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LIBRARY OF THE THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 PRINCETON, N. J. 
 Presented by 
 
 \ 
 
 BR 85 .L3 
 
 Lawrence, J. B. 1873-1968. 
 
 The biology of the cross 
 
 
The Biology of the Cross 
 
The Biology of 
 the Cross 
 
 Lectures delivered 
 
 at the Southwestern Baptist 
 
 Theological Seminary 
 
 By 
 
 J. BENJAMIN LAWRENCE, M. A. 
 
 Author of "Power for Service" 
 
 New York Chicago Toronto 
 
 Fleming H. Revell Company 
 
 London and Edinburgh 
 
. Copyright, 1913, by 
 FLEMING H. REVELL COMPANY 
 
 New York: 158 Fifth Avenue 
 Chicago: 125 North Wabash Ave. 
 Toronto: 25 Richmond Street, W. 
 London: 21 Paternoster Square 
 Edinburgh: 100 Princes Street 
 
Introduction 
 
 THIS book undertakes to set forth the 
 fact that Christianity is life and that 
 this life comes from the Cross. This 
 is a message that this age needs to hear. The 
 Cross is still a stumbling-block to the Jew and an 
 offense to the Greek. A great deal of present 
 day religion can see no saving power in the Cross. 
 A suffering Saviour is no Saviour at all to 
 twentieth century Pharisaism. It even rejects 
 the doctrine of the Cross as unethical. It is not 
 just for one man to suffer for another's sins. 
 And worldly wisdom still rejects the doctrine 
 of the Cross as foolishness. But to those who 
 are being saved the Cross is still the power of 
 God and the wisdom of God. 
 
 It would be well if Christianity to-day could 
 say with Paul more emphatically : " God forbid 
 that I should glory save in the cross of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ." The Cross to Paul did not stand 
 simply for a martyr's death. It was the symbol 
 of a redeeming act upon the part of the Lord 
 of Glory. It stood for an act of grace in which 
 one who existed from eternity in the form of 
 God and on equality with God voluntarily sur- 
 rendered Himself to death on the Cross for the 
 
 5 
 
6 Introduction 
 
 redemption of man. This doctrine of the Cross 
 was to Paul the central thing in the Gospel. 
 " Jesus and Him crucified " was the one mes- 
 sage that would save men. Any other gospel 
 was no glad tidings at all, for it left men under 
 the curse of the law and did not give the liberty 
 of grace. And it is just as true now as then 
 that the message of the Cross is the pulpit's one 
 message for sinning and sorrowing humanity. 
 A view of the Cross is the only thing that will 
 lift the burden from sin-laden souls. 
 
 Paul has been criticized for teaching a 
 doctrine of " legalistic " justification. But 
 Paul's doctrine of justification was not merely 
 legalistic. It was a " justification of life " 
 (Kom. v. 18). Since he believed in God, he 
 believed that man could not truly live without 
 being in right relation with God. And when a 
 sinner was brought into right relation with God 
 through faith in the propitiatory death of Christ 
 (was justified) he began to live. Being in 
 wrong relation with God meant death. Com- 
 ing into right relation with Him meant life 
 eternal. 
 
 One reason perhaps why men do not " glory 
 in the cross " more is because it means to be 
 crucified to the world and for the world to be 
 crucified to them. It necessitates taking up 
 the Cross daily and following Jesus. The Cross 
 is not merely a doctrine to be accepted. It is 
 also a power to be experienced. To glory in the 
 
Introduction 7 
 
 Cross one must crucify the flesh with the affec- 
 tions and lusts thereof. 
 
 It is a good sign that the religious world is 
 turning its thought again to the Cross. A new 
 appreciation of the Cross is the only thing that 
 can keep the Church from degenerating into an 
 ethical culture club, a society for social reform 
 or theological debates. The Cross is rightly 
 the symbol of Christianity. It is the Cross that 
 distinguishes Christianity from every other re- 
 ligion — not the Cross, of course, without Christ, 
 nor Christ without the Cross, but Christ on the 
 Cross. It is Christ lifted up that is to draw 
 men. 
 
 Our Christianity needs vitalizing. This can 
 be accomplished only at the Cross. There is a 
 world lying in the wicked one to be won and 
 saved for God. Only the Cross can furnish the 
 motive power for such a task. 
 
 This book, treating as it does of two of the 
 central ideas of Christianity, the Cross and life, 
 and showing how life comes from the Cross, 
 will, I believe, prove a vitalizing agency to its 
 readers. 
 
 W. T. Conner. 
 
 Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 
 Fort Worth, Tex. 
 
Contents 
 
 I. The Biology of the Cross . . 1 1 
 
 II. Christ the Head of a New Human- 
 
 ity 3 1 
 
 III. The Embryology of the New Life 52 
 
 IV. The Psychology of Faith . . 73 
 
 V. Spiritual Growth .... 94 
 
 VI. The Cross of Christ the Mission 
 
 Imperative 113 
 
I 
 
 THE BIOLOGY OP THE CEOSS 
 
 THE central figure in all sacred history 
 is the Cross of Christ. To it the in- 
 dex finger of prophecy turns, and 
 from it the Gospels gather their power and in- 
 spiration. Koman soldiers planted the tree of 
 the Cross upon Golgotha, but the crucifixion 
 of our Lord is the fulfillment of prophecy : 
 whether the acted prophecy of type or the 
 spoken prophecy of prediction. 
 
 The earliest records of our race, sacred and 
 profane alike, represent man as seeking accept- 
 ance with God by means of sacrifice. It does 
 not matter whether this was originally a divine 
 command, or whether the human mind in- 
 stinctively perceived the fitness of the rite ; in 
 either case, the sacrifice was from the first ac- 
 cepted, and as soon as laws were given, was 
 regulated and required. Whatever might have 
 been the inspiring motive in the earlier sacri- 
 fices of humanity, there is a plain recognition 
 in all of them that man is separated from God, 
 and that in approaching Him it is necessary in 
 some way to remove the intervening bar of hu- 
 man sinfulness. 
 
 Sacrifice was, therefore, always typical. 
 
 ii 
 
] 2 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 Isaac, the only son of Abraham, bearing the 
 wood of the burnt offering to Mount Moriah, is 
 a type of the only begotten Son of God who 
 bore His Cross to the Mount of Crucifixion. 
 On Mount Moriah it was not Abraham but 
 God who provided the ram for the burnt offer- 
 ing, and when that sacred place was called 
 " Jehovah Jireh," the name did not mean that 
 Jehovah would provide merely temporal bless- 
 ings for His people ; but it meant that the sac- 
 rifice for sin, which man could never furnish, 
 would be provided by God Himself. The Pass- 
 over lamb, whose blood sprinkled upon the 
 lintels of the door preserved the homes of 
 Israel from the destroying angel on the night 
 that God smote the first-born of Egypt, is a 
 type of that other Lamb who was sacrificed on 
 the Cross for us. The victim in the sin offering; 
 on the day of atonement was a type of that 
 perfect sacrifice of Christ, " who through the 
 eternal Spirit offered Himself without spot to 
 God." This is the fact set forth by Isaiah in 
 that mountain peak of prophecy when he ex- 
 claims: "He was wounded for our transgres- 
 sions ; He was bruised for our iniquities ; the 
 chastisement of our peace was upon Him ; and 
 with His stripes we are healed." 
 
 Thus we have limned on the background of 
 sacred history foregleams of the Cross. Yea, 
 and more than that. The tree of pain was in 
 the heart of God before all time. Christ was 
 
The Biology of the Cross 13 
 
 the Lamb slain from the foundation of the 
 world. God erected the Cross. Above the 
 inscription of Pilate there was written by the 
 linger of God the real meaning of the Cross ; 
 methinks I read written there this inscription : 
 " Herein is love : that while men were sinners, 
 Christ died for them." 
 
 The Cross is not a creed, but a life-giving 
 power. This fact has been veiled by theology. 
 The theological systems which have grown up 
 around the Gospel have monopolized the Cross ; 
 they have lifted the Cross out of the ethical 
 setting of the life of Jesus and planted it in an 
 environment of doctrine. They have contin- 
 uously traced it back to covenants and inserted 
 it into decrees ; stated it, all but exclusively, in 
 terms of justification and propitiation. The- 
 ology has one territory which is theory ; religion 
 has another territory which is life ; and the 
 Cross belongs to religion. 
 
 The Gospels do not represent the Cross as 
 simply a judicial transaction between Jesus and 
 God on which not the slightest light is thrown, 
 but as a vital force which Jesus introduces into 
 human life, and which He declares will be its 
 redemption. " The winder of the Cross," says 
 Dr. A. H. Strong, " is that it opens a window 
 into heaven, through which we see the central 
 fact of existence, the innermost secret of the 
 
1 4 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 universe ; nay, the very heart of God. There, 
 as in a burning-glass, are concentrated all the 
 rays of the Sun of Kighteousness, and there the 
 God, who daily beareth our burdens, took to 
 Himself our sorrows and death that we might 
 be free. But Christ's Cross did not reveal the 
 judging, suffering and saving God as a mere 
 objective show. Its aim was to declare the 
 essential principle of all true life, and to re- 
 produce that life in us. In Christ, who was 
 stretched upon that Cross, we see the pattern 
 and beginning of a new humanity." 
 
 The Cross may be made into a doctrine of 
 theology, but Jesus spoke of it as the regener- 
 ation of man. There are two kinds of religion 
 offered for the relief of man. One gives a 
 formula, a creed, to be accepted; the other 
 gives a life to be received. The religion of 
 Jesus is the religion of life, and it is impossible 
 to understand the relation subsisting between 
 Him and humanity without viewing that rela- 
 tion in the light of the term " life." 
 
 Jesus is indeed the greatest teacher the world 
 has ever produced, but He is vastly more than 
 a teacher. He is the greatest religious genius 
 that has ever appeared among men, but His 
 supreme work for the race was not simply the 
 organization of a new religious movement and 
 the formulation of a new creed. The very 
 heart of His efforts for humanity centres not 
 so much in His teaching, for He gives us little 
 
The Biology of the Cross 15 
 
 that is new in the realm of religious thought, 
 but His work for the race centres in His Cross. 
 The Mount of the Sermon is not the pulpit 
 from which He speaks His tenderest message 
 to man, but the Mount of Calvary is. The 
 Cross tongues with more eloquent pathos the 
 heart of His mission, the soul of His attitude 
 towards the race, than does the most eloquent 
 passages from His tenderest sermons. In fact 
 His teaching finds its key and explanation in 
 the Cross. 
 
 The reason for this is that Christ did not 
 come primarily to instruct men, but to save 
 them. What the race needed was not infor- 
 mation but redemption. This Christ secured 
 through the Cross. He died for sinners, and 
 ever since His Cross has been the sign of rescue 
 for the race. Whatever may be the nature of 
 that sublime transaction upon Calvary; what- 
 ever the name by which men may call it, — 
 Atonement, Sacrifice, Kedemption, Propitiation; 
 whatever relation it may have to the moral law 
 and to the divine righteousness, — its relation 
 to the human heart is luminous and beautiful. 
 It takes away sin. On Christ Jesus, in His life 
 and in His death, were laid the guilt and the 
 consequences of a world's sin. Standing solid 
 in the centre of human history is the Cross of 
 Christ as the symbol of a world's redemption. 
 Jesus comes to save the world. He saves it 
 by giving it life. He unites in one life the 
 
16 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 kingdoms of Himself and me. By one costly 
 outpouring of Himself He created a divine 
 environment for me. When we come to study 
 this life-relationship to Him, a relation sealed 
 and vitalized by the Cross, we pass beyond the 
 sphere of theology and enter the kingdom of 
 biology. 
 
 II 
 
 It may seem at first a contradiction of ideas 
 to set the Cross in a field of life. But in the 
 thought of Jesus the Cross is planted in an 
 environment of life. "I, if I be lifted up," 
 says He, " will draw all men unto Me." This 
 4 'lifting up" must refer to His crucifixion on 
 the Cross, and yet He does not hesitate to say, 
 " I came that they might have life, and have it 
 more abundantly." The Cross stands to the 
 life that He is to give as cause to effect. 
 
 In the history of redemption the Cross is the 
 token of our Lord's obedience unto death ; the 
 symbol of the sacrifice of His life for the world. 
 This crucifixion-act, a sacrifice so patent and so 
 brilliant that it has arrested every mind, men 
 call death. The philosophies of the world turn 
 away from the Christ on the Cross saying, as 
 did the two disciples on the way to Emmaus, 
 " We had thought it was He who would redeem 
 Israel." This is because men shrink from death, 
 and they see in the Cross only death. But in 
 the mind of God the Cross is the symbol of 
 
The Biology of the Cross 1 7 
 
 life. With God, as Jesus revealed Him, life is 
 an eternal procession of gifts, a costly outpour- 
 ing of self, an unwearied sacrifice of love. The 
 mystery of life, divine and human, is con- 
 tained in these words of Jesus : " Yerily, verily, 
 I say unto you, except a grain of wheat fall 
 into the ground it abideth alone, but if it die, 
 it bringeth forth much fruit. He that loveth 
 his life shall lose it, and he that hateth his life 
 in this world shall keep it unto life eternal." 
 This is the mystery of being. This mystery is 
 twofold : first, the life, the living force which 
 was in Christ reached its proper value and in- 
 fluence through His death; and, second, the 
 proper value of Christ's life is that it propa- 
 gates similar lives. 
 
 This then being the law of life, Christ must 
 not only announce it, He must observe and 
 enforce it. He speaks of Himself even more 
 directly than of us when He says : " He that 
 loveth his life shall lose it." His disciples 
 thought that they had never seen such promise 
 in His life as at this hour: seed-time seemed 
 to them to be past, and the harvest at hand. 
 Their Master appeared to them to be launched 
 on the tide that was to carry Him to the 
 highest pinnacle of glory. And so He was, 
 but not, as they thought, by asserting Himself. 
 Christ saw with different eyes. He knew that 
 it was a different exaltation from that they 
 dreamed of which would win for Him lasting 
 
18 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 sovereignty. He knew the law that governed 
 life, and so He exclaims, " I, if I be lifted up, 
 will draw all men unto Me." He knew that a 
 total and absolute surrender of self to the uses 
 and needs of others was the one path to per- 
 manent life, and that in His case this absolute 
 surrender involved death. His death, like the 
 dissolution of the seed, seemed to terminate 
 His work, but really it was its germination. 
 So long as He lived, it was but His single 
 strength that was used ; He abode alone. There 
 was great virtue in His life while He lived, — 
 great power for the healing, the instruction, the 
 elevation of mankind. But it was not until 
 after His death that the full power of His life 
 came upon men. On the Cross a change passed 
 upon Him which disengaged the vital forces 
 which were in Him ; a change which thawed 
 the springs of life in Him and let them flow 
 forth to all. It was on the Cross that He 
 poured out His life unto death and by that act 
 put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself. It 
 was on the Cross that He triumphed over the 
 powers of evil, destroyed the dominion of death, 
 and opened a new fountain of life. And now 
 His Cross has become the glory of Christianity. 
 It is the seat from which He teaches His high- 
 est lessons, the throne of His power as King in 
 the universe. Of all the aspects and relations 
 in which Christ appears to us, the primary one 
 is that of the Cross. 
 
The Biology of the Cross 1 9 
 
 III 
 
 But Christ is, above all else, the giver of a 
 new life. He was the grain of divine wheat 
 which fell into the soil of humanity. The 
 dying necessary to a new life took place upon 
 the Cross. That divine human transaction ac- 
 complished two fundamental things. On the 
 one hand, it broke down the barriers of death ; 
 on the other hand, it planted in the human 
 kingdom a new-life germ. 
 
 Next to life the most pregnant symbol in 
 religion is its antithesis, death. From the 
 time Jehovah God said, " The day thou eatest 
 thereof thou shalt surely die," this solemn word 
 has been linked with human interests of eternal 
 moment. Death, in the human life kingdom, is 
 the barrier that stands between man and that 
 experience called eternal life. This death is 
 connected with sin. " Wherefore as by one 
 man sin entered into the world and death by 
 sin ; and so death passed upon all men, for that 
 all have sinned." Men are not in peril of death, 
 they are in the inmost sense and truth of things 
 dead. As our bodies live by being in corre- 
 spondence with the light and air and food 
 under the economy of material nature, so our 
 spirits live by correspondence, through faith 
 and love, with the unseen and eternal. Hence, 
 the man who walks the earth a rebellious sinner 
 against God is separated from God and becomes 
 in consequence a dead man. The doom of sin 
 
20 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 lies on his unforgiven spirit. He carries death 
 and judgment about with him. Within his 
 living frame he bears a coffined soul. There 
 can be no life for that man until sin is dealt 
 with and the barriers of death broken down. 
 
 This is the work of the Cross. God hates 
 sin, but loves the sinner. God hates death. It 
 is foreign to His nature ; it is an intruder into 
 His kingdom. But humanity cannot be re- 
 deemed from the power of sin and the kingdom 
 of death without the self -vindication of justice. 
 The race is under the power of death because 
 of sin, and sin, according to the eternal law of 
 God, must be punished. In the Cross we see, 
 first of all, God's judgment upon human sin. 
 
 So the Cross is the sign of the awful tragedy 
 of sin, of the revolt of the race against God, of 
 the blasphemous suicide of the human soul in 
 the Garden of Eden. But it is a sign in which 
 there is the promise of triumph and victory. 
 That victory is won in the death of the Cross. 
 God did not merely come as Messiah to lead, 
 by His example, humanity to triumph, that 
 were impossible ; but He came to stand by the 
 side of fallen man, to walk calmly with him 
 the way of shame, to step fearlessly into that 
 death which is the wages of sin so that the race 
 might be redeemed from sin and death. The 
 Cross then suddenly irradiates light — a lurid, 
 painful, awful light at first, a light that shines 
 in the death of the Holy One upon the Cross 
 
The Biology of the Cross 2 1 
 
 for human sin. This suffering, this shame, 
 this association of Himself with sinful man is 
 redemptive. Its object lies far beyond the 
 Cross itself. It is the universal love of God 
 that suddenly, with dramatic flashing vividness, 
 bursts into human life to transform and to save. 
 Christ was one with the race. He was the 
 central heart and conscience of the race. He 
 felt the awful load of guilt that bore the guilty 
 race down and bowed beneath the sentence of 
 righteousness. Even our half -developed con- 
 science demands a God who hates and punishes 
 sin, and we can worship and respect no other. 
 Christ's conscience went farther, He saw that 
 He Himself must suffer because He was one 
 with the sinful race. He saw in the pain, 
 misery and death of mankind the marks of the 
 divine anger, and He took that pain, misery, 
 and death into His own bosom. He saw the 
 wrath of God revealed from heaven against 
 human iniquity, and He opened wide His arms 
 to receive its shock and to shield His brethren. 
 From the first day of human transgression there 
 had been gathering a cloud of just indignation. 
 It culminated when the heavens grew dark at 
 Christ's crucifixion. But out of that darkness 
 emerged a triumphant Saviour-Man ; out of that 
 darkness came the revelation once for all of the 
 holiness of God ; out of that darkness came the 
 revelation that God must first be just before 
 He can be merciful. Any scheme of theology 
 
22 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 which leaves out the Cross may be an applica- 
 tion of Christianity, but it is not Christianity 
 itself ; for Christianity is essentially union with 
 the crucified and risen Christ. 
 
