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From the Library
of the
Theological Seminary
Lancaster, Pa.
1925

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i^/*-* „._...„.,¦ i

INSTITUTES

OF

THE CHRISTIAN RELIGION

BY

EMANUEL V. GERHART, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Systematic and Practical Tlieology in the Theological Seminary
of the Reformed Church, Lancaster, Pa.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION BY
PHILIP SCHAFF, D.D., LL.D.,
Late Professor of Church History in Union Theological Seminary, New York

VOLUME II.
EMBRACING DOCTRINE ON THE ADAMIC RACE; JESUS
CHRIST ; THE HOLY SPIRIT ; PERSONAL SAL
VATION; AND THE LAST THINGS

Printed in the United States
NEW YORK
FUNK & WAGNALLS COMPANY
London and Toronto
1894

Copyright, 1891,
By EMANUEL V. GERHART.

'(5: 31
v.

TO
HIS OLDEST CO-WORKER
IN THEOLOGICAL EDUCATION,
The REV. THOMAS G. APPLE, D. D.,LL.D.,
WHO FOR MANY YEARS
HAS BEEN TO HIM A STRONG SUPPORT
IN PURSUING THE STUDY OF CHRISTIAN TRUTH,
THIS VOLUME,
in token of high appreciation and cordial friendship,
is dedicated
By the Author.

PREFACE.

What think ye of the Christ? is the question put to the
Jews by our Lord.
Scribes and Pharisees had taken counsel how they might
ensnare Him in His talk. To compass their purpose they
assail Him with political and speculative questions, seek
ing to expose His pretensions to wisdom by giving Him
problems held to be the most perplexing; but He promptly
silences their boldness and puts their hypocrisy to shame.
Not in turn to ensnare them, nor merely to reprove
their spiritual blindness, but in order to divert absorbing
interest from matters of comparatively little account, He
fixes serious thought on the question .which for them is
chief: What think ye of the Christ? The relation of the
Church to the State, or the truth of the resurrection, or
the relative claim to observance of this or that command
ment, may each be worthy of discussion; but the matter
which is paramount, and which before all others calls for
absorbing interest and solemn reflection, is wholly different
in kind. It concerns the Person and office of the Messiah.
Who is He? What opinion have ye of Him? This is the
principal question. It merited thoughtful inquiry then;
it merits thoughtful inquiry now.
To obey His words, to trust His saving grace and to
follow Him, is incumbent on all who hear the Gospel; but
it is no less incumbent on believers, especially on all
(v)

vi Preface.
teachers of the Christian religion, to form and to have an in
telligent judgment respecting His person and His mission.
The Christ challenges acceptance, obedience, devotion;
but His challenge is not limited to our ethical life. He
addresses the .intellect as really as the will. He addresses
the disposition and the ability rationally to interpret and
construe objective truth, as certainly as He addresses the
power of consecration and service. He is the Truth for the
whole manhood of man: for the will, to be obeyed and hon
ored according to the dictates of conscience; for the reason,
to be apprehended and known according to the. laws of
thought. The obligation to believe answers to the psycho
logical impulse which disposes us to credit the object of
perception; the obligation to obey answers to the genius
of the will which feels bound to affirm the right and to
deny the wrong. The same correlation obtains between
Christ as truth for thought and the structure of the human
reason. An earnest Christian cannot do otherwise than
think on what he believes. The necessity is peremptory
from without and it stirs irrepressibly from within, a
necessity which for the sphere of Christian knowledge is
as imperative as is the obligation to believe and to obey
for the sphere of Christian righteousness.
The will may not ignore the intellect, nor may the in
tellect ignore the will; each requires and conditions the
legitimate action of the other; neither may character be
indifferent to science, nor science be indifferent to char
acter. The science of ethics has, by common consent, a
place in the economy of civilized society, as truly as actual
morality. So theological studies have a standing in the
court of Truth by the side of practical religion. The
science of the Christian Creed insists on its right to recog-

Preface. vii
nition no less forcibly than the Creed commands reverence.
A faith without thought is insecure and unbecoming our
manhood. Valid Christian thought honors Christianity,
and it is an indispensable condition of consistent Christian
character. The results confirm faith and energize the
Christian life, empowering pastor and layman to give an
swer to every man that asketh a reason concerning the
hope that is in them.
A superficial or defective theology sooner or later begets
a defective or false proclamation of the Gospel; and a de
fective proclamation of the Gospel not only produces super
ficial or false conceptions respecting Christianity, but it
will also issue in the development of a moral life lacking
the distinctiveness, uncompromising firmness and spiritual
zeal of the Christian type. No age can disparage theologi
cal science without prejudice to practical religion. The
state of religion and morals answers to reigning religious
ideas. Recognizing the indissoluble connection" between Chris
tian thought and the Christian life, between theological
science and the efficiency of the pulpit, the author has felt
justified in devoting time and strength to the theological
studies embodied in the preceding and in this second vol
ume, studies which have been conducted on the basis of the
central truth of Christianity, the union of sovereign Love
and human autonomy in the person of Jesus Christ, who
is the final revelation and the only redemption.
When, in 1891, the first volume of this work was issued,
nearly the whole of the second volume was written, and it
was my expectation that it would follow during the ensuing
year. On further reflection, however, I decided to re-study
and re-write the whole of it, a task which, as a great part

viii Preface.
of my time is consumed by the duties of my Chair and by
the miscellaneous claims of the Church, has occupied
two years more than was anticipated.
I repeat my grateful sense of obligation for valuable help
received in various forms from my colleagues in the Theo
logical Seminary, and from Professors of Franklin and
Marshall College, Especially do I thank Prof. John B.
Kieffer, Ph. D., for many acts of kindness.
It is due the Rev. R. Leigh ton Gerhart, A. M., that I
express my obligations to him for a careful examination in
manuscript of anthropology and soteriology, and for many
important suggestions.
The Rev. A. Carl Whitmer has been my faithful co
worker in reading proofs. I am greatly indebted to him
for the time and patient labor he has from week to week
been bestowing on this volume.
The results of my researches and studies in the domain
of systematic theology as wrought out in these volumes
are consecrated to the service of the kingdom of God, with
the assurance that sound thought respecting the nature,
relations and compass of the absolute religion is an indis
pensable condition of zealous, steadfast and joyous devo
tion to Jesus Christ.
E. V. G.
Theological Seminary,
Lancaster Pa., November, iBg^..

CONTENTS.

Preface  „ . v
BOOK V.
ANTHROPOLOGY, OR DOCTRINE ON THE ADAMIC RACE.
CHAP. I.— The Divine Idea of Man.
I 186. Man to be studied in the light of the ideal Man.
Genesis by itself inadequate . , 3-7
I 187. Man's constitution twofold : connected with na
ture, and with God .... 7-17
I 188. Man, compared with lower orders, a new crea
tion. Nature neither evolves man nor com
pletes man, yet man is the perfection of na
ture . .  18-23
I 189. The divine idea of the world gains expression
through man, who is its prophet, priest and
king  24-27
I 1 go. Darwinian and pantheistic hypotheses . . 27-34
Chap. II. — The Primeval Man.
I igi. As created, man was much more potentially
than actually ... • • 35
\ 192. The first man was truly man, in whom lower
kingdoms became relatively complete . 36-46
$ 193. The primeval man good. His constitution
whole ; his nature adapted to his ultimate
end . .  46-50
\ 194. Free from the taint of moral evil, and qualified
to attain to a higher state of ethico-religious
perfection . . . . . . . 51-54
\ 195. Man's divine imageship  54-56
\ 196. The divine image commensurate with human
nature. Man's essence images God's essence 56-60
(ix)

x Contents.
I 197. Evidences of this exalted dignity : superiority
to nature ; tendency of pagan philosophy ;
the incarnate Son  61-64
I 198. The question concerning the location of the di
vine image , • 64-67
Chap. III.— The Probation.
I 199. By creation man was not at the goal of his ex
istence ; whether he would attain to it de
pended on uninterrupted obedience. Until
this problem was solved he was under proba
tion  ¦ 67-69
% 200. As there is a kingdom of falsehood his proba
tion bears the character of a conflict with his
spiritual foe  7°~74-
\ 201. A probation of the primeval man a necessity,
including his relation to God, to himself and
to the kingdom of evil. Needful to meet
and reject evil by the choice of the good . 74-78
Chap. IV.— The' Fall.
§ 202. The probation of the human race in the person
of Adam  79
\ 203. Gen. iii. 1-8 a pictorial representation, all
parts of which symbolize moral and spiritual
realities  80-86
| 204. The fall a failure, a loss and a positive wrong 86-94
Chap. V. — The Consequences of the Fall.
I 205. By the fall human nature sinks into a condi
tion wherein all relations contravene the di
vine idea .  95
| 206. Guilt: God's judgment of condemnation utter
ing itself in self-condemnation , . . . 96-102
g 207. Redemptive element in divine wrath 103, 104
I 208. The curse: the actual ills of sinful human life,
embodying and expressing God's judgment
of condemnation ; manifested in two ways,
mediately and immediately . . . 105-108
§209. The kingdom of darkness, the ultimate princi
ple of wilful transgression and of its conse
quences  109-112
Chap. VI. — The Sinfulness of Mankind.
<i 210. Terms : original sin, depravity, sinfulness, in
herited sinfulness, inborn sin . . .113,114
I 211. How is it that all men have a depraved na
ture ? Solidarity of the Adamic race; the

Contents. xi
nature of the primeval family becomes the
nature of their posterity .... 1 15-125
§ 212. How can the individual infant be justly subject
to condemnation ?  126-120
<S 213. Of the infant we predicate a twofold ethical
status: under one aspect condemnation, under
another aspect innocence .... 130-136
Chap. VII.— The Nature of Sin.
I 214. The conditions of a scriptural doctrine . . 137
§ 215. Defective theories  138-143
\ 216. Sin the self-assertion against God. To be
studied as an abnormal condition, and as
wrong conscious volition .... 144-147
\ 217. Sinfulness and sins their own punishment.
Dynamic and judicial consequences, embrac
ing the whole man  148-150
I 218. Self-reproduction of moral evil in the individ
ual, the family, the nation, the race . . 151-155
Chap. VIIL— Adamic Death.
I 219. Death the product and the penalty of sin . 156-159
I 220. Death under its negative aspect . . . 160-162
fj 221. Death under its positive aspect.. An epoch in
man's sinful history  163-166
§ 222. Four grades of human death .... 167-169

BOOK VI.

CHRISTOLOGY, OR DOCTRINE ON JESUS CHRIST.
Chap. I. The Advent.
g 223. Principle and motive of the advent . ... 173
<S 224. The advent referable to God and man in their
reciprocal connection  174-177
? 225. The abnormal relation of the race to God a
factor of the advent  178-182
\ 226. The Adamic race the natural basis of Messianic
revelation. The pre-Christian economy,
founded- by the Abrahamic covenant, a re
sponse of Jehovah to the instinctive longings
of mankind  183-185
\ 227. The Abrahamic covenant a necessity for the
advent of the Messiah  186-188

xii Contents.
\ 228. The Hebrews a unique people, the organ of the
religious life of the world . . . . 189-192
Chap. II.— Birth of Jesus Christ.
§ 229. An event referable to the direct agency of the
Godhead, yet the legitimate outcome of his
tory  193. 194
2 23°- John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary, the
conclusion of Old Testament history, condi
tion the beginning of the new world . . 195-199
I 231. The threefold reciprocal relation between God
and man beget a '.'highly favored" one,
capable of meeting the extraordinary de
mand of the impending juncture . . . 200,201
I 232. Jesus conceived and born according to normal
natural laws by supernatural agency . . 201-204
I 233. The possibility of conception by the Holy Spirit
stands in the original kinship between the
being of man and the being of God . . 205-207
\ 234. Twofold function of the divine factor in the
conception by the Virgin: Jesus is conceived,
and the conception is the beginning of His
incarnation. As related to moral evil the
conception was normal; as related to God it
was the quickening in embryo of eternal
life .  208-215
Chap. III. — The Circumcision.
\ 235. The spotless beginning neither the complete
redemption nor the final perfection of Christ's
humanity. Perfection attainable in the
Abrahamic covenant of which He became a
member by circumcision .... 216-220
§ 236. The notion that th£ circumcision of Jesus was
only an empty religious rite is to be rejected.
It had objective spiritual force . . . 221,222
Chap. IV.— Normal Development of Jesus.
§ 237. The period intermediate between His circum
cision and His baptism a period of normal
ethical development, of religious culture and
of positive preparation for the assumption
of His office  223-231
I 238. Does this idea of the normal development of
Jesus involve a contradiction ? . . . 232-235
Chap. V. — His Baptism.
\ 239. At His baptism the fitness of humanity for

Contents. xiii
this epoch and the manifestation of God by
the Spirit meet .... . 236
§ 240. The baptism to be studied objectively and sub
jectively : objectively, the recognition and
consecration of Jesus by the Father as the
Christ ; subjectively, the recognition by Jesus
of His Messianic vocation and the dedication
of Himself to it  237-240
Chap. VI. — The Temptation.
#241. The spiritual conflict ... . 241
% 242. The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness a
necessity of his mediatorial mission . . 242-246
\ 243. The form of the temptation a matter of subor
dinate importance. Whether the solicitation
to unfaithfulness was real the vital question 247-249
I 244. An answer, to the question, what was the false
hood presented to Jesus for His acceptance ?
or the matter of the temptation . . . 250-252
I 245. The peculiar adaptation of the temptation to
the human nature and the official position of
' Jesus . . . . . . . . 253-255
\ 246. The question concerning the peccability of
Jesus  256-260
§ 247. The victory over Satan a positive victory . 261-263
Chap. VII. — The Mediator and His Mediatorship.
I 248. The dignity of His person and the virtue of
His mediatorship imply the progressive per
fection of His twofold constitution . . 264-272
\ 249. The idea of the Mediator governs the idea of
His mediatorship  273, 274
I 250. The mediatorship one office. Organically con
nected with God and the world, it bears a
twofold character  275-278
I 251. The mediatorship in its relation to man's fall. 279
\ 252. The mediatorial history of the Christ becomes
of necessity a redemption .... 280-292
I 253. All phases of the mediatorship refer in the first
instance to the Mediator Himself . . . 293-295
Chap. VIII. — His Ministry: Deeds and Words.
\ 254. Deeds and words correspond to His personality. 296
\ 255. The deeds of our Lord to be studied in relation
to Himself, and in relation to persons and
things; in both relations natural . . . 297-311
I 256. His words like His works presuppose and ex-

xiv Contents.
press His personality; what Jesus teaches
answers to what Jesus is .... 312-318
§ 257. Words and deeds integral parts of the one min
istry  3i9-3z3
Chap. IX.— The Death op Jesus Christ: Atoning Sacrifice.
I 258. On the cross all lines of revelation and redemp
tion meet. The atoning sacrifice to be studied
in its objective relations, especially in its
connection with Himself . . . .324-327
§ 259. His sacrifice the manifestation of the redeeming
love of God in the expiation of human guilt. 328-331
(j 260. Particulars of the general truth developed in
the preceding articles  332-346
Chap. X. — Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades.
\ 261. An article of the Christian Creed. The astron
omy and geography of ancient times govern
the form of the teaching of the fact in the
New Testament  347~35i
§ 262. Death and Hades integral parts of the same
mystery  352-357
\ 263. The descensus taught in the New Testament by
necessary implication, being an inference
from the facts of His death and resurrection. 358-363
\ 264. The explicit teaching of the New Testament:
Matt. xii. 40; Acts ii. 22-32; 1 Peter iii. 18-20;
Phil. ii. 11; Rom. x. 7; 1 Peter iv. 5, 6;.Eph.
iv. 9, 10; Rev. i. 18  364-370
g 265. Into Hades the Christ descended to accomplish
the same work for which He lived upon the
earth. The Paradise of the Old Testament
transformed into the Paradise of the New
Testament . . . . ' . . . 371-375
\ 266. The scriptural teaching on the descensus super
sedes the Roman doctrine of purgatory. . 376-378
Chap. XL— His Resurrection.
\ 267. The atoning sacrifice anticipates the fact of the.
resurrection  379-381
\ 268. The resurrection an historical event recorded
by all the evangelists ; but belief turns
chiefly on its self-verifying virtue . . . 382-387
? 269. The law of self- verification the perpetual argu
ment for the resurrection of Christ . . 388-390
\ 270. The resurrection an epoch of positive progress,
a transition from the natural to the divine

Contents. xv
realm by which the Founder of the new king
dom is glorified, and the victory over death
and the kingdom of darkness concluded . 391-395
§271. In rising from the dead the Christ fulfils the
law of redemption  396-400
I 272. The substance and form of the victory dis
cussed more fully  401, 402
Chap. XII. — Ascension and Glorification.
% 273. The transformation and transfiguration of His
divine-human personality . . . 403-408
\ 274. The ascension an actual, visible transition
from earth to heaven, the mode in which a
transcendent epoch in the history of the in
carnate Son addressed the senses and the
faith of the disciples  409-413
Chap. XIII. —The Universal Headship.
\ 275. Constituted Head over all things unto the
Church, Jesus now reigns and will continue
to reign over all creatures in heaven, on
earth and under the earth . . . 414, 415
§ 276. The mediatorial office pertains to the essential
relation of mankind to God which stands in
the divine imageship, and to the accidental
relation brought about by the fall, the one
being normal, the other abnormal . . 416-418
\ 277. The prophetic function of the divine-human
Mediator  419-423
\ 278. The high-priestly function .... 424-427
g 279. His kingly function : Christ the law for the
order of heaven, for the teleology of the
world, for the growth and triumph of the
Church, and for the final consummation ;
Christ this law as the Head of the new race
and the Redeemer- from sin in one mystery . 428, 429
§ 280. The unity of the mediatorial office . . . 430-432

BOOK VII.
PNEUMATOLOGY, OR DOCTRINE ON THE HOLY SPIRIT.
Chap. I. — Pentecost.
§281. By the Spirit given on the day of Pentecost
the Church is constituted. The advent of

xvi Contents.
the Holy Spirit of Christ is correlative and
complemental to the advent of Himself . 435-438
| 282. Pentecost the fulfilment of antecedent Messi
anic history, and the condition of all the
mysteries of the kingdom of heaven . . 439-443
| 283. The pentecostal epoch introduces a new stage
of Messianic revelation, new in kind, new in
degree  444-446
Chap. II. — The Mission of the Spirit.
\ 284. The Spirit the Person by whom the divine-
human life of Christ is quickened in His
members, and their redemption is accom
plished : as to their essence the work of
Christ and the work of the Spirit are the
same. The work of Christ is the basis and
affords the material of the work of the Spirit,
who actualizes among men the perfected
mediatorship in the form of the Christian
community. But as regards His sphere and
form of action the work of the Spirit differs. 447, 448
? 285. Like the mediatorship of Christ the work of
the Spirit is life-giving and it is saving. . 448-453
Chap. III. — The Christian Church.
I 286. A new order of spiritual life which by His >
advent the Spirit has created and in which
He lives. The Christian Church presup
poses : (1) human society ; (2) the chosen
nation ; (3) the intermediate community
whose center was Jesus of Nazareth . . 454-458
I 287. On the basis ot the intermediate Messianic
community which Jesus organized, there
arises by the advent of His Spirit a com
munion, different in kind from all other
organizations, of which the glorified God-
man is the Head  459-463
I 288. This spiritual communion is the ' second ' race
of mankind, which in one respect is identical
with the race of the ' first Adam,' in another
respect genetically different .... 464-467
\ 289. Being the mystical body of Jesus Christ, the
Church like her Head is divine-human. . 468-471
\ 290. The Church in a preeminent sense an or
ganism, characterized by the phenomena of
a living constitution, chief among which is
the progressive actualization of her idea . 472-475

Contents. xvii
Chap. IV. — Properties of the Church.
i. Unity.
\ 291. As to her essence the Church is but one, like
the vine and its branches, but bears in her
self differentiating types of organization and
doctrine  476-484
2. Holiness of the Church.
I 292. The Church is holy negatively, being eman
cipated from the law of sin ; holy positively,
inasmuch as she fulfils the law of Christ . 485-489
3. Catholicity of the Church.
I 293. In distinction from Judaism and ethnic reli
gions Christianity is designed and fitted for
all nations  490-495
4. One, Holy, Catholic Church.
§ 294. Reciprocal relations of the properties of the
Church, each conditioning the others . . 496-499
Chap. V. — Functions of the Spirit in the Communion
of the Church.
§ 295. Functions of the Spirit prophetic, priestly,
kingly  500
\ 296. Prophetic function, revealing Christ in the
community of the Church. By revealing
Christ' the Spirit manifests Himself in the
members of Christ  501-503
\ 297. Priestly function. Leads the apostate race
from Satan to God. Their deliverence pre
supposes the new life-communion between
man and God quickened by the Spirit . . 504, 505
\ 298. The kingly function. By the Spirit the will
of Christ active in the life and freedom of
the Church. His agency dynamic and gov
ernmental. . ... 505-508
Chap. VI.— The Holy Ministry.
I 299. The ministry and the sacraments integral parts
of the organization of the Church. Christ in
heaven fulfils. His mediatorial office on earth
by His members. All constitute the agency
of the Spirit, but all do not occupy the same
place nor pursue the same calling . . . 509-514
I 300. The relation of the ministry to Christ glorified,
and to the economy of the Church. . . 515-517
I 301. Important to emphasize the office of the minis
try in both relations . . . .-518-521

xviii Contents.
\ 302. The Church a self-perpetuating communion,
including the ministry and the" lay member
ship . . ,  522-527
I 303. No necessary external, tactual succession of
ministers, according to the Roman or Angli
can theory  528-531
§ 304. Unity of the ministerial office in three distinct
functions, prophetic, sacerdotal, kingly . 532-539
j! 305. Every office-bearer duly ordained invested with
the one office, including its several functions. 540-542
Chap. VII.— The Holy Sacraments.
\ 306. Christian sacraments related to Jewish sacra
ments as Jesus Christ is related to Moses . 543-545
\ 307. Two sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's
Supper, universally acknowledged, each
rooted in the ceremonial worship of the
chosen people  546-553
§ 308. Sacraments are spiritual ordinances, appointed
means of grace, whereby Christ translates
' the subjects of the kingdom of darkness into
the kingdom of heaven, and nourishes them
unto eternal life . .... 554-557
Chap. VIII.— Holy Baptism.
\ 309. Baptism the sacrament of initiation and of
adoption into the kingdom of God. The
blessing of Baptism objective only . . 558-564
\ 310. Spiritual virtue of Baptism supported by a
threefold argument : (1) the explicit teach
ing of the New Testament ; (2) the belief of
the Christian Church ; (3) the Confessions of
the Reformed and' Lutheran Churches . . 565-573
(8311. The force of the consensus of the Church
during eighteen centuries , . . . 574-579
Chap. IX.— Baptism of Infants.
(S 312. Christ excludes no nation, no sex, no age.
The obligation to receive the infant children
of believers founded on the nature of Chris
tianity. The Christian economy in every
particular richer and more comprehensive
than the pre-Christian economy . . . 580-587
\ 313. Under Christian as under Jewish law infants
belong to the covenant and people of God.
Redemption from sin and the Holy Spirit
promised to them no less than to their
parents  588-591

Contents. xix
£314. Two objections to the baptism of infants: no
command to baptize infants; infants in
capable of faith  592-598
Chap. X.— The Lord's Supper.
§315. The different titles of the ordinance . . . 599,600
\ 316. The Supper a commemorative ordinance. . . 601-603
\ 317. The Supper a spiritual banquet . . . 604-611
$318. Four leading theories: The Roman, the original
Lutheran, the symbolical, and the Calvin-
istic theory  612-619
\ 319. The teaching of Calvin and Reformed Confes
sions on the Lord's Supper .... 620-624
(S 320; Summary of the results of this inquiry into the
Reformed doctrine of the Lord's Supper . 625,626
Chap. XL — The Communion of Saints.
\ 321. An article of the Christian Creed . . . 627, 628
§ 322. Christ lives in His members by the mediation
of His Spirit, who is the bond of union be
tween them and Himself, destroying the
sting of sin and resolving the article of
death into an epoch of spiritual growth . 629-631
<S 323. All the members of Christ have part in Him
and in His " treasures and gifts " . . .632-634
I 324. Each member by the Spirit stands in immedi
ate relation to Christ glorified and in imme
diate relation to his fellow-members, each
receiving spiritual good from others, each
- imparting spiritual good to others . . 635-637
\ 325. The communion of saints both conscious and
sub-conscious  638, 639

BOOK VIII.

SOTERIOLOGY, OR THE DOCTRINE ON PERSONAL SALVA
TION.
Chap. I. — Province op Soteriology.
I 326. Fundamentally Christianity is a new creation.
The necessity of expiating human guilt and
abolishing all forms of misery conditions
and imparts character to the office of the
Holy Spirit  643-645

xx Contents.
Chap. II. — The Kingdom of Salvation.
\ 327. Personal salvation presupposes the transition
of the transgressor from membership in the
race of the first man to membership in the
race of the Second Man, the new race being
the race of eternal life and salvation . . 646-651
Chap. III.— Faith.
I 328. Christ the central truth of the objective econ
omy of redemption. Faith the central prin
ciple of personal salvation, responsive to the
central truth of redemption . . . 652-654
I 329. The primacy of faith for knowledge and char
acter not peculiar to Christianity . . . 655-658
I 330. Jesus Christ the object of a twofold faith, nat
ural and Christian . . . . ' . 659-661
\ 331. The person of Christ the immediate object of
Christian faith, the effect of which is the
communion of Christ with the believer . 662-670
\ 332. Faith an active faculty, related fo the new man
as the natural senses are related to the body. 671-676
Chap. IV.— The Law.
I 333. The authority of God expressed by the for
mula, Thou shalt love . ... 677, 678
| 334. God's blessing precedes the expression and
enforcement of God's authority. The gifts
of love condition the demands of love . 679-682
\ 335. The relation of God's blessing to man's obliga
tion, seen in the first chapters of Genesis,
prophetic of the covenant of Jehovah with
Abraham; and the covenant-relation of
Jehovah with Abraham is' prophetic of the
relation in Christianity between grace and
law  683-685
I 336. JesuS Christ the perfect impersonation of the
authority of law and of obedience to law . 686, 687
Chap. V. — Repentance?
\ 337. The import of metanoia  688, 689
| 338. The conscious turning to Christ involves the
turning from the false life of sin. Such
turning predicable of the regenerate man . 690,691
§ 339. Christian repentance, taken in the sense of
metanoia, involved in the exercise of Chris
tian faith  691-695
I 340. Corresponding to the faith of the natural man

Contents. xxi
there may be a moral change in character
which may be called natural repentance . 696-698
Chap. VI. — Election.
I 341. A scriptural doctrine of election consistent
with the sovereignty of God and the auton
omy of man  699-703
j! 342. The twofold principle entering into election
appears prominently in that extraordinary
epoch when pre-Christian history closes and
the Christian era begins .... 704-707
§343. As elect Israelites were chosen in Abraham, so
elect believers are chosen in Christ. No
divine election arbitrary .... 708-716
Chap. VII. — Justification by Faith.
| 344. Two closely allied questions : How may a
transgressor obtain forgiveness ? How may
he come to stand in right judicial relation to
God ? The answer modified by three issues 717-721
\ 345. How can a person become righteous, who born
with a vitiated nature has by transgression
fallen under condemnation ? Important to
distinguish this question from others closely
allied to it  722-725
' $ 346. The solution of a threefold problem : How can
the transgressor be delivered from condemna
tion ? How can a man by nature sinful
stand approved at the bar of divine law?
How may actual obedience to God become
possible ? Christianity answers : by faith
in Jesus Christ.  726-730
I 347. The relation of Holy Baptism to justification
by faith ........ 731,732
§'348. The positive force of justification involves the
forgiveness of sin  732-736
I 349. The ground of forgiveness and righteousness
is the person and mediatorship of Christ . 737, 738
| 350. Birth into the kingdom and the peace' of justi
fication distinct elements of the Christian
salvation . . .... 739~743
Chap. VIII. —Good Works.
I 351. The life -of faith bears fruit in good works . 744-746
I 352. Faith in Christ the principle of good works . 747-749
§353- What words, what deeds are right? Good
works are done according to the law of God. 750-755

xxii Contents.
I 354. The aim of works truly good is God's glory,
the manifestation of His righteous love . 756-758
Chap. IX. — Sanctification.
fg 355. Sanctification the progressive formation of
holy character, being the product of person
ality asserting itself responsively to renew
ing grace  759~762
§ 356. Sanctification to be studied under a twofold
aspect : as a gradual transformation into the
likeness of the ideal Man, and a gradual
purification from the pollution of sin . . 763-768
g 357. Sanctification as involving degrees and stages :
the potential beginning, the^ actual develop
ment and the final consummation. . . 769-772
Chap. X. — The Christian Victory.
\ 358. The exit of the spiritual man from the present
world and the exit of the natural man differ
ent in kind. Neither an extinction. Each
an epoch in the history of man's existence . 773-776
§ 359. The end of the earthly history of the spiritual
man an epoch, which on the one hand is the
victory over the curse of sin and on the other
the transition from a lower to a higher plane
of eternal life  777-780
§ 360. The doctrine respecting the victorious depar
ture of Christ's members warranted by the
teaching of the New Testament . . . 781-786
(S361. The objection of materialism .... 787,788

BOOK IX.
ESCHATOLOGY, OR DOCTRINE ON THE LAST THINGS.
Chap. I. — The First and the Last.
§ 362. Eschatology the doctrine on those coming
events which are final in the history of the
kingdom of God. The consummation of
creation, providence and redemption . . 791-794
§ 363. The second advent of the Son of Man embraces
all other concluding events ; these are to be
studied in the light of the central fact . . 795-798
g 364. The Christological idea the only valid principle
of inquiry into the nature of the last things. 799-801

Contents. xxiii
Chap. II.— The Second Advent.
3 365- The second advent in comparison with the
first advent. In one respect the outcome of
the current Messianic age, this final epoch
will introduce a new eon, which will be gov
erned by the law of life controlling Messianic
history  802-805
§ 366. The second advent a new movement : new in
kind, new in its relations, new as to its pur
pose  806-809
\ 367. The peculiar phenomena of the closing epoch
of history will be the consequence of the
dynamic presence of Christ and the nearness
of His final manifestation. Some resem
blance to the phenomena attending His birth
and life on earth. When the epoch opens it
will be an unexpected manifestation that will
at once authenticate itself to the Church and
the world  810-816
Chap. III. — Concerning the Millennium : A Paren
thesis.
I 368. The millennium a sentiment or opinion, rather
than a doctrine ...... 817,818
ji 369. Two leading theories : the one naturalistic,
the other spiritualistic  819-825
\ 370. The millennial reign different from the order of
things now prevalent, different also from that
status of the kingdom following the consum
mation  826, 827
Chap. IV.— The Resurrection of the Dead.
\ 371. The dissolution of Hades and the resurrection
of the dead two sides of one mystery . . 828, 829
? 372. The resurrection of the dead not a return to the
natural world, nor the revival of man's nat
ural existence in a future world. Sound
thought must be guided by the law of the
resurrection revealed by the history of Jesus
Christ  830,831
1 373. The resurrection affirmed by the Christian
Creed to be distinguished from the pagan
belief concerning the immortality of the soul. 832-834
Chap. V. — The Resurrection of the Righteous.
§ 374. By virtue of the union of His members to Him
self, Christ will raise them tip in the likeness
of His resurrection  835

xxiv Contents.
I 375. In the article of death the righteous quit the
earthly economy of their history, but do not
at once complete the development of the new
life  836 840
I 376. The resurrection body a spiritual body. Its
relation to the ' new man ' like the relation
which the natural body bears to the ' old
man' ........ 841-846
§ 377. Whence comes the resurrection body ? . . 847-850
Chap. VI.— The Resurrection of the Wicked.
| 378. Whilst the righteous go forth from the inter
mediate realm according to the law of the
Spirit of life in the Second Man, the wicked
go forth according to the law of sin in the
fallen life of the first man .... 851-853
§ 379. The solution of this problem speculative. Nec
essary to reassert the truth that sin and death
are one, two forms of the same false principle. 854
§ 380. As of sin so of death three distinct stages are
to be predicated  855-858
I 381. The victory of Christ over sin in principle the
condemnation of Satan and the overthrow of
his kingdom. This involves a transition of
the wicked from the intermediate realm into
the place "prepared for the devil and his
angels"  859-862
I 382. The resurrection of the wicked includes a cor-'
poreal form ....... 863-865
Chap. VII. — The General Judgment.
I 383. The judgment as taught by our Lord in His
parables  866-868
I 384. The day of judgment a judicial proceeding pe
culiar to itself, but in principle identical with
all the judgments of God. Since the intro
duction of sin, the moral necessity binding
angels and men to do the right has become
the necessity for the condemnation of trans
gressors  869-871
I 385. The Judge is the Son of Man . . . .872,873
I 386. The Judge will render to every one according
to his works. Whether works are good or
evil turns on the relation which works bear
to the person of the Judge .... 874-879
§ 387. Judgment the utter separation of the wicked

Contents. xxv
from the righteous, a separation which will
be judicial, a justification of the one class, a
condemnation of the other .... 880-882
§ 388. The judgment primarily positive ; the good
asserts itself and maintains itself on the
throne. The people of Christ demonstrated
to be the living members of the only right
eous kingdom  883-885
Chap. VIII.— Gehenna : The Second Death.
\ 389. Since the revelation of God in Christ as to its
essential nature is prevailingly positive, we
know less of Satan than of Christ, less of sin
and death than of eternal life. . . . 886
\ 390. To all who have not been redeemed from sin
by grace through faith in Christ the general
judgment will issue in the second death. The
idea of sin the principle of thought respect
ing the world of woe ; but this presupposes
a scriptural idea respecting the Second Man. 887, 888
? 391. The torment of gehenna is to be studied in re
lation to its subjects. As we distinguish
between devils and wicked men, so we dis
tinguish between the final abode of devils
and the final abode of wicked men . . 889-891
§ 392. The gehenna of devils as existing prior to the
final judgment may be regarded as the pro
phecy of the gehenna which will be . . 892,893
§ 393- The woe of gehenna contrary to the eternal
purpose and providential designs of God . 893-895
Chap. IX.— Heaven: Final Blessedness.
1 394. Environment modifies the structure of the
plant and the animal ; but when we enter the
» sphere of personality this law is reversed.
God forms His own environment, called by
our Lord ' my Father's house ' . 896-898
\ 395. Heaven not a part of the created universe. The
self-produced ohda of God, it is eternal, super
natural, transcendent  899-901
\ 396. Heaven to be studied first as related to the life
of the triune God, then as related to the in
carnate Son glorified, finally as related to the
Church triumphant . . . . 902-906
§ 397. The everlasting life of the saints in the fellow
ship of Christ is the informing principle of
their heavenly blessedness .... 907-910

xxvi Contents.
I 398. Heaven in relation to man to be regarded as
the ripe fruit of the entire history of our race
on the plane of ' the new-creation ' ' . . 911-914
Chap. X. — The Antithesis.
\ 399. Doctrinal thought closes with two worlds,
the one ideal, the other contra-ideal, a status
of discord in ultimate existence. As phil
osophic thought prefers unity and harmony,
what may be said to relieve the sense of
disappointment?  915-922

book fifth:
ANTHROPOLOGY: OR DOCTRINE ON THE
ADAMIC RACE.

CHAPTER I.
THE DIVINE IDEA OF MAN.
§ 186.
Jesus Christ in the process of becoming the perfect
man realizes in Himself the divine ideal of the race.
To develop a Christian conception of humanity, of
its beginning, its ultimate end, and present abnormal
condition, it is needful to study the Person and history
of the Son of Man.
The account of creation as given in the first chap
ters of Genesis, when taken by itself, is inadequate,
for it represents man only as he was on the lowest
plane of the history of normal development.
i. The person and history of our Lord declare a two
fold fundamental truth, the truth respecting God and the
truth respecting man. As we have to study the Christ in
order to get an adequate conception of God, of His will,
His essence and His attributes, so we have to s.tudy
the Christ in order to get an adequate conception of man,
of his origin and destiny, his aptitudes and his essen
tial relations. It is the divine idea of mankind that is
actualized by His wonderful history on earth, and in its
final form by His perfected mediatorship in heaven. His
glorification reveals the significance of the truth that man
was made in the image of God ; reveals his essential dig
nity and his divine destiny; reveals the nature of his
ideal relation to the cosmos, both to the kingdom of light
a'nd the kingdom of darkness. What Jesus became as the
3

4 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
result of His mediatorial work, that the first man was as
to possibility and intention from the beginning.
The humiliation of Jesus and His sufferings on earth
show that the present condition of mankind is abnormal,
a condition that presupposes a moral fall. His ideal life
of love and righteousness provokes the hatred and deadly
enmity of the world; it brings to light the fact that moral
evil is antagonism to truth and goodness, a violation alike
of the divine will and of the original laws of human
nature. The significance of the fall described in Genesis we
cannot discover if inquiry begins with reflection on the
false and the wrong in human history, or on contra-ideal
phenomena of the natural world, and then endeavors in
thought to rise upward from the wrong to the ideal right,
from the abnormal to the normal ; for the bad cannot
teach the good, nor the imperfect teach the perfect. To
get an insight into the greatness of that catastrophe
thought has to proceed in the opposite order. Thought
must begin with an idea of the true and the right respect
ing man's nature, his relations and destiny, then in the
light of truth pass on to reflect on the false and the wrong
in human history. "Knowledge of the good," says
Nitzsch, ."always commences from above, and necessarily
proceeds from the absolute good. The bad is not a condi
tion of the good." 1 By this twofold process, by reflection
on ideal manhood, and with its support by reflection on
the actual history of man, it is possible rightly to estimate
his debased natural condition.
2. Christian anthropology observes the same law that
governs other sciences. Every science studies its proper
1 System of Christian Doctrine, p. 235.

1 186.] The Divine Idea of Man. 5
object, not a caricature, nor even an imperfect representa
tion. Botany studies the plant; optics the light. Though
light and the plant are related, yet the knowledge of
either can be obtained only by the investigation of itself;
not the knowledge of light from empirical studies of the
plant, not knowledge of the plant from experiments on
light. Being the science of man, anthropology, in order
tp develop a scientific conception, proceeds on the same
principle. And as botany needs the best specimen of a
plant, as optics -demands the investigation of light under
legitimate conditions, so Christian anthropology, in order
to ascertain the truth respecting mankind, rises to the
study of the human constitution as it confronts thought
on the highest plane of development.
3. If we compare the first Adam with the last' Adam,
man in the garden of Eden with the Son of Man amid the
errors and sins of the Jews in the Holy Land, we at once
observe the great contrast. Exalted and good as the first
man was in his primeval state, he is in all respects inferior
to the Second Man.
Waiving the question whether the account of the first
man given in Genesis is symbolical or historical, or is
historical truth in symbolical forms, but accepting the
record as authoritative, it in the nature of the case is
rather a prophecy than a fulfillment of the divine purpose,
a type of ideal manhood rather than the final realization.
Adam in his primeval state of innocence is the beautiful
aurora of the human race, not the noon-day sun, or as
Clement calls him, "the most beautiful hymn to the praise
of Deity;" but his original condition realizes his idea in
its first stage, not on the highest plane of its manifestation.
' Jesus Christ resumes the original status of the Adamic

6 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [Book 5.
race; then developing human nature in Himself according
to the divine idea, He advances it from its primeval plane
to its ultimate plane. Fulfilling the end of creation, He
represents man to faith, as to body and soul, under a char
acter that is perfect. The reality which the history and
glorification of the Son of Man set before us is cammensu-
rate with the divine idea. Genesis must be studied in its
subordinate relation to the complement of that record
which Jesus Christ has actualized. Otherwise we shall
fail to do justice to the book of beginnings; for the Old
Testament and the New Testament are an historical unity;
Genesis anticipates the Gospels, the Gospels presuppose
Genesis. 4. Neither does the pictorial representation in Genesis
afford an adequate conception of Adam's .apostasy, of its
nature, conditions and consequences.
It is not in my mind to imply that the representation, is
wanting in validity, or that it fails to declare historical
truth, but that it is incomplete. Complete it is for that
first period of the history of human sin, but not for the
mystery of sin in its profoundest relations. A more com
plete exhibition of the iniquity of transgression involved
in that fatal beginning is provoked by Christianity.
The nature of sin, the falsehood of the Devil and ;the
wickedness of temptation, stand out as the dark back
ground of the absolute revelation of Truth. The agonies
of the spotless Lamb of God expose the iniquity of sin.
As Dorner teaches, the most prominent characteristic of
Satan in the New Testament is that he .is "the enemy of
God and of man, that as to contents and form he wills
what is contrary to God."1 His persistent antagonisms to
'System of Christian Doctrine, f 86, 2.

1 187.] The Divine Idea cf Man. 7
Jesus Christ exhibit the hypocrisy of temptation and the
malicious attitude of the kingdom of darkness toward man
and toward God, as these diabolical powers were never
brought to light in the history of the pre-Christian
economy. Whilst the account in Genesis of the original goodness
of man and of the beginning of his apostasy is essential
and valid, it is by the Christian student to be regarded as
only a partial exhibition of both. The righteous life of
Jesus, the last Adam, and the bitter enmity brought to
light by His life of love, furnish the final complement.
Genesis is to be studied in the light shed upon it by the
New Testament. The Second Man illumines the first
man; the temptation in the wilderness illumines the pur
pose of the first temptation. The Devil bringing ruin
upon man must be studied in the light of Man destroying
the works of the Devil.1
If we pursue our anthropological studies guided both by
the final and the primary stage of human history, we may
develop a correct conception of the Adamic race.
§ 187.
The constitution of man is twofold, and occupies a
twofold relation; being directly connected on the one
side with nature and on the other with God.
1. Connected with nature and with the whole natural
creation, the Adamic man possesses a mundane life. He
lives according to a mundane law and a mundane mode
of existence. Connected with God and the spiritual
world, he possesses a spiritual and god-like life. He lives
'Heb. ii. 14, 15.

8 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [B00K5.
according to a super-mundane law, and a divine mode of
existence. As fashioned by the creative word, the human
constitution is the organic unity of two opposite factors,
the sensuous and the spiritual, the cosmic and the heav
enly. By virtue of this twofoldness, man is the mediator
between God and all sub-human kingdoms. That his
personality is the point in which two opposite worlds meet
will appear from several considerations.
2. That man's constitution unites in itself two princi
ples, the cosmic and the divine, is taught in the first chap
ters of Genesis. The account runs thus: "And God said,
Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: And
let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over
the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the
earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon
the earth. And God created man in His own imare, in
the ' image of God created He him ; male and female cre
ated He them." 1 The other account of his creation says:
"And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground
and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man
became a living soul." 2 These two records present differ
ent aspects of the genesis of man ; but the twofold idea is
essentially the same in both.
Man is the creature of God. He is what he became
under the plastic hand of his Maker. But he is not an
abrupt nor an isolated creation. God made man conform
ably to a teleological principle in force from the beginning
of His creative activity, and operative through all succes
sive periods onward to its relative conclusion on the sixth
day; the dynamic force of which principle connects the
human constitution internally with every kingdom of na-
1 Gen. i. 26, 27. 2 Gen. ii. 7.

<s 187.J The Divine Idea of Man. g
ture below man, down to lifeless matter in the state of
chaos. Man in one respect is the outcome of an upward
formative process, embracing distinctly marked stages and
orders of existence. Each stage of progress presupposes
on the one hand all stages that precede it, and on the
other conditions all the stages that succeed it, the force
and design of the entire movement from chaos onward
being gathered up, and -in a relative sense completed, in
the being of man, a distinct and new existence.
This is the profound ethical and religious significance
of the order of statement given by the first twenty-five
verses of the first chapter of Genesis. In the teleological
relations of this wonderful grouping of the phenomena of
these six ages lies the scientific truth of the chapter.1
Light and darkness; the waters and the firmament; the
solid earth and the growing plant; the lights in the firma
ment of the heaven ; the seasons, years and days ; the
moving creatures in the waters, and the fowl flying above
the earth ; the beast of the earth, cattle and* creeping
things ; — each in its measure and all as connected parts of
an ascending series prepare the conditions and call for the
personality of man, who by this natural history was pre
destined to come forth in the fullness of time. " He is in
need," as Delitzsch remarks, "of all the creatures that
precede him;" and John Fiske says: " The creation and
perfecting of Man is the goal toward which Nature's work
has been tending from the first. "2 When the ages were
1 That the "days" of creation in Genesis mean ages is not a modern
discovery of geology. This interpretation dates back to the second cen
tury. A "day" meant a "cycle" of "a thousand years" for Irenaeus
(f202), Adv. Her. v. 23, 2. Augustin accepts a similar interpretation,
City of God, xi. 6, 7. Institutes, \ 157.
2 The Destiny of Man, p. 107.

IO Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
ripe, the prophecies of the plant and the animal were ful
filled. When all things were ready, the head and lord of
nature appeared. He came as the fruit of the growing
ages. Man was the product of the creative word, which
was evoking and fashioning all kingdoms of nature with
reference to the last eon of the advancing series.
3. According to the representations of Genesis man em
braces iii his constitution the elements of lifeless matter.
He is a material structure. Delitzsch says: "It is not
said: God formed the dust into a man, but He formed the
man pulverem de humo, that is, so that this was the ma
terial of which he consisted."1 The mineral kingdom. as
organized in him becomes the physical foundation of his
being. But man is much more than a material structure.
Like the plant he is an organism. Nor can we stop here.
Man is an animated organism; he takes up into himself
the peculiar qualities of the animal kingdom. But neither
matter, nor organized life, nor animation realizes the dis
tinctive truth of the divine idea, nor embodies the pi'inci-
ple of' the human constitution. Tp say that man is an
animal is just as really a defective proposition as to say
that he is a plant or a crystal. Refined materiality and
organized vitality he possesses in conjunction with freedom
and self-consciousness. Materiality and individuality are
the under-world of personality. Like a tree, man strikes
the roots of his personal existence into the dark bosom of
the earth, but lifts his head above rocks and plains and
holds fellowship with heaven and with God.
4. Organically connected with all lower kingdoms and
molded by cosmical laws, man is at the same time con
nected immediately with the life of God. Says the record:
1 Comm. on Gen. i., p. 117.

1 187.] The Divine Idea of Man. 1 1
"In the image of God created He him." Again: "God
breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man be
came a living soul." From all other members of creation
man differs in this, that God Himself is his pattern. He
is not only a soul, but a living soul; and he becomes a
living soul by virtue of the breath of life which God
breathed into his nostrils. In the act of developing and
completing the ascending series of kingdoms God commu
nicates of His own spiritual vitality to the being who is
the outcome and exponent of the development of the ages.
By this divine gift constituting the outcome of the ages a
being in His likeness, God fulfills the idea operative ideo
logically from chaos onward to the animal. As regards his
essence, or that which is distinctive of his constitution
when compared with* the animal or the plant or the
mineral, he possesses kinship with the absolute Person
ality. Unlike the tree, but like the articulate word, man
in the process of creative inbreathing proceeds from God;
he is quickened by the life of Spirit, and as such he is de
signed for fellowship with God on earth and for perfected
fellowship with Him in His eternal glory.
5. A more forcible argument than the Old Testament fur
nishes in support of this twofold conception of the Adamic
race is the mystery of the incarnation. God in the Person
of His Son became man, and man, to appropriate the lan
guage of the Athanasian Creed, was "assumed into God."
A union so real, so indissoluble, argues a profound essen
tial connection between these two terms, God and man.
It would be contrary to. Christian reason to suppose that
God can become man, unless the infinite life of divine
Being were in itself preadapted to the finite mode of human
existence. The incarnation cannot be a false limitation

1 2 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
of the Godhead, much less does it imply a wrong done to
absolute personality.
On the human side of the mystery it would likewise be
contrary to -Christian reason to suppose an assumption of
manhood into God to be possible, unless the finite life of
mankind were by its essence adapted to union with the in
finite mode of divine existence. The assumption of man
hood into God cannot do violence to man's finite nature.
The historical fact of the incarnation confronting faith
in the personal history pf Jesus Christ is therefore a
revelation both of the nature of God and the nature of
man, especially of the hidden relationship between the
two orders of existence, the Pattern and the Image, a
revelation which transcends all suggestions of sub-human
kingdoms. Between the manhood* of man and the God-
hood of God, there must be reciprocal fitness. In the very
being of our race there must be an element, a positive
capacity, a profound need, which connects human person
ality directly with God's life. Says Wilberforce: "In
man's life is a divine principle, akin to that all-embracing
power which pervades the universe."1 As by his cor
poreal organization man is connected with all mundane
processes, and is an integral part of the economy of nature,
though by virtue of personality a being generically differ
ent from all lower kingdoms ; so b3' his pneumatic life, the
immediate inbreathing of God, he is allied to the Godhood
of God, and becomes a member of a transcendant economy,
a spiritual world.2
1 The Doctrine of The Incarnation, p. 13.
2 "Man is great, not merely because he thinks, and can recognize
moral relationship and obligations, but chiefly because he was created
for union with God, and was destined to find blessedness and perfection
in Him alone." Lux Mundi, p. 395.

1 187.] The Divine Idea of Man. 1 3
The truth that there is an immediate connection be
tween human personality and the life of God, is not taught
by the New Testament in explicit terms ; by the fact
of the incarnation it is implicitly given. It is logically
involved in the personality of Jesus who was the Son of
God ; involved also in all words spoken by our Lord re
specting His Person and mission. If we deny the divine
factor in the constitution of the Adamic race, deny the
capacity of humanity for vital fellowship with God, then
Christ as represented by the New Testament and as
affirmed by the Christian Creed, becomes a logical im
possibility. Instead of an incarnation we should get an
oriental avatar, or a Nestorian dualism, or a gnostic
phantasm. 6. The force of the argument derived from the incarna
tion is completed by the glorification. Jesus of Nazareth,
the son of Mary, not only rises from the dead, but He also
ascends up far above -all heavens, and enters into the
realm of the divine glory.1 He sits on the right hand of
God. This figurative language, common to nearly all the
writers of the New Testament, can mean nothing less
than that Jesus shares the dignity of divine existence and
the authority of divine sovereignty.
Should the objection be made that the exaltation of
our Lord is a predicate only of His divine sonship, the
reply is twofold : 1. Throughout the New Testament
the exaltation of Christ is affirmed, not of the Son of
God, but of the incarnate Son ; 2. The Son of God as
trinitarian Person being co-equal with the Father excludes
the idea of exaltation. Session at the right hand of God
is eternally His prerogative. Being in the form of God,
JEph. i. 20-23; iv. 10; Phil. ii. 9-10; 1 Pet. iii. 22.

1 4 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
He counted it not a prize- to be on an equality with
God.1 The exaltation affirmed by the Christian Creed is the
predicate of the manhood of Jesus Christ, of the manhood:
in vital union with the Logos. The finite being of man
assumed into God in the person of His Son, this finite
manhood is translated from the mundane to the heavenly
sphere, and becomes a partaker of the glory of the God
head. Like the nativity of our Lord, so His glorification justi
fies the postulate that in man's original constitution there
is the intrinsic capability of such translation and exalta
tion. The logic of Christian thought requires us to as
sume that the session of Jesus of Nazareth at the right
hand of. His Father in heaven is the final actualization of
that divine principle of life which at his creation man
received from the inbreathing of God. That enthronement
must be the perfection of finite human being as constituted
in the beginning. On no other presupposition can Chris
tian thought consistently maintain the truth of the record
respecting the ascension and glorification of the Sou of
Man. 7. The teaching of Genesis and the postulate of the
incarnation are illustrated by experience. In all ages and
in every stage of civilization, even the lowest plane of
moral and social degradation not excepted, the 'natural
man' affirms the existence of a divine world; affirms a
direct connection of the gods or of supernal spirits with
men, of men with the gods; affirms also in some form the
Divine to be the complement of human life. So intense
does the affirmation of the close connection between the
1 Phil. ii. 6.

1 1:87.3 The Divine Idea of Man. 15
divine nature and human- nature become, that both belief
and philosophic thought identify the two worlds. God
and man become the same. Either God descends to man,
or man ascends to God; either the Divine takes possession
of man, or man is transformed and deified.
Now, although ethnic religions are defective, and pan
theistic systems of philosophy are false, ueverthelss philo
sophy and ethnic religions are the exponents of a profound
spiritual reality. Error prevalent in forms of religious
belief and metaphysical speculation is the perversion of
fundamental truth. The truth of the close objective con
nection between divine personality and human personality
is dimly perceived and continually felt. It is this that
sustains perverse tendencies of sentiment and false methods
of apprehension. Being as to his essential nature really
bound to God and to the material world, the Adamic man
can no more separate his existence from the one than he
can from the other. If we suppose that pagan nations
sustain no such vital, indissoluble connection with God, it
must follow that these phenomena of religion and philoso
phy, than which no phenomena are more original, more
universal, more permanent and controlling, have no cor
responding basis.
We have accordingly the undesigned testimony of all
nations, whether civilized or savage, to the truth that in
the human constitution there is a divine factor, or at least
a principle other than mundane and material. In his own
way Professor Hoffding, an evolutionist, bears witness to
this truth:
"Even though the individual organism, wl^ich in spite of its com
pleteness and relative independence is still a republic of cells, were to be
explained as compounded out of elements, and its origin made intelligi-

1 6 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
ble through the law of the persistence of energy, this would not explain
individual consciousness, the formation of a special centre of memory,
of action and of suffering. That it is possible for such an inner centre
to come into being is the fundamental problem of all our knowledge.
Each individual trait, each individual property, might perhaps be ex
plained by the power of heredity and the influence of experience ; but
the inner unity, to which all elements refer, and by virtue of which the
individual is a psychical individuality, remains for us an eternal riddle.
As was observed in an earlier connection, it is impossible to apply to the
mental province anything analogous to the persistence of energy."1
Man is to himself an inexplicable mystery, a mystery
just because a profound and inalienable sentiment that he
sustains an indissoluble connection with a spiritual world
is ever stirring in his bosom. To determine the quality
of this connection has been the problem of the ages.
8. The solution of the problem is given by the advent
of Jesus Christ. His history is the concrete exposition of
humanity. From His glorification we learn the truth hid
den in pantheism.
The Mosaic record of man's creation interprets the intui
tions and aspirations of his spirit. Inasmuch as the life
of his soul proceeds by a direct afflatus from the bosom of
the Divine, it is no more than a legitimate manifestation
of such inbreathed life that, though apostate and sinful,
man should feel the presence of Spirit on every side,
should even discern the existence of Deity and affirm a
vital and abiding fellowship between Deity and himself.
Whilst the Mosaic record explains the religious phe
nomena of mankind, this record in turn is illumined and
explained by the glorification of Jesus Christ. The full
import of that picture may be seen when by a new creation
1 Outlines of Psychology, by Herold Hoffding, Professor in the Uni
versity of Copenhagen, pp. 353, 354-

?i87.] The Divine Idea of Man. ij
humanity is made partaker of the divine nature1 and the
divine glory. When God adopts man into union with
Himself in the person of the incarnate Son and translates
man from present cosmical connections to His own right
hand in heaven, then the significance of the breath of life
proceeding from God is developed and finally manifested.
It may be seen that the divine factor of the human consti
tution is not an incidental condition, but an element of its
very essence. Then too we may perceive the true ground
and deep meaning of the wonderful phenomena appearing
in the religious history of all nations.
The glorification of human nature in the person of Jesus
Christ completes the argument for the twofold life of man.
Taking His exaltation as the point of view, and surveying
the religious phenomena of every age and every nation, we
may observe running through the entire history of the
world, pagan, Jewish and Christian, manifestations of the
profound truth that man is the organic union of two origi
nal principles, of a divine law and a cosmic law, a law con
necting him with the infinite being of God, a law also
connecting him with the nature and development of all
sub-human kingdoms. 1 2 Pet. i. 4.
2

1 8 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.

, §188.
The argument for the twofold life of man is at the
same time a declaration of the idea of his constitution.
As compared with lower orders of existence, man is
a new creation. He is not merely the efflorescence of
the antecedent process. Identical neither with the life
of nature nor with the life of God, but different from
both, connected with both, man completes the economy
of nature, and in turn he is completed in God.
Nature neither evolves man nor completes man, yet
man is the perfection of nature. Nature is completed
by man, inasmuch as man becomes the climax of the
natural economy; and the climax he becomes by a
twofold force :
First. By the creative word he is formed in the divine
image. Secondly. Whilst rooted in the lower kingdoms, he
by the normal action of his will transcends these king
doms and rules over them as their rightful lord.
i. The Adamic race is a creation.
"The essential characteristic of creation is not the exclusion of exist
ing material, but the achievement, and indeed the miraculous achieve
ment, of something hitherto non-existent ; for to appoint that anything
shall henceforth exist according to law is a miracle." '
The godlikeness of mankind and the consequent affinity
between the being of man and the being of God do not in
volve either equality or identity of essence., God is self-
existent and infinite; man by the terms of the proposition
has a derived existence and is finite. Between the per
sonal Creator and the personal creature there is generic
difference and polar opposition; but no contradiction,
either between divine authority and human autonomy, or
1 Comm. on Gen., Delitzsch, p. 101.

gi88.] The Divine Idea of Man. 19
between divine thinking and human thinking. The differ
ence and opposition between infinite personality and finite
personality renders contradiction possible; but contradic
tion does not inhere in the ideal difference. On the con
trary, the ideal relation of the finite personality of man to
the infinite personality of God is of such kind that the
finite becomes the fit organ of the action of the Infinite.
The most perfect revelation ad extra of the Godhood of
God., as also of the divine will, is fulfilled in ideal manhood.
Of this generic difference and polar opposition the ideal
end is not sameness, but sympathy, harmony, unity.
When by the free activity of man this end of the generic
difference is realized, the difference between personal Cre^
ator and personal creature continues eternally in the per
fection of the life-communion of love. Lifted up ulti
mately into the transcendent realm, man's finite nature is
not, as oriental philosophy teaches,1 transmuted, not re
solved into God's infinite essence; but finite personality,
though a partaker of God's fulness, maintains itself as
finite in the realm of the Infinite. Man advanced into
the region of glorification is forever the creature of God, a
derived and dependent existence, whose sufficiency, as in
his history on earth, so also in his perfected state, is not
of himself but alone of God.
2. Formed in the divine image man is a new creation.
As he is not identical with God, so neither is any king-
1 "The grand and unnameable Power behind phenomena becomes
everything. The man springs from Him, the soul lives in Him, and is
to be absorbed at last in His ' nature. Absorption in deity and freedom
from re-birth is to the Hindoo everlasting life. As all things exist in
God, He is all, and nothing really lives but God. Man, the universe,
moral good and evil, are only parts of that infinite existence." — The Un
known God, by C Loring Brace, p. 199.

20 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
dom or member of the cosmos identical with him. Though
he is the final outcome and head of the economy of nature,
though his existence on its cosmic side is perpetually sus
tained by organic connection with sub-human kingdoms,
yet as on the one side between man and God, so on the
other between man and all creatures, whether impersonal
or personal, there is a generic difference. Whilst the
human constitution presupposes the economy of nature,
man in turn is a necessity for nature, without whose pres
ence and ideal control nature has no ideal history.
No animal can vacate the plane of its existence and lift
itself up into the plane of humanity. There is no hidden
law of impersonal life by the operation of which it may be
transmuted into personality. Nor can man, either by the
secret forces of some unknown cosmic energy or by the
mysterious powers of will, forsake the elevated plane on
which he stands and turn himself or .be turned into any
order of existence lower or other than himself. Rooted in
the cosmic process, yet he exists and will ever continue to
exist by the force of a law of life peculiar to himself, dis
tinctive not only of personality but of human personality.
Compared with lower kingdoms his physico-ethical con
stitution is heteronomic.1 Between man and all other
creatures there is a chasm as well as inter-dependence and
reciprocal harmony. A material organization, vital and
animate, rational and ethical, he differs from every lower
1 "The earliest human remains show that man was then no whit less
endowed with cranial capacity than the man of to-day. * * No man
has ever been found so embruted or sunken in savagery as to be without
capacity for spiritual quickening and development, a capacity no ape
has ever manifested." Truths and Untruths of Evolution, by John B.
Drury, D. D., p. 62.

1 188.] The Divine Idea of Man. 2 1
*
kingdom as really as divine being differs from human
being.1 Man is relatively a new idea of God ; and this idea
becomes reality by virtue of a new creative word.
3. A new creation, man as other and higher than the
kingdoms of nature completes nature. The formative
processes of the natural economy do not of themselves
result in the construction of man. No forces are at work
in the eons of cosmic development by which nature com
pletes itself or actualizes its ultimate end. As chaos had an
actual beginning, and the beginning was by the first crea
tive word, so the formative process of nature attains to
completion, not solely by the power of a law which chaos
bears in itself, nor solely by the agency of God immanent
in natural development, but by a different law which
comes into action when by another creative word man is
1 "The average capacity of the Caucasian skull is 91-92 centimeters;
that of the African skull, 85 centimeters ; that of the Australian skull
75-79 centimeters. But the average capacity of the gorilla skull is 29 to
near 35 centimeters ; that of the chimpanzee, 26 centimeters ; that of the
orang, 25 centimeters.
"The absolute difference of man from the ape consists in the greater
number and irregularity of the convolutions of the cerebral hemispheres,
which are also much larger compared with the cerebellum, and com
pletely cover the latter ; the entire brain being at least double the size
proportionately of that of the gorilla. It is also stated that two muscles
exist in man which have not yet been found in any ape, extensor primi
internodii pollicis and peronoens tertius, belonging to the thumb and
foot respectively (the first one found by Dr. Chapman, R. Sch.). There
are also points in the origin of certain muscles which are peculiar to
man, but Huxley adds that all the apparently distinctive peculiarities of
the muscles of the ape are to be met with, occasionally, as varieties in
man. On the other hand, the relative differences of the skulls of the
gorilla and man are, as Huxley states, ' immense. ' ' ' MS. of Prof. Richard
C Schiedt.

22 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
constituted. God completes nature by bringing into ex
istence a personal being as its complement and head, who
is other than impersonal nature.
Every sub-human kingdom, every individual and every
thing is in one respect complete, but in another respect
incomplete. Each is complete, complete in its relation to itself. The
plant was a plant, the animal was an animal, before man
appeared. What the lower orders of nature relative to
themselves were in the beginning, that these orders still
are, considered under this view. The creatures that pre
cede man, as Delitzsch remarks, were not in need of him.
Each existence, whether a kingdom or only a single mem
ber of it, is a unity or monad, a circumscribed whole, that
actualizes a distinct type, a type which no other thing
actualizes. Each is incomplete ; for every existence, whether a king
dom or only one part of it, is as to its peculiar type and
its relative position the bearer and organ of an idea broader
and higher than itself, or than it in its own cycle can
fulfil. That broader, that higher idea, every creature,
whether living or lifeless, in its measure adumbrates, an
ticipates and prophesies ; each sub-human kingdom, and
every class of created things, looks beyond itself for its
complement. In each there is a purpose active which
fails of realization. Then man steps upon the scene, and
he answers the universal call sounding forth from the
depths beneath. That higher idea struggling on through
the ages his constitution actualizes ; and he actualizes the
idea in its fulness.
A new creation, man exists after a type of being which
is distinctively his own ; but the type peculiar to his con-

?i88] The Divine Idea of Man. 23
stitution is the archetype of all sub-human kingdoms ; of
chaos, of crystallization, of material formations and of
every plant or animal organism. The actual world begins
with man, begins with God's idea respecting liumauity,
and the world reaches its conclusion wheiv at length this
divine idea becomes a reality. The purpose of God ful
filled by the creation of human personality, when consid
ered under one view, begins the economy of the natural
world, and when considered under another view completes
this economy.
4. But the human constitution does not complete the
economy of nature unless man completes himself. Object
ively considered, when God creates mail after His own
image, thus fulfilling the prophecies of sub-human king
doms, the world-process attains to its completion ; but the
objective completion is not the final realization of the
divine idea. This completion must itself be comple
mented by man's personal activity. It behooves him to
consummate himself, to fulfil the law of personality by
living his life in free, conscious fellowship with God.
Thereby he accomplishes the divine will concerning him
self. When by normal spiritual activity man completes
personality, he fulfils the idea embodied in his constitu
tion ; and when by living in fellowship with God he ful
fils the end of his existence, man in reality completes the
economy of nature. Then all sub-human kingdoms stand
and move in their normal relationship to one another and
to God.
Not the human constitution as fashioned by the creative
word is the completion of the divine world-idea, but man's
constitution as developed into ideal personality and ful
filled by his will, active in free self-determination accord
ing to the absolute will of God.

24 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
§189.
In this sense man, the completion of the economy
of nature* objectively its climax, and by the force of
ideal personality its head, is the organ through which
the divine idea of the world gains expression. Of the
cosmic order of things he is the prophet, the priest,.
the king.
1. Man is the prophet of the natural world. Being the
goal of all formative processes from chaos onward through
the succession of kingdoms, the end of creation at' length
matures in him as in ripe fruitage. Maturing in his
physico-ethical constitution, the divine idea of the world
becomes the object of his consciousness. When he rightly
knows himself in his twofold relation, on the one side to
sub-human kingdoms and on the other to God, man learns
to know the divine meaning of the world, a meaning
which he may declare by living the ideal life of human
personality, and may proclaim in speech.
2. Man is the priest. Invested with freedom as well as
possessing intelligence, he, if true to his prerogatives and
his trust, determines his personal life conformably to the
divine will, which on the one hand addresses him from
without and on the other is immanent in his being. He
gives himself an offering to God, his Father in heaven.
Being internally and organically connected with lower
kingdoms as their head, man in offering himself to God
brings with himself also the entire creation as a sacrifice
of thanksgiving and praise— a truth shining forth in the
one hundred and forty-eighth Psalm, and prophetically
described in the twenty-first chapter of Revelation.
Reacting upon the lower creation, man by virtue of his

<s 189.] The Divine Idea of Man. 25
godlikeness becomes the organ of divine benediction. In
him, through the normal action of personality, the favor
of God descends on the work of His hands. Harmony
and peace prevail in all the realms of creation, inasmuch
as, holding himself and being held in ideal communion
with God, he holds the economy of nature in normal rela
tions to himself. The ideal order of the world is actual
ized in natural and ethical goodness. Contrast a country
transformed by a typical Christian civilization with any
territory inhabited by savages.
3. Man is the king of the world. His headship when
viewed both in its vital and ethical relations to lower king
doms, implies authority and controlling power. Seated
on the throne, might and right meet in man. The dignity
of his position operates in two -ways, objectively and sub
jectively. Objectively : the creative word active in accord with the
teleological law of the cosmos from chaos onward, consti
tutes man the head and crown. He is endowed with the
requisite authority and power to hold the lower kingdoms
in their ideal relation to himself and to God, and thus to
maintain the predestinated harmony of the world.
Subjectively : man's regal dignity must be asserted and
realized in the sphere of his personal life. He rules as
king over the world not merely by the force of natural
law, but by the positive assertion of moral law. When
faithful to his supreme trust, when true to his mission as
the companion of God, he by the normal activity of his
self-conscious will so influences and governs sub-human
kingdoms that in him and through him they accomplish
the ultimate end of their creation.1 If he fails, they
1 "And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of
Eden to dress it and keep it." Gen. ii, 15.

26 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
fail. If he does not subdue the earth, he is himself sub
dued.1 The connection between the two terms, man and nature,
is reciprocal. Each complements the other. The ideal
development of nature anticipates and becomes final in
man. In turn, the ideal activity of man conditions the
ideal status of nature. As bodily health conditions mental
health, so a sound mind conditions the normal action of
the body. In like manner, as man's personal existence
depends on sub-human kingdoms, so does the normal atti
tude of sub-human kingdoms in their relation to man and
to one another depend on man, on his ideal attitude rela
tive to God and to nature.
4. The kingly, the priestly and the prophetic functions
of the Adamic race suppose and stand in this one central
truth, namely, that the race is freely active according to
the divine will immanent in the laws of its two-fold con
stitution ; for then the race fulfils its mission "in relation
to the lower world and to God.
Connected organically with the kingdoms of nature, and
standing forth as their prophet, priest and king, yet gen-
erically different from sub-human kingdoms ; sharing kin
ship with the essence of God and being the most perfect
manifestation of divine life, yet generically different from
God ; — man according to his divine idea occupies an inter
mediate place between nature and absolute Spirit, a position
where the Divine and the cosmic, Creator and creature, the
supernatural and the natural, meet. The opposition be
tween spirit and nature is resolved into concrete unity in
ideal manhood, Possible divergency, possible contradiction
and disorganization, are according to the wisdom of the
'Geni. 28.

\ 190.] The Divine Idea of Man. 27
divine plan superseded, when man asserts his high pre
rogatives and is faithful to his mission as the prophet,
priest and king of the universe. § 190.
The divine idea of man as now unfolded furnishes
the basis for an a priori judgment respecting the claims
of adverse/ theories advanced by the Darwinian and
the pantheistic hypotheses. The one emphasizes ex
clusively the cosmic side of the human constitution, its-
organic connection with the processes of nature; the
other emphasizes exclusively its divine side, its essen
tial kinship with the life of God. Each ignores a factor
in the divine idea of man which is as essential to its
integrity as that on which either lays exclusive stress.
Both assert a fundamental element of truth which
sound Christological anthropology must include ; yet
each is an error, because each asserts truth in a
way that violates the integrity of the divine pkin
of the world, and thus falsifies nature and man and
God. 1. The evolutional theory brought to the front in mod
ern times by La Marck, Goethe, especially Darwin, is not
a new hypothesis, being only a new name for a new phase
of the myth so common among pagan nations that men
originally sprang from the earth, their mother. The
primitive inhabitants of Attica were by the Greeks styled
Autochthones — the spontaneous production of their soil.
The Greek word a&zf, means two things : a stone and a
people. Of this double meaning of laac the English lan
guage, as well as the German, preserves a relic in the words
layman and laity, words applied to men when contra
distinguished from a professional class, applied more com-

28 Doctrine on the. Adamic Race. [book 5.
monly to church members iii distinction from office-bear
ers.1 Dawson pronounces
"The evolutionist doctrine one of the strangest phenomena of human
ity. It existed in the oldest philosophy and poetry, in connection with
the crudest and most uncritical attempts of the human mind to grasp the
system of nature ; but that in our day a system destitute of any shadow
of proof, and supported merely by vague analogies and figures of speech,
should be accepted as a philosophy, is surpassingly strange."2
The kernel of an old pagan myth has been revived in
the sphere of metaphysical thought, and asserts a claim to
confidence on the basis of fact and scientific research.
All life, all organizations, man included, are according
to the Darwinian theory developed from protoplasm by a
process of evolution, conditioned on natural selection. The
organic is evolved from the inorganic ; animal life from
inanimate life ; man from the animal. Protoplasm is the
beginning, man is the accidental end, the final outcome
of •&. mechanical process which has been going on in nature
through countless ages.
Evolution has certain gaps or breaks which have not
been filled out. The first which may be noticed is between
dead and living matter. A second is that which separates
vegetable and animal life. The former deoxidizes and
accumulates, the latter oxidizes and expends.
'According to another myth, Deucalion and his wife Pyrrha, after the
flood, were by Jupiter commanded to fling stones behind them, and so
replenish the earth. "Those which Deucalion cast became men, those
thrown by Pyrrha women ; and from this circumstance, say the Greeks,
came the name for people, %a6c from \aac, a stone." Apollodorus, i, vii, 2.
Quoted by Anthon.
2 The Story of the Earth and Man, by Sir G. W. Dawson, LL.D.,
F. R. S., F. G. S., ch. xiv.

1 190.] The Divine Idea of Man. • 29
" A third is that between any species of animal or plant and any other
species. It was this gap, and this only, which Darwin undertook to fill
up by his great work on the origin of species, but, notwithstanding the
immense amount of material expended, it yawns as wide as ever, since it
must be admitted that no case has been ascertained in which an individ
ual of one species has transgressed the limits between it and other spe
cies. However extensive the varieties produced by artificial breeding,
the essential characters of the species remain, and even its minor charac
ters may be reproduced, while the barriers established in nature between
species by the laws of their reproduction seem to be absolute."1
To this statement by so eminent a naturalist as Dr.
Dawson may be added the assertion of one of the foremost
scientists of England, Prof. Huxley, that there is between
man and those beasts which stand nearest to him in anat
omy, a difference so wide that it cannot be measured, an
"enormous gulf," a "divergence immeasurable," and
' ' practically infinite. ' ' 2
The theory has in it an element of truth. Man was not
abruptly called into existence. He is, according to Scrip
ture, the child of nature — a being who, under one -view, as
we have seen, has come into existence by the force of a
divine formative law continuously active in the bosom of
the unconscious world, an implicit reference to which we
have in the words of the Psalmist :
My bones were not hid from Thee,
I who was made in secret,
Curiously wrought in the depths of the earth.
As an embryo have Thine eyes seen me ;
And in Thy book were they all written ;
Days which were sketched out,
And for it one among them 3
Slowly fashioned by the mysterious power of this divine
Dawson on Earth and Man, p. 156.
'See Primeval Man, by the Duke of Argyle, p. 50.
3Ps. cxxxix. 15, 16.

30- Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [Books.
law working from a lower into the higher realm, from a
less complex into the more complex organization, man
developing under the plastic touch of God's hand event
ually actualized in himself a nature which is animate and
organic, cosmic and earthly. This truth Christian anthro
pology, ruled by a one-sided supra-naturalistic doctrine
of creation has at times ignored, thus provoking a legit
imate reaction in the sphere of natural science, a reaction
however that discarding the Christian idea of God as Cre
ator has assumed a false naturalistic form.
Whilst it is true that man comes forth from primary
forms of organization, being made 'of the dust of the
ground,' and is ever like a tree rooted in nature, it is false
to assume that nature evolves into man, or that protoplasm
either by natural selection or by an intrinsic potency pro
duces any species of existence generically other and higher
than itself. Most of all is it uuscriptural and illogical to
assume that the vital principle is evolved from lifeless sub
stance, or that personality, which fundamentally is ethical,
is evolved from impersonal organism. The truth of these
propositions is conceded by one of the foremost exponents
of the theory of evolution. Huxley says :
"Cosmic evolution is incompetent to furnish any better reason why
what we call good is preferable to what we call evil than we had before.
* * All the understanding in the world will neither increase nor di
minish the force of the intuition that this is beautiful and that is ugly.
* * Social progress means a checking of the cosmic process at every
step, and the substitution for it of another which may be called the
ethical process. * * The practice of what we call goodness or virtue
involves a course of conduct which, in all respects, is opposed to that
which leads to success in the cosmic struggle for existence."
Of the same import is the following :
"The struggle for existence, which has done such admirable work in

J 190. j The Divine Idea of Man. 3 1
cosmic nature must, it appears, be equally beneficent in the ethical
sphere. Yet, if that which I have insisted upon is true ; if the cosmic
process has no sort of relation to moral ends ; if the imitation of it by
man is inconsistent with the first principles of ethics ; what becomes of
this surprising theory ? " :
The chief error of the Darwinian theory is that whilst
professing to dismiss metaphysics, it proceeds on a meta
physical principle, an hypothesis that is neither logically
tenable nor supported by facts. The logical order of
thought is inverted. Beginning with the lower kingdom
it passes from the lower to the higher, assuming that the
higher may be known from the lower. Darwinian evolu
tion reasons from the natural to the ethical, from indi
viduality to personality. Starting with and proceeding
from protoplasm as the matrix of thought, it endeavors to
know and account for man. It proposes to end its en
quiries into nature at the point where sound anthropolog
ical and cosmic thought has to begin.
Anthropological science has to begin where the cosmos
itself begins, namely, in the divine world-idea. So long
as the universal idea is not discerned, or if discerned is
not firmly held, it is logically impossible to understand
either man or nature, or the reciprocal connection which
nature and man sustain to each other. That divine idea,
'the energy working in all mechanical motion and organic
processes, is realized in man, the organic head of the cos
mos, formed after the image of God. If we reason from
the higher to the lower, from the divine as manifested in
the person of Jesus to the human, from the personal to the
impersonal, from the organic to the chaotic, we may see
in lower formations the types of the higher, and in the
'Evolution and Ethics, by Thomas H. Huxley, F. R. S.

32 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [Books.
entire economy, of nature a grand typification of the
Adamic race.
We may see also the ideal ground, the final cause, of
this universal typification. Man, the ideal man, is the
archetype of the world, and of its manifold formative pro
cesses developing themselves during the ages. As he is
both the archetype and the final goal of creating activity,
the archetype and goal of a process ever rising from the
less complex to the more complex according to the teleo-
logical law immanent in the natural economy, all forms
of matter and all forms of organized life are, each in its
measure, on the one hand a reflection of the universal
divine idea, and on the other a type of the ultimate real
ity, the actual man, whom in the fulness of time God
forms of the dust of the ground and into whose nostrils
He breathes the breath of life.
2. The pantheistic theory of man is in one respect di
rectly opposite. Beginning with God and passing from
God to man, pantheism seeks to determine the idea of
humanity in the light of the Divine. Pantheism proceeds
on the valid assumption that there is an internal connec
tion and an affinity between man and God. So far forth,
pantheism conforms to the logical order of thought, and it
asserts fundamental truth.
But its doctrine of God is radically defective ; as a con
sequence also the doctrine of man. Denying the personal
ity of God, and proceeding on an hypothesis which the
reason of 'the natural man' suggests respecting God's
being and relations, pantheism fails to recognize the essen
tial difference between God and man, between the infinite
Creator and the finite creature, and allows the law of the
finite to rule theological thought with paramount force.

<j 190.] The Divine Idea of Man. 33
This method of pantheistic thought does not transmute the
finite into the infinite, nature into spirit, and thus issue
in acosmism ; but it merges the infinite into the finite,
loses the Creator in the creature, and thus issues in athe
ism. Pantheism exchanges the intuition of the Divine for
the idea of the universal world-soul.1 The logical conse
quence is that man conies to be merely the completion of
the natural world. He is the apex of a pyramid whose
base is matter and chaos. In his person the world-spirit
1 We have Plato's doctrine of the world-soul in Timaeus. Timaeus is
represented as saying : " Let me tell you why the Creator of the world
generated this universe. He was good, and he desired that all things
should be as like himself as possible. * * God desired that all things
should be good and nothing bad as far as this could be accomplished.
* * Now he who is the best neither creates nor ever has created any
thing but the fairest. * * * For these reasons He put intelligence in
soul, and soul in body, and framed the universe to be the best and fairest
work in the order of nature. And therefore, using the language of pro
bability, we may say that the world became a living soul and truly ra
tional through the providence of God. * * He made the world in the
form of a globe, the most perfect and the most like itself of all figures.
* * And He Himself provided His nutriment to Himself through His
own decay, and all that He did or suffered was done in Himself and by
Himself. For the Creator conceived that a being who was self-sufficient
would be far more excellent than one that lacked anything. He as
signed to him the motion appropriate to his spherical form."
"Such was the whole scheme of the eternal God about the god that
was to be, to whom He for all .these reasons gave a body, smooth, even,
and in every direction equidistant from its center, entire and perfect,
and formed out of perfect bodies. And in the center He put the soul,
which He diffused through the whole, and also spread over all the body
round about ; and He made one solitary and only heaven, a circle moving
in a circle, having such excellence as to be able to hold converse with
itself, and needing no other friendship or acquaintance. Having these
purposes in view, He created the world to be a blessed god." Timaeus,
\\ 3o-34, Jowett's Plato, Vol. II., pp. 524-527.
3

34 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
divests itself of the swaddling bands of blind nature and
rises into the sunlight of intelligence and will.
Pantheism begins by putting emphasis on the divine
element instead of the cosmic element of mankind ; but
such emphasis is apparent rather than real. As it con
founds Deity with the immanent teleological law of the
world, the doctrine respecting man is for substance the
same as the doctrine of materialistic evolution. The
divine factor of the human constitution, the kinship of
man with the absolute Personality, is eliminated, and the
cosmic law becomes the exclusive and all-controlling factor
in anthropology. Not the wisdom and love of God, but
blind necessities developing in the economy of nature de
termine man's constitution. In the endeavor to identify
Deity with mankind, that which is distinctive of human
personality is lost in the cosmic process.
3. If proceeding from the Christ-idea as the point of
observation we maintain that the divine factor and the
cosmic factor are vitally conjoined in man, regarded not
only as the ripe fruit of nature, but also when compared
with sub-human kingdoms as a new creation, we may de
velop an anthropology which holds the truth that under
lies both theories, pantheism and evolution, and escapes
the one-sidedness and confusion which involve both in
fatal error.

\ 191.] The Primeval Man. 35

CHAPTER II.
THE PRIMEVAL MAN.
§ 191.
The idea of man presented in the preceding chapter is
objective and fundamental, embracing what the first Adam
was in his primeval condition, but especially what in pro
cess of time he was predestinated to become. In Eden,
as created, he was much more potentially than he was
actually. In order that he might become in reality what
he was in possibility, not only was physical and social
development necessary, but also an ethico-religious pro
cess, a process that depended on two things : the spon
taneous action of the physical and social laws of human
nature, and the self-conscious determinations of his will.
Of this social and ethico-religious process the primeval
man, man as he actually stood when fashioned by the
creative word, was the normal beginning.
If anthropological thought be governed by the objective
idea of manhood, realized and consummated by the per
sonal history and glorification of the Son of Man, and if
we regard the first man as only the beginning, but the
normal beginning, of human history, we may be able to.
determine the moral and* spiritual status of Adam before
he fell by transgression.

36 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
§ 192.
Adam in his primeval state was man, in the true and
full sense of the term. As contrasted with all lower
kingdoms he was in fact the new creation, the divine-
cosmic mystery, who stood forth the image of God, in
whom the entire antecedent formative process, advanc
ing from chaos upward to the animal, became relatively
complete. i., Adam was endowed with all those qualities and gifts,
all those capacities and prerogatives, that enter into the
divine idea of humanity. He was a new genus, a generic
constitution, realized under the form of an individual ; and
this individual was a personal being. If not a person,
definitely self-conscious and exercising positive freedom,
we have to affirm at least that his nature was personal ; all
his instincts and impulses were distinctive of personality
in its sub-conscious process of normal development.
The primeval man was an organic unity, not a single
thing, nor a composition of two or more elements, but a
unity embracing different factors as its complemental
organs. Of the members of this organic unity we distin
guish three as fundamental, namely, spirit, soul, body.
Each is normal ; each exists in normal relations to the
others ; each also is active in harmony with the unity
and the ultimate purpose of manhood.
2. The soul under one view is the central principle, its
life and activity being intermediate between spirit and
body, on the one hand presupposing indissoluble union
with the body, and on the other implying indissoluble
union with the spirit. The soul conditions the character.
and the legitimate activity of the body ; in turn the normal

gi92.] The Primeval Man. 37
state and development of the body condition the healthy
growth and action of the soul. Vitally one with spirit,
the soul conditions the ideal action of the spirit, and the
ideal action of the spirit conditions the normal functions
of the soul. In its relation to itself and to the body the
soul presupposes and demands the presence and constant
ideal action of the spirit.
The soul is the nobler and richer life ; it animates,
.shapes and directs the bodily organization, subordinating
its powers and fu»ctions tP rational and ethical ends ; yet
the soul cannot prevail as man's nobler life, except in so
far as it is internally one with the body and normally active
through its organs. Corporeal life is the natural basis of
psychic life. " It is not true," Newman Smyth remarks,1
"that we are ever conscious of soul and body, but of soul
in body, and body in relation to soul. ' '
3. The human body is the finite and material organiza
tion which the soul inhabits and inspires.2 The body is
grown in and with nature, being interlinked with its
Whole earthly environment. Light, air, water, fruits
and the animal kingdom are conditions of bodily life, of
growth and well-being. The properties of nature and the
organs of the body are complemental parts of one System ;
nature is constantly conditioning the body, and the func
tions of the body are constantly conditioning the ministra
tions of nature.
The body is to be studied under a twofold aspect, as
1 Old Faiths in New Light, p. 326.
2 "The continuity between molecular processes and the phenomena of
consciousness is the rock on which materialism must inevitably split
whenever it pretends to be a complete philosophy of the human mind."
— Tyndall.

38- Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
visible form and invisible type, as an exterior material
structure and as an interior law.
The body as interior and invisible : it is fashioned from
within by the type of its existence, a type inseparable from
the soul ; and it is constructed by the force of a law
grounded in the unity of man's tripartite constitution.
Says the poet Spencer :
"For of the soul the body form doth take,
For soul is form, and doth the body make."
By the action of this law the bodily type is developed
and realized, and it maintains its identity through all the
changes of normal human history.
The body as exterior and visible : in the process of con
structing and sustaining the body according to the laws
of human life, man appropriates the substances of all the
kingdoms of nature ; but in appropriating these substances
he transforms them into the material of his own bodily
organization. A twofold process is continually in progress. There is
a constant building up of the body by the appropriation
and integration of the products of nature, and a constant
consumption and disintegration of bodily materials. There
is perpetual waste and perpetual productivity, a constant
reproduction, the type meanwhile ever maintaining itself
and realizing its hidden fulness. The invisible type is the
unchanging principle which imparts truth and reality to
the body, whilst the exterior visible form is like the rain
bow changing moment by moment. Apparently real,
the exterior structure is an. ever vanishing factor.
4. The spirit is the noblest principle of the human con
stitution. . By virtue of its spontaneous action man is di-

\ 192.] The Primeval Man. 39
rectly connected with God ; he becomes an ethico-religious
being. In the possession of spirit man rises into kinship
with God. God and man, infinite Spirit and finite spirit,
live in and for each other, God communicating of His ful
ness to man, man drawing essential nourishment from
God. The human spirit presupposes the human soul, from
which the spirit is inseparable. As the somatic life is the
basis of the psychic life, so is the psychic life the basis of
the pneumatic life. Through the body man is inwrought
with all the kingdoms of nature; so by the spirit man is
in positive sympathy with God, and is ever living in com-
munion with Him. Impartation from the realm of the
Divine is as necessary to his normal existence as light and
air, food and drink from the kingdoms of nature.
Whilst soul and body condition human spirit, the spirit
in turn completes soul and body. By virtue of the spir
ituality of man's being, the unique relationship of person
ality to God, the human constitution becomes distinct
ively human. The soul by vital union with spirit comes
to be truly a human soul in contradistinction from every
animal soul; and the body, in contradistinction from
every other order of corporeal organization, becomes a
human body by a perpetual benediction from vital con
junction through the soul with spirit.
5. This doctrine respecting man as the unity of body,
soul and spirit will not call for any essential modification
if we accept a dichotomy in place of a trichotomy, allow
ing only that man consists of soul and body. The living
kinship and sympathy of man with God refnain undeni
able; for this truth is both taught by the word of God and
supported by universal experience. Then, however, we

40 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books-
shall have to ascribe to soul a twofold connection and a
twofold function, a vital connection with the body and
through the body with nature, at the same time a vital
connection directly with God and with the world of spirits.
We shall then also have to predicate of the soul two oppo
site functions, the one distinctively psychic, the other
distinctively pneumatic. Under one aspect soul would be
the animating principle of the lower life rooted in nature;
under the other aspect soul would be the organ of the
higher life derived from and grounded in God.
If we hold a complete doctrine of the primeval man, the
difference between the trichotomic and dichotomic con
struction will not be important. The doctrine may be
truly biblical and metaphysically sound with the one as
with the other theory. But the trichotomic construction
accords better with biblical psychology, and is a more be
fitting working theory.
6. The predominant conception respecting man in the
history of the Church has been dualistic, body and soul
having been regarded, not as an indissoluble unity, but as
parts conjoined or brought together by opposite forces.
Impulse was given to this conception by the dualism of
Plato, which gave rise on the one hand to Gnostic, on the
other to Manichean theories. The philosophy of Plato
is in this respect in sympathy with the philosophy of
Zoroaster. The truth is that all pagan thinking is at
bottom dualistic, matter and spirit, body and soul, being
viewed not only as different, but also uncongenial, even
repellent. And this pagan idea had a powerful influence,
in some respects a controlling influence, in shaping the
anthropological doctrine of the Church, a doctrine which
dishonored the holy state of matrimony, and has prompted

1 192.] The Primeval Man. 41
the false and unnatural ascetic practices of the Greek
Church and the Roman Church throughout the centuries.
Spinoza constitutes an epoch in the history of thought
, concerning man. Dissatisfied with the dualistic tenden
cies of history, especially with the doctrine of a concursus
advocated by Cartesius, he postulated unity in all spheres
of existence. Overlooking the essential difference between
God and man, between the material and the spiritual, his
philosophy was drawn into the serious error of Pantheism.
Affirming that there is but one substance, matter aiid
spirit, thought and extension, soul and body became the
"attributes" of the same monad. Nevertheless by em
phasizing the oneness of mind and body, Spinoza gave
impulse to a unifying current of thought. Under different
forms the theory propounded by him has held its place in
philosophy. It shows its influence in Leibnitz, Kant (first
edition of the Critique of Pure Reason), Schelling, Hegel
and Fries, not to name others. No less truly has its influ
ence been felt in Christian anthropology. Hoeffding, as
the result of his psychological enquiries, grasps the unity
of man and expresses it definitely, though with an incli
nation toward a pantheistic conception. He says:
"Both the parallelism and the proportionality between the activity of
consciousness and central activity point to an identity at bottom. The
difference which remains in spite of the points of agreement compels us
to suppose that one and the same principle has found its expression in a.
double form. We have no right to take mind and body for two beings
or substances in reciprocal interaction. We are, on the contrary, im
pelled to conceive the material interaction between the elements com
posing the brain and nervous system as an outer form of the inner ideal
unity of consciousness.
"The same type prevails from the simplest to the highest forms. Far
as the ideal world of thoughts and feelings appears exalted above the

42 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
series of single, momentary sensations, it is ye't the same principle which
prevails in both.
"Concerning the inner relation between mind and matter, we teach
nothing; we suppose only the one being works in both. * * * The
same power which lives, expands, and takes form in the outer world of
the material, also discloses itself in its inner world as thinking,' feeling
and willing. In asking after the inner connection between the physical
and mental worlds, we stand at the limit of our knowledge."1
If man be an indissoluble unity, it is un philosophical to
hold that the body is mortal, the soul immortal. The
whole man is in one respect mortal, he dies ; and in an
other respect the whole man is immortal, he lives. Death
is an epoch of transition from the earthly to the post-
earthly realm.
7. These three, body, soul and spirit, are one organism,
all alike having their ground and potentiality in the divine
idea of man.
The body is not an accidental member, neither a hind
rance nor a limitation to freedom. Instead, it is the con
dition and the organ of freedom. Much less is the body a
prison house, or essentially an evil, to be abused and de
stroyed, as Manichean dualism teaches.2 Like the soul,
the body is an essential factor of man's unique constitu
tion; without it he would no more be truly human than
if he had no soul. In his apostate condition the prin
cipal hindrance to recovery is not the strength of bodily
appetites, nor the fact that matter enters into his bodily
organization, but the weakness and perverseness of the
1 Outlines of Psychology, 64-67.
8 According to the Manichean doctrine evil is a substance, and has
its seat in matter instead of free will. As a consequence the redemp
tion of the Adamic race, as including body and soul, becomes an im
possibility.

% 192.] The Primeval Man. 43
spirit. Justin says that the 'body is the house of the
soul, and the soul the house of the spirit.'1
Nor is the spirit hypothetical. Spirit is not a super
natural gift, without which human nature might be really
human. It is not to be supposed that man at first con
sisted only of body and soul, using the word soul exclu
sively in its lower sense and assuming that it was the
divine purpose to superadd the spirit whenever man
should become fitted for or worthy of its reception. The
spirit, on the contrary, is a necessity. If we use the ex
pression 'human nature' to denote man's constitution as
differing on the one hand from the animal and on the other
from God, we have to assert that the spirit is a constituent
of that "nature ' as really as the body. Neither is super
natural. We may not hold, with Dr. Bushnell, that ' na
ture' as applied to humanity means only "the created
realm of being or substance which has an acting, a going
on or process from within itself, under and by its own laws;
a system under the law of cause and effect. "2 The contrary
he pronounces supernatural. "That is supernatural," as
he defines it, "whatever it be that is either not in the
chain of natural cause and effect, or what acts on the chain
of cause and effect, in nature, from without the chain."3
It follows that the volitional principle of personality is not
natural, but supernatural. "The very idea of our person
ality is that of a being not under the law of cause and
effect, a being supernatural."4' On this hypothesis we do
not get beyond the dualism inherited from Neo-Platonism.
Instead anthropology must assert the organic unity of man-
1 Justin on the Resurrection, § 10.
2 Nature and the Supernatural, by Horace Bushnell, p. 36.
3 Ibid., p. 37. 4Ibid., p. 43.

44 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
hood, soul and body, or the spiritual principle and corpo
reity, being each an integral factor.
If we deny ' spirit ' of the primeval man, his constitution
is degraded and falsified; we get a caricature. Biblical
anthropology must hold that man as formed by the Divine
Hand is at one and the same time somatic, psychic, pneu
matic, each factor being with equal necessity a predicate
of the one indivisible whole.
Adam was in this true, full sense man. As no essential
member of his constitution was wanting, he realized the
divine idea in its integrity, but not on the final plane of
perfection. 8. In Adam these essential parts were one; and they
were active in their ideal character. The functions of
body, soul and spirit began to develop in normal equipoise.
As there was no defect of nature, so there was no dispro
portion, no actual disorder, and no bent or predisposing
cause slumbering in his nature toward any physical or
moral disorder.
Actualizing the divine idea on the first plane of human
history, Adam stood also in normal relations, 011 the one
side to God, and on the other to lower kingdoms. His
attitude in both directions corresponded to the divine will,
and fulfilled it; we may say, fulfilled the divine will per
fectly, if we limit the application of fulfilment to the
beginning of his development, implying that, like a per
fect seed, this beginning was designed to grow and bear
fruit in a kind and degree of perfection to be realized on a
nobler plane of existence.
As he was the head of all the lower kingdoms, so he was
their lord. He had dominion over the fish of the sea, and
over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all

\ 192.J The Primeval Man. 45
the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth
upon the earth.1 This dominion included actual supe
riority over all the elements2. So long as he was true to
himself, to his royal headship, he was superior to all natu
ral powers, sun and moon, fire and water, holding them in
harmony with himself and in subjection to his righteous
will. How much such dominion implies may be learned
from the dominion which Jesus possessed and exercised
over the winds and the waves, over diseases, demons and
death. In his relation to God Adam was His free and intelligent
subject. God's will was his law; and this law was his
choice. Adam, however, was much more than a subject
and a servant. His activity toward God was not merely
obedience, but filial obedience. Adam is called the ' son
of God.'3 Though the child of nature, yet as quickened
by the inbreathing of God he stood where no creature be
fore had stood, on a plane of spontaneous communion of
divine love, a communion which as between God and man
was paternal, as between man and God was filial.
God is love, man is 1'ove. As love expresses God's
being, so was love the original law of man's primeval
state. God loved Adam, and bestowed on him the richest
gifts of love which human nature at its beginning was
capable of receiving. In turn Adam by spontaneous re-
1 Gen. i. 26. Cf. Ps. viii.
2 " Auch sie erhalten einen Schopfungsegen, aber in und mit diesem
nicht bios die Kraft sich zu vermehren und die Erde zu fiillen, wie die
Thiere, v. 22, sondern auch die Kraft, sich die Erde selbst und alle
lebenden Wesen derselben zu unterwerfen, wie ein Herr mit Eigenthums-
recht (Ps: cxv. 16) dariiber zu schalten und sie seinen Zwecken dienstbar
zu machen." Dillman's Genesis, p. 38.
3 Luke iii. 38.

46 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
sponse loved God, yielding Him his will and giving him
self up iu righteous obedience to His service. Standing
in the living communion of love, and rendering spontane
ous obedience to the .will of his heavenly Father, Adam,
the head and lord of nature, was the exalted mediator
between the spiritual world and the natural world, through
whom divine benediction descended upon the animal,
vegetable and mineral kingdoms, whereby the incipient
harmony of creative wisdom reigned in and over the natu
ral creation. § 193-
Thus constituted under the touch of the creative
Hand by development from 'the dust of the ground'
and by the inbreathing of ' the breath of life,' thus nor
mally related to God and to cosmos, the condition of
the primeval man may be summarily expressed by the
scriptural term good.
The term 'good' expresses: i. the unity and whole
ness of the constitution of the primeval man; 2. the
complete adaptation of his nature and of the actual
status of his existence to the ultimate end of his crea
tion. Of these two things, the second, his adaptation to the
realization of -his ultimate end, is paramount, and ex
presses the distinctive quality of original human good
ness. 1. The Mosaic record does not directly teach that man
was created 'good.' This character is ascribed to the light
spoken into existence on the first day. 'Gopd' is predi
cated of the work of God wrought on the third, fourth and
fifth days of creation, as also on the work of the first part of
the sixth day. The formation of the dry land and the seas;
the growth of grass, herbs and trees; the coming forth of

1 193.] The Primeval Man. 47
the lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day
from the night; the creation of every living creature in the
waters, and every winged fowl after its kind, cattle and
creeping thing and beast of the earth after its kind ; — are
all. in a direct way pronounced good; but man formed at
the close of the sixth day is not so pronounced. When the
creative work is finished the term 'good' is applied to all
parts of it collectively: and God saw everything that He
had made, "and, behold, it was very good."1 Man being
included in the expression: 'everything that He had made,'
we have here an application of the term by the record, but
only in an indirect way. It is deserving, however, of spe
cial notice that in refraining from the use of the term
'good,' applied to man, the record assigns to him marked
distinction and prominence by describing him as the being
made in God's image (tselem). He is singled out from
among all other creatures, and instead of being called
' good ' like the light, the seas, plants, heavenly bodies,
and animals, it is said of him that he is created in the
image of God. Not good, but god-like.
Nevertheless since the word, is used by the Heidelberg
Catechism, and has become current in Protestant theology
to describe the integrity of Adam in Eden,T shall not de
part from common usage; but in adopting the word 'good'
I shall use it in a broad and intensive sense, especially as
including the meaning of the word 'image.'
2. As regards the first meaning of the word, 'good' de
notes that the constitution of man was whole or perfect.
Goodness, so understood, is tantamount to the assertion
that Adam was truly and emphatically man. No factor
of the divine idea was wanting. All the higher no less
1 Gen. i. 31.

48 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
than all the lower properties of humanity were, in his
original state, really parts of his constitution.
This conception, that Adam was man in the true sense
of the word, involves the denial of the Roman theory.
Drawing the line dualistically between natural and spirit
ual qualities, the anthropology of a majority of medieval
scholastics distinguishes between the donum secundum na-
turam and the donum superadditum gratice, many hold
ing that both kinds of gifts were conferred, whilst others
taught that the bestowment of the spiritual gift of right
eousness depended upon obedience to the divine will, upon
the moral worthiness which God designed that man should
acquire by his works. The noblest qualities of the divine
idea of humanity were wanting in the natural state of the
primeval man. Says the Catechism of the Council of
Trent: " His soul He created to His own image, gifted him with free will; and
tempered all his motions and appetities, so as to subject them, at all
times, to the dictate of reason. He then added the invaluable gift of
original righteousness, and next gave him dominion over all other
animals."1 Thomas Aquinas distinguished between the purely hu
man and the divine which is added, only in the abstract.
Prior to the fall man had never been in the condition of
the dona naturalia, but from the moment of his creation
had possessed the donum superadditum. The dualism re
mains, but the absence oi justitia originalis before the fall
is not asserted.2
1 Cat. Rom., Art. I., p. 30.
2 "Unde manifestum est quod et ilia prima subjectio, qua ratio Deo
subdebatur, non erat solum secundum naturam, sed secundum supernat-
urale donum gratiae." Summa Theo., Pars I., Qu. XCV., Art. I. "Vel

1 193.] The Primeval Man. 49
As God made man, secundum naturam, he was a de
fective being ; and essentially defective, inasmuch as just
that endowment was wanting by the possession of which
the human constitution becomes in reality human, and is
broadly distinguished from all non-human creatures. If
the word man be used in the proper sense, it cannot on
the Roman theory be applied to Adam, for he was not posi
tively man; he did not really exist in the image of God.
His life was somatic and psychic, but not pneumatic.
This conception is unphilosophical. It assumes that
man is a composition instead of an organic unity, ignoring
the truth that the creation of apart of his being neces
sarily presupposes the whole. The notion of the absence
of an essential part destroys the reality of manhood.
Nor is it valid to sever the supernatural from the natural
constituents of man. All the properties of humanity may
be pronounced to be either natural or supernatural. Nat
ural, because the whole man belongs to the natural econ
omy of the world, the finite order of things, in contradis
tinction from the uncreated realm of divine existence.
Supernatural, because, if we reflect on man in his internal
and organic connection with the world,, having the ground
of his existence in God alone, he is higher and nobler than
nature ; and if we reflect on him in his immediate con
nection with God, living by His quickening breath in
communion with God, man is god-like. The idea pervad
ing the entire economy of nature, embodied under its most
posset dici quod etsi homo fuerit in gratia, non tamen habuit ex crea-
tione naturae quod posset proficere per meritum, sed ex superadditione
gratise." Ibid. Comp. Bellarmine, Tom. IV., De Gratia primi hom.,
ch. 2, prop. 4, who says "that the integrity in which the first man was
formed, and without which after his fall all men are born, was not his
natural condition, but a supernatural endowment."
4

50 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
perfect character in humanity, is the divine idea. Whilst
we affirm the essential connection of man with God as well
as his organic connection with the cosmos, and distinguish
the one relation from the other, we cannot separate the
supernatural from the natural, as if the presence of either
does not presuppose the reality of the other.
The idea repecting Jesus, the Son of Man, given by the
Christian creed, requires Christology to affirm, as its ne
cessary presupposition, that man was in reality man.
Adam actualized the divine idea of incipient manhood in
its integrity.
There is, however, an important element of truth un
derlying the Roman theory, a truth which the older Pro
testant theology commonly overlooked. A kind of positive
perfection«in righteousness and holiness was predicated of
the primeval man, which did not accord with sound Chris
tian reason nor with the history of revelation.
The Edenic state did not fulfil human destiny.1 Eden,
though when compared with lower kingdoms the noblest
plane of existence, was nevertheless only the beginning of
human life; a beginning that looked forward to a change,
a transfiguration, which, had Adam been faithful, would
have been wrought in man's history; -a change, analogous
to the new creation of humanity in the Person of Jesus ; a
transfiguration, analogous to, but not the same as, that
which was accomplished in Jesus when He ascended from
earth into heaven.
1 " We are to remember the twofold danger, on the one hand of putting
man so high that no progress is conceivable, on the other hand of putting
him so low that he could not fall." — Strong's Systematic Theology, p. 261.

\ 194.] The Primeval Man. 5 1
§ 194.
The integrity of the constitution of Adam implies
that in his primeval state he was adapted to the fulfil
ment of the end of his creation.
The divine purpose embodied in his- constitution
Adam was able not only to assert, but also to develop.
He was both free from the taint of moral evil, and posi
tively qualified, by the free determination of his will, to
attain to that higher state of ethico-religious perfection
to which he was predestinated.
1. Adam as constituted by the creative word was sinless.
No perverse moral or spiritual force, no abnormal ten
dency, was either active in his soul or in his body, or
latent in the hidden recesses of his being; no contra-ideal
possibility which, when the apposite occasion might occur,
would of itself spring into contra-ideal reality. Instead
it must be held that all his faculties, all his slumbering
tendencies, whether spiritual or intellectual or corpor
eal, were in equipoise. The body was not a clog to the
soul. Nor may we assume a possible disturbance of this equi
poise by the normal activity of these manifold and complex
powers. If it be said that the sensuous nature took prece
dence in the development of life, and thus personality, in
becoming self-conscious and free, would by this subordi
nate relation to sense fail to realize ideal independence and
freedom, the reply is twofold: 1. That the sensuous nature,
active in its ideal relation to personality is just what hu
man personality presupposes and requires' as the condition
for the development and perfection of freedom; and 2.
That so long as man occupied his'normal status, the influ
ence of -his material organization on spirit could be only

52 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
good, for moral evil does not spring from sensuousness,
but from the false action of spirit.1 When the sensuous
nature works to the prejudice of spirit, it is because spirit,
failing to be true to God and to itself, has exerted a debas
ing influence on the sensuous nature. So long as the nor
mal influence of sense on the will prevailed, this influence
of sensuous life served only to confirm the original equi
poise of body- and soul.
In other words, the original constitution of Adam im
plies that he began his personal history in a state of
innocence. He had done no wrong act. He had formed
no unlawful purpose. He had conceived no false thought.
He had felt no impure feeling. Impulses of feeling there
were, but no impurity. Spontaneity of thought and of
will there was, but no contra-ideal motive or direction.
There was moral activity, but no violation of law. Con
sidered under these negative aspects, the moral and
spiritual condition of his life was whole or perfect. The
feeling of self-condemnation was foreign to his conscious
ness. .
2. The equipoise of his complex powers and the inno
cence of his character, or the total absence of sin and guilt,
presuppose a positive spiritual ground for this physical and
moral status of purity.
With the inception of his trichotomic existence Adam
began to be active, active in the complex powers of body,
soul and spirit. No other assumption is admissible. That
1 Of Augustin, Schaff says: "He has triumphantly demonstrated for
all time that evil is not a corporeal thing, nor in any way substantial,
but a product of the free will of the creature, a perversion of substance
in itself good, a corruption of the nature created by God." — Church His
tory, Vol. III., p. 1013.

§i94.] The Primeval Man. 53
Adam was formed in the image of God, that he had do
minion overall the earth, that he gave names to all cattle,
and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field,1
yet was only negatively righteous, is obviously self-contra
dictory. He was active, consciously active, and exercised
discriminating judgment in his primeval state. This ac
tivity was good; and so far forth he was in process of
forming a character that was positively righteous.
3. Being spontaneously active in all the powers of his
constitution, he was active also in all his relations. As
his position relative to God and to nature was normal, his
activity in these relations was normal also. The economy
of nature was under him, its laws and forces, at least as
affecting personality, being subject to his control. In his
relation to himself, within the sphere of his personal life,
there was order and symmetry answerable to the divine
idea, so far as this may be predicated of his incipient his
tory. The corporeal was subordinate to the rational, the
rational to the moral, the moral to the spiritual, and the
whole man was subject to God, the law and ultimate end
of normal human activity.
Being active normally in his relations to God, to him
self and to nature, Adam may be said to have been right
eous and holy. Righteous he was inasmuch as he was pre
disposed to assert the powers and functions of body, soul
and spirit according to the divine law. Holy he was
inasmuch as, living in the communion of love with God,
his life was set apart to God and spontaneously active for
Him.2 Holiness conditioned righteousness. By virtue of
1 Gen. ii. 19.
2Ebrard says: "In der That setzt auch die Stelle Eph. iv. 24 (der
mivhc av&pairoc sei ktusOeXc Kara tov 8ebv und zwar iv dinmoavvy icai 6oi6tiiti Tijc

54 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
the personal inter-communion of God with man, of man
with God, Adam asserted himself, asserted his faculties, in
harmony with the divine will. Positive holiness, sponta
neous self-consecration to God, conditions right activity in
all other relations.
We have to hold accordingly that Adam was "very
good" both objectively and subjectively. Created in the
image of God, he began to fulfil this divine imageship. v
He began to realize the divine intention in a righteous and
holy life, free from the poison of moral evil. In process
of fulfilling by his ethical activity the end of creation he
began to manifest forth the glory of God in the capacity
of prophet, priest and king of the world.
§ 195-
The exalted position of Adam, his universal dominion,
his innocence and the incipient righteousness of his life,
centre in this divine imageship. Every peculiar endow
ment, corporeal as well as spiritual, contributes to his fit
ness for his exalted vocation. But every endowment, each
in its measure, is a qualification because inwardly related
akrjBeiac') voraus, dasz unter dem "nach Gott " — "nach Gottes Bild"
geschaffen sein nicht blosz Bestimmung zur Heiligkeit, sondern wirk-
licher guter sittlicher Zustand zu denken sei." — Christliche Dogmatik,
I., 267.
Many of the most authoritative exegetes recognize the implied refer
ence of Eph. iv. 24 to Gen. i. 27, and concur in the exposition given by
Ebrard. Meyer says: Kara Bebv, according to God, i. e., ad exemplum
Dei, "according to the model of God" (Gal. iv. 28). Thereby the crea
tion of the new man is placed upon a parallel with that of our first
parents (Gen. i. 27)', who were created after God's image (/tar' hndva tov
K-iaavroe, Col. iii. 10); they, too, until through Adam sin came into exist
ence, were as sinless ev ducaioaiivo ml SocdrnTi rijg alrideiac.

2 195.] The Primeval Man. 55
to the imageship of God, the distinctive principle of man's
constitution.1 No definition can be exhaustive, since the divine image
has infinite as well as finite relations. Yet it is important
to institute an inquiry into its nature for the purpose of
unfolding a conception, though but partial, of its import.
Divine imageship distinguishes the life of human per
sonality. Sustaining infinite as well as finite relations, per
sonality in God's image could at first obtain only in its
germinating period. For the full manifestation of itself it
requires ideal development on earth and a state of exist
ence transcending time. In Edenic history we may dis
cern at most 'the blade' of ideal personality, not 'the ear,'
much less ' the full corn in the ear. '
There are no better terms by which to express this dis
tinctive principle than those furnished by Scripture, image
and likeness, which Christian anthropology has commonly
employed. These two terms are not synonymous; they
name the same reality under two aspects, and may therefore
be used interchangeably. But these two aspects are really
distinct, and imply an important difference, recognized by
Irenaeus and emphasized especially by Clement and Origen.
The distinction to be made between ' image ' (tselem)
and 'likeness' (demuth) turns on the important difference
between being and character. Image is applicable to
human being. It names the kind of existence which by
the creative word Adam became. Used with scientific
exactness, ' image ' excludes the conception of man as he
1 Dillman says: "The writer of Genesis could pronounce man to be the
image of God and god-like, for no other reason than that, as to his spir
itual endowments, his power of thought, his self-consciousness, his free-
•dom of will, his capacity for the Eternal, the True and the Good, he was

56 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
may become by his own activity. ' Likeness ' is applica
ble to character. It names the human constitution as it is
to be defeloped, fashioned and perfected by man himself,
that is, as it is to be formed by the normal exercise of will
and intelligence. ' ' The idea of tselem, ' ' Delitsch says,
"is more rigid, that of demuth more fluctuating, and so to
speak more spiritual ; in the former the notion of the orig
inal image, in the latter that of the ideal predominates."1
The image of God conditions the possibility of god-
likeness, and is in order to it; god-likeness presupposes
the divine image, and it comes into existence in conse
quence of the ideal growth of divine imageship.
§ 196.
Man images God. Imageship embraces his moral
and spiritual integrity. Like God, the primeval man
was righteous.
But the conception of the ethical and spiritual does
not exhaust the idea. The divine image is commen,'
surate with the profoundest depths and the entire
breadth of human nature.
The essence of human being images the essence of
divine being. Essence includes qualities. As human
nature images the essence of God so it also images
God's fundamental and derivative properties.
1. God is personal Spirit; so is man. Man is embodied
personal spirit. God as Spirit is Life, the absolute spiritual
organism. Man images divine life. He is a living spirit.
He lives his life quickened by God; and the life quickened
in him he lives by the ideal exercise of his will.
made partaker of the divine nature and divine powers. By virtue of
these god-like fundamental endowments man transcended all other
earthly beings, and was qualified to be their lord." — On Genesis, p. 36.
1 Cbmm. on Gen., p. 99.

§196.] The Primeval Man. 57
God is the absolute Light. That absolute light man
reflects, being self-conscious, self-manifesting, self-illumi
nating. As the light of truth shines forth from God in
His works, especially in human personality, the chief work
of His hand, so the light of divine truth shines forth from
man in his normal life, his deeds and words.1
God is Love. Righteous love is the essence of God. So
also is righteous love the essence of man. It is the prin
ciple and law of ideal manhood. As God the Father in
the Person of His Son communicates of His fullness to
man, so is it the deepest impulse of man responsively to
give himself up to God. As God. made man to be His
companion, so man finds his only satisfying complement
in God. Each is active for the other; for God made man
after Himself as his pattern.
2. Between God and the ideal man there is no difference
but that which obtains between Creator and creature,
between absolute Being and relative being, between the
Infinite and the finite.
This difference, however, is not absolutely exclusive.
Though a creature, man is endowed with originative
power. He images God as Creator. But the difference
is essential. Man creates no new force, no new material,
no objective principle. The creative energy with which
he is endowed originates new ideas; and he utilizes exist
ing forces, materials and principles, in the process of
actualizing new ideas in new forms of reality. Yet art
1 "His own luminous image God impressed as with a seal, even the
greatest, on man made in His likeness, that he might be ruler and lord
over all things, and that all things might serve him. Wherefore God
judges man to be wholly His, and His own image."— Clem, of Alex.,
Fragments, XIII., 9.

58 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
brings objects into existence which are neither the crea
tion of God nor the production of nature. "Only the
productions of liberty," Kant says, " that is, of a volition
which' founds its actions upon reason, ought properly to
be called art." God constitutes a real world; man forms
an ideal world. The ideal is the reflex of the real; but it
may differ as to contents, especially as to form. Man's
autonomic agency even conditions the perfect growth of
nature. " The Lord God took the man, and put him into
the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it."1 Without
the transforming agency of 'the man,' 'the garden of
Eden' would not have been Eden. "Without man nature
runs wild."
3. God-like as to his essence, man is god-like also as to
his metaphysical qualities.
Mau has part in God's aseity. God is absolutely self-
existent; man has relative self-existence. He has mould
ing force upon the structure of his body; he imparts tone
and order to the complex social economy; he originates,
develops and perfects civilization. By virtue of intrinsic
energies he forms for himself his own home, his own
physical and moral world, a new domain other than mere
nature in which he lives. The mountains and streams,
the fertile soil and mineral resources of Pennsylvania are
the gift of God ; but the State of Pennsylvania with her
developed coal and iron, her cultivated farms, her manifold
manufactures, her villages, towns and cities, her schools
and colleges, her theological seminaries and churches, her
government, Christian civilization and social atmosphere,
are the product of man's creative will. The gifts of God
in nature without man would leave this territory a wilder-
1 Gen. ii. 15.

gig6.] The Primeval Man. 59
ness; but under the touch of his hand the wilderness is
changed into a garden.1
Above all, man originates and develops his ethical char
acter and his own religious communion. True, God is
the author and upholder of the moral order of the world ;
but this moral order presupposes and demands man's self-
determined action. Completing God's order by the re
sponsive action of his will, man conditions and imparts
character to his communion with God; and in this self-
determined, self-formed communion he realizes his free
dom, he meets the demands of conscience, he fulfils the
purposes of his corporeal life, of the social economy and
of every stage of civilization.
4. Man reflects the omnipotence and omniscience of
God. Divine power is commensurate with the divine
will. What God wills to do, He does; no more, no less.
In this respect human power images divine power. Man's
might is commensurate with man's will. If the self-
determinations of his will be normal, if active according
to the law of his ethical being, he is able to do whatever
he chooses. Regarding the forces centering in himself as
head and crown of the cosmic economy, regarding all ob
jects in their ideal relation to his headship, his will is a
1 " An illustration of the power of man to complete even the work of
nature is found in the fact that nearly all fruits and vegetables, together
with the domestic animals, never attain their highest perfection except
under man's guidance and control. The finest domestic animals are not
simply the product of nature; they are the result of the direction of nat
ural forces by the intelligence of man. Neither natural selection nor
environment ever produced the high-bred intelligent dog and horse
and sheep and cattle or fruits and flowers of civilization. Human
intelligence utilizing natural forces produced them. Let alone, the race
horse soon degenerates to a wild mustang." — Rev. R. L. Gerhart, A. M.

60 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
controlling power. Occupying his ideal attitude, he can
hold the entire animal kingdom in subjection to himself,
command the winds and the waves, and the most potent
agencies of the physical world. No foe can touch him,
unless he wills to be touched.1
5. Respecting knowledge the same principle governs a
correct judgment. God's knowledge is commensurate
with God's essence, with His will, with all His relations
to His triune being and to the world. He is in the abso
lute sense self-objective. Of like order is man's knowl
edge. Whilst fulfilling the law of his primeval life, his
knowledge was potentially commensurate with his nature,
with his will, with his normal relations to God and to
sub-human kingdoms. A relative personality, man is rela
tively self-objective. In the degree that he realizes the
idea of his existence he knows himself in God; and in the
degree that he knows himself in God he may know all
things. The entire range of the universe, the moving
worlds above him, the innumerable creatures beneath his
feet, are within the horizon of his vision, and may be
taken up by his intelligence. Nature to his eye is trans
parent; and to his adoring faith God Himself manifests
His being and His will. Capable he is of beholding God
face to face, and of knowing himself even as also he has
been known.2
1 "All the facts bearing on the past of our race, on the development of
civilization, favor the conception that man came on the theatre of earth
in the plenitude of his powers, — not in his lowest but in his highest
type." — Truths and Untruths of Evolution, by Drury.
'* 1 Cor. xiii. 12. Not that nature is transparent to the eye of man as he
is now existing, but to the eye of his spirit, the intrinsic possibilities of
human spirit, which became a reality in the humanity of Jesus. Says

gi97-] The Primeval Man. 61
§ 197.
Of this exalted dignity of mankind as incipiently
realized by the primeval man there is evidence in the
actual superiority of man to nature, in the dominant
tendency of pagan philosophy, but especially in the
incarnate Son.
1. The wickedness, the degradation and the miseries of
our race seem to put the notion of man's divine imageship
to shame. And it must at once be conceded that if actual
history were the only interpreter of Genesis, the interpre
tation I have given of the divine image would have little
or nothing to stand upon.
Yet what does man's inventive genius mean? What
mean the successful endeavors to make water and fire
and lightning, not to speak of ten thousand other natural
forces, his docile servants? "All the things of which the
world is composed, and which it produces from itself," as
Lactantius remarks, "are adapted to the use of man."1
Is there not stirring his soul an irrepressible impulse to
subject the entire realm of nature to his will ? Does he
not drag into light her mightiest hidden forces, and com
pel them to do his bidding?
As regards knowledge, what mean the discoveries and
the results of natural science? Does not the eye of mind
penetrate the secrets of the earth ? What mean the revela
tions of microscopic studies? Is mind limited by time
and space ? Does not mind survey the stupendous dome
Tertullian: "The Creator, when looking on Christ His Word, who was
to become ma», said, Let us make man in our own image." — Against
Marcion, Bk. V., ch. VIII.
1 On the Anger of God, ch. XIII.

62 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books-
of the natural heavens? Measure the distance and move
ments of the planets? Seek to bring the boundless uni
verse within the horizon of common intelligence ? Mount
ing upward on eagle wing, dismissing the sublime worlds
of time and space, does not mind look in upon other,
higher, nobler realms, unseen timeless realms, and sol
emnly speculate concerning the Existence which is abso
lute ? Whatever may be the estimate of the relative value
of the knowledge of nature, or of the knowledge which
mau gains of his own body and mind, or of God, these
phenomena indicate a desire and a capacity for knowledge
that is illimitable.
2. With these phenomena must be connected the deeply
rooted tendency to identify himself with God, a tendency
that asserts its force both in mysticism and dialectic
thought. The most common feature of pagan religion
and of pagan philosophy is the disposition to resolve
humanity into deity. All ages bear witness to this charac
teristic mark of religious feeling and philosophic thought.
A profound law of human life seems to work toward the
annihilation of the sense of difference between God and
man, between Creator and creature. Whence comes such
a monstrous perversion ? The answer is given in the fact
which revelation brings to light. The dominant tendency
to identify himself with God can be accounted for only on
the ground of essential affinity. Man feels profoundly his
divine kinship. God-like life is stirring in feeling and in
thought; biit corrupted by moral evil, enveloped in dark
ness, he fails to see the generic difference between the
personal Creator and the personal creature, and mistakes
himself for God.
3. The satisfying evidence for the truth of the interpre-

1 197.] The Primeval Man. 63
tation I have given of man's divine imageship appeals to
us from the Person of Jesus Christ.
¦ If the teaching of Genesis were supported only by the
actual career of the primeval man in Eden, or only by the
complex phenomena seen in the history of our fallen race,
we should scarcely be justified in putting human nature on
so lofty a plane. But there is an interpretation of Genesis
afforded by the personal history of the ideal Man which
presents anthropology with an indisputable warrant to
ascribe to man such an exalted rank. Jesus enthroned at
God's right hand, Jesus living in the bosom of the uncre
ated glory, Jesus clothed with all authority in heaven
and on earth, — this Jesus is Man, the last Adam, who as
to His human nature is identical with the nature of the
first Adam. This man, the Son of Mary, who realizes the
divine idea of manhood in His state of glorification, sheds
light back upon the divine imageship of the first man
before his apostasy. Irenaeus says:
"In times long past it was said that man was created after the image
of God, but it was not [actually] shown ; for the Word was as yet invisi
ble, after whose image man was created. Wherefore also he did easily
lose the similitude. When, however, the Word of God became flesh, He
confirmed both these: for He both showed forth the image truly, since
He became Himself what was His image ; and He re-established the
similitude after a sure manner, by assimilating man to the invisible
Father through means of the visible Word."1
If we rightly estimate the exaltation of human nature in
the Person of the Son of Man, and if from His enthrone
ment we reason back to the intrinsic possibilities of human
personality as originally constituted, we may see that the
divine imageship of the primeval man is the necessary
'Against Heresies, XVI. , 2.

64 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
presupposition. Logical thought might constrain us to
assume that Adam was god -like even if the fact were not
taught by the scriptural record. §198.
The idea of divine imageship involves a question
respecting location. Anthropology has put the ques
tion : In what part of the human constitution is the
image of God to be found ? The best answer that can
be given is that human personality is god-like ; god-
likeness bears the central relation of personality to all
members and faculties of the human organism.
1. Is the divine image located in the soul or in the
body? If in the soul, is its seat in the emotional or in
tellectual or moral nature ? Answers haVe been various.
Some have suggested a gross anthropomorphism, suppos
ing that God bears a resemblance to the human body.
Spirit, as Tertullian maintained,, "has a bodily substance
of its own kind, in its own form."1 Reacting to the oppo
site extreme, others have denied all resemblance between
the being of man and the being of God, and concede
only a likeness to God of the human spirit. Others go
still one step further, and deny altogether the divine
imageship of man's constitution, allowing only that man
was god-like in respect of moral character. The right
eousness of Adam was like the righteousness of God.
1 After quoting the words of Paul, Who, being in the form of God,
thought it not robbery to be equal with God, Tertullian passes on to say:
"In what form of God? Of course he means in some form, not in none.
For who will deny that God is a body, although ' God is a Spirit ?' For
spirit has a bodily substance of its own kind, in its own form." — Against
Praxeas, ch. VII. Cf. Tert. de Resurr. Carn , ch. XVII. "By Tertul
lian, spirit and soul were considered identical."

g 198.] The Primeval Man. 65
2. These opinions Christological anthropology has to
pronounce defective. Defective they are, because they
grow out of a fundamental misapprehension of human
nature. They assume that the divine image is not a
predicate of man as man, but that it may have its seat in
one part of his constitution to the exclusion of another part.
So one-sided a presupposition renders the question itself
invalid. If man were an aggregation of things, there
might be room for the question; but inasmuch as he is an
organic unity, including the body no less really than the
spirit, the question respecting the seat of the divine image
is excluded.3. Scripture predicates the divine image of man, not of
any one part of his constitution in coiitra-distinction from
another part. It is predicated neither of the body nor of
the soul; neither of the reason nor of the will; it is predi
cated of Adam. Divine imageship is commensurate with
the divine idea. It is the idea as partially realized by the
primeval man that is god-like. As he is an, organic unity,
so is also the divine image; and the central point of the
unity is personality, which is related to and embraces
spirit, soul and body. Here we must find the centre
of divine imageship. As all parts and faculties of his con
stitution are immediately connected with the ego, from
which every faculty receives direction, and every form of
activity receives character, so divine imageship also is
related. It centers and reveals itself in personality, in
that life-point in which body and soul are one, in which
feeling, reason and will are one; but, like personality, di
vine imageship comprehends every constituent and every
capacity of man's being, his corporeal no less than his
spiritual endowments, each in a form answerable to its
5

66 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [Books.
place and function. The doctrine respecting Adam can<-
not be valid if we exclude any essential part of his consti
tution; so neither can the doctrine respecting the divine
image be valid if it be narrower than the idea respecting
himself. Being an organic whole, it may be said that
Adam could not have been created in the image of God at
all, if this image had not been commensurate with the
divine idea of man.
It is consequently to be regarded as an error to seek for
the seat of the divine image. The endeavor involves a
fallacy; for if man be an organism, centering in per
sonality, then of personality the divine image is to be
predicated. And as we cannot speak of the location
of personality, so we cannot speak of the location of the
divine image. Since the whole man is personal, the body
no less than the soul, the former the necessary physical
basis and organ of the latter, man in his totality exists in
the divine image ; but imageship has .its centre in per
sonality, in the ego, just as the human constitution is
human by its normal relationship to personality. When
ever in thought we divorce the body from its normal
vital connection with the ego, we cannot consistently
speak of the body as the organ of personality; and if we
could not speak of the body as in this sense personal,
neither could we speak of the body as participating con
formably to its function in the divine image. But then
also we lose the imageship of the soul; for the human soul
presupposes the human body, and the soul is personal only
as being the constituent of humanity in its integrity.
4. Like personal human life, the divine image in which
God formed Adam existed only in germ and anticipated a
history of normal growth. In reality divine imageship

I199.] The Probation. 67
began to exist only in the degree that the divine idea of
human life was realized. The development of imageship
to the point of perfection anticipates the ideal development
and the ideal perfection of manhood. The highest approx
imate realization on earth of man's divine imageship was
seen in the personal history of Jesus of Nazareth.

CHAPTER III.
THE PROBATION. § 199.
Though the being of the primeval man in Eden
was godlike, « though the spontaneous motions of his
personal life were normal and the action of his will
righteous, yet he was not by creation at the goal of.
existence for which he was predestinated, nor had his
ethico- spiritual character become in the final sense
perfect. Whether he would attain to the goal of his
creation, whether his noble constitution would become
a perfectly righteous character, depended on uninter
rupted obedience to the law of God; and until by his
free activity this problem was solved, he was in the
state of probation.
1." As God formed man's constitution he was whole and
so far forth perfect. He was qualified to fulfil his exalted
mission. Moreover, the incipient spontaneous action of
his personal life was right and good.
But as constituted and spontaneously active according
to God's law man has only set his foot on the threshold
of genuine humanity. The ultimate end of his exist-

68 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
ence lies in the distance; and in order that he may gain
his end it is needful that he be faithful to his vocation,
moving onward steadily toward the goal. As to his
essence good, it is also essential that he unfold and actual
ize the intrinsic goodness of his being by a life of obedi
ence to God. Standing as he did in the communion of
love, it was equally necessary that by the inflexible action
of his will he abide in this communion, and abide in
opposition to temptations that might assail him from the
kingdom of darkness.
2. The obligation of perfecting himself in order that in
process of time he may fulfill his mission, is not an arbi
trary requirement, is not externally imposed by the will
of God; but the obligation arises from man's unique con
stitution. The obligation is indeed ultimately referable
¦ to the divine will, but to the divine will as immanent and
active in human nature. Adam is a person, and his per
sonality is god-like; therefore it is necessary, it lies in the
genius of created personality, that Adam by the exercise
of his own moral powers make himself what in the end
God designs him to become. Pure innocence does not
suffice. Though subject to the divine law, he is also,
like God, a law unto himself. Just this is one essential
characteristic of human personality, that it is self-active
and self-determining, therefore in a relative sense self-
constructive, independently of nature and of God. Ac
cording to the divine idea of the world, man is required
not only to develop his ethico-spiritual existence, but in
developing it also to form and fashion his character, and
thus under one view to create himself. He is bound to
make himself what God designed him to be. Personality
is obliged to become the complete realization of its germi-

\ 199.] The Probation. 69
nal beginning, a reality which as constituted by God it is
not and cannot be.1
This moral necessity implies a period of probation.
Inasmuch as ultimate perfection depends on man's own
self-determination, the consummation may become actual
or it may not. Relative or creaturely freedom in the in
cipient period of its history, though positive, includes the
possibility of contrary choice, and by consequence the
possibility but not the necessity of failure.
That personality may develop into actual freedom it
must possess the true and the good ; and personality can
come into this possession only by the voluntary act of
choosing the true and the good. Truth becomes the pos
session of personality by the free self-appropriation of the
truth; and voluntary activity, because self-determined,
implies the ideal possibility of not choosing the good.
Hence to man in the beginning of his history we have to
ascribe a probationary state, even when contemplating
him exclusively in his original relation to God and to
himself. There is a kind of probation which is indepen
dent of an assault from the kingdom of darkness, and may
be compared with the moral status of angels prior to their
fall.2 1 "Durch das Bewusstsein des Gegensatzes des Guten hindurch soil er
sich fortentwickeln zur freien Selbstbestimmung fur den Gehorsam
gegen Gott oder fiir das Gute." — Dillman on Gen. iii. I.
2 Institutes, Vol. I., \ 168.

70 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
§ 200.
With the ideal possibility of not affirming and not
appropriating the divine good, is connected the antago
nism of the kingdom of falsehood outside of man ; and
his probation assumes the character of a conflict with
the spiritual foe, a record of which we have in the third
chapter of Genesis.
1. Coexistent with the kingdom of good, of order, of
physical and moral life completing itself in Adam, is the
kingdom of evil, of disorder and of spiritual death under
the headship of Satan. As from the history of Messianic
revelation we know that Satan antagonizes God and God's
authority, so from the same history we know also that he
antagonizes man, God's personal representative and vice
gerent. Hence with the moral necessity of perfecting
himself after the likeness of God by the free action of his
will, is connected another necessity: that of maintaining
his integrity and fulfilling his mission in direct opposition
to the assaults of the contrary spiritual kingdom.
2. Genesis represents this probation under the assault
of evil by the symbol of a tree. "And the Lord God
commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden
thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge
of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day
that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."1 God's
will relative to this tree is revealed in the form of a
categorical prohibition: Thou shalt not eat of it. The
prohibition is directed against the false spiritual king
dom which the tree symbolizes; this kingdom confronts
the eye and the mind of the primeval family as an ob-
' Gen. ii. 16, 17.

g2c©.] The Probation. 71
jective reality. It is an evil power, a death-producing
power. Several particulars merit attention.
The death-producing power is represented under the
form of a natural object, a beautiful tree, which addresses
the whole personality, the will, the intelligence, the bodily
senses. Sin is not a shadow, not a fancy, not a notion;
moral evil exists in concrete form; and the form is that of
an organized Power, addressing Adam and Eve from
without. The tree is beautiful, pleasing to the eye; and the fruit
seems to be good for food. In approaching the sinless
man and woman the tempter conceals the poison of evil
under the guise of a good adapted to their normal wants
and moral instincts. Instead of being repellent and
dreadful, evil is genial and friendly. In such garb sin
always approaches his victim. "When the tempter first
comes to the soul," says Matheson, "he comes not in his
own dress; he conies in the dress of virtue. So far from
appearing as the solicitor to evil, he professes to be the
ally of what is good and true."1
Objectively there is direct antagonism between the
kingdom of evil and man's nature, his mission and bless
edness, hence God's will is prohibitive; and the prohibi
tion declares the antagonism between this tree, symboliz
ing a world hostile to good, and man's life, between the
will of the tempter and man's freedom. The prohibition
is categorical: "Thou shalt not eat of it," because the
tree stands for the spiritual foe of man and of God.
So related symbolically to the kingdom of spiritual evil,
the tree becomes the sacrament of iniquity and death. To
eat of it is a wrong of twofold force: the renunciation of
1 Moments on The Mount, p. 125.

72 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
the communion of love with God, and au entrance into
the fellowship of hatred to the good with Satan. To eat
will be to take into man's spirit and assimilate to person
ality the poison of falsehood; thus he will introduce into
himself the law of iniquity and death. "In the day that
thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die."
3. This tree accordingly is the tree of knowledge of good
and evil. The prohibition draws the line for man, within
which the good develops, beyond which the evil begins,
so serving to awaken the perception of the difference
between good and evil, and render possible his free self-
determination for the good. Only by means of the divine
prohibition can the tree work that for man for which it is
set in the garden, that is, become the condition of the
formation of ethical character. Such conditiou the tree
may become in two ways.
If man honor the prohibition, he with clear conscious
ness decides for the good, for obedience to God, against
the evil. He will learn to know the good by the conscious
appropriation and positive fulfilment of the good, and
will rise into nobler fellowship with God; thereby he
becomes qualified to know evil as the contrary opposite of
God's will.
If man fail to honor the prohibition, he with clear con
sciousness decides for the evil, for disobedience toward
God, against the good. By false, self-reference he sets
himself against God, falls away from divine peace and
forfeits the right of access to the tree of life.
In both cases he learns to know good and evil by his
personal act, but under opposite forms. In the former, he
knows good by consciously asserting and becoming the
good; the evil, by self-determined triumph over it. In

jS2oo.] The Probation. 73
the latter, he knows evil by the acceptance of a foreign
law and a foreign dominion; and knows the good by his
alienation from God and the perversion of personality.1
So long as Adam lived in the communion of love with
God he knew by experience only the good. The evil by
experience he could not know. The absence of experi
mental knowledge of evil does not, however, warrant the
inference that in his sinless state he had, or could have,
no perception of evil, by virtue of the divine word. The
kingdom of moral evil is truly known in the light of the
absolute Good.
4. The prohibition, Thou shalt not eat of it, challenges
man's moral integrity, and his confidence in God. To
outward appearance the fruit is good, and to eat of it
agrees with the fitness of things. But he was not to be
governed by the outward appearances of nature, nor to be
deluded by the foreign kingdom approaching him in the
pleasing guise of sympathy and friendship. He is bound
to exercise faith iu God's word, trusting that order of
divine communion in which he by creation has been set.
So related on the one side to the kingdom of evil
and on the other to man in his primeval innocence, the
tree becomes the temptation. Through the bodily senses
it addresses the human spirit. Whilst God, addressing
man's faith by His word, requires obedience to original
law and fidelity to His revealed will, the tempter by the
fruit of the tree is soliciting man to eat of it, and by this
act to repose confidence in a power which is antagonizing
the divine will.
As symbolically represented in Genesis, the probation
answers both to man's innocence and man's dignity. The
1 Cf. Dillman on Genesis, p. 52.

74 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
probation was suitable to and commensurate with the
totality of his complex constitution. Adam was in reality
subject to trial. Actually addressed from without by
moral evil, he was qualified to resist the temptation by
self-determined continuance in the original communion
of love with God.
This pictorial narrative may have taken coloring from
legends so common among Asiatic nations. The notion
of a golden age, of a seductive foreign influence, and a
decadence of mankind, is the common inheritance of all
the more civilized peoples. But between Genesis and the
legendary lore of paganism there is throughout an essen
tial difference. Standing upon the firm foundation of
revealed religion, the writer titters not only sentiments or
phantasies, but imparts the certain knowledge of spiritual
facts which address faith and authenticate themselves to
faith. Whilst the record gives us truths in parabolic
form, the matter in chief is not the external events of the
representation, but the profound ethical and religious
thought embodied in the narrative.1
§ 201.
Such real probation of the primeval man was neces
sary. This moral necessity includes a threefold rela
tion, the relation of Adam to God, to himself and to
the kingdom of moral evil. In order to attain to his
ideal position in these fundamental relations it was
needful to meet evil and reject evil by the choice of
the good.
i. It cannot be said that it pleased God to appoint a
moral test, implying that if God in His sovereign pleasure
1 Cf. Dillman on Genesis, p. 49.

g2oi.] The Probation. 75
had so chosen, the ordeal might have been waived. Nor
can it be said that since God is infinite in wisdom and
power, He could have devised a scheme for the world
whereby the personality of man might have developed
into perfection without a probation. Given the divine
idea of the world, of a world becoming complete in man
as its organic head, and we have in this idea an ethical
law which requires that man perfect himself and fulfil his
mission, as lord over nature, by the free activity of his
own will. Moreover, given the fact of a ' kingdom of
moral evil, a kingdom antagonistic to God and to man;
and we have the necessity that man stand firm in the love
of God against this antagonizing power, and by persistent
self-assertion according to the will of God qse above and
triumph over it.
2. In order to develop his personal life, to acquire ideal
moral strength, and thus to become perfect in God, it is
not enough that man do the truth spontaneously. The
obligation of moral perfection requires also that he choose
the truth. Consciously and freely he has to choose truth
by recognizing and rejecting falsehood.
Since Adam is the fountain of human history, and under
the necessity of rising superior to and overcoming the
kingdom of moral evil, it is needful that the tempter chal
lenge his sinless personality, to the end that by a volun
tary act he may determine himself against the suggestions
of the tempter. The challenge had to be felt, discerned
and rejected. Only by such voluntary act could person
ality be victorious over the assaults of the foreign king
dom, and become actually strong in divine righteousness.
3. But the rejection of moral evil is possible only by
virtue of a self-determination for the good. Though when

76 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
under, temptation the denial of the evil is involved in the
choice of the good, yet it is the positive act of personality,
the loving choice of the good, asserting itself conformably
to the law of personality, that renders negative action, the
rejection of evil, possible. Confronted by the challenge
coming to him from the kingdom of falsehood, man was
required to see truth as the direct contradictory of false
hood, to see in God the absolute law of freedom, and to
choose God to be law for his will and his life. Thereby
the absolute Good would acquire controlling force in the
sphere of consciousness and freedom; man's nature would
be lifted up out of the status of spontaneous goodness into
the complemeutal statusof self-determined holiness, firmly
embracing God's will as the absolute contradictory of
Satan, and denying Satan's will as the contradictory oppo
site of God. Then by the action of his will living in the
kingdom of truth, and the truth having possession of his
personality, the kingdom of falsehood would be overcome
and man would hold it under foot.1 To this throne of
ethical dignity the head of the race could have ascended
only by passing after an ideal manner through the proba
tionary period.
4. Probation was a moral necessity for Adam during
one period of his history, the period of spontaneous good
ness and incipient self-determination. If by the normal
process of self-fashioning and ethical self-elevation in the
communion of divine love he had under all forms of
1 "Es gibt ein Wollen der gottlichen Gabe der Liebe mit der Moglich
keit des NichtwoUens derselben. Erst durch Ausscheidung dieser
falschen Moglichkeit kann die bewuszte Liebe und der entschiedene
Wille des Guten als solchen gesetzt werden."— Dorner, Glaubenslehre,
I., p. 519-

1 201.] The Probation. jj
temptation persisted iri fidelity to God, probation accord
ing to God's purpose would have been resolved into the
positive victory of actual holiness. The truth possessing
him, and he possessing the truth, Adam would have
. attained to the state of confirmation in obedience, and his
righteous life would no longer have been accessible to the
wiles of the tempter.
5. The probation of Adam touches the objects, the per
sons and things with which he was organically connected.
As the primeval man he was the head of a race, the
progenitor of innumerable descendants who according to
the law of race were to be begotten after his likeness,
deriving their nature, their life, their objective ethical
status and objective relations to the world from him. By
virtue of this organic headship the probation of Adam
was the probation of man, not of the members of his pos
terity as individuals, but of the constitution of the race
which every individual inherits.
His probation was also connected with the status of the
natural world. Lower kingdoms look up to man and
anticipate him, but they anticipate him as occupying his
ideal place and asserting his royal authority. The earth
with all its elemental forces, with its herbs and trees; its
insects and animals, demands his dominion over its mani
fold powers, that these powers may themselves exist and
work after their ideal type of order and harmony. The
subordination of impersonal things to personality, the re
ciprocal interdependence among sub-human kingdoms ac
cording to the divine scheme, especially the prevalence of
the true relation between man and the lower kingdoms,
depended on human personality, on the maintenance and
perfection of man on his throne as the head and lord of

78 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
creation. "All nature stands, as 'a matter of fact," De-
litzsch remarks, "in the closest relation to man, who is,
in virtue of his personality, which is at once spiritual and
material, the link between it and God." If man had
asserted and developed his original integrity, had victori
ously resisted temptation to evil, the disorganizing forces
of moral darkness could not by any other avenue have
entered into human personality, nor into the kingdoms
subjected to his behest.
6. Of the relation which the probation of Adam bore to
the angelic world Christian anthropology cannot 'speak
explicitly. That there was an intimate connection be
tween the integrity of man and the blessedness of holy
angels, and that angels had an interest in the development
and perfection of man's original life, revelation does not
justify us in entertaining doubts. On this question the
general tenor of the New Testament is unequivocal. But
of the nature of this intimate connection we cannot speak
with any definiteness; nor may we attempt to determine
to what extent the higher perfection of holy angels was
involved in the first man's fidelity to God.
But what we do know respecting the scope and grandeur
of redemption requires that anthropology recognize the
fact of a positive relation between the momentous issues
of Adam under trial and the objective .life of angels. As
we have before seen, this relation comes clearly to view in
the ultimate glory of the Mediator; for the things in the
heavens and the things upon the earth are in the fulness
of the times to be summed up in Christ, the Son of Man.1
If from, the teaching of Christ and His apostles we reason
back to Eden, we are warranted in affirming that the pro-
' Eph. i. 10; iii. 9, 10.

<s 201.] The Probation. 79
bation of Adam had meaning for the transcendent world
of personal spirits as really as for the impersonal world of
nature. The perfection of harmony between the super
natural and the natural turns on the ideal autonomy of
man, on his faith in God, on his perfect obedience to the
divine law.

CHAPTER IV.
THE* FALL.
§ 202.

The probation of Adam was the probation of the human
race, of that organic constitution of which he was the
ideal beginning; and the issues of his probation involve
the race no less than his individual person. If he had
triumphantly passed the ordeal, like Jesus in the wilder
ness and in Gethsemane, firmly resisting the solicitations
of the evil one by continuous self-reference to God, not
only would the individual person of the first Adam have
risen into the life of confirmation in righteousness, but in
his person he would also have advanced his constitution,
the whole nature of the race as realized in his individu
ality, into the same state of righteous life. Humanity as
such would, by resistance of temptation, in his person
have triumphed over the adversary, and would thereby
have been raised, objectively, into a higher status of posi
tive moral perfection. Persona consummat naturam.
The same organic law is operative in Adam's apostasy.
His fall was the fall of an individual, but no less really

80 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
the fall of his nature, the generic constitution in which
the individual person stood, of the nature in the person
ality; for the nature was personal, and the person was one
with the nature. Adamic humanity fell when the indi
vidual Adam fell. Hence in considering the fall of the
primeval man we are dealing with a calamity which affects
not one person only, nor one family only, but affects the.
Adamic race. § 203.
The account of the fall given in Genesis, like that of
the probation, is pictorial. ,This mystery and the mag
nitude of its consequences are presented under the
form of an external transaction, every part of which
symbolizes profound moral significance for the whole
nature of the first man and of his posterity.
1. The account in Genesis1 is in one respect to be taken
according to the letter. It is a becoming mode of repre
senting an historical fact of spiritual import; and into its
import we may get an insight by accepting the symbolical
representation as valid. The picture answers to the re
ality. But in forming our judgment of the reality we may
not be limited by the superficial meaning of the letter, or
the outward form of the symbols. There is a depth and
breadth of truth in the record which the letter indicates,
but does not adequately express.
Nor can an interpretation commensurate with the im
plicit truth of the record be given, if we reflect exclusively
on the record. Interpretation in the service of Christian
anthropology must be guided by that fuller manifestation
of man's sinfulness as' contrasted with his original good-
1 Gen. iii. 1-8.

?203] The Fall. 81
ness, which Christianity has brought into the light. As
from the dignity and exaltation of Jesus we may learn the
grandeur of the divine idea respecting man, so by reflec
tion on the abyss of humiliation and suffering into which
it was necessary for the Redeemer to descend we may
learn the magnitude of the calamity which Genesis depicts.
Such interpretation does no violence to the primitive
record; it only uncovers the wickedness of the catastrophe
which otherwise is partially hidden.
2. The fall is an ethical process of decadence, including
several distinct stages. Gradually the tempter gains ac
cess to man's personal life. Gradually man asserts a false
independence of God; and in the degree that he relin
quishes confidence in the wisdom of the divine prohibition
he surrenders himself to the control of his adversary.1
The serpent2 addresses the woman by putting the ques
tion: " Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of any tree of
the garden?" The words are a "half-interrogatory, half-
1 Gen. iii. 1-8.
2 "The serpent was preeminently adapted to represent an earthly
power of seduction with a mysterious background. And this mysterious
background is, as revelation in its onward course discloses, the evil
which before the fall of man had already invaded the world of spirits.
The ancient Persian tradition is that which has remained most faithful
to the original meaning of the. scriptural tradition. The serpent (Da-
haka) is the first creature by means of whom Ahriman destroys the first
created land of Orniuzd."
"If the biblical account had placed in the stead of this serpent, the
serpent of natural history as a symbol of sensuality and the charms of
sense, it would have imparted a moral shallowness to the national
legends, while in truth the scriptural reproduction of such national
popular legends has stripped them of their mythological tinsel, and
reduced them to the germ of the genuine and simple state of the case."
— Delitzsch, Com. on Gen. i., 151.
6

82 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
exclamatory expression of astonishment;"1 the aim of which
is to awaken mistrust of God. He approaches that mem
ber of the primeval family who is the more accessible to
the spiritual world. God's authority is not directly as
sailed, nor is His love impugned; but a question is raised
respecting the divine will, by which the prohibition to eat
of the -tree of the knowledge of good and evil is distinctly
brought to the consciousness of the woman, in order to
awaken the sense of needless restraint put upon her liberty
of action.
Instead of instantly repelling the insinuation, the woman
gives it a place in her mind, so far at least as to make reply
to it: "Of the fruit of the trees of the garden we may eat:
but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the gar
den, God hath said, Ye shall not eat of it, neither shall ye
touch it, lest ye die." The reply lays stress on three things:
the permission to eat of the fruit of the trees of the garden;
the prohibition to eat of the fruit of the tree which is in
the midst of the garden; and the consequence of trans
gression, "lest ye die." By the assertion of these three
things against the tempter's cunning she seems to make a
firm stand for truth and right ; but in responding to his
insinuation, though she repeats the words of the prohibi
tion, she has opened her heart to the poisoning influence
of the tempter. Having led the woman to reflect on the
prohibition as something contrary to her freedom and
independence, he has awakened a measure of sympathy
with himself, and thus has brought about incipient diver
gence from the line of ideal rectitude. The reply kept
her in contact with the tempter's mind, and that contact
was abnormal moral action. Fidelity to God is incom-
1 Cf Gen. xviii. 13; 1 Sam. xxii. 7.

\ 203.] The Fall. 83
patible with the least parley with temptation. Ideal alle
giance dictates instinctive resistance to the first approach
of evil.
This point gained, the tempter is emboldened directly
to impugn the truth and love of God. The serpent said:
" Ye shall not surely die: for God doth know that in the
day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye
shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." In two ways
the tempter assails the divine honor: 1. he directly con
tradicts God by denying that Adam and Eve will surely
die, if they eat; and 2. he accuses God of falsehood.
God knows that if they eat their eyes will be opened,
Instead of dying, they shall live a nobler life. God is a
deceiver, an enemy instead of a friend.
The woman is silent. She does not reassert God's pro
hibitory will, nor does she resent the aspersion of God's
truth. Why? She has come under the perverting influ
ence of communion with the wicked one. "The serpent
beguiled Eve in his craftiness."1 Instead of being gov
erned by unfaltering confidence in God, she begins to doubt;
she allows herself to be deceived by confidence in the
tempter. Turning from God, the Author of life and peace,
she yields to the anti-God, the principle of sin and death;
and in yielding to the anti-God she falls under the power
of false confidence in nature. Subjection to the natural
world follows from abnormal self-assertion.
So the record plainly teaches. " And when the woman
saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was a de
light to the eyes, and that the tree was to be desired to make
one wise, she took of the fruit thereof, and did eat; and
she gave also unto her husband with her, and he did eat."
1 2 Cor. ii. 3.

84 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
The motive of the woman is threefold, i. The tree was
good for food. She was moved by the anticipation of the
pleasures of sense. The lust of the flesh awoke. 2. The
tree was a delight to the eyes. A false estimate of the
beautiful divorced from righteousness influenced her will.
She was led captive by the lust of the eyes. 3. The tree
was to be desired to make one wise. Accepting the word
of the tempter, the woman saw in the fruit of the tree the
symbol of wisdom. Consenting to his suggestion, her
judgment was darkened. Doubting' the truth of God she
by disobedience sought to ascend the scale of wisdom,
as if it were folly by doing right to stand firm in her
fidelity. She was, blinded by the pride of life.
The apostle John sums up the action and deep, meaning
of satanic deception in these words: "All that is in the
world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes, and
the vain glory of life, is not of the Father, but is of the
world.1" 3. When lust under this threefold form had been con
ceived in the spirit of the woman, she became the bearer of a
false moral principle, which when full grown became man
ifest by the birth of sin, the act of outward transgression.
"She took of the fruit thereof, and did eat." The actual
eating was the outcome of the spiritual decadence which
began in the endeavor to be faithful to God by engaging
in an argument with the tempter against his cunning sug
gestion. The conception and birth of the first sin shows
that moral evil begins and works according to laws of
human life, as the Epistle of James teaches: "Each man
is tempted, when he is drawn away by his own lust, and
enticed. Then the lust, when it hath conceived, beareth
1 1 Jno. ii. 16.

g2o3.] The Fall. 85
sin: And the sin, when it is full grown, bringeth forth
death.1" "Lust is the mother of sin, and death its pro
geny. ' '
As the woman was one with the man, bone of his bones
and flesh of his flesh, the process of spiritual decadence in
the personal life of the one was a process going forward at
the same time in the personal life of the other; and the
consummation of apostasy included the voluntary act of
man and wife. "She gave also unto her husband with
her, and he did eat. ' ' The historical order of transgression,
beginning with the woman, passes from the woman to the
man; but the record implies that through the consecutive
steps of moral perversion the will of the man coincided
with the. will of the woman; and when the process of
decadence came to the point of consummation the com
pleting act, like the coincidence of the will, became the
act of two in one. "The lord of the world and his
helpmate fall through a tree; their natural environment,
which they were to keep and to rule, entangles them, and
thus become their and its own ruin." The transgression
was the apostasy of mankind under the twofold funda
mental form of existence.
4. The immediate effect of disobedience upon the pri
meval family was twofold. 1. The sense of having fallen
from a higher to a lower plane; the eyes of them both
were opened, and they knew that they were naked. 2.
Resort to some method of self-protection ; "they sewed fig
leaves- together, and made themselves aprons." Self-
assertion against God by accepting foreign authority
awakened the sense of self- insufficiency in the presence of
nature and of themselves. 1 jas. i. 14, 15.

86 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
In relation to God the immediate effect of disobedience
was a sense of contrariety, and the impulse of aversion.
Instead of choosing the Creator, sin chooses the creature
as the chief good. It is a condemning conscience that
begets dread of divine presence. "Conscience never sits
on the mercy-seat."1
5. This symbolical representation of man's apostasy is
dignified, philosophical, comprehensive. Dignified: for
it is consistent with monotheism, and the moral order of
the world. Philosophical: for it exhibits profound insight
into sin as alienation and guilt, and into the false psy
chological process consequent upon violated personality.
Comprehensive: for it embraces the relation which sin
bears to Satan as its source, to God, the absolute law of
right, and to man as formed for righteous fellowship with
God. § 204.
The fall from primeval innocence and righteousness
declares the anti-human nature of the law of sin, a law
which is reasserted in every new act of transgression.
The fall may be viewed under a threefold aspect.
It was a failure, a loss and a positive wrong. Wrong
doing, loss, failure express three aspects of one contra-
ideal fact. ,
1. The word failure denotes the negative issue of pro
bation. Adam was designed for a throne of dignity,
strength and dominion which he did not ascend.
He did not assert his prerogatives. He did not advance
upon his primeval condition. He did not fulfil nor de
velop the purpose of his creation. His ideal destiny,
dependent on the normal action of autonomy, was not
1 "Independent," January, 1S89.

«2C4.] The Fall. 87
actualized. He was predestinated to a plane of positive
freedom and of superior strength of righteousness to which
he did not rise. Nor did he acquire that complete com
mand over nature which by fellowship with God it was
designed he should possess.
These, forms of essential dignity and ethico-spiritual
perfectness Adam had not, as fashioned by the .creative
. word ; but it lay in the divine idea of human personality
that by fidelity to his trust and by obedience to the com
munion of love he should grow from a perfect seed grain
to perfect fruitage, from ethical childhood to ethical man
hood. There is a sense therefore in which it may be said that
man did not come into possession of that maturity of
righteousness which in the beginning he had not, and
could not have. He forfeited that might of personality
and that nobleness of character which would have been
the moral consequence and the reward of triumph over
temptation. This view of failure recognizes the element of truth
which underlies the Roman doctrine respecting the dona
supernaturalia. 2. Transgression incurred the loss of those noble gifts
with which Adam was in fact endowed.
The loss may be regarded as twofold. Adam ceased to
be in the normal state of existence; those distinctive
qualities peculiar to his personal constitution by virtue of
the creative act were no longer active after an ideal man
ner. Besides, he lost that measure of positive righteous
ness which as the consequence of the spontaneous activity
of his ethico-spiritual life conformably to the divine will
he had acquired.

88 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
This twofold loss carried with it the forfeiture of the
original position of superiority to- nature. He was no
longer able to wield the sceptre of authority which God
had put in his hand as lord of. the world. Ceasing to
appropriate the benediction of God to himself, he ceased
to be the needful benediction for sub-human kingdoms.
Though inconceivably great, the loss incurred by sin
ning was nevertheless not absolute; only relative. Though
fallen, man continued to be man. Sin did not either dia-
bolize nor dehumanize his nature. He did not become
truncus et lapis, as the theology of the Reformation
claimed. The words of the Synod of Dort1 need qualifica
tion, when it teaches that men by nature are " incapable of
any saving good," "neither able nor willing to return to
God, or to reform the depravity of their nature."2 And we
may rightfully question the scripturalness of the Heidel
berg Catechism when it teaches that by nature we are "so
far depraved that we are wholly unapt to any good."3
The fundamental law of man's constitution persisted,
demanding a communion of love with God. The renun
ciation of divine authority by accepting Satan's will
poisoned his being, but did not transmute his being into
1 Lutheran confessions also need qualification. The Formula of Con
cord denies "that man's nature and essence are not utterly corrupt;"
denies "that there is something of good still remaining in man, even in
spiritual things, to wit, goodness, capacity, aptitude, ability, industry, or
the powers by which in spiritual things he has strength to undertake,
effect, or coeffect somewhat of good." — Formula of Concord, Art. I., VI.
The divine aspirations of paganism, the parable of the prodigal son, and
Paul's discourse on Mars' Hill, not to name other places, call for a less
rigid interpretation of human sinfulness.
2 Canons, III., 3.
»Heid, Cm. 8.

§204.] The Fall. 89
an existence of another kind. The ideal state of the
divine image in its incipient stage of growth he lost, but
the divine image itself he did not lose. Itself distorted
and falsified in its action, it nevertheless continues to
live; for the divine image distinguishes man's being no
less than his ethical character.
So also as to the loss of primeval righteousness; though
in one respect total, for all the faculties and all functions
were touched by moral poison, yet the loss of righteous
ness was only relative. His will no longer determined
its action by the law of God, yet will continued to be the
human will. Personality retained the power of self-
determination and of self- construction. Divine truth, the
content of freedom, was wanting, but not absolutely the
perception of its supreme worth, nor the power of choice.
The form and subjective conditions of freedom remain.
Of man's relation to the natural world the same distinc
tion is to be predicated. His positive authority and his
actual dominion over the lower kingdoms disappeared,
but not absolutely. Constitutionally he is still superior to
animals and plants, superior to oceans and continents.
Some sense of his intrinsic supremacy he still has; and- he
is able, in a measure at least, to assert his supremacy, as
the arts of civilization clearly demonstrate. Winds and
waves, light and electricity, have all been commanded to
work for him, harnessed under the yoke of his mighty
will. 3. The fall, however, is much more than failure and
loss. The transgression of the divine will was a positive
wrong, involving an ethical falsification of man in all his
relations, a falsification partaking of the genius of that lie
of which Satan is the originator. Man lapses to a low

90 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
moral and physical plane. Here his existence becomes a
caricature of the divine idea. The character he develops
dishonors the divine purpose.
Transgression was a wrong done directly toward God.
Wrong touches God's heart.2 A perfect communion of
love between God and mau was the ideal of his creation.
Sin is a wilful violation of this communion. Sin not only
contravenes the divine will, but it even invades the divine
life. God is love. The violation of love is a wrong com
mitted directly against God's essential nature. The fall
incurred by wrong-doing of necessity provokes God's dis
pleasure and condemnation, and thus puts God and man
in false relationship; false, because His favor and benedic-'
tion, not condemnation and wrath, actualize His own
eternal idea concerning man and the world.
Transgression was no less also a wrong committed by
man against himself. Wisdom says: "He that sinneth
against me wrongeth his own soul."1 Man, formed after
God as his pattern, is fashioned for the love of truth and
for the perfection of righteousness. When he became
disobedient he dishonored the order- of his ethical life. As
the prohibitory injunction answered to the deepest de
mands of personality, he by transgressing the command in
the very act violated God's will as embodied in his own
constitution. Adam by a personal act took into the very
substance of his being, and as a consequence into the
bosom of personality, an anti-human spirit, a false ethical
principle, a principle that antagonizes the original order
of human life, that darkens his understanding, that weak
ens, obscures, even debases his moral perceptions. There
is a sense in which we may say that in accepting the
'Prov. viii. 36. 2Gen. vi. 6.

?204.] The Fall. 91
will of Satan as his law of action man became the child
of " the Devil," as our Lord charges upon the unbelieving
Jews.1 In the degree that the divine image was distorted
by the lie of Satan, man was changed into a character
reflecting Satan's image.
This principle is universal. In every created thing of
life, conformity to its law of existence is health and well-
being. The violation of its law is pain and death. No
living thing, being what it is, can attempt to be that
which is contrary to the essential law of its existence
without superinducing destruction. The possibility of
death lies in the sanctity of life.2
Being the head and lord of the world, Adam by unfaith
fulness to God and to himself transgressed God's law as
embodied in nature; for the divine will immanent in cre
ation binds all kingdoms into one system. The life-
communion of love with God was the ground both of
man's personal dignity and of his dominion over the lower
world. So long as he lived in God after a normal manner
Adam was truly man, whether active spontaneously or by
conscious volition. Being himself truly, he was superior
to nature and exercised controlling authority over all
things. When this life-communion was disturbed and
impaired, when the divine idea of his existence was falsi
fied, he forfeited this controlling authority. In trans
gressing the fundamental law of his own constitution he
transgressed the deepest laws of nature; for since nature
and man are a unity, bound into one by a common plan
and a common purpose, natural laws and natural relations
are inwoven with him as their dynamic centre. By trans-
'Jno. viii. 44-
2 MS. R- Leighton Gerhart, A. M.

9.2 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
gression he came to occupy a false attitude in his relation
to nature, and nature came to occupy a false attitude in its
relation to him. The fall carried disorganization into the
lower kingdoms; and God's purpose was seemingly frus
trated throughout the entire domain of creation.
Some scientists have been objecting to the biblical rep
resentation of the world, especially to the curse pronounced
upon "the ground" for Adam's sake.1 It cannot be other
wise, if science will ignore ethical reality and Christo-
logical truth, or refuse to accept any generalization but
what may be suggested by current external phenomena,
all of which Christianity must regard as defective manifes
tations of the original structure of the world. Baldwin
utters profound truth when he says:
"There is moral and esthetic reality no less than logical and sensa
tional reality; and there is the same reason for believing in one that
there is in another, for both rest upon the fact that our mental nature
demands certain kinds of satisfaction, and we find it possible to get them.
Sensational reality will not satisfy our logical demands, for nature is
often refractory and illogical. Neither will logic satisfy our moral and
esthetic demands, for the logically true is often immoral and hideous.
It is well, therefore, to write large the truth that logical consistency is
not the whole of reality, and that the revolt of the heart against fact is
often as legitimate a measure of the true in this shifting universe as
is the cold denial given by rational conviction to the vagaries of casual
feeling."2 Modern science has gone largely on the assumption that
inference from material phenomena is the measure of the
stature of man. It has been overlooking the truth that
the ethical and esthetic are just as real as the mate
rial; and that inasmuch as the ethical is essential in
1 Gen. iii. 17, 18.
2 Feeling and Will, by Prof. James M. Baldwin, p. 168.

§204.] The Fall. 93
manhood the science of material facts must be brought
for final adjudication to the bar of the ethical. What is
more, the world's grasp of the ethical has always been in
advance of its understanding of the physical. Even to-day
we know more of spirit than of matter.1
As man is the epitome of the world, the relation of
the soul to the body may be taken as the mirror of, man's
relation to nature. Deposed personality disturbs and mis
directs the bodily powers. When we maintain, accord
ing to Scripture, that the ground is cursed for man's sake,
we in principle do no more than science does when accord
ing to experience it admits that the false action of the soul
carries a disturbance of the normal action of the body.
The normal action of moral life conditions the normal
action of physical life.
4. The self-determined violation of divine law as re
alized in man's moral and physical constitution, in the
economy of nature and in the original communion of love
between God and man, is the pivot on which human apos
tasy turns, and from which all grades of misery get their
sting.2 The fall is wilful disobedience; and wilful disobedi
ence is as to its essence a positive wrong, a wrong com
mitted by man against God and against himself. Disobe
dience renounces the ideal center and the normal order of
human life, choosing instead a contra-ideal center and an
abnormal order. Renouncing the concrete right realized
by the communion of love with God, disobedience chooses
the concrete wr6ng realized in the fellowship of bondage
with Satan. The failure to rise to the high level of au
thority and righteousness to which Adam was predesti-
1 MS. of R. Leighton Gerhart, A. M. z i Cor. xv. 56.

94 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [Book 5.
nated, and the loss of the prerogatives with which in fact
he was clothed, these forms of apostasy are the conse
quences of wilful disobedience.
Beyond the wilfulness of disobedience we cannot go for
an explanation of apostasy; and for the sufficient reason
that back of the will there is no principle of man's wrong
doing. Of moral evil the possibility lay in personality;
no more than this. That the possibility in man became
reality, is referable to his own act, an act predicable of
human freedom. "A sin is an evil which," to use the
words of Coleridge, "has its ground or origin in the
agent, and not in the compulsion of circumstances."1 As
such it neither requires nor is capable of further account.2
If the fact of apostasy by the commission of sin were refer
able to a principle other than human will, the calamity
would be man's fate, not his fault; his abnormal condition
and conduct would make, him an object only of compas
sion, but could not entail condemnation. So Augustine
teaches with much force:
" If the question be asked, What was the efficient cause of the evil will?
there is none. For what is it which makes the will bad when it is the
will which makes the action bad ? And consequently the bad will is the
cause of the bad action, but nothing is the efficient cause of the bad will.
* * * I ask what made the first evil will bad ? For that is not the
first which was itself corrupted by an evil will, but that is first which
was made evil by no other will. * * * When the will abandons what
is above itself, and turns to what is lower, it becomes evil, not because
that is evil to which it turns, but because the -turning itself is wicked.
Therefore it is not an inferior thing which has made the will evil, but it
is itself which has become so by wickedly desiring an inferior thing."3
The primeval man did not transgress because through
1 Aids to Reflection, p. 160. '' Cf. Dillman on Genesis, p. 53.
"De Civ. Dei., xii., 6.

\ 204.] The Fall. 95
weakness or inexperience he failed to transcend original
innocence and spontaneous goodness, or because of such
failure he lost the moral superiority with which he had
been endowed; but his failure and loss are negative aspects
of voluntary transgression. It was the false volition of
free agency that by its fatal touch disorganized and pros
trated human nature.1 A wrong volition realized by the
wrong deed imparts the character of falsehood to all other
aspects and relations of sin. Sin is not a misfortune, but
moral wrong. Sin is referable to personality, the dynamic
centre of human life. Misfortune and misery prevail be
cause personality has become guilty.

CHAPTER V.
CONSEQUENCES OF THE FALL.
§ 205.
The fall is a catastrophe covering the human constitu
tion relatively to God, to nature and to the world. In the
person of Adam human nature sinks into a condition
wherein all relations contravene the divine idea. In his
relation to God man is under condemnation; he is suffer
ing the curse of sin. In his relation to himself he is
morally and religiously deformed and vitiated. As re
gards nature he is subject to its disintegrating forces. As
1 "Die bose Richtung aber, welche solche menschliche Handlung erst
zur Siinde macht, ist des Menschen Schuld; und wenn Gott auch dieser
Richtung nicht fremd bleibt, so thut er das aus einer ganz anderen Inten
tion, namlich er bezweckt Gutes auch da, wo die Menschen Boses be-
zwecken." — Dogmatik von Eduard Bohl, p. 137.

96 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
regards Satan, he is held under bondage to a dominion
foreign to his nature and to his teleology. All perverse
relations centre in personality, falsified and degraded by
wilful disobedience.
The false relation between God and man is reciprocal.
Man's false attitude toward God implies and includes a
false attitude toward himself; the false attitude toward
himself implies and includes a false attitude toward God ;
for God and man are the two terms of an indissoluble
relationship, whether the actual relationship be ideal or
contra-ideal. Hence we cannot successfully study one
term without direct reference to the other.
§ 206.
The wilful disobedience of Adam incurs guilt. Guilt
is God's judgment of condemnation on the wrong-doer,
uttering itself in the self condemnation of the con
science. This twofold condemnation involves a debasement
of human nature. Man is arrayed against himself, his
powers being perverted by the foreign principle of sin.
The feeling of guilt is judicial pain; and judicial pain
answers to divine displeasure.
1. It has been said that guilt is liability to punishment.
Though correct, this opinion is not adequate. Liability to
punishment is itself a penal state. Guilt is the condition
of the transgressor in his relation to moral law. This
proposition expresses one aspect only. Guilt is also the
condemnation pronounced by God upon the wrong-doer.
These two things are correlative: the divine sentence and
the human sentence, God condemning the transgressor
for the wrong done, and the transgressor condemning him
self. Since God is absolutely righteous He cannot but

|2o6.] Consequences of the Fall. 97
condemn the violation of right; and since man is fashioned
in soul and body for a perfectly righteous life he cannot
but condemn himself for the violation of the right.
In consequence of trangfession God and man have be
come terms of a Gontra-ideal judgment. Man was formed
that he might rightly know God, heartily love Him, and
live with Him in blessedness.1 His ethical organization
demands, and fits him for, judicial harmony with moral
law. On the other hand, God formed man good, for obedi
ence to law, to the end. that God might approve man, be
at peace with man, and take delight in the communion
of righteous love with him.
Disobedience reverses the divine Prder. Contrary to the
purpose of the creative word, disobedience turns the divine
judgment of approval into the judgment of disapproval.
Contrary to the intrinsic requirements of the moral organi
zation of the personal creature, disobedience turns self-
approval into self-condemnation, inward peace into judicial
discord. Sin sets the sinner by the same act and in the
same instant against God and against himself. For this
twofold wrong God holds the transgressor accountable.
Whilst His righteous judgment passes the sentence of con
demnation upon him, he feels and instinctively acknowl
edges the sentence to be righteous. For as God holds the
transgressor, so the transgressor holds himself, responsible
for the wrong done by him. The sentence falls, not on
intellect, not on feeling, but directly on his will; and the
sentence expresses its force immediately in the remorse of
personality. 2. God's condemnation of wrong is not a matter of
sovereign choice. It springs from His righteousness.
1 Heid. Cat., 6.
7

98 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
The absolute Good, He cannot but set Himself against
the bad. Being the absolute Right, He of inward neces
sity withdraws His approval from the wrong-doer. We
may not assume that it is only the good pleasure of God
to hold the sinner accountable, much less that were God
so disposed He might wink at wrong-doing. Guilt is of
the very nature of transgression. The sense of guilt is
begotten by the violation of the fundamental law of per
sonal life. Self-condemnation being the utterance of God's
judgment, it is a dynamic element of wickedness. Of the
conscience Cicero says: Deus regnans in nobis.
The transgression of Adam generated in the very act a
self-condemnatory attitude. Personality awoke to the per
ception of wrong committed by itself upon itself. The
law of right having been wilfully violated, man vindicated
the right in his own soul. Feeling the wrong done and
adjudging himself the transgressor, he executed upon him
self God's sentence of condemnation.
Not only does the transgressor hold himself accountable
to the authority of law, but he wills the penalty which
transgression begets.
3. This self-condemnatory attitude of the transgressor
includes suffering; the suffering is judicial. Judicial pain
is the penalty of sin. Sin and self-condemnation, self-
condemnation and penalty, involve each other. As guilt
is inseparable from wrong-doing, so penalty is inseparable
from guilt. Penalty is the moral misery which transgres
sion inflicts on the transgressor. Personality by doing
wrong becomes its own relentless tormenter.
Penalty prevails coextensively with moral evil. The
principle of sin, like poison in the blood, affects the
entire man, causing perverse action of every faculty of the

ii 206.] Consequences of the Fall. 99
soul, and sooner or later the disorganization of all the
functions of the body. Suffering is the fast companion of
sin. It is as profound as personality, and tingles through
every nerve of personal life. Says Byrou:
"There is no future pang
Can deal that justice on the self-condemned,
He deals on his own soul."
With God there is mercy in Christ , for the wrong-doer
no less than condemnation, but with the awakened con
science of the wrong-doer there is for himself only merci
less remorse.
Inasmuch as sin produces sin, as sin becomes a sinful
habit, an ever active voluntary transgression of God's will
and a thorough falsification of the divine communion of
love, the torment of penal suffering, unless man be regen
erated and pardoned, will be as enduring as man. Even
more than this may be rightfully asserted. The torment
of the penalty increases with the progress of sin in human
history. Our knowledge of the moral order of the world
shuts us up to the recognition of these terrible issues.
4. Corresponding to the guilt of man is the wrath of
God. The one is correlative to the other. Divine wrath
is the necessary manifestaion of righteous love in its rela
tion to the transgressor. It expresses the feeling of God's
infinite displeasure toward the wrong which personality
has chosen to commit against God. Wrath also expresses
the divine sense of the ethically false attitude toward God
which the wrong-doer is now occupying and is voluntarily
perpetuating. God and man are the two terms of a living ethical rela
tionship. God is the archetype and the perpetual ground
of manhood. Man according to the divine idea is the

ioo Doctrine- on the Adamic Race. [books.
image and the revelation, of God. The fall did not abro
gate this ethical relationship, nor does the unceasing
commission of sin destroy its reality; but the character
under which through sin the indissoluble connection of
man's being with God has come to prevail,, is directly con
trary to the immanent law of this connection.
In the original communion man's obedience to God pre
supposes the positive love of God to man, and' God's love
toward man implies and demands the obedience of man to
God. When, the normal character of the original com
munion is invaded and broken Up by man's transgression^,
the vital reciprocity between God and man continues, but
it is falsified. Man's guilt presupposes God's wrath, and
God's wrath implies man's guilt. Neither could be with
out the other. If man had not done wrong there could
be no divine displeasure; if God did not condemn wrong,.
man would have no sense of condemnation; if He did not
absolutely love the Good and the Right, He would not be
averse to the bad nor condemn the wrong.
Moreover, as God's- positive love to man manifests itself
in man's positive- love toward God, so- does the righteous
judgment of God against wrong-doing manifest itself in
the condemnation uttered" by the conscience ; and as
God's righteousness reveals itself in the blessedness of
human righteousness, so does God's wrath reveal itself in
man's penal sufferings for. transgression. The self-con
demnation and the sufferings of the transgressor declare
God's wrath. If there were no love of God to man, there
could be no love of man to God ; for God is continuously
the condition of normal manhood. If there were no divine
holiness, there would be no human holiness. The same
reciprocity, obtains in the sphere of retributive righteous-

jj2o6.] ^Consequences, of the FulL 101
ness. If there were no necessary judgment of God against
sin, there would be no condemnation of sin by the sinner;
and if there were no divine wrath, there could be no penal
suffering. Or, as Lactantius expresses it: "If God is not
angry with the impious and the unrighteous, it is clear
that He does not love the pious and the righteous."1
5. Divine wrath is accordingly the permanent attitude
of God toward the wrong-doer. Guilt continues so long
as the sinful status and the sinful action of the personal
creature continue; and wrath is as enduring as the guilt
of sin; rather may we say, guilt and the sense of guilt
continue in the history of the wrong-doer because God's
wrath is abiding,2 in other words, because the infinite
aversion of holiness to sin is eternal. The relation
between human guilt and' divine wrath is unchangeable,
like the relation between man's righteousness and God's
blessing. Not until the commission of sin and the preva^
lence of guilt cease in the history of the transgressor, can
divine displeasure abate and the positive love of God
manifest itself toward him under an exclusively normal
character. 6. The poison of sin taken voluntarily by Adam into his
personal being, introduced thorough disorder. His consti
tution was shattered. Renouncing God, the fundamental
law of his existence, and appropriating an anti-human
principle, discord and contrariety take the place in his
nature of unity and harmony. His impulses and facul
ties, physical and psychological, as Well as ethical and
spiritual, rise up and stand arrayed each against all.
Bellum omnium contra omnes.
According to the fundamental law of manhood, the
1 Lactantius, De ira Dei, 5. 2 Jno. iii. 36.

