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A MORE EXCELLENT
WAY

A Book Concerning the Provision Made of
God for a Life in Common between
Himself and Man

BY
WILLIAM B. CLARKE

G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS
NEW YORK AND LONDON
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1904

Copyright, 1904
BY
WILLIAM B. CLARKE
Published, April, 1904

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TO
MY DAUGHTERS
IN RECOGNITION OF THE AID THEY HAVE GIVEN ME
BY THEIR SYMPATHY

PREFACE
THE subject discussed in this book is, in
general, communion with God. It is, however,
studied in a portion only of its forms, and in
close connection with the development of the
special historic series of events which Christians
believe to have been divinely instituted to
secure that communion for us.
The guiding thought of the book is that
communion is strictly what the word by its
derivation signifies — a life in common between
souls. Communion with God, therefore, is a
life in common between a soul and God, each
entering with an intelligent love and sympathy
into the other's mind and thoughts. As our
theme unfolds, and especially in the study of
our Lord's death, increasing emphasis is laid
on the second and, as the writer thinks, less
understood part in this communion — our sym
pathy with God in his thoughts.
Inasmuch as historical facts, and documents
whose authenticity is generally acknowledged,
alone need to be employed in the study lying
before us, what is called the higher criticism
does not much concern us, and will be but
little considered.

vi Preface
Especial pains has been taken to lift the
truths of the Christian system, as far as pos
sible, out of the sphere of the unnatural, or
what may be called the thaumaturgic sphere,
into the sphere of the natural, or, if I may so
modify that term, of the larger natural. For
the writer accounts it the supreme value of the
bible that it reveals to us this larger, or, in
the truest sense, super natural, rather than the
merely finite or human natural.
It need only be added that the writer counts
the following as the two greatest benefits he
has himself received from his studies. First,
his strengthened faith in the bible, as a true
record of the great Father's special revelation
to man of his spiritual truths, and a record
divinely fitted to our need. Second, his clearer
apprehension of the death of Christ as the dis-
clo ure of God's very highest thoughts toward
us — thoughts wherein the wonderful perfection
of his sympathy with us is attended by a pow
er to draw human hearts out into sympathy
with him, which even the full strength of our
ignorance and sin will in the end be unable to
resist.
W. B. C.
Durham Parsonage,
Durham, Connecticut.

CONTENTS
PAGE
I. Faith-Knowledge . . . . i
II. Communion  16
III. The Old-Testament Idea of God 28
IV. The Justice of God ... 41
V. The New-Testament Idea of God 59
VI. Reconciliation of the Divine
and the Human Consciousness
in Christ  70
VII. The Love of God .... 84
VIII. Man's Only Perfect Righteous
ness is Love  95
IX. The New Man . . . .109
X. Laws of God's Kingdom . . 119
XI. Judgment  129
XII. The Incarnation .... 144
XIII. God's Sympathy with Man . . 160
XIV. The Bond of Suffering . . 174
XV. Man's Sympathy with God . . 183
XVI. Meaning of the Atonement . . 196
XVII. The Humanity of Christ . . 215

FAITH-KNOWLEDGE
The subject treated in this book lies in the
domain of faith. The book, therefore, is an
appeal to man in the totality of his powers;
for this is the characteristic of faith as distin
guished from the other operations of the human
mind. It is especially the feature that distin
guishes faith-knowledge from the only other
kind of knowledge, science-knowledge. The
difference between these two may be called
world-wide, so utterly diverse are they in the
mental activities they involve and the spheres
to which they introduce us. And yet, diverse
as they are, we are perfectly and equally famil
iar with both these kinds of knowledge, and
pass every day from one to the other without
a thought of the difference. Thus a great part
of each day's life consists of facts given us
in perception and consciousness. We meet a
friend, we are conscious of a thought, or ex
perience an emotion. When the mind care
fully reports such facts as these they are known

2 A More Excellent Way
absolutely, and are properly classed as coming
under the head of science-knowledge. Such
familiar truths as that a stone left unsupported
falls to the ground, or the sun rises every morn
ing at an hour that can be exactly determined
beforehand, it is well known, fall under the
same head. We have to do, on the other
hand, constantly, and in matters of the utmost
importance, with faith-knowledge. Most of
the things essential to our welfare, such as the
friends we love, the truths we cherish, and the
higher ends to which we devote ourselves, are
embraced by us in faith- not science-know
ledge. What, then, is the vital distinction between
these two? It lies in a peculiar fact, namely,
that science-knowledge, save that it has its
ultimate basis in cognitions whose origin is in
dispute, rests entirely on intellectual processes.
It may be said of science-knowledge, that it
approaches perfection according as it is unin
fluenced by any admixture whatever of feeling
or will. Has feeling any place in the mind's
acceptance of the truth of gravitation? It is a
pure production of the intellect, and nothing
else would so quickly and completely discredit
it as the discovery that it had come to rest
largely on feeling or on will for its support.
Faith-knowledge, on the other hand, can

Faith-Knowledge 3
have no existence save on the condition that
the three faculties, intellect, feeling, and will,
unite to produce it. Nor is the mere opera
tion of these faculties enough, their clear assent
is necessary. It is of the very nature of faith
to be affirmative. To speak of faith in the
denial of anything would be evidently absurd ;
negations are not subject-matter of faith. We
may test the truth of the general statement
here made by supposing the absence of the
affirmative testimony of either of these ele
ments. What will become of faith if we sup
pose the consent of the intellect to be wanting?
You may have a weak compliance more nega
tive than positive in its character; you may
have a blind superstition ; you may have the
wild rage of the fanatic, or the stolid persist
ence of the bigot. Neither of these is faith.
A sincere action of the intellect and its hon
est assent are indispensable to faith. This of
course does not require the existence of su
perior intelligence or of a high intellectuality.
A small intellect, used honestly in freedom
from selfish motive, may impart to the faith
of the simple-hearted an instinctive perception
of truth and a peculiarly beautiful love of it-
This, in high or low, is that assent of the in
tellect which genuine faith requires; and its
importance is such as to render it proper to

4 A More Excellent Way
call the intellect an equal factor with the other
powers which enter into faith's production.
This is saying much, for the need of feeling
in order to faith is conspicuous. The question
is a simple one. The word faith answers to
one of the most familiar of our mental states.
It is by the faith which men have, in religion,
in government and the institutions of society,
in principles of truth, in the honor of business
men, in the good feeling of neighbors and
friends, in their homes, in themselves, that the
world moves on. But these are all matters in
which the feelings of men are deeply interested.
So important, indeed, is it to rightly estimate
the place of feeling in our faith-knowledge that
I may properly specify a few particulars con
cerning it.
I. Consider that there can in the nature of
things be no motive to action that does not
consist of some feeling ; nor can there be any
end sought by the soul of man that does not lie
purely in the realm of feeling ; nor, in fact, can
life have any ultimate value save in the feelings
that are awakened and satisfied in the process
of it. The Principia of Newton was a purely
intellectual work. The fact, however, remains
that it would never have been written save as
the thinker was compelled thereto, and ani
mated, as the work progressed, by many feel-

Faith-Knowledge 5
ings — his joy in the doing of such work; his
consciousness of the increase in reputation and
power it would bring him; his feeling of the
benefits which such an advance in knowledge
would confer on the race ; the force of acquired
habit itself, the habit, namely, of intellectual
effort, and the satisfaction found in gratifying it.
2. The gradation in the nature of our feel
ings, and the superior value of some as com
pared with others is also a fact of evident
and familiar importance. Life is enriched by
exalted affections ; it becomes to its possessor
a thing of more exquisite value. The intelli
gent citizen and father blessed in his family,
has this advantage over the tramp.
3. Equally certain is the constantly increas
ing possession by the race of the better feelings
in the progress of its development. This is by
a natural law. It is one of many laws control
ling our human development. The revelation
made in scripture is in aid of it.
4. A fourth consideration of great signifi
cance is the fact that various ones among our
feelings have a marked evidential value. They
are self-evident, and therefore of their very
nature command the assent of the reason. It
is in the realm of right that this especially
holds. Our apprehension of the obligation
over us of that which we recognize as right is

6 A More Excellent Way
intuitive. It is complete in itself and indepen
dent of intellectual processes. So clear is this
that Herbert Spencer, holding the utilitarian
theory of right, acknowledges it. He affirms
that our sense of right is intuitive, though he
holds that this results from a vast experience
by our race of the fact that certain classes of
acts tend to produce happiness, and others the
contrary. The alternative explanation of this
fact is that the unfolding of the moral order in
this world was so shaped by its author as to be
in harmony with the already existing order in
the universe at large. This is a supposition
that clears away all the difficulties. Mr. Spen
cer himself admits "a naturally revealed end "
— natural evidently in distinction from super
natural — "toward which the power manifested
in evolution works. " ' In admitting this he has
already advanced beyond the steps of principal
difficulty in his approach to the theistic faith.
Christianity affords a striking instance of that
union of the intellect and feelings which we
have found essential to a true act of faith.
Two views of the nature of faith may be said
to divide the Christian world. According to
both, faith is the yielding up of the spirit in
loyalty to Christ. But the one sees in it chiefly
the yielding up of the intellect in belief; while
1 Data of Ethics, cheap edition, Appleton & Co., p. 171.

Faith-Knowledge 7
the other regards it as chiefly the surrender
of the heart in trust and love. The difference
is not a dangerous one, nor the question im
portant which view has the more of truth.
They are both true, and the more clearly we
can see the truth of each the better.
No fact in the world's history has shone
out more conspicuously than the power which
faiths, true and false, have had to change the
life of mankind. The will is the seat of power
in the human mind, and its activity in faith is
the secret of this power so often manifested. It
will repay us if we take a little pains to appre
hend the scope of this truth. We need first
of all to take into account the peculiarity of
faith-knowledge that by its very nature it
admits of doubt. It is only science-knowledge
when wrought to positive results that is free
from the possibility of doubt. It may be said
truly of any article of faith-knowledge, that if
it were to become free from all possibility of
doubt it would cease to be faith-knowledge
and become science-knowledge. While faith-
knowledge admits thus necessarily of doubt it
is also true, and the fact is very noticeable,
that the mind's certitude, or feeling of cer
tainty, in many matters of faith-knowledge is
far greater than in most matters of science-
knowledge.

8 A More Excellent Way
It is a matter of science-knowledge that the
rising of the sun is caused by the earth's turn
ing on its axis. Nobody doubts this. Every
body acknowledges it to be a fact proved by
science and of unquestionable certainty. But
in this and in a multitude of similar cases, our
feeling of that certainty is not to be compared
with faith's absolute assurance of things which
are unquestionably liable to doubt, such as the
integrity of a trusted friend, or the ultimate
victory of a rightful cause. How, then, does
the mind attain to that clear and firm convic
tion that in many instances gives so noble a
strength to faith? It is by the employment of
the will to strengthen both the consent of the
intellect and that of the heart. The office of
the will is twofold : first, to decide between
conflicting claims upon reason and feeling ; and,
second, to confirm the strength of a conviction
when made. Such terms as will-power or
strength of character imply an energetic action
of the will in both these forms. This is the
power by which men settle a matter and it
stays settled. It invests a spirit with a great
nobleness. When we speak of a mighty faith,
it is this in it chiefly which makes it mighty.
There is often no higher test of manhood than
that one be able to use an effective will-power
for the establishment of his faith; it may be

Faith-Knowledge 9
his faith in himself or in the work to which he
devotes himself ; it may be his faith in another ;
it is frequently his faith in a great truth; it
may be his faith in the Father and the Son.
It is evident that the word faith has a pe
culiarly intimate relation to the moral sphere
of life. The word is most at home here ; it is
fully at home nowhere outside this sphere.
The reason of this must be sought in the fact
that faith is a mental act involving the totality
of the human powers, involving especially the
three fundamental powers of thought, feeling,
and the will. Now in the realm of feeling
the moral affections hold the highest place, a
place, indeed, so much the highest that they
stand entirely by themselves. I assume this
as a first truth and recognized as such in the
developed consciousness of mankind. If this
be true, there can be no assent of the entire
powers of the soul in a case where right moral
action is excluded. There can be no faith, in
the highest sense of the word, in things neutral
as regards their moral quality. Still less can
there be faith in things evil. By failing to ap
prehend this truth some thinkers have gone
wide of the mark. The true and the beautiful
are plainly distinguishable from the good, but
they are in the very closest relation to it. A
pure devotion to either of these has in it ele-

io A More Excellent Way
ments of a noble faith. The question whether
there can be faith in these in the highest sense
of the word is the question whether they can
command to the highest possible extent the
human powers. The Christian believes that
only goodness can do this ; and that mere ab
stract goodness even cannot do it, but only the
great Being who is the source of all — the true,
the beautiful, the good itself included.
It is to be conceded that the word faith is
used not improperly in a multitude of cases
that fall below this standard ; but this is by
a species of accommodation, not in the full
meaning of the word. Thus a rider may have
faith in his good horse, or an engineer in his
good machine ; but this is by imputing to the
object of the faith the moral quality of faith
fulness. It is, on the other hand, an anomaly,
and an abuse of terms, to speak of faith in the
almighty dollar, or faith in an ordinary politi
cal machine. No man ever bestowed the real
consent of his entire nature upon anything so
sordid as these ; or if he did, this in itself was
sufficient proof that he had ceased to be pos
sessed of the totality of powers that combine
to make a man. A single question fairly an
swered should be decisive upon this whole
matter: What have been the great faiths of
humanity? Do any deserve that name in

Faith-Knowledge 1 1

which the very greatest moral interests have
not been involved? Even the Greek love of
beauty, however pure, must be shut out of
this list. Let her love of liberty be admitted ;
let her love and pursuit of truth, intellectual
and spiritual, count among the greatest : true
faiths both of these.
The world is mainly divided to-day between
two theories of the universe, briefly termed the
agnostic and the theistic. It is claimed by be
lievers in the former theory that it possesses
the great advantage of being based on posi
tive or scientific knowledge. The supporters
of the other rejoice that its foundations are
securely laid in faith-knowledge. Each begins
in the observation of facts : the one primarily,
and thus far chiefly, of the facts of the natural
world, and yet of these as leading on to the
knowledge of the universe as a whole; the
other primarily of the facts of the soul, as
leading on to the knowledge of the universe
and of him who made it. For the better
understanding of the discussion which follows
it will be proper that a few words be said here
as to the position held by the author regarding
these two theories.
In what of knowledge of the universe science
is able to affirm, science is wholly right and
beneficent ; a mighty source of light sending

12 A More Excellent Way
its rays into every realm of thought ; a thing
born of God, product of his plans for the good
of his creatures; a fountain of blessing; a
glorious object for our faith to accept.
The fault of science when it assumes to be a
theory of the universe, is not in its affirmations,
but in its denials. We accept thankfully the
former; we reject as unscientific and as un
worthy of our acceptance the latter. What
shall be said, for instance, of a theory that
affirms the existence of a first cause, for the
reason substantially that the nature of man
demands it, but shuts out entirely the suppo
sition that the author of the universe can be an
intelligent being and capable of choice — that is,
that he can be like unto ourselves, the highest
of his creatures and the beings nighest to their
source, and this upon the purely metaphysical
ground that ultimate being, whether matter or
spirit, is unknowable by us? May we then not
even raise the question whether the facts of our
nature indicate that God may be a being who
can have a thought for his creatures and a
plan for us ; who can regard us with love, and
whom we can love and reverence in return?
It is the fatal defect of the science theory of
the universe, as distinguished from the faith
theory, that it so narrows the life in the higher
and broader spheres of our being. In all the

Faith-Knowledge 1 3
lower rounds, heart and will have their free
scope. What there is of charm in our life and
what of nobleness springs from them. The
intellect itself is but their servant, its office
being plainly to broaden and enrich the sphere
of their glorious activities. It is, in a word, a
faith world that we live in, and outside of that
fact it has no value for us. Love, joy, pure
aspiration, loftiness of choice and of endeavor,
goodness and trust in goodness, the mighty
hopes, the mighty strifes, the vast achieve
ments "that make us men," — all turn on this
characteristic feature of our condition. But
when we rise to the larger thought of the cre
ated universe, and our relation to it and its
source, and the ultimate ends of our own be
ing, all this is shut away from us. We long
to love, but in this highest realm it is forbidden.
Our feeling would gladly rise in thankfulness
for all we have and enjoy, and in worship of
the great source of all ; there is nothing for us
but to put down this feeling. Our longing is
great to serve the right, and get the approval
of the Lord of the righteous kingdom ; but
there is no right in this sense and no such
righteous Lord. Our needs send us to the
throne of the Almighty for sympathy and help.
It is vain, there is no such thing as a heart of
God to sympathize ; nor a will that could bend

1 4 A More Excellent Way
that heart, if there were one, to our help.
Thus in the highest realm the highest in us has
no place ; nor in the largest realm has the larg
est in us any room for its activity. Our serv
ant, that intellect with which we find ourselves
furnished for our use, becomes our master,
shutting us out of our realm; while the true
masters, mighty heart and will, become its
slaves. We Christians do not believe, we can
not accept, such a theory. And it is because
we accept ourselves, and trust the demand of
our nature. We believe that there is such a
thing as the assent of the soul in man, and
that this is greater, infinitely, than the assent
of the mere intellect.
The preceding considerations are of a general
character. They depend for their effect upon
the response given by man's nature as a whole,
rather than upon their distinct acceptance by
the intellect.
It will be claimed by some that they are un
fair to the intellect, that they belittle its dignity
and importance. The writer is aware that he
might easily himself in some moods say the
same, should he meet these words in the writ
ings of another. There are times when the
high action of the intellect in faith seems all-
important. There are times when it seems the
least important: when the more vital elements

Faith-Knowledge 15
of faith appear plainly to be present even in
the absence of the intellect's clear assent.
There are noble-minded men and women, un
believers, of whom it can be said with good
hope, Their unbelief is only intellect deep, so
well are their hearts and lives attuned to the
spirit of his teachings, whose divinity their in
tellects have as yet failed to discern. Until
this is added to the assent of heart and will,
the faith of such cannot be complete ; but there
is every reason to hope that, if not in this world,
in the clearer light of the next, this will be
gladly yielded.
To the writer's mind the rational argument
for the theistic faith is strong, even in the full
measure of its importance. It is as strong
probably as is consistent with faith's require
ment, that feeling and will shall have an ade
quate share in its production. That the future
will protect this all-important interest he does
not doubt. His own concern is rather with
faith in general, and especially with faith in
that special revelation of himself by the all
Father to man of which the bible is the record.

II
COMMUNION
If the world's history could be written out
from what will prove in the end to be its cen
tral point of view, it would be but the record
of God's plan for bringing mankind into the
knowledge of and communion with himself.
What we call profane history is not in the larger
view separate from sacred history ; they are but
different volumes of the same book. Human
development works all together to accomplish
the end sought in man by the power that made
him ; a complete union of life between him and
God. Now it cannot possibly be maintained
that what we call distinctively the life of re
ligion in the soul constitutes the whole of this
communion. Physical science, or the know
ledge of the laws of the material universe, may
become the basis of a very sincere communion
with God ; for it is the study of God's thoughts
in a vast and peculiarly interesting form of the
divine energy. A sympathetic knowledge of
these thoughts would bring the human spirit
16

Communion 17
into participation with God in that field of
activity ; thereby imparting to it a peculiar joy.
But this alone would not deserve the name of
communion : it would be only one side of com
munion, and would lack completeness until the
other side were added. Communion, as the
word by its derivation signifies, is a life in com
mon between souls. In order to a true com
munion between God and man, there must be
first in each the recognition of the other's
separate and personal existence. Then only
does it become possible for each to enter into
the other's life. This mutuality of life is the
single feature indispensably characteristic of
communion. A human spirit may feel an im
mense delight in its sympathy with certain
thoughts of God, and it may be a very pure
delight. This feeling is sometimes loosely
called communion, as when Bryant speaks of
holding "communion with the visible forms of
nature." But while permissible in poetry, this
is not the language of fact. Communion is not
sympathy, but reciprocity of sympathy, and
the peculiar happiness it yields is due to that
fact. When the great astronomer, Kepler, an
nounced his discovery of the laws governing
the planetary movements, his statements were
received with neglect. Then he exclaimed:
' ' My book may well wait a century for a reader,

1 8 A More Excellent Way
since God has waited six thousand years for an
observer!" Such a saying could spring only
out of a spirit in communion with this God.
The two were friends ; they shared each other's
thoughts ; and none could take from the lonely
thinker the joy he found in this divine com
munion. This difference between a mere unreturned
sympathy, and communion, is illustrated by
the joy felt by so many in the harmonies of the
natural world. There are certain rhythmical
vibrations in nature, to which the nervous
organism in man can be made to respond,
whereby the mysterious spiritual perceptions
of harmony are awakened in the soul. We
give the name aesthetics to this sphere of the
soul's life.
What, then, is beauty of form or color, what
is music, what is the charm of thoughts clothed
in words fittingly and harmoniously chosen, if
it is to end in nothing more than the mere
awakening of these sensuous perceptions?
There is in that case a sympathy with a thought
of God ; there is none with God himself the
thinker of the thought ; still less is there the
sense of an answering sympathy from him.
But what if it be true that there are spiritual
harmonies of infinite range and depth and
sweetness and power, and that God's heart of

Communion 19
beauty is the central seat where they have their
dwelling? What a possibility then of a blessed
ness in the communion of a human spirit with
that spirit far beyond what any ordinary sym
pathy with beauty can afford !
I shall assume that communion with God in
the sense named is the very heart of anything
that can be properly called religion, and as
a necessary consequence that no system of
thought can afford a basis of religion which
does not recognize the source from which man
springs, as a being that can enter into com
munion with him. This would of course ex
clude the agnostic theory of the universe from
the category of possible religious systems, since
it utterly fails to furnish this essential ground
of a religious life.
Now the thought I urge is that religion, or
the pursuit of this possible community of life
between God and the soul, is not aside from
the general revelation of himself which God is
making in the world's development, but rather
forms a part of it. The great place which
religion, even in its lower forms, holds in the
world's history is sufficient proof of this; as is
also the fact that the study of the religion of
any people is so great a help to the under
standing of their temporal conditions. In the
study of the Old and New Testaments, we are

20 A More Excellent Way
introduced, so we believe, to the knowledge of
a special work of instruction and help instituted
and carried on by God in a definite historic
period, to the end that the life of religion might
be advanced in souls. If we seek for the reason
of God's undertaking such a work in our be
half, it may be found in part in man's extreme
ignorance and distance from God (an igno
rance, if the doctrine of evolution be true,
inherent in his nature as derived from an ante
cedent animal creation, by the ordination of
God himself), which must needs be somehow
relieved before a way could be opened for him
into a knowledge of his creator.
The doctrine of a special divine revelation is
so closely connected with that of the Divine
Spirit that in order to its proper consideration
a few words at least must be said on that topic.
This doctrine stands very high, I think second
only to that of the divine unity, among the
improvements made in the Old Testament, in
the conception of God. The spirit of God, one
spirit evidently, is the agent in the world's
creation ; it is the inspirer also of the genius of
the artist,1 the wisdom of the prudent, and
especially of the prophetic gift. It is more
than this; it is the inspiring force by which
God is constantly seeking to influence unto
1 Ex. xxxv., 3^.

Communion 21
higher forms the free will and conscience in
man.1 We may conceive of this as the most
essential and certainly the most congenial part
of the work of the Divine Spirit. It is clearly
recognized in the Old-Testament records ; it is
no less undeniably present in the more general
unfolding of the world's life. When, for ex
ample, Herbert Spencer, one of many, admits
"a naturally revealed end, and that the highest
life, toward which the power manifested in
evolution works," what is it he maintains save
in a more general form the identical truth
which the Christian theist holds specifically in
his doctrine of the Holy Spirit? This peculiar
title is only bestowed on the Spirit in the
New Testament ; the word holy in the two or
three instances in which it is applied to the
Spirit in the Old Testament being used as an
appropriate adjective only. None the less is
it clear that God's special revelation of himself
was, from the beginning, the work of the Spirit
in his capacity as the Holy Spirit — that is, the
Spirit acting on souls possessed of reason and
power of choice, to bring them into commun
ion with their maker.
It is peculiarly important in our day, and will
help to the solution of many problems, if we
bear in mind the reciprocal influence naturally
1 Gen. vi., 3.

22 A More Excellent Way
exerted on each other by these two forms of
God's self-revelation — that in nature, and that
in grace. We Christians are familiar with the
effect Christianity has had on the world's great
thinkers, and full ready to claim the credit of
it. We ought equally to recognize their im
portance to us; and the essential help they
render us in the shaping of our religious thought.
The tendency of men working in a single sphere
is to narrowness, and Christianity is not an ex
ception to this. Every great reform in the
church's life has been a revolt against narrow
ness, and had its origin in the larger and freer
spirit of some great age. It was so in the
Reformation under Luther, and in the rise of
Puritanism in England. Nor can Christianity
hope, nor ought it to desire, to pass through
an age of such disclosures of his thoughts in
many fields as God is now making to men,
without being greatly influenced by it. What
we call the spirit of the age, and the Germans
by a better name, the world-spirit (Weltgeist),
full as it is, on the one side, of weakness and
error, has in it, on the other side, still more that
is from God. The bible is of great account
in shaping this other side. The world-spirit
cannot escape being influenced thus by the
gospel, however it may try. It will certainly
influence the bible truths in return. And it

Communion 23
has one advantage, in its judgments of Chris
tianity, over Christian thinkers, namely this:
that it is capable of using God's other self-
revelations with a freedom impossible to them.
Especially is it free to perceive and free to
criticise conventionalized Christian teachings,
whose force, adapted to past rather than pres
ent conditions, has become largely spent.
This also is from God, and furnishes the church
with its principal hope of an ever new and in
creasingly glorious development of its sublime
system of truths.
So much concerning the relation to each
other of the truths of God revealed in the
world's general progress, and his special revela
tion of religious truths given us in the bible.
Somewhat needs still to be said as to the form
in which the latter of these two revelations is
clothed. The bible, which we reverence as comprising
that revelation, is simply a book conveying to
us the history of this special effort of divine
grace in our behalf. It is not even so much as
a book, if by that term is meant the product of
a single impulse, or a work marked by evident
unity of purpose. The bible is a compilation
rather than a book ; it is a compilation arranged
to picture the unfolding in human history of
this endeavor of God in our behalf, so that it

24 A More Excellent Way
shall be before our eyes for us to see it in its
irregular but, on the whole, advancing pro
gress. Its purpose is to introduce us to this
course of things, and, if we are open thereto,
to make us partakers in it. I shall ask your
indulgence while I mention a few of the charac
teristic features of this history. Let us remem
ber in doing this that the interest of supreme
importance is not the book, nor the authorship
of this or that portion of it, but the progress of
the events which it portrays.
i. This book is the product of many minds.
It may be called a collection of documents
rather than a book. Some of the writers were
actors in the scenes described, many doubtless
were not. They were all so imbued with the
spirit of the events which they portray that
they make the impression on us of being in
spired for the task by the same Divine Spirit
that inspired those events.
2. Mark well that the book takes the form it
does — that of history. The makers of the bible
plainly behold a plan of God in the events they
describe, and deem it their chief business to
admit others to see the process of this unfold
ing as it was. They seem like evolutionists by
anticipation. It is as though they understood
the increased importance which will be imparted
to history when God shall at last reveal clearly

Communion 25
to man that truth. They seem to write not for
the present merely, but for the farthest times
as well. In this sense surely, if not in the
smaller one of mere textual accuracy, they were
guided by the Divine Spirit. It is doubtless in
the events themselves, as they move onward
to their appointed goal, that this divine control
is most essential, but it is an added boon to
humanity if we may believe their record also
to be inspired by the same Spirit of all grace.
3. The book is characterized throughout by
the very important fact that it appeals to man in
the totality of his powers, and not to man in the
exercise chiefly of the reason or the critical sense.
We have seen the commanding importance in
our life of faith-knowledge as compared with
science-knowledge. We many say then of the
bible that it meets our human needs for the
reason that it lies wholly in faith's realm, and
touches man in all the spheres of his being's
life. We note especially that it acts with
equal power on each of his three principal
faculties — the intellect, feeling, and will. Even
the free action of the imagination is not want
ing in the bible records. Rather in various of
its narratives, and especially some describing
supernatural events, does it seem to the critic
to be given too free a range. But if descrip
tions of miraculous events occur in the Old

26 A More Excellent Way
Testament which strain the credulity of some,
it must at least be acknowledged that this was
doubtless true to the spirit of the history it
recounts, and significant of the commanding
influence their faith had come to exert in that
day over the entire natures of those who were
actuated by it, as also of those who gave form
to its records. The miracles of the New Testa
ment, by reason of their nature, the testimony
supporting them, and their connection with a
being presenting so many claims to a partici
pation in the divine nature, stand on separate
and far higher grounds; nor is the number
small of those to whom the relation in which
the Old Testament stands to the New will be
an all-sufficient guarantee of the miraculous
element contained in it. But should the criti
cal study of the bible in the future create an
increased doubt in many minds as to the
authenticity of at least a portion of the miracu
lous events narrated in it, this much is to be
said : The bible is not less true in its animating
spirit, and it is more true to our human nature,
and better fitted to move the human mind, for
the reason that it tends to an excess rather
than a deficiency of faith in God and in his
nearness to those he loves. However our
conception may change, under God's own
teaching, as to the relative value of different

Communion 27
forms which his special work for us assumes
(and we shall come, I believe, more and more
to see its highest manifestation in the Holy
Spirit's renewing efficacy), we may rest assured
that when the issue shall at last be made clear,
our largest faith will be found not to have sur
passed but rather fallen below the true great
ness of the revelation.
4. I shall detain you with only one thought
more. This history is peculiarly characterized
by the appearance of great religious saviors,
founders, geniuses — such men as Abraham,
Moses, Samuel, and the prophets, of whom (or
should the narrative ever be proved fictitious,
of the writers who invented them) it may be
said without fear of contradiction, that they
imparted to mankind a large share of the prin
cipal religious truths, upon which faith in God
builds to-day and seems likely to build for all
coming time. The Lord Jesus was the last
in the line of these great faith builders, and
was the legitimate outcome of his predeces
sors. The history finds in him its consumma
tion; the heavenly grace ripens in him to its
perfect fruit. Should this fruit ever turn to
ashes in the hand, it is difficult, indeed, to see
what fortune of perfect good, or, to use Spen
cer's phrase, of "highest life," the future can
possibly have in store for humanity.

