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 Baker, L. C. 1831-1915. 
 
 The mystery of creation an 
 of man 
 
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 Digitized by the Internet Archive 
 in 2019 with funding from 
 Princeton Theological Seminary Library 
 
 https://archive.org/details/rnysteryofcreatio00bake_0 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
TO WHICH IS ADDED 
 
 A NEW VIEW OF FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 
 
 ■/ Y 
 
 L. C. BAKER. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 
 J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO. 
 18 84 . 
 
Copyright, 1883, by L. C. Baker. 
 
PEEFAOE. 
 
 The forms in which the Christian faith is now 
 assailed are,— 
 
 1. As to the Father. It is sought to destroy 
 the idea of a personal God by obliterating the 
 distinction between matter and spirit, and making 
 nature the sufficient cause and end of all things. 
 
 2. As to the Son. His mission is reduced to 
 the level of this natural system and compressed 
 within its limits. All that assumes to transcend 
 these limits, not excepting that transcendent mira¬ 
 cle upon which the whole structure of Christianity 
 rests, the Resurrection, is rejected or thrust out 
 of sight behind that mythical veil which conceals 
 the origin of all religions. In this view the per¬ 
 fected natural man becomes of right the Son of 
 God and Heir of the world. 
 
 3. As to the Spirit. It is denied that He pro¬ 
 ceed eth from the Father and the Son, and speci- 
 
 3 
 
4 
 
 PREFA CE. 
 
 ally from the risen Son of man, as that new 
 creating energy by which all things are to be 
 made new, both in the region of man’s life and 
 in that physical system to which he stands re¬ 
 lated. It is affirmed that all things must con¬ 
 tinue as they were, and that whatever renovation 
 is effected in man, or in the system of things to 
 which he belongs, must be wrought out by the 
 well-known agencies of nature, and must proceed 
 according to her fixed and unchanging laws. 
 
 And so the thoughts of men are turned away 
 from Him “ Who is and Who was and Who is to 
 come.” 
 
 This volume does not oppose these errors with 
 scientific treatise nor yet with elaborate exegesis. 
 It is made up of fervid pulpit utterances, which, 
 while not disdaining the teachings of science, seek 
 to carry some new light into her realms from 
 Scripture, enabling us to look across her boun¬ 
 daries and to catch glimpses of the veiled face of 
 our Father God. 
 
 And they project light, from the same source, 
 upon the mystery of the Christ and behind the 
 veil which now conceals Him, and show what 
 meaning attaches to manhood in the light of this 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 5 
 
 manifestation of God and of the glory which is 
 yet to be revealed. And they show what harvest 
 the Spirit is ripening on these fields of creation, 
 of which His first fruits in our hearts and bodies 
 are the earnest and the pledge. 
 
 They are now sent forth upon whatever mission 
 of instruction, of comfort, or of warning the God 
 of all grace and truth may have in store for 
 them. 
 
 1 * 
 

 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I.—The Father of Lights .... 9 
 
 II.—The Word made Flesh .... 26 
 
 III. —What is Man?.48 
 
 IV. —Angels, Authorities, and Powers . 65 
 
 Y.—Things Visible and Invisible . . 71 
 
 YI.—The Prince of this World ... 85 
 
 VII.—The Power of Darkness ... 94 
 
 VIII.—The Natural and the Spiritual . 106 
 
 IX.—The Old Man and the New . . . 117 
 
 X.—The Sacrifice of the Body . . . 133 
 
 XI.—Physical Salvation.147 
 
 XII.-—Wiiat is Eternal Life? . . . 158 
 
 XIII.—The Everlasting Fire .... 166 
 
 XIY.—Destruction Qua Homo : A New 
 
 Thought about Future Punishment 181 
 XY.—The Song of Moses and of the Lamb . 191 
 
 7 
 

 
 
 
 
 
 
 ✓ 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
THE MTSTEET OF CREATION 
 AND OF MAN. 
 
 x. 
 
 THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 
 
 Di ) not err , my beloved brethren. Every good gift and 
 every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the 
 Father of Lights, ivith whom is no variableness, neither 
 shadow of turning. Of His own will begat He us with the 
 word of His truth, that we should be a kind of first fruits 
 of His creatures. —St. James i. 16-18. 
 
 The number of those who look upon it as a 
 superstition to believe in God or pray to Him 
 seems to be everywhere increasing. Few indeed 
 deny that there is a Supreme Power, or primal 
 force, the origin of all things. But is this 
 “ Power” in any proper sense a person ? Is He 
 a God and Father? What is His relation to 
 this system of nature, all of whose forces move 
 on fixed lines? And what is my relation to it? 
 
 Is my little barque of life, launched on to this 
 tide of motion and of being, a stray waif running 
 
 out to unknown seas, or shall it some day float 
 
 9 
 
10 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 me into the presence of God, where I shall see 
 His face, and know that He is my Father, and 
 that He has been guiding me by an unseen hand 
 across all these seas to a home in His palace and 
 His heart? 
 
 Scepticism about God in these days has taken 
 this special form. If it concede His existence at 
 all, it seeks to remove Him from any personal 
 connection with the orderly operations of nature, 
 and with the bounties which flow to us through 
 them. 
 
 Now, as if in foresight of the paths of error 
 by which so many are being led away from the 
 knowledge of God, whom to know is life eternal, 
 Scripture records this warning, “Do not err. 
 Every good gift and every perfect gift is from 
 above, and cometh down to 11 s from the Father of 
 lights.” The assertion is that all nature’s re¬ 
 positories of force were made and stored by Him, 
 and that the whole system is freighted with 
 ministries of mercy to man. And a reason for 
 this is given : “ Of His own will begat He us 
 with the word of His truth, that we should be a 
 kind of first fruits of His creatures.” 
 
 The title here given to God is significant. He 
 is called “ the Father of lights,” or of “ the 
 lights,” for the article occurs with the noun. 
 This title is unique, and occurs nowhere else in 
 Scripture. The 139th Psalm gives the clue to its 
 
THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 
 
 11 
 
 meaning. We are there exhorted to give thanks 
 unto the Lord, for His mercy endureth forever. 
 And among; the mighty works of Creation cited 
 in proof of His goodness is this: “To Him that 
 made great lights, for His mercy endureth for¬ 
 ever.” The apostle here is directing our minds to 
 God as Creator, not merely in a general way, but 
 as the Author of the innumerable lights that stud 
 the heavens. The term “ lights” includes with 
 the sun the whole family of which he is a mem¬ 
 ber, the fixed stars which bespangle the midnight 
 sky. These are all suns, great lights. And they 
 are called fixed stars, because the designation here 
 given to their Creator may be applied to them. 
 They have no variableness, neither shadow of 
 turning. The original word here has become one 
 of the technical words of astronomy. It is “ paral¬ 
 lax.” These fixed stars have no parallax or sen¬ 
 sible change of position in the skies. Science, 
 indeed, claims to have discovered by its delicate 
 instruments a slight parallax in two or three of 
 the nearest of them. But with these few excep¬ 
 tions, and these as the result of a marvellous 
 scrutiny, these innumerable lights have no paral¬ 
 lax. That is, they are so^far away that, by obser¬ 
 vations taken six months apart and with a base¬ 
 line the whole diameter of the earth’s orbit, they 
 give no appreciable angle of deviation. Their 
 place in the heavens is unchanged. 
 
12 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 And if this be true of these heavenly orbs, 
 how much more can we assert of the Father of 
 them that with Him there is no variableness. 
 These multitudinous stars are all in motion and 
 passing through vast changes, although they seem 
 not so to us. “They shall perish, but Thou re- 
 mainest: yea, all of them shall wax old as doth a 
 garment, and as a vesture shalt Thou fold them 
 up, and they shall be changed. But Thou art the 
 same, and Thy years shall not fail.” 
 
 This title, then, presents God to us as the Maker 
 of these countless stars which shine by their own 
 light through the infinite depths of space, and all 
 the mighty forces of which they are the centres 
 as ministers of His, that do His pleasure. 
 
 And what a large idea does this give us of our 
 God! These heights and depths around us are 
 strewn with stars like the sands on the sea-shore 
 for multitude. Science has multiplied our powers 
 of vision a thousand-fold. And as far out as she 
 is able to peer she finds the near and the remoter 
 shores of space crowded with their constellations, 
 and these lighting the way to myriads more be¬ 
 yond. And the spectroscope has told us that the 
 very same minerals and gases we find here on the 
 earth compose the substance of our sun, ahd blaze 
 in the photospheres of these countless suns. They 
 are all made out of the same materials. One 
 mind must have contrived and one hand have 
 
THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 
 
 13 
 
 formed them all. And of all these lights He is 
 the Father who is also said to be the Former of 
 our bodies and the Father of our spirits. 
 
 But still we have to ask, Why is this title 
 employed in this connection? It would seem as 
 if it anticipates the very objections we hear in 
 these days against the doctrine of an overruling 
 God, the Almighty Maker and Provider of all 
 things. 
 