102 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
only true centre of human life is God. This fundamental
law sin contravenes. Man fallen seeks to make himself
the law of his will and conduct. So far as his volition
can effect it he is self- centered, instead of being centered
in God. Hence comes unceasingly a war within. As the
original law binding man to God has not been abolished,
but is still asserting itself in the mysterious depths of the
human constitution (for the moral order of the world
stands as firmly as the physical order), there is in person
ality a thoroughgoing antagonism between the inalienable
forces of man's ideal status and the abnormal powers of
his actual status, an antagonism that is keenly felt and
known, yet is aggravated by the continuous false activity
of personality. The testimony of the pagan to the fact
of this moral contradiction is definite. Video meliora
proboque, deteriora sequor} Man is ever willing the in
ternal warfare, dissatisfaction with which he is ever ex
periencing. Moral disorder pervades the entire man. Sin has pene
trated to the core of selfhood. There it has a permanent
lodgment. From the central point, from the heart of
man, sin is active in all the radii of life, degrading
instincts and aptitudes, misdirecting every faculty, impair
ing all functions, and perverting feelings, thoughts and
volitions. We have to distinguish between depravity and abso
lute sinfulness. Total his depravity is, because the virus
of the fall penetrates the entire man; but sin has not
become "man's substance nor his fundamental law. The
substance of his being is good, because really human; but
human being is vitiated. The transgressor is still living
1 Ovid, Metamorph. VII. 1. 20, 21.

§207.] Consequences of the Fall. 103
in the divine image, but the divine image asserts itself
under a false character, some of its, manifestations in
paganism being even monstrous. Whilst every form of
personal life is poisoned by moral evil, personality itself
remains. Whilst the war within is virulent, the spiritual
qualities and divine aptitudes of personality, as distin
guished from impersonal kingdoms, have not been de-'
stroyed; and just because not destroyed, the internal
contradiction is persistent, and judicial sufferings are
intense. § 207. '
The wrath of God is vindicative1 of righteousness,
not vindictive. .God has no pleasure in the evils that
come upon the transgressor.1 Instead, the pains and
miseries of condemnation are so disposed under the merci
ful government of God' that they may issue in recovery,
the ultimate aim of God's judgments being not the utter
ruin of the sinner but his deliverance from sin. There is
a redemptive element in divine wrath; for wrath is none
other than God's judicial displeasure with the wrong done
by the wrong-doer, and the sense of this displeasure in the
experience of the transgressor is one condition of his
return to God.
Of repentance there are two classes of conditions: the
one is God's goodness, the gifts of His providence;2 the
other is the sorrow, misery and curse of sin. Both are
necessary. Could humanity have come to a just sense of
guilt if there had been no manifestation of divine condem
nation, either in providence or in the conscience ? And if
man did not know the bitterness of transgression, would
1 Ezek. xxxiii n; xviii. 32. 2Rom. ii. 4; Acts xiv. 17; xvii. 27.

104 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [Boqks.
he turn in penitence and faith to God, yearning for syn>
pathy and deliverance ? If there had been no manifesta*
tipn of God's love for fallen man in anger toward his sin
fulness and his sins, could redemptiye grace have taken
effect? Could redemption haye rescued the transgressor
from the moral and spiritual ruin of his sinfulness, if the
transgressor had no sense of his ruin and did not turn to
God in faith and prayer? To be saved the transgressor
must awake to the knowledge of his transgression and of
its judicial consequences. Rightly interpreted, we may
see the blessing of divine. mercy even in the terrors of the
divine curse. Hence it comes, as Augustine remarks, that
" even souls in their very sins strive after nothing else but
some kind of likeness of God."1
To gain a complete scriptural view of God's relation to
our fallen race it is not enough to recognize the element
of divine mercy active in His unchangeable condemnation
of sinfulness. Theology should lay stress also on the pos
itive grace that follows the transgressor amid the ruin of
transgression. The parable of the lost sheep teaches not
only God's infinite sympathy with man in his apostate
condition, but no less also the direct seeking of His inter
posing grace after the recovery of man from his apostasy.
It is not scriptural to hold with the older theologies that
by transgression man, though sinful and debased, has for
feited all claims to God's favor; for divine imageship is
not extinct, nor has the original design of the creation of
the race been abandoned.2 The language of Dr. Hodge is
questionable: ''The natural man may possess natural
affections, but his heart is dead toward Gpd."3 It is more
1 De Trim, xi, 5. 2 Cf. \ 209, 4.
a Outlines of Theology, p- 340.

§208.] Consequences of the Fall, 105
scriptural to teach with Fairbairn that " the salvation of
the sinner was a moral necessity to the Godhead." 1
§208.
The wrath of God involves the curse. The curse is
His wrath in the form of reality ; and reality means the
actual ills of sinful human life, which embody and
express God's judgment of. condemnation. The curse
is the bitter fruit which sin according to its own law is
ever producing.
God's curse appears in the history of transgression
in two ways, mediately and immediately. The differ
ence is only relative.
1. The curse may be called mediate because God's judg
ment against sin conies through the perverse action of the
laws of human life. His judgment operates in the soul
and body of the transgressor, and in the social organism.
It appears in bodily diseases, in insanity, in pauperism, in
family discords, in social animosities, in the feuds of tribes
and nations, in the devastations of war, and, as the bitter
est fruit of all the ills of sinful history, in death.
Also through nature transgressors experience the reality
of God's wrath. The curse shows itself in the destroying
power of storms., earthquakes and inundations, in the
extremes of cold and heat- As man and nature are mem
bers of the same system, nature, ' ' the whole animate and
inanimate creation as distinguished from man," as Bengel
correctly interprets nfc urineac in Rom. viii. 19, shares with
man the necessary consequences of transgression. There
is self-consistent ethical philosophy in the words of Gen
esis. Unto Adam the Lord God said: "Cursed is the
ground for thy sake; in toil shalt thou eat of it all the
' Christ in Modern Theology, p. 477.

1 06 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
days of thy life; thorns also and thistles shall it bring
forth to thee. * * In the sweat of thy face shalt thou
eat bread, till thou return unto the ground."1 The natu
ral elements without rise up and join with hostile forces
within to embitter the existence of the guilty, of the
transgressor who is ever choosing to live contrary to the
law of personality and to the moral order of the world.
2. There is also a judgment of God against sin which
the sinner realizes immediately. Of God's wrath there is
a direct expression by spoken and written words, as in
Deut. xxvii, 26, and Gal. iii. 10, and in the punitive dis
pensations of Providence visited upon individuals and
nations. Moreover, God by His Spirit speaks to every
transgressor with irresistible power, constraining him to
feel His displeasure in the remorseful pangs of conscience.
It is written: "Cursed is every one which continueth not
in all things that are written in the book of the law to do
them." Such words of condemnation may seem severe, even
terrific, if not incompatible with God's goodness; but it
must be remembered, that divine goodness in all its
dealings is righteous and just, and that words of con
demnation merely express in speech the appalling judg
ments of God upon transgression which are daily enacted
before our eyes in the course of nature. Sin is an infinite
evil. Says Schiller in Wallenstein:
" Das eben ist der Fluch der boesen That
Dass sie, fortzeugend, immer Boeses muss gebaeren."
All forms of misery are referable to satanic causality,
not to the originative action of the divine will ; but as sin
1 Gen. iii. 17-19.

<S2o8.] Consequences of the Fall. 107
violates the law of right in all realms, personal and im
personal, the ills of sin bear a judicial character. Being
unchangeably true to Himself and to the moral order of
the world, God affirms His will and maintains the moral
order with immutable authority. The ills of sin are to be
regarded as realizing the judgment of retributive right
eousness against the wickedness of sin. " The face of the
Lord is against them that do evil." 1 Says Seneca: "The
greatest punishment of siu is having sinned. Evil actions
are avenged by conscience. Nothing equals the torments
which it causes, for its blows fall heavily and unceas
ingly."2 These real forms of manifold misery which a
sinful world is experiencing declare the attitude of God
toward continuous wilful disobedience.
3. God's wrath and God's curse sustain the same rela
tion to guiltiness.
The guilt of man and the curse of God are correlative,
like human transgression and divine displeasure. The
curse which the transgressor bears presupposes guiltiness,
and the guilt consequent upon wilful disobedience gene
rates the curse. If there were no guilt, there could be no
curse ; and if God were incapable of inflicting a curse, if it
were contrary to Love to visit condemnation in real forms
upon the transgressor, there would be no guilt, no con
demnation on the part of God, no self-condemnation on
the part of man ; even the notion of sin and guilt would
not prevail among men; for by the supposition there
would be no moral order and therefore also no blessing.
4. God'? curse manifested by the antagonistic forces of
nature implies that, in consequence of the fall, man and
1 1 Pet. iii. 12.
2 Sen. Epistola, xcvii. Prima et maxima peccantium poena est peccasse.

io8 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [Books.
nature reciprocally occupy a false attitude. Man was
formed to have dominion over all lower kingdoms, but
these kingdoms now hold him subject to their disinte
grating forces. Says Delitzsch:
"Man having fallen from communion with God, the world of nature
became like him, its appointed head, subject to vanity, and needed as
he did redemption and restoration to recover its lost condition and high
destination."1 The false position man occupies is not negative only.
Not merely is he wanting in authority and might to hold
nature subject to his will. The change in his relative
position has a positive ground. The transgressor has
chosen to subject himself to nature and to natural laws.
Not only is he limited and controlled by natural laws, but
he wills this limitation; he seeks to complement his defi
ciencies from the resources of nature. Insufficient for
himself and averse to God, he instinctively turns to the
world as towards a satisfying good; he loves the world,
embraces it, lives for it, and exalts it above himself as the
chief object. Through the perverse action of the will
nature thus acquires the mastery over human life, a
mastery which appears in science and art, in the social
economy, and ultimately in the dissolution of man him
self. A keen sense of dissatisfaction with his subjection
to the disintegrating forces of natural laws is always felt;
the transgressor protests by word and deed against the
dominion of the law of dissolution, history in one respect
being a continuous conflict for superiority between nature
and man. Nevertheless in resisting the disintegrating
forces of natural law the transgressor determines his will,
' Delitzsch on Gen. i. p. 168. Cf. Rom. viii. 18-24 \ also Dillnian on
Gen. iii. 18.

§209.] Consequences of the Fall. 109
not by divine authority, but by things mundane and
earthly, thus on the one band choosing dependence on the
world, and on the other exalting the world above himself.
Chafed by the iron chain he struggles to unloose himself,
but with every effort he encircles his limbs with a stronger
coil. § 209.
Back of all these forms of self-contradiction' and
misery lies the kingdom of darkness* Here we reach
the ultimate principle of wilful transgression and its
consequences. 1. As the wilful disobedience and the fall of Adam are
referable to Satanic instigation, so also are all the evils of
apostasy which afflict his posterity. The subjection of the
race to Satan's dominion is not merely negative. It is not
enough to say that the fallen race is no longer superior to
the power of Satan. The relation is of a different kind.
Sin and guilt, sin and the curse prevail in the history of
the world, not only because men choose to turn against
God and choose to embrace nature as the chief good, but
by virtue also of Satan's continuous instigation. Satan is
the principle of ethical self-contradiction, of physical dis
integration and of death reigning in all the ages, a prin
ciple, however, whose controlling influence is not absolute,
but always presupposes the consent of man's will.
There was occasion above to say: fallen man is self-
centered. The proposition is true, for he seeks to assert
his will as- his only law and make himself the end of his
life. Yet the proposition needs some qualification.
In the act of asserting his will abnormally the trans
gressor goes beyond the periphery of his self-hood, and

no Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
lays hold of nature as his complement, thus betraying the
weakness of self and the insufficiency of his personal
resources. But his embrace of nature is only external and
superficial. The world seems to become his complement
and even his god. In fact, however, it is not the world
which is his god. As in the garden of Eden it was the
tempter that gained access to the human spirit through
the medium of nature, so now it is the tempter who
through natural objects and natural laws is ever active in
holding the fallen race subject to his evil purposes.
Satan is the 'god of this world.' The relation which
he now actually bears to our fallen race comes to view in
the threefold natural form in which in the wilderness he
approaches the Son of Man. If we study depravity in its
ultimate ground, we may not 'say that either self or the
world is the center of wickedness. Selfishness and world
liness are only the guise of a deeper principle of falsifica
tion with which the race, blinded by sin, is willing to be
deluded. The false center, the principle which conditions
worldliness and selfishness, is in reality the prince of the
kingdom of darkness, who ' hath blinded the minds of the
unbelieving, ' who is ' the spirit that now worketh in the
sons of disobedience.' \ In his endeavor to live for himself
and to gain possession of the world, ' the natural man ' is
fulfilling the will of his original adversary.
2. The ultimate principle of moral evil is the original
self-perverted personality, whom Christ represents as the
father of the lie, and Paul as the god of this world.
God is the ground of truth and order, of harmony, of
perfection and blessedness in the domain of creation, the
only ground' absolutely; so, on the other side, the ground
1 2 Cor. iv. 4 ; Ephes. ii. 2.

\ 209.] Consequences of the Fall. in
of falsehood and corruption, of disorganization, of wicked
ness and misery is Satan. He is the source, the self-
constructed fountain, from which the dark current of
perverseness and sinfulness is perpetually flowing.
Neither depravity, nor the curse of God resting upon
wickedness, nor the contra-ideal supremacy of nature over
the race is, strictly speaking, the principle of human
misery. In the last analysis this principle is the false
volitional connection existing between man and the head
of the fallen world. The life of ' the natural man ' is vol
untarily subject to a foreign law of action. This law is
Satan's will. In consequence of this voluntary subjection
the dominion of Satan penetrates into the interior pro
cesses of man's being, and extends over his entire history.
Transgression and guilt are ever renewed, the penalties of
sin and the dissolution of death are perpetually superin
duced, with man's consent, by an inspiration from the
kingdom of darkness.
3. The voluntary subjection of men to the foreign law
of sin expresses but one aspect of Scripture teaching
concerning their fallen state. There is another and a
different spiritual factor, which is more profound and
more significant. God is true to the original law of His
creative word. The existence of the race, though sinful,
is constantly sustained, spiritual intuitions are unceasingly
quickened, and heavenly aspirations are ever nourished,
by communications from the bosom of God's life.1
1 ' ' The existence of conscience is acknowledged throughout Holy Scrip
ture. * * The New Testament has a word of its own, cvveidr/mc. It is
described as an eye in man, and as light (Luke xi. 34 ; Matt. vi. 22),
which implies that a faculty of moral vision is inherent in man, and that,
according to the degree of his participation in truth, he is able also to

112 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
Divine presence and divine action, conformably to the
genius of man's kinship with his Maker, are the deeper
forces of his being and of his religious history, contrasted
with which the influence of the kingdom of darkness, how
ever potent, is ever alien and superficial. This abiding
fellowship of God is the possibility of the conflict announced
in Gen. iii. 15, an intimation in personality of inevitable
redemption by the incarnate Mediator, and the sure basis
of the hope of victory.
distinguish and pass judgment on good and evil.. No doubt this inner
eye may be darkened and obscured, the voice of conscience may be stifled,
the moral ideas which are conjoined with conscience' fflay receive a wrong
development ; but the intruding falsehood is again removable, because
in contradiction to man's abiding nature. (Acts xvii. 28; 1 Pet. ii 25;
Eph. ii. 1-3.) The entire Gentile mission of the apostle proceeded on
the true assumption that behind the rubbish of corrupt morals and
heathen conceptions lay an awakenable, pure conscience in the form of
a knowledge of duty and responsibility, of guilt and liability to punish
ment, to which appeal might be made. * * Better knowledge, slum
bering, in the background and capable of awakening, is presupposed even
in the case of the heathen, nay, a faculty of moral judgment able rightly
to reprove wickedness in others."— Dorner's System of Christian Doc
trine, g 72, 3.

?2io] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 113
CHAPTER VI.
THE SINFULNESS OF MANKIND, OR INBORN SIN.
§ 2IO.
The abnormal condition of the race as a consequence of
Adam's transgression suggests a question which the pre
vious chapter recognizes, ' but has not fully considered.
How is it that -men from age to age have a perverse moral
nature and become sinners? On what principle is this
evil of universal experience, this presupposition of Chris
tian redemption, to be understood?
An answer to the question may be introduced by briefly
reviewing the import of the different terms by which the
condition of the race has been denoted.
The abnormal attitude of the race has been called de
pravity, natural depravity, sinfulness, inherited sinfulness,
original sin, inborn sin. All these terms have a measure
of validity; each expresses someone particular aspect of
the universal calamity; but some embody a deeper con
ception than others of the connection between the first
transgression and the perverted condition of human na
ture, and are therefore better adapted to the purposes and
needs of anthropology.
Original sin, as used by Augustine and by medieval
theology, refers to the wilful dfeed of Adam and Eve, the
first act of disobedience. The first sin conditions all sub
sequent sinning.. As used by Calvinism the term ex
presses the moral corruption and the condemnation of
Adam's posterity as the divinely inflicted penalty incurred
by the commission of the first sin. "The guilt of this sin
8

1 1 4 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [Book 5.
was imputed, and the same death in sin and corrupted
nature conveyed to all their posterity."1 Or as Hodge
states it: "The guilt of Adam's first sin was directly
charged to the account of the human race in mass, just as
it was charged to himself, and punished in the race by
desertion and depravity, just as it was punished in him."2
Depravity fixes attention chiefly on the perverseness of
human nature.. The term expresses the abnormal char
acter of the 'natural man' in' all periods of his history,
affirming the fact of a radical predisposition to turn from
the highest Good toward all forms of moral evil; but
'depravity' doe's not necessarily imply that the radical
predisposition to turn against God is the only moral char
acteristic of 'the natural man.'
Sinfulness is in one respect equivalent to depravity. It
implies the false moral status of the race in contrast with
its true moral status. But sinfulness has more positive
force; for it means to say that man in his present abnor
mal state is disposed wilfully to assert himself against
God, against all forms of moral law. It is accordingly a
term of deeper and broader significance.
Inherited sinfulness, Erbsunde, or angeborne Siinde, ex
presses the additional thought that the sinfulness of the
individual is connate, being derived by the child from its
parents by birth, in and with the derivation of its indi
vidual existence.
Inborn sin is the equivalent of inherited sinfulness, but
more expressive of the law of human life by virtue of
which sinfulness has become universal. . This is the term
employed by the Heidelberg Catechism; for its doctrine
1 Confession of Faith, XLVIII.
2 Outlines of Theology, p. 358.

\ 211.] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 115
both of the fall and of redemption is predominantly or
ganic.1 ' Inborn sin ' expresses the fact that every person,
by virtue of descent from a sinful parentage, has a nature
predisposing him in his relation to God and to his fellow-
men to will and to do wrong. The law of sin is an alien
principle immanent in the human constitution, active in
and with the law of generation. This term by implication
sets aside the doctrine of an external imputation of the
penalty of Adam's sin to his posterity.
§ 211.
To find an answer to the question: How is it that
from age to age all men have a depraved nature and
are subject to the penalty of sin? we must, in oppo
sition to Pelagianism,2 emphasize the solidarity of the
'Heid. Cat, Q. 10.
2 Dr. Schaff gives us a lucid and comprehensive, yet compact statement,
concerning Pelagius and Pelagian anthropology in his Church History.
Cf. Vol. III., I 146, from which I quote several passages: "The Latin
church, under the influence of Augustine, advanced to the system of a
divine monergism, which gives God all the glory, and makes freedom
itself a result of grace ; while Pelagianism, on the contrary, represented
the principle of a human monergism, which ascribes the chief merit of
conversion to man, and reduces grace to a mere external auxiliary. * *
Pelagius starts from the natural man, and works up, by his own exer
tions, to righteousness and holiness. Augustine despairs of the moral
sufficiency of man, and derives the new life and all power for good from
the creative grace of God. To the former Christ is merely a teacher and
example, and grace an external auxiliary to the development of the
native powers of man ; to the latter He is also Priest and King, and grace
a creative principle, which begets, nourishes, and consummates a new
life. The one loves to admire the dignity and strength of man; the other
loses itself in adoration of the glory and omnipotence of God. Pela
gianism begins with self-exaltation and ends with the sense of self-
deception and impotency. Augustinianism casts man first into the dust

1 1 6 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
Adamic race. Mankind is an organism. Individuals
are not independent units, accidentally associated; all
are members of one vital constitution developed from
the same stock, realizing the same physical and ethical
type and informed by the same law of life.
The vitiated nature of the primeval family becomes
the nature of their posterity by the law of human gen
eration, and this vitiated nature realizes itself in the
members of the race by the spontaneous action of per
sonality. 1. Adam in Eden was not merely a man among men, he
and they possessing the same human nature. Adam was
the only man.
The first man and woman were not only, individual per
sons; they were husband and wife. They were the origi
nal matrimonial pair, and this pair was mankind in em
bryo. By the law of creation the whole of the family
constitution was embodied in the primeval family.' The
original matrimonial union was the mysterious germ of all
other men and women and of every subsequent family
organization. In the primeval family the divine idea of mankind
became a reality on the first plane of its existence; and in
this organic constitution were enveloped all the possibili
ties, corporeal and psychological, whether intellectual or
ethical or religious, which have wrought themselves out
and become manifest in the actual history of the world.
Inasmuch as the probation of the primeval family was
the probation of the Adamic race, the temptation to trans-
of humiliation and despair, in order to lift him on the wings of grace to
supernatural strength. The former starts with the proposition: Intel-
lectus praecedit fidem ; the latter with the opposite maxim : Fides prae-
cedit intellectum."

8 an.] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 117
gress the divine will was a temptation addressing the
entire race potentially embodied in the primeval family.
In this first human pair the Adamic race stood confronted
by the tempter; not the individual members of their pos
terity, but the constitution of the race. The same order
of personal existence which was individualized in the
union of the first human pair is individualized in every
human family. So far forth the first man and all other
men are identical. The same in kind, his posterity differs
from him only in the form of individuation. There is but
one humanity, the essential characteristics of all nations,
families and individuals being the same. In the animal
kingdom there are different species; but in .the human
kingdom all races and nations are the same species.
2. If we accept the organic solidarity of the Adamic
race, it follows that the transgression and the consequent
fall of the primeval family was the fall of mankind. The
whole of humanity was active in the ethical decadence
and in the overt act of wilful disobedience.
Human nature and human personality are a unity. Per
sonality presupposes and embraces the ethico-spiritual
nature in which personality stands, and the ethico-
spiritual nature asserts, itself in the volitions of person
ality. It was not the union of two natureless persons that
committed the first transgression, but it was the personal
constitution, the totality of which was embodied in the
first human pair, that voluntarily accepted a foreign will
as law and thereby asserted itself against God. If the
primeval family had stood firm in the original communion
of love with God, the ethico-spiritual constitution which
the primeval family individualized would by its steadfast
volition of the right also have* stood firm in the original

1 1 8 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
communion of love. The fidelity of Adam to God and his
triumph over the tempter would have been the fidelity and
triumph of mankind individualized in his person.
Reasoning from the same general premises anthropology
is fully warranted in asserting also that the apostasy of
Adam was the apostasy of the race latent in his personal
constitution. It cannot, be said that the individual mem
bers of his posterity transgressed the will of God by the
first transgression, for as individual members they had no
existence; but the generic type of life which individualizes
itself in all the members of his posterity is the same type
of life that was individualized in the head of the race. As
the transgression of the first pair was a transgression com
mitted by mankind, so the fall of the first pair consequent
upon transgression was the fall, not of isolated individuals,
nor of human persons divorced from human nature, but
the fall of human nature itself which was active in the
personal act of transgression.
In the domain of organized life, the genus and the indi
vidual are one. The two things are to be distinguished;
but the genus is absolutely inseparable from the indi
vidual, and the individual is absolutely inseparable from
the genus. The individual person exists as such only by
the force of a law by virtue of which the genus and the
individual person are a concrete reality.
The laws of thought and the laws of speech answer to
this truth. Reason deals with the universal, not with the
particular by itself, but with the universal in. the particu
lar. Human speech has no words for single things, and
cannot invent such words. All words denote universal
concepts; they name a class, proper names only excepted;
but even proper names become common names. Nominal-

§2it.] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 1 19
ism contradicts itself by the very words it uses to maintain
itself. When philosophy affirms the objective reality only
of single objects, denying the objective reality of the uni
versal, it has no way to vindicate its affirmation or denial
but by the use of universal terms, thus in spite of its theory
declaring that human reason necessarily postulates, not the
particular, but the universal in the particular.
The logic of human speech supports, and harmonizes
with, the Christian doctrine that the race was active in the
fjrst transgression of the first man, and that therefore the
nature of the race became vitiated by the false action of
the will of the first person.
3. The nature of the primeval family becomes the na
ture of their posterity.
Respecting human generation three theories have been
current : preexistence, traducianism and creatianism. Each
not only distinguishes the soul from the body, but each
also implies that soul and body are separate parts of man.
The theory of preexistence was taught by Origen. The
soul of man has had an existence in some previous state
of being before it is joined to the body. "The soul of a
man," he says, "was not formed along with his body, but
is proved to have been implanted strictly from without." '
Some expressions of Clement imply that he held the same
opinion, as when he asserts that "the soul is introduced,
and previous to it the ruling faculty, by which we ieasou,
not produced in procreation."2
The theory of traducianism is referable to Tertullian.
Though separate and separable, soul and body are propa
gated at the same time. These are his words: "Is the
substance of both body and soul formed together at one
1 De Prin. I, VII, 4. "Stromata, VI, XVI.

1 20 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
and the same time? Or does one of them precede the
pther in natural formation ? We maintain that both are
conceived and formed and, perfected simultaneously, as
well as born together; and that not a moment's interval
occurs in their conception, so that a prior place can be
assigned to either, ' ' 1
The doctrine of creatianisni maintains that only the
body is propagated by human generation, but that the soul
is the creation of God and is united to the body either at
the moment of conception or afterwards. On this point
Augustine and Gregory the Great, the most influential
teachers of their age, expressed themselves with reserve.
But Jerome taught: "God is daily making souls; He,
with whom to will is to do, and who never ceases to be a
Creator. * * Among those secret recesses of the body
the hand of God is always working, and there is the same
Creator of body and soul,"2
Of these theories the first concerning preexistence did
riot gain a firm foothold. It was early repudiated by lead
ing theologians. In pur time it has been revived by the
Rev. Dr. Edward Beecher. Traducianism and creatian-
ism have perpetuated themselves through the entire history
of the Church, each contending for the mastery over the
other. Dpmer recognizes an element of truth in all.
The solution of the problem concerning the origin of
individual spuls has. been proceeding on the assumption
that body and soul are not merely differentiated members
of manhood, but that they are separate and separable parts,
which somehow are conjoined tp make the man.
Concerning the procreation of the body of the individual
' De Anima, XXVII. Cf. De Resurr. Carnis, XIV.
2 Against John of Jerusalem, \ 22.

1 2ii.] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 121
child there has been no question. That is assumed, The
body is begotten. But when and how is the soul formed ?
has been the point at issue. Evidently the presumption
underlying these endeavors to solve the problem of human
generation has been dualistic, The inheritance of Pla-
tonism has been passing down from one generation to
another through all the ages. To this inherited dualism
I have to take exception. Is man a combination? Does
he consist of two opposing substances, spirit and matter,
held in juxtaposition by some power? Christological an
thropology will have to make answer in the negative.
Man is a vital unity. Body and soul are indeed not the
same. They are distinct, but inseparable, each being
essential to the truth of the other. A body not insouled
by a human soul would not be a human body; and a soul
not embodied would not be a human soul.1 Each comple
ments the other. Both with equal necessity enter into the
divine idea of man. The procreation of the body implies
that the body is insouled; otherwise it would not be a
human body. It is humanity that by the immanent pres-.
ence and blessing of God perpetuates humanity in the
integrity of its threefold, or twofold, constitution. Says
the anti-dnalistic record: "And God blessed them; and
God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and re
plenish the earth, and subdue it."'
1 "The besouled body is the goal of one world-age, as the embodied
soul may be the beginning of the power of the world to come. And, if
we begin with this fundamental assumption that the soul in its very
make, or elementary nature, needs some body for its own birth into con
scious existence, and that body needs some soul for its own highest
organization, then we are already, at the start, beyond the old dualifm
of Descartes and Leibnitz."— Old Faiths in New Light, Smyth, p. 328.
2 Gen. i 28.

122 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
This blessing consisted, among 'other gifts, in the en
dowment of the first matrimonal union with the power to
be fruitful and multiply. The union of one man and one
woman is the completed humanity; and complete hu
manity reproduces itself in an endless succession of human
individuals, each normal child being an organism in which
body and soul, or body, soul and spirit, are essentially
members, members potentially from the instant of con
ception, members in reality in the degree that the new
individual passes normally through the consecutive epochs
of development. Marriage is no more than the necessary
condition of the self-maintenance and individualization of
the race.
This idea presupposes the abiding creative presence and
action of God, in virtue of which an infant inherits and
embodies the whole nature of mankind in a unique indi
viduality. The formula of benediction given in Genesis i.
28, unites the elements of truth in creatianism and tradu
cianism. As Martensen expresses it: " Every human in
dividual is a product of the natural activity of the species;
but this mysterious natural activity constitutes the means
for individualizing the activity of the Creator.",1
4. As human nature has been vitiated by transgression,
the vitiated nature passes from one generation to another
by the operation of the law of human" life; and it is real
ized in the members of the race, though in different de
grees of actual wickedness in different ages and different
nationalities. The law of the solidarity of mankind by
the force of which the nature of the parents becomes the
nature of the child, is a matter of universal observation and
experience, and is now commonly vindicated by natural
'Dogmatics, p. 141.

8 2ii.] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 123
science.1 There are differentiating forces, human and
divine, which account for the endless variety of indi
viduals, each peculiar to itself; but all peculiarities pre
suppose and certify the identity of human nature in every
individual. As the national type and the family type
pass from parent to child by the law of heredity, so does
the ethical type of the primeval family pass to their pos
terity by the same law of heredity. That ethical 'type
became abnormal by wilful disobedience; and that abnor
mal type which predisposes personality to choose and to do
wrong passes, like the human type, from parent to child.
The infant is begotten with a nature which, takeii in this
sense, is fallen; and it is subject to the curse of death by
virtue of the fact that by the law of race-solidarity it has
the nature of the primeval family, which by accepting the
1 "That individuals originate new individuals of their species; that the
fecundated germs, if the necessary conditions are present, develop them
selves out of the first germ and egg-cell in continually progressive and
distinct differentiations, each after its kind, into the full-grown condi
tion, so that individuals endowed with a soul and intellectual life are also
developed out of such beginnings ; — these are facts which are continually
repeated before our eyes, and men of science have not yet reached the
end in pursuing the actual in these processes into its finest ramifications.
But how is it that individuals must transmit themselves— that the seeds
and eggs must have this force of germination and development — they have
not yet been able to explain, and will never be able to do so. The word
"inheritance," which is to solve the problem, is only a name for the fact
which we observe, and for the regularity of its repetition ; but for this
fact of inheritance itself, we seek in vain a physical explanation : we are
referred to a metaphysical cause. Thus, not only the first origin of life
on earth is an enigma to us, but organic life itself, in its whole existence
and course, is a process which, at every step, and in every place of its
course, remains to us in its last causes physically unexplained, and refers
us to metaphysical causes." — Theories of Darwin, by Rudolph Schmid,
P- 352-

124 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books,
foreign will of the tempter took into itself the death-
bearing poison of sin. Infants are the concrete individua
tion of mankind as mankind has become by the self*
determined act of the progenitors of the race.
It is human nature that became sinful by the wrong
volition of the first family, and it is human nature that
continues in the state of sinfulness. Sinfulness and guilt
do not attach, as Pelagius held, to the abstract volition of
wrong done by Adam, nor to his person divorced from the
human constitution by virtue of which he was a person.
That duajistic presumption would contradict the divine
idea of man. There was no volition divorced from or
independent of ethical life; there was no. such person in
existence as did not individuate and personalize the whole
ness of the human constitution. The sinfulness and guilt
consequent upon transgression attach both to the constitu
tion and the individual person of Adam; not to his consti
tution abstracted from the individual person, but to the
concrete unity, to the being whose constitution centers in
personality. In the primeval family va.sxi.kind was by the creative
word formed in the image of God; in this family, in the
mystical unity of the first man and the first woman, man
kind was on probation; in the unity of this family man
kind was approached by the tempter, mankind voluntarily
transgressed the will of God, and forfeited the communion
of righteous love; active in this family mankind accepted
the will of the tempter and took into the core of existence
the vitiating force of the original wickedness of Satan.
Therefore we have to predicate of the Adamic race a na
ture whose endowments are vitiated, a nature subject to
condemnation.

§2n.] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 125
5. Death is both the natural consequence and the pen
alty of transgression : the natural consequence, for sin
is the violation of the fundamental laws and relations of
human life ; the penalty of transgression, inasmuch as it
is God's judgment of condemnation upon wrong-doing.
Says Cremer: "In order to the clear perception and under
standing of the Scriptural, and especially of the New Tes
tament use of this word, Bavaroe, we must hold fast by the
fact that death as the punishment pronounced by God
upon sin fGen. ii. 17) has a punitive significance.
Death is a very comprehensive term, denoting all the puni
tive consequences of sin, Rom. v. 12, 14, 17, 21; vi. 16;
Jas. v. 20. nl
All men are born subject to death because the humanity
which they individualize became subject to death in the
primeval family. The penalty of transgression comes
upon all because the first family and their posterity are as
to nature the same; they share the whole of the same hu
manity; therefore all stand in the same contra-ideal rela
tion to God and to all original laws. The penalty of sin
does not come upon the race from generation to generation
because God chooses to impute the guilt of the first trans
gression to all men, or on the basis of a quasi connection
1 Lexicon of New Testament Greek, p. 283.— Commenting on Gen. iii.
17-19, Dillman says : " Das Sterben ist hier als aus dem irdischen Ur-
sprUng des Menschen von selbst folgend vorausgesetzt. * *¦ Gleich-
wohl ist dieses Sterben miissen, das hier als naturgemass fur ihn er-
scheint, eine Strafe, weil das Wort ii. 17 als Gotteswort keine miissige
Drohung sein kann. Denn obwohl von Natur sterblich war der Mensch
doch von Gott zu dauerndem Leben bestimmt, sonst ware er nicht in den
Garten mit dem Baum des Lebens versetzt worden ; durch seine Siinde
hat er die Erreichung dieses Zieles unmoglich gemacht und ist dem
Sterbenmiissen anheimgefallen."

126 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [Book 5.
between all men and the first transgression ; the penalty
conies upon all because all in reality, as to their nature,
sustain the same false relation to God. In other words,
God does not treat all men as if all had committed the sin
of the primeval family, implying that all did not in any
sense commit the sin; but God regards and treats all men
according to the sin which the human race, individualized
in the primeval family, individualized in themselves, did
in fact commit. He deals with all agreeably to the wrong
attitude which they in reality occupy, an attitude which
' the natural man ' is ever affirming and voluntarily per
petuating. § 212.
How can the individual infant be justly subject to
Condemnation? Personal guilt implies personal trans
gression. Though by birth inheriting a depraved na
ture, the infant has not in infancy violated divine law,
either in act or word, either in thought or con
scious purpose. Can it nevertheless be subject to the
curse of sin ? This question it is difficult to answer
satisfactorily to Christian reason. We may approach
a correct answer by recognizing the unity and soli
darity of the race.
1. As to the fact itself that infants- in their infancy are
subject to the curse of death and to all the disintegrating
forces which issue in death, there is no room for question.
Daily observation and experience, no less than revelation,
are ever setting the dark reality before our eyes. Before
it has consciously committed any overt act of transgression
the infant is subject to the direful maladies that afflict the
actual transgressor. It suffers all the ills which its parents
may suffer. The only ill to be excepted is remorse, or the

§2i2.] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 127
pain of self-condemnation for wilful disobedience. The
distressful fact confronts us, however it may be interpreted.
One of two things must necessarily be conceded : either
death with all the ills of infancy is rooted in and is a part
of human nature as God originally formed it, or the univer
sal phenomenon of death is referable to some direful cause
which fatally touches every member of the race without
exception. If we accept the first alternative we invade
the divine goodness and righteousness; we resolve God
into a monster of cruelty. It becomes impossible to vin
dicate His love or wisdom or justice. If we accept the
second alternative, to which we are shut up alike by
revelation and by every moral sentiment, we have to pro
nounce death contra-ideal. ' The cause can be none other
than a vicious principle to which, because active contrary
to divine law, contrary to the moral order of mankind,
God affixes the seal of condemnation.
2. As we distinguish between mankind as a whole and
the individual person, so we have to distinguish between
God's condemnation resting upon sinful mankind as a
whole, and the condemnation consequent upon wilful
transgression committed by the individual. Because hu
man nature is sinful, there is universal guiltiness; and
because there is personal transgression there is personal
guilt. In his Epistle to the Romans Paul draws a parallel
between Christ and Adam.1 The relation of the Adamic
race to the person of Adam is analogous to the relation
which the community of Christian believers bears to Jesus
Christ. Believers and Christ are one life, like the vine
and its branches. Being His members they are partakers
' Rom. v.

128 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
of His righteousness; so all men in their natural condi
tion, being members of the Adamic race, are partakers of
the sinfulness which vitiates the nature of the race. "For
as through the one man's disobedience the many were
made sinners, even so through the obedience of the one
shall the many be made righteous."1 The force of the
parallel depends on the principle that the. Adamic race
sinned in Adam, and by sinning in Adam the race in him
became subject to death; as the apostle expresses the
principle in verse twelve: "Through one man sin entered
into the world, and death through sin; and so death passed
unto all men, for that all sinned." This analogy furnishes ,
a key to the difficult problem.
Through one man sin did hot enter into the individual
person only of the one man, but sin" entered into the world
(z\c rbv Kdu/wv elcf/iBev),, into the moral and social economy
which has been developed from the primeval family.
Alford says that the reference here is to sin as a power
ruling over mankind, a principle in us, and a state in
which we are involved. Penalty follows sin. The pen
alty of death which came through sin did rtot come upon
one man only, but death through sin entered into the
world, into the entire social economy of which all men
are members. So Bengel: " Into. this world, denoting the
human race. Entered: Began to exist in the world."
The penalty of death through sin is Universal inasmuch
as all men are members of the same social economy which
became subject to death in the one man. This evidently
is the teaching of the apostle; and it is sustained at every
point both by sound reason and by the phenomena of ex
perience. 1 Rom. v. 19.

#212.] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 129
Agreeably to this organic view the nature common to
all men is sinful; "I am by nature prone to hate God and
my neighbor;" l and because mankind in this sense is sin
ful, mankind is under condemnation. Every infant, since
it is conceived and born according to the law and in the
bosom of this universal vitiated humanity, shares the con
demnation of vitiated humanity. The infant begins its
individual life subject to the penal consequences working
in fallen humanity actualized in its individual existence.
Inasmuch as the universal moral life realized in its indi
viduality is vitiated, and since as a consequence it sustains
a wrong relation to the divine will, the infant from the
first hour of its existence bears in some of its forms the
divine displeasure resting upon the depraved nature of the
Adamic race. It suffers the judicial consequences of a
vitiated human nature before this vitiated nature has
wrought itself out in personal acts of transgression. For
in. death, according to the uniform teaching of the New
Testament, "are concentrated," as Cremer remarks, "all
the evils that spring from sin." Thus understood, it may
be said that the infant suffers what we may call . the gen
eral condemnation of the Adamic race.
3. The doctrine concerning the universal condemnation
of the Adamic race in* consequence of wilful transgression,
is not a doctrine peculiar to Christian revelation. How
ever abhorrent the doctrine may be to some minds, espec
ially when definitely stated in its judicial aspect, it never
theless stands, not as a doctrine only, but as a fact of
universal experience. Pains and miseries of body and
mind, sicknesses and diseases, agonies and death, are the
common inheritance of little children no less than of their
' Heid. Cat., Q 5.

130 Doctrine on the Adam'c Race. [book 5.
parents. However philosophy may interpret it, the repul
sive reality remains; and the religious instincts of all peo
ples, whether civilized nations or the most degraded savage
tribes, ascribe the horrible reality to the displeasure of
the gods. The consensus of the entire pagan world is in
sympathy with Scripture teaching.
Strictly speaking, universal condemnation is not a dis
tinctive doctrine of Christianity. It is the doctrine of the
world concerning the moral and judicial status of the
world, a doctrine which antedates Messianic revelation.
Christianity only recognizes its validity, removes the errors
and defects attaching to it in pagan consciousness, and
perfects the knowledge of the terrible reality which the
doctrine represents. Universal condemnation is only the
presupposition of Christian redemption. Redemption
deals with it as an abnormal, contra-ideal, undivine re
ality, which it is its aim to destroy, root and branch.
For condemnation man is responsible, Christianity only
for complete emancipation from its bondage.
§ 213.
Though under condemnation as the heir of a sinful
humanity, the infant is nevertheless as an individual
not guilty. Of the infant relative to the law of God
we have to predicate a twofold ethical status: under
one aspect condemnation, under another aspect inno
cence. But the innocence of the individual infant is
purely negative, not positive.
1. The new-born child. is not to be pronounced person
ally guilty. A personal being, it is nevertheless not a self-
conscious person. Personality slumbering iii the depths
of its nature is only potential. As the will has not been
developed into voluntary action, the infant is incapable of

1 2i3] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 131
moral agency. It does not commit any act, either morally
good or morally bad. Hence when we think of it simply
as an individual, not as in reality a person, but only as in
process of becoming a self-conscious person, the new
born child is innocent. Since it has done no wrong in
thought, word or deed, it cannot suffer the penalty of
transgression. But as the infant with the inheritance of humanity in
herits its vitiated condition, and as this vitiated condition
and the infant, though distinguishable, are one, the penal
ties of wrong operating in sinful human life pervade the
individual history of the infant. Penalties are not active in
its individual history for wrong done by itself; but penal
ties operate in the development of infant life inasmuch as
the infant is the concrete individuation of the depraved
nature of the Adamic race. In one respect therefore it is
innocent, for by no personal act has it transgressed the
law of God; but in another respect it is under condemna
tion, being an heir to the penalties inseparable from its
vitiated personal constitution.
This law is universal. The penalties of the vices of a
father are borne by his innocent children. Our late civil
war inflicted untold sufferings on thousands of little ones
who were in no sense responsible for its horrors, suffer
ings whose consequences in many instances attend them
through life. By the moral constitution of mankind
the iniquity of the fathers is visited upon the children,
upon the third and upon the fourth generation of them
that hate God.
In the history of the human kingdom we have always
to distinguish the abnormal condition of the race as a
whole from the condition of the individual, the one being

132 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
the false ethical status in relation to moral law common to
all men, the other a state of personal innocence or a state
of personal guilt. Personal innocence attends the absence
of conscious volition, whilst personal guilt is consequent
upon wilful transgression. There is, on the one hand, a
universal false moral habit, on the other a self-determined
wrong volition of the developed individual; two things
that are to be clearly distinguished, but are inseparable in
the history of Adamic personality.
2. The innocence of the individual infant is purely neg
ative. All that we may express by the word, consistently
with the teaching of Scripture, is that the infant has not
consciously by desire or purpose or act violated the com
munion of divine love. Innocence does not express the
thought that the personal constitution of the infant is
ideal, pure, righteous; nor that the spontaneous impulses
of its ethical and spiritual being are exclusively directed
toward moral goodness. Therefore we may not imply that
in the pre-conscious period of human existence individual
life answers to the divine idea of man.
Experience no less than Scripture teaches directly the
Opposite. Though the entrance of moral poison by wilful
transgression has not diabolized the Adamic race ; though
the^deepest and strongest instincts of human nature reach
out amid the darkness toward God, and so far forth are
good, yet the dynamic consequences of the fall are as pro
found as the mystery of our ethico-spiritual being. Sa
tanic poison has so thoroughly penetrated the human con
stitution, its dynamic forces to such a degree vitiate the
sub-conscious germinal beginnings of personal develop
ment, that the religious instincts and the spontaneous
impulses of infant life become active under forms contrary

§213.] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 133
to truth and righteousness. So soon as the pre-conscious
moral and religious tendencies rise from the recesses of
nature into the early dawn of consciousness, they are seen
to be discolored by a vicious principle,1 a principle which,
if not superseded or restrained by Christianity, has con
trolling influence on the formation of character. The
incipient swelling of the seed of personality shows it to be
of divine planting, yet contra-ideal. The motions of the
will betray hostility to the authority of God asserted in
the conscience. The degree of hostility varies greatly in
the history of children ; yet it is a fact of universal experi
ence that in the plastic period of individual life, in the
organic transition from the unconscious natural state to
the conscious stage of personal existence, the child, if his
growing character be judged by the Christian standard, is
both subject and averse to divine law, and, though recog
nizing the valid claims of the Good, is predisposed to yield
himself to the false impulses of evil.2 And this predispo
sition toward the wrong is coincident with the first mo
tions of the human spirit in the form of conscious volition.
Moreover under forms of selfishness and worldliness the
child persists in turning against the Good, in turning
toward the bad; and unless subdued by moral discipline he
1 Jer. iii. 25 ; Eph. ii. 3.
2 " To theology neither nature nor time is ultimate; on the contrary, it
has to judge both in the light of the divine ideal. And so it finds in na
ture, as embodied in man, forces that work for evil— in man, as history
shows him, tendencies that create crime and wrong; and these are to it
agencies or energies that contend against God, sinful and factors of sin.
Theology were the blindest of all sciences if it did not see that evil was
something more and mightier than the habits and acts of persons, beset
ting the will even before it was awake with potent beguilements. " —
Christ in Modern Theology, by Fairbairn, p. 459.

134 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
persists with growing determination in the degree that
the power of determination itself grows. So general and
entire is this perverseness of personal agency, that there is
not ah instant in the life of the child when (unless born
of the Spirit) he loves God with all his heart and loves his
neighbor as himself.
3. This statement respecting the depravity of infancy
and childhood contemplates personality exclusively as it
unfolds itself according to the law of life in ' the natural
man.' Within the pale of the Christian Church children
are under the restraining and fostering powers of divine
grace, no less than under the law of sin. Early childhood
manifests phenomena of moral goodness coincident with
phenomena of sinfulness. Even outside of the Church in
Christian countries the operation of the law of sin iii chil
dren is more or less modified or checked by Christian
civilization, Christian schools and the preaching of the
Gospel. Yet notwithstanding the counteracting influence
of Christian teaching and Christian civilization, the heart
of ' the natural man,' in so far as it asserts its own predis
position, reveals the fact that its first motions are averse to
God's supreme authority.
4. The perverse personal activity of the child is attended
by the sense of self-condemnation.
When the child prefers or chooses the wrong he also at
the same time feels the choice to be wrong ; and the
sense of self-condemnation pertains to sin under its nega
tive and positive aspects.
The child fails to choose the good when he ought to
choose it, and he willingly fails. The child fails to do the
good which he ought, and he feels that he did not choose
to do it.

1 213.] Sinfulness of Mankind, or Inborn Sin. 135
Moreover, the child chooses to do the thing which he
ought not to choose; he actually does the thing which he
knows he ought not to, do; and he feels, more or less
keenly, that he chooses the wrong, that he actually does
the wrong.
This feeling is the sense of guilt, of self- disapproval,
which is coeval with the dawn of personal consciousness.
The feeling of self-disapproval in many instances seems
even to antedate the dawn of self-consciousness. Memory
may not recollect the moment when for the first time the
sense of guilt awoke; for spontaneously self-condemnation
becomes a moral habit of 'the natural man;' each moment
of self-disapproval appears as one of a continuous series.
With every act of the condemning conscience is connected
the sense of antecedent moral deficiency or of positive
wrong-doing. The sense of self-condemnation, or at least the sense of
deficiency, pervades all the' moral experiences of 'the
natural man.' There is not aii instant in the course of
his entire history when his personal life, in all its thoughts
and feelino-s, words and deeds," stands approved before the
bar of his own conscience. Instead, self-disapproval be
comes the dark habit of his soul which cleaves to him as
a part of his own personality.
The sense of guilt is distinct and keen in the degree
that moral life is developed. Among bad men who from
youth have been inured to vice and crime, or among those
pagan nations who are most degraded and besotted, the
conscience may be seared ' as with a hot iron,' 1 the sense
1 1 Tim. iv. 2. Cf. Eph- iv. 19. "Who being past fueling gave them
selves up to lasciviousness, to work all uncleanness with greediness."
Not feeling the punishment of conscience, they gave themselves up to

136 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
of guilt being only faint or confused or entirely wanting.
But where the best order of pagan civilization prevails the
sense of moral deficiency is distinctly felt in early child
hood, and it grows with the effort to attain to a high ideal
of moral worthiness and religious consecration.
5. The self-condemnatory habit of the conscience reveals
the unseen actual relation of the personality of the child to
the righteous authority of God. The voice of disapproval
coming from within is the immediate utterance of God's
displeasure, the primary form of His judgment against the
false attitude of the Adamic race toward the divine law.
The profound moral disorder of the soul is the possi
bility of the diseases and sufferings of the body. Inward
condemnation and outward suffering ate two forms of the
operation of the one law of moral evil.
The spontaneous sense of wrong and bodily diseases
spring directly from the abnormal judicial relation of the
personal creature to the personal Creator. All disorders,
physical and moral, express the dynamic forces of moral
evil. The race being averse to God's absolute authority,.
it is by this aversion active against the fundamental laws
of human life.
vice and wickedrtess. Eadie says: " Self-abandonment to deeper sin is
the Divine judicial penalty of sin."

8214'} Nature of Sin. 137
CHAPTER VII.
NATURE OF SIN.
§ 214.
In discussing wilful transgression and its consequences,
whether natural or judicial, it has been necessary to assume
a scriptural conception of sin, and here and there definitely
bring its nature to view, especially in our studies on the
fall and on human guilt. These studies prepare the way
and form the basis for a fuller and more direct inquiry into
the principle of sin, not of sin in fallen angels, but of sin
as active in the personality and character of man.
According to the teaching of Scripture and the decisions
of conscience, sin is referable to the voluntary act of cre
ated personality. Holding the results of previous inqui
ries, a correct doctrine of sin will have to recognize and
appropriate the truth of the following particular proposi
tions : —
1. Man is the creation of God, made in His image, after
His likeness.
2. As made in God's image, only the true and the good
entered into the human constitution. Moral evil and
physical evil were not elements of original manhood, either
actually or potentially.
3. Moral evil under all its forms is directly contradictory
to God's eternal will, and to His creative will as actualized
itt the physical and moral order of the world.
4. Sin and all moral evil is avo/iia, lawlessness, not the
absence nor the ignorance of law, but self-determined ac-

138 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [Book 5.
tivity of the personal creature regardless of moral law, and
contrary to God.
Any theory or doctrine concerning human sin incom
patible with these fundamental ideas is defective. If we
assume either that man's being is not a godlike creation,
or that as originally fashioned his constitution had in it
some contra-ideal element or impulse, or that moral evil
belongs to the divine idea of the world, or that sin is
merely natural imperfection, a transient condition in the
normal order of human history, it will be logically impos
sible to develop a doctrine concerning sin that will be
consistent either with the word of God or the intuitions
of conscience. § 215.
The primary element of a sound doctrine concerning
the nature of sin is that man voluntarily asserts him
self in opposition to the authority of Qod.
Governed by this fundamental idea, Christian an
thropology cannot accept the following theories: that
sin is only a negation, or a privation of the good;
that sin is an unavoidable limitation of personality,
arising from a law of humanity by which unconscious
and unfree nature conditions the development of the
ego ; that sin is the preponderance of the senses and
of corporeity over spirit, or the consequence of the
process of human growth in which the bodily life takes
the lead of moral life ; that sin is the condition of
positive moral perfection.
1. The sin of man may be studied under three aspects: in
his relation to God, in relation to himself, and in his rela
tion to- nature with which by his bodily organization he
is inwoven. A complete conception will embrace the false

\ 215.] Nature of Sin. 1 39
action of the will, not in one relation only, but in all these
essential relations.
It may be said that sin is voluntary subjection to the
control of the bodily senses and through them to the claims
of nature.
A deeper view affirms that sin is selfishness. Man
chooses himself as the chief end of his will, and he forms
the habit of using persons and things for a purpose of
which he is himself ultimate.
A still deeper view fixes its eye on man's fundamental
ethical relation. The first and great commandment says:
Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart.
We touch the bottom characteristic of sin when we make
due account of the fact that ' the natural man '.lives a vol
untary life, regardless of the 'commandment' on which
hang all the law and the prophets.
Accordingly the real attitude pf 'the natural man' in
his relation to moral law is expressed when we say that
he asserts himself contrary to God.
There is no wrong in the act of self-assertion. Self-
assertion enters into the moral economy; it is inseparable
from the right action of personality; for obedience to law
no less than disobedience implies the ^^determination
of the will.- Obedience is normal self-assertion; and nor-
mal self-assertion is the determination of self according to
'the first commandment,* Thou shalt love the L,ord thy
God with all thy heart. If self be really active according
to this 'first commandment,' self will also be in harmony
with its own constitution and with the moral order of the
world. Sin consists not in self-assertion, but in false self-asser
tion; and sinfulness consists, not in the disposition to love

140 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
one's self, but in the predisposition to resist God's abso
lute authority. In turning against God ' the natural man '
affirms himself as his first law of action; and so far as he
is influenced by the sinful principle he affirms himself
antagonistically to God.
This antagonistic attitude toward God is referable either
to the vitiated state of personality or to self-determined
volition. In one period of personal history or in one class
of circumstances sinfulness may predominate over wrong
volition; in other circumstances or in another period
conscious wrong volition may be more controlling than
sinfulness. But the principle of sin is not active by itself
either as a sub-conscious predisposition or as conscious
volition. Except in earliest infancy, these two things, the
wrong volition and the abnormal predisposition are ever
united, being factors of the same impaired personal or
ganism. This idea of sin, taught either explicitly or by implica
tion in the Old and the New Testament, is the test of all
theories. 2. The negative theory was maintained by Origen, Au
gustine, Athanasius and other theologians of their age.
Says Origen: "To depart from good is nothing else than
to be made bad. For it is certain that to want goodness
is to be wicked." 1 According to Augustine moral evil is
the turning from the unchangeable good to the changeable
good. "Let no one, therefore, look for an efficient cause
of the evil will," he says, " for it is not efficient, but defi
cient, as the will itself is not an effecting of something,
but a defect. For defection from that which supremely
is to that which has less of being, — this is to begin to have
1DePrin.,Bk. II., 9, 2.

§215.] Nature of Sin. 141
an evil will. ' ' 1 He confounds goodness with being, or with
reality; hence sin becomes the want of true being; a pri
vation of the good and the right, a defeclio ab eo quod
summe est ad id quod minus est.
This conception is inadequate. Wrong is not merely
the absence of right. Wrong contradicts and violates
the right. Moral evil is not merely a privation of
the moral good, or of divine righteousness. Evil is the
foe of the good. Says Paul: The mind of the flesh is
enmity against God.2 Sinfulness is not the lack of self
hood, not the absence of a mighty will, much less the pri
vation of the power of self-assertion. Sin is selfhood
asserting itself against the fundamental law of selfhood.
On Rom. viii. 7 Godet remarks that "the flesh is in its
essence hatred of God." Herein lies its. positive force.
The selfhood of the personal creature ignores God, denies
God; and personality in denying God's authority affirms
itself as final authority, as its first law, thus enthroning
self by dethroning God. Under one aspect anti-God, sin
under another aspect is false selfhood; but the pivot on
which the actualness of both forms of sin turns is self-
determination contrary to divine law.
3. The distinction between sub-conscious human nature
and self-conscious personality is valid. The actual free
dom of ego is the advanced stage of the personalizing
process which begins in the unconscious depths of numan
life. Before the individual can determine himself for God
or against God, he has been spontaneously active in the
wholeness of his constitution, in the unity of body and
soul. But pre-conscious activity in the wholeness of the hu-
1 De Civ. Dei, Bk. XII., ch. 7. 2 Rom. viii. 7.

142 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
man constitution is normal activity. Pre-conscious spon
taneous development does not prejudice nor endanger the
right moral action of personality. Just the contrary.
Sub-conscious impulses and motions of human nature, the
physical no less than the spiritual, are in the divine idea
of manhood the presupposition of right volition. Right
volition of developed personality is possible, inasmuch as
developed personality has its ground in the normal moral
and physical economy of manhood. Whenever the spon
taneous impulses of the child, or the affection of the senses
by external objects, exert a perverting influence on godly
volition and godly conduct, the reason is not to be found
in genuine human nature, not in the fact that blind sensu
ous development precedes conscious moral action, but in
the fact that spontaneous sensuous development of infant
life has become contra-natural, an abnormal process which
is no less contrary to laws of nature than to the law of
conscience. The scriptural doctrine concerning man leaves no room
for the hypothesis that conscious self-assertion involves an
issue of a person with his own nature. That hypothesis
would be valid only on the presumption that undeveloped
human nature, as God fashioned it, is itself under the
controlling influence of a foreign law.
4. The theory that moral evil arises from the preponder
ance in infant life of corporeity over spirit, is another
aspect of the hypothesis which has just been considered.
It assumes that evil enters man through the lower, not
through the higher avenues of his existence, through the
body or sensuous feeling, not through the false action of
the will. The primeval normal state of manhood em
braces the body with all its original appetencies no less

g 215.] Nature of Sin. 143
than personality active in the communion of love with
God. The perverse, influence on righteous conduct of
bodily appetencies, in the present state of our race, does
not afford the true basis for a legitimate judgment respect
ing the ideal natural relation between body and soul.
The doctrine of an essential conflict between body and
soul, between the senses and freedom of will, has arisen
from the dualism of Plato and his successors, who postu
late a contradiction between spirit and matter.
5. The notion that sin is the necessary condition, the
¦sine qua non, of moral perfection, mistakes the present
abnormal history of the Adamic race for its ideal history.
Evil does not condition the reality of the good, nor sin the
reality of holiness; but the good conditions the possibility
of the evil, and holiness the possibility of sin.
In order to know truth it is not necessary first to know
falsehood. In order to do the right it is not necessary first
to do the wrong. The truth we know from the truth; the
evil we know from the evil in the light of truth. Verum
est judex sui el falsi. Freedom of will and right conduct
qualify us to maintain the right in opposition to the wrong.
Yet in our present state where sin has darkened the
understanding and predisposes the will to choose the
wrong,1 it is nedessary to distinguish right from wrong,
truth from falsehood. To know the right fully and clearly
we have to know both what right is, and what right is
not; and for the reason that both the will and the intelli
gence are subject to the perverting influence of depravity.
To become strong in the practice of right we must stand
firm against the wrong; and to acquire definite knowledge
of revealed truth we have to know revealed truth in con
trast with error. ' Eph. iv. 18.

144 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
But the existing necessity to know truth in contrast
with error, to do the right in opposition to the wrong,
affords no ground for the opinion that according to the
divine idea of manhood the doing of wrong conditions the
doing of right, or that the knowledge of evil conditions
the knowledge of the good. The doing of wrong and that
knowledge of evil which is derived from participation in
evil, produce a contrary effect. Any degree of wrong
doing so far forth weakens the will for the doing of right,
and at the same time obscures mental perception. The
consequence of any participation in moral evil is a propor
tionate disqualification for clear insight into the nature of
the good. § 216.
Sin as prevalent in fallen mankind is to be studied
as an abnormal condition of human nature and as
wrong conscious volition, or as sinfulness and sinful
acts. In these two forms the abnormal life of devel
oped personality is ever active.
Perverse voluntary acts are rooted in vitiated ethical
life, and vitiated ethical life conditions voluntary trans
gression of God's law. Sinfulness anticipates volun
tary sinful acts. Voluntary sinful acts presuppose and
express sinfulness.
i. Two things enter into the scriptural doctrine of man
as sinful and guilty: an abnormal state of personal being,
and self-determined violation by the individual of God's
moral order.
On the one side we have relative necessity, a state of
man's ethical nature, in its relation to God, which is con
trary to the divine idea of manhood, but for which the
individual as an individual is not responsible. The'indi-

|2i6.] Nature of Sin. 145
vidual is begotten with a depraved manhood, referable to a
moral cause other than his own will.
On the other side we have the perveise action of the
will of the individual. The individual will is not inclined
to do the wrong by God's directing or withholding agency;
nor is the will coerced into transgression by the connection
of. personality with the body or with the natural world.
In its perverse choices personality is self-determined.
These two things, involuntary sinfulness and voluntary
sins, in the abnormal development of personality, are
indissoluble. If we ignore either, or if we chiefly empha
size either aspect, the doctrine of sin becomes deficient
and erroneous.
2. Sinfulness is primarily a false attitude in relation to
God, a status of ethico-spiritual being wherein aversion to
God is dominant. Sinfulness does indeed include selfish
ness; and selfishness may seem to be the primary element.
All sinful acts are selfish, and the element of selfishness is
more readily discerned by the common understanding than
the element of enmity to God ; but in reality selfishness
is not the profoundest element. The profoundest element
of sin is persistent aversion to man's profoundest relation
ship. Normal communion with God conditions man's normal
relation to himself, conditions his normal relation to na
ture. On this principle we have to reasou respecting
false ethical relations. The renunciation of God's abso
lute authority, in other words, the violation of the com
munion of love with God, conditions the false attitude of
man to himself. Sin is selfishness inasmuch as sin is un
godliness. Enmity to God, to the authority of His right
eous love, renders selfishness possible, and imparts to both
10

1 46 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
selfishness and worldliness their vicious tone. Hatred of
God, especially of God as He has revealed Himself in
Jesus Christ, constitutes according to Scripture the nerve
-of sin.
3. Every man who, knowing God, 'refuses to have God
in his knowledge,'1 every man who rejects the saving
grace of the Gospel, embraces of his own accord the viti
ated moral nature with which he is born. Unfolding this
vitiated nature consciously into wrong volitions, he makes
his nature as inherited by birth his personal possession.
The predisposition to wrong-doing becomes the content
¦'of the will, not as the effect of a blind natural process, but
by his voluntary act. That which his personal being is
'^without his consent, becomes, with his consent, the habit
of his personal history; and in greater or less degree he
develops the seed of sinfulness into fruitage.
Besides, at this point we have to recollect that God has
not forsaken fallen mankind. He bears witness of Him
self, of His existence and His authority, even of ' His ever
lasting power and divinity,' a witness of Himself to every
man which is clear and decided in proportion to man's
spiritual susceptibility. When the individual commits
sin he chooses the wrong in spite of the felt presence of
God's authority in his conscience. No age of the world
is to be excepted, and no nation. So Paul teaches: The
heathen "quenched the truth, seeing the truth had been
'revealed to them, and they changed it into a lie."2 There
'is consequently a sense in which it may. be said that,
though born with a vitiated nature, each individual falls
rby the choice of his own will. He does wrong with the
conscious sense that he is doing wrong. There is a point
1 Rom. i. 21, 28. 2 Rom. i. 19-23, Cf. Godet.

1 216.] Nature of Sin. 147
in the growth of ^personality when the sinfulness of the
Adamic race asserts itself in his ethical history, iiipt against
his intention, hut by an act of -wilful disobedience. A de
velopment of sinfulness in which personal nature only
is active, not conscious volition, wpuld not involve the
individual in personal guilt.
When arperson consciously embraces his vitiated nature,
and chooses the aversion >to. God, to which his. evil impulses
predispose him, he falls under condemnation by virtue of
a, twofold force: the false ethical state of the nature of the
Adamic race, and voluntary acts of transgression.
4. The universal and the particular, sinfulness and
sins, these two things are inseparably one in all trans
gressors. The notion of a sinfulness in developed person
ality that does not assert itself in wilful acts of transgres
sion is an abstractiqn. In the history of the 'natural
man ' such supposed fact has not been known. On the
other hand, wilful acts of transgression committed by
individual members of the Adamic race, acts which have
not their ground in an abnormal ethical life, are a moral
impossibility. The wilful act is by personality ever bound
up with the vitiated nature; the vitiated nature with wil
ful disobedience.
The question, whether the individual transgressor is
guilty and actually. condemned solely on account of inher
ited sinfulness, raises an, unreal issue; it presumes that in
herited sinfulness may in the developed personality of the
natural man, the man ' that knowing God, refuses to have
God in 1 his knowledge,' be disconnected from sinful voli
tions. Equally inconsequent is the opinion that the trans
gressor is guilty only for the sins which he commits, ibut
does not share the condemnation resting upon the Adamic

148 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
race. By every act of transgression he develops and con
firms the false ethical attitude of human nature toward
God; and by such development the inherited sinfulness of
his nature becomes the possession of his individual person.
Moreover these two things, sinfulness and wilful diso
bedience, mutually support and strengthen each other.
By every act of transgression sinfulness strikes its roots
deeper into the human spirit and gains a stronger influence
over ethical life; in turn, as a man is brought into more
complete ' captivity under the law of sin which is in his
members,' overt acts of transgression become more natural
and habitual.1 § 217.
Righteousness is it's own reward. So are sinfulness
and sins their own punishment. From sinfulness dy
namic and judicial consequences cannot be divorced.
Consequences of sin, whether judicial or dynamic, em
brace the whole man; and they inhere in the man who
dies in his sins, after natural death as during his pres
ent natural life.
1. Reward is not connected with obedience, nor penalty
with transgression, by the transcendent will of God, active
toward the man only from without. Love to God and the
obedience to His law springing from love in themselves
constitute for man the richest blessing; without this bless
ing no divine gifts can become a personal good. Says the
Psalmist: The judgments of the Lord are true, and right
eous altogether. * * In keeping of them there is great
reward.2 There is a like internal connection between
penalty and transgression, between misery and sinfulness.
1 Rom. vii. 23.
2Ps. xix. 9, 11. Cf. Prov. xxix. 18; Jno. xiii 17; Jam. i. 25.

g 2I7.] Nature of Sin. 1 49
Sin, whether viewed as a condition of human nature or as
active in volition and conduct, is contrary to God's right
eous love. Divine displeasure is a moral necessity. Being
a thorough violation of the original laws and fundamental
relations of man's being, no less than enmity against divine
authority, sin under either aspect lies under God's con
demning judgment and at the same time evokes the con
demnation of the conscience. By his false ethical attitude
toward God and in the very act of choosing the wrong the
transgressor is at issue with himself and at issue with God.
Hence he carries in his personal life the force of a judicial
sentence which in one respect proceeds from God, and
in another respect proceeds from himself. And the judi
cial pain consequent upon wrong-doilig, being as pro
found and all-embracing as sinfulness, becomes the keenest
misery of which human personality is capable. Juvenal
says: " It is more cruel than the pains of hell to have in
one's breast a witness testifying against us day and
night."1 2. The manifold consequences of sin are both natural or
dynamic, and judicial.
The consequences are dynamic. They proceed imme
diately from the reaction of man's own constitution, the
laws of which sin is ever violating. As when a vein is
severed the blood must flow forth from the body, so when
the moral economy of human life is transgressed the ills
of transgression are of ne'cessity realized. Sin is a force
within which works according to a law of abnormal per
sonality, producing all manner'of disorders, physical and
•social, moral and religious. But the law of personality is
in principle good, being none other than the embodied will
' Sat., XIII. , 196-198. Cf. Seneca, Epist 97.

tf^o1 Doctrine orf the Adamic Race. [books.
of God which by sin is resisted and dishonored: God' ever
Active in man's constitution and hi the social economy
cannot but witness against wrong, whether inflicted by a1-
person on his body or on his soul. Sin' " is so contrary to
nature," says AugUstirie, "that- it- Cannot but damage it.
Deparfufe from God would be no vice, unless in a nature
wbose property it was to' abide with God. ' ' : All miseries1
are therefore referable under one view to the operation of
natural law, being the necessary consequences of the vio-
lations pf humanity.
The consequences1 of sin are judicial as well as dynamic.
By His word God proiiouriees the sentence of condemna
tion on the transgressor; by the dealings of His provi'-<
dence He executes the sentence. The jndgrtient of His
word and His providence is at the same time uttered with
more or less distinctness by the decision's of the conscience.
The judicial and dynamic miseries of sin are comple-
riienta'l, being two forms in which' the One' righteous will
of God, because its action is both transcendent and jmmaf--
nerit, witnesses against sinfulness and aga^n'st sins.
3. As blessedness cannot be divorced from righteoUs^-
ness, so neither can misery be divorced fro'm sinfulness.
These' ethical propositions are correlative. If the first be
true', ihe second cannot be false. We are shut Up to the
logical necessity of teaching that with the sinful person
ality pf the sinner the consequences of sin are inwrought,
contemporaneous, coextensive. The epoch of natural
dfeath can'not abolish human personality; so neither can'
death Annihilate the false attitude of personality toward!
G'od. Since like sinfulness, the consequences i of sill, dy-'
namic arid judicial, inhere in the personality of the trans-
' City of God, XI.,- 17.

J218.] Nature of Sin. 151
gressor, these consequences continue throughout the his-,
tory of personality, or so long as personality is governed
from within by the principle of sinfulness. And in the
nature of the case the penalties experienced by the trans
gressor in his post-earthly state are in kind the same as
the penalties experienced upon earth; for as there is one
moral Governor of the world so there is but one moral
order; and under His moral government no such thing is
possible, at any epoch or in any period of human history,
as the cessation of penalties whilst the transgressor per
sists in his sinful activity. Those who die in sin continue
to be active sinners hereafter as they are active sinners
now; and they suffer the penalty of sins committed in
their post-earthly existence no less than the penalty of
sins committed in the natural body. Left to himself, the
transgressor is utterly impotent to abolish penal sufferings,
penal suffering and transgression being but different as
pects of the same moral evil. §218.
Sin begets sin. Self- reproduction of moral evil pre
vails in the individual, in the family, in the nation, in
the race.
1. Sin multiplies itself in the individual. Depraved
nature spontaneously active in abnormal instincts and im
pulses, in impure inclinations and selfish desires, realizes,
perverseness; and perverseness is ever imparting to im
pulses, inclinations and desires more and more of a God-
antagonizing tone. Evil men and impostors, as St. Paul
teaches, shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being
deceived.1 "God abandons man to the consequence of his
1 2 Tim. iii. 13. Cf 2 Thess. ii 11, 12; Rom. i. 24, 25.

152 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
own doings," as Dr. Schaff expounds Rom. i. 24, "and
thus punishes him. This is a divinely instituted law, in
perfect harmony with our personal freedom and moral ac
countability." The issue of the sinner with himself be
comes more fixed, his antagonism to God more malignant.
Either the felt presence of God in the soul is repressed
with stronger determination, or the living contradiction
between the true self and the false self is actualized with
increasing force. Both aspects of growing sinfulness may
develop together, the issue assuming chiefly at one time
the divine, at another time thehumau form of violence.
The wilful antagonism to God and the antagonism of
self against self may go on until the sinner reaches a crisis,
a point of relative ripeness in sin, when he becomes
'reprobate concerning the faith,' and reprobate 'unto every
good work.'1 Then the inborn capacity of positive re
sponse to God is reduced to the minimum, and the subject
of sin may no longer be capable of being saved, though
God's sympathy follows him as he plunges into deeper
misery. The inborn capacity, we may be justified in
holding, is not absolutely extinct; it may live on in sinful
personality; but the action of divine imageship in the ex
perience of the sinner is the persistent contradiction of
the fundamental law of personal being to personal activity.
2. Sin bears fruit after its kind in the family and in
the social economy. Parents and children are bound to
gether, being the members of a moral organism. Parents
beget children after their kind. As children inherit their
humanity, so they inherit its vitiated condition. The
ungodliness and wickedness of parents are reproduced and
multiplied in their offspring. The family sows to the
1 2 Tim. iii. 8 ; Titus i. 16.

g2is.] Nature of Sin. 153
flesh, and of the flesh the family reaps corruption.1 For
the law of growth and reproduction obtains in the moral
order as in the natural order, and in the sphere of the bad
no less than in the sphere of the good.
The law of progress of sin in the family is the law of
continuous penalties descending from generation to gener
ation, agreeably to the teaching of the second Command
ment: "Visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the chil
dren, upon the third and upon the fourth generation of
them that hate me,"2 a principle that is illustrated by
universal experience.
3. The same law of self-multiplication reigns in national
life. In the earlier stages of the history of the Greeks
reverence for the gods and the recognition of moral right
had a degree of commanding influence. The same thing
may be affirmed of other pagan nations. But as one gen
eration succeeds another the good becomes weaker, the
bad becomes stronger.3 Religious rites degenerate. Belief
in the gods passes into unbelief or theoretic doubt; the
moral nerve of the social economy is enfeebled or para
lyzed; manners lose reserve; depravity increases; wicked
ness, vices and crimes acquire greater ascendency; and
slowly, sometimes rapidly, the nation decays.4 The best
1 Gal. vi. 8. 2 Ex. xx. 5.
3 Of pagan nations Athanasius says: "Even in their misdeeds men had
not stopped short at any set limits ; but gradually pressing forward, have
passed on beyond all measure: * * while later on, having turned
aside to wrong and exceeding all lawlessness, and stopping at no one
evil but devising all manner of new evils in succession, they have become
insatiable in sinning. * * As to corruption and wrong, no heed was
paid to law, but all crimes were being practiced everywhere ; each man
vying with his fellows in lawless deeds." — De Incar., \ 5.
* Says Max Miiller: "If there is one thing which a comparative study

154 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [eooks.
example is furnished by the decline and fall of the Roman
Empire as represented by the classic work of Gibbon.
In Christian nations the law of degradation and dissolu
tion is held in check by the conservative and regenerative
virtue of Christianity. If the Christian life be vigorous
and healthy the unifying and consolidating energy of love
to God and love to man will not only hold in check but
may also triumph over the disintegrating forces of selfishr
ness and worldliness, and instead of being retrogressive a
nation's history may for ages be progressive.
4. The history of sin in a nation is the history of sin in
the Adamic race. Humanity as a whole repeats in every
succeeding period the wickedness and- follies of preceding
generations. Sin gains fresh momentum with the birth
of every new age. The pagan world becomes worse, as
from one century to another sin multiplies sin under man
ifold forms of transgression. An epoch of pagan reform
may for a time modify the phenomena of moral evil, but
reform cannot repress the upheavals of iniquity, nor check
the flow of its tidal wave. Adamic humanity hides in its
bosom no latent power of moral or spiritual recuperation.
5. Pessimism has in it one element of truth. The pres
ent actual condition of the race, of nations, of individual's,
is evil; the controlling forces of the family and of society
in the non-Christian world work from bad to worse. In
mankind not touched by Christianity there is no hope,
either in science or art or literature or in material pro
gress. of religions places in the clearest light, it is the inevitable decay to
which every religion is exposed. * * Without constant return to its
fountain head, every religion, even the most perfect, suffers from its con
tact with the world, as the purest air suffers from the mere fact of its
being breathed."— Chips from a German Workshop, I. Pref., XXIII.

?2i8.] Nature of Sin. 155
But pessimism is not a sound philosophy of moral and
physical evil. Evil expresses but one aspect of the condi
tion of the Adamic race. The fundamental law operative
in history is righteousness, not wickedness; the entire
economy of human life is designed for and adapted to well-
being, not to suffering. Misery is grounded, not in the
original constitution of things, which is good, but in vio
lence done to this constitution. The normal action of
natural and moral law can issue only in the good'..
Miseries exist, miseries multiply, beeause the moral order
of the world is resisted. The 'natural man' wilfully per
sists in warfare against God, warfare against the economy
of the world as ordained and upheld by God's righteous
will. Instead of overthrowing God's moral order, the
moral order standing firm overthrows its enemies.
What then is this that is written, The stone which the
builders rejected, the same was made the head of the cor
ner ? Every one that falleth on that stone shall be broken
to pieces; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will scatter
him as dust.

156 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
CHAPTER VIII.
ADAMIC DEATH.
§ 219.
The sum of the consequences of the fallen condition
and sinful activity of the Adamic race is expressed by
the word death. Of sin death is the product and the
penalty. Like sin death is unnatural, abnormal, false,
being contrary to the purpose of man's creation, con
trary to the moral economy of original manhood.
1. It is the death of man that is challenging inquiry,
not the cessation of individual existences of the vegetable
and animal kingdoms. The two are different creations,
and may not be confounded without prejudice to sound
anthropology. That the plant or the animal lives through a given cycle
of time and then passes away, may be according to its
original nature. Neither, as Dorner expresses it, can be
immortal, for. neither has in and for itself absolute worth,
but only finite adaptations.1 The animal is an impersonal
organism, from which man differs generically. Though
human life includes many vegetal and animal qualities,
these qualities are not distinctive of man. The principle
of manhood, that in virtue of which man is man, is other
than his animal history.
Man as to his essence is spirit, self-conscious, self-
determining spirit, akin to God. As to the principle of
his existence a spiritual being, he lives his life by recip-
' Dogmatics, \ 38, 2.

5219.] Adamic Death. 157
rocal communion with absolute Spirit, a communion
which is first sub-conscious and spontaneous, then be
comes also conscious and voluntary. Whilst receiving
nourishment from the fruits of the earth, the conditions
on which the efficiency of such nourishment of body and
soul depends are the perpetual spiritual communications
flowing to man from God and by him spontaneously ap
propriated. In God, as Paul teaches, we live and move
and have our being.1 Not in ourselves do we live, but in
Him. Bengel says: "/«, expresses the most influential
presence arising from the most intimate relationship, so
that we cannot feel ourselves without feeling Him." Ob
jectively, this sub-conscious relationship, this hidden bond
of connection between divine being and human being, is
unchangeable. As contrasted with animal life man has a
godlike existence. By virtue of his godlikeness, though
debased by sin, he is relatively superior to the kind of
decay and dissolution extant in the lower kingdoms of
nature. ,
The body, existing in vital union with spirit in the
organism of manhood, shares the intrinsic vitality of
divine spirit. If his spiritual condition were normal and
ideal his animal nature would be inaccessible to that pro
cess of disintegration and dissolution which is normal in
the constitution of plants and animals.
2. In the human kingdom death is contra-natural. It
contravenes the design and the laws of genuine manhood.
The word nature in its application to man has to be
used in a twofold sense. The word denotes, first, his
original Constitution or man as fashioned by the creative
Hand; and, secondly, his degraded condition brought
1 Acts xvii. 28.

1 58 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
about by transgression. It is not fallen humanity, not
•man as now existing, 'hut man in his original integrity,
;his nature as God formed it, which sin and death contra
vene. As Tertullian teaches: "Death happens not by
¦way of natural consequence to man, but owing, to a fault
and defect which is not itself natural. * * The very-
law which produces death, simple though it be, is yet vio
lence."1 The only congenial realm both of soul and body
is life. Hence the instinctive abhorrence of death as the
sum of all evils, an abhorrence common to all grades of
.civilization, .to which no class of persons become recon
ciled by familiarity with its repulsive phenomena. When
human death is said to :be natural, the word can mean
only that death is the inevitable consequence of an alien
law active universally in the Adamic race.
.Death is abnormal. Like sin and all sinful acts, death
violates the divine idea of man, violates the teleology of
ideal human history.
Death is false. The truth of man's existence implies
the unity of physical and mental, of moral and spiritual
qualities in personal life, a life that advances in vigoras
it advances in time. Decay and death give the lie to the
profoundest intuitions and the noblest aspirations of per
sonality, turning the individual and the family, the nation
and the race, into a mockery.
3. Human death is the curse of human : transgression.
This is its, fundamental- characteristic. Transgression and
death are in principle one. Sin renounces the essential
communion of love between God and man. Since- God is
the only fountain of normal human life, the renunciation
of the communion of divine love invades and neutralizes
' Treatise on the Soul, ch. 52.

J219.] Adamic Death. 159
the virtue of* the life-bond between man and God. This
wrong done to the life-communion of divine love is the
principle of death; nay, if we judge it in the light of
Christian truth it is itself death. Says Paul: The mind of
the flesh is death.1 When we say that man ceases to live
freely in the fellowship of love with God, we express under
one form the same thought which under a different form
we express when we say man dies. The ethical life-bond
joining finite spirit, possessing derived existence, with
.uncreated Spirit, the constant Author of human life, being
renounced, this alienation from and violation of the fun
damental law of ideal manhood becomes the seed of death.
The false self-assertion of ego against God works corres
ponding falseness and disorganization of the entire man,
in the history of the body as in the history of the soul.
iDeath has gained dominion through sin; and sin enters
into manhood, not through the connection of. man's body
with nature, but through the connection of man's spiritual
being with the kingdom of falsehood. As personality is
the only organ of righteousness and spiritual life, so it is
also the only organ of sin and death. The body is under
the law of death inasmuch as the soul is under the law of
death. The Adamic man? not the body only, is mortal.
'Rom. viii. 6. "Death is here conceived of as present (comp. i Tim.
v. 6; Eph. ii. i, 5), not merely as a result, but as a characteristic mark,
an immanent definition of the carnal niind."— Philippi quoted by Schaff.
2 "I know that the human soul is spiritual, not corporeal, that it is
endowed with reason and intelligence, and that it is not of God's essence,
but a thing created. It is both mortal and immortal: the first because it
is subject to corruption and separable from the life of God in which it is
alone blessed, the second because its consciousness must ever continue
and form the source of its happiness or woe."— Augustine, tetter to
Optatus,

160 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
4. Caused by wilful transgression, death is the conse
quence of sin under a twofold aspect, being both organic
and penal.
Being the violation of all original laws of humanity,
death is involved in such violation. It follows as a neces
sary effect according to natural law.
But the original laws of humanity are forms of God's
will active in human nature. Sin is the transgression of
God's will, whether we regard His will as the utterance of
His authority in the Ten .Commandments or as embodied
in man's constitution; a wrong committed against human
nature is a wrong done to God's moral order; hence all
the consequences of transgression are penal no less than
organic. The displeasure of divine justice cannot but be
felt by the transgressor. The condemnation of God, the
nemesis of nature, and the remorse of conscience, all meet
in the penalty of death. To use the words of Cremer:
' ' In death are concentrated all the evils that spring from
sin." § 220.
As we contemplate sin so we may also contemplate
death under its negative aspect. Death in one view is
alienation of man from God, causing a dissolution of
body and soul, and so the severance of man's connec
tion with the natural world. But alienation and disso
lution are not total nor absolute.
1. The alienation of the being of the transgressor from
God, or the cessation of God's upholding presence which
death seems to be, is not absolute. Death is not the ex
tinction of human existence, not extinction even as affect
ing the material particles of the body. Nor is death an

^220.] Adamic Death. 161
indefinite period of sleep; not a state of unconsciousness
continuing until the day of judgment.1
Though fallen, depraved and guilty, though held in
subjection helplessly to the alien law of sin, the trans
gressor is nevertheless really man; he is living his trichot
omic life. Paradoxical as it may seem, it is yet both
scriptural and philosophical to assert that the sinful, dying
life which the transgressor is living he lives in God. To
the Athenian Areopagus St. Paul said: In Him we live,
and move, and have our being.2 The vital bond between
sinning personality and God survives the dynamic conse
quences of sinning. The communion is invaded, per
verted, falsified; and as falsified it works all forms of
evil; but the vital bond is more profound, more mighty
than sin. Otherwise, if the ethical connection were not
real, there would be no self-condemnation, no divine judi
cial displeasure, no miseries of human guilt either here
or hereafter. For judicial suffering presupposes personal
accountability to moral law, and accountability to law
presupposes positive reciprocal connection between the
moral Governor of the world and fallen personality.
The unnatural exit from this world, which we call
'natural death,' is just as compatible with the reality of ,
an uninterrupted vital connection of man's personal being
'Teachers of Arabia in the third century, who were combated by Ori
gen, taught, some that the human soul perishes with the body, but that
at the time of the resurrection they will be renewed together, others that
during the intermediate period the soul is in the state of sleep called
Psychopannychy. Comp. Eusebius, Bk. VI, ch. 37. From the 5th cen
tury on, the opinion under both forms was abandoned ; A. D. 1240, con -
demned by the University of Paris.
z Acts xvii. 28.
II

1 62 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
with God as are the wickedness, disorganization and mis
ery of his earthly history.
2. ' Natural death ' involves the dissolution of the soul
and the earthly organization of the body, but not' an abso
lute dissolution. The earthly house of the transgressor is
perpetually decaying and dissolving, perpetually rebuild
ing, a double process which is going on day by day from
infancy to old age. Seemingly real, the external visible
body is an inconstant, ever- changing, shadowy form,
truly the most unreal thing in the human constitution.
Moment by moment a vanishing factor during man's
earthly history, the natural body is moment by moment
reproduced ; but the power of reproduction gradually be
comes less and less. Under the law of sin, active in soul
and body, there comes a point of time when reproduction
stops; the earthly house falls; and the connection with the
present natural world abruptly comes to an end.
But the somatic principle is not extinct; in the human
constitution -the principle of bodily organization is essen
tial no less than the psychic and pneumatic principle. In
commenting on 2 Cor. v. 2-4, Martensen sustains this
view: "We are not entirely naked in the intermediate
state. We are obliged to conceive of some intermediate
kind of corporeity in the realm of the dead." x Separated
from earthly Conditions, the Adamic man passes into the
post-earthly state in the wholeness of manhood, Poten
tially his being there is corporeal as truly as spiritual, but
the conditions and the mode of personal existence in the
future eon are different, it may be totally different, from
the mode of his existence on earth.
'Mar. Dgm., 460.

§22i.] Adamic Death. 163
§ 221.
The negative conception of Adamic death is to be
complemented by studying death under its positive
aspect. Natural death under one view the end, is under an
other view the beginning of human existence."
The exit from the earth is an epoch in man's sinful
history. It may be called a node of the abnormal de
velopment of human life, the transition from one status
to another status of false existence, from one stage to
another stage of sinful activity.
Considered morally and spiritually, the post-earthly
condition of the Adamic man is analogous to his con
dition on earth.
1. Natural death is an article in man's abnormal his
tory; not a ceasing to be, but an epoch of the positive
continuity of personal being. Under an outward aspect,
as death appears to our bodily senses, it is convulsive and
destructive; under its inward aspect, as it appears to the
eye of intuitive perception, death is resumptive and con
structive. Withdrawn from all earthly connections, man's
attributes and powers return as it were into himself, and
personality asserts its inalienable prerogatives on a differ
ent plane of action. In the very act Pf transition from the
present world to the future world the Adamic man not
only exists, but, judging of the epoch in the light of the
death of Christ, we are required also to say that he lives,
lives his fallen life in God. Life in God has not been ex
tinguished by sin, neither can it be extinguished by the
bitter fruit of sin; but life in God is by sin falsified,
physically and ethically.
To the eye of sense the dying man recedes and falls;
but to the eye of spirit he stands and proceeds. In the

164 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
act of outward dissolution he is reconstructed, and he re
constructs himself. Reconstructed he is by virtue of an
original law of personal being, deeper than consciousness,
mightier than sin. His vitiated personal being he recon
structs by asserting his will agreeably to the law of sin.
2. It is scarcely practicable to illustrate Adamic death
under its positive aspect by analogies derived from nature.
Analogies suggested by the vegetable and animal king
doms serve rather to represent normal human life and
Christian death. Yet we may recognize remote resem
blances in some familiar facts of the natural world.
The petals of a blossom wither and fall away, not be
cause the life of the blossom is extinct, but because it has
reached an epoch of development when the petals are
superseded, and the blossom must live on a superior plane
in the young and growing fruit. The silk-worm spins
a silken case about its waning body and then dies; but
the death of the worm is an epoch in the process of trans
formation through* which the worm passes in becoming
the moth-fly. Many other facts of the same class address
us from the kingdoms of nature. All serve rather to illus
trate the departure of the Christian than the transition of
the 'natural man.'
Yet if we firmly hold the revealed truth that the ' nat
ural man ' lives his false personal life in God, and that the
convulsive throes of natural death are an epoch in the
history of existence, an epoch in the development of this
false personal life, these analogies will assist rational re
flection. We recognize two opposite forces conjoined in
the history of a plant or an animal: the one negative, the
other positive. Relinquishing one stage of existence under
the form of seeming extinction, it in reality resumes the

j 22i.] Adamic Death. 165
type of its species and unfolds its life-powers upon an
advanced stage of its history. So the ' natural man,' if we
judge of his exit only from outward phenomena, only from
the disintegration of his earthly remains, seems to pass
away and be no more; but if, setting aside the inherited
dualism of pagan philosophy, we respect the spiritual per
ception of all civilized nations, especially if we judge by the
light of the resurrection of Jesus Christ, we are authorized
and required to believe that as the withered blossom lives
in the fruit and the broken egg in the young bird, so the
personality of the Adamic man when he quits the earthly
tenement survives and persists with all his essential qual
ities, developing his existence upon a different but really
human plane of the future world.
3. The ' natural man ' continues to be active in the
post-earthly state in conformity to the law of sin. The
probability is that in many cases he may be morally
active, active against the divine law, in the very .article of
death. The insensibility and unconsciousness of a dying
man may be only unconsciousness and insensibility to the
natural world through the medium of the senses. By the
earthly body survivors have no direct access to him. But
it is not to be inferred that in the moment of transition his
spirit is neither conscious nor morally active relatively to
God or to himself Even . if in many cases we have to
predicate the entire unconsciousness of a dying man, it
does not follow that a sub-conscious ethical action of per
sonality in relation to God must be denied. Analogies
support the contrary opinion: that in the article of death
human personality maintains the type of its acquired char
acter in its relations to the Good and to the bad.
The being of a man perpetuates itself in the unity of

1 66 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [books.
personality. Will, intelligence and feeling obtain here
after perhaps with intenser vitality and less restraint than
in the earthly body, but obtain after a mode of existence
as different as the mode of existence of the new-born child
is from its mode of existence in the womb.
Considered positively, Adamic death may be compared
to Adamic birth. The 'natural man ' in the act of organic
transition passes out of the womb of time -into the world
of spirits, where, like a child developing into manhood,
he will have a range of activity for evil on a lower plane
of degradation than he had in the earthly body.
4. In the post-earthly state 'the natural man' is active
against God. The alien law of sin reigns in his person
ality there as it reigns here; having formed his character
in moral evil, he reaps what he has sown ;T of his own mo
tion he affirms the alien law. If we reason from our
knowledge of the nature of moral evil as it develops in the
history of men on earth we may go a step further and say:
the sinful activity of the transgressor becomes more per
verse, more malignant. The sense of divine displeasure
provokes the growth of sin; the self-contradiction of the
sinner becomes more decisive as the sense of God's dis
pleasure becomes intenser, as the condemnation of the
conscience becomes keener. No more in the world to
come than in the present world can the wicked ignore
God, nor can they cut themselves loose absolutely from
vital connection with God.
xSays Matheson: "No event of thy life is half so startling, half so
awful, half so mysterious as thy life itself. Nothing that happens to thee
is so worthy of meditation as thine own being." — Moments on the.
Mount, p. 150. Gal. vi. 7, 8. "The identity of the seed sown and the
harvested grain, images the relation of moral conduct in life to the
recompense at the judgment." — Meyer.

§222.] Adamic Death. 167
The growth of sinfulness, the selfrnultiplication of sins
and the consequent penal suffering of- the rejecters of
Christ, continue through the whole intermediate eon until
the close of Messianic history. The second advent will
introduce a new epoch of human existence, as in the his
tory of Christ's members so also in the history of Christ's
enemies. Upon the final judgment will follow a different
status of the kingdom of darkness, called in Scripture 'the
second death.' § 222.
Accepting the distinction first definitely drawn by
Augustine we may recognize four grades of human
death: 1. spiritual death; 2. natural death ; '3. death
during the middle state, the age intermediate between
the exit from the natural world and the second ad
vent ; and 4. the second death, or death after the final
judgment. 1. The self-willed, persistent violation of the commun
ion of love with God by ' the natural man ' and the conse
quent voluntary subjection of his will to the will of Satan,
constitute death for the wilful transgressor in its pro
foundest sense.
The last three stages of death, unless the operation of
the law of sin is arrested by the new birth of the Holy
Spirit, are the successive periods of development of the
initial death. Spiritual death is the root, the ground
principle, of all moral disorganization, of all physical dis
integration, all alienation from God, all grades of human
misery. 2. This doctrine respecting the history of sin and death
is warranted by Holy Scripture in its application to the
heathen who 'are factious, and obey not the truth, but

1 68 Doctrine on the Adamic Race. [book 5.
obey unrighteousness,' and to men in Christian countries
who are the enemies of the righteousness of God mani
fested by Jesus Christ. For as many as have sinned with
out law shall also perish without law: and as many as
have sinned under law, shall be judged by law; for not
the hearers of a law are righteous before God, but the
doers of a law shall be accounted righteous.1
But the doctrine is not warranted by Scripture in its
application to all the heathen. God will render to every
man according to his works: to them that by patience in
well-doing seek for glory and honor and incorruption,
eternal life. "In all human conditions there are souls
which contemplate the ideal here described, and which,
ravished with its beauty, are elevated by it above every
earthly ambition and the pursuit of sensual gratifica
tions."2 Wrath and indignation, tribulation and anguish,, are
visited upon some heathen, not for the reason only that
the light of the Gospel has never shone upon them, but
for the reason that they "hold down (or hold captive) the
truth in unrighteousness."3 God's revelation to the con
science they repress, preventing "it from diffusing itself
in the understanding as light, and in the conduct as a holy
activity."* Knowing God, they glorified Him not as God,
neither gave thanks. Wrath and indignation are visited
only upon every soul of man that worketh evil, of the Jew
' Rom. ii. 12, 13. 2 Godet. 3 Rom. i. 18.
4 Godet on Rom. i. 18. "The Apostle proves first that men had the
truth (vs. 19 and 20); then that they hindered it, and perverted it (21-
23)." — Schaff. "If they did so out of ignorance, they would be excus
able ; but they do not so out of ignorance, and therefore God's wrath is
manifested against them." — Meyer.

\ 222.] Adamic Death. 169
first and also of the Greek.' Glory and honor and peace
come to every man that worketh good, to the Jew first and
also to the Greek. When the heathen who have no law
do by nature the things of the law, these, having no law,
are a law unto themselves. If they obey this law, if by
patience in well-doing they seek for glory and honor, they
are in a salvable condition in life and in death. Envel
oped in the darkness of paganism, they have not come into
the actual possession of life and salvation, for there is no
name under heaven other than the name of Jesus Christ
wherein they must be saved;1 and faith in Jesus Christ is
the only way by which Christ and His benefits may be ap
propriated. But every man that worketh good, whether
Jew or Greek, has the ethical capacity and the spiritual
disposition to accept Jesus Christ by faith whenever to
him the life and salvation of Christ are manifested.2 Or,
as Godet expresses it: "The love of goodness will then
lead him to embrace Christ, the ideal of goodness. * *
The desire of goodness is the acceptance of the gospel by
anticipation." 1 Acts iv. 12. 2 Rom, i'. -4-16.

BOOK SIXTH.
CHRISTOLOGY: OR DOCTRINE ON JESUS CHRIST.

CHAPTER I.
THE ADVENT.
§ 223.
With the abnormal moral and physical economy of the
world is closely connected the central fact of history, the
advent of the Christ.
The principle and motive of the advent is not to be
found in either term to the exclusion of the other, neither
in man alone, nor in God alone; but inasmuch as the Son
of God enters the world by becoming man, the principle of
the advent is to be found in both terms, in the reciprocal
connection between God and man; in each, however, it is
to be studied under a twofold aspect.
God sustains a twofold relation to the Adamic race.
The one is original, and in principle ideal, constituted by
the creative word forming man after His image. The
other is the actual, contra-ideal relation, brought about by
the realization of sin in the personality and history of man.
Man in like manner sustains a twofold relation to God:
a relation prevailing by virtue of the fact that he is created
after the divine image, and a relation entailed by the vol
untary transgression of the laws of his nature and of the
teleology of his creation.
In order to form a biblical conception of the advent we
shall have to emphasize these two terms, God and man,
each in its reciprocal connection with the . other, and
each under a twofold view, the ideal and the actual. J73

174 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
§ 224.
The advent is in the first instance referable to God.
In a subordinate sense it is referable also to man ; re
ferable to both, the personal Creator and the personal
creature, in their reciprocal vital connection. Therefore
the advent is not an afterthought, not a supplement of
the first creation ; it is anticipated by the divine idea
of the world.
1. The advent is referable to God; not merely to God's
sovereignty, nor to the attribute of mercy; but to the tri
une God Himself, to His life of love ; and it is to be
referred to God as He is related to man in the idea of cre
ation. The divine idea anticipates an actual development
of the world from an inchoate beginning, through a suc
cession pf kingdoms, a history in time, and a given tele
ology. The proximate end of the creative process from
below upward was the primeval man, the first Adam; the
ultimate end of the primeval man, and through him the
end of the entire creative work, was the ideal Man, the
last Adam.1 Conformably to the logic of universal history
grounded in the divine idea of creation which under the
direction of Providence is in process of normal actualiza
tion, the Christ comes into the world.
2. The advent is referable to man, not merely to the
guilt of his fallen state, not merely to his aspirations
after harmony and communion with God, but to his na
ture and his original vocation. To man's nature in its
original relation to God the advent is referable by virtue
of the fact that human personality is formed in God's
image. The position which man occupies as head and
1 1 Cor. xv. 45.

\ 224.] The Advent. 175
crown of the economy of the world, his vocation to be the
organ of harmony between sub-human kingdoms and God,
and his capacities for a nobler, a far more exalted com
munion, latent in his personal constitution, look forward
to the glorification of his being by an uplifting into the
realm of the divine existence. Man as man, apart from
his sinfulness and misery, demands a transition from the
lower to a higher plane of life, a transition from his origi
nal actual state in the domain of the natural and earthly
into another, a transcendent state in the domain of the
spiritual world.1 Conformably to this profound human
demand, a demand which is the outcome of God's own
eternal purpose actualized in man's creation, God moves
from heaven toward earth, descending in the person of His
Sou into the organic depths of humanity.
3. A^ the advent is not to be referred to God alone nor
to man alone, so neither may it be referred to God and
man externally associated. The ground of the advent is
to be seen in both as connected by the economy of crea
tion. It is referable to God as the Author and pattern of
man, and to man as God's companion and image; to God
as loving man unchangeably, and to man as capable of the
perfect reciprocation of divine love; to God as constituting
man the object of His most complete self-communication,
and to man as endowed with the richest aptitude for par
ticipation in the divine fulness. Not merely to the triune
God as related to Himself, nor to man in his time-relations
to himself, is the coming of Jesus Christ into the world
1 Of such a destiny the tree of life in the garden of Eden is the recog
nition. Says Delitzsch: "There was — for this is the meaning of the tree
of life — in Paradise a sacramental means of transferring man without
death to a higher stage of physical life."— On Genesis iii. 22, p. 172.

176 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
ascribable. It is the original communion of love between
God and man, the communion disturbed but not abol
ished by sin, which anticipates and accounts for the cen
tral fact of Christianity.1 Conformably to the spiritual
necessities. latent in the unfathomable mystery of this orig
inal communion, the Christ appears in the fulness of time;
and He appears in order to realize and thus to satisfy love,
the love of God to man, the crown of creation, and the
yearning of man after God, the absolute complement of
man's life. Christological theology has superseded the
famous line of Augustine: Ofelix cu'lpa, quce talem ac tan-
tum meruit habere redemptorem /
4. If we look upon the incarnation, the advent of the
Son of God in human nature, as having its ground in
God's eternal purpose- respecting the history and scope of,
the universe, it will be seen to be not an after-thought,
not an appendix devised by divine wisdom to supplement
1 " If the Redeemer of the world stands in an eternal relation to the
Father and to Humanity, — if His person has not merely an historical, not
merely a religious and ethical, but also a metaphysical significance, — sin
alone cannot have been the ground of His revelation ; for there was no
metaphysical necessity for sin entering the world, and Christ could not
be our Redeemer, if it had been eternally involved in His idea that He
should be our Mediator. Are we to suppose that that which is most glori
ous in the world could only be reached through the medium of sin ? that
there would have been no place in the human race for the glory of the
Only Begotten One, but for sin ?" — Martensen's Dogmatics, p. 260.
Principal Fairbairn teaches definitely the same truth: "The Incarna
tion is of all acts the act that most becomes God, and so the one we can
least conceive as accidental. And therefore, though its special form may
be affected by the fact of sin, yet it were mere impertinence to imagine
that but for the accident of sin, the universe would have been deprived
of its most invincible evidence of grace." — Christ in Modern Theology,
P- 477-

§224.] The Advent. 177
a defect in the plan of creation, or to display and glorify
punitive justice, or merely to remove the consequences of
man's failure. The incarnation does not involve a violent
or contra-ideal change either in the original teleology or in
the normal historical movement of the world. In purpose
and in possibility the birth and history of Jesus Christ an
tedate both the fall of man and the fall of angels. More
than this. It antedates the very beginning of the work of x
creation. Before the creative word, Let there be light,
was spoken, the idea of the Creator respecting the cosmos
included its consummation in 'the fulness of time,' when
God would send forth His Son, 'born of a woman.' We
are taught that Christ ' was foreknown indeed before the
foundation of the world, but was manifested at the end of
the times;' that the Father loved the incarnate Son 'before
the foundation of the world;' and that 'the Lamb hath
been slain from the foundation of the world.'1 The tap
root and the immutable law of the advent is the eternal
principle of love, the communion of love in the glory of
the tri-persoual Godhead.
5. The advent actualized by the history of Jesus Christ
was indeed not the pure embodiment of the essence of love,
nor were the reciprocal relations between the Godhead and
' "Who was foreordained indeed before the foundation of the world,*
but was manifested at the end of the times for your sake." — I Pet. i 20.
"Father, that which thou hast given me, I will that where I am, they
also may be with me ; that they may behold my glory, which thou hast
given me: for thou lovedst me before the foundation of the world." —
John xvii. 24. Cf. Eph i- 4- Rev. xiii. 8.
* Says Archbishop Leighton : "Amongst all the works God intended
before time, and in time effected, this is the masterpiece that is here said
to be foreordained, the manifesting of God in the flesh, for man's re
demption." — Works, p 54.
12

iy8 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book6.
humanity manifested exclusively in their positive form;,
yet from the humiliation and propitiatory sufferings of the
incarnate Son it does not follow that God's love to man is
not the fundamental law of his history. Christology is
betrayed into serious error if it supposes that, inasmuch as
men are transgressors and 'the wrath of God' is abiding
on them, the original principle of humanity and of the
advent is no longer in force, but that another has been
substituted in its stead. The profound humiliation of God
in the person of His Son can be rightly known only as we
firmly hold the eternal law of divine self-manifestation.
The principle that reigns in the triune communion of God,
reigns also in the history of the new creation.
§ 225.
The original communion of love between God and
man is, however, by itself insufficient to explain the
actual character of the advent. Due account has to
be made of man's sinful condition, and the abnormal
relation of the race to God which sinfulness involves.
This abnormal relation is also no less really a factor of
the advent.
The fall affects man, and it affects God. In conse
quence of sin the relative attitude of each to the other,
of God toward man, of man toward God, has under
gone a judicial change.
1. The Adamic race is in the state of misery. No one
word can more fully express the nature and effects of
transgression as realized in man's history. Guilt and de
pravity, helplessness and death, subjection and bondage to
Satan's will, all enter into and characterize his spiritual
condition. But the image of God, though distorted, is not
extinct; the original capacity for the possession of the ab-

\ 225.] The Advent. 179
solute Good, though degraded, enervated and misdirected,
is not destroyed. Retaining a profound sense of his origin
from God's inbreathing, of his kinship with the true and
the good, and possessing imperishable instincts and apti
tudes which God and the communion of God alone can
satisfy, the transgressor, though wilfully persistent in
wrong-doing, yearns after God out of the depths of his
misery. Even the appalling phenomena of wickedness
indicate a hidden protest of his godlike spirit against
the falsification of his life and the perversion of his voca
tion by the power of sin.
To this irrepressible yearning of the fallen Adamic race
after a satisfying Good there is a response in. the bosom of
God. God in turn yearns after ideal communion with
man, after the ideal communion of man with Himself.
The guilt and depravity of the race does not convert abso
lute love into absolute aversion. The very fact that hu
man personality, bearing God's own image and capable of
participation in His own eternal glory, is subject to the
dominion of His adversary and is held hopelessly under
bondage to the law of death, — this very fact awakens in
God's heart peculiar sympathy with the transgressor in his
misery, a sympathy corresponding in tenderness to the re
ality and compass of this misery as the infinite mind alone
can grasp it.
Divine love is active under a twofold character simulta
neously: being condemnation of sin, and sympathy with
the sinner. As regards sinfulness and guilt, righteous love
becomes aversion and wrath ; but as regards man himself,
the miserable subject of sin, divine love becomes compas
sion and grace, the free purpose to redeem the sinner from
sin.

i8o Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
In one view the transgressor is the object of wrath; in
another view the transgressor is the- object of grace. The
object of wrath he is because, averse to God, he is fulfill
ing the will of Satan. The object of grace he is because,
formed in God's image and capable of communion with
God in His glory, he is in a state of condemnation led
captive by the adversary of God and of man.
Therefore the will of eternal love to raise man up from
the domain of the earthly into the domain of the heavenly
realm, to translate him from the Edenic plane into the
glory of triune Spirit, becomes a purpose to redeem him
from the guilt and dominion of sin.
2. The mode of apprehending the advent relatively to
our race, helpless in the state of corruption and guilt, may
be reversed; and thought may perhaps more accurately lay
hold of its inwardness.
The love of God to man is eternal. Inasmuch as God's
purpose to promote man, in accordance with the original
law of his life, to a participation with Himself in His own
ineffable glory is unchangeable, God follows man in his
apostasy and wickedness, as the good shepherd follows the
lost sheep of the fold.1 Into the deep darkness of sin He
follows the sinner from the first day of his apostasy,2 and
from day to day as the ages roll on He announces Himself
uninterruptedly to the human spirit, manifesting His right
eous love, even whilst Satan is holding the apostate race
under bondage to himself, and the race is multiplying
guilt by persistent obedience to Satan's will.3 At no time
has God 'left Himself without witness, in that He did
good.' 4 The light of the life of the Logos has ever been
1 Luke xv. 3-7. 2 Gen. iii. 8, 9.
8Isa. xlix. 15; Mai. iii. 17. *Actsxiv. 17.

2225.] The Advent. 181
shining into the darkness, 'the true light which lighteth
every man coming into the world.' "Every one, and
wholly, so far as a man doth not withdraw himself: who
soever is enlightened, is enlightened by this Light. The
singular number here has great force. Not even one is
excluded." x The darkness has never been able wholly to
repress the illumining power of the Light.
This sympathizing love of the Good Shepherd who goes
after the lost sheep until He finds it; this gracious moving
of the Spirit of God upon the spirit of our apostate race,
has always been felt, and in some way has always been
acknowledged. The human spirit, though debased by
moral poison, responds by a constant longing after a good
other than earth, after a well-being higher, more perma
nent than the pleasures of sin. Amid the terrible revela
tions of the 'wrath of God against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who hold down the truth in
unrighteousness,'2 God's grace also has beeii ' revealing
itself in various ways to the eye of the mind. Grace has
even been revealing itself in and with the consciousness
of sin by maintaining the self-contradictory habit of the
soul. Whilst living in sin, even delighting in sin, the
conscience of the sinner maintains the authority of right,
and persists by an irrepressible struggle against sin as the
most terrible evil. No less really does divine grace reveal
itself in the universal effort of mankind to surmount all
existing contradictions and rise into the peace of a trans
cendent realm.
3. The universal yearning of our race after deliverance
from moral evil and reconciliation with God, is on the side
of man the basis and the aptitude for the advent of the
' Bengel. John i. 4, 9. Cf. Col. i. 28. 2 Rom. i. 18.

1 82 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
Mediator. Human personality by virtue of its original
kinship with God calls for the communication of divine
life in His Sou ; but human personality poisoned and par
alyzed by the fall calls for a Mediator who in imparting
divine life by becoming man is also able and willing to
save men from the dominion and guilt of sin.1 The
advent of Jesus Christ, especially His advent in humilia
tion and in suffering, is God',s answer to the necessities of
man's misery.
The sent one of God, Christ comes as the revelation of
eternal love to a fallen world. He not only accomplishes
the purpose of divine sovereignty, but he also satisfies the
sympathy and compassion of God. God so loved our
apostate race that He gave His only begotten Son.2
No less really does Christ come to satisfy all human
needs, especially the needs growing out of the prevalence
of sin and the dominion of Satan. Whosoever believeth
on the Christ shall not perish, but have eternal life. In
revealing the divine compassion He becomes the Saviour
of sinners; in coming to save sinners from the condem
nation of sin He fulfils eternal love in the character of
mercy and grace.
' Matt. i. 21 ; Jno. iii. 17.
2 Rom. viii. 32. Jno. iii. 16.

1 226.] The Advent. 183
§ 226.
The twofold attitude of fallen man — his inborn apti
tude for communion with God, and his profound yearn
ing after reconciliation — is the natural basis of the pre-
Christian economy of grace, founded by the Abrahamic
covenant. A supernatural manifestation of God rooted in the
primeval promise and an act of sovereign grace, this
economy was no less a direct response from the bosom
of Jehovah to the instinctive longings and the intense
cries of distress that went forth from the heart of man
kind. 1. Though but ' a shadow of the good things to come,'
the covenant, developed into the ceremonial institutions
of Moses, was nevertheless really an advent.1 It was a new
order of Jehovah's approach and communion with His
chosen people; new in distinction from that universal form
of divine approach and divine communion with the Adamic
race which has its ground in the essential connection of
the race with God. For "religion," as Fairbairn remarks,
"can be as little without the action of God as without the
'Riehm says: "Moses schuf die Institutionen, oidnete den Kultus
u. s. w. wobei gewisz manches schon Bestehende und Hergebrachte nur
mngebildet worden ist. * * Die neueste Pentateuchkritik wird zwar
nichtmude zu versichern, dasz die Kultusordnungen, wie sie im Gesetz
beschrieben sind, nicht auf Moses zuriickgehen. * * Aber auch Reusz
(die Geschichte d. hi. Schriften des. A. T. 1881, S. 80 ff,) erkennt diese
Vorstellung als eine ungeschichtliche. Er giebt zu, dasz dem Moses
zweifelsohne die Regel und Ordnung des Gottesdienstes, wie sie nach-
mals in Israel bestand, wenigstens ihren Grundziigen nach angehort (S.
80). * * Man konne sich eben im semitischen Altertum keine Relig
ion ohne Kultus denken. Selbst eine Fortiiberlieferung der Kultus-
gebrauche im Stamme Levi ist er geneigt einzuraumen." — Alttestament-
liche Theologie, D. Eduard Riehm, p. 55. Cf. Heb. ix. 9, 11.

184 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
action of man." ' This preveuient advent, being prepara
tory and therefore temporary, partook in its measure of the
objective character of the final advent of God in the per
son of Jesus Christ. Hence it was typical and prophetic,
but chiefly pedagogical.
The institutions of the Old Testament were typical, not
because of the external resemblances between the ' cere
monies of the law ' and events in the mediatorship of
Christ, but inasmuch as these institutions grew out of and
were imbued with the genius of the Messiaiiic idea. Pro
phetic they were because they stood for the gracious pur
pose of God concerning the redemption of the world; and
pedagogical, because the fellowship of Jehovah with His
people in the Spirit was a training-school which looked
forward to the complete fulfilment of the primeval promise.
"Before the faith came," says Paul, "we were kept in
ward under the law, shut up unto the faith which should
afterwards be revealed. So that the law hath been our
tutor to bring us unto Christ, that we might be justified
by faith. But now that faith is come, we are no longer
under a tutor. " J
2. As a tutor, a pedagogic institution, the law in its re
lation to the elect nation performs a twofold office: —
In the first place, the law cultivated the knowledge of
sin. Says Paul: "The law came in that the trespass might
abound. ' ' Again : ' ' The law was added because of trans
gressions, till the Seed should come to whom the promise
hath been made." "For I had not known sin except
through the law."8 By cultivating the knowledge of sin
the law quickened and purified the sense of guilt. As the
1 Christ in Modern Theology, p 495. < 2 Gal. iii 23, 24.
3 Rom. v. 20 ; vii. 7 ; Gal. iii. 19.

g226.] The Advent. 185
counterpart of the knowledge of sin and the sense of guilt,
the law cultivated the sense of the necessity of propitiation,
and to a degree developed its idea. As a consequence the
law nourished and elevated the natural desire for redemp
tion. This function of the law may be called the negative
work of the pedagogic economy.
Secondly, the law developed and realized the fellowship
of the covenant between Jehovah and the posterity of
Abraham. Taught and disciplined by this communion,
the social and moral life of the people moved upon a
higher plane. Especially was their religious life gradually
transformed. It was fashioned after a new and specific
type, in consequence of which the chosen nation became a
'peculiar people."
Moreover, the law prefigured the person and office of the
promised One. ' ' For all the prophets and the law proph
esied until John."2 Says Schaff: "Only 'prophesied.'
'The law' is also a prophecy, even its ceremonies point to
Christ." P«efiguring the Seed of the woman the law cul
tivated a new faith and a new hope; a faith in the love of
God toward man which was purer, and a conception re
specting the moral character of God which was nobler
than the beliefs prevalent among all other nations. This
faith generated hope; and hope laid hold of a certain future
event, the coming of an almighty Deliverer as the direct
gift of God.3 The ennobling fellowship of Messianic faith
and the inspiring prospect of hope constitute what we may
call the positive function of the tutorship of the law.
1 Deut. xiy. 2 ; xxvi. 18 ; i Peter ii. 9.
2 Matt. xi. 13. s Deut. xviii. 15, 18.

1 86 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
§ 227.
In the life of the covenant people molded under the
training of the law and the prophets we may therefore
recognize a necessity for the advent of the Messiah
which is peculiar.
The fellowship cultivated by the Abrahamic cove
nant includes three factors ; or we may say this fel
lowship was a spiritual energy which resulted from the
operation of three factors: the original connection be
tween God and man, the abnormal condition of sin,
and the new gracious communion of the covenant.
1. The primary factor is the original connection between
God and man, man and God, constituted by the creation
of man in the divine image. Among writers of oiir age
Principal Fairbairn is prominent among the few who put
emphasis on this profound principle. "Religion," he de
clares, "is but the symbol of the kindred natures and
correlated energies of God and man. It means that each
nature seeks the other, is capable of finding ^t, and is sus
ceptible to its touch."1 These reciprocal activities, char
acterizing the human race in distinction from all sub
human kingdoms, are active in the covenant people as in
all other nations. Divine kinship is the foundation of
whatever is distinctive iii the calling, the history and
character of the chosen nation. The fall by transgression
and the virulent poison of sin have neither destroyed the
essential kinship of man with God, nor cut asunder the
living bond of communion.
2. The secondary factor of the history of the covenant
people is the abnormal relation between man and God,
the divine attitude toward mankind and the human atti-
1 Christ in Modern Theology, p. 493.

g227.] The Advent. 187
tude toward God which the fall by transgression has intro
duced; a contra-ideal attitude which contravenes the law
and the purpose of creation. There is a natural conscious
ness of moral evil, including the sense of personal guilt
and the sense of divine displeasure. In this abnormal
relation there is active also the sympathy of God, a mu
tual sympathy which includes both God's tender compas
sion toward man in his misery, and the cry of anguish
ascending to Him from the depths of the human heart.
These spiritual forces wrought- in the history of the
covenant people with full legitimate effect. The sym
pathy of God with the race in its false moral condition, a
sympathy not understood but felt by the race, was the
basis and occasion of the entire sacrificial and sacerdotal
system of the pedagogic economy. Without this basis
the priesthood, the sacrifices and the Old Testamant ritual
would have had 110 meaning. Only as the consciousness
of sin developed and the sense of guilt became more and
more distinct did the observance of the ceremonies of the
law become a positive preparation for the advent of the
Redeemer. 3. These two factors, the original connection between
God and man and the alienation brought about by disobe
dience, become by their interaction a relative necessity for
the advent. The positive original connection is the de
mand for a higher divine self-manifestation, and the
prophecy of it. The abnormal condition, the alienation
of sin, is the necessity of divine redemption. Opposite
forces, active in organic union, become the necessity of
divine self-manifestation in the character of redemption,
and of redemption according to the law .of divine self-
manifestation. This twofold relative necessity, however,

1 88 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
could not of itself issue in the actual coming of the Christ,
unless complemented by a different spiritual force.
The complemental spiritual factor may be called the
gracious fellowship between Jehovah and the elect nation.
It is that kind of supernatural manifestation, that positive
communion of Jehovah with His people, which distin
guishes the Promise and distinguishes the covenant
founded in Abraham. In this concrete fellowship of
grace the two prevenient factors, the original communion
between God and man and man's false moral character
brought about by sin, produce by interaction their bitter
fruit, and at the same time are resolved into supreme
blessing. Illustrated by the fifty-first Psalm.
On the one side, the prevenient factors condition the
possibility of the ceremonial law established by the peda
gogic economy. If we think of it apart from either the
alienation produced by sin or the continuous force of the
original fellowship, the Abrahamic covenant becomes an
arbitrary arrangement, and the positive institutions of the
Old Testament Church assume a fantastic character.
On the other side, we have to lay stress on the comple
mental truth that the gracious communion actualized in
the pedagogic economy conditions the legitimate efficacy
and the positive issue of the prevenient factors. Neither
the force of the original connection between God and man
prevalent in the Adamic race, nor the sympathies of God
with the miseries of the race yearning after deliverance, —
neither by itself nor both by their co-working could de
velop an adequate redemption, nor could have become the
fit condition of the birth of the Christ.
The Messianic economy vitally connected with these
two universal factors takes up their truth into itself, re-

§228.] The Advent. 189
solving them into a new and higher character. Appropri
ated by the Messianic principle, their virtue is both modi
fied and transformed. In the covenant of grace developed
and matured among the chosen people, the original fellow
ship between God and man becomes the foundation of the
incarnate Son; the false moral condition of the race and
its yearning after deliverance become repentance toward
God; and divine sympathy with human misery becomes
saving grace. §228.
By virtue of the covenant, appropriating and re
solving the prevenient universal factors, the Hebrews
become a unique people. Blest with a positive Mes
sianic revelation, which distinguishes them from all
nations, they are the organ of the religious life of the
world, not of the Shemitic race only but of all races,
the organ of all antecedent and contemporaneous
divine revelation and of all the aspirations of the
Adamic race after God, the organ of every form of
divine compassion and of the world-wide cry of human
misery. 1. What the house of Aaron was to the tribe of Levi,
what the tribe of Levi was for the twelve tribes, that the
seed of Abraham, his posterity in its collective capacity, is
for all nations. Representing and realizing in their his
tory, on the one hand, the sympathy and the displeasure
of God with the Adamic race, and on the other both the
original kinship of man with God and man's sinfulness,
the Abrahamic people are a high-priestly nation, mediat
ing by their corporate history between heaven and earth,
between the divine realm and the world. In fulfiling this
extraordinary calling, the seed of Abraham, an elect na
tion, becomes an holy people unto the Lord their God,

190 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
chosen to. be a peculiar people unto Himself, raised high
above all nations for a praise, and for a name, and for an
honor.1 These advent factors of pre-Christian history the chosen
people develop into ripe fruitage. They develop them on
their human side.
The high -priestly nation is the beating heart of man
kind universally. Here among the representative men
and women the consciousness of guilt becomes the most
distinct, here the sense of spiritual poverty the most in
tense. Here the holiest and most acceptable prayers for
deliverance from sin ascend to the throne of Jehovah.
Here, moreover, the original kinship of man with God
is active in its best form of expression. The latent ca
pacity for divine communion and for redemption common
to all nations is among this people drawn out, cultivated,
disciplined and advanced to a high degree of vigor.
Hippolytus puts the question: "Who is meant by Israel
but a man who sees God?" 2 In process of time the moral
and spiritual condition of the Jews as represented by the
'remnant,' becomes the requisite positive fitness for the
advent of the Messiah.3
1 Deut. xiv. 2 ; xxvi. 19. Dr. Strong, like many other theologians,
teaches that "the education of the Jews was first of all an education by
law." (Systematic Theology, p. 359.I Do the facts of Old Testament
history sustain this proposition? Did not the election and call of Abra
ham precede the obligation of circumcision? Did not the deliverance
of Israel from the bondage of Egypt, accompanied by many miraculous
interpositions of grace, precede the giving of the Ten Commandments
from Sinai? Does not Paul insist that the' Promise is older than the
Law?— Gal. iii. 15-22.
2 So Philo explains the word Israel, as a man seeing God, 6pav Be6v. Cf.
Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Tripho, ch. 58. Gen. xxxii. 22-32.
3 Isaiah x. 21 ; Rom. ix. 27.

?228.] The Advent. 191
Among the chosen people these factors are likewise de
veloped on their divine side. Inasmuch as the activity of
God towards mankind in its twofold character, that is, in
the form of displeasure with sin and especially in the form
of sympathy and blessing, becomes in Abraham and his
seed the covenant of the primeval promise, the high-
priestly nation actualizes in its theocratic organization and
history the positive process of Messianic revelation and
from age to age unfolds this revelation in greater measure
of clearness. Godet says that the Jews, in distinction from
the Samaritans, " have developed themselves in constant
contact with the divine manifestations; they have re
mained in the school of the God of revelation, and in this
living relation they have preserved the principle of a true
knowledge." Of the central truth of all history, the
' Seed ' of the woman, and'' of the divine purpose to
' bruise ' the head of the serpent, this nation is the bearer
and therefore the herald and prophet.
It is not enough to say that the Old Testament economy
is a divinely instituted prefiguration of the Messiah. This
economy is also, conformably to the measure of its capacity,
filled with the presence of the coming personal Word, and
is positively active in bringing about the realization of the
event which it prefigures. Nor is this statement adequate.
The representative 'remnant' becomes the womb in which
by the Holy Spirit the new world is conceived. To change
the figure, it may be said that the faithful Jew is the bud
on the Messianic vine that blossoms into the ultimate fact
of the advent. Said our Lord : Salvation is from the Jews.1
2. There is this great difference between the relation
which the Adamic race in general bears to the coming of
1 John iv. 22.

192 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
the Christ and the relation of the covenant people to this
central event. Among the outlying nations the original
communion of God with man. and God's displeasure with
sin, served to develop and ripen a twofold attitude: a
profound sense of spiritual need, and a degree of posi
tive susceptibility of Christianity. But divine activity in
this twofold character among pagan nations does not issue
in the Christ. There is no real outcome that supplies
the profound need and fills the spiritual susceptibility.
Divine presence produces philosophers and poets, moral
reformers and great teachers of religion, like Gautama and
Confucius, like Zoroaster, Numa, Homer, Socrates and
Plato, Pindar and ^Bschylus, but the divine presence pro
duces no personal Redeemer. The divine process of pagan
history and the ethico-religious struggles of heart and mind
issue only in a well-defined but an impotent shadow.
Among the covenant people the same sense of ethico-
religious need and the same spiritual susceptibility are
developed, developed in purer form and in higher meas
ure; but this proposition expresses only a difference in
degree. There is besides a wide difference in kind. The
divine presence in the communion of the covenant be
gets the personal Truth. In fulfilment of prophecy God
through this people actually raises up unto them a Prophet
from the midst of them who turns their hopes into frui
tion, satisfies the universal need of the world, and fills
the universal spiritual susceptibility.1 Adapted to all the
needs of all races and of all nations, the Messiah is the
Seed of the woman, the Seed of Abraham, the Prophet like
unto Moses, the Son of David, who comes in the person of
the Son of the Virgin' Mary. 1 Deut. xviii. 15.

g2«9] Birth of Jesus Christ. 193
CHAPTER II.
BIRTH OF JESUS CHRIST.
§ 229-
From inquiry into the antecedent history of the ad
vent it follows that the conception and birth of Jesus was
not an abrupt event, not a miracle wrought by the magical
exercise of divine omnipotence.
A miracle indeed the conception and birth of Jesus was,
in one view the miracle of all miracles; for in that birth
God became man, a birth attributable not solely to natural
law and human conditions, but to an act done in the do
main of nature, pf time and space, by the direct agency of
the transcendent Godhead. Yet though referable to ex
traordinary divine agency, the mystery was not enacted
magically. Under another view, the event may be said
to have been the legitimate outcome of history, the result
of natural and human forces, developed, disciplined and
ripened by the covenant in the life- of the chosen nation;
not the result of human powers moving on the plane of
'the natural man,' nor yet merely of human life purified
and ennobled by the sanctifying virtue of pre-Christian
revelation. The event was the result of a concrete his
torical necessity, a necessity on the one hand referable to
God as the Author of the world and of man ; on the other
hand, the result of a necessity present and active in the
constitution and history of the Adamic race as lifted up,
molded and ennobled by the supernatural communion of
Jehovah with man in the elect nation. Undoubtedly an
13

194 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Boqk6.
event due to supernatural agency, the conception of Jesus
is, however, just as certainly a natural mystery. It was
the legitimate issue of spiritual . laws and forces silently
working for ages in the bosom of the Adamic race as indi
vidualized in the posterity of Abraham and nurtured by
the covenant.
Two opposite tendencies of doctrinal thought, the Ebio-
nitic and the Docetic, meet us at the threshold of Christ-
ology. If we deny the supernatural and transcendent
factor in the conception of Jesus, we are logically forced to
deny the fundamental article of the Christian Creed, the
incarnation of God in the person of His Son. There can
be no proper incarnation, for the reason that the real pres
ence, the real inneshment, of the personal Word is ex
cluded. The birth of Jesus as to its nature, could be no
more than an extraordinary human event.
Error may also arise on the other side. If we ignore or
fail to accentuate the legitimate agency of the natural fac
tor, logical thought will just as certainly compel a denial
of the incarnation. A denial will issue for the reason that
if doctrinal thought sets aside normal historical agencies
there can be no assumption of humanity in a real way into
union with God, in a way answerable to the laws of
human life. To escape the notion of a Gnostic Redeemer
we have to emphasize the reality of formative forces active
in the bosom of humanity as decidedly as we emphasize a
miraculous agency of God.

g23o.] Birth of Jesus Christ. 195
§ 230.
Of the Abrahamic covenant, of the divine-human
process in the history of the chosen nation, two per
sons stand out prominently as its last result and its
best exponents: John the Baptist and the Virgin Mary.
In them the old world reaches its relative conclusion.
Being the conclusion of Old Testament history, the
Baptist and the Virgin, each in a distinct line of Mes
sianic forces, condition the beginning of the new world.
The Virgin Mary represents and actualizes the
threefold attitude and vocation of the chosen nation:
the essential connection of our race with God; the
righteous love of God active both in the form of mercy
and of displeasure ; and the central and distinguishing
principle of the Abrahamic covenant.
, 1. John the Baptist was the great prophet of the Old
Testament; a greater than he had not arisen. Says our
Lord: "Verily I say unto you, among them that are born
of women there hath not arisen a greater than John the
Baptist: yet he that is but little in the kingdom of heaven
is greater than he."1 The Baptist stands for the divine
factor of the old world in its relation to the human factor.
Therefore he was ' filled for his life-work with the Holy
Spirit, from the moment life woke within him,' and he
becomes the organ, the final organ of pre-Christian revela
tion and authority.2 John invests Jesus with the office of
¦ ' Matt. xi. ir. "As far as John excels every one, even the greatest of
the ancient prophets, so far is John himself excelled by every one, even
the least, in the kingdom of heaven, whether a preacher of Christ or a
citizen." — Bengel. Neander says that "this verse shows strikingly the
vast distance between the Old Testament and the New; and answers
those who expect to find in the former the truth revealed in Christ."
2 Li/e and Times of the Messiah, by Edersheim, I. p. 139.

196 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
the Christ. In this act he fulfils the purpose of the cove
nant and of all antecedent history.
The Virgin Mary was among women the ultimate pro
duct of the covenant, her personal life and character
answering most perfectly to its intention. She represents
the final outcome of the human forces of Old Testament
history in response and subordination to the divine forces.
Sanctified and ennobled by the grace of the covenant, she
becomes the organ of the Abrahamic nation, of humanity
morally and spiritually elevated. In the culminating crisis
of Jewish history Mary conditions the human nature and
the personal existence of the Mediator.
2. The essential connection of our race with God,
though disturbed and perverted by sin, conditions the
natural susceptibility and moral capacity of human nature
to receive Messianic revelation. The mysterious power
of this original fellowship between God and man, active
throughout the entire history of the elect people, wrought
in her nature and personality; and it wrought with such a
measure of energy and purity that the Virgin was by her
nature fitted to become under divine action the second
Eve, the mother of the Second Man.
The Gospels give us but little information respecting
the personal history of Mary; but the few hints of Mat
thew and Luke are very significant, constraining us to
assume that she had inherited the best moral and spiritual
endowments of her nation. Sound Christian reason shuts
us up to the same assumption. We cannot do otherwise
than presume that in her womanly nature there was the
basis and possibility of extraordinary elevation of spiritual
character. To adopt the words of 'Olshausen:
"The appearance of the Messiah among, mankind presupposes condi-

g'230.] Birth of Jesus Christ. 197
tions and preparations; and these not merely negative, inasmuch as their
need of salvation had to be awakened in the minds of men, but positive,
in so far as the Messiah, the bloom and flower of humanity, must stand
in relation to the root from which He sprang. We must look upon the
incarnation of Christ as a fact, for which preparation was made by a vein
of nobler life flowing through the whole line of our Lord's ancestors.
The virgin chosen to be the mother of the Messiah could not spring sud
denly from the bosom of a sinful, race. Although not without sin, she
was the purest of the race."'
3. Mary represents the action of God's love in the his
tory of the chosen nation under its twofold form, sympathy
and displeasure.
Jehovah's presence wrought in the experience of the
nation under the form of goodness and mercy. His elec
tion of love, His compassionate kindness and tender care
awakened confidence and hope. By a course of sympa
thetic training, running through a series of ages, the na
tion gradually learned to honor Jehovah as a Father and
to honor itself as Jehovah's beloved son.
Grace at the same time was active in the form of dis
pleasure with sin, purifying and intensifying the sense of
guilt. Because the adopted son .of Jehovah, the nation
became the consecrated subject of penal justice. ' For
whom the Lord loveth he chasteneth. ' * Among this peo
ple the knowledge of sin was developed and the sense of
divine displeasure with transgressors experienced under a
character peculiar to them. The knowledge and experi
ence of the elect nation differ in this regard both in
degree and in kind from the knowledge and experience of
all contemporaneous nations. The evidence lies before us
'Quoted by the Rev. Henry Harbaugh, D. D., True Glory of Woman,
p. 201.
2 Hebrews xii. 6 ; Pro v. iii. 12.

198 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
in the books of the Old Testament, compared with the
sacred writings of the entire pagan world.
The distinguishing experience of the nation in its rela
tion to Jehovah alienated by transgression, culminated in
a small circle of representative Jews to which the Virgin
belongs. Although among the holiest of Jewish maidens,
she felt in the depths of her' spirit the evils of sin, the
manifold sufferings of her people, and the need of a divine
salvation; and her soul, feeling "the low estate of the
handmaiden" of the Lord, thirsted after redemption with
strongest desires. Mary did thus experience her 'low
estate;' she did thus yearn after divine favor inasmuch as
she was the chosen subject of Jehovah's prevenient grace.
He had looked upon her low estate. She was 'hungry'
and He had filled her spirit 'with good things.' Magni
fying the Lord she exclaims: "He that is mighty hath
done to me great things." J
The compassion of Jehovah towards sinners suffering
the miseries of transgression, operative in her nation, her
tribe, her family, reached its end and accomplished its
final purpose in this Virgin 'of low degree.' Being the
lowly one, feeling her 'low estate,' she found favor with
God; Elizabeth filled with the Holy Ghost pronounced her
blessed among women; and rejoicing in God her Saviour
Mary responds: "From henceforth all generations shall
call me blessed."
4. Mary realizes the virtue of the central and chief dis
tinguishing principle of the covenant, the Edenic promise.
The pattern woman, the pattern praying penitent of her
age, she represents the genuine type of womanhood and
actualizes an exemplary religious life, because by the
1 Luke i. 46-SS-

1 230.] Birth of Jesus Christ. 199
gracious fellowship of Jehovah with His people she had
become the pattern Jewess, the best exponent among
women of the unique genius of the covenant. The belief
and the hope which animated the national life attained
their climax in the 'remnant,' the small circle of faithful
expectant Jews of which Mary was an exemplar.
Like Hannah and Elizabeth, among the noblest daugh
ters of Abraham, Mary possessed to a high degree, perhaps
we may say to the highest degree, those peculiar qualities
of moral and religious life which characterize the super
natural communion of the covenant people. It has indeed
to be conceded that her opinions and Messianic hopes were
in some measure colored by prevailing errors respecting
the kingdom of the Messiah. The contrary assumption
would be arbitrary. But Mary certainly belongs to that
comparatively small number who, like Anna and Simeon,
were looking for the consolation of Israel and worshipped
God with fasting and supplications night and day. And
although her spiritual insight may not have been as clear
. and profound as was the insight of Simeon, nevertheless
the account of her faith and character as given by Mat
thew and Luke justifies us in maintaining that among this
most spiritual class of expectant Jews the Virgin stood
preeminent.1 Yet it is deserving of notice that, as Pearson
remarks, " Christ who commended the faith of the centu
rion, the love of Mary Magdalene, the excellences of John
the Baptist, hath left not the least encomium of His
mother."2 1 Luke ii. 33. 2 Pearson on the Creed, p. 259.

2GO Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
§ 231.
The threefold reciprocal relation between God and
man, as these relations were actualized in the covenant
people, so developed and fashioned the national life
as at length, when the fulness of the time came, to
beget a 'highly favored' one, who as regards her indi
viduality, her personal character, especially her religious
devotion, was capable of meeting the extraordinary
demand of the impending juncture in the history of the
world. 1. Contemplate the womanly ideal set before us by
Matthew and Luke. Free submission to the divine will,
receptivity of heart of immediate fellowship with God,
above all the positive ethical capability of being over^
shadowed by the power of the Most High, — theSe extra
ordinary qualities were united in the elect Virgin as they
were not in any other woman. Hence the propriety Pf
the salutation of the angel who "came in unto her, and
said, Hail, thou that art highly favored, the Lord is with
thee."1 The positive fitness of Mary to receive this salutation
from heaven appears in the traits of spiritual character
which the interview of the angel brings to light. The
revelation of her inner life reaches its acme in her lofty
but humble response with which the wonderful interview
closes: "Behold, the handmaiden of the Lord; be it unto
me according to thy word. ' ' 2
1 Luke i. 28.
2 Commenting on Lk. 1^38 Godet says: "God's message by the mouth
of the angel was not a command. The part Mary had to fulfil made no
demands on her. It only remained, therefore, for Mary to consent to the
consequences of the divine offer. She gives this consent in a word at

g 232.] Birth of Jesus Christ. 201
2. Childlike simplicity is united -With divine faith, holy
self-surrender with womanly innocence, virgin purity with
an obedient will. We detect a consciousness of spotless
chastity, but 110 maiden prudery; a perception of the won
derful in the annunciation, but no ecstatic excitement; a
sense of the extraordinary dignity of her vocation, but no
proud elation; a deep joy, but no self-forgetfulness ; an
unwonted silence, but no fear; a becoming thoughtfulness,
but no unbelief or doubt. The providence of God had in
the process and through the conflicts of Messianic history
formed a woman who by her moral and spiritual elevation
was capable of becoming the mother of the ideal Man.
§ 232.
Jesus, the Son of Man, was conceived and born ac
cording to the normal natural laws of human genera
tion, but by supernatural agency.
According to the evangelical record the angel said
to Mary: Behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb and
bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. When
Mary said: How shall this be, seeing I know not a
man? the angel answered: The Holy Ghost shall come
upon thee, and the power of the Most High shall over*
once simple and sublime, which involved the most extraordinary act of
faith that a woman ever consented to accomplish. Mary accepts the
sacrifice of that which is dearer to a young maiden than her very life,
and thereby becomes preeminently the heroine of Israel, the ideal
daughter of Zion, the perfect type of human reciptivity in regard to the
divine work. We see here what exquisite fruits the lengthened work of
the Holy Spirit under the old covenant had produced in true Israelites.
The word l6oh, behold, does not here express surprise, but rather the offer
of her entire being. Just as Abraham, when he answers God with,
"Behold, here I am' (Gen. xxlL, Behold, I), Mary places herself at
God's disposal."

202 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book6.
shadow thee: wherefore also the holy thing which is to
be born shall be called the Son of God.1
Therefore the Christian Creed affirms: Conceived by
the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, a develop
ment of the more ancient formula: " Qui natus est de
Spiritu Sancto ex Maria Virgine."
i. Two factors of humaii life are inwrought organically
in the generation of an individual, the masculine and the
feminine. So on the plane of the new creation we recog
nize the mysterious interaction of two opposite princi
ples. The conception and birth of Jesus presuppose the
union of the human and the Divine.
The feminine principle is the plastic condition. A
mother conceives and bears her child. The masculine
principle is the active condition. A father begets his
child. The conditions are correlated. The plastic func
tion of the mother qualifies the begetting function of the
father; the begetting function of the father qualifies the
plastic capacity of the mother. Humanity multiplies its
members by self-reproduction in new individuals, a repro
duction of which marriage is the law. Neither father
nor mother is the author of the child. The tree of
human life yields blossoms and fruit of divine immanence.
The author of every personal being is God working in and
through the human constitution. " My Father worketh
even until now."2 He is the creative energy who is
active conformably to the type and intrinsic possibilities
of the race ; the correlation of sex being the sine qua non
of the beginning of an individual. But in the instant of
this beginning there is a mysterious communication to the
embryo of the type of the nation, of the genius of the
1 Luke i. 30-35. * John v. 17.

\ 232.] Birth of Jesus Christ. 203
family, and of peculiar qualities of both father and mother.
The child is the concrete unity of these polar conditions,
representing two individualities, two families, and it may
be two nations or two races, in a new personal being.
2. In the miraculous conception of Jesus the human
condition and the divine factor sustain to each other a
similar polar relation. The receptivity of Mary, viewed
as the legitimate result of the divine manifestations and
the discipline of the covenant, and of the nation's his
torical development, was unique, her unique receptivity
including all the properties of her womanly nature and
of her personality. It embraced indeed her physical and
psychic being, but especially her ethical and spiritual life.
The wholeness of her constitution was receptive and form
ative. This receptivity conditions the possibility of divine
approach and the new creating virtue of divine agency;
whilst the overshadowing of the Most High conditions
the normal natural action of human motherhood.
The human condition and the divine condition being
thus reciprocally related, there was in the moment of the
conception of Jesus a twofold positive quickening of His
constitution: the beginning, as in ordinary conception, of
the reality and totality of manhood; the beginning as does
not take place in ordinary conception, of the being and
fulness of Godhood; the beginning of each principle pre
supposing in organic union with it the beginning of the
other. Says Barrow: "The eternal Son of God had a
production agreeable to the nature of man, and became
thereby truly and entirely man. * * He which before,
from all eternity, did subsist in the form or nature of God,
did by a temporal generation truly become man."1 We
1 Barrow on The Creed, Conception by the Holy Spirit, I., p. 418.

204 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
may not affirm a transfer of manhood to the divine prin
ciple, nor yet a transfer of divine properties to the human
principle; but we affirm a twofold beginning in time, the
one fulfilling the law of human generation, the other ful
filling the law of divine creation ; the one after the manner
of human motherhood, the other after the manner of
divine fatherhood. The words of Pearson may be aptly
quoted :
" As the Holy Ghost did not frame the human nature of Christ out of
His own substance ; so must we not believe that he formed any part of
His flesh of any other substance than of the Virgin. For certainly He
was of the fathers according to the flesh, and was as to that truly and
totally the son of David and Abraham." '
Generation and creation are one in a holy mystery by
virtue of which there was constituted in the womb of the
Virgin the dynamic beginning of a unique personality, a
divine-human embryo, the reality of which was on the
one hand the legitimate product of the normal operation
of the hidden forces of humanity, and on the other was the
free self-communication of God's essential nature in the
person of His only begotten Son.
3. Human nature in the person of Mary suffers no vio
lence from the extraordinary agency of the Holy Spirit,
for human nature as elevated and endowed in her indi
viduality is fitted for this extraordinary epoch. The
hidden plastic forces of human life are operative in the
form of the maternal principle, the normal law of ma
ternity being neither suspended nor contravened. But the
ordinary- masculine condition, the fatherhood of man, is
superseded by the overshadowing of the Most High. It is
Mary who conceives. Said the angel: Thou shalt con-
1 Pearson on The Creed, p. 253.

\ 233.] Birth of Jesus Christ. 205
ceive in thy womb. The conception of Jesus is the natu
ral act of her womanly powers in their virgin purity and
vigor. But this natural act presupposes the supernatural
presence. Said the angel: The Holy Ghost shall come
upon thee. §233-
The possibility of this conception by the Holy Spirit,
of the beginning of a divine-human personality agree
ably to natural law, stands in the original kinship be
tween the being of man and the being of God, of this
kinship cultivated, disciplined and trained to the highest
point of capacity by the Abrahamic covenant in the
person of a Virgin who among women is its final pro
duct. 1. There is in the divine imageship of man a capacity
for communion with the Godhead which was never met,
never satisfied, either by any event in his abnormal his
tory or by any act of God in his Edeuic state, a suscepti
bility not only of divine influences but also of divine
fellowship; a capability not only of receiving divine man
ifestations but also of participation in the nature of God
by organic union with God. This unique capacity is not
merely negative, not only a want that is to be supplied by
divine blessing ; the capacity is also positive, an endow
ment belonging to the original godlikeness of mankind,
an intrinsic power of responding freely to such divine
approach, such supernatural quickening as is presupposed
by the overshadowing of Mary by the Most High. Until
by the coming forth of the Son from the bosom of the
Father, until by the Word becoming flesh this unique
capacity is met, it manifests its vitality in ceaseless unrest
and perpetual yearning after the Divine; but its infinite

206 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
strength is latent and its prophetic significance is hidden.
The fact of that conception itself by which God in the
person of His Soil became man, nothing less than this
divine-human reality, reveals the depth, the might, the
teleology of the god-like principle which generates the
religious sentiments and religious activities of the race.
The human aptitude for God and the divine overshad
owing of the Most High condition each other intrinsically,
mutually. Without the overshadowing of the Virgin by
the Most High the spiritual phenomena of mankind would
be unmeaning, even self-contradictory. There would be
no outcome, no consummation answering to the intense
dissatisfaction and the convulsive spiritual throes of his
tory. On the other hand, if there were no positive apti
tude in the ' highly favored ' Virgin for the supernatural
mystery, the notion of a conception of Jesus by the over
shadowing of the Most High would be magical and fan
tastic. The possibility of this unique conception and birth is
demonstrated by the historical fact of a child, a youth, a
man, a prophet, a priest, a king whose life and history are
unique. Of the possibility of such a man being born amid the
darkness of Africa, or born of a woman like Cleopatra or
Lucretia or Jezebel or even like Miriam, we cannot with
any logical propriety begin to think.
2. A remote analogy to the conception of Jesus may be
seen in the connection which divine presence bears to
natural generation. The conception and birth of every
child is a profound mystery. There is an infinitude of
life in the race, the possibility of manifold classes and an
endless number of widely differentiated individual ities

g 233.] Birth of Jesus Christ. 207
ever appearing on the plane of history, for which neither
science nor philosophy can account but by recognizing
the originative and quickening agency of God; yet the
quickening agency of God works according to the law of
generation, founded on sexual difference. Every child,
though the bearer of the nature and qualities of the race,
physical and moral, is a new personality, who stands for
himself alone no less than for his race.. Though the
overshadowing of the Virgin by the Most High differs
both in degree and in quality from the originative presence
of the Creator in the beginning of every human embryo,
yet ordinary conception is analogous to the unique con
ception, inasmuch as the unique presupposes the ordinary,
and the ordinary, no less 'really than the unique concep
tion, presupposes the conjunction and formative forces of
the divine factor and the human factors. In this respect
the conception and birth of every child is a type of the
conception and birth of Jesus.
A better analogy may be discovered in the creation
of Adam. Presupposing all lower kingdoms, coming forth
apparently as the final fruit of the development of the
world from below upward, the first man nevertheless did
not become a personal reality in consequence of mechanic
and organic evolution. The world-process of the ages
develops but the universal fitness, a universal demand for
its complement. Another kind of action is essential, not
only a further process upward from the animal to some
thing higher, but a spiritual quickening, an act of impar-
tation from heaven, the realm of absolute Spirit. The
language of Genesis ii. 7 is philosophical, being the ex
pression of a metaphysical necessity. Into the constitu
tion internally connected with the world-process whose

208 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
roots reach back into chaos, God breathes, and by this
consummating act man becomes; he becomes a living soul
sharing kinship with the life of God. Adam is 'a figure
of Him that was to come. ' x
But all analogies fall short of their purpose. The
inception of the incarnate Son stands alone. A good
analogy shows only that there is no contradiction between
the first man and the Second Man, that the first creation
is the basis of the new creation, and that as the first man
transcends the highest animal so the Second Man tran
scends the first, in the beginning of liis history as really
as in its progress and at its consummation.
§ 234.
The function of the divine factor, the overshadowing
of the Virgin by the Most High, is twofold. The man
Jesus is conceived, and the conception of Jesus is the
beginning of the incarnate One.
This conception has a twofold distinction, a distinc
tion from ordinary conception in relation to moral evil
and in relation to God. As related to moral evil the
conception was normal, and therefore sinless; as re
lated to God; the conception of Jesus, the incarnate
One, was the quickening in embryo of eternal life.
1. Mary conceived Jesus by the Holy Spirit. The em
bryo is the inception of a proper human child. Whilst
' that which is begotten in her is of the Holy Spirit,' 2 she
nevertheless conceives according to the order and law of
motherhood. To her child Mary imparts organically the
same human constitution which she possesses and of
which she is the organ. The child partakes of the uni-
' Rom. v. 14. * Matt, i 20.

1 234.] Birth of Jesus Christ. 209
versal life of the race as this life was spiritually elevated
by the discipline of the Abrahamic covenant and repre
sented by the individual type of His mother, sharing all
the essential properties of humanity and set in all human
relations to nature and to the spiritual world. "Since
then the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also
himself in like manner partook of the same; that through
death he might bring to nought him that had the power
of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them
who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to
bondage. For verily not of angels doth he take hold, but
he taketh hold of the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it
behooved him in all things to be made like unto his
brethren, that he might be a merciful and faithful high
priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation
for the sins of the people.'*1 It was the 'seed of Abra
ham,' it was humanity changed by the fellowship of Jeho
vah with His people in the economy of the covenant, on
which the Son of God took hold; not on humanity as
existing in the national life of the Egyptians or the
Greeks.2 Moreover, Christology has to accentuate the
truth that He took hold on Hebrew humanity, as this was
advanced and to a degree sanctified by the godly life of
the Virgin. Says the Heidelberg Catechism : The eternal
Son of God "took upon Him the very nature of man, of
the flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary, by the operation
of the Holy Ghost; so that He also might be the true seed
1 Heb. ii. 14-17 ; iv. 15.
2 "It is not angels whom Christ delivers (v. 15), nor is it angels He
succors (v. 18), but the seed of Abraham, the theocratic name of the peo
ple of God. This is now generally accepted as the meaning of the
verse." — Prof. Joseph Angus, D. D.
14

2 1 o Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
of David."1 The Catechism teaches the sameness of the
human nature of Jesus and the human nature of Mary,- the
one by organic derivation from the other; and it implies
that her first-born Son inherited from her whatever degree
of nobleness and sanctity may justly be ascribed to her
womanly life. Not that her own conception was immacu
late, nor that her nature was normal, nor that her life
was sinless, but that her nature was sanctified and her
personal life was ,pure to a degree that qualified Mary to
receive the annunciation of the angel Gabriel: 'Hail, thou
that art highly favored, the Lord is with thee;' and justi
fied Elizabeth, filled with the Holy Ghost, to lift up her
voice with a loud cry and say: 'Blessed art thou among
women.' Jesus was in the true sense of the word the Son
of Mary, His relation to His mother embracing all ele
ments of human life that belong intrinsically to the mys
terious bond joining in vital union a son to his mother.
2. The child was conceived with all the essential prop
erties of real humanity, the accidental qualities of the
Adamic race being excluded. Sin is not of the essence of
human nature. Sin is an alien principle. In the degree
that this alien principle" has force in conception it falsifies
the beginning of individual life. So far forth the ordinary
conception is unnatural and contra-ideal.
The conception of Jesus was in the true sense natural,
being the inception of the embryo really and truly accord
ing to the constitution of humanity and in conformity to
the laws of human generation. Though the alien prin
ciple of sin was both latent and active in the life of Mary,
'Heid. (fat., Q. 35. Says Ursinus: "Christ was born a true man from
the substance of Mary His mother." — WiUiard's Ursinus' Commentary
on the Heid. Cat., p. 206.

1 234.] Birth of Jesus Christ. 2 1 1
it was not active in the formation of her child in embryo.
The alien principle was in abeyance, not so much by
divine resistance as by the vivifying of the energies of
positive vitality. Under the overshadowing of the Most
High the normal order of human life was awakened into
controlling action; the deepest original laws of humanity,
fashioned in God's image, asserted their formative force,
the false tendencies inherent in Adamic humanity being
held in abeyance, inasmuch as genuine human nature was
productive after its ideal type. The law of sin is an un
natural law. Its determinative force in the inceptive act
of the ordinary generation of a child is contra-human.
Just because the conception of Jesus was truly natural,
truly human, it was sinless.
3. The teaching of the New Testament respecting the
person of Jesus Christ requires Christology to affirm of
Him two things which seemingly are contradictory.
The conception of Jesus took place in the bosom of
fallen humanity. The flesh and blood of the Virgin, by
nature the daughter and heir of a race fallen in Adam,
became the flesh and blood of her Son. Yet this concep
tion was immaculate. In the history of our race Jesus
was the first man who was conceived and born without
sin. In the truth of this fact appears, under one view, the
virtue of the mysterious interposition of the supernatural
factor. Jesus was born of a .woman. Begotten of the
proper substance of His mother, born in the organic re
lation to mankind and to the kingdom of darkness in
which His mother stood, the child was so conceived, so
born, that by the quickening of a true humanity the falsi
fying consequences of the fall were superseded. The in-

212 Doctrine on Jesw Christ. [book 6,
herited sinfulness of His mother, inasmuch as sinfulness
is unnatural and unhuman, did not become a principle in
His inceptive being and organic development.
Accordingly the idea of a normal conception, the begin
ning of the Man according to the true type and the natu
ral laws of humanity, includes an issue with the alien
principle of evil, an issue with the dominion of the king
dom of darkness. The redemption of mankind begins in
the instant when the humanity of Jesus begins. Assum
ing a nature from a mother fallen, He assumes manhood
according to the truth, not according to the falseness of
human nature, asserting its normal, not its abnormal type.
4. The truly human in the conceptiou of Jesus affirms
but one aspect of the mystery. His conception was at the
same time an assumption of human nature into organic
union with the being of God in the person of the Son.
The Word became flesh, God was made man. The Son
of God did not take 'to Himself a man now made and
already perfected ;' from which ' it would of necessity follow-
that there are in Christ two persons, the one assuming and
the other assumed.' The human nature of Jesus begins
with the assumption of humanity into union with the
divine nature; as Hooker tersely expresses it: "The flesh
and the conjunction of the flesh with God began both at
one instant; His making and taking to Himself our flesh
was but one act. ' ' ' The Son of God enters objectively and
really into the finite economy of the world and assumes
humanity into Himself, when Mary according to the nor
mal laws of human motherhood conceives in her womb by
the Holy Ghost. The Son of God was not conceived; nor
was the Son of Man conceived; but to use the formula of
'Ecc. Pol., Bk. 5, ch. 52, 3.

1 234.] Birth of Jesus Christ 2 1 3
the sacred record: "The holy thing which is to be born"
was conceived. That "holy thing," to yew6fiev&v aycov, was
properly the Son of Mary and was properly the Son of
God. Flesh of her flesh, that ' holy thing ' was likewise, as
the Nicene Creed expresses it, very God of very God. The
opposite predicates, humanity and Deity, must be asserted
of His extraordinary beginning apprehended in its or
ganic unity. The Creator and the creature form one new
^personal constitution, Of this personal constitution the
'holy thing,' rb yevv&fieuov aywv, is the real, but potential, be
ginning. The denial of either constituent, the Divine or
the human, in the inceptive act must, if logically carried'
out, resolve the mystery either into a purely natural event
or into a myth.
5, The conception of the Second Man affects His divine
nature and His human nature, Deity and humanity. There
is a humiliation of God in the person of His Son. There
is an exaltation of man by the quickening of ' the holy
thing which is to be born ' in union with the Son of God.
The English language does not afford a term adequate
to express the change under both aspects. The Latin
derivative, incarnation, expresses the living synthesis of
the two factors of the mystery, but it chiefly emphasizes
the action of the divine factor, and only implies the change
of which human nature is the subject. The Anglo-Saxon
word, infleshment, would be the equivalent of incarnation.
Both fail to express the idea that the original nature of
man passes from a lower to a higher order of existence.
German theologians have used the words: Menschwerd-
ung and Vergottung. The former is a better word than
incarnation, as it definitely embodies the meaning of John
i, 14: The Word became flesh, God was made man. The

214 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [BooK6i
other term Vergottung is ambiguous, as it may convey the
thought that the human is transmuted into the Divine, a
thought that is uuchristological and unscriptural. We are
warranted in saying: God becomes man, but it is question
able whether we are warranted in saying: man becomes
God. Yet there is an element of validity in the word Ver
gottung which a sound Christology has to include. Christ-
ology fails to grasp the whole truth when it affirms only
that the human nature of Jesus was identical with the
nature of His mother.
The conception of 'the holy thing which is to be born,'
rb yevvafievov aytov, implies a change wrought in the constitu
tion of humanity. In one respect the change is negative.
The type of the original Adamic race asserts itself in the'
humanity of Jesus, and asserts itself with so great normal
energy that the falsifying force of the sinful principle is
superseded. Though valid and of fundamental signif
icance, this negative view is incomplete. ' If held by itself,
or if the absence of sin is thought to be the effect of the
controlling external influence of the. divine nature upon
the human nature, the dogma concerning the conception
of Jesus becomes .superficial and defective.
The change wrought in 'His human nature is also posi
tive] The spotlessness of the conception stands in the
presence of a new and higher energy. The mystery im
plies a real transition of the manhood of man from a lower
to a higher stage, from the plane of the primeval man to
the plane of a new creation, where a different order of
kinship with God prevails.
: This higher plane is not ethical only, not only that kind
of righteousness and holiness nor that kind of divine
imageship in which Adam was ; -created. More than this

g234] Birth of Jesus Christ. 215
is set forth by the New Testament. We are taught not
merely that the "Logos became flesh," but that He who
was on an equality with God was made "in the likeness
of men" and was "found in fashion as a man." Iden
tical with the race of the first Adam, the manhood of Jesus
was from the instant of conception no less really also a
manhood other than that of the first Adam. God sent
"His own Son," not in sinful flesh, but in the likeness
of sinful flesh.1
The original humanity of Adam is by a creative act, by
the transition of 'living soul' into 'life-giving spirit,'2
advanced organically to the ideal status of unioii with
God, and thus of that objective perfection which in prin
ciple actualizes the divine purpose respecting the creation
of Adam to which that first stage of human creation
looks forward as its ultimate end. The teleological law
of ' the first man ' is fulfilled, inasmuch as humanity in the
act of assumption into God is born again. Identical with
the nature of Mary, identical with the original nature of
Adam, 'the holy thing' that began to be by the power of
the Most High becomes in the same instant a regenerate
manhood and is emancipated- from the law of sin. The
birth of Jesus is the new birth of the race in Him. He
becomes the principle of regeneration for all the members
of fallen mankind. That new life of which He is the
'Rom. viii. 3. Godet: "While affirming similarity oi substance be
tween the flesh of Jesus and ours, the very thing the apostle wishes here
is to set aside the idea of likeness in quality (in respect of sin). * * *
Here is its meaning, as it seems to us: God, by sending His Son, meant
to provide a human life in that same flesh under the influence of which
we sin so habitually, such that it might complete this, dangerous career.
without sin (x"pk a/iapriac, Heb. iv. 15); comp. 2 Cor. v. 21."
2 1 Cor. xv. 45.

21 6 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book. 6.
principle is the <l eternal life." The beginning of His
mediatorship as Reveaier and Redeemer we see in the
beginning of His divine-human history,
Dogmatic thought, however, must guard against laying
false stress on His conception and birth. No subsequent
part of His mediatorial work may be confounded with the
initial fact of the incarnation. Extraordinary as is the
conception by the overshadowing of the Most High, it is
yet no more than conception, the dynamic beginning of
revelation and redemption, from which must be distin
guished the virtue of His atoning sacrifice on the cross and
of His triumphant resurrection from the dead. His con
ception anticipates all that Jesus became, and did and
endured afterwards. The consummation declares the sig
nificance of the beginning.

CHAPTER III.
THE CIRCUMCISION. §235-
Though the Son of Mary was conceived without the
taint of sin, though His birth involved the new birth of
the Adamic race in His person, yet this spotless begin
ning of His divine- human history is in itself neither the
complete redemption nor the final perfection of hu
manity. That final perfection was attainable not in
the kingdom of nature which He entered by His birth
of the Virgin, but in the kingdom of the Abrahamic
covenant of which He became a member by the sacra
ment of circumcision.
i. God sent forth His Son, born of a woman, born under

g235] The Circumcision. 217
the law, that He might redeem them which were under
the law, that we might receive the adoption of sons.1
Born under the law, identified with the race under con
demnation, He was subject to the limitations, the infirmi
ties and the penalties inherent in the fallen condition of
the race. Jesus knew no sin; yet God made Him to be sin
on our behalf.2 The Son of Mary lived on earth among
men 'in fashion' as an ordinary man. He stood in the
relations of a transgressor. Living in 'the likeness of
sinful flesh ' He occupied the position of one on whom
rested the wrath of God against sin, being 'made a curse
for us.'3 Made sin on our behalf, it became Him to suffer
in the abnormal state of the Adamic race, to learn obedi
ence by the things which He suffered, and to fulfil the
righteousness of God in the midst of all forms of tempta
tion. Identified with the sinful race, Jesus was himself
the subject of a process of salvation and victory and of a
growth in moral perfection.4 It was the problem of His
personal history on the one hand to be made sin on our
behalf, to be numbered with the transgressors,5 and to bear
the condemnation of violated law, yet on the other hand
to save Himself from complicity with the moral evils of
the world, and in feeling, thought, volition, word, con
duct, to realize a pure, godlike human life.
2. Like all children, the infant Jesus was by birth intro
duced into the existing economy of the fallen world.
Really a member of our race He was by virtue of His
organic connection with it subject, in a qualified sense, to
the dominion of the kingdom of darkness. If we use the
1 Gal. iv. 4, 5. 3 2 Cor. v. 21.
3 1 Peter ii. 24 ; Gal. iii. 13 ; I John ii 2. * Heb. v. 7.
6 Isa, liii. 12.

218 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
words of the Psalmist with a restricted meaning, they may
by way of description be applied to Him. Descending
into the depths of our fallen life, He was shapen. in the
bosom of iniquity and in the domain of sin did His mother
conceive Him.1,
But unlike other children Jesus was born with the posi
tive power, as regards character, of rising above the fallen
ethical economy whilst living in it, and of actualizing in
His person the ideal of moral perfection whilst assailed on
all sides by moral evil.
Of this salvation and perfection there was given in His
wonderful birth the potential principle, but not the re
quisite outward conditions. 'This world' because of sin
is the domain of divine condemnation. Lying under the
curse, it has in itself absolutely none of those moral and
spiritual resources which the formation of a perfectly holy
life presupposes. These spiritual resources, these requisite
outward conditions, were at hand only in the supernatural
communion of grace existing among the chosen people.
Entitled the Son of Mary was to membership in the cove
nant, but His natural birth did not constitute Him a
member, nor did it confer on Him its spiritual blessings.
3. To meet the needs of His personal life and His mis
sion, the infant Jesus conformably to the law of Moses
was, like the children of all faithful Jews, circumcised on
the eighth day. 2
1 Ps. Ii. 5.
2 Lev. xii. 3 ; Lk. ii. 21. Circumcision, the cutting awiay of the whole
or of parts of the prepuce, was practiced not only by the Israelites, but
also by the Edomites, Ammonites, Moabites, and by the Egyptians.
Herodotus, after him Diodorus and Strabo, assert that among the latter
the custom was original. The Coptian and Habessynnian Christians

§235] The Circumcision. 219
Circumcision was the sacrament of initiation into the
Abrahamic covenant, of transition from the lower natural
domain of human life into the higher, the supernatural
communion of divine love. Into this holy communion
Jesus was adopted by the official act of the Jewish priest.
Within this communion were the required divine condi
tions of grace for the fulfilment of His mediatorial mission.
Here lay the spiritual soil of a holy life. Here shone the
pure light of monotheistic truth. Here was enthroned the
perfect law of Jehovah, restoring the soul, making wise
the simple, rejoicing the heart, enlightening the eyes, in
keeping of which there is great reward.1 Here was preva
lent the purest family life, and the best moral and relig- .
ious culture. Here, as contrasted with the poisonous
vapors of pagan civilization, the child breathed the salu
tary atmosphere of heaven.
Growing up under the benediction of the Abrahamic
covenant, silently moulded by its transforming influence,
it was so far forth possible for Jesus to pass in a normal
way from spotless infancy into spotless youth, from uncon-
still retain the rite. By Islam, which found it in general use among the
Arabs, it was introduced to the Persians, Turks and Hindoos.
A custom, common among orientals, became a religious rite for Abra
ham and his posterity under appointment of Jehovah. To the Israelite
the foreskin was a token of impurity and uncleanliness ; and circum
cision was an act of purification and cleanliness. The idea of bodily
cleanliness forms the basis for the religious rite of circumcision ; and this
idea of bodily cleanliness gradually grew into that of spiritual purity,
such as was demanded of the chosen people. Circumcision became the
token of the covenant between God and His people. As such it was the
rite of admittance into the community of Israel, without which no one
was allowed to participate in the Paschal feast. — Cf. Schaff-Herzog En
cyclopedia, I., p. 486.
'Ps.xix. 7-1 1.

220 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
scious innocence into conscious obedience, from potential
holiness into actual holiness. His spontaneous tendencies
of reason .developed into positive divine knowledge, of
will into free self-determination according to divine law,
a development which proceeded without admixture of
error and without a blemish of moral deficiency.
The time in man's history when he becomes self-objec
tive, when the soul wakes up to the consciousness of self
and of its freedom, when the sense of opposition between
God and self begins to be distinctly felt, when the antag
onism between right and wrong, between good and evil,
becomes an object of personal perception, this point in the
history of every person is a crisis. A decision must be
made, and the decision determines future character. This
point was the fatal crisis in the history of Adam. This
point was also really a crisis in the personal history of
Jesus; but' Jesus reached this crisis and passed through it
in a normal way. His moral and spiritual being was
unfolded according to the divine idea of humanity; assert
ing itself for the right and against the wrong, for God and
against Satan. And He did thus surmount the crisis,
rising to the plane of free affirmation of the Truth by
virtue of a twofold power:' the one subjective, the unique
positive capacity for communion with God with which by
His spotless conception He was endowed; the other ob
jective, the divine grace bestowed on Him by adoption
into the communion of the Mosaic economy;

$236] The Circumcision. 221
§ 236.
A sound Christology has to reject tht notion that
the circumcision of Jesus was accidental,, merely a
Jewish custom or an empty religious rite devoid of
meaning for the childhood and youth of the divine-
human Mediator.
A rite of the religion of the Jews circumcision un
doubtedly was, but a rite which had objective spiritual
force. 1. It cannot be said that Joseph and Mary had not suffi
cient knowledge respecting the person and mission of
Jesus ; nor may it be supposed that if they had been
better informed as to His divine nature the-rite of circum
cision, because superfluous, would have been omitted.
Nor does it suffice to maintain that in the providence of
God Jesus was circumcised to put honor on the law of
Moses by the recognition of its authority ; assuming that
Providence sustained the binding authority of the cere
monial law for the Jew, but that the observance of the
law was not the medium of special divine blessing for this
child — an opinion, however, that has in it an element of-
truth. The circumcision of Jesus did indeed put the
highest honor on the law of Moses; but honor was put on
it, not by an outward meaningless conformity to its re
quirements, but by recognizing the necessity and spiritual
value of its observance for Jesus.
2. If we consider this rite of initiation into the cove
nant, in its historical relations to the advent of the
Messiah and to the triumph of His mediatorial mission,
Christology has to maintain that circumcision was insti
tuted, not so much for Abraham and the individual mem
bers of his posterity as for Him who was the true Seed

222 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
of Abraham, the Son of Man. The circumcision of the
infant Jesus was the consummation of its original design.
For the purpose of conveying spiritual good to the chosen
people from year to year during pre-Christian ages, but
especially for the purpose, through the chosen people, of
communicating blessing to this child, the last and highest
end of the ceremonial law, was the sacrament of circum
cision instituted.
The Jewish Church was the supernatural communion in
which alone it was possible for the Second Man to develop
a perfect moral and religious character. When He entered
into it by circumcision, when being a member He drew
from the fellowship of the covenant the needed spiritual
nourishment, then this covenant, through the ceremonial
economy developed from it, had fulfilled its mission and
had fulfilled it perfectly. The office of the ceremonial law
ceased to have spiritual value, and with the law the rite
of circumcision was superseded; for neither was any longer
necessary for salvation. "Genuine Judaism lived for
Christianity and died with the birth of Christianity."1
' Schaff's Theological Propedeutic, Ch. XXXVII.

§237.] Normal Development of Jesus. 223
CHAPTER IV.
NORMAL DEVELOPMENT OF JESUS.
§ 237.
Inasmuch as the birth of Jesus is a truly human birth
and His infancy a truly human infancy, the holy child
is passive in the sacramental act of circumcision. The
extraordinary positive powers with which in distinction
from other infants He is endowed by the Holy Spirit
are latent. The grace conferred by circumcision is
objective. The covenant apprehends the babe; but
the babe is Himself not personally responsive and
does not in this transaction apprehend the covenant.
At His baptism He occupies a different attitude.
The infant has become a mature man; and as mature
man He is active toward God no less than receptive.
Now acted upon by the Holy Spirit, He responds with
full consciousness and free self-determination to the
blessing of the baptismal transaction.
Between the circumcision of Jesus and His baptism
by John, a period of about thirty years, Christology has
to recognize an important stage of His mediatorship.
This intermediate period of seeming inaction is a period
of normal ethical development, of religious culture,
and of positive spiritual" preparation for the formal
assumption of His mediatorial office.
This doctrine respecting the naturalness of His child
hood and youth, whilst it affirms a truly human devel
opment, at the same time places Him above both the
ordinary level of children in general and above the level
of every extraordinary religious genius in particular.
1. The latent positive capacity of His nature to do the
right and to shun the wrong, to love God with all His heart
and love His neighbor as Himself, became gradually an

224 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
active self-conscious principle which unfolded itself nor
mally as, conformably to the law of personal growth, He
passed from one period to another of human life. As every
child advances day by day from infancy toward manhood,
so did He. He became successively the boy, the youth,
the man; and each He became in the full and proper sense
of the term.
The process of normal growth comprehends the whole
man, the soul as well as the body. The being of Jesus in
the unity and totality of His constitution developed itself
according to natural law. He was a child in knowledge
and in moral character as really as in age, figure, size
and physical strength. As He advanced in years, passing
from childhood into youth, from youth into manhood, He
advanced in wisdom and holiness. And as He grew in
wisdom and holiness He awoke to a sense of His high
vocation and developed into clearer consciousness of His
relation to God as His Father.
Of the progress of Jesus intellectually, morally and
spiritually, we have two explicit statements in the Gospel
by Luke. Of His life intervening between His circum
cision and His appearance in the temple at the age of
twelve the evangelist says: "And the child grew, and
waxed strong, becoming full of wisdom : and the grace of
God was upon Him." Of His youth and manhood after
He had become a son of the law, but before He entered
upon His ministry, the same evangelist says: "And Jesus
advanced in wisdom and stature, and in favor with God
and men."1
These two passages teach with equal explicitness the
naturalness of His personal history; and it is worthy of note
1 Luke ii. 40 ; ii. 52.

g 237. j Normal Development of Jesus. 225
that the words of the evangelist descriptive of Jesus are
almost the same with which He describes the physical and
moral progress of John the Baptist; for of John he says:
"And the child grew and waxed strong in spirit."1 And
between the two passages relating to Jesus, there is a not
able difference as to the presupposition of each, and the
order in which the physical and spiritual aspects of His
history follow each other. In the first passage the child
is represented as being passive and receptive rather than
active; He is becoming full of wisdom; God's grace is
upon Him; He is the object of God's favor and blessing.
This is the ordinary attitude of a child relatively to God
during the period of childhood. The second passage de
scriptive of Jesus after He became a son of the law repre
sents Him decidedly under a more positive aspect. Jesus
'advanced in wisdom,' implying that the advance was due
to the free action of His own powers; and in consequence
of His progress in wisdom He 'advanced' in favor with
God. Emphasis is put not on the grace of God bestowed
on Jesus, but on the advance 'in wisdom' by His own
activity, a personal advance which received the approval
of God.2
1 Luke i. 80.
2 On Lk. ii. 40 and 52, Otto von Gerlach makes the following just
observation: " The idea that Jesus was instructed in the religious knowl
edge of His people, and that by these means, as in the case of all men,
His human powers were developed, is in full accord with these words of
the Evangelist. The mysteries of the new covenant which He brought
with Him from the bosom of the Father, Jno. i. 18, mysteries which
before were only dimly anticipated, but by Him clearly revealed, He
neither had to learn nor could learn in any school of man. New depths
of the Godhead were disclosed to Him from within by every new awak
ening of His human powers."
"These words also evidently imply that as to His human nature Jesus
15

226 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book6.
There is a difference also in the order of statement.
Before He was old enough to become a son of the law the
description begins with the physical and passes to the
ethical." The child grew and waxed strong. This is the
first statement; then come the words which say that He
became full of wisdom. After He became a son of the law
we have in the description of His history the opposite
order. The first thing is His advance in wisdom, the
second His advance in stature or age. The statement
begins with the ethical and passes to the physical.
A comparison of these two modes of describing the per
sonal development of Jesus, both as to the presupposition
and the order of expression, intensifies our sense of the
naturalness of the human life which the evangelist predi
cates of our Lord.
2. Like His conception and birth, the formation of His
ethical and religious character was a normal human pro
cess, a human process which, as in the formation of ordi
nary manhood, implies two things: the presence of the
requisite objective conditions, and the conscious activity
of His own will. The development of His extraordinary
was continually becoming more holy. Not that at any moment there
was in Him the least degree of any sin. More holy He became in so far
as a lower plane of moral life on which a man in the conflict with sin has
not yet overcome may be compared with that higher plane on which He
has steadily been progressing in moral victories."
Equivalent to this statement are the words of Dr. Tucker: " There were
facts of which He had no knowledge. He frankly confessed His igno
rance of the 'times and seasons.' But He never confessed to the slight
est limitation in His knowledge of God. That was always clear and
absolute. In the midst of a restless humanity crying for light and life,
He stood the one silent, majestic figure, content, satisfied, sufficient in
Himself."1 1 Andover Review, Feb., 1892, p. 188.