Ill
THE OLD-TESTAMENT IDEA OF GOD
My purpose in the present and next follow
ing chapter is to point out the principal im
provements in the idea of God given to the
world in the Old-Testament revelation. No
attempt will be made to distinguish the order
of time in which these were imparted. The
history affords no clear data to determine this ;
and the fact of the presence of these ideas in
the Jewish system as a whole will suffice for
our purpose.
i. The fundamental Old-Testament discov
ery concerning God was the fact of the divine
unity, which now first took its place in human
thought as a definite and comprehensible truth.
The reader of the Old Testament comes at
times upon apparent limitations of this truth
in the Jewish mind, which have led some to
question the purity of the doctrine as a matter
of national belief; the question, therefore, as
to what the real facts of the case were becomes
one of importance. The polytheism prevalent
28

Old-Testament Idea of God 29
in Assyria and the Canaanitish tribes surround
ing Israel included, as one of its features, a be
lief in tribal or national divinities, upon whose
favor both the individuals of each nation and
the nation as a whole were largely dependent.
The prevalence in their vicinity of this belief
proved a temptation to Israel to think of
Jehovah as their national divinity, rather than
as the maker and lord of the universe. That
this should have been true of the masses of the
people in periods of especially spiritual declen
sion is not surprising; but, on the contrary,
quite what might be expected of ordinary
human nature. Its practical effect was not
merely to degrade their own conception of
God, but what was worse, to put the heathen
gods on a level with Jehovah. This, accord
ingly, became a great sin in Israel, and fur
nished frequent occasion for the reproaches of
their prophets ; a fact which is of itself suffi
cient proof how gross a departure from the
pure faith of Israel was any questioning of the
divine unity. "Hear, O Israel, the Lord our
God is one Lord"; these words, prefacing the
ten commandments as they are given in Deu
teronomy, are the true theologie watchword of
Israel. An immanent method of conceiving God
was almost universally prevalent in the ancient

3° A More Excellent Way
world. Religion was permeated with nature
worship, grew largely out of nature worship.
The impressive sights always before their eyes
in the natural world — sun, moon, the stars,
forests, rivers, and especially the vast breadths
of sky and ocean — were to them instinct with
divinity. The same thing was true at a later
day among the Greeks, only here they assumed
higher and more cultured forms. A great
charm lies to this day upon forest and foun
tain, upon the vineyards and the crops of
ripening grain, upon the blue of the sky, and
the crested waves of the ocean, by reason of
the spirits with which the imagination of the
Greeks peopled them. When Wordsworth,
wearied with the distance at which the world
at large in his day seemed to stand from God,
exclaimed —
Great God! I 'd rather be
A pagan suckled in a creed outworn,
So might I, standing on this pleasant lea,
Have glimpses that would make me less forlorn ;
Have sight of Proteus rising from the sea;
Or hear old Triton blow his wreathed horn, —
who does not see that there was much in the
best of those old beliefs, pagan as we call them
and as they were, that could enrich the com
mon life of even the lowliest? Now it was the

Old-Testament Idea of God 31
immanent conception of God which animated
those old mythologies; and the mind of this
age is coming back to that view of God, in
hope to obtain thereby a more comforting and
true sense of his nearness. We shall, however,
mistake if in doing this we lose our hold of that
solemn and momentous fact concerning God to
which the Jew first among men rose, when he
distinctly conceived the unity of the Godhead,
and based it on the fact of the divine transcend-
ance. There is one God, in a proper sense,
apart from and over the world; for by his
antecedent thought (foreknowledge St. Paul
calls it), and his eternal purpose, were heaven
and earth and all that in them is, created. This
was the doctrine of the divine unity as it
found expression in the higher Jewish mind.
It was in reality the enthronement of an eternal
purpose over the universe. It was setting the
changeless will of God on high as the source
whence all sprang which the eye can see or im
agination conceive. It was nothing less than
the whole of things, the universe, which was
to the true Jew the subject realm of this creator
and lord. Earth and heaven went together in
his cosmology, the kingdoms of this world and
the heavenly Sabaoth.
The consequences of this improvement in
theology are visible, under a multitude of

32 A More Excellent Way
forms, on every side of us to-day. The doc
trine of the trinity has its necessary ground
of preparation in this previous discovery of
the divine unity. The fatherhood of God;
the sonship of Christ; the personality of the
Spirit ; man's own native and universal dignity
in his sonship of God ; his unimpeachable in
dividuality ; the destiny open to him, however
denied here, in the farther and greater issues of
his life; — all these great truths, lying at the
basis of the social conscience, and of all true
advance of the human race, are the outgrowth
and natural consequence of that fundamental
dogma of the Old-Testament theology, the
unity of God.1
2. In the preceding chapter I expressed in
brief my sense of the importance of the doc-
_rine of the divine spirit in the Old-Testament
theology as second only to that of the divine
unity. I shall not enter at length into that
subject here, since it will be coming constantly
before us as we proceed. It will be enough to
say here that the doctrine of the divine spirit
is complementary in the Old Testament to its
transcendental conception of God. It com
pletes that conception by providing it with the
1 For suggestive remarks upon this and kindred subjects,
see Prof. H. S. Nash, on The Genesis of the Social Conscience,
chap. iii. The Macmillan Co.

Old-Testament Idea of God 33
element in the being of God through which he
becomes an ever-present, and, as I believe, an
ever-new creative force in the world's develop
ment. We have now become familiar with the
thought of the world's creation, as a process
slowly unfolding through countless ages ; and
the story of this creative process, as it is given
in the opening chapters of Genesis, begins with
the words: "And the earth was waste and
void ; . . . and the Spirit of God moved upon
the face of the waters." This statement is
not only not out of harmony with the results of
modern science, but in a harmony with them
beyond what could be expected, if we consider
the age in which it was written. There could
be no more explicit assertion of the agency of
the Divine Spirit in the world's creation.
The thought of man's physical life naturally
goes with that of the material creation, but
the Old Testament is full of the teaching that
the spiritual life, in the broader sense of that
term, is the product also of that Spirit. Isaiah
counts as proceeding from that source — "the
spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit
of counsel and of might, the spirit of know
ledge and of the fear of the Lord."
A fact of far greater importance is that of the
peculiar function ascribed to the Divine Spirit,
by which he strives, to use the Old-Testament

34 A More Excellent Way
phrase, with the reason and conscience of
men when they appear on the stage, to lead
them to holy choices and an upward tending
life. We have seen this to be an anticipation
of the New-Testament teaching concerning
the Holy Spirit; and it may be questioned
whether one of the highest uses of the doc
trine of the divine unity be not the ground
it furnishes for a more distinct, and, as the
New Testament represents it, a personal,
agency of the Holy Spirit. The important
question whether the revelation of the truths
concerning his own being made by God to the
Jews is a special revelation, in a sense in which
his revelation of his truths in the spheres of
aesthetic and philosophic thought made to the
Greeks is not, is one which turns, in the long
run, on the doctrine of the Holy Spirit. If
there be anything in the Christian system which
commends itself as unquestionably super the
merely natural, our soberer reason will find
that also in the bestowment of the Holy Spirit
on the souls of men, for their new birth and
constant inward quickening.
3. The third improvement in the knowledge
of God furnished in the progressive unfolding
of the Old-Testament history, was that con
veyed in the name of God given to Moses from
out the burning bush.

Old-Testament Idea of God 35
The word Jehovah was rendered in the King
James version, "I am that I am." The thought
is that of the self-existence of God, carrying in
it also that of his eternal existence. It has
been believed that nothing could surpass this
in sublimity, or be more expressive of the
inmost essentialness of God's being. The
probably more exact rendering given in the
margin of the revised version, "I will be that
I will be," connotes that sublime truth, while
it expressly conveys another, of even greater
importance not only to the Jew in that far-off
age, but to mankind in every age. The differ
ence is that between the eternally existing One
and the eternally evolving One; it is that be
tween the God of changeless being and the God
of eternal, and eternally unfolding, purposes ; it
is, in a word, that between the eternal "I am"
and the eternal "Is to be." I am the Is to be,
is the interpretation he who chooses has full
right now to give to the name. Have we not
then here an even heightened sublimity, be
yond which we can imagine nothing conceivable
by the human mind? The past is all in it,
even that far-off counsel of God's love, which
led him "in the beginning" to plan a social
universe, whereby in the blessedness of all and
their common love to himself he might gratify
his holy passion of loving companionship.

36 A More Excellent Way
The great future also, as it has been, is now,
and forever will be unrolling, is all in the
name. The advent of the greater "prophet
like unto himself" to whom the people should
harken was here ; and here also was that des
tined fulness of the times, when all the ends of
the earth should see the salvation of God. We
count as a superstition the feeling among the
later Jews which regarded it as an impiety to
utter the name of Jehovah; but the feeling
that this, above all other names which human
lips can utter, was sacred, we may well believe
to have been inspired by the Spirit of all
wisdom. 4. To these natural attributes of God I shall
add one other out of the moral sphere, namely,
his righteousness.
Right in the moral world is the foundation
on which all rests. It is the pure objective to
the subjective feeling — ought. It is the where
fore of every kind of moral good. If justice is
a moral good, and obligatory upon men, it is
because it is right to be just. If love is a
moral good, and obligatory upon men, it is
because right demands that we love. Right
is the only moral imperative. It alone com
mands the conscience. It is in morals what
space is in the world of matter, the form under
which all necessarily exists. It is a form, not

Old-Testament Idea of God 37
in itself a quality, though without it there can
be no conception of moral quality.
In the Old-Testament revelation of truth,
righteousness, which simply means conformity
to right, is the characteristic word, — a fact which
brings it into harmony with the laws of the
moral universe. Right is put where it belongs,
at the foundation. Examining more closely,
we find that God himself is represented both
as subject to, and in fact controlled by, the
law of right. This is, indeed, only a natural
result of the belief in his unity. Imagine an
infinite being who is in the completest sense
one — one not merely as distinct from any other
possible being, but one within himself ; all the
powers at one among themselves ; mind in per
fect harmony with heart and will, and, what is
if possible still more important, will in perfect
harmony with mind and tastes. Consider that
among the things included in the knowledge of
such a being must be the clear vision of those
moral ideals, ideals of character and conduct,
that command the allegiance of the true-
hearted. The equilibrium of powers existing
in such a being would naturally secure his per
fect loyalty to these ideals. I say naturally,
not necessarily ; for I would not by any word
throw doubt on the complete free-will of the
author of the universe. But supposing him

38 A More Excellent Way
free, we can but suppose also that in him, the
Infinite One, unlike his finite creatures, the
absolute harmony of his powers must produce
a nature set unalterably toward the good.
This was the conception of God in his moral
nature, which obtained among the Jews, and
the wonder is that it should have been as
clearly defined and as firmly held as it was.
We have seen righteousness to be the one un
questionably characteristic word of the Old
Testament. Observe, then, that this right
eousness dwelt first in God. As the Jew
conceived of righteousness in man, it was the
reflection of the righteousness in God. Right
eousness in man, to the thinkers among the
Jews, was right as God sees right to be ; it was
man's conformity to the divine ideals of right.
If now it be asked to what extent the divine
righteousness was a truth new to the human
mind, the answer, incredible as it may at first
seem, must be that it was wholly new. An
irresistible impulse seems to have been upon
the human mind up to this time, to think of
the supernal powers as beings who were a law
unto themselves, and whose ruling principle
was license rather than right. It was, perhaps,
not unnatural that this should have been the
conception in the minds of the men of that
age, concerning beings of whom their leading

Old-Testament Idea of God 39
thought probably was, that they were free from
the limitations which so discomfited their own
lives. Such beings they instinctively conceived
of as free to do whatever they pleased; but
that among the multitude of their divinities
there should have been so few whose natural
tastes were supposed to be just and kindly,
and that if some such there were they were still
thought of as taking offence so easily and giv
ing way upon slight provocation to malignant
passions, this affords a most unhappy com
mentary upon the conditions of life prevailing
in that age, and especially upon the injustice
and cruelty which men were accustomed to
see among those holding positions of power.
Plainly, then, it was the birth of a new day in
the world's life, when it became known to a
few favored ones among men, that God was a
lover of righteousness, and himself perfectly
obedient to its laws.
But this fact standing alone would be of little
use to man. Even the necessary inference
that the perfect ideals of moral good were
known to God, even the fact that he was
actually controlled by those ideals in his
dealings with men, could do but little for them,
if it was impossible for them to discover the
divine principles of conduct, either in the pro
gressive development of the world's life as a

40 A More Excellent Way
whole, or in any clear historic series of the
divine activities. We are brought, then, here
to the supreme value of the Jewish history,
which is found in the fact that, in the series of
historic events therein recorded, we have re
vealed to us at least a beginning of truth neces
sary to be known concerning righteousness, as
it is in God and as it ought to be in man.
This is the subject now opening before us, and
of which the next chapter will treat.

IV
THE JUSTICE OF GOD
I THINK it well to observe in the opening of
this chapter, that whatever information the Old
Testament may yield us as to the nature of the
divine righteousness will be entirely unaffected
by any recent critical studies of those scrip
tures, since the evidence upon which we rely is
found in historic events which are incontestable,
and in documents which all accept.
What is it, then, which the Old Testament
through the various means which it employs
has taught us concerning the divine righteous
ness? This is the vitally important question
to which we are brought.
It is not a new answer which I am able to
make to this question ; but one as old as old
theology, so called, itself. I believe the very
heart of the discovery made in the Old Testa
ment concerning the divine righteousness to
be contained in the word justice. But if this
word has a familiar sound, and suggests at the
first thought only a very old and well-worn
41

42 A More Excellent Way
idea, let us remember that this is equally true
of the word love, which corresponds in the
New Testament to justice in the Old. Let
me further say, if either of these words, as
things now are, fails to be understood in its
indispensable importance, it is not the word
love, but rather the word justice; and if either
is waiting till it come to its proper place in the
Christian system, it is not love, but justice in
its relations to love, and especially justice as
the indispensable antecedent condition of any
love that can be relied on to meet the possible
needs of the kingdom of right. Nor are signs
wanting that in these latter days the way is
coming to be open for new light upon the
nature and claims of justice and upon its true
place in the scheme, even as it has been gener
ally conceded to be open to new light upon
the nature of love, and its supreme import
ance in the system. A candid spirit is, there
fore, asked in our examination of the place
given to justice in the Old-Testament economy,
and the nature in God and man of the justice
which it sets before us.
The Old-Testament law is commonly called
the Mosaic law from the name of the reputed
founder of the Jewish state. Our Lord him
self accepts this use, nor has criticism as yet
been able to cast any valid doubt upon its pro-

The Justice of God 43
priety. I shall adopt this usage, taking its
truth for granted. Now, as it was given to
Moses to see the righteousness of God, justice
was its central attribute. This was that form
of righteousness which revealed God most im
pressively to his spirit, and what he saw
greatest in God he gave to the people en
trusted to him — he made justice the controlling
motive in the system of law and government
which he created for them. The Old-Testa
ment scriptures glow with the solemn light of
this word and of the kindred judgment (or
judgments) of the Almighty.
Let us seek first to conceive clearly the mean
ing of this great word ; for there is a use of it
as a general term, both in common speech and
in the bible, which is scarcely distinguishable
from right itself. If we allow ourselves to be
come entangled in this meaning of the word,
we simply go around in a vicious circle. Jus
tice in this sense of it is accordance with the
principle of right, as also right is accordance
with the principle of justice. Using the word
in this general sense we accomplish nothing.
There is a narrower employment of the word
which is its distinctive and therefore its proper
meaning. Justice is the rendering towards
another that which is equal, or that which is
his due from us, or that which is conformable

44 A More Excellent Way
to his proper claims upon us. How, then,
shall we learn what the proper claims of one
being on another related being are? Let us
see what light the Old-Testament history gives
us whereby to answer this question. The
thoughtful Jew evidently carried this question
back to the proper relations between God and
his creatures, as he believed these to be illus
trated in the history of his own people. In
Jehovah's relations with the Jewish people
these claims were to his mind exactly met.
He saw in them a perfect ideal of what the law
of justice demands in the case of creatures in
normal relations with their creator and lord.
What, then, was that treatment of his people
by Jehovah, which they accepted as the ex
pression of his perfect justice? The question
is of peculiar importance. Much depends upon
it which is essential to the proper understand
ing of the Christian system in its completed
form ; nor is it possible for us to be too deliber
ate or painstaking in our answer. My own
studies have led me to this answer: The
changeless truth underlying the demand of
justice on the part of God toward his creatures
was the fact that having made them for life —
made them, that is, with powers that demand
exercise and desires that demand satisfaction,
it rested upon him as an obligation required by

The Justice of God 45
his own perfections, that he should guard their
right to lead this life. We can only think of
this as a self-evident obligation — an instinctive
feeling in the mind of God necessitated by the
perfect balance of his powers. That this is in
fact eternally true of God we have abundant
proof in an instinct which by his own ordinance
is universal among his sentient creatures. I
mean the instinctive feeling implanted in every
creature, irrational or rational, that it is his
right by the very fact of his existence, to live,
or do his best to live, his life. The slightest
consideration will show the sacredness and
necessity of this instinct ; for without it we
can conceive of no motive to activity in any
rational creature, nor can we imagine any
ground for the continued activity necessary
for existence in any creature. Even the vege
table creature is not made independent of this
law. Earth holds, indeed, a mighty mystery — its
one greatest mystery — that, namely, of the
vastly multiplied hindrances to life. There is
hope that science, which, through its theory of
evolution, is disclosing to us the law that gives
rise to these hindrances, especially in the
animal creation, may in time furnish us with
new light on the divine purpose in making the
world subject to this law. My own hope is

46 A More Excellent Way
strong that this comfort may yet be vouchsafed
to man. Meanwhile to the Jew, who had
now, as he believed, been received into the
relation of a special covenant with God, — a
covenant governed on both sides by the prin
ciples of perfect righteousness, since it was of
Jehovah's own making, — this evidence was fur
nished of God's perfect justice: that he had
removed from them the obstacles that hindered
their life. He had broken the bondage in
which they had been so long confined ; he had
set their feet in a large place. In return they
owed to Jehovah their gratitude and obedi
ence. This was in essence a matter of simple
reciprocity. God had opened to them an ex
ceeding fulness of life ; but, on the other hand,
his fulness of life depended now on their grati
tude and love. How plainly justice forbade
that by their disobedience they should put an
obstacle in the way of it ! I do not maintain
that this was formally reasoned out by the
framers of the Jewish system. None the less
does it appear to have been the philosophy
which lay at the basis of their thinking.
Doubtless the Jew would have affirmed that
God was as distinctively just toward the heathen
as toward themselves, but that their relation
to him was an abnormal one by reason of their
disobedience and wickedness; so that the

The Justice of God 47
divine justice was free to take toward them
the forms of displeasure and punishment.
Especially were there no covenant mercies to
be bestowed on them.
As regards the claims of justice In the rela
tions of men with one another, the foundation
principle on which the Jev/ built was the same
as between man and God. Every human being
is conscious that he has a right, in so far as he
does not impede the proper rights 01 others,
to live his life unhindered by the adverse acts
of his neighbor. This is a natural inherent
claim in justice of every man. But what he
may rightly claim of his neighbor, each knows
intuitively that his neighbor, the conditions
being the same, may rightly claim of him.
Hence the law of justice in human relations,
which is simply the unfolding into the variety
of its applications of the principle that no man
shall deprive another of the means properly
belonging to him of living his life. The recent
treatise of Mr. Herbert Spencer on Justice
seems to the writer to have put this subject, in
its human aspects, on the true ground; and
students of ethics may well acknowledge their
obligations to him, anticipated in part, as he
owns to having discovered later, by Kant.
Spencer's formula of justice is as follows:
"Every man is free to do that which he will,

48 A More Excellent Way
provided he infringes not the equal freedom of
any other man."1 The principle, as it has
taken form in my own mind, without con
sciousness at the time of my obligations to Mr.
Spencer, is of wider application, covering the
relations of men to God as well as to one
another (a matter of essential importance to
the theologian), and throwing a valuable light,
as I believe, on the relation in which the jus
tice at the foundation of the Old-Testament
revelation stands to the love which forms the
substance of the New.
Returning to our study of the Mosaic code,
we have the law briefly summarized in the ten
commandments. These not only express its
spirit, they expound its spirit in the several
most important duties of life. The earlier
table concerns man's obligation in justice to
God ; the latter, his obligations in justice to his
fellow-men. As to the former of these, we
need to bear in mind that the peculiar tempta
tion of the Jew was to unite the worship of
false heathen gods with that of "the ever
living and true God," or even in many cases
to forsake the worship of Jehovah for that of
these false deities. They were tempted also,
like their heathen neighbors with whom they
became allied sometimes in relations of mar-
1 Justice t D. Appleton & Co., page 46.

The Justice of God 49
riage or others of close affinity, to substitute
the worship of idols, which the eye could see
and the hands handle, for the pure service of
Jehovah. In other cases it was to use lightly
the august name of their God. And in still
others to use their time, as though he, the
giver of it, had no claims upon it. These
things, therefore, were all solemnly forbidden
in the earlier table. And, for the reason evi
dently that parents were to their children in
the place of God, it was commanded that chil
dren should pay to their parents the honor
which was their due.
And if the earlier table defined thus clearly
the claims in right of God upon his creatures,
what can be plainer than that the purpose of
the second table was to guard every man
against the danger of being robbed by his
neighbor of the things which constitute his
life? The interests singled out to be protected
are: (1) His security in the possession of life
itself. (2) The purity of his home.
(3) His property.
(4) His good name.
No man shall deprive another of any of
these, for they are the means essential to a
true life. And since unholy desires tend to

50 A More Excellent Way
lead the soul on to acts of injustice, no man
shall permit himself to covet these possessions
of his neighbor.
It was, then, justice which the Jew recog
nized as the leading demand upon him of
righteousness — justice as between man and
God, and justice as between man and his
fellow-man. Much is accounted for by this fact — much
that is fine, much that is peculiar, and much,
it must be confessed, that savors of narrowness
in the Jewish religion.
i . The negative character, so often remarked
upon, of the Jewish law is explained : how it
comes to pass that it is so largely devoted to
prohibitions. 2. How it happens that its business seems to
be chiefly with sin ; to forestall sin if possible,
to punish it when necessary.
3. How judgment — a word whose origin is
apparently in acts of justice, and especially in
the just retribution of sin — is the word more
commonly employed in the Old Testament to
express justice as between God and men.
4. And lastly, how atonement, or the recon
ciliation of the sinner with his God, and with
his neighbor, came to have so great a place in
the Jewish economy.
It is evident, concerning the Old-Testament

The Justice of God 51
system as a whole — both its doctrine and ritual,
— that it was adapted to the case of man while
still in a lower stage of spiritual development.
Its cult of justice as the supreme righteousness
in God and man — justice rather than love — is
sufficient proof of this. It is common in our
day to speak of some act, or some course of
conduct, as mere justice. The expression
marks the inferior character of justice, but in
dicates even more forcibly, if possible, its
essential importance — the fundamental moral
principle, the fundamental demand which up
right natures make upon themselves, the first
and most sacred obligation in the intercourse
of mankind, the indispensable bond of society.
What higher claim can any system of thought
possess upon the respect of men than to have
been the first to clearly establish this principle?
And let us not forget that justice — low as it
may rank among the forms of love, and dis
tinct from its other forms as we may need for
clearness' sake to hold it — is at the bottom
still of love's essence. For by its very nature
justice is plainly a form of unselfishness, and a
very pure one ; it is also an essential primary
bond of love, an indispensable condition ante
cedent to love's reign, and even capable of in
definite advancement into the realm of love, as
we shall see later. It was, therefore, on all

52 A More Excellent Way
accounts an exalted function that was ap
pointed to the Jewish people when they were
made the medium of revealing to the world
this great attribute.
We are prepared to believe beforehand that
justice, as yet but slightly tempered with the
love which it foreshadowed, must be imperfect
even as justice, and is at the best but a step
forward toward a greater fulness of life. I will
refer to but a single point of inferiority, and
one also of excellence peculiarly noticeable in
the Jewish system.
Let it be conceded, then, as regards Moses
himself, that it seems not to have been the
larger justice he was capable of receiving, but
rather in many cases bare justice in its nar
rower form of retaliation, or, as our Lord ex
pressed it, the principle of " an eye for an eye,
and a tooth for a tooth. ' ' This was especially
true in the great instance of the treatment the
Jewish deliverer, as also his disciple Joshua,
felt themselves justified in bestowing on the
nations which, on their arrival, they found in
the occupancy of Palestine. Doubtless the
ordinary law holds true of the Jews, that they
became the possessors of Palestine because
they were the superior race. It is interesting,
however, to observe the grounds on which
they justified their treatment of the preceding

The Justice of God 53
occupants of the land. These they regarded
as enemies of the true God and his people. It
was in their minds a righteous business de
stroying such nations as these if they were
contumacious ; a proper submission saved
them. Doubtless other nations urged the
same plea, but probably no others with so
absolute a sense of the justice of it. Centuries
after the work of Moses and Joshua, we find
the same spirit, unabated in its fierceness,
animating the prophet Samuel. What other
fate was in the nature of things due to the
Amalekites, hereditary and persistent enemies
of God's people, but that they should be de
stroyed? Unfaithful ones might care for the
spoils of such a people, and weaker spirits re
lent at the cruelty of slaying both "man and
woman, infant and suckling"; but it was not
for him, a prophet of the God in whom justice
was absolute, to falter a moment. What a
power in this stern spirit ! And yet a power
that was but weakness, when compared with
the spirit of the cross.
Let it stand to the credit of the Jew, the
clearness with which he recognized the fact,
that if the chosen people transgressed God's
law, they also would have to endure to the full
the penalty. It was incumbent on them to
beware; it was for them to "observe God's

54 A More Excellent Way
statutes to do them," in the familiar phrase
ology of the code, lest they also should incur
his wrath.
This was a stern view of God. Unsoftened
it would have repelled. At first it did repel.
One thing served to modify this feeling — it
was the fact that God, as revealed by Moses,
cared no less profoundly that his people should
live together in the exercise of justice than that
they should render to him what was rightly
due from them.
We have here a complete innovation in
human thought and a more marked advance
than it is easy to conceive. The feeling of
the greatness of the attribute of justice and of
its importance to any prosperous intercourse
among men must have been awakened in the
human mind long before the time of Moses.
The laws that held society together must al
ways have been based, to a considerable extent
at least, upon this principle. But hitherto, as
we have seen, justice had not held a command
ing place in men's conception of the supernal
powers. These had been regarded as beings
quick to take offence, and whose wrath might
flame out at any moment unless they were
diligently, in many cases even abjectedly, pro
pitiated. Conceive, then, what it must have
been to the Jewish people to be taught that

The Justice of God 55
God was not only just in himself, but also
in profound sympathy with that spirit among
men. Their God was, indeed, a different thing
to them from the gods of the heathen. He
was a being to be feared, but with a holy fear ;
a being to be loved and feared. The fact we
are here considering — that God was as deeply
concerned in the welfare of men as in the
accomplishment of his own welfare — this truth
set forth so strikingly in the second table of
the law — may be called the supreme discovery
of Moses in the strictly moral field. It marks
the long step in advance which it was given
him to make in the practical knowledge of
God. It is evident that in hearts controlled by
such thoughts as these was already laid a
genuine ground of communion with God. It
was indeed far from being the communion
rendered possible by the love bestowed on us
by Christ, but the divine justice as here re
vealed to the covenant people was sufficiently
on the way to love to furnish a substantial
ground of mutual sympathy and to be the
means of a very blessed community of life.
For God was now near to them, even in their
common daily concerns in covenant faithful
ness. Let his people only be true to him,
living also justly with one another, and he will

56 A More Excellent Way
be true to them. If they will be indeed his
people he will be their God. He will bless
their bread and their water, their basket and
their store. He will give them abundant har
vests and happy homes, and victory over their
enemies, and peace in their borders. Their
going out and their coming in shall be under
his protecting care.
This was the conviction of the pious Jew;
and it was the blossoming out of this assurance
in the psalms which has converted that manual
of pious feeling toward God into the Christian
world's accepted book of uplifting devotion.
There seems no reason why this should not
continue to be the case. It is at least difficult
to imagine how language shall ever be made to
assume forms of higher sublimity, or to express
a sweeter spirit of trust and praise. Nor need
this tribute of our admiration be the less
frankly paid, because when we read the impre
catory psalms we are moved to pity rather than
to admiration — pity for those whose lot was
cast so far behind the Lord Christ's golden
day. In concluding this chapter I shall note, with
out attempting to account for it, a remarkable
historic fact — that, namely, of the extraordi
nary power of endurance which the Jewish
people, alone among the nations of that age,

The Justice of God 57
proved to possess. Notwithstanding their fre
quent infidelities to their own principles ; not
withstanding their unparalleled misfortunes,
deserved by reason of their infidelities; not
withstanding their division into two kingdoms,
and the destruction of one, the more unfaithful
of these ; notwithstanding the conquest of the
other, their deportation to Babylon, and the
permanent abiding there of the greater part of
them ; notwithstanding the troubles that, at
the very first, beset the restored portion ; the
later insidious, and for that reason peculiarly
dangerous, influence of their Greek conquer
ors; the all-subduing and therefore peculiarly
heart-breaking oppression of Rome; still the
Jewish people survived, broken and peeled, it
is true, but the one people on the known earth
continuing in their laws, their institutions, and
their belief, substantially unchanged from what
they had been fourteen hundred years before.
During this long period they proved compe
tent, it is especially noticeable, to produce
great men — men possessed of the pristine vigor
of their race, men able to restore the nation
when in decay, re-establishing it in autonomy
of power and of worship. What a long list of
men, whose influence still tells on the world —
Samuel, David, Hezekiah, Josiah, Nehemiah
— that mighty spiritual host the prophets;

58 A More Excellent Way
those later saviors of the people the Mac
cabees ! And a century and a half after them,
when only a remnant seemed to remain in
whom the old spirit of the race still lived,
then at last came in God's good time (or was it
only in man's good time?) the mighty Savior,
toward whom all pointed, and in whom all was
to find its consummation.