 Men argue that if there be a Creator of so vast 
 a system, He surely cannot concern Himself with 
 the minute care of all the tiny creatures who in¬ 
 habit this speck in His domains. Astronomy, it 
 is said, sinks this earth the Bible makes so much 
 of quite out of sight. And then again, it is as¬ 
 serted, if there be a God, He has made the universe 
 to be a system of fixed and unalterable laws. Its 
 potent forces know no change and no defeat. 
 Wise men tell us that this system is just as stolid 
 and unyielding to the voice of prayer as is the 
 moon to the baying of a dog. 
 
 This title, then, opposes itself to all these atheistic 
 or naturalistic conceptions. It asserts that behind 
 this vast and rigid system there is enthroned a 
 Father. That it should be an orderly system is 
 only a proof of the perfect wisdom with which 
 it was at first adjusted. There is no need of 
 rectification or amendment. But it is also a 
 
 beneficent system. Behind these huge batteries 
 
 2 
 
14 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 of natural forces there is a benevolent director of 
 them all. 
 
 Even science teaches that these lights in the 
 heavens are the repositories of those mighty forces 
 which pervade all space and sustain us and all 
 things in daily being. Here on the earth, the little 
 nook of creation with which we are most familiar, 
 it was these all-pervasive forces that rounded its 
 nebulous mass into a world and diversified it with 
 continents and seas, and smoothed its wrinkled 
 surface into the lovely hills and dales among 
 which man was placed. They have tempered its 
 climate into this happy equilibrium between heat 
 and cold, and stored it with mineral wealth and 
 clothed it with verdure and mantled it with beauty 
 as a fit abode for the intelligent creature who was 
 to be placed upon it. And they now ripen its 
 growing crops and fill it with fertility and abun¬ 
 dant food for man and beast. Even human 
 science confesses this, and traces back these benefi¬ 
 cent effects to the sun, primal source of light to 
 the earth, and to the universal forces that flash 
 from all suns. It bids us behold in these the 
 source of every good and perfect gift. 
 
 But Revelation takes us one step further. It 
 not only takes us to the threshold of this temple 
 of the skies, but bids us enter and behold therein 
 the face of our Father. It teaches us not only 
 that He framed and now manages this wide and 
 
THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 
 
 15 
 
 complex system of forces, but that He specially 
 has made them to be the bearers of His bounty 
 and love to us. They are the jewelled fingers on 
 His hand by which He reaches down to us every 
 good and perfect gift. The long fingers of light 
 and of electric energy that reach down from sun 
 and stars, that search out the seed buried in the 
 ground and warm it in f o life and fruitfulness to 
 give us food, are the fingers of His loving hand. 
 These hidden forces that paint for us the land¬ 
 scape and tint the clouds with gold and crimson 
 in the evening sky are part of His thoughtful, 
 tender ministry to us. And equally all our social 
 blessings are rivulets from the same stream of 
 bountv. These invisible forces of nature, how 
 little we know of their influence upon us and over 
 us. They are potent in all the influences that 
 mould society and nations. They control the de¬ 
 velopment of every individual life. They have 
 power to bless and to curse, to smite and to heal. 
 They fill the mountains around about us with 
 horses and chariots of fire. 
 
 And this suggests the inquiry by what right 
 science, which traces back the phenomena of mo¬ 
 tion and of being to these forces, assumes that 
 they are simply material and unintelligent. The 
 only system of forces in nature or in history which 
 the Bible recognizes is an intelligent system. The 
 executive forces of “ the Father of lights” in 
 
16 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN-. 
 
 creation bear such names as these ,— u Angels, 
 Principalities, and Powers.” These names imply 
 intelligence. . They transcend the sphere of the 
 material. They are spiritual powers. It is a 
 false and fatal mistake to assume that these forces, 
 of which science can take some cognizance, but of 
 whose real nature she is ignorant, are blind, un¬ 
 thinking agents. Scripture does not so regard 
 them. If it does not positively identify these 
 spiritual forces called “ angels” with the great 
 forces of nature which we call light, heat, gravi¬ 
 tation, and so on, it implies that the connection 
 between them is most intimate.* And this gives 
 
 a new force and beautv to the statement we are 
 
 •/ 
 
 considering, that operating through all these 
 forces, compelling them to be the messengers of 
 His care and bounty to us, is their Father and 
 ours, from whom cometh down to as, through 
 their ministry, every good and perfect gift. 
 
 And here we turn aside to enforce a special 
 lesson from this passage. The apostle had been 
 speaking in this connection about the transient 
 fickle good which men pursue when they are 
 drawn aside after their own lust and enticed. He 
 urges them not to be thus decoyed. For all true 
 and substantial blessings every perfect and well- 
 
 * Heb. i. 7, revised version ; Ps. xviii. 10; civ. 3, 4, etc.; 
 Kev. xiv. 18. 
 
THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 
 
 17 
 
 rounded gift will come to them from Him who 
 made all things, if we do not err from His ways. 
 And whatever short-lived good a sinful course 
 secures, we shall find ourselves running abreast 
 of that eternal tide of blessing which God set in 
 motion when He made the worlds. 
 
 But we pass now to consider the statement an¬ 
 nexed to the declaration we have been considering, 
 that all good gifts come down to us from the pri¬ 
 mal source of qreation’s lights. u Of His own 
 will begat He us with the word of His truth, that 
 we should be a kind of first fruits of His crea¬ 
 tures.” Here we are introduced to the reason 
 why God so constructed this system of the uni¬ 
 verse as to make it a store-house of blessings for 
 us. Here also we get a glimpse into this mystery 
 of creation which science cannot give us, which 
 the wisdom of this world never dreamed of. It 
 is here intimated that this universe of worlds is a 
 great field which God is tilling for a harvest. He 
 lias a certain kind of fruit He wants to produce 
 upon it. Mere boundless wastes of fiery suns are 
 not what He is seeking in this system of creation. 
 He wants it peopled with living intelligent crea¬ 
 tures. Here on the earth He has ploughed and 
 tilled and raised successive forms of animal life, 
 each series higher than the last, until, last and 
 highest of all, He has produced man, made in 
 
 His own image. Even evolution teaches this. 
 b 2* 
 
18 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 Now, in an important sense, this human race 
 are the first fruits of His creatures. The one per¬ 
 fect member of this race was the Archetype to¬ 
 ward which the whole system converges. (Coloss, 
 i. 15.) He is the Ideal Man, the First-Born of 
 every creature. And although this Perfect Type 
 or Image of God was not attained in Him and 
 cannot be in us, except through death and new 
 creation, yet in this transition stage of being, 
 while yet we bear the image of the earthy man¬ 
 hood, this race, in virtue of its present likeness to 
 God and its future possibilities, is the noblest har¬ 
 vest yet ripened on this soil. It is not said of 
 angels, however near they may be to Him, that 
 they are God’s embodied image. Man, so far as 
 we know, alone sustains this dignity. And science, 
 so far as it speaks at all upon this point, seems to 
 confirm the supposition that nowhere in the uni¬ 
 verse is there a creature so linked to God in origin 
 and destiny as man. It asserts that the nearest 
 of all the heavenly bodies, the moon, cannot be 
 inhabited. It fails to find the proper conditions 
 of cosmical order and chemical equilibrium suita¬ 
 ble for the abode of such a creature upon any of 
 our sister planets in the solar system. They all 
 seem to be in some one of those formative stages 
 through which the earth, in its previous geologic 
 history, has passed. You could never find a home 
 for such a creature as man amid the hot and vapor- 
 
THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 
 
 19 
 
 ous masses with which Jupiter is belted, nor among 
 the incandescent vapors of the sun. And all the 
 other visible bodies of the universe are similar 
 suns. 
 
