- > \f'i. -i PRINCETON, N. J. '^^ A BR 45 .B35 1882 Hampton lectures SAe/f. T."'. ...^ ' * > A ■pa-;." j : j.r'..Jm^.^-- f , (,ii^:fc/ .> •sw THE ONE MEDIATOR THE ONE MEDIATOR THE OPERATION OF THE SON OF GOD IN NATURE AND IN GRACE EIGHT LECTURES DELIVERED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD IN THE YEAR 1882 ON THE FOUNDATION OF THE LATE REV. JOHN BAMPTON;(^ M.A.^ t-2.C7 M ''2*- CANON OF SALISBURY PETER GOLDSMITH MEDD, M.A. RECTOR OF NORTH CF.RNEY, GLOUCESTERSHIRE; HONORARY CANON OF ST. AI.BAN's AND EXAMINING CHAPLAIN TO THE BISHOP; FORMERLY FELLOW AND TUTOR OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE ; I.ATE RECTOR OF BARNES E. & J. B. YOUNG & COMPANY r 00 PER UNION, FOURTH AVENUE MDCCCLXXXIV NOVUM TESTAMENTUM IN VETERE LATET, VETUS TESTAMENTUM IN NOVO PATET. St. Aiif^nslinc. ©iforlj PRINTED BY E. PICKARD HALL, M.A., AND HORACE HART PRINTERS TO THE UNIVEESITT EXTRACT FROM THE LAST WILL AND TESTAMENT OF THE LATE EEV. JOHN BAMPTON, CANON OF SALISBURY. — — " I GIVE and bequeath my Lands and Estates to the " Chancellor, Masters, and Scholars of the University of " Oxford for ever, to have and to hold all and sinjrular the " said Lands or Estates upon trust, and to the intents and " purposes hereinafter mentioned ; that is to say, I will and " appoint that the Vice-Chancellor of the University of Ox- " ford for the time being shall take and receive all the rents, " issues, and profits thereof, and (after all taxes, reparations, " and necessary deductions made) that he pay all the re- " mainder to the endowment of eight Divinity Lecture Ser- " mons, to be established for ever in the said University, and " to be performed in the manner following : " I direct and appoint, that, upon the first Tuesday in " Easter Term, a Lecturer be yearly chosen by the Heads " of Colleges only, and by no others, in the room adjoining " to the Printing-House, between the hours of ten in the " morning and two in the afternoon, to preach eight Divinity " Lecture Sermons, the year following, at St. Mary's in Ox- "■ ford, between the commencement of the last month in Lent •' Term, and the end of the third week in Act Term. vi Extract from Canon Baviptons Will. " Also I direct and appoint, that the eight Divinit}^ Lecture Sermons shall be preached on either of the following Sub- jects— to confirm and establish the Christian Faith^ and to confute all heretics and schismatics — upon the divine au- thority of the holy Scriptures — upon the authority of the writings of the primitive Fathers, as to the faith and prac- tice of the primitive Church — upon the Divinity of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ — upon the Divinity of the Holy Ghost — upon the Articles of the Christian Faith, as compre- hended in the Apostles' and Nicene Creeds. " Also I direct, that thirty copies of the eight Divinity Lec- ture Sermons shall be always printed, within two months after they are preached ; and one copy shall be given to the Chancellor of the University, and one copy to the Head of every College, and one copy to the Mayor of the city of Oxford, and one copy to be put into the Bodleian Library ; and the expense of printing them shall be paid out of the revenue of the Land or Estates given for establishing the Divinity Lecture Sermons ; and the Preacher shall not be paid, nor be entitled to the revenue, before they are printed. "Also I direct and appoint, that no person shall be quali- fied to preach the Divinity Lecture Sermons, unless he hath taken the degree of Master of Arts at least, in one of the two Universities of Oxford or Cambridge ; and that the same person shall never preach the Divinity Lecture Ser- mons twice." Hfx PREFACE. The object of the following Lectures is to exhibit, in out- line, the twofold Mediatorial Character which belongs to the Eternal Son of God, as the sole Means wherethrough the ad extra action of the Godhead has ever proceeded. Assigning to Him alone, as Holy Scripture does, the great function of Mediation between the Infinite Godhead and the Universe ; regarding Him, the Personal Wisdom and Word of the Father, as the one channel thi'ough which the Holy Spirit, Who is revealed as the Life and Power and Energy of the Godhead, has ever flowed forth, both in the act of Creation and upon things created, for their continual maintenance in being and for their development, we distinguish between (a) His Creative and (/>) His Redemptive, or New-Creative Mediation. Roughly speaking, this division corresponds to the customary distinction between Nature and Grace ; and were we limiting our view of the august Work of the Son of God to His relations with fallen man it might suffice to adopt that customary distinction, and to confine ourselves to His redemptive action only. Looking, however, at His Work and Function in a wider view, and at an earlier stage, as the Auyos aa-apKos, i. e. as He has operated in the invisible angelic world as well as upon Mankind, and upon Mankind before the Fall as well as since, we perceive that that distinction did not at first exist. The first Creation was a Creation in grace, both of angels and men. The distinction between Nature and Grace, between the Natural and the Supernatural, did not exist. The Natural was supernatural, the Supernatural was natural. At least they co-existed, if they were not indeed identical ; the Supernatural enveloping and interpenetrating the Natural. viii Preface. Such would seem to be the true, the ideal, the normal con- dition of created life, to be one day realized in the Consum- mated State. The entrance of sin it was that created for Man, and in man's thought, the sharp division between the Natural and the Supernatural, between Nature and Grace. The higher endowments of creaturely life in close conscious com- munion with God were cut off by the alienation induced by sin. The lower elements remained, constituting Man's natural life and powers ; so-called because they are those which belong to him by birth, and put him in relation with that visible world around him which we call Nature. Hence arose the necessity for the One Mediator to undertake, beyond His original creative function, a Redemptive function also. This involved in fact a New Creation, a Regeneration ; and necessitated, for its ultimate efFectuation,'that Incarnation of the Eternal Son, which had been conceivable, possible, even probable, as the predestined means of the Consummation of Creation, in its union with the Creator, even apart from sin. But it will be my endeavour to show, that, in an inferior and preparatory way, the One Mediator, in His love and pity for our fallen race, as the One Being to Whom of natural right the function of Redemptive Mediation necessarily belonged, was continuously exercising that redemptive function, though after a veiled manner, from the very first beginnings of human history until the fulness of the times was come. We are not to wonder at the, to us, seemingly slow movement of Him to Whom a thousand years are as one day. Science requires us to assume the lapse of long ages of preparation before the first creation of Man upon the earth. This protracted evolutionary process may well prepare us, by way of analogy, for the long recorded preparation for the New Creation of Man through the Incarnation. Viewing the work of Christ in this way we seem to gain a grander idea of the Purpose of God in His making of Man in His oivn Image, and a firmer grasp of the magnificent Preface. ix Personality of the Eternal Son, and of His function as the central force in all History, and the ultimate Judge, as He is the present King, of men. We rise also to worthier thoughts of the glories of that New Creation for the realization of which so stupendous means have been employed ; to worthier conceptions of the destiny of Man as united to God through the One Mediator, and so filled with the Life and Power and Energy of God. So regarded, the Christian Theology stands forth as indeed a worthy Revelation of God, full of deep inner hopefulness and joy. Its cardinal truths of the Trinity and the Incarnation find their due and necessary and satisfying place in our thoughts about God and His relation to us. It is seen, further, to include a true and most cheering Anthropology, which adopts all the certainties of Science, and co-ordinates them in their duo place and proportion. It helps in this way not a little to the removal, or relief, of many difficulties which oppress the modern mind from the darker side of life as naturally viewed, its sadness, its apparent disappointing waste. The days of Unitarianism, Deism, or Theism, as possible forms of final and permanent thought and belief for thoughtful religious men, are past. It will more and more be seen that there is no standin(r-o:round between the Catholic, i.e. the Nicene, Faith, and blank Agnosticism for the polished and refined, or a coarse Materialist Communistic Secularism — socially and politically dangerous — for the rest ; however at once intellectually unsatisfying and untenable (in the last resort and when fully thought out), and also morally hopeless and degrading, both forms of the latter alternative must be. Unitarian thought and the more relij^ious forms of Deism have laid usually much stress on the ' Fatherly ' character and loving goodness of God. Rightly enough ; but they have seemed to suppose that an earnest faith in these Divine Attributes removed the moral and intellectual ground and X Preface. necessity for a strictly Atoning and Redemptive Work, or, indeed, for any idea of Mediation at all as exercised by Christ. They have argued back from the parental relation and feeling among human beings to its existence in the Divine Being, as the reflex of what we ourselves are conscious of in our own best and deepest selves. The argument is, to a certain extent, true and sound ; for it is of the nature of analogical reasoning that it may be applied in illustration either way. That God is like Man is true, as well as that Man is like God. But it is far more deeply and cogently true that it is the human Fatherhood that is the reflex of the Divine, not vice versa. It was the mistake of Arius to argue as if the human Fatherhood were the original, and must rule and limit our conception of the Divine. On the contrary, quite apart from and antecedent to any such faint finite imperfect reflection, God is, in Himself and by His very essential Nature, and prior to Creation, a Father ; and that, not in any merely analogous sense, but in the strictest and most perfect, the only perfect and absolutely true sense. This thought the Catholic Faith, adequately in- terpreting the Bible Revelation of God, gives to us who sorely need it, in the stress of life, and in view of the anguish around us from the sight and sympathy of which we cannot quite escape, though we should harden our hearts against it with an armour of threefold brass. The thoughtless or the prosperous, the indifferent or the protected classes — the men and women who, from will or from circumstance, are cut off from whole- some contact with their fellows, and know not, or only by hearsay, what human life can sink to among the unhappy multitudes of our great modern cities — these may escape the felt necessity of having a faith, intellectual or moral, one way or the other, positive or negative, as to God and His relation to Man. But others there are whom sympathy, or duty, or circumstance has compelled to look beneath the surface of our hollow civilization, and to gaze into that deepening abyss of misery-producing sin and sin-producing misery with which, Preface. xi especially in these daj-s of selfish and narrow party-govern- ment, all merely secular methods are so ludicrously powerless to deal. These know full well that, as truly as nothing but the supernatural forces of real and full, that is, of Catholic Christianity can supply any sufficient remedies for these evils, so, equally truly, the mere intellectual and moral con- templation of the problem they present must, when pursued to the end, lead to either the acceptance of the Faith and hopes of Catholic Christianity, as the only tolerable intellectual solution, the only possible moral stay, or else to a condition both of heart and mind which is something other than human ; to a life of the sheerest selfish worldliness, or worse ; to a life whose sole principle is, practically, Let us eat and drink, for to-morroiu ive die, and from which, in the end, intellect as well as heart is stamped out. A persuasion that even among those who are Catholic Christians, and who heartily embrace and hold fast the Nicene Faith, there are many who have not fully entered into the height and depth of their glorious inheritance, nor really proved its applicability in face of the difficulties, speculative and practical, which meet us in modern life, has led to this present work. The larger view of Christ's operation in the field of history, and in the world of man from the beginning, which, within such limits as were al- lowed, I have, however humbly and insufficiently, endea- voured to present, does seem to me a real stay of faith, a contribution, such as is quite congenial to the. purpose of Canon Bampton's foundation, to the Evidences of the truth of the Christian Religion. Among genuine and candid seekers after truth, the Chris- tian faith needs only (I am persuaded) to be seen and kno\vn to be accepted. But, for it to be thus seen and known, partial presentations of it will not suffice. It cannot be doubted that among the many deteriorating effects of ' our unhappy divisions' a weakened and inadequate presentation xii Preface. of Christianity (even intellectually regarded) must be in- cluded. Men have pulled the Faith in pieces ; parties have appropriated this or that portion which was to them more congenial or attractive, and have become by their mere par- tisanship prejudiced against other portions of the common Truth which were more specially upheld and asserted by others : while the partisan maintenance of even important and necessary truths (whether it were Justification by faith or the need of Sanctification, or the efficacy of Sacraments, or the primitive truth about the state of the departed, or the constitution of the Church as the Kingdom of God) has tended to their exaggeration, distortion, or even caricature. The Catholic Church herself, in all her branches, has suffered from these causes. The total effect on the maintenance of the Christian Faith in the world has been disastrous. Hardly less to be lamented, as a further result of division and controversy among Christians, is the diversion and waste of power, of time and interest, which might otherwise have been profitably spent in, what is so greatly needed, that deeper, closer, calmer, and more philosophic study of the Christian Faith as a whole, and of the inspired Scriptures, whereby the great Christian Society should bring out of her treasure things neiu as well as old; should set, if need be, old truths in a new light, show their applicability to the more trying conditions of our complex modern life, and bring forward into their due prominence, whether in her own consciousness or in that of the world in which and for which she exists, those truths (and such we are persuaded there are) which belong indeed to the original deposit, but are yet latent in the pages of the Bible, unrealised, or at least, so far, not applied. In the department of Eschatology, for example, there is much, very much, yet to be done in this direction. Here, as in other subjects, it is the candid patient labour of many thoughtful and believing minds, and their calm and forbearing comparison and correction of re- Preface. xiii suits, that are required, to arrive, in the end, under the good guidance of the Holy Spirit of God, at precious and practically profitable and influential truth. What is, perhaps, more needed than anything else at the present time, to deepen, to give breadth and continuity to, theological thought amongst us, is a deeper, closer, and com- pleter, study of the Old Testament Scriptures. Some have almost seemed to think that the gift of the New Testament had rendered the Old superfluous ; that since the fuller revela- tion of God in Christ all was useless and antiquated that had gone before. No greater mistake could be made in Theology ; not only because we cannot dispense with the Old Testament in the general argument for Christianity, but also because the revelation contained in it — which is also, in a very true sense, a revelation of God in Christ — is not itself exhausted in lead- ing up to and preparing for the New Testament. The present generation, in this country as elsewhere, has seen much done alike for the criticism and for the exegesis of the New Testa- ment ; and there are indications that the study of the Greek Language has advanced as far as it ever will. There are now but few passages in the New Testament of which the render- ing, given the Greek Text, is doubtful or obscure. But the recent Westminster Revision, with its many unwarrantable — it may, in some cases, almost be said, its demonstrably un- tenable— alterations, from an insufficiently balanced view of authorities, and from the unwholesome method of settling such questions by majorities in too large a body, has shown that there is much still to be done for the permanent settle- ment of the Text. With the Old Testament the case is different. Of the Text, it may be, perhaps, true to say, there is at once far less material and far less occasion for any reconsideration ; though there is yet a large field open in the determination of the relation of the Septuagint Version to the Hebrew Original. But as regards the Translation, and the clearing up of pass- xiv Preface. ages and phrases at present wrongly rendered or obscure, or even wholly unintelligible, there is much yet to be done. A correct and adequate exegesis must, of course, wait for this, and for a fuller and more generally diffused knowledge of the original languages and their cognates than exists at present. Let us hope that we are on the way to this. Let us hope that the Revised Version of the Old Testament may mark a great step onward ; and that, with other benefits, this generation may be delivered from the mostly misleading arbitrariness of chapters and verses in either Volume, and may have seen the last of the enormity of presenting Isaiah in such an outward form as that in which most of us had to make our first acquaintance with him^. Let us hope also that the students of the future will begin with a stimulating, if a humbling, sense of how much yet remains to be done, in the way of close and fruitful study of the Old Testament as a whole, and of the Psalms and the Prophetic portions in par- ticular : how much towards the settlement of the true prin- ciples of interpretation, especially, for example, of the symbolic and hyperbolic language of Holy Scripture, and towards the making such principles generally known and understood, when settled, and towards the clearing of the true view of Prophecy, Messianic or otherwise, if indeed there be any Prophecy which is not Messianic. Further, let us hope that the study of the Old Testament will be earnestly taken up by those who know and feel that, except to Christian faith, it is and must remain a sealed book ; a book in the reading of which there is, and must ever remain, a veil on the faces of those who, from whatever cause, reject the historic Christ in Whom it is at once fulfilled and— not done away, but lifted to the full height of its glorious signifi- ' In the meantime I would earnestly commend to the attention of students and intelligent readers the beautifully printed Revised English Bible, edited by the Kev. Drs. Gotch and Davies, Jacob and Green. Eyre & Spottiswoode, London, 1877. Preface. xv cance, and invested for ever with an inexhaustible interest. May they remember that it was in the lifelong knowledge of these Scriptures that they had lived whom yet the merciful Lord upbraided as foolislt, and sloiv of heart to believe, whose understandings He had to open, that they might understand the Scriptures, heginning at Moses and all the Prophets, and expounding unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. May they remember that, now as then, it is only the Divine Eternal Word Who, through His in-breathed Holy Spirit, can enable men to see clearly throughout the Bible its one great Subject, which is Himself, in Whose Light alone can we see light. The believing Christian, however, in the outset, his faith may have been helped by the converging force of very various considerations, has, of course, the ivitness in himself, in his certain inward experience of the reality of contact with God and of supernatural grace, i. e. of the operation upon him of the Holy Spirit, in mind and heart, in answer to prayer. To honest enquirers Christianity may be defended on both historic and philosophic grounds. Our age needs both lines of defence. Perhaps the general English mind is more open to the historic argument ; for it generally finds the concrete more congenial to it than the abstract. But of real thought on any subject there is little enough in the absurd hurry of modern life. And in the way of the effect of even the historic defence of Christianity there is the obstacle of the scanty knowledge possessed by most of the history of our Race, even so far as it is contained in the Bible, and their consequent disadvantage in estimating the force of the his- toric argument. It may, however, help some if they are led to regard the Bible in its true light, namely. As the History of the Work of the One Mediator as the 'Educator' of Man- kind, the Record of the gradual progressive development of that Work, from Paradise to Pentecost. Throughout that long and chequered history, the Christ, the Eternal Word, xvi Preface. Whose Incarnation was foreshadowed as well as predicted from the first, is at once the Author and the Subject of the Revelation; throughout it, and beyond it, for the Olivet Discourse [St. Matt. xxiv. and xxv.) and the Apocalypse carry us on to the predicted Consummation of the pre-Christian Ao-e in the Judgment of Jerusalem, while the latter chapters of the last Book of the Bible, compared with the parallel earlier utterances of Christ Himself — the real author of the Apocalypse also — place us at the right view-point for our present Dispensation — the Millennial Times of the Gentiles — and disclose sufficiently, though in general outline, its career, the main features of its close, and its glorious results in the new Heaven and Earth. Such a view gives the necessary unity to Revelation and to the Bible as its Record ; and, by bringing out distinctly its progressive character, meets at once many difficulties, or rather anticipates and forestalls them. In the face of unbelief, amid whatever drawbacks from the weakness of faith or the imperfection of life among Christians, or from their grievous dissensions, the Religion and the Society of Christ stand out through nearl}^ nineteen centuries as tremendous facts ; facts lodged in the very centre of the active moving world, and of its activities ; facts that cannot be denied or ignored, facts that must be ac- counted for in the past, that must be reckoned with in the present ; facts which enshrine a spirit and a force which are found, and ever will be found — else must the lover of man- kind despair indeed — to be, in the face of whatever oppo- sition, incompressible, indestructible, Divine. P. G. M. NouTH Cerney Eectoky, Cirencester, August, 1883. x- CONTEN^TS. LECTURE I. THE CREATION OF ALL THINGS THUOUGH THE SOX OF GOD. SECTIONS PAGE 1-7. Intkoductory 1-13 1. Peace with and Love of God necessary for Knowledge of Him i 2. The Intellect to be used in the study of spiritual Truth 3 3. The Creeds contain all Fundamental Truth 6 4. The Supernatural must be accepted or rejected 7 5. Pre-eminent importance of the Nicene Creed 8 6. Practical value of the Creeds in everyday life 9 7. Spiritual Truth is only spiritually discerned 12 8. The first truth about God is His Only-ness 13 9. God is essentially a Father 15 10. The Son is The One Mediator of the Father's Action 16 11. God, in Himself, and as related to Creation 17 12. 13. In and after the Act of Creation the Son is the Mediator ... iS, 20 14. Holy Scripture on the Natural Mediation of the Son 22 15. Creation is through the Eternal Word, 26 16. Whose Existence is its necessary antecedent condition 26 17. The Godhead is manifested in and through the Eternal Woun, 28 18. as the Son, the Only-Begotten, 30 19. and as the Image of God 31 20. The Father is the Fountain, the Son the Well, of Life 32 21. Old Testament intimations of the Trinity 32 22. The Universe is upheld by the Son of God 36 23. Loss involved in partial views of His Mediation 37 24. The Incarnation is the full development of Mediation, 3S 25. but the Son, even before that, was the One Mediator 40 26. The Old Testament insufficiently studied 41 27. Christ the Supreme Personage in History 43 b XVIU Co7itents. LECTURE II. THE SON OF GOD THE LIFE AND LIGHT OF ALL CKEATION. SECTIONS 28. Life is given to all through the Son of God, 29. Who is the Sovereign Lord over all that lives 30. and the Heir of all things 31. The Consummated Universe to be His Heritage ... 32. Grandeur of the Created Universe ; No antagonism between Science and Theology 33. Much of the Bible still imperfectly understood 34. Judaism looked forward to the future; 35. So also does Christianity 36. The Son of God is the Light of the World Vf 37. Spiritual Illumination is only through Him 38. Distinction between ' soul ' and ' spirit ' in Man 39. Effects of the withdrawal of the Holy Spirit from Man 40. The Priesthood of the Only-Begotten Son 41. The essence of Worship is Self-Sacrifice 42. Connection of Priesthood with Primogeniture 43. Priestly relation of the Son to all Creation 44. The unseen Angelic world 45. The Angels' worship of God presupposes a Revelation 46. Angels employed in the administration of the Universe 47. Interest of the angels in the glories of Creation ... 48. Moral life, and Probation, of the angels : Origin of Evil 49. Self-assertion against God the inner essence of Sin 50. The outward form of the first act of sin 51. Effects of sin on angelic natures 52. Foreseen loss through sin of some angels and men LECTURE IIL THE CREATION OF MAN ; ITS RELATION TO THE INCARNATION. 53. The gradations of Organized Life 54. The processes of Nature the object of Science 55. Man is the Head of the visible world, 56. and the most representative of all creatures 57. 'Traducianism' and ' Creationism ' both true 58. The Incarnation, probably, not contingent .. 59. Its effects reach beyond Mankind Contents. xix SECTIONS PACE 60. It alone links Creation to God, 113 61. and secures its permanence and continual development 114 62. Scripture intimations of its wider Purpose 117 63. God's ultimate and all-inclusive Purpose 118 64. The Incarnation meets any true elements in Pantheism 122 65. Pantheism congenial to fallen man's thought of God 125 66. Only in Christ can Man bear the nearness of God 127 67. Unsatisfying hopelessness of Pantheism 128 LECTURE IV. THE PREPARATION FOR THE INCARNATION : THE THEOPHANIES. 68. The long Preparation for the Incarnation 132 69. Patience needed under difficulties as to Faith 134 70. The Son of God the ' Life ' and the ' Truth ' to all, 137 71. and the ' Educator ' of Man from the first 13S 72. Primeval Worship 140 73. Entrance of Sin into Man's world 142 74. Adoration of God for His mercy 144 75. The ' Protevangelium ' 145 76. The primitive usage of Animal Sacrifice 145 77. Mediatorial relation of the Son to fallen Man 148 78. The Christian Faith the Key of Man's past History 150 79. The Ante-diluvian Dispensation 153 80. Its close was an ' End of the world ' 154 81. Period from Noah to Abraham : Sodom and Gomorrah 156 82. The Mediator is also the Judge 157 83. The ' Theophanies ' in the Old Testament 160 84. Primitive Christian belief that all Di\-ine Dispensations, 162 85. and communications to Man, were through the Son of God, 164 86. Who is the ' Angel OF THE Lord ' 166 87. Tlie Incarnation no isolated fact 170 88. Illustrative passages from the New Testament 173 89. Unity of Operation of the Three Divine Persons 177 90. Saint Augustine's divergence from the primitive view 181 91. Hypothesis that the 'Angel of the Lord' was a erp.ibiire 183 92. Cessation of the ' Theophanies ' accounted for 187 93-111. Detailed Examination of the ' Theophanies ' 189 93. Divine Appearances to Abram 189 94. Appearances of the ' Angel of the Lord ' to Hagar 191 b 2 XX Contents. SECTIONS PACE 95. To Abraham on Moriah ; to Jacob at Luz, in Haran, at Mahanaim, at Bethel 192 96. Visit of the three Angels to Abraham 195 97. The Appearance to Moses in the Burning Bush 197 98. The Pillar of Cloud and of Fire 199 99. The Divine Guardian of Israel 200 100. The Appearance to Balaam 203 101. To Joshua before Jericho 205 102. To the People at Bochim : to Gideon 209 103. To the parents of Samson 210 104. The Angel of the Pestilence 212 105. Tlie Vision of Ezekiel 214 106. Appearances in the Book of Daniel 216 107. The Vision of 'The Ancient of Days' 217 108. The ' Great Vision ' of Daniel 220 109. The Visions of Zechariah 224 110. The ' Angel of the Covenant ' in Malachi 230 111. These Appearances a bond between the Old Covenant and the New 231 LECTURE V. THE MEDIATION OF THE SON OF GOD UNDER THE LAW. 112. The Christian Faith the only Key to past Revelation 233 113. The earlier Mediation of the Son of God was veiled 236 114. Old Testament hints explained by the Risen Christ 237 115. The Son operated behind and within the Legal System ; His Spirit was in the Prophets 238 116. His Priestly Function under the Law 24I 117. Development of Sacrifice in the Mosaic System 242 1/ 118. Underneath the Law lay the earlier Gospel of Faith 244 119. Grace was vouchsafed through the Unseen Mediator 246 120. Levitical Worship a shadow of the Heavenly 246 121. Christ sacrificed is the Sustenance of Man's Life 248 122. Significance of the ' Perpetual Passover ' 250 123. The Unseen Christ fed His ancient People 251 124. The Kingly Sovereignty of Christ 253 125. The strife of good and evil in human History 255 126. The Theocratic constitution of Israel: the Judgment of Egypt ... 259 127. The Judgment of Amalek 262 128. The Judgment of the Canaanites 262 Contents. XXI 129. God the Son especially ' the God of Israel ; ' and their King 130. Judgments inflicted on them by their Unseen King ... 131. The first downfall of Jerusalem 132. Grandeur of the Calling of Israel 133. Modern critical study of the Bible 134. The study of God's Purpose is permitted 135. Need of realizing the Eoyalty of Christ PACE Ig ... . . 263 . 266 . 267 . 26S ■ 273 . 275 . 276 LECTURE VI . THE INCARNATION ; THE WOEK OF THE INCARNATE MEDIATOR, ON EARTH, AND IN THE UNSEEN. 136. The ' fulness of the time ' 137. demanded some striking change 138. The Incarnation fully constituted the Son The One Mediator 139. The Incarnation is especially a message of Peace 140. The special work of Christ began with His Baptism 141. His Fasting and Temptation 142. His Work as Prophet 143. His Work as Priest, First, In the Upper Chamber 144. The three stages of the One Sacrifice 145. Gethsemane 146. His Passion 147. His Death 148. The Unseen State 149. No further probation after death ; 150. but development and progress 151. The Work of the Mediator in the Unseen 152. The ' spirits in prison ' 153. Increase of joy to the departed from Christ's Work 280 282 288 290 292 293 296 299 303 309 3io 312 313 314 316 318 3'9 321 LECTURE VIL THE WORK OF THE MEDIATOR DURING THE GREAT FORTY DAYS. 154. Importance of the great Forty Days ... . 155. Christ, as King, organizing His Kingdom , V 156. The Seven Great Sayings ; First, Peace 157. The Second Saying, Commission 158. The Third Saying, Power 3-!4 326 328 329 329 xxu Contents. 159. The remaining Four Sayings : The 'Power of the Keys' 160. Tlie Pastoral Charge, by the Lake 161. The Baptismal Commission, on the Mountain 162. The Final Charge, at Bethany 163. The Ascension 164. Distinction between ' natural ' and ' spiritual ' Mediation 165. The Gift of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost 166. The Action of the Apostolic Ministry 167. Ideal life of the first Christian Church 168. The forty years' Respite of grace to Jerusalem 169. The three visible Appearances of the Ascended Christ 170. The date and purpose of the Apocalypse, 171. which is an enlarged form of Christ's Prophecy on Olivet 172. Secondary 'applications ' of Inspired Prophecy 173. Later examples of Christ's Judicial action PAGE 330 332 333 335 335 337 338 340 342 343 344 345 349 355 357 LECTURE VIII. THE WORK OF THE MEDIATOR AFTER THE ASCENSION. 174. The temporary rejection of the natural Israel 175. The Binding of Satan : The Reign of Christ, 176. and of the Saints with Him 177. The Ideal of Salvation in Christ 178. The Millennial Reign ' within the veil ' 179. In Church Worship Heaven and Earth are one, 180. especially in the Holy Communion 181. The royalty of the Christian calling, 182. secured and perfected in the Unseen State 183. Christ's Work continually applied in the Church, 184. by the Power of the Holy Ghost, through a ministrative 185. The One Mediator ever acts invisibly ; 186. as Prophet; 187. as Priest; 188. as King, 189. claiming the allegiance of all 190. He is also the Judge 191. Evils resulting from the unfaithfulness of Christians 192. The predicted ' Apostasy ; ' Anti-Christ 193. The order and sequence of the ' Last Things' ... priesthood 359 360 363 364 368 369 370 371 372 372 373 375 376 377 379 380 382 382 385 389 Co7itents. xxiii SECTIONS PAGE 194. The 'Passing-away' of this earth and heaven 391 195. The descent of the ' New Jerusalem ' 394 196. Tlie consummated union of Christ with His Church 396 197. The uncovenanted saved 401 198. Various degrees of blessedness 402 199. The Consummated State a complex Society, 404 200. with an ordered govermnent, under Christ the Head of Humanity 406 APPENDIX I. I. The Angels illuminated by the Son of God 411 II. The Angels are not merely spirits 41 1 III. The Universe administered by agency of angels 414 IV. The essence of the first sin was Pride 416 V, The fall of the Angels irremediable 419 VI. Appearance of the Son of God in Paradise 423 VII. The Tlieophanies 426 VIII. The Co-inherence of the Three Divine Persons 502 IX. The Title vlrfoHa* belongs especially to the Son 503 X. Christ's Commission was given to the Church as a whole 505 XI. The Apocalyptic Babylon is Jerusalem 509 XII. The Millennial ' Binding of Satan ' 524 XIII. Bible Ideals 531 XIV. Christ the Minister of the New Covenant 540 XV. Antichrist 545 XVI. The Restoration of the Jews 1^53 XVII. The Surrender of the Kingdom 563 APPENDIX 11. Additional Notes and References 571 Index 578 LECTURE I. THE CREATION OF ALL THINGS THROUGH THE SON OF GOD. St. John i. 3. ndvTa 8t' avrov (yiv^ro, koX \0ip\9 avrov €yev€TO ovbe €v o ykyoviv. (All things came into being- through Him, and apart from Him came not into being even any one thing that has come into being.) I. It is a deep truth that Pectus est quod facif tJieologum (It is the heart that makes the theologian). It is ' the Peace of God which passeth aU imderstand- ing ' that keeps us in the knowledge and in the love of God ; in both, if in either. And the peace of God is that inward condition in which the soul, embracing heartily the essentials of Christian Faith, rests with entire confidence on the revealed love of God in Christ, and, yielding itself back to God with answering love, desires before aU things that His Will may be done * in earth as it is in heaven.' This is the condition of the children of God, wrought in them by the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, the Sanctifier, the Enhghtener, without Whose help there can be no true knowledge of the things of God. His Presence in the Soul, the accompaniment of the indwelling therein of Him Who is ' our Peace,' keeps both heart and mind * in the know- B 2 The Peace of God and the Love of God [lect. ledge and love of God and of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord.' But, in the growth of the Christian Infe within us, each helps on the other, and tends to increase it in mutual reaction. The love of God, the will to do His Will, the accompaniment of each ap- proach towards even the barest thought of Him by a reverent longing, by the impulse of adoration, these are the first elementary conditions of any real know- ledge of God. Where these are absent, there, although the very highest themes that can engage the human intellect may be treated of, and ^vith the highest reach of power whereof that intellect, learned, thoughtful, and informed, is capable, the discussion yet becomes but one of mere empty names, representing different ideas to different thinkers, and wholly barren of results of any value either intellectual or moral. Where they are present the intellectual and spiritual vision of Truth, though necessarily imperfect as to both exten- sion and intension, is clear in itself so far as it reaches, and in its gathering strength furnishes ever fresh motive and material for adoring love. o It is by this reaction of heart and mind on each other that a faith, warm to the height of an absorbing passion, and rational and intelligent to the utmost reach of those faculties which * the Father of Lights,' our Creator, has given us, is nourished and sus- tained. For ' in order to the searching of the Scriptures, and the drawing therefrom of true Knowledge, there is need of a good life and a pure soul and the virtue that is according to Christ, in order that the mind, making I.] necessary for the Knowledge of God. 3 its way thereby, may be enabled to attain and to ap- prehend the things after which it reaches forth, so far as it is possible for the nature of man to learn about God the Word. For without a pure mind and the imitation of the life of the Saints would not any one be able to comprehend the writings of the Saints ' {St, Athanasius on the Incarnation, chaj?. 57). Therefore, at the outset, I would pray in the words of the illustrious Bishop Bull at the opening of his great work in defence of the Nicene Faith : — Te vero Sanctissime Jesu, aeterni Patris co-aeternum Verbum, ego peccatorum maximus, servorum Tuorum minimus, supplex veneror, ut huic labori meo, in hono- rem Tuum sanctaeque Ecclesiae Tuae utilitatem (Te KapSioyvdoa-rrjv testor) suscepto, benedicere, meaeque im- becillitati in hoc gravissimo negotio pro immensa Tua misericordia, atque in Tui amatores propensissima vo- luntate subvenire atque opitulari digneris. Amen. [0 most holy Jesus, the Co-eternal Word of the Eternal Father, I, the chief of sinners, and the least of Thy servants, do humbly beseech Thee that Thou wouldest vouch^fe to bless this labour of mine, undertaken (as Thou, 0 Searcher of hearts, dost know) for Thine honour and the good of Thy holy Church, and to succour and help mine infirmity in this most weighty work ; for Thine infinite mercy's sake, and Thy most ready favour towards them that love Thee. Amen.] 2. It need hardly be said to a Christian congregation, that our intellectual powers, finite as they are in their scale, and hindered as they now are in their action, B 2 4 The Intellect to be used [lect. especially on moral and religious subjects, by their association with a nature morally corrupt and de- generate, are yet God's own precious gift to us, part of our likeness to Himself, and so are to be used, and not cowardly and faithlessly suppressed, in our ap- proaches to Him 'in knowledge of Whom standeth our eternal life.' The Christian believer need not think it a worthy sacrifice to God to withdraw the reverent action of his mind from any subject-matter of thought, even the very highest. On the contrary, he thinks it his religious duty to press it. He does not fear that the action of Eeason must of itself be hurtful to faith. Such fear, from his stand-point, seems really as irre- verent and profane as it is groundless. He accepts cer- tain data, the fundamental cardinal Truths of Natural and Eevealed Pteligion, as he feels himself, even intel- lectually, constrained to do by the cumulative converging force of a vast mass of considerations of very varied sorts, rational, moral, or mixed, a priori or inductive, historic, or growing out of his study of himself, his own subjective constitution, his moral and spiritual necessities and aspirations. But in these data he finds an inexhaustible field for the exercise of the very highest and most delightful thought ; while, in the standing results of such thought, in the sublimely coherent and satisfying view of God, of Nature, of History, and of Man, so opened up, he finds further strong confirmation of the truth of those data them- selves. Compare Dorner, Person of Christ, Vol. I, Preface, p. viii. 'Whoever reveres Christianity as accordant with the I.] ill the study of spiritual TrtUh. 5 highest reason, must also presume a proo-ressive unfold- ing and strengthening- of Reason through the power of Christianity, and that no term can be fixed for Reason in this advance. If in Christ be found, as Theology must hold to be the case, the key to the world's History, and the solution of all enigmas, it is not humility, but a self-willed inactivity, to refuse to seek how we may ever better and better apply this key for the resolution of all mysteries.' And Ibid., Inirod. p. 73. ' It is the tendency of the Christianity, which has through the Holy Ghost become subjective, to penetrate the whole sphere of the soul; and the man who should attempt to except the knowledge department from that, and to abide in simple immediate belief, would subject belief itself, which has already knowledge as an element in it, and thereby con- secrates the knowledge faculty itself, to similar infirmities with those which we see arise where faith does not pass over into practice, but seeks to hold this sunk in itself. . . . . The historical vocation of Christianity will not be satisfactorily fulfilled where men rest contented with being firm in the faith, with the deliverance of souls from the world, but only there where Christian know- ledge, or science, is also held to be the work and vocation of the Church along with that.' Also SJiedd's History of Christian Doctrine, Preface,];), v. 'It is a common remark that a powerful statement is a powerful argument. This is true of the dogmas of Christianity. But there is no statement of revealed truth more clear, connected, and convincing, than that which it obtains in the gradual and sequacious construc- tions of the Church, from century to century. Let any one trace the course of thinking by the theological mind, upon the doctrine of the Trinity, e. g., and perceive how link follows link by necessary consequence; how the objections of the heretic or the latitudinarian only elicit a more exhaustive, and at the same time more guarded, statement, which carries the Church still nearer to the 6 The Creeds contain all Fundamental Truth, [lect, substance of revelation, and the heart of the mystery ; how, in short, the trinitarian dogma, like Christian life itself as described by the apostle, " being fitly joined together, and compacted by that which every joint sup- plieth, maketh increase unto the edifying of itself" into a grand architectural structure, — let this process from be- ginning to end pass before a thinking and logical mind, and it will be difficult for it to resist the conviction that here is science, here is self-consistent and absolute truth. It cannot be that the earnest reflection of all the Christian centuries should thus have spent itself upon a fiction and figment. The symbol in which this thinking embodied itself must be the exponent of a reality. Such is the impression made, and such is the unavoidable inference.' 3. For us those data are tlie great primary truths about God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, which are embodied in the Catholic Creeds. The fact that these truths, reverently pondered, are seen to be in them- selves so luminous and coherent, and, further, to go an appreciable way towards explaining the phenomena of Nature, of Man, and of historic Kevelation, shews (it would seem) very forcibly their own impregnable truth. To the Christian they furnish a clue and a key to much that without them is, and must remain, a confused and inextricable, and, in its bearing on our- selves, our toilsome and suffering, our at best imperfect and unsatisfying lives, a truly painful riddle. In any system which is short of the full Catholic Nicene Christianity many precious shreds and frag- ments of truth may indeed be attained to which may, and do, nourish the moral and spiritual life in such souls as heartily embrace them with a faith that keeps I.] The Supernatural must be accepted or rejected. 7 itself open to fuller convictions as they may be offered. But that full rounded satisfyingness, moral and intel- lectual, which is felt by the thoughtful Catholic be- liever to be so great a stay of faith, so great an assurance of truth, can belong only to the complete system of Kevealed Truth. Towards this full conviction tends all hearty acceptance even of fragments of super- natural truth ; for it is a necessary consequence of the coherency of a true system that the clear apprehension of even portions of it has a tendency to lead on the mind, which candidly pursues the trains of thought thus opened up, to the apprehension of further truths, and, ultimately, of the whole. 4. The true dividing line in thought as to this class of subjects is that between the acceptance of the Supernatural and its rejection. Given the Supernatural, the Catholic Scheme is possible. All will admit this. And the Catholic maintains that, rightly understood and fully apprehended, it is as certain as it, and it alone, is fully and intellectually satisfying. Objections and hesitations as to any parts of the Catholic Faith by those who are Christian believers are felt to arise, either from misapprehension as to what the Truth really is, i. e. from objection to something which is supposed to be intended but is not ; or else from the presence, it may be quite unconsciously, of a way of looking at unfamiliar truths, against which ' our unhappy divisions' may have prejudiced their minds, that is rationalistic (so called), but really unbelieving. In the sectarian, and puritanical, and grievously miscalled ' evangelical,' rejection of certain Catholic Verities there 8 Pre-einine7it importance [lect, is much tKat is really due to this cause. And where it exists outside, and in antagonism to, the organization of the Church, it has shewn historically an unmis- takable tendency to work gradually downwards to- wards the ultimate rejection of the Supernatural, first by individual teachers and thinkers, and then by con- gregations and communities. From whatever causes (and they are manifold) the rejection, or, if such an attitude of mind be really tenable, the neutral non-acceptance of the Supernatural is not uncommon in the present day. The tendency is more and more for the world to be divided between those who thus reject or ignore the Supernatural, and those who accept the Catholic Scheme of Eevealed Truth as held by the Undivided Church, and stated in the Nicene Creed as completed at the Council of Constantinople. 5. In that document is enshrined all necessary funda- mental religious truth. In their hold of that the three great branches of the Catholic Church are one. The baptized man who holds that is a Catholic Christian so far as his individual faith is concerned. Such an one should find his natural home, and the warm welcome of Christian brotherhood, in any portion of the three great Catholic Communions with which he may be, for the time being, in local contact. The ordained man must of course accept, in addition, the existing con- stitutional system, and the current practical teaching, of the communion in whose executive he seeks. to work. But the first necessary steps towards the He-union of Catholic Christendom, which, if Christianity is to hold I.] of the Nicene Creed. 9 its own, is obviously the great need of the immediate future, will be the abandonment, at least to the extent of ceasing to insist upon them as necessaries, of all con- stitutional features which are not common alike to all three Communions, and the abolition of all express adhesion, subscriptionary or otherwise, except only to the Nicene Creed. Let not this view be misunderstood, as if it were meant that the area of certain and precious truth is limited to the actual statements of this Creed. One purpose of these Lectures is to shew that, taking the foundation truths of this Creed as a key to unlock the Holy Scriptures, there may be shewn to be, beyond them, a large body of further truth, deeply interesting and deeply important ; of truth which by its own beauty and consistency and by the way in which, to the eye of thoughtful faith, it lights up the whole field of History and of Prophecy, furnishes a strong a 'posteriori confirmation of the truth and strength of the founda- tion on which it is built, of the germ-truths from which it is developed. But these further truths, beyond those clearly expressed in the Creed, are not in them- selves vital. They are not necessary to the personal spiritual life, or the union of the soul with Christ in and through His Church. They are not fundamental. They need not, and, if they need not they ought not, to be required of any as a condition either of member- ship or of office in the Church of Christ. 6. AJl vital and practical Religion grows out of a true conception of God, of His Nature, Being, Cha- racter, and Purpose ; for on that depends our con- lo Practical value of the Creeds [lect. ception of His relation to Creation, to Man, and to ourselves, and of our consequent relation and duty to Him. It is from her strong instinctive over-ruling sense of this, as well as of what is due to God and abstractedly true in itself as a matter of Revelation, that the Chris- tian Church has always so strenuously insisted on the necessity and importance of the doctrines of the Trinity and the Incarnation. These truths, which are in perfect harmony with Eeason, though transcending reason, and undiscoverable without Revelation, she has ever felt to be no mere curious speculation, no cold abstract and unpractical refinements of a remote and over-subtle philosophizing, without bearing on cha- racter and life, and so admitting of being variously viewed by the subjective intellect this way or that, without danger or loss to the moral and spiritual nature. Far on the contrary, the great champions of the Catholic Faith, men like Athanasius, ever deeply felt that they were not contending for barren in- tellectual victories or even for Truth in the abstract (though that is precious), but were fighting really (not to mention the honour of God) for the moral and spiritual welfare, for the joy and comfort, ay, for the possibility of the patient endurance without apathy and despair in their e very-day life, as well as for their hopes of an eternal hereafter, of the poor and the un- instructed, the toiler and the serf, the woman and the child. It was the late Frederick Denison Maurice who said that St. Athanasius 'asserted the eternal genera- tion of the Son not as a dry dogma, but as a living I.] i7i every-day life. 1 1 principle in which every child and peasant was in- terested ' {Letttr to Dr. Jelf). I adopt with gratitude the following' passage from the Bampton Lectures of 1879 (by the Kev. Henry Wace) : — ' It is from this point of view that the Creeds of the Churcli are to be approached, and when they are placed in this light, all the appearance of mere speculative dogmatism, which is attributed to them by scepticism, at once melts away, and seems scarcely to need refutation. They are not mere abstract statements respecting the nature of God. They embody the most moral, the most human, the most touching and affecting conceptions which can stir the depths of the heart. If the Creeds are the distinctive characteristic of the Christian Church, it is not because Alexandrian metaphysics, or any mere theological specu- lations, had elaborated theories about the Divine nature. That was the work of the Gnostics, of the Arians, and of similar heretics. It was because, as a matter of certain apprehension and most blessed fact, our Lord Jesus Christ, fulfilling in His life and death and resur- rection the promises of the Old Testament, had revealed to men the image of a God of infinite love and light, had brought that God home to them in their very llesh and blood, had assured them of reconciliation and union with Him, had offered Himself as a propitiation for their sins, and in answer to their prayers had bestowed on . them a grace and power, which they felt in daily expe- rience to be the first-fruits of redemption. It is the whole of Christian life, the whole of that intense moral and spiritual illumination we have been contemplating, which constitutes the background of the creeds, and bestows on them their vital force and reality. The revelation of God, as we have seen in previous Lectures, was the life of faith from its earliest dawn — the strength of Abraham, the hope of the Prophets, the sum and substance of the life of our Lord. In Him, His life. His 1 2 Spiritual Truth only spiritually discerned, [lect. death. His resurrection, Ilis ascension, it had hecome the daily food of Christian souls ; and when, in Arianism, the last and most suhtle attempt was made to divide Him from God, and thus to prevent us from feeling- that, in union with Him, w^e were in union with God, it was not the Christian intellect, so much as the Christian heart, that revolted. It was this impulse which animated St. Athanasius. The spirit which really moved him may be perceived in his treatise Be Incarnatione Verhi, written before the controversial period of his life, and of which the centi'al idea is the recovery, through Jesus Christ, of the g-lorious image of God which the human soul had lost. It was probably to the intense devotion of St. Antony to God and Christ, as much as to the schools of Alexandria, that he owed his inspiration.' 7. If to any, devoid of the humility and of the living faith which are at once the condition and the consequence of that mward illuminating presence of the Holy Spirit of God without which there can be no true grasp of theological truth, such doctrines have been, even in their orthodox statement, the subjects of a mere intellectual exercise, they have ever been worse than barren. They have tended, under such absence of real spiritual life, to become perverted, distorted, and depraved, and so untrue even in their intellectual statement. For spiritual and supernatural truth, if it is to be to any even abstractedly and inteUectually true, apart from its influence on practice, must be 'spiritually discerned.' On such subjects only the * unction from the Holy One,' operating as well on the intellectual as on the moral elements in the complex unity of Man's nature, can give the true knowledge of divine things, the living growing knowledge which I.] The first truth about God is His Only-ness. 1 3 St. Paul calls eV/yi/wo-/?. This kind of knowledge is the result of the gift of 'the spirit of wisdom and revelation ' by which the eyes of our understanding are enlightened {TL'^li. i,). And of this gift a genuine moral sympathy with the Will of God is the necessary condition ; for only ' if any will to do the Will of God shall he know of the doctrine/ Only to * the pure in heart,' to those (that is) whose will is in sincere endeavour attuned to God's Will, does the promise belong that they shall see God in either the humble partial knowledge, ' through a glass darkly,' which belongs to this the pilgrimage of our exile, or in the open vision ' face to face ' hereafter in the Fatherland, in the 'City which hath foundations.' 8. ' There is but one living and true God. . . . And in unity of this Godhead there be three Persons, of one substance, power, and eternity : the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost ' {^Article I). Christian Eeligion begins with an intense grasp of the Unity, that is, the Only-ness, of God. The Catholic believer does not admit the use of the term 'Unitarian' as in itself expressive of an idea of God antagonistic to his own ; for his belief in the Trinity of Persons is not only consistent with but demands the antecedent fimdamental verity of the absolute and indivisible Unity of the Divine Essence, a verity which underlies his whole conception of God and of Keligion. He is as essentially Unitarian as he is Trinitarian. But any presentation of the thought of God which is negatively Unitarian, (that is. Unitarian without being at the 14 Only-ncss in God is not Loneliness. [lect. same time Trinitarian, as, for example, in Moham- medanism, Socinianism, Deism, or Theism,) he rejects as essentially inadequate, untrue, impossible. The Jewish Old Testament belief was not (as we shall see) Uni- tarian in this negative sense. It simply asserted the Only-ness of God, the Uniqueness, the Singularity of God, regarded ah extra, as well as the Unity (though this was naturally less insisted on) ah intra. But neither the one nor the other is so asserted in the Scriptures of the Old Testament as to exclude the conception of Plural Personahty within the Godhead. On the contrary, they rather, when closely examined, suggest it. They are not only consistent with, they prepare the way for, the Christian beliefs of the Trinity and the Incarnation. The Only-ness of God is one thing, and is a neces- sary truth even of natural reason ; for it flows neces- sarily from the primary conception of God as the Infinite, the Absolute, the Self-existent Being, as a Pure Spirit locally incomprehensible (immensiis). The Loneliness of God is altogether another thing, and to deny the Plural Personality, to assert the personal singularity, of God is to assert the Loneliness of God, Such an assertion presents us with the essentially cold and sterile conception of a sterile being, a God from whom the attribute of Fatherliness is essentially and eternally absent ; who is, and ever must be, set at an unapproachable and unrelated distance from all other being ; whose existence is indeed incompatible with the existence of any other forms of being. For such a con- ception of God renders the actual fact of the existence I.] God^ being Love, is essentially a Father, 15 of other beings than Himself unintelhgible and absurd, and tends to resolve itself into the conception of a mere blind force, a Fate or Destiny, or even practically, for man, to blot out the thought of God altogether, and land him in, at best, Agnosticism. 9. Glorious indeed in its contrast to a thought so barren is the faith of the Christian in One Who is, essentially and by His very Nature, a Father. We worship One Who could not be otherwise, and so was always and eternally a Father, in the strictest, fullest, and most perfect sense conceivable, in such wise that all other Fatherhood in created life follows from, grows out of, and is the partial and imperfect reflection of His essential and perfect Fatherhood. Our God is Love ; and Love is a relative term, and implies im- mediately and necessarily an object of love, and that object a Person ; and love, to be perfect, must be be- tween Persons perfect and equal. Wherefore, by an Eternal Generation from the depths of the Divine Fecundity, Which is the source of all Life, there is eternally begotten an Only Son, Who is tlie forth- flashing Brightness of the Father's Glory, the Very Image or Impress of His Person, the Likeness, the perfect reproduction, the adequate expression, of the Invisible God, and so a satisfying object of His Love, a Beloved Son, in Whom He is eternally well-pleased, for in Him He eternally contemplates the perfect reflection of His own glorious Nature and Attributes. So strict is the Substantial Oneness of the Son with the Father that the Son is the Word of the Father, the Logos, the Thought, the Reason, the Wisdom, of 1 6 The So7i the One Mediator ofthe Father s A ction. [lect. the Father ; and so the Means wherethrough the inner Will and Purpose of the Godhead has passed outwards into realization. lo. The Father has ever worked through the Person of the Son. The Son is THE ONE MEDIATOE, acting from and for the Divine Nature towards all else that is. This Mediatorial Character and relation, which it is the purpose of these Lectures to set in a clearer light, belongs to Him as involved in His Filial Pela- tion ; that is to say, it flows out of that relation naturally and necessarily so soon as the fact of Creation is added to the primary fact of God. To use the language of scientific Theology, it is an 'economical' function and relation ; but it rests on an anterior onto- logical and metaphysical relation. It is not a part of His Filial Personality as necessary a ^priori to its con- stitution, but it flows from it. The thought of Media- tion becomes necessary as soon as from the absolute thought of God we pass to the related thought of Creation, and the Bible Revelation distinctly attaches that Mediation to the Person of the Eternal Son, in resjject alike of the Works of Creation, of Administra- tion, and of Redemj)tion. This is the truth which, under the guidance of Holy Scripture and of Catholic Theology, it will be our endeavour to trace as it is exhibited, at least in its grand outlines, in Nature and in Grace. The task has been undertaken in the belief that the full reach and scope, in depth and height, of the aggregate intimations of Holy Scripture on the subject have been very generally only imperfectly ap- prehended and insufficiently taken account of; and in I.] God in Himself, and as related to Creation. 1 7 the hope that, in the course of our work, considerations may be suggested which may be helpful towards meet- ing some current difficulties ; or, at any rate, may open up to the thought of reasonable faith, and of faith- quickened reason, such a view of the grandeur and coherence of the Bible Scheme of things as may at once confirm and extend, and uplift into a more glorious and confident hopefidness, the faith of thought- ful believers. II. In the first place, however, it is necessary that we should remind ourselves of the necessity of keeping clearly in our thoughts throughout the distinction between the timeless and absolute, the properly eternal, the unconditioned and unrelated Existence of God in Himself, as He is in His inner Divine and inscrutable Being, and His Existence and Operation in relation to the Created Universe. So long as we think and speak of the Divine Being only as He is in Himself, there is no place for the thought of Mediation. And, further, as we dwell on the clear teaching of Holy Scripture, that it is ever through the Person of the Eternal Son that God is in relation to Creation, we must remember that the Mediatorial Character whereof we shall speak throughout is one whereby the Son, Con-substantial and Co-equal with the Father, operates, not by way of inferiority, though it be in connection with His FiHal Subordination, not as a rpoiro^ inrap^ew^y or a necessary mode of his Subsistence, but by way of 'condescension' and 'economy.' For, conceivably, it had not been so, had no act of Creation ever taken place, had there never been anything but God. In a past Eternity, c 1 8 In and after the Act of Creation [lect. before Time was, God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit rested in the Manifestation of Himself to Himself, blest in the overflowing Love of the Divine Persons each to other; yet contemplating all possible action, Creation included (since Creation did take place) as presently reahzed to Him in Whose Absolute and Infinite and purely Spiritual Existence there is no Past, Present, or Future. 12. The thought of Creation, so difficult a concep- tion in itself, is rendered easier (so to speak) and more intelhgible when viewed in the light of the revealed interna] relation of the Son to the Father. That relation seems, we cannot indeed say to necessitate Creation, but at least to render it more probable and more explicable. There is much that is suggestive and valuable on this point in Dr. J. J. van Oosterzee's Christian Dogmatics^ section Iv., on ' God's Plan of the World.' (Hodder and Stoughton, 1874.) Creation, that palmary and all-inclusive miracle, once admitted as the act of a Personal free-willing God, motived by supreme Love as well as executed by su- preme Wisdom and Power, then the Develation of Him- self and of His Love by the Almighty in the narrower and more special and intimate sense to and through the hearts and consciences of men, culminating in the supreme Kevelation of His Character in His Incarnate Son and in the New Creation, of which, as of the Old Creation, the Son is the Head and Centre, becomes natural, consistent, and probable. Certainly, as re- gards the Natural Creatiou, as soon as we think of 1.] the Son is the One, the U?iiversal, Mediator. 19 the Father as the Creator Whose inner Will has gone forth in a Fiat which has called into existence a whole Universe out of nothing:, from that moment the Ian- guage of Holy Scripture compels us to attach a Mediatorial Character to the Son. AVe use the term * Mediator,' as esteemed theological writers have done before, in its strictly proper and derivative meaning of * One who is a means of intercourse between two other parties, and through whom action passes from either to other,' a meaning much wider than its too commonly restricted application to Christ as the atoning and re- conciling Mediator between Man, as fallen and sinful, and God His Maker. Mediation in this latter sense, as exercised by the Eternal Son, however specially necessary and unspeakably precious, is still a part of a larger whole. It is a special function of a larger office, a result of a wider Mediatorial relation in which He stands to unfallen as well as to fallen natures, indeed to all created existence. To regard in this way Christ's special atoning work, with its unspeakably touching circumstances of love-compelling tenderness exliibited in the extremest humiliation and suffering, is (we are persuaded) to take a truer and more firmly-grasping view, a worthier, because a more comprehensive view, and at the same time (if we may use the expression) a more intelligible view, of His whole relation to us. Such a view tends to satisfy more completely our sense of fitness with reference to His special work of Man's Redemption : while at the same time the sense of the inconceivable grandeur of His relation to tlio whole scheme of things cannot but overwhelm us the more c a 20 Theological writers on the [lect. with wondering and adoring gratitude at the thought of His suffering Love for us. Lord, what is man that Thou visitest himf and the son of man that Thou so regardest him? 13. On this point Bishop Bull writes thus, 'We must note, in opposition to Bellarmine and other papists, that Hilary expressly affirms (as it is clear that the ancients taug-ht in common) that our Saviour was a Mediator even in the giving of the Law, and previous to the Incarnation ; and, therefore, is not a Mediator merely in respect to His human Nature, seeing- that He had not as yet assumed it ; and yet this is what they have earnestly maintained.' Defence of the Nicene Creed, IV. iii. 14. Similarly Cardinal Newman, in his History of the Ar/ans, II. 3.2:' Our Lord is called the Word or Wisdom of God in two respects ; first, to denote His essential presence in the Father, in as full a sense as the attribute of wisdom is essential to Him ; secondly. His mediator- ship, as the Interpreter or Word between God and His creatures.' And again (II. 4. 5) : ' Of the two titles ascribed in Scripture to our Lord, that of Logos ex- presses with peculiar force, His co-eternity in the One Almighty Father. On the other hand, the word Son has more reference to His derivation and ministrative office. A distinction resembling this had already been applied by the Stoics to the Platonic Logos, which they represented under two aspects, the hbidderos, and the TTpo(f)opLK6s, i.e. the internal thought and purpose of God and its external manifestation, as if in words spoken. The terms were received into the Church ; the eySia^eros standing for the Word, as hid from everlasting in the bosom of the Father, while the irpocpopiKos was the Son sent forth into the world, in apparent separation from God, with His Father's name and attributes upon Him, and His Father's will to perform. This contrast is. I.] Natural Mediation of the Son. 21 acknowledged by Atbanasius^ Greg-ory Nyssen, Cyril, and other post-Nicene writers ; nor can it be censured, being scriptural in its doctrine, and merely expressed in philo- sophical language, found ready for the purpose.' And the same writer, in a Christmas Day Sermon on the Incarnation : ' He is called the Word of God as mediating between the Father and all creatures ; bring- ing them into being, fashioning them, giving the world its laws, imparting reason and conscience to creatures of a higher order, and revealing to them in due season the knowledge of God's Will.' Newman's Parochial Sermons, Vol. II. Compare Bollinger, First Age of the Church, Book II. Chap. ii. ' The Son as His Image reveals the otherwise invisible Father, as the brightness of the sun is manifested in its rays. By Him and in Him (by a creative act of His Person) were all things made; as the Mediator of the Divine work He has formed the whole universe.' And again, ' He is the Only-Born of the Father, for He is the Word the Father has outspoken into separate personal existence out of the fulness of His Being, and by whom alone He speaks. This Logos was, and now is, the organ and medium of creation ; by Him all was made, and He alone is life, and gives life, of body or of soul ; for in Him all life is contained as its Principle and Fountain. As the Light of man He shone into the darkness which grew out of man's alienation from God, even before He was incarnated ; but the darkness comprehended Him not, and when He came as Man to His own people the multitude of them rejected Him. The world, as the Apostles teach, was created not only by, but lor, the Son, and for His sake ; for He is its immediate End, in Him its every end is realised, and therefore has God given it Him for an inheritance, and put all things under His feet.' And Martensen, Christian Bogmatics, ^ 125. 'As the mediator between the Father and the world, it appertains 22 Holy Scriptm'c on the Natural, . [lect. to the essence of tlie Son not only to have His life in the Father, but to live also in the world. As " the heart of God the Father," He is at the same time the " eternal heart of the world," through which the divine life streams into creation. As the Logos of the Father, He is at the same time the eternal Logos of the world, through whom the divine light shines into creation. He is the ground and source of all reason in the creation, be it in men or angels, Greek or Jew. He is the principle of the law and promises under the Old Testament, the eternal light which shines in the darkness of heathenism ; and all the holy grains of truth which are found in heathenism were sown by the Son of God in the souls of men. During His pre-existence, however. He was merely the essential, not the actual, mediator between God and the creature ; for the antagonism between the created and the un- created was as yet done away with merely as to the essence, not as to existence {essentia^ existent'ui) ; the strife between God and the sinful world was healed merely in idea, not in life and reality. In His pre- existent state, therefore, the Son regards Himself as the One who is to come in and through history ; who pre- pares beforehand the conditions under which the reve- lation of His love can take place, His incarnation in the fulness of the times can be effected, and the manifesta- tion be made by which the idea of Him as the mediating God will attain complete realization.' Hengstenberg also, Christolog)/, Vol. IV. Appendix III, finds ' in the Old Testament the doctrine of a revealer of God, who is equal to God, and yet distinct from Him, a mediator between God and the world.' 14, The leading passages of Holy Scripture on the relation of the Eternal Son to the work of Creation are the following : — T Oor. vni. 6. £49 Geo? 6 XlarVjO, e^ ou ra TravTa, /cat I.] or Universal, Mediation of the Son. 23 ^yuefy etV avTov' Kai elg KJjO/09 ^Ir](TOv;9 7^?, ra opara koi ra aopara, eire Opovoi, e'lre Kvpiortjreg, eire ap-)(aiy e'lre i^ovalai. Ta iravTa 01 avTOV Ka\ eU avrov eKTKTTai' Kai avTO/9 /cr/creo)? (First-born before all Creation) expresses His unique and transcendent and necessary relation to all created existence. In the I.] the Image, of God. 31 heginning, when God created the Heavens and the Earth, the Word already tvas, and so through Him was the whole Universe (tu irdirra) created. 19. Again, Creation must be through the Second Person as He is the Wikwv (Image) of the Invisible God. If such elements and features of the Nature and Attri- butes of God as could be manifested in the miniature forms of created and finite life were to be thus mani- fested and expressed — for the greater glory of God in the dehght felt by His intelligent creatures in the beauty and order, and in the forces and powers and uses of a vast Universe, as exhibitions of the Power and Wisdom and Love of God, and so a mirror wherein, in a measure, God Himself might be seen and known (see Acts xiv. 15-17 ; Romans i. 19, 20) — if there was to be this kind of Kevelation of God, then it must necessarily be through Him Who is absolutely, perfectly, and adequately, the Image of God, It pre-supposes His Pre-existence. Liddon, Bampfoii Lectures, Led. VI. 'The dKUiv is indeed originally God's unbegun, unending refleetion of Himself in Himself; but the dKutv is also the Organ Whereby God, in His Essence invisible, reveals Himself to His creatures. Thus the et/cwy is, so to speak, naturally the Creator, since creation is the first revelation which God has made of Himself.' This is more especially seen to be a necessary truth when viewed on its moral side. If on any minor scale the moral attril)utes of God, His Eighteousness and Purity, His Holiness and Love, were to be expressed in created and finite natures, to whom should be given 32 The Father the Fountain^theSontheWell, of Life. [lect. the capacity of an unspeakable happiness in the pos- session and exercise, towards Him and towards each other, of natures and qualities like those of God, ihen^ necessarily, such finite natures must be created, as Holy Scripture tells us they were, in the image and after the likeness of God. For this reason again, and more especially, must they be created through Him who is the absolute and perfect Image of God. 20. And further, if weaker and dependent life, in beings created out of nothing and so finite, was to be called into existence, it must be through Him in Whom ivas Life by plenary and infinite communica- tion from the Father, that is, through the Son ; for as the Father hath life in Himself so hath He given to the Son to have Life in Himself {St. John v. 26), so that He as well as the Father is Life, the Life of all that lives. Life must flow from the Father, the in- exhaustible Fount and Spring of all Life, into Him Who is the overflowing and inexhaustible Keservoir of Life, the Well of Life Who is with God (Psalm xxxvi. 9), and so to Creation from Him from Whose fulness all else that lives has received (St. John i. 1 6) its several share of the gift of Life. 21. Standing thus on the level of New Testament Revelation, and looking back on the partial and pre- paratory Eevelation of the Old Testament as Christian believers, we see in it, whether in its dogmatic state- ments, its historic records, its actual religious ob- servances, or its forward-looking prophetic utterances, a far deeper and fuller meaning than they who lived under the Old Dispensation, or even they who were I.] Old Tesfament intimations of the Trinity. 33 tlie vehicles of its Inspiration, could themselves be conscious of. In this we find a real confirmation of our faith. Such thoughts are indeed no argument to those who believe not ; and are not offered as such. But to the believer in Inspiration, wlio knows that liohj men of old sjycike as they zvere moved hy the Holy Ghost, the allegation, that such and such a view is beyond the thought and consciously-intended meaning of those writers themselves at the time, is no difficulty whatever. Inspired as they were to speak of things to come, the scope of their utterances must necessarily have been beyond the grasp of their own conscious thought. They knew this ; they knew that not unto themselves hut unto us they did minister the things (i Peter i. 12) the fulfilment of which was announced by the first preachers of the Gospel, and for this very reason they searched ivhat and what manner of time the Spirit of Christ ivhich ivas in them did signify. (Hid.) To limit the meaning and scope of the Sacred Writings of either Testament to that of which their human writers were conscious, and to treat that as necessarily exhaustive, is, of course, really to deny Inspiration altogether. In the plural name of God ; in the form of the utterance of the great resolve. Let ns make man in our i^nage, after our likeness ; in the sayings. Behold, the man is become as one of us, and, Let us go doini and confound their language; in the Mlwm shall I send, and tcho icill go for us, of the great vision of Isaiah ; we discern not a mere dignity of phrase, but the intimation of a great mystery. In like manner, D 34 The Personal Wisdom of God [lect, in much of the Old Testament language about the word of God we trace an admissible and very striking, if not always a necessary, personal sense ; of which indeed the paraphrases and commentaries of later Jewish writers themselves after the close of the Old Testament Canon show an evident consciousness. Among the most remarkable phenomeua of the Old Testament, as preparatory to the full disclosure of the existence of personal distinctions within the Divine Nature, and of the great work of the Son of God, are the occasional Appearances of God in visible form ; especially when taken in connection with the general statement of Holy Scripture that None {ovSel?) hath seen God at any time. These will demand a separate consideration, as examples of the truth enunciated by St. John that, before the Son of God came unto His own land and people in the actual Incarnation, He ivas in the world though the world hneiv Him not. {St. John i. lo, II ; on which see Professor Westcott in the Speaker's Commentary.) But there is one sublime passage which now, to us, and viewed as we may and must view it, is full of so glorious light and beauty that we cannot more appropriately illustrate what has now been set forth than in its exquisite language. It is the Eternal Personal Wisdom of God Who speaks, [Pro- verhs viii) : — T//e LonB possessed Me, the Befinnhig of Ills Way, Before His works of old. I was anointed from everlastinff, From the first, from the heginnings of the earth. When there loere no depths I was brought forth, I.] the Agent of Creation. 35 When there were no fountains abounding with tcater. Before the mountains were settled, Before the hills, teas I brought forth. While as yet He had not made the earth, nor the fields. Nor the first clods of the tvorld. When He prepared the heavens I was there ; When He set a canopy over the face of the deep: When He established the shies above: When the fountains of the deep waxed strong : When He gave to the sea its bounds. That the loaters should not pass their border; When He appointed the foundations of the earth ; Then I was by Him, I the Builder ; And I was daily His delight, rejoicing alioays before Him; Rejoicing in His habitable earth; And my delights were with the sons of me)i. On the whole we should judge that the truth, re- vealed in various forms with such uniform consistency in Holy Scripture, that the Father created all things through the Son has the appearance of a necesscunj truth, the expression of that which. Creation being given, could not be otherwise. Indeed we might almost assume a 'priori that such a character of ne- cessity, arising from the Law of His ow-n Being whereby God is What He is, would attach to the mode of the Divine operation, especially in so supreme an example of it ; so that we may believe not only tliat it is so, but that it could not be otherwise. In this sense therefore, that the original act of Creation passed necessarily through Him as its effecting Agent, we ascribe to the Son of God, as such, and in His Divine Personality, an inherently Mediatorial character re- latively to Creation as a collective whole, and especially D 2 36 The Universe upheld by the Son of God. [lect. to created life, and, more especially again, to intelligent and conscious created life in personal beings with will and moral choice. 2 2. But we have not yet exhausted the sublime statements of Holy Scripture as to the relation of the Son of God to the Universe. He is not only the Agent of its beginning and origination, He is also tlie Means of its continuance and preservation. In Him as well as through Him, ivere all tilings created, and in Him all things consist {Coloss. i. 17); for He ufholdeth all things hy the word of His ^ower {Heh, i. 3). This is said expressly of the Son ; and so of Him, doubtless, may we correctly understand the more general statement of the Apostle to the heathen Athenians that in God ive live, and move, and have our heing [Acts xvii. 28). In like sense must we understand also the language of St. John (Gosjjel, i. 4), that in Him loas Life, and the Life tvas the Light of men. This indeed carries us further than our pre- sent point ; but because it does so it includes it. For by Light we must here understand moral and in- tellectual Light, as both derived to Man from the Son of God, being the higher forms of that life which they have from Him Who is the Life. But if the higher forms of life are from Him, much more the lower life, which is their ground and condition, and so their whole being, is from Him in Whom ive live. Conversely, as Creation must Scripturally be considered as holding together in the Word, so are we taught that the Word has always been and is in Creation. So St. John says, He ivas in the ivorld, and the ivorld was I.] Loss involved in partial viczus of His Mediation. 37 made, hy Him, though the ivorlcl hneio Him not. This is the truth of His immanence in creation as the very base and ground-condition of its continuance. In this truth again, viewed thus on its two sides, as the world is in Him and as He is in the tvorlcl, is inherently contained the idea of a mediatorial relation in respect of the preservation, as well as in respect of the origination, of the Universe. 23. We cannot but think that Christian Theology has lost, both in breadth and depth and height, from the general absence of sufficient appreciation of these far-reaching and pregnant truths ; and from the cus- tomary restriction of the idea of Mediation on the part of tlie Son of God to His redeeming work for man as fallen. Nothing, we may readily allow, can be more natural than that restriction. We miserable heirs of sin and shame, conscious of the evil and moral fiiilure and alienation from God in ourselves, and sickened by the grotesque misery and sin and de- gradation of human nature, especially as it has been and is without Christ, and so, for the most part, amid all its griefs, without hojie and without God, we cannot but dwell with overpowering amazement, and gaze with an absorbing interest, on the work of moral and spiritual restoration as wrought by the Incarnate Mediator, the Man Christ Jesus. But — such is the limitation of human powers — the very fact that we do so, and rightly and necessarily do so, creates the risk of insufficient attention to other glorious truths, which are not only equally true, but are also perfectly harmonious with the truths which more especially and o 8 The actiuxl Incarnation of the Son is [lect. vitally concern us ; nay, further, lead us on and up to the fuller, larger, conception of a whole of which such special truths are a part, and so put these special truths themselves into a truer position in the abstract, and tend to give us a firmer and more unassailable grasp of them. When it is seen that to the Eternal Word of God, the Second Person m the One, Holy, and Undivided Trinity, there belongs, as such, a Me- diatorial Cliaracter, and that all the ad extra action of the Eternal Father has passed, and passes, and that necessarily, through Him, the One Mediator, alike in the orisfination and in the maintenance and administration of the Universe — our conception of which and of its extent and possibilities has been so wonderfully en- larged by the discoveries of Science even within the last fifty years, and of which we and our little globe seem to form so infinitesimal a part — then the sjDecial character of His Mediation in the afiairs of this un- happy province of His illimitable Eealm, the special kindness and cpiXavOpcoTrla (love to man, Titus iii. 4) wdiereby according to His mercy He saved us from the deathly grasp of His and our enemy, seems to fall into its place. Stupendous as it is, and, possibly, unique in its manifestation of the moral attributes of Him Whose very Being is Love, it becomes almost (as we may say) natux'al and of course. 24. Mediation, in the sense of Atonement and Re- conciliation as between God and man as fallen, and of conveyance of grace from God to man as fallen, does not exhaust the idea of Mediation as between God and man as man. Had man never sinned, Mediation and I.] tJic complete development of Jllediation, 39 a Mediator bad still been needed, as tbe means of communion between bim and bis Maker, tlie means whereby tbe longing love and worsbip of tbe creature sbould ascend to tbe Creator, and progressive blessing descend from Him upon tbe creature ; and of tliis Mediation, wlien fully developed, tbe Incarnation migbt still, even witbout tbe necessity of tbe Atoninof Suf- fering and Deatb, bave been tbe ultimate and perfect form. Tbus tbe great saying (1 Tim. ii. 5), There is One God, and One Mediator between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus, bad still, in any case, been empbatically true, even bad sin not made it necessary for Him to give Himself a ransom for all. It does not follow tbat, because, in tbat saying, tbe Apostle lays especial empbasis on tbe Humanity of tbe Mediator, therefore His Mediation is to be tbougbt of only as restricted to His reconciling work between God and man as sinful. Since tbat is tbe special subject of tbe passage (as tbe mention of tbe ransom shows), nothing is more natural than tbat attention should be so drawn to the Incarnation ; but it does not therefore follow that tbe Incarnation, as the union of the Creator with the creature, though actually effected iu the nature of man, may not have far wider bearings, and extend in its effects and benefits to tbe whole of that Creation of which man, compounded as he is of elements material and spiritual, is the wonderful epitome and microcosm. Tbus we are led to tbe great thought that the In- carnation as the perfect instrument of IMediatioii, in its widest sense, may have been included in tbe original thought, in the Eternal Purpose, of God, even apart 40 but He was the Mediator even before that. [lect. from the foreseen contingeDcy of the entrance of Evil and Sin, and so of death and ruin in separation from God, into a portion of His very good Creation. But of this we shall speak hereafter. (Lecture III.) 25. That the Son of God as Incarnate is the Mediator of Eedemption is the faith of all Christians ; and, being accepted as a broad foundation truth of our religion, needs no special enforcement now. It will be our endea- vour to exhibit in the closing Lectures {VI, VII, VIII) of this series the special forms and phases of this work, in its earthly and in its heavenly stages. Yet, just as we believe that a strictly Mediatorial work and function belongs to the Son of God in His Divine Nature, in respect of His general sovereign relation to the Universe, in its origination and in its continuance and administration (and this apart from the special work of Eedemption), so we believe that, in the special work of Redemption, His gracious in- terest in and intervention for His creature man is not to be restricted, if we would rightly understand it in its due connection and place, to the period since His actual Incarnation. Rather is that the climax of a long course of previous visitations and dispensations •of mercy, whereby it was, in various ways, as we can now clearly see, foreshadowed and prepared for by the loving, though as yet the veiled and unrecognised, action of the gracious Son of God, the tender and patient TraiSaycoyog (Educator), to use the expressive phrase of St. Clement of Alexandria, the ' loving Wisdom of our God' (Newman's Bream of Gerontius), Who rejoiced in His hahitalle earth from the be- I.] The Old Testament in sufficiently studied. 41 ginning of its existence, and Whose delights were ever witli the sons of men, to whose nature He was one day to hnk Himself in vital personal union, and so make it, and lis, His very own for ever ; to Whom be the glory for ever and ever. Amen. 26. The recollection of this truth (on which perhaps sufficient stress is not generally laid in the thoughts of even devout and educated believers), is, we are per- suaded, really necessary to the full strength of the argument for Christianity. It is, no doubt, only natural that the writings of the New Testament should have been more studied than those of the Old. Their original language is more generally known ; tlie ren- dering of them in the Authorized Version is more accurate than that of the Old. They contain fewer difficulties ; their meaning, on the whole, lies more on the surface ; their application to our own spiritual life and its circumstances is more direct and obvious. A mistaken and partial view of St. Paul's teaching has, perhaps, in certain schools of thought, led to an untrue disparagement of the Old Testament as compared to the New, as if it were opposed, and even contradictory to it ; as if there were an impassable chasm, an entire breach of continuity, between the Christian and all previous Dispensations. The language of our Seventh Article, that ' The Old Testament is not contrary to the New, for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to Mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man,' and that ' The old Fathers did not look only for transitor}' promises,' still bears witness to a 42 Continuity of God's dealings with Mankind, [lect. sense on the part of our Reformers of the existence of some misapprehensions of this kind in some forms of theological thought current in their day. And this, notwithstanding the equally real phenomenon of a tendency in some quarters to lay undue stress upon, and, often in a mischievous way, to revive and adopt certain features of Jewish civil and social life, or of Jewish moral and religious habits of thought. Surely any failure to perceive and to take due account of the great truth of the continuity and pro- gressiveness of God's dealings with mankind as fallen through successive dispensations of mercy, any dis- regard or forgetfulness of the essential coherence of the Old and New Testaments, of the Jewish and Christian Churches, involves a serious w^eakening of OLir grasp of Revelation as a whole, and of our sense of its grand historic reality as enshrined, first, in the very being of the Jewish Race and of the Catholic Church, and, secondly, in the Literature, inspired or other, of both. We will even go farther and say, that it must, in our judgment, deprive us of the one and only key to the true interpretation of past human history as a whole ; and, consequently upon that as well as in itself, disable us from anything but the merest conjecture as to its future course and ultimate destiny. It must leave it, as a whole, in our view of it, nothing but a tangled mass of confused and un- intelligible details, a puzzle wholly insoluble and arbitrary, a middle to which we have no clue, painfully, nay vitally, interesting as it is to the true patriot and the generous humanitarian, amid the growing diffi- l] CJivist the Supreme Personage in History, 43 culties, social, industrial, political, of the older nations ; not to speak of the deeper but connected evils which the march, however magnificent, of a material civi- lisation, and the advancement, however striking, of science, theoretical or applied, can do nothing to cure or to remove, and, for the masses of mankind, but little to relieve or to compensate. 27. Judaism was a forward-looking Religion; and so, essentially so, is Christianity, its perfected de- velopment. Christianity, and Christianity alone, has the hopes of the future in its bosom, the key of the future in its hand. The common corporate consciousness of believing Christendom knows this ; because, amid whatever eclipses of faith among individuals or nations, its eye has been ever uplifted to One glorious Per- sonage, Eternal and Divine, One grand central Figure, Who dominates human history from first to last, as He does all history of worlds of being beyond our ken. One Who, now as always, always as now, before or since His manifestation in the flesh, is the King of Men, the real operative and controlling spiritual force in human history throughout, the Alpha and the Omega, the Beginning and the End, the Eternal Son of God, the Lord, and the Heir, of all things, for us made Man. To Him as Man in His ascended glory is given the Name that is above every name, iliat in the Name of Jesiis every knee should how, of things in heaven, and things on the earth, and things under the earth ; and that every tongue shoidd confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. ii. 10). Of old, The Lord sat throned ahove the Deluge {Psalm 44 i^i<^ King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. xxix. 9), and now, as then, tlie Lord sitteth King for ever. Him we own as King of Kings, and Lord of Loi'ds, to Whom all poiver is given ^ in Heaven and on earth {St. Matt, xxviii. 18), in the unseen worlds and in the seen, in things eternal and in the things of time : — Ever since the world began hath Thij Throne been prepared^ Thou art from everlasting. The floods are risen, 0 LoUB, The floods have lift up their voice; The floods lift up their loaves. The waves of the sea are w.ighty, and. rage horribly : But yet the Lord Who dwelleth on high is mightier. {fs. xciii.) The LouB is King, be the people never so impatient : He sitteth betiveeii the Cherubim, be the earth never so unquiet. {fs. xcix.) The faith of the Christian in this great cardinal truth of the Supremacy of Clirist in the affiiirs of men, and in His continuing guidance and governance, from His unseen Throne in heaven, both of His Church and of His World, cannot but be greatly strengthened by the closer study of the record contained in the Old Testament Scriptures of the energising of the Word among men before His Incarnation. LECTURE II. THE SON OF GOD THE LIFE AND LIGHT OF ALL CREATION. Sf. Jo/m, Gospel, i. 4. 'Ez; avT^ ^co?; ijv (In Ilim was life). St. John, First Bpistle, v. 12. 'O iyoav tov vlov e'xet ti]v (oiTi']V 6 nij e\(av TOV vlov TOV 0eoC Ti]v C^i]v ovK e^ei (He that hath the Son hath life : he that hath not the Son of God hath not life). St. John, Gospel, xiv. 6. 'Eyw etjut ?/ 680? koI ?/ aA?/^eta kolL 1) (Mi'y ovbels epxfTac irpo's tov iraTepa, el jxr] bi efjLov (I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life ; none cometh unto the Father but throug-h Me). 28. Seeing, then, that a Mediatorial character belong.s necessarily to the Son of God because the Act of Crea- tion was necessarily through Him, we have next to point out that that Mediatorial character is thence- forward exhibited in continuous action in the inflowing of Life, in all its forms and forces from the lowest to the highest, into all living creatures from tlie Almighty Father through the Son. Strictly sjDeaking, the Life of all that lives is the energy in them of the Holy Spirit of God, Who is TO ^cooTToiov (the Giver of Life). This energy is mani- fested, in infinite gradations, in an ascending scale from the lowest and most rudimentary forms, from mere growth and movement and instinct through 46 Life is given to all through the Son. [lect. thoiisfht and will and moral affections and conscience up to spiritual affinity to God, But that Life passes ever and only through the Son of God to all created existence. The Incarnate Christ vouchsafed a typical example of this truth when, on His first meeting with His Body, His redeemed Church, in His risen and glorified Humanity, now become, as the result of His finished work, the sacramental Organ Whereby Life in its hiirhest form and fulness was to be communicated to that Body, He, on the first Easter-night, breathed on His disciples and said, with words of creative power, deceive ye the Holy Ghost, giving the great Gift, in its anticipatory measure, by that expressive outward and visible sio'n. Christian faith has ever seen in this car- dinal incident the antitype, for the New Creation, of that breathing into Man's nostrils the breath of life which marked the first creation. 29. As the mediating source of life to all that lives, on Whom all life depends, the Son of God, in personal subordination to the Father, is, by necessary conse- quence, the Sovereign Lord also and King over all that lives. The Royalty of the Only-Begotten con- sists, or is exhibited, in the dependence of all created existence upon Him. This gives Him a right of supreme dominion over all, ' implying,' as Bishop Pearson expresses it {Creed, Article II), 'a right of possession and a power of disposing.' This Royalty belongs to His superior Nature as the Son of God and the Heir of all things. It is, as Bishop Pearson says, inherent in His Divinity, and so is to be distinguished from the dominion over all things which was ' bestowed II.] The Son is the Heir of all things, 47 upon His Humanity.' The Human Royalty of Christ grows out of this His inherent and Divine Eoyalty by way of necessary consequence. It was bestowed im- mediately upon His Incarnation ; though developed, or manifested, by successive stages corresponding to the progressive stages of His Work. It was completed at His Ascension and Enthronement in our flesh at the Right Hand of God. But long ere the Incarnation His Throne had been established with the Father (Psalm xlv. 6 ; Heh. i. 8). During the elder Dispensations, in a mystery not as yet fully revealed, He had been King and Priest after the order of Melchizedeh. Him the Lord had set as King upon His holy hill of Zion [Psalm ii.) Of Him it had been written. The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit Thou at My right hand. . . . The Lokd shall send the rod of Thy poioer out of Zion, Be Thou Ruler even in the midst among Thine enemies {Psalm ex.) The In- carnation, and the taking up the bestowed Royalty of which Bishop Pearson speaks, were the jDredestined visible manifestation of that inherent Rovaltv which had throughout belonged to Him as the Son, w^iich the bestowed Royalty presupposed, and on which it ultimately rested. 30. From the Eternal Son ship of our Lord, and connected with His inherent Royalty, flows also, first. His Divine, and then His Human Heir-shijJ. His Heir-ship and Sonship over all in His Father's House is, as Bishop Pearson expresses it, ' the necessary con- sequence of His Filiation ' as the Only Son of God, Who ' t'OijKe (appointed) ^r»i Heir of all things' {Heh. 48 for Whom all things were made. [lect. i. 2), Who loveth Him and hath given all things into His hand {St. John iii. 35), Who sheioeth Him all things thai Himself doeth (v. 20), so that What things soever the Father doeth these also doeth the Son liJceivise (v. 19). Hence the Son can say, looking back upon a far-reaching past, My Father ivorheth hitherto, and I work (v. 17), a saying whose height of meaning the Jews immediately apprehended rightly, and so sought the more to kill Him, for they perceived that, so speaking, He claimed God as His Father in a peculiar and unique sense {YiaTepa 'ISiov k'Xeye tov Qeov), mahing Himself equal ivith God (v. 18). By His Heir-ship He was ever Lord and Master over God's House, i.e. over the Universe {Heh. iii. 2-6), faithful in His ad- ministration to Him That appointed Him, not only in a grander sphere than Moses, but in a superior and wholly unique relation, not as a servant, hut as a Son, Himself Divine, worthy of more glory than Moses by how much He That huilt the House hath more honour than the House. For every house is huilded hy some one; hit He that huilt All Things is God. The same truth lies also in St. Paul's words to the Colossians (i. 16), that as all things were created through the Son and in the Son, so also were all things created for Him (etV avrov), toivards Him, or ivith a vieiv to Him. This expression seems to point onwards to some great consummation in the remote future when, the Divine Plan being fully worked out, all things should become His in their completed and perfect and eternal state, when the process of evolution was complete, and so should be His abiding possession and inheritance, His II.] All Creation summed up in the Incarnate Son. 49 Kingdom, vitally and organically linked with Himself, even as to its material elements, through the pre- destined Incarnation. It is in this connection that we must take account, in interpreting the ek avrov {for Him), of St. Paul's language to the Ephesians (i. 10), wherein he says it was part of the mystery of God's Will acco7-ding to His good inleasiire ichich He imrj)osed in Christ unto a disj^ensation of the fidness of the seasons to sum iij) cdl things (rather the ivhole universe, auaice- (pakaiwa-aaOai ra -Trdvra) in the Christ, hoth the things in the heavens and the things u^on the earth, in Him, in Whom also we were made an heritage. Our Authorized Version in this passage wrongly renders {eKXtjpooQyuxev) in Whom also we have obtained an inheritance ; for the declaration here is not that we inherit with Christ as joint-heirs (a glorious truth referred to three verses later), but that we ourselves are included as a part in Christ's heritage, by our predestination, to His praise and glory. Compare Dean Alford's note on Ejjhesians i. 10, ii. 'All creation is summed up in Christ. It was all the result of the love of the Father for the Son, and in the Son it is all reg-arded by the Fatlier. The vastly different relation to Christ of the different parts of creation is no objection to this union in Him ; it affects, as Bengel says, on E-om. viii. 19, "each g-cnns according- to its own receptivity." The Church, of which the Apostle here mainly treats, is subordinated to Him in the highest degree of conscious and joyful union : those who are not His spiritually, in mere subjugation, yet consciously ; the inferior tribes of creation, unconsciously : but objectively, all are summed up in Ilini; in lotiom toe (Christians, all, both Jews and Gentiles : who are E 50 The Constimmated Universe [lect. resolved below into " me''^ and "^oz^": see on ver. 12) were also (besides having-, by His purpose, the revelation of His will, ver. 9. — Not, A.V. " m whom also'') taken for His inheritance (the prevalent idea of Israel in the Old Test, is a people whom the Lord chose for His inhe- ritance', see Deut. iv. 30; ix. 29; xxxii. 9; 3 King-s viii. 51; al.) Olshausen calls this "the realization in time of the election in Christ spoken of before,'' viz. by God taking- to Himself a people out of all nations for an inheritance — first in type and germ in the Old Test., then fully and spiritually in the New Test.' 31. The idea of Christ's Heir-ship throws our thoughts onwards to a distant future ; to a future we know not how distant even yet. Herein we perceive the dif- ference between His sovereign Eoyalty as King and His dignity as Heii' of all things. His Hoyalty is present and immediate, from the first moment of the beginning of creation. His Heir-ship carries with it a promise of something future. For its realization it waits through the long protracted processes, as they seem to us, of a wondrous evolution, the length of time required for wliich is only now beginning to be apprehended by scientific discovery, but which won- derfully enhances our conception of the scale and grandeur of the Creation, of its history, and of its meaning and purpose. That purpose is, That in its perfect consummation it should be the glorious Heritage of the Only Son of God. I speak of Creation in its largest, most inclusive, sense of Ta Havra (the Universe), the majestic whole, with its worlds within worlds of inanimate and animated existences, of merely animal or of conscious intelligent existences, up to the II.] the Heritage of the Incarnate Son. 5 1 very highest. Vast, inconceivably vast, as it is, there is yet a wondrous unity and continuity throughout it. It evidently forms one whole ; and is, as evidently, in all its powers and forces (whether blind, and so abjectly under uniform material law, or conscious and so acting under the higher and more spiritual law of will and choice), in all its methods and processes, in all its ends and purposes, subordinate or inclusive, the manifest product of one originating Mind, under the over-ruling guidance of one all-controlling Will, but all working towards one final end, the ultimate perfection, as a whole and in all its parts, of the whole. And all to be, when so perfected, the Heritage and everlasting Possession of the Son of God ; to be united to God in Him and through Him Who is Himself, in His Incarnation and in His thenceforward abiding Hu- manity, the crowning product of Creation, imparting His glory and His worthiness to the wdiole. Compare Dorner, Verson of Christ, vol. iv. p. 332. 'To the very important thought, That the God-man, Jesus Christ, is not merely a means of humanity, that is, for the work of redemption in particular, but is also an end in Himself served by the entire world, too little importance has frequently been attached.' 32. Does this seem too grand a view of Creation? Be it remembered. First that, perhaps, we cannot have too high thoughts, too great expectations, of that which God, infinite in power and in wisdom, has vouchsafed to make ; nor deem too highly of its ca- pabilities or of His resources. Tliere is no end of His greatness. We honour Him by thuiking much E 2 5 2 Grandeur of the Universe as an Object of study, [lect. of, by meditating with reverent and patient study on, even the lowliest things that He has made. Only Almighty Power could have made the very lowest of them. Marvellous are Thy ivorJcs, and that my soul knoweth right ivell. The more intense the adoring faith of the Christian, the deeper is the interest with which he observes and studies even the material part of God's Creation and the lower forms of life ; the more eager and respectful the attention with which he welcomes each fresh addition to the gradually un- folding Revelation of the manifold wisdom of God as displayed in that world of Nature which, perhaps, we separate too sharply, and mark off too jealously, from the world of grace. Not only the lower forms of life, but even the forms of inorganic matter on which the great temple of Life itself is founded and built up, and the mighty forces stored up even in that which is yet merely material, are worthy of close and attentive study. Such study — gradually unfolding their mani- fold wonders, and the new and unimagined uses to which they may be applied, in ministering to human life and reahsing Man's appointed lordship over nature — can but raise, for the devout and thoughtful mind, its conceptions of the meaning and ultimate destiny of the whole, and of the magnificent scale of the pur- poses of God. Later generations will marvel that it could ever have entered into the thought of any that there could be any antagonism between true Theology and true Physical Science ; or that God's Kevelation of Himself in Creation and Nature could be a less true (albeit a less glorious) Revelation of Himself than is II.] No antagonis7n between Science and Theology. 53 His Revelation of Himself in Eedemption ; or that there could possibly be any real contradiction between the ascertained truths of the one and those of the other. That it has ever been so is but one amoncr the many illustrations of the infirmity of narrowness which besets our human nature. Men's minds have become enamoured of the special pursuits to which their thoughts have early been directed, and in which they have subsequently become absorbed. Either of these great themes is so vast that it may well take up the whole field of any one mans thoughts. This, when it has been so, has tended to decrease sympathy with the other ; partly because of its necessary un- famiharity, partly because of the selfish pride which some minds take in their own pursuits, especially when those pursuits are the property of comparatively few. Certainly there has been and is an, it may be un- avoidable, one-sidedness on both parts. Theologians and religious men have, as a rule, known too little and thought too little about Physical Science in any of its departments. They have, quite needlessly, dreaded it ; quite unworthily disparaged it ; and have been all too ready to suppose that its ascertained truths could be mischievous to faith. And, equally, men of science have too often, perhaps more often of the two, dis- played a supercilious ignorance of theological truth which has warped their minds, in some cases, into an even ostentatious animosity to faith, and made them too ready to claim a premature triumph over some truth of Religion, real or supposed, long before they had really estabhshed the exact truth of their own 54 The Christian welcomes all scientific discovery, [lect. supposed discovery, much less fully thought out its relation to other truths, even of the physical sort. Certainly, to the believing student of Nature, as he watches with the deepest interest for each new en- largement of man's knowledge of Nature and of Man, no feeling can occur but one of adoring gratitude. He rejoices that He Whom he knows as ilie true Light that lighteth every man should, by His operation in the natural sphere of man's reason, have led on any to new knowledge of His methods and processes in Nature ; though, if it be so, they acknowledged not the guidance, but prided themselves, or allowed others to flatter them, as though by their own power or strength they had gotten them this wealth. The Christian welcomes gladly the grander thoughts presented of what may be the ultimate consummated perfection and beauty of that material habitation, or the forces and uses of those material powers, which shall be placed at the disposal of Man in his fully redeemed state, when the royal charter of the glorious liberty and sovereignty of the children of God, as shadowed forth in the Eighth Psalm, shall, at the length, be fully realized in the Kingdom of the Christ, the Perfect, the Ideal Man, the King of Men. 33. Great as have been the advances in both de- partments within our own generation, and specially hopeful as is the greatly increased interest in bibhcal study, there still remain, in both, large tracts of pre- cious truth to be explored and made our own. There are yet, it can hardly be doubted, regions of truth, both Natural and Kevealed, of which glimpses and II.] Much of the Bible still imperfectly imder stood. 55 guesses, it may be, have flashed on rare occasions on the choicer and more thoughtful spirits among man- kind, but which did not become the abiding reahzed possession of their fellows, nor even of themselves. And there are again, it may be, truths, more ascer- tained and familiar, which are far, as yet, from having been so thought out as to yield their full heritage of precious acquisition * far, as yet, from having been duly co-ordinated in their proper relation to other acknowledged and connected truth, and so brought to bear with due and needful influence on human life and action. In the Revelation of God's purposes, as well as of His past dealings with mankind, enshrined in the inspired pages of the Bible, there yet remain, we are fully persuaded, some far-reaching, and, when duly ascertained, some influential truths and principles which are at present altogether overlooked, or but dimly and uncertainly apprehended, in the thoughts of Christians in general. Compare DoUinger, First Age of the Church, Preface, ' These beginnings ' (the Original Apostohc Church) * contain the powers and secrets of a culture which, embracing the whole of humanity io its universal scope, is still, after eighteen centuries, ever receiving new life and in constant growth; there is laid up in them a wealth of creative ideas, a fulness of new forms in Church, in State, in Art, in Knowledge, and in Manners, which are far, indeed, from being exhausted ; nay, more, which in time to come will bring to light developments in knowledge and in life that as yet we can scarcely conjecture.' This is especially the case in regard to the escha- 56 Judaism looked forward to the fiiture ; [lect. tological portions of the Old and New Testament ; and indeed generally in regard to the whole question of the interpretation of the Prophetic language of Scripture, and, as throwing light upon this, the re- lation to it of actual subsequent History. There are not wanting signs that the questions connected with subjects of this kind, the heart-searchings and diffi- culties that arise as to what the Christian Religion really means and has to say as to the present condition and as to the destiny in the great hereafter of vast multitudes of the human race, both within and without the local pale of Christendom, have become already so practical and pressing as to compel the Church of God to face them, and to say, when many and various minds have been brought to bear upon them, what thoughts the Word of God warrants us in entertaining as to the hopes and possibilities of the future, and, even better still, what new present duties may mani- festly lie before herself. 34. Judaism of old exhibited the most surprising vitality, and survived the extremest changes of con- dition, because it was a forward-looking rehgion. Its golden age was ever in the future. Its eye was ever watching for Him Wlio ivas to come. It lived not only in hope, but hy hope. What its inner corpor- ate mind, so to say, as a whole is now, in its present state of trance and suspended animation, God only knows, Who for the times of the Gentiles hath shut up all in unhelief that He might have mercy upon all. What we do know is, that, even now, the Race to which the gifts and calling of God are ivithout rej^entance II.] so also docs Christianity. 57 {itfxeTafxk\Y]Ta, unaltered, unrecalled, on His part) is not dead, hut slee^eth, with veiled eyes ; and that some wondrous future, in connection with some great acces- sion of renewed life to the Church at large, is yet in store for it. (See St. Lulce xxi. 24. Bomans xi. 25-32.) 35. And, like Judaism, Christianity can live only as a forward-looking religion. It must show itself in each generation equal to and abreast of the present, the ever-changing present, as it keeps emerging from the womb of time. But more, it must convince each pre- sent generation that it can never be exhausted, or superseded, or cast aside as done with. It must show that, so far from that, it is the One, the One true, and absolute religion, the Religion of Humanity ; and that it carries within its bosom the hopes and promises of the future for the whole human Race. It must show that its principles and organization alone, as they once did successfully in the Fifth and following centuries, and again in the Ninth and Tenth, can again carry the worn-out societies of a long-standing civilization across the catastrophic changes which, as in centuries gone by, so again in the future, may overtake the world of men ; or can preserve alive the forces which may re- constitute them under new conditions. It will be a grander and more difficult service for the Church of Christ than any she has been called to in tlie past ; by how much the ruin and disruption of Nations and Society from causes developed from within are ever worse than those inflicted by external violence and aggression, which often have carried witliin themselves the means of their own repair. This Christianity must 58 Calvinism is not Chris iiattiiy. [lect. do on the stage of History, and in the sphere of temporal things. But farther she must show that she alone has the key which can open any way out of the difficulties, speculative, perhaps, but real, as affecting the pur- poses and character of God, which occur to the modern mind on the subject of the Everlasting Future. Cal- vinism, with its premature and unreal completeness of an_apparently rcmrided, logical system, had its answer for these questions, its remedy for these difficulties ; a remedy worse than the disease, an answer which only raised deeper questions than it solved. Its system led, as it could only lead, those who were trained in it, if they reflected upon it at all and did not shut their eyes to it, to a denial of the very existence of Him Whom it misrepresented and caricatured. But Cal- vinism, as a religious force, is dead. Thoughtful be- lievers who have been associated with its outward forms and confessions of doctrine, must, if they remain believers, exchange its narrow trammels and reject its intolerable conclusions for the healthier and diviner atmosphere, the largior et jjurior aether, of a Faith more Catholic and true, more worthy of God and Man. 36. The thought of Christ's Heir-ship, as the Only Son of God, has carried us on to the thought of the ultimate consummated glory of that vast realm of created Life which is to be His Heritage. We are now more particularly concerned with the Bible Reve- lation of His functions towards Creation whereby, through the instrumental agency of the Holy Spirit of Life and Light, the progress of Creation towards II.] The Son of God is the Light of the World. 59 that final destiny is being slowly evolved. We have dwelt already (in Lecture L) on the Mediatorial cha- racter of the Son of God, the One Mediator, as the Means wherethrough all Existence and Life have passed from the Father to the finite and dependent forms of being. We must now consider Him as the Medium of Light and Knoidedge, and especially of spiritual Knowledge ; as the Bevealer, and especially as the Kevealer of God, the Knowledge of Whom is the highest endowment of the Creature, to all his intel- ligent and rational creatures, angelic as well as human. (See Ajjpendix, Note 1). It is as He is the Logos, the Thought, the Reason, the Wisdom, and, further, the Speech, of God that this function belongs to the Son of God ; as He is the true, the Eternal, Light from Light, Which tvas, and Wliich, coming into the ivorld, lighteth every man. Compare Prof. Westcott (in the Speaker's Commentary) on St. John i. 9. He connects kpyJ)\xiLVov ets rov Koafxov (coming into the worliV) with to cfym {the L/ffht'), not with TTOLVTa avOptairov {ever?/ man), and says, ' It seems best to take it more literally, and yet more generally, as descrihiniT- a cominsj;' which was proj^rcssive, slowly accomplished, combined with a permanent being, so that both the verb [was] and the participle {coming) have their full force, and do not form a periphrasis for an imperfect. The mission of John was one and definite; but all along up to his time the Light of which he came to witness continued to shine, being revealed in many parts and in many ways. TJiere tvas the Light, the true Light, tvhich lighteth every man; that Li^^-ht was, and yet more that Light was coming itito the toorhl. The same idea of a constant, continuous coming of the AVord to 6o Intellectual Lightisonly throughtheSonof God. [lect. men is found in vi. '^'i,, 5°^ where that cometh (o Kora- Pa[vcov) stands in marked contrast with t//at came (6 Kara^as, vv. 51, 58). Taken in relation to the context, the words declare that men were not left alone to inter- pret the manifestations of the Light in the Life around them and in them. The Lig-ht from whom that Life flows made Himself known more directly. From the first He was (so to speak) on His way to the world, advancing" towards the Incarnation by preparatory reve- lations. He came in type and prophecy and judgment.' .... 