 IV 
 
 Christianity is the outflow of the Cross, and 
 Christianity is life. We have failed in theology 
 to grip the souls of men because we have tried 
 to press into creeds and definitions the opera- 
 tions of the vital forces in the kingdom of 
 grace. Definitions here, if not impossible, are 
 at least dangerous. They have an inherent 
 tendency to substitute themselves for the things 
 defined. The terms in which the fact is ex- 
 pressed creep into the place of the fact itself. 
 The reality is removed insensibly to a remote 
 distance behind the verbal symbols which rep- 
 resent it. The way of access to it is blocked 
 and its influence is restricted by the forms of 
 expression invented to define it. Thus the 
 creeds and confessions and definitions which 
 theologians have used to set forth to the world 
 the operations of divine grace — those operations 
 in which the living powers present in the world 
 and at work for the world's redemption mani- 
 fest themselves — have to a large extent covered 
 and hidden the vital elements in Christianity so 
 that it has become a mystical system instead of 
 a revealed life. 
 
The Biology of the Cross 23 
 
 When we come into the kingdom of the 
 Cross we are not dealing with formulas but 
 with vital forces. The Cross was planted upon 
 Golgotha that men might have life. Life was 
 the burden of the teaching of Jesus. He did 
 not set Himself to tell men how to organize 
 the state or how to formulate a system of the- 
 ology. This was not because Jesus was not 
 interested in these things, but because He rec- 
 ognized that back of these things there was a 
 vital principle at work building states and 
 commonwealths and evolving systems of the- 
 ology. Back of the state was the individual, 
 back of the individual is the soul, and the one 
 supreme element of soul is life. Touch and 
 change the life and you have given a new 
 course to the being, you have given a new ex- 
 pression, a new character to the soul. This 
 Jesus knew. He knew that the only way to 
 make the body politic alive was to regenerate 
 the individual. Thus, when He touched the 
 life of humanity and erected the Cross in the 
 heart of human history as the sign of the de- 
 struction of sin and death He created a new 
 life-force destined ultimately to transform the 
 kingdoms of this world into the kingdom of 
 Jehovah God. When he opened the way 
 through the Cross for individual redemption 
 He laid the basis for the ultimate salvation of 
 all civilization. When He brought life and 
 immortality to light through the Cross He es- 
 
24 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 tablished a new divine environment for man 
 and fertilized human nature to its farthest 
 border. 
 
 The New Testament conception of Christian- 
 ity is life, but it is life through the Cross. To 
 the apostles the Christian was a new creature, 
 a new being. The current conception of Chris- 
 tianity as we find it in the inspired record is 
 expressed in terms of life. It was after the 
 age of inspiration had closed and the age of 
 theology had begun that men began to seek 
 the origin of Christianity among the philos- 
 ophies. And it does not seem to occur to the 
 scholars of to-day who continue to contrast it 
 with human philosophies of the past and scheme 
 to fit it into philosophies of later growth, that 
 it is much more than a philosophy, that it in- 
 cludes a science, a biology pure and simple. 
 
 The apostles understood Christ to mean, in 
 His teaching, literal life and not simply a new 
 state of being or a new condition of being, 
 though these are included. When He said, " I 
 came that they might have life and have it 
 more abundantly," they understood Him to 
 mean a new vital entity. The apostolic belief 
 is defined by Reuss as " the idea of a real exist- 
 ence, an existence such as is proper to God ; an 
 imperishable existence, — that is to say not sub- 
 ject to the vicissitudes and imperfections of 
 the finite world." This primary idea is repeat- 
 edly presented at least in the negative form. 
 
The Biology of the Cross 25 
 
 It leads to a doctrine of immortality, or, to 
 speak more correctly, of life, far surpassing 
 any that had been expressed in the formulas of 
 the current philosophy and theology, and rest- 
 ing upon promises and conceptions altogether 
 different. The idea of life as it is composed 
 in this system implies the idea of power, an 
 operation, a communication, since this life no 
 longer remains, so to speak, latent or passive in 
 God and in the Word, but through them reaches 
 the believer. It is not a mental, somnolent 
 thing ; it is not a plant without fruit ; it is a 
 germ which is to find fullest development. 
 
 This life which Christ brings into the world 
 and which He makes possible for all men is the 
 product of His sacrifice upon the Cross. With 
 a soul that is sinful and hence spiritually dead 
 life cannot begin until there is deliverance. 
 Jesus, as the Physician of the soul, had first to 
 deal not with growth but with deformity, with 
 sin and death ; and Jesus, who alone has an- 
 alyzed sin, has alone prescribed its cure. When 
 He cried out on the Cross, " It is finished," it 
 was then that the gates of death were broken 
 down. With the reign of death broken, all 
 those who had been held under its power were 
 given access to the kingdom of life. This right 
 Christ purchased. After the tribute of His 
 voluntary expiation death had no more domin- 
 ion over Him, and through Him no more 
 dominion over those who accept His sacrifice. 
 
26 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 When Christ offered up Himself wrath to the 
 uttermost was spent upon human sin. The 
 shafts of death were forever shattered. He 
 triumphed in His death over death. Not only 
 so, but that His victory might be complete we 
 are informed by two of the apostles that Christ 
 triumphantly descended into the lower world 
 and took formal possession of the kingdom of 
 the dead. "Now that He ascended," says 
 Paul, " what is it but that He also descended 
 (first) into the lower parts of the earth ?" whence, 
 in the strong figure of Scripture, " He led cap- 
 tivity captive." Triumphing over all the 
 enemies of our salvation — sin, death, and 
 Satan — in His Cross ; having asserted His au- 
 thority and Lordship over the kingdom of death 
 and the grave, Christ comes forth triumphing 
 and triumphant. This triumph was won 
 through the sacrifice of the Cross, which sac- 
 rifice clears away the old obstructions between 
 God and man, sets up a new series of conditions 
 under which it is possible for the divine power 
 to operate, introduces into the world a new 
 all-mastering energy, and plants within the 
 individual believer a new life consciously de- 
 pendent upon God and controlled and borne 
 along by an infinite and resistless force. It 
 was through the Cross that the wall of par- 
 tition was broken down between God and man 
 and the divine-human type of life, through re- 
 generation, made possible. 
 
The Biology of the Cross 27 
 
 V 
 
 The Cross is planted firmly in the history of 
 humanity as the sacrificial cause of spiritual 
 life. What man could not do for himself God 
 did for him, preparing the atonement in His 
 own eternal nature and offering, as a gift, sal- 
 vation and life. Christ is the sacrifice for sin. 
 As in the Epistle to the Eomans He is the end 
 of the law for righteousness ; so, in the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, He is the end of the sacrifices 
 for eternal salvation. 
 
 But let us remember that it was a son of the 
 race as well as the Son of God who was sacri- 
 ficed. Hence the Cross stands solid in the centre 
 of human life. This is as it should be. If sin 
 is a principle in man's life, then it is evident 
 that it cannot be effected by a simple historical 
 act exhibited from without ; it must be met by 
 an opposing principle from within. This con- 
 dition the Cross meets. Nothing that belongs 
 to the incarnate history of Jesus can be regarded 
 as terminating in Himself. He was not man 
 for His own sake ; had He joined us for His own 
 glory His alliance with the race would not have 
 been by incarnation and birth into its dying 
 lineage. He became man that He might give 
 to us what He needed not for Himself. The 
 incarnation was the method of His approach to 
 the Cross. Remembering that the Redeemer's 
 duty was His passion, and that in His example 
 as proposed to us this is always prominent, we 
 
28 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 can see the force of Peter's words, " Christ also 
 hath once suffered for sin, the just for the un- 
 just." 
 
 But the Christ that suffered was a member 
 of the race. Humanity in Him was being 
 reconciled to God by this oblation. We are 
 Christ's and Christ is ours. The Redeemer was 
 not His own, but our possession. He gave 
 Himself to us before He gave Himself for us. 
 When He obeyed unto a sacrificial death He un- 
 did our sin. He was our Redeeming Repre- 
 sentative ; our Sin-offering and Burnt-offering in 
 one. But let us remember that He is the Son 
 of Man as well as the Son of God, and that in 
 Him humanity is meeting the divine satisfac- 
 tion for sin. His death includes our death. 
 The Cross marks the end of the old humanity 
 and the beginning of a new human family with 
 Christ as the spiritual head. The death of the 
 Christ on the Cross is the life of the soul of 
 man in the new kingdom. 
 
 The Cross is also the method of development 
 for the soul. Christian fellowship and service 
 are products of the Cross, and, for us as for 
 Christ, there is no glory except through suffer- 
 ing. Close fellowship with God has always 
 proven a costly, self-sacrificing service. A life 
 of carelessness is to nature and self the sweetest, 
 but it is not the best. Christ's life of sacrifice 
 is the most bitter of all, but it is to be preferred 
 above all. God laid a world-sin on a world- 
 
The Biology of the Cross 29 
 
 soul in order that the soul of the world might 
 enter into His own divine experience and be 
 saved with an everlasting salvation. Progress 
 is made by suffering, and, like every other great 
 fundamental principle of life, this is embodied 
 in the economy of human nature and confirmed 
 by the sweep of human history. The Cross is 
 the condition of every achievement. Jesus re- 
 mains forever the convincing illustration of this 
 severe formula. In His own life-history He was 
 the grain of divine wheat planted in human soil. 
 He must first die before there could be a glori- 
 ous harvest of redeemed souls. The Cross of 
 humiliation and death must come or else there 
 can be no exaltation and glory. Christ went 
 by the way of the Cross because it was the only 
 way divine wisdom could plan and divine jus- 
 tice could sanction. It was the only way by 
 which life could be brought to man. By 
 becoming, in His death, the food of men's souls, 
 Christ brought a new life into their souls. 
 Over and over again He declares Himself to be 
 " the life " and the " source of life " for man, 
 but that life-giving power of His is condi- 
 tioned on His death. 
 
 Christ has nothing to offer this world, if it 
 would live, but the Cross. He was willing to 
 undertake the salvation of every soul, but He 
 knew no other way for the soul's salvation 
 except the Cross. As He went to His Cross 
 for men's souls He now calls upon men to 
 
30 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 follow His example. " If any man will be My 
 disciple, let him deny himself, take up his cross, 
 and follow Me." It is only as men are cruci- 
 fied with Christ, only as they die through His 
 Cross to self and the world that they rise again 
 to newness of life. If His disciples wanted to 
 sit on His throne they must drink of His cup 
 and be baptized with the baptism of His suffering. 
 Jesus did not walk one way Himself and pro. 
 pose another way for His disciples, but He in- 
 vited them to His experience if they desired 
 His life. He nowhere commands men to cling 
 to His Cross, but He everywhere commands 
 men to carry His Cross ; and out of that daily 
 crucifixion commanded there are born the most 
 beautiful Christian characters. This is the 
 illustration of that selflessness which is the Law 
 of Holiness, the enforcement of that death 
 which is the gate of life. There is no salva- 
 tion, no hope of everlasting life but in the 
 Cross. 
 
II 
 
 CHRIST THE HEAD OF A NEW HUMANITY 
 
 THE Cross is made significant to hu- 
 manity because of the person who 
 hung thereon. If there are forces 
 emanating from Calvary working for the salva- 
 tion of the world it is because of Him who sanc- 
 tified with His sacrifice the cruel tree. Had 
 there not been on the Cross a Saviour-Man then 
 the crucifixion would have been simply a pa- 
 thetic tragedy. But as it is the tree of shame 
 has become the sign of rescue for the race, the 
 Cross of suffering has become the hope of 
 triumph for the world. 
 
 In the biology of the Cross we come nat- 
 urally to the life of the one who made the Cross 
 a way of life to the world. If there is to be a 
 new type of men in the world, a type called Chris- 
 tian, then there must first be an antecedent type 
 from which this new race must generate. From 
 antecedent life all life must come. The pres- 
 ervation of type is a law of God. Like begets 
 like in the spiritual world as well as in the ma- 
 terial world. Jesus is the source of this new 
 life. He is the antitypical Christian. 
 
 As a matter of history it is plain that the 
 force which started Christianity was the person 
 
 3 1 
 
32 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 Jesus. He was and is the core of His own Gos- 
 pel. From His wonderful personality emanate 
 the saving powers which vitalize the Christian 
 system. These vital powers are the life-forces 
 resident in His personality. In stating this fact 
 we make no assumptions and propound no the- 
 ories. It is not necessary to take anything for 
 granted or to adopt any particular theological 
 or philosophical system in order to see clearly 
 and beyond the possibility of mistake that all 
 the forces and influences of Christianity in the 
 world have emanated directly from Jesus Christ. 
 He is the soul and life of the Christian religion. 
 But Christ is more than the source of moral in- 
 fluences ; He is the source of life, the spiritual 
 head of a redeemed family. The most charac- 
 teristic designation which Paul applies to Jesus 
 is "The second Adam." "This title," says 
 Stevens, " suggests the idea that He is the head 
 and founder of a new humanity ; that in Him 
 a new human history takes its rise. The rele- 
 vant passages are 1 Cor. xv., and Romans v. In 
 the former chapter the apostle is contrasting 
 death and life. Adam is the cause of the one ; 
 Christ of the other. ' Since by man (Adam) 
 came death, by man (Christ) came life.' Later 
 (1 Cor. xv. 45-49) he contrasts their natures. 
 The first Adam was made a living soul — a 
 creature sharing the perishable life of nature ; 
 the last Adam became (in His resurrection) a 
 life-giving spirit. He is the ' second man from 
 
Christ the Head of a New Humanity 33 
 
 heaven ' ; He is ' the heavenly one.' In 
 Romans v. 12 Christ is the counterpart of 
 Adam. Through Him comes to man the abun- 
 dance of grace and of the gift of righteousness 
 which outdoes the power of sin introduced by 
 Adam. 'Through His obedience many are 
 made righteous (verse 19), and grace reigns 
 through righteousness unto eternal life through 
 Jesus Christ our Lord.' " 
 
 This is the end contemplated in the Gospel. 
 The kingdom of God is a kingdom of a new 
 order in the universe. Christ is the type of 
 citizen. This new kingdom is set over against 
 the kingdoms of this world in which Adam is 
 the type of citizen. In Adam resided the life- 
 type for the redeemed family. Adam was the 
 life-head of the sons of men ; Christ is the life- 
 head of the children of God. 
 
 If Christ then be the spiritual life-head of 
 the redeemed family, the founder of a new hu- 
 manity, to stop short of Him in our inquiry 
 would be to fail to trace the life-powers in the 
 biology of the Cross to their source. Who then 
 is this person that stands at the head of the 
 Christian-life kingdom ? What is His relation 
 to the Cross ? And through Him what is the 
 relation of the Cross to both God and man ? 
 
 I 
 
 In the redemptive work of Christ we are con- 
 fronted first of all with the divine side of the 
 
34 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 transaction. The atoning work of Jesus is 
 God's effort to restore the moral order of the 
 universe. God is in Christ reconciling the 
 world to Himself. This brings us face to face 
 with the unique claim of Jesus. He declares 
 that He is the Son of God ; He also asserts that 
 He is the Son of Man. On the one hand He is 
 distinct from Him whom He calls Father, and 
 yet so related to Him that He fully possesses 
 His nature ; on the other hand, He is distinct 
 from His fellows among men, and yet one with 
 them in life and experience. 
 
 We pass by the theological theories concern- 
 ing the nature of His personality. We are con- 
 cerned with the fact that the life of God and man 
 meet in Christ and form a new type — the God- 
 man life — and shall endeavour to set that fact 
 forth. Jesus did really assume the true and 
 perfect nature of humanity into a personal and 
 complete union with the divine nature so as to 
 become true man while He remained true God 
 in one person forever. This doctrine may be 
 stated as follows : 
 
 1. Jesus Christ is the eternal Son of God, the 
 
 second person in the Trinity, of one sub- 
 stance and equal with the Father. 
 
 2. This eternal Son of God became man, and yet 
 
 was at the same time truly God. 
 
 3. In becoming man He assumed a complete hu- 
 
 man nature, a nature consisting of a real 
 body and a rational soul. 
 
Christ the Head of a New Humanity 35 
 
 4. The human nature which He assumed was 
 
 our common nature, the universal nature 
 of the human family. 
 
 5. He inherited this nature from His mother, 
 
 Mary, and in her and her progenitors it 
 was, before He assumed it, the same fallen 
 nature which every child of the race in- 
 herits. 
 
 6. In the incarnation, in the act of conception 
 
 by the Holy Spirit, the human nature which 
 He received was purged from all hereditary 
 taint so that Christ was the Holy One, the 
 immaculate Son of God. 
 
 7. In the Atonement it was not the divine na- 
 
 ture as such, nor was it the human nature 
 as such — it was neither God alone, nor man 
 alone, that suffered and died, but it was 
 the Christ, the God-Man, in His complete 
 and entire personality. 
 
 In this union divinity is not dormant nor hu- 
 manity deficient. There are those who hold 
 that the immaterial part of Christ's humanity 
 is only metamorphosed Deity. They claim 
 that Christ had a sensitive but not a rational 
 soul, and that the Logos performed the func- 
 tions of reason. Some critics have intensified 
 this position by extending their denial to all 
 Christ's immaterial being, claiming that His 
 body alone was derived from the virgin. This 
 theory gives neither real divinity nor real hu- 
 manity, and consequently no real union between 
 the two. 
 
 There is not, either, a double personality. 
 
36 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 The theory of two personalities, two conscious- 
 nesses and wills, was first elaborated by John 
 of Damascus. It distinguishes between Christ's 
 humanity and His divinity in such a way as to 
 divide Him into two halves; either half ap- 
 pears virtually complete without the other, and 
 both of which are united, not in a single and 
 sincere personality, but in an outward mani- 
 festation and concealed life, covering in some 
 mysterious way a double centre of existence. 
 It is true that Christ possesses two natures, but 
 as Strong observes, " this possession of two 
 natures does not involve a double personality 
 in the God-Man for the reason that the Logos 
 takes into union with Himself, not an indi- 
 vidual man with an already developed person- 
 ality, but human nature which has had no sep- 
 arate existence apart from the divine nature." 
 
 There is a single personality. There are two 
 natures, but one person with one consciousness 
 and one will. To say that Christ in His ca- 
 pacity as man was ignorant, and yet at the 
 same time in His capacity as God was omnis- 
 cient, is to accuse Christ of unveracity. "When- 
 ever Christ spoke it was not one of the natures 
 that spoke but the person in whom both natures 
 were united. There is no intimation in all 
 Scripture that the God-Man is not a single will 
 and consciousness. There is no hint or indica- 
 tion that Christ is leading a double life, reign- 
 ing consciously as God while He is suffering 
 
Christ the Head of a New Humanity 37 
 
 apparently as man. His personality is simple 
 and indivisible. And while the manner in 
 which this union is affected may be beyond 
 our comprehension, yet the difficulty of con- 
 ceiving the manner of the divine unfolding in 
 human nature does not destroy for us the re- 
 ality of the divine-human life. He who said, 
 " I thirst," said also, " Before Abraham was, I 
 am." 
 