V
THE NEW-TESTAMENT IDEA OF GOD
In passing from the Old Testament to the
New, we leave behind the realm of justice and
enter on that of love. Many and great are the
issues involved, of which the most clearly de
fined is this: we pass from the law that no
man shall put an obstacle in the way of another
man's living his life, to the higher principle that
every man, in the measure of his ability, shall
help every other to live his true life. This is
the most striking of the contrasts between the
old covenant and the new. It, however, covers
the ground very imperfectly. For the revela
tion given us in the New Testament is not
merely of love as it ought to be between man
and his fellow-man, but primarily of love as it
is in the heart of God. The New Testament
follows, in this particular, the fashion set for it
in the older dispensation ; for as there justice
was first exhibited as it is in God, so here with
love. The love set before us is the love of
God, even as it shines in the person of his Son.
59

60 A More Excellent Way
It is therefore the perfect ideal of love that is
presented to our view, and that not of love in
some single lower form, as that of benevolence,
but love in its plenitude, as it is in the being of
God. God works by processes, and it was through
the unfolding life of Christ that he revealed to
man his perfect love. This, then, is to be the
theme of our study ; but it may be a help be
fore we enter directly upon it to set before our
minds some of those leading elements in our
Lord's self-consciousness which go to prove
his fitness for such a task, and which are ex
hibited in his life too distinctly to admit of
mistake concerning them.
i. We notice first the profound conviction
which filled the soul of Christ, that he stood to
the heavenly Father in a peculiar relation, dif
ferent from that occupied by any other child
of man. He described this relation by calling
himself the "Son of God." It was not wholly
aside from Jewish usage to bestow upon per
sons of exceptional powers the title Sons of
God. It was, however, not as one among
these that our Lord thought of himself.
It was as one distinct from all others —
the Son of God. No other shared this high
relationship with him; on him alone among
men was it bestowed. Among the disciples

New-Testament Idea of God 61
of our Lord there were evidently some
whose minds were largely occupied with the
question what the philosophical ground of
such a relationship could be. These questions
resulted in the conception of that threefold
distinction in the being of the Godhead —
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit — which has since
received the name of the Trinity. The natural
ness of this threefoldness in God, and the
greater clearness of light into which the source
whence springs the universe is set by this con
ception, are themes of unusual interest. We
pass them by as not falling distinctly within
our plan — which is concerned rather with the
evidences of this higher consciousness in Christ.
These may be briefly summed up as follows :
(i) That he had lived with God in a previous
state of existence.
(2) That he had come to this earth holding
a commission from the Father; which it was
the single aim of his life to fulfil.
(3) That the Father alone knew the Son, and
that the Son alone knew or was able to reveal
to men the Father.
(4) That this power of his to reveal the
Father was sufficient for all purposes what-
ever; since the Father had complete con
fidence in the Son ; had bestowed on him all
the knowledge of truth necessary to his work ;

62 A More Excellent Way
and, in a word, had "committed all things"
into his hands.
Such were the chief among the prerogatives
with which Christ in his own mind was in
vested by the fact of being the "Son of God."
There can be little doubt in any careful student
of our Lord's life that the sense of these things
simply dwelt in him ; that this was without
effort and especially without pretension ; that
it was perfectly natural to him.
2. There dwelt in Christ another profound
conviction which, to the writer's mind, was an
even greater element of power than his con
viction that he was the Son of God. This was
the consciousness with which he was constantly
possessed of being clothed with the fulness of
the Divine Spirit. That this stands in a cer
tain consistency with the Old-Testament teach
ings concerning God is sufficiently clear; and
we may properly regard it as a link binding the
New Testament to the Old, if it is true, as re
corded by Matthew and Luke and affirmed in
the Apostles' Creed, that Jesus was conceived
by the Holy Ghost. The question has been
raised whether this article in the generally ac
cepted creed of Christendom will stand the test
of final criticism. It is true that Mark and
John make no report of the miraculous con
ception ; but then these writers are both silent

New-Testament Idea of God 63
regarding the entire circle of incidents con
nected with the birth of Christ. On the other
hand, the remarkable fitness of this doctrine to
many of the unquestioned facts of Christ's life,
is a very strong presumptive argument in its
favor. The first of these facts is that of the
descent of the Spirit of God in bodily form —
the form of a dove — upon Jesus at his baptism,
with the solemn consecrating words : ' ' This is
my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. ' '
The importance of this event cannot be said
to have been overlooked by our Lord's biog
raphers, since, it is generally acknowledged
to mark an essential stage of progress in our
Savior's life. Nevertheless we believe that
most readers, and most commentators even,
fail to recognize its extreme significance.
There is evidently a great change — a leap
rather in advance — in passing from the old to
the new dispensation. Where then do we
find the leading element in that change if not
here in the descent upon Jesus of the Holy
Spirit? In Jesus we have no longer, as was
true in the greatest of the Old-Testament char
acters, an inspired one, but we have the actual
presence of the Inspirer himself. Jesus was
not, like the older prophets of his race, one
who could at times be lifted up to receive a
great truth from God. In him the Spirit of

64 A More Excellent Way
God himself had taken up his dwelling; even
as we are told in the fourth gospel : ' ' What he
hath seen and heard, of that he beareth wit
ness. . . . For he whom God sent speaketh
the words of God ; for he giveth not the Spirit
by measure. ' ' l Whether these are the words
of John the apostle or of John the Baptist is
not made certain; but the Baptist's independ
ent testimony is not less decided: "I indeed
baptize with water unto repentance; but he
that cometh after me is mightier than I, whose
shoes I am not worthy to bear: he shall
baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire."
It is worthy of note that the descent of the
Spirit of God is presented by Matthew and
Mark in a subjective form. It is the Savior
himself the action of whose consciousness is
set before us in the scene: "And lo, the
heavens were opened unto him, and he saw
the Spirit of God descending as a dove, and
coming upon him; and lo, a voice out of the
heavens, saying, This is my beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased. ' '
Looking out over the life of Christ, as from
the point of view we are now occupying it
stretches on before us, we cannot doubt that
the consciousness of his possession of the Holy
Spirit which at this time awaked in him so dis-
1 John iii., 32, 34.

New-Testament Idea of God 65
tinctly, was never even for a moment lost.
Not an instance can be discovered during
Christ's entire ministry, when any other
thought occurred to him than that the Spirit
speaking in his words, and acting in his acts,
was the Divine Spirit. When he preached the
gospel, when he wrought his mighty works,
when he raised the dead to life, he felt it to be
the Spirit of God in him that spake, and acted,
and awaked the dead. No other explanation
is possible of the fact, that this man, in whom
of all that have lived dwelt the least of self-con
sciousness, in the feeble sense of that word, was
yet so full of the divine consciousness that he
wrought the works of God in his own name, with
out a thought of there being anything in it that
was strange. A child at his play is hardly more
simple than he was in raising the dead to life.
The question of what we are to think of the
miracles our Lord is reported to have wrought
— a question rendered more difficult in our day
by the increased sacredness which attaches to
natural law — may perhaps best be considered
here. Here at least is suggested the one con
sideration which to my own mind is of prin
cipal weight. To science unmodified — that is,
held in entire independence of all knowledge
coming by other avenues than that of the in
tellect, — any direct action whatever of the

66 A More Excellent Way
Spirit of God on souls is as much a miracle as
would be the multiplying of three loaves of
bread and a few small fishes into food enough
to satisfy the need of five thousand people.
This is conceded by strict men of science in a
variety of ways; the most familiar of which
is their disbelief in any effect whatever in the
power of prayer to change the mind of God.
Now there is a large, perhaps a growing,
number of thoughtful and sincere Christians —
and the combination of these two qualities in
one Christian is always very hopeful — who in
their secret hearts, if not openly, question the
reality of the bible miracles ; with the one ex
ception, made by most of them, of our Lord's
resurrection. Each reader knows, or ought to
know, what his own experience in this matter
has been. There is probably sufficient reason
why such should question accounts of miracles
occurring since the apostolic age (question, my
feeling is, not deny); and even regarding the
miracles recorded of Christ and the Apostles, I
can see no reason why he should not be open-
eyed to whatever evidence there may possibly
be to suggest that the imagination of the wit
nesses of the miracle, or of its later historian,
becoming servant to over-zeal, may have led
them into error. With all such, however, one
great truth, a mighty bulwark, indeed, remains

New-Testament Idea of God 67
secure — that we are certified of the presence
with us of God in a form above (super) the
merely natural; namely, that of the gracious,
personal Holy Spirit acting on our souls. But
the scientist is right. This fact in itself is
wholly above the world of mere nature; and
he who can accept it need not fear to believe
that with this power there was united in our
Lord that of working miracles; and that the
apostles when they received the gift of the
Holy Spirit may have been invested with
the same power. For my own part this is one
of the cases where I feel justified in persuading
myself to call in all my will-power, to silence
doubt's clamor, and let me rest in the assur
ance of my Lord's complete divine efficiency.
And I am the more ready to do this when I
remind myself how wonderfully at home he
was among the thoughts of God — the sphere
where our need of a supreme fulness of grace
is beyond any other of our needs. Our Lord
solemnly declared of himself that he was the
light of the world. He meant by it the light
of truth to men — a stupendous claim, and yet
justified, as it could alone be justified, by the
perfect freedom with which he moved among
the thoughts of God. We do not, indeed,
claim that this was true of all the thoughts of
God; but it was plainly true with regard to

68 A More Excellent Way
such of the thoughts of God, and all such, as
lie in the spiritual sphere.
It may be freely conceded concerning Jesus
that his interest seems to have been confined
to this sphere, and that he was satisfied to
move in this one round of the divine thoughts.
If other modes of the divine activity — such,
for example, as those opened by modern
science, and which present God in adorable
lights to the Christian of to-day — were known
to him, he gave no sign of it. It is likely that
he knew not these things, in the same way
that he knew not the day nor the hour of his
own final coming. They were of no use to
him, in so far as they failed to minister directly
to his work for human salvation. Great as
these themes are, we may believe that they
are among the things which Christ relinquished
when he left behind his glory with the Father.
But the vast realm of God's thoughts in the
spiritual world was wide open to our Lord's
mind. He had measured its heights ; he had
measured its depths ; he knew it in its length
and its breadth. He knew it well as one who
had oft trodden its paths. No question in this
realm seemed at any time to take him un
awares; the right thought was always present.
He had no need to reason out his conclusions ;
his mind wrought graciously and by intuitions ;

New-Testament Idea of God 69
it wrought in the clear comprehension of a
perfect sympathy. He appeared never to be
subject to nervousness, unlike so many of his
greatest followers, and to know no weakness ;
his step was sure. It may be also safely
claimed for him that his truths have the quality
of adapting themselves to all the unfolding
life of man, and will suffice in their proper
realm, to all the needs of man to the end of
time; that while the application of his prin
ciples will of necessity vary with the changing
conditions of human life as it unfolds, those
principles themselves remain and will remain,
sufficient and unshaken ; so that in the future, as
thus far in the past, a single question will be suf
ficient to test the moral worth of any proposed
action, or line of conduct — the question, Is it in
accordance with the teaching and spirit of Christ ?
This then is he, whose appearance at this
time among men so changed the face of the
earth. What we see, as we look out in advance
over the scene, is this being — the only begotten
Son of the eternal Father ; who had received as
his Father's gift the Spirit of God without
measure. He is therefore one whose thoughts
are God's thoughts, and his acts among us the
acts of God. Is he not also in very truth an
Incarnation of the Lord Jehovah — God in his
continual self unfolding?

VI

THE RECONCILIATION OF THE DI
VINE AND THE HUMAN CON
SCIOUSNESS IN CHRIST
In the general record of the world's history
the life of Jesus finds no place. During the
period of more than a century that life was a
hidden leaven : the world felt it, but saw it
not, and made no account of it. The gospels
tell us the story, but they are private annals,
written and preserved within the bosom of the
church itself. It is a wonder to some that this
should be so, but in the nature of things it
could hardly be otherwise. It is a sincere and
wise providence that raised up no witness from
the outside, especially prepared to write an in
dependent life of Christ. In the workings of
God in the world the natural triumphs over the
unnatural. An outside record of such a life
would be unnatural. Faith accepts its own
records; and the story of Jesus written by
humble believers and participants in his life,
70

The Divine Consciousness 71
written as it was given them to write, not only
satisfies, it creates faith.
It is less easy to understand how it came
about that so little account was made in these
inner histories of our Savior's early life. His
mother outlived him, and made her home with
that one of the apostles whose subsequent
history is best known. His brothers also (what
ever the exact relationship indicated by that
word), one of whom became an important man
among the early Christians, could have narrated
interesting things about his youth. It is in
credible that they should not have sometimes
done this, but no record of such sayings has
come down to us. Aside from the simple
remark concerning his childhood that "He in
creased in wisdom and stature, and in favor
with God and man," we have only the account
of his adventure in Jerusalem with the doctors
of the law at the age of twelve years. This in
cident presents to our view a strangely absent-
minded, and no less spiritual-minded boy; a
boy living in a world of his own, filled so early
with scripture lore and the questions spring
ing out of it, and yet a boy not necessarily
possessed of more than a merely human en
dowment, since cases of a similar precocious
thoughtfulness in children are not unknown
among men. Rather is it true that the

72 A More Excellent Way
occasional occurrence of instances like this is a
fact which experience teaches us to expect,
under the laws of our human development.
The eighteen years passed by Jesus between
his visit to Jerusalem and his manifestation to
Israel are hidden under an impenetrable veil.
Would it probably minister to anything more
than curiosity if that veil should be removed?
We may believe not. One fact only is let slip
as it were; that he was, during a part of this
time at least, a carpenter and worked at his
father's trade.
Believing, then, as we do, that Jesus is the
last in the great line of the Jewish founders
and restorers; and especially knowing, as we
do, that he is God's appointed agent to advance
the knowledge of himself among men, from
that of the God of justice to that of the God of
love ; it must needs be a question of peculiar
interest to us, of what sort his manifestations
will be, when at last the Christ is revealed to
Israel. It is this consideration which gives
their importance to those two closely connected
facts of our Lord's earliest appearance: his
coming to John to be baptized in the river
Jordan, and his forty days of temptation in the
wilderness. In his coming to John the Baptist Jesus was
one among a great multitude. It had become

The Divine Consciousness 73
a fashion in all the region about to inquire of
the new prophet. The impulse which was
moving all hearts as one was the impulse to
repentance; the desire was that which has so
often stirred the spirit of men in masses, the
desire to receive the forgiveness of sins. Every
sincere disciple of John, every sincere receiver
of his baptism came as a penitent. This is the
first noticeable thing which separates Jesus from
ordinary humanity. Jesus is in this fundamen
tal respect unlike the other seekers, that he
is one who walks apart ; wrapped in his own
thoughts, intent, as the apostle John so graph
ically and we feel sure truthfully pictures him,
on problems peculiar to himself. When he pre
sents himself to the Baptist, even the Baptist is
seized with diffidence. A feeling of awe comes
over him. He exclaims: "I have need to be
baptized of thee, and comest thou to me?"
The young man does not reject this homage.
He concedes his desert of it rather in the
strange reply : ' ' Suffer it now, for so it becomes
us to fulfil all righteousness." Here is no
thought of penitence, no slightest trace of any
consciousness of sin ; and yet he is one, as we
learn later, of all men most sensitive to the evil
and guilt of sin. Here then already in Jesus,
in a way the more impressive because uncon
scious, is presented a claim impossible for

74 A More Excellent Way
ordinary humanity to make — the claim of
sinlessness. What does it mean that Jesus still consents
to be baptized by John ; nay counts it a matter
of righteousness to be partaker — he the sinless
one with the sinful — in the baptism of repent
ance? This is an important question. It has
received various answers. The mere facts
furnish no solution. They do suggest, and
the light thrown on them by the later history
strengthens the suggestion, that what may be
called a divine consciousness in Jesus — that is
a sense of God's very peculiar relation to
him and presence with him — was awaking to
clearness now in his mind, and contending
with his human consciousness, his perfect
sense of union with humanity. Suppose
these two things to have indeed coexisted
in this man. Suppose him, man as he knew
himself to be, to have been filled with a sense
of a mysterious union between himself and
God; and that this feeling had come to be
more to him that all else in life together — how
separate must he then have seemed to himself
from the multitude about him, common people,
sinners moved just now by the felt need of for
giveness, to fall to-morrow again, not unlikely,
into sin. We can easily imagine that it might
be the last thought of such a being as this to

The Divine Consciousness 75
join the throng in their headlong rush to be
cleansed by the Baptist.
But suppose there was existing in him also
profoundly, the feeling of our common human
ity; of its possible dignity, but its actual de
basement in the mass of men. Suppose also
that together with this not uncommon feeling
there was the presence of a sympathy with
men, in both their possible elevation and actual
debasement, such as had not lived in any
human soul before ; such as could be born only
in a spirit in truest union with the Father of
all ; how then might he have felt impelled to
own this kinship, and as one to whom their
guilt was as his own, to come with them to be
baptized in the waters of repentance ! Could he
doubt, moreover, that he was doing God's will
in this? Not that he could submit to the bap
tism of repentance as a sinner needing pardon ;
but that he could gladly submit to it as one of
a race whose sins he, in a sense, imputed to him
self — that is, counted as his own by reason of the
perfection of his sympathy — and whose media
tor with God he began to perceive that he was
divinely commissioned to be. This must surely
have been the righteousness which he felt called
upon to fulfil, and which the descent of the
dove, emblematic of the Holy Spirit; and the
voice, "Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I

76 A More Excellent Way
am well pleased, ' ' now first heard from heaven,
sealed with the divine approval.
The scene that followed next in Jesus' life
was the temptation. The main facts are these.
After his baptism Jesus withdrew from the
haunts of men in order to spend a period of
time in meditation. What the precise ques
tions he was revolving were, we are not told ;
nor what the process of his thoughts ; nor, in
any logical form, what the conclusions at which
he arrived. It is made clear that the time
was one of a profound testing of his spirit.
The word translated temptation conveys this
thought expressly. We miss the significance
of this passage in Christ's life, if we do not
bear in mind the fact that it was, in a double
sense, the testing of his spirit. It was adapted
in the first place to disclose his quality and
fitness for the strain which was to come upon
him. More especially was it fitted to illumine,
direct, and establish his spirit in the conflict of
feeling which was then occupying him. His
thoughts were evidently in the realm of intui
tion; they were communings with his own
spirit, and the Spirit of God which had been
given him ; they were the openings of his soul
to the movings of the Divine Spirit ; they bear
clear marks that the process in his mind was

The Divine Consciousness 77
that of the reconciliation of the divine with the
human consciousness in him.
It seems to have been the case that from the
first he had felt a peculiar relationship with
God. The early process of the development
of this feeling is concealed from us, save as we
have a glimpse of it in the scene in the temple.
But we perceive plainly now that it is awaken
ing into the sense of a most near and complete
union with God ; a relationship whose nature
he unfolded more fully later, when he spoke of
himself as the Son of the Father. The presence
of this divine consciousness in the temptation
is seen in the assurance which he evidently felt,
that the awful prerogative was bestowed on
him of calling in the power of God to his aid.
But the nearness of God is still more apparent
in his so strenuous effort, in the use of that
prerogative, to rise above all merely human
promptings, and perfectly to think the thoughts
of God. This was that testing of his spirit (or
temptation) into which the onward moving of
his life had now brought him.
It was in the purpose of God; it was also in
the nature of things; that the prince of the
powers of evil should be present, in this solemn
crisis, to reinforce with his suggestions the
promptings of the human nature in Jesus.
It was not given our Lord to escape this

78 A More Excellent Way
universal human experience. We need not
necessarily suppose that the tempter appeared
in any material form ; that is not his custom :
the spirit of evil spoke to the spirit in Jesus.
His first appeal was to the sense of bodily
desire ; the imperious desire for food in one who
had been long fasting. The thought suggested
to the mind of Jesus was that it was possible
for him to convert the very stones into bread
to satisfy his hunger. The question was
whether he might properly use the power be
stowed on him for his own personal relief,
when convenient ; thus making him independ
ent of the ordinary conditions of humanity.
He recognized the thought as a suggestion of
the devil, and rejected it.
The second temptation was more subtle and
appealed to a much stronger passion. Satan
said in effect : ' ' Take your place on the pinnacle
of the temple that overhangs the Kedron val
ley ; thence throw yourself down in the sight
of men, and let all know that God's angels are
at your service to uphold you." Consider the
wonder and glory of such an act ; the feeling
of security it would give him against the con
tingencies of the future; the power over men's
minds with which it would clothe him ! This
temptation also he perceived to be of Satan,
and rejected it.

The Divine Consciousness 79
And now it is as if the tempter will stake all
on a single cast. From the mountain's sum
mit to which the wanderings of Jesus, under
the guidance of the Spirit, had led him ; it was
as though all the kingdoms of the world were
spread out before him. Here the devil whis
pered to his heart : ' ' Use wisely the divine
power with which you are clothed, and these
all shall be yours." This too he clearly saw to
be a suggestion of the evil one, an invitation to
worship him instead of his eternal Father in
heaven, and repelled it. If we bring into one
view these three temptations, they represent
to us the mind of Jesus as employed mainly
upon one question, which the hour forced on
him, and on which, as we now clearly see, the
nature of his mission depended — whether he
should use the method of power, or that of re
nunciation ; whether he should assert his divine
prerogative, or live in all simplicity the life of
a brother man among men. We cannot doubt
that in this conflict of thought in Jesus, it was
the divine consciousness in him that prevailed.
It is the mind of God that we have set before
us in the decision of Jesus. The humility that
animates it is the humility of God.
If these views are correct, they disclose a mis
take often made in the study of the opening

80 A More Excellent Way
scenes of Christ's public life; in the failure
to understand the extent to which this was
still to him a formative period. The old con
ception concerning Christ was, that from the
beginning the fulness of the divine power was
in him. The prevailing thought has been that
expressed by Milton, in his Christmas ode,
concerning his mastery over the manifold de
monic powers :
Our babe to show his Godhead true,
Can in his swaddling clothes control the damned
crew.
According to this view neither the baptism
nor the temptation had any important part in
the subjective life of Jesus. They had little
to do with any process of development taking
place in his spirit. They were rather of the
nature of contrivances, divinely framed to
accomplish certain desirable purposes. The
baptism was of the nature of an inauguration
into office, with a divine certificate of the
legitimacy of his kingship. The temptation
was largely for scenic effect; to exhibit the
hostility, from the beginning, of the prince of
the kingdom of evil to Christ's work; as also
to teach Christians of all time, by their Lord's
own example, how to triumph over similar as
saults of Satan. The thought that there could

The Divine Consciousness 81
have been any questioning in the clear soul of
Jesus as to what form his mission should
assume, or any conflict arising between the
human and the divine consciousness in him
which might need reconciliation, seems not to
arise in such minds.
And yet plainly reasons might have occurred
to this son of man, to whom had come a new
and strange sense of the power of God resid
ing in him, why his proper work might lie in
the full display and use of this power; why
this rather than a process of self-humbling
might perhaps be the true significance of
God's impartation to him of himself.
What thought, indeed, could be more natural
at least to the human consciousness in Jesus?
Power is the attribute which we most readily
associate with God. The Jewish mind was
especially prone to this. The national repre
sentations of God were full of it. The pictures
of the Messiah abounded in it. The time also
and the conditions of the national life might
seem especially favorable to an exertion of
power. The nation which forty years later,
under the leadership of the Zealots, and after
the loss of a large proportion of its wisest
and best men, defended their revolt from Rome
with such skill and determined valor that
nothing short of the whole power of the
6

82 A More Excellent Way
Roman empire was able to overcome it ; what
might hot that people have accomplished
had Jesus set up to be a conquering Mes
siah ; supported by wisdom given him from
God, and by the divine energies which he
was conscious of possessing? Must we not,
indeed, confess that in the light of ordinary
human reason, taking all the facts into view,
the arguments were strong in behalf of the
method of power as against the method of
self-sacrifice? Were men rebels against God?
What kinder treatment of rebellion than to
crush it down with a strong hand : to begin
with creating an enforced submission; which
in time, under the influence of a just and bene
ficent government, might be converted into a
willing obedience? Was there anything mani
festly unworthy of regard in this solution of
the great problem of man's recovery? If in
our time the personal coming of the Son of
God, in the splendor of the divine power,
seems to many the only means to reclaim the
world ; can we say that in that day this was a
method for which a holy mind could find no
arguments, and the very thought of which
could be only the suggestion of the devil?
This was so far from being true that we shall
find repeated instances in the after-life of
Jesus, in which he seems to be moved with a

The Divine Consciousness 83
profound sadness that it was not possible for
him, even then, to adopt the milder ministry
of power, rather than that of suffering to
which he felt himself constrained.
It is evident that in the reconciliation thus
effected between the divine and human con
sciousness in Christ, it was the divine and not
the human that prevailed. The ultimate con
sequence involved was the form which the love
of God, as revealed in the Christ-life, should
assume. The form adopted was that of sym
pathy with men; and especially sympathy in
the many and various needs with which human
lives are so filled. Who can doubt that this
was, indeed, a victory of the divine part in
Jesus? What else was it than the spirit of God
now given Jesus without measure that led that
aspiring heart to regard the vision of power
when it arose so fair before him, as the sugges
tion of the spirit of evil, and that turned his
willing thoughts rather to a pathway of lowly
sympathy with his unhappy brothers, ending
in a suffering death in their behalf? Can we
account for this in any other way as well as by
believing that in this Jesus — Son of God, and
Son of Man — the divine consciousness took
now the supreme control ; with the result that
the very heart of love in God found in his life
among men its complete expression?