'The latter expression, loldch lighteth every man, describes the universal extent of its (the Light's) action. The words must be taken simply as they stand. No man is wholly destitute of the illumination of " the Light." In nature, in life, and conscience it makes itself felt in various degrees to all.' And, again, on ' lighteth every man^ ' The idea is distinct from that of " all men " (y. 7). The relation is not collective, corporate, as it is here presented, but personal, and universal while personal. The reality of this relation furnished the basis for the crowning fact of the Incarnation. The world was made for this re-gathering.' As nothing has any being or life except through and in the Son of God, so no rational creature has any knowledge, any intellectual perceptive or reasoning power, except also through, and in, and from Him ; such intellectual life and power being such portion of the Life-giving Spirit of Light as is vouchsafed, in infinite varieties of degree and of form, to each creature according to its God-given capacity of receiving it. This gift is not to be thought of as restricted to only the moral and spiritual life and light and knowledge of such creatures as, in heart and will and affection, open themselves towards God in conscious responsive love ; II.] Varying relation of Intellect to Moral Character. 6i but also as covering those far lower, far less precious and abiding, manifestations of merely rational power which, resting, in God's wondrous handy-work, on a physical base, and closely connected with the healthy condition of physical organs, in the marvellous complex constitution of Man, are yet themselves exquisite in power and subtlety and beauty, though sometimes, alas ! morally apart from God. The kinds and de- grees of relation between the moral and the intellectual elements in man are almost infinitely various. They may co-exist in a high perfection of each, in an Origen, an Athanasius, a Basil, a Leo, an Augustine, an Anselm, an Aquinas, a Butler ; or the moral and spiritual ele- ments, in a very high development of earnestly re- ligious and conscientious life, may co-exist with but moderate intellectual power ; or, again, purely intel- lectual gifts of the very highest kind, imaginative, speculative, or practical, may be strangely accompanied by an, apparently, almost total absence of moral sen- sibility and conscience, and be not inconsistent, as in a Napoleon, with a character utterly base, self-centred, and contemptible. The co-existence of great intel- lectual powers with low moral stature is more possible and more frequent than the co-existence of high moral character with low intellect. And the reason is, that merely intellectual power is essentially of a lower kind in the scale of life than moral and spiritual power. It lies nearer to the physical and material bases of life, and so varies with their condition and force. It does not necessarily presuppose, though it ought to subserve, the high development of the moral and spiritual ele- 62 spiritual lUuviination is vouchsafed [lect. ment in human nature. Contrariwise, any considerable growth of moral and spiritual character does presup- pose, as its necessary antecedent condition, a fair strength of the intellectual element also ; and, in turn, contributes to it. But even in the possible and actual separation of high gifts of intellect and genius from real moral goodness, nay, even in their actual association with moral meanness and badness, we claim them all as manifestations of the energy, as forms, if lower forms, of the working, of Him Who is the only Light of the world, the Eternal Logos of God. The human intellect is part of that Image of God wherein Man was created. It is the finite counterpart and miniature of the Intellect of God. Within its limited range of subjects and of pow-ers it works accord- ing to the same laws ; and so — I speak now of that action of the lumen siccum of the pure intellect on abstract subjects, of which we may take Mathematics as the type — it works certainly and truly, and with absolute assent-compelling force. Hence, in the natural sphere, in the realm of material nature, it is the proper and legitimate organ of truth. 37. But if we claim the creature's knowledge of truth in the lower departments of Nature and Creation as the result of the working of Him Who is the Reason of God on and in finite intelligences created in His Image, much more do we, necessarily, assign to the same only Source of Light and Illumination the higher knowledge of moral and religious truth, the knowledge of duty and of God, and the overpowering motives, con- trolling conduct, which are involved in and arise out of II.] only through the Son of God. 63 such knowledge. 'None — no creature — hnoioeth the Father save the Son, and he to 'whomsoever the Son loilleth reveal him. The Son is the Way, the Truth, and the Life ; no one cometh unto the Father hut through Him, This great truth is obscured by the famihar mistransla- tion of our Authorized Version no man; but it is as true of the highest angelic intelligences as of Man. No created mind has immediate and independent know- ledge of, or access to, the great source of Life. All must be alike indebted for whatever measure of Light they have, whether on the highest or lowest subjects of thouo-ht, to the Mediation of the Son of God. 38. We have Scriptural warrant for distinguishing between the soul and the spirit of man ; and therefore for distinguishing between the operation of the Eternal Logos on the one and on the other. The intellectual powers in man are to be classed as belonging rather to the soul, which is the living mass of natural vital powers intimately associated with a material organism, and clothed, for this present life, in a grosser robe of flesh, whereby it is at once both put into necessary con- tact with the grosser objects of this lower world, and also shielded, for needful protection as for needful pro- bationary discipline and moral exercise of faith, from the otherwise overpowering impact of ever-present spiritual realities with which it is closely surrounded. The crown and summit of this living mass of natural powers in man is the sjjirit, the highest element in man's nature, that wherein he is most like God, and whereby he most specially and directly aj^prehends God and the realities of the spiritual world. With 64 Wcahtess of the spiritual element in Man. [lect. this are intimately connected the Will and Affections and moral nature of man ; so connected as to influence and be influenced by it. This is the weakest element in man, in his merely natural condition as fallen ; so weak as to seem, in some cases, wholly latent and dormant, a mere capacity rather than an active energy. This weakness is a consequence of the fallen moral condition of man, whereby material and sensible objects appeal to him with overpowering, it may be with ex- clusive, force, through his lower faculties and tendencies ; while the spiritual faculty, the eye of faith, is left unexercised until it becomes, it may be, wholly be- numbed and powerless, as does any other power or faculty from prolonged entire disuse. Yet is it always there ; for it is an essential part of the living complex of Man, without which he were not truly man. 39. The human spirit, being that constituent of man which is most Hke the nature of God, Who, and Who alone, is essentially and merely Spirit, is that wherein the Spirit of God, working through the Eternal Son, most directly acts ; and by His action on which He enables man to apprehend God, and to hold communion with Him. It is also that from which, because of the intimate dependence of its action and condition on the moral will in man, the Holy Spirit of God soonest necessarily withdraws Himself, when, and for so long as, through the perverting influence of temptation, internal or external, the moral will averts itself from God in disobedience. The consequences of this with- drawal, which is in direct proportion to the degree of consciousness and wilfulness in, and of continued per- II.] Effects of the Withdrawal of the Holy spirit. 65 sistent adhesion to, the act of disobedience, are a pro- portionate dulling of the spiritual perceptiveness and a weakening of the faculty of apprehending God. Those consequences may, conceivably, amount, in the end, •when the will has finally and decisively rejected God, to the total and irrecoverable extinction and loss of all moral and spiritual capacity ; sealing the creature's final alienation from God in the highest and noblest element of its indestructible being ; yet leaving stiU, it may be, the merely reasoning and speculative intellectual powers untouched. For these are rooted in and depend for their action upon the lower life, the more material ele- ments of the human constitution ; they draw their stimulus and their jpabulum originally from the objects of the natural creation, apprehended through the organs and powers of sensation ; and they are, in their opera- tion upon such object-matter, wholly independent of the moral condition, of the affections and the will. Yet even as conceived of in this condition, in fallen angel or in sinful man ; and in man in whatever con- dition of being, in the flesh, in the temporary disem- bodied state, or in the final state after the Kesurrection; the yet remaining merely intellectual energies and life of rational creatures, even in their moral estrangement from the Creator, are still due to the operation within them of the Spirit of Life and Light, Which proceedeth from the Father, given through the Son, and, in Him, still sustaining their being. And in the cases of the finally lost, although the perverse will of the creature has caused it to fail in attaining the end of its being in full conscious union through its spirit with God, it may F 66 The continued life, even of the lost, is of God. [lect. yet well be that such lower life as is possible for it, in its material and intellectual elements, (being evolved and working, as indeed it must work if it exist at all, in the strictest conformity to the laws impressed on Creation as the expression of the Creator's highest wisdom and power) may be, nay must be, a real mani- festation of the Divine Life and power. As such it must be perfect in its kind, and so redound to the glory of God ; however, under the actual conditions into which sin has brought its unhappy subject, and disconnected by the rebellious will from that which should have been the crowning glory and blessing of the perfect hfe, it does but minister to the suffering and punishment of the creature. This it does by no arbitrary enactment (so to speak), which might con- ceivably have been otherwise, but by way of inevitable and necessary, i. e. natural, consequence ; consequence which has its unalterable roots in that very essential Being and Nature and Character of God whereby He is that He is, and that unchangeably, and whereby He is, and must be, a Law unto Himself in Will and in Action, and so a Law unto all else that is. In some such sense as this, in the final and unalterable state, when the economic Kingdom of the Son shall have been laid down upon the subjection of all things to Him, when all active power of evil and rebellious opposition to God and to His Son and Spirit shall have been broken and quenched for ever, it may be that, even in the lost, God shall be all in all. {See § 52.) 40. From His universal ministration of Life and Light, we pass on to consider another mediatorial IT.] The Priesthood of the Only-Begotten Son. 67 function of the Son of God, and one with which the notion of Mediation is usually more closely connected, tlie Function of Priesthood. This also we must contemplate as it assumes a wider range than merely the making reconciliation for the sins of men ; and, again, as in- cluding in its operation not men only but the Holy Angels also. We must consider the Eternal Son as the One acceptable Presenter of the worship of all that lives, through Whom, and through Whom alone, it does, or could, pass upward with acceptance to the Father. This is true, while, at the same time, He is, with the Father and the Holy Ghost, the Object of Worship, and of Him as the Only-Begotten it is espe- cially said, Let all the angels of God worslii/p Him. His sole acceptable presentation of the worship of the Creature pointedly excludes the thought of Him as part of Creation. It is because He is Uncreated and Divine, the ' Venerandus, verus et Unicus Filins ' {' the honourable, true and Only Son') of the Eternal Father ; and because, as such, His Knowledge and Love of the Father are alone adequate, because infinite ; that all worship, the very inner essence of which is love, must, necessarily, go up through Him, in Whom alone the Father is absolutely and perfectly tvell-pleased, since He alone can love the Father as He is worthy to be loved. Herein lies the moral, and the sufficient, reason of the Sole Acceptable Priesthood of the Eternal Son. Hence in this sense also of loving, longing, worship None cometli unto the Father hut through Him. It is His sole and inalienable prerogative as the Only-Be- gotten, the First-born, the Only-Born, the Well-Beloved, F 2 68 The essence of Worship is Self-Sacrifice. [lect. to be the One and only High-Priest of Creation, the One Mediator, at once of every good and perfect gft of blessing and of grace from the Father of Lights to each and all, and of the due return of homage and of worship to the Father of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named. 41. For Worship, that i«, Sacrifice, Self-Sacrifice, absolute self-surrender without reserve of the whole being as a whole-burnt-offering kindled by the fire of love, which God Himself, through His Spirit given through His Son, has lighted within, on the altar of the heart — this is the first, the supreme, duty, the one all-inclusive duty, of every creature of God's hand. Work and Service and Obedience come next ; but they come as wrapped up in, as part of, as consecrated by, Worship, that is, by Sacrifice. And this entirely apart from Sin and Expiation ; for it is inherent in the very nature of the creaturely relation ; which is essentially dependent, and bound, in its first and every thought and conscious movement, to acknowledge itself so. The restriction of the thought of worship to human worship only ; the restriction of the conception of Sacrifice to expiatory sacrifice only as ofiered on behalf of sinful men ; the loss of the thought that Sacrifice, in its essential and permanent central idea, is, (quite apart from and anterior to any idea of sin,) the very inner reality of all worship towards God on the part of every creature, even the very highest and holiest, and that for the Presentation of that Sacrifice the intervention of a Divine Priest is needed in order to make it either possible or acceptable ; have greatly II.] Expiation 7iecessitated by Sin. 69 lowered and damaged and narrowed our conceptions of worship as the supreme duty of the Creature ; even as the restriction of the thought of Mediatorship and Sacrifice to the gracious intervention of the Eternal Son on behalf of fallen and sinful man has narrowed and thrown out of its proper proportion our thought of the dignity and glory of the Son, and of the grandeur of His Work. Sin, of course, brings in another element into Wor- ship and Sacrifice. Sin creates a gulf between the creature and God ; and only a Mediator, a Priest, can bring the creature back again to God even when it wills to be brought ; or can make atonement and satis- faction on its behalf for the injury and wrong done to the Majesty of the Supreme Lawgiver by an act of disobedience. There is a new need, that of expiation; and there is a greater and to us more evident need of a Mediator. But the standing truth, that, from the first instant of Creation there has been a Mediator between the Father and Creation, One through Whom, necessarily. Creation came into being, renders it easier for us to apprehend alike the necessity, and (such is the love of God) the probability, of an Atoning Mediator who should undo the mischief of sin ; and, this being so, the impossibility that it can be any other than the Uncreated Mediator, through Whom and for Whom were all things made, the Eternal Son. But our immediate thought is of Ilim, the Beloved, the WpwTOTOKo^; 7rd(Tt]<; KTia-eo)^, as yielding back to the Father and offering up, with the infinite acceptableness 70 Worship must be offered through the Son. [lect, of His own supreme and divine and sole adequate wor- thiness, the sacrifice, finite, yet complete in that it was all that each had to give, of the self-devoting worship of unfallen angels and man. Even of such none could approach the Father but by Him. He is the Way, as well as the Truth and the Life, for all ; the link between, the medium of communication both ways, to and from, between the Creator and the created universe, by His ofiice and function as the Son, the Image, the Word, the Keason, the Wisdom, of the Father ; and this He was even before, in the fulness of the time, He became such, in an unspeakably closer and more intimate sense, in our Nature, as the Man Christ Jesus. The Sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving and ador- ation which is due to the Almighty from His rational creatures could not, of itself, even considered collectively, and accompanied by the fullest loving self-surrender of each and all, be adequate, because necessarily finite. But, ascending to Him through the Son of His love, in Whom He is always well-pleased, and seen in Him, it becomes so. It needed no expiation, no washing in the Blood ; but it needed completeness and perfection. These only the Infinite Co-Equal Son covdd give ; and so we cannot but believe that the conscious worship of the angel host in Heaven, if not of unfallen man in Paradise, was necessarily and consciously ofiered through the understood and realized Mediatorship and Priest- hood of the Eternal Son. If this is not expressly revealed, it is not revealed, partly because it follows necessarily, on reflection, from truths which are revealed ; such as that None cometh II.] Connection of Priesthood with PrimogetiitMre. 71 unto tlie Father hut through Him ; and partly because the Bible is, primarily and most importantly, the history of the Redemption of Mankind from Sin . 42. In the early beginnings of human history and under the earliest Dispensations Priesthood was con- nected with Primogeniture. The firstborn was the Priest. This primeval ordinance was the earthly and human reflection of the Divine prerogative of the Son of God ; and so may be taken to be of itself suggestive and illustrative of a mysterious fact in the Divine Nature and in the relation of the Divine Persons to each other ; not indeed necessarily, as they are related to each other in their absolute Being, but as they together, and regarded in their Unity, are related to created exist- ence. We have another example of this reflex illustration of the Divine from the Human Nature, the possibility of which arises out of Man's creation in the image, after the likeness, of God, in the noteworthy Divine utterance concerning Man, and one uttered before that image and likeness had been injured or defaced, It is not good for man to he alone. This saying indicates the existence of a corresponding mysterious necessity, on an infinite scale, in the Divine Nature, and that not in His related but in His Absolute and Essential Existence, a necessity of Social Companionship ; and so points directly to a Plurality of Persons in the Divine Essence ; for the idea of companionship is only realized between Persons, and equal Persons. Nay further, bearing in mind the fore- seen Incarnation of God, as viewed by Him to Whom past, present, and future are one, it might, perhaps, even be said, that the outward visible form and frame 72 Priestly relation of the Son to all Creation, [lect. of Man was also part of bis creation in the eternally conceived and predestined Image of Him Who was, in the fulness of time, and to human apprehension, Him- self to become Man in actual outer historic fact. An interesting and curious account of some crude cari- catures and exag-gerations of this thoug-ht, in relation to the complete humanity of Christ in body and soul, is given in Dorner's Person of Christ (J)\\ . ii. vol. ii. chap. ii. p. 325). He traces them from their rise in the Lutheran and Reformed Churches, 'as the 17th century drew to a close.' through the Quakers (Barclay), the Anabaptists (Hoffmann and Menno Siraonis), P. Poiret, and several English writers down to Dr. Isaac Watts. Thus the Priesthood of the Firstborn, of the Head of the Family, in the earliest human society, his func- tion as the depositary and guardian and transmitter of primeval truth about God and the presenter of worship to God, seem to point to an analogous function, on a scale of infinite grandeur, belonging to the Son of God, the YlpwTOTOKo^ Trdcrrj? KTiaecDg {TJie Firstbom before all creation) ; a function to be fully manifested in the Incarnation, whereby He actually became a part of, and the Head of, that Creation which He summed up and represented. 43. That event, in itself and in its consequences, espe- cially in its sacramental extension, brought the One Mediator into the closest possible connection with human nature ; and, in and through it, with that lower material creation at the head of which Man stands. But His Priestly relation to Creation at large and to Man as part of it does not depend on, though it is consummated and perfectly manifested in, His actual II.] even before His Incarnation. 73 Incarnation. By His Firstborn Sonship, and by the Mediatorial Character which belongs to Him as the Agent of Creation, He is essentially not only the Medium of Light and Knowledge, as of Life and joy and blessing and grace, to all orders of intelligent beings from the highest, but also the High Priest of their Worship, the Presenter of their homage, the Offerer of their sacrifice of praise and thanksgiving, in Whom alone and through Whom alone, associated with the infinite merit and perfect well-pleasingness which belongs to Him as the Perfect Son, the worship of the heavenly host has ever ascended with acceptance to the Father. Ere sin entered into God's fair universe, and while as yet was no estrangement between Him and any of His creatures, and so no need as yet of atonement and reconciliation, there w^as, for all this, need of One Who should stand between the Uncreated and the created Life ; One Who, Himself Uncreated, and Divine, could yet enter into relation with created Life as existing through, in, and for Him ; One in Whom the creature could see, and through Whom the creature could know, as much as its capacity, in each individual case, could bear and contain of God, Whom, immediately, l^one hath seen or can see ; One in Whom and through Whom the Father could look with satis- faction and complacency upon His own Creation ; which, however inconceivably grand and glorious, in kind and quality, or in scale and magnitude of forces and of extent, must be essentially finite, at least in quality and degree, and so at an infinite distance be- neath the Perfections and the Majesty of God. Thus 74 The 2inscen Angelic world. [lect it needed its association with the Divine Son, through Whom it came into existence, in Whom it continued to exist ; and Who must be in it, if either it were to be worthy of the Divine approval and a worthy object on which God's love should rest, or its conscious worship and adoration and love, the first and highest duty of every creature capable of them, were to come up with acceptance before Him, relieved of that necessary imper- fection and insufficiency which must always cleave to the best efforts of even the highest and purest of God's creatures and children. Him the Only-Begotten, of Whom it is said. Let all the angels of God worship Him, all, save the rebellious angels, have ever acknowledged in His threefold func- tion ; as the Sovereign Lord of the Divine Kingdom and Ruler of all ; as the Prophet and the Eevealer, in that all they know of God they know through Him by the Holy Spirit of God Who is in them through Him ; and as the One Priest, in that they approach not God in loving worship, save in and through Him. And in and through Him, the Beloved, they have ever enjoyed an acceptable access to, and a blessed communion with, the Father of Spirits ; they have ever enjoyed, as through the same Mediation, a continual influx of grace from Him. 44. The Sadducees of old, the rationalists of their day, believed in neither angel nor spirit. But the Church of God, in all its stages and through all its successive dispensations, has ever confessed both. God's human children (among whom primeval truth, contin- ually reinforced as it has been and enlarged by fresh revelations, has ever been earnestly and joyfully em- II ] God alone is piwe Spirit. 75 braced and cherished) have always beUeved that above themselves in the scale of God's Creation, though not more than themselves the objects of His Fatherly love and care, there is, in the unseen spiritual world, which is ever around us, though at present veiled from our eyes by our tabernacles of flesh, a glorious hierarchy of Angels and Archangels, of Thrones and Dominions^ Principalities and Foivers, greater, in what ways and degrees we know not, than human beings in j^ower and mi gilt. (2 Pet. ii. 11). Though often spoken of as spirits, we are not to suppose that the angels are merely and purely spiritual in the strict and proper sense of the term. To be mere Spirit, to exist in an absolute inde- pendence of space and time, to be Incomprehensible .(immensus) and Eternal, is the sole prerogative of the Self-Existent Beinof. This truth has been unfortu- nately obscured by the misrendering of our Authorized Version, not corrected in the Westminster Eevision, of Uvevfxa 6 Geo? by God is a S])irit, instead of by God is Spirit. For to say ' God is a Spirit,' seems to repre- sent Him as one in a class of existences which may be we know not how larire ; whereas His Existence in all its Modes and Attributes is singidar and unique. To say ' God is a Spirit,' sets the Divine and angelic natures, alike unseen by us but not alike unseeable, in a rank by themselves. It draws the line below them ; and then, below that line, begins to think and speak of human nature. However natural it be thus to draw the line in common language at the line of sight, it is yet misleading. The true line, one cannot 76 All created life is associated with Matter, [lect. doubt, is that whicli necessarily exists between Un- created and Infinite and Absolute Existence and all that is created and finite. The former is, in Itself, wholly apart from matter ; and existed, in and from eternity a jparte ante, before matter was. The latter would seem, alike from the hints and suggestions of Holy Scripture, and from various philosophical con- siderations, to be necessarily connected, though (it may be) in infinitely various ways, with matter, of (it may be) infinitely various degrees of materiality. We must remember, what is obviously true as soon as thought of, that the air in an empty room (to take this as an illustration) is as strictly material as are its walls and its floor ; and that, still within the limits of the strictly material, there may be we cannot limit what further advances in the direction of greater subtlety and ethereality, the material being simply relative to the acuteness of sense in the percipient. Physical Science abounds with illustrations of the way in which subtle forms of matter, often wholly imperceptible in them- selves by our ordinary senses, permeate grosser forms, which cannot resist their passage and their influence ; and, furthers of the fact that the mightiest forces of Physical Nature, Electricity, for example, are associated with and embodied (if we may use the term) in the subtlest forms of matter. Extending in this way our conception of the material, and remembering that what- ever is material must have outward form and local circumscription, we seem compelled to believe that all forms, even the highest, of created life are necessarily associated with, defined and individualized by, a mate- II.] which is of infinitely various degrees. "jy rial embodiment or envelope, and so are subject to the laws of space as of time, i. e. are here and not there, and must move, with a movement that takes time, from one point to another. And the necessity for this individual definition becomes, perhaps, greater in the higher forms of life, in which it is associated with reason and will and personality. All Science points, it has been said, to a wonderful continuity in Nature and in all created life so far as we know it. We may well believe that such continuity still largely prevails in the unexplored regions where, as yet, we cannot trace it. Of Man it is said. Thou madest him a little loiver than the angels ; and to Man, redeemed to the consummated perfection of his nature, which shall then as now include a body though a spiritual one, it has been promised by the Son of God that he shall be equal to the angels {St. Luke XX. 36), and, as the angels of God in Heaven {St. Matt, xxiii. 30). It is not then difficult for us to understand that the superhuman beings of the unseen angelic world are, even to the very highest, not mere spirit, but clothed in a material embodiment ; and that of human form, for so Holy Scripture always represents them, though unspeakably excelling in beauty and in power. {Ajyjyendix, Note 2.) 45. Revelation gives us no account of the first cre- ation of these glorious beings; but clearly implies their existence anterior to that of Man. Bishoj) Bull (Vol. I. Sermon XI.) adopts the opinion, which he says was general among divines of his day, that ' the angels were created some time within the six days; ' but the grounds he alleges for it seem very insufficient. Their normal 78 The Angels worship of God [lect. dwelling-place is uniformly spoken of in the Old and in the New Testament, and by our Lord Himself, as Heaven. By this term, used, as it always is in Holy Scripture, in contradistinction to Eartli, we must under- stand the place, or rather, perhaps, the condition, of God's nearer Presence and unimpeded Self-manifesta- tion ; such portions, that is, and conditions of the Universe and of created life as have not been over- shadowed by the dark cloud of sin. In that happier sphere the angels do always behold the Face of our Father Wliich is in Heaven (St. Matt, xviii. lo). To them the Universe is one vast Temple, wherein God dwells, and which is illumined by the Shekinah-Glory of His Presence manifested in His Son. Their first duty, their highest occupation, their chiefest joy and delight is the adoring worship of God. Twice, in wondrous vision, has a glimpse of their worship been vouchsafed in ecstatic spiritual trance, to human eyes, and the sound of their hymn of praise been heard by human ears ; once under the old Dispensation to the great evangelical prophet ; once under the New to the beloved disciple, in his exile for his testimony to his Lord. With that worship the worship of man redeemed in and by the Incarnate Christ, the One Mediator and Head of angels and of men, has in the Catholic Church been wondrously made one, in her highest act of Eu- charistic Thanksgiving, wherein, throughout all lands and through all her centuries, she has ever joined * with angels and archangels, and with, all the company of Heaven,' in magnifying God's glorious Name, ever- more praising Him and saying, ' Holy, holy, holy, Lord II.] presupposes a Revelation of God 79 God of Hosts, Heaven and Earth are full of Thy Glorv, Glory be to Thee, 0 Lord most High.' This worship presupposes, as its necessary antecedent condition, some sight of God, some revelation of God to the angels, some knowledge, and that we can hardly doubt, notwithstanding Hooker's language on the sub- ject, progressive, perhaps endlessly progressive, know- ledge of God, His Nature, His Will, His Work, His Ways, and of their own relation to and consequent duties towards Him. For on this knowledge and sight of Him their worship of Him is founded. We cannot doubt that the Medium of this Revelation of God to \\\Q Holy Ansfels is the Eternal Son, the Lofros, the Revealer, Who is their Light as well as their Life, in that through Him, standing therefore to them in a most truly and strictly Mediatorial relation, there is a continual inflowing into them, into their minds and spirits, of the Holy Spirit Himself of God. He, the Third Person in the Most Holy Trinity, is the quicken- ing Life in them, freely ministered to them, according to their several individual capacity, and that a growing one, through the Son of God. Hooker, H. P. Book I. vi. i, writes, ' In the matter of knowledge there is between the an'^-els of God and the children of men tliis difTerenee : angels already have full and complete knowledge in ihe h'ujhest degree ihal can he imparted to them ; men, if we view them in their spring, are at the first without understanding or knowledge at all. Nevertheless, from this utter vacuity they grow by degrees, till they come at length to be even as the angels themselves are.' The words italicised seem too strong ; but perhaps Hooker did not mean them to be taken 8o to them through His Son. [lect. absolutely, but only to draw a contrast between the infantile beg-innings of human beings and the (appa- rent) creation of angels at once in full adult perfection, not of knowledge, but of powers and faculties. It may seem a mere speculation, but is it not a justifiable and a probable one % to add, that to the angels, of whom, as we have seen, we are to conceive as clothed with spiritual bodies of human form, may be vouchsafed the sight of God in visible form ; and if so, of course, in human form, and that, of course, asso- ciated with the Divine Person of the Eternal Son, in Whom alone can any created being see God. We know that it was part of God's Purpose and Will to assume, wlien ilie fulness of the time was come, the actual flesh and blood, the whole nature, of Man ; as well as that outward form which, in varying degrees of glory and power and beauty, is common to men and angels : and so no marvel if, for manifestation to them, He should, even before the actual Incarnation, assume, whether permanently or occasionally, to them and to their apprehension, a visible human form ; even as in such form He, on occasion, manifested Himself to the Patriarchs and to others of the Old Covenant. However this may have been, it was in the Eternal Son, Who is the visible Image of God, that they saw God, whether inwardly or outwardly, and knew God in His Glory and in His Beauty and in His moral Attributes. In His visible works in Creation which lay outspread before their gaze, and whereof they were part, they saw God and knew Him in His Wisdom and in His Power ; watching with absorbing interest the slow evolution of II.] Gradations of rank in the Heavenly Hierarchy. 8 1 His mighty Plan, desiring to look into it. So seeing God and knowing Him, they loved Him and they worshipped Him. But they worshipped Him through the Son, the One Mediator ; He their High Priest gathering up into Himself their pure and holy, yet of itself, because creaturely, finite and inadequate love and worship, uniting it to His own perfect and infinite Love of the Father, binding it to His own absolute identity of Will with the Father's, and so giving it a worth and an acceptability which in itself it could never attain unto. 46. But Worship is not the sole element and occu- pation of the angels' life. Perfectly they do God's Will, which is their one Law, revealed to them through His Son their King ; and this in Work and Service as well as in adoration and praise. Of what nature is this work and service % Holy Scripture gives only general suggestive hints on this highly interesting subject: yet its intimations are sufiiciently clear, as to certain broad lines, to furnish trustworthy material for our devout meditation on a topic which occupied the last thoughts on earth of Kichard Hooker, ' the number and nature of angels, and their blessed obedience and order.' {hife^ in Kehles Edition, p. 85.) There are evidently distinctions of rank and power, and probably of natural endowment, among them. Their general name of An- gels, a name expressive not of nature but of ofiice and function, denotes that they are God's messengers or agents, specially towards the human race ; and that both of mercy and of judgement. Above the angels in general are the Archangels ; beings evidently of a G 82 Angels employed, in subordination to the Son, [lect. higher rank and place to whom the angels are subor- dinated. Some distinctions in the celestial Hierarchy are also clearly implied in the special designations Thrones, Dominions, Principalities, and Powers. [E^h. i. 21 ; Col. i. i6; i Pet. iii. 22.) For the principle of a graduated subordmation, through the various degrees of i^ovala (delegated au- thority) committed to various ranks of intelligent beings, evidently runs throughout the whole adminis- tration of the Divine Government of Him Who is ever the author, not aKaraa-raa-ia^ (of confusion and unsettle- ment), but of order and of peace (i Cor. xiv. 2,3)- Is not this the finite counterpart of the mysterious Subor- dination of the Second and Third Persons of the Holy Trinity within the Divine Nature Itself? And is not the one safeguard and guarantee of its due and orderly operation the willing subjection and loyal submission of all, from the highest to the lowest, to the Supreme Divine Authority of the Son of God Himself, the angels' King ? God rules the Universe through His Son ; the Son of God rules through His subordinate agents, angelic and human, who are empowered for their work and duty, under Him and in their ordered subordination one to another, by the Spirit Which pro- ceedeth from the Father and is given, through the Son, to them accordinor to the several ' ofiSce and work ' of each. (Compare the Formula of Ordination.) But the Son of God is Sovereign over all, the Object of Divine Worship to all. This supremest rank on the Father's Throne belongs to Him, First, in His pre-existent Divine Nature {Heh. i. 5, &c.), and here of native and inherent II.] in the Administration of the Universe. 83 right ; and, Secondly, by gift and bestowal, in His Incar- nate Nature also (^t. Matt, xxviii. 1 8 ; PhilijJj). ii. 9.) The angels are His willing servants. Even in His deepest humiliation in the hour of the poioer of darkness it was so. In Gethsemane there appeared unto Him an angel from heaven strengthening Him (St. LuJce xxii. 43). This may probably be understood of the special guardian angel of His Holy Humanity. But He could also say to St. Peter on the same occasion, Tliinl-est thou that I cannot now ^7^ay to my Father, and He shall presently give me more than tioelve legions of angels'^ {St. Matt. XX vi. 53.) But the services of that mighty army, the Hosts of the Lord of Hosts, were among the consequent prerogatives of that Divine Glory which was then, for the time, purposely and willingly laid aside. But part of His Divine Prerogative as the Son and Heir is the Ptule over and the Administration of that vast realm of created Life which had come into being through Him, and is maintained in being in and by Him, and of which the angels are a part. Holy Scrip- ture, though it satisfies no vain curiosity, and gives no ground or encouragement to rash speculation, yet does so repeatedly reveal the fact of the employment of angels as subordinate agents in the realm of nature and as wielding its powers, under God and according to His Will, for mercy or for judgement, as to convey the impression that the cases specially recorded are only the manifested specimens and examples of what is really a general principle, a predominant feature, in the systematic economy of the Universe. [A^^endix, Note 3.) G 2 84 Interest of the A ngels in the glories of Creation, [lect. 47. Certainly the Eevelations of Science as to the scale of Creation, the grandeur of its forces, the wonder- ful character of its phenomena, seem to make it quite natural to believe that it may well furnish a worthy field for the exercise of the highest faculties of created intelligences of the very highest order and the most glorious endowments. We see, as yet, but a little way, whether over the extent or into the depths of Creation; and yet how pure, how elevating, how absorbing the pleasure and interest with which we survey that little ! With wliat eager anticipation of greater wonders and glories still does even the untrained bystander, the iSiu)Tr]s (layman), watch for further knowledge of things hidden as yet, but whose revelation may be the crowning reward of further patient toil, to the glory and praise of God ! That such toil is one of man's appointed tasks and duties, as it is most surely the means of some of his greatest enjoyments, we do not doubt. But if so, how much more to those higher natures who in intel- lectual grasp, as in other gifts, are greater in jjower and might ? That the promise to redeemed mankind of equality with the angels, in our future state of complete restoration, includes an unspeakable advance in the powers brought to bear on the investigation of nature, its capacities and uses and its general purpose, and consequently a proportionate increase in the ground and motive for the most joyful adoration and praise, cannot surely be questioned. To enter more and more fully into the sublime truth, that all things came into being through the Son of God, continue in being in Him, and tend to their ultimate perfection through II.] Moral Life, and Pj^obation, of the Angels. 85 Him and for Him ; to learn more and more of tlie won- drous relations of all things to Him Who is the Alpha and Omega of the Whole, and of the meaning and con- sequences of that connection with Him which is as yet only revealed to us in the general statement of the fact ; to see all this with an ever-growing insight, and so to realize ever more and more the Divine Glory and Dignity of Him Who yet, ' for us men and for our sal- vation, came down from Heaven and was Incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the Virgin Mary, and was made Man,' — this must surely be no small part of the future joy of those who shall through Him have realized the end of their being. 48. Yet, great as is in this respect the joy of the a,ngels, in which we hope to share, far above this stands their wondering delight in the fuller manifestation of the moral Attributes of God as not only the Almighty Creator but also the all-loving Father, Who longs for the answering conscious love of His finite created chil- dren made in His Image, after His Likeness, and so with wiU and affections, with moral nature and capacity of love. Material Nature, grand and glorious as it is, is yet in itself, even in its highest animated forms, but the ground and basis of a higher, a moral and spiritual life, the evolution of which is its higher, more inclusive, aim and reason for existence, and to wliich it is its place and function subordinately to minister. Here again the recorded Revelation which God has given to man answers no curious questions, and leaves much, as yet, in deep and impenetrable mystery. Yet it does reveal, in broad outline, the tremendous truth that, in ',86 Entrance of Evil into the Creation [lect. the earlier world of conscious intelligent life of the angelic order, tlie mightiest issues of a moral and spiritual kind had already been tried, and with the most tremendous and far-reaching results, ere yet Man was born on this lower earth. Moral and spiritual Evil had been generated in even the highest of the heavenly 'places ; and on a scale of extent and of intensity which staggers human thought. The revelation of this fact to man was necessary to account for the condition in which he finds himself and all things around him. And although little beyond the fact of the existence of evil in evil beings, prior to and external to man and man's world, is revealed in Holy Scripture ; yet that little, combined with the moral knowledge open to man by natural means, through the observant study of his own moral constitution and the experience of life in himself and his fellows, may lead us so far as to the following conclusions : — God made all things good ; and, especially, all per- sons, i.e. all beings endowed with a distinct individual conscious existence. He made all such conscious per- sonal beings to be susceptible of Himself, conscious of Himself, as well as of themselves and of each other, and of the world around them. For this He endowed them, not only with mind and intellect, perceptive and reflective, faint finite shadows of His own Divine Logos, but also with moral affections, that they might love Him, the Source of their being and of all their joy. But that love should be love it was necessary that it should be given. Love not consciously felt and willed, love not given by a conscious, voluntary movement of II.] through the necessary Free-will of the Creature. 87 the creature towards its God is not love at all. Love extorted (were that conceivable) from an unwilling subject were hardly more a contradiction in terms. Hence the very purpose of the creature's existence could not possibly be attained without the added gift, awful and godlike as it is, of Will, self-choosing, self- determining Will, really free, else were it no Will at all. God, by the very law of His Existence, and because He is Love, must of necessity present to the apprehen- sion of His conscious and susceptible creatures every conceivable and possible reason why they should love Him, and so He attract their love. But, equally of necessity, the response must rest in the bosom of the creature himself Thus when there was no evil in the Universe, there was the inevitable possibility of evil, in the inevitable existence of Free- Will ; inevitable if there were to be any forms of finite personal life. The temptation, the probation {an essentially neces- sary condition of the moral discipline and development of the creature towards God), lay in the very thought that it was possible to withhold' love from God Who claimed it. This withholding must amount to a violent conscious act of wilful defiance and self-assertion against God ; it must amount, in effect, in tendency, and in its real essential character, to that attempted annihilation of God which is the real inner essence of all sin, which is the irreconcileable contradiction of God. Love from the creature towards God must necessarily be the love of submission and obedience, nay of worship ; and must carry in itself of necessity the acknowledgment of de- pendence. A possible refusal was the possibility of S8 Pride and Self-assertion against God [lect. the assertion of independence ; of the assertion, that is, of a position which is the sole prerogative of the Al- mighty, the Self-Existent. 49. We can thus, in some measure at least, under- stand that the original sin, the primary root of all sin, the defiant act of him who, whatever his rank in the scale of created life (and it may conceivably have been the highest), was the first leader of rebellion against the sovereign supremacy of God, was Pride. It was the lust of independence at whatever cost ; the longing for a separate kingdom of his own, the assertion of self and of self-sufficiency, the dethronement, the anni- hilation of God, the deification of self. {Appendix, Note 4.) In this all-inclusive sin, this root of sin, which carries in itself that which is the very damning essence of all sin (the rebellion, namely, of self and its will against God and His Will, the absolute defiance of God whensoever His Will crosses any form of self-will, or contradicts any gratification on which self-will may be set), there is further inherent a special jealousy and envy, a special conscious rejection, of that royal Heir- ship and present eternal Sovereignty over the whole realm of created Existence which belongs inherently, by right of His First-born Sonship, to the Only-Be- gotten. Hence arises an essential antagonism, absolute and irreconcileable, so long as the counter-claim of rival sovereignty is maintained against Him by the author of Evil. This one fact is of supreme and overruling import in the view and 'estimate of the revealed Work of Him Who ' was manifested that He might destroy the II.] the inner essence of Sin. 89 works of the devil, and make us the sons of God and heirs of eternal life/ It points to the Son of God at once as the necessary and only champion of fallen, suifering man as against the great rival, the invader, the usurper, the tempter and seducer of a weaker and more ignorant being into disobedience and sin. It points to the necessity, for His own glory and honour's sake, as w^ell as from pity towards those who were the victims of the lie, of the revindication by the Son of God in person of His own rightful and inalien- able authority ; and, of course, to the absolute certainty of His ultimate complete triumph, and the full re- establishment of His Kingdom over man and man's world, in righteousness and in truth, and therefore in happiness and in peace. It reveals, to the full, the deep malignity and, as well, the deep humiliation of sin, in that it shows the active, the purposed, the conscious, the aggressive, the personal character, in its ultimate aspects, of the opposition and conflict between Good and Evil, and the deadly irreconcileable hatred that must exist between their personal representatives ; and it involves, further, the awful truth that the willing service of sin involves the being taken captive by the evil one at his ivill ; and so, in the result, sooner or later, however veiled and disguised at first, the con- scious submission to the evil one of the sin-enslaved soul and its worship of him as God. 50. In what formal act the first sin of the devil and his angels took shape on their yielding their free- will to the inwardly generated suggestions of pride, we are not expressly told. It may have been in itself go The outward form of the first act of sin. [lect. a very simple act ; as simple as the plucking of the forbidden fruit ; yet carrying with it all its awful consequences, just because it was the known and under- stood act of rebellion and disobedience. Holy Scripture, in one place bearing on the subject, seems to intimate that it was the overstepping, the transgression, of appointed local bounds. The Epistle of St. Jude tells us that some of the angels liej^t not rrju eavrwv ap-)(f]v {their oion principality), hut left to 'ISiov oiKtjr^piov [their proper habitation). Some commentators refer this to what is mentioned in the second chapter of Genesis, The sons of God saw the daughters of men that they iverefair, and they took them wives of all which they choose; interpreting, as the Septuagint translators do, the sons of God to mean angels. This is a most uncertain interpretation, and seems to involve insuperable difficulties. But were it accepted, it by no means follows that the act, which was one of lustful sin, is to be identified with the act to which St. Jude refers. His language would rather point to what other passages of the Bible render pro- bable, that to the holy angels were assigned, under the Son of God, defined regions of God's created Universe, over which, in their several ranks, they were to exercise a delegated authority, subject to the Will of God as declared through His Son. The sin pointed to seems rather that of pride and rebellion, leading them to refuse to confine themselves within the limits which God had assigned them. 51. It is easy to imagine how such a sin may have had to the full all the characteristics of a wilful and deliberate defiance of the power of Almighty God and II.] Effects of sill on angelic natures. g i of the authority of His Son, and may have resulted at once in the complete and final estrangement and se- paration from God, Who alone is Life and Light, and so in the necessary banishment of the rebels from the Light of His Presence and their confinement in ever- lasting chains of darkness unto the judgement of the Great Day (St. Jude 6). Such an act as theirs may well have been an act of spiritual suicide. Certainly Holy Scrip- ture gives no hint of any possibility of their restoration. For them, for the devil and his angels, is the eternal fire prepared. (St. Matt. xxv. 41 : Aj^j^endix, Note 5.) In their simpler, though higher, nature, in the ori- ginal adult completeness of each individual angel in his rank and place, in the more immediate and direct relation of each one separately, as apart from his fel- lows, to the Father of Sinrits, to the Eternal Son, their Lord and King as well as their Mediator, and to the Holy Spirit, Ave may see considerations wdiich would give to the act of sin and rebellion, in them, a specially deadly character, in addition to its enhanced heinous- ness arising from the absence, in their case, of any external temptation or seduction. The act of sin, in the case of each one who fell, must have been much more a conscious, wilful, and deliberate act, done with foresight of its consequences, and so much more of the nature of a sin against the Holy Ghost, on Whose continued presence with them and within them, con- sciously apprehended and longed-for, depended their continued spiritual life and its growing development. Their rebellion would involve a distinct conscious re- jection and exclusion of Him and of His influences, by 92 Foi'esecn loss tJn'oiigh sin [lect. an act of will which, in a more purely spiritual nature than that of man, would at once cut off the spirit from the Source of good, and fill it with darkness and with defiant hatred of God, such as must draw after it exclu- sion from the light of Heaven and imprisonment under the chains of a self-made darkness, in an, apparently, hopeless condemnation. 52. We are thus brought face to face with the awful fact of the existence of evil ; not of mere pain, which has its manifold uses, and is singularly evanescent, forgotten almost as soon as past ; but of moral evil, of hatred of good, of spiritual ivicJcedness in high ])laces, in the highest ranks of being ; of an accursed delight in drawing others into rebellion against God, in bring- ing degradation and ruin on God's pure and perfect handiwork ; and of consequent awful suffering and de- gradation, present and future (must we not say eternal ?), as the portion of the wicked angels themselves. Before so inscrutable a mystery we bow, in humble acceptance of the fact. We acknowledge its difficulty ; which is, not that we cannot account for its origin, for the possibility lay (as we have seen) in the awful godlike gift to the creature of Free-will, a gift we can easily see to be inevitable if there was to be moral life and capa- city of loving God in the creature, — but rather this, that the abuse of that inevitable gift of Free-will, in the case of we know not how many of God's highest creatures, was, if not inevitable, at least foreseen in the prescience of God. This we must allow. God foresaw it all ; and yet God created angels and men. We exult with joy and thanksgiving in the manifestation II.] of some angels and men. 93 of love and wisdom and power in the material Uni- verse ; and still more in the gifts and powers and happiness of angels and of men ; yes, of human beings even in this present life, much more in the thought of them redeemed and glorified and happy for ever. We dwell with amazed delight on the thought of so vast, so illimitable, a sum of happiness ; of happiness realised in the present and expanding for ever with an illimitable capacity of development. But there is the thought of the inevitable shadow ; — ' This is not true of all.' There are those who will bO; must be, shut out of it ; we know not how many, of angels and of human beings ; and that for ever, in misery, con- scious, deserved, endless. It is no question, or only to a comparatively slight extent, of what may be the proportion of the lost to those, we doubt not incon- ceivably the greater number, in whom ultimately the end of their being will be blessedly realized. The mind refuses to cast, in such a matter, a balance of loss and gain, or to say that the cost, however appalling when regarded in itself, sinks into insignificance in comparison with the object secured. We stagger at the thought that any creatures, conscious, intelligent, immortal, formed for unspeakable happiness in loving and seeing God, should yet be cut off from Him for ever in misery unending ; and that God, in creating them, foreknew this. We know and are persuaded that ihe Judge of all the earth will do right. We know that the final award of the Righteous Governour of the universe upon all will be absolutely just and absolutely merciful. We know that God gives to each one of 94 Nahcre of God's Presence to [lect. His creatures exactly as much, in kind and in degree, of His presence, as it is momently capable of ; and that unless this were so it must absolutely cease, and that instantly, to exist at all. We know that from any originally capable of it, the gracious and welcome Pre- sence is withdrawn solely because of their self-caused incapacity to receive it. But if we add, as we must, to the subjective consciousness, on the part of the creature, of this poe7ia clamni, of this loss of the sj^iritual Presence the further consciousness of the continuing close natural Presence (inevitable as the very condition of its exist- ence at all), of a Being Whom it hates, and whose presence must therefore be to it simply that of a con- suming fire, we are confronted at once with a thought whose overpowering horror makes us dumb. It is this thought, much dwelt upon in the present day, which forces so many upon one or other of the two expedients of Universalism or AnniMlationism as a way of escape. Men would fain persuade themselves, in the presence of so great a difficulty, that either future punishment must in every case be corrective, and in the long run, after whatever prolonged discipline, be finally in every case successful ; or else that, in the case of those who shall be finally incorrigible, it shall end in their ceasing to exist. {8ee above, § 39.) It is no part of our present task to discuss these rival theories. We only remark that, as Origen perceived, the difficulty is not really removed unless the case of the angels be included as well as that of mankind. And we have been drawn into mentioning it only because it is inherent in the very thought of any II.] the consciousness of the lost. 95 creation at all, such as, as a matter of fact, we know it. As so inherent we must accept it ; content to await its explanation, but knowing, meanwhile, that the Creator is as purely Merciful and as purely Just as He is Al- mighty, and that the mystery of Creation, when fully unfolded, will be only the final and complete manifest- ation, to the heart and mind of every intelligent creature, of all the attributes of Him Who is Love. On the Fall of the Angels and the Origin of Evil see Hooker, E. P. Book I. iv. 3, and Book V. Appendix No. i. (Keble's Edition, Vol. II. p. 565.) LECTUEE III. THE CREATION OF MAN; ITS RELATION TO THE INCARNATION. Genesis i. 26. " And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. ... So God created man in His own image, in the image of God created He him." 53. We have already seen that the first dividing line in the scale of Being is that between the Self-Existent and the Created, the Infinite and the Finite, the merely Spiritual and the Material. Below that line, first and highest are the Angelic natures. Looking at the scale of Being from its lowest point, we find at its base mere inorganic matter, various in form, stupendous in bulk, passively subject to uniform law, without growth, yet subject to changes of the extremest kind under the operation of uniform law. Above this we draw a second dividing line, to mark off — what is clearly distinguishable from it, though in its lowest forms passing almost insensibly into it — organ- ized matter, i.e. matter associated with life ; an associa- tion wdiich is evidenced by growth and reproduction. A third dividing line is that which separates between the upper, or invisible, created world, the angelic world, and the lower, or visible, created world, the world of which we are immediately a part, and witli which we are familiar. This is a very decisive line ; though (possibly) not in itself so much so as is commonly III.] Gradations of Organized Life. 97 thought; (for the higher spiritual spheres of the purely divine and of the angelic life surround us always and everywhere ; and we are immersed in them, though we apprehend them not save by faith) ; yet for us as men a decisive line, because it is the limit of our natural and ordinary sight. Beneath this line are the Human, the Animal, and the Vegetable worlds of Organized Life, clearly connected, albeit through infinite gradations. Of these the higher forms at each stage include the essential constituents of the lower, together with tlieir more distinguishing elements ; while Man, the highest form of organized living matter within the visible sphere of this lower world, though formed of the very dust of the ground, includes and represents, in his constituent elements, alike both the purely material, the vegetable, and the animal world ; but with these combines those higher elements which difference him absolutely and essentially from the lower creatures, notwithstanding his points of resemblance and links of connection with them, and which make him human. 54. Holy Scripture teaches us that the creation of the invisible world of the angels preceded that of the visible world and of man ; but by what space of time it gives us no idea. Such was no part of its purpose ; which is, to record the story of God's dealings with His creature Man. It begins with the statement of the fundamental truth that the existence of the visible and material world, of the Heavens and the Earth, is due to the creative act of God, an act which took i>lace in the heginning, in some remote, possibly in some H 98 Processes of Nature to be sttLciied by Science, [lect. inconceivably remote, past. The first two verses of the Book of Genesis allow for as many millions of years as modern science (whose divinely-appointed task and duty it is to study physical nature) may discover it to be necessary to jDOstulate. And in its subsequent descrip- tion of the order of creation and the successive develop- ment (or evolution, if we like to use the word) of things created, a development which culminates at last in Man, there is really nothing that is not quite reconcile- able with the really attested truths of Physical Science. More than this we need not, we have no right, to ask. The investigation of processes, the observation of the Laws (so-called) which govern the development of material nature and the evolution of life up to its highest visible forms, whether from a primordial germ or otherwise (or rather, we should say, the observation of the course which, as a matter of fact, that develop- ment has followed), is within the grasp of man's natural intellectual powers patiently and laboriously exercised ; and so is left to them for their exercise, to the glory and praise of God and to the benefit of man. What Revelation insists on, in perfect conformity with the common sense and verdict of mankind, and with the necessary conclusions of the highest Reason, is the fundamental truth, that, behind all material nature and its phenomena, behind all that exists and which man can apprehend, there is a Personal and intelligent and Almighty Will, a Self-Existent Uncreated Life, the great First Cause of all, the present Sustainer and Upholder of all, the all-wise and all-merciful Ruler and Controller of all. III.] Man, tJic Head of the visible zuorid, 99 55. At the head of this lower and visible sphere of created nature stands, by divine appointment, Man, the sovereign and lord, under God, of all ; the being for whose sake this lower world was made, and to whom it, and all that is in it, leads up ; crowned loith glory and honour by his Creator, Who made him, in this his destined dwelling-place, to have dominion over the ivorhs of His Hands, and jjh^ all things under his feet. Placed thus in the scale of intellio-ent created Ufe Man is made a little lower than the angels, as belonging to a clearly different sphere, the epitome and representative of an order of things more closely bound up with matter ; clothed in a body of flesh and blood, itself a marvellous piece of God's handiwork, wrought out of the very elements of the ground on which he walks, and ani- mated, in the present life, by a living soul, a ^v)^v, which ministers to and subserves his higher life of intellect and spirit. It is a part of this closer relation to matter, this possession, at least in the first stage of its existence, of an animal nature, that the Human Kace was not created at once in a certain definite number of individuals, as it is thought the angels were, each in his full adult completeness, from the first ; but in posse, as contained in the Protoplast, in the primeval pair, and so developed by the unbroken succession of natural generation, by reproduction from them. There is no- thing analogous to this in the angelic nature. We are expressly told that they neither marry nor are given in marriage. Here is a marked distinction between the ' bodiless powers ' — bodiless though not merely spirit or un-material — of the heavenly world, and man with his u 2 lOO and the most representative of all creatures, [lect. compound oXoKXtjpov of body, soul, and spirit. In the connection of each individual with those who have gone before, in the natural relationship of a constitution of flesh and blood inherited from a common source, there is in the Human Hace a unity and a solidarity which, apparently, belongs not to the angels. This must be borne in mind, as throwing a light on some features of the Christian Eeligion, especially in its sacramental aspect ; and helping us somewhat to understand the work of Redemption, as carried out on behalf of man, and not, so far as we can see, of the angels who sinned. 56. It is the peculiar feature of Man's position in the scale of Created Life that he is of all creatures the most completely representative. His compound nature is the most complete summary, the microcosm, of all else that is. In his spiritual nature he is like the angels, and has the capacity, as redeemed, of becoming, in his full consummation, equal to the angels {la-dyyekoi, St. Luke XX. 36). In his lower nature he includes the elements of aU that is beneath him in the lower forms of life, and even of brute inorganic matter. In these facts we may perhaps see some of the rea- sons why, if there was to be a union of the Creator with the creature, it should take place in our natm^e. Saint Thomas Aquinas shews (iii. 4. i) that it is only in Human Nature that the two conditions of meetness or dignity and of necessity are united. To the irrational creation dignity is wanting- ; to the superhuman or angelic, necessity. For the angels (he argues) are not g-enerated as men are ; nor born, as men are, under a law HI.] The Compound Constitution of Man. loi of ovig-inal sin, to the inheritance of a tainted nature. There is no abstract common angelic nature. Each angel is, from his first creation, perfect in his own personality, from which it follows that the Son of God could not have taken the angelic nature without superseding, indeed annihilating, the personality of some one particular angel ; and the sin of the evil angels, who might seem to satisfy the condition of necessity, is (he says) irremediable. Human nature as the highest product of the creative energy of God as exercised in this lower visible and earthly sphere, was perfect and complete in the Proto- plast, in whom were germinally contained all the several individual members of the race which was to grow from him as from its origmal seed and root : in the Proto- plast, in the Adam, not in the first pair, but in the man alone, from whom, and not separately, the woman was derived by a subsequent special act of God's creative power. The material substratum of Man was first formed in the perfection of its physical organization, with all its contained capacities ; whether by direct immediate act, or by slow evolution from lower forms, is reall}^ immaterial. Into this God hreailied, the hreath of Ife, and man became a living soul {"^v^h <^<^o-«) in- dwelling in a natural hody (o-w/xa -^vyjiKov), which was the tabernacle not only of the soul (^('I'X'?) ^^^ the mind {vov> perfect image and likeness before His creatures. All nature points to such a being as its climax and con- summation. And such a Being is the Archetypal INTan- hood assumed by the Eternal Word. It is the climax of God's Creation ; it is the climax also of God's Self- 122 The Inca7'nation meets and satisfies [lect. revelation. At this point God's creative activity becomes entirely one with His Self-revealing" activity. The Sacred Manhood is a creature, yet it is indissolubly united to the Eternal Word. It differs from every other created being", in that God personally tenants It. So far then are Incarnation and Creation from being" antagonistic conceptions of the activity of God, that the Absolutely Perfect Creature only exists as a perfect reflection of the Divine g'lory. In the Incarnation God creates only to reveal, and He reveals perfectly by that which He creates. ' The Word was made flesh and dwelt amono- us, and we beheld His glory.' 64. Before we leave this part of our subject it may be well to point out that the Incarnation of God does, as a fact, correspond to and satisfy, to the fullest conceivable degree, that instinctive and true feeling of the universality of God, and of His close presence with Nature and with Man, which earnest thought on God, and on the mystery of Creation and of Life, has always exhibited ; and of which Pantheistic speculation in its various forms, all agreeing, however, in this fundamental thought, is the blind and groping ex- pression. In the midst of, and underlying, grossly polytheistic forms of behefand practice, the esoteric thought of serious thinkers about God has ever realized and dwelt upon His immensity, His universality. His all-embracing in- finity, His sole Self-Existence, His sole Eternal Exist- ence, alone and apart from space and time. His sole inexhaustible self-originated Life, His sole origination and maintenance of the life of all that lives. His im- manent Presence, in, behind, and underneath, as the very condition of its existence, to all else that is, visible III.] the true elements in Pantheistic thought, 123 and invisible. The thought that in Kim we live, and move, and have our heing, because ive are His offspring, was one that rose naturally to the lips of a sjjeaker, thoughtful and educated as well as inspired, when, in the then world's intellectual centre, he addressed the educated representatives of Greek culture and philosophy {Acts xvii. 28). It was a true thought, though it was a thought which was theirs as well as his; for which reason he recalled them to it. It would find an echo in the minds of the Epicureans and Stoics who encountered Paul, and who would be struck by the Jewish speaker's reminder of its occurrence in Greek poets of their own, like Aratus and Cleanthes, whom he showed to be part of his intellectual heritage as of theirs. It is a deeply true thought, and, as such, is an essential part of Christian thought about God and His relation to the Universe and to Man, though it be (so to say) only a truth about His natural relation to them (see Dean Plumptre on Acts xvii. in Bishop Ellicott's N, T. Com- mentary for English readers). But when we reflect how much more clearly defined a meaning it has, and of how much closer and more intimate a relation it speaks, to the fully trained ear of Christian Faith, and to the soul that embraces with thoughtful loving ac- ceptance the glorious truths of the Trinity and the Incarnation, we see another proof and example of the perfect coherence and consistency and continuity of the fully-apprehended Christian Hevelation with the highest and best natural thought of man about God ; we mark another example how the added light of the Christian Hevelation throws a brighter and intenser glory about 124 God is hi Creation, and in Man, throngh [lect. those earlier known verities which formed the best part, the true part, of previous Reh'gions, Jewish or Heathen. If in God we live and move and have our heing, we Christians know more particularly tliat it is in and through the Eternal Son of God ; through Whom the original life of the Living God has come forth upon Creation, and in Whom all creation consists ; and this is a general, and, so to call it, a natural truth. But we further believe, that, through the Incarnation of the Son, Who has thereby become the heginning of the Second, the New, Creation, (which the Father willed to bring about within (as it were) and above the first, the old, the natural, creation), a still closer bond than could exist before has been formed between God and the Creature, a bond involving their personal conjunc- tion, and that for ever. We believe that through that bond there is a closer Presence in man (not in all, not in man as man, but in the believing, baptized, and regenerate) of the Divine Spirit — an indwelling, in his heart and mind, and affections, in his whole nature, of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; and further we believe also that this is the cause and secret of man's true life, and the pledge of its endless continuance in progressive development. Believing this we believe what is ])erfectly consistent with the lesser, earlier, more natural truth, which is true of the life of all, that in God, whose offsjmng all men are, as men, ive live, and move, and have our heing naturally. Nay, we are as- sured that, believing thus, we believe what any who accept and reflect on that simpler truth should have no III.] His Son. Pantheism is congenial to 125 difficulty in accepting also as antecedently probable ; considering the power and the love of God, or the preciousness in His sight of His creature man, and the marvellous capacities of human nature, in thought and spirit, when living, as it was meant to do, in God, by God, for God. For want of the -restraining guidance of a true religion, men to whom these thoughts of the nearness of God to Man and to all that is, have come home, as flowing from any worthy, even natural, thought about God and Nature, have thrown them, sometimes (not always), into a pantheistic, and so untrue and dangerous form and connection ; when they have so dwelt on the universal, ever and everywhere, present immanence of God in Nature and in Man as to identify and confound God with Creation ; to the loss of the overpowering and controlling thought of His awful and transcendent Personality, and of the absolute incompre- hensible, purely spiritual, nature of His Supreme Es- sence and Being. Such a system is clearly atheistic. An impersonal God is no God at aU. The very con- ception of such a God is to us impossible, any true sense of the word ' God ' being maintained. And our consciousness, witnessing to an inalienable, and, as we instinctively feel, an indestructible personality, wit- nesses against such an endeavour as indeed absurd and irrational. For irrational it must needs be to claim a separate personality for ourselves, each in our several individuaUty, and deny it, except in a collective and unreal sense, to the Supreme. 65. Yet it is not unnatural. It may be accounted 126 Mali s natural thought about God. [lect. for. Indeed, a close and vivid apprehension of the nearness of God to every one of us, as the necessary substratum of our own being, and of our consequent ab- solute dependence on Him, must (unless we can feel that we can be at peace with Him, can be sure that He loves us, and so be drawn to love Him in return) overpower us by its very awfulness. For, rightly understood, it carries with it the tremendous thought of a Supreme Personality that enfolds us in its inevitable grasp ; the thought of One Who is ahout our jpath and about our heel, and s^pieth out all our ivays, of One from Whom there is no escape, now or hereafter, One to Whom we are responsible, One Who is over us, above us, distinct from us, One Who is our Judge. It is a way of escape from this thought, so oppressive to the natural mind, to welcome the suggestion that God, in Whom we are and Who is in us, is not distinct from ourselves ; that we and all that is, visible and invisible, material and immaterial, are God, and God is all that is, and only that ; that He (if we should not rather say It) is the soul and life of the visible universe, which is (as it were) His body ; that He is personal, if at all, only in us who are personal ; if we indeed are so ourselves, if indeed we be not mere foam-bubbles on the surface of an infinite and eternal ocean of life, from whose heaving bosom we flash up into a momentary existence of our own, only to be reabsorbed and merged again for ever. Such a thought of God, if the word is not to be avowedly parted with, is tolerable to the natural and unregenerate mind, if it speculates at all on subjects so mighty. But to the mind that knows not III.] Only in Christ can Man dear the nearness of God, 127 God in Christ, as the Lover and Eedeemer of sinners, and as, in Christ, a reconciled and loving Father ; to the mind whose thoughts, desires, and aspirations are con- fined within the limits of the present and the visible, and which is really self-centred the while, and conscious of that within on which God cannot look with favour ; the thought of the ever-present Personality of the living God, is and must be, unwelcome, nay, intolerable. Man cannot know God unless he at least wills to know Him. He will put Him from him. He will substitute for Him any vain self-created imagination, any idolum specih of his own. He will speak of an anima mundi, an all-pervading substance, an infinite life, or * force,* a * stream of tendency,' an ' unknown God,' but not of a living personal God, Whom man can know as an ever present Friend, in Whom man can trust, with Whom man can walk, and that joyfully and securely, amid the trials and the sometimes darkness, of this present life, on Whom man can lean when Jlesh and heart fail, because He is spiritually known and experimentally felt to be the strength of his heart, and his ^otiion for ever [Psalm Ixxiii. 25.) 66. It is only in Christ that man can realize, or endure when he has realized, the thought of the inti- mate nearness of God. All pantheistic systems begin with that; but they end by, practically, if not in terms, denying God, or reducing Him to a mere Idea or ab- straction. Through the Incarnation, and through the extension of the Incarnation through the Sacraments, the nearness of God to man is realized in a height of verity and fulness, inconceivable before and unima- 128 being tmited to God witJiout absorption, [lect. gined ; so that men may become fartahers of the divine nature (2 St. Peter i. 4), even as God became partaker of human nature ; and, being ' knit together in one communion and fellowship in the mystical body of God's Son Christ our Lord,' may be one in the Father and the Son, even as the Father is in the Son and the Son in the Father {St. John xvii. 21-23). ^^ the strength of this faith the Christian can say, / am per- suaded that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor prin- cipalities, nor powers, nor things present, nor things to come, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall he able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord {Bom. viii. 38, 39.) And this inseparable love is no absorption. It is no merging of individual being in an ocean, even of love. Rather the very joy of it, the secret of the Lord which is with them that fear Him {Psahn xxv. 14), is the sense of a conscious personal grasp of a Person, the answer of heart to heart, the Divine to the deepest needs of the Human, the human to the overflowuig fulness of the Divine ; the sense of being individually loved by One of Whom each can say. He loved me and gave Himself for me {Gal. ii. 20), the joy of self- surrendering love to Him, of unreserved sacrifice of the will, itself intensely realized in its individual self-ness, to the Will of Him Who made us for Himself, that from us He might enjoy the love of hearts that love Him with a willing con- scious love, and so grow continually into the likeness of Him, and so into fuller life. 67. The very thought of such a perfectibility of man's nature had not come to man save through that III.] Unsatisfying hopelessness of Pantheism. 1 29 Incarnation throuo-h wliicli alone it can be realized. o But in the thought of it, and in the sole conceivable realization of it, under any circumstances, through the intimate union rendered possible by the Incarnation, we may see at once some reason for believing that the Incarnation would, even apart from the entrance of sin and evil into the Universe, have taken place, as the one means to the highest perfection of the Creature, and, at the same time, the more than satisfaction of that instinct which has expressed itself among all think- ing races of mankind in the varied forms of Pantheistic speculation. We see in the Incarnation the satisfaction of the portions of truth which may be traced in these speculations, and which have given them their vitality, without that accompanying denial of all beyond the visible, that rejection of any individual future life, which, in so many systems, have bounded human life at either end by an impenetrable wall of blank non-entity, and reduced that human life itself, as men and women know it, to what, if it were not too seriously painful, would be ridiculous and grotesque, a life without sense or meaning or object or explanation ; a life in the observa- tion of which the bystanding cynic might amuse himself so long as health and sunshine lasted, but in which no thoughtful man could, after its first fresh years of novelty were over, find any pleasure ; a life from which, when its spring was gone, and its brightness had laded, the speediest exit were the thing most to be desired, for it must be necessarily a life without hope. It was Schopenhauer's exclamation, ' What ! this world the work of a God? Nay, rather of a devil.' Ou the K 130 Unsatisfying hopelessness of Pantheism. other hand, F. H. Jacobi, whose religion was mere natural Theism without a Mediator, ' My watchword and that of my reason is not my Ego, but one Who is more than I, Who is better than I, one Who is entirely dif- ferent from me, namely, God. I neither am, nor care to be, if He is not.' {Sendschreihen an Fichte.) On the subject of Sections 6'^-66, the student will find much that is valuable in Dr. Mill's work on The Mythical Inter x>r elation of the Gospels, Part I. section iv. — in Martensen's Christian Dogmatics, sections 37-45, On the Nature of God (translated in Clark's Foreign Theo- logical Library) — in Liddon's Bampton Lectures, Lect. VIII. I. 2, On belief in our Saviour^s Godhead as an ' effective safeguard against Pantheism ' — and in Ooster- zee's Christian Dogmatics (Hodder and Houghton, i^74)j Section xlv. a. The Idea of God, and Section xlviii, God''s mode of existence. LECTURE IV. THE PREPARATION FOR THE INCARNATION: THE THEOPHANIES. Genesis xxviii. 12. And he dreamed, and behold, a hidder set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven : and behold, the angels of God ascending and descending on it. And, behold, the Lord stood above it, and said, I am the God of Abraham thy father, and the God of Isaac .... 17. And he was afraid, and said. How dreadful is this place ! this is none other but the House of God .... 19. And he called the name of that place Beth-el. Genesis xxxi. 1 1 . And the Angel of God spake unto me in a dream, saying, Jacob : And I said. Here am I. And he said, I am the God of Beth-el. Genesis xxxii. 24. And Jacob was left alone ; and there wrestled a man with him until the breaking of the day .... 30. And Jacob called the name of the place Peniel : for I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved. Genesis xlviii. 15. And he blessed Joseph and said, God, before Whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads. HosEA xii. 3. By his strength he had power with God ; Yea, he had power over the Angel, and prevailed ; He wept and made supplication unto Him : He found him in Beth-el, and there He spake with us; Even the Lord God of Hosts ; — the Loud is His memorial. K 2 132 The Long Preparation [lect. Isaiah Ixiii. 9. In all their affliction He was afflicted. And the Angel of His Face saved them: In His love and in His pity He redeemed them ; And He bare them and carried them all the days of old. 68. That so great an event as the Incarnation of God, an event than which nothing can be conceived greater, whether in itself or in its possible conse- quences, should be preceded by a prolonged and mani- fold Preparation is only what must naturally be ex- pected. We are accustomed to dwell much on certain features of that manifold Preparation, such, for example, as Prophecy and Promise, which, dawning in the Frotevangelium that announced the ultimate triumph of the Seed of the woman, was repeated and expanded in later promises, to Abraham and the Patriarchs, and by renewed additions and developments grew fuller and brighter and more detailed, up to the close of the Old Testament Canon. We are accustomed also rightly to regard the whole History of the Chosen People, their peculiar divinely -ordained institutions, their Priests, their Prophets, their Kings, as all closely {,nd pointedly typical, as constituting, indeed, one great Prophecy in act. The marvellous correspondence which the instructed Christian traces in the Person and Life, the Offices and Work of Christ, and in the History of His Church, to this great pre-existing sys- tem of Prophecy verbal and typical, is to him one of the strongest proofs of the truth both of the Christian Religion and of its original records in the New Testa- ment. He sees before him a great historical phe- nomenon of the most remarkable and influential kind. IV.] J or the Incarnation, 133 the permanent monuments of which, as a whole, and in its grand outlines, as secured in the Jewish and Cliristian Scriptures, and in the uninspired history of the Jewish People alike and of the Christian, are far above out of the reach of any hostile criticism ; a phenomenon extending over many centuries, and affect- ing, undoubtedly for good, the prominent races of the world ; a phenomenon of which no reasonable and sufficient explanation can be given save on the sup- position of its truth and reality, its supernatural reality, as a mighty result of a Divine Providence ruling man's destiny and man's world. And further, extending his view beyond the pale of express covenants, as he has been taught to extend it by many Christian writers, both of earlier times, as, for example, the great repre- sentatives of that broad philosophic school of Christian thought of which Alexandria was the centre, or, in our own generation and country, such writers as Arch- deacon Hardwick (in his Christ and other Masters), Archbishop Trench (Hulsean Lectures of 1846), and the Bampton Lecturer of last year, he finds among Heathen Baces of all ages and countries yearnings which only the Christian Eeligion can satisfy, ideas which it alone can realize, thoughts, practices, expectations, resting originally, according to their most probable explana- tion, on traditional remains of primeval religion and belief, or else the natural growth of Humanity as it ^ * Sucli thoughts, the wreck of Paradise, Through many a dreary age Upbore whate'er of good and wise Yet liv'd in bard or sage.' (Keble, Christian Year, Trinity IV.) 134 io which all previous history leads up. [lect. is ; but which, in either case, point to Christianity and to nothing else, or must be wholly unaccountable. In this again we trace an over-ruling influence which has never deserted the human race in even its furthest wanderings from the Light of God. We see, with an enlarging faith and hope in the ultimate destiny of Man, gracious gleams amid the deepest darkness ; rays which could only come from Him Who is t\ie True Liglit ivhich, coming into the world, lighteth every man; guidance which could only be vouchsafed by Him Who, in His love and in His ^ity, was in the world, even when the world knew Him not, the Eternal Son of God. It is well that we should learn thus to dwell with deepest interest on the breadth and variety of the great Preparation for the universal, the everlasting Gospel of the Kingdom of God on earth, and for that supreme crisis in its development, the actual Incarna- tion. It is well that we should fully see and feel how all things lead up to that. The more we study pre- vious History in the light of so great a thought, the more natural (so to say) and probable will the Incarna- tion itself appear to us to be ; to us, and indeed, we must think to any who, believing in an intelligent and loving Creator and Father of our race, and together with any worthy conception of the dignity and capaci- ties of human nature combming any sufficient know- ledge of its actual condition, its wants, its misery, its degradation, are compelled perforce to conclude that the Almighty must care for us, must reveal Himself to us, must draw us towards Himself. 69. Many here are young, and therefore inex- IV.] Patience needed under difficulties as to Faith. 135 perienced ; with little real knowledge yet of themselves or of the world, present or past, Christian or Heathen. But to judge of the questions raised in our day as in others, in this place as elsewhere, as to the very fundamental postulates of any religious belief, requires a very wide and comprehensive view afield, a veiy close and candid look within ; a knowledge of human nature, in self and others, which only a larger and fuller experience of life can bring. Believe me, the argument for or against Christianity, for or against those deep common moral human truths about God and man which lie at its base, does not lie in a nut- shell. Questions about them can in no wise be even understood with so short an experience as yours ; much less can they be determined by any offhand formula, however apparently clever. In this matter ' short methods' are of no avail : and a wise man, in the face of alleged religious difficulty, w^ill always suspend his judgment, at least until he has really grasped the con- ditions of the problem. But such questions will press for an answer. Not perhaps while life is pleasant, and all seems bright and fresh before you, not while felt health and strength in body and mind fill men with suflS.cient enjoyment in mere existence and in the natural exercise of their powers in the present, and with buoyant hope for the future, a future which, with the unlooked-for changes, inward and outward, which it will assuredly bring to themselves and to others, they cannot as yet possibly realize or anticipate. But when the first flush and bloom of life is ovei', and men have learnt bv ex- 136 Experience of life sU^engthens Faith, [lect. perience (by which alone they can learn them) their weakness as well as their strength, their needs as well as their powers, their dependence as well as their freedom ; and, at the same time, have better guessed the possible grandeur of their nature in the height and depth of its capacities and its yearnings, moral, in- tellectual, spiritual, in its sense of power in will, in its consciousness of an ideal for which it feels it was made, but which it equally feels it can never realize within the limits of this present life ; when, on a fuller view, for good and evil, of the lives of others, it may be others with whom, and with whose welfare and destiny our own lives are bound up, there comes to us a humbler, a diviner pity for human nature in general, and for ourselves, in whom, as in others, the wreck we see, and the misery we cannot bear to think of, are at least possible, tlien, in a fitter mood to sympathise with God Who knows it all, tlien, with a larger capacity to understand God's ways — which are not our ways — men come to feel that, after all, they may trust Him, even in the darkest dark, that above and beyond all difficulties there must be, after all, a remedy and an explanation. And then comes back the faith, full, strong, impregnable, that the human misery which we know to be real, and the reach and capacity of im- mortal happiness which we know to be real too, even in the lowest and most miserable, must have, the one its sufficient cure, the other its complete realization, here- after if not here ; both alike procured and ensured, for all who do not put them from them and destroy their own capacity for them, by the Incarnation of the Son of God. IV.] The Son is ' The Life' and ' The Truth' to all. 137 70. We have seen that all God's intelligent creatures, ano^elic as well as human, were formed not onlv to live by and from and in Him, but also consciously to know Him, to love Him, to worship and to serve Him ; and all these in an ever-advancing progress. It is clearly revealed that the life of all, in all its forms, lower or higher — that life which is in them the present energy of the Holy Spirit of God, the Life-giver — comes to them from the Eternal Father, the Original Source of all Life, through the Eternal Son; Who thus bears, and that necessarily, a Mediatorial character, both towards the angelic world, and also towards the human world, even regarded as unfallen. He is to all ihe Life. But, further, to all God's intelligent creatures, He is also tlie Truth. Their intellectual powers and their spiritual perception and knowledge are alike, we have seen, through Him, the Word and Wisdom of the Father, Whom none can know save through Him. The language of the Synoptic Gospels, in the remarkable Johannine passage which is common to St. Matthew (xi. 27) and St. Luke (x. 22), is as express on this point as that of the fourth Evangelist. No one (ovSeig) knoiveth the Son, hut the Father ; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willefh to reveal Him. Thus that None comeih unto the Father, hut through the Son is a necessary, an eternal truth. Only in and through the Son, the perfect Image of the Father, can any created spirit look upon the Invisible Godhead, or learn the Nature, the Character, and the Love of Him Who divelleth in Light una])]j)roachal)le (i Tim. vi. 16), ^y^wm no man hath seen, nor can see; 138 The Creator of Man was also [lect. but of Whom it is said, lie that hath seen the Son hath seen Him (St. John xiv. 9), for the Only-Begotten Son, Which is in the hosom of the Father, He hath declared Him (i. 18). From these deep and universal truths it follows that from his first Creation Man has been indebted for what- ever spiritual knowledge he has enjoyed, in whatever condition of being, to the Mediation of the Son of God. 71. In Primeval Man we contemplate a being created indeed in the image of God, but whose likeness to God must be realized by probation ; created in grace, and en- dued with Original Kighteousness, but as yet inexperi- enced, untried, and with all his development before him. Sin and the experience of evil were no necessary steps in that development ; though the possibility of them was. But we believe that Man's merciful Creator was also his Educator from the first ; and that, in that closer communion w^hich is tlie normal state of man, and which, until sin entered and estrangement from God by sin, existed in the primeval state. He vouch- safed to him such guidance and instruction, such a Bevelation in fact, as should make him understand, in its essential features, his position in Creation, his rela- tion to other creatures and to the world around him, and to Him Who made him and them. Compare Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, § Iviii. p. 322. ' Even a priori we may safely assert that if there is really a God, who willed to he known and worshipped hy men, He must beg-in by revealing- Himself, and affording them so much light as to the creation of the world as was called for by their capacity and need. For he who wills IV.] his Educator from the First. 139 the end must also will the means; and this law has its application even to the Supreme Wisdom. Knowledg-e touching the orig-in of things was — as the foundation of all religion — indispensable ; and this could not be attained to unless it were furnished by Him. In what way this may have taken place is a question which certainly will never be answered, and also is, in a certain res2)cct, of comparatively small importance. Here we are concerned with the great principle, and that prin- ciple can be rejected only where one no longer reserves in his thinking a place for a personal God, and a direct community between Him and the humanity allied to Him, Not a little combines to lead us to conjecture that in the first age, before the Fall, this communion was mucli more intimate than in after ages; and the religious faith in a higher education of humanity leads naturally to the conviction that the highest Educator has in this respect least of all " left Himself without witness." ' So Bishop Bull, Vol. II. Disc. V. On The State of 3Ian before the Tall, ' It is apparent from the account of Moses, that the first man in the state of integrity was (as we have heard Tertullian expressing it) Beo de prox'wio atuicus, " the intimate friend of God," that he should coelestia portare^ "bear heavenly things," and sustain the approaches of the shechinah, or majestic presence of God, without any regret or starting back ; that he could maintain a conference or discourse with God (as we have heard St. Basil speaking) in the same tongue or language, as we read Gen. ii, 15, 16, 19-23. It is likewise evident from the same history of Moses, that Adam in the state of integrity had a know- ledge of certain things unaccountable upon any other hypothesis but this, that his mind was irradiated with a divine illumination.' We cannot doubt that the Mediator of this Revela- tion was the Son of God ; nor when, before or after 140 Primeval Worship. [lect. the Fall, we read of interviews of the Lord God with man, and of the Lord God loalking in the garden in the cool of the day, can our thoughts turn to any other, or refrain from picturing a visible, and if so, of course a human, though pre-eminently glorious, Form, as well as an audible and articulate Voice {Api^endix, Note 6). 72. And as Man received from God manifested to him in and through the Son, so must he also have given back to God. The Head and Eepresentative of all life below his own, gifted with those powers of Thought and Speech, of Will and conscious Love, which should qualify him to be the Priest of this lower world, Man was the mouthpiece of its otherwise dumb and inarticulate Worship, the link and the expression of its allegiance to the Almighty Creator of all. What was the outward form of this Worship we are not told. But inasmuch as its inner essence must necessarily have been the grateful sacrifice of himself and of all that God had given him, so it is not in- conceivable that some oftering of the fruit of the ground, which was the Almighty's gift to him as the support of his life, may have been the ordained and understood form, or part of it, of its outer exhibition ; whether we do or do not suppose the unfaUen life to have continued for a space sufficient for its actual exercise. Adam in Paradise, like Cain afterwards, was a tiller of the ground. Cain's offering at the end of days, (an expression which may possibly mean on the seventh day, tlie liallowed day of rest from the Crea- tion,) may very naturally have been, though incomplete under the altered circumstances, the continuation of a IV.] The Eiicharistic Sacrifice. 141 custom which did not originate with him — it is quite inconceivable that it should have done so, or within the fallen life of man — hut mav well have been a part of the religious life of Paradise, being the natural and obvious acknowledgment from him who was placed there to till the ground and to draw the sustenance of his life from its produce. Its defect would seem to have been the absence of any confession of sin, and of any expression of faith in an atonement by blood \ It may be observed here, in passing, how remarkably and yet how simply, and, we may almost say, con- veniently, the Christian Offering of the Catholic Church, the Eucharistic Sacrifice, combines and represents both elements, the thank-offering, for natural sustenance (the 'oblations' of the Liturgy, accompanying the oflPering of our substance in the ' alms ') and the sin-off'ering of expiation (in the ' perpetual memory ' of the Sacrifice of Christ). These, with the Offering of ' ourselves, our souls and bodies,' now in renewed union with Christ, as a tfhole hurnt-offeynng, complete the idea of sacrifice. Thus the Service of the Holy Communion includes all the essential elements of Sacrificial Worship, as it has ever existed, in whatever varieties of form, in all ages from the beginning, whether among God's chosen People, or, as a survival by tradition from primeval times, among Heathen Kaces also, among whom the Offering of Bread and Wine was as uniform and familiar ' See MaccIoualJ, Tnlroduction to the Pentateuch, Book III. Ch. iii. Sect. i. I, on TJce Oj/'erings of Cain and Abel. 142 Entrance of Sin into Mans World. [lect, a feature of Sacrifice as it was among the Jews them- selves \ 73. ' Of Man's first disobedience, and the fruit Of that forbidden tree,' it does not fall within the scope of these Lectures to speak particularly. The threat was, In the day that thou eatest thereof, dying thou shalt die. It was fulfilled. The essence of Death is separation from God, in Whom alone is Life. That result began to show itself in- stantly. The working out of the sentence in its full effects, in body and mind, in heart and affections, in soul and spirit, was only a question of time. All is summed up in the first utterance of fallen Man, I heard TJiy Voice in the garden, and I ivas afraid he- cause I was nahed, and I hid myself. Fear, shame, estrangement, had already taken the place of fihal confidence and love. But evil was not to triumph. God's Purpose in the Creation of Man and Man's World was not to be frustrated. Delayed it might be, as we count delay, by the intrusive operation of a rival will ; but this downfall was to be so marvellously over-ruled as to give occasion to a still greater display of the wisdom and resources of God, and especially of His Fatherly Character of Love, in a future New-Creation which should more than replace the lost glories of the old, ^ On this point the student may he referred to the very interesting and valuable passage on The Universality and Uniformity of Sacrifice, in Archdeacon Freeman's Prindjdes of Divine Service, Part. II. Ch. i. Sect. 4. IV.] Armouncement of the Incarnation. 143 recovering Man from the grasp of evil, and binding him in the closest conceivable union with God, and so opening up to him once more the path to the highest blessedness and joy. As the first consequence of the changed relation of God and Man, the agent and representative of evil is expressly cursed ; and the age-long strife between Good and Evil throughout human History, and the in- evitable antagonism between their personal representa- tives, are plainly announced. But while the consequent suffering to the Seed of the woman is foretold, the assurance of His final triumph is from the first de- clared, It blicdl bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise His heel. Here, with the Targums, (which paraphrase, as else- where, the Name of God by the phrase the Word of the Lord,) and with the Christian Fathers almost uni- versally, we understand the Divine Person, the Lord God, Wlio thus first preached the Gospel in the hear- ing of our first parents, and revealed the great central truth that the triumph over evil should be achieved by One in our nature, to have been Himself the Son of God, thus entering on a new phrase of His inherent Mediator- ship, and beginning to manifest Himself as the Saviour and champion of Man against the Evil One, man's seducer and oppressor, and His own envious adversary and rival. 'The Targ-ums hero and f^enerally paraphrase the Name of the Most Hig-h by " the Word of the IjORD," more especially in those passag-es where is recorded anything like a visible or sensible representation of His Majesty. 144 Adoration of God for His mercy. [lect. The Christian Fathers almost universally believed that every appeax-ance of God to the patriarchs and prophets was a manifestation of the Eternal Son, Compare John i. 1 8.' (Bishop Harold Browne in The Speaker's Commentary^ on Gen. iii. 8.) See also his Exposition of the Articles^ Art. I. Section II. On the Old Testament intimations of a plurality of Persons in the Godhead. Also, as to the Targums, Canon Churton on Gen. iii. 8. in the S.P.C.K. Commentary. 74. At this point, whatever we may think as to the question, Whether, without the necessity of redeeming Man from sin, the Son of God would have taken Man's nature upon Him, we cannot but pause to adore, upon the first announcement of the Divine Purpose of mercy towards our race. Let us prostrate ourselves in spirit before so mar- vellous a condescension. Let us hiuubly thank God for His tinsj^eakable gift of His Only-Begotten Son ; and this especially in connection with the accompany- ing revelation of the Suffering therein involved, now that Sin had entered into the toorld, and death hy sin. An Incarnation of God with no sin of man to atone for and remove, and so with no suffering or shame for the Incarnate One, had been the theme of the most awed thanksgiving, the occasion for the very highest reach of wonder, love, and praise ; but, when, as it actually is, it is the stooping of the Eternal Son, for love of Man, ' for us men and for our salvation,' to shame and dishonour, to agony and death, what words of human speech, what thoughts of human heart, what but the profoundest worship, on every mention, on every thought of it, of which oiu' whole nature which He so greatly IV.] The ' Protevangelitim! 145 loved and valued, is capable in its every element, in body, soul, and spirit, can be the meet acknowledg- ment of so great a mystery of love ; a mystery whose very amazing, nay, overpowering inconceivableness is, to the heart which knows its own sore need, the sure de- monstration of its truth % 75. We cannot tell in what sense the stupendous promise, as we see it to have been, was understood by Adam and Eve ; nor how far, if at all, they realized its import. Some have thought tliat Eve's saying on the birth of Cain indicates her belief that he was the promised Seed. / liave gotten a man, even Jehovah is the literal rendering of the present Hebrew Text in Genesis iv. i ; but the Septuagint renders through, or hy means of, God, indicating the presence of a preposi- tion and the reading Elohim instead of Jehovah ; and the Vulgate follows it exactly. But at least the promise assured them of mercy. It kindled a hope which should be, as widespread traditions show it to have been, the cherished posses- sion, amid whatever perversions and corruptions, of their descendants generally. And it was the germinal seed and root of that unbroken growth of enlarging Prophecy which became the special distinction of the Chosen Kace until it culminated in the Angelic Salutation. 76. We, looking back from the sure ground of a completed Revelation, can trace with thankful interest from the very first the presence and the love of the predestined Mediator, (Whose Sufiering in our flesh we perceive to be indicated m the allusion to the bruising L 146 The Primitive Usage [lect. of His heel). And we observe the symbolic intimation of His remedial Death, vouchsafed even before the ex- pulsion from Paradise, in the act of the Lord God Who vfiade unto Adam and to his wife coats of skins, and clothed them ; an act which, as involving the death of an animal, was the first proclamation of at once the necessity and the possibility for the sinner of cleansing and remission by blood. In the absence of any express statement we cannot be sure that the death of the animal, so slain to supply a covering, was sacrificial, a distinctly ordained addition to the primeval offering of the fruit of the ground ; but the supposition that it was so would be at least thoroughly consistent with the acceptance of animal sacrifice as offered by Abel and with the marked rejection of Cain's sacrifice ; a rejection which seems to imply the neglect on his part of a known duty. We know that the animal was not slain for food ; and it is hardly conceivable that its death should have had no deeper significance, no higher purpose, than to provide a covering. Bishop Bull, Vol. I. Sermon VIH., p. 305. ' The Church of God hath always believed that Adam re- pented, and laid hold on the mercy of a second covenant, and was received again into divine favour ; although there he no express mention of this in his history. Thus, we do not read of any precept or law given by God to Adam after his fall, but we find the practice of sacrificing- in his fiimily. And it will be very diSieult to him that considers the matter thoroughly, to imagine that he invented that rite of his own head; he was taught it therefore by the command and institution of God. And it is highly reasonable to think, that at the IV.] of Animal Sacrifice. 147 same time, when God g-ave a second law and institution, he encouraged him also to the obedience of it, by a promise of acceptance and restitution to his former favour. Upon this hope doubtless he renewed his alle- giance to his Creator, and devoted himself to the worship and service of God, and taught his sons, Cain and Abel, to do so likewise. From him they learned to present their several offering's to the Lord, Gen. iv., where we read also, ver. 4, 5, that God had respect to AheVs offering^ and declared his acceptance of it by some visible sign, taken notice of by his brother Cain ; probably, as the Hebrew doctors tell us, " by a fire from heaven, inflaming his offering." ' See also Bishop Harold Browne, on Gen. iv.3, in The Sjjeake/s Commenlary ; and Yreeman, Principles of Divine Service, Part II. Chap. II. Sect, iii., especially paragraph 8, and Note there. However tliis may be, the usage of animal sacrifice, accompanying and accompanied by the Unbloody Offering of the fruit of the ground, and that very soon expressly stated to be in the determinate form of Bread and Wine, is the marked central feature of outward religious worship among all races of mankind from the first \ The two kinds of sacrifice combine to form the standing witness at once to the primary duty of Eucharistic Thanksgiving to Him Who is the Author and supporter of man's life (in devout acknowledgment that all he is and has is from God and must be rendered back to God), and to the sad reality of sin and consequent estrangement, needing an intervening death of one who stands in the place of and represents the offerer. In this added feature were involved for the offerer both the penitent confession of sin ami ^ See Trench's llnlsean Lectures, 1846, Lect. IV. L 2 148 Mediatorial relation of the Son [lect. consequent forfeiture of life and the humble faith that, through the Death of Another which God would accept, the forfeited Hfe might be restored and the estrangement done away. That such was the inner meaning of this primitive and otherwise inexpHcable institution we can hardly doubt. Whether all who took part in it realized this meaning is another thing, and need not be supposed in order to believe that such was its inner meaning. Yet one can hardly doubt that the higher spirits at least among God's specially-favoured people did take part in it with a forward-looking faith in Him That was to come, and with some consciousness that, in thus drawing near to God in His then appointed way, they were accepted of Him. "j^. Such acceptance we are sure was vouchsafed to them for the sake of One Who, though as yet unre- vealed, was the Mediator even then. We have seen {Lecture 11.) that for the acceptance of the Worship of even the Holy Angels there was need of the con- descending intervention of the Only -Begotten Son. There was the same need for Man in his brief con- dition of primeval innocence. And now, for Man fallen, the need was greater. It was supplied. What- ever acceptableness belonged to the worship of the best and holiest, an Abel, a Noah, a Melchizedek, belonged to it only as passed upward to the Throne of the Most High by the Priestly Action of the Eternal Son. Nor was there any other channel of blessing from God to Man. Whatever knowledge of God and of their duty, whatever hope for the future came to IV.] to Mankind after the Fall. 149 men's sin-darkeneJ minds, came to them through Him Who is ever the only Lujlit of the loorld. Whatever discipline of mingled mercy and judgement, throughout the long preparation, was vouchsafed to Man, whether in the Heathen condition, as it grew and developed itself, or within the favoured circle of the Chosen, was administered throuo-h Him. Whatever strivino^s of God's Spirit wrought within the spirit of man, in whatever condition, under whatever circumstances, fav- ourable or otherwise, wrought through Him. Through the long four thousand years of chequered history, sacred or profane. His was the unseen guiding Hand, His the unseen controlling governance. He was never at any time far from His creature Man. In a true sense He was ever in the world, though the world hneiv Him not. He had ever, even in the darkest hours. His nearer People ; the few who were even then the beginning of His Kingdom ; on whom rested whatever liofht reached men from Heaven — and it reached them through Him — among whom was cherished from the first the stream of true traditional rehgion ; in tlie inner bosom of whose personal, family, social, or national life were treasured up the hopes of the whole world. Of those hopes He was througliout the centre and the stay. The faith of Israel looked ever onward from the first, to a personal Deliverer, to One ]Vlio should come. The growing light of Prophecy, age after age, sustained and developed this faith, until it was realized in Him Whose love and mercy were, like His personal dignity, beyond all actual expectation, though not beyond what a truer and more sj^iritual insight 150 The Christian Faith, lighted up [lect. miglit — and possibly in some few instances of the specially pure-hearted and devout actually did, at least in occasional glimpses — discern, in the recorded inci- dents of inspired History, and in the written utterances of inspired Prophecy. 78. We Christians indeed possess the key of a fully- developed Faith. Above oar horizon the Sun of Right- eousness has fully risen. Baptized with the Holy Ghost ive have an unction from the Holy One. Through the Christ, her Divine Head, the Church, ichich is His Body, the fulness of Him thatjilleth all in all, has, from the first Paschal In-breathing onwards, received, for her distinctive possession as an abiding Gift, not the spirit of the world, hut the S])irit Wliich is from God, that ive might hnoiv the things that are freely given to us hy God (i Cor. ii. 12). Partaking of this Gift, he that is spiritual has, in his measure, the mind of Chynst, and so discerneth that which can be only spiritually dis- cerned. In the language of Saint Paul on this subject there is very deep and important truth ; though it be truth not always sufficiently remembered even by those who readily admit it. The natural man {>\rv^iKo^ avQp(jo7rovo9, the consummation of one Age, the opening of another. 156 The Second Beginning of Human History, [lect. 8 1 . Noah and his Family, the saved Church of God, stepped forth from the Ark upon a new Earth ; and human History began once more ; but soon to manifest afresh the old antagonism between religion and irre- ligion. An express curse is laid on Canaan for an act of sin ; and he becomes, like Cain, the progenitor of a sinful race. A merely earthly social and political life, rising, apparently, under the leadership of Nimrod to the thought of a world-empire of which Babel was to be the centre, developed itself apart from the kingdom of God on earth among the descendants of Ham ; and was frustrated by special divine intervention. True religion w^as, however, preserved in the family of Shem, until we reach the critical epoch of the Call of Abraham, in whose family the hopes of the world, and the pledge and promise of Kedemption for all, were to be specially centred and treasured up, to the temporary exclusion of other races until such time as the great Promise should be fulfilled to the blessing of all. Compare, as to the purpose of mercy involved in the favour shown to the Race of Abraham, Dr. A. B. Bruce's Chief End of Revelation (Hodder and Stoug-hton, 1881), Ch. II. p. 83. ' Israel is regarded as elected to he a missionary people to spread the knowledge of the true God among the nations. . , . The prerogatives of Israel as an elect race . . . consist in being the vehicle through which God conveys His grace to all others,' and so we must ' regard election as merely a method by which God uses the few to bless the many.' And, page 90, In Abraham's life ' God revealed Himself as One having in view, as His end in guiding the course of history, the religious well-being of mankind, and adopting for that purpose the method of election.' Again, Ch. III. p. 138, lY.] Second Example of Divine Retribution. 157 ' We know what to say to Rousseau when he complains of" the proscription of the whole human race, Israel excepted. There was no proscription in the case ; election does not mean proscription, but is a method by which one is used to bless the many.' This, again, was, in a true sense, though in a gentler way, a coming to judgment. God's special choice of one Family out of all the earth, to represent His King- dom ; to stand in a nearer relation to Himself, initiated and sealed by a formal covenant with its perpetual sign and token ; to be the depositaries and guardians of the true primeval and traditional religion and the sole recipients of further express Revelation ; and, above all, to be the Family of whom, according to the flesh, the Christ should come — all this was in its very nature a Kpia-19, a separation. It involved the comparative and temporary rejection of the Gentile world in general : and was closely accompanied by a very visible judgment of vengeance upon the worst representatives of that Gentile world in the Destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah. To that event, as to the Flood, an especially pointed typical character belongs. This is plain from the allusions to both events in the later Scriptures of the Old Testament, and the use made of both by our Lord and His Apostles, as illustrative examples and pledges of the Divine Betribution on sin. 82. Here we have to remark — what is a point of grave and serious importance, yet often overlooked — that the operation of the Son of God as the Mediator in the Divine Administration is not to be regarded as ex- clusively one of Mercy. In both Testaments ahke we 158 The Mediator is also the Jtidge. [lect. are divinely taught that the Mediator is also the Judge ; that in that capacity also the Son acts for the Father, the Father through the Son. This truth the Lord has Himself revealed to us, in the words, T]ie Father judgeth no man, hut hath committed all judgment unto the Son (St. John V. 22. See Prof. Westcott, in the Speaker's Commentary on St. John v. 20-30.) His full revelation in this function is, of course, reserved for the Incarnate stage of His Work. The Father hath given Him authority [e^ova-lav) to execute judgment because He is a son of man (St. John v. 27). Both in solemn Parables and in express predictions Christ declares that this judicial function belongs to Him, and will be exercised by Him, as the Mediator of the New Covenant. As such He disclosed Himself in His character of Judge as decisively as in His character of Saviour. He spoke clearly as One Who when the time of their visitation, their accejpted time, their day of salvation, was over, would surely condemn the impenitent and unbelieving by whom His offered mercy had been rejected. At the close of His earthly Ministry He warned the doomed Church and City in the awful Parables of the Wicked Husbandmen (St. Mat. xxi. 33), and of the Marriage of the King's Son {St. Mat. xxii. i). He sentenced Jerusalem when He said I would — ye woidd not. Behold your house is left unto you desolate {St. Mat. xxiii. 37; St. Luke xiii. 34). He forewarned His Apostles of the impending calamity ; so wording His prophetic discourse as to lead on the thoughts of all who heard, or should read, it to that last great Judg- ment of all the Nations {iravTa ra eOvt]) when He, as IV.] Examples of His Coming to yudgment. 