 The reality of the divine-human union in one 
 personality is fundamental. If the one who 
 died on Calvary were a mere theophany, then 
 His death was little more than a divine spec- 
 tacle. In this transaction the body of Jesus 
 was broken, but God was not touched. But if 
 the Father truly spared not His own Son, but 
 delivered Him up for us all, then the Father 
 also made an invisible sacrifice and an infinite 
 surrender of love for our sakes. Then the Son 
 also suffered, making a visible sacrifice, and 
 pouring out His soul unto death to redeem us 
 from the fear of death and the power of sin. 
 This is what did take place. When the light 4 
 ning stroke of indignation fell upon the Cross, 
 it smote the heart of the Son of God. When 
 He bore our sins in His own body on the tree 
 it was the person of the only begotten Son 
 that suffered. In this crucifixion act there was 
 expressed both the justice of God and the love 
 of God. As God's holiness gathered all the 
 thunderbolts of the Divine Anger into one ter- 
 
38 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 rifle fulmination there was expressed the justice 
 of God ; but at the same time the love of God 
 was expressed in His only begotten Son who 
 hung upon the tree and gathered into His own 
 bosom all the darts of the Divine Justice. The 
 age-long sufferings of God for human sin was 
 condensed and expressed in the agony of His 
 only Son. God provides the sacrifice for sin ; 
 He gathers into Himself all the penalties due 
 humanity. This is the relation of the Cross to 
 God. Through the incarnation divinity is con- 
 nected with the Cross and vitalizes that trans- 
 action with the life of heaven. 
 
 II 
 
 But Christ is human as well as divine. If 
 there is any fact which stands out distinct and 
 luminous in the experience of the early Chris- 
 tians it is that they saw in Jesus not merely a 
 mysterious manifestation of divinity in a form 
 calculated to beget new doubts, but they saw 
 in Him something utterly different. They saw 
 the mystery reduced to terms of simplicity ; the 
 revelation levelled to the direct apprehension 
 of man, the unveiling of divinity under condi- 
 tions which were so similar to the things they 
 were acquainted with in human life, that they 
 dissolved doubts and difficulties. They saw in 
 Christ a brother, true, a brother linked onto 
 the life of Jehovah, but still a brother of the 
 race, making supreme effort to save the race. 
 
Christ the Head of a New Humanity 39 
 
 The work of Christ, therefore, in His effort 
 of redemption is a part of the history of hu- 
 manity. The sufferings of Jesus are the suf- 
 ferings not only of the Son of God, but also of 
 a member of the family of man. He is the Son 
 of Man as well as the Son of God, and as such 
 is making answer to God on the question of the 
 divine demand upon humanity. He meets the 
 issue squarely and solves for all time the prob- 
 lem of evil for the race. 
 
 This is the meaning of His human life. He 
 was bone of our bone, flesh of our flesh, blood 
 of our blood ; He was one with us in all the 
 experiences of human pain and suffering in 
 order that He might come, as a brother of the 
 race, into such a relationship with the race as 
 to stand sponsor for it. To become legally 
 responsible for man, Christ had to become a 
 co-partner in nature with man. He who deals 
 with the problem of evil must attack it from 
 the human side as well as the divine side. Sin 
 is somehow so related to humanity that it has 
 become identified with these bodies of ours, and 
 identified in such a way as to find its expres- 
 sion through them. Hence, Christ comes into 
 our nature, takes upon Himself the form of 
 sinful flesh that He may condemn sin in the 
 flesh. 
 
 For centuries the devil had reigned supreme 
 through the flesh. His will of evil had been 
 the dominant power in the world. Christ, the 
 
40 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 new man, steps out upon the arena of human 
 action and questions the authority of the devil, 
 He comes clothed in the nature which the devil 
 has always found it so easy to overcome, and 
 challenges the power of Satan. He assumes 
 that the nature of humanity, as God originally 
 made it, was sufficient to withstand the power 
 of the devil when that nature was put in right 
 relation to God. He at no time retreats behind 
 the shelter of His divine nature, but as the Son 
 of Man puts Himself in the right relation to 
 God and then challenges the whole host of 
 demons. Jesus comes into the human-life king- 
 dom, the kingdom which the devil has usurped, 
 and conquers Satan and drives him out. 
 
 It is the facts of life, its secret potencies, its 
 mysterious limitations, its magnificent unfold- 
 in gs that we are now face to face with. Christ 
 comes to open a new way into the kingdom of 
 life. This He accomplishes not simply by a 
 legal transaction, but by a vital relation. He 
 did not stand aloof from the race and make 
 a legal adjustment that would satisfy divine 
 justice, but He became one of the race and met 
 actually every divine demand made upon the 
 race. He met also every legal requirement 
 and satisfied fully all the claims of offended 
 and outraged justice. He became a part of 
 the universal humanity, through which the 
 forces of evil had operated in the past, and 
 by a life of supreme obedience to God and a 
 
Christ the Head of a New Humanity 41 
 
 death which was a complete satisfaction for 
 sin, He banished evil from the new-life king- 
 dom. This kingdom He proposes to make uni- 
 versal. He calls it the kingdom of God. 
 
 Ill 
 
 As the result of Christ's relation to God, on 
 the one hand, and to man, on the other hand, 
 thus bringing together God and man in one 
 person, we have the two parties concerned in 
 human redemption meeting and sharing in the 
 sublime sacrifice of the Cross. This gives us a 
 new conception of redemption. Salvation is 
 not something thrust upon man in which he 
 has no vital interest apart from the benefits 
 received. It is not simply a crumb of benevo- 
 lence falling from the tables of infinite plenty. 
 Nor is it simply a commercial transaction in 
 which Jehovah God bargains through His Son 
 to give the devil so much suffering for the souls 
 of men on the one hand, and, on the other hand, 
 bargains with men to give them eternal life if 
 they will give to His Son so much service. 
 Nor is it the stoop of infinite condescension in 
 which the Divine One, touched with pity by 
 man's poor sin-stricken state, gathers His right- 
 eous robes around Himself and stoops to save in 
 the most condescending way the helpless wrecks 
 of mankind, preserving in all the transaction 
 such an attitude as would make the saved sin- 
 ner feel the stigma of his former state and 
 
42 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 cause him to go grovelling as an unworthy 
 reprobate through the rest of his life. These 
 ideas, which have found more or less currency 
 among men, are caricatures on the work of Jesus. 
 "We must also steer clear of the idea that it 
 is by a simple deed of amnesty that man is in- 
 vited to return and be at peace with God ; it is 
 by a deed of expiation. It is not by nullifying 
 the powers of the law that man is offered a 
 free and full discharge from penalty, but it is 
 by executing the law upon another. God does 
 not lift man's iniquities from him and scatter 
 them to the four winds of forgetfulness, but 
 Jesus Christ lifted them off the shoulders of 
 the race aud placed them on His own shoulders. 
 The guilt of the sinner is not done away with 
 by a mere act of forgetfulness, but it is atoned 
 for and washed out by the blood of the Lamb. 
 The legal side of this transaction is, however 
 only one side of it ; the life side is the main 
 feature. Christ met the conditions of the law, 
 but it was in order that a new-life kingdom 
 might be established. He united the life of God 
 and man into one conscious being and thereby 
 established a new spiritual headship for the 
 race in order that there might be a new hu- 
 manity. He obeyed all the laws necessary to 
 this union. Justice and righteousness had to 
 be satisfied. Every divine condition had to be 
 met so that the resulting union of the two 
 natures would be harmonious and the resulting 
 
Christ the Head of a New Humanity 43 
 
 life free. This was the legal side of the ques- 
 tion. These conditions were all met. The God- 
 Man, free and yet a member of the race, as- 
 sumed humanity's obligations and met the full 
 penalty for all human failures. 
 
 Here lies, plain and distinct, the fundamental 
 fact of the Gospel. That fact is that Christ, as 
 the God-Man, assumes the guilt and conse- 
 quences of a world's sin. We do not profess 
 to be able to give an explanation of how this 
 is possible. Theories manifold have been in- 
 vented in order to make it plain. ISTo one of 
 them has gone to the bottom of the divine full- 
 ness. But we do know that Christ, in His 
 perfect manhood wedded to true divinity, is 
 capable of entering into such closeness of rela- 
 tion with humanity, and with every man, as 
 that on Him can be laid the iniquity of us all. 
 
 This is the method of Jehovah God. The 
 spirit of redemption has always been at work. 
 No sooner has one part of nature done or re- 
 ceived an injury than all the rest of nature 
 comes like a kind doctor to heal the wound. 
 If the lightning strikes a tree, nature seems to 
 become more tender to it, and, hardly has the 
 flash passed, until the healing, redeeming, 
 motherly spirit has taken the tree in charge 
 to bind up its wounds. We call this the self- 
 restoring power of nature, but whatever we 
 call it, it is after all the redemptive force ; it is 
 God at work keeping His creation together and 
 
44 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 making it whole. In the universe He is Shep- 
 herd, Mother, Physician, Friend, protecting 
 even the sparrows and coming to heal and to 
 cure and to reconstruct all things from the ten- 
 derest blade of grass to the most ponderous 
 planet. Shall the God of grace operate in 
 continuous healing power in nature and allow 
 the sons of men to decay in sin ? Shall His 
 power of redemption pervade the entire uni- 
 verse and not sweep the fields of human life ? 
 Such an attitude would be a violation of His 
 nature. The Christ of God takes away the sin 
 of the world. He redeems the world. He 
 does not try to save it ; He does not compro- 
 mise with it ; He does not say, " I will do the 
 best I can under these disastrous circumstances' ' ; 
 but He meets the tragic need of a sin-sick earth 
 and opens the door of hope and life to all. 
 Christ has procured the right of release for 
 every soul. The conditions of pardon have 
 been met for every man. What the first Adam 
 did has been undone by the second Adam. 
 
 IV 
 
 Christ, by coming into the life-kingdom of 
 man, put Himself in a position where He could 
 assume man's obligations, but that is not all He 
 did. To purchase freedom from man is one 
 thing, to give freedom to man is another thing. 
 Man's trouble did not consist simply in the fact 
 that he was a sinner, but he was spiritually 
 
Christ the Head of a New Humanity 45 
 
 dead as well. To establish the conditions of 
 pardon for the race is of little avail unless the 
 souls of men are quickened. Salvation does not 
 consist in a simple act of forgiveness, though 
 forgiveness is included. A saved soul is a re- 
 generated soul. The key word in the religion 
 of Jesus is life. That which He gives to us is 
 life. If the work of Christ means anything to 
 the race it means a new life relation to God. 
 Jesus brings us into the family of the Father. 
 He brings the life of divinity out of the in- 
 scrutable and unknowable mysteries of the 
 divine regions of existence and so focalizes 
 that life in a human personality that we can 
 comprehend and understand somewhat the 
 Father's love. He brings human nature, the 
 life of man, out of the depths to which it had 
 fallen and unites it onto the life of divinity in 
 such a way as to constitute a new- life kingdom. 
 This kingdom is a new thing in the universe, 
 and the citizens of this new kingdom are be- 
 ings of a new order. It is a kingdom in which 
 there is united the highest order of material be- 
 ing, — the man-life, with the highest order of 
 spiritual being, — the God-life, into a new order 
 of being, — the God-Man life. This new per- 
 son is of the family of heaven. He is not 
 simply a creature, but a son. He has come 
 into the possession of the highest principle of 
 life by being brought into contact with the 
 Father through the new spiritual head, Christ 
 
46 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 Jesus. This has been accomplished by Christ 
 in a supernatural way, the incarnation. When 
 the Logos became flesh, divinity was brought 
 into the life-sphere of man. But in the same 
 act humanity was brought into the life-sphere 
 of God. While God humbled Himself in stoop- 
 ing to this relation, humanity was glorified by 
 it and given a divine-life environment. Hu- 
 man life was then invested with a new mean- 
 ing. It was then given a new life-centre. 
 There was established, through the redemptive 
 work of Christ, a Christ-life kingdom. This 
 Christ-life kingdom is the God-Man kingdom. 
 The life-source in this kingdom is Christ. Be- 
 cause we have personal relation with Christ we 
 come into the Christ-life, become members of 
 the family of God, and pass out of the kingdom 
 of sin and death. " There is therefore now no 
 condemnation to those who are in Christ Jesus, 
 for the law of the spirit of life in Christ hath 
 made me free from the law of sin and death. 
 For what the law could not do in that it was 
 weak through the flesh, God, sending His own 
 Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin 
 condemned sin in the flesh that the righteous- 
 ness of the law might be made manifest in us 
 who walk not after the flesh, but after the 
 
 Spirit." 
 
 V 
 
 The effect of this whole system is salutary 
 and tremendous. As Dr. Van Dyke says : " If 
 
Christ the Head of a New Humanity 47 
 
 the Son of God, who is the image of the 
 Father, by laying aside the outward preroga- 
 tives of His divine mode of existence, actually 
 becomes human, then, and only then, the di- 
 vine image in which man was created is no 
 mere figure of speech, but' a substantial like- 
 ness of spiritual being. There is a true fellow- 
 ship between our souls and our Father in 
 heaven. Virtue is not a vain dream, but a defi- 
 nite striving towards His perfection. Revela- 
 tion is not a deception, but a message from Him 
 who knows all to those who know only in part. 
 Prayer is not an empty form, but a real com- 
 munion." And he might have added, Chris- 
 tianity is not simply belief in a creed or obedi- 
 ence to a set of rules, but a life in which the 
 soul is to live in fellowship with the Father. 
 
 Such a conception at once rectifies, purifies, 
 and elevates our view of God. It is through 
 the human life of the Son that we become ac- 
 quainted with the Father. " No man hath seen 
 God at any time, the only begotten Son who is 
 in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared 
 Him." It is through Christ and His work 
 that we come to know the most divine character- 
 istic of God. This is not vast size, dazzling 
 physical glory that overawes the senses, but 
 infinite goodness, holiness that cannot be 
 tempted, and love that accommodates itself to 
 the needs of all His creatures. The resistless 
 might of natural forces shows us only the 
 
48 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 omnipotence of God. The power that upholds 
 the planets speaks but of physical force and tells 
 us nothing of a holy, loving being. Nothing 
 but an impersonal power meets us in all these 
 mighty manifestations of nature, and though 
 the whole universe fell into ruins around us, or 
 though we saw a new world spring into being, 
 still we might suppose that the power by which 
 all this was effected was impersonal, and could 
 hold no fellowship with us. Only, then, through 
 that which is personal, only through that which 
 is like ourselves, only through that which is moral, 
 can God reveal His true character to us. This 
 we find in His Son, our brother, Christ Jesus. 
 
 If we doubt that there is a divine goodness 
 upholding all things let us look to Christ. It 
 is in Him that we see goodness tested and tried 
 under circumstances and in environments which 
 we can examine and understand. This is good- 
 ness carried to the highest pitch, goodness 
 triumphant, the goodness of One who comes 
 among us from a higher sphere it is true, but 
 of One who lived one common life with us. It 
 is the goodness of God translating itself into 
 the actuality of human history. This revela- 
 tion of God gives us a new conception of God. 
 For if the Son of God can surrender omnipres- 
 ence, omnipotence, and omniscience without 
 destroying His personal identity, then the 
 central essence of Deity is neither infinite wis- 
 dom nor infinite power, but infinite goodness. 
 
Christ the Head of a New Humanity 49 
 
 And so from the very lowest valley of humilia- 
 tion we catch sight of the very loftiest sum- 
 mit of theology, the serene and shining truth 
 that God is Love. 
 
 In Christ, through His human-divine relation, 
 we have revealed also the true and ultimate 
 glory of humanity. Sin had so spoiled human 
 nature that we could never know its original 
 glory and dignity if the Logos had not come 
 into it and lifted it up. Sin had spoiled the 
 work of creation. Man had fallen far short of 
 the glory of God. It seemed as if failure was 
 to be written on the face of earthly affairs. 
 But the Logos grasped the divine concept, came 
 down to earth and gathered together the 
 broken fragments of fallen humanity and 
 worked out into a spotless person God's idea of 
 manhood. Humanity, in its union with the 
 divine nature in Him, and, through His grace 
 which makes union with the divine nature a 
 fact in the life of every believer, is immeasur- 
 ably exalted in dignity and worth, but at the 
 same time becomes more intensely human. The 
 Christian, which is the product of the redemp- 
 tive work of Christ and the ultimate outcome of 
 God's saving thought towards the race, is the 
 true, the ideal, the ultimate manhood. This 
 work of God's grace is an over-reach of love 
 towards mankind, and the complete overthrow 
 of all the wicked devices of the devil. 
 
 Man was created a little lower than the 
 
50 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 angels, but in the final culmination of the re- 
 demptive purpose of God in Christ, the re- 
 deemed will be infinitely higher than the angels. 
 This final outcome is not because of sin, but in 
 spite of it. In the beginning God made man a 
 creature ; in redemption through Christ's Cross 
 God makes man a son. Thus through the 
 sacrifice of the divine-human Christ that which 
 sin would have ruined is lifted up to the proud 
 position of Sonship in the life-kingdom of the 
 Father. This is the supreme triumph of hu- 
 manity accomplished for us by our human-di- 
 vine brother, Christ. It is the supreme thwart- 
 ing of the purposes of Satan. It is the supreme 
 salvation of humanity. 
 
 This glorious result is obtained through the 
 sacrificial work of Christ. It is through the 
 redemptive work of the divine-human Son that 
 we are adopted into the family of the Father, 
 and not only adopted into the family, for the 
 work of Christ goes deeper into things than the 
 establishment of mere legal relations, but we are 
 made one with the life of the Father. If the 
 work of Christ means anything to the race it 
 means a life-relationship with God. Christ 
 brings us into the fellowship of the life of the 
 Father as well as the knowledge of God. 
 
 YI 
 
 In the economy of divine doings, Christ's 
 coming and His Cross were necessary. He laid 
 
Christ the Head of a New Humanity 51 
 
 by His Cross both the basis of condemnation 
 and the basis of justification. But the Cross 
 had to be set up ; the sorrow and suffering had 
 to be endured though no answering heart called 
 Him Lord and Saviour. Sin must be dealt with, 
 A divine answer must be given to a Satanic 
 challenge and a human apostasy, and that 
 answer could be given only through the Cross. 
 In the divine plan it was impossible to escape 
 the Cross whether any one responds to the call 
 of love as it sobs out its message on the tree of 
 suffering or not. The Saviour-Man must go by 
 the way of the Cross to fulfill the divine de- 
 mand. It is the eternal must that drives Him 
 to the tree of sacrifice. And the saved-man 
 must go by the way of the Cross also if he would 
 fulfill the divine conditions in the Christ-life 
 kingdom. The Cross is the gateway into glory 
 for all the race, and Christ made it more than a 
 deliverance from sin ; He made it the entrance- 
 way into the life of God. 
 
Ill 
 
 THE EMBKYOLOGY OF THE NEW LIFE 
 
 IN that splendid work of genius, " Natural 
 Law in the Spiritual "World," Henry 
 Drummond, one of the most scientific of 
 all the religious writers, says : " For two hun- 
 dred years the scientific world has been rent 
 with discussions upon the origin of life. Two 
 great schools have defended exactly opposite 
 views — one that matter can spontaneously 
 generate life, the other that life can only come 
 from preexisting life." He then shows by an 
 array of evidence overwhelming that a decided 
 and authoritative conclusion has at last been 
 reached. " So far as science can settle anything, 
 this question is settled. Spontaneous genera- 
 tion has had to be given up. And it is now 
 recognized on every hand that life can only 
 come from the touch of life." 
 