1 237.] Normal Development of Jesus. 227
personality observes the physical and the moral order.
Though divine no less really than human, yet for Him the
natural world, the family, the social economy and the Jew
ish Church were all necessary. Contact with nature and
intercourse with men served to awaken and discipline His
intellectual and moral powers; the observance of the cere
monial law, the worship of the synagogue and communion
with His Father in heaven were conditions of the devel-
opment of His extraordinary spiritual endowments.
Neither His childhood nor His youth is marked by
anything monstrous, by anything that resembles the babe
Hercules in his cradle strangling the great serpents. Of
unnatural phenomena, like those that characterize the
apocryphal gospels, there is not the least trace in the
evangelical record; nor whilst pursuing the trade of a
carpenter did any extraordinary events. occur which to the
eyes of His family and friends were prophetic of the
wonderful deeds of His ministry. When He came into
His own country and taught the people in their syna
gogue, they were astonished, and said: Whence hath this
man this wisdom, and these mighty works? Is not this
the carpenter's son?1 So on one occasion when Jesus
went up into the temple and taught, the Jews marvelled,
saying: How knoweth this man letters, having never
learned ? When a deputation of learned men was sent to
Him for the purpose of entangling Him by cunning ques
tions in folly and self-contradictions, they returned in con
fusion. The Pharisees inquired: Why did you not bring
Him ? The officers answered: Never man so spake.2 It is
evident that in His intercourse with the people of Naza
reth before His baptism, and in His association with all
1 Matt. xiii. 54; Mk. vi. 3. 2John vii. 15, 46 ; Luke iv. 32.

228 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
classes of Jews when from time to time during many years
He went up to Jerusalem to celebrate the passover and
other feasts of the Jewish Church, He appeared among
them only in the character of a God-fearing Jew, showing
no sign of extraordinary wisdom or extraordinary au
thority. It is evident also that during this long period He did
no wonderful works. ¦ When for example in the syna
gogue at Capernaum there was a man which had a spirit
of an unclean devil crying out with a loud voice, Jesus
rebuked him, saying: Hold thy peace, and come out of
him; and the devil came out of him, having done him no
hurt; amazement came upon all, and they spake together,
one with another, saying: What is this word? for with
authority and power He commandeth the unclean spirits.1
Instances of like amazement are frequent in the Gospels.
From these facts the inference is unavoidable that of His
commanding power over the winds and the waves, over
leprosy and all manner of diseases, over death and demons,
His family and acquaintances had no previous intimation;
and they had not, for the reason that He lived the life of a
devout Jew, not- of a thaumaturgist. Says Dr. Schaff :
"The idea of a perfect childhood, sinless and holy, yet truly human
and natural, had never entered the mind of poet or historian before ; and
when the legendary fancy of the Apocryphal Gospels attempted to fill out
the chaste silence of the Evangelists, it painted an unnatural piodigy of
a child to whom wild animals, trees and dumb idols bowed, and who
changed balls of clay into flying birds for the amusement of His play
mates."2 This silence of our Gospels marks the wide contrast
1 Luke iv. 36 ; ix. 43 ; Mk. iv. 41 ; vi. 51.
2 Church History, I., 102.

1237-] Normal Development of Jesus. 229
between the biographies of Jesus of purely human origin,
and the historical records of the evangelists, records dis
tinguished at every point by a simplicity, naturalness and
dignity which have no precedent.
As Jesus during His ministry proved Himself to be the
ideal man, so prior to His ministry we see in Him the ideal
child and the ideal youth.
So far from indicating that any violence was done to
human nature, the incarnate One as portrayed by the
Gospels demonstrates its reality and truth just in this:
whilst the Son of God assumes humanity into vital union
with Himslf, He in the process of assumption conserves in
all respects the manhood of man ; on the one hand filling
the substance and form of human nature with His divine
fulness, 011 the other redeeming and perfecting human
nature in union with Himself agreeably to its inner
demands. Under any view of the mystery less natural
His nativity would not be a Menschwerdung ; the Logos
would not become flesh ; but He would become something
that is not human, not identical with our race; and in the
degree that the human factor of His personal history would
not be real, the reality of the incarnation would itself dis
appear. 3. There is indeed a very great contrast between the
childhood of Jesus and the childhood of other children ;
but the difference between Him and them does not consist
ill the presumption that His childhood was less childlike.
The difference is just the opposite. In other children
there is an alien force inwrought into the process of
growth, so disorganizing the constitution of childhood and
youth that no psychic or ethical phenomena become nor
mal, and therefore are not purely human. But in His

.230 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
personal history, though born and living in contact with
the moral poison of a fallen world, no alien forces had
determining influence in the formation of His character in
any period of His life. His human nature was distinct
ively human, His childhood preeminently childlike.
A truly human development, the personal history of
Jesus distinguishes Him from the development and char
acter of all other men.
Free from the perversion of a hostile principle, and
realizing the ideal communion of man with God, of God
with man, the vigor, compass and penetration of His mind
were singular. Sense and perception, memory and judg
ment, imagination and thought, intuition and reflection, -
prevailed in perfect equipoise, as during His ministry so
also before His baptism.
The same equipoise may be seen in the deeper sphere
of His ethical life. Impulse and desire, propensity and
inclination, excitability and emotion, spontaneity of will
and deliberate purpose; all His endowments were devel
oped in favor of the right and against the wrong in ideal
subordination to a personality that was determined and
likewise determined itself uniformly by truth. ,
The common external conditions, natural, social and
spiritual, of human growth were indeed necessary; but the
artificial helps of education were in great measure super
seded. Like other youth He observed the heavens and the
earth, and He learned by observation; but unlike others
He without the aids of natural science discerned the
dynamic synthesis of the world with its Author, its divine
meaning and true teleology. So like other men He
studied mankind and learned by reflection and thought;

?237] Normal Development of Jesus. 231
but unlike them, without the aid of systems of psychology
and ethics, He looked into the hidden depths of manhood,
He saw the divine capacities of the race and its: radical
evils and recognized in His mediatorship the only remedy.
So like other Jews He communed with God by ob
serving the requirements of the ceremonial law. Learn-*
ing revealed truth from the Scriptures read in the syna
gogue, He yet broke away from the limitations of; the
Mishna and rose above all defective interpretations of the
Old Testament after an original manner. " All attempts-
to derive His doctrine from any of the existing schools
and sects have utterly failed. He was independent of
human learning and literature, of schools and parties-
He taught the world as one who owed nothing to the
world."1 His communion with God was the perfect rap
port of human life with divine life. Superseding the
necessity of ordinary theological education, He by the
intuitive act of direct vision learned gradually to read
the being of God as God is in Himself, likewise the dy
namic and moral relations which God sustains. to the
kingdoms of the world. Jesus developed an unerring
consciousness of God in and with the development of a
true self-consciousness. He developed an ethical and re
ligious character perfectly harmonious with the manda
tory will of God in and with the development of a-human
life perfectly harmonious with the laws of His own per
sonal and physical constitution. '
Thus Jesus grew, and waxed strong; He advanced in
wisdom and stature, and in favor with God and men.
Unfolding according to the laws of human life 'from'
year to 3'ear an extraordinary positive capacity for things
' Schaff's Church History, I., 103.

232 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
heavenly and spiritual, and filled with the fulness of God
at every stage of His personal history according to the
relative measure of His growing capacities, He passed
from unconscious infancy through an extraordinary pro
cess of growth; and when He was about thirty years of
age He had attained to an extraordinary maturity, not to
a precocious condition of intellect or will, but a maturity
of personality that was truly human, yet original and
unique. § 238.
Does such a view of the normal development of Jesus
involve a contradiction?
If from the instant of the conception by the Holy Spirit
Jesus was the Son of God no less really than the Son of
Mary, possessing the normal attributes of human nature
and the properties of Deity, cau we speak of progress in
knowledge or of the formation of ethical character? Can
the Son of God be the unconscious babe? If the Son of
God be coequal with the Father, can He, the incarnate
Son, increase in wisdom ?
The doubt as to the possibility of the normal develop
ment of the divine-human personality of Jesus arises from
a dualistic or Gnostic assumption respecting the incarna
tion. The Gnostic mode of apprehension overlooks two
polar facts: 1. the latent aptitude of man for divinization,
the intrinsic fitness and demand of his nature for a transi
tion from the original plane to a different and higher order
of likeness to and sympathy with God; and 2. the human
aptitude of God for incarnation (Menschwerdung), a fit
ness of God's being for life-union with man in accord
with the laws and -conditions of manhood. Fairbairn

?238.] Normal Development of Jesus. 233
says: "The natures are not contradictory or mutually
exclusive, but their affinity or kinship expresses their re
ciprocal susceptibility. God is, as it were, the eternal pos
sibility of being incarnated, man the permanent capability
of incarnation."1
The human nature is not less but more truly human for
such exalted development and fellowship; since such ex
alted fellowship is none other than the fulfilment of the
original intention of the Creator in forming man after His
owii image. And the divine nature is 110 less properly
divine for the assumption of human nature into itself
according to human laws and natural conditions; inasmuch
as God's being is the archetype of man's being, and the
normal life of man's constitution is the noblest and most
perfect organ of God's presence and revelation.
Recognizing this reciprocal aptitude between divine
being and human being, affirming the organic oneness of
divine nature and human nature in the conception and
birth of Jesus, a sound Christology may not think of the
incarnate Son of God independently of His humanity, nor
think of the new creation of man independently of the
Deity of Jesus. Of the only-begotten Son of God we affirm
nothing, deny nothing, when we speak of normal develop
ment. So of the manhood of the Son of Man we affirm
nothing, deny nothing, when we speak of the extraordi
nary positive capacities of Jesus and the sinless perfection
of His development. We speak of the mysterious organic
unity, of the personality of Jesus, no less really man than
God, no less properly God than man. We speak of the
One who is both der Menschgewordene Gott and der Ver-
gottete Mensch. 'The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 473.

234 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
A definite line of difference is to be drawn between the
transcendent Logos and the immanent Logos. The imma
nent Logos, as to His divine essence, is identical with the
transcendent Logos, but He is active under a creatural
mode of existence. It is of the Word become flesh, of the
man assumed into union with God, of Jesus the Christ
that Christology affirms normal growth, a proper physical,
moral and intellectual development.
It is a proposition which no one denies, that growth
conditions the maturity of manhood. The notion of a
man who had not been conceived and born, who had not
from infancy grown in stature and increased in wisdom,
would be a monstrosity. On the other hand, it is the cen
tral article of the Christian creed that ' the Word became
flesh,' that God became incarnate in the humanity of
Jesus. To deny it is antichrist. " Every spirit which
confesseth that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is of God:
and every spirit which confesseth not Jesus is not of God:
and this is the spirit of the antichrist, whereof ye have
heard that it cometh; and now it is in the world already."1
These two essential moments in the idea concerning the
Christ involve the law of development.
Faith in the incarnation does not imply that God in the
person of the Son became an infant, or that He became
an adult by an arbitrary act of omnipotent Will. It
implies that God became man conformably to man's con
stitution as now existing. "It seemeth," says Hooker,
"a thing inconsonant that the world should honour any
other as the Savior but Him whom it honoureth as the
' i Jno. iv. 2, 3. "The heresies, which deny the truth of the flesh of
Jesus Christ, assume, and by this very thing confirm, his Deity, since
they could not reconcile with this his flesh, as worthy of it." — Bengel.

% 238'.] Normal Development of Jesus. 235
Creator of the world, and in the wisdom of God it hath
not been thought convenient to admit any way of saving
man but by man himself."1 And man's constitution in
cludes a dynamic beginning, a process of growth, a stage
of relative maturity on earth and ultimate perfection in
the transcendent realm. God in fact became man in that
He in the person of the Sou really entered into the natural
order, assuming the substance of man according to the
generic idea and laws of mankind. Conserving and obey
ing these laws, the mystery of the incarnation becomes in
one respect as man himself becomes, by an organic pro
cess. The birth of Jesus was its real beginning; His
childhood and youth the normal unfolding and gradual
actualization of the beginning; His ministry and suffer
ings, His conflicts and victories, were its relative maturity;
His glorification was its final perfection. The Son of
Mary exalted to the right hand of God, possessing all
authority in heaven and on earth, presents to faith the
ideal of the incarnation.
Whenever Christology denies of Jesus Christ any prop
erty or element that belongs to the essential nature of
mankind we get in effect a docetic Christ, and a docetic
Christ is not the Christ of the New Testament.
1 Ecc. Pol., v., 51, 3.

236 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
CHAPTER V.
HIS BAPTISM.
§239.
When Jesus had passed through the period of childhood
and youth, and had acquired the requisite moral and relig
ious character, He was prepared to begin His public min
istry. Then He came to John, His great forerunner, to
be baptized of him in the river Jordan.
The circumcision had adopted Him into the super
natural communion of the covenant people. Living in
retirement and pursuing an ordinary secular vocation, He
by the grace of the covenant led the life of a devout Jew,
fulfilling the Ten Commandments and observing all the
requirements of the ceremonial law blameless. But the
hour had now come for which His birth of the Virgin, His
circumcision and His devout communion with God during
youth and early manhood were only the needful qualifica
tion. Recognizing His high vocation and willing to ac
cept it, another sacramental transaction became necessary.
As in His conception by the Holy Spirit so at His bap
tism two factors, the divine and the human, reach the
point of culmination. Then the fitness of humanity
ripening in the history of the elect people, perfected in
the person of the Virgin, and the historical manifestation
of God by the overshadowing of the Holy Spirit meet.
The epoch was a crisis in which each factor conditions
the virtue of the other. Now, when Jesus comes to John,
His mature personal qualification for the great vocation

3240.] His Baptism. 237
of the Christ and the requisite consecration by God to this
vocation meet. As in the conception, so at His baptism,
Christology has to emphasize the two factors of the mys
tery, each supposing the presence and determining influ
ence of the other. § 240.
The baptism of Jesus is to be studied under two
aspects: objectively and subjectively.
Objectively, the baptism was the recognition of Jesus
as the Christ by the Father, and the consecration of
Jesus to His mediatorial work.
Subjectively considered, the submission of Jesus to
the baptism of John was the recognition of His Mes
sianic vocation, and the dedication of Himself to it.
Christology has to maintain that the baptism by John
has real significance for the person of the Christ and
for His mediatorial work.
1. Of Jesus John Baptist said: After me cometh a man
which is become before me: for He was before me, and
I knew Him not; but that He should be made mani-
ifest to Israel, for this cause came I baptizing with water.
And John bare witness, saying, I have beheld the Spirit
descending as a dove out of heaven; and it abode upon
Him. And I knew Him not: but He that sent me to
baptize with, water, He said unto me, Upon whomsoever
thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and abiding upon
Him, the same is He that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit.
And I have seen, and have borne witness that this is the
Son of God.1
The baptism . by John in obedience to God's command
was the recognition of this Jew, Jesus of Nazareth, as the
' John i. 30-34.

238 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book6.
Christ of God, as God's beloved Son, in whom God was
well pleased.
The baptism by the forerunner was at the same time
the investiture of Jesus with His Father's authority. It
was His consecration to the mediatorial office by a new
act, an act of communication from the bosom of the divine
fulness. Fitted for this momentous epoch in the history
of His mission, He received grace for 'grace.
Possessing the Holy Spirit from His birth, living in
favor with God and men and day by day advancing in
wisdom, Jesus at the age of thirty was capable of this
higher epoch of His mediatorship. Then the Father in
heaven through the official act of John, the final represen
tative prophet of.the pre-Christian economy, clothed Jesus
sacramentally with authority by the descending and the
abiding on Him of the Holy Spirit, authority and power
to fulfil all prophecies by completing Messianic revelation
and performing the work of man's redemption. Says St.
Matthew: And Jesus, when he was baptized, went up
straightway from the water: and lo, the heavens were
opened unto Him, and He saw the Spirit of God descend
ing as a dove, and coming upon Him ; and lo, a voice out
of the heavens, saying, This is my Son, my beloved, in
whom I am well pleased.1
Of this consecration of Jesus by His Father through
the Holy Spirit John Baptist was the divinely ordained
organ. The exponent and embodiment of the Messianic
intent of the Mosaic economy, John became the vicar of
God. Baptizing Jesus, he fulfilled the original purpose
and final end of the Abrahamic covenant,- by this transac-
'Matt. iii. 16, 17; xii. 18; Lk. iii. 21, 22.

3240.] His Baptism. 239
tion inaugurating the first stage of a better and more
spiritual communion.
2. Considered in its direct relation to Jesus, the baptism
was His act; for it became Him to fulfil all righteousness.1
This act was the recognition of His calling to the office of
the Christ to which He was ordained by His Father, and
the dedication of Himself to the mediatorship.
As He had acknowledged the obligation of the cere
monial law and observed its requirements for a series of
years during the period of His devout retirement, so now
He recognizes the divine authority of the Baptist and the
necessity of an objective consecration to the office of the
Christ by His Father in heaven. The authoritative will
and order of God He recognizes inasmuch as He comes
from Galilee to the Jordan unto John to be baptized of
him, and there asserts a claim to be baptized when John
would have hindered Him. Submitting to this 'baptism
of repentance' Jesus turns from subjection to parental
authority, from the retirement of private life, from the
occupation of a carpenter. Waiving the supposed final
authority of the old covenant, He accepts the appointed
mediatorship and enters upon the new vocation for which
He had been born, for which He had come forth from the
Father into the world. Foreseeing the fierce, the terrible
conflicts of His mission, the tremendous responsibilities
and the momentous consequences, regarding the glory of
God and the perfection of mankind, involved in His medi
atorship, He with an humble mind, yet with heroic firm
ness, enters the ministry of reconciliation. Personally
fitted for this hour and endowed with heavenly gifts by
the Holy Spirit, He goes forth to engage in deadly war-
' Matt iii. 13-15.

240 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
fare with the kingdom of darkness and to build upon its
ruins the kingdom of heaven.
3. Therefore as of the circumcision so of the baptism of
Jesus a sound Christology has to deny that this sacra
mental transaction was only a passing event, an empty
religious custom of the Jews, that did not condition the
perfection of His personal life or the efficiency of His
mediatorship. The Baptist is to be viewed in his historical connection
with all stages of antecedent revelation. As the Abra
hamic covenant, developed into the Mosaic economy, was
the necessary condition of the incoming of the kingdom
of God, so was John who gathers up and realizes the whole
meaning of that economy in his person and in his office of
forerunner the organ of the final qualification of Jesus for
the work of the Christ. Not only by preaching and bap
tizing did John prepare the hearts of the people for a new
era, but Jesus Himself was, in His order, included in the
number, not as one moving on the plane of the people,
but as the One who above all others needed and laid claim
to the spiritual benediction of the, office of the forerunner.
Sent to bear witness to Jesus as the Christ of God, John
was sent especially to clothe Jesus with that official au
thority which the Abrahamic covenant and the ceremonial
law by the act of their greatest prophet alone could bestow.
It became Jesus 'to fulfil all righteousness,' to accept the
mission of the Christ, and to accept it conformably to the
order of revelation and history; so it became John to fulfil
the ceremonial law by the baptism of Jesus. When John
would have hindered Him, saying, 'I have need to be
baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?' Jesus answering
said unto him, 'Suffer now: for thus it becometh us to

j 241.] The Temptation. 241
fulfil all righteousness. ' ' The pronoun is in the plural.
Says Jesus: Thus it becometh us (ti/in>): Jesus and John.
The baptism of Jesus became John; His extraordinary
mission culminated in this sublime transaction. Without
it his Nazaritic asceticism, his call to repentance, his
preaching of the kingdom of heaven as being at hand, and
the baptism of the multitudes who went out, unto him
from Jerusalem, and all Judea, and all the region round
Jordan would have been wanting in Messianic significance.

CHAPTER VI.
THE TEMPTATION. § 241.

The actual investiture of Jesus with the office of the
Christ through the official act of John 'Baptist, the organ
of the Abrahamic covenant and of the ceremonial law,
completes His personal qualification for the beginning
of His mediatorial work.
It was His mission to manifest the Truth by founding
the kingdom of God and asserting its holy presence in the
midst of the reigning usurpation of the kingdom of Satan.
It was His mission to redeem mankind by destroying
Satan, the false lord, the despotic authority over the -world.
A new kingdom was to be founded by the personal life
of the Mediator, a kingdom of regenerate human life, of
divine love, of everlasting truth and righteousness, a
' Matt. iii. 14, 15. A. V. says, Suffer it to be so now; but the words in
the original are only: cu/>ec hpri, Suffer now. R. V. suggests me instead
of it; then the meaning would be: Suffer me now.
16

242 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
kingdom which was to prevail by adopting the subjects of
Satan into vital communion "with the Mediator, thus con
stituting them members of the kingdom of light.
Hence the office of the Christ affirms an issue, the pro
foundest issue, between truth and falsehood, between
right and wrong, between the Son of Man and His
adversary. Joining issue with the head of the kingdom of dark
ness, the office of the Christ anticipates a moral struggle,
a spiritual conflict, and looks forward to a victory over the
prince of falsehood as the condition of the triumph of the
new kingdom.
The issue of the new kingdom Centers in the Son of
Man. It resolves itself into a conflict, a spiritual battle,
between the Prince of life and the prince of death.
§ 242.
The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness was a
necessity growing out of His mediatorial mission.
Under this aspect the temptation is represented by
the evangelists Matthew, Mafk and Luke.
1. From the circumcision of Jesus onward to His bap
tism His ethical development and spiritual progress, we
are justified in assuming, were predominantly positive. He
led a private life distinguished chiefly by subjection to
parental authority and faultless communion with God.
The record of His infancy and youth by Luke in ch. ii.
40, 52, leave no room for a contrary inference. Being
'without sin,' unfolding an ideal manhood from year to
year, the ordinary temptations to moral evil which beset a
boy, a 3'outh, challenged Him in the nature of the case
with but comparatively little force. A decisive conflict

§242.] The Temptation. 243
between Jesus as the Prince of light and Satan as the
prince1 of darkness, did not arise. Nor was a decisive
conflict then either in place or necessary to the success of
His mission. But when He has passed through this pre*
liminary period of discipline and has attained to a stage
of requisite maturity in spiritual streugh, when Jesus
accepts the mediatorial office of the Christ and is about to
begin His extraordinary ministry, then His attitude toward
the ceremonial law, toward fallen mankind, toward the
kingdom of Satan is changed.
Now a new moral necessity arises. Before Jesus can in
reality become the Author of life, of the new, the righteous
life to fallen men ' dead through their trespasses and sins, '
it is needful that Jesus Himself become this righteous life
in conscious voluntary opposition to him who is the author
of sin, its principle and law. Possessing potentially the
fulness of this righteous life, it becomes Him to assert it,
to develop and actualize it in the sphere of His personal
experience by the negative no less than by the positive
determination of His will. "It behoved Him to be
tempted not by this or that kind of evil merely, but by
1 ' ' Only the most arbitrary exegesis can deny the existence of evil
spirits. Even the Old Testament teaches that man did not produce evil
from himself, but was expbsed to its influence by the seductions of a
wicked power, which supposes a bondage under a foreign force. * *
In the New Testament Christ confirms this doctrine, partly by univer
sally taking it for granted, as appears times without number in His dis
courses, that there is a kingdom of evil in opposition to the kingdom of
good (see Matt. xii. 26, ff), and partly by express assertions respecting it
(Matt. xiii. 39 ; John viii. 44 ; xiv. 30), which admit no other unprejudiced
exposition. * * The whole doctrine of the Bible concerning Christ's
relation to the kingdom of evil, even though we did not possess the nar
rative of the teniptation, would lead to the same idea which is there
involved."— OlshauseU, I., 276.

244 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. ¦ [book 6.
evil in and for itself, by the evil principle, the Devil."1
His ideal nature He must unfold into ideal character.
Confronted directly by Satan's antagonism to God, Jesus
has to meet the power of Satan's enmity and Satan's
dominion in order that, standing firm in the integrity of
His righteousness, firm in fidelity to the mission of the
Christ, He may abolish this false dominion over Adamic
humanity assumed into union with Himself. By denying
the will of Satan, by freely rejecting the false good, the
lie, with which Satan has blinded and bewitched the race,
Jesus advances to the state of confirmation in positive
righteousness, He consciously affirms the right against
the wrong, affirms truth against falsehood. Only by
meeting the head of the kingdom of falsehood, only by
achieving for Himself a conquest over the arch-foe does
Jesus actualize His dynamic superiority over the entire
realm of moral and physical evil, and so becomes fully con
scious of it. Then He can proclaim Himself the Head
of a mighty kingdom of righteousness, the Author of an
'eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him.' 2
The temptation of Jesus in the wilderness is accord
ingly a necessity that lay in the mediatorial office of the
Christ; and the necessity in the nature of the case meets
Jesus after His consecration and before He begins His
ministry. 2. St. Matthew introduces the narrative of the tempta
tion with these words: Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit
into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil.3 Tanta
mount to this is the record of St. Luke: And Jesus, full
of the Holy Spirit, returned from the Jordan, and was led
by the Spirit in the wilderness during forty, days, being
'Martensen's Dogmatics, p. 283. 2Heb. v. 7-9. 3Matt. iv. 1.

§242.] The Temptation. 245
tempted of the devil.1 Neither evangelist intimates that
Jesus was prompted by His individual choice to go into
the wilderness, but both say that He "was led" by the
Spirit. The Spirit who descended in a bodily form, as a
dove, upon Him at His baptism constrains Him to "with
draw from the synagogue and from the cities .to be for a
season ' with the wild beasts ' in the wilderness. The
purpose of the Spirit was that Jesus be ' tempted of the
devil.' The temptation was a moral trial, a probation.2
Manifestly the thought implied by the account of the
evangelists is that Jesus, the last Adam, like the first
Adam, was required to undergo this moral trial.
The account given by St. Mark represents this aspect of
the temptation still more forcibly. He says: And straight
way the Spirit driveth Him forth into the wilderness: and
He was there in the wilderness forty days tempted of
Satan.3 The English driveth is not too strong. The
Original is: to irvev/ia avrbv in^aXKei etc ttjv iprjjiov. The Greek,
IajSiMm implies a direct urgency of the Spirit by whom
Jesus was not only drawn but moved and impelled. The
law governing the new life of the Second Man, like the
law of the personal life of the first man, demands the
impending ordeal.
3. The necessity of the temptation lies both in the per
sonality of Jesus and in His mediatorship. 1. He must
conquer for Himself in order to realize in His person the
ideal of the righteous Man. 2. Consecrated to the office
of the Christ, He must conquer to the end that His king
dom may possess the dignity and freedom of victory.
1 Lk. iv. 1. 3 Mk. i. 12.
2 "To be tempted, Matt. iv. 1, irupaoBrjvai, means to try for the purpose
of destroying." Olshausen.

246 Doctrine on. Jesus Christ. f^BQo^e.
Under this twofold aspect the temptation was for Jesus a
moral necessity.
Given on the one hand the reality of. a fallen race, the
reality of a kingdom of evil spirits who under their prince
are antagonizing the will of God active in creation and
providence; given on the other hand the Second Man,
who is born and by the Spirit consecrated to fulfil God's
will in human history and consummate the teleologicat
law of the world; given these contrary Powers and we
have an issue, a radical contradiction, a contradiction
which has to be met and resolved into the triumph of
truth by the Christ. Not only is it necessary that Jesus
affirm the right, actualize the true and the good, but He
must also do the right, actualize the true and the good in
conscious opposition to the false and the wrong. By a
firm contradictory opposition to the false and the wrong
He develops His potential superiority over the antagoniz
ing kingdom of Satan, and in His personal history fulfils
the law of redeeming grace.
That this twofold end may be attained the genius and
the law of the kingdom of darkness, under the direction
of Providence^ confront the soul of Jesus. The direct
alternative of the false and the wrong to the true and the
right arises: the alternative of Satan's will to God's will;
of Satan's purpose of antagonism to God's wisdom in ere*
ating and governing the world; of Satan's ideal of man to
God's ideal about to be realized in the Son of Man; the
alternative of Satan's cunning malice in his proposed
defeat of the Christ to the love of God originating and
perfecting the redemption of a fallen world. The alterna
tive is not the antithesis of a false thought to a true
thought, of a wicked purpose to a righteous purpose, of

§243-] The Temptation. 247
an evil word to a goad word; hut it is the actual con
tradiction of the false personality to the true Personality,
of the abnormal order of creation to the normal order, of
the kingdom of darkness to the kingdom of light. That
this actual contradiction unfolded and matured by the
birth of the new Man and by the institution of the office
of the Christ may be resolved into the complete victory pf
life, of truth and righteousness, the antagonism of king
dom to kingdom, of person to Person, culminates in a
crisis. The kingdom of darkness in the person of its
prince challenges the kingdom of light in the person of
the Christ. In assailing the person of the Christ, Satan
assails His Messiahship, His mediatorial mission, His po
tential authority as Head over all things, unto the Church.
§ 245-
The external form of the temptation is a matter of
subordinate importance; yet it cannot be dismissed
without some consideration.
Whether or not the solicitation to unfaithfulness
was real is the vital question, not the manner of the
approach of the tempter. What Christology has to
maintain is the fact that the temptation of Jesus did
not arise from within, but assailed Him from without,
being referable to the antagonism of an opposing
kingdom. 1. Whether Satan manifested his presence by a vision,
or approached Jesus through a deputation of Pharisees, or
assaulted Him in some unique form of iniquity (which
might be called a Satanophany), is certainly not a question
of indifference to Christology. We might accept an an
swer under either form, yet hold a Christian conception of
the temptation. What sound Christology has to maintain

248 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
as essential, is the necessity and the reality of the tempta
tion. Jesus was not at issue with Himself, as Rationalism has
suggested. He did not compare one purpose with another
purpose, one plan of the proposed kingdom of God with
another plan, both being equally the product of His own
religious genius; nor did He doubt His calling or waver
in His purpose. Schleiermacher says: "If Jesus ever
harbored any such thoughts (as the tempter suggested to
him), even in the most evanescent manner, he would no
longer be Christ; and this explanation appears to me the
worst neological outrage that has been committed against
him." The temptation is objective. A personality con
trary to Himself, representing an actual kingdom of moral
and physical evil, confronts Jesus. A solicitation from
without addresses Him. "As the first Adam," says Ols-
hausen, "according to the profound narrative in Genesis,
was tempted from without, so was the last Adam also."
So long as Christology asserts the objective reality of a
temptation to do wrong, and asserts it firmly and consist
ently, much latitude may be allowed to speculation re
specting the external form.
2. The narrative of the temptation recorded by Matthew
and Luke is probably symbolical. Between the probation
of the first Adam and the probation of the last Adam there
is in some respects a parallel. Each stands the head of
a race; each is qualified to maintain himself; each from
without is addressed by the tempter; the interior nature
of the challenge of both is the same. Though the exter
nal circumstances differ, the one being in the garden of
Eden, the other in the wilderness, it is nevertheless reason
able to assume that the parallelism may extend to the form

\ 243.] The Temptation. 249
of representation adopted by the record. If in the garden
of Eden the 'tree' and the 'serpent' are symbolical, it is
consistent to assume that in the wilderness the threefold
form of the assault of Jesus by Satan is not to be taken in
its external literalness, but as a pictorial representation of
the real spiritual transaction.
Indeed Christian reason cannot conceive how the king
dom of evil spirits can in its prince approach man, a being
no less really corporeal than ethical, but in some symbol
ical manner, under a form assumed and adapted to man's
corporeal organization.
The difficulty of acknowledging an actual temptation,
an objective assault of the Devil, challenging Jesus under
an outward form to adopt a false ideal of His mission,
arises chiefly from the lack of a firm belief in the kingdom
of evil spirits. Accept the reality, of this kingdom of which
Satan is the personal head, accept the antagonism of the
the prince of wickedness to the kingdom of God, and the
difficulty disappears. If we holfl these fundamental pre
mises and recognize a close connection of the angelic world
with the human world, the temptation becomes an event
arising from the nature of things. Not this ordeal of
Jesus, but the non-occurrence of the temptation would
appear to be unreasonable. And so soon as it becomes
obvious from the nature of the issue between the mission
of the Christ and the kingdom of darkness that a solemn
crisis must come, we likewise see it to be legitimate that
the encounter occur under some outward form answering
to the conditions of the issue.

2 SO Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
§ 2,44-
More important than the external form is the matter
of the temptation. What was the falsehood presented
to Jesus for His acceptance ?
The answer may be given in a twofold way. The
matter or content of the temptation may be studied
under either its general or its particular aspect. The
one is. the antagonizing will of Satan' ; the other is the
false ideal of the Messianic kingdom.
i. Satan antagonizes the purpose and the authority of
God's righteous love by proposing and insinuating his
contradictory will, the same as to kind in his assault upon
the last Adam as in his assault upon the first Adam. In
the garden of Eden Satan asserts his will in direct antag
onism to the original communion of righteous love be
tween God and man. In the wilderness Satan proposes
his will to Jesus in opposition to the new life-communion
between God and man constituted by the divine-human
personality of the Christ* in whom love has become the
grace of redemption and forgiveness. There he succeeded
in destroying the original harmony of" the world by sub
jecting the will of the primeval family to his own will.
Here he aims at the overthrow of the new creation by
soliciting Jesus to renounce the divine will of redeeming
love, and in its place to accept Satan's will as the law of
the Messianic kingdom.
2. Under its particular aspeet the matter of the tempta
tion consists in the purpose to- falsify the divine idea of
the kingdom of God about to be actualized by the Media
tor. Satan's purpose is to constrain Jesus to. adopt the
false ideal of the Messiah, and of the kingdom of the Mes
siah, which at the time was prevalent among the masses

1 244.) The Temptation. 251
of the Jewish people. Not a spiritual kingdom of divine
love and divine righteousness, but a temporal kingdom of
earthly magnificence, mightier and grander than the king
dom of Solomon, is the ideal of the tempter, an ideal that
coincided with the sympathies and hopes of oppressed
Judaism, no less than with the universal aspirations of
mankind.1, 3. The law of the mediatorial work to which Jesus had
been consecrated is the law of humiliation, of self-denial,
of fasting and prayer, of poverty, persecution and shame.
Subjecting Himself to this law of humiliation, He looks
forward to a life of suffering and of seeming defeat ; He
even awaits the condemnation and death of a malefactor.
To obey this law of self-denial and self-sacrifice in the
endeavor to establish a great kingdom contradicts the
wisdom of all ages, incurs, the judgment of extreme folly,
and necessitates an experience which to the greatest degree
is painful and mortifying. The susceptible heart of Jesus
feels His anomalous position; He knows that the judgment
of the world, even of the wisest and best men, of the pro
foundest thinkers and the greatest scholars, is against Him;
He anticipates the bitterness of His trials, the agon}' of
terrible conflicts, and even then it may he the horrors of
His crucifixion. Gifted with the self-respect of the noblest
manhood, possessing the instincts of an immaculate per
sonality, His nature shrinks from His. extraordinary call
ing. Alone in the wilderness, He "offers up prayers and
supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that
was able to save Him." 2
1 "The aim of Satan was to make of Jesus a pseudo-Messiah, abusing
the divine gifts for selfish ends by conforming to the carnal expectations
•of the Jews respecting the Messiah, "-rrgchaff.
2 Heb. v. 7.

252 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6..
When Jesus ' had fasted forty days and forty nights, He
afterward hungered.'1 Then the tempter comes and pro
poses the contrary ideal of a kingdom, an ideal which had
received the approval and support of all great men. There
is another law of greatness and dominion, the tempter sug
gests, a law which supersedes hunger, dishonor and pov
erty. To one who is endowed with extraordinary powers,
who comes in answer to the prayers and in fulfilment of the
hopes of the Jewish people, and comes to satisfy the aspi
rations of all Gentile nations, this law commends itself as
rational and divine.
This contrary law is the self-assertion of His powers in
His own behalf. Being a free agent, an independent per
sonality, Jesus has the ability and the right to obey this law.
Jesus may assert His authority and exert His power
even to turn stones into bread; thus He will escape the
humiliation of want and the pains of fasting.
If He will assert His prerogatives of freedom ; if He will
avail Himself of His grand opportunities conformably to
the universal sentiment of the ages, He may, like Solo
mon, possess all the kingdoms of the world and the glory
of them. Instead of suffering the abjectness of poverty,
He may become the richest king among all kings.
More even than this. If He will display His personal
superiority before the eyes of men, instead of being de
spised He will command their admiration, in place of
persecution He will receive their homage. The resources
of unbounded wealth, the intense satisfaction of having
unexampled dominion, and the delights of the highest
honors, are for Jesus the alternatives of self-denial, of pov
erty and shame. 'Matt. iv. 2.

1 245.] The Temptation. 253
The animus of the temptation is precisely the same as
the animus of the proposition with which- the tempter ap
proached and succeeded iii seducing the primeval family.
The threefold form of the assault is adjusted to. the three
fold perverse tendency of Adamic humanity as represented
by St. John: the lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eyes,
and the vain-glory of life, which is not of the Father, but
is of the world.1 §245-
In setting forth the particular import of the temptation
its peculiar adaptation to the human nature and official
position of Jesus has also impliedly been presented.
The challenge addressing the last Adam, like that
which addressed the first Adam, was internally as well
as externally real.
1. Jesus felt the force of the contrary suggestions; and
it may be said that He felt their force in all their strength.
He saw the contrast of the proposed ideal of a mighty
empire to that ideal of His mediatorial mission to which
by His Father He had been consecrated. That the one
was in harmony with the universal sentiment of the age,
whilst the other stood in direct contrariety to it, He clearly
discerned. That the one was pleasing to natural feeling,
the other painful ; that the one would be supported by a
universal judgment of approval, whilst the other would
incur universal condemnation; that the one would be.
attended by outward prosperity and be crowned with
earthly success, whilst the other was full of peril and in
the opinion of all the wise would issue in'total failure; —
all these contrasts we have good reason to assume were
1 1 John ii. 16.

254 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
projected before the eye of His imagination. The one
was attractive, the other repulsive. The contrast stood
out definitely before His mind, and its meaning pene
trated the depth's of His soul. Standing alone in the pur
suit of His mission, not understood by His kindred, lack
ing the full sympathy of His mother,1 with the enmity and
persecution of His Own nation in prospect, and the hatred,
contempt and malice of the Roman Empire impending,
the moment when the contrast rose distinctly before Him
was a crisis.
Any view of the temptation which denies of it internal
penetrating force for the soul of Jesus neutralizes its
reality. Temptation implies a challenge from without to do the
wrong, and personal susceptibility to its force. A chal
lenge exclusively external, holding no relation of fitness to
the condition of the personal subject, would not be a
temptation; the rejection of such a challenge would not
be a moral victory. There must be the Capacity of feeling
the force of an evil Solicitation; there must also be the
possibility of responding affirmatively to the appeal {posse
pcccare). The possibility of yielding to the solicitation
is the negative side Of the autonomy of personality; and
it is inseparable from freedom in the process of develop
ment and confirmation.
Such negative possibility, the possibility of not affirming
the right with absolute firmness, does not presuppose the
sinfulness of the personal subject; it presupposes only the
state of relative moral perfection. As we are explicitly
taught, Jesus could be tempted. " For we have not a high
priest that cannot be touched with a feeling of our infirmi^
' Mk. iii. 21, 22 ; iii. 31-35.

§245-] The Temptation. 255
ties; but Pne that hath been in all points tempted like as
we are, yet without sin."1 "He was," Bengel says,
"both tempted without sin, and yet truly tempted." In
the case of the Second Man no more than in the case of the
first man does temptation imply that there is an abnormal
element or some false moral tendency latent in the subject.
2. The doctrine that the temptation was in the true
sense real, both externally and internally, presupposes just
the contrary moral status of the Son of Man. Of a tempta
tion to unfaithfulness or wrong-doing we can speak only
as prevailing in the sphere of moral life; and it necessarily
implies that the subject is capable of a prompt negative
response. An external solicitation from the kingdom of
darkness to the affirmation of which the personal subject
is predisposed by some latent propensity of his nature
makes the subject unfree; and the solicitation is in conse
quence not in the proper sense a temptation. Instead of
standing in the crisis of a probation, the person would be
Wrought upon by the force of an external power; he would
be related to the evil suggestion somewhat as thirst is
related to water, or hunger to food ; and compliance would
be rather a moral effect than a free affirmative response.
In these circumstances a yielding to an evil suggestion
'coming from without would not be an ethical fall; it would
be progress in sinfulness.
Hence whether We maintain that Jesus fasting in the
wilderness was by virtue of His sinlessness inaccessible to
the suggestions of Satan, or hold that Jesus was Pnly a
great and good man possessing the latent proclivities to
moral evil common to the best class of ordinary men, in
either case we in effect deny the reality of His temptation.
1 Heb. iv. 15.

256 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
Instead Christology has to teach on the one hand that
Jesus was accessible to the insinuating force of the false
ideal of the Messianic kingdom, for ' He hath been in all
points tempted like as we are ;' but on the other that there
was no latent sympathy, no potential rapport, of His soul
with this false ideal, for Jesus 'was without sin.'1 Jesus
was not only without evil thoughts, without evil words,
or overt transgression, but neither the law of sin, nor a
slumbering predisposition to think or to will the wrong,
was an element of His nature. § 246.
The vexed question concerning the peccability of
Jesus here arises. Christology has held contrary the
ories; the one that Jesus was impeccable (non posse
peccare), because truly divine ; the other that Jesus
was peccable {posse peccare), because truly human.
Both theories may be true ; both may be false. He
was not peccable, He could not commit sin, if the ques
tion be construed ethically. But if the question be
viewed in its relation to the idea of personal autonomy,
Christology will have to say that. He was peccable.
Wrhether Christology holds that it was not possible
for Jesus to commit sin or that it was possible, in either
case a distinction has to be made between a true and
a false affirmation of peccability, between a true and a
false denial.
1. Jesus was impeccable; He could not commit sin.
When the evil suggestion of the tempter confronted His
soul, He instantly asserted the law of His immaculate life
against the false spirit of the temptation. Freely and
without wavering He affirmed the divine ideal of His
Messianic mission against the false conception of Messiah-
'John viii. 46.

§246] The Temptation. 257
ship prevalent among the Jews. With uncompromising
firmness He chose the will of His Father as His only prin
ciple of action, in opposition to the will of Satan.
The record of the temptation as given by Matthew,
Mark and Luke justifies Christology in maintaining that
when Jesus felt the force of the evil suggestion, when like
a flash the proposed alternative challenged His accept
ance, He in that instant consciously, promptly rejected
it; the rejection was the reverse side of His unchanging
purpose to do the will of His Father. ' ' He had a sense of
sin deeper than that of all other men," says Dr. Tucker,
"but He never for a moment assumed that He had the
experience of it. * * He had the experience of tempta
tion greater than that of any other man, but it was not
the detailed experience of the common temptations of
men. * * His temptation was as real to Him as yours
to you, or as mine to me; but it was real to Him because
it was His temptation, not yours or mine."1 Not from
any erroneous expectation that His people would welcome
the truth of His mission and accept His new teaching, but
with a definite perception of impending conflicts, suffering
and shame, He, when like a sword the false ideal pierced
His soul, unhesitatingly determined His will according to
the true ideal of His Messiahship.
The impeccability of Jesus does not mean that He was
totally inaccessible to the insinuating force of the falsehood
of the tempter. Impeccability expresses the uninter
rupted self-determination of His personality according to
the law and truth of positive freedom. By affirming the
objective truth of freedom, the will of His Father in
heaven, He maintained fidelity and devotion to His Father
1 Andover Review, Feb., 1892, p. 1888.
17

258 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
in the moment of severest trial, and did it with increasing
decision and perfection. Impeccability consisted in the
self-determined, inflexible affirmation of the truth of God
in cOnscious opposition to every form of falsehood.
He could not do wrong because He would not. It is
however, more scriptural and philosophical to express the
thought thus: wrong He could neither do nor will, because
He constantly willed, and effectually willed, to do the right.
The ethical impossibility to commit sin is mightier and
more ennobling than the physical impossibility. The
physical finds its complement in the ethical.
If we refer His impeccability to the almighty power
which His deity exerted upon His human nature, thus
rendering the commission of sin a metaphysical impossi
bility through the controlling influence of external divine
force, we invade the humanity of Jesus, we violate the
law of the incarnation; and' instead of emphasizing the
genuine character of His holiness we reduce it to a lower
level. If the divine nature overwhelms the human nature
in the idea of His theanthropic personality and holy char
acter, we cannot with logical consistency predicate sinless-
ness and impeccability of the Mediator.
2. Jesus was peccable. Being truly the incarnate Son,
made to be sin on our behalf, in Him the absolute auton
omy of the Godhead and the relative autonomy of man
hood were one, the absolute being present and active in
the relative. A divine-huinan personality, He was acces
sible to the evil suggestion proposed by the kingdom of
darkness. Says Olshausen: "In the sphere of the invol
untary life of the soul He was passively susceptible as we
are."1 If He had been absolutely inaccessible to the evil
' Comm. on Heb. iv. 15, p. 410.

JJ246.] The Temptation. 259
suggestion, He would not conformably to the law of hu
man freedom have stood firm, both negatively and posi
tively, in His holy will; He would not have actualized in
His personal history the living contradiction to false Mes
siahship, nor actualized an ethical superiority over the
kingdom of darkness. The righteousness of His life would
have been spontaneous and positive, but the negative
element, the denial with clear consciousness of a pseudo-
Messiahship, would have been wanting; His righteousness
would not have included the virtue of conscious victory
over the kingdom of sin, and the holiness of His character
would under this negative aspect have fallen short of its
ideal. But Christology must guard against a false notion of
peccability. When it is conceded that it was possible for
Jesus to commit sin, the expression can denote only the
autonomy of personal^. A sinless person in the process
of confirmation in righteousness is capable of not choosing
the truth; but iu the act of choosing the truth he re
nounces falsehood. The peccability of Jesus was not a
minimum of latent indifference to His mediatorial mission,
much less a slumbering sympathy with Satan's false ideal
of the Messianic kingdom; but peccability was that in
trinsic capacity of affirming or denying truth which dis
tinguishes the mystery of creaturely freedom. Of this
mysterious capacity in the incipient stages of perfection
peccability and impeccability are reciprocally predicates,
each presupposing the other.
Freedom was developed in the personal history of Jesus,
day by day, year by year, after the divine pattern. He
asserted His will exclusively in choosing and doing the
truth, whereby the ideal possibility of choosing the false

2 60 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
was, moment by moment, resolved progressively into sin
less righteousness.
To think of the peccability of Jesus as a slumbering
disposition towards a pseudo-Messiahship, contradicts the
spotless moral purity of His human nature. Or, to assume
that the capacity of not doing the truth was by the will
of Jesus held completely under restraint, without at the.
same time laying chief stress on the internal connection
of such restraint with the firm, unbroken affirmation of
His Father's will, both ignores and violates the distinct
ively positive character of our Lord's moral perfection.
He did not keep Himself pure and faithful because He
held in check the possibility of choosing Satan's false
ideal ; but the possibility of choosing the pseudo-Messiah
ship did not become actual either in word or deed, either
in thought or feeling, because with unchanging purpose
He chose to be faithful to His Father by fulfilling His mis
sion. 3. The question concerning the peccability of Jesus is
speculative. A sound Christology may accept either an
swer. The matter of chief dogmatic importance is to
affirm the sinlessless and positive righteousness of His
personal life. But the doctrine of sinlessness and positive
righteousness must be held; consistently with human na
ture, especially with the autonomy of personality. If we
teach that He was sinless and righteous just because He
was divine, and for no other reason, we fail to make due
account of His humanity. We degrade His human nature
instead of exalting it. Instead of according to Jesus the
perfection of human freedom, we subject His human will
to the control of His divine will as of an external power.
Whilst therefore it may be said that Christology may be

§247-] The Temptation. 261
sound whether it accepts the one or the other answer to
the question concerning peccability, 3'et it must be added
that a Christology which denies His peccability solely
because He was divSne, puts the reality and. perfection of
His humanity on a precarious basis; and a theory of the
temptation which touches the integrity of His humanity
so far forth also affects the reality of the incarnation.
§247-
Standing firm in devotion to His mediatorial mission
by the free activity of His righteous will, Jesus, the
Head of the new race, achieved a positive victory over
Satan. The probation of Jesus and the assault upon Him of
the kingdom of darkness, issue in a development and
confirmation of His moral and spiritual dignity.
1. The .mighty angel who had superinduced the apos
tasy of innumerable angels and of the whole human race,
is now for the first time overwhelmed with defeat, over
whelmed by Man. Moreover, Satan, the god of this
world, suffers defeat in his own dominions, where all the
circumstances are favorable to success. Says Olshausen:
"Adam fell in Paradise, and made it a wilderness; Jesus
conquered in the wilderness and made it a paradise, where
the beasts lost their wildness, and angels took up their
abode." The victory of Jesus was not purely negative. He did
not simply by the force of will repel the tempter. Such
repulse could be construed into wilfulness. And a wilful
repulse, though in itself the repulse would be right, could
not have been a substantial victory. Wilfulness may say-
to temptation either yes or no at pleasure. If we might

262 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
regard such a repulse as a victory, it would in point of fact
have been a barren victory. The result would not have
been a confirmation in truth, and therefore- as regards the
purpose of the temptation would Irave been a partial
failure. Jesus repelled the tempter not by a wilful no, but by
acts of true obedience. He determined His will accord
ing to the law of right, of fidelity to God. The act was
indeed a conscious act of His will, but not a wilful act.
To do the will of His Father in heaven was His constant
supreme choice; hence the repulse of the tempter had
positive worth. He denied the will of the tempter be
cause without wavering He affirmed God's will.
2. The account of the temptation as given by Matthew
and Luke1 brings prominently to view the positive char
acter of the victory. Under each challenge Jesus refers
Himself with unobscured consciousness to the njoral order
and the inviolable law of God. When the tempter sup
ports his evil suggestion by putting a perverse construc
tion on the divine sonship of Jesus, or by an abuse of the
written word, Jesus repels his cunning by affirming man's
normal relation to God and asserting the truth of the
written word. .
The first suggestion is repelled in a twofold way: nega
tively: ' Man shall not live by bread alone;' then positively:
Man shall live 'by every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God.' That which is 'written' has for him
supreme authority. Not for an instant does He allow
Himself to debate the question.
The second suggestion2 is repelled under the negative
1 Matt. iv. i-i 3 ; Lk. iv. 1-14.
2 Following the order of Matt. iv. 5, 6.

g247-] The Temptation. 263
form, ' Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. ' But the
positive basis of the repulse is expressed by the prompt
reference of Himself to the word of God: It is written.
The third suggestion, like the first, is repelled in a two
fold way: negatively, 'Get thee hence, Satan;' then posi
tively: 'It is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy
God, and Him only shalt thou serve.' Jesus immediately
refers Himself to the divine word; and this self-reference
is the ground of the repulse of the Devil.
Jesus does not simply resist the tempter; He, does not
merely refuse to accept the proposed alternative. Nor
does He refer His refusal to His own choice; He does not
say 'no' arbitrarily. But He conquers the tempter by
the strength of the divine truth which with clear con
sciousness He steadfastly chooses. Referring Himself to
the Good, and appropriating the Good by the persistent
choice of His will, Jesus maintains His moral integrity;
and by maintaining His integrity He achieves the victory.

264 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
CHAPTER VII.
THE MEDIATOR AND HIS MEDIATORSHIP.
§ 248
Returning from the wilderness in the strength of His
victory, Jesus enters on His ministry, for which by birth,
by His circumcision, by normal development in the
communion of the covenant, by the consecration of the
Father through the Spirit, and by His conquest of the
tempter, He was designed and has now been prepared.
John Baptist introduces the consecrated Mediator to
the confidence of Jews and the confidence of mankind
with this sublime witness to His person and mission :
Behold, the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sin
of the world.1 From this time onward the Christ goes
forth to found. His kingdom.
The unique dignity of His person and the virtue of
His mediatorship involve the progressive perfection of
His twofold constitution. The eternal being of the
Godhead and the temporal being of man, centering
in His personality, enter at every epoch into the medi
atorship of the Christ.
1. The New Testament idea of the incarnation presumes
a real transition from the glory of the Godhead into the
sphere of the world, from the realm of the eternal into the
realm of the temporal. " I came out from the Father, and
am come into the world." 2 The 'Father' on the one side
and the world on the other are opposite, the one Infinite
the other finite, the one Absolute the other relative, but
not exclusive nor contradictory. The Son ceases to live
'John i. 29,
'John xvi. 28. "kl-JjWov Ik tov warpSc ml iXfjXvBa dc tov ndafiov. irdXiv
atyiriiu rbv k6o/iov ml iropevo/iai npbc rbv Tcaripa."

§248.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 265
purely in the form of God; by conception and birth He
begins to live in the form of man. The Son, 'taking the
form of a servant' was 'made in the likeness of men;'1 or,
as expressed by Paul in another place: 'God, sending His
own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering
for sin, condemned sin in the flesh. ' 2
Of the Mediator performing His mediatorial work
Christology predicates two modes of existence, the divine
mode and the human mode, the eternal mode and the
temporal mode, the one of the only begotten Son tran
scendent, the other of the only begotten Son incarnate.
Of the Son transcendent, living 'on an equality with God,'
Christology predicates the divine form, not the human
form, of existence. Of the Son incarnate Christology
predicates botb forms of being, the divine form and the
human form, the eternal Being in the temporal mode of
existence. The transition from ' the form of God ' to ' the
form of a servant' does not contravene God's nature; the
'form of a servant' is the unique manifestation of the
divine life of absolute love. The Son freely chooses not to
live iu the divine as the only form of existence ; but with
out invading the prerogatives of His eternal dignity He
chooses to manifest His power, wisdom and majesty by
assuming and living in the existence form of man.
In taking 'the form of a servant' the Son continues to
be 'the only begotten from the Father.' Having the ex
istence form of the personal creature in time, He did not
cease to be in eternity in the existence form of the Creator.
The real transition from the glory of God to the state of
humiliation 'in fashion as a man' was neither a divest
ment nor a negation 'of the Deity of the Son, neither of
1 Phil. ii. 7. 2 Rom. viii. 3.

266 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
His metaphysical nor of His ethical properties. Such a
supposition runs cpunter to the New Testament truth con
cerning the dignity of His person. The transition from
'the form of God' to 'the form of a servant' was in truth
such a manifestation of God's life of love, of God's majesty
and presence, as the creation and government of the uni
verse fails to realize. Instead of veiling or concealing the
Godhood of God, the Son in 'the form of a servant' is
the mip-htiest and noblest revelation of the otherwise hid-
den qualities of the Godhead. His most profound humili
ation is .in the sphere of time the most sublime assertion
of His eternal being.1
1 The anticlimax of Paul, Phil. ii. 5-1 1, has to some exegetes and theo
logians seemed to involve a limitation or a quiescent presence of divine
life. Rightly interpreted, however, this wouderful declaration illumines
God's metaphysical being, His infinite power and the boundlessness of
His wisdom with a unique kind of force which distinguishes this passage
from all others of its class. The humiliation of Christ in servant form is
a new manifestation of the divine nature, such as no pagan philosophy
could imagine, no Old Testament prophet predict, and the mind of no
apostle could conceive until the Spirit who searches ' the deep things of
God ' revealed its mysterious meaning ; for ' the things of God ' ' none
knoweth, save the Spirit of God.' 1 Cor. ii. 11.
Hooker by implication supports the principle as above expressed when
he teaches that the "Deity of Christ which before our Lord's incarnation
wrought all things without man, doth now work nothing wherein the
nature which it hath assumed is either absent from it or idle." Yet he
does not wholly surmount the. dualism of the 16th century. He says:
"The Son of God which did first humble Himself by taking our flesh
upon Him was an humiliation of Deity," but when afterwards He de
scended much lower, and became obedient "so far as to suffer death,
because such was His Father's will;" this Hooker pronounces "an
humiliation of manhood." The humiliation in death is predicated, uot
of His personality, but of His human nature. By consequence His self-
sacrifice does not become the new and most glorious manifestation of the
Godhood of God.— Ecc. Pol., V., LV., 8.

§248.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 267
Jesus being true God and true man in one person, the
Sou of God incarnate was at the same time the Son of God
transcendent, a truth which Reformed divines thus ex
press: Logos lotus extra carnem, lotus in came. Subject
in His incarnate history to the conditions of time and
space, He being of one substance with the Father was
likewise above time and above space. Born 'under the
law,' made 'to be sin on our behalf,' having become 'a
curse for us,' He was no less truly above the broken law,
the righteous One in heaven. The incarnate Son tempted
of the Devil and conquering the kingdom of darkness in a
real conflict on earth, He, the Son transcendent, was at
the same instant seated on the throne of majesty and ' up
holding all things by the word of His power.' The Medi
ator unites in His personal history two opposite worlds,
each in truth, each in its integrity.1
The constitution of the Mediator presupposes not only
the divinity (Bufcyc) of the Sou but also His unchangeable
Deity (0e<Sn?e); not only that the only-begotten Sou became
flesh and tabernacled among us, but also that though He
became flesh He continues to be truly the Son of God, a
unique truth clearly expressed by the Heidelberg Cate
chism: "The eternal Son of God, who is and continues
true and eternal God, took upon Him the very nature of
man, of the flesh and blood of the Virgin Mary, by the
operation of the, Holy Spirit." In the unfathomable
mystery of His person there is the organic conjunction of
1 "The eternal Logos," says Dr. Schaff, "continues in God and His
general revelation to the world as the Author of all reason; while at the
same time He enters into the bosom of humanity as a holy seed, that He
may arise within the human race as a Mediator and Redeemer. "—Christ
and Christianity, p. 112.

268 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
the Creator and the creature, and by consequence the con
junction of opposite modes of existence, of the divine mode
and the human mode, of the eternal and the temporal.
This Christological truth is analogous to the theological
truth respecting God as God, that He is transcendent, above
time and space, yet by a dynamic presence is immanent in
all His works.
2. The Mediator living the proper life of God in the
proper life of man, as He has a twofold mode of existence,
the one superhuman and heavenly, the other human and
earthly, so He has also a twofold consciousness, a divine
consciousness and a human consciousness, an eternal and
a temporal consciousness.
This proposition does not mean merely that the Medi
ator knew God, knew His nature and attributes, knew His
will and the purposes of His moral government; but it
means that the Mediator was in His incarnate as in His
pre-incaruate state the subject of divine and eternal con
sciousness, just as truly as ordinary men are the subjects
of a time consciousness. The knowledge predicable of
the Christ was a divine knowing. If .we lay special stress
on His divine nature as Divine, it may be said that His
knowledge was not temporal but eternal, not relative but
absolute, not finite but infinite. This proposition follows
from the truth that the Son of God, though incarnate, was
'true and eternal God.'
But the divine knowledge predicable of the Mediator
was not exclusively the eternal consciousness of the only
begotten Son transcendent. His knowledge was a divine
knowing in organic union with true human knowing; it
was a divine consciousness in a real human consciousness,
a union which was answerable at all points to the truth

§ 248 ] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 269
that 'the Logos became flesh and tabernacled among us.'
If thought be governed by the fundamental principle, that
the infinite being of the Son condescended to assume the
finite being of man and live on earth as to body and soul
'in fashion as a man,' Christology can logically accept the
truth that the infinite consciousness of the Son of God was
active in the finite consciousness of the Son incarnate. In
other words, the knowledge predicable of the Christ was a
divine knowing according to the essential laws, the condi
tions and limitations of human knowing, just as the Son
of God Himself, having become flesh, lived on earth, with
out violence to His Deity, under the conditions of time
and space. The truth of this proposition is based on the
principle that man is nigh of kin to God. Finitum capax
infiniti? It is ever to be bonle in mind that the infinite being of
God and the finite being of normal manhood are not ex
clusive nor contradictory. On the contrarj', man is
formed' for God.2 So far from violating the human consti
tution, the incarnation is adapted to and satisfies the pro
foundest human needs. The instincts and intuitions of
Jesus were really, but purely, after the manner of man.
He advanced in wisdom and age agreeably to the laws of
normal human development. This genuine humanness
of His life and of His consciousness was the mode of the
presence and life of His divine nature, the mode more-
1 Herbert Spencer in his " First Principles " maintains that the idea of
the infinite and that of the finite are correlatives, aud that in the mind
of man the finite only exists because he believes in the infinite. — P. 99.
Dr. De Pressense- remarks that this "great idea must be inherent in the
reason, before reason can educe it from the finite, even from the vastness
of the starry firmament."— Study of Origins, p. 455.
2Isa. xliii. 20, 21.

270 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
over which on earth was the most perfect revelation of
His divine nature. Any conception of the incarnate Son
which ignores the essential conditions of human life, or
denies that His humanity was the adequate organ of the
manifestation of His Deity, fails to lay hold of the reality
of the Mediator as this mediatorship addresses us from the
New Testament.
As the Son incarnate does not presuppose the non
existence of the Son of God transcendent, in other words,
as the existence form of the Sou of God in time did not
annul His existence form in eternity, so the knowledge of
the Christ, predicable according to the laws and conditions
of humanity, does not involve the denial of His knowledge
after the transcendent manner of the Godhead. His finite
time consciousness does not contradict the truth that He
is the Son of God, and as such has an infinite eternity
consciousness. Inasmuch as the Son, though incarnate,
continues 'to be true and eternal God,' He is the subject
of transcendent divine knowledge. The Son of God is the
incarnate Son; and the Son incarnate has a twofold mode
of existence, the one transcendent, the other immanent;
hence He has knowledge after a twofold order, the one a
divine knowledge after the manner «of God, the other a
human knowledge after the manner of ideal manhood.
Whilst we distinguish between the Son transcendent
and the Son immanent, we may not separate the one from
the other. The opposites, God and man, not confused but
ever distinct, are nevertheless one personality. So whilst
we must distinguish the eternal form of the divine con
sciousness of the Son transcendent from the time con
sciousness of the Son incarnate, we may not divorce these
two forms of consciousness. The eternal mode of knowing

3 248.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 271
and the temporal mode of knowing are in the Mediator
united; the two modes are not identical but are organic
ally one. Being the destroyer of sin and the perfecter of
human nature, He also destroys in Himself the contra-
ideal opposition between man and God, and resolves into
harmony the contradictions between God's eternal con
sciousness and man's t'emppral consciousness. The oppo
site forms of existence and the opposite forms of knowledge
may to the understanding of ' the natural man ' be irre
concilable; but in the Christ these opposite forms of ex
istence become to the eye of faith the members of a unique
constitution, and these opposite forms of consciousness
become the predicates of one personality.
3. The same general law must govern reflection on the
will of the Mediator. Being truly divine and truly human,
He has a divine will and a human will; He is active after
a divine manner and after a human manner. Of Him
Christology predicates two wills, two modes of mediatorial
activity. But Christology may not divorce the activity of
the human will from the activity of the divine will, nor
may Christology say that the human will cooperates or
concurs with the divine will. It does not suffice to teach
only that the Mediator is God and man, but Christological
thought must pass beyond this line of apprehension and
affirm that the Mediator is God-man, not a conjuction
only, but personal unity. So neither does it suffice to
hold 011I3' that the Mediator has a divine will and a human
will; but Christological thought concerning the 'will'
must advance to a conception demanded by the idea of
personal unity, and affirm of the Mediator that the divine
will is immanent in the human will. The divine will and
the human will are not the same, but the two are one.

272 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
The unity of two wills, like the unity of two natures, pre
supposes and includes essential differences.
Sameness excludes differences. The divine will is
active in the human will in a sense corresponding to the
truth that the being of the Son of God is in the being of
the Son of Man; or it may be said that the Mediator has
a divine-human will in the same sense that Christology
affirms that He is a divine-human Person.
According to this law we have to think of the works of
the Mediator, of His divine working in its relation to
His human working. Divine-human personality involves
the idea of divine volition active in human volition, of
divine working in human working. His deeds bore a
twofold character; under one aspect each was a divine
work, under another aspect each was a human work.
But in the person and personal history of the Mediator the
human mode of working is ever the organ, and the ade
quate organ, for the divine working.
Yet since the idea of the Son incarnate does not deny
the Son transcendent, so the immanent will of the Medi
ator is not inconsonant with the reality of His transcend
ent will. And His immanent activity, His words spoken
and His deeds wrought in 'the form of a servant,' do not
exclude nor contradict the reality of His transcendent
activity, His authority and dominion maintained after
the manner of God.
The divine form of the existence of the Son transcend
ent, His 'equality with God,' involves the divine form of
willing and working, jitst as the divine form of existence
involves the divine form of knowledge. The Son of
God living in the bosom of the glory of the Godhead
governs heaven and earth, with all creatures, as truly as

§249] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. ' 273
the Son of God incarnate, born under the law, lives in the
humiliation of ' a servant ' and becomes obedient unto
death. Hippolytus' in a striking manner sets forth the
contrasts in the unity of His personal life:
" Though demonstrated as God, He does not refuse the conditions
proper to Him as man, since He hungers and toils and thirsts in weari
ness, and flees in fear, and prays in trouble. And He who as God has a
sleepless nature, slumbers on a pillow. He sweats blood, and is strength
ened by an angel, who Himself strengthens those who believe on Him.
* * And He is scourged by Pilate, who took upon Himself our infirm
ities. And He who is inseparable from the Father cries to the Father,
and commends to Him His spirit. * * And He who gives life bounti
fully to all, has His side pierced with a spear.'
Thrones, dominions, principalities, powers, all things hav
ing been created through Him, hold together in Him
at the instant that He is reconciling all things unto the
Father ' through the blood of His cross.' 2
If the doctrine concerning the incarnate Son emphasizes
the unity in distinction from the sameness of the two
natures, if it conserve the integrity of each and exclude a
false subordination of either to the other, Christology will
be able to affirm the kenosis taught by St. Paul in Phil. ii.
7, yet escape the dogmatic errors to which a defective
interpretation of the incarnation exposes the Church.
§ 249.
The idea concerning the Mediator must govern funda
mental conceptions concerning His mediatorship. Christ
ology studies the mediatorial work in the light of the
mediatorial Person.
What our Lord .taught, what He wrought on earth,
what He suffered, what He achieved by His resurrection
1 Against one Noetus, \ 18. 2 Col. i. 16-20.
18

274 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Books.
from the dead, is in all its relations connected with Him
self, with what He was and is. The mysterious constitu
tion of the Mediator is the germinal principle of His
teaching and of His miracles, of His revelation of God to
man and of the redemption from sin and death which in
Himself He accomplished.
Jesus does not become the Mediator between the life of
God and the life of man, between God as the righteous
Governor of the world and man as the guilty transgressor,
in consequence of His passion and death or of the redemp
tive work which He, enthroned in heaven, is now accom
plishing. Jesus is the Mediator in virtue of the constitu
tion of His person. He fulfils the mediatorial office
because He is the Mediator. He is carrying forward the
redemptive work because He is the Redeemer.
Therefore Christology must study the Mediator and His
mediatorship according to the law which objectively gov
erns their relation. A dogmatic conception of the media
torship is to be developed in the light of the Mediator.
The idea of His divine-human life must regulate our
conceptions of the particular events of His life, especially
of His miracles, His death and resurrection.
?
True, the mediatorship manifests the riches of the ful
ness of the Mediator; and we cannot get a satisfying
insight into His fulness by reflection directly upon Himself
apart from His manifestations. The manifestation of the
cardinal events of His history sheds light upon the mys
tery of the person of the Mediator. Reflection on both
is necessary, on His person and on His work. Each we
have to study in its vital connection with the other. But
the mediatorship is to be viewed as the exhibition and
realization of what the Mediator Himself is. Whilst each

3250.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 275
sheds light on the other, the fundamental order of the
reality becomes the order of our knowledge. Thought
passes from the Person to His history in the state of
humiliation and of exaltation. §250.
The mediatorship of the Christ is essentially one
office. As the Mediator Himself is one, one person,
one life, so is His mission only one mission.
As He unites in His personal life two orders of
existence, the divine and the human, the heavenly and
the mundane, and therefore is organically connected
with God and the world, His mediatorship bears a
twofold character.
1. His mission pertains immediately to God, and imme
diately to man. The Mediator comes to constitute a new
communion; a new communion of God with man, a new
communion of man with God. The communion is new,
not absolutely but in a relative sense; for it presupposes
as its basis the original communion of love founded by the
creation of the primeval man in the image of God. This
original communion the Mediator revives, and in reviving
it, develops and completes it by the spiritual creation of
humanity in Himself.1
'Speaking of the formation of the first Adam, Tertullian says: "A
great matter was in progress, out of which the creature was being fash
ioned. Imagine God wholly employed and absorbed in it, in His hand,
His purpose, His wisdom, His providence, and above all, in His love,
which was dictating the lineaments of this creature. For, whatever was
the form and expression which was then given to the clay by the Creator,
Christ was in His thoughts as one day to become man, because the Word
too, was to be both clay and flesh. * * - That clay which was even then
putting on the image of Christ, who was to come in the flesh, was not
only the work, but also the pledge and surety, of God."— On the Resur
rection, Ch. VI.

276 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
Of this new communion of love between God and man
Jesus Christ is the real beginning. The beginning is
dynamic and potential. From the Christ as the fountain
of life proceeds a spiritual energy by which a new people
is begotten, a new community is brought into existence,
in which the revived, the ideal fellowship with God, begun
in Him and by Him, is to prevail, to be unfolded and
perfected. 2. As this new communion has two opposite terms, the
energy of divine love and the response of human aspira
tion, the positive mediatorship is active always under two
aspects. Looking at His office from one point of view,
divine activity is prominent. The Divine is progress
ively communicating of the fulness of His life of love to
the Son of Man. Looking at the mediatorship from the
other point of view, human activity is prominent. Man
apprehended and appropriated by God is lifted up into a
better fellowship with God, and in this fellowship the Son
of Man determines His life actually according to the divine
will. (
The new union and the higher communion of God and
man as realized in the personal history of the Mediator, is
accordingly a revelation, a revelation of God in man and
to man, a revelation of man in union with God. Human
nature having been created anew by the conception and
birth of Jesus Christ through the agency of the Holy
Spirit, the mediatorship becomes a process of human ele
vation, of human transformation and of metaphysical as
well as ethical perfection.
3. The mediatorship is not external to man, nor external
to God. The Christ does not stand between the two
worlds, as if God occupied a position on the one side sepa-

§250.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 277
rated by the infinitude of His being from man, as if man
occupied a position on the other side separated by crea-
tural finitude from God: so abolishing mutual antagonism
by effecting and maintaining peace. Such a mediation
would be a name rather than a spiritual reality. God and
man would still be two parties standing asunder. The
opposition between the infinite Personality of the Creator
and the finite personality of the creature would not be
resolved into vital union. Neither God's love of man nor
man's capacity of loving God would be satisfied.
The mediatorship is internal and organic, consisting
as to its principle in the unique constitution of the
Mediator. In Him the contradiction between the life of
God and the life of man, each otherwise exclusive toward
the other, is transcended; transcended inasmuch as the
two, each maintaining its own integrity, each honoring
the integrity of the other, have become one life. The
mediatorial history, as distinguished from the person of
the Mediator, is the gradual development and progress of
the mystery of His personal constitution. As this sublime
history advances by mighty word and mighty deed, by par
able and by miracle, from one epoch to another, through
agony and death, through resurrection and ascension, the
manifestation to men and angels of the Godhead ' in fash
ion as a man ' becomes richer and more glorious, and the
transformation of humanity into the image of God passes
'from glory to glory.' A work is done toward which all
other works look. Another, a pure, final order of personal
existence 'becomes on the plane of the natural world, an
order in which the spiritual instincts and profoundest
aptitudes of .man's original being are brought to light and
are met. Human aptitudes are met and enriched, inas-

278 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
much as the manhood of the Son of Man, responding to
divine love, turns to God as the absolute Good and lives
the life of spiritual perfection in God.
As each of these aspects of the mediatorship sup
poses the other at the birth of the Mediator, so each sup
poses the action of the other in every period, at every
point, of His mediatorial history. The progressive self-
communication of God implies the growing spiritual
capacities and the progressive transformation of His man
hood. A proposition reversing the order of action is
equally valid. The progressive transformation of His
human nature into the divine likeness implies the pro
gressive self- communication of God. The mediation in
cluding the reciprocal action of these two factors is
consummated in the person of the Christ by His glori
fication. The view of the mediatorship of the Christ as it has-
now in brief been stated sets forth its fundamental truth,
the truth which conditions its virtue for all the members
of the Adamic race. It emphasizes primarily the essential
relation between God and man, the reciprocity between
the being of the personal Creator and the being of the
personal creature. The Christ by His mediatorship fulfils
and satisfies the eternal love of God to man; and in satis
fying God's love He realizes the intention, the richest
possibilities of human personality, and becomes the
prophecy of God's foreordi nation concerning the world.
This twofold mediating truth He does in Himself, and
in His personal history. Here where the historical medi
atorship begins, thought on the mediatorship, to be thor
oughly logical, has also to begin. But here logical
thought may not pause.

§251.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 279
§251.
The mediatorship of the Christ would be positive
only, if the original communion between God and
man prevailed under its ideal character. But man's
apostasy from God by transgression is a fact that
perverts and in a degree paralyzes the endowments
of the race in all its relations.
Of the fall there are three fundamental aspects that
require restatement with emphasis.
1. Man is a transgressor of law. Transgression touches
God's heart. "It repented the Lord that he had made
man on the earth, and it grieved him at His heart."
Righteous love is turned into wrath. "And the Lord
said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the
face of the ground."1 The "divine law condemns the
fallen race; for the race is guilty of loving and doing the
wrong. Justice, the necessity of blessing, becomes the ne
cessity of punishment. God's judicial attitude is changed.
His presence in the economy of nature and His dealings
with the world in the dispensations of providence reveal
divine displeasure.
2. Sin infects man's entire constitution, and falsifies
his original relation to all the kingdoms of nature. Wil
fully subjecting itself to God's adversary, the author and
constant upholder of moral evil, the race is the subject of
an evil principle lodged in personality, a principle which
disorganizes and poisons its capacities and gives false
direction to its development.
3. Wilfully subject to the adversary of God, the race is
not only disorganized, viewed in its relation to itself; but
1 Gen. vi. 6, 7. Jno. iii. 36.

280 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
its disorganization is referable to a 'foreign dominion, to
the kingdom of darkness of which the race is the bond
servant. Assailed by the hostile powers of nature, man is
helpless in their ruthless grasp, because in and through
nature the adversary is ever beguiling and destroying the
transgressor. Identifying Himself with mankind subject to condem
nation and disorganization, the Mediator in fulfilling His
mission of love for the perfection of the race meets the
necessities arising from transgression. §252.
The mediatorial history of the Christ becomes of
necessity a redemption.
Coming to effect a new life-communion between man
and God, He. comes to deliver the race from moral and
physical evil. His mediatorship involves a profound
humiliation of Himself. He descends into the condi
tion and history of the fallen world: to sanctify hu
manity, to bear the curse of God against sin, and to
overthrow the dominion of Satan.
1. The redemptive mediation of the Christ includes the
purification and sanctification of His human nature. In
taking upon Him ' the very riature of man, of the flesh
and blood of the Virgin Mary, by the operation of the
Holy Ghost,' He revives the ideal action of the original
law of manhood, thus superseding the controlling alien
force of the law of sin. In consequence of a truly human
conception, a truly human birth, the humanity which He
develops in childhood and youth, which He expresses in
deeds and words, is a spotless humanity, growing in posi
tive moral elevation as He advances in His mediatorship.
The spotless purity of His birth and His infancy is the

3 252. ] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 281
consequence of the 'extraordinary agency of the Holy
Spirit. Conceived according to the laws of original hu
man nature, Jesus in the beginning of His divine-human
life was the passive subject of the Spirit. But passive He
could not continue to be. As the child grew, advancing
in stature, He advanced also in wisdom. Passive spotless-
ness became active righteousness. Moral purity was no
less the result of the free activity of His will than the
condition in which He was born. Jesus purifies Himself
from the corruption which attaches to the fallen condition
of human life in the bosom of which He is born and
grows and fulfills His mission.
Self purification was positive progress in purity as from
day to day, from year to year, He came into close contact
with all grades of impurity. It does not imply that the
principle of sin was latent in His being, nor that the
poison of impurity at any time infected His soul. When,
for example, He entered into the synagogue where was a
man that had his hand withered, and the Jews watched
Him, whether He would heal on the sabbath-day, that
they might accuse Him; and when He said unto them: Is
it lawful on the sabbath-day to do good, or to do harm?
but they held their peace; He looked round about on them
with anger, ^ bpyrjc. The line is narrow between right
anger and wrong anger, between holy displeasure with
hypocrisy and unholy aversion to the person of hypocrites.
But that His anger was righteous indignation, not against
the person of His enemies, but at their hypocrisy, is
evident from the narrative itself; for Mark says that He
was 'grieved at the hardening of their heart' "With
,His just grief," as Bengel remarks, "was united righteous
anger." This example illustrates the general fact that

282 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [books.
Jesus was living in the domain of selfishness, of moral
corruption and wickedness, and at every turn He was
assailed by the malice and cunning of moral evil. More
over, the events of His history recorded by the evangelists
justify us in. sa3'ing that, owing to the ingenuity and
deceitfulness with which on all occasions His foes miscon
strued His words and misinterpreted His deeds, though
actuated by pure love and genuine righteousness, there
were points in His experience on every day of His minis
try, on some days perhaps every hour, when the line be
tween right and wrong affection, between sinless aversion
and sinful passion, was just as narrow.
Yet though living in such close association with the
malice and pride of enmity, though tempted continually
by the stinging provocations of His persecutors, He was in
110 instance entrapped. By the exercise of positive free
dom He kept Himself spotless. Not only did He keep
His heart pure and His conduct blameless, but as He
'went about doing good,' and moved onward in His min
istry, He actualized more and more completely in His
person and character the divine ideal of human righteous
ness, thus satisfying without exception all the positive
demands of the divine law of love. Of Himself our Lord
says in the high-priestly prayer: " For their sakes I sanc
tify myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in
truth."1 The Epistle to the Hebrews Says: "It became
' John xvii. 19. "The word sanctify does not by any means imply the
removal of defilement. * * We must, with Calvin, abide by the natu
ral meaning of ayi6X,uv, to take a thing away from a profane use in order
to consecrate it to the service of God. Jesus possessed a human nature
such as ours, endowed with inclinations and repugnances like ours, but
yet perfectly lawful. Of this nature He continually made a holy offer
ing ; negatively, by sacrificing it where it was in contradiction to His

\ 252.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 283
Him for whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto
glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect
through sufferings." In another passage of this epistle
we are taught that "though he was a Son, yet learned
he obedience by the things which he suffered ; and having
been made perfect, he became unto all them that obey
him the author of eternal salvation." l The persecutions
and sufferings of the Christ became for Him a moral and
spiritual discipline, by enduring which He ' learned obedi
ence' and was 'made perfect' The Son of Man, living
in the bosom of sin, was the first person who, born pure,
maintained, developed and matured His purity, thus
changing the moral condition and moral character of
fallen Adamic nature, and making this nature in Himself
the ethical ideal of the divine purpose in the creation of
man. 2. The sense of the extraordinariness of the sinlessness
and righteousness of the Christ is intensified by the fact
that, born under the law, He was ' made sin on our be
half,' 'having become a curse for us.'
mission ; positively, in consecrating to the task assigned Him of God all
His powers, all His natural and spiritual talents. When the question
was of sacrificing a gratification, as in the desert, or of submitting to a
sorrow, as in Gethsemane, He incessantly subjected His nature to the
work to which the will of the Father called Him, and this was not
effected once for all. His human life received the seal of consecration
increasingly even till the entire and, final sacrifice of death, when 'by the
things which He suffered' He finished the 'learning obedience.' — The
pronouns / and myself set forth the energetic action which Jesus was
obliged to exercise upon Himself in order to attain this result. Thereby
Jesus realized in His own person the perfect consecration of the human
life, and He thus laid the foundations of the consecration of this life in
all His followers." — Godet.
' Heb. ii. 10 ; v. 8, 9.

284 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
Such is the uniform teaching of the New Testament
writers. Said our Lord: I am the good shepherd: the
good shepherd layeth down his life for the sheep, «a\ Tip.
fvxiiv pov tIBtj/u iwep tuv npop&Tav. The original means that the
Good Shepherd spreads His life over the sheep in order
that by giving up His life for them, in their place, He
may save them from destruction.1 Paul teaches: Him who
knew no sin God made to be sin on our behalf; that we
might become the righteousness of God in Him. Again :
" Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law, having
become a curse for us.: for it is written, Cursed is every
one that hangeth on a tree: that upon the Gentiles might
come the blessing of Abraham in Christ Jesus." 2 Equiv
alent to these utterances is the teaching of all the writers
of the New Testament.3 In full agreement with it the
Heidelberg Catechism says that all the time He lived on
earth, but especially at the end of His life, He bore, in
body and soul, the wrath of God against the sin of the
whole human race.4 The only attitude that God by the
absolute holiness of His being and character can occupy
toward sin is the attitude of judicial displeasure, fitly
expressed by the word wrath.
' The Greek imtp answers to the Latin pro, meaning that something is
done for one's safety, for one's advantage or benefit. "One who does a
thing for another, is conceived of as standing or bending ' over ' the one
whom he would shield or defend." Closely allied to this is the mean
ing: in the place of, instead of, mors precisely expressed by ami. See
Thayer's Greek-English Lexicon, p. 638. Our Lord teaches that to de
liver His sheep from 'the wolf He sacrifices His life. He lays down
His life for them that they may not perish.
'* 2 Cor. v. 21 ; Gal. iii. 13.
3 John i. 29 ; Rom. iii. 25 ; Col. ii. 14 ; Heb. ix. 28 ; I Peter ii. 24 ; iii. 18 ;
1 John ii. 2 ; Rev. i. 5.
1 Heid. Cat., 37 ; cf. 17.

3252.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 285
3. The Adamic race by reason of transgression had
fallen under condemnation, and was experiencing all
forms of the curse.
Born of woman, Jesus had the nature and life of the
race. The race and He, as being really man, were the
same. He occupied its judicial attitude, and in His per
sonal history realized its judicial condition. As the race
had fallen under the condemnation of God's law, He was
under this condemnation; not under condemnation in con
sequence of personal transgression or of any deficiencies
of personal righteousness, but by virtue of the fact that,
having identified Himself with the fallen race, He was its
representative. ' ' For both He that sanctifieth and they
that are sanctified are all of one."1 Moreover, inasmuch
as the race was experiencing the ' curse, provoked by
transgression, He, ' made to be sin ' and living ' in the
likeness of sinful flesh,' was subject to the same curse.
Says1 St. Paul : ' ' Having become a curse for us. ' '
However difficult it may be to construct a doctrine
concerning the vicarious condemnation of our Lord, a
doctrine satisfactory to the logical understanding, this log
ical difficulty does not justify Christology in questioning
its truth. Whether thought can solve the problem or not,
the mystery confronts the eye of faith. Apart from the
prophecies of Jesus, apart from the teaching of His apos
tles, there is the historical fact. Do not the narratives of
His life set before us the Man ' having become a curse ?'
Do not all moral evils and physical evils fall upon Him,
'who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth?'
Does not He who went about doing only good experience
these evils in their extremest form ? No evils are to be
'Heb. ii. n.

286 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
excepted but those stings of conscience that are directly
the consequence of personal transgression. , He was 'holy,
guileless,' undefiled, separated from sinners,' yet He be
came the bearer of a curse so sharp, so thorough in body
and soul, that ' being in an agony He prayed more earn
estly: and His sweat became as it were great drops of
blood falling down upon the ground.' 1
4. A false judicial relation prevails between the personal
Creator and the personal creature; false, because contrary
to the original communion of love. The original com
munion is neither annihilated nor suspended; it still lives,
asserting .its force in the heart of God, though offended
by wrong-doing; asserting its force in the heart of man,
though suffering the penalties of sin.
The force of the false judicial relation is revealed in
God's displeasure with transgression and in man's sense
of condemnation; whilst the force of the original fellow
ship is revealed on the divine side in grace, in God's
redemptive love, and on the human side in the prayer of
man after the judicial peace of perfect communion with
God. This prayer, this longing after judicial peace with
God, involves the profound desire to return into true com
munion, by satisfying the demands of His violated law.
In so far as the action of the conscience is in any degree
normal, the transgressor affirms the judgment of God
against himself ; and refusing to deny or ignore or forget
the guilt of wrong-doing, he is willing to re-enter into the
condition of judicial peace with God in no way but by an
expiation of the wrong which he has done. Expiation
is a necessity grounded in the ethical nature, in the judi
cial life, of personality. "Wherewith shall I come before
1 1 Peter ii. 22; Lk. xxii. 44.

3252.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 287
the Lord, and bow myself before the high God?"1 "I
will arise and go to my Father, and will say unto him:
Father, I have sinned against heaven, and in thy sight: I
am no more worthy to be called thy son : make me as one
of thy hired servants. ' ' 2
Both the divine side and the human side of the false
judicial relation between God and the Adamic race meet
in the Mediator, determining His moral position and the
necessities of His mediatorship. He asserts and realizes
in Himself the original and normal communion; He expe
riences and annuls in Himself by His obedience the false
judicial relation. The two forms of His office are at all
points the elements of one mediatorship. The one work
does not succeed the other. The false judicial attitude is
not first overcome, and the true communion afterwards
developed. He does the one in doing the other. He
asserts and actualizes the original communion of love in
the process of dissolving divine condemnation; He dis
solves condemnation by the process of developing and per
fecting the force of the original communion. The eternal
love of God to man becomes in the person of the Mediator
the humiliation of redeeming love; and the intrinsic apti
tude of human personality for God, the necessity of divine
fellowship, becomes in the person and history of the
' Mic. vi. 6.
2Lk. xv. 18. "That oneness of mind with the Father, which towards
man took the form of condemnation of sin, would in the Son's dealing
with the Father in relation to our sins take the form of a perfect confes
sion of our sins. This confession, as to its own nature, must have been
a perfect Amen in humanity to the judgment of God on the sin of man.
' In Christ tasting death [as] the wages of sin . . . was a perfecting of
the Divine response in humanity to the Divine condemnation of sin.' " —
"The Nature of the Atonement," by McLeod Campbell, in Lux Mundi,
p. 242.

288 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
Mediator the offering of Himself an expiatory sacrifice for
sin. In other words, the love of God to man subject to the
condemnation of violated law, and the yearning of man
after peace with God whose wrath is abiding on the trans
gressor, meet in the righteous life and the expiatory history
of the Mediator. As regards man it may be said: the
Mediator raises the transgressor into true communion with'
God in expiating his guilt.' The reverse statement is
equally true: in expiating the guilt of the transgressor He
assumes and perfects human nature. As regards God it
may be said: the Mediator originates a new communion
of God with man by actualizing redeeming love in His
mediatorial life ; and He actualizes redeeming love inas
much as, born under the law, He bears the wrath of God
against the sin of the whole human race.
5. By His expiation of guilt the Mediator delivers the
race from subjection to the kingdom of darkness.
Sin is of Satan. In superinducing man's fall Satan
has made man the servant of his will. His will is fixed
antagonism to God. By the commission of sin man does
Satan's will. Doing Satan's will, man is held in bondage
by Satan. Says our Lord: Every one that committeth sin
is the bond-servant of sin.1 Sinful human life is centered
in Satan's will. Says John: " He that doeth sin is of the
devil: for the devil sinneth from the beginning,"2 The
'Jno. viii. 34. Both the A. V. and the R. V. take rijc d/iapriac to be
genuine. If the words be spurious, we shall have to translate: "Verily,
verily, I say to you that whosoever commits sin is a slave;" a sense
which for substance is the same: truly a slave he is, while believing
himself a free man.
2 1 John iii. 8. ' Of the devil ' as a son. The word born is not used, nor
seed, as in v. 9, but works. " From the devil there is not generation, but
corruption."

3252.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 289
wrong-doer occupies a position in the Good and a position
in the evil; and this twofold attitude implies a twofold
ground. The original connection with God, which determines
the normal constitution of the race, has its ground in God
alone; and the immanent force of this original connection
is the power of God for good in the, being of fallen hu
manity. Man's false attitude toward God and toward himself, the
attitude which perverts and disorganizes the functions of
the human constitution, has its ground in Satan's will;
and the determinative force of this false connection is ' the
power of the devil ' 1 working in the perversion of hu
manity. Fellowship with Satan's will has disturbed and
neutralized normal communion with God. Says Godet:
"All personal and free life has communication in its depths with an
infinity of Good or of Evil, of light or darkness, which penetrates into
our inner being and which, when once received, displays itself in our
works, words or acts. ' '
To emancipate the race from sin this false, antagonistic
dominion of Satan had to be destroyed. ' ' To this end was
the Son of God manifested, that He might destroy the
works of the devil. ' ' * Into this false relation of the race
the Christ enters. His relation obtains not in thought
only, but in reality. Assuming the nature of the race
whose fallen life is centered in Satan's will, the Christ
enters into the domain of Satan and in a qualified sense
is under Satan's power. But at every point of His history
the falsifying power of Satan is met and effectually over
come; Satan's mighty will is resisted; Satan's dominion
1 Heid. Cat., Q. i and 34. zi John iii. 8.

290 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Books.
over mankind is broken. As in the wilderness, so at every
other juncture, the tempter is beaten back. The Son of
God partook of flesh and blood "that through death He
might bring to nought him that hath the power of death,
that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through
fear of death were all their life-time subject to bondage."1
In a real way the Mediator enters into this abnormal
relation in order that, standing in it and dissolving it in
Himself, He may destroy Satan's power over the new,
regenerate race.
6. Accordingly the mediatorship of the Christ involves
personal conflict with Satan, and the necessity of victory!
The race with which He was identified being subject to
Satan's dominion, He as the deliverer purchased redemp
tion by carrying on the conflict amid temptation, sorrow,
ignominy, unto complete triumph. Says Paul: "Ye were
bought with a price." Peter says: "Ye were redeemed
with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and
without spot." Jesus says of His mission: "Verily the
Son of Man came not to be ministered unto, but to minis
ter, and to give his life a ransom for many."2 On the
ground of such teaching the Catechism declares: Our
Lord "has redeemed us and purchased us, body and soul,
'Heb. ii. 14, 15. " 'A murderer from the beginning.' Death agree
ably to its full and profound biblical meaning denotes not only corporeal
death, but the destruction through sin of the body and the soul. (Cf.
Rom. i. 32. Ch. v., 12.) The devil is the originator of bodily and
spiritual, of the temporal and eternal ruin of men. From him the king
dom of evil, split as it is into innumerable divisions, derives unity,
coherence and direction; through his cunning wiles men are drawn into
his own destruction. The consequence of these diabolical seductions is
that all men stand in fear of death." — Otto von Gerlach.
2 1 Cor. vi. 20; 1 Peter i. 18, 19; Mk. x. 45; Matt. xx. 28.

3 2S2.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 291
from sin and from all the power of the Devil, to be His
own."1 Here we have the important element of truth which
Gregory Nyssa and other Greek theologians emphasized
disproportionately by their doctrine of the atonement:
" Deity was invested with the flesh, in order to secure that the enemy,
by looking upon something congenial and kindred to himself, might
have no fears in approaching that supereminent power. * * It was by
means of a certain amount of deceit that God carried out this scheme on
our behalf. For that not by pure Deity alone, but by Deity veiled in
human nature, God, without the knowledge of His enemy, got within
the lines of him who had man in his power, is in some measure a fraud
and a surprise. * * He who first deceived man by the bait of sensual
pleasure, is himself deceived by the presentment of the human form.
But whereas he, the enemy, effected his deception for the ruin of our
nature, He who is at once the just, and good, and wise one, used His
device, in which there was deception, for the salvation of him who had
perished."2 To ignore the truth underlying this misapprehension of
the relation of the Mediator to Satan involves defect in
construing the doctrine of redemption as really as to
ignore the Mediator's obligation to the justice of God.
The suffering of death as the penalty of sin and the
achievement of the victory over Satan were different as
pects of one abnormal necessity of the mediatorship, just
as on the other hand the violation of the divine law and
obedience to the will of Satan are two aspects of the same
transgression. The Mediator conquers Satan when, bear
ing the curse, He takes away the sin of the world.
7. Deliverance from the dominion of Satan, the bearing
of God's curse upon sin, and the purification of humanity,
are three different aspects of the one redemption.
1 Heid. Cat. 34. 2 Gregory Nyssa, The Great Cat'm, ch. 23-26.

292 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
These three forms are objectively inseparable; insep
arable, because the false moral status of the Adamic race
includes three things: the false relation of man to himself
to God, and to Satan. False these human relations are,
inasmuch as each is a perversion of the constitution andf
the teleology of mankind.
A real redemption answers to the needs and miseries of
the subjects of redemption.
To form a scriptural conception of Christ as Redeemer
we have to emphasize these three things in due propor
tion, each being valid and intelligible when viewed in its
internal connection with the others. To emphasize man's
fallen condition in any one relation by itself whilst the
modifying force of the other false relations is overlooked,
will result in a defective doctrine of redemption.
If we fasten thought chiefly upon the attitude of the
Adamic race toward God, the curse of God's law will be
unduly prominent; as a consequence the doctrine on the
redemptive work will come to be exclusively or mainly
forensic or judicial. The ethical heeds of the race are
overlooked. If thought dwells principally upon the false relation of
man to himself, that is, upon the moral defilement of
human nature, redemption becomes mainly ethical, a pro
cess of personal purification. The believer by the efforts
of his own will, by obedience and self-denial, attains to
righteousness. Then the juridical demands of violated
law recede or are ignored.
If, as was done in the first ten centuries, thought lays
stress chiefly on the false relation of the transgressor to
Satan, or on the dominion of the Devil over man and
nature, redemption is resolved into a strategic device by

1 253.] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 293
which Satan is outwitted and vanquished. Then the
doctrine fails to meet man's personal needs and his judi
cial necessities.
These defective opinions concerning redemption are
superseded when the doctrine lays stress in due proportion
on each of these three false relations in which the Adamic
race stands; but the false attitude of the race to be rightly
construed must be studied in its connection with the origi
nal and essential communion of man with God.
§253-
These three phases of the mediatorship refer in the first
instance to the Mediator Himself. The Mediator becomes
in reality the Redeemer inasmuch as His humiliation, His
propitiatory passion and death, issue in moral and spiritual
perfection, in absolute peace with God, in complete victory
over the powers of darkness.
This important truth has been assumed and is implied
by what has been said concerning the nature of our Lord's
mediatorial history. But a self-consistent apprehension
of the mediatorship requires that it receive special empha
sis. Otherwise, as has frequently been the case, Christ
ology may be ensnared by a mechanical or commercial
conception of the vicarious character of the Christian
redemption. The Mediator is the subject of the mediatorship. That
the world may be emancipated in and through Him, He
becomes identified with the world; and He performs the
redemptive work primarily on Hi's own behalf as the Head
of the new race. The Mediator redeems humanity in His
person. The only Saviour is the first man who is saved.1
1 Heb. iv. 7. "Who in the days of His flesh, having offered up prayers

294 • Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6,
Respecting the mediatorship no proposition is more
scriptural than that Jesus Christ is the Saviour. He is the
Lamb of God which beareth the sin of the world.1 The
Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.2
•
Faithful is the saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that
Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners.3 If there
had been no apostasy, no human guilt, no divine condem
nation, there would have been no occasion, no necessity
for the redemption. Christianity would have been purely
a new revelation, the quickening of a higher order of life-
communion with God. From the tremendous reality of sin
arises the necessity of a life-communion which is redemp
tive. "We behold Him who hath been made for a little
while lower than the angels, even Jesus, because of the
suffering of death crowned with glory and honor, that by
the grace of God He should taste death for every man."*
But the great redemption is wrought out by a transaction
of the Mediator which in the first instance directly affects
Himself. "What did He accomplish during His life on earth?" Rothe asks.
"Very little as regards others, but infinitely much as regards Himself.
He perfected Himself as the Redeemer, and what a vast work He thus
accomplished for humanity became evident from the day of Pentecost
and onwards."5
The Christ did not externally take the place of trans
gressors; He did not become their substitute as one man
and supplications with strong crying and tears unto Him that was able
to save Him from death, and having been heard for this godly fear,
though He was a Son, yet learned obedience by the things which He
suffered." Cf. Jno. xii. 27.
1 John i. 29. 2 Lk. xix. 10. s 1 Tim. i. 15.
4 Heb. ii. 9. 6 Still Hours, p. 210.

3 2S3-] The Mediator and His Mediatorship. 295
may become surety for the appearance of a culprit at an
appointed time before the civil court. His connection
with a sinful world is inward, not 'outward; organic, not
mechanical. He not only stands where the Adamic race
stands; He becomes also what the Adamic race is. ' Him
who knew no sin God made to be sin 011 our behalf {ynlp
rip.av d/iapTiav inoiriaev), that we might become the righteousness
of God in Him.'1 Bengel remarks: "He was made sin,
just as we are made righteousness. Therefore Christ was
also abandoned on the crpss." By the will of God, though
personally sinless, Christ by incarnation and by self-
determined obedience took, and in fact experienced, the
position of the transgressor, dfrnpruXog.
Made sin on our behalf and perfecting His incarnate life
under the condemnation of divine law, He wrought out
deliverance from sin and victory over death for Himself as
the Second Man. Having in 'the likeness of sinful, flesh '
perfected redemption from the fallen economy of the world
in Himself and for Himself, He becomes in reality the
Redeemer; and the redemption of which He is the prin
ciple becomes available for all members of the Adamic
race. Participation in the benefits of Christ presupposes
participation in Himself.2 Engrafted into Him by the
Holy Spirit, sinner's are justified by faith. Becoming mem
bers of Himself and thus identified with the Redeemer,
they have part in the' virtue of His expiatory death and
His triumphant resurrection.
1 2 Cor. v. 21. 2 H. Cat., 20, 55.

296 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
CHAPTER VIII.
HIS MINISTRY: DEEDS AND WORDS.
§254-
The person of our Lord conditions the peculiar charac
teristics of His ministry. Identified with our race suffer
ing the miseries of sin, He is distinguished by love to the
race, a love which marks His personal history from its
beginning to the end. Righteous love is active in two
ways: in what He does, and in what He says.
His doings and His sayings correspond to His person
ality. Jesus was what no man ever had been, He became
what no man had ever become; therefore He did what no
man had ever done, and He spake as no man had ever
spoken. Contrasted with the works done by other mighty men,
His deeds were miracles; contrasted with the doctrines
taught by other great teachers, His words were 'spirit'
and 'life.' Words and deeds fit the Son of Man.
The conquests of Alexander answer to his military
genius, the resources of his country and the bravery of his
troops. So the conquests of Jesus over diseases, demoni
acal possessions and over death, answer to the superior
authority of His divine-human personality. The philoso
phy of Plato answers to his metaphysical insight, and his
powers of profound thought; so the new teaching of Jesus
respecting God and man answers to the new consciousness
of ideal manhood.
Moved by the love of fallen mankind to take the form

g255.] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 297
of a servant and become obedient unto death, the Sou of
God became the Mediator that men might share the tri
umphant life which He lived and might know the truth
which He was.
The ministry of the Mediator was the impartation of
His fulness to all classes who were capable of receiving
His gifts.1 The new blessings given by miracle and by
parable presuppose the new spiritual resources which He
developed and realized in Himself.
It is not compatible with the necessary limits of this
chapter to attempt an exhaustive discussion of the import
of His parables or of the significance of His miracles.
Instead, our studies will be limited to some of the leading
features of His deeds and words. §255-
The deeds of our Lord are to be studied first in
relation to Himself, then in relation to the persons and
things upon which these deeds were wrought. In both
relations His deeds, however wonderful, were natural.
They were done in accord with His own nature and
in accord with the nature of men and of things.
1. The miracle which above all others appeals to faith
and reason is His own personal history ; yet this personal
history is neither unhuman nor unnatural.
The extraordinariness of His personality as presented
by the books of the New Testament we cannot but see
and feel. Contrasted with all heroes of ancient and mod
ern times, or with the best teachers of religion, He stands
alone. Between Him and the noblest among pious men
there is a deep, broad chasm.
1 " Of His fulness we all received, and grace for grace." — John i. 16.

298 Doctrine on Jesus Christ [Book <j.
Though Abraham and Moses, David, Samuel and Isaiah,
were chosen men of JehPvah who lived on a spiritual level
far higher than any pagan seeker after God, yet no law
giver, no seer, no prophet of the Old Testament furnishes
a criterion of judgment. "The greatest saints of the Old
Testament, even with the help of divine grace, did not
rise above reproach; and some of them are stained with
the guilt of blood and adultery."1 So far above them all
does His personality tower that John Baptist, than whom
there was none greater among them that are born of
women, pronounced himself not worthy to stoop down
and unloose the latchet of His shoes.2
A similar contrast is evident when we compare the
Master with -His disciples. Though He that is but little
in the kingdom of heaven is greater than John Baptist,
yet the life of no apostle is the perfect image of the life of
his Lord. John and James, Peter and Paul are wonderful
examples of a new, an uplifting and transforming virtue,
yet in point of character and divine consciousness they are
of inferior rank. He is the pattern, they are reflections;
He is faultless, they confess themselves sinners; He real
izes the divine idea of man, they are the imperfect wit
nesses of Him; He is the fountain of a new vitality, a new
righteousness, a new spiritual strength, they receive their
inspiration with all their new powers from Him.
Reason cannot account for the character of Jesus, for a
Man who whilst living on the ordinary human plane, in
sympathy with all the needs and all the woes of His fellow
men, stands forth the reality of an ideal never before
attempted or even conceived, by recognizing in Him only
1 Schaff 's Person of Christ, p. 43.
2 Matt. xi. 11 ; Luke vii. 28; John i. 27.

g 255.] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 299
the best endowments of the Hebrew people. A life, a
character so new, so extraordinary, so opposite to the
accepted principles of the noblest men, presupposes an
extraordinary personality. Jesus Christ is the one great
miracle of the Christian religion.1
2. In the degree that we rise to a clear perception of
the miracle which His personal history sets before us, we
may get an insight into the reasonableness of His charac
ter and the naturalness of His wonderful works. Rightly
apprehended, His personal conduct satisfies the universal
conscience, and His mighty deeds command the consent
of the universal judgment.
Does the ideal of any philosopher, pagan or Christian,
satisfy the aspirations of the human reason? Does not
every great man aim at a kind of perfection higher than
that to which he has attained ? Is any ideal of character
or of achievement, however exalted, irrational ? Does not
the age and the world commend the endeavor after extra
ordinary achievements for the well-being of mankind?
Is not the person who accomplishes great things for his
age rewarded by approval ? Does not a man lose respect
in the degree that he fails of a high aim ?
When Jesus sets before Himself an ideal of love to God
and love to man, of self-sacrifice for the salvation and
blessedness of His enemies, an ideal which distinguishes
Him above all great and good men, does not such a high
purpose accord with the dictates of sound reason? Is not
such an ideal truly in living sympathy with our purest
1 "The true idea of a miracle is that of an effect in nature which can
not be explained by the laws of nature, which can only be explained as
the result of a thoroughly original movement from the divine centre." —
Martensen's Dogmatics, p. 126.

300 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book-;.
aspirations ? l Does it not accord with the best instincts
of our nature?
Inasmuch as Jesus proposes to Himself an aim whjch
distinguishes Him from all other men, sound reason de
mands that He demonstrate His claim, to respect and
confidence by the realization of His aim. Did He or did
He not succeed ? There is no occasion for argument in
support of an affirmative answer. That He was the extra
ordinary reality which He proposed to Himself is conceded
even by some of the most learned of His enemies. Is such
reality natural or unnatural ?
Is it unnatural to evolve an ideal of manhood purer,
higher than the ideals of all other men? Is it unnatural
to resolve that ideal into reality, and set it without flaw or
blemish before the eye of, the world? Is it only super
human, or is it truly human, to touch the richest possibili
ties of man's divine imageship?
No: the personal life of Jesus was neither unhuman nor
unnatural. The miracle of miracles, whilst it reveals a
presence other than the laws of nature, other than the
endowments of the Adamic race, is nevertheless in sym
pathy with the laws of nature and responsive to the
dictates of sound reason.
3. From a man who is himself a miracle we look for
miraculous deeds. From a man whose endowments are
1 "There are spots in every sunbeam, there are thorns in every rose,
there are crosses in every life. I have never seen the perfect landscape,
I have never beheld the cloudless day. I have never looked upon the
faultless human soul. Never till I found Thee. But Thou hast answered
to the pattern in my heart, Thou hast realized the ideal in my spirit.
Thou art the spotless sunbeam, Thou art the thornless rose, Thou art the
cloudless day, Thou art the faultless. life. My imagination cannot tran
scend Thee." — Voices of the Spirit, by Matheson, p. 28.

g 255.] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 301
extraordinary we may expect extraordinary words. Rea
son asks for works and words that answer to personality.
Says Schaff:
"From His miraculous Person His miraculous works follow as an
inevitable consequence. Being a miracle Himself, He must perform
miracles with the same ease with which ordinary men do their ordinary
works."1 Jesus Christ was preeminently the Man of deeds. He
came into the world, not chiefly to teach new doctrines,
but to do new truth. His personality and His works were
the presupposition of all His words.
His deeds done in the service of mankind are to be
studied, first, in their relation to men as men, bearing
God's image, capable of God's love; then also in relation •
to the enemies of man, including all the ills of his fallen
condition. Formed in God's image, men without exception are
by creation predestinated for the perfect communion of
love with God. They have a hidden intrinsic capacity to
be wrought upon by the miraculous works done by Jesus.
Human nature has a susceptibility akin to His own man
hood. His aim it was by doing the will of His Father to
make Himself the archetype of a new manhood, a man
hood of which the primeval man was the figure.2 "The
mystery of Adam is the m3Tstery of the Messiah." At
every cost, opposed by the enmity of wicked men, assailed
by Satan, Jesus persisted with unyielding firmness in the
1 Schaff on the Person of Christ, p. iv.
2 Rom. v. 14. Says Olshausen: "The Old Testament is to all the
writers of the New Testament an adumbration of truth [fi6p<j>uotg Tijg
ahfieiac], and according to this principle Christ must naturally appear as
the second Adam (i Cor. xv. 45), the whole race being represented by
Him after a'spiritual, as by Adam after an external manner."

302 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
work of realizing and consummating in Himself the glory
of true manhood.
By His wrorks and His words He aimed to make men
what He was. The consummation set before Him by the
Father for Himself, was the consummation which He set
for others. In all men He recognizes the possibility of at
taining by the obedience of faith in union with Himself
to a manhood pure, perfectly righteous, divinely holy like
His own.
On the basis of this principle He forms a kingdom out
of sinful men, changed by a new birth of the Spirit into
likeness to Himself, a kingdom in which He reigns as
King, a kingdom which differs from the kingdoms of the
world as He differs from other kings. Says our Lord:
"Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the
Gentiles lord it over them ; and their great ones exercise
authority over them. But it is not so among you; but
whosoever would become great among you, shall be your
servant: and whosoever would be first among you, shall
be servant of all. For verily the Son of Man came not to
be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give His life a
ransom for many."1
The authority of His kingdom is the authority of love :
not the love of a father to a sou ; nor of a patriot to his
country, such as may be seen among the civilized nations
of paganism; nor that purer love, examples of which ap
pear in the best representatives of the Hebrew nation ; but
that self-sacrificing love for all men, for ' the evil and the
good,' for 'the just and the unjust,'2 in the service of God,
of which Jesus is the beginning; the love which perceives
in every man, every woman, every child, the inborn capa-
1 Mark x. 42-45 ; Matt. xx. 28. 2 Matt. v. 45.

jj255-] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 303
bility of godlike perfection, of a blessedness akin to the
eternal blessedness of God ; and therefore takes delight in
consecrating time and strength, talent and genius, even
life itself, to the work of raising the wicked from the
' horrible pit ' of sin to the divine plane of righteousness
and wisdom.
Of His kingdom He is the only foundation; "for other
foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which
is Jesus Christ." 1 This foundation is laid in man's nature
no less than decreed by God's sovereign will. Extraordi
nary as is the fundamental principle of His kingdom and
the law by which it is governed, fierce as was the war
waged against it by the enmity of the Jew and the Gentile,
the kingdom is nevertheless in reality a natural kingdom.
It was, and it is, just what the nature of the Adamic race
needs, what nature yearns after, struggles by inventions
of its own to establish, and what men by their endowments
have a fitness to enter. There is no principle of the king
dom, no precept, no maxim, no ordinance, not even a word
contrary to any law of mind or body. Instead, all the gifts
of the kingdom and all its demands prove it to be the
complement and the joy of genuine manhood.
4. Answering to the deepest needs of human nature, aim
ing at the positive perfection of sinners, the works of Jesus
were done in opposition to sin. From this alien principle
moral evils and physical evils arise. The enemy of sin,
Jesus waged a deadly war against sin ; He did His works for
the destruction of the ills to which our sinful race is heir.
Blindness, deafness, lameness, fevers, paralysis, leprosy,
demoniacal possessions, death, and all the pains and sor
rows attending these ills are contrary to nature and to our
' 1 Cor. iii. 11 ; Eph. ii. 19-22.

304 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
natural instincts. Each is a violation of manhood, being
inimical to the life of the body and the well-being of the
soul. It is not forgiveness that violates the laws of nature,
but transgression and guiit. It is not an effectual remedy,
not miraculous interposition, that interrupts and suspends
the harmonies of the family and the State, but sickness,
diseases, death.
The miraculous healings recorded in the Gospels declare
His superior authority to be in profoundest sympathy with
man's nature, no less also with the nature of sub-human
kingdoms. Jesus honors all natural laws.1 So far from
violating or suspending or even for an instant disturbing
the original equipoise of man's complex organization, or
interrupting the harmony between man and lower king
doms, every miraculous cure asserted the fundamental
rights of humanity by attacking the abnormal principle
from which the ills of life proceed, and overwhelming the
adversary of the Good and the Right. The Author of
nature honors nature. The Man who is the true ideal of
manhood is the enemy, not of natural law, but of the
violation of natural law.
If we get a clear insight into the naturalness of the
works of Jesus, into His devotion to the hidden truth of
man and to the harmony between man and lower king
doms, the great number of wonderful cures2 wrought by
1 The mystery of His death He illustrates by a grain of wheat. If it
fall into the earth and die, it beareth much fruit. Life springs out of
death. John xii. 24. "The same metaphor," Olshausen remarks, "is
employed by the oriental mystics. * * Nature, conceived of as ani
mated by the breath of the Eternal, and sustained by the Almighty word
of God, contains in her phenomena the most pregnant symbols of all the
truths pertaining to the spiritual world."
"Matthew says: 'And Jesus went about in all Galilee, teaching io

g 255.3 Tlis Ministry: Deeds and Words. 305
His touch or His word will appear to be like refreshing
streams flowing from a new fountain of life and freedom
opened in the barren desert
The synoptists prove the historicity of their records by
the very fa.ct that they contain an account of these mira
cles. If in the record miracles were wanting, the record
would imply that in the actual history of Jesus miracles
did not occur; and reasoning from the absence of miracles
in His actual history it would follow, either that His
works did not correspond to the perfect naturalness of His
personality, or that His personality did not in truth realize
the ideal superiority of man over nature's ills. His per^
sonal history would have come short of genuine manhood,'
would as really have been wanting in naturalness as the
personal history of all other great men. In full accord
with the words of Dr. Schaff, quoted above, Principal Fair-
bairn evinces clear insight into the cosmic significance
of Christ when he says that "the natural action of the
miraculous Person is the miracle. In the degree that He
Himself transcends nature, it is but normal that His acts
should do the same."1
5. Proceeding on the same general principle we may
form a correct judgment concerning other classes of our
Lord's miraculous works. When Jesus walks upon the
turbulent waves of the Sea of Galilee, or commands the
storm to be still and it obeys His word; or when He
their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing
all manner of disease and all manner of sickness among the people.
And the report of Him went forth into all Syria; and they brought unto
Him all that were sick, holden with divers diseases and torments, pos
sessed with devils, and epileptic, and palsied; and He healed them." —
iv. 23, 24.
' Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 347.
20

306 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book6.
directs Peter to go to the sea, cast a hook, and take up
the fish that first cometh up to find a shekel in his mouth
in order therewith to pay .tribute; or says to the fruitless
fig-tree: "Let there be no fruit from thee henceforward for
ever," and immediately the fig-tree withers away; — He
asserts and declares the original superiority of man over
the kingdoms of nature. Such extraordinary acts display
God's purpose, relatively to nature, in forming man after
His own image.
Of the primeval family it is written: God said, "Let us
make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them
have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl
of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth."
Seizing the truth of Genesis the eighth Psalm hymns the
praises of Jehovah in the same lofty strain :'
What is hian, that thou art mindful of him ?
And the son of man that thou visitest him ?
For thou hast made him but little lower than God,
And crownest him with glory and honor.
Thou madest him to have dominion over the works of thy hands;
Thou hast put all things under his feet.
When Jesus commands the angry sea we have a mani
festation of the true dignity of man, the king of the natu
ral world, a definite expression of the irresistible might
with which man's will may put in subjection under his
feet the disorganizing forces of lower realms. Jesus simply
fulfils the prophecy of Genesis.
On the same principle we interpret the miracle of feed
ing five thousand men with five loaves and two fishes.
When they have all eaten and are filled, the disciples take
up twelve basketfuls of the broken pieces. This extraor
dinary transaction accords with the original laws and the

g255] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 307
true teleology of nature. Jesus on the one hand touches
the hidden synthesis between the impersonal world and the
will of its Author immanent in its laws, on the other He
asserts the hidden synthesis of human personality with the
economy of nature. Nature anticipates man, anticipates
the ideal Man. To be truly natural, to fulfil its mission,
nature needs man's presence, needs the benediction of his
personality. The world invites him to be active in it and
upon it.
This principle is applicable to the miracle of Cana in
Galilee. Jesus ordered six water-pots of stone to be filled
with water; and when the servants obeyed His command:
"Draw out now, and bear to .the ruler of the feast," the
water became wine. The exertion of His miracle-working
power was not arbitrary, nor did He aim at display. There
was a want of wine at the marriage. Our Lord interposes
to supply this want. His act of interposition reveals His
kingship. Trench remarks: "He, a king, gave as became
a king. ' ' Agreeably to the word in Genesis He, the ideal
Man, has dominion 'overall the earth;' and the exercise
of this dominion expresses in a figure the purpose of His
presence.1 Nature is made for man, not man for nature.
' Nature is man's servant; and when by the force of His
will Jesus turns water into wine in the service of man, He
uses nature according to its latent capacities. Jesus works
after the method of the ideai Man who has an intuitive
perception of the relations of nature to His kingdom,
1 "The miracles of Jesus manifested not only God's glory, but His own:
they were signs of what He is. This gives a new starting point. Each
miracle -is a sign of what He is, not only in regard of His power, but it is
also a symbol of His work."— Prof. William Milligan, D. D., Schaff 's
Commentary, II., p. 23.

308 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
neither understood nor seen by ordinary men. This mira
cle images the truth that His kingdom not only removes
actual evils, but at the same time also supplies individual'
and social needs. His kingdom is profitable for all things,
having the promise of the life which now is and of that
which is to come.1
In performing the miracle in Catta He proves Himself
to be equal to His claims. Does He not profess to have
come to be the Saviour of the world ? The salvation which
He brings means deliverance from all evils, whether of
body or soul, whether of the individual or the family
or the State. Can any rational objection be made to a
universal salvation? Does not the judgment of men
everywhere bear witness to the fact, that a universal
salvation is needed ^ and that such salvation can come
neither from nature, nor from philosophy, nor natural
science, nor culture, nor material progress? Universal
judgment by implication affirms that if deliverance be
possible, it must come from Pne who not only differs from
ordinary men, but whP also as regards wisdom and power
is able at will to command all the forces of evil, natural
and spiritual.
Is it rational to raise an objection to the "wonderful deeds
of Christ because, claiming to be the Saviour from all evils,
He makes .good His claim? or inasmuch as the methods
of ordinary men are a universal failure He makes good
His claim by methods of His own ? Could Jesus do things
that no men have ever done, if His method did not differ
from ordinary methods? Would not the absence of
method and of results peculiar to Himself involve a reflec
tion on the perfection of His wisdom and character? If,
. ' i Tim. iv. 8.

gj2S5.] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 309
claiming to be the universal deliverer, He should, like
ether physicians, stand powerless before leprosy, or be
dumb in presence of the bier and the tomb, only weeping
with those that weep, would not this lack of ability to
afford extraordinary relief in extraordinary emergencies
declare Him to be only a man like other men, not the
almighty Saviour? and declare His kingdom to be of this
world, not the kingdom of God?
When Christology refers the authority with which Jesus
rebukes the storm, and the power with which He multiT
plies the loaves and the fishes or walks on the surface of
the sea or turns water into wine, exclusively to His
divinity, it overlooks fundamental Christian truth. The
gospels Ipse one element of their peculiar significance,
and the manhood of Jesus is divested of the unique dig
nity which the New Testament ascribes to Him. As
regards Jesus it means nothing when Christology says that
God can do all things, that God governs in heaven and on
earth and under the earth. Christianity is not needed to
teach us that. So much we learn even from the light of
nature.1 If Christianity means no more than this: that
God can forgive sins; that God changes man's heart; that
God can calm the turbulent waves; that God can give
sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and the vigor of
health to the leper; — if Christianity means no more, it is
as to kind no advance on Judaism, but only sets forth
more clearly, more definitely, what we learn from the Old
Testament, Then we lose sight of the virtue of the new
principle, that ' the Word became flesh and dwelt among
us.' The human nature of Jesus, because truly human,
was even while on earth the adequate organ of Deity for
1 Rom. i. 18-21.

310 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
the fulfilment of His mission in the state of humiliation.
Like Himself, His wonderful works are divine-human, as
really human as divine. His works, prove themselves to be
divine by the fact that in fulfilment of the original idea of
man they are truly human.
Of the transforming power of true manhood over lower
kingdoms we have a prophecy in the arts of civilization.
Art and science turn the desert into a garden, increase the
fertility of the soil, and bring to light secret possibilities
of vegetable and animal life. What ordinary men accom
plish through ingenious devices and mechanical instru
ments, the Son of Man does by a method of His own, the
silent exercise of His righteous will. In all its realms, in
all its laws, in its relations backward to God and forward
to man, nature is responsive to His plastic touch, because
human personality and impersonal nature are members of
one system, nature being man's material foundation, and
personality the apex, complement and glory of nature.
6. To complete a scriptural conception of our Lord's
miracles it is needful to emphasize their chief design.
His works derive their meaning from their direct connec
tion with the founding of His kingdom.
The type, the law, the ultimate end of His kingdom is
Himself. In it and by it the distinguishing qualities of
His personality are to be realized. His own attitude
toward God, His own attitude toward the Adamic race,
toward nature and the kingdom of darkness, is as to its
purpose the attitude of His kingdom. As His person is
superior to the disintegrating forces of the natural world,
as no sickness, no disease could seize Him with its fatal
grasp, nor death itself (which of His own will ' He suffered)
'Jno. x. 18.

g 255.] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 311
could hold Him in subjection, so the kingdom founded on
His person is intrinsically superior to all human ills. The
healing of bodily and mental diseases, the raising of the
dead and the removal of all kinds of human misery were
the normal operation of the genius of His kingdom,
on the one hand answerable to the demands of human
nature and on the other prophetic of an intrinsic energy
adequate to the entire emancipation of the race.
7. Wrought for the removal of moral and physical evils,
the works of Jesus had at the same time a profound posi
tive significance.
His miracles were more than antidotes. Jesus laid hold
of the normal order of human life and the normal order
of the natural world, the order which underlies disorgani
zation and misery. He touched latent possibilities of soul
and body, and developed these possibilities into realities.
Discerning and asserting the original purpose and the
ideal development of humanity, He overcame evils by a
quickening and recuperative force active from within.
Deafness, blindness, lameness, paralysis, He heals by re
viving the enervated vitality of the subject, thus honoring
and enthroning the rights of original humanity. As a
physician overcomes sickness by protecting or stimulating
the natural vitality of his patient, so the great Physician
by the force of His penetrating will quickens the capacities.
of suffering men, capacities unknown and inaccessible to
ordinary medical skill. By vivifying and unfolding slum
bering powers He neutralizes and abolishes the poison of
moral and physical evil.
Two things He does by one act: the external phe
nomena of mental and bodily disease He removes; and the
cause of these phenomena, lodged in the interior constitu-

312 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
tion, He destroys. All who are accessible to His spiritual
healing are not only delivered from physical ills, but are
also lifted up to a nobler plane of manhood on which they
move with new vigor, new strength, new hope.
§ 256.
The wonderful works of Jesus Christ presuppose
and express His wonderful personality: so do His
words. What Jesus teaches answers to what Jesus is.
Words set forth His purpose in founding and consum
mating the kingdom of God.
As to manner and matter, His teaching differs from
the manner and matter of the seers and prophets of
the Old Testament. No less also does. His manner
really differ from the manner of the teaching of His
apostles. 1. An extraordinary personality warrants the expecta
tion of extraordinary teaching.1 Distinguished from all
men by a sinless soul and a pure body, by vital union and
ideal communion with God, His speech like His history is
miraculous. Like Himself His words are above the com
mon level on which Jews and Gentiles think and act and
speak, though marked by singular simplicity and intense
human sympathies. To get an insight into the meaning
of His words requires such spiritual qualifications as are
necessary to grasp the truth of His person. Both require
the same kind of obedience, the same kind of study.
The central theme of His teaching was Himself. He
did mighty works as the natural expression of His mighty
presence. Works manifest His effective sympathy with
1 "The teaching and the person of Jesus, as the evangelists represent
each, are at one, and each is the witness of the genuineness of the
other.*'— Old Faiths in New Light, by Newman Smyth, D. D., p. 243.

§256.] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 313
the sick, the suffering, the needy in the hour of distress.
Words set forth in speech the truth that works manifest
by facts. That Truth was in every instance the Son of
Man. Jesus by words declared Himself to His disciples and to
the multitudes as occasion arose, and as His hearers were
able to bear His teaching. His disciples were under His
special training. Them He led on step by step from lower
to higher and better knowledge of His personality and His
mediatorship. Though the disciples were a select class of
Jews, yet they were slow learners; slow not because they
were unapt to learn nor' unfit for their high calling, but
because Jesus was personally so different from the scribes,
and stood so far above every Old Testament prophet, that,
to know Him or apprehend, the nature of His kingdom, a
thorough revolution in belief and in thought was requisite
for the Jew as well as for the Gentile, a quickening of
spiritual capacity and a radical change in habits of thought
which presuppose a new birth of the Holy Spirit.
2. The consideration of points of contrast between the
teaching of Jesus Christ and the teaching of Socrates,
Zarathrustra, Menu, Confucius, Gautama Buddha, or other
prominent founders of ethnic religions I shall waive, and
limit brief enquiry to the'contrast of the prophets of pre-
Christian revelation.
Seers and prophets describe the works of Jehovah in the
earth and in the heavens; they proclaim His attributes in
bold, lofty imagery drawn from the phenomena of nature ;
they declare His will in the words of the Decalogue; they
build the tabernacle and found institutions after a pre
scribed pattern;1 they separate the chosen people from
1 Heb. viii. 5. Cf. Ex. xxv. 40 ; xxvi. 30.

314 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
surrounding nations by the faith of Jehovah and by a
Messianic ritual; they cultivate the knowledge of sin and
announce divine judgments upon the disobedience of the
people; above all, by promise, by discipline and by pro
phetic teaching they develop the hope of a great Deliverer.
They teach truth other than their own personality; they
declare an authority other than their own will; they proph
esy events other than the prospective sorrows and joys
of their own future history. Their utterances are justi
fied by the common formula: Thus saith the Lord. No
prophet asserts authority on the ground of his personality,
nor does he claim obedience to his own will as final law.
Jesus manifests profoundest reverence for God; He
honors the Mosaic ritual; He recognizes His Father in
heaven as greater than Himself.1 The spirit of subordi
nation to God breathes in all His teaching. Yet the
difference between the subordination of prophets to Jeho
vah and the subordination of Jesus to His Father is wide.
Jesus asserts a dignity, a majesty coordinate with God.
He says: "My Father worketh even until now, and I
work." Jesus works as God works. He honors God's
absolute wisdom, but He teaches on the ground of His
personal authority. The common formula of the prophets:
Thus saith the Lord, never falls from His lips. He has
a formula of His own: Verily, verily, I say unto you.
He comes forth from the Father; by the Father He is sent
into the world; but that the Father is the light of the
world He does not teach. Instead, He says: I am the
light of the world.
3. Jesus honors the commandments of the Decalogue,
but not by accepting the Decalogue as it stands in the Old
'John xiv. 28.

g256.] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 315
Testament, or is applied by the pentateuch. He brings
to light and enforces the. positive spiritual meaning hidden
under its negative form. An illustration of His method
is furnished by the Sermon on the Mount, especially by
His exposition of the third, sixth and seventh Command
ments. With uncompromising boldness He attacks defective
interpretations current among the Jews. He says, for
example: Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt love
thy neighbor and hate thine enemy: but I say unto you,
Love your enemies, and pray for them that persecute you.
Jesus goes still further; He even sets aside some of the
enactments of the great lawgiver, Moses, who above all
others was honored by the Jews. According to Deut.
xxiv. 1, Moses authorizes a man who has taken a wife, "if
she find no favor in his eyes, that he shall write her a bill
of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out
of his house.". Jesus' says: For your hardness of heart
Moses wrote you this commandment. But from the be
ginning of the creation, male and female made He them.
For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother
and shall cleave to his wife; and the twain shall become
one flesh : so that they are no more twain, but one flesh.
What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put
asunder.1 Jesus honors His Father's will as fundamental authority.
His will is the law underlying all laws. He says: Not
every one that saith unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into
the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my
Father which is in heaven.2 Jesus, however, does not put
1 Gen. ii. 24 ; Matt. xix. 6 ; Mark x. 9 ; Matt. v. 31, 32.
2 Matt vii. 21.

31 6 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
His own will below His Father's will. Instead, the
Father's will is identified with obedience to the will of
the Son. He says: This is the will of my Father, that
every one that beholdeth the Spn, and believeth on Him,
should have eternal life; and I will raise him up at the
last day. For the hour cometh, in which all that are in
the tombs shall hear the voice of the Son of. Man, and
shall come forth.1 On one occasion when the Jews asked
Him: What must we do, that we may work the works of
God? Jesus answered: This is the work of God, that ye
believe on Him whom He hath sent.2
As regards truth, honor, authority, Jesus demands confi
dence in Himself. Men are to come to Him and believe
in Him not only as coequal with the Father, but to come
to Him as the only medium of access to the fellowship and
knowledge of the Father. The chief sin of which men
become guilty is not the transgression of the Ten Com*
mandments. He says: If I had not come and spoken
unto them, they had not had sin. If I had not done
among them the works which none other did, they had
not had sin.3 The chief sin is the rejection of His person
and authority. He says: Now they have no excuse for
their sin. He that hateth me hateth my Father also.4
That the rejection of Himself is the acme of sin He dc
clares in His final discourses. He teaches that when the
Comforter, the Spirit of Truth is come, He *will convict
the world in respect of sin, because they believe not
on me."
Neither Moses nor Isaiah, not even John Baptist, than
whom there was no greater prophet, claims for himself
'John v. 28, 'John vi. 29. 'John xv. 22, 24.
4 John xv. 23. BJohn xvi. 8-10.

$2S6.] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 317
in any instance a personal dignity cpQrdinate with the
majesty of God. No one asserts ultimate authority for his
words on the ground of his personal dignity. In these
respects the words of Jesus stand out in the strongest con
trast with the manner and matter of all teachers the world
over, whether pagan or Jewish, Mohammedan or Christian.
4. In one respect the apostles teach as Jesus taught.
The Subject-matter of their teaching was the same. Jesus
proclaimed Himself and His mediatorship. He was the
truth which all men were to receive; He was the source
of eternal life; and if men have this eternal life they
overcome death. So also do the apostles teach. But no
apostle preaches or writes on the strength of his own re
sponsibility. As the Old Testament prophet depends on
the word of Jehovah, so the New Testament apostle de
pends on the word and Spirit of Jesus Christ
Moreover, Jesus taught not only that whilst living on
earth He was the Source of eternal life and the ground of
hope, but that He would hold among men this central
position of dignity after He had gone to the Father. The
Holy Spirit would be sent to bear witness of Him. He
says: "When the Spirit of Truth is come, which proceed-
eth from the Father, He shall bear witness of me. ' ' The
apostles were chosen by Him and trained for the special
purpose of being His witnesses. "And ye also bear wit
ness, because ye have been with me from the beginning. ' ' 1
Of Him they were to be witnesses ' both in Jerusalem, and
in all Judea and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of
the earth.' 2 Jesus bore witness to Himself. To Him also
the Father bore witness at His baptism, at His transfigura
tion and on the eve. of His glorification.3 He was the
'John xv. 27. l Acts i. 8. "John xii. 23-28.

31 8 Doctrine oh Jesus Christ. [book 6.
only Man to whom the Father bore witness, the only Man
to whom apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors and teach
ers were commanded to bear witness. No apostle, not
even the great apostle of the Gentiles, bore witness to
himself. Jesus says, I am the Truth; but no apostle
teaches that he is the truth. Jesus says that ' no man
cometh unto the Father but by me;' but no apostle
teaches concerning himself that by him men come to the
Father. Just as all Old Testament prophets with more or less
definite perception look forward to One who is wounded
for our transgressions, who humbled Himself, who made
His grave with the wicked, although He had done no
violence neither was any deceit in His mouth; so the apos
tles and prophets of the New Testament point backward
to Jesus of Nazareth, who through the eternal Spirit
offered Himself without blemish to God, who put away
sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and point upward to the
Son of Man who is alive from the dead, who is on the
right hand of God, angels and authorities and powers
being made subject unto Him. After this manner proph
ets and apostles teach; but not Jesus. He neither bids us
look backward to discover the greatest Good or to see the
golden age, nor bids us look forward to His ambassadors
who will teach a decree other than His will or a truth
other than His personality; instead, with amazing self-
possession, He fastens all eyes upon Himself. He is the
Way, and the Truth, and the Life; He is the One who
when lifted up from the earth will draw all men, not to
the Father, but unto Himself.1 His disciples are com
manded to bear witness, not to Moses nor to David nor
'John xii. 32.

1 257.] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 319
to Isaiah nor to John Baptist, not even to His mother,
but to bear witness of Himself, His person, His death and
resurrection, His glorification and headship, because He
bearing a Name which is above every name has all au
thority given unto Him in heaven and on earth.
§257.
The words and the deeds of Jesus Christ are integral
parts of the one ministry. Miracles are truths confronting
us in the character of transactions. Words are deeds
wrought out in language. As the statue is poetry in
marble, so the parable is life-giving power in articulate
speech. Deeds and words are expressions of the same personality.
Each is the medium through which His life and salvation
are freely imparted to men subject to the curse of the
violated law. Of the two modes of ministration the deed,
the transaction, is the richer manifestation, because under
the form of reality it embodies and reveals more of the
wealth of His personality.
This proposition is valid respecting the actual history
of Jesus Christ compared with the record of Him in the
words of either of the four Gospels. The fact of His
miraculous conception and birth has more virtue than the
account written by Matthew and Luke can express. So
in regard to the crucifixion and resurrection. The reality
of His death is fundamental; it has more solemn signifi
cance than the words of Jesus foretelling it bring to light,
or than the words of the apostles who bear witness to the
fact can teach. As regards the resurrection no words of'
Scripture furnish us an adequate insight into its nature.
The mystery of the crucifixion and of the resurrection we

320 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
approach in the Spirit by faith; and unquestionably we
have to study both through the medium of the inspired
record. But the principal object of our faith, the ground ¦
of our undying hope, is the reality from which evangelical
speech derives its unfathomable meaning.
Of like kind is the relation of the words spoken by Jesus
Christ to the fundamental miracle, to His personality and
His personal history on earth and in heaven. Inasmuch
as He Was a Man such as no one had been before, such as
no one has been since, He spake as no other has ever
spoken. The truth that He was and lived has a breadth
and length, a height and depth, which by the common
consent of Christendom no believer, no theologian, has yet
measured. For this reason the words of Jesus as written
by the evangelists presuppose an import, a hidden wealth
of virtue, which the mind of the evangelists did not
fathom, a wealth which by the Christian may be more
and more clearly discerned in proportion that by the Holy
Spirit He grows in positive fellowship with the life of
Christ. Communion in the Spirit with Himself condi
tions better insight into the import of evangelical words.
The lack of a distinct recognition of the relation which
the personality and the deeds of our Lord bear to His
words has betrayed some scholars into a partial undervalu
ation of the synoptists.1 A sentiment has in our age been
1 The great Reformer led the way on this line of discrimination. At
the close of his preface to the German New Testament, Luther uses these
words: "Denn wo ich je der eins mangeln sollt, der Werke oder der
Predigt Christi, so wollt ich lieber der Werke, denn seiner Predigt
mangeln. Denn die Werke helfen mir nichts; aber seine Worte, die
geben das Leben, wie er selbst sagt (Joh. v., v. 51). Weil nu Johannes
gar wenig Werke von Christo, aber gar viel seiner Predigt schreibt;
wiederumb die andern drei Evangelisten viel seiner Werke, wenig seiner

1 257.] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 321
gaining currency which by overlooking the peculiar worth
of Matthew, Mark and Luke, extols the fourth Gospel dis
proportionately, extols it because whilst recording but
few miracles it contains, with the exception of the Sermon
on the Mount, the richest discourses. Negative criticism
attacks the Gospel of John because of these profound
discourses; the synoptists it attacks on account of the
numerous miracles which they record. Apologetics, fol
lowing in the wake of Luther, has proceeded largely on
the silent assumption that of the four Gospels the fourth
is the principal book. Corresponding to this silent assump
tion that our Lord's discourses are the fundamentals of
Christianity, some critics have felt called upon to apologize
for the miracles of the synoptists, even to explain away
the historical truth of some of them by denying or ques
tioning the reality of demoniacal possessions.
Such hesitancy of faith, such an unwarranted concession
to the enemy, is as unphilosophical as it is unbiblical.
The order of arrangement of the four Gospels is logical no
less than historical. First the person of the Son of Man,
then His discourses. First His wonderful deeds, then His
wonderful words. Rightly judged, the three synoptists
condition the fourth Gospel. All move on the same
high, divine-human plane; but if there be any difference,
Matthew, Mark and Luke, objectively considered, are
more profound and of richer import. Instead of feeling
any need of apology for the miracles recorded by the
synoptists, or of investing the record with more credi
bility by referring demoniacal possessions to superstition,
a sound Christology relies on the truth of the principle
Worte beschreiben: ist Johannis Evangelion das einige zarte,- rechte
Hauptevangelion. ' '
• 21

322 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
that the miracles answer to the personality of the Man.
The Man who has the consciousness of possessing godlike
life and transcendent authority, who has the amazing
boldness to lay claim to a dignity superior to all other
men, such dignity as the inimitable discourses recorded
by John necessarily presuppose, must either be unworthy
of confidence, or He must have had the required energy
of will to perform the miracles reported by the synoptists.
Accept the reality of the miracles of Mark, and there is a
logical basis for the discourses of John. Deny the mira
cles of Mark, and the logical reflex action of thought will
deny the extraordinary personality of Jesus. Deny His
extraordinary personality, and the discourses of John will
have to be resolved into the vagaries of a morbid phan
tasy. To state the same principle in other words: if no
mighty deeds had been recorded by the synoptists, if the
ills' of the kingdom of darkness had not receded at His
touch,' if the incarnate presence of God in ideal manhood
had not provoked an unprecedented manifestation of
1 The ills of the body represent the more malignant ills of the soul.
To give life to the dead, symbolizes a mightier spiritual energy by which
man's moral and spiritual being is transformed. Says Lactantius: "The
strength and power of the works performed by Christ had some weight
indeed for the present, but also declared something for the future. * *
He opened the ears of the deaf; declaring that it would shortly come
to pass, that they who were destitute of the truth would both hear and
understand the divine words of God. He loosed the tongues of the dumb.
In this display of power was contained another meaning : it would
shortly come to pass that those lately ignorant of heavenly things, hav
ing received the instruction of wisdom, might speak respecting God and
the truth. For he who is ignorant of the divine nature, he truly is
speechless and dumb. When the tongue has begun to set forth the
excellency and majesty of the one God, then only does it discharge the
office of its nature." — Divine Institutes, Bk. IV. 26.

1 257.] His Ministry: Deeds and Words. 323
demoniacal enmity, there would have been a contradic
tion between His teaching and His doings, between His
self-exaltation in speech and His helpless inefficiency in
practice. For the sake of the argument I have impliedly been
acceding to the presumption that the teaching of Christ
as represented in John differs in kind from His teaching
as reported by the synoptists. But truth requires Christ
ology to challenge this presumption. Is it valid? There
is good reason to question its validity. The subject-
matter of the teaching is the same in the four Gospels.
The variation appears in method. In John there is little
or no teaching by parables; instead we have the metaphor.
In the other Gospels parables abound. Two methods of
teaching represent different aspects of our Lord's genius.
The parables of the synoptists declare His artistic skill;
the discourses of John show His philosophic wealth.
Parables are works of art, the word-paintings of the
ideal Artist. The subjects are Himself and His kingdom.
The classic pictures of Matthew, Mark and Luke, like'the
noblest works of all great artists, are a perpetual inspira
tion to the heart of the Christian, and to the scholarly
theologian objects of study from age to age.
By deeds and by words, by miracle and by parable,
Jesus Christ imparts to receptive souls of the fulness of
His life and salvation. Men become rich, strong, godlike,
and triumphant over evil in proportion as by the obedi
ence of faith they accept and appropriate His minis
trations.

324 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
CHAPTER IX.
THE DEATH OF JESUS CHRIST : HIS ATONING SACRIFICE.
§ 258.
In performing His mediatorial work the Mediator
reaches the lowest stage of humiliation on the cross
and in Hades. Here all lines of revelation and re
demption, of the new life and of the issue with sin,
meet. To develop a scriptural conception of this concluding
epoch of the life of Jesus on earth we have to reflect
upon it, not by itself, but in its objective relations,
especially in connection with Himself.
The entire mediatorial work is internally one with
the divine-human personality of the Mediator; so is
the atoning sacrifice one with the entire mediatorial
work. The mystery of His person imparts character
to His mediatorship ; and His mediatorship imparts
character to His atoning death.
1. The course of study pursued in preceding chapters
has unfolded two general aspects of truth. Jesus Christ is
the reveaier of God and the redeemer of man. His
mediatorship is the progressive realization of a new human
life, a life which annuls the law of sin and expiates its
guilt. These two forms of mediatorship presuppose and involve
each other. Jesus reveals the truth of God. He develops
and perfects the new life-communion by performing the
work of reconciliation. The reverse proposition is like
wise valid. He redeems mankind from the curse of sin
by developing and perfecting in Himself the true life-com
munion between man and God, passing through and per-

§258.] The Death of Jesus Christ. 325
fecting every age, from infancy to manhood : a truth
prominent among the Nicene and ante-Nicene fathers, by
none however more definitely expressed than by Irenaeus :
He did " not despise or evade any condition of humanity, nor set aside
in Himself that law which He had appointed for the human race, but
sanctified every age, by that period corresponding to it which belonged
to Himself. For He came to save all through means of Himself, infants,
and children, and boys, and youths, and old men. * * At last He
came on to death itself, that He might be 'the first-born from the dead,
that in all things He might have the pre-eminence,' the Prince of life,
existing before all, and going before all."'
If He were not the true life-communion with God, He
could not be the Redeemer of mankind. If He were not
the Redeemer, He Could not be the positive revelation, not
the ideal Man nor the ideal life-communion with God.
These two forms are not coordinate. True life-com
munion with God conditions the virtue of suffering and
death. The fulfilment and realization of God's will by
the ideal manhood of Jesus is the foundation on which
propitiation rests. On the other hand, the annulment of
the law of sin and the extinction of the curse are necessary
conditions involved in the process by which the ideal
manhood of Jesus is realized. The redemptive process
governs the manner of the movement of revelation. The
revelation -of God is actual and complete in the degree
that mankind in the person of Jesus conquers temptation,
and transcends the disorganization of a fallen world.2
'Irenaeus Against Heresies, Bk. II., 2, 4. Cf. Bk. V., 23, 2.
2The article on The Atonement in Lux Mundi, by the Rev. and Hon.
Arthur Lyttelton, M. A., justly puts emphasis on the union of man with
God no less than on expiation, and in this respect it has special value.
"Only in union with God," he states, "can man accomplish anything
that is good ; and, therefore, so long as he is alienated from God, he can

326 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
True life-communion presupposes the essential connec
tion between God and man, God being the archetype of
man and man being formed in God's image. Redemp
tion, on the contrary, presupposes the abnormal or false
judicial relation of man to God, the relation which is not
fundamental nor necessary, but accidental, being brought
about contrary to all law by wilful transgression. The
Mediator fulfils a double necessity. He annuls the acci
dental relation inasmuch as He quickens the essential
connection, renews it and perfects it.
2. These two factors are active in the mystery of His
death as in the mystery of His birth.
At first view the agony in the garden and the bitter
passion on the cross may seem to be exclusively penal, an
expiatory offering required of the Redeemer by divine law
for the sin of the world. But more mature reflection upon
the nature of this offering discloses the presence of another
factor which is more fundamental. The offering of Him
self on the cross under the condemnation of law is the
manifestation of the eternal love of God, of love to sinful
mankind active in the character of redeeming love. Jesus
became obedient to the righteous will of saving love,
'obedient even unto death, yea, the death of the cross.'
Such obedience was not required by an arbitrary determi
nation of the divine will, nor was it merely subjection to
the demands of inflexible punitive justice; obedience was
no less truly the fulfilment of the eternal love of the
•only long for, he cannot obtain, his reunion with the Divine life." But
he presses the idea of alienation beyond due limits. "Sin is a state," he
says, "in which the will is separated from the Divine will, the life is cut
off from the life of God." Is this sentiment compatible with the words
of Paul, Acts xvii. 28? Has man been 'cut off' from God, like a branch
from a tree ?

§258.] The Death of Jesus Christ. 327
Father to the Son, and in the Son incarnate of the love
of the Father to mankind, degraded and led captive by
the device of Satan. " Herein was the love of God mani
fested in our case, that God hath sent His only begotten
Son into the world, that we might live through Him.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved
us, and sent His Sou to be the propitiation {tov 'iiaa/ibv) for
our sins." J
The sending of His only begotten Son in the flesh that
we might have life through Him, and the coming of the
Son, 'for this cause,' to be the propiation for our sins, this
twofold movement was the manifestation of love, of love
to 'the whole world lying in the evil one.'2 In prospect
of His crucifixion Jesus says: "Now is my soul troubled;
and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour?
But for this cause came I unto this hour. Father, glorify
thy name." 3 The sacrifice on the cross glorifies the name
of the Father, inasmuch as Jesus by laying down His life
for the sheep declares righteous love. In bearing and
resolving the condemnation of sin t'he redemption of the
race is achieved, whilst the new creation advances tri
umphantly. 1 1 John iv. 9, 10. Uaarypiov was the cover of the ark of the covenant
in the holy of holies, ttao/io?, propitiation, was the service of the high
priest on the annual day of atonement when he sprinkled the blood of
'the goat of the sin offering upon the mercy seat, and before the mercy
seat' (Xkaa-Tiipiov): "this rite signifying that the life of the people, the loss
of which they had merited by their sins, was offered to God in the blood
as the life of the victim, and that God by this ceremony was appeased
and their sins were expiated," Cf. Levit. xvi. 2-16; Heb. ix. 6-9.
(Thayer.) 2 1 John v. 20. 3 John. xii. 27, 28.

328 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
§ 259.
Christ offering Himself, the righteous . for the un
righteous, is accordingly to be studied as the revelation
of God and the redemption of man. His sacrifice is
the manifestation of redeeming love in the expiation
of human guilt. Each aspect of truth involves the two
terms, God and man, or God's relation to man and
man's relation to God.
1. Revelation by the atoning sacrifice presupposes 1.
The profound original aptitude of humanity for life-com
munion with God. It is a movement of God towards
man helpless under the curse, or the manifestation of
divine self-sacrificing love in and through man. . Such
manifestation implies a change, or the transformation of
man into the divine likeness. 2. Revelation also presup
poses the eternal aptitude of God for life-communion with
man, and involves the return of man to God from his state
of alienation. As a consequence of the approach and
manifestation of God in love, man, in Christ, turns away
from the world, turns against Satan, and offers himself in
body and soul to God. And since God is the ground of
man's existence, the law of his life, and the ultimate end
of his ethical activity, man in offering himself to God
realizes his highest beatitude.
Both elements of truth, the self-manifestation of God's
love to man and the free return of man to communion
with God, enter into the awful mystery of the cross. If
we leave either element of truth out of view, we shall fail
to. grasp the full import of the atoning sacrifice. The
yearning of divine love awaits the return of the ' prodigal;'
and the heart of the ' prodigal ' has an intense longing for
the spiritual good of his Father's house.

? 259.] The Death of Jesus Christ. 329
Jesus certainly is not the prodigal; but since 'He that
sanctifieth and they that are sanctified are all of one,'
Jesus revealing the race in 'the likeness of sinful flesh'
represents the condition and character of ' the prodigal.'
2. Redemption presupposes, as regards man, transgres
sion and consequent guiltiness ; as regards God, the judg
ment of His condemnation abiding on the transgressor.
Corresponding to this twofold presupposition, the Re
deemer meets a twofold demand, the demand of God's
righteous love and of man's ethical life. Identified with
the fallen race in its judicial relation to God,He bears
God's judgment of condemnation. God, sending His own
Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin and for sin, con
demned sin in the flesh.1 Identified with the fallen race
in its relation to itself, He expiates the guilt of transgres
sion. Bearing our sins in His body upon the tree He
fulfils our penal obligations, and cleanses the conscience
from dead works.2
The Redeemer changes both terms of the abnormal
judicial relation in Himself. Bearing the condemnation
of righteous love 011 the . cross, He changes the divine
curse into divine blessing. Christ redeemed us from the
'Rom. viii. 3.
2 1 Pet. ii. 24 ; Heb. ix. 14. Death, the " actual result of all human sin
was herein made the very revelation of holiness itself, the means whereby
the union with the will of God, so far from being finally broken, was
finally perfected." — Lux Mundi, p. 245. Martensen expresses the cen
tral thought of this statement in these words: "What Christ offers on
the cross is the Ego, the will, the principle of the world, from which
proceeds the whole of this world's dominion with all its glory, the sacri
fice which the human race itself could not bring, which He brings in
man's stead. As He without this could not be the Redeemer, so neither
could He be the Pattern."— Christian Ethics, I., \ 86.

330 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
curse of the law, having become a curse for us. Fulfilling
the penal obligation of the transgressor to righteous love,
that is to say, exhausting and annulling the force of guilt
by suffering the penalty of sin, Christ, the representative
of the sinful race, reconciles the race to God, and changes
the sense of condemnation into self- approval. Annulling
the abnormal judicial relation between man and God, He
asserts the original positive bond of love, and consummates
reciprocal love in a new and perfect communion.
As in the idea of revelation, so in the idea of redemption
it is important to affirm both terms. Wrath and guilt are
correlative. Man's guilt presupposes God's wrath ; God's
wrath implies mail's guilt. Redemption expiates human
guilt. Him who knew no sin He made to be sin on our
behalf. Redemption appeases divine wrath.1 He is the
propitiation for our sins ; and not for ours only but also
for the whole world.2 Redemption effects the reconcilia
tion between God and man. The Father 'made peace
through the blood of the cross ' of Christ.
3. The revelation of divine love obtains in the charac
ter of redemption. The redeeming work of the Mediator
is the mystery in which the manifestation of God's aton
ing love addresses our faith. God's righteous displeasure
with transgression stands in God's love of the transgressor.
His love, of the world is the love of truth, of right and
blessedness ; hence Love in its relation to falsehood and
wrong utters itself in the curse abiding on the trans-
1 'The wrath of God' denotes ho "changeful impulse or passing feel
ing, but the fixed and necessary hostility of the Divine Nature to sin,
including the manifestation of that hostility, whenever sin comes befdre
God." — Lux Mundi, p. 239.
2 1 Jno. ii. 2 ; 2 Cor. v. 21.

\ 259-3 The Death of Jesus Christ. 331
gressor. "He that believeth on the Son hath eternal life;
but he that believetli not the Son shall not see life, but
the wrath of God abideth on him."1
So does human guilt, the self-condemnation of the trans
gressor, presuppose man's original freedom and his divine
imageship. The original instinct of communion with
God, the yearning after divine love and blessedness, ex
presses man's rights in the sense of the necessity of expia
tion. Spontaneously the penalty, springing from the
depths of personality, asserts itself in remorseful feeling,
condemnatory judgment and in a judicial habit of misery.
Man must return to God ; return he must bearing the
curse of his sin ; the necessity is the categorical imperative
of his self-condemning soul. The transgressor invites the
penalty ; he seizes it as his due by the judgment of God
with an unrelenting grasp. In paganism as well as in
Christian lands, whenever moral life awakes to the per
ception of personal guilt or unworthiness for wrong-doing,
personality is irresistibly impelled as by the authority of
inviolable immanent law to make amends for the wrong,
by willing to bear the judicial evils of wrong-doing, or
even by inviting and inflicting judicial evils on itself.
Identified with the Adamic race, experiencing the ills
of its transgression, Christ realizes this human necessity
of expiation in His atoning death. The race calls for
judicial relief by self-sacrifice. To this call the passion of
'Jno. iii. 36. Literally according to the Greek : "He that obeyeth not
the Son shall not see life." (The Sinaitic Codex reads: cwk exei (hath
not), instead of ovk oiperai (shall not see). "The phrase o direiBav, he who
disobeys, brings out the voluntary side in unbelief, that of revolt. The
Son is the legitimate sovereign ; unbelief is the 'refusal to submit. "—
Godet.

332 Doctrine on Jesits Christ. [Book 6.
Christ is the response. He satisfies the universal judicial
need when, made sin on our behalf by God, He offers
Himself to God on the cross.
The officiating priest and the spotless victim "in one
person, the mystery of this 'one offering' proclaims God's
unfathomable love of the world and the kinship of man
with God.1 § 260.
On the basis of the general truth which has been set
forth I proceed to develop the particulars which this
general truth includes.
Jesus Christ is the sent one of the Father to make
atonement. Sent of the Father He comes of His own
will. He comes to realize and perfect manhood and to
suffer the penalty of sin, the righteous for the unright
eous. His propitiatory sacrifice is a necessity, divine
and human. The sacrifice is atoning in a twofold
sense, being vivific and forensic. The atonement
avails for all men. The laying down of His life by
the Mediator conceals the principle of victory -over sin
and death.
1. The incarnate Son is the sent one of God the
Father. His humiliation in the form of a servant reach
ing its lowest point on the cross and in Hades, is a fulfil
ment of the divine will. "Sacrifices and offerings and
sacrifices for sin Thou wouldest not, neither hadst pleasure
therein (the which are offered according to the law): then
hath He said, Lo, I am come to do Thy will. He taketh
away the first that He may establish the second."2 The
will of God in which ' we have been sanctified through
the offering of the body of Jesus Christ once for all,' is His
'Rom. xi. 33-36. 2Heb. x. 8, 9; Luke xv. 3-7.

J260.] The Death of Jesus Christ. 333
essential will, the will of righteous love. God so loved
the world that He gave His only begotten Son. And the
will of righteous love is that the Son of Man drink the
cup which the Father hath given Him.1 In prospect of
His crucifixion, His soul is exceeding sorrowful even
unto death; falling on His face He prayed three times
saying, O my Father, if this cup cannot pass away, except
I drink it, Thy will be done.2 That He offer Himself on
the cross was the unchangeable will of His Father. It
was not possible that the cUp should pass away from Him.
The Father's will was that He suffer for sins once, the
righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to
God.3 2. The sent one of God comes into the world to suffer
and to die for sins freely. Jesus ' humbled Himself. ' *
He came for the purpose of doing the will of His Father.
He says: My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me,
and to accomplish His work.5 In the darkest hour of
Gethsemane, when being in an agony He prayed more
earnestly, and His sweat became as it were great drops of
blood falling down upon the ground, He said: Not my
will, but thine, be done.6 On a previous occasion we hear
him saying: "Therefore doth the Father love me, because
I lay down my life, that I may take it again. No one
taketh it away from me, but I lay it down of myself. I
have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it
again. This commandment received I from my Father." '
What Jesus Himself says of His will to suffer for sins all
His apostles repeat. 'He offered up Himself.' Through
'John xviii. ii. 2 Matt. xxvi. 38-44. 3 1 Peter iii. 18.
* Phil. ii. 8. 6 John iv. 34. 6 Lk. xxii. 41-45. 'John x. 17, 18.

334 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
the eternal Spirit Christ ' offered Himself without blemish
to God.'1
The will of the Father and the will of the Son were dis
tinct, yet the same in purpose. The will of the Father
that the incarnate Son bear man's curse consequent upon
sin, was the will of the Son, by becoming man, to assume
the curse, and having assumed it to fulfil His will of self*
sacrifice by laying down His life of Himself. In fulfilling
His own will to lay 'd«wn His life for the sheep' He
reveals the love of the 'Good Shepherd.' Says our Lord:
"Even as the Father hath loved me, I also have loved
you. * * Greater love hath no man than this, that a
man lay down his life for his friends."2 The voluntary
coming into the world and the offering of Himself on the
cross, His obedience even 'unto death,' were the fulfil
ment and manifestation of His own purpose of love.
3. The sacrifice of Himself, which the Mediator freely
offers on the crpss in obedience to the commandment
from His Father, is the suffering of the penal conse
quences of sin. The penalty is of the nature of transgres
sion, for sin is the perpetual aversion to the divine law of
blessedness. Penalty is judicial" suffering, and judicial
suffering is inseparable from transgression. Penal suffer
ing is no less really the infliction of divine justice.3 Justice
is not the arbitrary determination of a righteous sovereign
to vindicate his authority by sternly executing the sen
tence of condemnation. God is indeed sovereign; His
authority is inviolable, and the sentence of condemnation
passes into execution; yet this aspect of God's attitude
towards the transgressor represents but a partial view of
1 Heb. vii. 27 ; ix. 14. 2 John xv. 9, 13 ; Rom. v. 5'-8.
» Cf. U 136 and 137.

?26o.] The Death of Jesus Christ. 335
the truth. Ideal justice unchangeably unites blessedness
with right-doing ; hence justice cannot but sever blessed
ness frcm wrong-doing. Inasmuch as God can approve
only the right, justice becomes the reaction against wrong.
Penalties are the juridical demand of the violated com
munion of love.
The communion of love between God and man is an
ethical communion; being ethical it. is judicial. Authority
and obedience are the action and reaction of love. Au
thority delights in obedience; obedience rejoices in au
thority. The disobedience of sin violates this righteous
communion, and by consequence incurs the penalty of
guilt. Disobedience renounces authority; authority con
demns disobedience. To take away sin it is necessary
that sin be expiated ; in and with the destruction of the law
of sin in human nature, the penalty which is inseparable
from sin must be borne. This juridical necessity is both
the punitive justice of God, and the punitive conscience
of the transgressor. Punitive justice accordingly is an
abnormal necessity that presupposes the communion of
righteous love, a necessity grounded in both its terms, the
essential nature of God and the ethical constitution of man.
The sum of all penalties is death. So the Old Testament
teaches. In Eden "the Lord God commanded the man,
saying, Of every tree of the garden thou may est freely eat:
but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou
shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof
thou shalt surely die."1 This principle characterizes all
the teaching of pre-Christian revelation. According to
the prophet Ezekiel the Lord God says: "The soul that
sinneth it shall die."2 Of sinning, death is the penalty;
1 Gen. ii. 16, 17. " Ezek. xviii. 4, 20 ; xxxiij. 8.

336 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
and the penalty will fall, not on another, but on the per
son of the transgressor himself. So also we are taught in
the New Testament. Our Lord connects death with sin:
"I go away, and ye shall seek me, and shall die in your
sin;" not in your sins, but in your sin, evTydp-aprlo.. In the
same sense the word death, edvaroc, is used by our Lord in
John viii. 51: "If a man keep my word, he shall never
see death." The reference is here, as Cremer observes,
"to death as the objective sentence and punishment ap
pointed for man."
QdvaTog denotes the penalty of sin, especially in Rom. v.
12: "Through one man sin entered into the world, and
death through sin;" and in vi. 21: "The wages of sin is
death;" so in many other places throughout the New
Testament. -"The end of earthly life, which is more
immediately called death, is always the point of the puni
tive sentence about which all the other elements in that
sentence can be grouped.1 This it is that gives the death
of Christ its significance."2 Cremer maintains "that in
order tp the clear perception and understanding of the
scriptural, and especially of the New Testament use of this
word {Bdvaroc), we must hold fast and abide by the fact that
death as the punishment pronounced by God upon sin has a
punitive significance. All the elements of the divine
judgment make themselves present and realize themselves
to man in its train, and are bound up with it." 3 The fact
1 Cremer's Lexicon of New Testament Greek, p. 284. Cf. Rom. v. 14,
17, 21; 1 Cor. xv. 21, 26, 54-56; 2 Cor. ii. 16; iii. 7; vii. 10; 2 Tim. i.
10 ; Heb. ii. 14, 15 ; Jas. i. 15 ; 1 John v. 16, 17.
2 Acts ii. 24; Heb. ii. 9; v. 7; Rom. vi. 3, 4, 5, 9; 1 Cor. xi. 26; Phil.
ii. 8.
s Cremer's Lexicon, p. 283.

§26o.] The Death of Jesus Christ. 3 2,7
that Christ suffered death is itself the sufficient evidence
that He bore the penalty of sin ; and He bore this extreme.
penalty either because He was Himself a sinner (which it
would be blasphemous to assume), or because, being
'Himself personally sinless, He was identified with and
represented the sinful Adamic race.
In representing the sinful race He quickened and per
fected the new creation of humanity by His birth and life,
by His death and resurrection. To express the relation of
His death to the new life in other words: identified with
the Adamic race in its judicial relations to God and to
itself, the Mediator by the offering of Himself under law
on the cross satisfies the juridical demand of righteous
love; and in satisfying this demand He reasserts the orig
inal law and fulfills the intent of the first creation.
4. The necessity of the sacrifice made by Jesus Christ
on the cross was a necessity of His mediatorial work. It
was due from Himself really and truly as the last Adam,
who was both the head of the new race and identified with
the old race.
Given the idea of a veritable incarnation of the Son of
God in the Son of Man under violated law, and as a
logical sequence we have the idea of a Mediator bearing
the condemnation of violated law. The condemnation
abiding upon a sinful world is not merely imputed to
Him; the juridical consequences of transgression attach
to the humanity which He has assumed. The humanity
with which He is identified being under sentence of con
demnation, He by assuming it voluntarily subjected
Himself to that condemnation. The Mediator came into
the world to save sinners, giving His life a ransom for
many; yet He offers Himself on the cross not primarily on
22

338 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
behalf of individuals, but on His own behalf as the Medi
ator. As He was conceived and born to be the Second
Man ; as by parable and by miracle He declared Himself
to be the truth and the life; as He always did those
things only which pleased His Father in heaven, because
to do the will of the Father was His meat and drink; — so
for the same reasons it was His will to lay down His life
for the sheep. It was a part of His mediatorship as the '
Redeemer of the world, a function of the office to which
He had been consecrated.
Given the notion purely of an imputed penalty, and by
logical sequence we get the notion of an imputed human
ity ; and an imputed humanity involves an imputed sub
jection to the violated law of God. Then we have
launched into the vacant region of unreality. The human
nature of the Redeemer instead of being an essential con
stituent of His personality and of His redemptive work,
comes to be only a temporary expedient or a phantasm.
We may not with Anselm separate the passive obedience
of Christ from His active obedience, maintaining that His
sufferings and death avail for the redemption of sinners,
whilst His positive righteousness, His observance of all
the precepts of the divine law, are due to God from Him->
self, and therefore cannot avail for the benefit of others.
With m'ore propriety Christology might assert directly the
opposite. It is obedience that satisfies the positive claims
of God, not the suffering of the penalty. Penal suffering
is an abnormal necessity ; it may only expiate guilt.
Though the expiation of guilt is a judicial necessity, yet
it is a life fulfilling the communion of love alone that
satisfies the authority of law ; and if the Mediator had
done no more than expiate guilt by suffering and death,
there would be no atonement.

5 26o.] The Death of Jesus Christ. 339
The sufferings of Christ like His positive obedience were
due from Himself as the Mediator between God and the
Adamic race. His entire personal history on earth was
the humiliation of Himself, and thus in one respect a
passive form of obedience. His entire personal history
was also the free determination of His own will, and thus
in another respect an active form of obedience. "Christ
is not passive in His passion," says Meyer. "His obe-
dientia passiva is active. His passion is the very acme of
the work He is doing." Christ was actively obedient in
all His sufferings, even on the cross ; He was passively
obedient in developing a perfectly righteous life, for every
moment of His righteous life was a painful conflict with
the powers of darkness.1
5. The death of the Mediator was an atoning sacrifice.
Atonement is a twofold idea, including the two forms of
His mediatorship, the new life-communion and the de
liverance from sin.
Studied under one aspect the atonement is unifying and
vivific ; studied under another it is ethical and forensic.
(1) The death of the Mediator is an atoning sacrifice ;
for as in all the cardinal events of'His personal history, so
by virtue of His death He makes God and man one. God
1 Equivalent are the words of Van Oosterzee : "The doctrinal theology
of the Church has distinguished between the active and passive obedience
of our Lord — obedientia activa et passiva — and has ascribed to each a
separate value in relation to the work of Redemption. * * The dis
tinction in itself is extremely imperfect, since the very doing of the Lord
was also to a certain extent a suffering, — His suffering, on the other
li and, in some respects His highest form of action. The suffering of death
on the cross is notably the personal deed, in which it attains a climax,
above which nothing higher can be conceived." — Christian Dogmatics,
II-, P- 552.

340 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
and man being alienated in consequence of man's sin, the
atonement is at-one-ment. So the word is used by Shake
speare :
Buckingham. Ay, madam ; he desires to make atonement
Betwixt the Duke of Gloster and your brothers.1
The mediatorship is throughout a unifying work.
In the fallen history of the Adamic race the article of
death is .an inevitable epoch. The work of reviving and
perfecting communion with God is done not only in har
mony with the original laws of human life, but conform
ably also to all its present abnormal conditions. It be
hooved Him in all things to be made like unto His breth
ren. The article of death conditions the real transition
from the mundane to the supermundane, from the earthly
to the heavenly, from the present unnatural, disorganized
status to the truly natural and glorified status of human
existence. In laying down His life the Mediator surren
ders the imperfect and inadequate order of existence for the
higher order in which righteous human life becomes per
fect and adequate to its idea. He passes through this
epoch, inasmuch as it is the inevitable crisis in the process
of perfection. The new human life which He has been
living on earth is by this crisis ' quickened ' and advanced.
That which " was entombed, was united to the spring of
life," says Leighton. Through death and the resurrection
Christ leads back the race, in Himself, out of the confusion
of the existing world ; He surmounts the limitations of
present disorganization and perversion, makes humanity
partaker of a life of blessedness on the transcendent plane,
a life triumphant over disorder and misery, satisfying all
spiritual instincts and the noblest aspirations. This view
' King Richard HI., Act. I., Sc. 3.

g 260.] The Death of Jesus Christ. 341
of the Mediator's death, as a transcendent epoch in the
history of His life, a passage from the earthly to the
heavenly world, comes prominently to view in a number
of places in the Gospel by John.
When the chief priests and Pharisees sent officers to
take Him, Jesus said : Yet a little while am I with you,
and I go unto Him that sent me.1 When Andrew and
Philip tell Jesus of certain Greeks who had said to Philip:
Sir, we would see Jesus, He answereth them, saying: The
hour is come, that the Son of Man should be glorified.
'* * Father, glorify Thy name. There came therefore a
voice out of heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and
will glorify it again.2 The Father will glorify His name
through the transition of His Son from earth to heaven.
If a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it heareth
much fruit. The moment at which the grain ceases to be
a grain is the instant of incipient glorification in the new
stalk. Again : Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that believeth
on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater
works than these shall he do; because I go unto the
Father.3 His death was 'a departure, a rising from the
earthly plane to the heavenly throne of authority, an
investiture with a quality of divine glory with which He
was not and could not be clothed while in the natural
body. In the same chapter our Lord says to His disciples: Ye
heard how I said to you, I go away, and I come unto you.
If ye loved me, ye would have rejoiced, because I go unto
the Father: for the Father is greater than I.* Leaving
the world and going to the Father was for Jesus an inde-
'John vii. 33. 2John xii. 24, 28. "John xiv. 12. 4John xiv. 28.

342 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Booxe.
scribable good, towards which He was looking forward in
hope. For this reason if the love of the disciples for Jesus
had been true and wise, they instead of being troubled
would have rejoiced with Him.
Speaking of the coming and the office of the Comforter
Jesus says that the Spirit will convict the world of
righteousness, because I go to the Father, and ye behold me
no more. 1 His transition from the earth to the glory
of the Father, He implies, will demonstrate the righteous
ness of His life, the truth of His teaching and the supe
riority of His kingdom.
In harmony with the import of this teaching Christ says
in His high-priestly prayer: I am no more in the world,
and these are in the world, and I am come to Thee. 2
Death is the gateway through which the captain of our
salvation passes in His triumphal march to take possession
of His throne.
(2) Man bears the guilt of transgression as well as the
divine image; and God is a righteous Judge no less than
a merciful Father. Mercy and righteousness embrace each
other. The essential connection between God and man is
ethical no less than vital, and judicial no less than sympa
thetic. Inasmuch as sin alienates the life of man from
the life of God, there is a profound necessity of return and
ideal union. But as sin is also a radical moral wrong, it
not only causes estrangement but also incurs condemna
tion. God being wronged by sin He condemns the sinner;
man being the wrong-doer, he feels God's displeasure in the
self-condemnation of conscience. The issue between God
'John xvi. 10. Cf. 28. I came out from the Father, and am come
into the world: again I leave the world, and go unto the Father.
aJohn xvii. 11, 13.

1 260.] The Death of Jesus Christ. 343
and the transgressor is a judicial issue; there can be no
peace with God, no peace of self with self, apart from the
expiation of guilt.
Christ by His humiliation, especially by His passion
and death, makes mankind one with God, because He
meets the juridical demand of the violated communion
of love. The offering of Himself is an expiatory sacrifice.
Identified with the race under sentence of death, He dies
under this sentence. His passion expiates the guilt of the
race, because He maintains Himself in the perfect com
munion of love with the Father in the act of bearing the
sentence. He so maintains Himself in righteousness that
He exhausts the force of condemnation in its relation to
Himself as the representative of the race. The atoning
sacrifice is forensic as really as vivific, being on the one
hand an epoch of transition in the process of perfection,
and on the other the reconciliation of God and man, both
in the one mystery.
(3) In a scriptural doctrine of the atonement Christ
ology has to hold in unison these two factors of truth.
The sacrifice is at the same time unifying and judicial.
His death is the epoch in which the Mediator advances
and perfects life-coinmunion with God, a transition which
presupposes the original kinship between God and man.1
Just as truly is His death a bearing of the sin of the
1 The departure of Christ from earth in death corresponds to the pre
destined epoch anticipated by the formation of the first Adam in the
image of God, a positive epoch of transformation for the whole man in
passing from the plane of the earthly life to the plane of the heavenly
life. Sin changes the joyous prospect of good into the depressing fear
of evil, but the positive necessity of spiritual transformation survives ;
and Christ obeys the original law of humanity when on the cross He
says : Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit.

344 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
world, the suffering of the necessary penalty of transgres
sion, whereby peace between God and the transgressor is
brought to pass.
If in the doctrine of the atonement we separate the life-
giving work and the redemptive work of the Mediator, and
then lay stress exclusively on either, the doctrine fails to
contain the whole truth. If, laying stress chiefly on the
life-giving aspect of the mediatorship, Christology denies
of His death that it is a propitiation for sin, the doctrine
will conflict with the moral order of the world as taught
by Scripture and declared by the intuitions of personality.
There is no forgiveness, no judicial peace, without expia
tion, That is the testimony of the conscience of mankind.
if on the other hand we lay stress only on the fact of
expiation, and ignore the more profound complemental
truth that the incarnate Son is the head of a regenerate
race, the author of a new victorious life, the doctrine of
the atonement may become purely forensic ; and a purely
forensic doctrine does violence to man's divine image-
ship, to the original communion of love, and to all those
teachings of the Bible, especially the teaching of our
Lord, which represent Christianity to be a new creation
and the death of Christ to be an epoch of triumph in the
process of glorification.
6. Inasmuch as the sacrifice of Christ was due to God
from Himself as identified with the Adamic race, it avails
for the benefit of all men.
Scientifically considered, the Mediator did not lay down
His life either directly on behalf of an elect few, or directly
on behalf of all men. He suffered death on His own
behalf. Being the Second Man, and at the same time
identified with the race of the first man, death for Him

g 260.] The Death of Jesus Christ. 345
was an inevitable crisis, like the temptation in the wilder
ness. The necessity was rooted in the truth of His divine-
human personality. The incarnate Son came into the
world to reveal God and mankind in Himself, and in
Himself to effect a reconciliation of God and mankind.
Having suffered and died and risen from the dead to
accomplish His mediatorship, He became the way, the
truth and the life for all men; all may partake of the
spiritual good of His death as they may of His birth. But
of the virtue of His birth as of His death all men may
partake only by becoming the members of Himself.1 He
is the true vine; only the branches of this vine share the
life and bear the fruit of the vine. It is not His death as
an isolated offering that confers benefits. Forgiveness
and salvation proceed neither from His crucifixion nor
from His resurrection, but from Jesus" Christ Himself,
from the crucified Mediator risen and glorified.
Viewed in its necessary connection with the person of
Jesus Christ, His atoning sacrifice avails in one respect
for mankind universally, but in another respect it avails
only for a part. It avails for the race, for no sinner is
excluded. Jesus Christ is the propitiation for our sins;
and not for ours only, but also for the whole world. By
the grace of God He tasted death for every man. As
1 On the necsssity of union to Christ Leighton has this forcible passage:
"To those that sincerely and with all their hearts receive Him, Christ is
all things ; to those that receive Him not, nothing. For, how can any
good, however suitable or extensive, be actually enjoyed ; or, indeed, any
such enjoyment conceived, without some kind of union between that
good and the person supposed to stand in need of it? * * To be
united to God, is the great and the only good of mankind ; and the only
means of this union is Jesus, in whatever sense you take it: He ought
truly to be,called the union of unions." — Works, p. 589.