VII
THE LOVE OF GOD
We have studied the mental process through
which Jesus, at the age of thirty, was ap
pointed to pass preparatory to entering on his
ministry. The result of this experience we
have seen to be that the divine part acquired
control in him, the human part being brought
over to a perfect sympathy with the divine
both in feeling and in purpose. Henceforth
our Lord was clear regarding the nature of the
work given him to do, and the manner of doing
it. He was to make God's love as it was
known to men. He was to do this by the
method of a simple community of life with
them, a divine sympathy with them in life's
experiences. What we see in the brief years
which follow is the carrying out of this process.
The beauty and wonder of it — divinely aimed,
as it was, to produce a complete communion
of life between us and our Father — these form
the subject of our further studies.
I shall first connect the ministry of Christ
84

The Love of God 85
with the work accomplished in preparation for
it in the Old-Testament period, by showing
the warmth of feeling for justice which Jesus
displayed in that intercourse with men upon
which he at once entered, and the character
which this imparted to his love.
Our Lord, while he was the pure medium of
heaven's love, announced himself as the ap
pointed judge of all mankind. A judge with
an imperfect sense of justice would be to our
mortal eyes an anomaly indeed. A judge im
bued with a profound sense of justice and yet
well proven as perfect also in his love, is fitted
beyond any other conceivable object to excite
in us both love and reverence. It is then with
a peculiar satisfaction that we mark the strength
of the feeling of justice in our Lord. He did,
indeed, build upon this solid foundation laid
for him in the older dispensation.
1. One of the earliest proofs of this to meet
us, and conspicuous to the very last days of his
life among men, was his treatment of the Phari
sees. If anything to be found in Christ is
difficult to reconcile with the supremacy of
love in him, it is, in the view of many, his
severe treatment of the Pharisees. What then
was the ground of his feeling toward them? It
was their habitual and wicked violation of their
own law, in its clear and oft-reiterated prevailing

86 A More Excellent Way
spirit, which was justice. Our Lord did not
judge the Pharisees by his law, but by their
own. He said of them: "They bind heavy
burdens and grievous to be borne, and lay
them on men's shoulders, but they themselves
will not move them by their finger." It was
the injustice of it that so deeply offended Jesus.
These men, distinguished by their superior op
portunities, and assuming to be the guides of
the people in religious things, selfishly by their
teachings barred the way of the mass of men to
God, while opening wide the door to them
selves. 2. If a sense of justice animated Christ's
treatment of the Pharisees, no less was it the
spring of much in his conduct toward the poor,
and even toward many of the morally degraded
ones who so abounded in Palestine at that day.
He loved these unfortunates very tenderly.
He rejoiced with a peculiar joy to win them
to him, and when he had done this called them
by an endeared name — his "little ones." He
loved them the more because they were unfor
tunates — the multitudes whose chance was
poor; the sick who had no physician. It was
the feeling of justice in our Lord that was so
deeply touched at sight of these. When so
many of the wise and favored ones were throw
ing their chances away, should these great

The Love of God 87
swarming multitudes about him, and the
greater multitudes in lands beyond, have no
chance? The sense of justice in Christ swelled
out in a mighty love filling his heart when he
thought of these.
3. One other instance let me give of the
sway of justice over the mind of Christ. I
refer to the discriminations which he was in
the habit of making, in connection with his
invitations, concerning the grounds of the final
condemnation of those who should reject his
offers ; as also of the acceptance or rejection in
the last judgment of those who should make
profession of discipleship. Concerning those
rejecting him he said: "This is the condemna
tion that light is come into the world, and men
loved darkness rather than light because their
deeds were evil." These are very characteris
tic words. Christ deeply felt the sin of men in
rejecting him. He declared that this would be
the ground of their condemnation, when they
were brought before his bar. But he was at
pains to have it clearly understood that this
act became decisive of judgment against
them only as it grew out of the sinful lusts
which they permitted to determine their
choice. Equally clear did our Lord make it, when
seeking to win disciples, that no merely out-

88 A More Excellent Way
ward recognition of himself would avail to pass
the final judgment. No words have been ever
spoken that stand out in a more awful light of
justice than that solemn admonition addressed
to men who were eagerly, but carelessly, mak
ing their professions of service: "And then
will I say unto them, I never knew you, depart
from me ye that work iniquity." Let us sum
up in a word our thoughts upon this subject.
Prince though he was of the kingdom of love,
there was no softness in Jesus as contrary to
the claims of justice. In him justice held the
first place, as it does in the heart of God, as
it must in all rightly constituted human be
ings. The Savior's love was fast fibred in this
eternal rock. And yet justice itself was the
occasion that Christ's feeling was wonderfully
softened toward many whom ordinary mortals
regarded with scant favor. Many a lesson he
taught humanity by his treatment of these
unfortunates, bond servants though they often
were of Satan. Many a false human judgment
was thus reversed by him, out of the simpler
and purer love of justice in his heart.
But if it is needful for us to understand the
great importance of justice to Christ, it is even
more needful, for it touches more nearly the
especial object of his mission to our earth, that
we see how foreign to his whole nature mere

The Love of God 89
justice was. He made this fact as clear from
the beginning as words could make it.
The most signal of all the proofs of this is
our Lord's doctrine of the treatment of enemies.
In contrast with the Jewish law, and in direct
contradiction with the prevailing national feel
ing growing out of that law, Jesus taught his
followers to exercise toward their enemies that
love which in his perfect sympathy with God
he saw to be the law governing the divine
activity. This our Lord informs us is the true
perfection; and it is this which he lays upon
us in the command: "Ye therefore shall be
perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect."
He had been treating of God's love even to the
unjust; his conclusion is, let your perfection be
like unto his.
In one peculiarly delightful teaching of Jesus,
the parable of the prodigal son, he sets God
before us expressly in the love he feels toward
his children who have wandered away into dis
obedience. The great Father is represented
here as desiring above all things for his erring
children that they return repentant to him,
and as welcoming them when they do come
with all the rejoicings of heaven. The family
itself is made, indeed, by Christ the type of
the heavenly kingdom — the kingdom of eter
nal love. And here we can but admire the

90 A More Excellent Way
preparation made in Judaism for the work of
Christ by the sacred importance with which it
invested the family. In this narrower sphere
the Jews had already learned much that could
be turned over to the service of heavenly love ;
nor was it a difficult thing for the true-hearted
among them to transfer their affection from
the earthly home to that more blessed house
hold of faith of which Christ was the ever-
living head. The most delightful feature of a
true home is its pure companionship— a fact
unhappily in too many cases overlooked. It
is an especially serious thing to fail to appre
hend this as true concerning the heavenly
home. There we may, indeed, look to see
fulfilled this sweetest possible form of fellow
ship. When Professor Clifford, compelled by
the requirements of the atheistic philosophy he
had embraced, exclaimed, ' ' The great compan
ion is dead," he spoke out of the consciousness
of a truth so high and pure that the faithful
witness of his own heart ought to have forbid
den his ever abandoning it.
We need to bear distinctly in mind in all the
discussion of this subject, that love can have
no claim upon obedience, any more than justice
can, save as it is the demand of the divine
righteousness. There can be but one basis of
obligation, and that is right. Our Lord made

The Love of God 91
as much of the word righteousness as Moses
did. He fully accepted it. Justice was rooted
in right, and was loved by Jesus for this reason.
The same thing was equally true of love. To
have understood and accepted one of these
forms of right was to be prepared to receive
the other. Well might the great teacher desire
to see in his disciples a righteousness that
should exceed the righteousness of the Scribes
and Pharisees ; the very hope of humanity lay,
to his mind, in this.
The fact that love is a form of righteousness
and invested to the full with the obligation of
right, teaches us important truths concerning
God's love to us in Christ. It teaches us this
especially ; that behind the love which led God
to send his Son to be our Savior, must have
been the obligation of right requiring love to
fulfil its sacred office. We cannot "find out
the Almighty to perfection, ' ' nor do we assume
to judge his acts, but we are compelled by
what we know of his character to believe that
he feels himself under the obligation of love to
the sinful children of our race. Our hearts tell
us that he has made them for a life with him.
If so he surely cannot suffer that they fall short
of a real and full chance to live that life. He
is their Father and cannot cut them wholly
off because they have become involved in

92 A More Excellent Way
ignorance, and are led captive by the powers
of evil. Rather will his perfect righteousness
oblige him to seek these lost ones — lost from
their natural home, their Father's house —
and win them back if possible. Only when
all means to this have failed can we believe
that love's obligation, or the obligation even
of justice in the larger meaning of that word,
ceases. My words will be resented by those whose
doctrine of God is, that his love to sinners,
and even to sinners who through repentance
have become obedient and loving children, is
not at all of obligation, but wholly of grace.
It is, indeed, of grace; but we greatly need,
when we use that word, to take account of
what it means. Grace is essentially a word of
magnitude ; they mistake who conceive it to be
chiefly a word of quality. Grace is the favor
of God (and to that extent we do, indeed,
recognize it as a word of quality), considered
in the boundlessness of its extent ; flowing out
absolutely free from all limitation of whatever
sort. It can no more be measured than can
the ether. It pervades the universe. It is so
large and full that sin and ingratitude are not
obstacles to it, if by overflowing them it can
sweep them away. It is so plenteous and free
that it assumes by its own potency every finer

The Love of God 93
form, every rarer form, of delicacy or beauty
possible for love to take. Man has no stand
ards by which the grace of God can be meas
ured ; and least of all any standards of personal
desert. Does a true heart, when its blessings
overflow, cry out: "I am properly paid now
for my service of love "? It cries out rather:
"Blessed is my lot, that God, the Infinite, is
love; and that on me, since I am his child,
the infinity of his love is poured out." The
Christian, then, does not feel God's goodness
to him to be a matter of obligation, but wholly
of grace; and he rejoices with all saints and
the angels of heaven that it is.
But who can think otherwise than that God's
sense of obligation to himself requires of him
this grace? If he be a moral being he must
have his own feeling of what things are right
for him to do ; if he be a righteous being he
must have the feeling of the obligations of his
righteousness. We cannot conceive otherwise
than this. And this feeling of the obligation
of his righteousness is in God the feeling of
what he owes to his own perfections — his obli
gation to himself to be God. We reach here
the highest of all thoughts in the moral sphere
possible to any mind ; we reach the utmost
possible of moral sublimity. This much, then,
concerning the righteousness of God in its

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highest form as revealed to us by Jesus, that
of love. This much concerning the place which
the law of love holds in God's government of
his universe.

VIII
MAN'S ONLY PERFECT RIGHTEOUS
NESS IS LOVE
AMONG the sayings of Christ was this: "Ye
therefore shall be perfect, as your heavenly
Father is perfect." Not as perfect as God,
but perfect in the way God is. The object
sought in this chapter is to show what forms
love must take in man, to become the fulfil
ment of this command.
The question divides itself into two : what
men owe to God himself in return for his per
fect love to them, and what they owe to one
another in the various relations of life.
i. It is evident that the immeasurable love
of God, if it were strictly repaid by the rule of
justice, would require in man also an immeasur
able love — a thing impossible to him, since he
is finite and incapable of rendering such a love.
One consequence of this is that the old idea of
obligation to God as a thing to be measured
and disposed of in terms of obedience and dis
obedience, and their exact appropriate rewards,
95

96 A More Excellent Way
disappears now altogether. It may be added
that with it disappear also the forms of a chiefly
legal obedience, and that purely mundane char
acter of the divine rewards and punishments
which prevailed among the Jews. With the
passing of this idea there arose also a new con
ception of what it is to live our life in this
world. As Christ saw the good of life, it con
sisted no longer chiefly, as it did among the
Jews, in the enjoyment of earthly blessings
through the favor of Jehovah; it was the
enjoyment of God himself; it was the being
admitted to a life of full and all blessed com
munion with him.
This was, as Christ clearly conceived it, a
mutual relation — wherein, in the nature of
things, alone a true communion can exist. It
was our having, as God's children, a heavenly
Father; it was his being blessed, as a Father,
with happy and loving children. This mutual
and mutually blessed relation Christ clearly
saw to be God's end in the creation of the
human race. His great peculiarity as a thinker,
the one principal addition which he made to
human knowledge, lay in his clear comprehen
sion of that truth. His consummate mission
to our race was in the fact that he came to
secure the accomplishment of that end.
Men often find a difficulty in conceiving with

Perfect Righteousness is Love 97
exactness the nature of God's love to them.
Is it chiefly benevolence, or the love of the
happiness of others? Is it benevolence taking
on the forms that adapt it especially to the
case of the unfortunate and sinful — pity for
their sufferings, mercy for their offences? Does
it reach in the case of some to the height of
complacency; that is to a pleasurable feeling
toward them, and the enjoyment of their traits ;
and is this what the great Father seeks ulti
mately to secure in the case of all? Now
there is plainly a love possible to God, different
from all of these ; and which I may venture to
call the love of mutuality — by which is meant
the participation which it is given souls to have
with one another in the satisfaction of a mutual
sympathy, a life in common. We are taught
by Christ that it is our heavenly Father's long
ing, as regards his children of our race, to live
with us in such a fellowship of love as this;
and that he gave his eternal Son to the end of
bringing such a love to pass between us and
him. If this be so then plainly our main duty
is to open our hearts freely to God, and, as we
are his children, to be true children; letting
our heavenly Father into our lives in a sincerely
filial spirit ; entering gladly also into sympathy
with him in his thoughts and feelings, in so far
as his grace permits us to do so. Our Lord him-

98 A More Excellent Way
self said : ' ' No longer do I call you servants ; for
the servant knoweth not what his Lord doeth ;
but I have called you friends; for all things
that I heard from the Father I have made
known to you." So freely does God open his
heart to us ; so high is it given us to aspire !
It seems, indeed, to be true, that so far as our
heavenly Father's part is concerned, the love
of mutuality is complete between him and us.
This is the case both as regards his readiness
on the one hand to enter into our lives; shar
ing with us our happiness and possibilities of
happiness ; our woes and potentialities of still
profounder woe ; and on the other as regards
his openness to receive us into his life ; and to
make us partakers in the things that constitute
its perfect blessedness.
How changed a thing the Christian life of
most of us would be, if the possibilities of this
high communion between the great Father and
ourselves, on both its sides, were made in some
good measure real in our experience! How
many of us are there who let God into our
lives, in that fulness of sympathy with us in
everything, which he is so ready to give — busi
ness, successes, mistakes, life sorrows, life en
joyments? And still more how many of us
who enter into such a sympathy with his
thoughts in everything — his material world;

Perfect Righteousness is Love 99
his children living on it ; his high and wonder
ful plans for ourselves ; his plans for our friends,
neighbors, country, the world, the world to
come, the worlds to come ; the lengths, heights,
depths of love in his heart ; the all in all in him
— which it is permitted us even here at least to
begin to enjoy?
2. It still remains to ask what it is that
righteousness requires of us in our treatment
of our neighbor under the law of love. It is
evident, as we have seen, that love differs es
sentially from justice, in that it not only avoids
injuring our neighbor's welfare, but enters into
his life as a positive force to help it on. It fol
lows that the welfare of others becomes, under
the rule of love, a personal interest of our own ;
it takes rank side by side with our own, as
being of equal value. We need especially to
remark that the parallel, strictly speaking, is
not here between persons, and the relative im
portance to us of our neighbor and ourselves ;
it is between two emotions of love in our hearts
— our love to ourselves and our love to our
neighbor. The claim is that these two affec
tions should be equal in us; and equally a
source of happiness. The command that we
love our neighbor as ourselves does not in any
way depreciate the love we bear ourselves;

ioo A More Excellent Way
but rather recognizes the exceedingly weighty
character of that love. The very point and
force of the command turn upon this fact.
Our love to ourselves is the standard. Not
less than this, but its equal, its counterpart,
shall be our love to our neighbor. The ques
tion of the possibility of our really loving our
neighbor as ourselves may still be with many
a difficult one. The writer has found it to be
such with some very sensible and right-minded
people. The question is essentially one of mo
tive, and we have seen that only some feeling
can in the nature of things be a motive. I
believe it to be in the power of a human will,
acting under the stimulus of very high, or, on
the other hand, of very base feelings, to re
inforce those feelings; imparting to them as
motives a weight beyond their unassisted value.
I believe that a man may pass, through his will
force, beyond his merely natural self in such a
case, and that the spirit of all good (as also
probably the spirit of all evil) is ready at hand
to help him. Whichever spirit he gives him
self over to, of that spirit he will have the help.
Thus it happens that in a multitude of men
who have become deeply imbued with the spirit
of Christ, the generous part in them, the part
that prefers the happiness of others, when the
choice is between that and their own, becomes

Perfect Righteousness is Love 101
predominant ; and the command to love their
neighbor as themselves, so far from being a
great stretch of virtue, proves to have become
in them an habitual law of action ; a thing of
course. Even in such this rule will necessarily hold
in a difference of working and a difference of
degree. Should it be true of our neighbor, for
instance, that by reason of his traits of charac
ter, or habits of life, we find him personally
uncongenial; his happiness is still an object
which may have the utmost value to us. If
his lot is hard, with many obstacles in the way
of his good fortune, this may make that inter
est an object of still greater desire to us. If
his character is bad, his happiness of an inferior
sort, and the prospect of his future a dark one;
to redeem it from its wretchedness, and set it
beside our own in fellowship with the things of
heaven and God, may be one of the highest
joys which even a spirit of heaven could taste.
If already heavenly love and pure tastes fill this
heart, then the joy to be had in becoming a
partaker in its life may be of the nature of the
highest blessedness known to God, or in his
power to provide for his creatures.
We see, then, clearly the wide scope of the
doctrine of love as Christ conceived it and
taught it, and especially as he lived it out

102 A More Excellent Way
among men. This doctrine is very closely
connected with our Lord's teaching of what it
is to live our own life, and a true child of the
kingdom cannot separate the one from the
other. Many attempts are made in our day to con
trive some method of men's living together
with an equal regard for each other's interests,
independently of Christ's philosophical basis of
such a life. The altruistic idea — that is, the
idea of holding the welfare of others as equal
to our own — is taken up and exploited before
us, by various sorts of people, after every pos
sible fashion. But, so long as the conception
of the best good for man is unlimited bread
and butter, together with the greatest possible
amount of leisure to enjoy these; or supposing
tastes to have become more elevated, pictures
and equipage and travel and culture, with the
altruistic spirit so developed that by general
consent all shall be made to share in these — so
long as the true life of man is held to be chiefly
such as this, the altruistic theory is likely to
meet with insuperable obstacles to its execu
tion. For the possible supply of these out
ward gifts of life is limited, and especially if it
be supposed that leisure to enjoy them, and
therefore the minimum of labor to create them,

Perfect Righteousness is Love 103
is essential to the proper working of the
scheme. But the desire of these things has proved
itself a thousand times, and is in the very
nature of things, unlimited. The possession
of these things, therefore, by one clashes with
the desire of them in another. The infinite in
man is against the success of such a scheme — ¦
that infinite in man which will never be satisfied
with any limited supply of good.
The philosophy of Christ escapes this dan
ger. God's thoughts are infinite; his spiritual
supplies are infinite in extent and free to all.
It is, therefore, when we attain to these larger
satisfactions, and taste their fulness of life, that
all comes into harmony. There is abundance
here to satisfy all. Each may take freely,
and find life in plenty. And each in so doing
helps and in no wise hinders every other ; for
each becomes thereby a new and separate
source of supply at which the passer-by may
replenish his store.
It is still true, and should be taken distinctly
into account, that as humanity advances on
its upward pathway the possession of a fair
amount of the things of the lower earthly life
seems increasingly necessary to high attain
ments in the spiritual life. Excessive poverty
is practically as great a hindrance as even

104 A More Excellent Way
excessive wealth to such attainments. Nor
does any way appear by which love acting alone
can make good this disparity. For it is the
apparently inevitable tendency of love acting
alone in such a case to become the love of
benevolence merely; but experience shows
that mere benevolence, or desire of the happi
ness of others, though acting sincerely, may,
in the bestowment of its bounties, create evils
that largely counterbalance the indisputable
good, which often, as things now are, can be
accomplished in no other way. Among these
evils one is that of arousing in independent
minds a feeling of rebellion against the hard
necessity which compels them to accept so dis
tasteful a means of supporting life. The ap
parent want of gratitude in such cases may
easily excite a feeling of repulsion in the giver,
and of contempt for such a seeming poverty of
good in human nature. If, on the other hand,
the recipient yields himself too easily to receive
proffered aid, his want of independence not
only becomes a reproach, but is likely to grow
into a most harmful lack of energy, and shame
ful subservience to others for the procurement
of the goods of life. Of the two the latter is
by far the greater evil and sufficient of itself to
stamp with condemnation the kindness that
produces such fruit.

Perfect Righteousness is Love 105
These evils are greatly lessened when the
love employed rises from this lower grade to
love's highest level of all, that of mutuality.
Whoever helps his needy neighbor, taking for
his own whatever good there be in the neigh
bor, and making him free partaker also in what
ever is best in himself, will submit to any
sacrifice, that even of putting constraint upon
his own natural kindliness, to guard against
his neighbor's being injured by his kindness.
The care, therefore, enjoined on us by ad
vanced thinkers to guard against pauperiz
ing the very poor by the help we give them,
is right and proper, and brings us into the
likeness of Christ, provided we guard this
care itself, that it become not tainted with
indifference. But the best virtue of all in this higher love
is that it tends to lift justice itself out of the
narrowness that characterizes its earlier mani
festations into the larger thing which in its
nature it is intended and fitted to become.
We have seen the unselfishness which animates
justice even in those earlier forms. This makes
it, by a force inherent in it, love's ally. But
love is also naturally the ally of justice, and
the field of what is identical in the action of
the two tends constantly to enlargement. The
history of the advancement in the past of

106 A More Excellent Way
men's life together, is sufficient proof of this.
The most signal of all proofs of genuineness in
any civilization is its power to convert what
were once (when they existed at all) conces
sions of love into unquestioned rights in justice
itself. The abolition of servitude, the emanci
pation of woman, the right to govern them
selves of all peoples who are capable of it, the
right of all peoples to treatment by those who
rule over them suited to render them capable
of self-government as soon as possible — these,
with a multitude of other enrichments of
humanity's life already in great measure
secured, are rights held in pure justice. They
are, in other words, true human rights; not
concessions merely of some ruling power which
has indulged itself for a time in the exercise of
a kindly feeling free from the control of higher
principles. When the rightful domain of justice has been
thus enlarged under the concurrent influence
of its great and natural ally, the love of mutual
ity, many great and pressing questions will be
carried far on toward their solution. For in
stance, little difficulty will be left in determin
ing what share of the profits of any business
enterprise shall be allotted to the different
partners uniting in its accomplishment. It
will be not mere justice, but the larger justice,

Perfect Righteousness is Love 107
which will then apportion to the laborers in
such an enterprise (the laborers as distinguished
from those in higher control) a share commen
surate with the expenditure of pure life-energy
which they have contributed to it. This rather
than the exact money-value, carefully com
puted, of their work, will have become then the
standard of apportionment. This means that
their intelligence in the putting forth of their
work, their diligence in pursuing it, and, best
of all, their faithfulness to the true ends sought
in the work shall have become recognized ele
ments of value in its products. There must
be first, of course, a public opinion demanding
this. But are there not signs already pointing
to the rise of such a public opinion? We
spend our money for the advancement, in one
way or another, of our lives, and it is easy for
the most of us to take little thought, and count
that best which, serving our need, can be
cheapest bought. But is the day never coming
when our full enjoyment of the things we buy,
whether a garment, or a journey, or a house to
live in, or any other article of supposed value,
shall be dependent on a reasonable assurance
that it is a means of true life also to those
whose toil provided it for us? When this
feeling becomes strong enough in us it will
certainly prevail also in those who control

108 A More Excellent Way
production for us. Self-interest alone would
require this of them. Right feeling in them
will also contribute its full share. But why do
I say right feeling, and why does the reader
accept that term, unless it be, indeed, a ques
tion of right? It is evidently such a question
— a question of right in the primary and ex
ceedingly sacred form of justice, or the demand
that in our pursuit of the things making for us
a life we shall deprive no brother man of the
means of living properly belonging to him.
Let us then hope that justice is, indeed,
treading an ascending pathway on the earth,
and that, as the ages pass, its goal will be ever
coming nearer into sight. In God the highest
love is only justice to himself and the creatures
he has made. What else then can be our ulti
mate destiny, save that we attain in him at
last to a perfection of life, in which the bound
aries between justice and love shall have become
indistinguishable?

IX
THE NEW MAN
If it be true that the right return for man to
make to God for his love is to accept it in a
filial spirit, it becomes an important problem
how he can be brought into the exercise of
that spirit. Our Lord gives two answers to
that question, and these two answers taken
together set before us the redemptive process
in its fundamental elements — they are faith
and the new birth. The former of these
represents the process as originating in man's
initiative, the other in that of God. These
belong together, their combined activity being
essential from the outset to any true renewal
of the spiritual life in man.
We have before us first the truth that a child
of God estranged from him by sin begins to
exercise the right, or filial, spirit towards him
by having faith in Christ. In discussing the
philosophical nature of faith in the first part of
this book, I spoke of it as distinguished among
our mental states by the fact that it expresses
109

no A More Excellent Way
the assent of our whole being, rather than that
of some one or more portions of our being —
whether intellect, feeling, will, or, I might add,
the imagination. Faith was treated in that
chapter chiefly in its subjective nature, though
the fact was recognized that no faith could be
truly great that had not some great moral
object, God himself being in the nature of
things the supreme object of that faith.
According to the teaching of Christ, faith in
himself is the condition of salvation. Many
have been the attempts to define the inner,
deepest nature of this faith. The question is
one of very great importance; for this faith,
by which the soul becomes the disciple of
Christ, or receives him as its savior, must
itself be the beginning in that soul of its
salvation, the spirit which in its unfolding
will become its full salvation. Is, then, this
faith chiefly the action of the heart trusting
itself to Christ to be saved, as so many be
lieve? Or is it rather the action of the intel
lect accepting Christ as a divine teacher, which
many others confidently affirm? Or is faith in
its profounder essence the soul's choice, yield
ing up its personal will to make the higher de
mands of right and God its own? How much
has been written and said upon these great
questions, and how much in terms of very

The New Man in
earnest controversy ; when, by the very nature
of the case, each of these modes of the soul's
assent must exist in order that a faith worthy
of the name may be present at all ! In my own
view the presence of no one of these existing
in any high measure of perfection marks the
beginning of salvation in the soul, and still less
the presence of all of them together. For these
are spiritual exercises far too high for a poor
sinner, coming often in extreme ignorance and
degradation, to be able to put forth.
But what does characterize him, and what
seems to have been always the heart of desire
in Christ for men, was a spirit open in its entire
being to receive illuminating and gracious in
fluence from God — open to know and love and
do the truth, as the Savior given to be the
world's light reveals it. Thus our Lord on
one occasion said, and he said it both as an
invitation to the true-hearted and as a word
of counsel concerning the spirit in which men
ought to listen to him ¦ "Whosoever willeth to
do his will, shall know of the teaching, whether
it be of God, or whether I speak of myself."
That which he most wanted to see in his dis
ciples was the desire to know the right as God
sees it, united with the purpose to do it when
it was known.
A characteristic saying was this, peculiar as

112 A More Excellent Way
was so often true of him: "If therefore thine
eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of
light." This means that God will fill with his
light the spirit that is in health, unimpaired in
its aim, open to him. The sermon on the
mount, which is without express direction on
the subject of faith, abounds in sayings like
the above, requiring the spirit characteristic of
faith. The apostle John also grasped this in
terior and vital truth, when he said — and there
is nowhere in the bible a clearer statement of
the nature of faith : " As many as received him,
to them gave he the right to become children
of God, even to them that believe on his
name." Here faith is represented as receiving
Christ. The two are declared to be identical.
Those who receive him, that is who open mind
and heart to him as their Savior, these it is
that believe on him. And these are owned by
God as his children, a fact indicating clearly
that they have the filial spirit. Now we all
know what a true filial spirit is; it is the re
sponse made to the love of parents by a spirit
open to be influenced by them, and sincerely
desirous to meet their wishes.
Faith, then, as our Lord represented it, is in
its main essence a condition of the spirit such
that it can be moved upon by God, and it is
wonderful how almost solely important this