 In the religious world a similar discussion 
 has been waged for more than two hundred 
 years. Exactly opposite views have been taken 
 by two great schools of thought. One has con- 
 tended that spiritual life in man can come only 
 from preexisting life ; the other that it can 
 spontaneously generate itself. They have dif- 
 fered also as to the nature of spiritual life in 
 
 52 
 
The Embryology of the New Life 53 
 
 man. To one school spiritual life is a new 
 entity ; to the other, it is only the old nature 
 regulated. One school holds that Christianity 
 does not consist simply in conformity to a 
 certain set of rules, but that it is a divine life 
 breathed into humanity from the nostrils of 
 God; the other holds that Christianity is a 
 system of faith or a body of doctrine in which 
 is set forth the regulations by which one's life 
 is to be governed, and that by meeting certain 
 specific external demands, the individual is, by 
 a legal process, absolved from all guilt and 
 made free from condemnation. 
 
 The difference between these two positions is 
 radical. According to one theory man is spiri- 
 tually, dead, that is, he is wholly destitute of 
 spiritual life ; according to the other theory man 
 is only in a condition bordering on death ; there 
 is yet in him the germ of spiritual life which only 
 needs stimulation that it may become active and 
 cultivation that it may become dominant. This 
 is simply the spontaneous generation theory 
 and means that a man may become gradually 
 better and better until in course of the proc- 
 ess he reaches that quality of religious nature 
 known as spiritual life. This life is not some- 
 thing added ab extra to the natural man; it is 
 the normal and appropriate development of the 
 natural man. The whole doctrine of regenera- 
 tion is opposed to this theory. The scheme of 
 redemption presupposes that man is dead, dead 
 
54 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 in trespasses and sin. It was because of this 
 fact that Christ came into the world. Life was 
 the gift He brought to man ; as He said, in His 
 magnificent way, " I am come that they might 
 have life, and that they might have it more 
 abundantly." 
 
 I 
 
 Herbert Spencer has given us what he calls 
 a definition of life. " All vital actions," says 
 he, "considered not separately but in their 
 ensemble, ' have for their final purpose the 
 balancing of certain outer processes by certain 
 inner processes. Whence it becomes manifest 
 that life is the definite combination of 
 heterogeneous changes, both simultaneous and 
 successive in correspondence with external co- 
 existences and sequences. Divesting this con- 
 ception of all superfluities and reducing it to its 
 most abstract shape, we see that life is definable 
 as the continuous adjustment of internal rela- 
 tions to external relations." 
 
 This definition does not deal with the pro- 
 duction of life, but only with its maintenance 
 in any given kingdom of being. It points out 
 the relation between environment and life, but 
 there must first be life before there can be cor- 
 respondence of any kind. Behind all adjust- 
 ments of internal relations to external relations 
 there is a vital entity whose business it is to 
 make these adjustments. We call that energy 
 
The Embryology of the New Life 55 
 
 life. This term expresses but does not define 
 for us the vital principle back of all organic 
 being and development. This life principle is 
 distinct, on the one hand, from the matter upon 
 which it operates to produce organic form ; 
 and on the other hand, it is distinct from (al- 
 though it is the cause of) all organic growth and 
 activity. This mysterious something we call 
 life challenges definition. It retreats into mys- 
 tery and all man's wisdom is incapable of coax- 
 ing it out of this inscrutable retreat. Every 
 attempt which man has made to drag this 
 fleeting entity to the light of understanding has 
 only served to exhibit the futility of the attempt 
 and to prove that, while men know a great 
 many interesting and curious facts about life 
 and reproduction, yet, when it comes to life it- 
 self, they can give no intelligent explanation 
 of it. 
 
 But while we cannot tell what life is, yet we 
 can distinguish between the different forms and 
 expressions and types of life in the various life- 
 kingdoms with which we are surrounded. 
 While it is a living principle that animates all 
 organic beings, yet it is not the same principle. 
 There is a different kind or type of life for every 
 species. In the protoplasmatic state it is true 
 that the biologist cannot distinguish between 
 the life-germ of the reptile and the life-germ of 
 the bird. " There is, indeed," says Beale, " a 
 period in the development of every tissue and 
 
56 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 every living thing known to us where there are 
 actually no structural peculiarities whatever — 
 where the whole organism consists of transpar- 
 ent, structureless, semi-fluid living bioplasm — 
 when it would not be possible to distinguish the 
 moving matter which was to evolve the oak 
 from that which was the germ of a vertebrate 
 animal." This structureless, semi-fluid sub- 
 stance called protoplasm is not only the struc- 
 tural unit with which all living bodies, both 
 plant and animal, start in life, but it is the sub- 
 stance with which they are subsequently built 
 up. "Protoplasm," says Huxley, "simple or 
 nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is 
 the clay of the potter. Beast and fowl, reptile 
 and iish, mollusk, worm and polyp are all com- 
 posed of structural units of the same character, 
 namely, masses of protoplasm with a nucleus." 
 But the very moment the organism begins to 
 develop and to take on organic form there is a 
 marked difference. One piece of protoplasm is 
 fashioned into a bird, another piece of the same 
 protoplasm is given the form of a serpent, and 
 still another piece of the same protoplasm is 
 builded into man. What is it that determines 
 the difference ? It is the mysterious something 
 which has entered into this protoplasm. No 
 eye can see it. No science can define it. It is 
 the vital entity we call life. " Protoplasm being 
 the clay," says Henry Drummond, " this some- 
 thing is the potter. And as there is only one 
 
The Embryology of the New Life 57 
 
 elay and yet all these curious forms are devel- 
 oped out of it, it follows necessarily that the 
 difference lies in the potters. There must be in 
 short as many potters as there are forms. There 
 is the potter who segments the worm, and the 
 potter who builds up the form of the dog, and 
 the potter who moulds the man." Moreover 
 each potter confines himself exclusively to 
 working out his own plan. " He appears to have 
 his own plan somehow stamped upon himself, 
 and his work is rigidly to reproduce himself." 
 
 This artist who operates upon matter in this 
 subtle way and carries out the law of conformity 
 type is life. This vital entity being different 
 in each operates to the upbuilding for its own 
 type an external existence. Thus the bird-life 
 seizes upon the things environing it and builds 
 out of these a bird, the image of itself. The 
 reptile-life seizes out of its environment the same 
 chemical elements and fashions them into a rep- 
 tile, the image of itself. In both instances it is 
 the nature of the life within that determines 
 the character of the organic expression. The 
 reptile is but the incarnation of the reptile-life. 
 The visible bird is but the organic expression 
 of the invisible bird-life. Behind all incarna- 
 tions and all visible manifestations of organic 
 form there must first be the vital principle 
 called life, which principle incarnates itself 
 and through this incarnation gives to itself or- 
 ganic form. 
 
58 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 This brings us to the place where the spiritual 
 analogy appears. These lower phenomena of 
 life are but the simpler forms in the operations 
 of the Great God of life. All life has its 
 source in God. But these lower forms do not 
 exhaust the divine operations. There is a 
 higher kingdom of being than that attained by 
 man in the most lofty reaches of his highest 
 correspondences. This higher life, called the 
 spiritual life, obeys the same laws which gov- 
 ern the lower forms of life. As the protoplasm 
 is the clav with which the lower forms of life 
 build organic structures, so is the human soul 
 the spiritual protoplasm with which the heav- 
 enly life builds the spiritual organism. As the 
 bird-life builds up a bird, the image of itself, 
 out of the material protoplasm with which it is 
 environed, so the heavenly life implanted in 
 the inmost nature of man builds up a heavenly 
 being, the image of itself, out of the spiritual 
 nature of man. This is a wonderful analogy, 
 so startling that one hesitates to put it into 
 words. " Yet," as Drummond says, " nature is 
 reverent; and it is her voice to which we 
 listen." 
 
 II 
 
 This throws new light upon man's spiritual 
 nature and puts a new construction on his rela- 
 tions to the kingdom of the heavenly life. 
 Man by nature, and we are dealing with him as 
 
The Embryology of the New Life 59 
 
 Christ found him, is out of correspondence with 
 that higher environment called the spiritual 
 world. But he is out of correspondence with 
 it because his life is not the heavenly type. 
 Environment does not determine the nature of 
 the life, but the nature of the life determines 
 the environment. The difference in the nature 
 of the life of different species is the funda- 
 mental reason for the impregnable barriers 
 which stand between different types. The fish 
 is dead to the universe of the bird not simply 
 because of a failure to correspond to the envi- 
 ronment of the bird, but because it has a dif- 
 ferent kind of life. The animals in the king- 
 doms beneath man are dead to the intellectual 
 and moral kingdoms in which man lives not 
 simply because of a failure to correspond to 
 the environment in these kingdoms, but be- 
 cause the life in each type beneath man is 
 different from the man-life. Hence man is 
 dead to the heavenly life because the type of 
 life which he possesses is of such a nature that 
 it cannot make the " continuous adjustment of 
 internal relations to the external relations " 
 of the heavenly kingdom. In other words man 
 has life, but it is not the divine type ; he lives, 
 but not in the heavenly realm. If one might 
 give the broader meaning to the words of Paul : 
 " The type of life which man has is not subject 
 to the law of God neither indeed can be." 
 We are not now discussing the nature of sin. 
 
6o The Biology of the Cross 
 
 It is enough to know that sin separates from 
 God, that it is apostasy from God. We are 
 not concerned either with the origin of evil. 
 We face the fact that man by evil has suffered 
 the loss of heavenly life. Christ did not in all 
 of His teachings speak of the origin of sin or 
 discuss its specific nature, yet He recognized it 
 as having its seat in the heart, the inner life, 
 the sphere of motive and desire. In His teach- 
 ings He follows the law of conformity to type 
 as set forth in biology. In the thought of 
 Christ the inner life rules the outer life (Matt, 
 vii. 34). Hate is the source of murder (Matt, 
 v. 22). Lust is the essence of adultery (Matt, 
 v. 28). Holding to this conception, which is 
 only the law of conformity to type transferred 
 to the field of moral conduct, Christ taught 
 that character determines the acts and words 
 of men, and that if you change the outer life 
 you must first change the inner nature (Matt, 
 vii. 17-20; xii. 33). That Christ considered 
 the type of life which man possessed of a dif- 
 ferent kind from that which he must have if 
 he would come into the heavenly life is evident 
 from His discourse with Mcodemus. Here in 
 the most unmistakable terms He declares that 
 a man — not Nicodemus simply, but any man — 
 cannot get into the kingdom of heaven until 
 there has first come a radical change in his 
 nature. "That which is born of the flesh is 
 flesh," and it remains flesh and cannot enter 
 
The Embryology of the New Life 61 
 
 the kingdom (1 Cor. xv. 50), and " that which 
 is born of the Spirit is Spirit." 
 
 It is universally admitted, because a universal 
 fact of consciousness, that the feelings and 
 affections are not under the control of the will. 
 No man can love what is hateful to him, or 
 hate what he delights in, by any exercise of 
 his self-determining power. Hence the philoso- 
 phers, with Kant, pronounce the command to 
 love an absurdity, as skeptics declare the com- 
 mand to believe absurd. Man's connection with 
 sin has so affected his life that the type which 
 he now has is " not subject to the law of God 
 neither indeed can be." Man has, through trans- 
 gression, fallen to that position in life where, 
 by no self -determining power which he pos- 
 sesses, can he force the inner powers of the 
 soul into submission to the will of God. This 
 makes the new birth an absolute necessity. 
 
 Ill 
 
 In the embryology of the new life we not 
 only have to deal with the old nature, but we 
 have also the transforming life and the new 
 being resulting from the operations of the 
 heavenly life as it works within the soul of 
 the individual into whom it has been planted. 
 In nature there are three things — formative 
 matter, formed matter, and the forming prin- 
 ciple of life. This analogy follows in the spiri- 
 tual world. In the kingdom of grace the soul 
 
62 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 of man furnished the spiritual protoplasm out of 
 which the new spiritual being is to be formed. 
 But there must be a formative agent. We 
 have seen above that by no self-determining 
 power within man can the affections be turned 
 towards God. The life man has is not the 
 right type for heavenly citizenship. The type 
 of heaven must come into him before he can 
 live spiritually. 
 
 It is to supply this need that Christ came 
 into the world. Christ's mission to the earth 
 was to give men life. He came because men 
 were dead ; because they were separated from 
 the life of God. Through His incarnation 
 Christ brought the life of heaven into the life 
 of man ; through His act He brought God and 
 humanity together in one person, the God-Man, 
 and in this new person opened, through the 
 sacrifice of the Cross, the fountains of a new 
 type of life. 
 
 This life which Jesus brought into the world 
 and which He proposes to give to men is the 
 Christ-life. This life has its centre and source 
 in God. When one thinks of life in the Chris- 
 tian as one thing and life in God as another 
 thing, he has lost the science of being in the 
 Christ-kingdom. Christianity does not consist 
 in mere conformity to a set of rules ; it is an 
 implanted life. Jesus claimed that He was 
 " The Life," and that His supreme function in 
 the world was to give men life. " I am come 
 
The Embryology of the New Life 63 
 
 that they might have life, and have it more 
 abundantly." Peter declares that we are made 
 " partakers of the divine nature," and Paul as- 
 sures us that " Christ is formed in us the hope 
 of glory." The Christian life is in its origin 
 heavenly and cometh down from above. 
 
 This principle of life is connected with 
 Christ. The germ of it is in Christ. He that 
 hath the Son hath life. "When a man be- 
 comes a Christian," says Henry Drummond, 
 " the process is this : The living Christ en- 
 ters his soul. Development begins. The 
 quickening life seizes upon the soul, assimilates 
 surrounding elements, and begins to fashion it. 
 According to the great law of conformity to 
 type this fashioning takes a specific form. It 
 is that of the artist who fashions. And all 
 through life this wonderful, mystical, glorious, 
 yet perfectly definite process goes on ' until 
 Christ be formed ' in it." Those who possess 
 the Son possess the spirit of the Son. That 
 spirit is, so to speak, organized within them by 
 the Son, so that as Paul says : " It is no longer 
 I that live, but Christ that liveth in me." 
 
 This life comes not from generation, but 
 from regeneration. The relation between the 
 spiritual man and the life above is a filial rela- 
 tion. He knows the Father, and that is life 
 eternal. This relation is established through 
 the Son. "Neither knoweth any man the 
 Father save the Son, and he to whomsoever the 
 
64 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 Son shall reveal Him." It was through the 
 Cross that the wall of partition was broken 
 down between man and God and the new hu- 
 man-divine relationship established. 
 
 IV 
 
 It is very important that we should have a 
 right conception of this wonderful miracle by 
 which the spiritual protoplasm, the soul of man, 
 is seized upon by the incoming Christ-life and 
 built up into a new being which is the image 
 of the Son. One's understanding of this mys- 
 terious process will largely colour his conception 
 of the Christian life. If he is led to believe 
 that regeneration is nothing more than a change 
 in his old nature, and that this change is in 
 some manner gradual in its operations, then, 
 when he finds, as he surely will, that this na- 
 ture of his which is supposed to be changed 
 still longs for the world and the things of the 
 world, he will be filled with continual anxiety 
 and apprehension, doubt and fear. 
 
 Eegeneration has been defined to be " that 
 act of God by which the governing disposi- 
 tion of the soul is made holy, and by which, 
 through the truth as a means, the first exercise 
 of this disposition is secured." This definition 
 does not provide for, yea, it does not include or 
 even comprehend the supreme thing in regener- 
 ation. The governing disposition or power of 
 the soul is indeed holy, but this new power is 
 
The Embryology of the New Life 65 
 
 not the old disposition changed, but a new life 
 implanted. Hence in defining regeneration we 
 want to get away from any suggestion that 
 would even faintly imply that this mysterious 
 process is simply making over the old man. 
 It is a new birth ; the implanting of a new life ; 
 the formation of a new being. God in Christ 
 through the incarnation makes possible a new 
 type of life. This new life type begins in re- 
 generation and is consummated in glorification. 
 The Christian is a new creature. 
 
 But let us appeal to the divine record. In 
 what terms does the New Testament describe 
 this process ? The answer is significantly 
 striking. It uses everywhere the language of 
 biology. There are seven words used to set forth 
 the process of the new birth, Gennao, Ana- 
 
 GENNAO, PALIGGENESIA, AnAKAINOSIS, APO- 
 
 kueo, Ktizo, Sltzoopoieo, and every one of 
 these words carries the idea of a new being, a 
 new beginning, a new birth, a new creation. 
 Gennao means to beget ; Anagennao to be- 
 get again ; Paliggenesia a new birth ; 
 Anakainosis a renewal, from Anakainao 
 to make new ; Apokueo to bring forth, to 
 produce ; Ktizo to create, and Suzoopoieo to 
 make alive. This brings us to the inevitable 
 conclusion that regeneration is not an internal 
 and spiritual rectification, but the bringing into 
 existence of a new life. A spiritual man is 
 not a carnal man highly refined. The two men 
 
66 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 belong to different species. Spiritual life is 
 not a question of chronology, but of biology. 
 It is a problem of origin, and not a theory of 
 development. Regeneration is not the setting 
 of the hands of a clock, nor the repairing of 
 the mainspring of the old, but the creation of a 
 new timepiece. 
 
 This fact is emphasized by the contrast be- 
 tween the old life and the new life. Christ 
 tells us that " that which is born of the flesh 
 is flesh," and, " that which is born of the Spirit 
 is spirit." Here the contrast is not simply be- 
 tween the material and the immaterial, but be- 
 tween the old kingdom-life and the new 
 kingdom-life. Paul so understood it and so 
 used it in his famous contrasts between the 
 "flesh" and the "spirit" (Rom. v. 16-24; vi. 
 19 ; viii. 4-7 ; 1 Cor. hi. 3 ; 2 Cor. v. 17 ; Gal. 
 iii. 3, 9), where "flesh" is used in contradis- 
 tinction to " spirit " as designating either " man 
 in his natural state apart from Christ, or the 
 creaturely side or aspect of man in Christ." 
 This life — the flesh — is presented in Scripture 
 not as a thing to be improved, but as a thing 
 which God counts as dead, and which we are 
 called upon to mortify — subdue and deny in all 
 its thoughts and ways. In the Cross we see 
 the end of everything pertaining to the flesh 
 (Gal. v. 24). God expects nothing from the 
 flesh ; neither should we. The old life should 
 not be allowed to show itself. God does not 
 
The Embryology of the New Life 67 
 
 own it. It has no existence for Him, It is 
 dead. 
 