346 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
regards the virtue of the sacrifice and the purpose of God's
love, all may become the members of Christ and share the
full virtue of His mediatorship. In point of fact, how
ever, the atoning sacrifice avails for the salvation only of
some. Many persistently refuse to accept Him ; and those
only can obtain forgiveness who 'by true faith are in
grafted into Him and receive all His benefits.'1 "He
that abideth in me, and I in Him, the same beareth much
fruit: for apart from me ye can do nothing. If a man
abide not in me, he is cast forth as a branch, and is
withered; and they gather them, and cast them into the
fire, and they are burned."2
7. The atoning sacrifice achieves the victory over sin.
A victory the sacrifice is because it is a real expiation.
Jesus Christ dies under condemnation, yet lives truly in
the communion of love with God; He lives in the act of
suffering the penalty of death. He does not succumb
under ' the wrath of God ' and become a prey to the power
of death. In that case, 'having become a curse for us,'
He would have suffered under the curse as all men suffer,
without annulling in Himself the law of sin, without
satisfying the juridical demands of the violated com
munion of divine love.
Christ maintained Himself personally sinless when ' His
own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree.' Or it
may be said: in the act of offering up Himself the 'one
sacrifice for sins ' He lived His life of positive communion
with God.3 So we are taught in the Epistle to the He
brews: "The blood of Christ, who through the eternal
Spirit offered Himself without blemish unto God, shall
1 Heid. Cat., 20. 2 John xv. 5, 6. s Heb. vii. 27 ; x. 12.

J261.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 347
cleanse your conscience from dead works to serve the
living God."
Hence instead of becoming a prey to death, He by
drinking 'the cup which the Father hath given Him,'
conquers this mighty all-consuming power. He conquers,
because whilst in reality bearing 'the curse of the law,'
He in this crisis surmounts the state of humiliation,
resolving and satisfying on the one side God's judgment
of condemnation, and on the other developing His right
eous life onward into the higher, transcendent realm of
glorification. In the hour when sin effects its triumph
over Him, He achieves the triumph over sin. The para
dox stands. When 'slain,' He was living the new life of
self-sacrificing love.

CHAPTER X.
BURIAL OF CHRIST: DESCENT INTO HADES.
§ 261.
The burial of Christ followed the offering of Himself on
the cross. Says the Christian "Creed: "Suffered under
Pontius Pilate, was crucified, dead, and buried." Imme
diately connected with His burial is the article: "He
descended into Hades." Like all the cardinal events in
the history of His mediatorship, the descent into Hades
has significance for Himself as well as for the economy of
redemption. The Greek ?<W of which the English Hades is simply a
' A(% or didris, commonly derived from a privative (not), and the verb

348 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
transliteration, is equivalent to invisible, unseen. In
contrast with the present world, seen with the bodily eye,
Hades in Greek mythology means the dark abode of
disembodied spirits, which with the bodily eye cannot be
seen. In the New Testament the word denotes the unseen
future realm intermediate between the article of death and
the resurrection.
It is important to have clearly before our minds the
distinguishing characteristic of the astronomy and geo
graphy of ancient times. According to the Ptolemaic
system the earth was central, and the sun, moon and all
the heavenly bodies revolved around the earth. The
earth was a vast undulating surface, consisting of land
and water, upheld by the mighty hand of God.' Heaven
was the realm of light above the earth; above the heaven
of heavens was the abode and glory of God. Below the
surface of the earth was Hades, the unseen realm, in the
Old Testament called Sheol, a realm of darkness, into
which the spirits of the departed entered. By the an
cients, the Israelites as well as the Greeks and Romans,
man's death was conceived to be the cessation of his life
on earth and his entrance into this 'nether empire,'
literally a descending into indescribable abysmal depths.
Agreeably to pagan intuition the state of the dead in the
nether world is conditioned on their moral and religious
Idelv (see), means, etymologically, not seen. In the New Testament the
word occurs ten times: Matt. xi. 23 ; xvi. 18 ; Luke x. 15 ; xvi. 23 ; Acts ii.
27, 31 ; Rev. i. 18; vi. 8; xx. 13, 14. Gehenna, the abode of penal suffer
ing, occurs twelve times, the word which is properly translated hell.
1 Call to mind the Greek myth of the giant Atlas, who bore up the
earth upon his shoulders.

?26i.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 349
character. The good are in Elysium, .the bad in Tar
tarus,1 the one a state of happiness, the other a state of
suffering. A similar twofold conception was held by the Jews, and it
appears in the New Testament. The parable of a certain
rich man represents that the beggar died and was carried
away by the augels into Abraham's bosom. The rich
man also died, and in Hades he lifted up his eyes, being
in torments. The figure of Abraham's bosom is drawn
from the image of a banquet, where Lazarus is reclining
in high honor, whilst Dives passes from the height of
earthly pleasure into the depths of anguish. Christianity
recognizes an element of truth in pagan intuition. And
the twofold Jewish idea of Sheol becomes the basis on
which rests Christian revelation respecting the state of
the righteous and the wicked in the future world.
The phraseology: "descended into hades" and "as
cended into heaven," is a representation of truth which,
as to its forms, teaches the local transition of Jesus
Christ downward and upward. As to mode of apprehen
sion, this is the meaning of the words descend and ascend
wherever they occur in the New Testament. The Coper-
nican system, which makes the sun the center around
which the earth and the planets revolve, and the conse
quent change in current conceptions respecting geography,
were neither accepted nor even known until the latter
half of the sixteenth century. In studying the history of
eschatological doctrines it must not be forgotten that the
astronomy and geography of the ancients prevail not only
in the Old Testament and in the New Testament, but
1 A word used once in the New Testament, 2 Pet. ii. 24.

350 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
also through all the ages of the Christian Church onward
till within the last two centuries.1
These two facts, the burial of our Lord and His descensus
ad inferos, are connected, being in truth two aspects of
one mystery. So they were regarded in the second and
third centuries, when the original Christian Creed was in
process of formation. By the burial the primitive Church
did not understand merely the solemn interment of our
Lord's lifeless remains. Burial implies also His real trans
ition from the natural world into the region of the dead.
Like His death on the cross, His burial, agreeably to the
New Testament, is the predicate of Himself, embracing
the totality of His constitution. It was Jesus Christ that
died ; it was He that was buried. Inasmuch as the words,
"crucified, dead, and .buried" had such fulness of mean
ing, the article: "He descended into Hades,1' was not
originally a member of the Creed ; not in it, because the
fact it teaches was affirmed' by' implication.
• The article was inserted, perhaps first by the church of
'Nicholas Copernicus, the founder of modern astronomy, was born
1473, and died 1543. His principal work, entitled De Revolutionibus
was completed in 1530, but was not published until the year of his
death. With him however the heliocentric idea was an hypothesis
rather than a demonstrated fact. It remained for Kepler, 1571-1630, dis
tinguished for the discovery of his four laws of the planetary system,
and for Sir Isaac Newton, 1642-1727, who demonstrated the law of uni
versal gravitation, to establish the intuition of Copernicus on scientific
grounds. From these historical facts it becomes evident that the old
geocentric theory held sway onward to nearly the middle of the 18th cen
tury. The idea that the sun is central and that around it the earth re
volves, did not gain free access to literature universally before the open
ing of the 19th century. As to its forms of representation, the teaching
of the New Testament respecting the hereafter has to be studied under
the imagery derived from the Ptolemaic theory.

§26i.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 351
Aquileja,1 when the docetic errors of Gnosticism made it
important to affirm explicitly that invisible side of the
mystery of His death which before had been confessed
implicitly. That the crucified Christ was buried is a fact so de
finitely taught by the evangelists, and so universally
accepted by the Church and the world, that there is no
occasion to adduce arguments in support of it. It is one
of the things which is designedly recorded in each of the
four Gospels.2
Moreover, that the burial of the crucified Christ was an
essential epoch in the progress of His humiliation and
included His descent into Hades, is a belief that likewise
was universally accepted by the Church onward to the
sixteenth century. From the time of Calvin some
branches of the Evangelical Church have denied this be
lief, or questioned its validity. Calvin "is responsible,"
as Schaff remarks, "for the unhistorical interpretation of
Christ's descent into Hades, by which he understood the
anticipation of the sufferings of hell in Gethsemane and on
the cross."3 To this remark the Larger Catechism of the
Westminster Assembly forms an exception.
1 Cf. Schaft's Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I , p. 19.
2 Matt, xxvii. 59, 60; Mk. xv. 45, 46; Lk. xxiii. 52, 53; John. xix. 38-4?.
Cf. 1 Cor. xv. 4.
'Creeds of Christendom, I., p. 470. Calvin maintains that "if Christ
had merely died a corporeal death, no end would have been accom
plished by it ; it was requisite also- that he should feel the severity of the
Divine vengeance, in order to appease the wrath of God, and satisfy his
justice. Hence it was necessary for him to contend with the powers of
hell and the horror of eternal death. * * Therefore it is no wonder,
if He be said to have descended into hell, since He suffered the death
which the wrath of God inflicts on transgressors. * * Those suffer-

352 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
It becomes important therefore to set forth the truth of
the descensus, as well as to inquire into its nature and pur
pose. § 262.
It is important to restate Christological truth re
specting natural death, Hades and death being integral
parts of the same mystery.
What is the meaning of the article of the Christian
Creed : He descended into Hades ?
1. Belief in Hades, the realm of the dead, is an infer
ence from a true conception of human death. Rather
may it be said that the two things are essentially parts
of one fact.
Natural death under the operation of the law of sin is to
be regarded as reigning under a twofold form. It is an
article of transition, and a realm of existence.
As an article death is an event, a point of time, an
epoch in the present course of a man's history, when his
connection with all existing social relations and all earthly
conditions is dissolved. This terminus of natural life
involves his whole being. It is not the human body that
dies, abstractly considered; nor does the human spirit die.
Man dies, body and soul included. The human constitu
tion in its organic unity is fatally touched by the virus of
sin, and its existence on earth ceases.
Looking upon this mystery in its relation backward to
man's earthly history, natural death is the end of one state
and period of existence ; looking upon it in its relation
forward to his post-earthly history, natural death is the
ings of Christ, which were visible to men, are very properly followed by
the invisible and incomprehensible vengeance which He suffered from
the hand of God." — Calvin's Institutes, Bk. II., ch. xvi. 10.

?262.] Burial of Christ: Djscent into Hades. 353
beginning of another period and a different condition of
existence. The epoch closes one period and opens the
other, removing the whole man by this crisis from the
present world .and introducing him into another world,
effecting an organic change, the form and conditions of
which are now not definitely discernible.
2. It follows that the article of natural death is not a cir
cumscribed, not an isolated event, but a continuous abnor
mal power. Destructive in one direction, like the breaking
of the egg, the epoch is in another direction constructive,
like the birth of the fledgling. Sin under the form of
dying and of death creates a sphere of its own, a sphere
after the nature of sin, into which by departing from this
world ' natural ' men enter, where the same law of sin
holds sway over its subjects, and holds sway so long as
that law is not abolished by a personal power other and
stronger than itself.1
Into this dark realm of death all men over whom the
empire of sin reigns enter. All enter, because all who do
not share the virtue of the risen Mediator die 'in sin.'
As by birth ' the natural man ' begins to live his natural
life subject to the law of dissolution, so by his exit from
this world he begins another mode of existence under
bondage to the same ruthleSs dominion.
'Says Cremer: " Qavarog is not an isolated Occurrence or fact merely,
it is also a state, just as life is a state ; it is the state of man as liable to
judgment. It is the antithesis of that eternal life which God had pur
posed for man, and which man may yet obtain through Christ ; see Rom.
vi. 23 ; 1 John iii. 14-16 ; the opposite of life as blessing and salvation.
* * We find that, according to the context, the reference of Bavaroc is
either to death as the objective sentence and punishment appointed for
man, or to death as the state in which man is as condemned through sin.
* * ." — Lexicon of New Testament Greek, p. 284.
23

354 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
If the question be raised whether the Christian does not
die like other men, and enter into Hades under the law of
sin, I anticipate a point which will be taken up further
on, and answer no. Being a member of Christ he passes
into no 'dark realm,' but he enters into Paradise, which
is the intermediate state as transformed by Christ.
The realm of death, though invisible, is a real world,
the outcome of the present fallen, abnormal order of
human history. Of. the outward manner of the existence
of its subjects we may not venture to speak, for it is
inevitably hidden from present perception. But regarding
the spiritual status of its subjects we are justified in assert
ing that the fallen life of the transgressor when in Hades
is in many respects analogous to the fallen life of the
transgressor on earth. The moral disorganization and
contradiction, the sinfulness, guilt and misery reigning
here, are reigning there; for whatsoever a man soweth,
that shall he alsb reap. 'The corrupt tree bringeth forth
evil fruit'
3. Into this hitherto unbroken realm of spiritual dark
ness the Christ enters. As by one natural epoch He
comes into the present world under human law, so by
another natural epoch He passes into the realm of the
dead under the same human law. The cross was not an
illusion, not a pretence. His crucifixion was an historical
fact, invested with all the phenomena of stern reality. So
the evangelical record teaches in most explicit words. So
the Church has always believed and taught. Even the
Jew and the Gentile have pointed the finger of scorn at a
pretended Mediator, 'crucified' and 'buried.'
Given the reality of the death of Jesus, and we have
given also the reality of His subjection to the realm of

§262.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 355
death. The affirmation of the former is the affirmation
of the latter. The denial of the descent of Jesus into this
realm, when logically developed to its last results, is
equivalent to the assertion that His crucifixion was not an
historical fact but an apparition or a deception.
4. The crucifixion of Jesus is much more, however,
than the death of an individual. To see more clearly and
fully how the article of His death involves His descensus
we have to reflect on the offering of Himself on the cross
as a part, an essential part, of His mediatorship. The
facts of His mediatorship answer at all points to the ne
cessities of the Adamic race.
The Son of God became man inasmuch as the race
which He came to save and to perfect was human. Since
the children are sharers in flesh and blood, He also Him
self in like manner partook of the same.1
The Son became man under the condemnation of vio
lated law inasmuch as the race, guilty of wilful disobedi
ence, was subject to condemnation. Him who knew no
sin God made to be sin on our behalf.2
The Christ was tempted of the Devil and "suffered in
the flesh " 3 inasmuch as temptations, sufferings and sor
rows are through transgression the inheritance of all men.
For it became Him, for whom are all things, and through
whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory,
to make the captain of their salvation perfect through
suffering.* In His humiliation He became obedient unto death,
even the death of the cross, because death was both the
judicial sentence of God pronounced upon transgression
and the dynamic consequence of the law of sin. Behooved
'Heb. ii. i±. * 2 Cor. v. 2r. 3 1 Pet. iv. 1. 4Heb. ii. 10.

356 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into*
His glory?1
The same law of vicarious humiliation reigns in His
mediatorship onward to the end. With the cross dog
matic thought may not stop. That would be arbitrary,
untrue, unscriptural. If the article of natural death were
the extinction of the transgressor, or the last consequence
of sin; if there were no lower stage of condemnation and
misery in the world of spirits beyond the grave; then there
would be some show of reason for the opinion that the
crucifixion of the Mediator on Calvary was the final act of
redemption. Such an hypothesis, however, is fostered
only by skeptics and atheists.
5. There is a domain and a period of future personal
existence. So the religious consciousness of every nation
in every age asserts, and asserts no less explicitly than
Holy Scripture teaches. Moreover, the moral condition
of the transgressor in the post-earthly domain is a condi
tion of guilt and misery. In this condition, the bitter
fruit of . perpetual sinning, transgressors will either con
tinue, or they must be redeemed by a method as real as
that by which they are redeemed from the guilt and misery
of transgression prevalent on earth.
Now since the Mediator is a complete Redeemer ; since
He performs the work of redemption, not by the fiat of
His divine will, not by the exertion of magical power, but
performs the redemptive work in a real way, that is, ac
cording to the economy of human life, by putting on the
nature of the transgressor, by entering into the moral con
dition and spiritual relations of the transgressor, and
assuming all his penal obligations ;— it is just as necessary
1 Luke xxiv. 26.

J 262.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 357
that in fulfilling the mission of a real Redeemer He enter
into the natural grave, and enter into the dark realm of
death in the world of spirits, as it was that by birth He
enter into ' the darkness ' of this world, and suffer ' in the
flesh,' and offer Himself a sacrifice on the cross. So far
down into the depths of darkness as sin carries the unre
deemed transgressor does the Son of Man descend, even
'into the lower parts of the earth,' in order to destroy the
tyranny of death, and, seizing ' the keys of death and of
Hades, ' to open a highway of deliverance for His people
by His resurrection from the dead ; for ' the gates of Hades
shall not prevail against' the Church of Christ1
The history and mediatorship of the Christ run parallel
with the history of the fallen Adamic race in the groove
formed by the law of sin. Herein consists the reality of
His redemptive work. The' constitution of man, that
constitution under the curse of violated divine law, deter
mines his spiritual and judicial needs at every epoch and
on every plane during his history on earth and in the
realm of the dead. These spiritual and judicial needs
under the form which they assume at all points of his ex
istence, whether here or hereafter; fix the objective neces
sities which confront a Redeemer. Inasmuch as the realm
of death beyond the grave is for transgressors a reality,
and the reality is a state of hopeless bondage, that realm
was a real domain for the redemptive work of the Media
tor, as truly as human history on earth, where He had to
meet and conquer the powers of darkness or suffer the de
feat and despair of other men.
1 Eph. iv. 9 ; Rev. i. 18 ; Matt. xvi. 18.

358 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
.§ 263.
The fact of the descent of the Christ into Hades is
plainly taught in the New Testament.
It is taught 1, by necessary implication, and 2, by
many explicit statements.
1. The first form of New Testament teaching concerning
this article of the Christian Creed is the prediction of our
Lord that He must be put to death, and continue for three
days in the realm of the dead. ' ' The Sou of Man must
suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and the
chief priests, and the scribes, and be killed, and after three
days rise again. And He spake the saying openly."1 He
would rise again, but not until ' after three days. ' This
prediction was known to His disciples, but not under
stood. Peter even began to rebuke Jesus for the saying.2
There was to be a period of time between the hour when
He should expire on the cross and the hour when He
would come forth from the tomb.
This prediction was fulfilled. The evangelists are
unanimous in recording the fact that Joseph of Arimathaea
laid the lifeless remains of Jesus, 'bound in linen cloths,'
in a new tomb wherein was never man yet laid, on Friday
evening before sunset ; and that His remains reposed in
this new tomb until before sunrise on the first day of the
week. Where was the Son of Man during those thirty-
six hours? He was not among the living on earth. He
had not ascended to heaven.3 To affirm either resolves
'Mark viii. 31 ; x. 33; Matt. xx. 17 ; Luke ix. 22. 2Mk. viii. 32.
s To Mary standing without at the tomb, on the morning of the resur
rection, the risen Jesus saith : " Touch me not ; for I am not yet ascended
unto the Father ; but go unto my brethren, and say to them, I ascend

1 263.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 359
His history into an illusion. According to His own pre
diction, He was rejected by the Jews, delivered unto the
Gentiles, and He was killed.* Being really killed, He was
really dead. He says of Himself in the book of Revela
tion : I became dead.2 Being dead He was, as Paul
teaches, under the 'dominion' of death.3
To say of Jesus that He died, yet deny that He was
really dead ; or to say that He was dead, but deny that He
was among the dead, is confusion of thought and a con
tradiction of words.
2. The descent into Hades is presupposed by the fact
of the resurrection. The resurrection of Jesus on the
third day was a resurrection "from the dead."' This
cardinal miracle necessarily implies that for at least thirty-
six hours intervening between the moment when He ex
pired on the cross and His reappearance among His disci
ples His abode was in the realm of the dead. These two
things, being among the dead and rising from the dead,
are correlative. If He was not in the realm of the dead,
He did not go forth from that realm ; if He did not go
forth from the realm of the dead, then there was no resur
rection ; ' and if Christ hath not been raised, your faith is
vain ; ye are yet in your sins.'5
Would it be possible for Paul to teach that ' death no
more hath dominion over Him,' unless Paul believed that
unto my Father and your Father, and my God and your God." John
xx. 17.
'Matt. xvi. 21 ; Mk. viii. 31 and ix. 31.
2 Rev. i. 18. Bengel remarks : " He might have said, aircBavov, I died,
but with singular elegance it is kysvofiriv veupbg-, I became dead, to denote
the difference of times, and of the events in them."
3 Rom. vi. 9, 10. 4 1 Cor. xv. 12, 20 ; Col. i. 18 ; et al. ° 1 Cor. xv. 17.

360 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
Jesus, having really died, had been in reality under the
dominion of death?1
These two mysteries, the descensus and the resurrection,
being correlative, we cannot rationally believe the one
without believing the other; nor can we deny either with
out by implication denying the other. So closely are the
burial and the descensus connected with the cross on the
one side, and with the victory "of death and of Hades" on
the other, that a denial of our Lord's descensus not only
annihilates the reality of the resurrection, but no less also
resolves the offering of Himself on the cross into a phan
tasm. 3. This method of argument is sustained by the Heidel
berg Catechism ; not indeed by its exposition, in the 44th
Question, of this article of the Christian Creed, which
teaches that the descent into Hades is "His inexpressible
anguish, pains, and terrors which He suffered in His soul
on the cross and before ;" but the Catechism does not
profess to teach the complete doctrine of the Reformed
Church on the descensus.
Ebrard maintains that in this Answer "the Reformed
theologians taught nothing that is false; but they taught,
1, something true under a false head, and 2, something
that is true they omitted."2 The more complete doctrine
as affirmed by Reformed theologians supplements the
deficiencies of Calvin. Sudhoff remarks that it is wholly
'Says Olshausen: "The oiwlrt Kvpievci, hath dominion no longer, inti
mates that death certainly had dominion over Christ, in that He really
died, but not by the necessity of nature, but by freely giving up Himself
in love [John x. 18; Phil. ii. 7]. Yet even in death life could not be
holden of death. * * Our Lord appeared among the dead as already
conqueror over death." — Kendrick's Olshausen, III., p. 597.
2 Christian Dogmatics, by Ebrard, II., \ 419, p. 238.

8263.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 361
an error to restrict the doctrine of the Reformed Church
on the descensus solely and exclusively to the 44th Ques
tion of the Heidelberg Catechism.1 Peter Martyr says:
" Eundem subiit statum (anima Christi) quern reliquae auimae a cor-
pore sejunctae experiuntur quae aut in sanctorum societatem cooptantur,
aut cum damnatorum spiritibus in exitium detruduntur."2
In his compendium of the Christian religion Bullinger
expresses himself to the same effect:
" Confitemur Christum descendisse ad inferos, non solum quia vere
mortuus est et ejus anima a corpore separata recepta in sinum Abrahae
h. e. in consortium omnium sanctorum patrum qui jam e vivis excesse-
rant, sed ideo etiam, quod ipsius mors ac passio satis efficax est ad re-
demptionerfi omnium sanctorum patrum."3
With this teaching the Larger Catechism is plainly in
sympathy. In answer to Q. 50 it says:
" Christ's humiliation after His death consisted in his being buried,
and continuing in the state of the dead, and under the power of death
till the third day, which hath been otherwise expressed in these words,
He descended into hell.
In support of this more complete conception respecting
the descensus we may refer to the Heidelberg Catechism
itself. It in effect surrenders the exposition given in the
44th Answer by its teaching respecting the death, the
resurrection and the ascension of our Lord.
As taught by the Catechism and by all the confessions
of the Reformed Church these mysteries: His death, His
resurrection, His ascension, are not vain appearances, but
each is a reality. The Heidelberg Catechism has no less
¦See his Theological Handbook on the Catechism, p. 234. Cf.
Schweitzer's Dogmatics, II., p. 350, a quote from Aretius.
2 1500-1562. Quoted by Sudhoff, p. 235.
s Book VI., ch. VI., quoted by Sudhoff on the Catechism, page 235.

362 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
than seven Questions on these mysteries: the passion, the
condemnation by Pontius Pilate, the actual crucifixion,
the necessity of His death, the difference between His
death and the death of His members, and 011 the benefit
we receive from the sacrifice and death of Christ on the
cross. It teaches in most explicit terms that He bore in
body and soul the wrath of God against sin; that He being
innocent was condemned by the temporal judge; that He
took on Himself the curse which lay upon us; that satis
faction for our sins could be made no otherwise than by
His death; and that He was really dead? Certainly there
is no shadow of ground for alleging that the Heidelberg
Catechism fails to teach either that He was reall/ " killed "
or that "He was really dead."
On the other hand the Catechism teaches just as ex
plicitly that He rose from the dead, and that He ascended
into heaven. Though very brief the definition of the
resurrection embodies, under its negative aspect, the mar
row of the truth of this mystery. It says : "By His re
surrection He has overcome death." His final victory
over death He did not achieve by dying 011 the cross but
by His resurrection. Being really dead, He overcame
death by becoming "the first-born from the dead."2 The
coming forth from the dead on the third day was the com
pleted victory over the realm of the dead.
The ascension follows upon His resurrection, and is
equally real. Christ, in sight of His disciples, we are
taught, was taken up from the earth into heaven ; and in
our behalf there continues until He shall come again to
judge the living and the dead. * * Christ ascended
into heaven for this end, that He might there appear as
1 Qs. 37, 38, 39. 4°. 4i, 42. 43, 45- 2 Col. i. 18.

§263] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades.

ouo

Head of His Church, by whom the Father governs all
things.1 Christ did not ascend to heaven from the cross ; but
from the cross He was taken down and buried, because
He was really dead. Nor did He ascend into heaven on
the morning of the resurrection. On that morning Jesus
saith to Mary : "Touch me not ; for I am not yet ascended
unto the Father."2 It was not until many days later, after
He had certified the reality of His resurrection to His dis
ciples, that He ascended. On Mount Olivet ' Christ, in
sight of His disciples, was taken up from the earth into
heaven.'3 The ascension, according to the Catechism,
was an historical fact as real as His resurrection.
All the confessions of the Reformed branch of the Re
formation affirm the reality of the resurrection and the
reality of the ascension, as definitely as the Heidelberg
Catechism. Such teaching respecting the truth of Christ's
death and the truth of His resurrection necessarily implies
the correlative truth that during the intermediate period
He was dead, not non-existent, but ' really dead. '
1 Heid. Cat. 46, 50. 2John xx. 17. sLk. xxiv. 51 ; Acts i. 9.

364 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
§ 264.
Here the argument might rest. If the idea of death
implies that Christ was really dead, and if the idea of
a real resurrection postulates the fact that He was in
the realm of the dead, then we cannot have more con
clusive evidence of the truth of this article of the
Christian Creed. The burial includes His descent
into Hades.
Yet the teaching of the New Testament on this
article is so explicit and so full that it brings more
definitely to light the truth of the inference from the
facts of His death and His resurrection.
Let us turn to the words of our Lord and of His
apostles. 1. Consider one of the utterances of our Lord. On one
occasion the, scribes and Pharisees said to Him : Master,
we would see a sign from thee. They desired some exter
nal phenomenon, such as Moses had given to their fathers;
but He replied that an evil and adulterous generation
shall have no sign given unto it but the sign of Jonah the
prophet ; "for as Jonah was three days and three nights
in the belly of the whale, so shall the Son of Man be three
days and three nights in the heart of the earth."1 The
sign that would be given the Scribes and Pharisees would
be His crucifixion, burial and descent into Hades. If we
bear in mind the ideas concerning astronomy and geo
graphy then universally prevalent, we shall have 110 diffi
culty in understanding the force of this analogy. The
formula, heart of the earth, certainly cannot mean the
natural life of Jesus before His crucifixion ; nor can 'heart
of the earth ' possibly mean heaven. The image of Jonah
in the belly of the whale sets definitely before us the pros-
1 Matt. xii. 40.

\ 264.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 365
pective analogous condition of Jesus. He should be
killed, and go down into the realm of the dead. ' Heart
of the earth ' denotes the nether- world, the world be
neath, the indescribable abode of the departed, in con
trast with the visible earth above, and in contrast with
the realm of glory beyond the heavens. So Tertullian,
Irenaeus, Theophylact, Bellarmin, Olshausen, Kceuig,
Schaff, Riddle and many others interpret. "The heart
of the earth," Meyer says, "can designate only the depths
in the interior of the earth." As the sea received Jonah
so will Hades open its mouth to receive the Son of Man,
and for 'three days and three nights' hold him in .its
depths. 2. We have a forcible testimony to the descensus in the
first proclamation of the Gospel by the apostle Peter on
the day of Pentecost.
Reasoning in support of the resurrection of Jesus of
Nazareth, who by the hand of lawless men had been cruci
fied and slain, he declares that God had raised Him up,
"having loosed the pangs of death ; because it was not
possible that He should be holden of it" As a child
when the full time for its birth has come cannot remain in
the womb of its mother, so Jesus could not be held in the
heart of the earth. The language is determined by the
analogy of natural birth.
Then proceeding to' argue from the Old Testament in
support of the resurrection of Jesus, the lineal descendant
of David, Peter quotes Psalm xvi. 8-1 1. David says:
Therefore my heart was glad, and my tongue rejoiced ;
Moreover my flesh also shall tabernacle in hope :
Because thou wilt not leave my soul in Hades,
Neither wilt thou give thy holy one to see corruption.
Thou madest known unto me the ways of life.

.366 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
The words of the Psalmist, Peter maintains, were not ful
filled in the patriarch David ; for David ' died and was
buried, and his tomb is with us unto this day.' This
prophecy was fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. David being
a prophet, and knowing that God had sworn with an oath
to him, that of the fruit of his loins one should sit upon
his throne ; he foreseeing this spake of the resurrection of
the Christ, that neither was He left in Hades, nor did His
flesh see corruption.1 Distinguishing between 'the Christ'
Himself and 'His flesh,' Peter declares that the Christ
was not left in Hades, the abyss of the under-world, and
that His flesh did not fall a prey to corruption. ' This
Jesus did God raise up, whereof we are all witnesses.'
Agreeably to the first proclamation of the Gospel by this
chosen apostle after he had been ' baptized with the Holy
Ghost,' the resurrection consists in this, that Jesus came
forth victorious over death from the depth of Hades in an
incorruptible body.
The entire argument of the apostle concerning the
resurrection of the Christ hinges on the fact that He had
really died, and had really been under the 'dominion' of
death in the under world.
3. If we accept the unequivocal teaching of Peter in his
first sermon, we shall have but little difficulty in recog-
' Acts ii. 22-32. In verse 31 the Received Text is at fault: "he seeing
this before spake of the resurrection of Christ, that His soul was not left in
Hades." According to Westcott and Hort who represent the best re
sults of textual criticism, the words rj fvxi) ovtov are not genuine. The
correct text is bri ovte ivmTekeitftri elg aSr/v. Therefore we read in the Re
vised Version "that neither was He [Christ] left in Hades, nor did His
flesh see corruption." This passage furnishes direct support to the fact
that Christ in the unity, of His divine-human constitution descended
into the realm of the dead.

? 264.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 367
nizing the same truth presented under a different aspect
in his first Epistle. There he sets forth the fact of the de
scensus in its historical relations. Here we have the same
fact under its doctrinal aspect and in its doctrinal bearings.
" Christ also suffered for sins once, the righteous for the unrighteous,
that He might bring us to God ; being put to death in the flesh, but
quickened in the Spirit; in which also He went and preached to the
spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient, when the longsuffer-
ing of God waited in the days of Noah, while the ark was a preparing,
wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved through water."1
The word prison, 'ev^vTuudg, is the equivalent of Hades, r<>w;
the latter denoting the nether world as unseen, the former
as a confinement within strong walls, as of a castle from
which there is 110 escape. Other equivalents are abyss,
«? Tfp> apvaaov, in Rom. x. 7; aud things under the earth, or
things of the world below, KaraxBovtav, Phil. ii. 1 1. ' Abyss '
presents Hades under the aspect of an unknown and un
knowable depth ; ' the world below ' as the abode of the
dead below the surface of the earth.
If we do not allow dogmatic prepossessions to prejudice
interpretation, if we study this passage in connection with
the historical order of events as recorded in the Gospels
and as made the basis of evangelical argument by Peter in
his sermon on the day of Pentecost, the meaning of the
words of the apostle in his epistle becomes evident. He
teaches that Christ, though put to death, was alive in the
Spirit. Being alive in the Spirit, He went into the world
below. 'Spirit' does not mean the soul as contradistin
guished from the body; nor does 'flesh ' mean the body as
contradistinguished from the soul. ' Flesh,' as in 2 Cor.- v.
16, Gal. iv. 29, also in other places, denotes the natural
1 1 Peter iii. 18-20.

368 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
constitution of the Adamic race represented by Christ, in
virtue of which relation to fallen humanity He offered
Himself. ' Spirit ' denotes the new order of human life of
which He, the Second Man, was the beginning. Christ
was both in one mystery. By virtue of His identity with
the Adamic race He suffered for sins once, the righteous
for the unrighteous. By virtue of the new creation of
which He was the principle, He triumphed in'defeat, He
lived the new life when expiring on the cross.
" Christ having life in Himself, and being Himself the Life, neither
ceased, nor began again, to live in spirit: but as soon as He had been
released by death from His fleshly weakness, immediately (as distin
guished divines acknowledge) the energy of His imperishable life began
to exert itself in new and unembarrassed ways." '
Descending in living Spirit He announces Himself to
the spirits which were disobedient in the days of Noah.
"Christ dealt with the living, in the flesh; with spirits,
in spirit He Himself has power with the living and the
dead. There are wonders in that invisible world."
In full harmony with this teaching the apostle adds that
those who have wrought the desire of the Gentiles and
walked in abominable idolatries "shall give account to
Him that is ready to judge the quick and the dead. For
unto this end was the Gospel preached even to the dead,
ml venpoic, that they might be judged according to men in
the flesh, but live according to God in the spirit"2 Inas
much as both the living and the dead shall give account
to God, the glad tidings were preached to the dead as well
as to the living, to the end that the dead no less than the
living might be judged by the same Gospel.3
1 Bengel on i Pet. iii. 78. 2 1 Peter iv. 5, 6.
3 Paul's language involves the same truth when, speaking of the final

5264.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 369
4. There are passages in the Epistles of St. Paul which
directly or indirectly teach the same truth ; such as Rom.
x. 7; Phil. ii. 10; Col. i. 18; 1 Cor. xv. 12-18; Eph. iv.
9, 10. Of these we select but one, Eph. iv. 9, 10.
" Now this, He ascended, what is it but that He also descended into
the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that
ascended far above all the heavens, that He might fill all things."
The expression, 'into the lower parts of the earth,'
dg rd mTa-epa jiipn ttjc; yi/c, is the equivalent of the 'heart of
the earth ' in Matt. xii. 40, iv ry «ap&ia t^ yqc. If we recol
lect the astronomical conception of the apostle, the pro
priety of the imagery by which he represents the victory
and the gifts of the Mediator may at once be seen. The
triumph and glory of His ascension is taught in contrast
with the extreme limit of His condescension. The for
mula, 'lower parts of the earth,' and the formula, 'far
above all the heavens,' are directly antithetic, the full
force of each depending on the significance of the other.
If ' far above all heavens ' denotes the height of glory in
the world above, then ' lower parts of the earth ' denotes
the profoundest depths of humiliation in the world below.
Says Delitzsch in his Biblical Psychology:
"The descent elg to, ttaTiirepa fikpin ttjs yijc, i. e. into Hades, which with
the burial is comprised in the sojourn iv ttj xapdla Tijg yijq (Matt. xii. 40),
is the extreme lowest point contrasted with the ascension above all the
heavens (Eph. iv. 9) ; for heaven and Hades (Matt. xi. 23), or heaven
and the under world (Phil. ii. 10 ; Apoc. v. 3), or heaven and the abyss
(Rom. x. 6), or heaven and the prison' (1 Pet. iii. 19, 22), are opposite
poles."1 issues of the moral conduct of Jews and Gentiles, some of whom ' by
patience in well-doing seek for glory,' whilst others 'obey unrighteous
ness,' He saj's: "In the day when God shall judge the secrets of men
according to my gospel, by Jesus Christ."— Rom. ii. 16.
1 Second English Edition, p. 482.
24

370 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [BooKf
Otherwise there is no propriety in the imagery. If the
words, lower parts of the earth, be taken in their superficial
and literal sense, as meaning only tHe tomb in which the
lifeless remains of Jesus were laid, and remained from
Friday evening until Sunday morning, then the antithesis
disappears, and the remarkable construction of the apos
tle's language loses its force. From the context it is
obvious that the endeavor of Paul is to set forth, in
strongest terms, the unspeakable contrast between the
lowest state of our Lord's humiliation and the most ex:
alted state of His glorification.
5. I shall note but one passage more, found in the
Apocalypse: "And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one dead. And He laid
His right hand upon me, saying, Fear not ; I am the first and the last,
and the living one ; and I became dead, and behold, I am alive for
evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades.'"
These words of one 'like unto the Son .of Man,' de
scribing His humiliation and victory, are ruled by the
image of a castle or city surrounded by impregnable Walls,
into which the entrance leads through massive gates.
Jesus being really dead had to descend into the city of the
dead; but the gates of Hades could not shut Him in, nor
could the power of. death hold Him captive. The gates
that had been shut against all the dead He opened; He
took captive the power of death which had held all others
in captivity. Going forth in His might He is alive, alive
unto the ages of the ages; not only alive, but He has the
keys of death and of Hades; the gates have been unbarred;
the death-power is broken down; and in the fulness of
time the Church of the redeemed, awaiting in joyous hope
' Rev. i. 18 ; ii. 8 ; v. 3.

J 265.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 371
His second coming, will follow Him in the path of com
pleted • victory. According to His own words spoken
when in the flesh: "The gates of Hades shall not prevail
against" His Church; He leads forth His people through
the opened gates of the intermediate world into the free
dom and final glory of eternal life.
6. These studies in the New Testament show that the
descent of Christ crucified into the abysmal abodes of the
dead is definitely set forth, or logically implied, not in one
passage of uncertain meaning, as has often been asserted,
but in all the books from Matthew to Revelation. This
mystery is more explicitly taught, and references to it are
more frequent, than the primary fact that Jesus was con
ceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin Mary,
in support of which we have but three or four categorical
statements.1 §265.
Into Hades the Christ descended to accomplish the
same end for which He lived upon the earth. The
work done among the living and the work done among
the dead are different parts and different stages of the
one mediatorship.
1. Jesus Christ crucified manifests and proclaims Him
self among the dead the Messiah, the hope of Israel, the
desire of the world, the One who brings to nought him
that hath the power of death. He went and preached
unto the spirits in prison, says St. Peter. What did He.
preach ? There is but one answer to be given : the Truth.
He proclaimed the same glad tidings " unto the spirits in
prison " that He had proclaimed among the living. There
'Matt. i. 18, 19, 20; Luke i. 26-35; Gal. iv. 4; Heb. ii. 14-18.

372 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
is but -one theme ; that theme is Himself, Himself as the
way, the truth and the life. "The gospel," Peter de
clares, "was preached even to the dead, that they might
be judged according to men in the flesh, but live accord
ing to God in the spirit." Of equivalent meaning are the
words of Paul: "To this end Christ died, and revived,
that he might be Lord of both the dead and the living."1
Of the Gospel the Christ, the Word become flesh, is the
beginning, the middle and the end. He, "quickened in
the Spirit," confronted the expectant spirits of all who
had "died in faith, not having received the promises, but
haying seen them and greeted them from afar," just as
when in the flesh He confronted Simeon and Anna, and
"all them that were looking for the redemption " upon
the earth. His personal presence, as on earth so in Hades,
was the manifestation of Himself, a mighty proclamation
of glad tidings.
2. Made to be sin on our behalf, the Mediator descended
into Hades under the operation of the law of sin. Having
become a curse for us, He redeemed us by bearing it, and
so bearing it that for Himself the curse was resolved into
a new revelation of His glory, and for us resolved into
blessing. Suffering and misery, death and Hades, all are
forms and stages of that one abnormal order of the Adamic
race which has supervened through the entrance of sin.
A complete victorious Redeemer delivers the children who
1 Rom. xiv. 9. Says Godet : ' ' With the view of securing the possession
of His own, whether as living or dead, Jesus began by resolving in His
own person the contrast between life and death. He did so by dying
and reviving. For what is one raised again except a dead man living?
Thus it is that He reigns simultaneously over the two domains of being
through which His own are called to pass, and that He can fulfil His
promise to them, John x. 28 : ' None shall pluck them out of my hand.' "

(S265] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 373
are "sharers in flesh and blood" with Him from the
whole compass of its degrading power.
For* the same reason that an effectual Redeemer suffers
the persecution of the Jews and the temptation of the
Devil on earth, and at length condemned by Pontius
Pilate dies on the cross, He also bears that degree and
form of humiliation which is the inheritance of the fallen
Adamic race in the realm of departed spirits.
The humiliation of the Mediator was in one respect
throughout penal, being borne by Him who was one with
the race suffering the sentence of condemnation. In an
other respect His humiliation throughout was expiatory;
for on every plane, at every point, He exhausted and
resolved the judicial consequences of transgression. He
exhausted and resolved guilt, because in bearing the judg
ment of God He ever asserted and developed the moral
and religious life of the fallen race in absolute harmony
with God's will. The process of expiation reaches its
conclusion in death, in the realm as in the article of death;
for the Lamb of God beareth the sin of the world, not in
part, but in its entire compass. Hades is the penalty, the
ultimate stage of the penalty of the transgression of the
moral law. In bearing, exhausting and resolving the
lowest stage of condemnation, Christ completes His own
victory, and by His victory completes the redemption of
His people from the law of sin.
3. When Jesus Christ descends into the realm of death
under the law of sin, and fulfills His mission among the
dead as He fulfilled His mission among the living, He
changes the nature and character of this realm in its rela
tion to Himself and for all who believe in Him. As He
was on earth the life and the light of the living, so He is in

374 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
Hades the life and the light of the dead. The new human
race of which He is the Head is not circumscribed by the
limits of our earthly history; the new race embraces
believers in the intermediate state as well as believers on
earth. As by His incarnation, by His deeds and His sufferings
in the flesh, the new communion with Himself was initi
ated on earth, so by the completion of the same mediator-
ship in Hades, by the filial victory over sin and Satan, did
the same new comihunion with Himself begin to exist in
•the world to come. Spiritual darkness there had to recede
before the streaming light of life as the powers of spiritual
darkness receded here.
The condition of suspense and expectation among Old
Testament saints waiting by faith for His advent there, as
Simeon and many others were waiting here, was changed
into a condition of Messianic joy. Old Testament hope
became New Testament vision. The Paradise of patriarchs
and prophets, and of all who had lived and died looking
forward to the coining of the Messiah, was irradiated by
His personal presence; this presence transforms the old
Paradise into the new Paradise. The words of Jesus
addressed to the thief on the cross: "Verily I say unto
thee, To-day shalt thou be with me in Paradise," imply
and teach that the abode of the saints of the old covenant is
by the atonement and victory of Christ changed from hope
into the blesssed fruition of the new covenant1 Hades
'The change in the status of believers in Paradise answers to the
change in the status of believers in the Church on earth. Cf. Heb. x.
1-18. The "sacrifices and offerings" of the Mosaic economy, that which
was but "a shadow of the good things to come," made way for "the very
image of the things," for the one offering by which Christ "hath per-

1 265.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. 375
became a world of light and felicity, which is to be super
seded only by that glory to be revealed, to them and to us,
at His second coming.
4. Jesus Christ in Hades meets the final crisis of His
mediatorial work. On earth the temptation in the wilder
ness was followed by the persecutions and conflicts of His
ministry ; His triumphal entry into Jerusalem by His ter
rible agony in Gethsemane ; His agony by the betrayal of
Judas, by the condemnation of the tsanhedriu and of the
Roman governor ; and the condemnation was followed by
His passion and death on the cross. In every crisis He
achieved a victory, but the victory did not and could not
become manifest ;'for the law of redemption from sin was
in no epoch fulfilled ; each successive victory became a
qualification for a new crisis in the progress of humiliation.
In Hades Christ reaches the lowest stage of His me
diatorship. Beyond that realm sin had not borne our
fallen race. Here the last issue under the law of con
demnation confronts the Mediator. Hence the victory
achieved by Him over sin and the kingdom of darkness
is not hidden under the humiliation of any lower stage of
condescension, but it asserts itself in the character of
victory. The reality of every antecedent achievement
hitherto obscured and the virtue of all His expiatory
sufferings are revealed in the glory of completed triumph. -
The lowest plane of the humiliation of the Mediator be
comes the first stage in the process of Exaltation. In the
realm of the dead He leads captivity captive.
fected forever them that are sanctified." By virtue of the same law of
grace we may say of believers in Paradise, that "He taketh away the
first that He may establish the second."

376 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. < [book 6.
§ 266.
The Scriptural conception of the descent of Jesus Christ
»into Hades supersedes and sets aside the Roman doctrine
of purgatory.
Calvin affirmed the reality of the death of Christ and
the reality of His resurrection on the third day, thus
assuming an intermediate state in the history of the media
torship ; but he attempted to explain away the descensus
ad inferos by a novel interpretation of the word 'hell.'
On the cross, he declares, Christ "suffered in His soul the
dreadful torments of a person condemned and irretrievably
lost"1 The chief reason for this logical inconsistency
was, as there is reason to believe, the difficulty of affirm
ing the descensus without giving support indirectly to the
error of purgatory. In truth however it is not the fact of
the descensus, as represented by the New Testament, but
the denial of the fact, that indirectly lends support to the
Roman error.
No one who confesses the Christian creed ex animo
can Refuse to hold that there is for believers a state and a
period of existence intervening between natural death and
the second advent. If the mediatorship of Christ embraces
in a real way the course of human life on earth ; if He was
born under the law because we are born under the law; if
He suffered because we are subject to suffering; if He bore
the curse because the curse rests upon us ; if He offered
Himself a sacrifice on the cross because we are under sen
tence of death; — there is a necessity also for a redemption
that in the same real way covers our existence in the in-
'Calvin's Institutes, II., xvi. 10.

? 266.] Burial of Christ: Descent into Hades. $77
tennediate state. Had the vicarious humiliation of the
Redeemer ended with the moment when He expired on
the cross, believers would enter the intermediate state
without that strength and comfort which is derived from
the vicarious experience of the victorious Forerunner.
Whatever, on this assumption, may be said of the imputa
tion of the atonement to us after death by the sovereign
will and infinite favor of God, it remains true nevertheless
that, though we have a vicarious Redeemer for our history
on earth, we have no vicarious Redeemer under the same
real character for our existence in Hades. At death we
should have to enter a realm into which He has not en
tered, a realm from which He was excluded, or from
which He held Himself aloof. Strictly speaking, it would
then not be true to say that our great High Priest "hath
been in all points tempted like as we are." Whatever
may be its conditions or its demands, whatever may be
our history or its suspense before the final judgment, we
should not have the support and joy of a Mediator who in
all these experiences has gone before us, subttuing all ad
verse powers, resolving fear into hope, doubt into assur
ance, suspense into confidence and peace. Such an anti
cipation of Hades into which the Mediator has not
entered, which by His presence Pie has not transformed
into the Christian Paradise, would afford support to the
notion that, since at the instant of death no believer is
perfectly holy, he will hereafter have to undergo a process
of further deliverance from moral evil, and endure the
judicial pains which such a process of deliverance may
include. If, however, as the New Testament abundantly teaches,
the vicarious humiliation of Christ did not come to an end

378 Doctrine on Jesus .Christ. [Book 6.
when He expired on the cross ; if from the cross He passed
into the realm of the dead, enduring whatever humiliation
the entrance into that realm involves ; if His mediatorship
was as real and triumphant there as it was real on earth ; —
then there is no room for a purgatory. The necessity or
occasion for it does not exist. The vicarious sacrifice is
commensurate with the entire history of the believer in
this world, commensurate with his entire history in the
world to come. He has a vicarious Redeemer, a vicarious
atonement, a vicarious Conqueror, who has gone before
him covering all periods of his existence. No unknown
penalty is impending ; no experiences of evil but such as
the Redeemer has had, none but such as He has resolved
into experiences of good. In the hour of death the be
liever can commend himself to the vicarious Forerunner
with the same assurance of hope with which he made his
confession of faith in the Church on earth.

j 267.] His Resurrection. 379
CHAPTER XI.
HIS RESURRECTION. § 267.
Belief in an atoning sacrifice which in truth has re
deeming virtue anticipates the glorious fact of the
resurrection. If Jesus Christ had had no power to take the life
which He so freely laid down; if in consenting to
be crucified the bondage of death had proved itself
mightier than His will, the sacrifice which He offered
would have been but a passing tragedy like the execu
tion of Socrates, a mark of God's displeasure, but not
the manifestation of an effectual redemption provided
by divine love, an example of the impotence and in
sufficiency of a great teacher, but not a real expiation
of human guilt.
1. Sin developed into fruit is death ; not extinction, but
an epoch of organic exit under condemnation. The realm
of death holds absolute sway over all its subjects, a dark,
ruthless dominion that mocks all nobler aspirations and
turns man's life into a lie. Into this dark realm, hitherto
unbroken, Jesus entered through the gateway of the cross.
He entered, not in thought, but really. The crucifixion
was not an empty vision, His death being neither a swoon
nor a sham. As were His birth and history in the flesh,
so were His death and burial, historical facts. So every
branch of the Christian Church has as with one voice con
fessed in all ages : Suffered under Pontius Pilate, was
crucified, dead, and buried.
2. Death and burial are the predicates of Jesus of Naza-

380 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
reth, of the person who lived and taught iu Galilee and
Judea ; not the predicates of His humanity only, much
less of His body only. He who was .the Son of God and
the Son of Man in one personality, He died under sentence
of condemnation, He was buried, He descended into the
lower parts of the earth. The crucifixion of a righteous
man upheld by divine strength would be a human sacri
fice, a martyr death, but not a divine-human atonement.
The burial of the lifeless remains of a man and the descent
of his departed spirit into the all-embracing realm of the
dead, Would have been the actual subjection of Jesus to
the dominion of death ; but no more than this. Such a
death could issue in no resurrection, no genuine victory
over Hades, no realization of triumphant life.
Given the veritable crucifixion, death and burial of the
incarnate Son ; given a veritable humiliation under the
law of sin, the subjection of the Christ in the totality of
His divine-human constitution to this law ; — given these
mysteries, and we have the basis and possibility of a re
demption that becomes complete in a veritable resurrecr
tion and glorification of the divine-human Mediator.
"Death and resurrection," says Dr. Milligan, "are com
plementary parts of one whole, each impossible without
the other. ' '
3. That the crucified Christ rose from the dead on the
third day and showed Himself alive unto the apostles after
His passion by many proofs, is the fundamental article of
the apostolic Creed and the central theme of the original
proclamation of the Gospel.
The fact of His resurrection from the dead was definitely
foretold by our Lord Himself. Matt. xvi. 21, ~ Mk. ix. 31;
Lk. xiii. 32; xviii. 32, 33; John xi. 25. The historical

5267.] His Resurrection. 381
transaction is also variously recorded with many particu
lars by all the evangelists. Matt, xxviii. 1-10; Mk. xvi.
1-8; Lk. xxiv. 1-12; John xx. 1-18; Acts i. 2, 3; 1 Cor.
xv. 3, 4. The variations as to incidental particulars of the
record reveal the relative independence of the writers, and
bear witness to the common faith of the apostolic Church
respecting the reality of the resurrection.
Whether the variations in the records are historically
reconcilable is a legitimate question for biblical criticism
and for exegesis; but as regards the foundation of Christian
belief and the doctrine concerning the resurrection, the
external differences of statement are unimportant. Indeed,
to an enlightened Christian faith these variations repre
sent more satisfactorily and more convincingly the unique
character of the fact. An event so novel, so contrary to
experience and to common belief, so contrary to the
expectations of the disciples; an event so wholly tran
scending the universal order of human history as well as
all modes of human thought, could not be apprehended
by different persons, possessing different capacities and
occupying different positions, after a manner externally
uniform; nor could the event be described as to all par
ticulars with such self- consistency as would make the
account accessible to ordinary understanding. A natural
transaction, such as the battle of Gettysburg or the inau
guration of a President, may be sketched like a picture,
self-consistent in all its parts; though even in such cases
it is sometimes very difficult to reconcile all testimonies ;
but a supernatural mystery like the resurrection of Jesus
from the dead, so startling to His enemies, so transporting
to His disciples, yet so real, must baffle the attempt to
draw a fourfold, or even a twofold, picture externally
harmonious as to all incidental circumstances.

382 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
Did the Gospels betray an effort of the writers to make
different accounts of it correspond to one another in all
the details, the fourfold testimony would be by so much
less forcible and less trustworthy. The absence of all traces
of collusion indicates the naturalness of the manner in
which the belief and knowledge of the resurrection lived
in the apostolic Church. §268.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is an historical
event. As such it is recorded by the four evangelists.
Whilst only Matthew and Luke have an account of His
birth of the Virgin, no one fails to give prominence to
the crucifixion and resurrection ; and every book of the
New Testament bears testimony directly or by impli
cation to the reality and significance of these mysteries.
But belief in the resurrection of Christ turns chiefly
on its self-evidencing and self-verifying virtue, a pro
position the truth of which will appear from a study
of the origin and perpetuity of the Church.
1. The historical evidence of the resurrection may not
be lightly estimated. The testimony of the apostles and
of all the first disciples has great value; yet historical
evidence respecting the external phenomena of the as
tounding event is by itself insufficient.
Not being a natural event, the resurrection of Christ, as
to its Messianic significance, is not accessible to natural
perception; nor is its significance demonstrable to the
natural understanding ; nor can its meaning be devel
oped merely by logical reasoning from the data recorded
by the evangelists. An argument proceeding on the
assumption that the records are genuine may from these
testimonies demonstrate the external historical fact that

g 268.] His Resurrection. 383
Jesus was crucified, was really dead, and was buried on
Friday before sunset; also, that on the morning of the
third day His tomb was found to be empty, and that He
showed Himself alive to His disciples at different times
and in different places, conversing with them, associating
with them, a living man among living men, in extraordi
nary forms. But an attempt to grasp the interior truth of
the mystery from these outward phenomena will fail.1 It
will fail whether regarded as successful or unsuccessful.
If held to be successful the attempt fails, because it lays
hold only of the external phenomena, thus ignoring the
interior virtue of the resurrection from which the extra
ordinary character of the phenomena is derived. This
fundamental article of the Christian Creed is divested of
its transcendent quality, being reduced to the level of an
extraordinary earthly event, accessible to the bodily senses
and to logical reflection. An extraordinary earthly phe
nomenon addressing our natural faculties, like the resusci
tation of a man supposed to be dead, is not the resurrection
of Jesus Christ; and all argument proceeding on the silent
hypothesis that this supernatural event may by natural
methods be demonstrated to the satisfaction of honest
inquiry, instead of showing the event to be a cardinal
'The words of Martensen may be appropriately quoted: "We chal
lenge any impartial critic, assuming for the sake of argument that the
resurrection did take place, to ask himself whether it was not to be
expected that the great and unequalled impression which that event
must have made upon the first witnesses of it, would not naturally have
incapacitated them from treating all the minute circumstances connected
with it microscopically, and would not involve a want of exact harmony
in their accounts of it? while the main assertion of the fact of the mani
festation of the risen Saviour must have been the same on the part of
them all?"— Martensen's Dogmatics, p. 321.

384 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
mystery of His mediatorship, serves rather to obscure the
truth and undermine the foundations of Christian belief.
2. More satisfying evidence is derived from a considera
tion of the nature and relations of the resurrection.
The condemnation of Jesus first by the Jewish Sauhe-
drin, then by the Roman governor, and His subsequent
execution as a malefactor, blasted the hopes of all His
disciples, filling them with despair. The Shepherd was
smitten, and the flock was dispersed. So Jesus had fore
told, "Behold, the hour cometh, yea, is come, that ye
shall be scattered, every man to his own, and shall leave
me alone." The bond of fellowship, as Godet remarks,
"will be broken, at least externally. But the spiritual
bond will remain forever." This prediction was fulfilled.
The betrayal of Judas was followed by the denial of Peter
and the dissolution of the nascent community of disciples.
Dissolution was the natural consequence of the condem
nation, the crucifixion and (as they thought) the utter •
extermination of their Master.
Death in its effect on all temporal organizations is not a
unifying but a dissolving power. As it terminates the
earthly existence of the individual, resolving the organic
union of manifold parts into separate elements, so it termi
nates the organized community and dissolves the social
and civil relations that center in the subject of death.
When parents are consigned to the grave the family
is broken up. When Alexander died his empire was
divided. The death of Charlemagne induced a similar
dissolution. The little band that Jesus had organized
centered in His living personality. When He failed,
when He was conquered, when His life was taken by His
foes, seemingly more powerful than Himself, then the

1 268.] His Resurrection. 385
bond of union and communion between Jesus and His
disciples was broken, and broken hopelessly. Death can
not inspire confidence; death relaxes, enervates, prostrates
the earthly connections of whatever object it touches.
This was the natural effect of the crucifixion. The effect
continued from hour to hour, and it would have been
perpetual throughout all subsequent time, had the cruci
fixion and burial been the end of the history of the
despised Nazarene. The Christian Church clothed with
authority from the mediatorial throne and possessing
heavenly resources adequate to the spiritual conquest of
all nations could never have had an existence, despite all
the noble words of the crucified Teacher.
3. Nor could the simple announcement of the resurrec
tion in words of "certain women of our company," who
had been early at the tomb on the third day but had not
found His body, revive the confidence of the disciples.
The report circulated by the women ' amazed ' them ; it
sounded like the recital of a dream, serving at most only
to awaken the memory of the prediction which Jesus had
uttered when He was alive, and to excite a faint hope that
the report of the women might be true. That report,
however, was no more than this: that His body was not
found, and that the women had "seen a vision of angels,
which said that He was alive."
What this report meant, or what influence, if true, it
would have upon their "future life, or on the religion of the
Jews, or on Jewish polity, or on the condition of the Gen
tile world, the disciples did not perceive, much less did
they understand. If the astounding report of the women
had been the end of the matter, if Jesus had not by His
extraordinary presence authenticated Himself to be the
25

386 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
first-born from the dead, His resurrection would have
proved itself- to be an empty vision, or at most would
have become only an impotent belief founded on rumor.
4. It was the self-verification of the risen, living Jesus
Christ Himself, confronting the senses, confronting the
spirit of the despairing disciples, and communicating by
His word and Spirit to the center of their personal being
the mysterious energy of His new, His victorious life, that
dissipated the gloom of despair, revived confidence in
Himself, and quickened the new faith in His triumph over
death. The old life ' in the flesh ' and the old fellowship be'
tween Jesus and His disciples were now transcended and
superseded, whilst the resurrection life and the uplifting
force of a new fellowship springing from the resurrection
life asserted itself in the hearts of the scattered members
of the flock. The disintegrating influence of His cruci
fixion was checked; not checked by a denial of the reality
of His death and- burial, nor by the resumption of previ
ously existing earthly and Jewish relations; but disinte-
gration was checked inasmuch as the risen Jesus, though
the same person, was now a different Man, who became
the dynamic center of another order of communion on a
different and higher plane of spiritual existence. Mani
festing the resurrection life under the transient form of
His history 'in the flesh,' the risen Jesus by virtue of
the victorious energy going forth from His personality
apprehended the receptive hearts of His 'little flock,' and
made each member a partaker, in principle, of the same
victorious energy.
Reanimated by His wonderful presence, quickened into
a degree of participation with Him in the mystery of His

j 268] His Resurrection. 387
resurrection, thus raised up with Jesus out of the prelimi
nary Jewish fellowship and translated into the fellowship
of a new, triumphant life, the disciples believed. They
did not believe on Jesus of Nazareth only as the promised
Messiah of the Jewish nation, nor in any doctrinal theory
of the resurrection ; but they believed on Jesus, the Christ,
as the risen One, their Lord, who had overcome death
and Hades.
5. The first belief of the disciples was only germinal.
It could not be more ; for the self-manifestation of Jesus'
as their risen Lord was, in its incipient stage, potential
only rather than mature. The resurrection life of the
God-man had not yet absolutely transcended the limita
tions of this mundane sphere. He moved on a plane
intermediate between His unglorified and His glorified
existence. The old order of human life was overcome by
the energy of the new, death-conquering life; but there
were ties that still bound Him for a time to a communion
with His disciples conditioned on natural and earthly
relations. He had to linger both for His own sake and on
account of His disciples. He did not at once take posses
sion fully of the glory of His Father in heaven.
Hence during the ensuing interval of forty days the
participation of His disciples in the virtue of the resurrec
tion could be only partial ; and their faith in the risen
One growing out of His new communion with them could
be only the beginning of what it was afterwards to
become, a living seed, not ripe fruit. Faith in His vic
tory over death was on the human and earthly side the
positive basis of a subsequent more glorious revelation to
them of the risen Christ; as a consequence, the possibility
also of another quickening into a more mature Christian
faith.

388 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
6. The miracle of Pentecost was the full revelation in
the bosom of the Christian community of the ascended,
glorified Christ. By the advent of the Holy Spirit the
resurrection became the new creative energy on earth.
When the assembly of disciples was apprehended by the
sin-destroying and death-conquering life of the "risen
Christ, and by its regenerative virtue was through the
Spirit raised up into fellowship with Himself, then the
mystery of the resurrection verified itself. Being made
partakers of the life of the resurrection, they had the wit
ness of the risen Christ in themselves. Whether or not
they were able to form an adequate rational conception of
the miracle, they rose to a direct perception and a clear
consciousness of the unique reality, inasmuch as the risen
Christ asserted His new creating and transforming energy
in the center of their spiritual being, and by consequence
in their personal experience. Possessing the intrinsic
virtue of the resurrection and uplifted by its might they
had a demonstration of its truth to their hearts and minds
dynamically ; and the apostolic Church attained to a thor
ough conviction of its reality, which no adverse argument,
no scoffings, no persecutions, no pains of suffering, could
ever overthrow. § 269.
This law of self-verification is the central and per
petual argument for the resurrection of Jesus Christ,
an argument no less convincing and satisfying for the
Church to-day than it was for the first disciples. The
law consists in the virtue of the risen Christ Himself,
informing the community of believers. ¦
1. Working by the Holy Spirit dynamically in every
living branch of the Christian communion and in every

JS269.] His Resurrection. 389
living member, the risen Christ inspires the faith of His
people in the reality of the historical fact from age to age,
a faith which prevails by the force of an inner spiritual
necessity. Not only, however, does the risen Christ active from
within necessitate faith in Himself as victorious over
death; this law of the fellowship of the risen Christ with
His members is also ever generating the organic unity
and maintaining the real existence of the Church herself;
so that notwithstanding her deficiencies and corruptions,
her errors and divisions, the Church under all her mis
fortunes reveals the uninterrupted presence and ever-
victorious power of a deathless life.
The most forcible argument for the reality of the resur
rection of Jesus Christ, 'the Head of the body,' has
accordingly always been the existence of the Church, the
actual presence in the world of a new spiritual economy,
an economy hostile and superior to the law of sin| there
fore ever victorious over disintegration and dissolution.
The pentecostal outpouring of the Holy Spirit and the
organization of the apostolic Church would have been an
impossibility, if the crucified Jesus had been ' holden ' of
death ; so much more now, if. Jesus were a dead man
' holden ' among the dead, like Socrates and all other meri
who have been executed, the kingdom of "Christ as at the
present day existing on the earth would be 'unknown.
Not only would belief in His resurrection be impossible,
but the very community in which the resurrection of its
founder from the dead is an article of belief would be im
possible. That a dead man, execrated by his nation, ignomin-
iously executed for alleged crimes, forsaken by his family

390 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book6.
and most intimate friends, thus demonstrating his preten
tious claims to universal personal superiority to be false ;
that such a fanatic can be the foundation of an ever-
living and ever-vigorous holy community which from age
to age can meet unflinchingly all forms, all degrees of
antagonism, triumphing over them, and subduing to its
faith in its crucified founder every nation of the world ;
that a dead man whose crucifixion has proved his proph
ecies respecting his resurrection to be false, can be the
principle, the life of such an indestructible community,
mightier than all the kingdoms of the world — is of all
absurdities the most monstrous.
2. The argument stands whether the fundamental signi
ficance of the resurrection in the economy of redemption
is acknowledged by theological science or not. If for a
time the Church in theory makes the crucifixion to be
central, overlooking or ignoring the cardinal virtue of the
resurrection, this defective conception of the mediator-
ship can be possible only on the ground of the resurrection
miracle. The dynamic force of the risen Christ immanent
by His Spirit creates and upholds the community that
in doctrine fails to lay due stress on the fundamental fact
of its existence. He upholds and nourishes the Church in
Spite of the partial misapprehension of her origin and
nature. That the Church may live and grow in spite of her ina
bility consistently to apprehend the foundation of her
existence, shows that her life and the principle of her life
are richer than her knowledge, more profound than her
dogmas. 3. In presenting the central argument for the historical
fact of the resurrection, I have unavoidably been assum-

J270.] His Resurrection. 391
ing a positive conception of the nature of the mystery, the
two aspects of the question being inseparably connected.
The truth which has been given by implication, I proceed
now to develop more directly and definitely.
§ 270.
The resurrection of Jesus Christ is an epoch of posi
tive progress, progress in His mediatorial life and
mediatorial work, a real transition from the existing
natural world into the supernatural and divine realm,
a transition by which the founder of the new kingdom
is glorified and the process of the glorification of the
kingdom is begun. Transition and glorification include
a victory over death and the kingdom of darkness.
This general truth calls for development first under
its negative aspects.
1. The resurrection is not the return of Jesus from the
grave into the natural status and mode of ordinary human
life. He does not come back to earth and resume the
place and relations, whether physical or ethical or reli
gious, which He occupied among the Jews and in the
circle of His disciples before His crucifixion. A resump
tion of His former relations would not have been progress
of the new creation, but a retrograde act ; not victory over
death, but continued subjection to its law. Instead of
overcoming the curse of the fall, Jesus would still have
been in the state of subjection to its dominion, and in pro
cess of time natural death would have been inevitable.
Jesus was really dead. The death that He died was a
death l under the law,' 'having become a curse for us.'
But His death under sin was also a death unto sin. "For
in that He died He died unto sin once." "The meaning
seems to me to be," says Godet, "that He died to expiate

392 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
sin, and to destroy it. There was a moment in His exist
ence in which He bore its penalty, and thereby established
its defeat. It was a transient necessity which He consented
to encounter ;" but such a crisis cannot be renewed. By
dying unto sin He broke its power over Him. As His
death was not a swoon but real death, the dissolution of
His subjection to the curse of sin was also real. ' Being
raised from the dead He dieth no more ; death no more
hath dominion over Him.'1 His death unto sin having
been real, Jesus by His vicarious death abolished once and
forever His antecedent natural status in the flesh and the
unglorified form of His human life. But the abolition of
the antecedent natural status does not imply that He did
not rise in a real human body.
From this negative view two inferences are to be drawn:
i. The restoration of Lazarus to life is not an adequate
type of the resurrection of Christ, but only a faint fore
shadowing of it. Lazarus returned to our existing natural
condition. In process of time he died a natural death,
being subject to the penalty of the fall. 2. After the
resurrection of Christ the ordinary human conditions of
association with Him were no longer adequate. The
Scribes and Pharisees did not see Him. The resurrection-
form of His presence on earth was not accessible to the
bodily eye. That is to say, none but disciples, persons
spiritually qualified, were capable of seeing the risen
Christ ; and even they could see Him and hold con
verse with Him only when and where He manifested
Himself to them, the manifestation being made under
a form suitable to the conditions of their unglorified life
on earth. 'Rom. vi. 8-1 1.

^270.] His Resurrection. 393
2. The resurrection was not a transfer of the natural
body, of ' flesh and blood ' and of natural human relations
into the transcendent realm. Jesus risen, Jesus reigning
in heaven, does not possess a material organization identi
cal with that with which He was clothed on earth. Says
St Paul : "Wherefore we henceforth know no man after
the flesh : even though we have known Christ after the
flesh, yet now we know Him so no more."1 The old
things are passed away. "Old principles of judgment,"
says Dr. Brown, "are at an end." Such a transfer of
flesh and blood would be a violation of human nature,
a limitation, not the perfection, of personal freedom.
Much more is to be affirmed than an external trans
lation from a lower to a higher sphere. The earthly
organization with which He was born was in one respect
superseded and surmounted in the article of death. The
same personality as to nature and constitution that died,
rose again from the dead ; but in developing His identity
He underwent a miraculous change. ' Put to death in the
flesh,' He was 'quickened in Spirit.'
From this negative conception two things follow: 1.
The natural and spiritual conditions on which depended
the communion of His disciples with Him whilst living
in the flesh now no longer avail. When Jesus drew near
to two of His disciples going to a village named Emmaus,
'their eyes were holden that they should not know Hiin.'
A thorough-going spiritual change of the disciples, a new
creation, became requisite, corresponding to the spiritual
'2 Cor. v. 16. Meyer's interpretation of the passage is: "Wenn auch
der Fall statt gefunden hat, dass wir nach Fleischesnorm Christum
erkannt haben, so findet aber jetzt dieses Erkennen desselben nicht mehr
bei uns statt."

394 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
transition which Jesus experienced when He rose from the
dead. Says Paul: "Wherefore if any man is in Christ,
there is a new creation: the old things have passed away;
behold, they are become new." ' Again He says: " If then
ye were raised together with Christ, seek the things that
are above, where Christ is." 2 2. Christ living and suffer
ing in the flesh is not, when taken by itself, an adequate
criterion of judgment respecting His personality. A cor
rect conception concerning Him as represented by His
deeds and words on earth is indeed necessary and of first
importance, but this conception is not the norm of judg
ment concerning His personality in the transcendent realm.
3. The resurrection of Christ from the dead is not a
transition that may be predicated of any one member or
element of His divine-human constitution. The mystery
embraces the whole Christ. "He who rises from the
dead," says Van Oosterzee, "is not the man Jesus merely,
but the God-man, during and after the state of death
inseparably one with the Father."3
The resurrection may not be predicated of His divinity,
implying that as God, being mightier than death and
Satan, He overcame death and Satan. Such a conception
denies the reality of the resurrection, resolving it into an
empty vision. Jesus rose from the dead in His humanity.
Nor may the resurrection be predicated of His humanity,
if we imply that the manhood of Christ was raised up and
enabled to triumph by the mighty power of God the
Father, the divinity of Christ meanwhile being quiescent,
or not a participant in the mystery of the transaction.
Such an opinion is both Ebionitic and dualistic : Ebionitic
it is, inasmuch as the resurrection, the corner-stone of
1 2 Cor. v. 17. * Col. iii. i. s Christian Dogmatics, II., p. 564.

?27o.] His Resurrection. 395
Christianity, would be a victory achieved in the person of
a man only, not of the God-man ; dualistic it is, for it
severs the divine nature from the human nature in the
consummating epoch of redemption. The assumption of
manhood into God in the person of the Christ would on
this supposition fail in the last stage of His vicarious
humiliation. Much less may we predicate the resurrection of any one
part or member of His humanity, of His soul but not of
His body, or of His body but not of His soul; for soul and
body are an organic unity, each being an essential member
of manhood. In either case, whether the resurrection
embraces the soul only, or the body only, the reality of
the mystery is in effect denied, and as a logical conse
quence the reality of His death is also denied.
The article of the Christian Creed concerning the death
of Jesus by crucifixion, as this death is everywhere set
forth in the New Testament, involves His divine-human
personality. The Mediator offered Himself on the cross;
a truth which means, to say the least, that the offering
was made in the wholeness of His manhood. The Medi
ator as to body and soul subjected Himself to death 011 the
cross, and 'descended into the lower parts of the earth.'
The resurrection is the antithesis of His death. As the
human soul of the Mediator did not rise from the dead,
implying that the remains of His natural body saw cor
ruption, so neither were the remains of His natural body
revived and reconstructed, implying that His soul was not
implicated in His crucifixion, and therefore that His soul
superseded a resurrection. But as His death was a really
human death, an epoch including body and soul, so was
His resurrection in reality a human resurrection, a victory

396 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
over the realm of death in which His manhood in the
integrity of its constitution participated.1
§ 271.
The denial of defective views of the resurrection is a
corollary from faith in its positive substance.
In rising from the dead the Christ fulfils the law of.
redemption. Leaving behind the status and mode of
His mediatorship belonging to the existing order of
the Adamic race on earth, He asserts the hidden force
of His mediatorial work ' in the flesh,' of His bitter
passion and death dynamically in the character of a
new mystery, a mystery that translates Him from the
unglorified into the glorified domain of His thean-
thropic history.
1. In His resurrection Jesus Christ transcends the fallen
mundane order. The event we may call a transcendent
act. The Christ does not return from the ' lower parts of
the earth' into 'this world;' instead He rises from 'the
abyss,' and goes beyond the confines of earth; though not
'The -conception commonly prevalent among theologians from the
ante-Nicene age onward to our own century has limited the resurrection
to Christ's body. His body was resuscitated, quickened, changed on the
third day. Cf. Dwight's Theology, II., p. 264, 274. This conception is
connected with the idea that Christ died as to His humanity, not as to
the unity of His constitution. If this interpretation be analyzed it will
be found that not a few theological thinkers mean only that Jesus died
as to His body, not as to His soul; the assumption being that the soul is
immortal whilst the body is mortal. Yet theology, if logically consistent,
must concede that the seat of sin is not in the body but in the soul, and
in the ruling constituent of the soul, namely, in the will. Sin is the
principle of death. Death begins where sin begins. It is the soul that
dies under the law of sin. The body dies not of itself, but in conse
quence of its vital union with the soul. It is the personality of Jesus
that revives and triumphs:

\ 271.] His Resurrection. 397
in the absolute sense during the ' forty days ' as by His
ascension; but in principle He absolves Himself from
natural connection with' the earthly mode of His exist
ence. The evangelical records agree in showing that He
does not reassert Himself amid the conditions of ordinary
Adamic life. These Adamic conditions as affecting Him
self He abolishes, and He abolishes them forever. From
the mundane He passes into the supermundane domain,
from the earthly into the heavenly, where He is accessible,
not to the bodily senses, not to ordinary natural intelli
gence, but only to the eye of the faith of ' the spiritual
man. '
The transcendent state of the Christ was begun in the
mystery of the resurrection, but not completed. The
resurrection anticipated His ascension, when God "made
Him to sit at His right hand in the heavenly places, far
above all rule, and authority, and power, and dominion,
and every name that is named, not only in this age, but
also in that which is to come." The forty days preced
ing His ascension from Mount Olivet were an intermediate
stage in the history of His glorification.
Two classes of phenomena appear, natural and super
natural, showing that He was living His resurrection life
in a real human body, yet living in a real body that had
undergone a marvellous change. Natural phenomena,
such as the print of the nails in His hands, the wound in
His side, and eating with the disciples, serve to demon
strate His personal identity. With these natural mani
festations were connected supernatural phenomena, such
as suddenly standing in the midst of the disciples, the
doors being shut. Besides, there was something in
the expression of His bodily presence which caused the

398 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
disciples to feel that He had become a different man.
Martensen says:
" All the four gospel accounts of the resurrection seem to introduce two
contrasted representations concerning the nature of the resurrection-
body of the Lord. The risen One seems now to live a natural human
life, in a body such as He had before His death. On the contrary, He
seems to have a body of a spiritual transcendental kind, which is inde
pendent of the limitations of time and space. His body was in a state
of transition and of change, upon the boundary of bolh worlds, and
possessed the impress and character both of this world and of the next."
Our Lord Himself teaches this great difference when, as
reported by Luke, He says: •• "These are my words which I
spake unto you, while I was yet with you, how that all
things must needs be fulfilled." J In saying: ' while I was
yet with you,' He plainly distinguishes between His pres
ence with them in the natural body before His crucifixion
and His presence when He 'stood in the midst of them'
in His resurrection body; implying that whilst in reality
the same Son of Man, in soul and in body, He had super
seded the natural plane of Adamic life.
2. The resurrection of Jesus Christ was a cardinal event
under a twofold view: cardinal in His mediatorial life;
cardinal in His redemptive work.
Having assumed the substance of the Adamic race, and
living the Adamic life in all its abnormal relations, the
Christ stood and wrought in the bosom of the finite mun
dane economy, being limited and oppressed by its contra-
ideal conditions. In the bpsom of these abnormal rela
tions and contra-ideal conditions He developed His
personal life, His incarnate history, in order to advance
the union of human nature with God in Himself, organ-
1 Lk. xxiv. 44.

g27i.] His Resurrection. 399
ically and ethically, from one stage to another, looking
forward to the fruitage of final perfection. This process
had to reach a crisis, when either the ultimate purpose of
the incarnation would prove a failure, or the entire consti
tution of the present world must be surmounted. To that
crisis He came in the article of the resurrection. The
false limitations of the present fallen order, both of nature
and of mankind, were overcome when, rising above the
space and time environment of nature and breaking
through the bondage of moral and physical evil, He abol
ished death. Mankind in the person of the Second Man
was translated into that new and ineffable order of fellow-
snip with God for which Jesus was conceived and born, a
fellowship moreover which is the goal of the creation of
the 'first man' in the image of God.1 The resurrection
is the fruit of His conception by the Holy Ghost, inasmuch
as it actualizes the idea and demonstrates the meaning of
His entire personal history. In a real way it solves the
problem of humanity.
The resurrection is a cardinal event also in the work
of redemption. The new creation and the redemptive
work are inseparably connected, being essential parts of
the same mediatorship. Each involves the other. The
Mediator redeems mankind from the curse of death in
that He fulfils the law of His mediatorial life. Of the
epoch of the resurrection we must affirm this twofold force.
In rising from the dead the Mediator perfects His redemp
tion ; His redemption He perfects inasmuch as He passes
from a lower to a higher plane of the new creation. By
1 "The great design of God in the work of the first creation was the
second; He made the world, that out of it He might make this elect
world that is called His Church."— Leighton's Works, p. 597.

400 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. f book 6.
this victorious transition He verifies the vicarious expia
tion of His passion, and demonstrates the otherwise un
seen life-quickening virtue of the cross.
3. That Jesus did endure manifold forms of bodily and
mental suffering, that He was condemned to death by
Jew and Gentile, and was executed by crucifixion, are facts
of history, whether He arose from the dead or not. That
His passion and His execution were the consequence of
the judicial displeasure of God resting upon an apostate
world, is a truth of revelation, a truth also of moral con
sciousness independently of the resurrection. The anguish
of suffering and the pains of death are solemn facts that
distinguish the Adamic race, facts that in some form are
the inheritance of all men, whether good or bad.
But whether the suffering of the penalty of death was
the extinction of the penalty ; whether the death of Jesus
under judgment of condemnation was really a vicarious
sacrifice of propitiation before God and an expiation of the
guilt of the race ; whether having become a curse for us
He brought the curse to nought ; — this solution of the
judicial problem could neither be known, nor did the so
lution become a fact, anterior to the resurrection. If the
crucified Mediator be not risen from the dead, all faith in
an atonement by His crucifixion is vain. , Not His death
on the cross but His resurrection from the dead was the
crisis in His work of redemption. That the Christ bore
the curse and in bearing the curse destroyed it ; that He
suffered the full penalty of sin and, dissolving it, turned
condemnation into judicial peace ; that He wrought out a
perfectly holy life whilst He died under the condemnation
of law in the likeness of sinful flesh, dethroning sin in the
flesh ; that through the eternal Spirit he offered Himself

2272.] His Resurrection. 401
without blemish, maintaining the integrity of the com
munion of love with God when He expired on the cross,
thus resolving death under sin into the triumphal gateway
of eternal life ; — these mysteries in the history of redemp
tion become realities when the Christ on the third day
rises from the dead, thereby asserting, realizing and dis
playing ' the exceeding greatness of His power. ' The
virtue of vicarious suffering hinges on the resurrection.
So St. Paul teaches : "If Christ hath not been raised,
then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain." Not
only is faith in redemption vain, but believers like other
men are under the condemnation of sin ; for he adds :
"If Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain ; ye are
yet iu your sins. Then they also which are fallen asleep
in Christ have perished."1 So essentially is the resurrec
tion, the completing act of vicarious humiliation, con
nected with the death on the cross, that if we deny the
resurrection, or (which is equivalent to a denial) if we
ignore the complemental atoning virtue of the risen
Christ, regarding His crucifixion by itself as the full and
final atonement, we turn the New Testament idea of re
demption from sin and death into unreality.
§ 272.
The entire discussion thus far has been proceeding on
the assumption that the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead is the completion of a victory over sin and corrup
tion, over death and Hades, over Satan and his kingdom.
The substance and form of complete victory it is im
portant to treat somewhat more fully.
The incarnate Son from the inception of His history
1 1 Cor. xv. 14-18. Cf. John viii. 21.
26

402 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [books.
lived a life of conflict with moral evil. At every epoch
and on every stage of His development He was victorious.
But from His birth to His burial His mediatorial life was
shaped by the law of humiliation. Taking the form of a
servant, He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even
unto the death of the cross. The author and perfecter
of faith endured the cross, despising shame. From step
to step He descended until He touched the lowest depths
of man's moral and judicial fall. Victorious at every
step, resolving each crisis into a defeat of 'this world'
and of Satan, He was by. each achievement qualified to
descend to another stage of humiliation, to perform a new
act of self-sacrifice, and encounter a more deadly assault
of the adversary, maintaining in the fulfilment of His
mission the moral and spiritual perfection of His person.
ality as 'He humbled Himself from year to year, from
day to day, from moment to moment. But the reality of
the victory was unseen, its glory being hidden under the
guise of seeming defeat and shame.
After He had offered Himself on the cross; after He had
'descended into the lower parts of the earth,' so fulfilling
the law of humiliation; after He had 'preached to the
spirits in prison, which aforetime were disobedient,' as
before He had proclaimed the kingdom among the living;
— the extreme limit pf His humiliation, the turning-point
of His mediatorial life and redeeming work, was reached.
Then the victory achieved by Him in the final crisis
asserted itself. " Christ was too strong a prisoner," says
Leighton, "for all the bars and iron gates of death to keep
Him in. He strangled that lion in his own den." He
asserted His authority, not in hidden strength fitting Him
for a severer conflict with the kingdom of darkness, but in

§273-] Ascension and Glorification. 403
the noble form of victory, not in the mystery of a deeper
humiliation, but in the glory of triumphant exaltation.
Now the Son of Man could not any longer be holden
under the law of the Adamic fall ; but resolving this law
into nothing, and developing the mystery of His divine-
human life according to its own type and purpose, Jesus,
the pangs of death being loosed, came forth from this
hitherto unconquered realm, holding in His hand 'the
keys of death and of Hades.'1 "Having put off from
Himself the principalities and powers, He made a show of
them openly, triumphing over them in it."2 Now the
'judgment of this world' became real; now was 'the prince
of this world ' cast out. The resurrection was the final
victory in a long series of victories, the culminating epoch
of a spiritual triumph of which every previous triumph
had been a prophecy. Henceforth the mighty powers of
the kingdom of darkness lie prostrate at His feet.

CHAPTER XII.
ASCENSION AND GLORIFICATION.
§273.
The resurrection of Christ being a transcendent act,
a crisis both in His mediatorial life and in His redemp
tive-work, it involves the transformation and the trans
figuration of His divine-human personality.
1. The idea of a transformation underlies and pervades
the doctrine of the resurrection as it has been so far de-
1 Acts ii. 24; Rev. i. 18. "2 Col. ii. 15; John xii. 31.

404 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
veloped. Under another view, transformation is a corol
lary from the resurrection.
The transition of the Christ from the natural into the
supernatural economy, from the earthly into the heavenly,
is the cardinal epoch in the progress of His new, His
divine-human life, and the cardinal epoch of progress in
His redemptive work. This twofold progress is not out
ward only but also inward, not local but organic, not
mechanical but personal. As He does not return in the
earthly body to resume former natural relations, so He
does not pass beyond the confines of the existing time-
world in the earthly body, clothed in flesh and blood, for
"flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God."
The identical Jesus who was crucified and buried enters
into the domain of God, but not in such sense as implies
that the status and mode of His personal existence remain
the same. In the transition He is the subject of myster
ious change.
2. This change is to be studied under »its negative and
positive aspects.
All the concrete natural relations in which Jesus stood
before His crucifixion, all the limitations of the fallen
order of the world which condition His history are dis
solved. Dissolution is the earthly form under which the
positive force of the resurrection reveals itself. Positive
transformation is the law of all negative phenomena.
The petals of beautiful blossoms must wither and pass
away because the tree has life, and is pressing on toward
the season of fruit-bearing.
This is the analogy which our Lord uses to set forth the
relation of the negative to the positive phenomena of His
resurrection. In response to certain Greeks who came to

\ 273.] Ascension and Glorification. 405
Philip, saying, Sir, we would see Jesus, Jesus says: "Ex
cept a grain of wheat fall into the earth and die, it abideth
by itself alone ; but if it die, it beareth much fruit,"1
The grain of wheat must die, it must cease to exist as a
grain ; if it does not, it will continue to be only a grain ;
it will not be changed into a stalk. But if it die, if put
into the soil it ceases to exist as a grain, it is transformed
into a rich harvest. So is the Christ. If He had con
tinued to live in natural relations, clothed in flesh and
blood, He would have been no more than an ideal man,
living and ending His earthly career according to the
natural course of this world. But inasmuch as He was
crucified, and in death dissolved and superseded all earthly
connections, He becomes by His resurrection the princi
ple of a spiritual harvest. As of the grain of wheat so
of the Seed of the woman, death is the negative phe
nomenon of an epoch in which the mystery of His new
life, in dissolving natural connections, transcends the con
ditions of these connections and bears fruit in the wonder
ful phenomena of the resurrection history. "Through
death unto life," says Tholuck, "this is the great law
which runs through all things in the realm of grace as
well as in the realm of nature ; it is first fulfilled in the
Head, and then also in all the members. ' '
3. These extraordinary positive phenomena address our
faith under a transcendent form. For this reason we can
conceive of the transformation of Christ only approxi
mately, and we can express the truth only in general and
*
rather indefinite terms. Though the terms of expression
must be somewhat indefinite, yet the objective truth, the
positive transformation, is a reality that confronts the eye
'John xii. 24.

406 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book6.
of faith. The transition of Jesus, His progress in the
organization of regenerate life and His transfiguration
distinguish the idea of the resurrection. Theanthropic
history at this juncture attains the last node of cosmic
development. Breaking through the nexus of the abnor
mal time-world and surmounting its conditions, life as
serts and unfolds its hidden type teleologically in the
world of divine Spirit. The ' grain of wheat ' fallen into
the earth rises from the earth a plant of heaven, and
beareth much spiritual fruit
Jesus is born again. The epoch of transition from the
realm of the dead into the realm of God is for Him a birth.
So St. Paul teaches:1 and He is the head of the body, the
Church: who is the beginning, the first-born from the
dead: be ioTiv apxfy, irpuTdTOKOC in. tov veicpuv. The Greek, t&v vsxpEiv,
is the partitive genitive. The preposition in. implies that
'the abyss' of the dead was like the womb in which for a
season Jesus was holden, but from which He came forth
as by an organic translation, analogous to natural birth.
As He is the first one who could not be holden by the
'gates of death,' but came forth in the perfection of youth,
Paul calls Him 'the beginning,2 the firstborn from the
dead.' The transformation of a grain of wheat into a
living, fruit-bearing stalk, and the birth of a child, are
1 Col. i. 18 ; I Cor. xv. 35-49 ; Rev. i. 5.
2 Or, first-fruits, 'Airapx%. 1 Cor. xv. 23. Says Olshausen: "Christ is
called ' beginning ' as He who in the life of the creature, which was
fallen under the power of death,* Himself established a new beginning
through His victory over death ; and thus became the beginning of a new
series of developments. In his unglorified humanity He was through
Mary in anip/iaroc Aaveid, therefore ranked among mankind as such ; but
when glorified He was an absolutely new man, the apxfi."

?273-] Ascension and Glorification. 407
the organic imagery of Scripture, under which the trans
figuration and glorification of the Son of Man are taught
4. Of His transformation we have a type and a prophecy
in the extraordinary manifestation of Jesus when He
taketh with Hii'n Peter, and James, and John his brother,
and bringeth them up into a high mountain apart; and
He was transfigured before them ; and His face did shine
as the sun, and His garments became white as the light.
Historical evidence of His organic change we have in
the extraordinary manner in which during the days pre
ceding His ascension Jesus manifested Himself to His
scattered disciples, hovering as it were between heaven
and earth. Mary at the tomb beheld Jesus standing, but
knew not that it was Jesus; she supposed Him to be the
gardener. He revealed Himself by saying unto her, Mary.
When she turned herself, He said : Touch me not. The
reality of His resurrection-life was not accessible to the
touch, and she was not to be misled or deceived by the
experience of outward contact
Meeting two of His disciples on their way to Emmaus,
He entered into conversation with them respecting the
report of the resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth. Begin
ning from Moses and from all the prophets, He inter
preted to them in all the Scriptures the things con
cerning Himself; yet although their hearts burned within
them while He opened the Scriptures, they did not recog
nize Him, not until, when He had sat down with them
to meat, He took the loaf, and blessed it, and brake,
and gave to them. He became known of them in the
breaking of bread.1 Yet no more than three days had
elapsed since these disciples had by day and by night been
' Luke xxiv. 13-35.

408 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
associated with Him. No event similar to this interview
occurred prior to His crucifixion.
On the same day, when it was evening, and when the
doors were shut where the disciples were, for fear of the
Jews, Jesus came and stood in the midst, 'and saith unto
them : Peace be unto you. See my hands and my feet,
He said, that it is I myself: Handle me, and see. And
they gave Him a piece of a broiled fish. And He took it,
and did eat before them.1 Risen from the dead in His
humanity, but in a human nature in process of glorifica
tion, He assumed and manifested Himself under the
character of His pre-resurrection humanity. The mani
festation was genuine; He was not an unorganized, form
less spirit. The very same Son of Man He was in soul and
body, but risen to a plane of reality more truly human than
the state of humiliation in the pre-resurrection body. The
manifestation was of the nature of a Christophany, and
bears some resemblance to the Christophany that con
fronted Saul on his way to Damascus.
The chief thing which it is needful to emphasize is the
extraordinary change in the form of His manifestation
and iu the manner of communion with His disciples. He
appears in the room where His disciples are assembled
"when the doors were shut." Suddenly also, "the doors
being shut," He disappears. These signs are contrary to
the natural manner of His intercourse with the Jews and
with His disciples, obvious on all occasions before His
death. Excepting the transfiguration, His previous his
tory affords no parallel.
The old things had passed away. He did not celebrate
any Jewish festival. No temptation assailed Him. The
1 John xx. 19-23 ; Luke xxiv. 36-43.

£274-] Ascension and Glorification. 409
Pharisees send no commission to entangle Him in His
words. The multitudes did not gather around Him. No
lepers were cleansed! His soul was not ' exceeding sor
rowful.' Instead, He moves in the atmosphere of divine
peace, of victory over all foes, and of transcendent life.
The Christ risen was the Truth. The miracle was Him
self, the conqueror of sin and death; and the manifestation
of Himself as the risen One was accorded, at intervals,
only to His chosen disciples. § 274.
Risen from the dead and advancing in the process
of perfection, Jesus Christ when His hour had come
ascended in sight of His disciples from Mount Olivet
to heaven, to His Father and our Father, there taking
full possession of His mediatorial authority. 'Thou
art seated at the right hand of God in the glory of the
Father.' The ascension was an actual, visible transaction, a
transition from ' earth ' to ' heaven.' The external, his
torical character was the mode in which a spiritual, a
transcendent epoch in the history of the incarnate Son
addressed the senses and the faith of the disciples.
1. The words 'earth' and 'heaven' are Bible terms that
express two different, two opposite spheres, otherwise
designated by the words 'creation' and 'Creator,' the
world and God.
As the nativity of Jesus implies the organic transition
of the eternal Son from the supermundane, from the
transcendent realm, by the New Testament called 'the
glory of God,' into the finite, the mundane economy, in
vested with and living in the concrete earthly relations of
mankind; so the ascension predicated of the incarnate Sou

410 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
implies a return, an organic transition from the mundane
economy into the world of God's glory. By the one tran
sition He ceases to live exclusively in 'the form of God,'
and begins to live in ' the form of a servant, being ' found
in fashion as a man.' By the other transition He ceases'
to live in the form of a servant and resuming the form of
equality with God He is glorified ' with the glory which
He had with the Father before the world was. '
As to its external character the ascension was historical
and local.
Historical it was in the sense that His nativity, His
baptism, His agony in the garden and His crucifixion are
facts which took place at given points of time, each pre
supposing the antecedent events and anticipating the
subsequent events of His mediatorial history. So the as
cension was an event in the order of time; it followed after
the resurrection, and after He had given commandment
through the Holy Ghost unto the apostles to whom He ,
presented Himself alive after His passion by many proofs;
and it preceded the day of Pentecost by a period of ten
days. The ascension was an actual, visible miracle which
took place in presence of chosen disciples.
Local it was inasmuch as the miracle occurred at a
given place, on Mount Olivet, not in Galilee, not in Jeru
salem, but on the spot where Jesus before His crucifixion
had with His disciples beheld the city and wept over it ;
local also because the ascension was the elevation of Him
self, a movement upward, the rising from Mount Olivet
toward the skies. So we are taught: "And He led them
out until they were over against Bethany : and He lifted
up His hands and blessed them. And it came to pass,
while He blessed them, He parted from them, and was

§274] . Ascension and Glorification. 411
carried up into heaven."1 Equivalent to these words by
Luke are all other references of the New Testament,
especially by the apostle Paul, to the reality of the ascen
sion. A visible movement upward toward the skies is the
only form suitable to human perception, by which the
truth of personal transition from ' earth ' to ' heaven, '
from the natural to the spiritual world, could be mani
fested. 2. The external, historical and local character of the
miracle as set forth by the New Testament is philosophi
cal. Time and space are the essential categories of exist
ence. All created things, personal and impersonal,
organic and inorganic, realize the laws and conditions of
these fundamental forms. As all objects realize time and
space so. likewise do all human thought and all human
volition. Men live and move, they think and act, they
speak and toil, conditioned at all points by the processes
of time and the dimensions of space.
Conformably to the law of these universal categories
Jesus lived and grew, He spake and ' went about doing
good.' In no other forms could He be either in reality a
true man, or fulfil His mediatorship. Otherwise He would
have been an abstraction, an empty phenomenon, not the
historical Jesus, whom "we have seen with our eyes,"
whom "we beheld and our hands handled." An external
reality the ascension was as truly as the crucifixion.
Neither mystery was an accommodation to supposed
human weakness. Instead all the cardinal events of the
mediatorial work were answerable to the. laws and condi
tions of human nature, therefore real.
3. The outward reality was the character of new spir-
Luke xxiv. 50, 51.

412 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [Book 6.
itual truth, of an epoch in the personal history of the
Mediator by virtue of which He passed from earth into
heaven, undergoing a change constitutionally which cor
responded to the difference and contrast between the
created and the uncreated realms,
The change was on the one hand an emancipation.
As by His resurrection He delivered Himself from the
conditions of earth and the limitations of Hades, so by
His ascension He surmounted that unique and indescrib
able mode of existence which He lived during the interval
of ' forty days. ' Unlike the phenomena of His history
before the crucifixion, unlike the phenomena of His state
of exaltatiou, the events of the forty days were, in reality,
neither of an ordinary earthly character nor were they in
truth heavenly. The forces of two opposite worlds seem
to intermingle. The ascension ended this unique inter
action of opposite worlds, being the point at which Jesus
finally laid aside all the limitations which attach to the
'form of a servant'
The change on the other hand shows itself to be an
epoch of glorification. Not only may it be said that Jesus
parted from His disciples and entered into heaven, but in
the act of entering into heaven He was also transfigured.
His human nature in organic union with the Son of God
attained to the last stage of development and moral per
fection. The incarnate Son by this transition realized
His own ideal absolutely. Humanity became in the final
sense the fit organ for the presence and manifestation of
the Godhead.
Heaven is not a locality within the bounds of the uni
verse, not some distant galaxy of stars, nor is it the
present earth changed into the 'new earth.' Heaven is

\ 274.] Ascension and Glorification. 413
the abode of the Godhead. As God differs from man, so
does heaven differ from the created universe. Our con
ception of heaven will grow, advancing toward perfection,
as our idea of God develops and advances. Heaven is
infinite, spiritual, eternal, absolute, like God Himself.
JesUs, the Son of Man, is so changed, so developed, that
He is capable of rising into this eternal abode of God and
of living in fellowship with God in the bosom of His
own eternal, ineffable glory. " Christ in His humiliation
descended so low that it was not fit to go lower; and in
His exaltation He ascended so high that it was not pos
sible to go higher."
The Son of Man is glorified. The incarnate Son, the
Seed of the woman, opens into bloom and consummates
His life in full-grown fruit.
This image of His positive glorification is furnished by
our Lord. He compares Himself to the vine, His mem
bers to the branches. The clusters of grapes that ripen
on the vine in the fall of the year are the glory of the
vine. Its life, its growth, its peculiar qualities mature in
luscious clusters. So the incarnate Son. The final con
summation of all history, of His humiliation and birth, of
miracle and parable, of passion and death, of triumph over
death and Hades, is attained in the absolute perfection of
His personality. Translated from the earthly into the
heavenly realm, Jesus realizes the fulness of His divine
life in the ideal final character of His humanity. The
Son of Man living in hypostatic union with the Son of
God is lifted up, transfigured organically. By the Holy
Spirit He becomes the possessor of God's life and dignity,
God's authority and wisdom, in the glory of the Father.
The whole truth of God and the whole truth of man, one
in Him, is about to break forth in the miracle of Pentecost.

414 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
The import of His positive glprification comes to view
in His universal headship, in the new gift of the Holy
Spirit, in the constitution of the Christian Church, and in
the blessings of regeneration and salvation which by the
Holy Spirit are bestowed.

CHAPTER XIII.
HIS UNIVERSAL HEADSHIP.
§275-
Seated at the right hand of God, constituted Head
over all things unto the Church, Jesus now reigns over
all creatures in heaven, on earth, under the earth.
There He will continue to reign until He shall have
abolished all rule and authority and power ; for He
must reign till He hath put all enemies under His
feet. 1. The mediatorial life and the mediatorial work of
Christ being one, His mediatorial office is one office. But
His office, though one, is not a single force. Since His
personality unites two modes of existence, and He is in
consequence organically one with the Creator and the
creature, with God and humanity ; and since the crucified
Mediator, now glorified, bears a relation to the kingdom
of light and the kingdom of darkness, His office manifests
itself under forms as manifold as are the concrete rela
tions of the Mediator. Hence recognizing the propriety
/)f the distinction that came fully into vogue during the
progress of the Reformation, we may speak of three func
tions of the one office. We may distinguish the pro-

1 275] His Universal Headship. 415
phetic, the priestly and the kingly functions, provided we
neither disconnect these distinctions from the personal
life of the Mediator, nor separate either from the others ;
but contemplate the three functions as only different forms
of the one exalted mediatorship.
2. In the exercise of His mediatorial office Christ glor
ified imparts to His mystical body, to the members of the
fallen race adopted into the Christian community, the
fulness of His life and salvation : of that life, victorious
over sin and death, which the incarnate Son has developed
and consummated in Himself ; of that salvation which by
His' atoning humiliation He has achieved in His personal
history.1 As the source of life and of salvation the Mediator lays
hold of the entire manhood of men ; not of the soul only,
but of body and soul ; not of feeling only, but of the intel
ligence, of the will and of feeling. Conformably to their
complex constitution He apprehends men. Possessing
will, men must do the truth ; possessing intelligence,
they must know the truth ; possessing feeling, they need
the experience of heart-felt devotion to the truth. In
other words, their sinful condition includes error and
ignorance, depravity and guilt, a perverse disposition and
false sentiment.
The needs of men correspond to the different elements
of their life and character. Being depraved and guilty
they need purification and forgiveness ; misled by error
and ignorance they need spiritual light and knowledge;
subject to a perverse disposition they need discipline and
freedom. Thus arise the three functions of the one media
torial office, each being a mode in which the exalted
'John x. 10; xiv. 6. Col. i. 13, 14. ' Peter i. 18, 19.

41 6 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
Mediator is now by the Spirit carrying forward on earth
the regeneration and salvation of mankind. The Media
tor teaches and atones and governs. He is a prophet, a
priest, a king. § 276.
Like the Mediator Himself, like His mediatorial
work, the mediatorial office has reference to the two
fold attitude of mankind toward God, namely, the
essential relation which stands in the divine imageship
of the race, and the accidental relation which has
supervened through the fall and now is prevalent in
the form of disorganization, guilt and bondage; the one
being original and normal, the other derivative and
abnormal. 1. The Mediator develops and perfects the original
relation of men to God in that men are by the Holy Spirit
engrafted into Him, the true Vine. Engrafted into Him
they become members of the Second Man, the new Head
of the race, and are made sharers of His resurrection-life.
The possibility and the necessity of the new birth lie in
the fundamental truth that on the pne hand the pattern
after which the first Adam was created is the Son of God,
and on the other that in his Edenic state Adam did not
fulfil the ultimate purpose of his creation in God's image.
The false relation, in consequence of which there is
alienation and antagonism between men and God, the glor
ified Mediator removes. Inasmuch as by His vicarious
death and His victory over death in the resurrection He
has resolved the abnormal attitude of Adamic humanity
absolutely in His own constitution, He by His Spirit
has the power to annul in the persons of His members the
principle of sin which is ever producing their false attitude

§276.] His Universal Headship. 417
toward God. They become identified with Him by faith,
with Him, the crucified Oue risen from the dead; and
being identified with Him they have the blessing of His
expiation and victory.
In studying the three functions of the one office it is
important to emphasize each of these two relations which
a transgressor occupies toward God. The work of saving
and perfecting men, whether we contemplate this work as
teaching or as atonement or as discipline, respects these
two sides of Adamic life and character, the one grounded
in man's original constitution, the other arising from a
perversion of it.
2. I11 fulfilling the prophetic function the Mediator
asserts and reveals man's essential relation; He brings to
light its reality and teleology; its reality by the mystery
of His incarnation, its teleology by His glorification.
He also uncovers the sinfulness and heinousness of sin.
Its nature He discloses by provoking and drawing out the
direct antagonism of Satan and His kingdom to the wis
dom and righteous love of God. The might of the king
dom of darkness He calls forth by His personal history on
earth, a truth seen particularly in His temptation and in
demoniacal possessions. His victory over this kingdom
He proclaims by His commanding authority over demons
and by His resurrection from the dead. His victory
declares the principle and law of the present and pros
pective victory of all who by faith live in fellowship with
Himself. 3. In fulfilling the priestly function, the Mediator
quickens the original aptitude of human nature for God;
He revives and completes in Himself the communion
between God and man, man and God, the life-communion
27

41 8 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
in which the first man was created, thereby bringing
about that union and harmonious action, both organic and
ethical, which is the ultimate end of man's creation.
Man in Christ has become the ideal offerer of worship.
At the same time the Mediator annuls the alienation
and antagonism produced by sin; divine displeasure He
turns into divine approval; transgressors He reconciles to
God by breaking the dominion of sin and purging the
conscience from the sense of guilt, thus begetting true
peace, a peace that obtains on the one hand by the grace
of God and on the other by the free activity of man's will,
the pne productive the other responsive.
4. In fulfilling the kingly function the Mediator exerts
His authority dynamically and governmentally.
Dynamically, for the law of the Spirit of life in Christ
Jesus becomes the law of life in His members. The law
operative in the original communion between the first man
and God is reasserted, and it becomes active by the new
birth of the Spirit, revealing its force in the new commu
nity of love of which Christ is the Head. The dynamic
activity of the personal Word in the old creation is re
solved into the dynamic activity and plastic power of the
incarnate Word in the new creation.
Governmentally; as the members of Christ are at the
same time, in a subordinate sense, members of a fallen
race, the ruling function of the Mediator is operative also
in the form of authority external to His people, an
authority which relatively to the sinfulness of Adamic
nature is a foreign force. Christ commands and prohibits;
He protects and defends; He approves and condemns; He
builds and overturns.
5. The recognition of these two opposite forms of man's

g277.] His Universal Headship. 419
relation to God must have determinative force in a sound
doctrinal conception of each of the three functions of the
mediatorial office.
If in developing the doctrine we overlook the force of
the original communion, if we fail to emphasize the truth
that man in his fallen condition, though in himself help
less and hopeless, bears the image of God, the doctrine
concerning Christ glorified as the chief Prophet, the only
High Priest, the eternal King, becomes negative and
somewhat superficial.
If we overlook the false judicial -relation, if we fail to
emphasize the depravity and guilt of man and God's dis
pleasure with sin, the doctrine will ignore or by implica
tion contradict the necessity of the vicarious mediation at
God's right hand.
We may apprehend and formulate the truth consistently
when we recognize both factors, and lay stress on both in
due proportion. § 277.
As prophet Jesus Christ is the true light. ' Of
Himself He says: I am the light of the world: he that
followeth me shall not walk in darkness, but shall have
the light of life.1
The divine-human Mediator is the fulness of light
in His own person. Shining forth from His infinite
fulness He reveals God and man and the cosmos by
the manifestation of Himself.
1. Christ glorified teaches truth by His Spirit respecting
Himself. He is both the Teacher and the subject-matter
of His teaching. This proposition expresses what is cen
tral. The incarnate Word, the Mediator between God
'John viii. 12; John xii. 46.

420 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book6.
and man, the Redeemer of 'the world,'1 the principle of
'a new heaven and a new earth,'2 He is the substance of
His revelation and the theme of His teaching, as repre
sented by the Gospels of His ministry on earth, as repre
sented by the Acts and the Epistles of His mediatorship in
heaven. The Christ does not become the central light of history,
the effulgent luminary of the spiritual heavens, because.of
His words, of His rich teaching of sublime wisdom in the
forms of human speech. This central light He is by
virtue of His divine-human constitution, of His mediato
rial history, and His victorious exaltation. Objectively
considered, He occupies the central place in the old
economy of nature and the new economy of grace. His
words answer to realities.
2. Concretely related to the Godhead, and being the most
perfect form of divine presence, the Christ in revealing
Himself reveals His Father in heaven. The process of
development and of self-manifestation through which He
passes conformably to the laws of time and space, this
redemptive life including the atoning sacrifice and the
transcendental mystery of the resurrection, is the revela
tion. His mediatorial life and work are the most sublime
manifestation both of God's being and of God's will; of
God's will because Jesus Christ is the manifestation of
God's being. The divine essence, otherwise unknown and
unrevealed, confronts human perception in the mediato
rial history of Christ on earth and in heaven. As the
consequence of such real divine presence in His person,
the redemptive work reveals the divine will. For, object
ively considered, the divine will stands in the divine
1 John iii. 17. 2 Rev. xxi. 1-6.

j 277.] His Universal Headship. 421
essence; though essence and will are to be distinguished,
yet divine essence and divine will are one. So in the
relations of grace that God bears to fallen mankind, His
will cannot sever itself from His being; but His will is
made known only in so far as God Himself is manifested.
3. Concretely related to mankind, and the noblest ideal
of human personality, the Christ in revealing Himself
reveals the nature and the relative position of man. In
revealing God's relation to man, the Christ reveals God as
the original and perpetual ground of man's existence. By
assuming fallen humanity into organic union with God in
His person, Christ reveals the latent God- likeness of man.
By His crucifixion and resurrection He reveals 011 the one
side the redeemableness of fallen mankind, and on the
other man's capacity for life-communion with God.
The historical fact of redemption realized in His sinless-
ness and His positive righteousness declares the capability
and the susceptibility of our sinful race for complete
redemption. The glorification of the crucified Mediator
manifests the extraordinary endowments of human person
ality, otherwise absolutely unknown, which fit personality
for fellowship with God in the realm of His own glory.
Moreover, if we survey the entire mediatorial life of the
Christ, His human birth in its organic connection with
His divine glorification, it may be seen that He brings to
light the teleological law active in the human race from
its beginning and in all epochs of its history.
4. Concretely related to the earth and the cosmos, Christ
reveals the cosmos. He reveals its ground, its present
intermediate status and its teleology. He is the highest
form of the natural world, inasmuch as He is the most
complete organization of humanity, of soul and body.

422 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
Since man and the lower kingdoms of nature are organ
ically one, though specifically different, and since all
kingdoms of nature constitute one universal system of
which man is the apex and exponent, Christ in revealing
the redeemability and the teleology of mankind also re
veals the redeemability and teleology of sub-human king
doms. ' ' The earnest expectation of the creation waiteth
for the revealing of the sons of God. For the creation was
subjected to vanity, not of its own will, but by reason of
Him who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself also
shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the
liberty of the glory of the children of God. For we know
that the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain
with us until now."1 Nature is in sympathy with man,
especially with the ideal Man.
The study of the mediatorship of Christ in its cosmic
relations may afford us a more profound insight into the
economy and laws of the world than any purely scientific
researches, if they proceed only under the guidance of
external phenomena and ignore Christocentric truth.
5. The Christ was conceived and born in the bosom of
this abnormal world; and the abnormal condition of this
world is internally connected with the kingdom of dark
ness. Hence His mediatorial life and work bring to light
the nature of sin, the enmity of Satan, and the antagonism
of 'this world ' to truth and righteousness. "The light,"
Dorner remarks, "reveals both what it is itself and what
its opposite is, while darkness cannot illumine itself."
Verum index sui el opposili.
This revelation of the nature of moral evil may be seen
in the work of Christ as Redeemer. From the beginning
1 Rom. viii. 19-22.

1 277. ~\ Hs Universal Headship. 423
to the end of His pure, His sinless history in the flesh He
obeys the law of humiliation, enduring temptations, per
secutions, conflicts at every turn. The bitter antagonism
of Satan to Jesus Christ shows Satan's antagonism to every
person, every ordinance, every institution, every word that
in principle and aim is Christlike.1
The victory which Jesus Christ achieved when Pie rose
from the dead prophesies the final deliverance of man and
of nature, and the total overthrow of the kingdom of
darkness. 6. The sublime and peerless teaching of our Lord and
His apostles is the expression in words of the substantive
truth which in the form of reality moves before the eye of
Christian faith. The reality is the infinite fulness of the
concrete revelation, the immeasurable length and breadth,
depth and height of the new creation in the personal
Word, of which the spoken word is the partial expression.
Through prophetic words we discern and study the
Prophet, who, because He is what man never became,
because He lived a life such as no man had ever realized,
spake as man had never spoken, and wrought out a work
on behalf of God, of man, of the universal order of things
such as no man ever accomplished. The fundamental
truth, which Jesus Christ is, the Church learned in the
first instance, not from the written word,' but from Jesus
Christ Himself in the Holy Spirit. By the same Holy
Spirit the Church now learns from Christ through the
written word. 'John xv. 20-25.

424 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
§ 278.
As the only High Priest, Jesus Christ is the atone
ment. Making God and man one in His person and
mediatorial life, He offers Himself a sacrifice, an ex
piatory sacrifice for sin on the cross. His death is the
completing epoch of that spotless offering of Himself
for the redemption of our race which He made by com
ing through conception and birth into this world lying
under God's curse; and by living a life of faultless obe
dience through the entire history of man from His
infancy to the cross under the condemnation of the law.
1. In Christ, the only High Priest, the two factors of
the idea of priesthood are united. Priest and victim, the
offerer and the offering are correlative and equal. As in
all pagan sacrifices, so in the sacrifices authorized by the
ceremonial law, these complemental moments are of differ
ent dignity and stand asunder. Victim and priest come
together externally; they do not constitute a unity.
Hence no Jewish priest is an ideal priest. In and
through the Jewish priest God and man do not become
one, either metaphysically or ethically. So also we
have to regard the sacrifice offered by the Jewish priest
No Jewish sacrifice is really a propitiation.1 The victim
neither bears the wrath of God against sin, nor expiates
man's guilt. " In those sacrifices there is a remembrance
made of sins year by year. For it is impossible that the
blood of bulls and goats should take away sins. * *
Every priest standeth day by day ministering and offering
'According to Lev. xvii. n, the blood upon the altar makes an atone
ment for the soul. Ebrard observes that it was shed, not as the instru
ment of complete vicarious propitiation, but as an exhibition of the pos
tulate of vicarious propitiation. Cf. Alford on Heb. x. 4.

§278.] His Universal Headship. 425
oftentimes the same sacrifices, the which can never take
away sins."1 "There was an arraignment of sins," says
Chrysostom, "not a release from sins. Types contain the
figure only, not the power." Jesus Christ is both sacri
fice and priest in one person. Being the victim, He is
offered. 'Christ was once offered to bear the sins of
many.'2 Being the priest, He offers the sacrifice. The
offering and the offerer are identical, identical in will and
in fact. ' ' Now once at the end of the ages hath He been
manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself."3
The dignity and worth of the sacrifice are equal to the
dignity and worth of the priest.
2. The priesthood of Christ is unchangeable. Quick
ened in the Spirit when He had offered Himself on the
cross, and triumphing over death through the resurrection,
the atoning virtue of His sacrifice is perpetual and abso
lute. "They indeed have been made priests many in
number, because that by death they are hindered from
continuing; but He, because He abideth forever, hath His
priesthood unchangeable."4 He has a priesthood that
does not pass from Himself to another person. "For
Christ entered not into a holy place made with hands, like
in pattern to the true ; but into heaven itself, now to ap
pear before the face of God for us."5 Christ ever liveth ;
therefore His priesthood has not passed from Himself to
another, and because the priesthood is ever His own, the
atoning virtue of His self-sacrifice continues to be ever the
same. "He, when He had offered one sacrifice for sins
forever, sat down on the right hand of God."6 The one
'Heb. x. 3, 4, 11. 2 Heb. ix. 28. 3 Heb. ix. 26 ; vii. 27.
* Heb. vii. 23, 24. 5 Heb. ix. 24.
6 Heb. x. 12. "The sacrifice of the mass is inconsistent with sitting

426 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
sacrifice He offered is of force always to put away sin.
Inasmuch as the atonement is Himself, the atonement is
eternal. The office of priest He fulfils in heaven, where
the office has absolute virtue.
3. Christ ever liveth to make intercession for them that
draw near unto God through Him. His intercession is
the perfected atonement. Human nature purified in Him,
redeemed, victorious, glorified, is at one with God, at one
essentially and ethically : essentially, for the life of man
having in Christ transcended the fallen world is active in
complete union and communion with the life of God, the
love of God to man being absolutely satisfied and the apti
tude of man for God being fulfilled ; at one with God
ethically, for having forever expiated the guilt of sin the
Son of Man has no conscience of conflict with evil or de
ficiency of holy character, He being at peace with God by
the free activity of His will. The unity of essence is
complete in the character of ethical or self-determined
harmony. The intercession obtains at the right hand of God.
This High Priest who offered Himself on the cross, dying
unto sin once, is now clothed with God's absolute author
ity; and He is thus clothed with divine majesty, not
merely because He is the true God, but, being the true
God, because He lives His divine life in the humanity in
which He offered Himself a propitiatory sacrifice for sin
at God's right hand : for Christ's sacrifice is neither continued nor re
peated in the mass. The apostle not only urges the identity, but also
the word once, concerning Christ's sacrifice, in antithesis to the Leviti
cal sacrifices, often offered, although they were the same. A sacrifice
which is often repeated, although it be the same, does not satisfy God."
— Bengel.

§278.] His Universal Headship. 427
on the cross. The propitiation continues, continues in
heaven eternally; for the incarnate Son, once crucified but
now glorified, ever liveth, the Mediator between God and
regenerate men. The propitiation so being made true
and real, it has force unchangeably throughout all the
ages of time and in eternity.
One with God, He, the atonement, is also one with us,
His members. Living the infinite life of God, He also
lives in heaven the finite life of man. Though dwelling
in the glory of the Father He is touched with the feeling
of our infirmities.1 " He can sympathize, for He was both
tempted without sin, yet truly tempted." Like the High
Priest and the priestly sacrifice, the intercession in heaven
is a perpetual divine-human intercession.
4. The incarnate Son, ever living the lffe of Mediator,
constitutes in heaven the throne of grace. To this throne
men by faith may draw near with boldness that they 'may
receive mercy, and may find grace to help in time of
need.' 2 Not on earth in 'a holy place made with hands,'
but there, 'in heaven,' in the Holy of Holies, is the final
'mercy-seat' for all the nations.3 Thence proceed by the
Spirit eternal life, forgiveness of sins and the peace of
God.1 1 Heb. iv. 15. 2Heb. iv. ?6; Eph. iii. 12. sHeb. ix. 5, 24.
* " If we seek salvation, we are taught by the name of Jesus, that it is
in Him ; if we seek any other gifts of the Spirit, they will be found in
His unction ; strength, in His dominion ; purity, in His conception ; in
dulgence discovers itself in His nativity, by which He was made to re
semble us in all things, that He might learn to condole with us ; if we
seek redemption, it will be found in His passion ; absolution, in His con
demnation ; remission of the curse, in His cross ; satisfaction, in His
sacrifice ; purification, in His blood ; reconciliation, in His descent into
hell ; mortification of the flesh, in His sepulchre ; newness of life and

428 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
§279.
As King, Christ is the dynamic necessity of the uni
verse, and its governing law. He is the law, 1, for
the order and harmony of heaven ; 2. for the develop
ment and teleology of the world ; 3. for the origin, the
growth and triumph of the Church ; 4. for the final
consummation of all things.
This law Christ is as the Second Man, as the Head
of the new race and the Redeemer from sin in one
mystery. From the concrete law of righteous love principled
in Him all particular commandments proceed, and all
derive their authority. The same law determines
every executive act of the divine government, whether
of the old creation or of the new creation.
1. It is not to be assumed that Christ glorified possesses
absolute authority and rules in and over all the affairs of
time, because God by an act of omnipotent will has con
stituted Him King. Christ possesses the kingly function
by virtue of the place He occupies in the organism of the
Godhead and in the economy of the universe. For the
Son of Gdd (Logos 'aadpme) is the principle of the existence
and movement of the cosmos,1 and the Son incarnate is
the principle of the kingdom of grace. Both economies,
the natural and the spiritual, the kingdom of nature and
the kingdom of heaven, with all their reciprocal inter
actions, stand in Him who is their ground and all-
immortality, in His resurrection ; the inheritance of the celestial king
dom, in His entrance into heaven ; protection, security, abundance, and
enjoyment of all blessings, in His kingdom ; a fearless expectation of the
judgment, in the judicial authority committed to Him." — Calvin's Insti
tutes, Bk. II., Ch. xvi., 19.
' Col. i. 16, 17.

\ 279.] His Universal Headship. 429
pervading energy. The investiture of the Son by the
Father with the headship ' over all things to the Church '
answers to the fitness and positive claim of the Son to be
Head over all things.1
2. The kingship of Christ is likewise the crown of His
mediatorial life and of His redemptive work.
By His eternal sonship He is the law of the cosmos
occupying its primary status; and He rules in it, rules
over it, directing its general movement relatively to a
higher end. By virtue of the humanity which He assumed
in the domain of the first creation, including all essential
relations of man to the cosmos, He became the law of the
new creation, the complemental economy. Its type and
law He became inasmuch as He became its ground-
principle. His session at God's right hand is the final act of the
new creation, completed in Himself. In one view this
final act is an exaltation. "God highly exalted Him,
and gave unto Him the name which is above every
name."2 In another view the final act is the resumption
of His original glory. "And now, O Father, glorify Thou
me with thine own self with the glory which I had with
Thee before the world was."3 Fulfilling the end of the
old creation He becomes the principle, the law and crown
of the new creation.
3. Inasmuch as Jesus Christ is the true and only King,
His will expresses the determinative force of His position
and authority as 'Head over all things.' His will rules
dynamically and ethically.
Dynamically: His will is active in the life of His mem
bers, in the mystical history of His Church and in all the
' Eph. i. 20-23. 2 Phil. ii. 9. 8 John xvii. 5.

430 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
movements of 'this world,' shaping the doings of men and
the operations of nature unto the final consummation.
Ethically: His will is active from without in the form
of explicit authority, addressing the Church and the world.
The commands and precepts of the Gospel are so many
different expressions of the one divine-human will, the
forms of expression being determined by the relation of
Christ to the manifold aspects and occasions of man's
ethical life within and without the Church. But however
numerous and various His counsels and* commands, all are
one in principle, spirit and aim. To violate one is to
violate all. "Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and
yet stumble in one point, he is become guilty of all."1
To keep one command according to the mind of Christ is
to honor all commands. §280.
It is a matter of importance rightly to emphasize the
unity of the mediatorial office. Otherwise valid dis
tinctions degenerate into error.
Error in relation to the central truth of Christianity
exerts a pernicious influence on the preaching of the
Gospel, on cultus and on practical religious life.
1. If we lay undue stress upon the prophetic function
the teaching of the Church becomes predominantly doc
trinal. Practical religious life acquires a one-sided intel
lectual character. The mysteries of Christianity recede;
the ethical side of the Christian life fails to receive due
emphasis; and the mystical element of true Christian piety
is repressed.
If the sacerdotal function of Christ acquires false promi-
' James ii. 10.

g 280 ] His Universal Headship. 43 1 ,
nence, the Church becomes largely a ceremonial institu
tion. The voice of instruction is feeble or irregular or
silent. For lack of Christian intelligence authority may
become arbitrary command; and the Christian freedom of
the membership is endangered. The tide of ignorance
rises. Worship is localized, and it becomes largely a
system of outward observances.
If false emphasis is put on the kingly function, the
Church becomes a governmental organization. The grace
of the Gospel is converted into a system of law. Christ
is viewed predominantly under the image of a temporal
sovereign. Faith is converted into submission, devotion
into the acceptance of dogmas. Love loses its freedom
and joyousness. The religious life is governed rather by
the fear of penalties than by the love of truth.
In the actual condition of the Church these one-sided
developments appear variously modified. Instead of un
duly emphasizing one function of the mediatorial office,
the Church may either deny or ignore the force of any
on,;, and assign undue prominence to the other two.
Emphasis, for instance, may be put exclusively on the
prophetic and kingly functions of the Mediator, whilst the
perpetual force of the priestly function in the cultus of the
Church may be denied. Then arises a combination of
intellectualism and legalism, or . some form of ethical
rationalism. The objective reality of life-communion
between God and man in Christ disappears from view,
and the conception of sin, of guilt, of propitiation becomes
superficial. 2. Instead of separating and comparing the three func
tions of the. glorified Mediator and raising the question
which is the more fundamental and important, it becomes

43 2 Doctrine on Jesus Christ. [book 6.
us to assert their unity. As there is but one Mediator,
one mediatorial life, one mediatorial work, so there is but
one mediatorial office. The life and work of Christ are
for believers Light, Atonement, Law; so the mediatorial
activity of Christ glorified in their history embodies this
threefold virtue of Himself as Mediator. Imparting Him
self to them by the Spirit they share all the blessings of
His glorification; He becomes for them and in them the
only source of knowledge, the only medium of commun
ion with God, and the vital principle of authority and
holiness. There is indeed a proper order of apprehension and
statement. That order we have in the received evangel
ical formula: Prophet, Priest, King. Any other order is
less consistent, and produces more or less confusion, as in
the sphere of thought so also in practice.
It is questionable however whether a sound Christology
can make either function central, for such centralization
of one function would imply that the other two functions
are subordinate. The truth is that the three functions are
coordinate. The principle of order is in the Mediator
Himself. Neither is central with reference to the others.
The prophetic, priestly and kingly functions are equally
essential to the mediatorial office. That which is central
in the manifold forms of mediatorship is the dj vine-human
Person.

BOOK SEVENTH.
PNEUMATOLOGY: OR DOCTRINE ON THE HOLY
SPIRIT.

CHAPTER I.
PENTECOST. §28l.
Jesus Christ in heaven fulfils His mediatorial work
on earth by the agency of the Holy Spirit. The rela
tion of the Spirit of the incarnate Son glorified to the
Christian Church is like the relation of the Spirit of
God to the nativity and personal history of the Me
diator. As by the Spirit of God the only begotten Son
became incarnate, as by the Spirit His divine-human
life was developed without sin and His redemptive
work was perfected, so by the Spirit as given on the
day of Pentecost the Church, the body of Christ, is
constituted, and men are regenerated and saved from
sin. The advent of His Holy Spirit is correlative and
complemental to the advent of Himself. Each event
is an epoch ; each epoch is cardinal. The one is the
beginning, the germ, of the mediatorial life and the
redemptive work, which becomes relatively complete
when the risen Jesus ascends to heaven and is made
to sit at God's right hand. The other is the begin
ning, the germ, of that undying 'chosen communion'
in which the new- creating and saving virtue of His
mediatorial life and work prevail, a communion that
will become complete at His second coming.
1. The pentecostal gift derives its significance from
Jesus Christ glorified. In some respects the Spirit of
Pentecost is the same as the Spirit of God in the Old Tes
tament, but in other respects there is a wide difference.
(435)

436 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
There is one Holy Spirit, but there are diversities of
gifts.1 The Spirit of Pentecost is the Holy Spirit, the
personal agent, a member of the mystery of the Godhead,
coeternal and coequal with the Father and the Son.
The Spirit of Pentecost is the same divine agent who
'brooding upon the face of the waters' fashioned chaos
into the order and beauty of the first creation, and is now
working as the formative power in the world of matter
and of mind.
The Spirit of Pentecost is the agent who was the divine
medium of the supernatural manifestation of God during
the patriarchal age, who fashioned the Mosaic economy
after the Messianic type, who animated and governed its
positive development, and by whom moved 'men spake
from God.'2
Yet we have to assert a positive difference between the
gift of the Holy Spirit on the day of Pentecost and every
previous communication ' of Himself or mode of His
activity. As He was miraculously given to the disciples
assembled in an upper room in the city of Jerusalem, the
Spirit had at no time before been given. We are even
taught by the Gospel of St. John that before Pentecost the
Holy Spirit was not. It is said: "But this spake He of
the Spirit, which they that believed on Him were to
receive: for the Spirit was not yet; because Jesus was riot
yet glorified. ' ' 3
1 1 Cor. xii. 4-11. Heid.. Cat. Q. 53. '* 2 Peter, i. 21.
8 John vii. 39. The original is: Ovira yap rjv nvevfia, the Spirit was not
yet. It is not needful to supplement the clause, as is done by the A. V.,
also by the Revised Version, by adding the participle "given." The
emphasis is not on the giving of the Spirit, but on His presence. Pres
ent He had been as the agency by whom the Abrahamic covenant was

{S281.] Pentecost. 437
2. The Spirit active in transforming chaos into the
order and beauty of the first creation was related to the
personal Word, through whom all things were made in
bringing the worlds into existence by the outgoing of His
creative energy. By the presence and activity of the Spirit
the divine idea concerning creation became a reality.
Active in our fallen race, He is the medium of com
munion between God and pagan nations, the communion
founded on the divine imageship of the race but, dis
turbed and neutralized by sin. The persistent religious
phenomena of the heathen are due to the Spirit, to the
indissoluble connection maintained by His agency with
God. "That which may be known of God is manifest in
them; for God manifested it unto them."
Active in the Sethic line of faith, in the descendants of
Shem, in Abraham and in the covenant people, the work
of the Spirit was related to the Son of God, the Jehovah
of the Old Testament. Jehovah by the Spirit was edu
cating a peculiar people in the bosom of a fallen world, a
people of whom life and salvation should come by the
Son of the Virgin Mary.
The work of the Spirit among pagan nations answers to
the possibilities of the connection subsisting between God
and the fallen race. In Abraham and his posterity the
effective in Judaism preparatory to the advent of the Messiah: Present
He was also as the divine agency by whom the Christ became, and by
whom He fulfilled His mission. But as the divine bond of communion
between the Son of Man glorified and the members of His mystical body
the Spirit had no existence on earth. He was not yet, and could not yet
be; because Jesus was not yet glorified. Says Godet: "Until the day
of Pentecost, the Spirit had acted on men both in the Old Covenant and
in the circle of the disciples; but He was not yet in them as a possession
and personal life."

43B Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7,
Spirit's work answers to the Messianic possibilities and
Messianic intent of the Abrahamic covenant and the
Mosaic economy. The work of the Spirit in the elect
people differs from the work of the Spirit among pagan
peoples as the Messianic type and intent of the covenant
differ from the religious possibilities of the natural man.
On the day of Pentecost the advent and work of the
Holy Spirit was related, not to the Son of God as He is
active in the fallen Adamic race, not to a symbolical
presence of Jehovah among His chosen people, but pre
supposing both kinds of the Spirit's agency as the neces
sary historical basis of a different and higher effectual
working, He was related directly to the incarnate Sou.
The Spirit given was the Spirit of the Christ, the Spirit
of Truth, by whom the Son of Man was glorified in vital
and eternal union with the Son of God. As the resurrec
tion and glorification of the Son of Man differ from all
events in the history of Confucius or Gautama or Zara-
thrustra or Socrates or Numa Pompilius, or from all
events in the history of Noah or Abraham or Moses or
Elijah, so does Pentecost differ from every previous mani
festation and work of the Third Person in the Godhead,
whether in paganism or among the covenant people.

1 282.] Pentecost. 439
§282.
Like the advent of the Christ in His relation to all
antecedent history, to all types and prophecies, so was
the advent of His Holy Spirit relatively to the ante
cedent personal history, the death and glorification of
Christ, a fulfilment. Fulfilling among the disciples
the design of the exaltation, Pentecost conditions all
the mysteries of the kingdom of heaven, and every
stage in the progressive history of the Church onward
to the second advent.
1. The day of Pentecost was an epoch in the objective
process of revelation and redemption which developed
the import and realized the design of the works which
Christ had done and the sufferings He had endured in the
flesh. That day also brought to light the spiritual worth
for mankind of the perfection and glory to which He had
attained by His exaltation.
Contemplating Pentecost retrospectively, it depends both
on the divine-human life of Christ advanced to the state
of consummation and on His completed redemptive work.
This epoch was not possible at any previous juncture in the
history of Messianic revelation, nor possible at any point
of His personal history on earth before His glorification.
Contemplating Pentecost prospectively, all subsequent
Christian facts depend on it: the apostolate, the apostolic
ministry, the organism of the Christian Church, the spir
itual virtue of the sacraments, the forgiveness of sins, the
written word of the New Testament, the resurrection from
the dead in the image of Christ and the life everlasting.
These mysteries become realities by the fulfilment of the
promise of Christ concerning the Paraclete.1
'Eph. iv. 4-16. 1 Cor. xii. i-ii.

440 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
2. The miraculous gift of the Holy Spirit was a fulfil
ment' under a twofold view. Pentecost was a necessity
grounded in the objective economy of revelation and re
demption. It was required also by the predictions of the
prophets, especially by the words of our Lord.
As a fulfilment, Pentecost was the product of the law of
life in the new creation. Necessary it was in the same
sense in which the incarnation was necessary. The entire
personal history of Christ, all His words and deeds, look
forward to this day as their relative consummation, just
as the calling of Abraham, the Abrahamic covenant, the
education and discipline of the chosen nation anticipated
the advent of the Messiah. The Spirit of Pentecost was
not given just for the reason that our Lord had uttered
the promise respecting the Spirit's advent; but the prom
ise was spoken by Him for the reason that the gift of the.
Spirit, like His death and resurrection, was a necessity
arising from the nature and purpose of the Christian econ
omy. The death of Christ, for example, was a cardinal event,
an indispensable epoch of His mediatorial work. "Be
hooved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to
enter into His glory?"1 So was Pentecost objectively
indispensable. After His passion, being assembled to
gether with the apostles whom He had chosen, He
charged them not to depart from Jerusalem but to wait
for the promise of the Father. He says: " Ye shall receive
power when the Holy Ghost is come upon you."2 The
Spirit could not be given unless Jesus would depart from
the apostles. " It is expedient for you that I go away; for
if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you;
'Luke xxiv. 26. zActs i. 8.

§282.] Pentecost. 441
but if I go I will send Him unto you."1 And unless the
Spirit would be given the apostles would not attain to the
full possession of the truth. "When He, the Spirit of
truth is come, He shall guide you into all the truth; for
He shall not speak from Himself; but what things soever
He shall hear, these shall He speak: and He shall declare
unto you the things that are to come. He shall glorify
me: for He shall take of mine and shall declare unto
you."2 As the atoning virtue of the sacrifice on the cross
anticipates and requires the resurrection, so does the new-
creating virtue of Christ glorified anticipate and require
the pentecostal gift.
Given the idea of the incarnate Son of God as the Medi
ator between God and man, and we have given by this
idea the miracle of Pentecost as an epoch essential to the
integrity of His mediatorship. Pentecost accomplishes
the purpose of His nativity, of His passion and His resur
rection. It reveals the glory of the life and the righteous
ness of the risen Christ. It realizes His regeneration in
His disciples, who by this birth of the Spirit become
members of the new race of which He is the Head.
3. Inasmuch as Pentecost is an integral part of the
objective economy of grace and for this reason a necessity,
Jesus Christ by His words of promise assures the disciples
of the advent of another Advocate.
Everywhere He speaks of the coming of the Spirit as a
future event, and of this future event as necessary, im
plying • that His natural presence with them and His
teaching in person are inadequate to their needs. That
the end for which He came into the world may be accom
plished He must first leave the world and go to the Father.
'John xvi. 7. JJohn xvi. 13, 14.

442 Doctrine oti the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
Then after He has been glorified the Spirit of Truth can
come and will come. Then through the abiding presence
of the Spirit He can fulfill and will fulfill His mission.
"I will pray the Father," He says, "and He shall give
you another Advocate, that He may be with you forever,
even the Spirit of Truth: whom the world cannot receive,
for it beholdeth Him not, neither knoweth Him: ye know
Him; for He abideth with you, and shall be in you."1
"In that day," the day when the Father shall send the
Advocate, "ye shall know that I am in my Father, and
ye in me, and I in you." His words imply two things:
1. that the Advocate had not yet come, and until Jesus
' had withdrawn frbm the world the Advocate would not
come; 2. that until the Advocate should come the disci
ples could not know that Jesus is in the Father, and they
in Jesus, and Jesus in them. Jesus could not teach them
nor lead them into the truth ; for since the disciples had
not yet received the Spirit of Truth they were not able to
discern or take in the truth. He had 'many things to say
unto them,' but they could not bear those things then;2 or
'John xiv. 16, 17, 20. The words of the original " aMs>v napdiikriTov"
here translated in our English Version "another Comforter" mean
properly, One called to stand by us for our help, our Advocate, Helper,
Representative. "Comforter is not its meaning," says Dr. Milligan.
"The Paraclete is really one who stands by our side,. sustains us in our
Christian calling, and breathes into us ever new measures of a spirit of
boldness and daring in the warfare we have to wage. He is the repre
sentative of the glorified Lord with His militant people upon earth."
2 John xvi. 13. Those 'many things' which the disciples then had not
the strength to bear are the "contents of the Epistles and the Apoca
lypse, so far as they passed beyond those of the teaching of Jesus. * *
This domain of the new creation, which Jesus can only show them from
wifjiout, in the objective form, the Spirit will reveal to them by making
them themselves enter into it through a personal experience." — Godet.

g 282.] Pentecost. 443
as Godet translates: "you have not now the strength to
bear them. ' '
After His resurrection and ascension, after He shall
have been glorified ' with the glory ' which He had with
the Father 'before the world was,' He will send the
Spirit from the Father to His desolate disciples, and the
Spirit will reveal in them the fulness of Himself. "When
the Advocate is come, whom I will send unto you from
the Father, even the Spirit of Truth, which proceedeth
from the Father, He shall bear witness of me."1
Of similar import are all the utterances of our Lord
respecting the advent of the Spirit. His teaching in this
respect forms a noteworthy contrast with the teaching of
the apostles. He promises the pentecostal gift, always
speaks of the Spirit's advent as a future blessing; but the
apostles refer to Pentecost as a past event, a blessing actu
ally in force. Excepting the four evangelists all the
writers of the New Testament speak of Pentecost, on the
one hand as a fulfilment of Old Testament prophecy and
a fulfilment of the predictions of Christ, on the other
hand as the effect and consequence of His glorification.2
He, iKelvoc, the Advocate, says Meyer, will bear witness of Me in opposi
tion to the hatred of the world ; of Me, my Person, my mediatorship,
etc. Cf. John xvi. 7-15 ; Acts ii. 33-36; 1 John v. 6.
'John xv. 26. "Acts ii. 16, 17.

444 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [B00K7.
§283.
Fulfilling the entire antecedent history of the incar
nate Son, thus meeting an intrinsic demand of the
economy of Christian revelation, the pentecostal epoch
introduces a new order of things, a new stage of the
one Messianic revelation. This new order is new in
kind as well as new in degree.
1. The pentecostal stage of life-communion with Christ
differs in degree from the communion with Him when in
the natural body. The new life begun by the miraculous
conception and birth of Jesus and developed by His media
torial work, is now imparted to His disciples and mani
fested among them in larger measure of fulness. There
is no abrupt suppression of one law of communion by the
introduction of another law essentially different. The
disciples continue to stand in the same fellowship into
which they were called by Jesus before His glorification ;
but by the Spirit this fellowship has become more real,
more joyful, more fruitful. Pentecost entirely supersedes
the previous status of fellowship conditioned at all points
by natural relations and earthly circumstances, but it
does not contradict the principle of the fellowship, nor
supersede its necessity, nor set aside its moral and spiritual
value. Though valid, the recognition of a difference of degree
does not suffice. Pentecost is an epoch which is of the
nature of a birth from above, introducing a fellowship
different in kind. And in this truth consists its special
significance, a truth which it is important to bring promi
nently to view.
2. During the personal history of Jesus on earth, iuclud-

\ 283.] Pentecost. 445
iiig the interval of many days following the resurrection,
the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth had not
been given; the office of the Spirit of the Christ was not
really in force.1 As a consequence it must also be main
tained that no function of the Holy Spirit, no function
peculiar to the Christian communion was operative an
terior to Pentecost.
Pentecost is a creative epoch. The gift of the Holy
Spirit brings into being a spiritual constitution which
before had no existence. The epoch may be compared to
natural birth. Birth in one respect is the natural result
of an antecedent process of the growth of the embryo; in
another respect it constitutes a new individual and begins
a new history. So whilst Pentecost is the legitimate con
sequence of the mediatorial life and work of the incarnate
Son on earth, this event brings into existence a new
human race and begins a history for all time to come
which in point of quality is different from all other his
tory, Jewish or pagan.
This new race is the community of the Christian
Church, the body of which Jesus Christ is the Head. A
new organization the Church is, because the principle and
law of her origin and growth is the incarnate Son, the
divine-human Lord glorified at the right hand of God.
Not Jesus teaching in Galilee, not Jesus offering Himself
a sacrifice for sin on the cross; but this Jesu,s, this Son of
Man victorious over sin and Satan, translated from earth
into the domain of the heavenly world, invested with the
glory of God the Father, He perfected in heaven becomes
by the gift of His Spirit the principle and substance of His
body the Church. "Where the Church is," says Ire-
'John xiv. 17 ; xv. 26 ; vii. 39.

446 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
nseus, "there is the Spirit of God; and where the Spirit
of God is, there is the Church, and every kind of grace;
but the Spirit is. truth."1 Pentecost, since it quickens a
human race fashioned after the new type in Christ, is a
creative epoch..
The day of Pentecost may therefore appropriately be
styled the birthday of the Church, not merely because the
history of the Christian Church dates from that day, but
because this beginning is of the nature of birth. The
beginning of the Church is analogous to the beginning of
the individual man, analogous to the beginning of the
personal history on earth of the incarnate Son. Hence
Pentecost has permanent significance for the Christian
community and for the world, down to the end of time.
"For what the soul is to the body of a man," Augustine
says, " that the Holy Ghost is to the body of Christ, which
is the Church. ¦ What the Holy Ghost does in the whole
Church, that the soul does in all the members of one
body." Pentecost will never be repeated. Giver» once, the
Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the glorified God-man is given
forever. So our Lord teaches: He will pray the Father,
and the Father "shall give you another Advocate that He
maybe, with you forever." Like the 'one offering' by
which He hath perfected forever them that are sanctified,
like the miracle of the resurrection achieved once for all,
the advent of the Holy Spirit is a cardinal mystery, the
supernatural force of which is not only continuous from
age to age, but adequate also to all the needs of the Church
and the purposes of God.
'Irenseus Agaiust Heresies, Bk. III., Ch. XXIV.,

<s 284.] The Mission of the Spirit. 447
CHAPTER II.
THE MISSION OF THE SPIRIT.
§284.
Directly connected with, the mediatorial life and the
mediatorial work, the Spirit given is the Person by
whose agency the divine-human life of Jesus Christ is
quickened in the members of His body, and the work
of their redemption is accomplished.
The work of Christ and the work of the Spirit are
as to their essence the same. Christ's mediatorial
work is the basis and affords the material of the work
of the Spirit. The Spirit is the medium of the commu
nication of Christ and of all His benefits. Among men
on earth He actualizes the perfected mediatorship in
the form of the Christian community.
As regards the sphere and the form of action, how
ever, the work of Christ and the work of the Spirit
differ. 1. As was developed in the previous Book, the work
of Christ was done primarily within the sphere of His
own history and for the perfection of Himself as Mediator.
He begins, develops and. matures the new creation in the
consecutive epochs of His personality. The ideal human
life He realizes in organic union with God; and from His
nativity to His ascension He realizes ideal life by redeem
ing the Adamic humanity which He assumed from the
curse of the law, from the dominion and all the conse
quences of sin. The glorification obtains in the character
of completed redemption.
Comparatively considered, the mediatorial work of Christ

448 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
consists in making His divine-human personality the
foundation for the communication of His Holy Spirit.
2. The distinctive work of the Spirit as given on the
day of Pentecost pertains, not directly to the Person of
Jesus Christ, but to the purpose of His mediatorship in
relation to the world. What Jesus Christ is, what He has
done and is now doing, the Spirit relates effectively to
mankind. Says Augustine: " Dicente Christo, verba capi-
mus ; docente Spiritu eadem verba intelligimus.'1''
Whilst the work of Christ is in the first instance done
for Himself, or in the sphere of His personal history, the
work of His Holy Spirit is done outside of and beyond
His glorified personality. The Spirit is given to and is
active in the members of the fallen race.1
§ 285.
Like the mediatorship of Christ, the work of the
Spirit is twofold. The Spirit reveals and He redeems.
His work is life-giving 'and it is saving.
1. The Spirit' quickens men in Christ. They are be
gotten from above 'of water and the Spirit' Begotten
anew they are inasmuch as by the Spirit they are engrafted
into Jesus Christ, the glorified God-man, and so are made
His members.2 "I am the Vine, ye are the branches."
1 From the day of Pentecost onward "the Holy Spirit," as Dr. Strong
fitly expresses it, "was the Spirit of Jesus Christ, taking of the things of
Christ and showing them, applying His finished work to human hearts,
and rendering the hitherto localized Saviour omnipresent with all His
scattered followers to the end of time." — Systematic Theology, p. 151.
2 Says Augustine: "By That which is the Bond of communion between
the Father and the Son, it is Their pleasure that we should have com
munion both among ourselves and with Them, and to gather us together
in one by the same Gift, which One They both have, that is, by the Holy
Spirit, at once God and the Gift of God."— Sermon XXI. 18.

1 285.] The Mission of the Spirit. 449
Like the branches of the vine they are by faith partakers
of His life, of His divine-human life; or, to use the analogy
of Paul, as the members of the human body are partakers
of the one natural life of the body, so men through the
Spirit become the members of Christ. The Heidelberg
Catechism teaches this truth definitely and forcibly. To
the Question: Why art thou called a Christian ? the Answer
is given: Because by faith I am a member of Christ, and
thus a partaker of His anointing.1
The Spirit does not beget a person anew by implanting
Christ into him. By the Spirit he is implanted into
Christ. The Son of Man glorified is the principle of
regeneration. He is the one new Man, the regenerate
personality. His sin-conquering life is the type of the
new race. Men are born again by participation in His res
urrection life. As we are members of the Adamic race by
participation in the life of the first Adam, so we become
members of the second race by participation in the life of
the last Adam. Whilst it is true that the Christ by His
Spirit lives in His members as really as His members live
in Him, yet the order of this life-communion requires that
fallen men pass from the natural economy into the spiritual
economy. The natural man is implanted into Christ, and
by that act He becomes a member of the new community.
As a consequence Christ by His Spirit lives in him.
This new life-fellowship does not obtain on the plane
of the fallen economy, not among men who are ' of this
world;' it can obtain only in the kingdom of God, the
objective economy of grace.2
1 Q- 32-
2 Says Martensen: "Awakening precedes regeneration, but it does not
constitute it. * * Awakening is the spirit seeking its home, in answer
29

450 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
The first thing then as regards the regenerate life is not
that Christ begins to live in the believer, implying that
as a consequence the believer begins to live in Him ; but
the opposite order is the law of the Spirit. Engrafted
into Christ a man by faith begins to live the regenerate
life of Christ; then at the same time, as the necessary cor
relate of this life-communion, Christ lives in the regen
erate man.
The new-creating work of the Spirit thus implies an
objective translation. As natural birth implies a transla
tion, a severance from the embryonic mode of growth, and
an introduction into the family, a totally different sphere,
into the new conditions and relations of separate individ
uality, so is the birth 'of water and the Spirit' a transfer
of the subject from the kingdom of Adamic nature, from
the fallen human race which stands in the first Adam,
into the kingdom of the Spirit, ilito the life of the regen
erate race which springs from the last Adam. This tran
sition is greater and more real than an external transfer
from a barren desert to a blooming paradise, or than the
elevation of a man from the condition of ¦ a slave to the
throne of a king, or the natural transition of the embryo
into the history of individual existence.
2. Such a translation implies that there is in man's
to the effectual call of grace ; but it is not yet the permanent indwelling
of grace within the soul. * * Grace cannot advance toward its goal
except through a voluntary act of surrender on the part of the man him
self, by means of which it becomes creative and renewing grace. It is
only when this principle of a new development after the image of Christ
has taken root that regeneration is begun. But it is obvious that when
grace becomes the source of a new development in a man, he must be
placed in a new relation to that kingdom which is the organism of the
Spirit."— Christian Dogmatics, p. 384.

,; 2s5.] The Mission of the Spirit. 45 1
spiritual being, though sinful and guilty, a corresponding
capacity, a capacity that becomes an unsatisfied demand.
The original connection between the personal Creator and
the personal creature, the kinship between God and the
primeval man, has not by sin been annihilated; hence
the Adamic race longs instinctively, though unconsciously,
after a radical change, a new birth, a transition into a
spiritual domain. Inborn aversion to God and the natural
predisposition to commit sin do not contradict this propo
sition. In the natural man as in the spiritual man there
is a conflict between the conscience and passion, between
» the divine imageship and the law of sin.
This spontaneous longing, this unsatisfied aptitude for
life-communion with God, is the natural basis of the birth
from above and constitutes the possibility of the 'chosen
communion.' The new-creating energy of the Holy Spirit
working upon and working in the sinful subject, so far
from violating human personality completes it, so far from
destroying the freedom of the will revives, confirms and
perfects freedom. Though ' dead through their trespasses
and sins,' men are born again conformably to the deepest
law of their moral and spiritual being. This new birth
by which men become 'members of Christ' is a mystery
parallel to the nativity of our Lord; by conception and
birth human nature in Him was created anew. As
through the overshadowing of the Virgin by "the power
of the Most High " Jesus was conceived and born, so by a
similar overshadowing of the Spirit of Christ glorified
men are born into His kingdom. By incarnation human
nature was assumed into organic union with God in His
Son; so by the new-creating work of the Holy Spirit men
are translated from ' this world ' into mystical union with

452 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
our risen, perfected Lord. The new-creating work of the
Spirit in the mystery of the incarnation relative to the
mediatorial work of Jesus Christ typifies the begetting act
of Christ's Spirit in the mystery of the new birth relatively
to the existence of the Church, to the new spiritual 'life
of her members and their salvation from sin.
3. The Spirit delivers men from sin under all its aspects.
The condition in which men are on account of sin
involves at least three things: 1. bondage to a foreign
dominion; 2. a false principle active in the sinner, disor
ganizing his life and perverting the action of his faculties;
and 3. guilt, including the condemnation of God and the
condemnation of the conscience.
Deliverance is effected under a corresponding threefold
form: 1. the Spirit breaks the controlling power of bond
age to a foreign dominion; 2. He annuls the dominant
influence of the false principle lodged in man's spiritual
being; and 3. He frees him from condemnation and from
the curse of death. The subject of the Spirit's saving
energy rises out of the depths of spiritual misery into the
life of peace with God and peace with himself.
The salvation of men planted into Christ the Spirit
begins and carries forward by imparting to believers the
saving virtue of Christ's redeeming life and work. The
redemption accomplished by Him becomes, through the
mediating agency of the Spirit in the hearts of Christ's
members, the power of a personal and actual salvation.
Repentance, forgiveness of sins, sanctification, ultimately
the resurrection from the dead and the everlasting life
obtain in the history of the Church as a whole and in the
history of her individual members, as fruits of the indwell
ing agency of the Holy Spirit.

js 285.] The Mission of the Spirit. 453
4. The life-giving ene'rgy and the saving work of the
Holy Spirit are not externally conjoined, nor does the one
form of His action follow the other in the status and expe
rience of the believer. These two distinct things, the new
birth and salvation from sin, are inseparable parts of one
work, being related to each other as revelation and re
demption, or as the life of Christ and His death. The
personal history of the believer conforms to His personal
history. As He redeems man's nature by revealing God
in His divine-human personality, as by constituting the
true communion of God and man iu Himself, the Head of
a new race, He breaks the dominion of sin and abolishes
the curse of death, so in the act of creating men anew the
Spirit saves men. On the day of Pentecost the Spirit by
His advent brings the 'body' of Christ into existence,
and by this new-creating miracle He delivers the members
of His body from Adamic miseries. So likewise are these
two parts of the Spirit's work connected in the subsequent
history of the Church. No one is by the Spirit engrafted
into Christ who is not also by this engrafting emancipated
from the kingdom of darkness. There is "no condemna
tion to them that are in Christ "Jesus." And no one has
the assurance of forgiveness unless by the. Spirit he is
made a member of Christ; for only the members of Christ
are the members of His kingdom. " If any man hath not
the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His."
Though these two parts of the mediating agency of the
Holy Spirit are inseparable members of one work, they
are not coordinate, nor do they possess equivalent force.
His life-giving energy conditions His saving virtue. Here
too it is important to emphasize the parallel. The order
of truth respecting the Holy Spirit obeys the order of

454 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [B00K7.
truth respecting the mediatorship of Christ. Jesus the
Redeemer, and Jesus the Second Man, begin to be in the
same mystery. His incarnation and the redemption from
sin wrought out by Him are coeval; yet the redemption
of man's nature from the law of sin depends on the mys
tery that "the Word became flesh, and tabernacled among
us, full of gr^ce and truth." So the sin-destroying virtue
of the Holy Spirit in the persons of fallen men depends on
the new life of the Spirit quickened by engrafting into
Christ. The law of the Mediator is the law of the medi
ating Spirit. The new birth conditions and involves the
forgiveness of sins.

CHAPTER III.
THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH
§286.
The work of the Holy Spirit implies the existence
of an objective economy, a new order of spiritual life
on earth, which by His advent He has created and in
which He perpetually lives. This new economy is the
Christian Church, the 'body' of Christ glorified.
The Christian Church presupposes at least three
things: 1. human society, or the law of social inte
gration; 2. the chosen nation, or the religious com
munity of the Abrahamic covenant; and 3. the inter
mediate religious community whose center was Jesus
of Nazareth.
Besides, the body of the disciples of Jesus is to be
distinguished from the disciples of John Baptist.
1. The natural basis of the Christian Church is human

g286.] The Christian Church. 455
society. The principle and law, of social life is the foun
dation of all forms of organization, whether civil or eccle
siastical. With natural social life the Church is internally
connected; yet from every purely human organization,
such as the State or the family or any voluntary associa
tion, the genius of the Church differs and is to be distin
guished.. The social principle universally prevalent demands and
begets religious organization, an organization correspond
ing to the plane on which the religious life moves,
whether lower or higher. Christianity recognizes and
conserves every original law. Hence Christian life be
comes organized life; Christian activity becomes organized
activity; and, we may add, if human nature were not an
organism, if it did not by virtue of the social principle
spontaneously develop into some form of social organiza
tion, Christian life would not develop in the form of the
' kingdom of heaven.'
Whilst the law of social integration is the natural possi
bility of the Church and begets the necessity of organiza
tion, neither human nature nor Christian people produce
the Church. All human organizations, such as the family
and the State, grow into existence from the operation of
natural law, and they are perpetuated by the force of this
law immanent in mankind. The Church on the contrary
is the community of the Holy Spirit. Whilst appropriat
ing and based on natural law, she is an order of human
life which is supernatural no less than natural, because
through the Spirit she is begotten in the image of the re
surrection life of Jesus Christ, and by the Spirit she is ever
living this life of the risen Christ,
2. Presupposing the natural law of social integration,

456 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
the Church of the Old Testament was distinguished from
all pagan religions by the primeval promise concerning
the Seed of the woman. This promise gave tone to the
people of God during a series of generations onward to the
time of Abraham. Then the promise budded forth in the
Abrahamic covenant, whose Messianic genius subsequently
opened into the organization and ritual of the Mosaic
economy, the economy which in process of the ages vital
ized and strengthened the Messianic hope until in the
fulness of time this communion of the Abrahamic cove
nant bore ripe fruit in the predestined transition. ' First
the blade, then the ear, then the full corn in the ear. '
With this supernatural communion of the chosen people
the Christian Church is organically connected; yet from
this communion as from human society the Church essen
tially differs and is to be broadly distinguished.
Of the Church of Christ the Jewish Church is the posi
tive preparation, being the community from which the
Christ 'according to the flesh' came forth, the community
that cultivated and matured the religion which was the
spiritual possibility of 'the kingdom of God.' As the
religion of the. Jews was of one order with the Mosaic
economy, or with the 'first covenant,' which was not
'faultless,'1 that religion was destined to pass away with
the 'first covenant' "He taketh away the first, that He
may establish the second."2 Existing by the authority
of Jehovah and animated by the divine Spirit, the relig
ious community of the chosen nation nevertheless was
only a transient pedagogic organization; and when by the
nurture and discipline of Jehovah this community had ful
filled its purpose, the necessity of its continuance ceased.
1 Heb. viii. 7. a Heb. x. 9.

g2S6.] The Christian Church. 457
The supernatural basis of the Messianic kingdom, it became
the possibility of a final spiritual organization.
Based on the natural law of social integration, and
growing forth from the Abrahamic covenant, the Christian
Church is related to the Jewish Church as the Christ is
related to Abraham, to Moses, to Elijah and John Bap
tist. She appropriates the truth of human society and
the truth of the Mosaic economy, but by appropriation
transforms all pre-Christian truth, making it the servant
of another and higher economy, the organization of the
new human race of the last Adam.
3. The positive preparation for the birth of the Chris
tian Church becomes complete by the creation of the
'little flock,'1 the intermediate community, which stood
between the Mosaic economy and the day of Pentecost, a
community in whose history we distinguish two stages.
Of the first stage John Baptist is the center and the
soul. He was the voice of one crying in the wilderness,
Make straight the way of the Lord. "I baptize with
water: in the midst of you standeth one whom ye know
not, even He that cometh after me, the latchet of whose
shoe I am not worthy to unloose."2 By preaching "the
baptism of repentance unto remission of sins,"3 he gath
ered about himself a number of disciples who believed
him to be the forerunner of the coming Messiah. Point
ing to Jesus and saying: " Behold, the Lamb of God, which
'Luke xii. 32. 2John i. 26, 27.
3 Mk. i. 4. "John did not institute some new rite, but his baptism was
a ceremonial washing, such as was well known, to signify repentance and
forgiveness: unto remission of sins. 'Repentance' was the prominent
idea of John's baptism, while 'remission of sins' was to come from the
Messiah, whose forerunner he was." — Prof. Matthew B. Riddle, D. D.

458 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
taketh away the sin of the world," he turned the eye of
faith from himself to Him who should baptize with the
Holy Spirit.
As John was the forerunner of Jesus of Nazareth, so was
the community of John the forerunner of the Messianic
community of which the person of Jesus was the center
and soul. In the Messianic community formed of the
disciples of John and from the body of the Jewish people
we may distinguish three classes: 1. the twelve apostles,
among whom there was an inner circle of three who
stood in closer fellowship with the Master; 2. the seventy
disciples whom the 'Lord appointed and sent them two
and two before His face;' and 3. that indefinite number
of devout Jews, not less than five hundred, who believed
that Jesus of Nazareth was
" A light for revelation to the Gentiles,
And the glory of thy people Israel."
Animated by the belief that Jesus was the Messiah, and
bound together by a common sympathy and a common
devotion, the more susceptible part of these three classes
of believers, consisting of men and women, fused into one
body by the word and the love of the Master, were spirit
ually qualified for receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit on
the day of Pentecost, and therefore qualified for becoming
the nucleus of the Christian Church.

§287.] The Christian Church. 459
§287.
Conformably to the natural law of social integration,
and resting on that intermediate Messianic community
which Jesus organized, inspired and commissioned
before His ascension into heaven, there arises by the
advent of His Spirit another 'chosen communion,'1 a
communion different in kind from every other organi
zation, whether social, civil or religious, a spiritual
constitution, of which the incarnate- Son, the glorified
God-man, is the Head and of which men born of His
Spirit become members.
1. The Church of Christ is an objective constitution
confronting faith; not a code of laws, nor a system of doc
trine, nor an order of cultus authorized and established by
God's wisdom aud grace. Worship, doctrine, law, disci
pline are elements of her organization, but each presup
poses the spiritual economy of which it is a part. Nor
can the Church be adequately represented by saying that
she is the institution of Christ. True, the Church is an
organization which He has ordained, for she was formed
according to the idea in the mind of Christ; and her laws,
her method of action, her ordinances, her aims are deter
mined by His will, on which account we may with pro
priety speak of the Church as His institution. But the
doctrine respecting the Church may not be governed by
the import of this term.
Nor may the doctrine be ruled by the etymology of the
Greek word, kmifojaia, an assembly convened by the call of a
herald. This etymology furnishes one essential element
in the idea of the Church, an element which has the force
of the original verb «>*&>• and the preposition ™. For as
'Heid. Cat, Q. 54.

460 Doctrine on the Hcly Spirit. [book 7.
Jesus called men and women from among the Jews to
Himself, and by the heavenly virtue of His word united
them in a community different from Scribes and Phari
sees, different from Sadducees and Herodians, so the
Church by the word of the Gospel approaches the world
and effectually calls men to turn from sin and enter into
her holy fellowship. But the secret, the strength and
blessing of her fellowship do not lie in the association
of believers with one another according to some scheme
or method of goverment The blessing lies in the vital
connection of believers with Christ glorified, who is the
archetype and source of a new spiritual life of which by
the Holy Spirit all believers are partakers.
The Church is the present organized form of the king
dom of God;1 and the kingdom our Lord compares to a
living reality: to the sower who went forth to sow; to the
man that sowed good seed in his field; to a grain of
mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field; to
a treasure hidden in a field; to a net, that was cast into
the sea, and gathered of every kind; to a flock and the
shepherd, who calleth his own sheep by name, and leadeth
them out; to the vine and its branches.2 St. Paul com
pares the Church sometimes to a temple, a habitation of
' The connection between the Church and the kingdom Principal
Fairbairn thus represents: "The plan after which the Church is built is
the ideal of the Kingdom ; while the means by which the Kingdom is
realized is the Church. This involves the correlation of the two ideas:
the Kingdom is the immanent Church, and the Church is the explicated
Kingdom, and nothing alien to either can be in the other. The King
dom is the Church expressed in the terms and mind and person of its
Founder; the Church is the Kingdom done into living souls and the
society they constitute. ' ' — The Place of Christ in Modern Theology, p. 529.
2 Matt. xiii. ; John x. ; John xv.

1 2S7.] The Christian Church. 461
God, more commonly to the human body.1 This rich
imagery of the New Testament is drawn not from a
mathematical formula, not from a sphere of abstractions,
but from the life of nature and from the natural and
social life of man. The growth of the mustard seed, the
vine and its branches, and the human body suggest the
best figures of speech by which the teaching of the New
Testament concerning the Church may most fitly be rep
resented in ecclesiology. If thought be governed by this
imagery, we discover the Church to be, not an aggregation
of individuals, not an organization devised by human
genius, but a spiritual organism, all of whose parts, like
the mustard tree developed from the mustard seed, grow
forth from the mystery of the personality of Christ glori
fied.2 The mustard tree is developed from the mustard
seed by vegetal law; the human body from the embryo by
human law; but the Church, the body of Christ, attains
'Eph. ii. 19-22; iv. 13-16; Col. i. 18, 24; 1 Cor. xii. 12-31; Rom.
xii. 4, 5.
2 "The point," says Principal Fairbairn, "where we can best study the
relation of the real and ideal in the notion of the Church is where Paul
first elaborates the image of the body of Christ. 1 Cor. x. 17 ; xii. 12-31.
He had first used it of the local Church. The local was a microcosm, the
image and mirror of the universal. The fellowship of the body of Christ
suggested the figure of the Church as His body. The unity was one of
persons ; what all received made all who received it one. But did this
ideal agree with the reality ? In the Corinthian Church there were
manifold divisions ; violent strife had raged. The actual condition sug
gested by contrast the ideal, and he presented the one as a rebuke and
warning to the other. He called upon this much-divided society to
conceive itself through its ideal. It was a unity, an organism, a body,
the body of Christ. Its life was one, but its parts were many ; the
meanest part was as necessary as the noblest, aud so neither could dis
pense with the other, while the dignity of the whole dignified the least
noble member." — Christ in Modern Theology, p. 523.

462 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [F.00K7.
' unto a full-grown man, unto the measure of the stature
of the fulness of Christ ' by ' the law of the spirit of life in
Christ Jesus.' Each is a mystery. Each addresses intui
tive perception. Each is a fulness of life, richer in possi
bilities than reason can grasp or interpret Neither is
accessible to complete analysis by the understanding.
But the richest and mightiest of all, the organism that
has possibilities and powers grander and more glorious
than any natural organism, or any organization formed on
the plane of human history, is the kingdom of heaven,
present and visible in the Church of Jesus Christ. More
real than the mustard tree, more mysterious than the
human body or the Adamic race, the Church not only
confronts natural perception but addresses faith as a
constitution, existing, living, firmly maintaining herself
against her foes, and advancing from conquest to con
quest, from age to age, by her own intrinsic vitality.
The mode of her organization is constructed, like the size
and shape of the body of an individual man, from within
by the law of her life; and by the force of the same imma
nent law she is constantly reconstructing and readjusting
the form of her activity to her own inner growth and to
the changing needs of her environment.
"2. The constitution of the Church is spiritual, not natu
ral.1 The human race of the first Adam is not a spiritual,
but a natural constitution, a physico-ethical organism.
The Adamic race exists, lives, perpetuates itself, multi-
1 "The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became
a life-giving spirit. Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that
which is natural ; then that which is spiritual. The first man is of the
earth, earthy: the second man is of heaven. As is the earthy, such are
they also that are earthy: and as is the heavenly, such are they also that
are heavenly." — i Cor. xv. 45-49.

IJ287.] The Christian Church. 463
plies its individual members, by virtue of a law immanent
in the first creation, the economy of the natural world
whose crown is ' the first man.'
By the operation of no law of nature nor of any etliical
forces_of history did the Church originate. "My kingdom
is not of this world."1 Nor is any natural law, nor are
any moral forces of the world the primary condition of her
present existence or of her perpetuity or her future tri
umphs. She exists solely by virtue of the advent and the
abiding presence of the Holy Spirit, "the Spirit of
Truth," the supernatural gift of the incarnate Son glori
fied.2 The presence and anointing of His Spirit condition
the virtue of her ordinances, the authority of her ministry,
the unction of the written word, and the ideal service of
all her members.
It is by reason of this unique fact that ecclesiology
affirms the Church to be a spiritual organism. The
Church cannot be said to be either a physical or "an ethi
cal organization, if by these terms it is proposed to desig
nate a fundamental or essential element of her existence.
Nor does even the word 'spiritual' express her essential
characteristic, if the term be used to denote the product
of man's religious life in contradistinction from his intel
lectual or social life; for the Christian Church is in no
sense a product of the spiritual powers of the Adamic race.
Her genius, her unsearchable resources, her ordinances,
1 'H flamlela tj e/jt/ ovic eoriv en tov tcoopov tovtov. Here i k, of, unites the
notions of origin and nature. "Though in the world, the kingdom of
God has not the characteristics of an earthly kingdom. Unlike this, it
has not come to Him by descent or conquest, nor is to be defended by
arms. Each agent acts in his own sphere." Cf. Bengel, John xviii. 36.
"Acts ii. 1-4.

464 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
her mission and°her triumphs are referable exclusively to
the Holy Spirit who inhabits and moulds her develop
ment, and moulds those manifold agencies inspired and
organized by her progress.1 § 288.
This spiritual organism is the 'second' race of man
kind, begotten of Christ and in Christ by the ' Spirit
of Truth,' a race more real, more intensely vital than
the posterity of the first Adam.
The race of the ' last Adam ' is in one respect iden
tical with the race of the ' first Adam ;' in another re
spect the two races are generically different.
1. The communion of the Christian Church consists of
the members of a new race, a race begotten by the Holy
Spirit of the perfected Christ, sent forth from the Father
on the day of Pentecost; begotten in the persons of the one
hundred and twenty assembled in an 'upper room,' await
ing the fulfilment of the promise. By this birth from
above the one hundred and twenty became the embryo of
the kingdom. The Spirit quickened another order of
mankind which by this miraculous generation begins
from that day onward to exist according to the law of 'the
life' of which the incarnate Son was 'the beginning.'2
And every person since that day who is of this spiritual
household has become a member because born from above
after the type of the same pentecostal birth. The Word
made flesh was the life. "I came that they may have
life, and may have it abundantly."3
As the race of the first Adam perpetuates and multiplies
itself by natural generation, so the race of the last Adam
'Cf. Institutes, \\ 90, 91.
2 Matt. xix. 28; Rev. iii. 21. Col. i. 18. 3John x. 10.

g2S8.] The Christian Church. 465
perpetuates and multiplies itself by spiritual generation.
No one becomes a member of the natural race but by
natural birth, and natural birth implies the dissolution of
all prenatal vital connections; so no one becomes a mem
ber of the spiritual race but by a birth of the Holy Spirit,
and spiritual birth implies the dissolution of abnormal
connections with the Adamic race, a dissolution which
Paul calls death unto sin.1 "Verily, verily, I say unto
thee, except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he
cannot enter into the kingdom ' of God. That which is
born of the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the
Spirit is spirit"2 Men 'born of the flesh' live the life of
the first man; as is the earthy, such are they also that are
earthy. Men ' born of the Spirit ' live the life of the
Second Man; as is the heavenly, such are they also that
are heavenly.3 The race of the first man is a defective
human life, and develops a false history. The race of the
Second Man possesses genuine human life, and develops,
now in part, hereafter in- perfection, the ideal of the
human race, the earthy being transformed into the
heavenly.* 2. The race of the Second Man is in one respect iden
tical with the race of the first man. Birth of the Holy
Spirit involves an organic change, a new creation, but not
a creation de novo. Jesus born of a woman, a daughter
of the first Adam, a lineal descendant of Abraham, was
' according to the flesh ' 5 identical not only with the
chosen people but identical also with mankind universally.
What He was on earth, He, as to the essence of humanity,
is now in heaven. He continues to be identical with the
'Rom. vi. 11. 2John iii. 5, 6. a 1 Cor. xv. 48.
* 1 Cor. xiii. 9-13 5 Rom. i. 3 ; ix. 5.
30

466 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
being of the Adamic race; yet He is the exhaustless foun
tain of regenerate human life which, though new, though
of the Holy Spirit, is, contrasted with the nature of sub
human kingdoms on the one side and on the other with
the being of God, essentially the same as the life which
Jesus lived when on earth.
According to the same law of reasoning we judge, re
specting the members of- Christ. When a person. by the
birth ' of water and the Spirit ' becomes a new creature, a
member of the race of the Second Man, he does not cease
to be as truly human as before he was born from above.
His new birth does not contravene nor endanger personal
identity, but conserves it. As to the nature of his per
sonal being he is the same; and this sameness of being
includes all the normal qualities of body and soul. The
original purpose of the ' first ' is accomplished by the
' second ' race. Says Martensen :
"The whole human race was created and foreordained to Christ as the
first-born of every creature fitted to be gathered together under Christ as
under the head, and is therefore only rightly acknowledged and loved in
Him."' 3. In another respect the race of the Second Man differs
widely from the race of the first man. The difference is
negative and positive.
The race of the first man is 'of the earth, earthy.' It
is fallen and sinful, guilty before' God and enslaved to a
foreign dominion. The race of the Second Man is eman
cipated from the bondage of this foreign dominion, stands
by faith in right relation to God and therefore of Him is
approved. The law of sin being broken, the predisposi
tion to righteousness and holiness begins to assert itself.
1 Christian Ethics, I., p. 309.

2 288.] The Christian Church. 467
In one respect identical with the 'old man,' the 'new
man ' is the old radically changed and active in the pro
cess of salvation.1
The chief difference, however, of the new race from the
old race is positive. The ' first man ' was formed in the
image of God. Human personality is godlike. It is this
divine imageship of personality that above all other en
dowments differentiated man, in the beginning, from the
noblest species of the animal kingdom. "Man is great
chiefly because he was created for union with God."2
Though his moral and metaphysical fall is profound, yet
the image of God is the vital principle which through the
ages distinguishes all the nations of his posterity.
Asserting, developing and perfecting the original divine
imageship, the new race is formed, not in the image of
God, but in the image of the God-man, Jesus Christ, who
is the final realization of the image of God in which the
first man was formed. The Head of the new race is
distinguished from the head of the old race by a cardinal
difference. Whilst the first man was capacitated and
designed for a fellowship of love with God higher than
and different from the fellowship in which he stood by
the creative word, but in consequence of disobedience
failed to attain to that transcendent dignity, the Second '
Man, on the contrary, was what the first man was not,
and became what the first man did not become; in the
form of reality He became on earth and in heaven the
true Man. "He is," says Rothe, "the universal Man,
and yet, in an incomparable sense, the God-man."3 Liv
ing in hypostatical union with God He consummates in
1 Eph. iv. 22 ; Col. iii. 9, 10. 2 Lux Mundi, p. 395.
3 Still Hours, p. 208.

468 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
Himself the life of divine imageship, and realizes in its
ultimate character the reciprocal fellowship of love be
tween man and God. Of Him with unqualified emphasis
it may be said : Persona consummat naiuram. The second
race is the new creation, because by the Holy Spirit the
race is formed after the image of the Second Man.
By a spiritual birth the natural man becomes a member
of this new creation, and shares the new life which pro
ceeding by the Spirit from Christ glorified animates the
entire spiritual organism. § 289.
The spiritual constitution, in which the Church con
sists is not a human life only, and the qualities of her
life are not exclusively human qualities. Being the
body of Jesus Christ, the Church, like her Head, is
divine-human, invested with divine-human authority,
possessing divine-human powers, and active for divine-
human ends.
1. Of this twofold character we have a faint adumbra
tion in the constitution of the first man. A physico-ethical
creation, he was made such in the image of his Maker.
In the mystery of his original being there was a divine
factor. Whilst we do not fail to distinguish widely be
tween God and man, the personal Creator and the personal
creature, we are nevertheless obliged to recognize in man
as man kinship with God,1 in consequence of which the
human spirit cannot, as Augustine says, be at resfuntil it
rests in complete fellowship with God. There is a positive
basis in humanity for the theanthropic constitution of
' " Man is capable of ever deeper spiritual affinity to God. Such must
be the ideal end of a being of whom it is revealed that he was made in
God's image." — Lux Mundi, p. 395.

