AHR nie i e—7 ect f ‘3 gi .s iw, is : Leah - > Mi av q ' “MN an et VAT arta ha San Wha ite Me ae PL / ie. ty WV P Pinay” we ‘ d "i, Pay he a a wert ey | REVIEWS AND STUDIES of noe REVIEWS & STUDIES BIBLICAL AND DOCTRINAL By tHE Rev. Be ye BADGCOCK): (DiDs FELLOW OF ST. AUGUSTINE’S COLLEGE, CANTERBURY LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO. 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON, E.i4 NEW YORK, TORONTO BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 1925 Made in Great Britain. All vights reserved PREFATORY NOTE OF the following papers four were sent in at different times to the Church Quarterly Review; two have appeared in the Journal of Theological Studies ; two in the Interpreter ; and one each in Theology and the Lay Reader. To the respective Editors of these journals thanks are due for permission for their reproduction. Of the remainder, two are papers read before the Canterbury Clerical Society, and one is an independent study not hitherto published in any form. St. AUGUSTINE’S COLLEGE, CANTERBURY. 1924. CONTENTS PAGE THE TRINITY ae Ry . e ae Leh Ae 8 THE PROBLEM OF CREATION... wy he ek MODERNISM AND THE TWO-NATURE THEORY Ses THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST wee 3G THE First Days OF OUR LoRD’s MINISTRY .. wag CHRIST AS SEER .. a 2 as ee Sra pare Dr. ILLINGWORTH AND THE GOSPEL MIRACLES Booats. >, THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY ON THE GOSPEL MIRACLES .. ap 2e we Age eel OA THE TRANSFIGURATION .. 4 As ae ene Les THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES .. ae as Sagi 2e ST. PAUL’s APOSTOLIC COMMISSION... 4 oles PELAGIANISM AND ORIGINAL SIN oe Ry ehh A? THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT Hop e250: THE TRINITY! THIS volume shows all the qualities of the earlier members of this series or summa. There is the same marvellous width of reading, the same clearness of statement, the same passion for the truth of Christianity, manifesting itself in simplicity and earnestness of style, the same desire to retain a judicial fairness in judging a statement with which Dr. Hall profoundly disagrees, the same confidence in the real truth of the traditional position. Nevertheless, there is a marked difference of grasp, which exhibits itself in a varia- tion of treatment. In the earlier volumes, Dr. Hall moved among his authorities as a master, accepting the statements of one, pointing out the shortcomings of another, telling us what a third really meant or at least would have wished to mean, and how his statement fell short in the attempt to express his meaning: and he was enabled to do this, not only because he felt a confidence in his own view, a con- fidence of being at once more scientific and more orthodox than his opponent, but because in his central principle he had found a clue to unravel the intricacies of cognate problems, and a light which illuminated their obscurities. Dr. Hall was abundantly equipped before he started on a work, which, like that of St. Thomas Aquinas, to which it has been compared, has earned the epithet of monumental. There is no meretricious adornment, but there is a dignity and impressiveness arising from the balance and solidity of the whole structure, the careful masonry, the close adjustment of the separate parts. Accordingly, when we read the large claims he makes for theology, we are conscious that we are listening to no conventional phrases or flimsy rhetoric, but to the deliberate conclusion of a trained and balanced mind. And if those claims seem to our modern taste to have a slightly medieval flavour, yet we cannot help wondering whether the bias may not be rather on our side than on his, and at the worst we decide to suspend our 1The Trinity. By the Rev. Francis J. Hall, D.D., Professor of Dog- matic Theology in the General Theological Seminary, New York City. (Longmans: 1918.) B 2 THEOLRENTITY judgement until we have seen whether theological science will not in his hands justify his estimate of its value and position. We are, of course, at one with him as to its subject- matter. Theology ‘treats of truth which must take the first rank in the circle of things knowable by mankind.’! Where doubts, if any, arise, it is in regard to the adequacy of theology to deal with its problems, the sufficiency and accuracy of its methods, and its place in the hierarchy of knowledge as compared not so much with the special sciences as with philosophy in its various branches and departments. But Dr. Hall has no doubts either of its competency or of its scientific and practical value. ‘ It is both intrinsically and practically of the greatest value to all.’2. It is ‘of inestimable importance to true religion.’ Theology ‘treats of ascertained facts, considered in their logical connection and implications,’ ‘it exhibits,’ quoting Fleming’s Vocabulary of Philosophy, ‘ ‘a rationalized know- ledge’’ of them’.* ‘ The claim of theology to be a science stands or falls with the truth or falsity of the claim that it is a department of knowledge, capable of rational arrange- ment and interpretation.’® And if this is true of theology in general, it is especially true of the doctrine of God. ‘ The theistic hypothesis of scientific theology, cleared of unnecessary contradictions by the theological doctrine of the Trinity, is the ultimate hypothesis of the totality of being and life... . Thus the science of God, which theology is, exhibits the underlying principle needed to give unity, rationality, and validity to the natural and _ historical sciences. ’® And again, ‘ The theistic hypothesis, as thus enlarged, is relieved of certain metaphysical difficulties connected with the notion of an infinite personal being, and becomes in consequence a satisfying hypothesis of all being and life.’ ? And the doctrine of God is central to all other doctrines of theology ; it ‘affords the standpoint from which all other doctrines are to be understood.’® ‘ Knowledge of the doctrine of the Trinity is a vital point of our religious equipment ; and a 1 Introduction, p. 4. 2 Ibid. Ibid. D.i9, 4 Ibid. p. 16. 5 Ibid. p. 19. 8 Ibid. p. 28. v ibid, 2. 233 8 Being and Attributes of God, p. 1. THE TRINITY 3 knowledge which shuns determinate conceptions, and refuses to be expressed in the terms of men’s highest intelligence, is self-condemned and is doomed to extinction as invalid.’ } Such is his claim for theology. It embraces amongst its data facts natural and supernatural, but its faculty is reason, strengthened and illuminated by grace, but still reason co-ordinating data, as do other sciences, in accord- ance with logic. ‘It should be emphasized that theism has no other logic than that which all men employ in other departments of reason. Subjectively and formally considered, the grounds of certainty which determine men’s convictions are the same for all, and under all circumstances. The laws that are seen to govern human reason in ordinary thinking are the laws which govern true theological thought; and, if conformity to these laws gives validity to other human arguments, it also gives validity to theistic arguments. The logic of theism is a logic which every intelligent person is accustomed to employ, and which he cannot con- sistently impugn in any domain of thought. It is true that the things with which theistic doctrine is concerned are spiritually investigated, and that in theistic argument we depend upon the aid of supernatural enlightenment and upon moral predisposition to believe. But these conditions neither alter the logic which we employ nor weaken its intrinsic force.’ ? It is necessary to quote these passages at some length, because they exhibit the real principles which Dr. Hall employs with singular felicity and success in his Intro- duction, and in his volume On the Being and Attributes of God. The argument in these is really constructive, and we are glad to have it restated. But it is otherwise in the volume on the Trinity. Here reason is employed with the same cogency on the destructive side, but on the con- structive with a success more qualified, first because Dr. Hall sometimes rests on a particular interpretation of passages of Scripture, where an alternative is possible which would not support the conclusion which he wishes to draw ; and secondly because he limits himself to main- taining the truth of several statements contained in the doctrine of the Trinity, but frankly abandons the attempt 1 The Trinity, p. 9. 2 Being and Attributes of God, pp. 55, 56. 4 THE TRINITY to co-ordinate them or to show their interconnexion. ‘In reckoning with the rational difficulties which attend the doctrine of the Trinity, we acknowledge explicitly that we cannot solve the fundamental problems which it raises.’ } Now, if this is an editorial ‘ we,’ it is a manly and straight- forward confession of personalincompetence. The problem is fundamental on Dr. Hall’s own showing : ‘The doctrine of the Trinity must occupy the central place in any sound or adequate conception of spiritual realities. It constitutes the postulate of the doctrines of the Incarnation, of the Atonement, of the Church, of justification and salvation, and of the coming kingdom of God.’ ? But if this ‘ we’ means theological science, such a failure is crucial. And that this is the real meaning of the phrase is all but stated at the conclusion of the paragraph. ‘If problems are thus raised which we cannot solve, this is to be expected because of the finite limitations of our reason and knowledge.’ This might be the lamentable truth, but anyone who believes it to be so has no right to make the large claims for theology which we have already quoted. If all other Christian doctrines depend on the doctrine of the Trinity, then a failure at this point invalidates the claim of theology to be a science, or at the best to be more than a connected series of tentative hypotheses. The doctrine of the Trinity is the key to all the actions of God alike in the spheres of nature and grace: if the being of God is unintelligible, all other doctrines are unintelligible also. God must not only be reason and be goodness in Himself, He must be revealed to us as such. An example of the possible consequences of this fatal defect may per- haps render its magnitude more perceptible. We know that there are three Persons in the One Being of God: do we know that there are not more than Three, if we do not know ‘the manner of divine personal subsistence’ ? By what arguments could we meet some neo-Gnostic, who asserted that he had a revelation, limited indeed to the elect, but no less cogent on that account, which embraced all the truths asserted by ordinary Christianity, but had this additional dogma, that in God were Four Persons ? On grounds of authority we could meet him, no doubt— “We have no such dogma, nor the Churches of God ’— but could we do so on grounds of reason ? We have already 1The Trinity, p. 158. 4 Iind. p. 2. 3 Introduction, p. 28. THE TRINITY 5 allowed the insufficiency of reason to deal with a problem of this kind. We may think it improbable that this revela- tion should not have been made known in earlier ages, but thatisall. ‘ Your faith,’ we should be told, ‘ in this crucial matter rests on a probability ; and yet you dare to dog- matize !’ According to Dr. Hall it is impossible for us to say why there are Three Persons, or why only Three ; but he also tells us that ‘the doctrine of the Trinity is the ultimate hypothesis of being and life.’ If so, a considera- tion of being and life ought to furnish us with an analogy to the doctrine of the Trinity. Now leaving aside the theological problem, and thereby avoiding at once the danger of apparent irreverence and of the odium theologicum, let us deal with the problems of being and life in the facts that fall under our ordinary observation. Every portion of the world with which we can come into contact is in some form or other of activity. Let us take this as our clue, and consider the world as thus reduced to its lowest denominator. Our conception of it shall be, at the outset, of the utmost possible simplicity. We will leave out of our view the differentiation of its parts ; we will treat it at the lowest possible level. On this level the total of the universe is precisely equal to the sum of its parts. We have left out whatever may be the principle of life or individuality which, for instance, makes an animal more than its chemical constituents, and endows it with a kind of unity not to be dealt with by mathematics or physics; the whole universe is, for the purpose of our problem, the sum of its parts in the same sense as 2 is the sum of rand 1. Now the universe which we are consider- ing has, ex hypothest, nothing outside itself. Each part is active towards the other parts, and the sum of the parts is equal to the whole, and the sum of the different activities to the whole activity. Each part is active, therefore the whole is active: each part is receptive of activities, then the whole is receptive. From this it follows that the whole is active and recep- tive towards itself. As far as our experience goes or could go, we know of nothing except as in some way active ; we distinguish one thing from another by the form or magnitude of its activity. Ingenious scientists have asserted that the whole world which we perceive is nothing but centres from which activities radiate and these are also points at which the activities terminate one course 6 LAE TRINEDY. before they start onanother. Insucha case these‘ centres of force’ become unsubstantial in themselves; their substance, their very being, lies in the activities of which they are the terminal points. Now let us consider what is the simplest formula of being that we have attained, a ‘ somewhat ’—which is the starting point of the activity and without which it could not exist—an activity—which is also ‘ somewhat ’—and a ‘ somewhat ’—-which first receives and then transmits this activity. Three ‘ somewhats ”’ within a single reality, which would not be real unless they ~ were there, and each, from a different point of view, the whole universe of our problem, the universe as subject, its activity, and the universe as object, forming a single, internally related whole. Such a consideration is extremely abstract, but the most concrete being in the world, that of which we know most, our own self or personality, only seems to enforce the truth of the same formula. ‘ The fundamental characteristic of personality,’ we are told, “is self-consciousness.’1 We need not now dispute about this statement; let us deal with the problem of self- consciousness in its simplest and most abstract form. There is, then, first the subject of consciousness—other characteristics or qualities we leave on one side; for us he is simply ‘ the knower ’—there is secondly his knowledge —a form of activity not material or physical or mechanical but spiritual, and, within the limits of our problem, the sum total of the spiritual activity of the knower, who is simply the possessor or starting-point of this knowledge— and there is the known or object of this knowledge. Thus two terms are related together by a third term which is also the ground of their distinction, and the whole is an unity, the self or personality regarded under a special aspect. The reviewer of Dr. Illingworth’s book in the Church Quarterly Review * objected, and rightly, to the statement that the fundamental formula of human personality is ‘I am I.’ The real formula is ‘I am active towards myself,’ this activity embracing ‘an immeasurable multitude of intelligible actions.’ ? This is of course only one side of the description and needs to be balanced by the corre- sponding statement that I am the object or recipient of an immeasurable multitude of activities from my en- * Illingworth, Personality ;Human and Divine, p. 28. * No. Ixxix, April, 1895, pp. 191-194. * Ibid. p. 194. THE TRINITY 7 vironment : but it is true as far as it goes and does differen- tiate personality from all lower forms of being, in that I am the originating subject of conscious activities towards myself, while ‘ things’ transmit but do not originate, and ‘brutes ’? originate but are not. conscious of themselves as the source of their activities. In our former illustration we were dealing with little more than a mere conception, an abstraction indeed from experience, but an abstraction so refined and rarefied as to become only just more than a mere formula, exhausted of reality and content. In this second illustration we are dealing with the being most real to ourselves. Other persons may be more real to them, their personality may be more developed than ours, their self- directed activities more comprehensive and intense; but each is real to himself as no one else can be. And the amount or content of this reality varies with the number or quality of these activities within the unity of the self. ‘I’ who am the subject have my substantial being in these activities of myself: increase these, and ‘I’ become more real; diminish them, and ‘I’ so far cease to be a person, until at the lowest limit ‘I’ become a mere potentiality, the possible subject of personal activities yet to be, and their possible object alike. Now this gives us a yet further clue. Each of us starts his existence as actually the mere object of the activities of others and at most the potential subject of hisown. That minute spot of jelly-like substance from which each of us grows is but little more than a thing, the unconscious embryo of a later stage hardly more than a mere brute, or, if a human being, only so in the light of that which it will normally grow to be. No man even in his highest maturity achieves a complete independence of others. He distinguishes himself from them as himself and other than himself, but this distinction is also a mani- festation of community, though it may be only a community of a purely logical or conceptual order. Whatever re- lations the object of thought may have, whatever qualities it may possess beyond those indicated in the fact that it is an object of my thought, yet in virtue of this last rela- tion it is no longer completely isolated from me: it has come to be, in however slight a degree, within my mental or spiritual being in coming to be within my ken. How- ever wide the gulf between even material phenomena and intellect, it is not impassable, ‘ seeing that in knowing or 1 These two terms are borrowed from the Nature of Personality, Lecture I, by W. Temple. 8 THE SPRINILTY taking cognizance of them the intellect actually passes ee In considering the self in abstraction from any external relations we seemed to have a real unity, a real ground of relation and distinction; but the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ which were the subject and object of that relation were shadowy and but half-real entities. In this illustration of the individual person and his environment we have two real terms existing in a quasi-independence with but a casual bond of connexion, and in consequence an unreal and shadowy unity. But if this environment is no merely material phenomenon, nor a mere chance acquaintance, but a worthy object of devotion, the unity becomes at once more profound. Let us imagine that the environment, the other than ‘I,’ consists of a single personal being, and that he is gifted with all the graces of character and intellect that entitle him to the greatest confidence and veneration : and on the other hand let the subject of these feelings add to the enthusiasm of the disciple towards the revered teacher, the loyalty of a subject towards his lawful sovereign, and the devotion of an ardent lover towards the object of his affections. Such a combination may be somewhat fantastic, but its several elements are all within human experience and their synthesis cannot be regarded as impossible. Now what, in such a case, will be the attitude of the lower towards the higher and more gifted person ? Will he not desire to make himself his willing servant, to propagate the other’s ideas, to be the instrument where- with his superior may move the world ? Will he not forego selfish ambitions, forsake his private views, sink his own desires, make himself the unspotted mirror of the other’s mind, the tool of his purposes, in short, his famulus, his alter ego, the extension of the other’s personality ? Will he not pass his life in continual self-abnegation, and con- tinual assertion of the other’s rights, his claims, his merits, in continual emptying of himself and continual drinking in of all that flows from the object of his regard? The portrait can be completed by each for himself: we have but laid down its general lines in a rough and imperfect sketch. But suppose that this ‘ other than self’ were God, and it becomes a sketch of what ? Is it not the sketch of a Christian? Nay more, if some great artist were to draw no rude and imperfect sketch, but a complete and 1 J. Caird, Philosophy of Religion, p. 105. THE TRINITY 9 finished picture, should we not recognize in it the portrait of the human life of our Lord Himself ? It is therefore false to say that we can form no idea of the immanence of the Father in the Son within the eternal being of God; it is analogous to His indwelling in the sacred humanity of our Lord. Looking on Him, we see the Spirit of the Father as the motive spring of all His actions, the source of His knowledge, the inspirer of His words, the bond of His consistency of character, and this because of His incessant self-emptying of all that was limited, individualistic, self-regarding: But this is to deal at most with one side of the problem. These sug- gestions leave so far untouched the manner in which the Son indwells the Father. To find analogies to this mutuality of immanence let us employ a conception or illustration somewhat similar to that with which we started. It will have all the limitations of a mechanical scheme, but may nevertheless be the lowest and most earthly step of the ladder whose top reaches to heaven. Suppose some source of energy or power, say an electric filament, in a vacuum, at the centre of a spherical bulb which absorbs nothing but reflects from its inner surface all that it receives. The filament is at present cold; it is therefore but a potential source of light and heat, and the bulb in consequence but a potential reflector. Now for an instant only switch on the current. The filament at once glows, rays of light and heat start out from it in all directions ; but, in leaving it, they deprive it of energy, and it sinks back into its former condition of mere potency. But the rays strike the bulb, which is thus at once raised out of potentiality into actuality of reflection ; it glows with the power which it has received from the central source, but its glory fades as the light and heat are returned to the filament whence they were radiated. But, when they reach it, the filament is revived, raised in its turn from a potential to an actual source of heat and illumination. Our illustration is complete, but it needs some touches which, while depriving it of reality as a mechanical fact, shall render it the more suitable as a parable of spiritual interaction. And first let us abolish the time factor. Then the events which complete our cycle are all simultaneous. The filament is perpetually giving forth its radiance, an un- ceasing source of energy. It is perpetually lowering itself 10 THE TRINITY. from actuality as a source to potentiality ; but it is never exhausted because the bulb in its turn is perpetually reflecting the energy which it has itself received, and so restoring the filament to life and power. And though by this sacrifice it also lowers itself from actuality to mere potentiality of reflection, this condition is never perman- ent, never indeed endures for a single instant, because it perpetually receives back the same energy which itself gives. The priority of the centre to the circumference as a source of power is thus merely conceptual or intemporal. Let us now endow this machine with spontaneity and freedom, freedom of initiation and reception on the part of the filament, and of reception and initiation on the part of the bulb. Then we see at once a real analogy to the mutuality of spiritual intercourse in the most intimate of human relations. ‘ When two beings are utterly in love with one another, and each yearns to make a sacrifice to the other of his every thought and inclination and whim, till.at the last he seems to have emptied himself of his very personality, so far from being annihilated, he is enriched by that very sacrifice, for he receives back the life of the other.’ } ‘ Through the severance...effected by personality, a higher form of unity becomes possible—the interpenetration of soul by soul, identity of thought, identity of action, love.’? ‘ The Christian dogma of the Trinity in Unity . . . accords accurately with... natural analogies...; for it shows the dualism of personality to be solved ... by its intensification in an infinite personal subject which, as infinite, must have an adequate and therefore a personal object, to which object it must be united not by an abstract or single rela- tion, such as exists between thought or love, and their respective objects amongst ourselves, but by a relation which is adequate, including all possible relations, and therefore perfect, and therefore personal.’ 3 Dr. Hall dismisses the illustration drawn from dis- tinctions within the ‘ego’ as Sabellian in tendency. He quotes Dr. Illingworth : ‘A person is... a subject who can become an object to himself, and the relation of these two terms is necessarily a third term,’ 4 [and continues] ‘ such an illustration cannot 1 Illingworth, Sermons in a College Chapel, p. 16. 2 Ibid. p. 170. * Tbtd. pp. 171, 172. * Personality, p. 69. THE TRINITY II be pressed far without Sabellian implication, for the terms mentioned are in reality aspects in the functioning of single personalities. A trinity of real persons in one being, so far from being suggested, is made to appear more remote from the verisimilitude of truth.’ ? But surely this is an error. The illustration is partial, is one-sided, is unbalanced; but it does indicate one element in the complex and balanced truth. There is a real unity in God, not less but far greater than the unity of a single human self. Where it is defective is in the com- parative unreality of the two terms related. They have their being as subject and object only as terms or termini of the activity which at once conjoins and distinguishes them ; they are, as it were, but terminal points of a line. A single point has, we are told, no parts and no magnitude : it is as nearly nothing as possible, reality at its lowest limit, in terms of space. But if there is a second point, it at once gains in substance or reality, it possesses locus or position by virtue of the distance or distinction, the one- dimensioned space between the two points, which the conception implies. In the illustration drawn from self-consciousness, we have two comparatively unreal ‘somewhais’, united and distinguished by an intervening activity between them, and depending for their reality on this union and distinc- tion. But this want of balance is redressed in the illus- tration taken from the earlier work which we have quoted, where what strikes usis that the persons are real individuals, but the bond between them is not so real as themselves. But if we examine the apparent objection, we observe that the picture which we have in mind is of two individuals who have other relations beside and beyond those that exist between them: we import into our mental image con- siderations that are really foreign to it, and considerations which have no place in regard to the being of God. Never- theless, this illustration is open to objection as making the third or intervening term in a manner accidental. This objection has been forcibly stated by St. Gregory Nazianzen : ©The Holy Ghost must certainly be conceived of either as in the category of the self-existent, or as in that of things which are contemplated in another, of which classes those who are skilled in such matters call the one sub- 1 The Trinity, p. 283. 12 THE TRINITY stance and the other accident. Now, if He were an accident, He would be an Activity of God... and if He is an Activity, He will be effected, and will cease to exist as soon as He has been effected, for this is the nature of an Activity.’ (e évépyea, evepynPycetat SfAov oT, ovK évepyyoe, Kal ood TH evepynOqvar maveeTar. ToLwodTov yap 1 evepyera.)} But the objection is no less forcibly disposed of by St. Augustine : ‘ Some have ventured to believe that the very communion between the Father and the Son, and, so to speak, the Godhead which the Greeks call Oedrns, is the Holy Ghost, so that since the Father is God, and the Son is God, the very Godhead whereby they are united, both the Father by begetting the Son, and the Son by cohering with the Father and being made equal with Him by Whom He is begotten, this Godhead by which they would also under- stand the mutual love and charity of Them both, is called, they say, the Holy Ghost. And they support this opinion of theirs by many passages of Scripture.’?... ‘ This opinion is contradicted by those who think that that com- munion (whether we call it Godhead, or love, or charity) is not a substance, [the very objection brought by Gregory] and they would have the Holy Spirit explained to them as substance, ... being guided by their experience in corporeal things, since if two bodies are united so as to be placed close together, the union of them is not a body, [and there- fore not substantial but only accidental to them, as Gregory asserts] seeing that when they are separated again no union remains, and yet we do not understand that it has departed and gone as those bodies have done (non tamen quast discessisse et migrasse intelligitur, sicut illa corpora). But let these persons cleanse their hearts... that they may be able to see God’s substance is not such that in it substance is one thing and accident another, and not substance, but that whatever can be understood in it is substance ’ 3: or to quote Dr. Illingworth’s words ‘ a relation . . . including all possible relations,’ uniting ‘ an infinite personal subject ’ and ‘ an infinite personal object,’ is ‘ perfect and therefore personal,’ that is, it has all the reality of the terms united. For the intercourse of Father and Son is no accident, no thing that might be otherwise; it is necessary with all 1 Theol. Orat. v. c. 6. 2 De Fid. et Symb. c. 19. * Ibid. c. 20. THE TRINITY 13 the necessity of God, since without it neither Father nor Son could exist. It should be needless to emphasize the fact that ‘ person’ in its popular usage of a more or less independent self-conscious individual is not the equivalent of hypostasis, which is so vague a word that in the anathemas appended to the creed of the Nicene Council it is used as an equivalent of ‘substance.’ Dr. Hall translates it a “somewhat, and he quotes as his authority for so doing St. Augustine. ‘It stands, according to this writer, for three mysterious “‘somewhats’’ in God; and we cannot rightly make the term signify in theology more than is necessarily involved in the Scriptural distinction between Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.’ In other words, ‘Three Persons in one Substance,’ ‘One Substance in Three Persons,’ is a declaration not of the content of God- head, but of the form of God’s being. Three x’s in one y, one y in three x’s, would tell us all that the formula in itself imposes on Christians as an article of belief, and the content of the terms must be supplied from the Scriptures and the Creeds. But we cannot leave St. Augustine without noting a fruitful hint which he has supplied for the further elucida- tion of the doctrine of the Trinity. There is no division of activity in God. To know is to love, and to love is to will. This is a commonplace of theologians and we need not elaborate it. But it carries with it a very important consequence. There is no distinction between the Father’s generation of the Son and His love of Him: they are only different names for the same essential and eternal opera- tion. If therefore the love of the Father for the Son is the Holy Ghost, the generation of the Son by the Father is also the Holy Ghost. The Holy Ghost is not only the supreme but the sole and universal gift of the Father to the Son. He is that in virtue of which the Father is Father to the Son, and the Son Son to the Father, the spirit of Fatherhood and Sonship both in the metaphysical and in the ethical sense. And this raises another aspect of the problem. Our Lord’s life on earth was not only the manifestation of the powers and properties of an ideal manhood engraced, nor only the manifestation of the life of the eternal Son of God: it was also the manifestation of the eternal life of God the Father. The outward, visible, audible signs through which we make ourselves 1 The Trinity, p. 178. 14 THE TRINITY known to each other were in Him parables, manifestations of the life of the Father and of the Son within the eternal being of God. If Christ, Whom men then knew to be man but had not recognized as God, showed any virtue, that virtue must exist in God, only in a transcendent degree. Now, in Christ love took the form of self-sacrifice unto death; is there then self-sacrifice in God? Can we say that the Father sacrifices Himself for the Son, or the Son for the Father ? Is there a definite giving, at the cost of loss to the giver, for the advantage of the other ? Is there any antitype in the essential being of God to the Crucifixion and the Resurrection ? Does God in Himself ‘ lay down His life and receive it again ’? The question so raised is a formidable one, but the issue cannot be evaded. If self-sacrifice exists in man but not in God, is not man more divine than God, or how is God man’s moral ideal? Let us first clear our minds of a possible misconception. ‘ Devotion of love to another in conditions of earth—even while it touches the ‘highest possibilities of joy—-means always more or less of pain.’ } But in God love “self-expending and perfected in self- expenditure ’ need not carry with it any such suggestion, but be pure joy, the joy of heaven. ‘ But is there any giving up, any pouring out, any self-impoverishment that the other may be rich ? And if not, why not ? The answer to this question would probably be that while this self-sacrifice of each for other is written large over all God’s works and is the noblest trait in human character, yet it does not exist in the eternal being of God, because the conditions are so far dissimilar that the created world supplies no real analogy or ground of probability for conjecture. I pass over the fact that this vitiates all argu- ments for the existence and goodness of God drawn from a consideration of His works, that it renders all but meaning- less the life of the Incarnate as a real revelation, and I ask the more fundamental question—if there is no self- sacrifice within the being of God, what renders it impossible? Who is it that fixes the conditions of that life ? What fate, what law, what principle of metaphysics dictates its terms to God? If it is true that the Father cannot sacrifice Himself for the Son, nor the Son for the Father, it is because They will not. They evade the cost of self-sacrifice, of loss for the other’s gain ! If it were necessary to choose between 1 Moberly, Ministerial Priesthood, p. 267. THE TRINITY 15 the moral and the metaphysical impossibility, would there be any hesitation in the answer ? But if this impossibility exist at all, it does so only in our imagination. A pipe bent round to form a ring is no less full of water if the water be in perpetual motion. If we would analyse motion, we can only do so in terms of a going from here to there, a leaving one position and passing to another, a plenum which becomes a vacuum in order that a vacuum may become a plenum. But if the void thus created is perpetually filled, then there is no void even for an instant. So in the life of God, if the Holy Spirit is an energy or activity, if He may be compared with the wind which is caused by the variation in pressure, here denser, there rarer, then, while on the one hand the willing self- sacrifice is typical of God’s action, of His character, while the xévwors of which St. Paul speaks in connexion With our Lord is a real revelation of the life of God within the eternal Trinity, it is balanced by an avravarAypwais, so that God is never a vacuum, but always a plenum ; and the mAsjpwya of the Father and the Son is the Holy Ghost. Each pours out His own Spirit, His own life, Himself, into the Other, Each abnegates Himself to enthrone.the Other, becomes the servant to the Other that the Other may become the Lord, lives on the Other’s charity; and this ‘ perfect sacrifice of Each to Other,’ proceeding first from the Father to the Son, and then from the Son to the Father, this Spirit of love—Who is the Spirit of Holiness, is God, is the Holy Spirit—‘ makes’ the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity ‘ Absolutely One.’ ? 1[llingworth, Sermons in a College Chapel, p. 17. THE PROBLEM OF CREATION! THE student of Christian philosophy has good cause to be ~ grateful to Dr. Matthews for this series of lectures. That they have behind them both a solid mass of learning and thinking is obvious and only to be expected. But they possess the additional merit, by no means universal in philosophical writings, of being clear and graceful. Such a subject cannot be easy reading: by its very nature it demands a considerable effort of attention; but Dr. Matthews achieves no mean triumph in avoiding difficulties of diction which, while they are doubtless intended to elucidate, often destroy the calmness of mind needed to follow the reasoning by arousing feelings of asperity and irritation. And yet we lay aside the volume with a gratitude tinged with disappointment. In the last two chapters the author | has failed to place the keystone in the arch; it is indeed rather a stone rejected by the builder ; and the substitute which he prefers crumbles under the strain put upon it, threatening the whole structure with ruin. Dr. Matthews insists, rightly as we think, that God, as being personal, must be incessantly active, and that activity demands a distinction of subject and object, a self and what Dr. Matthews calls a ‘ not-self,’ though it would be far better named an ‘ other-than-self’ or simply ‘another.’ But he fails to find that this self, this incessant activity, and this other-than-self, are all necessary ele- ments within the being of God, and in fact form at least one aspect of the meaning of the Trinity, and in consequence he substitutes for this other a series ? of worlds each attaining its perfection, and having attained it demanding a successor in order that the activity of God may suffer no lapse or diminution. The hypothesis appears plausible until it is examined in the light of those very principles which Dr. Matthews 1 Studies in Christian Philosophy : The Boyle Lectures for 1920. By W. R. Matthews, D.D., Dean of King’s College, London. (Macmillan: 1920.) 2 Dp. 205. 16 THE PROBLEM OF CREATION 17 himself furnishes, while the view! which he somewhat summarily rejects is not really open to the objection which he states, but does not examine. It remains to develop in some detail these short gener- alities, but before doing so it will not be unprofitable to note an omission which perplexes his argument. The relation of God to Christians is that of communion: ‘ the dominant note of Apostolic Christianity is that of loving fellowship with God, and with one another. We are fellow workers with God, not slaves but free children.’ But this com- munion, while it is characteristic of the intercourse of personal beings with one another, is quite distinct from the relation of persons to things,* and below the level of things (Dr. Matthews prefers ‘belonging to a lower type of existence’ to ‘ possessing a lower degree of reality,’—but this is largely a question of words) is the realm of concepts. There can be little that can be called ‘ communion ’ between a mathematician and an equation, or an equi- lateral triangle ; but there is, nevertheless, a relation—a relation in which the thinker is almost completely trans- cendent. The mathematical judgement or proposition does indeed in some way express him, but it expresses a very small portion even of his intellect, his will in a still less degree, and his affections hardly at all. This purely con- -ceptual world, of which the mathematical world is a portion, is a real world of a kind. It has laws of its own, and the temple of science, of which so much has been raised in modern times, attests the solidity of its substructure. But concepts are dependent for their existence on the concipient, their esse is concipt. But on Dr. Matthews’ principles this purely intellectual world of concepts bears in its relation to God an analogy to that of the world of moral aspirations. Each is the embodiment or exemplar of unchanging laws, and the moral ‘ ought’ * is paralleled by the intellectual ‘ must.’ In fact in the logical necessity of pure mathematics we have the ground of an additional argument for theism. There are, then, different kinds or orders of being, concepts and persons, the one capable and the other incapable of communion, and the relation of God and of man to each kind is therefore diverse. Moreover, the formation of concepts,® in which the element of an independent existence ip, 183: 2p. 159. > Dp. 160. la COR CY 18 THE PROBLEM OF CREATION is reduced to a minimum, presents the nearest analogy to ‘creation ex nihilo’ 1 that our experience affords. It follows that to speak of persons and of concepts as being alike ‘creatures’ of God is to introduce an ambiguity, which may readily become exceedingly misleading. We had better denominate God’s relation to them by two dis- tinct terms, and for the present ‘creation’ and ‘com- munion ’ will serve. But the communion which God has with the Christian is not yet in its final stage. The Christian has not yet attained the things which God has prepared for him. The ultimate goal or purpose of that evolutionary process which started in creation is achieved in Christ, who for the achievement of that purpose, for the salvation or con- summation of the universe, in becoming man took on Him the nature of the creature, and is in that nature exalted to the right hand of God, possessing the fulness of the Spirit, endowed by gift in time with all the prerogatives of God in their completeness. Dr. Matthews quotes? with a large measure of approval that great saying of Plato in the Timaeus: ‘ Let me tell you why the Creator made this world of becoming. He was good, and the good cannot entertain jealousy towards anything. And being free from jealousy He desired that all things should be as like Himself as they could be.’ But to paraphrase the Epistle to the Hebrews: ‘ We see not yet ’ all things made as like to God as they can be, “ but we see Jesus,’ and Jesus shows us the purpose of God for the creature realized in an ‘earnest’ or archetype. In other words, if we think of God as exercising a perpetual activity of self-impartation at the cost of self-sacrifice, and this self-sacrifice pressed to the ultimate limit, we shall see God’sideal of creation, God’s purpose for the universe ; and Christianity asserts as a fact, revealed unto us by His Spirit as already realized in Jesus, the ‘august anticipation’ of Plato. In the last resort, by the necessity of His own nature God could create for nothing less than the raising of the creature into equality with Himself, saving only the incommunicable prerogative that He is Himself the Author of the drama, the Giver of the gift, the Origin of the activity, the Source of the stream of spiritual life. To insist that Christ is in the creaturely nature which He took in time exalted to that status or position which is His necessarily and eternally as God is 1p. 1966 2p. 1956 THE PROBLEM OF CREATION 19 not to ‘confound the natures.’ The distinction drawn in the Nicene anathemas is still maintained; as man He once was not, while as God there never was nor could be when He was not. Manhood, as far as it is creaturely, is made out of nothing, which is essentially untrue of God- head. We have now fixed the limits, in the mathematical sense, of the evolutionary process, and can formulate the nature of the change of relation of God to the successive stages of elements comprised in it. It begins with creation ex nthilo, creation in its strict sense; a state analogous to the relation of logical concepts to the thinker, in which the several creatures have no independence of their creator, no initiative, no individuality, and are accurately defined by the terms of their mutual relationships; it ends in sonship, in which the creature, as it once was, is endowed with the sum total of the divine attributes, saving only as conditioned by the fact of its origin. But if we want to comprehend more fully what such sonship involves we must attend to a © conception which Origen developed in the dawn of Christian thought,’ though not that which Dr. Matthews quotes. Origen insisted that the generation of the Son by the Father is no mere past event at an infinitely remote date. That would involve a real change in the nature of God; it would be a temporal and not an eternal act; it would introduce something accidental into the being of God Himself. The divine generation is a necessary and eternal process. “The Father is ever generating the Son.’ Aeterna et sempiterna generatio sicut splendor generatur a luce.* But this eternal and necessary act is also characteristic ; it is an act of self-sacrifice, the eternal act of self-sacrificing activity in God. As such it is adumbrated in all those activities of human beings which we class as moral. In every act which we deem praiseworthy there are, in varying proportions, three elements. There is first the self- sacrifice, the impoverishing of the self. This, if it were all, would result in a mere mortification such as we see im- perfectly exemplified in forms of Eastern asceticism. But there is also a value intrinsic to the thing given, and with these there is the benefit conferred on the recipient. The third element is as necessary as either of the former. Thus to risk one’s life for something less than personal in its 1p. 205. 2 Hom. in Jerem. ix. 4. * De Princ. 1. ui. A. 20 THE PROBLEM OF CREATION reference is not courageous but rash. From one point of view we may admire the man who hazards his life to save some wild animal from a carnivorous beast or bird; yet if he loses it we should also condemn the act as foolhardy. It would be a risk which ought not to be run. But the same risk if undertaken for a child incurs praise untinged with blame, because the child has, as personal, a potential value which the wild animal is without. This principle we shall find most clearly exemplified in the death of Christ. Here was a self-surrender complete both in outward fact and in inward spirit. The thing given was the most valuable of the world’s possessions. Nothing on earth is so valuable asa human life may be, nor is the value of any other human life to be compared with His. And the cause for which it was given was at once the glory of God and the salvation of men, who by that sacrifice were to become worthy of it. But Christ is the revelation to us in terms of historic fact both of the Father, with Whose Spirit He was filled, and of the Son, Who He was. The life of God, therefore, in His eternal being is of this kind, a perpetual self-surrender and self-giving of Each to the Other. It isin the life of God that we are to find, if at all, the unchangeable ideal of human goodness. We cannot ‘think of God,’ says Dr. Matthews, ‘as personal unless we think of Him as creative. To be active and self- expressive, to bring into objective existence entities which are relatively new, is a mark of personality.’1 But crea- tion, so far as it stops there, is but an incomplete process. It bring into existence things which have a being only in the mind of the creator, and have no independence or spontaneity of their own. Let us substitute for it that which includes all that is implied by creation in its own richer and fuller content. We cannot think of the Father as personal unless we think of Him as generative. To be active and self-expressive is a mark of His personality. The Son is the self-expression of the Father. But self- expression is an inadequate term, because it does not contain the idea of self-sacrifice; to be active in self- emptying and self-imparting, that is the mark of divine personality. God the Father is not moved by self-regarding motives. He does not seek His own highest good because it is His own good. Even man, says the Theologia Germanica, so seeking it will never find it. The glory of 1p. 204. THE PROBLEM OF CREATION 21 the teacher is in his pupils, of a ruler in his subjects, of parents in their children, of the Father in the Son. The Father generates the Son eternally for the sake of the Son, the Son returns to the Father all that He Himself receives for the sake of the Father. No man achieves his own perfection as the goal of his own effort ; he exerts himself for the sake of others in self-disregard, and receives his own moral goodness as a gift. And eternal life is ever a gift, and never a wage. The internal life of God is, by the necessity of His own goodness, a perpetual self-emptying or kenosis, but it is no less a plerosis, or being filled by the ‘ other-than-self.’ And while on the one hand the ‘ objec- tive entity ’’ of the Father, the Son is, as being eternally generated, for ever ‘ relatively new ’, in logical posteriority to the Father; He is also eternally perfect and complete, His complete image. The moral ideal thus exists objectively, ‘ over against us,’ within the being of God, eternally realized, and yet eter- nally in process. It comes to be in us and ours, not merely as an external object of contemplation, but as an internal power and motive, by virtue of that ‘communion,’ in which we surrender ourselves to God, and God imparts to us His own life, making us ‘ partakers of the Divine nature.’ Here then in the mutual communion of sons with the heavenly Father, a communion begun on earth but to be perfected in Heaven, we find within an experience mirroring the life of the eternal Sonship, the real meaning of creation, the earnest of our inheritance, ‘ the last of life for which the first was made.’ And it is only by regarding the creature as intended to share in the Divine life that we shall find the solution of the dilemma of the moralideal. If God to be personal must be creative of something which is ever outside Himself, then such an ‘ objective entity ’ can never satisfy the divine desire of communion and self impartation, while if God eternally creates by an inner necessity of His own nature, it.is futile to assert that this external object or series of objects is not co-eternal with Himself. God Himself is made by this hypothesis the subject of an eternal life, which ipso facto is incapable of realization, and is therefore doomed to eternal disappointment. Each successive world will demand another incarnation, another ascension, that its nature may, in the person of the Eternal Son become 22 THE PROBLEM OF CREATION successively the creature, be raised to the right hand of the Father. But if God creates unto sonship, then creation must be regarded in a double aspect. Its final goal is eternally fixed ; it is by being taken up into that sonship to share the glory of satisfying the divine longing—may we say the divine need ? But in its first origin it is contingent, since in the Eternal Son the longing of the Eternal Father is always satisfied. This is but another aspect of the change - of relation between God and His world which we have already noticed. Ex nihilo cum tempore creavit, in totum simul aeterne generat. We pass from the bare timelessness of a realm of mere concepts, whose beingis totally in another, whose form is defined by their relations within his mind, through the time and space that are the terms expressing the existence of ‘ things,’ to the eternal communion of Father and Son in the Holy Ghost. And the unending series which characterizes the purely formal stage, the theoretical possibility of ever adding to or subtracting from a given number, and so restating the old problem, the perpetual ‘ beyond’ of points in space, or ‘ before’ or ‘after’ of moments of time, has its own logical necessity within the eternal Being. Why is it that there is an endlessly regressive series of efficient causes, and an endlessly progressive series of final causes ? Why is it that to each of us our moral ideal seems ever to recede and go further away as we grow in spiritual attainment ? Why is heaven so remote from earth that the ladder seems infinitely long, and the tower becomes a tower of confusion ? Surely it is because past is bound to present and present to future by an imperfect link. The activity of each is incomplete, one-sided ; there is no real mutality. The energy of the cause passes over to the effect but vestigia nulla vetrorsum. But in God all that is given from the Origin flows back to Him again. In a mechanical metaphor God is the perfect engine of Carnot; in a spatial metaphor His life is the circular motion of Aristotle ; in a religious metaphor God is Himself fed by sacrifice, as said the Jews: but none of these can be other than the most jejune parables of that eternal mutuality of self-sacrifice of the Each to the Other- than-Self, which is the very substance of the life of Father and Son, as St. Augustine says, God the Holy Ghost. MODERNISM AND THE TWO-NATURE THEORY MoDERNISTS do not, at any rate at present, form a party. It is possible to go to a person and say, ‘ If you hold such and such views you are not a good Protestant, or a good Catholic,’ and by so doing arouse in him some sort of compunction, because he recognizes the claims of party loyalty. But no appeal of that kind can be made to a Modernist. If a man were told that he was not a good Modernist because he holds or does not hold such and such opinions, he would not feel that he had any grounds what- ever to be ashamed or hurt. The party label means little or nothing, and by comparison the views are every- thing. But again it is not so much the views that matter as the method. Modernists are, therefore, individuals who hope much from the use of certain methods; they form no party, and itis only by a Sort of accident that they form a school. - And now, as I am shortly going to dissent entirely from a tenet which has come into prominence and appears to be widely held among them, let me say at the outset that we owe to the Modernists a large debt.of gratitude. As far as I can judge they are entirely sincere. Wecan no more - reproach them with vanity or self-esteem than we can any other students who are conscious of possessing the know- ledge that comes from hard intellectual labour. With a large and powerful class they are extremely unpopular and regarded as dangerous, and, human nature being what it is, there is no doubt that in certain cases there exists a tendency to react against this opposition. But there are few, if any, of us who can afford to cast stones on that account. On the other hand, though, as I said, from certain of their conclusions I profoundly dissent, and though I think they have a tendency to overrate the value of their methods and neglect other important considerations, yet they are doing undoubtedly a useful work. If Christianity is to be intelligently held, it behoves 23 24 MODERNISM AND THE Christians to be perpetually active in thinking out what it means. Throughout a very large period of our life we are in- capacitated by other duties or are naturally incapable of doing much original thinking ; therefore we rest, and must rest, on authority. But there is a real danger that this unfortunate necessity in certain departments should become an excuse for mere intellectual laziness. The unpopularity of the Modernist is in some ways like that of Socrates, who refused to take traditional views for granted, and insisted on asking very inconvenient questions, by which he made people come to see how very little they knew. He stimu- lated into active exercise those intellectual powers in them which were in danger of partial atrophy through want of use. Now in religion atrophy of the intellect is the occasion, if not the cause, of superstition. Criticism Sweeps away intruding foreign bodies, and is a valuable instrument of intellectual sanitation. Or; to put the matter in another shape, to be over dogmatic, to insist on the uncertain or unessential with the same vehemence as on the certain and fundamental, is to lower the whole standard of the faith. If.infidelity is a real danger, credulity is a danger certainly no less-real,.and-is-more subtle because-tess-easily perceived. This function of criticism was performed in the middle- ages by the universities. No traditional position was secure from attack merely by reason of antiquity. Every teacher, as a condition of his recognition, was compelled to argue in favour of certain theses, and was opposed by others who adopted without scruple the best weapons they could find in their intellectual armoury. Nor was it required that a disputant should be himself convinced of the truth of the position he took up. That would naturally be so in most cases, but he was, at least in theory, allowed the same rights as counsel in a law case. It was held to make for the advantage of truth that it should be both attacked and defended with the utmost skill and ingenuity. We have seen in Germany the political disadvantages of muzzling free discussion. The same result, on a more disastrous scale, takes place under Papal domination. Within the Roman communion a heterodox position in a controversy can only be taken at personal risk, unless, indeed, that risk be avoided by a process which a Roman lawyer would have called Praevaricatio, that is by employ- TWO-NATURE THEORY 25 ing a specious argument designed to lead to its own con- futation. In our time, when the theses of doctors are never orally attacked, the alternative method pursued is that of publication in the form of books or pamphlets or articles. Unfortunately these are no longer written in a learned tongue, and moreover in a condensed and some- times garbled form they are liable to be dished up to furnish a new sensation in the public press. What we badly need is either a method of discussion in private, of which the results shall only come abroad when they have won recog- nition, or else the granting of rights in matters of theology such as are commonly allowed to barristers in matters of law. There is, after all, a certain modicum of truth even in a heresy, and from time to time this needs to be rescued from oblivion for the good of the whole. With this introduction I proceed to the main subject of this paper. This subject was selected nearly a year ago, and had at the time an obvious reference to certain statements made in the Girton Conference of the previous summer. The particular issue I desire to raise is to be found in Mr. Major’s preface to the Modern Churchman, of Septem- ber, 1921. ‘ The modern Churchman,’ he says, ‘ differs from the Chalcedonian Fathers by holding that the sub- stance of the Deity and of the Humanity ’ (of our Lord) “are not two but one.’ Along with that statement goes what I regard as a most confusing use of the term ‘ Incar- nation,’ though it has been employed in this sense by so orthodox a theologian as the late Dr. Du Bose. Dean Rashdall asserted that ‘it is impossible to maintain that God is fully incarnate in Christ, and not incarnate at all in anyone else.’ ‘If we believe that every soul reveals, reproduces, incarnates God fo some extent ... then it becomes possible to believe that in one Man the self- revelation of God has been signal, supreme, unique. That we are justified in thinking of God as like Christ, that the character and teaching of Christ contains the fullest disclosure both of the character of God Himself and of His will for man—that is... the true meaning of Christ’s Divinity.” So Prof. Bethune Baker: ‘ When I say that the Man Jesus is “‘ God,”’ I mean that He is for me the index of my conception of God.’ On the positive side we should all agree with the 26 MODERNISM AND THE Modernists. That Christ is the supreme and uniquerevealer of God we all accept ; that man reveals God in measure, that a good man reveals more of what God is like than a bad man, is certainly true. Only we do not call this kind of likeness to God Divine ‘Incarnation.’ The Modernist asserts that at any rate this is all that we know of what ‘Incarnation’ really connotes, and that the orthodox doctrine, so far as it goes beyond that, is meaningless, that — it presents no analogy to our ways of thinking in other connexions. When the Modernist talks about ‘ knowledge,’ he seems to limit the term to ‘ knowledge by acquaint- ance,’ and to deny that there is any other sort of knowledge at all. I am not going to deal with what may be called the psychological antecedents of Modernism. Historically it is, no doubt, a reaction against the abuse of authority in matters of faith, and I think I could show that on the positive side it rests on two hypotheses, extremely useful within a limited sphere of operation, called the doctrine of relativity and the doctrine of continuity, and that it has taken them over without giving due consideration to their limits. But I prefer to attack the main problem, and in bold opposition to the assumptions of Modernism I would say that if there is to be such a thing as knowledge at all, we must allow the validity not only of direct exper- ience, but of certain postulates or pre-suppositions of experience as well. These are not demonstrable, but without them demonstration is impossible. And first of all I assert against this over-pressing of the principle of continuity, that there are at least two different worlds, or orders of reality, known to us, and that while the lower depends for its existence on the activity of the higher, there is no such continuity between them that we could by the wildest stretch of the imagination picture the evolution of the higher from the lower. I refer to the Ego or ‘ I,’ and my ideas and experiences. I cannot, of course, prove that I exist, but I must postulate my existence alike in asserting and in denying it. If I deny that I exist, I nevertheless imply the existence of the subject of that form of activity of mine which is called denial just as strongly as I do when the activity is one of assertion, for the exist- ence of the subject is a necessary postulate of all its activi- ties. Moreover, of this Ego or self I have persistent though partial manifestations. When I am conscious of other things my attention may seem to be almost wholly given to TWO-NATURE THEORY 27 them ; but if I analyze my mental state, I become aware that, besides this more prominent element in it, there is a consciousness not only of the things, but of them as related to me, and conversely of myself as related to them. And this factor of self-reference is not only an element in my consciousness of these particular objects, but a constant and persistent element over against the other varying objects of my consciousness. At one time I see a table, or I feel a pain ; at another I hear a sound or experience a satisfaction. But while these other elements in my total experience are in perpetual flux, they are each held in — connexion with a persistent element, the consciousness of myself. But this is not the whole truth of the matter. I am not merely a permanent object in all my acts of consciousness, an object to myself: I am, as I said, at the same time the subject of all my activities Thus I postulate myself as the universal and identical subject of all I think, or do, or feel,—that is a matter of theory—but I confirm this ratiocinative process by a succession of observations in each of which I am incompletely manifested as an object, and thus the Ego, which I am, transcends not only each but the whole sum of my past experiences of it: it is the ground not only of the actual present or past, but also of the potential future. An argument for the existence of God might be framed on the same lines. God is to us at best but imperfectly manifested ; but He is the universal and necessary postu- late, not only of my experiences, but of my existence, and of the existence of all else that is. He is, even to me, a great deal more than the object, or one among other objects, of my experience. Nor is this position without analogy. Other persons at any rate hold a place in some degree akin. All persons, if there are any such, have an existence for themselves as well as for me, nor are they the less real if they are outside the range of my acquaintance. But with regard to some of them it may be asserted that, so far from being merely the objects of my experience, they are the grounds of its possibility, as, for instance, my parents and ancestors. Without me my experience of them would not exist; but without them, not only my experiences, but I myself should not exist. I will not attempt to prove this point. Prof. Bethune Baker, quem honoris causa nomino, says that he would call a belief irrational if it 28 MODERNISM AND THE could not be related to the generally accepted Welt- anschauung of the period. Well, the theory known as Solipsism, the theory that the only beings of whose exist- ence I can be certain are myself and my experiences, is by this canon highly irrational. So much by way of a general sketch, but I fear that these illustrations may serve to confuse the issue as well as to disentangle it, in that they seem to presuppose a quasi- independent existence of objects of experience such as tables, and sounds, and persons. I will now deal with a case involving no such independence of the mind. Pure mathematics deals solely with concepts; they are not even dependent on visible symbols ; sums can be worked in the head. Whether pure arithmetic or pure algebra was derived from material objects or not, does not vitally affect the question. If the mathematical ideas represented by 1 and 2 and a and 0 and ~ are so derived, yet as used by the mathematician they have lost their original reference. x” xX x* =x"+" is a mathematical truth of which I make no doubt ; but I should be hard put to it to express it in terms of pebbles or trees or cocoa-nuts, or whatever other material objects man first used in counting. Now this mathematical world is a real world, with quite definite laws of its own, but a very tenuous or highly abstract one, and it possesses some curious characteristics. Material objects are capable of computation, but mathematical objects are not; you can never tell how many I’s, or 2’s, or x's or y’s there are in this world. There are just as many of them as you may happen to want. Again the sole test of mathematical truth is its consistency with all other mathematical truth. With a wonderfully close approximation the material order exemplifies mathematical calculations ; but mathematical truth would be just equally true if it did not. The space of experience may or may not be the space of Euclidean geometry, but if it is not, that does not mean that the angles at the base of an Euclidean isosceles triangle are not precisely equal. All it does mean is that the Euclidean isosceles triangle has merely a conceptual existence, which is in fact all that pure geometry cares about. The truths of pure mathematics are not inductions from observation. Slips may be avoided in the working by repeating a mathematical operation, but there would be no such thing as mathematical error unless mathematical truth had a logical priority to the attempt to TWO-NATURE THEORY 29 find the answer tothesum. So much as against the purely pragmatic school. But they are right in this, that mathe- matical truths, though they could not be otherwise, need not be so. Twice two can never be other than four, but it is only four if two is multiplied by two. And this means that for mathematical truths to exist there must be a mathematician, and he must have an interest and a motive in doing the sum. And as this motive is the ground of his activity it determines the existence of the result, but it determines its form only among a number of equivalents. He may express the same thing differently, but if the result is to be right it must have the same mathematical value. But mathematical concepts have no independent exist- ence or activity of their own. Their esse is concipi; their laws are not theirs but laws of mind. Thus if I were asked whether I fully understood what was meant by ‘ Creation,’ I should answer, No. But if it were suggested that I had no idea of it, I should say, ‘It is like...” The mathe- matician transcends his concepts. They exist only so far as he puts himself into them. He belongs to a higher order of being than they. They possess a conceptual, he a personal, nature. He calls them into being by thinking them. He is necessary to each of them, but he thinks mathematically, at his own will, and for his own purposes. And similarly, when I picture God, I picture Him as a Being on Whom the world depends, Who called it out of nothingness for its highest good, and Who transcends all other beings in an order of reality more remotely above any mathematician than he is above and beyond the concepts he employs. But though we are, as persons, far more real than our concepts, yet we ourselves are capable of providing the matter of mathematical problems. When a chairman counts the votes in favour of or against a motion, he treats the hands held up merely as counters, and the majority bears to the minority a certain mathematical proportion. To divide a number into two parts so that the one part bears a certain stated ratio to the other is the same problem whether the units employed are men, or pebbles, or mere numbers. A man can, then, for certain purposes, be regarded as a mere mathematical entity. What is this but to say that he possesses a conceptual as well as a personal nature ? Similarly when we weigh ourselves the result which we are 30 MODERNISM AND THE seeking is of the same order as when we weigh a sack of coals or of potatoes, and our moral and personal qualities do not affect the reckoning. For certain abstract pur- poses, therefore, a man may be regarded as a mere thing. So when men are classed among the mammalia they are regarded, and for certain purposes rightly regarded, as mere animals. Finally, the lawyer or moralist or anthropo- logist deals with men on a different plane; for him they are human beings with a human nature. And it is only by abstracting from the fulness of their being that men are regarded as expressible, and are expressed, in these lower categories. A trial for murder assumes that the prisoner is by nature more than a mere animal. The biologist asserts that for his study he requires other categories than physics or chemistry can provide. Though at one time the inorganic may have given rise to the organic, yet these worlds or kingdoms are so far disparate that the transition from the one to the other is a petdBaats ets addo yévos which does not allow itself to be thought out. We can descend by abstraction from the higher, but life exhibits phenomena which it is impossible to describe adequately in the terms appropriate to a lower order. A perfect chemical compound is by no means the ‘index of my conception ’ of a living being. Similarly though we can weigh and measure the stars, yet material bodies are more than a collection of concepts. They do not cease to exist, even for us, when we are oblivious of them, as any one knows who has collided with a chair or a table in the dark. I assert, therefore, that if we hold that our Lord possessed two natures of different orders, differing not in degree but in kind from each other, we are not speaking of something to which we have no analogy. We ourselves possess a human nature common to mankind, an animal nature shared with the brutes, a material nature along with all bodies possessing weight, and a conceptual nature, since for the statistician we are mere units. But the real self of each of us belongs to the higher category. A mere concept can indeed hardly be said to have an individual self at all. When in two different equations x has the same numerical value, who can say whether we are dealing with the same x or different x’s ? But so soon as we get beyond the realm of mere concepts, we postulate for each thing a kind of self or focus of its TWO-NATURE THEORY 31 qualities. A table is made of oak, or two feet high, or round, but in each case we predicate the qualities of an ‘it.’ And we do this on the analogy of what we find in ourselves, the only instance in which we can look at any object, as it were, from the inside. But with objects possessing lower natures, lower orders of reality than ourselves, we leave out by abstraction certain of our own characteristics. Touse Prof. Bethune Baker’s terminology, it would be ‘irrational’ to assert that all material objects are self-conscious, self-determining persons, but it would be equally irrational to regard them as mere collections of qualities, whose bond of connexion lies solely in us, and not also in them. There is, then, a real order of ‘ things,’ to use Bishop © Temple’s word,} above concepts, and of ‘ brutes,’ including plants and animals, above things, and of persons above brutes. And when I compare specimens belonging to different orders, possessing different natures or substances, I do so in general by first abstracting from them those generic qualities in the possession of which the member of the higher order differs from that of the lower. I can compare a class of twenty pupils with the number ten by saying that the class has in it twice as many units, but though I may compare the intelligence of one member of the class with that of another, I cannot say how much more or less intelligent he is than a proposition in Euclid, but only whether he is more or less intelligent than was Euclid. I cannot say how much more moral a man is than an earth-worm, if I think that an earth-worm is incapable of morality, but I can compare him in respect of longevity or any other quality known to me which is common to both. For myself I am a man possessing these various natures ; but for the physiologist I am an animal; for the chemist a highly complex compound ; for the physicist a mass of matter; for the statistician a numerical unit. I do not resent being so regarded, as though my human dignity were disparaged. Science wins its triumph by the abstrac- tion, or leaving out, of the irrelevant, and irrelevancy is to be judged in each case by the purpose in hand. But to say that a man is an animal, though true in a sense, is only abstractly true, and it ceases to be true altogether when it is treated as the whole truth, or when this partial truth is 1 Nature of Personality, Lecture 1. 32 MODERNISM AND THE supposed to countervail the claims of the higher. Tell a man that he is a mere animal, and you loosen the obliga- tions of morality. Thus to say that our Lord as ‘a’ manis, Fearn an anthro- pological point of view, to proclaim a truth, but it becomes radically false if we imagine that it is the whole truth, and that His Deity is of no importance, or not a fact. And if there is a sense in which the lower order can be asserted, there is a sense in which it can be denied. Never was I mere animal. Even in embryo each of us was a human embryo, a being not to be understood except in the light of what it was to become. But we may go further and say of each of us, ‘I could not be a brute, or thing, or unit, unless I were a man. That particular animal or thing or unit which, for certain purposes, I readily admit that I am rightly considered to be, would not be at all if I were not a human being as Iam. Its self, in so far as it has a self, is in reality myself.’ So I should say that Christ would never have been that man which for certain purposes He may be rightly regarded as having been, unless He had been God the eternal Son. Once more, though by abstraction I can leave out of consideration that higher order of being to which I belong, yet I cannot so divide my qualities or activities as though some of them were impersonal and others personal. Though I sleep as an animal sleeps, drink as an animal drinks, yet it cannot be truly said that because these are such acts as an animal performs they are impersonal or non-human acts. Animal they are from the point of view of the physiologist, whose highest category is that of animality, but they are human acts nevertheless, because they are mine, and I am a human being. So we may say of all the acts of our Lord’s incarnate life on earth that they were all alike human, because done within the limits of that human nature which He as God prescribed to it; nay more, we should be but following His own guidance if we were to say that others might under certain conditions do the like: ‘Greater works than these shall ye do.’ But they were also divine because He was God. And it is but misleading to say that He could not have stilled the storm, if He had not been God, if we do not proceed to add that neither, if He had not been God, could He have slept on the ship. ‘Under certain conditions men might do the like,’ since TWO-NATURE THEORY 33 the whole of His acts and thoughts and words on earth - were within the limits of His human nature. Under what conditions ? Let me attempt to answer that by a parable. Though I think it may be rightly said that animals in their natural or wild state act by instinct and are non- moral, yet domesticated animals, and particularly the dog, seem to show from time to time the evidences of a moral consciousness. Few of those who, if I may use the term, are ‘intimate’ with dogs would deny this; most of them would assert it with confidence ; and in such a case they are the real experts. The domesticated dog has been taken out not only from his own natural physical environ- ment, but he has been introduced into an alien psycholog- ical atmosphere, which belongs properly to beings of a higher order, mankind. What then? At first, by an imposed discipline, but later by affection, he acquires, or at least seems to acquire, a psychological equipment other than his own. It may be said that this is an artificial or unnatural state, but it must at least be allowed that the dog seems to find in it something singularly congenial. He becomes not merely the servant, but the willing servant of another’s will, and the instrument of his purposes. What depression of spirits ensues upon separation ! With what joy he welcomes the restoration of companionship ! It is, I think, difficult to doubt that in the canine nature from the beginning there was something, latent indeed, but waiting to respond to this new stimulus. The dog seems to have acquired in human society something for which he was made, an atmosphere which allows his being to expand, and to exhibit the real truth of himself. I hardly need to point the moral. That desire of self-sacrifice for another, that longing to be imbued with another and a higher spirit, that fidelity that we so natur- ally describe as dog-like you will find running through all the epistles of St. Paul, and all the writings of the saints. I, yet not I, but He! To have the mind of Christ, to think the thoughts of God, to be the willing instrument moved by the Holy Spirit, what is this but to subject oneself to the mentality belonging to a higher order? To be the slave, the living instrument, as Aristotle defines the term, of God, how often does this come before us as the description of the Christian life ? To be domesticated, at home, in heaven, as a being transported out of its natural habitat to a higher region, hope 34 MODERNISM AND THE in which alone, nevertheless, it can find the realization of its implanted propensities ; to be lifted by a divine act above the world, so that though we still live in it we are naturalized into another and have there the home of our souls, how well does this accord with all we read, and with our own highest experience ! And if this becomes more consciously and vividly true of us as we progress in the spiritual life, shall we deny that it was most emphatically true of our Lord as man on earth ? Do we not see Him as one under the perpetual influence of a plenary inspiration ? And if we turn to His own words as reported by the beloved disciple, do we not find Him saying, ‘I, yet not I, but the Father?’ ‘I can of Myself do nothing.’! ‘I spake not from Myself.’ ‘The word which ye hear is not Mine.’’ ‘I do nothing of Myself, but as the Father taught Me, I speak these things.’* If, then, our Lord’s teaching possesses for us an unique authority, it does so not so much because it was He that spoke it, as because it was the Father Who by His Spirit inspired it. We shall acknowledge all that the Modernist claims, but we shall deny that this constitutes incarnation. If we are to seek evidences of a divine power or knowledge, we must look for them in regard to things which our Lord denied that He could as man accomplish, but asserted that the Father did. ‘ Of that hour knoweth not the Son but the Father.’> In spite of His inspiration no one would deny that there were things outside the limits of that sacred humanity. Our Lord’s actual acquaintanceship here on earth with things or persons was limited, yet no sparrow fell to earth without the Father; the Father clothed with beauty those flowers of the field which our Lord as man admired. The Father ordered the course of the stars which filled His human eyes with wonder. But all that the Father did, He as God did likewise. If the Father is almighty, the Son is almighty ; if the Father is eternal the Son is eternal also, but both as God, and neither while on earth as man. I have attempted to show that we recognize the existence of different natures or orders of reality, and ourselves share more than one of them; but that that which we call our Ego belongs to the higher ; that there is a real continuity downwards, since we are ourselves partially immanent and partially expressed in the lowest of them, the order, or 1 Jn. Vv. 30. +xliv49. © * xI1V. 24; 4 viii, 28. 5 Mt. xxiv. 36. TWO-NATURE THEORY 35 realm or kingdom of our own concepts ; but that we cannot in thought bridge the gaps upwards by any process of evolution, from concept to thing, or from thing to brute, or from brute to man. It is not, therefore, contrary to but in accordance with analogy if we hold that our Lord belonged both to the divine and human orders, and that His true self belonged by nature to the higher order, even though for certain abstract purposes we are justified in looking on Him as shown us in the synoptic portrait as a human being. But if we do this, we must allow that as a human being He lived in the kingdom of heaven, and by the constant effort of His own human will became the servant of the purposes of God, the unspotted mirror reflecting that higher mentality, if the phrase is permissible, which we are accustomed to call God’s Spirit. But throughout His life on earth, though filled with the Spirit of God, that Spirit yet transcended the limits of His human capacity of reception, and if we desire to see His Deity unscreened behind the veil of His humanity, we must look for it where He as God the Son exercises a necessary and unchangeable function within the being of God, and in the cosmical activities of all the Three Persons towards the whole universe and each several part of it. THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST THOUGH the evidence is scanty, yet it is generally agreed that John the Baptist did not in baptism institute a rite unknown among the Jews, but that it was already in use as one of the initiatory exercises of proselytes, the other two elements in the ceremony being circumcision and sacrifice, which were common to proselytes and born Jews alike. The effect of this initiation was to render the man a Jew, that is to make him an inheritor of the promises under the Old Covenant which were outwardly symbolized by the possession of the promised land. Thus later Jewish writers contended that the whole nation had been baptized previous to the giving of the law,? and St. Paul asserts that they had been baptized in the cloud and in the passage of the Red Sea,? which is a particular instance of his theory that events in Jewish history, like the events of our Lord’s life narrated in the creed, are not only histor- ical occurrences but also spiritual symbols. Thus the crossing of the Jordan would also be a kind of baptism ; and we notice that it is closely connected with the general circumcision of the nation in much the same way as his own baptism was connected with his circumcision in the case of the individual proselyte.* The novel feature in St. John’s baptism was that it was con- ferred on persons who were already Jews, and thus suggested that they had forfeited any claim to the promises and were reduced to the position of the heathen. And this suggestion is borne out by his language, ‘ Begin not to say within yourselves we have Abraham to our father,’* which implies that the Pharisees and Sadducees, to whom his words were addressed, refused his baptism on the ground that as children of Abraham they possessed the claim which St. John denied. And so when our Lord showed that He recognized the mission of His forerunner, 1 Wall. History of Infant Baptism, vol. I. ed. 1845, pp. 10. ff. whe Gu eee aoe B 3 Josh, v. 2-7. ‘Mt. iii. 9; Lk. iii. 8. 36 THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST 37 the same argument created a difficulty against the acceptance of Himself.t And He makes it clear that He was aware of this. They refused to submit to St. John’s baptism, because by doing so they would implicitly have abdicated their claim to authority.? The same implication is expressed by the symbolic fact that St. John administered his baptism on the further side of Jordan ; * thus in order to receive it his converts had to put themselves outside the holy land and so assi- milate themselves to those who had not yet entered on the promises, and it was only after baptism and re-crossing the Jordan that they came into their inheritance. But baptism had a wider signification than this. In Jewish modes of thought the earth was regarded as resting on the abyss, with which all seas and rivers were in connexion and from which all natural springs welled up.* And this was regarded as the abode of death and evil. Thus, being baptized signified not only an acknowledgement of the forfeiture of special or national privileges, but of the ordinary human right to live, while the coming up out of the water was a victory over death, a resurrection to a consecrated life. That is, baptism had much the same meaning as sacrifice. The offerer of the sacrifice identified himself with the victim by laying his hands upon it, acknowledged that his own life was forfeited by the slaying of it, and then through death the life was conse- crated to God by the sprinkling of the blood before the mercy seat or the horns of the altar. It is this inward connexion of baptism with death that seems,to be in the mind of our Lord when He speaks of His own ap- proaching death as a baptism,® a term which does not startle us by its strangeness only because of our familiarity with it. But neither baptism nor sacrifice was an exclusively Jewish rite, as the Jews were well aware from their own Scriptures. When mankind had allowed itself to fall under the sway of the evil powers, then the spiritual fact was signified by the bursting up of the fountains of the abyss and the overwhelming of the earth,® and the salvation of Noah is paralleled by the rising of the land out of the falling waters ; and immediately Noah offers sacrifice, and PRM. 300) Mt £xisok. Mkorxi, 30. * Jn. i) 284 i a6 5: x. 40. “See Bernard, Odes of Solomon, p. 34; Texts and Studies, VIII, Mes. Piste | ek. &, 26, 80 p44 eks Xi, 50) Gen... Vil, 15 SS Yl 2. 38 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF its acceptance is signified by the establishment of a new covenant relationship between God and man. A similar symbolism seems to underlie the rite of circumcision. It was the sign given to Abraham showing that in figure he was not accepted as righteous on the ground of anything that he had in himself, but of the righteousness that was his by faith in God’s promise of the seed which was Christ.1_ It denoted the complete cutting off of the flesh, for it was not on the ground of the flesh but of faith that entrance was to be granted into the promised kingdom. It symbolized death to the flesh and thus is closely joined by St. Paul with baptism and our Lord’s death.2. And this symbol was present at the conception of every Jewish child. But the baptism of John, like Jewish sacrifices and circumcision, did not confer what is symbolized. It was anticipatory of a reality to come, baptism with Holy Spirit,a baptism which began at Pentecost 4 and has been continued in Christian baptism ever since. But what St. John’s rite could not itself give that God in our Lord’s case supplied. The fact of the descent of the Holy Spirit on Him is maintained by St. Peter ® and by our Lord Himself.¢. The perception of the fact through vision appears to have been limited to Him and the Baptist.’ The setting may be allegorical as in the narration of the fall or of our Lord’s temptation, but the symbolism is itself suggestive. The collocation of water, the dove, and the anointing carries us mentally back to the flood, the dove, and the leaf of the oil olive in Genesis,* and therefore implies a new covenant and a transfigured or purified earth, as Noah’s rainbow prefigures the rainbow round about the throne in the Apocalypse; and the fulfilment of righteousness can only refer to the righteousness which is not by the law but from God in answer to faith of which St. Paul speaks. And it is noticeable that, though the Baptist was familiar with Isaiah and drew many of his metaphors from his prophecies, yet it is only from this point that he seems to come to realize the moral necessity of the death of our Lord and the applicability to Him of the ‘ Suffering-Servant’ passage, an interpretation which, though it may now be a commonplace, was during our 1 Rom. iv. 11. * Col. ii. 11-14. oe op Ae, : * Acts(1, 5. . Acts x. 38. * Lk. iv. 18....,.7 Mk. i 103 Mtjiii716;)-Lk Sil, 2a 8 viii. 11; ® Mt. iii. 15; cp. 1, Tim. iii, 16. THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST 39 Lord’s life on earth limited to His own thought and that of St. John, and did not enter the minds of His contemporaries. It has been customary to say that it was at His baptism that our Lord as man first became conscious of His Messiah- ship, but the quotations from the Acts! and St. Luke’s Gospel ? already given would rather lead us to hold that it was in virtue of His baptismal anointing that He became the Messiah. And the same conception is borne out by the fact that His Messiahship was the main substance of the earliest apostolic preaching, and that the qualification for apostleship was association, beginning from His baptism. § Similarly it has been said that our Lord obtained at His baptism the power of working miracles, and this view is supported by the narrative of the temptation imme- diately following. But what is true of the casting out of demons,‘ is true of His miracles universally, that they are by the Holy Ghost, they are works proper to the kingdom of God, showing forth that conquest of evil powers which baptism typified. Our Lord’s teaching is on similar lines. It is not strictly analogous to the teaching of the pre-Christian prophets, who reported what view they could obtain of the kingdom of God from outside. Our Lord speaks of it from within ; He is at home in it; He knows it with that familiarity and sense of ownership and intimacy which belongs to other dwellers in their own native land. Yet it belongs to Him as man by gift. Eternal life is a gift always,® by the necessity of its own nature. False as adoptionism is when used as an explanation of what is meant by our Lord’s essential deity, it is true of Him regarded as man. That adoption which St. Paul speaks of as the privilege of Christians, is distinctly prophesied of our Lord: ‘I will make him my first-born.’* Our Lord entered into that racial sonship of God which belonged to the Jewish nation, by the typical and anticipatory rite of circumcision, but He entered also into a messianic sonship by that anointing which made Him no longer merely Messiah designate but Messiah actual, though His Messiahship was here on earth ‘cribbed, cabined and confined.’ He was on earth full of the Holy Spirit, and yet St. Peter implies that there was a gift of the Holy tx. 38. iv. 18. % Acts i. 21-22. ‘Mt. xii. 23. - 5 Rom. vi. 23. S Peo exis: 25, 40 THE SIGNIFICANCE OF Spirit to Him which was dependent on His exaltation.' He was filled with the Holy Spirit, and yet His human capacities were on earth limited, whereas now He is not only filled with the Holy Spirit but contains all His fulness. Such a conception of our Lord’s baptism has three important bearings on Christian thought. In the first place it is parallel to and explanatory of Christian baptism. Our Lord, in becoming the Anointed, the Messiah, the Son of God and Inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven, became the archetypal Christian, not by the efficacy of John’s baptism as a sacramental rite, but by the action of God in supplying its defect. Thus His ministerial life on earth is exemplary of our own life, and His baptism is significant of resurrection after death, a pledge and assurance of it, asisours. The earnest of the Spirit ? which as man He then received and received in its fulness at His exaltation, is parallel to the baptismal gift and that fulness of reception in the regeneration,? when we shall share His throne as He shares the throne of the Father.* Secondly, while the attempt to divide our Lord’s thoughts and words and deeds into two mutually exclusive classes of human and divine has always broken down in practice, is contrary to the impression made on His contemporaries as recorded in the Gospels, and is docetic in tendency; yet it has been widely felt that some new and hitherto unexampled power was at work. And this is true. It was the power of the age to come. The Messiah’s kingdom was that in which He lived, and which was embodied in Him. To the category of ordinary or non-Christian humanity His view of life, His teaching, His acts, were superhuman. They were, of course, divine in the sense that He who wrought them was God; they were human in so far that He did not as man transgress the limits which He had as God fixed for human nature in the very fact of creating it; but they were superhuman also, since humanity in its very constitution had the capacity of being lifted above its pre-Christian level by the reception of the Holy Spirit. And, lastly, just as the faith by which the miracles were wrought (or the faith which allowed God to work the miracles) was a faith not creative of, but responsive to, a divine act, so the mystical union, which has seemed to many to be the explanation of much of the Johannine 1 Acts ii. 38. 22 Cor. i. 21-22. 8 Mt.xix. 28. ‘4 Rev. iii. 21; Eph. ii. 6. THE BAPTISM OF CHRIST 41 phraseology, is not created by the consciousness of it, but rests on a divinely given sonship. . The apologist who sets himself to demonstrate the deity of our Lord from the Gospels finds that with a constant reiteration they attribute to Him as man that which he thinks ought to be an exclu- sive attribute of God. Thus, the possession of life,t the forgiveness of sins,? universal judgement? and universal attraction‘ are all spoken of Him in that nature in which Heis Son of Man. So also the phrase, ‘ I and the Father are one,’ ®is paralleled by ‘ That they all may be one as Thou, Father, art in Meand I in Thee.’ .. .‘that they may be one, even as Weare one, and, at least as far as the use of the ‘one’ goes, by ‘ He that planteth and he that watereth are one.’ ? But, though we cannot demonstrate the essential deity of Christ by this method, yet, if we follow the leadings of the Alexandrine and Cappadocian Fathers, we shall assert that our Lord even in respect of His humanity is now ‘ deified’, since His human nature has received so great an expansion, that in it He occupies that position at the right hand of God which is His necessarily and eternally in respect of His deity, so that He differs now in no whit as man from that which He is as God, save that as man he became by exaltation that which as God He could not begin nor cease to be. And this terminology has its anticipation in the New Testament. The regular trans- lation of ‘ Jehovah’ which is the supreme title of God in the Old Testament, is in the Septuagint ‘ Lord,’ but this is given to Christ in His human nature.? And so St. Gregory Nazianzen asserts that the name above every name which has been given to Him can be none other than God.® But of that fulness of the Spirit in virtue of which our Lord as man is at the right hand of God, He received the earnest at His baptism, and by that what is true of us through Him, our ‘ deification ’ in baptism, our sonship to God, our inheritance of the kingdom of heaven, became first true of Himself, And it is through the gate of this Messiahship perfected in heaven that the Apostles seemed to have come to recognize His deity first as economic and later as essential. We need not, therefore, tremble for the faith if in the Gospels we find that belief in only its earlier stage. 1 Jn. v. 26. Mt ime eek i t05 0 Lev 24.) 11 Vy eae ee ©. Jt, X11, 325 34, hl § Pic OE: (2? PAX Vil 21, 22% Tt Cor; iil. 8: * Acts 41.026. ® Theol. Orat. iv. 3. THE FIRST DAYS OF OUR LORD’S MINISTRY THE narrative of the early preaching of St. John the Baptist clearly falls into two portions, the first connected with the baptism of our Lord, and the second with the call of the original disciples. These are separated by an interval, in the course of which occurred our Lord’s temptation. The preaching itself was, we may presume, continuous up to the time of St. John’s imprisonment, but our narrative is dependent on the reports of witnesses who were auditors only for broken periods. St. John, as foretold by the angel, was to go before the Lord in the spirit and power of Elijah; and this he did, preaching repentance? and preparing the way for the ultimate revelation of God. And he himself seemed to be aware that he was sustaining this office; he borrowed from Malachi? the metaphor of fire, the refining fire which well characterized the baptism administered by his Successor,* and the destructive fire which shall burn the chaff.5 And he not only fulfilled the canonical expectation of Elijah, and took up the teaching of the prophet who had spoken of his coming, but also assumed a costume exactly similar to that of Elijah as tradition described it.® It is, then, natural to assume that his sudden and dramatic appearance took place in the Jordan valley on the east side of the river where Elijah is recorded to have been caught up into heaven. This position would best account for popular excitement created by his preaching and for the question addressed to him, ‘ Art thou Elijah ? ’ Nor is this location merely fanciful. The site is tradi- tional since the days of Origen, who had himself investigated it on the spot ;? it is accepted by Sir Charles Wilson and other modern experts ; and it suits well with the contexts in which it is mentioned. Thus St. John came there from the wilderness of Judaea,’ which lies immediately to the west and north-west of the Dead Sea, and our Lord 1 Mal. iv. 6. 2 4b. iil. 1. | ent eB 44b. iii. 2, Lk iii. 16. = Mal. iv. 13 Mt) iii-i2) Lean 17% * Mk: 3,°6:*. *2 Katte. 7 In Ev. Joan. vi. 4o. SMT sit 7. 42 OF OUR LORD’S MINISTRY 43 went there from Jerusalem, and there received a message from Bethany which, we gather, was within easy reach. At this point the Jordan is ordinarily fordable except in seasons of flood, when it is necessary to use a boat; and the double name of the place, Bethany (Beth-Anijah, House of the Ship), Bethabara (House of the Ferry or Passing-over), seems to show that a ferry boat was per- manently stationed there. Here, also, it was that the Israelites crossed the river on their entrance into the Land of the Promise. John, then, began to preach in the wilderness of Judaea, and thence took with him his first disciples to his station at the ford or ferry on the east side of the Jordan, some five miles north of the Dead Sea. From near Jericho a direct road ran north along the valley to the Sea of Galilee, while from the ford on the east side ran an approximately parallel road leading in the same direction. The first narrative of his preaching, that given in the Synoptic Gospels, is a condensed summary, and probably covers some little time, but that in St. John is carefully dated. On both occasions we notice the presence of a considerable crowd; in the former account it embraced people from Jerusalem—Pharisees, Sadducees, and soldiers belonging to the garrison—from Judaea, and from the plains of the Jordan; in the latter a formal deputation of Pharisees from Jerusalem and Galileans, including John the son of Zebedee, Peter and Andrew from Capernaum, and possibly Philip from Bethsaida and Nathanael from Cana. This suggests that both the collections of dis- courses were delivered in close connection with some festival. At such times the presence of numbers of people at a considerable distance from their homes is easily accounted for; Galileans and others would readily come south to keep the festival, while the soldiers were probably sent on police duty to a place where pilgrims were wont to assemble ; thus our identification of the site is confirmed. Between these two occasions we must find room for the Temptation of our Lord, which lasted some six weeks. Plainly the feasts that will most nearly give this interval are those of the Passover and Pentecost. Accepting, therefore, these dates as provisionally correct, we shall suppose that our Lord left His home at Nazareth to go up to Jerusalem for the Passover. On His way He turned aside to listen to St. John the Baptist, and after 44 THE FIRST DAYS the multitude had been baptized and passed on He Himself received a baptism which was completed for Him by the descent of the Holy Spirit. His natural course would have been to follow His companions up to Jerusalem, but He was driven out of it into ‘the wilderness,’ probably the wilderness of Judaea from which St. John had come. For forty days He was led by the Spirit in that wilderness, typical of Israel’s forty years of wanderings when they were led by the pillar of cloud and fire after coming out of Egypt. During this time they had been fed by the manna, which did not cease until they reached Gilgal. This gives point to the first temptation; if our Lord was Son of God! then it would appear that He also could claim to be miraculously supported. That this analogy was present to His mind is indicated by His quotation of the second half of the verse Deut. vili. 3, the first half of which contains a reference to the manna. But God the Father, Who had called Him His Son, nevertheless refused to give Him that sustenance, which Scripture suggested should have been His. And since the Father refused, to work a miracle would have been to go against the Father’s will. The second temptation, following St. Luke’s order, took place on a mountain, possibly the mountain. between Ai and Bethel in the wilderness of Beth-aven where Abraham let Lot depart and received the promise. This would lhe on the route of the Israelites when they took possession of the country under Joshua. Here again the temptation arises from the situation. God had promised the Seed of Abraham all the land within the range of his vision, and the suggestion was to go in and take forcible possession ofit. But again the true ‘ Land of Promise,’ the Kingdom of Heaven, was not to be seized by violence, but to be received as a gift; if, therefore, the Father refused to give it, for the Son to extort it would be an act of dis- obedience, a doing evil that good might come, a worshipping of the devil. Both these temptations exhibit the principle stated by St. John the Baptist, ‘A man can receive nothing except it be given him from heaven.’ The next temptation takes us up to Jerusalem, probably at the time of Pentecost, and in Jerusalem to the Temple. It was then, and at that season, that the Messiah might be expected to appear. The messenger had been sent to Lop. Hos, x1. 1: OF OUR LORD'S MINISTRY 45 prepare the way, and now the Lord was to come to His temple 1; Pentecost commemorated the giving of the old law, and the new law was to go forth from Jerusalem and the word of the Lord from Mount Zion.2 The Heir of Salvation was there, and the ministering spirits were ready to do Him service.* But the Father refused to give the heavenly sign * which should manifest Him as the Messiah, and therefore the Son refused to work it. And after the temptation was over, the angels, whose aid He had refused to invoke, came and did Him service,® doubtless in the Temple where Isaiah had seen them, and where Gabriel had appeared to Zacharias. Now let us return to the Baptist. He had been fore- warned of the coming of the Messiah, and that had given him his mission.* Before our Lord’s baptism he could only foretell His appearance, but did not know who He was to be. His original hearers may have been compara- tively few, but there is no doubt that they would have caused the greatest excitement in the city. The Messiah, the theme of age-long expectation, was to come almost at once, and therefore men were to prepare themselves for His coming. Many would be stirred by such tidings, and on their returning to Jordan at the close of the festival, the pilgrims would have been accompanied by a much greater multitude. But now St. John’s message was even more startling ; the Messiah had come. Whither He had gone St. John could not say. He had seen Him cross the Jordan and take the road to Jericho, as though He were going up to Jerusalem, but beyond that he had no know- ledge. The news would be carried throughout Judaea and up the Jordan valley to Galilee; and before Pentecost large crowds would have come to the passage of the Jordan, anxious for further information, and in this state of excitement would have gone up to Jerusalem. But there nothing seemed to have happened. In their perplexity they turned to their spiritual leaders, the Priests and Levites, and compelled them to send to St. John a formal deputation. But they obtained from him very little satisfaction, and returned home again, wishing to get him quietly out of the way, but unwilling, in the face of popular belief, to denounce him as a false prophet.’ 1 Mal. iii. 1. FAS eT Ree & * Heb. 14 hcp. Mtcxavir $3, 4cp. Lk. xi. 16. 5 Mk. i. 13. AN Ba SE ba 7 ob. Mk. 1.14 > Actsvil. §2.4° Mt. xvii. 12 5) xx1, 25; 46 THE FIRST DAYS On the next day St. John saw Jesus coming to him, and at once pointed Him out as the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world, a reference to Is. liii. 7, and also to the paschal lamb which had probably been mentioned in his earlier preaching. The day following he again saw Him, and rose to meet Him, and remained stand- ing, as a mark of respect. (The contrast does not appear to lie between St. John’s standing and our Lord’s walking, but between St. John’s previous sitting, which was the ordinary attitude of a Jewish teacher, and his subsequent standing.) It is possible that the ‘ again’ of St. John i. 35 may be merely resumptive after the parenthesis of vv. 32-34, ‘On the next day, I say it again,’ or ‘as I said yesterday’ ; so that these two announcements may refer to the same © occasion, an interpretation which some will deem more probable on the ground that, if these incidents are distinct, after the first momentous proclamation nothing seems to have occurred. At any rate, on the second occasion, if they are two, St. Andrew and another disciple, almost certainly St. John the son of Zebedee, heard him speak, and followed Jesus. The time, which is carefully noted, was about the tenth hour, that is, somewhat late in the afternoon.* } Our Lord took His first two followers into the wilderness of Judaea, where He had Himself been abiding,? ‘and they abode with Him that day,’ probably a sabbath day, which would begin with the sunset of Friday, and continue till the sunset of Saturday. In this case St. John’s proclam- ation of our Lord as the Lamb of God would fall on a Friday ;* moreover, if that day was a sabbath, the company of pilgrims, which included St. Peter, would have been resting instead of travelling, and thus St. Andrew could readily find Him. Early * on Sunday morning St. Andrew left our Lord, and found his brother, St. Peter, and brought him to Jesus. Then our Lord, with St. John, St. Andrew and St. Peter, set out from somewhere in the neighbourhood of Jericho along the northern road which led towards the 1See Ramsay, Expositor, 4th series, vol. VI, 216, ff. aT .19305 ® See Edersheim, Life and Times i. p. 345. 4For the reading ‘early,’ instead of ‘first,’ implying that St. John also found his brother, St. James, see Mrs. Smith Lewis, Light on the Four Gospels from the Sinat Palimpsest, pp. 135-141. OF OUR LORD’S MINISTRY 47 Sea of Galilee. They probably traversed a considerable distance. Josephus says that on the direct road which led through Samaria you could go from Galilee to Jerusalem in three days, and the return journey took the festival pilgrims on the first day to Beeroth, a short stage on account of the difficulty of getting the party together ; on the next day, to Jacob’s well, near Sychar, a distance of 23 miles ;! and on the third, to Galilee. As St. Peter had first to be found and brought to our Lord in the wilderness of Judaea, at'a spot which must have been within some two hours’ walk from Bethabara (since by that time the sun would have set), the first day’s journey would probably be not more than 15 miles north of Jericho. Just about this point there is a fork in the road to the left leading past Jacob’s well to Nazareth and western Galilee. Here, then, on the next day, Monday, our Lord would naturally have branched off towards His home, which He had left some two months before. But he willed to go out (‘ of His way,’ or ‘ of Judaea ’) into Galilee.2_ (The Greek word for ‘ willed’ denotes by its tense a definite act of resolution, and probably repre- sents an original which in the Old Testament is often rendered ‘ began.’) Nor are we left in entire ignorance of the reasons for this decision. In the first place the Pharisaic deputation to St. John the Baptist had failed to arrive at any satisfactory con- clusion, and he had given them no assistance. They could not acknowledge him as a prophet without abnegating their own claims, a sacrifice which they were not prepared to make. St. John’s natural humility had foiled their efforts to entangle him in his talk. They could not indict him as having made a false claim to be a prophet, even if they dared, since he had himself made no such claim, but had allowed others to judge for themselves ; yet he firmly refused to give up his message or his obligation to proclaim it. But the popular verdict had already gone in his favour; and, though amongst themselves they professed to despise it, they did not dare openly to contradict it ; while not to make up their minds was to manifest their own incapacity for spiritual leadership and their want of spiritual insight. One course alone remained open to them ; it was to get St. John removed without themselves 1G. H. Trench, Study of St. John’s Gospel, p. 96. *inoheas: 48 THE FIRST DAYS seeming to be responsible. If the more scrupulous might be inclined to hesitate, to the astute mind of a Caiaphas this was the only alternative to ecclesiastical suicide. And in the event this was the course which they actually took. This interview had doubtless been reported to our Lord, and with the clear insight of the innocent He had seen its import and divined its result. It wasatest case. If they accepted the Baptist they would accept Him; if they rejected him, His own rejection was inevitable. In these circumstances He refused to force the issue. Clearly the best thing was to give opportunity for subsequent reflection to overcome the natural leadings of prejudice and self- seeking. Accordingly He decided to make His head- quarters in Galilee, going up to Jerusalem for the festivals lest He should prejudice the case against Himself. And, secondly, St. Andrew and St. Peter both came from Capernaum, and so, we may gather, did St. John, since he and his brother were partners with them. This, to our Lord’s mind, was providential,! that is, a revelation of the Father’s will. Of these, St. Andrew had already decided that He was the Messiah,” and he had carried with him St. Peter. St. John may possibly have taken longer to make up his mind; his was a deeper nature in which the seed does not spring up so rapidly, but when it does appear is not withered by the fierceness of the sun of tribulation or persecution; the narrative suggests that he did not come to his final decision until he had seen the first ‘ sign.’ Moreover, probably in the company which had come up to that feast was also St. Philip, by birth a fellow citizen of St. Andrew and St. Peter at Capernaum, but a resident at Bethsaida,? and we may conjecture that it was St. Andrew who mentioned him to our Lord; at any rate, St. Philip and St. Andrew are constantly associated together. If it was so, St. Philip may well have been returning to his home by the direct road which led up the Jordan valley towards the Sea of Galilee. Accordingly we may paraphrase ‘ He willed to go out into Galilee... and He findeth Philip’ by ‘ He decided to leave Judaea and direct His way towards Capernaum,’ to which He subsequently removed,* ‘ postponing the call of home ’ >— and so taking the direct road to the north instead of that 1 cp, Jn. Vi. 44. Bt fe et Meer) 3 John i. 44, where notice the change of prepositions. 4 Mt, iv: 13. 5 cb. Mk. x. 29, OF OUR LORD’S MINISTRY 49 leading to Nazareth on the north-west—‘ and travelling in the track of Philip.’ Where He succeeded in overtaking Philip must be uncertain. He could hardly have gone all the way to Bethsaida, and thence to Cana in the time, as it would be a three days’ pilgrimage to the Jordan end of the lake from the wilderness of Judaea. The third day after His decision to accompany St. Andrew and St. Peter, there was a marriage in Cana of Galilee.t After being overtaken by our Lord, St. Philip apparently went off independently to find Nathanael. Now Nathanael was a resident at Cana.? Even if he had gone up to the feast of Pentecost, which was not only customary for the good Jew but this year had a special urgency in view of the wide area to which St. John’s message had been carried, he would by this time have reached his home. And there St. Philip finds him medi- tating under his fig tree, probably in the evening,® for Nathanael does not appear: to have been a wealthy man of no occupation, and would only go out for meditation after his work was done. Moreover, if our Lord overtook St. Philip on the road after the halt for Sunday night, it would be approximately a three days’ journey to Cana. Marriage with a maiden was commonly celebrated on Wednesday afternoon,‘ a fact which confirms our itinerary. Behind St. Philip came our Lord with His three disciples. News of His arrival would quickly spread, and the invita- tion, which had doubtless been sent to Him as well as to His mother at Nazareth, but had failed to find Him there, was now repeated and enlarged to include His disciples. As we have seen, our Lord could not well arrive at Cana before the evening, and we gather from the remark of the ruler of the feast that the feast had already lasted some time when He entered.® All the best places had doubtless been already occupied, and our Lord and His disciples were obliged to take the lowest, which would be nearest the door, a thing which He would naturally have done in any event.® On entering the room they passed six water-pots. These seem to have caught St. John’s attention. Possibly they were visible to him when he lay down. At any rate he notes their number six, corresponding to the number of the party ; their material, SS Tire 21.0 T', Ml bay 2a Beye 3 cp. Gen. xxiv. 63. 4Edersheim, Sketches of Jewish Social Life, p. 151. er ins- ly 10, © ch. LEV SIV. 9," £0; 50 DHE FIRST OO AY of stone; their capacity, each containing at the lowest estimate Io gallons; and their use. But the water-pots were empty, obviously empty, so that our Lord could take it for granted in ordering them to be filled. And St. John has indicated this. ‘Now there were there six stone water-pots, according to the purifying of the Jews, —and then comes a word, which from its position, must bear emphasis ; it might mean ‘ deliberately placed there and nowhere else,’ but in that case the clause would run, ‘Now there were,’ etc.; or it might mean ‘lying down,’ and is so used of laying a foundation ; and of the fires of coals which was laid.t_ In any case the word is emphatic, and in the choice between the two possible meanings that fact must have due weight. We may take it that our Lord with His disciples would slip in as quietly as possible and draw the least attention to Himself, so it would not be strange, especially in view of the remark of the ruler of the feast (v. 10), if He and they were overlooked. But His arrival could not be concealed from His mother. She would have learned that the invitation had been given to Him and that He had accepted it. He had been absent from home for at least seven weeks, and no news could have reached her, since He was wandering in the wilderness of Judaea. She would therefore be on the tip-toe of expectation. We may consequently suppose that she came up to Him very soon after He had taken His place. The conversation which follows may very possibly be abridged, but the Evangelist must have thought that, in the form in which he gives it, it was perfectly connected and intelligible. And if that evangelist is the disciple whom Jesus loved, and to whom He committed His mother, he would not, by any omissions from his report, have left it possible to be supposed that she showed little affection towards our Lord. We know the kind of solicitude with which that mother regarded her Son, and it is inconceivable that the first remark she makes after His long absence should have no reference to Him. But besides being consistent with her maternal anxiety, her words must also give occasion for our Lord’s reply, and in both clauses He mentions Himself. And, thirdly, they must be in some connection with her order to the servants. When, therefore, she says, ‘Wine they have not,’ she is not 1 Jn. xxi. 9. OF OUR LORD’S MINISTRY 51 simply referring to the failure of supply, as though that was her sole trouble, but as affecting Him, herson. ‘ They have no wine, that is the reason He has not been given any by the servants. He has had a long journey ; He has passed through a great spiritual experience, involving an incalculable strain, and the signs of it were obvious to a mother’s eye, ever watchful for His material welfare. But our Lord takes up her remark from a different point of view; to be invited to the wedding He regards as a compliment, and the invitation has been stretched to include His friends; He is not thinking of Himself, but of His host and of the wedding party; the failure of the wine is to Him not a personal deprivation, so much as a social calamity. ‘ Why are you troubling yourself about Me and My affairs,? the time for that is not yet come ? ’—that is, there are other matters that demand precedence, a remark as characteristic of our Lord and of His sacrifice of Himself and His apostles to the needs of others,? as-is His mother’s of her and of her care for Him. Still continuing in the same strain of solicitude on His account, at this point, perhaps, she marks another failure of attention ; not even His feet, near which she was standing, or hands, have been washed. Accordingly she turns to the servants and tells them to do whatever He bids them, ‘.Whatsoever He says unto you, doit at once.’ “ Jesus saith untothem, fillthe water pots withwater,.’ Itwasnot, properly speaking, her office to order the servants; that devolved on the ruler of the feast, who was responsible for all the arrangements. Knowing how servants hate being spoken to by anyone except the person they regard as their master, we might expect them to show their resentment, and the more so in the East, as they were male servants being ordered about by a woman, and their lack of attention was being publicly notified. We catch just a hint of this feeling in their action. In spite of the size and weight of the water-pots, ‘ they filled them,’ and the evangelist notices it, ‘up to the brim.’ Doubtless they imagined that they were being bidden to take the first step in the ceremonial of the feast and repair their neglect by washing the hands and feet of the guests, and they resolved to give good measure. ‘ Draw out now’; that is, pour out 1 For this interpretation of ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee,’ see Prof. Burkitt, Journal of Theological Studies, XIII, pp. 594, 595. 2 Cp. Mk. vi. 30-44 ; Lk. ix. 10-17. 52 THE FIRST: DAYS of these cumbrous pots into the ordinary flagons and other drinking vessels that were standing about idle. So far would be intelligible; the guest apparently cared little for foot and hand washing, but after His long walk was consumedly thirsty. But what would they make of the rest of His order to ‘ carry these flagons to the governor of the feast ’ ? The governor of the feast had already drunk considerably, and was himself possibly in some measure responsible for the failure of a supply which doubtless had been thought adequate. What would he say when they poured water instead of wine into his cup? Then it would come out who had given the order, and then the neglected guest would have a more than satisfying revenge. And they filled his cup, and lo, it was wine; and the ruler of the feast, who had been inwardly chafing at the parsi- mony of the establishment, now atones for his thought by passing a somewhat vulgar compliment, ‘ Everybody sets on his good wine first, and when men have drunk freely the second rate, but thou hast kept the good wine going until now.’! Our Lord, then, multiplied the wine —as He did subsequently the barley loaves,—not altering its quality, so that there should be the least possible sense of a hitch, and it might be concluded that the servants had merely drawn on a fresh source of supply while He kept Himself as far as possible in the background. And now what of the effect on St. John? His faith in our Lord’s Messiahship was established. ‘ He manifested forth His glory, and His disciples believed on Him.’ If there was one point more than another on which St. John was sensitive it was on the respect due to his Master. His was by nature a fiery temperament; it was not for nothing that he and his brother were given the name Sons of Thunder. This repayment of discourtesy by gifts, this acceptance of the invitation as a compliment and oblivion of the insult, this sympathy with another’s trouble and forgetfulness of injuries to oneself—is it any wonder that St. John found here a character so strikingly superior to his own, or that, having found it, he paid the tribute of admiration and devotion? So much at least at the time, but as he looked back through the years at those wonderful first few days he found not only a wonder, but a ‘sign.’ That change of water into wine was the beginning only of miracles ; such a change has been wrought 1 For this interpretation see J.T.S. VI, 438. OF OUR LORD’S MINISTRY 53 time after time in men’s lives, and he had seen it, nay, he was conscious of a change in himself, forgiveness of sins, victory over the evil one, knowledge of the Father, unction from the Holy One, love of the brethren, all these things and more have become theirs, his, and ours, through that change whereby we are made children of God. CHRISTisAs corer. INTRODUCTION THAT our Lord appeared to His contemporaries to be a prophet is evident from the whole course of the Gospel narrative. Man after man uses this term to describe the. impression He produced, until towards the close of His earthly life the choice seemed to lie between recognizing Him to be a prophet, or condemning Him as an impostor.? “Who are people saying that I am?’ He asked His disciples, after they had been traversing the country, and on their journeys had thus been acquainting themselves with public opinion.” Some said that He was John the Baptist, others Elijah, others one of the prophets; but they all agreed that He must be classed under the pro- phetic category. And our Lord Himself would seem to have allowed that, partial and imperfect as this description of Him might be, it possessed at any rate a substantial element of truth. A prophet had no honour among his own familiars, and therefore He could not expect the people of Nazareth to recognize Him ; ® Jerusalem had an evil reputation for slaying prophets, and therefore there was a naturalness or appropriateness in that city being the place of His death.4 And if we go on to ask on what sort of ground this opinion rested, the most striking character- istic which led people to employ this term as descriptive of Him was His assumption of authority, an authority only made the more obvious by contrast with the manner of their habitual teachers. ‘He taught as One having authority and not as their Scribes.’® The Scribes claimed for themselves no direct inspiration ; their method was deductive ; it consisted in co-ordinating into a system the records of revelations made to others 1 cp. Deut. xiii. 5, 10; Jn. x. 31; Mt. xxvi. 68. 2Mt xvili3+ Mk ix. 27; LK ix18: * Mt xiii. 57; Mk. vi. 4; Lk. iv. 24; Jn. iv. 44. -¢Lk. xiii, 33; Mt. xxiii, 37. 5 Mt. vii. 29; Mk. i. 22. 54 CHRIST: AS SEER 35 and especially to Moses. But two persons had taught as though they had a direct acquaintance with God, as if they had received a revelation from Him, and were privy to His counsels. Of these one was John the Baptist, and the other was Jesus of Nazareth. Their authority was in either case a delegated authority. To the Jews the fount of all authority was God. ‘ There is no authority,’ says St. Paul, ‘except it be ordained of God.’ All existing authorities are derived from that source, and he includes in his statement civil governments no less than ecclesias- tical or religious. And to this general assertion every Jew wouldagree. The Greek word for this authority is €€ovcia, and though it is often translated ‘ power,’ it differs from the other word dvvayrs, which is also so translated, pretty nearly as right differs from might. Avvaprs is effectiveness, efovoia May or may not be effective, for the word of God spoken by the prophet might fall on very diverse kinds of soil: here it might be fruitful, there sterile. The most obvious evidence of the possession of éfovata will often lie in the clear result of its use ; nevertheless the two ideas are distinct. A rightful sovereign in exile still possesses efovoia ; a successful rebel has Svvayrs. But besides this marked difference there is another which is rather more subtle; 8dvayss does not carry the mind beyond the possessor of it ; efovcia nearly always implies delegation. Three pieces of evidence from different sides will enforce this point. ’Eéovcia is hardly ever (and never in the Gospels) attributed to God ; in fact it is only used of God three times in all : ‘ The times and seasons which the Father hath put in His own authority.’ ‘To the only God our Saviour be glory, greatness, might and authority.’ ‘ They blasphemed the Name of God that had jurisdiction in these plagues.’ On the other hand éfovaia is repeatedly used with some word of bestowing or giving. This sense of delegation which hangs about the word éfovola is brought into prominence if we compare the question put to our Lord with that answered by St. Peter on behalf of himself and St. John. The first runs *Ey ola éfovoia;—‘ What is the nature of your authority?’ And this suggests the second question—‘ Who gave it you?’ St. Peter antici- pated being asked whether the power was his own, and so SPOsy Ri. 05, A ACTS IAF 7, 3 Jude 25. 4 Rey. Xvi. 9. St ee 2S ty Mey 25th Lk ex. 25 56 CHRIST: AS ‘SEEK efovoia is replaced by dvvayis. Why do you gaze at us as though we had made this man walk (dia duvdpe ?? And again ’Ev wola Suvdmer 7 ev Toiw dvopatt émowjnoate robTo buets ; is the power you wield yours or whose ? Lastly, the point is hardly less clearly made in the trial scene before Pilate in St. John’s Gospel.2 The political charge had broken down; Pilate had pronounced the verdict of acquittal. The Jews reverted to the ecclesiastical count on which our Lord had been tried before their court. We have a law pets vopov exouev, we as Jews have a law in spiritual cases recognized by Rome, and by that law He ought to die, because He claimed to be the Son of God. Pilate proceeds to deal with Him on this charge. Our Lord refuses to answer. Pilate is perplexed: ‘ Knowest — Thou not that I have the right to release Thee and the right to crucify Thee ?’ There was no question of the power ; that was conceded. Pilate could rely on his soldiery as Herod is said to have done (adv tots otpatevpacw adrod, Lk. xxiii. 11). Our Lord answers him: ‘ Thou couldest have no jurisdiction in My case but for the fact that the cause has been remitted to thee by thy superiors (ei j7 dedopévovy aor avwhev, where notice the neuter participle, the spiritual court), and therefore he who delivered Me to thee has the greater sin.’ (cp. Matt. iv. 12, Mark i. 14.) To Pilate this statement meant that the majesty of Rome was in danger of being so degraded as to become the catspaw of the Sanhedrin. And é« tovrov Pilate sought to discharge Him. I A Prophet, then, was one who had received a commission from God to publish something. If a definite message is given him to deliver he is a herald, xypvé, (cnptocev implies a formal «ypvywa, so St. Mark i. 14, kenptoowv 76d evayyedov To Deot (kai Aéywr) dtu ITemAnpwrar 6 Katpos kal nyyexev 7 Baotdeia Tob Gob, where the kypvypya is given ; and it is to be distinguished from SiddcKev, éAéyyey, emitysav and apaxadeiv, all of which may be included in ‘ preaching’). But the prophet may have merely seen a vision, and then he had to publish what he had seen. A prophet who had no commission to publish ~would lack one of the necessary qualifications, though in TV ACtS 1 Oka iV. ies Jd fe ee CHRIST AS SEER 57 general the reception of a commission to publish followed after or was included in the reception of a revelation. (cp. Is. vi.) The terms used to amet the reception of a revelation by the prophets are those of seeing and hearing. These are, no doubt, metaphorical ; but how far they are appro- priate can only be judged by one who has the like experi- ence; their persistence from the earliest records, going back, as we read, at least to the case of Abraham, and on to the Christian saints almost of our own day, is in their favour. They are, of course, the ordinary terms of inter- course between human persons, and it is difficult to find others more suitable to describe the intercourse between a human being and a personal God, if that intercourse ever takes place. Nor doesit invalidate the claim to such com- munion that these terms may have become conventional- ized, and employed to designate the results of a mere quickening of human faculties without any manifestation which might be called objective; for, even if this were the case, the later use of this language in a conventional sense would yet rest upon a real earlier experience. Nor is it possible to doubt that both prophets and their con- temporaries were convinced that an objective revelation had been made. To deny this is to incur the danger of rejecting as false the whole Jewish point of view. To the Jew God was no mere quiescent object of man’s search ; He was Himself far more really active than man; and the hope of Israel, which was fostered by prophet after prophet, was that He would come into His own world by a marked intervention. Nothing that man could do could suffice to cause the realization of this hope, though he could do much to hinder it, and in the mean- while man’s part was to trust God to accomplish His promises, and to order his own life so as to be best pre- pared for His coming. The pious of all nations, including the Jews, were feeling after God if haply they might find Him ; but the Jews were unique in this, that their religion did not spring simply from a sense of man’s need, but from a reiterated promise that this need would be more than satisfied. It is open to any critic to deny that this promise was ever made, but to regard it as a delusion is to throw away the possibility of interpreting the whole religious system which the prophets strove to inculcate. 1 Acts xvii. 27. 58 CHRIST AS SEER - We have only to compare the Jews with the most cultured and spiritually minded of the Greeks to be at once struck by the immensity of the contrast. Plato’s Idea of the Good, Aristotle’s God meditating on Knowledge, are, we feel, abstractions. Such, they declared, God must be; but their knowledge of God was a philosophical postulate, “a knowledge by description,’ and neither of them would have claimed ‘ knowledge by acquaintance.’ Plato suc- ceeds in personalizing God only when he ceases to be a philosopher and gives rein to his poetic imagination. If we are to find within the Greek religion any place for personal acquaintance with God we shall not find it in the greatest moralists or thinkers of the ancient pagan world, but in the popular mystery cults which they despised. And we have little difficulty in discovering the roots of these. They were derived from mythological representa- tions of natural processes, and they owed their attraction to their claim to satisfy man’s imperative need, a claim which we have no hesitation in pronouncing false, if only on the ground that, as the philosophers saw truly, no system of polytheism can give final satisfaction. But among the Jews it is precisely the men who claimed to have been admitted into personal intercourse with their God, and based the whole of their best and noblest teaching on revelations received from Him, that preached the highest morality, were ready to face the greatest sacrifices, and, more than any others, lifted their nation out of the slough of a polytheistic and sensuous idolatry. In short, while in the pagan religions of the ancient world we are dealing with the human factor and its upward strivings, we misunderstand entirely the Jewish conception unless we allow for the divine factor standing in a trans- cendent position over and beyond the human. By the aid of a soaring imagination, trained and disciplined by philosophy, the best of the Greeks conjectured what God must be ; while the same imagination, if allowed free rein, gave to sensuality the glamour of beauty and of art. Inthe Jewish religion this imagination was held in the severest check, and forbidden to speculate or indulge its natural tendency to curiosity ; and when it broke loose it was only to find itself swamped in sensual polytheism. In our own day we suffer from a double bias. We habitually employ categories of thought derived from the Greeks in judging religion, of which the Jews in the ancient CHRIST AS SEER 59 world were the highest experts; and this bias is strengthened by the tendency of modern science, which, at thecost of being abstract (rightly enough for its own purposes), deals solely with forces immanent, whether in nature or in man. In consequence of this, in a region in which it is of incom- parably greater importance to recognize adequately the personal activity of God transcendent over nature and man alike (as well as immanent in both), we mentally depreciate the more important factor. The prophet, then, claimed to know God by acquaint- ance, but though he saw or heard, his vision was coloured by his own temperament,! and the metaphors which he used to describe the underlying reality and possibly the forms under which he perceived it were drawn from his own modes of thought, from the scenes and objects among which he habitually moved, and from those familiar to the audience to whom he spoke. No necessary qualification of the subjective factor need be disallowed if it is not regarded as creative of the reality which it apprehended. Nor need we deny that at least in some cases the state of prophetic receptiveness might be artificially induced. Yet we should be wrong in supposing that this was uni- versally necessary. We hear from time to time of the use of music or other aids, but by no means always. This state of receptiveness might supervene upon the prophet with no deliberate or conscious preparation, and almost in spite of himself, certainly against his natural inclination. Nor again was the balance and poise of the mind always disturbed, though it would appear that certain faculties by which man is fitted to hold communion with the unseen world were super-normally quickened and intensified. It is perhaps going beyond the evidence, if we generalize and say that this excitation supervening upon the revelation took forms of violent disturbance of the mental balance, in proportion as the prophetic state was imposed on a character or temperament, where it would meet with moral opposition ; yet it is probably true that intimacy with God under the conditions of normal experi- ence rendered the transition to the prophetic state both 1«*Tn all true visions of this kind an impact is made on the senses by an object, but the object in its reality is outside the range of sensory experi- ence, and therefore the impressions received are confused until the recip- ient has sorted them out. He must sort them out into his own categories, because he has not any others available, and so he sees things in a familiar guise.”” Quoted by T. A. Lacey in The Guardian, March 11th, 1921, p. 198. 60 CHRIST US ORL easier and readier at its beginning, and less disturbing after it had taken place. The music, when it was employed, was doubtless of a religious character, and of course far simpler than that in use among ourselves,! but its effects may well have been similar. On the one hand it would seem to dispose the mind towards feelings of awe and reverence, suggesting to it the presence of a world of impalpable realities, and on the other hand it would aid the effort of detachment from the pressing claims and interests of mundane affairs, the pépipvat Brwrixat of our Lord’s parable. But to persons on whom the worries and anxieties of this life had but a loose hold, while the presence of an unseen spiritual order formed an habitual element in their ordinary consciousness, such artificial aids may well have been needless. Natur- ally enough the pressure of physical circumstances would be as far as possible avoided, and we should expect the prophets to be most susceptible to spiritual influences in the absence of a crowd, in solitude or aided by the sympathy of at most two or three selected friends, and at night, when the fathomless immensity of overarching space rendered more intense by the shining of the stars, produced an effect of awe and wonder pictured for us in the eighth psalm. That such an effect is perfectly natural is witnessed by the well-known sentence of Kant, who reports that two things filled him with awe and reverence—the moral law, and the contemplation of the skies by night. It does not surprise us, therefore, to read that prophetic visions were for the most part accorded when the prophet was alone, and often during nightly vigils. A kind of mental attachment to God and detachment from the world, a simplicity of out- look, and interior collectedness, would enable the instru- ment best to receive and record the impression made upon it, and this attitude of receptiveness and trustfulness would be most easy when most habitual. It is not, of course, denied that the Hebrew prophets were men of a special temperament, or that the prophetic state was on its subjec- tive side akin to other psychic states of which the most recognizable signs are telepathy—or the power to read the thoughts of others,—clairvoyance and clairaudience—or the perception by hearing and seeing events of a past time or spatial remoteness from the subject,— and second-sight, 1 On the effects of Music on people of a religious tone of mind. cp. New- man, University Sermons xiv. pp. 348-350, and Holland, Philosophy of Faith, pp. 19 and 20. CHRIST, AS° SEER 61 or the prevision of events which have not yet taken place. But such manifestations do not constitute in themselves the essence of prophecy; they might occur without it, though they would dispose those who witnessed them to favour any claim made to inspiration. But if the true prophetic vision is granted, such previsions might be received along with it, or in so close a connexion with it as to form part of the same experience. This connexion is, indeed, so frequent, that, in enquiring whether any given individual is a prophet or not, we should be bound to regard such states as forming part of the evidence of his prophetic character. Now states of thought-reading, of clair- voyance, and of prevision seem on the face of the record to have been frequent, if not almost habitual, in the case of our Lord, until those most intimate with Him came to hold that the minds of those with whom He came in con- tact were an open book to Him. And similarly His know- ledge of the death of Lazarus is singularly akin to well- known psychical phenomena of modern times, while His prevision of the details of the Passion reads like some case of second-sight.! II There is, then, a strong a priorz probability that our Lord experienced prophetic visions of spiritual realities, that He saw God at least as really and clearly as did the prophets of the Old Testament, and was in receipt of messages and commands from Him. And indeed all this and more is implied in our Lord’s use of the Scriptures. However dependent on these for instruction He may have been before His ministerial life began, from its commencement He shows every sign of being conscious of an inspiration greater than theirs. His treatment of the law, as Himself occupying a position superior to it and transcending Moses in clearness of outlook and depth of insight and familiarity with the ways of God, is manifest, and has been often remarked. But exactly the same position seems to be taken also with regard to the prophets. Here also the general tone is ‘ It was said... but Isay’ ; and the ground on which this assumption rests is that of personal experience and a received commission. Thus, while it may be true 1 This subject has been well treated by Professor G. Henslow in The Interpreter for October, 1907. 62 CHRIST AS SEER that up to the time of His Baptism He recognized the Scriptures as inspired in a degree superior to His own ex- perience so far, yet afterwards it is rather the case that His own inspiration is the standard by which He judges and certifies them; and in consequence He uses Scripture much as He uses miracles,—as an argumentum ad hominem, an appeal to an authority acknowledged by others but not that by which He was convinced. The questions, then, with which we have to deal are these: Did our Lord receive reve- lations comparable to those given to the prophets in Old Testament times and later to the Christian saints ? Have we any direct statements to that effect ? And, if this may be granted in general terms, can we point to specific instances ? And when we have considered instances which are either indubitable, or at least very highly probable, are there any - other passages in the records, the obscurity of which can be lightened by considering them as references to prophetic visions either entirely unnoticed, or but barely and scantily hinted at ? That our Lord was under a sense of mission will be generally allowed, and analogy would suggest that He received this mission in a vision as did the prophets of the Old Testament. This much would be conceded even if we confined our attention to the synoptic Gospels. But if we wish to discover how He Himself regarded His own acts, and the events of His life, we shall turn more naturally to the Gospel of St. John. Whether we hold that the words there put into His mouth were those actually uttered by Him or not, we have in this Gospel an extraordinarily intimate picture of the workings of our Lord’s own human mind. Even allowing that this picture may be imagina- tive, still the general consensus of Christians, from an age when tradition was still fresh up to our own time, is of immense weight in accepting it as true to character. The thoughts expressed, the point of view represented, are precisely such as would be held: by One who corresponded with the more exterior portrait given by the synoptists. If He produced the impression on His contemporaries which they depict, then there is a singular harmony between the mind which we should be led to expect Him to have, and that expressed for us in the words which St. John attributes to Him. The portrait lives for us; in studying it we feel ourselves illuminated ; it opens to us an avenue of appreciation of a character which wins us by its gracious- CHRIST AS SEER 63 ness, while it inspires us by its sublimity. And the im- ‘pression which we derive from this Gospel is that, while prophetic vision was to the prophets of the Old Testament an exceptional and transient experience, to our Lord something corresponding to it was normal and habitual. To the outside world He appeared as a great miracle worker ; but that is not the way in which He regarded His own works, though He might from time to time employ lan- guage which reflected the popular estimate. The works were, ‘ the Father’s works’ ! ‘ the works of God,’ ? done ‘ in the Father’s name,’ °‘ The Father abiding in me He doeth the works.’* They were done ‘ by the finger of God ’5— that is, ‘ by the Spirit of God.’ And similarly the outside world regarded Him as an original teacher ; but according to the Gospel of St. John this is not how He regarded Himself. . ‘ The word which ye hear is not Mine but the Father’s Who sent Me;’? ‘I speak the things which I have seen with the Father ;’& ‘The Father showeth the Son all things that Himself doeth.’® And in a similar strain the author of the Gospel bore testimony to Him: ‘ What He hath seen and heard of that He beareth witness.’!° ‘ He whichis from God, He hath seen the Father.’44 And these scattered sentences are summed up in two striking utterances: ‘ The Son can do nothing of Himself ;’ ‘I can of Myself do nothing.’” Before we leave the Gospel of St. John there are two other features which must be noticed. The first is that this strangeness of phraseology, I do the works, the Father doeth the works ; the words, or works are Mine, they are not Mine; I can of Myself do nothing ; receives an explana- tion in the closing chapters which form what is called the Great High Priestly Prayer. ‘Iam in the Father and the Father in Me.’!? The general theological principle of the Incarnation forbids us on the one hand to take the ‘I’ as referring in any exclusive sense to our Lord in His eternal or intemporal divine nature. If in His manhood He spoke of Himself, He spoke of Himself in that manhood. Though these words would be a typical expression of the mutual inherence of the Father and the Son within the Eternal Trinity, yet here they must be used of an indwelling possible to man and realized by our Lord Himself as Man. ee a LIK, 4. Soave IV SO. bea et 20.0 4) DAE ibe eo. PLUCKY. 24. 8 viii. 38. tha xe Ye a0 ful {ae ivi; 46. Bers 59,30. Pe Miva ET. 64 CHRIST (AS <2 8100s And this interpretation is supported by the fact that this mutual inherence of God the Father and man is prophe- sied of Christians, and indeed is their fundamental blessing. If our Lord says of Himself ‘I and the Father are one,’? yet He prays that the same may be true of those who believe on Him—‘ that they all may be one ; even as Thou, Father, art in Me and I in Thee, that they also may be in Us.’ 2 And it is because of that indwelling that they also are to do works greater than Hisown.* The world is to come to believe in His mission by perceiving that that mission has not ceased, but is continuing in them. They are to be in Christ, and therefore in God ; Christ is to be in them, and therefore the Father in them. Thus it is the same Spirit by which He spake that is to prompt their words also, ‘ The Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say;’ 4 ‘ As the Father taught Me I speak these things ;’ > ‘ The Holy Spirit .. . shall teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance all that I said unto you.’® And St. Paul is witness that this promise has been fulfilled. No one accuses St. Paul of drawing a fictitious portrait of the ideal Christian, or of writing out of anything else than his own experience. But his lan- guage is curiously parallel to that used by our Lord in the Gospel of St. John. ‘ Not that we are sufficient of our- selves so as to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God;’? ‘I can do all things in Him that strengtheneth me;’ §‘I laboured moreabundantly than they all; yet not I but the gracious gift of God which was with me.’ ® ‘ We speak wisdom not in words which man’s wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth.’!° IJ, yet not I; I in Christ, Christ in me ; and because in Christ, Iam a temple of the Spirit of God. And we may compare with this ‘I am the Light of the world,’ ‘ Ye are the light of the world.’!! It is thus that the verdict of Christian experience authen- ticates the portrait of our Lord as drawn by St. John; yet there is no particle of evidence that in origin they are not entirely independent. It is, in fact, difficult to find any statement which has been made about our Lord in His manhood on earth which could not be paralleled with Scripture warrant about Christians. wan Pe Xx. 30. ae ey eels Pav, ks. 4k, xtra; Ani Tvl 5. x1 VaraOy ¥ 2. Corsi as. 8 Phil. iv. 13. P72 ASOT sa ee Oe A075 COM iE Pa SLOT RPV, I 4 ee ea ee CHRIST AS SEER 65 Is He omnipotent ? St. Paul claims ‘ I can do all things’! (cb. Mk. ix. 23: ‘ All things are possible to him that believeth’; Mt. xvii. 20: ‘If ye have faith . . . nothing shall be impossible to you.’ ) Is He omniscient ? St. John writes ‘ Ye have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things.’ ? Is He richly endowed ? ‘ All things are yours.’ ® Is His prayer efficacious ? ‘ All things whatso- ever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.’ Has Hea mission? ‘ As the Father hath sent Me even so send I you.’> Is He adequate to it? ‘God hath made us sufficient as ministers of the New Covenant.’*® Is He taught of God? ‘It is written they shall be all taught of God.’ ‘ Ye yourselves are taught of God.’ ? Is His life a heavenly life? ‘Our citizenship is in heaven.’ ‘ God hath made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places.’ § Is it eternal? ‘God gave unto us eternal life.’® Is He sinless ? ‘Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not’; ‘ Whosoever is begotten of God doeth no sin, because His seed abideth in him; and he cannot sin because he is begotten of God.’?° Was He foreknown before the foundation of the world ? 11 God ‘chose us... before the foundation of the world.’ #2 And finally, ‘ As He is, even so are we in this world.’ ‘In Him ye are made full.’ “We have the mind of Christ.’13 III This leads us on to another characteristic of Hebrew prophecy. However it might vary in expression, yet running through it is a constantly recurring theme, the foundation melody, however embroidered, as it were, with variations. Every great prophet tells of an age to come, an age emphatically new, though often foreshadowed ; an age in which men shall know God and have His covenant written in their hearts. The figure of the Messianic king might vary from century to century. It did not rise over the threshold of prophetic consciousness before the time of David, and in some prophets it is entirely absent ; but when it is present it is never exclusive or independent of the Messianic people. His greatness consists in what MPT iy. 3; 27 Jn. ii. 20. ar Corsi ais + Sit. Seterae, imen sete. 2 Gori. 6.5)" [ne vi g5i tt haivog,. 9 Phill nizag; Epp. 1 Gs 2 [ne i. 6. oh ed be a eae YP SO Si) Pe, Sey Gere Uy Pet.i.20. 2 Ephoi 47)" 27) ivei7;. Gol, ty 203): Coraii 16: F 66 CHRIST.AS SEER He does for them, or what they do with and through Him. It is thus that our Lord stands as the culmination of Old Testament prophecy. The Kingdom of God, of which He so often speaks, is the Messianic kingdom which they foretold. He isinit anditin Him. But the blessedness of its possession which He experienced was not to be confined to Himself: rather He conceived His function in regard to it to consist in making Himself the way by which, or the door through which, others might enter into it. His Messianic kingship was not in His sight an oriental sultanate. He was to be the servant of His people, sub- ordinating Himself to their interests, even unto death. They are to share His privileges, to be anointed with His anointing, to sit on His throne, as well as to be partakers of His baptism and to drink of His cup. In the language of the Epistle to the Hebrews He is the pioneer (apynyés) of a common salvation.! So, in the same Epistle, He is compared to Abraham, as one in whom the privileges of a covenant relation with God were summed up, which never- theless were not to be confined to Him, but extended to all those who were members of His body, incorporated into Him. So, in St. Paul’s writings, He is compared to Adam, the founder of the race of mankind, and its primary and, for a time, its sole embodiment. We have, therefore, our Lord regarded as a prophet, conscious of a mission, of having received a revelation and of being under an obligation to proclaim it. We see Him taking up the message of the older prophets, predicting a Messianic kingdom into which others were to enter, while He Himself already lived in it. Our first question then will be: At what period of His earthly life did He Himself enter it, and was His entry signalized by anything resem- bling the visions in which the prophets of the Old Testament claim to have received their several commissions? Now, here we are left in no manner of doubt. Taking the evidence in chronological order, we observe that our oldest Gospel begins almost immediately with our Lord’s Baptism. It has, indeed, a short introduction, but it is an intro- duction leading up to that event. Turning to the Book of the Acts we find that one of the necessary qualifications of candidates for the Apostolic office was that they should have been in the Apostolic company from the baptism of John until the Ascension.2 Looking at St. Peter’s speech 1 Heb. ii. ro. * Acts 1. 