 It is not to be understood, however, that the 
 old life is not affected, or that the character 
 of the regenerated person remains unchanged. 
 This old life is the material with which the 
 new life works in the creation of the Christian. 
 " When a new animal is made," says Drummond, 
 " no new clay is made ; life merely enters into 
 already existing matter, assimilates more of the 
 same sort and rebuilds it. The spiritual artist 
 works in the same way. He must have a pecul- 
 iar protoplasm, a basis of life, and that must 
 be already existing." This protoplasm is found 
 in the life of the natural man. The mind and 
 the character, the will and the affections, the 
 moral and the immaterial nature — these form 
 the basis, or to state it more correctly, the ma- 
 terial out of which the Christ-life implanted 
 in regeneration builds the Christian. Hence 
 there is going on in every regenerated person 
 a spiritual transformation. This transforma- 
 tion is that process in which the Christ-life 
 takes the life-elements of the natural man and 
 builds them into the spiritual organism called 
 the heavenly man. As the bird-life grasps the 
 material protoplasm with which it is environed 
 and builds up a bird, the image of itself, so the 
 Christ-life grasps the life-elements, the mind 
 and will and the affections of the individual 
 into whom it comes, and builds up a God-man, 
 
68 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 the image of itself, in the inward nature of 
 man. We call this process sanctification. The 
 idea of a man's character, therefore, as it ex- 
 presses the totality of a man's being, is only 
 begun in regeneration, and the process proceeds 
 not by changing our fleshly nature but by kill- 
 ing our fleshly desires and propensities in the 
 process of building up the spiritual man. But 
 so long as the flesh-life remains, the propensi- 
 ties and dispositions of this life will be in evi- 
 dence. Evil is not a part of our flesh as matter, 
 but it is a part of our nature, and our present 
 nature is a part of our fleshly existence. Hence 
 evil is one of the links in the chain of our w T orld- 
 life, and so long as we live in the world, will, 
 through the flesh-life, have a field for operation. 
 To know this is an immense relief to the 
 heart that has been struggling for years in the 
 hopeless business of trying to improve nature. 
 It is also an immense relief to the conscience 
 which has been seeking a foundation for its 
 peace in the gradual improvement of a totally 
 unimprovable thing. It is an immense relief 
 to the soul that has for years been earnestly 
 breathing after holiness, but has looked upon 
 holiness as consisting in the improvement of 
 that nature w r hich loves sin. No one who has 
 not experienced it can conceive the intensity of 
 anguish, and the bitterness of disappointment, 
 which a soul feels, who, vainly expecting some 
 improvement in nature, finds, after years of 
 
The Embryology of the New Life 69 
 
 struggle, that the old nature is the old nature 
 still. God is not looking for improvement in our 
 old nature, that is dead in Christ, and is simply 
 the basis out of which the new life is to be 
 built up, but He is looking for the development 
 of the Christ-life implanted in regeneration. 
 To be led into a clear and full apprehension 
 of this is the divine emancipation of the con- 
 science. 
 
 Y 
 
 The mystery of life is inexplicable, hence 
 we do not hope to be able to explain how this 
 life of Christ comes to be implanted in the 
 soul. We can only give the forces which oper- 
 ate under given conditions to produce life ; we 
 cannot explain the mystery of their operation. 
 This, however, should not keep us from receiv- 
 ing the truth of this great subject. We cannot 
 comprehend God, or the Divine Logos mani- 
 fested in the flesh, or the person and work of 
 the Holy Spirit, but by faith we can know God 
 and become recipients of the redemptive work 
 of Christ. So, while we cannot comprehend 
 the mysterious work of life-creation within the 
 soul through Christ, yet by faith we can enter 
 into that union with Him, which gives eternal 
 life. It is enough for us to know the combi- 
 nation of forces which operate in the produc- 
 tion of spiritual life within man. 
 
 The source of this life, as we have seen, is 
 in Christ. He is the germ of spiritual life. 
 
70 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 But in the New Testament, when this subject 
 is discusssed, we find two things associated to- 
 gether in the work of life-production ; these are 
 the Spirit and the Word. " But as many as 
 received Him to them gave He power to be- 
 come the Sons of God, even to them that 
 believe on His name ; which were born not of 
 blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
 will of man, but of God " (John i. 12-13). A 
 parallel text may be found in Ephesians (i. 13). 
 " In whom we also trusted, after that ye have 
 heard the Word of Truth, the Gospel of your 
 salvation ; in whom also, after that ye believed 
 ye were sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise." 
 Paul says in another place : " Because God hath 
 from the beginning chosen you to salvation 
 through sanctification of the Spirit and belief 
 of the truth" (2 Thess. ii. 15). Peter to the 
 same effect says, " Seeing ye have purified your 
 souls in obeying the truth through the Spirit ; 
 being born again, not of corruptible seed, but 
 of incorruptible by the word of God " (1 Peter 
 i. 22-23). These passages establish the fact that 
 the Spirit operating through the word implants 
 the Christ-life in the soul of the individual. 
 We call this the new birth. 
 
 The reason for the use of the word seems to 
 be that God does not wish to violate, even in 
 the supernatural work of new-life production 
 in the soul, the laws by which mental processes 
 are governed. He meets us on our own ground. 
 
The Embryology of the New Life 71 
 
 He approaches us in a natural way. Hence we 
 are not overawed by the supernatural in re- 
 generation and yet, all the time, the super- 
 natural is predominant. The Gospel is God's 
 method of approaching the soul. In it are the 
 facts upon which our faith is founded, and facts 
 must forever remain the basis of faith. The 
 Gospel is God's appeal to the human heart. It 
 exhausts all the sources of moral power. Every 
 consideration that can affect the intellect, the 
 conscience, the feelings, the will and the hopes 
 of man are presented. This gives us the 
 rational basis for the use of the word in the 
 life-production process. 
 
 This word, however, is useless without the 
 Spirit. To all moral, and especially to all re- 
 ligious truth, there is an inward unsusceptibility, 
 arising from the perversity of the affections and 
 will, which must be removed before the soul 
 can or will perceive or be moved by the truth. 
 Hence the Spirit must deal directly with the 
 soul. He comes in contact not simply with the 
 instrument, but with the soul itself. At Jericho, 
 the force was not applied to the ram's horns, 
 but to the walls. When Jesus healed the blind 
 man, His power was not applied to the spittle, 
 but to the eyes. So God's spirit does not act 
 upon the word, but upon the soul. And yet 
 the word must be present in order that the sen- 
 sitized soul may be led to see the Saviour 
 through whom alone salvation is secured. 
 
J 2 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 The person who is thus touched by the Spirit 
 through the Word is brought into a new life, 
 or rather, has a new life brought into him. 
 The emphasis is not merely upon the change as 
 initial but upon the inherent nature of the 
 Christian life as divinely originated. It is 
 God's self -communication of Himself to man. 
 The fourth Gospel speaks of this new spiritual 
 entity as "eternal life." It is the birth in the 
 soul of man of a new personality or type of 
 manhood that is Christlike and spiritual. The 
 process is analogous to that of natural birth and 
 is set forth by Christ under the figure of natural 
 birth. The soul of man is the spiritual womb 
 in which the Christ-life germ is planted. 
 
 The source of this life as we have seen is in 
 Christ. The legal difficulties in the way of its 
 manifestation are removed through the sacri- 
 ficial work of Christ, which work includes His 
 incarnation. It comes to be implanted in the 
 soul as we have seen above through the Spirit 
 operating through the "Word, which w r ord re- 
 volves around the Cross. 
 
IV 
 THE PSYCHOLOGY OF FAITH 
 
 AWONDEKFUL change has taken place 
 in the intellectual world in the last half 
 century. The renaissance of science 
 fructified every field of human thought. The 
 light turned in upon the world of matter and 
 life, by the discovery of new facts, dissolved 
 many archaic systems of thought. Every de- 
 partment of human thought was revolutionized 
 except theology. Here the scientific method 
 met with the most bitter opposition. Keligion 
 immediately arrayed itself against science. 
 This was, perhaps, for two reasons : First, in 
 the beginning the efforts were destructive in 
 their purpose since it was the skeptical mind 
 that attacked the problem of a scientific expla- 
 nation of religious phenomena; and, second, 
 the ancient and established moulds into which 
 theological thought had crystallized refused to 
 yield readily to the new process. 
 
 We have at last, however, passed the skep- 
 tical period and now under the touch of friendly 
 fingers Christian thought is beginning to con- 
 form to the facts of biology and psychology 
 and geology. There was a time when the 
 
 73 
 
74 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 student of religion was concerned only with the 
 formation of creeds. The work of redemption 
 was reduced to a system of doctrine. The life 
 of Christ was set forth as an article of faith. 
 Dogmatic systems of theology were set up and 
 enforced as the only way of salvation. That 
 time has passed. Now the Christian teacher 
 and writer recognize that Christianity belongs 
 not simply to the realm of theory, but to the 
 domain of being. And recognizing this they 
 are bringing the facts of science to bear upon 
 religious phenomena. This is as it should be. 
 No truth is without religious significance. 
 Every fact in the universe should be used to 
 enrich our knowledge of the greatest of all 
 facts, the redemption of the race. 
 
 One of the results of this change in front has 
 been to supplant analysis with synthesis in the 
 study of religious phenomena. Analysis is 
 destructive of life, and Christianity is a life. 
 The dissecting room may be necessary for the 
 demonstrator in anatomy, but dissection means 
 death. The most perfect bodily organ is worth- 
 less and lifeless if separated from the other 
 organs of the body. This is true of spiritual 
 life. The various elements which enter into 
 the spiritual organism are not isolated factors. 
 The spiritual life is a unit. Conversion and re- 
 generation go together. Faith and repentance 
 are related functions of the quickened soul. 
 And these are all joined in and are necessary to 
 
The Psychology of Faith 75 
 
 the outward expression of the religious life. 
 Spiritual life— that vital entity implanted in the 
 soul in regeneration — expresses itself in the 
 various ways described in the Bible. These 
 may be catalogued as love, joy, peace, long-suf- 
 fering, gentleness, goodness, meekness, temper- 
 ance, humility, unselfishness, beneficence, self- 
 sacrifice and faith, and whatever else belongs to 
 the Christian character; but the spiritual or- 
 ganism is not made up of these things by a 
 process of addition or multiplication; the 
 new creature is one thing and is simply mani- 
 festing itself in these ways, and not in these 
 ways alone, but in every conceivable way that 
 love and duty can prompt. These expressions 
 of the Christian life are functions of the spiri- 
 tual ego. 
 
 In the teaching of the New Testament faith 
 is one of the chief functions of the new life. 
 The participation in all the blessings of redemp- 
 tion depend upon it ; the support and progress 
 of the spiritual life are essentially connected 
 with it. Christ divided men into two classes 
 from the standpoint of religion, not morals— 
 those who believe, and those who believed not. 
 He marvelled twice, once at men's unbelief, 
 once at a Roman centurion's faith. When men 
 came to Him with the question, " What shall 
 we do that we may work the works of God ? " 
 Jesus answered, " This is the work of God, that 
 ye believe in Him whom He hath sent." Faith 
 
76 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 stands in the forefront of all New Testament 
 teaching. 
 
 I 
 
 Many attempts have been made to define 
 faith. None of these are entirely satisfactory 
 for the simple reason that all of them have 
 considered faith as a doctrinal requirement in a 
 plan of salvation. Dr. B. W. Pope defines 
 faith to be " a divinely- wrought belief in the 
 record concerning Christ and trust in His 
 Person as a personal Saviour." 1 Dr. A. H. 
 Strong defines faith to be " certitude with re- 
 gard to spiritual realities, upon the testimony of 
 our rational nature and upon the testimony 
 of God." 2 But these definitions do not define 
 faith. They simply state the result of faith's 
 operations. Behind a " divinely- wrought be- 
 lief " there is something that does the believing. 
 As the act of recollecting is the product of 
 memory so the act of believing is the product of 
 faith. Faith is a function of the soul and as such 
 it is* to be^ classed with memory, imagination, 
 and the other conscious elements of the ego. 
 " Tt is," says Fletcher, " a mental state that is 
 indispensable if the human personality is to pass 
 from lower levels of existence to the highest 
 spiritual experience of the moral and religious 
 life. Kegarded psychologically, faith is a state 
 of consciousness which is capable of being 
 
 1 " Compendium of Theology," Vol. II, p. 376. 
 
 2 l< Systematic Theology," p. 3. 
 
The Psychology of Faith 77 
 
 analyzed and understood like any other psych- 
 ical state." ' 
 
 If faith is a function of the soul, a method 
 of the soul's operation in performing certain 
 conscious actions, and not a mere doctrinal re- 
 quirement, then we may expect to find in it, on 
 close analysis, somewhat of the three elements 
 of consciousness, — thinking, feeling, and will- 
 ing. This Ave find to be the case. The faith- 
 state as reflected in the writings of the New 
 Testament can be readily analyzed into these 
 three elements. " Sometimes," says Fletcher, 
 " the intellectual factor (as belief) operates 
 most prominently, at other times the emotional 
 (as a feeling of trust) bears sway, and yet again 
 the moral side (as purposeful surrender) at times 
 appears in the forefront. Faith is a complex 
 state of mind in which all of these elements are 
 present within the personality. But one or the 
 other, according to the temperament and dis- 
 position of the subject, takes the lead and gives 
 character to the whole state." 2 
 
 Faith may then be defined as that form of 
 conscious activity by which the soul admits as 
 knowledge what is received only on evidence or 
 authority internal or external. This definition 
 will clear away a great deal of the misconcep- 
 tion which has gathered about the nature of 
 faith. We have no longer the task on our 
 
 1 " Psychology of the New Testament," p. 219. 
 3 Ibid., p. 220, 
 
78 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 hands of discriminating between an historical 
 faith and a saving faith ; between a natural 
 faith and the faith that is supernatural. The 
 nature of faith throughout the conscious act of 
 believing remains the same. The functional act 
 of the soul, by which it receives as knowledge 
 whatever is presented on evidence, remains 
 the same whether the evidence be of super- 
 natural phenomena or of natural phenomena. 
 The difference arising in the effect which the 
 exercise of this function produces in the life of 
 the individual does not grow out of a difference 
 in the nature of faith, but out of the difference 
 in the character of the knowledge thus received 
 and the relation which that knowledge bears to 
 the ego or self. The facts of salvation, — the 
 story of redemption, including the crucifixion of 
 Christ, His burial and His resurrection, — cannot 
 influence the soul and cause it to surrender to 
 the Christ revealed in the Gospel, until the 
 relation, subsisting between these supernatural 
 facts and the individual ego or self and its 
 eternal well being, is revealed to the soul and 
 becomes a matter of consciousness. Hence men 
 hear the Gospel and receive it as a statement 
 of historical facts, but they are not moved by 
 it. Why are they not moved ? There is but 
 one explanation, the subsistent relation between 
 the individual and the Gospel story has never 
 become a matter of consciousness with them. 
 These facts cannot become a matter of experi- 
 
The Psychology of Faith 79 
 
 enoe in the life of the individual until they are 
 spiritually discerned. This takes place with the 
 quickening of the ego in regeneration, in which 
 process there is implanted the life of Christ by 
 the Holy Spirit. This spiritual discernment 
 has to do, not primarily with the Gospel story 
 as an historical fact, but with the relation sub- 
 sisting between these facts and the soul. This 
 relation is entirely spiritual and can be compre- 
 hended only by a spiritually sensitized soul. 
 So soon as the subsistent relation between the 
 soul and Christ is discerned faith admits that 
 relation as a matter of knowledge and makes it 
 a fact of consciousness. The result is the Chris- 
 tian life. 
 
 "We have seen that the type of life which the 
 natural man possesses is not subject to the law 
 of God, neither indeed can be. This type of life 
 cannot discern spiritual relationships for it is 
 dead to the heavenly. " No man can say that 
 Jesus is Lord but by the Holy Spirit " (1 Cor. 
 xii. 3). Hence the natural man cannot perceive 
 the subsistent relation between Christ and the 
 soul because this relation is only spiritually dis- 
 cerned (1 Cor. ii. 14). In the kingdom of 
 Christianity, as in every other kingdom of life, 
 the first step towards the production of a new 
 organism is the implantation of the life germ. 
 This is unmistakably set forth in the Scriptures. 
 " And you hath He quickened, who were dead 
 in trespasses and sins. Even when we were 
 
80 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 dead in sins, hath made us alive together with 
 Christ. For we are His workmanship, created 
 in Christ unto good works" (Eph. ii. 1-10). 
 Saving faith is, therefore, not a new element of 
 the old life, but an act of the new creature. 
 It is not a new spiritual commodity which the 
 old life generates and by which it is changed, 
 but it is the use of an old function by a new 
 power. It does not produce a new entity, for 
 the new birth is the product of the Holy Spirit 
 operating through the word. Its function is to 
 produce the consciousness of the spiritual rela- 
 tion subsisting between Christ and the soul in 
 the ego or self and thereby work a new expe- 
 rience. This experience we call conversion, and 
 it consists in the turning of the personal ego, in 
 its threefold power of thinking, feeling and 
 willing, to Jesus Christ as Saviour. This ex- 
 perience is different from the new birth in that 
 the new birth is the implanting of the Christ- 
 life, which implantation results in the quicken- 
 ing of the soul ; conversion is the turning of the 
 soul under the stimulant of that quickening to 
 the Christ of the Gospels as Saviour. 
 
 II 
 
 With this definition of faith let us consider 
 it in relation to other mental activities, activi- 
 ties which we are informed are opposed to faith. 
 The two acts, knowing and reasoning, which 
 
The Psychology of Faith 81 
 
 are products of the thinking element of con- 
 sciousness, are most persistently set over in 
 opposition to faith, which we are informed is 
 purely a product of feeling. 
 
 There is a wide-spread notion that knowledge 
 and faith are in the inverse ratio. But when 
 we bring the two together, in a comparative 
 study, we find that they are in that perfect 
 harmony which is required of two actions of 
 the same ego. Knowledge is what a man 
 knows, faith is what a man believes. A man 
 knoAVS what has been verified by facts that have 
 come under his own observation or experience ; 
 a man believes what has been presented to him 
 upon authority. Hence, faith, one function of 
 the ego, comes before knowledge, which is a 
 result of the exercise of another function. 
 Therefore faith is superior to knowledge, in 
 that without faith every man would be tre- 
 mendously limited in knowledge, since most of 
 the things which fill up the cabinets of infor- 
 mation have been received on faith. Again, 
 put faith to the test and you always have 
 knowledge. Take the history of the race, the 
 geography of the world, the speculative sciences, 
 and these are all received by the average stu- 
 dent upon testimony — they are matters of faith. 
 Put these things to the test, demonstrate them 
 for one's self and they become matters of fact- 
 knowledge. So faith goes before knowledge; 
 it goes where knowledge cannot go; it is a 
 
82 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 higher sort of knowledge. It enables one to 
 rise above the range of knowledge. It is like 
 the condor of the Andes, the bird of highest 
 flight. When the tempest comes, weaker birds 
 fly to their coverts, under the cliffs, and where 
 they can be protected from the fury of the 
 elements. Not so the mighty condor. Turn- 
 ing his eye upward, he cleaves his way to the 
 empyrean, and there basks in the sunshine 
 above the tornado's fury and beyond the storm- 
 cloud's power. Thus faith enables us to mount 
 up on eagle's wings, above the clouds and dark- 
 ness that hover over the lowlands of reason 
 and knowledge, in that everlasting light which 
 knows no shadow, flowing in peace and stillness 
 from the throne of the Eternal. 
 