The New Man 113
grace in his disciples seemed to Christ to be.
Jesus is distinguished among the world's great
teachers by the small stress he laid on the
ordinary human virtues. These were not
directly the object of his endeavor. He de
sired to see a certain spirit in his disciples.
This spirit he called faith, which in its essence
was openness towards God ; and in its practical
working trust in himself, the Son of God, come
to teach and save men.
It is clear in the light of these thoughts what
the foundation is of that essential Christian
doctrine, justification by faith. It was St.
Paul to whom it was given to develop this doc
trine ; partly in forms of universal application,
as when he illustrated the principle of faith by
the example of Abraham; but chiefly in the
form of opposition to the Jewish ceremonial
law. Our Lord must have had the same truth
in mind when he spoke of a righteousness
which he looked to see from his disciples that
should exceed that of the Scribes and Phari
sees. Faith was doubtless that righteousness
— the truly filial spirit toward God. This spirit,
for our greater clearness of apprehension, and
ease of access, and comfort of hope, and motive
power of love, we are permitted to exercise
toward God as he comes near to us in Christ,
and it is accepted by God as our righteousness

ii4 A More Excellent Way
because it is the right and only right spirit for
those in our condition to have ; it is the true
spirit for children of God that have been un
faithful and disobedient to have. But it is not
right in the sense of being an entirely righteous
spirit, for this is a thing beyond the power of
the greater part of men, probably of all men,
to attain in the present stage of our existence :
it is right because it has in it the promise of
that condition, and is in fact the first stage of
a soul's progress towards it.
Our Lord abounded much in a style of teach
ing admirably adapted to explain the precise
stage which faith holds in the progress of a
soul toward a complete righteousness. I refer
to those teachings in which he likens the king
dom of heaven in the world, not to earthly
kingdoms, composed of a great community of
human beings bound together by statute laws,
and rendering allegiance to one whom they
recognize as their ruler, but rather to the
kingdoms of life in nature, governed by the
eternal mysterious laws of life.
This thought of Christ's is especially notice
able in his sayings that bear on the preparation
in the heart — the preparation of faith — for the
reception of his truth. Thus in the parable of
the sower he likens the word of the kingdom,
as it falls on a spirit prepared to receive it, to

The New Man 115
a seed which the sower casts into good ground.
As a seed in such case takes root, and grows,
and brings forth abundant fruit, so does the
word of the kingdom spring to life, and grow
to the fulness of a prosperous harvest in such
a heart. There is needed then a preparation
of heart to receive the gospel, as truly as of the
soil to receive the seed. This preparation is
faith— or a spirit open to the divine influence.
In another parable Jesus describes the man
ner of our spiritual growth by likening it to
leaven which a woman took and hid in two
measures of meal till the whole was leavened.
This most felicitous illustration also, as we
have now learned, is drawn from the kingdom
of vegetable life. What is leaven but a living
vegetable germ, growing with wonderful rapid
ity, under favorable conditions of warmth and
moisture, in a soil well prepared to receive it?
Jesus had no confidence that there could
be any genuine spiritual life in men save as it
was nourished by the inflowing of the divine
life. Christ's whole life as it was pictured in
the synoptical gospels was attuned to this
truth, but it was left to the apostle John to
report the teachings of Christ that most ex
pressly declare it. After the Savior's death
this truth became a pervasive element in the
teaching of all the apostles, and has been

1 16 A More Excellent Way
accepted by the church in all ages since as
fundamental among it doctrines. There is no
greater single witness to the authenticity of
John's gospel than this.
As reported by John, Jesus early in his min
istry announced to Nicodemus— one who by
reason of his superior education might be sup
posed fitted to receive such a truth — that
"Except a man be born anew he cannot see
the kingdom of God," and he added, by way
of explanation: "Except a man be born of
water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the
kingdom of God." Jesus nowhere used ma
terial substances — such as water for cleansing,
or bread for nourishment — with the idea that
there is any direct efficacy in these things,
natural or imparted, to produce spiritual re
sults. "It is the Spirit that quickeneth," was
his consistent teaching. We must suppose,
therefore, that the expression "born of water"
means formed anew from out a depraved into
a cleansed nature. Of this water was a signifi
cant symbol, but the agency in this change —
other than that of the Divine Spirit — could only
be the man's own spirit, opening itself to
God to be moved upon henceforth by him.
In this process God's spirit must needs be act
ively present, since all good in souls is from
him, while the attitude toward God assumed

The New Man 1 1 7
in faith, makes it sure that for the future the
Holy Spirit will direct and control the life.
We have seen that Christ supposed the spirit
of God to be so vitally present and active in
his own spirit that he failed to distinguish in his
thought between the two. His taking on him
self to pardon repentant souls, and to justify
those who had faith in him is proof of this.
The natural way in which he undertook to
supply all the spiritual needs of such as would
come to him is another proof. Very beautiful,
on the other hand, was the perfection of his
confidence that there was that in the human
soul which could respond to the gracious influ
ence of this spirit residing in him. There was
good soil in man. His heart was a soil in
which the seed of the kingdom could grow.
The parable of the leaven assumed this. So
did the parable of the sower, and of the wheat
and the tares, as also did the saying concern
ing the earth bringing forth fruit of herself.
It is evident that the growth of the germ-
principles, whether of right feeling, or of divine
truth implanted in us by the Holy Spirit, must
in the nature of things be slow in coming to ma
turity. How relatively small is the implanted
germ of leaven; nevertheless when the slow-
creeping hours are accomplished, the patient
house-wife finds the needed work done. So in

118 A More Excellent Way
souls we must be patient and willing to wait
for the completion of the Spirit's work. So
still more in the larger world-work of the Holy
Spirit — -pictured by Christ in the parable that
tells how the tiniest of seeds unfolds in time
into the greatest of herbs, so that the birds of
heaven could lodge in it — we must be willing
to work after his own fashion of working.
Most important is it for us ever to bear in
mind this slowness of movement in the life
processes that go on in the soul. Even in the
many cases in which a heart seems, by means
of a holy purpose formed at a definite moment,
to enter at that moment into life, who can tell
what seeds of truth dropped into the mind long
years before may have maintained some sort of
vitality in them through the action of the Holy
Spirit, or even what holier desires may have
lived a latent life in them from the earliest be
ginnings of the consciousness of existence and
of duty?
"He that believeth shall not make haste."
There are many sayings of Christ in harmony
with this profound Old-Testament saying con
cerning workers with God.

LAWS OF GOD'S KINGDOM
Our principal business in the remainder of
this book will be an examination of the more
prominent forms which the divine righteous
ness assumed when brought into contact, in
the person of the Son of God, with the human
race in its condition of disobedience and sinful
ness. This is in effect to say that our study is
to be of the laws of the "kingdom of God," as
they are revealed in the teachings of Christ,
and his bearing toward sin. As preliminary to
the study of this question, it is important that
we have clearly in mind the meaning of the
term law in general, and of the laws of the
kingdom of God in particular. In order to
this it is necessary to discriminate between the
laws of the natural and the moral worlds of
God, which, while they are clearly distinct,
have still many features in common.
Before man's coming there was none but
natural law in the world. This does not mean
that the world's unfolding was without regard
n9

120 A More Excellent Way
to man ; it would be truer to say that it was
entirely in his interest. This at least all must
think who believe that God's chief end in crea
tion was the intelligent beings who should
people the world. It would be too much
absolutely to affirm that until man's appear
ance on the stage there were no departures
from that fixed sequence of phenomena (the
conditions being the same) in which natural
law, for want of a more exact philosophical
knowledge of it, is now generally defined as
consisting. Even at this remote period, in the
interest of the destined head of the race whose
time was surely approaching, it cannot be
denied that there may have been direct inter
ventions of the divine agency.
I. The evidence thus far attainable is fully
consistent with the thought that the beginning
of life on our planet was very probably brought
about by this means, there being no known in
stance in the world's history of life being pro
duced except from antecedent life. Previous
to this time it is difficult to see what necessity
there could have been for divine interpositions.
In the earlier ongoing of a simply material
world, and its unfolding from stage to stage of
its progress, there seems no reason why the
eternal plan of God, sustained by his ever-
present power, should not have been sufficient

Laws of God's Kingdom 121
to every required purpose. The beginning of
the mysterious principle of life is a thing of
another sort; it is a thing of a diviner sort;
nearer to God's own being. Men speak of
the ever-living God ; but they cannot speak of
an ever-living universe of matter. We know
it not to be ever-living, but at the most some
times living; and whenever it has risen from
the condition of dead matter to the infinitely
higher stage indicated by the word life, there
can be no proof that the eternal life-giving
Spirit did not breathe directly upon it, or
within it, to bid it live.
2. But it is clear that conscious life, as of the
animal in distinction from the vegetable crea
tion, is a thing still higher; for with this hap
piness is born into existence. In the widest
generalization happiness is the end of all being.
The question of the supreme happiness, which
must ever be the ultimate happiness sought in
an ordered world, while more important, is
logically a narrower one. All that is asserted
now is that a world, while still without the
existence in it of happiness, is without true
value, unless, indeed, its end be the merely
subsidiary one of causing happiness by its
far-off splendors to the inhabitants of some
other world. What we conceive as true, then,
when life came into being, we may more easily

122 A More Excellent Way
believe to have been true when conscious life
was seen appearing. We may naturally con
ceive of it as the immediate product of the
eternal life-giving spirit.
3. Self-conscious living beings are at a still
greater advance beyond those possessed only
of consciousness. Such have not merely the
feeling of certain sensations, — hunger, thirst,
fear, joy, a multitude of others, — but they are
conscious also of themselves; they have the
distinct conception: "It is I that experience
these varying sensations ; I in distinction from
other beings about me." This higher form of
consciousness becomes the basis upon which a
great variety of mental processes, otherwise
impossible, can be carried on. There now
arises what can, indeed, be called a mind; as
also a distinct and separate personality. Sim
ple perceptions, simple acts of intelligence,
memory, and will, such as a mere animal is
capable of, can in such a person be compared
with one another. The mind of one such
being will also contrive improved methods of
communicating with other minds. By means
of such mental processes reason will come to
its birth. In its proper order also the kindred
feeling, "I ought," will become a part of the
mind's furnishing.
It has become apparent, with the progress of

Laws of God's Kingdom 123
time, that no other of the operative forces that
shape the life of our world compares in its
power with this feeling of duty. Few, indeed,
among men are wholly destitute of it. It is so
truly a distinguishing trait of humanity, that
to be wholly without it would be to place one
outside of humanity's pale. It is capable be
yond most traits of being awakened in those in
whom its power by nature seems to be feeble
— a fact especially evidenced when such hearts
are acted upon by the Holy Spirit. A charac
ter marked by a profound sense of moral obli
gation not only excites universal respect and
sympathy, but is the one thing capable of
doing this to the full. Man's nature is plain
ly attuned to right as its supreme principle.
Genius commands respect and the power of
mastery over other men commands admiration
and fear ; but the presence in any human being
of an exalted sense of obligation, especially
when united with a clear perception of what
things are worthiest to be the objects of pursuit
by such a spirit, this commands undying rever
ence and love. This in the end conquers the
minds of men and controls the world's pro
gress. Nothing is settled in this world until it
is brought into accordance with the principle of
right. A thousand things are settled. The
world is stable compared with what it once

124 A More Excellent Way
was. In the midst of activities so immense,
changes so frequent and vast, seeming confu
sion so great, the principle of order in the life
of men together, and in consequence a settled
condition of life, is coming more and more to
prevail. And this is because the laws of the
moral universe are coming to be increasingly
recognized and obeyed.
The change here, then, is the greatest of all ;
the length of the upward stretch and the differ
ence effected in the world's condition is the
greatest. The world's value has become in
finitely enhanced. A veritable upward leap is
now made toward God, for the possibility of a
real communion with him now arises ; the end
sought by him comes fully into sight. If,
then, in the other cases, there was reason to
believe that the occasion was such as might
justify a direct interposition of God, here the
probability of such an interposition seems the
greatest of all.
Thus much has been said to show that the
uniform action of natural phenomena, essential
as it is *to any true world-order, is not re
garded as incompatible with any possible direct
interpositions of the Infinite Spirit that dwells
in nature. It should, however, be conceded in
claiming this, that there are Christian thinkers
— and Professor Drummond appears to be one

Laws of God's Kingdom 125
of them — who think that all the seeming gaps
in the unfolding of the world down to the pro
duction of man himself may have been filled
out, without special divine interpositions, under
the regular and normal operation of its laws.
This may, indeed, be possible and God still in
and over all, if we suppose his Spirit to have
been ever present in the world, and operative
in the maintenance of its laws. This would be
possibly consistent also with the appearance of
man upon the stage under natural law; only
here the regular and normal action of the Spirit
would become the action of the Holy Spirit, as
we shall see later.
Coming now to the exact question, what the
relation is in which the laws of the moral world
stand to those of the natural world ; and to the
more definite question, what is meant when we
speak of the laws of the kingdom of Christ
among men ; it will suffice for our purpose to
mark the following points :
(1) The moral laws, like the natural laws, we
have reason to believe, are of universal validity
in all the worlds of being.
(2) In the moral realm the operation of the
forces appropriate to maintain its order is in
variably the same, under like conditions. If I
may apply here the phraseology of science, the
phenomena of right are invariable in cases

126 A More Excellent Way
where conditions are the same, even as the
phenomena are in nature.
(3) As the knowledge of the law of nature is
obtained by the exact observation of its phe
nomenal modes of action, so the knowledge of
the moral laws of the universe is best obtained
by the clear perception of the forms which
right action assumes, when that action is nor
mal and undisturbed.
(4) The laws of the moral universe differ
from those of the natural world chiefly in the
respect that while in the latter no person is pres
ent to hinder their proper action — God's will in
that sphere being undisturbed, — in the former
the free will residing in every man can, and as
a rule does, set itself against the eternal will.
(5) Hence an infinite variety of cases arising
in the moral world, which, while they can in
many particulars be cared for under the general
methods which the system provides, give occa
sion nevertheless, in order to their proper treat
ment, for individual oversight and influence, of
a kind and to an extent not known in the
natural world. This, which is the eternal need
of finite spirits, is met in our world, as prob
ably in all worlds, by the everywhere present
and active agency of the Holy Spirit. This is
the one greatest truth of God's moral govern
ment in his universe. It was especially empha-

Laws of God's Kingdom 127
sized by Christ in his kingdom. Affirmed
constantly in scripture, and reaffirmed in the
Christian consciousness, the presupposition of
our reason is also favorable to it.
(6) We have seen that, viewed in the light of
pure science, this is certainly true of it ; the doc
trine of the Holy Spirit is a doctrine of the su
pernatural ; but if we could view it in the broader
light of the complete worlds of God, and his
universal kingdom, it would doubtless seem to
us the most natural of all conceivable things.
One thought more will finish the examination
undertaken in this chapter. We believe that
it was given our Lord Christ to unfold before
our eyes, by his words and his acts, the right
eousness of God — especially that it was given
him to display perfect justice and perfect love,
as they are in their essential nature wherever in
the universe they find exercise. In no merely
human life could these laws of the moral uni
verse have been perfectly revealed ; humanity
is not near enough to God for this. But in
Christ, in whom it is given us to see the life of
God himself lived out before us under human
conditions, we believe that we have this know
ledge in perfection. It is evidently the simple
and ordinary laws of the moral universe of God
which our Lord thus expresses. It is possible
to conceive of him as having laid down for us a

128 A More Excellent Way
series of statute enactments, or of laws specially
adapted to our case, corresponding to what are
called statute enactments among men. It has
often happened that views of the divine gov
ernment widely received by Christians have
erred by reason of the prominence given this
supposed fact. If any are disposed to regard
the laws laid down by Christ as statute enact
ments, they ought to bear ever in mind that
these must be, and are, still in absolute harmony
with the natural laws of right in God's universe.
It is a narrow view of God to suppose that this
world is an exception to his ordinary methods
in his treatment of his creatures. Especially
does it need to be said that there could be no
greater injustice to God than to suppose that
his love in Christ is something extraordinary,
or a stretch of love such as is unknown else
where. However wonderful to us it is and can
only be, in the larger view it is simply a normal
movement of the divine heart. God changes
not; he is always God. He can no more sur
pass himself than he can fall below himself.
Every world of his intelligent creatures must
have its own experience of his perfect good
ness. It is given to us to be shown the nature
of perfect goodness as we see it passing before
our eyes in the life, and equally in the death,
of our divine Lord.

XI
JUDGMENT
Retribution is one of the inviolable prin
ciples in the natural world. Earth's forces
must operate uniformly. A world-order is the
necessary antecedent condition of a world.
Law is the word expressing this uniformity in
the action of the world's forces, and retribution
is simply their mode of operation when one
force is prevented from acting freely by the
antagonism of another force. The word has
no peculiar significance until conscious life ap
pears. It is when animals appear that the
world begins to have significance. The happi
ness of animals depends upon their ability
to accommodate themselves to the unvarying
order of the world. So far as they fail to do
this and receive injury as the result, they suffer
what is properly called the retribution of vio
lated law. The word by its very derivation
implies, and implies truly, that the evil they
suffer is rendered back to them under law
as the natural consequence of their own act.
g 129

130 A More Excellent Way
This does not in any sense imply wrong-doing
on their part, nor can they know any sense of
ill-desert. Not being possessed of self-con
sciousness, they do not even think clearly of
the action as theirs, nor do they impute to
themselves blame on its account. The retribu
tion, therefore, is in no true sense punishment ;
when it is so spoken of, it is in a figurative
sense. An animal follows his instincts, and if
in the effort to escape an enemy, or to appease
an appetite, he miscalculate his ability to leap
over a chasm and is dashed into it, his death
that follows is in its essential character the
natural consequence of an innocent mistake.
The vast amount of happiness created by the
introduction of conscious but not self-conscious
beings into the life of our earth is but little
diminished by their sufferings. These suffer
ings are seldom prolonged, seldom actively
felt, not increased by anticipation, nor followed
by remorse, nor intensified by the fear of judg
ments to come. The animal world, except
when cursed by inhumanity in man, is a happy
world. Our earth with only one swarm of
insects upon it, hovering over flowers in the
enjoyment of the light and warmth of the sun,
and propagating their kind capable of the same
happiness, would be at a truly vast advance
over what it was before that insect swarm

Judgment 131
came into being. Now happiness has begun
to exist upon it, and minds acquainted with
God's ways can see in this a sure portent of
more abundant happiness to follow.
In the case of man this higher happiness is
abundantly realized in the use of those intelli
gent and free choices, and the affections and
pursuits consequent upon them, in which his
manhood consists. For these choices he is re
sponsible. Retribution, therefore, in his case
takes on a new form, that of punishment.
Judgment, and judgment approved by his own
conscience, is laid up against him if he trans
gresses. In considering what the perfect
judgment of God against sin is, as revealed by
Christ, it needs to be borne in mind that, even
though we may prefer to regard his laws as
statute laws, their punishments cannot be
otherwise than in perfect harmony with the
everywhere natural and necessary retributions
of God's moral universe.
1. All students of our Lord's life must know
how much he makes of individual responsibil
ity. He assumes that every man is directly
responsible to God, owing him both personal
love and faithful service in his kingdom. His
calls to faith in God are based on this principle.
Many of the parables — as those of the pounds
and the talents — derive all their force from it.

132 A More Excellent Way
Guilt and remorse are natural accompaniments
of this teaching, and it is evident that Jesus
had a profound feeling of their reality. This
was one element in the punishment rendered
back to him who violated the law of the king
dom ; it was a part of retribution. It is now
generally conceded that "the worm that dieth
not" which characterizes the state of the lost
in eternity, is the gnawing of conscience under
the sense of guilt and remorse. In a very vivid
picture drawn by our Lord of the condemnation
incurred as the penalty of a life spent in the
selfish enjoyment of wealth, this feature is
forcibly portrayed. In a hell of remorse (tor
mented by flames) Dives awakes to all he has
so wickedly thrown away, and begs that his
brethren may be warned in time, lest they also
come to this place of torment. The element
of doom so vividly brought out in this parable
is not the sense of the displeasure of heaven,
for the soul of goodness in Father Abraham is
still kindly toward the offender ; the trouble is
in the nature of things. It is in the gulf fixed ;
it is in the difference between the conscience of
the condemned — self-condemned and entirely
awakened now — and the inward feeling of those
whose own hearts assure them of their faithful
ness. This fire of remorse in the soul is the
first element in that wages of sin which is death.

Judgment 133
2. Our Lord was at especial pains to make
it clear that guilt and condemnation increase
according to the measure of light, and power
of love, that have been sinned against. He
was wont to measure the guilt of communities
in this way ; upbraiding the cities that had re
jected him and denouncing against them a
retribution proportioned to the measure of
heavenly grace they had resisted; this made
their guilt greater than the worst of the heathen
cities of old. Even more fundamental in him
was the feeling of the responsibility incurred
by persons who deliberately rejected his offers
of salvation. One saying will occur to many
minds as peculiarly expressive of this feeling
in Christ : "This is the judgment that the light
has come into the world, and men loved the
darkness rather than the light, because their
deeds were evil. ' ' These words are the key to
much in Christ. They were not spoken by
him in anger, nor in the spirit of a judge de
nouncing penalty. They were a part of his
discourse to Nicodemus, and followed close
upon that proclamation, which Luther used to
call the little gospel : ' ' God so loved the world
that he gave his only begotten Son, that who
soever believeth on him should not perish, but
have eternal life." They declared the cause
of disbelief in such a gospel as this to be the

134 A More Excellent Way
soul's love and practice of sin, and its guilt to
be self-evident. The cause, the act, the retri
bution, all were in an order of nature.
Another saying of Christ cannot be too
highly valued for the precision with which it
conveys the truth that the measure of guilt is
proportioned to the measure of the known light
of obligation in the face of which the sin was
committed: "And that servant who knew his
Lord's will, and made not ready, neither did
according to his will, shall be beaten with many
stripes ; but he who knew not and did things
worthy of stripes, shall be beaten with few
stripes." 3. But here already a third element of the
judgment of sin becomes apparent, which is
the displeasure, even the awful displeasure, of
God. Nothing can be plainer than that this
also is a form of natural retribution. To sup
pose that love can be otherwise than displeased
with the sinner is to suppose that love can be
unmindful of its claims as based in eternal
right. Love's right to rule all hearts in God's
universe rests on the fact that a society fulfill
ing the high purpose of God in the complete
happiness of its members can be built on no
other basis. Can there be any other displeas
ure at the transgressor so weighty as one which
has this clear perception at its source?

Judgment 135
The world has been full from the beginning
of voices lifted angrily in condemnation of sin
ners. The voice of Jesus was often lifted in
anger, but it was only so lifted when perfect
love had a perfect right to be offended. Even
then, it is to be noticed, those awful denuncia
tions were not against individuals. Our Lord,
when on earth, closed the door of hope against
no mortal. His denunciations were against
classes of men, and these, all of them, such as
did violence, both in their spirit and their con
duct, to the simplest and self-evident obliga
tions of love. "Woe unto you, hypocrites,"
he cried out against the Pharisees, "because ye
shut the door of heaven against men ; for ye
enter not in yourselves, neither suffer ye those
who are entering in to enter."
A question not without difficulty arises here,
the question how the sympathy of God's heart
of love with very abandoned sinners, so ap
parent everywhere, can be made to harmonize
with this divine displeasure against them. It
is vain to say that the Pharisee's sin was so
aggravated as to put him outside the possibility
of heaven's sympathy. Even the Pharisee was
not without something in him to love, and the
Pharisee, as well as others, might plead in pal
liation of his guilt that his spirit in its worst
features was a part of him by nature, being

136 A More Excellent Way
inherited by him from his forefathers. Christ's
humanity was not so narrow as to exclude the
Pharisees from his sympathy, when any in
dividual one among them gave him the chance
to exercise it.
We need not count it in any true sense an
explanation of this anomaly to say that Christ's
displeasure was against sin and not against the
sinner; such pale abstractions as this are not
the refuge of the strong. There are two con
siderations which may be urged as of force to
reconcile the seeming contradiction. One is
that displeasure and sympathy are not oppo-
sites in such a sense that they cannot coexist
even in a perfectly balanced mind. Are there
not rather cases in which they not only co
exist, but each is the more vehement on ac
count of the other? Take the instance of a
father whose son has committed a disgraceful
act through the strength in him of a passion
against which the father himself has waged an
incessant and, as he knows in his heart, only
an imperfectly successful warfare. Shall he
withhold his sympathy, refusing to see any
thing but the guilt of his son? This were to
substitute an angry will for a true heart ; and
to convert displeasure into violence. Shall he
then condone the offence; covering it out of
sight with a multitude of excuses? This would

Judgment 137
be to be false to his own soul history ; it would
be to dishonor his own honor; it would be
treachery to his conviction of right ; it would
be faithlessness to the son of his love entrusted
to his keeping; and if he has left that son un
warned of the evil taint in the blood from which
he sprang, and unfortified against it by all the
help he could bring, it would be adding to the
guilt of that act of unfaithfulness. Plainly in
such a case sympathy and displeasure must be
united, even as they were in Christ, and love
and wisdom must decide how and in what pro
portion each must be employed.
Another very important truth helps us to
an understanding of this question. Judgment
was real, but its full time was not yet. The
solemn and consistent claim of Christ was,
"The Father hath committed all judgment to
the Son." He knew that the great day was
coming when, in other guise — as one whose
seat was on the right hand of power, and sup
ported by the angels of heaven — he was to
summon the world before his throne in judg
ment. But that day, he consistently taught,
was not yet; it was in the future. "I judge
no man," was as yet his cry. It was the hope
fulness of love that ruled the world; love in
grace, love in its divine mission to save.
While, therefore, there was judgment, it was

138 A More Excellent Way
judgment in suspense, and consistent with the
profoundest sympathy.
This is a great truth for our day. As the
gospel ripens in souls conformed to their Lord,
it is seen to be more worthy their best devotion
than it could have seemed in any of its past
ages. History helps it ; science helps it ;
maturer tastes, the product of eighteen cen
turies and a half of Christian culture, welcome
it ; hearts in closer communion with God are
better fitted to understand and serve it ; now,
therefore, we do well to certify that it is hope's
day that rules among men. But we need the
more on that account to take heed lest we yield
ourselves up to the softness of mere sentiment.
It was not thus with the Savior. In the warm
light of the love of God he did indeed entreat
his brethren to come to him and be saved ; but
at the same time, in the cold light of that love
protecting its own mighty interests, he taught
them the exceeding guilt of their sin, and
warned them solemnly of the retribution it
would inevitably bring, if they rejected him.
4. Another form which retribution takes,
and equally in the order of nature, is the effect
of sin in its character of selfishness to produce
dissension within the spirit destructive of its
unity; destructive, therefore, of true life and
the joy of life.

Judgment 139
This element of retribution is the one nearest
the personality in man, and therefore the most
impossible to escape. If what we see among
men is as it appears, then it becomes possible
for some, after long hatred of God's ways, to
say in their hearts, "There is no God." There
are those also who seem to be able to turn a
deaf ear to the conscience, and to still the feel
ing of remorse. But to escape the suffering
arising from inward disharmony — the weak
nesses, the disturbances, the enmities, the dis
satisfactions caused by sin in the heart, and
reacting on it from surrounding hearts — that
is beyond the power of any. These inward
disharmonies have so become in us a nature,
they are so almost universally a matter of in
heritance and a part of our condition as a
race, that the life within the kingdom of love
is only less affected by them than the life with
out. St. Paul is full of exhortations addressed
to the Christians of his day, against jealousies,
strifes, factions, enmities, and other forms of
the great spirit of discontent that surges con
tinually in human hearts. It is still true that
the church, notwithstanding the help that it
should receive from faith, is not far advanced
on the way to deliverance from this defect of
life. The time of that deliverance is not even
in sight as yet to most eyes. In nothing are

140 A More Excellent Way
we farther behind. But that deliverance must
come before those even who are partakers in
the heavenly calling shall escape the miserable
effects of the discord which sin has wrought in
human nature.
As for hearts that reject the spirit of the
kingdom — this is a form of retribution to which
that choice inevitably leads ; nor is there any
possible escape from it except in the soul's con
version to the spirit of love. What hell will
be — if there be indeed a realm where selfish
ness fully ripens its fruits; where, moreover,
since the very desire of better things has dis
appeared, quenched in the supreme love of self
and sin, hope itself has no longer any sub
stance — that utter discord of life it is as little
given us fully to understand as it is the perfect
harmonies of the kingdom of the blest.
5. It remains to speak of one more form
which love takes on in its judgment of sin. It
was the one most upon Christ's heart ; it seems
indeed ever to have been before his eyes, as
though he could not shut it out. In many
ways he urged it, coming around to it as the
thought which had in it the utmost conceivable
of loss, and even of horror — it was being shut
out at last from love's companionship, love's
empire, the communion of souls within the
kingdom of love and of God. Never have

Judgment 141
there fallen from human lips words breathing
such tenderness as some in which Jesus
preached this truth — such at least is the feeling
of many who know him well.
"And the door was shut."
"And then will I say unto them, I never
knew you ; depart from me ye that work
iniquity." "Then the king said unto his servants, bind
him hand and foot and cast him into the outer
darkness ; there shall be weeping and gnashing
of teeth."
"And these shall go away into eternal pun
ishment." It is the word outer that is the word of
meaning. It means the outside darkness — to
be shut out from the feast of love, the kingdom
of love, the glad fellowship, the spirit's life in
its native air. And yet it is more than mere
exclusion. "Bind him hand and foot." It is
the exclusion of one with whom the king is
justly incensed because he has not on the wed
ding garment ; woven by love, cleansed by
love's sacrifice, put on in holy penitence of
love, and becoming thus love's attestation in
him that wears it.
It is plain how inevitable under natural law
is this form of retribution. This man, who
has been at last thrust out by God, has first

142 A More Excellent Way
shut himself out ; for he has cultivated tastes
the opposite of the heavenly spirit, till even
divine love can no longer change them. This
will certainly become true before he is finally
shut out. He will be shut out because he is
proved incapable of finding a life in communion
with God, and in the heavenly citizenship, so
entirely has his will gone over to the choice of
evil. He is shut out because his place is with
out. A malignant God might add torture to
this punishment. This would be a needless
cruelty ; the doom is complete without it ; it
has in it all the elements of the death of a soul.
But can this, indeed, be the end to which any
being whom God has made in love is destined?
Or, to phrase it differently, can a God of love
have made any soul to come at last to this as
its end? We have here a great question, which
the feeling of each of us would gladly answer
in the negative, but which in fact no man can
answer. Our Lord himself has clothed what
he said concerning it in words differently in
terpreted by different minds. Is not one thing
clear — that it is as little given us to deny the
possibility of this as it is to affirm it? Who of
us shall dare to lift the veil which God in Christ
has let fall over the future of the unredeemed
soul? Can the future have a rich promise when all

Judgment 143
the wealth of promise in the young present has
come to naught? Has judgment, then, no
reality? Or is judgment to be confounded
with the discipline whose failure constitutes
judgment? Can any dare to say that Christ's
agony of spirit over those threatened with the
loss of all, had no basis in any reality which
has ever existed, or that shall ever exist? Or
shall a child of man believe that it could rejoice
him as much as it would have rejoiced the Son
of God, to sound full, and sweet, and unmis
takable, an assured and endless hope for every
human being? Let us believe that it is the
divine love that lets the darkness lie on the
solemn future, save as the spirit makes its sal
vation good, here in the earth-life, and while
the chance, through riches of grace, is without
any doubt whatever given to it.