 There is nothing, then, in science which contra¬ 
 dicts the Bible statement that man, made in God’s 
 image, is the first fruits of His creatures. On the 
 other hand, modern astronomy, which has ad¬ 
 vanced far beyond the speculations of Thomas 
 Dick and other glowing writers, who wrote splen¬ 
 did lectures about other inhabited worlds, now dis¬ 
 pels this fanciful imagery with the stern and some¬ 
 what modest statement that, so far as she can see , 
 she does not find anywhere else the same favorable 
 conditions for created life as exist here on the 
 earth. Such conditions may exist indeed in other 
 solar systems. All that can be affirmed is that 
 science has revealed nothing which contravenes 
 this statement of Scripture, that the first fruits of 
 God’s creatures, the most advanced and ripened 
 harvest that has yet blossomed out upon these 
 sparkling fields, is this race of men. And there¬ 
 fore we can better understand why they are stored 
 with blessing for us. The purpose He had in 
 mind when He framed these worlds was to crown 
 this system of His works with an embodied image 
 of Himself. The fiery nebulous vapors that first 
 filled all space were created as they w T ere, because 
 they were to contain the substances and the forma- 
 
20 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN . 
 
 tive energies out of which man was to be evolved. 
 These rounded the earth into shape because she 
 contained within her womb this anointed race. 
 The 139th Psalm implies this when it sings, “I 
 will praise thee, for I am fearfully and wonder- 
 fully made. My substance was not hid from thee, 
 when I was made in secret, and curiously wrought 
 in the lowest parts of the earth. Thine eyes did 
 see my substance, yet being imperfect; and in thy 
 book all my members were written, which in con¬ 
 tinuance were fashioned, when as yet there was 
 none of them.” Observe here how the Word of 
 God reverses and puts to shame the speculations 
 of men. Men would look upon the human frame 
 as the proficient product of a tentative struggle in 
 nature up through lower forms of life until this 
 higher has been reached. As if she had been 
 blindly struggling after more perfect organism 
 under no higher impulse than a general tendency 
 toward improvement. The law of u the survival 
 of the fittest” is put forth as adequate to account 
 for this result. Whereas the Bible represents the 
 creation of man as definitely in the mind of God 
 at the beginning of the series, and all its lower 
 links as preparatory thereto. So that man derives 
 his importance, not in that he is the highest pro¬ 
 duct of a long series of previous lower organisms, 
 but these lower forms derive all their importance 
 from the fact that they prefigure man. They are 
 
THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 
 
 21 
 
 rude draughts of the more perfect model which 
 was to be hereafter fashioned, and all of whose 
 members were shaped and wrought out in the 
 thought of God from the foundation of the world. 
 
 We go back, then, in order to find the purposes 
 of our creation, to the point where the Bible con¬ 
 ducts us, “ before the worlds were made.” And 
 so we find a good reason why He made these 
 worlds of light to be store-houses to us of every 
 good and perfect gift. We were to be the first 
 fruits of His creatures. 
 
 But while all this is true, in a general way, of 
 the human race, truth compels us to state further 
 that only a select class of this favored race is 
 reaching toward the end of its creation. 
 
 While humanity, as such, is a first fruits of 
 creation, Scripture speaks about a first fruits com¬ 
 pany from this race of mankind. Indeed, this 
 designation is specially limited and applied by St. 
 James to Christians, those who have been begotten 
 “ by the word of His truth.” Scripture is replete 
 with references to this anointed race.* Of them 
 Jesus is the First-Born and the Head. He is 
 presented in the New Testament as a newly- 
 created man. He was first on earth as an earthly 
 man, in the likeness of sinful flesh. But, pass¬ 
 ing through death, He arose on the other side of 
 
 * Rom. viii. 29; Coloss. i. 18 ; Rev. xiv. 4. 
 
22 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 it in a higher order of manhood, a glorified and 
 immortal man. Hence He is styled “ the Begin¬ 
 ning of the Creation of God,” “ the First-Born 
 from the dead.” The grand archetypal Image of 
 God, the pattern of manhood, which He had in 
 mind when He made the worlds, was at last pro¬ 
 duced. And so when He rose from the dead He 
 took His rightful place, as the Son and Heir of 
 God, on the summit of this system of creation. 
 All its principalities and powers were put beneath 
 His feet.* He was truly the first fruits man, 
 first begotten from the dead, the Image of the 
 Invisible God, the appointed Heir of all things.f 
 But Scripture also teaches that He is the First- 
 Born among many brethren. There is a church 
 of the first-born, whose names are enrolled in 
 heaven, who are predestinated to be conformed to 
 His image, and who are therefore joint heirs with 
 Him. This is the royal race of whom these words 
 are strictly true : “ A kind of first fruits of His 
 creatures.” They are to stand in the front rank 
 and to wear the crown of this vast empire. They 
 are to be set over all the works of His hands.J 
 Babes and sucklings they may be now, as the 
 8th Psalm teaches, of this dying race. But out 
 of their mouth has God ordained the strength 
 that shall still the enemy and the avenger; that 
 
 * Eplies. ii. 18-23. f Heb. i. 2. % Heb. ii. 6-11. 
 
THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 
 
 23 
 
 shall rescue the earth and all these blighted fields 
 from the destroyer’s reign. The God of peace 
 shall bruise Satan under their feet. And through 
 them, after their resurrection from the dead, shall 
 the lustre of God’s grace and bounty be diffused 
 not'only over the earth, now mantled with the 
 curse of sin and death, but over wider and wider 
 circuits of creation, until all its waste and fiery 
 fields shall blossom out into life and beauty, and 
 become vocal with His praise. 
 
 All this, and more than we can express or 
 conceive, is implied in this and kindred passages 
 of Scripture, which teach that we, who have 
 believed on Jesus, and have been made partakers 
 of His life, are now a kind of first fruits of 
 His creatures. 
 
 And so again we see a new force and beauty in 
 the previous statement that God has stored all 
 creation’s lights with blessing for us. This was 
 His most cherished thought in their formation. 
 To this end He hung them in the firmament. To 
 this end He first marshalled and now directs all 
 the forces that traverse these boundless plains. 
 “ Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to 
 minister for them who shall be heirs of salvation ?” 
 On the silent wings of these forces, which men 
 call by such names as Light, Electricity, Gravita¬ 
 tion, but concerning whose true nature they know 
 but little, on their darting pinions flashing from 
 
24 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 star to star, across inconceivable chasms, leaping 
 down abysmal depths, searching out the buried 
 seed and raising it up into an hundred-fold as food 
 for us, stealing into our chambers on the wings 
 of the morning, folding their wings around us in 
 the darkness of the night, shielding us from the 
 pestilence that walketh in darkness and the de¬ 
 struction that wasteth at noonday, bearing us up 
 in their hands lest at any time we dash our foot 
 against a stone, these invisible messengers are our 
 loving guardians, our bounteous almoners, bring¬ 
 ing down from their Father above and our Father 
 every good and perfect gift to us, whom He has 
 designated to this high honor, to be a kind of 
 first fruits of His creatures. 
 
 Yea, more, St. Paul, in the epistle to the Romans, 
 warrants ns in going further. He represents the 
 whole creation, not only as charged with this 
 ministry of mercy to us; it awaits with longing 
 desire, as a mother waits for her unborn child, the 
 redemption of our bodies and the time of onr 
 manifestation as the sons of God.* Their out- 
 birth into the glory of the new creation shall be 
 her rest and joy. So closely has God bound up 
 this mystery of redemption with this mystery of 
 creation. 
 
 And if our eyes are anointed with the eye-salve 
 
 * llom. viii; 19-22. 
 
THE FATHER OF LIGHTS. 
 
 25 
 
 of His word, if we truly prize these great lights 
 kindled on its pages to guide us through the dark¬ 
 ness of this present time, no false lights of human 
 wisdom or science can ever obscure in our souls 
 the light of this bright and Morning Star. 
 
 Nothing shall close our eyes to the fact of God’s 
 presence all around us, of His loving ministry of 
 mercy and of chastisement, too, through all this 
 system of laws and forces to which we are now 
 subject. Beyond Sirius, beyond those vast fields 
 of light across which Orion leads his bands, we 
 shall discern the shining of this greater light,— 
 “ The Lord God is our Sun and our Shield.” 
 All nature will seem to us alive with God, and 
 we shall see His hand and feel the warm beating 
 of His heart in all, and all its agencies of good or 
 ill will seem but fingers on the hand by which 
 He is leading us up along our pilgrim path on to 
 the heights of eternal life and glory. There no 
 veil of created things shall any longer hide from 
 us the full vision of our Father. The veil will 
 be lifted, and we shall see Him face to face and 
 know Him heart to heart. 
 
 n 
 
 3 
 
 ♦ 
 
XX. 
 
 THE WORD MADE FLESH. 
 
 And the Woi'd was made flesh and dwelt among us. —St. 
 
 John i. 14. 
 
 No Scripture phrase is more deeply significant 
 than tliis, “ The Word of God.” Christ is the 
 complete revelation to us of the Father. Hence 
 He is denominated “The Word.” Of Him are 
 predicated the titles, the acts, the names, and at¬ 
 tributes of God. “ Without Him,” St. John 
 affirms, “was not anything made that was made.” 
 
 It was the special mission of this beloved 
 apostle to present this mystery. The Word, of 
 whom he writes, is not an attribute but a person, 
 who, from everlasting, has been the outgoing of 
 the Father in the works of creation and redemp¬ 
 tion. This divine Person, he tells us, was made 
 flesh and dwelt among us. 
 
 Such is the great mystery of godliness. Jesus 
 Christ, who we know was man, was truly God. 
 The Christian confession concerning Him is that 
 of St. Peter, “We believe and are sure that Thou 
 
 art the Christ, the Son of the living God.” On 
 26 
 
THE WORD MADE FLESH. 
 
 27 
 
 this Rock the church is built. And he that so 
 confesses is born of God. 
 