 The same thing is true with reference to the 
 relation between faith and reason. There are 
 those who seem to think that faith and reason 
 stand opposed to one another, and that reason 
 is superior to faith. On close analysis we find 
 that there is no conflict between faith and rea- 
 son. Sir William Hamilton says : " We know 
 what rests on reason, we believe what rests on 
 authority." This would bring us to the con- 
 clusion that reason itself rests upon faith, for 
 the data with which reason works in forming 
 her judgments are, in the main, accepted on 
 authority and are therefore matters of faith. 
 Not only so, but faith is positive, reason nega- 
 tive. " Reason," says Combe, " is the superior 
 
The Psychology of Faith 83 
 
 and predominant element which settled the 
 direction in which all other faculties shall 
 expand." Emmanuel Kant, in his "Critique 
 of Pure Reason," says: "The greatest and, 
 perhaps, the sole use of all philosophy, of all 
 pure reason is, after all, merely negative, since 
 it serves not as an organon for the enlargement 
 of knowledge, but as discipline for its delimi- 
 nation, and instead of discovering truth, has 
 only the modest merit of preventing error." 
 This deliverance of Kant was quoted and en- 
 dorsed by Prof. T. H. Huxley in the Nineteenth 
 Century for February, 1889. Surely those who 
 exalt reason against faith will respect Kant and 
 Huxley, and not suspect them with being biased 
 in favour of evangelical religion. Hodge tells 
 us, "That reason is that faculty which per- 
 ceives, compares, judges, and infers." But rea- 
 son must always work with the material in 
 hand. Its work is not to gather material, but 
 to separate the material gathered into its par- 
 ticular elements. Therefore reason does not 
 lead out in the mind's activities ; it simply 
 directs the mind in its investigations so that 
 the individual will not go astray. Faith sweeps 
 beyond this. It goes beyond reason. And yet 
 it uses reason. Reason acts as a check. It 
 prevents one from believing things that are 
 contradictory and absurd. The two, faith and 
 reason, go hand in hand in the search for truth. 
 Reason could not go one step without faith, 
 
84 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 and faith would likely go astray if it were not 
 for reason. Faith demonstrates that it is not 
 unreasonable to believe in Christ. The expe- 
 rience which it brings, the consciousness of the 
 divine acceptance, demonstrates to reason the 
 truths of Christianity, truths which could never 
 be known by reason alone. It is reason that 
 prevents our going wrong, but it is faith that 
 enables us to go at all. 
 
 In the Christian life faith furnishes the basis 
 for both knowledge and reason. The Holy 
 Spirit taking the truths of the Gospel and 
 bringing them to bear on the faith-function of 
 the soul, makes the individual conscious of the 
 relation subsisting between the ego or self and 
 the facts of the Gospel, and, through this con- 
 sciousness, produces in the individual an ex- 
 perience. This experience furnishes a conscious 
 basis in the soul for both knowledge and rea- 
 son. Men know what comes within their own 
 personal experience. This experience is a fact 
 of consciousness which reason cannot deny. 
 Hence faith, knowledge, and reason become 
 closely allied in the Christian life. Faith brings 
 the soul into the consciousness of the spiritual 
 life implanted in regeneration, and this con- 
 sciousness, being a fact of experience which 
 reason cannot deny, is accepted and made the 
 basis of a new life. This is the psychological 
 basis for the statement in Hebrews : " Now 
 faith is the assurance of things hoped for, the 
 
The Psychology of Faith 85 
 
 conviction — the demonstration — of things not 
 seen " (Heb. xii. 1). 
 
 All the hopes of the Christian are not only 
 grounded on faith, but they are grounded in 
 faith. Outside of our trust in Christ there can 
 be no legitimate ground for hope ; in this con- 
 fidence and trust in Christ there is not only the 
 ground for hope, but the seed-bed, the germ- 
 inating place, the incubation for every hope of 
 the soul. Faith, therefore, is the whole Chris- 
 tian life in germ. But faith is not only the basis 
 of hope ; it is^also the demonstration of things 
 not seen. Faith furnishes the proof of the 
 existence of the unseen world. The physical 
 senses give to the soul the knowledge of the 
 material Avorld. Through these senses the 
 material objects are inwrought upon the soul 
 and become a part of the personal consciousness. 
 It is with them as matters of consciousness that 
 we deal. But there is a world higher than the 
 material. Have we no communication with it ? 
 The faith-function of the soul is the sense by 
 which the things of the spiritual world are 
 brought into the personal consciousness and 
 become matters of experience with us. A 
 personal experience is the end of argument. 
 It is a fact. It is a matter of knowledge. It 
 is an element which reason has to accept. 
 Hence, so long as our natures can trust, so long 
 as our faith can unfold to us a morality, so long 
 as our hearts can pray, the simple soul need not 
 
86 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 bewail its want of logic and its lack of 
 argument to prove the verities of God. As 
 Dante says : 
 
 ' i And from this credence it is fit and right 
 To syllogize, though other sight be none : 
 Therefore faith holds the place of argument. " 
 
 III 
 
 We turn now to consider faith as set forth in 
 the New Testament. The word faith, " Pistis," 
 occurs two hundred and twenty times in the 
 New Testament. The verb to believe, " Pis- 
 tueo " occurs two hundred and thirty times. 
 John uses the word faith only once (1 John 
 v. 4), but he uses the verb to believe more 
 than one hundred times. Paul uses more 
 largely the word faith, using it in his Epistles 
 one hundred and thirty-six times. In Hebrews, 
 which is Pauline in thought, the word faith is used 
 thirty-one times. Because of this divergence 
 between Paul and John in the use of words to 
 express the soul's acceptance of Christ, inter- 
 preters differ considerably in their judgment as 
 to the central idea in the New Testament 
 presentation of faith. This makes it necessary 
 for us to study the question first from Paul's 
 standpoint, and then from John's standpoint ; 
 after that we can compare the two conceptions 
 and draw a conclusion as to the teaching of the 
 New Testament. 
 
The Psychology of Faith 87 
 
 With Paul faith is a very rich conception. 
 It is at once an attitude of receptivity and of 
 sympathy. In Paul's way of thinking it is an 
 affair of the heart. It is with the heart that 
 man believeth unto righteousness (Rom. x. 10). 
 It is through faith that Christ dwells in the 
 heart (Eph. iii. 17). But Paul does not forget 
 the thinking elements of consciousness, for to 
 him it is through the mind that the heart or 
 feeling element is to be reached. There must 
 be an intellectual perception of truth, for how 
 can they believe on Him whom they have not 
 heard ? So Paul concludes that " faith cometh 
 by hearing, and hearing by the word of God " 
 (Roin. x. 14-17). In Paul's conception there is 
 also the idea of activity as well as receptivity. 
 Here the volitional element of consciousness 
 enters. In faith men enter into active fellow- 
 ship with Christ. Faith is, therefore, in his 
 thought inseparable from all good choices and 
 actions (Rom. xiv. 25). It includes the choice 
 and pursuit of truth (2 Thess. ii. 1 2). It implies 
 separation to the righteousness of God (Rom. 
 x. 3). It is, in short, the movement of the entire 
 personality towards God and righteousness. In 
 faith man enters, in the thought of Paul, into 
 fellowship and sympathy with God. He is con- 
 nected with Christ in such a way as to become 
 one with Christ. To live by faith is synony- 
 mous with living in Christ, and with Christ 
 living in the believer (Gal. ii. 20). It denotes a 
 
88 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 mystical union, a mutual fellowship. This is 
 the inner consciousness, or experience of salva- 
 tion which makes Christ a real thing to the 
 believer. By it a new life-relationship is set up 
 in the heart and man comes into fellowship 
 with God and appropriates all the blessings of 
 salvation. 
 
 In John we find a few passages in which the 
 verb to believe is used in the sense of believing 
 that a thing is true. He tells us that he wrote 
 his Gospel that the reader might believe that 
 Jesus was the Christ, the Son of God. In the 
 first epistle, where he is refuting the errors of 
 Gnosticism which denied the true incarnation 
 of Christ, he represents faith as the opposite of 
 this denial. In this sense faith is an affirmation. 
 Reference to these passages, however, will show 
 that the object of this faith is ultimately a 
 person, " God " or " Christ," so that, after all, 
 these passages connote trustful reliance upon the 
 personal object mentioned. But this is only 
 the fringe of John's teaching on faith. He 
 evidently understood faith to be connected with 
 sonship, and that the one involved the other 
 (John iii. 16). Believing on Christ and coining 
 to Christ are one and the same thing (John 
 xxxiii. 50-51). In John's view faith is certainly 
 used in a sense sufficiently comprehensive to 
 include all that men think or feel or do in 
 appropriating the salvation which is offered in 
 Christ. John's conception of faith is something 
 
The Psychology of Faith 89 
 
 more than the persuasion that Jesus is the Son 
 of God accompanied with the confession that 
 He is the Christ. It is something more than a 
 stage of knowledge. To believe is to have the 
 Son (1 John v. 12) ; it is to receive Jesus Christ 
 (John i. 12-13) ; it is to come to the Son (John 
 vi. 35) ; it is to enter into the possession of 
 eternal life (John vi. 47). 
 
 By comparison we find that John and Paul 
 agree in their understanding of faith. For 
 both it is more than belief ; it involves personal 
 relation and fellowship. Paul expresses it by 
 such phrases as " in Christ," " dying with 
 Christ," and " newness of life." John ex- 
 presses it by such phrases as "abiding in 
 Christ," " living through Christ," and " eating 
 the flesh of Christ." In both there is a mvs- 
 
 Ml 
 
 tical element. Faith is life-fellowship with 
 Christ. It is no mere possession of truths which 
 lie dead and cold in the mind ; it is a vital al- 
 liance with Christ, the hiding of the life with 
 Him in God. They both looked upon faith as 
 the very opposite of meritorious works. It 
 had power, but that power was the vital life 
 with which it connected the believer. The sav- 
 ing power of faith lies in the fact that it joins 
 the life of the individual to the life of Christ. 
 It furnishes, as a function of the soul, the 
 medium of intercommunication between the 
 old life and the world of spiritual realities. 
 Faith is, then, an act of the whole man. 
 
90 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 The whole personality, viewed as focussed in 
 the heart, believes intellectually, feels trustingly, 
 and yields willingly to God in Christ. The 
 man himself is the believer ; there is no act in 
 which the ego or self more absolutely gathers 
 up the whole being than in believing. As a 
 function of the soul, faith, in the act of believ- 
 ing, is the whole soul going out towards God in 
 Christ, looking up to the Cross for salvation 
 from sin, and bowing to the will of the Lord 
 for service. 
 
 IV 
 
 It remains now to point out the relation be- 
 tween faith and a few of the most intimately 
 related phenomena of the spiritual life. 
 
 As a state of consciousness faith is a complex 
 experience springing from the depths of the 
 personality when influenced by the Holy Spirit. 
 God enters the life, as we have seen, through 
 the Holy Spirit. In a way surpassing human 
 comprehension He fructifies the soul by the im- 
 plantation of the Christ-life. The coming of 
 this life into the soul constitutes the " quicken- 
 ing" spoken of in the Scriptures. It is the 
 " new birth " produced through the Spirit 
 (John iii. 3-8). This "new birth" affects the 
 soul and the result is an immediate response 
 which we call conversion. We have all along 
 been told that regeneration and conversion are 
 the two sides of the same act, regeneration 
 
The Psychology of Faith 91 
 
 being God's side and conversion being man's 
 side. This is true and yet there is a biological 
 distinction which it does not comprehend. The 
 divine side of this transaction is the implanta- 
 tion of a new and higher life, the Christ-life ; 
 the human side of this transaction is the re- 
 sponse of the soul to the awakening produced 
 by the incoming of this new life. Faith is 
 related both to the incoming Christ-life and to 
 the old personality. It is the first act of the 
 Christ-life; it is the last act of the old per- 
 sonality. As such it unites the two into one 
 conscious experience. " There must be a uni- 
 fying principle," says Dr. Inge, " in which dif- 
 ferent activities of oar nature are harmonized 
 as activities of one person, directed towards one 
 satisfying end. It is in this unifying experience 
 that faith for the first time comes fully into 
 its own." l 
 
 The result of faith's operations, as a unify- 
 ing principle in the soul, is the new creature. 
 In the New Testament the new life into which 
 human personality passes is viewed from many 
 standpoints. In terms of life it is called the 
 new birth. Mysticism sees in it union with 
 Christ and fellowship with Him. Keligious 
 devotion views it as consecration and sanctifi- 
 cation. But behind the diversity of description 
 and the complexity of incipient doctrine result- 
 ing therefrom there lies a unity of thought 
 1 " Faith and Ite Psychology," p. 231. 
 
92 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 which finds expression in the term " new 
 creature." This new creature is a new per- 
 sonality. The change wrought in the soul, 
 looked at from the human side, is produced by 
 faith. Faith as a function of the soul admits 
 . the facts stated in the Gospel as knowledge, and 
 these facts being inwrought upon the soul be- 
 come matters of consciousness. The quickened 
 soul perceiving the subsistent relation between 
 itself and the Christ thus presented appropriates 
 the new life offered and the result is a new ex- 
 perience. " The supernatural scheme of the 
 Bible," says Dr. Laidlaw, " emerges in human 
 experience. The religion of revelation — a sys- 
 tem of supernatural facts — touches at this point 
 the natural scheme of man and his being ; for 
 the supernatural, in this form of a personal 
 spiritual change, becomes a fact of conscious- 
 ness." ' 
 
 Here is the basis of Christianity. It is a 
 matter of life and therefore of consciousness. 
 The active state, the state of consciousness that 
 is fundamental to all outward manifestations of 
 the Christian life, is faith. It is also funda- 
 mental to all the inward experiences. A con- 
 vert may have a very imperfect doctrinal 
 system of belief, his view about the nature of 
 the Trinity or the Atonement or the character 
 of the relation subsisting between the divine 
 and the human natures in Christ may be very 
 1 '■ The Bible Doctrine of Man," p. 249. 
 
The Psychology of Faith 93 
 
 hazy, but if through the Spirit he is led to 
 trust himself to the divine good-will he may 
 have the experience of deliverance before he 
 understands the rationale of it. The teaching 
 of Christianity in this respect is profoundly in 
 accord with the processes of life on other 
 levels. A child trusts its parent's love and acts 
 upon that feeling long before it understands. 
 Subsequent understanding may deepen the 
 trust, but the instinctive feeling of the child 
 precedes the reasoned reflection of later years. 
 So with the Christian, faith goes before in the 
 development of the life of conscious repose. 
 
SPIRITUAL GROWTH 
 
 THE origin, growth, and energies of liv- 
 ing things are the subjects which have 
 always engaged the attention of 
 thinking men. These are the subjects with 
 which we are most constantly confronted in na- 
 ture. The world is full of life, and life is an 
 active principle, the chief characteristics of 
 which are growth and reproduction. In our 
 observation in nature we see the mysterious 
 vital principle, called life, seizing upon the 
 matter with which it is environed and building 
 that matter into organic structures. This proc- 
 ess, which we call growth, is the fundamental 
 distinction between the living and the not liv- 
 ing. The crystal increases and the stone en- 
 larges, but this is by accretion and not growth. 
 The living organism grows. In the former in- 
 stance enlargement is the result of adding new 
 particles externally ; the other, growth, is the 
 unfolding of an internal life. The two proc- 
 esses belong to different worlds. The last be- 
 longs to the living world, the first to the dead. 
 
 I 
 In nature, as we have seen, all life comes 
 
 94 
 
Spiritual Growth 95 
 
 from antecedent life and follows in its unfold- 
 ing the law of conformity to type. This law 
 is defined by Darwin as " That fundamental 
 agreement in structure which we see in organic 
 beings of the same class, and which is quite 
 independent of their habits." According to 
 this law every living thing that comes into the 
 world is compelled to stamp upon its offspring 
 the image of itself. If we are to follow out 
 the analogy of nature this process maintains in 
 the spiritual world. We have seen that the 
 spiritual life is an endowment from the spiri- 
 tual world, and that the living Spirit of Christ 
 dwells in the Christian. Eegeneration may be 
 defined as " God's self -communication of Him- 
 self to man." It is the implantation of a new 
 life in the soul of man, a life different in 
 quality to anything else in nature. This con- 
 stitutes the separate kingdom of Christ and 
 gives to Christianity alone of all the religions 
 of mankind the strange mark of divinity. 
 
 After the implantation of the new life we 
 should expect, from the analogies of biology, 
 two things: First, that this new life would 
 unfold and grow gradually into maturity ; and 
 second, that it would follow the law of con- 
 formity to type and reproduce the Christ type 
 in the character of the individual into whose 
 life it comes. On the first of these there can 
 be little controversy. The thing that strikes 
 even the most casual observer is the gradual- 
 
96 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 ness of growth. Development into maturity is 
 a process. When the dead atoms of carbon, 
 hydrogen, oxygen, and nitrogen, are seized 
 upon by life, the organism is at first very 
 simple. It possesses few functions. Christ 
 recognized this fundamental process — " First 
 the blade," says He, " then the ear, then the 
 full corn in the ear." The second, that the 
 life implanted in regeneration should produce 
 the Christ type in the character of the individ- 
 ual, is recognized throughout the teaching of 
 the New Testament. The apostle reiterates 
 that the Christian in the beginning of his career 
 is " a babe," and that he is to grow to the u full 
 stature of manhood." We are again and again 
 admonished to " put on the new man, which is 
 renewed in knowledge after the image of Him 
 that created him." And we are expressly told 
 that the end and goal of Christianity is to 
 reproduce in the Christian the Christ type : 
 " Whom He did foreknow He also did predesti- 
 nate to be conformed to the image of His Son." 
 This conformation is the result of a process. 
 It is accomplished by the unfolding of the 
 Christ-life implanted in regeneration. In the 
 process of spiritual growth the new life appro- 
 priates the life elements of the soul and builds 
 these elements into a spiritual organism, a 
 new personality, fashioned after the image of 
 Christ. Thus there is a gradual unfolding of 
 the Christ-life until the perfect counterpart 
 
Spiritual Growth 97 
 
 of the type is reached. This is the law of 
 spiritual growth. 
 
 II 
 
 In the phenomena of growth we are con- 
 fronted primarily with three things. In every 
 organism there is formative matter, formed 
 matter and the forming principle of life. Fol- 
 lowing this analogy we have in spiritual growth 
 the old nature, the new creature, and the im- 
 planted Christ-life. There is a definite dis- 
 tinction, on the one hand, between the old 
 nature and the implanted Christ-life, and, on 
 the other hand, between the old nature and the 
 new creature which is the product of spiritual 
 growth. The old man is the basis or, as we 
 have seen, the material with which the new 
 life operates ; the new creature is the product 
 of this operation. 
 
 It would be contrary to imagine that the 
 new creature could be formed out of nothing. 
 An organic being is one that derives its exist- 
 ence from a previously existing organic being 
 and which grows to maturity by appropriating 
 from its environment the material out of which 
 the organism is built up. Life merely enters 
 into already existing matter, assimilates more 
 of the same sort and rebuilds it. In the proc- 
 ess of spirtual growth this same law maintains. 
 The soul of man is the already existing pro- 
 toplasm out of which the spiritual organism is 
 
98 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 to be built. The Christ-life when it is clothed 
 upon and becomes a living personality is the 
 old man made new. The powers of the soul 
 are not changed in their function when they 
 are built into the new creature, but only in 
 the end towards which their operations tend. 
 There is not a function with which man is en- 
 dowed that is not within itself good, and when 
 properly and legitimately exercised produces 
 conduct that is righteous and brings happiness 
 and pleasure. The trouble with the natural 
 man is not that his functions are corrupt, but 
 that the life using these functions and oper- 
 ating through them is the wrong type and 
 cannot, therefore, produce the right kind of 
 character. The Christ-life, the heavenly and 
 eternal type, comes into the life of man, in- 
 vests itself, through a process of spiritual 
 assimilation, with the functions and powers 
 of the soul and builds them into the new crea- 
 ture. 
 