XII
THE INCARNATION
In an early chapter we saw it to be one of the
functions of the revelation made in the world's
development, to exert a constant illumining
and interpretive influence on the Christian
revelation. We possess in that revelation the
leading principles of spiritual truth in their
perfection. It is, however, necessary that the
application of these truths to the ever-changing
conditions of human life should be constantly
renewed. The most important of the agencies
to accomplish this seems to be the discovery of
great natural truths by men of science moved
upon by the Divine Spirit, and, in so far as
they affect Christian doctrine, the proper re
ception of these truths into the body of Chris
tian teaching. There are already many bible
conceptions which have been greatly changed,
and their power over us increased under this in
fluence. Christianity as a system of truth has
been steadily growing to larger dimensions as
the centuries have advanced, and this process
144

The Incarnation 145
is certain to continue. This all will see who
will stop to think what the creative days are to
us, as compared to what they probably were to
the writer of the book of Genesis ; or what the
stars of heaven are to us compared to what
they were to Job ; or what it means to us that
all the heavenly hosts praise God, as compared
with what it meant to ancient readers of the
psalms. We do, indeed, give daily thanks that
God's universe and God himself are so much
more resplendent with glory to his saints now
than they were in those old days. These im
provements in our knowledge of God and ap
prehension of the truths revealed by him in
the bible have arisen chiefly through the dis
covery of great cosmic and geological truths.
The theory of evolution is now added to its
predecessors, and promises equally important
results. It is a matter of some moment to us
to know what effect this scientific theory,
should it eventually be confirmed, is likely to
have on various bible teachings which of neces
sity enter into our discussion, and I therefore
take the opportunity at this point, where we
are passing from the law of judgment as re
vealed by Christ to that of the forgiveness of
sins, to consider this question.
It is a matter of concern to some that the
evolution theory will necessitate a recasting

146 A More Excellent Way
of the story of the fall, which follows close in
the bible on that of the creative days, even as
these have been already transformed by dis
coveries in geology into vast creative periods.
The story of the fall is concerned with the im
portant truth of the sinfulness of man by
nature. It affirms this truth, and in this lies
its chief significance. Its method of doing this
is one evidently adapted to the literary require
ments of the age in which it was written. The
writer takes an old cosmogenic legend and
moulds it to his purpose. The legend is after
the nature of those old stories, and enters with
particularity into the manner of sin's introduc
tion. No less on that account is it the fact of
sin's reality, not the manner of its introduction,
which is the truth of consequence. If, then,
we are obliged to give up as mythological the
story of the devil's assuming the form of a
snake, and in that form tempting the mother
of our race to disobey the God with whom she
had till then lived in friendly intercourse, we
should consider whether there may not be new
light thrown on our relations with God which
will make amends for any supposed loss.
These points of advantage will be considered
later, but previous to that I will attempt to
meet certain difficulties which so unaccustomed
a doctrine may naturally awaken in some minds.

The Incarnation 147
The evolutionary teaching is exceedingly
strange to us; but we should consider that if
it be indeed true that our race is descended
from a preceding animal creation, and this
to the theologian is the heart of meaning
in the evolutionary theory, we have every
reason to believe that this is a process lying in
a larger order. We cannot suppose that the
line of procedure adopted here on earth is one
outside any general order in God's universe;
nor that we are made subject to some peculiar
and strange manner of experiment, different
from that employed in the case of all other
beings. We are convinced by a just analogy
that this cannot be; for, as we have learned
concerning the starry spaces, that so far as the
telescope and spectroscope can reveal their
secrets, the same great laws govern in the uni
versal worlds of matter ; so we naturally believe
that throughout the vast realms of life the
same laws in general prevail. Here, too, there
must be a connection of thought and harmony
of purpose in the different worlds. Is it pos
sible to believe that each world of created
beings is a disconnected world, leading a wholly
separate existence, its history contributing
nothing to the general complement of life in
God's universe — each a world of mere matter
and its phenomena, running its brief course

148 A More Excellent Way
and being then blown out, like a bubble? Can
this be all which such a universe, in which
great souls reach out longingly towards the
infinite of things, and in which all souls, truly
such, are probably capable of an indefinite de
velopment—can this be all that it means? It
is the impossibility that this can be so which is
the strongest intellectual ground of our im
mortality. This is an instance of the larger
dimensions into which the scripture truths are
growing under the light thrown upon them
by the progress of the world in its unfolding.
If any say, "Too large dimensions, these
thoughts put God too far from us," may not
the answer properly be, "The larger the object
of our faith, the nobler the faith itself, for there
is an infinite in man which is not appalled, but
rather attracted by his ever-growing conception
of the infinite in God? "
The almost interminable length of the pro
cess of man's formation at first confounds
us. We had already come to think of the
earth as unfolding very slowly ; but the thought
that the process in man's formation was so in
conceivably long seems incredible. Until a few
years ago we had supposed our creation to
have been instantaneous; that God had made
us at a single stroke. It is now presented as
a process maturing slowly through millions of

The Incarnation 149
years. But, after all, when we stop to think,
what are these millions of years to God? God
has time enough. Time must be the common
est of all things to him, and the emptiest — like
space, mere form without substance, save as it
is possible it should be filled with substance,
and especially substance of life, which is alone
of value.
One more and very serious difficulty is this
— that under the evolutionary theory of man's
origin he begins his career loaded with so heavy
weights, and with the odds favoring the victory
of evil in him rather than of good. This, in
deed, if true, is a very serious objection, and it
would be well could we become settled in our
minds as to its truth or falsity.
From the moral point of view innocence is
the peculiar characteristic of the animal world.
Not being possessed of reason and intelligent
choice, the animal cannot be held responsible
for his actions. Nobody believes that God will
hold him responsible, or that we ought so to
hold him. Meanwhile he has great claims upon
our regard by reason of the trust with which
he generally returns our affection, if we care to
bestow it upon him, and by the docility with
which he submits to such training as our selfish
ness, not often our love, subjects him to. We
need to bear in mind that while mankind have

150 A More Excellent Way
as a rule been alive to what they consider the
lower traits of the brute creation, they have
generally been far too little disposed to appre
ciate their more unselfish characteristics. A
little reflection, however, will teach us that
these are sufficient, if our inheritance includes
a fair proportion of them at their best, to pro
vide us with a considerable stock of good quali
ties to offset whatever lower ones may fall to
us. Professor Drummond has done us good
service in calling our attention to these in his
Ascent of Man. Take it then all in all, does it
not seem probable that in adopting this method
God has done no more than to furnish man
with such a provision of traits — all antecedently
innocent — as to make his conflict, when at last
he becomes entrusted with reason and con
science, as nearly as could be an even one —
selfish and unselfish elements, lower and higher
inclinations urging freely and equally their
claims on him? Should the difficulties to be
overcome seem immense, and the work to be
done of frightful magnitude, there may still
possibly be more than answering advantages.
Let us pass on to consider these.
i. If we may judge from what seems to be
the most conspicuous trait of our human nature,
the particular purpose of God in the creation of
this world, subordinate to the general purpose

The Incarnation 151
of adding a new people to the kingdom of his
love, was to provide a race in which the prin
ciple of selfhood should be strongly developed ;
or, as it is often expressed, a race endowed with
a strong personality. To say that this seems
to have been his plan for the human race does
not recessarily imply that it is his plan for all
the races he creates. It is only natural to sup
pose that perfect wisdom would arrange for
variety in the unfolding of worlds, even as it
does in the individuals of a race. In our own
case we see how wonderfully our unfolding
was adapted to its end, if that was to furnish
man at the outset of his career with a mighty
feeling of selfhood. No sooner does the life
of intelligence and of that moral responsibility
that flows from the power of intelligent choice
begin in this being, than he finds arising in
him a conflict proportioned in its magnitude to
the strength of the natural desires engendered
in his progenitors before the birth of self -con
sciousness at all. Ignorant as we are of the
particulars of that early condition, we may
safely assume that these desires took two prin
cipal forms ; the one the eager pursuit of ob
jects sought, the other the destruction of the
enemies that stood in the way of their pursuit.
Whichever of these forms they took — from
the violence of hunger, or of sexual passion, or

152 A More Excellent Way
of mother love, down to the mighty lust of
battle with an opposing enemy — they were un
restrained. There was no higher obligation;
no other decisive law than that of self.
This is not to say that a wider community-
sense may not have modified the individual
consciousness in many cases ; it is not to deny
the existence of delicacies of affection, and
nobilities of feeling, and habits of instinctive
forecast, and possibly even of deliberation;
but the principle was still that of selfhood, and
of selfhood unmodified by the one force able
really to control it, that of the consciousness
of duty.
This is, however, to be said concerning the
presence in this highly developed feeling of
selfhood of unselfish elements; there is a for
ward look to them ; they point to high pos
sibilities; and they are congruous with the
supposition of a great moral outcome to the
process; for when reason and conscience be
come at last developed, they may be able to
turn to their use these elements. Take for
instance the family ties, tribal and other asso
ciations of friendly co-operation, and the gener
ous impulses, reaching in many cases to utter
self-sacrifice, to which these give rise — what
material they furnish for reason and conscience
later to use !

The Incarnation 153
It is true that there are those who stoutly
deny that there is any plan whatever in the
ordering and laws of the universe; but such
exclude a thing which to other minds is the
one explanation of the world — that it is what
it is because we are a part of the universe of
God, and the laws of the eternal kingdom of
right in that universe control the process of our
development. It is this also that explains the
fact that the eternally right has the immense
advantage in the slow onward progress, and
will in the end, under God's guidance, bring
us to the appointed goal.
2. If these thoughts are true, the source of
the enormous power of sin is plain, and the
reason why God permits that it should possess
that power. The power of sin is the power of
self-will asserting itself in disregard of reason,
conscience, and the higher impulses of our
nature. The force with which this self-will
acts is in proportion to the strength of the
aboriginal desires by means of which it got its
early training — a training well adapted to de
velop strength of self-will, or a determined self
hood. The early forms resulting from such a
training were not, indeed, necessarily selfish,
but they were naturally selfish — that is, their
natural trend was toward self-indulgence un
restrained by the principle of right. And this

154 A More Excellent Way
accorded with the divine purpose, since it was
not excellence of character that was wanted at
the first ; it was rather the strength which alone
can impart to character its highest excellence —
it was the foundation in force of selfhood on
which could be based a discipline whose result
should be strength subdued to the rendering
of a willing allegiance to duty.
We may say with reverence concerning God's
plan, that it seems to have had in view these
two objects — to turn the mighty force of self
hood in man to the service of eternal love in his
kingdom ; and to do this in a way not to im
pair its strength. His method of accomplishing
this twofold object is the incarnation.
3. The central power of Christ over our hearts
lies in the divine sympathy with which he
enters into the conditions of our lot. Consider
this, then, whether under the new view of
man's origin we cannot see the possibility of a
more complete sympathy with us on the part
of God than seems to have been open to him
under the old view. According to that view
our race was created with the faculties of a
spiritual being fully developed; reason, right
feeling, power of choice. Hence the selfish
animal instincts, and all the infernal passions
springing to life in man must have been his
own work — the product of his own wilfulness

The Incarnation 155
choosing wicked self-indulgence and exploring
all the dark ways of cruelty and lust, by the in
ventions of a spirit abandoning itself to the
power of evil. How small seems the chance
that God should sympathize deeply with a race
like this ! Pity for their misfortunes he might
have, but hardly, it would seem, sympathy
with them in their lot.
But is it possible for God to withhold his
sympathy from the child of his own thought,
held by his own ordering in the grasp of pas
sions which were innocent in his far-off ances
try because they were the natural instincts of
beings unblest as yet with the moral sense,
but which in him have come to be guilty be
cause in him the sense of right has been
awakened? Here the discipline, tremendous
in its severity, is the Father's own plan for
creating a nobler communion between his child
and himself. Can he be otherwise than full of
sympathy with him? On the contrary, such
a sympathy is love's privilege, it is love's right,
and who shall dare to say it is not love's obli
gation, since love in reasonable souls, beyond
all other passions, is founded in right, and sub
ject to its commands. And a wonderful thing
let us notice before leaving this theme — how
our very sinning itself is not left outside this
circle where the divine sympathy acts, but

156 A More Excellent Way
is included within it. According to Jewish
modes of thought this would be a thing im
possible to be believed. God might have pity
for the misfortunes sinners had brought upon
themselves, for after ail they were beings made
by his hand; but sympathy with them, and
especially sympathy not although they were
sinners, but even in their sinning (mark that I
say in their sinning, not in their sins), this was
even beyond imagination's power to conceive.
But in Christ this seemingly impossible is made
real, and the Christian is on Jewish not Christ
ian grounds who fails to understand this. It is
given the Christian to believe that in no point
of our condition does Christ fail us — not in our
temptations, for he himself has experienced
them ; and not in our sinning, since he knows
the almost compelling power of our lusts at
times to control us, and since he knows that
the heart of our woe is here.
If it be said — There is no teaching in scripture
of any such unfolding of our race out of a lower
and merely animal creation, it may be an
swered : Such a truth as this was not for the
bible to teach; it had to wait the time ap
pointed for its revelation in the slow unfolding
of the human reason. It was clearly outside
the sphere of Christ, since it belonged in strict
ness to the realm of science, nor was the

The Incarnation 157
world in any sense ripe for it in his day. Our
faith is not weakened on this account. It is
enough for us that whether our Lord had this
truth consciously in mind or not, his work was
in accordance with it. It is enough that, if we
accept it as a truth, it helps to explain Christ ;
it illumines his life among us, and it makes
plainer the meaning of his death. We accept
this truth — those of us who do accept it — be
cause its light, like that of all truth acquired
from whatever source, blends with the light
that shines in Christ to add to its clearness and
beauty. Inasmuch as our line of thought has brought
us to the incarnation, I will add a few words
concerning light thrown directly by recent dis
coveries on this great theme. Among the
Christian doctrines this is profound beyond all
the rest — mysterious also, and impossible for a
finite mind fully to comprehend. And yet in
all ages a deeply seated instinct has led men to
believe in it. Here also we have important
help furnished us by a better knowledge of the
nature of matter. For if matter is in its
essence, as now seems probable, a form of
force, then it is more nearly allied than has
been supposed with spirit, and we may more
easily conceive of it as a product of the eternal
spirit, not wholly unlike its source.

158 A More Excellent Way
We have been wont to separate sharply two
spheres of our spirits' intercourse — that with
the world of matter, and that between us and
God. This is less necessary now for two
reasons : First, because we know that the most
spiritual exercises of the human mind have
their appropriate nerve — which of course means
material— excitations. The precise relation be
tween these two is indeed still a mystery, but
the fact of the connection between them, and
of the very great closeness of the connection,
and of the almost infinite fineness of this nerve
matter fitting it for its function in the spirit's
behalf, is no longer a mystery ; it is very clearly
and certainly known.
Another thing, revealed indeed, in Christ,
but very imperfectly comprehended, we begin
somewhat better to understand — that God, who
breathed his own Spirit into matter, making it
a thing fit to furnish a body for the soul he
loved, can himself, naturally and not by a
species of violence, employ a body to be his
medium in holding communion with that soul.
This is the simple rationale of the incarnation,
whose actualization the filial heart leaps to find
in Christ. It is an act in its nature evidently
akin to that in creation. In both God is seen
in the exercise of a power inherent in his being,
of coming into relation with a somewhat other

The Incarnation 159
than himself. In the latter the power to give
birth to a world on which his love may bestow
itself. In "the former the power to identify
himself with his creation in order to accomplish
the end sought by it.
One of the most marked and wisest tenden
cies of theological thought in our age is seen
in the effort to rid the Christian system of
the seemingly unnatural elements that have
abounded in it, and to lift it as far as possible
into the realm of the natural, or I might per
haps better say the larger natural. We may
surely rejoice if we can see this to be measur
ably true even in the mysterious doctrine of the
incarnation itself.

XIII
GOD'S SYMPATHY WITH MAN
In the last chapter we considered the peculiar
claim upon the divine sympathy which the re
cently discovered facts of man's origin seem to
give us. A few thoughts were offered also
concerning the presence of God with us in the
incarnation. We saw that the assumption of
our flesh was not to be conceived of as a thing
foreign to the being of God, but as wholly
germane to it, and suited to our case. Coming
now to the examination of Christ's life with a
view to discover the leading features of his
sympathy, we find ourselves on familiar ground.
The following seem the features of especial use
to us.
The three most common forms of earthly
trouble aside from sin are poverty, sickness,
and a poor inheritance of natural gifts. Much
might be said, and much has been said, con
cerning the wonderful sympathy which our
Lord showed men in all these forms of their
trouble — in the first, poverty, sharing their lot
1 60

God's Sympathy with Man 161
with them, since this was in his power; in the
second, sickness, spending himself for their
cure; and in the third, degeneracy, taking
them with a peculiar tenderness into his great
heart's protecting love. These and such as
these were included, with the children, in the
number of his "little ones." This was indeed
true of all who were small in their own and the
world's estimation, if they would let him be
their friend. But it was men in their sins —
which he saw so clearly to be the source whence
came their greatest need — that he loved and
cared for the most. Here, where their fellow-
men had the most of judgment and the least
of sympathy for them, he had the most of
sympathy. This sympathy, while more actively dis
played toward hearts that were open to his
approach, appeared also in yearnings over
those rejecting him. Instances of this were
his weeping over Jerusalem and his prayer on
the cross for his crucifiers.
Perhaps nothing else added so peculiar an
element of power to our Lord's ministry as the
new consciousness it awakened in souls of the
nearness of God and of the abundance of grace
from him that was flowing about them. The
apostle John reports, as among the earliest of
our Lord's great sayings, this: "For God so

1 62 A More Excellent Way
loved the world that he gave his only begotten
Son, that whosoever believeth may in him
have eternal life."
How triumphant is the ring of hope in this
saying — hope in our Lord's own heart, and
hope for the world of lost men ! As such it
finds an echo to-day under heaven's wide
dome, wherever man is found. The vast and
universal welcome given these words is not
merely on account of the love they describe,
nor its freeness, such that no barriers of ignor
ance nor even hatred in man can hinder it;
but it springs even more out of the feeling of
wonder that such a love can animate the heart
of the Almighty towards such beings as we
are. This is our first acquaintance with the
real glory of God. It is our first vision of him
in that infinite love that flows out in a divine
adaptation to the needs of all his creatures.
And the wonder of it constantly grows upon
us, as we observe the manner in which God
comes into our lives in Christ — so full is he of
a truly heavenly sympathy ; reaching to all the
life, its sins even not excepted, and turning our
deepest darkness into a glad morning light. A
buoyant spirit marked those first years of our
Lord's ministry. It was a period of heavenly
hope and cheerful enthusiasm. Earth has never
seen another like it ; will never see another.

God's Sympathy with Man 163
But a marked change was impending, and it
dates from about the time of the withdrawal
of the popular favor, near the end of the
second year of his work, consequent upon his
rejection of the people's offer to make him their
king and his exposure of the selfish spirit that
in reality underlay this enthusiasm. The de
fection of so many would naturally suggest the
fact, of which he was not ignorant, that the
nation as a whole would soon reject him, while
it could not fail to deepen his feeling of the
destructive power of sin in man's being. From
this time accordingly the real nature of sin as
the seed of death in the soul began more to
occupy his mind, as also the necessity of his
own death in order to a complete victory over
it. The first distinct prediction of his death
was made about this time.1 The eternally
foreordained end of his life toward which all
was moving assumed henceforth a great place
in the Savior's teaching. This did not inter
fere with the old cheerful sympathy, nor with
the constant kindly activities of healing and of
teaching ; but there was blended with these so
compassionate a feeling for our evil case by
reason of our sin, and the utter ruin it is work
ing in us, that, taken in connection with his
death for sin's cure, it has made the world
1 Math, xvi., 21.

1 64 A More Excellent Way
over, and turned our life here into an infinitely
more sacred and precious thing.
Prominent among the influences emanating
from our Lord's ministry at this period was his
urgent commendation to his disciples of the
cross principle as the one true and all-blessed
means of their escape from their woes. It
cannot be said that this principle was new in
human experience. The fact of love, or right
in some other of its forms, swaying the spirit
even to the point of death willingly incurred in
its behalf, was a familiar one in all lands. None
the less was it left to Jesus to proclaim that
eternal devotion of self to higher ends which
is for all men the last obligation of right, as
well as the soul's highest blessedness.
These sayings of Christ take on two forms :
the one more outward in which he declares
that bearing one's cross — meaning thereby,
as he explains, the renunciation of all things
for his sake — is the one condition of true dis-
cipleship : the other in which he teaches that
herein alone is the reality of spiritual life. It
will suffice to bring before us a single instance
of each.
i. Christ had been predicting his early
death. Peter protested, ' ' Let this be far from
thee, O Lord." Jesus turned to him and said:
"Get thee behind me, Satan, for thou art a

God's Sympathy with Man 165
stumbling-block unto me; for thou mindest
not the things of God, but the things of man."
The form of this rebuke carries us back to the
scene in the wilderness. The best explanation
both of its form and of its severity is, that it
brought to the remembrance of our Lord the
attempt of Satan at that time to induce him
to prefer the ministry of power to that of suf
fering. Peter became to Jesus a Satan be
cause, instigated evidently by Satan, he
appealed to that same feeling in his heart. In
no other way does it seem possible to account
for the fact that Peter became a stumbling-
block to Jesus. Jesus now accordingly reaf
firms for himself and binds on his disciples the
law of self-abnegation, which in the wilderness
he adopted as his life-principle, saying : " If any
man would come after me, let him deny him
self and take up his cross and follow me. For
whosoever would save his life shall lose it ; and
whosoever shall lose his life for my sake shall
find it." The universal obligation of the
spirit of self-sacrifice when required for right's
sake is the truth here declared ; and we are
assured that without it no substantial union in
character with God can be attained.
2. That the cross bearing spirit has in it the
elements of increased present happiness our
Lord did not fail even in these more outward

1 66 A More Excellent Way
sayings to make clear. "Ye shall have mani
fold more in this present time, and in the world
to come life everlasting." In the sixth chap
ter of the gospel of John the spiritual law is
expounded from which this follows. In the
discourse there reported Jesus said: "I am
the true bread, which came down from heaven.
If any man eat of this bread he shall live for
ever, and the bread which I will give him is
my flesh for the life of the world." Mind, he
says not, The bread which I will give him is
my flesh, but my flesh for the life of the world ;
that is my flesh given in sacrifice for mankind.
The true divine life is in you, he says, accord
ing as you receive into your hearts the spirit
that will be manifested by me when my body
is offered up on the cross for the world's life.
This was a saying intended to be a power in
these disciples, when they should have become
witnesses of his death ; it was intended to be a
saying for the church to possess to the end of
time. And as its importance was vast, it was
not left to stand alone as here uttered. It
was, in substance, repeated with a great access
of meaning at the last supper, when Jesus took
the broken bread and gave it to his disciples
with the words: "This is my body, which is
given for you, this do in remembrance of me."
A thing very marked in our Lord was the

God's Sympathy with Man 167
peculiar suffering which he evidently felt in the
prospect of his death. This suffering took the
form of those painful and gloomy anticipations
which largely filled his mind as the end ap
proached. It is true that we are wont to think
of his whole life as invested with an undertone
of sadness on this account ; but in the earlier
years the evidences of it are so slight that we
question whether it may not be our fancy only
that perceives it. Towards the end this feel
ing grows deeper, and even expresses itself
at times in passionate words of sorrow and dis
tress. This power of the fact of his impending
death to affect the mind of Jesus is beyond
what the circumstances, as they appear on the
surface, would seem to justify. The first of
these outbreaks of suffering known to us oc
curred about a year before his death. "I came
to cast fire on the earth, and what will I if it
be already kindled? But I have a baptism to
be baptized with, and how am I straitened till
it be accomplished ! ' ' Fire is for cleansing,
but it is for cleansing by consumption of the
dross. This seems to be Christ's thought. By
his death he is to accomplish such a work of
purification. It is with a great feeling of dread
that he looks forward to it ; for it is to involve
his being "baptized with a baptism" — that is
plunged into, or overpowered by the waters,

1 68 A More Excellent Way
or better perhaps the fires — of suffering; and
his heart is straitened within him at the pros
pect. The tender feeling of Jesus for his dis
ciples is shown by the fact that this prevision
of his own sufferings awakens in him the
thought that they will have to share in them.
He goes on to picture their sufferings, especially
those arising from the disruption of families,
and the tearing asunder of earth's most tender
ties. Our Lord's tender feeling for his disciples
as destined to suffer with him, was shown on
another occasion, when the mother of James
and John came to him to beg places of honor
in his kingdom for her sons. The story says
that Jesus turned to the young men and asked
them : "Can ye drink of the cup that I drink,
and be baptized with the baptism that I am
baptized with?" When they in their ignor
ance answered yes, he did not rebuke them for
their presumption ; but accepted the fidelity of
discipleship which he discerned as the truest
of all the mixed feelings in their hearts, and re
plied with a tender and beautiful sympathy:
"The cup that I drink, shall ye drink, and with
the baptism that I am baptized withal shall ye
be baptized." Here again the word baptized
comes in, and conveys the same profound feel
ing — not of the few sharp pangs that should

God's Sympathy with Man 169
end all, but of a tide of sorrows that should
overwhelm him, and them together with him.
A very interesting disclosure of the feeling
of Jesus in anticipation of his death was made
when certain Greeks were introduced to him
by Philip on the day of his triumphal entry
into Jerusalem. This coming of the Greeks
was a rare event ; and the first thought it sug
gested to him was that of the ultimate triumph
of his cause, of which this served to his mind as
an omen. He cried out : "The hour has come
when the Son of man shall be glorified." This
joyful exclamation affects us with a peculiar
feeling of pleasure, because it proves that at
this period an exalted forecast of the result of
his self-sacrifice did sometimes possess him.
This was immediately followed by a profound
saying: "Except a seed fall into the ground,
and die, it abideth by itself alone ; but if it die,
it beareth much fruit." The connection of
thought in this saying is clear. Jesus saw his
body and mere bodily life to be to the centre
of his being, the divine spirit animating him,
what the envelope is to the germ in the kernel
of wheat. As this envelope must die to afford
nourishment to the germ for whose use it ex
ists, so must his body perish that the spirit
might enter into a more victorious life. Follow
ing this his thought turns here again to the

17° A More Excellent Way
disciples. He thinks of their lives as subject to
the same principle, and announces once more,
but with an increased impressiveness, the truth
already so familiar to their ears: "He that
hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto
life eternal. ... If any man serve me, let
him follow me, and where I am, there shall my
servant be ; if any man serve me, him will my
Father honor." The way in which they are to
follow him is that of the cross, leading on to
the glory beyond. But this brings up before
him the vision of that pathway: its sorrows
rise in his heart and almost overwhelm him.
He cries out in his distress: "Now is my soul
troubled, and what shall I say? Father, save
me from this hour." We can but ask what
means this sudden outburst of feeling? It
seems as though the conflict of the wilderness
were here for a moment renewed ; and that the
sight of these Greeks, impelled by an inward
force to seek him, suggested the thought that
possibly even yet the harvest of the world
might be reaped without his being plunged,
and his people with him, into this baptism of
suffering. If this be his thought, it is but for
a moment; and his last cry arises: "But for
this cause came I unto this hour; Father,
glorify thy name." Thereupon came a voice
out of heaven: "I have both glorified it and

God's Sympathy with Man

171

will glorify it again." The fact that on each
of these occasions the Lord admits his disciples
to share with him in his suffering should put
us on our guard against the disposition to as
cribe these anticipatory sufferings to an atoning
quality in his death of such a nature that they
could have no participation in it. No stronger
argument than that afforded by these passages
could be urged against that disposition.
On the other hand, it is not necessary to
suppose, it is quite impossible to suppose, that
they could taste the full bitterness of the cup
their master was called to drink. No such in
tensity of suffering was possible to them as
came by the eternal foreordination to him.
The last scene of our Lord's suffering antici
patory of his death — that in the garden of
Gethsemane — affords the most abundant proof
of this. The betrayal has not yet been con
summated, but Jesus knows it to be in prepara
tion, and has vividly before his mind the cup
he is to drink. If the prayer is to have its full
significance, we must suppose it to be still pos
sible in the nature of things that the cup
should be avoided. Not on the cross itself do
we see greater agony than that which now
comes upon him. He tells the three who are
with him: "My soul is exceeding sorrowful
even unto death." In such a strait it is only

172 A More Excellent Way
prayer that can relieve him, and in this he
must be alone with the Father. He goes for
ward a little and falling on his knees cries:
"O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup
pass from me." He adds: "Nevertheless not
as I will, but as thou wilt." This is repeated
three times. Luke tells us that in his agony,
"His sweat became as it were great drops of
blood falling down upon the ground."
It is evident that Christ's tumult of feeling
in the garden was a renewal, in heightened in
tensity, of the conflict he had when the Greeks
came to be introduced to him, as this was itself
a renewal of the conflict in the wilderness. If
there was a question it was not between going
on with and giving up his work, but rather
the old question — forced again by this last
agony of anticipation on his mind — between
the method of power and that of suffering.
When, after the struggle was over, Peter drew
his sword and cut off the high priest's servant's
ear, Jesus said to him: "Thinkest thou I can
not beseech my Father, and he will even now
send me more than twelve legions of angels? "
This renders certain the presence of the
thought that the method of power was not
even now impossible. But he goes on to say :
"How then should the scriptures be fulfilled
that thus it must be? " We have here, per-

God's Sympathy with Man 173
haps, the most remarkable thing of all in this
preparatory scene — the feeling of the great ne
cessity that urged the Savior on — that will of
God, high, unalterable, which his lofty spirit
could do nothing but obey, whithersoever it
might lead him.