 As this is the foundation-truth in the Christian 
 scheme, by which it stands or falls, it is not sur¬ 
 prising that the chief assaults of unbelief have 
 been from the first aimed against it. Perhaps 
 from no quarter has it been more plausibly as¬ 
 sailed than from the teachings of science, falsely 
 so called. Since the time St. John wrote, “All 
 things were made by Him,” science has revolu¬ 
 tionized the common conception of the universe. 
 Then men thought the earth the greatest thing in 
 creation. Now we know it to be but a speck in 
 the mighty volume of star-dust the breath of God 
 has rolled through boundless space. A drop to 
 the ocean, a grain of sand to its wide stretch of 
 shore, is all that the earth is to the universe. 
 And yet we are confronted with the amazing an¬ 
 nouncement that the Maker of all these worlds 
 was born a babe in Bethlehem. “ He was made 
 flesh and dwelt among us.”. “The world might 
 have believed that,” says the sceptic, “eighteen 
 hundred years ago, but the advanced science of 
 our day pities its credulity.” 
 
 But let us see whether this cavil, so boastingly 
 put forth, has any ground even in reason or 
 science to rest upon. It is a sufficient reply to it 
 to say that there is something grander in creation 
 than all this material glory. The mind that is able 
 
28 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 to investigate these subjects, that can reach over 
 these vast spaces and measure these huge orbs, 
 that can range on wings of light through these 
 trackless depths and pay its intelligent tribute of 
 praise to the Maker of these countless worlds, is 
 greater than the worlds themselves. Jesus taught 
 men that the whole world was not of equal value 
 with one human soul. And this mass of worlds, 
 considered as agglomerations of matter, are not 
 worth so much. Moreover, the element of size 
 provides no standard by which to measure the 
 thoughts and ways of God. Before Him, the 
 Infinite, all finite things are equally great or 
 small. If the earth were millions of times larger 
 than it is, and man proportionately enlarged in 
 person and in faculties, the disproportion between 
 him and his Maker would not be one whit the 
 less. 
 
 But this objection takes much for granted that 
 is not allowable in an argument that pretends to 
 base itself on the exact teachings of science. It 
 assumes that this multitude of worlds are inhab¬ 
 ited, and that these inhabitants are as high, if not 
 higher, in the scale of being than man. But for 
 this assertion it gives no proof. No one has ever 
 seen or conversed with these alleged beings. True, 
 the Word of God speaks of angels. But the ob¬ 
 jector who will not submit to that Word in one 
 thing must not appeal to it to sustain another. 
 
THE WORD MADE FLESH. 
 
 29 
 
 If the appeal be to that infallible source, we dis¬ 
 cover there that redeemed man has a higher place 
 in the counsels of God and a higher destiny than 
 angels. “ Know ye not that ye shall judge an¬ 
 gels?” This assertion that the universe is peopled 
 by creatures like man is all conjecture, and cannot 
 be used in any way to discredit a plain statement 
 of the Bible. Indeed, science herself, so far as 
 she is able to teach anything on this subject, 
 seems to contradict the assumption. She is not 
 able to find elsewhere the conditions under which 
 human life exists here. She affirms that this 
 planet was in existence an inconceivably long 
 period after “ the beginning,” before man was 
 placed upon it, and that the bodies nearest to it, 
 with which she is best acquainted, the moon and 
 sister planets, do not give evidence of the same 
 settled condition of things that we find here. 
 Before the earth became the fit abode of man 
 there were vast convulsions and deluges, and 
 commotions of land and sea and air, that would 
 not admit of his existence, much less his devel¬ 
 opment into the social and civilized man of our 
 day. 
 
 Mighty forces, chemical and mechanical, wrought 
 on this globe for ages before it was well rounded 
 and its wrinkles smoothed into the lovely hills 
 and dales among which man was placed. We 
 
 might infer, a priori, the improbability that the 
 
 3 * 
 
30 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 planets, with their varying distances and motions, 
 would all come at the same time to such equilib¬ 
 rium and repose. And this inference the obser¬ 
 vations of science confirm. There is good evi¬ 
 dence that the forces of nature have not so thor¬ 
 oughly done their work on the other bodies of 
 this solar system. The body nearest to us, the 
 moon, is without an atmosphere. Jupiter and 
 Saturn seem to be immense fluid masses, shrouded 
 and belted with humid vapors. The telescopic 
 appearances of the planets indicate a cosmical 
 condition similar to the earth’s, in the formative 
 stages through which science insists she passed 
 long before man was created. And if it be true 
 that the period of his existence here, compared 
 with this period of preparation, is extremely small, 
 even the argument from analogy favors the sup¬ 
 position that these other bodies are not yet the 
 abode of any such race of beings. That God 
 should leave them still without such inhabitants 
 is no more improbable than that He should have 
 left the earth so long. 
 
 As for the fixed stars, we know that they are 
 suns, luminous with mighty fires that feed on the 
 same elements which the spectroscope discovers 
 in our sun’s photosphere. And as for the in- 
 • visible worlds revolving around them, what we 
 know of them is all conjecture; so that it is pre¬ 
 sumption to affirm, as it would be wholly to deny, 
 
THE WORD MADE FLESH. 
 
 31 
 
 that these innumerable worlds are peopled with 
 creatures as high in the scale of being as man. 
 
 There is no valid argument, then, from the 
 immensity of creation against the Bible statement 
 that the Word, by whom all things were made, 
 was made flesh and dwelt among us. He came 
 for the good of something more precious even 
 than these illimitable fields of sparkling suns. 
 Moreover, there is no scientific evidence against 
 the view which Scripture favors, if it does not 
 directly teach, that nowhere, through these wide 
 realms, is there a creature so linked to God in 
 origin and destiny as man. 
 
 But, are all these worlds then made for naught? 
 Are these unbounded fields a barren waste, or 
 have they no higher end than to reveal the glory 
 of their Creator to us? Surely it would be folly 
 and conceit so to affirm. 
 
 That these worlds are to be inhabited by intel¬ 
 ligent subjects of the one kingdom of the heavens 
 we may not doubt. But that these glowing fields 
 of fire are yet prepared for their abode cannot be 
 proved. Science affirms that the earth passed 
 through immense cycles of preparation before it 
 was ready for man. So that, to say the least, she 
 is debarred from disputing that cosmogony which 
 Scripture compels us to construct, and which as¬ 
 signs to the creation of man the crowning place 
 in tliis whole material system, and makes him the 
 
32 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 focal point around which the lines of God’s work¬ 
 ing turn, as they sweep down from a past eternity 
 and curve away into the eternity to come. 
 
 The order of the universe, as gathered from 
 Scripture and science, we would state somewhat 
 thus. 
 
 Of course there never was a time when God 
 began to be. “ He inhabiteth eternity.” Co-ordi¬ 
 nate and coextensive with Himself there was the 
 outgoing of His essential being in the person of 
 His Son, who is “ the only-begotten Son of God, 
 begotten of the Father before all worlds, God of 
 God, Light of Light, very God of very God, 
 begotten, not made, being of one substance with 
 the Father.” So St. John begins, “In the begin¬ 
 ning was the Word, and the Word was with God, 
 and the Word was God.” This outgoing person 
 from the Father is His agent in creation. “He 
 created all things by Jesus Christ.” The universe 
 
 CD f 
 
 is thus an outflow of creative power and wisdom 
 from Him in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the 
 Godhead. And now science conies in to suggest, 
 if not to teach, that these outflowing works of 
 God were at first one mighty tide of elemental 
 matter, in whose abysmal depths were hidden the 
 forms into which it was to unfold. On the bosom 
 of this chaotic deep the Spirit, “who proceedeth 
 from the Father and the Son,” the formative 
 energy of God, as His creative energy is expressed 
 
THE WORD MADE FLESH. 
 