 If the soul is to furnish the material out of 
 which the new creature is to be formed then 
 it must possess two things : the capacity for 
 life, and plasticity. Capacity for life is evi- 
 denced by the spiritual nature of man. He is 
 not conceived of in the Scriptures as simply a 
 self-centred being, living a life on earth with 
 other animals, or, at best, sharing a self-con- 
 scious life with his fellows. He is represented 
 as a spiritual personality, made in the image of 
 
Spiritual Growth 99 
 
 God, and in the very constitution of his being 
 somewhat akin to God. Hence we find man 
 possessed of a spirit that renders him pecul- 
 iarly open to the influence of the divine Spirit. 
 The soul has a capacity for God. Through all 
 the ages humanity has longed for God. This 
 longing has voiced itself in the religious pro- 
 clivities of the race. In every land and in 
 every age man has not been without a religion. 
 The soul is a chamber not only ready to receive 
 the new life, but the new life seems to be 
 expected, and, till it comes, is missed. In man 
 God has left Himself a way of approach and a 
 ground for moral renovation. 
 
 If we would know whether the soul is capa- 
 ble of being appropriated by the Christ-life and 
 builded into the new creature we will have to 
 turn to psychology. It is in the analysis of the 
 various phases of consciousness that we are 
 furnished with the evidence of the plasticity of 
 the soul. Modern psychology does not now 
 classify mental phenomena according to the 
 different " faculties " from which they were sup- 
 posed to spring ; it arranges them in groups ac- 
 cording to the element which is most prominent 
 in each conscious state. The three ultimate 
 modes of consciousness are now named (accord- 
 ing to the mental element which predominates 
 in each) thinking, feeling, and willing. And 
 these are the very elements with which the 
 Christ-life seeks to clothe itself. The think- 
 
loo The Biology of the Cross 
 
 iixg element of consciousness includes all per- 
 ception and memory, all forms of reasoning and 
 imagination. It is the power by which men 
 believe, or have intuition of truth. The feeling 
 element of consciousness includes all emotions, 
 such as joy, and sorrow, hope and fear, love 
 and hate. The willing element of consciousness 
 includes all impulses, desires, and volitions. It 
 is the purposeful quality in human action which 
 lies at the basis of moral character. 
 
 It must be kept in mind, however, that be- 
 hind this threefold activity of thinking, feeling 
 and willing lies the unity of the ego or self, the 
 subject of these states of consciousness. This 
 self, to whom belong all thoughts, feelings, and 
 volitions, we call the soul. The soul is the sub- 
 ject of life. It is the bearer of the individual 
 life and as such is capacitated for appropriation 
 by a higher type of life. Appealing to the 
 Christian consciousness, which should be made 
 a separate branch of psychology, we find that 
 the Christ-life does appropriate the elements 
 of the soul and does build them into a new 
 creature, the Christian. As the Spirit of God 
 went forth in creation, as the principle of order 
 and life in the new world, so the Holy Spirit 
 operates directly upon the soul of man implant- 
 ing within him a vital entity which is capable 
 of picking up the life elements of the soul out 
 of the chaos of sin and building them into a 
 new creature, a new type of manhood that is 
 
Spiritual Growth 101 
 
 Christlike and spiritual. The only thing we 
 insist upon is that in the natural man these 
 mental and moral elements which form the basis 
 for* the new creature are spiritually lifeless. 
 However active the intellectual, emotional, and 
 volitional elements may be, from the point of 
 view of the Christ-life, they are dead. That 
 which is born of the flesh is flesh. 
 
 Ill 
 
 The old life furnishes the material out of 
 which the new creature is to be constructed. 
 The vital agent is the Christ-life implanted in 
 regeneration. The type to be attained is the 
 Christly character as that character is revealed 
 in the life of Jesus. The process by which this 
 result is accomplished with reference to the 
 Christ-life is a growth, but with reference to 
 the old life it is a transformation. It is evident 
 that the Christ-life was made to grow, not 
 stop. Or in the words of Paul, " whom He did 
 foreknow, He also did predestinate to be con- 
 formed to the image of His Son." No one for 
 a moment doubts that this conformation is a 
 process and that the ci image of His Son " is the 
 moral beauty which the Son displayed as the 
 antitypical Christian character while here among 
 men. " Predestined to be conformed to the 
 image of His Son " implies that somewhere in 
 the revealed will of the Father is the method 
 by which this purpose is to be realized. It is 
 
102 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 the decree of God that the Christ-life shall 
 clothe itself in beauty. If there is not some law 
 for accomplishing this result, then one of the 
 chief gifts to the world has been forgotten. 
 Paul has approached the nearest to the state- 
 ment of the law. He says : " We all with un- 
 veiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory 
 of the Lord are transformed into the same image 
 from glory to glory." 
 
 The first step in this process is the attitude 
 of the Christ-life towards the spiritual environ- 
 ment. " We all with unveiled face beholding," 
 says the apostle. Here is indicated a definite 
 posture of soul towards the Lord and spiritual 
 things. In the physical world the supply of 
 nutriment for the functions of life are kept up 
 by the environment. And so long as the or- 
 ganism continues to grow, think, and act, there 
 is a constant, simultaneous, and proportionate 
 drain upon the surroundings. And if there be 
 nothing within reach of the organism to supply 
 this wasted energy, life and activity must cease. 
 What is true of the physical organism is also 
 true of the spiritual organism. The Christ-life 
 must be in direct contact and touch with the 
 source of all life. Hence the uninterrupted 
 vision. While the Christ-life appropriates the 
 life elements of the soul and builds them into 
 the spiritual organism, yet this is its field of op- 
 eration and not its source of life and strength. 
 The spiritual life does not get its strength 
 
Spiritual Growth 103 
 
 from the old nature, but from the spiritual en- 
 vironment. 
 
 When Paul speaks of the "unveiled face" 
 he is referring to the attitude of the spiritual 
 ego. For, mysterious as it may seem, and all 
 life processes are mysterious, the transforma- 
 tion spoken of takes place in the individual life 
 which is at all times a unit. Paul is, therefore, 
 speaking of the soul as dominated by the Christ- 
 life. The difference between the " veiled "and 
 the " unveiled " soul is the difference between 
 the natural man into whose life the Christ-life 
 has not come and the man into whose soul this 
 new life has been planted. There was never a 
 ray of starlight in the Mammoth Cave of Ken- 
 tucky ; only the red glare of torches ever light 
 its walls. So with the unregenerated soul. It 
 is a mammoth cave, all underground, all un- 
 lighted save by the torches of selfishness and 
 passion. Such a soul finds nothing in the Bible 
 but mystery, nothing in the Sabbath but drudg- 
 ery. The whole scheme of religion is but a 
 chain of meaningless forms and the Gospel 
 foolishness. Such a soul receives none of the 
 spiritual things brought to the world through 
 these forms, and receiving them not, cannot be 
 transformed by them into the character of the 
 Christ. On the other hand the man into whose 
 soul the Christ-life has come is clear-seeing and 
 keen-hearing ; a soul of quick perceptions and 
 prompt emotions ; a soul to which the Saviour 
 
104 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 stands out a living person, and for which heaven 
 is waiting an expected home ; a soul so sensi- 
 tive, that sin makes it writhe with agony, 
 whilst it finds holiness a true delight, and 
 God's conscious favour an elevating joy. Such 
 a regnant power in the soul, a new life whose 
 aspirations are heavenward, is bound to work a 
 transformation. Heart longings will be created. 
 These are not vapourings of the imagination, 
 they are prophecies, they are couriers, fore- 
 runners of things which will become realities. 
 
 The second step in this process is that the 
 regenerated soul should have the divine type 
 constantly in its vision. It is here that a new 
 element enters. This element is the conscious 
 power of choice with which man is endowed. 
 In all animal organisms we find that growth 
 blindly obeys the law of conformity to type. 
 In physical development we not only follow 
 the type involuntarily, but we are unconscious 
 of such conformity. In the higher realms of 
 spiritual growth the soul might have been 
 made to conform to the divine type with no 
 more knowledge or power of choice than the 
 physical organism has, but then we should not 
 have been men. Owing, therefore, to the pecul- 
 iar characteristics of the living elements which 
 are to be incorporated into the spiritual organ- 
 ism an additional and exceptional provision is 
 essential. The first demand is that being con- 
 scious and having this power of choice, the 
 
Spiritual Growth 105 
 
 soul should have an adequate knowledge of 
 what it is to choose. Some revelation of the 
 type is therefore necessary. And as that reve- 
 lation can only come through the type itself we 
 must look for it there. And following this, 
 the other demand is that the type revealed for 
 man's conscious consideration should be the 
 highest conceivable type. 
 
 This twofold condition is set forth in the 
 language of the formula which outlines the 
 law of growth: "Beholding as in a mirror 
 the glory of the Lord we are changed into 
 the same image from glory to glory, as from 
 the Lord the Spirit." The soul enlightened 
 by the incoming Christ-life implanted in re- 
 generation looks upon, contemplates, beholds 
 the "glory of the Lord." Here is set forth 
 the divine type which is to be the model of the 
 spiritual life. It is also indicated that in the 
 process of " beholding " the soul comes to have 
 an adequate knowledge of this type and be- 
 comes conscious of the fact that this type which 
 it beholds is the supreme ideal of manhood 
 after which the life is to be modelled. This is 
 not a radiance to be reflected ; but a person to 
 be contemplated. That person is Christ. Not 
 simply Jesus, the Carpenter's Son, but the cru- 
 cified and risen Saviour. It is this life that 
 constitutes the uplifting power of the Gospel. 
 The transforming force in the kingdom of 
 heaven is the crucified and risen Saviour. 
 
io6 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 There is summed up in Him all the powers of 
 divine grace, all the forces of redemption, all 
 the energies working for world uplift and soul 
 transformation. This divine Christ is the type 
 which the regenerated soul is destined to realize. 
 
 IV 
 
 This transformation does not take place in 
 the soul without struggle. It would be strange 
 indeed if it did. That one life should overcome 
 another life, absorb and appropriate its essen- 
 tial elements and build them into its own 
 being, and do this without meeting with resist- 
 ance, would be different from anything we are 
 acquainted with in the world of life around us. 
 Struggle for existence is one of the laws of life. 
 Not only so, but there are resisting forces con- 
 fronting every species of life in nature, and 
 these have to be overcome before there can be 
 growth ; yea, and the very existence of the 
 species is maintained by a continuous struggle 
 and warfare. In the spiritual world we find 
 this struggle going on. "I find then a law," 
 says Paul, "that to me who would do good 
 evil is present. For I delight in the law of 
 God after the inward man ; but I see a different 
 law in my members, warring against the law 
 of my mind, and bringing me into captivity 
 under the law of sin which is in my members " 
 (Rom. vii. 21-31). 
 
 In regeneration a new life is implanted, but 
 
Spiritual Growth 107 
 
 the old life is not purified. The carnal nature 
 remains. This nature is not subject of the law 
 of God, neither indeed can be, hence it is op- 
 posed to the Christ-life. In fact the two lives 
 belong to different kingdoms. Paul uses two 
 words to designate them. The flesh-life he 
 designates by the Greek word " Sarx," which 
 can only signify an earthly organism consisting 
 of body and soul, and cannot denote either an 
 earthly existence that is not living or a living 
 organism that is not earthly. The Christ-life 
 implanted in regeneration, the life that forms 
 the new creature, he calls " Pneuma," which sig- 
 nifies the divine life belonging to God and com- 
 municated in Christ to man, by virtue of which 
 communication man is regenerated. These two 
 living entities are antagonistic forces. This is 
 evident from the language of Paul : " For the 
 flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit 
 against the flesh ; for these are contrary the 
 one to the other" (Gal. v. 17). 
 
 The difference between these two antagonis- 
 tic forces is as follows : the carnal life is received 
 from Adam ; the spiritual life from Christ. 
 The one we get in natural birth ; the other in 
 spiritual birth. The carnal nature is the vehicle 
 of sin ; the spiritual nature is the vehicle of 
 righteousness. The world is the environment 
 of the carnal ; the kingdom of God and spiritual 
 things the environment of the spiritual. Satan 
 reigns through the carnal ; Christ reigns through 
 
i o8 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 the spiritual. The problem of Christianity — 
 the supreme struggle of the soul — is between 
 these two natures : the Christ-life struggling 
 to overcome the Adamic-life and to subject it 
 to the divine will. Through the process of 
 spiritual growth the carnal life is assimilated 
 by the new life and builded into the Chris- 
 tian personality. By this wonderful change 
 wrought in the soul the regenerated man be- 
 comes like Christ and subject to the will of God. 
 This conflict, while it is one of the concomi- 
 tants of spiritual growth, is not^ an essential 
 element in the process of growth. There are 
 two fundamental characteristics of all growth : 
 one is spontaneousness and the other is mysteri- 
 ousness. No one can tell just how the flower 
 grows. It is from the tiny bulb pushing up its 
 stem and leaf, all the time at war with the op- 
 posing forces of gravity, until at last the flower 
 is shaped by invisible fingers. The growing 
 process was all the time a separate thing from 
 the warring process. Turn to the soul and 
 follow out the analogy. In regeneration the 
 Christ-life is implanted in the soul. It is at 
 first a tiny thing, " a babe in Christ." But it 
 begins slowly to rise, pushing up its delicate 
 virtues in the teeth of sin, shaping itself myste- 
 riously into the image of Christ, and all the time 
 doing this in the face of the opposition of the 
 world, the flesh and the devil. Remember, too, 
 that this process is taking place in the conscious 
 
Spiritual Growth 109 
 
 life of an individual whose nature is not subject 
 to the law of God neither indeed can be. It 
 will then be apparent that as this new spiritual 
 personality is formed the old nature, which is 
 out of harmony with it, will be arrayed in op- 
 position to it. A conflict is bound to follow. 
 But this conflict is one thing, and the growth 
 of the new life is another thing. Spiritual 
 growth is spontaneous, mysterious, beautiful, 
 and there would be no conflict in the soul if it 
 were not for the fact that the Adamic-life is 
 at war with the Christ-life. 
 
 V 
 
 This growth is not augmented either by 
 taking thought. Spiritual character is not the 
 product of anxious work, self-denial, and con- 
 scious struggle. It is not denied that by hard 
 work and self-restraint a man may attain to a 
 very high character. But what is denied is 
 that this is growth, and that this process is 
 Christianity. The conscious struggle may give 
 strength to the will, but every strong will is 
 not a Christian will. Conscious efforts after 
 goodness are generally formed for the purpose 
 of securing what is conceived of as being the 
 best for the self, and in the last analysis are 
 resolvable into simply a regulative programme 
 for the old life. But regulation is not growth. 
 Regulation is an external process which forces 
 the will to observe certain standards without 
 
1 1 o The Biology of the Cross 
 
 any thought of changing the nature of the life ; 
 growth, on the other hand, is the unfolding of 
 a specific type of life which brings with it a 
 changed nature, a changed personality. All 
 one can do is to put himself in the right relation 
 with the spiritual environment and leave the 
 matter of growth to the mysterious inward 
 principle. 
 
 It is to be kept in mind, however, that while 
 the processes of growth are beyond the reach 
 of the individual effort, yet the vital powers 
 which make growth possible are inherent in 
 the regenerated soul. It is the same law govern- 
 ing the phenomena of growth in nature. There 
 the branch ascends, and the bud bursts, and the 
 fruit reddens under the cooperation of influ- 
 ences from without, but the inherent life 
 within the plant appropriates these external ele- 
 ments and through this process of appropriation 
 unfolds and comes to maturity. If it were not 
 for this power of appropriation, by which the 
 plant takes up the carbon and nitrogen which 
 it finds within its reach, there would be no 
 growth, whatever the external conditions might 
 be. So with soul development. The elements 
 which enter into and make up the body of 
 character are external, but these elements must 
 be appropriated by the individual soul. No one 
 by taking thought can add to his stature, but 
 the growing youth, by obeying the laws of 
 nature, by taking the proper exercise and eating 
 
Spiritual Growth 1 1 1 
 
 the right kind of food, can give the inherent 
 powers of his being a chance and they will add 
 to his stature and to his strength and to his 
 health — he will come to the full stature of 
 splendid manhood. So let us not get the im- 
 pression that by some mystic, mysterious proc- 
 ess of the Spirit we are changed into the 
 character and likeness of Christ, and that apart 
 from anything that we can do. Such is not the 
 method of this change as Paul understood it. 
 It is a process that obeys a general and funda- 
 mental law. As the body has within it the 
 powers that appropriate the elements of growth, 
 so has the regenerated soul within it the powers 
 that appropriate the elements of character. As 
 the body obeying the law of its being eats and 
 grows, so the soul obeying the laws of its being 
 assimilates and grows. The food for the soul 
 is the Gospel. It is here that we find the 
 eternal verities which furnish the elements 
 necessary to character. So it is a simple process 
 of giving the soul that which will produce 
 character. 
 
 VI 
 
 In this transformation we are changed into 
 the image of Christ. It could not be otherwise. 
 The regenerated soul is created anew in His 
 image. It is made to partake of His nature. 
 It has within it the germ of the Christ-life, and 
 when it comes to maturity of character it can 
 
112 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 be nothing else except like Him. It is true that 
 we do not realize the full glory in this life, but that 
 is no reason why we should not through faith 
 claim the full consummation. Christ is on His 
 throne and His people are exalted and victori- 
 ous in Him. Their oneness with Him is the 
 pledge of their glorification. " It doth not yet 
 appear what we shall be," says John, " but we 
 know we shall be like Him when He shall 
 appear, for we shall see Him as He is." 
 
 Such is the method and such is the issue in 
 spiritual growth. All is divine in its origin and 
 secret in its processes. In eternal compassion 
 the sovereign and renewing Spirit goes forth in 
 redemption, as He went forth in creation, to 
 call chaos into cosmos. Under His divine super- 
 vision the work of life-building goes on. All 
 in it may not be understood, but the soul which 
 has joyfully surrendered to the all-trusted 
 Master only desires to know what is essential to 
 its progress. Fuller understanding comes with 
 the unfolding life. Trust is always first. Thus 
 the Christian moves along the path of an 
 ever brightening transformation ; at once open- 
 eyed, and in the dark ; seeing the Lord, and so 
 with a pure instinct gravitating to His will, 
 yet content to let the mists of the unknown 
 hang always over the next step but one. 
 
VI 
 
 THE CROSS OF CHRIST THE MISSION 
 IMPERATIVE 
 
 PRESIDENT A. H. STRONG in a 
 masterly address on "The Cross of 
 Christ," delivered before the General 
 Baptist Convention of North America in 1911, 
 after he had declared that "the Cross has meant 
 an eternally judging, suffering and saving Christ ; 
 and a continually judging, suffering and saving 
 Church," adds that " the recognition of this 
 supreme sacrificial event is essential to the ex- 
 istence of a truly missionary church. The 
 greatest need of the hour," continues this master 
 in his exposition of the meaning of the Cross, 
 " is a fresh and forcible expression of the 
 sacrificial spirit of Christ by the Church, His 
 spiritual body on earth. As Christ's sacrificial 
 offering for man's redemption was the crowning 
 characteristic of His earthly ministry, in like 
 manner must the Church, by its sacrificial 
 service for the world's salvation, justify its 
 claim to be the true Church of Christ. Its best 
 talent should be put at the disposal of Him who 
 emptied Himself of honour and became obedient 
 to the death of the Cross. This sacrificial spirit 
 among business men should express itself in 
 large offerings to Him who, for our sakes, 
 
 ll Z 
 
1 14 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 became poor that we through His poverty 
 might become rich. Let this central truth of 
 the Gospel get firm hold upon the men to whom 
 God has given worldly treasure, and then, under 
 the constraining love of Christ, millions will be 
 forthcoming for all our great missionary enter- 
 prises, and the Church herself will attain to a 
 position of moral dignity and power unpar- 
 allelled in her history." 
 