§289.] The Christian Church. 469
Jesus and for the divine-human organism which is His
body. Of the twofold life of the Church we have also a dim
prophecy in the universal sentiment of mankind, a senti
ment which evidences in all ages, however degraded the
nation or tribe may be, that God is in touch with the
soul. Feeling, as Ovid says, the Divine stirring within,
kiudling the ardor of desire after the unknown One, men
are ever disposed to connect themselves with the tran
scendent world, or even to identify the Divine and the
human. No sentiment becomes a principle so profound,
so controlling and absorbing as the religious sentiment,
the sense of an indissoluble connection with a superhuman
presence. 2. What the two factors in the constitution of the first
Adam foreshadow, what the mythologies of the pagan
masses and the philosophies of pagan thinkers uncon
sciously and undesignedly predict, that the mystery of the
new race begotten by the Spirit in the image of the
' Second Man ' is .in reality, a race really human, actual
izing the truth of humanity more perfectly than the race
of the 'first man,' yet a human race living a divine life.
In Jesus Christ we recognize the hypostatic union, the
Divine and the human being vitally one in His person
ality. Such union of divine nature and human nature we
may predicate only of the Mediator; yet agreeably to the
teaching of the New Testament the quickening virtue of
this mystery extends and imparts unique character to the
second race. His mystical body is a creation in which
these two factors are active dynamically as the members
of a spiritual organism, in one respect natural and human,
with all the essential properties of mankind, in another

470 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
respect supernatural and divine, manifesting throughout
the entire history of the Church qualities other than
natural and human.
3. If the argument sustaining the doctrine respecting
the divine-human life of the Church be accepted, two
things will follow: 1. the divine element of the Church
is not the Holy Spirit in contradistinction from Jesus
Christ; 2. the human element of the Church is not the
fallen nature of man.
The Divine in the organism of the Church is the
sequence of the truth that her glorified Head, whose life
by the, new birth of the Spirit the Church possesses, is the
Son of God. The human element in the organism of the
Church is the sequence of the correlative truth that her
Head, in whose image her membeis are begotten, is the
Sou of Man.
These two factors, the divine and the human, are mys
teriously and indissolubly one in the constitution of the
second race, inasmuch as the Head, the incarnate Son,
imparts Himself to His body by the Spirit in the miracu
lous act of bringing the Christian Church into existence
on the day of Pentecost, as also in every new act of regen
eration by which an individual descendant of the 'first
man ' becomes a member and an heir of the ' Second Man.'
It follows moreover that in the actual history of the
Church militant, ecclesiology will have to distinguish two
different forces, both of which are human, the true and the
false, the ideal and the contra-ideal, a distinction which
addresses us from nearly every book of the New Testa
ment. Paul calls the one human factor the 'old man,'
the other human factor the 'new man,' as in Eph. iv.
22-24 and in Col. iii. 9, 10. He draws the. same line of

1 289.] The Christian Church. 471
distinction by naming one 'the mind of the flesh,' the
other ' the* mind of the Spirit;' ' and he teaches explicitly
that "the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh; for these are contrary the one to the
other; that ye may not do the things that ye would."2 Of
the new man John says that, begotten of God, he "doeth
no sin, because his seed abideth in him." "In him who
is born of God'," says Bengel, "God's seed remaineth,
that is, the word, with its power." It is added: "and he
cannot sin because he is begotten of God."3 In the next
chapter John says: "whatsoever is begotten of God over-
cometh the world."4 The old man, on the contrary, is
"corrupt" after the lusts of "deceit," being predisposed
to "falsehood, passion, evil desire, covetousness, anger,
wrath, malice, railing."5 All Christian experience and
observation sustain the fact that in the heart of the be
liever there is a war between the old man and the new
man, between the human nature of the 'first Adam' and
the human nature of the 'last Adam;' a war also between
the same contrary forces in the body ecclesiastical, which
accounts for the imperfections, irregularities and abuses,
for even the wickednesses that appear in the history of
the Church catholic; though regarding the law of her life,
her distinctive genius and her aims, she is holy, as the
Apostles' Creed affirms.
The specific truth which it is important for ecclesiology
to emphasize is that the persistent conflicts of the Church
are not merely between the Holy Spirit immanent in her
organization and the depravity of human nature, but
between the human and the human, between the new
'Rom. viii. 5-7. 2Gal. v. 17. Cf. Rom. vii. 18-25. 3 J John iii. 9.
1 1 John v. 4. 5Eph. iv. 22 ; Col. iii. 5-8.

47 2 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [bookt.
humanity begotten in the image of the Son of Man and
the old humanity inherited by natural birth from the first
head of mankind.1 ' § 290.
Inasmuch as the Christian Church is the new or
second human race descending by spiritual birth
from the glorified Christ, and grows by the immanent
presence of His Holy Spirit, she is in a pre-eminent
sense an organism, a living mystery. She possesses
the marks and reveals the phenomena of a living con
stitution. Chief among these phenomena are the progressive
development of her life, and the progressive actualiza
tion of her idea.
1. Like the race of the first man, the race of the Second
Man among all nations and from age to age bears no
mechanical sameness of outward character. The Church
directly affects and is directly affected by her national,
civil and social environment. Whilst the environment
modifies the mode of her existence and action, the Church
in turn lays hold of the national, civil and social environ
ment, modifies and even transforms it. Of this twofold
modification, the change of environment effected by the
Church is the more decided and thorough. As man turns
the forest into orchards and vineyards, the barren desert
into blooming gardens and the wilderness into villages
and cities, so the Church transforms and elevates the
moral and social condition of society, undermines slavery, .
dissipates the superstitions, purifies the morals and gradu
ally removes many of the ills of the world. In turn the
' This principle is the key for the correct interpretation of 1 John
iii. 6-1 1.

j 2go.] The Christian Church. 473
radical changes of environment brought about by the force
of the Truth which she lives and proclaims, react upon
herself and become the occasion of further and better
development of her life.
The consequence is, as history demonstrates, that the
Church cannot have an unchangeable form either of
organization or of worship or of dogma. The New Tes
tament presents the realities of the Christian creed rather
than formulas of doctrine; presents the distinctive type of
organization rather than a code of laws for ecclesiastical
government; presents the leading features of cultus rather
than a finished ritual. In this respect as in all others the
New Testament is philosophical, evincing the nicest per
ception of the necessities of history.
The realities affirmed by the Christian creed are un
changeably the same; so also the fundamental type of
ecclesiastical organization. But as the Church is the
fulness of Christ who 'is all and in all,' since- her life
unfolds its infinite riches with new power from age to
age, she is ever exerting a transforming influence, as
upon the character and condition of the world, so also
upon her own organization. There is an unbroken con
tinuity of life, also an unbroken continuity of organi
zation; but the .continuity is organic, conditioned funda
mentally on the continuous quickening energy of the
Holy Spirit, whilst the continuity of her organization, in
so far as organization is not interrupted or misfashioned
by error and wrong-doing, is conditioned on the develop
ment of her life. The life of the new race may wax for a
time or for a time it may wane; thus itself changing,
passing onward from one node of development into an
other or receding from a more vigorous to a less vigorous

474 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
condition ; but the leading characteristic phenomenon of
her history is the progressive actualization of her divine-
human idea. As the life changes, whether for the time
advancing or receding, so the organization changes. " Or
ganization," Drummond correctly maintains, "can never
in itself result in Life, Life being always the cause of
organization and never the effect of it,"1 The external
form may be the same for a given period, notwithstanding
the changes going on in the vigor of her life and the sub
ject matter of her consciousness; but the propriety and
effectiveness of the organization are always in proportion to
the degree that the organization corresponds in fitness to
the node and vigor of her life. The lack of adequate
correspondence will occasion restiveness and friction. If
the plastic power of life be restrained by a false exercise
of authority, if the external form of organization be con
tinued by arbitrary might, the dynamic forces of the
Church may issue in convulsive throes, as in the sixteenth
century, and a new epoch of history may develop itself
by a seeming catastrophe.
2. The idea of the Church, the distinctive qualities of
her divine-human life, gain expression progressively. The
New Testament compares the history of the individual
believer to the history of the individual man. The begin
ning and progress of the new life of faith is like infancy
passing into childhood, youth into manhood, manhood
into the maturity of age. The truth of this analogy our
Saviour inculcates when He says that the kingdom of
heaven is like the 'mustard tree,' and when He calls
Himself the 'true vine.' Like a tree, like the vine, like
1 Natural Law in the Spiritual World, p. 383.

1 290.] The Christian Church. 475
a child, the Church develops and realizes her type by a
process of growth.
The growth of the Church is intensive. Development
and progress are within herself. Being the body of Christ,
the abode of the Holy Spirit, she bears in her bosom man
ifold living powers and a boundless fulness of saving
grace that can be actualized, as the occasion arises, only
in the course of the ages. Among other phenomena the
actualization of her fulness may be seen especially in the
progress of the Christian righteousness of her individual
•members and in her social organization, also in her pro
gressive knowledge of Christian truth.
The growth of the Church is extensive. She multiplies
her membership. She enlarges her territory. She sub
dues hostile nations, turning her enemies into allies. She
modifies the character and attitude of civil governments.
She originates institutions of charity. She turns the
material improvements of the world into agencies for the
enlargement of her spiritual activities.
There is sympathy between her extensive and intensive
growth. The first and most essential necessity is her in
ternal development as to spirituality, morality, Christian
consciousness, knowledge. Internal development condi
tions the worth, the gain of territorial extension, condi
tions the vigor, the wisdom and self-sacrifice with which
her missionary activity may be pursued. True it is that
wise propagandism will react upon the intrinsic powers of
the Church and stimulate their vitality; but such reac
tion will be healthy only in the degree that propagandism
is prompted and imbued with the love of Christ. If the
work of the Church in making disciples of all nations
lacks the inspiration of devout faith, or is wanting in gen-

476 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
uine love to her Lord, the reaction cannot be healthy; and
the Church, though distinguished for the outgoing of her
energies and for practical benevolent activities, may never
theless be receding.
3. Of 'the Christian Church the Creed predicates unity,
holiness, catholicity; qualities which are elements of her
essential nature as the body of Christ glorified.

CHAPTER IV.
PROPERTIES OF THE CHURCH.
I. UNITY.
§ 291.
The Church of Christ as to her essence is but one,
like the vine and its branches.
Though one life, she bears in herself differentiating
types of character, of organization and of doctrine
operative through her entire history.
Types are definite ideal possibilities immanent in
her constitution that by development become the forms
in which the manifold wealth of unity embodies itself.
The Church maintains her essential unity, both in
tensively and extensively, against all opposition.
1. Unity arises necessarily from the truth that "there
is one God, one Mediator also between God and men,
Himself man, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself a ransom
for all."1 As there is but one Mediator there is also but
one body. So St. Paul teaches: "There is one body, and
one Spirit, even as also ye were called in one hope of your
1 1 Tim. ii. 5.

? 291.] Properties of the Church. 477
calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of all, who is over all, and through all, and in all." 1
Since the Church is the regenerate race of which the
Second Man is the Head, her oneness is organic, like the
unity of the human body. As the human body is one
life, so the Church is one life, the life of Christ glorified
in the organism of a new community quickened by the
Holy Spirit. As the human body has many members,
and 'all the members have not the same office,' so the one
Church has many parts, each part having its own posi
tion and fulfilling its own function. Christian commun
ions constitute different members of the one kingdom.
Each communion may have an organization of its own;
but all organizations, being members of one organism, like
the organization of the eye in the organism of the human
body, and informed by one Spirit, ' are one body in
Christ, and severally members one of another.'2
2. The method of correct judgment and thought is pre
sented to ecclesiology by the method of teaching used by
our Lord and His apostles.3 According to their method
'Eph. iv. 4-6. 2Rom. xii. 5.
s Our Lord and His apostles teach, primarily, the unity of the consti
tution of the Church, objectively considered ; then also the obligation is
enforced on believers to realize this unity in the experience and actual
state of the Church. In this respect she has come short. Though all
Christ's members in all confessions and sects form "one Spirit, in one
hope," they are not in external organization one. Paul in Eph. iv. 4-6,
"does not," as Olshausen remarks, "mean to say that the Church is no
church unless she exhibits herself as ev aapa ml ev nvevfia, but that she is
not in her normal state. He does not say, that the Church holds exactly
the same doctrine on the Lord, on faith, baptism, and one God, but that
she has but one Lord, she has but one faith, one baptism, one God and
Father of all. Differences in doctrine may exist without impairing es
sential unity."

478 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
of apprehension the unity of the Church is not a single
organization, like Romanism subject to the authority of
the Pope, but an organism like the mustard-tree or like
the Adamic race. Humanity, though the same the world
over, bears in its mysterious depths differentiating possi
bilities or types; different types develop into different
¦nationalities, each nation bearing the definite marks of its
own type ; and the past history of the world shows that
different types commonly develop, not in the sympathy
of one nation with other nations, but in the character of
intense antipathy. Yet neither differentiating types nor
the hostilities of nations annul the essential unity of man
kind. As there is but one physiology for all men'aud one
anatomy, so there is but one psychology, one mathe
matics, one logic; the fundamental pattern, the prime
ethical qualities, the categories and laws of thought are
the same among all nations in spite of their hatreds, jeal
ousies and wars.
Like the race of the first man is in pne respect the race
of the Second Man. Being an organic unity, it bears
in itself differentiating possibilities which develop into
permanent variations of cultus and organization.
The Church from the very beginning reveals these dif
ferentiating tendencies. By common consent we have at
least three distinct types of Christianity reflected by the
New Testament, the Petrine, the Pauline and the Johan-
nean type ; yet the apostolic Church was in truth one
body. Varying characteristics, varying modes of appre
hending Christian truth as between Peter and Paul, differ
ent spheres of evangelistic work, Peter among the Jews,
Paul among the Gentiles, and varying methods of service,
some insisting on the circumcision of Gentile converts,

j 291. ] Properties of the Church. 479
others firmly resisting circumcision, did not annul the fact
that all were one body.
3. The argument of Paul in his epistle to the Ephesians
vindicates this conception of unity. Between Jews and
Gentiles there was an inherited chasm, deep and broad,
which asserted itself among converts from these two
classes and endangered the peace of the Church. Paul
affirms the 'one body' of the 'one Lord,' but distinctly
recognizes the wide difference between the history and
attitude of Gentiles and Jews. Christ "brake down the
middle wall of partition, having abolished in His flesh the
enmity, even the law of commandments contained in
ordinances; that He might create in Himself of twain one
new man, so making peace; and might reconcile them both
in one body unto God through the cross, having slain the
enmity thereby: * *- for through Him we both have
our access in one Spirit unto the Father."1 Though
there are in the Church of Ephesus two very different
classes of converts, there is but ' one new man, ' the life
of which the Gentile convert possesses as really as the
Jewish convert; but the common possession of the one
new life does not destroy typical differences, nor are typical
differences incompatible with the 'one body.' It is the
middle wall of partition, the law of commandments con
tained in ordinances which was broken down ' through
the cross;' and it is the ancient mutual 'enmity' between
the Jew and the Gentile which Christ ' abolished in His
flesh.' The same organic conception is vindicated by Paul in
his epistle to the Colossians. The 'old man' with his
doings is put off, and the 'new man,' renewed after the
1 Eph. ii. 14-18.

480 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [booej.
image of Him that created him, is put on, in whom
"there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and un-
circumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman: but
Christ is all, and in all." ' Typical differences of nation
ality continue conformably to the laws of humanity. Even
wide differences in point of civil status, as between bond
man and freeman, or of culture, as between Greek and
barbarian, may be perpetuated for ages, yet there are not
for this cause many churches of Christ, but only 'one
body' for each of whose members ' Christ is all, and in all.'
Types of life have been operative throughout the history
of the Church. Each type may realize itself in a distinct
form. In every instance the realization may be more or
less defective, and the organization may in greater or in
less degree embody the genius of Christianity. History
presents three main branches of church life: the Greek
Catholic, the Roman Catholic and the evangelical Pro
testant. Though no one of these main branches has
de'veloped an ideal character, nevertheless each has a
wealth of vitality peculiar to itself, which has been un
folded in varying forms of doctrine, worship and organi-
tion. There is one Lord, one Creed, one Baptism, one Law,
one Holy Communion, inasmuch as there is one new Man,
one Holy Spirit.2 Variations in doctrinal apprehension,
in cultus and in organization are not only consistent with
'Col. iii. 9-1 1.
2 In 1 Cor. xii., says Olshausen, " the unity of the divine Spirit in all
believers appears manifested under various forms as 6iaip'eaeic in different
individuals. This implies the divisions of the gifts (see Acts ii. 3), as
that of light into colors by the prism. Unity of the Spirit is thereby not
annulled. The same Spirit is refracted into various gifts according to
the capacity of the soul with which the Spirit comes into contact."

1 291.] Properties of the Church. 48 1
church unity, but according to Rom. xii. and 1 Cor. xii.
are demanded by it. For no one formula of doctrine can
be final; no one office of worship will express the whole
truth of Christian cultiis; no one kind of organization
adapted to or demanded by a given age can be adequate at
the same time to the needs of all Christian nations, or be
adjusted with equal fitness to every era of history. Vary
ing modes of apprehension are necessary that the whole
Christ may be known; necessary also are varying forms
of organization and differentiated methods of ethical action,
that the genius of the law of love may come to light and
exert its transforming power in all the relations of society
and on all classes of men. Uniformity instead of express
ing the unity of the Church may contravene unity. In
stead of developing the rich manifoldness of the one life,
uniformity may repress the genuine growth of life and
turn organic unity into a mechanism.
It is the violation of the law of Christian love, not dif
ference of organization, that is incompatible with church
unity. Unity is of the Spirit; it is the one fellowship of
life by a living faith, the same in all the branches of the
one new race. Jealousies, antipathies, antagonisms violate
the fellowship of Christ, not confessional or theological
variations. On the representatives of differing confessions
and differing theologies Paul enjoins that they forbear one
another in love, "giving diligence to keep the unity of the
Spirit in the bond of peace," a peace that is consistent with
freedom of thought and of discussion.
4. The Church maintains her essential unity against
the assaults of the world.1 Her persecutions, instead of
'Says Archbishop Leighton : "The preservation of the Church is a
continuing miracle ; it resembles Daniel's safety among the hungry lions,
31

482 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
enervating her vitality, have served the purpose of a disci
pline by which her vitality has been invigorated; even
discordant branches have been consciously brought into
closer fraternal fellowship.
The Church has maintained her unity againsj: the divi
sive forces of sin active in her own constitution. Her
life is but imperfectly realized. Her members are not
immaculate; they are only in process of sanctification.
The law of sin is dethroned, but not utterly abolished.
The body as a whole, as well as each individual member,
cau say with Paul: "I find then the law, that, to me who
would do good, evil is present. For I delight in the law
of God after the inward man: but I see a different law in
my members, warring against the law of my mind, and
bringing me into captivity under the law of sin which is
in my members."1 Nevertheless as compared with the
unity of life common to all branches of the Church the
divisions incident to her present imperfect development
are but superficial phenomena.
Unity accordingly is not to be regarded as a formal or
an external property, like a grain of sand or an arithmet
ical figure. Like the Adamic race the new race is one
organically. Notwithstanding the radical divisipn of
Jewish Christians and Gentile Christians in the apogtolic
age; notwithstanding the antagonism between Roman
Catholicism and evangelical Protestantism since the six
teenth century, the kingdom of God is essentially but one
household. Better perhaps to say that the Church is one
like the personal history and character of her Head, who
but prolonged from one age to another. The ship, wherein Christ is,
'may be weather-beaten, but it shall not perish." — Works, p. 443.
1 Rom. vii. 21-23.

?29i.]> Properties of the Church. 483
passing through all the stages of humiliation, dying under
the curse yet approved of God, advancing through different
epochs of exaltation from victory over death in His resur
rection to headship over all worlds at God's right hand, is
the same one, true, only Mediator between God and man.
The Church being one intensively, she is likewise one
extensively. Subject to one Lord, filled by one Spirit,
developing the fulness of one life, she asserts the one life,
the one faith, the one law of love through all the muta
tions of time and amid all the contrasts of space. "This
unity," says Meyer, "is the identity of faith, of love, of
mind and of hope in the different subjects who are led
of the Spirit."
The distinctive type of Christianity is the same now as
in the apostolic age, the same in Protestantism as in
Romanism, in Northern Africa as in England. The con
trast between Romanism and Protestantism reveals vast
differences of the degree and manner in which the one
new life is developed in doctrinal thought and actualized
in conduct and polity ; but compare these differing
branches of the Church with Mohammedanism or Brah-
manism or Confucianism, and it will be found that the
Protestartt and Roman communions are distinguished from
world-religions substantially by the same fundamental
belief, the same law, the same hope. The resemblance
between Buddhism and Roman Catholicism lies only in ex
ternal ceremonial services, whilst the genius of Buddhism
and the genius of Romanism are directly contrary, the
one being negative and atheistic, the other positive and
theistic. There is but one Christian creed, pronounced by all the
historic branches of the Church. All unite in the con-

484 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
fession of one God the Father, and in one Lord Jesus
Christ, the only-begotteu Son of the Father, and in one
Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father, and with the
Father and the Son one God Almighty. All believe the
incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God,
whereby being perfect God He became also perfect Man;
suffered for our salvation, descended into Hades, rose
ao-ain from the dead, and now sitteth at the right hand of
God the Father Almighty, from whence He shall come to
judge the quick and the dead.
The Church universal confesses these essential articles.
They vary somewhat in the form of expression, but the
substance of the articles is the Truth which characterizes
and has characterized all the churches of Christendom.
Of the Apostles' Creed Calvin says: " I have no doubt that
it has been publicly and universally received as a confes
sion of faith from the first origin of the Church, and even
from the days of the apostles."1
When we consider cult'us we find that the cardinal rites
of service are the same. Baptism is the ordinance of ad
mission into her communion. The Lord's Supper is the
sacrament of commemoration and of communion. All
churches obey the last command of our Lord. The doc
trinal apprehension varies ; the mode of observance varies ;
but by the observance of the Supper all show the Lord's
death till He come.
All unite in offering the Prayer of all prayers: Our
Father who art in heaven.
All recognize the authority of the Decalogue as inter
preted by the Head of the Church : Thou shalt love the
1 Calvin's Inst., Bk. II., Ch. 16, 18.

?292.] Properties of the Church. 485
Lord Thy God with all thy heart ; and, Thou shalt love
thy neighbor as thyself.
There is one Creed, but many articles and differentiated
doctrines ; one Baptism, but different modes of ministra
tion ; one Lord's Supper, but different theories as to its
virtue ; one law of love, but manifold precepts.
Her distinguishing marks the Church bears in her or
ganization from age to age, and in every country where
she has planted the cross. In one age more faithful than
in another, in one branch laying stress chiefly on au
thority, in another chiefly on freedom, in one life and
thought being vigorous and progressive, in another retro
gressive or stationary, the Church proves herself in all
lands, more or less perfectly, to be the 'one body' of her
ascended Lord, sometimes actualizing the spirit of her
organic oneness on a lower plane, sometimes actualizing
it on a higher plane of Christian peace.
2. HOLINESS OF THE CHURCH.
§ 292.
The Church is holy. Holy the Church is for the
same reason that she is one, a unity.
The Church is holy negatively, being emancipated
from the law of sin. Holy she is also positively inas
much as in a degree she fulfills the law of Christ.
Obedience to the law of Christ conditions actual
deliverance from sin.
1. The life of Christ glorified is a perfectly holy life.
The Church being His mystical body, His holy life be
comes the life of the Church. Engrafted into Him by the
Spirit, her members are the members of Christ. As the
branch has in itself the specific life of the vine, so the

486 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
membership of the Church possesses, in principle, the dis
tinguishing qualities of the risen, triumphant Christ.
The Spirit by whose agency the Church lives in Christ
and becomes His mystical body is the Holy Spirit. Be
gotten of the Spirit, her members are formed after the,
image of their perfected Lord.
The sacraments of the Church are holy ordinances.
'Baptism transfers its subjects from the unholy kingdom
of ' the first man Adam' into the holy kingdom of 'the
last Adam' who is 'a life-giving spirit' Says St. Paul:
"We were buried with Him through baptism into death:
that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the
glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of
life."1 The Lord's Supper commemorates the mediator-
ship of Him who is Redeemer and Saviour; it seals to
believers the forgiveness of sins; and with His crucified
body and shed blood He Himself feeds and nourishes them
to everlasting life. Her worship is holy worship, being
on the one hand separation from ungodliness and world
liness, and on the other self-consecration to the service of
God, the absolutely holy One. Every prayer is, directly
or indirectly, supplication against some form or conse
quence of sin and an aspiration after godlikeness. Praise
celebrates God's wisdom, goodness and grace, extolling
Him for His rich blessings.
Therefore this ni}'stical communion which through the
indwelling of the Holy Spirit embodies the life of Christ
glorified, is a holy communion, holy in its constitution, in
its agencies, in its work, in its design and influence. ' ' Noth
ing," says Gardner Spring, "is more characteristic of the
cross than- the holy salvation it reveals. It saves not in
'Rom. vi. 4.

§292.] Properties of the Church. 487
sin, but from sin."1 The imperfections and moral short
comings of her membership do not annul the law of her
life, nor change the adaptation of her constitution to the
ends of holiness.
2. The Church is holy negatively. As Christ by His
expiation of the* guilt of sin, by His victory over death
and the kingdom of darkness, Himself has a redeemed
humanity, so His mystical body by sharing the virtue of
His expiation and victory is a redeemed humanity. The
Church has boldness to enter into the holy place by the
blood of Jesus, by the way which He dedicated for us, a
new and living way, through the veil, that is to say, His
flesh.2 Says Paul: "Ye were washed, ye were sanctified,
ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
in the Spirit of our God."3 Christ being raised from the
dead,, dieth no more; death no more hath dominion over
Him. As by His resurrection the law of sin is in princi
ple overcome for His Church as really as it is overcome
relatively to Himself, the Church is not under the domin
ion of sin. Death no more hath dominion over her mem
bers, and for the reason that death no more hath dominion
over her Head. The death that Christ died He died unto
sin once; but the life He liveth, He liveth unto God.
Even so has the Church died unto sin, being crucified
with Christ, and her life is hid with Christ in God.*
3. The ChUrch is holy positively. She is no less an
ethical than an organic communion. Her life develops
and reveals itself in positive freedom of will. Positive
freedom of will consists in the doing of the truth, in actual
obedience to the law of Christ; and the law of Christ for
'Attraction of the Cross, p. 205. 2Heb. x. 19, 20.
ai Cor. vi. 11. 4Rom. vi. 11. Col. iii. 3.

488 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book -.
His members is the law of love, of love to God and love to
man, that law as He realized it in His personal history on
earth.1 The positive holiness of the Church is on the one hand
the dynamic of her life; all the instincts, all the spiritual
and ethical tendencies of the new creation in Christ, ate
toward Him and for Him, the spontaneous sympathies of
her heart being with His kingdom and with its final per
fection. On the other hand the Church by the force of
will seeks consciously to determine her activity as a whole
and regulates the moral conduct of her members according
to the divine will as this is exemplified by her Head. Her
aim is not to. please herself, but to do the will of the Father
on earth as His will is done in heaven. Rooted in the
perfected life of Christ glorified, the Church is predestined
to realize the profound impulses of her life toward holiness
in her organization, in her creed, in her prayers, and in her
moral perfection. To a degree she has been fulfilling and
is now fulfilling her divine vocation by her persevering
work in the service of Christian truth and human rieht-
eousness. The historical fact that for nineteen centuries the Church
has in her actual condition but partially realized the pure
and holy dynamic of her new life does not contradict the
truth that she is a holy communion. "Sanctification
means progressive appropriation by man of the life of the
Son of God; the formation in him, by successive stages,
of the image of Christ"2 The law of sin is not now
utterly abolished ; emancipation from the evils of the fall
is not now complete. Yet the principle of Christian holi
ness is active in her history, and it has borne rich and
'John xv. 12. i John iv. 21. 2 Lux Mundi, p. 424.

3 292.] Properties of the Church. 489
abundant fruit. The Church is the only communion that
has asserted the law of positive Christian holiness; and by
positive Christian holiness we may mean nothing less than
the spotless purity, the unique righteousness and perfect de
votion to God which is exemplified by the personal history
of the Son of Man. Such a righteous life had never been
seen, nor even conceived by human genius.1 No religious
teacher of any pagan nation, no Jewish prophet, can bear
comparison with Him. Yet it is He who is for the
Church the ideal of her holiness. He is the pattern ever
confronting her faith. It is He whom she is ever striving
to follow. This steadfast faith in Him who is the reality
of a perfectly holy ideal, and His constant communion in
the Spirit with His people, impart to the Church an
essential quality of divine, sanctity which distinguishes no
other communion. That her ministry and her member
ship are not now like Himself completely holy only
signifies that the mediatorial work of Christ in the history
of His mystical body is itself not yet final.
4. Like revelation and redemption, like the love of
righteousness and the hatred of sin, so positive holiness
and negative holiness involve each other. There is no
deliverance from the dominion of sin unless the law of the
spirit of life in Christ Jesus is the active principle of
believers; and in whatever degree this new law becomes
an active principle the perverting influence of sin on
Christian character disappears. Each form of holiness
conditions the other ; but the two things are not coordi
nate. The primary condition is the new life. The com
munion of faith with Christ conditions the possibility
1 Not by Socrates in Thaetetus of Plato, 176, Jowett, III., p. 378, though
for a pagan his conception of God and righteousness is extraordinary.

49° Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
of actual salvation. Only in the degree that the Church
in doctrine and worship, in government and discipline
and in works of charity, is actuated by love and truly
fulfils the will of God, is she in reality emancipated from'
'the dominion and' purified from the taint of sin.
3. CATHOLICITY OF THE CHURCH.
§ 293.
The Church is catholic. In distinction from Judaism
and from ethnic religions Christianity is designed and
fitted for all races and for all nations.
1. The title ' catholic,' from the Greek, KaBolmbg, is the
equivalent of the Latin derivative universal, and agreeably
to the force of its component parts, >cara and Moc, it means
that the Church is through or diffused among all nations
and tribes. Christians of the first centuries used the title
to mark an essential characteristic which distinguishes the
Church from the Abrahamic covenant, from the Mosaic
economy and from Judaism, different stages of the pre-
Christian religion confined only to one nation. The title
also distinguished the early Church from heretical sects
developed from schismatic schools and limited to schis
matic communities, each of which was in principle repel
lent toward others. The Church, "in distinction from
Judaism, embraced Gentiles and Jews, Greeks and barba
rians, bondmen and freemen. In contradistinction from
heretical sects, Christians affirmed the same Creed in all
places and among all peoples.
In our age the title 'catholic,' as naming an essential
quality of the Christian Church, has the same meaning,
but by implication it asserts a wider contrast Now as

g 293.] Properties of the Church. 491
then the Church is catholic in contrast with Judaism,
which still characterizes a single nationality; catholic also
in contrast with communities of sects which deny one or
more of the fundamentals of Christianity and are con
fined to one period of time or to one or more countries,
such as the Manicheans of the fourth and fifth centuries,
or the Socinianism of the Reformation age, or the Oneida
communism or the Mormonism of our own century.
The Church is catholic in a still broader sense. As
regards her claim to recognition and obedience she asserts
a contrast with all world religions. The religion of Egypt
suited the Egyptians, and the religion of Zarathrustra
the ancient Persians; so in our day the Brahmanism of
India has a measure of adaptation to the temperament,
habits of life and thought of the Hindoo, and the fetichism
of Africa answers to the superstitions and degradation of
savage negro tribes; but neither the one nor the other can
retain its authority within its own territory when the light
of Christian truth illumines its devotees, much less could
either now take root and become the molding force in the
Christian nations of Europe or America. Christianity
on the contrary is in sympathy with the deepest needs and
the. best aspirations of all races and nations, of the Hindoo
and the African no less than of the European and the
American. Countries are separated by mountains, rivers and oceans;
races by original types of humanity; nations by heredity,
by language, manners and customs. Each race is by the
perverseness of human nature repellent in a degree to
other races, each nation to other nations, notwithstanding
the fact that God "made of one every nation of men for
to dwell on all the face of the earth." Regardless of

49 2 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
these separations, divisions, antagonisms, the Church ap
proaches each and all in the one Holy Spirit, with the
same creed, the same grace, the same sacraments, the
same prayer, the same law, proclaiming the forgiveness
of sin and eternal life to men, women and children, and
proving by the experience of all classes of people that the
Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one
that believeth. Says Pearson:
" I conclude that this Catholicism of the Church, consisteth generally
in uuiversalit)', as embracing all sorts of persons, as to be disseminated
through all nations, as comprehending all ages, as containing all nec
essary and saving truths, as obliging all conditions of men to all kinds
of obedience, as curing all diseases, and planting all graces in the souls
of men."' 2. The word catholic, naBoiLKbc, does not occur in the text
of the New Testament; but this essential property, as ex
pressed by the word, intones all the books of the New
Testament. Catholicity comes prominently to view in
the apostolic commission. Says our Lord: "Go ye there
fore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them
into the name of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost." The unlimited compass of the apostolic
commission is likewise declared by our Lord in His ex
position of the parable of the tares, where He teaches
that "the field is the world."2 It is implied also by the
words of "the voices" when the seventh angel of the
Apocalypse sounded. Then there followed great voices
in heaven, and they said: "The kingdom of the world is
become the kingdom of our Lord, and of His Christ: and
1 Pearson on the Creed, p. 522.
2Matt. xiii. 38. "The gospel is good seed to be scattered everywhere.''
Schaff.

? 293] Properties of the Church. 493
He shall reign forever and ever."1 Head over all things,
He claims for the communion of His Church all nations.
Two factors enter into the idea of catholicity: the adap
tation of the Church with equal fitness to all nations, and
the special receptivity of all nations to the spiritual life
and fellowship of the Church.
The religion of Christ is adjusted not specifically to the
peculiar traits of an individual, not to the accidental attri
butes of a nation; the adjustment is deeper and broader.
Christ answers to all the needs of man as man; He satisfies
' the universal yearning after deliverance from moral and
physical evil ; He can make every man a sharer of His
resurrection life, whatever be his race or his nationality,
whatever his ignorance or degradation. Such an adjust
ment cannot be predicated of any other person or of any
other communion. On the other hand all souls are re
ceptive toward Christian truth. One nation may indeed
have a greater degree of spiritual receptivity than another;
but even the least receptive nations have capacities for
the Christian faith and for the Christian Church, more
profound, more persistent, more controlling than they
have for those elements of truth which either the lower or
higher systems of ethnic religion possess. Though utterly
ignorant of Christianity, though debased by superstition,
yet the heart of the pagan, dissatisfied with itself, yearns
unconsciously for that peace, that hope and victory attain
able alone in the spiritual communion of Christ and His
kingdom. If we duly emphasize these two factors in their recip
rocal relations, we may get a scriptural conception of the
cathoMcity of Christianity; and since the Church is the
'Rev. xi. 15.

494 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
communion in the Spirit of the Christian life, we may also
in consequence get a true conception of the catholicity
of the Church.
3. Like as her glorified Head claims to be the only ideal
Man for all men, so the Church claims to be the only
catholic institution; and because catholic she is invested
with the right, and she asserts the right, to plant the cross
in every laud, and by the preaching of the Gospel to
subdue every nation to the Christian creed. Therefore
she puts on the armor of the Spirit and fights the good
fight. To be true to herself she must carry on a warfare'
against sin and vice, against superstition and misery. So
also since she approaches the Jew, the pagan and the
Mohammedan with the rich spiritual blessing which no
other religion can bestow, but for which every man yearns,
she carries on her warfare, either directly or indirectly, not
by carnal weapons but with the sword of the Spirit, against
all other religions. For as it is the prerogative of her
Head to be King of kings and Lord of lords, so it is the
vocation of His Church to supplant every other religious
belief, to overthrow every antagonizing organization, and to
gather into her fold all the families of mankind. What is
true of Jesus Christ is true also of His mystical body.
Jesus says: "He that is not with me is against me; and
he that gathereth not with me scattereth."1 In relation
to: Him no neutral position is possible. "Indecision for
Him," as Olshausen remarks, "is decision against Him."
Appropriating the language of Isaiah it may be said:2
Whosoever shall gather together against the Church shall
fall: no weapon that is formed against her shall prosper;
and every tongue that shall rise against her in judgment
1 Matt. xii. 30. 2 Isaiah liv. 17 ; lx. 3.

§ 293.] Properties of the Church. 495
God shall condemn. Nations shall come to thy light, and
kings to the brightness of thy rising.
4. Catholic is one of the distinguishing epithets applied
to the Church by the original Christian Creed: "I believe
in the holy catholic Church;" the Creed which affirms the
fundamental articles of Christian truth, and which all the
historic branches of the Reformation join in confessing ;
yet in our age the epithet has been surrendered by a large
majority of evangelical Christians. Evangelical Protest
antism has in great degree lost the idea; or perhaps it is
more correct to say that inasmuch as the true idea of
catholicity has to a large extent disappeared from the con
sciousness of the Protestant Church, the word itself has
been discarded and even prejudice excited against the use
of it. By the disuse of the epithet and by estrangement
from the truth it expresses we have been retreating from a
portion of the vantage ground on which the Reformation
stands, and by logical consequence have been giving it
exclusively to the Roman Church, which by its own title,
Roman Catholic, is at most only one historic branch. Yet
catholic is the word which, more than any other, expresses
the fundamental claim of the Reformers, and when wisely
vindicated justifies the disruption of the sixteenth century.
This singular anomaly confronts us : the title which,
agreeably to the teaching of the New Testament, expresses
the universal claim and destiny of the Christian Church
as a whole, is appropriated by and commonly conceded to
a body representing but one section.

496 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
4. ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC CHURCH.
§ 294.'
Unity, holiness and catholicity are the 'distinguishing
predicates of a spiritual organism. Each invplves the
others. Nor can any one property be rightly devel
oped in greater measure than another. Like the
Church, so the predicates of the Church are now but
partially actualized.
1. Catholicity presupposes unity. Only one Lord, only
one Church. One incarnate Son, one Holy Spirit; one
new creation, one mystical body; therefore, as there is but
one Mediator between God and men, so there is but one
spiritual communion into which all nations and all classes
are called; and into this communion all are called because
it is the only spiritual body in which eternal life and
salvation are available. Martensen puts the question:
" Must we not allow that the period of her first inspira
tion, when her true genius was first manifest, and won her
earliest results, is to be taken as the prototype of her entire
subsequent development?" '
Unity reveals its force in catholicity. The one Son of
Man, through the Church, authenticates Himself to be the
ideal Man, the only true Head of humanity, by approach
ing all races, all nations, with the same love; by respond
ing with equal freedom to all needs, however various or
discordant; by transforming all grades of civilization or of
barbarism into the image of Himself, and diffusing in the
hearts of all believers the same peace, the same joy, the
same hope. In no way can the ChUrch, to the exclusion
of contrary religious organizations, prove herself to be the
1 Christian Dogmatics, p. 337.

1 294.] Properties of the Church. 497
only communion of life and salvation but by .claiming,
embracing and transforming all races and classes of man
kind. "The unity of the Church is in the tongues of
all nations."
Notwithstanding that the Protestantism of our time
commonly does injustice to itself by failing to claim for
her .communion the title of catholic, yet during the nine
teenth century, especially the latter half of it, the evan
gelical Protestant Church has been demonstrating, as
never before, that she is partaker of the original life of the
one new creation; and, by claiming for herself the whole
world, and aiming at the subjugation of the world to the
sway of her spiritual sceptre, that the life-blood of New
Testament Catholicism is flowing in her veins.
Unity presupposes and includes holiness. If the Church
were not in principle holy she would not be in principle a
unity. Sin sets man against God, against law and order,
truth and right. As a consequence sin sets man against
man, tribe against tribe, nation against nation. In all its
relations sin is alienating and divisive. Holiness is the
contrary power. Law and order, truth and right resolve
discord into harmony, alienation into peace. Righteous
love binds men to Jesus Christ, believer to believer, each
branch of the Church to all branches. The idea of one
Church implies that her life is a holy life.
Conversely, holiness presupposes and includes unity.
If the Church were not in fact the one only mystical body
of her glorified Head, she would not by the law of her life
be a holy communion. Christ glorified is the only foun
tain of regenerate life; and His Holy Spirit is the only
agency by whom men are in Him created anew. He,
active by His word and Spirit, is the only One by whom
32

498 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
the law of sin is broken, by whom selfishness and hostili
ties are resolved into the fellowship of love. Hence if the
Church were not the new race, if she were not the body in
which the one Holy Spirit is living and developing the
one new life toward perfection, she could not be holy.
Unity, holiness and catholicity, the essential properties
of the Christian Church, are so connected objectively, so
vitally interdependent, that we cannot think adequately
of either, unless we have some measure of correct insight
into the distinctive qualities of the others.
2. Nor can any one property prevail in greater meas
ure than the others. It is the one life of Christ that
is both holy and catholic. Since unity and harmony
stand in positive holiness, the Church can be actually one
in her manifestations as she is one in the principle and
law of her existence, only in the degree that the dividing
forces of sin are destroyed. And she can be catholic in
reality only as the one life of Christ is ideally developed,
and as the one will of Christ is fulfilled by her member
ship. External unity without commensurate holiness
becomes a caricature. Catholicity, or the purpose of
bringing all nations under the teaching and government
of the Church, unless the Church possess a degree of gen
uine holiness answerable to the demands of such a purpose,
becomes a monstrous abuse.
The prevalence of any attribute, in order to be genuine
and real, must be commensurate with the intensive growth
and extensive actualization of the life of Christ immanent
in her constitution.
3. Like the Church herself, the properties of the
Church, though always existent and active, become only
partially actual in her history on earth. Her history re-

1 294.] Properties of the Church. 499
sembles the history of her Lord. Though sinless from the
beginning and through His entire ministry, He ' advanced
in wisdom;' advanced from one epoch of His mediator-
ship to another, looking forward to His resurrection and
exaltation as the ultimate perfection of His divine-human
personality. The difference between the history of Christ
on earth and the history of His Church in her militant
state is in some respects great; as regards sin the difference
is even essential Nevertheless the resemblance is regu
lative of a scriptural conception of the Church.
Like Himself she is now in the state of humiliation.
As He was in conflict with the wickedness of men and the
kingdom of darkness approaching Him from without, so
she is struggling with the mighty powers of sin active in
her own communion. As He ' for the joy that was set
before Him endured the cross, despising shame,' and after
the triumph of His resurrection sat dowu at the right
hand of God, so His Church is now bearing the cross
and confessing her imperfections, whilst looking forward
in hope to His second advent. Now the 'new man' is
limited by the 'old man;' now spiritual life is bound by
an uncongenial environment, the true genius of Christian
character being hidden. Says Paul: Your life is hid with
Christ in God. "The life of which the Son is the essence
lies shrouded and concealed." At her consummation she
will attain to complete recovery from the poison of sin.
When Christ, the life of the Church, shall be manifested,
then shall she also with Him be manifested in glory.1
"The world which persecutes, despises, ignores now, will
then be blinded with the dazzling glory of the revela
tion."2 Only in the degree that the Church is in faith
1 Col. iii. 3, 4. 2Lightfoot.

500 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
and discipline, in doctrine, government and character, at
one with Christ her Head, and at one with herself by the
spiritual bond of love to Christ, can she in fact become,
outwardly as well as inwardly, the one true communion
for all the nations of the world.

CHAPTER V.

FUNCTIONS OF THE SPIRIT IN THE COMMUNION OF THE
CHURCH. § 295-
As the office of Christ is related to His mediatorial
work so are the functions of the Holy Spirit related to the
quickening and saving work of the. Spirit. The functions
of His office are the manner of fulfilling His mediatorial
agency. There is also a very close connection between the func
tions of the Spirit's office and the functions of Christ's
office. The office of Christ is but one office; so is the
office of the Spirit but one, for the glorified Christ fulfils
His mediatorial office in and by the agency of the Spirit.
The functions, of the office of Christ are threefold, pro
phetic, priestly and kingly. Christ teaches, atones and
governs. Therefore the functions of the office of the Holy
Spirit are threefold, prophetic, priestly and kingly. The
Spirit is the mediating agency by whom Christ becomes
the light, the atonement and the law of the Church.
The Spirit has a prophetic function: He reveals and
teaches. The -Spirit has a priestly funetion: He makes
God and man one communion in Christ. The Spirit has

4296.] Functions, of the Spirit, in the Church. 501
a kingly function : He animates and governs the life and
conduct of the Church. § 296.
The office of the Spirit is prophetic. The Spirit
reveals Christ in the communion of the Church. By
revealing Christ the Spirit manifests Himself. By
revealing Christ in His members, the Spirit reveals
man to himself.
1. The Spirit reveals the historical and glorified Christ
to the Church by revealing Him in the history of her
communion and in the experiences of her membership.
In other words, the Church by faith possesses Christ
and lives in Him, forasmuch as her members are builded
together upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Christ Jesus Himself being the chief corner-stone, for a
habitation of God in the Spirit.1 Our Lord says: "How
beit when He, the Spirit of truth, is come, He shall guide
you into all the truth: for He shall not speak from Him-:
self; but what things soever He shall hear, these shall He
speak: and He shall declare unto you the things that are
to come. He shall glorify me: for He shall take of mine,
and declare it unto you.2 All things whatsoever the
Father hath are mine: therefore said I, that He taketh of
mine, and shall declare it unto you." In the formula
'Spirit of truth,' the word truth is to be taken objectively.
The glorified Christ is the object that in the Spirit con
fronts faith and is revealed to faith. "After the Father
shall have exalted Christ personally to glory," Godet says,
"the Holy Spirit will cause His celestial image to beam
forth from on high into the hearts of the disciples, and
'Eph. ii. 19-22. 2 John xvi. 13-15; xv. 26; xiv. 16, 26.

502 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. rr.o.K 7.
through them into the hearts of all believers." The word
is to be taken also subjectively. The Spirit is He by
whose agency believers possess the truth and do the truth.
Jesus Christ who, in Himself, is the true light of the
world becomes light for the Church as a whole and for
the individual member, inasmuch as the Spirit who is
given, 'that He may be with you forever,' is the living
bond of fellowship between Christ and His Church.1 The
Church sees Christ by faith and knows Christ by faith,
through the illumination of the Spirit. This inward
teaching, this witness of the Spirit with our spirit that
we are children of God, is the most direct mode of the
self-manifestation of Jesus -Christ "No man can say that
Jesus is the Lord but in the Holy Spirit"2
2. By revealing Christ in the Church the Spirit reveals
God. Of God the Father Jesus Christ in His person and
mediatorship is the absolute manifestation. In Him the
true glory of God shines forth through the inspiration and
illumination of the Spirit. The Church alone is the abode
of His Spirit; hence the Church alone may truly know the
being and attributes of God. Says our Lord: "Ye know
the Spirit of truth, for He abideth with you, and shall
be in you." The world cannot know God truly,3 because
'Says the Heidelberg Catechism: "The Holy Spirit makes me by a
true faith partaker of Christ and all His benefits.'' 53. "The Holy
Spirit dwells both in Christ and in us." 76.
2 1 Cor. xii. 3. Alford says: " The Holy Spirit is the Power pervading
the speaker, the Element in which he speaks."
3 John xiv. 17. Says Augustine: "By me (Christ) men come, to me
they come, in me they rest. For when we come to Him, we come to the
Father also, because through an equal an equal is known ; and the Holy
Spirit binds, and as it were seals us, so that we are able to rest perma
nently in the supreme and unchangeable Good." — Christian Doctrine,
Book I. 34.

1 296.] Functions of the Spirit in the Church. 503
it does not receive the Spirit of truth whom Christ, the
absolute revelation of God, has given. "The things of
God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God." To the
natural man the " things of the Spirit of God " are " fool
ishness." '
3. By revealing Christ the Spirit manifests the Spirit.
He manifests Himself not as the formative force of nature,
not as the ethical and religious energy ruling the history
of pagan nations, nor only as the inspiration of the Abra
hamic covenant, of the Mosaic economy and of the pro
phets, but He manifests Himself distinctively as the Spirit
of truth, the Spirit proceeding from Jesus Christ, and com
municating to the Church that truth which Christ is, and
was, and will ever be. Manifesting Himself as the Spirit
of the new creation, He brings to light: 1. His work in
the Christian Church as distinguished from His work in
nature, in the history of pagan nations and in the history
of the elect people; 2. He indirectly declares the import
and teleology of His prevenient activity in creation, in
providence and in all the natural and moral spheres of
the human race.
4. By revealing Christ the Spirit also reveals man to
man, the Christian to himself. Man awakes to the per
ception of his moral and spiritual relations to God and to
his fellowmen. Perception passes into consciousness.
On the one hand he begins to recognize his divine origin,
his divine destiny, and his divine aptitudes; on the other
he comes to a sense of his moral corruption, and gains
some insight into the wickedness of sin, the greatness of
his guilt and the reality of the kingdom of darkness.
As a Christian the believer comes to know himself, not
1 1 Cor. ii. 10-16.

504 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
only as depraved, but also as dead unto sin and alive unto
God in Christ Jesus; not as condemned, sold under sin,
but as at peace with God; not as subject to bondage
through fear of death; but as raised together with Christ,
possessing the life which is hid with Christ in God. This
knowledge of himself, of his participation in the resurrec
tion life of the Christ, and of his emancipation from the
law and bondage of sin grows and bears fruit through the
agency of the Spirit in the degree that the believer is
transformed into the likeness of his Lord.
§ 297.
The office of the Spirit has a priestly function.
He leads our apostate race back from Satan to God,
from sin to holiness, from falsehood to truth. The
deliverance from the consequences of the fall presup
poses the new life-communion between men and God
which by the Spirit is quickened.
1. The priestly function of the Spirit is the mode in
which He begins and completes His life-giving work. He
begets the mystical union between Christ and His people.
By virtue of this communion He lives in them and they
live in Him. Says our Lord: "I came that they may
have life, and may have it abundantly." And the apostle
John adds: "He that hath the Son hath the life."1
Thus generating and nourishing the communion of love,
the Spirit supplants the alienation between God and men.
Through the exercise of faith He enables sinners to actual
ize in their history and personal experience the atone
ment of Christ, or the at-one-making virtue of His person
and His mediatorship. 'John x. 10. 1 John v. 12.

2 298.] Functions of the Spirit in the Church. 505
2. His life-giving work involves His saving work.
Effecting the mystical union between believers and Christ,
the Spirit enables them to repent. They experience the
peTdvoui. By true faith they turn to Christ; and by turning
to Christ through the Spirit they turn from the world, the
flesh and the Devil ; they renounce the habits of sin, and
begin a victorious warfare against the powers of Satan.1
In this warfare they are by the Spirit qualified to perse
vere unto the end. Standing in vital communion with
Christ believers actualize in their personal experience the
expiatory virtue of the atoning sacrifice. They may re
joice in the knowledge of sins forgiven and in the hope
of finally attaining to complete victory over death and the
kingdom of darkness.
The life-giving function and the saving function of the
Holy Spirit are the correlative forms of one mediatorial
agency in the personal history of Christ's members. Life-
communion with Christ by faith implies repentance, the
voluntary turning of the heart toward Christ; and repent
ance, this free, self-determined turning of personality,
presupposes the propulsion of the new life.
§298.
The office of the Spirit has a kingly function. The
Spirit is the agency by which the will of Jesus Christ
is active in the life and freedom of the Church, an
agency that is both dynamic and governmental.
1. The pre-incarnate Logos has from the beginning
been sustaining and governing the mysterious processes
of nature and the complex ethical forces of fallen mankind
through the Spirit, the Spirit being the form-producing
'Acts xxvi. 17, 18.

tr;o6 Doctritie on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
power in nature and in the moral order of the world. So
does the incarnate Logos glorified in heaven fulfil His
mediatorial will in the economy and government of the
redeemed race, through the pentecostal outpouring of His
Holy Spirit, ' the Spirit of truth.'
The will of Christ is the immanent law of the constitu
tion of the Church, active from within in the. sub-conscious
depths of her mystical life-fellowship with her transcend
ent Lord. By His all-pervading presence He is ever
vitalizing His word, imparting virtue to the sacraments,
informing the ministry, and directing the progress of her
history. This, dynamic activity of Christ as Head of His
Church prevails by the constant presence of His Spirit.
In the Spirit the will of Christ became and continues to
be this interior law; for, as the New Testament unequiv
ocally teaches, it is by the quickening agency of the Spirit
that the Church and Jesus Christ are one life and one
communion. "The unity of the Holy Spirit is the in
trinsic reason of the unity of the Church."
2. The Spirit is the medium by which the governmental
relation of Christ to His Church becomes effective. Christ
is authority for His people. As their Lord, whose exclusive
right it is to reign, He is ever confronting their faith and
authenticating Himself to their conscience. On the other
hand the Church freeiy determines her will and regulates
her moral activity conformably to His authority and
example. Thus the righteousness of the Son of Man
becomes a characteristic attribute of His faithful members
and of the body of the Church.
This ethical correspondence between the Church and
Christ exists for a twofold reason: Christ is ever speaking
to His people by the Spirit through His written word and

§298.] Functions of the Spirit in the Church. 507
through the preaching of the Gospel ; in response to His
presence and influence His people choose the will of
Christ as their law and seek to govern themselves con
formably to His example, because by the grace of the
Holy Spirit abiding in them they have the requisite moral
ability to live in obedience to His will.
The governmental relation stands in the dynamic rela
tion. The authority which Christ asserts over His people
by His word presupposes His informing presence by the
Spirit. The Church seeks to do the right because by
union to Christ through the indwelling of His Spirit she
is the right ; in principle she occupies the right attitude
toward God. She has in herself undeveloped ethical re
sources, richer and mightier than her experience has as
yet attested.
The actual, visible holiness of the Church is the imperr
feet fruit of that unfathomable communion of life with her
Head, the perfectly holy One, which the Spirit of her
Head has quickened and is ever invigorating.
3. As the mediatorial office of Christ glorified is ful
filled by the Holy Spirit, the functions of the Spirit are in
all respects related to one another as are the prophetic,
priestly and kingly functions of Christ's mediatorial office.
It is important first of all to affirm the unity of the pro
phetic, priestly and kingly functions of the Holy Spirit;
for like the one mediatorship of Christ the office of His
Holy Spirit is but one office. It is just as needful also to
maintain this unity consistently with the objective differ
ences of the Spirit's agency. "There are diversities of
gifts, but the same Spirit." The truth of unity implies
differentiation in His activity; but to emphasize the differ
ence between His functions without clearly recognizing

508 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
and affirming their unity and interdependence, will occa
sion confusion of thought and give rise to errors in practi
cal religion.
4. In all that has been said respecting the quickening
and saving work of the Holy Spirit and respecting the
three functions of His one office, it has been assumed
that the Spirit is active through ordinances 110 less than
through the word, and that the effectiveness of the Spirit's
agency is conditioned on the faith of men.
On the objective side we have the institution of the holy
ministry, also the sacraments of Holy Baptism and the
Lord's Supper. The ministry and the sacraments are
organs through which the Spirit's agency becomes
effective. On the subjective side we have to emphasize the free
response to Christ of the members of His Church. If
faith be wanting, if there be no appropriation of the ful
ness of the Mediator, the functions of the Spirit are
practically inefficacious. They do not issue in the growth
of the Church and in the fidelity of her members.

gagg] The Holy Ministry. 509
CHAPTER VI.
THE HOLY MINISTRY.
§299.
Given the idea of the Christian Church and by con
sequence 'the -communion of saints,' we have also
by implication given therewith two institutions as inte
gral parts of her organization: the ministry of the
Gospel, and the holy sacraments.
The order of statement is not essential ; for neither
institution is derived from the other, and neither exists
after the pattern of the New Testament without the
other. Sacraments are ordinances which presuppose an
order of men by whom they are administered. Minis
ters, being office-bearers, are ambassadors and stew
ards. To be an ambassador implies that to him is
committed the proclamation of the Gospel. To be a
steward of divine mysteries implies that to him the
mysteries of God are committed. He preaches the
word and dispenses ordinances.
To fulfil His mediatorial work among men Christ in
heaven exercises His mediatorial office on earth in and
by the members of His Church. His office fulfilled,
in the Spirit, by men among men, is the manner in
which the ultimate end of His mediatorship is accom
plished. All the members of His Church constitute
the agency of the Spirit by which the ultimate end is
attained , but all have not the same capacities, nor oc
cupy the same place, nor pursue the same calling.
1. Being the fulness of Christ, the Church possesses the
life of Christ and accomplishes His work. The life of
Christ the Church realizes in that by the Spirit she lives

510 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
in Christ and Christ lives in the Church. She fulfils His
work because He lives in her communion as the 'resurrec
tion and the life;' she is the subject of that redemption
from sin which He has achieved. Being the subject of
His resurrection-life and His redemptive work, the Church
fulfils His mediatorial office.
In other words, since Christ is living perennially by the
Spirit in the communion of the Church and is inspiring
her with His mighty love and clothing her with His
mediatorial authority, He is fulfilling the threefold func
tion of His mediatorial office in and by the activities of
the Church; and she by consequence comes to possess in a
subordinate degree the prerogatives of Christ. The Head
is active in the members of the body. As Christ is the
chief Prophet, the only High Priest, the eternal King, His
mystical body is a prophetical, a sacerdotal, a kingly com
munity. This community fulfils these functions because
Christ and His people are one life, make one kingdom,
share the same redemption, and. are the heirs of the same
glory. 2. The vocation of the new spiritual community as a
whole is the vocation to whiqh every individual member
is called, each in his own sphere. Like the glorified Head
of the body so is every member a prophet, a priest, a king.
Every member is a prophet. Says our Lord: "Ye are
the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hid.
So let your light shine before men, that they may see your
good works, and glorify your Father which is in heaven."1
Says the Heidelberg Catechism: "By faith I am a mem
ber of Christ, in order that I also may confess His name."
In his place and within his sphere the believer is a witness
1 Matt v. 14-16.

5 290-] The Holy Ministry. 511
to the mysteries of the Christian creed. "The Spirit of
truth, who goeth forth from the Father, He shall bear
witness of me: and bear ye also witness, because ye have
been with me from the beginning." The believer is an
epistle of Christ, written not with ink, but with the Spirit
of the living God.1
. Every member is a priest. Justified by faith and living
in Christ, he possesses the atonement. He has peace with
God through Christ, and rejoices in hope of glory. There
fore, moved by the mercies of God, he presents his body a
living sacrifice, holy, well-pleasing to God. He is part of
a royal priesthood, that he may show forth the excellen
cies of Him who called him out of darkness into His
marvellous light; or as we are elsewhere taught, he is a
priest unto his God and Father.2 Accordingly the Cate
chism teaches: "I am a member of Christ in order that I
may present myself a living sacrifice of thankfulness to
Him." By virtue of his sacerdotal prerogative every
member is likewise an intercessor. What Bishop Light-
foot says of the ministry of the Gospel may really, but in
a subordinate sense, be predicated of every faithful layman :
he "represents God to man and man to God." Christ
prays for His chosen disciples, yet not for these disciples
only, but for them also that believe on Him through their
word. So in His name believers pray for the coming of
Plis kingdom, that His will may be done, as in heaven, so
on earth. In nearly every epistle Paul enjoins that prayer
'2 Cor. iii. 3. "The Corinthians are Paul's Epistle of recommenda
tion, both to themselves and others; an Epistle, written by Christ, min
istered by Paul; the Corinthians, themselves the writing of Christ,
inscribed, not on tables cf stone, but on hearts, tables of flesh. "— Alford.
2 Rom. xii. 1 ; 1 Pet. ii. 9 ; Rev. i. 6.

512 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book?.
and supplication be made on his behalf. To Timothy he
says: "I exhort therefore, first -of all, that supplications,
prayers, intercessions, thanksgivings, be made for all men;
for kings and all that are in high places." '
Every member is a king; not a servant of sin. The law
of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made him free from
the law of sin and of death. Sin does not reign in his
mortal body, but 'he presents his members as servants of
righteousness unto sanctification. He has the might to
fulfil in his personal history the ethical harmony between
redeemed man and God. In other words, by the exercise
of his spiritual freedom he resists temptation, he reigns
over the sinful impulses of the ' old man,' and to a degree
exemplifies God's law. He possesses divine authority, an
authority which he puts forth by ruling his own spirit2
And by governing his own spirit, he may also assert divine
authority over those who are under him, whether in the
family or the school, whether in the Church or State.
Invested with the authority of Christ, he is entitled to a
place and a voice in the government of the Church ; and
in proportion to fidelity to his trust in the Church, every
member, each in his place, exerts a degree of Christian
influence in shaping the history of the world.
Conformably to this conception of kingship believers
are by the New Testament represented as fighting, con
quering, attaining to enthronement. Paul 'fought the
good fight of faith.'3 He teaches that in tribulation or
persecution ' we are more than conquerors through Him
that loved us.' Jesus said unto His disciples: "Verily I
say unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the
1 Eph. vi. 18 ; i Tim. ii. i. 2 Prov. xvi. 32.
°2 Tim. iv. 7; Eph. vi. 10-20.

g299.] The Holy Ministry. 513
regeneration when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne
of His glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging
the twelve tribes of Israel."1
3. Whilst every member of Christ is a prophet, a priest,
a king, it does not follow that all members hold the same
position and are clothed with the same degree of authority.
In one respect all stand on the same plane; "for in one
Spirit were we all baptized into one body, whether Jews or
Greeks, whether bond or free; and were all made to drink
of one Spirit"2 But the Spirit bestows different gifts and
fits believers for different vocations.
Like the Adamic race the Church, the new race of the
last Adam, is not a mass of -individuals, but an organism,
and by St. Paul is compared to the human body. "For
even as we have many members in one body, and all the
members have not the same office: so we, who are many,
are one body in Christ, and severally members one of
another. " Or as he teaches in another place : " As the
body is one, and hath many members, and all the mem
bers of the body, being many, are one body; so also is
Christ"3 Among the members of the Church " there are
diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit. And there are
diversities of ministrations, and the same Lord. And
there are diversities of workings, but the same God, who
worketh all things in all." Of these diversities of minis
trations under the same Lord some are apostles, some
prophets, some evangelists, some pastors and teachers; and
some are neither apostles nor prophets nor evangelists,
neither pastors nor teachers; but having been baptized into
one body they are members of Christ, each occupying his
'Matt. xix. 28; Rev. iii. 21. 2 1 Cor. xii. 13.
3 Rom. xii. 4, 5; 1 Cor. xii. 12.
33

514 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
owii place. "All these worketh the one and the same
Spirit, dividing to each one severally even as he will."1
With extraordinary clearness, force and beauty the
apostle develops under manifold aspects the analogy be
tween the natural human body and the mystical body of
Christ; constraining us to reflect on the Church scientific
ally under the image, not of a mechanism nor of a volun
tary association, but of a vital whole, an organism, like
the mustard tree, or the vine and its branches. Whilst
there are different office-bearers as well as members who
are only members, all are quickened by the same Holy
Spirit and have the same common Christian vocation, all
are clothed with authority and have prerogatives and per
form functions, each one peculiar to himself, like the hand
and the foot, like the eye and the ear.
"In the Church," says Godet, "which is the organ of Christ's life on
earth (His body), there is not only a multiplicity of members, but also
a diversity of functions, every believer having a particular gift whereby
he ought to become the auxiliary of all the rest. It follows that every
one should remain in his function, that he may be able to render to the
rest the help which he owes them, and that he may not disturb these in
the exercise of their gift."
It is the complemental difference of gifts, the difference
of office and of vocation, like the difference among the
bodily members, that makes the Church a unity. If qual
itative differences among the gifts of the one Spirit did
not exist, the apostolic idea of one Church could- not be
realized. " If they were all one member, where were the
body ? But now they are many members, but one body. ' '
¦Understood agreeably to the context the apostle denotes
•by 'many members' the diversities of gifts, of ministra-
*i Cor. xii. 4-6; xii. 11; Eph. iv. 11.

g 3».] The Holy Ministry. 515
tions and of workings of which he is speaking throughout
1 Cor. xii. § 300.
The office of the ministry sustains a relation in two
directions : a relation to Jesus Christ glorified, and a
relation to the economy of the Church. These two
aspects of the office are reciprocally connected.
1. The holy ministry is an office; and by the authority
of the Founder of Christianity it is an integral part of the
organization of the Church. As to its nature, office is
representative, being an organ through which the body
in which it stands is active. The functions of an office
answer to the constitution of the body which the office
represents, whether that body be an organism or only a
voluntary organization. Offices in the State are clothed
with the authority of the State, whether legislative, judi
cial or executive. Offices in the Church represent the
authority of the Church, each office according to its rela
tive position. The nature of office in the Church and the
nature of office in the State differ as widely as the kingdom
of God differs from the kingdoms of the world. Yet this
wide difference does not make the offices of the Church
less real than offices of the State. The kingdom of God,
Hke the kingdoms of the world, seeks to accomplish its
end by two distinct classes of persons, laymen and office
bearers. 2. The functions of the ministry differ from the vocation
of the layman. A comparison of Christ with His people
furnishes a suitable analogy. There is a sense in which
Christ and His members are identical, for His members
possess His Spirit and share the fulness of His life. Yet

516 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
He and they differ, for He is the Head, the law, the end
of His kingdom ; they receive and appropriate the gifts of
His headship. Analogous to this difference is" the differ
ence between the minister and the layman. Whilst like
all laymen the minister is a member of the Church, and
by virtue of his membership he receives, as well as they,
whatever rights he may have or whatever spiritual func
tions he may perform from the Lord Jesus Christ, yet
being: the ambassador of Christ he ministers in Christ's
name, and being the representative of the Christian com
munity he is an organ of the divine worship of the com
munity. Whilst the prerogatives of the minister differ from those
of laymen, there is nevertheless a profound sense in
which their prerogatives are identical. Baptized into one
Christ and having all been made to drink of one. Spirit,
both so far forth have the same spiritual office, he no
higher than they, they no lower than he. The incarnate
Son differs from His regenerate people in that He is the
Second Man, the beginning of the resurrection ;T yet He is
identical with them inasmuch as He has assumed their
nature and become flesh of their flesh.2 So whilst the
minister as to his office differs from the people, they are
nevertheless partakers together with him of the same
grace, the same salvation, and are the temples of the same
Holy Spirit They possess in Christ the same spiritual
freedom; with Him they are heirs of the same divine
glory. As regards their personal relation to Christ, their
personal rights, their capabilities of exaltation, there is no
difference in kind or degree between those who bear office
in the Christian Church and those who do not.
1 Col. i. 18; i Cor. xv. 20-23. 2 Heb. ii. II.

g3oo.] The Holy Ministry. 517
3. In his direct relation to Jesus Christ the minister is
the representative of Christ, of His authority and grace.
He is the living organ through whom our Lord speaks
and teaches, through whom He dispenses the holy sacra
ments and pronounces His heavenly benedictions. This
direct relation to Christ is however only one aspect of the
office. The minister sustains a direct relation also to the
Christian community. As he is a member of the Christian
community, and as the office is an integral part of the
organism of the Church, the minister is a representative
of the membership as truly as the representative of Christ
Of divine origin, bestowed by the Head of the Church,
the office, since it is the exponent of the whole body of the
membership, is at the same time conferred by their author
ity; for the relation of the membership of the body to' the
office is as real as the relation which the Head of the
Church sustains to the office.
These two concrete relations meet. The office is from
Christ glorified. Its functions are from Him, being de
rived from His own mediatorial office ; and only from
Christ proceeds the virtue of the office. Yet the will of
Christ active on the one hand directly by His Holy Spirit
in and by the ministry, is on the other hand active also in
and through the Christian community. Through the
medium of this community the office is by Christ con
ferred; and through it the right of administration may
also be withdrawn.

518 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
§ 3°x-
It is important to emphasize the office of the minis
try in both relations at the same time.' Whilst assert
ing that the office represents the authority and grace
of Christ, we have to guard against a false dependence
of the membership upon the ministry. Whilst main
taining that the office represents the membership, their
rights and functions, we have to guard against a false
dependence of the ministry upon the will of the mem
bership. i. The office of the ministry is not created by the mem
bers of the Christian community. The community did
not exist before the office. The written word does not
allow us to say that the Church was first constituted by
our Lord, and afterwards the office was instituted by the
people. The origin of the ministry is coeval with the
origin of the Christian membership. In the beginning
the Church was not a body without a head. .The office
exists independently of the will of associated Christians;
and its perpetuity does not depend on their consent.
As Christian people did not originate the office, so
Christian people can neither abolish it nor by some device
or supposed progress of Christianity supersede its neces
sity. On the fitness of a man who ' seeketh the office of a
bishop ' it is the right of the membership to sit in judgr
ment, and their will may determine the choice of a man
on whom the office is to be bestowed; but the office itself
cannot be affected by either their will or their judgment.
The Church is the body of Christ; she possesses a consti
tution of her own, derived from her Lord by the new-
creating agency of the Holy Spirit. Of this constitution
the ministry is . an essential member. The ministry ac-

g3oi.] The Holy Ministry. 519
cprdingly exists in the Church by the same divine warrant
which justifies the observance and perpetuity of Holy
Baptism and the Lord's Supper.
2. Nor does the office of the ministry originate the
Christian community. The written word does not allow
us to assume that either the apostolate or the presbytery
was consummated without a lay membership. On the
day of Pentecost the infant Church did not become a head
without a body. The first laymen were not indebted for
their membership, or for any of their spiritual rights, to
the official acts of the apostles. Men and women assem
bled with the eleven 'in the upper chamber.' All with
one accord continued steadfast in prayer, with the women,
and Mary, the mother of Jesus, and with His brethren,
when suddenly there came from heaven a sound as of the
rushing of a mighty wind. And there appeared unto them
tongues parting asunder, like as of fire; and it sat upon
each of them. And they were all filled with the -Holy
Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the
Spirit gave them utterance.1 The same miraculous gift
of His Spirit by which Christ from heaven invested Peter,
James and John with the powers of the apostolic office,
imparted to the men and women assembled with them in
the upper chamber the life and the prerogatives of true
membership in the new community.
A similar relative independence of the membership pre
vails after the day of Pentecost, for the membership of
converts did not depend absolutely on the official acts of
the apostles. The same thing holds true of the Church
in after ages. Active through the written word, active
through the example, the influence and the words of
'Actsi. 12-14; ii. 1-4.

520 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
Christian parents, the Holy Spirit is 110 less truly active
also immediately in the hearts of the children of the
Church, drawing them toward the love of Christ; and this
agency of the Spirit is the fundamental condition of mem
bership. As regards the ordinance of Baptism it is to be
borne in mind that whilst it is a prerogative of men
invested by ordination with the office of the ministry to
administer the sacraments, the Christian Church has in
all ages affirmed the validity of lay baptism.
Besides, since the ministry sustains a vital connection
both on the one side with Christ glorified and on the
other with His membership, the office presupposes in
every age the mystical body of Christ as a whole; and the
office possesses vitality and truth by virtue of its organic
connection with the whole body no less really than by
virtue of its organic connection with the Head. In all
ages Christ alone is the source of ministerial authority as
of all" the spiritual blessings that come to the Church from
the performance of ministerial functions; yet this authority
is represented as truly by the membership, speaking and
working in their own sphere, as by the ministry.
3. Whilst each constituent, the ministry and the laity,
has its own province, the two parts are vitally and insep
arably connected. A true Christian ministry does not exist
apart, from vital fellowship with the laity; nor does a
genuine Christian lay membership exist apart from fellow
ship with thfe ministry. Nor may we simply maintain
that these two parts of the Church run parallel to each
other, or that they are only contemporaneous facts.- On
the contrary, it is evident from the teaching of our Lord
and from the Acts of the Apostles that each part is an
essential constituent of one spiritual economy. If there

j 3oi.] The Holy Ministry. 521
be no ministry, there is no true Church of Christ. This is
a valid proposition. An organization composed exclu
sively of laymen, claiming to be a Church, would be a
caricature. But it is equally valid to say: if there be no
lay membership, there is 110 true Church. An organiza
tion composed exclusively of ministers, claiming to be the
Church, would also be a caricature. Different as are these
two factors of the economy of the Church, yet neither is
in its own sphere less necessary or less important than
the other. According to the New Testament the idea of
the Church includes both with equal necessity.
When a babe is born it possesses all the organs of a
complete human body; so when on the day of Pentecost
the Church of Christ was born she came into existence a
complete organism. On the day of her birth she was
indeed only the beginning of a mighty historical develop
ment; but no essential part, no endowment, no function
demanded by the idea and mission of this new spiritual
community was wanting. What St. Paul says in the 12th
chapter of his first epistle to the church at Corinth respect
ing diversities of gifts, diversities of ministrations and of
workings, is applicable to the mother Church at Jerusalem
as originally formed by the quickening breath of the Holy
Spirit. The same manifold diversities may be predicated
of every living branch of the Church catholic. In one
respect the ministry is always conditioning the truth of
the lay membership; in another respect the lay member
ship is always conditioning the truth of the ministry.

522 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
§ 302.
By virtue of this general law the office of the minis
try exists, and has been perpetuated from age to age,
The Church is a self-perpetuating communion ; not
the ministry of and by itself, not the lay membership
of and by itself, but the Church as a whole is self-
perpetuating. 1. Self-perpetuating the Church is because of her vital
connection with Christ in the -fellowship of the Spirit.
By the Spirit Christ lives in the communion of the Church;
by the Spirit the Church lives in communion with Christ,
from whom all the body fitly framed and knit together
through that which every joint supplieth, according to the
working in due measure of each several part, maketh the
increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love.1
Says Dr. Matthew Riddle: "Growth is possible only be
cause the Living Christ is the Head." As the origin and'
life of the Church do not depend on the ministry, but
on Jesus Christ exalted to the right hand of God, so the
continuity of the Church depends on the constant nourish
ment by Christ of her vitality, not solely on the functions
of the ministerial office, much less on an unbroken exter
nal succession of office-bearers.
There is indeed no true Church of Christ without a
ministry; still the Church is a broader, a more fundamental
reality than an order of Christian men, however necessary
to her existence. An order of men is but one part, one
condition of the Christian community; and a part of an
organism is iess than the whole. The ministry does not
1 Eph. iv. 15-16. For the meaning of ' each several part ' compare vs.
11 and 12.

§3o2.] The Holy Ministry. 523
uphold the Church; that prerogative may be predicated
alone of her Founder. There is more of truth in the pro
position that the Church upholds the ministry. The
ministry stands in the communion of the Church some
what as the head conditions and is conditioned by the
complete organism of the human body.
2. The same general principle of judgment is valid in
its application to the laity. Laymen did not at will origi
nate the Church. Nor did laymen in the beginning
organize her communion, nor did they introduce any
distinguishing elements of her organization. Nor has
this subordinate relation of laymen undergone any change
in the progress of history. As the faith and will of lay
men did not originate the Church, so neither does her
perpetuity depend on their will or judgment. The reverse
proposition expresses the truth. The perpetuity, of the
laity is consequent upon the perpetuity of the Church,
The Church upholds the membership; the membership
does not uphold the Church. True, as there is no Church
without a ministry, so there is no true Church of Christ
without a laity. Laymen are an indispensable part of her
integrity; but the Church is a profounder, a more potent
mystery than either ministers or laymen, The tree bears
the branches. The organism vitalizes and sustains the
several parts. Jesus Christ, not the minister, not the lay
man, but the enthroned Christ perpetuates His mystical
body. This spiritual organism He perpetuates dynam
ically, that is, by virtue of His vital unbroken fellowship
in the Spirit with His people, laymen and ministers, a
fellowship more original than their consciousness, more
essential than volition. So in effect Godet interprets John
xy. 5: "In me, "rich fruitfuluess; apart from me, barren-

524 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
ness. " Nourishing and supporting His body by imparta-
tious from His perfected life of love, He perpetuates the
two factors as reciprocally interdependent parts, but each
according to the law of its own position and purpose, each
with its distinctive prerogatives.
3. From this conception of the relative position and im
portance of the ministry it does not by any means follow
that the office has but little value or force. The office is
the immediate institution of Christ. It was explicitly and
formally perpetuated by His apostles. The rights of the
ministry are of divine origin, and they are vested in no
other class of the Christian community. Moreover, it is
evident from the founding and history of the apostolic
Church that the ministerial office directly conditions the
existence, growth and extension of the kingdom; but
it is not the only condition. There is a dependence of
laymen on the ministry; there is a dependence of the
ministry on laymen. The' dependence is reciprocal, but
in each case it is specifically different. The ministry may
not deny nor curtail the rights of laymen, nor undervalue
their vocation; nor may laymen either set aside or assume
the functions, of the ministry.
Considered as to its true vocation and in its objective
relations, on the one side directly to Christ, on the other
directly to His people, the office of the ministry is to be
regarded as possessing central significance in the economy
of the Christian Church. Of the office we deny only : 1.
that the ministry considered by itself is the Christian
Church; 2. that the objective authority and the spiritual
virtue which are to be predicated exclusively of the Holy
Spirit are vested in the ministerial office; and 3. that the
minister's relation to Christ makes him independent of

JS302.] The Holy Ministry. 525
the life and will of the people, or that the office is repre
sentative only of the Head of the Church.
4. Whilst the influence for good of a competent and
faithful ministry is confessedly more powerful than the
influence of laymen, yet the Church lives and perpetuates
herself in the Spirit, whether many ministers be faithful
or unfaithful, godly or ungodly, a fact .supported by the
history of the Church. She suffers seriously when minis
ters are ignorant or immoral; she prospers when they are
devout and intelligent, active and zealous; but the Church
perpetuates herself, though corruptions and abuses are pre
valent in ministerial ranks. The testimony of the Holy
Spirit never fails, the fellowship of Christ with His mysti
cal body never fails, however powerful the secular spirit
may be in the membership, however forgetful office-bear
ers may be of their solemn vocation. More than this may
be affirmed. The indwelling Spirit may assert His life-
giving presence with so much force in the heart -of the
Christian community, of ministers and laymen alike, as to
bring about, in ways forecast by no one, a revival of faith
and piety, and a reformation of ecclesiastical disorders.
5. There are two errors the fallacy of which may be
inferred from this general conception of the Church.
The one puts false emphasis on the ministerial office,
overlooking the function and rights of laymen. The
other overlooks the authority and virtue of the ministerial
offif e in its immediate relation to Christ glorified, and in
effect resolves the Church into an associated membership.
The one error is the Roman theory, which resolves the
Church into the hierarchy, the hierarchy into the Church.
Rome distinguishes, between the ecclesia docens and the
ecclesta audiens, and the distinction becomes separation.'
Priesthood and people stand asunder.

5 2 6 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [B00E7.
According to the Roman theory, the hierarchy consists
of a separate order of men. The apostolate of which
Peter was the head is continued in the priesthood whose
head is the Bishop of Rome; from him, as the vicar of
Christ, bishops and priests derive the right to perform
ministerial or priestly functions. Through the perform
ance of these functions the people acquire their spiritual
character and their spiritual relations. Only through the
agency of the priesthood do they find acceptance with
Christ. In point of time the ministry was first, and
existed independently of laymen. The Council of Trent,
1563, says in Canon VI of the 23d session: " If any one
saith, that in the Catholic Church there is not a hierarchy
by divine ordination instituted, consisting of bishops,
priests, and ministers: let him be anathema."1
This theory ignores, the organic unity of the Church ;
1 On the supreme power of jurisdiction of the Pope over the universal
Church the Vatican Council, 1870, says; "If any shall say that the
Roman pontiff has not full and supreme power of jurisdiction over the
universal Church, not only in things which belong to faith and morals,
but also in those which relate to the discipline and government of the
Church ; or assert that he possesses merely the principal part, and not
all the fullness of this supreme power: let him be anathema. " — Dogmatic
Decrees, Ch. III.
Concerning the infallible teaching of the Pope the Vatican Council
says: "The Roman Pontiff, when he speaks ex cathedra, that is, when in
discharge of the office of pastor and doctor of all Christians, by virtue of
his supreme apostolic authority, he defines a doctrine regarding faith or
morals to be held by the universal Church, is possessed of that infalli
bility with which the divine Redeemer willed that His Church should
be endowed for defining doctrine regarding faith or morals ; and that
therefore such definitions of the Roman Pontiff are irreformable of them
selves, and not from the consent of the Church. "^Dogmatic Decrees-,
Ch. IV. See SchafF's Creeds of Christendom, Vol. II., pp. 192, 265, 270.

§3o2.] The Holy Ministry. 527
the Gospel becomes another law; truth is not the person
of Christ; truth consists chiefly in the teaching of the
hierarchy respecting the authority, the dogmas and the in
stitutions of the Church. The priest is separated from lay
men as by a chasm. Wrong is done in two directions :
(the ministry is raised to a false elevation; the laity is
reduced to a false dependence.
The other error puts false emphasis 011 the position and
rights of laymen. Overlooking the divine authority and
virtue of the ministry as representing the mediatorship of
Christ, it denies the objective difference between the min
ister and the layman. The office gets its warrant from the
Will of the associated membership, not from direct rela
tionship to the enthroned Christ. The minister has no
prerogatives but such as the people confer. He has the
right to teach, to administer the ordinances and to rule,
not from our Lord, but from their consent. The super
natural warrant for the ministry is ignored and the office
is reduced to the level of an economic arrangement. There
is in reality no ministerial office invested with the authority
of Jesus Christ.
This theory is not commonly asserted in all its logical
consequences. There may be some recognition of the
direct relation of the office to Christ; then the error con
sists chiefly in a false preponderance of emphasis on the
dependence of the ministry upon laymen. But whenever
any degree of false emphasis is put on the position and
prerogatives of laymen in their direct relation to Jesus
Christ, the current of sentiment and of theological thought
is set against the prerogatives of the ministerial office and
moves in the direction of hutnanitarianism.
These two errors assert each the opposite pole of a great

528 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
truth. False high churchism lays stress exclusively on
the divine and supernatural side of the ministerial office.
Rationalism and all forms of false low churchism empha
size its human and social side. Each factor is essential.
The true doctrine must affirm the direct relation of the
office to Christ in unison with its direct relation to the
people. When these two essential factors are divorced,
either, because emphasized by itself, fails to assert the
whole truth of New Testament teaching. Whilst the one
theory ignores the fellowship, dignity and authority of
laymen, the other ignores the authority and dignity of the
ministry. A biblical conception will have to accept the
important element of truth which each falsely emphasizes;
and will have to supply a deficiency which renders each
theory untenable. § 3°3-
From the truth that the Church is a spiritual organ
ism of which the ministry is but one vital part, it
follows that there is no necessary external, tactual
succession of ministers from the apostles, according to
the Roman or Anglican theory.
The answer to the question whether the succession
has been regular or not depends on the rule or crite
rion by which we judge, and on the conception we form
of the ministry in its relation to the entire body mys
tical. 1. The history of the Church shows that there has been
a succession of ordained men who have preached the Gos
pel and administered the ordinances from the age of the
apostles to our own time. But the continuous ministry
has not been in and by the ministry alone separated from
the authority, judgment and life of the people; nor has

; 303.] The Holy Ministry. 529
ordination been unaffected by the great epochs of con
vulsion and development through which the Church has
been passing. In one sense of the word the apostolic
ministry, has been continuous and uninterrupted; but the
succession of ordained men has been a part of the un
broken continuity of the entire ecclesiastical communion.
This communion has at 110 time been suspended. The
Church, inclusive of office-bearers and laymen, has at no
time ceased to have an existence. For this reason the
continuity of the ministry has never been broken. The
Christian community has by the Holy Spirit been per
petuated in its integrity from one generation to another;
and as thus perpetuated by the Spirit it has always em
braced the ministerial office as an essential member of its
organization. Of this twofold fact the evidence addresses
us from the history of the Church and of the world during
nineteen centuries.
2. The decision of the question concerning regular suc
cession involves the relation of the office to the economy
of the Church.
If we grant that the outward organization of the
Church has from the beginning been fixed by the command
of Christ, or if we hold that there can be a true succession
only according to an episcopal polity that came into vogue
during the second or third century or was introduced in
the Niceue age, or according to the papal polity which was
first asserted by Leo the Great1 and afterwards enforced
by Gregory the Great2 and his successors, then, it will
have to be conceded that the succession has not been
regular, not regular during the Middle Ages nor in the
convulsive epoch of the Reformation, either on the conti-
1 Leo d. 461. 2 Gregory d. 604.
34

53° Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
nent of Europe or in Great Britain. Men have not from
age to age been set apart to the holy office on the basis of
one and the same theory of the ministry, nor conformably
to only one mode of ordination. If our judgment be
governed by the canon of the Council of Nicea, or by the
Roman theory concerning the papacy, or by the Anglican
standard set up by Archbishop Laud,1 the notion of out
ward regularity cannot be upheld by any branch of the
Christian community. The irregularity is as real in the
Roman Catholic as in the Protestant Church.
But if we decline to accept the Nicene or post-Nicene
organization of the ministry as the only standard of judg
ment, if we dismiss the false emphasis put on. the differ
ence between ministers and laymen during the Middle
Ages, and develop our judgment respecting legitimate
ecclesiastical continuity, not from the Roman point of
view, but from the standpoint of the New Testament as
interpreted by many of the ripest scholars of every evan
gelical branch of the Church, we shall come to a different
conclusion. Judging the order of continuity according to
the nature of the divine-human life of Christ glorified,
immanent in the Church, we pronounce the succession
regular, regular because conformable to the profoundest
and all-embracing law of history. The kingdom of God,
of which the Church is the present form, is an organic
unity. Like every organism, this kingdom unfolds the
energies of its life in a series of stages of growth; and
growth evolves vitality through epochs or nodes of devel
opment The development of spiritual life and the tran
sition from one stage to another stage, effect correspond
ing changes in the form of organization. Each epoch
1 i573-i645-

3303.] The Holy Ministry. 531
of growth and every transition from one order of things to
another include the entire constitution of the Church,
affecting more or less all parts of her organization and
every function of her life. With these changes wrought
in her constitution by the Spirit active from within come
changes in the outward manner of ministerial succession,
the development from within being ever modified by forces
operative from without.
Emphasis is to be put on the truth that changes of or
ganization and modifications of the method of ecclesiasti
cal continuity are brought about by the law of history.
Brought about by this law ever active in the Christian
community, changes conform to this law. They are reg
ular, not according to an hierarchical or mechanical the
ory, but regular according to the idea of the parable of
the mustard tree or the metaphor of the vine and. its
branches. The Church is the organization of the new
race of the last Adam, of which the old race of the first
Adam is a type and a prophecy. In the history of an
individual there is a national and a family type of psycho
logical and bodily organization which from infancy to old
age is ever the same; but the outward figure of the type of
his life changes with the progress of years. So the Church
carries in her bosom the distinctive type of the new race
quickened by the gift of the Spirit on the day of Pente
cost, an original type that in all ages differentiates the
new race from the old race. This type imparts dis
tinguishing qualities to every part of its organization,
to the written word, the ' ministry and the sacraments.
Of the ministry the distinctive features are that it repre
sents the prophetic, priestly and kingly functions of the
mediatorial office of the enthroned Christ, and at the same

532 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. ' [book 7.
time the prophetic, priestly and kingly functions of »the
new race. But as the new race advances by growth and
development under changed conditions, one form of or
ganization gives way to another; and every modification
of the organization includes changes, as in the doctrine of
the sacraments and the mode of administration, so also in
the conception of the ministerial office and the method of
perpetuating the office.
As the new race is not perfect in moral character or in
Christian knowledge, the development of the Christian
type of life is partly normal, partly abnormal. This judg
ment applies to the history of the ministry in every branch
of the kingdom, just as it does to the history of doctrines
and of morals. The intermingling of abnormal elements
is implied in the origin and mission of the new race. Im
perfection neither contradicts the truth of the progressive
development of an unchangeable type nor vitiates the
validity of changes produced by the law of history.
§3°4-
The ministerial office is one. There is one Mediator
and one mediatorship, one Holy Spirit and one mysti
cal body. So there is but one order of men represent
ing the one Head and the one body.
As of the Head of the Church and of the Holy
Spirit we predicate the prophetic, sacerdotal and kingly
functions, so we predicate these three functions of the
entire membership. And as the ministerial office •
represents the mediatorship of the Head and the voca
tion of the mystical body, three distinct functions are
predicable also of the ministerial office.
The New Testament type may rightfully develop
either in the direction of an episcopal order or of a
presbyteral order.

§3o4.] The Holy Ministry. 533
1. These three functions may be distributed among
three classes of persons, one class being ordained chiefly
to the department of teaching, another to that of minis
tration, a third to that of ruling ; or these three functions
may be vested in one class of men, and this one class may
be represented by one person.
Whether the three functions are distributed among three
classes or all are vested in one class, depends on the
exigencies and demands of history. Different modes of
organization are valid. In the New Testament we have
only the beginnings of organization, not a prescribed
order imposed upon the Church for all time. These
beginnings set before us different classes in each of which
a given function or different functions are vested. We
have apostles who perform all the functions of the minis
try ; then we have prophets, evangelists, pastors and
teachers.1 Not all are prophets, nor are all teachers, nor
all workers of miracles, nor have all the gifts of healings,
nor do all speak with tongues, nor do all interpret. A
particular class was limited to a particular kind of minis
terial service; or different gifts were by the Spirit distri
buted, some to one and others to another class of chosen
men. Says Meyer:
" Christ gives the Church's ministers ; the Church takes those given
and sets them in the service of the Church. Accordingly the Church
never has to choose the subjects arbitrarily, but to know and recognize
those endowed by Christ as those given by Him, and to place them in
the ministry; hence the highest idea of the ecclesiastical examination is
to test whether those concerned are given by Christ, without prejudice,
however, to other requisites which are matters of ecclesiastical polity.
The persons are given by Christ, the service by the Christian com
munity."2 1 Eph: iv. 11 ; i Cor. xii. 28; Rom. xii. 6-8. ¦
2 Note to Commentary on Eph. iv. 11.

534 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
This distribution of functions among different classes of
men according to their several ability supports the Pro
testant method in distinction from the Roman method of
organization. And for this reason it may be maintained
that the organization of the evangelical Protestant Church
is more scriptural than the papal system or the Anglican
system. But the New Testament reflects only the organi
zation of the Church adapted to her needs in apostolic
times; and does not directly or indirectly forbid a modifi
cation of the apostolic mode of organization, provided that
the distinctive Christian type of the ministry is conserved.
The generic type reflected by the New Testament is a
matter of permanent obligation.
2. Since each ministerial function embraces different
classes of duties, the subdivision of the ministry may be
extended. Each subordinate function may be assigned to
a subordinate class of office-bearers. Then we get differ
ent grades of teaching, of ministration and of rulers.
Offices may be multiplied as the supposed exigencies of
the Church may demand, without a violation of funda
mental law.
Such subdivision of offices and the consequent multipli
cation of office-bearers are economic. Whether the sub
division be wise or not is a question to be determined by
Christian judgment, not by reference to the letter of the
New Testament. Church organization has varied and
may vary from time to time as her spiritual needs and her
social or political environment may require. If legiti
mate, the variation is governed, not so much by authority
as by the law of life immanent in her communion, which
is ever silently working toward growth and transforma
tion. The outward structure both of the Church in gen-

j 304.] The Holy Ministry. 535
eral and of the ministry in particular, like the outward
structure of every organism, is free, being shaped from
within, not imposed from without. If not subject to the
violent restraints or the interference of external authority,
the Church will modify her organization after a manner
answerable to the node of her unfolding life and the neces
sities of the age. No valid changes are arbitrary. The
original type of organization will through the Spirit per
petuate itself in every epoch and on every plane of history.
3. A modification of the New Testament form of organi
zation was developed in the direction of the episcopate
during the earlier decades of the second century.
The New Testament distinguishes especially three
classes of office-bearers: apostles, presbyters or bishops,
and deacons. The apostles were the immediate represent
atives of the enthroned Christ. No other office-bearers
are mentioned in the Gospels and the first five chapters of
the Acts. From all others the twelve with Paul (except
ing Matthias) were distinguished by the fact that they
were called directly by Christ to be the witnesses of His
resurrection and the founders of His Church; in virtue of
which commission their authority was not limited by
time or place but extended over the Church in all places.
The titles of presbyter or elder and bishop or overseer-
as used by the writers of the New Testament are inter
changeable, the former being of Jewish the latter of Gen
tile origin. They designate one and the same office. The
argument sustaining the identity of these office-bearers
is concisely and forcibly stated by Dr. Schaff: — (1) The
npeefivrepoi and i-Kimonoi appear always as a plurality or as a
college in one and the same congregation, even in smaller
cities, as Philippi. (2) The same officers of the Church

536 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
of Ephesus are alternately called presbyters and bishops.
(3) Paul sends greetings to the \ bishops' and 'deacons'
of Philippi, but omits the presbyters because they were
included in the first term; as also the plural indicates.
(4) In the pastoral epistles, where Paul intends to give the
qualifications for all Church officers, he again mentions
only two, bishops and deacons, but uses the term presby
ter afterwards for bishops. (5) Peter urges the 'presby
ters' to 'tend the flock of God,' and to 'fulfil the office of
bishops ' with disinterested devotion and without ' lording
it over the. charge alloted to them.' (6) The interchange
of the two terms continued in vogue to the close of 'the
first century, as is evident from the Epistle of Clement of
Rome (about 95), and still lingered toward the close of the
second.1 The argument as stated by Schaff is definitely sustained,
among many others, by Bishop Lightfoot The opinion
that the same officers in the Church who were first called
apostles came afterwards to be designated bishops, he pro
nounces baseless. As Lightfoot declares:2
"The Episcopate was formed not out of the apostolic order by locali
zation, but out of the presbyteral by elevation ; and the title, which
originally was common to all, came at length to be appropriated to the
chief among them ;" and "he was rather the chief of the presbyters than
the chief over the presbyters. * * To the dissensions of Jew and Gen
tile converts, and to the disputes of Gnostic false teachers, the develop
ment of episcopacy during the second century may be mainly ascribed."
References by Polycarp, Clement, Tertullian and others
tq the progress of change in the organization of the minis
try, besides establishing the general prevalence of epis
copacy, throw light on its origin.
1 Cf. Schaff 's Church History, Vol. I., g 61.
2 The Christian Ministry, by J. B. Lightfoot, D. D., pp. 32, 48, 73.

§304.] The Holy Ministry. 537
"They indicate that the solution suggested by the history of the word
'bishop,' and its transference from the lower to the higher office, is the
true solution, and that the episcopate was created out of the presbytery.
They show that this creation was not so much an isolated act as a pro
gressive development, not advancing everywhere at an uniform rate, but
exhibiting at one and the same time different stages of growth in differ
ent churches." '
During the second and third centuries the bishop was
the chief among the presbyters of a single church, primus
inter pares, a congregational bishop, not a diocesan
bishop, and he was set apart to his office by the coordinate
presbyters. At Alexandria the consecration of the bishop
by his presbyters lasted for generations after all other
bishops were consecrated by bishops. Diocesan episco
pacy may have its roots in the latter half of the second
century, but in point of fact it was a later development.
The ' ' historic episcopate ' ' as emphasized by the Lam
beth quadrilateral cannot with certainty be traced farther
back than the third century.
4. That the episcopate was a gradual development from
the presbytery was a prevalent opinion in England in the
16th and in the early part of the 17th century. During
this period the validity of the orders of the churches on
the continent was recognized. In his exposition of the
Articles Bishop Burnet says that their authors, and suc
cessors for half an age after, did "acknowledge the for
eign churches to be true churches as to all essentials of
the Church." Hooker concedes that episcopal ordination
is not in all cases indispensable.
" When the exigence of necessity doth constrain to leave the usual
ways of the Church ; where the Church must needs have some ordained,
and neither hath nor can have possibly a bishop to ordain ; in case of
1 Lightfoot, p. 81.

538 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
such necessity the ordinary institution of God hath given often times,
and may give place." '
Archbishop Usher2 says: "In places where bishops can
not be had, the ordination by presbyters standeth valid."
And William Wake, archbishop of Canterbury from 1716
to 1737, says: "The Reformed Churches, though in some
things dissenting from our Anglican Church, I cheerfully
embrace. ' '
The confidence of Anglican divines in the validity of
presbyteral ordination supported a close fellowship of the
Church of England with the Reformed Churches on the
continent. Bucer and Peter Martyr were called by Cran-
mer to the chairs of divinity in Cambridge and Oxford,
during the reign of Edward. Cranmer, in 1552, invited
Calvin, Bulliuger and Melancthon to England, to aid in
drawing up a Confession of Faith. Clergymen from the
continent received benefices in England; they were not
reordained, but were only required to subscribe the Arti
cles.3 The recognition of the validity of presbyteral
ordination by the Anglican Church was almost universally
prevalent until toward the middle of the seventeenth cen
tury. The change of sentiment was brought about mainly
through the influence of Archbishop Laud.4
It may be added that the original identity of presbyter
and bishop is freely conceded by prominent Episcopal
commentators of our time, such as Whitby, 1776, Bloom-
field, Conybeare and Howson, Alford, Ellicott, Stanley and
others. 5. The general principle which justifies the develop-
1 Ecc. Pol., Bk. VII., 14, 11. Vol. II., p. 404. » 1580-1655.
3 Cf. Hagenbach's History of Doctrines, Vol. II., pp. 185, 297.
' Laud, b. 1573, Archbishop of Canterbury 1633, beheaded 1645.

? 304.] The Holy Ministry. 539
ment of a congregational or of a diocesan episcopate also
makes room and justifies a reverse order of change. As
when wisdom demands it the Church may multiply min
isterial offices and have different grades of bishops and
deacons, so when wisdom no longer sustains these differ
ent grades of office-bearers the number of offices may be
reduced. If the process of reduction be not arbitrary, but
answerable to the altered condition of the Church, reduc
tion is compatible with the integrity, the dignity and a
valid succession of the ministry. As at one time a
superior or subordinate office may arise because needful,
so at another time an existing office may cease because, no
longer needful. In both cases, whether offices be insti
tuted or superseded, the principle is the same, the Church
being free to adjust the form of her organization to the
status of her life and the call of history. If history super
sedes the necessity of an archiepiscopal or metropolitan
see, that see may cease with as much propriety as in a
previous age it was established; and the order may be
followed by an organization in which all presbyters or
bishops have co-ordinate authority. The change is eco
nomic. It violates neither the genius of the New Testa
ment Church nor the constitution of the apostolic min
istry. To the process of reduction and simplification
there is no limit but that which is fixed by the original
type of the ministry. The prophetic, priestly and kingly
functions inhere in the idea of the office by virtue of its
origin, and therefore neither the one nor the other can
ever be superseded or set aside.

540 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.

§3°5-
Though there are three distinct functions of the min
istry and each function embraces different classes of
duties, yet as the mediatorial office of Christ, in whose
name the minister officiates, is but one office, every
office-bearer duly ordained is invested with the one
office, including its several functions.
1. Invested with the one office, the minister has au
thority to perform all its functions, each function being
part of the office. The ordained man has this compre
hensive authority because the prerogatives of the one office
are vested in him. He may agreeably to the existing
economy of a branch of the Church be invested by ordi
nation with authority to perform only one function, for
example, that of a ruling elder; but there is no ordination
of a man to only one function without clothing him with
the office in which the function inheres. In other words,
every one ordained to take part in the ministry of the
Gospel possesses not only some but all the prerogatives of
an office-bearer ; though his right of administration is by
the existing church organization limited to but one func
tion. It does not follow that a man limited by the vows of
ordination to the exercise of but one function, may at
will, because clothed with the one all-comprehensive office,
assert the right to exercise all functions. He is bound by
the existing economy of the Church and by the existing
organization of the ministry. Living the life of the en
throned Christ and having authority to adjust her organiza
tion by spiritual wisdom to internal demands and external
conditions, the Church has the divine right in all ordinary

g 305.] The Holy Ministry. 541
cases to enforce her regulations on every member, whether
a layman or an office-bearer. If he transgresses he vio
lates his vows, he commits sin, and is subject to penalty.
The same authority which clothes him with the office
binds him to the performance of its duties according to
the established order. All the prerogatives of the office
other than the function to which he is ordained are in
abeyance. His vows bind him to abstain from the exercise
of functions withheld as really as to discharge the specific
duties which to him have been entrusted. The existing
economy, or the particular organization in which he stands,
is as truly law for the conscience as the New Testament
type which underlies and justifies the existing mode of
organization. 2. There is no exception to this law in the ordinary
course of history. An exception may arise in a convulsive
epoch, when one established order of things is superseded
and a different order arises to take its place. When such
an epoch emerges, the Church has in reserve an adequate
spiritual force in every office-bearer which she may assert
for the perpetuity of the ministry in its integrity. At
such an extraordinary juncture a subordinate office-bearer,
whether a 'presbyter' or a 'ruling elder,' might not only
administer the sacraments but likewise lay on hands in
ordination. With this judgment Bishop Lightfoot con
curs: " The Christian minister does not interpose between God and man in
such a way that direct communion with God is superseded on the one
hand, or that his own mediation becomes indispensable on the other.
"Again, the Christian minister is the representative of man to God.
* * He is a priest, as the mouthpiece, the delegate, of a priestly race.
His acts are not his own, but the acts of the congregation. Hence, too,
it will follow that, viewed on this side as on the other, his function can-

542 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
not be absolute and indispensable. It may be a general rule, it may be
under ordinary circumstances a practically universal law, that the high
est acts of congregational worship shall be performed through the prin
cipal officers of the congregation. But an emergency may arise when
the spirit and not the letter must decide. The Christian ideal will then
interpose and interpret our duty. The higher ordinance of the universal
priesthood will overrule all special limitations. The layman will assume
functions which are otherwise restricted to the ordained minister.'"
But under what circumstances such a justifying neces
sity may occur cannot be determined a priori. The sup
posed epoch is a juncture full of peril, and will stand
self-condemned or self-justified by the developments of
history. Ecclesiology may maintain no more than this:
that the mystical body of Christ has latent spiritual
resources which are of necessity held in abeyance, or may
be called forth whenever the solemn hour has struck.
There is at hand a recuperative power adequate to every
emergency or calamity, and this recuperative and self-
adjusting power resides both in the ministry and in the
lay membership. The lay membership and the ministry
are factors equally essential to the existence and perpetuity
of the Church, each in its own sphere; and wherever there
are laymen and office-bearers, whatever be their grade,
there cannot be an absolute break in the continuity of life
or order of succession.
1 The Christian Ministry, by The Right Rev. J. B. Lightfoot, D. D.,
P- 145-

2 306.] The Holy Sacraments. 543
CHAPTER VII.
THE HOLY SACRAMENTS.
§ 306.
As Jesus Christ is related to Moses, as Christianity
is related to the economy of the Old Testament, so are
Christian sacraments related to Jewish sacraments.
A sacrament is rooted in the nature of the economy
of which it is an institution. From that economy it
derives its meaning, its virtue and its purpose.
1. The economy of the Old Testament is symbolical,
typical and prophetic. It is not the final reality of Mes
sianic revelation, but only 'our tutor to bring us unto
Christ, that we might be justified by faith." The sacra
ments of this economy are in kind the same as the econ
omy itself. As, when compared with Christianity, that
economy is only prefigurative, so Jewish sacraments when
compared with the sacraments of the Christian Church
are likewise to be regarded as being only prefigurative.
They are not ordinances by which the forgiveness of sin
and eternal life are signified and sealed; for although Old
Testament believers ' had witness borne to them through
their faith, they received not the promises,' but only
'greeted them from afar.'2 The law had only 'a shadow
of the good things to come, not the very image of the
things.' The sacrifices which year by year were offered
continually could never make perfect them that by those
' Gal. iii. 24. 2 Heb. xi. 13, 39.

544 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
sacrifices drew nigh to God.1 Circumcision and the pass-
over have no spiritual virtue greater than the Abrahamic
covenant or the Mosaic economy.
It is therefore fallacious to reason from the nature of
circumcision to the nature of Holy Baptism, or from the
commemorative and prophetic purpose of the passover to
the Holy Eucharist; just as fallacious as it would be to
reason, after the manner of the ancient Ebionites, from
the life and mission of Moses to the person and mediator-
ship of Jesus Christ. We ascertain who Christ was and
what He now is, not merely by studying the history of,
Moses and the prophecies of the Old Testament, but we
get true knowledge of Him by fixing faith and contempla
tion on Himself, on His personal history upon .earth and
His exaltation in heaven. As Christian sacraments were
ordained by Christ and are integral parts of the kingdom
of which He is the Founder, we can ascertain the import
and purpose of Christian sacraments, not by reflection on ¦
circumcision and the passover, but by studying Baptism
and the Eucharist as taught by the New Testament.
According to New Testament teaching both sustain a
direct relation, on the one hand to the person and work of
Christ, the glorified Mediator, and on the other to the
communion of the Church, His mystical body. If we
recognize this twofold relation we may develop a sound
Christian conception.
2. It does not follow, however, that dogmatic thought
may without loss ignore the institutions of the first dis
pensation. Though widely different, though one is only
type, shadow, prophecy, whilst the other is antitype, sub
stance, fulfilment, yet the pre-Christiaii and the Christian
'Heb. x. 1-2.

g3o6.] The Holy Sacraments. 545
economies are in all respects closely connected, both being
essential parts of Messianic revelation. We cannot dis
pense with the study of the law and the prophets, of
Abraham, Moses, Samuel, Elijah and Isaiah; we need the
knowledge of types and prophecies as one of the conditions
of clear insight into the truth of the Messiahship of Jesus
of Nazareth; yet we become entangled in grievous errors
if on the other hand we mistake the type for the antitype,
or fail to study the shadow by the illumination of the
reality. Accepting the principle that sacraments derive
their significance from the economy in which they stand,
it must follow that whilst New Testament sacraments
differ from Old Testament sacraments as widely as the two
economies differ, these two classes of divine ordinances are
also connected as the pre-Christian and Christian econo
mies are connected, and that we cannot get a full concep
tion of Baptism and the Eucharist independently of insight
into the significance of circumcision and the passover.
Much less may we allow that there is any contradiction
between the two classes of ordinances. Like Abraham in
his relation to Christ, so circumcision is a type of Baptism;
like Moses in his relation to Christ, so the passover is a
type of the Eucharist. Like the entire ceremonial law, so
the ordinances instituted by the law were to the chosen
people a 'tutor to bring them unto Christ'
As there is this wide difference and close connection
between circumcision and Baptism, between the passover
and the Eucharist, dogmatic thought must have legitimate
reference to the historical basis of Christian sacraments in
the antecedent stages of Messianic revelation. Circum
cision was an external sign and a seal. Abraham "re
ceived the sign of circumcision, a seal of the righteousness
35

546 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
of the faith which he had while he was in uucircumcis-
ion. ' ' 1 The sign signified his separation from heathendom
and his fellowship in covenant with Jehovah into which
he was called. As a seal circumcision certified the truth
of the promise that in his 'seed shall all the nations of the
earth be blessed. ' 2 Baptism may also be pronounced both
a sign and a seal, though 'sign' is an appellation that is
nowhere given to this sacrament in the New Testament
The wide difference between circumcision and Baptism is
to be found in the thing signified and sealed. In the pre-
Christian economy we have only the promise, whilst in the
Christian economy we have, not the promise only, but the
reality, the fulfilment of the promise. Nevertheless the
symbolical element enters into the idea of the baptismal
transaction ; and unless we emphasize its symbolical aspect
we may fall into the error of Romanism, which is prone to
confound the water of baptism with the blood of Christ.
§ 3°7-
The Church universal, Greek Catholic; Roman Cath-
- olic and Evangelical Catholic, acknowledges the two
sacraments, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, which were
instituted by Jesus Christ before His ascension into
heaven. Each of the two Christian sacraments is rooted in
the ceremonial worship of the chosen people; and in
one respect each is a development from the Old Tes
tament ritual.
1. The fact is not overlooked that the Greek Catholic
and the Roman Catholic branches of the Church adopt
seven sacraments: confirmation, marriage, ordination,
penance and extreme unction in addition to Baptism and
'Rom. iy. 11. 2Gen. xvii. 10-14; xviii. 18; xxii. 18.

1 307.] The Holy Sacraments. 547
the Eucharist. But the addition of five to the original
number of sacraments does not weaken the force of the
truth that the Church universal has in all ages been of
one mind in confessing Holy Baptism and the Holy Sup
per to be ordinances instituted by our Lord, ordinances
that are integral parts of His Church and therefore of
permanent obligation, binding all believers.
Each is an objective witness to His sacrificial death and
His triumphant resurrection from the dead, not a testi
mony of spoken or written words, but a concrete witness
consisting in an actual transaction which has been repeated
day by day, hour by hour, from the day of Pentecost
onward to the present moment. Each has also uninter
ruptedly asserted itself in the Church universal as a means
of grace, constituting an expression of faith in the funda
mental facts of Christianity and a necessary part of
Christian worship.
2. Symbolical washing with water was an obligation of
the ceremonial law. By command of Jehovah Moses
made a laver of brass and put it between the tent of
meeting and the altar. "And Aaron and their sons shall
wash their hands and their feet thereat: when they go
into the tent of meeting they shall wash with water, that
they die not; or when they come near to the altar to
minister, to burn an offering made by fire unto the Lord:
so they shall wash their hands and their feet, that they
die not: and it shall be a statute forever to them, even to
him and to his seed throughout their generations."1 This
religious rite appointed for the priests had a basis in
oriental custom. The hands had to be kept perfectly
clean, for all persons at table put their fingers into the
1 Ex. xxx. 17-21.

548 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
same dish. The feet were to be washed, because the san
dals afforded no protection against soil. External cleans
ing became the symbol of personal and official purification.
Washing with water became also the rite by which
converts from paganism, after they had been circumcised,
were fully admitted into the fellowship of the 'covenant
people. Such were called ' proselytes of righteousness '
amd were distinguished from the 'proselytes of the gate,'
who were not circumcised nor baptized.
In process of time the social custom of washing hands
and feet was by the rabbis resolved into a religious duty.
The ceremony was scrupulously observed by all faithful
Jews. " The Pharisees and all the Jews except they wash
their hands up to the elbow, eat not, holding the tradition
of the elders: and when they come from the market place,
except they wash themselves, they eat not."1 Frequent
washing was the sign of frequent ceremonial purification.
When John, the forerunner of our Lord, became the
voice of one crying iii the wilderness, Make ye ready the
way of the Lord, when he "baptized in the wilderness and
preached the baptism of repentance unto the remission of
sins," the entire body of the Jewish people were familiar
with the religious meaning of washing with water. By
divine authority John adopted this significant rite; but in
his hands Jewish ceremonial washing became the baptism
of repentance unto the kingdom of God.2 John's baptism
was the rite of admission into the fellowship of John,
the forerunner of the coming Messiah. The common rite
of ceremonial purification was raised to a higher plane
and invested with new Messianic significance: repentance
1 Mk. vii. 3, 4. 2 John i. 26-28.

§307.] The Holy Sacraments. 549
unto remission of sins, and from the heart turning toward
the kingdom of God which was at hand.
Agreeably to the genius of the Old Testament, and
following the order of the Messianic kingdom continued
by John, baptism became the rite of admission into the
community of which Jesus of Nazareth was the centre.1
Accepting the baptism administered by His disciples,
responsive Jews by this transaction confessed faith in
Jesus as the promised Messiah and became His followers.
Appropriating this solemn religious rite, our Lord con
nected it with Himself first in His state of humiliation,
subsequently with Himself in His state of exaltation, im
parting to it distinctively Christian significance, and
making it as permanent ordinance of His Church. Bap
tism became a part of the final commission given by Him
to His chosen apostles: Go ye therefore and make disciples
of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father,
and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.2
3. There are accordingly three different stages in the
history of religious washing which antedate Christian
Baptism: — 1. the ceremonial washings observed by the
Israelites prior to John Baptist, in which we recognize at
least three classes: the washing of the priests at the laver
of brass before they entered the holy place, the baptism of
the 'proselytes of righteousness,' and 'the Jews' manner
of purifying' described by the Gospels;3 2. the baptism of
repentance'unto the remission of sins introduced and ad
ministered by John; 3. the baptism of the disciples of our
Lord during His earthly ministry, ' although Jesus Him
self baptized not, but His disciples.' By this baptism
'John iv. 1-2. 2 Matt, xxviii. 18, 19. 3John ii. 6.

550 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
those who believed Jesus to be the Christ became mem
bers of the community of His disciples.
The ceremonial washing observed by the Jews, changed
by John into a baptism unto repentance and by Jesus of
Nazareth connected with the confession of His Messiah-
ship, was the historical basis and the preparation for
Christian .Baptism appointed by our Lord immediately
before His ascension. Christian Baptism was not admin
istered by the apostles until after the promise of the Holy
Spirit had been fulfilled.
There are accordingly at least four kinds of baptism set
before us in' the New Testament, each of which is to be
distinguished from the others. Christian Baptism is to be
studied under a twofold view: in its connection with the
entire history of ceremonial washings prior to Pentecost,
and in its specific difference from each and all.
4. Eating like washing was prescribed by the Mosaic
law and became a part of Jewish worship. The most
solemn of all the festivals was the feast of the passover. A
lamb without blemish, a male of the first year, taken from
the sheep or from the goats, was to be slain at even of the
fourteenth day of the first month; the blood was to be put
on the two side posts and on the lintel, upon the houses
wherein they were to eat it. "And they shall eat the
flesh in that night, roast with fire and unleavened bread;
with bitter herbs they shall eat it''1 The law of eating
was applicable to other sacrifices, to the guilt offering and
the burnt offering. The blood of the slain animal was
sprinkled upon the altar round about; particular parts of
the sacrifice "the priest shall burn them upon the altar
for an offering made by fire unto the Lord," whilst other
'Ex. xii. 1-20.

§307.] The Holy Sacraments. 551
portions were to be eaten. "Every male among the
priests shall eat thereof: it shall be eaten in a holy place;
it is most holy. ' ' The same law governs the sacrifice of
peace offerings. " The flesh of his sacrifice of peace offer
ings for thanksgiving shall be eaten on his day of oblation ;
he shall not leave any of it until the morning."1
The shedding of the blood of the animal and the eating
by the priests of portions of the flesh signify two things:
an atonement for the siu of the worshipper, and com
munion with Jehovah, each part of the ceremony of sacri
fice being typical. The shedding- of blood foreshadows
the true atonement to be made by the offering of the life
of the promised Deliverer; the eating of the flesh of the
animal foreshadows the real communion of God in the
Spirit with believers, who eat the ' bread of God which
cometh down out of heaven and giveth life unto the
world.'2 5. Whilst celebrating the feast of the passover for the
last time with His disciples, Jesus took the bread and the
wine of this passover, and connecting the institution and
the observance of this festival directly with Himself and
His mission, He instituted the holy Eucharist, the com
munion of His body and blood. ' As they were eating,
Jesus took bread, and blessed, and brake it; and He gave
to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.'
The institution of the Supper is recorded by three of the
evangelists, and by the apostle Paul. Matt. xxvi. 26-28;
Mk. xiv. 22-24; Luke xxii. 19, 20; 1 Cor. xi. 23-26; x. 16.
As Christian Baptism presupposes John's baptism and the
entire history of ceremonial purification among the Jews,
'Levit. vii. 1-21. 2John vi. 33.

552 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
so the Supper is immediately connected with the passover
and with the sacrifices of the Mosaic law.
Our Lord appropriated a typical religious service which
by the express command of Jehovah had for centuries
been observed. by the chosen people; but in the act of
appropriating it the type is superseded by the spiritual
reality. The import of the passover' He changes by ful
filling the passover. To religious eating and religious
drinking He imparts a spiritual virtue, derived from His
theanthropic Person and mediatorial work. He was the
final sacrifice of peace, -by which His disciples were to be
spiritually nourished by 'eating the Lord's Supper.'
6. Connected directly with the history of His person
and mediatorial work, Baptism and the Lord's Supper at
the time when they were instituted answered to what the
Lord Jesus Himself was when He instituted them. Then
He had not offered Himself a spotless sacrifice on the
cross. Then He had not risen from the dead. When the
final commission was spoken He had not taken posses
sion of the glory which He had with the Father before
the world was. The mediatorship being conditioned on
His personality had not attained to the status of comple
tion. The Mediator enthroned at the right hand of God,
the fountain of eternal life,, the author of salvation, had
not then become a reality. Therefore the Holy Spirit had
not been given.1
For this reason Baptism and the Supper did not when
instituted possess their full objective virtue. As the Medi
ator Himself had not yet finished His mediatorial work on
earth, these ordinances which signify and seal the blessing
of His mediatorship were incomplete. Like Himself they
'John vii. 39.

§307.] The Holy Sacraments. 553
were prophetic of what they were to become. Or, like
the Christian community of which these ordinances were
organs, their spiritual power was potential rather than
actual. In process of time they were to become in truth
means of grace. The perfection of the sacraments de
pends, not merely on words spoken by Him, but chiefly
on the perfection of His mediatorship. Ten days after
His ascension comes the fulness of time. The advent of
the Holy Spirit transforms the waiting believers, the body
of the followers of Jesus, into the Christian community.
Those assembled in an upper chamber became by the
birth from above the mystical body of their ascended Lord.
This birth of the Spirit introduced a new epoch of fellow
ship between Jesus Christ and His people. He became
the Head of a spiritual organism; they became His living
members. The objective change wrought by the miracu
lous gift covered the whole constitution and the whole
organization of the first Christian community ; and the
ennoblement thus wrought in the community included an
objective ennoblement wrought in its ordinances. Then
the spiritual blessing of the sacraments corresponded to
the glory of the Mediator and to the enrichment of His
mystical body.
By this miraculous gift of the enthroned Christ, this
birth of the Holy Spirit, the baptism and the supper insti
tuted by Jesus before His ascension became Holy Baptism
and the Lord's Supper, each being endued with the
heavenly virtue of His glorification. In accordance with
this Messianic order of progress, Luke records that just be
fore His final departure Jesus charged the disciples that
they should "not depart from Jerusalem, but wait for the
promise of the Father, which, said He, ye heard from me:

554 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
for John indeed baptized with water; but ye shall be bap
tized with the Holy Ghost not many days hence."1 There
is no evidence that before Pentecost either Baptism was
administered or the Supper' celebrated. Our Lord gave
no command to this effect, and there is no record of the
observance of either ordinance.
But when the waiting disciples received 'the promise
of the Father,' when by the advent of the Spirit they be
came in truth the body of Christ glorified, then also did
Baptism and the Supper become the Christian sacraments. ¦
They became the means and seals of the blessing proceed
ing from His perfected mediatorship. As by the new-
creating agency of the Holy Spirit the waiting disciples
were transformed into the nucleus of the Christian com
munity, so by the same miraculous act were the ordinances
of this community developed into completeness.
§308.
The sacraments are spiritual ordinances, the ap
pointed means of grace, whereby Christ, the perfected
Mediator, apprehends the subjects of the kingdom of
darkness and translates them into ' the kingdom of
heaven,' in the communion of which eternal life and
salvation become their inheritance.
1. The sacraments are Christian ordinances, or institu
tions ordained by Jesus Christ As ordained by Him
sacraments are integral parts of the new community,
essential members of the organism of His Church. The
connection is vital. Like the ministry, sacraments belong
to the idea of the Church. Without them the Church
has not a normal existence. But the relation is not ex-
' 'Acts i. 4, 5. Cf. prophecy of the Baptist, Luke iii. 16 and John i. 33.

g3o8.] The Holy Sacraments. 555
ternal. The perpetuity and blessing of the sacraments do
not condition the existence of the Church. The converse
would be nearer the truth: the perpetuity of the Church
conditions the blessing of the sacraments, for the Church
is more fundamental and comprehensive than her ordi
nances. To speak more accurately, however, neither after an
external manner conditions the other. The Church is
not subordinate to the sacraments, nor are the sacraments
subordinate to the Church. The connection being vital,
the interdependence is reciprocal. The whole includes
the parts. Like the branches in the vine, the parts stand
in the whole. When we speak of the Church after a
scriptural manner we include sacraments; when we speak
of sacraments we presuppose the Church. The sacra
ments are perpetual by reason of the spiritual body of
which they are organs.
2. Baptism and the Lord's Supper are means of grace.
Each is a transaction whereby the blessing of the glorified
Christ is bestowed on believers.
Baptism is the divine act of initiation. The subject is
translated from the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom
of light.' The translation is real, not merely nominal;
but the translation is objective, like the birth of an infant
into the family, not subjective and personal. Baptism is
not the seal of spiritual experience; it does not change
moral character; but it puts the subject into the kingdom
where by faith and repentance a thorough change of char
acter from bad to good may be developed.
The Lord's Supper is the standing witness to the cruci
fixion and resurrection of Jesus Christ. Its observance is
'Col. i. 13.

556 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
the means whereby from age .to age the fact of the atone
ment and of the resurrection is commemorated, and the res
urrection life of believers is nourished with heavenly food.
As means of grace Holy Baptism and the Lord's
Supper are transactions. Each presupposes a fellowship
of two parties, the recipient who confesses his faith in
Jesus as the Christ, and the dispenser of the sacrament
who acts in the name of Christ glorified. Without either
party the transaction is not really the sacrament. The
water in the font is not Baptism ; nor is the outward appli-
•catiou of water. The consecrated bread and wine are not
the Lord's Supper. There is no Christian Baptism unless
there be a baptizer and a person baptized. Unless there
be a celebrant and a communicant there is no Lord's
Supper. Spiritual virtue does not inhere in the natural
element, nor does virtue attach to the outward natural use
of it, but the spiritual blessing is bestowed and received
in the sacramental transaction ; and the transaction im
plies that Christ and the recipient are present, Christ
being active by His Spirit, and the recipient active toward
Christ by faith. The spiritual gift imparted by Christ
implies the reception of the gift by man; and the recep
tion by man presupposes the spiritual gift proceeding from
Christ. The sacrament is a spiritual ordinance. It belongs to
the kingdom of Christ, being a part of this supernatural
organization. In its application to Baptism and the Lord's
Supper the term "spiritual" has distinctive import.
The word may be applied to ethnic religion; for the
religion of the pagan has in it a spiritual as well as an
ethical and an intellectual element. The word may also
denote the higher endowments of the race. Psychology

§308.1 The Holy Sacraments. 557
may predicate of the man a trichotomy, body and soul and
spirit. Further, the sacraments sustain relations to the
higher realm of natural human life ; and for this reason
Baptism may be called spiritual in distinction from ordi
nary washing with water, and the Supper may be called
spiritual in distinction from a common meal. But here in
its application to Christian sacraments the word spiritual
has a different meaning.
The sacrament by its institution is related in two direc
tions: to the mediatorship of Jesus Christ glorified, and to
the new life of His people ; and this relation between
Christ and His people prevails in the Holy Spirit. By
virtue of this truth, that sacraments have position in the
organism of the Church and perform functions peculiar to
the Church, not by the will of the dispenser, not by the
will of the recipient, but by the divine agency of the
Spirit, each is a spiritual ordinance — not natural, not
merely human, not an empty ceremony, but a real trans
action between the Head and the members of the kingdom.
The Spirit has been given by the enthroned Christ; the
Spirit has quickened His 'body,' the Church; the Spirit
perpetuates and inhabits her communion; He dwells in
every living member; He fills her ordinances; He em
powers her ministry; He inspires the written word and
the spoken word of the Gospel with the fulness of Christ1
Therefore sacraments are spiritual institutions, their sig
nificance and virtue being referable neither to the religious
faith of men nor to their moral conduct, nor even exclu
sively to the words of our Lord spoken on earth, but
referable to His Holy Spirit ever proceeding from the
Father and the Son. 1 Cf. Vol. L, \ 90.

558 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book*

CHAPTER VIII.
HOLY BAPTISM.
§3°9-
Holy Baptism is the sacrament of initiation and of
adoption into the kingdom of God. As to its nature
it consists of two things, the affirmation of which may
be joined in one propositiqn : the application of water,
in the name, of the Father and of the Son and of the
Holy Ghost, to a person who confesses faith in Jesus,
the Christ of God.
Baptism signifies the admission of the subject into
the kingdom of God, whereby he becomes an heir to
its blessings ; and the transaction seals what it signi
fies. It makes him a member of the Christian commu
nity. But the blessing of Baptism is objective only.
i. Holy Baptism consists of two things: the one outward,
the other inward; the one natural, the other supernatural;
the washing with water, and the gracious work of the
triune God. The natural element and the heavenly
import, the visible act and the invisible energy, have
by the institution of our Lord become the two essential
parts of the ordinance. Water remains natural water.
The external use of water confers no spiritual benefit, but
by the word of Jesus Christ the two things have been
iudissolubly conjoined. The visible affusion in the name
of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit and
die invisible adoption into Christ's kingdom, become one
constitution. Says Augustine: Accedit verbum ad ele-
mentum et fit sacr amentum}
1 Aug. on John xv. 1-3, Tractate, LXXX., 3. Of the sacraments Sud-

5309.] Holy Baptism. 559
If the invisible agency of God, that is, of the Father in
the Son by the Spirit, were wanting in the outward trans
action, the religious rite would not be Holy Baptism. We
should then have only an external washing with water, an
empty uuspiritual formality, of which no blessing could
be predicated ; ' for only the blood of Jesus Christ and the
Holy Spirit cleanse us from all sin.'1 Only of the mys
tical union of the earthly and the heavenly by the Spirit
does the New Testament predicate spiritual significance.
2. The subject of Baptism is a believer in Jesus Christ,
or the infant whom a believer may represent; for the
kingdom of Christ, like the covenant of God with Abra
ham, is not designed for the individual as an individual,
but for the family; the family, not the individual man nor
the individual woman, is the unit, as of human society so
also of the Christian Church. No adult who refuses to
accept Jesus as the Lord and Saviour may be baptized.
Confessing Jesus to be the Christ, the subject is by Bap
tism translated from the kingdom of the first Adam into
the kingdom of the last Adam, from membership in the
old race to membership in the new race. By natural
birth the individual becomes a member of the fallen race
whose head is the first man ; by Baptism the believer
passes into the community of the new race whose Head is
the Second Man. By a divine act there is effected an
objective transition.
Initiation and adoptioii into the kingdom of God by
Baptism presuppose the reality and objectiveness of this
hoff says: "Sichtbar sind sie, um eben das Unsichtbare und Himmlische
darstellen und versichern zu konnen. Rom. vi. 4 ; Gal. iii. 1. Gott ist
es, welcher, durch sie wirkt." — Heidelberger Catechismus, p. 302.
1 Heid. Cat, Q. 72.

560 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
kingdom. The new race is a veritable constitution as real
as the old race; and the organization of the new race is as
truly an actual corporation as the natural organization of
the old race. As no one becomes a member of the civil
organization but by natural birth, or by adoption accord
ing to the provisions of civil law, so no one becomes a
member of the spiritual organization but by adoption into
it according to the provisions of spiritual law. If we
believe in the objective reality of the new race, and dis
cern the essential difference between the Church catholic
and the State or natural human society, between the
organization of the new race and the organization of the
old race, we may also appreciate the reality of an objective
transition from the natural organization to the spiritual
organization. For faith and for theological science the
transition is real in the degree that faith and science
acknowledge the kingdom of Christ to be a spiritual con
stitution qualitatively different from every merely human
institution. If the reality and objectiveness of the spiritual corpora
tion of Christ be ignored, if the kingdom of Christ be re
solved into repentance and personal faith, into individual
experiences of peace and hope, or into spiritual feelings,
spiritual thoughts and works of charity, theu the idea of
a real transition from one corporation into another will
fall to the ground; and as a consequence it will be unwar
ranted and meaningless to ascribe to Holy Baptism spirit
ual virtue, for Baptism does not confer belief in Christ,
but presupposes belief.
3. The religious needs of the Adamic race are positive
and negative, the quickening of the new spiritual life
and the deliverance from sin. The mediatorship of our

§309.] Holy Baptism. 561
Lord answers to this twofold need. He has founded a
kingdom, the new life-communion of love with God, and
in this communion of love there is salvation from sin.
Being the sacrament of initiation and adoption into this
kingdom, Baptism answers on the one side to the twofold
needs of the Adamic race and on the other to the twofold
virtue of the mediatorship of our Lord.
In the fallen economy of the Adamic race sin, guilt and
death are the controlling forces; in the new economy of
grace forgiveness of sin, the peace of God and life eternal
are in principle triumphant over moral evil. Being the
sacrament of initiation and adoption, Baptism signifies
and seals to its subjects the real transition from the king
dom of death into the kingdom of life. The transition
comprehends the whole of manhood, including the body
no less than the soul. Translated into the kingdom of
eternal life the subject has a new position, and his new
position is the beginning of a new spiritual existence.
Like a seed sown upon good ground, so by Baptism the
person is planted in spiritual soil, where the requisite con
ditions of Christ-like growth are present, and he may take
root and bring forth heavenly fruit. By faith working
in love the new life may -become more and more mature
in personal history, and its essential nature be fully devel
oped in the resurrection from the dead. The resurrection
is the ripe fruit grown from the seed planted in the king
dom by Baptism.
Paul represents this transition under imagery drawn
from death and resurrection. As Christ in dying died
unto sin once, and in being raised from the dead He
liveth unto God, so we who are baptized into Christ Jesus
are joined to Christ in His death and in His resurrection.
36

562 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
"We were buried with Him through baptism into death;
that like as Christ was raised from the dead through the
glory of the Father, so we also might walk in newness of
life. For if we have become united with Him by the
likeness of His death, we shall be also by the likeness of
His resurrection."1 Baptized into Christ we become one
with Him in His death unto sin ; baptized into Christ,
we become one with Him in the life of the resurrection.
Baptism is not the death unto sin, nor is Baptism the new
life of the resurrection ; but Baptism is the ordinance in
which Christ Himself by His Spirit translates its subjects
from the economy of sin into the economy of grace. The
exit from the economy of sin is likened to the exit from.
the natural world by death; and the initiation into the
economy of grace is likened to the beginning of triumphant
life by resurrection from the dead. ' ' Reckon ye also
yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive with God in
Christ Jesus."
4. The twofold significance of Holy Baptism is .object
ive. The position occupied by natural birth in the realm
of sin and the curse is superseded, inasmuch as the subject
comes to occupy a position in the kingdom of forgiveness
and blessing. In the translation of a person from the one
kingdom into the other God in Christ alone is active; He
is the efficient agent, the subject being passive and recep
tive. Baptism is not a converting ordinance; it is not a
'change of heart;' nor does it supersede repentance and
faith. Instead, the scriptural observance of the sacrament,
if the subject be an adult, presupposes repentance and
faith; and if the subject be an infant, the observance pre
supposes sponsors who are believers. The exercise of faith
'Roni. vi. 4, 5.

j 309.] Holy Baptism. 563
is for all baptized persons, whether adults or infants, a
continuous necessity.
Personal salvation includes two factors, the one object
ive the other subjective, the adoption into the kingdom
of grace by the Spirit which Baptism signifies, and the
appropriation of the blessings of the kingdom by the
personal act of its members. " For by grace have ye been
saved through faith. '" Baptism is the sacramental warrant
for personal faith, and pers'onal faith is both fitness for
Baptism and the indispensable condition of the personal
experience of its benefits. The baptism of an infant, if
not afterwards complemented by his own personal faith,
is objective only and continues to be merely an objective
fact. The baptized infant grown to manhood who re
fuses to accept Christ from the heart is like Esau, who for
one mess of meat sold his own birthright2 His personal
history and his moral character, governed by self-will and
aversion to Christ, may thoroughly contradict the mem
bership to which by Baptism he was admitted. Instead of
becoming the savor of life unto life, his baptism, like the
preaching of the Gospel, may through his unbelief prove
to be a savor of death unto death.3 Dependence on the
sacrament for salvation by one who is living in impeni
tence and unbelief, is a delusion and a monstrous perver
sion of the order of grace.
The complemental relation of faith to baptism Prof.
Thomas G. Apple,-D. D., expresses clearly and forcibly
in the following paragraphs:
"May we not say that in the new birth there is an objective side,
God's act in us, and also a subjective side, our response to this divine
act? And is not this objective side represented in baptism? And may
' Eph. ii. 8. 2 Heb. xii. 16. 3 2 Cor. ii. 16.

564 'Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
it not be that the objective and subjective factors do not always come
together in precisely the same way in different individuals and under
different circumstances ? May we not say that in the case of infant bap
tism the two factors require time, a certain incubation so to speak in
the "bosom of the family of Christ ? The child is born again when it is
baptized, so far as its objective membership in the Christian Church is
concerned, but subjectively it has not yet attained to a consciousness of
its Christian personality.
"Baptism represents the activity on the divine side ; it is the approach
of God to mao to take him by the hand and make him His child. Faith
is the responsive act on the human side by which man accepts and
appropriates the gifts of life and salvation. The two factors, the divine
and the human, come together in the new birth in a way that we cannot
comprehend. We grant the distinction theology makes between regen
eration and sanctification, and this does not necessarily exclude a certain
process in regeneration. And with this conception of a process we may
be able to join together the two factors, baptism and a believing accept
ance of divine grace in one process, though in the case of infant baptism
they may be separated in point of time." '
The most notable illustration of delusion and hypoc
risy is afforded by the history of Simon Magus.2 Of
him it is written: "Simon also himself believed: and
being baptized, he continued with Philip." By this
sacramental act he became a member of the Christian
community; but yielding to his strong natural desire for
gain, he offered the apostles money to give him also this
power ' ' that on whomsoever I may lay my hands he may
receive the Holy Ghost;" proving, as Peter declared, that
his heart was not right before God. Though he had
believed and had been baptized, he 'had not ex corde
repented of his wickedness.
1 "Reformed Church Messenger" for August 6th, 1891, p. 9.
2 Acts viii. 13-23.

g3io.] Holy Baptism. 565

§310.
The doctrine respecting the spiritual virtue of Holy
Baptism is supported by a threefold argument: 1. the
uniform and explicit teaching of the New Testament ;
2. the belief of the Christian Church from the second
century onward to the Reformation ; 3. the Confes
sions of the Reformed and the Lutheran Churches.
The force of the argument drawn from the belief of
the Church depends on the teaching of the New Testa
ment. I shall therefore confine inquiry chiefly to Holy
Scripture. 1. The argument from Scripture may begin with a quo
tation of the words of our Lord. In His discourse with
Nicodemus .He says: "Verily, verily, I say unto thee-,
except a man be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot
enter into the kingdom of God. That which is born of
the flesh is flesh; and that which is born of the Spirit is
spirit ' ' 1 Probably these words do not definitely teach a
1 In answering the question: What is the relation between Baptism and
the new birth? Godet says: the two differing words, 'water' and 'Spirit,'
are parallel, "depending on one and the same preposition ; the one can
not represent something purely subjective and the other something purely
objective. The water also contains something objective, divine. ' If
Baptism is, on the part of man; the declaration of the renunciation of sin,
it is, on the part of God, the declaration of the pardon of sins.' " — Comm.
on John, I., p. 379.
Says Meyer: £f MaTog Kal nvevpaTog, water and Spirit united, constitute
the objective causative "element " from which the birth from above pro
ceeds: water, since with water the subject is baptized unto the forgive
ness of sins (Acts ii. 38; xxii. 16; 1 Cor. vi. 11; 1 John v. 6; Eph. v. 26);
and Spirit, since the Holy Spirit is imparted to the subject unto renewal
of life and sanctification ; the former as the causa medians, the latter as
the causa efficiens; hence baptism becomes "KovTpdv naliyyeveciag, 'the
laver of regeneration - (Tit. iii. 5).

566 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
doctrine respecting Christian Baptism; but according to
the best commentators they affirm the basal truth on
which sacraments are founded. A man must be born
again not of water only, not of the Spirit only, but 'of
water and the Spirit' There is a union of the heavenly
with the earthly, of the invisible with the visible, of the
spiritual blessing with the outward washing, in the ordi
nance by which a man enters into the kingdom of God.
Natural water and the Holy Spirit have by the word of
our Lord become an institution of His Church. The
agency of the Spirit is present and active in and with the
sacred affusion of water.
2. On the day of Pentecost, when by inspiration of the
Holy Ghost miraculously given the first gospel sermon
was preached, the people were pricked in their heart and
said unto Peter and unto the rest of the apostles: Brethren,
what shall we do? This was the first enquiry after the
way of Christian salvation from a congregation, awakened
by the preaching of Jesus and the resurrection. To this
solemn question Peter made answer, in these words: "ReT
pent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of
Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall
receive the gift of the Holy Spirit."1
The answer of Peter enjoins two things, each as a mat
ter of prime necessity: the one personal, repentance, the
turning from their unbelief to Jesus Christ, whom they by
' the hand of lawless men did crucify and slay;' the other
sacramental, namely, the submission to Baptism in the
name of Jesus Christ for a twofold purpose, that they
might have the remission of their sins and receive the
gift of the Spirit. The original is, ek dfeoiv dpapriav. The
1 Acts ii. 37, 38.

£310] Holy Baptism. 567
preposition «?, by the Revisers translated 'unto,' expresses
the purpose or intent for which they were to be baptized
in the name of Christ. Of the multitudes who heard the
first sermon concerning the mediatorship of Jesus Christ
three thousand obeyed the command of Peter: "they hav
ing received his word were baptized."
There is no intimation by the apostle that Baptism is
only a sign, much less an empty form. The language is
concrete. There is nothing signified but the blessing
which at the same time is bestowed. Baptism on the day
of Pentecost was a divine transaction; and those who
turning from the heart to Jesus Christ were baptized in
His name entered by this transaction into the kingdom
of God, in which they had ' the remission of sins ' and
' the gift of the Holy Spirit.'
There is no intimation of a fear lest by connecting the
command to be baptized with the command to repent, in
quirers after the way of salvation might be betrayed into
a delusion and be led to build their hopes on a false foun
dation. 3. The apostle Paul teaches the same doctrine. It is
noteworthy that the Epistle to the Romans, written for
the special purpose of expounding and establishing the
great doctrine of justification by faith without the deeds
of the law, contains definite and forcible statements re
specting the spiritual virtue of Baptism. He says : ' ' Are
ye ignorant that all we who were baptized into Christ
Jesus were baptized into His death ?.m Baptism was not
merely an external transaction, but internal and mystical
as well. Believers were baptized into Jesus Christ, ipanTta-
Bnpev elg Xpiarbv 'inaovv. United to the person of Christ by Bap-
'Rom. vi. 3.

568 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
tism, they were at the same time also united to Him in
His death. An objective connection of believers with
Christ was constituted. As Christ by His death died unto
sin, so believers, being joined to Him in His death, are
admonished to reckon themselves to be dead unto sin.
"If we died with Christ, we believe that we shall also
live with Him."1
The entire argument in support of a thorough conver
sion, a renunciation of all the immoralities of heathenism
and a consecration to a righteous and godly life, rests on
the principle that believers have through Baptism died
unto sin and become 'alive unto God in Christ Jesus.'
According to the apostle Paul, who above all other apos
tles emphasizes the evangelical doctrine of justification by
faith, all that is peculiar to Christian truth respecting per
sonal salvation from sin is based on this twofold founda
tion, namely, living faith in Jesus Christ and union to
Him in His death and resurrection by the Spirit through
Baptism. Each is emphatic.
4. Paul's teaching in his Epistle to the Colossians is
equally explicit. He says: In Him who is the Head of.
all principality and power "ye were also circumcised with
a circumcision not made with hands, in the putting off of
the body of the flesh, in the circumcision of Christ; having
been buried with Him in baptism, wherein ye were also
raised with Him through faith in the working of God,
who raised Him from the dead."2
The factors 011 which life and salvation depend are
asserted in a twofold statement: first under the image and
in terms of circumcision, secondly under the image of
water and in terms of washing. This twofold form of his
'Rom. vi. 8. 2Col. ii. n, 12.

§3io.] Holy Baptism. 569
statement adds great force to the argument Circum
cision separated the ' proselyte of righteousness ' from the
heathen world, and constituted him a member of the
people of the covenant; so through Baptism the connection
of believers with Judaism and paganism was broken, and
they entered into the kingdom founded by Christ; being
citizens of this kingdom they were heirs to its blessings.
Of these blessings there are two which the apostle lifts
into prominence: the death of Christ and His resurrec
tion. Each was a part of their inheritance. ' Buried
with Him in baptism ' they were dead with Him unto
sin ; raised with Him ' through faith in the working of
God ' they were quickened together with Him in His res
urrection.1 Paul is speaking of the baptism of believers, not of
baptism divorced from repentance and faith. Though the
virtue of Baptism stands in the institution of Christ, not
in the sentiments or will of men, yet the objective trans
lation from the kingdom of ' the first man ' into the king
dom of ' the Second Man ' becomes effective in the actual
experience of baptized persons only when complemented
by faith ' in the working of God ' who raised Jesus from
the dead.
5. The necessary connection of these factors, faith
1 Meyer: " The recipient of baptism, who by his baptism enters into the
fellowship of death with Christ, is necessarily also in the act of baptism
ethically buried with him (i Cor. xv. 4), because after baptism he is
spiritually risen with Him. In reality this burial with Him is not a
moral fact distinct from the having died with Him, as actual burial is
distinct from actual dying ; but it sets forth the fulness and completeness
of the relation, of which the recipient, in accordance with the form of
baptism, so far as the latter takes place through Ka-ddvoig and dvdSvatg
becomes conscious successively." — On Rom. vi. 4.

5 7° Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
and Baptism, comes distinctly to view in the Epistle to
the Galatians. Paul says: "For ye are all sons of God,
through faith, in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as
were baptized into Christ did put on Christ " 1 The virtue
of faith and the virtue of Baptism are each explicitly
affirmed. Through faith all were sons of God in Christ
Jesus. Through baptism into Christ believers put on
Christ. Faith anticipates baptism; baptism presupposes
faith. Believers through baptism put on Christ as an
engrafted twig takes the vitality of the stock. Neither
faith without baptism, nor baptism -without faith, is the
divine order of Christian life and Christian salvation. If
we lay stress exclusively on faith as taught in the 26th
verse, we set aside the necessity and ignore the truth of
baptism. Then we become spiritualistic and falsely sub
jective. If we lay stress exclusively on baptism as taught
in the 27th verse, we in effect deny the necessity of per
sonal faith. Then we become falsely objective, falsely rit
ualistic; we are moving in the direction of the grievous
error, held by the Roman Church, that the sacraments ac
complish their purpose ex opere operato. But when we
affirm both factors, assigning to each its distinctive func
tion, we have the whole truth concerning the method of
God by which He bestows and men appropriate eternal life
and salvation.
In full agreement with the import of this teaching is the
doctrine of the passage in the Epistle to Titus: "Not by
works done in righteousness, which we did ourselves, but
according to His mercy He saved us, through the washing
of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit, which
He poured out upon us richly, through Jesus Christ our
1 Gal. iii. 26, 27.

1 3I0.] Holy Baptism. 571
Saviour; that, being justified by His grace, we might be
made heirs, according to hope, of eternal life."1 The
original translated: 'the washing of regeneration,' is
did Twmrpov ¦Kaliyyeveaiag, literally, the laver of regeneration, the
figure being drawn from the laver of brass standing be
tween the altar and the temple where the priests were
required to wash the hands and feet. With sacramental
washing the apostle connects the ' renewing of the Holy
Spirit' 6. The doctrine of Paul as taught in his epistles is com
plemented by the account of his own entrance into the
kingdom. When he had come into the house of Judas
in Damascus, a disciple named Ananias was commanded
by the Lord to inquire for Saul and minister to him ;
and Ananias, entering into the house, came unto Saul,
and standing by him said unto him, brother Saul, receive
thy sight. ' ' The God of our fathers hath appointed thee
to know His will, and to see the Righteous One, and to
hear a voice from His mouth. For thou shalt be a witness
for Him unto all men of what thou hast seen and heard.
And now why tarriest thou ? Arise, and be baptized, and
wash away thy sins, calling on His name."2
Called by Jesus Christ in a miraculous vision and led
into Damascus by the hand of them who were with him,
Saul became a disciple by the appointed means of grace :
by the word cf Ananias with the laying on of his hands,
and by Baptism. • To wash away his sins he was baptized,
calling on the name of the Lord. The words of Ananias
as reported by Paul, ' Be baptized and wash away thy
sins,' convey for substance the meaning which Paul ex
presses in Romans vi. 4, 'buried with Him through bap-
'Tit. iii. 5-7. 2 Acts ix. 18 ; xxii. 14-16.

572 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
tism into death,' and in Galatians iii. 27, ' as many of you
as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ.'
The teaching concerning the spiritual virtue of this sac
rament in the account of the baptism of Paul as recorded
in Acts xxii. 14-16, especially when compared with other.
passages, such as Acts ii. 38, 39; Rom. vi. 3-5; Col. ii.
11, 12; Gal. iii. 26, 27; 1 Pet. iii. 21; 1 Cor. xii. 13; Eph.
iv. 5; Acts xvi. 33; Acts xix. 1-6, not to name other
places, is very explicit, and can not be resolved into the
theory that Baptism is only an external ceremony.
7. With the import of these passages the teaching of
all the writers of the New Testament concurs. There
is not a sentence nor a word in any book that justifies
the opinion that Baptism is only a sign. Neither the
word sign, mifiezov, nor any equivalent, is in any place
applied to this sacrament The passage in Rom. iv. 11
does not refer to Baptism, but to circumcision. Abraham
'received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the right
eousness of the faith which he had while he was in
uncircumcision. ' Instead the New Testament everywhere
represents Baptism to be a concrete divine transaction.
In nearly every book expressions meet us like these:
Except a man be born of water and the Spirit; buried with
Him through baptism unto death; in one Spirit were we
all baptized into one body; buried with Him in Baptism;
as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put 011
Christ ; which also after a true likeness doth now save you,
even baptism. Such is the uniform style in which the
word of God speaks of the sacrament of initiation and
adoption into the kingdom of Christ.
A negative argument also addresses us which requires
attention that the full force of scripture teaching may be

§3io.] Holy Baptism. 573
appreciated. There is . not a passage in any book of the
New Testament referring to the meaning or virtue of
Christian Baptism that does not connect the ordinance
directly either with entrance into the kingdom or with
the forgiveness of sins, or with tboth as in Rom. vi. 2-11.
Moreover, excepting only three places, John i. 12, 13,
1 Pet. i. 23 and James i. 18, there is 110. teaching by our
Lord or by His apostles concerning entrance into the
kingdom that does not connect this organic transition
wrought by the Holy Spirit with the baptismal transac
tion ; and these three passages are each in full sympathy
with the teaching as elsewhere given. John i. 12 speaks
only of the fact that as many as received the Word became
children of God which were begotten, not of the will of
man, but of God. Here there is no reference to the ordi
nance by which ' He gave to them the right to become
children of God.' The other two passages put emphasis
on the word of the Gospel. Says Peter: "Having been
begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorrupti
ble, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth."
To this the language of James is equivalent: "Of His own
will He brought us forth by the word of truth, that we
should be a kind of first fruits of His creatures." , James
and Peter in these places both lay stress on the preached
word of the Gospel through which ' the natural man '
is begotten again of the Spirit; for the preaching of the
Gospel is ' the power of God unto salvation to every one
that believeth.' Baptism presupposes ' the word of truth '
through which men are led to believe on Christ ; for
faith 'cometh of hearing,' not of baptism, and hearing by
the word of Christ.1 Without the word of Christ, or in the
' Rom. x. 17.

574 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
absence of the faith which comes of the hearing of the
word, the subject has not the required fitness for baptism.1
§3I]:-
The argument derived from the history of the doc
trine in the Nicene period and during the Middle Ages
is too extensive for a review of particulars. Nor is
such a review a matter of fundamental importance,
Holy Scripture being our principal and final authority.
Yet the consensus of the Church during eighteen cen
turies merits attention.
1. The history of the Church not only supports the doc
trine that Baptism is the sacrament of initiation into the
kingdom of God, but it does more. During the Nicene
period and during the Middle Ages all the teachers of
the Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic Churches, and
the principal representatives of the heretical sects, predi
cated of this sacrament so much divine meaning and force
that the complemental necessity of personal faith was in
danger of infringement. Magical virtue was by many
ascribed to the baptismal water itself. A leaning toward
this notion we may discover as early as Tertullian. "Yet
the subjective condition of repentance and faith was uni
versally required. " How shall we account for this false
emphasis put. on the water of Baptism by the Christian
Church? Was it a gratuitous invention that without any
basis in Scripture maintained its ascendency for centuries?
The only way in which we can rationally account for this
' Says Augustine: " Take away the word, and the water is no more nor
less than water. * * And whence has water so great an efficacy, as in
touching the body to cleanse the soul, save by the operation of the word?
and that not because it is uttered, but because it is believed." — Tractate,
LXXX., 3.

j 3ii.] Holy Baptism. 575
excess of emphasis is by recognizing the truth that the
New Testament does in unequivocal terms predicate spirit
ual virtue of this sacrament'
2. As regards the Reformers, and the Confessions of the
16th and 17th centuries, both of the Lutheran Church and
of all branches of the Reformed Church, there is no
material difference of belief. The Reformers rejected the
medieval notion of the magical virtue of the baptismal
water;2 yet they interpreted New Testament teaching on
Holy Baptism in harmony with the interpretation of the
post-apostolic fathers and of the great teachers of the
Nicene and post- Nicene ages. The principal change
affected the administration of the sacrament. Baptism
was divested of abuses and unscriptural accretions.
Hagenbach, the eminent Reformed theologian of the
University of Basle, says that "Protestants and Catholics
entertained essentially the same view of the nature of
baptism, asserting, 1. its general necessity, in opposition
1 Of the many names of excellence given to Baptism by Basil the Great,
Gregory of Nazianzum and Gregory of Nyssa, such as illumination, spirit
ual circumcision, anointing, death of sins, Ullman says: "All the bless
ings of Christianity appear, as it were, concentrated in one point in
baptism, and are dispensed altogether in one moment ; but all these can
only in so far be applied to Baptism, as the person to be baptized pos
sesses the right disposition, without which none can enter into the king
dom of heaven founded by Christ." "According to Leo the Great, the
baptismal water which is filled with the Holy Ghost, is in relation to
the regenerate man what the womb of the Virgin filled with the same
Spirit was in relation to the sinless Redeemer, to whom she gave
birth." Cf. Hist, of Doct. by Hagenbach, I. \ 137. Hase's Ch. Hist.,
\\ 44, 71. Respecting the doctrine in the early Church Schaff says:
"Baptism was not only an act of God, but at the same time the most
solemn surrender of man to God."— Ch. Hist., Vol. II., \ 71.
2 Luther may be an exception. Cf. Walch, xii., p. 714.

576 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
to the Quakers;1 2. its sacramental character, in opposition
to the Socinians; and chiefly, 3. the necessity of infant
baptism in opposition to the Anabaptists (Mennonites)."2
Dr. Marheineke expresses the same judgment: " Of all the
sacraments, that of baptism is the one respecting which
Roman Catholics could always unite most easily with
Protestants, and would have had the least reason for
framing particular canons, in order to keep up any differ
ence in respect to points of secondary importance."3
Though of one mind with the pre-Reformation Church
as to the truth that Baptism conveys, spiritual blessing,
the Reformers developed several significant modifications.
According to the traditional theory held by the Roman
Church, Baptism is of avail for the forgiveness of original
sin and of the overt sins committed before its administra
tion. The Reformers teach that Baptism seals the forgive
ness of all sins, original and actual, seals the forgiveness
of actual sins, whether committed before or after the ad
ministration of the sacrament4
The Roman Church maintains that the positive spirit-
1 Not the absolute necessity. From the beginning the canon of the
Church has been that not the omission but the contempt of Baptism
incurs condemnation. "Non privatio, sed contemtus sacramenti
damn at." Schaff remarks: " This leaves the door open for the salvation
of Quakers, unbaptized children, and elect heathen who die with a de
sire for salvation." — Church History, Vol. II., p. 2*54.
2Hagenbach's History of Doctrines, II., \ 270.
sMarheineke's Symbolics, I., p. 149.
*Says Calvin : " Nor must it be supposed that baptism is administered
only for the time past. * * Whenever we have fallen, we must recur
to the remembrance of baptism, that we may be always certified and as
sured of the remission of our sins. For though, when it has been once
administered, it appears to be past, yet it is not abolished by, subsequent
sins."— Calvin's Institutes, Book IV., Chapter III., I 3.

5 3n.] Holy Baptism. 577
ual virtue of Baptism is made over alike to all baptized
persons ; but the Reformers, especially Calvin and all the
theologians of the Calviuistic school, limit its saving vir
tue to the elect, whether adults or iufauts.
According to Roman teaching the external administra
tion bestows the spiritual blessing npcm the subject. The
sacrament works its legitimate effect ex opere operato.1
Rejecting this theory, the Reformers hold that Baptism
does not accomplish its saving purpose unconditionally,
proving itself to be the blessing of God unto salvation only
to them that believe. They emphasize the necessity of
repentance and faith as explicitly as the necessity of Bap
tism. 3. During the 16th and 17th centuries no Reformers, no
orthodox theologians, no Reformed Confessions, denied
either the necessity or the saving grace of Baptism. In
this respect the Confession of Faith of the Westminster
Assembly, 1648, and the Confession of Scotland, 1560, are
in full accord with the Helvetic Confessions, the Belgic
Confession and the Heidelberg Catechism. The denial
of spiritual virtue came from Socinians, Anabaptists and
some other divergent sects.'' Upon the unbelieving spirit
that sees in Holy Baptism only an empty and ineffectual
sign the Confession of Scotland pronounces this condemn
atory sentence:
'Council of Trent, Seventh Session, Canon VIII., says: "If any one
saith, that by the said sacraments of the New Law grace is not conferred
through the act performed (ex opere operato non conferri gratiam), but
that faith alone in the divine promise suffices for the obtaining of grace:
let him be anathema."
2 For a summary discussion on the doctrine of the Reformed Churches
respecting Holy Baptism, the author refers to his article in the Mer-
cersburg Review for April, 1868, p. 180.
37

578 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
"Itaque vauitatem eorum, qui affirmant, sacramenta nil
aliud quam mera et nuda signa esse, omuino damnamus."
4. The objective virtue of Holy Baptism may be illus
trated by two analogous transactions: the one is the legal
adoption of a child into a family; the other is the act of
naturalization by which the subject of a foreign govern
ment may become a citizen of the United States.
An infant, born of low parentage, in poverty and squalor,
amid vice and crime, may be transplanted according to law
into a Christian family of intelligence, culture and wealth.
By this transaction it becomes the child of the adopting
parents; then it lives in the bosom of Christian love and
righteousness, and is invested with the right's of other
children of the same household. The hour of adoption is
for the infant the beginning of a new social existence, the
intrinsic moral value of which it is scarcely possible to
overestimate. Yet the transaction is objective only. The
moral and social force of a position in such a new environ
ment begins to influence and shape the life of the infant
from the first day of his adoption ; but whether this birth
into a Christian family will become a social and moral
blessing in the actual experience of the child, as from year
to year he grows up into manhood, will depend on his
receptivity, teachableness and obedience. If the child
prove to be disobedient, refractory and obstinate, his birth
into a Christian household may become for him a curse
instead of a blessing.
The subject of a foreign power, whether friendly or hos
tile, may by compliance with our laws become a citizen of
the United States. Then his amenability to the govern
ment under which he was born ceases, and he accedes to
the civil rights of an American citizen. Naturalization

§3ii.l Holy Baptism. 579
effects an objective transition from a monarchy to a repub
lic, and is thus for the person the beginning of a new civil
existence. By this transaction he is born into another
world and invested with new prerogatives. To the au
thority of every foreign potentate he is dead. Yet this
civil birth, this transition into a new world, though real,
though affecting the entire subsequent history of the man,
is objective only. Naturalization, does not make him an
honest, faithful or influential citizen. Whether he will
become an honored member of an American common
wealth depends on himself, on the manner in which he
asserts his rights and uses the blessings of civil freedom.
Now to speak of the initial sacrament in terms of the
State, we may express its meaning thus: Baptism is the
transaction by which a person, by nature the heir of
depravity and death, is translated into the bosom of a
heavenly household, where grace reigns, where spiritual
blessings abound and he is the heir to the victory of Christ
over death.
Or to use the other figure: Baptism is the naturalization
of the subject of a foreign despotic power. By this act he
becomes a citizen of the Republic of spiritual life aud
spiritual freedom, where he enjoys its protection and is
clothed with all its rights.
This new household of love into which a child, by
nature the heir of misery, is adopted, this Republic of
grace of which by the act of spiritual naturalization the
subject of an alien despotism becomes a citizen, is the
kiHgdom of heaven, the realm of forgiveness, of peace and
eternal life.
Yet whether adoption into the household of faith will
develop into the resurrection of life eternal or whether

5 So , Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
citizenship in the Republic of Christ will issue to its
members in the complete triumph over the kingdom of
darkness, depends on fidelity to the new law of grace.-

CHAPTER IX.
BAPTISM OF INFANTS.
§3"-
The religion of Christ is designed for mankind, not
for any class of men in distinction from other classes ;
for no race is excluded, no nation, no sex, no age. The
compass of the Church is as broad as the religion of
which the Church is the organization.
The obligation to receive the infant children of
Christian parents into the fellowship of the Church by
Baptism is founded, not on a command of the New
Testament, but on the nature of Christianity and the
purpose of the Church.
The pre-Christian economy and the Christian econ
omy are in principle and aim the same. Wherein the
two economies differ, the new is in every particular
richer and more comprehensive than the old. Truth
is higher ; wealth more spiritual ; its compass not
national, but universal.
1. No one will dispute the proposition that the covenant
of Jehovah with Abraham was particularistic, being de
signed for himself, for his family, and for the people of
which he was the progenitor — not directly for any other
nation. For the time all other nations were shut out. "
Neither will any one deny that Christianity, in distinc
tion from the Abrahamic covenant, is designed, not for
one elect people only, but designed for and adapted to all

5 3i2.] Baptism of Infants. 581
the world. The middle wall of partition between- the Jew
and the Gentile is broken down, the blessings of the Chris
tian religion being accessible alike to every nation.
Yet in principle the religion established by the Abra
hamic covenant and the religion of Jesus Christ are the
same. There is but one fundamental promise, revealed in
successive stages of clearness and fulness, but one fellow
ship of grace, developed by historical process in the two
dispensations, the one typical the other substantive, the
one prophetic the other the realization of prophecy. As
to their ultimate aim there is no difference. Abraham,
Isaac, Jacob and the twelve tribes became the elect peo
ple, to the exclusion of other nations, not because the
grace of Jehovah had absolutely rejected other nations,
but because the ultimate purpose of His grace embraced
them. Israel was chosen to be a people under the special
spiritual discipline of the ceremonial law, to the end that
in the fulness of time this people should become the fit
organ by which the promised Seed of Abraham might
come into the world, by which the compass of the cove
nant might be enlarged, and a kingdom founded which
should embrace all nations, Jews and Gentiles alike. " By
myself have I sworn, saith the Lord, that in blessing I
will bless thee, and in multiplying I will multiply thy
seed as the stars of the heaven; and in thy seed shall all
the nations of the earth be blessed."1
2. To this end the covenant of grace was made by
Jehovah, not with Abraham as an individual, isolated
from other individuals, but with Abraham as the husband
of Sarah, as the prospective father of Isaac and the head
of an innumerable posterity. Isaac, the child of promise,
'Gen. xxii. 18.

582 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
and his lineal descendants, were entitled to the blessings
of the Promise equally with Abraham. The covenant was
a fellowship of Jehovah with a community, all of whose
members were bound together by common natural descent,
common promises, common worship and a common Mes
sianic vocation.
The people founded by Abraham did not consist of a
voluntary association of individuals held together by their
own free choice, from which they had the right at will to
sever themselves. Though consisting of twelve tribes and
many families, all were of one blood. The people were
an organic whole, conjoined on the one hand by the law
of natural generation and on the other by the genius of
the Messianic Promise. Each family, each individual,
whether adult or infant, shared the rights of a common
vocation, each being the heir to the blessing and the
discipline of the special governing providence of Jehovah.
The covenant emphasizes the difference between natural
birth and birth into the covenant. Birth of Hebrew
parentage entitled the male infant to circumcision, but
natural birth did not constitute him an heir to the Pro
mise. The Mosaic law requires the male infant to be
circumcised on the eighth day. "And God said unto
Abraham: This 'is my covenant, which ye shall keep,
between me and you and thy seed after thee; every male
among you shall be circumcised; it shall be a token of a
covenant betwixt me and you. And he that is eight days
old shall be circumcised among you, every male through
out your generations. * * And my covenant shall be
in your flesh for an everlasting covenant."1 It was by
circumcision that the infant was made a member of the
1 Gen. xvii. 9-13.

:3i2.] Baptism of Infants. 583

o

theocratic community and became an heir to its blessings.
The neglect of circumcision was a sin and provoked
Jehovah's condemnation. "The uncircu incised male who
is not circumcised in the flesh of his foreskin, that soul
shall be cut off from his people: he hath broken my cove
nant"1 When Isaac, the child of promise, was born he was
entitled to circumcision; and 011 the eighth day he was
circumcised. By this sacramental act the unconscious
infant was born into the fellowship of the covenant and
became in fact an heir of the promise. Though an uncon
scious infant, Isaac had a right to be received into the
covenant, a right, not contingent on the will of his parents,
but a divine right, a right secured to him by the nature
and terms of the institution, a right of which his father
could not deprive him without committing a grievous sin.
This law was obligatory upon the chosen people through
out all their generations. ' Thou shalt keep my covenant,
thou, and thy seed after thee throughout their generations.'
3. The Abrahamic covenant anticipates the Christian
religion. The religion of Christ presupposes the Abra
hamic covenant; in all respects it is a fulfilment of Old
Testament typology. In no particular is the kingdom
founded by Christ less comprehensive or less liberal than
the covenant with Abraham or than the Mosaic economy.
The Abrahamic covenant was a fellowship of Jehovah
with one nation only, all other, nations being excluded.
The stranger might become an heir to its blessings, but
he was required to be incorporated by circumcision into
the body of the chosen people. On the contrary, the
kingdom of God founded by the Christ is designed, not
1 Gen. xvii. 14.

584 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
for one family, nor for one nation only, but for all families
and for all nations. The one was particular, the other is
universal, being commensurate with the whole of the
human race.
In the chosen nation male members only were entitled
to all the privileges of the covenant. Woman, it is true,
occupied a higher place than among heathen nations; she
was a member of the covenant; and to her the ceremonial
law guaranteed the right to observe various acts of worship
in the tabernacle and in the temple. But her sex was a
bar to many services of the ceremonial worship. She was
not admitted to the inner court. This line of separation
Christianity abolishes. Women are raised by Christ to a
spiritual plane on a level with men. The male children
and the female children of the family are alike the heirs
of the same promises and the same gifts of grace. Though
our Lord when celebrating the passover instituted the
Lord's Supper with His twelve disciples, no woman being
among the number, yet women as well as men were
worshiping together in the upper room when the promise
was fulfilled; "and they were all filled with the Holy
Spirit, and began to speak with other tongues, as the
Spirit gave them utterance." Women and men were
quickened by the Spirit into the same new spiritual life.
Both sexes being among the original members of the
regenerate community, the genius of Christianity from
the beginning accorded to women, no less than to men,
the right to observe the holy communion of the. Lord's
Supper, the right to have part in all the services of the
Christian Church. Christianity does not lessen religious
privilege .nor contract the limits of spiritual fellowship,
but it breaks down the limitations of the chosen nation
and enlarges the area of privilege.

»3i2.] Baptism of Infants. 585
Circumcision, the token of the covenant, was appointed
for Abraham and his children. Male infants no less than
male adults were to be circumcised. When eight days
old, the infant was entitled to the ordinance by which he
entered into the covenant. Infancy was no bar to mem
bership. .Agreeably to the law of universal love which distin
guishes the religion of Christ from the religion of Israel,
not male infants only, but female infants as well, are
entitled to membership in the 'Christian Church.
Circumcision was the rite of initiation into the Abra
hamic covenant. Who were to be circumcised? There is
but one answer: adults and their infant children. Baptism
is the rite of initiation into the Christian Church. Who
are to be baptized? There is but one answer: believers
and their infant children. As- the covenant with Abra
ham anticipates the Church of Christ and the Church
presupposes the covenant, so circumcision anticipates and
prophesies Holy Baptism, whilst Baptism presupposes
circumcision and appropriates all its elements of truth.
As the Christian Church invites not one nation only to
the banquet of grace, but all nations, as she welcomes to
her altars not men only, but men and women with equal
freedom, so the grace of Baptism is freer and larger
than the grace of circumcision. More comprehensive
Baptism is in three particulars: — 1. Under the pre-Chris
tian economy members of the male sex only were com
manded to be circumcised; under the economy of the New
Testament believing women as well as believing men are
entitled to baptism. Sex is not a bar to the privilege of
the sacrament. 2. As only male adults so only male
infants were entitled to circumcision. This restriction

586 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
also has been abrogated. Not limited to male adults,
neither is the right to Baptism limited to male infants.
Female children have the religious rights of male children.
Infancy was no bar to circumcision. Infancy is no bar to
Baptism. Says Thomas Watson: " Certainly Jesus Christ
did not come to put believers and their children into a
worse condition than they were in before." Instead of
abolishing the rights of male infants, these rights to the
sacrament of initiation into the covenant are by Christian
ity conferred on all infants, irrespective of sex. 3. The
rite of circumcision was to be administered when the male
infant was eight days old. No such line of limitation
is drawn by the religion of Christ The male infants and
female infants of believers are entitled to admission into
the fold by Baptism whether less or more than eight days
old. 4. Infant children have rights. Under civil law in a
Christian country they have rights to life, to food, cloth
ing, property, fostering care and protection. These rights
do not depend on the will of parents; they are grounded
in the institution of the family and in the organization of
the Christian State.
Under Christian law the infant children of believing
parents also have rights. They have a right not only to
be brought up under Christian teaching and training, but
also a right conjointly with their parents to be constituted
members of the Christian Church; they are entitled to
those spiritual blessings which from the communion of the
Church flow to her members. The family is a solidarity.
Parents have no rights to spiritual benediction from which
they may exclude their infant children ; for the divine-
rights of the family, of parents as of their infant children,

5 3i2.] Baptism of Infants. 58 7
are not based either on merit or sex or age or the actual
exercise of faith, but exclusively on the sovereign grace
of God in Christ Jesus; and His grace is no respecter of
age, as it is not of persons.
The same civil law that protects the life of father and
mother protects also the life of the infant child. He has
the same title lo food, raiment and shelter as they. In
this respect Church and State are bound by the .same
principle. The same law of grace that entitles father and
mother to admission into the Church of Christ entitles
also their infant children. Grace is not less liberal, nor
less sympathetic, than the civil law. The lack of self-
consciousness is no bar to the property rights of a child.
Is the Christian Church severer and more exclusive toward
the little ones than the Christian State ?
To deny to the infant child of Christian parents the right
of initiation into the Church by Baptism is as really con
trary to the genius of Christianity as it would be to deny
to the believing wife the right to join with her Christian
husband in the observance of the Lord's Supper.
The argument in support of the baptism of infants,
drawn from the genius of the religion founded by Jesus
Christ, contrasted with the limitations of the Mosaic
economy, is general and is adequate. It suffices to justify
the nearly universal practice of the Christian Church. Yet
the general argument is sustained by some particular
truths which I shall now proceed to consider.

5 88 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book?.
%3^3-
The infant children of Christian parents belong to
the covenant and people of God, under Christian law
as under Jewish law. Further, redemption from sin
and the Holy Ghost, who works faith, are through the
blood of Christ promised to them no less than to their
parents. i. That the covenant is in principle the same both
under the old and under the new dispensation is recog
nized and asserted by the apostle Peter in his first gospel
sermon preached under inspiration of the Holy Spirit on
the day of Pentecost. In answer to the question of the
multitude: What shall we do? Peter said: "Repent ye,
and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus
Christ unto the remission of your sins; and ye shall
receive the gift of the Holy Ghost. For to you is the
promise, and to your children, and to all that are afar off,
even as many as the Lord our God shall call unto him."1
The promise of which Peter speaks is the original
promise first spoken by God Himself in Eden, afterwards
declared and sealed to Abraham and his posterity, then
foreshadowed by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the
law, and proclaimed by the prophets, and finally fulfilled
by the death, resurrection and glorification of Jesus Christ,
His incarnate Son; — God's promise of acceptance, of sal
vation from sin, of eternal life proceeding from the love
of God to the world, to Jews, Greeks and barbarians, to
men and women, to old and young. The ancient promise,
as interpreted by Peter, respects three classes of persons: —
It respects, first, the adult Jews who had crucified Jesus.
1 Acts ii. 37-40.

j 313.] Baptism of Infants. 589
Peter says: to you is the promise, namely, to the ' men of
Judea, and all that dwell at Jerusalem,' who by the hand
of lawless men did crucify and slay Jesus of Nazareth, a
man approved of God unto them by mighty works and
wonders and signs. These men of Judea, guilty of cruci
fying the King of the Jews, were commanded to be bap
tized in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of
their sins ; and the ground on which this command rests
is the gracious promise of acceptance and forgiveness made
to them, the chosen people of God. The rejection of Jesus
of Nazareth when on earth, and His crucifixion by the
hand of lawless men, was no bar to their entrance into the
new kingdom, no bar to the reception of the gift of the
Holy Spirit.
The second class consists of the children of the Jews.
'For to you is the promise and to your children, miroig tLk-
voig iftav.' The word 'children' stands in opposition to
adults. Says Peter: to the ' men of Judea,' who had cru
cified and slain Jesus of Nazareth, is the promise; but not
to them only. In contradistinction to the 'men of Judea'
the promise, Peter reminds them, was also to their chil
dren. Not to their adult "posterity," as some generalize,
but as Alford maintains, " to your little ones," an inter
pretation which answers both to the prophecy of God and
to the import of the covenant of Jehovah with Abraham :
" This is my covenant, which ye shall keep, between me
and you and thy seed after thee; every male among you
shall be circumcised. * * And he that is eight days
old shall be circumcised among you, every male through
out your generations."
This is the ancient covenant as recorded in Gen. xvii.
10-14 aim Lev. xii. 3, the covenant than which none was

590 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
better known or better understood or more scrupulously
kept by the Jews of that age. For the Jews the words
of Peter, under these circumstances, could convey no other
meaning than that infant children were embraced with
their parents in the promise of blessing.
The third class included in the promise are the Gen
tiles, " all that are afar off." The words do not designate
the Jews locally distant from Jerusalem, but the nations
that were religiously and socially separated from the Jews.
By reason of the covenant the Jews were in communion
with Jehovah ; they were ' nigh ' to Him. The Gentiles
were not members of the covenant, and therefore not in
communion with Jehovah; they were 'afar off'1 In this
sense Paul uses these formulas in his Epistle to the
Ephesians. He says : " In Christ Jesus ye that once were
far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ." The Gen
tiles who had been excluded from the commonwealth of
grace had now ' in the blood of Christ ' become ' fellow-
citizens with the saints, and of the household of God.'2
The application by Peter of the promise to the Gentiles
corresponds to the import of the promise as recorded in
Genesis. The Lord said unto Abraham: 'In thee shall
all the families of the earth be blessed;' or as recorded in
another place : ' In thy seed shall all the nations of the
earth be blessed.'3
'The explanation which, as Howson observes, "is undoubtedly the
one to be preferred, as the expression, an Old Testament one, is con
stantly used to describe the Gentiles. Isa. xlix. I ; lvii. 19 ; Zech. vi.
15." Alford says: " There is no difficulty whatever in this interpreta
tion. The apostles always expected the conversion of the Gentiles.
* * It is surprising to see such commentators as Burton and Meyer
finding difficulty where all is so plain."
2 Eph. ii. 13, 17, 19. 8Gen. xii. 3; xxii. 18.

§3 13. J Baptism of Infants. 591
The promise made to Abraham, the progenitor of the
chosen nation, Peter interprets in strict agreement with
the letter, and with its spirit as understood by the later
prophets. He distinguishes those three classes of persons
to each of whom the promise was made: adult Jews, the
little children of the Jews, and the Gentiles; on this
ground no nation, no sex, no age, was to be denied the
right of initiation by Baptism into the Christian com
munity.1 2. Another truth deserving special consideration is that
the spiritual necessities of little children are essentially
the same as the spiritual necessities of their parents.
By nature infants are fallen; they are subject to the
power of the law of sin; they are the heirs of death.
Members by birth of the race of 'the first man,' they are
under the condemnation and in the miseries which by
transgression have come upon the race. In the kingdom
of ' the first man,' on the plane of perverted human nature,
there is no hope of deliverance. Infants and their parents
need redemption, need the same redemption ; therefore the
promise is made, not to parents, excluding the children,
but to both. The life and salvation which both need are
blessings which distinguish the members of the new race,
blessings that may be appropriated and enjoyed, not in
the kingdom of man, but in the kingdom of God, not in
the wilderness of the world, but within the fold of the
Good Shepherd. For this special personal reason the in
fant children of believers have the right to enter by Bap
tism into the kingdom of grace, the same right to be
within the fold of the Good Shepherd that is guaranteed
to their parents. 1 Cf. Acts x. 35.