159 Judge and King, should 8it on the Tlirone of His Glory {St. Mat. XXV. 31). In answer to their adjuration He said to Caiaphas and the ruling Council of the apostate nation, Presently shall ye see the Son of Man sitting on the Right Hand of Potver, and coming in the clouds of Heaven {St. Mat. xxvi. 64). He waited tlirough that generation for forty years, as He had forborne with their fathers in the wilderness, not willing that any should perish, hut that all should come to repentance (2 Pet. iii. 9). He saved the penitent and believing remnant, when, warned into watchful preparedness by His words on Olivet, the Jewish Christians of Jerusalem escaped for their lives to Pella, the Zoar of the Church. Then, and not till then, He visited the once faithful city, now become an harlot, a Babylon, not a Jerusalem, with the most fearful judgment the world has ever seen, marking decisively the final close of the Mosaic Dispensation as indeed a arwreXeia TOO aiwvo9f the passing away of one Age, the beginning of another, the judicial inauguration of the times of the Gentiles {St. LuJce xxi. 24 ; Rom. xi. 25). But he must be a careless reader of the Old Testa- ment History, so typical and significant throughout, who does not discern therein similar critical epochs of judicial visitation, accompanied in each case by the same marked deliverance of the faithful, and signalizing the commencement of a new stage in the development of the Kingdom of God. So it w^as at the close of the Ante-diluvian Age. 80 it w^as at the Call of Abraham and the Judgment on Sodom and Gomorrah. So it was at the Judgment of Egypt and the Exodus. So it was 1 60 The ' Thcophauics ' in the Old Testament, [lect. at the Conquest of Canaan and the Judgment of the Seven Nations. These, and such later events also as the downfall of Samaria and the Northern Kingdom, the Conquest of Jerusalem, the Captivity, the Eeturn, the suffering under Antiochus, must be viewed in a line (so to speak) with their New Testament analogues, the Final Judgment on Jerusalem and the Calling of the Gentiles, if we would understand rightly the true cha- racter of either series or their place in the development of the Divine Purposes, as they slowly unfolded them- selves under the Providential guidance of One Who, though long unseen, was ever at work, overruling the weakness and waywardness, the failures and the sins, of mankind and of His People, and Whose Personality is fully disclosed to us in the New Testament Eeve- lation. 83. In looking at the past Education of the World in preparation for the transcendent event of the Incar- nation, less consideration perhaps than was due has been bestowed on one very remarkable feature of it, as recorded in the Old Testament, the visible Appearances {Ajjjparitiones, ' Theophanies ') of God to Man at certain critical epochs. To these, regarded in addition to the verbal Promises and Prophecies, and to the closely typical character which belongs as well to the whole history as to the prominent institutions and personages of God's ancient people, an especial importance attaches over and above their interest as marking occasions or communications of a special nature ; for they are, in the language of Bishop Bull, ' preludes of the Incarnation,' and so an important part of its evidence. IV,] They occur at adtical periods. i6i We find them just when we should naturally expect them if at all ; not so much in the settled and matured religious life of the nation in its destined home in the Holy Land ; not so much, if at all, when the regular Priesthood and the Prophetic Order were normally dis- charging their proper functions as the religious guides and teachers of the Jewish People ; but, speaking generally, in the earlier beginnings of their religious history as a nation peculiarly related to God, or else in times of difficulty, distress, and change. In one class of passages it is said that God, or the Lord (Jehovah), ai^j^eared, with no express mention of the outward form or manner ; yet with indications usually decisive enough, even in each case taken by itself, and absolutely so when all of like kind are con- sidered together, that what is described is intended to be understood as indeed a visible Appearance of a Divine Person. In other passages there is mention of audible com- munications of God to Man, and indeed of a colloquy between them, without any express assertion of a visible appearance. Yet a close observation will lead to the conclusion that in these also the inspired historian intended his reader to understand that the Divine in- terlocutor was visibly present. Examples of this are, The hearing by Adam and Eve of the Voice of the Lord God ivalldng in the Garden in the cool of the day^ ; The ' Of this St. Augustine says, ' Quomodo enim possit ad litteram intclligi talis Dei deambulatio et collocatio non iu specie huniaua non video.' And, again, * Non teniere dixerim si Paradisuni quemdam corporalem locum ilia Scriptura insinuat [and the names of tlie four M i62 Bp. Bull follows tJie early Christian [lect. Lord's interview with Cain; Also God's blessing of Noah and his sons, and His speaking unto Noah and his sons with him, when He established His covenant with them and ordained the rainbow for its token. Distinct from passages of this class are others (of which we are not speaking at present) in which all that is said or implied is that God spake audibly (as, for example, in His call of Samuel) to the ear of man, in waking life, or in visions and dreams ^ Lastly, there is a striking group of passages in which there is undoubtedly intended a visible Appear- ance as of an Angel or a Man, while yet in each instance the communication is undoubtedly from God ; and the progress of the narrative compels the reader to think of a very close and solemn Presence of the Almighty. 84. Before investigating these passages in detail it is necessary to insist afresh on the great underlying truth, that the One Medium of the Divine communi- cations to mankind, whatever may have been their special outer form (and that was various), has ever been throughout the Second Person of the Holy Trin- ity, the Eternal Word. Bishop Bull, in the opening of his immortal Treatise in Defence of the Nicene Creed, an effort expressly designed to meet the Arian teaching of one Christoijher Sandius, whose writings (published rivers seem to com])el us to this, not to mention the general dangers and uncertainty of (so-called) spiritual interpretation of plain narrative statements] deambulare ibi Deum nisi in aliqua corporea forma uullo mode potuisse.' {De Triiiitate, II. Cap. x. 17, i8). ^ Yet in the narrative of Samuel's Call in i Sam. iii. the wording of ver. 10 is noticeable, 'And the Lord came, atid stood, and called as at other times, Samuel, Samuel.' IV.] writers in believing that 163 at Cologne in 1676) 'were then everywhere in the hands of students of theology and others/ lays down, in lano;uaf!:e borrowed from Tertullian's aro-ument ao^ainst the Patripassian heresies of Sabelliiis, Noetus, Praxeas, and others, this truth, as the very first proposition of his work, that ' from the beginning the whole order of the Divine Administration has had its course throuirh the Son ('a primordio omnem ordinem divinae dis- positionis per Filium decucurrisse') ^ He then pro- ceeds to draw it out at length and in detail, and refers to it repeatedly throughout his argument as a truth of the utmost importance. That this should have been so will, after our previous consideration of the relation of the Son of God to the w^ork of Creation in general from the beginning, seem natural, consistent, and what was to be expected, as in full harmony with that relation. Bui, further, and very evidently, it also harmonizes with the great central truths of the Incarnation, the Pre -Existence, and the true Godhead of Christ, and of the Plurality of Persons within the One Divine Essence ; and not only harmo- nizes with them but goes a long way towards establish- ing them. This it is clear Bishop Bull very strongly felt ; and herein he only followed the undoubted belief of the early Christian ^vl'iters and Apologists, of whose general view the language quoted from Tertullian is a correct expression. His own assertion, many times repeated, is ' That the Catholic Doctors of the first three centuries all with one accord taught this : ' and ' IjuII, Def. Xic. Creed, Translation in Oxford Library of Anrj.-Cath. Theology, Part T. p. 15, Part. II. p. 596. M 2 164 Divine communications [lect. lie adds, 'One who is ignorant of this is a stranger to the writings of the Fathers/ and that ' The Catholic Doctors of the Church after the Council of Nice agree on this point with the Nicene Fathers ^! A few pages later he states the view alluded to, which he says the ancient Doctors ' had learnt from Apostolical tradition,' as follows; — 'God the Father, as He at first framed and created the world through His Son, so through the same Son did He afterwards manifest Himself to the world. Therefore the Son of God, although in the last times of His Incarnation He has at length held familiar intercourse with mankind, still always from the very earliest period of its existence presided over the Church; and even under the Old Testament, though by a hidden and secret dispensation, showed Himself to holy men ^Z 85. It would then follow from this principle that He Who in the earlier Dispensations immediately com- municated with Man, on the occasions alluded to, was the Personal Word of the Eternal Father, the Eternal Son. Where the communication was by audible word or voice only, nothing would seem more natural than to regard it as the Voice of Him Who is Tlie Word of God. The Voice of the Father is indeed declared in Holy Scripture to have been heard by man ; but that is in the New Testament, and during the Incarnate Presence of the Son on earth at the times when the Voice was heard, as at the Baptism and the Transfiguration, and 1 Def. Fid. Nic. I. i. 2. ^ Ibid. I. i. 12. But the whole of Bishop Bull's first chapter, and of Book IV. Chap, iii, should by all means be carefully read in con- nection with this subject. IV.] were always through tJic Son; 165 again, at the close of the Ministry in answer to our Lord's direct appeal, Father, glorify TJiy Name. {St. John xii. 28.) But if in the Old Testament the spoken word an- nounced the Presence more especially of God the Son, much more the visible Appearance accompanying the Voice ; for of Him alone, as Dr. Mill says, ' a personal apparition can be catholically supposed ^' So the an- cient Church undoubtedly thought ; on the following grounds. Holy Scripture, speaking of the Almighty in His absolute Divine Being, says, None (ovSeli) hath seen God at any time {St. John i. 18) : None can see Hrni and live {Exod. xxxiii. 20) : }¥liom no man hath seen, nor can see, ^¥llo divelleth in light that none can a])proach unto (1 Tim. vi. 16), It follows therefore, since God in Himself, in His essential Nature, is necessarily invisible to the Creature, being Pure Spirit, that when we read that God appeared unto any ; that Moses and the Elders sa^o the God of Israel; and that Isaiah saw 'the King, the Lord of Hosts,' or, again, that others, as the Patriarch Jacob at Bethel, seeing the Angel of the Loud saw God and yet lived ; we are driven to understand it of God in special relation to the Creature, not of God either Father, Son, or Holy Ghost, in His absolute Being as He is in and to Himself; and so of the Second Person rather than the First, since it is through Him that the One God is in relation with Creation and with all that is finite. Again, It is a common-place of Patristic Theology that the Father is never spoken of as Sent, but is * Mythical Jnterp. of the Gospels, Appendix E, 2ii(l cd. 1861, p. 359. 1 66 and that the 'Angel of the Lov.t)' [lect. always the Sender, and the Son the Sent, in an especial manner. On this ground also it may be said with confidence that the Manifestations of the Divine to human sense suit rather the Person of the Son than of the Father ; especially when regarded in the light of the subsequent actual Incarnation, and as providen- tially intended as a help to prepare the minds of men, l)oth before and since the Incarnation, for the full acceptance of that stupendous fact itself. 86. For it should be carefully noted that Holy Scrip- ture makes sjjecific mention of one who is preeminently, and in a unique sense, TJie Angel of the Lord (of Jehovah), of one who stands alone in unapproachable dio-nitv, one in whom (to use the language of Dr. Pusey) ' God accustomed His creatures to the thought of beholdino; Himself in human form.' Such a title, like that of Aj^ostle (Heh. iii. i), which has much the same meaning — a meaning expressive not of nature, but of office — may well be applied to the Son of God, Who Himself speaks so distinctly of His mission of mercy from the Father, especially in the Fourth Gospel, in which His Divine dignity is most fully declared. ' Nor is the office itself of an ang-el or announcer of the Fathers will unbecoming Him. In a word, God the Father could not have become an angel consistently with His prerogative as Father ; for then He would have been sent by another. Who yet is indebted for His authority to no one. To the Son of God, however, both the name of God altogether belonsfs, as being most true God ; and also the appellation of Angel, forasmuch as Pie is in such wise very God, as to be God of God, and was, therefore, capable of receiving and undertaking, con- IV.] was tJie Logos. 167 sistently with the dignity of His Person, the mission and dispensation committed to Him by God, of Whom He is. This, without doubt, was the very thing- which the Fathers meant, who wrote the Synodical Epistle from the council of Autioch [a. d. 269] to Paul of Samosata ; who contend that He, who in the Old Testament from time to time appeared to the Fathers and conversed with them, was the Son ; " Being- attested sometimes as an angel, sometimes as the Lord, and sometimes God; for it were impious to suppose that the God of all is called an angel ; but the angel of the Father is the Son, being Himself Lord and God ; for it is written, ' The Angel of great counsel' (MeyaA?;? ^ov\fJ9 ayyiKo^, Isa. ix. 6. LXX.)" [Routh, Heliq. Sacr. Vol. II. p. 470]. Here the holy Bishops clearly teach that the Name of God and Lord are applicable to the Father and to the Son alike, but that the appellation of Angel, as indicating a mission from another, is by no means suited to the Father, who can no more be said to be sent than to be born of another ; but to the Son, as being begotten of the Father, it may be rightly ajjplied ; and on that account He is called in the Scriptures " the Angel of great counsel." ' (Bull, Bi'f. Nic. Creed. IV. iii. 8.) Hengstenberg .writes, ' The New Testament distin- guishes between the hidden God and the revealed God — • the Son or Logos — connected with the former by oneness of nature, who from everlasting, and even at the creation itself, filled up the immeasurable distance between the Creator and the creation, — Who has been the Mediator in all God's relations to the world, — Who at all times, and even before he became man in Christ, has been the light of the world, and to whom, specially, was com- mitted the direction of the economy of the old covenant. It is evident that this doctrine stands in the closest connection with the Christology, — that it forms indeed its theological foundation and groundwork. . . . The question then is. Whether any insight into this doctrine i68 This view held by modem writers. [lect. is to be found as early as in the Books of the Old Testament, Sound Christian Theology has discovered the outlines of such a distinction between the hidden and the revealed Godj in many passages of the Old Testament, in which mention is made of an Angfel or Messeng'er of God.' (Christ ology of the Old Testament, 2nd Ed. Vol. I. p. 107.) On this whole subject the student may usefully refer to this work, Vol. I. pp. 107-132; and Vol. IV. Appendix III. p. 385 et seqq. He deals with the arguments of two principal opponents of this view among the German biblical writers, Hofmann and Delitzsch, who maintain the Angel of the Lord to be a created angel. Kurtz [Geschichte des alien Btmdes) at first agreed with Hengstenberg, but afterwards adopted the view of Hof- mann and Delitzsch. Among later English writers the view maintained in these Lectures is held by Dr. Gordon, Christ as made known to the Ancient Church (Edinburgh, 1854); Canon Barry, Article Angel, in Smith's Bible Dictionary, i860; Macdonald, Introduction to the Pen- tateuch, 1861; Steward, Mediatorial Sovereignty, 1863; Dr. Walsh, Bishop of Ossory, in his very interesting work. The Angel of the Lord, or Manifestations of Christ in the Old Testament (Seeley, 1876); and the Speakers Commentary/ ; also by the Danish Bishop of Seeland, Dr. H. Martensen, in his Christian Dogmatics, 1866. The consideration, in combination, of the numerous passages in which these phenomena occur seems to compel the admission that their language is not satis- fied by the hypothesis of a message from God through a created angel in whom God was ; through whom, act- ing in His Name, God spoke. Their force is cumulative. Such an hypothesis cannot (we believe) by any possi- bility be made to fit all. And if it does not fit all, if in any even single instance it is admitted that God IV.] Language of Dr. Mill and Card. Newman ; 1 69 (that is, of course, the Son) manifested Himself in visible human or angelic form, temporarily assumed for the purpose of such manifestation, then, obviously, nothing is gained by insisting on it in the few instances in which it may be apparently more tenable. Surely it is better to adopt the explanation which the passages themselves seem naturally to invite, or even to demand; an explanation which gives a consistent meaning to them all, and which has ample support in Christian exesesis from the earliest times, not to mention the singular and suggestive paraphrase so general in the Targums of the Name of the Most High by ' The Word of the Lord.' Dr. Mill says that the Christian Fathers ' frequently ' speak ' of the Son of God as appearing- in the Old Testament, and as the special object of the provocation of the Israelites ; ' and speaks of ' the indubitable in- stances of His manifestation as the sole imag-e of God to man.' Mythical Interpretation of the Gospels, Appendix E. p. 2)5^- Compare Newman [Parochial Sermons, Vol. II. p. 39, On the Incarnation), * We read in the Patriarchal History of various appearances of Ang-els so remarkable that we can scarcely hesitate to suppose them to be gracious visions of the Eternal Son. For instance ; it is said that ' the Angel of the Lord appeared unto ' Moses ' in a flame of fire out of the midst of a bush ;' yet presently this supernatural Presence is called ' the Lord,' and afterwards reveals His name to Moses, as 'the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.' On the other hand, St. Stephen speaks of Him as ' the Angel which appeared to Moses in the bush.' Again he says soon after that Moses was ' in the Church in the Wilderness with the Angel which spake to him in the mount Sina;^ yet in the Book of Exodus we read, ' Moses went up unto God, 1 70 Hengstcnbcrg, and Prof. Burto7t. [lect. and the Lord called unto him out of the mountain ; ' ' God spake all these words, saying' (Exod. iii. 2 ; Acts viii. '^S-3^ '• Exod. xix. 3; xx. i.), and the Hke. Now, assuming", as we seem to have reason to assume, that the Son of God is herein revealed to us, as graciously minis- tering to the Patriarchs, Moses and others, in angelic form, the question arises, What was the nature of the appearance ? We are not informed, nor may we venture to determine; still, anyhow, the Angel was but the temporary outward form which the Eternal Word assumed, whether it was of a material nature, or a vision.' Compare Hengstenberg, ChnstGlogy, Vol. IV. Appen- dix III. p. 309. ' That the Angel of the Lord is the Logos of John, who is connected with the supreme God by unity of nature, but personally distinct from him, was, if we except the Fathers mentioned above [i. e. SS. Augustine, Jerome, and Gregory the Great], the universal doctrine of the Early Church. [The italics are Hengstenberg's.] The Fathers of the first Synod in Antioch [a.d. 269], in a letter sent to Paul of Samosata before his deposition, affirm that ' the Angel of the Father, being himself Lord and God, \i^yakr\S^^. John i. 51). It is observable here that in the account of the first appearance to Jacob the title The Angel of the Lord is not given to Him Who speaks ; naturally enough, because the visible presence of the created and ministering angels is a marked feature of the incident. Yet, since on the next occasion {Gen. xxxi. 11) the Angel of the Lord expressly says, I am the God of Bethel, we may infer that on other similar occasions also, as the mysterious wrestling (xxxii. 24) and the fhial Appearance at Bethel (xxxv. 9), it was the Angel of the Lord Who was seen, even when He is not expressly introduced by that title. The total im- pression that remained on the mind of the patriarch, on his reviewing, at its close, his long eventful life, is phiinly indicated in the form of his blessing on Josepli and his sons (xlviii. 15) ; — God, hefore ivhom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did ivalk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel tvhich redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads. He had not the clear con- ce})tion of the relation of the Blessed Persons in the One Godhead which Christian faith gives to us ; yet o 194 Reference in Hosea xii. to 'the ArigeF. [lect. he identifies Tlie Angel ivhich redeemed him with The God of his fathers, and he uses the word hless in the singular number {Ajpjpendix, Note g). This view is deci- sively confirmed by the language of the Prophet Hosea (xii. 3), who describes the wresthng of Jacob with the Man Who rebuked the enquiry after His Name, and of Whom the patriarch said, I have seen God face to face, and my life is preserved, in the following words : — B^ his strength he [Jacob] had poioer with God: Yea, he had power over the Angel, and prevailed: He wept, and made supplication unto Him : At Bethel, He found him, And there He spake with us ; Even Jehovah, the God of Hosts ; Jehovah is His memorial. ' This " angel " we feel authorized in identifying- with "the angel of the covenant" {31nl. iii. i), in whom was God's " Name " (Exod. xxiii. 21). In the original account in Gene-sis xxxii. there is no mention of an " angel " ; the mysterious Wrestler is described in v. 24 as " a man," but afterwords in v. 30 is identified by Jacob with " God." ' (Prebendary Huxtable, in Speaker s Comm. ad loc.) The reference of ' he wept ' to the angel (as making supplication to Jacob to let him go), which Mr. Hux- table (ibid.) mentions as 'adopted by Saadia, Rashi, Aben Ezra, Kimchi, and Hitzig,' arises probably from the view that the mysterious visitor was only a created angel. Dr. Pusey writes {ad loc, in 3Iinor Prophets) ' He then Who appeared to Jacob, and Who, in Jacob, spoke to all the posterity of Jacob, was God ; whether it was (as almost all the early fathers thought) God the Son, Who thus appeared in human form to the Patriarchs, Moses, Joshua, and in the time of the Judges, under the name of IV.] Visil of the tJwce Angels to Abraham. 195 the Angel of llie Lord, or whether it was the Father. God Almighty thus accustomed man to see the form of Man, and to know and believe that it was God.' 96. In contrast with these wholly gracious manifest- ations stands the visit of the three angels to Abraham ]ireparatory to the Doom of Sodom and Gomorrah [Gen. xviii, xix) ; a visit full of mercy to him and to Lot, but closing with a most solemn disclosure of the judicial character of the One Mediator. Here we must first observe that tlie opening statement, And the Loud appeared unto him hy the oaks of Mamre, is an intro- ductor}'- heading to the whole narrative, summing up the meaning and general result of the whole, and defining its character. Describing the manner of the Appearance, the narrative proceeds to say, Three men stood hy him. He does not see them coming ; he lift up his eyes and looked, and, lo, they are there. He ad- dresses them as one \ 0 Lord (Adonay, not My Lord), if now I have found favour in Thy sight. In the pro- mise of the Heir, One speaks, He said, I loill certainly return unto thee, and Sarah thy wife shall have a son. Henceforward to the close Abraham's interlocutor is each time called The Loiw [Jehovah) ; both before the men (that is, the other two of the three visitants) went away towards Sodom, and afterwards, during the communi- cation of the purpose of judgment and the ensuing intercession of Abraham. The exact progress of the incident appears to be this : — After the hospitable entertainment under the oak, and the promise of the ' So the present Text, Lxx., and Vulg. ; but St. Atig. de Trin. ii. 10, Siiys, ' per pluralcm numcrum invitat, ut hoppitio suscipiat.' O 2 196 Abraham s Intercession before the Lord. [lect. Heir, tlie men (i. e. the three) rose iq) from thence and looked towards Sodom, and Ahraham. ivent ivith them to bring them on the way. The way led by Abraham's customary place of worship, the ^lace ivhere he stood hefore the Lord (xviii. 22 ; xix. 27), which commanded a view of the land of the ^lain (xix. 28). At tliis sacred spot The Lord said, Shall I hide from Ahraham that thing which I do? After the communication of the coming judgment the men (i.e. the two created angels) turned their faces from thence, and ivent toward Sodom ; hut Ahraham stood yet hefore the Lord ; or, if we adopt the remarkable variation restino; on Jewish tradition and accepted by Bleek and Geiger (see Cheyne and Driver) \ The Lord stood yet hefore Ahraham. Then Abraham di^ew near, and made his intercession, four times addressing Him Whom he acknowledges as The Judge of all the earth, as the Lord (Adonay). At the close the Lord ivent His way, as soon as he had left communing with Ahraham: and Ahraham returned unto his place; and the two angels (xix. i should have the article before tivo angels, as Lxx. ol Svo ayyekoi) came on even to 'Sodom, where Lot was sitting in the gate. In the remainder of the narrative, especially when care- fully compared with the earlier portion in ch. xviii, it is abundantly clear that these two were created angels in human form. They describe themselves as sent by the Lord to destroy the place. They are treated by Lot as men up to that moment. It is only when, on the morrow, they insist on his immediate ^ Bible with various Renderings and Readings. (Eyre and Spot- tiswoode, 1876.) IV.] The yiidgincnt of Sodom and Gomorrah. 197 escape, that his language seems to acknowledge in them a supernatural character. Then there is (if we adopt the received pointing of the Hebrew Text) a cliange to a more marked petition to one, in the sin- gular, Lot said unto them, 0 not so, Lord {Adonay) ^, &c., recognising a messenger and an instrument of the Lord, but otherwise, in the character of his entreaty generally, indicating no consciousness of being in the immediate Presence of the Lord Himself. That the unseen Judge should use the ministry of His creature- angels in the actual immediate execution of j^unish- ment, especially of the reprobate as distinct from the chastisement of the elect, while He Himself personally talked with Abraham, Tlie friend of God, harmonizes with other examples in Holy Scripture ^. Yet the true ultimate agency is clearly enunciated in the significant declaration of xix. 24, Then the Lord rained ujion Sodom and upon Gomorrah hrimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven. 97. Passing to the Book of Exodus (chap, iii) we meet the same Divine Personage operating on a grander scale for the redemption of His PeojDle and the discomfiture of their enemies. He Who spake to * The Masoi-ites note this (as in xviii. 3) as 'lioly,' i. e. addressed to God, reading it with Kamets {Adonay), not Pattahk {Adonai, mtj lords, as xix. 2), but it is uncertain, perhaps. Gesenius, Lexicon, }nx, takes it on one page as Adonai, plural, on the next as Adonay, singular. ■•* For example, in Rev. xiv. 14-20, while the hai-vest of the earth is reaped by the golden-crowned One, like unto a Son of Man, Who sat upon the while cloud, the gathering of tlie vine oftJie earth, to cast it into tJt£ great wine-jyress of tlie lorath of God is the woi'k of a created angel. 198 The Appem^ance to Moses in Horeb [lect. Moses in the wilderness of Horeb from the flame of fire in the bush, and said, Draw not nigh hither : j^ut off thy shoes from off thy feet, for the ]flace ivhereon thou standest is holy ground ; He Who said I am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, and before Whom Moses hid his face, for he loas afraid to look u^on God, was the Angel of the Lord, and yet the Lord God of the Hebrews {v. t8), the I am that I am^. There is an absolutely unanimous consent of the Fathers that the special Divine Personahty here manifested, though not, of course, without the concurrent Presence and Co-operation of the Father and the Spirit also, was that of the Eternal Son. And if so here, then, surely, on the similar occasions also, both before and in the ^ The Church seems to sanction the thought that the Angel Who appeared in the Bush was Christ, by her conjunction, on the Fifth Sunday in Lent, of Exodus iii. as the First Lesson at Matins with St. John iii. 58, in the Epistle. The appointment of Genesis xviii. as an Evening Lesson on Trinity Sunday was probably due to St. Augustine's language in the De Trinitate, ix. 11. 20, etc., where he labours to show that the three ' men ' or ' angels ' may have rej^resented the Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity, the two who went on to Sodom representing, more especially, tlie Second and Third Persons, because they say they wei'e 'sent,' (though he admits (cap. 13. 23) that he cannot recollect that the Holy Spirit is anywhere called an 'angel'); while the specialty of addi'ess to one in the singular, so marked in Abraham's language, and also, though much less so, in Lot's, he takes to indicate only Their Unity and Identity of Substance. But his comment exhibits plainly the difficulties inseparable from his peculiar view ; and only sets in a clearer light the simplicity and consistency of the primitive Catholic view, that the Lord Who ' appeared ' was ever the Son of God. But, of course, this chapter, like all the narratives of the Theophanies, has a weighty force in the establishment of a plural Personality in the Grod- head ; and that is the first necessary stej) towards the full faith in the Holy Trinity. IV.] in the Burning Bnsh. 199 after history. In fact this signal manifestation throws a flood of light on both the earlier and later examples of the kind we are discussing ; and if we are compelled to admit that there is here an especial action and mani- fested Presence of the Looses tliere can be no valid reason against admitting the same Presence in other instances also which are reallv, in essentials, analoo-ous. It is natural, after this, to suppose that the Lord Who in the subsequent history, up to and after the Exodus, spake to Moses, was the Eternal Son. Thus Dr. Mill writes {^lythical Interp. of the Gospels, Appendix E, p. 153), 'That the Angel of the Lord who preceded the children of Israel from Egypt in the cloud and in the fire, was (agreeably to Exod. xiii. 20. 21, compared with xiv. 19, 20; Kiim. xx. 6, &c.), the Lord Himself, possessor of the incommunicable name nilT^, and that this Angel of the Covenant (as he is termed in Mai. iii. i, compared with Gen. xlviii. 15, 16, &c.) is the Uncreated Word, who appeared in visible form to Jacob and Moses, and who was in the fulness of time incarnate in the person of Jesus Christ, is the known undoubted faith of the Church of God, and needs not to be enlarged on here. This same Uncreated Angel, in whom was the name of the Loud, is promised by the mouth of Moses, in Exod. xxiii. 20-23, to continue to precede the armies of Israel, and cut oil' the Canaanites before them.' But, following Theodoret, and also the Rabbis Tanchuma and jNIoses Ben Nachman, he proceeds to express a view (to be presently noticed) that the sin of the golden calf led to a permanent with- drawal of the Divine Presence and substitution of a created ang'cl, and that i/ie Captain of the Lord's Host, who appeared to Joshua before Jericho, was the Arch- angel Michael. 98. The next special mention of The Angel of the 200 The Divine Angel-Guardian of Israel, [lect. Ijo-rj) after the Burning Busli (Exod. xiv. 19) identifies Him with the Lord Who (xiii. 21) went hefore them hy day in a pillar of a cloud to lead them the way, and hy night in a 'pillar of fire to give them light; and who (xiv. 24) looked unto the host of the Egyjjtians through the pillar of fire and of the cloud, and troubled the host of the Egyj^tians, even as once again He troubled those who, when He said unto them, I am, ivent hachivard and fell to the ground {St. John xviii. 6). 99. Next we find a remarkable passage which, on a superficial view, has been thought to show an express substitution of a created angel in the place of the Son of God as the Guardian of the Host of Israel, and so to authorize the weaker interpretation of the phrase The Angel of the Loed in earlier and later passages. The real force of the passage is the exact opposite of this. It runs as follows {Exod. xxiii. 20) : Behold I send an Angel hefore thee, to keep thee in the ivay, and to bring thee into the flace which I have jirejjared. Beivare of him, and obey his voice, provohe him not; for he ivill not ]pardon your transgressions: for my naiyie is in him. But if thou shall indeed obey his voice, and do all that I speah ; then I will he an enemy unto thine enemies, and an adversary unto thine adversaries. For mine Angel shall go hefore thee, and bring thee in unto the Amorites, &c. . . . and I ivill cut them off. These words of promise occur at the close of a continuous section of three chap- ters (xxi, xxii, xxiii), in which Moses communicates to the people the Revelation made to him in the Mount, where he was, in an especial and peculiar manner, in the immediate presence of God. The language used IV.] withdrawn after the Worship of the Calf, 201 points, especially when regarded in the light of that used in the narrative of the manifestation at the Burn- ing Bush, to a Divine Angel, and so to the Son of God ; for it says, My name is in Mm. This could be said of no created angel. And so far Dr. Mill would agree. The sin of the golden calf (xxxii.) threatened a differ- ence. The act of idolatry broke the covenant; and then (xxxiii.) the Lord said unto Moses ... 7 will send an angel before thee; . . . for I will not go up in the midst of thee ; for thou art a stiff-necked people ; lest I consume thee in the way. The breach that was made between God and the People by this sin is indicated by Moses' removal of the Tent of Meeting to the outside of the camp, afar off from the camp [v. 7), and by the absence of the Cloudy Pilla.r from above it, until Moses, who, witli Joshua, had not participated in the idolatrous worship, entered into the Tent, when it came to pass, that the Cloudy Pillar descended, and stood at tJie door of the Tent, and He talked ivith Moses. But, in esti- mating the consequences of this transgression, we must take account of the Repentance of the People, and of the Intercession of Moses. ]Mien the people heard these evil tidings, they mourned: and no man did fut on him his ornaments (v. 4), and The children of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments hy the mount Horeb [v. 6), and When Moses ivent out unto the Tent, all the people rose up and stood every rnan at his tent door, and looked after Moses, until he ivas gone into the Tent . . . and all the peoyle saio the Cloudy Fillar stand at the door of the Tent ; and all the people rose up and tvorshipped, every man in his tent door. And the Lord spake unto Moses 202 restored after Moses Intercession. [liECT. face to face., as a man speaketh unto his friend (vv. 8-10). Then followed Moses' Intercession, and the gracious answer of God to him (vv. 12-17). Moses said unto the Lord, See thou say est unto me, Bring iq) this jpeople : and thou hast not let me hnow whom thou wilt send ivith me . . . And he said, My Presence \^IB, My Face, cf. Isa, Ixiii. 9] shall go ivith thee [Lxx. aiVo? irpoTropev- arofiai crov] and I will give thee rest. And he said unto him, If thy presence [^"'^?, TJiy Face^ go not ivith me [Lxx. Et /nrj aiiro? a-u a-vjuiTropevri'j, carry us not uj) hence. For, &c. . . . And the Lord said unto Moses, I will do this thing also that thou hast spoken. Further, in the next chapter, when Moses went up the second time unto Mount Sinai, with the second tables of stone, and the Lord descended in the Cloud, and stood with him there [vv. 4, 5), again Moses interceded and received a gracious answer (9, 10), Ifnoiv I have found grace in thy sight, 0 Lord (Adonay), let my Lord {Adonay), Ijjray thee, go among us: for it is a stiff necked people; and pardon our iniquity and our sin, and take us for thine inheritance. And He said, Behold, I make a covenant, &c. Thus the covenant-relation was renewed ; and, with it, the guar- diansliip of the Angel in Whom was the incommunicable Name ; and its outward token, the Cloudy Pillar, was restored to its customary position above the Tabernacle. Conformably with this view the Prophet Isaiah, when, long afterwards, he set himself to mention the loving kindnesses of the Lord, and the praises of the Lord, according to all that the Lord had hestoived on them., and His great goodness towards the house of Israel, says (Ixiii. 7) :— IV.] Appearance of the Angel of the Lord to Balaam 203 So He was their Sacioiir. In all their aJJUetioyt, He tvas afflicted, And the Angel of His Face saved them : In His love and in His pity He redeemed them ; And He hare them, and carried them all the days of old. Where the Septiiagint Version, very remarkably, runs as follows : — Kat lytvijo avToHs ets rrcaTi-jpiav (k. 7!a(n]s (?At\//-ea;9 avTutu. ov 7rpi(TJ3vt] 6 Geo? tw B«\auV) . . . A)id the Lord put a u'ord in Balaam's moidh. And 204 €vidc7itly a Divine Manifestation. [lect. again (15), Stand here . . . ivliile I meet the Lord yonder. And the Lord met Bcdaam, and j^id a toord in his moidh. Next, in the narrative of the Appearance, first to the ass and then to Balaam himself, of the Angel of the Lord ivith His sivord drawn in His hand'^, He is called throughout The Angel of the Lord ^, and never simply an angel. He speaks as God, TJiy way is perverse before me, and only the word that I shall speah unto thee, that thou shcdt S2')eah (see xxii. 20). Lastly, observe the effect on Balaam ; he howed down his head, and wor- shipped ^ on his face . . . a7id said, I have sinned ; and his twice repeated allusion afterwards (xxiv. 3, 4 and 15, 16) to his blindness at first, and the awful disclosure that followed when his eyes were opened : — A revelation to Balaam tJie son of Bear, And a revelation to the man unclosed {or, closed*) of eye, ^ Compare tTos/ma v. 13, and i Chron. xxi. 16. ^ The Vulg., unlike the Lxx., having introduced Him as Angelus Domini, afterwards in every instance calls him simply angelus. This, added to the absence of the definite article in Latin, weakens the effect considerably. ^ The word in the Hebrew is the same as that rendered worshi2^2^ed of Joshua, in Joshuas. 14. Curiously, the Lxx., which omits it there, gives here a full rendering, Kvy\ras TrpoaeKvvrjae tS Trpoa-oina avrov. * I. e. if we read Onb' as Vulg. (cuius obturatus est oculus), Eng. A. V. margin, and Drs. Gotch and Davies in their very valuable Revised English Bible (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1877); also (according to Cheyne and Drivei''s Bible with various Renderings and Readings, (Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1876), Hcngstenberg, Hupfeld, Roedigcr, and Keil. The other reading ^'^^, unclosed, has in its favour, according to the same authorities, ' ilie Lxx., Targums, Peshito, most Jews, Gesenius, Eivald, and Knohel. If we read closed, the allusion is to Balaam's blindness before he saw the Angel; as falling, and having the eyes opened alludes to xxii. 31, and his prostration in worship. The student will IV.] Appearance of the Captain of the L orhs host 205 A revelation to him ivho heard the words of God, Who beheld ^ the vision of the Almighty, Falling, and having the eyes opened. In this latter passage the English reader can only think of the ordinary verb for speaking, in the tlirice repeated liatli said of the Authorized Version ; which fails entirely (as also do the Septuagint and the Vulgate) to convev the force of the orio-iual, and its inherent thought of a very special and solemn disclosure. The addition of ev vttvw {in sleej)) by the Septuagint trans- lators to beheld the vision, &c., which probably misled the A, v., into the unwarrantable addition of into a trance di^iter falling , is possibly merely dishonest. 10 r. We pass to the Book of Joshua, the faithful servant who was guiltless of the idolatry which had temporarily interrupted the covenant-relation between God and His People, and to whom Gods favour had ever been vouchsafed. Here we find a characteristic and appropriate Appearance of the great Protector of Israel at the critical period which followed the passage of the Jordan. The passage (the internal continuity of which is, most unfortunately, obscured by the division of the chapters) covers the close of the fifth and opening of the sixth chapters. The Appearance is that of a Man ivith his sicord drawn in his hand, Who announces Him- self as the Cai^tain, or Prince, of the host of the Loud ; observe that the A. V. has no right to insert into a trance after ' fall- ing.' Gotch and Davies render ' falling to the ground.' ^ "^tl"! • . '^^n'?. Gt'senius says HTH nicans 'specially, i. To see God, sometimes pp. of the actual vision of the Divine presence. Ex. xxiv. 1 1, They \Afoses and the Elders] saw God. Job xix. 26. 27, Even from [or ivithout] ing Jlesh shall I see God, whom I for mgself sludl see.' 2o6 to Joshua before Jericho, [lect. and Who not only accepts without rebuke the prostrate worship of Joshua, but, as if on purpose to remind him of what must have been, in every detail, deeply im- printed in his memory from his close association with Moses — the Manifestation at the Burning Bush — bids him also, as Moses had been bidden. Loose thy shoe from of thy foot, for tJie flace whereon thou standest is holy, and in the remainder of the interview is expressly styled the Lobb. It is remarkable that any, at least, of those who admit the Manifestation at the Burning Bush to have been Divine, should hesitate about this, in the face of so clear indications of a Divine Presence. Justin Martyr (Dial, cum Tryj^hone, cap. 62.) so understood it, as well as Eusebius the historian (E. H. I. ii,), ' and others, as Theodoret witnesses in his Questions on the Book of Joshua^ ; ' so also, among ourselves, Archbishop Usher, Bishops Patrick and Watson ; also Stackhouse, AUix, Woodward, Scott, D'Oyly, and Mant ; and, in our own day. Chancellor Espin in the Speaker's Commen- tary, Prebendary Davey in the S.P.CK. Commentary, and Dr. Walsh (Bishop of Ossory) in The Angel of the Lord: so too Protestant Commentators generally 2. On the other hand. Dr. Mill lays great stress on a curious scholion on the place in Eusebius (preserved by his editor Valesius, who says it is ' written by the hand of the very antiquary who wrote out the Manuscrij^t '), ^ Yalesius, on Etiseb. I. ii. Among the ' others ' is Origen, in his Sixth Homily on the Book of Joshua, as preserved in Rufinus' Latin Translation. See Burton, Ante-Nicene Fathers, § 210. ^ See Hengstenberg, Christology, vol. i. p. 121. IV.] not an appem'ance of the Archangel Michael 207 to the effect that 'the Church thought differently/ chiefly on the ground that the being who appeared to Joshua did not call himself God, but God's chief cajatain, a dignity rather ministerial than supreme. Valesius states that ' the rest of the Fathers ' thought he was * not the Son of God, but rather Michael the Archangel.' This view (adopted by Dr. MilP, and also, as 'most probable,' by Dr. Pusey-, but claiming expressly among the Fathers the name of Theodoret only) is evidently based on tlie pecuHar phenomena of the Lxx. Version of the passage. It is observable that in Joshua v. 14, the ^nrivT^'l {and did loorshijp; the word used of Balaam's falHng flat on his face when he saw the Angel of the Lord) is altogether unrepre- sented in the Greek. Again, in Joshua's question, What saitli my Lord unto his servant f "^21^ is rendered not Kvpie (Lord), but AeWora (Master). These two peculiarities considerably lower the effect of the original ; which is further weakened by the severance of the fifth verse in the narrative. And the Lord said unto Joshua, from its proper connection with the appearance of the Captain of the Lord's Host, To Dr. Mill's argument, that the title Ca])tain (ap-^ia-rpdrriyos) implies * only a ministerial superintendence,' it may be replied, that it does so not at all more than the title Angel or Messenger, which the same high authority frankly admits is elsewhere given to the Son of God ; or than the title Captain of our Salvation, which it is possible ^ Mythical Inferp. Gosj). p. 353. Appendix E. ^ Daniel the Froj)/iet. Lecture ix. p. 520. 2o8 but of God the Son coming in Judgment [lect. was applied to our Lord by the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews from a recollection of this incident. He further urges, ' that it seems most natural and obvious to conceive that the Lord sent this message to Joshua by the mouth of his Archangel ; ' but there is really no very evident reason why it should be more ' natural and obvious ' in this case than in the case of the Burning Bush. It was, indeed, really far more than a ' message.' It was, in truth, a much- needed assurance, vouchsafed in such outward and visible form as should make it more surely decisive and effectual, that the same invisible Divine Leader Who had brought their fathers safely through the wilderness would be also with this younger and less experienced generation, in their terrible task of reducing the war- like races of Canaan and their strongly-fenced cities. It was an assurance, too, from Him Who, after the death of Moses, spake expressly unto Joshua (i. 5), saying, As I was with Moses, so will I he ivith thee : I will not fail thee nor forsake thee .... Have not I commanded thee ? Be strong and of a good courage ; he not afraid, neither he thou dismayed : for the Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest. And it was, farther, a most expressive and much-needed token that the fearful work of extermination which was at that moment before the Israelites was indeed a Divine judicial Visitation on the Seven Nations, whose iniquity was now full ; and that their execution of it was a duty warranted, as it could alone be warranted, by a most undoubted special Divine Command. The drawn sword in the hand of the Son of God we, at least, can IV.] Appear a7ices in the Book of jftidges, 209 now clearly perceive to indicate Who was the real, though invisible, Agent in that act of doom. This question, however, may really be considered as ruled by the allusion to the Conquest of Canaan in the inspired Psalm of Habakkuk, who cries, after grateful thanksgiving to the Lord for the glories of the Exodus, Sun and moon stand still in their habitation^ At the fash of Thine arrows which go swiftly^ At the shining of Thy glittering sjiear, In tvrath Thou marchest throxigh the land, In anger Thou dost thresh the Heathen, Thou marchest forth for the salvation of Thy People, For the salvation of Thine Anointed. 102. In the Booh of Judges we find mention of three Appearances of Tlie Angel of the Lord : First, to the People at Bochim, where, speaking directly as in the Person of God, and with evident reference to the last- mentioned occasion, He rebukes them for their re- missness in not having fully carried out their duty in the execution of that Judgment on the Canaanites, of which they were the appointed instruments. Akin to this is the language of Deborah's song of triumph for the victory of Barak over Jabin and the Canaanites of Hazor {Judges v. 23), Curse ye Meroz, said the Angel of the Lord, curse ye ever the inhabitants thereof. The Ayigel of the Lord may have made the communication of ch. iv. 6, 7, to Deborah. The curse was effectual ; Meroz * disappears from history.' (Pusey, Daniel, p. 518.) The second is that to Gideon {Judges vi. 11) during p 2IO The Appeara7ice to Gideon; [lect. the oppression of Israel by the Midianites. The passage should bo carefully studied and closely com- pared with the other similar narratives. It will then be felt, in this as in the other examples, that it is almost, if not quite, impossible to resist the conclusion that, even weakened as it is in our Authorized Version, it conveys, and was intended to convey, the impression that He Who was seen and Who spoke was, and was understood by Gideon to be, a Divine Person. Notice especially Gideon's first address, 0 my Lord i^'il'^ Adoni, simply) not yet recognizing the Divine character of the visitant ; then the remarkable expression. The Lord looked iijpon liim and said, where the readings of the Septuagint curiously waver between eirea-rpe^e and i-TrejSXeyl/eu, reminding us of arpacpeh 6 KJ^io? ej/e/3Xe\|re Tw Uerpw (the Lord turned and looked u^on Peter, St. Luke, xxii. 6i) ; then the recognition of a Divine Lord ("^J'^i;^* Adonay), and, upon this, the proposal of the offering, i^ola-eo rtjv Ova-lav Koi 6vresent themselves before the Loed, to point out the mixture of their motives, the defects and infirmities of their characters, or worse, their sins — so the holy angels, the lovers of mankind, may plead for respite and merciful considera- tion for individual souls, for classes, for parties, for nations, for causes, which are not wholly on God's side, which are mixed and doubtful, yet not wholly evil ; and may put forward what is good in them (though, if it be so, the evil that is in them outweighs it) either in arrest or delay of judgment, or in plea for the advance- IV,] in the strife between good and evil. 223 ment of their (supposed) interests, i.e. as those interests are partially viewed hy finite intelligences. The great drama of human history, especially as viewed in the light of the Incarnation, may well be, in its gradual unfolding of the high purposes of God, the object of the closest attention to a vast cloud of (to us unseen) ivitnesses ; and may be among the things (perhaps the chief thing) which the angels desire to look into. We may be sure that it presents to the deeply engaged thought of their superior intelligence the field on which the one supremely vital issue, of the great conflict between good and evil, is being fought out, and on which it will be finally and gloriously decided. On that great issue there is ivar in heaven, war between principalities and powers, in the heavenly flaces ; and sides, we doubt not, are taken, and zealously main- tained, in a generous spirit of loyal partizanship for the good and the true and right, and of earnest sup- port to whatever, amid the tangled web of human affairs, seems to angelic minds to make for them, and for the final victory of good. Some glimpses of the inner process of this tremendous struggle were disclosed to the man greatly beloved, for his own support and that of God's ancient Church, in a time of special trial, and for the enlio'htenment and consolation of the Church of all future ages. It was not unbecoming the dignity, or inconsistent with the functions, as it was wholly con- sonant to the loving-kindness, of the One Mediator re- vealed as the great High Priest, the man clothed in linen, i.e. the priestly vesture (Ban. x. 4, xii. 6. 7), that He should Himself disclose in outline the future fortunes 2 24 Appearances in the Visions of Zechariah. [lect. of His Church to His long-tried and faithful martyr- servant. 109. The Tiext mention of any revelation of tlie Angel of the Lord under that title occurs in the series of eight prophetic visions which the prophet Zechariah saio hy night, on the four and tioentieth day of the eleventh month (Sebat) in the second year of Darius, and which are recorded in chs. i. 7. to vi, 8 ^ In the most recent English commentary (by Canon Drake in the Speakers Commentary) on this passage, the identification of the Angel of the Loed with Jehovah is fully admitted. On the other hand, Dr. Pusey {Minor Frojjhets, ad loc.) allowing the man riding upon a red horse to be ' doubt- less the same who appeared to Joshua in form of man, preparing thereby for the revelation of God manifest in the fleshy thinks ' it probably was St. Michael,' as St. Jerome tells us the Jews of his day thought. Yet, with the deepest respect for the judgment of so great a biblical scholar, it must be said that it is hardly possible to read his language on the subject, either in his Lectures on the Prophet Daniel (pp. 515-522) or in his commentary on Zechariah, without feeling that it seems, as it were involuntarily, to bear witness to the fuller truth of the more primitive view and to its far higher consistency and clearness. ^ In the later portion the following passage is noticeable, as showing, Ly the parallelism, the divine character ascribed to the Angel of the Loed : — In that day shall the Lord defend the inhabitants of Jerusalem ; And he that is feeble among them at that day shall be as David; And the house of David shall be as God, As the Angel of the Lord before them. {Zech. xii. 8.) IV.] Dr. Puscys comments upon them. 225 Compare, for example, observing the capitals, On Zech. 1 8 'He [the rider on the red horse] rides here, as Leader of the host who follow Him ; to Him the others report, and He instructs the Angel who instructs the prophet.' On i. 12, ' So the Angel of the Lord, in whom God was, exercised at once a mediatorial oflBce with God, typical of our Lord's High Priest's prayer (St. John xvii) and acted as God.' On ii. i, ^ man with a measuring line in his hand. 'Probably the Angel of the Lord, of whom Ezekiel has a like vision. " He who before [Dr. Pusey is quoting from St. Jerome ad loc.'\ when he lift up his eyes had seen in i\iQ four horns things mournful, now again lifts up his eyes to see a man of whom it is written (Zech. vi. 12), Behold a man whose name is the Branch ; of whom we read above (i. 8), Behold a man riding upon a red horse, and he stood among the myrtle trees, which were in the bottom. Of whom too the Father saith ; He builded my city (Heb. xi. 10), whose builder and maker is God. He too is seen by Ezekiel in a description like this (xl. 3), a man whose appearance was like the appearance of brass, i.e. burnished and shining as fire, tvith a li^ie of fax in his hand a?id a measuring reed^ ' Surely it is easier to understand this of the Son of God than of any creature. To Him (see § 107) a comparison of Ezekiel's description with St. John's in the Apocalypse seems decisively to point. Again, on iii. If Joshua, the High Priest, standing before the Angel of the Lord, ' probably to be judged by him ; as in the New Testament, to stand before the Son of Man ; for although standing before whether in relation to man or God, ex- presses attendance upon, yet here it appears only as a condition, contemporaneous with that of Satan's, to accuse him. Although, moreover, the Angel speaks with authority, yet God's Presence in him is not spoken of so distinctly, that the High Priest would be exhibited as standing before him, as in his oflBce before God.' And on iii. 4, And lie [the Angel of the Lord] spake to those who stood before Ilim, ' the ministering Angels who had waited Q 226 The five ' Dra7Jiatis personae' [lect. on the Ang-el of the Lord to do His bidding-.' And on vi. 8, Then cried he upon me^ ' Then God, or the Angel of the Lordi who speaks of what belonged to God alone, called me (probably ' loudly ') so as to command his attention to this which most immediately concerned his people. These have quieted My spirit in the North cojintri/, or rather, have made my anger to rest on, i.e. have carried it thither [i.e. to Babylon] and deposited it there, made it to rest upon them [the Chaldaeans], as its abode, as St. John saith of the unbelieving. The rvrath of God ahideth on him.' And on xii, 8, The house of David shall be as God, i.e. in Christ, the Son of David, ' And this the prophet brings out by adding, As the Angel of the Lord before them, i.e. that one Angel of the Lord, in whom His very Presence and His Name was ; Who went before them, to guide them. Else, having said, lilce God, it had been to lessen what he had just said, to add, like the Angel of the Lord.'' Surely the language of these comments is far more consistent with the earlier belief that the Angel of the Lord was the divine Son of God than with the later one that he was the Archangel Michael. The chief difficulty felt by the student of these eight visions is that of clearly distinguishing and identifying the superhuman dramatis 'personae with whom the pro- phet is in ecstatic communication. They appear to be five in number, viz. : — 1. Tlie man riding ti^on a red horse, who stood among the myrtle trees (i. 8). He is clearly identified (i. ii) with The Angel of the Lobd. 2. The riders on the red, speckled, and ivhite horses. These are subordinate created angels, who report to the Angel of the Lord. 3. The angel described by the prophet in eleven places (i. 9, 13, 14, 19 ; ii. 3 ; iv. i, 4. 5 ; v. 5, to; vi. IV.] of the EigJU Visions of Zcchartah. 227 4) by the phrase the angel that talked with me, or, more exactly, that sjmhe in me. So Dr. Pusey, ad loc, who adds, ' The very rare expression seems meant to convey the thought of an inward speaking, wliereby the words should be borne directly into the soul without the inter- vention of the ordinary outward organs. God says to Moses [Numhers xii. 6-9), If there is a j^royhet among yon, I the Loiw ivill make Myself hnoicn nnto him in a vision, I ivill sj)eah [lit.] in him in a dream. Afy ser- vant Moses is not so — In him will I sj^eak mouth to mouth; and Habakkuk says (ii. i) of the like inward teaching, I will watch to see, ivhat He ivill speak in me. It is the characteristic title of one attendant-angel, who was God's expositor of the visions to Zechariah.' Simi- larly Canon Drake (Si^eaker's Commentary, ad loc) says he was * The [created] angel, whose office it was ... to interpret to the prophet what he saw and heard.' 4. In the third vision (chap, ii.) the man ivith a measuring line in his hand, whom Dr. Pusey thinks to be ' probably the Angel of the Lord, of whom Ezekiel has a like vision.' 5. In the same vision (ii. 3) another angel, who went out to meet the angel that talked ivith the prophet, when ho (tlic angel) ivent forth. Besides these must also be observed in three places (i. 13, and 20, and iii. i) the mention of the Lord, Who is in each almost certainly identified with The Angel of the L (lit 1 1. There is in many passages considerable uncertainty as to the exact reference of the relative pronouns lie, Q 2 2 28 * The angel which spake in' the Prophet, [lect. liim, &c. ; for example, i. 21 ; ii. 4, 8 ; iii. i. 4 ; iv. 11, T2, 13, 14; V. I, 3; vi. 7, 8. Perhaps the chief peculiarity of this series of visions lies in the action of the angel lohich spake in the pro- phet. It is perhaps not quite clear that he was a created angel. His peculiar function of interior in- struction seems to point to a higher Power. In i. 9 the prophet says to the man on the red horse (for the angel that spake in him has not yet been mentioned), 0 my lord (""iib^ Adoni), what are these, i. e. the other riders on horses 1 The angel that spake in him (now first mentioned) said unto him, I will shew thee ivhat these he. Yet it is not he, but tlie man that stood among the myrtle trees, who really gives the explanation, These are they whom the Lord hath sent to walk to and fro through the earth. Here is identity of function and of action, if not of personality. It is possible — may we not sup- pose ? — that the same Divine Logos may be thus sepa- rately presented at once as the Angel of the Loed and as the angel that spake in the prophet. Or it may be, possibly, that the latter is a mysterious hint of the operation of the Holy Spirit, One in Substance, as One in Will and Purpose, with the Logos, as with the Father, though distinct in Person ; for example, in i. 1 2 it is observable that though the Angel of the Lord intercedes with the Lord of Hosts, the Lord answers, loith good and comfortable words, not the Angel of the Lord, but the angel that spake in the prophet. This angel it was who communicated them to the prophet, and bade him announce them. This would seem to suggest the inward operation of the Logos through the rv.] Special passages in Zechariah, 229 Holy Spirit. A close examination of the action and language ascribed in these visions to this mysterious angel seems to show that they may consist with either hypothesis. They are, perhaps, better explained by either than by that of a created angel ; but best ^ per- haps, by the supposition of a separate presentation of the One divine Angel of the Loud, at once under that title, and also as tlie angel that sj^ake in the prophet, including the possibility (or certainty 1) that the agency whereby the Angel of the Lord, at the same time that He was seen outwardly, spake inwardly in the prophet, was that of the Holy Spirit. Looked at in this way the surface ambiguity of the reference of the ^jronoun he in i. 21 becomes intelligible. It may equally refer to the Lord of ver. 20, or to the a^igel of ver. 19. Similarly of the pronoun He in iii. i. In vi. 7 and 8 the same pronoun, though its last antecedent is the angel (vi, 5), i. e. the angel that sj)ahe in the prophet of vi. 4 — yet introduces language which, with Dr. Pusey, we can only assign to ' God, or the Angel of the Lord.' Here is another apparent identification of the latter with the angel that s^aJce in Zechariah. Our view of the Divine Personality of the Angel of the Lord is strongly supported by such passages as ; — i. II. The inferior angels whom the Lord had se7it to walk to and fro through the earth rej^ort to the Angel of the Lord. iii. 2. The Lord who said unto Satan, Tlie Lord ' Because of the (apparently) visible aj)peai-ance (ii. 3 and v. 5) of the communing angel, which seems alien to the Holy Spirit. 230 and in Malachi, [lect. rebuke thee, 0 Satan, must be The angel of the Loud, before Whom the High Priest stood. iii. 4. He gives orders to the created angels that stood before him. iv. 8, 9. The word of the Loeb came unto me, sayincj . » . the Loud of hosts hath sent me unto you — with which compare the similar language of ii. 8-1 1, which is only intelligible as spoken in the Person of the Eternal Son, sent by the Father. no. Our survey of the passages in the Old Testa- ment which speak of the Angel of the Lord closes with the well-known words of Malachi, which are confessedly decisive as to His Divine character. We read {Malachi iii. i), Tlie Lord, ivhom ye seek, shall suddenly come to his tem])le, even the Angel of the covenant, ivhom ye delight in. On this Dr. Pusey writes thus : — ' He who should come was iJie Lord, again Almighty God, since, in usage too, none else is called '■' the Lord" (""."^isn' ^^^- ^3- ^7' 34- 23 ; Is. I. 24 ; 3. I ; 10. if>, '^'^ ; 29. 4) as none else can be. The temple also, to which He was to come, the temple of God, is His own. The Messenger, and the Angel of the Covenant, plainly, even from the pai-allelism, is the same as the LordJ He then quotes from Pococke, as follows : — ' All Christian interpreters are agreed that this Lord is Christ, Whom God hath made both Lord and Christ, and Who is Lord over all (Acts 2. ;^6 ; 10. 36) ; by Whom all things were made, are sustained and governed ; Who is, as the root of the word imports (*,ii^ from 'n^)' ^^^^ basis and foundation, not of any private family, tribe, or kingdom, but of all ; by J f 'horn are all things and we by Him ; and Whose we are also by right of redemption ; and so He is Lord of lords and King of kings, deservedly ly.] indicating the Divine Personality 231 called the Lord;' and adds, of his own, 'As then the special presence of God was often indicated in connection with the Angel of the Lord, so, here. He Who was to come was entitled the AniTcel or messenger of the covenant, as God also calls Him the covenant itself (Isa. 42. 6), I wilt give Thee for a covenant of the people, a light of the Gentiles. He it was, the Angel of His Presence (Isa. 63. 9), Who saved His former people, in Whom His Name was, and Who, by the prerogative of God, would not pardon their transgressions (Ex. 23. 2i), He should be (Heb. 12.24; 8. 6) the Mediator of the nezo and better covenant.' III. Thus we trax3e throufrhout the volume of the Old Testament the gracious intervention, from time to time, of the Son of God, the One Mediator, in the character of Tlie Angel of the Lord, sent by the Father, and seen in human form by man, in waking life and in vision, in significant preparation for His permanent Incarnation. This great Presence, so clearly appre- liended by the earlier Christian writers and Apologists, and, in later times, so largely admitted, outside the Koman and Greek Communions, i. e. by the great majority of orthodox reformed, and especially English, biblical writers, lights up the whole previous Dispensa- tion with a wonderful anticipation of the glorious future Gospel. It binds together, as nothing else does, the Old Testament in a compact unity with the New ; giving a special strength and consistency to the great Eevelation contained in the two. Read in the light of this bond of coherence, the great saying of Saint Augus- tine receives additional force and meaning. Novum Tes- tamentum in vetere latet ; Vetus Testamentum in novo 232 of the ^ Angel of the Lord! jpatet ; and, taking prophecy in its widest, truest, sense, i. e. for tlie whole inspired utterance of the wliole Bible as a historic Eevelation, it is seen clearly that its spirit, its whole inner meaning and aim, is the hearing witness to Jesus, the Same in the yesterday of the Old Cove- nant, as in the to-day of the New. LECTURE Y. THE MEDIATION OF THE SON OF GOD UNDER THE LAW. Psalm ii. 6. ' As for Me, I have anointed My King upon Zion, the mountain of My Sanctuary.' 112. From the consideration of the Theophanies we pass on to consider the general action of the One Medi- ator under the Law. It may conveniently be regarded inider tlie familiar division into the Prophetic, the Sacerdotal, and the Eegal. But first it must be pre- mised that it is throughout a veiled action. Only the Incarnation reveals Him as ihe One Mediator hehveen God and men, the Man Christ Jesus. Only the New Covenant — and it is its crowning glory — discloses to us, in visible and human presence, and speaking with tender human accents, the one invisible Divine Personality of the Eternal Son, the living and life-giving Personal Word (i Cor. xv. 45), of Whom it could then alone be said that that Life was manifested, and ive have seen it ; we have heard Him, ive have seen Him with our eyes, and our hands have handled Him ; we have eaten and drunh icith Him after He rose from the dead ; and, That which we have seen and heard declare we unto you, that ye may have communion ivith us ; and truly our com- munion is with the Father, and tvith His Son Jesus Christ (i St. John i. i, &c.). Such language as this — 2 34 -F/^// revelation, impossible before, [lect. language of divine unspeakaLle blessedness, language declaring the stupendous fact wliicli lies at the base of our common Christian Faith and Life and Hope — could not have been written before the long-promised union had become an accomplished fact, and, further, had been clearly realized, both in itself, its historic reality, and its permanence, and in some, at least, of its results and consequences, by those who were nearest to it. Before that time the gracious intervention of the Son of God between God and man, real as we can now see it to have been, was necessarily veiled ; because the time had not yet come when mankind, even as repre- sented by the Chosen Eace, could safely bear the revelation of a plural Personality within the Divine Essence, or rise to the glorious faith in a Mediator between itself and God Who should be Himself Divine; and Whose true Divinity should set in a clear light the essential Fatherhood of God, and that without in the least obscuring the fundamental truth of the Divine Unity. How clearly Christian thought can now accept and embrace, in all the fulness of each and without confusion, the sublime verities of the Trinity in Unity and of the Unity in Trinity, as well as of the permanent Incarnation of the Second Person in the perfection and reality of our human nature ; and can feel, not only that they are true, as matter of Eevelation, but also that they must be true by reason of their absolute satisfyingness, morally, intellectually, and spiritually; every thoughtful and instructed Christian is well aware. Hence to such an one the Faith of the Nicene and Athanasian Symbols is the one possession which v.] 710W vouchsafed io Christian faith. 235 in his estimation transcends all others. It is that for the sake of which he most prizes the gift of life, and the added grace of his election to Baptism and education within the Christian Pale. It is that for which, as a present joy and an endless promise, he most thanks God, the Knowledge of Whom, the Only True God, and of Jesus Christ Whom He has sent, he knows to be, even now. Eternal Life. In the One Faith, in these Symbols so clearly stated, so sharply and distinctly, yet guardedly, defined, he feels himself to possess the condensed essence and sum, as to all necessary points, of the great Kevelation of the Being and Character and Purposes of God, and of the redeem- ing Work of Christ. And, further, in that definite Faith he finds the one key to the right understanding of the Revelation itself, as a whole, and in its separate parts and progressive stages, notwithstanding the va- riety and complexity of structure and contents which arise from its actual historic form. To him — if he has really understood and prized the full glory of his Catholic inheritance — the Three Divine Persons into Whose One Name he was baptized stand clearly re- vealed in their blessed relation to himself, in their several yet united work of love unspeakable toward himself; the Father Who made him, the Son Who redeemed him, the Holy Ghost Who sanctifieth him, Three Persons and One God, in Whom, even now, in an ineffable nearness and reality, in a supernatural as well as in a natural sense, he live^ and moves and has his being, and Who dwells in him, an ever-present joy which only sin can take away or interrupt. 236 Before the l7icar7iation, the Mediation [lect. 113. But before the completed Incarnation, with its consequences — consequences which could only be reached through it — of the removal of sin by the Atoning Death, and the Gift of the Holy Spirit of enlightenment and renewal to all who by repentance and faith were capable of It, this could not be. Hence the operation of the Mediator was, as a rule, itself me- diate; itself, the while, secret and undisclosed, although incessant. It effected itself through the instrumentality of inspired men unto whom the Word of the Lord came, and through the subordinate agency of the standing institutions which they by divine command originated. And it effected itself also through tlie general super- intendence of a * never- failing Providence ' ordering all things, small and great, in human history; and, yet again, through those inward voices and inspirations to which, by the mercy of Him Who is the common Maker of all, the conscience of no man has ever, save through his own fault, been a stranger. Thus secret was the ordinary operation of the unseen Word of God in the world of man as in the realm of nature. Only (as we have seen) at specially critical periods of the seemingly slow Preparation for the Kingdom of God, there were directly presented to the sense of ear or eye, or both, communications as from God ; and then in a manner so evidently exceptional and mysterious as at once to make the occasions more impressive and yet free from any danger of weakening men's sense of the sole un- approachable Majesty and Only-ness of the One God ; while, at the same time, they filled the heart of God's People with an abiding sense of His love and tender v.] of the Eternal Son was veiled. 237 care for them, individually or as a nation, especially in circumstances of danger and distress. Who it was that thus audibly, and even visibly, spake to the Patriarchs and Prophets, to the earthly mediator of the Legal Dispensation, to the Judges and Deliverers of the Jewish Nation, they themselves could not, needed not, to fully know as we know now. It was enough for them to know that God did speak to them ; and that their consequent duty was absolute and imperative. Yet in the circumstances of such special manifestations, as they stand recorded, and in the inspired language also of Psalmists and of Prophets, there was that which not obscurely intimated not only the Divine Personality of Him Who sent but also, as distinct, that of Him Who was sent, Who came, and Who was actually heard and seen. 114. How they to whom these revelations were vouchsafed, or they who in after ages read the record of them, solved the difficulty (if they were conscious of it, and reflected upon it), we are not told. Yet the intimations were there. Beyond the Visitations and Appearances which were discussed in the last Lecture, such passages as T}iou art 7ny Son, this clay have I hegotten Thee {Psalm ii. 7), or, The Lord said unto my Lord {Jehovah said to Adonai), Sit Thou on My right Hand {Psalm ex. i), might have raised the question in other minds than theirs to whom Christ pointedly put it. If David in sjnrit call the Christ his Lord, hoiu is He then his son? {St. Matt. xxii. 42). We may well believe that when, but a few days later, the Divine Word Himself, walking with the sorrowful pair on that 238 Behind I sraeVs Prophets, Priests, and Kings, [lect. Easter- Sunday afternoon on the way to Emmaus, ex- ^ouncled unto them in all the Scrii^tiires the things concerning Himself {St. Luke xxiv. 13), or when, for the larger party assembled that evening in Jerusalem in doubt and fear, He ojpened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures, the occurrences we have specially considered must have been among those which, now lighted up with a new and unex- pected light, carried into their inmost souls that inex- tinguishable faith, both in the Messiah-ship and in the true Godhead of Jesus, which was later embodied in the inspired volume of the New Testament, and on which, as on an indestructible rock, the Catholic Church is built. 115. The consideration of the veiled Mediatorial relation of the Son of God to the Chosen People under the Law naturally begins from the appearance of The Angel of the Lord to Moses in the Burning Bush. We have seen (Lecture IV) that the unanimous consent of primitive Christian antiquity regards this as a mani- festation of the Son of God. With this we must con- nect the very remarkable visible revelation of the God of Israel to Moses and the Elders on the occasion of the Ratification of the Covenant after the Giving of the Law {Exod. xxiv). In these two incidents we find disclosed at its very commencement the Personality which really operated behind the outward adminis- tration of that whole Legal System which was inau- gurated by these two cardinal incidents. The Prophets, Priests, and Kings of ancient Israel, beginning from Moses and Aaron themselves, were not merely the types v.] was the 'One Mediator I the Eternal Son, 239 of One greater Who was to come. They were through- out, in tlieir whole exercise of their several functions, the subordinate agents and instruments, for tlie pro- gressive education of His People, of one unseen con- trolling Hand, one guiding over-ruling Mind, the Hand and Mind of One Who was indeed the Angel, the Messenger, of the Loud to His People, Himself Divine. This disclosure, standing as it does at the opening of the Mosaic Dispensation, and renewed, as it was from time to time, during its course, must be allowed to have a decisive influence on our whole view of the period. Looking at the unique phenomenon of Hebrew Prophecy as a whole the Christian student feels com- pelled to take up with regard to it this position, That all those to whom any portion of the spirit and gift of Prophecy was vouchsafed, from the Patriarchs and Moses and Samuel onwards, were the earthly visible human mediators of a growing Kevelation of the Sal- vation that was to come, but that behind them (so to speak) and within them, in their inspired prophetic utterance, was the true, the One Mediator, the Word of God, invisibly, through them, teaching His Ancient Church the growing truth about Himself and His future Work, for them, for us, and for all the world. As we have already seen, 'H juaprupla toO 'Itja-ov iari to TTvevfxa tP/? Trpocf^rjreiag ('The bearing witness to Jesus is the spirit of Prophecy,' Rev. xix. 10) from the Protevangelium onwards ; and the Sjnrit of Christ, the Logos, the Eternal Word and Wisdom of the Father, was in them (i Pet. i. 11), for their sake and for our sake who were to follow. Thus in the Prophetic Func- 240 the Jesus of the Sermon on the Mount, [lect. tion was Christ the true, though the as yet unrevealed, Mediator, the gracious and considerate TiaiZa^wy6<5 (Edu- cator) communicating to each generation, through His chosen instruments, such supernatural knowledge of spiritual truth and of God's loving purposes towards Mankind as each was able to bear, until He, the Great Prophet like unto Moses, unto WJio^n they should hearken, being raised up from the midst of them, of their brethren, from among themselves {Deut. xviii. 15), should stand revealed in human flesh, and should speak to them the New Law, not amid the terrors of Sinai, ' In cloud and majesty and awe,' but sitting, a Man amongst men and women and chil- dren, on the green mount that overhangs the sun- flashing ripples of the Galilaean Lake. Then was He listened to by the simple folk of despised Galilee eagerly, reverently, earnestly, delightedly, for never man spake like this man. They hung upon Him (St. Luke xix. 48), the humble especially, and the poor. Their hearts burned within them as they listened ; for His words awoke an answering chord in all that was best and truest and deepest, most truly human, and so most akin to His perfect human nature, in man or woman. They hung upon Him, for they felt, as children do, by instinct, the warm kindred love out of whose glowing depths His utterance came ; while yet He taught them as One TJiat had authority, and not as the Scribes (St. Matt. vii. 29). Yet was it He Who, in their long past history as a Nation, in His love and in His pity, had redeemed them (Isa. Ixiii. 9), Who had led them forth like sheep, v.] C-^y^'/srs Sacerdotal Function under the Law. 241 and carried them in the ivilderness like a jioch {Psalm Ixxviii. 52). It was He Who through their long day of grace in time of old had stretched forth His hands in varied longsiiffering appeal, though it were to a diso- bedient and gainsaying jpeoj^le {Isa. Ixv. 2) ; as once again He was to stretch them forth all the day long upon the Cross of shame. It was He from Whom, as He sat enthroned in His Divine Boyalty, Isaiah received His prophetic commission. It was He of Whom the vision was vouchsafed to Ezekiel also, to Daniel, and to Zechariah. It w^as He Wlio could say, Before Abraham teas I AM. (St. John viii. 58.) 116. The earthly exhibition of the Sacerdotal Function of the Mediator received in the Ancient Church its most specific development under the Mosaic Law. Up to that time the original connection of Priesthood with Primogeniture had prevailed. Sacer- dotal duties, and indeed prophetic also, had been exer- cised by the Heads of Families \ and in connection with the general governing powers which belonged to them in Patriarchal days and in a simpler and less developed society. ^ The Elders of Israel ; see Exod. iii. i6 ; iv. 29 ; xviii. 12 ; xix. 7, They are spoken of in Exod. xix. 2 2 as the jjriests which came near to the Lord. In the very remarkable account of the Covenant Sacrifice in Exod. xxiv. there is mention made, as of an almost official class, of the young men (*?y^, Lxx. tovs veaviaKovs) of IIm children of Israel, as offering, i.e. doing the actual work of, the sacrifices by command of Moses. These would seem to have corresponded to the Levites of the later hierarchy, and were probably the eldest sons of still living fixthers. Compare the 01 vccorepot and 01 vtaviaKoi of the narrative of Ananias and Sapphira {Actsx). B 242 Development of the Sacrificial [lect. The time came, in connection with the numerical growth of the people, with their deliverance from serf- dom, and their constitution into a free Nation, when a more highly organized system was needed, involving the separation and the thenceforward distinct exercise of functions, religious and civil, which had previously been united. This new and special official hierarchy was instituted by Moses, who, as the mediator appointed by the special call of God at the Burning Bush, himself exercised supreme authority in both departments. He first, by Divine direction, set apart his eldest brother Aaron and his family, and afterwards the whole tribe of Levi, for the exclusive performance of priestly duties; and it is expressly stated that God took the Levites to be especially His own instead of all the frsiborn among the children of Israel [Numbers iii. 5-13, and 40-51 ; viii. 5, &c. ; and xviii. 6). 117. This change was accompanied by a large further development, under special divine direction, of the sa- crificial system ; and by the institution of other marked rites and ceremonies of religious worship. But all had one great object in view, namely, to deepen, in the mind and conscience of the worshippers, the sense of sin and of the awful justice and holiness of God, of the barrier placed by sin between Man and God, and of the consequent need of Atonement, and that by blood. By the Law was to be the knoivledge of sin {Bo7n. iii. 20). By the commandment sin was to be seen to be exceeding sinful (vii. 13). The impossibility of drawing near to a holy God without the intervention of an ordained, and so acceptable, sacrifice of atone- v.] System in the Mosaic Covenant. 243 ment, the principle that ivithout shedding ofhlood there is no remission (Heh. ix. 22) — these were to be deeply and lastingly imprinted in the conscience of the Jewish Race, and, through them, on that of mankind; in order that so the necessaiy moral foundation might be laid, in the inner conviction of sin, and in the sense of guiltiness before God {Rom. iii. 19), for the joyful acceptance of the Gospel of salvation — i.e. of forgiveness and justification through faith in the hlood of Christ (25). To this great object tended the special institutions of the Sin-Offer- ing, as an addition to the primitive Whole-burnt- Ofiering and Peace-Ofifering ; of the Tabernacle, with its Holy of Holies unapproachable save by the High- Priest alone ; of the peculiar and significant Ritual of the Great Day of Atonement; and of the constant daily morning and evening sacrifice. All spoke, in striking and varied ways, of One Who was to come ; of One Who should be at once * Himself the Victim and Himself the Priest,' at once The Lamb of God, without hlemish and tvithout S'pot, and the one true and only and abiding Priest, the true Aaron and the true Melchize- dek, in Whose One Offering of Himself, made once for all, ' single and complete,' this whole elaborate and complicated, this burdensome, yet highly significant and expressive, system should be completely fulfilled and realized ; its whole substance and essential purpose absolutely secured for ever ; so completely, so abso- lutely, as to render its longer actual continuance fii"st needless and then mischievous; while the standing record of its divinely-ordained, though only temporary, provisions, was still preserved in the inspired volume R 2 244 ^^''^ underneath it lay the earlier [lect. of the Pentateuch, to teach the abiding principles which underlay them, and to point for ever, as the Christian student sees it to point, to Hira Who is the sum and substance of them all; and so to throw a most instruc- tive and always needed light on the whole redemptive work of the Christ, in principle and in detail, and so on the divinely-ordained constitution and usages of the Catholic Church. It was a great system of human mediation ; sanc- tioned and appointed by God Himself, yet actually administered by earthly agents. But it Avas, as a whole, like the Tabernacle, or Temple, which was its visible centre, a gigantic Parcible (Heh. ix. 9), looking forward to, all along, and lasting u^ to {eii) the time noiv present, the Christian Dispensation. It was a parable whereby the Holy Ghost was ever this signifying, to all who had spiritual apprehension to perceive it, that such a system was necessarily only provisional, because, in itself, essentially incomplete and ineffectual, wholly unable to make him that did the service jperfect as per- taining to the conscience, and so necessarily destined to lead up to, and, having led up to, to pass away before, the Perfect Work of Keconciliation and Atonement which should be wrought once for all by Him to Whom it pointed. 118. But it must be carefully remembered that underneath the Legal System inaugurated at Sinai there lay throughout, not superseded nor disannulled by its parenthetical character and temporary purpose, the knowledge of, and the faith in, that earlier Gospel of Justification by Faith, and consequent peace w4th God v.] Gospel of Jusiijication by faith, 245 and po-sver to walk with God, which had been iweaclied before to Abraham in days of old [Gal. iii, 8); and of which the record remained in the oldest traditions of the race and in their earliest Scriptures. ' The Church,' writes Bishop Moberly of Salisbury, 'believed in Christ and was accepted in the Beloved ages before He was born in Bethlehem ^' It was through a simple faith in that everlasting Gospel, then a forward-looking faith in Him That was to come, as it is now an upward-looking faith in Him Who has come, that the Legal System had whatever justifying power it had ; whatever ability to bring any peace to the sin-stricken conscience. But, joined with this gospel faith, the pious observance of the Mosaic Law, in humble loyalty to the God of Israel, did evidently bring peace to the conscience, and ensured acceptance with God, and the grace which could enable men and women to live a holy life well-pleasing to Him ; until the race should bloom at last into the spiritual grace and beauty of her whom all generations call blessed, the precious flower of royal David's line, the Lily of Nazareth, the Mother of God. Canon Barry writes, ' Our Ijord is declared (see I Pei.i. 20) "to have been fore-ordained" as a sacrifice " before the foundation of the world." . . . The material sacrifices represented this Great Atonement, as already made and accepted in God^s foreknowledge, and to those who grasped the ideas of sin, pardon, and self-dedication, symbolized in them, they were means of entering into the blessings which the One True Sacrifice alone procured. The whole of the Mosaic description of sacrifices clearly ^ Great Forty Days, Appendix, TJiird Edition, p. 285. 246 and grace through the Unseen Mediator, [lect. implies some real spiritual benefit to be derived from them.' (Article ' Sacrifice/ in Smiili's Bible Dictionary^ 1 1 9. And as it cannot be doubted that whatever knowledge of spiritual truth came to the saints of the older covenants came to them through the Son of God, the One Eevealer to Man, in whatever condition, of the things of God ; so neither can it be doubted that what- ever spiritual grace, whether of forgiveness or of sanc- tification, was vouchsafed to them — and the high level of possible spiritual attainment may be estimated by the examples of Elijah and Daniel and the Baptist, not to speak of Mary — was so vouchsafed through the secret action of the One Mediator through Whom alone all good things are given by God to Man. Even under the old Covenants, notwithstanding their immeasurable in- feriority to the New, the Holy Ghost, in whatever dif- ferent manner or measure, was truly given, as souls were able to receive Him. This is clearly witnessed to by Holy Scripture, as, for example, in David's great peni- tential prayer {Ps. li. 11, 12). It lies also in St. Stephen's declaration, to the worldly and unbelieving Church-Rulers of his day, that the resistance of them- selves and their predecessors to the light and grace and purpose of the system of which they were the official administrators, and their characteristic ill-treatment of the truest representatives of its real spirit, was a resistance to tJie Holy Ghost that arose from unconverted hearts {Ads vii. 51). 120. So again, whatever acceptance accrued to the worship and service, national or individual, of the Old Covenant, whatever degree it afforded of real communion v.] Levitical worship a shadow of the Heavenly. 247 mtli God, was due, as it could only have been due, to the unseen action of the One true and only Priest, Whose Priestly Function, in the making an effectual Atonement, in the acceptable presentation of Worship, in an all-prevailing Intercession, it was the one glory, as it was the underlying purpose, of the Mosaic Ritual to prefigure and to set forth. In regard to this point due weight must be given to the emphatic and repeated declaration that, in every particular, the Levitical system, the Tabernacle, its arrangements, its ritual, were the earthly copies of a heavenly pattern and original, revealed, first, to Moses in the Mount {Exod. xxv. 9 and 40 ; xxvi. 30 ; Ntim. viii. 4 ; Acts vii. 44 ; Heh. viii. 5), and again, by special inspiration, to David when he was preparing the plans for the Temple on Moriah (i Chron. xxviii. 12, 19). Above it all (so to speak) and behind and through it all, the eye of faith can, now at any rate, discern a heavenly reality then existing, yet kept in the back- ground until the actual Incarnation and the completed work on earth of Christ as the real Minister of the Sanctuary, and of the trne Tabernacle tvhich the Lord pitched, and not man {Heh. viii. 2), should render its full disclosure possible, and inaugurate a spiritual w^orship — the worship of the Catholic Church — which, though still necessarily under earthly conditions, is yet, in inner spiritual reality and power, and as apprehended by Christian faith, truly and absolutely one with the present worship of Heaven. Meantime, and until, through the Life and Death, through the Resurrection and Ascension, of the Incarnate Son, men could be 248 Meaning of the Partaking of sacrifices, [lect, admitted, through the Rent Veil, to the united worship of the one Family in heaven and earth {Eph. iii. 15), the Levitical High-Priest and the Levitical system nerved unto the copy and shadoiv (Heh. viii. 5), in dim paraboHc representation, of the sublime reaHties of the Heavenly Sanctuary. They faintly pictured, under earthly conditions, the invisible action of Him Who wsis foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world, hut was manifested at the end of the times (i Pet i. 20), Who, in purpose, to be outwardly and visibly realized and exhibited in due season, was already the Lamh slain from the foundation of the ivorld (Bev. xiii. 8). 121. The coiTespondence, in broad fi'imd facie unmistakable principle, and even in detail, between the sacrificial svstem of the Mosaic Law and the work of Christ in its propitiatory aspect, is so well under- stood that it is needless to dwell upon it further. More necessary is it to insist on the spiritual meaning of the actual participation, by eating and drinking, of the ancient sacrifices, as setting forth a connected and important, yet now less sufficiently and generally real- ized truth ; namely. That the Eternal Son of God is, especially as sacrificed, the true inward sustenance of the essential life of man ; a life supported, not merely by the mental contemplation, however devout and believing, of Christ and of His work, but by a real, however mysterious, communication and assimilation, throughout his whole being in body, soul, and spirit, of the life of the Second Adam as a Qiiichening Spirit (i Cor. XV. 45). The Primitive Sacrifices were either Whole Burnt- v.] Sin-Offering aii addition to Primitive Sacrifice. 249 Offerings, expressive of the complete dedication and consecration of the ofTcrer to God, or else Peace-Offer- ing's, of which part was offered to God by fire, and part eaten by the worshipper. The Unbloody Offering of Bread and AVine was an invariable accompaniment and append- age of both forms of animal sacrifice ; and this in Gentile as well as in Jewish usage. Of this, in like manner, one portion was offered to God, and the other partaken of by the worshipper. The ideas of this religious eating and drinking were those of peace and acceptance, of union and communion with God, manifested by the worshippers being received as guests at His Table (see the record, Exodus xxiv, of the Sacrifice on the great occasion of the Inauguration of the Mosaic Covenant) ; also of joyful thanksgiving and gratitude for this privilege; and, further, of the mutual love and peace and communion between the worshippers themselves. (See Uxod. xviii. 12; I Cor. X. 17.) The special Sin-Offering, and, with it, the greater prominence given to the generally expiatory character which necessarily from the first underlay all animal sacrifices, belong to the Levitical system, as designed to enforce upon the conscience the conviction of sin and the need of atonement. Once instituted, the Sin-Offering took precedence of the Burnt-Offering, the Peace- Offer- ino-, and the Meal-Offerin"-. This was in order to show the necessity of expiation before there could be accepted approach to God. This order may be observed in the two accounts of the Consecration of Aaron and his sons to the Priesthood [Exod. xxix. and Lei'it. viii). Of the Sin-Offering the worshipper did not partake [Levit. vi. 30). What was not offered upon the altar was consumed outside the camp. But in the completed system the Offer- ings which were partaken of, i. e. the Meal-Otfering ac- companying the Whole Burnt-Offering, the flesh of the Peace-Offering (see LeviL viii. 11 etc.), and the INfeal- Offering which accompanied the Peace-Offering, pre- 250 Significance of the 'Perpetual Passover' [lect. supposed, and were based upon, a preceding Sin-OfFering of atonement. The Mcal-OfFerings were partaken of by the priests exclusively. It was the flesh of the Peace- OfFering which was partaken of in common by the priests and the offerers, in token of communion with each other and with God. 122. But by far the most remarkable and significant occasion of the partaking by all of the flesh of the offered victim was that of the annual Passover. This was an institution unique and peculiar, and specially ordained by God under circumstances, and at a time, which were calculated to invest it for ever with peculiar solemnity. The sacrificial character of the ordinance cannot really be doubted by any who consider the pointedly sacrificial use of the blood ; which, like that of the Sin-Offering, was wholly poured out at the foot of the altar by the priests. Indeed it has been said with truth ' to embrace the peculiarities of all the various divisions of sacrifice^,' which were instituted as part of the later revelation made to Moses at Sinai. But in the ease of the Passover the flesh of the lamb was wholly eaten by the worshippers ; the expiatory feature being solely, though most pointedly, supplied by an outpouring of the blood. ' The whole substance of the sacrificed lamb was to enter into the substance of the people ^.' Their acceptance at God's Table as His children. His firstborn [Exod. iv. 22; Heh. xii. 23), an acceptance based on a sufficient atonement, was to be marked in the completest way possi ble ; and the truth was decisively indicated that the true sustenance of the life of man comes to him from communion with God. The full spiritual meaning of what is here typically expressed is, of course, apprehended only by Christian faith. The Passover-lamb was the most marked and special type of the Lamb of God That takefh aioay the sin ' Canon Barry, Art. Sacrifice in SmitJi's Bible Dictimiary. 2 Canon Cook, in Sj)eaker's Commentary on Exod. xii. 9. v.] The Unseen Christ fed His ancient People, 251 of the world ; and Who suffered exactly at the moment when the Passover lambs were sacrificed. But by lift- ing up the accompanying meal-offering and drink-offer- ing into a sublime significance and power ; by perpetuating them, while all other forms of sacrifice were abolished, as the standing memorial of His Saving Death ; He had provided a means whereby, in a wholly spiritual and heavenly mystery, His life-giving Humanity might be wholly communicated to His faithful people as the true Bread of Life. 123. But we have even more direct Scriptural ground for believing that, in some true sense, though not necessarily by them, or by all of them, understood or apprehended, Christ was Himself the Sustenance of His ancient people. St. Paul, in his First Epistle to the Corinthians, drawing a parallel, by way of warning, between the circumstances of Christians under the new Covenant and those of their forefathers under the old, points out the typical and pai-abolical character of the Church in the Wilderness on its way to the Promised Land, and speaks as if the close relation, as it was now perceived to have been, of the Son of God to the Church of old, was a commonplace among the Christian teachers of his day. He finds the analogue of the Christian Eucharist in the miraculous food and drink which supported the Israelites in their pilgrimage. They did all eat the same spiritual meat ; and did all drink the same spiritual drinlc, for they drank of that spiritual Bock that followed (or accompanied) them ; hut the Bock was Christ. What relation, if any, St, Paul's words may have to Jewish traditions supplementing the narrative of the Pentateuch we cannot here discuss. We need look only at two broad statements which he makes ; first, That the supply of Manna and of water was spiritual, i. e. miraculous or supernatural ; second, That the true, though unseen, agent of the supply was Christ. The narrative of Moses distinctly states that the supply 252 as part of His ever-zvatchfid care of them. [lect. of Manna was continuous ; it followed, or accompanied, them. It also mentions distinctly two occasions (at Rc'pliidim, Exod. xvii, in close connection with the first mention of the Manna, and at Kadesh, Nuinh. xx) on which water was procured by striking- the Rock. Whether there were other occasions of special need of water, and, if so, how that need was met, we are not expressly told ; though we mig-ht infer, perhaps, with the fairest proba- bility, that it would be by striking- the Rock. But the watchful ever-present though unseen protection of Christ over the Church in the wilderness is a truth, at any rate, that lies clearly in St. Paul's language in this place ; as also in his saying, a few verses later, Neither let tis tempt Christ, (or, tJie Loed), as some of them tempted ; implying that their faithless disobedient and presumptuous murmuring and complaining were really against Christ, Certainly I cannot believe that the real teaching of such passages as these, and of the Old Testament facts alluded to in them, is exhausted by the hypothesis of a merely typical prophetic reference to Christ and His work for or His gracious gifts to the Christian Church ; as if He as well as they were as yet wholly future ; as if He had not then a real existence in active, though hidden, relation to the then Dispensation and to those who were His People under that Dispensation. Neither can I look with patience on the untold loss of strength to the Christian argument, especially with Jewish unbelief, that •results (as I cannot help thinking) from a view which, however true as far as it goes, is wholly inadequate to cover the whole ground, to explain all the facts of the Old Testament History, or to lay that firm and broad foundation which Almighty God, in His earlier Church, in His earlier Scriptures, and in the ever-watchful con- trol of His 'never-failing Providence' in History, has really laid, for those stupendous superstructures, the Doctrines of the Trinity and of the Incarnation, and the v.] The Kingly Sovereignty of Christ 253 Institution of the Catholic Church, the King-dom of God on earth, with its Divine-Human Mediator in Heaven, operating at once there and on earth, which He has made one with Heaven, and supplying- all our needs through His Sacraments and means of grace. 124. Tlie third special aspect under which we have to consider the manifold operation of the unseen Me- diator under the elder Dispensation is that of His Kingly Sovereignty. It has always been the characteristic of unregenerato human nature to rebel against this Royalty of Christ, and to chafe under His stringent rule of absolute moral right, het lis hreak their honds asunder and cast away their cords from us {Ps. ii. 3). This has been due to two causes, one natural, one supernatural. There has been a natural tendency in man since the fall to rebel against the rule, in either form of it, secret or revealed, of the Mediator King, because His rule is necessarily one of absolute holiness, justice and goodness. To Him it is said {Ps. xlv. 7) : — Thy Throne, 0 God, is for ever and ever, The Sceptre of Thy Kingdom is a Sceptre of Equity, Tliou lovest righteousness and Jiatest unckedness. Before Him 'the unruly wills and affections of sinful men,' whether as tending to sin against themselves or against other men, or directly against Christ and Plis Throne, must be controlled and put down ; and His Law, whether of Sinai or of the Galilaean Mount, de- mands an absolute submission and observance. Against these claims unregenerate human nature must rebel. But behind this obvious cause there stands in the darkness the dread form of the Bival King, the head 2 54 opposed by the rival kingdom of evil, [lect. of another and a hostile kingdom, the Prince of Evil, Satan, the great ' adversary ' of all good ; one in whose arms tlie ivliole tvorld, as unredeemed and left to itself, lieth ; one v^ho could say, not without truth, of the power and glory of the kingdoms of this world, that they are his, and to whomsoever he wills he gives it, on the one condition of worshipping him. With him there stand, associated under his sway, mighty spirits of evil, princijjalities and j^oivers, rulers of the darkness of this world. From the devil and his angels has ever pro- ceeded, in the first instance, as from its original source, all conscious, purposed, organized resistance to the Kingdom and Sovereignty of the Son of God. Be- tween it and them there must be implacable hostility. And they are mysteriously permitted to entice mankind from their true allegiance, and to use them as the instruments of their deadly warfare against Christ and His Church, in their hopeless endeavour to de- throne Him from that Royal Lordship which is His by double right, of Creation and of Redemption ; or at least to hinder the progress of His Kingdom, and to retard its beneficent action among mankind. The cor- rupting influences of human sin, in its various forms of pride, ambition, selfishness, sensuality, covetousness, on human life and institutions, domestic, social, political, bring them down, even among professedly Christian nations, to so low a moral and spiritual condition that they may be only too easily wielded by the devices of the great statesmen of the kingdom of evil against the Kingdom and the Throne of Christ, and as means towards the ultimate accomplishment — an accomplish- v.] throitghout htimaii history. 255 ment which will we know be permitted to be realized for a brief period at the close of the present Dispen- sation— of what has been evidently their ceaseless endeavour all along, from Babel onwards, namely, to bring all the glory, and especially all the power and force, of the kingdoms of this world into one hand, under one sole master of a vast world-empire, who shall be the willing tool and vicegerent of the unseen Evil One, who, in and through him as the final Anti- clirist, shall receive, what he has ever lusted after, the worship of mankind, stamping out in blood and fire every known upholder of the rights of Christ and of His Church ac-ainst his unrio^hteous rule. 125. The careful student of the history of mankind traces the course of this prolonged strife, the one great inclusive question at issue in the world's probation ; and sees in it the real key to human history. M\lvov, aiKivov, eiire, to S' ev vikcltci) (' Sing a dirge, a dirge of sorrow ; yet let the good prevail : ' Aeschylus, Aga- memnon, 159), is his reflection and his prayer, as he ponders over the mingled misery and glory of its efiects in the past ; the misery of the sin and suffering, the hindrance and delay of God's purposes, resulting from the temporary victories of evil ; the moral glory and grandeur of all faithful witness to that which was good and true and right ; the joy of the ultimate successes won by patient endurance through the birth- throes which have lifted the world to each higher level of moral and spiritual light and life, and helped it forward on the path of the only true progress. In elder days, in the infancy and childhood of the 256 The conflict renewed after the Flood, [lect. human race, the Eeign and the Kingdom of Christ and the rival reign and kingdom of Satan were both in the background and unseen. They strove together in the arena of human life and history, themselves as yet undisclosed. In the Antediluvian World evil was in the end triumphant ; until the One Mediator, Who is also the Judge, came in predicted judgment and swept it away in the Visitation of the Flood. His Kingdom was reduced to a single family. It was cad doivn, hut not destroyed. The hopes of the world and the promise of Eedemption were carried over in the Ark, above the destroying waters of the deluge wherein the old world perished, to a fresh beginning, under covenant and promise, in new heavens and a new earth. But again the old struggle broke out afresh ; for the evil one had still his foothold in the world, in the sinful nature of man. The next climax was Babel ; the next catastrophe the Confusion of tongues, and the dis- persion of the earliest would-be founders of a secular world-empire. Still there was as yet no visible distinction between the Church and the World. The forces that strove together in the world of man were not, as yet, so out- wardly pronounced and accentuated as to be gathered apart into opposing camps. For it is the normal, and should be the ultimate, form of human society, that what we now distinguish as Church and State should be one ; only the same Society, of the same persons, in different aspects ; the social and political life of Man, and the powers and institutions which belong more v.] Primeval religion soon corrupted. 257 directly to that life, working Larmoniously with his moral and spiritual life and with the institutions de- signed to foster his progress towards the highest good ; and both operating consciously and as of set purpose, according to God's known and revealed Will, on the acknowledged basis of an authority in either case equally derived from Him. Such is the ideal. On such lines human history began. Some approach to its realization, in a simple and homely and rudimentary form, was possible on the narrow scale and amid the simpler arrangements of patriarchal times. But the growth of populous and extended empires, the gather- ing of men in great cities, the development of war, and its offspring, the slavery of captive men and women, were always against its proper and continuous evolution towards perfection ; for they all worked too exclusively on the side of that which, under whatever brilliant and seductive exterior, was mostly evil in its effects on the moral and religious life of all those who, whether as agents and promoters, or as helpless sufferers, came within their influence. Worship began to take idolatrous forms ; and the old primeval religion handed on by tradition began to be seriously corrupted in the direc- tion of Polytheism and gross superstition, with their inevitable accompaniment of increasing moral de- basement. Martcnsen says, * Among the various attempts to give a connected picture of the religious systems of heathen- dom, those of Hegel (in his philosophy of relig-ion) and of Schelling (in his newer system) are the most worthy of note. Without entering here into particulars, we must 258 Hence a 'ChurcJi called out from the world, [lect. explain our decided preference for that of Sehelling-, because he has endeavoured to draw a distinct line of demarcation between Mythology and Revelation, between the wild and the noble olive tree ; whereas Hegel looks upon all religions as branches of one and the same stem, whose top and crown is Christianity. The fact that Hegel, in his philosoj^hy of religion, looks upon the Greek, the Jewish, the Roman religions, as ramifications of the same development, clearly shows that he overlooked the decided divergence of the history of religion in two separate directions/ [Christian Dogmatics, § 120,) Hence it became necessary, if a witness to true re- ligion was to be preserved among mankind, that a ' Church ^ should be created, a body of men ' called out ' from the general mass of mankind, and the founda- tions laid of a Kingdom of Heaven upon earth, in the world, but not of it. For earth, as such, or rather the world of human life on earth, was no longer part of the Kingdom of Heaven, since its forces and institutions had been so largely laid hold of by an usurping evil power which had turned them against their own true Founder and Lord. Wherefore the One Mediator, the Eoyal Son, and Heir of all things, secured for Himself, in the Call of His faithful servant Abraham, a fresh footing in the world that of right was all His own. By that act He laid the foundations of a Church which should be His special and avowed Kingdom ; and which, though its life must ever be that of a beleaguered fort- ress surrounded by hostile invaders \ should be, as a city set on an hill that cannot he hid, His standing ^ A TTapefjL^oXrj, see Speaher^s Commentary on Rev. xx. 9. v.] The Theocratic constitution of Israel 259 visible witness in the world which is, de jure, His own, and tlie pledge of its future complete re-conquest. That Church has had a continuous, however che- quered, existence ever since. The Bible and Christian history are the record of its life and work under the guiding hand of its Founder and its King, its Protector and also its Judge. 1 26. The creation of the national life of the Israelites, after their deliverance from their lengthened bondage under the world-power in Egypt, its development in connection with their religious mission as the then Church of God on earth, and the Theocratic Con- stitution of the whole under God manifesting Himself in His Son as their King, w^as (as we may say) an endeavour to revert to the true Ideal. It w^as an endeavour to create, on a scale not so large as to endanger its success, yet in a locality so central as to make it widely influential, a specimen of a rightly ordered human polity ; which should secure, in the form and to the degree then attainable, the higher ends of human life ; and should, further, serve as an example to the world of man's true relation, individually and nationally, to God and to the world, and, in their essential principles and inner spirit, of the institutions best adapted to maintain men and nations in that relation. This again was a new beginning in human history; and of an important kind. A change had come over the religion and sjjirit of Egypt since Joseph's time ; a change for the worse, morally and religiously. A comparatively pure religion (for a devout servant of s 2 26o a re-assertion of the Divine Royalty of [lect, God like Joseph could marry the daughter of one of its priests) had degenerated into an idolatrous super- stition, with features, at least in its exoteric manifes- tations, of the grossest kind. Selfish vaingloriousness and covetousness were the characteristics of the rulers, who gratified themselves at the cost of untold misery to the people. The Church of God, once protected, was oppressed. But a day at once of deliverance and of judgment came, when Tlie Angel of the Lord ap- peared to Moses in the flame of fire in the bush. That Angel was (we have seen) the Lord (Jehovah), the Messenger of the Lord (Jehovah) ; the Same Who had appeared to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob ; the God of their fathers, Who, for the deliverance of His Peo- ple, woidd make bare His holy Arm in the sight of the Nations. His message by His specially -appointed earthly ambassador to the earthly king, who had made himself but an instrument of Satan, was the royal mandate of the real King both of Israel and of Egypt, Let My People go, that they may serve Me. Warning was given on refusal ; and gentler preliminary judg- ments inflicted in mercy were a call to, and an op- portunity of, repentance. At length, after reiterated appeal in vain, when the blind world-power finally refused in its unbelief to see the spiritual, and so invincible, character of that with which (or, should we not rather say \ the Divine Omnipotence of Llim with Whom) it was contending, the hour, of deliverance for the one and judgment for the other, struck on that much to be remembered night when, at midnight, there arose a great cry throughout all the land of Egypt, v.] the Eternal Son, Who judged Egypt, 261 for tliere ivas not a house wliere there was not one dead : and a few days later the decisive blow was dealt, when, as for Fharaoh and his host, He overwhelmed them in the Bed Sea. That was a Bay of Judgment for the land of Egypt, the world of that day ; and the Judge was He to Whom the Father hath committed all judg- ment, even His Eternal Son, ' The Mediator in His wrath Descending down the lightning's path,' (Christian Year, Easter F), for the discomfiture of the enemies of His people, whose affliction He had seen, and whom He came down, in His love and in His jtity, to deliver. Then tlie re- joicing Leader and the ransomed Nation sang their grateful praise in one of the most glorious bursts of inspired poetry: — In the greatness of Thy Majesty Thou hast overthrown tJiem that rose up against Thee. ****** Thou in Thy Mercy hast led forth the People whom Thou hast redeemed, Thou hast guided them in Thy strength imto Thy Jioly habitation. ****** Thou wilt bring them in and 2>i(int them In the mountain of Thine inheritance, The 2)lace, 0 Lord, which Thou hast made for Thee to dwell in, TJie Sanctuary, 0 Lord, which Thy hands have established. The Lord shall reign for ever and ever. {Exodus xv.) In all this we see a typical and exemplary instance of the mingled exercise of mercy and judgment by the One Mediator in His character and function of the Ilighteous Judge and King. 262 and Amalek, and Canaan. [lect. 127. A lesser instance followed quickly, Avhen Moses, with his hands upheld by Aaron and Hur on the hill a,bove, represented the unseen Interceding Power, and Joshua below, re2:)resenting the unseen Royal and Judicial Powder, fought with Amalek, and discomjited Mm and his j)eoj)le with the edge of the sivord. And the LoED said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in a hook, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua ; for I ivill utterly ^ut out the rememhrance of Amaleh from under heaven. Why ? Because the hand of Amalek is against the throne of the Lcrb, the Lobb ivill have war with Amalek from generation to generation. (See Exodus xvii. 8-16. The correct translation of ver. 16 is that in the margin. See Sjpeakers Commentary.) 128. But this, significant as it was, was but the foreshadowing of the greater work entrusted to Joshua a few years later in God's tremendous Visitation of Judgment against the Seven wicked Nations of Canaan, whose iniquity, at length, was full. This event is especially to be regarded as a solemn judicial Act of God, a Day of Judgment and of vengeance on out- rasfeous wickedness, like the Visitation of the Flood, or that on Sodom and Gomorrah. Effected by the instrumentality of the Israelites, it was the solemn act of the Unseen King, the righteous Judge, strong and patient, Who, though too often ignored and unac- knowledged, even by Christian Nations, yet throughout human history ever standeth before the door {St. James V. 9). It is one great function of the divinely-recorded history of the People of Israel to exhibit in operation, now on themselves, now among Heathen Nations, as it v.] God the Son especially Uke God of Israel;' 263 is one great function of Hebrew Prophecy, like the song of a bystanding Chorus, to draw attention to, the Divine Administration and Government of human atfairs, and the consequent sure vindication, in the long run, of the essential and eternal distinction be- tween right and wrong, the consequent sure witness borne to the truths that, over al], the Unseen Lord is King, and that it is only righteousness (that is, allegiance to Him and to His broad Moral Law), that permanently exaltetli a nation. 129. God, as revealed in the Person of the Son, was in an especial manner ' The God of Israel.' The markedly Theocratic character of the Mosaic Legis- lation, in its original idea, left no place for a visible or human king. It regarded the institution of an earthly monarch, even though understood to be but the visible representative, the earthly vicegerent, of Jehovah, as a deflection from the perfect original ideal ; a condescension to human infirmity, and to an earthliness of aims, which was sure to draw mis- chief after it, though it might be controlled and overruled for good. In truth the Lord was their King, ever-present, though invisible ; His Presence was visibly and locally symbolised by the Cloudy Fiery Pillar that rested over the Tabernacle, which was His Palace, His dwelling-place among them. The Mercy-Seat, placed upon the Ark of the Covenant within the Holy of Holies, was His Poyal Throne, where He visibly dwelt, during the period of the first Temple, in the Shekinah, the cloud of glory, between the Cherubim. 264 and their King ; seen by Isaiah, [lect. There the great Gospel Prophet saw Him, the Lord {Adonay) sitting u^on a throne high and lifted u]) ; and his train filed the temple. Above it stood sera- phim . . . And one cried unto another and said, Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of hosts ! . . . Then said I, Woe unto me, for I am undone . . .for mine eyes have seen the King, the Loed of hosts. (Isaiah vi.) And from the King Himself Isaiah received, like St. Paul, His direct commission as His ambassador, His Pro- phet. His eyes saw Him whom the Elders of the Chosen Hace, in the first generation of their national history, saw with Moses and Aaron, when they saio the God of Israel, on the great occasion of the Covenant- Sacrifice. {Exodus xxiv.) But He whom they and Isaiah saw was not the Father, nor the Holy Trinity, Whom no man hath seen, nor can see ; though the threefold Sanctus bears witness to the then, as every- where and always, equal and indivisible presence of the Divine Three. Equally jDresent They were ; for They are inseparable in presence as in operation ; yet not equally sensibly manifest or visible. To be so manifested, in visible form, on temporary occasion as of old, or in gracious permanence through the Human Nature, which He took for ever in His In- carnation, is the unique and special condescension of the Son, the One Mediator ; and for the purposes of His Mediation, as the Divine Agent of God's purposes amongst mankind. Him Isaiah saw, as the beloved disciple witnesses. (St. John xii. 41.) He saio His glory (His who afterwards became our Jesus), and He sjpahe of Him. Him he saw ; and doubtless in human v.] luor shipped by, riding, and protccti^ig 265 form, however overwhelmingly majestic and sub- lime. Him the Seraphim worshipped ; and to Him, thus mysteriously enthroned amongst them, with, as we Christians know, the Father and the Spirit, One wdth Him, as He with Them, w^as the loyalty of the re- deemed Nation exclusively due ; to Him the God of Israel, their King, their Protector, when they were faithful and obedient, their Judge when they rebelled and disobeyed, and gave His honour to them that were no gods. To Him went up the daily tribute of offered sacrifice and incense and of vocal praise, in a divinely- appointed elaborate and costly worship, through the hands of an appointed Priesthood who were the officers of His Court. From Him, through the instrumentality of His appointed ambassadors the Prophets, from Moses and Samuel onwards, came the authorized and unap- pealable teaching of either the Written Code as given at Sinai, or the inspired word of the living Prophet, saying, Thus saith the Lord. And this sufficed for the normal and regular life of the Jewish People, as Church and Nation, both in one. From Him also, as occasion was, came the stirring summons to a Moses, or a Joshua, a Gideon, a Barak, to stand forth, as the heaven-sent leader and commander of the People, in their warfare against their enemies. From Him came also the victory that was granted them, often through, apparently, wholly inadequate means. But this ruling and military action was not provided for by any standing institution or order of men resting on a basis of original divine appointment, like the Priestly 2 66 tJie Chosen People; and visiting them [lect, and Proplietic orders ; and so far as it, quite naturally, arose after and out of the institution of the Monarchy, it was condemned ; especially as involving anything like a standing army. This, because War was not, in any of its forms, the business of God's People. The Conquest under Joshua was wholly exceptional ; wholly indefensible, except as resting on the express and un- doubted command of Him Who vised the sword of Joshua as His instrument of judgment against the Wicked Nations. While defensive wars, or wars of deliverance from oppression, were only the result of their national unfaithfulness and their deflection from the divinely-given ideal. Had they as a nation stead- fastly soiiglit first the Kingdom of God, and its rigliteous- ness, they had been exempt from these cliastisements ; which yet were in mercy, the greatest mercy possible under the circumstances which their wilfulness and disobedience had created for themselves. 