 This profound burst of eloquence Dr. Strong- 
 calls his confession of faith. And well may he 
 so call it. It should be the confession of faitli 
 of every Christian and of every Church. The 
 heart of the Gospel is the Cross. From the 
 Cross is sobbed out heaven's message of life and 
 heaven's imperative to service. 
 
 The divine imperative which is to hurl the 
 forces of Jesus across mountains and plains and 
 stormy seas until the " every creature " in the 
 Great Commission has been reached with the 
 message of love is centred in the Cross of 
 Christ. Did you ever stand with Him in your 
 imagination on that mountain top appointed 
 in Galilee and hear Him as He delivered to His 
 apostles the marching orders for His people for 
 all the years ? Listen as He speaks. " Go ye 
 therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, 
 baptizing them in the name of the Father and 
 of the Son and of the Holy Spirit ; teaching 
 them to observe all things whatsoever I have 
 commanded you : and lo, I am with you all the 
 
Cross of Christ the Mission Imperative 1 1 5 
 
 days even unto the consummation of the age." 
 Behind that triumphant and imperial command 
 is Calvary. If there had been no Cross of 
 suffering there could have been no command of 
 triumph. The "all power" given is on the 
 other side of the all surrender made. Jesus here 
 asserts that He as " Son of Man " has received 
 from the Father supreme authority in heaven 
 and in earth, over the whole kingdom of God in 
 its fullest extent. This is not given to Him as 
 Son of God ; for, as God, naught can be added 
 to Him or taken from Him ; it is a power which 
 He has merited by His incarnation, death and 
 passion. As the purchase of His sacrifice all 
 authority in heaven as priest with God is His — 
 all authority on earth as King of men is His. 
 
 Did you ever stop to ask yourself this 
 question: What is it that Jesus demands of 
 His followers? Have you ever thought 
 seriously, thought until you have arrived at a 
 definite conclusion concerning the superlative 
 duty ? Such a consideration might give you a 
 new vision. The Christian religion takes higher 
 ground in respect to human duty than any pre- 
 tended message from heaven ever dared to as- 
 sume ; and it makes claims, which, for boldness 
 and authority, stand entirely without parallel 
 The imperial demand is that all who come into 
 the experience of the heavenly life shall give 
 
1 16 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 themselves to Christ in the work of establishing 
 the kingdom of heaven throughout all the world. 
 Christ never thought of His kingdom as being 
 anything less than universal and world-wide. 
 His final command to His disciples was : " Go 
 ye into all the world and disciple the nations." 
 His parting instruction was : " Not to depart 
 from Jerusalem, but to wait for the promise of 
 the Father. But ye shall receive power, the 
 Holy Spirit coining upon you : then shall ye be 
 My witnesses both in Jerusalem and in all Judea 
 and Samaria, and unto the uttermost parts of 
 the earth." The ultimate end of the saving 
 powers of the Gospel is the " every creature " 
 of the Great Commission. The final consum- 
 mation of the redemptive forces in the king- 
 dom of grace is the " all creation " in the com- 
 mand of the heavenly King. You cannot 
 divorce the kingdom of heaven from the 
 geography of the world. It was so in the be- 
 ginning, it is so now. The map of America 
 was in the divine conception concerning the 
 kingdom, so Jalso was the map of China and 
 India. The Son of God could think only in 
 terms that were world-wide. To Him the earth 
 was a unit. There were no seas, no mountain 
 ranges, no desert plains. He saw no national 
 boundary lines, and knew no distinctions of 
 race or conditions among the sons of men. 
 Finite creatures think in terms of continents, 
 sections, division of the earth ; they reach the 
 
Cross of Christ the Mission Imperative 1 1 7 
 
 limit of their comprehension when they have 
 included in their thought a few of the races of 
 men, but with the Son of God nothing short of 
 a world including all the races of the family of 
 man could satisfy His conception of a mission 
 worthy of His love. 
 
 The kingdom of Christ must include there- 
 fore Tartar and Tagal as well as Caucasian. It 
 can be nothing less than the reign of Christ in 
 the collective body of men in the material, in- 
 tellectual and spiritual features of the civiliza- 
 tion and social life of the whole world. This 
 includes the environments of men, for the social 
 well being of men must always include the in- 
 creased capacity and restfulness occasioned by 
 the ministry of their surroundings to their mu- 
 tual uplift and progress. So long as conditions 
 in Russia exist which make persecution possi- 
 ble ; so long as the people in China are bound 
 down by the traditions of the past ; so long as 
 political corruption maintains in Europe and 
 America ; just so long will the world be retarded 
 in its social progress and the kingdom of 
 Christ delayed. To these as to all retarding 
 influences there is but one cure. That cure is 
 found in the Cross of Christ. The world's so- 
 cial hurt will be healed only by the coming of 
 the universal kingdom of peace; only by the 
 enthronement of Christ as King ; and this can 
 never take place until the world has bowed at 
 the foot of His Cross. 
 
1 1 8 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 II 
 
 The time has come and now is when every 
 citizen of the kingdom of Christ must feel that 
 this kingdom — its enlargement and glory— is 
 the grandest interest in the universe. The 
 movement for the social betterment of the world, 
 for the moral and spiritual uplift of humanity 
 is not simply a desirable thing for Christians to 
 carry forward ; but it is the chief and most im- 
 portant undertaking under heaven. An active 
 interest in the promotion of Christ's kingdom 
 is a mark of true discipleship. A man's Chris- 
 tian life is not what it ought to be if the out- 
 reach of his sympathies is limited to anything 
 less than all mankind. 
 
 Behind this the largest movement ever known 
 in the history of humanity there is a supreme 
 reason. Behind this superlative call to duty 
 there is a triumphant, a regnant, and an eternal 
 argument. Christ never makes a demand upon 
 the soul that He hasn't a reason for, a reason 
 sufficiently divine and exalted to inspire the 
 heart of His love. That reason is set forth by 
 the great apostle to the Gentiles : " Know ye 
 not the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that 
 though He was rich yet for our sakes He be- 
 came poor that ye through His poverty might 
 become rich." Here the humiliation of Jesus 
 Christ which culminated on the Cross is set 
 forth under the figure of poverty and on this 
 supreme stoop of His humiliation there is based 
 
Cross of Christ the Mission Imperative 1 19 
 
 an argument and an appeal. In Komans Paul 
 begins the practical part of the epistle with an 
 appeal based upon the sacrificial work of Jesus. 
 " I beseech you therefore brethren by the mer- 
 cies of God that you present your bodies a liv- 
 ing sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God which 
 is your reasonable service." The sacrifice of 
 the Gross for us stands behind the appeal of 
 God to us. Because Christ came and died for 
 the world we are to go to the world with the 
 message of life. 
 
 Then let us in our efforts to get hold of the 
 supreme imperative go back to the source of 
 authority and power. We go to-day into all 
 the world armed with an argument which jus- 
 tifies the supreme sacrifice, an argument that 
 justifies the proclamation which we make to the 
 world, which proclamation is that " there is life 
 for a look at the crucified one." Wherever a 
 preacher or a missionary goes — he may be a 
 weak man or an unlearned man — but he goes 
 armed with the argument of the Cross and by 
 this sign he shall conquer. Christ " lifted up " 
 will be an argument to do what no reasoning, 
 no philosophy can do — an argument high as 
 heaven, and deep as hell, and against which 
 no sophistry of earth, no sublety of the devil 
 
 can avail. 
 
 Ill 
 
 But Christianity is more than an argument ; 
 it is a vital power. It is of little avail to 
 
1 20 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 preach Christ crucified if the Cross were only 
 an argument. It is to show utter ignorance 
 of human nature to suppose that any external 
 demonstration will disenchant men of the 
 Avorld. The argument may be overwhelming, 
 but what is this to one who will not weigh the 
 evidence ? I speak now of professed Christians 
 as well as unbelievers. How are we going to 
 stir these out of their apathy ? What can we 
 bring to bear on the host of indifferent ones in 
 order to enlist them in this great work ? How 
 are we going to breed a passion for souls? 
 The instrumentality to accomplish this work is 
 the Cross ; the power that alone can awaken 
 and arouse men from this fatal unconcern and 
 callousness is the Christ lifted up. 
 
 Christianity should be colour, Christianity 
 should be romance, Christianity should be 
 strife, Christianity should be glory, Christian- 
 ity should be sacrifice. Where shall we get 
 these things ? What is there in a bloodless 
 and cross-less religion to evoke in man that 
 higher passion which alone reveals him to 
 himself, tragic and momentous and austere? 
 Up in heaven there is a throne set. Below it, 
 here on earth, amid the toil and moil, divine 
 energies pass hither and thither; but in the 
 deepest heart of it all there is the spirit of the 
 Lamb as it has been slain working to transform 
 and to conquer. This is the vision by the light 
 of which we are flung out of the drab monot- 
 
Cross of Christ the Mission Imperative 1 2 1 
 
 ony into the arena of that age-long struggle 
 for the establishment of the kingdom of God. 
 
 Ihis is the Christian's life romance. How 
 can ve believe it, you and I ? How can we 
 come to see it ? How can we come to feel it ? 
 How can these kingdom forces that are throb- 
 bing in the world and working to the world's 
 redemption throb in our own souls ? How can 
 we come into a mission experience that will 
 forever change the religious horizon for us, 
 that will make us over again ? There is but 
 one way. It is a vision of the Cross and its 
 meaning. You and I must have the Cross 
 erected in our souls ; then and not till then can 
 we do as Jesus did, take the facts as they are, 
 the actual facts of the world as it is to-day and 
 bring God into them. We can then identify 
 ourselves, heart and soul, with the sorrows and 
 labours of men, with the weeping of women, 
 with the pain of little children. Inside all the 
 famines and plagues, the wrongs and the curses 
 of earth we can then creep, and, having come, 
 make them all our own. This is the method 
 of the Cross. This is what Jesus did in coming 
 to the Cross. The bitterness of the world 
 passed over Him, its agony shook His soul ; 
 and therefore in Him God's royal purpose was 
 declared and revealed ; and that bitterness and 
 that agony are about us still. Look at the 
 world to-day, look at its sufferings, its sorrows, 
 its poverty, its nakedness, its pain. We must 
 
122 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 go closer down to it. We must fling into it 
 our reason, our imagination, our conscience, so 
 that we can actually see what the unhappy see, 
 and feel what the wronged feel. This is the 
 method of the Cross. This can happen in our 
 lives only when the Cross is erected in our 
 souls. And this is the dynamic of missions. 
 We claim to be one with the Christ of God, 
 but that Lamb only lives and reigns and opens 
 the seals of the tomb of our souls because He is 
 one with us and in us through the Cross. He 
 lives for the world because He died on the 
 Cross for the world; He lives in the world 
 because He is one with the lives of those who 
 have through the Cross died to the world in 
 Him. 
 
 Such a death will give birth to a heart- 
 wrenching passion for sinners. Have you ever 
 felt the immediate tug of sinning humanity's 
 need ? As you have looked upon the broken 
 and ruined splendour of the soul ; as you have 
 contemplated the wreck of human happiness 
 and the perversion of human society all because 
 of sin ; as you have contemplated all this have 
 you put the question to yourself, Do I really 
 care ? Have you ever felt the sense of brother- 
 hood which sets you to bothering about your 
 brother? The true Saviour-man cares; the 
 man who has erected the Cross in his life cares ; 
 not theoretically, not distantly, not profession- 
 ally, but actually, vitally, through the immedi- 
 
Cross of Christ the Mission Imperative 1 23 
 
 ate impact of need and with an immediate 
 outrnsh of love. This is the only basis for a 
 world programme. A mission movement that 
 is not inspired by love— love to Christ and 
 one's fellows— will be ephemeral ; it will come 
 and go with the changing times and tides of 
 men, with the rise and fall of human values. 
 But a mission interest built upon love will 
 wane not, through bright and cloudy weather, 
 through the stress and storm of financial flurry, 
 through the shocks of the changing times and 
 tides of men, it will still remain. Love is eter- 
 nal. It is optimistic. It is insistent. It does 
 not have to resort to the multiplication table to 
 calculate its responses. The man who cares and 
 cares because he loves, is not careful to count 
 noses in estimating how much he cares. The 
 heart of love does not have to be pried open 
 with the leverage of multitudes. A soul yearn- 
 ing is not fed on columns of figures. Christ did 
 not stop to figure up the number of men in the 
 world to be saved ; He came to save men not 
 because there were so many ; but because they 
 were so dear. And the only inspiration to love ; 
 the only dynamic that drives out our selfishness 
 and causes us to bother about our brother is 
 the Cross of Christ. 
 
 One cannot begin to open up the fullness of 
 this subject. The Cross ! What overwhelming 
 truths flash out from it as from a blazing focal, 
 radiating central point ! What exhibition does 
 
1 24 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 it give of the value of a soul ! What an ad- 
 monition of the miseries of the damned ! De- 
 vouring flames, chains of darkness, howlings 
 of despair — oh, how the Cross, where Jesus 
 bleeds, gives us a most terrific idea of hell! 
 The Cross ! What an awful lustre does it pour 
 upon the justice, the severity and the holiness 
 of God! Above all, the love of God — how 
 dazzling, with what surpassing brightness, does 
 not that shine here — sending a heavenly efful- 
 gence over all this world of darkness even 
 down to the gates of hell ! Can this Cross be 
 viewed with indifference ? Is it strange that 
 the Cross has power to rouse and stir the heart ? 
 Is not this the wonder, not that men are shaken, 
 but that all are not melted and mastered by 
 the very first proclamation of a crucified Re- 
 deemer ; and that whenever and wherever that 
 truth is proclaimed, the scenes of Pentecost are 
 not renewed? When one looks at the Cross, 
 how is it possible not to love God? not to 
 call with the Psalmist upon heaven and earth, 
 upon our souls and all within us, to love and 
 praise the Lord ? And with Andrew Fuller to 
 find our hearts forever breaking out into un- 
 known strains of love, and our lips — go where 
 we will — still singing : 
 
 "Oh, for this love let rocks and hills, 
 Their lasting silence break, 
 And all harmonious human tongues 
 The Saviour's praises speak." 
 
Cross of Christ the Mission Imperative 1 25 
 
 IV 
 
 The Cross stands as the symbol of sacrifice. 
 On it Jesus gave Himself for the world, and 
 His appeal to us for service comes from the 
 mount of His own sacrifice. It can have no 
 other meaning to us than that it had for Him. 
 Here is symbolized the supreme gift which 
 every Christian is called upon to make, the 
 giving of himself for the coming of the king- 
 dom of God in the world. 
 
 Let us not be guilty of criminal perversion of 
 God's word by inferring that because He has 
 promised a specific reign of Christ in all the 
 ends of the earth, that He will certainly bring 
 it to pass, and therefore we may repose in a 
 state of entire inaction and unconcern. There 
 is no piety in that confidence which neglects 
 prayer, or which praying does not add to prayer 
 diligent effort to attain that for which it prays. 
 God's kingdom is a kingdom of means. He 
 never did, and probably never will, convey the 
 light of the Gospel to any people by direct 
 miracle. " Faith cometh by hearing and hear- 
 ing by the Word of God," says the apostle; 
 and as if to stir his hearers with a holy zeal in 
 the work of preaching the Gospel, he continues, 
 ,ji but how can they hear without a preacher, 
 and how can they preach except they be sent ? " 
 The world-wide work of kingdom building has 
 been commissioned to men. 
 
 The work which we are called upon to ac- 
 
1 26 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 complish is the moral renovation of this entire 
 world. Not a corner of it is to be left unre- 
 claimed. Over all of it Christ is to reign. To 
 those who would go to foreign fields I would 
 say go ; go as fast as winged ships can carry 
 you, but do not go because American sin is not 
 picturesque enough. Do not go because you 
 think it is only by going that you can work for 
 the bringing in of the kingdom. Go only be- 
 cause the leader has commanded you to take 
 your position at the post of duty in the foreign 
 field. The army of King Jesus is world-wide, 
 the campaign of conquest is universal, and every 
 point of contact with the forces of evil is the 
 front of battle whether the lines be drawn in 
 the home field or on the foreign land. 
 
 To you who are commissioned to stay and 
 fight in the ranks at home let me give you this 
 word of encouragement. The battle cannot be 
 waged successfully abroad unless the enemy be 
 kept in check at home. The greatest problem 
 of foreign missions to-day is a home problem. 
 Treasuries of benevolence are being lavished in 
 vain, and the lives of men spent for naught, 
 because, as soon as the faithful missionary 
 begins to succeed in turning the miserable 
 heathen from his idols and saving him from his 
 pollution, modern commerce, with its heart 
 lusting for gold, and fearful of losing its prey, 
 rushes in, and beats to the earth the work of 
 heavenly benevolence, and knocks in the head 
 
Cross of Christ the Mission Imperative 1 27 
 
 the new-born hopes of regenerated tribes. 
 With every vessel bearing a missionary there 
 goes a cargo of rum, and a troop of moral 
 perverts to debauch the heathen. Can we ex- 
 tend over all the earth the victories of the 
 Prince of Peace while we are bearing in one 
 hand the emblems of salvation, and in the other 
 hand the price of blood ? Can we break the 
 chains of spiritual thraldom abroad while we 
 rivet the fetters of moral bondage at home ? 
 Can we teach the races of the earth the law of 
 universal love, while we are trampling on hu- 
 man rights, treading out the life from the im- 
 mortal mind and crushing, with iron heel, the 
 image of God in man in our home land ? So 
 long as the so-called Christian nations are filled 
 with graft and greed; so long as the most 
 dreadful corruptions of morals and the most 
 dismal defiance of every sound principle come 
 from Europe and America ; just so long will the 
 far-flung battle lines of King Jesus move for- 
 ward uncertainly and the kingdom of peace be 
 retarded in its ccming. 
 
 V 
 
 And how shall this be changed ? How shall 
 our home land as well as the lands across the 
 seas be lifted up and redeemed ? There is but 
 one way, it is the Cross of Christ. The Cross 
 of Christ is the only remedy for a lost world. 
 We know that where Christ crucified is not 
 
128 The Biology of the Cross 
 
 preached, nothing is done for eternity. Much 
 there may be of sublimity and beauty in the 
 orations of the pulpit ; but if Christ crucified be 
 not there — while the imagination may be enter- 
 tained — all will be to the soul only the beauty 
 of frost, and the sublimity of the desert. Do 
 you want this earth to be born anew ? Then 
 bring it to the Cross. Do you wish it to make 
 Jesus King ? Then erect the Cross in the heart 
 of its commercial, its civic and its social life. 
 Do you wish it to drop all its heart burdens of 
 slavishness and come into the life wherein there 
 is liberty ? Then plant the Cross in the midst 
 of its sorrow and sin as the sacrificial oblation 
 for all its wickedness. The Cross is the gate- 
 way of glory for all the race. It is more than 
 deliverance from sin, it is entrance into the life 
 of God. It is not disaster, it is design. All 
 nations, kindreds, tribes and tongues are in- 
 cluded within the ample fold of its all-compre- 
 hending sufficiency. The ages to come and 
 the ages past are to rejoice in the blessings 
 which it confers. 
 
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