59 2 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
Agreeably to the teaching of the Old Testament and
the New Testament the grace of God respects, not the
individual as an individual, whether an adult or an infant,
but in the first instance respects the family, including all
its members. The individual has his place, his rights,
his privileges, but not as an isolated person, severed from
organic connection with the family. Whether adult or
infant, the individual is a member of an estate, of a com
munity, of a nation, from which indeed he may sever
himself or attempt to sever himself; but then his position
becomes abnormal and unnatural, and his moral or re
ligious condition becomes a caricature of the divine order.
The law by virtue of which individuals are members of a
family or of the community and have divine rights both
as individuals and as members of an organism, underlies'
and governs both the organization of the State and the
organization of the Christian Church.
§ 3*4- '
Two objections against the baptism of infants call
for some consideration. The one is that in the New
Testament there is no command enjoining the baptism
of infants ; the other is the fact that infants are incap
able of believing in Jesus Christ.
1. The absence of an explicit command of our Lord or
of His apostles to baptize infants, instead of being a reason
for denying to them the right to Baptism, supports the
contrary presumption.
The first believers were converts from Judaism; and
as we all know, the rights of the covenant were guaran
teed to children as well as to their parents. No other
conception of a true religion would naturally enter their

g3i4-] Baptism of Infants. 593
minds. That infants had a right to stand within the pale
of the Church, side by side with their parents, was a pre
supposition fundamentally inwrought with all the religious
sentiments of the Jews. If we recognize this historical
fact, it becomes evident that in the apostolic age there
were no conditions present that called for such a com
mand or that would have justified it.
The religion of the Jews, their theocratic history and all
their sentiments respecting the relation of little children
to their parents, required and justified silence respecting
the baptism of infants. The command of Christ was:
Baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son
and pf the Holy Spirit, implying that circumcision was
superseded. The command of the apostle was: Repent
and be baptized every one of you. in the name of Jesus
Christ unto the remission of your sins, implying that the
intent of circumcision is fulfilled and its compass realized
in Holy Baptism.
If our Lord, or His apostles, had given converts from
Judaism explicit command to baptize infants as well as
adults, the presupposition would be that circumcision had
not embraced infants. Would not a command imply that
there was necessity or occasion for it? And the occasion
could have been none other than this: that the idea and
habit of sealing the rights of membership to the infant
children of Jews was foreign to their traditions, to their
religious sentiments and to their social organization.
If we bear in mind the terms of the covenant with
Abraham, if we give due weight to the explicit require
ments of the ceremonial law and the fixed habit of ,
thought prevalent among the Jews respecting their chil
dren, we shall scarcely fail to see that the absence of a
38

594 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
command to baptize infants is evidence of the fact that in
the apostolic age they were not excluded, but that by-
virtue of the law of the covenant they were included with
their patents in the command: Repent ye, and be baptized
every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ.
The principle of reasoning underlying this argument is
applicable to converts from paganism ; for ethnic relig
ions no less than Judaism connect children with parents,
and require both to observe the same religious rites. No
religion excludes children from participation in the obli
gations and blessings of devotion to the gods.
2. The objection that the unconscious infant cannot
believe in Jesus Christ, and therefore is to be denied the
right to Baptism, since the sacrament may be administered
only to believers, overlooks the solidarity of the family.
Parents and children are not a voluntary association
of independent individuals. They constitute an 'organic
unity, the individual members of which are bound to
gether by a law of divine origin immanent and operative
in the family, a law not contingent on the authority or
consent of human will.
The Christian State no less than the Christian Church
recognizes this truth. The child is the heir to his parents
and to his ancestry, under whatever aspect he may be
viewed. As regards his bodily type, his mental endow
ments, his temperament, even his moral arid religious
status, he is fashioned and his personal history is in large
measure influenced by this inalienable law, from which
grow forth parental duties and filial duties, and on which
rest the peculiar rights of parents and the peculiar rights
of children. In civil and social relations the father stands
for his children. He is bound to them by obligations

§314.] Baptism of Infants. , 595
from which in a normal state of Christian society he
cannot be absolved. The child in turn has claims upon
his parents, upon their wisdom, upon their time and care,
their earnings and their home, claims which he possesses
for no reason other than the fact that he is their child.
The solidarity of the family, the reciprocal fellowship of
parents and children, both the Christian State and the
Christian Church assume.
Parents represent the child as in his relation to the
State so in his relation to the Church. If parents be be
lievers in Christ and members of His Church, their infant
children have the rights of believers. If the parents be
unbelievers, their infant children occupy the position of
unbelievers. The civil order and the ecclesiastical order
correspond. If the parents are citizens, the children have
the rights of citizens. If the parents are not citizens and
their children are born under the dominon of a foreign
power, children have not by virtue of birth the rights of
citizens. The rights of infants in respect of the Church
run parallel to the rights of infants in respect of the State.
I may proceed one step further and say: if the parents
are believers the infant child is a believer. That is to
say, by the law of the Christian household constituting
parents and children an organic unity, the child comes to
the door of the Church with the rights and in the attitude
of a believer. The Church recognizes in the parent the
believing attitude of the child, opens the door, and by
Baptism admits him into the Christian fold.
3. The argument in support of the soundness of this
principle furnished by the Abrahamic covenant I need not
again present. No one can gainsay the manifest truth
that the covenant with Abraham presumes the solidarity

596 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
of the family, and explicitly guarantees to infant children
. the right of admission by the ceremony of circumcision
into the fellowship of the covenant.
Our Lord assumes the validity of the Old Testament
principle, for He deals with both "Jews and Gentiles on
this basis. It may suffice to cite two cases. The one is
recorded in John iv. 46-54.
A certain nobleman of Capernaum went to Jesus when
at Cana of Galilee, and besought Him to come down and
heal his son, for he was at the point of death. Jesus saith
unto him, Go thy way; thy son liveth. On inquiry of his
servants the nobleman learned that, ' yesterday at the
seventh hour the fever left him;' the hour in which Jesus
had said unto him, Thy son liveth. The son at the point
of death did not believe and did not take refuge in Jesus.
It was the father who went to Jesus and besought Him
for his son; and it was the believing prayer of the father
on behalf of his son that Jesus answered. The blessing
came to the child on the father's account.
The other illustration is the case of the Syro-Phcenician
woman, recorded in Matt xv 21-28 and Mark vii. 24-30.
Her little daughter had an unclean spirit. She besought
Jesus that He would cast forth the demon. His reply
seeming to be repellent, her prayer became more impor
tunate; then He said unto her: O woman, great is thy
faith; be it done unto thee even as thou wilt. The case
of this woman is the more remarkable, because she was
not a member of the covenant. She was a Greek, a Syro-
Phcenician by race. Standing outside of the covenant,
not being one of the lost sheep of the house of Israel to
whom Jesus especially was sent, she had not the claim of
a Jew upon His healing power. Yet the line of national

j 314.] Baptism of Infants. 597
separation was no bar to her faith. Jesus honored the
faith of the mother by healing her little daughter. The
suffering child had not approached him in prayer, had not
put forth an act of faith. The faith of the mother was
the condition of the blessing. Neither the absence of the
child, nor her inability to believe, was a bar to the saving
love of the Christ.
4. The Old Testament doctrine respecting the solidarity
of the family underlies also the teaching of the apostle
Paul in 1 Cor. vii. 12-15, on the relation of husband and
wife in mixed marriages and on the relation of children
to the believing father or mother. If any brother hath an
unbelieving wife, and she is content to dwell with him,
let him not leave her. And the woman which hath an
unbelieving husband, and he is content to dwell with her,
let her not leave her husband. For the unbelieving hus
band is sanctified in the wife, and the unbelieving wife is
sanctified in the brother: else were your children unclean;
but now are they holy.
If a pagan husband becomes a believer, his pagan wife,
by reason of the conjugal relation, is sanctified in the
brother. If a pagan wife becomes a believer, the pagan
husband, by virtue of the conjugal relation, is sanctified
in the believing wife. The marriage is not unclean in
consequence of the unbelief of the husband or the unbelief
of the wife; but the marriage is holy because of the faith
in Christ of the husband or the faith of the wife. As
Bengel remarks: "The faith of the wife has more influ
ence than, the unbelief of the husband." Or to reverse
Bengel's proposition: The faith of the husband has more
influence ¦ than the unbelief of the wife. Not that the
unbelieving member became personally pure and right-

598 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
eous by virtue of the believing wife or the believing
husband, but by reason of the mystical unity of husband
and wife, the faith of either party affects both, by setting
both in a positively new relation to God. The exercise
of faith did not only mean the consecration of the party
believing, but faith also effected a consecration of the
unbelieving party. As Dr. Robinson expresses it: "The
unbelieving husband or wife is made clean or sanctified,
that is, is to be regarded, not as unclean, not as an idol
ater, but as connected with the Christian community."
The apostle supports his argument by the concession:
"Else were your children unclean; but now are they
holy." The children of such a mixed marriage were
neither illegitimate nor heathen. They were legitimate
children, members of a Christian family, notwithstanding
the fact that one of the parents was a heathen. As mem
bers of a Christian family the children were 'holy;' that
is to say, by virtue of being the offspring of a believing
father or a believing mother children were connected with
and set apart to Christ, and therefore had the right to
membership in the Christian community.
The argument of the apostle regarding mixed mar
riages, especially as to the effect of a mixed marriage on
the religious status of the children, rests throughout on
the idea that the family, even though but one parent be a
Christian, is not an association of individuals, each being
independent of the others, but an organism, a vital whole,
in which parents and children are equally members, bound
together by a divine bond.
The doctrine of Paul on mixed marriages has not been
cited on the presumption that it has direct reference to
the baptism of infants. For him that question did not

5.315.] The Lord's Supper. 599
arise. His argument has been brought under review to
show that the solidarity of the family is the doctrine of the
New Testament, and that by consequence parents stand
for their children before God in the Christian Church. It
follows that the objection to the baptism of infants on the
ground that infants do not exercise faith in Christ has no
force. To sum up the results of the argument, it may be said
that the ground of obligation to baptize the infant children
of believers is threefold: — 1. the terms and obligations of
the Abrahamic covenant; 2. the typical and prophetic
purpose of the covenant and of the Mosaic economy rela
tive to the kingdom of God; 3. the genius of Christi
anity, which is both a fulfilment of the Mosaic economy
and in all respects an enlargement of its blessings.

CHAPTER X.
THE LORD'S SUPPER.
§ 315-
The ordinance appointed by our Lord Jesus whilst cele
brating the passover with His disciples in the night in
which He was betrayed, the Church has designated by dif
ferent names, all of which derive their authority from the
New Testament.
By the Reformed Churches the ordinance is commonly
called the Lord's Supper, a name applied by the apostle
Paul in 1 Cor. xi. 20. It is a sacred banquet at which the
spiritual hunger and spiritual thirst of believers are satis
fied by spiritual food and spiritual drink.

600 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
The ordinance is called the Eucharist, the service of
thanksgiving, from the Greek ' evxaptoTfoag,' an expression
used by Matthew and Mark, Luke and Paul. The first
two use the expression with reference to the cup, the last
two with reference to the bread and cup.
The ordinance is also called the Communion, an appel
lation authorized by the apostle Paul, 1 Cor. x. 16, where
he teaches that the cup of blessing is a communion of the
blood of Christ, and the bread which we break is a com
munion of the body of Christ.
The Supper is not by our Lord nor by Paul called a
commemoration or a memorial or a symbol. According
to Luke and Paul our Lord in giving the bread and the
cup to the disciples said: This do in remembrance of me.
Paul adds the important words: for as often as ye eat this
bread, and drink this cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death
till He come. Therefore the Church is warranted in pro
nouncing- the Supper a . thanksgiving service, a eucharist
which is commemorative and declarative.
The word sacrament, in the Greek /j.vot?jpiov, is not applied
to this ordinance by our Lord or by His apostles. Sacra
ment, the Latin sacramentum, is a theological term, first
introduced by Tertullian. It means that the Supper is a
sacred transaction in which as by an oath believers renew
their allegiance to Jesus Christ. ' ,
It is deserving of notice that our Lord gives no title to
this institution. The evangelists only record the transac
tion as it actually took place, including many particulars
and giving the words used by our Lord. Neither does
Paul apply the title ' communion ' to the Supper in 1 Cor.
xi. 23-26, where he describes the acts done and gives the
words spoken by the Lord Jesus when the ordinance was
instituted.

g3i6.] The Lord's Supper. 60 1
§316.
The Lord's Supper is a commemorative ordinance :
' This do in remembrance of me.' Disciples of Christ
are commanded to eat the consecrated bread and to
drink the consecrated cup. This eating and drinking,
agreeably to the institution of the Lord Jesus, proclaims
His death and resurrection till He come.
1. To celebrate the Supper in remembrance of the Lord
Jesus consists in observing the entire transaction. The
transaction has two parts: the one, what Jesus Himself
said and did; the other, what the disciples did in obedi
ence to the command of Jesus. On both sides there are
several particulars: Jesus takes the bread; He gives thanks;
He breaks the bread; this broken bread He passes to the
disciples; He says, Take, eat, this is my body. Obeying
the command of Jesus the disciples receive the broken
bread distributed to them and they eat this bread broken
by Him. Jesus proceeds in the same order with the cup.
Luke says: And the cup in like manner after supper.
Paul says: In like manner also the cup after supper.
The use of the cup includes the several particulars which
mark the use of the bread. Jesus takes the cup; He gives
thanks; He passes it to the disciples; and in passing the
cup He says: This cup is the new covenant in my blood.
Obeying the words of Jesus the disciples take the cup
and they all drink of it.
This twofold transaction, first respecting the bread,
secondly respecting the cup, including the words and acts
of Jesus, including the acts of the disciples, is the unique
ordinance which is commemorative and declarative of the
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

602 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
2. Not the bread by itself, not the cup by itself, not
the consecration of either kind, not the breaking of
the bread, not the wine poured forth into the cup, not
the words spoken by Jesus to the disciples respecting the
bread and the cup; — neither one of these things nor all
together is the scriptural commemoration. So it is be
coming to speak of the part taken in the transaction by
the disciples: not the receiving of the bread or of the cup,
not the eating of the sacred bread, not the drinking of the
sacred cup; — neither one of these things nor all together
constitute the scriptural commemoration.
The Holy Supper, which is commemorative according
to the institution, embraces two classes of things: on the
one hand the things done and the words spoken by our
Lord ; on the other hand the things done by the disciples.
The objective part and the subjective part of the transac
tion, though of different significance, enter of necessity
into the commemorative observance.
If in the observance of the Supper by the Church either
part be wanting, the transaction is not done in remem
brance of Jesus agreeably to the institution, and therefore
is not in the scriptural sense commemorative. The sym
bolism in that case is defective.
We have to deny that the acts done by the minister in
the celebration of the Supper are the commemorative
transaction. Of the minister when he offers prayer, and
breaks the bread, and pours forth the -wine, and uses the
words of institution, if we include only the things done by
the minister, it cannot be said that he is fulfilling the
command: This do in remembrance of me. Reasoning on
the same general principle we have also to deny that the
' acts done by communicants constitute the commemorative

;I6.] The Lord's Supper. 60

o

service. Of church members when they eat the bread
and drink the cup, if we include only the things done by
them, it cannot be said that they are fulfilling the com
mand: This do in remembrance of me. To have a scrip
tural commemoration of the crucifixion and -resurrection
of the Lord Jesus, both parts of the celebration are requi
site: the things done and the words spoken by the
officiating minister, and the things done by the people.
At the institution of the Supper two parties joined in the
transaction, the Lord Jesus and His disciples. In the
absence of either there would have been no institution.
So when the Church obeys the command of Jesus two
parties are indispensable, the minister and the members,
the celebrator and the communicant. The commemora
tion consists in the complete objective transaction.
3. The Supper celebrated after the manner of its insti
tution has been the constant exhibition of the cardinal
historical facts of Christianity, the crucifixion and resur
rection from the dead of Jesus Christ, a unique exhibition
which by an actual transaction done before the eyes of
the world witnesses to His personality and triumphant
mediatorship, a transaction which since the day of Pente
cost has been witnessing from year to year, from day to
day, yea, from hour to hour, with unbroken continuity in
all lands and among all peoples where the Church has
planted the cross. This memorial testifies to the truth that
the Lord Jesus in His death and resurrection is the only
Mediator between God and man, and that His mediatorship
has full force now after the lapse of nineteen centuries and
will have full force throughout all time for the salvation
and triumph of those who by faith join' in its observance.1
'John vi. 54.

604 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
This witness is not a report nor a tradition ; it does not
consist in words spoken by the apostles or by church
fathers or by early church historians. The witness is a
fact, not the record of a fact which took place centuries
ago, but a tangible reality which has been and is now
uninterruptedly enacted before the eyes of men; no week,
no day being known since the miracle of Pentecost, when
the significant service was not solemnized. A witness that
has stood unfalteringly for ages amid the convulsions of
history, proclaiming in unequivocal terms and enacting in
unique symbolism the crucifixion of the victorious Christ,
has more convincing force, when confronting the eye of
the capable soul, than the visible tragedy on Mount
Calvary or the outward signs of the resurrection.
§3*7-
The Lord's Supper, as the word imports, is a feast,
a spiritual banquet, a communion between Christ glori
fied and His believing people, in which by communi
cations from Himself He nourishes them in soul and
body unto the resurrection from the dead and eternal
life. i. As in Holy Baptism, so in the Lord's Supper the
word of Christ active by His Holy Spirit so conjoins two
things, a visible symbol and His invisible grace, the one
natural the other supernatural, that they become one
constitution. The visible symbol consists of the sacred
bread and the sacred wine; the invisible grace is the
presence of the divine-human Christ. These two parts
are conjoined in the actual observance. The union is not
in the bread on the altar, nor in the cup, but in the festi*
val, in the sacramental transaction.

§317.] The Lord's Supper. 605
The transaction embraces all the constituents belonging
to the celebration, not only the visible elements of bread
and wine, not only the formal consecration of the elements,
but also the distribution of the elements by the minister,
the eating of the sacred bread and the drinking of the
sacred wine by the people. The distribution of the sacred
bread and wine and the eating and drinking by the people
are as essential to the integrity of the spiritual banquet as
the elements themselves.
2. This doctrine respecting the union of the supernatu
ral with the natural, of spiritual nourishment with the
eating of« consecrated bread and the drinking of conse
crated wine in the Lord's Supper, is supported by the
words of institution as given by Matthew, Mark, Luke
and Paul. The words spoken by our Lord are not merely:
This is my body. According to Matthew His acts and
words are: Jesus took bread, and brake it; and He gave
to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body.
According to Mark the words are the same, with this
difference only, that whilst Matthew says, take, eat,
Mark says, take ye. The words as given by Luke and
Paul are also the same as the words in Matthew, with this
difference, that neither says, take, eat. Luke says: this
is my body which is given for you; Paul says: this is
my body which is for you. In other respects the words
are the same in the four records.
What then do the records teach ? The bread taken by
the Lord, by Him blessed and broken, and given to the
disciples with the words: Take, eat; this is my body:
this bread blessed, broken, given by the Lord, and by the
people taken and eaten, is His ' body. '
Of the cup we have to judge after the same law. Mat-

606 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book?.
thew and Mark say: Jesus took a cup, and gave thanks
and gave to them. With these words Luke and Paul
agree by saying: in like manner also the cup after
supper. The words spoken by Jesus in passing the cup
are, according to Matthew and Mark: This is my blood
of the covenant which is shed for many; according to
Luke and Paul: This cup is the new covenant in my
blood. Not of an ordinary cup of wine does Jesus say:
This cup is the new covenant in my blood; He pronounces
these words of a cup which He took, for which He gave
thanks, and which He gave to the disciples, saying, Drink
ye all of it.
Judging of the Supper by the words of institution it is
plaiu that the Lord Jesus connects Himself •with, the sac
ramental transaction, connects His body with the bread
consecrated, broken, distributed, taken and eaten by the
disciples, connects the new covenant in His blood with
the cup consecrated and given to the disciples, of which
they all drink. The connection is pronounced in unequi
vocal terms: tovto iorw to aap.d pov. As to the use of these
words the records all agree. On this point there is no
room for question. The acts and words of institution
affirm and establish a connection of our Lord in His
humanity with the observance of the Supper. The fun
damental truth of this spiritual banquet Paul expresses by
the use of the word imivavia, 'communion,' in i Cor. x.
16, 17. The banquet consists in the communion of the
Lord Jesus with believers, of believers with the Lord Jesus.
3. The communion in the Lord's Supper is primarily
objective. The risen Jesus present by His Holy Spirit in
this sacred transaction imparts Himself to His people.
His ' body ' and ' blood ' are the spiritual food and spirit-

§317.] The Lord's Supper. 607
ual drink whereby they are nourished unto the resurrec
tion from the dead and the eternal life.
The terms ' body ' and ' blood ' are indeed not to be
taken in an external, literal sense. ' Body ' does not de
note His natural flesh; 'blood,' not the blood . of His
natural humanity ; but on the other hand we may not
divest the words 'body' and 'blood' of the sacramental
truth which they signify. The words stand for the
human nature of our Lord glorified, for His human life in
union with His divine life.
Before His crucifixion and resurrection His humanity is
the actual medium, the organ, of revelation and redemp
tion. He lives, He teaches, He works miracles, He
suffers, agonizes and dies 'in the flesh.'1 The mediatorial
work He performs in His natural, unglorified humanity.
By His resurrection and ascension He is exalted and
transfigured; He enters into the realm of divine glory;
but He continues to be human as really in heaven as He
was on earth. In heaven He is the perfected, glorified
Man, one with God in the person of His only begotten
Son. As when on earth so now in heaven His human
nature is the organ of divine communion with His disci
ples, on earth by a fellowship in His unglorified humanity,
in heaven by a fellowship in His glorified humanity.
The connection of His ' body ' and ' blood ' with the ob
servance of the Holy Supper can mean nothing less than
that the glorified Son of Man, really present by His Holy
Spirit, imparts Himself, His divine-human life, as the true
spiritual meat and the true spiritual drink to His mem
bers, a mystical truth taught with great force in figurative
speech by our Lord iii the Gospel of John:
'2 Cor. v. 16.

608 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
"I am the living bread which came down out of heaven : if any man
eat of this bread, he shall live forever : yea and the bread which I will
give is my flesh, for the life of the world. Verily, verily, I say unto
you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye
have not life in yourselves. He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my
blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day. For my
flesh is true meat, and my blood is true drink. As the living Father
sent me, and I live because of the Father ; so he that eateth me, he also
shall live because of me."1
These strong words are indeed not to be interpreted in
the sense in which they were misunderstood by some of
His disciples in the synagogue at Capernaum, when they
said: "this is a hard saying; who can hear it?" But
neither are they to be deprived of their profound signifi
cance; they are not to be resolved into the thought of a
merely moral fellowship with Christ by the exercise of
faith. His words 'are spirit, and are life.'2 They teach
a fellowship of the Son of Man in heaven with His people
on earth, which is indeed moral but also much more than
moral. The fellowship is vital, and moral because vital,
a fellowship analogous to the interaction between the vine
and its branches. As the branches derive their vitality
from the vine, so His members derive the vitality of
regenerate humanity from their Head, the glorified Son
of Man. The connection of the vine with its branches
obeys the laws of natural life. The connection of the
Head of the Church with His members obeys the law of
spiritual life. For this reason the vital interaction of the
vine with its branches is less real than the vital com
munion of Christ with His members. As the invisible soul
of man is better, more real, more influential than the visi
ble body, so is spiritual life, the life of Christ by the Spirit
'John vi. 51-58. 2 John vi. 63.

§317.] The Lord's Supper. 609
iii His people and the reciprocal life-communion between
Him and them, more real, more influential on spiritual
growth, on the resurrection from the dead in the likeness
of Christ and on ultimate glorification, than the natural
life of the vine 011 its clusters of fruit. The life of a plant
is a mysterious process ; its hidden workings elude percep
tion, being concealed from the microscope as from the
bodily eye. More mysterious, more profoundly hidden
from the ken of the natural understanding, is the spiritual
life of the regenerate man. Just because more mysterious,
more profoundly hidden, the nourishment of the regener
ate life by Christ in the Spirit authenticates itself to
Christian faith as true and influential with more force
than the processes of plant life. The latter addresses
natural intuitive perception.; the former addresses the
spiritual perception of Christian faith.
The self-communication of Christ glorified in the Supper
is a communication to regenerate men, the members of His
mystical body. Not the 'old man' but the 'new man'
is receptive toward Christ and is nourished by Him unto
the resurrection of the just. Says our Lord: he that eat
eth my flesh and driuketh my blood hath eternal life; and
I will raise him up at the last day. His relation to His
members is analogous to the relation of the Father to
Christ. The living Father sent Him, and He lives because
of the Father. He survives death, He lives the life of the
resurrection from the dead, because of the Father who
lives in Him. So ' he that eateth ' the Son of Man shall
survive death, shall live His resurrection life. As He
overcame death because of the Father who lives in Him,
so His people will overcome death because of the risen,
glorified Son of Man who lives in them. The Supper is
39

610 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
the heavenly feast by which the life of ' the new man ' is
sustained and nurtured to the end that ' the new man ' in
Christ may completely triumph in soul and body over the
law of sin and death.
4. The objective communion of Christ with His people
implies the personal response of His people. Being His
members through the Spirit, His people are to be active
toward Him in the sacramental, transaction. He imparts,
they receive. The Supper is the Supper of the Lord.
He instituted it, that by it, He, the true meat, may be- .
come to them the blessed food of immortality. But what
He freely gives they must take. The words of institution
as given by the Gospels and by Paul, likewise the words
of the 6th chapter of John, teach two things: not only
that His flesh is 'true meat,' not only that His blood is
'true drink,' but also, and no less emphatically, that His
people, by eating and drinking,.partake of this heavenly
food. Personal participation is as necessary as the pres
ence and impartation of Christ. ' Except ye eat the flesh
of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have no life in
yourselves.' The personal act of spiritual eating and
spiritual drinking by faith conditions, not the presence of
the Son of Man, not the nurturing virtue of His presence
in the Supper, but conditions the reality of the communion
of His people with Himself, conditions the efficacy of the
Supper in the personal history and experience of His
people. It is important to distinguish between virtue and effi
cacy, the one being objective, the other subjective. The
virtue of the Supper depends on the institution, on the
presence and grace of Jesus Christ. By the Spirit the
Supper maintains itself in the Church, its quickening and

1 317.] The Lord's Supper. 611
saving power being ever the same; for the presence of
Christ by the Spirit cannot fail. But the efficacy of the
Supper may fail; for that depends on the spiritual life,
on the active faith of His people. The intrinsic virtue
of the Supper, if not discerned nor appropriated by
faith, may be inefficacious. Spiritual virtue is present
in the sacred transaction, but its virtue is not experienced
by the communicant. If he be wanting in spiritual per
ception arid spiritual appropriation, his attitude is abnor
mal; the communicant is a communicant externally and
nominally, not in truth; he is not receptive toward Christ,
and therefore is not nourished by 'true meat' and 'frue
drink' unto the life of the resurrection.
5. The virtue of the Supper has positive and negative
force. By the Holy Communion of His body and bloorl
Christ Himself feeds and nourishes the new personality of
the believer unto everlasting life, and thus confirms him
in the forgiveness of sins. On the one hand the new life
of faith is renewed and developed; on the other hand
Christ by this communion verifies the .mystery that His
body was offered and broken on the cross for him, as cer
tainly as he sees with his eyes the bread of the Lord
broken for him and the cup communicated to him. If
his faith be a scriptural and living faith, the new life
becomes more vigorous and the peace of God passeth all
understanding. He who is the propitiatory sacrifice for sin
and the conqueror of Satan imparts to the believing com
municant renewedly the atonement of His sacrifice and
the power of His victory over death.

612 Doctrine on the Holy, Spirit. [Book?.
§318.
As to the reality of a peculiar connection between
Jesus Christ .and His people in the celebration of the
Holy Communion, there is no difference of judgment
among different branches of the Christian Church.
Differences of doctrine have been developed in the
effort to construe the nature and mode of this connec
tion. Four leading theories have arisen: — 1. The Ro
man theory, that the substance of the natural elements
is changed into the- very body and blood of Christ. 2.
The original Lutheran theory, that Christ is present in,
with and under the bread and wine. 3. The symbol
ical theory, that the Supper is purely a symbol of
spiritual blessings, a commemorative institution. 4.
The Calvinistic or Reformed theory, that the Supper
is a commemoration and a communion, Christ glorified
being present to faith in the sacramental transaction
by His Holy Spirit.
1. The Roman theory recognizes the symbolism pf the
Lord's Supper, but lays false stress on the communion.
Two things enter into the dogma of the Mass: transub-
stantiation and sacrifice. Bread and wine cease to be
bread and wine. The bread is literally changed into the
body, and the wine is changed into the blood of Christ.
The body in the outward form of bread and the blood in
the outward form of wine are offered to God a propitiation
for sin. I quote from the confession of Pope Pius IV.,
drawn up in obedience to his command, in 1564, by a
college of cardinals:
"I profess likewise that in the Mass there is offered to God a true,
proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead ; and that
in the most holy sacrament of the Eucharist there is truly, really, and
substantially the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of
our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there is made a change of the whole

g3i8.] The Lord's Supper. 613
essence of the bread into the body, and of the whole essence of the wine
into the blood ; which change the Catholic Church calls tran substantia
tion.'" The same doctrine meets us in the canons of the Council
of Trent:
" If any one denieth that in the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist
are contained truly, really, and substantially the body and blood, to
gether with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and conse
quently the whole Christ ; but saith that He is only therein as in a. sign,
or in figure, or virtue: let him be anathema."
" If any one saith that in the sacred and holy sacrament of the Eucha
rist the substance of the bread and wine remains conjointly with the
body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ, and denieth that wonderful
and singular conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the
body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, the spe
cies only of the bread and wine remaining, which conversion indeed
the Catholic Church most aptly calls transubstantiation: let him be
anathema."2 The doctrine of the Greek Church is for substance the
same as the doctrine of the Roman Church. According to
the Roman liturgy the bread and wine are literally tran
substantiated into the' very body and blood of Christ by the
consecration of the priest when he repeats the words of
institution: This is my body. According to the Greek
•liturgies the presence of the body and biood of Christ is
effected by the invocation of the Holy Ghost, which
follows the recital of the words of institution.3
2. The original Lutheran doctrine as taught by Luther
in his Smaller Catechism, 1529, and by the Formula of
Concord, written in 1576, published in 1580, differs on the
one side from the Roman dogma, and on the other from
thejdoctrine of Zwingli and Calvin.
' Creeds of Christendom, I., p. 99. 2 Creeds of Christendom, II., p. 136.
3 Creeds of Christendom, I., p. 325.

614 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book-.
It denies that the substance of the bread and wine is
converted into the substance of the body and blood of
Christ. It denies also that in the celebration the cruci
fied body and shed blood of Christ are absent and wanting.
The doctrine affirms that the crucified body is present and
eaten by the mouth in, with and under the bread, that the
shed blood is present and by the mouth drunk, in, with
and under the wine. The words of the New Testament
are not to be otherwise received than as the words them
selves literally sound, so that the bread does not signify
the absent body of Christ and the wine the absent blood
of Christ, but that on account of the sacramental union
the bread and wine are truly the body and blood of Christ
The believer and the unbeliever alike partake of the body
and blood by the mouth, the former' unto salvation, the
latter unto condemnation. Says the Formula of Concord:
"We believe, teach, and confess That in the Lord's Supper the body
and blood of Christ are truly and substantially present, and that they are
truly distributed and taken together with the bread and wine."
"We believe, teach, and confess that the body and blood of Christ are
taken with the bread and wine, not only spiritually through faith, but
also by the mouth, nevertheless not Capernaitically, but after a spiritual,
heavenly manner, by reason of the sacramental union."
"We believe, teach, and confess that not only true believers in Christ,
and such as worthily approach the Supper of the Lord, but also the
unworthy and unbelieving receive the true body and blood of Christ ; in
such wise, nevertheless, that they derive thence neither consolation nor
life, but rather so as that receiving turns to their judgment and condem
nation, unless they be converted and repent. ' ' '
The words of Christ: Take, eat, this is my body; drink,
this is my blood, are "understood in the simple and literal
sense as they sound." "The true and natural bodjt of
1 Formula of Concord, Art. VII., I, 2, 6, 7. Schaff's Creeds, III., I37>
139, 140.

l2is.] The Lord's Supper. 615
Christ which hung on the cross, the true and natural blood
which flowed from the side of Christ, are exhibited and
received" in the Supper, "not only spiritually, but by the
mouth, with the bread and wine, yet in an inscrutable and
supernatural manner, not only by the worthy, but also by
the unworthy," though with different effect.1
Lutherans and Reformed alike emphasized the neces
sity of personal faith in Jesus Christ in order to a wor
thy participation in the Lord's Supper. The difference
between the two Confessions comes tp view chiefly on
three questions: — (1) Whether the natural body of Christ
and the natural blood of Christ were exhibited and received
in, with and under the bread and wine. (2) Whether the
body and blood of Christ are by the mouth received in
the Supper with the bread and the wine. (3) Whether
the unworthy and unbelieving receive the true bod)' and
blood of Christ. The Lutherans gave an affirmative an
swer to each of these questions. The Reformed gave a
negative answer to each. The Reformed Church denied
the presence in the Supper of the natural body of Christ
and of His natural blood; by logical consequence they
denied also the oral manducation bf His natural body,
whether by the worthy or the unworthy. Instead the
Reformed Church affirmed a spiritual manducation, a
communion of Christ in His glorified humanity with
believers, and with believers only, in the observance of
the Supper.
This difference of teaching respecting the Supper im
plies a difference concerning the person of our Lord,
especially concerning His humanity and the relation
which His humanity bears to His Deity.
1 Cf. The Saxon Visitation Articles, 1592, Art. I., 1, 4, 5, 6.

616 Docti'ine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
3. There is no room to question the truth 6f the propo
sition that ,the Supper is a commemorative ordinance.
According to Luke and to Paul our Lord says: This do iii
remembrance of me.1 The bread broken represents the
body crucified; the cup represents the shedding of His
blood. The transaction stands as the memorial of Christ
offering Himself a sacrifice for the sin of the world. Too
much emphasis cannot be put on the commemorative
aspect of the ordinance, provided that its commemorative
significance be held in conjunction with the truth that the
ordinance is in the Holy Spirit a communion of the body
and blood of Christ. If the reality of communion be
ignored or overlooked, the doctrine of commemoration
becomes a defective doctrine. Its deficiency is evident
even if we do no more than apply to the entire transaction
the idea of symbol.
Not only is the bread broken, not only is the wine poured
forth into the cup, but the disciples were commanded to
eat the bread and drink the cup. The eating of the bread
and the drinking of the cup are symbolical acts no less
' The Revisers and the great body of biblical scholars take Luke xxii.
20 to be genuine, whilst Westcott and Hort put the passage in brackets.
A brochure on "The Origin of the Lord's Supper," by Percy Gardner,
Litt. D., has recently revived .the question respecting the genuineness of
the words of Luke: "This do in remembrance of me." Considered his
torically and scientifically, the argument does not justify reasonable
doubt. Whatever may be the final issue of textual criticism, the com
memorative significance of the Supper will be unaffected, for that does
not hinge on the words of Luke xix. 20 or of Paul, 1 Cor. xi. 24. The
representation of the institution as given by the evangelists, the words of
Paul occuring at other places in this Corinthian Epistle and all direct
and indirect references to it throughout the New Testament, imply both
the symbolism of the Supper and the obligation of perpetual observance
by the Church.

§3i8.] The Lord's Supper. 617
than the breaking of the bread and the pouring forth of
the wine. If the eating and the drinking are symbolical
as truly as the bread and the cup, the meaning can be no
other than this, that the 'body' of Christ which the bread
represents is the 'true meat' of the believer, and that His
'blood' which the cup represents is the 'true drink.' As
the believer eats the bread and drinks of the cup so he
partakes of the body and blood of Christ. Thought can
not logically stop short of this conclusion. Otherwise the
principle of symbolical interpretation becomes inconsistent
with itself, being applied only to a part, not to the whole,
of the sacramental transaction.
Among the Reformers of the 16th century Zwiugli
stands as the chief representative of the symbolical con
struction; but his doctrine does not exclude the idea of a
communion of the body and blood of Christ. The contro
versy which he conducted against the Church of Rome
was directed principally against the doctrine that in the
Mass there is offered to God a propriatory sacrifice for the
living and the dead, which led him antithetically to lay
stress on the symbolism of the natural elements and of the
celebration of the sacrament. Developing his conception
in opposition to this Roman dogma, he was in a degree
betrayed into overlooking the reality of the presence of
Christ in the Supper and of His communion with His
people. When compared with the subsequent develop
ment of the Reformed doctrine by Calvin, Zwinglian
teaching is to be pronounced defective; yet the defect is
only relative. In truth Zwiugli does emphasize the com
munion of the body and blood of Christ in the Supper as
really as the symbolism of the Supper, as really, but not
adequately nor consistently.

Ci 8 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7,
In evidence I quote his last words from the confession
sent to King Francis I. shortly before his death:
" We believe that Christ is truly present in the Lord's 6upper ; yea, we
believe that there is no communion without the presence of Christ.
(Christum credimus vere esse in coena, immo non credimus esse Domini '
coenam nisi Christus adsit.) This is the proof: Where two or three are
gathered together in my name, there am I in the midst of them. How
much more is He present where the whole congregation is assembled to
His honor! But that His body is literally eaten is far from the truth and
the nature of faith. It is contrary to the truth, because He Himself says:.
I am no more in the world, and the flesh profiteth nothing, that is to eat,
as the Jews then believed and the Papists still believe. It is contrary to
the nature of faith, I mean the holy and true faith, because faith em
braces love, fear of God, and reverence, which abhors such carnal and
gross eating, as much as any one would shrink from eating his beloved
son. * * We believe that the true body of Christ is eateu in the com
munion in a sacramental and spiritual manner by the religious, believing
and pious heart, as also Chrysostom taught. And this is in brief the
substance of what we maintain in this controversy, and what not we, but
the truth itself teaches."1
The doctrine of Zwingli has been adopted by the Ar-
minians; and, as Dr. Schaff remarks, it extensively pre-
' Schaff 's Creeds of Christendom, Vol. I., p. 375. Based on a study of
Zwingli's brochure entitled de cano?ie missae, Sudhoff sums up his doc
trine on the Lord's Supper in the following propositions:
I. On account of the instability of our personal life of faith, it is need
ful that the Father repeatedly renew our life- communion with the glori
fied Christ, that through this Conqueror we may overcome the world.
2. To proclaim the remembrance of Christ only by words does not
suffice. 3. The food of the Word is expressly distinguished from the food of the
glorified Christ, by which our whole being is nourished into complete
renewal after the image of God.
4. So also is nourishment by the one offering on the cross clearly dis
tinguished from nourishment from the glorified Head, which is received
in each observance of the Supper. — Handbook on the^Heid. Cat., p. 375-

3 3 1 8.] The Lord's Supper. 619
vails at present even among orthodox Protestants of all
denominations, especially in England and in America.
4. The doctrine of the Reformed Churches as embodied
in all their leading Confessions was shaped mainly by the
faith and genius of John Calvin. It differs from the
Roman dogma by denying transubstaiitiatiou and the
unbloody sacrifice of the altar. In this denial Calvin was
of one mind with Zwingli and Luther. Reformed doctrine
differs from Zwiugliau in degree rather than in kind.
Affirming the symbolical character of the Supper, it lays
chief stress on the real communion of our Lord in His
glorified humanity with the believing communicant.
From original Lutheranism the Reformed doctrine
differs chiefly by denying the literal presence of the cruci
fied body and the shed blood of Christ in, with and under
the bread and wine, and the eating of the body and blood
by the mouth of the communicant, whether worthy or un
worthy. In distinction from original Lutheranism the Reformed
doctrine affirms three things: —
(1) The communion of Christ with the believer in the
Supper is the communion of the whole Christ in His
glorified humanity, not the communion of His natural
body offered on the cross, not of His natural blood shed
for us on the cross. It was the Son of Man glorified in
heaven which the Reformed Church pronounced to be the
true meat of the believer.
(2) This union and communion is effected not alone by
repeating the words of institution, but by the Holy Spirit
through the words of institution. Says Calvin:
"Though it appears incredible for the flesh of Christ, from such an
immense local distance, to reach us, so as to become our food, we should

620 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
remember how much the secret power of the Holy Spirit transcends all
our senses, and what folly it is to apply any measure of ours to His
immensity. Let our faith receive, therefore, what our understanding is
not able to comprehend, that the Spirit really unites things which are
separated by local distance."'
(3) The eating of the body and the drinking of the blood
of Christ is done, not by the mouth, but by faith. In the
act of eating and drinking the natural elements by the
mouth the communicant by faith receives the heavenly
nourishment of the Son of Man glorified. Says the Sec
ond Confession of Basel: "Real spiritual things are re
ceived by faith, as the signs are in a bodily way."
Of the Reformed doctrine this especially is distinctive,
that Christ has commanded only believers 'to eat of this
broken bread and to drink of this cup,' and that only by
faith do communicants partake of the body and blood of
the Lord. ¦ § 3*9-
That all branches of the Reformed Church in the
1 6th and 17th centuries held and taught the com
munion of the body and blood of Christ glorified with
believers in the Lord's Supper, whereby believers as
by heavenly food and heavenly drink are nourished
unto the resurrection and eternal life, appears from the
teaching of Calvin and from all Reformed Confessions.
1. I quote a few passages from Calvin's Institutes. He
says: "That Christ is the bread of life, by which believers are nourished to
eternal salvation there is no man, not entirely destitute of religion, who
hesitates to acknowledge ; but all are not equally agreed respecting the
manner of partaking of Him. For there are some who define in a word,
1 Calvin's Inst., IV., 17, io.-

g3Ia,] The Lord's Supper. 621
that to eat .he flesh of Christ, and to drink His blood, is no other than to
believe in Christ Himself. But I conceive that, in that remarkable dis
course,' in which Christ recommends us to feed upon His body, He
intended to teach us something more striking and sublime, namely, that
we are quickened by a real participation of Him, which he designates by
the terms of eating and drinking, that no person might suppose the
life we receive from Him to consist in simple knowledge. For as it is
not seeing, but eating bread, that administers nourishment to the body,
so it is necessary for the soul to have a true and complete participation
of Christ, that by His power it may be quickened to spiritual life. At
the same time, we confess that there is no other eating than by faith, as
it is impossible to imagine any other ; but the difference between me and
the persons whose sentiment I am opposing is this: they consider eating
to be the very same as believing ; I say that in believing we eat the flesh
of Christ, because He is actually made ours by faith, and that this eating
is the fruit and effect of faith ; they consider eating to be faith itself, but
I apprehend it to be rather a consequence of faith. * * When the
Lord called Himself the 'bread of life,' He intended not only to teach
that salvation is laid up for us in the faith of His death and resurrection,
but also that, by our real participation of Him, His life is transferred
to us, and becomes ours, just as bread, when it is taken for food, com
municates vigor to the body. " 2 * * *
"Our souls are fed by the flesh and blood of Christ, just as our corpo
real life is preserved and sustained by bread and wine. Otherwise there
would be no suitableness in the analogy of the sign, if our souls did not
find their food in Christ ; which cannot be the case unless Christ truly
becomes one with us, aud refreshes us by the eating of His flesh and the
drinking of His blood. * * Now, this holy participation of His flesh
and blood, by which Christ communicates His life to us, He in the sacred
Supper also testifies and seals; not by the exhibition of a vain or in
effectual sign, but by the exertion of the energy of His Spirit, by which
He accomplishes that which He promises."3
The following passage is entitled to special attention.
It brings' forcibly into view some of the leading points of
Calvin's doctrine in a way that cannot be misunderstood:
"The sacred mystery of the Supper consists of two parts: the corporeal
'John vi. 30-71. 2 Institutes, IV., 17, 5. institutes, IV., 17, 10.

622 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book".
signs, which being placed before our eyes represent to us invisible things
in a manner adapted to the weakness of our capacities ; and the spiritual
truth, which is at the same time typified and exhibited by those symbols.
This truth includes three particulars: the signification ; the matter, or
substance, which depends on the signification ; and the virtue, or effect,
which follows from both. The signification consists in the promises
which are interwoven with the sign. What I call the matter or sub
stance is Christ, with His death and resurrection. By the effect I mean
redemption, righteousness, sanctification, eternal life, and all the other
benefits which Christ confers upon us. Now, though all these things
are connected with faith, yet I leave no room for cavil ; as though, when
I say that Christ is received by faith, I intended that He is received
merely in the understanding and imagination ; for the promises present
Him to us, not that we may rest in mere contemplation and simple
knowledge, but that we may enjoy a real participation of Him. * * I
say, therefore, that in the mystery of the Supper, under the symbols of
bread and wine, Christ is truly exhibited to us, even His body and blood,
in which He has fulfilled all obedience to procure our justification. And
the design of this exhibition is, first, that we may be united into one
body with Him, and secondly, that being made partakers of His sub
stance, we may experience His power in the communication of all
blessings."1 The Catechism of Geneva, prepared by Calvin in 1536,
revised and enlarged by him in 1541, teaches the same
doctrine. To the question: Why is the Lord's body
figured by bread and His blood by wine? the following
answer is given:
""To teach us, that such virtue as bread has in nourishing our bodies
for the support of the present life, the same is in the body of the Lord
for the spiritual nourishment of our souls ; and that as by wine the hearts
'lust's., IV., 17, 11. "Dico igitur, in coenae mysterio per symbola
panis et vini, Christum verS nobis exhiberi, ade6que corpus et sangui-
nem ejus, in quibus omnem obedientiam pro comparanda nobis justitia
adimplevit: qu6 scilicit pfimum in unum corpus cum ipso coalescamus:
deinde participes substantiae ejus facti, in bonorum omnium communi-
catione virtutem quoque sentiamus."

§319.] The Lord's Stipper. 623
of men are exhilarated, their strength refreshed, the whole man invig
orated, so our souls receive like benefits from the Lord's blood."
2. The doctrine of Calvin respecting the sacrament of
the Lord's Supper passed into all the leading Confessions
of the Reformed Church, especially into the French,
Dutch and Scotch, also into the Lambeth Articles, the
Irish Articles and the Westminster Standards. I shall
quote briefly from several of these Confessions.
Says the First Confession of Basel:
"In the Lord's Supper, in which with the bread and wine of the Lord
are represented and offered to us by the minister of the Church the true
body and blood of Christ, bread and wine remain unchanged. We
firmly believe however that Christ Himself is the food of believing souls
unto eternal life; and that our souls, by true faith upon Christ crucified,
are made to eat and drink the flesh and blood of Christ."1
According to the Second Helvetic Confession the Lord's
Supper is a grateful commemoration of the benefits of
redemption, and a spiritual feast of believers instituted by
Christ, wherein He nourishes us with His own flesh and
blood by true faith unto eternal life. It signifies and seals
to us the greatest benefit and blessing. * * This eat
ing is not corporeal and Capernaitic, by the mouth and
the stomach, but spiritual, that is, by the Holy Ghost
through faith. * * Besides the spiritual eating, in the
daily communion of the soul with Christ, there is also a
sacramental eating, whereby the believer not only in
wardly partakes of Christ, but also receives the visible
signs and seals of His body and blood at the Lord's table.
And with the signs he receives the thing itself.2 He is
nourished and strengthened by spiritual food.
'First Helvetic Confession, Art. 22.
2 Second Helvetic Conf., xxi. 8. " "Et qui foris vera fide sacramentum
percipit, idem ille non signum duntaxat percipit, sed re ipsa quoque, ut
diximus, fruitur."

6 2 4 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
The Belgic Confession, composed in French for the
Churches in Flanders and the Netherlands, 1561, adopted
by a Reformed Synod at Emden, 1571, and by the
National Synod of Dort, 1619, which subjected the text
to a careful revision by a comparison of French, Dutch
and Latin copies, uses this language: ,
"As certainly as we receive and hold this sacrament in our hands, and
eat and -drink the same1 with our mouths, by which our life is nourished,
we also do as certainly receive by faith, which is the hand and mouth
of our soul, the true body and blood of Christ our only Saviour in our
souls, for the support of our spiritual life." '
The First Confession of Scotland was by direction of
the Scotch Parliament (given to the Protestant ministers),
drawn up by John Knox and his compeers in 1560. The
document was read twice, article by article, and ratified
by the three estates, as a doctrine grounded upon the in
fallible word of God. On the Supper of our Lord the
Confession says:
"We assuredly believe, that in the Supper rightly used, Christ Jesus
is so joined with us, that He becomes very nourishment and food of our
souls. * * We confess that the faithful in the right use of the Lord's
Table, do so eat the body and drink the blood of the Lord Jesus, that He
remains in them and they in Him: yea, they are so made flesh of His
flesh and bone of His bones, that as the eternal Godhead has given to
the flesh of Christ Jesus life and immortality ; so does Christ Jesus His
flesh and blood eaten and drunk by us give unto us the same preroga
tives."2 Under authority of the Elector Frederick III., sover
eign of the Upper and Lower Palatinate, the Heidelberg
Catechism was composed by two professors of the Univer
sity of Heidelberg, Ursinus and Olevianus, and adopted
1 Belgic Conf., Art. XXXV.
2 Scotch Conf., Art. XXI. Cf. Schaff's Creeds., III., 467.

4320.] The Lord's Supper. 625
by a Synod representing both sections of the Elector's
dominions, in January 1563. From this Confession I take
But one passage:
" Christ has commanded me and all believers to eat of this broken
bread, and to drink of this cup, and has joined therewith these promises:
First, that His body was offered and broken on the cross for me, and His
blood shed for me, as certainly as I see with my eyes the bread of the
Lord broken for me, and the cup communicated to me ; and further, that,
with His crucified body and shed blood, He Himself feeds and nourishes
my soul to everlasting life, ais certainly as I f eceive from the hand of the
minister, and taste with my mouth, the bread and cup of the Lord, which
are given me as certain tokens of the body and blood of Christ.'"
The same doctrine respecting the Lord's Supper is
taught by the Westminster Confession of Faith, 1647:
"Our Lord Jesus instituted the sacrament of His body and blood, for
the perpetual remembrance of the sacrifice of Himself in His death, the
sealing of all benefits thereof unto true believers, their spiritual nourish
ment and growth in Him, their further engagement in and to all duties
whiqh they owe unto Him ; and to be a bond and pledge of their com
munion with Him , and with each other, as members of His mystical body.
" Worthy receivers, outwardly partaking of the visible elements in this
sacrament, do then also inwardly by faith, really and -indeed, yet not
carnally and corporally, but spiritually, receive and feed upon Christ
crucified, and all benefits of His death: the body and blood of Christ
being then not corporally or carnally in, with, or under the bread and
wine ; yet as really, but spiritually, present to the faith of believers in
the ordinance, as the elements themselves are, to their outward senses." 2
§ 320.
The results of this inquiry into the doctrine respecting
the Lord's Supper, as taught by Calvin- and set forth by
the Confessions of the Reformed Church, I sum up in the
following propositions : —
1. In distinction from the Roman dogma the Reformed
1 Heid. Cat., 75. 2 Confession of Faith, XXIX. 1, 7.
40

626 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
Church denies: that the substance of the bread aud wine
is changed into the substance of the body and blood of
Christ; that the sacrifice of Christ made on. the cross is
repeated on the altar as a propitiation for the sins of be
lievers; that this sacrifice offered by the priest avails for
the dead as well as for the living.
2. In distinction from original Lutheranism the Re
formed Church denies : that the crucified body and shed
blood of Christ is in, with and under the bread aud wine;'
that communicants, whether believers or unbelievers, eat
the body and drink the blood of Christ with the mouth.
3. In distinction from the symbolical theory the Re
formed Church denies : that the bread and wine of the
Supper are only the symbols of the body and blood of
Christ, no invisible grace being connected and dispensed
with their sacramental use; that the celebration of the
Supper is a transaction only commemorative of the suffer
ings and death of the Lord Jesus.
4. The positive affirmation of the Reformed Church
respecting the Lord's Supper includes the following par
ticulars: —
The Lord's Supper is an ordinance which is both com
memorative of the sufferings and death of the Lord Jesus
Christ, and a real' communion of His 'body' and 'blood'
with His faithful disciples.
The communion is to be viewed on the one hand as an
impartation of the life of the crucified Christ in His glori
fied humanity by. the presence and agency of His Holy
Spirit, on the other hand as the appropriation by the com
municant of Christ who is the true meat and true drink
of the spiritual man.
The presence and impartation of Christ by the Holy

5 32i.] The Communion of Saints. 627
Spirit in the Supper condition the appropriation of Christ
by the communicant. The appropriation by the com
municant conditions, not the spiritual real presence of
Christ, nor the objective virtue of the ordinance, but the
spiritual nourishment of the communicant by the body
and blood of Christ.
The eating and drinking of the body and blood of Christ
glorified is done by the exercise of true faith, not by the
mouth. Whilst the communicant after a natural manner
is partaking of the sacred bread and wine, he is by faith
after a spiritual manner partaking of Christ, and by Him
is nourished unto the resurrection of the dead and eternal
life. Communicants who are without faith do not by eating
the Supper have part in the communion of the body and
blood of Christ. He that eateth and driuketh, eateth and
drinketh judgment unto himself, if he discern not the
body. '

CHAPTER XI.
THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS.
§321.
The article of the Christian Creed respecting the com
munion of saints is a corollary from the article which
says: I believe in the Holy Ghost: the holy catholic
Church. The idea of the Christian Church implies that her mem
bers are living in the communion of love with the risen,
1 1 Cor. xi. 29.

628 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [booic.
glorified Christ,- and that iu consequence there is a mysti
cal fellowship among her members. The truth implicit in
the article concerning the Church, becomes explicit, in the
article concerning the communion of saints.
This truth accounts iu part for the fact that the com
munion of saints was not an article of the Christian Creed
during the first four centuries. It was wanting, not be
cause the truth of the 'communion' was hidden from the
faith of the Church, nor because it did not make its force
felt in her experience, but the article was not in the Creed
for the reason that the historical occasion for the formal
confession of the communion of the saints, by an article of
the Creed had not arisen, or had not force enough to issue
in formal confession. Not until the 5th century did occa
sion require the Church formally to complement her Apos
tolic Creed.1
The term ' saints ' does not imply that believers are
spotless, perfectly righteous and holy. Of such persons
1 "Semisch traces the several articles, separately considered, up to the
third and second centuries, and the substance to the first. Fr. Span-
heim and Calvin did the same."
Of the Apostles' Creed as a whole, Calvin says : " I have no doubt that
it has been publicly and universally received as a confession of faith
from the first origin of the Church, and even from the days of the Apos
tles. Nor is it probable that it was composed by any private individual,
since from time immemorial it has evidently been esteemed as of sacred
authority by all the pious. But what we ought principally to regard is
beyond all controversy, that it comprehends a complete account of our
faith in a concise and distinct order, and that every thing it contains is
confirmed by decisive testimonies of Scripture." — Inst., II., 16, 18.
Dr. Schaff says: " If we regard the present text of the Apostles' Creed
as a complete whole, we can hardly trace it beyond the sixth, certainly
not beyond the fifth century, and its triumph over all the other forms in
the Latin Church was not completed till the eighth century." Creeds of
Christendom, I., p. 19. Comp. Pearson on the Creed, p. 524.

§322.] The Communion of Saints. 629
there are none in the militant Church. The term denotes
the chosen ones who have believed iu Christ, aud have by
confessing Christ in Holy Baptism entered into the king
dom of God. Believers they are, set apart by the Holy
Spirit to the service of Jesus Christ and by the Holy Spirit
engrafted into Him. Members of Christ, consecrated to
the service of His kingdom, and yielding themselves by
faith to the obedience of His will, they are 'saints;'
though the perfection of saintship, complete emancipation
from sin and complete transformation into Christ's image,
will be attainable by individuals only when the whole
body of the faithful shall triumph and be glorified at the
final consummation. Says Bishop Pearson:
" There is no doubt but the saints mentioned here are members of the
Church of Christ, built upon the apostles, laid upon the foundation of
their doctrine, who do not only profess the Gospel, but are sanctified
thereby."1 In this article the Creed affirms the sum of Christian
blessing bestowed by love, and wrought by the Holy
Spirit through the means of grace in the personal history
of all who become members of the new race.
§ 322.
The risen Christ glorified, the principle of regenera
tion, the Founder of the new race, is the prototype of
His members, in each and all of whom He lives by the
mediation of His Spirit. His Spirit is the bond of
union between His members and Himself; and union
to Him puts an end to the sting of sin, resolving the
article of death into an epoch of spiritual growth.
1. Believers being members of the risen Christ, branches
of the true Vine, they are sharers of His resurrection life.
' Pearson on the Creed, p. 527.

630 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book?.
All are bound by the same vital bond to their common
Head. His resurrection life is the eternal life. Jesus
said: "I am the resurrection, and the life: he that believ
eth on me, though he die, yet shall he live: and whosoever
liveth and believeth on me shall never die."
This fellowship of the resurrection life is quickened by
the Holy Spirit, the Spirit sent forth from the Father by
the enthroned Son of Man on the day of Pentecost. From
that culminant epoch of revelation onward through all the
centuries the enthroned Son of Man has by His Spirit
been quickening and renewing this vital' communion of
Himself with His people, and with increasing power has
been enlarging its compass.
The ineffable contrast between heaven and earth, be
tween the personal Creator and the personal creature,
between God's majesty and man's low estate environed
and degraded by moral evil, is no ground of objection to
belief in the reality of such real communion. The Spirit
is active in harmony with the conditions of space and
time; but neither space nor tirfie does or can control or
limit the effectual action of the Spirit. Such vital inter
communion between the. Son of Man in heaven and men
on earth is not affirmed of His relation to the world, the
old Adamic race, but according to the New Testament
may be affirmed only of His relation to the new race.
Says Christ: "I pray for them: I pray not for the world.
but for those whom thou hast given me, for they are
thine: and all things that are mine are thine, and thine
are mine: and I am glorified in them."1
'John xvii. 9, 10. Bengel: "Jesus does not pray for the world at this
time and place, and with these words which applied to believers alone."
Still better Luther: "What must be asked for the world is that it should
be converted, not that it should be kept or sanctified."

1 322.] The Communion of Saints. 631
2. The intercommunion of Christ in heaven and the
members of Plis mystical body embraces not only those
that in the apostolic period or in our day are within the
pale of the militant Church. It embraces all whom the
Son of God has from the beginning, by His Spirit and
word, been gathering, defending and preserving for Him
self unto everlasting life: prophets, apostles, martyrs, con
fessors 'and saints of all ages.
As to its principle and purpose the communion of
saints likewise embraces all who throughout the centuries
to come shall of the Spirit be born into the kingdom of
heaven. The article of natural death breaks all earthly ties, dis
solves all earthly unions ; but natural death does not
break the ties created by the Holy Spirit, does not dissolve
the mystical union of the members of the new race with
their Head. The glory of the triumph over the realm of
death which the Father has given to the Son, the Son has
given to His members, that His members may be one with
Him in life, one with Him in the triumph over death.
As natural human life can neither originate nor sustain
this fellowship with Christ, so neither can the cessation
of the earthly order of human life abolish nor invade it.
All who have departed this life in the faith of Christ
have entered the future world iu life-communion with
Christ. It may be said that in one respect they have
died under the operation of the law of sin, for their rela
tion to the 'first man' had not during their earthly history
been finally superseded. This more profound Christian
truth, however, is to be distinctly recognized: that be
lievers live the new life even when they are passing out
of the natural world in the article of death; they live

632 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
according to the law of life of the risen Christ. Says
Archbishop Leighton:
"They are one body united to that glorious Head that is above ; they
have all one spiritual life flowing from Him ; and this communion holds
not only on earth and in heaven apart, but even betwixt heaven and
earth ; the saints on earth make up the same body with those already, in
glory.'" *
The multitudes who have gone before us into the felicity
of Paradise, the multitudes who among all nations are
now devoted to Christ in the kingdom of God on earth,
these innumerable multitudes are members of the same
spiritual kingdom, inheritors of the same resurrection
glory, knit together in one by the same Spirit. We who
are many, whether among the dead or among the living,
are one body in Christ, and severally members one of
another." §323-
All the members of Christ have part in Him and in
all 'His treasures and gifts:' the resurrection life; for
giveness and peace ; the strength of faith, hope and
love ; the assurance of triumph over the kingdom of
darkness; the heirship of God with Christ.3
1. Intrinsically there is no difference as to the heavenly
gifts which believers have or are entitled to receive. The
same Christ in all His fulness is the inheritance of each
and the same Holy Spirit of Pentecost is the possession of
each; but there are diversities of ministrations by the same
Lord, and there are diversities of gifts conferred by the
same Spirit. Whether the gift be wisdom or knowledge
or prophecy or discernings of spirits, all are wrought by
1 Works, p. 413. 2 Rom. xii. 4, 5 ; 1 Cor. xii. 12. 3 Heid. Cat., 55.

?322.] The Communion of Saints. 633
one and the same Spirit, dividing to each one severally
according to his ability.'
The difference between one member and another mem
ber is a difference of function, as between the foot aud the
hand, between the ear and the eye of the human body.
The difference of function is not to be referred exclusively
to the sovereignty of the Lord Jesus; it turns rather on the
difference of natural endowment between man and man.
As there is a difference of function, so among those called
to the same function there is a difference in degrees of
strength. Among members in the same calling, whether
prophecy or ministry or teaching or ruling, some have
more some less natural fitness, some more and some less
spiritual capacity; but the difference of capacity turns
largely on the degree of fidelity to Christ in the service of
His kingdom. The more devout and faithful a member
is, the stronger he is, the more efficient he becomes.
Spiritual gifts are the gifts of grace; they flow from the
unfathomable love of God in Christ to His people. His
gifts are freely bestowed on all, even on the most un
worthy. " Their inheritance is such as is not lessened by the multitudeof heirs,
it is entire to each one. That grace and salvation that flows from Christ,
the Sun of Righteousness, is as the light of the sun where it shines, none
hath the less because of others partaking of it. " 2
In reality, however, the rich inheritance becomes the
personal possession of believers only if accepted by them
and by faith appropriated. No one becomes the partaker
of a blessing which he is not capable of receiving. The
strength of his eye must be proportionate to the splendor
of the light.
1 1 Cor. xii. 4-21 ; Matt. xxv. 15. 2 Leighton's Works, p. 414.

634 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book ?.
2. The resources of Christ glorified for His people on
earth are greater and richer than the gifts they have re
ceived or He has bestowed. From His ' gifts ' we may
distinguish His 'treasures.'
The spiritual good which Christ has bestowed on His
people in time past or is now bestowing, is not the full
revelation of the blessing which is in reserve for them.
They possess spiritual gifts in proportion to the ability
each has developed for reception and appropriation, a
principle illustrated by Christ in the parable of the talents.1
As believers become able to bear His blessing, the riches
of His blessing are bestowed and experienced. In the
degree that the capacity for receiving spiritual good, either
here or hereafter, becomes stronger, His people will tran
scend their present ppssession of spiritual good, and taste
the heavenly joys now in store but not yet communicated.2
The difference between what they have at present and
what they will have hereafter, even on earth, if faithful,
is immeasurable. The gifts which we now enjoy are not
worthy to be compared with the treasures of divine glory
which will be revealed to us. The contrast between the
'seed' and the 'full corn in the ear' sets before us both
the wonderful growth of the kingdom and the transforma
tion of the individual member.
The unrevealed treasures of Christ are communicable to
all. Each believer has not only the gifts that are now in.
his possession ; he has niore. The spiritual good not now
in possession but only in reserve for him, is. accessible
whenever he has power to receive it, and accessible in
the degree that the power of reception becomes purer and
greater. "For unto every one that hath shall be given,
and he shall have abundance."
'Matt. xxv. 14-30. 2John xvi. 12; Dan. xii; 10.

§324.] The Communion of Saints. 635
§324-
The position of every member of the ' communion
of saints ' is twofold : he stands in an immediate rela
tion by the Spirit to Jesus Christ, the glorified Head,
and also in immediate relation to all his fellow members.
In both relations the truth which distinguishes each
member of the 'communion' is that he receives and
gives ; he takes spiritual good and he imparts spiritual
good. The blessing of Christ in the communion of
saints multiplies itself, reproduces itself. Receiving
anticipates and conditions giving. Giving presupposes
and conditions receiving.
1. In his relation to Jesus Christ every living member
is receptive and communicative. He accepts Christ, and
he gives himself to Christ. He appropriates to himself in a
degree of the fulness of His life ; in turn he yields hynself
with his endowments and spiritual gifts to the service of
Christ in His kingdom. In proportion to his fidelity and
the maturity of his spiritual growth he will use endow
ments, time, property, and the blessings of the Holy
Spirit, not for his earthly comfort aud glory, but for the
honor of Christ. As he appropriates what Christ imparts,
so Christ accepts the offerings which the believer brings.
This law governs the believer in his relation to his
fellows. Each faithful member becomes a blessing to
other members. His faith, his zeal, his godliness, his
upright conduct, is a spiritual good for himself, and at the
same time ministers spiritual good to others. Faith begets
faith; zeal kindles zeal; godliness nourishes the growth
of godliness; upright conduct promotes upright conduct.
All grow in knowledge and love of the truth for the pro
gress which each is making, and each develops his Chris-

62,6 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [Book 7.
tian character more completely for the light and warmth
emanating from all. Every individual fulfils a ministry to
the whole body of the faithful, and the whole body fulfils
this ministry toward each individual.
This reciprocal intercommunion is normal, rich, power
ful in proportion to the purity, strength and firmness of
Christian faith, in proportion to the degree that conse
cration to the service of Jesus Christ is scriptural, self-
consistent and mature.
The personal influence of each in the Spirit on others is
conservative, confirming their faith, strengthening their
hope; is defensive, warding off" the assaults of spiritual
enemies or weakening the force of their attacks; is stimu
lating, affording inspiration and buoyancy to Christian
life. 2. We have to recognize the vital interdependence of
members of this spiritual communion.
Whilst all spiritual good proceeds from Jesus Christ and
becomes the possession of His members only by the Holy
Spirit, yet since His members are also members one of
another, it lies in the nature of the communion of saints
that the vigor, growth and joy of each believer depend,
not on himself alone, but also on the grace and fidelity of
others. Each ministers spiritual good to others; others
advance in the Christian life and bear the fruits of the
Spirit in proportion to the worth of this spiritual good
ministered to them. There is continual giving and con
tinual receiving, of each to all, of all to each.
Moreover, the spiritual action of each member on others
involves a spiritual reaction on himself. In ministering
spiritual good to other members he is himself invigorated
by his faithful ministrations. Giving to others of the

§324-] The Communion of Saints. 637
wealth he has from Christ enriches himself. He grows in
faith and holiness in the degree that he contributes to the
growth of faith and holiness of the entire communion.
No one can infringe this law of the spiritual kingdom
without serious loss. If a believer is inactive in right
eousness or fails to impart to others the heavenly gifts to
him imparted, he impoverishes himself. "He that hath
not, from him shall be taken away even that which he
hath. ' ' 1 The liberal soul shall be made fat.
3. These reciprocal ministrations of members of the
communion to one another condition the reception of
greater spiritual good from Jesus Christ. Of His fulness
He can impart- to His members in the degree that each
imparts sympathy and the strength of faith to the entire
body ; and in the degree that each imparts he becomes
capable of imparting. If he lets his light so shine that
others seeing his good works glorify the Father in heaven,
himself develops into a holier and brighter light. The
spiritual capacity of no one is proportionate to the fulness
of Christ. The culture of the second great commandment,
Love thy neighbor as thyself, opens and enlarges the soul
to the inflowing of love from the original fountain.
The growth of spiritual capacity depends accordingly on
these two forms of the Christian life: on fidelity to Christ
in the service of His kingdom, and on the ministration of
blessings, spiritual and temporal, to Christ's members.
Not only fidelity to Christ, not only the desire or will
ingness to accept His gifts, conditions the growth of the
spiritual capacity of the individual believer, but growth
depends also on the outflowing love and devotion of the
individual toward other members of the communion.
"Prov. xi. 24; Ps. cxii. 9; Mk. iv. 25; Prov. x. 25.

638 Doctrine on the Holy Spirit. [book 7.
Selfishness is abnormal. It violates not only the ideal
interaction between member and member, but also the
ethical relation of each member to himself. So incom
patible are selfishness, division and strife with the com
munion of saintp, that in the degree that this false spirit
prevails the communion becomes a libel on Christianity.
§325-
The 'communion of saints,' as has now been developed,
is conscious and subconscious, voluntary and spontaneous.
The conscious and voluntary fellowship of members with
Christ aud of members with one another, reveals the
subconscious and spontaneous union of both in the Spirit
The subconscious communion of spiritual life is deeper,
richer, mightier than the controlling force of the com
munion in voluntary interaction, or its manifestations
iu Christian consciousness. The former conditions the
latter. The latter reveals somewhat of the former; but it
has never fully revealed the wealth of its vitality.
The actual ministrations of members to one another are
a partial exhibition of the truth of the 'communion;' but
imperfect phenomena are not to be regarded as an adequate
criterion of judgment respecting the mysterious reality.
Nor has there been manifest in fact an adequate criterion
during the past history of the Church, whether among
apostles and early disciples, or at any epoch in the
progress and conflicts of her history. The criterion of
judgment respecting the nature of the 'communion of
saints ' is presented by the fellowship of Jesus Christ with
His chosen disciples during His personal history on earth;
but even this extraordinary fellowship is only approxi
mately adequate. Though real and unique, it is chiefly

1 325-] The Communion of Saints. 639
prophetic of the perfected communion consequent upon
the perfection of Christ in His state of glorification.
The reality of the 'communion' will answer to its un
seen teleology, the outward form will express its hidden
truth, when the law of this life-communion shall be ful
filled at the second coming, when the holy catholic Church
shall have triumphed over her internal divisions and her
external foes, and the word of the Lord shall be fulfilled
which says: "I go to prepare a place for you; I come again
and will receive you unto myself; that where I am, there
ye may be also." Then when the communion shall have
become in final character what it is iu idea, Christian
thought will have an adequate criterion of judgment
Then the virtue of the transition by the Holy Spirit in
Baptism from the kingdom of the first Adam into the
kingdom of the last Adam, then the heavenly nourish
ment of ' the spiritual man ' by the body and blood of
Jesus Christ in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, then
the riches of the living ' communion of saints,' now known
only in part, between Christ and His mystical body, be
tween member and member, whether among the living or
among the dead, will bear ripe fruit in the Christ-like
dignity and the unspeakable blessedness of the everlasting
life.

BOOK EIGHTH.
SOTERIOLOGY : OR THE DOCTRINE ON
PERSONAL SALVATION.

CHAPTER I.
PROVINCE OF SOTERIOLOGY.
§ 326.
The mediating agency of the Holy Spirit, like the
entire mediatorial work of Jesus Christ, has direct
reference to the guilt and misery of the Adamic race.
Whilst fundamentally Christianity is a new creation, its
aim being the glory of God in the perfection of ideal
manhood, the necessity of expiating human guilt and
of abolishing all forms of misery conditions and imparts
character to the mediatorship of Christ, to the office of
the Spirit, to the Church and the sacraments, and to all
the phenomena of Christian history.
1. The incarnate Son of God, the Founder of a race
constitutionally different from the Adamic race, is at the
same time the Redeemer of mankind.
The new life communion of man with God, of which
the incarnate Son is the principle, works toward a com
plete salvation from the dominion and the consequences
of transgression.
The Church, the mystical body of Christ, is an economy
of grace. Being the form of the kingdom of God over
which and in which Christ reigns as the only Lord, the
Church is at the same time the refuge of all who are
seeking reconciliation with God.
The quickening agency of the Holy Spirit in the mem
bers of Christ anticipates and requires repentance and
sanctification, repentance and sanctification being the
complement of birth into the kingdom.
(643)

644 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [books.
Holy Baptism, the sacrament of initiation into the
kingdom, signifies and seals the forgiveness of sins. The
Lord's Supper, the sacrament of the vital communion of
the body and blood of the glorified Christ, confirms to
believers the benefit of the propitiatory sacrifice offered on
the cross.
The holy ministry, whilst representing the authority of
the enthroned Christ, announces mercy and pardon on the
ground of His propitiation and intercession to all who will
accept pardon, announces divine sympathy with all who
are suffering the miseries of sin. The Gospel proclaims
the glad tidings of spiritual strength, spiritual joy and
spiritual freedom, not to the righteous and holy, but to
the captives of Satan.
The regenerate life of Christ's members is a continual
conflict with the powers of moral and physical evil, a
conflict that looks forward with confidence to ultimate
victory. From whatever point of view we may consider the
religion of Christ, whether objectively or subjectively,
these two aspects address our faith: the one presupposing
truth, goodness, righteousness and beauty, the other
recognizing the existence and hostility of the kingdom of
darkness; the one presupposing man's divine image and
his consequent affinity with God, the other man's self-
perversion of his original nature by wilful disobedience;
the one declaring and realizing eternal life and blessed
ness, the other aiming at the destruction of the law of sin
and death.
From these fundamentals of Christianity arises the ne
cessity of developing the mediatorship of Christ and the
work of His Holy Spirit in the Church and in the world

\ 326.] Province of Soteriology. 645
under a positive rand a negative view, on the one hand as
the creation of a new race and on the other as a deliver
ance of the members of the new race from the dominion
and the evils of sin.
2. Christology studies the redemptive side of the new.
creation mainly as wrought out objectively, that is, by the
person and personal history of Jesus Christ, from His
birth, through suffering and death, to His resurrection
and glorification. Faith beholds the economy of redemp
tive grace in the crucified Son of Man risen and enthroned
at God's right hand.
Pneumatology develops the saving work of the Holy
Spirit: His miraculous advent; His formation of the
Church; His agency in the institution of the ministry, in
the production of the written word, and in the virtue of
the sacraments. This objective work of the Spirit antici
pates a corresponding subjective process, a process of
actual deliverance from moral evil, going forward in the
personal life and experience of believers. On their part
there is an appropriation by repentance and faith of the
fulness of redemptive grace. The appropriation of grace,
whilst it presupposes the redemptive work accomplished
by Christ and the existence of the Church with her spirit
ual resources, implies at the same time the conscious re
sponsive activity of those whom the Gospel addresses.
To unfold the nature and the successive steps of personal
salvation in the history of believers is the province of
Soteriology. Accordingly I pass on to study the virtue of
the religion of Christ in its direct bearing on mankind
regarded as fallen, degraded, guilty and miserable, at all
points postulating the personality of Christ as the Life
which is redemptive.

646 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [books.
CHAPTER II.
THE KINGDOM OF SALVATION.
§327-
Christian repentance presupposes birth 'of the
Spirit' into the kingdom of God, or the transition of the
sinner from membership in the race of the first man to
membership in the race of the Second Man.
The Adamic race is subject to the dominion of sin
and death, having within itself in its relations to God
no resources and no means of deliverance. The new
race is the race of salvation. By virtue of vital con
nection with the Mediator it is now in principle the
saved race, and its history is the process of the achieve
ment of complete victory over sin and death. The
Christian Church, being the organized form of the
race of the Second Man, is the sphere in which the re
demption of the Mediator has normal force and is ful
filled in its faithful members. •
r. The basis and possibility of salvation from sin is the
new life of the Second Man. As in ' the natural man '
physical vitality, rightly sustained, conditions the possi
bility of recovery from sickness, so in 'the spiritual man'
it is the spiritual vitality nourished by the fellowship of
the Redeemer that conditions the possibility of recovery
from the deadly poison of sin.
Salvation is not merely a new form of religious experi
ence, nor a peculiar mental and moral state of the return
ing prodigal. Personal salvation implies that the person
is a member of Christ.
The fallen order of the Adamic race is the domain of

1 327.] The Kingdom of Salvation. 647
sin, all who stand in this fallen order being subject to the
curse of death. Modifications of religious sentiment or
improvement of character may indeed be developed in
individual members of the Adamic race, but such changes
are superficial rather than radical,' seeming rather than
real, the results of volition or stoical self-assertion rather
than of ideal life.
The radical salvation from the death-producing poison
of sin wrought by the Holy Spirit does indeed include
peculiar forms of personal experience, and necessitates a
transformation of moral character; but a personal experi
ence truly Christian is not wrought by the Spirit in a
person standing in the kingdom of the first Adam, where
the law of sin reigns, the law dominant in all members of
the old race. Genuine Christian experience presupposes
a new position and a new environment, possible and
available only in the kingdom of God.
¦ 2. A salvation that answers to the organic and moral
needs of the sinner is a real and radical emancipation from
sin, deliverance not from some of its consequences, such
as remorse or disease, not from its penalties in the world
to come, but a deliverance from sin itself, from the type
and law of sin immanent in the fallen nature of the sinner.
From the consequences of sin, whether sin be regarded as
original or actual, whether its consequences be experienced
here or impending over the hereafter, the sinner may
escape in but one way: if the law of sin and condemnation
which he obeys and by which he is bound over unto death
is resolved into freedom. This radical emancipation, this
resolution of death into life, of the curse into blessing,
requires that the subjection of the natural man to the
kingdom of darkness be annulled. The subject of sin

648 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [books.
must pass out of the kingdom of sin ; he must be liberated
from the unhuman domain of the author of sin; and such
a liberation he may have only by entering into the king
dom of life and forgiveness.
The Son of God became Man not merely to rescue
individuals from moral evil, but to found a kingdom, a
kingdom different from, and as to purpose aud character
contrary to all human kingdoms — a truth illustrated by
the parables. Into this kingdom the Gospel invites all to
enter, regardless of age or sex or nationality, for only by
the grace and love of this kingdom can the members of
the Adamic race overcome all spiritual foes.
3. Hence arises the most deadly conflict. The contra
diction between righteousness and wickedness, between
divine grace and human guilt, between the blessing of life
and the curse of death, presupposes a more original and
more profound contradiction, of which the conflicts be
tween faith and unbelief introduced by Christianity are
but the phenomena.1 That more profound antagonism is
the issue between Jesus Christ and Satan, between the
kingdom of light and the kingdom of darkness. From this
fundamental issue proceeds the thorough opposition of the
new creation to the perverted order of the old creation, of
the Christian Church to the course of 'this world.'
Transgression and guilt, miseries and death, presuppose
the objective reality of the kingdom of darkness. God
being the author of the right and the true, of love and
wisdom, cannot be the cause of the moral evils which
afflict mankind ; aud man, created in God's image, is not
the original source of the perversion and folly that has
1 Matt. x. 34-36. Pagan animosity denied to Christians the right even
to existence. Non licet esse vos. — See Apology of Tertullian, ch. IV.

§ 327-] The Kingdom of Salvation. 649
degraded and darkened his history. The ground of
human wickedness lies back of the human race in that
sombre kingdom of evil spirits in which wickedness aud
folly had their beginning. Men are by nature sinful
because by inheritance they are members of the kingdom
of sin ; and they commit transgression because they choose
to obey the evil propensities of their sinful nature rather
than the dictates of divine imageship as uttered by the
conscience. Faith and forgiveness, individual righteousness and
peace, presuppose and imply the objective reality of the
kingdom of light.1 Satan being the author of the lie and
of transgression cannot beget truth and holiness. As the
lie and transgression reign in the kingdom of darkness,
this kingdom cannot awaken repentance, nor beget a holy
life, nor support a thorough reformation of character.
Believers may become truly penitent in the kingdom of
repentance; they may receive power to do righteousness
and evermore to turn against sin in the kingdom of right
eousness. A thorough change of moral and spiritual
character they may undergo, true faith they may exercise
and may attain to complete salvation, for the reason that
they have become members of a kingdom that challenges
Christian faith, begets the new life, and effects deliver
ance from moral and physical evils in its faithful members.
There is no adequate saving virtue in 'the natural man '
himself, a fact not only taught by Scripture but also attested
by the universal experience of pagan nations, and by men
1 Says the Rev. Dr. Stearns : " If I were asked what has been the great
est achievement of recent theology, I should say that it was the revival
of this doctrine of the kingdom and its restoration to its proper place in
the theological system."— Present Day Theology, p. no.

650 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
in Christian lands who renounce Christianity and the
Church. By common consent of Christendom saving
virtue adequate to the needs of sinners is available only in
the mediatorship of Jesus Christ; and the saving virtue of
His mediatorship is active and available in the ' body ' of
which He is the Head. The ancient adage is sound:
extra ecclesiam, nulla salus ; provided, that ' ecclesiam"1
denote, not an external ecclesiastical organization,
whether Papal or Episcopal or Presbyterial, but is taken
to be the equivalent of 'kingdom of God' as proclaimed
by our Lord, or of the ' holy catholic Church ' as affirmed
by the Christian Creed, the Church catholic being the
present distinctive form of the reality and saving grace of
the 'kingdom.'
4. The law of the Christian salvation requiring sinners
to become members of the kingdom of forgiveness and of
peace with God, in order that they may share the blessings
of forgiveness and peace, is analogous to the constructive
law of ordinary human life.
A child may develop itself into a distinctively human
being only in a human family and in human society.
The environment of social life is indispensable. Should
it live from birth among animals it would become brutish,
or at best would grow up a savage. This principle is
fundamental in all other circles. A man can have the
benefits of civilization, whether pagan or Christian, only
among a civilized people. The rights of citizenship are
guaranteed to the law-abiding subjects of the State, the
State being the sphere, the only sphere, of civil blessings.
The advantages of the republican government of The
United States can be claimed only by the citizens of the
Republic. With no less force does this principle rule in

§ 327.] The Kingdom of Salvation. 65 1
the narrower circles of civilized society: in jurisprudence,
in medicine, in science, in music, and in all the arts.
Jurisprudence begets a circle of men learned in the law;
music a circle of musicians, the prerogatives of which only
those can have who enter this circle. So Jesus Christ
begets a community of Christian people, the members of
which derive their distinguishing traits of character and
all their prerogatives from Him- in this community. He
also is a positive force, a living power, that generates a
distinctive sphere of social- life, a spiritual corporation
differing as to quality from every other corporation. As a
child must be a member of the family to have the benefits
of family discipline, as a man must be a citizen in order
to claim all the rights of citizenship, as an aspirant after
the honors of the legal profession must enter the profession
and live in it according to accepted principles in order to
enjoy whatever there is of value in the profession, so a
man must enter the kingdom of Jesus Christ, must live in
communion with Him in His kingdom, in order to have
the salvation from sin and death which Christ, the Head
of this kingdom, alone has achieved. The natural econ
omy of ' the first man ' is the basis and a justification of
the spiritual economy of ' the Second Man.'
5. The kingdom of Christ promises what no other
kingdom has ever promised, and it fulfils its promise in
the history of its faithful members. His kingdom is the
spiritual basis of a salvation thorough and complete. As
Christ glorified is the only Lord of this communion, and
as its members are apprehended of Christ by His Spirit,
they standing in this new fellowship of grace with Him
may appropriate the benefits of His mediatorship accom
plished by His death and resurrection.

65 2 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
Here are at hand not only the rich resources of deliver
ance, but no less also the conditions on which depends the
appropriation of these resources. The kingdom not only
offers salvation from sin and death, not only makes good
what it offers, but it also communicates adequate moral
strength and moves men to the exercise of that faith
which is the personal condition on which actual salvation
depends.

CHAPTER III.
. FAITH. §328.

Of the objective economy of redemption the central
truth is Jesus Christ.
Answering to this central truth there is in man a
central principle which conditions the reality and pro
gress of personal salvation.
This central principle of personal experience respon
sive to the central truth of Christianity is faith.
1. The mystery of Christian revelation and redemption
turns on the divine-human personality of Jesus Christ; the
development of regenerate life and actual redemption turn
on the principle of Christian faith. Faith and Christ stand
in a polar relation. Christ confronts the eye of faith, not
the common understanding. He is the object challenging
the obedience of personality. In turn faith sees Christ,
appropriates Christ.
If we contemplate Jesus Christ glorified as He is in
Himself, He is independent of belief or unbelief. He is

§32S.] Faith. 653
what He is whether but few or very many receive Him.
But what Christ designs to be and to do in the history of
the Christian Church and in its individual members, He
becomes and He effects through their faith, which condi
tions the development and ripe fruit of the mystical union
of Christ with His members. Engrafted into Him by the
Holy Spirit, the blessing of this engrafting is experienced
by those only who by their own act make this blessing
their personal possession.
2. Belief in Christ does not presuppose a distinct faith-
faculty, but is to be predicated of the man himself, that
is, of the man who is a new creature in Christ Jesus.
The natural eye presupposes the human body of which
it is an organ. Will and intellect presuppose the human
soul. It is the soul that perceives, thinks and chooses,
or determines itself for or against this or that object.
Ranch says:
" It is usual to consider Reason and Will as wholly different activities,
and to speak of mental and moral faculties. But the mind is one, and
reason and will are so inseparable, that the one includes the other.
They have one principle and one life ; and what is on the one hand lib
erty of will, is on the other spontaneity of thought. Man cannot will a
thing, unless he knows of it ; he cannot have any knowledge of it with
out the influence of will. * * Will and reason constantly determining
each other, are one and the same — existing in different forms."'
Rauch published his Psychology in 1840. During the
last fifty years the science has been progressing along the
line of thought which he pursued. American writers
now affirm the same principle. Harris says:
" I speak of powers or faculties merely as a matter of convenience, to
denote the mind itself considered as capable of various acts or states.
' Rauch's Psychology, p. 293.

654 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [Book 8.
This is well put by Lotze, who says in substance, that for the whole of
every circle of similar phenomena we ascribe to the soul a peculiar fac
ulty or capacity to act in a way which proves it competent to the action
in each circle of phenomena. * * We assume not a distinct number
of qualities laid out adjacent to one another, but so in affinity with each
other that they all concur as distinct expressions of one and the same
being, in the wholeness of its rational development. * * The recog
nition of a faith faculty as the distinctive organ of religious knowledge
is inadmissible. The very conception of a ' faculty ' is false and mislead
ing. The mind in its individual oneness reveals itself in acts and pro
cesses which we can note and classify. From this misconception of the
mind as divided into faculties the doctrine of a faith-faculty derives its
chief significance.."'
Consistently with this sound psychological principle,
soteriology maintains that Christian faith presupposes not
a distinct God-given power but the Christian soul. Faith
is that chief mode of right action toward Christ which
distinguishes a man 'born of water and the Spirit,' being
like love and hope the predicate not of ' the natural man '
but of regenerate or Christian personality.
Christian faith is a predicate of personality which is not
absolutely new. As the ' natural man ' is the possibility
of the 'spiritual man,' as ethnic religion is the human
basis of the Christian religion, so we have to recognize
the truth that the constitution of the Adamic race, though
debased by the fall, has the capacity for faith- in Christ,
a capacity that may be called natural faith. This truth
corresponds to other truths that address us from the
Christian economy.
The incarnation of the Son of God presupposes a slum
bering aptitude of the Adamic race for the conception and
birth of a Man who may realize the hypostatical union
' Philosophic Basis of Theism, pp. 44 and 78.

«329-] Taith. 655
with God. The birth into the kingdom by the Spirit
supposes a latent susceptibility of 'the natural man' for an
ingrafting into Christ. So does the faith of ' the spiritual
man ' presuppose the corresponding capacity of ' the natu
ral man.' The truth of natural faith is the possibility of
Christian faith. When of water and the Spirit a person is
born into the kingdom of the Second Man, becoming thus
a member of the ideal race, that which is natural may
become Christian. When the man himself comes to stand
in the spiritual kingdom where spiritual realities form his
environment, his natural endowments may undergo a rad
ical change, answering to the heavenly forces of grace by
which he has been apprehended. I say may undergo a
change, for the reason that the responsive action of the
will is an essential factor of 'Christian character.
§ 329-
The argument of the foregoing article implies that the
doctrine concerning the primacy of faith for the culture
of knowledge and the building of character is not peculiar
to Christianity. Considered psychologically, belief or its
equivalent is the first form in which the human soul
reveals itself in all spontaneous or conscious phenomena.
Knowledge, discursive no less than philosophical, begins
by crediting the thing, whether external or internal, which
mind presumes to reproduce in the sphere of thought.
The building of character begins in a spontaneous recog
nition of moral obligation. Reflection on the ground of
obligation follows the assumption of its truth.
Natural science assumes the veracity and reliability of
the bodily senses. All experimentation presupposes the
validity of this a priori method. Sense-perception may

656 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
err, but only by means of sense-perception can the judg
ment rectify an error.
Astronomy credits the natural heavens; geology the
reality of the earth; physiology the living human body.
Other sciences are based 011 the same principle. Each,
moreover, proceeds on the assumption that the object con
fronting perception is, not a lawless jumble of heteroge
neous things and forces, but an order existing or active
according to law. No natural science asks whether the
natural world exists, or whether there are objective phe
nomena. Believing both to be real it puts the question :
what are the phenomena? what objective law is tp be
inferred from observed phenomena? It is theology that
has been so unpsychological as to press the inquiry whether
-God, the object of thought, is a reality. It. is metaphysic
that at times raises the question whether the external world
has an existence, or whether sense-perception reports ob
jective facts. Natural science has not committed .such a
blunder. Often ignoring or denying psychological or
metaphysical principles, it nevertheless silently proceeds
on the basis of the truth which is denied orio-nored.
Materialism denies that there is mind or spirit, but it
affirms that there is matter. Skeptical in its relation to
the spiritual world, it. is credulous in its relation to the
material world. Belief in the material, the reality of
which it does not prove but credits, is the foundation on
which its system of negations and affirmations is built.
Des Cartes professed to be skeptical of inherited philoso
phies, aud proposed to construct a philosophy of his own
by rejecting the historic schools of thought, ancient and
medieval. A sound philosophy, he supposed, has to begin
by discrediting traditional opinions. It must doubt the

g329-] Faith. 657
validity of all systems. Accordingly he laid down the
famous dictum: de omnibus dubitandum est; but in
affirming this proposition he contradicts universal doubt.
Without proof he accepts his negative hypothesis. In
spite of his purpose to the contrary the constitution of
mind asserts itself. He must begin by accepting some
fundamental idea as truth.
The same principle reigns in the moral order of the
world and in all social relations. The child exercises
implicit confidence in mother and father before it raises
any question or begins to reason respecting the estate of
the family. Conscience credits the supreme authority of
right, whether thought has constructed for itself an ethical
system or not. There could be no ethical philosophy if
there were no intuition of moral obligation.
In society and in civil affairs the same primacy is
accorded to faith. Confidence between man and man
conditions social intercourse and business transactions.
Confidence in the wisdom and stability of government
begets the sense of security and gives impulse to enterprise
and trade. Mistrust paralyzes the industries of a country
aud checks financial prosperity, even though there is no
adequate cause for the fear of impending evils in the
actual condition of affairs.
All the facts of civilization go to show that the human
soul is so organized by the hand of the Creator that belief,
either as intuitive perception or spontaneous assumption
or hypothesis or confidence, conditions knowledge, whether
secular or scientific or spiritual. Belief not only conditions
knowledge, but it gives the thing believed position and
force in personality, and thus it becomes regulative both
of the contents of thought and of the character of morality.
42

658 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
If consistent, a man thinks and acts according to what he
believes to be true and right.
The Church addresses mankind on the basis of a uni
versal principle. She obeys psychological law when she
approaches us with the command: believe in the Lord
Jesus Christ The challenge is psychological .as truly as
when mathematics requires a student to begin by accepting
axioms. The entire scope of mathematical demonstration
is founded on formal truth, which as such the mind accepts
without demonstration. Says Dr. Harris:
"The maxim that faith precedes intelligence has no peculiar applica
tion to religious knowledge. This,' like all other knowledge, begins as
primitive, implicit, spontaneous knowledge, and is elaborated into clear,
definite, systematic knowledge.'"
The laws of mind require thought not only to credit its
object and to recognize the relation of cause and effect,
but als,o to pass from a proximate cause to a more remote
cause, from a given law to a more general law. Logical
thought does not rest until it finds that which is funda
mental to all thought. Intuitively it credits the reality of
an Author of the universe. Belief in God is so necessary
for philosophical thought that reason cannot think logic
ally without it2 Harris says:
"God is the resting-place of the intellect no less than the heart. All
lines of thought converge toward God: all meet and stop in Him: all
spring again from Him, made certain as real knowledge and effective as
life-giving wisdom."3
' Philosophic Basis of Theism, p. 77. 8 Ibid., p. 203.
2 The primacy of faith for knowledge and character dignifies human
personality. Says the Rev. Dr. Lee: " The soul is more honored in what
it cannot prove than in what it can." — "The Independent," Aug. 31st,
1893.

§33o.] Faith. 659
Christian faith answers to natural faith. The law of
man's original constitution requires and justifies the law
of his regenerate constitution. §330-
There is a twofold faith of which Jesus Christ is the
object. Both faiths may be true. Both may also be
saving; each, however according to its own law.
1. There is a saving faith that may be predicated of
unbaptized persons, persons who are not members of the
new race. Such faith is awakened by the proclamation
of Christian truth. The Holy Spirit through the preach
ing of the Gospel directs the eye of the soul upon the
person of Jesus Christ. Historical belief may become a
profound conviction. Intellectual assent may pass into
positive ethical self-determination. Such belief proves
itself to be genuine, and it becomes in fact saving faith
when it moves the subject to confess Christ and to enter
into His kingdom by submission to Holy Baptism. Then
with the transition of the person from the kingdom of the
'first Adam' into the kingdom of the 'last Adam,' where,
objectively considered, he stands in right relation to the
person and kingdom of Jesus Christ, natural belief is re
solved into Christian faith. Christian it becomes, not
only by fixing its eye on Christ as the chief good, but also
by living in fellowship with Him in the exercise of a faith
that works by love; and love proves itself to be the love
of faith by keeping His commandments. "If ye keep my
commandments," says our Lord, "ye shall abide in my
love; even as I have kept my Father's commandments,
and abide in His love."1 The natural capacity for appre-
'John xv. 10.

660 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
heuding Christ fulfills its intent when it ceases to be only
natural, and becomes a positive Christian power. The
transformation is wrought, primarily by the agency of the
Holy Spirit, responsively by the obedient will of the per
son upon whom and in whom the Spirit through the
Gospel is operative.
2. The natural belief of ' the natural man ' is not saving
unless it is directed toward Jesus Christ and lays hold of
His person. There is but one Saviour; only He can, only
He does save from sin and death. A belief that, setting
aside the only Saviour, seeks to lay hold of God, as
revealed in nature or in Adamic personality, is not saving
faith. If historical belief continues to be only historical,
or intellectual assent to be only intellectual, or theoretic
contemplation to be only theoretic, the man with his cor
rect beliefs or his sound theoretic affirmations does not
appropriate to himself the positive virtue of the Christ.
'That which is born of the flesh is flesh.'
Natural belief may even to a degree be developed by
the Gospel without acquiring the positive power of deliv
erance from sin. Convinced of the dignity of Jesus Christ
and elevated by Christian civilization, men may in some
measure regulate their moral conduct in their social rela
tions by His word, even by His example ; yet if such
conviction does not move them to confess Christ, instead
of killing the inborn aversion of ' the natural man ' to
Christian truth, divine knowledge may feed this inborn
aversion, and at heart men may become confirmed in the
disobedience of unbelief. Then divested of many forms
of outward immorality, sin may assume a more refined
and spiritual habit. To such, notwithstanding their
theoretic beliefs, the Gospel becomes ' a savor of death

1 33o.] Faith. 66i
unto death.' Christian faith alone is saving faith. It
imparts to natural belief whatever of positively transform
ing and uplifting efficacy it may acquire.
3. When natural belief becomes Christian faith, the
former is not superseded. Though radically changed,
the natural capacity of believing is ever a possibility of
Christian faith and ever lives on in it. As a man's natural
temperament modifies his moral character when he be
comes a Christian, so does his natural capacity for Chris
tian faith.
All persons have will and intellect, but the strength of ¦
will differs greatly in different individuals. So do intel
lectual endowments greatly differ. Similar differences
appear in religious capacity. Men are endowed with
various degrees of susceptibility for divine things. This
difference is perpetual. When they become the members
of Christ their faith is stronger or weaker, more or less
energetic and stable, according to the measure of their
original spiritual susceptibility. But the fact may not be
overlooked that the actual faith of the Christian depends
very much on his will. One believer of less natural sus
ceptibility for spiritual things may in truth be more
devout, more active and consistent, than another whose
spiritual endowments are by nature of a higher order.
He may become a more fruitful Christian because he
seeks faithfully to cultivate all the gifts he has received,
whilst the other uses his gifts partially in the service of
Christ, partially in the service of the world.
Though such facts of Christian experience are not to
be overlooked, nevertheless emphasis has to be put on
the truth that the natural difference of capacity for the
spiritual world remains; and in the estimate we form of

662 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [Book 8.
Christian character the natural differences of believers
must always be taken into account. Two men may be
equally sincere, equally devout and faithful, yet the one
be far less fruitful in good works than the other.
§33J-
The immediate object of Christian faith is Christ;
not primarily His mediatorship, much less any one
essential part of His mediatorial work, such as His
nativity, or His atoning death, nor yet the promises of
Scripture, but the Lord Jesus Christ Himself.
Of faith the immediate effect is the union and com
munion of Christ with the personality of the believer.
i. God as God is not the object of a faith that is Chris
tian. Of Christian faith God is the object as present and
manifest in the person of His Son; but it is the incarnate
Son that imparts to faith its Christian quality. Whatever
else the object may be on which belief fastens, whether
spiritual or natural, divine or human, it falls short of being
Christian faith. When our Lord admonished the Jews
not to work for the meat which perisheth, but for the
meat which abideth unto eternal life which the Son of
Man shall give, they said unto Him: What must we do
that we may work the. works of God ? Jesus answered :
"This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom
he hath sent"1 The 'work' of a Jew which is truly of
divine origin and answerable to the divine will is not only
that he believe in Moses, or in Jehovah as set forth by
Moses and the prophets, but chiefly that he believe on
Him whom God hath sent. Belief in Jehovah, or belief in
Moses as the prophet of Jehovah, was not in the ideal sense
'John vi. 28, 29.

?33i.] Faith. 663
the 'work of God.' The object toward which the entire
work of God in the pre-Christian economy had been look
ing was the Son of Man; and so long as the Jew did not
believe Jesus to be the Christ he had not done ' the work
of God.' The turning point of our Lord's teaching is
neither the obligation of believing in contradistinction
from knowing, nor yet the obligation of believing on
Jehovah in contradistinction from Moses or the prophets,
but the necessity of accepting Jesus of Nazareth as the
Christ.' "Every disbelieving or extraneous thought is
put aside," says Dr. Milligan, "and with unusual direct
ness, force and simplicity Jesus shows that the one car
dinal requirement of the Father is the reception of the Son
by faith."
This teaching was addressed to the Jews who had not
honored the claims of Jesus. We have similar teaching
at the close of His ministry. To His disciples He said:
"Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God,
believe also in me."1 Their faith in Jehovah was becom
ing and necessary; but it was not sufficient. Jehovah, as
the disciples had learned to confide in Him through Moses
and the prophets, was not the final object of belief nor the
principle of victory. Peace, consolation, triumph over
sin and death, were not to be attained by taking refuge in
God after the manner of the ceremonial law. What the
disciples needed as the complement of confidence in the
God of their fathers was belief in Him whom the God of
their fathers had sent. He was the object in whom they
were to take refuge, in whom they as His followers, in
order to be faithful to Jehovah, were bound to confide.
2. When the New Testament sets before us Jesus Christ
'John xiv. I.

664 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [cooxS.
as the object of faith it is His person that is prominent,
not His miracles, not His words, not even any cardinal
epoch of His mediatorship. It is not His birth nor His
death, not His resurrection nor His glorification that is
the pivotal truth, but it is the central reality which im
parts saving worth to these essential and momentous
mysteries. That pivotal truth is Himself; yet not His
personality divorced from the cardinal facts of His personal
history. The faith of which Jesus Christ is the object presupposes
Jehovah and the revelation of Jehovah by Moses and the
prophets, and embraces His birth of the Virgin, His won
derful deeds, His mighty words, His inspiring promises,
His atoning sacrifice, with the resurrection and session at
the right hand of the Father. Apart from these mysteries
His person would not be the divine-human reality whence
proceed eternal life and salvation. Only when we grasp
the central force of His personality may we have clear
insight into the virtue of the mysteries that enter into His
mediatorship. But no part of the Christian economy is a legitimate
object of Christian faith independently of its organic con
nection in the Spirit with the glorified Christ. From
Him alone, the principle of regenerate human life, each
article of the Creed derives the authority of a faith-object
If thus related to Himself, then, for example, 'the holy
catholic Church,' as affirmed by the Creed, becomes a
legitimate object of faith. Such an object the Church is
because she stands as the mystical ' body ' of Christ, apart
from whom there is no Christian Church. He, the Head,
and His members are the Church; neither He disconnected
from His membership, nor His members disconnected

j 33i.] Faith. 665
from Himself. The man who ex corde can say: "I be
lieve in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son our Lord,"
and can affirm the cardinal mysteries of His mediatorship,
he also may say : " I believe in the Holy Ghost. ' ' And the
man who believes in the Holy Ghost sent from the Father
by the incarnate Son on the day of Pentecost, may say
also: I believe " the holy catholic Church, the communion
of saints." Whenever ecclesiology requires faith in the
Church, but fails to emphasize her vital connection, not
with the Pope as the supposed vicar of Christ, but directly
with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, enthroned at the
right hand of God, it breaks away from the inviolable
law of the Christian Creed.
3. Of all natural faith, whatever be its object, whether
divine or human, one distinguishing characteristic is, that
it effects and maintains a union of the object with the sub
ject. The union is internal, being a moral force in the
personal life of the subject. The object comes to be a
power in the sphere of will and of consciousness; and the
power is strong or weak, and works for good or for evil,
according to the nature of the object. The implicit con
fidence in Jehovah of 'a Jew which is one inwardly,' gave
to the authority of Jehovah a place in personality that
developed approximately the ideal Jewish character. The
confidence of a son in his mother transforms her judgment
and will into a principle of his personal life, exerting from
within a controlling influence on his conduct. The con
fidence of a boy in a bad man governed by false notions of
morality and religion, makes the man a debasing force in
the heart aud character of the boy.
This characteristic of confidence is the predicate of
Christian faith, and distinguishes it preeminently. Lay-

666 "Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
ing hold of Jesus Christ, faith makes Christ one with the
believer; not that Christ and the believer become the same
person; but Christ becomes the central principle in the
heart of the believer, in his spiritual aud ethical life.
Through faith Christ obtains an 'abode' in the believer;1
or as Dr. Stearns says : ' ' Faith opens the closed temple of
the human heart to its rightful owner. "2 Then He asserts
Himself in the believer's personal activities, transforming
feelings, thoughts, volitions and conduct into His like
ness. Faith may be described to be the bond of living
fellowship between those who have been baptized into
Christ and Jesus Christ Himself.
4. Faith as the bond of fellowship is complemental to
the work of the Holy Spirit.
Primarily and fundamentally the union is of the Spirit.
The Spirit in the baptismal transaction translates the sub
ject from the natural economy into the spiritual economy,
from the kingdom of the first man into the kingdom of
the Second Man. This transition is of the nature of birth.
It is not effected by natural will or by natural reflection.
The subject is passive and receptive.- He does not by an
act of his own make himself a member of another race,
but he is made a member by the inscrutable agency of the
Holy Spirit.
By the work of the Spirit there is thus established an
objective connection, a fellowship between Christ glori
fied and the members of His kingdom. In this fellowship
Christ, apprehending the susceptible personality of men
by nature sinful and helpless, communicates to them of
the fulness of His divine-human life in the degree that
'John xiv. 23.
2 Present Day Theology, p. 41°-

l33i-] Faith. 667
they through the obedience of faith become capable of
receiving His gifts.
The obedience of faith completes the scriptural idea of
union to Christ. Acted upon by the Spirit, translated
into the kingdom of God, the subject of divine love will,
if a living member, himself also be active. When a
branch is set in the vine there is vital interaction between
the vine and the branch; if the branch do not reciprocate
the vitality of the vine, it can bear no fruit. A member of
the Second Man must be active according to the law of the
new life of the spiritual economy into which he has been
translated. The free gift of God bestowed on the sinner
received into the kingdom becomes his possession only by
his voluntary act. Faith establishes the connection, the
fellowship of believers with Christ. In this fellowship
they apprehend Him by whom they have been appre
hended.1 They lay hold of and make their own that life
and salvation which in consequence of deliverance ' out of
the power of darkness ' and translation ' into the kingdom
of the Son ' 2 have become their inheritance. Otherwise
they do not experience the infinite blessing sealed to them.
It is by the voluntary appropriation of the blessing that
the members of Christ fulfil the Christian salvation in
their personal history, that is, in their spontaneous im
pulses, in their conscious purposes, and by their Christ
like conduct in all social relations. The organic union
effected by the Spirit becomes an ethical union effected by
faith. The same truth may be thus expressed: the communion
of Christ with His members becomes a communion of His
members with Christ. He first loves us and freely bestows
1 Phil. iii. 12. 2 Col. i. 13.

668 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
the blessings of His love, we in turn receiving His bless
ings by our voluntary act reciprocate His love. Then the
fellowship is genuine; His salvation is made real by us
and in us. The fellowship of the Spirit is complemented
by the fellowship of faith.
5. The fellowship of faith presupposes and stands in the
fellowship of the Spirit The Spirit conditions the possi
bility of Christian faith, but only its possibility. The
fellowship of the Spirit does not of necessity originate
faith. Because God in Christ loves the world with an
unfathomable lpve, and by His Spirit adopts transgressors
into His kingdom, it does not follow that they will
acknowledge the great inheritance sealed to them and in
turn love Him. The fellowship of Christ with men in
His kingdom depends on His grace, not 011 human will;
but the fellowship of faith, whilst conditioned on the work
of the Spirit, and so far forth dependent on the Spirit, is
also conditioned 011 human will. The subject may accept
or may not accept the blessing to which • by grace he is
entitled. The salvation is sealed to him, and he may
appropriate it or reject it. AH that can be said in explana
tion of these momentous possibilities is that personality is
relatively autonomous. Man is a self-determining agent.
Divine- blessing can avail for his spiritual good only in so
far as he opens the door of his heart and chooses to make
the blessing a part of himself.
It becomes evident that the fellowship of the Spirit may
obtain by itself. It may not be followed by repentance,
by sanctification and glorification. A person may by the
Spirit be translated in Baptism into the kingdom, yet for
lack of ' the obedience of faith ' may fail both on earth and
hereafter to experience salvation from sin. Like Esau he
he may sell ' his own birthright ' for a ' mess of meat '

2 33i.] Faith. 669
But the fellowship of Christian faith cannot obtain by
itself; it always presupposes the fellowship of the Spirit.
The normal personal relation of the believer to Christ
may be developed into fruitage only in virtue of the true
objective relationship.
6. The true mystical communion between Christ and
believers includes both forms of fellowship: the fellowship
effected by the energy of the Holy Spirit, whether the
subject be conscious of his translation into the kingdom
or not, and the complemental fellowship effected by faith,
which cannot be developed without the conscious or spon
taneous exercise of human will.
The necessary work of the Spirit and the necessary
work of faith are both taught with emphasis in Scripture.
Sometimes the work of the Spirit is enforced by itself, as
in John iii. 5 : " Except a man be born of water and the
Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God;" and in
1 Cor. xii. 3: "No man can say, Jesus is the Lord, but in
the Holy Spirit"
Sometimes the work of faith is enforced by itself, as in
John vi. 40: "This is the will of my Father, that every
one that beholdeth the Son, and believeth on Him, should
have eternal life;" and by Paul in Acts xvi. 31: "Believe
on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved ;' ' and in Romans
x. 10: "If thou shalt confess with thy mouth Jesus as
Lord, and shalt believe in thy heart that God raised Him
from the dead, thou shalt be saved."
In very many places the work of the Spirit and the work
of faith are enforced in conjunction, as in John i. 12: "As
many as received Him, to them gave He the right to
become children of God, even to them which believe in
His name; which were begotten, not of blood, nor of the

670 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [books.
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."
The same conjunction appears in the first evangelical ser
mon preached by an apostle. In answer to the question
put by men ' pricked ' in their ' heart, ' ' ' Brethren, what
shall we do?" Peter gave the reply: "Repent ye, and be
baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ,
unto the remission of your sins." Two things were neces
sary: the one was, under the influence of the Gospel to
turn from Judaism to Jesus Christ; theother was to accept
Baptism administered by the apostles in the name of Jesus
Christ, that they might have the remission of their sins.
From the many passages of like twofold import I select
but two more, both from the Epistles of Paul. He says:
"We through the Spirit by faith wait for the hope of
righteousness."1 It is 'through the Spirit' that we wait
for the fulfilment of hope. The Spirit conditions the
waiting; yet it is by ' faith ' that we wait. Each is essen
tial. In the other place he says: "By grace have ye been
saved through faith. " 2 The grace of God in Christ by the
Spirit is the ground and possibility of salvation, but this
salvation becomes efficient ' through faith.' If there were
no 'grace' there could be no salvation; if there be no
' faith ' the salvation of the kingdom does not in reality
deliver the sinner from his sins.
The results of the argument I sum up in the following
statement: —
Whilst the Spirit on the one hand conditions the fellow
ship of faith, on the other hand faith conditions the actual
ization of the fellowship of the Spirit. Faith is for all
persons an indispensable necessity. If there be no faith,
the work of the Spirit does not issue in fruition. Only
1 Gal. v. 15. 2 Eph. ii. 8.

§332.] Faith. 671
when the work of the Spirit is complemented by the
work of faith does the mystical union between believers
and Christ exist according to its idea. Then the com
munion issues in personal and eternal salvation.
§ 332-
From this doctrine respecting the office of Christian
faith several inferences are deducible. Faith is an
active faculty, not passive submission. Faith is related
to 'the new man' as the natural senses are related to
the body. Faith is the principle of good works, and
grows with the growth of the Christian life.
1. Faith is not passive submission to the authority of
the Church; nor is faith merely an intellectual assent to a
prepositional truth authoritatively pronounced ; nor yet
is faith either a passive or a blind surrender to the spoken
word of Christ, or even to His 'Person. A surrender to
Christ, if we suppose the surrender to have been brought
about, not by the direct contact of Christ through the
Spirit with the subject, but by the external authority
either of His Person or of His word, would enslave the be
liever. He would be held subject to a person toward
whom there is no heartfelt response. The response would
be external and formal, not prompted by the soul. True
faith always works by love, whether in relation to God or
to man. Faith is the immediate perception of truth, a
perception which at the same time becomes an energy
active from within. It is a power predicable of personal
ity; when in exercise it not only is the action of personality
directed toward the object which authorizes and warrants
faith, but also it possesses its object. Being central,
rooted in the Ego, faith imparts contents and tone to

672 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
reason and intelligence, and gives direction and character
to the choices of the will. It is the witness in conscious
ness of the object confronting perception, and a self-acting
force shaping ethical life conformably to the nature of its
object. 1
Natural faith in God is the act of the ethical being of
'the natural man.' Christian faith is the act of the
ethical being of 'the spiritual man.' Christian faith in
Christ differs from natural faith in Christ as the spiritual
man differs from the natural man.
2. Faith is the eye of the soul correlative to spiritual
truth. The light of truth authenticates itself to spiritual
vision. Faith is not a blind act, any more than the
normal use of the bodily eye is a blind act, Faith sees its
object; the spiritual object in the element of light ad
dresses the eye of the soul. It is the object that warrants
and justifies faith. No reason for believing in its reality
can be logically given other than the object itself. My
mother begets my confidence in my mother; she herself
justifies my judgment of her moral worth.
The same correlation exists between the bodily ear and
the ordinary spoken word. The spoken word manifests
its import to personality through the ear. In heeding the
1 What the author of Hebrews says of divine faith is predicable of all
genuine belief: "Faith is the assurance of (the giving substance to)
things hoped for, the proving (test) of things not seen." Whether con
fronting personality in the forms of promise and type as Messiah ad
dressed the Jew, or in the forms of space as the external world
addresses>the sense, or in the forms of speech as moral and intellectual
truths address the mind of a child, the object authenticates itself to the
perceptive and receptive capacity of faith, and becomes a subjective
principle, uplifting personality in the degree that the object itself is
noble.

§332.] Faith. 673
spoken word and being responsive to its import personality
is active in the element of certainty, not of doubt.
Faith is the ear of the soul for the word of Christ,
.spoken or written. His word communicates its import,
its authority and power, to personality through the hear
ing faculty of the soul. Hearing comes by the word of
God.1 When responsive to God's word, faith becomes the
organ of the certaiii knowledge of truth; faith moreover
is the only organ that the fundamental truth of Christian
ity in the first instance addresses. If the normal action
of this organ of personality be in suspense or be sup
planted, there is no other faculty of personal life by which
Christian truth may be known or discerned.
Faith may be compared to the mouth, the organ with
which we take food and drink by which bodily life is
nourished and refreshed. Flavor addresses the taste.
Taste presumes flavor. Eating is a chemical process
through which food becomes the aliment of the body.
Christ affirms Himself to be the bread of life, the bread
which both quickens and nourishes the spiritual life of the
whole man unto the resurrection from the dead. Faith is
the organ of spiritual manducation. It is the appropriat
ing faculty by which Christ becomes the life-giving power
in human personality, a power that neutralizes the law of
death. The analogy might be extended, but these aspects of
resemblance may suffice. Natural light cannot be a guide
to our feet unless the eye can see it. The spoken word
does not impart intelligence unless heard by the ear.
Natural food does not nourish natural life unless the food
be eaten and assimilated. If the normal action of the
'Rom. x. 17.
43

674 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
bodily powers be in suspense the external world is not
correlated to us and cannot be the condition of life.
So if the spiritual powers of personality be in suspense
the light which Jesus Christ is cannot be seen, the truth,
which His word teaches cannot be known, the bread of
life which He offers cannot be assimilated. Christ is un
seen and unknown, not because He fails to assert Himself,
not because the light of truth is not effulgent, but because
perception and apprehension fail to perform their normal
functions. When like the bodily eye faith sees the ' light
of the world,' when like the bodily ear faith opens the
soul to the word of truth, then the truth illumines aud
possesses personality.
3. Being the act of personal life, faith develops itself in
a succession of stages, and exists in various degrees of
strength. Like the tiny blade it may at first be only an
imperfect prophecy of the 'full corn in the ear.'1 Chris
tian faith may be no more than a faint sense of the
presence and communion of Christ. Then it may pass
into the self-motion of the human spirit, taking a direction
toward Jesus Christ. The words of Paul describing the
bent of the heathen mind under the influence of God's
revelation in'nature may apply to the bent of the Christian
soul under the action of God's revelation in Jesus Christ:
' that they should seek God, if haply they might feel
after Him and find Him.'2 In its first stages Christian
faith may be no more thau a ' feeling after ' Christ, and
1 Our Lord recognizes the legitimacy of this comparison when He says:
Verily I say unto you, if ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye
shall say unto this mountain, remove hence to yonder place ; and it shall
remove. Matt. xvii. 20.
" Acts xvii. 27.

2332.] Faith. 675
may be> compared to the first dim perception of its mother
by an infant.
In its more advanced stages, faith not only perceives
but also discerns Jesus Christ, discriminating with some de
gree of clearness between His personality and all other
persons, between His saving virtue and all other resources.
If growth be normal, discernment and spontaneity will
pass into voluntary action. Laying hold consciously of
His Person and mediatorship, faith will attain to a convic
tion of His transcendent excellence and appropriate His
manifold fulness. Having advanced to the plane of clear
recognition and positive appropriation of Christ, the be
liever will steadily grow in the clearness of his convictions
and in the strength of assurance of the Truth, in propor
tion to his persistent obedience to the law of Christian love.
4. Being the central act of personality, faith has differ
ent properties.
Faith is historical. It credits the personal history of
Jesus Christ, and all the cardinal mysteries of His media
torship, on earth and in heaven, as set forth in the
Gospels, the Acts and the Epistles. Such historical
belief is not by itself genuine Christian faith, but Christian
faith necessarily includes the acceptance of the historical
facts of Christianity.
Faith includes intellectual assent to fundamental truths.
Being a living principle it informs thought and intellect-
ualizes the articles of the Christian Creed, constraining
assent to doctrinal truth and dissent from doctrinal error.
But intellectual assent to sound doctrine, whilst in the
development of the believer's life it is the consequence of
faith, is not of necessity a part of its nature. Assent to
sound doctrine there may be in the absence of saving faith.

676 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
Belief in historical facts and assent to correct statements
of truth have moral and spiritual worth only in so far as
this belief and assent grow forth from the personal appro
priation of the mediatorship of Christ in the communion
of the Spirit with His glorified person. A denial of the
historical facts or dissent from the fundamental doctrines
of the Christian Church is not reconcilable with normal
Christian faith.
5. Being the central energy of personality and directly
related from within to the will no less than to conscious
ness, faith is the principle of good works. Obedience to
the commandments of Christ is its immediate product.
Respecting the relation of faith to works, soteriology
has to affirm at least two things: no works of righteous
ness are good in the evangelical sense unless they proceed
from the fellowship of faith with Christ; and no belief
is genuine Christian faith unless it be an active principle
of personality manifesting itself in persevering obedience
to the law of Christian love.

§333-] The Law. 677
CHAPTER IV.
THE LAW.
§ 333-
Christian faith is an active principle, working through
love ; and love to God asserts its practical force by
keeping His commandments.
• The authority of God constituting on the one side
the ethical and judicial relation of man to Himself, and
on the other the relation of man to his fellow-men' is
expressed by the formula : Thou shalt love.
1. The law fundamental to all commandments is: Thou
shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart The
second commandment is subordinate, but in kind like the
first: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
, The formula: Thou shalt love, expresses the essence of
the obligation common to both commandments.
The response toward God required of the Adamic race
by divine authority is love. Love is the free consecra
tion of the whole man in will and thought and feeling
to God, the highest Good, a consecration which energizes
and ennobles the manhood of man. From this love is"
developed righteous obedience to the divine will in all the
relations of social life.
That the race might be qualified in reality to make to
God the response of genuine love, and in all relations to
honor the divine will, man by the creative word was con
stituted a personal being; and as personal every individual
is addressed by the fundamental formula of obligation:
Thou.

678 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
2. Inasmuch as God is love, who by His creative word
formed man in the image of love, designing him exclu
sively for the twofold communion of love, with God and
with his neighbor, the command enjoined by divine
authority is categorical: Thou shalt Says Godet: "God
has no higher life than that of love."
Neither age nor sex, neither learning nor culture,
neither riches nor poverty, neither high rank nor obscu
rity, neither health nor sickness may take the place or
have the force of a condition of obligation. As all men
aud women and children, whatever may be their environ
ments, are personal, either in fact or iu possibility, the
command: Thou shalt love, binds all persons uncondition
ally, binds them to the degree and under the form that
personal life exists or has been developed.
Genuine love to nian presupposes genuine love to God,
rooted in the faith that honors and confides in God; and
the only faith that confides in God agreeably to God's
will is the faith that recognizes and obeys God as He has
revealed Himself by His incarnate Son. "This is the
work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath
sent. ' '
Inasmuch as faith in Christ is an active principle, it
works according to the fundamental law of all righteous
ness, which is expressed by the formula: Thou shalt love.

g 334-] The Law. 679
§334-
The blessing of God freely bestowed on man pre
cedes the expression and enforcement of divine au
thority. The obligation binding the conscience to
obey the divine law presupposes the gifts bestowed by
divine love. In other words, the communications of
love to man condition the demands of love made upon
man. 1. At the beginning of the sacred record of human his
tory we are taught the truth that God made man in His
own image. However low the plane may have been on
which the first man began to live, he was constituted in
principle a godlike personality. He was man, the unity
of reason and will, not an animal. Endowed with godlike
personality, he was superior to all sub-human kingdoms,
and therefore was commanded to exercise dominion over
the fish of the sea, the fowl of the air and the beast
of the field. Being personal, he could develop a personal
history. Therefore we have a series of ethical and judicial ,
events set before us by the pictorial representations of
Genesis. Man had authority to eat of the fruit of the trees
of the garden; he had no authority to eat of the tree of
the. knowledge of good and evil.
The physical and moral ability to honor God by obedi
ence was the endowment of divine love. This endowment,
not subjection to authority, was the first fact of human
history. When the endowment had been given it became
a demand for objective authority. Then was given the
law for the government of man's will. He had the ability
to obey or to transgress, either to eat or not to eat the for
bidden fruit. After, he had been constituted a personal

680 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [books.
being the demand for law awoke. Following the endow
ment came the mandate and the prohibition; both came
to regulate the development and culture of his mental
and moral faculties.
2. The Decalogue observes the same principle. First
in the history of the elect people was the call of God to
Abraham to depart from Ur of the Chaldees, and ' go out
unto a place which he was to receive for an inheritance.'
Connected with this call was the promise of a son by his
wife Sarah, and of an innumerable posterity. Jehovah
enters into covenant with Abraham, confirming it by an
oath;1 and Abraham accepts the covenant, believing the
word of Jehovah.
Then came long periods of discipline, first of Abraham,
afterwards of his posterity, and a succession of blessings,
prominent among which was the deliverance of the chosen
people from the bondage of Egypt. Now, after these
wonderful dealings with the nation whom Jehovah had
chosen for Himself, follows the formal expression of Jeho
vah's authority given in the Ten Commandments. The
election and the gifts of God's love precede the obligations
imposed by God's love. This relation of divine blessings
to the enforcement of divine authority is announced in the
preface: "I am the Lord thy God, which brought thee
out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage."
Jehovah was the God of this peculiar people. He had
loved them, multiplied their numbers, directed their his
tory, delivered them from bondage, defended them against
enemies, and subjected them to moral and religious dis
cipline, as an earthly father loves his children, trains them
and supplies their needs.
1 Gen. xv. 5-16; Heb. vi. 13, 14.

§334-3 The Law. 68 1
For the Lord's portion is His people;
Jacob is the lot of His inheritance.
He found him in a desert land,
And in the waste howling wilderness;
He compassed him about, He cared for him,
He kept him as the apple of His eye:
As an eagle that stirreth up her nest,
That fluttereth over her young,
He spread abroad His wings, He took them,
He bare them on His pinions:
The Lord alone did lead him,
And there was no strange god with Him.'
Therefore His chosen people, the object of His electing
love, were in turn bound to love Jehovah, to honor His
name, to obey His commandments. Therefore the people
needed the expression of Jehovah's will. They needed a
moral law, not only as uttered by the darkened conscience,
but a law definitely pronounced in words, a law addressing
them authoritatively from without as well as from within.
The giving of the Ten Commandments accordingly
presupposes the special blessings of Jehovah experienced
in the previous history of the chosen nation, extending
through centuries of discipline.
3. Obedience to the Ten Commandments was not the
condition of Jehovah's love, nor of Jehovah's recognition
of the nation as His chosen people; but the election and
blessing of Jehovah were the conditions of the obligation
binding this people, in contradistinction from all other
nations, to obey the moral and ceremonial law.2 If the
posterity of Abraham had not beeu the chosen people, if
Jehovah had not with a mighty hand brought them out
of the house of bondage, delivering them from subjection
' Deut. xxxii. 9-12. 2 Isa. xl. 8-11 ; xliii. 1-7.

682 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8,
to Pharaoh, they would not have received the Ten Com
mandments. To a degree they were fitted to obey the
righteous will of Jehovah, aud therefore they were hon
ored with the formal expression of His righteous will.
Otherwise this branch of the Semitic race would have
occupied the plane on which all Gentiles stood, would
have continued to be counted among those who ' having
no law, are a law unto themselves. ' i
4. The law, whether moral or ceremonial, fulfils a two
fold purpose. 1. Law has negative force. Moral law,
by the enforcement of authority, enjoining righteous love
and forbidding transgression, is a restraint upon irreligion
and upon the wickedness springing from human passion,
thus provoking the development of the strength of natu
ral depravity, and begetting the knowledge of sin. Says
Paul: " Sin, finding occasion, wrought in me through the
commandment all manner of coveting: for apart from the
law sin is dead."2 Ceremonial law built a wall of parti
tion and separation between the elect people and the
Gentile world, being designed both for protection against
the errors and sins of paganism and for religious culture.
2. The law has positive force. Moral law answers the
question: What is the right? or, what is the wrong? It
becomes, as it is designed to be, a guide for and a support
,to religious life and social conduct. Presuming confidence
iu God and a disposition to honor His authority, moral
law is regulative of that obedience which fulfils the design
of Jehovah's electing love. Ceremonial law is the pre-
figuration and prophecy of the coming Messiah, cultivat
ing confidence and hope in God.
Both purposes of the law were necessary, necessary that
1 Rom. ii. 12-15. 2 Rom. vii. 8.

\ 335- ]

The Law. 68'

the elect people might awake' to see the light of the
Messianic promise, and cultivate a righteousness of life
answerable in some degree to the demands of divine love
and the demands of man's god-likeness.
§335-
The relation of God's blessing to man's obligation
addressing us from the first chapters of Genesis, is
prophetic of the covenant-relation of Jehovah with
Abraham. And the election of Abraham's posterity to be the
chosen people of Jehovah, in their relations to the
mandates of the Decalogue, is prophetic of the rela
tion in Christianity between grace and law, between
blessing and obligation.
i. The love of God revealed in choosing Abraham and
his seed to be His peculiar people, is prophetic of the
larger love of God revealed by the election of His only
begotten Son to be the life and salvation of the world.
By the mediatorship of Jesus Christ the true relation of
the blessing of God to the obligation of man, of God's
love to man's obedience, is manifested and established
under its final form. The only begotten Son is the Gift
of all gifts. His advent conditions the possibility of the
profoundest response from human personality, such as
neither God's goodness in nature or providence, nor God's
electing love toward the people of Israel, was designed or
was able to call forth.
The revelation in the Mediator of the unfathomable
love of God originates the new obligation of man to love
God with all the heart. This obligation becomes at the
same time the possibility of positive response.
First in order is the coming of God iu the tenderness

684 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
and sympathy of mercy to a world in moral ruin. The
Son of Man lives a perfectly righteous man; He fulfils the
will of His Father's love; He resolves death into eternal
life; He overcomes the realm of darkness, bringing vic
tory and immortality to light. Therefore' the obligation
follows, binding to obedience the conscience and will of
every man to whom the Gospel says: Believe on the Lord
Jesus Christ. Therefore the invitation" of grace for all
nations becomes possible and necessary: Come unto me, all
ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will, give you rest.1
This sublime blessing is the surety of all other needful
blessings: He that spared not His own Son, but delivered
Him up for us all, how shall He not also with Him freely
give us all things?2 The sinful and unworthy are the
objects of sympathy; the guilty, the objects of grace.
The Gift of all gifts freely bestowed begets the moral
necessity of accepting the Gift. From this relation of
mercy and grace into which by His incarnate Son God
has come to stand with fallen mankind, arises an obliga
tion of faith and service which is imperative and uncondi
tional. The objects of unfathomable love are bound to
love God, 'who is most worthy of love,' as God iu Christ
has loved them, 'who are most unworthy.'
2. Of the law, love to God and love to man, Jesus
Christ is the impersonation. What the nature of divine
love is we learn by the study of His self-sacrifice. What
the true human love of God is and requires we learn by
contemplating His perfect obedience. In Him two oppo
site things are to be seen : the most perfect revelation of
the nature and requirements of law, and the most perfect
fulfilment of that obedience which the law uncondition-
'Matt. xi. 28. 2 Rom. viii. 32.

1 335-] The Law. CS5
ally commands. Hence the Lord Jesus Christ is the
concrete law, not the law written in words, but the reali
zation of the divine will in deeds.
Of the Edenic prohibition the ethical import is seen in
His fixed aversion to all forms of wrong-doing. Of the
Ten Commandments, considered positively as well as
negatively, the profound spiritual requirements were
brought to light by His personality and were fulfilled by
His righteous life. What the Decalogue enjoins on God's
people and what it forbids, address us most clearly and
forcibly from the realization of the Decalogue consum
mated in His unique history.
3. Being the absolute revelation of the authority of
law, and at the same time the absolute fulfilment 'of law,
Christ becomes for us the embodiment of the relation
which divine blessing sustains to human obedience, the
relation which grace bears to law. From love to our
fallen race the Son of God assumes human nature into
union with Himself; and human nature by virtue of this
assumption in the person of the Son is bound by divine
law to and is qualified, for absolute obedience. This
unique truth sets before us the reciprocal connection
between the Gospel and the law.
He gave Himself to us and for us; therefore we are
bound to give ourselves to Him. Says De Presseus£:
"The recompense of love is to love perfectly."1 We
love because He first loved us. He, enthroned in heaven,
is ever active on our behalf, is ever imparting of the
fulness of His life to us, therefore we are qualified and
obligated to live a life after the pattern of His self-sacrifice
for men and of His devotion to God.
' Study of Origins, by De Pressens6, p. 413.

686 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [Book 8.
The genius of the Gospel precedes law and conditions
obligation; obedience to the authority of law fulfils the
necessities of the Gospel. The principle pervading the
whole history of Messianic revelation, that the gifts of love
originate obligation, attains to its noblest embodiment aud
most complete expression iu the divine-human history of
the ideal Man.
This obligation binds the conscience of all men by the
authority of a law which is fundamental to all divine and
human laws. What Hooker says of God is valid in its
application to the God-man: " That perfection which God
is, giveth perfection to that He doth."1 In Christ the
blessing of God to fallen mankind and the obligation of
respons'ive obedience have become qne reality. Christ,
the concrete Gospel, has the authority of inviolable law;
Christ, the concrete law, exemplifies the ethical ends of
the Gospel. § 336-
Jesus Christ, the perfect impersonation of the authority
of law and of obedience to law, fulfils the negative and the
positive purposes both of the Decalogue and of the cere
monial economy. And when we accept Jesus Christ and
take refuge in Him, when we follow Him bearing His
cross aud obey the new commandment to love one an
other as He has loved us, we fulfil the purpose of all
divine laws.
Of human judgment respecting the right and the wrong
He is the criterion. His personal life is the right in the
concrete. The voluntary thoughts, words and deeds that
either contravene or fail to conform to this standard are
1 Hooker's Works, Vol. I., Bk. I, ch. 2, 2.

5336.] The Law. 687
the wrong. His personality becomes the guide of the
Christian Church aud of the world for judgment 011 all
moral questions.
Since His personal history is the realization of law, the
authority of His ideal life conditions the true knowledge
of sin, aud the knowledge of sin conditions the genuine
sense of guilt.
When Jesus Christ, the embodiment of the new com
mandment, reveals Himself by His Spirit, sin revives
and men die. The commandment, which is unto life,
the natural man finds to be unto death: for sin, finding
occasion, through the commandment beguiles him, and
through it slays him. The law is holy, and righteous,
and good. But sin, that it may be shown to be sin, works
death to the natural man through that which is good; that
through the commandment sin may become exceeding
sinful.1 From such positive knowledge of Christ, the absolute
authority of Truth, is begotten the peTdvoia set forth aud
enjoined by the New Testament.
If the correctness of these premises be conceded, it will
follow that the law-work, as it has been termed, which
enters into the experience of the returning 'prodigal,' is
most effectually accomplished, not by enforcing the man
datory authority of the Decalogue, much less by picturing
its minatory terrors, but by proclaiming the Truth of all
truths; for than this there is no authority higher and more
commanding, none that can authenticate itself with such
direct, penetrating force to the conscience, being ' sharper
than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the divid
ing of soul and spirit' 1 Romans vii. 9-13.

688 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [books.
Our Lord honors the Ten Commandments and the cere
monial law, but He does not recognize either as final
authority. Instead, He rectifies and enlarges the tradi
tional interpretations of the Jews. Moreover, it deserves
to be noted that Christ does not lay stress on the enforce
ment of the obligations of the moral law in order to move
the Jews to acknowledge Him to be the Messiah. Instead,
He proclaims Himself to be the fulfiller of the law, the
One who is 'greater than the temple,' who is 'Lord of the
Sabbath,' and the supreme Judge.
The means by which all men are to be moved to take
refuge in the Son of Man is none other than the Son of
Man. "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto myself." To Christian perdvom. He, not
the Decalogue, is the motive of all motives.

CHAPTER V.
REPENTANCE. § 337-

Of the Greek perdvom, the root of which is vovg, the Latin
derivative 'repentance,' adopted by the English New Tes
tament, is a defective 'translation. MeTdvoia means another
mind, another counsel or purpose. Novg is applied to God-,
as in Romans xi. 34: rig yap lyva vovv Kvpiov, quoted from Isaiah
xl. 13, where the Hebrew is ruah, quoted also in 1 Cor. ii.
16: "who hath known the mind of the Lord?"
The Latin derivative 'repentance,' adopted from the
Vulgate by Tyndall, whom all English translators have

\ 337.] Repentance. 689
followed, has etymologically a different meaning, the root
of the word being poena, punishment To 'repent' is to
suffer pain, or to punish the soul with sorrow on account
of some evil done or some good left undone. Sorrow, an
element of perdvoia, is substituted for the deeper meaning of
the original Greek. Repentance and penance are essen
tially the same. The one is the infliction of pain on the
soul; the other is the infliction of pain on soul and body.
No5c designates the cognitive or mental principle of person
ality, and is to be distinguished both from t°xfi, life, soul,
and from nvevpa, spirit,, will, or the ethical principle,
though each has meaning akin to that of the others.
Merdvoia denotes the positive direction of a person taken by
a free act of will toward God in Jesus Christ. Perhaps
the best Anglo-Saxon term for expressing the import of
the Greek would be turn, the word used in Isaiah xxxi. 6:
" Turn ye unto Him from whom ye have deeply revolted,
O children of Israel;" also in Hosea xii. 6: "Therefore
turn thou to thy God: keep mercy and judgment, and
wait on thy God continually;" and in many other places.
This is the meaning of the word • peTavo^aare ' as used by
Peter in the first gospel sermon: he enjoined on the Jews
to turn to Christ from the religion of the ceremonial law,
and confess Christ by accepting Holy Baptism in His

1 On vovg Cremer says: " The word belongs to the same root as yiyvaam,
Latin nosco, and signifies i. the organ of mental perception and appre
hension, the organ of conscious life; 2. thinking, or moral thinking and
knowing, understanding, sense. * * Specially it means consideration,
purpose, intention, decision, according to the connection in' which it is
used." — Lex'con °f New Testament Greek, p. 435.
44

690 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.

§ 338.
The obedience of faith implies the conscious volun
tary turning to Jesus Christ as Lord and Saviour ; and
this conscious turning to Christ involves the turning
from the false life of sin.
Such conscious turning is to be predicated, not of
the Holy Spirit, though enabled by His agency, but of
the regenerate man. By the grace of the Spirit true
repentance becomes possible; and the Spirit immanent
in regenerate life moulds personal activity conformably
to the law of freedom. Empowered by the Spirit, the
new personality turns freely toward Christ.
1. Repentance and conversion are convertible terms;
both designate the same kind of Christian experience.
As equivalents they are used by Calvin, by Ursinus, and
generally by the Reformed theologians of the 16th cen
tury. Such theological usage is based on the terminology
of the New Testament,' the word ' convert ' being the
translation of imorpfyetv.1
But the two terms, repentance and conversion, are dis
tinguishable. Though employed to designate the same
kind of Christian experience, they do not always express
precisely the same phase of meaning.
2. When the distinction is recognized, ' repentance ' be
trays the for,ce of its etymology from poena, expressing
the sorrow caused by the guilt of sin; whilst ' conversion '
' Different forms of the verb, imo-Tpfyew, Latin convertere, occur eleven
times in the New Testament ; in James v. 19 and 20, imoTpk'ipri, translated
' convert' in R. V.; in Acts xv. 3, imoTpo^v; 'conversion ;' also in Matt.
xiii. 15, Mark iv. 12, Acts iii. 19 and xxviii. 26 and 27, Luke xxii. 32,
'be converted,' 'turn again;' in Matt, xviii. 3 and John xii. 40, 'be
converted,' 'turn.'

2 339-] Repentance. 691
expresses more of confidence in God as reconciled through
Christ. We speak of men as converted to God, and re
penting of sin ; but this difference is only relative. For
repentance from sin, if the word is used to express in any
measure the meaning of peTdvom, implies a turning toward
God; and conversion to God is conversion from the errors
and sins of our fallen life. All conscious ethical turning
in the power of the Holy Spirit is a turning to God from
all sin by faith in Jesus Christ.
The difference admissible is that the term ' repentance '
asserts the negative aspect of the moral change more
forcibly than the positive aspect; whilst 'conversion'
asserts the positive turning toward Jesus Christ more
forcibly than the turning against sin. Hence repentance
expresses more of the element of sorrow and depression,
whilst conversion expresses more of the element of confi
dence and hope. § 339-
Evangelical repentance, if taken in the sense ot
fierdvoia, is involved immediately in the exercise of Chris
tian faith; and like faith it is predicable of those who
have been translated from the kingdom of nature into
the kingdom of grace.
1. Being the conscious turning of the entire man, re
pentance is a moral change.1 Under the action of will a
person gives himself a direction in confidence toward
Jesus Christ. Will and moral conduct are subjected to the
law of the Spirit of life.2
1 " From the standpoint of regeneration, the change of heart is an act
of God ; from the standpoint of repentance, an act of the human will." —
J. Kostlin, Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia, Vol. III., p. 2031.
2 Rom. viii. 2.

692 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
The self-determined turning of personality toward Christ
supposes the corresponding positive basis of the regener
ate man, and the active power of Christian faith. Faith
in Christ reveals its internal uplifting moral force in the
form of such change of mind and purpose.
A conscious turning to God in Christ, repentance is
at the same time a turning from a life of sin. This
moral change is primarily positive, yet negative as truly
as positive, involving two forms of one act ; but the
negative action of repentance stands in its positive action.
Aversion to sin derives its spiritual value from the sincere
turning to Christ. A transgressor cannot first turn from
his sins in order that having set himself against sin he
may then yield himself to Christ. A religious experience
arising from such an endeavor after conversion is unscrip
tural and delusive.
By the word and Spirit men are invited and moved to
turn to Christ, that by an unreserved surrender to Him
they may be saved. "Come unto me, all ye that labor
and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my
yoke upon you, and learn of me."1 This is the import pf
the call to conversion that sounds through the Gospels.
Jesus condemns the Jews because they have no will to turn
to Him. "Ye will not come to me, that ye may have
life."2 Only those who obeyed the call to take up the
cross and follow Him became the partakers of His salva
tion. So ever since. Only they who take refuge in Him
do in reality turn from sin. Any change of sentiment, all
turning in whatever direction, is false and sinful, unless
the soul takes direction toward Him, the only source of
life, the only way of righteousness. He that is not with
1 Matt. xi. 28, 29. > John v. 40.

§ 339O Repentance. 693
Him is against Him; and he that is against Him is against
the truth.
Not only by turning toward Christ in faith does a man
in reality turn from sin ; but by turning to Christ he also
gets a clear conviction of the sinfulness of sin; and when
he gets an insight into sin as wrong done toward God, he
may experience a ' godly sorrow ' for the wrongs he has
committed.1 That sorrow of heart alone is truly Christian
which arises from the genuine exercise of faith iu Jesus
Christ. Godly sorrow is to be distinguished from remorse and
from .the sorrow of the world. Remorse is the torment of
pure. self-condemnation. Conscience thrusts its fangs into
the vitals of personality, accompanied by no contrition, no
self-humiliation before God. The sorrow of the world
is the distress of soul arising from a sense of the present
aud the impending consequences of transgression, and
may coexist with the love and wilful practice of sins.
2. These two forms of repentance the Heidelberg Cate
chism forcibly expresses by calling the one ' the dying of
the old man,' and the other 'the quickening of the new
man.'2 'The dying of the old man' is thus defined: "To
have sorrow of heart for sin; and to hate and turn from
sin always more and more." 'The resurrection of the
new man' is explained to be: "Heartfelt joy in God; and
to have the delight of love in living according to the will
of God in all good works."
In adopting the terminology3 of Paul, and in expound-
1 2 Cor. vii. 10.
2 Q. 88. The original is: Absterbung des alten, und Auferstehung des
neuen Menschen. Literally: The dying of the old and the resurrection
of the new man.
3 Rom. vi. 6 ; Eph. iv. 22-24 i Col. iii. 10.

694 Doctrine on , Personal Salvation. [books.
ing the positive form of repentance to be the resurrection
of ' the new man,' and the negative form to be the dying
of 'the old man,' this Catechism reveals profound insight
into the peculiar nature of Christian repentance. The
voluntary turning toward Christ is the awakening of the
person born into the kingdom to conscious action answer
ing to the claims of Christ upon him in this gracious
relation. He begins freely to live for Christ into whom
he has been engrafted. Living for Christ, he by the very
act is dying to his old sinful life. The ' old man ' must
die in the degree that the ' new man ' lives and grows,
the new and the old being as to their nature exclusive.
The dying of ' the old man ' by ' the quickening of the
new man ' is a process. As the regenerate life becomes
more vigorous, the Christian is crucified unto the world,
and the world is crucified unto him ;l and as he grows
up into Christ, year by year, joy in God becomes more
pure and real, and sorrow for sin becomes more profound.
3. Of Christian repentance sorrow for sin, or contrition
of heart, is a necessary phenomenon. The perception of
wrong done toward God, the absolute Good, the author
only of blessings, involves the sense of self-condemnation,
the commission of sin being seen to be the evil of all evils.
This perception of guilt and an insight into the heinous-
ness of the wrong done toward God beget penal pain and
godly sorrow.
But -godly sorrow is not itself repentance; it is rather
that frame of mind and heart which is involved in and
proceeds from genuine repentance; and any degree of sor
row is conditional rather than essential. Feeling is modi
fied by sex, age, temperament, culture and the whole
1 Gal. vi. 14.

2 339-] Repentance. 695
course of the previous moral life. Godly sorrow grows. iu
purity with progress iu the knowledge of sin; and progress
in the knowledge of sin depends on personal growth in
likeness to Jesus Christ.
Christian repentance is rooted, not in feeling, but in the
ethical life of the new man. The conscious action of the
will in turning toward Christ is attended by a correspond
ing change in the sphere of feeling. As we know what is
the right and the good we are qualified to know what is
the wrong and the bad; as we choose and do the right we
enjoy the blessing of the right; and as we experience the
blessing of knowing and doing the right we also experi
ence the contrition of heart that attends the knowledge of
sin. A genuine change of feeling is conditioned on the
genuine change of conscious volition. The degree of
pain and sorrow may fully indicate the action of the will
in taking the direction toward the truth of God and against
the falsehood of sin, toward the holiness of God and
against the wickedness of sin; but the feeling of godly
sorrow may also fall very far short of indicating the purity
and strength of self-consecration to Christ. The only
trustworthy criterion of Christian repentance is obedience
to the 'new commandment'
Penitential feeling is not merely godly sorrow. As the
Heidelberg Catechism teaches, repentance is ' heartfelt joy-
in God.' The emotional quality partakes of the nature
of both at the same time, of joy no less than of sorrow.
Pure distress of mind, whether it be grief or remorse or
disgust, is not a quality of Christian repentance. He only
who recognizes God as his Father in Christ and rejoices
in Christ by faith, is made ' sorry after a godly sort. '
Godly sorrow worketh repentance unto salvation, a repent-

6g6 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
ance which bringeth no regret; but the sorrow of the
world worketh death,1 §34°-
As Christian faith presupposes a corresponding posi
tive capacity of the natural man, which has been called
natural faith, so does Christian repentance presuppose
the possibility of a moral change, analogous to it, which
by the Gospel may be brought about in the character
of the natural man. This change of moral character
we may call natural repentance, or natural conversion.
I. Natural repentance is the moral change which a person
may experience who, not having become by the Spirit a
member of the new race, stands in the domain of the fallen
moral order of the world. Such change of attitude toward
Christ is wrought by the Holy Spirit through the preach
ing of the Gospel and through Christian teaching in
general. Lydia furnishes an example. When at Philippi
Paul on the Sabbath day Went forth without the gate by a
river side, and spake unto the women which- were come
together, the Lord opened her heart to give heed unto the
things which were spoken by Paul. Having by way of
response to his teaching turned in faith toward Christ, she
was baptized, and her household.2 A similar illustration
is afforded by the sermon of Paul at Athens. When the
Athenians heard of the resurrection of the dead, some
mocked; but certain men clave unto him aud believed,
among whom were Dionysius the Areopagite and a woman
named Damaris.3 Wrought upon by the power of the
Gospel, ' the natural man ' may become the subject of a
genuine change of will and character which is preliminary
2 Cor. vii. 9-11. 2 Acts xvi, 12-15. 8 Acts xvii, 32-34.

g34o.] Repentance. 697
to admission by Baptism into the full communion of the
Church. 2. Like Christian repentance, natural repentance is on
the one hand the positive turning of personality towards
Jesus Christ in the exercise of natural faith, and on the
other a sincere aversion to sin as wrong committed against
God. These two things are inseparable parts of the same
moral change. The positive turning involves some sense
of the great evil of sin. Though inseparable, the two
forms are not coordinate. Aversion to sin depends on the
perception of the true and the right which Jesus Christ
is. Otherwise distress on account of sin is not genuine.
The man who may imagine that he recognizes the evil of
sin and is setting himself against it, though he does not
from the heart turn to and accept Christ as Lord and
Saviour, mistakes one form of sinfulness for another; he
may abstain from many overt acts of transgression whilst
taking refiige in self-will and self-righteousness.
As ' natural faith ' in order to become a saving power
must become Christian faith, so ' natural repentance ' in
order to become Christian repentance must issue in an
actual self-surrender to Jesus Christ in Holy Baptism, as
illustrated by Saul of Tarsus, by Lydia, by the Philippiarf
jailer, the eunuch under Candace, and by the three thou
sand on the day of Pentecost.1 When it falls short of this
end it is delusive.
Since both natural repentance and Christian repent
ance involve a desire for salvation and sorrow for sin, the
phenomena of the former resemble the phenomena of the
latter; both forms of experience are effected by the agency
of the Holy Spirit through the preaching of the Gospel.
1 Acts ix. 18 ; viii. 38 ; xvi. 29-34 ; ii. 41.

698 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book s.
What is merely the experience of the natural religious life
when addressed by the Gospel may easily be mistaken for
the experience which is truly Christian.. A comparison
of subjective phenomena does not afford a trustworthy
criterion of judgment. The only test of genuine repent
ance is such a turning toward Christ, such an obedience
to His commandments, as proves itself to be sincere and
whole. 3. Soteriology has been exposed to two errors. The
one is to deny or ignore the possibility of genuine repent
ance being experienced by unbaptized persons. It denies
the saving character of that species of turning toward
Christ which the preaching of the Gospel produces among
men of the world.
The other error pronounces the moral change which the
' natural man ' standing outside .the communion of the
Church may experience, to be genuine Christian repent
ance and therefore to be adequate to the demands of the
Gospel. There is no recognition of the difference between
natural repentance and Christian repentance. Both may
indeed be genuine; but it is only Christian repentance
that fully answers to the requirements of the Gospel.
If we recognize the emphasis put by Christ and His
apostles on the spiritual virtue of Holy Baptism, and draw
the line of difference between the members of the first
Adam and the members of the last Adam, we may see that
underlying both errors there is an important truth. The
turning of the true Israelite in faith and hope toward the
promised Messiah was genuine, but it was different in
kind from that turning of the three thousand toward the
crucified Christ glorified, when on the day of Pentecost
they were baptized in His name unto the remission of

g 341.J Election* 699
their sins. So there is prevenient grace aud a prevenient
repentance which may be predicated of many members of
the Adamic race, -which conditions their spiritual fitness to
become members of the Church. By entering her com
munion and living in it a godly life the prevenient turning
toward Christ becomes genuine Christian turning.

CHAPTER VI.
ELECTION. §341-

A scriptural doctrine of election unto life has to be
consistent on the one hand with the sovereignty of
God, who is the life of love in light, and on the other
with the autonomy of man formed in God's image.
Election is to be studied in the light of Messianic
history; first under the guidance of pre-Christian, then
of Christian revelation.1
1. The sovereign election of God is to be studied first
as it comes to view iu pre-Christian history.
Abraham was chosen of God to become the progenitor
of a peculiar people. His brother Terah was not chosen.
1 For a brief review of the doctrine of unconditional foreordination as
held by Calvinism and of the contrary theory of Arminianism see Vol. I. ,
\l 19, 20, 21. Cf. Canons of the Synod of Dort, Articles VII. and XV.
Confession of Faith of the Westminster Assembly, 1648, ch. III. On the
question of predestination the Heidelberg Catechism is Augustinian
rather than Calvinistic, and so far forth is in sympathy with Melancthon-
ian Lutheranism; whilst on the doctrine of the Lord's Supper, which
was the pivot of the controversy between the Reformed and the Luth
erans, the Catechism is Calvinistic, and in this regard at issue both with
Romanism and with the Lutheranism of the Form of Concord.

700 Dortrine ok. Personal Salvation. [book s.
Why? Under the providential education of Jehovah
Abraham had developed moral and spiritual fitness for this
extraordinary vocation. His brother had not the same
fitness. The two men differed by natural endowment,
though each had a capacity for faith adequate to the pur
poses of divine grace: The difference between them was
moral and spiritual rather than natural; and that differ
ence was chiefly the consequence of the degree in which
each had honored the truth of Messianic revelation. The
election was not arbitrary; yet we have to recognize in the
choice of the one and the passing by of the other the
wisdom of God, or, as Paul expresses it, "the good pleasure
of His will."
We recognize the working of the same complemental
forces in Isaac, the child of promise. Not Ishmael, not
the sons of Keturah were in the line of the development
of the Messianic covenant. Isaac was chosen to represent
Abraham, and the choice expresses two things: the pur
pose of infinite wisdom, and the spiritual fitness of Isaac.
Both require emphasis. Isaac was relatively qualified for.
his calling, yet the calling was of God. His fitness was
due to the inscrutable working of divine grace at his birth
and iu his subconscious history, but due no less also to his
appropriation of electing wisdom, and this appropriation
was the voluntary act of his personality.
Of the twin sons of Isaac, Jacob was chosen, Esau
rejected, rejected because constitutionally disqualified, and
morally unworthy to be the representative and bearer of
the Abrahamic covenant; yet his rejection was God's
sovereign act Divine sovereignty elects one and rejects
another; but sovereignty does not proceed regardless of the
moral order of the world, not without a reason in truth,

3 34i.] Election. 701
much less not in violation of human personality; sover
eignty elects and rejects for a reason, and after a manner
distinctive of divine wisdom and divine righteousness.
Says Dr. Schaff: "God loves the good, because He pro
duces the very good that is in them ; aud He elects them
not on account of their faith and their holiness, but to faith
and holiness. But it cannot be said, on the other hand,
that He hates the evil men because He produces the very
evil that is in them; for that would be absurd, aud destroy
His holiness; but He hates them on account of the evil
that they do or will do in opposition to His will. While
human goodness is the effect of divine love and grace, on
the contrary, human wickedness is the cause of divine
hatred and abhorrence; and on that account alone can it
be the object of the punitive wrath and condemnatory
decree of God."1
2. This twofold principle characterizes the entire his
tory of the chosen people.
Moses was selected to perform wonderful miracles, to
lead the Israelites forth out of Egyptian bondage, aud to
become their law-giver, a work for which he was pre
pared partly by his education ' in all the wisdom of the
Egyptians,' partly by his fidelity to his people aud by his
retirement for forty years in the land of Midian.
Aaron was chosen to fill the office of high-priest
David, not his father Jesse, David, not Saul, was chosen
to be the founder of the royal dynasty. Of the twelve
tribes ten, composing the northern kingdom, were con
quered by Assyria and led away eastward into captivity.
The two tribes, Judah and Benjamin, under kings who
were the lineal descendants of Rehoboam, alone consti-
'See Schaff 's Lange on Romans, p. 328.

702 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [books.
tuted in fact the covenant people for seven centuries
before Christ; and of these two Judah was the chosen
tribe from which our Lord according to the flesh came.
"It is evident that our Lord hath sprung out of Judah; as
to which tribe Moses spake nothing concerning priests." 1
In each instance the election of the one and the non-
election of the other are rooted in the sovereignty of God ;
sovereignty, however, is not the action of an arbitrary
will undetermined by truth, but the transcendent wisdom
of righteous love. Sovereign choice accords with both
the righteousness of God and the natural aptitudes and
ethical conditions of men. Natural aptitudes and the
moral order of the world embody the sovereign will of
God no less truly than the election of David to the
exclusion of Saul, or the election of the tribe of Judah to
the exclusion' of all other tribes, in the actual history of
the Israelites. The election of one and the non-election
of another is the expression of the good pleasure of His
will. 3. The conditions of the initial election universally
characterize God's electing love. As Abraham was called
from among all other men to be the founder of an elect
nation, so this one people to the exclusion of all other
nations was educated, trained, nurtured, disciplined in
order to develop and mature the covenant fellowship of
Jehovah with man, to be the bearer and prophet of Mes
sianic revelation, and to become the impersonation of a
religious and moral life specifically different from the
religious and moral life of the entire pre-Christian world.
Yet the election of Abraham and 'his posterity and the
rejection of all other nations were relative only. In one
1 Heb. vii. 14.

1 341.] Election. 703
respect all other nations were passed by and seemingly
excluded from the purpose of divine grace; but in reality
the election as to its ultimate purpose included all nations.
Studied historically, as the facts address us from the books
of the Old Testament, the election of the Abrahamic peo
ple did- not imply the everlasting rejection of all other
peoples. One man, one nation, was chosen that through
one the divine blessing might come to all. The Lord said
unto Abraham: "In thee shall all the families of the earth
be blessed." This teaching respecting the design of
election is repeated: "Iu blessing I will bless thee, and in
multiplying I will multiply thy seed as the stars of the
heaven, and as the sand which is upon the seashore; and
thy seed shall possess the gate of his enemies; and in thy
seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed ; because
thou hast obeyed my voice."1 Divine wisdom elected
one man, one nation, not for the reason that the blessing
was for the one nation only, but that this nation might
become the righteous 'servant' of Jehovah, through whose
fidelity the spiritual good of the covenant might become
the possession of the whole world. Elect Israel was to be
the universal blessing. When Jesus gives the final com
mission to His apostles: " Go ye therefore and make dis
ciples of all nations," He expresses the original design,
until then hidden from Jewish eyes, of the election and
the solemn office of this ' holy nation. ' 2
1 Gen. xxii. 18 ; xviii. 18 ; Gal. iii. 8.
2 "The Christian doctrine of Providence finds its full expression in the
doctrine of the election of grace, of the creation and nurture of nations
and- individuals for the kingdom of God: a nurture that is begun, con
tinued, and perfected, not only by inward spiritual awakenings and
movements of soul, not only by the efficacy of God's word and sacra
ments, but also by the outward circumstances of life and destiny." —
Martensen's Christian Dogmatics, p. 223.

704 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
§ 342.
The twofold principle entering into God's electing
love appears prominently in that extraordinary epoch
of revelation when pre-Christian history closes and the
Christian era begins.
1. John Baptist and the Virgin Mary appear in the
fulness of time. The purpose of Jehovah active in the
national life and in the historic discipline of the Abrahamic
people was fulfilled in the forerunner, than whom no
greater prophet had been born, and in the Virgin who had
found favor with God. Each was chosen; each was dis
tinguished from among other Israelites by a call to fulfil a
special office in this central epoch of history, yet neither
was called irrespectively of individual fitness and personal
character. Each stood in the Abrahamic covenant. Each was a
representative of the national life and of the Messianic
genius of the Mosaic economy. Standing in this national
life, representing the faith and the hope of the 'holy
nation,' each by the observance of the ceremonial law and
by communion with Jehovah in the services of the Jewish
Church had become spiritually capable of the office to
which each was chosen: Mary, by the overshadowing of
the Most High, of becoming the mother of the Son of
Man; the Baptist, 'filled with the Holy Spirit, even from
his mother's womb," of being the voice of one crying in
the wilderness, Make ye ready the way of the Lord. The
election of the Virgin Mary was effectual, inasmuch as
Mary responded to the annunciation of Gabriel: "Behold,
the handmaid of the Lord; be it unto me according to thy
1 Luke i. 15.

1 342.] Election.

-j

word." The election of John was effectual, because the
child grew, and waxed strong in spirit, and was in the
deserts until the day of His shewing unto Israel; because
when of ripe age he came into all the region round about
Jordan, preaching the baptism of repentance unto remission
of sins; confessing that he was not the Christ, and bearing
witness to Jesus that He was the Lamb of God which
taketh away the sin of the world.
Neither John nor Mary was chosen as an isolated indi
vidual, but chosen in the covenant. Nor in either case
was the purpose of the election fulfilled by the action of
God's electing will alone; each responding in obedience
heartily acquiesced in the purpose of the divine counsel.
2. The most conspicuous illustration of effectual elec
tion grounded in the sovereignty of God is the first-born
sou of the Virgin, Jesus of Nazareth.
Of all elect persons He is chief. The elect nation and
all elect men and women in the history of the Israelites
were chosen to fill offices subordinate to the one great
mediatorial office of the Second Man. On His account
Abraham was selected and called. On His account the
nation was developed, sifted and perfected by a most
extraordinary discipline^ Least of all was the election of
Jesus an arbitrary election. Of all nations, the Hebrew
people were the fittest in which the Redeemer of the world
could be born. Of all the descendants of Abraham, Jesus
was the fittest person for His unique vocation. This fit
ness was on the one side hereditary and constitutional, on
the other ethical and historical. Jesus advanced in wis
dom and stature, and in favor with God and men. By a
pure development of a godly life He proved Himself
worthy of His extraordinary calling. Therefore at the age
43

706 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
of thirty, when He was physically and ethically mature,,
God by tile agency of the Baptist, the exponent and the
orgfen of the Abrahamic covenant, set Jesus apart to His
mediatorial mission. Said the voice from heaven: "Thou
art my beloved Son, in- Thee I am well pleased." '
The election of Jesus to a unique mission implies on
the one side a unique constitution and unique endow
ments, but on the other it also just as truly implies
unique personal fitness acquired and perfected, by the ideal
action of human freedom.
3. In accordance with the law of election exemplified
in the person of Jesus we study the organization of the
apostolate. From among the hundreds who at first became His
disciples He selected twelve to be the foundation of His^
kingdom. They were chosen, not arbitrarily, but because
they were among the number of Jews who, like Zacharias
and Elizabeth, like Simeon and Anna, were the ripened
fruit of the Abrahamic covenant. They possessed those
moral and' spiritual qualifications, each after the type- of
his own individuality, which by the education and train
ing of the 'holy nation ' it was Jehovah's purpose to
develop. Each was chosen because of the spiritual possi
bilities of his personality. Under the tuition of Jesus
each was capable of becoming a faithful apostle, fitted for
the extraordinary work to which he was called. The
betrayer, Judas Iscariot, forms no exception.
On the same principle we interpret the miraculous call
of Saul of Tarsus. His individual genius, his Greek
culture, his rabbinical learning and his intense conscien
tiousness made him the fit subject of the electing grace of
'Marki. ii.

2 342. j Election. 707
the ascended Christ. True, he was set apart from his
birth to this ministry;1 but not on this ground alone was
he called. Called he was especially because his spiritual
life, his moral character and his extraordinary zeal foe
'the Jews' religion,'2 though a mistaken zeal, were an
approximation to the ideal of a true Israelite.*
The election of Saul addressing him by a miraculous
vision from without corresponds to the divine election,
active in his personal history. By the providence of God
Saul was born a Jew, a Hebrew of the Hebrews, of the
tribe of Benjamin; by divine providence his psychologi
cal and ethical endowments were extraordinary. Thus
constituted by the action of God immanent in his tribe, in
his parentage and in the type of his individual life, Saul
under the ennobling grace of the Mosaic economy, modi
fied by the environment of his age, freely developed the
singular ability and the strength of character which qual
ified him to be the apostle to the Gentiles, the office for
which from among all learned Jews he was chosen. All
others were passed by, not because the divine decree had
consigned them to destruction, but because Saul of Tarsus
was chosen to be the apostle by whom the salvation of
Christ was to be effectually proclaimed, and by whom both
Jews and Gentiles were to be brought into the kingdom of
salvation. 'Gal. i. 15. 2Gal. i. 13. sRom. ii. 28, 29.

708 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
§343-
As elect Israelites were chosen in Abraham, "so elect
believers are chosen in Christ, but no divine election
is arbitrary. The result of the preceding survey of the history of
election requires us to emphasize the two opposite
factors : the sovereign will of God, and the autonomy
of man.
• i. The doctrine of election must lay stress on God's
freedom. His will is sovereign and absolute. He creates,
He governs according to the counsel of righteous love.
The kingdom of grace founded by Jesus Christ is His own
kingdom. It was His good pleasure to bring into- exist
ence the Second Man to be the principle of regenerate
human life, aud in Him to provide a redemption from sin
for the entire Adamic race.
God asserts His sovereignty in all His dealings with
nations and with individuals. He loved Jacob; He hated
Esau. He overthrew Saul, the son of Kish. In his place
God enthroned David and the Davidian dynasty. Peter
was reinstated, Judas consigned to 'his own place.'1 God
hath mercy on whom He will, and whom He will He
hardeneth.2 No object other than God can determine
God's will. His liberty, is absolute self-determination,
and therefore in the absolute sense righteous. But no
divine decree is fatalistic; no dealings of God in Christ
with men are indifferent to the law and the relations of
human personality.
Though Esau was the first-born son, Jehovah was not
for that reason bound to make Esau the bearer of the
' Acts i. 25. 2Rom. ix. 18.

1 343.] Election. 709
Abrahamic promise. Instead He chose Jacob. Though
Jacob's character was lacking in uprightness and truthful
ness, yet as his subsequent history shows he was capable
in his time of representing the covenant and fulfilling its
purpose. God 'hated' Esau; not his personality, not his
well-being, either temporal or eternal. To his Messianic
unfitness God was averse. He denied to Esau the pre
sumptive right to be the representative of the Abrahamic
line of promise. Under this view Esau was rejected.
The son of Kish was deposed because he was unfaithful to
his trust. Though set on the throne and consecrated to
the officeof king, God was not by this fact limited and
unfree. He asserted the right to dethrone Saul and
enthrone David; and David became the founder of a per
petual dynasty because he was faithful to the covenant
Firm in his fidelity to the Messianic monotheism of the
covenant, he was in this respect a man after, God's 'own
heart'1 The Jews imagined — because Jehovah had elected their
-nation to be His peculiar people; "whose is the adoption,
and the glory, and the covenants, and the giving of the
law, and the service of God, and the promise; whose are
the fathers, and of whom is Christ as concerning the
flesh,"2 — that they only were the elect people; that the
kingdom of the Messiah was a kingdom the rich blessings
of which were to be bestowed only on them, not on the
Gentiles. It is against this false idea of election that Paul
1 1 Sam. xiii. 14 ; Acts xiii. 22. Says the Dean of Chester, D. S. How
son, D. D. : " One characteristic especially distinguished David's rule —
he rigidly guarded the people from idolatry and all the abominations
which attend idol worship, and kept them faithful to the adoration of
the pure and holy God of their fathers."
2 Rom. ix. 4, 5.

71 o Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
argues in the 9th, 10th aud nth chapters of his Epistle to
the Romans. God elected Abraham not Terah, Isaac not
Ishmael, Jacob not Esau. As then so now, asserting His
sovereign pleasure, God elects Gentiles as well as Jews to
be the heirs of His grace. The election of Abraham and
his seed to be the positive preparation 'for the advent of
the Christ does not mean, -as the Jews imagined, tha't'God
has forever passed by the outside world. It is His sov
ereign will in Christ to have mercy on the Gentile as on
the Jew. For there is no distinction between Jew and
Greek: for the same Lord is Lord of all, and is rich to all
that call upon Him: for, whosoever shall call upon the
name of the Lord shall be saved.1
2. But God is not the only factor. Election does not
become effectual just because it embodies His sovereign
will. The free agency of man also is determinative.
Man's response to God's will conditions the ultimate
results of election.
Human personality is autonomous. So by His creative
word God has constituted man ; and by the immanent-
action of the divine will this distinguishing characteristic
is upheld and nourished. The will of God transcendent
is coincident with the will of God immanent The pur
pose expressed by sovereign election does not violate His
sovereign purpose as embodied in the genius of human
personality. The will of God is one will, consistent with
itself whether active upon or active in man.
If we concede that God by the Gospel commands all
men to enter the kingdom of Christ, but assume that
Some men according to a secret purpose of His sovereign
pleasure are foreordained to eternal exclusion, and that
'Rom. x. 12.

§343-] Election. 711
this secret purpose itself determines the condition of the
non-elect here and hereafter, then God is arrayed against
God. According to the will of love embodied in man's
ethical and spiritual constitution, all are formed for the
blessedness of communion with God ; but by the secret
counsel of sovereignty the non-elect are '" foreordained to
everlasting death," and this secret counsel works effect
ively in human history toward consummation. Such
teaching is in conflict with many passages of the Old
Testament and of the New Testament. In the prophecy
of Ezekiel God says: "Have I any pleasure in the death
of the wicked ? and not rather that he should return from
his way and live?" The apostle Paul teaches that God
our Saviour " willeth that all men should be saved and
come to the knowledge of the truth."1 The theory of un
conditional foreordination, ignoring the determining force
of personal agency, introduces a ¦contradiction into the
divine government which the Christian idea of God
forbids. Among nations as among individuals there is a differ
ence of susceptibility for Christian truth. The ethico-
spiritual nature of men inherited by natural birth may be
more or less accessible to the Gospel. In one nation, in
one family, iu one individual, the divine instinct may be
active aud persistent, in another feeble and sluggish; in
one a disposition toward sensuality and wickedness may
be restrained by the conscience, in another the action of
conscience may be repressed or wholly silenced. Never
theless in all nations, every man, whether better or worse,
is a law unto himself. He shows the work of the law
written in his heart, his conscience bearing witness there-
1 Ezek. xviii. 23; 1 Tim. ii. 4.

712 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
with, and his thoughts one with another accusing or else
excusing him.1 He determines his conduct according to
his perception of truth or he does not ; or he may aim
at governing his conduct in part according to truth, whilst
in other respects he may be indifferent to truth.
When to the Jew or the Greek Christ is proclaimed he
may be repelled, as were the mocking members of the
Areopagus; or he may be attracted, as were Nicodemus
and Joseph of Arimathea, as was Dionysius the Areopagite
and a woman named Damaris.2 Or he may be repelled
again and again, but ultimately he may be moved to
believe and to abide firmly in the Christian faith, as
was James, the brother of our Lord. Or he may be con
tinually repelled and confirmed iu the aversion of unbelief,
as were the majority of the Pharisees and Sadducees.
Or he -may be attracted for awhile, and afterwards decid
edly repelled, as was Judas Iscariot. Or he may from the
first be powerfully drawn to Jesus Christ, and yield him
self cheerfully and perseveringly to His service, as was
the apostle John.
However potent may be the agency of the Holy Spirit
through the word of the Gospel upon the heart, God does
not violate personality. Faith is the positive act of the
individual will. Neither belief nor unbelief is the effect
of divine causation. Belief is the self-determined recep
tion and appropriation of Christ, a reception however that
presupposes the presence and saving power of the Gospel.
Unbelief is the self-determined rejection of Christ, though
a rejection that presupposes Christian truth confrontino-
the soul. Whether Christ be accepted or rejected, the
-mysterious action of the law of personality is determina-
' Rom. ii. 14, 15. 2 Acts xvii 32_34

2343-] Election. 713
tive. Whether a man turn toward Christ or turn against
Him, the act is voluntary; otherwise the act would not be
his own; otherwise neither reception would be a personal
blessing, nor rejection incur personal guilt.
The law of self-determination is constituted by God's
eternal decree, a decree that became concrete when man
was formed in God's image; and the immanent activity of
the divine will unchangeably maintains the prerogatives
of divine imageship.
3. When we lay due stress on the absolute freedom of
God and the relative autonomy of man, when moreover
we recognize' the coincidence or correlation between God's
authority and man's moral agency, between God's provi
dence and the prerogatives of personality, we may lay
hold of the truth concerning sovereign election as taught
in Scripture.
Neither - factor may be ignored. Not the sovereignty
of God, not the prerogative of choosing whom He will,
nor of rejecting whom He will ; for sovereignty neither
annuls nor dishonors tlfe manhood of man. Election does
not accomplish its end by external divine forces alone.
Election works neither magically nor mechanically.
Election works in living sympathy with the autonomy of
personal life. Human will conditions, not the fact of God's
sovereignty, not its virtue, but its efficiency. As all
transgression contradicts God's will, both as embodied
in man's constitution and as expressed by revealed law,
so God's will as uttered by election may be resisted, and
it may fail of its end. For there is but one divine will,
whether transcendent or immanent, though expressing
itself in manifold forms. Whether revealed in moral law
or in ceremonial law. whether confronting men in the

714 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book£.
form of commandment or of decree, it is as to its essence
and its aim identical with itself.
Many facts in the history of revelation support these
propositions. The most prominent in onfe respect is the
history of Judas Iscariot. He was chosen by our Lord to
be one of the twelve apostles. With the eleven others he
was selected from among the many disciples that believed
in Jesus during the early part of His ministry. Judas
heard the teachings of his Master. He witnessed His
miracles. He retired with Him from time to time into
desert places for rest and prayer. He heard His private
interpretation of parables. Judas was with Jesus in the
mountain; with Him in the ship in the midst of the
storm; with Him among the multitudes in the cities; with
Him as from year to year He went up to Jerusalem to
observe the feast of the passover. Judas like the eleven
adhered to Jesus notwithstanding the persecutions to
which Jesus and His disciples were subjected. Excepting
the miracle of raising the daughter of Jairus from the
dead and the transfiguration of Jesus on the mount, Judas
Iscariot, as we may infer from the records, lived in pro
portion to the degree of his spiritual capacity in the same
intimate fellowship with Jesus from day to day, from year
to year, as did Peter, James and John ; and he received the
same Messianic training for the apostolic office. Yet the
election of Judas failed of its end. Instead of improving
his calling for the fulfilment of the purpose for which he
had been chosen, he so abused and perverted his election
as to become the betrayer. The election of Judas by our
Lord was ' without repentance.' ' The election of grace '
did not change. Judas had spiritual capacities compara
ble with those of Andrew and Philip, but his faith did not

§343-] Election. 71^
issue in an obedience that was firm and faithful unto the
end. Offended in Jesus and turning to His enemies, Judas
instead finally resolved to sell his Master for thirty pieces
of silver.
Judas Iscariot is the most conspicuous illustration of
several phases of truth which have been developed above:
1. whilst election presupposes the sovereign act of God,
-His will is not the only factor that enters into the final
issues of election; 2. election does not imply the viola
tion or the negation of man's autonomy; 3. the foreordi-
nation of God involves the reciprocal interaction of two
factors, the absolute freedom of God and the relative
freedom of man. Divine sovereignty neither does nor can
invade human personality; but human personality may
contravene God's sovereign will, and thus incur condemna
tion. 4. By way of objection it may be said that the sovereign
will of God working secretly in the sub-conscious history
of Judas fulfilled His foreordained purpose. Judas was
the appointed instrumentality by which the betrayal and
execution of Jesus were to be brought about. God's eter
nal counsel so directed and shaped the course of his moral
life that Judas of his own motion chose to betray 'his Lord
with a kiss.
On this assumption two things will follow. In the first
place, God would be active according to a double will.
The moral constitution of every man is formed for truth
and righteousness, and the will of God upholding his
moral constitution by immanent action works toward the
ends of righteousness; but according to an unconditional
decree Judas is chosen to commit a crime. This decree
so disposes his heart, -.so controls the conditions of his

7 1 6 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book i
personal history that whilst seeming to fulfil the wicked
purpose of his own heart he in reality is only fulfilling a
sovereign decree of God.
Not only does the objection disregard the autonomy of
personality, not only does it array God's will against
Gocl's will, making Him the subject of contrary wills, but,
by the agency of Judas, God also becomes the hidden
efficient author of the transgression of His own moral law.
Further, the objection exposes our Lord to the charge
either of insincerity or of a lack of discriminating judg
ment. On what principle did Jesus elect Judas Iscariot ?
Was he chosen that he might become the betrayer? This
assumption would be in conflict with His godly simplicity
and thorough uprightness of character.' It would shock
our Christian 'sense of His siulessness.
Or was Jesus mistaken? Was Judas, contrary to His
judgment, morally incapable of becoming a faithful dis
ciple? Then we assume that His judgment was super
ficial. He was lacking in penetrating insight into the
moral and religious possibilities of Judas Iscariot. Neither
alternative can stand.
So soon as Judas began to waver in his fidelity, and that
was at an early period of His ministry,1 Jesus discerned the
nascent ill-will that was poisoning his soul and antici
pated the final result. But when Judas was chosen, when
made a member of the apostolic college', Jesus saw in him,
as in Thomas, the positive basis of a competent and faith
ful apostle.
The objection we are considering cannot escape either
of these logical consequences. In effect it ascribes to God
the exercise of two contrary wills, aiming at contrary
' John vi. 64.-'

2 344d Justification by Faith. 717
purposes. Therefore the objection is not valid. It is not
a reason for denying that the history of Judas is a promi
nent illustration of the general principle that the auton6my
of man conditions, not its sovereignty, but the efficiency
of election.