XIV
THE BOND OF SUFFERING
THE facts of our Lord's death, outwardly
considered, are entirely familiar. His betrayal
by one of his disciples, his conviction by a
prejudiced court, who stooped to receive the
aid of perjured witnesses, his desertion by his
friends, his being handed back and forth be
tween Pilate and Herod, the confirmation of
his sentence by the Roman governor against
his own sense of right, the cruelties practised
against him by the soldiers, the brutal cries
of the rabble demanding his death and refus
ing the pardon urged by Pilate — these were
but the preliminaries, and are chiefly noticeable
because of their appropriateness to the events
that followed.
As to the form of execution employed in our
Lord's case, that by crucifixion, it was prob
ably the most shameful and the most distress
ing of any then in use. Loving hearts turn sick
at the thought of that sacred body, whose
very touch was healing, hung up to drag on
174

The Bond of Suffering 1 75
the cruel nails through the heat of that day ;
of the torn and bleeding tendons, the mockery,
the thirst, the cruel thoughts toward him of the
concourse gathered to witness the sight. Our
painful sense of the ignominy endured by this
sufferer is heightened by the extraordinary ele
vation of his character. It is this which excites
in us the feeling of shame and even of dread.
Has the history of the universe another such
sight to show? Will it patiently endure to
behold this sight?
And yet we are aware that these are only the
outward aspects of Christ's death; and that
these sufferings, great as they are, are what
many noble-minded men in every age of the
world have borne. Ingratitude! a multitude
of benefactors of their kind have learned the
meaning of that word. Nor was Jesus the
first exalted spirit to suffer ignominy. Nor
was he alone in the respect that, having de
voted himself to a great cause, he was com
pelled at his death to see it scarcely as yet
begun — a cause despised, and to human eyes
without a future. In all these respects Jesus
was at an advantage over his brethren whose
names are on the world's roll of noble suffer
ers. The very loftiness of his spirit, if it in
creased the incongruity of his being exposed
to such suffering, placed him higher than

176 A More Excellent Way
others above the power of "these light afflic
tions" to move him. As to the apparently
unpromising condition of his work, and there
is scarcely a sadder feeling, who else was per
mitted, like him, to know that the end was
eternally decreed to be success, and that these
very sufferings were appointed him only be
cause they were the essential means to that
success? Plainly these things could have had
little power over him ; nor was he, of all men,
one to hold his mere bodily life dear to him
that he should not gladly lay it down at his
Father's call.
And yet we find confronting us the fact that
the trouble on the mind of Jesus continued
substantially unrelieved through all the hours
of his suffering. We see no trace of the joy
swelling often into triumph, whfch has filled
the hearts of martyrs amid sufferings equally
great ; nor is there anything of the thoughtful
philosophy which lifted so high the soul of
Socrates. No other spirit that has existed has
had such store laid up of pleasant thoughts,
nor such power of taking refuge in them away
from earth's ills. He had dwelt in an exceed
ingly delightful union with God, and the sense
of this had been an ever-present consciousness.
It had supported him in his time of need; it
had been sufficient for him. Even this now

The Bond of Suffering 177
failed him, and its failure had the force of a
positive blow, added to all the rest ; for it pro
duced the sense of being abandoned by God
himself. I am not disposed to lessen the force
of that cry, "My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me? ' ' nor to believe that it means only
a momentary triumph of human weakness.1
It is to me more reverent, and more in sym
pathy with our Lord's frame of mind, to let it
stand as expressing a real element of his suffer
ing. Is it not indeed the highest expression
of the most significant feature of our Lord's
passion — the fact of its being so wholly un
relieved? Here as never before, and never
again, our Lord was alone — this was the mark
of the hour.
If now we inquire as to the real inward
nature of his suffering, one answer only seems
to be in accordance at once with the antece
dent probabilities of the case and with the
facts as they are narrated. It could not have
been the ordinary suffering of noble hearts un
der the reproach of men. It could not have been
the incongruity of a nature divinely pure, ex
posed to endure such contradiction of sinners.
1 The thought that these words, which are employed in one
of the psalms, occurred to Christ amid his suffering, and found
utterance as expressive of his own feeling, mitigates, but does
not, to my mind, remove the difficulty.

1 78 A More Excellent Way
It could not have been the temporary mastery
of a feeling that his Father was displeased with
him, though in reality his love was as freely
and richly bestowed as ever. We cannot be
lieve that any other explanation of our Lord's
suffering in his death is sufficient, except to
say that it was the final supreme exercise of
that sympathy with men in their woe by reason
of their sin, which was his deliberate choice at
the beginning of his ministry, and had been
from that day on the ruling motive of his life.1
We have seen that for a full year before his
death our Lord's sympathy with men had been
assuming, increasingly, the form of a profound
feeling of the ruin which sin was working in
them. More and more, as the end drew nearer,
did he seem to be bearing this their greatest
sorrow on his heart. This process simply
reached its fulfilment in his death.
1 It is proper that a word of just obligation should here be
frankly spoken. It was given to that great religious thinker,
President Edwards, in his treatise entitled The Divine
Satisfaction for Sin — to the writer's mind the most illumin
ating of all treatises on this subject — to set forth the real
nature of these sufferings with a power peculiar to himself.
Many subsequent thinkers, notably Dr. James McLeod Camp
bell in his book, The Nature of the Atonement, have furnished
evidence of abundant fruit borne by these thoughts. If the
present treatment of this subject have any merit, it will come
largely from the writer's having absorbed these thoughts and
having carried them out to their results.

The Bond of Suffering 1 79
Think what it is we believe. We believe
that in the dealings of Christ, the Son of God,
with sinners, the perfect laws of the divine love
are seen in actual operation among us; and
that his death in our behalf is their very high
est expression. What then, more closely con
sidered, are the facts of his death? From
midnight on during the slow unfolding hours
till three o'clock in the afternoon of the next
day our Lord was shut in to the sole contact
with sinners, in the full exercise, under intense
excitement of passion, of all the evil in their
hearts. Consider that this was true of him
when the one passion of his heart was sym
pathy with them in the evil sin was working in
their lives. Think to what an agony of sorrow
for them his spirit must have been wrought, as
he went through that day in the acute con
sciousness that he was the single object on
which the moral evil in them poured itself out.
Here were these great numbers of people of
every class — men, women, and children. Here
were great magistrates, teachers learned in the
law, many persons faithful in public worship,
many with good repute as neighbors and citi
zens, and considered excellent in the family.
Here were multitudes of another kind; evil-
minded, profligate, full of cruelty, scoffers
against God. Here were others still, caring in

180 A More Excellent Way
general for the right ; but in this instance in
different, caring more for personal interest or
comfort. These were all alike in this, that
their faces were turned away from the light;
all, save the handful of faithful ones, letting
out upon him who was himself the world's
light their evil passions — contempt, hatred,
cruelty, or the least guilty their indifference —
scarce a trace of open sympathy tendered him ;
men and women glad to see him suffer; glad
that they could add to his sufferings ; glad to
be rid of him, and not able to see that to be
rid of him was to be rid of hope of heaven, and
of God's love.
Should they be in such woeful wretchedness,
and no heart anywhere in God's universe know
about it, or care for it? Here was one heart
seeing and feeling it all ; knowing it indeed to
the very full; knowing what it meant and all
that it meant, and all that it was ; and making
all this shame and loss its own; love's own;
yes, tasting all its bitterness, drinking the cup
to the full.
For he saw it, and felt it, as it would work
itself out in the far-off end. He, from God's
home of love, and filled to his being's depths
with the sense of the blessedness of the life of
God, felt what that was in which alone this sin
could end — the loss of God's love, the being

The Bond of Suffering 181
shut out of the blessedness of the kingdom.
How those words of his own, "the outer dark
ness," must have filled his spirit now! What
a meaning that word death, which he had so
often used, must have had for him now ; while
he, the life indeed, yielded himself up to the
power of such a death ! Must not this awful
thing, physical death, so foreign to his being,
have meant to him at this hour all that of
which it is a symbol to a perishing world — the
forfeiture of the eternal life itself, the eternal
soul death? Lo, his Father's face is hidden!
Hear his longing cry for the divine sympathy
withheld. Why, if not that it was part of
that eternal counsel, whose high necessity he
owned, that he should be left entirely free — as
one from whom all other thoughts, and espe
cially all comforting thoughts, and, most of all,
the thought of his own utter blessedness should
be for the time withdrawn — to become perfect
in his sympathy with the need of guilty sin
ners and the completeness of their impending
loss? And so here again, as all through his life,
the thought that abides and conquers every
other is that of the necessity laid upon him.
It is always present, sometimes in softened
form, as in the parable of the shepherd dying
to defend his sheep. But he cannot cry, "I

1 82 A More Excellent Way
am the good shepherd ; I lay down my life for
the sheep," without adding, "This command
ment have I received." Even in that earlier,
all-triumphant proclamation of salvation, "God
so loved the world that he gave his only be
gotten Son," amid the joy tones that resounded
through earth and in heaven, and in which the
sobs of the redeemed mingled with the rejoic
ings of angels in light, that awful "must," "So
must the Son of man be lifted up," rang out
like the tone of a great solemn far-off bell, amid
them all, beyond them all, wide as the universe.
Let no creature of God, from the highest to
the lowest, imagine he can escape from the
necessity laid upon him. God himself does
not escape it. Even he must do what is right,
or cease to be God. Blessed are the disciples
of the divine master who can say with him:
"Nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt."
Blessed are they who wear his motto: "Here
am I to do thy will, O God." God give us
all to see this in our Lord, and to apprehend
the crowning glory won by it ; for now at last
the cup which he dreaded but would not refuse
has been drunk; the solemn, eternal necessity
is accomplished; and in the hush of nature,
while the darkness rolls from the sun, the last
cry arises from the great sufferer, for every one
among his fellow-men to hear — ' ' It is finished. ' '

XV
MAN'S SYMPATHY WITH GOD
The object sought in this treatise is to inter
pret the special way provided by God, whereby
man may come into communion with himself.
If there is any single guiding thought in the
book, it is this, that the word communion
means not sympathy, but reciprocity of sym
pathy; God's purpose being that there should
eventually arise between himself and man a
communion of this complete sort — each coming
into a loving participation with the other in
his life.
In our previous study of the Savior's life
we have been chiefly occupied with its disclos
ure of the great Father's sympathy with us in
our condition of need. It is necessary for us to
have, and to know that we have, this sym
pathy of God with us in our condition. It is,
if possible, even more essential that we be our
selves brought into a living sympathy with God
in his thoughts concerning us. Then only can
there begin to exist a true communion between
183

1 84 A More Excellent Way
us. Then only can there arise between us that
love of mutuality in which alone can be found
our perfection of life. It is in our Lord's death
that the motives are found best fitted to
awaken in us this second part of communion.
Our Lord himself affirmed: "And I, if I be
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto
me. ' ' This was in effect to say, ' ' My death on
the cross will so reveal the character of God as
to clothe it with the greatest possible attractive
power upon the minds of men. " It remains for
us now to consider this element of peculiar
power contained in our Lord's death.
I. Observe first the extraordinary exhibition
of sin's true nature made in the scene about
the cross set in contrast, as it was, with the
stainless purity of him who hung upon it.
We need to bear in mind that the sin at the
crucifixion was the common sin of human-kind ;
that the perpetrators of it were not depraved
beyond the average of humanity. Judas and
Herod Antipas were probably the worst of
them ; and were it given us clearly to see the
motives animating each of these, it may be
doubted if we should find their guilt to be
aggravated beyond that of a multitude of
others among men. The members of the San
hedrin that convicted Jesus were a company
of conservative gentlemen, ranking, many of

Man's Sympathy with God 185
them doubtless deservedly, among the most
honored in a city famous for its high moral
tone. The Roman soldiers, cruel as was their
treatment of Jesus, were like soldiers the world
over. The disciples were probably not less
true than the average of disciples to-day.
The rabble was only an ordinary city rabble.
The crowd of indifferent onlookers were, as the
majority of easy-going people in all the ages
and all the lands, busier with their own interests
than with those of righteousness. The cross,
indeed, as a scenic world-spectacle — and it ac
corded with the divine purpose that it should
bear that character — was plainly ordered to the
end that, as regards the merely human element
in it, it should exhibit only an average of
human sinfulness. The wonder and terror of
the scene lay in the fact that this average
of human sinfulness stands out here in a pure
light, free from all false glamours: for over
against it is set high and clear, for all the world
to see, the stainless righteousness of the Son
of God. It was on the little company of dis
ciples that stood about the cross that the im
pression of this must have been at the time the
strongest ; but in the end does not all the world
of Christ's followers partake in it? We are all
there ; none are absent now ; it is in our pres
ence the scene transpires. Our ears catch the

1 86 A More Excellent Way
murmur of the Savior's distress, our eyes
behold his sufferings, and through all the
avenues of our perception his wounded purity
and love assail our hearts. Is there more than
one side which any one, however corrupt his
heart may be, can take ; if only he believes this
being to be "God with us," and sees him en
during the contradiction of sinners in our be
half? Is there any who must not, for the time
at least, side with God as against his enemies,
and feel as he feels, sin's utter shame; the
blessedness of heaven's purity?
2. We are familiar with two prominent forms
which the divine love assumed in the Savior's
death, each of them clothed with great power ;
that of benevolence, or the purest good-will to
the lost race of man ; and that of sacrifice, or
the readiness to endure the last extreme of
suffering necessary to give effect to that good
will. It is evident that these two may often
belong together, and that when they do, the
relation between them is that which has been
expressed. Good-will to others is an end in
itself. It yields, in the case of a generous
mind, as real a happiness to him who bestows
as to him who receives it. This is not true of
suffering, which is never properly an end, but
at the best only a means to an end. Man is
made for happiness, and suffering is of itself

Man's Sympathy with God 187
evil and only evil. This very fact makes its
voluntary endurance, when required for some
high necessity, the greatest evidence possible
of a supreme unselfishness. On the other
hand, to invent supposed occasions of suffering
for certain mystical virtues imagined to reside
in them, and more particularly for the example
of virtue they are supposed to set men, is a
mere striving after wind, a going ceaselessly
about in an endless circle. Weighed in proper
balances it amounts to this — suffering to the
end that there may be more suffering. It is,
in a word, an unlimited and aimless propagation
of earth's greatest evil next to sin.
Much of the current writing, and it is to be
feared the current preaching, on the subject of
the atonement is liable to the charge that it
opens a door, which it fails in the issue prop
erly to shut, for the imputation of this weak
ness to our Lord's sacrifice. That sacrifice is
presented (in strict accordance with the bible
representations) as so truly divine in its nobil
ity of self-sacrifice, that no other motive to
our admiration or gratitude can equal it. If
further asked what the ultimate object was
sought in the suffering, since it appeared not
forced by unavoidable circumstances, but vol
untarily endured, no definite answer is at
tempted. It is simply reiterated that the

188 A More Excellent Way
suffering was great, and that it was undergone
in our behalf.
It is clear how little comfort such an answer
can furnish to those who see in suffering a
needless waste of an important good, happi
ness, unless some sufficient end beyond itself
is plainly accomplished by it. Dr. Bushnell,
in his profoundly suggestive treatise on The
Vicarious Sacrifice, sets our Lord's object be
fore us as "the healing of souls"; a true
answer, if properly interpreted. But in Bush-
nell's elucidation of this "healing," we search
in vain for the clear statement of any other
elements of power it contains than its example
of self-sacrifice. The question may, indeed,
arise whether our lack of ability to undergo
self-sacrifice may be possibly such as to require
the help of that great example. Only in the
want of other sufficient means to that end can
we conceive this to be true. But who needs to
be told that the abundance of such means pro
vided for us in the very constitution of the
world is so great as to be the one inscrutable
mystery of our existence? The days of most
of us are crowded full of occasions to deny our
selves, either for the maintenance of our own
souls' integrity under some supreme trial of
our faith, or for the welfare of our neighbors.
It is not in occasions of this discipline that our

Man's Sympathy with God 189
life is lacking, but in the willing heart that dis
covers such occasions when they arise, and
faithfully embraces them. If the cross be such
as to teach this lesson, and win us to the prac
tice of it, then will it indeed be divinely fitted
to our need. We are assured by our Lord that
such is its real meaning — that he freely offered
himself in order to accomplish for mankind an
indispensable good, even the forgiveness of the
sins of the world. This is the one distinctly
declared, all-sufficient key to the meaning of
the atonement. We cannot adhere to it too
closely. It is true the way was not clearly de
fined in which our Lord's death avails for our
forgiveness with God. The theme is a very
high one, and it is laid upon us by the divine
wisdom to seek for its explanation, with such
light as we can get from the Savior himself
and from the Spirit of truth whom he has sent.
That our quest, if sincere, however far below
our wishes its results may fall, will bring us
into a very gracious sympathy with many
thoughts of God concerning us, none need
doubt. We have seen his perfect purity and abhor
rence of sin to have their place among these
thoughts. The way is now clear to add to
these a desire on the part of God to forgive
and receive into favor his erring children, such

190 A More Excellent Way
that no extremity of sacrifice could hinder him
from fulfilling it. These are traits of the divine
character full to the highest degree of motive-
power over the minds of men. They are full
of attractive power — the power to win souls, if
they can possibly be won, to that sincere re
pentance which is the necessary condition, the
one door of entrance, to the heavenly forgive
ness. So true is this that St. Paul deemed it
the sign of a peculiar depth of moral degrada
tion not to know that "the goodness of God
leadeth us to repentance." The testimony of
missionaries, and others that labor among the
most degraded of mankind, is clear to the
effect that nothing else compares with this in
its power to move such hearts to penitence for
the past and aspiration for the future.
3. This goodness of God, as it is revealed
in our Lord's death for our sins, presents a
variety of aspects, each having its own attrac
tion for souls, and this is only what might be
expected, since great characters in the crises
of their lives reveal naturally the complex ele
ments which make them great. We have
already considered the decisive choice made by
our Lord, when about to enter on his ministry,
of the method of sympathy as against that of
power. This was indeed a crucial test of love,
and clothed his life with a very peculiar charm

Man's Sympathy with God 191
for the winning of our hearts. It is the friend
who comes in under our poor roof in the hour
of our trouble, and sits beside us, holding our
hand in his, at whose loving touch the barriers
of distance melt away, and our souls flow out
to him. It was this method of work that our
Lord chose to adopt, and the history of the
world in all its ages since witnesses to the in
numerable throng which it has drawn in love
and devotion to his side. We have seen that
this quality in his death surpassed even the
exhibition which his life had made of it. For
here the sympathy of God rose to the awful
height of becoming partaker with us in our sins
themselves, and the doom they would bring
upon us if unrepented of. But if there can be
any goodness of God that should lead us to
sympathy with himself and repentance of our
sins, it must assuredly be this.
4. The humility of God is another of his at
tributes clothed with a peculiar power. This
trait, little esteemed in ancient times, save in
the Old Testament, is still as far as possible
from being one of the world's favorite virtues.
St. Paul does not hesitate to ascribe it to his
Lord, not viewed as man, but viewed as God.
He sets before us for our imitation the eternal
Son, whose right it was to claim equality with
God, but who took upon him the form of a

192 A More Excellent Way
servant, even our human form, and in the
greatness of his humility became obedient unto
death itself, the death of the cross. Observe
how well this instance exemplifies humility's
true nature. Humility, in its essential nature,
is not thinking meanly of ourselves ; it is our
being ready, at any clear call of right, to lay
aside our claims on the regard of others, and
to become less than nothing in any eyes save
those of God. This is the humility which the
world itself, when it is nearest to God, sees to
be great — the humility which must have been
present to the mind of Carlyle when he called
it, "In all senses Godlike, and the parent of all
Godlike virtues." Has human -kind indeed ever
witnessed a sight more fitted to win it to sym
pathy with God than that of the humility of
its divine Savior? He does not hold himself
aloof from us poor sinners, nor deal with us
from a footing far above us ; he becomes one
of us, takes his place beside us, enters with a
charming sympathy into all our forlorn experi
ences, treats us in every way like brothers.
This is the sweetest and mightiest form of
divine purity, love, righteousness; all com
bined in the humility of God.
5. The careful student of the death of Christ
may see in it still another feeling on God's
part, not distantly related to those we have

Man's Sympathy with God 193
considered, which may be best described by
the word honor. Honor stands in a near rela
tionship to justice, which is to form the subject
of our next chapter. Honor may be called a
glorified justice ; and such is the feeling of God
displayed in the cross to which I now call at
tention. It is a preparation in love with which
his justice, is as it were, treated, antecedently
to his being called upon to dispense it. Let
me seek to make clear precisely what is
meant. There is a sight not uncommon on
our earth, which excites in generous minds a
feeling of peculiar abhorrence — it is that of
men holding positions which give them power
over the destinies of others, consigning their
fellow-men to some terrible misery with an in
difference which would seem impossible save to
one ignorant of the woe which he inflicts.
Many think of God as a hard taskmaster, and
treat him as though they supposed this to be
true of him. But his righteousness as he is re
vealed in Christ is not such as this. On the
contrary, it is with him as though he would
not consent to inflict the woe till he has first
tasted that doom himself. He still inflicts it ;
shuts sinners out of his halls of feasting; turns
them over to their own poor mockery of life if
they prefer it (only then we may be sure), but
he first himself drinks their cup in the all-perfect

194 A More Excellent Way
sympathy of his divine heart, even to the ful
ness of the penal woes which necessity may
compel him to pronounce against them. The
effect is such on the mind that, however near
to us these persons may be, and dear to our
hearts, we leave them in his hands with the
holiest possible feelings of trust, and thankful
ness, and love. Contemplate the wonderful
winning power in this. We are admitted, as it
were, to look in upon our Father in the very
process of his seeking to be reconciled to us
and win us into sympathy with his thoughts
towards us. He has not waited for us to
move; he has moved first. "The day spring
from on high hath visited us." Our judge
himself has come first, with the fulness of his
heavenly sympathy. He has looked at our
life from our point of view, making himself
acquainted with our whole condition — yea,
with the very woes his judgment, if against
us, will occasion. Our sins only stand out the
blacker in their wickedness for this; and yet
greater far than our sins appear the gentleness,
the mercifulness, the perfection of honor even,
in our God. How sincere indeed the repent
ance must be of our heart, how blest also the
reconciliation between us and God, obtained
by means like these !
Our Lord, after his return to the Father,

Man's Sympathy with God 195
said: "To him that overcometh will I give a
white stone, and upon the stone a new name
written, which no one knoweth but he that
receiveth it." What can this new name be
but a name descriptive of the work for that
soul's salvation — a work in which the two, that
soul and the Lord, have wrought together, in
what has steadily grown to be a mutual, and
even more a delightful sympathy, of mind and
heart ; until at last its end has been attained in
a communion between them impossible for
another to understand.

XVI
MEANING OF THE ATONEMENT
OUR Lord declared his death to be for the
forgiveness of sins ; and that he did not under
estimate the means adopted by God to accom
plish so great an end is made very clear. To
his mind the universe was deeply concerned.
Angels were looking on. He saw Satan falling
from heaven. The Father who sent him was
ready to furnish all needed help — to send him
legions of angels if necessary. Sin was a bar
rier high as heaven's walls parting souls from
God. This barrier was to be removed ; these
souls were to be brought nigh. This was to
be accomplished by a single transaction cover
ing a few very brief years of time, but in which
these august spiritual powers were to have their
part. All this is made clear. We are also
given to understand what was the principal
object sought by this transaction. It was to
illustrate to men the character of God, to the
end that coming to know him as he was, they
might be won to welcome him ; that they might
196

Meaning of the Atonement 197
be even won, in return for his sympathy with
them in their ways, to come into sympathy
with him in his thoughts.
I need waste no time to confirm a statement
so evidently justified by the whole tenor of the
New-Testament scriptures as this. Christ is
the pure, last, complete revelation of God, — of
his love as we are taught over and over again ;
of his justice in some sense, we are assured
in various ways, and especially in St. Paul's
great saying: "Whom God hath set forth to
be a propitiation, through faith, by his blood
. . . that he might himself be just, and the
justifier of him that hath faith in Jesus." 1
I set these acknowledged principles of truth
concerning Christ's death thus clearly before
our minds at the outset of this study of God's
justice, that they may serve as a safeguard to
protect us as far as possible from being im
properly affected by old conventional modes
of thinking. A difficult task is committed to
this age — the task not to undervalue, and still
more not to overvalue, for this is the greater
danger, the past. Especially do we need to
'It is conceded that the word translated "just" means
literally " righteous," but the form of righteousness intended
is so clearly that of justice that the revisers seem to have done
well in retaining that word in the text, while they put the
other in the margin.