22. CHRIST AS SEER 67 to Cornelius we find ‘ Jesus the Anointed ’ or ‘ the Messiah ’ . .. ‘God anointed Him’ (made Him Messiah) ‘ with the Holy Ghost and with power.’! Turning back to St. John’s Gospel we find our Lord explaining the significance of His own experience in conversation with Nicodemus, who as a Pharisee had not, we presume, been baptized by St. John: * Except a man is born anew (or from above), of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.’ ‘ We speak that we do know and bear witness of that we have seen.’ Finally, when we look at the record of the event itself we feel ourselves at once in the presence of a pro- phetic vision. The narratives differ slightly. Most of the MSS. of St. Matthew tell us that the heavens were opened to our Lord, that He saw the Spirit of God des- cending as a dove, and coming upon Him, and heard the Voice from Heaven proclaiming, ‘ This is My Son, My Beloved.’ And this is based on the narrative in St. Mark. St. Luke leaves the beholder of the vision indefinite, while St. John specifies that the vision was granted to the Baptist, and it was this that revealed to him who the Messiah was. But these differences are not of great importance. If St. John had a vision and our Lord was there and was a prophet, there is no assignable reason why He should not have shared in the vision of His forerunner. And, conversely, if the vision was granted to our Lord, it might well be that the Baptist participated in it. And that the vision was not granted to one to the exclusion of the other is indicated by subtle harmonies. Thus, there can be little doubt that the words used by the voice from heaven point back to the 42nd chapter of Isaiah. It does not follow, of course, that they are unauthentic, merely a later insertion to add verisimilitude to the narra- tive. This argument could only be employed by persons who have made up their minds that all records of pro- phetic visions are tpso facto false. On the contrary, if we regard the vision as granted to our Lord exclus- ively, the same argument applies to the narrative of the Temptation, namely, that both are based on His own disclosure, and we must adduce evidence before we consider Him misinterpreted. But, accepting the record as substantially accurate, we find for it considerable corro- boration in subsequent events, which show no sign of having been ingeniously filled in to support a fictitious view. 1 Acts x. 36-38. 2 Jn. iiis 5-7. 68 CHRIST AS SEEK Thus it is clear that the Baptist’s designation of our Lord as the Lamb of God is subsequent to the Baptism, and identifies Him with the Lamb brought to the slaughter in Isaiah liii., that is with ‘ the Suffering Servant.’ This is itself remarkable. It was an identification which had apparently no tradition behind it. It reappears in the Acts (iv. 27-30) in the title given to our Lord of zais tod @cod and then it disappears except in liturgical formulae. On the other hand, the Baptist’s preaching seemed to be based largely on Isaiah, and therefore however novel the identification, it is not out of character with the rest of his language. In St. Mark the same identification is made by our Lord, but obscurely, yet less so than is the reference to — Daniel in ch. xiv. 62, a reference which might well escape our notice but for the fact that we find similar expressions based on the same original authority in the Book of Enoch. Thus St. Mark ix. 13 refers to Malachi, therefore it is probable that ix. 12 also refers to a definite prophecy. It is difficult, however, to think of any passage more suitable than Isaiah liii., and a similar reference would seem to be implied in ix. 31 and x. 33. Our Lord, knowing Himself to be Man, would naturally consider that sooner or later He would die. In some form or other, also, He would believe with most Jews in a Resurrection. But from the moment when He became conscious of His Messiahship, the whole stream of tradition would be against either of these events happening to Him. If we, therefore, allow His claim to Messiahship but disallow any way of obtaining information except such as were open to ordinary men of His time, we are at once faced with the difficulty of accounting for the com- plete reversal of ordinary conceptions of Messiahship which we find exhibited in His life and teaching. Nor have we open to us the explanation that outward appear- ances made it increasingly clear that His life could meet with only one end ; for the Messiah of popular expectation was one who when things were darkest would triumph most signally over his enemies. Again, no analysis is sufficient to prove progress or development in the thought or con- sciousness of our Lord during His ministerial life. It is obvious that this must be so. The opposite view pre- supposes that no evidence of conceptions which are con- sidered to be later has been omitted from the earlier 1¢p. L. Johnston in The Interpreter, vol XII, 244-256. CHRIST AS SEER 69 portions of the record, and this is in itself by no means demonstrable. But it presumes also that our Lord could entertain no ideas without giving utterance to them, if not immediately, yet within a short interval. Now this is opposed to all analogy. The mind of the teacher may well be far in advance of those of his pupils—and in this instance we have every reason to believe that it was so— but if he is a good teacher, and just because he is a good teacher, he willlead them step by’step. And this deliberate progress of instruction will be the more necessary in proportion as his teaching is profound and novel, and so likely to encounter prejudices and pre-suppositions hostile to its reception. He will, perhaps, from time to time drop hints of what possesses his own mind, hints which, if remembered, become intelligible to his audience only after much greater progress on their part or in the light of sub- sequent events. And something of this kind is precisely what we find. Thus, in the second chapter of St. Mark we read of the bridegroom being taken away, or snatched away, an expression which may itself look back to the same chapter of Isaiah. Then there is the taking up of the cross in the tenth chapter, and the parable of the vineyard let out to husbandmen, in the twelfth. It is conceivable that all these and other predictions may be fictitious insertions ; but the only ground for maintaining this opinion is that detailed foreseeing is impossible. In the face of undoubted instances of ‘second-sight’ among ordinary men and women this is untenable. Second-sight may be inexplic- able with our present knowledge, but it is not scientific to refuse to admit well authenticated facts because we are unable at present to form a theory which shall afford them standing room. It is, of course, possible that our Lord’s foresight of His passion may have become increas- ingly detailed, and to some this may appear the more probable opinion; but we really have no particle of evidence showing that this was the case. The most that could possibly be affirmed is that His language about it became more explicit, but this can be fully accounted for, if we take into consideration the dullness and prepossession of His hearers, qualities which are strongly marked in the -narrative, even if there were no direct statement to that effect. But perhaps the most outstanding evidence is to be found not in His words, but in His conduct. No one 70 CHRIST AS SEER can read the account of His conversation with the three disciples on coming down from the Mount of Transfigur- ation without feeling how much the death of St. John Baptist had affected Him. Nor does it need great in- genuity to see that this is immediately coupled with His own passion, which He had begun to predict but a little while before. The same mental collocation is seen lying behind His question to the Pharisees. Our Lord seems to take the view that behind the action of Herod, in being the actual instrument of St. John’s martyrdom, was the same party which was compassing His own death. St. John’s beheading made His own destruction morally inevitable. © In this way St. John was a sign to Himself, as many of the acts of the former prophets had been signs to their own generation. And we are given to understand that this prepossession was no new thing in the mind of our Lord. As soon as St. John is put in prison our Lord takes up His message ; as soon as he is put to death He retires from His enemies, as though anxious not to anticipate the event which He foresees to be inevitable. It follows, then, that the identification of Himself with the ‘ Suffering Servant ’ had already been made when this retirement began. St. John’s Gospel, as has been said, ascribes the vision at the Baptism to the Baptist. This is entirely in character. Whoever we think the real author to have been, he presents himself as the disciple of the Baptist, and thus gives us a record of an event of which he was not himself a spectator, from the Baptist’s point of view. St. Matthew and St. Mark, on the other hand, suggest that the record rests on our Lord’s own report: the two are not irreconcilable, but are curiously brought together. Whenin St. Matthew’s Gospel the Baptist’s disciples are sent to ask our Lord in set terms whether He was the Messiah (the Coming One) or not, He replies in language which is intended to give a definite answer to St. John’s question without laying claim to the title in words which were explicit to the minds of the listening multitude. He does this by calling the attention of the messengers to the fact that He was fulfilling the prophecy in the sixty-first chapter of Isaiah. In St. Luke we meet with the same prophecy more fully quoted quite early in the ministry in the synagogue at Nazareth. There we find that our Lord uses precisely the same word employed by St. Peter in the Acts—that He had been anointed, made the Messiah, and had received a commission GORIST YAS USER ax to act as a herald (knpvéar). This anointing took place at the Baptism. Our Lord is, then, referring the Baptist to a vision known both to His enquirer and to Himself, because both had shared it. IV We have dwelt at some length on this event because any reason which can be adduced for holding that St. John received a vision affords support to the hypothesis that our Lord received visions also; and because it illustrates the fact of which there is subsequent evidence, namely, that visions may be shared whether (to use modern lan- guage) telepathically or otherwise. We have also in this quotation from Isaiah an instance of the freedom with which our Lord treated both prophecy and law alike. One of the next indubitable instances of prophetic vision is the Temptation. Here nothing forbids us to accept as historically true the local setting. There is no reason for supposing that our Lord did not go into the wilderness, or was not hungry, or did not see the stones, or that He - did not go up into a mountain and enjoy an extended view, or up to the Temple at Jerusalem. But the sight of all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them is such as could only come within the vision of the prophet’s eye. It is parallel to the visions related of Abraham and Moses, and may have taken place on one or other of the sites where those visions were granted to them. Here again the whole temptation turns on the reality of His ‘ adoption’ as Son of God at His baptism, a word which we have seen is an alternative to the spatial metaphor of the indwelling of God the Father. Buta flood of light is let in on the tempta- tion if we remember that our Lord already regarded Himself as designated to bring about the realization of God’s kingdom on earth by His death. Along with these we may perhaps put ‘I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.’ ! Whatever this may mean, the ‘I beheld’ at once suggests a prophetic vision. It is usual to take the words as a logical deduction from the report of the success of their mission as related by the disciples. But in the first place the tense is against this. ' No reason can be urged for the words being put in the past tense when the reference is to the future. The disciples Ee Sy To. Fie CHRIST AS SEER had felt, that which was afterwards to become the charac- teristic note of Christian experience, that they were not alone, but that the cures they wrought by Christ’s name (ch. Mt. vii. 22) were due, in a way which they could not understand, to His presence with them: is it impossible that He was conscious of the power going forth from Him- self (Lk. viii. 46) at the moment when that power was being exercised ? Surely one of the most characteristic peculi- arities of our Lord during His ministerial life on earth was His capacity for entering into others’ thoughts, seeing through their eyes, and reading their history by something ~ which, perhaps, is best called a kind of intuition. Somewhat similar in character to this prediction of the ultimate triumph of God’s kingdom, as made evident by this instance of its power, are the general predictions of its world-wide extension—as for instance in Mt. xiii. 32, Lk. xiii. 19. It has become common with writers of a certain type of mind to regard this as a sort of logical induction from positive instances taken as samples of the whole, but this is to treat the mind of a Jew as though it were that of a Greek, and is no more applicable in -the case of our Lord than in that of the earlier prophets. Parables with the Greeks, as for instance Plato’s myths, are illus- trations of an argument, and separable from it, by those who prefer an unillustrated edition, without substantial loss. But stories, parables, similes are to the Jew the substance of the communication, and explanations are but appended footnotes, unnecessary to those who perceive with a comprehending eye. To the scientist the explanation of a phenomenon is the general principle of which it is one example ; but to the Oriental the explanation of a principle is the concrete instance: he thinks in terms of pictures and proverbs, his method of carrying conviction is by telling a story. The Western answer to the question what a thing is takes the form of a definition, the Eastern of an appropriate simile ; the proverb to the Western is an inferior argument, inferior in logicality; the argument to the Eastern is inferior to the proverb, inferior in vigour and pictorial vivacity. Hence also the modern feeling about exactness of quotation and acknowledgement of indebtedness for language. But there is no copyright in ideas, and stereo- typed metaphors are common property. The modern writer works in a study among books, the ancient writer worked among memories. Coincidence of language has CHRIST AS SEER 73 in consequence for us an importance which it loses as soon as our attention is fixed on community of spiritual perception. Hence the mere fact that our Lord speaks of the king- dom of God as a great tree, does not prove literary borrow- ing. The metaphor may have occurred to more than one mind independently to express a similar thought ; its use says nothing in regard to our Lord’s prophetic originality. If He definitely repeats language, as in the trial before the high priest, where there is a deliberate reference to Daniel, or sets Himself to give the prophesied Messianic sign, as in the triumphal entry, it is not because He is dependent on His predecessors, but for the sake of the audience or spectators. Once grant that the Old Testament prophets were sincere in ascribing their message to revelation from an external source and not to their own penetrative insight, and we are bound to grant the possibility of similar revela- tion to our Lord in His manhood. Finally, among visions which are indubitable we have the Transfiguration. This is definitely called a vision. The imagery—the glistening robe, the supernatural light, the cloud—s all prophetic in character. The confusion of St. Peter’s mind, showing a partial appreciation of the meaning of the vision overlaid by the effects of preoccupation with the thoughts of the coming passover, is eminently true to psychology. St. Peter’s second epistle is generally re- garded as unauthentic, nevertheless it is writtenin character, and gives an impression, which would be regarded by its author and his readers as true to fact. Now in this des- cription we find a remarkable phrase; the effect of the vision on the mind of those who beheld it is said to have been the intensifying of confidence or belief in prophecy. Time after time our Lord appealed to the prophets as grounds of conviction that His death and subsequent glorification was inevitable (ede), but the disciples were slow of heart to comprehend or to accept the message. The vision opened to them an opportunity of beholding that which the earlier prophets had foreseen. But the St. Peter of the epistle seems to have in his mind a definite passage, ‘ the word of prophecy,’ ! and if we look back to the earlier epistle, which is generally thought to have been the model of the later, we find what this word of prophecy was, —‘ Who did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth, ay = Pb A 74 CHRIST AS SEER but His own self bare our sins in His body upon the tree . .. by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were going astray like sheep, but are now returned to the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls,’! and that is from the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. Summing up the main import of our Lord’s visions as far as the evidence has gone, we see that, like earlier pro- phecy, they were concerned with the rejection and death and subsequent glory of the Messiah. Andas were many of the earlier prophets, so also our Lord, in these acts wrought upon Himself, was to be a sign. If He was crucified, others were to take up their several crosses and follow Him, to take upon themselves the burden laid upon Him, and the yoke that was on His shoulder. He was the first and typical example to enter the kingdom of heaven by water and the Spirit, and that baptism of water signified a death to self, a losing of the life or soul. Our Lord refers to this death to be evinced in the outward and visible sign of crucifixion as a baptism—‘ I have a baptism to be baptized with.’? And the anointing with the Spirit was a foretaste of the glory of the Resurrection, in which He received from the Father ‘ the promise of the Holy Spirit.’% It is by the power of this Spirit that our Lord as man inheres in the Father and He in Him. Illuminated by it He testifies from His own experience, and empowered by it He works His miracles;* and resting on this inner ex- perience, He beholds by faith the universality of the extension of the realm of God. We have now to deal with other references to a vision or visions of similar import which are not so obvious or clear. And first, ‘ I am authorized to lay it down and I am author- ized to receive it again. This command I received from My Father.’ 5 We have already shown that there is a radical distinction between dvvayus and éefovoia, the latter being the word used here. Avvauww éyev would be equivalent to dvvdcAat, and would mean to have the power, or be able; efovaiav exeev is to have right, or jurisdiction, authority or com- mission. In this context its use is explained by ér7oAy, I have received a commandment from God, and am there- fore authorized. But the meaning of the word is further emphasized by other passages in the Gospel. Thus verse 27, He hath given Him authority to hold a judgement, He has given Him a commission as judge, a judicial authority, 11 Pet. ii. 22-25. 2 Lk. xii. 50. 3 Acts ii. 33. ‘Mt. xii. 28. 5 Jn. x. 18. CHRIST AS SEER 78 an authority to acquit or condemn. The distinction is clear by ordinary human analogies. The executive acts on the judge’s report, but the judge represents the supreme government in one capacity, the police in another. The judge hands over to the officer (danpérns Or mpadxTwp). The executive and judicial functions may be combined in a single individual; but executive, judicial, and legis- lative functions are in themselves distinct. The judgement of the judge is as a judgement similar to that of anyone else ; it may be more equitable, or a better declaration of the law as applicable to the particular case founded on superior knowledge, but it differs from the judgement of anyone else essentially not in these respects, but in the fact that it is authoritative. But the distinction is never more clearly brought out than in St. John’s prologue: ‘Them He authorized to be made children of God.’! The theology of St. John is in this matter entirely at one with that of St. Paul. To become a child of God is not a human achievement, and man has no inherent powers of making himself such. It is a divine gift, not of works but of grace. It demands a new birth into a higher order of being. It is an adoption. Man is recreated, and by virtue of this he is a new creature. Christian ethic is based upon it; Christian progress springs from this as its root. Children of God owe their position not to natural faculties, or human aspirations, or acts of will, but to being born of God. Faith enables a man to receive, but in itself it is sterile to produce salvation. The fallow ground needs to be broken up, but the seed is a thing that comes to it from outside; the lump is un- leavened until the energizing leaven is introduced into it. So it is here. Our Lord’s death was voluntarily accepted, but not self-inflicted ; he was not going to kill Himself (vii. 22). It was no suicide, even though it might conceivably have been avoided. The Scripture foretold it ; the salvation of mankind could not else have been achieved. And similarly our Lord did not as man raise Himself. In Scripture sometimes a neutral word is used to describe the Resurrection—‘ He rose’; but when this is not the case the verb is never middle, but passive—‘ He was raised,’ or ‘ He has beenraised’; and sometimes the agent is de- finitely stated to have been the Father. So it is through- out sub-apostolic literature, with the single exception of cg Se ek Hk 76 CHRIST AS SEER Ignatius (ad Smyrn. 2) and the same writer says that the Father raised Him (ad Trail. 9). And the like is true of the Ascension and glorification of our Lord. The point is important in more than onerespect. The miracles recorded in the creeds stand on a different level from those which we find attributed to our Lord in the Gospels. The former were miracles worked by the Father on Him. No one can assert that our Lord as Man accomplished the work of taking that manhood which then only, and through that act, became His. The Incarnation, the Baptism, the Resurrection, the Ascension and glorification are all alike in that; they are creative acts of God worked on pre- viously existent material. And they have analogies within the experience of each Christian soul. No man can make himself child of God, member of Christ, inheritor of the Kingdom of Heaven. Eternal life, or the Holy Spirit, is always a gift. Hecan but prepare himself for its reception, desire it, trust to God’s promise to bestow it, hold out his hand to receive it. No Christian prayer can make a sacrament; it can but ask God to effect it. Christian experience is the experience of something which God does on, or in, or to the soul, something for which a man should thank God, but not something of which he can boast, as though he accomplished it himself. And our Lord’s life is a revelation of God’s working according to thislaw. We do not climb up a tower of Babel into heaven: the new Jerusalem came down to earth. It has been necessary to emphasize this point in order to make the meaning of this passage clear: we have now to ask ourselves when or under what conditions did our Lord receive this ¢fovoia or évtodj. It is the more probable opinion that it was the original intention of God to raise the creation to His own right hand in Christ. This then may have been the implicit law of our Lord’s incarnate life, though contingent for its fulfilment on His human faith and obedience. But it does not follow that as man He was aware of thislaw. Nor is it sufficient to say that it was the subject of prophecy. That is, no doubt, our Lord’s own interpretation of prophecy. Scripture testified over and over again of the need of His death and subsequent glorifica- tion. But, as we have seen, Scripture was to Him not the ultimate ground of faith but its corroboration. Moreover, analogy is in favour of the reception of a commission, authorization, or command in prophetic vision. It is CHRIST AS SEER 77 true that these visions may have been of repeated occur- rence, but their import appears to have been in substance identical. We shall probably, therefore, not be wrong in referring it to the baptismal vision. This was the moment of the gift of Messiahship, of adoption, of Sonship, of mutual indwelling in the Father and of the Father in Him. It is from this vision that we have been led to date both His and St. John’s consciousness of His designation as the Lamb of God. Baptism was, as we have seen, significant to Him of death. We may then say with some confidence that our Lord’s primary reference is to that: ‘I was authorized in My baptism to lay down My life for the sheep, and to receive it again. I there received this charge from My Father.’ Our Lord’s own personal experience was that of dying daily and being revivified no less than was that of St. Paul. Indeed, it is a commonplace of Christian mysticism that the mysteries of our Lord’s life, birth, death, resurrection, ascension, glorification, heavenly life, are re-enacted, not in succession, but all at once, and always in the Christian soul. And what is true of the experience of Christians was, we may be sure, no less true in our Lord, their pattern and example. We pass now to a passage intimately related to this: ‘Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” The comment ‘ He spake of the temple of His Body ’ is an editorial note, and the value of the editorial notes in St. John as interpretations of the context is not always of the highest order.2, An example or two will make this clear. Thus in ch. xviii. 8, we read, ‘ If therefore ye seek Me let these go their way,’ and the comment follows ‘ that the word might be fulfilled which He spake, “‘ Of those whom Thou hast given me I lost not one’’.’ Here the reference to ch. xvii. 11-12 is clear: ‘ Holy Father, keep them in Thy name which Thou hast given Me... While I was with them I kept them in Thy name...andI guarded them, and not one of them perished but the son of perdition.’ Are we to believe that “ guarded’ means ‘ saved from arrest,’ and ‘not one of them perished’ means they all survived except Judas, who hanged himself ? Another instance is in ch. xxi. 18: ‘ When thou wast young thou girdedst thyself, and walkedst whither thou wouldest ; but when thou shalt be old, thou shalt stretch .1Jn. ii. 19, ch. Hort, Christian Ecclesia p. 163. 2 see J. M. Thompson in The Expositor for Sept. 1917, p. 214. 78 CHRIST AS SEER forth thy hands and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither thou wouldest not.’ The imagery is that of an old man who stands up and holds up his hands whilst another girds up his loins; and for this Cwvvdvar is the appropriate word (cp. Acts xii. 8). The description is that of literal old age: it is used by our Lord metaphorically. St. Peter’s spiritual feebleness will need bracing by another, and he will be carried ina direction whither he has no natural mind to go. As a prophecy it is closely fulfilled by the meeting with St. Paulat Antioch. St. Peter failed through feebleness, and St. Paul braced him up, stiffened him, as we should say, and carried him in the opposite direction to his natural inclination. But is it possible to apply this girding of the loins to crucifixion ? ‘ This He said signifying what death he should die’. It remains then that we are not bound to adhere to the interpretation given in such editorial notes. It is possible our Lord was speaking of His resur- rection: this temple might refer to the body of the Speaker; but though it is clear that it did not refer to the literal temple of stone before Him, it is not so clear of what He was thinking when He used the temple made with hands as a symbol. But if it isa symbol, we must ask what in the mind of our Lord the temple represented. And it could only stand for the Jewish religion. Judaism was in process of destruction by the Jews, and especially by their leaders, because they did not recognize their Messiah. In the divine intention Judaism should have attained its consummation in Christianity ; it was meant to lead up to that. The antithesis between the old temple and the new is familiar to us in the contrast between the old and the new Jerusalem in St. Paul. But we need not go so far as St. Paul’s epistle. The same incident is referred to in St. Mark xiv. 58, when our Lord is reported as saying, ‘I will destroy (ckaraAvow) this temple that is made with hands and in three days I will build another made without hands.’ And it meets us again in the false accusation against Stephen (Acts vi. 14), that he was heard to say that Jesus of Nazareth would destroy this place, that is, ‘this holy place’ of the previous verse (katadvoe tov Témov TobToV, 1.€., 6 Té70s 6 ayos), and the interpretation is given by St. James—Acts xv. 15-17. ‘ To this agree the words of the prophets, as it is written, “ After these things I will return, and I will build again CHRIST AS SEER 79 (avocxodouyow) the tabernacle of David. And I will build again the ruins thereof and I will set it up (a4vop0wow). That the residue of men might seek after the Lord, and all the gentiles upon whom My Name is called, saith the Lord who maketh all things known.”’ ’—Here ‘ known’ (yyword) is an addition to the prophecy of Amos (ix. 12), who says simply 6 woidv wavta tata. Here it is clear that the tabernacle of David as meant by the prophet was the temple, but it is interpreted by St. James to mean the Jewish religion, and the restored temple is the Christian Church, which is built upon the ruins of fallen Judaism. The quotation combines dvoixodopjow, where St. Mark says otxodopyce, and avopfdow, which in St. John is represented by éyep. Nowin St. John’s account the announcement is made at the time of the cleansing of the temple. But one motive is indicated in the quota- tion in St. Mark—‘ My House shall be called a house of prayer for all the nations.’ The Jewish traffickers had occupied the only portion of the temple where the Gentiles were allowed to worship, and we notice that the quotation by St. James is given as determining the right of admission of Gentiles into all the privileges of the Christian Church. Is it not then extremely probable that our Lord’s remark, which we have in an abbreviated form in St. John, was in reality a quotation: ‘‘‘ Destroy thistemple and in three days I will raise it up,’’ saith the Lord who doeth all these things.’ The temple was the house where God dwelt. The old temple had been built with hands. But the new temple was to be built without hands. In a temple built with hands God had no permanent abiding place (Acts vii. 47), it was but a figure of the true; but the true is the work of God, His building, upon the foundation which is Christ, as He is also the headstone of the corner. A parallel to this concealment of the fact of quotation is found by comparing Lk. xi. 49: ‘ Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send unto them prophets,’ etc,, with Matt. xxi. 36: ‘Therefore, behold, I send,’ etc. It is possible that our Lord identified Himself with the wisdom of God, but more probable that this identifi- cation was made later, and that St. Luke’s version gives the full text which St. Matthew abbreviates, apparently by putting the words attributed to the wisdom of God into the mouth of our Lord. Miko S17. 80 CHRIST, ASUS Es V Three distinct strains may be noticed in our Lord’s eschatological teaching: the prediction of the fall of Jeru- salem ; the general teaching on persecution as the lot of the Church; and the special instruction as regards the final coming of the Son of Man. The most detailed narrative of the fall of Jerusalem is to be found in St. Luke xix. 43, the lament over the fate of the Holy City because it knew not the time of its visita- tion. The detail here is so accurate that it has been too readily asserted in certain quarters that the Gospel must have been composed after the event, and the words spoken touched up to correspond with it. The same view has been taken with regard to detailed prediction of the events of the Passion: that is to say, if the events of it do not correspond with the prediction, we are told that our Lord has been correctly reported, but had no real foresight ; if they docorrespond, the report is unreliable and has been assimilated to the occurrence. The bias in such criticism is unmistakable. It must at least be allowed that some prophecies in the Old Testament or by Christian Saints have been literally fulfilled, while cases of ‘ second-sight ’ in which the whole scene appears in detail before the mind’s eye are not unknown. Explan- ation may be wanting, but the facts are undeniable. Nor is the phenomenon on the face of it much more strange than the insight into the minds of others which it is indubit- able that our Lord possessed. But we are constantly struck, in reading our Lord’s life, with the extraordinary coincidence of His appearance on a scene at precisely the moment when He was most needed, such, for instance, as His arrival at Nain just in time to meet the funeral procession issuing from the village. Or to take another instance, supposing that Zacchaeus had not climbed up into the sycamore tree, where would our Lord and His disciples have found their meal ? When our Lord adduces the way in which God provides for the sparrow and the lilies of the field, we are conscious that here, as always, He is speaking from His own experience. Life looked to Him as a perpetual succession of ‘ special providences.’ He is confident that the storm on the lake will not drown Him and His disciples, because His spiritual experience CHRIST AS* SEER 81 has been that nothing happens without the Father. Such has been also the experience of Christians who have submitted their own lives to God’s guidance. But if experience shows that, without impairing the freedom of human choice, and in a manner which cannot be precisely formulated, events are nevertheless controlled for those who are intent on the service. of God, then foresight of such events creates no new difficulty. And if there are well-authenticated instances of foresight, we cannot deny the possibility of it in our Lord’s case. And, finally, if this is so, we cannot affirm that the date of a document must be subsequent to the events, unless we have other evidence besides their prediction. As regards the second division, the persecution of Christians, this has held good from the time of the Apostles up to the Boxer Rebellion in China and the Great War. In all ages Christians have been subject to persecution, and the general truth of this prediction is not prejudiced by the fact that in all ages the charges brought against them have been political or social and not always religious. On this head all that needs to be said is to draw attention to the similarity of the fate foretold for Christians to that of the persecution of the faithful remnant foretold by prophets of the Old Testament. It is in regard to the third division that questions have arisen. But it must be noted that the prophecy as trans- mitted to us is in large measure a cento of quotations. And the reason for this is obvious, though it seems often to escape notice. If words and phrases were quoted this was not due to poverty of understanding, but for the purpose of being intelligible. Perhaps the closest analogy is the use of proverbs and proverbial expressions among the non-literary elements of the population. Here the mere word-by-word meaning is often misleading, or even absurd. No one would take as a literal description, ‘Little pitchers have long ears’; or what can be made of ‘ dressed up to the nines,’ or ‘ tirée a quatre €pingles ’ ? It is clear that they have a meaning, often a vivid meaning, but only to those who think in that idiom. We have, then, to enquire what sort of significance was intended by our Lord in using prophetic imagery. But here, though we may be in the twilight, we are by no means in total darkness. We can discover how the prophetic imagery of the Old Testament was regarded by men of His own G 82 CHRIST SAS 25h Bik generation, and moreover by men who were in some degree within the circle of His own experience as being members of the Kingdom of Heaven. In other words to discover the meaning of His prophetic language we have to turn to the other books of the New Testament. A single quotation is enough to show the general appli- cation. We read in St. Matthew xxiv. 20, and St. Mark xiii. 24, ‘ The sun shall be darkened, and the moon shall not give her light, and the stars shall fall from heaven.’ This has a reference to Isaiah xili. 10, (‘ The day of the Lord cometh’), ‘For the stars of heaven and the constellations thereof shall not give their light; the sun shall be darkened in his going forth, and the moon shall not cause her light to shine,’ and Isaiah xxxiv. 4, ‘ All the hosts of heaven shall be dissolved, and the heaven shall be rolled together as a scroll; and all their host shall fade away, as the leaf falleth off from the vine, and as a fading leaf from the fig tree.’ This may be compared with Joel ii. 30-31, ‘I will show wonders in the heavens and in the earth, blood and fire and pillars of smoke. The sun shall be turned into darkness and the moon into blood.’ No one would doubt that the prophets who foretold these things did mean something, and in all probability were describing under similar and harmonious imagery the same event or series of events. And many would go further. They would say that such events have certainly not yet come to pass. That is the literal, the matter of fact, almost it may be said the scientific point of view. But if we turn to the second chapter of the Acts we find it asserts that this prophecy of Joel, including the blood and fire and pillar of smoke, the sun being turned into darkness and the moon into blood, had all actually happened. Whether you think St. Peter’s speech correctly reported, or call it a composition by St. Luke, does not matter. What the assertion does show is the extraordinary depth of misunderstanding into which we may be led by our literal, matter of fact, ‘ scientific ’ judgements in dealing with oriental prophecy. To the mind of St. Peter or of St. Luke ‘these things’ had been accomplished in that generation. After all, of the apocalyptic utterances of our Lord we have but a condensed report. If we had them in’ full the problem might be greatly simplified. But the utmost critical acumen since has as yet given no convincing interpretation of the CHRIST AS SEER 83 Apocalypse of St. John, it is unreasonable to be over dogmatic about the condensed narrative. We will take one more instance from the same chapter. ‘ He shall gather together His elect from the four winds, from the uttermost parts of the earth to the uttermost parts of heaven,’! or as St. Matthew has it ‘from one end of heaven to the other.’2 This reflects, even if it is not based on, Deuteronomy xxx. 3-4. ‘It shall come to pass when all these things are come upon thee, the Lord thy God... will gather thee from all the peoples whither the Lord thy God hath scattered thee. If any of thine be driven out into the uttermost parts of heaven, from thence will the Lord thy God gather thee.’ And now compare this with Actsii.5, ‘ There were at Jerusalem... men from every nation under heaven,’ and with Mark xili. 10, ‘The Gospel must first be preached unto all the nations.’ Iam not now contending that this eschato- logical discourse of our Lord had its only fulfilment at Pentecost; but I am urging that it had then, to the minds of His contemporaries, of men of Jewish upbringing and turn of mind, a fulfilment sufficient to justify the language He is reported to have used; and to oppose to their view that of Western scientists is to prefer the verdict of the outsider to that of the expert. We can of course say this is where we differ from St. Peter, St. Luke, and to these must be added St. Paul and St. James; but we must admit that their authority is greater than our own. I do not deny that there may be another and different fulfilment, but I should contend that it may be just as pedantic to limit ‘this generation’ to our Lord’s contemporaries, and to rule out any larger reference, as it is to insist on the literalness of ‘ blood and fire and vapours of smoke.’ We need something more than a dictionary to interpret the language of an Eastern prophet. The language and the thought of science is abstract. It seeks for immanent reasons and secondary causes. The language of prophecy is abstract also, and with equal justification. It attributes initiative to God or to evil powers. To the critic the source of a passage may, let us say, be found in an earlier writer, the later copied or adapted and that is the solution of his problem. But to the religious mind of the later writer it may seem that he was inspired to utilize previous material, and the 1Mk. xiii. 27. Mt. xxiv. 3). 84 CHRIST WASta Bik earlier writer inspired to provide it, each being simply an instrument, a moral or consenting instrument, no doubt, but an instrument of God’s will, the mouthpiece of a revelation. To such a mind success and calamity are alike providential ; they leave behind them a purpose greater than that of the human agents concerned in them. Thus, for instance, the successive captures of Jerusalem by David, by the Assyrians, by the Romans are all in some sort visitations of God. And the language for God’s action is marked by phraseology suitable to God: it is no doubt metaphorical, in large part conventional— that is, it carries on the tradition of an earlier age, and an earlier conception of God’s nature—it may often seem extravagant. But it does not befit a lover to speak of his beloved in cold passionless terms, nor a religious man thus of the object of his adoration. And again, every visitation of God is a symbol; God's acts in history are parabolic. What appears on the surface is superficial ; it is neither the whole reality nor its most important part. The destruction of the old Jerusalem is necessitated, it is needed that the new may be built. It is due to sin, as all human death is regarded as due to sin; the old man must die that the new may be born again. The new is the fulfilment of all that the old was intended to become ; but the old had lost sight of its ideal and its purpose. It is only in the light of the cross and the resurrection, in the light of Christian experience of the daily dying and of the ever fresh renewal to life by the coming of the Spirit of God, that the significance of the parables of history can be appreciated or understood. The key to the parable of the fall of Jerusalem and of the Tabernacle of David was in the hands of every Jewish convert, who by baptism became a citizen of the new Jerusalem in the heavens and a temple of the living God. There is a real order of history, and a real order of experience or apprehension; but the lesson which they teach in multiform repetition is always the same, the same God acting the same way in order to do the same thing, a lesson more real than any of its exemplifications, and there is no key to prophecy or to history until this lesson is learnt and taken to heart. Finally we come to a possible instance which will be rejected by many, but yet has at any rate arguments in its favour. If we can imagine our Lord’s words “‘ Upon CHRIST AS SEER 85 this rock’’! etc., detached from their present context, no one, I suppose, could doubt their meaning. The rock on which the Church is built is not a man, nor the faith of a man, nor the confession of a man. It is Jesus Christ. He, as St. Paul asserts, is the foundation laid by the Apostles and prophets—of whom St. Paul was one—as He also is the head of the corner. The Church is God’s Church, a house not made by hands but of God’s building, eternal, heavenly. This rock it is that in the resurrection smote through the gates of Hades that were powerless against it, as the stone in the book of Daniel shattered the great image. To our Lord are given the keys of death and Hades and of heaven; He opens and no one shutteth, shutteth and no man openeth; He binds, He looses, He has all authority in heaven and earth. So interpreted, the whole passage has consistency; it is a prophecy of the passion and of the glory that should follow. I suggest that it embodies a revelation given by the Father to our Lord. There are, at any rate, indi- cations that the title Peter, whatever it may mean, was not first bestowed upon Simon at this time, and St. John places the giving of it almost immediately after the temptation. If so, then this revelation to our Lord may have taken place at His baptism. It was from that moment that the Church existed in Him as, to use St. Paul’s analogy, the human race existed in Adam, or as Levi and the priesthood and the people of the old covenant existed in Abraham when he met Melchizedek. That baptism signified and foreshadowed a death, as the coming out of the water signified a new life bestowed in the Spirit. Here then, also, we need to supply ‘ Thus saith the Lord to me “ Thou art the rock whereon I will build my Church and against Thee the gates of death shall have no power and [after the Resurrection] I will give Thee the keys of the Kingdom of Heaven [power of sending the Holy Ghost] and whatsoever Thou shalt bind shall be bound, and whatsoever Thou shalt loose shall be loosed.”’’ [Our Lord as universal Judge.] V It remains only to summarize the preceding conclusions. Our Lord was a prophet ; this was the ordinary description 1Mt. xvi. 18. 86 CHRIST AS SEER of Him, and He recognized its naturalness. He used prophetic language, and prophetic figures. These were on the line of the language and figures of the prophets of the Old Testament. This language should have been much clearer to His contemporaries than it is to us, because it was the idiom suited to the genius of His auditors. If they failed to understand it, the result was part of a general failure to understand their own Scripture and Him. Our difficulty is of another kind. We need first of all the insight of Christian experience, and with it we need sympathy with the Jewish mind. Had Christians set themselves in the past to convert the Jews instead of persecuting them, Christian thought might now find itself more at home with the forms in which the Jewish mind expressed itself, and in that case problems of interpretation which now present formidable difficulties might seem much easier of solution. He speaks of Himself as having received a commission to which the commission given to prophets in the Old Testament offers the closest analogy, and while it may be impossible to define with precision what is meant by prophetic visions—seeings or hearings—we can _ best explain certain recorded incidents in our Lord’s life and notably His baptism, temptation and transfiguration, along these lines. The first of these was shared by the Baptist and the last by three of the Apostles. The Baptism was to our Lord also the beginning of that adoption into Sonship with the Father which is an alternative mode of speaking: of His indwelling as man in God and God in Him, a status or condition which forms the basis of speci- fically Christian experience as witnessed to by St. Paul. The vision of our Lord at His Baptism seems to have included a revelation of the need of His death and of the glory that should follow. From this moment He is conscious of possessing an authority grounded on spiritual insight which renders the authority of Scripture, whether contained in the Law or the Prophets or the Psalms, secondary. His employment of Scripture is, therefore, as regards Himself, that of the most suitable vehicle to express His own experience, and towards others, a method by which they might easily come to believe in the reality of the privileges accorded to Him, in virtue of which He was the Messiah, or, more rarely, in the nature of an argumentum ad hominem based on an authority which to CHRIST AS SEER 87 them was primary. Making all possible allowance for the recasting of our Lord’s language in the reports which have come down to us, we have, therefore, to face the fact that, on the lowest estimate of Him, the Greatest Expert in matters of spiritual experience has put His imprimatur on the value of prophetic symbolism to describe to His Jewish contemporaries the interpretation of an experience, into the realm of which they were, as Christians, to enter. The meaning of these visions seems to be similar to that which He asserted was the meaning of all Scripture ;1 it was concerned with His death and resurrec- tion and His enthronement at the right hand of the Father, and His mission thence of the Spirit as the life of a brother- hood which in the divine intention was to include the whole world. It is in the light of this revelation that He approaches His temptation, this forms the matter of His thought at the Transfiguration, and the other fragments of His reported speeches deal with the same class of subjects. As congenial to the prophetic temperament we noted the faculty of prevision akin to second-sight, which, in the case of our Lord, appears to have more than one exemplification ; of clairvoyance and clairaudience, that is, of the perception of distant events contemporaneous with the speaker, which seems best to explain the expression : ‘I beheld Satan as lightning falling from heaven,’ and of mind-reading, or the perception of another’s thoughts. Finally, we considered that entrance into the prophetic state would be more ready and attended with less emotional disturbance to one who was ordinarily in the nearest spiritual contact with God. If the fulfilment of these conditions is granted, it would seem that there may well lie hidden in certain abbreviated reports of our Lord’s words, references to visions which would be explicit if His language was more fully reported ; and this view seem to overcome several difficulties of interpretation. 1 ¢.g. Lk. xxiv. 25-27, 32. DR. ILLINGWORTH AND THE GOSPEL MIRACLES? By the death of Dr. Illingworth the English-speaking Church has lost the greatest of its apologists for the Christian faith. There was much in him which was © peculiar to himself and forbids classification, but though, like all great men, he possessed a personal outlook and his contributions to the defence of the faith shew a marked originality, yet he belonged to a definite school of thought known from the title of the volume of essays to which its members contributed. And of all such volumes Lux Mundi is the most homogeneous. The Oxford tutors who wrote it were bound together by similarity of training ; their philosophy was based on Plato and Aristotle, and they had all imbibed the teaching of T. H. Green; other philosophers, Spinoza, Descartes, Malebranche, Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, and pre-eminently, at least in the case of Dr. Illingworth, Lotze, were included in their study, but towards these they adopted a more critical attitude and defined their position by rejection as much as by adoption. To secular philosophy they had added in varying measures a wide reading of the great Christian Fathers. But what must be reckoned as contributing in no small degree to their cast of thought, was the subtle and pervasive influence of Oxford; for the Lux Mundi School is as typically a product of Oxford as the Tractarian movement. But unlike the Tractarian its circle was never broken except by death. Its members continued to meet, from time to time receiving fresh recruits to fill up vacancies in its ranks, and the work of each was submitted to the criticism of all; but it was the experience of mutual friendship, no less than the criticism of the intellect, that formed a bond which is reflected in their literary output, and makes them, as a body, more characteristically defined than any other collection of theological writers. 