CHAPTER VII.
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.
§344-
Granting the central truth that Jesus Christ is the
Founder of a new kingdom in which He is the Saviour
from sin and death of fallen men, two closely allied
questions arise. 1 . How may a transgressor obtain the
forgiveness of sins? 2. How may the transgressor in
reality come tostand in right judicial relation to God?
The answer that Christian thought gives to this
twofold question has reference to three errors : the
first is maintained by legalistic Judaism, the second
by Roman Catholicism, the third by natural or secular
morality. 1. In the apostolic age the Jew, adhering to the cere
monial law and to the traditions of the Rabbis, answered
this twofold question by saying: No man can be righteous
before God unless in all particulars he observes the cere
monial law.
When Paul in his Epistles to the Romans and Galatians
asserts and argues in support of the doctrine that by the
works of the law shall no flesh be justified in God's sight,
that apart from the law a righteousness of God hath been
manifested, even the righteousness of God through faith

7 1 8 Doctrine on Personal Salivation. [book 8.
in Jesus Christ unto all them that believe; x he teaches
justification, before. God by faith in Jesus Christ in opposi
tion to the doctrine, of Judaism prevalent in .that age.
Paul neither denies nor ignores the- necessity of godly
living. He is arguing against two current errors: the.
perpetual obligation of the ceremonial law, and the notion
that the merit accruing- from- supposed obedience to law,
moral and ceremonial, is the ground of pardon and accept
ance. James insists on the necessity of good works, seeming
to inculcate a doctrine adverse to the teaching of Paul.
In reality there is no conflict The works which James
requires are not observances of the ceremonial law; nor
does he enjoin conformity to the moral law that by the
merits accruing from? obedience believers, may stand ap
proved before the bar of God. The works enjoined by
James are the fruits of living faith, the necessary fruits, of
faith iu Jesus Christ. On the necessity of works under
this view Paul and James are iu entire accord. It is Paul
who in his great epistle on justification by faith says:
Let not sin reign in your mortal body that- ye- should obey
the lusts thereof: but present yourselves unto God, and'
your members, as instruments of righteousness unto God.2
2. In the i6th. century the form of the issue, between
acceptance by faith and acceptance by works was very
different The controversy on justification between, Chrisr
tiauity and Judaism was no longer pressing to. the front..
The question challenging the Reformers was; not whether
circumcision, or the passover, or the ' blood of goats and
bulls, and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that had
been- defiled,,' 3- was necessary to. obtain, the forgiveness, of
'Rom. iii;, 20,-22. 2 Rom. vi*, 12, 13. 8Hieb., is-, 1^,

$3440 Justification by Faith. 7ig-
sins., The entire Church,. Greek Catholic and Roman
Catholic no less than Protestant, was of oue mind iu
maintaining that the obligation to observe the ceremonial
law had been superseded. The fundamental principle in
controversy was the same, but uot its application, the con
ditions, of the question being very different
Like evangelical Protestantism, the Roman Church in
culcates the necessity of faith in Jesus Christ; but she
teaches also that the faithful have to; make satisfaction for
their sins,, and. gain merit or worthiness before God by
doing works of righteousness.. Good works. do< not only
consist in obedience to the moral law, but they consist
especially in. following the counsels of Christ and in obey
ing the commands of the Church,, such as abstinence from
food, celibacy, voluntary poverty, the infliction of bodily
pains, pilgrimages, honors done to the Virgin Mary, and
various other penances. '
It was. in opposition to this species of legalism that the
Reformers asserted the original doctrine of the apostle
Paul., Transgressors; as. they taught, could receive the
1 1 quote from the decrees and canons of the Council of Trent, 1543-
1-363 : " The Synod teaches that we are. able through Jesus Christ to make
satisfaction to God- the Father,, not only by punishments voluntarily
undertaken of ourselves for the punishment of sin-, or by those imposed
at the discretion of the priest according to the measure of our delin
quency, but also, by the temporal scourges inflicted of God, and borne
patiently by us.'' — Fourteenth Session, Ch. IX.
' ' If any one saith, that satisfaction for sins; as to their temporal pun
ishment, is nowise made to God, through the merits of Jesus Christ;, by
the punishments, inflicted by him, and patiently borne, or" by those en
joined by the priest, nor even, by those voluntarily undertaken, as by
fastings, prayers, alms-deeds, or by other works also of 'piety; and that,
therefore, the best penance is merely a new life : let him be anathema."
Fourteenth Session, Canon XIII.

720 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
forgiveness of sins, not by doing penances, not by repeat
ing prayers, nor by the infliction of bodily pains, but alone
by taking refuge iu Jesus Christ as Saviour and Lord.
The obedience, passion and death of Christ are the only
object of confidence aud hope, not the endeavors of the
transgressor to appease God's displeasure by bearing for
himself the penalties of sin, much less by suffering penal
ties invented and imposed by the priesthood. No moral
worthiness is the prerequisite to an acceptable approach to
Jesus Christ for salvation. He is accessible to all, however
great their unworthiness, who with a contrite heart come
to Him in faith.
Whilst Paul taught justification by faith in opposition
to the observances of the ceremonial law and to external
conformity to the Decalogue, Zwingli, Luther and Calvin
taught justification by faith in opposition to the works
imposed by the Roman Catholic Church. Neither Paul
nor the Reformers, in opposing works as a reason for ac
ceptance, implied a denial of the necessity of righteous and
godly living. Christian righteousness was necessary, not
that thereby the believer might render himself worthy of
acceptance, but that he may thereby have iu his life aud
character the fruit of his righteous relationship to God in
which he stands by faith.
3. In our day the issue with error is different from the
issue joined either by the apostles or by the Reformers.
As between Christianity and Judaism the question is the
same as in the apostolic age. As between evangelical
Protestantism and the Roman Catholic Church the ques
tion is the same as in the 16th century. But an issue
different from either has arisen: whether natural morality
will not satisfy the demands of the divine law. If a man

1 344 i Justification by Faith. 721
leads a scrupulously honest and upright life in all social
and civil relations, is he not worthy of confidence? Does
he not honor the divine law7? If from moral principle he
always upholds the right, if iu all his dealings he honors
the divine law, is he not accepted of God? Is he to be
condemned as a transgressor?
Against this specious opinion which has gained currency
among men of the world, to some extent also among
church members, the principle on which the reply is made
by Christian soteriology is in one respect the same.
Christ claims for Himself universal recognition and obe
dience. He is the only Mediator between God aud the
sinful human race. Though men are honest and upright,
honorable and influential, there is for them "as for all
others only one way of access to God. That way is Jesus
Christ. "I am the way. No man cometh unto the
Father but by me." In other words, the only way of
gaining acceptance with God is a faith in Jesus Christ
that works by obedience to His commandments. The
refusal to accept Christ is the rejection of the authority of
God. Defiance of God as manifested in Christ is the
great sin. Of this sin there is no forgiveness; no forgive
ness, because the wilful rejection of the mediatorship of
Christ is by the very act the renunciation of 'eternal life '
and of the only salvation. A sin so fundamental vitiates.
in God's sight the moral worth of external conformity to
the requirements of civil and social morality.
Whilst there is a wide difference before the civil law
and before the bar of the natural judgment between the
moral and the immoral, between the law-abiding citizen
and the criminal, there is no difference of obligation to
Jesus Christ. If both classes renounce His claims to
46

722 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
allegiance, both classes fall under condemnation. Saith
Christ: He that hateth me hateth my Father also.1 If
both classes honor Him as Lord and Saviour, both in Him
stand in the right relation to God. Saith Christ: "neither
doth the Father judge any man, but He hath given all
judgment unto the Sou; that all may honor the Son even
as they honor the Father. He that honoreth not the Son
honoreth not the Father which sent Him."2
The truth that only by a childlike self-surrender to
Jesus Christ a person may be just in the sight of God is
an evangelical principle that Christianity asserts in rela
tion to all classes of men, regardless of civil or social or
moral differences. § 345-
How may a person guilty of the transgression of
God's law obtain forgiveness and become righteous
before God? The same question as to its essence
may be put thus : How can he become just who born
with a vitiated nature has transgressed the law of God
and is therefore in the state of condemnation ?
This is the solemn problem which the Christian doc
trine of justification aims to answer. The answer has
to satisfy all the conditions.
To give clear insight into the nature of Christian
justification it is important to distinguish it from sev
eral questions closely allied to it.
i. The first is the following: how may a righteous
person, one who is free from the taint of sin, maintain his
righteousness before God? This question is applicable to
two classes of persons: to the angels who continued in
their original state of holiness and to the primeval family
¦John xv. 23. 2John v. 22, 23.

« 245-3 Justification by Faith. 723
as fashioned by the cieative word. The solution is readily
given. Christian reason replies that if holy angels are
active in perfect obedience to the divine law they will
continue to be rightous; if the primeval family had with
out faltering honored the command of God they would
have become confirmed in their original righteousness.
Revelation sustains the reply: He that doeth righteous
ness is righteous, even as He is righteous.1
The Christian problem does not relate to persons who
are innocent and occupy a normal judicial position before
God. The solution, however, has to meet the moral
necessities arising from moral law. Law demands both
that men occupy the right judicial position, and that they
acquire righteous character.
2. Another conceivable question is: how shall a man
guilty of transgression obtain forgiveness? assuming that
the act of transgression has not vitiated nor weakened his
moral constitution, assuming also that he possesses the
requisite mental and moral ability to lead a life conform
able to the divine law? The question under this form
would emerge should we concede the claim of Pelagianism.
According to Pelagius the transgression of the primeval
family was an external act, like a blow dealt by the hand,
which did not vitiate the ethical integrity of human
nature.2 The dynamic relation of Adamic nature to God
is right; but by the accident of transgression the indi
vidual Adam lapsed into a false judicial position. Though
1 1 John iii. 7.
2 Says Pelagius in the first Book of his work on Free Will: " Omne
bonum ac malum, quo vel laudabiles, vel vituperabiles sumus non nobis-
cum oritur, sed agitur a nobis."- Quoted by Aug. on Original Sin, Bk.
II., eh. 14.

724 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
his constitution continued to be right and good he became
subject to condemnation because of a wrong external act.
The judicial position of the first man through the evil
influence of his example comes to be the judicial position
of all men. To the question: how may a man guilty of
transgression obtain forgiveness ? the answer on the basis
of the Pelagian theory would be: if released from the pen
alty due to his transgression, a man at once resumes his
normal judicial position at the bar of divine law. A new
creation in Christ is not necessary. All he needs is the
remission of the penalty. Then he is righteous before
God; and if he will put forth the moral ability with which
he is endowed, he will commend himself to divine ap
proval. Pelagianism asserts one aspect of judicial truth which
the Christian doctrine of justification includes. The
transgressor is under condemnation, , and needs forgive
ness; in order to stand approved at the bar of God the
penalties of transgression must be remitted.
3. There is a, third conceivable question : how may a
person inheriting a vitiated nature, and subject to death,
become just before "God? assuming that he has committed
no act of transgression in thought, word or deed, assum
ing also that if created anew in Christ he will have the
ability perfectly to conform to. the divine law? This
question is applicable to infants who die in their infancy.
If we answer it on the basis of the evangelical Protestant
doctrine concerning the fall of the Adamic race, we may
say: it is necessary that the infant dying in infancy be
'delivered out of the power of darkness, and translated
into the kingdom of the Son,' in other words, necessary
that by the agency of the Holy Spirit the infant be set in

g 345.] Justification by Faith. 725
right ethical and judicial relation to God, and thus be
emancipated from the state of condemnation common to
the fallen race.
Inasmuch as infants dying in infancy have committed
no sin in feeling or thought, in word or deed, their justi
fication before God does not include the remission of the
penalties of transgression. If set by the Spirit in right
relation to God in Christ, they have by virtue of this right
ethical and judicial relation the power, as personality
develops into conscious volition, to choose and to act as
the law of God requires. Kept by the Spirit, they live in
the Spirit.
The necessity to be set by divine grace in positively
right relation to God is a valid necessity, and has to be
met by the Christian doctrine of justification.
4. The actual problem challenging Christianity differs
from each of these conceivable questions; but it is not
solved by repudiating the element of truth which each
comprehends. Instead, the element of truth in each is
recognized, and it enters into the Christian solution of the
problem. Though men are by nature sinful and under condemna
tion, the original relation of mankind to God is not
abolished. Violated and distorted it is, nevertheless it
asserts its formative power and its claims. So far forth
the relation of the fallen race to God is akin to the rela
tion in which the primeval family stood before the fall.
Though depraved, men retain the latent capacity of posi
tive obedience to God's law; and this latent capacity must
become actual righteousness.
Further," inasmuch as all adults, and all children who
have come to the age of moral accountability, have become

726 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
transgressors, they are subject to the penalties of trans
gressors. So far forth there is truth iu the doctrine of
Pelagius. It is necessary that the penalties, being insep
arable from the commission of sin, be remitted. Other
wise the transgressor abides under condemnation, suffering
the inalienable penalties of sin.
Inasmuch as transgressors are by nature depraved as
well as in fact guilty, and predisposed to manifold forms
of wrong-doing, the simple remission of penalties does not
meet all the conditions of the problem. It is necessary
also that they occupy both ethically and judicially an
approved relation to God, in order that iu the full sense
of the term they may be righteous. Neither forgiveness
nor the objective translation from the kingdom of dark
ness into the kingdom of light can suffice; it is equally
necessary that they bear the fruit of holy living. ' Every
branch that beareth not fruit is taken away, and cast into
the fire, and it is burned. '

-i

§346.
The Christian doctrine of justification is the solution
of a threefold problem :
How can the guilt of sin be remitted? or, how can
the transgressor be delivered from condemnation?
How can a man by nature sinful, in whom the law
of sin is the controlling force, stand approved at the
bar of divine law?
How may actual obedience to the will of God be
come possible?
Christianity makes answer to this threefold question
by saying that transgressors obtain forgiveness, they
are judicially approved, and they meet the demands
of God's will by faith in Jesus Christ.
Faith in Christ has negative and positive force. On

1 346] Justification by Faith. 727
the one hand it obtains the release of the transgressor
from all the penalties of sin ; on the other it puts him
in an attitude before the bar of law, approved by the
judgment of God.
1. Acknowledging and accepting Jesus Christ by true
faith, the transgressor stands approved before God. He
occupies the judicial position which is positively right.
His relation to Christ meets the claims of Christ. Meet
ing the claims of Christ his position answers the require
ments of divine law. All have sinned, all come short of
the glory of God; yet through faith in Jesus Christ all are
justified freely by the grace of God through the redemption
that is in Christ Jesus.1
The question arises: how is it that by faith in Jesus
Christ the transgressor stands approved at the bar of God ?
The answer is that the mediatorship of the incarnate Sou
has in His relation to the Adamic race met the twofold
demand of law.
In the first place law, the embodiment and expression
of God's will enjoins obedience, perfect conformity to its
requirements. Such an obedience, without flaw or defect,
the Sou of Man fulfilled. He became the ideal Man, not
only by honoring under a normal form the authority of
His Father in all the relations of human life, but also by
unfolding in His character all the original possibilities of
the Adamic race. The will of God immanent in humanity
as well as the will of God expressed by formal command
was by Him asserted, actualized aud glorified. He says:
I do always the things that are pleasing to the Father.2
As confirmatory of this utterance came the voice of the
'Rom. iii. 22-24. 2John viii. 29.

728 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
Father at His transfiguration: This is my beloved Sou, iii
whom I am well pleased; hear ye Him.1
Secondly, law, the embodiment and expression of the
divine will, condemns 'iniquity, transgression and sin,'
both the overt violation of law by voluntary acts, and the
vitiated ethical constitution of the race. The approval
of the moral right is of necessity the condemnation of the
moral wrong. As God is unchangeably holy, He can
occupy no other attitude toward the enmity to holiness of
the natural man and toward wrong-doing than the attitude
of condemnation; and this condemnation is itself the pen
alty of all penalties, from which there is no escape.
To adopt the language of prophecy, the ideal Man "was
wounded for our transgression, He was bruised for our
iniquity: the chastisement of our peace was upon Him;
and with His stripes we are healed. ' ' 2 Or, to use the
words of Paul : ' ' Christ redeemed us from the curse of the
law, being made a curse for us."3 The blood of -Christ,
" who through the eternal Spirit offered Himself without
blemish unto God," cleanses the conscience from dead
works to serve the living God.4 Bearing the curse of the
law in His body upon the cross, He became the propitia
tion for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for the
whole world.5
This demand of God's will in its relation to the Adamic
race Christ meets by His sinless life aud by His atoning
death. He does the will of His Father, rendering a com
plete obedience to its requirements, thus becoming the
ideal righteous Man. At the same time, being identified
with the Adamic race, He suffers the curse consequent
' Matt. xvii. 5. s Isa. liii. 5. a Gal. iii. 13. * Heb. ix. 14.
5 1 John ii. 2 ; iv. 10; 1 Pet. ii. 24.

2346.] Justification by Faith. 729
upon sin. Each is a necessity, each the demand of law:
the one the positive demand arising from the nature of
law in its relation to personality; the other the negative
demand arising from man's violation of law. Both de
mands are met, not met successively but by the same holy
life, by the same humiliation, the same passion, the same
triumph. Christ honors the law by absolute obedience, as
if He were not identified with the fallen race. Christ
bears the curse of violated law as really as if He were the
transgressor. These necessities, seemingly contradictory
and exclusive, become one in Him and are met by His
mediatorship. Therefore in His person and work Jesus
Christ is the absolute atonement.
2. The Mediator having realized by His personal life an
absolute justification before God, He becomes the possi
bility of justification to all transgressors who by the Holy
Spirit are engrafted into Him, so becoming His members.
The human condition on which depends participation in
His atonement is faith. By faith the transgressor is justi
fied; he stands in right judicial relation to the judgment of
God, inasmuch as by1 faith iu Christ he in truth acknowl
edges and honors God as the sole authority for his will.
Christ is God manifest in the flesh. Being the most real
presence of God, He is the final form of authority. To
acknowledge Christ is to acknowledge God. To accept
Christ is to accept the authority of God. Conversely, he
that does not accept Christ does not, cannot in truth
acknowledge God. He that honoreth not the Sou honor
eth not the Father which sent Him. Faith in Christ is
the most real submission to God of which man is capable.1
1 Says Prof. Henry B. Smith, D. D.: "Faith is an act of the whole soul
 not of the intellect, nor will, nor sensibilities alone, but of all com-

7jO Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
By faith, moreover, the transgressor appropriates Christ
to himself, so that the unifying- virtue of the atonement
becomes his possession, and obtains positive force in his
personal history. As by the Spirit a person becomes a
member of Christ, so by faith Christ becomes the principle
of atonement in personality. The propitiation becomes
effective in ethical life, working an experience of judicial
peace with God, so purging the ' conscience from dead
works.' Faith establishes the oneness of the believer with
the Mediator, so that the believer begins to live in Christ
as Christ by the Spirit lives in the believer. Says the
Heidelberg Catechism: "God grants aud imputes tome
the perfect satisfaction, righteousness and holiness of
Christ, as if I had never committed nor had any sin, and
had myself accomplished all the obedience which Christ
has fulfilled for me, if only I accept such benefit with a
believing heart."1
It does not suffice to say that God for Christ's sake treats
the believer as if he were standing in right relation to
moral law implying that in reality he does not. A
correct conception of the function of faith requires us to
hold that God is at peace with the believer because in
truth he stands in the right judicial relation to moral law.
God approves the believer, inasmuch as the self-surrender
of personality by faith in Christ is obedience to the au
thority and command of God.
bined. The whole soul goes out in the act of faith in Christ. * * *
Thus it is properly called the instrumental cause of justification. The
meritorious, ground is Christ. * * * Justification is not without
works, yet not by works,— not without love, yet not by love, — not with
out assent, yet' not as though the assent were meritorious."— System of
Christian Theology, p. 540.
'Heid. Cat., 60.

g 347.] Justification by Faith. 731
§347-
Soteriology has to recognize an intimate connection of
justification with Holy Baptism; yet the two things are
diverse, and have to be clearly distinguished.
•Baptism is the objective translation of the subject from
the old race in Adam to the kingdom of the new race in
Christ. In this kingdom the right judicial relation to
God becomes possible. Baptism anticipates justification
by faith; aud through the exercise of faith in Christ by
the subject its spiritual virtue becomes actual. But bap
tism does not justify the transgressor. Righteous before
God the baptized person becomes only when by his volun
tary act he acknowledges Christ as Lord and accepts Him
as the only Mediator between God and man. Through
His atonement alone he obtains approval and pardon.
Agreeably to the New Testament Baptism is adminis
tered in the name of Christ unto the remission of sins, as
we are taught in Acts ii. 38, the remission of sins being
the end of Baptism. So long as the baptized person
does not accept Jesus Christ as his only Lord and Saviour,
his judicial attitude before God is false. For lack of true
faith his ethical character is at issue with his objective
relations. Salvation from sin and eternal life are sealed
to him, yet he refuses to accept and appropriate his spirit
ual inheritance. Like the younger son, there is a contra
diction between his sonship and the character he acquires
by the departure from his father into a far country where
he wastes his substance with riotous living.
Nevertheless the objective relation to Christ in His
kingdom, established by the Holy Spirit in Baptism,
abides;1 God is true to His covenant, true to all its mem-
'Num. xxiii. 19; Mai. iii. 6 ; Rom. xi. 29.

73 2 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
bers, though many are unfaithful and suffer the judicial
consequence of unfaithfulness. On the ground of this
abiding relationship the prodigal, when he comes to him
self, may arise and go to his Father, and may say unto
him, Father, I have sinned against heaven, and iu thy
sight: I am no more worthy to be called thy sou, in the
firm belief that his Father will receive him with rejoicing.
If the prodigal does not come to himself, if he does not
return confessing his sins, and claim the inheritance of
grace, his baptism will not save him from perishing.
Like the preaching of the Gospel by the apostles, the
holy sacrament is a sweet savor of Christ unto God, iu
them that are being saved, and in them that are perish
ing; to the one a savor from . death unto death; to the
other a savor from life unto life.1
§348-
The positive force of justification includes- its nega
tive force. When the transgressor becomes righteous
in Christ before God the guilt of his transgression is
gone. A member of Christ by faith, one with Him in
His death and resurrection, sharing God's approval of
the Mediator, the believer stands acquitted as the
Mediator Himself is acquitted.
i. A distinction is to be drawn between the fundamental
sin and all other sins. .The fundamental sin is false self-
assertion, the assertion of personality against God. His
supreme authority, His absolute right to reign in and over
all men, is renounced. False self-will asserts the right to
occupy the throne.
Of God's sovereign authority the highest revelation
'2 Cor. ii. 15, 16.

5348.] Justification by Faith. 7?"

jj

confronts men in the person aud mediatorship of Jesus
Christ. The rejection of Christ is the rejection of God.
His rejection sets divine authority at defiance. This sin
committed against the divine-human Mediator is the
supreme sin committed against Almighty God.
From this fundamental sin all other sins grow forth;
from it they derive their vicious character; it poisons all
natural morality. So long as the sin of self-assertion
against God continues, there can be no moral conduct that
in God's sight is right and good.
A corresponding distinction is to be drawn between the
forgiveness of this sin and the forgiveness of the trans
gressions growing forth from it. The primary judicial
necessity is the extinction of the fundamental sin, the sin
of sins, the self-determined defiance of the righteous
authority of God by the wilful rejection of Jesus Christ.
So long as this sin continues there is no forgiveness; there
can be none. By the very nature of righteous love God
must condemn the persistent renunciation of His author
ity. Nor may we speak of the forgiveness of any minor
offences which grow forth from the fundamental wrong;
for the false judicial attitude of the transgressor toward
God's sovereignty is constantly vitiating the moral worth
of all words spoken, of all deeds done in his personal and
social relations. The notion that the guilt of transgression
may be pardoned whilst the transgression is wilfully con
tinued, is a contradiction iu terms.
2. At this point maybe seen the necessity and the signi
ficance of faith in Jesus Christ. Faith honors Jesus Christ
as Lord and Saviour. Faith is self-surrender to His
mediatorship. Faith in Christ recognizes and acknowl-
edo-es God's authority to be supreme. The faith of the

734 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
transgressor is the confession that he has done wrong, aud
therefore that he is unworthy to be called a son and is
justly under condemnation. His faith pronounces God
righteous, worthy of supreme love and obedience, just and
holy in the condemnation of transgression.
By the very nature of faith iu Jesus Christ the attitude
of the transgressor toward God undergoes a radical change.
The fundamental sin is abolished by the fundamental act
of obedience. He obeys the first and chief command of
"the Gospel: Come unto me; take my yoke upon you; this
is the work of God, that ye believe on Him whom He hath
sent; believe on the Lord Jesus, and thou shalt be saved;
he that believeth hath eternal life. By the exercise of
faith the personal attitude of the transgressor toward
God answers to the gracious relation of God to the
transgressor. The grace signified and sealed to him by
the Spirit in his baptism beconies his personal possession.
He experiences the spiritual good which the kingdom
bestows on its members; and his experience is rich and
joyous in the degree that he appropriates the spiritual
gifts of the kingdom. There is therefore now no con
demnation to them that are in Christ Jesus.1 So long as
he stands in the faith of Christ he stands in Christ ; and
so long as he is in Christ he stands in the blessing of the
remission of the fundamental sin.
3. The forgiveness of all other sins is a benefit roofed
in the right relation of a believer to God". The divine
judgment approves his attitude of faith in Christ as
judicially and ethically right. God. pronounces him re
leased from condemnation due to sin in virtue of the fact
that he and Christ are one, one by his adoption in the
Holy Spirit, one by his exercise of true faith,
'Rom. viii. I.

§348.] Justification by Faith. 735
By the humiliation of Christ, by His passion and death
under violated law, He became the Lamb of God which
beareth the sin of the world. The redemption is iu Christ
Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through
faith in His blood.1 The virtue of this propitiation is the
virtue of the crucified Christ risen and glorified. One
with Him through the Spirit by faith, the believer is a
living member of Christ Being a member he is crucified
with Christ; and it is no longer he that lives, but Christ
lives in him; and the life which he now lives in the flesh
he lives in faith.2 Living in Christ, 'the head of the
body,' His members possess the infinite merit of His suffi
cient sacrifice and accepted intercession as really as if each
one had in person rendered a perfect obedience to the law
of God, and in the act of rendering such obedience had at
the same time suffered the full penalty due to sin. Says
Paul: " Iu that He died, He died unto sin once for all: but
in that He liveth, He liveth unto God. Even so reckon
ye also yourselves to be dead unto sin, but alive unto God
iu Christ Jesus." 3 Members of Christ, they by faith are iu
such sense one with Him that His humiliation is their
humiliation, His suffering their suffering, His atoning
death their atonement, His resurrection from the dead
their victory.
3. They that acknowledge God's supreme authority by
accepting Jesus Christ as their only Lord and Saviour are
not only accounted to be righteous, but they are iu reality
pardoned, in reality guiltless. Crucified with Christ,
quickened with Christ by the Spirit into the resurrection
life, believers develop and actualize the reality of the
'John i. 29 ; Rom. iii. 25 ; 1 John ii. 2.
2 Gal. ii. 20. Heid. Cat., 60, 61. 3 Rom. vi. 10, 11.

736 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
redemption in their new personality, so that the penalties
of their depravity and transgressions are as certainly
resolved into judicial peace with God as Christ Jesus
Himself is approved. Through faith in the ideal Man
they become in fact righteous before God. ' Our old
man is with Him crucified, slain and buried, that so the
evil lusts of the flesh may no more reign in us.' Though
'the old man'1 is 'still prone always to all evil,' and in
consequence the entire history of the Christian is a life of
repentance, a turning toward holiness against sin, yet 'the
new man ' in truth stands in right relation to God's au
thority, is approved by God's law, approved by the con
science; for 'God, without any merit of mine, of mere
grace, grants and imputes to me the perfect satisfaction,
righteousness and holiness of Christ'
4. 'Justified by faith, we have peace with God through
our Lord Jesus Christ' That the peace with God of the
devout believer may become an element of his experience
the Gospel declares to him the forgiveness of his sins.
When four men uncovered the roof where. Jesus was,
and let down the bed whereon a man sick of the palsy lay,
Jesus seeing their faith saith unto the sick of the palsy:
Son, thy sins are forgiven. The declaration had objective
force. The Gospel is glad tidings to penitent men op
pressed with a consciousness of guilt. The ambassadors
of Christ are called and set in office for the very purpose,
among other things, of declaring to believers their release
in Christ from this bondage. The conscience is to be
purged from dead works. The unequivocal declaration
of pardon to all believers who confess their sins with full
purpose of new obedience carries the virtue of 'divine peace
1 Gal. v. 17.

?349-] Justification by Faith. 737
to their hearts, the word of God- being the organ by which
the grace of the Gospel gains access to the innermost re
cesses of the soul. The blessing of divine peace is expe
rienced in feeling and consciousness, not in proportion to
the progress of personal sanctification, but in proportion
to the measure of the faith with which the believer clearly
discerns the Mediator as his complete atonement and ap
propriates to himself the truth of that atonement.
§349-
This inquiry into the fact of God's approval of the
transgressor who accepts Christ by faith has through
out been proceeding on the assumption that the only
ground on which forgiveness and righteousness can
rest is the person and mediatorship of Christ.
1. According to Holy Scripture the only reason why
God can be righteous, yet acknowledge the transgressor
who has faith in Jesus to be righteous, is the Mediator
Himself. What the divine-hunfen Mediator is, what He
has accomplished by His life on earth, by His death and
resurrection, and what He, the advocate of His people
with the Father, is now fulfilling in heaven, — this is the
ground, the only ground, of forgiveness and judicial peace.
There is no merit, no saving virtue, in the abstract
exercise of believing. This negation the doctrine of just
ification as taught by St. Paul necessarily implies. The
same denial was asserted by the leading Reformers of both
Confessions in the 16th century. Not faith, but faith in
Christ is the Reformation principle of justification. The
justifying virtue of faith is derived, not from the personal
act of the believer, but from the object in which he takes
refuge. Faith makes the transgressor righteous, because
47

738 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
faith changes the moral attitude of the transgressor toward
God, and is the actual appropriation of the mediatorship of
Christ.1 The infinite virtue of the atonement, objectively
at hand iu the Mediator, passes by the obedience of faith
to the person of the transgressor, aiid becomes actual
reconciliation in the history of personality.
2. Protestant soteriology in consequence rejects the
Roman dogma respecting justification by works, or by
faith and works. The ground of God's acceptance of the
transgressor, and of the forgiveness of his sins, is not in
the transgressor, not iu the dignity of his nature, not iu
his self-humiliation, not in sincere efforts to make atone
ment for his sins by suffering God's displeasure or by
inflicting penalties upon himself ; nor does moral char
acter or personal worthiness, condition the freedom with
which God accepts the penitent transgressor. There are
no degrees in the forgiveness of the supreme sin. It
cannot be said that when the believer has acquired an
advanced stage of symnietrical Christian character he is
more really or more fully justified than when he first
accepted Christ as his only Lord and Saviour. Says Paul:
In Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything,
nor uncircumcision; but faith working through love.2
The first act of true faith sets him in the right judicial
relation to God, and in this right judicial relation he is
in reality emancipated from the power of condemnation.
'Says Ullman: "So close is the living union between the Head and
the members, that they form parts of one whole. His fellowship with
Christ, from which the Spirit and the life of Christ pass into his soul,
makes the believer a partaker in all that Christ Himself is." — The Sin-
lessness of Jesus, p. 231.
2 Gal. v. 6.

JS350.] Justification by Faith. 739
His faith may be weaker or stronger; but if faith be gen
uine, the believer is in Christ justified, no less if his faith
be weak than if it be strong. "In this fellowship, even
when it exists only in its early dawnings, he does not
stand alone in the sight of God, but is in His sight as one
who has been grafted into Christ"1 The degree of his
faith, so long as by faith he abides in Christ, does not
affect the reality of his acceptance, but affects only his
inward experience of the truth of divine peace. The
weak believer is not less justified, nor is the strong be
liever more justified; but the believer whose faith is clear
and strong has a strength of peace and an uplifting joy to
which his Christian brother may be a stranger.
§35°-
There is an intimate connection between member
ship in the kingdom and the personal experience of
peace with God. Yet birth into the kingdom and the
peace of justification are distinct elements of the Chris
tian salvation. They are neither to be identified nor
to be divorced.
1. Each is objective. A man is born into the kingdom
by the grace of God. By the grace of God a man is justi
fied. Neither is a moral change; of neither is the human
will the efficient cause; in both the efficient cause is divine
agency. By the birth of the Spirit the person obtains a
position in the kingdom. The justification of God ac
cepted by faith establishes the right personal relation to
God. In the one case the change is organic, in the other
judicial. In the birth of the Spirit the subject is receptive, or
1 Ullman.

740 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. , [book 8.
even passive. There is a transition from the objective
kingdom of sin into the objective kingdom of grace.
As regards the unconscious infant baptized into Christ
the passive and receptive status of the subject is self-
evident ; but the adult who confessing Christ yields his
entire self to Him in baptism is also passive under the
divine act of transition. God in Christ by the Holy
Ghost translates him into the kingdom.1 Repentance and
faith are indeed necessary; and obviously in exercising
faith the subject is active. In the case of the adult re
pentance and faith are only the necessary prerequisites,
not the birth itself into the kingdom.
If we recognize the reality of the essential difference of
the two kingdoms, the difference between the kingdom
of 'the first man' and the kingdom of ' the Second Man;'
and if we accept the New Testament truth that the birth
' from above ' is organic, a deliverance ' out of the power
of darkness,' and a translation 'into the kingdom of the
Son,' then we have to teach, not that repentance is the
birth from above, but that repentance conditions the fitness
of the adult subject for translation into the kingdom.
Unbelief does not invalidate a transaction done by the
Spirit of God; but unbelief is a bar to the effectiveness of
God's grace in the personal history of the subject A
pertinent illustration is afforded by the case of Simon
Magus. Simon Magus believed.2 By baptism he became a
member of the apostolic Church, and was also closely as
sociated with Philip. For lack of true faith in. Christ his
membership in the kingdom did not develop into spiritual
knowledge ahd genuine Christian experience. By the
1 Col. i. 13. 2 Acts viii. 9-24.

«35°.] Justification by Faith. 741
wickedness of self-will he so perverted the blessing of the
kingdom that it became to him a curse.
2. In justification the subject is not only passive and
receptive, he is also himself active; and unless active he'
cannot be declared righteous.
The subject is receptive. The judicial act by which he
is constituted and pronounced righteous is a divine act
'It is God that justifieth." God it is who grants forgive
ness to the transgressor, aud sets him in right judicial
relation to Himself. But this judicial relation of peace
God can establish only with the believer. The grace of
acceptance and forgiveness takes effect in him who appro
priates this grace. The transgressor must himself be
responsively active. There is no alternative.
These two things require equal emphasis, each under its
own character: 1. The blessing of pardon and righteousness
is alone of God through Christ The transgressor cannot
justify himself, any more than he can translate himself
from the kingdom of 'the first man' into the kingdom of
'the Second Man.' 2. Since justification is internal and
real no less than formal and declarative, he only iu truth
can be righteous who by his own act receives the free gift
of God, that so the gift may become his personal possession,
the obedience of faith being the indispensable condition of
appropriation. As an infant is born into the family by the objective
powers of parentage, so a person is adopted into the
kingdom by the objective agency of the Holy Spirit; but
as the infant growing up into youth must honor father
and mother in order to stand in right personal relation to
them, so a member of the family of Christ, though made
' Rom. viii. 33.

742 Doctrine on Personal Salvation: [book 3.
a member by grace alone, is required to honor Christ by-
accepting Him as the only Lord and Saviour, in order that
in Christ his personal relation to God may be right, and
he may experience ' the peace of God which passeth all
understanding.' Otherwise, as with Simon Magus, the
infinite blessing of adoption into the kingdom of forgive
ness and peace becomes the occasion of greater condem
nation. To be made a member of the kingdom and to have the
blessing of justification are accordingly distinct things.
A person may be adopted into the kingdom, yet not stand
approved before the bar of God. A branch of the true
Vine he may be, but not a fruit-bearing branch. On the
other hand, however, no one possesses the blessing of just
ification before God who refuses to be received into the
kingdom. The refusal is an act of disobedience. The
justification taught by the New Testament those only can
enjoy who ' with the heart ' believe unto righteousness,
and ' with the mouth ' make confession unto salvation.1
Many branches of the true Vine may be dead, but no
branches are living unless on the Vine. So there is no
scriptural justification before God but for those who are
members of His kingdom; yet there are many members
of the kingdom who for lack of repentance and faith have
not the forgiveness of sins and do not stand in right judi
cial relation to God.
4. The Church, however, is not warranted in teaching
that the blessing of justification may in no sense be expe-
'Rom. x. ia Cf. Matt. x. 32; Luke xii. 8. Schaff: "Confession is
the first act of faith." Alford: "The Lord will not confess the confess
ing Judas, nor deny the denying Peter; the traitor who denied Him in
acts is denied, the apostle who confessed Him even unto death will be
confessed."

?35o] Justification by Faith. 743
rienced by persons who have not by baptism been received
into the kingdom. The Gospel of the kingdom lays hold
of great numbers outside the pale of the Church and
exerts over them a constraining influence, drawing them
toward Jesus Christ. There is a natural faith which is to
be distinguished from spiritual faith; there is a natural
repentance toward God to be distinguished from Christian
repentance. So there may be a prevenient justification, a
justification by responsive hearers of the Gospel who have
not been admitted into the kingdom. Their justification
before God answers to that kind of faith in Christ which
men, though not members of the kingdom, may through
the agency of the Holy Spirit exercise iu Jesus Christ
The standing of this class of believers is analogous to the
standing of the faithful under the old dispensation in their
relation to the coming Messiah. They are in the right
way of approach ; and to them the Church may speak as
our Lord spoke to the scribe who had answered discreetly :
Thou art not far from the kingdom of God.1 Such was
the attitude of the multitudes on the day of Pentecost who
said unto Peter and the rest of the apostles: Brethren,
what shall we do ? When in answer to this enquiry they
heard the words of Peter: Repent ye, and be baptized
every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ uuto the
remission of your sins, we are told that they obeyed the
command. 'They then having received his word were
baptized.' 2 Turning under the preaching of Peter toward
the Christ by faith these repentant Jews were accepting
the Gospel, and so far forth were approved of God. This
prevenient faith became genuine Christian faith in the
' Mark xii. 34. a Acts ii. 41.

744 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
actual self-surrender to the command of Christ pronounced
by Peter.
So are all men who through the preaching of the Gospel
are with penitent hearts turning from their sinful life
toward Jesus Christ, in the way of rightousness, and being
in the way they are approved of God. If in truth they are
seeking reconciliation, the genuineness of their repent
ance and faith will become evident in the same manner as
the repentance of the three thousand evidenced itself on
the day of Pentecost: they that received the word of Peter
were baptized.

CHAPTER VIII.
GOOD WORKS.
§35J-
Born of the Spirit into the kingdom and at peace with
God by faith, the members of Christ live in the sphere of
freedom. On the one hand they are emancipated from the domin
ion of sin. "Our old man was crucified with Him, that
the body of sin might be done away." On the other hand
the members of Christ become active in the Truth aud for
the Truth. The Truth is both the principle and the end
of their life. ' ' We were buried with Him through baptism
into death; that like as Christ was raised from the dead
through the glory of the Father, so we also might walk in
newness of life."1
Such a life bears fruit in good works. Works are the
'Rom. vi. 4, 13.

§35i-] Good Works. 745
words spoken aud the things done by man, a moral agent
The moral quality of works is derived from the moral
quality of personality. It is the man that forms the
character. The spiritual status of the mau conditions the genius
of his words and deeds. If the man be 'rooted and
grounded' in the love of Christ, his works will be good;
good, inasmuch as Christian love energizes and animates
them. In turn, works inspired aud sustained by Christian
love exert a reactionary influence on the character of the
man. Love active according to its own law becomes
more mature aud more fruitful. The person is better for
the good works which he does.
The reverse order involves a false conception of works.
Works that are good react upon the man who is good. In
the first instance the works do not condition the character
of the man. It cannot be said that the works must be
good in order that the man may become good. The fruit
does not condition the tree; but the tree the fruit. Fruit
reveals and expresses the species and the life of the tree.
Iu answer to the question: whether it be necessary that
the believer, a person justified by faith alone, do good
works, the unqualified answer must be given in the
affirmative. Good works are necessary, not that he may
make amends for his sins and obtain forgiveness, but
because amends have been made by the Mediator, and he
has received forgiveness; not that he may gain the approval
of God, but because he has God's approval; not, in other
words, that he may become righteous before God, but
because being a member of Christ by faith he is right
eous. Righteous in Christ, righteous by faith working
through love, possessing the peace that passeth all under-

7\6 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book s.
standing, he must of inward necessity live a righteous life.
It will be his meat and drink to do the will of his Father
who is in heaven.
A scriptural conception respecting the good works of a
Christian presupposes the truth of the doctrine of just
ification by faith alone, without the works of the law.
Believers are approved of God to the end that they may
live an approved life. They are justified of free grace
without any merits of their own to the end that ' the ordi
nance of the law might be fulfilled in them." Without
self-inspired works they are righteous in Christ that they
may do God-inspired works. For they that are after the
flesh do mind the things of the flesh; but they that are
after the Spirit the things of the Spirit.
What are good works ? An answer at once scriptural,
comprehensive and concise is given when the Reformed
Church says that "good works are those which are done
from true faith, according to the law of God, for His
glory; and not such as rest on our own opinion, or the
commandments of men."2
This proposition embraces the source or principle of
good works, the criterion or standard of moral judgment,
and their ultimate end. Works that are good in the evan
gelical sense unite these three elements. They pro
ceed from faith in Christ, the law of God has for them
regulative force, aud the manifestation of God is the end
for which they are done.
'Rom. viii. 4, 5. 2Heid. Cat., 91.

?352.] Good Works. 7^7

§352-
Good works have a principle, a living fountain in
personality from which they flow. This principle is
not human will, but true faith in Jesus Christ, by whom
human will is inspired and governed.
1. Words spoken and deeds done that are morally good
presuppose the free action of the human will, but not the
action of will divorced from its fundamental law.
Freedom is the product of two factors: the divine law
and volition. Moral law, the expression of the author
ity of God's righteous love, is the truth for human
personality. Truth is the fundamental warrant and con
dition of freedom. The noblest truth conditions the
noblest freedom. The Truth from whom all truths derive
their truthfulness and their worth is the Son of God
incarnate. This rank He claims for Himself : 'lam the
truth.' Therefore respecting freedom He says: "If the
Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed."1
The Son does not make a man free mechanically or
magically. Free a man becomes when he chooses the
Son; when by the act of his own will he accepts as the
fundamental law of his life the truth which the incarnate
Son is. "Rightly considered, moral action is simply the
conformity of the particular will to the consistent will of
the absolute person."2 Appropriating the truth to him
self by his voluntary act, he and the objective truth
become ethically one. By the right action of will the
truth possesses and is possessed by personality. Then
the truth lives in the man, and becomes the controlling
'John viii. 36. 2 Commissioner Wm. T. Harris.

748 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
principle of moral action. Only from this principle pro
ceed works that in the Christian sense are really good.
All moral action, whether good or bad, is voluntary.
Wrong-doing, no less than right-doing, presupposes the
self-determined act of the will. We have to distinguish
between pure volition and freedom. In choosing to do
wrong the will, correctly speaking, is not free. Voluntary
the'act is, but no mope. Iu choosing the wrong and the
false, the will by the very act becomes enslaved. False
hood and wrong violate the immanent law of personality.
Says our Lord: "Everyone that committeth sin is the
bondservant of sin. " ' Personality is constituted for doing
and knowing truth and right. Like bread for the body,
the true and the right are the necessary food of person
ality. When the objective truth and right are appro
priated by volition and conduct, personality is nourished
by the only aliment which qualifies it to realize its ideal.
Personality becomes true by appropriating the truth; it
becomes right by doing the right; it becomes free by
taking in and living on the substance of freedom.
In one respect, therefore, it is not Christian to say good
works proceed from human will. If the action of will be
divorced from Jesus Christ, the objective truth, no good
works proceed from human will. The position and rela
tions of personality being abnormal, all words spoken and
all deeds done are wanting in the essential quality of
Christian goodness. Such words and deeds are in He
brews pronounced 'dead works;'2 they are wanting alike
in divine life and in ideal human life. Paul calls them
' the unfruitful works of darkness. ' 3 Inspired by the king
dom of evil, they are not the genuine fruit of personality.
'John viii. 34. 2 Heb. ix. 14. "Eph. v. 11.

?352.] Good Works. 749
In another respect, however, good works do proceed
from the human will. Voluntary action is essential. If,
receiving the Son, a person is made free by virtue of
union with the Son, his will is' active according to the law
of truth. Then words spoken and deeds done, though
imperfect when judged by the 'perfect law of liberty,'1
partake of the quality of Christian righteousness, and so
far forth they are good fruit, growing on ' a good tree.'
2. Faith is the organ by which Jesus Christ becomes
one with personality, and personality derives from Him
the disposition aud the power to do the good. He says in
His sacerdotal prayer: " The glory which Thou hast given
me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even
as we are one; I in them, and Thou in me, that they may
be perfected into one."2 In another place He says: "I
am the vine, ye are the branches: he that abideth in me,
and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from
me ye can do nothing."3 Apart from Him no one bears
the fruit of good works; He is the original motive of all
genuine goodness.
True faith is the only subjective principle of good works,
inasmuch as Christ through the Spirit becomes the new
life of personality only when the believer by the responsive
act of his will accepts Christ as the law of moral action.
Then, emancipated from the condemnation of sin and
living in the peace of God, he breathes the exhilarating
atmosphere of spiritual freedom. Moved from within by
the love of righteousness he takes ' delight in the law of
the Lord,' as the bodily eye rejoices in the light of the
sun, or the ear in the harmonies of music. So far from
making good works the ground of a claim upon God, the
'James i. 25. 2 John xvii. 22, 23. 'John xv. 5.

750 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
works of the believer are an offering of thankfulness for
the great grace which has accepted him through faith in
Christ ' apart from the works of the law. ' His ' great
recompense of reward '* consists in doing the will of his
Father in heaven. § 353-
The believer needs a critical standard of judgment.
The question arises: What words, what deeds are
right? What are wrong? He may not violate his
conscience; but the conscience needs an objective
regulator, and that is moral law.
The second element of good works consists in this,
that they are done according to the law of God.
Neither the motive nor the end sanctifies the means.
i. The Christian conscience is the organ for the right,
an inalienable endowment of personality. Conscience is
a faculty, answering to the self-determination of will; a
perception, answering to intellectual and rational life; a
sense, answering to feeling conditioned on perception or
volition. As a faculty conscience is the will-power to choose the
right and do the right, the power to choose and do the
wrong. As intellectual perception conscience discerns the
moral order of the world, as living within and existing
without, from which arises the idea of the objective right,
of obligation and duty. As the sense of right, conscience
begets the feeling of self-approval when the right is chosen
and done, begets the feeling of self-condemnation when the
wrong is done or the right is left undone. Moral faculty,
moral perception, moral feeling, are distinct but insepara
ble moments of the same endowment. Each is potential
1 Heb. x. 35 ; Rom. xii. 1-3.

§353-] Good Works. 751
in nascent personality. As personality awakes and de
velops, each is a force in every motion of the conscience.
Every act of personality involves some moral power, some
moral intelligence, some moral feeling; though one form
of the action of conscience may predominate over another
form. 2. The conscience does not beget the right, nor impose
obligation.. The moral order of the world antedates con
science. Man has a conscience because there is a moral
order. Truth and right are primarily objective. Right
addresses us from the constitution of* Christianity, and
from the constitution of the human kingdom, especially
from the personality of the Christian man. If the light
within be not darkness, if the eye of the soul be sound,
the conscience sees the right and by contrast recognizes
the wrong. In consequence of the moral disorganization
of the Adamic race and the imperfections of the members
of Christ, all intuitive judgments concerning the right are
only partially correct. The best moral judgment is not
absolutely good. The eye of the Christian soul is dim.
Conscience comes to clearer and fuller perception of what
the objective right is only by a slow process; and when the
right is seen with some degree of clearness, Christian
personality lacks the adequate power perfectly to do the
right. Sometimes judgment mistakes the right for the
wrong, or the wrong for the right; and. the conscience may
condemn when a person has done that which in itself is
right, or the conscience may fail to condemn when a per
son proposes to do or has done the deed which in itself is
wrong. Though the organ for the right, the organ which
fundamentally distinguishes personality from all imper-

752 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
sonal creatures, yet conscience is not the objective standard
for its decisions. That standard is the revealed will of
God : that will first as expressed by the most perfect moral
code, the Ten Commandments; then that will embodied
and expressed by the ideal personal history of the Son of
Man, an expression of authority which complements and
transcends the Ten Commandments.
The authority of the righteous life of Jesus Christ as
final law for Christian personality is at issue with the
errors of moral judgment respecting obligations to God
and duties to man inherited from paganism or from
Judaism, and with the errors always arising from the
imperfection of Christian judgment In the endeavor to
answer moral questions the problem consists in the just
interpretation of the perfect law of God in its application
to the varying conditions .of family life, social life, civil
life, ecclesiastical life. Whilst the Church may never fail
to emphasize the. good and the true as developed in past
centuries, and may never silence the dictates of the indi
vidual conscience or the common conscience of her mem
bership, yet she may never look within for the law of
moral conduct. Tradition and custom are ever to be
tested by the objective right as expressed by the objective
law. The ethical life of the Son of Man is perpetually
the object of study with an open mind, a mind free from
prejudice or prepossession. Then the Ten Command
ments, complemented and perfected by righteous love
realized in Jesus Christ, become year by year an actual
power in the progress of the Church, correcting the moral
judgment and ennobling the moral life. As the moral
life rises, and the moral judgment improves, the conscience
will obtain clearer vision of objective right and become a
mightier motive.

8353.] Good Works. 753
3. The only criterion of judgment, and the only rule of
action is the law of God. An action proceeding from true
faith is so far forth good. So is an action as regards its
proposed end good, which is done for the glory of God.
An action may proceed from the true principle of moral
goodness, and it may aim at the true end, yet it may not
in reality be a good work. If the standard of judgment
be false or inadequate, a person may perform a work in
itself wrong from a right motive, or a work in itself wrong
for an end in itself good, a contradiction arising from the
ethical disorganization of the Adamic race, the conse
quences of which invade the ethical life of the Christian,
and impair the worthiness of his conduct. The same con
tradiction may appear when the standard of right is true,
but the moral judgment is at fault. Two things are
therefore necessary : 1. the law of God, the ultimate and
universal criterion of right; 2. a correct moral judgment
respecting the requirements of the law in its application
to conduct.
Sound Christian ethics must deny that the end sanctifies
the means, or that the means are right because the end is
good. Ethics enjoins that only means approved by the
law of God be employed to accomplish an end, 110 matter
how noble the end or how obligatory its accomplishment
Christianity tolerates no conduct, no motives, no transac
tions, that contravene the righteousness of God. We have
indeed to distinguish between religious life and good
works, between faith in Christ and morality; but we can
not sever the two things without injury to both. Religion
is essential to good works. Without religion works lack
vitality and substance. On the other hand good works
are the expression of religious life. If works are not
48

754 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [books.
good, if not approved by the law of God, religious life for
lack of normal development in action is weak and sickly.
Or if works are done according to a false standard, or gov
erned by a false moral judgment, not only is religious life
misdirected, but it is poisoned by the virus of moral evil.
Hence the necessity and significance of the Decalogue for
the Abrahamic people. Hence too the fundamental neces
sity and infinite worth of the sinless, holy life of Jesus
Christ for the ethics of Christianity and the ethical char
acter of Christian people.
4. A correct doctrine respecting the law of God in its
bearing on Christian life and conduct excludes the errors
of legalism and anti-nomiauism.
Legalism lays false stress on the law, ignoring the value
of the other properties of good works. Overlooking the
truth that faith in. Christ is the only principle from which
a work in the Christian sense good may grow forth, it
resolves this principle into volition, into a firm resolve to
act conformably to the demands of law, a resolve which
has in it an element of stoicism. Legalism emphasizes
both the letter of the law and external conformity to the
letter. The mosit prominent representatives of legalism
were the sect of the Pharisees. The severity and hardness
of Pharisaic morality our Lord represents by the conduct
of the elder brother in the parable of the prodigal son.
Genuine faith may coexist with legalism; but the life of
faith of the. Christian Church, if dominated by the Phari
saic spirit, becomes a caricature of the Christian religion.
Failing to distinguish between sinfulness and the person
of the sinner, it becomes harsh and extreme in its con
demnatory judgment of men; and instead of illustrating
the love and mercy of Calvary it delights in the lightning
and thunder of Sinai.

2 353-1 Good Works, 755
Legalism founders on the rock of Scylla; anti-nomian-
ism is engulfed in the whirlpool of Charybdis. Whilst the
one makes false account of the law, the other ignores its
necessity. Anti-uomianism puts false stress on the sove
reign "grace of God. The emphasis is not excessive, not
too great in degree, but grace is falsely apprehended and
falsely applied. The grace of God iu Christ requires not
only acceptance by faith, but requires also a faith in Christ
that works through love to Him, and love to Him keeps
His commandments.1 If love developed from faith does
not keep His commandments, or is indifferent to right
eousness of life, it is not Christian love; and where there
is no Christian love there is no true Christian faith,
In the interpretation of Paul's doctrine of justification
by faith apart from the works of the law as set forth in the
Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians, anti-nomianism
confounds ..the obligation of the ceremonial law binding
the Jew, an obligation which Christianity has superseded
and abolished, with the universal and unchangeable obli
gation of moral law which Christianity not only recognizes
but has also perfected and enthroned by the- faultless right
eousness of Jesus Christ. Both errors are referable to a
defective conception respecting the relation between the
authority of law and the necessity of faith.
' John xiv. 15 ; xv. 12.

756 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
§ 354-
The aim of works truly good is the glory of God,
the manifestation of God's righteous love. Righteous
love is manifested inasmuch as good works are the
realization of the divine genius of righteous love.
Faith in Christ, inspiring action according to the law
of God, unfolds into full bloom. The bloom of faith is
God's glory.
i. Divine faith and divine glory, if each be ideal, are
related like a field sown in wheat and the golden harvest.
Faith is the vital principle; God's glory is its legitimate
product. The nianifestation of God's righteous life by
good works presupposes the divine vitality of the Chris
tian, a vitality nourished by the fellowship of faith with
Christ. Apart from me, He says, ye can do nothing; ye
can bear no fruit If the vitality of faith develops itself
according to the law of 'faith, the fruit declares the moral
excellence of grace.
The glory of God is not an unsubstantial display of a
divine purpose by words or by influence. Glory implies
an actual existence, a reality, which itself is a concrete
revelation of God. St. Peter's, the magnificent temple of
God in Rome, is the glory of Michael Angelo. Somewhat
analogous to this fact is the Son of Man. He is the ideal
glory of God. The members of Christ who honor the law
as realized by His righteous life are the glory of Christ.
What He is as the Saviour from sin and as the ideal Man
becomes manifest in men. Of Himself He says: He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father. The practical aim
of Christianity is that it may be said of all His followers
what we may say of the apostle John: He that hath seen

2 354-] Good JVorks. 7^7
the beloved disciple hath seen the Master. Just iu the
proportion - that the Christian is Christlike, that he is a
partaker of His anointing, that he steadfastly confesses His
name, that in truth he presents himself a living sacrifice
of thankfulness to Him, and with free conscience fights
against sin and the Devil, he becomes the glory of Christ.
His works glorify God inasmuch as his words aud deeds
are a genuine exhibition of God, of truth and wisdom, of
love and righteousness.
Such works are not the product of the natural human
will; nor of the nominal Christian; nor even of the true
Christian, if we conceive him to be an isolated personality,
sustaining no vital connection with the fountain of life.
Such works are the product only of the fellowship of living
faith with Christ glorified, directed and shaped through
out by conscientious regard for the universal authority of
moral law.
If however the doctrine concerning good works main
tains only that works exhibit the excellence of God's
righteous love, though so far forth valid, it does not com
pletely express the idea of moral goodness. It is necessary
to supplement this conception by saying that the person
who, living by faith in Christ, conforms his conduct to the
law of God, consciously makes God's glory his fixed aim.
It is his deliberate purpose to be Christ-like, to do what the
law enjoins, not to the end that his conduct may exalt
himself, not that he may secure position and influence,
but that God may in reality be set forth by him before the
world as God has been set forth by Jesus Christ who is the
archetype of Christian faith and Christian conduct. Good
works do not minister to spiritual pride or to vanity.
They are attended by modesty, and minister to humility.

758 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
So let your light shine before men that in your good works
they may see the glory of your Father in heaven.
3. A 'good work' includes 'true faith,' conformity to
moral 'law,' and the 'glory' of God. Each element is
necessary. If true faith be wanting, works are not rooted in truth.
For want of faith in Christ the person does not stand in
right judicial relation to God. He is under the condem
nation of unbelief. This false attitude toward God viti
ates volition and conduct.
If a person has true faith, but is not governed by a
conscientious regard for the law of God, works lack the
genuine substance of goodness. God's law is the truth of
human freedom; and the law,, whether addressing the
conscience from without or revealing itself from within,
becomes the truth of freedom, the content of works, only
by obedience. He who chooses and fulfils the law does
works which the law energizes and inhabits.
If a person has true faith and honors the law, but his
works are not done for the glory of God, his moral'activity
is misdirected. The right motive is wanting. The aim
of volition is a false aim; and a false aim of a moral agent
reacts upon the life of personality, and therefore also upon
conduct, exerting a vitiating influence even upon an ap
proved standing before God. Indeed if the aim of a per
son be the glory of self or the possession of 'the world,
justifying faith cannot inspire conduct according to the
law of faith. There is a contradiction of personality with
itself which enfeebles the 'spiritual man' and sullies the
purity of moral action.
In the degree that these three factors are active in due
proportion the new life of ' the spiritual man ' will grow in

1 355.] Sanctification. 759
vigor and moral beauty, and the process of sanctification
will advance step by step toward perfection.

CHAPTER IX.
SANCTIFICATION. §355-

Sanctification is the progressive formation of holy
character, being the product of personality asserting
• itself responsively to renewing grace.
The birth from above is the act of God by which the
subject is translated, objectively, from the kingdom of
darkness into the kino-dom of light. This transition
conditions genuine Christian repentance ; and repent
ance conditions genuine Christian sanctification.
1. Justification is the judicial act of God, conditioned on
the personal exercise of faith in Jesus Christ. Justified,
the believer is at peace with God. God being at peace
with him, he breathes the atmosphere of pure freedom.
In this spiritual atmosphere the process of growth in
Christian holiness is possible, and may be genuine.
Repentance and sanctification are each a change of per
sonal character wrought by man's will in response to the
love of the Father in .the Son active toward us and in
us by the Spirit. The order of experience is the reverse
of justification.
In justification God is the efficient agent. Faith is the
condition and the organ of the appropriation of God's
o-race. In sanctification as in repentance the believer is
the agent Whilst repentance is the voluntary turning to

760 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
Jesus Christ, sanctification is progressive free obedience to
the law of holiness.
Genuine repentance is the beginning of the growth of
holiness, and growth in holiness is personal growth. At
every point it involves conscious turning toward Christ, or
the self-determined conformity of the spiritual man to the
demands of righteous love as exemplified by the life of Jesus
Christ; but it is a conformity depending on the agency of
the Spirit operative in and through the means of grace.
2. So the New Testament teaches. Sanctification on
the one hand is due to the work of the Holy Spirit.
Christ says: For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they
themselves also may be sanctified in truth.1 By His vol
untary act He set Himself apart from the world to the
founding and service of the kingdom of God, that His
disciples may also by His Spirit be consecrated to the
truth of the same kingdom.
Paul teaches that he is a minister of Christ Jesus unto
the Gentiles, " that the offering up of the Gentiles might
be made acceptable, being sanctified by the Holy Ghost"2
By the Gospel the Gentiles were called. They that be
lieved were by the Holy Spirit through the word and
sacrament delivered from the vileness of paganism and
brought into the kingdom of divine holiness,
In many other passages the term has the same objective
meaning. Iu writing to the Corinthians Paul addresses
"them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus."3 He says:
" But ye were washed, but ye were sanctified, but ye were
justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the
Spirit of our God."4 The word 'sanctified' does not
mean that their moral character was immaculate, but that
'John xvii. 19. 2 Rom. xv. 16. " 1 Cor. i. 2. * 1 Cor. vi. 11.

2 355-] Sanctification. 761
through the Spirit their attitude relatively to God in
Christ Jesus was holy. They were no longer in the king
dom of darkness, but by the Spirit had become members
of the kingdom of light, and as members of the kingdom
they were set apart to the service of the Holy One.1
3. These and similar passages represent one aspect of
New Testament teaching; they are complemented by a dif
ferent class, which inculcate the necessity of the agency of
the believer himself in the process of building a holy char
acter. On the believer rests the fundamental obligation to
love God with all his heart, to love his neighbor as him
self. Says Paul: "The whole law is fulfilled in one word,
even in this: thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself,"
implying the necessity of obedience to this law. He
enjoins on the Galatians that they work that which is
good toward all men, and especially toward them that are
of the household of faith. If we live by the Spirit, he
says, "by the Spirit let us also walk,"2 implying the
responsibility and personal agency of the believer.
Under a different aspect Paul teaches the same obliga
tion in his Epistle to the Colossians. The believer bap
tized into Christ is 'the new man ' iu distinction from a
1 7
member of the Adamic race who is 'the old man.'3 The-
old man waxeth corrupt after the lusts of deceit;, the new
man is created in righteousness and holiness of truth.
Paul enjoins that the believer 'put on the new man;' he is
to clothe himself with the life and moral form of the
new creation as with a garment, or as a tree glorifies its
branches with ripening fruit. By the exercise of a living
'Cf. Eph. ii. 10; 2 Thess. ii. 13; Rom. viii. 29, 30; Phil. ii. 13; 1 Cor.
i. 2 ; Heb. x. 10.
2Gal.v. 25. 3Eph. iv. 24.

762 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
faith, by the habit of prayer, by the active service of God
and man iu the kingdom he is to build up a Christ-like
character. Of like force is Paul's admonition to the Colos
sians: put ye also away all these; anger, wrath, malice,
railing, shameful speaking out of your mouth ; lie not one
to another; seeing that ye have put off the old man with
his doings, and have put on the new man, which is being
renewed unto knowledge after the image of Him who cre
ated him. Such admonitions call forth the determinate
self-action of the will for the right and against the wrong.
So Dr. Henry B. Smith: "Sanctification is the work
of overcoming the old man by the new. It is the victory
of the spirit over the flesh.'
In his Epistle to ' all that are in Rome ' Paul draws a
contrast between the servant of sin and the servant of
righteousness. When they, 'called to be saints,' were the
servants of sin they presented their members as servants
to uncleanness and to iniquity; but now being made free
from sin, and become servants of God, he enjoins that
they present their members as servants to righteousness
unto sanctification. The obligation binds ' the beloved
of God' to present themselves unto God, as alive from the
¦dead, and their members as instruments of righteousness
unto God.1 The transgressor is responsible for his wick
edness, the believer for his sanctification.
In harmony with the teaching of Paul, the apostle
Peter says: like as He who called you is holy, be ye your
selves also holy in all manner of living; because it .is
written, Ye shall be holy; for I am holy.2
In very many other places the responsibility of the be
liever for his growth in holiness is directly implied. It is
'Rom. vi. 12-23. 2i Peter i. 16; Levit. xix. 2; xx. 7.

?35°-] Sanctification. 76?
written: as new born babes, long for the spiritual milk
that ye may grow thereby unto salvation;1 grow in the
grace and knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ;2
work out your own salvation with fear and trembling;3 put
on, therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a heart of
compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, longsuffering.4
Therefore the doctrine may not be accepted that sancti
fication is the infusion of divine grace, or the product of
the sacraments, or that it is effected exclusively by the
agency of the Holy Spirit working upon and in personality.
The Spirit of Christ is the divine factor by whom the
sinner is adopted into the kingdom and consecrated to
Jesus Christ, the word and the sacrament being His ordi
nary instrumentalities; but the purity of personal life and
the righteousness of Christian conduct are not realized un
less the believer appropriate the blessing of the Spirit,
cultivate righteousness of character, and work out his sal
vation by his own free act. §356.
Sanctification is a gradual transformation into the
likeness of the ideal Man, and a gradual purification
from the pollution of sin.
1. The ideal of Christian holiness is the Son of Man.
Of His members accordingly the fundamental moral ob
ligation is that in disposition, temper, conduct and service
they become like Himself. So He teaches: "If ye keep
my commandments, ye shall abide in my love; even as I
have kept my Father's commandments and abide in His
love. " His obedience to the will of the Father is the kind
of obedience toward God which His followers are to perform.
>i Peter ii. 2. '2 Peter iii. 18. 3Phil. ii. 12. *Col. iii. 12.

764 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [Book 8.
So in their relation to one another they are to be bound by
the self-denying service of His love. He says: " This is
my commandment, that ye love one another, even as I
have loved you."1 His self-sacrificing love for His dis
ciples is the kind of love which His disciples are com
manded to cherish toward one another.
The same principle is to govern their devotion to the
welfare and salvation of the world. In His sacerdotal
prayer He says: " As Thou didst send me into the world,
even so send I them into the world."2 Their work among
Jews and Greeks is to be governed by the unselfish love of
mankind which had moved Him to suffer and die for His
enemies. In full sympathy with the doctrine of Christ,
St. Paul says: " For whom He foreknew, He also foreor
dained to be conformed to the image of His son, that He
might be the first-born among many brethren."3 The
Christian standard of righteous character is not merely the
moral law as expressed by the Ten Commandments, but
the moral law, or love to God and love' to man, as this love
reigns and shines forth in the mediatorship of the incar
nate Son. Obedience to the law of His love is the ex
pression of love to Himself.
2. Emphasis is to be put on the distinguishing truth
that Christ reveals His love to the Father in His self-
humiliation for the redemption of sinners. Found in
fashion as a man, He humbled Himself. Not that He
was humiliated by the Father; but the ideal Man realizes
ideal manhood in this, that of His own will "He carried
up our sins in His body upon the tree." Though He did
no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth, yet when
He was reviled, He reviled not again; when He suffered
'John xv. 10, 12. 2John xvii. 18. s Romans viii. 29.

§356.] Sanctification. 765
He threatened not; but committed Himself to Him that
judgeth righteously.1 The sacrifice of Himself by obedi
ence unto death declares that kind of love to man which
His members are required to cultivate that they may
purify themselves from selfishness and worldliness.
"Have this mind iu you, which was also in Christ Jesus,"
says Paul; and Peter enforces the same principle of like
ness to Christ when he says: "Forasmuch then as Christ
suffered in the flesh, arm ye yourselves also with the same
mind." 2
Fellowship with Christ in His love is fellowship with
Him in His sufferings for the redemption of the world.
"Every act of righteousness is right only in the degree
that it expresses the underlying spirit of love for man;
and in love to men there is a bearing of the burdens of
their weakness and sinfulness," agreeably to the words
of Paul: " Bear ye one another's burdens, aud so fulfil the
law of Christ."3 Such sympathy and communion with
others, suffering the moral and physical evils of our fallen
state, is a fulfilment in actual life of the sacrifice of Christ,
though it can in no sense be spoken of as atonement. To
suffer with Christ for men, or to serve Christ as Paul,
writing to the Colossians,4 represents his ministry when
he says that he rejoices in his sufferings for their sake
and fills up on his part that which is lacking of the afflic
tions of Christ in his flesh for the sake of the Church, is
"the destruction of the baser self, and in the way of ac
tivity for the salvation of men a release and a development
of "the Christlike self." Says Elisha Mulford, LL. D. :
"The law which was fulfilled in the Christ is the law of the life of
humanity. * * It is written: 'wherefore Jesus also, that He might
' 1 Peter ii. 22-24. zPhil. ii. 5 ; 1 Pet. iv. 1. 3Gal. vi. 2. 4Col. i. 24.

766 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
sanctify the people with His own blood, suffered without the gate.'
This is made the ground of a principle of duty, and we are bidden : ' let
us go forth, therefore, unto Him without the camp, bearing His reproach.
This is the sacrifice of the Christ fulfilled in humanity. * * There is
thenceforth in the life of humanity the manifestation of redemptive
forces. They come forth in the life of righteousness in the family and
the nation. These are the forces which work in conflict with the evil
of the world. The law of sacrifice becomes the law of life. * * In
this world of forms the symbols of sacrifice become the symbols of
power. The Lamb that was slain from the foundation of the world be
comes the Lamb that sits in the midst of the throne. This type is not
lost in history. The manifestation of power is not in a separation from
men, nor in the assertion of a dominion over men, but in the service of
men."' The positions of Dr. Mulford are not sound in all re
spects, but his interpretation of a holy life in these quota
tions is undoubtedly correct "It is in the fulfilment of
the law of sacrifice for the redemption of men that right-
doing after the pattern of Christ, who is the revelation of
the law, consists; and by the doing of the right after the
pattern of Christ the process of sanctification advances."2
3. Such sacrifice of self for Christ to save men is possi
ble in His kingdom. As of Christian faith and of Chris
tian repentance, so especially of. Christian sanctification
soteriology is bound to teach that it can be developed and
perfected only in the communion of the Church. Sancti
fication begins by a hearty turning toward Christ; it
progresses by the keeping of His commandments; and the
first commandment of the Gospel is: repent and be bap
tized. When confessing faith in Jesus Christ a person
accepts the baptism of Christ, he is received into the
kingdom, and being in the kingdom he may be obedient
1 The Republic of God, pp. 185, 186, 187, 189.
2 MSS. of Rev. R. Leighton Gerhart, A. M.

§356.] Sanctification. 767
to the command: Take, eat, this is my body. The Lord's
Supper is the communion of the body and blood of the
glorified Christ with His people, a heavenly banquet on
earth, a spiritual banquet in the natural world, whereby
' the new man ' is after a supernatural manner strength
ened with the strength of the Holy Ghost. In the degree
that life-communion with Christ becomes more intimate
Christian personality grows stronger to fulfil the demands
of righteous love, and conformity 'to the image of His
Son ' is normally progressive.
4. Progressive conformity to the image of Jesus Christ
involves a corresponding process of purification from the
defilement of sin. The former conditions the latter.
Christ alone has overcome the world.1 All forms of ap
proach in which the kingdom of evil challenged His
sympathy and acquiescence were by Him vanquished,
inasmuch as with absolute fidelity He honored . the au
thority of His Father in heaven. That victory achieved
by His immaculate obedience avails for His people. This
is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our
faith.2 Faith is strong by His strength, aud victorious
over sin by His victory. As faith grows unbelief withers.
As the flame of love to Christ burns brighter the sympathy
with sin of ' the old man ' dies away.
The relation between these two forms of sanctification is
reciprocal. Love to Christ and conformity to His example
of living for the honor of God and the good of man do not
progress, unless the power of the old man declines, unless
the internal warfare of the Spirit against the flesh becomes
decided and more intense. Inherited sinfulness will yield,
cannot but yield, in proportion that the spiritual life of
'John xvi. 33. 2 1 John v. 4.

7 68 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
the new personality grows in the strength of Christian
righteousness. The spiritual warfare which the process of sanctification
begets is therefore on the one hand a fight iu the service
of Christian righteousness and on the other a fight against
the unrighteousness of the flesh and of the world. Effi
ciency depends largely on the relation of the positive to
the negative character of the conflict. The strength of
resistance to evil depends on the strength of the righteous
life. Christian will becomes righteous conduct in the
degree that personality asserts and develops the obedience
of faith. It is not scriptural to say, either that the Chris
tian has to resist the Devil in order to be able to obey
Christ, or that he must stand firm against the temptations
of the world in order that he may be able to stand firm
in the service of the kingdom. They who do battle
against sin in the belief that thereby they may conquer sin
are in danger of being taken captive by sin. Only the
good can overcome the bad. Only the righteousness
of faith in Christ clothes the Christian with an armour
that makes him invulnerable to the attacks of his spir
itual foes. Says Paul: Be strong in the Lord, and in
the strength of His might. Take up the whole armour of
God, that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day,
and, having done all, to stand.1 Only 'in the Lord' is the
believer strong. Only when his loins are girded with
truth, when he puts on the breastplate of righteousness,
when his feet are shod with the preparation of the gospel
of peace, when he takes up the shield of faith, aud wears
the helmet of salvation, and wields the sword of the Spirit,
which is the word of God; then only is he a conqueror,
' Eph. vi. 10-20.

2 357.] Sanctification. 769
and more than a conqueror, 'through Him that loved
us." §357-
Being a process of conformity to the image of Christ
and of purification from the defilements of sin, sancti
fication involves degrees and stages. Among these we
may distinguish the potential beginning, the actual
development and the final consummation. In every
period the process of growing holiness must be con
sidered under its positive and negative forms.
1. The beginning and primary stage of sanctification
coincide with the birth of the Spirit into the kingdom of
God. Infants and believing adults are by this transition
made holy; not holy in personal character, but holy by
position and consecration. Separated by the Spirit from
the kingdom of falsehood, they are delivered from its
dominion; translated by the Spirit into the kingdom of
truth, they are planted in the soil of positive Christian
holiness; ingrafted into the Christian Church, they
become partakers with the fruit-bearing branches ' of the
root and of the fatness of the olive tree,' Jesus Christ.2
The new position in the kingdom conditions right action
and character. Not itself holy character, this position is
the vital possibility of the formation and development of a
holy character.
When a man is inducted into a civil office he is invested
with the rights and the possibilities of the office. Inves
titure is the primary necessity. If he has not the place he
cannot perform its functions. Whether the position will
inure, to his honor or dishonor depends on his ability and
fidelity. 1 Rom. viii. 37. "Romans xi. 13-24.
49

770 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
The position of grace acquired by translation of the
Spirit into the kingdom is potential. The person occupies
objectively the true relation to Christ; he stands in the
environment of a holy commonwealth which supplies all
the conditions of actual sanctification. Neither the spirit
ual environment nor the requisite conditions are accessible
to one who refuses to be a member of this commonwealth;
any more than that the prerogatives of citizenship in the
American Republic can be asserted by an alien.
2. The second period of sanctification is the actual de
velopment of the spiritual possibilities of the supernatural
relation to Christ in the kingdom of the Spirit. The life
in Christ reveals its sanctity by the exercise of faith, by
love to Christ, by Christ-like service done to men, and by
consequent hatred to sin. There is a free self-determina
tion of personality according to ' the law of the Spirit of
life in Christ Jesus.' This period in the history of the
Christian is the stage to which the term sanctification is
especially applicable.
The human will chooses the divine good. A sense of
responsibility to God prevails. The holy position is re
solved into righteous conduct. Consecrated personality
passes into spiritual experience aud righteous habits.
Ideal Christian character is in process of formation. At
every step the two forms of sanctification are active, and
are to be duly emphasized: transformation into the image
of Christ, and deliverance from the power and pollution
of sin. Progress under both aspects of sanctification der
pends on the normal action of the Christian will, or of true
freedom, The action of the Holy Spirit through the means of
.grace in and upon the members of the kingdom is the

2 357-] Sanctification. 771
primary and constant factor; but the effectiveness of the
Spirit anticipates the responsive action of faith and devo
tion. Endowed with relative autonomy, man is a self-
determining agent; he holds the key of the door of
approach to the recesses of personality. Transforming
grace can operate in the depths of his ethical being and
shape his spiritual character only in the degree that he by
personal faith freely appropriates Christ to himself and
makes Him the interior law of moral action. Responding
from the heart to the sanctifying virtue of the Spirit the
believer is made conformable, and he conforms himself, to
the image of Christ.1 So in his relation to sin. Only in
so far as by the action of his will he turns against sin,
hating its sinfulness, abhorring its vileness, does the
emancipating and purifying virtue of the Holy Spirit take
effect in experience and character. Otherwise the saving
virtue of grace does not-work in a member of the king
dom, but operates rather upon him. The connection
between the kingdom and himself is external rather than
internal ; and sanctification is formal and nominal rather
than real and personal.
The process of sanctification in the history of the faith
ful Christian goes forward continuously during his entire;
earthly life. If the process be normal, if perseveringly
responsive to the work of the Spirit, he grows in positive
holiness as he grows older in years. The image of Christ
he reflects more and more perfectly; and he acquires-'
stronger and wiser control over 'the law of sin which is in
his members.' When he attains to a full age he may be'
' like as a shock of corn cometh in in its season,'2 ready to
be gathered into the granary of the Lord. Or like the
'Phil. iii. 10; Rom. viii. 29. 2Job v. 26.

772 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [books.
aged Paul when the probability of martyrdom confronted
him, he may anticipate his departure with the exclama
tion of triumph: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown
of righteousness, which 4:he Lord, the righteous Judge,
shall give to me at that day.1 «
From the beginning to the consummation of the process
on earth the positive and negative forms of sanctification,
at every step, include and condition each other.
3. The stage of completed sanctification opens, under
one view, when the believer quits the present world;
under another view, at the resurrection of the last day.
In the epoch of transition from the earthly to the post-
earthly period ' the body of sin is done away;'2 the internal
connection of believers with the kingdom «of darkness
ceases; and the process of purification from moral evil is
superseded. But the positive communion in the Spirit with Christ
during the intermediate state advances normally and be
comes more vigorous. The new life ripens toward the
fruit of consummate holiness. Till then life is only
relatively mature, its possibilities only partially actualized;
and therefore in its attributes and forms of manifestation
it is not in the final sense perfect.
What the apostle Paul says of the members of Christ
during their earthly experience, may in a modified sense
be predicated of them during their entire history prior to
the second advent: their life is hid with Christ in God.
When Christ, their life, shall be manifested, then shall
they also with Him be manifested in glory.3
' '2 Tim. iv. 7, 8. 2Rom. vi. 6; Col. ii. 11.
8 Col. iii. 3, 4 ; 1 John iii. 2.

2358.] The Christian Victory. 773

CHAPTER X.
THE CHRISTIAN VICTORY.
§358.
The exit of ' the spiritual man ' from the present
world and the exit of ' the natural man ' are not in kind
the same.
The exit of each is an epoch in the history of human
existence. Neither is the extinction or cessation of
being ; .but the one is an epoch governed by the law
of life in Christ Jesus, whilst the other is an epoch' de
termined by the operation of the law of sin.
1. The exit of ' the natural man ' is properly denoted by
the 'word death. Death and sin as to kind are the same,
siu being the seed of death, death the bitter fruit of sin.
An epoch of transition from the present world to the
future world is not in itself abnormal nor unnatural.
Sound Christian speculation, justified by the history of the
Son of Man, may teach that a transition was ordained by
the divine idea of human history. It is typified by the
translation of Enoch and of Elijah, and demonstrated by
the ascension of our Lord.
That normal epoch of departure became abnormal in
consequence of the entrance of the vitiating power of sin;
and because abnormal, the change has the false character
which we call death. Death has a sting. The sting of
death is sin, aud the power of sin is the law. The poison
of this sting resolves the exit of the Adamic race into a
curse. Like his entire history, the transition of the
Adamic man to the future world is now contra-ideal.

774 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
2. The life of Jesus Christ, on the contrary, is the ideal
human life. He asserts the original law aud the original
teleology of man as formed in the image of God, both in
His history on earth and in His exit from the earth. His
exit was in one respect the normal epoch of transition
from the lower to the higher realm which the original
law of humanity anticipated and demanded. Considered
under this aspect, the epoch is to be regarded as the
organic resolution of the earthly order into the heavenly
order of ideal human existence.
By asserting and developing the true type and original
law of humanity, Christ supersedes and destroys the law
of sin; and in destroying the law of sin He abolishes that
false type of human existence which the law of sin has
generated, the false type as of man's history on earth so
also of his exit from the earth.
During His personal history in the flesh ideal human
life and fallen human life were in constant conflict; but at
every point ideal life was victorious. By doing the right
He overcame the wrong; by fulfilling the law of holiness
He vanquished the law of sin; by realizing the true type
of humanity He abolished the false type.
The same principle of judgment applies to the cross.
By maintaining the communion of love with God in His
humiliation and passion, His death under sin became an
epoch of judicial peace and of triumph over the curse.
Two things require emphasis. Jesus died under sin.
Identified with the Adamic race He subjected Himself to
the condemnation abiding on the race. For a time death
had 'dominion over Him.' In offering Himself on the
cross He also died unto sin. The subjection of Himself
to the condemnation of the law was by dying superseded,

235?-] The Christian Victory. \ 775
and His organic connection with the world of moral evil
was dissolved; dissolved, because whilst bearing 'our sins
in His body on the tree ' He at the same time fulfilled the
positive demands of the divine law and was realizing the
perfection of humanity, both His victory over sin and the
realization of man's perfection being demonstrated by His
resurrection from the dead. So St. Paul teaches: "Christ
being raised from the dead dieth no more; death no more
hath dominion over Him. For the death that He died,
He died unto siu once: but the life that He liveth, He
liveth unto God."1
3. The offering of Himself on the cross for the sins of
the world was in reality death, the curse entailed by sin;
and it was iu reality life, the resolution of the earthly into
the post-earthly form of ideal human existence.
This mystery, distinctive alone of the cross, is taught
by the apostle Peter when he says that Christ was "put
to death in the flesh but quickened in the spirit"2 The
word 'flesh' is not the equivalent of body considered by
itself; nor is the word ' spirit ' the equivalent of the soul
considered by itself. 'Flesh' denotes the truth that by
incarnation Christ 'became flesh,' identifying Himself
with the Adamic race. ' Spirit ' denotes the truth that in
being made man He created human nature anew in Him
self; He became 'a life-giving spirit' In one respect He
was flesh, in another respect He was spirit. 'Put to
death in the flesh ' teaches that in conformity to the law
of sin in Adamic humanity He died. 'Quickened in the
spirit' teaches that in conformity to the law of 'life-giv
ing spirit' His death under sin ^became an epoch of
triumph in the development of the new creation.
' Rom. vi. 8-10. 2 1 Pet. iii. 18.

776 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
Our Lord illustrates the union of these opposite forces
in Himself by His words to Philip aiid Andrew when they
came and told Him that certain Greeks would see Jesus.
Answering them He said: "The hour is come that the
Son of Man should be glorified. Verily, verily, I say
unto you, except a grain of wheat fall' into the earth and
die, it abideth by itself alone; but if it die, it beareth
much fruit"1 In a grain of wheat fallen into the earth
two laws are operative, the law of dissolution and the law
of reproduction. By the force of the one it ceases to be a
grain of wheat; it dies. By the force of the other it bears
much fruit; it lives and multiplies life. There is an
organic interaction of two laws, which issues in the tri
umph of life over death. So is the mystery of Christ
According to the law of ' the flesh ' He dies a real death
under condemnation. According to the new law of ' life-
giving spirit' He like a grain of wheat is quickened while
He dies; He not only surmounts death when He 'gives up
His spirit,' but He also advances into a new stage of
triumphant life. The mysterious process of the vegetable
kingdom our Lord employs to set forth the more mysteri
ous process of His spiritual kingdom. The one is a fact
confronting natural perception, the other a fact confront
ing spiritual perception. 1 John xii. 24.

2 359-] The Christian Victory. 777
§359-
Of Jesus Christ as the Head of the new race we
therefore predicate only life. "I am the life." By
the realization in humanity of the law of holiness Christ
annuls the law of sin; by quickening and perfecting
the eternal life Christ destroys death.
'The spiritual man,' being a member of the de
stroyer of sin and death, lives the life of the as
cended Conqueror. The end of his earthly history
is not death, but an epoch which on the one hand is
victory over the curse of sin, and on the other hand is
the transition from a lower to a higher plane of eternal
life. 1. Being members of Christ, the Author of eternal life,
Christians repeat in their experience the life-giving and
saving virtue of His mediatorship. As He asserted and
developed ideal human life, in conflict with the law and
curse of sin during His history on earth, so do His mem
bers in their earthly history develop the moral purity
and the divine spirituality of ' eternal life. ' Then in pass
ing out of this world they, upheld and determined and
fashioned by the principle of indestructible life, achieve in
themselves the triumph of the ' last Adam ' over the curse
entailed by the 'first Adam.'
We may distinguish at least three periods in the incar
nate history of our Lord: the first, from His conception
and birth to His death and burial; the second, from His
death and burial to His resurrection from the dead, em
bracing the silence of 'His grave' and the manifestation in
the world of departed spirits; the third, from His resur
rection and ascension onward, embracing the state of
exaltation in the glory of the Father.

778 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
The transition from the first period to the second was
an epoch in the victorious progress of the new creation.
The transition from the second period to the third was the
epoch of final triumph over the world, and of transforma
tion in body and soul into the ideal order of consummated
humanity. 2. The experiences aud achievements of Christ become
the experiences and achievements of His members. We
may therefore also distinguish three periods in the life of a
Christian. The first period of the ' eternal life ' of the Christian
begins with the birth of the Holy Spirit into the kingdom,
the period which embraces his entire history of repentance
aud faith, of self-denial, of warfare with moral and phys
ical evil, and of spiritual growth onward to the hour of
his departure. Though waging warfare with sin springing
up from within and assailing him from without, though
faith may seemingly be weak, and his character may
betray many flaws, yet the fundamental and distinguishing
factor in his history is the life-communion of faith with
the incarnate Son glorified.
The second period of the Christian's life corresponds to
and fulfils the second period of the victorious history of
Jesus Christ, beginning with the hour of his departure and
extending to the resurrection of the just at the second
advent. Though not the final plane, of perfected glorifica
tion, this intermediate age is a period of blissful fellowship
with Christ, interrupted by no conflict with the powers of
evil, a period of heavenly growth in the possession of
ineffable good.
The third period of Christian life corresponds to the
exaltation and glorification of Jesus Christ. It begins

?359-] The Christian Victory. 779
with the resurrection at the last day, when the members
of the kingdom will accede to the glory of the life eternal
which the Son had with the Father before the world was.
The beginning of each of these periods is an epoch
which, as set forth by the New Testament, is of the
nature of birth. The first beginning is/ a birth into the
kingdom of God. The third is birth into the ultimate
glory of the same kingdom. Neither of these beginnings
now requires discussion. It is the second epoch which we
have here further to consider, the point of transition from
the first period into the second period of life in Christ,
commonly called death.
This epoch of transition we cannot study, guided either
by physics or metaphysics. The event so universal, yet so
inscrutable to natural intuition and the common under
standing, we can approximately judge only by the criterion
given by the Son of Man, who is the only true type as of
humanity so also of every epoch in the development of life-
communion with Himself.
3. There is a sense in which the believer departs this"
life under sin. Though a member of Christ, he is also
during this earthly history a member of ' the first Adam.'
The dominion of sin is broken, but the law of sin is not
utterly abolished. Moral evil is a force in the spontaneous
motions of personality and in forms of outward conduct,
disturbing peace of mind and marring the symmetry of
righteous character. What the prophet predicts of the
' righteous servant ' of God describes the attitude of many
Christians : he hath no form nor comeliness; and when we
see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
Following the teaching of the 7th chapter of Romans, we
may predicate of him a history shaped by organic connec-

780 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
tion with ' the first man,' and a history quickened and gov
erned by connection in the Spirit with 'the Second Man.'
This two-fold connection continues in force from year to
year, producing contradictory phenomena, as through his
earthly history so also at its close. Sickness and pain, old
age and decrepitude, may mark his advancing years. He
experiences the decline of natural vitality, he suffers the
dissolution of his earthly body. As Christ's death was a
death 'under sin,' so in one respect is the death of the
Christian. The latter resembles the former. The re
semblance is, however, internal and mystical rather than
external ; and it obtains under the positive aspect of his
departure rather than under its negative aspect.
Having become a curse for us, Christ resolved the curse
into blessing. For Him evil was converted into good. So
for the Christian. Crucified with Christ and sharing the
virtue of His propitiation, the Christian by union to Him
in the Spirit experiences the evil of the curse transmuted
into blessing. Put to death in the flesh,, but quickened in
' the spirit, Christ resolved death into the epoch of victorious
life. So we believe respecting the Christian. In his last
hour he realizes the sin-destroying and death-conquering
vitality of the victory achieved by Christ. Of a member
of Christ, therefore, we have to teach that in the hour of
departure he surmounts his personal connection with the
sinfulness of the Adamic race. Says Delitzsch:
" It must be assumed that the spiritual life, begotten and nourished in us
by word and sacrament, is in itself actually sufficiently powerful to break
forth in the view of the manifest reality of that which has been believed
here below with such intensity, that it drives out the sin which is still
dwelling in human nature, even to the last trace of its consequences.'"
' System of Biblical Psychology, p. 488.

?36o.] The Christian Victory. 781
4. Accordingly the doctrine respecting Christian death
has to proceed a step further and maintain that, like the
death of Christ, the departure of the Christian is a death
unto sin. When Christ offered Himself on the cross, His
organic connection with the world of moral evil was dis
solved. So His members in the crisis of departure, like a
child in the crisis of natural birth, undergo a thorough
transformation. What the dissolution of His internal
connection with the world of moral evil was for Him, that
their dissolution in Him is for# them. For both the law
of triumph is the same. In dying He destroyed death in
its relation to Himself. So by the transforming virtue
of His victorious life they in the act of dying destroy
death in its relation to themselves. "Our old man was
crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be done
away, that so we should no longer be in bondage to sin ;
for He that hath died is justified from sin."1 This law of
emancipation from bondage to sin is triumphant in the
hour of transition. Being members of the sin-destroying
Mediator, their birth -like transformation wrought by His
life in their departure is .the fruit of the triumph over sin
and death which He achieved. § 36°-
This conception respecting the victorious departure
of the members of Christ is the equivalent of the doc
trine of the Reformed Church as taught by the Heidel
berg Catechism.
The doctrine is warranted by the teaching of the
New Testament, especially by the words of our Lord
as recorded in the Gospel by St. John.
1. To the Question : Since then Christ died for us, why
'Romans vi. 6, 7.

782 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
must we also die? the Answer says: "Our death is not a
satisfaction for our sin, but only a dying to sins and
"entering into eternal life."1
'Our death,' according to this teaching, is an epoch
characterized by the operation of ' the law of the Spirit of
life ' in construction and destruction.
In its relation to the transcendent plane of fellowship
with Christ, the law of the Spirit is constructive. De
parture from the earth is an event in the progress of
'eternal life,' a decisive epoch in the history of 'the new
man.' A child is born because the development of indi
vidual life has come to the point of embryonic maturity,
when the relative perfection of individual life supersedes
and abolishes all pre-natal conditions. What Paul says
of the resurrection of the righteous is in principle true of
the righteous when at their departure the new life in
Christ breaks the shell of the earthly tabernacle, namely,
'death is swallowed up in victory.'2 This positive truth
is called an 'entering into eternal life,' an expression
which must be construed consistently with the fact of the
resurrection of the dead and the final judgment3 'Enter
ing into eternal life ' means access to the stage of spiritual
maturity attainable before the second advent, not ' the
heavenly joy and glory' following the final consummation.
'Our death is a dying to sins' because it is an 'entering
into eternal life.' In its opposite relation to sin the law
of the Spirit is destructive. It sets the members of Christ
'free from the law of sin and death.' Destructive the law
of the Spirit is because in its relation to the post-earthly
fellowship with Christ it is constructive. The inherited
bond of connection with moral evil and with the kingdom
1 Heid. Cat., 42. 2 Is. xxv. 8 ; 1 Cor. xv. 54. 3 Heid. Cat., 52.

?36o.] The Christian Victory. • 783
of darkness is dissolved, not because siu exhausts its
power, nor because dying can effect a change in our judi
cial standing before God, but because the departure of
Christ's members is an epoch of transition which is of
the nature of birth. As the exit of Christ is the type and
law of the exit of His members, we are warranted in be
lieving that they in the article of death die unto sin after
the manner in which He in passing through His death
resolved His organic connection with sin and surmounted
the realm of darkness.
2. The foundation of this doctrine respecting Christian
victory in the article of death, is the person of Jesus Christ.
He says: "I am the life.'" Being the life, He imparts
Himself as life to His people. "I came that they may
have life, and may have it abundantly."2 He has power.
to lay down His life for the sheep, and power to take
it again. In accordance with this truth respecting Him
self, He says: "I am the resurrection and the life: he that
believeth on me, though he die, yet shall he live: and
whosoever liveth and believeth on me shall never die."3
Using different imagery He says: " I am the living bread
which came down out of heaven: if any, man eat of this
bread, he shall live for ever." "Verily, verily, I say unto
you, if a man keep my word he shall never see death." 4
It does not answer to the import of the context nor
to the general tenor of the New Testament, especially of
the Gospel by John, to interpret the word 'die' to mean
only physical death, and the word ' live ' to mean only
spiritual life. Man is the indissoluble unity of body and
soul. As the seat of sin is in his spiritual being, not in
'John xiv. 6; i. 4. 2John x. 10.
"John xi. 25, 26. *John vi. 51 ; viii. 51.

784 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
his physical nature, there is no spiritual death that is not
also physical, the spiritual being bound up with the phys
ical by the unity of manhood; and there is no physical
death that is not also spiritual, the physical being rooted
in the spiritual. The law of sin immanent in the soul of
the members of the Adamic race involves the body; and
the law of death as it prostrates the body presupposes the
principle of death falsifying the life of the soul. "The
mind of the flesh is death. ' ' '
So as regards victory over death. There is no participa
tion of ' the new man ' iu the life of Christ that is not both
psychical and physical; for spiritual birth into the kingdom
is the potential beginning of a manhood that has life in
'abundance.'2 Communion with the risen Christ is life, life without
death. "The mind of the spirit is life." Like Lazarus
of Bethany, a man may die according to the law of death
immanent in the Adamic race; yet he that believeth on
Christ, though he die, shall live the life of Christ, a life
which is victory over the law of sin in soul and body.
And, like Martha and Mary, whoever are alive on earth
and are believers in Christ, shall not die the Adamic death,
but in soul and body they shall live the new triumphant
life in the very article of seeming death.
Indirect support of no little force is given by Paul to the
doctrine that the exit of the Christian is the dissolu
tion of the connection of ' the spiritual man ' with the
' natural man ' when, speaking of those believers who will
be alive on earth at the second coming of Christ, he says:
" Behold, I tell you a mystery : We shall not all sleep, but we shall all
be changed, in a moment in the twinkling of an eye, at the last trump :
1 Rom. viii. 6. 2John x. 10.

?36o.] The Christian Victory. 785
for the trumpet shall sound, and the dead shall be raised up incorruptible,
and we shall be changed."'
The dead shall be raised incorruptible. Believers who
have not died, but are awaiting the coming of the Lord in
the natural body, shall all be changed. The great trans
formation will be instantaneous, "in a moment, in the
twinkling of an eye."
From the instantaneous change wrought in the consti
tution of believers alive in the natural body at the Lord's
coming, we may reason to the dissolution of the old man
' in a moment ' by the Spirit of life in the epoch of transi
tion from the earthly to the post-earthly fellowship with
_ Christ. Purification from moral evil is superseded and
transcended. Growth in the vigor of the holy life of love
in communion with God in Christ progresses in ideal form.
3. If we accept this doctrine of the New Testament
respecting the Christian victory, it will follow that it is an
error to regard the exit of ' the spiritual man ' and
the exit of ' the natural man ' as constitutionally the
same. Whether we judge the departure of the two classes
physically or metaphysically, the logic of Christian reve
lation justifies us in affirming that there is a difference not
only in experience, but especially in kind, as wide as the
difference -of the new race from the old race. In the old
race the law of sin is dominant in the article of death; in
the new race the law of sin is in this epoch of 'eternal
life' abolished.
It is a still more serious error to judge the exit of the
Christian chiefly under its negative aspect, as being only
the dissolution of body and soul. Since man is an organic
unity the body is as essential to his integrity as the soul;
'1 Cor. xv. 51, 52.
50

786 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
not the earthly or material structure, but the type and law
of the organism.
The somatic principle is an integral factor of the human
constitution as really as the psychic principle; rather may
we say that the embryonic beginning is a unity which of
necessity develops into body, soul aud spirit, each of
which is essential to a human being. If death were an
absolute dissolution of these essential constituents, a
severance of the psychic principle from the somatic prin
ciple, mau's existence would cease, and death would be
another name for annihilation.
Death, an epoch embracing the soul as well as the body,
is the birth of the individual into the post-earthly realm. .
If we fix thought chiefly on the outward phenomena of
material dissolution, if we fail to make due account of
the constructive and formative power of the Spirit of life
active in this mysterious change, Christian judgment re
specting the departure of 'the spiritual man' will be
seriously at fault. Even our judgment of material disso
lution will be defective; for the positive and transforming
energy of spiritual life in the article of transition is its
principal factor.
When the young bird is mature it breaks the shell of
the egg in which it has been developed. The shell is
broken because the form of life is too vigorous for confine
ment within its walls. Analogous is the death of the
Christian. He reaches the point in his history when 'the
earthly house ' is no longer his fit tabernacle. Then ' the
earthly house of this tabernacle is dissolved.' If we judge
of his departure only by the dismantling of the earthly
house, we shall as really come short of the scriptural con
ception respecting the epoch of transition as if we should

?36i.] The Christian Victory. 7S7
judge the history of an egg by the breaking of the shell.
The crucifixion of Christ, as demonstrated by the resur
rection, is to be accepted as the law of judgment respect
ing the exit of the Christian. If reflection be governed by
this law, we shall look chiefly on the positive, triumphant
and transforming factor. Then the fall of the earthly
house will be seen to be only a condition incident to the
erection of the building from God a house not made with
hands, eternal in the heavens. ¦ § 361.
The objection of materialism in its bearing on the
Christian victory requires some consideration.
The brain and nervous system are present conditions of
consciousness. Materialism draws the inference that when
the existing physical organism perishes consciousness
must cease. This inference is not logical, for the reason
that the assumptions which it presupposes are unwarranted.
The objection assumes that -the material body is the
only condition of personal consciousness. The assumption
overlooks the truth that the soul is itself the principal con
dition of willing and knowing. The life of the soul
conditions the normal functions of the body more really
and fundamentally than the brain and nervous system
condition the normal functions of the soul. Did the soul
not reciprocate the action of the body, the material organi
zation would not be distinguished by the phenomena of
personality. If there be a basis for the science of physiological
psychology, there is also a basis, a more solid basis, for a
psychological physiology. If it be true that we must
know the functions of the body in their relations to the

788 Doctrine on Personal Salvation. [book 8.
soul in order to develop a true psychology, it is more cer
tainly true that we have to know the functions of the soul
in order to get a thoroughly scientific conception of the
body. Says the Duke of Argyll:
"A profound interest attaches to every new fact which connects to
gether the parallel phenomena of mind and organization. But it is the
phenomena of mind, and it is these alone of which we are directly cogni
zant, and it is from these that we must start as the basis of all psycholog
ical research. This is true even of those phenomena of mind which are
most purely animal. * * * * Still more is this true of the intellect
ual powers. Yet there are philosophers that appear to think that some
new light is cast upon sensation when they call it an affection of the
' Sensory Ganglia;' that thought is in some measure explained when it is
called 'Cerebration,' and that the laws of the intellect are reducible to
scientific expression when they are described as the working of the
' Cerebral Ganglia.' All this is mere idle play on words. It is an attempt
to put that first which must be last, and that last which must come first."1
Materialism also assumes that existing corporeity is the
only possible bodily organization. Ignoring the philor
sophical anthropology of Christianity, the assumption
overlooks the truth that the departure of the Christian is
not an absolute dissolution of soul and body, but an epoch
in the history of the whole manhood of man, in which the
law of dissolution is supplanted by the law of a recon
structive life, embracing the body no less than the soul.
The earthly constitution is, after the manner of an organ
ism, resolved into the post-earthly constitution. Personality
constructs for itself a form of existence answerable to the
advanced stage of fellowship in the Spirit with Christ, a
dictum which is supported by the known phenomena of
psychological life. 1 The Reign of Law, pp. 167, 168.

BOOK NINTH.
ESCHATOLOGY: OR DOCTRINE ON THE
LAST THINGS.

CHAPTER I.
THF FIRST AND THE LAST.
§ 362-
The aim of eschatology is to develop a doctrine on
those coming events which are last in the history
of the kingdom of God. Last they are in point of
time, and as the consummation of creation, providence
and redemption.
Respecting these last events, the science seeks to
construct a conception that will be consistent with the
Christoeentric principle and with all branches of
Christological theology.
1. Those coming events which eschatology studies are
called 'last,' because in point of time they are the closing
events of the kingdom.
The 'last things' do not close the Messianic eon merely
in consequence of a divine decree; neither are they con
nected with antecedent events after an external manner,
like the last with the first links of a chain. In their order
they are not held by the divine will operating upon the
world and upon the Church.
The relation is internal and dynamic. The thing
which is last in the history of Christianity is vitally con
nected with the thing which is first. The last is the
product, the ripe fruit of the development and progress
extending through all the ages, and is to be viewed as the
realized fulness of the beginning. The relation of the end
to the beginning is like the relation which the maturity of
(79i)

79 2 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
manhood bears to the crudeness of infancy, or the glorifi
cation of the Son of Man to His life on earth.
2. Theological science commonly speaks of the final
consummation by the use of the plural number. It
teaches a doctrine respecting ' the last things, ' not respect
ing the last thing.
If eschatology be constructed from the Christoceutric
principle this mode of representation becomes inaccurate.
The final consummation of history does not consist of
¦many coordinate events. The end corresponds to the
beginning, that which is the last to that which is the
first. As regards the beginning of Christianity we do not
. use the plural number. We do not speak of the first
things in revelation and redemption, whether we refer to
the Christian or the pre-Christian economy; and we do
not, for the reason that Messianic revelation does not begin
in many facts or in many promises. So neither does the
history of the kingdom of God conclude in maiiy things.
The life of Christianity begins in one dynamic fact; so
does the history of Christianity reach its ultimate conclu
sion in one dynamic fact. In this respect the history of
the Christian economy is like the history of the pre-
Christian economy. s
Pre-Christian Messianic revelation began with the one
word of promise spoken in Eden concerning the Seed of
the woman. That order of revelation also completed its
history in one reality, the fulfilment of the Messianic
promise, the advent of the Son of God in the person of
Jesus of Nazareth. The fulfilment of the protevangel, of
the Abrahamic covenant and of Old Testament prophecy
in the person of the Word who 'became flesh,' is the one
mystery which closes the antecedent ages of Messianic

§362.] The First and the Last. 793
history and Messianic prophecy. In closing the ante
cedent ages the mystery of the incarnation opens the
entire subsequent series of events which enter into the
completed Messianic revelation. This central crisis of
history does not consist of many events animated by a
common spirit and governed by a common aim, but in
Him who, though of twofold nature, is one person. In-His
life and mediatorship the old order of Messianic revelation
which is typical aud shadowy passes away, and the new
order which is veritable and substantial is brought into
existence. 3. Ruled by the same law of truth, the entire. history of
the kingdom of God likewise terminates in the glory of a
person. That term is the mystery of the second advent.
This one sublime impending reality in which all history,
Christian and pre-Christian, sacred and profane, completes
its development is the consummation as of the Church
militant so also of the history of the world.
So the second advent is represented by the New Testa
ment. Our Lord teaches this idea of the consummation
in His parables concerning the judgment under the im
agery of a shepherd dividing his sheep from the goats;1 of
the ten virgins who went forth to meet the bridegroom;2
and of a certain nobleman who went into a far country to
receive for himself a kingdom. Calling ten servants, he
gave them ten pounds, saying, Trade ye herewith till I
come.3 In these as in other parables His second coming
is the central and decisive event. On their relation to
Himself at His coming depend the character and destiny
of helievers and unbelievers.
The same conception comes to view in the Epistles.
'Matt. xxv. 31-46. 2Matt. xxv. 1-13. 3 Luke xix. 11-27.

794 Doctrine on the Last Things. [B00K9.
The second advent is the object of aspiration and hope in
the teaching of all the apostles. They look for the
blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God
aud Saviour Jesus Christ1 Paul affirms that when Christ,
who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also
with Him be manifested in glory;2 and that for him there
is laid up a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the
righteous Judge, shall give to him at that day: and not
only to him, but also to all them that have loved His
appearing.3 According to Hebrews Christ, having been
once offered to bear the sins of many, shall appear a second
time, apart from sin, to them that wait for Him, unto
salvation.4 John teaches that it is not yet made manifest
what we shall be; but we know that, if He shall be mani
fested, we shall be like Him; for we shall see Him even as
He is.5 With the same explicit emphasis does the book
of Revelation challenge our faith by setting before us this
cardinal truth. One like unto the Son of Man is ' the
first and the last, and the living one: I was dead, and
behold, I am alive unto the ages of the ages, and I have
the keys of death and of Hades.' 'He that overcometh,
I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I
also overcame, and sat down with my Father iu His
throne.'6 The book concludes with the emphatic declara
tion of Jesus by the mouth of His angel 'sent to testify
these things for the churches:' "Behold, I come quickly;
and my reward is with me, to render to each man accord
ing as his work is. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the
first and the last, the beginning and the end.'"
'Tit. ii. 13. 2Col. iii. 4. '2 Tim. iv. 8.
* Heb. ix. 28. • °i John iii. 2.
6 Rev. iii. 21 ; i. 18 ; ii. 8. Cf Rev. xxi. 6. 'Rev. xxii. 12, 13.

§363.] The First and the Last. 795
Accordingly we may define eschatology in more precise
terms by saying that it is that branch of Christian Dog
matics which constructs the doctrine concerning Jesus, the
incarnate Sou of God glorified, coming again to consum
mate His mediatorship. It has to do not chiefly with the
last things, ™ loxara, nor yet with the last thing, to loxaTov,
but it studies and represents Him who is the last One,
6 iaxaTog. Eschatology aims at formulating a scriptural
doctrine concerning the office and work of Jesus Christ
completing in Himself the old creation and the new crea
tion, redeemed from the dominion and the iniquity of sin.
§363-
The parousia is not an isolated nor an unrelated
event. Being the ultimate and central fact of the
consummation it embraces all other concluding events
with which it is dynamically connected. Of these
connected events we think in the light of the central
fact. 1. Connected events take place some before the parousia
whilst others follow after; but all, whether they precede or
succeed it, are vitally related to and contingent on the one
great central event, their form and substance depending
upon it somewhat as the force of the words and clauses of
a proposition depend upon the leading conception.
Therefore we do not reason from these attendant events
to the fact or significance of the parousia, but we reason
in the reverse order. The idea of the second coming of
the Son of Man in glory must determine a Christological
doctrine respecting other closing facts of history. Neither
the resurrection of the dead nof the judgment nor a doc
trine of heaven or hell, can afford us a true insight into
the nature of the consummation. Of heaven, for example,

796 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
we cannot form a scriptural conception by reflection on
heaven, unless we study its nature in its immediate con
nection with Him who is the author of its blessedness and
apart from whom there can be no heaveu for a fallen race.
It is the parousia, the central and ruling truth of the con
summation, which in the sphere of doctrine must be the
principle of inquiry.
The relations of the second advent are like the relations
of the first advent. The idea of Jesus, the incarnate Son,
living amid persecution" on earth, and fulfilling His media
torial work by His crucifixion and His resurrection, has to
govern our interpretations of the Old Testament, of the
vocation of the chosen people, of the typology of their
history and ritual, of the teaching of their prophets, and has
especially to afford us an insight into the necessity and the
conditions of the abrogation of the pre-Christian dispensa
tion. So the idea respecting the incarnate Son, Head
over all things unto the Church, coming from heaven to
judge the quick and the dead, must inform and control
every other eschatological doctrine. As the parousia is
the key to unlock the hidden meaning of history, so it
becomes the law of thought respecting the resurrection pf
the dead and the issues of the final judgment.
2. The first advent and the second advent being sepa
rated in time, are to be clearly distinguished the one from
the other; but in their essence the two events are the same,
the second being the fulfilment and realization of the first.
The first in relation to us is historical, the second is pro
phetic. Whilst the first confronts faith in the character
of actual fact, the second .is an impending reality awaken
ing faith under the form of anticipation and hope. For
this reason eschatological doctrine is not to be developed

1 363. J The First and the Last. 797
exclusively from a study of the prophetic teachings of the
Old or New Testament Whilst the riches of New Testa
ment prophecy are not to be undervalued, it is New
Testament history which forms the important basis of
trustworthy inquiry. As Old Testament facts are typical
of the first advent, so are New Testament facts typical of
the second advent.
Jesus Christ in the form of His twofold history, His
humiliation and His exaltation, is the matrix of the gen
eral idea respecting Jesus Christ coming again in glory.
As He was living on earth, as He now is ever living at
God's right hand, we know Him; we know Him through
the teaching of the Spirit by faith. We know Him con
ceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary;
we know Him crucified, dead and buried; we know Plim
risen from the dead, ascended to heaven and glorified.
What He was as to His constitution, as to the purpose of
His mediatorship and His relations to sinful mankind, He
is now; what He is now He will be; for Jesus Christ is the
same yesterday and to-day, yea and unto the ages.1 Be
cause of such historical knowledge we may also have some
true knowledge of Him as He will be manifested at the
last day.
Though our historical knowledge of Christ is the trust
worthy basis and becomes the law of thought respecting
the interpretation of New Testament prophecy, the historic
conception and the prophetic conception are not equally
clear and definite. The second advent is an impending
reality, a prospective manifestation. Present indeed even
now is the second advent in the Church and in the
world, present as a dynamic force working in the develop-
'Heb. xiii. 8.

798 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
ment of all lines of history, just as the blossom is in the
bud and the' fruit in the blossom. But until the parousia
becomes an actual manifestation, when the potential will
be the realized fact, the anticipation will of necessity be
more or less vague, aud be wanting iu completeness.
Doctrines respecting the birth, death and resurrection of
Christ possess a measure of definiteness and fulness which
we may not expect to attain in the doctrinal construction
of eschatological events. In the nature of the case, how
ever, it cannot be otherwise than that Christological truth
will ever involve the possibility of correct insight into the
closing events of the kingdom. Since the incarnation
and the parousia are connected facts iu the history of the
same personality, faith looking beyond the historical may
contemplate the second advent in the light and according
to the law of the first; but our knowledge of the consum
mation will ever be rather of the nature of prophetic
vision than have the clearness aud certainty of historical
apprehension. 3. Though eschatological knowledge is necessarily
somewhat speculative it does not follow that the doctrine
concerning the parousia and concomitant events is un
trustworthy. Our conceptions developed from the typol
ogy aud prophecies of the New Testament are not con
jectures, not fanciful imagery.
To the final consummation of the Church militant we
stand related somewhat as Isaiah and other spiritually-
minded Israelites stood related to the conclusion of the
Mosaic economy. Only the advent of the Messiah in the
person of the Son of Man could illumine the ceremonial
law and the Old Testament Church, and so illumine them
as to make the deepest meaning of the pre-Christian

2364.] The First and the Last. 799
revelation intelligible. Yet with such a measure of pre
cision and fulness did the pre-Christian dispensation,
including the law, cultus and prophecy, set forth by word
and in symbol the unique office and character of the
Messiah, the promised Son of David, that for a faithful
Jew, like Simeon, it was possible, to form an anticipation
of the future glorious fact containing essential elements
of the truth.
So are we related to the final consummation. The
second advent is in such way connected with the first
advent that the first is for us the true type of the second.
The Son of God who has come in the flesh adumbrates the
Son of Man coming in glory. Hence if we study New
Testament prophecy iu the light of New Testament his
tory, just as a spiritually-minded Israelite, like Isaiah or
David, might study Old Testament prophecy in the light
of Old Testament history, we may construct a doctrine
respecting the ultimate triumph of Christ which, though
but partially satisfactory, will nevertheless as to its essen
tial contents be valid. To say the least, our eschatological
anticipation may answer more correctly to the truth of the
impending reality than did the Messianic conceptions of
Old Testament prophets answer to the actual history of
the Messiah and the character of His kingdom.
On the basis of this general principle I propose to
enquire into the nature of the second advent and of all
events therewith connected. §364-
The Christological idea is the only valid principle of
enquiry into the nature of the 'last things.'
Christojogical theology must therefore take issue with

800 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
philosophy, whether natural or metaphysical, when it
attempts to solve the eschatological problem from the
standpoint of the natural reason. The attempt has been
and always will be ineffectual.
Philosophy has never been able, in the Christian sense,
to think a beginning of the world, nor has philosophy
ever been able to think its end.' Neither the beginning
of the existing cosmos by creation nor the end by trans
formation into ' the new heavens and the new earth ' is an
hypothesis of human reason or the product of logical
thought. The beginning and the end are both ideas
developed from Christian intuition, and by Christian
intuition these ideas are nourished. Moreover, logical
thought proceeding from the hypotheses of unchristo-
logical philosophy does not sustain either the one or the
other. Attempts to give the intuitive perception of the
Christian Church logical form in the sphere of uuchristo-
logical speculation, have terminated either in a categorical
negation of creation and of ultimate glorification, or in a
theory of the cosmos which is tantamount to negation.
As the idea of the transformation and glorification of the
world is not the product of human reason, so neither, when
revelation teaches the end of the existing order of things,
can the human reason, if relying on its hypotheses and
guided by its own light, determine the conditions aud the
character of the end. When the Christological idea is
ignored, speculation and the logical process are limited
and misled by the glimmering light of the finite universe
disorganized by contra-ideal forces. Reflecting on the
possibilities of the future from its own point of observa
tion, the reason of a Plato may dimly anticipate an age to
'Cf. Vol. 1., \ 159.

2364.] The First and the Last. 801
come better and brighter than the age which now is; but
reason does not rise to the perception of a transcendent eon
of the world, much less to a prophetic vision of its exist
ence and character. No imagination concerning the ripe
fruitage of Messianic history even approximately satisfies
the profound demands of personality. Those to whom
belief in the advent of the Son of God by conception and
birth is ' foolishness ' are consistent in holding that the
belief respecting the Son of Man coming ' a second time,
apart from sin,' to judge quick and dead also is 'fool
ishness.'1 As a consequence, no unchristological philosophy can
render the Christian Church material service in her eschat
ological enquiries. We are shut up to the rich resources
of the Christian creed. '1 Cor. ii. 14 ; Heb. ix. 28.
51

802 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.

CHAPTER II.
THE SECOND ADVENT.
§365-
The first advent constitutes an epoch in the history
of the past, but it has perpetual transforming spiritual
force in the Church and the world. The second advent
is a coming epoch that addresses the hope of Christian
faith. In one respect the outcome of the current age, that
epoch will introduce a new eon, different from and
opposite to the current Messianic age.
Different, the eon introduced by the second advent
will nevertheless be governed by the law of life under
lying and controlling Messianic history.
Opposite to the current eon it will be as regards its
moral and spiritual status, because wholly though not
absolutely new ; but between the future eon and the
present eon there can be no contradiction.
1. New for the Christian Church the second advent will
be in the sense that the Word made flesh was a new event for
the Old Testament Church. Inwardly connected with
the Abrahamic covenant, with the Mosaic economy and
with all pre-Christian revelation, the incarnate Son con
served the central principle of the Old Testament, and
actualized this principle in the mystery of a new person
ality. This new fact, whilst fulfilling the original promise
as neither Moses nor Aaron, neither Samuel nor David,
fulfilled it, surperseded and abolished the economy of
the promise. On the one hand the legitimate out
growth of the Abrahamic covenant, Jesus of Nazareth

8365.] The Second Advent. 803
was on the other hand more and other than the product
of a law immanent iu the history of the chosen people.
When the fulness of the time had. come there was a
new movement of the Spirit of God in His covenant
people towards the world. The life of Jesus was the per
sonal coming and the personal presence of the Sou of God
in the Son of Man, a mystery that presupposes a fresh
creative act of God, beginning a history of Messianic
revelation governed by a law and fashioned after a type
that had no existence before.
So is the second advent related to the Church militant.
It is the outgrowth of the current Christian eon, the pro
duct of the new law of life introduced into the world on
the day of Pentecost by the incarnate Sou glorified, a law
founded on His divine-human personality.
The parousia, however, is much more than the product
of Messianic history. The revelation will be the personal
advent of the God-man in heavenly glory. Like the birth
of our Lord, this ultimate epoch also involves a new
creative act, an act of the Head of the Church different
from every antecedent mode of manifestation, which will
establish an order of existence and effect a status of the
kingdom of God, fashioned after a type and governed by a
law that is not now operative.
The analogy of the first advent justifies us in affirming
another aspect of truth. In fulfilling the purpose of the
Christian economy and realizing the prospect of the Chris
tian faith, the parousia by the realization of the hope of
faith, will also transcend and abolish the present status of
the kingdom. , The current Christian eon will be super
seded by the second coining of the Son of Man, as the
entire pre-Christian economy was superseded by His first
coming, a truth which calls for further consideration.

804 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
2. The first advent and the second advent are analogous,
and shed light each on the other; but the difference
between the two advents is as great as the analogy is close.
In order rightly to grasp the distinctive significance of
the final epoch this difference requires emphasis.
The incarnation was the mystery of the Son of God
made man for us men. He living in the form of God came
into the world, taking the form of a servant. He who was
in the beginning with God, by whom and unto whom all
things were made, and in whom all things consist, He
came. It was the eternal personal Word, the prototype of
man, who came forth from the bosom of the uncreated
heavenly glory, and being made in the likeness of men,
and found in fashion as a man, entered really into the
existing order of the fallen world. Then as the last
Adam, the progenitor of the new race, having made atone
ment for sin and overcome death, He passed out of the
existing order of the world and returned unto the Father.
The name which is above every name having been givtn
unto Him, He is on the right hand of God, angels and
authorities and powers being made subject unto Him.1 Of
Himself He says: I came out from the Father, and am
come into the world; again, I leave the world, and go unto
the Father.2
The Son returns to the Father not as He came out from
the Father. He came out the Son of God; He returns the
incarnate Son, the God-man. As the incarnate Son, the
Word become flesh, He is now, during the progress of
the Christian eon, apart from the world, outside of the
unglorified order. He is with the Father, in the bosom
of the same uncreated glory whence He came forth to take
' Phil. ii. 5-11 ; I Peter iii. 22. 2 John xvi. 28.

§365.] The Second Advent. 805
the form of a servant1 Possessing all authority in heaven
and on earth, He sits at the right hand of the Father in
heavenly places, far above all rule, and authority, aud
power, and dominion, and every name that is named, not
only in this world, but also in that which is to come; all
things being put in subjection under His feet." Not present
among men under the limitations of 'the flesh,' of natural
human life, nor absent from the world by a local separation,
His will is nevertheless an immanent force in the world,
shaping and controlling its movements. Related to the
Church as the head is related to the body, He, though
seated on the throne, lives in the members of His body by
His Holy Spirit.
The presence in the world of the incarnate Son is on the
one hand internal. By the Spirit He abides in His mys
tical body. By the Spirit He upholds the world, and so
governs in it that all things work together toward His
second coming.
On the other hand His presence is also external and
governmental. Invested with the glory which He had
with the Father before the world was, He in heaven rules
over all things toward the recovery of the allegiance of
His enemies and for the defence and perpetuity of His
Church. Upholding and governing all things by immanent spir
itual force and by external governmental authority, Christ
is active in the universe and upon it with direct reference
to the consummation of the old, creation and of the new
creation in Himself.
'John xvii. 5. 2Eph. i. 21.

806 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
§366.
The second coming will therefore not be a repeti
tion of the first coming.
It will be a new movement : new in kind, new in its
relations, new as to its purpose.
1. The second advent will be a movement of the en
throned Christ new in kind.
His first coming was by conception of the Holy Spirit
and by birth of the lowly Virgin. The second coming
will be ' in His glory,' and He shall 'sit on the throne of
His glory.' : This manifestation will be the act, not of the
eternal Son, but of the eternal Son in perfected humanity.
It will be the revelation, not only of Him by whom all
things were made, but of Him who having made all things
has also resumed all things in Himself. For it is 'the
mystery of the will' of God the Father 'to sum up all
things in Christ, the things in the heavens and the things
upon the earth.'2 All things are summed up in Christ
1 Matt. xxv. 31.
2 Eph. i. 10. Tertullian: "The two letters of Greece, the first and the
last, the Lord assumes to Himself, as figures of the beginning and end
which concur iu Himself: so that, just as Alpha rolls on until it reaches
Omega, and again Omega rolls back till it reaches Alpha, in the same
way He might show that in Himself is both the downward course of the
beginning on to the end, and the backward course of the end up to the be
ginning; so that every economy, ending in Him through whom it began,
that is, through the Word of God who was made flesh, may have an end
correspondent to its beginning." — On Monogamy, Ch. v. Alford: "All
creation is summed up in Christ. * * The Church 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
Him."

§366.] The Second Advent. 807
iuasmuch as ' the word became flesh,' man being both the
image of the Sou and the head and lord of the mundane
economy. One with the natural world Christ is also one
with the supernatural order of absolute Spirit.
The second advent accordingly is the coming of One
who in His personal constitution organically unites the
creature with the Creator, the ideal cosmos with God.
He represents and in Himself connects two worlds, the
heavenly and the earthly, the eternal and the temporal.
Under one view above the time-world and ruling over it,
He under another view is vitally conjoined with the time-
world and in truth from within shaping its processes.
Supported by the typology of the New Testament we
are warranted in believing that the final epoch will prevail
under a twofold character: it will be transcendent and in
glory. The movement will be revealed in presence of heaven
and earth, a manifestation confronting, under a form not
now describable excepting under apocalyptic imagery, the
vision of angels and men. Transcendent, the coming will
at the same time be mystical and dynamic, an' irresistible
movement in the Church and in the world, an internal
energy felt by all men, felt among the living and among
the dead, determining the direction of their activity with
an all-controlling will towards the issues of the final day.
2. The second advent will be a movement of Christ
new in its relations.
The first advent of the Son of God by incarnation was
His entrance into the Abrahamic covenant, which was but
'a shadow of the good things to come,' and into a world
lying 'in the evil one,'1 subject to the law of sin and
* 1 John v. 19.

808 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
death. Here the god of this world had blinded the eyes
of the unbelieving. Here the disintegrating forces of
death were triumphant. The 'god of this world ' stood in
the attitude of victorious hostility to truth and to the ap
proaching kingdom of God. Even the faithful teachers of
the Jewish Church had mistaken error for the truth.
Hence the incarnate Son came in the character of Re
deemer and Saviour. His birth and personal history 'in
the flesh ' were determined by the law of humiliation.
Living under this law He was shut up to bearing the curse,
to a conflict with Satan in the dominions of Satan, and to
the necessity of overcoming sin in a humanity which had
become subject to the law of sin. "For ye know the grace
of our Lord Jesus Christ, that, though He was rich, yet for
your sakes He became poor, that ye through His poverty
might become rich.1" His mission it was to quicken
eternal life and redeem mankind in Himself. Therefore
He wrought on earth amid persecution, in poverty and
ignominy. He was despised and rejected of men ; a man
of sorrows and acquainted with grief; and as one from
whom men" hide their face He was despised, being without
form or comeliness.2
In complete contrast will be His relations to the Church
and the world at His second coming. He will come to a
world where the law of sin is broken, where the dominion
of Satan is in 'principle overthrown ; to a world of which
not Satan, but the Soil of Man 3 Himself is both the right
ful and the actual Lord. The new human race, the Church
of the living God, will go forth rejoicing as a bride to meet
her heavenly bridegroom.4 The old race fallen in Adam,
* 2 Cor. viii. 9. 2 Isaiah liii. 2, 3.
3 Matt. xiii. 41 ; xxv. 31. * Rev. xxi. 2, 9.

§366.] The Second Advent. 809
together with the thrones and dominions, the principalities
and powers of the unbelieving world, whether on earth or
under the earth, struck with terror, will quail before His
presence. The whole lower creation, in sympathy with
the original intent and the government of Christ, which
has been groaning and travailing in pain together until
now, waiting for the revealing of the sons of God, will at
the same time manifest profoundest sympathy with the
grand, triumphal approach of the King of saints; for the
creature itself also shall be delivered from the bondage of
corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of
God.1 The second coming will accordingly be ruled by the law
of exaltation. As enthroned above the world and reigning
over all its kingdoms, He will come. Arrayed with the
insignia of authority, of almighty power and acknowledged
victory, He will come. Present likewise by the Spirit in
the communion of the Church and immanent in nature,
He comes working in the sub-conscious life of His
mystical 'body' and in all the laws and relations of sub
human kingdoms. His people He inspires with the vision
of triumph. His enemies through the remaining native
sense of truth and right He forces to submission in con
fusion and shame.
3. The second advent will be a movement of Christ new
as to its purpose.
The first was a coming into the world to regenerate and
perfect, to redeem and sanctify mankind. The incarnate
Son became 'life,' and His life was the true light of men.2
Since the day of Pentecost living in His mystical body by
the Holy Spirit, He is to His members the perennial source
'Rom. viii. 18-23. 2John i. 4.

S i o Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
of life-communion with Himself and of salvation from
moral and physical evil. Through the agency of the
Church He is maintaining in the Adamic race the work of
regeneration and sanctification. This effective mediator-
ship now in progress looks forward to a glorious end to
be accomplished at the last day.
At His second advent He will appear, not to be despised,
but to be honored; not to suffer, but to judge; not to over
come death by His resurrection from the dead, but to
abolish death;1 not to introduce the principle of eternal
life in the midst of the dying world, but to emancipate
the members of the new race from all the limitations of
the current age; not to initiate a victorious conflict with
the kingdom of darkness, but to put an end to the exist
ing disorganization, transforming the cosmos into the new
heavens and the new earth; not to found the Church and
proclaim salvation, but to actualize the idea and fulfil the
teleological law of the Church in the post-mundane per
fection of His kingdom. §367-
Whilst the second advent will open the perfected
revelation of God, it will like the first advent be pre
ceded by conditioning events. There will be signs of
the end.2
The peculiar phenomena of the closing stage of his
tory will be the consequence of the dynamic presence
of Christ and the nearness of His final manifestation ;
and they will bear some resemblance to the phenomena
attending His birth and His life on earth.
Though preceded by extraordinary signs, neverthe
less when the final epoch opens it will be an unex
pected' manifestation ; and like 'the lightning, when it
1 1 Cor. xv. 26. 2 Matt. xxiv. 37-39.

1 367.] The Second Advent. 8 1 1
lighteneth out of the one part under the heaven, shin-
eth unto the other part under heaven,' it will at once
authenticate itself to the Church and the world.
The inference, however, may not be drawn that the
events attending the parousia will occupy only a brief
period, a day of our ordinary time.
1. Christ was born in the bosom of the Mosaic econ
omy. In the same economy He quickened eternal life and
wrought out redemption.
By virtue of the mystery that Jesus was born of the
Virgin and lived His life in the fellowship of the Mosaic
economy, that epoch in its history became its concluding
epoch. When the vine of the Lord's planting bore the
ripest cluster of grapes, this vine ceased to be a necessity
for the kingdom of God.1
By His ascension and glorification Christ put an end to
the economy in the bosom of which He was born, and
without which the necessary conditions of His sinless life
and atoning death would not have been. Not, however,
by an arbitrary or wilful act was it done away. By the
gift of the Holy Ghost proceeding from the Father and
the Son the kingdom of God in the form of the Christian
Church was founded ; and the founding of the kingdom,
which was the fulfilment of the Mosaic economy, abolished
the necessity and the spiritual value of that economy.
Analogous to the relation of Pentecost to pre-Christian
institutions will be the relation of the final advent to the
history of the Church militant.
2. As the Head of His mystical body and Lord over all
things, the coming Christ will manifest His presence in
the bosom of the existing time-world. When the branch
1 Ps. lxxx. 8, 9, 14.

8 1 2 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
of the fig tree is become tender and putteth forth its leaves,
ye know that the summer is nigh.1 Summer is known to
be uigh because the leaves of the fig tree announce its
approach. So there will be remarkable outward signs of
the unseen presence and the resistless approach of the
coming Christ.
Manifesting Himself as the true iax^og, the fulness of all
eons, Christ will consummate all divine creative and re
demptive activity in His personal glory; and by the act of
consummating creative and redemptive activity the cur
rent status of the Church and the present conditions of
the cosmos will be transcended and superseded. From the
confusion of this universal catastrophe He will, by a new
creative word, evoke the final transcendent status of His
kingdom, as from the destruction of Jerusalem the apos
tolic Church emerged, divested of the habiliments of
Judaism, clad in the robes of Christian truth and Christian
freedom. Then the bride of the Lamb, perfectly emanci
pated and consecrated, will be admitted to beatific fellow
ship with the heavenly bridegroom and will sit down with
Him to the marriage supper in glory.2
3. Though for ages the object of longing aud hope to
the righteous, the second coming, though preceded by ex
traordinary signs in the heavens and on the earth, will
nevertheless, like the flood to the antediluvians, be sudden
and unexpected to the world and the Church.
The Church will be habituated to patient suffering and
continual hoping from age to age. Often disappointed by
a superficial interpretation of the signs of the times she
will be disposed, as in time past so then, to look upon the
1 Matt. xxiv. 32. ' Rev. xix. 9.

§367.] The Second Advent. 813
coming day as indeed nigh at hand but not actually
present. At length when that final hour is struck, when the
glorious presence of the Bridegroom is announced, when
suddenly faith is changed into sight, hope into fruition,
the bride, though ready and waiting for His approach,
will be taken with joyous surprise.1
A different surprise will seize the unbelieving world.
As the reason of the natural man has always done, men
will ascribe premonitory convulsions, occurring iu sub
human kingdoms and among the nations of the earth, to
the operation of merely naturalistic causes. As wicked
men did in the apostolic age, they will pronounce the
promise of Christ's coining a vain and superstitious hope.
"In the last of the days mockers shall come with mock
ery, walking after their own lusts, and saying, where is
the promise of His presence? for, from the day that the
fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from
the beginning of the creation."2 Holding superficial
theories respecting the uniformity of the laws of nature,
convinced that all things must continue as they are now,
and absorbed in earthly pursuits and sensuous enjoyments,
eating aud drinking, marrying and giving in marriage,
they, like the scoffers when Noah predicted the flood or
like the apostate Jews when the destruction of Jerusalem
Was impending, will be struck with terror when at mid
night there is a cry, Behold, the bridegroom! Come ye
forth to meet Him.3 Conscious of helplessness and guilt
the enemies of Christ will "say to the mountains and to
the rocks, Fall on us, and hide us from the face of Him
'Matt. xxv. 1-13. 22Pet. iii. 3, 4. 8Matt. xxv. 6, 26-30.

8 14 Doctrine on the Last Things. [Book 9.
that sitteth on the throne, and from the wrath of the
Lamb."1 As the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah typifies the
destruction of Jerusalem, so does the destruction of Jerusa
lem, which engulfed in irrecoverable ruin the effete Jewish
polity, typify the effect of the second advent upon unbe
lieving men aiid the existing form of the cosmic economy.
4. The types and analogies afforded by the history of
revelation suggest the thought that ' the last things '
attending the second advent will extend through an in
definite period.
So the first advent justifies us in believing. From the
announcement by an angel to Zacharias respecting the
birth of John Baptist to the day of Pentecost, onward to
the overthrow of Jerusalem by Titus, when the Church
was released from the swaddling clothes of Judaism, there
is a period first of perhaps 34 years, altogether of 70 years,
embracing two generations, the whole of which was
crowded with extraordinary and momentous events. Like
the age of the first advent may be the age of the second
advent, an indefinite intermediate period between the
existing eon and the transcendent eon. Of the peculiar
nature of each of these opposite eons the intermediate age
may in a measure partake.
The life and cultus and other distinguishing charac
teristics of Judaism were seemingly dominant forces in
the community of Jesus of Nazareth during His ministry
on earth; even after the day of Pentecost the precepts of
the ceremonial law exerted a powerful modifying influence
on the status of the Christian Church so long as the temple
stood and its services were observed. But the forces of
'Rev. vi. 16.

§367.] The Second Advent. 815
Judaism were not in reality the controlling forces. The
presence and holy life, of the Son of Man, His unique
teaching and mighty deeds, wrought iu the bosom of the
covenant people. Whilst attracting one class of men to
Himself and transforming them into His image, He re
pelled another class, separating them from His fellowship
and provoking deadly hatred against Himself.
Assuming, as the history of revelation warrants, that the
advent of Christ in the flesh typifies the advent of Christ in
glory, we have good reason to believe that existing forces,
good and evil, now working in the unbelieving world and in
the Church militant, will under a modified character perpet
uate themselves, extending into the intermediate age of the
parousia, somewhat as the distinctive peculiarities of the
Mosaic economy prevailed whilst the Son of Man was on
earth. But the new force of the transcendent eon will
also assert its presence from the very opening of the epoch,
and will operate as the transforming and all-determining
principle, somewhat as the presence of the incarnate Sou
on earth wrought mighty spiritual and social changes in
the condition of the covenant people. The intermediate
age will be a transforming process. At its beginning the
condition and the phenomena of the current Messianic age
may be predominant, as Judaism was predominant from
the birth to the baptism of our Lord, and during the first
years of His ministry. But the law of the transcendent
eon will assert its transforming presence with greater and
still greater power, until the old order shall have been
done away by the new order, when the full glory of the
Son of Man, like the risen sun shining in his strength,
shall confront His people.
Between the long deferred hope of the faithful Jew and

816 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9,
the fear of the shepherds when the angel of the Lord
stood by them and said: I bring you good tidings of great
joy, there is no contradiction. No contradiction between
the teaching of the disciples by our Lord respecting His
death and resurrection, and, on the one hand, their de
spair when they saw Him taken captive, condemned, cru
cified, on the other hand, their terror when after His
resurrection He stood in the midst of them, saying, Peace
be unto you, when they 'disbelieved for joy and wonder.'1
No contradiction between the fact that after His ascen
sion the disciples, assembled in an upper room, continued
in prayer, waiting during ten days for the fulfilment of the
promise, and that other fact that suddenly there came
from heaven a sound as of the rushing of a mighty wind,
and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit, and began
to speak with other tongues, as the Spirit gave them
utterance.2 So neither is there a contradiction between
the anticipation that the concomitant events of the second
advent may occupy an age intermediate between the
Church militant and the Church triumphant, and the
belief that the full revelation of the final epoch will be a
sudden manifestation of divine glory, surprising the heirs
of Christ with an unspeakable joy.
5. Connected with the second advent are several subor
dinate events: the destruction of Hades, the resurrection
of the dead, of the righteous and the wicked, the general
judgment, hell and heaven.
As belonging to the last things we may also. name the
doctrine concerning the millennial reign of Christ on
earth. ' Luke xxiv. 36-41- z Acts ii. 1-4.

§368.] Concerning the Millennium. 817

CHAPTER III.
CONCERNING THE MILLENNIUM: A PARENTHESIS.
§ 368.
Though the question respecting the millennium is in
volved iu much uncertainty, eschatology cannot consist
ently pass it by in silence.
Stated in general terms the millenarian doctrine is this,
that before the close of the current Messianic age Christ
will appear and reign triumphant on earth for a thousand
years. The millennium sound eschatology prefers to speak of as
a sentiment or opinion rather than as a doctrine; for in
point of dignity, of worth and definite revelation, it is not
coordinate with the resurrection of the dead or any other
eschatological mystery affirmed by the Christian Creed.
The millennium has never been an article of Christian
faith. It is not taught by any one of the ecumenical
Creeds. Nor is it a doctrine of the Greek Catholic or
Roman Catholic Church. Nor is the reign of Christ on
earth for a thousand years taught by any confession of the
Reforrnation, whether Reformed or Lutheran.
The anticipation is suggested by a number of scriptures
in the Old and New Testament, such as Genesis xii. 3,
and by the prophetic visions of Daniel and Ezekiel. In
the New Testament it is suggested by scriptures like Matt.
v. 5; xix. 29; and 1 Cor. xv. 25, 26. But the principal
passage, the one which supports all the others, occurs in
Revelation xx. 1-10. According to the literal interpreta-
52

8 1 8 Doctrine on the Last Things. [B00K9.
tion of this symbolism the following four things enter into
the millennial reign:.
1. The Devil shall be bound a thousand years and be
cast into the abyss, that he should deceive the nations no
more, until the thousand years shall be finished.
2. During the thousand years Jesus Christ shall reign
visibly on earth, and with Him shall reign those who had
been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus and for the word
of God.
3. When the thousand years are finished,. Satan shall be
loosed out of his prison, and shall come forth again to
deceive the nations.
4. Satan will gather the nations together to the war, a
multitude as the sand of the sea. They shall compass
the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city; when
fire will come down out of heaven and devour the hosts of
Satan. The Devil will be cast into the lake of fire and
brimstone, where are also the beast aud the false prophet,
and they shall be tormented day and night forever and ever.
A war and an overthrow this is Which, according to the
millennial theory, will come to pass during the closing
period of the history of the Church militant.
Millenarianism accepts in its literal sense the number
of a thousand years. To say the least, this interpretation
is very doubtful. It is not supported by the characteristic
features nor by the scope of the Apocalypse, a book
abounding in magnificent hieroglyphic figures. By the
ablest Christian scholars it is conceded that time and
number are throughout symbolical. Neither is to be
understood in the ordinary natural sense. It may be
admitted that the thousand years of the reign of Christ
may mean a period of time, but for the Church in the

§369] Concerning th3 Millennium. 819
current eon the extent of the period is indefinite; yet even
this concession is called in question by some commentators.
Kliefoth maintains that the thousand years are not a period
of time at all. On this particular point Milligan is at one
.with him. No more is conceded than that the thousand
years "represent the victory of the Lord over Satan which
is shared by His people in Him."
§ 369-
Of the millennium two leading theories have beett
prevalent in the Church. The one is naturalistic and
sensuous, the other abstract and spiritualistic.
1. The sensuous theory is the ancient chiliasm. Dur
ing the present order of the natural world Christ will come
again, and establish His kingdom among all nations.
Temporal and earthly blessings of every description will
abound. The whole earth will be transformed into a par
adise. Of such millennial glory the reign of Solomon is
the type and prophecy.
The belief is found in the Epistle of Barnabas, i^Cerin-
thus, in the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, and
amongst the Ebionites. The Shepherd of . Hermas has
echoes of it. Justin Martyr held it; so also Irenseus and
Papias, the latter basing their expectation of Christ's
millennial reign on the assertion of those who had seen
the apostles.1 Gieseler says: "In all the works of the first
'"Right-minded Christians," says Justin, "are assured that there
will be a resurrection of the dead, and the saints will live a thousand
years in Jerusalem, which will then be built, adorned, and enlarged."—
Dial, with Trypho, ch. LXXX. and LXXXI. A belief supported by a
literal interpretation of Isaiah and Ezekiel.
According to Irenseus the elders who saw John, the dis/ciple of the

820 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
two centuries millenarianism is so prominent that we can
not hesitate to consider it universal."1
The sensuous theory is in sympathy with the false Mes
sianic hopes current among the Jews before the birth of
Christ. The eoming Messiah, it was believed, would be a
temporal sovereign, and establish a mighty kingdom of
righteousness, in point of grandeur, wealth aud earthly
dominion exceeding the glory of Solomon. Indeed the
chiliastic expectations so prevalent during the first three
or four centuries among that class of Christians represent
ing the realistic tendencies of the Church, are no more
than a reproduction of the false Messianic hopes prevalent
among the ancient Jews. In form greatly modified by
Christianity, they are for substance the same.
From the time of Augustine the millenarianism of the
first centuries waned, and during the Middle Ages nearly
disappeared. At the Reformation the doctrine was proclaimed by the
Anabaptists, especially among the fanatics of Muenster.
The Augsburg and Helvetic Confessions condemn it.
Abo#it the middle of the 18th century millenarianism
was revived under a modified form by the celebrated com
mentator, Bengel, who was followed by Oetinger, Stilling,
Lavater and others. Since that time it has been preva
lent, sometimes in large portions of different branches of
Lord, related that they had heard from him how the Lord used to teach
and say: " The days will come in which vines shall grow, each having
ten thousand branches, and in each branch ten thousand twigs, and in
each true twig ten thousand shoots, and in each one of the shoots ten
thousand clusters, and on ever}' one of the clusters ten thousand grapes,
and every grape when pressed will give five and twenty measures of
wine." — Irenseus Against Heresies, Bk. V., ch. 33, \ 3.
'Church History, I., p. 156.

§369.] Concerning the Millennium. 821
the Protestant Church, more commonly in some partic
ular communities or among individual theologians and
laymen. This chiliastic conception overlooks the spirituality of
Christ's kingdom. Judged by the New Testament its
distinguishing mark does not consist in civil authority,
nor in outward dominion over thCnations; not a dominion
that bestows the blessing of bodily health and a super
abundance of natural gifts. True, the kingdom includes
earthly prosperity as well as spiritual benedictions; for
godliness is profitable for all things, having promise of the
life which now is and of that which is to come.1 But an
abundance of earthly goods is not the distinguishing mark
of His kingdom. That which distinguishes the Church
from the day of Pentecost onward, is the presence and
fruitage of the Holy Spirit; for the kingdom of God is not
eating and drinking, but righteousness and peace and joy
in the Holy Ghost2
More than this however it is needful to bear in mind.
The transcendent eon which will open with the second
advent presupposes, not the continuance of the present
earthly order of things, but its transformation. The New
Testament teaches the continuance of the wickedness of
this world onward to its end, a prophecy with which
chiliastic hope is not reconcilable.
2. To the opposite theory Augustine gave the impulse.
He interpreted the millennium to be the sixth period of one
thousand years, or "the time of His first coming,"3
namely, the period between the first advent and the sec
ond advent of Christ. This conception ruled during the
Middle Ages; and from it have been developed the spiritual-
1 1 Tim. iv. 8. 2Rom. xiv. 17. 3De Civ. xx. 9.

822' Doctrine on the. Last Things. [book 9.
istic anticipations that in our century possess the popular
niind. Whilst the ancient chiliasm lays false stress on the
outward and earthly dominion of the kingdom", the spirit
ualistic theory lays false stress on its inward and spiritual
growth. The one fails to see that the law. of natural good
is the life of the Spirit; whilst the other fails to see the
indissoluble connection of the life of the Spirit, on the one
hand with the divine form of its organization, on the
other with the temporal blessings flowing from spiritual
life. Chiliasm grew. out of Jewish realism, and belongs to
the ebionitic tendency of Christian apprehension. The
spiritualistic theory has grown out of Gentile idealism,
and belongs to the gnostic tendencies of Christological
speculation, .
In other words, the one theory falsely emphasizes the
human, the natural and visible in the constitution of the
Church, whilst the other falsely emphasizes the divine,
the supernatural and invisible. The kingdom unites both
elements, being invisible and visible, internal and external
in indissoluble unity.
3. The spiritualistic conception may justly receive some
further consideration.
According to this theory, the millennium consists in the
diffusion among all nations of the truth as it is in Jesus
Christ, in the prevalence of faith and love, of holiness and
righteousness, among all classes of men. Idolatry and
superstition will perish from the earth; errors will be
supplanted by truth, vice by virtue; Christ will reign
supreme in every land and in all hearts.
This theory rests on a defective interpretation of

§369] Concerning the Millennium. 823
prophecy. Considered logically in the light of New Tes
tament teaching, it makes no room for the second coming
viewed as the concluding epoch of history, the epoch that
will transform the earthly order of things into the heavenly
order, the Church militant and expectant into the Church
consummate aud triumphant. It assumes only that the
invisible, the moral and spiritual forces of Christianity will
through the agency of the Holy Spirit increase and grad
ually extend over the whole face of the earth. Between
the present condition of the Church and the millennial
reign the difference will be only a difference of degree.
The minds and hearts of believers will be more thor
oughly controlled by the Gospel, and all, in place of some
men only, will become obedient subjects of the kingdom.
4. There is another conception of the millennial reign
which claims to be different as well from defective spirit
ualism as from the chiliasm of the primitive Church. In
reality, however, it is no more than an enlargement of the
spiritualistic theory.
This modified doctrine is the interpretation originally
advanced by Augustine. In accordance with his view the
millennium is none other than the beginning and progress
of the kingdom in the form of the Christian Church, which
amid constant conflicts with the powers of darkness has
subdued and is subduing the nations of the earth to the
obedience of Christ, transforming their life and character
into His spotless image. If the Augustinian interpretation
be accepted, the millennium does not mark a decisive
epoch in the progress of revelation, in kind other than the
conversion of Constantine or the Reformation of the six
teenth century. The millennial reign of Rev. xx. 1-20,
understood according to Augustine, is only the symbolical

824 Doctrine on the Last Things. [Book 9.
representative of the progressive history of the Church.
This doctrine receives no more support from the symbolism
of Scripture than the spiritualistic theory in its modified
form. The conception expressed by Dr. Milligan is in sub
stance the interpretation of Augustine. The thousand
years, he says, "complete the picture of the glorious con
dition in which believers have all along really been, but
which only now reaches its highest point, aud is revealed as
well as possessed."1 Of this interpretation, the main defect
is that it leaves no room for the element of truth underly
ing the ancient chiliasm, namely, the realness of the
second advent, and the realness of the transcendent eon
which the second advent will open.
Before the New Testament idea of Christian salvation
cau be freely realized, the abnormal condition of the
economy of the world will be abolished. So long as the
present disorganization continues, this world perverted by
the law of sin will in principle remain unchanged ; there
will be no universal prevalence of faith and love. The
consequences of the presence of the law of sin will per
petuate themselves not only in human society, not only in
the relations between man and nature, but also to a degree
in the communion of the Christian Church. Even in the
heart and conduct of devout Christians the warfare be
tween right and wrong, between truth and error, will go
on, and will go on uninterruptedly until the end come,
when all false rule, false authority and power shall be
abolished.2 4. That the struggle between the Church and the world,
* In Schaff 's Commentary on Revelation, ch. 20, p. 148.
1 1 Cor. xv. 24. '

§369.] Concerning the Millennium. 825
between the new law of life and the old law of death, will
continue until the Sou of Man shall come in His final
glory, is a truth taught by the words of Scripture and typi
fied by the earthly life of our Lord.
Instead of making quotations I shall merely refer to
some relevant passages: Matt. xiii. 24-30, 47-50; xxiv.
3-I4i 36-39! Rom. viii. 19-23; 1 Cor. xv. 24-26; 2 Thes.
ii. 3-12; 2 Pet. iii. 3-13. Particular passages, however,
do not constitute the chief argument from Scripture.
That the conflict of the Church with sin will be perpet
uated to the end is a truth implied in the doctrine of salva
tion as everywhere taught throughout the New Testament
A continuous conflict is foreshadowed by the life of our
Lord. The revelation of God in the incarnate Son pro
voked a counter-revelation of the mystery of iniquity.
Devils pressed into the foreground. Instead of receiving
the word of Christ, instead of opening their eyes to divine
light as it shone in His life, the chosen people shut their
eyes to the light and hardened their hearts against the
truth. Instead of overcoming their aversion and winning
their confidence He provoked opposition that became
fiercer, more malignant, from day to day, until finally,
amid scoffs and execrations, ' His own ' nailed Him to
the cross.
The life of our Lord on earth typifies the history of His
Church. The growing animosity of the Jews typifies the
continuous and increasing antagonism of 'this world.'
There is reason to believe that as the spiritual power of
the Church increases, as her sway is extended over the
face of the earth and she proclaims the truth fully and
unequivocally, the opposition of ' this world ' will become
more arrogant, more violent, and the conflict will be

826 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
sharper, even more bloody. As toward the close of the
earthly history of Jesus, so also when the close of the
present eon is approaching, the hostile powers of ' this
world,' inspired by diabolical enmity, will array them
selves with terrific fury against the Church catholic, wag
ing war against her creed, against her very life, with the
weapons of ridicule and falsehood, of learning, science and
philosophy, even with fire aud sword. The Jews, rulers
and people, were bent on the destruction of Jesus; so will
' this world ' be resolved to exterminate ' the elect ' of God.
Awful social convulsions are to be awaited, convulsions
and persecutions of which the events of passion week are
the type and the prophecy.
From these premises the inference may be drawn that
the millennial reign will not open until after the present
eon has run its course. §37°-
There is some force in the opinion expressed by Semisch
that "in view of the difficulty of separating figure from
real fact, we conclude that the millenarianism of the Book
of Revelation is a hieroglyph whose meaning has not yet
been satisfactorily solved." Yet studied in connection
with the entire circle of teaching in the Old and the New
Testament we have a basis for a sober Christian anticipa
tion. For the fulfilment of Revelation xx. 1-10 and of cognate
scriptures, speculation, as eschatology may assume, has to
look to that intermediate age, typified by our Lord's his
tory on earth, which the parousia will bring to pass.
Then Satan will be bound, and shut up for a time in
prison. The Church will reign supreme. She will reign

?37o.] Concerning the Mille?inium. 827
until by inward development during the progress of the
intermediate eon she will have attained to sufficient
strength to endure the shock of the final onset, as Jesus
by personal spiritual growth and by the revelation of the
Father in the transfiguration on the mount was qualified
to stand firm amid the sufferings and assaults of passion
week. Satan will then be loosed again for a little season.
Combining the hosts of hell with hostile men he will
assail the Church with deadliest enmity. This will be
the final battle, which will issue in the discomfiture and
overthrow of the kingdom of darkness typified by the
resurrection and ascension of Jesus.
The intermediate millennial reign of Christ will indeed
be spiritual, but it will also be real, not sensuous and
realistic, neither spiritualistic. The chiliastic hope of the
primitive Church will not in form be fulfilled, nor the
anticipation of the conversion of all men as cherished by
the modern age. There is, however, an element of truth
underlying both theories. The inward and the outward,
the supernatural aud the natural enter into the economy
of the anticipated intermediate age, when the union of
the physical and the spiritual in glorified form will be
accomplished and manifested.
Agreeably to this Christian speculation the millennium
implies an order of things different in all respects from the
order now prevalent, yet different also from that status of
the kingdom which will supervene after the consumma
tion. The invisible and the visible, the spiritual and the
material will be factors, constituting a real kingdom of
the Spirit in a real world, a world in process of glorifica
tion but not yet perfectly glorified. An analogy and a
typification of this anticipation may be seen in the unique

828 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
mysterious events of the history of our Lord in the in
terval between His resurrection and ascension.

CHAPTER IV.
THE RESURRECTION OF THE DEAD.
§ 371-
The dissolution of Hades and the resurrection of the
dead are two sides of one prospective mystery. The
resurrection conditions the dissolution. It is the power
of Christ asserted in the raising of the dead which
terminates the realm of death. Being so closely con
nected, the triumph of the resurrection and the aboli
tion of death are to be studied as the two forms of one
article of faith.
It is, however, the idea of the resurrection, not
either class of its subjects, which it is proposed now
briefly to discuss.
1. The resurrection is to be predicated of the dead them
selves, not merely of the bodies of the dead. The persons
who lived upon the earth and who in consequence of sin
became the subjects of death, these persons will be raised
up. Scripture does not teach the resurrection of the body,
separately considered. Scripture teaches the "resurrection
of the dead." This is the form of words most commonly
used by the New Testament.1 The body being an essential
constituent of members of the race, the resurrection of
necessity includes a bodily organization. Hence Paul em
phasizes the reality of the body in 1 Cor. xv. and elsewhere.
1 1 Cor. xv. 13, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 23, 29, 32, 35, 42 ; Acts xvii. 31, 32 ;
xxvi. 23 ; John v. 28, 29.

\ 371.] The Resurrection of the Dead. 829
The dead shall be raised up in their bodies, but ' we shall
all be changed.1 The body is included, being an integral
part of the human constitution.
2. The word 'body' in. the Apostles' Creed is to be
taken in its proper sense. "I believe in the resurrection
of the body " means not that a soulless body will go forth
in the resurrection, but implies that the whole man is the
subject of the resurrection. During the first centuries,
when the Creed was in process of formation, the reality
and identity of the body in the resurrection was especially.
emphasized; but emphasis put on the body does not neces
sarily signify man's physical organization to the exclusion
of the soul. The word ' body ' means the essential outward
form of concrete human existence.
The original word in Latin for body is not corporis, but
carnis; in the Greek, not a&paTog, but odpnog, flesh. Accord
ingly the German expresses this article by the words:
Auferstehung des Fleisches, resurrection of the flesh.
' Resurrection of the flesh ' means by implication the
resurrection of man, who as to the idea and law of his
being is psychic no less than somatic, though ' body ' is
the chief element of truth affirmed in the article, especially
by the primitive Church.
Hence whatever will be said concerning the resurrection
in this and succeeding chapters' is to be understood as
predicated, not of the material body exclusive of the soul,
nor of the soul exclusive of the body, but of the dead as
embracing the soul as well as the body. It is man who
dies in body and soul; it is man who in body and soul.
will be raised again from the realm of the dead.
1 1 Cor. xv. 52.

830 Doctrine on the Last Things. [booeq'.
§372-
The raising of the dead will not be a return of the
dead to the existing natural world.
Nor is the resurrection to be 'regarded as the re
vival of man's natural existence in some different
future world.
Sound thought on this mystery must be guided by
the law of the resurrection revealed by the history of
Jesus Christ; though properly speaking His resurrec
tion forms the ideal of the resurrection of the right
eous, not of the wicked.
1. The organic connections of man with the time and
space world are dissolved in the article of death, so also
his connection with the material of his earthly organiza
tion. These connections will never be resumed. Under
the dissolving force of the positive eschatological power
of Jesus Christ at His coming the existing cosmos will
itself be dissolved. Says Peter: By the presence of the
day of God, "the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved,
and the heavenly bodies shall melt with fervent heat"1
At death the earthly stage of human existence reaches its
final term; with all its natural conditions it is superseded
and left behind. Says Bengel: "A great change must
intervene." As the dead do not come back into their earthly con
nections, so neither in the resurrection do the dead go
forth from their condition in Hades as they entered into it.
Hades is not an episode. The dead do not resume tire
nexus of existence, as if death had only for a season sus
pended the operation of natural and moral laws. Hades
is a period of human existence which lies beyond the
'2 Pet. iii. 12.

§372.] The Resurrection of the Dead. 831
earthly stage; it is onward in the mysterious process of
human history. In the resurrection man supersedes and
goes beyond the conditions of his intermediate history.
As in the article of death he passes out of the present
natural sphere aud enters the post-earthly realm; so in the
resurrection he passes out of the post-earthly realm, and
enters into another world that opens before him beyond
his intermediate abode.
2. Nor is the resurrection the reassertion of natural
existence in another world.
When Jesus was raised from the dead, He neither came
back to live His natural life with His disciples among the
Jews as He had lived before He was crucified, nor did He
go forth into the spiritual world in a form and condition
of human life that may properly be called the natural
body. The body in which He was conceived and born,
in which He suffered and. died, was changed. When He
took the life which He had of Himself laid down, He went
forth from among the dead in a humanity relatively new,
a humanity which as to its generic type and law was
indeed the same as the humanity in which He was cruci
fied, yet it was at the same time specifically different, as
different, to use the analogy of Paul iu 1 Cor. xv. 35-49,
as the stalk is from the seed, or the fruit from the
blossom. Lange, commenting on the words, 'flesh and
blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God,' says:
"In opposition to the gross identification of the present body with the
resurrection body, Paul asserts a distinction between the two -a distinc
tion, however, which does not exclude the identity of the fundamental
substance or germ. Amid the constant change in our bodies, there is
something fixed which makes us recognizable as the same from the
cradle to the grave— something which gives form, feature and organiza
tion to this ever-moving current of matter, which is momentarily con-

832 Doctrine on the Last Things. [Book 9.
densed into what we call our bodies. And what is this but the plastic
principle of life, which is ever shaping the materials that nature gives it
for its own uses and in accordance with an inward law that molds us
after our kind?"
The resurrection of Christ, not an abstract conception
of God's omnipotence, is our only trustworthy guide in
the endeavor to form some just conception of the resurrec
tion in general. Speculative reflection on an article of
'the Christian Creed which does not come nor can ever fall
within the range of natural observation or ordinary exper
ience, must be directed and shaped by the true type of the
mystery. If we reason governed by this principle of thought, we
are justified in believing that in the resurrection all men
will not only pass from one domain, of existence into
another, but all will also live in the higher or the lower
world in a form of being and of character specifically other
than that human organization which appears on earth or
subsists in Hades, a constitution and a form which will
certainly be consistent with personal identity, but as to
the status and qualities of personality will nevertheless be
diverse, the difference being determined in the righteous
by the law of the spirit of life in Christ Jesus, in the
wicked by the development of the law of sin.
§373-
The resurrection of the dead as affirmed by the
Christian Creed is to be broadly distinguished from the
pagan belief concerning the immortality of the soul.
The Christian mystery is peculiar to the eschatology
of Christianity.
1. Belief in the immortality of the soul is purely a
negative belief. As taught by pagan mythology the idea

§373-] The Resurrection of the Dead. 833
is wanting in positive contents. It affirms only that man's
spirit will not be annihilated in the hour of his departure;
his spirit when separated from the earthly body will con
tinue to subsist in the character of an unsubstantial
'shade,' an idea that does not get beyond the prospect of
dissolution. The important belief universally diffused
among mankind that man's spirit does not perish, in other
words, the denial of the non-existence of the human soul
after the present life, this belief, if judged by the resurrec
tion from the dead of the God-man, will be found to be
equivalent to the recognition of the unbroken reign of
death. The perpetuity of a man in the form of a shade is
the perpetual severance of the essential constituents of
man. That is to say, the existence of the whole manhood
of man in the form of an organic unity is, according to
pagan belief, a reality only during his natural life on
earth. The immortality accepted by mythology affirms
one side of the gloomy prospect of everlasting dissolution,
no more. Among the Greeks, as Martensen remarks,
' ' we find only the hopeless picture of a kingdom of shades,
and Achilles will rather be a day-laborer upon earth than
Achilles in the world beneath."
2. From the pagan belief respecting the immortality of
the soul, the resurrection affirmed by Christian revelation
differs both in principle and in form. The general resur
rection is referable, not merely to the intrinsic, death-con
quering genius of man's spirit, not to some unique fitness
for survival, but it is consequent upon the all-pervading
energy of the parousia. Moreover, Christian revelation
prophesies a concrete reality. The whole man dies, the
soul no less than the body being subject to the law and
penalty of sin. , Death is an abnormal epoch in the history
53

834- . Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
of man's concrete existence, not the point at which he
suffers extinction. Equally comprehensive is the resur
rection. The whole manhood of man is raised from the
dead. Not only does a bodiless soul survive, but man in the
unity of his constitution, including body as truly as soul,
survives the article of death and passes beyond the realm
of the dead. Maintaining his identity as to his generic
constitution and as to the type of his personality, he will
enter into the world transcending Hades.
There the type and law of his existence, while as to
kind the same essentially as the type and law now oper
ative in his earthly history, will be different; for both will
answer to his changed status and conditions.
Scripture represents the resurrection under the image
of birth. Paul says of Christ that He is ' the firstborn
from the dead.'1 Though the issue of the resurrection for
the rejecters of Christ will be contrary to the issues of the
resurrection for Christ's members, nevertheless the fact of
natural birth furnishes the best analogon for thought on
the nature of the resurrection in the case of both classes.
Natural birth is an objective and organic transition, effect
ing a radical change of the law and the conditions of
existence, whilst conserving the identity of individual
being. The man risen from the dead will differ from the
man on earth or in the intermediate state as really as the
separate individual being of a child born into the world
differs from the status of the life of the same individual in
the womb of his mother.
3. The general resurrection embraces the righteous and
the wicked. Both classes will be raised from the dead
in the wholeness of the human constitution — they that
'Col. i. 18.

2 374-] The Resurrection of the Righteous. 835
have done good, unto the resurrection of life; and they
that have done ill, unto the resurrection of judgment.1

CHAPTER V.
THE RESURRECTION OE THE RIGHTEOUS.
§374-
Christ is the resurrection and the life. Believers being
His members possess His triumphant life, and by virtue
of union to Him, unbroken by death, He will raise them
up at the last day in the likeness of His resurrection.2
The life of Jesus Christ though divine-human is never
theless truly human. He actualizes the divine idea of
man in the process of His development on earth, more
completely in His victory over death, and perfectly in the
final consummation of His mediatorship.
The life of Christ aud the life of His members is one
life. He is the beginning of the new, victorious race.
The believers' life is the life of One who is the ideal man
in personal union with the eternal Son; and as to essence
the life of the eternal Son is identical with the life of the
Father. The type of manhood revealed by the victory and glori
fication of Christ is man's original type in the character
of ultimate realization; and this type of manhood the
members of His mystical body also will realize in the pro
cess and consummation of their history.
The law of the triumphant life of Jesus Christ is the
'John v. 29. sJohn vi. 40 ; xi. 25.

836 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
law now active in the history of the righteous, fashioning
their character and fitting them for their destiny. As He
triumphed over the limitations and the bondage of the
present condition of the world, so will they triumph.
Their life will develop itself through the epochs and
stages of His history. The victory over the kingdom of
darkness which He achieved they iu the communion of
His triumphant life will also achieve.
The victory of the righteous will be their transition
from the intermediate period of the kingdom to its post-
mundane perfection. They will go forth in the might
and appear in the full image of their risen Lord.
§375-
In the article of death the righteous quit the Adamic
body and quit the earthly economy of their history.
The contradictions and conflicts arising from their
orcanic connection with this world are in this epoch
brought to an end. But the righteous do not at once
complete the development of the new life.
1. In their exit from this world the righteous put off the
earthly organization of the body, being emancipated from
the abnormal conditions of ' the outward man,' and they
enter into Paradise, the abode of bliss in the intermediate
realm. They enter in the unity of human existence.
The article of death is not an absolute dissolution of body
and soul. In the case of the members of Christ, exit from
the earth is the abolition of 'the old man,' and this aboli
tion includes the dissolution of the present earthly organ
ization; but in this dissolution 'the new man' survives
and is triumphant. The ' new man ' triumphs in the
unity of his being, a unity which includes the somatic no

2 375-] The Resurrection of the Righteous. 837
less than the pneumatic principle. The man it is that
enters into Paradise.
It may. be said that the righteous die, and that they die
under the operation of natural law; but these propositions
express only a superficial aspect of the truth. It is
more scriptural to say that they seem to die, for in reality
their exit is an epoch through which they pass from a
lower to a higher stage of Christian life. " The river runs
through the lake aud pursues its way beyond" As before
when living under the limitations of the flesh they never
theless lived the new life in Christ, so now, having died
under the law of the fall, they have at the same time sur
mounted this law. Under one view among the, dead,
under another view they are among the living. In Christ
they have been released from organic connection with the
disorganizing forces of the Adamic constitution, released
because in Him and with Him they are living the tran
scendent life in the Spirit. Whilst the remains of the
Adamic body are dissolving into dust, they, though the
resurrection of the just is not yet achieved, have advanced
to blissful communion with Christ. Says St Paul: "For
to me to live is Christ, aud to die is gain. But if to live
in the flesh be my lot, this is the fruit of my work; and
what I shall choose I wot not. But I am in a strait be
twixt the two, having the desire to depart and. be with
Christ; for it is very far better. ' ' ' Though not in the final
sense triumphant, the righteous are living the higher life
of blissful communion with Jesus Christ, awaiting the
perfection of the kingdom at His second coming.
2. Before the resurrection the righteous are not in the
realm of final glory. Says Paul: "When Christ, who is
'Phil. i. 21-23.

838 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with Him
be manifested in glory."1 To be with Christ in the glory
of the Father presupposes the perfection of the whole man,
of the body no less than of the soul. For the resurrection
of the righteous is the final transition of the 'spiritual
man ' in a ' spiritual body. '
Between the natural man and the spiritual man, or be
tween the old man and the new man, there is an instructive
analogy. The natural man lives his life in a corporeal
organization that is natural. Soul and body, members of
an indissoluble unity, answer each to each. So the spirit
ual man lives his new life in a corporeal organization that
is spiritual. But during the earthly period the kingdom
is iu the springing seed ; the harvest is hidden under the
garb of promise and hope. The spiritual man is whole,
but lives in the embryonic stage of the new life. Though
the intermediate period transcends the earthly, as ' the ear '
is different from and is better than 'the blade,' yet the
intermediate like the earthly period is not ' the full corn in
the ear.' The full corn in the ear will be developed when
the harvest is ripe. Until the second coming the spirit
ual man, though enjoying a life of blessed communion
with Christ, will be incomplete, incomplete somewhat as
the Mediator and His mediatorship were incomplete prior
to His final triumph achieved by His resurrection and
ascension. Says the Rev. Dr. Lewis F. Stearns:
"It was but seldom, if we can judge from the New Testament, that the
early Christians raised any questions respecting the state after death, and
then only that they might be sure that those who died in the Lord before
the great consummation would be kept in happy communion with the
Saviour, and brought with Him at His second coming to take part in the
1 Col. iii. 4 ; i John iii. 2 ; 1 Cor. xiii. 12.

§375-] The Resurrection, of the Righteous. 839
solemn scenes of the last day, and share in the glory and blessedness of
the final and eternal state. * * * We need to put the emphasis
where it was placed by the first Christians. In order that this should be
done, it is not needful that we should lay less stress than we do upon the
condition of the individual in the intermediate state, but that we should
recognize the fact that the intermediate state is a temporary and subord
inate order of things, and must give way to a higher order, and that the
goal toward which human history, and the history, if we may call it such,
of the unseen world of the life beyond are alike tending, is the eternal
state which is to be ushered in by the last day." '
The righteous are out of the natural body. That was
put off in the article of death; it will never be resumed.
Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of God;
neither does corruption inherit incorruption.2 As to the
spiritual body, that indeed exists in principle, and if we
reasou from the analogies used by the New Testament, we
may also say that the spiritual body is in process of
growth, but it does not exist in the form of completed
reality.3 The reality is in suspense as ' the full corn' is in
suspense in 'the ear.' The spiritual body will exist in
perfection when the spiritual man in the resurrection at
the second coming attains to his perfection.
3. The natural body of the natural man presupposes the
natural world in the bosom of which soul and body may
subsist. So the spiritual body of the spiritual man pre
supposes a corresponding objective world, the glorified
1 Present Day Theology, p. 502. " I Cor. xv. 50.
3 On 1 Cor. v. 1, Meyer remarks: "He who has died has, from the
moment of the state of death having set in, instead of the destroyed
body, the body proceeding from God, not yet indeed as a real possession,
but as an ideal possession, undoubtedly to be realized at the (near) Par
ousia. Before this realization he has it in heaven just because the
possession is still ideal and proleptic."

840 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
economy, in Scripture called 'the new heavens and the
new earth.'
The glorified economy is now in germ. The cosmos is
glorified in the glorified Son of Man, who is ' the begin
ning.' But as completed fact, actualized in the new
heavens and the new earth, the glorified cosmos is now in
suspense. The heaven must receive Jesus Christ until
the times of restoration of all things,1 that is, as Meyer
says, "until times shall have come, in which all things
will be restored." The realization of the ripe fruitage of
the cosmos will continue in suspense, until the fulness of
the times, when Christ will complete 'the regeneration.'
"Then comes the end, when He shall deliver up the
kingdom to God, even the Father, when He shall have
abolished all rule and all authority and power. For He
must reign, till He has put all His enemies under His
feet"2 Until then the life of progressive blessedness is awaiting
'the common consummation of redemption and bliss in
the glorious resurrection of the last day.' Says Dr. A.
H. Strong:
" While the Scriptures represent the intermediate state to be one of
conscious joy to the righteous, and of conscious pain to the wicked,
they also represent this state to be one of incompleteness. The perfect
joy of the saints, and the utter misery of the wicked, begin only with
the resurrection and the general judgment."3
The Old Testament saints received not the promise,
God having provided some better thing concerning us,
that apart from us they should not be made perfect4 So
have the righteous in the intermediate period of blessed-
'Acts iii. 21. 2 1 Cor. xv. 24-26.
3 Systematic Theology, p. 566. " Heb. xi. 40.

§376.] The Resurrection of the Righteous. 841
ness not yet received the final promise, God having pro
vided some better thing concerning them and concerning
us, which better thing is in reserve until the Messianic
eon shall have run its course and all the members of the
kingdom shall have ripened for the harvest, that they who
have gone before apart from those that follow after should
not be made perfect. § 376.
The spiritual body will not be absolutely new. It
bears an internal relation to 'the new man' like the
relation which the natural body bears to ' the old man.'
The old man is the ego in Adam ; the new man is the
ego in Christ.
The relation which the personality of man in Christ
bears to the personality of man in Adam, determines
the relation of the spiritual body to the natural body.
1. Whilst living on earth the members of Christ have a
twofold life. I live a genuine human life in the com
munion of the Spirit with Christ glorified. At the same
time I am subject to the law of the fallen life in Adam.
Now, what relation do I living in Christ bear to myself
living in Adam? The question is legitimate and relevant;
important also, as it has a direct bearing on the doctrine
of the resurrection. There is a relation of myself to my
self as the subject of two opposite energizing principles.
Though we cannot analyze this hidden relation, we may
nevertheless know something respecting it The only key
we have is the personal history of Christ. In Him we
have the typical truth and the law of judgment The le-
lation which I, a member of Christ, bear to myself, a
member of the Adamic race, may be seen in the relation
which the perfected God-man bears to the flesh and blood

842 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
of His Adamic humanity. Christ glorified as related to
Christ not yet glorified, furnishes an answer to the ques
tion respecting the spiritual body in its relation to the
natural body.
The Sou of God having become man, lives on earth in a
natural body, connected like other men with the natural
order of this world. At the very same time He was the
resurrection and the life.1 He was potentially the risen
Man, whilst living a natural human life on earth. This
two-fold order of His life was temporary. By the cross He
relinquishes the natural body. Quitting the world of the
living He enters the world of the dead. By His resurrec
tion He became the 'first-born from the dead.' He came
forth not in the natural body, but in a new, spiritual body,
a corporeal organism which actualized what He was
potentially whilst living on earth in the body in which He
was conceived and born.
The new humanity in which Christ became ' the first
born from the dead ' was as to kind the same that He
assumed by conception and birth. The same in kind, it
was not the same in its organization. The resurrection
was a birth, an epoch of transformation and transfigura
tion. Christ risen differs from the Christ born as the
ripened grain differs from a seed fallen into the earth, as
the heavenly differs from the earthy, or as the spiritual
from the natural.2 Now, since the idea respecting Christ
as true man includes corporeity, we predicate a change
wrought in His body like the transformation through
which His whole human nature itself passed.
The resurrection body of Christ is on the one hand the
same as His natural body, on the other hand not the same.
'John xi. 25. zJohn xii. 24; 1 Cor. xv. 44-48.