198 A More Excellent Way
guard well against a snare into which the past
has often fallen, that of getting our measures
of thinking about God and his ways from man
and his ways; and our ideas on a subject of
awful majesty, that, namely, of the government
of God, from petty instances of government on
earth. It is indeed the danger of the petty as
distinguished from the large, the mechanical as
distinguished from the natural, that we have
especially to guard against. When we first
invent our own God, and then reason from
him, almost any conceivable horror may be the
result. Returning then to our theme, if the remis
sion of sins was the object sought more partic
ularly in the death of Christ, it is plain that
the love of justice must have been one of the
divine attributes entering deeply into that
event. Our Lord believed the great function
of the divine judgment at the end of the world
to be entrusted into his hands ; and this might
well be, since judgment unquestionably is one
of the attributes of the divine sovereignty.
But what would be thought of a judge whose
concern for justice should prove, in any par
ticular whatever, deficient? For justice is an
interest vast, universal, the safeguard every
where of the general welfare against the selfish
ness of individuals, essential to any proper

Meaning of the Atonement 199
fulness of life in rational creatures, and even
in God himself. Nor is justice in the form of
punishment of inferior importance. We must
not permit the halo that surrounds the heaven
of the redeemed to blind us to the awful splen
dors of retribution in the form of punishment.
We must not forget how much depends, in
the kingdom of divine love, on the firmness of
the hand that holds the scales. It is not for
giveness that is the pillar of righteous govern
ment — it is justice that is the everlasting
foundation of right in governments.
We have many means of knowing how well
our Lord understood this, and how dear this i
interest was to his heart. To him the judg
ment of the future was an exceedingly solemn
reality. We cannot think little of a fact that
to him was so great. Surely not if our busi
ness with him is to see in him "the image of
the invisible God," and to be ourselves trans
formed into that image.
Let us now turn our thoughts to our Lord's
death, with the intent to find in it that expres
sion of the love of justice in God which it must
have contained, and which we are assured it
did contain.
The great central thought of the cross
is clearly evident; it is this. In bearing

200 A More Excellent Way
vicariously in those sacred hours of his passion
our self-contempt, our self-reproach, our inward
disharmony, our consciousness of the divine
displeasure, our remorse at the evil we have
done to others, and at having wasted on our
lusts the heritage of a child of God, we know
that our Lord felt both the shame and the
disaster of our sin to the full.
As regards our Lord's feeling of the shame
of our sins I ask you to consider it as contain
ing in itself the elements of an absolutely per
fect repentance.
President Edwards, in his treatise on The
Divine Satisfaction for Sin, affirmed that an
adequate repentance would be a sufficient
reason for the divine forgiveness of sin. Upon
the, to us, strange metaphysical ground that
man is incapable of exerting such a repentance,
since his sins are against an infinite being, and
his repentance to be adequate must be infinite
— a thing impossible to a finite being — he dis
missed the thought. But a Scotch admirer of
Edwards, J. McLeod Campbell, seized upon
it; and this bore fruit in a book entitled The
Nature of the Atonement — a book by reason of
its thoughtfulness and purity of tone among
the most valuable which the century has given
us on this subject. The thought advanced
by Dr. Campbell, who seems to have taken

Meaning of the Atonement 201
for granted the truth of Edwards's remark,
was that Christ in his death "made a per
fect response in amen to the mind of God in
relation to sin." In doing this he rightly
"met the wrath" of God against sin, since
he exercised in effect for man a perfect re
pentance; or, to use his own words, he "ac
corded to justice that which was its due, and
could alone satisfy it." It was of course as
man's representative that Christ was conceived
as having acted — his perfect repentance being
accepted as though it were that of the race in
whose behalf he acted.
But this view was plainly open to the objec
tion which he himself had urged very strongly
against the old orthodox view ofthe atonement.
The old orthodox theory was that Christ's suf
ferings in dying for men were literally equal
in amount to all that the saved would have en
dured, had they been punished eternally. This
theory involved the assumption, sufficient of
itself to condemn it, that God may justly punish
the sins committed by souls in the very brief
and few years of the earthly life by an eternity
of suffering (and that, even though these sins
should have been abandoned in life's progress).
Eternal sin will in the necessity of things incur
an eternal retribution of punishment ; but what
mortal shall dare affirm so awful a seeming

202 A More Excellent Way
disproportion as that between a very finite
period of sinning; in many cases committed by
souls placed under most unfavorable circum
stances; and an eternity of punishment?
It was not this objection which Campbell
urged against the old orthodox theory, but
rather, that whatever the magnitude of Christ's
sufferings, God could not accept them in place
of what they were not, the penal sufferings of
guilty men. Campbell easily detected the
point of weakness in this scheme, and had
much to say regarding "the legal fiction"
which such a transaction would involve. He
strangely failed to see that equally the re
pentance of Christ in our behalf, supposing it
to have been perfect, cannot serve with God
as being our repentance, when in reality it is
not. And yet how gracious a thought of God
toward us it is, if our Lord in his death does,
as we all most profoundly believe to be the
case, perfectly "respond to the feeling of God
in relation to sin" ; for then he becomes to us
at least a perfect pattern of what our repent
ance to be complete must be. This opens the
way, as otherwise it could not be open for us,
to satisfy by a true repentance the justice of
God; for now, learning from Christ, we also
can come "into accordance with the mind of

Meaning of the Atonement 203
God in relation to sin"; in other words, we
can exercise a true repentance.
This proceeds on the supposition that Ed
wards was right in his assertion, and that a
perfect repentance would be a sufficient satis
faction to divine justice. The matter is one
of supreme importance in the study of the
atonement; nor can we advance with any as
surance whatever upon that pathway, except
by a thorough examination of it.
We saw in our study of the law of judgment
that there were four principal elements in the
punishment — or recoil of the moral law — which
the sinner brought upon himself by setting
himself against that law. These were :
Remorse.Inward disharmony (involving doubtless that
of the body also).
The displeasure of God.
Exclusion from heaven.
I can think of no possible form of punish
ment, torture of every kind excepted, that is
not included under some one of these four.
Let the reader bear in mind that these ele
ments of our punishment are all simply the
natural and necessary reaction of sin upon us,
as it is to the perfect vision of God. They are
what sin naturally does to one who indulges in
it — law being what it is and God a being who

204 A More Excellent Way
rules by law. Of these penalties of sin under
natural law, the central one and the one from
which the others derive their chief power is
the displeasure of God. This would, of course,
result in heaven's loss, since heaven is the
home of souls in harmony with God. The
feeling of God's displeasure would also be at
the root of all true remorse for sin. Remorse,
it is said, is a feeling little known in the savage
races — a thing to be expected, since they have
little knowledge of God, and little conception,
therefore, of the ideals of right whose home is
in the bosom of God. Julius Miiller, in his
Christian Doctrine of Sin, expressed his belief
that previous to any complete experience of
hell a soul must have seen the life in heaven ;
and we must suppose this to be in substance
true, for it is impossible to think of a soul as
knowing the remorse which is so essential an
element of its eternal punishment, save as it
has come somehow to know the glory of a life
conformed to God's perfect righteousness, and
the misery by comparison of a life subject to his
displeasure. True remorse for sin arises in the
soul that sees sin as it is in God's sight, and
knows itself to be guilty of it.
The spirit's inward disharmony also, if it be
of a nature to destroy its peace, springs from
the same source, the feeling of the divine dis-

Meaning of the Atonement 205
pleasure ; only we are to remember that there
may be in any, even the Christian soul, much
of variance between faculties not as yet brought
into completely harmonious action ; as also be
tween that soul and neighbor souls. But these
would not suffice to destroy the spirit's peace,
if it had a reasonable assurance of the divine
forgiveness and substantial approval. This
given, the substance of what the soul needs is
given. These things, then, constitute the punish
ment of sin. Is repentance of a nature to
stand with God in their stead? This is the
question before us. And the answer is: If
truly patterned after the example of Christ on
the cross it is, since it is in that case the spirit's
becoming conformed to God's thought con
cerning sin — it is seeing sin as God sees it ; it
is hating it as he hates it ; it is turning from it
to live superior to it, as he does. A perfect
repentance (furdvow.) would amount even to
this. Nor can any one for a moment imagine,
if he sees this repentance aright, that it would
not satisfy the feeling of justice in God. How
can justice require God to be displeased with
a soul that in very truth pleases him, since it
now thinks his thoughts and is in sympathy
with him? This is the one great object that
was sought, in man's creation, in the gift of

206 A More Excellent Way
Christ, and, as I believe, in law itself. It has
been accomplished. Can justice demand any
thing more?
This conclusion is greatly strengthened when
we consider the relation which punishment and
repentance bear to each other — a relation of
the very highest intrinsic importance, but which
seems to have been almost wholly left out thus
far in the study of the atonement.
Punishment, though to the one who suffers
it chiefly a subjective experience, is to the law
objective. It is the law's very objective thrust
at its own violation. This thrust is disarmed
of its power beforehand by repentance. For
what is repentance save the soul's preliminary
acceptance, by a movement of its own in free
will, of this action of the law ; acknowledging
its justice, and even taking on itself the penalty
the law demands? This is the only sufficient
explanation of the remorse, the inward distur
bance of the faculties, the sense of God's dis
pleasure, and the feeling that heaven is shut
against the spirit save as grace opens its doors
— which so characterize and constitute a genu
ine repentance. We have here the very ele
ments of a soul's punishment ; only they are
borne by its own act, and without the definite
thought of their being punishment. If this be
so, well may justice be satisfied with the sub-

Meaning of the Atonement 207
stitute it receives for the poor sinner's punish
ment. But we are brought here to a difficulty of
the most serious importance, and which might
seem at first sight almost fatal to our newly
awakened hopes. It is the difficulty created
by the fact that the average of repentance as it
actually exists among men is of so inferior a
quality ; so far, so very far, from being a per
fect, or even in many cases to our view a
reasonably sincere repentance. What propor
tion is there of Christians at large, in the world's
great aggregate, who seem to have any feeling
of sin's evil ; or sorrow for their personal trans
gressions; or conception of the interminable
reach to which the consequences of their wrong
doing, or neglect of right doing, may extend ;
or sense of God's displeasure with them because
they keep themselves so far from him — at all
commensurate with the greatness of their ill-
deserving? And yet, as the Christian system
is everywhere construed, even such a one may
believe that the divine displeasure has been, or
will soon be (I use this qualifying term to meet
the case of believers in purgatory), changed
into good pleasure. He thinks he may believe
that he is no longer regarded by God as a sin
ner, nor as one liable to punishment; he is

208 A More Excellent Way
counted as a just person, and his sins are for
given. Doubts may come at times to indi
viduals, and the question arises whether they
are justified in counting themselves among
God's elect ones. Now and then the feeling
of personal ill-desert may get strong hold on
one who wakes up to a sense of his condition.
But these are exceptions, nor are they apt to
be abiding; as a rule they regard their good
estate as reasonably secure. Very earnest
Christians shudder at this so widely prevalent
condition of the church, so plainly does it seem
to be a thing outside "the way" that leads to
the true life. And yet it is difficult to see how
it is possible to escape from very much of this
if the gospel is to be indeed good tidings to
men generally. For consider that it is not
some sinful individual whose need is to be met
by such a provision ; still less some exceptional
individual, the purity of whose repentance is
above the average. The gates are to be flung
open to a race of beings, and a race many of
whom are lying in a great depth of degrada
tion. Absolution is to be offered to all of this
race who will repent and believe. Nor, if the
hope for man is to be real, can too much ac
count be made of imperfections; for are not
men in a very slowly advancing progress from
lowest precedent conditions? There can be

Meaning of the Atonement 209
but one requirement — that of sincerity. A
germ of true life perceptible to God in the
spirit of his child must be enough to win his
pardon. We notice indeed the provision made
in the cross to deepen the sense of repentance.
This is of God and full of his wisdom. Be
cause it is of him its power over men must
deepen, and the best hope possible for us to
cherish regarding the future is that this power
in the cross shall deepen and not diminish.
But for centuries yet at the least, with the
abiding patience of God, and his continual gift
of the Holy Spirit, how great will be the de
ficiency in the faith and repentance of Chris
tians ; how exceeding large the deficit due to
God's justice even from the saved!
Let us render the respect that is due to sin
cere believers in the doctrine of purgatory for
the effort made by them to overcome this diffi
culty. We shall not enter into any discussion
of that very important doctrine of the ancient
and a portion of the modern church ; for there
is little reason to believe that protestants will
be brought over to a view whose supporters
have been able to find so little in the bible to
found it upon. Whether this doctrine looks
forward to a training, after death and under
severe discipline, in the grace of true repent
ance; or whether it contemplates the more

210 A More Excellent Way
rational solution, that the deficit of punish
ment due from us all for our life's sins — sins
confined in the worst to a few brief years — will
in time be made up ; it seems equally outside
of the bible teaching. The uniform tenor of
that teaching seems to be that believers in
Christ are washed of their sins, cleansed in the
all-precious blood, forgiven of God, and made
heirs of life.
But observe that even this does not exclude
the thought of a possible completion in us of
the holy work of repentance when our life here
is ended. Only this will not be done in a
world of vast duration, and wholly character
ized by suffering, but in a department of the
heavenly life itself, where we may believe our
lot will be cast previous to the final judgment.
Bitterness of spirit in the memory of various
follies committed in the earth-life we may sup
pose there will be, but much of heaven's sweet
ness with it; tears which a loving hand will
wipe away ; but the result will be a blessedness
in union with God and sympathy with his
thoughts, which must needs be brought to pass
in us before we can know the fulness of the life
that is in God. Are there not many to whom
no thought is more dear than that of talking
over with the Savior, on some more than
usually celestial day, many things about the

Meaning of the Atonement 2 1 1
earth-life and its sins, and learning from him
just what to think about them?
There remains a thought which over my
own mind possesses a peculiar power, and
which seems to me to be one of the pervasive
thoughts of the bible. I have made a most
careful examination of the Old and New Testa
ments in the study of the thought I am speak
ing of. In the sin offerings of the Old
Testament, as interpreted by the sacrifices of
the great day of atonement, I find it. I find
it in the prophets, I find it in our Lord. In
many sayings of the apostles — those especially
which presuppose the mystic efficacy of the
blood of Christ, in distinction from those which
speak simply of his death — I find it again. It
answers in my mind to the depth of my con
viction that in a very backward race like ours
there will surely be vast deficiencies in our
payment of what we owe to justice, as well as
in the perfection of that repentance which is
the only conceivable substitute in nature for
punishment. It is the thought that Christ's
sympathetic endurance of our penal woes on
the cross may have been purposed by God to
answer this need, and to stand to justice in
lieu of all remaining deficits in our punishment.
It is not in any dogmatic spirit that I offer
this thought. May there not be truths not

212 A More Excellent Way
intended to be reduced to dogma? Must God
tell everything? Must he put everything in
hard and fast lines for us? Is there nothing
that can be left for the Christian consciousness
to interpret as it varies in different individuals
and in the differently unfolding ages? Are
there no things whose value lies not so much
in their absolute truth as in our being true to
ourselves in interpreting them? It is then as
a contribution out of my personal feeling re
garding values, it is as a testimony to what
makes Christ's death mean the most to me,
that I offer this thought, which for so many
ages and in different forms has been dear to
true saints of God.
For to whom of us does not the feeling
at least occasionally come, ' ' I deserve 111 * * ?
Sometimes it is when sin has confirmed its
power over us and wrought some uncommon
shame ; and possibly when the shame has been
exposed, that this feeling takes strong hold of
us, "I am ill-deserving." Often it is the pre
cursor of repentance in souls. It means "I
deserve punishment." It does not mean I de
serve discipline. It does not leave out the
element of judgment. That would be very
weak. It has in it the thought, the solemn
thought of God's displeasure. It is a premoni
tion of the day of judgment. When such hours

Meaning of the Atonement 213
come to us, and still more when that great hour
itself comes, whose impending future was to
our Lord's mind so solemn a reality; then the
thought may become the dearest refuge of our
souls, "He bore my sins, even in all the woe
of their deserved penalty, on the cross." For
the thought of punishment and of bearing it
to the full is sometimes truer to an awakened
spirit than any other — truer until Christ is seen
bearing our punishment for us. Then indeed
the perfection is seen of grace ; and if there be
still an undertone of mystery, is it the less
divine for that ?
In concluding this chapter, and in leaving
behind what has been the main thought of the
book, I desire to express my profound sense
of the need the church has, and its ministers
especially, to understand the importance of the
second part in the communion between God
and us — namely, our sympathy with God in his
thoughts. It is so much pleasanter to accept
the comfort of God's sympathy with us ; it is
so soothing to our sense of ease ; it leaves us
so much freer for the earth-life! But the
stimulus of the true life and its blessedness are
in the other. Here also is the only sufficient
remedy against the encroachment on the
Christian world of the spirit of this world.
God is the eternal norm of souls. It is when

214 A More Excellent Way
we begin to be conformed to his Spirit as it is
revealed in his Son, our Lord, that we begin
to possess a true righteousness, and to have
what is not a mere experience of dreamers, but
a veritable foretaste of heaven. For did not
our Lord himself say in his prayer for us to the
Father: "And this is life eternal, that they
might know thee, the only true God, and him
whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ "?

XVII
THE HUMANITY OF CHRIST
Among the truths made clear by the Incar
nate Word is the familiar one, that the final
goal appointed for man is in the future world.
The pathway ends in heaven; the traveller
will arrive at his destination there. The
power which this truth had over the early dis
ciples is seen in the importance they gave to
the doctrine of the resurrection. Our Lord's
death was deprived of its proper significance
to them, save as it was associated with the
great fact of his rising from the dead. These
two belonged together, and the resurrection
had the greater place, since, as it involved the
rising of the disciples with their Lord, it car
ried in itself the fulfilment of the end sought
in the cross. The reader will recall various
sayings of apostles expressive of this truth, of
which it will suffice to quote the following from
St. Paul: "That like as Christ was raised from
the dead through the glory of the Father, we
also might walk in newness of life. For if we
215

216 A More Excellent Way
have become united with him in the likeness of
his death, we shall be also in the likeness of the
resurrection." Our Lord in the near prospect of his death
was pleased to afford the twelve a glimpse of
what their future home in heaven was to be.
His promise in effect was, that he would re
ceive them into a specially prepared mansion
of the Father's house. One of the delightful
thoughts suggested by this promise is that
when we reach our home we shall possess the
constant and immediate sympathy with us of
our Lord, together with the opportunity of an
ever-increasing sympathy with him. This is
to many a thought of some difficulty, since we
naturally conceive, and must conceive, of the
eternal Word — the being who appropriately
claims to be "equal with God" — as forever
occupied in caring for the worlds he has been
appointed to create ; and as unable, therefore,
even for a moment, to abdicate his seat beside
the Father. Happily, however, it is not this
being of whom we hope to have the constant
companionship, but of the Word in that form
of his manifestation — one doubtless out of a
countless multitude — under which he is espe
cially known by us of this world. It will be
ours to have the presence, the loving compan
ionship, the divine guidance of the Incarnate

The Humanity of Christ 217
Word. In this we shall find the complete and
even distinguished fulfilment of all the pos
sible spiritual desires appropriate to our race.
Especially pleasing to true hearts will it be,
that we shall have in this Jesus such a medium
of communication with the eternal Father.
With Jesus as our mediator, what a dignity
will be imparted to our position, and what
power ! Our Lord tells us in one of his great
Apocalyptic sayings that his name will be upon
our foreheads, and he himself will call us by it.
Think, then, how near we shall be in that
name, to him, to one another, and even to the
great Father of us all ! In that day the long
ing expressed by St. Paul, "If by any means I
may attain unto the resurrection of the dead,"
will have been fulfilled, then each of us will be
able to say, My heart's desire has been accom
plished, it has been given me to attain.
The above is a picture of the relation in
which individuals come through faith to stand
with Christ. But it would be unduly to limit
the freeness of salvation to confine these bene
fits to believers only. A greater thing than
this is true, that there exists now in the bosom
of our entire humanity, what did not exist
before — namely, the potentiality, real in the
fullest sense, and embracing every human
spirit, of a renewed life with God, and the

218 A More Excellent Way
possession of all the fruits that grow from it. It
is not plain how it could have been possible
before Christ for God to make to mankind a
universal offer of forgiveness, even on condi
tion of repentance and faith ; because the prac
tical possibility of any true spiritual life was
lost out of our race as a whole. For though
there were individual instances in which this
grace doubtless appeared, it was present only
in a sporadic way in a chosen person here and
there, and in one instance only, and then im
perfectly, in a chosen race. What there was
of this grace flowed from the Christ-fountain in
God, and had Christ by anticipation in it; but
the fountain itself was not opened ; there was
as yet no spring of divine grace, which, exist
ing in humanity, was also central to humanity,
and to the whole of it, opening in an available
way to every man the possibility of repentance
and life. Humanity's condition apart from
Christ is the opposite of faith ; it is separation
from God. In his freedom man has chosen
sin, and in so doing has given himself up to the
control of a principle that excludes God. It
is through the "one mediator between God and
men, the man Christ Jesus," that this condi
tion of our race has been changed; and the
reason of this is that in Christ the grace of God
became incorporate in humanity itself.

The Humanity of Christ 219
It accords well with the fitness of things that,
as we approach our journey's end, this thought
should occupy us. In our discussion hitherto
the divinity of Christ has been chiefly em
phasized. Our principal aim has been follow
ing in this the example of the New Testament
itself, to see how in Christ God came in the
fulness of his divine sympathy into our human
lives, thus inviting us to sympathy with him.
The thought of our Lord's humanity was never
absent from this great truth; it was involved
in it rather at every point; but it contributes
much to the completeness of our view that it
should rise now into a greater prominence.
If we would see how it is that through Christ
the condition of grace becomes incorporate in
humanity itself, we have first of all to bear in
mind that this one alone of our race stands be
fore us as man in the very truth of his being ;
man accordant with God's pure ideal; the
genuine or real man. Christ is without the
defect, sin, that impairs alike all the rest of us
men. He also alone of us is perfect in his
communion with God. Now the very fact of
the existence in humanity of such a being as
this, supposing him to be "set forth" in such
a way as to be an object of observation to all,
is of unspeakable value to men ; and the reason
is that each one of us has in him a pure ideal

220 A More Excellent Way
of that which he must seek to become in order
to attain to the proper fulfilment of himself.
The encouragement we have in knowing that
one of our number has attained to this perfec
tion of our manhood, if we had nothing more,
might seem a sufficient reason for the great
Father's bestowment on us of such a gift. But
this is very different from the opening of a
fountain of divine grace in the bosom of
humanity ; it is rather the opening of a foun
tain of human influence, available indeed for
God to use, but outside the mind and heart of
God. However great a grace from God this
might be, it would not be the divine grace
itself, the very fountain of that grace, opened
in humanity's own bosom. This becomes true
when it is given us to see in the Savior, God
present with man ; and present not in a union
of loving fellowship merely, but in such an
identity of being that the two constitute one
person and are moved by a single will. This
is the sacred fact, sacred mystery, if any please
so to call it, of the incarnation. It is in a
somewhat different sense the other, or obverse
side of the incarnation. For the incarnation
is rendered possible not merely by the exist
ence in God of a human element, but no less
by an element of potential divinity existing in
ourselves. If the incarnation is real, it is not

The Humanity of Christ 221
only possible for God to be united with us,
but for us to be united with God. The mys
tery here, in our possible union with God, is
farther beyond our power to define than even
the mystery of God's union with us. Nor do
we seek to penetrate it, nor do we dare to think
of it as actually true of any among men, save
of Jesus. But for him it is as possible now to
become truly a spiritual head of our race as it
was for Adam to be our natural head. For he
is in truth the God-Man : "In him dwelleth all
the fulness of the Godhead bodily" — that is,
made operative and efficient among men,
through the bodily forces of the man Jesus.
Hence Jesus is clothed, not by delegation from
the Almighty, but in himself, with power to
impart to all who seek it of him the true life.
Thus "the last Adam becomes," as St. Paul
calls him, "a life-giving spirit. "
If now it be asked in what sense the exist
ence among men of this fountain of grace
effects a change in the condition of humanity
at large, we can do no better than to study St.
Paul's own explanation of the matter. This
apostle strikes at once at the very root of the
trouble of our race. It is sin that separates
the world of men from God; and this is a
matter of nature; it is the characteristic and
dominant trait of humanity. But this our

222 A More Excellent Way
organic condition, so full of discouragement,
and rendering the prospect of the race in gen
eral so doleful, is wholly changed through the
death of Christ for us. The apostle explains
clearly the manner of the change. "For the
love of God constraineth us ; because we thus
judge, that one died for all, therefore all died;
and he died for all, that they which live should
no longer live unto themselves, but unto him
who for their sakes died and rose again." It
is death in its. ethical significance that is plainly
meant in these words. Christ died to sin, that
is to the principle of sin, that existed po
tentially in him as in other men. In his dying
all died — not actually to the commission of sin
henceforth, for the added clause implies that
only a part would become in fact partakers of
the spiritual life in Christ — but in the sense
that the controlling power of sin in humanity
was now broken; it had become fully open
now to all to die unto sin. If it be an object
to preserve an alliterative force such as is found
in the Greek of St. Paul, the meaning of the
passage may be expressed by the words : Christ
died really to the sin that was potential in him ;
men died potentially to the sin that was real in
them.1 1 De Wette in his commentary on this passage, II. Cor. v.,
14, has well expressed the meaning of this saying of the

The Humanity of Christ 223
They died potentially to sin, since now the
way to this was open to all. And no less was
it open to all to rise from out of this death to
sin into "newness of life with Christ" ; for the
motive "that they live no longer unto them
selves, but unto him who for their sakes died
and rose again," was now beyond expression
powerful. It is evident how important a place is held
by this truth in that unfolding of the way of
communion with God which is the subject of
this discussion. It is true that the way is only
yet a clearly possible way, proved such by the
fact that certain ones have climbed the steep ;
but that possibility is not a mere chance, turn
ing upon unknown factors, and factors that are
never likely to come under any real control by
those interested ; nor is it a chance whose fre
quency of occurrence is fixed and can be calcu
lated by the mathematical laws of probability,
which some assuming have greatly erred. This
rather is the truth — that the value to men
at large of the opportunity changes as the
race moves on toward its maturity; and the
apostle: "Christ died as that one in whom all should have
their true, pure life, even as he was the real man (der Mensch
an sich) or the head of humanity. His death, suffered on
sin's account, and for its destruction, was therefore as truly
common to humanity as was the pure human life that in him
attained to victory and dominion."

224 A More Excellent Way
tendency of the change is ever toward the
increase of the value of the chance.
The testimony of human history during the
period which our knowledge covers is proof
enough of this. Doubt — that important factor
in all soul-progress, whose function is to hinder
speed in order to make progress surer ; to incite
to thought in order that knowledge, emerging
from a more careful treatment, may be more
pure of dross — doubt, which in our time tests
all the old values, has raised the question
whether the Abraham of the bible was a real
historic character, or whether his record belongs
to the age of the world when human knowledge
was shrouded in that atmosphere of legend,
which, like the earth-born mists that some
times wrap the morn about, presents objects as
much impaired in their distinctness as they
are increased in size. But one thing is clear,
that human society as pictured in the story of
Abraham differs from the reality of that age,
if at all, only in picturing it as better than it
was, for it is pictured in that story as able to
produce an Abraham, which it was not if the
Abraham of the bible was not real.
How wonderful, then, the progress made by
humanity in the brief interval from that period
to this ! I say brief, for, measured by the vast
cycles of a world-development, a millennium is

The Humanity of Christ 225
indeed a very brief period. It is not time that
is of importance in the infinite mind; it is
event. Let a million of years go to the prep
aration of a world; the time is nothing; the
issue in a world is all. A thousand years' may
count at a later day as a million earlier; and
even many millenniums may be as nothing to
the one day that shall see the crucifixion of
the Son of man. Four short millenniums from
Abraham's day, four "yesterdays when they
are past" to God, with Calvary's noon-tide
shining clear in their midst, and how vast the
change ! At their beginning at the best a single
good man who had found his way to God in a
world else very dark. At its end an infinitude
of life opened in that other one man, who,
having made clear to us the way, and opened
it to all, converted death into a gateway
whereby all may pass upward to the Father's
side. It is a wonderful thing that humanity
has now that day behind it in its onward pro
gress. The life of God among us in man's ap
pointed Savior and the anointed one has
been lived; that stage is passed. "The diffi
cult blue heights" now shine clear, their tops
glowing with the tints of eternity's fair morn
ing. Many travellers are climbing the heights,
and the door to the way leading upward is
wide open. Lo, the holy hands that beckon

226 A More Excellent Way
downward from above to the climbers; the
voices that sing their invitation ; one glad face,
known to us already, the face of Jesus, shining
its welcome; the Father's heart rejoicing in
every child whom the love of his "well be
loved" has persuaded to come home!
Have we not here at last, completed, the
Father's unfolding of the way of life to his
children? The older covenant is fulfilled in
righteousness. This is made clear in the
heavenly songs: "And they sing the song of
Moses, the servant of God, and the song of the
Lamb, saying Great and marvellous are thy
works, O Lord God, the Almighty ; righteous
and true are thy ways, thou King of the ages.
Who shall not fear, O Lord, and glorify thy
name ? for thou only art holy ; for all the na
tions shall come and worship before thee ; for
thy righteous acts have been made manifest."
But it is not at the cost of life's fulness that
righteousness has triumphed; rather in the
triumph of righteousness the cause of love and
true life is also won. "And I heard a great
voice out of the throne saying, Behold the
tabernacle of God is with men, and they shall
be his peoples, and God himself shall be with
them, and be their God. And he saith write,
for these words are faithful. And he saith
unto me, they are come to pass. I am the

The Humanity of Christ 227
Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the
end. I will give unto him that is athirst of
the fountain of the water of life freely. He
that overcometh shall inherit these things ; and
I will be his God, and he shall be my Son."
Let it be ours to say : "Unto him that loved
us, and loosed us from our sins by his blood;
and he made us to be a kingdom, to be priests
unto God and his Father, to him be the glory,
and the dominion forever and ever. Amen. ' '

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