130. Under the Judges and under the Monarchy, before the Disruption, and, after it, in the separate careers of Judah and Israel, successive examples occur to illustrate the controlling Kule of the unseen King and His various disciplinary dealing with them, in mercy or in judgment, according as the nation was faithful to its high vocation, or lapsed and failed in its allegiance and was enticed into the high treason of idolatry. But for the more signal instances of its exercise we naturally look to the catastrophes in either case ; the judicial Visitations which, after prolonged but, alas, useless warning, closed the history of the Ten Tribes in a sense, and as a nation, for ever, of v.] with J2idgment for their si?is ; 267 the less faithless Judah for a time. These events, duly considered, are full of the most important teaching as to the principles on which the Mediator-King deals with His earthly Church and Kingdom, whose Lord and Judce He is as well as her Saviour and Eedeemer \ For He is Tlie Loud, the Loud God, merciful and gra- cious, longsiiffering, and abundant in goodness and truth; heejnng mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and trans- gression and sin ; and that ivill hy no means clear the guilty ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers ujpon the chil- dren, and ujpon the children's children, unto the third and, to the fourth generation. Such was the solemn declar- ation of the character of Him Who dealt with Israel, and of the grand principles of His government {Exod. xxxiv. 5, where see S'peahers Commentary). 131. The first downfall of Jerusalem and of the Jewish Church beneath the Chaldaean Empire is doubt- less to be regarded as a true Day of the Lord, a true Comiiig of the Lord to judgment. Yet even in the crash of that terrible Visitation, the faithful remnant were preserved ; for the sake of future hopes, and for the sake of past promises on which those hopes were based. For they are the promises of One Who cannot fail ; they are the word of One Who hath sivorn hy Himself, and Wliose gifts and calling are therefore aneraixeXr^Ta (not repented of, or subject to change of jnirpose on ' ' TIic Last Judgment must be regarded not as an isolated act, but as the, in the highest sense, natural, result of all that precedes, the crown of the whole of that judicial activity of the King of the Kingdom of God, which extends throughout all history.' Van Oosterzee, Christian Dogmatics, cxlvii. 2. 268 judging also their enemies and oppressors, [lect. His part). On them the faithful minority could rest : and, as represented by the Prophet Micah, could say (vii. 18-20), ^Yllo is a God like unto Thee, Tliat 2)ardoneth iniquity, And 2>(isset7i over t/ie transgression of the remnant of His heritage! He retaineth not His anger for ever, because He delighteth in mercy. He will turn again, He will have compassion upon us; He will subdue our iniquities; And Thou wilt cast all their sins into the depth of the sea. Thou wilt perform the truth to Jacob, the mercy to Abraham, Which Thou hast sioorn unto our Fathers from the days of old. Closely, and very instructively, accompanying the visitation of the unfaithful Church, came also the judg- ment on the tyrant and oppressive world-power. The same Almighty Hand, as it had already crushed Nine- veh, so, using Cyrus and his Medes and Persians as its instrument, it swept away that proud Babylonian Empire which, under Nebuchadnezzar, had been itself the agent of God's chastisement upon the backsliding Church and Nation. The nation to whom they shall he in hondage ivill I judge, said God, of Egypt the oppres- sor of Israel of old ; and the same was true now of cruel and idolatrous Babylon, the haughty conqueror of Jerusalem. 132. From the first, the temporary, downfall, capti- vity, and dispersion, our thoughts are carried instinc- tively onwards to that greater and unparalleled Catas- trophe of which it was but the typical shadow and forewarning ; and we look with awe on that Day of Judgment upon the Jewish Church and Nation when, after their decisive rejection of their King in His nearest and most gracious self-revelation to them, the v.] Grandeur of tJic calling of Israel. 269 Roman armies were the angels of His wrath, and tlie eagles gcdlitred together round the carcase. If thou hadst knoivn, at least in that thy day — is the reflection tliat rises irresistibly to our lips. Had they rightly conceived and duly laid to heart their high destiny, their unique and unparalleled mission, in the centre of the nations of the earth, on the great high- way, between East and West, between North and South, of the Ancient World ; had they as a nation realized, in their full glory and blessedness, the singular privi- lege of their special nearness to God, their guaranteed prosperity, in the highest and truest sense, under His wing, and the grandeur of the work which He had given them to do for Him and for Mankind ; they had then, in the first place, furnished to the world in its secular, its natural, aspect, a much needed example of a well-ordered and permanent state, with the best secu- rities for the most solid earthly happiness, national, domestic, social, and individual ; under the most fa- vourable conditions for the steady development of all that is best and most precious, as well as most digni- fied, in human nature. Then, and far more importantly, had they, in the second place, and at the same time, more completely subserved the intentions of the Divine iraiSa- ycoyog (Educator) in holding up the light of spiritual and religious truth and the example of devout God-fear- ing life and conduct, and in extending the remedial in- fluences of these (as a leaven) among other nations. The illumination vouchsafed to Moses enabled him to con- ceive something of this sort, and with inspired fervour to set it before the Israelites ; as, for instance, more especi- 270 What might have been [lect. ally, in the Book of Deuteronomy. The same inspira- tion enabled the Prophets of Israel, from time to time, in glowing God-breathed words of warm appeal, to re- call tlie tlioughts of a stijf necked and rebellious jyeojyle to some w^orthier sense of their high and noble calling. And the glory and beauty of that calling, thus set forth, may have been more or less fully, more or less steadily, apprehended by some at least of the elect spirits of the Jewish Church. Such as were loyal and faithful, it may have been in lowly place and in lives of humble obscurity, helped on, in their measure, the mighty purpose, whether they knew it or not, whether they entered consciously and sympathetically into it or not, by the mere goodness and blessedness of lives spent in loyal love and dutiful obedience to God, the God of Israel, their King. Had such appeals been more suc- cessful, had such lives been more generally character- istic of the Nation than they were, we can well imagine how much more rapidly the Divine Education of the world, so largely dependent as it was on the progress and fortunes of the Jewish race, might have developed itself, and ripened, both among Jews and Gentiles, into an earlier readiness for the Christ, the true King, not of the Jews only, but of all Mankind, the Saviour of the World. Then had the fulness of the time, waiting so mysteriously on human wills, and arrested and delayed by human wilfulness and perversity, and by sin-engen- dered incapacity for receiving spiritual ideas, come ear- lier (and, may we say % more blessedly), than it did. Then, possibly, He had cowe unto His 0201, and His own had received Him. Then, possibly, had the Jewish v.] had they been faithful to it. 2 7 1 Church and Nation, as such, and not its children only, welcomed Him with loud and genuine Hosannas to the Son of David. Then, possibly, with joyful unanimity, and without a catastrophe which has no parallel in history, had a Christianised Judaism, the Old Covenant dissolving and transfigured without a breach into the New, found in the Jews, not its most bigoted and violent antagonists, but most fervent and effectual missionaries for the spread of the glad tidings of moral deliverance throughout the world. Then, possibly, had the King- dom of God come in peace as well as in power; without the birth-pangs which marked the deliverance of the Christian daughter from the Jewish mother ; and those times of restitution the sooner and the more fully come, the pictured glories of which stand forth in the glow- ing descriptions of the inspired Prophets of both Cove- nants ^ ; glories which have received an immeasurably ^ I add here a valuable passage from Canon Boyd Carpenter's Expo- sition of the Apocalypse (chap, vi, in Bishop Ellicott's New Testament Commentary for English Readers), which I did not see until some months after this Lecture was written ; — ' There are two lines of thought in the Bible, and these give rise to two apparently contradic- tory sets of pictures. There are the pictures of wliat would be the state of the world were the principles of Christ fully and universally accepted ; and there are the pictures of the world as it will be because men do not fully accept them. The first set are the ideal, and include the abolition of war, social injustice, poverty, when the golden age and reign of righteousness shall dawn. When, however, we speak of this as ideal, we do not imply that it is visionary ; it is the sober statement of what would actually take place were the rule of Christ admitted in the hearts and lives of men, and what will take place whenever they do so. But between this grand possibility and its realization stands the way- ward, and tortuous, and weakened human will, which either rejects or fatally but half adopts the teachings of God. This will of man, seen in 272 TJic full ^Restitution'' still delayed. [lect. laro-er measure of realization in the Catholic Church of the times of the Gentiles, as they received a faint and sliadowy realization m the re-constituted Church and the rebuilt Temple of the Return from the Captivity ; but which vi^ait yet for a fuller and grander develop- a world which is directly hostile to Christ, and in a Church which is but half faithful to Him, must be convinced ere the true ideal of Christ shall be attained, and the fulness of His kingdom made manifest. Thus the ideal pictures are postponed, and the world, which might have been saved by love speaking in gentleness, must be saved by love speaking so as by fire. Now in the earlier Christian times the hope of an ideal kingdom, soon to be realized in the immediate establishment of Christ's kingdom, was very strong. The first disciples yearned to see it imme- diately set up. " Wilt Thou at this time restore the kingdom % " The golden light of hope lingered long in their minds ; they lived in the memory of those pi'ophecies which foretold the cessation of wai', sorrow, pain, and death. They thought, now that Christ had come, the Mes- sianic kingdom in its utter gladness must immediately appear. They forgot the Prince's visit to the far country ; they forgot the citizens who hated Him, and rejected His rule ; they forgot the session at God's right hand till His enemies were made His footstool. They thought the day of the Lord, in the sense of the perfecting of His i-eign, was at hand ; they forgot that the Heavenly Bridegroom must gird His sword upon His thigh, and that His arrows must be sharp in the heart of the King's enemies {Ps. xlv. 3, 5). The vision of these seven seals is the repeti- tion of the warning against such forgetfulness. The ideal Kingdom might come if mankind would receive it, but it must be established by conviction, not by coercion ; and so the actual liistory of the growth of the Kingdom would be different from the ideal ; the Church, like her Master, must be made perfect through sufferings ; where He was, His servant must be; through much tribulation the Kingdom must be entered. The seals unfold, then, the general aspects of the world's history after Christ's ascension. Certain features would continue ; war, famine, disease, death would remain. They might, indeed, have been abolished had Christ's own received Him ; but as it was, the fact of the world's will being in opposition to God's will opposed the mani- festation of the peaceful Kingdom.' v.] Modern critical study of the Bible 273 ment when ilie times of the Gentiles shall be fulfilled, and the long-suspended destiny of Israel as an instru- ment in the hand of God shall at length be manifested as life from the dead; when the heart of the blind Nation shall turn, at last, to their one true Lord and King, and the veil shall be tahen cnvay from their eyes, and Joseph shall be revealed to his brethren, in His love, and in His Majesty and Power. To think thus, whether in respect of what might have been or of what may yet be, is not, as some miglit deem, to give the rein to baseless fancies. We are persuaded that the observant and believing student of Revelation as a whole must think otherwise. 133. Much patient and valuable labour, and of a kmd that needed to be done, has been bestowed in the course of the last fifty years on the outer criticism of the writings in which Revelation is enshrined. The freest handling has been liberally applied. Every con- ceivable theory, as to their origin, authorship, date, text, integrity, and authenticity, has been broached ; and has been, or is in process of being, warmly and eagerly discussed. Much that is true and valuable will, no doubt, be reached as the total abiding result of such discussion, when it has had its perfect work. That day is not yet ; as the indefensible alterations of the Greek Text of the New Testament, in tlie recent Westminster Revision, very plainly show. But that the final result, whensoever, and after whatsoever oscillations of opinion, it shall at length be attained, will only be to set in a clearer liglit than ever the essential truth of the great historic Revelation of which the Bible is the record, the T 2 74 often too partial and microscopic. [lect, believing and instructed Christian, who never doubted it, begins already distinctly to perceive. It is well that the gold should be tried in the fire : its purity will thus be only the more clearly demonstrated. But it may be doubted whether such minute critical investigations do not tend, (like the modern realistic fashion of dwell- ing so much on the outer earthly setting of Beve- lation, and the profuse illustration of its history and its personages from Eastern manners, customs, and loca- lities, and from contemporary history,) to draw away men's interest and attention, to some extent, from the Revelation itself. It may be doubted whether the microscopic study of its several component parts does not interfere with the perception of its general cohesion and meaning as a whole. Yet it is only by careful and balanced study of God's Eevelation as a whole, gradually developed under the action of His Providence in human history until its final completion in the Incarnate Christ, and illustrated by the after history of the Church and of the World, that a true, an adequate, a growing, con- ception of its meaning can be attained ; or a firm assur- ance of its impregnable position, as a light shining in a ilarh 2)lcicey in the deepening conflict of the Faith with unbelief, be secured ; and the true principles of its full interpretation, especially as bearing on the future de- velopment of the Divine purposes in human history, be discovered. No more necessary work, it would seem, can be done, in these days, than to recall men's thoughts from this minute piecemeal study, in a disputatious and often a pedantic spirit, of the outside preliminary ques- tions and circumstances of Revelation, to its inner v.] The study of God's Purpose is permissible. 275 essence and principles as a whole ; for as a whole it must in the long run be accepted or rejected. 134. Some endeavour to grasp the Almighty's ideal purpose (if we may so express ourselves), in His Self- manifestation, whether in Nature or in Grace, notwith- standing its having been so far crossed and its realiza- tion delayed, within the scope of man's world, by dis- obedience and sin, is (it may well be thought) both permissible and helpful to the loyal believer ; whose one desire is to be faithful to it, so far as he knows it, and so far as his powers and circumstances, environed and imprisoned as he is by infirmity and imperfection, will permit. It is permissible, for such things tlie angels desire to looh into ; and we much more, by how much they concern us more closely, since they are for us a matter of life and death ; and, again, because, to a certain extent, and up to the limit of such extent, the materials for such an endeavour are supplied to our reverent con- templation ; in Nature, as dutifully studied by candid and patient Science, in Kevelation, and in the course of human History before and since the Incarnation. Fur- ther, the devout study of God's Purpose, as revealed, is not only permissible but useful, and even necessary. So far as it is revealed, it is surely revealed in order that his servants may understand it, and concur with it, and co-operate with PHm for its furtherance, for the good of all. The mischievous effects of the want of a sufhcient appreciation of it are seen in the narrowness of view which thinks only of future individual salva- tion, and is a ready prey to that spirit of disunion and separation which is the bane of modern Christianity. T 2 276 The assistance of the Holy Ghost is promised, [lect. The true conception of a Christian is of a man now already consciously redeemed and saved by Christ ; filled by Him with a new life throughout his moral and spiri- tual nature, and that life the indwelling force and power of the Holy Spirit of God. He is a man pledged to serve his Saviour, whose he is, with all liLs powers ; and enlisted for that very purpose in the ' Salvation Army' which Christ formed for the conquest of the world, the Catholic Church, the whole company of Baptized Be- hevers throughout the world; a man who, saved himself, desires to help all others, as he can, out of the 'power of darhiess into the Kingdom — the present Kingdom, full of life and joy and blessedness — of God's dear Son. In the case of the English-speaking peoples, even among earnest believers in the essential truths of Christian faith, the idea of the Kingdom of Heaven, of the Church as a corporate whole, an organized body — the Body, and the Kingdom, of the Christ — and of its insti- tution as such by Him for the very purpose of its being an unequalled power in the world for good, has been almost lost ; and with it, to a very great extent, as our lamentable and even ridiculous failures show, the power of really adequate and successful missionary effort, whe- ther at home or abroad. 135. To the exercise of their powers by Christian believers in the endeavour rightly to understand, and so to work with, the drift of God's revealed purpose and method, the assistance of the Holy Ghost is pro- mised. In other times, the special direction given by the circumstances and necessities of the day to general Christian thought has led to a fuller realization, which v.] to lead Christians to fuller truth, i^j"] has been almost like a fresh discovery, of previously latent truth. Compare Dorner, Person of Christ, vol, i. Introd. p. 48, ' History of Dogmas has to show how the objective tendency concerning Christ, given for all times, is, in the entire fulness of all its elements, more and more disclosed to the consciousness of the Church in virtue of her work, conducted by the Holy Ghost. No generation of the Church, least of all the first, has the entire riches of the Apostolic preaching vitally in it : the word of Christ and His Apostles rather stretches beyond and over each, as the all-sufficient norm, even to the end o.f time.' And DoUinger, First Age, Preface, p. viii, 'Christians themselves £i. e. of the First Age] were very far from appreciating the reach, and the force for the world's culture, of those spiritual and moral powers laid up in the bosom of their society, and entrusted to their care and administration. On the other hand nearly two thousand years of Christian history are spread before our eyes ; we are in a position to embrace and measure the process of development working itself out by an internal law of necessary sequence, a continually advancing and constructive process, never, indeed, transcending the original fulness of its internal being, but far surpassing the simple outlines and primitive forms of thought and life in the Apostolic age. In the light of this long experience, where every age is a commentary to illustrate the preceding one, we can pierce more deeply into the teachings of the Apostolic Church, and exhibit all its bearings more fully than former generations could.' This process has also led to a hardly less blessed revision of opinions largely held, and sometimes, un- happily, enforced, at least in portions of the divided Church, but which varied from the real truth of Keve- lation by either defect or distortion or exaggeration. 278 and, especially, to worthier thoughts [lect. We cannot refuse to hope and believe that there is vet room, as there certainly is need, in the Church of the present and of the near future, for the further bene- ficial operation of a similar jorocess in both its forms ; First, in the revision of current opinions, often the lifeless residuum of old controversies between partial and one- sided schools of thought, and now simply a dead-weight on Christian thought and a stumbling-block to faith ; and also in the bringing forth into the light, as the realized and consciously-held possession of the Christian Body, of truths, — it may be germinant and pregnant truths, and, in future circumstances of the Church, highly practical and controlling truths, — which are, as yet, an unused part of the deposit, latent and unper- ceived, or, if once present to the mind of the Church, since overlaid and forgotten. Among these will be a fidler, worthier, grasp of the great conception of the Kingdom of Heaven, and a quickened appreciation of the Royalty of Christ, as the Only-Begotten Son of God, the Sovereign Heir of all things ; and more especially of His claims in His relation to the whole human world, as King, the Prince of the Kings of the Earth, the one perfect Ideal Man, the Head of the Church and of Humanity, the King of Kings, and Lord of Lords. And this we may expect to be accompanied by a stronger sense of the paramount duty,before all things, of earnest loyalty to Him, of earnest work for Him, and for His kingdom ; and, springing out of this, a drawing together of those who call Him their Lord and King into a closer love and union with each other, as part of His most clearly expressed will ; v.] of the Royalty of Christ. lyi) a more wholesome dread of offending Him and drawing down His judgments by breach of His commandments, or hindrance of the progress of His kingdom, or re- sistance to His holy rule of moral righteousness in personal, or in public life, religious or secular \ ' An interesting illustration of the value of the due presentation of the Royalty of Christ comes (November, 1882) from the missionary field of East Central Africa. The Rev. Chauncy Maples, of the Universities Mis- sion, in a Paper on The Method of evangelising uncultured Ro/ces (No. 9 of Occasional Papers, Oxford Mission Press, Calcutta), writes thus : — ' The fact is certain that here where I am writing (at Masasi) it is the doctrine of Christ the Eternal Son of God, the King of men and angels — together indeed with the central fact of the Incarnation, and the Sacrifice of the Cross — that, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, has proved the attractive power, compelling belief in and attention to the preach- ing of Christianity. Even while saying that the sacrifice of Christ's Death has drawn them, I cannot but add that it was the fact of the Offering made by the Person of the Son of God that seems to have filled them with awe, and brought them to the very foot of the Cross . . . the Majesty of Christ has compelled their allegiance, and brought them to Him in fear and awe with a sense that they must obey . . . God in His attribute of infinite and absolute Power is thoroughly believed in by all the native races. From this we start . . . Next we .speak of His Kingdom upon earth, and exhibit Him as conferring the Government upon His Son, and sending Him down to us to take His great power and reign. By this time we have reached a doctrine which will not sound strange in their ears. jSIassing themselves as they do under their local chieftains . . . they yield them a cheerful and hearty obedience . . . with all this practical and daily recognition of their duty as subjects of a king they hear of the Onniipotent One as their great King, and not theirs only but the King of all nations and kindreds and tongues . . . Messiah the Anointed One they bow before, ere they have learned to realize that He and Jesus the Saviour are one. That God's Son is God, co-equal in majesty, power, and miglit, co- equal in the Godhead, with the Fatlier, suggests no doubt to their mind. Henceforth God the Omnipotent is for them Messiah their King, and they press forward for admission to His Kingdom.' LECTURE YI. THE INCARNATION; THE WORK OF THE INCARNATE MEDIATOR, ON EARTH, AND IN THE UNSEEN. St, John i. 14. 'O Ao'yos aap^ eyevero, /cat kcxKrivciXT^v kv rjfxiv. (The Word became Flesh, and tabernacled among us.) 136. At length the fulness of the time was come. Even the non-Christian student of history is compelled to admit the propriety of the expression as applied to a period when, if ever, some new birth of time, some fresh and powerful spiritual upheaving, might suitably find its place, as the close of one epoch, the beginning of another. Many extended forms of secular civilization, in some of which the material elements of human great- ness, in others the intellectual, in others the political, predominated, had in their turn arisen. All but the last, the Eoman, had fallen into decay; leaving such permanent elements as they had for the possession of the future. Many ancient forms of religion, all origi- nally containing elements of truth from primeval tra- dition, had run their several courses downward, into degeneracy and corruption ; and had all, without excep- tion, practically passed away. Moral forces (I am speak- ing, of course, of the Heathen world), had also equally exhausted themselves. Their failure, operating, as it ever must, to the degradation of personal, domestic, and social life, and not without its effect in the disin- \ The 'fulness of the time^ 281 tegration also of political life, and consequent develop- ment of despotic imperialism, had produced the condi- tion of society which the literary remains of its own historians and poets — and, remembering the loathsome revelations of Herculaneum and Pompeii, we may add, its monumental and artistic remains also — combine with Saint Paul to describe, to our horror indeed, but also for our warning. Not less marked symptoms of impending change are discernible in the condition of God's ancient People. The scei^tre had departed from Judali {Gen. xlix. 10). Roman procurators and gover- nors ruled Syria and Palestine. Caesar's coinage was current in the Holy Land. His legions kejDt the peace at Caesarea and in Jerusalem. The old Theocracy was in all but its last stage. It had but one more oppor- tunity to reject before its fall. Yet its subjects were now a world-wide people. Its moral and spiritual influence were more widely extended than ever. In every city of the Homan Empire, and beyond it, was a Jewish community ; with its synagogue, with its Old Testament Scriptures, now translated into Greek, and its regular worship of the One true God ; a centre of light amid the surrounding darkness, a witness to pre- sent truth, the nurse of the cherished expectation of further and fuller light. All these phenomena were ex- hibited in the very local centre of the world, the coun- tries that border on the Mediterranean basin, the great highway of nations. The 'Pax Romana' held the world together and at rest. Inter-communication by sea and land was highly developed. The necessities of govern- ment, commerce, and religion, the two last especially 282 demanded some striking change. [lect. operative on the Jews, created a constant movement to and fro of large bodies of men, which was highly favour- able to the rapid transmission and dissemination of new ideas. Concurrently with all this there was the remark- able prevalence of a very general expectation of the im- minent coming of some great one, who should arise in the East, and should rule the world. However true it be that this belief first spread among the Jews, and must have been communicated to the Gentiles by con- tact with them, the fact is attested by the impartial witness of Virgil and Tacitus and Suetonius ^, as well as by that of Josephus ^ and the writers of the New Testament. 137. The co-existence .of all these elements, which make up the then fulness of the times, is simple matter of hard dry history. It is for the impartial student to consider its explanation, and to weigh its significance, first, as it stands as a phenomenon by itself, and, even so, demanding with imperious outcry some new develop- ment, some onward step ; and, secondly, as it stands related to the subsequent course of history, which equally witnesses, and under our very eyes continues to witness, to very remarkable changes, in the highest regions of human life, dating from that time ; changes only explicable in the hypothesis of the introduction, at that time, of new forces into human society ; forces, as Christians maintain, of supernatural and divine origin, the gift of One ' whose never-failing Providence ordereth all things in heaven and in earth,' of One who, ^ Yirg'il, Eclogue,\v.; Tacitus, Histories, w.i"^) Suetonius, Ves;pasian, 4. ^ Josephus, Jewish War, VI. v. 4. VI.] The Incarnation of the Son of God 283 revealed or unrevealed, recognised or unknown, has been thronghout, and is, the merciful and gracious ITai^a^coyo?, the Guide and Educator of the world. What, then, was the great event, which, occurring at such a crisis, is the secret impelling force and cause of the striking changes in the condition of mankind discernible, as matter of fact, in their later history, to our own day \ Only Christianity gives the true answer. ' O Love liow deep, how broad, how high, It fills the heart with ecstasy, That God the Son of God should take Our mortal form for mortals' sake ! He sent no Angel to our race, Of higher or of lower place; Wearing our robe of human frame Himself to save His world He came. Nor willed He only to appear; His pleasure was to tarry here ; And God, made Man, with man would be The space of thirty years and three ^' ^ ' 0 Amor quam exstaticus, quam effluens, quam nimius, qui Deum Dei Filium unum fecit mortalium ! Non invisit nos angelo, seu supremo, sen iufimo ; carnis assumens pallium venit ad nos per Se Ipsum. Non solum Se ostendere voluit, sed convivere Dkus-iiomo honiinil)us hie anuis trigiuta tribus.' (From a Mediaeval Cento, given in Mone's Lateinische Ilyjnnen des Mittelalters, Freiburg, 1853, vol. i. p. 67.) 284 constituted Him the perfect Mediator, [lect. Yes : Tee Wobd was made flesh^ and dwelt among us. The Son of God, Who had all along been the Angel of Mercy to the human race, as He had ever been the One Mediator of Life and Light from the Godhead to the Created Universe, now, at length, * for us men and for our salvation, came down from Heaven, and was incarnate, by the Holy Ghost, of the Virgin Mary ; and was made man.' Consubstantial from everlasting with the Father, He now took our flesh ' of the substance of the Virgin Mary His Mother, and that without spot of sin, to make us clean from all sin.' By this act His Mediatorship was, at length and for ever, constituted in its full absolute pre-ordained com- pleteness and perfection. That which all along had been prepared for and foretold ; that towards which all things had before been tending, at the length was fully realized. The most stupendous event happened which thought can conceive ; the most stupendous, whether in itself or in its consequences — consequences which can have no limit, whether in the ranks of created exist- ence, or through the process of the unending future. The actual Union of the Creator with the Creature was effected in the Person of the Eternal Son. At tliis point I thankfully insert a passage, on the too frequent insensibility among Christians to the gran- deur of the Incarnation, from a Sermon (No. XLII) by Dr. Dwight, the (Congregationalist) President (1795- 1817) of Yale College, New Haven, U.S.A. ' No subject presents to us so wonderful an example of (Condescension as the Incarnation of Christ ; nor could any fact fill our minds with the same astonishment, were it not that we have been accustomed to hear it repeated VI.] Too frequent hisensidility to the 285 from the cradle, and, like the state of the weather, ren- dered an object of perpetual familiarity ; a thing", almost, of course, in the ordinary current of our thoughts, by in- creasing inculcation. From these causes we pass it with- out serious attention, and, even when we dwell upon it, scarcely realize its nature. The impressions which it makes on the mind, resemble those made on the eye of such as have been long accustomed to them, by a delightful landscape, a stupendous cataract, or a mountain which loses its summit in the clouds. At the view o-f these a stranger is fixed in exquisite delight, and has all his thoughts engrossed and his emotions absorbed by the wonderful scene. No language will, in his view, serve to describe, and no picture to image, on the one hand, the beauty, or on the other, the sublimity, of these illustrious objects. To do them justice in his representations, and to spread fairly before others the views, formed of them by his own mind, he will labour in thought, select and refuse, alternately, the language which offers itself, and will at last sit down discouraged, without a hope of being al^le to render his conceptions visible to other eyes, or to do anything like justice to what was so magnificent in the view of his own. Those, in the mean time, who have long lived in the neighbourhood of the same objects, will in many, though not indeed in all instances, survey them without emotion, and even without attention ; ap- parently as insensible to their beauty and grandeur as the horses which they ride, or the oxen which they drive. Such seem but too commonly to be the views formed by most men concerning the Incarnation of Christ, and such the insensibility with which it is but too generally re- garded. Even Christians, like their predecessors men- tioned in the Gospel, are, in innumerable instances, "fools " in this respect, " and slow of heart to believe," or even to realize. But let us, for a moment at least, lay aside these obtuse views, these " eyes " which *' are dull of seeing," these "hearts " too "gross to understand." Let us shake 2 86 grandeur and blessedness [lect. off the torpor which benumbs our framCj and rouse our- selves to perception and feeling-. Let us regard this wonderful subject with common justice, and common candour. The glorious Person, who in the Scriptures is desig- nated by the appellation, 'O Ao'yos rov 0eoO, or the Word of God, '' in the beg-inning created the heavens and the earth ; " and said, " Let there be a firmament, and there was a firmament." His hand also lighted up the flame of the sun, and kindled the stars. He " upholds " the uni- verse " by the word of His power ; " and preserves order and regularity throughout all the parts of this amazing system. In the heavens He shines with inexpressible splendour. On the earth He lives and works, provides and sustains, and satisfies the wants of every living thing. Throughout immensity He quickens into life, action, and enjoyment the innumerable multitudes of intelligent beings. The universe which He made, He also governs. The worlds of which it is composed. He rolls through the infinite expanse with an almighty and unwearied hand, and preserves them in their respective places and motions with an unerring harmony. From the vast storehouse of his bounty, he feeds and clothes the endless millions whom His hand has made, and from the riches of His own unchangeable mind, informs the innumerable host of intelligent creatures with ever improving virtue, dignity, and glory. To all these He allots the respective parts which they are qualified to act in the boundless system of good which His wisdom contrived, and His power has begun to execute ; furnishes them with the means of being useful in His eternal kingdom ; and thus prepares them to be amiable and excellent in His sight, and instru- ments of perpetually increasing good to each other. At the head of this great kingdom He " sits upon a throne high and lifted up," " far exalted above all heavens;" surveys, with intuitive view, and with divine complacency, the amazing work which His voice has vl] of the fact of the Incarnation, 287 called into being, and beholds it increasing- without in- termission in happiness, wisdom, and virtue, and advanc- ing-, with a regular progress, towards consummate glory and perfection. Although " He is not worshipped, as though He needed anything, seeing He giveth unto all life, and breath, and all things;" yet before Him angels bow and veil their faces. "The four living ones rest not day nor night, crying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, who wast, and who art, and who art to come." And the whole multitude of the heavenly host, " the number of whom is ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thou- sands," unite in the everlasting song, "Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power, be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb for ever and ever.'" From this stupendous height of greatness and enjoy- ment, this Divine Person, passing all the bounds between God and man, between the infinite mind and lifeless matter, united himself to "man, who is but a worm;" assumed to himself a human soul and a body, and in a manner incomprehensible by us, and not improbably by all other creatures, became thenceforth God-man, insepa- rably united in one most wonderful and mysterious Person. What were the views which angels formed of this new and astonishing event ? Easily may we imagine, that all heaven was lost in wonder, and buried in silence, to behold this transition from infinite glory to supreme humiliation, from the throne of the universe to a tene- ment of clay. How instinctively ought we, uniting with angels in the same views and the same emotions, to behold, wonder and adore ! ' As was befitting, tlie Incarnation was, at the first, a secret known only to a few ; and, most probably, not by any, even of them, realized, in full consciousness of its miirbtv, its awful siojnificance, until after the Resur- rectiou and the gift of the Holy Ghost. At the first, 288 which brought fresh possibilities of [lect. as always, the Kingdom of God cometli not with observa- tion. The ever blessed visit of the angel of the An- nunciation was, probably, far long years a cherished secret in the families of Joseph and Maiy, of Zachariah and Elizabeth. The Gloria in Excehis sounded but in the ears of a few humble shej)Jiercls abiding in the field. The meaning of the Star in the East was understood only by the few whom it drew on their pilgrimage to the cradle at Bethlehem ^ To others, as to us, the knowledge of these things, and of Him Whose coming they announced, came from the lips, and from the pens, of others. But it is a knowledge to whose objective historic reality, to whose moral and spiritual power, the Christian not only believes each subsequent page of the world's history, but also his own daily experience and inner life, to bear their more than sufficient witness. 138. The Eternal Son of God was now in very truth a daysman Who could lay His hand upon us both [Job ix. 33), and so a perfect Mediator. And as He had been the Mediator all along, in the earlier, less perfect, pre- paratory stages of His Work, not only between God and man, but also between God and the heavenly host of intelligent and immortal beings superior to man, so was He still. To them also the mystery of the Incar- nation opened up fresh views of the manifold wisdom and resources, and of the inestimable love, of God ; and (we cannot doubt) new openings of spiritual advance- ment in the knowledge and love of God, and of closer communion with Him. For, in that it was the closest possible union between the Creator and the Creature, ^ Compare St. Ignatius, Ep. to the Epliesians, xix. VI.] advancement to the whole Creation. 289 it was, though actually effected in the nature which was a little lower than the angels, the closest union with them also. Nay more, since the Nature of Man is the microcosm of Creation, including and representing all its elements, from the highest to the lowest, the Incar- nation unites even material nature to the Creator. It is in very truth, even to our imperfect apprehension, and, of course, with consequences which we cannot at present even guess at, a recapitulation, a gathering together, a summing up in one, all things in Christ, hoth the things in the heavens and the things ujion the earth {Ej^h. i. 10). In the Incarnate Son we see united, in the most inti- mate way conceivable, and that indissolubly, the abso- lute Divine perfection and the crown and summit of creaturely perfection ; and that in a material and object- ively visible form. In Him the idea of God in Creation is absolutely realized ; in Him, but not for Him only ; for His Incarnation is the beginning of a New Creation, whereby the old Creation, even in this province of it, which we know only too well, of fallen man and his fallen world, may be uplifted to otherwise unattainable degrees of glory and beauty, of goodness and perfection, in an undreamt-of nearness to God, and in unimagined inflowings, through the contact and union thus estab- lished, of the Holy Spirit of God, ' the Lord, the Life- giver/ ever and only vouchsafed through the One Mediator. But for us the Divine Son becomes, through His Incarnation, a personage in human history. As Man He performs for man, and on man's earth, a ' finished u 290 The Incarnation is especially [lect. work ' of Redemption, and of Reconciliation of man to God, which results in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit, as the one regenerating and renewing influence, upon man. It will be the endeavour of this and of the remaining Lectures of this series to trace this work, in its progress and main features, as a work of Salvation through Mediation. 1 39. On earth j^eace, goodwill toward men. — Such was the chant of the angel-choir, announcing the essential feature, as towards man and his supreme need, of the heaven-sent messasre of which the mano;er-birtli in Beth- lehem was the outward and visible sign. Peace I leave ivitli you, My peace I give unto you, was the last bequest, the dying legacy, of the Christ to the little flock of His believing followers. Peace he unto you, was His first joyful salutation, when, on the first Easter-night, He manifested Himself again among them in His Risen Glory ; and proceeded to give them, from Himself, as He breathed upon them, His redeemed ones, His Mysti- cal Body, that all-inclusive gift of the very Spirit and Life of God which comes at once when peace is re-estab- lished between man and God; Receive ye the Holy Ghost. The inherent and essential evil of sin, which the Son of God came from Heaven as the Son of Man to undo, and so to destroy the tvorhs of the devil, is its being defiance of God, mistrust of God, separation from God, opposition to God. Sin means war against God ; war against His Law and Will, in obedience to which the creature's happiness and perfection must necessarily consist. It involves a perversion on the part of man VI.] a message of Peace to Man. * 291 of all the elements of his nature into instruments of this opposition. All the minor forces, agencies, and circumstances, intended to be subservient to the glory of God and the happiness of man, to which man's will and man's influence can reach, are degraded and abused by sin. The results of this alienation from God had abundantly showed themselves in the past history of mankind, before the Flood and after it. And now once again a fulness of the times was come. Again, all the world, Jewish and Gentile alike, was hecome guilty before God [Romans iii. 19). Once more was come a time of visitation, for both ; a time of judgment, or of mercy which should prevent judgment ; or, in truer, deeper, wider view, a time both of mercy and of judgment ; a day of mercy for those who would accept it, knoiving the time of their visitation, feeling and acknowledging their need, longing for its satisfaction, looking for re- de7nj)tion ; a time of the blessing of 'peace for those who were sons of i)eace ; (and in this sense we may under- stand the reading, if it be the true one, eV avOpcoTrois evSoKiag, ' Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis '), ' On eai-th be peace, And love towards men of love — salvation and release,' (Cheistian Year, Christmas Day) or else a day of judgment ; and that the more severe for the mercy which had been offered, but in vain, and whose rejection left no more that could be done. For all, then, who should accept Him, the Son of God came as the Ambassador of Peace. He came to carry into execution the counsel of i^eace (Ztch. vi. 1 3) u 2 292 Christ s whole Life infinite in value, [lect, which was in the heart of God towards man ; and to bring back man to God ; potentially, all men ; actually, all who should not finally and decisively resist His grace. 140. But we premise first, that, in our reverent and adoring study of the Mediatorial Work of the Incarnate Lord, as it is set before us in the fourfold picture of the Holy Gospels, and in the inspired com- ment upon it furnished by the remaining books of the New Testament, we devoutly acknowledge an untold value and efficacy in the whole earthly life of our Lord. From His Birth and Circumcision, and His Presentation in the Temj)le at forty days old, onwards to His second Presentation as a ' son of the law ' at twelve years old, and onwards to His Baptism, we acknowledge an infinite worth in His humiliation ; in His perfect obe- dience, active and passive ; in His gracious submission to the conditions of a human existence ; in His conse- quent experimental sympathy with man ; in the moral and spiritual growth of His holy Manhood ; in the absolute and ideal perfection of His human character as in the Father's sight, and in the atoning virtue and satisfaction resulting therefrom, by way of reparation to the Majesty of God for the wrong done by the sin of the race, which in His Incarnation He represented as its new Head, the Second Adam, the Father of the World to come ^ ^ Isaiah ix. 6. Lowth, who, strangely, has no note on this verse, renders ' The Father of the everhisting age.' The Vulgate is Pater futuri saeculi, following one reading of the Lxx, which is strangely- confused in this verse. See Dean Payne Smith, Messianic Interp. of Isaiah, Sermon II. VI.] His special Work began with His Baptism. 293 Yet all this, precious and necessary as it was, was but prei:)aratory for the great work, the public, the official work, which stands before us in the pages of the Evangelists, and which is to be dated from His Baptism, Fasting, and Temptation. Up to His Baj)- tism, He was Jesus of Nazareth. Ba2)tized by the new Elijah, His great forerunner ; receiving in His holy Manhood the gift of the Holy Ghost, sacramen- tally indicated by the outward and visible sign of the dove (as a * token and pledge,' such as the public nature of His future work demanded, to the Baptist and other bystanders, who should bear witness of it) ; receiving this Gift ' for the office and work ' of the Messiah to the Church of God ; and receiving therewith the testi- mony, and commission, of the Father, in the Voice from Heaven, saying. This is my heloved Son in ]VJwm I am ivell pleased, the Incarnate Son stands forth from that moment as The Christ, the Anointed, He icho ivas to come, the Holy One of God, the Apostle and High Priest of our Profession, the Messenger of the New and better covenant, the Captain of our Salvation, our Adam, our Melchizedek, o\ir Moses, our Aaron, our Joshua, our David, our Prophet, our Priest, our King, our one, our only, our perfect, our all-sufficient Mediator. 141. As before, it will be convenient to consider the work of the Incarnate Son under the three aspects, the Prophetic, the Sacerdotal, the Regal ; and in that order, which was the order of its progressive outward development. We premise, however, that we must not too sharply separate them into distinct and successive epochs ; but must remember that, from the first, and 294 Throughout He was Prophet, Priest, & King. [lect. throughout, the three aspects are present together, con- stituting together one continued and complex function vested in the Person of the One Mediator. Even in the earlier, the hidden, portion of the great Life, they latently co-existed. The Message of Peace at His Birth carried within itself, germinally, the pledge and promise of all three, as needed for its effectual realiza- tion. His Circumcision, and His Name of Jesus, told of a priestly work of obedience and sacrifice, and consequent deliverance from sin. The homage of the Wise Men at His cradle in David's City acknowledged Him as King. His understanding and answers at twelve years old revealed, even to the Masters in Israel, the presence of One Who stood among them rather to teach than to learn. But it is, of course, to His pubHc Work, as the Anointed, that we must look for the full exhibition of His Mediation. That Work dates from His Baptism ; which, with its special gift of the Holy Ghost, and its express acknowledgment by the Father of His Sonship, was His Ordination. (Compare above, §§ 40, 42, and Hebrews iv. 14 to v. 5, observing the pointed allusions to Christ's Sonship in connection with His Priesthood.) Into the mystery of His forty days' retirement in the wilderness. His Fasting, and Temptation, we cannot penetrate ; even as we cannot penetrate into the mys- tery of Gethsemane. Yet, as that final Agony, so these also, we cannot doubt, were necessary parts of His re- deeming work. In them also, Son though He were, was He already learning obedience by the things ivhich He suf- fered {Heb. V. 8) ; already realizing, in His human con- VI.] His Fastings and Temptation. 295 sciousness, the awful greatness of the work to which His Baptism had called Him ; and, as ike Man Christ Jesus, looking in the face the now imminent realization in Himself of those old inspired pictures, in prophetic strain, of the ideal Servant of the Lord, Who must be, at once, the Man of Sorrows, and the glorious King of Righteousness and Peace. Tempted He was the while, by the Evil One, who was fired by an imperious and exacting curiosity to find out if He, the circumstances of whose Birth and Baptism were so remarkable, were indeed the Son of God, His predestined Vanquisher \ Tempted He was throughout His preparation of lonely communion with His Heavenly Father ; searched through and through with patient craft, that tried each avenue of His human nature, by the offered thoughts and suggestions which (we are surely right in suppos- ing), were summed up in that final Temptation of which two of the Synoptic Gospels give us the par- ticulars ; and which reproduced the same appeals, to fleshly appetite, to worldly ambition, and to spiritual pride, which have combined to form the trial of man from the first Adam onwards. But the prince of this world came, and found nothing in Him. ' 0 loving wisdom of our God ! When all was sin and shame, A second Adam to the fight And to the rescue came. * Compare chap. xix. of St. Ignatius to the Ephesians, on the con- cealment from ' the prince of this world ' of the full import of the Conception, the Birth, and the Death of the Lord, the three Mysteries ' which were wrouj^ht in the silence of God.' 296 His Teaching, as supreme Prophet, [lect. 0 wisest love ! that flesh and blood Which did in Adam fail, Should strive afresh against the foe, Should strive and should prevail^.' 142. Victorious, and in the added strength of suc- cessful conflict, the presage of final triumph for Himself and for us ; comforted by the ministry of angels ; the Messiah returned, in the fower of the Spirit, into Galilee, and began His work as the supreme Prophet, the Revealer of the Father. He taught in their synagogues, and preached the Gosj)el of the Kingdom, accepted at the first, nay, glorified of all. His fame spread, as His supernatural mission was evidenced by His miracles of healing, as well as by the character and style of His teaching. Great midtitudes folloioed Him ; and so gave occasion to the more blessed antitype of Sinai ; when He, the 'Lord of Might Who to the tribes on Sinai's height In ancient times did give the Law In cloud and majesty and awe V now, with gracious words from human lips, spake the great New Law of His Kingdom in the Sermon on the Mount ; announcing His coming not to destroy, hut to ^ Newman, Dream of Gerontius. ^ Compare the second of the greater Antiphons which, beginning with 0 Sapientia on Dec. 1 6, were said, according to the ancient Use of Sarum, before the Magnificat at Vespers up to Christmas Eve. It is addressed to our Lord, and runs thus : ' 0 Adonai, et dux domus Israel, qui Moysi in igne flammae rubi apjiaruisti, et in Sina legem dedisti : Veni ad redimendum nos in brachio extento.' On these Anti- phons is founded the beautiful Latin Hymn for Advent, ' Veni, veni, Emmanuel,' No. 49, in Hymns Ancient and Modern. VI.] on the Mount, and afterwards ; 297 fidfil ; deepening and extending the outer law of the ancient Decalogue, once given to them of old time, by His supreme authoritative word, But I say unto you ; wielding, Himself the Personal Word, that word of God which is living and powerfid, and sharjier than any two-edged sivord, piercing, in its searching inward re- quirement, and in its insistance on outer practical fruit, even to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marroiv, and discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart {Heh. iv. 1 2). In this we see a car- dinal specimen of the One Mediator's exercise of His Prophetic office. That office was continued in His Parables and Discourses, and in His controversial argu- ments with the Jews in Jerusalem. It was closed, for the first stage of His work, first, by those great escha- tological predictions which were uttered on the Mount of Olives on that memorable Tuesday in the Holy Week of His Passion, and in which He so strikingly claims for Himself the sovereign judicial authority over all mankind ; and then, two days later, by the precious words of comfort and of promise recorded by the pen of the beloved disciple who lay on His bosom at the last Supper. As to all the verdict of His hearers was the same ; — They ivondered at the precious loords that proceeded out of His mouth; Never man spahe like this man ; for He taught them as one that had authority, and not as the Scribes. Thus perfectly, in spoken word and in living cliaracter, did the great Prophet of Naza- reth of Galilee, the Incarnate Eternal Word and Wis- dom of the Father, reveal the Father to the world, in His awful holiness and in His ' tender love towards 298 completed by inward illumination. [lect. mankind.' Hence He could say, Re that hath seen Me hath seen the Father; and, From henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him. Thus perfectly did He, Who is the One true Light of the ivorld, manifest the One Father s Name unto the men ivhom He gave Him out of the world {St. John xvii. 6), giving unto them the Father s word (14), the ivords the Father gave Him (8) ; so giving eternal life to as many as He had given Him; for this is life eternal, to knoiv Him the only true God, and Jesus Christ Wliom He hath sent (2, 3). The solemn converse in the Upper Eoom, or on the moonlight walk to the Garden, closed the first, the out- ward stage of His teaching Prophetic work. Then were uttered the last words of His which were ivritten for our learning, and whose record remains to us. After His glorification, by His Death and Besurrection, His teaching, as evermore the Great Froinhet, the standing Light of the World, is inward, as well as outward. Hence- forward it is inspiration, as well as utterance ; inspira- tion lighting up all past utterances of His, in the Old Testament and in the New ; and accompanied by fresh exegetic utterances as to the Prophetic Kevelation of Himself and His work in those Old Testament Scrip- tures which His disciples were now, for the first time, enabled thoroughly to understand ; utterances which, though unrecorded, were of the very highest im- portance ; for, coupled with the cardinal fact of the Resurrection, they evidently wrought a complete change in the disciples' conception of the Person and Work of the Master ; and they were more- over (as we cannot doubt) the true original source of Vi,] The Priestly work of the Incarnate So7i 299 that Christian interpretation of the Scriptures which lias ever since been traditionally held by the Catholic Church, and without which they are dumb and unin- telligible. Now to enable them to grasp that interpre- tation, the Holy Ghost was given, ivithout '[VJiom no man can say that Jesus is the Lord. Mysterious illumination, such as was not possible before, could pass from the Christ to His believing and loving disciples. At once and without delay, on the very afternoon of His Resurrection-day, a new spiritual influence from Him is felt by the two whose hearts hurned within them ivhile He talked ivith them hy the ivay, on the Emmaus- walk, and tvhile He ojjened to them the Scrij^tures, hegin- ning at Moses and all the Froyhets, and exjpounding unto them, so that they saw, as they had never seen them before, the things concerning Himself {St. Luke xxiv. 26, 32). Further, on the same evening, an hitherto impos- sible illumination {St. John vii. 39) was vouchsafed to them together with the larger body of the disciples, the eleven and them that icere zvith them, upon whom He sacramentally breathed the Holy Ghost, so opening their understanding, that they might understand the Scrij^tures {St. Luke xxiv. 33-48. St. John xx. 19- 23). 143. The fuller outward exhibition of the Priestly Function of the Incarnate Word begins on that evening of the Last Supper, which saw the close of the earthly and outer form of His Prophetic Teaching. The sacri- ficial commemorative eucharistic ordinance of the Old Covenant, the Annual Passover, having been duly ob- served for the last time (or being in course of observance. 300 was first specially exhibited on the [lect. for the text is uncertain), the Messiah vests Himself for the exercise of His office as the Great High Friest. He began by laying aside His garments, even as the Leviti- cal high-priest, when about to enter into the Holy of Holies on the great Day of Atonement, laid aside the holy garments which, in the ordinary exercise of His typical ministry, He wore/or glory and for beauty {Exod. xxviii). He took a toivel, and girded himself ; for the work He was about to undertake was a work of cleans- ing. He needed not to wash Himself, as those high priests ; for the cleansing was needed by others, not by Him. Eobed in the perfect purity of His spotless humanity (foreshadowed by the linen garments pre- scribed for the Aaronic high-priest during the atone- ment service, for the fine linen is the righteousness of saints (Eev. xix. 8). He washed the Apostles' feet. This was a sacramental act of striking symbolic mean- ing. It carried with it, for all but one who could not receive it, an inward spiritual grace of absolution ; for after it He said, Ye are clean, hut not all. Thus were the Apostles' thoughts directed towards, and their souls and spirits inwardly prepared and fitted for, something of high and heavenly import that was to follow. Some among them in express terms, in their longing to sit on His right hand and on His left, at His Tahle, ayid in His Kingdom; others virtually, as Thomas when he said Let us also go, that we may die ivith Him; and the rest in their exceeding sorroiv at the announcement that one of them should betray Him, had declared that they were able to drink of the cuj) that He should drink of, and to be baj)tized with the baj)tism that He ivas to be VI,] occasion of the Last Supper, 301 ha2:)tizecl ivith. They knew not what they said. Only they knew they loved Him ; and He had chosen them to be the seed and beginning of that subordinate repre- sentative priesthood in His Kingdom, whereby, in vis- ible earthly form necessitated by the cessation of His natural Presence, His supreme sole Priesthood as the Only Mediator should, through all generations of the Church below, until He should come again, be, instru- mentally but effectually, exercised and exhibited. So must they, and they alone, in whom the whole subse- quent Priesthood of the Catholic Church was at that moment wrapped up and germinally contained, be associ- ated with Him in that solemn act of manifold depth of meaning which was at once to follow. To them now was His pledge to be fulfilled. Ye shall drink indeed of My cup, and he baptized with the baptism that I am bap- tized with {St. Matt. xx. 20-28. St. Marh x. 39). And as they had been already taught, by word and by example, that the inner secret of priesthood is the very lowliest self-abasement and self-sacrifice, and meant, not lordship over others, but humble service and minis- tration for the welfare and cleansing of their souls ; so, now and henceforward, were they to learn also, for themselves, as He for Himself, that the great work in which they were to be united with Him for the salva- tion of the world should be, so far as concerned the world's relation to them, not one of honour but of shame, not one of welcome, but of opposition ; a work of inward and outward suffering, of martyrdom, of death ; and then, and not till then, the glory and the joy, in the realized Kingdom of Heaven, for which they 302 which spiritually marked the [lect. should toil and suffer, they with Him, He with them, until His coming again. They sat at His Table in the Upper Koom ; but they knew not yet the height or depth of suffering or of glory for which they were, in that blest Communion of sacrifice and of sacramental conjunction, knit and made one with Him, for His and their one but manifold Work. He had given them an example. He had long since told them of what they must give up for Him, and of the cross they must bear after Him ; and now He said. Verily, Verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his Lord; neither he that is sent greater than He that sent him. It must be enough that the disciple should he as his Master, and the servant as his Lord. The Old, the Mosaic Covenant, the Covenant of Sinai, was about to pass away — to pass away, through the obstinacy and unpreparedness and unbelief of its sub- jects, in blood and fire. This as to its outward and visible passing, after forty years more of patient waiting on the Judge's part ; the goodness of God continually calling them to repentance, and an Ark of safety con- tinually being builded up before their eyes, in the growing, though suffering. Christian Church. But in inner spiritual reahty the Old Covenant was already passing away, or passed. Behold your House is left unto you desolate had been said already, as He left the temple, for the last time, on the Tuesday afternoon. Then was uttered the true Mera^alvooimev evrevBev (Let us depart hence) ^ This Passover observance, in which ^ This of the farewell to the Temple. The farewell to the city, now VI.] passing away of the Old Covenant. 303 He had desired, with great desire to take part with them before He suffered, was the last. As before God, and in the sphere of inner heavenly realities, what passed in the Upper Chamber signalized the beginning of the end, as the Rending of the Veil marked the very ending, of the Old Dispensation. Between these limits of time, from the moment when, the actual Passover-meal now finished, the Lord, the true Aaron and the true Melchizedek, took the Bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the Disci][)les, saying. Take, eat; This is My Body ]V]iich is being given for you; and, of the Cup, This is My Blood of the New Covenant, Wliich is being shed for you and for many for the remission of sins ; down to the moment when He said It is finished, and gave up the Ghost, is one great continuous Sacrificial Work. Between those limits lay, as a completed act, the achievement of man's salvation, the taking away the sin of the world, the Atonement, the Reconciliation, by one great deed of full, true, perfect and sufiicient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins of the whole world, by the ofiering once for all of His Body and Blood, His Life, His whole Self, by the One Mediator, the One and only High-Priest. 144. Or rather, perhaps, we may think of it as one fixed in its murderous purpose, and so virtually doomed, and into wliifli He was to enter no more save as a prisoner, is recorded in the words fydpea-df, nycofifv ivrtvBev [Arise, let US (JO hence), with which He left the Upper Chamber on His way to the Kedron and Gethsemane. For the Mera^alvcofiep evrtvdfv, sce Josephus, Jeivish War, II. xxii. i ; and VI. V. 4 ; also Tacitus, Histories, v. 1 3. 304 Three stages of the One Great Sacrifice, [lect. great drama, in wliich, though they are closely con- nected and form a continuous whole, three successive acts may be distinguished. For, first, we distinguish clearly and decisively, by the light of the circumstances themselves and of the language and demeanour of the Lord, between what we may call severally the active and the merely passive stages of the Great Sacrifice ; between the scene in the Upper Chamber, on the one hand, and the Lord's sufferings at the hands of His enemies from the moment of His midnight arrest, on the other. Between these two lies Gethsemane, and its awful mystery of Agony ; wherein seem mingled the mightiest actings of a resolved self-sacrificing Will and the severest passive suffering in inward moral and spi- ritual anguish, unknown, inconceivable. Then, inwardly and outwardly alike, in the sole unapproachable gran- deur of His Atoning Love, in the lonely majesty of the absolute submission to which, for love of His" Father, and of us, He had devoted Himself, He ifrocZ the wine- press alone, and of the people there teas none ivith Him {Isaiah Ixiii. 3). The first of these three stages has a certain marked completeness in itself. We must remember that the very constitutive essence of sacrifice is the inner sacri- fice of the Will, the Self, in absolute surrender and devotion to the Will of God, whatever that may be. This inner sacrifice is kindled only by the heaven- sent fire of a supreme love of God. Without that no outer sacrifice, of however severe suffering, avails anything. For though I hestow all my goods to feed the poor, and though I give my body to he hurned, and have not love. VI.] CiiRisrs Sacrifice of His Will grew 305 ii f^'ojiteth me nothing. The willing submission to out- wardly imposed suffering, coming from the act of others, of God, or man, or evil spirit, is germinally contained (and this whether the suffering to follow be fully and consciously foreseen or no), in the mner sacrifice of the will which pfoes before. That inner sacrifice is made, and renewed, on occasion, as God calls for it, in perfect love to God ; and so (for perfect love involves this), in perfect trust in God ; in the absolute confidence that nothing can befal, or be laid upon, the self-sacrificing spirit but by His permission ; and that all must turn to His praise and glory in the furtherance of His great purposes of Love, and in the moral perfecting of the spirit itself. Such a self-sacrificing Will belonged to our Lord throughout His whole life. Yet were there mysterious crises of its higher development through conflict ; as, for example, in His lonely trial in the wilderness; and once more when the icaipog (season) until which, after His Temptation, the Devil dejjarted from Him, came round again, on the near approach of His Passion and of the hour of the ^oiver of darkness. To these occasions we may (I think) be right in adding a third, not obscurely intimated in the Gospel record as occurring between them ; namely, in close connection with the Lord's Transfiguration, That event, which happened when, as at other times. He was spending the whole night in solitary communion with His Father, was signalized by not only the temporary revelation of His inner glory, but also by the appearance of the two great Saints of the Old Covenant, the representatives of the Law and the Prophets, who spahe of His decease X 3o6 throughout His whole life, and was, [lect. ivliicli He should accom'plish at Jerusalem; and by the renewed testimony of the Voice from Heaven to His vmiqne Sonship, as the Beloved. Further, in each of the Synoptic Gospels, the narrative of the Transfigura- tion is immediately both preceded and followed by marked predictions of His Sufferings, Cross, and Death. In the same immediate connection Saint Luke (ix. 51) writes, It came to ])ass, when the time ivas come thai He should he received up, He steadfastly set His face to go to Jerusalem; and Saint Mark (x. 32), that as they were in the tvay going up to Jerusalem, Jesus ivent hefore them : and they were amazed ; and as they folloived they were afraid. With the foreknowledge of the inevitable suffering which was to be the price of man's redemp- tion, with the ever-increasing pressure of that fore- knowledge, grew, in like ratio, in the human con- sciousness of the Saviour, the stedfast purpose of unlimited self-sacrifice. Yet were these earlier oc- casions but so many steps which led to the Upper Room, as surely as the next steps thence were to Gethsemane, and thence to Calvary. Tuesday had seen the solemn close of His teaching, the last of His warnings to His people, as the great Prophet Who was to come. Wednesday's plot of the wicked husbandmen with the traitor disciple for the murder of the Son and Heir was not unknown to Him. He entered the Upper Chamber with the shadow of that treachery on His heart. He knew that His hour was come : and so He said, With desire have I desired to eat this Passover ivith you hefore I suffer. His Passion was already at the door. VI,] actively^ completed in the Upper Rooniy 307 It is tliis that gives its deejo, its undying, its immense significance to His every act, every word, every gesture, on that solemn night. It is this that discloses the real meaning of His exhibition of Himself as our Great Sigh Priest^ the Mediator of the New Covenant, when He blessed the Bread and Wine, and, so blessing them, conseciated them to be the sacred symbols of His Body and His Blood, then and there, in the inner and essen- tial reality of His self-devoting will, given, hroken, and shed, as the sacrifice and token of the New Covenant, for the remission of sins. It was, in the highest spiri- tual sense, a Sacrificial Act. It carried in itself all that followed ; and so it was complete in its acceptableness ; even as was Abraham's surrender of his child of promise, and Isaac's surrender of himself for a whole burnt-offerins:, though not outwardly consummated in blood. Abra- ham, by that act — an act loaded with deepest typical meaning — scared not his own son, but freely gave him, a willing victim, to the death, from ivhence also he received him in a figure {Heh. xi. 19). The father's sacrifice was in the long three days' sad journey to Moriah, and in the taking (it needed not the use) of the knife to slay his son. The sacrifice of the son was in his willing submission, whereby he was bound and laid iij)on the altar, itjjon the ivood. Even so was Christ's Body given, and His Blood shed, for the remis- sion of sins, when, by His own act, the Bread was broken and the Wine poured out. Compare Archbishop Thomson, in Aids to Faith, Essay VIII. On The death of Clind:— ' When He speaks of " My Blood of the New Cove- X 2 3o8 the scene of a true Sacrifice, [lect. nant," no doubt tlie word Sacrifice is dispensed with ; but there must be very few, we should hope, who cannot discern in such words the " sacrificial allusion." ' (I.) Again, ' It cannot be denied (we might almost say that before Mr, Jowett it never was denied) that the words of the institution of the Lord's Supper speak most distinctly of a sacrifice. " Drink ye all of this, for this is My blood of the new covenant/' or, to follow St. Luke, "the new covenant in My blood." We are carried back by these words to the first covenant, to the altar with twelve pillars, and the burnt-offerings and peace-offerings of oxen, and the blood of the victims sprinkled on the altar and on the peoj^le, and the words of Moses as he sprinkled it : " Behold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with you concerning all these words " [Exod. xxiv.) No interpreter has ever failed to draw from these passages the true meaning : " When My sacrifice is accomplished. My blood shall be the sanction of the new covenant." The word sacrifice is wanting ; but sacrifice and nothing else is described. And the words are no mere figure used for illustration, and laid aside when they have served that turn, " Do this in remembrance of Me." They are the words in which the Church is to interpret the act of Jesus to the end of time. They are reproduced exactly by St. Paul (i Cor. xi. 25). Then, as now, Christians met together, and by a solemn act declared that they counted the blood of Jesus as a sacrifice wherein a new covenant was sealed; and of the blood of that sacrifice they partook by faith, professing themselves thereby willing to enter the covenant and be sprinkled with the blood." (I. 2.) Communion followed; and, upon that, the solemn typi- cal High-Priestly Intercession, the Lord's own Prayer for His Church so long as it should be ' militant here in earth.' In that prayer He expressly says, 'I have finished the work that Thou gavest Me to do.' The active Sacrifice VI.] passively cojiswnmated in the Agony, 309 was, at that moment, made and accepted, or such language could not have Leen used. In what remamed, at least from the Arrest onwards, He was rather passive than active. Hence His silent submission, whereby, unless when forced to speak, lilie a sheep before her shearers is dumh, so He opened not His mouth. Hence, in the final moment, the noticeable use of the passive form It is Jinished. 145. At the entrance of the Olive-Garden we rever- ently pause. To the endurance of all that might await Him there He had submitted Himself already in the Self-oblation of the Upper Chamber. There was the mysterious conflict, with strong crying and tears ; but it was not the struggle of resistance ; it was the struggle of the resolved and devoted Will, enforcing itself and its imperious determination on the natural reluctance of the lower elements of a genuine human nature, whose very perfectness and purity, in body, soul, and spirit, could only give it a more sensitive susceptibility to suffering, and a stronger aversion to both the humiliation of death and the deeper humilia- tion and degradation of a close, though it were but a vicarious, contact with sin, when on Him loere laid the iniquities of us all. We watched with Him in spirit, as, a few weeks ago, the awful night came round \ More inwardly touching than even the Cross itself we found that sight on which our spirits gazed. In life's hardest battles, in the fiercest soul-conflicts, when the struggle is that of a sin-weakened will against a nature not merely reluctant, but actively * This Lecture was delivered in Easter-tide. 3IO and in the Passion, of the One [lect. rebellious, in hours when prayer alone with God is our only stay, it is to the thought of Gethsemane ; it is to the remembrance of Him, Who under the Easter moon, beneath the gnarled olive-trunks, bowed Himself to the dust for us, that we turn for strength ; knowing that in Him, the sayne yesterday, to-day, and for ever, we have not an High Priest that canyiot he touched with the feeling of our infirmities, hut was in all points tempted like as ive are, yet ivithout sin. ' To the still wrestlings of the lonely heart He doth impart The virtue of His midnight agony.' (Christian Year, Wednesday before Easter) Wherefore we pray, ' By Thine agony and bloody sweat, Good Lord, deliver us;' or, more touching still, with our Greek brethren, At' ayvMo-Tociv crov iraOrjixaroov, 'VvaaL n/^ag, Kvpte (By Thine unknown sufferings. Good Lord, deliver us). 146. In the third stage of His one great Sacrifice, viz. from His arrest to His giving up the ghost, the great High-Priest was merely passive in the hands of His enemies ; patiently submissive to whatever, in malice or in ignorance, Jew or Gentile, rulers or rabble, governors or soldiers, inflicted upon Him in His most holy Flesh, which He gave for the life of the Woi'ld. That is, He was passive outwardly. Inwardly, the active energy of His will was working throughout ; for only when He willed He hoived His Head, and gave up the ghost. None (ovSelg) took His life from Him, hut He laid it down of Himself. He had poiver VI.] Prophet, P^'iest^ and King. 3 1 1 to lay it down, and He had j)Ower to taJce it again (St. John X. 18). Nay, even in uttered word and act, in this last extremest stage of His voluntary humilia- tion and self-abnegation, did the One Mediator show on occasion His latent royal and divine character. His inalienaLle Majesty was there when, as soon as He said / am He unto the noisy multitude, whom He rose from His knees in Gethsemane to meet, they ivent backward, and fell to the ground (xviii. 6). Before Caia- phas, and before Pilate, He acknowledged, in differing but appropriate ways. His royal dignity as the Son of God. To both also He indicated His prophetic cha- racter. When adjured by Caiaphas, He answered, in language that involved His claim to the Messianic dignity of Prophet and of King, that He was the Christ; nay, He was the Son of God; and He foretold His sitting on the right hand of j^ower, and His coming, in their time, in the clouds of Heaven. To Pilate He admitted that He was a King, though His Kingdom was not of this loorld ; and, further, that He came into this world to hear witness to the truth. To the daushters of Jerusalem, on the Via Dolorosa, He prophesied of the days of judgment that were coming, lohen men should hegin to say to the mountains. Fall on us, and to the hills. Cover us. As Priest He interceded for the Gentile soldiers who nailed Him to the Cross, Father, forgive them, for they knoiv not ivhat they do. As King He listened graciously to the prayer of the Penitent Thief, Lord, remember me when Thou comest in Thy kingdom. But as regards His present relation to the Jewish and Gentile powers, in whose hands He was a 312 The Death of Christ. [lect. helpless victim, He was, in this stage, simply passive, until He willed to say. It is finished. 147. With these words, being put to death in the flesh, hut preserved alive in His human spirit (i St. Peter iii. 18), He passed into the vast populous realms of the Unseen ; submitting still, since He willed hj the grace of God to taste death for every man, to that abnormal and contradictory separation of soul and body which is the wages of sin, the * debt ' of sinful nature, the work of him who was a man-slayer [avOpwiroKTovog) from the beginning ; and which, in itself a degradation and disgrace for that human nature which was origin- ally made in the image of the Living God, was an in- finitely greater humiliation for Him in Whom was no sin. Yet this too He willed. This too was wrapped up in the Offering of the Cup in the Upper Chamber, when He poured out His Soid unto death (for the blood is the Ife), and so was numhered with the transgressors, accepting their lot ; and so bare the sin of many and made intercession for the transgressors (Isaiah liii.). This was involved in His Incarnation, since sin had entered into His world. Forasmuch as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, He also Himself likeivise took part of the same, that through death He might destroy Him that had the power of death, that is the Devil, and deliver them who through fear of death were all their lifetime sidjject to bondage {Hebreivs ii.). The state of death was, while it lasted, a pro- longation of His voluntary humiliation ; but it was a necessary part of the work of our Kedemption, which VI.] TJie Unseen State. 313 He had undertaken. For it was a time, we cannot doubt, of most important action on the part of the One Mediator, during His sojourn in the unknown dwelling-place of that vast and growing ' majority ' (0/ TrXf/oi'e?) of those imperishable souls of men whom He came to save. 148. The veil that hangs between us and that great unseen M^orld, Sheol, or Hades, or Paradise, however Holy Scripture designates it, in whole or in part, has scarcely been lifted, even in the recorded words of the Lord Himself What the rapt Apostle saw or heard in Paradise he expressly tells us it is not 'possible for man to utter (2 Cor. xii. 4). Only the broadest out- lines are revealed to us. But these are revealed ; and so are fitting subjects for our earnest thought and meditation. The continued, uninterrupted, conscious ex- istence of each human spirit, disembodied, but not there- fore necessarily disassociated altogether from matter (as is, perhaps, usually, but superficially, assumed to be the case), nor without some envelope or vehicle, how- ever subtle, of its living essential vital forces, which gives it outer form and locality and individualization ; sensibility, perhaps greatly intensified, to pain and pleasure, inward and outward, mental and physical ; continued memory, and power of utterance and con- verse ; recognition of others in the same mysterious abode, and, consequent upon such power of converse and such recognition, the possibility, at least, of social life ; knowledge of what has passed on earth since their decease, by whatever means conveyed, direct, or throusfh intercourse with later comers ; interest in those 314 No pi'obation in [lect. left beliind ; hope or fear, for them and for itself — these surely must be allowed by the believer in the Chris- tian Scriptures to be general features, clearly enough revealed, of the condition of all departed souls in the great Unseen ; which, we shall do well to remember, is not so much a ' future state,' (except to each one of us who are still in the flesh,) but is the actual present state of the vast mass of mankind. Further, if faith must insist that thus much must be conceded, it must also follow, from the continuance of essential life, with memory and power of converse, that there is also moral, mental, spiritual movement, growth, development ; and this aided and quickened by a nearer perception of spiritual things, consequent upon the introduction of the soul to great hitherto unseen realities, simul- taneously with its removal from this present life, and its being unclothed of that grosser frame of flesh and blood by which it was in relation with this visible world. 149. There is, indeed, after the term of this earthly life is reached, no further probation ; no opportunity of repentance in the proper sense of the word, that is, of inner change of mind from the love of evil and the life of sin to the love of good and of God, and the life of earnest endeavour after holiness. The whole tenour of Holy Scripture is against so unfounded and dangerous a supposition ; and implies that, however it may be only as yet in germ, and that undiscernible by any but the all-searching Eye, the final direction and de- termination of the moral choice is really taken, for good or evil, within the allotted limits of the present VI.] the Unseen State; 315 life. Natural moral science, based on observation and experience, apart from revelation, points unhesitat- ingly to a like conclusion ; and even heathen philo- sophy fully recognises the solemn significance of life, in its opportunity for the exercise of moral choice, and for the growth of habitual moral attitude and tend- ency into finally settled determination of character. Further, it should be remembered, as bearing upon our view of this highly important question, that, ideally and in the original purpose of man's Creator, his Moral Governor, and Judge, the intermediate state, of sepa- ration of soul and body, is abnormal and unintended. That state is a dislocation of the true continuity of man's full and complete life, a strange thing, the re- sult of sin, a deflection, however overruled for good by the manifold resources of the infinite mercy of God. Man, as originally created, was created for Life, not for Death ; for life in his oXoKXrjpov (whole con- stitution) of body, soul, and spirit (i Thess. v. 23) ; for life upon this earth, wliich, under whatever altered conditions of glory and of beauty, when its travail-time is over, and it shall have been delivered from tJie londage of corruftion, we have no real reason to doubt will always be man's dwelling-place. But he was created, and that, as we have seen (jj 48, 71) neces- sarily, in a state of probation ; and it is obviously fitting, and almost, we may say, required by the very idea of probation, that it should come at the opening of his endless career, and begin, as it does begin, as soon as free will and power of moral choice are felt within him. But if the originally-intended sphere and 3i6 only development and progress [lect. stage of this probation be his natural earthly life in the flesh, and the natural condition and circumstances of human social life common to him and his fellows ; and if, in fact, his very probation lies in, and is con- stituted by, that condition, those circumstances; then it would seem to follow — apart from the observed de- cisive and often (apparently) unalterable effects result- ing, and that often very early, from our probation, as we know it, in the present condition of our life — that an extension, or a renewal, of probation in a state of being so strange, so different, so unintended, is not to be expected, and would be unavailing ; especially when it is considered that that state of being is itself a penal state, a consequence of sin. 150. On the other hand, although this be so, and although we have no ground for looking for further probation on the other side the grave, nor for re- newed opportunities of an inner vital change from darkness to light, from death to life, in the moral centre of our being, the conscious will ; we may, we must, believe — since we believe in the uninterrupted continuance of the real life, and in the carrying over the grand total result of this life across the change of death into the Unseen state — we must beHeve in the continuance of progress, development, and growth ; for life, in every or in any sense of the word, implies them ; only it is a development in the direction already de- cisively taken. In these considerations we see the opening for a great work of tlie Fatlier of spirits on the countless millions of millions of the human souls for whom Christ VI.] in ihc direction already taken. 317 died ; a work to be carried on through Him, the One Mediator, in Whom and through Whom and for Whom, as the Image of God, those souls were made, and Who died for them that He might, if they do not defy Him, restore that image within tliem. God alone knows the determinate moral condition and capacity of each of the souls that He has made, at the moment when He summons it into the Unseen. We may be quite sure that their moral conditions and capacities vary infinitely; that is, in degree ; though of kind and quality there can be, in the last resort, but two. We may be quite sure that, in the placing of each on this or that side of the dividing line — the acceptance or the rejection of God, so far as He has, in various ways and degrees for each, presented Him- self to each in the opportunities of earthly life — the Judge of all the earth will do absolutely right, with absolutely perfect knowledge, with infinitely perfect and tender discriminating love. Moral capacity — so awfully different, so infinitely varied, are men's lots, men's opportunities, in life — may be present, though in the very lowest conceivable degree, the merest germ of as yet unextinguished possibility. The living spark may be there, though it defy our microscopes. God can discover, and will tend it. We may trust Him never to hreak the bruised reed, nor quench the smoking flax. We may trust Him to fan it into a living flame of love, and to place it in the most favourable circum- stances for its development. What the process may be, or the time taken up in it, we cannot, need not, guess; but of the fact itself we must be absolutely 3i8 The work of the One Mediator [lect. certain ; and of the loving agency therein of the Divine n 0*^07(070?, the One most gracious Mediator, breathing, from Himself, upon each morally living soul, as each can bear them, and together with whatever needful discipline of inward or outward pain, the renewing in- fluences, the freshening dew, of His own Holy, patient, loving, creative and re-creative Spirit, the Lord, the Life-Giver. 151. We may joyfully believe that untold millions of waiting souls in God's safe keeping, with various de- grees of spiritual capacity, each very precious in God's sight, and part of His Son's reward, from all the races of mankind, within God's special covenants and from outside them ^ ; were the subjects, whether consciously longing and hoping for it or not, of some such grace and mercy, when the one white and spotless Soul from among the children of men, the Soul of Jesus, passed from the Cross of shame to the Paradise of joy ; to be followed thither so quickly by one surely accepted, yet as surely most undeveloped, soul, from the cross beside His own. In that vast realm, we may be well assured, are many mansions, many abodes of exact fitness to their destined occupants ; abodes which are, for each, their own ^lace. Lito one portion, whose name of Para- dise recalls man's first happy state, Christ's Soul passed at once, carried (it may be) by angels ; there to be recognised by the expectant faithful, from Abel, its first inhabitant, to Joseph of Nazareth, and the Baptist, and others who had known the Lord in the flesh. In ^ See St. Matthew viii. 10-12, and St. Luke xiii. 28-30. VI.] upon souls in the Unseen State. 319 tlieir place of peace and rest and refreshment they saw Him Whom they had beHeved in, for whose coming they had longed ; and they were glad. They saw the great Prophet of whose coming Moses had foretold ; and whose very presence was a fresh revelation to them of God and of His love, and of the gathering mercy of His gracious dealings with them. They saw the great High Priest Whom their old ritual had fore- shadowed ; the Lamh of God Whom their sacrifices had prefigured, and Who had now taken aivay the sin of the world. They recognised their King, the royal David, fresh from the overthrow of the great Goliath ; and they knew that His appearance there was but the presage of still greater triumphs for Him and them. 152. Beyond this we have at least one highly sig- nificant intimation of another work, in another portion of the great Unseen, which may, very probably, be taken, like so many other things in Holy Scripture (which cannot tell us everything), as a typical and suggestive example and specimen. Beyond, below, the Paradise of God, Christ descended ad inferos. We are not to understand this, and probably those who placed it in the Creed never so meant it, of the Hell of Fire {t] yeevva tov Trupoi); prepared (that is, originally), not for man, but for the Devil and his angels. Of the portion of any human beings in that nothing is said until after the General Resurrection and the Judgment. But, short of that. Saint Peter, in a well-known passage (i Pet. iii. 18), as to whose meaning surely Bishop Pearson is wrong and Bishop Horsley right, speaks of the ^uXaV? {prison, or safe heeping), in which were detained the 320 The case of the Antediluvians. [lect. souls of the Antediluvians who had perished in the Flood, when it overtook tlie ivorld of the ungodly; among whom, at the last, they were found, notwith- standing long previous warning, ivhen once the long- sulfering of God ivaited in the days of Noah, the preacher of righteousness, while the Ark ivas a pre- joaring. They were outside the Ark of safety by their own act. They perislied by an awful visitation of judgment ; which was the end of their world. They had no share in the New Heaven and the New Earth, over which the Dove flitted, and across which the Kainbow of mercy shone, when the waters were abated, and the purpose of the Ark was served. Yet to them the human spirit of Christ ivent and jpreached — rather, His own Herald, He went and proclaimed {eKi^pu^e) — can we doubt 1 a proclamation of mercy. The destruc- tion of the Jlesh, the awful and sudden judgment, from which there was no longer any possible escape, may have been the very means of compelling, at the last, that repentant turning to God which should preserve, or rekindle, ere yet too late, the spark of life within them, and so render it possible for their sjiirits to he saved, albeit we know not in how for ever diminished glory and beauty, in the day of- the Lord Jesus (i Cor. V. 5). In what necessary discipline of not quite despairing uncertainty and expectation they had "waited those long ages ; what spring of renewed hfe and love the visit and the proclamation of Christ, turning hope into certainty, had brought them ; what further trainino- should lead their and others' souls o upwards, in the intermediate time tiU Christ shall come VI.] Increase of peace and joy 321 again, to close, as He then opened, this present Dis- pensation, we cannot say. But the thought of this passage rightly apprehended must (we may humbly submit) widen the range of our conceptions with reference to the manifold variety, the unfailing yet varied mercy, and the inconceivably vast scale, of God's dealings, as their moral Governour, their All- loving Father, with the infinite variety of human souls, in all their infinitely varied relations to Himself, that do not, with final defiance, refuse His mercy and re- nounce Himself. 153. That an increase of light and peace and joy, in possession and in hope, was diffused through His un- seen Kingdom for all who were able, and as each was able, to receive it, we cannot doubt. It has been so for His believing people on earth, even while they are still in the flesh, and are in heaviness through manifold temptations. Saint Paul, looking forward to his rest in Paradise, whose joys, disclosed in his rapture, he coidd remember with longing though he could not litter them in words, could desire to deixirt, and to he ivith Christ, as far better than even his loving and assured communion with Him in this life ; and so as making death, for him, a gain. By this we know that whether in itself (that is, because of some objec- tively closer spiritual Presence of the Lord to faithful souls in the Unseen) or by reason of some change for the better, in themselves, or in their removal from worldly distractions and temptations, they are in closer comniunion with Hiui than here on earth ; comforted, not in Abraham's hosom, but in His ; safe in the ever- Y 2,2 2 residting to soitls m the Unseen [lect. lasting arms. Perhaps the change to increased blessed- ness is from both causes, objective and subjective ; or, rather, we may distinguish three causes ; some nearer manifested Presence of the Lord; some upward spring of soul and spirit into greater nearness to and capacity for Him, such as must indeed necessarily result to the living and capable soul from His nearer manifestation of Himself; and, thirdly, the greatly more favourable conditions in which the soul finds itself, through its deliverance from the hurclen of the flesh, and its in- troduction into the 'joy and felicity' of God's chosen, its rejoicing with the gladness of His People, its giving thanks with His inheritance (Psalm cvi. 5). But, so far as the change is in some nearer Presence of the Son of God, we should perhaps be more right in con- necting it, not with anything that took place during, or upon, the visit of His disembodied spirit to the Unseen, but rather with the spiritual consequences that followed, to Himself and to His Church, (which, militant or at rest, is His Body,) upon His Kesurrec- tion ; when His Manhood, from whose temporarily separated elements His Godhead had never been dis- sociated, was reconstituted in its entirety, and fully glorified ; and upon His Ascension, when He Who had descended first into the lower ^arts of the earth {E])h. iv. 8-10), Who had gone down to the lowest depths where anything human was to be found, ascended ujp far above all the heavens, that He might Jill all things. So, filling all things. He, the glorified God-Man, the new Head and Centre of Redeemed Humanity, filled both the Church on earth and the Church in Paradise VI,] from the Work of the One Mediator. 323 with an abiding nearer real spiritual Presence than was possible before ; and the Church in Paradise with an even nearer Presence than was vouchsafed to the Church on earth ; either as nearer in itself and in the modes and agencies of its manifestation and communi- cation, or in the quickened receptive capacity of its subjects, or in both. Y 2 LECTUHE YII. THE WORK OF THE MEDIATOR DURING THE GREAT FORTY DAYS. Acts i. 2. *0 'Irjo-oC? . . . evTeiXajxevos rols ^ Attoo-toKols bta Ylvev- fjLaros ' AyCov, ovs e^eXe^aro, av(Xi](p6r]. ols koI TTapi(TTi](TiV kavTOV C^vra ^ejci to iraOeiv avrov, iv TioAAots T(KiJ.r]pLOLv TecaapaKovra ovravofji.evo'i avToHs, kol Keycav to. Trepl rrjs (3a(n\(La]- VII.] The Baptismal Commission^ at the 333 Teucrare . . . (SaTTTi^ovreg . . . SiSdaKovreg, k.t.X., Go, make discijiles . . . ha^tizing . . . teaching.) The former is surely open to the zeal of the menibers in general of the Christian Society, working loyally in a spirit of love and goodwill, not of eiivy and strife, and contention (Philij)jj. i. 15), and in union with the authorized officers of the Church : the latter seems to be rather a special function of these last, as requiring fuller and higher knowledge and experience, and closer and more exclusive devotion to the work of teaching, as well as special empowering gifts, conveyed in ordination ; with- out which gifts none, surely, would dare to undertake so awful and so responsible a task. 161. It was on what must, perhaps, be considered the most public, and otherwise remarkable, occasion of the Lord's Manifestation of Himself after His Hesurrec- tion, that He gave the Baptismal Commission which contains the conclusive revelation of the Doctrine of the Holy Trinity. In the Upper Chamber Jesus had said to the Apostles, After I am risen again, I ivill go hefore you into Galilee {St. Mattlieio xxvi. 32 ; St. Mark xiv. 28). On the actual Eesurrection morning, first the angel at the sepulchre, and then the Lord Him- self, repeated to the women this promise for the dis- ciples, that they should see Him in Galilee ; with a command to meet Him there for that purpose. St. Matthew, who records these promises, records their fulfilment (xxviii, 16), The eleven discijples icent into Galilee, unto the mountaiii ivhere Jesus had a/p^ointed them. It is impossible to resist the conclusion that others were present besides the Eleven ; that this 334 meeting on the mountain in Galilee, [lect. great occasion was, in fact, a general meeting of our Lord's followers, including all who could by any possi- bility attend. (So Olsbausen, Stier, Alford ; so Canon Cook, in Speaker s Commentary.) And, if so, the occasion may, very probably, be identified with that of which St. Paul speaks (i Cor. xv. 6), when the Eisen Christ was seen hy ahove Jive hundred hrethren at once. The largeness of the number present may well account for St. Matthew's next statement, that ivheii they saw Him, and worshijj^ed Him, some doubted. The Eleven, and others present with them in Jerusalem, had certainly seen Him at least twice before, on the Easter Night and on its Octave, and so had been satisfied of the reality of His Kesurrection. But others among the large number of His Galilaean followers may well have hesitated on this their first occasion of seeing Him; and then, possibly, at some distance, at least at first, foi' in the next verse it is said that Jesus came toioards them (Trpoa-eXOwv) and so spake unto them the great words. All authority hath heen given unto Me in Heaven and on earth, Go ye therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things ivhatsoever I commanded you : and, lo, I am ivith you all the days even unto the consummation of the age. Here the One Mediator speaks in the fulness of His Mediatorial Power ; exercising, in a great authoritative act, that plenary sovereignty as Prophet, Priest, and King, wherewith He was now, since His glorification through His Passion, solemnly invested in His In- VTi.] Final Charge to the Apostles at Bethany. 335 carnate Nature ; revealing, once for all, decisively and distinctly, His relation to the Father, as One with Him in Essential Deity; and, further, disclosing the distinct, but equally Divine, Personality of the Holy Spirit, through the gift of Whom to His Church His own continual Presence with them was to be for ever as- sured, giving His ov^ti authority to their acts, sacra- mental and otherwise, done in His Name. 162. With this charge, given to the disciples in general, must be compared the final charge, given to the Apostles at Bethany, before the Ascension. The record of this is preserved in the closing verses of St. Mark and of St. Luke's Gospel, and in the first chapter of the Acts of the Apostles {yv. 4-8). It is noticeable, first, for the universal sweep of its com- mission, Go ye into all the ivorld, and 'preach the Gosjoel to every creature ; Secondly, for its authoritative declara- tion of the terms of salvation, He that helieveth and is l)a])tized shall he saved, and its equally authoritative de- nunciation of the consequence of rejecting the preached and offered Gospel, He that disbelieveth shall he con- demned ; and. Thirdly, for its promise of the miraculous powers over various forms of evil, bodily and spiritual, and of speaking with new tongues, which should ac- company and attest the first proclamation of the Gospel. The promise of the great Gift of the Father was re- newed, and they were commanded to tarry in the city of Jerusalem until they loere endued ivith ^oiver from on high {St. Lulie xxiv. 49). 163. And so, from the summit of the Mount of Olives, u'hen He had said these things, as they icere JO^ The Ascension into Heaven. [lect. looldng, icliile He hlessed them, He ])aTted from them, and was carried u^ into heaven, and a cloud received Him Old of their sight {St. Luke xxiv, 5 1 ; Acts i. 9), and He was received ujo into Heaven, and sat on the right hand of God (St. Mark xvi. 19). Then was the language of the Twenty-fourth Psahn fulfilled— 'Lift up your heads, 0 ye gates; And he ye lift up ye everlasting doors; And the King of Glory shall come in. Who is this King of Glory ? Tlie Lord strong and mighty ; The Lord mighty in battle, Even the Lord of Hosts, He is the ICing of Glory.^ Then also was fulfilled the typical ministration of the great Day of Atonement. The great High Priest, the true Aaron, the One Mediator, now imssed through the heavens [Heb. iv. 14), and entered ivithin the veil into the true Sanctuary of the Universe, the very Presence of the Invisible Eternal God, having obtained eternal Redemption for us {Heb. ix. 1 2). Then the great Sacri- fice, once made in the Upper Chamber and upon the Cross, was offered, presented, pleaded, before tlie im- mediate Presence of the Father, an offering and a sacrifice to God for a sweet-smelling savour {E^h. v. 2) ; perfectly and for ever, in its continual presentation, through the continued Presence in Heaven of the Lamb as it had been slain {Rev. v. 6), reconciling Heaven and earth, and uniting them in one ; in one Communion, one Church, one Family, with one life and one worship, one service and one work. VII.] Distinction of' statural ' d ' spiritual ' Mediation. 337 164. At this point it becomes necessary to direct our attention afresh to the distinction between the functions of natural and of spiritual Mediation as both exercised by the One Mediator ; a distinction identical with that between Nature and Grace, as commonly understood among Christians. The natural life of all that lives owes, as we have seen, its origin and main- tenance to the instrumentality of the Eternal Son, through Whom the Creative fiat of the Godhead passes forth into actual external realization. But, in beings endowed with a moral and spiritual nature, angels or men, there is a deeper inner life, of the will and of the affections. This is their spiritual life, the life of grace. Of this also the Son of God is the Mediator. Whatever spiritual life, in its varied forms and degrees, reaches any, it is ever and only the presence and action, within heart and soul, of the Holy Spirit of God, ever and only given through the One Mediator. The all-inclusive loss of the fall of man was the with- drawal of this life. Sin is contradictory to it. The wages of sin is death, first, in the spirit, and in the higher life of man ; then in the body and the lower, the natural, life. The great work of the Eedeemer was the recovery of this higher life for man. Its first necessary part was the removal of sin, its next a New Creation, a Regeneration, of human nature. This was the great work of Christ's spiritual Mediation. Fore- shadowed and prepared for by lesser exercises of the same gracious function through a long series of ages, it could only be fully achieved on His actual Incarna- tion. He must become one of us, though without sin, z 338 The Gift of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost, [lect. in order that He might be the Second Adam, the new- Head and Centre of the New Creation, the Father of the world to come. And, since sin had entered in, He must vanquish sin and its author in our nature ; though it were only through His own voluntary submission to the law of sin and suffering and death that He could destroy him that had the ^oiver of death (Heh. ii. 14). 165. This great work was now completely effected. Already, as we have seen, on the very day of His Eesurrection, with loving eager haste, the Saviour began to apply its restorative powers to those whose faith in Himself rendered them capable of such restora- tion. Yet was this, for the present, only by way of preliminary pledge and foretaste. His entrance into the true Holy of Holies, there to appear in the Presence of God for us, and His enthronement as King in the Kingdom of God, must precede the ftdl restoration of the great Gift of the Holy Spirit of God, man's true, man's highest life. For that great result, that crown- ing blessing, was to be at once the fruit of the all-pre- vailing Intercession of the Great High Priest in the true, the Heavenly Sanctuary, and the bounteous gift, the gracious royal largess, of the Eisen and Ascended Kinf>-. It came at Pentecost on the united assembled praying Church, wdiich was then, according to the Baptist's prophecy (St. Matt. iii. 11), baptized ivith the Holy Ghost and with fire. Then was the Body of tlie Christ fully born into its new regenerate life, the life of the new, the spiritual creation, the life of living membership in Him, as to body, soul, and spirit, the VII.] was the Sacramental Gift of Life from Christ, 339 life of organic union with the Christ, and, in Him and through Him, with God, The manner of the bestowal of the gift was essen- tially sacramental. It was accompanied by the double outward sign, the rusliing miglity ivind, betokening the power of the Spirit in the Church as a collective whole, and tlie divided tongues lilce as of fire, resting u^on each one of them, betokening His living influence in and upon each severally. In that all-inclusive gift were germinally contained all the powers and forces, all the gifts and graces needed for the full development of the Body Mystical of the Christ. It was the conclusive token of accepted Atonement ; it was the pledge of full and complete Reconcihation, of Peace, of Sonship ; for it was the spirit of adoption, loherehy we 'cry, Ahha, Father {Rom. viii. 15). It made those who received it sons of God {St. John i. 12), uniting them to the Eternal Son, their Head. It was Life in Christ, Who thereby became the true inner life of His Church and of each member thereof {Col. iii. 3, 4). It was a life which should grow and strengthen, in both its forms, the in- dividual and the corporate, in the original Church, the then Body of the Christ (i Cor. xii.), which first re- ceived it ; and in the thenceforward growing and ex- panding Church, as it spread itself, like leaven, through the mass of unregenerate human nature, by the continual admission, on Faith, Repentance, and Baptism, of new members, like those three thou- sand, the first-fruits of Clu'istian preaching, in whose favour the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven were first used on the Day of Pentecost itself, and who z 2 340 and the beginning of the Churclis life. [lect. were the earnest of the great harvest that was to follow. The record of its earliest growth is contained in the Book of the Acts of the Apostles and in the Apostolic Epistles. In these documents we have, preserved for all time, the history of the first manifestation of Chris- tianity in the world ; of the first exhibition of its principles, moral and social ; and of the development of the constitution and working of the Catholic Church, according to the principles imparted by its Divine Founder to its first ofiicers and members. What we find in the latter half of the volume of the New Testa- ment, from the Acts onwards, are not detailed instruc- tions, nor precise rules and laws ; but the concrete historic exhibition, in actual life and work, of certain great principles of order and of conduct, together with the record — and this is a specially precious feature of the form which the literary monuments of original Christianity providentially took — the record of certain typical specimen cases, which remain as examples of tl]e application of the principles which the Teaching and Spirit of the great Head had lodged within His Church, to be developed for its guidance and govern- ance as occasion arose. 1 66. It seems demonstrable that the great Gift of Pentecost was, like the sacramental inbreatliing of the Paschal night, bestowed not on the Twelve Apostles only, but on the larger body of the believing disciples in general then present in Jerusalem ; on the then Bodij of Christy in fact, together with its already developed organs and duly authorized and acknowledged execu- VII.] Action of the Apostolic Ministry. 341 tive officers, of whom Saint Peter was first {A2)^encl{x, Note 10). For the present, and for immediate needs, those organs, those officers, were the Twelve alone ; the Twelve as one, with St. Peter their mouthpiece. Thus when the first converts from the outside world put their first question to the Church, 3Ien and brethren, what shall we do? it was to Peter and the rest of the Apostles; and Peter answered them. In the College of the Apostles were then stored up and contained all the needful powers and resources, for Teaching and for Government, of the Christian Ministry. Teaching and government were their work; but their inherent powers for that work were to be exercised, even during the early years of their united residence at the original centre, Jerusalem, according to a due and orderly and already divinely-ptrovided course ; of which order the primacy of Saint Peter was the guarantee and representative. And for the minor and subordinate exercise, in lesser defined departments or localities, of parts of that work, (which in its entirety was theirs, and for which they were responsible in chief,) they were empowered to provide, and did provide, as occasion arose. It is even probable that on the very day of Pentecost itself the principle of delegation came already into use, and that the Apostles, exactly as their Lord Himself had done {St. John iv. i , 2), either in whole or in part, baptized the three thousand by the hands of others deputed to the task. In the general body of the original believers, small as it then was, there would still be those differences of age, position, character, and aptitudes, which would obviously mark out some 342 Ideal life of the first Christian Church, [lect. rather than others for subordinate duties under Apo- stoUc direction. One such distinction (we can hardly doubt) would be the circumstance of having been, by the Lord's own call, one of the Seventy. Another might well be the belonging to the family of the Lord Him- self, or to a priestly family. 167. The beautiful picture of the First Church, con- tained in the opening chapters of the Acts of the Ajoostles (see especially the latter verses of chapters ii. and iv.), has an undying attraction for us. It is the Ideal of what the Church of Christ, the Kingdom of God on earth, should be ; in itself, and as a power for good in the world. Peace and unity, brotherly love and self- obliterating helpful service, joyful thanksgiving wor- ship, and holy high communion with God, a simple and gladsome social life one with another — these are its plain and striking features. They are exactly what the life of man ought to be, as lived in the great thouofht of the central fact of the Kesurrection, in itself so wondrous a revelation of the higher, the eternal life for which man was made ; and which was now re-opened to him, and, in the power and force of the Pentecostal gift, placed within his reach, now and for ever. Thus a new, a supernatural force and agency, lodged in the Catholic Church as its organ and instrument, was now planted in the midst of the hostile world, for its recovery to God. What should ideally, had the ancient Israel been faithful, have come by continuous and peaceful development without a break, must now call out an intenser opposition to God, to His Purpose, and to His Method. It must be seen that, in the VII,] opposed by the unbelieving world. 343 result, lie, who was essentially tlie Prince of Peace, and the Ambassador of Peace, had come not to send peace on earth, hut a sivord. The settled and matured hostility to Jesus on the part of the classes who de- termined the attitude and action of the Jewish nation, sealed irremediably as it had been by the murder of the Messiah, must necessarily extend itself to His Church. The breach declared from the moment when they rejected Him and His Kingdom, in the fatal words, We have no king hut Csesar, could only grow wider until it ended in their downfall and destruction. The gift, a paljoable gift which they both saw and heard, which He shed forth, according to ancient prophecy and to His own more recent promises, was the proof at once of His Resurrection and of His Ascension and Enthronement. It was the sure pledge that He Who had gone aivay into afar country had now received for Himself a King- dom ; and was now hy the Right Hand of God exalted as Prince and Saviour, as hoth Lord and Christ {Acts ii. 36), as Lord of all (x. 36). And it was also the proof that, having received for Himself His Kingdom, He would return in power and majesty, coming in the clouds of Heaven, and that ere that then living generation should pass away, for the judgment of the apostate Church. 168. Meantime, throughout the whole of that genera- tion, by the space of forty years, there was to be a respite of grace. The offer of mercy was to be specially made to the Jews, both of Palestine and of the Dis- persion, and to them first, ere the Mediator should be- come the Judge. Unto them first God, having raised up His Son Jesus, sent Him to hless them in turning 344 Three Mdnifestations of the Ascended Christ, [lect. away every one of them from his iniquities (Acts iii. 26), and offering them, no longer as a Nation, but one by one, a home among tlie true Israel of God, a citizen- ship in the New Jerusalem. The record of this work, and of the announcement of the Gospel throughout the world and the opening of the New Covenant to the Gentiles, is preserved in the inspired literature of the New Testament. It was a work of difficulty, of suffer- ing, of martyrdom. Hence three special manifestations of the risen and ascended Christ, the now Incarnate Son of God, in His glorified humanity, are recorded. 169. These manifestations recall, and are to be con- sidered in a line with, those appearances, in human or angelic form, under the Old Covenant, which, as prepa- ratory to the Incarnation, we considered in Lecture IV, and, like them, they occur on special and critical occa- sions. Their character is thus marked as unusual ; as not belonging to the normal manifestation of Christ through the Holy Spirit in and to His Church. The first of these was that to St. Stephen, immediately before his martyrdom. In his trial before the Council the two now opposing influences met face to face ; the official Jewish Church, apostate, rejected, and already doomed, in its resistance to the Holy Ghost ; the Christian Church, full of the Holy Ghost, and of faith in Jesus as the Messiah. He Who had said, Lo, I am with you all the days, was not wanting to His faithful witness at that supreme moment. Stephen, the first to die for the Faith of Christ, looked up steadfastly to heaven, saw the Shekinah-glory, and Jesus standing on the right hand of God, and said, Behold, I see the heavens VII.] The Date of the Apocalypse. 345 ojoeiied, and the Son of Man standing on the right hand of God. In intimate connection with this was the second manifestation of the ascended Jesus to Saul the persecut- ing zealot, who had stood hy, consenting to the murder of Saint Ste2:>hen. It forced open his closed heart to the overpowering conviction that the despised Jesus, Whom in His followers he persecuted, was indeed the Lord. It converted him into Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles, the chosen vessel to carry that Name which he had hated hefore the Gentiles and kings and the children of Israel (Acts ix. 15). The third manifestation was that vouchsafed to the beloved exile of Patmos, the com- panion and partaker with the then much- suffering Church in the tribulation and Kingdom and jjatience which are in Jesus [Rev. i. 9). Again, the gracious and encouraging Revelation of Him Who, in His unseen glory is the Prince of the kings of the earth (Rev. i. 5), as well as the Head and Lord, the Guide and Governour and Protector of His Church, was sorely needed. Once made, it serves for her assured support and comfort through all time until He shall come again. 