$ 376.] The Resurrection of the Righteous. 84

o

The same it is, inasmuch as ft presupposes the .unbroken
organic continuity of the same divine-human personality
moving onward toward consummation through different
epochs and stages of mediatorship. Not the same it is,
inasmuch as His resurrection -body is a new body. That
which was sown was not the body that was to be, but God
gave Him a body even as it pleased Him, as to each seed
He gives a body of its own.1 The new is spiritual, and
the spiritual body is the natural transformed by the in
scrutable virtue of a birth into the transcendent domain
of Spirit.
2. So are the righteous, as members of Christ, related to
themselves as members of the Adamic race. Partakers of
the life of Christ, they will transcend the intermediate
Paradise as He triumphed over Hades. And as He was
transformed by the epoch of the resurrection, so will His
members in the final epoch be changed into the likeness
of His transformation. This transformation of Christ's
members will include the body. The process of growth of
the spiritual man in the spiritual body will be ripe for
consummation, and in the consummation, though the
spiritual body may differ from the natural body as greatly
as ' the full corn in the ear ' differs from the seed cast
upon the earth, the spiritual body will nevertheless be
none other than the original divine idea of the natural in
the form of ultimate consummation.
3. This argument based on the analogical teaching of
Scripture implies that the resurrection body of the right
eous will be a new corporeal organism, not the old mater
ial organization reconstructed. The radical change is by
St. Paul compared to the epochs in the growth of a seed:
1 1 Cor. xv. 37, 38.

844 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
"That which thou thyself sowes't is not quickened, except it die : and
that which thou sowest, thou sowest not the body that shall be, but a
bare grain, it may chance of wheat, or of some other kind ; but God
giveth it a body even as it pleased Him, and to each seed a body of its
own."' This analogy of the apostle requires special emphasis.
The ripe grain in the full-grown ear is not the seed that
was sown and dissolved in the earth. The seed is not re
constructed by a power operating upon it from without.
Whilst as to kind and specific type it is the same as the
seed sown, it is a new grain, a grain which in the form of
reality had no existence before. It is a new organism, or
life in a new body, produced according to the mysterious
law immanent in the seed sown.2
So also is the resurrection of the just. It is sown in
corruption, it is raised in incorruption: it is sown , in dis
honor, it is raised in glory: it is sown in weakness, it is
raised in power: it is sown a natural body, it is raised a
spiritual body. Again using the words of another: " The
resurrection body has the same relation to the natural body
that the stalk of wheat has to the grain of wheat which is
planted. Both are wheat. The one grows out of the
other. The identity is preserved; yet how different that
which flourishes above the ground from that which was
buried in the ground."
The body in which the righteous are raised up is a new
body. New it is as their life in Christ is new, differing
1 1 Cor. xv., 35-49-
2 Says Bunyan: "Though the kernel die, be buried, and meet with all
this change in these things, yet none of them can cause the nature of the
kernel to cease ; it is wheat still. Wheat was sown and wheat arises ;
only it was sown dead, dry and barren wheat, and riseth living, beautiful
and fruitful wheat."

1 376.] The Resurrection of the Righteous. 845
from the Adamic body as incorruption differs from corrup
tion, as glory differs from dishonor, as power from weak
ness, as the spiritual differs from the natural. The new.
body answers to the new life in Christ as the body of the
new grain answers to the species of the individual seed
sown. As children of the first man, who is of the earth
earthy, they by natural birth bore the image of the earthy.
As children of God in the Second Man, who is of heaven
and became a life-giving Spirit, they shall also, by virtue
of their birth of the Spirit into the kingdom, bear the
image of the heavenly.
The analogies of our Lord and of the apostle Paul fur
nish the only sound basis for doctrinal thought respecting
the mystery of the resurrection.
4. But agreeably to the principle of thought postulated
by scripture analogies, we may not think of the spiritual
body as wholly severed from the natural body. With the
natural body the spiritual body is organically conjoined,
as the spiritual man is conjoined with the natural man.
Personal identity underlies the birth of the Spirit into
the kingdom. The person 'born of the Spirit' is the per
son who was ' born of the flesh. ' Personality, however, is
identical with itself not in one constituent only of human
existence, not the same only as to the soul, but the same
also as to the body. Born into the kingdom, a member of
Christ is the same person in the wholeness of his existence.
He lives in Christ the identical man as to spirit, soul and
body he was before his birth into the kingdom. The
same person, he yet differs from his former self as the
humanity of Christ on earth differs from the humanity of
His mother, or better, as the glorified humanity of Christ
differs from His human nature before His glorification.

846 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
The same law is operative in the resurrection from the
dead as in the transition by the Spirit into the kingdom;
for each epoch is of the nature of birth, the one being the
completion of the other. According to the law of person
ality we have to affirm an unbroken continuity of human
existence. Under the operation of this law a member of
Christ in the resurrection is identical with himself when
on earth. The same person who in the article of death
passes from earth, goes forth in the resurrection from the
intermediate world in the totality of his constitution; and
he will live in the realm of glory the identical person as
to his body no less than as to his soul that he was during
his earthly history. Paul says: "If the Spirit of Him that
raised up Jesus from the dead dwelleth in you, He that
raised up Christ Jesus from the dead shall quicken also
your mortal bodies through His Spirit that dwelleth in
you."1 Not the same material organization that died will
rise; but the same personal being, including soul aud
body, quickened and transfigured by the Spirit of God that
dwelleth in him will be raised up. Going forth ^from
Paradise into the transcendent world a new spiritual man
in a new spiritual body, he will know and feel himself to
be the same person. Yet he will in the resurrection differ
from himself in the flesh as ' the new man ' in Christ
differs from ' the old man ' in Adam ; and the body in
which he will be raised up will differ from the body in
which he died as the body of Christ glorified differs from
the body in which Christ was crucified.
Whilst the resurrection body of the righteous is spirit
ual, not natural, whilst it differs in organization and
capacity from the natural as the new man in Christ differs
'Rom. viii. ii.

§377-] The Resurrection of the Righteous. 847
from the old man in Adam, yet the spiritual body is the
same dynamically as the natural body ; and this corporeal
sameness obtains according to the law of identity in the
organism of personal existence. Being the ripe fruit of
the entire history of spiritual growth on earth and in Para
dise, the resurrection body will be the true body, not less
real but more real than the earthly organization. The
present corporeity is no more than the type and prophecy
of the ideal body. §377-
One question more merits inquiry. Whence comes
the resurrection body?
Two answers may be given: the one, that the body
is formed by supernatural agency and united to the
soul from without; the other, that the resurrection
body is the product of the soul, being evolved by
development from its inner life.
There is an important element of truth in both an
swers, yet neither by itself is adequate.
A scientific solution of the problem resolves into
unity the valid elements of both.
1. The unity of the natural man is in its beginning
trichotomic. The embryo is not somatic to the exclusion
of the psychic principle, nor psychic to the exclusion of
the somatic principle. The beginning is threefold, being
the vital possibility alike of body, soul and spirit. Gesta
tion, birth and the subsequent growth of the individual
are but the unfolding and realization of the factors imma
nent in the embryo.
As regards the question concerning the resurrection
body of the righteous, the force of the argument is not
affected by the assertion of a dichotomic in place of a
trichotomic anthropology. If we accept the dichotomic

848 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
theory, the beginning of the embryo will be two-fold, the
unity of the somatic with the psychic principle.
The spiritual man begins to live in Christ by the Holy
Spirit conformably to the same law. It is the man, the
whole man, not the soul only, who is created anew by
birth into the kingdom. Spiritual birth is organic. Per
sonal being in the totality of its constitution is the subject
of the transition. A member of Christ is from the very
beginning of his new existence potentially threefold, the
principle of the resurrection body being a factor of his
constitution as really as the soul. The type and law of
the spiritual man is the type and law of trichotomic
existence. Or, if a dichotomic anthropology be accepted,
we shall have to hold that the type of the spiritual man is
dichotomic. In either case the somatic principle is an
essential factor of the unity of a member of Christ.
Spiritual growth in the Church militant, the epoch of
transition from the earth into Paradise, and progressive
development in the communion of love with Christ in the
nobler service of Paradise, are each and all the unfolding
of the infinite fulness of the birth of the Spirit into the
kingdom. If we reflect upon the problem consistently with these
anthropological principles, the resurrection body will have
to be regarded as the ultimate product of the potential
principle immanent in the spiritual man from the begin
ning of his life-union to Christ. As the earthly organiza
tion of the body becomes by development from the
mysterious beginning of the embryo, so the resurrection
body of the righteous becomes by development from the
embryonic beginning of the new man.
2. Sound as may be this method of reasoning, it is

§377.] The Resurrection of the Righteous. 849
incomplete, for it recognizes but one aspect of anthropo
logical truth. , Another essential fact enters into the solu
tion of the problem.
The material organization of the natural body is not
purely an evolution from within. The development of
the somatic principle, whether in the embryo or in the
child, depends moment by moment on a corresponding
environment, the external natural world being the ueces&-
sary condition of natural evolution, especially of bodily
growth. Food and drink, air and light, supply the
material which natural life assimilates, transforming it
into the constituents of the natural body. In the absence
of an objective world adapted to and complementing nat
ural life, the type of man's existence is not active, nor cau
it be. The pabulum of development and realization is
wanting. In this respect also the spiritual body is analogous to the
law of the natural body. Neither is purely an evolution
from within. Though the new life iu Christ quickened by
the Spirit is a mystery which from its inception includes
potentially the resurrection body, yet the new life does not
of itself produce the resurrection body.
In the new life the type and law of the resurrection
body are potential forces,- but the life is not its own
pabulum. From itself exclusively it cannot evolve the
glorified form of organization. For the pabulum of com
plete organization the spiritual man, like the natural man,
depends on a corresponding environment, an external
homogeneous world.1 That necessary environment is the
'Says Newman Smyth: "The chosen metaphor for the marvellous.
change and perfection of the earthly is the growth of the seed into the;
green blade and the full-grown ear. It is important not to lose this
54

850 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
new cosmos, the final creation of the immanent Christ,
which will reach its consummation at His second coining.
Until then the righteous will not possess the mature
glorified embodiment Being neither in the natural body,
nor clothed with the resurrection body, but living in a
spiritual form supported by and corresponding to the
environment of the intermediate realm, they will be cor
poreal in principle rather than actually. The law of their
intermediate life of blessedness is somatic, but the opera
tion of the law is iu a relative sense suspended.
3. In the final catastrophe when at the second coming
the new heavens and the new earth will supersede the
existing cosmos and the blessedness of Paradise, the condi
tions and relations of the righteous will be changed.
Iu that final epoch of their history they will be released
from incompleteness and from the suspense of the ultimate
perfection. Spiritual life will unfold itself in a form fully
answering to its own law in the bosom of the world to
come. That world will supply the needful pabulum of the
spiritual body. From the paradisaical realm the righteous
will go forth in a new corporeal organism, the building
from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the
heavens,1 a building which will be the structure of the
form-producing type of Christ's life in His members, the
necessary material being given by the new environment,
the perfected condition of the cosmos.
Two factors will enter into its construction: the one
being the internal principle, the type and law of its organi
zation, the other its external requisite conditions. Of the
primary truth of the scriptural doctrine that the resurrection is according
E6 law." Old Faiths in New Light, by Newman Smyth, p. 362;
1 2 Cor. v. 1.

§378.] The Resurrection of the Wicked. 851
mysterious interworkiug of these complemental forces, the
spiritual body of the spiritual man, as the logic of Scripture
and Christian reasoning justifies us in believing, will be
the product.

CHAPTER VI.
THE RESURRECTION OE THE WICKED.
§378-
The resurrection of the dead in a corporeal organism
is to be predicated of two classes, the righteous and the
wicked. Whilst the one class will go forth from the
intermediate realm according to the law of the Spirit
of life in the Second Man, the other class will go forth
according to the law of sin in the fallen life of the first
man. The resurrection of the wicked is for Christian
reason the most obscure question in eschatology.
Respecting the prospective fact there is no ground for
doubt. The problem arises in the endeavor logically
to adjust the fact to the fundamental principle of es
chatology. 1. In Scripture there are but few data apart from the
unequivocal prophecy of the fact; for Messianic revelation
as to its essence is the positive manifestation of God in the
mystery of life-giving aud redeeming love, and with this
positive manifestation the books of the Bible are chiefly
concerned. Sin, the abnormal power in this world and in
the world to come, appears in Scripture rather as the dark
background of the kingdom of God than as its theme.
Our Lord and His apostles teach unequivocally that the

852 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
wicked will be raised from the dead. Says Christ: "Mar
vel not at this; for the hour cometh, in which all that are
in the tombs shall hear His voice, and shall come forth;
they that have done good, unto the resurrection of life;
and they that have done ill, unto the resurrection of judg
ment." Paul teaches " that there shall be a resurrection
both of the just and unjust"1 Many other passages set
forth or imply the same fact, such as Matt. xxv. 31-46;
1 Cor. xv. 22; 2 Thess. i. 7-9; Rev. xx. 12-15. As the
righteous go forth from Paradise so the wicked shall go
forth from the prison of Hades in the day when God shall
judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ2
2. On the basis of scripture teaching the resurrection
of. the wicked has always been a part of Christian belief.
Says the Apostles' Creed: "From thence He shall come
to judge the quick and the dead." Judgment is both neg
ative aud positive, denying admission to the glory of the
kingdom to one class, opening the door to another. The
wicked will be raised up and, as the word 'judge' implies,
they shall appear before the tribunal of Christ, who will
render to every man according to. his works, approving
those that have done good, condemning those that have
done evil.
The Nicene Creed uses nearly the same words: "And
shall come again with glory to judge the quick and the
dead." The Athanasian Creed asserts the resurrection of the
wicked explicitly. It says: " From thence He shall come
to judge the quick and the dead. At whose coming all
men shall rise again with their bodies, and shall give
account for their works. And they that have done good
'John v. 27-29 ; Acts xxiv. 15. 2 Rom. ii. 6, 16.

2 378] The Resurrection of the Wicked. 853
shall go into life everlasting, and they that have done evil,
into everlasting fire."
Since the authority of the ecumenical Creeds was recog
nized by both branches of the Reformation, Reformed and
Lutheran, the doctrine concerning the resurrection of the
just and the unjust passed into all Confessions of the 16th
and 17th centuries. Belief in the resurrection of the two
classes has accordingly been an element of the Christian
consciousness of every age. Individuals or sects that
have denied the belief are to fee regarded as departing from
the faith of the Church catholic.
3. The difficult question arises in the domain of dog
matic science, how may we account for the resurrection
of the wicked?
The resurrection has been referred directly to God's
omnipotence. As G.od can do whatever He wills, it is
thought there is 110 difficulty iu the premises; but neither
Christ nor any apostle refers this mystery to divine omnipo
tence. Christ says that all that are in the tombs shall hear
the voice of the Sou of Man; and Paul teaches: "For since
by man came death, by man came also the resurrection of
the dead."1 The resurrection is an essential epoch in the
history of the kingdom, and it is referred directly not to
God but to Christ, the Head of the Church. It is God
that exerts His power in His kingdom, but He exerts
power according to the law of the new creation. To be
consistent, eschatology searches for a principle of the
resurrection of the wicked which is compatible with the
New Testament idea concerning Christ as Head over all
things unto the Church, aiming at the discovery of a law
by the operation of which this final issue is effected.
' John v. 29 ; i Cor. xv. 21.

854 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
4. The status of the wicked relatively to Christ differs
essentially from the status of the righteous. The righteous
being members of Christ, go forth from Paradise by virtue
of life-union with Him in the Spirit. The wicked
sustain to Him no such dynamic relation. Members of
the fallen Adamic race, they are held under bondage by
the law of sin, and are subject to its curse. They willfully
choose their false attitude towards God, the penalty of
which they are suffering in Hades. Not only have they
conscious existence, but it may also be said of them, they
are alive. They live a false life, a life which at all points
is determined by aversion to the truth and righteousness
of God as manifested by Jesus Christ. For the same
abnormal moral forces work iu the personal history of the
wicked there as here. The principle of spiritual disor
ganization is dominant. How then shall the wicked rise
from the dead ? In what sense will they overcome death ?
§379-
The endeavor to solve this problem will in the nature
of the case be somewhat speculative, not indeed fanciful
nor arbitrary, but it will be an effort to find a solution on
the basis of general principles taught by Scripture con
cerning sin and death, concerning Christ and the future
history of His kingdom.
It is necessary to reassert the important truth that sin
and death are connected by a law common to both. Sin
and death are two forms, two stages, in the development
of the same false principle, a self-contradictory power
which has its perpetual ground in the personality of
Satan, the prince of the kingdom of evil. The two things
at bottom are the same: sin is death, death is sin. Sin

§380.] The Resurrection of the Wicked. 85 5
manifests its virus in the disorganization, the anguish and
bondage of death; death is the bitter fruit of sin. Death
ever presupposes sin as its immanent principle. Wherever
this false principle is active we have the irresistible law of
death. Conversely, wherever death reigns, the principle
of sin is active.
So Scripture plainly teaches. "The wages of sin is
death." J But penalty is not affixed to transgression by an
external act of the divine will. Penalty is the mode in
which of inward necessity transgression affects the trans
gressor. So Paul teaches: The mind of the flesh is death,
because the mind of the flesh is enmity against God.2
In so far as personal experience, ethical philosophy and
the observation of the moral phenomena of history throw
light on this dark theme, the doctrine of Scripture is
sustained. The idea that sin and death are one by an internal in
dissoluble bond will have to underlie trustworthy inquiry
into the history of the wicked in the future world.
§380.
As of sin so of death, we have to predicate three
distinct stages.3 The first stage is the period of fallen
Adamic life on earth. The second follows the article
of death ; it is the interval between that epoch and the
the resurrection. The third stage in the history of the
wicked is ' the second death.'
1. The wicked are of two classes: those who resist the
claims of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, wilfully choosing the
service of sin in opposition to the life and salvation of re-
' Romans vi. 23. 2 Romans viii. 6, 7.
3 Cf. Martensen's Dogmatics, p. 461.

856 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
deeming grace; and those among the heathen who hold
down the truth iii unrighteousness, who knowing God,
glorify Him not as- God, neither give thanks.1
The first stage of death prevails from the hour of natural
birth onward to the article of natural death. Apparently
the wicked live their life on earth as really as the right
eous. Apparently they grow and mature, but their life is
not a genuine human life, it is not rooted in Him who is
'the resurrection and the life,' and the development
through which they are passing is none other than the
process of disintegration. "All flesh is as grass, and all
the glory thereof as the flower of grass. "2
Under a broader view the first stage of the death of the
wicked is the period of disorganization extending through
the entire earthly history of sinning mankind from the fall
of Adam onward to the parousia. Through all ages of
struggle and conflict death holds continuous aud unbroken
dominion over the Adamic race, turning all hopes into
bitterness and all works into ashes. 3
2. The second stage begins with the article of natural
death and prevails over the wicked in Hades, the inter
mediate realm of the dead, continuing in force whilst the
existing eon is prevailing.
As regards the second stage a distinction is to be recog
nized between the article of death and the realm of death.
The former is the iron gate opening into the 'prison.'
The article of death is the terminus of natural life on earth,
removing the subject from the domain of earthly condi
tions. - The earth-bound material organization of the body
fails and dissolves, whilst the subject in the unity of
' Romans i. 21. 2i Peter i. 24 ; Psalm xxxix. 6 ; Gen. ii. 17.
3 Rom. v. 12-14.

§380.] The Resurrection of the Wicked. 857
human being passes into the conditions of the intermediate
world. This intermediate world is the realm of death. For
those who have no part in the redemption and victory of
Jesus Christ it is an unbroken dominion of evil, holding
sway after the character in which sin overwhelms men at
the terminus of natural life. Death, like sin, is a contin
uous, an uninterrupted tyranny. The same law reigning
in sinners under one form during their earthly history,
reigns over them under another form in the history of the
post-earthly period. The abnormal and unnatural condi
tion which sin engendered when the race became sinful,
perpetuates itself through the entire history of its unre
deemed members. This proposition will bear the test of
ethical criticism; and however painful to a sympathetic
heart, Christian eschatology and the moral order of the
world both justify the assertion of it with emphasis. Of
the post-earthly as of the earthly state of the unredeemed
members of the race we have to predicate the same misery.
The dominion which death asserts at the terminus of
natural life, death retains. The wicked die. They are
dead, not extinct; they experience that abnormal condi
tion of misery which is the fruit of sin and of sinning.
Death reigns over persons; not over the body only, but
over body and soul. The body separated from the soul is
not, in the sense of Scripture, mortal. The soul separ
ated from the body is not immortal. Mortality is to be
predicated of man; not of man as fashioned by the
creative word of God, but of man as disorganized and
vitiated by sin. It is the transgressor who dies under the
curse of sin, a curse which has its seat in the soul and em
braces the body. Into Hades, the intermediate realm of

858 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
the curse, the whole man passes, because the whole man
has wilfully subjected himself and persists iu subjecting
himself to the law of death.
The post-earthly reign of death over the unredeemed is
perpetual. There is neither power nor will in its subjects
to break its dominion. Sin does not exhaust itself. Sin
multiplies sin. Nor can death annul death. Just this
wilful, hopeless subjection of the unredeemed to the un
broken dominion of sin is for them the intermediate period
of Hades, a state of existence which differs both from the
life which they lived in the natural body on earth and
from the form of corporeal organization with which they
will appear in the resurrection.
3.. The third stage of death is the ultimate stage. By
the written word it is called the second death, also the lake
of fire. "And death and Hades gave up the dead which
were in them: and they were judged every man according
to their works. And death and Hades were cast into the
lake of fire. This is the second death, even the lake of
fire. And if any was not found written in the book of life,
he was cast into the lake of fire." ' Again: "For the fear
ful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and
fornicators, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, their
part shall be in the lake that burnetii with fire and brim
stone, which is the second death." 2 The second death
realizes all the energies of sin and fulfils all previous
forms of death. As the second death follows after the
resurrection and after the final judgment, it presupposes
the end of the intermediate dominion of sin, or the disso
lution of Hades. That realm of death, holding sway over
the unredeemed dead, continues in force only whilst the
Rev. xx. 13-15. 2Rev. xxi. 8.

§38t.] The Resurrection of the Wicked. 859
advent of the Lord is impending. The resurrection of the
wicked is the epoch of transition in a vile body from the
intermediate realm into the final domain of sin 'prepared
for the devil aud his angels.' x
§381.
The victory over sin and death achieved by the
atonement of Jesus Christ is complete in relation to
Himself, but in its relation to the dead it is now po
tential rather than actual. The teleological law of His
victory will be fulfilled at His second coming, when the
end of the resurrection in the history of the world will
be accomplished.
1. Christ's victory is in principle the condemnation of
Satan and the overthrow of his kingdom. Satan's reign
is even now adjudged to destruction. Says Christ : "Now
is the judgment of this world ; now shall the prince of this
world be cast out"2 The judgment in force during the
current eon will at His advent become an actual and com
pleted fact. The dominion of Satan will in reality be
abolished.3 The abolition of Satan's dominion will be the extermi
nation of his power in the existing cosmos. Not that
Satan himself, or the host of evil spirits, will cease to
exist, nor that 'the lake of fire' will be annihilated; but
his works of evil as now prevalent in nature, among men
on earth and in Hades, this dominion will be dissolved,
these works.will be brought to naught. "The last enemy,
death, shall be abolished."4 The Hades now triumphant
over the unredeemed dead will come to an end. Then
excluded from the whole natural creation, which shares
'Matt. xxv. 41. 2John xii. 31. 3iCor. xv. 24. 4i Cor. xv. 26.

860 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
the virtue of Christ's redemption from the thraldom of
sin,1 Satan with his works of iniquity, with all the conse
quences of his enmity to Christ, will be cast out from the
kingdom of God, and he will be shut up iu his own place.2
With Satan will go forth the wilful subjects of his king
dom: the angels who with him have sinned, and unsaved
men who for want of the fellowship of faith with Christ
have no part with Christ iu His victory over sin and death.3
2. This general conception concerning the overthrow of
Satan's kingdom and the destruction of his works, involves
the resurrection of the wicked. Their present status in
the history of sin is temporary. Though the relation of
unredeemed sinners to Christ and to His second coming
differs in kind from the relation to Him of His redeemed
people, yet the all-pervading immanent energy of the
parousia will change the condition of the one class as
really as it changes the condition of the other class, each
according to the law of their character, the righteous
determined by the law of victorious life in the risen Media
tor, the wicked determined by the unbroken law of sin
principled in Satan.
The gates of Hades are to be unbarred; the'old cosmos
is to be abolished. The intermediate, incomplete mode of
human personality will be superseded by that twofold
ultimate form of existence which will ensue when the
positive redemptive energy of the new creation is con
summated. 3. That the Paradise of Christ's members and the Hades
of the'unredeemed will be superseded at the second com
ing, is plainly taught by our Lord and His apostles.
By our Lord it is taught in several parables: the parable
'Rom. viii. 19-22. 2Rev. xx. 10. sRev. xx. 15.

§38r.] The Resurrection of the Wicked. 86 1
of the wheat and the tares, Matt. xiii. 24-30; the seed
cast into the ground and growing up secretly, Mark iv.
26-29; the net cast into the sea, Matt. xiii. 47, 48; the
wise and the foolish virgins, Matt. xxv. 1-13; the sheep
and the goats, Matt. xxv. 31-46. These parables repre
sent chiefly the advent of the Son of Man to the final
judgment; but they also teach, not by implication only,
but in explicit terms, the great change wrought by His
advent in the status of all men, of the 'foolish ' as of the
'wise,' of the 'bad' as of the 'good.'
No apostle gives us more explicit instruction on this
mystery than St. Paul. I quote again from his classic
chapter on the resurrection. "For since by man came
death, by man came also the resurrection of the dead.
For as iu Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made
alive. But each in his own order: Christ the first-fruits;
then they that are Christ's, at His coming." Interpreted
according to the analogy of faith and in its relation to the
context, this proposition that as in Adam all die so in
Christ shall all be made alive, must be taken to be uni
versal. It asserts a twofold law working in the history of
the human family, embracing both the present and the
future. The death of man came by man, not by the
decree of God; so by man, not by divine omnipotence,
shall come the dissolution of the bonds of this death.
The parallel lies between the first man and the Second
Man. In the first man all die; not necessarily that in
him all living creatures die, but in him all men die, and
by virtue of their organic union with him they abide
under this inherited death. Death holds in its iron grasp
the whole posterity of Adam, a fact to be predicated, not
of some individuals, but of the race in its solidarity.

862 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
So in Christ, the Second Man, shall all be made alive.
He is the principle of a universal life, a life in its possi
bilities and purpose coextensive with the universal death
of the first man. Humanity in Christ is triumphant over
sin and over death, a triumph which through the Spirit
all men by faith may share. Not that every individual
member of the race of ' the first man ' will inherit the
glory of the resurrection-life of the Second Man ; but that
order of universal death which ' all die in Adam ' will
cease to prevail. ,
It is in Christ, the Head of the new race, that men will
be 'made alive.' It was in Adam, the first head of the
human race, the head also of the existing mundane econ
omy, that all men die. Humanity died for that he sinned.
By inheritance his death became the death of the race.
Like Adam so is Christ organically connected with man
kind. The principle of universal existence, He occupies
a profound relation to those who accept Him and to those
who reject Him; to those who accept He is the necessity
of the transition from Paradise to His own glory in
heaven ; to those who reject Him He becomes the resistless
necessity of the transition from the ' torment ' of Hades
to the despair of the second death. The Second Man is
the principle of a deeper and mightier transformation than
the first man, a transformation which all nations and all
individuals will undergo, but each in his own order. He
must reign till He hath put all His enemies under His
feet.

§382.] The Resurrection of the Wicked. 863
§382.
The resurrection of the wicked includes the organi
zation of a body.
The being of man in the personal existence of the
wicked hereafter is no less corporeal than psychical.
1. In the article of death the organic connection of the
wicked with the present natural world is broken. The
invisible region into which they pass does not afford the
requisite objective conditions answering to their somatic
demands. The earthly organization of the body was re
linquished in death. The resurrection body has not yet
become actual. Yet during .the intermediate period the
somatic principle is immanent in the being of the
wicked, a principle, however, that is in suspense whilst
they are under the power of the first death. At the sec
ond coining, when the new cosmos will supervene, the
potential force of the somatic principle will cease to be
merely an immanent, unrealized propension, and it will
actualize itself in the concrete wholeness of individual
existence. The new cosmos will furnish the material and
thus be the condition of the formation of the resurrection
body of the wicked.
2. Though the organization of the body in the resurrec
tion will differ from its earthly organization, it will never
theless be the same body, fashioned both after the type of
the race and of the individual. The identical type which
on earth was actual in the form of the natural body will,
in the final world of evil, actualize itself in the gross form
of the resurrection body. As on earth so then, the mode
of the actualization of the somatic principle will be gov
erned by the immanent law of humanity, perverted and
degraded by the lie of Satan.

864 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
Inasmuch as the righteous are members of the risen
Christ, the law of human nature is in them active nor
mally, being related normally to- God, to the constitution
of the individual and to the. objective world. In the
wicked this threefold relation is abnormal and false,
human nature under all its conditions being subject to the
ever active, falsifying law of sin. Hence the formative
forces of the somatic principle issue in the construction of
a body answering to the sinfulness of the soul; and the
resurrection becomes an epoch of transformation for the
whole man, soul aud body, from the intermediate form to
the final form of degradation.
3. As to the organization of the wicked in the resurrec
tion, two opposite things are to be noted.
The wicked are human, aud the law of their being will
in the resurrection be active according to the generic idea
of humanity. Though members of the kingdom of Satan
they will not exist after the angelic type of Satan.
But as the law of their being is perverted by connection
through sin 'with Satan, the somatic principle will exter
nalize itself in a false corporeal organism. Like the im
manent law of sin grounded in Satan, the body produced
under the operation of this law will in its capacities aud
character be satanic. Their resurrection body will be a
species of corporeity which, like the moral aud spiritual
habit of the soul, will answer to the genius of false self-
perverted personality.
The understanding may be aided by emphasizing an
analogy between the earthly form and the post-resurrec
tion form of existence. Whilst on earth the godlike spirit
of the wicked was enslaved by wilful subjection to the
lusts of the flesh, and the body was sensualized and bestial-

§ 382.] The Resurrection of the Wicked. 865
ized by the reign of passion or the indulgences of vice; yet
light and air, food and drink, yea, all other natural condi
tions were for them objectively the same as the conditions
which on earth ^sustained the purer, higher life of the
righteous. In the resurrection this contrast of corporeal
form with corporeal form will culminate under the new
external conditions of the future world. Governed and
molded in still greater degree by the law of siu and the
mind of Satan, the wicked will appear in a corporeal
organization which more completely expresses and actual
izes the mystery of iniquity. When the Lord comes He
will bring to light the hidden things of darkness.1
Of the righteous Paul teaches that Christ will "fashion
anew the body of our humiliation that it may be conformed
to the body of His glory."2 This conformity to the body
of His glory the righteous only will share, for they only
have the required spiritual fitness. Reasoning from op
posite premises, it is legitimate to believe that, alien from
the redemptive power of Christ and subject to the degrad
ing activity of the law of sin, the resurrection body of the
wicked will develop and realize a type of moral and physi
cal deformity which until then had been hidden; or as
Dr. Strong puts it: "the outward form will fitly represent
the inward state of the soul, "'being corrupt or deformed as
is the soul which inhabits it."3
The same ultimate cosmic economy which conditions
the glorified body of the righteous will condition the
formation of the vile body of the wicked. The one class
under the operation of the law of the Spirit of life in
Christ Jesus are fitted in soul and body for the beatitude
1 1 Cor. iv. 5. 2Phil. iii. 21 ; 1 Thess. iv. 13-17.
'Systematic Theology, p. 575.
55

866 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
of heaven. The other class under the operation of the
law of fellowship iu sin with the prince of darkness will
be fitted in soul and body for the inheritance of gehenna.
The final state in the world to come of every man will
correspond to his moral and spiritual qualifications. The
second death will be the retribution of those only who by
the persistent wilful rejection of the ideal good have been
confirmed in the choice aud service of evil. Says Dr. Mil-
ligan: "Those who have committed evil, whose deeds
have not been the abiding fruit aud work of the truth,
shall go forth to a resurrection to which belongs abiding
judgment"

CHAPTER VII.
THE GENERAL JUDGMENT.
§383-
The kingdom of heaven is likened unto a man that
sowed good seed in his field: but while men slept, his
enemy came and sowed tares also among the wheat and
went away. He that soweth the good seed is the Son of
Man; the field is the world; the good seed, these are the
sons of the kingdom; the tares are the sons of the evil one;
the enemy that sowed them is the Devil; the harvest is the
end of the world, the .consummation of the age; and the
reapers are angels. As therefore the tares are gathered up
and burnt with fire, so shall it be in the end of the world.
The Son of Man shall send forth His angels, and they
shall gather out of His kingdom all things that cause
stumbling and them that do iniquity, and shall cast them

g 383.] The General Judgment. 867
into the furnace of fire. Then shall the righteous shine
forth as the sun in the kingdom of their father.
The kingdom of heaven is like unto a net that was
cast into the sea and gathered of every kind, which, when
it was filled, they drew up on the beach; and they sat
down, aud gathered the good into vessels, but the bad
they cast away; so shall it be in the consummation of the
age: the angels shall come forth, and sever the wicked
from among the righteous, and shall cast them into the
furnace of fire.
The kingdom of heaven is as when a man, going into
another country, called his own servants and delivered
unto them his goods. And unto one he gave five talents,
to another two, to another one, to each according to his
several ability; and he went on his journey. Now after a
long time the lord of those servants cometh and maketh a
reckoning with them.
When the Son of Man shall come in His glory, and all
the angels with Him, then shall He sit on the throne of
His glory, and before Him shall be gathered all the na
tions: and He shall separate them one from another, as the
shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats; and He shall
set the sheep on His right hand, but the goats 011 the left.
For the Son of Man shall come in the glory of His
Father with His angels, and then shall He render unto
every man according to his deeds.
For we must all be made manifest before the judgment-
seat of Christ, that each one may receive the things done
in the body, according to what he hath done, whether it
be good or bad.1
'Matt. xiii. 24-30; 36-43; Matt. xiii. 47"5°; Matt. xxv. 14-17; 3'"46;
Matt. xvi. 27 ; 2 Cor. v. 10.

868 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
According to this teaching: of the New Testament con-
cerning the general judgment, the following particulars
require emphasis: —
1. The judgment is the assize, which differs in character
and in its results, though not in principle, from all judi
cial dealings of God with men on earth, or at the article
of death, or in the intermediate state.
2. The Son of Man is the Judge; not the Son of God,
but the Son of God incarnate, "the self-same one who has
before offered Himself for me to the judgment of God."1
All men, good and bad, will be made manifest before
the judgment-seat of Christ, and the award of the Judge
will be according to the deeds of each class and each
person. 4. The judgment passed upon men will consist in the
judicial separation of the. bad from the good: the con
demnation of 'all that cause stumbling and do iniquity,'
who "shall go away into eternal punishment;" and the
approval of the righteous, who shall inherit the kingdom
prepared for them from the foundation of the world.
5. The principle of the award is the relation of men to
Jesus Christ: works done in His service are approved and
issue in blessedness; while all works not done in His ser
vice fall under condemnation and issue in misery.
6. The day of judgment will be the final epoch in the
judicial history of the world.
'Heid. Cat, 52.

§384] The General Judgment. 869
§384
The day of judgment marks a judicial proceeding
peculiar to itself, yet in principle it is identical with all
preceding judgments of God.
An inflexible moral necessity binds all persons, men
and angels, to do the right.
Since the introduction of sin into the world, the
moral necessity binding angels and men to do the right
has also become the necessity for the condemnation of
wrong. The occasion of the day of judgment is the perverted
moral order of the world.
1. The judgment is not an assize which may be or may
not be held, as God's sovereign will may arbitrarily deter
mine. It does not depend on a divine decree different
from the moral order of the world.
The judgment is internally, connected with the righteous
economy of grace, which enjoins obedience to Christ and
condemns unbelief. The ground of the economy of grace
is the moral order of the first creation, which enjoins
loyalty to truth and condemns those who obey unright
eousness. Of the truth to which the moral order of the
first creation requires obedience, Jesus Christ in His person
and mediatorship is the final development and realization.
Thus related to the established moral order, the day of
judgment is not optional but necessary; not an incident
but a conclusion, historical and logical.
The necessity of the day of judgment is a teleouomic
force active from the beginning in the growth of the king
dom, being rooted both in the ethical nature of Messianic
revelation and in the divine idea of the first man. The
position of Adam in Eden, who was commanded not to eat

870 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, presumes
the existence of the antagonistic kingdom of darkness.
The same antagonism is a presupposition of the entire
economy of redemption. This antagonism implies the
conflict of truth with falsehood, of right with wrong, of
Christ with Satan, a conflict which ultimately will reach
a decisive crisis.
That crisis will be the conclusion of the historic an
tagonism, the result of the spiritual war going on in the
world since the apostasy of the angels. The original pur
pose of God in bringing the world into existence will
triumph, and the end which the moral battles of history
have been anticipating will be accomplished. This
triumph will be the ripe fruit of all the processes, whether
natural or ethical or judicial, which from the beginning
has been growing from the living seed of righteousness,
the immanent action of the Logos. Being the conclusion
and culmination of all the judicial processes of man's his
tory, the general judgment by this fact differs from God's
antecedent judicial dealings.
2. A necessity and. a conclusion, the general judgment
is a fact, the force of which pervades the progress of Mes-
. sianic revelation from the primeval promise onward
through the ages.
All events of human history, whether sacred or profane,
evince the presence of moral and of judicial forces. An
unseen law is ever working with resistless might, which
connects right doing with approval and blessing, wrong
doing with condemnation and misery, thus amid fierce
conflicts announcing an eventual solution of the world
problem. A spiritual eye only is needed to interpret the
signs of coming judgment which the monuments of every
battle-field have been predicting.

1 384-] The General Judgment. 871
Especially may we discern in the judgments of sacred
history imperishable prophesies of the judicial conclusion.
The pre-Christian economy adumbrates the ultimate fact in
its pregnant epochs. Consider the expulsion of Cain, the
deluge, the calling of Abraham, the exodus of the Israel
ites, the overthrow of Pharoah, the conquest of Canaan,
the deportation of the ten tribes, the Babylonian captivity,
each a vindication of the -right and a condemnation of the
wrong. More significant still are the judgments declared by
Christ and His Church. Consider the downfall of the
Herodian family, the victory of Jesus in the wilderness,
His resurrection from the dead, the destruction of Jerusa
lem, and the overthrow of the Grseco-Roman Empire.
Every war of ideas waged by the sword, every social con
vulsion, every victory of right over wrong discernible in
the experiences of nations or individuals, is a sign of divine
judgment. History has a physiognomy, every line of which
manifests not merely policy nor might nor selfishness,
but mingled with these transient powers manifests the
deeper vitalizing force of judicial blood.
3. The impending event is indicated on nearly every
page of the sacred record. Let it suffice, in addition to
the passages above quoted, to note several places in the
Old and New Testament: Gen. iii. 15; xviii. 25; Ps. i. 5, 6;
xcvi. 10, 13; Eccl. xii. 14; Dan. xii. 2; Matt, xxiv; Mk.
xiii; Acts xvii. 31; Rom. ii. 16; 1 Thess. v. 1-3; 2 Thess. i.
5-10; Heb. ix. 27; 2 Pet. iii. 5-13; Rev. xxii. n-15.
The mighty God, the Lord of hosts, great in counsel, and
mighty in work : whose eyes are open upon all the ways
of the sons of men, to give every one according to His
ways, and according to the fruit of his doings.1
'Jeremiah xxxii. 18, 19.

872 Doctrine on the Last Things. [Book 9.
§385-
He who will sit on the throne of judgment is the Son of
Man. Says our Lord of Himself: "As the Father hath life
in Himself, even so gave He to the Son also to have life
in Himself: and. He gave Him authority to execute judg
ment^ because He is the Son of Man." x The same teach
ing we have in many other places: as in Matt. xiii. 41: the
Son of Man shall send forth His angels; in Matt. xxiv. 30:
they shall see the Son of Man coming on the clouds of
heaven with power and great glory; in Matt. xxv. 31:
when the Son of Man shall have come in His glory, aud
all the angels with Him, then shall He sit on the throne
of His glory; in Matt. xvi. 27: for the Son of Man shall
come in the glory of His Father with His angels; in Acts
xvii. 31: God will judge the world in righteousness by the
Man whom He hath ordained; in Rom. ii. 16: God shall
judge the secrets of men by Jesus Christ; in 2 Cor. v. 10:
we must all be made manifest before the judgment seat of
Christ; and in Rev. xxii. 12: behold I come quickly; and
my reward is with me, to render to each man according as
his work is.
The Father does not judge any man, but He has given
all judgment unto the Son. Not God as God will sit on
the judgment-seat, but the Son of God incarnate.
The perfected humanity of our Lord qualifies Him to be
our chief Prophet, our only High Priest, our eternal King.
To the question : What benefit dost thou receive from the
holy conception and birth of Christ? the Reformed Church
answers by saying, "that He is our Mediator."2 The
assumption of human nature qualifies the Son of God to
'John v. 26, 27. 2 Heid. Cat., 36.

§385.] The General Judgment. 873
be the atoning sacrifice, the resurrection and the eternal
life; so His perfected humanity qualifies Him to be the
Judge of all men. The ideal Man, bound to all men by
community of nature, bound in fraternal sympathy with
the needs of His people, will discriminate between the
right aud the wrong, will know aud approve His members,
will know and condemn the enemies of truth and right
eousness. As He gives His life a ransom for sinners, as by His
Spirit He adopts men into His kingdom, as He guides
them in the way of truth by the light of the Gospel, as He
nourishes them with His body and blood, as He keeps
them in the fellowship of the Spirit in the article of death
and welcomes them to better communion with Himself in
Paradise, so sitting on the throne of judgment He con
fesses them to be His redeemed people before His Father
"" in heaven.
As when on earth He declares to unbelievers: Ye will
not come unto me that ye may have life; except ye eat the
flesh of the Son of Man and drink His blood, ye have not
life in yourselves; except ye believe that I am He, ye shall
die in your sins; no one cometh unto the Father but by
me; and as in Hades they that were unrighteous continue
to do unrighteousness; so at the last day it is the will of
the Son of Man that the moral order of the world shall
stand, that every man shall reap as he has sown. The
law of sin works out its own issue: he that soweth unto his
own flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption. No other
judgment is compatible with justice or with love. Love
maintains truth and right. The love of truth is aversion
to falsehood. The approval of right is the condemnation
of wrong. The Judge pronounces the award of every man

874 Doctrine on the Last Things. [ book 9.
according to every man's moral and spiritual fitness.
They who are righteous in Him are by their personal
character fitted for the blessedness He bestows. They
who by their aversion to Him and by devotion to evil are
fitted for the kingdom of darkness, are consigned to the
realm which they have persistently chosen and for which
contrary to God's will they have educated themselves.
§386.
The Son of Man is no respecter of persons. He
will" render to every one 'according to his works.'
Whether works are good or evil turns on the rela
tion which works bear to the person of the Judge.
1. The criterion of judgment will be moral and spiritual
character. The decision of that day will turn on the
question whether a person has 'done good' or has 'done
ill.' On this point the teaching of Scripture is decided and
explicit. Says the Psalmist: "Also unto Thee, O Lord,
belongeth mercy: for Thou renderest to every man ac
cording to his work." 'So in the book of Proverbs: "And
He that keepeth thy soul, doth not He know it? and shall
not He render to every man according to his work?" x
The New Testament declares this principle with the
same emphasis. Says our Lord: "The Son of Man shall
come iu the glory of the Father with His angels; and then
shall He render unto every man according to His deeds." 2
So the apostle Paul: "We must all be made manifest be
fore the judgment seat of Christ; that each one may receive
1 Ps. lxii. 12; Prov. xxiv. 12. Cf. Job xxxiv. 11; Jer. xvii. 10; xxxii. 19.
2 Matt. xvi. 27.

§386.] The General Judgment. 875
the things done through the body, according to what he
hath done, whether it be good or bad." '
Acceptance will depend not 011 a scriptural creed, nor
on a sound theory concerning God or righteousness, but on
what the person is in the sight of God. Not that the'
Creed of the Church is a matter of but little account, nor
that sound doctrinal knowledge is an insignificant thing,
but, as we are taught, because genuine faith works
' through love' and "faith without works is dead." What
is true of a lifeless faith is just as true of lifeless doctrine.
A theory not animated by faith, or that does not bear the
fruit of good works, is only a matter of the intellect
divorced from spiritual vitality; it does not imbue nor
direct the will, nor bear the fruit of genuine Christian
character. The kingdom of Christ is the redemption from
sin, not safety in sin; not in the first instance a redemption
from its penalties, but from its vitiating and debasing
power. Salvation by faith means that Christ living by the
Spirit in the believer is the law and the ruling element of
his words and deeds. His deeds will answer to the domi
nant principle of his life. If Christ in him be this princi
ple, his works will be Christ-like, which Paul calls ' the
fruit of the Spirit.' 2 If the works of the flesh characterize
a man's life, the man is himself of the flesh. This law our
Lord illustrates by an application of it to false teachers:
"Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles? Even
so every good tree bringeth forth good fruit, but the cor
rupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot
bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring
' 2 Cor. v. 10. Cf. Matt. xiv. 2; Rom. ii. 6; 1 Cor iii. 8; Rev. ii. 23; xx.
12; xxii. 12.
* Gal. v. 22.

876 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good
fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire. Therefore by
their fruits ye shall know them." J As the fruits of a tree
are the criterion of judgment concerning the quality of the
tree, so are a man's works the criterion of final judgment
concerning the quality of the man.
2. Jesus Christ is for all men the Truth. He demands
for Himself undivided love, supreme devotion, exclusive
service. " He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not the
Father which sent him."2 All loves are to be held tribu
tary to that love of which He is the object. Works done
toward Him, . or toward others in His name, or toward
others who represent Him, are good works. All works
wanting in this quality of devotion to Christ are not good.
A character formed by the service of Himself in His
kingdom is an approved character. A character formed
by devotion to any other object as the end of life falls
under condemnation. Says our Lord: "He that is not
with me is against me."3 In the parable of the sheep and
the goats the King says unto them on His right hand:
"Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom pre-
paredfor you from the foundation of the world: for I was an
hungered aud ye gave me meat: I was thirsty and ye gave'
me drink." When the righteous answer: "Lord, when
saw we thee an hungered and fed thee? or athirst, and
gave thee drink?" the King shall say unto them: "Verily
I say unto you, inasmuch as ye did it unto one of these
my brethren, even these least, ye did it unto me." The
King is identified with all the members of His kingdom;
in them by His Holy Spirit He lives. A deed of unselfish
1 Matt. vii. 16-20. 2John v. 23. Cf. Matt. x. 32 ; Luke. xii. 8.
8 Matt. xii. 30 ; Luke xi. 23.

§386.] The General Judgment. 877
service done even to the least of those who belono- to Him
is a deed done to Himself: so far forth it is good, aud con
tributes towards the formation of a divine character, even
though the deed seemingly has but little value. Says
Christ: "Whosoever shall give to drink unto one of these
little ones a cup of cold water only, in the name of a dis
ciple, verily I say unto you, he shall in no wise lose his
reward."1 The deed is good for its ultimate end, which
is Christ, the only, Man worthy of supreme homage. The
deed is good also for its motive, which is love to the Son
of Man, who is the impersonation of the true and the right.
To them on His left hand the King shall say: " Depart
from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire which is prepared
for the devil and his angels: for I was an hungered, and ye
gave me no meat: I was thirsty, and ye gave me no drink."
When they shall answer: "Lord, when saw we thee an
hungered, or athirst, and did not minister unto thee?"
the King shall say: "inasmuch as ye did it not unto one
of these least, ye did it not unto me." The law of Christ
is the law of self-denying service, of selfrsacrifice for the
earthly well-being and the moral salvation of others.
They who are Christ's have the Spirit of Christ; if any
man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His.2 Not
having the Spirit of Christ they are not identified with
Him, nor with the genius of His kingdom; hence all the
works done by them are wanting in the indispensable
quality of Christian goodness, aud they are in consequence
disqualified for the blessedness of the righteous. The
words of the King: "depart from me, ye cursed," corre
spond to the permanent moral and spiritual habit of their
souls. Aversion to Christ is the status of personal exist-
'Matt. x. 42 ; Mark ix. 41. 2Rom. viii. 9.

878 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
ence which they have by their own act chosen on earth
aud in Hades; aud this wilful alienation from Christ in
opposition to the grace of the: Gospel involves the curse.
The sentence, "depart from me," will be pronounced on
no one unless, contrary to the will of divine grace, he has
acquired diabolical fitness for the realm prepared for the
Devil aud his angels.
3. On the same general principle the Judge will deal with
the 'Gentiles which have 110 law,' but ',do by nature the
things of the law.' ' Glory and honor and peace to every
man that worketh good, to the Jew first, and also to the
Greek, for there is no respect of persons before God.' ' No
one who by birth is a Jew will for that reason be approved.
No one who by birth is a Gentile will for that reason be
condemned. Be he Jew or be he Gentile, if he ' worketh
good,' he is good.2 Having no law, but being a law unto
himself, the Gentile who does not hold down the truth in
unrighteousness, but 'by patience in well doing,' lives for
that which may be known of God from 'the invisible
things' of God which 'are clearly seen,' even 'His ever
lasting power and divinity,' will be acknowledged 'in the
day when God shall judge the secrets of men by Jesus
Christ' 'The secrets' of the Gentile who 'by patience
in well doing seeks for glory and honor and incorruption '
is his conscientious devotion to the good for its own sake
amid the dim light of paganism,3 a devotion which by the
'Says Olshausen : "As Abraham and other saints, before the coming
of Christ, lived a life of faith, so individual pious Gentiles had also those
germs of faith in their hearts, without which no good works are possible,
because where they are wanting the best outward actions remain ipya
venpd, dead works."
2 Comp. Romans, chapters i. and ii.
8 Says Godet : " In all human conditions there are souls who contem-

§326.] The General Judgment. 879
acquired spiritual habit and spiritual sympathies of his
soul predisposes and qualifies him to embrace the absolute
Good, the mediatorship of Christ, so soon as the absolute
Good confronts his spirit. It is the spiritual habit of his
personal life, developed by response to the felt but sub
conscious gifts of the Son of God iu heathendom that
moves him to honor the King on His throne. The true
light shineth in the darkness and 'lighteth every man
coining into the world.' '
The same principle will decide the destiny of the oppo
site class of Gentiles. Unto them that ' obey not the
truth, but obey unrighteousness, shall be wrath aud indig
nation. '
"Unrighteousness, which Paul contrasts with truth (exactly as Jesus
does, John vii. 18), denotes the selfish passions, vain ambitions, aud un
righteous prejudices, which lead a man to close his eyes to the light
when it presents itself, and thus produce unbelief. Unrighteousness
leads to this result as certainly as moral integrity leads to faith." 2
' For as many as have sinned without law shall also
perish without law.'3 That which may be known of God
is manifest in them, for God manifested it unto them.
But knowing God, they glorified Him not as God; but
exchanged the truth of God for a lie.4 Instead of working
good they work evil; instead of obeying the truth they
obey unrighteousness. The law written in their hearts
works by self-accusation.5 With the self-accusation of
their consciences corresponds the sentence of condemna-
plate the ideal of ' glory, honor and incorruption,' and which, ravished
with their beauty, are elevated by it above every earthly ambition and the
pursuit of sensual gratifications. These are the men who are represented
under the figure of the merchant seeking goodly pearls."
'John i. 9. 2 Godet. 3 Rom. ii. 8, 12. * Rom. i. 19, 25. 5Rom. ii. 15.

88o Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
tion pronounced by the King on His throne. As they
refused to have God in their knowledge God gave them
up unto a reprobate mind. Knowing the ordinance of
•God, that they which practice wickedness, covetousness,
maliciousness are worthy of death, they not only do the
same but also consent with them that practice such
things. Having formed their character in moral evil and
for evil, they lack personal fitness for the blessedness of
the kingdom, and from blessedness they are excluded as
well by the law of their moral being as by the revealed
law of God. § 387-
The general judgment of the world will be the utter
separation of the wicked from the righteous, of all evil
from the good. This separation will be judicial, a
justification of the good, a condemnation of the evil.
Christ and His kingdom will be vindicated.
1. At present and throughout the ages of the current eon
right and wrong commingle, the kingdom of darkness being
inwrought with the kingdom of light. As a consequence
the kingdom of light does not fully actualize the type of
Christian truth, for the abnormal forces of sin are active
not only in the world, but also in the bosom of the Church.
For the same reason the kingdom of darkness does not
fully actualize its type of diabolical falsehood. The 'mys
tery of lawlessness ' is ever modified, ever held in check,
by the presence and might of Christianity.1 The law of
sin and the law of grace, the Spirit of Christ and the spirit
of Satan, are at war in the heart of every believer, and in
the experiences of all branches of the Church. It may
'' 2 Thess. ii. 7.

§387.] The General Judgment. 881
even be said that these warring principles work in each
other, being antagonizing forces iu the same subject, in
the same personality, each aiming at the mastery over the
other. 2. From time to time, this uninterrupted antagonism
reaches what may be called a crisis. In the history of the
Church as also of individual members there are epochs of
judgment. The angry powers of evil from without and
from within collect their strength and concentrate their
enmity into a deadly onset, resolved to fell to the ground
the good as by a single stroke. In turn the mightier ener
gies of the good, evoked by the intensity of the conflict,
meet the foe as in the shock of battle. Moral and spiritual
convulsions akin to birth-throes shake 'not the earth
only, but also the heaven.'1 The Church survives the
crisis; and in surmounting fiendish antagonism she experi
ences a fresh quickening of her spiritual energies. Going
forth from the smoke of battle arrayed in robes of a better
righteousness, the bride of the Lamb for. a time treads
moral evil under foot.
But such victories are temporary, not final. Whilst her
spiritual life renews its strength and her garments are
more beautiful, the conditions of other and even more
direful conflicts remain. After the triumph as well as
before, the virus of sin still poisons her blood. The foe
without lies in ambush awaiting the moment when spirit
ual slumber or moral weakness may expose the Church to
a more formidable attack.
This internal war of the powers of darkness with the
powers of light in the communion of the Church militant
is approaching a crisis that will be final. With the aboli-
1 Heb. xii. 26, 27.
56

882 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
tion of death at the second coming will also be abolished
the principle of antagonism. Sin will cease to be a dis
turbing and disorganizing power within the kingdom of
Christ aud the existing cosmos. As the shepherd separates
the sheep from the goats so will the kingdom, the commu
nity of the faithful, be delivered from confusion with the
kingdom of darkness.
3. The separation of the good from the evil will be
judicial. The crisis will not be the natural consequence
only of contrary forces. Satan will not appear to have
been only unsuccessful, or only weaker than Christ; nor
will his kingdom come to an end because the purpose of
God in permitting moral antagonism and confusion has
been accomplished. Nor might it be said that sin is no
longer the necessary condition of the good. Such opin
ions respecting the judgment fall short of its true import
It is the immoral character of Satan, the immoral status
of his kingdom, that will be brought to light. That final
day will declare Satan to be thoroughly bad, utterly false,
absolutely wrong. His kingdom falsifies the law and the
end of creation, the character and purposes of God, the
life, the truth and the mission of the Church; no less also
does it contradict the conscience of mankind. As active
in the wrong, as being the lie, Satan shall fall under the
ire of God and bear the penalties of open condemnation.
A similar judicial separation from the blessedness of the
good all angels and men will share who have chosen, and
have persisted in choosing, to be the members of Satan's
kingdom.

§388.] The General Judgment. 883
§388.
The judicial overthrow of Satan and his kingdom
presupposes the complete victory of the kingdom of
Christ. The final judgment is primarily positive. The
good asserts itself and maintains itself on the throne.
The Son of Man manifests Himself to be the perfectly
righteous One ; and His people, by virtue of His ap
proval, are demonstrated to be the living members of
the only righteous kingdom. The positive force of the
final judgment is its chief significance.
1. The moral and judicial victory of the Son of Man
actualizes the meaning, hitherto hidden, of His ascension
from earth to heaven. His judicial victory appears in His
enthronement as Judge, and in the positive perfection of
His mystical body. Even now humanity in the person of
the Son, emancipated from the law of corruption, released
from the death of sin, is perfectly triumphant over Satan
and his kingdom.' What humanity, glorified in the per
son of Christ is, that His. people now are in principle
and will actually become at that day. It is not yet made
manifest what we shall be. When Christ, who is our
life, shall be manifested, then shall we also with Him be
manifested in glory. Even whilst in the natural body
being risen with Christ, the righteous possess His victory
potentially; but then they shall be like Him in reality,
for they shall see Him even as He is. The hidden virtue
of His ascension they will fulfil. As He overcame so they
will overcome.2 As He rose above the whole realm of
Satan's dominion, so will they rise with Him.
' Cf." 1 John iii. 2; 1 Cor. i. 7, 8; 2 Cor. iii. 17, 18; 2 Cor. iv. 15-18; Col.
ii. 15; Col. iii. 3, 4.
2 Rev. iii. 21.

884 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
2. It is the kingdom of Christ that attains to perfection
and complete triumph, not the believer as an isolated in
dividual. The growth of the whole conditions the growth
of all the parts. The perfection of the whole kingdom
conditions the perfection of the individual members.
True, the relation of every member to the kingdom de
pends on personal faith and obedience, and his fidelity
reacts upon the growth and spiritual status of the en
tire kingdom; but this reaction is only the correlate of the
truth that the history of the entire organism at every
epoch conditions the possible status of each member.
Hence the supposition that the final judgment of indi
viduals will ensue immediately after natural death is
without warrant. The supposition contravenes Christian
philosophy, especially our Lord's parables respecting the
last things. The good seed and the tares will grow to
gether until the harvest.1
In the end of the world, the angels shall come forth and
sever the wicked from among the righteous.2 Paul
teaches that in Christ shall all be made alive, but each
in his own order: Christ the first fruits, then they that are
Christ's at His coming. Then cometh the end. The
consummation of the individual cannot precede the con
summation of the kingdom.3
As there are crises in the history of the kingdom, so
there are peculiar crises in the history of the individual.
Such a crisis is the epoch of natural death. The state of
the believer in the intermediate realm may be spoken of as
a judgment, a personal vindication, a positive approval of
his faith and character; but the judgment of approval
rests on the fact that he is a living member of the body of
'Matt. xiii. 30. 2Matt. xiii. 49. 8 1 Cor. xv. 23.

§388.] The General Judgment. 885
.Christ. Being a member, he participates in the eternal
life and the radical salvation which distinguish Christ's
mystical body.
The final judgment respects the members of the king
dom as individuals no less than the kingdom in its col
lective capacity. This aspect of the truth I do not overlook.
But the judgment does not respect the individual inde
pendently of his relation to the kingdom as a whole.
Complete deliverance from sin and final glorification , de
pend primarily on the perfection and victory of the entire
body. Therefore every faithful member is approved and
will triumph. It is the ark of God that rides safely over
the waves of the final convulsion, and every member is
safe because the ark will rest on the mount of God.
3. With the Church will also the natural creation itself
be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the
liberty of the glory of the children of God.1 By the im
manent presence of Christ the 'cosmos will be transformed.
Heaven and earth are waiting for the revealing of the sons
of God. Says Bengel: " The visible creation is intended,
and every class according to its capacity." Inwrought with
the resurrection of the righteous, heaven and earth will
triumph over disorganization.2 Then the universe of God,
emancipated in all its kingdoms from the disturbances and
contradictions of moral and physical evil, will be con
summated in the grandeur and beauty of Christ's glorifica
tion. ' Romans viii. 18-24. 2 E-ev- s*1- 5-

886 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
CHAPTER VIII.
GEHENNA : THE SECOND DEATH.
§389-
The revelation of God in Christ as to its essential
nature is prevailingly positive. Christ came directly to
declare Himself, His person and His mediatorship; indi
rectly He uncovers Satan. The ideal life of man and the
true end of the world He manifests rather than man's
disorganized life and the abnormal condition of the world.
Hence we know less of Satan than of Christ; less of sin
than of redemption ; less of death than of eternal life.
For the same reason we know less of hell than we know
of heaven. We can think with less clearness, less logical
consistency, of the ultimate misery of the wicked than of
the ultimate blessedness of the righteous.
We have to remember, moreover, that the natural mind,
-no less than Christian reason, is by its constitution
adapted primarily to inquiry into the good, not into the
evil; and the laws of scientific thought answer to ob
jective truth, not to objective falsehood. Therefore
eschatology may develop better and more trustworthy con
ceptions concerning the kingdom of light than concerning
the kingdom of darkness.
The correct idea respecting the moral order of the world
and the righteousness of Christ's kingdom conditions an
approximately correct conception of the nature of the dis
turbances and miseries produced by the violation of truth
and right. If we recognize aud grasp the necessary con-

§39°.] Gehenna: the Second Death. 887
uection of righteousness with blessedness, we may safely
infer the necessary connection of misery with wickedness.
If only the doing of the truth can yield the fruit of heav
enly glory, it cannot be otherwise than that a personal
history in the service of the lie must issue in the bitterness
of woe. § 39o.
To all who have not been redeemed from the power
and guilt of sin by grace through faith in Jesus Christ
the general judgment will issue in the second death,
the ripest fruit of sin.
The idea of sin, of self-assertion against God, is the
principle of thought respecting the world of woe. This
idea, however, is not fundamental. It presupposes a
more original principle, namely, a scriptural idea re
specting the Second Man, who is the impersonation
of the true, the good, the beautiful.
1. The second death is hell, called in the New Testa
ment gehenna. Of gehenna sin is the informing prin
ciple; and by the constant action of the forces of sin
gehenna perpetuates itself from age to age. Gehenna is
the realm where all the dark possibilities of the sinful
personality of fallen angels and wicked men are com
pletely actualized.
Hell being directly related to transgression committed
by man, and through man's transgression related to the
mystery of iniquity lying back of his apostasy, is to be
regarded, not as the creation of God, but as the product
of the personal creature. Heaven has no beginning, be
cause the good is eternal. Hell has a beginning, because
sin is not eternal. Sin begins in time, not with time.
When sin and the sinfulness of the personal creature

888 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9,
begin, hell begins. When the angels kept not their first
estate, when Lucifer became Diabolus, then in and with
the perversioii of their moral aud spiritual nature began a
sphere of existence corresponding to this moral perversion,
a domain iu itself false and abnormal, and in its relation
to God and to the truth inimical.
As sin and the character of Satan contradict God's
righteous will, so hell is contrary to God's righteous pur
pose. As sin is not an integral part of the original world-
plan, neither is hell. Sin is a foreign principle, foreign
to God, to man and to the teleology of the cosmos; so is
hell foreign. God hates hell. He hates it beqause He
hates sin. The shame and confusion, the wickedness aud
miseries of this final abode of transgressors, are to God
objects of abhorrence.
2. Hell accordingly is to be viewed, not as necessary,
but as an accidental domain. It is not a part of God's
world; it is Satan's world, produced not by the righteous
will of God, but by diabolical wickedness. As by the
mystery of the pre-human apostacy, the angel of light was
transformed into the angel of darkness, so by the principle
of sin working in Satan and his host the objective sphere
of their existence, in itself like their original life good,
was by virtue of the dynamic connection between a per
sonal subject and his environment debased, and thus
transformed into a condition corresponding to his false
life and his vicious moral activity. This false, this per
verted domain of angelic existence is hell.
Analogies to gehenna may be seen in the products of
the law of sin among men now. The wicked form for
themselves on earth little hells, dens of iniquity. There
are places where profanity and cruelty, vice and crime,

§391.] Gehenna: the Second Death. 889
degradation and filth skulk, and reign supreme over right
eousness and love, over order and truth, nobleness and
beauty. Such dens are dug iu pagan lands: for even there
may be found a wide difference betweeu a worse class and
a better class of idolaters. Vile dens are constructed in
Christendom,. where the laws of nature aud the gifts of
Providence, even the blessings of the Gospel, are all so.
misused, so perverted, as to stimulate depravity, foster
wickedness and multiply the most repulsive forms of
vilenes? and wretchedness. Such a hell some years ago
was Five Points in New York, Bedford Street iu Philadel
phia and Cowgate in Edinburgh.1 Vile places like these
are on earth the types and prophesies of the final hell;
and they illustrate the principle that sinful personality, by
a law of its own, projects an environment of 'blackness of
darkness,'2 producing an abode of enduring torment
§39i-
The torment of hell is to be studied in its relation to
its subjects. We have to distinguish between devils
and wicked men, also between wicked men in Hades
and wicked men after the final judgment.
Moreover, we distinguish between hell as the abode
of devils and hell as the abode of men.
1. As regards apostate angels, hell is now for them an
actual abode. Says St. Peter: "God spared not angels
when they sinned, but cas.t them into dungeons, and com
mitted them to pits of darkness, to be reserved unto
judgment3" This state and place has been and is now
'See Harbaugh's Guardian, Feb., 1870. 2Jude 13.
3 2 Peter ii. 4. Taprapiioag, cast into Tartarus. This verb is not used
in the Septuagint, nor elsewhere in the New Testament. According to
Homer, Hesiod and Plato, Tartarus is the lowest place in nature, most
dreadful with darkness and cold. See Bengel. Cf. Jude 6.

890 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
the 'Tartarus' of devils. As on the one side, heaven is
the mansion of divine glory which the eternal light of
righteous love irradiates, so 011 the other hell is even now
the dark pit where the remorse of wickedness is ever
feeding on the heart of its subjects and the unmixed dis
pleasure of God with sin is revealed.
2. As regards wicked men iu Hadesr gehenna or hell
taken iu the sense of 'the second death' does not now
exist iu fact. For them that world of Satan is still a
future abode. In Hades they are indeed under bondage
tp sin. They suffer the torment which is its necessary
consequence; but they have not yet sunk into those depths
of iniquity and woe which follow after the general judg
ment Their sufferings in Hades are more intense than
they were in any hell on earth; but their sufferings are
also less than they will be after the consummation, when
sinful personality will produce the bitterest fruit of
wickedness. In Hades sufferings are greater because the spiritual
status and moral relations of the wicked are different. On
earth, though unregenerate men are wicked and hostile to
God, especially to the grace of Jesus Christ, they are
nevertheless the recipients of God's goodness and the
objects of God's mercy. Positive blessings come to them
in the course of nature aud through the dispensations of
Providence. God maketh His sun to rise on the evil and
the good, and seudeth rain on" the just aud the unjust.
Paul teaches that God left not Himself without witness
among the heathen, in that He did good, and gave them
from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling their hearts
with food and gladness.1 In addition to such blessings of
1 Matt. v. 45; Acts xiv. 17; xvii. 25; Rom. ii. 4.

«39'] Gehenna: the Second Death. 891
Providence, wicked men in Christian lands enjoy, in pro
portion to their capacity, the far richer blessings of the
Gospel. The design of God's love and forbearance, ex
perienced in greater or less measure by all nations, is to
restrain the power of sin and relieve its miseries. The
mediation of Christ avails during natural life for the social
and spiritual benefit of all classes, so long at least as men
have not been confirmed in their aversion to Christ and
their rejection of His Holy Spirit.
The status of the wicked, in their relation to the gifts
of Providence and the blessings of the Gospel, is changed
in Hades. So much at least we may affirm: that the un
redeemed who have rejected the person and kingdom of
Christ suffer the direful consequences of such rejection.
They have come to an advanced stage of sinfulness, espec
ially of aversion to Jesus Christ, and therefore have de
scended to a lower plane of suffering. And those among
the heathen who knowing God glorified Him not as God,
who obey not the truth, but obey unrighteousness, will in
herit the tribulation and anguish which come upon every
soul of man that worketh evil;1 not that 'anguish ' come?
upon ' every soul ' only for the ' evil ' done here, but much
more for the unrighteousness which 'every soul' confirmed
in evil is fitted to work and actually does work hereafter.
They experience the falsehood of sin, not modified by the
appropriation of any gifts of God's goodness or of our
Lord's intercession.
But sufferings are less in Hades than they will be in the
final abode of evil. Though bearing the curse inherent in
transgression, the wicked are still .in the intermediate
period of the history of human wickedness. The law of
'Rom. i. 21; ii. 9, 10.

892 Doctrine on the Last Things. [B00K9.
siu iu the sinful personality is working towards its last
result, but the cup of iniquity is not yet full. The fruit
of aversion to God and of self-contradiction has not yet
reached its final stage. Moral evil bears iu its bosom a
law of progress, a law which does not work out its ultimate
status of misery so long as the consummation of all things
is in suspense, for until then all the required conditions do
not exist. § 392-
Hell as it now exists, whilst the wicked dead are in
Hades and the Church of Christ is fulfilling her mission
on earth, may be regarded as the prophecy of the hell
which will be.
1. The final condition of the wicked as that condition
becomes after the judicial separation of the general judg
ment, will be the actualization of all the potencies of sin
and corruption, of guilt and wrath. This actualization
depends on the second coming of Christ. When the exist
ing cosmos has been superseded and Hades is destroyed;
when devils have been utterly excluded from God's natural
aud spiritual economy; when the wicked will follow the
prince of the kingdom of evil to the abode prepared for
him; — then the law of sin and the working of guilt will
have unrestricted scope.
Sin and guilt will hold complete sway over the wicked.
Going forth from Hades in a yile body, a body which is
the complete counterpart of the wicked spirit, sin will
realize its satanic type under forms of the most determined
enmity to the love of God, the grace of Jesus Christ and
the communion of the Holy Ghost. Reasoning from our
knowledge of human personality and of the thorough con-

§ 393d Gehenna : the Second Death. 893
tradiction between right and wrong, truth and falsehood,
we are justified in saying that the wicked develop a char
acter which will be the most hideous perversion of the
divine imageship.
2. Over devils the law of sin will hold complete sway,
inasmuch as after the judgment devils will reap the horri
ble harvest of apostasy and of persistent wickedness ex
tending through the whole course of history.
Even for devils prior to the final consummation, we are
warranted in supposing that there is a species of relief.
As during the current eon their continuous antagonism to
God is maintained in the kingdom of the true and the
good, we may presume that the bitterness of sin is in some
degree neutralized by this warfare and by seeming tem
porary victories.
But when devils will no more come into contact with
the true and the good; when they are cast out from the
positive domain of God's kingdom; when all seeming
victories have been overwhelmed by ruinous defeat; when
they shall be shut up within themselves, circumscribed
'only by diabolism; when their own intrinsic wickedness
will react upon themselves without restraint; — then sin and
guilt will work out the lie of diabolism in their experience
with extreme virulence and under its most hideous forms.
*
§393-
The Christian heart contemplates with horror the final
penalties of devils and wicked men. The hand of a
thoughtful theologian almost refuses to set down in words
the indubitable intimations of siu and the unequivocal
prophecies of Christianity.

894 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
"There is no power in holy men,
Nor charm iu prayer, nor purifying form
Of penitence, nor outward look, nor fast,
Nor agony, nor, greater than all these,
The innate torture of that deep despair
Would make a hell of heaven, can exorcise
From out the unbounded spirit the quick sense
Of its own sins.'"
Eschatology however dare not forget that the hopeless
woe of gehenna is contrary to the eternal purpose, the
creative word and the providential designs of God. God
has constituted Satan and his angels personal beings.
Relative autonomy is their inalienable prerogative. God
has constituted man a personal being, bearing His own
image. Relative autonomy is also his inalienable pre
rogative. Human personality carries in its unfathom
able depths positive capacities for the Infinite and the
Absolute, capacities for transcendent ennoblement in the
fellowship of the triune God. But positive freedom
toward the absolute Good implies the possibility of con
trary choice. The absolute Good to become the good for
me and in me, must by me be chosen and appropriated.'
This possible appropriation of the Good may not become
actual. The autonomy of personality is a profound mystery.
Angels and men may renounce the truth for a lie, renounce
God for self, and the right for the wrong. In such volun
tary self-perversion sin begins," by it sin continues and
sways the sceptre of bondage over its subjects here and
hereafter. Gehenna is not the decree of God, not the consequence
of God's causative providence. The gehenna following
1 Byron.

§393-] Gehenna: the Second Death. 895
the judicial separation of the final judgment is the ultimate
product of siu: for devils, of diabolical sin and diabolical
guilt; for men, of human siu and human guilt. There the
mystery of iniquity finds its own place, begotten by itself
and for itself.
Will gehenna ever cease to exist? The answer to this
question depends on the reply we may give to two other
questions. First, will the constitution of personality be
abolished? Secondly, will the false principle of sin cease?
These two questions may be resolved into one: will sinful
personality cease to be sinful ?
Sin and penalty are one. Penalties will cease when
sinfulness ceases. Should we have any reason to anticipate
that sinful personality in gehenna may become righteous
and holy personality, or that fixed aversion to Jesus Christ
may be resolved into faith and love, then we might teach
that the horrors of gehenna may come to an end. But
that such a presumption may become a fact neither
faith nor sound reason affords ground for hope.
Pagan moral philosophy and Christian ethics and the
written word of God, all shut us up to the conviction that
sin multiplies sin, that sinful personality which has wil
fully, persistently rejected the true, the good, the right as
realized and manifested in the person of the incarnate Son,
becomes confirmed in sinfulness; and the penalties insep
arable from sinfulness and sins, instead of effecting a
return from falsehood to truth, from self-will to Christian
obedience, intensify and embitter aversion to God aud His
righteousness. Rational thought on the ethical and judi
cial relationship between the personality of God and the
personality of the creature necessitates the bitter expecta
tion that the disorganization and torment of sinful

896 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
personality will become more and more real as from age
to age devils and wicked men perpetuate and intensify
their wickedness. Christian reason has to justify the
sentence: "Depart from me, ye cursed, into the eternal fire
which is prepared for the devil and his angels."

CHAPTER IX.
HEAVEN: PINAL BLESSEDNESS.
§394-
In the world of nature environment modifies and in
process of the ages may change the structure of the
plant or the animal, though the degree of change of
structure depends in every case on the constitution of
the living thing.
When we enter the kingdom of man the same law
operates, in a degree, as regards the figure of his body,
his dwelling, and external methods of gaining a liveli
hood. But as regards personality the law operative
in sub human organisms is reversed.
1. Natural environment does not touch the categories
of thought, or the fundamental laws of speech, much less
the unique qualities of man's conscience; least of all does
environment change his instinctive relationship to God.
In the sphere of personality, the environment does not
form the man, but the man fashions the environment.
This reversed interaction between personal being and
environment may be seen even among savage tribes, some
building for themselves a more degraded, others a more
noble abode. The reversal of natural law becomes more

2 394] Heaven: Final Blessedness. 897
and more remarkable as we pass from savage to civilized
nations and then ascend in the scale of civilization.
Civilization is not the effect of natural surroundings.
Whatever modifying influences latitude or ocean, moun
tain or sky, may have on the disposition and customs of a
people, neither one nor all taken together make a civiliza
tion. Civilization is builded by personality. Human
genius begets the useful arts as well as the fine arts.
Intelligence and will originate and inform the moral
structure of the social organism. The noblest develop
ment of human life and the best civilization may emerge
and flourish where climate is inhospitable and the external
conditions of society are seemingly most unfavorable to
moral and religious culture; whilst a lower status of civil
ization may exist in the midst of external conditions
apparently much better adapted to the progress of knowl
edge and morality. Iceland compared with Mexico affords
an illustration. Whether we contrast a hut or a palace, a
field or a golden harvest, a village or a city, a bank or a
temple with a desert or a wilderness, it is evident that
man changes his natural environment and constructs his
own abode; he constructs it in forms answerable to the
character'and aims of individual and social life.
2. Of man, ' the image and glory of God,'1 this reversal
of the law governing the interaction between a thing and
its environment in nature is true, because the reversal is
true of God. God forms His own environment, called by
our Lord "my Father's house," iv rg oltiaTov warpog, and by
Paul "light unapproachable," Tac oln&v cmpdoiTov? Like His
own being, the ohia of God is holy, blissful, in the abso
lute sense. Says Delitzsch:
' 1 Cor. xi. 7. 2John xiv. 2 ; 1 Tim. vi. 16.
57

898 Doctrine on the Last Things. [Book 9.
"The holiest of all — to ayia — is the place of God absolutely elevated
above place and time. ' This place of God is not anywhere in the region
of the created. It is heaven beyond all heaven, filling everything, with
out being limited by anything whatever ; it is the uncreated heaven of
God, His eternal doxa."1
As God may not be comprehended by human thought,
especially not now whilst the Christian is moving on the
earthly plane of history, so neither may heaven, the oUla
of God, be comprehended. For this reason however
heaven, like God, is not unknowable. As the eye of
Christian faith may in Christ see God, so in the fellowship
of Christ may faith see God's home; and as the intuition
of Christian faith may learn to know God and learn rightly
to think of God, so may the intuition of Christian faith
know the abode of God, His eternal <M?a, and learn to think
of our 'Father's house' according to the objective laws of
truth. God conditions heaven. In the degree that our
conception of God approaches perfection may our concep
tion of heaven become more and more trustworthy.
Any effort of thought to gain a knowledge of heaven
from any other point of view is alike unscriptural and un-
philosophical. Man's abode we study in the light of
man. Neither the plant nor the animal illumines a palace.
Comparison with the nest of a bird or the comb of a bee
or the hut of a beaver presents the difference of contrast;
but such comparison does not give a clue to insight into
the laws and the goal of mankind. So neither does the
study of man's present abode set before us the abode of
God. Whilst the analogy between man and God may
never be repudiated, nor its worth for Christian thought
be ignored, yet the law of the divine existence is to be
'Biblical Psychology, p. 517.

§395.] Heaven: Final Blessedness. 899
studied by concentrating faith and thought on that law as
revealed by Jesus Christ. As we refer the manifold forms
of man's abode to the social, moral and religious constitu
tion of man, so we refer the organization of heaven, the
mansions of our Father's house, to the triune constitution
of the Godhead. § 395-
^ Heaven is the domain of uncreated glory, in which
God, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, lives the life of
absolute love in fellowship with Himself. Heaven, the
self-produced om'm of God, is eternal, supernatural,
transcendent. It is not a part of the created universe.
It may not be located. Heaven is the form of exist
ence which differs essentially from the present econ
omy of mankind or of the cosmos, as the Creator
differs from His creation.
1. As to its essence and character heaven is spiritual,
being of the absolute Spirit, and it is divine, being purely
and absolutely God-like. As God differs from man, as the
spiritual differs from the material, so heaven differs from
the cosmos. The two orders, the heavenly and the
cosmic, are two in kind. They are not contradictory, nor
mutually exclusive; but heaven exists by virtue of condi
tions and relations other than those which originate and
uphold the cosmos.
The analogy between God aud man affords aid to sci
entific thought There is a true no less than a false
anthropomorphism. The highest revelation of God's
being we have in the life of the ideal Man. It must-
therefore be valid to think of God in human forms of
thought. Man presupposes God. God anticipates aud
complements man. Yet the two ideas differ in kind by a

qoo Doctrine on the Last Things. [Book 9.
manifold and an infinite difference. We may neither
deify man nor humanity God, nor yet may we imply a
dualistic severance. On this theological principle escha
tology has to study both the difference aud the connection
between the cosmos and heaven.
The natural economy is the parable of the spiritual
world, and may sustain inquiry into the nature of heaven
when thought is illumined by the vision of faith and
works in obedience to faith ; yet of heaven we may get the
most satisfying conception when we contemplate it directly
.in its dynamic relations to the Father and the Son and the
Spirit. 2. Says our Lord: "In my Father's house are many
mansions; if it were not so, I would have told you; for I
go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a
place for you, I come again, and will receive you unto
myself; that where I am, there ye may be also."1 In His
sacerdotal prayer we have these momentous words:
"Father, that which thou hast given me, I 'will that,
where I am, they also may be with me; that they may
behold my glory, which thou hast given me: for thou
lovedst me before the foundation of the world."2 The
heaven of Jesus Christ is the glory of the Father which He
had with the Father before the world was. The heaven
of the saints, according to His own word, will be the per
fected fellowship with Himself where He now is in the
glory of the Father. The true eternal heaven the saints
will inherit; and this heaven is now as to its substance
what it was before time began by virtue of the triune life
of absolute Love. The prophecy declared by the profound
words of His sacerdotal prayer will then absolutely be ful-
1 John xiv. 2, 3. 2John xvii. 24.

§395-] Heaven: Final Blessedness. 901
filled: "And the glory which thou hast given me I have
given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are
one; I iu them, and thou in me, that they may be per
fected into one."1
Therefore eschatology cannot proceed on the assumption
that heaven may be located. Christian thought may not
assume that it exists anywhere within the undefined
extension of the created universe. Hell is not a dungeon
among the dark caverns of earth ; so neither is heaven the
place of bliss on some fixed star, or iu some distant region
of the siderial heavens.
Nor yet, however great the transformation through
which the earth may pass, and however important the
position which the renovated earth may occupy in the
glorified cosmos, may we assume that this theatre of reve
lation, where the incarnate Son performed His mediatorial
work in the natural body, will become the fiual abode of
the saints. *
3. Nor may we think of heaven as an abode which is
separated from us conformably to the laws of nature-space
or nature-time. Considered from this point of view, heaven
is neither far from us nor near to us. The conception is
equally defective, whether we imagine the omia of God to
be locally present or locally distant. Like God Himself,
the sphere of His essential glory does not, objectively,
exist under the conditions of any natural or earthly cate
gory. " There is a heaven of glory which does not belong to the portions of
the world-system which were created once for all, and yet it is some
where,— to wit, continually produced and brought forth by God's will
there, and throughout there, and only there, where God will reveal Him-
'John xvii. 22, 23.

902 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
self in His bodily glory to angels and men. There also is that ciaivfi, or
rather, this heaven of glory is that OKr/vf), through which Christ entered
into the doxa (John xvii. 5), or the essence of the Godhead self-revealed
to Himself."1 The difference between heaven and the cosmos is gen
eric, and may be compared to the difference between the
social organism of mankind and a group of trees. The
idea of local separation or local proximity, does not affect
the reality of difference between the two things. Whilst
we cannot do otherwise than speak of heaven in terms of
space or time, eschatology may never lose sight of the
fundamental truth that heaven proper differs from earth
as God differs from man. § 396-
In the oiKia of the triune God eschatology may discern
distinctions and relations, or what our Lord calls
'many mansions,' poval ¦koIMI.
Heaven is to be contemplated first as related to the
life of the triune God ; then as "related to the incarnate
Son enthroned at God's right hand ; and finally as re
lated to the Church triumphant, or the members of
Christ's mystical body glorified.
We are warranted in believing that the kingdom of
God has a history in heaven corresponding to its his
tory on earth.
1. As related to the objective fellowship of the Father,
the Son aud the Holy Spirit, heaven is eternal. Eternal
it is in the sense in which God is eternal, being the
domain of His essential glory, effulgent with the light of
His triune life of love.
Not only is the oUia of God without beginning and
without end. Respecting heaven it is logical also to
'System of Biblical Psychology by Franz Delitzsch, D. D., p. 518.

§396.] Heaven: Final Blessedness. 903
believe that it answers to and is commensurate with the
infinitude of His own being, the domain of absolute perfec
tion and absolute blessedness. Viewed in its immediate
relation to the triune God heaven is identical with itself,
the same before the creation of worlds that it is -now, the
same now that it will be when the first creation in the first
man and the new creation in the Second Man have come
to their ultimate consummation.
2., As related to the Son incarnate, now glorified at the
right hand of the Father, heaven is organically connected
iii two directions: with the eternal life of triune absolute
Love, and with the new creation brought into existence
by Jesus Christ in the economy of the time-world. Under
this view heaven embraces the perfected natural in the
form of the ideal human. As a consequence heaven is
now somewhat other tha*n heaven was before the first
creation, or before the incarnation. Inasmuch as the Sou
of Man is now glorified, that is, since He is so transfigured
that He has become intrinsically fitted for, and has been
invested with the glory which the pre-incarnate Son had
with the Father before the world was, the heaven of His
glorification is an actual sphere of divine-human existence
different from the eternal glory of the Godhead. Difficult
it is, if not impossible, to express the difference in terms
of the natural understanding. Nevertheless Christian
thought ruled by Christian faith, as certainly as it recog
nizes the enthroned Christ to be the Son of Man glorified
in union with the Son of God, must also recognize a differ
ence in the organization of heaven by as much as the
incarnate Son, who through His manhood is dynamically
connected with the cosmos, differs from the pre-incarnate
Son.

904 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
3ut the heaven of the glorification of the incarnate Son
and the eternal heaven of the triune God are not to be so
construed as to imply separation. The one is not discon
nected from the other. The two heavens are one heaven,
one in life, one in love, one in blessedness. The heaven
of glorification is related to the original, the absolute
heaven, as the God-Man is related to the Sou of God in
the eternal fellowship of the Godhead. Eschatology has
to distinguish heaven from heaven as Christology distin
guishes between the pre-incarnate Son and the incarnate
Son. Eschatology has to identify heaven with heaven as
Christology holds the being of the pre-incarnate Son and
the being of the incarnate Son to be one and the same.
Accepting these scriptural premises, the heaven proper of
the triune God is seen to be not a realm mechanically
fixed, excluding the movemeiit of organized life. The
ascension of Christ constitutes an epoch in the history of
God's kingdom in heaven as if constituted an epoch in the
history of His kingdom on earth.
3. The heavenly life of the God-Man glorified is the
source of the heavenly life of His members, who will be
perfected in Him at His second coming. The heaven of
final blessedness for the members of Christ will exist by
virtue of their life-communion in the Holy Spirit with His
perfected personality. That life-communion, begotten by
the Spirit, and nourished by His flesh and blood during
their earthly history, is now in Him the perfected life.
What the Son of Man is, they are becoming. The new life
which they live on earth in the Church militant aud the
new life which they will live with Christ in the Church
triumphant are as to kind the same eternal life. Their
heaven of blessedness is none other than the completed

«39&] Heavzn: Final Blessedness. 905
fruitage of that transforming fellowship in the Spirit with
Jesus Christ which now by faith they have aud are per
fecting. Under one view, therefore, the heaven of the saints is
now in existence. It is existing in principle; for the
exaltation, perfection and blessedness of the Son of Man
constitute the very perfection and blessedness for which
His members are in process of preparation, into which
they shall enter, and which with Him they shall possess.
In another respect, however, the heaven of the saints is
not now in existence. The final heaven for them will be
brought to pass when the entire creating and redeeming
activity of the incarnate Son shall become complete by
the actual glorification of the saints themselves. For
the perfected likeness to Christ of His members condi
tions their fitness for blessedness as really as His own
glorified life is the ground and source of their spiritual
perfection. 4. Not only, however, does the final perfection of the
saints condition for them the blessedness of heaven, but
their final perfection also affects the glory of Christ, their
Head ; for the life "of Christ as fulfilled by the everlasting
life of His members completes His own glorification.
On the one hand we are taught that His members are
glorified with the glory of Christ. The glory which thou
gavest me, He says, I have given unto them.1
In turn Christ, the Head, is glorified by the final per
fection of His members. He says: "I pray for them: I
pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast
given me; for they are thine: and all things that are
mine are thine, and thine are mine, and I am glorified
'John xvii. 22.

906 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
in them."1 The final perfection of His members com
pletes His mediatorial work. It actualizes under its ulti
mate form the eternal purpose of God's wisdom and love.
Universal history, including all worlds, from the moment
when the first creative word was spoken onward to the
last day, will be developed into the transcendent beauty
and sublimity of the kingdom. The kingdom, the com
pleted organism of the mystery of life, of which each
individual member is an exponent, will be what divine
love designed the whole and every part to be, and so
become the organ of the glorification of Christ. As the
Father honors the Son, as the Son honors the Father, so
do fallen men redeemed from sin, transformed and beauti
fied by grace, honor the Son. By that which they have
become in Him they actualize and set forth that which He
is. And living the life of divine love by the Spirit in the
glorified communion with the Son they also honor the
Father. Hence of the final abode of the saints we may not think,
exclusively, under, the image of a magnificent city with
innumerable finished palaces, all ready awaiting the re
ception of guests. The grand imagery of the twenty-first
chapter of the Apocalypse describes the truth of heaven
for the saints under its divine aspect only. The whole
truth includes human conditions. Though heaven is
eternal and is now truly in existence, yet the final bless
edness of Christ's members is internally connected with,
and therefore dependent on the new life of the kingdom
now in process of growth on earth and in Paradise. For
the saints, after the final consummation, heaven will be
'John xvii. 9, 10. Cf. John xv. 7, 8; xvi. 13, 14; xvii. 20-24; Rev. xiv.
1-3 ; xv. 3, 4 ; xxi. 3-5.

1 397.] Heaven : Final Blessedness. 907
what it is not now. There is a sense in which the saints
make their own heaven. They condition it after a man
ner analogous to the manner in which Christ makes His
heaven of glorification. We may say that the sphere of
final blessedness is, in one respect, the self-produced en
vironment of the personal Christ and of the members of
His mystical body. To use the words of another: Heaven
is a prepared place for a prepared people.
§ 397-
The everlasting life which the saints will live in the
fellowship of Christ is the informing principle and the
substance of their heavenly blessedness.
Being the consummation of the kingdom of God, the
heaven of perfection embraces the totality of the in
dividual organization of its members.
1. The life of the saints is distinct and different from
the life of God. God lives His absolute life of love in the
fellowship of the Father, Son and Spirit. The saints on
the contrary live a relative life of love. The difference is
the infinite difference between the personal Creator and
the personal creature.
Yet the life everlasting which the saints will live in
heaven is of one order with the life of the incarnate Son; for
He is man of man, He that sanctifieth and they that are
sanctified being all of one.1 And the life of the incarnate
Son is one with the absolute life of God. As the Father
hath life in Himself even so gave He to the Son also to
have life in Himself.2 This life of the Father which the
Son has in Himself the saints possess. The members -of
the kingdom of the incarnate Son live the life of the
'Heb. ii. n. 2John v- 26> xvii" 20"26"

908 Doctrine on the Last Things. [Book 9.
incarnate Son. I am the vine, He saith, ye are the
branches. Says the apostle: "God gave unto us eternal
life, aud this life is in His Son; He that hath the Son
hath the life."1 They shall know that the Son is in the
Father, and they in the Son, and the Son in them. Liv
ing this life with the Son in God, the saints share with
the Son the original aud eternal blessedness of the life of
God Himself. They are the heirs of God, and joint-heirs
with Christ. In Christ the triune God is their inheritance.
Our Lord prays: "Father, I will that where I am, they
also may be with me; that they may behold my glory,
which thou hast given me." 2
2. As to the status of human life in heaven, eschatology
has to emphasize two opposite features. It is distinctively
a finite, a human personal life, yet it is the pure image of
God, a life akin to the absolute life of God which is its
perpetual fountain.
The everlasting, life eschatology may trace backwards
step by step through the history of our race on earth to its
beginning. Identical with the life which by faith believers live in
Christ on earth, the life everlasting is connected with
man's natural life fallen in Adam. For 'the spiritual
man ' is none other than the Adamic man regenerate in
Christ by the Spirit.
Through this fallen Adamic nature 'the spiritual man'
is connected with the original being of Adam, as it was
constituted by the creative word.
And through his original being 'the spiritual man' is
connected with the eternal life of the Son, after whose
image the first man was made.
1 1 John v. n, 12 ; John xiv. 20.
2 Rom. viii. 17; John xvii. 24. , Cf Rev. iii. 20, 21 ; xxi. 6; xxii. 14.

§397] Heaven: Final Blessedness. 909
And through the Son the life of 'the spiritual man' is
connected with God Almighty, the Father of our Lord
Jesus Christ.
The personal life which in the beginning was fashioned
in God's image, which by wilful transgression fell away
from God aud was vitiated by the foreign principle of sin,
and by the birth into the kingdom by the life-giving
Spirit is quickened after the image of the incarnate
Son, and is glorified by the victory of the resurrection, —
this identical human life proceeding originally by creation
from God has now in the person of Christ's members glori
fied become the everlasting life. Beginning from God the
cycle of history closes in God. Yet the conclusion differs
from the beginning by as much as the relative maturity
of Christian character on earth differs from the crudeness
of infancy.
As the life everlasting completes the birth of the Spirit
and the mystical union, so it realizes the concrete perfec
tion of the image which in the beginning reflected the
eternal archetype of the Son. The possession by the saints
of the glory of the Father in the communion of the Son
is thus the ultimate development and bloom of that crea
tive word which became a reality when God breathed into
man the breath of life, and man became a living soul.
As related to the moral disorder and the warfare of the
time-world now in progress, that perfection of the. life
everlasting will be the final form of the victory of Christ
over Satan, the victory which will manifest the truth and
righteousness of the positive historical riiovement of which
the Son of God has been the law from the moment of the
first creation onward through all the ages.
3. The everlasting life of the saints in its ripe fruitage
comprehends the totality of their personal being.

910 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
Inconceivably unique as may be their transformation
and transfiguration iu passing from the existing mundane
economy into the heavenly world, they will not cease to
be in any sense truly and properly human. So far from
undergoing transmutation, or any change incompatible
with personal identity, the transition will obtain according
to the distinctive laws of manhood. The transition will
be the epoch of normal development through which the
manhood of man will assert itself iu its integrity.
The perfection of heaven includes the body, not the
present earthly corruptible body of flesh and blood, but
the spiritual body which is incorruptible.1 As Christ now
enthroned in glory is veritable man, in body as in soul, so
will every saint be " conformed to the body of His glory."2
Of that spiritual body we are now not able to form a con
ception that is just and satisfying. Nor is such a concep
tion a present necessity. What is chiefly a matter of
importance is to recognize the life everlasting to be a
reality comprehending the whole man. The spiritual
body is the finite form of personal existence which will
answer completely to the status of glorified manhood, not
less real, but more real than the earthly body. Compared
with corporeity during our present abnormal history, the
spiritual body is the only true human body, of which our
present material organization is but an imperfect type and
prophecy. 'iCor. xv. 53. 2 Phil. iii. 21.

§398.] Heaven: Final Blessedness. 91 1
§398.
Heaven in its relation to man is to be regarded as
the ripe fruit of the entire history of our race, especially
of the race on the higher plane of the new creation.
1. Special emphasis needs to be put on the truth that
heaven means the consummation of man's spiritual being.
Human personality there attains to its ideal realization.
The profoundest normal powers of the will are evolved
into spiritual action. The saints will determine their
righteousness according to God with unlimited strength
and holy consistency, in forms of celestial beauty. Moral
capacities now latent in every member of Christ will
awake into divine exercise. We shall be like Him, for we
shall see Him even as He is.1
This law of perfectibility includes the intellect Powers
of divine intuition and reason, now unknown, like seed
buried in the soil during the season of winter bursting into
the blade by the touch of the vernal sun, will, awakened
by the quickening beams of Christ's revealed glory, spring
into a clearer perception and a profounder knowledge of
God and the universe, a knowledge which will satisfy the
hunger of the yearning soul aspiring after insight into
all truth. "Now I know in part, but then shall I know
fully, even as also I have been known fully."2
2. All the saints will possess the absolute Good and the
absplute Truth; but each according to his several ability.
In the o'uda of our Father there are 'many mansions.'
Each person will havehis place, his vocation, his peculiar
service, and an environment answerable to his endow-
' 1 John iii. 2. 2 1 Cor. xiii. 12.

9 1 2 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
ments. Each will unfold with joyous freedom in ideal
forms his individual type of normal humanity. No gift
now latent will remain latent No original faculty, on
earth but partially developed or misdirected, will be
partial or misshapen iu its mode of action. Perfection in
glory means that humanity will stand forth the noblest
consummation of the divine idea of man. Yet every
individual, without restraint, will form a character dis
tinguished by the original features of his own individual
ity. Whilst heaven will be the communion of the saints
with Christ and with one another iu the divine peace of
love, each saint will be himself, distinctly differentiated
from all others by the peculiar type of his own manhood.
3. Their works follow with them.1 They will reap in
the Church triumphant what they have sown to the Spirit
in the Church militant. Self-denying works done here in
the service of Christ will yield a corresponding ability of
service there in the glory of His kingdom.
The social bond will not limit the pure love of self, nor
will the love of self weaken the social bond. Instead, the
growth of each will be the strength of the other.
The cultivation of Christ's love to our fellowmen now
will then bear the fruit of love to the innumerable multi
tudes of all races and nations'. All the deeds of faith done
in the natural body live on after their kind iu the spiritual
body. "Their works follow with them." Even a cup
of cold water given in the name of a disciple shall in no
wise fail of reward.2 The reward will not be so much an
external good as an internal good, an element in the right
eous personality of the perfected man himself, which will
qualify him for the faultless service of God in Christ, and
'Rev. xiv. 13. 2Matt. x. 42.

§398-] Heaven: Final Blessedness. 913
for that ineffable blessedness which consists in the 'free/
unchanging obedience of love.
Herein consists the glory of the eternal life: whilst the
kingdom of God, victorious over all moral and physical
evil, will without defect fulfil God's origiiial design, each
member will have his assigned place, his appropriate em
ployment, his congenial companionship, aud assert his
personal prerogatives in his relation to himself, to his
fellowmen and to the triune God. The fundamental law
of humanity in the Church on earth will be the funda
mental law of the eternal life in heaven, love to God and
love to man, with this difference only, that then the law pf
holy love will prevail in ideal forms. Normal repose and
normal action, universal obedience to God and the reali
zation of all the original possibilities of individual person
ality, will reign in equipoise.
4. Love to God and love to man will be active in three
fundamental forms. The saints will reflect and fulfil the
prophetic, the priestly and the kingly function of the
- mediatorship of Jesus Christ.
On earth believers are 'the light of the world.' So
there each saint will be light. The truth of God and man
which the enthroned Mediator is, will shine in the mani
fold fruitfulness of the life which the members of the
triumphant kingdom are living. From consummate
obedience to the immutable law governing the relation of
man to God, to his fellowmen and to himself will
radiate the glory of the kingdom. An elect race, a royal
priesthood, a holy nation, a people for God's own posses
sion, they show forth the excellencies of Him who called
them out of darkness into His marvellous light.
Animated by the Spirit of Christ the saints, then as
58

914 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
now, will be priests unto God. They offer themselves to
Him in devotion and praise. They are before the throne,
and they serve Him day and night iu His temple. Love
to God bears fruit in the service of God. Love to man
bears fruit in the service of man. No saint is passive.
None lives unto himself. Each is active for the good of
all; all active for the good of each. All minister to the
honor of God. All minister divine blessings to one
another. Standing in the truth of Christ and doing the truth in
His strength and wisdom, the saints are a royal household.
They have triumphed over sin, over the prince of dark
ness, over the entire realm of moral and physical evil.
Now they sit with Christ in His throne, demonstrating
the truth of the promise: He that overcometh, I will give
to him to sit down with me in my throne, as I also over^
came, and sat down with my Father in His throne.1
Members of the consummated kingdom, sharing the
glory which the Mediator has with the Father, they de
velop and fulfil with ever-increasing truth the threefold
function of eternal life: declaring Him, serving Him,
reigning with Him, in the transcendent communion of
love with the Father in the Son through the Holy Spirit.
The heaven of the saints will therefore not be a realm
of shades, unsubstantial and indeterminate, but a kingdom
substantial and real, where' the faculties and functions of
human personality will be active in the joy of righteous
freedom. Like the capacities of the soul, the powers of
the body will be commensurate with the law and vocation
of the everlasting life. These are they which come out of
the great tribulation, and they washed their robes, and
1 Rev. iii. 21.

§399-] The Antithesis.

915

made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are
they before the throne of God; and they serve him day and
night in his temple: and he that sitteth on the throne
shall spread his tabernacle oyer them. They shall hunger
no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun
strike upon them, nor any heat: for the Lamb which is iu
the midst of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall
guide them unto fountains of waters of life, and God shall
wipe away every tear from their eyes.

CHAPTER X.
THE ANTITHESIS. §399-
The doctrine respecting heaven is the last theme of
Christian Dogmatics. Here we reach the goal as of reve
lation and redemption so also of Christian thought.
Eschatology, however, lacks the sense of entire com
posure. Conformably to the dictate of ethical philosophy
no less than in obedience to the revelations of Christianity,
doctrinal thought closes with contrary issues, with the
fact of gehenna and the fact of heaven — two worlds, the
one ideal the other contra-ideal, a status of discord in
ultimate existence which to the logic of the Christian
reason appears to be a disappointing dualism. The self-
revelation of God in Christ and His mediatorial work do
not terminate in that unity and harmony of the manifold
creation which thought disposed by rational impulse may
anticipate. .Seemingly theological science fails in its con
clusion to meet its own demands.

gi 6 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
What may be said to relieve the sense of logical disap
pointment? 1. Theological science does not refuse to acknowledge
that it is confronted by a problem as yet unsolved. Diffi
cult it is, if not impossible, at least in the present state of
progress, logically to reconcile the doctrine of future
misery with the doctrine of future blessedness. But this
antithesis does not react to the prejudice of Christian
faith; it has not the right to weaken our confidence either
in the objective truth of Messianic revelation or in the
positive virtue of redemption.
The problem does not confront theology alone; it con
fronts all philosophy as well. Truth and falsehood, right
and wrong, beauty and ugliness, well-being and ill-
being, appear under various forms iu every sphere of
created existence. The law of integration and the law
of disintegration, of constructive forces aud destructive
forces, are at war in nature, even in its hidden depths
accessible only to the penetrating ken of mind through the
microscope. Yet neither natural science nor metaphysic
has developed or discerned a satisfying solution. The fact
of intense antagonism runs through all realms from the
very lowest to the very highest, a mystery for which
neither philosophy nor science can assign rational causa
tion. Modern science no less than ancient science is
confessedly dumb in presence of this universal war. If
theology were shut up to the same kind of silence, it would
nevertheless in this respect stand side by side with the
philosophy of the ancient and the modern world.
But theology is not confined within metaphysical limits.
In presence of this perplexing problem it is able to speak.
3. Christianity furnishes the ground of an explanation.

§399-] The Antithesis. 917
It accounts both for the beginning aud for the prevalence
of moral and logical contradictions.
The truth that God is the absolute Good; that the crea
tion with all its kingdoms, including angel and man, was
by the word of God made 'very good;' that personality is
autonomous, being constituted for the doing of the good,
but capable of refusal to do the good; that personality by
its false voluntary self-assertion against God became an
abnormal self-hood; that through his dynamic connection
with sub-human kingdoms man by his apostasy became
the cause of contradiction iu himself and of conflict be
tween himself and the natural world; — this order of revealed
truth accounts for the universal war between moral good
and moral evil, between physical good and physical evil.
Though redemption is the effectual remedy for the great
apostasy, and in fact is issuing iu the complete victory of
the kingdom of light over the kingdom of darkness, it
does not annihilate, but it conserves, the autonomy of
angels and of men. And the relative autonomy of created
personality makes the perpetual continuance, as truly as
the beginning, of the kingdom of sin a possibility. The
Christian idea of God and of His immanence in the world
forbids us to suppose that He will, or that He can, abolish
either created personality itself or the autonomy of person
ality; in consequence of which, whatever may be the
miseries of the wicked, we cannot logically deny the
ethical possibility of continuous sinning, and continuous
sinning, as we know from our observation of godless me:
becomes a changless moral habit. Says Marteuseu :
" For our earthly life bears witness to that awful and yet necessary
law according to which evil ever assumes a more unchangeable character
in the individual who chooses it."1
1 Christian Dogmatics, p. 478.

91 8 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
From the historical fact of a fixed antagonism between
good men and bad men, believers in Christ aud unbeliev
ers, we may reason to the continuance of the same antago
nism in the future world. As sin is the voluntary status
of abnormal personality, it is as logical as it is scriptural
to hold that, hereafter as here, personality may persist in
falsifying itself by the wilful violation of its constitutive
law; and that hereafter as here the wilful violation of
divine law will produce a condition of misery answerable
to the malignant wickedness of sin.
If we reflect on gehenna in its relation to the dominion
and intrinsic energies of sin, we may see even now that
the ultimate antinomy is a moral necessity. To say the
least, gehenna is a perpetual possibility. Further, if we
consider the moral facts of the history of the world and of
the Church, it is patent to logical thought that a future
abode of wickedness is more than only possible; it is in
evitable. We may anticipate for the hereafter no moral
conditions other than the direful opposition which now
addresses us from all departments of human life. The
power and the ravages of sin on earth are co-existent with
the revelation of God in Christ and the triumphs of the
kingdom of righteousness. It is rational therefore to accept
the proposition that sin may" extend its ravages among
wilful transgressors in the post-earthly period.
3. Let us also bear in mind that those ultimate objects
of thought are post-mundane. They belong, not to tlie
existing order of things, but to the transcendent eon,
which implies conditions and relations of which now we
have but an indefinite perception. Now we stand amid
the thorough confusion of the current mundane economy.
Transcendent facts we see only aS in a mirror darkly.

§ 399-1 The Antithesis. g 1 9
Then the environment of existence will be different,
and existence itself will be differently constituted. Modes
of thought will move in wider categories. Intuition will
be deeper, clearer and more consistent. Judgment will
transcend the logic of earth; and both in adjustment and
method thought will be other than what Christian reason,
as now limited in the Church militant, can hypothecate or
typify. The gehenna which on the one hand is now seen to be
a moral and spiritual necessity, but on the other hand may
appear to Christian logic to be in conflict with the unity
and the wisdom, or with the power and goodness of God's
providence, may then, when our spiritual life 'and divine
fellowship shall have been perfected in the realm of
heavenly glory, confront judgment neither as unwisdom
nor as an impotent dualism, but as a moral necessity only,
responsibility for which attaches, not to Providence, but
to the personality of the creature.
4/ The apostle Paul teaches that it is the good pleasure
of the Father through Christ to reconcile all things unto
Himself, having made peace through the blood of His
cross, in the fulness of the times, to sum up all things in
Christ, the things in the heavens, and the things upon the
earth; that in the name of Jesus every knee shall bow, of
things in heaven and things on earth and things under the
earth; and that God put all things in subjection under His
feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the
Church which is His body, the fulness of Him that filleth
all iu all.1
'Col. i. 19, 20; Eph. i. 10, 22; Phil. ii. 10, 11. These passages if
taken by themselves will mislead interpretation. Here as elsewhere in
quiry is bound to pay due regard to the analogy of faith. On Eph. i. 10,

920 Doctrine on the Last Things. [book 9.
The same apostle teaches with equal emphasis that
the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation only to
every one that believeth; that the natural man receiveth
not the things of the Spirit of God; that the world through
its wisdom knew not God; that if the Gospel is veiled, it
is veiled in them that are perishing, iu whom the God of
this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that
the light of the Gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the
image of God, should not dawn upon them.1 Christ saves
the transgressor from sin by grace through faith; aud faith
is a voluntary act responsive to grace, an act which by the
constitution of personality men may or may not put forth.
The universal headship of our Lord and the manifold
wisdom of God displayed by the kingdom, as set forth by
the Gospels and the Epistles, is compatible with the con
tinuous dominion of sin in the rejecters of Christ and with
the fact of the kingdom of darkness. The truth of this
Meyer says: " Before the parousia, this ava/ceQaTuilacig is still but in course
of development ; for the devil is still with his demons iv roig EKovpavioig
(vi. 12), is still fighting against the kingdom of God and holding sway
over many ; many reject Christ, and the KTlaig, 'creature,' longs after the
renewal. But with the parousia there sets in the full realization, which
is the airoKaTdoraaig irdvTuv, 'restitution of all things ' (Matt. xix. 28 ; Acts
iii. 21 ; 2 Peter iii. 10, et seq.); when all anti-Christian natures and
powers shall be rejected from heaven and earth." Further on he says
that " the dvaxefaXaiaoig is completed by the victory over all anti-Chris
tian powers." Paul does not teach in the absolute sense a restoration of
all things, including the salvation and glorification of those upon whorft
at the day of judgment the sentence will be pronounced : " Depart from
me, ye cursed." He teaches the elimination of all evil, physical 110 less
than moral, from the kingdom of God, which embraces the cosmos as
well as the Church, so that " all things " may resume their ideal status
on the plane of ultimate perfection.
1 Rom. i. 16 ; 1 Cor. i. 21 ; ii. 14 ; 2 Cor. iv. 4.

§399-] Th.e Antithesis. 921
proposition has ever confronted and is now confronting
the Christian mind. The final heaven and the final
hell, as anticipated by Christianity, are only the per
petuity in the future world of the existing antagonism
between right and wrong, holiness and sin, blessedness
aud misery.
If whilst we are in the natural body it may be impracti
cable to understand how this perpetual antagonism of
Satan may be harmonized with the universal headship of
our Lord and the unity of His kingdom, there is relief in
recognizing the truth that such limit to our knowledge is
inevitable, limitation being a part of the imperfection of
the Messianic age predicable of all our knowledge, scien
tific as well as moral and Christian.
When we shall have surmounted, the profound contra
dictions of the fall; when the law of sin in Christian
personality shall have been utterly abolished; when we
shall have risen into the transcendent world of glory,
where our moral and intellectual powers will be com
pletely godlike, and our concrete relations will be so
adjusted, to the conditions of this logical problem that we
shall see truth and falsehood, blessedness and misery in
the pure light of God's wisdom; — then we shall occupy a
position and possess a character which will qualify us to
see heaven as the abode of the righteous and gehenna as
the abode of the wicked, in a way that will be consistent
with present scriptural faith in Jesus Christ
It becomes us to remember moreover that what was true
of Jesus Christ in relation to His chosen disciples prior to
the advent of the Holy Spirit is true of Him also in re
lation to all His disciples prior to His final manifestation:
"I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot

922 Doctrine on the Lqst Things. [book 9.
bear them now." The many things which whilst He
was with His disciples it was not possible for them to
bear, they became able both to hear and to do when from
heaven they received the requisite power by the fulfilment
of the promise of the Father. So when we shall have
attained unto full-grown manhood, unto the measure of
the stature of the fulness of Christ, we shall be strong
with power through His Spirit to hear unspeakable words
which it is not lawful for a man to utter. Until then we
wait in the patience of faith, pressing on toward the goal
unto the prize, assured that when the consummate Pente
cost is come, we shall be empowered to think the thoughts
of God and speak with other tongues as the Spirit shall
give us utterance.
Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly
above all that we ask or think, according to the power
that worketh in us, unto Him be the glory in the Church
aud in Christ Jesus unto all generations for ever and ever.
Amen.

INDEX.

Adam, the first compared with the
' last, ' 5 ; apostasy of, 6 ; status of,
in his primeval state, 36 ; normal
in development and in relations,
44 ; lord of lower kingdoms, 44 ;
as created good, 46 ; sinless con
stitution of, 51 ; normal in his ac
tivity and relations, 52-53 ; divine
imageship of, 54; the only man,
116 ; the apostasy of, the apostasy
of the race, 118; original human
ity of, advanced, 215.
Adamic race, the, a creation, 18 ;
the kingly, priestly and prophetic
functions of, 26.
Advent, the, 173 ; referable to God,
174 ; referable to man, 174 ; re
ferable to God and man, 175; the
ground of, 176 ; the fall a factor
of, 178; the covenant an, 183; in
the life of the covenant people a
necessity for, 186 ; relative neces
sity for, 187 ; a historical neces
sity, 193 ; the advent of the Spirit
is correlative to the advent of
Himself, 435 ; the mystery of the
second, 793 ; the second, the ob
ject of aspiration, 794; relations
of the second, like the relations
of the first, 796 ; the second the
fulfilment of the first, 796; the
second, is an impending reality,
797 ; the second, a coming epoch,
802 ; will be uew, 802 ; the second,
related to the Church militant,
803 ; the first, and the second, are
analogous, 804 ; the second, will
be a movement of the enthroned
Christ new in kind, 806 ; the sec
ond, the coming of One who
unites the creature with the
Creator, 807 ; will be transcend
ent, 807 ; will be new in its rela
tions, 807-809 ; the second, will be
new as to purpose, 809 ; at His
second, He will appear to be hon-
(923)

ored, 810 ; conditioning events of,
810 ; remarkable signs of the, of
Christ, 812; the second, will be
sudden, 812; effect of, upon the
unbelieving world, 813 ; extent of
the last things attending the sec
ond, 814; the advent of Christ in
the flesh typifies the, of Christ iu
glory, 815 ; subordinate events
connected with the, 816.
Alford, on sin, 128; ou 1 Cor. xii.
3, 502 ; on 2 Cor. iii. 3, 511 ; con
cedes identity of presbyter and
bishop, 538 ; on confession, 742 ;
all creation summed up in Christ,
806.
Auger, right of Jesus, 281.
Angus, Prof. Joseph, D. D., on Heb.
ii. 18, 209.
Antinomianism, 755.
Apple, Prof. Thomas G., D. D., on
the relation of faith to baptism,
563.
Appolodorus, myth of, 28.
Aquinas, Thomas, on the human
and divine in man, 48.
Argyll, Duke of, ou mind and or
ganization, 788.
Ascension, the, 403 ; transformation
of Jesus before, 403-408 ; visible,
409 ;' historical and local, 410 ;
character of, philosophical, 411 ;
an epoch, 412.
Athanasian Creed, on the resurrec
tion of the wicked, 852.
Athanasius, negative theory of sin,
140 ; ou siu of pagan nations, 153.
Augsburg Confession, condemns
chiliasm, 820.
Augustine, on the cause of evil will,
94 ; souls strive for God, 104 ; on
creationism, 120 ; on negative
theory of sin, 140 ; on sin, 150 ;
letter to Optatus, 159; O felix
culpa, 176 ; on the relation of the
Holy Ghost to Christ, 446 ; on the
teaching of the Spirit, 448: on

924

Index.

rest of the. human spirit, 468 ; on
the Spirit binding us, 502 ; on the
sacrament, 558 ; on the word and
water iu baptism, 574 ; theory of
the millennium, 821, 823.
B
Baptism of Jesus, 236 ; a. recogni
tion, 237 ; an investiture with au
thority, 238 ; His act, 239 ; cul
mination of John's mission, 240 ;
validity of lay, 520 ; difference
and connection between circum
cision and, 545 ; answered to what
the Lord was when He instituted
it, 552 ; and the Lord's Supper
, means of grace, 555 ; a transac
tion, 556; the sacrament- of initia
tion and adoption, 558 ; consists
of two things, 558 ; subject of, a
believer in Jesus Christ or an in
fant, 559; twofold significance of,
• is objective, 562 ; relation of faith
to, 563 ; dependence on, for salva
tion in impenitence illustrated,
564 ; doctrine of spiritual virtue
supported by threefold argument,
565 ; argument from scripture,
565 ; taught by Peter, 566 ; not an
.empty form, 567 ; doctrine of
Paul on, in Epistle to Romans,
567 ; in Epistle to Col., 568; con
nection o'f faith and, 570 ; teach
ing of Paul to Titus, 570 ; comple
mented by account of his own
entrance into the kingdom, 571 ;
no word justifies opinion that, is
only a sign, 572 ; negative argu
ment for, 573 ; argument for. from
history, 574; confessions of 16th
and ryth centuries, 574 ; not differ
oni 575 ! names given to, 575 ;
Roman teaching on, 577 ; objec
tive virtue of, illustrated, 578-580;
of infants, 580 ; obligation of -in
fant, founded on the nature of
Christianity, 580; grace of, freer
and larger than the grace of cir
cumcision, 585 ; objection against,
of infants, 593 ; silence respecting,
of infants, 593 ; rite of, denied to
infants because they cannot be
lieve, 594-599 ; signifies and seals
the forgiveness of sins, 644 ; is
administered unto the remission
of sins, 731 ; the objective relation
established in, abides, 731.
Barrow, on the conception of Jesus,
203.

Beecher, Edward, preexistence, 120.
Being, aptitude between divine and
human, 233.
Belief, conditions knowledge, 657 ;
in God necessary for thought,
658 ; is the self-determined recep
tion of Christ, 712.
Bellarmin, heart of the earth, 365.
Bengel, Rom. viii. 19, 105 ; on sin
in the race, 128 ; on life iu God,
'57 ; °u John i. 4, 9, 181 ; on Matt.
xi. n, 195 ; on 1 John iv. 2, 3, 234;
011 the temptation, 255 ; on Jesus'
anger, 281 ; on Rev. i. 18, 359 ; on
1 Peter iii. 18, 368; ou sacrifice of
the mass, 425 ; on John xv.ii. 36,
463 ; on God's seed, 471 ; on John
xvii. 9-10, 630 ; revived millen
arianism, 820 ; on death, 830 ; on
Rom. viii. 18-24, 885.
Bloomfield, concedes identity of
presbyter and bishop, 538.
Body, the human, 37 ; the righteous
after death are out of the natural,
839 ; the spiritual, presupposes a
corresponding world, 839 ; the
spiritual, will not be absolutely
new, 841 ; the Son of God on
earth lived in a natural body,
842 ; transformation of Christ's
members will include the, 843 ;
the resurrection, of the righteous
will be a new corporeal organism,
843 ; with the natural, the spirit
ual, is conjoined, 845 ; the resur
rection, of the righteous is spirit
ual, 846 ; whence conies the re
surrection, 847 ; the resurrection,
product of the principle imma
nent in, the spiritual man, 848;
spiritual, analogous to the law of
the natural, 849 ; two factors of
the resurrection, 850.
Brace, C. Loring, ' ' The Unknown
God," p. 19.
Brown, Dr., on resurrection, 393.
Bucer, called by Cranmer, 538.
Bullinger, on the descensus, 361 ;
invited to England, 538.
Bunvan, on the resurrection body,
844.
Burial, of Christ, 347 ; an essential
epoch, 351.
Burnet, Archbishop, on true
churches, 537.
Bushnell, on the natural and super
natural, 43.
Byron, on guilt, 99 ; on sense of sin,
894.

Inde:

9^5

Calvin, John, on death of Christ
351; his explanation of the descen
sus, 376; on the gifts of the Spirit
found m Jesus, 427; on the Apos
tles' Creed, 484; invited to En
gland, 538; on Baptism, 576; on
union and communion iu the
Lord's Supper, 619; on Lord's
Supper, 620, 621-622; on the Apos
tles' Creed, 628.
Campbell, McLeod, on Luke xv. 18
2S7.
Canons of Dortrecht, 88.
Catholic, meaning of, 490; the
Church is, in a broader sense, 491;
word, not iu the New Testament,
492; a distinguishing epithet, 495;
expresses claims of the Reformers,
495- . .
Catholicity, two factors of, 493 ; of
Christianity, 493 ; presupposes
unity, 496 ; unity revealed in, 496.
Child, self-condemnation of the, 134.
Children, rights of infant, 586-587 ;
infant, belong to the covenant,
58S ; spiritual necessities the same
as of parents, 591.
Christ, and Adam, parallel between,
127 ; birth of, Jesus a miracle, 193 ;
as prophet, 419 ; reveals Himseif,
420 ; reveals His Father, 420 ; re
veals the nature and position of
mau, 421; reveals the cosmos, 421;
reveals the nature of sin, 422 ; the
fundamental truth which He is,
learned from Himself, 423 ; the
priest and victim, 424 ; priesthood
of, unchangeable, 425 ; as King,
dynamic necessity of the uni
verse, 428; King by virtue of the
place He occupies in the God
head, 428 ; the kingship of, the
crown of His mediatorial life and
redemptive work, 429; the law
and crown of the new creation,
429 ; head over all things, 429 ;
rules dynamically, 429 ; rules eth
ically, 430; life and work of, are
light, atonement, law, 432 ; work
of, done for the perfection of
Himself, 447; the divine-human,
468 ; hypostatic union in, 469 ; the
will of, the law of the Christian,
506 ; governmental relation of, to
His Church, 506 ; the risen, the
prototype of His members, 629 ;
meets the demands of God's will,

728 ; the rejection of 733 ; mil-
leuial reign of, 827.
Christianity, type of always the
same, 483 ; life of, begins iu one
fact, 792 ; concludes iu one fact,
792.
Christology, studies the redemptive
side of the new creation as wrought
out objectively, 645.
Chrysostom, on arraignment of sins,
425.
Church, the, constituted by the
Spirit on the day of Pentecost,
435; the Christian, 454; a new
economy, 454 ; human society the
natural basis of, 454; human
nature does not produce the, 455 ;
the, of the Old Testament distin
guished from pagan religions, 456 ;
the Jewish Church the positive
preparation for the, of Christ, 456 ;
preparation for the birth of the,
complete, 457; community of
John the forerunner of. the, 458 ;
the nucleus of the Christian, 458;
an objective constitution, 459 ; is
the present organized form of the
kingdom of God, 460 ; a spiritual
organism, 461 ; the constitution of
the, spiritual, 462 ; did not origin
ate by a law of nature, 463 ; com
munity of, consists of a new race,
464 ; prophecy of the twofold life
of, 469 ; divine element of the, not
the Holy Spirit in distinction from
Jesus Christ, 470 ; human element
of the, not the fallen nature of
man, 470; two forces in, 470, 471 ;
conflicts of, between the human
and the human, 471 ; a living
mystery, 472 ; affects and is af
fected by environment, 472 ; can
not have an unchangeable form,
473 ; idea of, gains expression pro
gressively, 474 ; growth of, is in
tensive, 475 ; is extensive, 475 ;
properties of, 476 ; unity of, 476 ;
oneness of, organic, 477 ; unity of,
as taught by our Lord and His
apostles, 477-478 ; argument of
Paul on unity of the, 479-4R0 ;
types of life in the, 4S0 ; violation
of law of love incompatible with
unity of, 481 ; maintains unity
against the assaults of the world,
481 ; against forces of sin active in
herself; 482 ; unity of, not exter
nal, 482 ; cardinal rites of, the
same, 484 ; unites in one prayer,

926

Index.

484 ; all the, recognize the Deca
logue as interpreted by Christ,
484; bears her distinguishing
marks from age to age, 485 ; holi
ness of, 485 ; life of Christ the life
of the, 485 ; sacraments of, are
holy, 486 ; is holy negatively, 487 ;
positively, 487 ; holiness of, the
dynamic of her life, 4S8 ; only
communion that has asserted
Christian holiness, 489 ; catholic
ity of, 490 ; the only catholic in
stitution, 494 ; one, holy, catholic,
496 ; Protestant, partakes of the
original life, 497 ; unity of the,
includes holiness, 497 ; holiness of
the, presupposes unity, 497 ; cath
olic as the ideal life of Christ is
developed, 498 ; properties of,
only partially actual on earth,
498 ; like her Lord, 499 ; ethical
correspondence between, and
Christ, 506 ; possesses the life of
Christ, • 509 ; Christ fulfils His
mediatorial office by the activities
of, 510 ; compared to the human
body, 513 ; self perpetuating, 522 ;
because of vital connection with
Christ, 522 ; laymen did not at
will originate the, 523 ; lives in
the Spirit, 525 ; Roman theory of,
525 ; organization of the evangel
ical Protestant, more scriptural
than the Papal or Anglican, 534 ;
not subordinate to the sacraments,
555 ; is an economy of grace, 643 ;
addresses mankind on the basis
of a universal principle, 658 ; may
not look within for the law of
moral conduct, 752 ; conflict of
the, with sin perpetual, 825.
Church of England, fellowship of,
with Reformed Church, 538.
Cicero on conscience, 98.
Circumcision, the, 216; of Jesus,
218 ; by whom practiced, 218 ;
sacrament of initiation into the
Abrahamic covenant, 219 ; of
Jesus not accidental, 221 ; why
instituted, 222.
Clement of Alexandria, on man
God's image, 57 ; on preexistence,
119 ; on episcopacy, 536.
Coleridge on sin, 94.
Communion, Holy, connection be
tween Christ and His people in
the celebration of, 612 ; Roman
false stress on the, 612 ; doctrine
of Greek Church on, 613 ; Luth

eran doctrine on, 613 ; difference
between the Lutherans and Re
formed on, 615 ; of body aud blood
of Christ, 620 ; the, of saints, 627 ;
idea of Christian Church implies
that her members are living in
the, of love, 627 ; of saints not an
article of the Christiau creed iu
the first four centuries, 628 ; be
tween Creator and creature, 630 ;
of saints embraces saints of all
periods, 631, 632.
Conception of Jesus, by supernatural
agency, 201 ; presupposes union of
the human and the divine, 202;
possibility of, 205 ; an analogy to,
206 ; has a twofold distinction,
natural, 210; was immaculate, 208,
211 ; an assumption of human
nature into union with God, 212 ;
affects deity and humanity, 213 ;
implies a change in humanity,
214 ; anticipates all that He be
came, 216.
Condemnation, universal not pe
culiar to Christianity, 130.
Confession of Basel on the Holy
Communion, 620.
Confession of faith, on sin, 114;
doctrine' of Calvin in all leading,
623 ; of Basel, first, on the Lord's
Supper, 623 ; second Helvetic, on
the Lord's Supper, 623 ; Belgic,
624; first, of Scotland, 624; Heid
elberg, 625 ; Westminster, 625.
Confessions, agreement on Baptism,
577-
Conybeare and Howson, presbyter
and bishop, 538.
Copernicus, Nicholas, 350.
Covenant people, factors in history
as related to the advent of, 186.
Covenant, of Jehovah with Abraham
particularistic, 580; religion of the
Abrahamic, and of Jesus Christ in
principle the same, 581 ; of grace
with Abraham as head of poster
ity, 581 ; the, emphasizes differ
ence between the natural birth
and birth into the, 582 ; Abra
hamic, anticipates Christianity,
583 ; male members only entitled
to the privileges of the, 584 ; in
fant children belong to the, 588 ;
the, the same under the old and
the new dispensation, 58S ; pro
mise of, respects three classes of
persons, 588 ; the, includes adult
Jews, 589 ; children of Jews, 589 ;

Index.

92;

the Gentiles, 590; with Abraham
presumes the solidarity of the
family, 595.
Creationism, 119, 120.
Creed, realities of the Christian,
unchangeably the same, 473 ; the
predicates of the Church unity!
holiness, catholicity, 476; there
is but one Christian, 483.
Cremer, on death as punitive, 125,
336; on all evils in death,' 129',
160 ; on death a state, 353 ; on
vovg, 689.
Cross, the offering on the, was
death, and was life, 775.
Cultus, the same, 484.
Curse, the, mediate, 105 ; immediate,
106 ; Christ became for us, 283 ;
changed into blessing, 330.
D
Darwin, theory of, 27 ; error of, 31.
Dawson, 611 evolutionist doctrine
28 ; on gaps in evolution, 29.
Death, the consequence of trans
gression, 125 ; all men subject to,
125 ; contra-ideal, 127 ; Adamic,
156 ; contra-natural, 157 ; the curse
of transgression, 158 ; organic and
penal, 160 ; negative aspect of,
160 ; Arabian teaching on, 161 ;
natural, involves, 162 ; positive
aspect of, 163 ; an epoch, 163 ;
analogies of, 164 ; four grades of,
167 ; doctrine of, applied to
heathen, 167 ; of Jesus Christ, 324 ;
two factors in the mystery of
Christ's, 326 ; the sum of all pen
alties, 335 ; inevitable, 340 ; of
Christ, a rising to the heavenly
throne, 342 ; an article, 352 ; a
realm, 353; Christ enters the realm
°f. 354 J of Jesus more than an in
dividual, 355 ; fruit of sin, 379 ;
a dissolving power, 384 ; does not
break spiritual ties, 631 ; the exit
of the natural man denoted by
the word, 773 ; has a sting, 773 ;
of the Christian, a death unto
sin, 781 ; is birth into the post-
earthly realm, 786 ; sin and, con
nected, 854 ; three distinct stages
of, 855 ; the first stage of, from the
hour of birth, 856 ; the second
stage begins with the hour of nat
ural, 856 ; intermediate world the
realm of, 857 ; the third stage of,
is the ultimate, 858.

Deeds of our Lord, 297 ; answer to
the ideal, 299 ; miraculous, 300.
Delitzsch, on structure of man, 10 ;
comment on Genesis, 18 ; ou Gen
esis i., 81 ; effect of fall on nature,
108 ; on Genesis iii. 22, 175 ; on
the descensus, 369 ; on the power
of the spiritual life, 780; on
heaven, 898-901.
Depravity, 114; of childhood modi
fied, 134.
Depravity and sinfulness, 102.
Des Cartes, philosophy of, 656.
Descensus, 350, 360 ; taught by our
Lord, 364 ; by Peter, 365 ; scrip
tural conception of, sets aside
purgatory, 376.
Devils, the law of sin will hold sway
over, 893 ; final penalty of, 893.
Dillmaii, on Adam's dominion, 45 ;
on Genesis, 55, 94; on Gen. iii. 1,
69; on Gen. iii. 17-19, 125.
Docetic tendency, 194.
Dorner, on Satan, 6 ; on possibility
of choosing good aud evil, 76 ; on
conscience, 112, 156; on revela
tion of light, 422.
Drummond, on organization and
life, 474.
Drury, John B., D. D., on capacity
of man, 20 ; on powers of first
man, 60. E
Eadie, on penalty of sin, 136.
Ebrard, on the holiness of Adam,
53 ; on the descensus, 360 ; on the
blood shed on the altar, 424.
Ebionitic, tendency, 194 ; theory of
the resurrection, 394.
Economies, pre-Christian and Chris
tian closely connected, 544.
Edersheim, on John the Baptist,
'95- . ,
Election, scriptural doctrine of,
699 ; to be studied in pre-Christian
history, 699 ; of Abraham not ar
bitrary, 700 ; rooted in th e sov
ereignty of God, 702 ; conditions
of the initial, characterize God's
electing love universally, 702 ; of
John Baptist and the Virgin
Mary, 704 ; most conspicuous il
lustration of, 705 ; in accordance
with the law of, we study the
apostolate, 706; of Saul, 707; no
divine, is arbitrary, 708 ; doctrine
of, must lay stress on God's free
dom, 708; Paul argues against

Q28-

Index.

false idea of, 709 ; man's response
conditions the result of, 710 ; sov
ereign, as taught in Scripture,
713; of Judas, 714-717; does not
violate man's autonomy, 715.
Ellicott, presbyter and bishop, 538.
Environment, modifies iu the world
of nature, 896 ; natural, does not
touch the categories of thought,
896; God forms His own, 897 ; in
the transcendent eon the, will be
different, 919.
Episcopate, development of, 535-
539 ; "historic," of the Lambeth
quadrilateral, 537 ; development
from presbytery, 537.
Eph. iv. 9, 10, 369.
Ethics, sound Christian, must deny
that the end sanctifies the means,
753-
Eucharist, instituted by Jesus, 551 ;
answered to what the Lord was
when He instituted it, 552 ; be
came .endued with the virtue of
His glorification, 553 ; Roman
theory of, 612
Evil, kingdom of, 70 ; antagonizes
man's nature, 71 ; rejection of,
possible, 75 ; ultimate principle
of, 1 10 ; law of moral, 136 ; arises
from preponderance of corporeity,
142.
Evolution, element of truth in
theory of, 29.
Exit of the spiritual man, 773 ; of
the natural man, 773; of Jesus
Christ, 774 ; His, an epoch of
peace and triumph, 774; of the
Christian is the dissolution, 784 ;
of the spiritual man and of the
natural man not the same, 785 ;
Christian, from the earth is the
abolition of the old man, 836 ; of
the righteous is an epoch through
which they pass to a higher life,
837-

Fairbairn, Principal, on evil forces
iu man, 133 ; on the incarnation,
176 ; man and God in religion,
183 ; the meaning of religion,
186 ; on the natures of Jesus, 232 ;
on the miracle, 305 ; on the con
nection between the Church and
the Kingdom, 460 ; on the real
and ideal notion of the Church,
461.
Faith, the central principle, 652 ;

and Christ stand in polar relation,
652 ; not a distinct faculty, 653 ;
not a new predicate of personality,
654 ; presupposes capacity of the
natural man, 655 ; primacy of, not
peculiar to Christianity, 655 ;
society and civil affairs accord'
primacy to, 657 ; Christian, an
swers to natural, 659 ; a twofold,
659; natural belief not saving,
660 ; Christian, does not supersede
natural belief, 661 ; actual, de
pends much on will, 661 ; imme
diate object of Christian, is Christ,
662 ; in Jehovah not sufficient,
663 ; His Person the object of,
664 ; Christian connected with
the glorified Christ, 664 ; distin
guishing characteristic of all
natural, is, 665 ; confidence is the.
predicate of Christian, 665 ; is
complemental to the work of the
Holy Spirit, 666 ; obedience of,
667 ; fellowship of, stands in the
fellowship of the Spirit, 668 ;
necessary work of the Spirit -and
necessary work of, both taught in
Scripture, 669 ; for all a necessity,
670 ; inferences from doctrine of,
671 ; not submission to authority
of the Church, 67 1 ; the eye of the
soul, 672 ; author of Hebrews on,
672 ; the ear of the soul, 673 ; the
organ of spiritual manducation,
673 ; develops in a succession of
stages, 674 ; is historical, 675 ; in
cludes intellectual assent, 675 ; is
the principle of good works, 676 ;
the obedience of. implies, 690 ;
forgiveness by, in Jesus Christ,
726 ; through, in Jesus Christ all
are justified, 727 ; how is it that
by, the transgressor stands ap
proved ? 727 ; by, the transgressor
appropriates Christ, 730 ; necessity
and significance of, 733 ; effect of,
on the attitude of the transgressor,
734 ; justified by, we have peace,
736 ; in Christ is the Reformation
principle, 737 ; the first act of, sets
the believer in right relation, 738 ;
degree of, does not affect reality,
739 ; true, the principle of good
works, 749 ; relation of divine,
and divine glory, 756 ; deeds of,
live on, 912.
Fall, the, significance of, 4 ;_account
of, in Genesis, 80 ; an ethical pro
cess, 81 ; the immediate effect of,

Index.

929

85 ; viewed as failure, 86 ; as loss,
87 ; as wrong. 89 ; wilful disobedi
ence, 93 ; consequences of, 95 ;
in consequence of, man and nature
have a false attitude, 107 ; referable
to Satan, 109 ; of the first family
the fall of mankind, 117.
Fiske, John, nature's goai, 9.
Forgiveness, how shall a guilty man
obtain? 723.
Formula of Concord, on man's
nature, S8 ; on the Lord's Supper,
614.
Foreordination, 699; unconditional,
711.
Function, prophetic, if we lay undue
stress upon, 430 ; priestly, if we
lay undue stress upon, 431 ; if
false emphasis is put on the
kingly, 431 ; the Church may
deny or ignore one, 431 ; it be
comes us to assert the unity of,
432.

Gardner, Percy, Litt. D. "This do
in remembrance of me," 616.
Gehenna, 886 ; the second death is,
887 ; not a necessary domain, 888 ;
analogies to, 888 ; abode of apos
tate angels, 889 ; a future abode
for men in Hades, 890 ; as it now
exists the prophecy of what it will
be, 892 ; the hopeless case of, con
trary to Ihe providential designs
of God, 894 ; is not a decree of
God, 894 ; will, ever cease to
exist ? 895 ; is a perpetual possi
bility, 918 ; a moral necessity,
9T9-
Generation, human, 3 ; theories of,
119.
Gerhart, Rev. R. L., on power of
man, 59; on death, 91.
Geneva, Catechism of, on the Lord's
body and blood in the Holy Com
munion, 622.
Gerlach, Otto von, on Luke ii. 40,
52, 225 ; on Heb. ii. 14, 15, 290.
Genus and individual, one, 118.
Gieseler, ou millenarianism, 819.
Glorification, the, 413.
Glory of God, 756.
God, difference between, and man,
57 ; has not forsaken mankind,
14.6; twofold relation of, to Adamic
race, 173 ; fellowship of, and man
the foundation of the incarnation,
59

189 ; false relation between, and.
man, 286 ; blessing of, precedes
the enforcement of authority, 679 ;
made mau in His owu image,
679 ; ability to honor, 679 ; call of,
to Abraham, 680 ; Jehovah the, of
His peculiar people, 680 ; relation
of God's blessing to man's obliga
tion, 683 ; obligation of man to
love, with all his heart, 683 ; first
is the coming of, 683 ; the objects
of love are bound to love, 684 ;
does not violate personality, 712 ;
is the absolute good, 917.
Godet, on Rom. viii. 7, 141 ; on
Rom. i. 18, 168 ; on acceptance of
the Gospel, 169 ; on the develop
ment of the Jews, 191; on Luke
i. 38, 200 ; on Rom. viii. 3, 215 ;
on John 17-19, 282 ; on communi
cation of life with good or evil,
289 ; on John iii. 36, 331 ; on Rom.
xiv. 9, 372 ; on disciples scattered,
384 ; on Christ's death, 392 ; on
the Spirit on men and in them,
437 ; on John xvi. 13, 442 ; on
diversity of functions iu the
Church, 514 ; on John xv. 5, 523 ;
ou relation between Baptism and
new birth, 565 ; on love, 678 ; on
the men seeking goodly pearls,
878 ; on unrighteousness, 879.
1 Goethe, theory of, 27.
¦ Good, as used in Mosaic record, 46 ;
who worketh, 878; judgment will
! be the separation of all evil from
the, 880 ; separation of the, will be
judicial, 882 ; mind adapted for
enquiring into the, 886 ; all saints
will possess the absolute, 911.
Gospel, genius of, 686; if the, is
veiled, 920.
Gospels, arrangement of, 321,
Grace, Abrahamic economy of, 183 ;
throne of, constituted by the Son,
427- . .
Gregory the Great on creatianism,
120.
Ground, the, cursed for man's sake,
92.
Guilt, as God's condemnation, 96 ;
not a matter of choice, 97 ; in
cludes suffering, 98 ; wrath corre
sponding to, 99; presupposes
wrath, 100; continuance of, ioi_;
and curse correlative, 107 ; uni
versal and personal, 127 ; sense of,
in children, 135 ; deadly conflict
between grace and, 648.

930

Index..

H
Hades, 347 ; descent into, meaning
of, 348 ; meaning of descended
into, 352 ; descent taught by im
plication and statement, 358 ; why
Christ went into, 371 ; in, Jesus
became the light of the dead, 374;
in, meets the crisis, 375 ; not an
episode, 830 ; the whole man
passes into, 857 ; will come to an
end, 859 ; gates of, to be unbarred,
860 ; will be superseded, 860 ;
status of the wicked in regard to
the Gospel changed in, 891.
Hagenbach, on the Protestant and
Catholic view of Baptism, 575.
Harris, Dr. Samuel, on a. faith fac
ulty, 653 ; on religious knowl
edge, 658 ;. on the resting place of
the intellect, 658.
Harris, Wm. T., ou moral action, 747.
Healing, of the nobleman's son,
596 ; of the daughter of the Syro-
Phoenician woman, 596.
Heaven, 896 ; is not unknowable,
898 ; God conditions, 898 ; is spir
itual, 899 ; will be the perfected
fellowship with Himself, 900 ; es
chatology cannot assume that,
may be located, 901 ; neither far
from us nor near to us, 901 ; dif
ference between, and the cosmos
is generic, 902 ; as related to the
objective fellowship of the Trin
ity, is eternal, 902 ; is other than
before the creation or the incar
nation, 903 ; for the members of
Christ, will exist by virtue of
their life-communion with His
personality, 904 ; final perfection
of the saints conditions for them
the blessedness of, 905 ; a sense in
which saints make their own, 907;
life of the saints in, of one order
with the life of the Son, 907 ; as
' to the status of human life in,
908 ; perfection of, includes the
body, 910; the ripe fruit of the
history of our race, 911 ; not a
realm of shades, 914; doctrine of,
the last theme of Christian Dog
matics, 915 ; the final, and the
final hell are the perpetuity of
the existing antagonism between
holiness and sin, 921.
Hebrews, the, a unique people, 189;
bearer of the divine promise, 191 ;
relation of, to the coming of
Christ, 192.

Heidelberg Catechism, on deprav
ity, 88 ; on creation of man, 97 ;
011 sinful nature, 129; Christ the
true seed of David, 209 ; on the
descensus, 361; ou the resurrection
and ascension, 362 ; 011 diversities
of gifts, 436 ; office of the Holy
Spirit, 502 ; on membership, 510 ;
on Holy Baptism, 559 ; on the
Lord's Supper, 625 ; on repent
ance, 693 ; on predestination and
the Lord's Slipper, 699 ; on right
eousness before God, 730; on good
works, 746; on death, 782 ; a dying
to sin, 782 ; on the Judge, 868.
Helvetic Confession, First, on the
Lord's Supper, 623 ; condemns
chiliasm, 820.
Hippolytus, on Israel, 190 ; on con
trasts in Christ's unity, 273.
Hodge, on the natural man, 104 ; on
original sin, 114.
Hoffding, Prof., ou a psychical
principle iii man, 15 ; on unity of
man, 41.
Holiness, the Church asserts, 489 ;
positive and negative, involve
each other, 489.
Hooker, ou the incarnation, 234;
on the twofold existence of the
mediator, 266 ; on episcopal ordi
nation, 537.
Howson, Dean, on "afar off," 590;
on David's rule, 709 ;
Huxley, Prof., on difference be
tween man and beast, 29 ; origin
of the ethical, 30.

Image, and likeness distinction be
tween, 55 ; divine, where located,
64 ; divine, of man, 65.
Incarnation, gnostic idea of, 232 ;
New Testament idea of, 264 ; pre
supposes a slumbering aptitude
for union with God, 654.
Incarnate, Son is the Redeemer,
643 ; history of our Lord, three
periods in the, 777.
Infant, the, how subject to condem
nation, 126; not guilty as an
individual, 130 ; innocence of,
negative, 132 ; the, dying in in
fancy, 724.
Irenaeus, man the image of God,
63 ; Jesus sanctified every age,
325 ; on the Church and the Spirit,
445 ; his view of the millennium,
819.

Index.

931

Jesus, normal development of 223 •
growth of, 224; formation of
ethical character normal, 226;
childhood of, not monstrous, 227 •
power of, unknown, 228 ; the' ideal
child, 229 ; equipoise of ethical
life of, 230 ; mission of, 241 ; im^
peccable, 256 ; peccable, 258 ; posi
tive victory of, over Satan, 261 ;
victory of, positive, 262 ; kept Him
self spotless, 282 ; had the nature
of the race, 285 ; honors natural
laws, 304 ; fulfils the prophecy of
Genesis, 306 ; human authority of,
309 ; the reveaier and redeemer,
324 ; sacrifice of, a necessity of
His mediatorial work, 337 ; death
and burial predicates of, 380 ; born
again, 406 ; as prophet, 419 ;
promises the pentecostal gift,
443 ; transgressor obtains forgive
ness by faith in, 726 ; Christ is for
men the Truth, 876.
John the Baptist, 195.
Judgment, the general, 866-868 ; a
necessary assize, 869 ; the necessity
of the day of, teleonomic force,
869 ; differs from God's antecedent
judicial dealings, 870 ; is a fact
pervading revelation, 870 ; indi
cated in the sacred record, 871 ;
He who will sit on the throne of,
is the Son of man, 872-874 ; the
criterion of, 874-880 ; will be the
separation of all evil from the
good, 880 ; epochs of, 881 ; the
final, is primarily positive, 883 ;
final, of individuals, 884 ; at the,
the cosmos will be transformed,
885 ; to all not redeemed the, will
issue in the second death, 887.
Justification, by faith, 717 : by faith
in Jesus Christ in opposition to
Judaism, 718 ; controversy on, in
the 16th century, 718 ; teaching
of the Roman Church on, 719 ;
teaching of Paul and the Reform
ers on , 720 ; issue in our day,
720-722 ; problem which the
Christian doctrine of, aims to
answer, 722 ; actual problem of,
725 ; Christian doctrine of, is the
solution of a threefold problem,
726 ; the Mediator becomes the
possibility of, to all transgressors,
729 ; intimate connection of, with
Baptism, 731 ; positive force of,-
includes its negative force, 732 ; I

Protestant soteriology rejects the
Roman dogma of, 738 ; birth into
the kingdom aud, distinct ele
ments, 739; in, the subject is
active, 741 ; to be a member of the
kingdom aud to have the blessing
of, are two things, 742 ; as to per
sons not in the kingdom, 742-743 ;
interpretation of Paul's doctrine
of> 755 J is the judicial act of God,
759-
Justin on the millennium, 819.
Juvenal on judicial pain, 149.
K.
Kepler, 350.
Kingdom, the principle of Christ's,
. 302 ; the foundation of, 303 ; real
and objective, 559-560; Son of
God became man to found a,
648 ; transgression and guilt pre
suppose, of darkness, 648; faith
and forgiveness presuppose, of
light, 649 ; of Christ promises
what no other, promises, 651 ;
communicates adequate morai
strength, 652; the, of Christ at
tains complete triumph, 884.
Kliefoth on a thousand years, 819.
Kcenig, heart of the earth, 365.
Kostlin, on change of heart, 691.

Lactantius, all things adapted to
man, 61 ; on God's anger, 101 ;
on miracles, 322.
La Marck, 27.
Lange, on the resurrection body,
831.
Larger Catechism, on the descensus,
361.
Last things, the, are the closing
events of the kingdom, 791 ; term,
inaccurate, 792 ; Christological
idea only valid principle of in
quiry into the nature of, 799 ;
human reason can not determine
the character aud conditions of,
800 ; will extend through an in
definite period, 814; the millen
nial reign of Christ as belonging
to the, 816.
Laud, Archbishop, influence of, 538.
Law, the, a tutor, 184 ; prefigured
the office of Christ, 185 ; of the
mediatorial work, 251 ; the funda
mental, 677 ; the, fulfils a twofold
purpose, 682 ; Jesus Christ the im-

932

Index.

personation of the, of love, 684 ;
the revelation of the authority of,
685 ; Jesus Christ impersonation
of the authority of, 686; work,
687 ; our Lord honors the, 688 ;
condemns iniquity, transgression
aud sin, 728 ; of God the only
rule of action, 753 ; of integration
and disintegration at work in na
ture, 916.
Lee, Rev. Dr., on faith, 658.
Legalism, 754.
Leighton, Archbishop, on the in
carnation, 1 77 ; on union to
Christ, 345 ; on design of crea
tion, 399 ; on Christ's victory over
death, 402 ; ou the miracle of the
Church, 481 ; on communion of
saints, 632 ; on spiritual gifts, 633.
Leo the Great on baptismal water,
575-
Life, we predicate of Jesus Christ
only, 777 ; His members iu their
earthly history develop eternal,
777 ; everlasting, 909 ; everlasting,
of the saints comprehends totality
of being, 910 ; glory of the eter
nal, 913.
Lightfoot, on the manifestation of
Christ in the church, 499 ; ou the
episcopate, 536, 537; on the as
sumption of ministerial functions
by laymen, 541.
Logos, difference between tran
scendent and immanent, 234.
Love, divine, twofold activity of,
179 ; of God to man eternal, 180 ;
Christ the revelation of, 182 ; the
authority of Christ's kingdom,
302 ; the response toward God re
quired of the Adamic race is, 677;
genuine, to man presupposes
genuine, to God, 678 •- obedience
to the Ten Commandments not
the condition of Jehovah's, 681 ;
Christ reveals His. in self-humil
iation, 764 ; fellowship in His, is
fellowship in His suffering, 765 ;
to God and to man active in three
forms, 913.
Luther, on the words and deeds of
Christ, 320 ; ou John xvii. 9, 10,
630.
Lux mundi, greatness of man, 72;
death of Christ, 329 ; on wrath of
God, 330; on man's affinity to
God, 468 ; on sanctification, 488.
Lyttelton, the Rev. and Hon.
Arthur, on the atonement, 325.

M
Man, the Adamic, 7.
Man, twofold constitution of, 7 ;
shown in the incarnation, 11 ; a
new creation, 18 ; heterouomic
constitution of, 20 ; as completing
nature, 21 ; completing himself,
23 ; as expressing the divine idea
of the world, 24 ; as he was poten
tially in Eden, 35 ; as body, soul
and spirit, 39 ; dualistic concep
tion of, 40; one organism, 42;
Roman theory of, 48 ; the image
of God as to essence, 56 ;
as to metaphysical qualities, 58 ;
reflects God's power, 59 ; his
knowledge, 60 ; tendency of, to
identify himself with God, 63 ;
probation of, 67 ; obligation of, to
perfect himself, 68 ; learns to know
good and evil, 72 ; obligation to
choose the truth, 74 ; his kinship
with hisMaker, 112 ; a unity, 121 ;
death of, 156 ; the natural, in the
post-earthly state, 165 ; twofold
relation of, to God, 173 ; a trans-
' gressor, 279 ; no saving virtue in
the natural, 649 ; God rnade, in
His own image, 679 ; analogy be
tween the old and the new, 838 ;
unity of the natural, is trichoto
mic, 847 ; the whole, is created
anew, 848.
Manhood, idea of, realized in Jesus
63-.
Manichean dualism, 42.
Mankind, dignity of, 61 ; solidarity
of, 122; in the primeval family,
124.
Marheineke, Dr., on Roman Cath
olic and Protestant views of Bap
tism, 576.
Marriage, law of mixed, 597 ; argu
ment of the apostle on, rests on
the idea of the family an organ
ism, 598.
Martensen, on creatiauism and tra
ducianism, £22 ; on the advent,
176 ; on the temptation, 243 ; idea
of a miracle, 299 ; on offering, 329;
on the resurrection, 383 ; on
Christ's resurrection body, 398 ; on
awakening, 449 ; on the creation
of the race for Christ, 466 ; on the
development of the Christian,
496 ; on Christian doctrine and
providence, 703 ; on the unchange
able character of evil, 917.

Index.

93:

Martyr, Peter, on the descensus.
36i.
Matheson, on the tempter, 71 ; on
life, 166; ou Christ as faultless,
300.
Mediator, the, 264; two modes of
existence of, 265, 268 ; constitu
tion of. presupposes, 267 ; the will
of, 271 ; works of, 272 ; idea of,
governs idea of mediatorship, 273 ;
constitutes a new communion,
275 ; divine and human side meet
in, 2S7 ; delivers the race, 288 ;
conquers Satan, 291 ; one with the
work, 324 ; death of, atoning,
339 I work of, life giving aud re
demptive, 344 ; the, a complete
redeemer, 356 ; went into Hades,
372 ; humiliation of, penal, 373 ;
removes false relation, 416 ; Him
self the principle of order, 432.
Mediatorship, active under two
aspects, 276 ; internal and organic,
277 ; involves humiliation, 280 ;
involves conflict with Satan, 290 ;
three phases of the, 293 ; parallel
with Adamic race, 357 ; lowest
stage in Hades, 375 ; study of, may
afford insight into laws of the
world, 42'2.
Melanchthon, invited to England,
538. •
Member, every, a prophet, 510; is a
priest, 511 ; is a king, 512; does
not hold the same position, 513.
Members of Christ, all have part in
His treasures, 632 ; difference be
tween, is a difference of function,
633 ; relation of all, to Christ,
635 ; relation to their fellows, 635 ;
vital interdependence of, 636 ; re
ciprocal ministrations of, condi
tion of greater good from Jesus
Christ, 637 ; regenerate life of, is
a continual conflict, 644 ; possess
the infinite merit of His sacrifice,
735-
Men, why all are depraved, 115.
Meyer on Ephes. iv. 24, 54 ; on the
judgment, 166 ; on Rom. i. 18,
168; 011 2 Cor. v. 16, on heart of
the earth, 365 ; on enelvog, 443 ; on
, unity of the Church, 483 ; on
choice of ministers, 533 ; on Bap
tism, 565 ; on Rom. vi. 4, 569 ; on
1 Cor. v. 1, 839; on Acts iii. 21,
840 ; on Eph. i. 10, 919.
Millennium, the, involved in un
certainty, 817; never been an ar

ticle of Christian faith, 817 ; four
things that enter into the, 818;
two leading theories of, 819 ; chil
iastic theory of, held by, 820-821;
theory of Augustine on the, 821 ;
spiritualistic conception of, 822 ;
makes no room for the second
coming, 823 ; modified doctrine
of the, 823 ; implies an order of
things different from the order
now prevalent! 827.
Milligan, Prof. Wm., D. D., on mir
acles, 307 ; on death and resurrec
tion, 380; on John xiv. 16, 17, 20,
442 ; conception of the millen
nium, 824; on resurrection of the
wicked, 866.
Minister, the representative of
Christ, 517.
Ministry, of Christ, 296; conditioned
by His person, 296 ; the holy, 509;
an office, 515; functions of the,
differ from vocation of laymen,
515 ; false dependence of the,
upon the members, 518; of the
membership on the, 518 ; does
not originate Christian commun
ity, 519; and laity vitally con
nected, 520; no true Church
without, 522 ; instituted by Christ,
524 ; influence of the, more pow
erful than influence of laymen,
525 ; humanitarian notion of, 527;
succession of the, 528 ; in one
sense the apostolic, has been con
tinuous, 529 ; question of succes
sion of, involves the relation of
the office to the economy of the
Church, 529-532 ; subdivision may
be extended, 534; announces mer
cy and pardon, 644.
Miracles, 305 ; miracle of Cana,
307-308 ; design of our Lord's,
310; have positive meaning, 311;
answer to the man, 322.
Mulford, Elisha, LL- D., on a holy
life, 765-766.
Muller, Max, on decay of religion,
154- N
Nature, human, sinful, 124 ; human,
' subconscious, 141.
Neander on Matt. xi. 11, 195.
Newton, Sir Isaac, 350.
Nicene Creed on resurrection of the
wicked, 852.
Nyssa, Gregory, on the atonement,
291.

934

Index.

o
Offering of Christ, a revelation and
redemption, 328.
Office, mediatorial, one, 414 ; exer
cise of, 415 ; has reference to nor
mal and abnormal attitude of
man, 416 ; prophetic function of,
417 ; priestly function of, 417 ;
kingly function of, 418; unity of,
430 ; ministerial, is one, 532 ; three
functions of the ministerial, 532 ;
may be distributed among three
classes or vested in one, 533;
bearers three classes of, 535; every
office-bearer invested with one,
540; because clothed with the one,
may not exercise all functions,
540; except in a convulsive epoch,
541-542.
Olshausen, on Virgin Mary, 197 ;
on a kingdom of evil, 243 ; on
temptation, 245, 248 ; on Heb.
iv. 15, 258 ; on the conquest of
Jesus, 261 ; on Jno. xii. 24, 304 ;
on Christ's death, 360 ; heart of
the earth, 365 ; on 1 Cor. xv. 23,
406 ; on Eph. iv. 4-6, 477 ; on 1
Cor. xii., 480 ; on indecision, 494 ;
on germs of faith in Gentile
hearts, 878.
Origen, on preexistence, 119 ; nega
tive theory of sin, 140.
Ovid, on man's moral contradiction,
102 ; on desire for the unknown
One, 469. P
Pantheistic theory, 32.
Parousia, the, not isolated, 795 ; is
the key to unlock the meaning
of history, 796 ; doctrine concern
ing the, not untrustworthy, 798 ;
more than the product of Mes
sianic history, 803.
Passover, most solemn festival, 550;
Jesus celebrating the, 551 ; changes
the import of, 552.
Pearson, on the mother of Christ,
199 ; on the conception of Jesus,
204; on catholicity of the Church,
492 ; on the saints, 629.
Peccability of Jesus, 256 ; false no
tion of, 259 ; question of, specu
lative, 260.
Pelagius on sin external, 723.
Penal suffering inadequate, 338.
Pentecost, 435 ; derives significance
from Jesus Christ glorified, 435 ;
Spirit of, is the Holy Spirit, 436 ;

gift of the Spirit on the day of, dif
ferent from every previous com
munication, 436 ; an epoch in the
objective process of revelation
and redemption, 439; depends on
Christ, 439 ; all subsequent Chris
tian facts depend on, 439 ; the pro
duct of the law of life, 440 ; indis
pensable, 440 ; miracle of, given
by idea of the incarnate Son, 441 ;
introduces a new order of things,
444; supersedes the previous status
of fellowship, 444 ; anterior to,
no function peculiar to Christian
ity was operative, 445 ; is a crea
tive epoch, 445 ; day of, the birth
day of the Church, 446 ; will not
be repeated, 446 ; on day of, the
Church became a complete organ
ism, 521 ; first gospel sermon
preached on the day of, 566.
Pessimism, element of truth in, 154.
Peter Martyr, called by Cranmer,
538.
Philo., on Israel, 190.
Pius IV., Pope, on the Eucharist,
612.
Plato, on doctrine of the world-soul,
33 ; dualism of, 40.
Pneumatology develops the saving
work of the Holy Spirit, 645.
Polycarp, 536.
Preexistence, 119.
Pressense- de, on the infinite, 269 ;
on love, 685.
Priest, Jewish, not ideal, 424 ;
through the, God and man do not
become one, 424; High, clothed
with absolute authority, 426.
Priesthood of Christ unchangeable,
425-
Probation, the, 67 ; represented in
Genesis, 70; answers to man's in
nocence, 73 ; was necessary, 74 ;
of Adam touches all things, 77 ;
relation of, to angelic world, 78 ;
of the human race, 79, 116.
Purgatory, no room for, 378.
R
Race, active in first transgression,
119; misery of the Adamic, 178;
yearning after good, 179 ; yearn
ing of human, basis of the advent,
181 ; Christian Church a new,
464 ; of the last Adam perpetuated
by spiritual generation, 464 ; of
the Second Man in one respect
identical with the, of the first

Index.

935

man, 465 ; of the Second Man
differs from the first, 466 ; differ
ence of the new, positive, 467 ;
the new, formed in the image of
the God-man, 467 ; a human, liv
ing a divine life, 469 ; life of the
new, may wax or wane, 473 ;
Adamic, needs of, positive and
negative, 560 ; in the fallen, sin,
guilt and death controlling forces,
561 ; the new, is the, of salvation,
646.
Rauch, Dr. F. A., on the mind, 653.
Redemption, three aspects of the
one, 292 ; reveals divine love, 330.
Reformed Church, doctrine on
Lord's Supper shaped by Calvin,
619 ; denies the Roman dogma of
transubstantiation, 626 ; denies
the body of Christ is in, with and
under the bread and wine, 626 ;
denies that bread and wine are
symbols only, 626 ; affirms that
the ordinance is both commem
orative and a real communion,
626 ; on departure of members of
Church, 781.
Reformers, teaching of, on Baptism,
575. 576 ; limit the virtue of Bap
tism, 577 ; of 16th and 17th cen-
centuries on Baptism, 577.
Relation, ideal, of man to God, 19.
Repentance, meaning of the word,
688 ; and conversion are converti
ble terms, 690 ; are distinguish
able, 690 ; expressing sorrow, 690;
the term, asserts the negative as
pect, 691 ; evangelical, 691 ; is a
moral change, 691 ; is a turning
from a life of sin, 692 ; two forms
of, 693; of Christian, sorrow for
sin necessary, 694 ; Christian, is
rooted in the ethical life, 695 ; is
heartfelt joy in God, 695; natural,
696; like Christian, 697; test of
genuine, 698 ; conditions the fit
ness of the adult for translation
into the kingdom, 740 ; is the be-
ginning'of the growth of holiness,
760.
Resurrection, the, of Christ, 379;
foretold by Himself, 380; differ
ences of statement of, unimport
ant, 381 ; an historical event,
382 ; evidence from the nature of,
384 ; announcement of, 385; effect
of, 386 ; first belief in, 387 ; a new
energy, 388 : perpetual argument
for, 388; a transition, 391 ; Laza

rus not an adequate type of, 392 ;
not a transfer of the natural body,
393 ; embraces the whole Christ,
394 ; common conception of, 396 ;
positive substance of, 396 ; phe
nomena of, 397 ; cardinal in His
mediatorial life, 398 ; cardinal in
redemption, 399 ; the crisis, 400 ;
a complete victory, 401 ; analogy
of, 404 ; believers share the, life,
629 ; fellowship of the, life quick
ened by the Holy Spirit, 630 ; of
the dead, 828 ; to be predicated of
the dead themselves, 828 ; of the
body means, 829 ; of the flesh,
829 ; not a return to the natural
worid, 830 ; not a reassertion of
natural existence, 831 ; the, of
Christ is our guide in forming a
conception of the, in general, 832;
of the dead to be distinguished
from pagan belief, 832 ; from
pagan belief the, differs in princi
ple aud iu form, 833 ; Scripture
represents the, under the image
of birth, 834 ; the general, em
braces the righteous and the
wicked, 834; the, of the right
eous, 835 ; before the, the right
eous are not in the realm of final
glory, 837 ; body is a new body,
844 ; body of the righteous is spir
itual, 846; two factors in the,
body, 850 ; of the wicked, 851 :
Christ teaches the, of the wicked,
852 ; of the wicked has been a
part of Christian belief, 852 ; how
may we account for the, of the
wicked? 853; conception of the
overthrow of Satan's kingdom
involves the, of the wicked, 860 ;
teaching of St. Paul on the, 861 ; .
of the wicked includes the organ
ization of a body, 863 ; the, body
will be the same, 863 ; the#law of
their being will in the, be active,
864 ; the, body of the wicked will
develop a type of moral deform
ity, 865.
Revelation prevailingly positive,
QQC
Riddle, on ' heart of the earth,' 365;
on John's baptism, 457; on growth
of the Church, 522. _
Riehm, D. Eduard, on Mosaic in
stitutions, 183.
Right, Jesus Christ is the criterion
of, 686; and wrong commingle in
the current eon, 880.

936

Index.

Righteous, how may a, person
maintain his righteousness, 722;
they that accept Jesus Christ as
their only Lord are accounted,
735-
Robinson, Dr., on mixed marriages,
598.
Rothe, Richard, on Christ's work on
earth, 294; on Christ the Man, 407.

Sacraments, the holy, 543; Christian,
related to Jewish, 543; learn the
import of, by studyiug Baptism
and the Eucharist, 544; two, ac
knowledged by the Church uni
versal, 546; Greek and Roman
Churches adopt seven, 546; each,
an objective witness to Christ's
death and resurrection, 547; Bap
tism and- the. Supper became the
Christian, 554; are spiritual or
dinances, 554; are ordained by
Christ, 554; spiritual, 556-557.
Satan, the god of this world, no;
antagonism of, to Christ shows
antagonism to everything Christ
like, 423.
Schaff, Dr. Philip, Augustine on
evil, 52; ou Pelagianism, 115; on
Rom. i. 24, 152; Philippi quoted
by, 159; on Rom. i. 21-23, 168; ou
the law, 185; life and death of
Judaism, 222; on childhood of
Jesus, 228; on Jesus' independent
teaching, 231; on Satan's aim in
the temptation, 25 1 ; on the eternal
Logos, 267; on miracles, 301; on
Calvin's interpretation of the
descensus, 351; on 'heart of the
earth,' 365; on Matt. xiii. 38, 492;
on the titles of office-bearers in
the Church, 535; on Baptism, 575;
on doctrine of Zwingli, 618.
Schiedt, Prof. Richard C, on the
skuTl and brain of man, 21.
Schiller, on sin, 106.
Schmidt, Rudolph, on inheritance,
123.
Schleiermacher, on the temptation,
248.
Scotland, Confession of, on sacra
ments, 577.
Semisch, the Apostles' Creed, 628;
on the millenarianism of revela
tion, 826.
Seneca, on punishment, 107.
Shakespeare, atonement, 340.
Sin, the birth of, 84; effect of, upon

Adam, 101; inborn, 113; original,
113; nature of, 137; referable to
voluntary act, 137; false self-asser
tion, 138; not a negation only,
140; false selfhood, 141; not the
condition of moral perfection, 143;
an abnormal condition of human
nature, 144; the nerve of, 146;
consequences of, dynamic, 149;
consequeuces, judicial, 150; begets>
sin, 151; in the individual, 151; in'
the family, 152; in national life,
153; is of Satan, 288; the atoning
sacrifice a victory over, 346;
knowledge of, conditions genuine
sense of guilt, 687; the funda
mental, and other sins, 732; pri
mary ueccessity the extinction of
the fundamental, 733; is death,
854; ravages of, on earth co-exist
ent with the revelation of God in
Christ, 918.
Sinfulness, a false attitude in rela
tion to God, 145 ; and sins, 147 ; -
inherited, 147 ; its own punish
ment, 148; misery not divorced
from, I50.
Smyth, Dr. Newman, on soul and
body, 37, 121; on teaching of
Jesus, 312 ; on the resurrection,
849. ¦
Socrates, 489.
Son, incarnate, the sent One, 3325
comes freely, 333 ; sacrifice of the,
penal consequence of sin, 334;
constitutes in heaven the throne
of grace, 427 ; the principle of the
kingdom of grace, 428 ; presence
of the incarnate, internal and ex
ternal, 805.
Soul, the central principle, 36.
Spencer, 38 ; on infinite and finite,
269.
Spinoza, an epoch in anthropology,
41:
Spirit, the human, 38; the, active
in creation related to the personal
Word, 437 ; medium of communi
cation between God and pagan
nations, 437 ; by the, Jehovah ed
ucated a peculiar people, 437 ;
given on Pentecost was the Spirit
of Christ, 438 ; advent of, like the
advent of Christ, 4,39 ; gift of the
Holy, a twofold fuifilment, 440 ;
coming of, assured by Christ, 441 ;
the mission of the, 447 ; work of
the, and work of Christ are the
same, 447 ; work of the, and work

Index.

937

of Christ differ as to sphere and
form, 447 ; distinctive work of,
pertains to the purpose of Christ's
mediatorship, 448 ; work of, two
fold, 448 ; quickens men, 448 ; im
plants men into Christ, 449 ; work
of, implies an objective transla
tion, 450 ; working in the siuful
subject perfects freedom, 451 ; de
livers men from sin, 452 ; begins
and carries forward by imparting
the virtue of Christ's work, 452 ;
life-giving energy and saving
work of the, not externally con
joined, 453 ; these two parts of the
agency of, inseparable but not
coordinate, 453 ; birth of, not a
creation de novo, 465 ; functions
of, in the communion of the
Church, 500 ; functions of the
office of, and of Christ's office
connected, 500 ; threefold pro
phetic function of, 501 ; reveals
God, 502; mauifests the, 503; re
veals man, 503 ; priestly function
of, 504 ;' life-giving work of, in
volves His saving Work, 505 ;
kingly function of, 505 ; the me
dium of governmental relation of
Christ to His Church, 506 ; unity
of prophetic, priestly and kingly
functions of, 507 ; active through
ordinances, 508; mediating agency
< of, has reference to the guilt and
misery of the Adamic race, 643 ;
agency of, in the members of
Christ anticipates repentance aud
sanctification, 643; infinite fulness
of the birth of the, into the king
dom, 848-.
Spring Gardner, Dr., on the char
acteristic of the cross, 486.
Stanley on presbyter and bishop,
538.
Stearns, Lewis F., Rev. Dr., on the
doctrine of the kingdom, 649 ; on
faith, 666 ; on the state after
death, 838.
Strong, Dr. A. H., on position of
man, 50; education of the Jews,
190 ; on the Holy Spirit, 448 ; on
the intermediate state, 840; on
the resurrection body of the
wicked, 865.
Sudhoff, on the descensus, 361 ; on
sacraments, 558; on the Lord's
Supper, 618.
Supper, the Lord's, witness to the
crucifixion and resurrection, 555;

a transaction, 556; right to ob
serve, accorded to women, 584;
commonly called.by the Reformed
Churches, 599; is called the Eu
charist, 600; is also called the
communion, 600; not called sacra
ment by our Lord or His apostles,
600; is a commemorative ordi
nance, 601 ; a twofold transaction,
601 ; embraces the things done by
our Lord, the things done by His
disciples, 602; celebrated has been
the constant exhibition of the
cardinal facts of Christianity, 603;
is a spiritual bauquef, 604; iu the,
the Spirit conjoins two things,
604; union of the supernatural with
the natural in, 605; the Lord Jesus
connects Himself with, 606; the
communiou in, is primarily ob
jective, 606; the mystical truth
concerning, 607-609; self-com
munication of Christ in the, 609;
communion of Christ in, implies
the response of His people, 610;
difference between virtue and effi
cacy in, 610; virtue of the, posi
tive and negative, 611; a com
memorative ordinance, 616; doc
trine of Zwiugli on, 617; Sudhoff's
doctrine of, 618; Reformed doc
trine of, differs from original
Lutheranism, 619; doctrine of
Calvin pn, passed into leading Con
fessions, 623; Reformed Church
denies regarding the, 626; the
positive affirmation of the Re
formed Church respecting, 626;
confirms the benefit of the sacri
fice, 644.

Tartarus, 889.
Teaching of Jesus, 312; central theme
of, 312; contrasted with the
prophets, 313; honors the Deca
logue, 314; attacks Jewish errors,
315; honors His Father's will, 315:
demands confidence, 316; teach
ing of apostles similar to, 317;
bears witness to Himself, 318;
same in the four Gospels, 323.
Temptation, the, of Jesus, 241; a ne
cessity, 242; for Himself and for
His mediatorship, 245; external
form of, 247; objective, 248; narra
tive of, symbolical, 248; difficulty
of, 249; the matter of the, 250;

938

Index.

Satan's aim in, 250; like the
Adamic, 253; real, 253.
Tertullian, on creation of man, 60;
on bodily form of spirit, 64; on
traducianism, 119; on death, 158;
on the form of the first Adam,
275; 'heart of the earth,' 365;
episcopacy, 536; on pagan ani
mosity, 648; all iu Christ, 806.
Thayer, on atonement, 327.
Theophylact, 'heart of earth,' 365.
Tholuck, death unto life, 405.
Traducianism, 119.
Treasures of Christ, distinguished
from gifts, 634; gifts now enjoyed
not to be compared with the, to
be revealed, 634; of Christ com
municable to all, 634.
Trent, Council of, on creation of
man, 48; on the hierarchy in the
Catholic Church, 526; on grace
conferred by sacraments, 577; on
the Eucharist, 613; on justifica
tion, 719.
Tucker, Dr., on knowledge of Jesus,
226; on His temptation to sin, 257.
Tyndall, on materialism, 37. '
U
UHman, on Baptism, 575; on the
union between the Head and the
members, 738; on being grafted
into Christ, 739.
Ursinus, on Christ a true man, 210.
Usher, Archbishop, on ordination,
538. V
Van Oosterzee, on active and pass
ive obedience, 339; on the resur
rection, 394.
Vatican Council, on supreme power
of the Pope over the Church, 526;
on the infallible teaching of the
Pope, 526.
Victory, the Christian, 773; the
Christian realizes in death the,
achieved by Christ, 780; the
foundation of the doctrine of
Christian, 783: as regards the, over
death, 784; objection of material
ism in its bearing on the Christian,
787; Christ's, over sin and death

complete in relation to Himself,
859; Christ's, is the condemnation
of Satan, 859; complete, of the
kingdom of Christ, 883; of the
Son of Man actualizes the mean
ing of His ascension, 883; of Christ
over Satan, 909.
Virgin Mary, the, 195-199; fitness
of, to receive the angel's saluta
tion, 200; so formed by the provi
dence of God, 201; Christ the Son
of, 210. W
Wake, Win., Archbishop, on Re
formed Churches, 538.
Washing, symbolical, an obliga
tion of the ceremonial law, 547 ;
the rite of admitting pagan con
verts to the 'fellowship of the cov
enant people, 548 ; rite of, adopted
by John, 548 ; the rite of, adopted
by our Lord, 549 ; the stages of
religious, 549 ; ceremonial, the
basis of Christian Baptism, 550.
Whitby, concedes Ihe identity of
presbyter and bishop,' 538.
Wilberforce, the divine principle in
man, 12.
Words, and deeds one ministry,
319 ; relation of, to His personal
ity, 320.
Works, good, 744 ; the spiritual
status of a man conditions the
genius of his, 745 ; good, neces
sary, 745 ; what are ? 746 ; the
principle of, 747 ; not Christian
to say, proceed from human will,
748 ; true faith the subjective
principle of, 749 ; the second ele
ment of, 750; standard of judg
ment for, 750 ; religion essential
toi 753 ', the aim of, 756 ; the pro
duct of the fellowship of faith,
757 ; faith and, 758 ; follow with
them, 912.
Wrath, not vindictive, 103 ; involves
the curse, 105.

Zoroaster, philosophy of, 40.
Zwingli, on presence of Christ in
the Lord's Supper, 618.

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