 33 
 
 through the Son, moved. We speak now of the 
 creation of matter. And yet what is matter? 
 We know as little about it as we do about spirit. 
 The tendency among able and even devout students 
 of nature, like Faraday, is to regard it as a group 
 of centres of force. But the crime and ignorance 
 of science has been to regard the forces of nature 
 as merely material and unintelligent. We believe 
 that, from the first, embosomed in the vast pro¬ 
 found, were spiritual powers, creatures of God, 
 intelligent and mighty forces operating in this 
 new realm of creation; working out the designs 
 and the praise of its Author. These are the angels, 
 the principalities and powers of Scripture, known 
 to the dull perception of science by names which 
 suppress the idea of intelligence and life, such as 
 light, heat, electricity, gravitation, affinity, but 
 which the word of God warrants us in believing 
 to be the sons of light, which it represents as from 
 the first rejoicing in and over His works. Any 
 one who has examined Scripture on this point 
 would be surprised to learn how closely it associ¬ 
 ates and even identifies the angels with all ordinary 
 and extraordinary operations of nature. These 
 mighty powers, vivified and controlled by the 
 Almighty Spirit of God, have been at work in 
 this realm of wonder from the time that light 
 flashed from pole to pole of the huge orb in which 
 were then rolled up the constellations and systems 
 
34 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 of the heavens. They lighted the fires of that 
 mighty forge on which the worlds were cast, and 
 from which our sun is but a scintillating spark. 
 And they are still at work through this vast 
 domain, doing the good pleasure of Him who 
 covereth Himself with light as with a garment, 
 who “ maketh the winds His angels, His minis¬ 
 ters a flaming fired’ 
 
 But to what end have they been working? 
 Why have the dark depths been lighted with the 
 innumerable watch-fires of the encamping hosts 
 of God ? Why are their curtained tents pitched 
 over the boundless blue of space? It was, from 
 the beginning, in anticipation that God was, in a 
 marvellous way, to show forth His glory in crea¬ 
 tion and make a full unfolding on its platform of 
 all the attributes of His exhaustless being. To 
 this end creation, proceeding from Him, was to be 
 brought into marvellous accord with Him through 
 the creation of a new order of being, differing from 
 angels, linked to the world of matter, subject to 
 its limitations and liabilities, and yet made in the 
 image of Himself and so linked to God. The 
 mystery of evil was to be allowed to do its work 
 in this new realm and upon this new creature of 
 His hand that, in the discipline of conflict with 
 it, he might gain a wider experience and be pre¬ 
 pared for his high destiny. Satan was suffered to 
 impose his yoke of bondage to corruption upon 
 
THE WORD MADE FLESH. 
 
 35 
 
 the creation which God had made, and upon 
 man placed upon its summit. But the promise 
 was, that the mystery of evil should rebuked 
 and disclosed by the revelation of a greater mys¬ 
 tery of godliness, by which the fallen sons of 
 men, redeemed from sin and death, should be 
 made the appropriate and efficient instruments of 
 showing forth the glory and the grace of God in 
 the ages to come, and over the field of creation 
 to be disenthralled at their manifestation. This 
 plan, therefore, required that some sheltered nook 
 in the universe should be made ready for the in¬ 
 troduction and abode of this new creature, man. 
 A planet in this solar system, out of innumerable 
 systems, was designated. The earth was chosen 
 on which the mighty powers before referred to, 
 which men call the powers of nature, have wrought 
 to produce a settled order, such as we do not see 
 elsewhere. No other planet of this system, and 
 certainly no one of those furnaces of blazing fire 
 we call fixed stars, presents such an aspect o‘f 
 chemical equilibrium and cosmical order as we 
 find here, where sun and moon and stars of light, 
 fire and hail, snow and vapors, stormy wind, 
 mountains and all hills, fruitful trees, and all 
 cedars, unite not only in praising God, but in sus¬ 
 taining and blessing man. Man then was placed 
 here, the crowning work in the whole series of the 
 works of God, the Monarch of creation; the 
 
36 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 earth, the most perfect work yet cast lip from the 
 depths of this seething sea of fire, and man upon 
 it, the pearl of great price, which even the Lord 
 of glory came to seek and find. 
 
 And how did He come? He was made flesh, 
 and dwelt among us. He took upon Him our 
 nature, and entered wholly into the sphere of this 
 human life of suffering and conflict. He carried 
 our nature triumphantly through all; paid down 
 the wages of its sin, which is death, that, through 
 death, He might destroy him that hath the power 
 of it; and carried it through resurrection on to 
 the pinnacle of power and of glory. God, in the 
 person of His Son, has thus taken man into per¬ 
 petual union with Himself, and crowned him king 
 of this dominion. And, in lifting up man to His 
 throne, He is lifting up the whole system, of which 
 man was made the head, out of its transient 
 eclipse, into the eternal order and beauty of that 
 new creation, in which the glory of our Father 
 God, which we now see through the veil of things 
 temporal and through a glass darkly, shall be re¬ 
 vealed to us face to face and heart to heart. His 
 Son, who made all things, as Jesus the Incarnate 
 Word, once dead, but now alive for evermore, is 
 the appointed Heir of all things. The First-Be¬ 
 gotten of the Father from eternity, in this new 
 relation and order of being, He is now the First- 
 Begotten from the dead, whom, when the Father 
 
THE WORD MADE FLESH. 
 
 37 
 
 raised, He declared to be His Son, and commanded 
 all the angels of God to worship, giving Him 
 lordship over all kindreds of the earth, and all 
 the hosts and realms of heaven. And this, His 
 passage through humiliation and death to this 
 glory, was that He might become the First-Born 
 among many brethren. It was to bring many 
 sons unto glory. So that we are brought face to 
 face with the amazing, the unspeakable wonder, 
 that this mighty work of creation was begun, and 
 has been carried on, and this earth was selected 
 and fitted up, that, through conflict and triumph 
 over evil, there might be born and trained here 
 that anointed race who should be let into the 
 deepest secrets of the mind and heart of God, 
 who should be, in the highest and most sacred 
 and endearing sense, His sons, the heirs of His 
 estate, and the prime ministers in the coming ad¬ 
 ministrations of His kingdom, that shall flood the 
 wide fields of space with a brighter effulgence of 
 His glory than that which sparkles from suns and 
 stars. Man, in resurrection glory, linked by em¬ 
 bodied being to the material world, and yet in 
 origin and by new creation made one with God, 
 shall be the golden bond in that heavenly mar¬ 
 riage of the future when the whole creation, like 
 a beauteous bride, shall stand suffused with the 
 light and radiant with the loveliness of God. 
 
 We have no sympathy, then, with those dwarfed 
 
 4 
 
38 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 conceptions of the ways of God in creation and 
 redemption which make man to be a miserable, 
 solitary rebel in a remote and insignificant corner 
 of one of His provinces, whom it were a pity to 
 let perish without a great effort to rescue. That 
 he is a sinner is, alas! too plain. That he has 
 passed under the power of death is sorrowfully 
 true. That he is, in the sight of God, insignifi¬ 
 cant, is also true in one aspect; in another, he is 
 the pivot around which turns the whole plan of 
 creation, as it has been unfolding in the ages past, 
 and sweeps away into the ages to come. He is 
 nothing in himself; but the good pleasure of God 
 has made much of him. He will never achieve 
 his destined greatness, except, as in union with 
 the risen Jesus, he shall rise into the rank of ex¬ 
 cellent being which He has attained. Many will 
 not enter in through unbelief; but a royal seed 
 shall not fail to come to the same joy and honor, 
 who shall inherit all things, and be kings and 
 priests unto God forever. 
 
 The discoveries of science, then, in these last 
 days, instead of disproving to the devout believer 
 the Gospel on which all his hopes are based, have 
 only disclosed to him sublimer views of the wis¬ 
 dom and grace that stooped to his low estate. 
 They have uncovered depths before hidden, and 
 lifted him on to splendid heights in the knowledge 
 of the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our 
 
THE WORD MADE FLESH . 
 
 39 
 
 Lord,—the one theme which he shall explore with 
 delight forever, but never exhaust; for it filleth 
 all the fulness of God. They have immeasur¬ 
 ably enlarged our conception of the works of 
 Him who has taught us to call Him Father, and 
 given us views of His eternal being and wisdom 
 and power of appalling magnificence. But they 
 all tend to magnify the riches of that grace which 
 has let itself down to us that it might lift us up 
 forever. 
 
 Welcome, then, the most advanced teachings of 
 all true science. They let us more into the mys¬ 
 tery of the love of God in our salvation. The 
 doctrine of the Word made flesh gives us who be¬ 
 lieve the key that unlocks the arcana of the uni¬ 
 verse. We see the plan by which the worlds 
 were framed. This sublime masonry of suns and 
 stars is crowned on its summit with a cross; and 
 on that cross a Lamb slain from the foundation of 
 the world. The structure is not too grand and 
 costly for such an altar. And on the platform, 
 where stands that cross, and around its base, there 
 is being gathered that royal company who are to 
 be kings and priests in this temple of the skies, 
 which the glory of God and of the Lamb shall 
 lighten. A few short graphic strokes of St. John’s 
 inspired pen sketch out this plan of ages, which 
 the wisdom of this world could never find out, 
 which its princes did not know, else they would 
 
40 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 not have crucified the Lord of glory. “ In the 
 beginning was the Word. . . . And the Word 
 was God. . . . All things were made by Him. 
 . . . The Word was made flesh and dwelt among 
 us. . . . To as many as received Him, to them 
 gave He power to become the sons of God.” 
 This is His manner of love to us, he writes in an¬ 
 other place, that we are now the sons of God, al¬ 
 though it doth not yet appear what we shall be; 
 but when this mantling veil of things visible is 
 rent and His glory is revealed, we shall be like 
 Him and appear with Him in glory. 
 