1 The Gospel Miracles. By J. R. Illingworth, D.D. (London: Mac- millan and Co. Ltd. 1915.) 88 THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 89 Dr. Illingworth, then, is an inheritor of the great idealistic tradition ; but he is more than a philosopher who deals with the data of Christianity, and shews the nexus between the Christian system and earlier modes of thought. He is emphatically a Christian, and finds in philosophy a terminology and intellectual form for his faith ; a Christian who starts with vital conviction, where Plato had but a poetic imagination, and Aristotle an intellectual postulate. And if philosophers are to be divided into Aristotelians and Platonists, Dr. Illingworth is a Platonist. The problem of philosophy is to construct an intellectual map of the universe. Aristotle’s system is comparable to a map on Mercator’s projection. So long as you keep along a single parallel the relative distances are correct; the spherical right angles are represented by right angles on the plane surface; but its most attractive feature is its consistency: it all hangs together. Plato’s map on the other hand is in sections. ‘ Every sheet edge is an exact fit with the corresponding edges of the four adjacent sheets’, but ‘the corner sheets to complete a block of nine will not make a perfect fit along their two edges simultaneously.’! That is, Plato’s sections are far more closely representative of the actual surface than Aristotle’s; they have, as it were, more rotundity, more vitality ; but they are suggestive of something more than they express, and you cannot get the whole Platonic system in one conspectus without seeing the need of elasticity of logical connexion. And the longer your train of reasoning by the map the greater and more obvious the gap. You cannot fit together the philosophical ‘idea of the good’ which is obtained by reasoning, and the personal God which is the object of direct poetic vision. The Platonic Socrates is ordinarily quite conscious of this, but his audience are not, and this is the underlying irony of the Dialogues. He adopts a train of reasoning and, just so far as it is rigidly logical, Socrates is aware that it is leading off at a tangent, and, if it is really to bring you to the haven where you would be, terms must be used with great elasticity, if connexions are to be rigid, or connexions must have a certain play if terms are to be incapable of distortion. But Aristotle’s system is so consistently logical that you lose sight of the fact that it is extraordinarily unlike the reality: it is not until you 1 Geographical Journal, vol. XLVI, No. I, p. 29. go DR. ILLINGWORTH AND look at it as a whole that this unlikeness is seen ; and then you are inclined to doubt your intuition in deference to your sense of logic. Now so far as he is rightly classed as an idealist, Dr. Illingworth is an idealist of the Platonic type. He has an extraordinarily clear vision of reality, and he has the true-artistic touch when he desires to represent his vision in words. But if you treat his word-pictures as definite logical terms, you do not feel quite happy about the rigidity of the process by which he arrives at conclusions, which nevertheless win your hearty assent; while, on the other hand, if you are convinced of the logical exactness of his method and of the accuracy of his premisses, the conclusion appears sometimes more logical than convincingly true. Dr. Illingworth is in fact a sacramentalist. He feels that the thing is always more than it appears, more than its name implies, if you treat that name as a logical term. Every object in nature is not merely a creature of God to be contemplated as a picture, it is not merely a work of art which reveals the character of the artist, it is something beyond itself, a means for those who can receive it of conveying in degree the Divine life. This carries you beyond logical definition, but also beyond description. You cannot define a sunset, not simply because each sunset has an individuality of its own, but also because the terms of the physicist only give one aspect of it and are abstract and cold. Norevencan you describeit. Your description might be able to evoke similar emotions to those experi- enced by the beholder ; what is beyond them as descrip- tion is the sacramental influx of the Divine life, a thing which cannot be described but only symbolized. Tlling- worth insists that the logician as such is not a competent critic of the realities for which the words stand ; they are labels merely ; and the logician is liable to be as much at fault in classifying them, as the curator of a museum who has no practical experience of the objects in the collection, or as the anthropologist who deals with religious cults without any experience of what is religion. The greatest value of Dr. Illingworth’s work lies in the fact that he stimulates our faith to perceive, and that he encourages the effort of this perception by shewing us the reality that lies behind, and by assuring us that we shall do no violence to our reason nor offend against authority by thus using our faith. The logician will always be inclined THE GOSPEL MIRACLES QI to criticize him on the ground that his terms have a penumbra of meaning beyond that which they express ; the sacramentalist will always lament that terminology is necessarily so limited in suggestion. The real question therefore of the value of Dr. Illing- worth as an apologist turns on the question of the function of apologetic. If the aim of apologetic is to quicken Spiritual perception, to exhibit something more of the actual order of the world and to convince us of the truth of revelation by enabling us to perceive it, as a system, for ourselves, Dr. Illingworth is entitled to a very high place indeed ; but if we arrive at a new truth only as an intellectual deduction or induction, then he will often seem unconvincing. We admit the force of cumulative analogy, but we shall be deceived if we imagine we have a demon- stration. The world is really connected by vital, personal, Spiritual processes, and logic only gives this connexion when the terms are notional, and merely symbolizes it when they are ‘ real.’ The meaning of these abstract statements will be brought out more vividly if we exhibit them as exemplified in a particular book, and Dr. Illingworth’s last work on the Gospel Miracles offers itself readily for our purpose. Dr. Illingworth’s main position is that the course of the world cannot be adequately described or rightly understood if we confine our thinking to mechanical categories. It is not ‘a closed circle which admits of no spiritual interference ’!; rather does each later stage of the world exhibit an increased degree of freedom and spontaneity, and it is by the later stages that we must interpret the earlier. Accordingly those physical laws, which to our ordinary modes of thought appear so rigid and lifeless, are in reality merely the expression of the consistency of a being or beings of absolute freedom, and the choice les between regarding each as personal, or regarding the world as primarily the creature or instrument of a free and generous God, intended to pass by gradations from creatureship to sonship. The monadistic theory of Leibniz Dr. Illingworth had already discussed elsewhere, and he mentions it now as an alternative necessary to the completeness of the scheme, but not otherwise to be seriously entertained. In man this spontaneity finds a clear though as yet imperfect expression, but it exists to Bp LT. 92 DR. ILLINGWORTH AND be too often misused, and by such misuse to destroy itself. In a powerful passage Dr. Illingworth shews how the effect of sin is to close the possibilities of self-expression. But on the other hand the effect of loyal co-operation with the purpose of the universe, loyal submission to the suggestions of the Will of God, is to extend their range. It is on this basis of the absolute freedom of God communicated in ever higher degrees to His creation, and of the freedom of man possible by virtue of that gift, but dependent for its growth or diminution on his own co- operation, that we approach the miracles of the Gospels. The older apologists, convinced of the Deity of our Lord, attempted to give a reason for the faith that was in them, by declaring that His miracles were simply acts of Divine omnipotence. Their conviction as to His Person was of course true, and it was no less true that the course of His life on earth was a manifestation of the manner of Being which He was, 7.e., not only of His humanity but of His Deity. Had they said that they found it easier to recognize His Deity in one class of acts and His humanity in those of a more ordinary nature, they would have been without blame; such a distinction would have been merely subjective, a difference in their recognition without implying a difference in Him who worked or in the part played by either nature in the working. But their language certainly implied more than this. In the working of miracles the active properties of the human nature of our Lord were supposed to be held in suspense; it became merely passive or instrumental. His human will, for instance, was active only in the sense of voluntarily holding itself in restraint so as to let His Divine omnipo- tence have free play; it surceased voluntarily from its proper operation. Such a view robs His humanity of its reality ; retains that which made Him animal; and omits that in virtue of which He was really human. This opinion is rejected by Dr. Illingworth, as it was rejected in 680, in relation to our Lord’s human will by the Council of Constantinople, which ruled that a human will was a function of human nature, and in consequence that just as the Divine nature of our Lord had its Divine will and that will its Divine operation, so the human nature had its human will and that will its human operation ; and thus in the whole Christ, at once God and Man, there were 10On p. 58. THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 93 two wills and two operations. Difficult as the conception may be, anything short of this robs the Temptation and the Agony of their reality, and our Lord of the glory of virtue. But rejecting this, Dr. Illingworth offers us two alternatives. The one he maintains by strenuous argu- ment; the other he allows may nevertheless be correct ; and by so doing denies the logical conclusiveness of his own apologetic. It is difficult to formulate Dr. Illingworth’s position without employing a verbal paradox, but we are persuaded that this is due not to poverty of language but to an inner inconsistency of thought. The revelation given by our Lord was of course a revelation of God; about that there is no question: but on its human side ‘it was not the revelation of what was already implicit in every man,’ but ‘of human nature raised to a new level,’! an ‘ august anticipation’ of that which man may eventually reach, and which is now manifested in Christ as He is in glory. The capacity which our Lord manifested in His miracles was ‘ more than human ’ 2, and as such beyond the achieve- ment of ‘mere’? humanity. It was a definite endow- ment by God given for the purpose of his mission; it was the result of that ‘ grace of union’ of which Hooker speaks, the action of the Divine nature of God the Son on the humanity which He assumed. This gives His miracles their worth in apologetics. They were not, as some older writers assert, direct works of the Divine omnipotence 4; they were in a sense human works, but the works of a humanity in a new state, as definitely superior to the state of humanity imperfectly manifested in other men, as men are above animals, or those above vegetables or vegetables above minerals.> And it is this that gives to the Virgin conception its peculiar significance. It was a new stage in creative evolution to which the rise from one of these great classes to the next offers a valuable analogy. Such a position has an obvious apologetic value. The miracles are not direct evidence that our Lord was God, but they are evidence that the humanity which they presuppose was such as could be formed only by a fresh creative act due to the union of ordinary human nature with a Person Who was God. In other words, our Lord in the very act of taking our humanity made it super- #75, 50. AD Ags 3p. 55. 4p. 58. aeieh Uae 94 DR. ILLINGWORTH AND human. Granted the miracles, and these cannot be eliminated,! the Deity of our Lord is a deduction indirect indeed but none the less necessary. In favour of. this position there is a great deal that may be said. It does away with the grounds of the desire to separate our Lord’s miracles into classes and to deny the occurrence of those which shew more obviously a creative power. It avoids the argument that the miracles of the saints can be cited in disproof, for this superhuman humanity is perpetuated in those who are in heavenly places by virtue of their union with Christ. It is supported by the negative instance of St. John the Baptist; for here was one amid like sur- roundings with a mission so closely similar that our Lord could adopt St. John’s message, and men thought of him in similar terms to those used of Christ Himself; and yet John worked no miracle. It has then much a posteriori support both in the narratives of the Bible and in ecclesiastical tradition.2 A priorvt support it has of necessity none.? -We have no means of determining beforehand what would be the effect on human nature of its assumption by a Divine Person. It might have received such an addition to its powers as outsoars our imagination to conceive, or, on the other hand, the limits which God the Son imposed on human nature might have been maintained in rigid exactness. It might have been that the ‘limitations of ordinary humanity,’ * which He observed to the extent of not seeking a relief which would make His own life more easy, were limitations which as man He could not surpass, because as God He imposed them on Himself as the law of His whole incarnate life. And now having set out Dr. Illingworth’s first position in terms as far as possible chosen from his own work, we will endeavour to set out the alternative; but in doing so we shall allow ourselves a greater fulness of language and statement because the book itself does little more than make suggestions. It is in a word this: that our _ Lord’s miracles were wrought ‘by faith, which is a generic property of human nature as such, though carried in Him to a higher degree of insight and self-surrender and co- operation than the ordinary man evinces ; through prayer, which again is a characteristically human operation; and in that power of the Holy Ghost which is at once prevenient and responsive to faith and prayer. +p. 40; ody «is + * DiiS7- ds inet THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 95 Dr. Illingworth draws a valuable analogy between the restorative effect of our Lord’s miracles on others, and the sustaining power in Himself in which He wrought out the greater miracle of His own sinlessness. Without endorsing the entire position taken by Dr. Du Bose in his Soteriology of the New Testament, we may follow him in this regard, that ‘our Lord’s whole personal life as man in all its spiritual, moral, and natural disposition, character, and action was essentially human’! and that His human sinlessness was by the Holy Ghost, ‘ positively, the holiness of a human faith and the righteousness of a human obedience ;’ 2 that ‘He knew the mind and worked the works of God through His human, spiritual and moral, oneness with the Father, through His knowledge as man by the Holy Ghost of the mind and will of God ;’? that “He was sinless not by . . . necessary consequence of being God ... but in the freedom of His personal faith and obedience as man... by the Third Person of the Trinity.’ 4 This is entirely consistent, we take it, with Dr. Lling- worth’s second position. On page 82 he lays emphasis on the power of prayer, and prayer, he tells us, is ‘a world-wide fact.’ > It is, as he assured us in his University Sermons many years ago, ‘natural to man.’® It is the normal expression of religion, and religion is ‘a primitive endowment’? of men. And the life of our Lord from Bethlehem to Calvary was one unceasing prayer. And our Lord Himself, as Dr. Illingworth reminds us in this latest work, makes reference to prayer before the raising of Lazarus.® On this view the whole of our Lord’s works, and not merely His miracles, will be human. They are Divine in the sense in which all power, even in its perver- sion, is a Divine endowment; they are Divine also in the sense that the Person Who works them is God; but they will not bear the weight of Dr. Illingworth’s apologetic argument. They shew what was already ‘implicit ’!° in men, and do not manifest a ‘new order of human life.’!4 They shew what man is capable of if he has faith, if he seeks the Kingdom of God with a single eye, if he loves God with all his faculties and all his might, and his neigh- bour as himself. They do not shew that their author is 10Op. cit. p. 156. 2p.) 20, wil A? 4022185. ae 6 Op. cit. p. 168. 7 OD, cit. p. 47. S Op. cit. p. 172. Pps iss. 19». 56. 2p, 68. 96 DR. ILLINGWORTH AND necessarily God. They are evidence of the perfection of our Lord’s manhood perhaps, though we must remember that there are lying signs and wonders, and that the sons of the Pharisees cast out devils; but they do not prove Him to be God except so far as His being man does so. And it is precisely here that we touch the significance of the Virgin conception. The Christian position is that our Lord is God. He is God eternally nor can cease from so being. He became man. But He could not have become man, could not have been man, could not have performed the simplest human act, nor thought the simplest human thought any more than wrought the most stupendous miracle, could not have possessed the rudi- ments of human faith nor have formed the earliest human prayer, could not have suffered nor died as man, unless He had been God. For unless He were God, He would not have been at all. It is not then altogether true that we do not know what difference it made to our Lord’s humanity that He was God. It made just all the difference between not-being and being. Not that humanity did not exist before, but humanity was not His in the sense of personal possession. We may not be able to speculate what other difference it made, though we are not in entire ignorance even there. For our Lord took our human nature in its primary form, in that form in which the whole of its human faculties are mere potencies latent in the unconscious embryo. And it is precisely this fact at the moment of its origin, that the Virgin conception symbolizes in the form of an historic event. At the moment of becoming man He was God, and the possibility of His becoming man depended on His being God. It is significant that the ‘ miracles’ of our Lord which are laid down in the Creed as to be believed are concerned with two moments only in His human life—His Conception and Nativity, His Resurrection and Ascension. And these two moments are very closely analogous. In the first we have the beginning of life which, though the life of Him Who is eternally God, is yet from earth (é« yfjs) ; He became son of Adam in becoming Son of Man. In the second we have this life, without ceasing to be human in any oi its positive properties or endowments, raised beyond the negative limits that had hitherto confined it—Christ the Son of Adam becoming from heaven (é& odpavod), THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 97 heavenly. The whole context of this passage in St. Paul, to which Dr. Illingworth refers,1 shews that the Lord ‘from heaven’ is Christ not in the pre-incarnate but in His post-resurrectional state. The Resurrection was for Him, in His human nature, a rebirth into a higher order of being which, while it was endowed with all the capacities of Deity,2, was yet human. Indeed St. Peter dates from this His Lordship and Christship®, and it is the fact of our Lord being risen, of His living in the risen and glorified state, that St. Paul has in mind when he declares that it defines Sonship of God.4 State to yourself the problem of being God and becoming man, of having been man with a limited humanity and becoming man with a humanity unlimited, and the problem of these moments of entry on a new state being manifested under the conditions of time and space, and the significance, almost the necessity, of the Virgin conception and the Ascension flash out. And the real Christian context in which we approach these facts is something like the mind of St. Paul. Behind all external evidences and testimonies, as the key to their interpretation, lies the knowledge of Christ after the Spirit. It is with that inner context of spiritual experiences which is open to all Christians in the measure of their faith, that St. Paul approaches the Resurrection. He could give, no doubt, a list of witnesses and include in that list himself, but he never suggests the propriety of going to Palestine to interrogate them first-hand. This weighing of external evidence may indeed be the gateway to faith, but it pro- duces a conviction, if at all, which has not the characteristic mark of being Christian. It deals with Christian facts not specifically Christianly. But if you can imagine St. Paul being asked how he himself knew that Christ rose, he would, doubtless, say that he had seen Him risen with the outward eye; but he would not stop there. ‘ Your real question,’ he would answer, ‘is not merely about an historic event, it is how do I know that the life I now live is life in Christ and Christ living in me? It is not merely that Christ rose nor even that He isrisen, but thatin Him I am risen also spiritu- ally, and my physical resurrection will be a manifestation in the flesh of this present spiritual reality. You are asking me: ‘‘ How do I know that my life is heavenly, how do I 1p. 66. 2 Col. i. 18, 19, ii. 9, and cp. Mt. xxviii. 18. 3 Acts li. 34-36. 4 Rom. i. 4. H 98 DR. ILLINGWORTH AND know that I am a Christian? ”’ I will also ask you one question, and answer me: ‘‘ How do you know that you area human being ? Do you really think that is established for you by a birth-certificate ? Does it really rest for you on external testimony? Would you really doubt so transparent a fact if that testimony were wanting? Do you hold, with the pragmatist, that the evidence of your manhood to yourself is that the opinion that you are such has a moral significance and acts as a check on conduct ? Or are you so certain of it that while you know it is possible to behave as a beast, yet that declension will only emphasize the fact which it cannot alter? ”’’ Dr. Illingworth assuredly would have no quarrel with one who asserts that it is impossible rightly to deal with Christian problems except on the basis of a conscious possession of Christian life. But this should be remembered as a caveat in reading his remark that sinful souls have been assisted by the record of our Lord’s healing the leper. It is true, of course; but surely the primary truth is that of which he reminded us in Lux Mundi, that ‘ there are scattered throughout Christendom men for whom the problem of moral evil is practically solved : men who have a personal conviction that their past sins are done away with, and the whole grasp of evil upon them loosened; and they attribute this to Jesus Christ.’2 It is such as these that Dr. Illingworth calls spiritual experts, and no one is more emphatic than he that the expert alone can form a valuable judgement. Accordingly we must defer to them and ask them how they regard the miracle of healing the leper. Now their first answer will be this, that in the practical sense of their experience, it is easier to heal lepers than to forgive sins. The physical miracle has for them no special difficulty if the spiritual one be granted. But beyond this it has a positive value. It is difficult to believe ante- cedently to experience that Christ can and does forgive sins, and the occurrence of a physical miracle does help belief in the possibility of the spiritual one, and unless you do believe that Christ can do this, He simply cannot do it. Forgiveness of sins as a fact demands a prior faith in its possibility. And secondly, the healing of the leper has a value as a description of the spiritual experience, a description not 1p. 50. 2 8th ed. p. 209. THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 99 merely to others but to oneself. It enables one to realize, in the sense of making vivid, that which actually has happened and happens in the spiritual order. It is an acted parable.} It is, perhaps, worth while to dwell a little on this aspect of miracles, both for its own sake and that of the parables which Dr. Illingworth compares with them. If we are to take his estimate of the value of expert knowledge, that is, of Christian experience, we must apply it no less to that of our Lord’s parables, and we shall apply it primarily to His own attitude with regard to them. Whatever may have been His mode of entry, He was at the time of His teaching fully instructed into the Kingdom of Heaven. If He spoke, He brought forth things new and old out of the abundance of His heart. His was the highest expert knowledge. And precisely on this account He spoke in picture language. The spiritual life defies formulation even more completely than the physical life of man. It has been said that Christ thought in pictures, and there is at least this much truth in the statement—that the things which presented themselves to His consciousness He represented in reflection in pictures or similitudes. But this is not a defect, as though they were capable of a better representation in a formula; they are not: their best expression is in an analogy. An illustration will perhaps make the matter more clear. The Christian has, as such, entered into the Kingdom of Heaven, or it has entered into him. He is in Christ, Christ isin him. It is not an attainment but a gift. It demanded effort, self-sacrifice, self-concentration, but itself is not the result produced by that effort. A man may toil up a mountain; the result of his toil is the attainment of its summit, but the view over a land of far distance is not proportionate to the toil; it needs but that he should open his eyes. Unwittingly we have been betrayed into a parable ourselves. Such a sight is a splendid possession, a ‘ possession for ever.’ It is described in one aspect as a man finding a great treasure waiting for him but hid ; in another, in view of his previous trouble, as a pearl for which he must sacrifice all the living that he has. In fact the only way of judging parables rightly is to be at the centre and select the most appro- priate image for the momentary purpose. These images will be chosen necessarily as one or other aspect of the 1p. 48. 100 DR. ILLINGWORTH AND truth needs to be emphasized, but succession of the pictures does not imply a succession of spiritual events, and the necessity of this or that picture is purely a necessity of bringing out this or that aspect of the indivisible truth. Such a view throws no small light on the interpretation of parables, and of apocalyptic visions. The thing perceived is a spiritual reality ; the pictures of it are no more neces- sarily in historic sequence of events than the order of succession in a gallery. It throws light also perhaps on the use of titles by our Lord; they too were parabolic or descriptive. If He speaks of Himself as Son of Man, it is expressive of His own state of feeling or consciousness as regards Himself; if he calls God His Father, it is expressive not primarily of a metaphysical fact so much as of a mystical experience. Now this view limits the value of records of miracles. They are illustrative. But it is impossible to assert a priori that the union with Christ, or the forgiveness which is involved in that union, could not be obtained unless it had been recorded that He healed a leper or a paralytic, or raised the dead, or gave light toa man born blind. Certain facts are necessary to the experience, because without them the thing experienced could not have taken place. And these facts are precisely those which are enumerated in the Creed— the Incarnation, the Death, the Resurrection, and the Ascension. It is thus that the Resurrection stands on an entirely different level from all other miracles; it is a necessary presupposition of any Christian experience. So also is the Ascension. But the raising of the widow’s son at Nain is no more necessary than the parable of the finding of the hid treasure. The Christian has found the hid treasure in Christ and in Him is raised to newness of life. The Resurrection is the text of the charter of our freedom, the raising of the widow’s son, or indeed any other miracle, is an illustration. We were raised in Christ in baptism, the narratives of miracles make plain to us what is the greatness of our heritage, and how our efforts are out of all proportion to it, in some cases a condition sine qua non, but not a creative cause of the effect, which is a free gift of God. This illustrative value to the expert does not prevent miracles having an educative or propedeutic, or a protec- tive or prophylactic value to the non-expert. THE GOSPEL MIRACLES IOI ‘You stick a garden plot with ordered twigs To show inside the germs of herbs unborn And check the careless step would spoil their birth ; But when herbs wave, the guardian twigs may go.’ } But their prophylactic value depends on there being ‘careless steps’ of ‘ trampling ox, rough boar and wanton goat.’ In other words Christ’s miracles were not worked of necessity, because being such as He was He could not help it, because ‘ there was power in’ Him ‘ which He must exercise,’ it “hurt Him else,’ but their value depends on the need of education or of protection. That is, the complete Christian could dispense with the main portion of the Gospel narratives if he retained the Creed, but they have for the incomplete Christian a value which may make them indispensable, a necessity which may approxi- mate in extreme cases to that of the Incarnation and Death and Glorification of our Lord as a curve approximates to its asymptote. But there is one point which we do not recollect having seen expressed in Dr. Illingworth’s treatise, and which, nevertheless, admirably illustrates his fundamental thesis. It is that our Lord’s miracles obeyed a law as universal throughout the range of their subject-matter as any of the laws with which science has made us familiar. Given cer- tain conditions the miracles happened with all the regularity and apparent necessity of ordinary physical phenomena. Of these conditions the first is human need, the second faith on the part of the recipient, and the third a kind of personal contact, often actual touch, sometimes sight, more rarely hearing by report. Of contact by touch, the most striking instance is that of the woman who had an infirmity. It is as though our Lord were charged with some spiritual fluid which waited only for the isolating medium to be broken through by some needy and faithful recipient for the virtue to flow out and the miracle to occur. But this outward rigidity of law was but the mask of character, of an unyielding habit of will: a will not primarily to work this or that miracle, but to keep Himself in contact with God and man by faith and love. Miracu- lous power is but the index of spiritual devotion, and this self-devotion the accumulative effect of acts of will. Here again we touch on the analogy of miraculous power to 1 Browning, ‘A Death in the Desert,’ 102 DR. ILLINGWORTH AND sinlessness, for sinlessness also was not a special endow- ment of His human nature placing it beyond the reach of temptation, but an acquired habit. Nowhere is this perhaps better shewn than in the instances of the Tempta- tion which Dr. Illingworth has selected. For while the first temptation is to misuse His own miraculous power, in the succeeding two the miraculous power, if implied at all, belongs either to the devil, or to God and His angels. But the moral law, to which our Lord appeals, is valid not only in cases of supernatural endowment, but throughout the whole range of man’s acts. ‘Man doth not live by bread alone but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God doth man live,’ “ Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God,’ and ‘ Thou shalt worship Him only * are, in the mouth of Christ, quotations of a law which held good in far different circumstances and indeed holds universally. But there is another uniformity which Dr. Illingworth seems to indicate: it is this, that our Lord limits His miracles in due respect not only to the moral law of God, but to the constitution of the world. He demands of each order that of which it is capable, and His miracles never transcend this capacity. Of man he demands faith, of animals the exercise of their physical powers, of vegetables growth or decay. Thus He respects all degrees of freedom or of right. To this law the miracles of multiplying the loaves and fishes and changing the water into wine are no exception, for the substances on which these were wrought were devoid of spontaneity or life. Our Lord owed them, as it were, no respect. But He did feel that He owed a certain respect to those to whose needs they could minister. Miracles were governed by need, yet not only by need but by a need that brought him who felt it to seek relief at Christ’s hand. And this coming to Himself He treats almost like a personal compliment. Men were ignorant, they needed teaching, but if they admitted their ignorance in the form of asking enlightenment from Him, He gave as though He had received a mark of courtesy and repaid it with lavish generosity. You see this generosity of soul in His treat- ment of Nicodemus, but you see it no less in His miracles of multiplying food. The multitudes had listened to Him at some personal cost. He would not let them suffer by it. So at Cana, His host would have been shamed before THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 103 his guests if the supply of wine had run short, and this shortage would apparently have been due to our Lord increasing the number of the guests beyond expectation. Our Lord therefore supplied the need without ostentation and with the least possible publicity. The miracle was a ‘sign’ (onpetov), and a ‘sign’ of the Kingdom of Heaven, where men are Princes of the Blood and shew it by their feelings and conduct. Nothing so convinces us of Christ’s royalty as this delicacy of consideration. And this was His peculiar glory. | One last word as to the value of Dr. Illingworth’s books as a whole. He is a prince among apologists; and in an age which has been trained to represent its experience in categories of science and philosophy, apologetic has a very high value. The mystic may have an immediate certainty of the faith, but even for him it will be no slight gain if he colligate his experience with other classes of facts. Such a process may reveal the distinction between convictions which have the right to dominate him, and personal idiosyncrasies which control his mind with no such right. But apologetic does more than this. To help us to see the whole created universe as built up on prin- ciples inherent in the life of God Himself, is at least to remove stumbling blocks from the acceptance of the Christian Creed. Apologetic cannot of itself give the life, but it can rollaway the stone. By manifesting consistency of principle it enables us to realize how the human life of Christ was but a lower analogue of His eternal life as God the Son. That ‘ Kenosis’ of Himself in the act of His becoming man is the law of His life on earth, and the law of the Divine life of Godin heaven. The generation of the Son is the generosity of the Father, is the outpouring of Himself, the self-surrender, which is Love the Holy Ghost. » To know God is to be the ‘ spectator of all existence.’ It is this identity of principle throughout, which shews the creature as the work of God, and shews God as the generous Author of creaturely being, and we owe Dr. Illingworth a far greater debt than words can pay for having opened for us the intellectual eye and shewn us that the objects of its vision are all of one with the God and His Christ perceived in the beatific vision of faith. THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY ON THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 1 IN spite of its reference to modern authors, Dr. Hitchcock’s book will strike the reader as old-fashioned. Its stand- point is in the main that of the fourth of Dr. Liddon’s Bampton Lectures, or to go to an earlier and greater authority, that of Leo’s Tome. But Leo supplies his own correctives, and what Dr. Liddon treats as a thesis to be proved, Dr. Hitchcock regards as the only possible Christian — position to be defended, not only by reason, but by rhetoric. This is a rough and somewhat crude outline, but it is no unfair outline of the gist of the book. In certain passages, indeed, Dr. Hitchcock is inclined to allow that modern criticism has elements of value. Thus he permits us to consider that the blasting of the fig tree, and the destruc- tion of the swine of Gadara were not actual occurrences, but that in this case parables have hardened into miracles’ ? ; that is, he throws over the testimony as not being an infallible report,? on the ground, apparently, that such miracles would conflict with his idea of the character of our Lord. But he will not admit of this possibility in other instances. He treats the possibility of inaccuracy of report as an evasion of the real issue,* and he insists that the fact that miracles have a parabolic meaning is one of the strongest reasons for belief in their actuality.® And he breaks with Dr. Liddon also in regard to the miracles of the Old Testament,® which he abandons as insufficiently supported, though he admits, and requires us to admit, that there can be no a priori presumption against these having happened. In short, he not only regards our Lord’s miracles as historic events, but he pours scorn on those who think them as ‘ wrought wholly and solely within the sphere of His perfect human nature,’ and that ‘whenever He seemed to surpass man, it was due to His superabundant manhood,’ on the ground that such thinkers are ‘ slaves to the reign of law, the uniformity 1 F, R. Montgomery Hitchcock, D.D. (S.P.C.K. 1915.) * D278; * tp. .p. 159. OCD: ® cp. Liddon Clerical Life p. 250, and Hitchcock p. 30. 104 ON THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 105 of nature.’! His position is that they are evidences of divinity precisely because they are extra-human. And he not only accepts our Lord’s deity as an essential part of the Christian faith, as indeed it is, but demands that we should put the historic occurrence of the miracles on the same level, and that we should take his view of their cogency as proofs. ‘Should not the authority of the Body,’ he asks, “ make itself felt in tightening our grip on the essentials of the faith ?’ 2 And among the essentials of the faith He includes our Lord’s miraculous works. Now, as a matter of fact, the Body has laid down in no uncertain terms what it considers the essentials of the faith. It has done so in the creeds; and it has not included among those essentials any miracle wrought by our Lord in the course of His earthly ministry. But it has included among them two miracles, or groups of miracles, wrought on Him in His humanity, the first at its beginning, the second at its close, or rather at the beginning of a new ministry, unlimited by earthly conditions. No one will, of course, say that He through the mediation of His own humanity wrought that humanity’s first beginning, and the New Testament is equally emphatic that His resurrection, ascension and glorification were things wrought on Him, gifts given to Him by the Father through the Spirit. He is not said to have raised Himself from the dead, but to have been raised ; nor to have given Himself His own eternal priesthood, but to have been made priest ; nor to have elevated Himself to the throne of God, but to have been elevated to it. It is difficult to imagine that Dr. Hitchcock has faced the consequences of adding articles to the Catholic faith. There is no doubt that he thinks he has behind him the main stream of tradition. But that also is claimed for novelties in the Roman confession which he would most emphatically repudiate. But the tradition itself is not as unanimous as Dr. Hitchcock would appear to think. ‘St. Paul made no reference to the miracles and earlier events of the life of Jesus,’* and though there are appeals to them in the Acts of the Apostles, they were addressed either to those who were already familiar with the miracles, or disposed to credit their occurrence on grounds outside the authority 1p. 86. 3 pp. 36, 37. aerkes Ke 106 THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY of the speaker. Similarly, Mr. Edghill asserts of the early apologists that ‘ Very little reference is made to the miracles of the ministry, though here we must be careful to draw an important distinction between those two supreme happenings—the Incarnation and the Resurrection —and the other miracles.’ And again “ Inno sense are they regarded as all-important signs and sources of revelation. No one attempted to regard them as a firm foundation for any of the great articles of the Christian faith, such as the liberty of a loving God, or the Divinity of Christ.’ ‘Miracles were evidentially effective only for those who actually witnessed, or directly experienced the same.’ ? We turn now to consider Dr. Hitchcock’s second point, that our Lord’s miracles were not wrought ‘within the sphere of His perfect human nature.’ An assertion of that kind presupposes that its author knows what the limits of that perfect human nature actually were, and that such miracles as our Lord wrought are not within its compass. It is difficult to see how such knowledge could be obtained. But the theological objection does not lie there. Dr. Hitchcock appeals more than once to Bishop Westcott; let us hear then what Bishop Westcott says on this matter. ‘It is unscriptural, though the practice is supported by strong patristic -authority, to regard the Lord during His historic life as acting now by His human and now by His Divine nature only ... As far as it is revealed to us. His greatest works during His earthly life are wrought by the help of the Father through the energy of a humanity enabled to do all things in fellowship with God.’* And so also Prof. Moberly: ‘ It is really of considerable importance to rid ourselves of a certain dualism (in its way somewhat parallel to the Nestorian dualism ... ) according to which the Person of Christ is currently conceived as being in such sense both God and man, that He is, in point of fact, two... He can speak, think, and act, sometimes under the conditions of one nature, sometimes under the conditions of the other. As God He does this ; and as man He does that... He is not so much God avd man, as God in, and through, and as man... In His human life on earth, as Incarnate, He is not sometimes, but consistently, always and in every act and detail, Human. The Incarnate never leaves His 1 Revelation of the Son of God, p. 57. *Ibid. p. 77. 3 Ep. to Hebrews p. 66. ON THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 107 Incarnation. God as man is always, in all things, God as man ... Whatever the reverence of their motive may be, men do harm to consistency and to truth, by keeping open, as it were, a sort of non-human sphere, or aspect, of the Incarnation. This opening we should unreservedly desire to close . . . We are to study the Divine, in and through the human. By looking for the Divine side by side with the human instead of discerning the Divine iia the human we miss the significance of them both.’? So also Dr. Du Bose, who at least cannot be suspected of any anti-Nestorian bias, in his criticism of Leo’s position, which has already been compared to that of Dr. Hitchcock: ‘We say that if Christ was totus in nostris, then he was human in all the activities as well as the passivities of a rational, free, moral, and spiritual . . . manhood. His highest act of faith in God, his supremest attainment of self-sacrificing love and obedience, his entire conquest of sin and victory over death, were as truly human acts and activities—and needed a thousandfold more for our salvation to be truly human—as his merely bodily passion.’? ‘ Not only does Leo incompletely apprehend the nostra or “ ours’’ in which the church through him affirms our Lord’s human completeness, but he introduces into our Lord’s personal consciousness and will and acts a duality, different indeed from that charged against Nestorianism but hardly less objectionable in itself. The human Jesus knows, wills, and does this as God, and that as Man.’ But Leo supplies his own corrective in the phrase ‘ totus im suts, totus 1n nostris,’ of which Dr. Du Bose quotes the half. But in regard to our Lord’s own inner life, Dr. Hitchcock appears to adopt the opposite principle. ‘His own sinlessness was a proof that He had conquered sin in the body, and was an earnest of His restoration of the image and likeness of God in human life. His own Resurrection was a proof of the fact that He conquered death as well as sin in the body, and was an earnest of our victory over sin and death.’4 Now His resurrection was the work of the Father—though not in such sense as to deny that in every act of God the whole Three Persons of the Blessed Trinity are co-operant—effected through the Spirit, and made 1 Atonement and Personality, p. 96. 2 The Ecumenical Councils, p. 261. 3 Ibid. p. 2062. p. 107. 108 THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY possible by the completeness of our Lord’s self-surrender in faith. Itis of course true that our Lord says of the temple of His body ééovotav éyw Oeivar adriy, kat e€ovoiay exw mad AaBetv avr#v but the distinction between e€ovoia and Svvapts in St. John is fixed by ewxevr adtois eLovaiay réxva Qcod yevécba,2 where it is clear that no man can make himself a child of God by the exercise of his own powers, but is made such by gift, and the sense of AaBety is no less fixed by ravrnv tiv évtoAnv éAaBov mapa tod Ilatpds pov. Consequently, the single apparent exception to the consistent language of the New Testament is seen to vanish on examination. The resurrection, therefore, is the gift of God to our Lord in His humanity, consequent upon His human faith. And the constant usage of St. Paul shows that the resurrec- tion symbolizes the completeness of victory, not only over death, but also over sin. That is, our Lord’s sinless- ness was the manifestation of the power of God where the perfection of faith permitted the perfection of God's protection. The moral and spiritual perfection of our Lord’s manhood was something wrought on Him as was His resurrection. The work which Christ wrought on earth was the work of faith, and this He wrought to perfection.? And that necessary condition being fulfilled, God perfected Him.4 And in Christ we have the power of living with His faith, and anticipate the victory which God has in Him shown that He gives, and which faith qualifies him who exercises it to receive. Thus the moral miracle of our Lord’s human sinlessness is demonstrative of, or equivalent to, the perfection of His humanity, but only symbolical of His deity. His outer action and His inner life are of a single piece, and exhibit the same principle. If He frees those whom Satan has bound by miracles of healing, He frees also that human nature which He had assumed, and which was subject to bondage, and in both cases restoration is from God, prevenient to, but also conditioned by, faith. And in Him we receive His power of conquest, because in Him we-are made partakers in His faith. It is precisely this principle which was asserted in the Council of Constantinople in 680. The human perfection of our Lord was not one in which the exercise of His human . ne x, te et. A. ea: * eb: aa. 2, « Heb. iis 10, < vi". *" vii. 26, ON THE GOSPEL MIRACLES 109g will had no share. As He had two natures so He had two wills, and His human will was not merely passive; its operation was not suspended in order that it might be superseded by His divine will, but had its own operation. Moral virtue is not a thing which can be given ab extra, It is only those that are capable of exercising free will that can attain it, and only by the exercise of that will is it receivable, and the proper exercise of that will is faith. But if our Lord’s acts are manifestations and not contradictions of His own inner life, it will follow, as is explicitly stated, that they are the Father’s works wrought within the atmosphere of Christ’s faith, faith being, as it were, not the electric power which works, but the conductivity of the medium. Dr. Hitchcock’s third point is that the purpose of the miracles was not primarily beneficent and only secondarily evidential, but that they were wrought from the beginning with a deliberately evidential purpose in order to support a claim on the part of our Lord to be God the Son.! Such an interpretation seems to inflict a considerable distortion on the Gospel narrative. Our Lord’s miracles are con- ditioned by an atmosphere of faith, and given that condition they are wrought as naturally as any work of ordinary beneficence would be wrought by a person of charitable disposition and of sufficient ability. And the appeal to them, when it is at length made, is made, as it were, under constraint and with deprecation. But is there really any evidence that our Lord ever claimed during His ministry to be more than the Messiah ? It is not necessary to prove that Messiahship lay within the limits of our Lord’s humanity. St. Peter’s statement on the day of Pentecost would be evidence enough of that if the point were otherwise doubtful.2 He appeared to His contemporaries as a human prophet.? Close to the end of His earthly life men had not made up their minds if He were the Messiah or not. Only to the Samaritan woman does He definitely state it as a fact. And among His followers only the Apostles were convinced of it. The whole question at His trial turns on whether He had made this claim, and the accusation breaks down because in the absence of Judas there is only constructive evidence to support it. The title Son of God is used by our Lord oh Do 9Se4 i Acts, 1.36, * Mt) xvii: Miko viii2d + LED i 19: Mt. xxvi263 5) Jn. x.'24: 110 THE PRESENT CONTROVERSY only three times and all the instances are in the Gospel of St. John, and may well be no more than Messianic. It is used of the whole chosen people in Hosea,! of Adam in St. Luke,? and in the Psalms of an earthly sovereign.® Moreover, our Lord Himself meets the charge of blasphemy by pointing out that at the most He is claiming no more than was given to the rulers of Israel in the Old Testament,* a saying which ought to be regarded as decisive. He calls God His Father, but sonship towards God is promised to David in respect of Solomon 5, and ascribed to our Lord as Man,® and it is expressly prophesied in the Psalms that the Messiah should use this form of address, where its human reference is fixed by the next words, ‘ My God, and the rock of my salvation.’ ® He forgives sins, but claims that God has given such power unto the Son of Man. He declares that to Him all judgement has been committed, but it is because of His humanity. He revises the law, but Moses is represented as foretelling the advent of a prophet to whom men were to hearken. Finally, so far from saying that His mission was to bear witness of Himself, He expressly declares that if He were to do so His witness would not be true.’ It is impossible to do more than summarize, but it appears clear that until Hé was adjured by the High Priest in such a form that He could not refuse compliance without sacrificing the principle of obedience to constituted authority which He Himself taught, He steadfastly refrained from claiming even Messiahship in so unambiguous a form as not to leave a loophole. And if this is the case, a fortior1 He did not claim to be God the Son. He knows spiritual realities, but if we may trust St. John’s insight and his report, it is not because He as God knows them, though no doubt that is true of Him in His deity, but because to Him in His humanity God reveals them. If He works miracles though to outward sight, and in the form of ordinary language, He does them, yet He is but instrumental, and can of Himself do nothing, but the Father does the works by His Spirit. And moreover He declares in language which could hardly be more forcible, that the sole necessity on the part of the worker, and apart from the need and faith © of the recipient, is trust in God. When the disciples ask he Sls hoe 2 iii. 36. pian Aub we ae teem eB act, Te § 2 Sam. vii. 14. 6 Heb. i. 5. fe ee e ON THE GOSPEL MIRACLES III Him why they as well as He could not cast out devils His answer is not ‘ Because I am God and you are not,’ nor even ‘ Because I am the Messiah and you are not,’ but because of the extreme paucity of your faith. ‘ Verily I say to you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible to you.’ } . Miracles, then, if they are evidential at all, are evidences of His completeness of self-surrender, and of the power which God exercises for the destruction of evil, and the introduction of His kingdom, through the self-surrendered Man. That is, our Lord’s miracles are indeed such evi- dences of His deity as were,His non-miraculous works. He was God as much when He slept in the boat as when He rebuked the waves, and His sleeping and His wonder- working were alike evidences of the completeness of His trust in the Father. To us, indeed, the fact that He was God may be more manifest in one action or word than in another, but the fact was no more a fact at one time than at another; the difference of evidential value is merely subjective. And it cannot really be held that the best evidence of a God who is primarily and essentially love, and Whose omnipotence is ministrant to the promptings of love, is to be sought in works primarily of power to which beneficence is in evidential value secondary and subordinate, because in this respect they are not miraculous. Dr. Hitchcock rejects the miracle of Balaam’s ass, as he rejects the puerilities of the Apocryphal Gospels, and, as we may feel confident, rightly in both cases; but the reason of this confidence is not the impossibility of God’s having power to cause them, nor, at least in the former instance, the want of plan and purpose, but that they evince a breach in that uniformity of action which our Lord’s miracles consistently maintain. Our Lord shows a constant respect for the capacities of the nature of the recipient. Even the swine of Gadara perform actions within the realm of their own nature, though under the stimulus of a nature so far higher than their own that it possesses capacities of intelligence and will. Even the fig tree keeps within the limits of the vegetable order to which it belongs. So from human beings our Lord demands faith as being the highest of which they are capable. Only 1 Mt. xvii. 20; cp. xxi. 21 and Mk. xi 23. I12 THE GOSPEL MIRACLES in the case of inanimate things does He act as it were purely from the outside, because at the best they could be but instruments. And this law, once recognized, leads us to suppose that as God He would, in His Incarnation, respect the limits of that nature which He took. Nor is God the less free, because He respects the law which He by the uniformity of His action creates; nor is Christ the less truly God because as God He imposes on Himself as Incarnate the limits of the nature He assumes. But rather, ‘that the omnipotence of the divine nature should have had strength to descend to the lowliness of humanity, furnishes a more manifest proof of power than even the greatness of His miracles. It is not ... the unbroken administration over all existence that so mani- festly displays the transcendent power of the Deity, as this condescension to the weakness of our nature.’? Or as Dr. Illingworth has summarized it: ‘The greatest action ’ of our Lord’s Incarnate life ‘was His passion,’* crucified in weakness—so God loved the world. This review has already run to too great a length, but it is impossible to close it without animadverting to the remarks on p. 98. Suppose ‘God, were but one Divine Person, we would expect to find the unity of that Person- ality impressed upon the Universe and its system. There would be no sphere for the accidental and the abnormal, no room for the contingent and the phenomenal, because there would be no scope for interference with its laws.’ This, if it means anything, suggests that the plurality of Persons within the Blessed Trinity introduces an element of contingency and abnormality, and by that suggestion is sufficiently condemned. But does Dr. Hitchcock really mean that God could by any possibility be anything else but a Trinity ? Certainly, to use Dr. Illingworth’s phrase, the Unitarian conception of God ‘ cannot be translated into thought ; it cannot be thought out.’* But clearly if God be God, He could be neither less nor more than He is in distinction of Persons. If twice two were five mathematics would be impossible ; but we still might hope to experience and reciprocate our mother’s love. But if God the Holy Trinity were less or more than the Trinity, there would be no we,,no world, and no God. 1 Greg. Nyss. Orat. Cat. xxiv. 2 Sermons in a College Chapel, p. 30. 8 Personality, p. 74. THE TRANSFIGURATION ‘THERE appeared unto them Moses and Elijah talking with Him.’ Matt. xvii. 3. Moses is naturally assumed to represent the law, and the phrase ‘ the law and the prophets’ is so familiar that it is assumed almost as a necessary corollary that Elijah represents the prophets. Let us take as our starting-point the first half of this identification. Moses represents or embodies the law. Our Lord was ‘ born under the law,’ or rather by His incarnation ‘ came to be under the law’? and according to the law of Moses He was circumcised the eighth day after His birth,? and on the fortieth day presented in the temple ‘ as it is written in the law of the Lord.’ When He had completed His twelfth year He was taken up to the temple and became, like other Jewish youths, a ‘son of the law,’ and we shall probably be right in assuming that up till the time of His baptism He was “as touching the righteousness that is in the law found blameless.’ But after that event the whole position is changed. He has received ‘ the adoption,’ *> and is a son of God. Henee He considers that He is under no obligation to pay the half-shekel.* If, as seems probable, His baptism took place just about the time of the feast of the Passover, then He did not keep that Passover in Jerusalem, for the Spirit drove Him forth into the wilderness.’? Nor did He keep the Passover that followed the feeding of the 5000, but remained in Galilee. And we read that He did not keep a certain feast of Tabernacles, but went up in the midst of it: ‘I go not up to this feast ’®; that is, He did not go up as a feast-keeper, did not consider Himself under legal obligation to go up. Nor did He think Himself under obligation to keep the Sabbath, for He says, ‘The Son of Man is Lord of the Sabbath ’ °; nor to observe the distinction of clean and unclean food, “1Gal.iv.4. *%Lk.ii2r. *Lk.ii.23. ‘Phil. iii.6; op. Lk.i. 6. © Gall ives. © Mti xvii; 24—27. *° ME, i. 12. ° Jn. vil. 82. 9 MED 28. VE I X14 THE TRANSFIGURATION for St. Mark’s comment on His words is, ‘ this He said making all meats clean,’ + an interpretation the scope of which is shown in St. Peter’s subsequent vision.? In short, as is clear from the passage first quoted from St. Matthew, during His ministerial life on earth our Lord presents Himself as one who constantly became as a Jew to the Jews,® being Himself not under the law but under grace. And His language bears out this obvious inter- pretation of His conduct. Thus He goes behind the law, much in the same way as does St. Paul; Moses in the law allowed in certain cases a bill of divorcement to be given ‘but from the beginning it was not so’*; and He corrects or supplements the law, ‘it was said to them of old time ’ —‘but I say unto you.’® So He speaks of the law to the Jews as your law,’ or to others, as theiy law,® never of our law.° Thus we may say that in whatever way Moses spoke to our Lord, he did not speak to Him as Hzs lawgiver, as giving Him the law of His ministerial life, as presenting to Him rules of conduct. ‘ Moses was faithful in all God’s house as a servant,’ ‘ but Christ as a son over God’s house’ 1° was ‘ free’ 14, the superior and not the inferior of Moses, released by the adoption of sonship from legal obligations transmitted or imposed by the ‘ servant.’ But it must be remembered that in thus speaking of ‘Moses’ and of the ‘ law,’ we are not dealing with ‘ the Moses of history’ as the higher critics have portrayed him, nor of the curtailed and abbreviated code of which they permit him to be the author, but of ‘ the Moses of tradition,’ the reputed author of the first five books of the Bible, which were collectively called the ‘law’; that is, we are dealing with Moses the historian or chronicler, in whose books Moses the legislator is one of the most prominent figures. Now in this sense Moses, while he was no legislator to our Lord, had a real and positive function. He wrote of Him, prophesied of Him. Even within the books of the law themselves Moses is called a prophet, ‘ There hath not arisen a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face.’ ® So also .the whole narrative of the covenant at Sinai is Mk -viti 19. (A Acta wie 59. 6 %t Cor 12.720, 4Rom. vi. 14. SMt.rxix. 8. SME. wi 22;°27;' 35.5." Jn vill, 397 eoad 3 eee 9 cp. Jn. vii. 51. 1° Heb. iii. 5,6. 1 Jn. viii. 35, 36. 1% Jn.i. 46; v. 46. 18 Deut. xxxiv. Io. THE TRANSFIGURATION II5 thoroughly prophetic in character,t and the Decalogue, whatever view we take of its origin, represents the moral standard to which the prophets of the eighth century made their appeal; while one of the prophets themselves claims Moses as a member of his own order, ‘ By a prophet the Lord brought Israel up out of Egypt, and by a prophet was he preserved’ 2; and, finally, the Jewish expectation of the advent of ‘the prophet’ as a person distinct from Elijah * was based upon the fact that Moses foretold that a prophet should arise like unto himself.* Thus the distinc- tion between the law and the prophets, in their application to Christ, or their speech to Him and concerning Him, breaks down; it is not their diversity but their identity of function that we need to bear in mind. And this unity is brought out in the use of the phrase itself. ‘ The law and the prophets,’ with or without the addition of ‘the psalms,’ is constantly used as a name for the whole of the Old Testament. Thus in St. Luke xxiv.: “OO... slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into is glory?P And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he inter- preted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself... Was not our heart burning. . . while he opened to us the scriptures ... These are my words which I spake unto you... how that all things must needs be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their mind that they might understand the scriptures; and he said unto them, thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead the third day.’ And St. Paul is in entire agreement with this recognized usage when he claims that he is ‘ saying nothing beyond what the prophets did say should come and Moses,’ after which follow the heads of his speech that the Christ should suffer, that He first by the resurrection of the dead should proclaim light both to the People and to the Gentiles.» And the language of his epistle to the Romans is similar to that used in his speech, ‘a righteousness of God hath been manifested, being witnessed by the law and the prophets.’® And so also St. Peter: ‘ The things which God foreshewed by the mouth of all the prophets, that his Christ should Nix. xxiv. 1-11. “Hos. xii..13.. .* Jn. i. 213). vii. 40. ..* Deut. xviii. 15. Acts =xvi. 22,23. apis thy ee r16 THE TRANSFIGURATION suffer, he thus fulfilled. God spake by the mouth of his holy prophets which have been since the world began. Moses indeed said... Yea and all the prophets from Samuel and them that followed after.’ 1 Here, then, we have the whole Old Testament called ‘ the law and the prophets,’ and fore- telling just those events on which as we know the mind of our Lord was dwelling at the time, His exodus to be accom- plished at Jerusalem and the glory that should follow.? At the beginning of the prophetic series stands Moses, not that the historic Moses was the earliest of the prophets, but that the first book of Moses records the commencement of prophecy. This interpretation is shewn to be correct by the statement that prophets were from the beginning of the world. Moses the prophet begins with ‘in the beginning.’ But this use of ‘ Moses and the prophets’ for the whole Old Testament and the interpretation of “Moses and Elijah’ as symbolizing ‘the law and the prophets’ inevitably raises the question: Why Elijah ? It is true that Elijah was expected before the coming of the Messiah ; he was expected on account of the prophecy in the last chapter of Malachi, and we may conjecture that he was named by Malachi because the prophet that was to arise was to fulfil a similar function to Elijah, in that by his ministry the Lord God might turn the hearts of the people back again. But Elijah was neither the first nor the last of the prophets, nor the greatest. On the last point our Lord’s words are explicit: there was none greater than John. Accordingly, if Moses represents or embodies the law as being the greatest legislator, we should have expected the representative of the prophets to be John ; if Moses stands for the beginning of the old dispensation, John should represent its close, for ‘ all the prophets and the law prophesied until John’5; if the Jews expected Elijah, John was the Elijah whom they looked for. This is the message of the angel who foretold his birth,® and this identification of John with Elijah was made by our Lord quite early in His ministry,’ and main- tained by Him throughout. It is true that this was not the view of the Jews. For the most part they rejected both our Lord’s Messiahship and John’s Elijahship, and in fact the one was involved in the other: if Jesus was the Messiah, John must be the Elijah that should go before 1 Acts ili. 18-24. *%1 Pet.i. 11. * Lk.i. 70; Acts ili.2r. * 2 Kings xviil.737,, 1% Mt. 20.004, SL eee ce THE TRANSFIGURATION II7 Him: if John was the forerunner announced in the prophecy of Malachi iv. 5, Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah. It is this double identification that lies at the root of our Lord’s question before His passion.? If the Jewish leaders accepted John, they must accept Him; if they rejected His Messiahship, they must reject John’s prophetic inspiration. But we are not concerned with the common Jewish opinion ; the question we must ask is: Who was the Elijah with whom our Lord was seen in converse, who was he to Him? And the answer is clear: John the Baptist. The three apostles did not themselves under- stand this at the time. They saw some one whom they recognized to be Elijah—how they recognized him we shall endeavour to indicate later—but Elijah ought, according to the view they had learnt to hold, to have come in the flesh, and he had not done so. Our Lord corrects them in reference to this very vision. Elijah had come in the spirit, and John the Baptist was he. They had accepted Him as Messiah, but their non-acceptance of John as Elijah still created a difficulty, and His explanation removes it.? Now this collocation of Moses and John has a peculiar fitness. Moses ‘in the beginning,’ John at the end, both prophesied of ‘ His exodus,’ from the prophecy “It shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel,’ from the sign of the slain beasts of whose skins God made coats to clothe Adam and Eve—typical of the God-given righteousness won through death,—from the prophecy of Eve, ‘I have gotten a man from the Lord,’ and from the death of Abel, up to the foretelling of the death of Christ under the figure of the slaughtered Paschal Lamb. But more than this, both Moses and John were in themselves signs. John was not only set forth as a sign to Israel, but to our Lord Himself. And our Lord quite clearly recognized him as such. Behind Herod who put John to death were the Jewish leaders who betrayed him,‘ as behind Pilate were the same betrayers® who thus incurred the greater sin. And John was not only a sign to our Lord, but the last sign ; his death warned Him that His own was a certainty,’ and thenceforward He kept Himself out of danger until His hour should come. Again, ‘ Moses, the prophet of the Law, is dramat- ically pictured as dying outside the Promised Land, RMta Reis She t MiaKVils Pus eek BO. eK. Te 4 SACS Vib, 52, PMIteeeVil 2 .io go \tkaeiee hts nity XV, 02, 118 THE TRANSFIGURATION which he cannot himself enter. John, the last prophet of the law, greater than all the prophets, still remains to the end dramatically outside, pointing the way in.’ ? Moses hands over his followers to Joshua, John his disciple to the other Joshua, Jesus, whom the former prefigured. Moses and John alike symbolize in their own persons the preparation, in the fulfilment of which they nevertheless have no share; both ‘look forward to and tell of Another in whom their prophecy is to be accomplished. Moses leads the children of Abraham to the Jordan ; John baptizes the unique seed of the faithful Abraham in it. But throughout it must be remembered that we are dealing with a prophetic vision,? a vision primarily granted to our Lord Himself, in which the Apostles are privileged to share so far as they had the capacity. They enter into the cloud, or the glory.? It is the cloud into which Moses entered4; it is the cloud of smoke of Isaiah’s vision > when he saw the glory of Christ ®; it is the cloud . of which Joel prophesied 7; it is possibly referred to by St. John, ‘ We beheld his glory ... John beareth witness of him... the law was given by Moses’ §; it signifies the spirit of prophecy, the testimony which bears witness to Jesus. The Transfiguration was the culminating endeavour of our Lord to make the Apostles understand what was coming on Him. He had often attempted to teach them by word, in parable, or by express and detailed declaration, but He had found their hearts preoccupied with prejudices and ambitions, and their ears dull of hearing. Now a new method is to be tried by which they may enter into His mind and learn to take His point of view. They see Him engrossed with the future. One event after another portended His death and resurrection; voice after voice had proclaimed it, ending with the voice and the death of John the Baptist. We have not here to do with the corporal reality or presence of Moses and Elijah, any more than we have with the physical reality of the almond tree or the seething cauldron in the first chapter of Jeremiah, or of the great sheet in the vision of St. Peter. The whole description shews us that the robe of our Lord did not come off an earthly 1H.S. Holland, Philosophy of Faith p. 189. *Mt.xvii.g. °%2 Pet.i. 17. “Ex, xxiv. 18; cp. xxxiv. 29. ‘5Is. vi. 4. * Jn. xii. 41. 7% Joel ii. 30; ep. Acts ii. 19. ° Jn. i, 14, 15, 17. ® Rev. xix, 10. THE TRANSFIGURATION 119 loom, any more than its brightness from a human fuller ? ; it is the white robe of the redeemed,? the robe of the High Priest, washed in the blood of Himself the victim. Our Lord is real, it is into His mind that the Apostles are invited to enter ; but Moses and Elijah are figures in a parable, not spoken but exhibited to prophetic sight, and their reality hes in that which they symbolize, Moses and John the Baptist, the Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end of the old dispensation, ‘ beginning from Moses’ ® ‘ the law and the prophets,’ ‘ in all the scriptures,’ ‘ prophesied until John.’ 4 But the Apostles did not wholly enter into His meaning ; they were still confused. St. Peter’s mind had been occupied with the approaching feast of Tabernacles, and we are shown the resulting effect of these two streams of thought, the Master’s and his own. ‘ Let us make three tabernacles’ (this he said) ‘not know- ing what he said.’> So also he failed to follow our Lord in recognizing, in Elijah, John the Baptist. For the ordinary Jew the canon of scripture was closed. For centuries no prophet had arisen, and those who wished to put forth new writings had to veil their names under the pseudonym of some previous author. Thus it is, we are told, that the book of Daniel found an entrance into the canon; so the Book of Enoch, the Testament of Abraham and others are pseudonymous works. But, to our Lord, Old Testament prophecy endured to His own time ; the old dispensation ended in John; in preaching repentance he was greater than Jonah, a prophet but more than a prophet ; in the wisdom literature, the latest element in the canon which began with Solomon and was continued under his name, he was wiser than Solomon, greater than any man born of woman. We know that our Lord’s mind was at this time full of the prophecies which spoke of His death and resurrection ; He Himself tells that this is the theme of all the Scriptures ; He personalizes the law over and over again under the title of Moses; He uses parable constantly in words ; it is not to be imagined that while other prophets saw visions He saw none; we are told that this revelation was a vision ; we know that He identified the Baptist and Elijah, He Himself tells us so; and that He regarded John as the closing figure of the pre-Messianic Age. These and other similar considerations must all be in our minds as SME. ihr 4 OV, Vile tae "Lio EX1V. 27.0: OMT xits.. o LE. ix..33; 120 THE TRANSFIGURATION we endeavour to estimate the significance of the Trans- figuration : it was at once a manifestation of that heavenly state into which He had passed by the endowment of the Holy Spirit at His baptism by St. John, an event in itself typical of death and resurrection, and a revelation con- firming to the Apostles the prophecies in words ? which they found it so hard to realize. 1 Lk. xii. 50. 27 Pet. 1 oro: THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES “As the Scripture hath said, Out of his (or its) belly shall flow rivers of living water’ (St. John vii. 38). There seems fairly good reason to suppose that this Feast of Tabernacles followed close after the Transfigura- tion, which may, indeed, have taken place on the preceding day, or on the first day of the feast itself ; for we read that our Lord did not go up to Jerusalem until it was well on its way. If this is so, it would explain the mental preoccupation of St. Peter which is shewn by his remark to our Lord: ‘Let us make three tabernacles ... not knowing what he said.’ 4 Originally, no doubt, the Feast of Tabernacles was a harvest festival, coming at the end of the ingathering of the fruits ; but by the time of our Lord this characteristic had been overlaid and almost obliterated in the minds of the worshippers, and it had become a feast of remem- brance, looking back to the wanderings of the Israelites in the wilderness, and of anticipation of the blessings of the Messianic reign. Thus the dwelling in booths was doubtless a survival of a custom of living in booths during the fruit harvest, a custom which has been continued in Palestine to this day; but it was regarded as typifying the manner of life of the Israelites during their wanderings.” The ingathering also was held to typify the final harvest of the nations of the world, which was symbolized by the offering of the seventy bullocks during the feast, it being supposed that the inhabitants of the world were divided into seventy nations.® The feast itself began shortly after midnight of the r4th-15th of Tishri, when the temple gates were thrown open. The time intervening before the offering of the morning sacrifice was occupied in examining the offerings to be made during the day. While the morning sacrifices RIK is, 69935 OMG, XVile 4002 Cf, Lev, Xxil, 42.9)" Sukkah 755: Pesikta, ed. Buber p. 17 a; Shabb. 88 b. (Deut. xxxii. 8 LXX.) I2!I 122 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES were being prepared (unless the day happened to be the weekly sabbath, when the water would have been already stored in a golden vessel in the temple) a priest went down to the pool of Siloam and thence drew water in a golden ewer, which he carried through the water-gate (so named from this ceremony), timing his arrival at the altar so as to coincide with the laying of the sacrifice upon it. Ascen- ding the slope on the south he turned eastward, and poured the water into a silver basin, which was provided with a funnel leading to the base of the altar, doing this at the same time as a colleague poured the wine of the drink-offering into the corresponding basin next to it. Though this ceremony was considered by the Rabbis as having reference to the dispensation of rain, the annual fall of which was regarded as being determined by God at that feast,1 yet it represented also the coming of the water out of the rock in the wilderness, and signified the future outpouring of the Spirit predicted in Isaiah xii. 3, which was possibly an allusion to this very rite, unless, indeed, the rite was derived from his language. Thus the Talmud says distinctly ‘ Why is the name of it called ‘‘ The Drawing- out of Water ’’?’ Because of the pouring out of the Holly, Spirit, according to what is said, ‘‘ With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.” ’ But if the water represented the Spirit, it is hardly less clear that the source from which it was obtained is our Lord Himself. Indeed, St. John almost says so expressly. When the man born blind is bidden to wash in the Pool of Siloam that he may receive his sight (John ix. 7) the Evangelist explains that Siloam means ‘ He who has been sent,’ and, that there may be no mistake in the reference, he studs the surrounding narrative with other parts of the same verb. Thus v. 36 ‘the works bear witness of Me that the Father hath sent Me’; v. 37 ‘the Father which sent Me’; v. 38 ‘Him whom He sent’; vi. 29 ‘ This is the work of God that ye believe on Him whom He > sent’; vi. 57 ‘As the living Father sent Me’; vii. 29, vill. 42 ‘He sent Me’; x. 36 ‘Whom the Father sent.’ Thus the miracle of giving sight to one born blind is a parable of baptism by water and the Spirit, which our Lord was to send, and is connected with the discourse to Nicodemus,? in much the same way as the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand ® and the discourse which 1T. B. Rosh hash. 12; Taanith 2 a. 2 Jn. ili. I-15. 3 vi. I-13. THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 123 followed it! has reference to the other great sacrament of the Eucharist. When the priest poured the water into the basin the choir sang the great Hallel, Ps. cxiii—cxvili, and at the words ‘ O give thanks to the Lord,’ ‘O work now salvation, O Lord,’ all the worshippers shook their lulavs towards the altar. The lulav was composed of palm with myrtle and willow on either side of it, and was carried in the right hand, while the left held the aethrog or citron. This ceremony probably forms the foundation of the symbolism in the Book of Revelation (vii. 9-10) ‘ After this I saw, and behold a great multitude, out of every nation, and of all peoples and tribes and tongues, standing before the throne of God and the Lamb’ (from which proceeded the river of the water of life),? “ arrayed in white robes ’ (the ‘beauty of holiness’, or the festal array of the worshippers) ‘and palms in their hands,’ and they cry with a great voice, saying, ‘ Salvation unto our God which sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb.’ And similarly ‘the glory of God did lighten it, and the lamp thereof is the Lamb,’ ® looks back to the special illumination of the temple which took place on the first, and possibly on the succeeding nights, of the feast. This had a his- torical reference to the pillar of fire in the wilderness which, according to Jewish tradition, had first appeared on the 15th of Tishri, on which day also Moses was said to have come down from the Mount and announced that the Tabernacle of God was to be reared among the people; and Solomon’s temple was dedicated, and the Shekinah descended upon it. It is probably in allusion to this ceremony that our Lord twice declares ‘I am the Light of the world,’ once publicly in the Treasury, and once to the man born blind, in reference to the recovery of his sight.* But as the water signified the Spirit which ‘ they that believe on Him were to receive,’ > and Jesus was to give after His glorification, it is all but certain that He identi- fied Himself with the rock of the wilderness which the altar symbolized, the rock on which the temple was built, that here came to the surface and formed the living base or core on and around which the altar was constructed. The identification of our Lord with the rock in the wilder- ness is made by St. Paul, ‘ they drank of a spiritual rock PUL VL ec -AOre a) GV EX too A7 tO, SX) 2 Fe 2 (MS Vat, Ley AR F WiL} 30; 124 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES that followed them: and the rock was Christ.’1 This comparison may be original in St. Paul, but it is not impossible that Saul, the disciple of Gamaliel, was in Jerusalem at this time,? and privy to the orders of the Pharisees to send soldiers to take Him who spoke as never yet man spake,® and in consequence it may have been derived from our Lord Himself. Before discussing the precise origin of the quotation in chapter vii. 38, two points are to be noted. ‘ The Scripture’ in the singular number occurs eleven times in St. John’s Gospel, and in eight of these eleven the reference to a particular passage of the Old Testament is obvious, while in the two others (ii. 22 and xx. g) it is not hard to find. Hence it is highly probable that this also has a definite reference, and the reference must have been familiar and in the minds of the audience at the time. Now both the ceremonies of the water and of the lamps are post-Mosaic, and obviously require the existence of a central sanctuary. There is no allusion to. either in the lessons read at the feast. The sections from the Torah‘ are Lev. xxil. 26—xxili. 44, Num. xxix. 12-34, or, when a sab- bath occurs, Exod. xxxlii. I2—xxxiv. 26, and with these Zech. xiv. I-21, 1 Kings viii. 2-21, Ezek. xxxviil. 18—xxxix. 16, and Ecclesiastes, which book Solomon was supposed to have read to the assembled people. But besides the lessons there was also a cycle of psalms sung at the drink offering after the festive sacrifices. These were, on the feast day, Ps. cv.; on the second day, Px. xxix. ; on the third day, Ps. 1. from verse 16; on the fourth day, Ps. xciv. from verse 16; on the fifth day, Ps. xcvi. from verse 8 ; on the sixth day, Ps. Ixxxi. from verse 6; and for the last day, Ps. Ixxxii. from verse 5. It is, therefore, from among these that the quotation must be selected; and, in fact, the nearest parallel in the Bible to the wording of the quotation is Ps. cv. 41, ‘ He opened the rock, and waters gushed out; they ran in dry places (like) a river,’ which follows hard after verse 39, ‘He spread a cloud for a covering, and fire to give light in the night,’ to which the lighting of the lamps looked back. That the quotation is not verbally exact need not greatly trouble us. We are familiar with this feature in other quotations from the Old Testament in the New. Of the fourteen quotations *1 Cor. x. 4. *% cp. Weiss, Paul and Jesus pp. 54-56; Moulton, From Egyptian Rubbish Heaps pp. 73-75. * Jn. vii. 37-46. * Meg. 31 a. THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES 125 in St. John’s Gospel half are inexact, and this freedom of wording extends even to our Lord’s own discourses. ‘Out of his (or its) belly ’ can be dismissed as a paraphrase for ‘from him’ (or it), or ‘ out of the midst of him’ (or it)!; and ‘living’ may be an addition, standing, as it does in the original, the last word in the sentence. But the passage in Ps. cv. contains the three important words ‘flow,’ ‘river,’ and ‘ water,’ and, as I have said, there is no passage in the Bible which comes closer to the quotation. But if this is so, there is no doubt that ‘ his belly ’ must be the belly of Christ, or of the Rock, and not of the believer. We have already quoted St. Paul’s testimony to this effect ; and St. John, or his later editor, is hardly less decisive on the point: ‘ This spake He of the Spirit, which they that believe on Him were toreceive; for the Spirit was not yet (given), because Jesus was not yet glorified ’? Our Lord Himself could not give the Spirit while He was on earth, but only after His glorification, which He did at Pentecost; therefore, a fortiort, no earthly believer can give It. To this direct testimony might be added reasons of a more theological kind. To give the Spirit is a divine function, characteristic of God Himself; and our Lord could, as man, only give the Spirit after He was risen to the dignity and power of God, at the right hand of the Father. No saint and no bishop gives the Spirit ; he does but ask that God may send It. The highest Christian saint is in no better position than was our Lord between His baptism and His crucifixion. Christ was as man the embodiment of the Church, as, according to St. Paul, mankind was embodied in Adam, or, according to the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Jewish nation, including the Levitical priesthood, was embodied in Abraham. Nor is there any text of scripture. which states that the believer could ever give the Holy Spirit, though there are many that promise that he should receive It as an ever-flowing stream. Thus Jer. xxi. 12 ‘ Their soul shall be as a watered garden’; Isaiah lviii. rz ‘ The Lord shall . . . satisfy their soul in drought... -and thou shalt be a watered garden, and like a spring of water whose waters fail not.’ But this interpretation suggests that the previous verse should be re-pointed so as to read ‘ If any man thirst let 1¢p. Jonah ii. 2, of Hades; Job xvi 35; Prov. xxii; 18, &c.; Sir. iSite Wily 39. 126 THE FEAST OF TABERNACLES him come unto Me, and let him drink that believeth on Me; as the scripture hath said, Out of his (or its) belly shall flow rivers of living water.’ The ancient manuscripts have, of course, no stops, therefore no objection can be taken on that ground. On the other hand, there are considerations that favour such a reading. In moments of elevated thought we constantly find the Jewish mind running to that form of parallelism which is most familiar to us in the Psalms. Our Lord Himself uses this method of speech more than once. Thus to the woman of Samaria He says, ‘Everyone that drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.’ So in chapter vii. 36: ‘ Ye shall seek Me—but shall not find Me: and where I am—ye cannot come.’ And similarly xii. 44, 45: ‘He that believeth on Me, believeth not on Me but on Him that sent Me: And He that beholdeth Me, beholdeth Him that sent Me.’ And examples may be multiplied. ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION INTRODUCTION It has been often taken for granted that St. Paul dates his apostolic commission to the Gentiles from his vision of our Lord on the road to Damascus. The object of this present paper is to show that this view is not warranted ; but rather that he received a commission to the Jews of Syria, Cilicia, and Cyprus from the Apostles at Jerusalem, while his commission to the Gentiles, which was not locally limited, was given him by our Lord in a vision in the Temple. Closely connected with this question is that of St. Paul’s ordination, and it will be suggested that the vision at his conversion was not a substitute for the laying- on of hands, but that ordination was conferred either by Ananias, or by St. Peter or St. James previous to his journey to Tarsus. Some portion of the evidence must necessarily be derived from St. Paul’s conduct and writings subsequent to these events, so that it will be needful to consider at least the earlier portion of his ministerial life. ST. PAUL’S CONVERSION The most detailed descriptions of this occur in St. Luke’s account in Acts ix., and in St. Paul’s speech in Jerusalem in Acts xxii. We can best see what it is that they assert by placing them side by side. Chapter ix. Chapter xxii. 4. He fell upon the earth, 7. I fell unto the ground, and heard a voice saying and heard a voice saying unto him, Saul, Saul, why unto me, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou Me ? persecutest thou Me? 127 128 5. And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And he (said), I am Jesus whom thou persecutest : 6. But rise and enter into the city, and it shall be told thee what thou must do. ST, PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION 8. And I answered, Who art thou, Lord? And he said unto me, I am Jesus of Nazareth whom thou persecutest. ro. And I said, What shall I do, Lord; And the Lord said unto me, Arise, and go into Damascus: and there it shall be told thee of all things which are appoint- ed for thee to do. It is clear from these two narratives that there was no message then given to St. Paul directly touching any mission to the Gentiles. In his first epistle to the Corinth- ians he distinguishes this sight of our Lord from any subsequent appearances in trance or vision, and ranks it on the same level with the appearances after the resurrec- tion to the apostles and others which they saw with their bodily eyes. But though it was at that time a necessary qualification for the apostleship that a man should have seen our Lord after His resurrection, this did not zfso facto constitute him an apostle, else not only would Joseph Barsabbas have been an apostle, but all the 500 brethren, among whom were possibly Judas Barsabbas, Barnabas, and Silas. The next event of importance is the vision which St. Paul had in Damascus itself. ‘ He hath seen a man named Ananias coming in, and laying his hands on him, that he might receive his sight’ (Acts ix. 12). And the third vision is that granted to Ananias (Acts ix. 13), in which the Lord said to him: ‘ He is a chosen vessel to me to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel ; for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name’s sake.’ This is an accidental corroboration of our argument, for the revelation of the sufferings has yet to be made. Then we come to the message of Ananias to St. Paul: Ananias, laying his hands on him, said, ‘ Brother Saul, the Lord {even) Jesus, who appeared unto thee in the way which thou camest, hath sent me, that thou mayest receive thy sight, and be filled with the Holy Ghost,’ which is condensed in chap. xxii., ‘ Ananias, a devout man ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION 129 according to the law, well reported of by all the Jews that dwelt there, came unto me, and standing by me said, Brother Saul, receive thy sight.’ In this second account it is obvious that some part of Ananias’s message has been omitted ; but it is possible also that even in the first account the actual words spoken have been abbreviated. The messages to Saul at his conversion say that he was to be told at Damascus what he was to do. It would seem, therefore, that some such statement either formed part of what Ananias said to him, or else that he was instructed in Damascus as to what to do as occasion arose. At any rate, it is natural to suppose that while he was there, he submitted to Ananias’s general direction, for we may, I think, take it for granted that Ananias was the leader, or at least a member, of the governing body of the local Christian community. The only effect of Ananias’s laying his hands on Saul which is definitely stated is the latter’s recovery of his sight ; but in the vision in which our Lord appeared to Ananias he is instructed to lay hands on him not only for that purpose, but also that he may receive the Holy Ghost. I do not suppose that there is any doubt that St. Paul did receive the Holy Ghost through the laying- on of Ananias’s hands; but, if so, Ananias must have occupied a high office in the Church. Philip, one of the Seven, did not lay-on hands in Samaria, but the Apostolic Body sent Peter and John with full authority to take action in their name.? St. Paul laid his hands on those whom he ordained, and Timothy and Titus were commissioned to do the same. We do not elsewhere read that the laying-on of hands preceded baptism, but the case of Cornelius shows that the Holy Ghost could be received before it, and St. Peter compares this with His coming on the Apostles.2. In short, this laying-on of hands must at least have been St. Paul’s confirmation, and if we remember his regular practice of ordaining presbyters, possibly his own ordination also. But when we compare these two accounts with that given in Acts xxvi. we find there no mention of Ananias at all. It is clear, therefore, that we have in this chapter a much condensed report. The beginning of it is very much like the previous accounts of St. Paul’s conversion. ‘I heard a voice saying unto me in the Hebrew language, Saul, Saul, why persecutest thou me? It is hard for thee 1 Acts vill. 14. a Xian Be K 130 ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION to kick against the goad. And I said, Who art thou, Lord ? And the Lord said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. But arise, and stand upon thy feet.’ If the narrative was complete it would doubtless continue: ‘And Saul arose from the earth... and they led him by the hand and brought him unto Damascus,’ as in chap. ix. But the whole history of what happened in Damascus has been omitted, and in place of it the narrative goes on: ‘For to this end have I appeared unto thee, to appoint thee a minister and a witness both of the things wherein, I will appear unto thee; delivering thee from the people, and from the gentiles unto whom I send thee.’ 7 Accordingly, we have here a very condensed narrative with considerable omissions, and it is therefore impossible to press it against the more detailed histories of chaps. ix and xxil., which make it clear that the revelation to St. Paul of what he was to do and to suffer, was subsequent to his arrival in Damascus, and therefore that his apostolic commission cannot be dated from his conversion. After the laying-on of hands by Ananias, St. Paul ‘ straightway in the synagogues proclaimed Jesus that He is the Son of God, and confounded the Jews.’1 We have seen that Ananias was a devout keeper of the law, and well reported of by all the Jews in Damascus.? It is therefore practically certain that St. Paul, so long as he was in Damascus, did not exercise any ministry towards the Gentiles, and this affords some independent support to our argument that he had not yet received a commission towards them. In Gal. i. 1, we read: ‘ An Apostle not from men, neither through man.’ St. Paul is here speaking of his apostleship to the Gentiles, and he denies that this came to him through Ananias or any other human intermediary. From Damascus he went into Arabia, and returned again to the city, from which he was persuaded to escape, and then went up to Jerusalem. ST. PAUL IN JERUSALEM On his arrival at Jerusalem the disciples were at first afraid of him not believing that he was a Christian, but Barnabas stood sponsor for him, and introduced him to the apostles—that is, to St. Peter and St. James,* narrating 1 Acts ix. 20, 22. Axx. 12, * Gal. 4. 185. ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION 131 the story of his conversion, and how boldly he had preached at Damascus. Being acknowledged as a member of the Church, he made Jerusalem a centre of evangelistic work in Judaea, avoiding places where Christian organizations already existed,? and ministering especially to Greek- speaking Jews.? His uncompromising vigour aroused no little opposition, so that a plot was formed to kill him. Accordingly the brethren decided to send him away for the sake of his own safety, as he had already been sent ‘away from Damascus, and was subsequently sent from Beroea. St. Paul himself might have been more than willing to suffer the same fate as St. Stephen,* but the matter was decided for him by a vision in the temple, in which the Lord said unto him: ‘ Get thee quickly out of Jerusalem, for I will send thee (forth) (adaooreAXS or éfatroaoteA@ oe) far hence unto the Gentiles.’® We have already seen that St. Paul exercised no com- mission to the Gentiles at his conversion, and that he claims that his commission towards them did not come from men, neither through man hence he did not receive it through Ananias; we have found also that in a much condensed report he claims to have heard from the Lord ‘delivering thee from the people, and from the Gentiles unto whom I send thee’ (eis ots amooréAAw ce): Can we resist the conclusion that St. Paul dates his apostolate to the Gentiles from the vision in the temple? THE BEGINNING OF THE GENTILE MINISTRY In consequence of the attempts on his life, the brethren, including Peter and James the Lord’s brother, sent him forth to Tarsus,* as they sent forth Barnabas (€€a7éoreAav) as far as Antioch 7—that is, they not merely dismissed them (azéAvoarv),8 but gave them authority to act (cp. the mission of Peter and John to Samaria, ‘the Apostles in Jerusalem, hearing that Samaria had received the word of God azéoreAav mpos adrovs Ilétpov cat 'Iwavnv’). Very possibly these two missions were not independent. St. Barnabas constantly shows a strong affection for St. Paul ; 1 Acts xxvi. 20; Rom.xv.19. *Gal.i.22; Rom.xv.20. % Actsix. 29, Cai 03,1 eK, 077. oS ik 300 eid, 22...) x9 32.) P vil 4 132 ST. PAUL'S APOSTOLIC |\COMMISSION to the Apostles at Jerusalem he would be a sort of guarantee ; and he was certainly regarded as head of the mission. Paul and Barnabas may therefore have travelled to Antioch together, going by ship as far as Seleucia ; but while Paul continued his journey to Tarsus by land, Barnabas remained at Antioch, and this is possibly indicated by the word €ws, ‘as far as Antioch.’ St. Paul refers to this mission when he says, ‘I came into the regions (eis ta kAipara) of Syria and Cilicia ’4; Tarsus was the chief city of Cilicia, and Antioch of Syria, and Cilicia and Syria formed a single administrative unit, as is clear by Quirinius having jurisdiction over the two, and being in charge of the census in Palestine,? while holding a military command over the mountain district between Phrygia, Cilicia, and Lycaonia, and making war on the Homonadenses, who inhabited these parts. It is not improbable that included in the ‘ regions’ was the island of Cyprus, which is visible both from Cilicia and the Lebanon, holds an obvious strategic position with regard to each, and formed with them a single province in the time of the Roman republic. In these districts there would be found Jewish Christians. There were certainly large Jewish colonies in all.* After the perse- cution that arose about Stephen, Christians travelled from Jerusalem to Cyprus and Antioch; Mnason the Cypriot was ‘ an original convert ’; 4 and the Cilicians had a synagogue in Jerusalem. It was to these Jewish Christians that Barnabas and Saul were sent, doubtless with the letters of commendation, or they would have experienced the same difficulty that the latter found when he essayed to join himself to the brethren in Jerusalem. The idea of ‘ credentials’ was already current among the Jews, as we see in St. Paul’s own case, and it is clear that it was no less necessary for Barnabas to have some sort of ‘mandate’ to justify him in assuming the authoritative position which he seems to have taken at Antioch. Leaving Antioch, Barnabas went to Tarsus to seek out Saul, and having found him brought him back with him. If with Westcott and Hort we read ‘ Hellenists ’—that is, Greek-speaking Jews—in Acts xi. 20,6 then the work of the two Apostles was probably confined to their former co-religionists, the class with which St. Paul had already attempted to reason in Jerusalem.’ 1 Gal. i, 21. ?Lk.ii.2. 3 Phils, Legatio ad Gaium, 36. * Acts xxi. 16. Svi.g. ®see their New Testament in Greek, II Ap. p. 93. 7Acts ix. 29. ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION 133 ST. PAUL’s SECOND VISIT TO JERUSALEM At Antioch Agabus signified by the Spirit the famine soon to occur, and the disciples determined to send minis- tration to the presbyters in Jerusalem, and did so, consti- tuting Barnabas and Saul their envoys (aaooreiAavtes Ova xepos B. kat &.). We do not know with any certainty whether any of the Apostolic College were in residence in Jerusalem; but even if they were they would not have the superintendence of finance. The appointment of the Seven was expressly made to relieve them of this burden, but it possesses several curious features. They are a body without a name. Nowhere in Scripture are they referred to as ‘the deacons.’ They are to be men not only of administrative ability (Ajpes codtas), but also of spiritual power (mAjpes mvedpatos)—a qualification which would seem unnecessary in mere finance officers—and the two whose history is narrated after their appointment, St. Stephen and St. Philip, take a marked lead in preaching and evangelization. Thirdly, they are also men who are to have testimony borne to them. And lastly, their election is not simply ratified by apostolic approval, but by ordination. They have the hands of the Apostles laid on them. The primary object of their appointment, to relieve the apostles of the distribution of money especially as regards the poor widows, is called dvaxovia, Now, without for a moment denying that this word bears a very wide meaning, it is somewhat significant that it also seems to have a narrow, almost a technical, sense. Thus, of the brethren at Antioch making a collection for those in Judaea, it is said they each of them determined to send for ministration (eis dvaxoviav), and when Barnabas and Saul returned from Jerusalem to Antioch they did so, having fulfilled their ministration (dvaxoviav). So St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, ‘ I robbed other churches, taking wages of them to save your having to contribute to my maintenance’ (mpos mv tudv siaxoviav).2 And so of the great collection he made throughout the churches, ‘Now I go to Jerusalem ministering (dvaxov@v) to the saints,’ *? and ‘ the brethren who were appointed to travel in the matter of the gracious gift which is ministered ’ 1 Acts vi. 2. ny oH Osi « Beg ey 3 Rom. xv. 25. 