170. It is no part of our present task to discuss the questions of the date, and consequent true primary reference, of the Apocalypse. It must suffice to say here that the study of it led me long since to the con- viction that its date lies within three years or less of the catastrophe of the Jewish War and of the downfall of Jerusalem. The time was one of great excitement among the Jews ; not in the Holy Land only, but throughout the world. It was, consequently, a time of great trial for the Christian communities every- 346 The Jeivish believers were especially [lect. where. They were exposed to the combined hostihty, at once, of the imbelievmg Jews, and of the Gentile powers, who ignorantly confounded them with the everywhere detested Jews, and hated them accordingly ^ The Christians of Jewish race would, for obvious reasons, be likely to suffer most from both these quarters ; and many might well, under their circumstances of fearful trial, be tempted to apostatize. Their still remaining ^ The few years immediately preceding the Destruction of Jerusalem by Titus were in fact, and that in an increasing degree year after year, the time of that 6\L\j/t.s jxcyaXr] {the Great Tribulation, the Tribulation of these days) which was so specifically foretold in the Olivet Pro- phecy {St. Matt. xxW. g, 21, 29); of which, as a necessary antecedent condition of the incoming of the Kingdom of God, the Apostles fore- warned their converts {Acts xiv, 22 ; i Cor. vii. 28); which had become, before the date of the Epistle to the Hebrews, a very present fact (//e6. X. 32-34) ; which St. John shared in, with the rest {BevA.g), and out of which the souls of the martyrs passed into the Presence of the Lamb {Rev. vii. 14), It seems to have coincided with, or at least to have fallen within, that period during which the Devil, who had previously been the Prince of this World {St. John xii, 31) and had, especially through the agency of idolatrous religion, deceived the whole world, i. e. especially the Gentiles {Rev. xii. 9 ; xx. 3,8: i Cor. x. 30), was cast out into the earth {Rev. xii. 9 ; compare St. Luke x. i8 ; St. John xii. 31), and so had gi-eat wrath, because he knew that he had but a short time {Rev. xii. 12) before the mystery of God should be finished {x. 6, 7), and vented that great ivrath in persecuting theiooman (the faithful Church, the true Israel) which brought forth the man child, and in going to war with the remnant of her seed, which kejit the commandments of God, and held fast the testimony of Jesus Christ (xii. 13, 17). The short time was closed by the millennial binding of Satan, consequent upon that coming of Christ in His Kingdom which was signalized outwardly by the fall of apostate Jerusalem, and the presence of which Kingdom on earth, in the Catholic Church of the Times of the Gentiles, marks and guarantees the temjiorary abeyance of the full power of the imprisoned deceiver. VII.] persecuted by their own tinbelievhig 347 strong attachment to their own ancient system, and their intense national ]iride in their beautiful capital, and their great Temple with its stately worship — feel- ings whicli, in their case, could not possibly escape the contagion of the special excitement then prevalent among their brethren — would tend (it can hardly be doubted) to increase the force of that temptation. The whole system in which they had grown up, round which their deepest affections had entwined themselves, and which had necessarily left so deep a mark upon them, was plainly threatened with destruction. The very thought of its passing away had almost driven their race to madness. That such should be the end of their excited expectation of a Messiah Who should be, in their worldly sense, tlie prince of the kings of the earth, and should not only deliver them from their subjection to Rome, but place them in a position of supremacy in the world, was to the Jews an intoler- able thought. The Christian Jews would know of the ominous predictions which the first, the more specially Hebrew, Gospel has preserved, in the record of Christ's great Prophecy on Olivet, and of the words of Christ to Caiaphas. And not the Christian Jews only. We cannot doubt that that answer to Caiaphas was care- fully treasured up against Christ and His Cause in the memories of non-Christian Jews ; and they might well have gained a knowledge of the Olivet discourse also from Christian relatives. The presence of this know- ledge, and the consequent passionate feeling it would naturally generate, is very clearly indicated in the testimony of the suborned false witnesses against Saint 348 co2intrymcn, as well as by the Heathen, [lect. Stephen {Ads vi. 13), Tiiis man ceasetli not to sjoeak hlas^hemous ivords against this Holy Place and the Latv : for we have heard him say, that this Jesus of Nazareth shall destroy this ^lace, and shall change the customs tvhich Moses delivered us. It is not difficult to imagine the bitterness and violence of the feelings which would be thus aroused in the minds of the still unbclievinof Jews against their Christian countrymen ; nor the in- tensity of the pressure, moral and otherwise, to which these would be subjected in consequence. Nor can we wonder that, under such circumstances, the thought should have come back again, to the minds of some at least among them, Can it be, after all, that Jesus is what Christians maintain He is ? They knew that God spake to Moses {St. John ix. 29). They knew that the ancient and venerable relio-ion of their race rested on the acknowledged foundation of a great historic revela- tion. Was it really necessary to acquiesce in the belief that all its outward and visible splendour must pass away for ever, and be as if it had never been ? Was the Christian allegation true, that its real inward essence was imperishably secured in the Work and in the Church of Christ 1 Could it be that the humble Christian Church of those days, the sect that was everyu'here spohen against, was to be, and that ex- clusively, what it should all end in l Putting ourselves into the position of that first generation of Hebrew believers, we may well imagine their difficulties, their sore temptations. That the Church survived and triumphed notwithstanding such difficulties, not to speak of others which, like these, were peculiar to that VII.] The Apocalypse is an expanded 349 time, is one among the many sure proofs of her super- natural origin. It was to meet such difficulties, and to strengthen them against such strong, subtle, and plau- sible temptations, that the Epistle to the Hebrews was, very evidently, written ; to arm them beforehand at once against the growing intensity of the special per- secution they had already begun to suffer from, and against the heavy blow, now imminent, of the visible downfall of that system which, to the insight at least of spiritually-minded Christians, had long been decay- ing and ivaxing old, and was ready to vanish away (Heh. viii. 13) ^ 171. With the same state of things fit in the mes- sages and the revelation of the Apocalypse, the date of which its style and language combine with other considerations to place as early as I have indicated. It were strange indeed, were it possible, that of the four Evancrelists the one who alone is named amono: the small group of the four actual listeners to the discourse on Olivet (see St. Mark xiii. 3) should have left no record of it ; especially since it is he who gives such prominence in his Gospel to our Lord's controversy with Jewish unbelief But if we suppose the Apoca- lypse to be a special fuller revelation on the same sub- jects as occupy the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chapters of Saint Matthew's Gospel and the parallel passages in the other Synoptics ; to be, as it were, a fuller form, an expansion, on a larger canvas, of the ' Compare also the Epistle of St. James, the Bishop of Jerusalem, written under the same general circumstances, at a somewhat earlier date ; observing especially i. 2, 3, i 2 ; ii. 6, 7 ; v. 2, 7-1 1. 350 form of Christ's Prophecy on Olivet ; [lect, solemn prophecy to which Peter and James and John and Andrew had listened as thev sat with Jesns, on that last Tuesday evening, on the slopes of Olivet, facing the setting sun, with the doomed city and its glorious Temple lying full in their beauty at their feet, such difficulty is removed. The downfall has proved so great, so terrible, so complete, the period it closed has so completely passed away, that later generations have failed sufficiently to estimate either the grandeur and the glory of the Jeru- salem of that day, and of the system of which it was the visible centre and representative, or the very peculiar and critical character of the whole epoch. Hence has arisen a failure to perceive the true primary bearing alike of the Olivet discourse and of the Apocalypse ; and a sort of feeling that the language is too grand and high-flown for such an application. But this latter difficulty in the way of a truer view arises in great measure from a too literal habit of mind in estimating the symbolical, and consequently, (as it seems to the more prosaic Western mind,) the hyperbolical character of the language and imagery of prophetic Scripture. Looking closely at the twenty-fourth chapter of Saint Matthew, we discern a clear line between the first and the second portions of the great prophecy. Surely our Lord Himself has given us the key to the primary ap- plication of the first portion. It lies in His words, as reported, with all but verbal identity, by the three Sy- noptics {Si. Matt. xxiv. 34 ; ;S^^. Mark xiii. 30 ; St. Luke xxi. 32), Verily, I say unto you, this generation shall not jpass away till all these things he ful/illed. For one primary VII.] both refer to the Comings of Christ. 351 and very practical purpose of the prophecy was to warn beforehand those whom it would actually closely concern ; in order that, when the time came, they might secure their safety by flight ; as we know the Christians of Jerusalem did. But after these words the discourse changes its character. It passes into a general warning to all Christians, and especially (>SV, Matt. xxiv. 45) to the clergy, of the necessity of watchful readiness for that later, and greater, coming of the Son of Man to Judgment, of which the Visitation on Jerusalem was a type. In this second portion, in marked contrast to the assurance that the former portion would be fulfilled within that generation, we find clear indications of the lapse of an indefinitely long time. They lie in the phrase xvliile the Bridegroom tarried {^povlX^ovro^) and in the Lord's return (in the Parable of the Talents, St. Matt. XXV. 19), after a long time. Distinct again from this portion is the solemn description of the final Judge- ment of the Gentile world [iravra ra eOvt]) with which the discourse closes, and which is without any note of time, further than what is implied in its position as fol- lowing the Parables of the Virgins and of the Talents. But the decisive character of the break after verse 34 is clearly marked ; for the next words carry us on from the fall of Jerusalem to the final Consummation. The heaven and the earth shall ^mss away, hut My words shall not j)ass away. But of that day and hour, i. e. in which the heaven and the earth shall pass away, hnowetli not any, no, not the angels of heaven, hut My Father only. The parallel place in Saint Mark has here the re- 352 Time of the still future Coming 710 1 revealed, [lect. markable addition, Neither the Son. This gives still greater point to the sharp contrast of the uncertainty (humanly speaking) of the time of the great future and final Consummation of the Age to come (the Christian Dispensation, then only beginning), with the express declaration of the Son that the close of the then Age, the Jewish Dispensation, would certainly be seen by men then living. The difference of the two statements is also further marked by their close and immediate juxtaposition. The addition ovSe 6 V169 [neither the So7i) perhaps only expresses what is really implied in the /moi/og [only) of el fxr] 6 iraTrip ixov fjLovos {hut My Father only). The Lord's saying, re- corded in Acts i. 7, should be compared in this con- nection ; — It is not for you to hnow times or seasons, which the Father set in his own power. The knowledge of the doom of Israel, after its long history, was appropriate even to the human nature of Him Whom it closely concerned as the King of the Jeivs, and Whose sentence, in fact, it was. The future consummation of the Christian Age [aiwv) of the times of the Gentiles, then only beginning, was a mystery upon which, just because it was only beginning (or, biblically speaking, only to begin on the downfall of Jerusalem), no light was as yet vouchsafed to any created intellect. The issues of our dispensation lay in the free-will of man, to the action of which it was subjected, as well in the offer of the Gospel as in the commission, and com- mand, to spread it. How many, and whom, out of the world, the Father should give to the Son, was, together with the relation of man's free-will to such act of VII.] The first Coming to Judgment not unexpected; 353 gift, an impenetrable secret and mystery, hid in the Absolute and Sovereign Will of the Eternal Father ; not revealed, at the time Christ spoke on earth, to the human mind of even the Eternal Son. And there was EG experience light as yet, at that date, upon it. The attitude of tlie rulers of the Jeivs was, indeed, already fatally determined, and their doom thereby sealed. But the attitude of the Jews of the dispersion was (perhaps) not yet so ascertained at the time our Lord's words were spoken, and upon that attitude much depended. It was otherwise thirty or thirty-five years later, as we know from the later Epistles of the New Testament, and from the Apocalypse. Hence (it would seem) the greater fulness (as compared with the Ohvet Discourse) of the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto Him, and which He sent and signified hy His angel unto His servant John [Eev. i. i) to testify unto the then Christians these things in the Churches (xxii. 16). They were then things which must shortly come to imss (i. i). Upon them was to follow the Millennial period ; a long, but wholly indefinite, period, \o be closed by the General Resurrection and Judgment; but that at a day and hour of which the inspired volume gives absolutely no indication whatever. It only intimates that it will be, to the generation on whom it comes, awfully sudden and unexjoected ; prob- ably because of their unbelief and consequent mere worldliness. The catastrophes that came upon the world A.D. 67 to 70, were not unexpected; and the men of that time were not altogether, like the con- temporaries of Noah, absorbed in worldly business and A a 354 after it the present ' Millennial'' Period, [lect. enjoyment. On the contrary, there was distress of nations loith ])er^lexity, mens hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things ichich were coming on the earth {St. Luke xxi. 25). This again is an indication that, from the words ' Heaven and earth shall jpass away ' to the close of the Olivet Discourse the reference is to things that are now still future. It is very observable that there is a parallel break and change of subject in the Apocalypse ; through which, from the fourth chapter onwards, we trace a general analogy, though on a greatly enlarged scale, to the Prophecy on Olivet. The doomed city is the same in both. The once faithful city had hecome an harlot {Isaiah i. 21), a Babylon, not a Jerusalem, a 'city of confusion,' not a ' Vision of Peace ' {Apjpendix, note 1 1 ). The Elect Church was to be delivered from her hatred, and placed beyond reach of the misery of her downfall, the description of which is completed in the eighteenth chapter. Then it is announced (xix. 7) that ' the Mar- riage of the Lamb is come,' and we are reminded of the Parable of the Ten Virgins in the Olivet Prophecy {St. Matt, xxv), and the imagery there employed. After this follows {Rev. xx) the Millennial period, w^iich, according to the most reasonable and probable interpre- tation, seems to answer generally to the present actual dispensation (see Lecture VIII and Ajjpendix, note 12); and then, with manifest reference to Christ's own words in Saint Matthew, the Seer exclaims (xx. 11), And I saw a great white throne (the " tlu^one of His glory") and Him that sat on it, before whose face the earth and 'the heaven fled away : and there loas no ^lace found for VII.] Secondary ' applications ' of Prophecy 355 tliem. And I saiv the dead, small and great, stand hefore God And I saio (xxi. i) a neio heaven and a new earth : for the first heaven arid the first earth ivere jpassed away. 172. In offering this comparatively simple solution of a problem on wliicb, through long ages, volumes have been written, with the general result only of making confusion worse confounded, and, in some in- stances, of bringing contempt and ridicule on a deeply interesting and solemn subject, and even on Biblical Exegesis generally, it is necessary to say that it deals only with the original primary and immediate reference at once of the Apocalypse— as a revelation, shortly before the event, of the coming downfall of Judaism, and of Jerusalem, its centre — and of the corresponding portion of the Saviour's eschatological discourse. Of the Revelation, chapters four to nineteen inclusive, the ' Pre- terist ' view seems the true view. But it is the nature and characteristic of New Testament, as it is of Old Testament, Prophecy, to have, beyond its primary, and (so to say) intended, reference, beyond the immediate historic fulfilment which was consciously anticipated by the prophet himself, the capability of further ' appli- cations ' by way of analogy ; and so of further fulfil- ments, it may be of varied scales of magnitude — but always proportional — under parallel circumstances of the Church and of the world, or of portions of either. This truth is indeed only a higher way of saying that ' History repeats itself,' i. e. that human affairs are not the sport of chance, that they are under a moral govern- ment, and that a uniform one, under which like causes A a 2 356 in later History, religious a7zd secular, [lect. produce like effects. The immediate historic occasions and fulfilments of Bible Prophecy may be said, with the exceptions of such clearly marked portions as point without question and by the very nature of the case to the still future end of all things, to lie wholly within tlie Bible itself. But being, as they are, striking examples and specimen cases of the method of the Divine Government, and of the principles on which that Government is administered, they have a second- ary and typical reference — and that a divinely intended reference — of the most instructive and important kind, to later events, persons, and circumstances, of a similar chaiacter. And to this analogical reference we can place no limit, since it depends only on the recurrence of an analogous condition of things. The second and final downfall of the earthly Jerusalem, itself foreshadowed by the first, and in- cluded together with the first in the vista of such prophecies as Leviticus xxvi. and Deuteronomy xxviii. foreshadows, for all time, the doom of a faithless and apostate Church wheresoever found. This permanent applicability of inspired piophecy, and of the exem- plar cases of the Mediator's Government of His Church recorded in the Bible history, is but the analogue in the spiritual sphere, in the religious life of man, of what we may also observe in the natural sphere of man's earthly, civil, and social life. God's dealings with Egypt, with Nineveh, with Tyre, with the earthly Babylon, themselves the subjects of fore- warning prophecy, are again but patterns and ex- amples of His dealing with other nations and cities vii.] Examples of this, in the case 357 under like circumstances, and so far as they are like. As it was with Sodom and Gomorrah, so it was with Herculaneum and Pompeii. As it was with the literal Babylon, so with pagan Rome. As with Tyre and Egypt, so, in their secular and political aspect, has it been — though in lighter measure, because of the Christian remnant within them — with Venice, with Constantinople, with Spain, and with Holland. 173. In the Christian Church it may be that, in the latter days, t\\Q falling-away {air oa-racr la, a^ostasia) of which Saint Paul speaks (2 Thess. ii) may bring about an awful parallel to the last days of Jerusalem ; and the fearful language of the Apocalypse may receive its final illustration in the case of once Christian nations into whose em^ty house, once guarded by faith, the evil spirit, which had been exorcised by Christ, has returned, hringing loith him seven other sj>irits more wicked than himself, and so making their last state tvorse than their first [St. Matt. xii. 43-45) ^ Meantime, the history of the once flourisliing Churches of the East, of Asia Mmor, and of North Africa, and, more ^ These words were indeed uttered with express reference to the then existing generation; as is clear from (i) the connection (which see) in which St. Matthew records them, and (2) from the closing sen- tence which he, the Hebrew Evangelit^t, preserves, Fven so shall it be also unto this wicked generation. St. Luke, in tlie parallel passage (xi. 24-26), introduces the saying about the unclean spirit without its introductory connection with the wickedness oiih&t evil and adulterous generation of Jews, and without the closing sentence above quoted. Do these omissions in the Gentile Gospel — this abstinence from pointing the saying directly at the then living generation of Jews — contain a hint that the saying may be analogously true in Gentile Churches also'? 358 of Nations and of Churches. strikingly still of Alexandria, of Constantinople, or, nearer home, of medieeval Scotland \ may furnish examples, in varied measure, of historic parallel to the downfall of Jerusalem, and of the judicial action of Him Who was seen walking in the midst of the seven golden candlesticks, and Who, in the messages to the seven Churches, has indicated, for all time, the prin- ciples of His dealing with those who bear His Name, and are set to do His work in His kingdom of heaven upon earth. ^ It has been estimated that in mediaeval times the Catholic Church owned one-third of the soil of the kinp^dom of Scotland. LECTURE VIII. THE WORK OF THE MEDIATOR AFTER THE ASCENSION. Hebrews xii. 22. 'AAAa irpoaeXrikvOaT^ Stwy opet kol iruXet ©eou (oji'Tos, lepovaakijix iirovpai'tio, kol fxvpidatv ayytkiav, Travrj-yvpei Kol (KKKrja-iq TipaiTOTOKOiv iv ovpavoHi aiToyeypa[xix4va)v, koL KpLTij 06(1) navToiv, KoX TTvevp-acri hiKaiinv rereAetco/zercoy, koX hiaOriKr]^ vias ixea-LTi] 'li]aov. (But ye are come unto mount Sion^ and unto the city of the living- God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerable company of" angels, to the general assembly and Church of the firstborn^ which are enrolled in Heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant.) 174. The judgment upon the Jewish Church, de- cisively and visibly marked by the destruction of the old Jerusalem, the mystical Babylon, inaugurated as decisively the times of the Gentiles, and launched the Catholic Church on its wonderful career. The Gentiles ivhich folloived not after righteousness attained to right- eousness, even the righteousness which is of faith, accept- ing Him as Lord and King Who had been to Israel a stone 0/ stumhling and a rock of offence, but Who, fall- ing upon them in awful judgment, had ground them, as a nation and a polity, to poioder. Only the election, now merged in the true, the spiritual, Israel of God, had obtained that which had been the great end of their Church and nation, the reason for its existence. The 360 The temporary rejection of the ancient Israel, [lect. red tvere hlinded ; cast aivay, like branches broken off God's good olive tree, into whose place the Gentiles were grafted in. So, in that wonderful Providence of God, the thought of which, with its ever mingled mercy and judgment, drew from 8aint Paul the burst of adoring amazement which closes the eleventh chapter of his Epistle to the Komans, all the sub- sequent generations of the Jewish race, themselves not partakers in the sin of their fathers, have been born into that condition of inherited unbelief, of invincible ignorance, and (humanly speaking) inevitable blind- ness, in which, for this age, God hath shut them all iq) together, in order that, in some way known unto Him- self, He may have mercy u^on all. 175. Satan, who, as a strong man armed, had reigned as king, nay more, as the god of this loorld, over the Gentile races in the days of their ignorance, was now dethroned. A stronger than he had come vjyon Him, and met him on his own ground, the world of man, which he had invaded, and over which he had usurped authority. Even in the preliminary stage of His re- deeming work the Christ, speaking with reference to the subjection of the demons to His delegated repre- sentatives acting in His Name, had said, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from Heaven (St. Luke x. 1 8). Later, as the great crisis drew on, He had said, on the third occasion when the Father's Voice was heard from Heaven (St. John xii. 23, &c.), Now is the judgment of this world ; noiv shall the prince of this ivorld be cast out. And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, ivill draw all men toivard Myself. And later yet, in the final VIII.] The Bmding of Satan. 361 discourses that followed the great self-oblation of the upper chamber, He said, projecting His and the Apostles' thoughts onward to the time after Pentecost, The Paraclete shall convince the world ahout judg7nent, because the prince of this ivorld hath heen judged. At last, A stronger than he had come u]^on him, and had overcome him, and tahen from him all his armour ivherein he t^'usted, and divided his spoils. The king most mighty of the forty -fifth Psalm had girt His sword uj>on His thigh, and in His Majesty had begun to ride on jprosjperously on behalf of truth and meekness and righteousness. The rider on the white horse of the Apocalypse was gone forth coriquering and to conquer. The Kingdom of God had come upon the earth (St. Luke xi. 20). That work of recovery had begun, the ultimate result of which should be that the kingdoms of the world should, fully and for ever, become the kingdoms of our Lord and of His Christ {Rev. xi. 15, 16). Thus the Millennial Period of the Apocalypse was opened by the binding of Satan, the great ad- versary, the secret animating spirit of the rival world- power (see Rev. xiii. 2, 4). His action was restrained; so that wherever the Kingdom of God came, and with it the new spiritual forces, tlie poicers of the age long looked for, but now come (Heb. ii. 5 ; vi. 5 ; ix. 9), he shoidd deceive the Gentiles no more, till the thousand years shoidd be fidfilled {Rev. xx. 2, 3). Thenceforward, from the definite setting up of Christ's Kingdom, even on earth and amid the circumstances of this mortal life of man, within the now world-wide Church of Christ, as within a charmed circle held for Him by the God- 362 The Reign of Christy [lect. inspired, God-supported, faith and devotion of His believing people militant in the power of His Name, not Satan, but the Crucified, is King. Much more does He reign in and for the Church at rest in that Paradise %mt\iin tlie veil ; wherein are stored, their earthly warfare over, tlie ever-increasing ' majority ' of redeemed souls, who constitute the incomparably larger portion of the Church which, on earth or within the veil, is but one Communion of Saints, one Kingdom of God. Over that Kingdom, from His ascended glory, where He sits, in our nature^^ on the throne of the Universe, at the right hand of God, He reigns, the One Mediator, tlie Man Christ Jesus, the Head of the Church ; and shall reign until He hath j)ut all His enemies under His feet. Moses with the Elders of Israel, and afterwards Isaiah and Ezekiel, had seen Him in His glory under the old dispensation. Once more the Seer of the Apocalypse beheld Him, now presented under the expressive symbol of the Lamb, that is, as the incarnate and once suffering Eedeemer, now associated in equal glory with Him That sat on the Throne ; and receiving, as within the Triune Godhead, Which was manifested in Him, the worship of the Church, of the Angels, and of all Creation {Bev. v) \ ^ Notwithstanding the distinction between Him That sat on the throne and the Lamb, I incline to think that both are to be understood of the Son ; the first of the Son in His Eternal and Divine Nature, as the Creator, the second of the Son as the Redeemer, as sacrificed, i. e. in His Human Nature. The distinction in Dan. vii. between the Ancient of Days and the son of 7nan should perhaps be understood in the same way (see § 107). Certainly St. John's description of Him Whom he saw walking amid the seven golden candlesticks I'ecalls Daniel's VIII.] and of His Sainis, in and with Him, 363 176. He reigns not alone. To a wondrous present reality of high spiritual privilege, the pledge and the earnest of future manifested glory, God, Who is rich in mercy, for His great love ivherewith He loved us, hath quichened us also ivith Christ ; given us the new spiritual life, in Him and with Him, in thefrst Besurrection, the resurrection of the soul to grace ; and so hath raised us u^ together ivith Christ, and made us to sit together loith Him in the heavenly flaces, in Christ Jesus {Ej)h. ii. 4). His people also, the subjects of His Kingdom, the members of the Church which is His hody, has Christ made to be kings and iwiests unto God and His Father (see Exod. xix. 5, 6 ; Isa. Ixi. 6 ; 2 Pet. ii. 5, 9 ; Rev. i. 6 ; V. 10; XX. 4), and to live and reign ivith Him ujpon (or over) the ea7ih (exi rrj? ytj^), i. e. within the visible earthly sphere of man's present life \ How are we to understand words which seem so great, especially as applied to anything now existing ? Perhaps the following considerations may help us. An ideal redemption is depicted in the New Testament, especially in some of the great sayings of Christ — ideal, but not in the sense, God forbid, of its being unreal, unattained, impossible ; for, in itself, and as regarded description of the Ancient of Days. The words spoken by Him That sat upon the throne, in Rev. xxi. 5, suit perfectly the Son in His divine Nature. Or, we may understand it of the Ti-iune God, as Isa. vi ; but with more especial reference to the Son, inasmuch as a visible form, and that human (see verses i and 5), is indicated. See Bp. "Words- worth, ad loc. It should be recollected that the whole description is symbolical, and the language, as it were, hieroglyphical. ^ The Westminster Revisers of 1881 read in Rev. v. 10 ^aaiKtvuvcnv {they do reirjii) for ^aaiKfvaofifv {ice shall reign). 364 The Ideal of Salvation in Christ, [lect. from the point of view of the finished work of Christ, it is real from the moment of the Pentecostal gift. To us who are, of God's unspeakable mercy, the sub- jects of it, it is real as far as, at each moment of our spiritual history, we grasp it with living faith, and yield ourselves to it and to its influences with answer- ing will. We, in our weakness and littleness of faith, in our slowness of heart to believe, are straitened in ourselves, and almost stagger at our own high destiny; nay, not destiny, for that is future, say rather, at the greatness of our present joy. According to thy faith he it unto thee is ever true. As our fiiith is, so are we. And we, in a lowering atmosphere of weakly faith, half-informed and so half-hearted, or even of bold scoffing unbelief — though that is really less dangerous, for it rouses and stimulates faith by reaction, and provokes enquiry, which always, if it be candid, strengthens faith — we, amid these adverse influences, too often fail to grasp and to appropriate, and so to make fruitful within us, the great things our Lord has done for us, the unspeakable gifts and graces He has placed within our reach. Yet, for all that, the Ideal is true. It is before us, above us, around us, within us, secured for ever and immovable, a kingdom ivhich can- not he shaken, which we, so far as concerns God's gift to us, God's calling of us, have received. It may be ours, if we will ; ours in present conscious joy, ours in future everlasting, ever-growing, fulness, if we holdfast grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably ivith reverence and godly fear (see Heh. xii. 18-29). {A'pioendix, Note 13.) 177. What is this Ideal ? How shall we express it 1 VIII.] the present Gift of Ete7'7ial Life, 365 I answer, It is Life in Christ, life moral and spiritual, life eternal, present and everlasting. Death is the evil one's great triumph. Death, spiritual, moral, physical, is his great work as the accursed antagonist of God, and tlie slayer, from the heginning, of man made in God's hnage and Liheness. The Son of God, the One great Mediator of life, natural and spiritual, to all creation, came in our nature, to destroy the works of the devil (i St. John iii. 8) ; to take away the sin of the world ; to give a new life from Himself, the Second Adam, and that more abundantly, to the race which, without Him, was, and must remain, dead in tresjyasses and sins. And the life which He brou2;ht to man was that Life which is in Him, the God-Man, ivithout measure (St. John iii. 34) ; and which overflows from Him to us ; even the living energy of the creative Spirit of God, the Lord, the Life-Giver, The true conception of the ideal redemption, and of salvation, as Christ has procured it for us, and offers it to each one severally whom God's mysterious election has called, and has brouo^ht to the knowledo;e of Christ in this life, is that it is Eternal Life. The way to the fuller and more fruitful grasp and apprehension of that conception is simply to meditate on the thought of spiritual, the only real, life, in the light at once of our own experienced need and of our Father's divine pro- vision for that need in and through Christ our Lord. So meditating, we begin to see light in His light, by, first, realizing how real, how intolerable a death is the state of willing slavery to sin, of estrangement from God, now, in a fear and hatred which forecast an o 66 in the ' First Resurrection' [lect. eternal separation. So meditating, the inner eye is opened to spiritual things ; and the ' second sight/ the spiritual sight, of faitli awakes within us. We realize, with growing consciousness, the realities of that spiritual world with which we find ourselves, as Christians, in relation. We grasp Christ and His work by faith. Justified hy faith we have jpeace ivith God through Him. Peace with God — and that, first and foremost, in the sense of assured and abiding forgive- ness of our sins and conscious acceptance with Him as His sons in Christ — is our great, our standing necessity. In Christ we have this peace. Then, further, we feel the blessedness of our covenant-relation as initiated and sealed, in abiding efiect, in the ' One Baptism for the remission of sins,' whereby we were graciously lifted out of the natural state of death, and new-born into the Family and Kingdom of God. Then we know that by that ingrafting we were brought into contact with the new, the supernatural, spiritual life which circulates through the Body of Christ, and which is the very Spirit, the very Life, of God. By that grace we are raised with the first Resurrection, the moral and spiritual resurrection ; the essential resurrection, for it carries with it, for all who abide in it, the promise of the uninterrupted growth into all that is to follow. Of this first Resurrection and of the Life Eternal into which a man is born thereby, Christ speaks in the saying {St. John v. 24), Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that heareth My ivord, and helieveth Him that sent Me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment ; hut is ][)assed from death unto life. And He speaks of VIII.] viz. Of the Soul to Grace. '^^'j it as a present thing, resulting at once from the acceptance of the Gospel as preached, directly or in- directly, by Himself; for He adds, Verily, verily, I say unto you, the hour is coming (i. e. after Pentecost) and noio is (i. e. in the then presence and teaching of the Incarnate Mediator) when the dead (i. e. in the natural state of spiritual death) shall hear the Voice of the Son of God; and they that hear (i. e. with willing acceptance and oLedience) shall live ^ Once in this Life Eternal, and continuing in it, the believer has, in Christ's Ideal, no death to fear. The essential chansfe is made. TJiere is no condemnation to them tvhich are in Christ Jesus . . . For the laio of the Sjnrit of Life in Christ Jesus has made them free from the latv of sin and death. Hence Christ can say, TVho- soever liveth and helieveth in Me shall never die; i. e. the ^ That our Lord is speaking in St. John v. 25, 26, of a spiritual re- surrection from a spiritual death is evident from (i) the phrase they that hear, implying a willing reception of, and attention to, the voice of the Son of God. There is nothing like this in the contrasted verse 28 ; for all that are in the graves must hear, whether they will or not ; (2) From the addition and now is. The contrasted bodily resurrec- tion is wholly future. (3) All that are in the graves {28) points to the physically dead ; and so, by contrast, shows that 25 speaks of S]nritual death. (4) Shall come forth (i. e. out of the graves), as con- trasted with shall live, points to the same interpretation. Compare, for the present gift of the risen, the eternal, life to the regenerate believer {St. John iii, 14-16, 36; iv. 14; vi. 40, 47, 51, 54-58; viii. 51 ; X. 10, 28 ; xi. 25, 26; xvii. 3. Romans vi. 3-1 1 ; viii. i-n. Coloss.n. 12, 13; iii. 1-4. x St. John v. ii, 12). This life is real now, though often feeble, and always imperfect, always forfeitable by lapse into unbelief and disobedience. Faithfulness and 2)atient continu- ance in well-doing to a death in the Lord secure it for ever. Hence St. John's language about the (present) millennial reign with Christ of the faithful dead within tlie veil [Rtv. xx. 4-6). 368 The full Millennial Reign ^within the veil' [lect. physical death to which our mortal hodies are still liahle is no death to the man, the self, but an upward step to fuller life, and so a gain, being the introduction to a closer nearness to Christ, Who has abolished death and Irought life and immortality to light through the Gospel (2 Tim, i. 10). 1 78. We can now understand that, for the believer whose life is in Christ (i. e. whose life is Christ's life in him), eternal life is a present possession ; and the same in essence, and in spiritual reality and continuity, whether here or within the veil. Hence we can understand how, in a true sense, Christ's faithful people live and reign with Him even on the earth ; though it be true that the Millennial Eeign revealed to Saint John has its truer and fuller, though now present and contempo- raneous, realization, both objectively and subjectively, only for the redeemed in Paradise, in the Jerusalem which is ahove [Gal. iv. 26; Heh. xii. 22; Bev. iii. T 2 ; xxi.). To the eye of faith, which apprehends present spiritual fact, the work of the One Mediator is, though waiting as yet for its full manifestation in the final consummation, still so far in itself complete, as that, the dividing barrier of sin and death being done away, the seen and the Unseen are already reconciled and made one. The Communion of Saints embraces both. Even to Christians still in the flesh it is said, Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the Living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumerahle company of angels, to the general assemhly and Church of the Firsthorn who are enrolled in heaven, and to VIII.] spiritually one with the Church on earth; 369 Go^ the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men, i. e. the faithful departed of the older Dispensations, now at length, through the work of Christ, made i^er- feet, and to Jesus the Mediator of the New Covenant. Already our citizenship is in heaven. (Phili^p. iii. 20.) Already we are fellow-citizens ivith the saints and of the household of God. {Eph. ii. 19.) Already we belong to the Jerusalem which is above, which is the mother of us all. {Gal. iv. 26.) And the spiritual greatness of our calling sheds its heavenly glory and its beauty over the oft darksome and toilsome lot, in this world, of many a lowly Christian life that is lived in the light of that faith, under the observation of scarcely any eyes but those of God and His holy angels. Gloria haec est omnibus Sanctis ejus. Such honour have all His saints (Ps. cxlix. 9) ; and, perhaps, most of all those who are His secret ones. 1 79. This now actual spiritual unity of Heaven and earth finds its expression in the Worship of the Church. In her holy services, and most completely and charac- teristically in the sacred mystery of her Eucharistic Sacrifice and Communion, believers, as an holy and royal priesthood, permitted to offer up sjpiritual sacri- fices acceptable to God through Jesus Christ (i Pet. ii. 5 and 9) have access through Him, by One Spirit, unto the Father. In our solemn sacramental Liturgy, the only full expression of our worship, the only worthy exhibition of our relation to God as His redeemed children, we lift up our hearts unto the Lord. From that moment we are more in Heaven than on earth. The veil is done away between them ; and ' with Bb 370 and one in Worship, especially [lect. angels and archangels, and with all the company of heaven,' we laud and magnify, in the threefold Sandus which is part of the revealed worship of Heaven, Him of Whose glory not heaven only but also tJie ivJiole earth is full {Isaiah vi. 3 ; Eev. iv. 8). 180. The hfe which is in harmony with this worship is the Hfe akeady of Heaven upon earth. The all- inclusive ordinance of the Holy Communion, the very crown and sum of the Gospel, as it enables God's for- given children to plead before Him on earth, even as the Mediator Himself ever pleadeth it still in Heaven, that One and only Sacrifice (of the Lamh slain from the foundation of the world) which is the one and only ground and means of that effectual atonement on which alone their hopes depend, so it conveys to them, presently, that continual cleansing, refreshment, and renewal which, amid the infirmities and trials of this present life, they continually need. It maintains and strengthens their living union with Christ, and, in and through Him, with God. For it is the actual communication of the Body and Blood of Christ (i Cor. X. 16) as a quickening Spirit (i Cor. xv. 45) to us in our whole nature of body, soul, and spirit. It is the living link which binds each quickened soul to the One Mediator. It is the chief of the joints and hands whereby all the Body, having nourishment ministered from the Head, is knit together (Col. ii. 19) ; keeping up in each his membership in Christ's Body, and so securing for each that constant inflowing of the ful- ness of Christ's life whereby the whole Body increaseth with the. increase of God. It maintains in each one VIII.] ill the Holy Communion. 371 that eternal life of wliicli we have spoken. And it carries with it the sure promise of that bodily re- surrection and glorification ai the last day {St. John vi. 39, 40, 44, 54) which shall be the token of the realized completeness of our salvation, the means of the final manifestation of the Sons of God {Rom. viii. 19), when the righteous shall shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father {St. Matt. xiii. 43), and shall be as the angels of God in Heaven ; nay more, shall be lihe Him (i St. John iii. 2) Who died for them and rose again ; for He shall change the hody of our humiliation that it may he fashioned conformahly to the Body of His glory ^ according to the tvorking ivherehy He is ahle even to subject all things unto Himself {Philip^, iii. 21). 181. Looking forward through the present Hfe to this full consummation and bliss, both in body and soul, which is daily presented to our faith and hope in the closing words of the Creeds ; and feeling that he has already received, in Christ, a kingdom that cannot he moved, and is already introduced to, and surrounded by, eternal realities most blessed; the Christian, at peace with God, and delivered from the heathen's perpetual hondage through the fear of death, does indeed, in a most true, albeit a most unworldly sense, reign, with a royalty of which the most highminded Stoic never dreamed. The Christian knows that, with the victory that overcometh the world, even our faith, he is delivered from the various forms of the world's degrading bondage, the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, or the ^ride of life; and has learnt to estimate more truly the dignity and the capacity of that human B b 2 372 Christ's provision, in the Chtcrch, [lect. nature which the hopeless pessimism of much modern anti-Christian thought would lower to a depth whence only its misery could redeem it from contempt. 182. Yet the very grandeur of such a ' state of salva- tion ' secures humility ; for in this stage, however real, it is not indefectible. To embrace with a fuller faith the glory of his calling is for the thoughtful Christian only to feel more acutely the contrast of liis own shortcoming and unworthiness. Even a Paul must say, Not as though, I had already attained, or am as yet made jyerfed ; hut I j^ress on, if that I may lay hold of that for which also I was laid hold of hy Christ Jesus. (Philijyp' iii. 1 2.) Even a Paul, straining for- ward unto those things ivhich are in front, must press on toward the goal unto the 'prize of our calling above of God in Christ Jesus (ver. 14), if hy any means he might attain unto that rising up from out of the general body of the dead {e^avacrramv t>V e'/c vcKpwv, a peculiar phrase used only in this place), which is the croivn of life for those who are faithfid unto death, and which the language about the millennial reign seems to assign already, in some high unspeakable spiritual reality, to the saints in the Unseen, as their present reward, the outgrowth, the secured further develop- ment, in unbroken continuity, of that eternal life which had been begun in them even while still m the flesh ; and the pledge of the assured consummation of their adoption, in the future redemption of their hodies. 183. Forgiveness, peace, life, in and through the King- dom of God on earth, and through its life-giving Sacra- ments and means of grace, are the blessings enjoyed by VIII.] for the continued application of His Work, ^*]i the believer from the finished work of the One Mediator the Prophet, Priest, and King, of that Kingdom which is the CathoHc Church. For in that Kingdom Christ has made a perfect provision for the conveyance and application of all the benefits of His work of re- demption to individual souls in each generation. For this purpose, among others, the Catholic Church exists, as a divinely-organized Body with a divinely-ordained constitution and ofiicers. In the place of Christ's visible, bodily, local, limited presence is now substi- tuted an invisible but universal presence, in and with His Body mystical, through His Holy Spirit. To that Body he gave the great commission to represent Him, to act in His Name, to carry on His work ; As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I you. And when He had said this, He breathed on them, and said unto them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost. But He had already provided, in the creation, and in the acknowledged position, of the Apostolic College, for the orderly ex- hibition of tliat living energy which He then breathed into His Body. Though all were priests and kings, yet were there those who were so, by His own appoint- ment, in a special sense, and with a special ministry, as the recognized executive ofiicers and organs of His Body. They were to act, and through them the Body was to act, in Christ's Name (i Cor. v. 4 ; 2 Cor. ii. 10), and ' by His commission and authority.' (Article XXVI.) 1 84. For the mediatorial work of the Son of God, at length fully organized in its completeness by His great redemptive acts as Incarnate, had now to be car- ried on and applied for that which was the great object 3 74 through the Operation of the Holy Ghost, [lect. of it all, the bringing back man, and man's world, to God, to a fuller life in God than had belonged to man even as unMlen. It was to be carried on at once both in Heaven and on earth, which were now made one ; in Heaven openly, immediately, by the direct personal action of the Mediator Himself as the High Priest of the New Covenant, Who, tuithin the veil, ever liveth to make intercession for us, pleading evermore, as the Lamh as it had been slain, His own one offering of Himself; presenting evermore, with absolute accept- ance, before the Father, the worship of His redeemed Church ; and showering down the Father's answering grace upon it. On earth also in deepest, highest spiritual reality, though all invisibly to the eye of sense, was the same work to be carried on by the ever- present operation of the same Mediator, Whose promise was. Where tivo or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them, and, Lo, I am with you all the days, even unto the consummation of the age. The Agent of this spiritual presence, the living Power and informing Force of this spiritual opera- tion, within the militant Church, is the Holy Spirit of God ; using (since the conditions of our earthly life render such intervention necessary for man's re- ligious as for his natural welfare) the present, local, visible, ministrations of men, called and empowered by Him ' for the office and work of priests in the Church of God.' This subordinate, delegated, ministrative priesthood is simply the visible instrument whereby the one and only High Priest exhibits and exercises on earth His own sole inalienable and ever-continuing VIII.] and a ministrative priesthood. 375 Priesthood. He ordained it originally in the College of the Apostles ; who were not His ' successors,' but only the visible representatives of Him Who still lived, and Who, though invisible, was and is, since His Ascension and His gift of the Holy Ghost, more than ever present, Jilling all things {E]jili. iv. 10). But the Apostles, like the Levitical priests, were not suffered to continue hy reason of death {Heh. vii. 23). Successors they must have ; for the work of Christ must be as near, and His Church as effectually operative, to each succeeding generation as to the first believers after Pentecost. Hence — and we cannot doubt, according to the prin- ciples Avherein the Lord Himself had instructed them, when, during the great Forty Days, He s'pake unto them of the things j^ertaining to the Kingdom of Heaven — the Apostles provided such successors in the local Episco- pate, wherein the Christian priesthood, in its totality of powers and responsibilities, has ever since been vested in chief; to be exercised locally, in clearly specified departments of spiritual function, for the ordinary charge of Christ's flock, through the subordi- nate delegated service of those of the second order, who receive their commission through the bishops, as they through their predecessors. 185. But behind, and above, and through, as well as besides and beyond, all these visible arrangements — which, depending on men which have infirmity, are, and must be, ever liable to defect in working — stands and acts, in His unapproachable prerogative, the Great High Priest (tcov dylcov Aeirovpyo? Heh. viii. 2), the Minister of the true Tahernacle, giving power and efficiency to 376 The One Mediator ever acts invisibly, [lect. the means and ministers of grace which are His own ordinance ; yet visiting also, in direct and immediate action, through His Holy Sj^tirit, the hearts and souls, individually and severally, whom the Father has given Him, and has, by His Providence, called ' to the know- ledge of His grace and faith in Him ;' knitting each one directly to God in the one Communion of Samts, which is His own Body mystical, and assuring therein to each separate baptized soul, according to its need of the moment, an open access to Himself, and, through Himself, to the Father ; vouchsafing ever to each several living member in the Body His own indwelhng presence in the believing heart, and His own ever ready sympathy and loving help. It is these constant ever-present blessings that make the gracious work of the One Mediator to be to even the humblest Christian a fact of his daily and hourly experience. Thus, the Spirit of God, which he has, and knows that he has, though only in and through Christ, heareth loitness with his own spirit — a witness within himself — that he is the child of God, and that God is indeed a Father, loving, and ready to help. {Apj)endix, Note 14.) 186. The living Church of God on earth is at once the outcome and the depositary of these supernatural forces and agencies. Hers they are, through the grace of her Founder and Head, her Bridegroom and her Lord. By them she lives in Him ; with the promise that, as a whole, the powers of the kingdom of darkness and of death shall never jprevail against her. For her, and through her, as the city set on an hill that cannot he hid, the Mediator exercises on earth, for the salvation VIII.] in His CJmrch ; as Prophet ; as Priest, 377 of all men, His threefold function of Prophet, Priest, and King. First, as Prophet ; His inspiration — acting on His own earlier utterances of the Old Testament, as well as on His later utterances in the flesh immediately prepara- tory to the New Covenant — revealed to the first Church, from Pentecost onwards, and to the Church of all time, all necessary truth as to God, His loving Fatherhood and His purpose of mercy towards mankind, and as to His own Person and office and His redeeming work. His mercy provided that the preservation and trans- mission of that revealed truth should not depend on the uncertainties of merely natural human tradition, either oral or written. He guided its first authorita- tive teachers to commit it to writing, under special in- spiration, for all time. And so, in the later volume of Holy Scripture, completing the earlier, the Incarnate Word, as the Final Prophet, reveals God to man ; ap- pointing His Church the while to be ' the witness and keeper ' of that revelation ; and not that only, but also, through that unction from the Holy One wherewith she was anointed from the first, the one authoritative judge of its true meaning. Thus, in all that it most concerns man to know for his highest welfare, now and here- after, the Church is the Light of the Woylcl, shining by the Light of Him to Whom it is her one work to bring all who do not hate the light, but will come to it. 187. Christ's priestly action, through the Church and her ministry, conveys and seals, to the penitent and be- lieving, all needful grace, whether of initial forgiveness and regeneration or of continual renewal and progressive 2,yS especially through the Sacraments ; [lect. sanctificution. For this work He uses that sacramenta] system, whereby an inward gift of grace is connected with an outward and visible sign, which is one of the special features of His Church as a divine and super- natural institution. This principle (besides the great example of the Incarnation itself) is unmistakeably in- dicated on those three cardinal occasions that mark the three stages of the Saviour's Work ; the gift of the Holy Ghost to Himself in His Baptism, by which gift He was constituted the Messiah ; His preliminary communica- tion of the Spirit to His Body on the Easter night ; and His plenary gift of the same Spirit on the Day of Pentecost. That gift, then fully given, was the all- inclusive Sacrament. It united, for all needs and pur- poses of spiritual life and action, corporate or indi- vidual, the Body to the Head. Of the informing power and energy so given — involving an extension of the Incarnation from the Son of God as glorified man to the living members of His Body — all other sacra- mental ordinances are but particular examples, sub- ordinate and special forms. In the highest of these forms, the Holy Communion, as indeed in all the acts of His Church done in His Name, Christ Himself is the real, though unseen, Operator, the one true Priest. Through it He pleads on earth, liidden in spiritual mystery, that one and only Sacrifice of Himself, once made, which He pleads openly and immediately in Heaven ; while His Church, acting by her priesthood, pleads it through Him, as her highest, her all-inclusive, act of worship. Through it also He Who gave Him- self, His flesh and blood, as the true Paschal Lamb, VIII.] a7id also as King, claiming 379 the Bread of Life, to the Apostles in the upper chamber, gives Himself now, by the hands of their successors, to nourish the souls of His people, and to preserve them, body and soul, unto everlasting life ; communicating to each, in heavenly reality, His own God-penetrated humanity. His human nature, so made to each a qiiickening S2>irit, the one antidote to the flesh and Hood, the old nature, of the first Adam which is in lis all, and counterworking it in a growing con- formity to Himself. Nothing less real than this will satisfy the language of the Apostle : Tlie cui) of Uess- ing which we hless, is it not the communication of the Blood of Christ? The hread ivhich we hreah is it not the commnnication of the Body of Christ? (i Cor. x. 16). Nothing less real than this will reach down to the deeplying bases of our subconscious being ; or heal and cleanse the innermost springs of our tainted humanity, in body, soul, and spirit. 188. Passing to the third function of the Christ : In the Church on earth, as in the Jerusalem ahove, and over 'Angels and Archangels and all the company of Heaven,' the Incarnate Mediator reigns as Lord and King. His Law — the law of absolute and perfect moral righteous- ness and truth — is the acknowledged rule and standard for all His people ; a law reaching to the minutest details of conduct even in thought and feeling ; a law finding its highest expression in a supreme personal devotion to Himself, as the one supreme and perfect example and pattern, the master, and the owner, of the Christian's whole self. The Christian Society is the Kingdom of the righteous 380 the allegiance and service of all [lect. King. It exists by its allegiance to Him. Its work is to reconquer the world for Iliai ; and to make His law of moral righteousness, justice, purity, and love prevail among mankind, until the evils that afflict humanity are done away by a willing conversion of man's will to God, and so God's Kingdom comes in such wise that His will shall be done in eartli as it is in Heaven. For this Christ died ; for this Christ lives and reigns ; for this, through His Church on earth and her children, so far as they are faithl'ul to their glorious calling, Christ works still among mankind, that He may bring men back to God, and undo the work of the devil. 189. Passing by the mystery of His relation, in this life or in the great Unseen, present or future, to the masses of Heathendom and to the Jewish race, it be- hoves us to remember that, at least for professedly Christian nations, churches, institutions, their relation of earnest loyalty and faithfulness, or otherwise, to Him and to the beneficent work of His Kingdom, is decisive of their destiny; since for the w^ork of that Kingdom, and for the glory of its King, they exist, as means to ends. Christ's law is the law of right. His Kingdom is the kingdom of light, of purity, of peace, of love, of brotherly kindness between man and man, between class and class ; the kingdom of hope, for time and for eternity, and of endless progress for human nature. Re- sistance to that law, opposition to that Kingdom and hindrance of its work, are high treason against hu- manity ; and seal, after whatever warning, the doom of all, individuals or societies, who in unprincipled and reckless self-seeking commit themselves to such courses. VIII.] to Himself and to His Kingdom, '^^'^ i The higli-handed oppression, nay, the negative, cold- hearted, indifferent neglect of even the least and lowest of those who, in Christ's wide sense, are our neighhours, is never overlooked, forgotten, or forgiven by Him Wlio said, Inasmuch as ye did it not to one of the least of these My brethren, ye did it not to Me. His motto truly is — and it is a worthy blazon for the true ' King of men,' the King of kings — ' Homo sum ; nihil humani alienum a Me puto ' (I am a Man ; nought that is human deem I strange to Me). His sentence is, That it were letter for any that a mill-stone were hanged about his nech, and he ivere droivned in the dej^th of the sea, than that he should offend one of His little ones {St. Matt, xviii. 6-10). H we would know the true 'enthusiasm of humanity' we must learn it in the school of Christ. If we would promote the true brother- hood of man we must study its deep underlying principle at the feet of Him Who ' for us men, and for our salvation, came down from heaven, and was in- carnate by the Holy Ghost, of the Virgin Mary, and was made man/ that He might seek and save that which was lost, and might lay down His Ife for His friends. The call to, and the opportunity for, faithful service to Christ as King, and loving unselfish labour in the cause of man, come, and with sufficient plain- ness, to each generation, in the order of that over- ruling providence of God which controls all things, alike in the spiritual and in the natural sphere, in the affairs of men, through the universal mediation of the Eternal Son. It is the appointed task, and the duty of each generation to discern the signs of its own time^ o 82 being the Governour and y^idge of all. [lect. to watch for the iim,e, and the special form, of its own visitation; and, at least in its own day, to hnoio, and to heed, the things that helong unto its ^eace {St. Luke xix. 41-44). 190. For the King is also the Judge. Above the Church and above the world, above the whole life of man in whatever condition or relation, He sits en- throned in majesty supreme ; wielding, for the pur- poses of His righteous government as of His redeeming work, all 'power in heaven and in earth ; judging com- munities, nations, classes, Churches, all those special associations and combmations of men which belong to this present life only ; judging also, in their several, their incommunicable, responsibility, all men's indi- vidual souls, according to those their infinitely various relations to Himself, to His Moral Law, and to the calls and opportunities which He has given them, which He alone can know; storing up the materials for His future righteous Final Judgment of each separate soul in the Great Day. 191. We ventured humbly to conjecture (J 131)^ va the light of God's evident purpose in human history, what might have followed, possibly, had the ancient Israel of God proved faithful to their high vocation and their widespread opportunities for good. What shall we Christians say, as we cast our eyes back across the nearly nineteen centuries of the chequered history of the Kingdom of God on earth ? Have they to whom it was committed hr ought forth the fruits thereof them- selves, or laboured as they ought to extend its blessings to others as yet outside 1 VIII.] Evil consequences of the '^Z'^ And what have been the manifest consequences of faikire and of unfaithfuhiess \ We can hut sketch them in outline. Yet the Chris- tian student can never refuse to admit as certainly among them the generally slow progress from the first ; and, next, the desolation of the Christian East and of Northern Africa by the scourge of Islam % Surely tlie scdt had lost its savour, ere it could be so cast out and trodden underfoot of men ! Surelv it was He Who is ever saying to each one of His local Churches I knoiv thy loorks. Who thus in judg- ment removed His own candlesticks out of their j^Iace ! {Eev. ii. 5). Tlie second great and abiding disaster induced by the unfaithfulness of Christians to the spirit of Christ and of His Gospel is the breach of unity ; first, be- tween East and West, for which the arrogant pre- tensions of the see of Home must be held mainly re- sponsible ; and, later, within the West itself, when the further growth of those pretensions, and the only too successful resistance to all attempts at improvement had brought about the intolerable state of things which resulted in the Reformation, and in the inevitable severance — it would seem, for ever — of English-speak- ing Christianity from the Catholicism of Continental Europe. Had the earlier movements of the fifteenth century towards the reform of acknowledged abuses in doctrine and practice been welcomed and guided by the then ecclesiastical authorities, at Rome and elsewhere, it is conceivable that unmixed good might have resulted 384 unfaithfulness of Christians. [lect. to Western Christendom and beyond it. Delay and resistance, in this as in other instances, largely turned what might have been wholesome reform and recovery into destructive revolution, except in England; and the present religious condition of Continental Europe, whether among Protestants or Eoman Catholics, is the unhappy result. The Church of England did reform herself; though at the cost of a separation and an isolation of which, though the guilt lies not at her door, the depressing effects have not been unfelt by her ; while contact with the Continent and its extremer spirits imported alien elements which proved the source of religious division within her own borders. From this lamentable breach of visible organic unity in the most important and influential provinces of the Kingdom of the Christ on earth — lamentable from that very stern necessity which more than sufficiently justi- fied it at the time, and has additionally justified it since, and justifies it still — there flow, nevertheless, inevitably, certain further admitted evils, not only to that English-speaking Christianity which is rapidly occupying the whole earth, but to Christianity at large and everywhere, in whatever form. Among these evils are certainly to be reckoned, a grave weakening of the Church's witness in the world in general to Christ and to His Kevealed Truth, whether within the local limits of professed Christendom itself, or in missionary efforts beyond its pale ; and, further, an injurious relaxation, within the Church's own borders, of wholesome moral discipline over her own professing members ; and, what is very largely consequent on this, an impaired power VIII.] Call to increased devotion. 385 of resistance to growing moral evils in society at large, such, for example, as our own generation has seen, both at home and in Continental Europe, in America, and in the Colonies, in regard to the laws affecting marriage. Nor can we fail to note and to grieve over the wasteful diversion in party-strife of the time and money, the energy and interest, which ought to be exclusively devoted to the common objects of the great Christian Society ; or the more than danger of the substitution of party loyalty and zeal in the place of the supreme love of Christ and of His cause; of a mischievous onesidedness in doctrinal belief, and a feeble and imperfect grasp of Christian truth, arising from strong prejudice against certain portions or aspects of it ; with a consequent distortion and exaggeration of other portions ; and, generally, it is much to be feared, a lowered standard of Christian Ufe and holiness and devotion. 192. Whether before the end the Church at large shall see any lessening of or recovery from these evils, God knoweth. The urgent call upon all who feel them to greater devotion and unworldliness in personal hfe, to a more loving spirit of Christian brotherhood, to an increased earnestness in the study of God's Holy Word, and, above all, to a stronger faith in the power and grace of the Holy Spirit, and to increasing prayer for its more abundant outpouring on all who name the Name of Christ — all this is abundantly self-evident. Our own Church, in our own generation, has seen much to revive our hopes, and to make us thankfully feel that God is still with her. But it is not possible c c 386 The predicted' apostasy^ and Anti-Christ, [lect. to overlook the clear intimations in Holy Scripture of a dark time in the future before the personal visible return of the Mediator. There shall come a falling away first, an ajpostasy from the faith, among Christian nations. This, we can hardly doubt, will coincide with the close of the present millennial period, which will be marked by the loosing of Satan out of his prison {Rev. XX. 7), the temporary recovery of his ascendancy over tlie nations {ra eOpij, the Gentiles, i. e. the un- christianized, or de-christianized, races), and the con- sequent revival of Paganism, for a final strenuous efibrt against Christianity under the leadership of the Laivless One (2 Thess. ii. 8) ; who, as the almost in- carnation of the Evil One, shall have been permitted, for the moment, to gather into his one hand all the hingdoms of the tvorld and the glory, and the power, of them, and to use his anti-Christian universal dominion in the endeavour to suppress all worship but that of himself, a worship in effect equivalent to the worship of his master, the great rival of the Christ, the Evil One himself. This lawless one, the devil's agent, is to be identified with the Antichrist, of whose certain coming, in the last days of this the last time, we read in the Epistles of Saint John, the latest utterances of New Testament inspiration. {Aiy^endix, Note 15.) The history of the world in its purely secular aspects, and consequent hostile relation to the Kingdom of God, has had its types of this dread personage, even as the history of God's people on earth had its types of the Christ before the Incarnation. We may trace them in the history of a Nimrod, a Pharaoh, a Nebuchadnezzar, VIII.] Possible developmeyit of -^^-j an Antiochus, a Nero ; while, within the period of Christian history, there are not wanting, (in some fea- tures, for example, of the great French Revolution, and of its outgrowth, democratic imperialism,) sugges- tions of what might happen on a greater, or even a world-wide scale, if only the simultaneous and con- nected rejection and overthrow at once of Christian faith and of that civil subordination and established government, which letteth hitherto, and ivill let until it he taken out of the tvay (2 Tliess. ii. 7), should give to some master-mind, who was willing to submit to the Evil One's condition. If thou loilt fall doivn and wo7'ship me, the opportunity to wield, possibly under the pre- text, and in the name, of order and of humanity, those monstrous forces of violence and destruction, which some strange fatality seems, in our day, to impel civilized nations to heap together, in their outrageous armaments by sea and land. For indeed a world-wide unity, in the most literal sense — for good or evil — is no longer an impossible dream. The development of communication has made the world of man all but a self-conscious whole. A deed of horror enacted in sufficiently high place sends, as the phrase is, a * thrill of horror through the whole civilized world,' and that instantly ; and the universal world's opinion of it is expressed ere the material earth has completed another revolution on its axis. Clearly, the completest concentration of force into one world-power wielded by one hand, for what- ever purpose, is already within sight. Neither are the vast and compHcated financial operations of modern c c 2 388 a world-ivide godless power. [lect. times, and the consequent extensive power of con- trolling, or paralyzing, the energies of whole nations, without their manifest importance in this point of view. Blows may be struck by unscrupulous wicked- ness and over-reaching ambition which would be felt instantly throughout the whole extent of civilization. Meantime the pressure of increasing populations, out- growing the resources of nations, must necessarily tell on the stability of existing institutions and order, which are nothing to those who starve, or at best live but miserably, in spite of them. It is obvious enough that a very conceivable combination of in- fluences like these may give at once the opportunity and the momentum to changes of the widest and the most destructive sweep. {Aj^jpendix, Note 16.) That such an opportunity, when it has fully come, will be snatched at by the Evil One in his hatred of Christ and His Kingdom, and with a momentary ap- parent success, the observant student of Holy Scripture and of human history cannot really doubt. The thought, were awful to him indeed, but for his sure faith that, now as ever. The Lord sits throned above the waterjlood, The Lord remaineth a King for ever ; and that the moment of the deepest darkness shall be the herald of the dawn of the great future Day of the Lord, which will be marked by the visible personal return of the Mediator, with His risen and glorified saints, to be followed by the general Resurrection of the dead, and the general Judgment. vm.] The Resurrection of the Saints; 389 Through some such awful crisis and catastrophe, the scale and grandeur whereof no human imagination, in its highest flight, can reach to picture, must the final and complete regeneration of man and of his world, social and material, through the now fully developed work of the One Mediator, be attained, in the new heavens and the neio earth, tvherein chvelleth righteous- ness (2 Pet. iii. 7-14). 193. And yet, though it was once indeed true that Eye had not seen, nor ear heard, neither had entered into the heart of man, the things which God hath jpre- jpared for them that love Him [Isaiah Ixiv. 4) ; St. Paul was able to add (1 Cor. ii. 9), But God hath revealed them to us hy His Sjnrit ; and at least some faint outline, some few general features, and those in a certain order and sequence, of the great Restoration of all things [Acts iii. 21) are revealed to Christian faith and hope, in the eschatological portions of the New Testament. Among such features are the following : — A clear distinction between the resurrection of tlie saints, i.e. of those who are of the Body Mystical of Christ — which our Lord Himself, four times in His great eucharistic discourse (St. John vi.), assures us He will effect on the last day — and the resurrection of the dead in general. St. Paul tells us that TJie dead in Christ shall rise first, as a simultaneous accompaniment of the descent of the Lord Himself from heaven ivith a shout, loith the voice of the archangel and the trumpet of God (i Thess. iv. 16). This precedency is also inti- mated in the same Apostle's language to the Co- rinthians (i. XV. 22), As in Adam all die, even so in 390 their session with Christ in His Throne; [lect. Christ shall all he made alive. But every man in his own order ; Christ the first-fruits ; afterivards they that are Christ's at His coming. Then cometh the end. At the same time the living saints, who do not sZeep, but are alive and remain^ shall be caught iij), together ivith the glorified dead, in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air ; and so, having been changed in a moment, in the timikling of an eye, into incorruption and immortality, to he ever ivith the Lord ; and so to accompany Him in His progress to the earth, whither He shall come, in visible majesty as the Son of man {St. Matt. xxv. 31), in His glory, and all the holy angels ivith Him, and shall sit uj)on the throne of His glory; and hefore Him shall he gathered all the nations {-Travra ra eOvtj, all the Gentiles), i. e. those who are not part of His Mystical Body. To His glorified saints, with all of whom He shall thus co77ie (i Thess. iii. 13), and who, collectively, are His Body, Christ will then fulfil His promises, To him that overcometh tvill I grant to sit ivith Me in My throne, even as I also overcame and am set down with My Father in His throne (Bev. iii. 21); and. To him will I give authority over the nations; and he shall rule them with a rod of iron, as the vessels of the potter are hrohen to shivers [Psalm ii. 8) ; as I also have re- ceived of My Father {Bev. ii. 26). Thus will the great words of Saint Paul's appeal to the Corinthians (i. vi. 2) be actually realized. Do ye not know that the saints shall judge the world 1 . . . knoiv ye not that ive shall judge angels f Then shall the chosen Twelve — in yet a fuller sense VIII.] The ' passing-away' of this earth and heaven. 391 and in fuller manifestation than they do even now, within the veil, in the incipient and imperfect regenera- tion of this present millennial period — Sit u^on tivelve thrones, judging the tivelve tribes of Israel {St. Matt. xix. 30). 194. Concurrently with this Manifestation (e-TrKpaveia, Titus ii. 13) of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ, which is the blessed hoj^e of Christians, will be the passing away (Rev. xxi. i) of this present heaven and earth, the scene of man's sin and misery and of the triumphs of evil. They shall flee from His face, and no flace be found for them (xv. ii). This He Himself promised (St. Matt. xxiv. 35 ; St. Mark xiii. 31 ; St. Luke xxi. 33, TrapeXeva-ovrai, in all three pas- sages). This, in his vision, the seer of Patmos saw fulfilled {-Trap^XOe, Rev. xxi.). Another of the listeners to the Olivet discourse, St. Peter, witnesses (2. iii. 10) to the same expectation in connection with the corning (t^v -Kapova-lav) of the Day of God. It ivill come, he says (with evident reference to St. Matt. xxiv. 43, and St. Luke xii. 39), «s a thief in the night ; in the ivhich the heavens shall ^ass away (again the Lord's own word, -TrapeXeva-ovrai) ivith a great noise, and the elements shall be dissolved with fervent heat, and the earth and the ivorhs that are therein shall be burned ujj (or, dis- covered), . . . the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt ivith fervent heat ; for, as he expressly reveals (2. iii. 5), As the heavens that ivere from of old, and the earth compacted out of icater and amidst (or, through) ivater, by the word of God ; by which means the loorld that then was, being oversowed 392 The new heaven and earth, [lect. witli ivater^ perished ; so the heavens that now are, and the earth, hy the same word, have been stored ujp for fire (or, stored with fire), heing reserved against the day of judgment and destruction of ungodly men. The Apostle's reference to the earUer destruction of the earth by the agency of water, and whole tenour of this as well as of the parallel passages, seem to point to a great physical catastrophe, such as even the latest conjectural speculations of physical science leave ample room for, whereby the material dwelling- place of man — throughout, by some mysterious sym- pathy, bound up with man's destiny — shall be regene- rated into a condition adapted to his now consummated life in what will be a celestial hody, a s'piritual hody, wherein he shall hear the image of the heavenly Man (i Cor. XV. 40, 44, 49) ; the present hody of his humilia- tion being transformed so as to have become conformed according to the body of Christ's glory, according to the working of His jpoiver even to subject all things unto Himself {Philipp. iv. 21) — but still a hody. As man is, so his destined home and dwelling-place must be. It fell with him, cursed for his sake {Gen. iii. 17). It shall be redeemed with him, so that there shall be no m,ore curse, {Rev. xxii. 3). It is but a false and mis- taken ' spirituality ' that ignores or denies this clear Scripture revelation, so plainly consonant to reason and to natural expectation ; and speaks vaguely of some remote unreal ' heaven,' utterly discontinuous with all the previous history of the race and every individual of it. It is a dishonour to the Creator's wondrous work in His material universe of Nature to suppose VIII.] the dwelling-place of redeemed man. 393 that even this minute and humble portion of it — which yet has been the scene of the Incarnation of the Son of God — must be thrown aside and perish for ever as a hopeless failure, wrecked, overmastered, violated, dishonoured, for all its beauty and its wonder, by the too successful malice of the enemy of God. It cannot be. Not in vain did Christ teach us to pray to our Father, Tliy Kingdom come ; Tliy ivill he done, in earth as it is in heaven. His will shall be done, not only by man, as by the holy angels, whose equal he then shall be {la-dyyeXoi, St. Luhe xx. 36), but also in earth, as in heaven. For indeed the contrast, the op- position, shall be done away, in visible realized fact, as it is already, spiritually, and to faith ; and ' earth ' shall become part of 'heaven.' For 'heaven' is no confined locality, but is wherever God, Who is every- where, can manifest Himself fully to creatures fully capable of Him. And so the glory ivhich shall he re- vealed in us shall be accompanied by a glorious re- generation of our ancient home. The loveliness of nature, which, even in its temporary obscuration and almost ruin, we have loved, and for which, as the wreck of Paradise, we have blessed our and its Creator — though we have discerned, and that but in transient glimpses, the fringe of His garment, the outer skirts of His magnificent beauty and His almighty power — shall be restored and revealed, and that beyond that primal beauty, for the sight whereof, even in its first beginnings, The morning stars sang together, And all the sons of God shoiUed for joy. [Job xxxvlii. 7-) 394 "^^^^ descent of the New Jertisalem, [lect. Such was the faith of the toiling and despised Apostle, whose own hodily presence tvas tveak, and Ms sjpeech contem/ptible ; such his hope, as he laboured for the uplifting of the outcast and the vile in the disgusting cities of tlie pagan East, or, for two whole years, a weary prisoner in the imperial city. To him it was revealed that The creation was subjected to vanity, not of its own tvill, hut hy reason of Him Who subjected it in ho]^e ; because the creation itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God {Romans viii. 19). 195. In full, and, indeed, in exclusive agreement with the revelation that the scene of man's consum- mated life in the Resurrection will be the regenerated o earth, a new heaven and a new earth ivherein dwelleth righteousness; is the statement that the holy city, the great city, the neio Jerusalem, the holy Jerusalem, was seen coming down from God out of heaven, descending out of heaven from God, having the glory of God ; filled, that is, with the Shekinah-brightness of His mani- fested presence. This city is the redeemed and glori- fied Church, now in the Unseen, and not yet fully glorified, partaking as yet only of the first resurrection (§ 177); but which, though now Jerusalem which is above, is yet the mother of us all, the city whereof we, whose citizenship is already in heaven (PhilijJj)- iii. 20), are alreixdj felloio citizens ivith the saints {Eph. ii. 19), the city ichich hath the foundations, whose builder and maker is God [Heb. xi. 10), the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem,, to which, in inner spiritual membership, already we are come (xii. 22), the city VIII.] wherein God hicarnate will dwell on earth, 395 which, ahke in the thought of St. Peter (i. ii. 4) and of St. John {Jiev. xxi. 22), and of St. Paul {E^lu ii. 20), was being slowly upbuilded of living stories, until it should groiv into an lioly temple in the Lord (i. e. Christ) in Wliom Christians are now being huilded together, on Him the chief corner stone, elect, precious, for an habita- tion of God through the Spirit. Therein, in its full consummation, the tabernacle {(TKrivri) of God is ivith men, in the visible Presence of the glorified humanity of the Incarnate Son ; and He ivill tabernacle with them, and they shall be His peo'ples, and Himself shall be God with them (compare Emmanuel), their God. And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes ; and death shall be no more ; neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor painful toil (ttoVo?, labour and sorroio, Psalm xc 10) any more; for the first things are passed quite aivay. Such is the Christian's hope ; not vague, shadowy, unreal and elusive ; but, in its great essential outlines, clear, definite, and real; a hope the definiteness and certainty of which, as to be realized, beyond all hope, at the longed-for coming of the Lord, may prove the stay and anchor of believing souls, in the sore stress of the darker days towards the end, when the founda- tions are cast down {Ps. xi.), and there is not one godly man left, and the faithfid are minished from among the children of men (xii. i) ; when the man of the earth is exalted against them, and the patient abiding of the meek seems like to perish for ever (ix. 18). Then will the cry go up, on earth and ivithin the veil, as once in earlier days it went up, and not unheeded, 39^ ConstimmatedmtionofChristwilk His Chiirck, [lect. from the victims of Neronian and Jewish persecution, Sow long, 0 Lord, holy and true? (Rev. vi. lo). And the answer shall come, in the sudden Manifestation of Him ]V]io sitteth u^on the throne, and Who, His work of judgment finished, shall proclaim, Behold, I make all things new (xxi. 5). He bade His beloved Apostle record these wondrous disclosures, that they might remain for the perpetual comfort of His people ; He said unto me, Write ; for these ivords are faithful and true, a revelation from Him Who is the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the new, as of the old creation of God [Rev. iii. 14). 196. Then, sin and evil subdued and banished, the last enemy destroyed, in all his forms, it can be said of the great work of the One Mediator, It is done {Veyove) ] All has come to joass (xxi. 6). And then, since perfect union between God and man is the one in- clusive purpose, and result, of that work — a result realized through the Incarnation — the vision is pre- sented of the Bride, the Lamb's ivife {ver. 9) lohom He loved, for whom He gave Himself, that He anight pre- sent her to Himself a glorious Church, not having s'pot or ivrinkle or any such thing, hut that she should be holy and ivitliout blemish {Lph. v. 25). The description that follows, Revelations xxi. 10-23, shows that by the Bride, who is identified mth the heavenly city, the holy Jerusalem, is intended the glorified Church in its corporate totality as the mysti- cal Body of the Christ, one with Him, through sacra- mental union, bone of His bones, and flesh of His flesh {Genesis ii. 23 ; E'ph. v. 29-32). VIII.] His Bride, and Mystical Body, 397 Does this blessed company include the faithfid of the earlier covenants ? It would certainly seem so. There was a time when Christ could say that Among them that were horn of women there had not risen a greater than John the Ba])tist, hut yet that the least in the Kingdom of heaven ivas greater than he {St. Matt, x'l. Ti). But that was before the work of Christ was finished, and before the Kingdom of heaven was ' opened to all believers.' We must remember that there was no breach of spiritual continuity between the Jewish Church and the Christian. In the persons of the remnant according to the election of grace (Bom. xi. 5), of whom the Blessed Virgin and the Apostles may be regarded as typical examples, the Jewish Church bloomed, after the Resurrection and Pentecost, into the Christian Church, the Kingdom of heaven, the good olive tree of Romans xi., into which the Gentiles, cut out of the olive tree which is tvild hy nature, were ingrafted ; and from which the unbelieving Jews, natural hranches though they were, were hrohen off. But what of those elder faithful who had passed into the Unseen before Christ came in the flesh % or who had, Hke old Simeon and Anna, and the Baptist, seen Him and beheved on Him, but had died before the Holy Ghost was given, and so before sacramental union with Him was possible 1 Surely it is of these, the faithful children oi faithful Ahraham, the true seed of him who rejoiced to see Christ's day {St. John viii. 56), who in all his pilgrimage looked for the city which hath the foundations, ivhose huilder and maker is God, that that Epistle speaks in which we should naturally 398 inclnding the saints of the older [lect. expect allusions to their spiritual state. These all died in faith, not having received the ^promises, hut having seen them afar off, and were persuaded of them and embraced them [Heb. xi. 13). They had to wait; but in sure hope. For them, for these longing seekers after a better country, even an heavenly, God, Wlio is not ashamed to be called their God, had prej^ared a city (ver. 16). In darker times, God's nameless martyrs of the elder faith, those of whom the ivorld ivas not ivorthy, were tortured, not accepting deliverance, that they might obtain a better resurrection (ver. 35). Yet they received not the promise, God having provided some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they should not be made perfect {ver. 40). So things stood for them when they died ; and afterwards also, until Christ's finished work brought in eternal redemption for them and for us. ' When He had overcome the sting of death, He opened the Kingdom of Heaven to all believers \' What mysterious change passed over their spiritual condition, or how effected, on the visit of the human spirit of Jesus to the unseen state, we are not told. But we doubt not that lohat many prophets, and kings, and righteous men had long desired to see, and had not seen them, and to hear, and had not heard them {St. Matt. xiii. 17; St. Luke X. 24), they saw at last, in the presence of the promised Seed of the ivoman, and heard with rapture from His own lips. Christ Himself has told us {St. Matt. viii. 1 1 ) that Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shoidd sit down in the Kingdom of Heaven, and ivith them many ^ ' Tu devicto mortis aculeo : aperuisti creclentibus regna coelorum.' The Te Deum. VIII,] covenants, now * made perfect,' 399 Gentiles from the east and from the west, from the north and fi^om the south ; and that at a time when the children of the Kingdom, they whose very heritage it was, ivere cast out into the outer darkness. (Compare also St. Luke xiii. 28, to the same effect.) Accord- ingly St. Paul's language to the Ephesians (ii. 14, &c.) of Christ our Peace, Who hath made both Jew and Gentile one, and hath broken doivn the middle ivall of partition between us ; and of the result of His work in making in Himself of the twain one new man, and in reconciling both unto God in one body, viz. that one household, city, temple of God which is built iipon the foundation, not of the Apostles only, but of the Prophets also, may better be understood as including the faith- ful Israel of all generations, than as restricted to the believing remnant at Pentecost and afterwards. So it is that the writer to the Hebrews, who, looking at their past condition, had described it as one of longing expectancy, speaking afterwards of the contrasted ^ present, includes now in that city of the living God, the ^ Ileb. xi. 40. Iva fjLr] ;^;v vfKpa>v, com- pare aS'^. Licke, XX. 35), Not as though I had already attained, either were alreadi/ 2)erfected (171^17 TerfXeloifiai) ; but I follow after . . . 1 2)ress toivard the mark for the jrrize of the calling above of God in Christ Jesus. He looks and longs for that nearer and everlastingly assured relation to Cluiyt which is tlic crown of life to the faithful in the Unseen ; and so speaks, naturally, in this same Epistle of the gain of death, and so of his desire to depart, and to be tuith Christ, which is far better (i. 21). 400 and reigning with Christ. [lect. heavenly Jerusalem, to which the Christian Hebrews were already come {Heb. xii. 22) the spirits of just men (i.e. the departed faithful of the older covenants) now made j^erfect. Consistently with this inclusion of the elder faithful in the mystical body of the Christ, Saint John sees, through the oji)ened door in heaven {Rev. IV. i), the four and twenty thrones round about the throne of the Kedeemer, and thereon four and twenty elders sitting, clothed in white raiment, and having on their heads croions of gold. These we may safely understand to be the representatives of the two covenants, now at length united. Is it in any con- nection with some such access of blessedness that we have, in the specially Hebrew Gospel (St. Matt, xxvii. 52), the mysterious statement that, in some inner rela- tion with the death and resurrection of Christ, many hodies of the saints which slept arose, and came out of the graves, after His Resurrection, and went into the holy city, and appeared unto manyf We cannot be- lieve that this was only a Lazarus resurrection, nor that they who had thus in a manner shared in the Lord's triumph over death and corruption, were re- mitted to the darkness of the grave \ ^ St. Matthew records this where he does, evidently in connection with the opening of the graves which accompanied, perhaps by way of consequence, the earthquake which marked the moment of Christ's Death ; but the resurrection of the old Saints, their coming out of the graves and being seen in Jerusalem, are clearly to be understood as following Christ's Resurrection. In connection with so suggestive an incident one naturally thinks of the cases of Moses and Elijah, who appeared in glory at the Transfiguration. Their cases were very special. Elijali had not died at all. Moses died indeed, but scarcely with the VIII.] The ' saved ' from among ike Gentiles. 40 1 197. We conclude, then, that ilie heavenly Jerusalem^ which is the mystical body and the Bride of Christ, includes the elder saints, at least from Abraham on- wards, who, living before Christ came, died in faith, but who, after and through His finished work, were made j^erfect. We must next inquire whom, among the finally saved, it does not include. The prior resurrection of the saints, whom Christ brings loitli Him, and who are assessors with Him in the judgment of the world ; the pointed use, in the Saviour's description of that judgment, of the clearly defined phrase irdura to. eOvt], all the Gentiles, i. e. the uncovenanted races of mankind ; their trial by the test of the corporal works of mercy, done according to the instincts of common humanity and the dictates of natural conscience, or left undone in defiance of them ; the surprise expressed, even by those who are accepted, at the relation of their good works to Him before Whose bar they stand ; the evident ignorance, alike of those on the right hand and of those on the left, of common death of all men ; and, though he passed, as to his hody, under the hand of hi»i that hath the 2)ov:er of death, that is, the devil, the mention by St. Jude (9) of the contention of St. Michael the arch- angel with the devil about the hodij of Moses, indicates its speedy deli- verance from the bondage of corruption, and so explains its glorified condition in the days of Christ. One might have expected that Enoch, also translated like Elijah, would have been found with him and Moses on the Ilohj Mount. His absence there is one among the various in- dications of a clear line between the antediluvian period (or alwv) and the subsequent age. That would seem a dispensation by itself its close and end of the world. Hence, again, the special mention [i St. Peter ill. 19) of Christ's preaching in the unseen state to the sjurits of those who perished in the flood. Dd 402 God judges according to opportunities. [lect, what is a commonplace among Christians — all point with convergent force to the conclusion that the judg- ment described is that of humanity out of Christ ; i, e. first, of those countless myriads of millions of the human race to whom, whether within or beyond the local pale of professing Christendom, the knowledge of Christ never came in this earthly life, and among whom therefore will be those (we know not how blessedly many) of whom St. Paul speaks as Gentiles loliicli, having no law, do by nature the things of the law, and are a law unto themselves, in that they shew the ivork of the law written in their hearts {Bomans ii. 14); and, secondly, alas, of those fallen Christians who, though they knew the way of righteousness, tlu^ough the hnow- ledge of the Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, yet turned from the holy commandment delivered unto them, and so, through the love of sin, were again entangled in the 'pollutions of the world, and overcome (2 St. Peter ii. 20). 198. The Lord did not answer the question of curiosity, Are there few that he saved? but put it aside with a practical exhortation to His disciples to take the highest aim. Yet He has revealed to us ex- pressly— what our natural sense of right might safely assure us of— that He will judge all according to their ojjportunities ; That servant which knew his Lord^s will, and ^rejpared not himself, neither did according to His tvill, shall he heaten with many strides. But he that knew not, and did commit things 2vorthy of strides, shall he heaten with few strides. For unto whomsoever much is given, of him shall he much required: and to ivhom men have committed much, of him they will ask the VIII.] Various degrees of blessedness. 403 more [St. Luke xii. 47; compare Romans ii. 12). He has said that In His Father s house — that house which was built by Him Wlio huilt all things {to, TrdvTa, the universe, Heh. iii. 4) , that great house, wherein are not only vessels of gold and of silver, hut also of wood and of earth ; and some to honour, and some to dishonour (2 Tim. ii. 20), but still within the house, for use, and not for destruction — in that house are many mansions. He went indeed to prepare specially a ])lace for those to whom He spake. They were to sit on thrones. And for His faithful in general, His elect, for those whom the Father had given Him, those of whom He said, The glory which Thou gavest Me I have given them, that they may he one, even as We are One ; I in them, and Thou in Me, that they may he made jperfect in one [rerekeiw- [xevoi ek 'ev, St. John xvii. 23); for these also He prayed, / will that they also he with Me where I am, that they may hehold My glory which Thou hast given Me ; with Him, that is, in that Holy Jerusalem which descendeth out of Heaven from God, having the glory of God {Rev. xxi. 10); which had no need of the sun, neither of the moon, to shine in it, because the glory of God did lighten it, and the Lamh is the light thereof, the Incarnate Saviour, in Whom God visibly tabernacles with men, from Whose Face the Glory of God ^ beams forth, in Whose light the saints see light, seeing Him, Who is light, as He is. ^ Buxtorf, in his Lexic. Talmvd., s.v. ri3''3B', and in Hist. Arcae Foederis, cap. xiv. shows, from their own writings, that tlie Shekinah, according to the opinions of the ancient Jews, was the ^Icssiah, and tliat He was called by that name because He tabernacled in the Pillar of the Cloud and of Fire, as afterwards in the Tabernacle and the Temple. D d 2 404 Loss throiig'Ji persistent abuse of Free-Will. [lect. Short of this supreme blessedness, which is theirs only who are of His Body, there is a blessed share in life eternal, a place in His heavenly Kingdom — if not in its centre and capital, the heavenly city — for those innumerable happy subjects of the Divine King who — doubtless in ordered ranks, and in many various but progressive degrees of nearness — shall inhabit the other portions of the regenerated earth, enlarged as its capacity shall then be by the absence of any sea {fiev. xxi. 1). 199. Such is the kind of conception the Bible revela- tion seems to yield of the future state when closely studied. The want of attention to it has lamentably narrowed men's thoughts of the merciful purposes and just fatherly government of the Almighty Father of sjnrits, the God of the spirits of all flesh ; has created wholly groundless difficulties in the way of faith and religion ; and given rise to unworthy thoughts of God. It is an awful thought, indeed, and full of solemn warning, that any should finally perish through their wilful resistance, throughout their (doubtless suf- ficient) time of probation, to the light which God has offered them. Yet it cannot be otherwise ; seeing that God respects to the last that freedom of the will which is part — the highest part — of His own image in His creature man (see ^J 48, 51). Yet, with the awful deduction disclosed in such verses as Revelations xxi. 8 and xxii. 1 1 and 15^; the picture given in the Word ^ But the fearful, and unbelieving, and the abominable, and mur- derers^ and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars. VIII.] The Consummated State a complex Society. 405 of God differs as Hglit from the deepest darkness, from the miserable Calvinism which, in days gone by, has crushed and darkened the minds and hearts of many even good and holy Christians. Further, another evident feature of the Consummated State of man, represented as it is under the forms of a city and a kingdom., is its social and political character, its evidently furnishing a field for the exercise, and the combined and organized exercise, in a varied and com- plex administration and government, and in the pursuit and communication of knowledge, of all the highest capacities of human nature, and free scope for the de- velopment, through the endless ages of eternal life, of its noblest instincts and powers. The seer of the Apocalypse, having described the glories of the heavenly city, proceeds (Rev. xxi. 24) to speak of the nations (again ra eOvij, the Gentiles) who shall walk in the light thereof, and of the kings of the earth who shall bring their glory and honour — the glory and honour of the nations — into it. He speaks, in very intelligible symbolism, of the abundant grace of the Holy Spirit, which, as a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, he saw proceeding {eKiropevofxevov, the very word used, in his Gospel, of the Holy Ghost) out of the throne of God and of the Lamb; and of the abundant supply of the Tree of Life, whose fimit is the .shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone ; which is the second death. He that is unjust, let him be unjust still : and he tvhich is filthy, let him be filthy still. Without are dogs, and sorcerers, and wlioremongers, and murderers, and idolaters, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie. 4o6 The Parables of the Talents and Pounds, [lectt. sacramental food of the saints, while its leaves are said, by a distinction to be carefully noted, to be for the healing of the nations. Among these saved nations, as even among ilie saints, will, doubtless, be included many who, when the mercy of God first found them, were, in the saddest spiritual reality, the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind, recovered from the streets and lanes of the city, and from the hightvays and hedges, and made welcome at the great supper, that God's house may he filed (St. Luhe xiv. i6). 200. Over these saved nations, the saints, with and under Christ the King, shall reign for ever and ever ; labouring (we cannot doubt), in grateful love to Him Whose servants [SoOXot) they are, Whom they ivorshij). Whose Face they see, Whose Name is u^on their fore- heads, for the further development of the less favoured ones in the knowledge of God and in progressive near- ness to Him ; for still, as ever, from Abraham onwards, election means, not the proscription, not the exclusion, but the blessing and the elevation of the non-elect. Thus Mall the hints of the two parables of the Talents and the Pounds be absolutely realized. (See St. Matt. XXV. 15-30; and St. Luke xix. 11-27.) The position of both these parables throws them clearly into the future ; and shows that they speak of what will happen on the great coming day of account. The Son of man, preparing to travel into a far country, calls His own servants, and puts them in trust, every man according to his several ability, and straightioay takes His journey. After a long time, He cometli and rechoneth viTi.] and the Beatitudes, fulfilled. 407 witli tliem ; and what is His reward to His good and faithful servants ? It is fresh and greater opportunities of helpful service and of work for others. That is the joy of the Lord ; of Him Who came not to he ministered unto, hut to minister. And so His blessing is, Well done, good and faithfid servant (^ouXo?) ; thou hastheen faithftd over a few things, I ivill set thee over many things: Enter thou into the joy of thy Lord. In the parable of the Pounds the teaching is to the same effect. Having gone into a far country, and having received for Himself His kingdom and returned. He summons His servants to the reckoning. The reward of faithful service is similar — Have thou authority over ten cities ; Be thou also over five cities. A picture is here presented of a world-wide and populous kingdom, under the present and visible rule of the Prince of Peace, such as should fully and absolutely realize in glorious fact all the glowing pictures of future blessed- ness, of which the pages of Hevelation, from beginning to end, are full ; such as should indeed be worthy of God's purpose in the creation of man, and of the great work of the One Mediator through which it is to be brought about. Then shall the high promises of Christ's beatitudes, renewing as they do, and enhancing, the language of such portions of the older Scriptures as the thirtv-seventh Psalm, be indeed fulfilled : The tneeJc shall inherit the earth ; the ]^oor in spirit shall find that theirs is the kingdom of heaven ; the ^ure in heart shall see God ; they shall hehold His presence in righteous- ness, they shall he satisfied, ivhen they aivake, with His likeness, with the revelation to their enraptured sight 4oS God will be ' all in all.' of His image, His similitude, in the Face, the Person, of Jesus Christ (Psal. xvii. i6 ; 2 Cor. iv. 4-6). To this Fnd, denoted by the declaration (Rev. xxi. 5) of Him that sat upon the throne, It is done : I am Alpha and Omega, the heginning and the end, does Holy Scripture lead us up ; the end, lohen He shall deliver up the kingdom to Him ivho is God and Father (rw Qew Kal Jlarpi) ; when the Son of God shall have ;put all enemies under His feet ; when the last enemy, even death, shall have been destroyed; when the Divine ideal of man shall have been realized, in the final sub- jection of all things (Psal. viii. 6) under the feet of the Divine Son of man, the Head of regenerate Humanity, Who shall then also Himself he subject unto Him that 2>ut all things binder Him, that God may be all in all (i Cor. XV. 24-28. Appendix, Note xvii.) THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE IN EARTH, AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. APPEI^DIX. APPENDIX. Note I. § ^fi. The angels owe their illumination to the Son of God. Compare St. Augustine, Be Civitate Dei, xi. 9. ' Profecto facti sunt (angeli) participes lucis aeternae, quod est ipsa incom- mutabilis Sapientia Dei, per quam facta sunt omnia, quem dicimus unigenitum Dei Filium ; ut ea luce illuminati, qua creati, fierent lux, et vocarentur dies participatione incommuta- bilis lucis et diei, quod est Verbum Dei, per quod et ipsi et omnia flicta sunt.' Compare also the passage from St. Gregory the Great, given in the next note. Note II. § 44. The holy anrjels are not merely spirits. Compare St. Basil, Be Spiritu Sancto, § 24. Tdv n^v ovv aWoov €Ka.(TTri hway-iiov kv irepiypaTTT^ TOTro) Tvyxaveiv TreTJtWeurat' 6 yap T(3 KopyTjAto) CTrtcrTas ayyeXos ovk rjp kv ravrw koI itapa rw (t>iAi7r7r(o, ovbt: 6 anb tov dvcnacTTrjpLov tw Zaxapta OiaAeyo'juei'O? Kara Tov avTov Kaipov koI kv ovpaix^ ti]v oLKeiav ardaLV cttAtj^ov. (Of the other powers then, each one is believed to be in a circum- scribed space. For the angel that visited Cornelius was not in the same place as with Philip [i. e. he was at Cffisarea, and not at Azotus, see Acts viii. 39] ; nor did he who conversed with Zacharias from the altar occupy also at the same time his proper station in Heaven.) And St. Ambrose {Be Abrahavi, II. viii. 58, p. '^'i^). ' Nos autem nihil materialis compositionis immune atcjue alienum putamus, practer illam solam venerandae Trinitatis Substantiam, 412 The holy angels [app. quae vere pura ac simplex sincerae impermixtaeque naturae est.' And St. Augustine [De Trinitate, III. i. 4) speaks of the angels as ' ipsum suum corpus cui non subduntur sed subditum regunt mutantes atque vertentes in species quas vellent ac- commodatas atque aptas actionibus suis ; ' — and [ihid. 5) * an ipsa propria corpora sua transforment in quod voluerint, accom- modate ad id quod agunt ^.' And St. Gregory the Great, in a passage [Moral. II. iii. p. 39) which follows a thought of St. Augustine's in Be Genesi ad litteram VIII. xxiv. 45, ' Quomodo enim aut semper assistere, aut videre semper Faciem Patris possunt [angeli], si ad minis- terium exterius pro nostra salute mittuntur? Quod tamen eitius solvimus, si quantae subtilitatis sit angelica natura pen- samus. Neque enim sic a divina visione foras exeunt, ut in- ternae contemplationis gaudiis priventur : quia si Conditoris aspectum exeuntes amitterent, nee jacentes erigere, nee igno- rantibus vera nuntiare potuissent ; Fontem Lucis, quem egre- dientes ipsi perderent, caecis nullatenus propinarent. In hoc itaque est nunc natura angelica a naturae nostrae conditione distincta, quod nos et loco circumscribimur, et caecitatis ignorantia coarctamur: angelorum vero spiritus loco quidem circumscripti sunt, sed tamen eorum scientiae longe super nos incomparabiliter dilatantur. Interius quippe exteriusque sciendo distenti sunt, quia Ipsum Fontem scientiae contemplantur. Quid enim de his quae scienda sunt nesciunt, qui scientem omnia sciunt? Eorum itaque scientia comparatione nostrae valde dilatata est, sed tamen comparatione divinae scientiae * There is a good passage on this subject in -the book de Spirita et Aniina falsely ascribed to St. Augustine (and given in the Appendix to vol. vi. in Migne's edition of St. Aug.), as also to Hugh of St. Victor, but which Aquinas assigns to a ' nameless Cistercian monk,' whom the Benedictine editors of St. Aug. suppose to be one Alcherus, a monk of Clairvaux. It runs thus : ' Nihil enim invisibile et incorporeum natura credendum est praeter solum Deum, id est, Patrem et Filium et Spiritura Sanctum. Qui ex eo incorporeus et invisibilis dicitur quia infinitus et incircumscriptus, simple.'c et sibi omnibus modis sufBciens, se ipsum sustinet et idipsum. Et cum ubique sit in semetipso invisibilis et incorporeus esse dig- noscitur. Omnis vero rationalis creatura corporea est. Angeli et omnes virtutes corporeae sunt, licet non came subsistant. Ex eo enim intellectuales naturas corporeas esse dicimus, quia loco circumscribuntur.* NOTE II.] are not merely spirits. 413 angusta : sicut et ipsi illorum spiritus eomparatione quidem nostrorum corporum, spiritus sunt, sed eomparatione summi et ineireumscripti Spiritus, corpus. Et mittuntur igitur et assis- tunt : quia et per hoc quod circumscripti sunt, exeunt : et per hoc, quod intus quoque praesentes sunt, numquam recedunt. Et Faciem erg-o Patris semper vident, et tamen ad nos veniunt : quia et ad nos spiritali praesentia foras exeunt, et tamen ibi se, unde recesserant, per internam contemplationem servant ^.' And St. John Damascene {Be Fid. Orthod. Lib. II. cap. 3, quoted by Rev. Robert Owen, Dogmatic Theology, ch. viii. 1), ' An Angel is called incorporeal and immaterial as far as relates to us ; for everything being compared to God, the Alone Incom- parable, is found to be crass and material ; for the Divinity Alone is really (oi/rojs) immaterial and incorporeal.' Bishop Macaire, Rector of the Ecclesiastical Academy of St. Petersburg, in his Theologie Dogmafique Orthodoxe (a valuable Exposition of the Catholic Faith as conceived by the holy Orthodox Eastern Church, Three vols, CherhuViez, Paris and Geneva, 1^57-1859), quotes the same passage, and gives many valuable references to the Fathers. Vol. i. Partie II. Sect. 2, chap. i. § 6^, p. 474. Bishop Bull says (Vol. i. Serm. XI. On the Existence and Nature of Angels), ' The angels of God are not such spirits as God . . . is. . . . But we cannot so certainly and positively tell what kind of spirituality that of the angels is, whether it be void ' I have transcribed this beautiful passage for the sake of the clerical reader. The priest's lipn should keep lmo%ch^, ' lUi [naturae sublimioris officii, scil. angelicao] data est potentia omnia con- tinendi officio proprio .... Nee tamen sua majestate continet omnia, sed inhaerendo Illius Majestati, et Ejus imperiis devo- tissime obtemperando, a Quo et per Quem et in Quo facta sunt omnia.' And Enarr. in Psalm. CIII. § 9. ' Praepositi sunt angeli coelorum super potestates aereas et inde procedit verbum quod fit bic. Intuentur enim legem fixam, legem aeternam, jubentem sine scriptura, sine syllabis, sine strepitu, fixam semper et stantem ; intuentur angeli corde mundo, et ex ilia faciunt quidquid bic fit, et potestates ex ilia ordinantur a summis usque in ima.' And De Civitate Dei, VII. xxx. ' Haec autem facit atque agit unus verus Deus ; sed sicut Deus, id est ubique totus, nullis inclusus locis, nullis vinculis alligatus, in nullas partes sectilis, ex nulla parte mutabilis, implens coelum et terram praesente potentia, non indigente natura. Sic itaque administrat omnia quae creavit, ut etiam ipsa proprios exercere et agere motus sinat. Quamvis enim nibil esse possint sine Ipso, non sunt quod Ipse. Agit autem multa etiam per angelos : sed non nisi ex Se Ipso beatificat angelos.' And Be Genesi ad litteram, VIII. xxiv. 45. ' Sublimibus angelis Deo subdite fruentibus, et Deo beate servientibus, sub- dita est omnis natura eorporea, omnis irrationalis vita, omnis voluntas vel infirma vel prava ; ut hoc de subditis vel cum subditis agant, quod naturae ordo poscit in omnibus, jubente illo cui subjccta sunt omnia.' He speaks also [ihid. xxv. 47) of the ' creaturae angelicae actio, per quam universarum rerum generibus, maximeque humane, providentia Dei prospicitur.' Bishop Bull (Vol. i. Serm. XII. The Office of the holy Angeh). ' The providence of God in the government of this lower world, and therein more especially of the children of men, and most especially of those who love and fear him, is in great part administered by the holy angels.' 41 6 All rational beings have Free- Will. [app. The reader may also consult Chapter VIII. of the Rev. Robert Owen's Dogmatic Theology. He says, § 3 : ' They are God's viceg-erents in the administration of the universe; a position which is amply supported by testimonies of Scripture/ which he proceeds to give. Also, ibid. : ' Besides, the Angels are regarded as presiding in some mysterious way over the destinies of kingdoms and nations. This notion is universal in Christian antiquity.' Note IV. § 49. T/ie essence of the first sin was Pride, So Hooker, in the valuable fragment printed as an Appendix to Book V. (Vol. ii. in Keble's ed.) in the third part. Touching Predestination, p. 567 : ' In presupposing that the will of God did determine to bestow eternal life in the nature of a reward, and that rewards grow from voluntary duties, and voluntary duties from free agents ; it followeth that whose end was eternal life, their state must needs imply freedom and liberty of will. A part therefore of the excellency of their nature was the free- dom of their will .... Out of the liberty wherewith God by Creation endued reasonable creatures [the italics are Hooker's], angels and men, there ensued sin through their own voluntary choice of evil, neither by the appointment of God nor yet without his permission .... Touching permission, if God do naturally hate sin, and by his knowledge foresee all things, wherefore did not his power prevent sin ? ... . Because, in wisdom (whereupon his determinate will dependeth), he saw it reasonable and good to create both angels and men perfectly free, which freedom being a part of their very nature, they could not without it be that which they were : but God must have left them uncreated, if not endued with liberty of mind. Angels and men had before their fall the grace whereby they might have continued if they would without sin : yet so great o-race God did not think good to bestow on them, whereby they might be exempted from possibility of sinning ; because this latter belongeth to their perfection who see God in fulness of glory, and not to them who as yet serve him under hope. NOTE IV.] The angels fell through Pride. 