 In the light of these reflections, the importance 
 of that cardinal doctrine of our faith, the resur¬ 
 rection of the dead, is apparent. There are many 
 fascinating speculations nowadays that etherealize 
 into emptiness the grand verities of revelation, 
 making embodied life to be the lowest form of 
 life, and affirming virtually that there is no resur¬ 
 rection of the dead. But the doctrine of God 
 our Saviour affirms that the highest form of life 
 and being has been embodied. The whole drift 
 and energetic action of creation has been toward 
 the production of a creature that should be 
 fashioned out of its materials into an image of 
 God. The First Adam, of the earth earthy, was 
 made such an image. Sin and Satan were suffered 
 to pollute and deface the image for a while; but 
 only in order to its reconstruction after a perfect 
 
THE WORD MADE FLESH. 
 
 41 
 
 model in Him who, as the Risen Man, is now the 
 Image of the Invisible God, the First-Born of 
 every creature. The Second Adam is the Lord 
 from heaven. It would seem as if God Himself 
 would take on a form, not indeed to enhance His 
 own happiness, but that He might communicate 
 of His ineffable fulness to His creatures. The 
 Word was made flesh, died for our sins, and was 
 raised again in the power of an endless life, the 
 Type and Fount of pure and indestructible man¬ 
 hood, set in the highest heavens, the model and 
 the goal to which He would bring us. The being 
 clothed upon, then, with this glorified humanity 
 at the resurrection, is as essential to this plan of 
 ages as is the keystone to an arch. The stock of 
 this human family is the noblest tree that has 
 blossomed out on the field of the universe, the 
 grains in whose soil are stars; and that stock has 
 yet ripened but one fruit, one Risen Man, the 
 corn of wheat that fell into the ground and died 
 and rose again, the germ of springing harvests 
 that shall make this wide field glad with golden 
 sheaves, and vocal before God with perpetual joy. 
 It is this embodied immortality, this incorrupt¬ 
 ible manhood that bears the stamp of God’s own 
 image, to the production of which He has been 
 working through all the ages, for whose manifes¬ 
 tation the whole creation now waits as an expect¬ 
 ant mother travailing to bring to light the kingly 
 
 4* 
 
42 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN 
 
 race whose birth shall be her rest and joy. And 
 through this race, not of disembodied spirits, but 
 of men, who come to their immortal manhood at 
 the redemption of their bodies, shall the designs 
 of God in creation be unrolled in the ages to 
 come. 
 
 Here, also, has run the line between truth and 
 error in every age. Men have always been seek¬ 
 ing after an idea or image of God. The invisible 
 things of Him, from the creation of the world, 
 have compelled them to the search. But the uni¬ 
 versal tendency has been to deprave this idea, to 
 deify the forces of nature, and to compress the 
 glory of the incorruptible One within the limits 
 of the corruptible forms of the creature. Hence 
 all nations lapsed into idolatry. From the idol¬ 
 atrous mass the Jews were separated to conserve 
 and exhibit the true idea of God. Any attempt 
 to worship the One Lord through the likeness of 
 anything in heaven, earth, or sea was the crown¬ 
 ing sin to an Israelite, to be punished with death. 
 
 But whv is it thus wrong: to look for God in 
 these works of PIis hands? Has He not, through 
 these forms, made known to us Himself? To 
 this His word, from its first announcement of the 
 fall and the consequent curse upon the creature, 
 replies that these forms are not now a just expres¬ 
 sion of the uncreated One. They are preliminary, 
 made subject to vanity. Their fashion passeth 
 
THE WORD MADE FLESH. 
 
 43 
 
 away. And the earliest promises involve the 
 subsequent revelation of the great mystery of 
 godliness, in which the true idea of God, the 
 express image of His Person, was to be disclosed. 
 
 The Bible does, from the outset, recognize the 
 justness of the universal instinct of men to look 
 for God in some outward form or expression of 
 Himself. While it commands them away from 
 the creature, and declares their crime and con¬ 
 demnation to be the worship of it, it is full of 
 promises and types of a subsequent manifestation 
 of Himself. Now, in these last days, He hath so 
 made known Himself. Men beheld His glory, 
 the Only-Begotten of the Father, full of grace 
 and truth, the Son of David according to the flesh, 
 but declared to be the Son of God with power by 
 His resurrection from the dead. 
 
 Here, then, is the only true Idea and Image of 
 God. Creation reveals that idea only as these 
 .works of God sum themselves up in Him as their 
 crowning mystery, and as they are refitted to show 
 forth His glory. These works were, indeed, from 
 the first, designed as the platform on which the 
 Image of the invisible God was to beset up. In 
 this sense Jesus is said to be the beginning of the 
 creation of God. But it was to be for a while 
 shrouded by an eclipse of sin and death before it 
 should finally mirror forth the glory of Him who 
 created it. Hence His glory must first be veiled 
 
44 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 in human nature. In order to redeem it He must 
 become subject to death, and rise above it in that 
 new form of being which creation was intended 
 to display, and the human race hereafter to em¬ 
 body. He is now the Head of the new creation, 
 who, when the scaffolding of things seen is taken 
 down, shall be revealed as the Image of God in 
 His temple of creation. But it is not Christ Jesus 
 after the flesh, but as glorified in resurrection, that 
 is this image. This explains why no traces of the 
 appearance of His person in the flesh are left on 
 record, and why even the traditions of it were 
 lost from the church, and why it is now idolatry 
 to worship images and pictures of Jesus. The 
 
 attention of the church was directed a wav from 
 
 •/ 
 
 Jesus after the flesh to Jesus glorified.* The 
 adoration of the crucifix is the mark of her 
 degeneracy and shame. 
 
 But it is not alone among idolaters, pagan, and 
 Christian, that this true idea of God has been lost. 
 Among those to whom a purer faith has long been 
 preached, even within the precincts of the church, 
 this same degrading tendency is painfully mani¬ 
 fest. Multitudes who call themselves Christians 
 find their highest idea of God in the forms and 
 forces of this present natural system, and in hu¬ 
 manity as now constituted, although they may not 
 
 * 2 Cor. v. 16. 
 
THE WORD MADE FLESH. 
 
 45 
 
 employ images to represent the idea to their minds. 
 This present evil world they regard as the plat¬ 
 form on which His promised kingdom is to be set 
 up. Man must seek and find regeneration in his 
 advancing knowledge and power over nature and 
 in his own self-culture. The end of all this is 
 the natural man crowning himself as God’s image 
 in this temple of nature. If there is any knowl¬ 
 edge of Christ—and there is much pretence of it 
 * —it is “ only after the flesh/’ as a great teacher 
 and reformer. There is no knowledge of Him, 
 either in His relations to humanity or to creation, 
 or to the plan of God that shall issue in its de¬ 
 liverance. He is not owned as the Christ of 
 God. “ This is that spirit of antichrist, whereof 
 
 ye have heard that it should come.” Alas ! it 
 
 * 
 
 is fast waxing to its most presumptuous height. 
 
 And now, concerning the many false ways in 
 which the wisdom of the world conceives of God, 
 we know that an idol or a mere human idea of 
 God is nothing in the world, and that there is 
 none other God but one. “For though there be 
 that are called gods, whether in heaven or in 
 earth (as there be gods many and lords many), to 
 us there is but one God the Father, of. whom are 
 all things, and we in Him, and one Lord Jesus 
 Christ, by whom are all things, and we by Him.” 
 We, who know the Lord, crave no other God 
 than this. Here our soul’s deep want is met. 
 
46 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 Our sin, the great barrier between us and God, 
 is put away. The mysteries of being and creation 
 are explained. Our own future is lighted by 
 Him along a path of peace and blessedness, and 
 up those splendid heights along which He as¬ 
 cended when He arose out of death, leading cap¬ 
 tivity captive. And as science unfolds to us the 
 wonders of the universe, and proves these wreaths 
 of shining mist above us to be woven from the 
 scattered sunbeams of worlds as countless as the 
 leaves of the forest or the sands on the sea-shore, 
 it is our joy to know Him as now Lord of all. 
 The thrones and dominions and principalities 
 which represent the mighty forces at work in this 
 domain were all made subject to Him when He 
 rose from the dead. He has re-entered this 
 temple of the skies as the God-man, and resumed 
 His sovereignty over all the potent agents that 
 traverse these glowing fields of fire, to plough 
 and till them for that harvest of glory to be 
 reaped thereon to His eternal praise. The high¬ 
 est seat of power and dominion in all this realm 
 of wonder is the body of the man Christ Jesus. 
 The highest effort of all these forces, working 
 from the dawn of creation, is to rear a throne and 
 prepare an empire for that royal race of which 
 He is the First-Begotten from the dead. 
 
 We do not think of Him as merely enthroned 
 among shining ranks of angels, the recipient of 
 
THE WORD MADE FLESH. 
 
 47 
 
 a homage that terminates upon itself, but as now 
 constituted head of that system of mighty forces 
 that surge and play through the boundless gulf 
 of space, sprinkling its dark depths with jewelled 
 worlds, tossing their sun-gems along its shores as 
 thick as pebbles on the ocean strand, rounding 
 them in the fiery surf that beats on that eternal 
 shore, polishing them in their own diamond- 
 dust, and fitting them up in order and beauty to 
 flash forth forever the glory of Him who created 
 them. 
 