134 ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION (79 Svaxovovpévn).1 Now it is remarkable that in Acts xi. 30 the collection is said to be sent to the presbyters at Jeru- salem, and in Acts xxi. 18, when St. Paul and the delegates have arrived with the much greater collection, it is noted that he went in unto James, and all the presbyters were present. We have no notice of the ordination of these presbyters, but there is no doubt that they were ordained. The qualifications of a presbyter in the pastoral epistles are much the same as for the Seven—external testimony, administrative ability, spiritual power, and if they have a gift of teaching, as was notably the case with St. Stephen and St. Philip, so much the more are they to be honoured ; and we find them also performing functions in the matter of distribution of alms at Jerusalem identical with those of the Seven—that is, in qualification, in function, and in ordination they were alike. Moreover, it is impossible to imagine that St. Luke, a writer who is so careful to mark all new beginnings, could introduce the presbyters at Jerusalem casually for the first time in Acts xi. 30, unless he identified them with some class of ordained men, not apostles, whom he had already mentioned. I submit, therefore, that the Seven were the original body of presby- ters at Jerusalem, and that their ordination formed the precedent for all subsequent ordinations. But if the special function which we find them performing was in connexion with finance, and if the collection made at Antioch was forwarded to the presbyters, then it is highly probable that those who presided over the collection of the money, as well as over its distribution, those who were sent as well as those who received, were also presbyters ; and in that case the ordination of Barnabas and Saul would have preceded their mission to Cilicia and Syria. We may gather, I think, that a movement of conversion had taken place in both districts, as it certainly had at Antioch,? and that Barnabas and Saul were despatched to take charge of it (as Peter and John were to Samaria), and to organize it, and this organization would include the appointment of local presbyters after sufficient instruction, if they found any fit for that office. St. Paul appears to have set up presbyters in every church. If he spent but a short time on the spot at a first visit, then he appointed them on a subsequent visit, or sent another to actin his place. If, on the other hand, he resided for any considerable period, as seems to have been the aa Gok, Syilis 20: 2 Acts xi. 19-21. ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION 135 case at Tarsus, then he would organize the church in this fashion before passing on. Probably, therefore, in accor- dance with his subsequent custom, he ordained presbyters there, and so set the Church on a well-established basis, as otherwise he would have been reluctant to leave with Barnabas, and would not have fulfilled the special mission with which he had been entrusted by the authorities at Jerusalem. It is therefore probable that not only had Barnabas and Saul the rank of presbyter already, but that they were also of status to lay hands on others. THE SECOND JOURNEY After their return from Jerusalem accompanied by St. Mark, the next incident is their dismissal from Antioch. In the course of some religious service, while they were fasting, the Holy Spirit said, probably by the mouth of one or more of the prophets, ‘Set me apart Barnabas and Saul for the work to which I have called them.’ Then with fasting and prayers, and the laying-on of hands, they were dismissed, and being (thus) sent forth by the Holy Spirit went down to Seleucia, and thence sailed to Cyprus. We notice first that Barnabas and Saul were already prophets and teachers, co-equal in spiritual qualifications with those that laid hands on them. This at once differ- entiates this ceremony from that of confirmation or ordination. Secondly, there is no mention of their receiv- ing any spiritual endowment or ecclesiastical office by this imposition ; they are not said, for instance, to receive the Holy Ghost. Thirdly, the ceremony is described as a commending to the grace of God.!_ Fourthly, all the prophets and teachers were Jews; Symeon is called by his Jewish and not by his Gentile name, Niger, and Lucius of Cyrene is probably the ‘kinsman’ whom St. Paul mentions in Rom. xvi. 21; and lastly, those who sent them forth are not said to have ‘apostled them,’ but only to have let them go (améAvoav). The work of the Holy Spirit was to speak, probably through the prophets, and it was with this prophetic utterance upon them that they went forth. This laying-on of hands was, therefore, probably not an ordination, but a parting benediction. In whatever manner it happened, whether by accident or design, or whether it was indicated in the prophecy, 1 Acts xiv. 26. 136 «6ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION Barnabas and Paul no doubt thought that their taking ship to Cyprus was in obedience to the Divine will. With this Divine guidance on a journey we may compare Acts xvi. 6, 7. When we put together the fact that they left Antioch in obedience to a prophetic utterance calling them to take up a work to which they knew they had already received a commission, and that they regarded Cyprus as providentially indicated to them, I think it is probable that Cyprus had been included in their mission at the start, but had hitherto been neglected. Moreover, they appear to have spoken only to Jews (év rats ovva- ywyats tov *Jovdaiwyv, xiii. 5) until they had traversed the whole island and arrived at Paphos; that is, St. Paul’s peculiar work of preaching to the heathen had not yet begun. At Paphos, in connexion with the Gentile governor Sergius Paulus, St. Paul begins to take the lead. Hitherto it has been ‘ Barnabas and Saul,’ now we find the Roman name Paul substituted for the Hebrew Saul, which suggests that the Hebrew name which had sufficed hitherto was no longer an adequate designation, and on leaving Paphos the company are called ‘ those with Paul.’ Thisis probably significant, and implies that from this time St. Paul resolved that when the Gentiles showed keenness (zpooxaAccdpevos, émelitnoev, xili. 7) they were not to be excluded, and the work of St. Barnabas became in consequence subordinate. From Paphos they sailed to Perga. Strabo describes Perga as situated on the River Cestrus, which is navigable up to that point. This probably means that there was a port town on the river ranking not as a separate city, but as part of Perga,! from which it was but a little way distant ; supposing a ship to be sailing up the Cestrus to Perga, it would not call at Attaleia, which was some miles west of the mouth of the river. But though they went to Perga, the apostolic company did no preaching there, and probably Ramsay is right in inferring that St. Paul’s health made it imperative that he should go at once to the higher ground of Pisidian Antioch.? At Perga St. Mark left them, and went to Jerusalem. This defection is probably due to a much deeper cause than that of personal cowardice or shrinking from hardship. St. Mark had already abandoned his home in Jerusalem +See Ramsay’s article on Perga in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible. 2 St. Paul the Traveller, p. 92. ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION 137 and had done good service in Antioch and Cyprus, and if this were the only reason he would naturally have returned to Antioch in Syria, from which he had set out. But instead of this he went to Jerusalem, though, in all probability, there would have been many coasting vessels which would have taken him to Antioch had he so desired. Preaching the gospel to the heathen was outside the commission which St. Paul had received from the apostles at Jerusalem ; accordingly, St. Mark returned to Jerusalem for fresh instructions. St. Paul’s commission to the heathen rested on a private vision, and had not yet received the authorization of the church, and St. Mark, a Jew of Jerusalem, refused to countenance it. It is clear that St. Paul felt that there was between them a difference on a great point of principle, and it seems probable that St. Barnabas himself was uneasy and accompanied St. Paul out of personal regard, and in order to be near him in case of another attack of illness. At Pisidian Antioch St. Paul did as a matter of fact begin his special work of evangelizing the heathen. The importance, in the mind of St. Luke, of this change is indicated by the length of the report of St. Paul’s speech ; by its general tone—clearly akin to that of St. Stephen ; and possibly by the deliberate choice of certain words and phrases from among the many that St. Paul might have used. Thus the variation ¢efameordAn, in xill. 26, where the LXX has the uncompounded verb, may have a second- ary reference to St. Paul’s mission, while v. 47 seems to designate its universal range. There is no doubt that in later times St. Paul regarded his apostolate to the heathen as his special ‘ work,’ ? and from this work, the work, St. Mark drew back. The experience at Paphos had pro- bably decided St. Paul that the time had arrived for making this new departure, and if we agree with Ramsay that St. Paul had wished to begin preaching at Perga, but that reasons of health had compelled him to go to Antioch without delay, then he commenced this work at the earliest possible moment. But it actually happened by an accident which to St. Paul appeared providential. His first discourse was directed to the Jews and those on the fringe of Judaism (of doBovpmevor tov Oedv Xiii. 16), as was his regular practice even after his apostolate to the P67) 2 STAM LIVE T, 4. Gal, ii: §, PLACES Vid Oe 138 ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION Gentiles had been officially recognized.1 His language in his epistle to the Romans (i. 16; lil. 9, 10; ill. 29, 30; Xv. 8-12), with the quotations from Isaiah in the last passage, is sufficient evidence of the principle on which he worked. But on the following Sabbath almost the whole city was gathered together,? including many Gentiles of the mind of Sergius Paulus, a thing which moved the envy of the Jews, and in this way a definite start was made in beginning a Gentile mission. 7 Leaving Pisidian Antioch, Paul and Barnabas went to Iconium, where they had a Divine testimony to the new policy, for the disciples, including Gentile converts, were filled with the Holy Spirit. From Iconium they went to _Lystra and Derbe preaching the word, and it is in the course of this journey that they are first called “ apostles,’ as though now acting for the first time as plenipotentiaries with full independence. On their way back they ordained presbyters in every city by the laying-on of hands, a rite which had been employed from very early days by the Apostles at Jerusalem, and by Ananias towards St. Paul himself for the bestowal of the Holy Spirit. They returned by the same route to Antioch, and then accomplished their original intention of evangelizing Perga ; but they spent no time in Attaleia, either because they found a ship about to sail immediately ; or possibly because there was already an organized Christian community there, and St. Paul held that it was not within the scope of his mission to build on another’s foundation ;4 or for reasons of health, as on the first journey.. On their return to Antioch in Syria they declared how God had opened the door of faith to the Gentiles—thus showing that preaching to the Gentiles had not been before attempted —and appealed to the numerous signs wrought by them as evidence of the validity of the Pauline gospel of freedom. AFFAIRS AT ANTIOCH The history of the course of events from the arrival of Paul and Barnabas at Antioch to the Council at Jerusalem and St. Paul’s rebuke to St. Peter is confessedly obscure. The most that can be done is to frame a hypothesis which will co-ordinate the new facts given to us. To avoid. 1 Acts xvili. 5, 6; xviii. 28. 2 Acts xili. 44. 3 Op. THCOF 3x. 2, Rom. xv. 20, ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION 139 prolixity this hypothetical reconstruction is given in the following paragraphs as if it were the only one possible, but this dogmatic form should not mislead any reader who bears this caution in mind. Confident in the leading of the Spirit, as shown by the success of the labours in Asia Minor, St. Paul began to baptize converts, not of course without preparation, but without making enquiry as to whether they had been circumcised, and to admit them to all the privileges of Christianity. At first the Gentile converts were few in number as compared with the large Jewish element, a predominance due in great measure to the previous work of himself and Barnabas; and Christians, whether of Jewish or Gentile antecedents, mingled freely and formed a single congregation or church. Somewhat later St. Peter arrived from Jerusalem, accompanied apparently by St. Mark, whom we left at Jerusalem, and next find at Antioch with no notice of his arrival. Possibly St. Peter was not fluent in Greek, or unfamiliar with the Septuagint, so in a Greek- speaking community he would need an interpreter. But if this is so, may we not further conjecture that St. Peter was sent from Jerusalem partly in consequence of St. Mark’s report, as well as owing to news of St. Paul’s actions at Antioch ? At first all went well, and St. Peter ministered in the united congregation without raising any question. Certainly, after his experience in the matter of Cornelius, he would not insist on the Gentiles’ undergoing circumcision as a condition of being recognized as Christians, and even if he himself had regarded this instance as unique, the comment on his action made by the apostles and brethren in Jerusalem admitted the general principle.t Nevertheless, certain Jewish Christians came from Jerusalem pretending the authority of the Church there,2 who demanded that the Gentile converts should be circumcised as a condition of their recognition as Christians. Against this St. Paul and St. Barnabas protested with vehemence, and St. Peter also must have been on their side. But the increasing numbers of Gentile converts raised a new question on which no authoritative decision had yet been given. Granted that it was not necessary for Acts x1) 3S. 2JI find it difficult to believe that rwés xareA@ovres amd THs “Tovdaias (Acts xv. 1); rwes e& nuav (Ib. 24); mpo rod edOeiv tivds amd “laxwPov (Gal. ii. 12) can refer to different groups. 140 ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION a Gentile to be circumcised in order to be made a Christian, on what footing were Gentile Christians to stand as regards the Jewish converts ? Were both to continue to form a single church, or was it not better that there should be separate congregations of Jewish and Gentile extraction ? It must be remembered that the unconverted Jew thought himself polluted by contact with his Gentile neighbours, and though such contact could not be altogether avoided, yet he made a special point of ceremonially cleansing himself before sitting down to meat, and would on no account eat with a Gentile. Would it not be more charitable to spare their natural prejudices until lapse of time should help to remove them? And then there were the unconverted Jews to be considered. Would it not make conversion from among them far more diffi- cult if these deep-seated prejudices were to be totally disregarded ? And would it not also serve to embitter opposition? St. Paul and St. Barnabas themselves observed Jewish customs, and such had been the usage of the Church until this recent development. Could not the Gentiles be recognized as Christians but have separate Eucharists and Agapae, unless, indeed, the Gentiles consented to submit to circumcision, not as a condition of being recognized as fellow-Christians, but in order to preserve unity in the Church? If circumcision was waived by the Jews as a matter of principle, could it not be conceded by the Gentiles as a matter of charity ? Sooner or later this question was bound to be raised, but it would not occur in churches where St. Paul had exclusive authority, or where the Gentile element was so small that the few instances that arose would be treated as exceptional. In Asia Minor St. Paul’s ruling would be unquestioned, at any rate until some other authority appeared on the scene. But no sooner was it suggested that the Church at Jerusalem might hold a different view from his, then dissension was almost sure to break out. It was an integral part of the Gospel of St. Paul that the ‘wall of partition ’* (a metaphor taken from the wall in the temple which divided the court of the Gentiles from the portion of the precincts reserved for Jews only) had been entirely taken away in Christ, and though, in order to disarm prejudice, he himself lived as did the Jews,‘ yet he would have nothing to do with anything that suggested UMk, vii. 4. ahs No Oe a sil Ob a) WL en 4 ie Cori ik: aoe ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION tar the inferiority of Gentile converts. Apparently St. Peter was for bringing moral pressure to bear on the Gentiles to constrain them to conformity, and St. Barnabas was for a time carried away by what might be plausibly urged as a measure of charity, but was on the part of those who came from James simply a disguise for their original argument, that circumcision was a necessity of salvation, and intended to achieve the same result.? When leaders of such eminence disagreed, the natural course was to refer the matter to the central body at Jerusalem for settlement, and any hesitation was swept away by a revelation given to one of the local prophets.? Accordingly, with the prayers and goodwill of the Church,* St. Paul went up to Jerusalem, accompanied by St. Barnabas, whom he had won back. But St. Paul also insisted upon taking with him an uncircumcised convert, Titus.4 St. Peter, therefore, as the matter was now sub gudice, travelled separately. THE COUNCIL AT JERUSALEM On his arrival St. Paul laid his gospel of Gentile freedom before the leaders of the Church privately.5 They accepted his principle, but advised the circumcision of Titus as a matter of concession, urging the opposition of those whom St. Paul calls ‘false brethren.’* To this he would by no means assent. Such a concession seemed to him to give away his whole case. In this state of strain the Council met. The first point was to make it clear that the Church still maintained the position it had taken up in the case of Cornelius. Here St. Peter and St. Paul were on the same side, and the men from Judaea had gone beyond their mandate, and acted on their own initiative with no instructions from St. James or any other. But the question of circumcision being thus decided in favour of the Gentiles, they were required, for the sake of unity, to make certain minor concessions to Jewish prejudices.’ In view of the marvellous successes accorded to him,® the authorities could not refuse to recognize the reality M(A0e Weel te Mon te lie, Puy. ACIS RVs osu ny © GrAl. tl. © Jal)” tO An ae ®See Murray, Fragment of Spiritual Autobiography, p. 16 and cp. Acts. xxi. 20-24. SACS XVlI29, @ Acts xv. 12. 77 Galk. is &y 142. ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION of St. Paul’s apostolate to the Gentiles ; + a decision which justified his action in exceeding the commission they had formerly given him. They adopted towards it the attitude taken by St. Peter in reporting to the Church at Jerusalem the conversion of Cornelius, ‘ Who was I that I could with- stand God? ’? It neither rested on their authority at the beginning, nor did it need it now. Accordingly, the synodical letter was directed to the heathen to whom they had given Barnabas and Saul their original commission, who dwelt in the region of (kara) Antioch, Syria, and Cilicia. Asregards themselves, they decided to evangelize the Jews,? and any Gentiles that might come in would not be of their seeking. If we are to assign the first epistle of Peter and the epistle of James to their reputed authors, we must read the opening titles in this sense. In any event, we must regard the Church of Jerusalem as keenly alive to the feelings, not only of the converted Jews who formed its membership, but also of the uncon- verted by whom it was surrounded.* One thing they pressed on St. Paul, that he should be mindful of their poor, and that, says St. Paul, with a statesman’s insight into the opportunity of smoothing away difficulties, ‘I at once threw myself into with zeal’ (6 kat éomovdaca avTO TobTo movjoat—notice the force of the two aorists, where by contrast the imperfect and present infinitive would imply that he was doing so already),® a resolution which he subsequently carried into effect: in the great collection from the Gentile churches. With the letter communicating their decision, they sent also (aveordAkapev, Acts xv. 27) Judas and Silas, men of position (7jyovUpevor) among the brethren (c/. Heb. xiii. 7, 17, 24, an epistle written either to or from the Church at Jerusalem, where this obviously technical term is repeated). Judas Barsabbas may well have been the brother of Joseph Barsabbas called Justus, a man who only just failed to be admitted into the Apostolic College,* and, as the Gentile name shows, probably a Greek-speaking Jew. Both he and Silas, like Barnabas and Saul, were prophets, and they were sent as _ plenipotentiary represent- atives of the authorities at the mother city. With this recognition of his Gentile apostolate, St. Paul returned to Antioch, and after some time suggested to Barnabas that 1 Gal, 11. 7, 9; Eph. 11.8; Acts xxvi. 17,18. *Actsxi.17. *Gal/ii.g. 4 Acts xxi. 24. %cp. Hort, Judaistic Christianity, p. 67. * Acts i. 23. ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION 143 they should revisit the churches they had founded. St. Barnabas wished St. Mark to accompany them, but St. Paul resented his defection from the work, while St. Barnabas clearly held that this treachery to the cause, as it appeared to St. Paul, had at least a technical justification, and even if St. Mark had made a mistake, allowance should be made for his youth and upbringing. _ The effect of this decree was to give, or to preserve, unity to the church in those districts in which it ran, that is Syria, Cilicia, and presumably Cyprus, the scope of St. Paul’s original commission ; but it was not directed to the rest of Asia Minor or Macedonia or Greece. Here, if St. Paul’s conception of the church was to be carried out in practice, he could enforce it only on his own authority, and accordingly the extreme Judaizers had here opportunity to press the attack, of which the decree had robbed them in the districts to which it was directed. This attack would necessarily take two forms: it would assert the superiority of the Jew, and the need of conformity to the Jewish law, if the Gentiles were to be recognized as equals and partakers in Christian privileges on the same footing ; and it would endeavour to invalidate the authority of trail, THIS VIEW SUPPORTED BY EPISTLES TO THE CORINTHIANS The position taken has a curious support in St. Paul’s epistles to the Corinthians, in which church his apostolic - authority was challenged. Over and over again we can gather from the answer which St. Paul makes, in these letters not only the questions which his correspondents had put to him, but the kind of things which were being said of him among his correspondents. At the beginning of chapter ix. of the first epistle occur four questions in immediate juxtaposition, and therefore, presumably, intimately linked together—‘Am I not free? Am I not an Apostle? Have I not seen the Lord? Are not ye my work in the Lord?’ These suggest that the statements made were that St. Paul was arrogating to himself an independence which, it was claimed, did not belong to him. He was a mere servant. He had not received the apostolate to the Gentiles to which he pre- tended. The vision which he spoke of rested on his own mere assertion, and could not be corroborated. His special ‘work’ was a fiction, and did not include any commission towards them. Now the vision of our Lord 144 ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION accorded to St. Paul at his conversion was by this time notorious, and with it was given no commission of any kind. Clearly the Corinthian opposition would have weakened the support of their cause by attempting to deny this vision, and their reference to any authority then conferred would have been futile. The reference, there- fore, is to the visionin the temple. And this interpretation is supported by other considerations. ‘Have we not power to lead about a wife as the brethren of the Lord and Cephas ?’ with a reference in the mind of St. Paul to his meeting with James and Peter. ‘Or I only and Barnabas, have we not the right to forbear working ? ’ St. Paul is claiming for himself an independent position with the right to do ‘the work’ or to forbear working on his own responsibility, but why does he introduce Barnabas, who had no connexion whatever with Corinth ? If we were considering who would be uppermost in St. Paul’s thoughts in this connexion, we should naturally have expected ‘Silas’ instead of ‘ Barnabas.’ But we may infer that the Corinthian objection was that neither Paul nor Barnabas had a position of independence. Both had received the same jurisdiction, and Barnabas had rightly confined himself to it, except when he was led away out of kindness of heart. Perhaps this is also indicated by the next sentence. “If to others I am not apostle, yet at least I am to you,’ may be St. Paul’s retort to some such statement as ‘ He may be an apostle to others, but at any rate he has no commission as regards us ’—that is, the Corinthians of the party of Cephas would allow that he had a limited commission as agent to Syria and Cilicia, but he had no independence of action, and they were outside his juris- diction or kavov.1 A somewhat similar complaint occurs in the third chapter of the second epistle: ‘ Need we, as some, letters of authorization to you—or such letters from you?’ It was evidently said that if St. Paul claimed the right to act, he ought to exhibit credentials from the apostolic body at Jerusalem, letters such as he doubtless took to Tarsus. No, says St. Paul, so far from these being necessary, the Gentiles among whom I laboured were accepted by those authorities at Jerusalem as credentials bearing the unmistakable signature of Jesus Christ. Re Or Pye Shee Mi ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION 145 And in these epistles is also the insistence on the unity of the body mystical and of the body sacramental (1 Cor. xii.) and of both as intimately connected. CONCLUSION—SUMMARY We may, then, conclude that St. Paul received neither ecclesiastical status nor apostolic commission at his conversion. He saw our Lord risen, and, as having seen Him, became qualified for an apostolate to be afterwards conferred. The two detailed narratives of Acts ix. and xxii. make this negative conclusion clear, and any opinion to the contrary is based upon a condensation which omits intervening incidents, and throws together events which, in fact, were separate. But he was confirmed and possibly also ordained by Ananias, who had the right of the laying- on of hands which, in all other instances, was restricted to the higher orders of the ministry. His preaching was confined to Jews, whether Aramaic or Greek-speaking, until leaving Cyprus, though heathen hearers might happen to be present, as occurred at Paphos. Towards the close of his first visit to Jerusalem after his conversion, he had a vision of our Lord:in the temple, who there and then entrusted him with an apostolate to the Gentiles. He refers to this in the beginning of his epistle to the Galatians as being not by men, nor through man, but through Jesus Christ. But he also received a limited ‘apostolate’ to the Jews of Cilicia, Syria, and Cyprus from St. Peter and St. James, as recorded in chapter ix. This limitation to the Jews is indicated by the fact that the conversion of Cornelius, which may be called the beginning of the opening of the door to the Gentiles, is recorded in the Acts after the mission of Paul and Barnabas to Tarsus and Antioch. Before he was thus sent forth, St. Paul was almost certainly a presbyter by due ordination, having the power also of ordaining others. The evidence for this last point is cumulative, and cannot here be completely retraversed ; but the weight of the argument can well be seen, if we suppose what might have been said had we no direct record of St. Paul’s baptism. It would have been urged that the older apostles had never received Christian baptism, and therefore it was not necessary in the case of St. Paul. He would be supposed to refer to the vision at his conversion (and not, as is actually the a 146 ST. PAUL’S APOSTOLIC COMMISSION case, to his baptism), when he says ‘it pleased God... to reveal His Son in me’!; and therefore St. Paul would be thought to have reckoned this vision equivalent to baptism by which others were born in Christ or Christ came into them. The practice of the Church, it would have been said, proved nothing in so exceptional an instance. The fact that he conferred baptism on others would be taken as insufficient to show that St. Paul would not have been sent forth to Tarsus without it. St. Paul, it would be urged, could very well himself administer it or direct it to be administered by a member of his staff without feeling it first necessary to have been baptized himself. And, finally, the evidence of his spiritual success showed that baptism might be dispensed with. The argument is almost exactly similar to that which is used against St. Paul’s ordination, but we well know its conclusion is entirely false. The evidence is that ordination by laying-on of hands was already an established practice of the early Church; that St. Peter himself ordained ; that no delegate from the apostolic college with administra- tive power was, as far as we know or can see, ever sent out unless he was ordained ; that ordination was practised by St. Paul throughout the churches, and probably for years before he entered on the execution of his Gentile apostolic commission in Pisidian Antioch; and that in reality the choice is between holding that the laying-on of hands by Ananias included St. Paul’s ordination, or that he was ordained by St. Peter or St. James at Jerusalem. 1 Gal. i. 16. PELAGIANISM AND ORIGINAL SIN PELAGIUS is commonly supposed to have held wrong views on original sin, but I myself am persuaded that his error was in fact more deep-seated and had a wider effect than is implied in this statement. He seems to have been a native either of some part of Great Britain or of Brittany, but the tradition that he was a Welshman appears to rest solely on the fact that the name Pelagius may be a Grecianized form of Marigena, or Morgan. He wasa monk, brought up in a well-ordered monastery, a man of disciplined life, and of blameless habits. He came to Rome, to a monastery there, and found that the monks who had now become his fellows were extremely lax in the fulfilment of their obliga- tions. The contrast to the regularity to which he had been accustomed was obvious and shocking tohim. It would, he thought, be cowardice not to speak, so he upbraided them in forcible terms. They attempted to excuse themselves, and to mitigate his anger. They pleaded the frailty of the flesh. ‘ Nonsense,’ he said, ‘it is not the fact that you \can’t; the truth is, you won’t. What you want is not ‘power but will. Your duty is clear, and when God sets you a duty He always gives sufficient grace for its fulfilment. ‘To think of Him otherwise is to make Him a despotic and arbitrary tyrant. Look at the example of the saints, not only under Christianity, but in the Old Testament history. There you see God, demanding difficult service indeed, but always giving grace sufficient to meet the need. Think of Enoch who walked with God, or Abraham who was called His friend. Your plea is a mere hollow excuse for laziness.” God always gives the grace to enable a man to fulfil his duty completely in his own particular circumstances, and ‘it is his own fault if he does not doit. To hold anything | short of that is to deny God’s providential ordering, or His _ bountifulness. A man’s duties no doubt vary with his circumstances, but at each moment there is a duty to be fulfilled, and conscience not only bears witness to it, but accuses us of negligence if we fail to carry out its behests.’ 147 148 PELAGIANISM AND ORIGINAL SIN I have ventured to paraphrase Pelagius’s language, but not, I trust, to alter its tone. To Pelagius, as to Napoleon, there was no such word— ‘at least in the moral world—as can't. ‘Well then,’ they said, ‘what about Adam, and the use St. Paul makes of him ? ’ ‘ Adam fell, of course. He sinned, no doubt. But do you think it just that one man should be punished for the sin of someone else ? And even if this does happen, as in fact we read of whole families being put to death for the transgression of their head, yet we condemn that as unjust in man, and you cannot think that the justice of God is such a travesty. No, the soul that sinneth it shall die. Adam ’s fall, therefore, does not so affect us as to make it inevitable that we should sin. If it did, our sin, just because we were irresistibly compelled to it, would not render us morally guilty, would not, in fact, be sin. You cannot blame a person for what he cannot hinder. Con- science does not convict us in respect of another’s sin but of our own, and in respect of our own just because we need not have doneit. And if that is the verdict of conscience, then we never need be morally guilty.’ ‘Well, then, what about the Incarnation and baptism ? ’ ‘ The Incarnation gives us a great example, it exhibits to us both the character of God, and the character of perfect man ; it shows us what we ought to be, and because we ought to be therefore we can be, or there would be no- moral : obligation in that ought. Baptism is indeed necessary for the attainment of heaven, our Lord says so; but it is not necessary for the complete fulfilment of our several duties in this life. Conscience and the example of the Old Testament saints bear witness to that.’ Caelestius, Pelagius’s chief disciple, added to these another proposition which to-day would be generally accepted. He said that man’s physical death was not the effect of the sin of Adam, but that men were naturally mortal. “ Lex et natura,’ a moral example, a moral ideal, such as our Lord gives and is, and human nature as we know it, not a human nature as independent of God, for God is the author of it; but nature to this extent at least engraced, that God gives grace in the fixed order of things as regularly and actually as He gives life-—Now what is there wrong with that? Supposing conscience to be healthy, can it be denied that it only commands us to do something PELAGIANISM AND ORIGINAL SIN _ 149 within our powers? Or supposing Adam’s sin does infect the race, yet can we be rightly judged guilty for some one’s else sin, or its effects on us which we cannot escape? Granted that our spiritual tone is thereby lowered, can that be imputed to us as a fault, or is it not more rightly regarded as a misfortune? If God treats man as free, is it not an unworthy superstition to regard ourselves as bound, in deference to what we conceive as orthodoxy, rather than to take God’s estimate, and accept our responsibility just so far as we are capable of fulfilling it? How are we to meet such an argument ? We can try Augustinianism, but does not Augustinianism necessarily lead to a form of Calvinism, as in practice it certainly did ? Are we not forced to choose between saying that man can by the powers he already possesses fulfil the claim upon him of that moral ideal which he recognizes as his, or that he cannot be under moral obligation to fulfil what is ex hypothesi impossible ? But leaving out the reference to the Incarnation and Sacraments, is not the whole of the rest of the argument just such as might have been used by Marcus Aurelius ? Is not the whole question stated as though the supreme moral aim for each of us was to make a spiritual success of his own life ? And now comes the question, Is that aim the Christian one? That is to my mind the fundamental issue raised by Pelagius. What is the Christian view of life, what is its aim, and therefore its motive? Having first determined that, we can then ask under what conditions, if any, this aim is realizable. I do not think we go deep enough if we say that Pelagian- ism is individualistic, and that Pelagius left out the whole set of facts suggested by each man’s membership in the human race. Even supposing that were true, we should still have to-ask the same questions concerning the race as concerning the individual. The extent of the problem would be enlarged ; we should be dealing with all collec- tively instead of with all distributively—that is, with each member of the class—but such a change would not really affect the nature of the problem itself. We should be compelled to ask what is the moral aim of the race. Can the collective conscience rightly condemn the race for not attaining it, if attainment is impossible; and, if it be possible, are not the necessary conditions a vision of the 150 PELAGIANISM AND ORIGINAL SIN moral ideal and the natural powers of man, including under that word ‘ natural’ all the gifts of God which mankind had by assimilation made his own ? So that in any case we come back to the question, what is the moral aim ? Ought men to strive collectively or individually to achieve their own perfection, to ‘realize themselves’, as it is said? Is that the supreme end or purpose of their life ? On this point we have two distinct lines of evidence. The first shows that, supposing that to be the end, it is an end which in the nature of things, can never be achieved. You can, if you like, interpret that ‘ never ’ in the mathe- matical sense in which you talk of parallel straight lines “never’ meeting, and say its achievement demands a period longer than any conceivable, but you cannot escape that way. Man is to strive to attain in each single moral act an ideal of conduct which, just because it is an ideal, is always beyond achievement. He might perhaps suc- ceed but for one fact, that with every moral act, with every improvement in character, the ideal itself rises. I think it is true that the better a man really is the farther off his ideal of what he ought to be seems to become, that is, the ideal rises more rapidly than the attainment; I do not, however, want to insist on this—though it is singularly consonant with the ever-growing humility of the saints— all I need for the sake of the argument is that in its own nature a man’s conception of the ideal for himself is always beyond him, and rises as he progresses. In that case the identical problem restates itself in every new instance, and therefore a solution of it along this line is 7pso facto impos- sible. That is the theoretical objection, but the mystical writers are insistent that what seems necessary in theory is also a fact of experience. So long as a man seeks his own perfection as his highest end he will never find it, says the Theologia Germanica. We can never be as good, not merely as we should like to be, but as our own conscience tells us we ought to be, and we cannot appeal against our own judgement on ourselves without upsetting our basis of morality. And it is our own fault. Man’s own condemna- tion of himself is as old as history. It is not a creation of Christianity. Ovid expresses it by saying, ‘ Video meliora proboque, deteriora sequor,’ The same condemnation can be found in the Greek tragedians, and it is at least one of the roots of piacular sacrifices. And original sin is just the hypothetical cause of the universality of that law. Itis not PELAGIANISM AND ORIGINAL SIN 151 simply that men are collectively fallen in Adam ; it is that each man, if he is honest, condemns himself for falling ; he is under the condemnation of his own conscience as a fallen being. Evidence from the opposite side is almost equally cogent. The breaking of this bondage to the law of sin is ascribed, all but universally, to an outside action of God. I do not deny that there are, or seem to be, exceptions that make against this conclusion. A man starting from Pelagian principles, and being spiritually successful, will congratulate himself on his own achievement. The victory is his; he fought ; he made up his mind to conquer; he has conquered. What then? If he is a non-religious man he is confirmed in his opinion of the rightness of his method. ‘ Practice makes perfect.’ ‘Every tub must stand on its own bottom.’ If he isa religious man he will no doubt thank God for the victory which he is conscious that he himself has won. The first is the self-complacency of the Stoic, and the second is that of the Pharisee. If on the other hand he fails he is plunged into the depths of despair. He has had every chance, and there is no reason to suppose that the future will not resemble the past. But let us take the former alternative. The man who is consciously self-made is not an amiable creature. Nor is his character more lovable if his triumphs are won in the spiritual and not in the material sphere. The deliber- ate effort to effect one’s own spiritual advancement as the highest end on the theoretical side is folly—the hope is by its very nature unrealizable; on the practical side it leads, so far as it seems to the subject to be successful, to an odious self-complacency ; so far as it fails, to hopelessness. Both these are universally recognized as deplorable states, and as a matter of fact, the best Christian experience con- demns not only the result, but the method. It is, of course, perfectly true that the ‘I can’t’ of the Roman monk might be but an insincere excuse for moral laziness, but it is certainly no less true that it may be the heart-rending cry of the conscious sinner. God saves, it is often said, on the fulfilment by man of antecedent con- ditions. You may state these conditions in what terms you will. He saves if you believe ; if you repent ; if you try ; if you are in earnest ; but to each the sinner replies, not only condemning his own want of faith, the half-heartedness and insincerity of his best efforts towards repentance, his lack of moral earnestness; what he deplores is that he cannot 152 PELAGIANISM AND ORIGINAL SIN fulfil the necessary antecedent conditions, state them as you will. ‘ Try, try, try again,’ may be all very well for the man conscious of his own strength, but it is the sinner’s complaint that his weakness prevents his concentrating himself on the effort. Now if we think of the Incarnation, God did not come to a world striving after its perfection. He came to a weak, sinful, selfish world, and He came precisely to change these antecedent conditions. The Gospel is not primarily a Gospel for the ninety and nine, but for the lost sheep. God’s action is prevenient. Our Lord does not simply demand faith before He works a miracle; He evokes it. If it is too much to say that confidence in oneself is the real obstacle to faith in God ; it is at least as true as to say that the real obstacle to loving God is self-love. Humility, which we are often told is the fundamental virtue, cannot be acquired by deliberate cultivation of it. The verdict of the greatest saints is never that they are self-made, but God-made. Looking at them from an outside point of view you may marvel at their goodness, as though it were their own accomplishment. Such a view- point is never theirs. ‘ I can of mine own self do nothing,’ is their verdict on themselves. ‘ Why callest thou me good? There is none good but God.’ And ought not the verdict of the seemingly most successful in the result, to be accepted as a verdict on the method to be employed ? That, I think, is the fundamental error of Pelagius, that he treats God as a God who did, and not as a God who does. Modern psychology may be, I am inclined to believe, a useful ally against Pelagianism. It has on the one hand impressed upon us the power of suggestion, while on the other hand it assures us that no suggestion from outside can overcome the deliberate set of the will. This action of mind on mind, or of person on person, would seem to furnish us with the nearest analogue to the action of God on man. He suggests but he does not compel. And in this suggestion His action is prevenient, or anticipatory, to the action of man. Penitence, even in its earliest form of personal discomfort, self-referent attrition, is not an original act of man, and still less is it so in its true and > developed form of contrition with the reference to God. That discomfort, if it is even germinally penitence—as in PELAGIANISM AND ORIGINAL SIN 153 the case of the prodigal son when he first ‘ came to himself ’ and blamed himself for his folly—is a reflection of the unsatisfied yearning of God for the restoration of a broken communion. It has its origin there, and is reflected in the mind of man, though in a distorted shape; but the real penitence is not a regard for one’s own distress, it is a kind of sympathy with the distress of God; it yearns for the restoration of communion with Him, not simply as the undoing of a personal loss, but as a thing by which even God Himself attains a satisfaction denied to Him by the breach of intimacy effected by sin. Thus the whole spiritual life of man is grounded in the laying of himself open to the divine influence. He is to be moulded and transformed by that, and not by his own direct effort, into the divine image. It is this receptiveness towards God which St. Paul often entitles faith, while St. John emphasizes its affective aspect in calling it love. Man is to have no confidence in himself to bring about a union, which must at the last remain merely an aspiration after something future to be attained. Such a struggle, however successful, yet con- tains, as we have seen, within itself and of necessity, an unending disappointment. But while so long as man considers himself this result is inevitable, he is to grow into an increasing trust in God, whose resources are never limitable by past experience. The evil which man knows and laments, itself only exists in opposition to good, as error always implies a truth which it contradicts. In whatever sense, therefore, our experience justifies us in using such language as ‘slavery’ to evil, as though man had become the mere puppet of passion, we are more than justified in using similar language of the predominant influence of God. We must indeed grow into the desire for it, but this desire is itself a divine inspiration. So far the analogy carries us. But there is this important distinction between the over-bearingness of evil and that of good, that while the devil, under the specious suggestion of letting us have our own way, in fact makes us his slaves ; slavery, as the devil calls it, to God, is found by experience to mean freedom ; we become by God’s imparting of Himself, not that which we are by nature, but that to receive which our nature was made. This, I think, gives at least a suggestive interpretation of the inner meaning of original sin. Its core is the desire to be of ourselves, to achieve for ourselves, to be self-made, 154 PELAGIANISM AND ORIGINAL SIN and to find ground for a boastful satisfaction in the very fact, instead of a desire that God should come to His kingdom, find expression for Himself through us as His media. And surely no one will deny the universality of this tendency, nor its inherent opposition to the sacrifice of the self to God, that in and through us He may attain the satisfaction of His purposes. I hardly need to emphasize the contrast between these two ideals, nor do I think it necessary to do more than remind you that it is the second of them that we see portrayed in the life of our Lord. The real change in the Apostles under Christianity from that which they were under Judaism is to be noted not so much in the answers they gave, but in the questions they asked. They had changed from men whose aim was that God should help them to achieve their object, into men who gave themselves to God to help Him to achieve His purposes. Their question was not what am I to do, but what does God want to do with me. The intolerable hardship to the Jew was that he was not free; the aim of St. Paul is to be Christ’s slave. Now as soon as we regard ourselves not as persons from whom something starts, but as persons into whom something already existing is trying to get, the position is altered. The fundamental question is not ‘Can I?’ but ‘Can God?’ And that makes all the difference. The answer to the first is ‘No.’ Theory says it must be ‘ No’; experience says it is‘ No’ infact. But the answer to the second is ‘ Yes’ ; theory says it must be ‘Yes’; history says it undoubtedly was ‘ Yes.’ The actual effective power of grace is placarded before our eyes in the raising of Jesus to the right hand of the Father. There is the ground of our confidence. Not in what we can do, but in what God can do and has done. The Christian is bound to his fellows not by physical descent, nor by natural regard: that is Adam, and the old Adam, the great brotherhood of Cain and Abel. But he is bound to them as being a co-servant with them of a common Master, both inspired by the same Spirit, sons by adoption by the same Father into the new Adam. He does not possess that Spirit, but is possessed by it. He does not own, but is owned. ‘I can of myself do nothing’ ceases to be a burden or a complaint. It is only the other side of being empowered by a ‘ power not ourselves that makes for righteousness.’ PELAGIANISM AND ORIGINAL SIN 158 That, I think, tells us what original sin really is, the desire of man to be something, to have something, to do something ex sese, of his own; and this is so imbedded or fused into the construction of our nature that the question as to whether it is to be thought of as hereditary, or rather as contagious, does not much matter. Even in the case of physical disease it is almost impossible to say whether a child gets a tendency by the fact of its birth, or imbibes it by subsequent contact. What is important is that in both respects sin is a parable of righteousness. The mind of God, His purposes, tastes, desires, judgements, surround us as a spiritual atmosphere trying to penetrate within. And just because it is His Spirit, it is a common gift to all Christians. The analogy of suggestion is the best I can find, and the characteristic of childhood which renders that simile peculiarly suitable is the suggestibility of the child, its readiness to adopt the views and opinions of those whom it respects and admires. While, if we are to qualify this by representing the distinction between Godhood and man- hood, it is, I think, to the suggestibility of the well-trained dog that we should turn, endeavouring to soak in the mind of its master as supplying a need of which it is in its wild state unconscious, but for which, nevertheless, it seems to have been made. In their wild state, I suppose, we are not justified in imputing to animals deliberate moral choice, but their actions we nevertheless characterize by moral metaphors—the cruelty of the cat, for instance. We cannot hold them responsible for their savagery, but they do exhibit conduct which in a moral being we condemn. Man takes over their habits and their impulses, but develops a faculty of judging impulses in others and in himself; and he judges that it is a perverted world, and he himself perverted in it. God infuses into him not only his own judgement, but His own power. And man’s work is to make himself into God’s instrument for the world’s con- version. The world is a machine that has been partly wrecked and become dangerous ; God, its Maker, wills to restore it. But He needs tools, and man is to provide himself as a living and willing tool for God’s hand, and in the world’s re-fashioning God re-fashions man. Nor in this work need the individual lament his own characteristics ; God needs tools of different kinds. But in any case man’s ideal is to be the best possible instrument of his kind for the particular purpose for which God will employ him. THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT THE present controversy on reservation raises in an acute and, it may be said, ina lamentably aggravated form certain wider questions, and is only to be solved, if at all, asa particular case of a larger issue. To the ordinary man the problem presents itself in this shape— How am I to obtain a view which will harmonize the appearances of Christ after His resurrection, His life as man in heaven, the reality of the sacramental gift, and the future life of the redeemed ? ’ An attempt will be made in this paper to suggest a method by which this problem may be met on a basis which all can agree to accept. And first, matter, as soon as we reflect on it, seems to possess this characteristic property—that no two portions of it can at the same time occupy the same space, and conversely that no single portion of it can be in different parts of space at the same moment. Whether this quality is regarded as imposed on matter by space and time, or whether space and time are best to be thought of as abstrac- tions derived from the more concrete matter, is for our purpose of no importance. It is evident that one hour cannot be contemporaneous with another, nor one division of space conterminous with another. The common note of matter, time, and space is that each portion of either ex- cludes every other portion. And, secondly, this law of mutual exclusiveness is not the necessary law of spirit. It may be true that by the exercise of his will each person can exclude every other, that he may refuse to allow himself to fall under another’s influence, and this negative attitude can be developed into positive antagonism; but there is the opposite possibility, that two persons can by sympathy come to agree in knowledge, affection, and will so that they hold the same spiritual ‘ position,’ and their personal distinction from each other may seem to have no other function than to act as the ground of their spiritual union 156 THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 157 and make mutual love possible.1. Each desires to think what the other thinks, to love what the other loves, to will what the other wills, both for the sake of the truth or goodness or rightness of the thing, and for the sake of the other person ; in short, to live with the other’s life, and so to give himself to the other that the other may possess, as it were, a second self. Considerations of this kind point towards that unity in which spirit is perfect, the unity of God. And itis certain that the law of mutual exclusiveness, which governs space and time and matter, has in regard to God no other application than to render possible this mutual indwelling. The life of God within the Blessed Trinity is one of incessant self-devotion in love.? Now, in man both spirit and matter meet. His body, regarded as mere matter, is exclusive, it is always just here now; but mentally he ‘looks before and after,’ memory recalls to him the past, and he compares it with the present, and so lives, however imperfectly, in two different ages at the same time. So by the use of foresight he anticipates the future, or projects himself into it. So, again, he pictures other places and contrasts them with the sur- roundings of his home, and so by sympathy he learns to look through others’ eyes and to adopt another’s point of view. But in all this growing spiritual sympathy and inclusive- ness the body plays a part. Here on earth thought is not independent of the brain, and in the communication of our thoughts to others the hand, the eye, the voice, all have a function to fulfil. More and more the body becomes the means by which the soul expresses itself. Character is manifested by gesture and is legible on the face. But while the body thus expresses it also conceals; while it helps it hinders. It is not merely states of ill-health that curb spiritual activities; bodily weariness is a regular and normal check; and though the man may consent to their limitations, yet he feels them, and limitations they are. And this leads us to consider what we should mean by a perfect body. We should at least mean a body which imposed no such restrictions, but co-operated completely 1 cp. Illingworth, Serymons preached in a College Chapel, p. 170. “‘ Through the severance, and because of the severance effected by personality, a higher form of unity has become possible—the interpenetration of soul by soul, identity of thought, identity of action, love.” 2cb. Moberly, Atonement and Personality, ch. viii. 158 THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT with the soul, sharing its freedom. Now this speculative conclusion seems to be confirmed by what is said of the appearances of our Lord after the resurrection. His body is completely at His command. It was where He willed it to be; it showed itself in the form He wished it to assume, so that it was impossible to ask the question “ Is it here or there ?’ as though admitting of a direct answer, but only ‘ Where does He will it to be?’ ‘ How does He willit to appear ? ’ because there and in that form doubtless it is. It is from this point of view that the state of our Lord in glory is seen to possess significance. In his reflective moments man cannot help asking him- self the question for what purpose is this material world, or to put the same enquiry in its Christian form, ‘ Why did God create matter?’ He cannot obviously be satisfied with the answer of pure agnosticism, ‘I do not know,’ nor with the addition of dogmatic agnosticism, “ Nor does anyone else.’ Nor can he rest in the conception ‘ It exists for no ultimate purpose’ or ‘ God created it to destroy it.’ Such an idea is impossible, if only because it introduces purposelessness or futility into the will of God. But the answer for the Christian is to be found in Christ, in Whom all purposes of God find their fulfilment and realization. Christ in glory is not merely Jesus exalted as an individual, nor only the nature of man exalted and glorified. God the Son in becoming man became the creature, took on Himself material nature, as an element of the human; and He is in glory the earnest and first-fruits not only of mankind but of all creation. Matter in Him is redeemed into the glorious liberty of the Son of God. Vivified in animate nature, rationalized in man, in Christ it is spiritualized as the adequate organ and expression of the fulness of the Spirit of God. And of this change of state, this fulfilment of its ‘promise and potency,’ the Resurrection and Ascension of our Lord is the sign and pledge. God gives its own proper being to each thing that is, but not everything cancontain Him. Over matter Heis all but wholly transcendent, and in it hardly at all immanent. On the other hand the Father is wholly immanent in the Son and over Him only so far transcendent as is implied by 1 Tyndall’s Belfast Address § 8, ‘ By a necessity engendered and justified by science I cross the boundary of the experimental evidence, and discern in that matter which we, in our ignorance of its latent powers, and not- withstanding our profound reverence for its creator, have hitherto covered with opprobriums, the promise and potency of all terrestrial life.’ THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 159 the relation of Fatherhood to Sonship. Leaving aside the question of perversion by sin, evolution is the gradual lifting of the creature from mere creatureship into sonship, God becoming increasingly immanent until in Christ exalted as man to that position or state which is His necessarily and eternally as God, transcendence is merged into immanence, and creatorship into paternity, and the distinction between manhood or creatureship, as it is in Christ, and Godhead is solely that manhood and creature- ship once were not and were made, but now are for ever, whereas Godhead is and must always be. But this elevation from one plane of being to another means an increase of freedom. Man possesses free-will and knowledge, and must co-operate with God if he is to be raised. Mere matter can neither accept nor refuse the gift of physical life, but man can accept or refuse the gift of that life which is offered to him in Christ. As the life of the Father is a perpétual giving of Himself to the Son, so the life of the Son is a perpetual re-giving or returning of Himself to the Father. And as this is the life of our Lord as God, so it is also His life as man, a life of perpetual offering of Himself in that glorified state which was attained through death. And again it is Himself, in this state of exaltation in which He is made equal to the Father, that Christ offers to manin sacraments. We are taken up into Him that in Him we may offer ourselves to God, and that Christ may have in us, as it were, an ex- tension of Himself, and may win in us that victory over sin and death which was won in Himself by His death and resurrection. We are to live with His life unto God. Christ gives Himself to us that we may realize and attain that perfection of humanity which is His, but the benefit of this gift is only accepted by us in so far as we give our- selves to the Father in Christ, that He may attain in us the extension of that risen and glorified life, which, as regards Himself, is complete in Him, and manifested to us in Him as the purpose of God for us and all the world. Any attempt to achieve our own holiness or perfection simply for our own benefit is frustrated at the very outset by the very fact that it is self-interested. The terms of spiritual communion with Christ are the completeness of the sur- render of ourselves to the Father in Him to meet the completeness of His offer of Himself to us. And it is this that communion symbolizes. As our i160 THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT Lord on earth put Himself into the hands of His enemies by His non-resistance, taking the form of a slave that others might become free, so the bread and wine are put into our hands as things over which we have power. But to treat our Lord as though this condescension on His part involved no moral claim on us is impiety. The very fact of His self-humiliating generosity calls for reciproc- ating action from us. We dare not presume upon it, nor can we be partakers of the benefit of His self-sacrifice except by sharing His Spirit. We must in our turn put ourselves wholly into His hands that He may have His way with us and work His will on us and through us. As the bread and wine are taken up into our life, so we must be taken up into His and assimilated by Him and to Him, and by such self-surrender we extend the scope of His life lived on earth by man and through man, that is, of the Kingdom of God. Christ gives Himself to us for this purpose, that by our being filled with the fulness of God, which is His glorified life in Heaven, God may be all in all. It is this desire of self-impartation at the cost of supreme self-sacrifice that renders God worshipful. And our worship is not only the thankful recognition of the sacrifice, but the answer of self-devotion to the fulfil- ment of God’s purpose—the dedication of ourselves to the bringing in of His kingdom on earth; the wish to have nothing of our own that He may possess all things ; the desire to renounce our views, our pleasures, our pur- poses for His; the offering up of our thoughts, as well as of our wills, our souls and our bodies, that He may be embodied in us as living sacraments of His own glorious life. It will be seen how strong a front this argument presents. The life of free mutual self-devotion is the life of God the Father and God the Son in heaven. It is manifested as the motive of creation and the goal of evolution. Our Lord’s life on earth exhibited it ; to do the Father’s will, to think His thoughts, to bring about His kingdom, to glorify His name, were Christ’s meat and drink. And as man in heaven the same desire is His. The creature finds its proper function in co-operating in this end to the utmost of its power. And in the Eucharist the bread and wine, which are the nourishment of man’s natural life, become the instruments by which the glorified Body of Christ, as an element of His humanity and the means THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 161 of His self-expression and self-impartation, is given to us that He may live in us and we in Him, and that this life, through us as living sacraments, may be extended through- out the world until all creation come to its fruition in Him. Texts of scripture, the consentient tradition of the Church, the life of Christians, the gropings of man after God, the speculations of philosophers ‘and theologians, the revelation given, not only by the teaching of our Lord in word, but more forcibly in deed, all are evidence of this one purpose. While on the other hand to think of our Lord’s Body as merely material, merely passive, unvitalized, unrationalized, unspiritualized, as a mere object for us and not as the active and co-operative instrument of Him, is to lower the whole standard of thought, and to involve ourselves in a hopeless tangle of contradictions. | For under this conception the Ascension, instead of being the manifestation under the form of space and time of the elevation of His humanity, and of His body as an element of it, to a higher level of being, becomes a mere local transference, and therefore heaven, wherever it may be, is not on earth, nor, in contradiction to St. Paul, are we spiritually init. His body cannot be present at once on different altars without division and dis- memberment, nor is it the whole Christ that we receive in our communion. But on the other hand if the view given be held to be true, we have the certainty of His presence as, and only as, conditioned by this purpose. He is present that He may give Himself ; He gives Himself that we may live with His life; and our worship as a function or expression of our life is therefore, so far as we are Christians, not ours, but His. It is evidence of His presence within us. Christian worship is impossible for the non-Christian precisely on this account—that as Christian it does not originate with the worshipper, is not elicited from him as from his natural powers, but from the life of Christ welling up within him. It is only by Christ incorporating us into Himself, vivifying us with His own life, that we are made Christians or rendered capable of any Christian act. And as the Christian life is Christ’s own glorified life in us, subduing all things to itself, and making them instruments of its own vitality ; as the Christian faith is secure because it M 162 THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT is in essence our Lord’s own faith, a function of our life in Him because a function of His own life and of that life in us ; as Christian love is His spirit in us ; so Christian worship is not from us but is His self-oblation renewed in us and from Him. And Christ as an object of worship is no merely passive Christ, but Christ as the embodiment of the spirit of self-sacrifice and self-impartation. Nothing can be a right object of worship that is not of itself rightly worshipful; it must be transcendent in the activity of virtue and love; and it is precisely because the sacred species in Holy Communion are the means of our Lord’s self-surrender and self-giving that they differ from all other representations of Him. Worship is the recognition of this moral transcendence and the naturaland spontaneous answer to it, but to stop short at worship, as though it was the definite achievement of an end in itself, is to frustrate Christ’s own purpose of immanence within us. And this purpose cannot be omitted from our thoughts, since, as we have seen, it is in virtue of it that He is Himself worshipful. He is to be worshipped that He may be desired, to be desired that He may be welcomed, to be welcomed at His coming, that as He gives Himself to us, we may give ourselves in Him to God. The justification of this exposition of principles is that they ought to govern our practice. We are to have no views that are not in accordance with the mind of Christ ; no purposes that are not His purposes; no wishes except His wishes. This belongs to the essence of our life as Christians. Our Lord became incarnate for a purpose, - and rose for it, and ascended for it, and is at the right hand of God for it, and for it He instituted the blessed sacrament—nor can we defend the Incarnation itself as a fact, if we leave the purpose of it out of account. We dare not therefore assert simply, Christ is there beneath the sacred veils, therefore Our Lord makes the matter of the sacrament His body for the purpose of imparting Himself. Can it be asserted that He would have done so at the original institution for any other purpose? For worship? But He Himself was present in His natural body all the time! ‘ Yes, but that is the difference. He was present there both as the consecrator and the consecrated.’ And is He less present now in His body mystical as the consecrator of the sacrament ? Was it not part of the discipline of the Apostles after the THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 163 Resurrection to recognize that Christ was present even when unseen; or was He less present after Pentecost, than when He went about with them before the Crucifixion? Did not the coming of His Spirit make the Church an embodiment of Him as a living sacrament, one with His unity as all eucharists are one, holy with His sanctity as all eucharistic elements are holy things, catholic with His fulness, apostolic with His mission ? Is it possible to hold fast to His presence in the consecrated elements and not to recognize Him in the soczetas fidelium? Do not both conceptions rest on the same principle, are not both sacramental with the same life ? Admittedly the recognition of His in-dwelling is impossible without faith, but does that make against its truth or diminish its value ? Should we not welcome that which makes a call upon our faith rather than endeavour to escape the effort ? Our Lord has made provision for all that the consecrated elements stand for outside their function as the matter of communion. In this Divine intention, and so far as His power is not frustrated by man’s weakness or man’s resistance, He has given a symbol of His presence, so that in drawing near to it we may draw nearto Him. That symbol is the Christian, both individual and society. It is our privilege and our duty so to think that Christ’s mind is the substance of our thoughts, so to speak that it is He that speaks through us, so to act that men may know of a truth that He is in us. Is not this seeking to meet Christ in ways that He has not ex- -pressly authorized due to the failure of Christians to live the sacramental life ? And does not the tremendous sense of need and yearning to which this devotion bears witness, really constitute a call to satisfy it, not by doing what He has not commanded, but by living the life which He died - to make possible for us? There is nothing in the symbol that impedes our recognition of Christ’s presence, that is true ; but this devotion has not the power of satisfying the hunger of our souls because it does not satisfy the hunger of His own. We can never be satisfied, we are never intended to be satisfied—and this dissatisfaction is the patent of our being one with Him—until every human being is the embodiment and expression of Him. This devotion bears witness to a true need of the Christian ‘soul; which need is to be sacramentally (that is to faith through outward signs) surrounded with the life of Christ, 164 THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT and it is precisely this that the church is intended to provide in its own manner of living. You cannot really separate between the presence of Christ in the sacrament and in the recipient of it. To the question ‘Is He in this one or in the other?’ the answer is ‘ Both or neither.’ Whatever reasons there are for affirming the one are so far reasons for affirming the other and vice versa. Unless as consecrator He is in the church, as the life of it and of every member of it, He is not in the sacrament; and unless He gives Himself in sacraments and takes up the Christian into His own life, the Christian is no Christian. But, on the other hand, abandon this idea of purpose, and it is all but impossible to escape thinking of the sacrament materialistically. I have already said that the sort of logic that says: If the consecrated elements are here, Christ is here: if they are reserved Christ is kept near at hand, if they are elevated Christ is lifted up, if they are enclosed in the tabernacle, Christ is imprisoned, cuts away the whole basis for holding that Christ is on earth at all, or if on earth on more than one single altar.1 Spatial ideas are inadequate for spiritual realities, and the development of partial and one-sided logic is the backbone of heresy.? And though we may say that to think in material terms is all but inevitable, because we inherit a mind trained to deal with matter, and our very phraseology, the very name ‘ spirit,’ is witness of it, may we adopt the easier course because it requires less effort? Is it not part of the moral struggle to rise above our earthly origin ? And ought we not mentally to endeavour to dwell with Christ in heaven and share His point of view ? lop. Newman, Via Media ii. p. 228. ‘Our Lord is im loco in heaven not (in the same sense) in the Sacrament. He is present in the Sacrament only in substance, substantivé, and substance does not require or imply the occupation of place. But if place is excluded from the idea of the Sacramental Presence, therefore division or distance from heaven is excluded also, for distance implies a measurable interval, and such there cannot be except between places. Moreover, if the idea of distance is excluded, therefore is the idea of motion. Our Lord then neither descends from heaven upon our altars, nor moves when carried in procession. The visible species change their position, but He does not move. He is in the Holy Eucharist after the manner of a spirit. We do not know how ; we have no parallel to the ‘‘ how ’’ in our experience. We can only say that He is present, not according to the natural manner of bodies, but sacramentally. His Presence is substantial, spirit-wise, sacramental ; an absolute mystery, not against reason, however, but against imagination, and must be received by faith.’ 4¢p. Mozley, Theory of Development, pp. 41-44. THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 165 But suppose that Christ is so locally present that where the material elements are, there He is, may we do what we will with Him because we can doit with them ? Suppose we have the power, do we desire to become His goalers by imprisoning Him within the tabernacle ? Do we wish to impose our will upon Him? Is there not a certain presumption in taking advantage of His non-resistance ? There is hardly anything that would be more affecting than being blessed by the uplifted hand of Christ. But suppose that when the Host is lifted up in Benediction, it is our Lord’s own hand that is raised over us, have we the right to take it ? Can you imagine without a shock one of the apostles performing such an action on Him when alive on earth without His expressed request ? Or is it less presumptuous now because He reigns as king over us in glory ? And again, supposing our Lord really present, in what state is He present if we omit any reference to communion? The whole idea of ‘ extra-communicant ’ adoration hinges on the presence of our Lord ‘here and now.’ Apart from that a crucifix or picture, a chapter of the Bible, a pious memory or reflection, would stimulate devotion of the same kind. They would uplift us by recollection of what Christ has done, they would bid us consider what He is doing in heaven; nay, in a certain sense, what He is doing by means of that very writing, or representation, or thought. But, difficult as it may be to describe, the attitude of a worshipper before the Reserved Sacrament is claimed to be something of an entirely different order. It is asserted that the reserved species are not merely the means by which our Lord imparts Himself to the faithful communicant, but also something by which He is in a special relation towards the worshipper outside the idea of communion. Now what is our Lord then and there doing ? He is the recipient of adoration, and it is a peculiar favour that he allows Himself to be so worshipped. But can our Lord ever really be conceived as thus passive ? Can we really worship the God of the deist who did things once, but now takes no further part in the world’s history ? Alive, He may be—the deist asserts that He is—but He does not show Himself so to be. The adoration of Christ in the reserved sacrament is in some respects singularly ‘like the worship of the infant Jesus, or of our Lord upon the cross, and the phrase ‘ the prisoner of the tabernacle ’ 166 THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT suggests the same train of thought. It makes a strong appeal just because it implies helplessness. But the whole question of pity and commiseration is foreign to the writers of the Epistles and the Apocalypse, and equally foreign to the Christianity of the early monuments, which represent our Lord not as He was but as He is, that is as active and dominant. If He appears helpless, it is because He is restrained by our want of faith; but His relation to us can never be other than that of a sovereign and a saviour, that is, one of intense and powerful activity. Or, to put the matter subjectively, as Lord, He is de jure, and is to be de facto, Lord of our entire personality, but as helpless, the appeal is far less catholic, it is but to a part only of our emotional nature. This is the Christ of the Pieta, and lacks the expression of majesty and domin- ion, and so fails to arouse the corresponding emotion. But though we ought to bear these things in thankful remembrance, yet we should do so only as elements in a larger context and a completer self-revelation. He became an infant that He might grow to manhood, He was bound that He might be free, He died that He might live, He lives that He may live and reign'in us. We cannot, as Christians, desire to put ourselves into sympathy with pre-Christian ages, except as a transitory state of feeling, and to enrich by contrast the sense of our own greater privilege. If the logic is weak, this cult can make but a partial appeal to the intellect; but it appeals no less partially to other faculties. There is a certain pleasure in the recognition of the fitness of a symbol to set forth the thing symbolized, as there is in recognizing the aptness of a word to embody an idea. To come across in reading some apt expression of feeling, and to be able to say, ‘that is exactly how I have felt, but I was never able to put it into words,’ is to be stirred by gratitude towards the author. So the more a person is able to enter into the mind of our Lord, the more does He feel the aptness of His metaphors and parables, as expressing clearly and crisply one of the many aspects or characteristics of the kingdom of heaven. Indeed, it would create some difficulty if we came across anything inept or inappro- priate in His language. But the bread and wine which He selected are exactly appropriate for the purpose of communion, and entirely inappropriate for reservation for THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 167 a prolonged period. If it is desired to keep Christ with us by keeping the symbol, then the first necessity of the symbol is that it should keep. But on the very corrup- tibility of the elements depends their value as food. It is difficult not to feel that the ineptness of the symbol for the use to which it is proposed to put it does testify against such a use being in accordance with the mind of our Lord, and thus the emotional value of this devotion is no less one-sided .than its intellectual appeal. But the argument from devotional value is itself prec- arious.- It is not as though it had universal testimony. The experience is modern and partial: nor can we assume that those who feel it most strongly are, tfso facto, the best spiritual guides. The claim of the West to have better knowledge of Christ than the East, of the modern West than of the whole early Church, only escapes being pharisaical at the cost of being ridiculous. But the danger of relying solely on the experience of some relatively small body of Christians does not end here. Dissenters have informed us time after time that our Lord is as really present to them in their eucharistic rites as He is to usin ours. We have no right to doubt such testimony. But we do insist that their rites are not valid on that account. We cannot, in dealing with them, point to the need of scriptural warrant and universal tradition to validate orders and sacraments, and claim that in regard to this desired usage these things have no place. Our Lord may indeed give Himself to them in ways where there is no express promise, He may not refuse the homage of devotion to Himself though occasioned by a use of the sacrament which He has not authorized, but for good or for evil both are equally unauthorized and invalid. We have endeavoured to consider the adoration of our Lord in connexion with the reserved sacrament, and, from whatever point we approach the subject, we find ourselves brought back to the idea of communion as the starting-point of His renewed life within us. The early Church, as far as evidence goes, knew of no use of the © consecrated species apart from this purpose, nor do the Churches of the East to-day. This form of worship lacks, therefore, the note of external catholicity. And it lacks the note of internal catholicity also. Its logical basis is ‘insecure and one-sided. It has no clear scriptural support, nor dogmatic decision, initsfavour. It makes an emotional appeal, but even in that gives but little play to the sense 168 THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT of majesty or of the security of triumph. It cannot be asserted that it is embraced under the revealed purpose of our Lord, and thus lacks validity. Nor does human experience supply this defect, for that experience is by no means universal, nor is experience by itself, and apart from other criteria, a safe guide. But though this devotion rests upon so insecure a basis, though it is encompassed with dangers, though there is some reason to suppose that it is not merely negatively outside the mind of our Lord, but even more probably opposed to it, yet it may occupy a subordinate, but in individual cases and abnormal circumstances, a really valuable place. If we seek for early parallels, the nearest to be discovered are these. It is difficult to measure how great was the joy of the disciples when they saw our Lord risen, or the change that their recognition of the fact of His resurrection made to their outlook on life. And yet this was but a preparatory stage. It was expedient that those appear- ances should have an end. The joy of worship of a Christ on earth outside them was to be swallowed up by the greater joy of a sense of His presence within them, by the Spirit after Pentecost. That joy was one independent of space or time. Here, there, everywhere, at all times and in all places, they were to live in Him unto God and He in them. So we can sympathise with the joy of the catechumen when first he was allowed to remain present throughout the holy mysteries, or with the joy of the penitent who had passed into the final stage before complete reconciliation to the Church. So with ourselves, when we are present at a celebration of the eucharist without communicating, we may feel ourselves uplifted to where the angels worship around the Lamb as it hath been slain. And yet how far greater is the blessing to be received in a good communion. There is a privilege higher than that of the angels, who partake not of the Body because they are not of the Body, and are not of the Body because He took not on Him their nature. Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter. The defence of adoration, except under the shadow of the idea of communion, is invalid; as a preparation for it, as the best that may be had when, for any reason, communion is impossible, it has a place ; how high for the individual no one can measure. It does not lie within the circle of THE CULT OF THE RESERVED SACRAMENT 169 practices that are based on acknowledged authority of universal dogma, it belongs rather to the poetry of Christ- janity than to its prose. Let no man judge another, nor dogmatize in favour of his own opinion. The Catholic cannot say that it is necessary to sanctity or to salvation ; the Protestant cannot deny that our Lord may vouchsafe His presence beyond its revealed channels. One thing is certain, that there is no sin against our Lord so deadly as an affectation of superiority for ourselves, our views, our class, nor anything which so quickly shows our want of love to Him as despising our brethren and His. INDEX ABRAHAM : significance of the rite of circumcision to, 38; his vision of the promised land paralleled in our Lord’s temp- tation, 44, 71; Christ com- pared to, 66. Abraham, Testament of, I19. Adam: Christ compared to, 66. Adoptionism, 75, 76, 154; as applied to our Lord, 39, 71, 86, 113. Agabus, prophecy of, 133. Agony, the, of our Lord, 93. Ananias, 129, 130; the vision of, 128, 129; the laying on of hands by, 129, 145, 146. Antioch, 132, 134. Apocalypse of St. John, the, 38, 83. Apocryphal Gospels, the, I11. Apologetic, aim and value of, 91, 103. Apostles, the, under Christianity, 154. Apostleship : the qualification for, 39, 66, 128. Apostolic College, the, in Jerusalem, 133. Appearances, the, of our Lord after His Resurrection, 128, 158, 168. Aquinas, St. Thomas, I. Aristotle cited, 22, 33, 58. Aristotelian system of philosophy, the, 89. Ascension and glorification of our Lord, the, 40, 41, 76, 96, 97, 100, 105, 154, 158, 161. Attaleia, 136, 138. Augustinianism, 149. Authority: the distinction be- tween efovocia and dvvapuis, 55-6, 74-5, 108 Authority, the: of our Lord, 54, 66, 86. BALAAM’S ass, III. Baptism: in Jewish ceremonies, 36-7; not an_ exclusively Jewish rite, 37; significance of, 37, 85. . Baptism, the, of our Lord, 38 ef seq., 44, 67, 85, 86, 113, 120; typical of death and resurrec- Baptism of our Lord ,—continued. tion, 37, 4°, 74, 77, 85, 86, 120; the descent of the Holy Spirit at, 38 ef seg., 44, 74; the vision in, 38, 67, 70, 77, 86; Gospel accounts of, 67, 70; a creative act of God, 76 ; bearing of, on Christian thought 40,, 41. Barley loaves: miracle of the five, 52, 102. Benediction, 165. Bernard: Odes of Solomon, cited, 87; Texts and Studies, cited, 87. Bethabara, 43. Bethany, 43. Bethune Baker, Professor, quoted, 25; crted,.27, 31. Burkitt, Professor, cited, 51 n. CAELESTIUS, 148. Caiaphas, 48. Caird, J., Philosophy of Religion, quoted, 8 Cana of Galilee: 49-53, 102-3. Carnot, cited, 22. Christ: the death of, exemplifying the principle of self-surrender, 20. Christ, the mind of, 33. the miracle at, Christian, Archetypal, the: our Lord as, 40. . Christian experience, 76, 77, 81, 84; paralleled in our Lord, Christian life, the, 33-4. Christian problems: judgment in, 98, 99. Christian worship, 161, 162. Christians, persecution of, 81. Church, the: the Rock of, 85. Church Quarterly Review, cited, 6. Circumcision, symbolism of, 38. Clairaudience, 60, 87. Clairvoyance, 60, 61, 87. Communion with Christ, 159-60. Conception of our Lord, the, 96. Conceptual world, the, 17. Consciousness, the, of our Lord, 68-9. 171 172 Constantinople, Council of, 92, 108. Co-operation with God, 159, 160, Corinthians, Episiles to, 143-5. St. Paul answers the challenge to his authority, 143-4; in- sistence of the unity of the body, in, 145. Cornelius, the conversion of, 129, 139, 141, 142, 145. Creation: the problem of, 16, ef seq.; the meaning of, 21-2; the purpose of, 18, 21, 29, 76, 158. Creation ex nihilo, 18, 19. Creeds: the essentials of the faith in the, 105. Criticism, function of, 24. Crucifixion, the, 75. Cyprus, 132, 136. DANIEL, Book of, 119. David, the tabernacle of, 79, 84. Decalogue, the, 115. Deity, the, of our Lord, 35, 94; demonstrated from the Gospels, 4I. dtaxovia, 133. didaoKew, 56. Dissenters : 167. Divine life, the, 20, 159, 160. Divine personality, 20. Du Bose, Dr. W. P., cited, 25, 95; quoted, 107. dvvapis, 55, 56, 74. Eucharistic rites of, EASTERN asceticism, 19. Edersheim, A., cited, 46, 49. Edghill, Revelation of the Son of God, quoted, 106. Ego, the, 34. edéyyxetv, 56. Elijah, as symbolising the prophets, 113, 116; St. John the Baptist identified with, 42, 116, 117, I19. Enoch, Book of, 1109. emirmay, 56. Eschatological teaching of our Lord, 80, 82-4, 100. éEovoia 55, 56, 74. Eternal life, 39, 76. Eucharist, the bread and wine in the, 160-1, 162, 163, 166—7. Evolution, 159. Fait, our Lord’s requirement of 110-11, Figtree : miracle of the, 104, 111. INDEX Fleming’s Vocabulary of Philosophy cited, 2. Foresight, 81; 80, 81. Forgiveness of sins, 98, 100, 110. of our Lord, 69, GABRIEL, 45. Gadarene swine, the: the miracle of, 104, III. Geographical Journal, quoted, 89 Germany: instance of political disadvantages of muzzling free discussion, 24. Girton Conference, the, 25. God, existence of : an argument for, rae God, the life of, 20, 159, 160. God : relation of, to Christians, 17- 19, 21; man’sattitude to, 153. God’s Kingdom: the ultimate triumph of, 72. Greek religion: knowledge of God in, 58; the mystery cults of, 58. Green, T. H., 88. Hat, Rev. Francis J., Dogmatic Theology, 1; claims for theol- ogy in, 1-3; volume on The Trinity reviewed, I, 3, e¢ Seq. | Healing of the man born blind: the miracle of, 122, 123. Hebrew prophets, the, 58, 60, 73; anticipation of the Messianic kingdom in prophecy of, 65-6. Henslow, Professor G., cited, 61 n. Hitchcock, Dr. F.R.M., volume on the Gospel Miracles reviewed, 104 et seq. Holland, H. S., Philosophy of Faith, cited, 60 .; quoted, 118, Holy Communion: the bread and wine in, 160-1, 162, 163, 166-7. Holy Spirit, the, 13, 15, 35.; the descent of, upon our Lord in Baptism, 38 et seg., 44; St. Augustine quoted on, 12, 22; St. Gregory of WNazianzen, quoted on, 11, 12. Holy Spirit, the: the gift of, 76, 125. Hort, F.J.A., Christian Ecclesia, cited, 77.1; Judaistic Christ- tanity, cited, 142. Human perfection of our Lord. See Sinlessness. Humility of the saints, the, 150, 152. Hypostasis, 13. INDEX IGNATIUS, cited, 76. Illingworth, Dr. J. R., 88 et seq. ; philosophical standpoint of, 89; his work as a stimulant to faith, 90; value of, as an apologist, 91, 103; Gospel Mivacles, The, reviewed, 88, gi et seqg.; Personality, Human and Divine, quoted, 6, 10, 112; Sermons in a College Chapel, quoted, 10, 35, 112; 157 ».3; University Sermons, cited, 95. Immanence, Divine, 9, 158-9. Incarnate life, the, of our Lord, 13-14, 32-3, 34, 35, 49, 76, Gee OSmrlOd inst en LIL 94: 160; a revelation of God’s working, 76; the limits of His humanity, 34, 35, 40, 94. Incarnation, the, 76, 100, 112; the purpose of, 76, 152, 162, “Incarnation ’’’: the term as used by some Modernists considered, 25, 26, 34. Inherence of God and man, 64. Intuition, the, of our Lord, 72. Israelites, wanderings of: typified in our Lord’s temptation, 44 ; typified in the Feast of Taber- nacles, 121; ‘the pillar of fire’ typified, 123. JAcoB’s well, 47. Jehovah: translation of the word, at; Jerusalem: the journey to, from Galilee, 47; appropriateness of, as the place of our Lord’s death, 54; the fall of, 80, 84 ; the successive captures of, Jerusalem, the Church in, 142. Jesus Christ: Our Lord’s life on earth, 13-14, 32-3, 34, 35, 40, TOmNe. Ose 208.) ta, (115-4, 160 ; thelimits of His humanity 34, 35, 40; His capacity for entering into the thoughts of others, 72, 80, 87; the two natures of, 25-6, 30, 32, 35, 49, 41, 92, 106. See also under headings Ascension, Baptism, Incarnation, Resurrection, etc., etc. Jewish ceremonies of initiation, 36-7, 38; proselytes, 36. Jewish customs, 140. Jewish mind, the: and Christian problems of interpretation, 86. 173 Jewish prophets, the. See Hebrew prophets. Jewish religion : the idea of, 57, 58. Jews: idea of God, 55, 57, 58, 84; God the fount of authority, 55; Greek idea contrasted, 58. Joel, the prophecy of, 82. Johnston, L., cited, 68 x. Jordan, the: at Bethany, 43; the crossing of, 36, 43. 4 ‘ Joseph Barsabbas, called Justus, 128, 142. Josephus, cited, 47. Journal of Theological cited, 51, 52 7. Judaea, wilderness of, 42, 43, 44. Judaism : the Divine intention for, Studies, 78. Judas ‘Barsabbas, 128, 142. KANT, cited, 60. Kenosis, 15, 21, 103. Knpv§, 56. Kingdom of God, the: our Lord’s teaching of, 39. AaBewv, 108, Lacey, T. A., ezted, 59 n. Language of prophecy : tation of, 83. Law, the, and the Prophets, 114-6. Law of Moses, the: attitude of our Lord to, 110, II4. Laying-on of hands: the apostolic rite of, 129, 138, 146. Lazarus: our Lord’s knowledge of his death, 61 ; the raising of, interpre- 95. Leibniz, 88, 91. Leo’s tome, 104, 107. Leper, the healing of the, 98, 100. Lewis, Mrs. Smith, Light on the Four Gospels, eic., cited, 46 n.*. Liddon, H. P., cited, 104. Lotze, 88. Lux Mundi, 88, 98. Major, Mr., 25. Malachi, 42. Manhood, the, of our Lord, 96. Manna, the, in the wilderness, 44. Marcus Aurelius, 149. Mary, the mother of our Lord, at Cana marriage feast, 49, 50-1. Mathematical concepts, 28-9. Matthews, W. R., Studies in Christian Philosophy, reviewed, 16 et seq. 174 Messiah, the: the anticipation of, 44, 45, 57- Messiahship, the, of our Lord, 39, 41, 66, 68, 70-1, 77, 109, TYG St. John’s? faith in; established, 59; rejected by the Jews, 116, 117. Metaphor. See Prophetic language. Ministry of our Lord: itinerary in the first days of, 44-9. Miracles, the, of our Lord in the Gospels: power of working conferred in His Baptism, 39, 40; our Lord’s use of, 62; views on, of the older apolo- gists, 92, 93; mature of the capacity manifested by our Lord in, 93-6, I10; as evi- dence of the perfection of His Manhood, 96; compared with parables, 99; illustrative value of, 100; prophylactic value of, 100-1 ; obedience to law in, IOI, 102, III-12; conditions in which they were performed, 101, 102, 109; evidential value of, considered, 10Q-II. Miracles of our Lord as laid down in the Creeds, 76, 96, 105. Mission, the, of our Lord, as con- tinuing in Christians, 64. Mnason, the Cypriot, 132. Moberly, Professor, quoted, 14, 106 ; cited, 157. Modern Churchman, The, 25. Modernism: psychological ante- cedents of, 26; doctrine of continuity in, 26; and the ‘two nature’ theory, 23 et seq. Modernists: appreciation of, 23; use of the term ‘ Incarnation’ by, 25, 26, 34; use of the term ‘ knowledge,’ 26. Moral aim, the, of mankind, 149-51. Moral consciousness in animals (dogs), 33, 155. Moses: as symbolising the law, 113, et seq. ; collocation of, with St. John Baptist, 117-8; vision of the promised land, 71. Mozley, Theory of Development, cited, 164 n.?. Music as an aid to prophetic re- ceptiveness, 60 and n. Mysteries of our Lord’s life, the, re-enacted in the Christian soul, 77. Mystic, the, 103. INDEX NaIN, the raising of the widow’s son - at, 80, 100. Nathanael, 43, 49. Nativity, the, 96. Newman: University Sermons cited 60n.; Via Media, quoted, 164n.!. Nicene anathemas, the, 13, I9. Nicodemus, 67. Noah, 37, 38. ORDINATION by laying-on of hands, 146. Oriental prophecy, 82. Origen, czted, 19, 42. Original sin: inner meaning of, 153-4, 155; Pelagianism and, 147 et seq. PARABLES : Greek and Jewish ideas of, compared, 72; our Lord’s attitude to, 99; and miracles, compared, 99. Parables of history : of, 84. mapakaketv, 56. Passion, the, 112; our Lord’s pre- vision of, 47, 48, 61, 69-70, 73, 80. Pelagianism and original sin, 147 et seq. Pelagius, 147. Penitence, 152-3. Pentecost, 38, 45, 125; as fulfilling the Eschatological discourse of our Lord, 83. Pentecostal feast, the, at Jerusalem, significance 45, 49. Perga, 136, 138. ‘Person’ not equivalent of hypostasis, 13. Personality, human: fundamental formula of, 6-7. Pharisees, the, 70; attitude of, to the baptism of St. John, 36-7. Pharisaic deputation, the, to St. John Baptist, 43, 45, 47. Pilate: the trial scene, 56. Plato: quoted, 18; cited, 58. Platonic system of philosophy, the, 89. Prayer, power of, 95. Prayer: the Great High Priestly Prayer, 63. Presbyters, the, in Jerusalem, 133, 134; the appointment of the Seven, 133, 134; the qualifica- tions of a presbyter, 134. Prevision, 61, 87; of our Lord, 87. Priesthood, eternal, of Christ, the, 105. f INDEX Prophet: our Lord as a, 54, 66; His assumption of authority, 54, 86; a priort probability that our Lord experienced prophetic visions, 61, 71, 73; His sense of mission, 62-4, 86; comparison with views of the outside world, 63; main im- port of our Lord’s visions, 74 et seq., 87. See also under headings Foresight, Prevision. Prophet, the qualifications of a, 56-7, 61. Prophetic knowledge of God, 59. Prophetic language and imagery, 72-3; our Lord’s use of, 73, 81-2, 86, 99. Prophetic receptiveness, 57, 59, 87; artificial aids to, 59, 60. Prophetic vision, 60-1, 86; effect of temperament in, 59, 60. Psychology, 152. Ramsay, Sir W.M., cited, 46, 136, 137. Rashdall, Dean, quoted, 25. Red Sea, passage of, 36. Religion, modern categories of thought in judging, 58-90, 72-3 83-4. Reserved Sacrament, the cult of, 156 et seq.; the adoration of Christ in, 165-9; weakness of appeal in, 166-7. Resurrection, the, 75, 76, 96, 97, 100, 105, 107-8, 158. Revelation, Book of: symbolism in, 123; Rock, the, in the wilderness our Lord identified with, 123-4. Rock, the, of the Church, 85. SACRAMENTAL Presence, the, 164. Sacraments: Christ in the, 159-60. Sadducees, the: attitude of, to the baptism of St. John, 36-7. St. Andrew, 43, 44; call of, 46. St. Augustine on the doctrine of the Trinity, quoted, 12; cited, 13, 22. St. Barnabas, affection of, for St. Paul, 130, 131, 137, 141; mission of, 131-2; ordination of, 134-5. St. Gregory Nazianzen, cited, 41 ; quoted, 11-12. St. James, call of, 46 n.‘. Epistle of, 142. ; St. John the Baptist: baptises eur Lord): ¥38 ‘et seq. ;) as participating in the vision, at our Lord’s baptism 67, 70, 175 St. John the Baptist :—continued. - 86; as realizing the moral necessity of our Lord’s death, 38; proclaims our Lord as Messiah, 45; designates Him as the Lamb of God, 46, 68, 77; identifies our Lord with the ‘ Suffering Servant,’ 38, 68. Authority of, 55, 94. Baptism, the, of, 36; implica- tions in, 36, 37; anticipatory of Pentecostal baptism, 38. Elijah, identified with, 42, 116. Martyrdom of: effect of, on our Lord)\70;) 117; Mission of: our Lord’s recog- nition of, 36. Moses, collocation of, with, 17-18. Preaching, narrative of the early, of, 42-3; place of, 42-3; largely based on Isaiah, 38, 68. St. John the son of jZebedee, 43, 48; call of, 46; character of, 48, 52. Gospel of: narrative of the preaching of the Baptist in, 43; the editorial notes in, 77-8 ; picture of the working of our Lord’s mind in, 62-3; portrait of our Lord in, 64; quotations from the Scriptures in, 125. St. Mark, defection of, at Perga, 136-7," 139, 143- St. Paul: theory of, as to events in Jewish history, 36; connection of the rite of circumcision with baptism and our Lord’s death, 38; his portrait of the ideal Christian, 64; attitude to the Resurrection, 97-8. Apostolic Commission, the, of, 127 et seq; conversion - of, - 127-8, 129-30, 144, 145; the vision in Damascus, 128-9; receives the laying-on of hands by Ananias, 129, 130, 138, 145; receives a vision in the temple at Jerusalem, 131, 144, 145; apostolate to the Gentiles, 130, 131, 145; beginning of the Gentile ministry, 131-2, 137-8, 139 ; second visit to Jerusalem, 133; ordination of, 134-5, 145-6; dismissed from An- tioch, 135-6; receives laying- on of hands as a benediction, 135; the second journey of, 135 et seg.; at Paphos, 136, 137; henceforth designated 176 St. Paul :—continued. Pauk:3136 <> at Petga, 16 36;, his commission to the heathen, 137; the question of circum- cision, 139-41, 143; recogni- tion of his Gentile apostolate by the Church in Jerusalem, 141-2; his authority chal- lenged, 143. Peter, 43, 48, 139; call of, 46, 47; mental preoccupation of, at the Mount of Trans- figuration, I19, 121. Epistles of, 73, 142; the word of prophecy in, 73. St. Philip, 43, 48, 49, 129, 133, 134. St. Stephen, 133, 134. Saints, humility of, 150, 152, Samaria, the woman of, I09, 126. Scribes, the, 54. Scriptures, the: our Lord’s use of, 61-2, 71, 76, 86. Second sight, 60-1, 69, 80, 87. Self-consciousness, 6-8, II, 27. Self-sacrifice : within the Being of St. God, 14, 18, 19, 160; in Christ, | a manifestation of God, 14. Seven, the: appointment of, 133-4. Seventy, the: the mission of, 71-2. Siloam, significance of the name, 122, Sinlessness, the, of our Lord, 95, 102, 107, 108, 109. Skies, the, by night: contemplation of, 60. . Socrates, 24, 89. Solipsism, 28. Son of God: title, 109. Son of Man: our Lord’s use of the title, 100. Sonship, 19, 21-2, 41, 86, 108, IIo. Sonship of our Lord, 39, 41, 77, 86, 97, 113, 114. Spirit, the gift of the, 125. Stilling the Storm, miracle of, 32, our Lord’s use of the III. ‘Suffering-Servant’ passage of Isaiah: applied to our Lord, 38, 68, 70. Suggestion, 152, 155. Superstition as the result of atrophy of the intellect, 24. Synoptists’ narrative of St. John’s preaching, 42-3. Synoptists’ portrait of Christ, 35, 62. TABERNACLES, the Feast of, 121 et seqg.; symbolism of, 121 et eee a SS NN AS TS A, INDEX Tabernacles :—continued. seqg.; ceremonies of the water, 122-3, 124; and the lamps, 123, 124; the lessons read at, 124. : Tarsus, 132. Teaching, the, of our Lord, 39, 99; authority of, 34. Telepathy, 60. Temple, Bishop : Nature of Personality, cited, 7, RY; Temple, the: as a symbol used by our Lord, 78-9; the cleansing of, 79. Temptation, the, of our Lord, 43, 67, 86, 87, 93, 102 ; an instance of prophetic vision, 71. . Theologia Germanica, cited, 20, 150. Theology, claims for: Dr. F. J. Hall’s views considered, 1-3, 4. Thompson, J. M., cited, 77 n.?. Thought reading, 61. Transfiguration, the, 86, 87, 113 et seq., 121; an instance of prophetic vision, 73, 119; our Lord’s purpose in, 118-9 ; significance of, 120; the Mount of, 70. Trench, G. H., Study of St. John’s Gospel, cited, 47. Trial of Christ, the, 56, 109, IIo. Trinity, the, 112; the life of God within the, 57.57 “Dr. 1e. 1. Hall’s volume on, reviewed, I, 3 et seq. Tyndall, Professor, Belfast Address, quoted, 158 n. UNIVERSITIES, the, and the function of criticism, 24. VIRGIN conception, the, 93; sig- nificance of, 96-7. Wall, History of Infant Baptism, cited, 36. Wall, the, of partition, 140. Welianschauung, 28. Westcott, Bishop, quoted, 106. Westcott and Hort, New Testament in Greek, cited, 132. Wilson, Sir Charles, cited, 42. Wisdom of God: identification of our Lord with, 79. Woman who had an infirmity: healing of, IoI. ZACCHEUS, 8o. Zacharias, 45. Printed by Fox, Jones & Co,, Kemp Hall Press, Oxford ;% * ‘s - ; a off i bs hud hey, oe ‘ ul a 7 . 1 ‘¢ y a; t # a ea Pie ty ete wee ( ' : wna , i q Tahoe 7 4 Py at phe ys Aes iy ie ee One