417 .... We see therefore how sin entered into the world. The first that sinned ag-ainst God was Satan. And then through Satan's fraudulent instigation man also. The sin of devils grew originally from themselves without suggestion or incitement outwardly offered them .... and as our Saviour himself saith of them, The}' stood not in the truth [St. John viii. 44] whereby it may be very probably thought that the happiness even of angels depended chief 1/ vpon their belief in a truth which God did reveal unto them [Hooker's italics] : The truth of that personal conjunction which should be of God with men. For Christ, although a Redeemer onl}^ unto men, might notwithstanding be revealed unto angels as their Lord, without any reference at all to sin, which the knowledge of Christ a Redeemer doth neces- sarily presuppose. So that man, their inferior by degree of nature, they must in Christ the Son of God advanced unto so great honour adore. Which mystery the too great admiration of their own excellency being so likely to have made incredible, it is unto us the more credible, that infidelity through pride was their ruin.' So Bishop 'Macaire (Theolof/ie J)or/m. Orthodoxe, § 68), ' Suivant quelques-uns (e. g. St. Gr6g. le Theologien) ce chef etait, avant sa chute, le premier et le plus parfait de tons les esprits crees^;' and, ' le diable . . . tomba par son orgueil. Cette opinion est effectivement fondee sur la Parole de Dieu . . . . i Tim. iii. 2, 6 .... Parmi les saints Peres qui partageaient cette idee nous nommerons Saint Gregoire le theologien {Ilijmn. Sacr. Serm. YI.); Saint Athanase le Grand (Oraf. de rirginifat. in Opjh t. I. p. 824, ed. Commel.) ; Saint Ambroise [Epist. Ixxxiv. ^) ; Saint Leon, ' St. Gregory tlie Great (Moral. IV. 9) speaks of him as ' That apostate angel, who had been so created as to be pre-eminent over all the rest of the legions of angels.' Macaire quotes also St. John Damascene {Fiil. Orthod. II. 4) as speaking of him as ' Parmi les puissances angeliijues, le clief de la celeste hierarchic, auquel Dieu commit la surveillance de la terre.' TertuUian (Adv. Marcion. II. 10) calls him ' eminentissimus angelorum,' ' archangelus,' and ' sapientissimus omnium, antequam diabolus.' * I cannot verify this reference, but I find the following in St. Ambrose : — Expos. in Ps. cxviii. (i.e. cxix.), vers. 51, p. 1046 (Migne, Ambr. I. 1283), ' Ipse diahulus per superbiam naturae suae amisit gratiam. Denique dum dicit : Ponam (hronum meum supernubes . . . et ero similis Altiffiino {Enai. xiv. 13 et 14), consortiis excidit E e 4i8 The sill of the angels. [app. pape de Rome ^ ; . . . . En general, ce fut I'id^e de presque tous les anciens Doctcurs de I'Eglise ; on la trouve dans Orig-ene, in Ezeeh. Horn. ix. 3 ; Basile le Grand, sur le ii% et sur le x" chap, d'lsaie ; Chrysostome, in Genes. Horn. xxii. ; Cyrille d'Alex- andrie, Contra Anthropomorpli. cap. 1 7 ; Theodoret, Ahr. du Bogm. div. ; Jerome, in cap. 1 6 Ezec/i. ; Augustin 2, Jean Damascene, Ua^p. de la Foi Orthodoxe, liv. ii. chap. 4, etc' On the question, ' en quoi proprement consista I'orgueil de I'esprit dechu, qui constitua son premier peche ? ,' Macaire says {ibid.), ' A cet egard les opinions furent partagees. Quelques- uns, se fondant sur les paroles d'lsaie (xiv. 13, 14) pensaient que le diable eut la pretention d'etre egal a Dieu dans son essence et de sieger avec lui sur un seul et meme trone (Cyrill. Alex, in Joann. lib. v.) . . . . Suivant d'antres, I'Etoile du matin tombee du ciel aurait refuse d'adorer le Fils de Dieu, soit qu'elle eut envie ses prerogatives (Lactantius, Biv. Inst. ii. 8), soit qu'ayant su par revelation que ce Fils de Dieu devait unjour souffrir, elle eilt doute de sa divinite, et n'eilt pas consenti a le reconnaitre pour Dieu (S. Greg. Mag. Moral, ii. 17).' • The student may also consult Owen, Dogmatic Theology, chap. ix. angelorum.' And in the Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans (if indeed that be a genuine work of St. Ambrose), chap. xii. i6, ' Non alia sapientcs, Alta sapere superbia est ; nam et diabolus cum alta sapuit, apostatavit.' '■ E.g. Serm. IX., i. e. De Collectis TV. (Migne's ed. vol. i. col. i6o), ' Incentor ille auctorque peccati primum superbus ut caderet, deinde invidus ut noceret, quia in veritate non stelit ' {Joan. viii. 44), - Macaire does not here give a traceable reference ; but the following may suffice : — DeVera Eeligione, cap. xiii. 26, ' Ille autera angelus magis seipsum quam Deum diligendo, subditus ei esse noluit, et intumuit per superbiam, et a .summa essentia deficit, et lapsus est.' De Civ. Dei, XI. xv. : ' Illud, quod ab initio diabolus peccat, non ab initio ex quo creatus est peccare putandus est ; sed ab initio peccati, quod ab ipsius superbia coeperit esse peccatum.' XII. vi. : 'Cum vero causa iniseriae malorum angelorum quaeritur, ea merito occurrit, quod ab Illo qui summe est aversi, ad seipsos conversi sunt, qui non summe sunt : et hoc vitium quid aliud quam superbia iiuncupatur? Initium quippe omnis peccati supei-hia' (Eccli. X. 15). XIV. xi. : 'Superbus ille angelus, ac per hoc invidus, per eamdem super- biam a Deo ad semetipsum conversus, quodam quasi tyrannico fastu gaudere subditis, quam esse subditus eligens, de spirituali paradiso cecidit.' NOTE v.] 419 Note V, § 51. The fall of the angels irremediable. Tertullian, On the Flesh of Christ, § 14, ' Never has restoration been promised to the ang-els. Christ has received from the Father no commission about the salvation of angels. What the Father has neither promised, nor committed to Him, Christ could not carry out.' St. Augustine, On St. Johns Gospel, Tract. CX. (Miffne,\o\. iii, p. 1924), 'Since however we know that the Creator of all good has conferred no grace for the restoration of bad angels, we infer that their fault has been judged so much the more damnable as their nature was more sublime than ours. For by how much they were better than we, by so much the less ought they to have sinned. Whereas, in offending the Creator, they proved so much the more assuredly ungrateful for His kindness, by how much they had been created with greater mercy ; nor were they satisfied with forsaking Him, but they must also deceive us.' And on Galatians, iii. 20 (ib. p. 2122), 'The angels who fell not from the vision of God have no need of a mediator by whom they should be reconciled. And the angels who, with none to persuade them, fell by their own unfaithfulness, are not reconciled by any mediator.' And Against Julianus, Book VI. xxii. [3Ilgne, x. p. 1553), com- paring the sin of Adam with that of his posterity, he says, * For by how much a rational nature is itself higher, by so much its fall is more ; and as its sin is more incredible, so is it more to be condemned. And so the angels fell irreparably, forasmuch as To whom more is given, from him is more required {St. Luke xii. 48). And so the more excellent their nature, the more they owed a willing obedience. Hence by not doing what they ought they are so punished, as that they can no longer even wish [to do what they ought], and are destined to even eternal torments.' And, Clt^ of God, Xlll. xxiv. 6 [Migne, vii. p. 402), 'The E e 2 420 The fall of the angels irremediable ; [app. deserter angels^ although in a certain sense they are dead by sinning (for they deserted the Well of Life, which is God, by drinking Whereof they might have lived in wisdom and blessed- ness) : yet could not so die as to cease altogether to live and feel. For they were created immortal ; and so, after the last judgment, they will be cast down into the second death, so as not even there to be without life ; forasmuch as they will not even be without feeling, since they will be in pains.' This passage, it may be observed, is strongly adverse to the modern notion of ' Conditional Immortality.' St. Thomas Aquinas, Sum. Part I, Qusest. Ixiv. Art. 2 [M'lgne, vol. i. p. 1137), 'It must be firmly held, according to the Catholic Faith, That both the will of the good angels is con- firmed in good, and the will of demons obstinately fixed in evil. Yet you must seek the cause of this fixedness, not in the gravity of their fault, but in the condition of their nature or state. For, as Damascene says [Oriliod. Faith, Bk. II, ch. iv), Their fall is to the angels zvhat death is to men. Now it is manifest that all deadly sins of men, great or small, are pardonable before death ; but after death unpardonable, and abiding for ever.' The whole passage deserves study. He argues that in the angels both ' Apprehension ' (or Perception) and ' Will ' have a wider sweep, and consequently a more decisive operation, than in men. ' An Angel apprehends immoveably, through intellect [or vovi\ in the same way that we men apprehend a few first principles [e. g. " The whole is greater than its part "], but man by reason [Ao'yo?, Uiscnrsns, a weaker faculty than vom, being mediate and indirect, and not intuitive], apprehends moveably, by running [discurrendo) from one thing to another. Hence also the will of man adheres to anything moveably, as having the power of even departing from it and adhering to the contrary ; whereas the will of angels adheres fixedly and immoveably. . . . Hence it has been usually said that " the free will of man is flexible, both before his election and afterwards ; but the free will of the angels is flexible before election, but not afterwards." Wherefore the good angels, once adhering to righteousness, were confirmed therein ; but the evil ones, sinning, were obstinately fixed in sin. . . . The mercy of NOTE v.] Tertullian, Augustine^ Aquinas, Ansehn. 42 1 God delivers penitents from sin. But those who are not capable of repentance adhere immoveably to evil, and are not delivered by the divine mercy. . . . The sin whereby the devil first sinned still remains in him, as to the desire.' And again, Sum. Part III. QnaDst. iv. Art. i {Migne, iv. p. ^^), he argues that it is only in human nature that the two conditions, viz. o^ fitness, or meeiness, or digniijj (congruentia), and of necessiiy, are both found. To the irrational creation dignify is wanting; to the superhuman, or angelic, necessity. For the angels are not generated, as men are ; nor are they, as men are, born under a law of original sin, to the inheritance of a tainted nature. There is no abstract common angelic nature. Each angel is, from his first creation, perfect in his own personality. Hence it follows that the Son of God could not have taken the angelic nature without superseding, or, indeed, annihilating, the personality of some one particular angel. And the sin of the evil angels, who might seem to satisfy the condition of necessity, is, he says, irremediable. St. Anselm alludes to this question in two places of his treatise Why God was made man, viz. i. 17 and ii. 21. In the first, to Boso's question, ' Why the fallen angels could not be restored,' he simply answers, ' When you see the difficulty of our restoration, you will understand the impossibility of their recon- ciliation ; ' and proceeds to give reasons why the loss could not be repaired by the ci'eation of more angels, but must be made up from mankind. The second passage is as follows : — ' As for the reconciliation of the devil, about which you enquired, you will perceive it to be impossible, if you diligently consider that of man. For just as man could not be reconciled unless by God becoming Man, and so able to die, and one by Whose righteous- ness that might be restored to God which He had lost by Man's sin ; so the condemned angels cannot be saved, unless by God becoming an angel, one who could die, and who through his righteousness could recover for God what the sins of the others had taken away from Him. And just as man could not {iion detjuit) be lifted up again by means of another man who was not of the same race, even though he were of the same nature ; so no 42 2 SL Anse/m 07t the 7ion-redemption of angels, [app. angel can [debet) be saved by means of another angel, although they are all of the same nature ; since they are not of the same race, as men are. For the angels are not all from one angel, as all men are from one man. Again ; this also hinders their restoration, That as they fell when none other tempted them to fall, so they ought [clebent) to rise up again without help from any other ; and this is impossible for them. For they cannot otherwise be restored to the dignity which they would have had ; since without any other help they would, by their own power, which they had received, have stood fast in the truth [St. John viii. 44), if they had not sinned. Wherefore, if any thinks that the redemption through our Saviour ought some time to be ex- tended even to them, he is shown by reason itself to be misled by reasoning. And this I say, not as if the value [pretium) of His Death did not, in its greatness, prevail against all the sins of men and of angels ; but because a reason that cannot be altered is against the restoration of the lost angels.' The first of St. Anselm's two reasons is identical with the second quoted above from St. Thomas Aquinas, viz. That there is not the same solidarity and interdependence in the angelic as in human nature, and so we cannot conceive the possibility, in their case, of their sacramental ingrafting into a new stock ; nor understand how One in their nature could so, as Head of all, represent all, as that His Righteousness and Life and Death should atone for all. If, as rationalising Christians view it, the Life of Christ were but the exemplary exhibition of perfect morality, and His Death, so far as it was more than part of that, only the crowning proof of love, and the supreme motive of gratitude ; then indeed it, or a similar exhibition in angelic nature, might avail, by an external motive and attractive power, for the recovery of the angels also. But it cost more to redeem our souls. Our disease is deeper than could be reached by anything merely operating as a standard, or even a motive, presented ab extra, on a will itself weakened and biassed by the act of sin. NOTE VI.] 423 Note VI. § 71. Visible appearance of the Son of God to Adam in Paradise. St. Augustine, On Genesis {Ad Lilt. VIII. xviii. 37), ' How then did God speak to him [Adam] ? Whether inwardly, in his mind, through the understanding, that is, so that he should intelligently perceive the will and command of God without any bodily sounds or resemblances of bodily things ? I do not think that God so spake to the first man. For the Scripture narrates these things in such wise that we should rather believe that God spake to man in Paradise in the same way as He afterwards spake to the Fathers, to Abraham, to Moses, that is, in some bodily form or appearance. Hence is it also that they Jieard His Voice, as He walked in Paradise at eventide, and kid themselves {Gen. iii. 8).' Again, ibid, xxvii. 50, speaking of this same passage of Genesis, he says, ' That this [the visibly walking in the garden] was done, not by means of the very Substance Itself of God, but by means of the creature which is subject to Him, no man who knows the Catholic Faith can by any means doubt. But I have here thought it right to speak somewhat more fully on this subject, because certain heretics [the Arians, Benedictine Notc\ think that the Substance of the Son of God is visible of itself without the assumption of any bodily form, and that, accordingly, before He took a body of the Virgin He was Himself (they imagine) seen by the Fathers, as if it were only of God the Father that it is said. Whom no man hath seen, nor can see (i Ti/ii. vi. 16) ; because the Son was seen before He took on Him the form of a servant, and that by His own very Substance ; which impiety is to be utterly rejected by Catholic minds.' I have here rendered St. Augustine's Substantia by Substance, the phrase of our English Nicene Creed and Articles. Perhaps Essence {pvoia) would convey the thought better to modern ears. The passage is valuable as showing exactly the false inference (which St. Augustine calls ' impietas ') of the Arians, who, appealing to the general belief of the Church that the Son of God did appear in visible form to man under the old Covenants, argued illogically from that admitted fact that He was essentially inferior to the 424 The visible Appearaiices of God, related in [app. Father even iu His pre-existent Nature, and so less than Divine. The Catholic knows that invisibility is not a Personal attribute of the Father only, but an essential attribute of the Godhead as such, and so common to the Three Persons. The form seen was not the uncreated Ipsa Substantia of the Son, which is as invisible as that of the Father, being- indeed that of the Father, nor was the Ipsa Suhstantia seen in it ; but it was a temporarily-assumed form, from the ' Subdita Ei creatura.' See Lecture IV. §§ 89, 90, p. 179, &c. Thomas Scott, in his Commentary on Gen. iii. 8, says : ' Some visible tokens of the Lord's Presence, perhaps in human form, seem here intimated, of which we shall hereafter find undeniable instances ; and which should be considered as anticipations of Rls incarnation, who is called the " Word of God." ' Lange, on the same, in his Bibel-werk (edited by Schaff, pub. by T. & T. Clark, Edinburgh, 1868), says : — ' Delitzsch maintains that God appeared to man as one man appears to another, though this had not been the original mode of the divine converse with him. The Theophanies had their beginning first after the fall ; and according to his explanation " God now for the first time holds converse with men in an outward manner, corresponding to their materialisation and alienated state." On the other hand Keil maintains, "that God held converse with the first men in a visible form, as a Father and Educator of His children, and that this was the original mode of the Divine revelation, not coming in for the first time after the fall." .... We must regard as unanswered, in what respect the Theophanies (which were mediated in all cases through vision-seeing states of soul) are to be distinguished from real outward appearances in human form.' Keil seems more right than Delitzsch; in whose language, connecting ' materialisation ' with man's ' alienated state,' there is a latent Manichaeism. Man was ' material ' as God made him. There was no more reason against the ' mode of the Divine con- verse ' being outward and visible before the Fall than afterwards. Lange's assertion, that 'the Theophanies were mediated in all cases through vision-seeing states of soul,' is mere assumption ; and contrary to the plain meaning of the Bible narrative, which, in NOTE VI.] the Bible, were real and outward. 425 most cases describe them simply as ' real outward appearances in human form.' The distinction between prophetic 'vision' and 'real outward appearances ' seems marked in Numbers xii. 6, ' 1/ there be a prophet amovg you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, I tvill speak unto him in a dream. Not so my servant Moses. He is faithful in all my house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches, and the similitude di'icroc jxoi atavruv. [Cod. Alex. Ad^vv noi t^c atavTov 5ofar], as if with a feeling that, for Ihcit passage, T^v Su^av aov merely would not have been strong enough. 426 Dr. Pusey's estimate [app. Note VII, § 87, On the Theophames. The following- passages are here given from the writings of the early Christian Fathers, in illustration, for the English reader, of the original and primitive view of tlie ' Theophanies ' ; viz. That it was the Eternal Son Himself Who did, visibly, as the ' Angel of the LoBD ' or otherwise, manifest Himself, in human or angelic form, temporarily assumed for the purpose, under the old Covenants. It should be observed that, from the different and distant localities to which they belonged, the writers cited are (so it happens) singularly representative of the whole Church ; and further that they introduce this view, as their subject or argument requires, not as if it itself needed argument or support, or as an idea of their own, but as the current thought of the Church of their day, universally acknowledged and accepted, and so capable of being itself employed as an argument. Later writers who oppose it, or hesitate about it, yet admit one and all its general, nay, universal prevalence in the earlier ages of the Church. There is, in truth, a consensus against which the hesitations of Saint Augustine really avail but little. I. St. Justin Maetyr, born in Samaria about a.d. 100, suffered at Rome a.d. 166. I give the extracts from the Oxford Transla- tion in the Library of the Fathers. The Preface introducing that Translation, and written by Dr. Pusey upon an unfinished draft by the Rev. John Barrow, D.D,, speaks thus of the value of St. Justin's writings : — ^ He had ample means of knowing what was the faith and practice of Christians throughout the world in his own as well as in earlier times (p. iii.) .... Eusebius . . attests the estimation in which his writings were held as authentic descriptions of the Christian Church of his age. In statement of fact, therefore, respecting Christian history and doctrines, St. Justin may be regarded as most trustworthy ' (p. iv.) ' The most important use of the writings of this early age is to be found in the evidence which they offered respecting the doctrines then held by the body NOTE VII.] of St. Jtistin Martyr. 427 of Christians spread throughout the world. It is indeed to us a matter of the highest concern to know assuredly what the truths were which our Blessed Lord and His Apostles taught. And in connection with what we read in Holy Scripture, and that which the Church teaches from Scripture, the testimony given by the faith of the sub-Apostolic Church is invaluable' (p. xi). ' That Justin on the whole represented faithfully what the universal Church of his own age held, we may feel assured from the fact already noticed, his publishing the Dialogue with Trypho, for the purpose of challenging contradiction if he had been unfaithful in his representations; as well as from the esteem in which his writings were held by the Church of his own and the following age' (p. xiii). From this favourable estimate of St. Justin, Dr. Pusey (himself inclining, see § 94, p. 191, to prefer the later view of the Theophanies) proceeds somewhat to detract in regard to the matter before us in this Note. He says (p. xiv.), ' It is very necessary to keep in mind, that the doctrine of the Church is to be distinguished from the views and theories formed respecting it, no less than from the arguments by which Theologians maintain it ; even, though those views be widely spread and generally received. For instance, it is quite certain that the Church held most deeply the true Divinity of our Blessed Lord, though many of the arguments by which Justin would establish it from the Old Testament may seem invalid, and based upon erroneous notions. One may question with St. Augustine, whether the appearances recorded in the early Books of Scripture were those of the Son Himself personally, as St, Justin, in common with almost ^ all Christian antiquity until ' Dr. Pusey does not give references to any early exceptions. The few tliere are apply chiefly to the appearance of the Captain of the Lord's host to Joshua. Among them are, i. 8t. Athanasius, see p. 457 : 2. Theodorct (a.D. 450) who, in Quamt. iv. in Jcmmfilium Naue says 'I think it was Michael the Archangel,' but (luotes no authority, and gives no reason except the erroneous view (see § 99. p. 200) that a created angel was permanently substituted as the guardian of Israel after the sin of the calf; and, 3. The anonymous and undated scholion to Valesius' MS. of Eusebius (Hist. I. 2) see § loi, p. 206. Thus Dr. Pusey 's qualifying 'almost' has but little support. Nor is there more for the extraordinary state- ments of Dr. INlill {Myth. Inlerp. Gosp. Append. E. p. 355) that Theodoret's opinion has, ' with two remarkable exceptions (viz. St. Justin Martyr and Eusebius the 428 SL y2Lsii)i s belief as to the Theophanies [app. St.. Aug-ustine, so strenuously maintains, without detracting from the exceeding- value of his testimony to the great truth which underlies his exposition : the personal Preexistence and Divinity of the Word.' Upon this it may be remarked that the interpretation given by St. Justin of tlie Old Testament narratives in question is certainly not put forward by him as a ' view ' or a ' theory,' but as a well-understood and generally acknowledged belief. Sup- ported as it is beyond all gainsaying by a very extensive mass of evidence throughout the ante-Nicene ages, it approaches itself much more nearly to being a ' doctrine of the Church ' than a ' view ' or a ' theory ' ; which could have had no weight in either an Apology addressed to a Heathen Emperor, or an argument held with a Jewish unbeliever. Indeed it is evident that to have used such an argument on his own sole authority (which would have argued it a novelty, unknown to the Church) would have been certain to engender needless difficulties in the minds of those he desired to win to the Faith. It could only be of any real force under two conditions. i. That it should be the generally accepted belief of the Christian body ; 2. That to those who, like Trypho, accepted the Old Testament, it should admit of being shown to be, not in solitary instances but throughout a whole series, the most probable, natural, and consistent interpretation of the sacred narrative itself. The very fact that the Arians of the fourth century (illogically enough) appealed to it proves its acknowledged currency throughout the Church. The earlier use, by a few, and subsequent dropping, of such terms as 'mingling^ (to 'express the closeness of union of our Lord's Divine and Human natures') because afterwards 'abused by the Historian), received the sanction of the ancient Church,' and that the anonynaous scholiast's ' allegation of general catholic consent ' (to his reasons for supposing the Captain of the Lord's host to be the Archangel Michael) is ' unquestionably true.' What is to be observed is, i. That a variety of opinion as to this one Manifestation — a variety evidently largely due to the Lxx. version (see § loi, p. 207) — does not affect the consentient interpretation of the Theophanies as a whole : and 2. That the amount of ascertained adhesion among early Christian writers to Theo- doret's view is exceedingly small, if any. His own reputation for orthodoxy was too uncertain for his opinion to have much weight. But see the allusions in the passages which follow to the Appearance to Joshua. NOTE VII.] was not a 'view' nor a ' theory! 429 ApolHnarians ' ; or as ' conjunction ' (rruya^eta), because abused by the Nestorians, are not really parallel cases ; and should not be seriously adduced as an argument for the surrender of an admittedly wide-spread view, in possession of the ground from the first days of Christianity, affecting large tracts of the Old Testament Scriptures (not to say the whole of them throughout) and holding so cardinal a position in the Christian argument. I add one more passage from Dr. Pusey's Preface, bearing on this subject : — ' The supposition that whereas in the Old Testament God is said to have appeared to man, it was the Son Who so appeared, lasted on to the time of St. Augustine. It is used as an argument of the Divinity of the Son, since He Who so manifests Himself is declared to be God. The supposition itself implied nothing derogatory. What more natural than to think, that He Who, in the fulness of time, vouchsafed to become Man, did beforehand accustom man to the thought of His appearing in human form, by appearing in a form which He had created. Not the supposition itself (which occurs in the most accurate Fathers, as St. Cyprian, and even St. Athanasius himself) but statements connected with itj were less carefully worded ' (p. xvi), I append the passages themselves from St. Justin : — T. Apologi/, i. 6^, (Oxf. Transl. p. 48). 'But the Word of God is His Son, as I have already said, and He is called Angel and Ajwsile, for He declares all that ought to be known, and is sent to proclaim what is told, as indeed our Lord Himself said, He that heareth He, heareth him that sent Me. And tliis will be clear from the writings of Moses, in which it is said as follows : And the Angel of God spake unto Moses ht aflame of flre out of the midst of a hnsh, and said, I Am That I Am, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the God of thy fathers ; go doion into Egypt, and bring up My people. And what followed, you who wish may learn from them ; for it is not possible to write all the events in this book, but thus much has been said to prove that Jesus, the Christ, is the Son and Apostle of Godj being formerly the Word; and at one time appearing in the form of fire, and at another in the image of incorporeal beings, but now by the will of God, being made man for the 430 The Tkeopkanies. [app. human race, He endured also to suffer all that the devils caused to be inflicted on Him by the senseless Jews; who, having* it expressly said in the Mosaic writings, And the Angel of God spake with Moses in a flame of fire in the hush^ and said, I Am That I Am, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob ; affirm that it was the Father and Maker of all things "Who spoke thus. Hence also the Spirit of prophecy upbraids them as follows : Israel hath not known Me, My people hath not under- stood Me. And again, Jesus, as we have shown, when with them, said, No one knoweth the Father but the Son, nor the Son but the Father, and those to whom the Son will reveal Him,. The Jews then always thinking* that the Father of all thing's spoke to Moses — He Who spoke to him being the Son of God, Who is called both Angel and Apostle — are rightly upbraided both by the Spirit of Prophecy, and by Christ Himself, as knowing neither the Father nor the Son : for they who say that the Son is the Father, are proved neither to know the Father, nor that the Father of all things has a Son, Who, being- moreover the First-born Word of God, is also God, and Who formerly, throug-h the shape of fire, and through an incorporeal image, appeared to Moses, and the other Prophets ; but now, in the time of your g-overnment, as I said before, was made man of a Virg-in, according" to the counsel of the Father, for the salvation of those who believed on Him.' 2. Dialogue with Trypho, 34 (Oxf. Transl. p. no), ' Where it is said. Give the King Thy judgments, 0 God [Psalm Ixxii. 1) ; because Solomon was a king*, you say that the Psalm was spoken of him, whereas its words plainly show that it was spoken of the eternal King, i. e. Christ ; for Christ is spoken of as a King-, and a Priest, and God, and Lord, and an Angel, and a Man, and Captain of the host, and a Stone, and a Child that is born, etc' 3. Ibid. 56 (p. 138, a full discussion of the Appearance to Abraham recorded in Genesis xviii. and xix.), ' Moses, that blessed and faithful servant of God, declares that He Who was seen by Abraham at the oak of Mamre was God, accompanied by two angels, who were sent for the condemnation of Sodom, by Another, namely, by Him Who always remains above the heavens, Who NOTE VII.] S^. Justin Martyr. 431 has never been seen by any man, and Who of Himself holds con- verse with none, Whom we term the Creator of all things, and the Father. . . . What I assert, I will endeavour to prove to you who understand the Scriptures ; namely, that there both is, and that we read of, another God and Lord under the Creator of all things. Who is also termed an Angel, in that He bears messages to men, whatever the Creator, above Whom there is no other God, wills to be borne to them. . . . He Who is said to have appeared to Abraham, to Jacob, and to Moses, and is called God, is other than the Creator of all things ; other I mean in number, not in will ; for I assert that He never did (nor said) anything but what the Creator of the world, above Whom there is no God, willed Him to do or to say.' 4. Ibid. 68 (p. 144, On the Appearances to Jacob), ' Moses has written again, that He Who was seen by the Patriarchs, and Who is called God, is also termed Angel and Lord, in order that you may thus perceive Him to be a minister of the Father of the universe. [He quotes the passages from Genesis xxxi, xxxii, xxxv.] .... When Jacob fled from his brother Esau, the same Angel, and God, and Lord, appeared to him. Who also appeared to Abraham in the form of a man, and afterwards wrestled with Jacob in the same form.' [He quotes Gen. xxviii. 10-20.] 5. Ih'id. 59 (p. 146, On the Appearance in the Burning Bush), * The same Angel, and God, and Lord, and Man, Who appeared as man to Abraham and Jacob, also appeared to and conversed with Moses in a flame of fire out of the bush.' 6. Ih'ul. 60 (p. 146, In answer to Trypho^s objection that the Angel who appeared and God who conversed with Moses at the bush were two distinct Persons), ' Even if it be so, my friends, that both an Angel and God appeared together in that vision to Moses, yet .... That God Who said to Moses that He was the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, will not be the Creator of the universe, but He Who was proved to have appeared to Abraham and Jacob, who ministers to the will of the Creator of all things, and who in the judgment of Sodom also ministered to His counsel. So that even if there were two, as you say, an Angel and God, yet no one who has the 432 The Theophanies. [a pp. least sense will venture to assert, that the Maker and Father of all things left those realms which are above the heavens, and ap- peared on a little spot of earth. ... In that vision He alone, who is both called an Ang-el and is God was seen by and con- versed with Moses. ... As the Scripture calls Him who ap- peared to Jacob in his dream an Angel, and then declares that that very Angel who was then seen by him in that sleep, said, I am the God who appeared to thee when thou fieddest from the face of thy brother Esau ; and we read in the time of Abraham in the destruction of Sodom, The Lord brought this judgment //-o^i the Lord hi heaven ; so when the Scripture here says that an Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses, and afterwards declares that He is Lord and God, it means the same Person whom in many passages it points out to have ministered to the will of that God, Who is above the world, and to Whom there is none superior. . . . 6i. He once calls Himself Captain of the host, when He appeared to Joshua the Son of Nun in the form of man.' 7. Ibid. 126 (p. 226), ' But if you had known, Trypho, who He is that is called at one time Angel of Great Counsel, and a Man by Ezekiel, and like the Son of Man by Daniel, and a little Child by Isaiah, and Christ and God who is to be worshipped by David, and Christ and a Stone by many, and Wisdom by Solomon, and Joseph, and Judah, and a Star by Moses, and the East by Zechariah, and One who must suffer, and Jacob, and Israel, by Isaiah again, and a Rod, and a Flower, and chief Corner-Stone, and Son of God ; if you had known this, Trypho, you would not have blasphemed Him Who has already come, and been born, and sujffered, and ascended into heaven ; who will also return again ; and then your twelve tribes shall mourn.' 8. Ibid. 127 (p. 228), 'I suppose that I have sufficiently shown that when my God says, God went np from Abraham, or. The Lord spake to Moses, and. The Lord came down to see the tower which the children of men built, or, God closed the Ark of Noah from without, you should not suppose that the Unbegotten God Him- self descended or went up from any place ; for the ineffable Father and Lord of all things neither comes to any place, nor walks, nor sleeps, nor rises up, but always remains in His own NOTE VII.] S/. Melito, Bishop of Sardis. 433 place wherever it is, seeing quickly and hearing quickly, not with eyes or ears, but by an ineffable power — (and yet He beholds all thing's, and has knowledge of all things, and none of us is hid from Him) — nor is He moved nor contained in any place, not even in the whole world, having been even before the world was made ; how then could He speak to any one, or be seen by any one, or appear on the smallest spot of earth ? when the people could not even look on the glory of him who was sent by Him in Sinai ; and Moses himself was unable to enter the tabernacle, which he had made, if it were filled with the glory of God, and the Priest could not endure to stand before the Temple when Solomon brought the ark into the house at Jerusalem, which he himself had built, — then neither Abraham, nor Isaac, nor Jacob, nor any other man, ever saw the Father and Ineffable Lord of all things whatever, and of Christ Him- self; but Him, who, according to His will, is both God His Son, and His Angel from ministering to His will ; who. He determined, should be born as man of the Virgin, and who once even became fire when He conversed with Moses from the bush ; for if we do not understand the Scriptures thus, it will follow that the Father and Lord of all things was not in heaven when it was said by Moses, And the Lord rained upon Sodom, fire and brimstone from the Lord out of heaven. And again when it w^as said by David, Lift up your gates, 0 ye princes, and he ye lift up, ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in. And again when he says, The Lord saith unto my Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand, uniil I make Thine enemies Thy footstool. And that Christ being Lord, and being in His own nature God the Son of God, and being formerly manifested with power as man, and an angel, and in the form of fire as in the bush, appeared also at the judgment which was brought upon Sodom, has been proved at length by what I have said.' II. St. Melito, Bishop of Sardis, a.d. 168. He addressed an Apology to the Emperor M. Antoninus. The Eev. W. H. Sim- cox in his recent interesting volume. The Beginnings of the Christian Church, ch:ip. viii, after speaking (p. 389) of Saint Melito as ' undoubtedly one of the chief theologians of his age, and one of rf 434 '^^^^ Theophanies. St. Mclito. [app, the most honoured persons in the Church,' presents us (from Canon Cureton^s version, in his Sjncileghim Synaaim) with the following" passage from the extant fragments of his writings : — ' We have made collections from the Law and the Prophets relative to those things which have heen declared respecting our Lord Jesus Christ, that we may prove to your love, that He is perfect reason, the Word of God ; who was begotten before the light ; who was Creator together with the Father ; who was the fashioner of man ; who was all in all ; who among the Patriarchs was Patriarch ; who in the law was the Law ; among the priests Chief Priest ; among- kings Governor ; among prophets the Prophet ; among the angels Archangel ; in the voice the Word ; among spirits Spirit ; in the Father the Son ; in God God — the King for ever and ever. For this is He who was pilot to Noah ; who conducted Abraham ; who was bound with Isaac, who was in exile with Jacob, who was sold with Joseph, who was captain with Moses, who w^as the divider of the inheritance w'ith Jesus the Son of Nun, who in David and the prophets foretold his own sufferings, who was incarnate in the Virgin, who was born in Bethlehem, who was wrapped in swaddling-clothes in the manger, who was seen of the shepherds, who was glorified of the angels, who was worshipped by the Magi, who was pointed out by John, who assembled the Apostles, who preached the kingdom, who healed the maimed, who gave light to the blind, who raised the dead, who appeared in the temple, who was not believed on by the people, who was betrayed by Judas, who was laid hold on by the priests, who was condemned by Pilate, who was transfixed in the flesh, who was hanged upon the tree, who was buried in the earth, who rose from the dead, who appeared to the Apostles, who ascended to heaven, who sitteth on the right hand of the Father, who is the rest of those that are departed, the recoverer of those who were lost, the light of those who are in darkness, the deliverer of those who are captives, the guide of those who have gone astray, the refuge of the afflicted, the bride- groom of the Church, the charioteer of the Cherubim, the captain of the Angels, God who is of God, the Son who is of the Father, Jesus Christ, the King for ever and ever. Amen.' ' This,' adds NOTE VII.] S^. TJicophihis. St. Ireftaeus, 435 Mr. Simcox, * is not only orthodox theology — it is second century theology. The thought of the Divine Word pervading the Old Testament — appearing in the revelations made to the Patriarchs and Prophets, and foretold by their typical deeds and sufferings, as well as by their inspired words — is one that has never indeed ceased to influence Christian theology ; but it has in later ages been less insisted on, indeed less clearly conceived. The reason is that the second century was the time when it was necessary to maintain, against both Jews and anti- Jewish heretics, that "the Old Testament is not contrary to the New ; for both in the Old and New Testament everlasting life is offered to mankind by Christ, who is the only Mediator between God and Man, being both God and Man." As other controversies arose, the faith was expressed in other forms ; but the old form never entirely passed out of memory.' III. TiiEOPHiLUS. Bishop Bull writes [Defence, Nicene Creed, Vik. I, ch.ii, §5), 'Theophilus of Antioch (writing to Autolycus, Bk. II) asserts that it was the Sou of God, who appeared to Adam shortly after the fall, and that " assuming the person of the Father and Lord of all, He came into Paradise in the person of God, and conversed with Adam ; " ' upon which passage the ■student should see Bishop BulTs remarks in Bk. Ill, ch.vii. § i, in which he vindicates Theophilus, as in other places he has to vindicate others of the Ante-Nicene Fathers, against the super- ficial misunderstanding of them by the Jesuit Petavius. IV. St. Irenaeus, born in Asia about a.d. 140; a disciple of St, Polycarp, as he of St. John; succeeded Pothinus who was martyred a.d. 177, as Bishop of Lyons ; died about a.d. 200. I. Against Heresies, III. 6 (translated by Dr. Burton, Testi- mo7iies of the Ante-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of Christ, p. 78), ' In the overthrowing of Sodom, the Scripture says [Gen. xix. 24), And the Lord rained npon Sodom and vpon Gomorrah fre and brim- stone from the Lord out of heaven. For it signifies in this place that the Son, Who had also been conversing with Abraham, had received })ower from the Father to judge the people of Sodom on account of their iniquity .... And in another place the Son speaks to Moses, saying, I am come down to deliver this people r f 2 436 The Theophanies. [app. [Exod. iii. 8), for it is He Himself Who descended and ascended for the salvation of men. It is by the Son therefore who is in the Father, and has the Father in himself, that He Who is truly God has been manifested unto us, the Father bearing testimony to the Son, and the Son announcing the Father.' 3. Also III. xi. (quoted by Dr. Burton, p. 84, as follows) : — ' The Word of God conversed with the patriarchs before Moses in his divine and glorious character \_^K.aTa to QeiKov kol €vho^ov b)ijt,ik€t, secundum divinitatem et gloriam colloquebatur, i.e. as not being yet incarnate] : to those under the law. He fulfilled the office of a priest : and after this, becoming man, he sent the gift of the Holy Ghost into all the earth.' 3. Also Idid. IV. xvii. (I translate from Grynaeus^ Latin ed. after Erasmus, Basileae, i57i)j 'Wherefore the Jews departed from God, receiving not the Word of God, but thinking that through Himself they could know God the Father, without the Word, that is, without the Son ; knowing not Him Who in human form spake to Abraham and Aaron, and Who said to Moses, Seeing, I have seen the oppression of M?/ people in Egypt, and am come down to deliver them. For this Son, Who is also the Word of God, from the beginning made preparation (praestruebat), since the Father needed no help of angels, for His making the Creation, and forming Man, for whose sake also the Creation was made.' 4. Ibid. IV. xxiii. On ' Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed Me, for he wrote of Me. Yes ; for everywhere in his writings is the Son of God embedded [inseminatus, insown], sometimes indeed talking with Abraham, sometimes eating with him, sometimes again bringing judgment on the people of Sodom : or, again, when He is seen, and guides Jacob on his journey, and speaks from the Bush with Moses.' 4. IV. 37. Speaking of the various modes in which prophetic announcements were made of the coming Saviour and His Work : — ' For not by speech only did the prophets prophesy, but by vision also, and by their manner of life, and by acts which they did, according as the Spirit suggested. Accordingly on this principle they saw God Who is invisible. As Isaiah says. NOTE VII.] S^. Irenaeits. 437 / saw with my eyes the Kivg, the Lord of hosts ; announcin;^ that man was to see God with his eyes and to hear His Voice. Where- fore also on this principle they saw also the Son of God as man conversing- with men, prophesying- that which was to be hereafter .... And the Word indeed spake with Moses, appeai'ing in his sight, as a man speaketh with his friend .... Now the Word of the Father, forasmuch as He is rich and manifold, declareth [Himself] not in any one single form, nor was seen by those that saw Him in one character only, but according to the oc- casions of His dealings ; as it is written in Daniel that He was once seen by those who were around Ananias and Azarias and Misael, standing by them in the burning- fiery furnace and de- livering them from the Ihime ; and the appearance (he says) of the fourth was like the Son of God.^ The student may compare also Adv, Hcer. I. iv. Et cur quura invisibilis sit Deus, pro- phetis apparuerit non in una forma, sed alitor aliis, intelligas. III. vi. Deo Quo [so. Filio] iterum dicit, Deus Deorum Dominus loquutus est,-et vocavit terram. {Ps. 1. i.) Quis Deus? De Quo dixit : Deus manifeste veniet, Deus noster, et non sile- hit : hoc est Filius, Qui secun- dum manifestationem homini- bus advenit, Qui dicit palam : Ajyparui his qui Me non quae- runt. III. xi. Accipieus eos qui a terra essent panes, et gratias agens, et iterum aquam faciens vinum, saturavit eos qui re- cumbebant, et potavit eos qui invitati erant ad nuptias: os- teudens quoniam Deus Qui fecit the following : — terram, et, jussit earn fructus facere, et constituit aquas et edidit fontes, Hie et benedic- tionem escae et gratiam potus in novissimis temporibus per Filium suum donat bumano generi, incomprehensibilis per comprehensibilem, et invisibilis per visibilem, cum extra Eum non sit, sed in sinu Patris ex- istat. Deum enim, inquit, nemo vidit unquani, nisi Unigenitus Filius Dei, Qui est in sinu Patris, Ipse enarravit. Patrem enim invisibilem existentem, Ille Qui in sinu Ejus est Filius, omuibus enarrat. Propter hoc cognoscunt Eum hi quibus re- velaverit Filius, et iterum Pater per Filium Fibi sui dat agnitionem bis qui diligunt Eum. 438 The Theophanies. [a PP. For the explanation of the language used here see Lect. IV. § 89, p. 179- III. xviii. Unus igitur Deus Pater, . . . et unus Christus Jesus Dominus noster veniens per universara dispositionem, et omnia in Semetipso recapitu- lans. In omnibus autem est et homo plasmatio Dei : et homi- uem ergo in Semetipso recapi- tulatus est Invisibilis et visibilis factus, et lucomprehensibilis factus comprehensibilis, et Im- passibilis passibilis et Verbum homo, universa in Semetipsum recapitulans, uti sicut in super- coelestibus et spiritalibus, et invisibilibus princeps est Ver- bum Dei, sic et in visibilibus et corporalibus principatum habeat, in Semetipsum prima- tum assumens, et apponens Se- metipsum caput Ecclesiae, uni- versa attrahat ad Semetipsum apto in tempore. III. XX. In jiTincipio Verbum existens ajmd Deum, per Quem omnia facta sunt. Qui et semper aderat generi humano . . . no- vissimis temporibus secundum praefinitum tempus a Patre unitum suo plasmati, &c. IV. xi. Qui a prophetis ado- rabatur Deus vivus, Hie est vivorum Deus, et Verbum Ejus Qui et locutus est Moysi [i.e. at the Bush, in the words, / am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacoh], Qui et Sadducaeos re- darguit . . . Ipse igitur Christus cum Patre vivorum est Deus, Qui et locutus est Moysi, Qui et Patribus manifestatus est. [Cap. xii.] Et hoc ipsum do- cens dicebat Judaeis, Abraham pater vester exultavit ut videret diem meum, et vidit, et gavisus est. . . . Juste igitur derelin- quens terrenam cognationem omnem, sequebatur Verbum Dei, cum Verbo peregrinans, ut cum Verbo moraretur. . . . [The whole passage is beautiful, but too long to transcribe.] Non in- cognitus igitur erat Dominus Abrahae cujus diem concupivit videre : sed neque Pater Do- mini : didicerat enim a Verbo Domini, et credidit Ei. [Com- pare with this IV. xvi.] Non tan- turn propter Abraham hoc dixit \^Abraham j)ater vester exulta- vit, &c.,], sed ut ostenderet quo- niam omnes qui ab initio cog- nitum habuerunt Dominum et adventum Christ! prophetave- runt, revelationem acceperunt ab Ipso Filio, Qui et novissimis temporibus visibilis et passibilis factus est. IV. xiv. Arguing the pre- existence of Christ, he points out the error of supposing that only * a temporibus Tiberii Caesaris commemoratus est Pater providere hominibus, et NOTE VII.] S/. Irenaeus. 439 non semper Verbum Ejus una cum plasmate fuisse ostende- batur.' Ibid. Bonum autem placitum Patris Filius perficit : mittit enim Pater, niittitur autcm et venit Filius. Et Patrcm quldcin Invisibilem et Interminabilem, quantum ad nos est, cognoscit suum Ipsius Verbum, et cum sit inenarrabilis Ipse enarrat Eum nobis. Rursum autem Verbum suum solus cognoscit Pater : utraque autem haec et sic se habere manifestavit Do- minus, et propter hoc Filius revelat agnitionem Patris per suam manifestationem. Agiiitio enim Patris est, Filii manifes- tatio. Omnia per Verbum ma- nifestantur. Ihid. Per legem et prophetas similiter Verbum et Semetip- sum et Patrem praedicabat. Et audivit quidem universus popu- lus bimiliter : non similiter au- tem omncs crediderunt : et per Ipsum Verbum visibilem et pal- pabilem factum Pater ostende- batur,ctiamsi non oranes simili- ter credebant Ei : sed omnes vidci-unt in Filio Patrcm : invi- sibile etenim Filii Pater, visibile autem Patris Filius. . . . Omnia autem Filius adrainistrans Pa- tri, perficit ab initio usque ad finem, et sine Illo nemo potest cognoscere Deum. Agiiitio enim Patris Filius, aguitio au- tem Filii in Patre et per Filium revelata. Et propter hoc Do- minus dicebat. Nemo cognoscit Filium nisi Pater, neque Patrem nisi Filius, et quibuscunque Filius revelaverit. Eevelaverit enim, non solum in futurum dictum est, quasi tunc inciperet Verbum manifestare Patrem, cum de Maria natus, sed com- muniter per totum tempus posi- tum est. Ab initio enim as- sistens Filius suo plasmati, re- velat omnibus Patrem, quibus vult, et quando vult, et quem- admodum vult Pater. IV. xxxvii. Prophetae ab eodem Verbo propheticum ac- cipieutes charisma, praedicave- runt Ejus secundum carnem adventum, per quern commixtio et communio Dei et hominis secundum placitum Patris facta est, ab initio praenunciante Verbo Dei, quoniam videbitur Deus ab hominibus, et conver- sabitur cum eis super terram, et colloquetur et adfuturus est, id est ab universo suo plasmate, salvans illud. . . . Enarrat ergo Filius ab initio Patris, quippe Qui ab initio est cum Patre, Qui et visiones propheticas, et divisiones charismatum, et min- isteria sua, et Patris glorifica- tionem consequenter et compo- site ostenderit humane generi apto tempore ad utilitatem . . . et propterea Verbum dispensa- 440 The Theophanies. [app. turn Paternae gratiae factus est ad utilitateni honiiiium, propter quos fecit tantas dispositiones, hominibus quidem ostendens Deum, Deum autem exhibens hominem : et invisibilitatem quidem Patris custodieus, ne quando homo fieret contemptor Dei, et ut semper haberet ad quod proficeret : visibilem au- tem rursus hominibus per niul- tas dispositiones ostendens Deum, ne in totum deficiens homo cessaret esse. Gloria enim Dei vivens homo. Vita autem hominis visio Dei. IV. xxxviii. Pachel prae- figurabat Ecclesiam, propter quam sustinuit Christus : Qui tunc quidem patriarchas suos et prophetas praefigurans et praenuntians, praeexercens su- am partem dispositionibus Dei, et assuescens haereditatem suam obedlre Deo, et peregri- nari in saeculo, et sequi Verbum Ejus, et pr-aefigurare futura. Nihil enim vacuum, neque sine signo apud Eum . . . Non enim propter eos solos qui tempori- bus Tiberii Caesaris cretlider- unt Ei venit Christus, nee propter eos solos, qui nunc sunt homines, providentiam fecit Pater : sed propter oranes omnino homines, qui ab initio secundum virtutem suam in sua generatione et timuerunt et dilexerunt Deum, et juste et pie conversati sunt erga proxi- mos, et concupierunt videre Christum, et audire vocem Ejus. Quapropter omnes hu- jusmodi in secundo adventu, primb de somno excitabit, et eriget tarn eos, quam reliquos qui judicabuntur et constituet in regnum suum. Quoniam quidem unus Deus, Qui patri- archas quidem direxit in dis- positiones suas. V. i. Showing the literal reality of the Incai'nation through Mary, as compared with previous temporary ap- pearances : — Praediximus autem quoniam Abraham et reliqui prophetae, prophetic^ videbaut Eum, id quod futurum erat per visionem prophetantes. Si igitur et nunc talis appaniit, non existens quod videbatur, quaedara pro- phetica visio facta est hominibus, et oportet alium expectare ad- ventum Eius, in quo talis erit, qualis nunc visus est pi'ophe- tic6. V. St. Clement of Alexandria, President of the Catechetical School there, about a.d. 190, where Origen was among" his pupils. Throughout his treatise entitled Faedagogus he speaks of Christ by that title, as the ' Educator,' or ' Instructor ' ; as in his Exhortation to the Gentiles, chap, i., he speaks of the ap- NOTE VII.] Si. Clement of Alexandria. 441 pearing-, in His Incarnation, of ' the pre-existing- Saviour,' tlie 'Word, Who was with God,' the ' AtSao-KaAos, by Whom all thing's were made.' Perhaps he got the thought from the LXX. of Hosea v. 2, 'Eyo) 86 TratSeurrjs Vjuwy, a passage which [Paed. I. 7.) he says 'the Word spake respecting Himself.' 1. The Instructor, Bk. I, ch. 7 (I adopt the Rev. W. Wilson's Translation, in Clark's Ante-Nicene Library), ' Our Instructor is the holy God Jesus, the Word, who is the guide of all humanity. The living God Himself is our Instructor. Somewhere in song the Holy Spirit says with regard to Him, [he quotes Bent. xxxii. 10-12] .... Again, when He speaks in His own person, He confesses Himself to be the Instructor : / am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out of the land of Egypt [Exod. xx. i) . . . . This was He who appeared to Abraham, and said to him, / am thy God, be accepted before 7ue [Gen. xvii. i, 2) ; and in a way most befitting an instructor, forms him into a faithful child, saying. And be blameless ; and I will make my covenant tjetween me and thee, and thy seed. There is the communication of \k\Q Instructor's fi'iendship. And He most manifestly appears as Jacob's instructor. He says accordingly to him, Lo, I am with thee, to keep thee in all the way in which thou shall go ; and I will bring thee back into this land ; for I will not leave thee till I do what I have told thee. He is said too to have wrestled with him. And Jacob was left alone ; and there wrestled tvith him a man (the Instructor) till the morning. This was the man who led, and brought, and wrestled with, and anointed the athlete Jacob against evil. Now that the Word was at once Jacob's trainer and the Instructor of humanity [appears from this] — He asked, it is said, His name, and said to him. Tell me what is thy nam.e ? And He said, Why is it that thou askest my name ? For He reserved the new name for the new people — the babe ; and was as yet unnamed, the Lord God not having yet become man. Yet Jacob called the name of the place, " Face of God." For 1 have seen, he says, God face to face, and my life is preserved [Gen. xxxii. 30). The face of God is the Word by whom God is manifested and made known. Then also was he named Israel, because he saw God the Lord. It was God, the Word, the 442 The Thcophanies. [app. Instructor, who said to him again afterwards, Fear not to go doivn mto Egypt .... It is He also who teaches Moses to act as instructor .... It was really the Lord that was the instructor of the ancient people by Moses; but He is the instructor of the new people by Himself, face to face. For, Behold, He says to Moses, mi/ angel shall go before thee, representing- the evangelical and commanding power of the Word, but guarding the Lord's prerogative. In the day m which I will visit them, He says, / tvill bring their sins on them ; that is. On the day on which I will sit as judge I will render the recompense of their sins (Exod. xxxii. ^^, 34). For the same who is Instructor is judge, and judges those who disobey Him ; and the loving Word will not pass over their transgression in silence .... Formerly the older people had an old covenant^ and the law disciplined the people with fear, and the Word was an angel; but to the fresh and new people has also been given a new covenant, and the Word has appeared, and fear is turned to love, and that mystic angel is born — Jesus .... The law is ancient grace given through Moses by the Word. Wherefore also the Scripture says, The Law was given through Moses [John i. 17)^ not by Moses, but by the Word, and through Moses His servant. Wherefore it was only tem- porary; but eternal grace and truth were by Jesus Christ. Mark the expressions of Scripture : of the law only is it said was given ; but truth being the grace of the Father, is the eternal work of the Word ; and it is not said to be given, but to he by Jesus, without whom nothing was {John i. 3). Presently, therefore, Moses prophetically, giving place to the perfect In- structor, the Word, predicts both the name and office of Instructor, and committing to the people the commands of obedience, sets before them the Instructor. A prophet, says he, like me shall God raise up to you of your brethren {Dent, xviii. 15), pointing out Jesus the Son of God.' On this passage the student may also refer to Burton, Testim. Ante-Nicene Fathers, §§ 78, 79. 2. Ibid. I. ch. II, 'Of old He [the Word] instructed by Moses, and then by the prophets .... One alone, true, good, just, in the image and likeness of the Father, His Son Jesus, the Word of God, is our Instructor ; to whom God hath entrusted NOTE VII.] St, Cle77ie)it of Alexandria. 44? us, as an affectionate father commits his children to a worthy tutor, expressly charging- us. This is my beloved Son: hear Him {Matt. xvii. 5).' 3. Exiiortation to tJie Heathen, chap, i, 'The Saviour, who existed before, has in recent days appeared . . . The Word, who " was with God," and by whom all things were created, has appeared as our Teacher; that as God He might afterwards conduct us to the life which never ends. He did not now pity us for the first time for our error ; but He pitied us from the first, from the beginning .... Our ally and helper is one and the same — the Lord, who from the beginning gave revelations by prophecy, but now plainly calls to salvation .... Let us run to the Lord the Saviour, who now exhorts to salvation, as He has ever done, as He did by signs and wonders in Egypt and the desert, both by the bush and the cloud, which, through the favour of divine love, attended the Hebrews like an handmaid. By the fear which these inspired He addressed the hard-hearted ; while by Moses, learned in all wisdom, and Isaiah, lover of truth, and the whole prophetic choir, in a way appealing more to reason. He turns to the Word those who have ears to hear. Sometimes He upbraids, and sometimes He threatens . . . The Saviour has many tones of voice, and many methods for the salvation of men ; by threatening He admonishes, by upbraiding He converts, by bewailing He pities, by the voice of song He cheers. He spake by the burning bush, for the men of that day needed signs and wonders. He awed men by the fire when He made flame to burst from the pillar of cloud — a token at once of grace and fear : if you obey, there is the light ; if you disobey, there is the fire ; but since humanity is nobler than the pillar or the bush, after them the prophets uttered their voice, — the Lord Himself speaking in Isaiah, in Elias, — speaking Himself by the mouth of the prophets. But if thou dost not believe the pro- phets, but supposest both the men and the fire a myth, the Lord Himself shall speak to thee. Who, being in the form of God., thought it not robbery to be equal with God, but hnmbled Himself {Fhil. ii. 6), He, the merciful God, exerting Himself to save man.' 444 ^>^^ Theophanies. [app. 4. I take the next passag-e from Burton's Ante-'Nkene Fathers, together with his comment upon it. ' Upon the words (P*. xxiv. 6 ; LXX. xxiii. 6), This is the generation of them that seek /dm, (hat seek the face of the God of Jacob, Clement {Strom, vii, 6) makes the following observations : " The prophet has given a brief description of the man of knowledge {rov yvcoa-TLKov). David has shown to us cursorily, as it appears, that the Saviour is God, calling him the face of the God of Jacol, who has given us glad tidings and instructions concerning the Spirit : wherefore also the Apostle {Heh. i. 3) has called the Son the express image of his Father s glory, who hath taught us the truth concerning God, and expressly declared that God the Father is one and alone the Almighty, lohom no man hioweth, save the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him [Matt. xi. 27)." This passage (says Burton) becomes more intelligible, when we remember that Clement calls Christ the face of the Father. It was his opinion, as it was of all the early Fathers, that whenever God is said in the Old Testament to lie seen, as He was by Jacob [Gen. xxxii. 30) and by Moses [Fxod. xxxiii. 11), face to face, it was not God the Father, but God the Son, who appeared ; and thus they called the Son the face of the Father, or that form under which He chose to reveal Himself to man. Thus in the passage already quoted (Burton^ p. 153), he says, "The face of God is the Word, by whom God is made manifest and known ; " and in another place [Strom, v. 6), "The Son is called the face of the Father, the Word who took our flesh, and revealed that which belongs pecu- liarly to the Father," .... Clement therefore conceived David to have intended Christ, when he speaks of the face of the God of Jacob.' (Burton, § 94, p. 176). VI. Tertullian, born at Carthage about a.d. 150, died about A.D. 230. I. Le Praescript. Haeret. 13. (The passage, which is a sort of Creed, is given by Dr. Burton, Ante-Nicene Fathers, p. 236.) ' Now the Bule of Faith is — That there is absolutely One God, and He none other than the Creator of the world. Who produced all things out of nothing through His Word sent forth before all things : That this Word is called His Son, in the Name of God NOTE VII.] Tertullian. 445 variously seen by the Patriarchs, ever heard in the Prophets, finally by the Spirit and Power of God the Father brought into the Virgin Mary, made flesh in her womb, and being born of her came forth Jesus Christ ; That He thereafter preached the New Law and the new promise of the Kingdom of Heaven, wrought miracles, was nailed to the Cross, rose again the third day, and, being carried into the Heavens, sitteth at the right hand of the Father ; That He sent in His stead the Power of the Holy Ghost, to guide believers ; That He will come with glory to take the holy to the enjoyment of eternal life and heavenly pro- mises, and to doom the unholy to perpetual fire after the raising up again of either sort together with the restitution of their flesh. This Rule instituted, as shall be shown, by Christ, admits among us no questions, save those which heresies bring in, and which make men heretics.' 3. Jgainst Marcion^ II. 2'J. A very remarkable passage, given at length by Dr. Burton (^iMd. p. 220), from whose rendering (with the necessary correction of some inaccuracies) I give the following : — ' God could not have entered upon converse with man unless He had assumed both the feelings and afiections of man, by which He could temper that greatness of His Majesty, which is intolerable to human weakness, by a humility which is indeed unworthy of Him, but which is necessary for man's sake, and so far therefore worthy of God, because nothing is so worthy of God as the salvation of man. . . . Nay, we even declare that Christ always acted in the name of God the Father ; that it was He "Who from the beginning held converse and inter- course (conversatum — congressum) with patriarchs and prophets, the Son of the Creator, His Word, Whom by production from His own very Self He made His Son, and thenceforward set Him over His own whole dispensation and will, making him a little loioer than the angels, as it is written in David [Tertullian evidently refers here to the Theophanies in human form] : by which lowering He was also appointed by the Father unto those things whicli you object lo as human, that He might learn thoroughly (ediscens), even already from the beginning, that human nature which in the end He was to be. It is He Who came down ; 446 The Theophanies. [app. He Who inquires ; He Who requests ; He Who swears. But that the Father is seen by no man even the common Gospel will testify, when Christ says, None knowetk the Father save the Son. For He Himself in the Old Testament had declai-ed None shall see God and live, clearly marking- the Father as invisible, in Whose authority and Name He Himself Who was seen, the Son of God, was God. . . . Therefore, whatever j'ou require as worthy of God will be found in the Father, Who is invisible and unapproachable and unmoved, and, so to say, a philosopher's God [i. e. as God might be thought of by unassisted human reason]. But whatever you object to as unworthy will be found in the Son, Who who was both seen, and heard, and conversed with, the witness and minister of the Father, uniting in Himself man and God : In His mighty acts, God, in His weakness, man ; so that He bestows upon man what He takes from God ; in fact, the whole of my God, in your estimation a humiliation, is a Sacrament of man^s Salvation. Yes, God was wont to associate with man, that man might be tavight to act divinely. God acted on a level with man, that man might be able to act on a level with God. GoJ was found little, that man might become as great as possible. Thou that disdainest a God like that, I know not whether thou canst with faith believe that God was crucified.' It is almost impossible to reproduce the forcible grandeur of the original ; ' Totum denique Dei mei, penes vos dedecus, sacramentum est humanae salutis. Conversabatur Deus, ut homo divina agere doceretur; ex aequo agebat Deus cum homine, ut homo ex aequo agere cum Deo posset ; Deus pusillus inventus est, ut homo maximus fieret. Qui talem Deum dedig- naris, nescio an ex fide credas Deum crueifixum.' 3. Against Marcion, III. 9: 'Wherefore even He Himself (Christ), together with angels, appeared then before Abraham in true flesh indeed, though not as yet born, because not as yet needing to die, but learning already to converse among men.' 4. Ibid. IV. 10 : 'In like manner also acknowledge Christ as the forgiver of sins in the pages of the same prophet (Isaiah, from whom he quotes liii. 12 and i. 18), and Micah also (he quotes vii. 18). Nay, even had nothing of this kind been fore- NOTE vil] Tertullian. 447 told with reference to Christ, I had still had instances of this mer- ciful kindness on the part of the Creator, assuring- me of the dispositions of the Father in the Son also. I see the Ninevites obtained pardon of their sins from the Creator, not to say that it was even then from Christy since from the heg-inning- He has acted in the Father's Name. . . . He was seen by the Xing' of Babylon in the furnace, together with His martyrs, a, fourth, like unto a son of man. The very same was revealed to Daniel expressly as the Son of Man coming with the clouds of heaven as Judge, as the Scripture also declares.' 5. Concerning the Flesh of Christ, 14. Arguing against those who said that Christ bore the nature of an angel, that there was an angel in Christ, he says : — ' He is indeed called the Angel of great Counsel, i. e. the messenger or announcer, by an expression which denotes not His nature but His office ; for He was to announce to the world the great thought of the Father, namely, concerning the restitution of man. Yet He is not on that ac- count to be understood to be an angel in the same sense as some Gabriel or Michael. For the Son also is sent by the lord of the vineyard to the husbandmen, as well as the servants, to ask of the fruits ; yet not on that account must the Son be reckoned one of the servants because He afterwards took up the duty of the servants. Wherefore I could easier say, if it be so, that the Son Himself is the Angel, i. e. the Messenger of the Father, than that there was an angel in the Son. , . . What more need be said ? As to all this hear Isaiah crying out (Ixiii. 9), No angel, nor ambassador (legatus), but the Lord Himself saved them.^ On this Dr. Burton remarks, p. 209 : ' All this reasoning about angels seems to be introduced because Tertullian was aware of Jesus being spoken of in the Old Testament as the Angel or Messenger of the Covenant. To those who believe, as all the early Fathers believed, that the Angel of the covenant was no other than God Himself, this will be sufficient to prove that Tertullian acknowledged the divinity of Christ.' 6. Against Fraxeas (who taught the Sabellian or ' Patri- passian ' heresy, which ' confounded the Persons,' i. e. denied the Personal distinctions, within the One Godhead), § 13 : ' Never 448 The Thcophanies. [app. do we utter from our lips the expression " Two Gods," or " Two Lords ; " not as though the Father were not God, and the Son God, and the Holy Ghost God, and each one God, but formerly [i.e. in the O. T. Scriptures] two were spoken of as God and Lord, in order that, when Christ came, He mig-ht both be acknowledged God and styled Lord, because the Son of the God and Lord. For if but One Person, whether of God or Lord, were found in the Scriptures, then certainly Christ were not admitted to the name of God and Lord. For, in that case, none other were spoken of save One God and One Lord, and the result would be that the Father Himself would seem to have come down, because but one God and one Lord was read of; and that whole Economy of His would be overshadowed which has been with forethought pro- vided and arranged as a groundwork for our faith. But since Christ came and was known by us, that He it was who formerly had been reckoned distinct as the second from the Father, and third together with the Spirit ; and since now the Father is through Him more fully revealed ; now indeed the name of God and Lord is fully brought into openness. , . . Accordingly I would absolutely not speak of " Gods " or " Lords," but would follow the Apostle ; i. e. if both the Father and the Son must be spoken of together, I would style the Father God, and would speak of Jesus Christ as Lord. But speaking of Christ alone I shall be able to speak of Him as God, as doth the same Apostle (Rom. ix. 5) Of wliom CJrrist came^ who is (he says) God over all, hlessecl for ever. For speaking separately of the sun's ray, I should call it " the sun ;" but speaking of the sun, whose ray it is, I should not in the same breath call the ray too the sun. For although I should not make two suns, yet I should speak distinctly of the sun and its ray as two things, two forms of one and the same undivided substance, and so of God and His Word, of the Father and the Son.' Ibid. § 14: 'And further that principle which declares that God is invisible supports us who insist on two Persons, the Father and the Son. For when Moses in Egypt longed for the sight of the Lord, saying, If therefore I have found favour in Thy sight, mani- fest Thyself to me, that I may see Thee and know Thee ; Thou canst, NOTE viT.] Tertullian. 449 not, lie said, see Mi/ Face ; for there shall no man see My Face and live, that is, He shall die that hath seen Me. For we find that both God was seen by many, and yet none of those who saw Him died ; that God was indeed seen, according' to the capacity of man, not according to the fulness of His Divinity. For the patriarchs are recorded to have seen God, Abraham and Jacob, for example, and the prophets also, as Isaiah, as Ezekiel, and yet died not. . . . Now therefore He Who was seen must be another, because He Who was seen cannot also be described as invisible." In ch. 15 he proceeds to argue from the same distinction in the New Tes- tament, quoting- St. John's saying" (i. 18) No man hath seen God at any time, and St. Paul's (1. Tim. iv. 16) JFhom no man hath seen, nor can see, and showing that it is always and only the Son Who is seen, whether before or after the Incarnation. ' If these thing's are so, it is evident that He was ever seen from the beginning-, Who was also seen in the end ; and that He was not seen in the end. Who never was seen from the beginning, and so that there are Two, the Seen and the Unseen. It was there- fore always the Son that was seen, always the Son that con- versed, always the Son that wrought, by the authority of the Father and by His Will, for The Son can do nothing of Himself hut what He seeth the Father doing, doing, that is in Mind [sensu, which Tertullian and the Latin of Irenaeus use as equivalent to the Greek vov^\ For the Father acts in Mind, but the Son, seeing it, carries through {perfxcit^j that which is in the Mind of the Father. In this way all things w^ere made through the Son, and without Him was not any- thing made. Ch. 16. 'And think not that only the works of the creation were made through the Son, but also whatever has been thence- forward done of God. For the Father, Who loveth the Son and hath given over all things into His hand, hath loved Him from the beginning, and hath given over all things from the begin- ning , . . and with no exception of any time, for all things would not be given over if they had not been so given in all time. It was therefore the Son, Who from the beginning acted as judge, overthrowing that most haughty tower, and scattering the G s 450 The Theophanies. [app. tongues, punishing- the whole world by the violence of waters, raining, God from God, fire and brimstone upon Sodom and Gomorrah. He too it was always Who came down and talked with men, from Adam to the Patriarchs and Prophets, in vision, in dream, in a glass {In speculo), in a riddle {In aenlgmale) ever from the beginning paving the way for His own plan [ordinem sumn praestruens) which He was about to follow up to the end. Thus was even God ever practising {edlscebaf) to converse on earth with men ; and no other God than the Word, Who was to become flesh. Now He was thus practising, in order that He might establish faith in us, that we might the more readily believe that the Son of God has come down into the world, when we perceived that even of old something of the same kind had been done. For for our sakes, as they were written, so were they also done, iopon whom the ends of all ages are come. For thus did He even then know the feelings of man; He Who was about to take upon Him even the very essential elements of Man — Flesh, and Soul ; questioning Adam as though He knew not, Where art thou, Adam ? repenting that He had made man, as though He had not foreseen all ; tempting Abraham, as though He did not know what is in man ; offended with some, and then recon- ciled to the same; and whatever else heretics lay hold of as unworthy of God, and destroying [the idea of] the Creator, not knowing that these things belonged to the Son, Who was to undergo even the sufferings of human nature, thirst and hunger and tears, and even birth and death itself, being for this made of the Father a liitle lower than the angels. . . . But what a thing is it, that that Almighty God, the Invisible, Whom no man hath seen nor can see, Who dwelleth in light that none cati approach ituto, Who dwelleth not in things made toith hands, at the sight of Whom the earth trembles, and the hills melt like wax. Who grasps the tohole world in Ills hand like a nest, Whose throne is Heaven, and the earth His footstool, in Whom is all space. Himself in no space, Who is the utmost bound of the whole Universe, that He, the Most High, walked in Paradise at eventide, seeking Adam ; and closed the ark after Noah's entering in ; and with Abraham refreshed Himself under the oak ; and called to NOTE VII.] Terhillian. 451 Moses from the buraing- bush ; and in the furnace of the Baby- lonian King appeared with the three, though called a Son of man; were it not that these things were done in appearance, in a glass, in a riddle [in imayine et specula et aeiiigmak)? And of a truth neither of the Son of God had these things been to be believed had they not been written ; perhaps not to be believed, even had they been written, concerning the Father, Whom these people bring down into Mary's womb, and set before Pilate's judgment-seat and shut up in Joseph's sepulchre. And from this accordingly their mistake is evident. For being ignorant that even from the beginning the whole order of God's Dispen- sations has had its course through the Son, they believe that the Father Himself was both seen, and conversed, and wrought, and suffered hunger and thirst . . . and so that one only Divine Person, that is, the Father, always acted in those things which really were done through the Son.' 7. Against the Jews, Chap. 9. Professor Burton, giving a passage from the Treatise Against Marcion, Book III. ch. 16, writes as follows : — ' The same passage occurs nearly word for word in TertuUian's work against the Jews, c. 9, where he says, " He who spoke to Moses was the Son of God, who was always visible [rather. Who also ever was seen, i. e. Who also always was He Who was seen] ; for Ko one Jiath ever seen God the Father and lived ; and therefore it is evident that the Son of God himself spoke to Moses, and said to the people, BeJiold, etc. [Exod. xxiii. 20)." We have only to observe that Tertullian refers these words to Christ ; and yet if we look to the Book of Exodus, it is impossible to doubt but that they were spoken by the Almighty himself: and the passage is more remarkable, because Tertullian and all the Fathers considered the Angel here promised to be Christ : so that Christ promised that he would send himself; which is wholly unintelligible, unless we believe that the Father and the Son arc one. That Tertullian believed so [i. e. that they are One in Essence, but distinct in Person] is plain from this passage.' [Burton, § 123, p. 326.) What we mus^t understand is, That the promise from the Father of the accompanjiug guidance and protection of the G g 3 452 The Thcophanies. St. Hippolytus. [app. Divine Angel of the Loud was itself spoken througli the Word^ the Eternal Son, Who is Himself the Angel of the Loed. VII. St. Hippolytus, about a.d, 220, a disciple (so Photius says) of St. Irenaeus and teacher of Orig-en; Bishop of Portus Romanus, and a martyr. 1. On Daniel iii. 22 (Lagarde's Hippolytus^ § 84): 'They who were in the furnace were bedewed by the Angel, ebpocrC- CovTo:' evidently from ver. 25 of the Fragment of Theodotion's Greek version of Daniel, which contains The Song of the Three Children, Hut the Angel of the Lord came down into the oven together loith Azarias and his fellows, and made the midst of the furnace as it had been a moist tvhistUng toiud, ws Trv^vixa bpoaov hiaavpiCov. Compare the next passage, on Dan. iii. 25, ' The hand of God touched with compunction (Karew^iv) the heart of the King, so that, acknowledging Him [the Son of God] in the Furnace he glorified Him. . . . The Scripture showed beforehand that the Gentiles would acknowledge when incarnate Him Whom of old not yet incarnate {aaapKov) Nabu- chodonosor saw and acknowledged in the furnace, and confessed that this was the Son of God. . . . He (the King) called out the names of the three, but the name of the fourth he could not utter. For Jesus was not yet born of the Virgin.' 2. On Laji. vii. 18 (Lagarde's ed. § 103): 'The heavenly King shall be openly shown to all, no longer seen through an appearance as in a vision, nor revealed in a pillar of cloud on the top of a mountain [i. e. as at Sinai] ; but, with powers and angelic hosts, incarnate God and man, Sou of God and Son of man, coming to the world as judge from heaven.' 3. On the great vision of The Man clothed in linen, Dan. x. 5 (La- garde's Hippolytus, § 59. 24, p. 160) : ' Whereas in the first vision he says, The angel Gabriel was sent, here it is not so, but it is the Lord he sees, not yet indeed perfectly man, but appearing " in the form of man," as he says, And, behold, a man clothed in linen^ [i. e. (St. H. says) the tepartKos \n(i>v, or priestly vesture]. Then, after quoting the words of the man clothed in linen to Daniel, he says, ' And who was the speaker but the Angel who was assigned to the people?' clearly meaning the Divine Angel ; for NOTE VII.] Origen. 453 he adds {ibid. 28, p. 162) : ' This was He Who withstood Moses in the inn when he was taking- his uncircumcised child into Egypt \Exocl. iv. 24, where for the Heb. mn'' the Lxx. has ayyiko'i Kvptou]. . . . And noxo, saith He, / loill sheiv thee the truth {Ban. xi. 2). Could the Truth tell him anything" else but the truth ? Wherefore He saith to him. Behold^ three Kings shall arise in Persia.' And on xii. 5, etc. (ibid. 42, p. 167) : ' Who was he [the w/aw clothed in linen'\ that stood upon the water [of the river], but the very One, concerning Whom they [the law and the prophets] long ago foretold, Who was in the last days to be openly borne witness to by the Father at the Jordan, and plainly pointed out to the people hy John.' VIII. Origen. Born in Egypt about a. d. 185 ; a disciple of St. Clement of Alexandria, and of St. Hippolytus ; President of the Cathedral School of Alexandria, died a. d. 255. I take the following from Dr. Burton's Testimony of the Ante-Nicene Fathers to the Divinity of Christ : — 1. 'Origen, Selecta in Genesim, vol. ii. p. 43. Upon those words in Gen. xxxii. 24, And Jacob was left alone, and there wrestled a man with him, &c., Origen has this commentary : — " Who else could it be that is called at once man and God, who wrestled and contended with Jacob, than He, who spake at sundry times and in divers manners unto the Fathers {Ilet). i. 1), the holy Word of God, who is called Lord and God, who also blessed Jacob, and called him Israel, saying to him, Thou hast prevailed with God ? It was thus that the men of those days beheld the Word of God, like our Lord's Apostles did, who said, That tvhich was from the beginning, lohich we have seen icith our eyes, and looked ujwn, and our hands have handled, of the Word of Life (i John i. i), which Word and Life Jacob also said, and added, 1 have seen God face to face." It has been observed ah-cady, that all the Fathers con- sidered it to have been Jesus, who revealed himself to the patriarchs.' [Burton, § 207, p. 305.) 2. 'Upon Joshua v. 13, &c. [the Vision of the man with the sword draion in his hand^ Origen (/« Jesum Nave, Hom. VI, § 3), remarks : " Joshua therefore not only knew that he was of God, but that he was God : for he would not have worshipped, if he 454 '^^^^ Theopha7iies. St. Cyprian. [a pp. had not known him to be God. For who else is Captain of the host of the Lord, except our Lord Jesus Christ?" This exactly agrees with the sentiments of all the Fathers, that the God who appeared either in a human form or in that of an ang-el, to any of the Patriarchs, was Jesus Christ.' [Burton, § 210, p. 308.) 3. ' Origen, in Psalm 1. 2 : Oitr God shall come and shall not Tieep silence, &c. . . . He, at whose Lirth we say, " Emmanuel is come visibly, and does not keep silence," . . . will convince the world of sin or declare the will of His Father: for He is called the Angel of great counseV [Burton, § 226, p. 314.) 4. ' Origen, in Jerem., Horn. IX : The Word that came to Jere- miah from the Lord (xi. i). Whenever it is said that the Word came to Jeremiah, or to any of the prophets, Origen understands it of Christ the Word of God. " I know no other Word of the Lord, but him, of whom one evangelist says, In the heginning ivas the Word ; and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It is particularly necessary for this to be known by us ecclesiastics who conceive that there is the same God of the Law and of the Gospel, the same Christ, both then and now and for ever."-' [Burton, § 241, p. 321.) 5. ' Origen, upon these words. Vs. Ixxx. 7, Cause thij face to shine, and we shall he saved, says, " He here calls Christ the Face : for he is the image of the invisible God [Col. i. 15):" and upon Ps. cxix. 58, which he translates, I entreated thy face with my tohole heart, he says, " The face of God is the express image of his substance [Heb. i. 3), as I have often observed." ' [Burton, § 94, p. 178.) IX. St. Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, martyred 14 Septem- ber, 258. His evidence is contained in the second of his three books of Scripture Testimonies against the Jews. He shows (chs. I, 2), 'That Christ is the Wisdom, and (ch. 3) the Word, (4) the Hand^ and Arm, of God.' The thesis of his fifth chapter is, ^ That the same Christ is the Angel, and God;' as to which he quotes Gen. xxii. 11, the Angel's call to Abraham out of heaven; and xxxi. iT-13, where the Angel of the Lord speaks of Himself to Jacob as the God of Bethel, Ego sum Deus * Compare St. Athanasius' Orations against the Anans,u. 71. NOTE VII.] SL Athanasius. 455 qnem vidisti in loco Dei; and F.xod. xiii, 21, for the presence of God (i. e. Christ) in the pillar of cloud and of fire ; and xiv. 19, the protecting" care of the Angel of God in the pillar; and xxiii. 20, 21, the express appointment of the Angel as their protector. Of his sixth chapter the thesis is, ' That Christ is God/ and he alleges in proof Gen. xxxv. i, God said unto Jacob, Arise, go up to the place Bethel, and dwell there ; and make there an altar to that God Who appeared unto thee when thou fieddest from the face of Esau th>/ brother. X. The Council of Antioch, held in 269, which condemned the heresy of Paul of Samosata, furnishes the following- im- portant passage. It occurs in their letter to Paul, stating* the belief ' preserved in the Catholic Church from the time of the Apostles to that day,' and g-iven in Routh's Jleliqniae Sacrae, vol. ii. p. 466. ' Him the Begotten Son, the Onlj^-Beg-otten Son, Who is the Image of the Jnvislhle God, the First-born before all creation, the Wisdom, and Word, and Power of God, existing before the ages, not by foreknowledge, but in essence and substance, God the Son of God, we, having known Him in both the Old and New Testament, do confess and preach He it was. Who, ful- filling the Father's counsel, appeared to and conversed with the Patriarchs, being witnessed to, in the same sections and in the same chapters, sometimes as an Angel, sometimes as the Lord (Kvpios), sometimes as God. For it were impious to think that the God of the Universe is called an Angel : but the Angel of the Father is the Son, Himself being Lord and God.' See above, Lect. IV, § 86, p. 167. XI. St. Athaxasius, born at Alexandria, about a.d. 297 ; attended his bishop at the Niccne Council, a.d. 325 ; became liimself bishop of Alexandria, a.d. 326; died a.d, 373. The following passages are from his Discourses against Arianism, as translated by Dr. Newman, who in his prefatory notice (2nd ed., Pickering, 1881) styles them ' the greatest work of their author.' I. Oral. I. 38 (I refer to Dr. Bright's edition of the Greek Text, Oxford Press, 1873) : ' If He did not pre-exist . . . how 456 The Theophanies. [app. were all things made by Him? . . . And if it was after His death that He received His worship, how is Abraham seen to worship Him in the tent, and Moses in the bush? and how, as Daniel saw, were myriads of myriads, and thousands of thousands ministering* unto Him ? ' To this passage Dr. New- man appends this footnote, ' All this implies a traditional and authoritative interpretation of the Old Testament.' 2. Oral. II. 13 : 'If then they suppose that the Saviour was not Lord and King, even before He became man and endured the Cross, but then began to be Lord, let them know that they are openly reviving the statements of Samosatene. But if, as we have noted and declared above, He is Lord and King everlasting, seeing that Abraham worships Him as Lord, and Moses says, Then the Lord rained upon Sodom and upon Gomorrah brimstone and fire from the Lord out of heaven ; and David in the Psalms, The Lord said unto My Lord, Sit Thou on My right hand ; and. Thy Throne, 0 God, is for ever and ever; a sceptre of righteousness is the sceptre of Thy kingdom, and. Thy kingdom is an everlasting kingdom ; it is plain that even before He became man. He was King and Lord everlasting, existing as Image and Word of the Father.' 3. Orat. III. 13: ' And if the Patriarch Jacob, blessing His grandchildren Ephraim and Manasses, said, God loho fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel that delivered me from all evil, fjless the lads, yet none of created and natural Angels did he join to God their Creator, nor, rejecting God that fed him, did he from any Angel ask the blessings on his grandsons ; but in saying. Who delivered me from all evil, he showed that it was no created Angel, but the Word of God, whom he joined to the Father in his prayer, through whom, whomsoever He will, God doth deliver. For knowing that He is also called the Father's Angel of great Counsel, he said that none other than He was the Giver of blessing, and Deliverer from evil. Nor was it that he desired a blessing for himself from God, and for His grand- children from the Angel, but for them too from Him whom he himself had besought, saying, / will not let Thee go except Thou bless me (for that was God, as he says himself, I have seen God NOTE VII.] SL Athanasius. 457 face to face) i for Him it was that he prayed for a blessing on the sons of Joseph also. ' It belongs then to an Angel to minister at the command of God, and often does he go forth to cast out the Amorite, and is sent to guard the people in the way ^; but these are not his doingSj but of God who commanded and sent him, whose also it is to deliver whom He will deliver. Therefore it was no other than the Lord God Himself whom he [Jacob] had seen, who said to him, And behold I am with thee to guard thee in all the %oay whither thou goest ; and it was no other than the God whom he had seen, who kept Laban from his treachery, ordering him not to speak evil words to Jacob ; and none other than God did he himself beseech, saying, Bescne me from the hand of my Ijrother Esau, for I fear him ; for in conversation too with his wives he said, God hath not suffered Laban to injure me [III. 13]. But if it belong to none other than God to bless and to deliver, and none other was the deliverer of Jacob than the Lord Himself, and Him that had delivered him the Patriarch besought for his grandsons, evidently none other did He join to God in His prayer, than God's Word, whom therefore he called Angel, because it is He alone who reveals the Father.' These passages sufficiently show St. Athanasius' general agree- ment with the current belief of the primitive Church, at least as to the earlier Theophanies. As to the later ones, in the narratives of which there is more specific mention of the Angel, he adopts the view that the being seen was a created angel, in whom God, through His Son, spoke. Compare, Orat. II. 23, ' Manoe the father of Samson, wishing to offer sacrifice to the Angel, was thereupon hindered by him, saying, Offer not to me, but to God' But this is an inexact quotation (if indeed it be in- tended for more than a loose general reference) 0? Judges xiii. 16, whether in the Hebrew or the Septuagint, which agree. Again, * St. Athanasius takes the Angel Protector of the Israelites for a created angel. But see above, Lect. IV. § 99. If the Divine Angel was the guardian of Jacob — and this St. Athanasius asserts — it would seem to follow d fortiori that He was the guardian, in the crisis of their fortunes, of the nation descended from Jacob ; unless, indeed, when they wore actually under the guilt of the sin of idolatry, and until they repented. 45 S The Theophanies. [app. Oral. III. 14 : ' And he who beholds a vision of angels [he refers to St. Luke xxiii. 23], knows that he has seen the Ang-el, and not God. For Zacharias saw an Ang-el [he had been alluding to the appearance of Gabriel to the father of St. John the Baptist] ; and Esaias saw the Lord. Manoe, the father of Samson, saw an Angel ; but Moses beheld (e^ecopryo-e) God. Gideon saw an Angel, but to Abraham appeared God. And neither he who saw God beheld an Angel, nor he who saw an Angel considered that he saw God ^ ; for greatly, or rather wholly, do things of created nature differ from God the Creator. But if at any time, when the Angel was seen, he who saw it heard God's voice, as took place at the bush ; for the Angel of the Lord was seen in a flame of fire out of the hiish^ and the Lord called Moses out of the bush, saying, L am the God of thy father, the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, still was not the Angel the God of Abraham, but in the Angel God spoke. And what was seen was an Angel, but God spoke in him. For as He spoke to Moses in the pillar of a cloud ^ in the tabernacle, so also God appears and speaks in Angels. So again to the son of Nun He spake by an Angel. But what God speaks, it is very plain He s];)eaks through the Word, and not through another.' XII. EusEBius, Bishop of Caesarea, a.d. 314 to 340; pro- minent at the Nicene Council. For his life, theological opinions, and works, see Canon Bright's Introduction to his edition of the Ecclesiastical History (Oxford Press, 1H72), and Bishop Lightfoot of Durham's Article in Smith's Bicfionary of Christian Biograj)hy. I. The second chapter of the Ecclesiastical History is a ' Summary Statement of the Pre-existence and Divinity of Christ,' Who is spoken of as ' The Living God the Word, Who w^as in the beginning with the Father, . . . the first and only ' But Jacob wrestled with a man {Gen. xxxii. 24) and yet (30) ' considered that he saw God,' as St. Athanasius himself admits, above, No. 3 ; and so Hagar, Gen. xvi. 7-14; see above Lect. IV. § 94; and so Joshua v. 14, 15; and so Manoah, Judges xiii. 22 ; an^^'^. Before con- sidering the important passages from St. Hilary's great work Against the Avians, or, On the Holy Trinity, ' the first great con- tribution, in the Latin tongue, to the discussion of this great dogma of the Christian faith ' (Canon Cazenove, in Art. Hilarius Pictav.^ in Smith's Diet, of Christian Biography) the student should note the following remarks of the Benedictine Editors, prefixed to Book IV : — ' Constans apud veteres videtur opinio, Filium ab initio mundi variis se modis hominibus si:)ectabilem praebuisse. Hoc diserte decent Justinus Martyr, Irenaeus, Origenes, Theo- philus Antioch., Clemens Alexandr., Tertullianus, CjiDrianus, Patres Antiocheiii Concilii contra Paulum Samosat., ut mit- tamus Favistiuum Presbyterum, Ambrosium, Leonem, aliosque plurimos. Se ne ab lis quidem hoc negatum est qui Ario favebant. Idipsum passim praedicat Eusebius in lib. Dem. Ev., et Sirmieuse concilium contra Photiuum eos anathemate daranat qui aliter senserint. NOTE VII.] The Benedic tines'' Note on St. Hilary. 467 ' Sed cum in bac doctriua fraudem moliti sint Ariaiii, ut Filium, qui visibilis ac visus sit, a Patre invisibili iiatura dii^similcDi praedicarcnt ; alte retiuendum, Sanctos Patres ita Deuni visum asscruissc, ut cum Augustino, Lib. II. Cont. Maximinum, cap. 26, n. 12, senserint, " divinitatem non per substantiam suam, in qua invisibilis et iminutabilis est, sed per creaturam sibi subjectam moitabum oculis apparuisse cum voluit." Ac ne peregrina hue adsciscamus, locuples hujus rei testis est Hilarius, Lib. II. n. 45 et 46. " Certe," inquit, "qui ante angelus, nunc etiam homo est : ne naturalem banc esse Dei speciem diversitas hujus ipsius assunq)tae creationis pate- retur intelligi. Adest autem Jacob etiam usque ad luctae complexum in habitu humano .... Sed idem postea et Moysi esse ignis ostenditur : ut iiatui*ae creatae turn potius ad spe- ciem, quam ad substantiam naturae, fidem disceres." Acute Augustinus, Epist. abas cxii. nunc cxlvii, num. 20, in ilia Moysi verba, Si inveni gratiam ante te, Ostende mihi temet- ipsum. " Quid ergo," inquit. " Ille non erat ipse ? Si non esset ipse, non ei diceret, Ostende mihi temetipsum, sed, Ostende Deum : et tamcn si ejus naturam substantiamque conspiceret, multo minus diceret, Ostende mihi temetipsum. Ipse ergo erat in ea specie, qua apjiarere voluerat : non autera ipse apparebat in natura propria, quam Moyses videre cupiebat." * Si ex proximis Scripturae verbis ipsum Deura a IMoyse visum recte asseruit ; pari ratione concedendum est ipsum Deum eidem Moysi in rubo dixisse : Ego sum Deus Abra- ham,, etc., verumque Deum Agar allocutum esse, cui clamavit : Tu Deus, qui adspexisti me. Neque hoc etiam negant ii Patres, qui in visis illis veros angelos adstitisse arbitrantur. Non enim existimant angelos illos Dei ac Domini nomcn sibi attribuisse, quia ut legati Dei ac Domini nomine loquebantur ; quis enim legatus regis, imperatoris, aut principis sibi arroget nomen, cujus pei-sonam repraesentat ] Sed ideo potius, quod Deus ipse in illis loquebatur. Hoc diserte docet Athanasius Or. IV. cont. Arian., pag. 467': .... Ita et Hieronymus, cap. III. ad Gal. : " Quod auteni lex ordinata per angelos, lioc vult intelligi, quod in onini Veteri Testamento, ubi angelus primum visus refertur, et postea quasi Deus loquens inducitur, ' Comp. above, p. 458. H h 2 468 The Thcophaiiies. [app. angelus quidem vere ex ministris pluribus quicumque sit visus, sed in illo mediator loquatur, qui dicat ; Ego sum Deus Abra- ham.^' His accedit Augustinus, 1. II. contra Maximin., cap. 26. n. 11: " Quaero quis apparuerit Moysi in igne quando rubus inflammabatur, et non urebatur. Quamquara et illic angelum apparuisse Scriptura ipsa declarat .... In angelo autem Deuni fuisse quis dul)itet 1 " Juxta hos Gregorius Papa, Praef. in Job, c. 2 : " Angelus, qui Moysi apparuisse dicitur, mode angelus, modo Deus memoratur. Angelus videlicet propter hoc quod exterius loquendo serviebat ; Dominus autem dicitur, quia interius praesidens, loquendi efBcaciam ministrabat. Cum ergo loquens exterius ab interiori regitur, et per obsequium angelus, et per inspirationem Dominus nominatur." ' The passages in St. Hilary are the following- : — 1. On the Holy Trinity, IV. 23. On the Appearance to Hag-ar, ' He Who is called the Ang-el of God is Himself Lord and God. Now according" to the Prophet the Son of God is The Angel of the great Counsel (Isa. ix. 6. Lxx). He is styled The Angel of God in order that the distinction of the Persons mig-ht be clear ; for He who is God from God is Himself also the Angel of God. But in order that the honour that is due may be g-iven him He is proclaimed both Lord and God. 24. . . . Can there be any doubt that the Same Who is called the Ang-el of God is again called also God ? ... To Abraham God speaks ; but to Hagar spake the Angel of God. Therefore He is God, Who is also the Angel : because He Who is the Angel of God is God born from God. But He is called the Angel of God because He is the Angel of the great Counsel. Yet the very same is afterwards plainly shown to be God, lest He Who is God should be thought to be only a [created] angel.' Compare V. 11, 13. 2. IV. 27. On Gen. xviii. xix., ' Abraham adores one [of the three men], and acknowledges Him to be the Lord. . . . For though He was seen as a man, Abraham nevertheless adored Him as Lord ; acknowledging in fact the mysterious intimation of His future Incarnation (sacramentum scilicet futurae corpora- tionis agnoscens).' In 28 he clearly distinguishes the two who NOTE VII.] S/. Hilary of Poitiers. 469 visited Lot in Sodom as created angels ; but says the Lord Who rained judgment on Sodom from the Lord was the Son, and quotes St. John v. 22. So, in 30 and 31, of the Appearances to Jacob, ' To Jacob also God came in human form. And not only came but is declared to have wrestled with him. ... Of a truth it was God ; because Jacob had power with God, and Israel saw God.' Compare V. 15, 16, 19, 20. 3. IV. 32. ' But let us see whether elsewhere as well as to Hag-ar this Angel of God is known to be God. Clearly He is so known. And not God only, but also The God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. For the Angel of the Lord appeared to Moses from the bush, while the Lord speaks from the bush. Whose voice do you suppose must be understood ? whether His who was seen, or some others? Here there is no room for mistake. For the Scripture saith \Exod. iii. 2, &c.], He Who appeared in the bush, speaks from the bush ; the place both of the vision and the voice is one and the same ; nor is any other heard than He Who was seen. He Who is the Angel of God when seen, the same too when heard is the Lord ; while the very Lord Who is heard is presently known to be the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. Forasmuch as He is called the Angel of God, He is shown to be not alone by Himself and solitary . . . while in that He is styled Lord and God, He is proclaimed in the honour and in the name of His own Nature.' Again, in 33, commenting on the words (which are in the Lxx, but not in the Heb. or Vulg.) of the Song of Moses, Bent, xxxii. between 42 and 43, Bejoice, ye heavens, with Him, and let all the angeU of God worship Him ; 4 3, Rejoice, ye Gentiles, with His People, and let all the sons [or, angels'] of God honour Him, he says : — 'And lest you should think that honour is claimed for One Who is not by nature God, and should suppose that in this place Moses thought of honouring God the Father, whereas in truth the Father must be honoured in the Son, observe the blessing which, later in the same passage {Dent, xxxiii. 16), he assigns to Joseph. For he says, And let the things which be according to the good toill of Him That dicelt in the bush come upon the head of Joseph. God therefore is to be worshipped by the sons of God, but God Who is also the 470 The Theophanies. [app. Son of God. And God is to be honoured by the angels of God, but God Who is the Divine Angel of God; for from the bush appeared God the Angel of God, and the things which are accord- ing to His good will are desired for Joseph when he is being blessed. Not therefore because He is the Angel of God is He on that account not God ; nor, again, is He not the Angel of God because He is God ; but, by a marked reference to a Plurality of Persons, and by the thought of the Unbegotten as distinct from the Begotten, and by the revelation of an economy depend- ing on heavenly mysteries, He has taught us that we must not think of God as solitary, since both the angels of God and the sons of God must adore a God Who is both the Angel and the Son of God.' Compare also V. 2 1 . 4. V. II, 'The meaning of the word '^ angel" points rather to office than to nature. . , . Accordingly the Law, or rather God through the Law, purposing to intimate the distinct Personality of the Father's Name, spoke of God the Son as the Angel, that is, the Messenger, of God. For it clearly signifies His office in the title Messenger, while it confirms the verity of His Nature by the Name it gives Him, in that it calls Him God. But we ha,ve here a relation arising from the economy, not a relation of Being. For we proclaim nothing else than the Father and the Sou ; and we so affirm the co-equality of Nature involved in these Names as to show that the Generation of the Only-Begotten God from the Unbegotten God involves the absolute verity of His Godhead. Now this use of the terms " Sent " and " Sending" means nothing else than the Father and the Son ; yet it in no wise takes away the verity of Nature, nor in the Son destroys the full possession of Divinity by Nature. For none can doubt that the nature of the parent is reproduced together with the generation of a son.' 5. V. 17. 'The mysterious incidents (sacramenta) of the Law prefigure the mystery of the Gospel Dispensation, [i.e. the In- carnation] : and the Patriarch sees and believes what the Apostle contemplates and preaches. For whereas the Law is the shadow of things to come, the outward appearance of the shadow ex- presses the reality of the substance. And God in the likeness of man is both seen and believed and adored. Who in the fulness of NOTE VII.] St. Hilary of Poitiers. 471 time was to be born in the likeness of man. For there was assumed to the sig-ht the outward appearance of the reality that was prefi<^ured. But then, under the Law, God was only seen in the likeness of man, not born : ailerwards, He was also born that which He appeared. And familiarity with the outward appear- ance temporarily assumed helps us to grasp the reality of His Birth. ... In Gospel times the shadow becomes substance, the semblance reality, the visible appearance actual nature ; yet is there no change in God Himself.' 6. V. 23. That the Law was given to Moses by the Divine Son of God as Mediator. 7. V. 33. That it was the Only-Begotten Son of God Whose glory Isaiah saw : quoting St. Jolni xii. 41. 8. Commentinfj on the old Latin version of the Lxx of Frov. viii. 22, Ki^ptos iKTKxk jue a.f)yj\v bhSiv avTov et? ^pyo. avTov, Dominus creavit me iniilum (or, in i7iifium) viarum snanim in opera sua, he has, De Trin. xii. 45, a valuable summary passage which covers the whole ground : — ' Ultimae dispensationis sacranientum est, quo etiam creatus in corpore, viam se Dei operum est professus ^ Creatus autem est in vias Dei a saeculo : cum ad conspicabilem Bpeciem subditus creaturae, habitiuu creatiouis assumpsit. 46. Yideamus itaque in quas Dei vias, et in quae opera a saeculis creata sit, nata ante saecula ex Deo Sapientia. Vocem deam- bulantis in Paradiso Adam audivit {fien. iii. 8). Putasne deam- bulantis incessum nisi in specie assumptae creationis auditum : ut in aliqua creatioue cousisteret, qui inambulans fuerit * The Benedictine footnote here is important : - ' Duplex hie distinguitur Verbi dispensatio, ultima scilicet, qua novisbimus temporibus homo factus inter homines conversatus est; altera vero ab initio saeculi: ex quo varias variarum creatiouum species assumens multifarie multisque modis visus est Patribus • cum ex illo usque tempore, imiuit EusebiuH, lib. v. Dem. Ev. c. 19, sulntarem suam ad homines ad- vejitum exordiietur. Quod autem Dei Filius, modo in fonua angeli, modo in forma hominis, modo in assumpta ignis ac nubis specie visus sit, ut singulis pro cuj usque a€Fectione congrueret, edi.sserit idem Eusebius, ibid, a cap. 9 ad 19. Quibus con- sentit Auguatinus, Epist. clxiv. ad Erod. n. 17 : Ah initio generis huinani, vel ad ar;/uendos malos, sicut ad Cain ac j)rius ad ipsum Aduni uxoremqne ejus, vel ad conmlundos bonos, vel ad utrosque admonendos, ut alii ad sulntem suam credcrent, ipse utiquc (Christus) non in came, sed in spirita renitbat, lisis congniis alloquens quos volebat, sicut volebat.' 472 The Theophanies. [app. auditus ? Non require quails ad Cain et Abel et Noe locutus sit, et henediceus quoque Enoch (jualis adfuerit. Angelus ad Agar loquitur [Gen. xvi. 9, 13) : et utique idem Deus est. Numquid speciei ejusdem est cum angelus videtur, cujus est in ea natura qua Deus est 1 Certe species angeli ostenditur, ubi postea Dei natura memoratur. Sed quid de angelo dicam ? Homo ad Abraham venit {Gen. xviii. 2). Numquid secundum homiuem in creationis istius habitu Christus talis assistit, qualis et Deus est % Sed homo loquitur, et corpora assistit, et cibo alitur : verumtamen Deus adoratur. Certe qui ante angelus, nunc etiam homo est : ne naturalem banc esse Dei speciem diversitas hujus ipsius assumptae creationis pateretur intelligi. Adest autem ad Jacob etiam usque ad luctae com- plexum in habitu humano, et manum conserit, et membris nititur, et lateribus inflectitur, et in omni motu nostro inces- suque consistit {Gen. xxxii. 24). Sed idem postea et Moysi esse ignis ostenditur {Exodi iii. 2) ; ut naturae creatae tum potius ad speciem, quam ad substantiam naturae fidem disceres. Habuit tum in se potestatem conflagrandi, non tamen naturalem suscipiens urendi necessitatem : quia sine rubi damno confla- gratio ignis apparuit. 47. Carre per tempora, et intellige qualis visus sit, vel Jesu Nave nominis sui prophetae, vel Esaiae etiam cum {.Joan. xii. 41) evangelico testimonio visum pi'aedi- canti, vel Ezechieli usque ad conscientiam resurrectionis as- sumpto {Ezech. xxxvii.), vel Danieli hominis filium in aeterno saeculorum regno confitenti {Dan.\n. 13, 14) caeterisque aliis, quibus se in habitu variae creationis ingessit, in vias Dei et in opera Dei, ad coguitionem scilicet Dei et nostrae aeternitatis profectum. Quid hie nunc haec humanae salutis dispensatio tum impiam aeternae nativitatis contumeliam niolitur'? Creatio ista a saeculis est : caeterum ante saecula infinita nativitas est. Vim sane nos dictis aflferre conteude, si Propheta, se Dominus, si Apostolus, si sermo ullus ad divinitatis aeternae nativitatem cieaturae retulit nomen. In his enini omnibus Deus, qui ignis cousumens est, ita creatus inest, ut creationem ea virtute qua assumpsit absumeret : potens abolere rursum, quod tantum ad causam contemplatiouis exstiterat.' XIV. St. Ambrose, Bishop of Milan from a.d. 374 to a.d. 397. I. In his work O71 Abraham, Book I. ch. vi. speaking of the notevil] St. Ambrose. 473 Appearance recorded in Gen. xviii. and xix, he clearly dis- tinguishes one of the 'three men' as Divine: '32. Illi Deus ap- paruit ad (luercum Mambrc. 33. Deus illi apparuit et tres aspexit. ^fi. Tres vidit, ct unum Dominum appellavit^ ipsius solius se servum fatetur. Deinde conversus ad duos quos mini- stros arbitrabatur,' etc. And, ih. § 49, of the two who went on to Sodom : ' Illi qui ad Abraham simul cum Domino venerant, Sodomam j^etierunt viri ; ' and 50 : ' Ubi gratia larg-ienda est Christus ad est : ubi exercenda severitas, soli adsunt ministri, deest Jesus.' 2. And on the sacrifice of Isaac, Ibid. ch. viii. § 78, on Gen. xxii. 14 : ' Vocavit Abraham nomeu loci illius, Dominus videt, ut dicanl hodle: In m.onie Bonunus apparuit^ hoc est, quod apparu- erit Abrahae, revelans futuram sui passionem corporis, qua mundum redemit.' 3. On Jacob, Book II. ch. iv. 16; on Gen. xxviii. ii : 'Vidit angelos Dei ascendentes et descendentes, hoc est, Christum prae- vidit in terris, ad quem angelorum caterva descend it atque ascendit, obsequium proprio domino pio praebitura servitio;' and on Gen. xxxii. 24 : ' Luctatus est cum Deo.^ 4. On Psalm xxxv. § 18 : ' Angelis ang-elus factus est Dei Filius, prophetis propheta.' 5. On Psalm cxix. Sermon xviii. § 29, he says, addressing- the Jews: ' Miramini Moysen, quia patres vestros per mare siccis duxit vestigiis. Moyses non imperavit, sed impetravit : nou jussit mari, sod servivit jubenti fiuctibus. Moyson laudatis, quia regem Pharao cum exercitu suo mersit : Moyses orabat, et alius imperabat. Moyses precabatur, Christus operabatur. Moyses fugiebat, Christus insequebatur. Moyses columnam sequebatur, ut nocturnas tenebras declinaret : Christus illuminabat. Moysen agnoscitis, quia aquae amaritudinem temperavit. Moysen agno- scitis, quia aquam produxit de petra : Christum non agnoscitis, qui vcro illius Aegyptii regis stravit exercitum, et abyssi mersit profundo.' (Migne's ed. vol. i. pt. ii. p. 1462.) 6. On St. Luke, Book I. § 24, on the appearance of the angel to Zacharias in the Temple: ' Bene apparuisse dicitur ei, qui cum repcnte conspcxit. Et hoc spccialiter aut de angelis, aut de Deo 474 ^/^^' Theop/i antes. [app. Scriptura divina tenere consuevit : ut quod non potest prae- videri, apparcre dicatur ; sic enim habes, Apparuit Deus Abrahae ad ilicem Mambre. Nam qui ante non praesentitur, sed repentino videtur aspectu, apparere memoratur. Non enim similiter sensi- bilia videntur, et is in cujus voluutate situm est videri, et cujus naturae est non videri, voluntatis videri. Nam si non vult, non videtur; si vult, videtur. . . . 25. Et quid de hominibus lo- quimur, cum etiam de ipsis coelestibus virtutibus et potestatibus leg"erimus quia Benm, nemo vlillt unquam (Joan. i. 18)? et addidit quod ultra coelestes est potestates : Unigenitus Films (pd est in sinu Patrls, ijjse enarravit. Aut adquiescatur ig-itur necesse est, si Deum Patrem nemo vidit unquam, Filium visum esse in veteri Testamento ; et desinant haeretici ex Virgine ei principium dare, qui antequam nasceretur ex Virgine, videbatur : aut certe refelii non potest, vel Patrem, vel Filium, vel certe Spiritum Sanctum, si tamen est Spiritus Saneti visio, ea specie videri, quam voluntas eleg-erit, non natura formaverit ; quoniara Spiri- tum quoque visum accepimus in columba. Et ideo Deum nemo vidit umquam : quia earn quae in Deo habitat plenitudinem di- vinitatis nemo conspexit, nemo mente aut oculis comprehendit.' 7. In his Treatise On the Faith, Book I. ch. iv, after a passage on the union of the human with the Divine in the Incarnation, showing- that it does not trench on the Unity in Trinity, he adds : ' Such is our faith. Thus God willed Himself to be known by all. Thus the Three Children believed, and felt not the flames around them. . . . For there was present in the appeai'ance of an Angel One Who showed that under the number of the Trinity praise should be offered to one Divine Power. God was being blessed [i. e. in the Song of the Three Children], the Son of God was being seen in the form of an angel, the grace of the Holy Spirit was speaking in [the Song of] the children.' And, ibid. ch. xiii : ' The heathen King saw in the fire together with the three Hebrew youths the form of a fourth like as of an angel : and because he thought he excelled the angels, he judged Him to be the Son of God. ... So too, Abraham saw three, and adored One.' 8. In the same chapter, commenting on the Voice of the NOTE VII.] SL Ambrose. 475 Father at the Transfig-uration, he says : ' This [the Son of God] is the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, Who appeared to Moses in the bush, of Whom Moses says. He that is hath sent me unto you. The Father spake not in the bush, the Father spake not in the desert: but the Son spake to Moses. . . . This is He That gave the Law, the Same That spake to Moses, saying : / am the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jaeofj. This therefore is the God of the patri- archs. This is the God of the prophets.' 9. Ibid. Book II. ch. ii. he shows the merciful goodness of Christ from His benefits to the Israelites of old : ' Is not He good. Who, when six hundred thousand of the people of the Jews were fleeing before their ])ursuers, suddenly divided the yawning Red Sea tide and made its waters stand on an heap, in such wise that the waves guarded the believers, and, turning back again, drowned the unbelievers? Is not He good, at Whose biddino- the seas were made solid for them that fled, the rocks made liquid for them that thirsted; that the act of the true Creator should be acknowledged, when the water grew firm and the rock flowed? For which reason, that thou shouldest own the work of Christ, the Apostle said, Now that Bock was Christ. Is not He good, Who, lest hunger should attack them, fed so many thousands of people in the wilderness with bread from heaven . . . and caused that through forty years their raiment waxed not old . . . setting in this before believers a pledge and type of the future resurrection ? ' 10. Ibid. Book II. ch. viii. § 71. Proving, against the Arians, that Christ is not inferior to the Father as touching His God- head, he says : ' He Himself speaks to Abraham, H// Mi/self have 1 sivorn (Crew. xxii. 16). Now the Apostle shows that He Who swears by Himself cannot be inferior [he quotes Ileb. vi. 13, 14] ; Therefore Christ had none greater, and so He swore by Himself. . . . 72. Or if they will have it that it would seem to have been said of the Father, the rest agrees not thereto : for neither did the Father appear to Abraham, nor did he wash the feet of God the Father, but His in Whom was the appearance (figura) of the Man He was to be. Finally the Son of God says, Abraham saw 47^ The Thcophafiies. [app. My day, and was glad. It was He therefore Who sware by Himself, Whom Al)raham saw.' 11. On the Holy Spirit, Book I. ch. iv : ' There is one Son, Who, according- to the history of the Old Testament, was offended by Adam, seen by Abraham, adored by Jacob.' On this the Bened. Editors write : ' The Son is said to have been offended by Adam, because Ambrose, like very many of the ancient Fathers, is wont to assig-n the Creation of the world, and all the Apparitions of the Old Testament, to the Son.' 12. The following" passages also may be referred to in the valuable early commentary on St. Paul's Epistles which is usually g-iven as an Appendix to the Works of St. Ambrose: — {a) On Rom. ii. 22. Op. S. Ambr. Tom. ii. P. ii. p. 40 (70) : {b) Rid. On Eo7n. x. 13, p. 87 (144) : (j'^, A certain man planted a vineyard, &c., . . . and, presently, He sent his servants. . . And, last of all, he sent his son. And again, A certain man made a marriage for his son. Not that the Son is excluded from reign- ing, of Whom Isaiah wrote, I saw the Lord sitting upon a throne, high and lifted vp ; but that in the Father the Son reigns also. . . . And in Daniel also (vii. 9) God the Father is brovight in as sitting, and the Son of Man is brought (offertur) to Him that He may receive the Kingdom. And in the Apocalypse of John (iii. 21 ; vii. 9, 10, 17) the same things are written of the Son.' What the ' many proofs ' are he gives us no idea ; of the weight of the ' proofs ' alleged the reader must judge. (^) On the Vision of the Ma?i with the line of fax, and the measuring reed, Ezek. xl. 5, &c., he says (vol. v. p. 465) : ' It is He of Whom it is written, Behold the man Whose name is the Branch {Zech. vi. 12). . . He stood in the gate because through Him we enter in to the Father, and without Him we cannot enter the City of God. . . This Man, in whose hand was the line, . . . spake to the prophet. He who spake to Ezekiel was the True Architect, Whom Paul the Apostle imitated.' And on ver. 5 [Ihid. p. 471), ' Whereby it is clear that the Lord and Saviour, Who is the True Architect, proves the stones, which are fit to be placed in the foundations of the temple, which in the middle courses, and which in the upper.' 6. On Laniel iii. 49, LXX. and Vulg., (vol. v. p. 641) : 'The Angel of the Lord, to wit, the Divine Word comes down, and strikes off the burning heat of the flame.' And on iii. 25 (Lxx. Vulg. 92) : ' The appearance of the fourth, whom he calls like the Son of God, we must take either for an angel, as the Seventy have rendered it, or in very truth, as very many think, for the Lord and Saviour. Yet I know not how the impious King should deserve to see the Son of God. Wherefore, after Sym- machus, who renders, The appearance of the fourth, the likeness of sons, not of God, but of the gods, angels are to be understood, who very frequently are called both gods, and sons of gods, or of God. This according to the history [i.e. the literal primary narrative NOTE VII.] Si. Jerome. 479 sense]. But in type this angel, or Son of God, prefigures our Lord Jesus Christ ^' {U) On vii. 9 {Ib'ul. p. 668), / beheld till the thrones were set, and the Jncient of days did sit : ' The many thrones which Daniel saw seem to me the same as John speaks of as the fo?ir and twenty thrones ; while the Ancient of days is He Who in John sits alone upon the throne. Also the Son of Man, Who came to the Ancient of days is He Who by John is called the Lion of the tribe of Judah. . . God is spoken of as seated, and as the Ancient of days, that the bearing (habitus) of the Eternal Judge may be shown forth.' [But this would rather point to the Son.] (c) On viii. 16, 17 (^ibid. p. 676) : 'The Jews suppose the tnan who commanded Gabriel to make Daniel understand the vision to be Michael.' {d) On xii. 5, &c., he takes the two angels on the river banks for the guardian angels of the Persians and of the Greeks, and the man clothed in linen, which was upon the loaters of the river, for ' that most merciful angel ' whom 'he had seen at the beginning, clothed in linen ' (x. 5), who ' had offered the prayers of Daniel in the sight of God, when the angel of the Persians withstood him one and twenty days^ (x. 13, which see, as showing that it was not Michael, and so must have been the divine Angel of the Lord. St. Jerome in his Comment, on ch. x. distinguishes him of course from Michael ; but his language, on the whole, implies that he thought him a created angel). 7. His Commentary on Zechariah (vol. vi. p. 775, &c., Migne, col. 14 1 7, &c.) is curiously interesting from his careful contrast throughout of the Christian interpretation with that which he had learned from his Jewish instructors (' a quibus (he says) in Veteri Testamento eruditi sumus '), who only saw St. Michael where the Church sees her Lord. Space forbids a sufficient analysis. The student must examine it for himself. 8. On Malachi iii. i (vol. vi. p. 20) he takes Christ to be the speaker ; ' Behold, I send My messenger, &c., is said in the person * He adds, '(|ni ad fornacem descendit infemi, in quo clausae, et peccatorum et justorum anirnae tenebantur, ut absque exustionc, et noxa sui eos qui tenebantur inclusi mortis vinculia liberaret.' 480 The Theophmiies. [app. of Christ, that He sent John in the wilderness of Judaea to preach, &c. . . . but what follows. And the Lord, Whom ye seek, &e., He speaks of Himself as of another, accordini^ to the custom of the Scriptures, And none doubts that that Lord. is the Saviour, Who is the Creator of all, and is called the Angel of the Covenant, and the Angel of the great counsel^ XVI. St. Augustine. Born a.d. 354; baptized, 387; Bishop of Hippo, 395 ; died, 430. I have already, in Lect. IV. § 90, described the novel attitude taken up on this subject by this g-reat and too influential writer; and need only now refer the student to the numerous passages, often too lengthy to quote, which bear upon it. The fullest and most important will be found in his Sermons Be 8crq:)turis, V. VI. and VII. (Works, vol. V. col. 57-66) ; in his Answer to Maximin the Ar'ian Bishop (vol. viii. col. 743, &c.), Book I. iii. and xv., and II. ix. and xxvi^; and in the Be Trinitate (vol. viii. col. 815, &c.). Book II. chs. V. to the end, and III. Prooem. and chap, i., where II. xvii. 3a and xviii. 35, with Prooem. 3, seem to supply a summary expression of his matured opinion. It should be re- membered that the two books Against Maximin were among* his latest works, having been written about 427, and after his Betractations, while the Be Trinitate occupied him from about 400 to about 412 or 413. The points to be noted are, on the whole, That his language bears witness to the existence of the earlier, and, as I humbly believe -, the truer view ^ ; That he clearly shows how his own * The student who wishes to understand the Arianism with which the Western Church of St. Augustine's day had to contend would find himself repaid by the study of the Sermo Arianormn (vol. viii. col. 678), with his answer to it; and of his Epidles 170, 238-242, in volume ii. ; of the Tractates on St. John's Gospel (in vol. iii.), Nos. 18, 20, 36, 37, 59, and 71 ; and of Sermons 52, 117, 118, 139, 140, 341, and 384. ^ On the threefold ground of, The plain sense of the Hebrew Text, The con- sensus of the Primitive Church, and. The deep inner consonance with the revealed Office and Function of the Eternal Son. ^ E.g. in Sermon VII. §§3 and 6, on Exod. iii. (Migne's ed. vol. v. col. 64), where, speaking of the two views, he admits, ' quarum quaelibet vera sit, ambae secundum fidem sunt;' and Tractates on St. John, liii. 12, on John xii. 37-43 (vol. iii. col. 1779), that Moses and Isaiah saw the Lord Christ, though not ' sicuti NOTE VII.] SL Attgustme. 481 opinion was influenced by the dread of Arianism and of its abuse of the earlier belief of the Apparitions of the Son of God ^ ; and. That his if^noranee of Hebrew, and his dependence, practically, on inaccurate Latin Versions of the Greek Versions, of which, until they were superseded by the labours of St. Jerome, there were only too many in circulation, really disabled him from dealing- closely with the Old Testament, and, as his comments nearly always show, prevented his seeinjj^ the full force of the Bible narratives of the Theophanies ^. The Arian fallacy was, That as the Son of God was, ad- mittedly, • sent,' and ' appeared,' therefore He was ' visibilis per suam substantiam,' and therefore of a ' Substance ' inferior to the Father, i. e. in His pre-existent as well as in His Incarnate Nature. To this St. Augustine rig-htly answered. That the Son is not ' visibilis per suam substantiam,' — if He were, Moses had not needed after he had seen Him and heard Him, to ask, SJioio me Thy (jlurij ; — That the Divine Nature is essentially, in Itself, invisible; and equally so, of course, in all Three Persons; That God manifested His Presence on occasion, only ' per subjectara est,' adding, ' Ostendit ergo se, etiam antequam susciperet carnem, oculis liomi- num, sicut voluit, in subjecta sibi creatura, non sicuti est.' ' See esp. § 4 of Sei-inon VII. ; Anstver to Maxindn. II. xxvi. ; Be Trin. II. ix. 15, and XV. 25. ' Filium Dei delirantes haerotici in sua substantia visum volunt; ' and xvi. 27 : 'A miseris creditus est, non per creaturam, sed per seipsum visibilis Filius Dei ; ' and, ihid. : ' Stulti qui putant per ea quae supra dicta vel gesta sunt, substantiam Dei oculis ejus [Moysis] fuisse conspicuara.' * E.g. in Quaest. in Heptateuch am, XCI. (vol. iii. p. 630) he takes the pro- mised Angel in the great passage, E.cod. xxiii. 