 But lest this view of our inheritance in Him 
 seem too vast and vague, His Word also assures 
 us that the administrations of power and blessing 
 that shall finally gladden this wide waste of 
 worlds shall begin here on the earth. Here, 
 where He was put to death in the flesh, must He 
 also set up His throne, until on the earth every 
 tongue confess Him Lord. And finally the new 
 heavens and earth shall be the metropolis of that 
 everlasting kingdom, extending itself in ever- 
 widening circles to the utmost confines of space, 
 and causing its barren solitudes to blossom with 
 infinite forms of life and intelligence and beauty. 
 
 “ What shall we then say to these things? If 
 God be for us, who can be against us? He that 
 spared not His own Son, but delivered Him up 
 for us all, how shall He not with Him also 
 FREELY GIVE US ALL THINGS?” 
 
XIX. 
 
 WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 What is man ? —Ps. viii. 4. 
 
 No question can be proposed to men of greater 
 interest than this. It meets us at every turn in 
 this mazy path of life. It demands attention at 
 every shifting of the scene in this wonderful 
 drama of human history. It confronts us at the 
 bedside of the dying. 
 
 Let us look, first , at some of the diverse ele¬ 
 ments that enter into this problem ; secondly , con¬ 
 sider some of the ways in which men attempt to 
 solve it for themselves; and, thirdly , let us see what 
 the Bible has to say about it. What is its answer 
 to this significant inquiry, “ What is man?” 
 
 There are many phases in which this question 
 presents itself. We study man physically and 
 find that he is only one, the highest indeed, in a 
 series of animal races peopling this planet. 
 
 And this creature is but frail and perishable. 
 He dies, as the brutes die. He has an intellect, 
 by which he is able to scale the stars and pry into 
 
 the secrets of the universe. And yet hardly is 
 48 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 49 
 
 his eye lit with the lustre of this divine intelli¬ 
 gence before a film of death steals over it and 
 shrouds it in ravless darkness. 
 
 And this creature, too, seems to be born to 
 trouble, insomuch that grave philosophers, like 
 Schopenhauer, have recently joined hands with 
 the suicides in affirming that human life is not 
 worth living. For it seems to be only a series of 
 victories crowned with defeats; a cup of delights 
 with the bitterness of disappointment in the dregs. 
 As well not to be a bird of song, we are told, as 
 to be forever beating your life away against the 
 bars of the cage that shuts you in. Even the 
 Bible, from this point of view, surveying man 
 wearing his life away in baffled attempts to win a 
 glory which only fades like a flower, declares, 
 “ Surely man, at his best estate, is altogether 
 vanity.” 
 
 And then, considered morally, what a strange 
 creature is man. He has capacities of goodness, 
 of virtue and tenderness, which assimilate him to 
 God. And yet he has an irresistible tendency to 
 evil, which sometimes drags him down to the 
 level of brutes, and even of demons. 
 
 There are thus many sides to this question, 
 “ What is man?” and we must be careful not to 
 take up with any one-sided answer. On the one 
 hand there is much to impress us with the vanity, 
 
 the weakness, the selfishness and meanness of man. 
 c d 5 
 
50 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 On the other we are equally impressed with his 
 greatness. The very earth is made sublime as the 
 theatre of his achievements. We are amazed 
 every time we set ourselves to think about the 
 attainments and the possibilities of this strange 
 being. Man has a feeble body which ties him 
 down to earth. And yet we find him roaming 
 among the stars, weighing them, measuring their 
 distances, inspecting the materials that compose 
 them. He invents a telescope and peers into the 
 depths of space where the gathered beams of a 
 thousand suns have trembled into darkness. He 
 constructs a spectroscope and compels these suns 
 to tell him what substances feed their mighty fires. 
 
 And here, on the earth, we see him founding 
 empires, building cities, transmuting these rough 
 materials of stone and clay, and iron and timber, 
 into magnificent palaces or quiet homes for his 
 abode. We see him running iron roads across 
 continents and floating bridges across the oceans. 
 Nothing is more suggestive of his greatness and 
 daring ambition than one of these huge iron ships, 
 from which, as from a fortress, he bids defiance to 
 nature in seeking to confine him within narrow 
 limits, conquers her elements of wind and wave, 
 and compels them to do him service. So also w r e 
 see him invading the realm of nature’s hidden 
 forces, putting on them a harness of steel, com¬ 
 pelling them to drive his steamers and give wings 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 51 
 
 to his locomotives, and to do more in his work¬ 
 shops than if every one of them were filled with 
 such giant workmen as old Briareus, who had a 
 hundred hands and fifty heads. So also does he 
 overleap all limits to intercourse, stretching a net¬ 
 work of wires from city to city, and even under 
 the seas, and compelling the lightning to flash his 
 thoughts almost in a moment around the world. 
 And he is even learning to transmit his voice 
 audibly over long distances. If he cannot have 
 ubiquity for his person over the earth, he will have 
 it at least for his thoughts, the expression of his 
 soul. 
 
 Such are some of the phases in which this won¬ 
 derful composite being, which we call man, appears 
 to us. And these are some of the elements that 
 enter into this inquiry and make it so startling. 
 
 But passing next to observe how men answer 
 this question for themselves, we notice first that 
 most men act as if they were children of nature, 
 put into the world to live off of it and make the 
 most out of it. Hence, as Jesus says, the things 
 which the nations seek after are, “ What shall 
 we eat and drink, and wherewithal shall we be 
 clothed ?” This may be called the naturalistic 
 view of what man is. 
 
 But many take a higher view than this. They 
 recognize in him a higher element than that of 
 mere animal life. They believe him to be in- 
 
52 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 vested with noble powers and capable of indefi¬ 
 nite improvement, if only the barriers which 
 obstruct his progress were removed and he could 
 be allowed to fairly adapt himself to the laws 
 which prevail in this system of things. Nature 
 has given him the lordship of the world, for 
 which he must prepare himself by proper educa¬ 
 tion, by physical and mental culture, by reforms 
 in society and government. This may be called 
 the'rationalistic or the humanitarian view of man. 
 It makes his true goal of being to be perfection 
 in this world. 
 
 But beyond these solutions of the mystery of 
 man, we have in these days certain attempts of 
 an undevout science to throw light upon it. 
 Viewing him as the centre and the product of 
 this wonderful system of nature, she has come to 
 the front in the endeavor to explain this mystery 
 of man; and yet confessedly she has not found 
 the origin of life nor pierced at any point the 
 veil that shuts out from her lenses the realm of 
 the soul. Some of her devotees refuse to believe 
 that there are any wonders of spirit beyond her 
 ken. Hence we see a battle racing around this 
 vital point, “ What is man ?” between atheistic 
 materialism and Christianity. Man is declared 
 to be only the last in a series of tentative efforts 
 by which nature through untold ages lias been 
 reaching out after a more perfect form of being. 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 53 
 
 But even if this be true of his physical being,— 
 even if it could be demonstrated that his bodily 
 organism is lineally descended from the apes, 
 which were themselves evolved from previous 
 lower forms,—and that all life on the globe is 
 but an ascending development from protoplastic 
 germs, we are no nearer getting rid of the neces¬ 
 sity for a creating God, as the Author and Ener¬ 
 gizer of the whole system, than we were before. 
 Nor do such explanations account at all for man’s 
 spiritual nature, that part of his being which 
 science cannot inspect nor analyze, and to which 
 some of her votaries seem strangely blind. Nor, 
 if proved true, would they preclude us from ac¬ 
 cepting the Bible statement of the special creation 
 of this man of a higher order, the Adam, en¬ 
 dowed with a spiritual nature and made capable 
 of union in eternal life with God. It is one of 
 the strangest things about this question of ages, 
 “ What is man ?” that, in this nineteenth cen¬ 
 tury, amid such evidences of his noble origin and 
 destiny and conquests over nature, of which the 
 investigations of these scientists are a striking 
 proof, some of them should be trying to prove 
 that man is only a childless waif, floating on this 
 great stream of life without a Father and with- 
 out a future, a mere bubble tossed up for a mo¬ 
 ment out of this seething caldron of nature’s 
 forces, and sinking back again into its pitiless 
 
54 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 bosom as into a bottomless abyss, without God 
 and without hope. Into such blindness concern¬ 
 ing this mystery of man do men sink who do not 
 begin their investigations from the right centre. 
 Still is it true that “ no man hath seen God at 
 any time,” and that no man can find Him ex¬ 
 cept as the Son shall reveal Him. If we first 
 come to Christ and accept Him as the revelation 
 of the unseen God, then all these wonders be¬ 
 come lighted with a glory beaming from His face, 
 and, instead of a remote mechanic or a primal 
 supreme force in this system of the world, we get 
 a Father who hath loved us from the beginning, 
 and who is drawing us by all the lines of light 
 and power, along which He has been working 
 from the dawn of creation, to that knowledge of 
 Himself which is eternal life, and to that loving 
 union with Himself which is blessedness supreme 
 and everlasting. 
 