20, to be Joshua ' who brought in the people into the land of promise ;' ibid. XCIX. p. 632, he comments on his Latin version of the LXX. misrendering, viderimt locum ubi steterat ihi Dens Israel, where the Heb. has They saw the God of Israel. Similarly De Tnn. II. xv. 25. In Serrnonyil. (vol. v. p. 65), 'Dixit et propheta, Audiam quid loquetur [in me] Dominus Deus {Psal. Ixxxv. q). Qui loquitur in homine, loquitur in angelo. Idea apparuit Moysi angelus Domini, et dixit Eijo sum qui sum. Habitatoris vox est, non templi.' But the words in me are not in the Hebrew. De Triii. II. x. 19 furnishes an example of the misleading weakening of the narrative by tlie render- ing of both mrr and '^tx by Kvpio's only in the LXX. and Dominus only in the Latin. In De Trin. II. xviii. 34 (vol, viii. p. 868) he finds it jiossible to write, on Visus est Dominus Abrahae, ' non unus aut duo sed tres apparuerunt viri, quorum tiullus exceisius aliis eminuisse dictus est, nullus honoratius effulsisse, nullus imperiosius egiase.* I i 482 The Theophanies. [app. creaturam ' ; ' and added, that God Who so manifested Himself might be any one of the Three Divine Persons, or even ' tota Trinitas ' as One. The questions at issue are, [a) As to this last idea, and (Ij) Whether the ' suBjecta ereatura,' when not an inanimate material thing-, as the Fire, or the Cloud, but an, apparently, human or angelic being, was a separate personal entity or not. As to (fl). Abstractedly, we may admit it conceivable, as, of course, within the Divine Power. The question is. Whether to think so of the Father or the Spirit is consistent with the revealed principles of the Divine Economy towards Man, and especially with the great underlying principle, That all Manifestation is through the Son, whether to eye as the Image, or to ear as the Word; and, again, Whether to think so does not, in the end, create some fresh and needless difficulties, and more than it removes'-^ (if indeed there be any real difficulty which needs ^ E.g. Quaest. in Heptateuchum, Lib. II. ci. (vol. iii. p. 632): *■ Quod ergo se ostendit specie corporal! vel signis corporaliter expressis, non substantia ejus apparet, qua est ipse quod est, sed assumptio formarum visibiliura ejus omnipo- tentiae subjacet.' This language is entirely consistent with the earlier viewj if not, indeed, exclusively so, yet more so than the supposition of a created angel (whether always t'.ie same, e. g. St. Michael, or different on different occasions) ; because it equally covers the appearances in the Fire and in the Cloud, and in human or angelic form, as all equally in themselves impersonal and only tempo- rarily assumed, the speaking and acting Personality being all the while ex- clusively that of the Son of God. The later view involves a needless difficulty because of the abiding personality of the (supposed) created angel in or through whom God manifested Himself. Also Contra Maximin. I. xv. and II. xxvi. §§ lo and 12 (vol. viii. p. 811), 'per subjectam sibi creaturam.' And De Trin. II. v. 10 : ' Apparuit foris in ereatura corporali, qui intus in natura spirituali oculis mortalium semper occultus est ; ' and, ibid. vii. 12:' lUae species corporales ad demonstrandum quod opus fuit ad tempus apparuerunt, et postea destiterunt ; ' and, ibid. ix. 16, 'per subjectam suae potestati corpoream creaturam j' and, ibid. x. 17; xiv. 24 ; XV. 26. In Tractat. on St. John's Gospel, iii. 17, 18 (vol. iii. p. 1403) he says, ' Moyses vidit nubem, vidit angelum, vidit ignem ; omnis ilia creaturq, est; typum Domini sui gerebat, non ipsius Domini praesentiam e.xhibebat .... Loquebatur cum Moyse Angelus, portans typum Domini .... Facta sunt ilia visibilia corporaliter per creaturam, in quibus typus ostenderetur : non utique substantia ipsa demonstrabatur et raanifestabatur.' '■^ E. g. the Saint himself is evidently conscious {Sermon VII.) that, if the Divine Presenca in the three ' men ' (equal created angels, as he supposes) who visited Abraham is indicative of a Trinity of Equal Persons in One Nature, so the visit of two to Lot might be taken to intimate a 'dualitatem.' NOTE VII.] SL Augustine. 483 removal) ; whether, indeed, it does not end, not so much in guarding the true equal Consuhstantial Godhead of the Son, as in risking the lowering the whole conception of the Godhead, as e. g. in the thought which (needlessly, as I humbly think ^) St. Augustine admits, that the ' Antiquus dierum' oi Daniel vii. 9 was a visible Appearance of the Eternal Father. As to (3), May it not be said that, the INIanifestation con- fessedly being ' per subjectam creaturam,' it is easier, more natural, and more consistent to suppose the ' subjecta creatura,' the ' visibilis species,' to have had, in every instance, and not merely in the instances of the Fire or the Cloud, no personality of its own, but to have been merely the temporary vehicle and medium of the visible and audible manifestation of the Son of God, Whose One Divine Personality was behind it and operated through it, than to suppose that the Appearance, when intro- duced as angelic or human, was, immediately, that of a creature angel, with distinct — and so, of course, permanent — personality of his own, and only mediately an Appearance of a Divine Person ? Not to mention the further difficulty that, in the cases where the Appearance is introduced as human in outer aspect, it must still be held to be angelic (for no one supposes a human personality was ever so employed), and so to involve the cum- brous hypothesis of a merely apparent humanity covering an angelic reality, behind which again is the Divine Personality. St. Augustine admits that the Father is never spoken of as ' sent.' The Son, of course, is constantly so spoken of. To Him, therefore, the title of the Angel of the Lord is entirely appropriate. But the hypothesis that the unique Being so spoken of througliout the Old Testament was a created angel, in whom, as in a temple, God temporarily dwelt, and through whom God sjioke, as He spake by the Prophets who said Thus saith the Lord, does not ^tisfy the language of Holy Scri})ture ; for the utterances of the Angel of the Lord are clearly wholly distinct in form from those of the inspired Prophets. They spoke indeed in the name of God, but never as God, i.e. in the Person of God, as the Angel does. 1 See Lecture IV. § lo;, p. 217. I i 2 484 The Theophanies. [app. The passages in St. Augustine which bear on specific Theo- phanies are the following : To Abraham and Lot, 8erm. VII. (vol. V. col. 65), Qziaest. in Heptateuch. I. xxxvii-xliii. (vol. iii. col. 558), Be Civifat. Bel, XVI. xxix. (vol. vii. col. 508), Cont. Max. II. 5 (vol. viii. col. 806) ; To Jacob, Enarr. in Psalm, cxlvii, 27 (vol, iv. col. 1936)^ Serm. V. (vol. v. col. 57), Ser7n. CXXII. (alias, Be Verbis Bornini xl. vol. v. col. 681), Cont. Max. II. 9 (vol. viii. col. 810) ; To Moses, Enarr. in Psal. cxxxviii. 8 (vol. iv. col. 1788), Serm. VI. and VII. (vol. v. col. 59), Serm. XXIV. cap. xiv. (vdl. v. col. 161), Cont. Max. II. 11 (vol. viii. col. 812); To Joshua, Quaest. in Hept. VI. vii. (vol. iii. col. 778); To Gideon, Ibid. VII. xxxi. &c. (col. 802) ; To Manoah, Ibid. li. (col. 822). XVII. At this point may be added a very interesting testi- mony to the prevalence in the West of the older view of the Theophanies, even in St. Augustine's own day. It is that of the great Christian Latin poet Phudentius, who was born in Spain in A.D. 348, and lived on into the early years of the fifth century. In the first part of his poem entitled Ajpotheosis, on the Godhead of the Son, he is arguing especially against the Sabellian con- fusion of the Divine Persons. At line 22 he says, — ' Quisque hominum vidisse Deum memoratur, ab ipso Infusum vidit gnatum : nam Filius hoc est. Quod de Patre micans se praestitit inspiciendum Per species, quas possit homo comprendere visu. 25 Nam mera niajestas est infinita, nee intrat Obtutus, aliquo ni se moderamine format. Hoc vidit princeps geuerosi seminis Abram, Jam tunc dignati terras iuvisere Christi Hospes homo, in triplicem numen radiasse figuram. 30 Hoc conluctantis tractaruut brachia Jacob. Ipse dator legis divinae accedere coram Jussus, amicitiae collate qui stetit ore Comminus, et sacris conjunxit verba loquelis Carnis in effigie Christum se cernere seusit.' 35 Again, line 43 : — * Quid apertius, absque aliena Quam sumat facie, Verbum non po£se videri % NOTE VII.] Pnidentius. 485 Posse tamcn, quum nialit idem, numquani Patre viso 45 Terrenis oculis, habitu se ostendere nostro : Saepe et in angelicas vel moi-tales moderatum Induci species, queat ut sub imagine cerni. Hoc Verbum est, quod vibratum Patris ore benigno Sumsit virginco fragilem de corpore formam. 50 Inde figura hominis nondum sub carne, Moysi Objecta, effigiem nostri signaverat oris Quod quandoque Deus Verbi virtute coactum Sumturus corpus, faciem referebat eandem.' 54 And line 71 : — ' Ergo nihil visum, nisi quod sub carne videndum Lumen, Imago Dei, Verbum Deus, et Deus ignis ; Qui scutum nostri peccamen corporis implet. Nam lucis Genitor, Verbi sator, auctor et ignis, Creditur extra oculos ; ut Apostolus edocet auctor, 75 Qui negat intuitu fontem deitatis adiri. Credite, nemo Deum vidit, mihi credite, nemo. Visibilis de fonte Deus, non ipse Dei fons Visibilis. Cerni potis est qui nascitur, at non Innatus cerni potis est. Latet os Patris illud, 80 Unde Deus : qui visibilem se praestitit olim. Tale aliquid fornums in sese, quale secuta est Passio, quae corpus sibi vindicat ; ardua nam vis Est impassibilis.' Again, line 128 : — ' Quem si perspicuum mortalibus infitiaris. Fare age, quem videat Babylonis ab arce tyrannus Innocuas inter flammas procul exspatiantem. Filius ille Dei est. . . . Filius (baud dubium est) agit haec miracula rerum ; Quem video : Deus ipse, Dei certissima proles. 1 39 . . . Semper in auxilium Sermo Patris Omnipotentis 155 Descendit servaudo homini : mortalia semper Adraiscenda sibi proprio curavit amore : Ut socianda caro, Dominoque implcnda perenni, Degenerem vitam, quae tunc animalis agebat, 486 The Theophanies. Prudentius. [ait. Exemplo mutaret hcri, similesque per artus 160 Cernere consoi-tem terreni adsuesceret oris ; Participemque suum visu velut obside nosse, Et consanguineo paullatim accedere Christo.' Again, line 300, of God speaking to Moses : — * Coram proditus ipse, Ipse Deus, trepidum mortalem mitis amico Inbuit adloquio, seque ac sua summa retexit. Nimirum meminit Scriptor doctissimus, illo Oibis principio non solum nee sine Chi'isto Informasse Patrem facturae plasma novellae : Fecit, ait, condens hominem Deus, et dedit olli 305 Ora Dei, quidnam est aliud, quam dicere, solus Non erat % atqiie Deo Deus adsistebat agenti, Quum Dominus faceret Domini sub imagine plasma ! Cbristus forma Patris, nos Christi forma et imago, Condimur in faciem Domini bonitate paterna, 310 Venture in nostram faciem post saecula Christo. Possum multa sacris exempla excerpere libris, Ni refugis, quae te doceant, non in Patre solo Vim majestatis positam, sed cum Patre Christum Esse Deum : velut illud ait Genealogus idem : 315 " A Domino Dominus flammam pluit in Sodomitas." Quis Dominus % De quo Domino % si solus ab arce Siderea spectat Pater, aut ardescit in iras % Filius armatam Domini Patris ignibus iram Spargebat Dominus: sunt unum fulmen utraque.' 320 XVIII. St. Leo the Great, Bishop of Rome, a.d. 440-461, who, ' as a preacher and writer, may be said to have lived in the light of the Incarnation ^,' has many valuable passages on the general preparatory character of the earlier Dispensations, their ordinances and incidents, as significative of the future Incarna- tion and Passion of the Son of God. The two following bear more particularly on the subject of this note. * Preface to translated Sermons of St. Leo on the Incarnation, by the Eev. Canon Bright. See also tlie full article on St. Leo, in Smith's Dictionary of Christian Biography, by the Rev. Charles Gore, Vice-Principal of Cuddesdon. NOTE VII.] SL Leo the Great. 487 1. As to the general pre-cxistent operations of the Son, 8erm. XXV. iv. (vol. i. 85, Migne 210), ' For although^ even in former ages, the light of truth was sent forth for the illumination of the holy fathers and prophets, as David says ; 0 send forth Thij light and Thy truth {Vs. xliii. 3), and in divers manners, and by many signs, the Godhead of the Son declared the works of Its presence ; yet all those significant things and all those wonders were testimonies to that Mission whereof the Apostle speaks. But when the fulness of time ivas come, God sent forth His Son,' &c. (Gal. iv. 4.) 2. Contrasting the Incarnation with the Theophanies, Epist. XXI. ii. (vol. i. 855, Migne 791), ' Of course the Almightiness of the Son of God might have appeared for the instruction and justification of men in such wise as to both the patriarchs and the prophets He did appear, in the semblance (specie) of flesh ; as when He wrestled [Gen. xxxii. 24), or joined in converse, or as when He did not decline the courtesies of hospitality, or even partook of food placed before Him {^Gen. xviii). But these out- ward semblance (imagines) were tokens (indices) of this Manhood whose reality these mystic significant events announced should be assumed of the stock of the fathers that went before. And thus that mystery (sacramentum) of our reconciliation which was determined before eternal times ^ was fulfilled by no mere figures, because the Holy Ghost had not yet come upon the Virgin, nor the Power of the Highest overshadowed her ; that within her undefiled womb, JFisdom might huild her house [Prov. ix. 1), and the Word be made Jlesh {St. John i. 14), and by the meeting of the form of God and the form of a servoMt in one Person the Creator of times might be born in time, and He through Whom all thing's were made mio-ht Himself be brought forth as part of all things (inter omnia gigneretur).' XIX. St. Gregory the Great, Bishop of Rome from a.d. 590-604, shows on this subject, as might be expected, strong traces of the influence of St. Augustine -. Indeed, though he ^ 'Ante tempora aeterna.' He is evidently quoting the wpi ypdvoiv aluviaiv (Vulg. ante tempora saecularia) of 2 Tim. ii. 9, though the Balleriui (in Migne) do not print the phrase as a quotation, nor give the reference. " The Benedictines' Life of St. Greg., Bk. IV. iv. 2, speaks of the ' Doctrina 488 The Theophanies. St. Gregoiy the Great, [app. speaks of Abraham and of Moses as ' talking- with God,' and of Isaiah as 'eumdeni Dominum contemplatus^,' he seems to have no thought but of created angels as the actual speakers in the Theophanies-. His comments have but little independent value, since his ignorance of Hebrew and Greek made him entirely dependent on the Latin Versions^. Yet the student should look at his exposition of /oZ^ xxviii. 12, Where shall wisdom he found, &c., Moral, in Job, Lib. XVIII. cap. liv. [3Iigne, vol. ii. col. 600 (91), and at his full discussion of the Wai/s in which God speahs to man, Hid. Lib, XXVIII. cap. i. (ii. 893 (447) on Job xxxviii. i ^. His comments on the Appearance to Moses at the Bush may be seen in Moral. XXVIII. i. 8 (vol. ii. 895, Migne 450), and Homil. in Ezechiel. Lib. I. Homil. vii, 10. In this latter work he devotes eight Homilies to the exposition of Ezeh. i., explaining", on ver. 0,6, the likeness of the appearance of a man, seen upon the Augustiniana, quam ipse sitibuBdus liauserat et inebriatus eructabat.' See also his own opening of his Horn, in Ezechiel. * Horn, in Ezelc. I. viii. 19 ; Regul. Pastoral. II. vii. ^ This gets him into the difficulty of having to account for their acceptance of worship, as, e.g. from Abraham, Lot, and Joshua, while in liev. xix. lo, xxii. 9, they expressly forbid it. He meets the difficulty, in two places, Moral. XXVII. xv. 29, and XL. Homil. in Evan. Lib. I. Homil. viii., not by saying that the worship was offered to God in the angel, not by any distinction of degrees of worship, but by frankly saying that under the Old Covenant the angels ' aequanimiter se con- cedebant adorari,' because they despised man as 'carualibus corruptionibus de- ditum, nee ab eisdem carnalibus corruptionibus redemptum,' and so as ' weak and abject ; but that afterwards they were afraid to do so, when they saw the height to which Human Nature is raised in Christ.' Does this idea account for the language of the old hymn, placed by Daniel, Thesanr. Hyninol. vol. i. p. 191, No. 162, among Hymns of unknown authorship written 'circa saec. vi-ix.,' ' Tre- mentes vident angeli Versa vice mortalium: Culpat caro, purgat caro, Eegnat Deus Dei caro,' ' In awe and wonder angels see, How changed is man's estate by Thee,' &c.? ^ Benedictin. Praefat. Gen. xviii. * Here he even declares the Father's voice from heaven, St. John xii. 28, to have been uttered 'per angelum,' and ' rationali creatura administrante' ; and blunders curiously in his reference to the passage, ' Dicente Domino, Pater, clarifica Filinm tuum, ut et Filiuii taus clarified te \_St. John xvii. i], protinus respondetur : Clarificavi, et iterum clarijlcaho ' [xii. 28]. Towards the close of this chapter he says, ' Scriptura Sacra nunquaui Patrem, nunquam Spiritum Sanctum, et nonnisi per incarnationis suae praedicationem Filium, angelum vocat.' So Moral, in Job XI. xii. 19 (I. 373, Migne 962) he restricts tlie title 'Magni consilii angelus' to the Lord as Incarnate. NOTE VII.] S/. Basil. St. Chrysostom. 489 likeness of ihe throne, of our Lord, Who (he says) is the ' firma- mentum-' above the 'animalia' (i.e. in His earthly life, the first stage of His Incarnate life), while the 'thrones' (Ezekiel says throne) are the hig-hest rank of the ' Virtutes ang-elicae,' quoting- Co*?, i. 16, above vi'hom, though ' potestates Deo proximas,' ' elevatus est Mediator Dei et hominum homo Christus Jesus,' in His glorified, risen, and ascended life. Addressing himself {^Ih'id. Lib. I. Homil. viii. 31) to the question how St. John (xii. 41) says Isaiah saw the glory of Christ, while Ezekiel saw 'non gloriara, sed gloriae similitudinem,' he says that St. John had been just speaking of Christ's miracles as manifesting on earth a certain glory ' in factis,' or ' in rebus,' which it is possible for man to see, and which, accordingly, Isaiah saw ; while of the glory ' in coelo, sicuti est . . . in semetipso,' Ezekiel could, of course, only see the ' similitudo.' But the language of the Bible will hardly bear this distinction between the two visions. Surely Isaiah's was as 'heavenly' as Ezekiel's, though neither was of God 'sicuti est;' as the human appearance shows. On Ezeh. xl. (Homil. in Ez. II. i.) he explains the Man Whose appearance teas like the appearance of brass of Christ as Incarnate. XX. Before passing to later writers of Latin Christendom we may note two passages from the Greek writers of the latter part of the fourth century. 1. St. Basil the Great, Bishop of the Cappadocian Caesarea A.D. 370-379, writes, on the Angel who appeared to Moses at the Bush, Tt? ovv 6 avrbs koI ayyeKos Koi Qeos ; apa ovxc Trepi ov }Xi\xaOi]Kafxa> , ort KaKa.Tai to oi'o\xa amov MeyaAr/s /3oi;\7/? ayyeXos ', . . . "flare koL 6 e-l tov Mcocrea)? ovra kavrbv uvoixaaas, ovk. aAAo? Tts irapa tov Qeov Aoyov tov iv apxfl ovra irpos tup Qeov vorfitir]. Contra Eunomium, 11. J 8, Op. Tom. i. p. 253. 2. St. Chrysostom, Bishop of Constantinople a.d. 398-407, of whose commentaries on the Old Testament only some small por- tions have come down to us, whites On Gew^s/.?, Homily xlii., 'E2' ti] (yKi]in] TOV ^Aftpaap. Kal ot ayyeXot KOt 6 TovTOiV AeaTTor?;? Kara tuvtov co(f)Oi]aat'. Op. Tom. ii. p. 598. See also Hom. xvi. in Actt. Apost. XXI. In the later Latin Church the Augustinian view pre- vailed, as was to be expected ; but not exclusively. Aquinas 490 ^^^ Theophanies. Later Latin Writers, [app. writes, ' Hoc autem quod Ang-eli corpora assumpserunt in Veteri Testamento, fuit quoddam figurale indicium quod Ver- bum Dei assumpturum asset corpus humanum. Omues enim apparitiones Veteris Testamenti, ad illam apparitionem ordinatae fuerunt, qua Filius Dei apparuit in carne.' Siimmae I. Quaest. li. Art. 2. And to the same effect Siimmae III. Quaest. xxx. Art. 3. See also Prima Secundae, Quaest. xcviii. Art. 3, On the g-iving" of the Law ' per angelos.' Later Latin Theologians, like Lyranus, Abulensis, and the Jesuit Commentators Suarez and Cornelius a Lapide, take the same general view, identifying the Angel of the Cloudy Pillar and of the vision to Joshua with the archangel Michael, as ' olim praeses synagogae Judaeorum sicut nunc est praeses Ecclesiae Christianorum.' On Judges vi. 14, And Jehovah looked upon him [Gideon), Cornelius glosses ' puta Angelas legatus Domini, ej usque personam repraesentans.' With reference to the (supposed) difficulty of Gideon^s not being a priest, he quotes Abulensis as thinking that the angel sacerdotally offered the sacrifice, while he himself maintains that the offering [ininchah^ was not presented by Gideon as a sacrifice, but only as hospitable refreshment. The same difficulty, of course, occurs in the Appearance to Manoah. Here Cornelius (who thinks, with Serarius, that the angel was St. Michael) adopts the view that it was a sacrifice, but that the angel offered it. This idea, obviously, is hardly consistent with his view that the angel (who, he says, accepted worship, not indeed ' latria,' but ' dulia') was God's ' Vice-gerent,' and at least for the time and for each occasion, ' repraesentabat Dominum, sicut legatus reprae- sentat principem a quo mittitur.' His comment on the as- sumption, by the angel who appeared to Manoah, of the name 'Wonderful' or 'Secret' must be read in extenso, for its weak- ness to be appreciated. On the other hand, another Jesuit writer, nearly contemporary with h, Lapide, the Portuguese Ant. Fernandius, in a work In Visiones V. T. (ed. nova, Lugduni, 161 7) expressly dealing with the question, Apparueritne Moijsi Dens ipse, an aliqxiis Angelns (visio sexta, on Exod. iii. Comment. II. § i, p. 179), sets out both views, with authorities, and concludes, ' Nobis videtur probabilius esse . . . Deum ipsum et specialiter NOTE VII.] yewish Interpretation. 49 1 Verbum Divinum interdum apparuisse Patribus in veteri Tcsta- mento/ He quotes Theodoret for the wrestling of the Divine Son with Jacob. To the arg-nment of Abulensis, that ' nee in promulgatione Icgis, opere omnium Veteris Testamenti eeleber- rimo, Deus erat, qui loquebatur Moysi, ut patet ex illo ad Galat. iii. 9, Lex ordinata per angelos in manu Mediatoris,' and that, if not then, then never '' Deura alieui apparuisse, sed Ang-elum loco Dei,' he answers well, ' Illud . . . non sig-nificat Angelos dedisse legem, sed suum ibi exhibuisse ministerium : nam constat in- sonuisse tubas, micuisse ignes, audita tonitrua, et haec ipsa ministerio Angelorum facta, nee aliud voluisse Paulum.' On the Vision of Isaiah, he says, p. 293, ' Sub hujusmodi similitudinibus [sc. in aliqua similitudine corporali] visus est saepenumero Deus ^ veteribus Patriarchis.' On the Vision of Ezekiel, ch. i. 26-28, he says, p. 391, ' Hac forma secundum omnes intelligitur Christus ; nam sieut ilia ex electro et igne constabat, ita Christus .... ex divina humanaque natura.' On Dan. ix. 5, he thinks ' tJte man clothed in linen ' was the angel Gabriel, quoting ' Cassianus Collat. 8, and D. Gregor. 17 Moral. 8,' for an idea that he had a special guardianship over the Jews of the Captivity. XXII. Jewish Interpretation. A full investigation of the later Jewish views of the Theophanies is impossible within the limits of this Note. It is a suspicious circumstance that, in the main, it coincides with the Augustinian view. The student will find much that is interesting on the point in a Trandation (London, 1837) by the late Dr. M'^Caul, to whom the Hebrew was almost a mother tongue, of the Commentary on ZecJiariah, by Babbi David Kimchi (son of Joseph Kimchi) of Narbonne, about the time of the Third Crusade, a.d. 1190. Kimchi iden- tities the Angel of the LoiiD with the man Gabriel of Dan. ix. 21. Dr. M^^Caul, speaking for himself, says, p. 9, ' It has been re- peatedly proved by Christian writers that this Being is none other than the Son of God ' ; and mentions especially INIr. Faber in ' Horae Mosaicae/ and Dr. Pye Smith on The Messiah. He vindicates, p. 11, the rendering of rTiiT^ '^f^^'r ^Y ^'^^^ Angel of the Loud, and thinks that ' there is but one person thus called.' At p. 15, 'The being designated by the title The Angel of the 492 The Theophanies. Jewish View. [app. Lgud is called also JlirT^, Jehovah, the proper Name of God ; and from the Rabbinical Commentaries it appears that this inference is not peculiar to Christians, nor forced from the text in order to suit their doctrinal views, but that the rabbies, who made it their peculiar care to overthrow every interpretation favourable to Christianity, were nevertheless constrained, by the plainness and frequency of such passages, to come to the same conclusion.' They tried to explain this away by saying* that the messenger was called by the Name of Him that sent him. Yet they admitted that the Name TV\TV was incommunicable. ' Why then (p. 19) is it communicated to The Angel of f he Lord ? There can be but one answer : Because He partakes of that Substance and Essence which makes the communication of the Name suit- able ; or, in other words, because The Anrjel of the Lord is very God." And Dr. M'^Caul refers to the Appearance to Jacob, Gen. xxxi. The shifts to which the later Jewish Commentators were driven, in their endeavour to evade the evident force of such passages, are well illustrated by the remarks of R. Bechai on this Appearance. He says, ' If interpreted literally, the words I am the God of Bethel mean The God that ajij'ieared to thee in Bethel. But according to Cabbalistic interpretation, this angel who calls himself The God of Bethel, is the goodness spoken of in the words 7?^?'// make all my goodness jmss tjefore thee [Eocod. xxxiii. 19) ; and he is the house mentioned in the words Who lo as faithful in all mij house ; for a man's goodness is his house, and therefore he says of himself, I am the God of Bethel. And so it is said of Jacob, Tie called the ^^lace '•'• Bl-Bethel.^'' But, behold, even according to the literal interpretation of the verse, it is certain that the angel is the God of Bethel; and understand this.' {fJomment. in loc.) Dr. M'^Caul, p. 22, refers to Menachem of Rekanata for the same opinion ; and speaking, p. 25, of the Burning Bush, says, * R. Bechai testifies unreservedly to the fact that the Angel here calls himself The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, " Ask not," he says, " how Moses could hide his face before the angel, for the angel mentioned here is the Angel, the Redeemer, of Whom it is written I am the God of Bethel. And in like manner it is said here, I am the God of thy Father, the God of Abraham^ the God of NOTE VII.] Modern Writers. 493 Imac, and the God of Jacob, and he it is of tohom it is said, Mij Name is in him. [Comment, in loc.)." 11. Moses ben Naehman goes a step further; he not only confirms the fact, but rejects the explanation, that the angel was speaking in the name of Him that sent him. His words are, " The explanation, that in the words / am the God of thij father the messenger spoke in the language of Him that sent him, is not correct, for Moses' degree in prophecy was too high for him to hide his face before the angel .... This angel was the Angel, the Redeemer, for it is said, Mif Name is in him. He it is who said to Jacob, / am the God of Bethel ; and of him it is said, And God called to him [i. e. to Moses out of the Bush] .... And thus it is written [in one place] And the Loiw brought ns out of ILgypt {Beut. vi. 21) ; and [in another place] it is written And he sent an angel, and hath brought us forth out of Egypt [Num. xx. 16). Again, it is said, The angel of his presence saved them, that is to say, The angel who is his presence [Isa. Ixiii. 9). For it is written. My presence shall go, and I will give thee rest {Exod. xxxiii. 14). And this is what is said. The Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his Temple, even the messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in : behold, he shall come [Mai. iii. i)." ' After quoting this from Nachmanides, Dr. M'^Caul sums up as follows : — ' We have here the confession of Jews, that that Being who is called the Angel of the Lord says of himself that he is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; that this is the ])lain meaning of the text. What, then, is the con- clusion ? What can it be but that he is what he claimed to be ? W^e have seen that there is but one Being who is called the Angel of the Lord ; secondly. That the Name of this one Being is Jehovah, the incommunicable Name of God ; and, thirdly, That this Being says of himself, distinctly and unequivocally, that he is the God whom Jacob worshipped, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob ; and we have seen, fourthly. That this is as plainly asserted by the Jews as by us. There is but one possible conclusion, and that is, that this Being is very God.' XXIII. MoDEUN W^KiTEiis. John Diodati, of Geneva, in his useful Annotations on the Bible, Eng. Trans. 2nd ed. 1648, main- tains consistently the primitive view that the Angel of the Lord, 494 ^-^^ Theophanies. Ode, ' De Angelis! [app. and the Being* seen in human form by the prophets, was the Sou of God. Space forbids quotation ; but see his clear comment on Exod. xxiv. lo ; xxxii. 34; xxxiii. 14; xxxiv. 9. So Archbishop Usher, in his Annales Vet. Test. 1650, writes, p, 38, ' Jesus Dominus noster, Princeps militiae Patris sui, Jesu typico ad Jerichuntem stricto o^ladio apparens, promittit ee populum defensurum.' So Bishop Patrick, who quotes this from Usher. So Matthew Henry, 1706, in most cases, following Patrick. So Thomas Scott, de- cisively and, in most cases, consistently; see especially on Gen. xxxi. 13 ; xxxii. 30 ; JosJma v. 13 ; Judges ii. i ; v. 14 ; xiii. 18. So D'Oyly and Mant, 1818, who quote Stackhouse, Dr. Hales, Bishop Kidder, Shuckford (see on Exod. iii.). Dean Allix, Dr. Woodward and Bishop Watson {Joshua v. 13), Pyle {Judges ii. i), for the primitive view. The student should also consult the copious work of Jacobus Ode, De Angelis, Traj. ad Rhenum, 1739, 4to. pp. 1068, especially his concluding Sect. X. Be Angela Jehovae, F'lUo Bel, in which he argues against certain classes of writers who adopt the ' created- angel ' hypothesis, e.g. Roman Catholics, who wished to find an argument for the worship of angels. Remonstrants, who wished to establish their opinion that the mystery of the Holy Trinity is nowhere revealed in the Old Testament, and Socinians, like Crellius and Schlichtingius, who thereby got rid of an argument for the pre-existence of Christ, p. 10 17. On Judges vi. he writes, p. 1042, ' Quem Gideon, v, 13, vocat ''^"Tb^ cum Chireck, quando nondum cum Divinam esse Personam cognoverat, eumdem sibi melius ex sermone cognitum, vv. 15 et 22, vocat "^^It^ cum Kametz signatum . . . Divina Persona quae et Angelus Jehovae et Jehova ipse vocatur, et divina ad homines in salutem populi sui legatione functus fuit, debet fuisse Filius Dei, ob relationem quam tanquam Sponsor et Mediator habet tarn ad Deum Patrem quam ad electos homines, Sibi in aeterno pacis consilio in haere- ditatem datos, ut ipso opere demonstraret Se demandatum Sibi a Patre, atque liberrime susceptum munus fideliter administrare, et populi sui curam gerere.' Vid. Jes. 48. 16 ; et 61. i, 2. At p. 1043 he quotes Habickhorstius, Calovius, and Vitringa, as thoroughly answering objections alleged to his view. The NOTE VII.] Living English Writers. 495 Manoah vision, lie says, p. 1045, is well defended by Vitringa, Observat. Sacr. Lib. IV. cap. 15. § 4-13. The angel spoken of by EHhu, Job xxxiii. 23, was, he says, the Son of God, p. 1046. Of living writers among ourselves, besides those enumerated on p. 108, Bishop Wordsworth of Lincoln favours the primitive view. On JosJi. v. he writes, ' The ancient Jewish Church .... believed that the Captain of the Lord's Host was the Word of God. ... So Calovius, Gerhard, Pfeiffer,'Lightfoot.' Quoting Origen (Qu. 6), ' Joshua perceived that He was not only of God, but was God. For he would not have worshipped Him unless he had recognized Him to be God. And (it may be added) if this Person had been only a created angel, he would not have received adoration from Joshua, but have said, " See thou do it not ; worship God." And who is the Captain of the Lord's Host, but the Lord Jesus Christ ? ' — he concludes, ' On the whole, then, this sublime vision may be regarded as a vision not of any created being, but of the Son of God Himself, the Lord Jehovah ; ' and refers to 'The vision vouchsafed to Moses at the Bush,' as being, ' as all Christian antiquity believed, a vision of the Son of God.' Again, On Judges ii. i : ' Who was this Angel who came from Gilgal to Bochim? Probably the Second Person of the Holy Trinity. He speaks as God.' And on Judges vi. 11, ' an angel of the Loed] Who seems to have been no other than God the Son : see vv. 14 and 16, where He is called Jehovah ; and see above, note on Gen. xxii. 1 1 ; Exod. iii, % ; xxiii. 20, 23; xxxii. 34; xxxiii. 2 ; Josh. v. 13 ; Judg. ii. I ; below xiii. 19.' And, on ver. 23, ' Here then was a mysterious vision of the Son of God Himself, before His Incar- nation.' And, on Judges xiii. 3, ' tJie angel of the LoriL)\ From vv. 18, 19, and 22, it appears that this was no other than a Divine Person, the Son of God, who had appeared to Gideon.' And, on ver. 19, 'The "Angel of the Lord" was no other than the Lord God Himself, Whose name is Wonderful, the Son of God.' Otherwise Canon Liddon, who in the second of his Bampton Lectures of 1866 has a passage on the Theophauies, in connection 496 The Thcophanies. Liddon, Payne Smith, [app. with the subject of Old Testament ' intimations of the existence of a Phirality of Persons within the One Essence of God.' In the course of a summary of the Bible narratives of these Appear- ances, which, naturally, points almost irresistibly to the earlier view about them, he Avrites, with especial reference to the three Appearances of the Angel of the Loud in the Book of Judg-es, 'We are scarcely sensible of the action of a created personality, so completely is the language and bearing' that of the higher nature present in the Angel.' Yet, on the question ' Who was this Angel ?,' while admitting* as ' beyond dispute ' that ' the earliest Fathers answer with general unanimity that he was the Word or Son of God Himself,' and that their view * has been more gene- rally advocated by English divines/ he thinks that the Augus- tinian interpretation, though ' not unaccompanied by considerable difficulties when we apply it to the sacred text,' yet ' certainly seems to relieve us of greater embarrassments than any which it creates.' He describes the ' general doctrine ' of St. Augustine to be, ' that the Theophanies were not direct appearances of a Person in the Godhead, but Self-manifestations of God through a created being.' But this, which, as we have seen, was also the ^doctrine' of the post-Christian Jewish Commentators, is, ob- viously, no help whatever towards the proof either of a Plurality of Persons within the Divine Essence, or of the Incarnation of the Second Person. An Uni-personal God could manifest Him- self ' through a created being,' angel or man ; and the Mussul- man, or the Unitarian, might say that He did so manifest Himself in Jesus. The Augustinian view, in that it expressly does not restrict them to being manifestations of the Second Person ' through a created being,' really detaches them from all ' relation to the doctrine of our Lord's Divinity ; ' for it detaches them from all ascertained specific relation to Him whatever, whether as God or as Man ; and so, at the same time, destroys altogether their character as ' anticipations of a coming Incarnation.' Amicus Avgustbms, sed magis arnica Veritas. We may not call any man ' master ' upon earth. Dean Payne Smith, of Canterbury, in an Excursus to Genesis, in the recently published First Vol. of Bishop EUicott's 0. T. NOTE VII.] Steward's ' Mediatorial Sovereignty'. 497 Comment ar?/ for English Readers, wavers in his view, omitting- to notice that he, whoever he he, who is introduced as pre-eminently The Angel of the Lob i), is always one and the same. He seems to think that, while, sometimes, the ' manifestation of Deity was so high ' that * we may fearlessly connect this angel with our hlessed Lord, called "the angel of the covenant" in Mai. iii. i,' yet, ' ffencrallv it was created ang-els who were the medium of com- munication hetwecn God and man.' But if there he One only who is The Angel of the LOBD, then what he is in the instances where his identification with a Divine Person is so evident that it must he admitted, that he is in all instances. And is there not really a sufficient intimation of his identity in every instance ? I close this Note with a passage from a valuahle work which is not, I fear, so widely known as it deserves to be among- students of Theology, Steward's Mediatorial Sovereignty (3 vols. 8vo., Clark, Edinburgh, 1863), Part I. chap. iv. p. 113. 'The Angel must be accounted God, in whatever way we may explain this ; or the Scriptures not only teach falsehood but blasphemy. Nor can the Socinian hypothesis that the Angel signifies no more than some sensible form of appearance but without personalitii, or, at most, but a temporary one ; or even the Arian hypothesis that the Angel was a real person, and a very glorious one, though not God, relieve these texts of such imputations. For, on the former showing, the Angel was no more entitled to put himself forth and to speak as if he ioere God, than any image, or thing whatsoever, because employed as a medium of communication. Here the medium is not the person employing it, and therefore cannot be represented to be that person consistently with truth, and without teaching us that we may regard as God that which is not God ; and may, therefore, pay worship on this principle of represetitation to that which is not God, as if it were God Himself, which is the very essence of idolatr}'. . . . Nor does the Arian hypothesis which ascribes the highest creature rank to the Angel, go any further toward a just exposition than the former. It is true, it is more plausible in one respect than the other because it allows a substantial per- Kk 498 The Theophanies. Steward' s 'Mediatorial [app. sonality to the Angel, but it halts altogether when it professes to explain to us why this Angel is called God, and speaks and acts as if he were God. By allowing personality proper, there- fore, it is driven to admit Divinity in an imj)ro2)er, and therefore, in a false sense as ascribed to the Angel, which amounts to an imputation on the veracity of Scripture, and a sanction to idolatry, though by a more plausible path than the other .... It remains, then, that the grand initial oracle of Eevelation is the true key to this mysterious appellation, " the Angel of the Lord" — namely, the plurality of persons in the Divine Nature, the very zmiii/ of which not only admits but requires such dis- tinctions as this appellation implies. Their essential relations as Triune give rise to an order of agency and outgoing strictly con- formable to, and in effect, expository of them, since all things are designed to manifest God to His creatures, and to glorify Him as He is. Hence, we can understand how the term Angel as well as the term Word may distinguish a person truly God, though these cannot be applicable to each person of the Godhead indiscriminately. He whose Angel this divine Person is, must be supreme on the ground o'i personal priority/ to Him who is His Angel ; and this order, therefore, cannot be arbitrary and in- vertible. This fact becomes fully manifest when the New Testament statements on this point are applied to elucidate the more vague and general statements of the Old. In them, 2)ersonal relations are brought out, not only as consistent with the Unity, but as of its very essence Now this shows us at once, why the term Angel is used to denote the Mediating Deitj/ : it belongs to Him as " the head of all principality and power." He is the Angel or Envoy, who is not only the head of a whole host of these " ministering spirits," but in a very peculiar sense the Minister of God on behalf of the world. It is His ministry that gives rise to every other, and that ordains and sets all these in motion. It is the vinculum or bond between " Him whom no man hath seen, nor can see," and the creatures made like Him, and to be restored to Him, by Him who is " become one of us." ' Thus, we see that Angel implies the position of a Mediator NOTE VII.] Sovereignty' Archbishop Trench. 499 and all the prerog-atives and works proper to Him, while it has this advantage over the term Word, that it is more strongly personal. It cannot be resolved into personification It is also worth notice, that the passage in which the first mention occurs of " the angel of the Lord " is in the chapter immediately following the one opening with the first mention of the " Word of the Lord " in a sense undoubtedly personal, as if this collation of the terms Word and Angel were meant to form together an outset in the career of mediatorial personality , loJnchfrom this point onward acquires increasing variety and fulness of expression ; while the evidence before adduced is in proof that the functions any more than the office of the Mediator did not take date from this point, but connected the manifestations now referred to with the earliest times. It is but distinct pjersonal development that now occurs ; a fact which supposes official pre-existence just as cer- tainly as it does a personal one^ and in entire keeping with th ' germlnant principle inherent in all the divine counsels and works, of which the history of Creation itself supplies a great example.' I thankfully add here a passage from a precious little volume which I did not see until after these Lectures were delivei'ed, Archbishop Trench of Dublin's Five Cambridge UnlversUy Sermons of Nov. 1856 (Macmillan). It is irideed a passage which covers more than the point immediately before us in this Note ; but my readers will only value it the more on that account. It does indeed indicate, if it may be permitted to me to say so, a worthy grasp at once of the grandeur of the Christian Faith, and of the lines which the English Theology of the future, and especially its Apologetic, should follow. It is from the First Sermon, On Christ the Only Begotten, p. 9. ' If we would be delivered from these dangers, and re-assert for that which is the queen-science of all, her rightful dominion over the hearts and spirits of men, we must learn to fall back more on those transcendant truths of which the prologue of St. John is full — to meditate on them more fully and more fre- quently— to bring them into greater prominence for ourselves K k 2 500 The Theophanies. Archbishop Trench [app. and for others — to believe that it was not for nothing- that this Scripture, or the first chapter of Colossians, was written. We must learn to connect our Lord's manifestation in the flesh, not indeed less with all which followed it, his death, his resur- rection, his ascension, his g-lorified sitting at the rig-ht hand of the Majesty on high ; but to connect it more with that which preceded, his eternal generation, the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, the creation of all worlds by Him, and above all, of man, not merely by Him, but in Him, and for Him, and io Him ; and this so really, that even had there been no Fall and Incarnation, a coming forth on his part, as at once the root and perfect flower of our nature, would probably not the less have been. ' It behoves us, indeed, to speak with hesitation and modesty on a matter like this. Had there been no Fall, the conditions under which that transcendant manifestation of love and of honour done to man must have taken place, would of course have been infinitely different from those under which the Eternal Son did actually exchange the form of God for the form of a servant, and become obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Those conditions, more glorious seemingly, would have been less glorious in realit}^, for they would have lacked the glory of suffering, the unfathomable wonder of that infinite self-denial which stooped to the fallen and the guilty, and shared the miseries of the one and the penalties of the other. But the thing itself, we may reverently believe, would not the less have been. They only re-affirm what has been the conviction of many theologians in all times, who are persuaded that the headship of the race of man would have pertained to Him not the less, to whom all headship of men or of angels rightly appertains ; all things in heaven and in earth being recapitulated in Him ; since only in this recapitulation could the race of Adam have attained the end of its creation, the place among the families of God, for which from the first it was designed. ' In this view, the taking on Himself of our flesh by the Eternal Word was no makeshift, to meet a mighty, yet still a particular emergent, need ; a need which, conceding the liberty NOTE VII.] on probable Incarnation in any case. 501 of man's will and that it was possible for him to have continued in his first state of obedience, might never have occurred. It was not a mere result and reparation of the Fall, such an act as, except for that, would never have been ; but lay bedded at a far deeper depth in the counsels of God for the glory of his Son, and the exaltation of that race formed in his image and his like- ness. For against those who regard the Incarnation as an arbitrary, or as merely an historic event, and not an ideal one as well, we may well urge this weighty consideration, that the Son of God did not in and after his ascension strip off this human nature again ; He did not regard his humanity as a robe, to be worn for a while, and then laid aside ; the convenient form of his manifestation, so long as He was conversing with men upon earth, but the fitness of which had with that conversation passed away. So far from this, we know on the contrary that He assumed our nature for ever, married it to Himself, glorified it with his own glory, carried it as the form of his eternal subsistence into the world of angels, before the presence of his Father. Had there been anything accidental here, had the assumption of our nature been an afterthought (I speak as a man), this marriage of the Son of God with that nature could scarcely be conceived. He could hardly have so taken it — taken it, that is, for ever — unless it had possessed an ideal as well as an historic fitness ; unless pre-established harmonies had existed, such harmonies as only a divine intention could have brought about between the one and the other. ' What lhoi>e pre-established harmonies were, the words of the heathen poet, but words adopted and made his own by the Christian Ai)0stle, declare — " For we are all his offspring ;" words, be it remembered, not addressed to the regenerate, and on the ground of their regeneration, but addressed by St. Paul to his heathen listeners at Athens. Children of this world, children of wrath, as all or nearly all of those listeners may well have been when he addressed them, he yet did not fear to bring them back to their divine original, to remind them of the ideal heights and primeval destinies of man — all forfeited in Adam, and now won back and recovered in Christ ; but which yet had been only re- 502 Co-Inherence oj the Divine Persons. [app. coverable, because they were a portion of man's original inherit- ance; because in the fact that man was God's offspring-, or God's race, the possibility hiy that One should come forth from God, He too God's Son from eternity, fulfilling this name to the utter- most ; who should place his shoulders under the mighty ruin of our race, should arrest its fall, and so vindicate his right to ex- claim, " The earth and its inhabiters are dissolved. I bear up the pillars thereof." It seems to me, therefore, that in discours- ing of the Word made flesh, we may fitly, as regards the re- deemed, carry back our thoughts to that creation of man in God's image and likeness, which alone rendered an Incarnation possible. We may fitly also, as respects the Redeemer, declare that we regard that but as one step, the last indeed, and most glorious one, of his manifestation, that He who so manifested Himself then, had been manifesting Himself from the beginning of the world ; and not of our world only ; for the Apostle speaks of another and a higher world in these words, " When He bringeth in the First Begotten in the world He saith. And let the angels of God worship Him." But yet in our world also we may affirm that He had been manifesting Himself long before, patriarch and prophet walking in his light, encountering Him, as He, the Angel of the Covenant, the Captain of the Lord's Host, preluded his Incarnation by transient assumptions of a human form. Yea, every spark of higher life which was not trodden out in heathen- dom, we have a right, resting on Jhis Scripture, to declare that it was He who kept it alive, that this light shining in men's darkness, was his light, his unextinguished and inextinguishable witness in the hearts and consciences of men.' Note VIII. § 89. The inseparable Co-inherence of (lie Three Divine Persons. This truth is a necessary part of the essential conception of the Co-equal Trinity of Persons in the One Divine Essence. It follows from the idea of the Infinity which belongs to the Supreme Spirit, both in Person and in Essence. Infinities cannot be mutually exclusive ; but must necessarily coincide NOTE IX.] The title A don at. 503 and interpenetrate each other. Exclusion implies limitation; which is foreign to the Divine Nature. So Bishop Bull says, Def. Fid. Nic. II. ix. 23, that the Three Divine Persons 'inti- mately cohere together and arc conjoined One with Another ; and thus that they exist One in the Other, and, so to speak, mutually run into and penetrate Each Other, by a certain ineffable nepiyuipriais, which the Schoolmen call circuminsessioJ' The lowest and nearest form of the thought is that by which the Three are necessarily conceived of as equally locally present everywhere. Above that is the thought of their moral unity of Will, and, consequently, of Operation. But the thought of Their indivisible and inseparable Unity, as They are ahsoluiely and in themselves, in the senses alike of Existence, Presence, and Operation, is quite consistent with the thought of a special manifestation, relatively to us, of One Person (i. e. the Second) moi-e than the Others, whether in presence or in operation ; or, if the expression be preferred, a special manifestation of the Godhead, in presence and in operation, through the Second Person, Whose function it is, as the Image of God, to reveal and to exhibit God to the creature. St. Hilar, Pictav. Be Trinitate, VIII. 51 [Mifjne, 273), says the Father ' videtur in viso, operatur in operante, loquitur in loquente/ i. e. in the Son. See also a fine passage in St. Augustine, Be Trinitate, II. v. 9, on the Una voluntas Patris et Filii et inseparabilis operatio, and the con- sequent share of the Son in His own Mission and Incarnation. See also ifjid. x. 18. The classical passage in English theology on the 7repi)(wp>;(ris is that with which Bishop Bull closes his great work in Befence of the Nicene Faith, Book IV. ch. iv. § 9-14. Note IX. § 93. The title AixjXAi helo^igs especially to the Son. There is much that is valuable on this point in the Commen- tary n])on the Apostles^ Creed by Dr. Thomas Jackson, Dean of Peterborough, 1639 ; see Bk. VII. ch. xxxvi. § 3-7 : 'That this name Adonai is so peculiar to the Son of God as 6 Aoyo? is, I dare not adirm : for 6 Ao'yos doth nowhere, to my remembrance, 504 The Son especially entitled A DONAi. [app. denote any other Person in the blessed Trinity besides the Son, whereas the name Adonai is an expression which many times refers unto the Trinity or Divine nature. . . . But in many passages of the Old Testament both names are expressed ac- cording" to their proper consonants. And in all these places the name Adonai refers only to the Son, as the name of four letters denotes the Father. As in Ps. ex. i. . . . T durst not have been so bold as to have gathered this general rule from my own observation, unless I had found it excellently observed and proved at large by Petrus Faber, in his Dodecamenon, cap. 8.' On Joshua vii. 7 he [ibid.) quotes Masius, Comment, in Josuam^ as follows : ' Joshua calls God by two names . . . Adonai, Je- Jiovah. The former setteth out God's ruling power, the latter hath respect to God's essence. . . . Seeing Adonai hath an eye to God's ruling power, it agrees manifestly to the Son, and repre- sents him to us, by whom as God the Father made the world, so he ruleth it. In this point the diviner sort of Hebrew authors (diviniores Hebraeorum philosophi), called cahalists, as- sent to, as when they teach that the name Adotiai is as it were the key by which entrance is opened to God Jehovah ; that is, to Godj as it were hid in His own essence ; and that it is the treasure in which these things bestowed on us by Jehovah are all deposited ; and that moreover it denoteth the great Steward (oeconomon ilium magnum) who disposeth of all, and nourisheth and quickcneth all things under Jehovah ; and finally, that no man can approach near Jehovah but by Adonai, because there is no other way or course at all to come to him ; and that there- fore the Church thus begins her holy prayers : "Adonai," that is, "Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise." These and such-like passages are extant in the book entitled "The Gate of Light," and in the book called U^ID^n D^, that is, " The Name explicated." ' Again, Book XI. ch. vii. : ' The name Jehovah, which is usually rendered Kvpios, Bominus, or Lord [Lord], is alike common to every person in the holy Trinity, as expressing the nature of the Godhead — he that is leinrj itself ; howbeit, even this name is sometimes in peculiar sort attributed unto Christ. But that MOTE X.] Chrisfs Commission to the wJiole CJmrch. 505 Christ, or the Son of God, is in these places personality meant, this must he gathered from the snhject, or special circumstances of the matter, not from the name or title itself. But the name Adonai, which properly signifies lord or kinr/, as fiaatXiVi in Greek doth (implying as much as the pillar, ov foundation of the people), is the peculiar title of the Son of God, or of God in- carnate. And for attrihuting this title unto Christ as his peculiar, the apostle St. Paul had a good warrant out of the prophetical writings, especially the Psalms. . . . This title of Lord — Adonai — is used most frequently in those psalms which contain the most pregnant prophecies of Christ or the jMcssias' exaltation. [Jackson then refers to Psalms ii, xlv, ex, Ivii, cviii, and proceeds]. These fundamental points of faith arc clear from this collation of Scripture : first, That Adonai, or Lord, was the known title of the Messias, whom the Jews expected in our Saviour's time ; and this was the reason that the Pharisees had not a word to answer or rejoin unto our Saviour when he avouched that the Messias was to be the Son of God, because David in spirit called him (Adonai) Lord. Matt. xxii. 45. The second. That he that was Adonai, or the Messias, was likewise Jehovah, truly God, because David did not in s])irit only call him Lord, but did in spirit worship him as his Lord and God, with the best sacrifice that he could devise, as appears from psalm Ivii. 8.' On Malachi iii. i Dr. Pusey writes : ' He Who should come was the Lord, again Almighty God, since, in usage too, none else is called " the Lord," as none else can be ; ' and notes that Malachi's phrase plt^H is elsewhere used only in Ex. xxiii. 17 ; xxxiv. 23 ; Isa. i. 24 ; iii. J ; x. 16, 33 ; xix. 4 ; which passages see, for their decisive identification of plt^H with Je/iovah of Hosts, the God of Israel. Note X. § 157. Christ gave His great Commission to the Church as a whole. A considerable volume might be written on the unhappy practical results that have followed, in the long history of the 5o6 Christ's Commission and Gift of the Holy [app. Churcli, from misrendering-s of important words and phrases in Holy Scripture — such e. g". as the ' Ipsa conteret caput tuum ' of Gen. iii. 15, or the ' ona fokV {Vvlg. unnm ovile) of St. John x. 16 — and from misconceptions of important passag-cs or incidents which, taken up and repeated by one writer after another without examination, have given currency to theories and doctrines unbalanced and defective if not erroneous. Of this last kind is the very g-eneral failure not only to insist on but even to perceive the sufficiently evident and certainly not un- important fact that the great words of the Easter-Night Com- mission [St. John XX. 21), As My Father hath sent Me, even so send I yon . . . Beceive ye the Holy Ghost : Whosesoever sins ye remit, &c., were spoken, not to the Apostles only, but to the then Church collectively, as a corporate whole, the Body of Christ. The following facts bearing upon the right appreciation of this point must be carefully observed : — 1. The similar language first uttered to St. Peter, St. Matt. xvi. 18, as the then representative and nucleus of the Church that was to be, the rock on which it was to be built (for such is the plain natural sense of our Lord's allusion to the name He had Himself given him), had been repeated {St. Matt, xviii. 17), and with renewed promise, to the Church collective. To have restricted it, when used on the third occasion, to the Apostles only, would have been a retrograde step. The Power of the Keys was, in fulfilment of the two previous promises — observe the future tenses in St. Matt. xvi. and xviii. — now, the first moment it was possible, actually vested in the Body, for exercise by the Body through its duly appointed and recognised organs and officers. 2. St. Lnlce xxiv. '^'^ &c. and St. John xx. 19 &c. unquestion- ably refer to the same occasion, viz. the first meeting of the assembled disciples after the Crucifixion, the meeting on the Easter-Night. In describing those who were present, St. John uses the general term disciples, including, of course, by implica- tion the Apostles in his special note that the one absentee was Thomas. St. Luke expressly says that the company gathered together, to which the two returning from Emmaus joined NOTE X.] GJiost ivcrc to the zvhole CJmrch. 507 themselves, was the eleven, and tiie^i that weee with TUEM. 3. The post- Ascension meeting", Acts i. 13, &c., in the upper room, prol)al)ly the larf/e vpper room fio-nished which was the scene of the Last Supper, and, very possibly, was in the house of Mary, the mother of John Mark and sister of Joses and Barnabas, is expressly stated to have been a collective meeting-. And, under the guidance of St. Peter, it performed a very solemn corporate act in the election of St. Matthias, such as it could hardly have done save by virtue of the Commission of St. Jo/m XX. 21. 4. A close study of the passage, (the connection of which is impaired by the break between the first and second chapters of the Acts,} and especially of the Greek o^ Acts i. 13, 14, 15, and ii. I, points irresistibly to the conclusion that the Pentecostal Gift also was bestowed on the Church as a whole, and not on the Apostles exclusively. 'There is the same emphatic state- ment, in almost the same words, of the asmntjUnrj of all, with one accord, in one and the same place, in the account of the Pentecostal meeting- as there is in that of the post-Ascension meeting. It is certainly more natural to understand the em- phatic all of the first verse of the second chapter, of the larg-cr number, the Imndred and tioentij at least, whose constituent elements, so representative in character, had been specially enumerated a few verses before, than to restrict it to the twelve Apostles on]3\ ' Again ; If the Church as a whole, the original body of the first believers, did not receive the Holy Spirit on the Easter- night and at Pentecost, Ijut the Apostles only, when did they receive it? Thougli doubtless baptized with the preliminary baptism of John unto repentance, it does not appear that they ever received Christian Baptism, as did the three thousand who were added, not to the Apostles, but to the Church, after St. Peter's sermon. There is absolutely no indication of tlie ex- elusive bestowal of the Baptism ^vith the Holy Ghost and with fire on the Apostles only, and its subsequent bestowal, by, through, or from them, on the rest of the first believers ; but, on the 5o8 Christ gave His Spirit to the whole Church, [app. contrary, every indication of their having- received the Gift at one and the same time. The idea of such a distinction would probahly not have occurred to the first or second g-eneration of believers. It is altogether a later growth ; natural indeed, be- cause the Gift, originally bestowed on the Body, was, as the Church grew, bestowed on new converts, through Baptism and Confirmation, by the authorized officers of the Body ; that is, by the Body, or^ more exactly, by the Head and the Body acting as one indivisible organism, through the organs of the Body. ^ A yet further argument, and one (it would seem) of some force, may be drawn from the consideration that there would have been somewhat of inappropriateness, to say the least, in St. Peter's quotation of the prophecy by Joel of the great dis- tinctive blessing of the New Covenant as then and there, in- cipiently, fulfilled, if a passage which promises an outpouring- ujion all flesh . . . sons caul daiujhters . . . yoimg men and old men . . . servants and handmaideiis, had been realized only in the persons of the Twelve. What assurance would a gift limited to the officers of the Church have given to others, as yet outsiders, that they also, upon repentance and Baptism, might receive the Gift of the Holy Ghost? Or what meaning, upon the narrower exposition, can we attach to the words, For the Promise — i. e. the Promised Gift — (compare the Greek of Acts ii. 39 with that of i. 4, and the 'Tu rite Promissum Patris' of the Veni Creator^ — is unto you and to your children, and to all that are afar off, even as many as the Lord our God shall call ? ' Moreover, it is to be noticed, whatever it may be worth, that the languages miraculously spoken were certainly more than twelve in number. We must suppose, surely, that what actually took place was not an unmeaning display of miraculous powers in unintelligible speech, but that various groups, of men of various languages among* the multitudes who thronged the Holy City and the Temple at a great festival, found them- selves severally addressed in their oton tongues wherein they were horn, by one or more of these Galila^an Christians who spoke to them the wonderful works of God in the Death and Resurrection and Ascension of the Christ, which stupendous facts, with the NOTE XI.] The 'Babylon ' of the Apocalypse. 509 talk about which the whole city would be ringing-, were attested by the miracle before them. * And, lastly, to mention another point in the same line with our present argument; after the first touch of persecution, when Peter and John had been put in hold for a night, and brought up next morning before the Sanhedrim, we read i^Acts iv.) that being let f/o they tvent to their oton company, and o-eporfed all that the chief priests and elders had said unto them, and that they, when they heard that, lifted up their voice to God with one accord, and prayed that pra}^er to which was vouchsafed an almost second Pentecost, so that the place was shaken loherein they were gathered together, and they tvere all filled with the Holy Ghost, and they spiahe the Word of God loith boldness. And the multitude of them that believed ivere of one heart and soul. This again does not read as if the company assembled were only the remaining ten Apostles. ' We conclude then that the great endowments of the Lord's abiding Presence and the indwelling Life of His inbreathed Spirit were bestowed, not on the Apostles only, not on the Apostles first, and through them on the Body, but at once on the whole Church as a Body, and on the Apostles in and with, and as part, albeit the most highly organised and vital part, of the Body mystical of the Christ.' (From a Sermon, by the present writer, as Select Preacher, before the University of Oxford, Oct. 23, 1881.) Note XL § 171. The ^ great city,^ the ^Babylon,' of the Apocalypse was Jerusalem. I confess it has long seemed to me, as an independent but earnest student of the Apocalypse — the very absurdities written about which create a deeper interest in it, and a stronger desire to revindicate its own ])lain and direct but very solemn and awful meaning — that it is demonstrable, from the Book itself, that the great city so repeatedly spoken of, and identified with the Harlot Woman, is none other than the old, the earthly, the apostate. 510 The 'Babylon ' of the Apocalypse is, [app. the doomed Jerusalem of a.d. 30-70, and not Rome Pagan at all ; and only Rome Papal by secondary and analogical applica- tion, such as may have touched, and may yet touch, in very varying degrees of intensity, but in every case with very solemn reality, the Christian Church of very various ages and countries. The scanty limits of a note preclude a full treatment of the ques- tion ; but I would ask the candid student to consider the follow- ing points, in the light especially of the now very generally accepted earlier date of the Apocalypse, and of its contemporane- ousness (speaking generally) with the Epistles of St. James, St. Peter, and to the Hebrews. Two ' cities,' and two only, are spoken of and sharply con- trasted in the Apocalypse, the old Jerusalem and the new ^ ' Kaii'77, not via, like oiipavus Kaivus koX 7^ Kaivrj, implying the contrast, not of juxtaposition, but of related, i. e. continuous succession and substitution, the old being removed and transfigured into the new. If the neiv city was a Jerusalem, the word Kaivus really carries within it the proof that the old was a Jerusalem also. See Trench, N. T. Synonyms, Second Series. The organic vital connection be- tween the old, which was dissolved and perished, lay in the believing remnant, the eK\oyr], the dnapxri, the Hundred and Forty-four Thousand, who were contributed by the old Jerusalem to the making of that eh Kaivos dvOpaiiros of Ej)h. ii. 15, which is the Israel of God, Gal. vi. 16. The same contrast, it should be observed, runs through St. Paul's language in Gal. iv. 22-31. It was, in fact, very early familiar to the Christian thought of the first generation. It is at least arguable that ^ kv BalBvXaivt avve/cXeKTrj of I Pet. v. 13 is really another example of an early Christian symbolical identification of the city, which they knew to be doomed for its apostasy, with ' Babylon,' as with ' Sodom ' and ' Egypt ' in Bev. xi. 8. The accompanying salutation of MapKos 6 vlos /xov looks like it. Mark's home was at Jerusalem, in that house in which was, very probably, the large upper room which was both the scene of the Last Supper and the first rendezvous and head- quarters of the Christians, and from which it is very possible St. Peter was actually writing. Even those who (wrongly, as I think) maintain ' Babylon ' to be Pagan Rome, admit that its use here is symbolical. But it may be replied witii much force to those who maintain that view, that, if so, the destruction of the Apocalyptic Babylon must be an event yet future. Nothing at all comparable to it has ever yet happened to Rome, Pagan or Papal ; it did happen to the Jerusalem of A.D. 70. I would ask the unprejudiced reader to take notice, in weighing the arguments of writers who maintain that the N. T. Babylon is Rome, that all which have any weight or veri-similitude apply, in the same kind of sense, with much greater force to Jerusalem, and that many which do not suit Rome at all, or only with a twist, suit Jerusalem obviously and naturally. The mistake about the date of the Apocalypse was clearly the first origin of tlie mistaken interpretation, which we observe early; e. g. TertuUian, Adv. Judaeos, 9 : ' Sic et Babylon apud Joannem nostrum Eomae urbis figura est, proinde et NOTE XI.] priiiiarily, the old y erusalem, 511 The contrast first appears in the message to Philadelphia. It is between them of the synagogue of Satan, which say they are Jews, and arc not, and the clfy of my God, the Neio Jerusalem, iii. 9, 12. The old 'city' is first mentioned in xi. 2, where the epithet Ti]v ayiav and the mention of the Temple combine to identify it with the old Jerusalem. In xi. 8 it is called ?; ttoAis 7} /aeydA?;, and is again distinctly identified with Jerusalem by the addition which spiritually is called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. In eight other places the great city is spoken of, viz. xiv. 8; xvi. 19; xvii. 18 ; xviii. 10. 16, 18, 19, 21. The epithet // ixeyuKr], in fact, becomes speciKc and distinctive, and very evidently applies only to one and the same city throughout. A close examination will show that there is really no doubt of this. But in xiv. 8, the anticipatory announcement of her fall, the great city is expressl}^ called Bahylon, i. e. in the same symbolical sense in which it had before been sinritually called Sodom and Elgypt. In xvi. 19, while, in respect of the effects of the earthquake it is, by separate mention, contrasted with the cities of the Gentiles — a contrast which points to Jerusalem — it is again expressly identified with Babylon. In xvii. 5, the name of the Harlot is Bahylon the great. Here the epithet 57 [xeydXr] identifies her with 1) ttoAis ?/ fx^yaXr] of xi. 8, etc. We can hardly doubt the reference to Isa. i. 21, Iloto is the faithful city become an harlot! It was full of judgment ; Righteousness lodged in it ; lut novo murderers, any more than the reference in xi. 8 to Isa. i. magnae et regno superbae et sanctorum debellatricis.' But the early history of the Apocalypse is obscure. It served, no doubt, its immediate purpose ; but it had no wide circulation in the early church. When it became more generally known it was, at first, received with hesitation. By the time it was generally known and acknowledged, its original purpose had been wholly served, and then practically forgotten, in the clean sweep made of the old Jerusalem. Another great persecuting city had, by that time, fully declared its hostility to Chris^t and His Church ; and Pagan Rome and its woildwide power was, to Christians of the fcecond and tliird century, ' I'eunemi.' What more natural than that, when the Apocalypse came into their hands, they .should aj)ply it to Rome and read in it the assurance of Christ's ultimate and complete victory ? And they were right, in a 8en.se, in so doing; and only wiong in not knowing, or not realising, that there had been already a decisive and infinitely important fulfilment. 512 The 'Babylon ' of the Apocalypse is, [app. lo. The biblical fitness of the epithet to the spiritual fornication and adultery of that evil and adulterous generation cannot be doubted, Tlie sin described was one of which no pagan city, only one which had once been the chosen of the Lord, could really be g'uilty. But it was very distinctly the sin of that old Jerusalem with which the New Jerusalem is contrasted as the Bride, the LainVs loife^. Xvii. i8 again identifies the Harlot Babylon with ?/ ttoAis j; \i.iy6Xr\\ and, again, xviii. 2, lO, 1 6, 19, 10, 21. The common epithet, 7} ixeydXr], thus so emphatically repeated, really binds together in absolute identity the earthly Jerusalem and the Apocalyptic Babylon, The additional epithet of xviii. 10, ■>) TTokis // l(Txvpa (not mighty, but strong), was sin- gularly applicable to Jerusalem, as Titus aud his legions found to their cost. How is it that this identification, which clears away innumer- able difficulties and supplies the real key to the meaning of the Book, has been so generally overlooked ? Probably from two principal causes, i. The Harlot's being seated upon the scarlet- colouredj seven-headed Beast (xvii, 3), or upon the seven moun- tains, xvii. 9. For the Beast of xiii, i is the then pagan world- power, the Roman Empire, really animated and worked by the Dragon, the Prince of the World {St. John xii. 30 and xiv, 30, where see Westcott in Speaker s Commentary), and upheld by the other, the two horned Iamb-like Beast of xiii. 11, i.e. the false idolatrous religion of Paganism, which then insisted on the worship of the Emperor, the embodiment of the Beast, an insist- ance which made martyrs both among Jews and Christians. 2. The greatness and splendour of the Babylon described, and her world-wide relations and influence. As to I : Her beiug seated upon the Beast indicates a relation certainly, i. e, of being really supported, not by God, but by the world-power. The base apostate worldly Judaism of that period, especially of the Jewish kinglets, and the dominant parties, whether courtly Herodians, popular Pharisees, or Sadductean High Priests, really did rest upon, depended, for its very exist- ' Compare Isa. Ivii. 8; Jerem. ii. 2, 20; iii. throughout; iv. 30; xi. 15; and xiii. 27: also Ezelciel, chs, xvi, xxii, xxiii, and xxiv, throughout. NOTE xr.] primarily, the old Jerusalem. 513 ence in power and supremacy upon the Roman world-power. And they knew it ; and the Romans knew it, and despised them accordingly. But this relation points, at the same time, to dis- tinctness, not to identifi/ ; and passed easily into that relation of hostility (xvii. 16) by which t/ie tea horns, and the beast, hated the harlot, and made her desolate and naked, and ate her flesh, and burned her utterly toUhflre, loheri God put it in their hearts to do his mind . . until the words of God [Levit. xxvi., Dent, xxviii., St. Matt, xxiv.) should be fulfilled. As to 2 : {a) The great harlot sat (xvii. i) upon many waters, i.e. (15) peoples, and muUltudcs, and nations, and tongues. So, through the Jews of the Dispersion then spread through the whole Roman olkovix^vt] and beyond it, Jerusalem and Judaism, did sit, as truly, though not in the same way, as Imperial Rome rested upon and ruled over her subject peoples. See the account of the Day of Pentecost ; and Josephus' description of the representative gatherings at the great Jewish Festivals. (1^) The harlot is the great city lohich holds a royal, or queenly, position (?/ (xovaa (SaaiXeiav) over the kings of the earth (xvii. 18). We have already seen that the one city which in the Apocalypse is called the great is identified with Jerusalem. The question here is. Who are intended by ol jSacnkeU t^s yrjs ? In connection with which it should be remarked that the true estimate of the primary purpose and reference of the Apocalypse has probably been very much hindered by the frequent translation of y?} by ' earth,' where the reference really is the restricted one, to the ' land,' i. e. of Judsea and Palestine. The ordinary reader has been thus thrown far a-field, and has lost the scent altogether. Setting aside the Epistles, in which, from the nature of their subjects and their being addressed to Churches out of Palestine, the usual reference is naturally wider, let any one examine the N. T. usage of the word yrj in its local or geographical sense, especially in the phrase ol /SacriAets tt/s yijs (as, for example, it is exhibited, in a conspectus, in Bruder's ed. of Schviidl^s Concord- ance) and the following results will be apparent: — That, in the Gospels and the Apocalypse — leaving out passages in which the frequent contrast of earth with heaven, or the addition of -naaa, Ll 514 T^^^ Babylon of the Apocalypse is, [app. o\r], or some equivalent phrase, defines the wider use, and sug- gests the rendering- ' earth ' or ' world ' — the natural, probable, or even certain rendering is usually the restricted one, ' land,' the Land of the Jew^. Certainly it seems to me that the ^ Matt. xvii. 25 : Of whom do the Icings of the land take tribute ? A reference to the Galileean Peter's personal knowledge of the usage of the local kings and tetrarchs is more natural than a wider one. Mat. xxiv. 30 : Then shall all the tribes of the land mourn (KuipovTat), and they shall see the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great fjlory; compared with Bev. i. 17 : Behold, he Cometh with clouds, and every eye shall see him, and they also which pierced him, and all the tribes of the land shall mourn (KoipovTai) because of him ; and with the parent passage, Zech. xii. 10-14, which see, especially in Lxx. observing the Koipovrai of ver. 10, and the Kuif/erai y •yrj (here unquestionably the Jews' land) Kara cpvXoLs ipvXds. But Matt. xxiv. 30, especially taken in connection with the Lord's solemn answer to Caiaphas, xxvi. 64, refers to the Lord's coming in His Judgment of Jerusalem. Matt. %x\\\. 25 : iraaav ttjv frjv, with its parallels, Mark xv. 33, LuJ:e xxiii. 44, oKtji' t^v •yrji', of the miraculous darkness at the crucifixion, is surely in the restricted sense, notwithstanding the ■naaav and the oAjji'. When St. Mark, a few verses later, wishes to express a. wider reference, xvi. 15, his phrase is «iy rhv KoOfiov anavTa. Luke iv. 25, throughout all the land, is yet restricted, and BO A. "V. And xviii. 8, When the Son of Man cometh shall he find faith on the earth, might as well, or better, be in the land. Certainly it is consistent with the view of this subject taken in these Lectures, that the coming spoken of should be the Lord's Coming in Judgment on Jerusalem. See the preceding verse (and the clear reference to its langu3.ge in Bev. vi. 10; and xxi. 23) There shall be great distress in the land, and wrath upon this peopile. Here the Authorised Version has land, for the restriction is unquestionable, the general distress of the Gentile nations upon the earth being separately foretold in ver. 26. The unrestricted use is well marked, by iraat]^ and the context, in ver. 35 ; for the Lord had passed, at ver. 34, from His immediate subject to its awful future analogue, which is future stiU. Acts iv. 26 is a serviceable passage as to the usage of ol PacnXeii rrj? yrjs, which it quotes from Ps. ii. i ; for, as ver. 27 says, there was in the movement against Jesus just that combination of the Heathen with the People, and of the rulers (like Pontius Pilate) with the Kings of the land (Herod), which the Psalm foretells. And it throws light on Bev. i. 5 : Jesus Christ . , . the first-born of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the land. They had combined against Him, and would not have Him to reign over them, saying, We have no King but Ccesar ; but His Resurrection (from the sealed and guarded tomb) showed His lordship over them, and over Csesar ; and He had made His believing people to be Kings and Priests with Him unto His God and Father. In vi, 15, the reference may well be the restricted one. The manifest allusion to Isa. ii. 10-22, and Hosea x. 8, looks like it. What sort of men, morally, the kings of the land were, and the great men, and the rich men, and the chief captains, and the mighty men, of the Jewish world of a.d. 1-70, we have ample evidence in the New Testament. See especially, besides the passages which refer to the Herods, Matt, xxiii. 13-39 ; Lvke vi, 24-26; xvi. 14-31; James i. 10, 11; ii. 6, 7; iii. 14 to v. 6. The following juxta-position is surely very curiously instructive as to whom the Seer NOTE XI.] primarily, the old Jerusalem. 515 peculiar phrase liohh a o'oyal poailion, describes very naturally the relation of the Jerusalem of that g-eneration to the kings of the land. Not one of them was king of her, seated in Jerusalem as in his own capital. That might have been said of Herod the Great, and, in a greatly diminished sense, of the brief nine years' reign of his son and successor Archelaus. But from a. d. 6 Judaja was a Roman province ; while yet the usual residence of the Governor at Ca}sarea, and the absence of any national king at Jerusalem itself, after the subdivision of the original kingdom of Herod the Great among his sons, the Tetrarchs, who then became the kings of the land, combined to give to the stately and splendid city, still the religious centre, not only of the whole hmd, but of the world-scattered race of the Jews, just that quasi-independent and capital character which is indicated by the phrase eyovc^a fiamXiiav, and which would minister to at once the pride and the advantage of its ruling classes, among whom the High Priest and the Sanhedrim would naturally hold the first place. Milman, Hist, of the Jetvs, writes (Book XII,), ' The Sanhedrim was probably confined to its judicial duties — it was a plenary court of justice, and no more — during the reigns of the later Asmonean princes, and during those of Herod the Great and his describes as paralysed with fear at the tokens of imminent judgment. History perhaps furnishes few groups more likely to be so affected than that of which Herod Antipas was the centre when he kept his birthday festival in his castle of Machserus. S. Marc. vi. 21. 'HpwSj^y roTs yfrfffloi^ avTov Sfiirvov (iro'ift rots fifyiardaiv avTov Koi rots X'^'^PX"'^ '"^^ '^^ts irpwrots rrji Ta\i\aias, K.r.\. The peculiar word fxtytarava occurs nowhere else in the New Testament except in liev. xviii. 23, where it has a consistent and indeed identical meaning. The merchant princes who ministered to and grew rich by the luxury and splendour of the Jerusalem of that epoch may well have been the great ones of the land. Per- haps we have a picture of on,e member of the class in the passage about the rich man and Lazarus, the connection of which with the preceding context can only be that it furnishes an example of the prevailing dishonesty, worldiiness, covetous- ness, and impurity of the upper classes of Jewish society at that date. The level of New Testament usage of such a phrase .as ol 0aat\(is rijs yfji' is illustrated by the circumstance that S. Mattliew spe.aks, ii. 22, of Archelaus reif/niiif/ as King {0aat\(v(i) ill the room of his father Ilernd, wliile the Komau authorities never gave him the title o{ ^acnKtvs, but only that of idvapxrjs. L 1 2 Apoc. vi. 15. Kai 01 PaffiXtis ttJ? yrjs, Koi 01 fitytardva, Kal 01 iT\ov(Ttoi, Kal ol xt\tapxot, Kal ol Svvaroi, k.t.\. 5 1 6 The Babyloit of the Apocalypse is, [app. son Archelaus. To the despotism of the two latter there was no check, except aa appeal to Rome. When Judsea became a Roman province the Sanhedrim, either, as is more likely, assumed for the first time, or recovered, .its station as a kind of senate or representative body of the nation ; possessed itself of such of the subordinate functions of the government as were not actually administered by the Roman procurator ; and probably, on account of the fi'equent changes in the person of the high priest, usurped, in some degree, upon his authority.' These Rulers of the Jeios were practically enthroned in Jerusalem, and supported by the world-power of the Roman Beast. In them the per- sonified Jerusalem {Rev. xviii. 7) glorified herself, and waxed wanton, and said in her heart, I sit a queen, and am no widotv (though the sceptre was departed from Judah), and shall see no sorrow. But it was upon them that fell the scathing denuncia- tions of both the Baptist (^S';^. 31att. iii., St. Luke in.), and the Christ [St. 3Iatt. xii., St. Lxihe xi., St. Matt, xxiii). It was their doom the Lord scarcely veiled in the fateful Parables of St. Matt. xxi. and xxii. It was their sentence He judicially pronounced at the close of His public teaching, as He left the Temple for the last time, St. Matt, xxiii. 35-39. It was the execution of that sentence, within the lifetime of the men before whom He stood, that, in the hearing of the seer of the Apocalypse, He solemnly predicted, in answer to the High Priest's adjuration at His Trial (xxvi. 64). if) The description in the eighteenth chapter of the wail of the interested classes over the downfall of the harlot city, the lament of the kings of the land, and the merchants of the land, who grew rich hy her, and the shipmasters, and mariners, and as many as gain their living hy the sea, will not be thought inap- plicable to the Jerusalem of a. d. 70 by any one who has tried to realise the grandeur of the city at that epoch as it is pictured in the pages of Josephus, and who thinks of the enormous and far- reaching traffic which the mere necessities of the multitudes of her annual visitors must have created, with the accumulated wealth and luxury to which it must have given rise for those who conducted it. It is not a great mercantile city that is NOTE XI.] pi'imarily, the old yerusalem. 517 described. If it were, the description would suit Rome no better than Jerusalem, though it might suit the Corinth, or, still more closely, the Alexandria of the day. It is the description of a city which was a large consumer of both necessaries and luxuries, and a profitable customer to the merchants of these things ; and it suits Jerusalem exactly. {(T) And if it be said (xviii. 3) that all the Gentiles drank of the lo'ine of the wrath of her fornication, i. e. (I suppose) were spiritually injured and corrupted by the religious unfaithfulness of the Jewish Church, can it be doubted that the general moral and religious condition of the Jews, then in contact, thi'ough their dispersion, with the whole Gentile world, was such as to operate to the serious discredit of religion in the Gentile mind, and to the grievous hindrance of the spread of Christianity among those who ignorantly, but very naturally, confounded it with a Judaism which they had equal reason to hate and to despise ? The first offer of the Gospel was made everywhere to the Jews, who might have been everywhere its most effectual missionaries. How they, as a race, rejected it, we know from the Acts of the Apostles. And the deep-lying moral causes of that rejection, the moral sins and defects in consequence of which, combined as they were with a proud, exclusive, fanatical, profession of a true religion, the very name of God toas tjlasj^hemed among the Gentiles through them, we learn from the latter half of St. Paul's second chapter to the Romans. It was an awful failure, after so grand a history, so long and wonderful a providential preparation, in Palestine and beyond it. It is not surprising it should have drawn after it an awful judgment ; a judgment felt even to the extremest bounds of that world-wide system of which Jerusalem was the centre. Another cause which has contributed to the mistaken identifi- cation of the Apocalyptic Babylon with Rome has been the exclusive reference of such passages as vi. 9-1 1; xi, 18; xv. 2-4; xvi. 6; xvii. 6; xviii. 20, 24; xix. 2, to Christian martyrs, whereas the reference really is to the saints and mai-tyrs of the Old Covenant, the great cloud of witnesses (jxapTvprn'), the men and women of days long past, of whom the world was not toorthi/. 5i8 The Apocalyptic Babylon is ycrusalcm. [app. and whose deeds of faith are celebrated in the eleventh of Hebrews, The passage vi. 9-1 1 seems clearly to recall our Lord's language in 8t. Luke xviii. 7 : Shall not God avenge his 'own elect, which cry day and night tinto him, though he bear long with them, ? 1 tell you that he will avenge them speedily. The cry for vengeance was a just cry ; yet it was of the spirit of the Old Dispensation rather than the New. It was the echo of the dying words of that Zechariah whom, in the days of Joash, they sleio between the altar and the temjjle, The Loud look ujjon it, and require it (2 Chron. xxiv. 20-22), and to whose martyrdom the Lord specially referred, when, in His parting words of judicial doom, He said to the Jews of His day that vjjon them should come all the righteous blood shed upon the earth . . . Verily, I say unto you, All these things shall come ujpon this generation, upon that Jerusalem, which killed the proj^ihets and stoned them that were sent unto her {St. Matt, xxiii. 34, &c.). Different was the spirit of the first martyr of the New Covenant, who, after the example of His Master, prayed for his murderers. Lord, lay not this sin to their charge. With the others God bore long. Waiting was their trial. They received not the promise: God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. The grace of perfect charity was a gift of the Holy Spirit (God's good things, St. Matt. vii. 11, com- pared with St. Luke xi. 13), which gift could not be until after Jesus was glorified [St. John vii. 39), for which reason he that was least in the kingdom of heaven was greater than the greatest of the saints of old [St. Matt. xi. 11). They therefore must wait for their perfecting. Only now were vjhite robes given unto them, for they must be washed and made white in the blood of the Lamb. And even then it was said unto them that they should rest yet for a little season, tmtil their felloio-servants also and their brethren, St. Stephen and St. James and their fellow- sufierers at the hands of Jewish unbelief, that should be killed as they were, should, be ful filed. In like manner, in the seven remaining passages given above, in which this special sin of the old Jerusalem is mentioned as drawing down judgment upon her, the reference is certainly to the martyrs of the Old NOTE XI.] Analysis of the Apocalypse. 519 Covenant, though not always exclusively, hut including also, as e.g. in vi. 11, ihe marfi/rs of Jesus, who, it is to be observed, are separately mentioned in xvii. 6, I saw the ivovian drunken with the blood of the saints and of the martyrs of Jesus. Here the separate mention of the two shows that two distinct classes are intended, and that the primary reference in this and the parallel places is to the Old Testament saints. It is nothing less than astonishing that this should have been so overlooked, see e. g. Alford's note on vi. 1 1 ; but the mistake has had a most mis- leading influence on the interpretation of the Apocalypse. This leading point is made more clear by a close observation of the passage in which the Christian martyrs are plainly spoken of. It is XX. 4 : And I saw thrones^ and theij sat upon them, and judgment was given unto them : and I saw the souls of them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus, arid for the tvord of God, and such as ivorshipped not the beast, neither his image . . . and they lived, and reigned with Christ a thousand years. The phrase 1 saio the souls recalls vi. 9, and shows that this is the Christian counterpart of what the seer saw before. But they are not under the altar, a phrase which recalls Jewish associa- tions, just as beheaded, a word never used in the earlier passages, points distinctly to martyrdom at Roman hands, such as was St. Paul's. On the contrary, they are enthroned with Christ. And the vision is at a markedly later stage of the divine dis- pensations, after the binding of Satan had introduced the millennial period, the times of the Gentiles. I append a brief analysis of the Apocalypse, as referring in its immediate and primary (but not exclusive) application to Christ's coming in judgment upon the Old Jerusalem and the fallen Church of the Old Covenant. Ch. iv. describes the scenery and setting of the great Revelation. The first trumpet-voice is probably, see i. 10, that of Jesus. 'O Ka0?//j.ei-'O9, visiljle, human in form (v. 7), is the representation of the Eternal Son, but regarded in Ilis divine nature; God, but 'God of God.' It is observable that in the Apocalypse the Father is not distinctly mentioned by that personal name, except in i. 6, His Father (i. e. of Jesus), and 520 Analysis of [app. xiv. I, His FafJier (i. e. of the Lamb). The Godhead, the One Divine Being, is spoken of throughout as (i) God, ©eo's, simply ; or (2) as the Lord, AeaTTor-qs, once, viz, by the Old Testament martyrs, vi. 10 (compare Acts iv. 24, and the only other in- stances of its use, both expressly of Christ, 2 Pet. ii. i, and Jude 4) ; (3) the Lord God, Kvpcos 6 0eo?, xxii. 5, 6 ; and (4) the Lord God Ahnightj/, or All-rtding , 6 Kvpios 6 Qebs 6 IlavT0Kp6,Ta>p, in nine places. The Lord Jesus in His human nature is pre- sented separately and distinctly, under the symbolical form of the slain Lamb. The relation of the Man Christ Jesus to the Godhead could be best brought out in this way. The recollec- tion of His visible humanity was at this date fresh in the memory of the Church and of living persons. This wonderful Book, thus pi'esenting Him distinctly in His humanity, yet identifies Him absolutely with the Lord God, and exhibits Him worshipped as so identified; observe especially v. 18-14. He is the A and XI. the Eternal. To bring this out would seem to be one great object of the Book, an underlying link of con- nection with the fourth Gospel. And naturally, if it was to comfort and support Christ's persecuted and sufiering people under and through the awful period of the ^Atv//ij rj ixeydXt], which not in Judsea only but everywhere preceded and ac- companied the great catastrophe of Judaism. The twenty-four elders are the patriarchs of the Two Covenants, The four living creatures represent the powers of organic animated creature-life. Ch. V. The seven-sealed hooh is the Apocalypse itself. The Lamh is the Saviour in His human nature, worshipped by the elders, the angels, and every creature, as identified with 6 Ka^?;/xei'os. Chs. vi, vii. The seven seals opened, vi. First seal : The rider on the white horse is Jesus, as King, Conqueror and Judge, cp. xix. 11. Second, third, and fourth seal: the agents and instruments of Judgment, War, Famine, Pestilence. Fifth seal : The cry for vengeance from the Old Testament martyrs, answering to the fourfold Come (not Come and see) of the four NOTE XI.] the Apocalypse. 521 living creatures. Sixth seal : Signs of judgment immediately imminent, cp. St. Matt. xxiv. 29, 8t. Luke xxiii. 30, but suspended for the gathering together [Matt. xxiv. 31) and sealing of the elect, i. e. the believing remnant from among the Jews, the tKkoyri of Eom. xi. 5, 7, the fwsf -fruit [a-napxi]) of Bo7n. xi. 16 and Rev. xiv. 4. Vii, 9-1 7 is a preliminary glimpse, proleptic, after the manner of this Book, of the great Gentile Catholic Church, including, ver. 13, the Christian martyrs who kejit coming (ipxcixevot, 14) out of the Great Tribulation, which was then actually going on. Ch. viii. The Seventh Seal opened discloses the Seven Trumpet Angels, the highest in rank, who stand (not stood) hefore God (lo-TT/Kacrt, implying permanent place and dignity), of whom Gabriel is one, 8t. Luke i. 19. The Trumpets, chs. viii— xi, disclose in order the process and method of Judgment, as the Vials the actual execution. The first four Trumpets should be closely compared with the corresponding Vials, both exhibiting plagues on land, sea, waters, and celestial luminaries. Ch. ix. The Three Woes, introduced by the last three Trumpets. The First Woe (fifth Trumpet), the army of Locusts from the Abyss, under their king, Abaddon, the angel of the Abyss. The Second Woe (sixth Trumpet), the loosing of the four angels from the river Euphrates, with their army of horse- men. The fifth and sixth Trumpets seem to be closely con- nected, and to announce (perhaps) the mustering of the hosts of Rome, the instruments of judgment. Ch. X. The Preparation for the Seventh Trumpet, which will announce the Final Woe or actual consummation of Judgment. The Mighty Angel of x. i. Who is almost certainly the Son of God (cp. i. 15, 16, and the Man clothed in linen oi Ban. x. and xii.), announces, ver. 6, that there shall be delay no longer, but that, on the sounding of the seventh Trumpet, the mystery of God should be finished, as declared to his servants the prophets. Ch. xi. 1-14. The Episode of the Two Witnesses : scene, Jerusalem. I have no theory as to whom we are to understand by the Two Witnesses. They arc described in language which recalls at ouce Joshua and Zerubbabcl in the Book of Zechariah, 522 Analysis of [app. and Moses and Elijah of elder days. The reference is, ap- parently, to eminent witnesses for Christ within the doomed city during the dark period of its final agony. It would seem very probable that St. James the Just, the abeXcpodeos, the first Bishop of Jerusalem and writer of the Epistle, who was martyred in Jerusalem in 69, was one. The other has been thought to be St. Peter. Ch. xii. The Sun-clothed Woman (cp. Joseph's Dream, Gen. xxxvii. 9), is the Ancient Church of Israel regarded as faithful, the Mother of the Messiah, her royal Man-Chihl, Whom the devil, acting through Herod the Great, seeks to devour. His Incarnation dethrones the devil, who is cast down from heaven to earth, cp. Luke x. 18 ; John xii. 31. But for a short while, i. e. up to his millennial confinement in the Abyss, he has great wrath, and causes much misery on earth, especially during the 6\l^ls r] jxeydXr] (^Matt. -s.xiv. 21 ; 3Iar k xiii. 19; Luke xxi. 23; xxiii. 29). He persecutes the woman and the faithful remnant {Rev. xii. 13-17) ; but a place of refuge was prepared (6 and 14, compared with 3Iatt. xxi v. 15, &c.) and the Christians escaped, as we know, from the beleaguered city to Bella. Ch. xiii. The Beast, who, like the Dragon, has seven heads and ten horns, is the then world-power, imperial Rome, seen also in vision by Daniel, ch. vii. It combines the features of the preceding world-powers, the Macedonian, the Medo-Persiau, and the Babylonian, the Leopard, the Bear, and the Lion. Its in- visible animating power is the devil, ver. 2. It persecutes both Jews and Christians. The two-horned lamb-like Beast, ver. 11, is the false idolatrous religion of Paganism, the false prophet of xvi. 13; xix. 20; XX. 10. It enforces, on Jews and Christians, the worship of the emperor and his image, as the impersonation of the Beast. The number of the Beast, 666, is the numerical value of the Hebrew letters of CAESAR NERO. Ch. xiv. The contrasted Vision of the Heavenly Power, the Lamb and His company stationed on Mount Sion. The an- nouncement of the fall of Babylon in ver. 8 is proleptic, antici- patory of ch. xviii. So also the visions of Judgment, the Harvest, 14-16, and the Vintage, 17-20, are anticipatory. NOTE XI.] the Apocalypse. 523 Chs. XV, xvi. The Seven Vials, the actual execution of Judg- ment. Ch. XV. The Vision of the Blessedness of the Martyrs, whose numher being- now fulfilled the time of vengeance was come. Ch. xvi. The Wrath of God actually poured forth upon the land ; the Seven Vials answering to the Seven Trumpets, each to each. Ver. 13 reveals in close conjunction the rival trinity of evil, the Dragon, the Beast, and the false Prophet : i. e. (i) the unseen animating spirit of evil in the background ; (2) his visible manifestation, and instrument and embodiment; and (3) the bad moral and spiritual influence proceeding from them, and seducing men to the worship of the evil one. Verses 14-16 are proleptic, and anticipatory of xix, 17-19, and xx. 8, 9. Chs. xvii, xviii. The great Judgment upon Jerusalem described more fully. Ch. xvii. The Vision of Jerusalem as Apostate, the contrast to the Vision of the faithful Israel as the Sun-clothed IFoman of ch. xii. She sits upon the scarlet Beast, i. e. is upheld by the world-power of Imperial Rome, until it and its subordinate kings, the ten horns, turn against her, to fulfil the will of God and make her desolate. Ch. xviii. The Fall of Babylon, in vengeance for the blood of the Saints. Nothing comparable to this has ever happened to any city save the Jerusalem of a.d. 67-70. It has no reference whatever to Pagan Rome, the analogues of whose fall must be sought in the fulfilled Old Testament prophecies against Nineveh, Babylon, and Egypt, the great world-powers of old and oppressors of God's people. It has a proportional analogical reference to the Christian Israel, to Christian nations, churches, cities, whensoever, and so far as, they, or any of them, the Seven Churches of Asia, the Churches of North Africa and the East, of Constantinople, of Rome, or of England, reproduce the sins and faithlessness of the ancient Israel. Ch. xix. Joy in heaven over the Triumph of Christ, "Who re-appears as the conquering rider on the white horse, crowned not now with a wreath or garlaml, oTi^avos, vi. 2, but with mauy diadems (hahjixara -noXKa) xix. 12, Kinf/ of kings, and Lord 524 The Millennium, or, [app. of Lords ^ at the head of the armies of heaven, cp. Joshua v. 14. The mention of the Marriage Supper of the Lamb (for which compare the corresponding portion of the Olivet Discourse, Ilait. XXV. 1-13) and of the contrasted Ar-mageddon Supjier of the great God, and the accompanying destruction of the Beast and the false Prophet, are Loth proleptic, the former anticipatory of xxi. J — xxii. 5, the latter of xx. 8-15. Ch. XX. The Millennial binding of Satan in the Abyss. On some points in this and the remaining chapters of the Apoca- lypse, see Notes XII, XV, and XVI, of this Appendix. Note XII. §171'. The Millennium, or, The Period of the Biiiding of Satan. After his successful temptation of Man, the great adversary ^ 6 Saraz'tts, the old serpent, the great red dragon of Rev. xii. 3, the Devil, maintained a usurped power over Man and man's world. He had a kingdom {Matt. xii. 26; Marh iii. 24; Luhe xi. 18; Mev. xi. 15), a kingdom of darhiess {Col. i. 13); and was the ruler of this tvorld {John xii. 31), claiming a power and right of disposal over its kingdoms {Luke iv. 7). His agents, the dcemons, were the world-rulers of this darkness {Llph. vi. 12). His power exercised through them as his angels was the delegated poioer {e^ova-Ca) of darkness {Luke xxii. ^'3^ ; Col. i. 13). As he had leguiled Eve through his snhtilfy (2 Cor. xi. 3), so he continued to deceive mankind, especially ra IQvt], the uncove- nanted races, the Gentiles {Rev. xii. 9 ; xx. 3, 8) ; lusting after man's worship, through pride and jealousy of God, especially of the Eternal Son ; drawing men's offered worship aside to him- self and his agents (1 Cor. x. 20 ; Rev. ix. 20, comp. Lev. xvii. 7; Beiit. xxxii. 17 ; Ps. cvi. '^']), and tempting even the Incarnate Son Himself to worship him. The Incarnation broke this power of darhiess, and began the desolation of its kingdom. Not, perhaps, the Incarnation as a mere fact in itself, but the operation of the Incarnate One as soon as He began to act in the power of the Holy Ghost NOTE XII.] The Period of the Binding of Satan. 525 received at His Baptism {Luke iv. 1). There is no sign of the disturhance of Satan's power until after Christ's victory in the hand-to-hand strug-g-le of the Temptation. After that He Who, like his forerunner, made the good news of the near approach of the kingdom of Heaven the first great subject of His preaching, began to show His power over evil in His miraculous cures, especially of human beings possessed with daemons. It is in connection with the exercise of this His power by His delegated agents the Seventy that He makes the remarkable statement [Luke X. 18), / heheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven. By that time some mighty change had taken place in the unseen spiritual realm ; the power of evil had received some mighty check. This is alluded to in Rev. xii. 7-10 as the ivar in heaven, which, clearly subsequent to the Incarnation and the Birth of the Man-Child, resulted in the casting out of the devil and his angels from heaven to earth. The effect of this was a specially malicious outburst of evil on earth in the period a.d. 30 to 70, the devil's short time of great %orath [Rev. xii. 12). We may thus account for the prevalence of demoniacal possession, and the other remarkable evils and miseries of that time both among Jews and Gentiles^, and for the great Tribulation (?; 0X1-^1% rj \j.(ydKr], Matt. xxiv. 31, 29 ; Mark xiii. 19, 24; Rev. i. 9 ; vii. 14) which so sorely tried the Christians until the Coming of Christ to Judgment in the Destruction of Jerusalem. Successive blows were dealt at the kingdom of evil as the Work of the Incarnate One progressed. A strong light is thrown upon the struggle by a great saying of our Lord, which is organically connected with the Millennial passage in the Apocalypse. It is given in Matt. xii. 22-45 ^'^^ its parallels, Mark iii. 22-27, and Luke xi. 14.-26. The evil one had been indeed 6 laxvpos, the mighty one, but the Mightier One, 'O 'Icrx^- purepo^, had come upon him, and, in a preliminary manner, had hound him \ not, as yet, so as to prevent his doing evil, e. g. pos- sessing men, but so as signally and manifestly to undo the evil which he did, for the greater glory of God and of His Son. The Millennial Binding, as the result of the completed work of ' Compare the remarkable language of Tacitus, Histories i. chs. 2, 3. 526 The Millennium, or, [app. the Risen, Ascended, Glorified, and Enthroned Christ, is here foreshadowed. The Saviour's next great utterance, hearing on the forward movement of the awful drama which was being enacted at that critical epoch, is that recorded in John xii. 28, &c., as following upon the third utterance of the Father's Voice from heaven, J^ow is the judgment {yvv Kpiais [crisis) eo-rt) of this tvorld: now shall the prince, or ruler, of this world he cast out outside : and I {Kayd)), if I he lifted up, will draw all men to myself {jiphs iixavTov, i. e. to Myself), i. e. as the one true King, both of Jews and Gentiles ; for He was, in deep inner spiritual reality, to reign gloriously /)*o»« the Tree, even in the moment of His deepest apparent humiliation. But when these words were spoken the casting out, i. e. out of this world as his kingdom and sphere of power, was yet future, eK/3Arj07/o-erat e£a), but imminent. The final struggle, we cannot doubt, was in Gethsemane and on Calvarj' . Then was their hour, and the poioer of darkness [Luke xxii. ^'^. It was only through death that Jesus finally overcame him that had the poicer of death, that is, the devil, and, with the exception only of the brief permitted loosing at the close of the Millennial Period, broke for ever his power over man in life and in death, and over man's world. Thenceforward the unclean spirit was exorcised. He was gone out of man. The house was ready for the good Spirit of God as its legitimate possessor and inhabitant ; and into the little band that were ready to receive It, and who were the beginnings of His Church, Jesus inbreathed It, in a preliminary way, on the Easter Night. But the first open declaration of the victory was the Gift of the Holy Ghost at Pentecost ; and, since possession by Him depends on man's good will, for He is not a Spirit of violence, so now for the Jewish Church and Nation the question was. Would they welcome into their empty house Him Whom Jesus as King had shed forth, or would they not? They answered as Jesus had foreseen ; and with the result that He foresaw, their repossession, in sevenfold greater force, by the evil spirit, so that their last state was worse than the first. See again the whole passage, Matt. xii. 22-45, especially the close, Even so NOTE XII.] The Period of the Binding of Satan. 527 slall it he also imio this wiched generation. Comp. Acta vii. 51 ; xiii. 40-52 ; xxviii. 25. From among- God's ancient People only a remnant {Bom. xi. 5), an election (7), a first fruit (16, ep. liev. xiv. 4), viz. the sealed 144,000 of the Apocalypse, welcomed the Holy Spirit; and they, after having" been carefully guarded, by God's wonderful Providence, through the great tribulation until after the decisive visible manifestation of the Kingdom of Christ in the visitation of the apostate Church, were added to the Gentile ■nXi'ipaifj.a which God called to fill the gap created by the'iYfall, and so were absorbed into the Catholic Church of the Tiwes of the Gentiles. In the inner spiritual realm that decisive visible manifestation was marked by the Millennial Binding of Satan, which is to last through the now current Dispensation of the Times of the Gentiles; for by the thousand years we are to understand a long but, to us, wholly indefinite period. The Fall of Jerusalem, the mj^tical Bahylon^ was the token that the kingdoms of this world had become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ [Rev. xi. 1 5), and that the Lord God All-Sovereign is King [Rev. xix. 6). During the millennial period Christ's faithful ones, His martyrs and saints, who have been raised with Him in the First Resurrection, the resurrection of the soul to grace, now reign with Him within the veil. Nay, inasmuch as in idea, but, as yet, in fact only inchoately and imperfectly, the Church is already Christ's kingdom on earth, His believing people who have the first fruits of the Spirit, the pledge of the full reality of the great hereafter, do, even in this life, reign with Him, being made to sit together with Him in the heavenly places [Eph. ii. 6). They possess already, though not as yet indefectibly, the franchise and citizenship of the Heavenly City [Rhil. iii. 20), being the children of the free woman, the Jerusalem which is (as yet) above, which is the mother of us all [Gal. iv. 26-31), and being, in the Com- munion of Saints, ah'cady one in Christ with those within the veil. The kingdom of the Regeneration, though not as yet fully manifested on earth, is already begun in Heaven, since the Son of ]\Ian, its King, took His seat upon the throne of His glory [Matt. xix. 28), on His Resurrection and Ascension. Into the 528 The Millennmm, or, [app. kingdom of the regeneration believers are admitted by Baptism, the laver of Hegeneratlon {Tit. iii. 5), which engrafts them into membership with their glorified Head, so that, in their measure and proportion, they share, in and with Him, its blessings now. This was impossible before the Resurrection of Christ. But then He overcame death, for Himself and for His members. He broke down the barrier between the merely earthly life and the eternal spiritual life, and ' opened the kingdom of Heaven to all believers.' Thenceforward believers could pass, through Him, from death unto Ife {John v. 24), from the merely natural and mortal to the eternal life ; so that for them, abiding in Him, death was abolished (1 Tim. i. 10). Hence the frequent con- nection in Holy Scripture, between the Resurrection (of course presupposing the Death) of Christ and our Baptism ; between His Resurrection, as the Firsthorn from the dead, and our Regeneration. For the former — St. Paul (^Bom. vi. 4-1 1) speaks, as of a past fact in the experience of Christians, of a death and burial unto sin in baptism, and a rising again to newness of life, wherein we are alive unto God through Jesus Christ our Lord; of a justification from sin in its guilt, and a deliverance from its dominion and power. Again, in Col. ii. 11-14, he speaks of our burial with Christ in Baptism,, and our rising again with Him through the faith of the 0])eration of God Who raised Him from the dead, accompanied by a forgiveness of all trespasses, and a being quickened into a new life together with Christ. And St. Peter tells us (I. iii. 31) that the baptism which doth noio save us does so bj/ the Hesurrectlon of Jesus Christ; while — for the latter — he speaks (I. i. 3) of God's having begotten us again {avayivvqcra's) unto a living hope, by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ. Thus the Christian ' state of salvation ' entered into by Faith and the Sacrament of Holy Baptism, and persevered in by Faith and the Sacrament of Holy Communion, is a state of life and light, a new and eternal life as contrasted with the old natural state of darkness and of death in trespasses and sins. Christ said it should be so ; His Apostles say it is so. Christ said it should be so; To Nicodemus, John iii. 3, 14, 15; To the Samaritan woman, iv. 14, compare vii. 38 ; To the Jews, v. 34-29. This NOTE XII.] The Period of the Binding of Satan. 529 last is a specially important passage, because it is the foundation of the idea of a spiritual resurrection consequent upon faith and acceptance of Christ, and explains the distinction of liev. xx. 4-6, between the Jirst resurrection, that is, of the soul to the new life of grace, which introduces to the millennial reign with Christ, first, in the Communion of the Catholic Church, and, secondly, more fully in Paradise, and so to the ultimate bodily resurrection, the redemption of our hody {Ttorn. viii. 23), which is still future. To these same Jews again (v. 40) Christ com- plained that they would not come to Him that they might have life. To the Galilaeans in the synagogue at Capernaum (vi.) He announced Himself as the Bread of God, the Bread of Life yVihich, coming doicn from Heaven, ^qv\<\. give life %into the world; and, more particularly, that the Bread lohich He would give loas His Flesh, for the life of the world, that Whosoever eaieth His Flesh and drinheth His Blood hath eternal Life, as a present possession, through the First Resurrection, and should have its crown and completion in the raising of the body in the Second Resurrection in the last day. A man eating of that Bread should not die, but live for ever. These were indeed words of eternal life. To Martha professing her faith in the distantly future bodily resurrection of the dead at the last day. He said, I am noio ('Eyco ctfxi) the present actual Besurrection and the Life. He that believeth in Me, He said, though he had died, as Lazarus had, yet shall he live, and tohosoever being alive believetji in Me shall never die. And the Risen Lord, meeting His Body of believing followers for the first time on the Easter Night, breathed at once into them the Spirit of Life from Himself, even as at the beginning of the old, the natural, Creation, He had breathed info the nostrils of His creature man the breath of his natural life. So the Apostles understood His words and acts; and so they deemed of the present reality and blessedness of the spiritual, the eternal, Life, given, in Him, to His members. The Millennium must then be conceived of as preceding the final, the bodily, resurrection ; as being, in fact, now current, contemporaneously with the present conditions of earthly human life. A careful comparative study of the passages which bear M m 530 The close of the Millennium. [app. on the question would seem to dispose entirely of those ideas of a pre-millennial personal return of Christ, or of a post- resurrection millennium, whieh were the foundation of that Judaizing- and fanatical millenarian belief, or ' Chiliasm/ which the Church has rejected. It is to be observed that in the cardinal passage, Reiu xx. i-6, on the reign of the Saints with Christ, it is not said that they shall during the period there spoken of reign with Him on the earth. The unauthorized importation, from v. lo, of these last words, understood in the literal, bodily, and visible sense, has been the cause of much confusion and mistake, from which the Seer's significant phrase, 'I saw the souls,'' &c. (comp. vi. lo) might have saved the careful reader. The passage v. lo will, of course, have its full and literal realization hereafter in the Consummated Regenera- tion after the bodily Resurrection, when the New Jerusalem, the Heavenly City., that is, the Body of the Covenanted Faithful, shall have come doioti from heaven to earth, xxii. 5, to be the capital and centre of Christ's world-wide Kingdom of righteous- ness and peace, wherein the will of God shall be done on earth as it is in heaven. The predicted circumstances also of the close of the Mil- lennium further indicate that the period itself precedes the end of the present age and determines before it. As towards the close of the Jewish Dispensation, so towards the close of the now current titnes of the Gentiles, Holy Scripture forecasts that a loss of faith, probably gradual, among once Christian nations will bring on, as its result and climax, the falling atvay, or Apostasy (?) dTroo-rao-ta, 2 Thess. ii. 3). Then the house, the fabric of Christian society, having become empty, no longer indwelt by the Holy Spirit of God, no longer owning as its King the Mightier One (6 layvponpo'i), though swept and gar- nished with the highest results of a refined material civilization, is repossessed by the mighty one, 6 i(r)^vp69, the imclean spirit, who returns to it, bringing with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, so that the last state of de-Christianized society becomes worse than its original heathenism. See Lnke xi. 14-12 ; and note that whereas St. Matthew, the Hebrew Evangelist, NOTE XII.] Bible Ideals. 531 preserves, in the parallel passage, xii. 45, the words of Christ which intimated the fulfilment of His parabolic saying- within that very generation, Hven so shall it he also unto this wicked gene- ration, i. e. in the case of the Jewish Church, St. Luke, writing for Gentiles, omits them, so giving the saying a wider appli- cation, and indicating its possible realization in the case of the Gentile Church also. This repossession by the evil one of the once Christian Gentile society is consequent upon, or coincides with, his being loosed from the abyss. He refcovers, for a time, his power, and goes forth {Rev. xx. 7-9) to use it in the old way, viz. to deceive the nations, especially the nations tvhich are in the four corners of the earth, Gog and Magog (Query, The outlying still unchristianized races ?), and to gather them together for a final general attack on the still existing Christian Church. See Notes XV and XVI in this Appendix. Note XIII. § 176. Bible Ideals. On this subject I venture to quote a somewhat fuller passage on the thought contained in the text, from a sermon preached by the present writer at Oxford, as Select Preacher, in February, 1883:- "Holy Scripture presents to us a manifold revelation, or un- veiling, of things and persons spiritual and unseen, and far above the reach of our natural faculties. The same is true, in a measure, of the great conceptions of physical science; espe- cially, for example, in the department of Astronomy. But, while these are intellectually delightful, and even absorbing — nay, to the devout student (and it has been truly said, 'The undevout astronomer is mad') a real help to faith, a felt stimulus to worship — the ideal conceptions of Inspiration are all this and more. For these, coming as they do from the Almighty Creator of man, appeal to man's whole nature, to his speculative intellect, to his moral alfections and his con- science, and to his poetic and artistic faculties; and their in- urns 532 Bible Ideals. [app. Huence is then duly and normally, and, as we may say, ideally felt, when they make their proper impression on each of these elements of human nature, normally susceptible and duly balanced. But, ideal as they are, in their height and completeness of perfection, they are not unreal — which is the too common En"-lish conception of the Ideal. They are not unreal, in either the sense of being* non-existent, or of being impossible to exist ; or of having no tendency to exist among those to whom they are proposed as Ideals ; or of having no uplifting force on the lives and characters of even the most unpromising of their possible and conceivable subjects. On the contrary — they are inherently and forcibly practical ; because of their exact adaptation, by way of complement and counteraction, to the dull and lowering^ the dark and depress- ing, the, surely, but for them, despairing conditions and cir- cumstances of our human life, as it is known to all but the unenviable few whom either an apathetic callousness, or else a childlike acquiescence in the sunshine of a material prosperity, dispenses from the necessity of reflection, and lands in a con- scious or unconscious agnosticism, of either the sunny and cheerful kind, or else the dull, the gray, the leaden kind. Among inspired Ideals are the following : — First, the great Ideal of God, the Infinite, the Absolute, the Uncreated, the Eternal ; Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, our Maker, our Redeemer, our Sanctifier; our indwelling, ever present friend ; Whose very being is light and love, answering unspeakably to all that man, with either mind or heart, can long for, 'Whose very greatness is a rest To weaklings as we are.' Then, the Ideal of the Spiritual, the Heavenly, world ; the world of the Angels ; created spirits, countless in number, excellent in power, glorious in beauty, not mere spirit, as God only is, but clothed and defined in spiritual or heavenly bodies, and so needing, and therefore enjoying, a material dwelling- place, God's vast universe of unimaginable beauty and grandeur. NOTE XIII.] The Bible Ideal of Worship. 533 Next, the Ideal of Man, a liUle lower than the Angels, yet crowned with glory and honour ; the lord of this lower world,, with all things pnt in snhjectlon under his feet, the child, the son, of God, created for full communion with God in a never- ending moral, intellectual, and spiritual advancement. Tlien, the Ideal of Eternal Life, as the normal and destined condition of Angels and of men ; a life whose essence is the knowledge and the love of God as revealed in and through the Eternal Son, the Mediator, the Incarnate, in Whom, for His heritage and possession, are summed up and united for ever all things, both the things in the heavens and the things on earth {Eph. i. \o). Then, the Ideal of Redemption, as the inconceivable revelation of the love and of the resources of God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, exercised in the recovery of man from sin and death, and his exaltation to a consummated blessedness, in body and soul, of which the glorified Manhood of Christ is at once the Ideal, the pattern, and the pledge. Other inspired Ideals, more or less particularly involved in these, might be specified ; such, for example, as the moral Ideal exhibited, for our love, our reverence, and our imitation, in the human life and character of Jesus, as the Perfect Man. That of which I would now speak more particularly is, the Ideal of Worship, as set before us in the Bible. It is an Ideal to the grasping of which the average English mind is, not without reason, thought to be somewhat unapt. For any moderately worthy acceptation of it involves a strong and realising sense of the unseen ; of persons ' unseen, yet ever near,' of purely spiritual relations, purely spiritual agencies, purely spiritual results — results, I mean, purely spiritual and private in their first impact and operation upon our nature ; but, surely, when they are real, evidencing their reality in results and effects plain and traceable enough in those outward features of life and conduct which are the visible fruits of cha- racter, known and read of all men. Our defective imaginativeness reduces the power of realising unseen objects. It detracts so much from faith, and, proper- 534 Symbolism of the Tabernacle and Temple, [app. tionately, weakens tlie impulse of adoration, in respect of both its imperious over-awing necessity and its beneficial effect on the worshipper. And, besides this cause, there is yet another which is very operative in the way of favouring an inadequate sense of either the obligation, the blessedness, or the real nature of worship ; and that is, the failure to grasp the true and full meaning of the Communion of Saints, that great fact of fundamental Christian belief on which the inspired Ideal of Worship really rests — I mean, the fact that, to us Christians, since and through the work of Christ, Heaven and Earth are one, and so their worship one. Let us look, for a moment, at the very evident symbolism of the Tabernacle and the Temple. There was the outer court for the general congregation. Here the sacrifice was actually offered. But it was in the Holy Place, within the first veil, into which only the priests might enter, that it was presented, by the sprinkling of the blood, accompanied by the offering of the Incense on the golden altar ; while into the Most Holy Place, within the second veil, the high priest alone entered, once in each year, with the blood of the sacrifice of the great day of atonement. This inner Holy of Plolies was symbolical of Heaven, the place of the immediate presence of God. But when the way into the holiest of all was made open by the blood of Christ, the veil was rent in twain ; the barrier between Heaven and the earthly Church (symbolised by the Holy Place) was done away in Him ; and while a full view (as one may so say) was now afforded to faith into the opened Heaven and of the mercy-seat of God, whither the great High Priest entered to present His once-offered sacrifice of Himself, the general condition also of God's whole redeemed people was raised. Admitted as a royal 2mestJioocl they were now em- powered to offer lip spiritual sacrifices, accepialile to God ly Jesus Christ, in that true Holy Place, the Christian Church, now, through the opened veil, made one with the true Holy of Holies, the Heaven beyond. Henceforward, from and after the completion of the work of NOTE XIII.] Unity of Heaven and earth in Christ. 535 Christ, in Ilis Ascension and His Gift at Pentecost, Heaven and earth, spiritually, i.e. in respect of spiritual privilege, are one. Access is free ; the barrier is removed. Christ, ever spiritually present with it and within it, binds His Church on earth to Himself in Heaven, the Body to the Head, by the link of an indwelling" supernatural life, which is the indwelling presence of the Holy Spirit of God. This is the eternal life of which Christ speaks, as the present (though not, as yet, the indefeasible) possession of His people. Hence it is that Christ's language ignores death : He that hearetli My word, and helieveth Him tliat sent Me, hath eternal life, and cometit not i?ito judgment, hut is passed from death unto life. He is ttiat bread which came doivn from heaven, of which tie tluit ealeth shall live for ever. If a man keep my saying, Christ says, he shall never see death. I am tlie resurrection and the life: he tliat believetti on Me, though he were dead, yet shall lie live ; and whosoever liveth and helieveth in Me shall never die. These are great words, most glorious, most blessed : so great, so blessed, that we dare not even venture to conceive as possible the appropriation of them to ourselves, did we not remember whose words they are, Who is the Very Truth, whose repeated reproach to even the nearer circle of His own disciples was for the littleness of their faith ; Who seems to labour to make us believe that it is our Father s good pleasiire to give us the kingdom. He spake not such words, of the sublime reality and complete- ness of His Redemption of us, to delude or to mislead us, but that we might dwell on them, feed on them, appropriate them, live on them, live by them, die by them. Do not let us minimise their greatness. Great as they seem, even to us, tiny are doubtless yet greater than they seem ; and they arc doubtless truer than they seem great. For we cannot measure either their greatness or their truth. We think at once too much and too little, both of life and of death. We think too little, too lowly, of what death may mean in its perfect work; for we cannot realise the depth of complete and final separation from God ; while yet we think too much of it, in its nearer, its natural, its physical side towards us ; for we do not, in our 536 Bible Ideals. [app. littleness of faith, realise the completeness of onr redemption from it. So, in like manner, we think too much, too highly, of life in its nearer and lower and more familiar aspects, in our fear of losing- it ; while we think too little, too lowly, too feebly of what it may be, of what it is, in its hidden fulness of spiritual, heavenly, eternal, reality, in and from God through Christ the Incarnate Son. Our inner life lies in this, that He is one with us beyond all thought, through His real communi- cation of His Body and Blood to us, to and through the entire 6\6k\t]pov of our God-created nature in body, soul, and spirit, down to the deepest sub-conscious bases of our compound, yet coherent, life; so that we are one with Him, members of His BocJt/, of His Flesh, and of His Bones, one with Him in an in- destructible life — indestructible so long as we are in Him. St. Paul, in his eighth chapter to the Romans, supplies us with a good example of what I have called ' inspired Ideals ; ' of that high characteristic of the Bible revelation, of which Cardinal Newman speaks in a great sermon for the Epiphany, whereby ' Holy Scripture oft-times (he says) represents things as God views them, and as they are in His providential pur- pose, and speaks more commonly of the divine design . . . than of the measure of fulfilment which it receives at this time or that ... or it speaks of the profession of the Christian ... or of the tendency of the divine gift in a long period of time, and of its ultimate fruits.' So he expresses this feature ; and its imderljnng principle and explanation he indicates in the following passage : — ' Whereas God is one, and His will one, and His purpose one, and His work one, whereas all He is and does is absolutely perfect and complete, independent of time and place, and sovereign over Creation, whether inanimate or moral, yet in His actual dealings with this world, that is, in all in which we see His Providence, in that man is im- perfect, and has a will of his own, and lives in time and is moved by circumstances, God seems to work by a process, by means and ends, by steps, by victories hardly gained, and failures repaired, and sacrifices ventured. Thus it is only when we view His dispensations at a distance, as the Angels do. NOTE XIII.] SL Paiirs language about Prcdesiinatio7i. 537 that we see their harmony and their unity ; whereas Scripture, anticipatino;' the end from the beg-inningf, places at their very head and first point of orig-ination all that belongs to them respectively in their fulness.' Accordino^ly the fulness of man's salvation — of which we cannot think too hig-hly, seeing- Who it was that wrought it, how He wrought it, with what love, and at what cost He wrought it (thus giving us the measure of the value He set upon our nature, which Himself created, and of the high destiny for which He created it) — is in Holy Scripture set forth in the fulness of God's design, which cannot really fail^; set forth ' viewed as God's work,' which is ever perfect ; viewed as God's work in itself, without man's co-operation ; a picture of what God's work always and essentially tends to be, ought to be now, and might be now, if Christians had perfect, absolute, and entire faith; and what it will be abso- lutely hereafter, in the final state, in and for all those who shall attain that world. In this way the language about predestination is accounted for, Whom He did foreknow. He also did predestinate ; w/iom He did predestinate, them He also called; whom He called, them He also justified ; whom He justified, them He also glorified. It is the Divine Ideal of man's redemption, viewed from God^s side, viewed as it is His purpose, viewed in its completeness. In that view the salvation of the elect is an accomplished fact. And the gifts and calling of God are tvithont repentance. He does not recall them. But their operation in individual cases depends on individual free-will. It is for us to grasp, in living faith and hope, and to grow up to the glory of, the high calling whereioith tve are called, the grandeur of our in- heritance in Christ. And the first step to that is, to believe that His words of what He has done for us, and of what is, in and by Him, offered even to such as we are, are absolutely true. Bi/ His death He hath destroyed death. He has abolished death, and has brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel. It is indeed a ' Gospel.' 0 Death, where is thy sting ? 0 Grave, where is thy victory ? 538 The revealed Worship of Heaven. [app. So in the ideal view, that is, the only worthy, the only adequate, the only real, and Scriptural view, of Christian Worship, Heaven and Earth are one, their worship one. A worship of Heaven there is. Isaiah saw it. John saw it. And, before Isaiah, Moses saw, alone in the mount with God, a heavenly original and pattern, revealed to him, to copy in the arrangements and the ritual of the Tabernacle, which, with its priests, was to serve imto the example and shadow of heavenly things {lleh. viii. 5), and especially of the mystery of propitiation and atonement. With no mention of that feature — for it was the wor.ship of the sinless seraphim which was revealed to him ■ — Isaiah reports the words of their Sanctus Hymn, Holy, Holy, Holy, is the Lord of Hosts. The whole earth is full of His Glory. Through the door opened in Heaven, St. John {Jiev. iv. 1) saw, as Isaiah, the solemn worship offered to One that sat on the throne, and heard again the Sanctus, Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come. But, round about the throne he saw, as worshippers, not alone the six- winged living creatures, but, on four and twenty thrones, the four and twenty elders, the crowned and glorified representatives of the Israel of God, of both the earlier and the later stage, now united and made one new man in Christ {TLph. ii, 14). But here, in significant addition to the song of worshipful praise for the glory of Creation — Thou art tvorthy, 0 Lord, to receive glory, and honour, and ptower : for Thoio hast created all things, and for Thy pleasure they are, and were created, — there follows the thanksgiving for the greater wonders of redemption. And this is especially addressed to One Who is revealed under the expressive symbol of the Lamb as it had heen slain, and Who is immediately afterwards identified, as an equal object of worship, with Him that sitteth upon the Throne. Naturally, this special thanksgiving of the redeemed belongs to the Israel of God ; The four and twenty elders fell down before the Latnb . . . and they sung a new song, saying. Thou art worthy . . . for Thou wast slain, and hast redeemed us to God by Thy blood out of every kindred, and tongue, and peopjle, and nation. But this again is followed by a hymn from an outer circle of the myriads of NOTE XIII.] The Worship of the New Jerusalem. 539 angels, Worthy is the Lamb that was slain . . . and that again by the voices of ever?/ creature, in heaven, and earth, and sea, saying, Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power tmto Him that sitteth upon the Throne, and v.nio the Lamh for ever and ever. And this is a picture of the actual worship of this present dispensation, now going on, in the unseen state within the veil. It is not the worship of the consummated state, after the resurrection, in the new heaven and earth, after the return of the Bridegroom, after the marriage supper of the Lamb in the holy, the heavenly city, the New Jerusalem, the true ' vision of peace,' then planted upon the regenerated earth. For its brief description of that state the Apocalypse waits until its closing chapters, after the present millennial reign. The worship which St. John describes in the fourth and fifth chapters must be conceived of as the worship, now going on, of the Church beyond death, of the new Jerusalem which is the mother of us all, the City zvhich hath the foundations, whose luilder and maker is God; the city which, in old days, from Abraham onwards, God's faithful people knew of, and longed for, and sought for, declaring plainly that they were strangers and pilgrims on the earth; the city which, in due time, as God's plan providentially unfolded itself, was typically fore- shadowed to the fiiith of the devout Israelite by the glories of the earthly Jerusalem and the Hill of Zion, from David and Solomon onwards ; the city to which, and to no earthly Sinai or Jerusalem, we Christians are come, the city wherein already our citizenshi]) is {Philij). iii. 20), though 'By Babylon's sad waters Mourning exiles now are we ; ' the Jerusalem which is above, and is free ; the Mount Sion, the city of the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, in whose ranks are included the innnmerahle company of the angels, as well as the general assembly and Church of the Firstborn of the new Covenant, and the sjArits of the just of the older Covenants, now at the length, — after patient waiting, God having pro- vided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect {Ilcb. xi. 40) — now at the length made perfect. 540 Christ the Mediator of the New Covenant, [app. throuf^h the work of Jesus, the Mediator of that new Covenant whereinto they are now united, so that their twelve repre- sentatives are enthroned together with the twelve whom Jesus chose, and to whom He promised that, in the regeneration^ when the Son of Man should sit on the throne of His glory, as He has done ever since His ascension, they also should sit on twelve thrones with Him, the Princes, and the Judges, of His Israel. Into this Regeneration, into this new Covenant, into this world to come — or rather, to us, now come (for the writer to the Hebrews spoke from the point of view of the time before that judgment of the old Jerusalem, which was the formal and manifest inauguration of the millennial period, the times of the Gentiles) — into this redeemed world, now truly, though not yet fully come, we were admitted at our Baptism, when first we tasted its powers {Heb. vi. 5), and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, Who is its inner regenerating and renewing force. Thus, in the true conception of that great article of our Creed of which I spoke as the foundation of any true idea of Christian worship, ' The saints on earth and those above But one communion make.' " Note XIV. § 185. Christ the Minister (AetToupyo's, Heb. viii. 2) of the New Covenant. Let me here earnestly commend the attention of my readers to the valuable and interesting exposition by my venerated predecessor in the parish of Barnes, the late Canon Melvill, of Heb. viii. 2. A minister [Xeirovpyos) of the sanctuary, and of the true tabernacle which the LoJtD pitched and not man. The sermon is entitled ' Christ the Minister of the Church,' and is the second in the volume of his sermons published by Riviiigtons in 1833, and also in Vol. I of their edition of 1872. Its lan- guage is remarkable, alike as having been first published in the very year of the first issue of the Tracts for the Times, and NOTE XIV.] The Church is the True Tabernacle. 541 as coming" from the quarter of Church opinion with which Canon Melvill was usually more particularly identified. 0 si sic omnes ! I quote some of the leading passages by way of a short analysis ; but the whole sermon deserves careful study. ' St. Paul had in view those portions of the mediatorial work which are yet being- executed, and not those which were completed upon earth. . . . The priesthood now enacted in heaven was that on which he wished to centre attention. . . . Christ in heaven and not Christ on earth is sketched out.' Then, as to the meaning* of the phrase the true tabernacle, &c. ' The most correct and simple idea appears to be, that, inasmuch as Christ is the hig-h priest of all who believe upon His name, and inasmuch as believers make up Ilis Church, the whole company of the faithful constitute that tabernacle of which He is here asserted the Minister. If we adopt this interpretation, we may trace a fitness and accuracy of expression, which can scarcely fail to assure us of its justice. The Jewish tabernacle, unquestionably typical of the Christian Church, consisted of the outer part and the inner ; the one open to the ministi'ations of inferior priests, the other to those of the high priest alone. Thus the Church, always one body whatever the dispersion of its members, is partly upon earth where Christ's ambassadors officiate, partly in heaven where Christ Himself is present. St. Paul, referring to this Church as a household, describes Jesus Christ as Him " of whom the whole family in heaven and earth is named [Ephes. iii. 15);" intimating that it was no inter- ference with the unity of this family, that some of its members resided above, whilst others remained, as warriors and sufferers, below. So that, in considering Christ's Church as the tabernacle with its holy i)laee, and its holy of holies — the first on earth, the second in heaven — we adhere most rigidly to the type, and, at the same time, preserve harmony with other representations of Scripture.' ' We only keep up the imagery of Scripture when we take the Church as that "true tabernacle" whereof the "Redeemer is the Minister."-' 542 Christ present with the earthly Church. \h.vv. ' The '' true tabernacle " is the collective Church of the redeemed, whether in earth or heaven.' Proceeding" then to speak 'in the first place, of Christ as Minister of the Church on earth,' he says, ' Now it is of first-rate importance that we consider Christ as withdrawn only from the eye of sense, and, therefore, present as truly after a spiritual manner with His Church, as when, in the day of humiliation. He moved visibly upon earth. The lapse of time brought no inter- ruption of His parting- promise to the Apostles, " Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world [Matt, xxviii. 20)." He has provided, by keeping up a succession of men who derive authority, in unbroken series, from the first teachers of the faith, for the continued preaching of His word, and administration of His sacraments. And thus He hath been all along the great minister of His Church, delegating, indeed, power to inferior ministers who ''have the treasure in earthen vessels " (2 Cor. iv. 7) ; but superintending their appointment as the universal bishop, and evangelizing, so to speak. His vast diocese through their in- strumentality. We contend that you have no true idea of a Church, unless you thus recognize in its ordinances, not merely the institution of Christ, but His actual and energizing presence. You have no right, when you sit down in the sanctuary, to regard the individual who addresses you as a mere public speaker, delivering an harangue which has precisely so much worth as it may draw from- its logic and its language. He is an ambassador from the great Head of the Church, and derives an authority from this Head which is quite independent of his own worthiness. If Christ remain always the minister of His Church, Christ is to be looked at through His ministering servant, whoever shall visibly officiate. And though there be a great deal preached in which you cannot recognize the voice of the Saviour ; and though the sacraments be administered by hands which seem impure enough to sully their sanctity ; 5^et do we venture to assert that no man, who keeps Christ steadfastly in view as the " minister of the true tabernacle," will ever fail to derive profit from a sermon, and strength from a communion. The grand evil is, that men ordinarily lose the chief minister in the inferior^ and deter- NOTE XIV.] His Intercession ^within the veil! 543 mine beforehand tliat tlicy cannot be advantaged unless the inferior be modelled exactly to their own pattern. They reg-ard the speaker simply as a man, and not at all as a messeng-er. Yet the ordained preacher is a messengei*, a messenger from the God of the whole earth. His mental capacity may be weak — that is nothing. His speech may be contemptible — that is nothing. His knowledge may be circumscribed — we say not, that is nothing; but we say, that whatever the man's qualifications, he should rest upon his office. And we hold it the business of a congregation, if they hope to find profit in the public duties of the Sabbath, to cast away those personal considerations which may have to do with the officiating individual, and to fix stead- fastly their thoughts on the office itself.' ' Christ, though removed from visible ministration, has yet so close a concernment with all the business of the sanctuary — uttering the word, sprinkling the water, and breaking the bread, to all the members of His mystical body — that He must emphatically be styled " a minister of holy things, of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched and not man." ' Thus far of Christ's indirect mediate action in the visible earthly Church through His commissioned representatives. *But whilst the office of minister thus includes duties whose scene of performance is the holy place, there are others which can only be discharged in the holy of holies. These appertain to Christ under His character of High Priest, no inferior minister being privileged to enter " within the veil." You must, we think, be familiar, through frequent hearing, with the offices of Christ as our intercessor. You know that though He suffered but once, in the last ages of the world, yet, ever living to plead the merits of His sacrifice, He gives perpetuity to the oblation, and applies to the washing away of sin that blood which is as expiatory as in its first warm gushings. In no respect is it more sublimely true than in this, that Jesus Christ is " the same yesterday, and to-day, and for ever." The high priests of Aaron's line entered, year by year, into the holiest of all, making con- tinually a new atonement " for themselves and for the errors of the people " {llch. ix. 7) . But He who was constituted " after 544 His acceptable presentation of our Worship, [app. the order of Melcliiscdee " king as well as priest, entered in once, not " by the blood of goats and calves, but by His own blood " {Ileh. ix. 12), and needed never to return and ascend again the altar of sacrifice. It is not that sin can now be taken away by anything short of shedding of blood. But intercession perpetuates crucifixion. Christy as High Priest within the veil, so immor- talizes Calvary that, though " He liveth unto God," He dies con- tinually unto sin. And thus, " if any man sin, we have," saith St. Jolin, " an advocate with the Father" ' (i St. John ii. i). ' Once more. We may regard the prayers and praises of real believers as incense burnt in the true tabernacle, and rising in fragrant clouds towards heaven. Yet who knows not that this incense, though it be indeed nothing less than the breathing of the Holy Spirit, is so defiled by the corrupt channel of humanity through which it passes, that, unless purified and etherealized, it can never be accepted of God ? The Holy Ghost, as well as Christ Jesus, is said to make intercession for us. But these inter- cessions are of a widely different character. The Spirit pleads not for us as Christ pleads, holding up a cross, and pointing to wounds. . . . He holds in His hands the censer of His own merits, and, gathering into it the prayers and praises of His Church, renders them a sweet savour acceptable to the Father. Perfumed with the odour of Christ's proi^itiation, the incense mounts ; and God, in His condescension, accepts the offering, and breathes benediction in return.' ' To all true believers Christ Jesus is literally the Minister of the sanctuary, preaching through the preacher, and administering through his hands the Sacraments. ... As the High Priest of His people, Christ offers up continual sacrifice, and burns sweet incense. And when you combine these particulars, you have virtually before you the Saviour in the pulpit of the sanctuary, the Saviour at the altar, the Saviour with the censer ; and thus, seeing that He oflEiciates in the whole business of the divinely- pitched tabernacle, will you not confess Him the minister of that tabernacle ? ' Passing to 'ministerial offices discharged by Clirist towards the saints in glory,' as distinct from what He does on behalf of NOTE XIV.] Antichrist. 545 His still militant Church, he restricts Christ's priestly action to {a) atoning- sacrifice for sin, which he says they do not need, being- ' beyond the power of sin,' and (li) intercession, in the sense of presenting- the prayers and praises of His Church, which he also regards as needless for ' the saints in glory,' bccaufse ' the music of their praises is rolled from celestial harps, and requires not to be melodized.' This last assertion is probably erroneous. It seems to be more true that the worship of the creature, being necessarily finite and defective, needs, even in the case of the very hig-hest saints and angels, to be presented through the One Mediator, See Lect. II, § 40, 41, 43, 45. But Canon Melvill dwells exclusively, though with great eloquence, on our Lord's ministrations as ' preacher or instructor ' in the unseen Church, concluding as follows : — ' Removed as is the Church within the veil from the ken of our observation, ... we can yet be con- fident that in the Holy of Holies there goes onward a grand work of instruction ; and thus ascertaining, that, as a preacher to His people, Christ's ofiice is not limited to those who sojourn in the flesh, we can understand by the " true tabernacle " the Church above conjointly with the Church below, and yet pro- nounce, unreservedly, of Jesus, that He is " a minister of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man." ' Note XV. § 192. p. 386. Antichrist. It is very remarkable that the general subject of to. t(T\aTa and, as part of it, the coming of the Antichrist, should have formed so prominent a portion of the earliest recorded apostolic preaching. The general subject is present in the thought of St. Peter's sermon in Acts iii. It was part of that great thought of the coming Kingdom of God, which was dominant in the earliest preaching alike of the Baptist, of the Saviour, and of His Apostles. It is especially prominent in the earliest writings of the New Testament, St. Paul's Epistles to the Thessalonians, written to a Church in which he had only spent three weeks, N u 546 The Bible revelation [a pp. yet alluding to the ajwstasy, and to the coming of that man of sin, the son of perdition, that Wicked one, as among the things which, while he ivas yet ivith them, he had told them of, i Thess. ii. Looking back to the Old Testament it would be surprising if David, as a great representative of the Kingship of Christ, had not been led by the Spirit to speak prophetically of its great opponent ; and no attentive student can read those three deep and wonderful Psalms, ix, x, and xi — Psalms which so appro- priately follow the charter of the ideal greatness of the Perfect Son of Man in Psalm viii — without perceiving that he was so led^ Doubtless they had their fitness to the circumstances of David's life ; but they point onward to a greater than David, to greater enemies and a greater conflict, followed by a greater triumph, than his. The history of the age-long struggle between the kingdoms of light and of darkness furnishes its types and forecasts of the great enemy in such personages as Cain, Nimrod, Pharaoh, Sennacherib, Nebuchadnezzar, and Antiochus Epi- phanes, to be followed by Nero and Simon the Son of the Star. But the special prophetic revelation of him is to be looked for, as the Church has ever believed, in Daniel, vii. 8, and 20, seqq. (See Pnseys Led. on Ban., p. 81, &c.), and viii. 8 seqq.; and xi. '^6, seqq. {Pnsey, p. 96). In the Olivet Prophecy Christ speaks of the rise oi false Christs and false prophets ; and though there is a distinction between the essential idea of avrixpiaTos, as the antagonist of Christ, and x/^euSo'xpto-ro?, the false pretender to his character, we may yet, with Archbishop Trench ^, ' cer- tainly conclude that the final Antichrist will present himself to the world as, in a sense, its Messiah ; not indeed as the Messiah of prophecy, the Messiah of God, but still as the world's Saviour : as one, who, if men will follow him, will make their blessedness, giving to them the full enjoyment of a present material earth, instead of a distant and shadowy heaven ; abolish- ino- those troublesome distinctions, now the fruitful sources of * See Isaac Williams, TIte Psalms interpreted of Christ. We may indeed include also the next three Psalms, xii., xiii., xiv., appropriately followed by Psalm xv., the pictured character of the accfpted citizens of the Holy City. '■' On the two words in A''. T. Synonyms, First Scries. NOTE XV.] of the futtire Antichrist. 547 so much disquietude and pain ; those, namely, between the Church and the world, between the spirit and the flesh, between holiness and sin, between good and evil. It will follow, there- fore, that, however he will not assume the name of Christ, and so will not, in the letter, be a ^^vhoy^piaTos, 3'et, usurping to himself Christ's offices, presenting himself to the world as the true centre of its hopes, as the satisfier of its needs and healer of its hurts, he will in fact take up into himself all names and forms of blasphemy, will be the great x/^evSo'xpioroj and olvtL- Xpca-Tos at once.' In the Apocalypse, the revelation, in ch. xiii, verses i-io, which obviously directly refer to Dan. vii, is of the antichristian world-power (then pagan Rome) which the personal Antichrist, foreshadowed by Nero, the antichrist of that day, will wield : while verses 11-17 speak of the false teaching, philosophic or religious (so-called), personified in the false prophet of Rev. xix. 20 and xx. 10, which, as his forerunner, will prepare the way of Antichrist before him. The same kind of revelation is indicated in our Lord's connected reference to false Christs and false prop)Jtets, It appears again in St. John's Epistles, in which, as he speaks (I. ii. iH) of the future coming of Antichrist as a known part of Christian belief, and of there being, even then, many (preliminary and typical) ant'ichrisfs, so he speaks also (I. iv. 1-3) of mani/ false propthels gone out into the icorld, and of a spirit of antichrist^ iohereof they had heard that it should come, which was even now already in the world, and which is included in St. Paul's expression, 2 Thess. ii. 7, the mystery of latvlessness, which doth already v:ork, i.e. in antagonism to the mystery of godliness, the Divine Incarnation, i Tim. iii. 16. The TO Kariyjiv [that tohich letteth, or holds lack, the Antichrist from being revealed in his own time, 2 The^^s. ii. 6), personified in the next verse as 6 Karexcoy a/vrt [he who notv letteth) is best understood, with the ancients^, as, immediately, i.e. in St. Paul's day, and long afterwards, the civil power of Rome, as the then embodiment and security of good and orderly government (compare St. Paul's language in Eom. xiii. 1-7, and 1 'Tim. ii. ' E.g. Tertullian, De Res. Canm, c. 24; Liher Apohffcticus, c. 32, and 39. K D 2 548 The sph-it of ' lawlessness! [a pp. 1-3, and his own actual appeal to Csesav); and then, secondarily, secure and orderly civil government generally. The taking out of the way of old imperial Rome was quickly followed by the appearance of the Mahometan antichrist. It seems that what is to be expected is the development^ of which we even now see the beginnings, within the old Christian civi- lization, of an uncontrollable and anarchical spirit of Unvlessness, which shall finally overthrow every form of civil government and destroy the whole existing fabric of society. It will be, on a practically world-wide and international scale, the supreme instance of that democratic decomposition which the student of history and of politics is familiar with from Plato and Aristotle onwards, in states great or small, in the later stages of their histor}^ The tendency towards it has not been as rapid in Christendom, as in the older pagan polities ; partly because of their larger size and their freer scope for colonial expansion ; but more because of the presence within them, or their identifi- cation with, the Christian Society, which is the salt of the earth. But when the salt shall have lost its savour, through the weaken- ing or loss of faith, and through the divisions of Christendom, it may well be that the natural downward tendencies of merely human organizations, stimulated and inflamed by the overgrowth of population, with its attendant hopeless misery for large classes of the people, may result in the complete overthrow of ro KaTe^ov ; which, after all, when unsupported by the presence of living moral and religious principle in its subjects, reposes, ultimately, only on brute force, and so must go down before stronger brute force in the h:inds of irresistible multitudes. Then, still on the lines of the old fjimiliar process, but on a grander scale, will be the opening for 6 Tvpavro'i, the world- wide popular hero, the world's messiah, the ' saviour of society,' who shall bring in the secular ' good time coming,' in which, having at length got rid by combined effort, under his leader- ship, of the incubus of a supernatural religion, and substituted for it the ' religion of humanity,' culminating in the worship of the ])ersonal Antichrist, as the head and representative of humauiiy, and, really, through him, of the Evil One who is NOTE XV.] The ' loosing of Satan! 549 behind him, the 'tribes of the earth/ amid much promise of unexampled material success and prosperity, shall ^•ive them- selves up to a wholly secular existence, aai'ing and drhiklufj, VHirrijhicj and giving in marriage^ with a firm persuasion that all things are to continue as they loere from the tjeginning of the creation, 2 Pet, iii. 4. Antecedently to this the Millennium (see above, Note XII. p. 524), closes with the loosing of Satan. This is probably a gradual process, coinciding with, and possibly dependent and consequent upon, that gradual decay of faith among once Chris- tian Nations which will culminate in The Jjjostasy, which is a condition precedent of the Manifestation of the Lnivless One. This Son of Perdition, a title which indicates his ultimate destiny, will be the visible earthly agent of the Evil One ; indeed, his all but incarnation, but that incarnation would imply a creative act, which he cannot compass. The nearest approach possible for him is his complete ' possession ' of one who, for the sake of the Devil's bribe, the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them, shall be willing to comply with the Devil's condition, All this will I give thee, if thou wilt fall doivn and worship me, as a pre- liminary to his own receiving, as the representative of the Devil, the worship of mankind, as the Man-God, the deified head of humanity, the accursed parody of the Christ. Archbishop Trench writes {Five Cambridge Sermons, Macmillan 1857, Serm. I. p. 18) ' '• God is man," or *' Man is God" — we must choose between these two sta,tements, and accept the tremendous con- sequences of our choice. A time in the development of the history of our race arrives, when these are the only alternatives for every man. And if we are willing to believe St. Paul and St. John, be sure, brethren, that the question in the end will present itself to every man in a very palpable form, and one from which there shall be no escape, but that he must answer it one way or the other. "Will he accept the God-man, Him who was God fi'om everlasting before He was made man ; or in lieu of Him, a man-god, a man that has lifted up himself, and been lifted up by the consent of his fellows, to this blasphemous height ? Nor is it Scripture alone which declares this : he must 550 Archbishop Trench on Antichrist. [app. be blind indeed to the moral signs of the times, who cannot per- ceive this mystery of iniquity, the last and the crowning- one, already working ; this world-wide conspiracy, the same of which David spake in the second Psalm, spreading through an apostate Christendom, which is ripening more and more for an open revolt from its Lord. " Man is God," this is the new Gospel, which is seeking to supplant the old, or " God is man." It needs hardly be observed that this new gospel is indeed atheism, and that veiled under thinnest disguise. For " Man is God," what after all does it amount to but this — "Man is man"? for they who so speak, having in this very utterance evidently renounced a belief in God, in a Being, that is, greater, better, holier, wiser than man, have no right to retain and juggle with a name which belongs to another and a higher range of things than any which they would acknowledge, to deck themselves with its spoils, and by aid of these to cover and conceal their own miserable poverty ; crouching, like some barbarous horde, beneath the ruins of temples and palaces which they themselves have destroyed. But leaving this, which is but by the way, the time will assuredly arrive when every man will have to choose for the one or the other. So it was at the first founding of the Church, when martyr and confessor first took their side, braving all and enduring all, rather than that they would give to any other man the honour and the worship which was rightfully their Lord's. So shall it be once more, amid fiercer fires and yet sharper trials, when the Church is passing through the final agony, " the great tribulation," which shall precede its entrance into glory. What the God-man is, in meekness, in patience, in love, in holiness, this the history of Jesus of Nazareth abund- antly declares. Nor are we left in total ignorance of what the man-god will prove. We need but to study him in the com- pletest manifestation which he has yet assumed, I mean, of course, in the deified emperors of Rome, a Tiberius, a Nero, or a Domitian, and we may a little guess the moral lineaments which he will wear. What altogether he will be, it is reserved for the final Antichrist, in his yet more complete opposition to all which is divine, in the final apotheosis of man, to declare; NOTE XV.] S/. Hippolytus on Antichrist. 551 when he, being' indeed incarnate sin, shall " as God sit in the temple of God, showing- himself that he is God," and being accepted and worshipped as such by all save the little company (and they will be a little one then), who shall recognize in Jesus of Nazareth the only begotten of the Father, and who in the strength of this confession, " I believe in Jesus Christ, the Son of God," shall overcome at last by the blocd of the Lamb, issuing triumphantly from those fires in which they shall have been purified and made white and tried. To this decision, to this solemn consummation, the world's moral history, " the times of the Gentiles," are travelling, and by ever faster strides.' The aim of the unseen agents and statesmen of the dark kingdom of evil has ever been at world-wide empire, the concentration of the world-power into one hand. This is, very evidently, becom- ing more and more possible, and probable. It seems that it will be realized, for a brief period, in the person of the Antichrist ; who will use it in the furious endeavour to destroy the Faith and the Church of Christ from off the earth, as the great obstacle in the way of his designs, and especially of the world's worship of himself. Among early Christian writers, Hippolytus Romanus (a. d. 200) has left a special treatise On Antichrist which recals passages in Origen's writings, and, as might be ex- pected from his having been a hearer of Irenaeus, has some points in common with the latter's treatise Against Heresies. He describes Antichrist, whom he identifies with the ' little tiorn' of Da7i. vii. 8, as in close particulars a parody of Christ, as a ' cir- cumcised Jew,' 'of the tribe of Dan,' who will ' send forth false apostles,' and ' gather together the scattered people,' and who, ' as the Saviour raised up and showed his holy flesh as a temple, will himself raise up again the temple of Stone in Jerusalem,' and 'restore again the kingdom of the Jews'; that he will be 'a tyrant and king,' 'ruling over the whole world,' 'a terrible judge,' ' a son of the devil,' ' a vessel of Satan,' ' a shameless fighter against God.' Describing (§ 54) his 'mode of action,' he says 'He will summon all the people (i. e. of tlie Jews) to him- self from every country of the dispersion, claiming them as his own special children, promising to restore (JmoKaTaaTi'iauv) the 552 \9/. Cyril of Jerusalem on Antichrist, [app. country and to raise up ag-ain their kingdom and people, that he may be worshipped as God by them ;' that (§ ^^ he will also ' summon to himself humanity {jiiv avOimTrorrjTa), wishing to claim for himself what does not belong to him, promising deliver- ance to all, though unable to save himself ; that (§ ^6) 'having gathered together to himself the people which everywhere has become unbelieving, he will, at their invitation, come to per- secute the saints, their enemies and opponents,' and ' being puffed up by the Jews, who seek at his hands vengeance against the servants of God, will begin to send out against the saints edicts for the destruction everywhere of all who will not adore and worship him as God.' Hence the ' great tribulation ' and fierce persecution ; which will, however, last only a short time, being cut shoi't by the Coming of Christ. All this shall befal (§ 43) in the last seven years, the last ' week of years,' of this Age ; the Persecution falling in the last half week, or three and a half years ; at which time also ' the two prophets, Enoch and Elias,' whom Hippolytus identifies with the Two Witnesses of the Apocalypse, will reappear, as the forerunners of the Second Coming, ' to proclaim the imminent Epiphany of Christ from heaven, and, working signs and wonders, to turn men to repent- ance because of their exceeding lawlessness and ungodliness.^ The XVth Catechetical Lecture of St. Cyril of Jerusalem (a. d. 350) is also on this special subject, and deserves the atten- tion of the student. It agrees, for the most part, very closely with St. Hippolytus' Treatise, which in all probability St. Cyril had seen ; for the works of Hippolytus were very widely circulated in the East^. On the passage (§ 15) in which he says that ' Anti- christ, wishing to deceive the Jews into the belief that he is the Christ, will show a zealous anxiety for the rebuilding of the Temple,' i.e. at Jerusalem, of which he understands 3 Thess. ii. 4, his Benedictine editor Tutteus notes that this was a very general opinion, and quotes St. Gregory Nazianzen, Oral, xlvii. as inter- preting the abomination of desolation standing in the holy place, of ' Antichrist, who will be believed by the Jews to be Christ, and ' See Dr. Salmon's article, ' Hippolytus Romanud ' in the Diet, of Chrktian Biography. NOTE XVI.] The Restoration of the Jews. 553 will be seated in the rebuilt Temple, and will seem to be Kinq- of the whole world.' It seems hardly possible to resist the belief that some remarkable movements among* the Jews may be con- nected with the close of the Times of the Gentiles^ until the fulfil- ment of which Jerusalem is to be trodden down of the Gentiles, St. Luke xxi. 24. Perhaps the world-diffused race may do for the furtherance of the aims of this pretender what they would not do for the religion of Jesus. Ancient Christians based their thought that this will be so on -57. John v. 43, If another shall come hi his oivn name, him ye will receive. It is quite conceiv- able that in future schemes of world-wide Empire the Jews may play a large part, especially in the financial aspects of any such movement. They have, alas, motives enough for a virulent spirit of revenge towards Christendom. But see the next Note. On the general subject of Antichrist the student may consult Dr. Doellinger's Appendix I, On the Histori/ of the Interpretation of the passage about the Man of Sin, in his First Age of the Chnrch, and the article ' Antichrist ' in J. H. Blunt's Bictionari/ of Doctrinal and Historical Theology. Note XVI. § 192. p. 388. The Restoration of the Jews. The whole subject of Inspired Prophecy relating to the des- tinies of the children of Abraham needs, ])erhaps, a careful re- investigation. It runs through the whole Bible Revelation from first to last; and a just view of it may be necessary to a just view of the whole with which it is so intimately bound up. It can hardly be denied that the general tenour of Old Testament pro- phetic language with regard to God's treatment of and purposes towards the Jews does point to a recovery and a restoration to His favour, and to their own country, which are beyond what has already happened in their past history, whether in the Return from the Captivity, or in the Maccabean deliverance from the godless tyranny of Antiochus Epiphanes, or in the offer to them of the kingdom of God and the admission of the believing remnant 554 ^-^^ Bible revelation concer7iing [app. into the Catholic Church, their merging* in it, the true Israel of God : i.e. it points to something which is still future, it is not yet exhaustively fulfilled. To think this is entirely consistent with the fullest ackuowledofment of a most g-lorious and blessed spiritual fulfilment, in the Christian Church, of the promises to Abraham and to David, and of the later prophecies to and con- cerning the People of Israel. The student should carefully consider, as a whole, the follow- ing passages : — I. The Law. The germinal parent passage, the promise to Abram, Gen. xii, i-8, compared with xxiii. 4, Acts vii. 3-5, and Heb. xi. 8, etc. : Gen. xiii. 1 4, etc. : The Solemn Covenant, xv. 7, etc., especially 18 : xvii. 8, the Sign of the Covenant: The Promise to Isaac, xxvi. 2-5 : To Jacob, xxviii. 13 : Jacob's faith in the Promise, xlvii. 29 ; xlviii. 4, 21 : Joseph's faith in the Promise, 1. 24. Exod. Vii. The promise of the immediate and primary ful- filment. Lev. xxvi. The enjoyment of the land depends on observance of the Covenant, cp. Deut. v. 33 and Deut. viii. and Deut. passim: Lev. xxvi. 33, The Scattering; 41, The jDromise, even then, to repentance. Num. xiv. The people, through their faithlessness, cannot enter the land. Deut. xxviii. 64, The Scattering : xxx. The promise to re- pentance. II. The Prophets. Joel, the first to speak of The Day of tite Lord, forewarns of judgment through a people great and strong, yet invites to repentance, promises restoration, and the Gift of the Holy Ghost, cp. Acts ii. 16, etc., and passes on to the Final End in the Judgment of the Gentiles, and the New Jerusalem. His prophecy in fact is a germinal epitome of the whole sweep of inspired prophecy, later prophecies, even to the Apocalypse inclusive, being but the expansion of its topics. Amos, Warnings of awful judgment against Israel and Judah, [ yet with the promise of Restoration, ix. 11, etc. Ho&ea, i. and ii., God's Church guilty of whoredom ; conse- NOTE XVI.] the Future of the Jews. 555 quent judgment, }X't promise of Restoration ; iii. 4-5, Restora- tion : so also vi. 1-3, xi, 8-1 1, and xiv. Micah, ii. 12, 13, Salvation of a Remnant : iv. 1-8, The final Consummated State, in the New Jerusalem; (observe the identity of iv. 1-3, with Isaiah ii. 2-4) : vii. 20, The sureness of the promise, a verse reproduced in the Betiediclus, Lu. i. 70, etc. Isaiah, i. 24 : ii. 2-4 : iv. 2-6, Restoration of the Divine Presence : vi. 13, Even at the worst a stem remains: xi, xii. (xi. 4 is applied by St. Paul, 2 Thess. ii. 8, to the destruction of Antichrist) : xiv. 1-3, Return from Captivity, not necessarily exhaustively fulfilled in any past returns : xxv, xxvi, point to the Palingenesia, xxv. 8, 9 and xxvi. 19, looking on to the Resurrection (as Dan. xii. 2, 3, 13) as a necessary part of it: XXX, Judgment followed by Restoration, so xxxi, xxxii : xxxii, The out-pouring of the Holy Spirit, cp. xliv. 1-5 : xxxiii. 15-23, Restoration : xxxiv, The Judgment of the Anti-Christian world: xxxv, The Palingenesia : xl. 1-12, The great Fore- runner of the Advent, cp. Mai. iii. iv, fulfilled primarily, but not exhaustively in St. John Baptist : also xlix. 14, etc.; Ii. 9 to Iii. 12 ; liv, Iv ; Ixi-lxiv ; Ix. 17, etc. and Ixvi. Zephaniah si)eaks of judgment, invasion, the conversion of the Gentiles, the salvation of a remnant of Israel, and the Restora- tion of Zion and Jerusalem. Habakkuk, ii. 2, 3, comparing Heb. x. 33, and the LXX ; also ii. 14 ; and Obadiah 15-21. In Jeremiah the passages to be noted are iii. i2-i8 ; xvii. 25, 26, compared with xxii. 4 ; xxiii. 3-8 ; xxiv. 4-7 ; xxx, xxxi; and xxxiii. 14-22. In Ezekiel xi, 16-20, compared with xxxvi. 24, etc.; xvi. 60-63 ; XX, 40-44 ; xxxvii ; and chs. xl-xlviii. Daniel speaks much of the final time of trouble (xii. i, cp, xi. 33) under Antichrist, of whom Antiochus Epiphanes was an eminent type ; hints, xi. 45, at his opposition to Christ, cp. viii. 1 1 and 25, his suppression of Christian worshiji in the (restored and Christian) Sanctuary at Jerusalem, viii. 11, xi. 31, with the help of the unbelieving Jews, xi. 31 ; his substitu- tion of his own temple-palace in its place, xi. 45. But he does not dwell on any pre-Advent restoration of believing Chi istiau Jews, — though his language about the Sanctuary, and the daily 556 6"/. Pauts language in Rom. xi. [app. sacrifice, which Antichrist destroys, implies it — but passes on to the Resurrection, in which he is promised a share. The three last prophets, the prophets of the Return from Bab}lou, speak, no doubt, of the joys and blessings of that restoration, and point onwards to the Coming of Christ, of which it was a type and a pledge. Yet they do so in language which blends in prophetic fore-shortening the glories of the First and of the Second Coming, and so is not yet exhausted. Observe especially Haggai ii. 6-9 and 20-23, on which see Dr. Pusey's commentary; Zechariah, ii. 10-13, especially re- garded as spoken by the Eternal Son ; viii. 1-8 (comparing 2 Sam. vii. 11 and Rev. xxi. 7), and viii. 20-23 '■> ^^^^ xii-xiv, where see Pusey on xii. i, xiv. 2, 4, 5, etc. ; and Malachi iii. and iv, where see Pusey on iii. i, 2, on the ' blending of the first and second coming of our Lord;' and on iv. 5, on the return of Elijah. The language of St. Paul in Romans xi. seems absolutely to forbid the thought that these prophecies have already, and, indeed, long since, been exhaustively fulfilled. Eighteen cen- turies of subsequent history, exhibiting the Jewish Race shut uj) indeed together in unbelief, yet still guarded throughout in their marvellous national and religious distinctness, only make the Apostle's inspired language to be now even more remarkable than when it was uttered. He speaks of some future recovery which shall be, as it were, life from the dead. How are we to understand this expression ? One speaks with hesitation. On these subjects thought moves' among mystei'ies which the future course of events alone can fully unravel. Any suggestions must be tendered with the humblest submission to the corrective thought of other believing students of Holy Scripture, and to the ultimate judgment of the collective Christian Body. Yet God wills that the intimations which He has vouchsafed to His Church in the sure word of ])rophecij should be cjiven heed to, as unto a light shining in a dark place ; and the more so, as the end draws nearer and the times grow darker. For us, and for those that come after us, to do so is a duty exactly analogous to that of the first generation of (especially Jewish) believers, with NOTE XVI.] The Final Combination against Christ. 557 reg-avd to the enig-matic hints of the Olivet Prophecy ; the duty of watching the signs of the times in a spirit of faith in His sure deliverance at the moment of sorest need, a faith which in tlieir case was fully justified by the event. Looking then in this spirit at St. Paul's language, may it mean that, in the predicted, and now visibly incipient decay of faith among Gentile Churches, a movement towards faith in Christ on the part of the Jews, or some considerable proportion of them, may revive Christianity in the world ; and that, coincidently with the return of the Jews in large numbers, whether with Christward tendencies or other- wise, to their own land, Jerusalem, when the times of the Gentiles shall have heen fulfilled, may become once more, through the faith of Christian Jews, the centre of Christian life in the world ? If so, it would naturally be the great object of attack for the mighty unbelieving world-power, then combining the forces of the de-christianised Gentile nations with the races, the Gog and Magog of prophecy, which have always resisted Christian influences, and with the still unbelieving Jews who seek a false, a merely earthly Messiah, and find him — in Antichrist. To this Bev. XX. 9 seems to point, speaking of a time, evidently the very climax of the last time, when, after the close of the millennial times of the Gentiles, after the loosing of Satan, the camp (irapefx- /SoAij) (f the Saitits and the beloved citij, are threatened by alien hosts, and the typical period of Ilezekiah, face to face with the insolence of Rabshakeh and the might of Sennacherib, is repro- duced, on a grander scale ; but with like result, in the end ; though, apparently, not without the temporary capture of the Christianized Jerusalem, the profanation of its restored (Christian) Temple by the aljomination of desolation, and its conversion into the Temple- Palace of the temporarily successful Antichrist, who, seated there, will claim the worship of mankind. Compare Daniel viii. II, xi. 31, etc., and 45 (on which last see Speakers Com- mentan/) and 2 Thess. ii. To some such events the Apostles evidently looked forward, with a faith which, we cannot doubt, was grounded on the prophecies of old, as those prophecies were interpreted to them, First, by the general view of the Old Testament imparted to the Church by the Lord Himself after 558 The Re-appearance of Elijah. [a pp. His Resurrection, and, Secondly, by their own inner spiritual illumination, the mind of Christ, which they had, 1 Cor. ii. 15, the unction from the Holy One, i John ii. 20. Should we be right in connecting' with these events the prophetic intimation, which so significantly closes the Volume of the Old Testament [Mai. iv.), of the re-appearance of the Prophet Elijah ? It would seem so. If the Apostles and disciples in general were aware of the disclosure made by the angel Gabriel to Zacharias in the Temple that his child should go hefore the Lord their God in the spirit and power of Elijah ; or of the Lord's saying. 81. Mat. xi. 14, to the multitudes concerning John, — If ye will receive (ei deXere be^aadai) it (or, him), this is Elijah which is to come: He that hath ears to hear, let him hear, — still they did not take in its real meaning, nor discern its fulfilment. Accordingly, after the appearance of Elijah at the Transfiguration, they very naturally reminded the Lord of the prophecy, and of the teaching of the Scribes founded upon it. His answer is remarkable. While He said indeed that Elijah was already come, — meaning, as they were then led to perceive, the Baptist, i.e. in the spirii and power of Elijah, — He yet said that Elijah indeed cometh first, and shall restore all things, aTTOKaTa(TTi](Tet iravra. Compare St. Peter's language as to the dTTo/caTdcrracrt? iravToov, in Acts iii. 21, the only other passage in which this phrase occurs, and then with a distinctly future reference. Christ's words leave room for, if indeed they do not directly assert, a further coming of Elijah, which is still future. He had come, and he had not come. See the Baptist's own answer, Joh7i i. 21. In spirit and power he had come, through and in the Baptist. In literal, personal, visible, bodily presence he had not yet come ; but will come, in the End. Are we permitted in respect of this, and of some parallel cases in Holy Scripture, to conjecture something like this. That, had it been possible for the faith of man to have risen fully to the thought that, in spirit and power, in idea. Saint John Baptist, than whom among those horn of women there had not arisen a greater, was Elijah ; and so to have accepted him as such, obeyed his teaching, and so been led to embrace Jesus with heart-surrender- ing loyalty as the Christ, The Son of God, The King of Israel ; NOTE XVI.] Literal fulfilments for the iinspiritiial. 559 tben no more had been needed ; the prophecy had been, not partially and imperfectly, but sufficiently, fulfilled, and so ex- hausted ; the Gospel of the Khigdom had been fully accepted, first, by a loyal Israel, then by the g-eneral world ; the Kingdom of God had fully come, in the Regeneration of the world ? Jf yc will to receive it (or, kim), this is {avros iarw) Elijah tohich is to come. The idea is real to those who, morally and spiritually, are able to receive it. And the initial requisite is amoral willingness, €1 64X€T€, such as was in those few devout souls of that generation who really waited for the consolation of Israel, whose er/es there- fore saw God's salvation, and who thankfully knew that they saw it. Full childlike faith realizes all, even now, and lives in Heaven now ; for to it the New Jerusalem, the Catholic Church, is already in the midst of than, and they in the midst of it. The Kingdom of God is within than ; though it has not come with observation to the general world. The pure iti heart see God. But they, that generation of Israel as a whole, did not will to receive the stern preacher of repentance and holiness ; and so to them he was not Elijah which was to come. So there must be for them, and for their unbelieving descendants, a literal bodily personal return of the actual visible Elijah ; as also, after it, of the Son of God, when every eye, in the most absolutely literal sense, shall see Him, and they also which pierced Him. A spiritual fulfilment sufl[ices for the spiritually-minded ; for the rest there must be a bodily fulfilment. So when the Lord comes in visible glory, it will not be to or for the spiritual, who, by faith and sacraments, shall have been, and shall be. His very own, members of His Body, of His flesh and of His bones. For all such, if already departed, shall be brought 7oith Him; and if still alive and remaining on earth, shall be caught up to meet Him in the air, and, changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, into Resurrection glory, shall also come with Ilim, and with Him shall sit on His Throne, oxiA. judge the world, when He shall come to be glorijied in His saints, and to he man'elled at in all them that believe, in that day, 3 Thess. ii. 10 ; cp. St. Judc, 14, 15. Even now, of course, God and Christ and the spiritual world are really as near as they will be when Christ shall come again. Believers realise this. The visible appear- 560 The Fathers on the Return of Elijah, [app. ance, within the conditions of this present age, and to the bodily eye of those still in the flesh, is, perhaps, needed only for those — the last and worst generation of unbelievers — who cannot otherwise be made to acknowledge Him to Whom evcrij knee must bote, and Whom everi/ tongue must confess. And to such His manifestation of Himself must be as a consuming fire. From this His previous manifestation of Himself to His own redeemed, within the veil, whether at the last for the purposes of their return to earth with Him, or at any intervening time, is a distinct thing, alike in nature and in time. Certainly the Fathers speak of a visible re-appcarance of Elijah in his own person as to be expected before the future visible Advent of the Lord. Dr. Pusey, in a Note to his two Bristol Sermons of 1850 on ' The Danger of Riches,' remarking first, of our Lord's saying Elijah shall first come, and shall restore all things, that ' When He so spake, John was beheaded,' pi'occcds to say, ' Hence Justin Martyr speaks positively : " Our Lord hatli in His teaching delivered this very thing, saying that Elias shall come ; and ive [Christians as opposed to Jews] know that this shall be, when our Loi-d Jesus Christ is about to come in glory from heaven." Dial. c. Tryph. § 49.' Dr. Pusey refers also to two places in Tertullian, De Res. Carnis, 22, and De Anima, 35 ; to St. Jerome on Mat. xi. 14 (Migne's ed. vol. viii. p. 72), a passage apparently referring to the last-mentioned place of Tertullian ; to St. Greg. Nyss. Testim. adv. Jud. t. ii. p. 120 ; Auct. de Prom, et Praed. Dei, c. 15 ; to Theodoret and St. Cyril Alex, on Malachi ; Andreas Csesar on Rev. ; and to St. Greg. Mor. XIV. 23, on Job xviii. 20 (Migue, i. 1053); Mor. XX. 34, on Job xxx. 23 (Migne, ii. 178) ; and Homil. VII. in JEvangelia, § i, on John i. 19-28 (Migne, ii. iioo) — as all ' speaking positively ' of a future personal bodily re-appearance of the great Prophet Elijah as the foreruuner of the Second Advent. The first two of the three places in St. Greg, are remarkable, for in both he distinctly expresses the idea that Elijah, since he did not die, is still in the flesh, in which he will return, to die under the persecution of Antichrist, ' Etsi ad coelum raptus Elias esse perhibetur, mortem tamen distulit, non evasit .... Veiiiet restiturus omnia, quia ad hoc nimirum NOTE XVI.] Some join Enoch with Elijah. 561 huic mundo restitultur ut et praedicatiouis muuora impleat, et carnis debitum sol vat ;' and in the first— like TertuUian, de Anima, 50, St. Hil, in Matt. xvii. and St. Ambrose, in Psal. xlv — he couples Enoch with Elijah, saying of both, ' ad medium revocabuntur, et crudclitatis ejus [Antichristi] saevitiam in sua adhuc mortal! came passuri sunt.' This would seem hard to reconcile with what is said about Enoch in Ileh. xi. 5, and with the appearance of Elijah together with Moses in jlory {Luke ix. 30) at the Transfiguration. St. Hippolytus similarly connects Enoch and Elijah, whom he speaks of as the two witnesses of Bev. xi. and the ' forerunners and heralds of the Epiphany of Christ from heaven ; ' see him On Antichrist, 43, &c. ; also in the treatise (numbered 14 in Lagarde's ed.) On the End of the World, &c., § 21 ; also On Daniel (Lagarde, 59, p. 160) § 22, compare also § 42. Dr. Pusey also, in the same note, quotes St. Augustine, as follows, * What John was to the Fii'st Advent that will Elias be to the Second Advent. As there are two Advents of the Judge, so there are two heralds : the Judge indeed one and the same, but the heralds two,' Ilom. on St. John, iv. § 5 ; and, again, * It is exceedingly well kno\yi (ccleberrimum) in the discourses and hearts of the faithful that thi'ough this Elias, the great and wondrous Prophet, the law being explained to them, the Jews will believe in the true Christ, i. e. our Christ. For with good reason is his coming hojied before the Coming of the Saviour as Judge, who now too is, with good reason, believed to be alive ; ' also St. Chrysostom, as follows, ' When He saith " Elias indeed cometli and will restore all things," He means Elias himself, and the conversion of the Jews which is then to take place ; but when He saith, "Which was for to come," He calls John Elias, with regard to the manner of his ministration For as the other shall be the forerunner of the Second Advent, so was this of the First.' St. Chrys. on St. Matt. Ilom. Ivii. i. See also Puscy's full note on Mai. iv. 5, in his Minor rr(q)hets. But all this is yet within the limits of this pi-esent age, though at the very close of it. Tiius little time is left for the development of results from any revival of religion in the world through any turning of the Jews towards Christ. It is cut short o o 562 The Restoration, in ' the Regeneration! [app. by furious persecution, perhaps exasperated by the revival itself; crushed by the temporary success of world-wide imperial secular power wielded by Antichrist, whom in the very darkest moment of his apparently complete triumph over Him the Lord shall destroy %o\th the hrightness of His Comhig. It is therefore on the other side of that Coming, and of the General Resurrection and Judgment, that we are to look for the final full and permanent realization of the promised glories of the great Regeneration, as they are pictured in the far-reaching prophetic anticipations of both the Old and New Testament. Then it may be that the revelation of the mystery latent in St. Paul's reference in Rom. xi. 32, to purposes of mercy in the mind of God towards the many generations of Jews who, during the tines of the Gentiles, have all been shut up together in nnhel'ief, may light up with wondrous meaning the Apostle's anticipation of life from the dead, through their recovery^, in that Resurrection-state the hope f^/^ which, as the promise made of God unto their fathers [Acts xxvi. 6), lay so deep in the heart of religious Jews before and at the time of Christ ; which St. Paul so earnestly longed that he might hy any means attain iinto [Philipp. iii. 11) ; for the sake of which he exercised himself to have ahvays a conscience void of offence [Acts xxiv. 14-16) ; icnto which, he said, our twelve tribes, instantly serving God night and day, hope to come (xxvi. 7). ' It is not, of course, supposed that St. Paul's meaning is that all the Jews who since Christ have been born into an inlierited condition of unbelief, through in- vincible ignorance, will, in the unseen state, now or hereafter, be brought to a saving knowledge of and belief in Christ ; but that, in the case of such as have lived good lives according to their opportunities, and their natural and Old Testament knowledge of God and of His will, their inherited and, humanly speaking, inevitable unbelief will be no bar to the completion of their salvation by the revelation to them of the Christ Whom they had negatively rejected, if,norantly, in unbelief. Perhaps we may parallel this principle of the Divine dealings with the case of the mere outside heathen, who have never heard of Christ, and have had only the natural light and law of our common humanity to guide them, either in belief or practice. To such as, in that condition, have, in however blind feeliiir/ after God, followed that light and obeyed that law, and not, in hard selfishness, rejected and trampled them under foot, we are compelled by St. Matt. xxv. 31, &c., and Fomans i. 18 to ii. 16, to believe, with thankful rejoicing, that mercy will be shown, and acceptance ; and that, through the unknown Christ, at length graciously revealed to them, a place, most blessed albeit not the highest, will be opened to them, in the Eternal Kingdom of God. NOTE XVII.] 563 Note XVII, § 200. The Surrender of the Kingdom. The one explicit passage on this mysterious subject is i Cor. XV. 20-28. It is important to observe that St. Paul is there clearly speaking-, as he is also in the later verses, 45 etc., of Christ in His human nature, as the Second Adam, the Pattern, the Ideal Man, the Head of Regenerate Humanity. Hence there is no question of the Divine Royalty and Kingdom which eternally belong to Him as the Only Begotten Son ; and so no opening to the heretical thought of Marcellus of Ancyra and Photinus, who, ignoring alike ' His prc-eternal existence and His endless kingdom ' (j^v ■npoaL(i)i>tov vuap^lv re koL ti]v aTiXevTrjTov jBaaiXeMV, Socrates, S. E. II. 19) spoke of His Godhead as only a sort of temporary 'extension of the Godhead of the Father' {iKraaiv Tiva Ti]i Tov Tlarpos 6€6Ti]TOi, Theodoret. II. 10) to be withdrawn at the close of the Dispensation (^ix^ra T't]v a-vixiraaav oiKovoixiav ttclXlv avacnTa(T9?jvaL Kal crvaTaXijvai upb'i tov 6i6v, e£ ovirep (^erddrj, Jbid.), and of the Son's ' being resolved into the Father ' [ava- \vea9aL, St. Cyril. Hierosol. Catech. Ilium, xv. 30) \ The king- dom spoken of, of which His future subjection to the Father will be the delivery to the Father, is to be associated in our thoughts entirely with His incarnate life and redeeming mediatorial work. ' See Cyril's whole passage on this subject ; also St. Ambrose, De Fide, V. cap. xii-xv. (fd, Migne, vol. ii. col. 677). Note especially § 148, 'Si ut Filius hominis regnuin acccpit Dei Filius, ut Filius utique houiinis etiain traditurus est quod accepit : Si ut Filius hominis tradit, ergo et ut Filius homiuis subjectionem, utique per conditioutm carnis, non per majestatem divinitatis, agnoscit ; ' and 154, 'Nou utique secundum divinitatem subjectus est Dei Filius;' and 165, 'Si per naturam subjiceretur, semper subjectus maneret : cum vero subjiciendus dicatur in tempore, dispensatioiiis ergo susceptae, non perpetuae infirmitatis erit ilia subjectio ; ' and 172,' Secundum humanae naturae assunqjtionem erit ilia sub- jectio.' See also Archdeacon Norris' note, in his 'New Tcdnmmt,^ on the place in I Cor. XV, and his reference to St. Chrysostom. Bernardin of Picquigny writes well, in his Triplex Exposilio, on i Cor. xv. 25, etc., ' Oportet Christum a dextris Dei sedentem regnare eo quo coepit niodo . . . usqucquo Pater aeternus, suura adimplens promissum, ponet oinnes ejus initidcos sub pedibus ejus, id est, usque ad finem mundi . . . Tunc et ipse Filius, ut homo, cum omnibus suis, id est, Christus caput Ecclesiae, cum omnibus membris suis, subjicietur Deo ; Deuraque gratus adorabit, laudabit, et glorificabit in acternum.' 0 0 3 564 The Bible sequence of ' The Last Things', [app. It is to be elated from His Glorification and Exaltation in His Resurrection and His Ascension ; which Glorification and Ex- altation are the reward of His Sufferings and of His perfect obedience unto death. It is that which is spoken of in Psalm ex. and in Juh)i xii. 23, xiii. 31; Matt. xxvi. 64, xxviii. 18, Acts ii. 2,?,) iii- 21, v. 31, vii. ^^, ix. 3, x. 2,^; Rom. xiv. 9 ; Ejih. i. 20-23; Philijjp. ii. 9-1 1 ; Col. i. 18-20, iii. i ; Hetj. ii, 5, etc., X. 12, 13 ; and Rev. i. 13-18, v. 6-14, vi. 2, vii. 9-17, xiv. 14, xvii. 14, xix. 11-16, XX. 11-T3, compared with Matt. xxv. 31, etc. It is given to Him as Man, for the purpose of overcoming all evil and all opposition to Himself and to God, and so of ultimately realising the Divine Ideal of Man and Man's World in their perfect conformity to God's Will, and to His great Purpose in their Creation. It is noticeable how the inspired Apostolic thought recurs to the language of Psalm viii., as the Divine Ideal of Man, the great Charter of Humanity, first realized in Christ the Second Adam, and, through Him and His completed Work, to be realized in His members also. Eph. i. 22 quotes Ps. viii. 6 ; so does Ileb. ii. 5) &c., and notably the great passage 1 Cor. xv. 27, 28. The outward token of the completion of Christ's Work, of the great Consummation, for which all Creation, groaning and travailivg in pain together, waits with us, is the redemption of our body [Rom. viii. 23), the final victory over tJie last enemy ^ in the Resurrection, which, immediately following the final overthrow of the Dragon, the Beast, and the False Prophet, the trinity of evil {Rev. xv. 13, xix. 20, xx. 10), immediately precedes the casting of Death and Hades into the lake of fire {Rev. XX. 14). Then the New Heaven and Earth, and the descent upon it of Christ with His redeemed and glorified Church, the holy city, the new Jerusalem, wherein He shall reign over the House of Jacob for ever, and of His Kingdom there shall be no end {Luhe i. 33). Then under Christ as the Head of every man, the true King of Men, the King of Kings and Lord of Lords, the Kingdom and dominion and the greatness of the Kingdom under the whole heaven shall be given to the People cf the Saints of the Most High {Dan. vii. 27), in whom are realized at once the characters and the promised blessings of the Eight Beatitudes. NT.xvii.] CJuns£ s abiding Presenceo7i the' New Earth! 565 So far all seems plain. But what is not generally realized, it is to be feared, among" us now is this — That the Bible Revelation distinctly ends with Christ on earth, the renewed earth, and that for ever, as the home and dwelling'-place of that Regenerated Humanity of which He is the abiding- Head, in that Humanity of His which, including His Mystical Body vitally united to Himself, is the true Temple of the Lord God Almighti/, John ii. 21 ; Col. ii. 9 ; Bev. xxi. 22; i Cor. vi. 19, iii. i6 ; 2 Cor. vi. i.6; Ej)h. ii. 21. The characteristic and all-inclusive ultimate bles- sing, as promised alike in the Old Testament pictures of the Final State and in the New Testament echoes of them, is ever this, The Tabernacling of God with men, so that He shall dwell with them, and they shall he His People, and God Himself shall be with them {^ EmmanueV)^ their God [Rev. xxi. 3). The abiding guarantee of this supreme blessing is the Presence on earth of the Incarnate Son, the Second Adam, and also the abiding Emmanuel. Earth will then be part of Heaven ; the contrast, opposition, or distinction between them for ever done away, God's will being done on earth as it is in Heaven, and so His hinrjdom fully covie. For Heaven is no special distinct locality in the great universe of space ; but is wherever God can fully manifest Himself to His fully receptive creature. And that He will do this on earth to Man, when sin, the one barrier to His gracious and loving Manifestation of Himself in and through His Son, is done away, when the Son's work for Man is com- plete— this is the final sum, and the most blessed closing assur- ance, of the Bible Revelation. I humbly believe it to be a great drawback from the strength and definiteness of our faith and hope that this is not more realized among us than it is ; and that the minds of so many are possessed with vague ideas of some final di.sappearanee of this present earth- — ideas iavoured by the misrenderings of our English Version, which speaks of the end of the world where it should speak of the close of the age — and of some shadowy Heaven — no one knows where — to follow ; a heaven of a shadowy so-called merely ' spiritual' happiness — no one knows what — but something utterly unlike and alien from our present human social existence. The language of the Lord's 566 The primitive belief, yewish and Christian, [app. Prayer, .and of His Parables of the Talents and the Pounds, the language of St. Paul in Romans viii., and of general prophetic description, re-stamped by New Testament Inspiration in 2 Tet. iii. and J\ev. xxi., xxii., are the standing warrant of a much more glorious and definite anticipation, a far more truly human, real^ and presently influential hope. This great thought has the support, if anything were needed beyond Holy Scripture, of early traditional belief alike among Christians and Jews. Mede says {Paraphrase and Exi). of 2 Pet. iii, AVorks, vol. ii. p. 754) that it was one ' E.. Samuel, one of the Doctors of the Gemara or Gloss of their Talmud, which was finished about 500 years after Christ,' who im- peached and opposed, in the latter times, 'the more ancient opinion and tradition of the Renovation of the World ; ' and that * After this time there appears to have been amongst the Jews a sect of the followers of the opinion of this E. Samuel, which at length was greatly advanced by the authority of that learned Maimonides .... Nevertheless Aben Ezra, who lived not long after Maimonides, maintained still the contrary, as othei's also did ; ' and he mentions particularly a Tractate of R. Isaac Aharhinel, 'wherein all the arguments brought against the Renovation are confuted.' Among the Fathers, St. Cyril of Jerusalem, in the 4th cent., witnesses to the same belief in his XVth Catechesis, § 3, saying that ' on the glorious coming of our Lord Jesus Christ from heaven, yiVerai tov Koajiov tovtov crui/re'Xeia kol 6 yevrjTos ovros Ko'cr/xoy TTukiv avaKaivoTvoiflrai. eVftS?) yap Koi (f)6opa Koi KXonrj Koi jjLOi^ela Koi Tiav fl8os apapTLMV fx^^l *""' '''1^ "YV^ '^"' aipara e(^' a1p.a(nv ejJ.l-yq, iv Tw Koapcp Lva p.r] fieivrj to Bavpaarov tovto olKrjrrjpiov avopias TreTrXrjpcupevov, irapfpxfTai 6 Koapos ovros, ifa 6 KaXKioiv dva8ei)(djj.' And he speaks, ibid., of a Resurrection of Nature as well as of Man, "ElXijCTti Tovs ovpavovs 6 Kvpios, ov^ tva airoXia-rj tovtovs, nXX' iva avTovs ttuXiv KoXXiovas eyeiprj .... dvdaTaaiv irpoaboKoipfu koi tS)U ovpavoyu .... UapfpxfTai Toivvv ra (paivopeva, Ka\ tpxerai to. 7rpoa8oKU)peva rd rovrcov KaWlova. Similarly Origen, whom Mede (vol. ii. p. 766) quotes as say- ing. Contra Celsum, lib. Ill, Ovk dpvovpfda t6 Kadapcnov nvp, koi Trjv TOV Kocrpov cf)6opau, tnl Kadaipeafi Tijs KOKiai koX dvaKaivaicTeus tov NOTE XVII.] of the 'Renovation of the World! 567 TTHin-or, words more noticeable because Origan was a strong opponent of all ideas of a carnal millennium on earth, such as those of Cerinthus, Papias, and Nepos (if Eusebius' report of them, //. E. iii. 28, 39, and vii. 24, is to be trusted) or those ascribed to ApoUinaris, for whose views see Epiphanius, III. 26. The passage which ^lede quotes from Tertullian, Adv. Mar- don. III. 24, and a strange passage in Lactantius, Inst. Div. VII, 24-26, both obscure the whole subject by placing the Advent of Christ, the Resurrection and Judgment, and the Descent of the New Jerusalem before, and the Reign of Christ and His Saints, and His dwelling with them, on a happy and peaceful earth, during, the Millennial Period. This involves Lactantius in the express assei'tion of the co-existence on earth of the glorified saints in the risen state with the ' nationes,' their subjects, still ' in corporibus,' in the natural life, though preserved from death through the Thousand Years, after which the ' princeps daemonum,' being loosed, will seduce them into a war against the Holy City which will end in their utter de- struction. All this is absurd. It arises from i. The taking the First JResurrection of Rev. xx. 5 to be a literal bodily Resur- rection' ; and, 2. The transference to the Millennial Period of features that belong only to the Final, the Consummated and heavenly State. The Millennial Period ended, Lactantius says, ' Renovabitur mundus a Deo, et coelum complicabitur, et terra mutabitur ; et transformabit Deus homines in similitudinem angelorum, et erunt candidi, sicut nix ; et versabuntur semper in conspectu Omnipotentis, ct Domino suo sacriticabunt, et servient in aeternum. Eodem tempore fiet secunda ilia et publica omnium rcpurrcctio, in qua excitabimtur injusti ad cruciatus sempiternos.' These last words bear witness to the expectation of the ' Renovation of the "World ; ' but it is impos- sible that cither Tertullian or Lactantius can have had the actual text of the Apocalypse before them while they wrote as they did on the general subject. St. Augustine writes, De Civ. Dei, xx. 14 (Migne, VII. 679), * Peracto quippc judicio tunc esse desinet hoc coelum et haec terra, quando incipiet esse coelum novum ct terra nova. ' See St. Augustine's argument that it is a spiritual Resurrection, De Civ. Dei, XX. vii. vii., Migne, vol. vii. col. 665. 568 The 'Stcrrender of the Kingdom'. [app. Mutatione namque rerum, nou omui modo interitu tiansibit hie muiidus. Unde et Apostolus ait, Praeterit enim fi(jura Jiiijus mundi, volo vos sine soUicitudine esse. Figura ergo praeterit, non natura.' On this passage Bisliop Newton, Pro2)hecies, Dissert, xxv. p. 597, writes thus, ' And indeed why should the new heaven and the new earth be destroyed, when there shall l)e no more sin, when "there shall be no more curse," when " there shall be no more death 1 " The heaven and the earth of old (2 Fet. iii. 5) for the wickedness of man perished by water : " The heaven and the earth which ai'e now, are re- served unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men ; " but why should not the new heaven and the new earth be preserved, " wherein dwelleth I'ighteousness % " ' It would seem then that the Surrender of the Kingdom is co- incident with the Return, in fulfilment of the Angels' predic- tion, Acts i. II, of the Second Adam, the Man Christ Jesus from the Right Hand of the Father, to the Renovated Earthy token lie shall have put down all rule and all authority and power, and put all things under his feet. For this exercise of power such as He has wielded from His Ascension till His Return there will be no further need, when the great Purpose for which it is wielded shall have been for ever secured. As Man, the Head and Kins- of His Elect Church and of redeemed Humanity, His place will be for ever with Man, in Man's new and everlasting home, the gloriously regenerated earth, to guide and direct the progressive moral and spiritual development, through the agency of His great instrument, His Elect Church, His mystical Body, of the myriad millions of rh. IQvi], the uncovenanted saved. For this work He will re'ujn over the House of Jacol) for ever, and of His Kingdom there shall he no end. While He will be the Head of every man (i Cor. xi. 3), God will be His Head (ib.), and as re- deemed Humanity will be Christ, s, so Christ will be God's (i Cor. iii. 23). Subjection, in perfect submissive and active conformity of will, has ever, in the days of His Flesh, and since, been the mark, and indeed the very moral perfection, of the Son of Man. We need not therefore stumble at the revelation that, when the Divine Ideal in the Creation of Man shall have been in Him NOTE XVII.] Christ, the Head of redeemed HiLmanity , 569 fully realized, it will be so still. Such filial subjection and conformity are the very crown of Human Nature; and must therefore be chiefly seen in Ilim, the Pattern. Nay, it will be the very seal and token, indeed, in a sense, the cause, of His abid- ing- Royal Supremacy over the Race He so loves, and for whose sake He was content to sanctrfy Himself, and. Son though He were, and i//e Captain of oxir Salvation, to learn obedience hij the things which lie suffered, and, heing made perfect through sufferings, so to bring His ma7ii/ brethren %inio glory ; a glory of which, for Him and for them, the very essence is perfect subjection to God, in supreme love to the Father, ^oith all the heart, with all the soul, and with all the mind. ' Sancti subjiciuntur Deo ut patri; Deum laudant, amant, g-lorificant, ut omnium bonorurn auctorem. Deus sanctos dilig-it ut filios, omnium suorum bonorum posses- sione replet et beatificat, ut suae felicitatis haeredes. O beatum commercium ! O felicem sanctorum Deo subjectionem ! Erg-o Deo subjici et servire, regnare est ; ncc est alia sanctorum bea- titudo, aut aliud rcg-num aeternum quam Deo subjici, servire, Deum amare, adorare, laudare' (Bernardinus a Piconio, in i Cor. XV. 28). Such, it would seem, will be the final expanded result, after slow evolution, of the mysterious intimation, the typical seci*et, which lay hid in the Presence of the Shekinah Cloud and Light upon the Mercy-seat in the Holy of Holies in the Tabernacle of Israel in the Wilderness. The process of its evolution may be traced through such marked stages as the following : — The Con- quest of the Heathen Races and the Possession of the Promised Land, events typical of the saints' final Inheritance of the Harth ; The fuller development of the Theocratic Idea — taking a more visible and outward form because of the backwardness of their unsi)iritual hearts — in the Holy City, with its perniiinent Temple, and with the glorious Palace and extended rule of its Peaceful King, in the Solomonic era ; all true and most significant types (see Psalms xlv. and Ixxii.) though earthly, and so partial and imperfect, and destined to be broken and cast aside ; Next, in more spiritual wise, through the Captivity, and then the Disper- sion, resulting in an extended currency of better moral and spiritual 5 70 binds it to God tJirongh His Incarnation. ideas among the Nations; Then through the Catholic Church of tJie Times of the Gentiles, a spiritual Israel of God spread through- out the world, for the redemption of such among tJie Nations as will to be redeemed. All these are stages working upward to a glorious, a complete, a permanent fulfilment, in the Regeneration. The outward and visible sign, the eternal guarantee and secu- rity, of the final completed blessedness of redeemed Humanity ; the indestructible conduit and channel, where through as through a Sacrament, God will ever inflow into tJie Saints, and overflow upon t/ie Nations ; will be the actual Presence in flesh, upon the renovated earth, of the One Mediator, the Incarnate Son, the God- Man, the Shekinah, the Image, and Glory, of God, Emmanuel, God with us, our King, Perfect God and Perfect Man, the Head of every man, as God of Him. GLORIA IN EXCELSIS DEO, ET IN TERRA PAX HOMINTBUS BONAE VOLUNTATIS. THY KINGDOM COME, THY WILL BE DONE, IN EARTH AS IT IS IN HEAVEN. AMEN. EVEN SO, COME, LORD JESUS. APPENDIX 11. ADDITIONAL NOTES AND REFERENCES. Sect. 8. p. 1 4. The Old Testament pi-epares the way for the Christian beliefs of the Trinity and the Incarnation. — See St. Hil. Pictav.'s argument, in his De Trinitate, Books IV. and V, that God in the Old Testament is not ' solitarius ; ' also Book VI. 19 and VIII. 47 ; also TertuU. adv. Prax. 5. 9. p. 15. God is eternally a Father. — St. Leo, Serm. XXIV. (vol i. 84, 210), ' Sempiterne enim Filius, Filius est ; senipiterne Pater, Pater est;' also Pearson, Creed, Art. II. His only Son. III. Ihid. The Father contemplates Himself in the Son.— St. Hil. Pictav. De Trin. IX. 36 (Migne, vol. ii. col. 307). 1 0, p. 1 6. The Father has ever worked through the Son. — St. Ath. Cord. Ar. III. 12, olhtv Se iariv, 6 /if) Si' YioC ivepyel 6 Ylar^p. 21. p. 33. On the Plural Name of God. — Liddon, BamiMn Led. IT. p. 72. 22. p. 37. Mediatorial relation of the Son in respect of the preserva- tion of the Universe. — St. Irenaeus, adv. Ilaer. V. p. 586. 42. p. 7 1. Reflex illustration of the Divine from the Human Nature. — Tertull. adv. Prax. 5. 48. p. 87. Free-Will essential to finite personal life. — St. Thomas Aquin. Sum. V^, Qu. Ixiii. Art. i, in cd. Migne, vol. i. p. 1 1 20. 5G. p. 100. Man the representative microcosm. — Bp. Andrewes, ^S'er- mons, Vol. i. Serm. XVI. p 275 ; and Bp. Bull, Works, Vol. i. Serm, XL On the Existence and Nature of Angels, p. 267 ; and the Russian theologian, IMacaire, Bp. of Vinnitza, Theologie Dog- matiqne Orthodoxe, Part. II. ch. i. § 76, p. 517 ; and Noirlicu, Dogmes Princvpaux du Christianisme, ch. x. p. 224. 59. p. III. Possible benefit to the angels from the Incarnation. — St. Hippol. Against Beron and Helix, 2 (Lagarde's ed. p. 59, 1. 26). Jh. p. 112. Created things not instantly consummated. — St. Iren. Adv. Haer. IV. cap. 73, p. 520; St. Hil. Pictav. De Trin. XL 44 (Migne, IL 488). 572 Additional Notes and References, [app. ii. Sect. G8. p. 134. Pity felt by the Ao'yor ua-apKos for the Gentiles. — Commenting on Ps. Ixix. 26, where the Lxx. has koI eVl t6 aXyos Tcbv TpavjiaTav ixov TTpoa-edrjKav, St. Hippolytus, Ag. the Jews, 7 (ed. Lagarde, p. 66. 16), paraphrases, IlpoTepop fiev clXyos flxov as <^i\dvdpunvos Bui Trjv TrKdvrjv TOiV iOvwv, a\X em to uXyoi wpoaedrjKav poi iTepov TvKavrjQiVTfs Koi avroi, 70. p. 138. Revelation to Primeval Man. — St. Ath. Be Incarn., quoted by Bull, Disc. V. On the state of Man before the Fall, Bull's Works, vol. ii. p. 103. 71. p. 140. Visible Appearance of the Son to Adam. — St. Hippol. Fragment 21, in ed. Lagarde, p. 125. 73. p. 143. Targum Paraphrase of the Name of God. — Pearson, Creed, Art. II. His only Son, I. ' Thirdly,' note. 82. p. 158. The Mediator is also the Judge. — St. Iren. Adv. Ilaer. IV. cap. lxx. p. 507. 83. p. 161. Add. to refs. in Note, St. Aug. De Genesi ad litt. VIII. xviii. 37; Migne, iii. Part. I. p. 387. 95. p. 192. To the ref. to St. Cyril Hierosol. Catech. x, add the follow- ing, from St. Hippolytus, Be Antichristo, 3, on the impartial tenderness of the Word, 'ETreiS^ t6 iavrov evcnrXny^^vov Koi airpoaoi- TToXrjTtTov evSeiKwrat 8ia Travrav tcov ayiaiv 6 Aoyos, ecpodid^uiv (cat pvOpi^oju avTov w? epTreipos lurpos TVpos to rjp.2i> crvp(pepovTa iiriaTd- pepos rt]V T(Jov avOpconoiV daOevnav, tovs pev dyvoovvras e'/cStSacr/cetf TTeipdrai, tovs Se TrXaPapivovs eniCTTpecpei els ttjp eavTov dXrjdlpTjv 686p, toIs pep peTci TriaTecos ^rjTovaiP evaoXois evpicTKopepos, toIs 8e KaOapo'is oppaai koi aypTj jcapSt'a Kpoveiv ttjp 6vpap eTTidvpovcnp evBiis apoiyopepos. OuSeVa yap aTTo/SaXXerat tcop eavTov 8ovXa)v i)s pfj opra a^iop Tuiu 6eio}P pvaTripLcov, ov ttXovctiop TrpoTipcop TrevrjTos ov8e Tvevqra bia to ptTpiop e^ovOevap ov8e (Bdp^apop uveiSi^cop ovSe top evpov)(OP COS pr] apSpionop dcpopi^cop ov8e 5^Xo 8ia ttjp e^ ^PX^]S yepo- pePTjP TvapaKorjV pt,acop ovSe top cippepa 8ia ti)v napdiSacTLP UTipu^cop, dXAa ndpTas ddXnwp Koi rrdpTas crco^eco enidvpwp, irdpTas v'lovs Qiov KaTapTLcrai diXutP koi tovs TrdpTas aylovs els epa TeXeiop auOpcoTTOP KaXu>v. 'Es yap koL q tov Qeov limy, St ov koi rjpus tv\6pt€s ttjp dia TOV Aylov JIpevpaTos dpayevprjaip els epa TeXeiop /cat enovpaPiov fiv6pu>TT0P ol ndpTes KaTaPTrjcrai em6vpovpev. 'EneiSr] yap 6 Aoyos TOV Oeov utrapKos top epeSvaaro ttjp dyiav adpKa e< Trjs ayias irap- Bevov ws pvp dfpddpTco TO (pdapTov Ka\ TO daOepes T>j lij)^vpa) (juxrrj top dnoXXvpepop updpoinop. APP. II.] Additional Notes and References. 573 Sect. 95. p. 193. Tlie Angel ichich redeemed me. — Eather, The An ij el the Redeemer, 7i<3Ll '^';^?'?l'. See Macdonald, Pentateuch, III. ii. I, vol. ii. p. 240. 9G. p. 196. The two created angels. — See Euseb. Dem. Efcing. V. ii. P- 237- lb. p. 197. Add to note 2. — So St. Ambrose, De Abraham, I. vi. 51 (Migne, i. 440) on Gen. xix. i, ' Ubi gratia largienda est, Christus adest : ubi exercenda sevcritas, soli adsunt nainistri, deest Jesus.' 99. p. 202. Its outward token, the Cloudy Pillar. — Compare Num- bers, xiv. 14. 101. ji. 209. The invisible Agent in that act of doom. — So Euseb. Dem. Evan. V. 19. 105. p. 215. To Ezekiel and Daniel. — And see, before Ezekiel, Amos vii. 7, and ix. i. 108. p. 221. Add to note. — St. Hijjpolytus, in his comment on the passage (Lagarde's ed. No. 59. § 24, p. 160), takes the Man clothed in linen to be 6 Ki'pioy, and distinguishes him from St. Michael. lb. p. 222. May put forward what is good in them. — See St. Thomas Aq. I". Qu. cxiii. Art. 7, ad fin. lb. p. 223. Priestly vesture. — So St. Hippolytus speaks of the lepan- Kos x''^'^" of the Word, On the Vision of Daniel, ed. Lagarde, p. 161, 1. 4. 112. p. 233. The familiar division into the Pro])hetic, the Sacerdotal, and the Regal Action of the Mediator. — The earliest occurrence of this that I have met with is in Euseb. Dem. Evan. Book VIII. Prooem. p. 363. //;. p. 235. The one key to the right understanding of Revelation. — Comp. St. Leo, Serm. LXVI. ii. (Migne, vol. i. col. 365 (256)). 113. p. 236. Secret and undisclosed, although incessant, operation of the Mediator. — Comp. St. Athau. Cont. Ar. III. xxx. p. 184. 115. p. 239. Teaching His ancient Church. — So St. Hippolytus, Ag. yoetus (Lagarde, No. 3. § 12. p. 51, 1. 24), 'Ei* tovtoi% toIvw [y6- fx(0 KOI npocjiTjTais] iroXiTtvopfvos 6 Ao'yor iv pfWovra Adyoi' (paivecrdai, (V avdpunois, 81 tjv alriav oi/tcoj e^ua, 'Epcf)aV7), fup(6r)u ro(s (p( pr) (TTtpuToxTiv, Jsd. Ixv. I ; aUo On Anticlirist, § 2 (Lagarde's ed. p. 2, 1. 12), OItoi yup nvevpan npo- 574 Additional Notes and References, [app. ii. (f)i]TLKa ol narepes KaTTjpTicrfj.ei'Oi Koi vtt uvtov tov Auyov d^ta>s rfriprj- fifvoiy opydvutv hiK-QV iavTois fjvcofievoi, €)(0VTes (v iavTins dti tov \6yov ws TrK^KTpov, 8i ov Kivuvfitvoi aTrrjyyeWou ravra anep fjdiKev 6 Geo? 01 Tvpo(^r)Tai.. Ov yap i^ Idias dvvdpecos e(})dtyyovTo (/zij TrXai/w) ov8e anep avTo\ e'/SouXoiro. Tavra eKj'jpvrrov, dXXci npuiTov pev 8i.a tov Aoyov f(T<)(Pi^ovTo opOoiS, ervfiTa fit' opaparuiv Trpoe^iSdcTKOvTO to. peX- Xoiira Ka\S)s, fid ovto) TTfTTSicrpevoi, fXeyov ravTa, dnep avToli rjv povois dno rev Qeoii diroKeKaXvppfua, roTy 6e XoltvoIs dTroKfKpvppiva. Also, see Burton, Testim. Antenicene Fathers, § 95, p. 179, for the language of St. Clement of Alexandria on this point, speaking of Christ as 6 Trpo^Tjrr/? TTpocprjTcov Koi Kvpios Travrus 7rpo(pr]TiKov Xoyov. Sect. 118, p. 244. That earlier Gospel of Justification by Faith. — See Card. Newman, Parochial Sermons, Vol. ii. Serm. YIII. pp. 94, 95: 'The evangelical covenant, which was not to be pi'eached till near two thousand years afterwards, was re- vealed and tranf^acted in Abraham's person . . . He was justi- fied by faith, he trusted in God's power to raise the dead, he looked forward to the day of Christ, and was vouchsafed a vision of the Atoning Sacrifice on Calvary;' and the following beautiful places of St. Leo, Serm. XXXI. (Migue, vol. i. col. 234 (ill)), ' Omnes sancti qui Salvatoris nostri tempora prae- cesserunt, per banc fidem justificati, et per hoc sacramentum Christi sunt corpus effecti, exspectantes universalem creden- tium redemptionem in semine Abraham . . . qui est Christus;' Serm. LII. (i. 314(199)), ' Non enira quia secundum iuscruta- bile propositum Sapientiae Dei novissimis diebus Verbum caro factum est ideo salutiferae Virginis partus extremi tantum teraporis generationibus j)rofuit, et non se etiam in j^raeteritas refudit aetates. Omnis prorsus antiquitas colentium Deum verum, omnis numerus apud saecula priora sanctorum in hac fide vixit et placuit; et neque patriarchis, neque prophetis, neque cuiquani omnium sanctorum, nisi in redcmptione Domini nostri Jesu Christi salus et justifieatio fuit ;' and Serm. LXIII. ii. (i. 354 (244) ), ' Una enim fides justificat universorum tempo- rum sanctos, et ad camdem spem fidelium pertinet quidquid per mcdiatorem Dei et hominum Jesum Christum vel nos confitemur factum vel patres nostri adoravere faciendum ; ' and Sei-7n. LXVI. i. (i. 365 (255)), 'Rederaptio Salvatoris, de- struens opus diaboli et runipens vincula peccati, ita maguae APP. II.] Additional Notes and Refei'cnces. 575 pietatis suae disposuit sacramentum, ut usque ad consumma- tioneni quidem muiidi praefinita generationum pleuitudo de- curreret, sed renovatio originis per justificationeiu indlscrctae fidei ad omnia retro saecula pertineret. Incarnatio quippe Verbi, et occisio et resurrectio Christi, universorum fidelium salus facta est, et sanguis unius justi hoc nobis donavit, qui eum pro recouciliatione mundi crcdimus fusum, quod con- tulit patribus, ([ui similiter credidere fundendum.' (Cap. ii.), 'Nihil ergo, dilectissimi, ab autiquis significationibus in Chris- tiana religione diversum est, nee umquam a praecedentibus justis, nisi in Domino .Tesu Christo salvatio sperata est, dispensationibus quidem pro divinae voluntatis ratione varia- tis, sed in idipsum coruscantibus et legis testimouiis et pro- jjhetiae oraculis et oblationibus hostiarum : quia sic congruebat illos poj)ulos erudiri, ut quae revelata non caperent, ob- umbrata susciperent, et major Evangelii esset auctoritas, cui tot signis totque mysteriis veteris Testamenti paginae de- servissent ; de quibus Domiuus profitebatur, quod non venerat le^era solvere, sed adimplere.' Also St. Gregory the Great, Homil. in Ezech. Lib. II. Horn. iii. i6 (Migne, Vol. ii. col. 966(1338)), 'Et quidem ab Abel sanguine passio jam coepit Ecclesiae, et una est Ecclesia electorum praccedentium atque sequentium . . . Non divibi [autiqui patres] a sancta Ecclesia fuerunt, quia mente, opere, praedicatione, ista jam fidei sacra- raenta tenuerunt, istam sanctae Ecclesiae celsitudinem con- spexerunt, quam nos non adhuc praestolando sed jam habendo conspicimus. Sicut enim nos in pi'aeterita passione Redemp- toris nostri, ita illi per fidem in eadem ventura sunt salvati ; ' and Ibid. Horn. iv. 7 (ii. 977 (1345)), ' Ipsa fides atque ipsum meritum tenuit corda praccedentium quae replevit corda se- quentium sub novo testamento positorum;' and Ibid. Hom. V. 2 (ii. 985(1352)), ' Omues elccti, sive qui in Judaea ei^se potuerunt sive ([ui nunc in Ecclesia existunt, in Mediatorem Dei et hominum crediderunt et credunt.' See also Canon Bright's Sermons of St. Leo on the Incarnation^ note 13, p. 94. 119. p. 246. The secret action of the One Mediator. — St. Hippol. Comment, in Genes. Lagarde's ed. § 46, p. 139, 'O \s.vpios w? Ytor ra 81 oiv iKtivoi \oi tCov nariputv fTnariixoTOTOi, who were ouly ojKtVai] ytyovaai Xafjnrpoi Kf)(oprjyr]Kfv avTo'ts' ToiydpToi Xeyovcriv on fK Tov TvXrjpoipaTos ai/TOv niivTa rjpus (Xd^opa/. 576 Additional Notes and References, [app. ii. Sect. 13G. p. 282. The remarkable prevalence of a very general ex- pectation.— Head Newman's Two Sermons on The Kingdom of the Saints — Parochial Sermons, Vol. ii. Sermons XX. XXI. 144. p. 307. Christ's act in the Upper Chamber was saci'ificial. — Comp. the Atard^fty rwi' uyiav anocrTokoiv, bia 'itriTokvTov {Constitt. Apost. Lib. VIII.), given as No. 7 of Lagarde's Hippolytus, § 26, n(pl evra^LaSf p. 88, 1. 9, Uparos Tolvvv 'Ap)(iepevs 6 p.opo- yf vrjs XpiCTTos , ov^ cavrco rrjv rifxfjv ApTrdaas, dXXa irapa tov Uarpos KaTa(TTa6eis' os yfyop-evos uvdpcoTros 6t rjuai Kai ttjv Ttvfvp.aTiKrjv Bva'iav 7rpov nyicov yp^vxnls, 8ia davdrov Bdvarov viKwv ', and St. Irenaeus, Adv. Haer. IV. xlv ; and St. Augustine, Cont. Julian VI. xxii. (Migne, vol. x. col. 1553.) 177. p. 367. The First Resurrection is spiritual. So St. Augustine argues, De Civ. Dei, xx. vi, vol. vii. 665. 178. ji. 368. Christ's faithful people live and reign with Him even now. Compare the ' Quern nosse vivere, Cui servire regnare est,' of the Second Collect at Matins ; and St. Aug. Civ. Dei, XX, ix (vol. vii. col. 672), ' Interea dum mille annis ligatus est diabolus, sancti regnant cum Christo etiam ipsis mille annis eisdem sine dubio, et eodem modo intelligendis, id est, isto jam tempore prioris ejus adventus .... Ecclesia et nunc est regnum Christi, regnumquae coelorum. Regnant itaque cum illo etiam nunc sancti ejus, aliter quidem, quam tunc regna- ' Compare the title 'O 'Apx^eptiis 6 uavjKpiTos, 'The Incomparable HighPrlcat,' applied to Christ a few lines farther on in the same passage. APR II.] Additional Notes and References. 577 bunt ; ' and, a few lines afterwards, of the Faithful Departed, ' Quamvis ergo cum suis corporibus nondum, jam tamen eorum animae regnant cum Illo, dum isti mille anni decurrunt. Unde in hoc eodem libro et alibi legitur, Beali morlui, qui in Domino moriunlur, amodo et jam dicit Spiritus, ut requi- escant a lahoribus suis; nam ojiera eorum sequuntur illos. Regnat itaque cum Christo nunc primum Ecclesia in vivis et mortuis,' pp INDEX. The figures refer to the Sections of the Lectures, and to the pages of the Appendix- The Roman numerals refer to the Notes in the Appendix. Abraham : His Call, 8i ; Sacrifice of Isaac, 144. Absolution : the power of, 159. Adonai, 93, 96, loi, 102, 109, 114, 129, 142 ; IX. p. 503. Agony, the, 144, 145. Amalek, the Judgment of, 127. Ancient of Days, ihe, 107, 175. Angel of the Lord, the : Is the Eter- nal Son, 86, &c. ; not a created angel, 91, &c. ; His Appearances, 86-1 11, Angels : 44, &c. ; unscriptural cultus of, 91 ; their interest in this world, 108, III ; are enlightened by the Son of God, I ; have bodies, 11 ; fell through pride, IV. Annihilationism, 52. Antediluvians, the, 79, 125, 152. Antichrist, 192 ; XV. p. 545 ; xvi. p. 557- ^ ^ Apostasy, of the Jews, 107, &c. ; the Final, 173, 192. Apostolic Succession : Canon Melvill on, XIV. p. 542. Appearances, Visible, of God, 83, &c. ; see ' Theophanies.' Arianism, 87, 90. Atonement, Day of, 143 ; see ' Sacrifice.' Acts: chap. i. §§ 155, 162; i. 7, § 171 ; i. 13; x.p. 507 : ii. § 165; X. p. 508 ; iii. 21, § 193; iii. 26, § 168; iv. 32, § 167, X. p. 509; v. § 116; vi. 13, § 170 ; vii. § 169 ; vii. 44, § 120 ; vii. 51, § 119; ix. § 169; xvii. 28, § 22, 64. Apocalypse, the : date of, 170 ; Is an ex- pansion of Christ's Olivet Prophecy, 171, 172 ; Preterist view of, 172. Alford, Dean, 30, 38. St. Ambrose : on Angels, II, iv ; on the Theophanies, VII. p. 472 ; on the Sur- render of the Kingdom, xvil. p. 563. St. Anselm : on angels, V. Aquinas, St. Thomas, 56; on angels, v. St. Athanasius, 1,6; vii. p. 455. St. Augustine, 83 ; on the Theophanies, 90, 107 ; VII. p. 480 ; on angels, i, 11, III ; on Gen. iii. 8 ; VI ; on the Reno- vation of the World, xvil. p. 567. Babylon: of the Apocalypse, 171 ; xi. p.'sog. Beatitudes : the Eight, fulfilled in the Consummated State, 200. Bible : still imperfectly understood, Pref. p. xii. §§ 26, 33 ; critical study of, 133- Barry, Canon, 118, 122. St. Basil: on angels, 11 ; on the Theo- phanies, VII. p. 489. Bellarinine, 13. Bernardinus a Piconio : on i Cor. xv. 24-28 ; XVII. pp. 563, 569. Browne, Bishop Harold, 73, 76. Bruce, Rev. A. B., 81. Bull, Bishop, I, 13, 45, 71, 76, 84, 86, 89 ; on angels, 11, III. Burton, Rev. Dr., 97 ; vii. p. 451. Caiaphas, Christ's answer to, 82, 146, 170. Calvinism, 35. Christ. See Son, The Eteknal. Christianity : a forward-looking Reli- gion, 27, 34, &c. Church, the: the worship of, 72. 120, XIV. p. 540 ; the Church and the world, 1:5; the Pentecostal Church, 174, 183, 186; Christ's Comunssion to, 157, X. p. 503. City: the 'Great City' of the Apoca- lypse, 171 ; XI. p. 510. Co-inherence, 89; viii. p. 502. Commission, Chkist's to the Whole Church, 157 ; x. p. 505. Communion, the Holy, 72, 143, 179, 180. Communion, of Saints, 175, 178. Index. 579 Councils: Antioch, vii. p. 455. Covenant, the Mosaic, 117; close of, 143. Creation, 12 ; through the Son, 14, &c. ; neces.«arily finite and imperfect, 63 ; needs the Incarnation, 63 ; grandeur of, 32. 47. Creationism, 57. Creeds, the Catholic, 3, 5, 6. 1 Chronicles: xxi. 15, § 104. 2 Chronicles : li. xxiv. 20, xi. p. 518. Colossifnis : i. 15. §§ 14, 18, 30; i. 16, § 30 ; i. 19, § 62 ; ii. 19, § 180. 1 Corinthians: ii. § 78; ii. 9, § 193; V. B' §§ 152, 183; vi. 2, § 193; X. §§ 88, 123 ; X. 16, §§ 180, 187 ; xv. 6, § 161; XV. 22, § 193; XV. 24- 28, § 200. xvii ; XV. 40, §194; XV. 45, §§ 121, 180. 2 Corinthians : ii. 10, § 183; iv. 6, § 89 ; xii. 4, § 148. Carpenter, Canon Boyd, 132. Cheyne and Driver, Bible ivith various lienderings, 96, 100. St. Clement of Alexandria, 25 ; vii. p. 440. St. Cj'prian : on the Theophanies, vii. , P- 454- St. Cyril of Jerusalem, 94 ; on the Re- novation of the World, XVII. p. 566. Dwight, Rev. Dr. : on man's insensibi- lity to the Incarnation, 137. Death: of Christ, 147; of man, 149; progress after, 150. Delegation : tlie principle of the Chris- tian Ministry, 166. Difficulties as to Faith : Pref. p. xv. § 69. Discipline : exercised by the Church, 1 59. Disembodied : the disembodied state, 1 47. Dispensation, Ante-ililuvian, 79, 125 ; Noachian, 81 ; Abrahamic, 81, 93, 125; Mosaic, 117, 143. Dispersion, Jews of the, 136, 171. Daniel, iii. and vi., § 106; vii., § 107 ; XIV. p. 646; viii. 15, § 107; X., xi., and xii., § 108. Deuteronomy, xxviii., § 172 ; xi. p. 513. Damascene, St, John : on angels, il. Delitzsch, 86 ; vi. Diodati, John : on the Theophanies, vii. P- 493- Diillinger, Rev. Dr. von, 13, 33, 135 ; XV. p. 553. Domer, Person of Christ, 2, 31, 42, 135. Earth: Renovation of the, 149, 193, 194; XVII. p. 565. Egj'pt : the judgment of, 82, 126. Elders of Israel, 1 16. Election: is not proscription, 81; the Election from apostate Israel, 1 74. Elijah, 104; future re-appearance of, XVI. p. 560. End of the world, the, 80, 193-200 ; xv, XVI, xvii. Eschatology: Pref. p. xii. § 171 ; xvii. p. 564. Eucharist, the, 72, 143, 179, 180, Evidences, Christian : Pref. p. xv. §87. Exegesis: source of Christian, 154, 158 ; XVI. p. 539. Exodus, the 82. Ephesians: i. q, § 62 ; i. 10, § 30, 138 ; ii. 4, § 176; ii. 14, § 196; ii. 19, §§ 178, 195; ii. 20, § 195; iv. 8, § 153; iv. 10, § 184; V. 25, § 196; V. 29-32, § 196. Exodus : iii, § 97 ; xiii, § 97 ; xiv, §§ 97. 98 ; XV, § 126 ; xvii. 8, § 127 ; xxiii, § 99 ; xxv, 9 and 40, § 1 20 ; xxvi. 30, § J 20 ; xxxii, § 99 ; xxxiii, § 99 ; xxxiii. 9, vi ; xxxiii. 20, § 85 ; xxxiv. 5, § 130. Ezcldel: i. § 105; x. 20, § 105; xl., &c., § 105. Eusebius, of Caesarea, vil. p. 458. Evans, Canon of Durham, 88. Father — God the Father — Never visibly seen, 85 ; never said to ' be sent,' 85, 88. Fatherhood of God : Pref., p. ix. §§8, 9. Forty: the 'Great Forty Days,' 154. Freeman, Archdeacon, 73, 76, 79. Gentiles: the 'Times of the Gentiles,' 174; XII. p. 527. Gethsemane : The Lord's Agony, 46, 144. I45- r^: New Test, use of, xi. p. 514, note. Oixj and Mayog, xvi. p. 557. Gospul : anterior to and underlying the Law, 118 ; App. II. p. 573. P p 2 58o Index. Grace: Nature and Grace, Pref. p. i. § 164; the Gospel of Grace underlay the Law, 118, 119; App. II, p. 573. Galatians: iii. 8, § 118; iv. 26, § 178. Genesis: ii. 17, § 73 ; "• 18, § 42 ; iii. 15. § 73; iii- 17. § 194; iii- 21, § 76; iv. I, § 75 ; vi. 2, § 80; xii, § 93 ; XV, § 93; xvi, § 94; xviii, §§ 91, 96 ; xix, § 96 ; xxi, § 94 ; xxii, § 95 ; xlviii, 15, § 95. Gladstone, W. E., 155. Gotch and Davies, Rev. Drs. : Revised English Bible, Pref. p. xiv. note, § 100. St. Gregory the Great: on angels, 11, IV ; on the Theophanies, vii. p. 487 ; on the Justification of the 0. T. saints by Faith, App. 11. p. 574. Hades, 147. Harlot : the Harlot upon the Beast, XI. p. 512. Heathenism : at the date of the Incar- nation, 135. HeU, 152. Hahakhuk: iii. 11, § loi. Hebrews: i. 2, § 14; i. 3, § 22 ; i. 8, § 29 ; ii. 14, § 147 ; iii. i, § 86 ; iii. 2, § 30 ; iii. 22, § 178 ; iv. 14, § 141 ; vii. 23, § 184; viii. 2. § 185 ; xiv. p. 540 ; viii. 5, § 1 20 ; ix. 9, § 1 1 7 ; xi. lo, § 195; xi. 13, § 196; xi. 19, § 144; xii. 22, § 195. Uosea : xii. 3, § 95. Hardwick, Archdeacon, 68. Hengstenberg, 13, 86, 91. St. Hilary, of Poitiers : on the Theoph- anies, VII. p. 466 ; his De Trinitate, App. II. p. 571. St. Hippolytus : on the Theophanies, VII. p. 452 ; on Antichrist, xv. p. 551 ; App. II. p. 572 ; on Christ in the an- cient Church, App. Ii. p. 573. Hooker, 45, 46, 52, 59 ; iv. Horsley, Bishop: on i St. Peter iii. 18, § 152- Huxtable, Prebendary, 95. tion, 24, ii2,&c., 137, 164; the 'sum- ming up ' of all things, 30, 59, 62 ; not contingent on sin, 58, &c. ; vii. p. 500 ; secures the permanence of the material creation, 61 ; the long pre- paration for, 68 ; adoration of God for, 74; not an isolated fact, 87; men's insensibility to the grandeur of, 137- Intellect : to be used on religious sub- jects, 2 : relation of to moral charac- ter, 36, &c. Intermediate : the Intermediate State, 147. Isaac : the Sacrifice of, 144. Israel : grandeur of the calling of, 132; consequences of unfaithfulness of, 132. Isaiah: vi, §§ 107, 129; ix. 6, §§ 60, 86, 140; liii, § 147 ; Ixiii. 3, § 144; Ixiii. 7, §§99, 115 ; Ixiv. 4, § 193 ; Ixv. 2, § 115. St. Irenseus, 89 ; on the Theophanies, VII. p. 435 ; disembodied men are not mere spirits, App. 11. p. 576. Ideal : the Ideal of Redemption, 1 76, &c. ; XIII. p. 531; Bible 'Ideals,' XIII. p. 531. Incarnation : the Incarnation tlie completed development of Media- Jerusalem: its first downfall, 182 ; final fall of, 132, 171 ; the Babylon of the Apocalypse, 171; xi. p. 509; the ' New Jerusalem,' 195. Jews : future Restoration of, 132 ; xvi. P- 553 ; their view of the Theopha- nies, VII. p. 491 ; Prophecies relating to, XVI. p. 554. Joseph : a type of Christ, 132. Judaism, 2 7 ; the Judaism of our Lord's time, XI. p. 512. Judgment : the judgment of the Ante- diluvian world, 79 ; of Sodom, 82, 96 ; of Egypt, 127 ; of Amalek, 127 ; of the Canaanites, 128 ; of Israel, 130; of Judah, 131 ; of Nineveh, 131 ; of Babylon, 131; of the later Jerusalem, 132, 167, 168, 170, &c. ; of Christian Churches, 173, 189, 190; the Gene- ral Judgment, 197. Judicial character of Christ, 82, 190. St. James : his general Epistle, 171. Job : xxxiii. 23, § 104 ; xxxviii. 7, § 194- St. Johii's Gospel: i. 3, §§ i, 14; i. 4, § 22 ; i. 9, §§ 36, 68, 77, 88 ; i. 10, §§ 15, 21, 88: i. 14. § 136; i. 18, §§ 70, 85 ; V. §§ 30, 82, 88 : v. 24, &c., § 177; vi. 39, §§ 180, 193; viii. 56, §§ 88, 196 ; X. iS, § 146 ; xii. 23, Index. 581 § 172 ; xii. 28, § 85; XII. p. 526 ; xii. 41, § 129; xiii. § 143 ; xiv.31, § 143 ; xvii, §§ 142, 144, 198 ; xviii. 6, § I46 ; XX. 19, §§ 142, 157, 1S3; XX. 21, X. p. 506 ; xxi, § 160. Joshua: i. 5, § loi ; v. vi, § loi. St. Jude : § 50 ; ver. 9, § 196. ^ Judgrs : ii, § 102 ; iv. v, § 102; v. 23, § 108 ; vi. II, § 102 ; xiv, § 103. Kaiv6i : use of, xi. p. 510, note. Karixov '■ ^i /carexoi' of 2 Thess. ii, Xiv. p. 547- Keys, power of the, 159, 165, 183, 187. Kingdom of God, 124, &c., 135, 167, 188. Kingly function of Christ, 124, 135, 155,167, 188, 189; XVII. p. 563. Kings of the earth, xi. p. 513. Kings : i. xix, § 104 ; 11. i. § 104. Keble, Rev. John, 68, 126, 139, 146, il. Keil, VI. Lamb : the Lamb as it had heen slain, 175- Law : the law of Moses, 117, 143. Lawless : the lawless one, 192 ; xv. p. 548- Lawlessness, of the last times, xv. p. 548. Life Eternal, 177. Logos ; AoyosdoapKOi, Pref. p. i. ; A pp. II. 572. Loosing of Satan, xv. p. 549. Lost spirits, angelic and human, 39, 51, &c., 199. Leviticus: xxvi. § 172; xi. p. 513. St. Luke's Gospel: ix. 51, § 144; x. 18, § 175, XII. p. 525; X. 22, § 70; .X. 24, § 196; xi. 14-26, XII. pp. 525, 530; xii. 39, § 194; xii. 47, § 197: xiii. 28, §§ 151, 196; xiii. 34, § S8 ; xiv. 16, § 199; xvii, § 80; xix. 11- 27, § 200; XX. 36, § 194; xxi. 24, §§ 34, 82 ; xxi. 25, § 171 ; xxi. 32, § 171 ; xxi. 33, § 194; xxii.43, § 46; xxiv. 27, 45, Pref. p. xv, §§ 87, 1 14, 142, 154, 158 ; xxiv. 33, § X. p. 506 ; xxiv. 50, § 162. Martyrs : the Martyrs in the Apoca- lypse, XI. p. 517- Mediation : natural and spiritual, Pref. p. i. 164. M€7i(rTai'€s : New Testament use of, xi. p. 515 note. St. Michael, the Archangel, 97, 108, 109, VII. p. 427. Millennium: 170, 171, 175, 178, 182, XII. p. 524. Malachi: no; iii. i, viil. p. 503; iv. XVI. p. 558. St. Mark : x. 32, § 144 ; x. 39, § 143 ; xiii. 3, § 171 ; xiii. 30, § 171 ; xiii. 31, § 194; xiv. 28, § 161 ; xvi. 19, § 162. St. Matthew : v. 3, &c., § 200 ; viii. 11, § 196; X. 8, § 151; xi. ir, § 196; xi. 27, § 70; xii. 43-45, § 172, 175, XII. p. 525 ; xiii. 17, § 196; .xiii. 43, § 180; xviii. 6-10, § 189; xix. 30, § 193 ; XX, 20, § 143 ; xxi. 33, § 82, XI. p. 516 ; xxii. I, § 82, XI. p. 516 ; xxiii. 37, §§ 82, 88 ; x.xiv. 34, § 171 ; xxiv. 35, § 194; xxiv. 43, § 194; xxiv. 45, § 171 ; XXV. 15-30, § 200 ; XXV. 19, § 171; XXV. 31, § 82, 193; xxvi. 26, § 143; xxvi. 32, § 161; xxvii. 52, § 196 ; xxviii. 16, § 161 ; xxviii. 18, § 154; xxviii. 19, § 154. Micah, vii. 18, § 131. Macaire, Bishop : On angels, II. iv. M<^Caul, Dr. : Kimchi on Zechariah, VII. p. 491. Macdonald, Rev. Donald : On the Penta- teuch, 71, 79. Maples, Kev. Chauncy, 135. Martensen : Christian Dogmatics, 1 3, 67, 126: Maurice, Rev. F. D., 6. Mede : On the Renovation of the World, XVII. p. 566. St. Melito : On the Theophanies, VII. P- 4.^3- Melvill, Rev. Canon : On Ileh. viii. 2, XIV. p. 540. Mill, Dr., 67, 85, 86, 97, loi. Milman, Dean : History of the Jews, XI. p. 5i.=;- Moberly, Bishop of Sarum, 118, 156. Moulton, Rev. Dr., 88. Magog, Gofj and Mngog: xvi. 557. Man: the Microcosm, 55, &c. ; App. II. P-57I- Nature and Grace: Pref. p. i. 164. Nicene Creed : importance of the, 5. Numbers : iii. 5, § 116; iii. 40, § 116 58: Index. viii. 4, § 120; viii. 5, § n6 ; xii. 6, VI ; xviii.6, § 116; xxii.-xxiv, § 100; xxii. 8, VI. note. Newman, Cardinal, 13, 86, 89, 141 XIII. p. 536. Old Testament: insufficiently studied, Pref. p. xiii. § 41. Only-ness, of God, 8. Ode, Jacobus : De Anfjelis, On the Theo- phanies, vii. p. 494. Oosterzee, Van ; Christian Dogmatics, 12, 14, 67, 71, 130. Origen : On the Tlieophanies, vii. p. 453. Owen, Rev. Robert: Dogmatic Tlieology, III. Pantheism, 64, &c., 67. Parables: the Talents, 200; the Pounds, 200. Paradise, 147, 148, 151, 175. Passover, the, 122, 143. Peace : the fruit of the Incarnation, 138. Pentecost, 165. Xlepixwprjais, 89, VIII. p. 502. Persecution : of the Jewish Christians, 170. 195. Predestination : St. Paul's language on, XIII. p. 536. Priesthood : connected with primogeni- ture, 42, 116, 141; the Christian priesthood, 143, 166, 183, 184, 185; Melvill on, xiv. p. 542. Probation: of angels, 48, 71 ; no pro- bation after death, 149. Prophecy, Hebrew, 1 15, 129, XVI. p. 653- Purpose : God's all-inclusive Purpose the Manifestation of Himself, 63 ; the purpose of God may be studied, 134- t>t. Peter s Epistles: I. i. 11, § 115; i. i. 12, § 21 ; I. i. 20, § 118; 1. ii. 4, § 196; I. ii. 5, 9, § 179; I. iii. 18, § 147, 152 ; I. iii. 19, § 196, note ; i. iii. 20, § 80; II. iii. § 194. PMlippians : i. 21, § 196 ; ii. 20, § 178 ; iii. 8, § 196, note; iii. 12, 14, § 181 ; iii. 20, § 195 ; iii. 21, § 180; iv. 21, § 194. Proverbs: viii. 22-31, § 21. Psalms: ii. §§ 29, 112, 114, 193; viii. §§ 55, 154, 200; ix. x.xi. XVI. p. 546; ix. 18, § 195; xi. § 195; xii. § 195 xvii. 15, VI.; xxiv. § 163; xxxvii. § 200 ; Ii. § 119 ; xciii. 2, § 27 ; xcix. 1, § 27; ex. § 29, 114. Pearson, Bishop : On the Creed, 29, 152 Plumptre, Dean of Wells : On Acts xvii. 64. Prudentius : On the Theophanies, vii. p. 4S4. Pusey, Dr., 87, 94, 95, 101, 102, 104, 109 ; on Justin Martyr, vii. p. 426; on the return of Elijah, xvi. p. 560. Reign : of Christ on earth, xvii. p. 565 ; of the Saints with Christ, 176, 181, 182, 193, App. II, p. 576. Renovation of the World : 194, XVII. p. 566; App. II. p. 577. Resurrection: of the Saints, 193, 197 ; the 'First Resurrection,' 177, xii. p. 527 ; the General Resurrection, 193. 197- Retribution : examples of Divine, 80, &c., 96, 127, 12S, 130-132. Revelation : The Book of the. Revelation ; see 'Apocalypse.' Royalty of Christ, 27, 124, 135, 175, 176, XVII. p. 565. Revelation: analysis of, xi. p. 519; i. § 107; ii. 5, § 191 ; iii. 12, § 178; iii. 21, § 193; iv.-xix. § 172 ; iv. I, § 196 ; v. § 172 ; V. 6, § 163; v. 10, § 176; vi. § 132; vi. 10, § 195; xii. § 170; xiii. 2, 4, § 175; xviii. XI. p. 516; xix. 7, § 171 ; xix. 10, § 115; XX. § 171, 175 ; XX. 4, § 176; XX. 7, § 192; xxi. §§ 178, 194, 195, 196, 198 ; xxi. 8, § 199 ; xxi. 24, § 199; xxii. II, 15, § 199. Romans: ii. 14, § 197 ; iii. §§ 1 17, 139 ; viii. 19, § 194, XIII. p. 536 ; xi. xii. p. 527, XVI. p. 556 ; xi. 25-32, §§ 34, 82, 196. Sacraments, 59, 165, 179, 183, 187. Sacrifice : is the essence of worship, 41 ; animal sacrifice, 76 ; the Eucharistic Sacrifice, 72, 143, 179; meaning of the partaking of sacrifices, 121; sacrifice of the will, 144 ; inner es- sence of sacrifice, 1 44. Salvation : the ' state of salvation,' 177, &c. Sanhedrim, XI. p. 515. Sapientia : the antiphon, 0 Sapientia, 142. Science : not antagonistic to theology, 23 ; is the study of Nature, 54. Index. 583 Septuagint, Pref. p. xiii. 100, 102. Sheol, 148. Sin: necessitates expiation, 41 ; entered through free-will, 48 ; essence of, is pride, 49 ; sin of the Angels, 50, &c. Sin-offering, 121. Sodom, the Judgment of, 82, 96. Son: the Eternal Son, 8, 9, 16 ; is the Mediator as the Son, 10, &c. ; upholds the universe, 22, 28; royal character of, 29 ; is heir of all thing.s, 30, 31 ; the Light of the World, 36 ; His Priesthood, 40, &c. ; the ' Educa- tor' of mankind, 25, 71, 78, 137, 150 ; the Mediator from the first, 77 ; judicial ch.iracter of, 82 ; was always the medium of Divine Communica- tion, 85 ; is the Angel of the LoED, 86-111; pre-incarnate appearances of, 83, &c. ; His prophecy on Olivet, 80, 170, 171 ; is invisible in His Di- vine Essence, 89 ; is the Image of God, 89 ; was Mediator under the Law, 112, I 20 ; His Kingly Function, 124, 129; was 'tlie God of Lsrael,' 129 ; His Incarnation, 137 ; value of His earthly life, 140; His Baptism, 140; His work as Man, 140, &c. ; Temptation, 141 ; teaching, as Pro- phet, 142; Priestly Function, 143; Last Supper, 143, App. 11. p. 576; His Agony, 144 ; Transfiguration, 144; Death, 147; action in the Un- seen State, 147, &c., 195 ; Resurrec- tion, 154 ; commission to the Church, 157, &c. ; commission to St. Peter, 160; commission to baptize, 161; Final Charge, 162 ; Ascension, 163; His answer on oath to Caia|ihas, 170 ; His Mediation after His Ascension, 1S4, &c. ; His future post-Millennial reign on earth, 195, 200, xvii. p. 565. Spirit— The Holy Spirit — His help needed in theological study, i, 7, 78; is the life of all that lives, 28, 70 ; inbreathed by Christ, 158; gift of, at Pentecost, 165, 167, 187; given, at Easter-night and on Day of Pente- cost, to the whole Church, 166, X, p. 505 ; bears witness witliin Chris- tians, 186. Spirit of man, 38, &c., 56, 57 ; disem- bodied, 148; spirits m pri/ion, 152. St. Steplien's martyrdom, 160, 170. Subordination of the SON, 11. Succession, Apt>8tolic : Canon Melvill on, XIV. p. 542. Supper, the Last, I43. Samuel, 11. xxiv. 16, § 104. Sandius, Christopher, 84. Schopenhauer, 67. Shedd : Uistory of Christian Doctrine, 2. Smith : Dean Payne Smith of Canter- bury, on the Theophanies, vil. p. 496. Steward's Mediatorial Sovereignty, vii. p. 497. Tabernacle and Temple : symbolism of the, XIII. p. 534. Targunis, 73, 86. Theocracy of Israel, 126, 129, 136. Theology not antagonistic to science, Theophanies, 83, &c. ; cessation of, 92 ; examined in detail, 93-11 1; of the ascended Christ, 168, 169, Appen- dix, Note VII. Time: (he fulness of the time, 136. Traducianism, 57. Transfiguration, the, 144. Tne of life, the, 59. Tribulation, t/ie great, 169, 170, xil. P- 525- Trinity— The Holy Trinity— Old Testament intimations of, 21. Trinity of evil, xi. p. 523 ; xvii. p. 534. TlicHsalonians : I. iii. 13, § 193; i. iv. 16, § 193; I. V. 23, § 149; II. ii, §§ 172, 192, XV. p. 545, XVI. p. 557. Timothy: i. ii. 5, § 24; i. vi. 16, §§ 70, 85 ; I ii. 20, § X98. Titus : ii. 13, § 194 ; iii. 5, Xli. p. 628. Tertullian, 84 ; on angels, V ; on the Theophanies, VII. p. 444; on the Millennium, xvii. p. 567. St. Theophilus : on the Theophanies, VII. p. 435. Thomson, Archbishop of York, 144. Trench, Archbishop of Dublin, 68, VII, p. 499 ; XV. p. 549. L^nitarianism, Pref. p. ix. 8. Unity, of Gon, 8. Unity among Christians : unhappy re- sults of breach of, Pref. p. ix. 191. Universe, the, grandeur of, 32, 47. Universalism, 52, 199. Unseen State, the, 147, 148, 178 ; Christ's Presence in, 153. 178. Unseen Universe, the, 61. 584 Index. Version, Revised Westminster Version of 1881, 43, 133. Valesius, on EuseLius' Ilht. Eccl., loi. War : not designed for God's people, 129. Wicked One, the, of 2 Thess. ii., 192, XV. p. 545. World-power, the: Babel, 125; Egypt, 126; Imperial Rome, xi. pp. 512, 522 ; of the future Antichrist, 192, XV. XVI. Worship: must be through the One Mediator, 41, &c., 76; offered by angels, 45 ; of the Catholic Church, 120, 179, XIII. p. 538. Wace: Bampton Lectures, 192. Westcott, Rev. Dr., 36, 82. Wordsworth, Bishop of Lincoln, 88. Wordsworth, Canon John, Hampton Lectures, 59. ZcchariaJt, 109. THE END. V^ ./-;//; <_ 1 101 2 01131 1646 I .A J; V *•; -i.V 1 • ** ', ■ ^ .' 'U' -MWWLi yu. V