 We turn, then, from these purblind conceits of 
 the worldly and natural mind concerning man’s 
 origin and destiny to consider the Bible answer to 
 this great question, “ What is man?” 
 
 And here at the beginning we are met with 
 the surprising announcement that man was made 
 in the image of God. St. Paul puts it in even a 
 stronger way, “ The man is the image and glory 
 of God.” Here is a statement which at once ex¬ 
 plains the immense superiority of man to all the 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 55 
 
 forms of animal life beneath him. The man has 
 a nature allied to God and capable of fellowship 
 with Him. We are not surprised, therefore, that 
 he has an intellect capable of indefinite expansion. 
 There is no explanation of the immense distance 
 between the chattering intelligence of a monkey 
 and the vast sweep of a mind like that of Lord 
 Bacon that can begin to take rank with this: 
 “ Man was made in the image of God.” Nothing 
 less than this accounts for the difference between 
 the forest homes of the apes and a splendid city 
 like Paris; between a group of chimpanzees in 
 the woods and the Peace Congress at Berlin. 
 
 But we are told further that this creature, made 
 in God’s image, was invested with dominion over 
 the lower orders and over the earth. We have 
 already alluded to some of the ways in which we 
 see this statement verified. We see man every¬ 
 where asserting his ownership and title to dominion 
 over God’s works. He has not scrupled to invade 
 even that domain which Scripture often alludes 
 to as the invisible side of creation. This is the 
 home of those angelic forces which move on the 
 wheels of this created system and flash on view¬ 
 less wings through all its heights and depths. He 
 has found ways of yoking even these secret forces 
 of nature which we call by such names as heat, 
 electricity, etc., but which the Bible views as an¬ 
 gelic powers, to the chariot wheels of his progress. 
 
56 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 And we cannot deny that they were included in 
 his original grant of dominion. These forces 
 have been working for his benefit from the time 
 when God first set in motion this flood of light 
 and fire through space, and broke it up into 
 shining drops of worlds. They have been the 
 fingers on His Almighty hand by which He 
 framed and fitted up the earth for man’s abode. 
 These forces seem from the first to have recog¬ 
 nized man as their coming king and to have 
 prepared his way. 
 
 And yet we must recognize the fact that they 
 now yield him a reluctant service and homage, as 
 if his right to rule them were yet in dispute. 
 Often they mock his attempts to bind them. 
 They make him pay down dearly in toil and tears 
 and blood for his success. How many hundreds 
 of lives, for instance, have been lost in bringing 
 the art of steam locomotion to its present perfec¬ 
 tion and safety. Now and then an ocean steam¬ 
 ship goes down with its precious freight of hun¬ 
 dreds of lives, as if in sardonic mockery of man’s 
 attempt to rule them. And so with the invisible 
 gases confined in gunpowder and other explosives. 
 They often burst their fetters and scatter death 
 
 and destruction around. Or sometimes a conflaora- 
 
 © 
 
 tion lays waste a splendid city like Chicago, or en¬ 
 wraps a hotel or a theatre, crowded with despair¬ 
 ing victims, in its fiery shroud. All this teaches 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 57 
 
 that man’s dominion over these forces of nature is 
 as yet temporary, limited, and provisional. 
 
 And this leads us to notice another very im¬ 
 portant feature in the Bible account of man. It 
 is that of his sin, by which he forfeited both life 
 and title to inheritance in this system of God’s 
 works. Sin came in to mar this noble creature 
 of His hands, and to defeat His gracious purpose 
 to crown him king. And the wages of sin came 
 with it, which are death. So that after all it 
 seemed as if the image of God, which He had set 
 up on the summit of His works, had turned out 
 to be only a grinning skeleton. 
 
 But not so. God cannot be defeated in any of 
 His purposes. Known unto Him are all His 
 works from the beginning of the world. Even 
 man’s sin was not outside of His eternal plan. 
 For He meant to recover him from it, and, by 
 means of the discipline of conflict with it, to train 
 him for a far higher dignity than was given him 
 at first. Hence He provided a Redeemer, a First- 
 Born brother to the human race, who was also 
 Son of God, who should have the first-born’s 
 right to redeem our lives and our inheritance. 
 Th is He did by the one perfect sacrifice of Him¬ 
 self. And then God raised Him from the dead 
 to that full dignity of man’s estate which He had 
 contemplated from the beginning, crowning Him 
 as His perfected Image over the whole system of 
 
58 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 His works, and putting all things on earth and 
 in heaven beneath His feet. 
 
 And this leads to the important thought that 
 the question what man is, and what does his 
 Maker mean to do with him, is answered only as 
 it is viewed in the light of this crowning article 
 of the Christian faith, the resurrection of the 
 Christ from the dead. We discover here that 
 man, as at first formed, was only a clay model of 
 the splendid figure the Divine Artist meant to 
 produce as the express Image of His person. 
 The complete, Ideal Man is the risen Man. And 
 we reach that goal only as we die out of our old 
 manhood through union with Christ and are made 
 new creatures in Him. God’s thought concerning 
 us, from the beginning, was to bring us to the 
 same rank of being, through the same gateway of 
 death and resurrection. 
 
 But every son whom He reeeiveth He scourgeth. 
 Such high honor is only won through tribulation. 
 Hence we see why the present existence of man 
 is so limited and frail and why he now holds so 
 weak a sceptre. He is now under discipline, 
 wrestling with evil and with trouble, a candidate 
 for the high honors of immortal manhood. Be¬ 
 fore he can wear such a crown and administer 
 such an estate, he must be trained by conflict. 
 He must wrestle with the principalities and powers 
 who are hereafter to be his subjects, and who 
 
WIT A T IS MAN? 
 
 59 
 
 sometimes come down upon him in great wrath, 
 because they know their time is short. This 
 present strange and checkered experience, this 
 conflict with evil, these holocausts of human lives 
 by the fierce powers of nature, this bondage to 
 death, are all explained when we know that this 
 is not the final stage of man’s existence, and that 
 he is only passing along, by this way of conflict 
 and the cross, the same path that Jesus trod, to 
 the same splendid heights of immortality and do¬ 
 minion. For it is written that He is but the 
 First-Born among many brethren, and that our 
 Father hath predestinated us also to be conformed 
 to the image of His Son. 
 
 We see, then, that the Mighty Builder of this 
 framework of the skies hath now enshrined with¬ 
 in it an Image of Himself, and that image is a 
 risen Man. 
 
 We see, also, that man, receiving Christ, re¬ 
 ceives power through Him to become, not figura¬ 
 tively, but really, a Son of God, and, through 
 resurrection, rises to the full rank and heritage of 
 a Son. A son has his father’s nature. So, in 
 Christ, we are made partakers of the divine na¬ 
 ture. A son is loved by the father as he loves 
 himself. So God has loved us with a love which 
 passeth knowledge and filletli all His fulness. A 
 son is tutored and trained by his father to worthily 
 fill the station in life for which he is designed. 
 
60 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 So God is now training us by all this wondrous 
 discipline of life for our high station. A son is 
 heir to his father’s estate. So we are heirs of God 
 and joint heirs with Christ. And when we speak 
 of our Father’s estate we are to take no narrow 
 view of what that means. We have already seen 
 that our brother-man, Christ Jesus, is on the 
 throne of the universe. Its shining worlds are 
 but the pavement beneath His royal feet. And 
 all the forces that surge and play across its bound¬ 
 less fields are bound to His throne and do His 
 pleasure. We cannot get away in the least from 
 this grand fact concerning manhood and the pur¬ 
 pose of the Father in its creation that a man, as 
 the express Image of Himself, is now seated on 
 His throne and made the Lord of all these wide 
 dominions. Nor can we get rid of the fact that 
 He is seated there as Head over all things to the 
 church which is His body, and that we are to 
 reign with Him. And therefore we cannot limit 
 our answer to this question concerning man’s 
 future by any narrow bounds of earth. This 
 earth is now his appointed possession. And the 
 earth, we are told, is to be liberated and glorified 
 with him. It will doubtless be the first theatre 
 upon which God will display His gracious designs 
 concerning him. But the earth is only a part of 
 a vast system of creation, all of which is one 
 system and one estate. The same laws and forces 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 -61 
 
 prevail here as in those distant realms through 
 which Orion leads his bands, and all along those 
 shores where suns lie scattered like pebbles on the 
 ocean strand. These are unexplored and perhaps 
 uninhabited regions of God’s great empire, parts 
 of our Father’s estate. And therefore we are 
 not to limit His love toward us, nor fathom its 
 boundless depths by any such short line of meas¬ 
 urement as is the assumption that man is but a 
 feeble creature of the earth, whose destiny is 
 linked in with that of the earth alone. 
 
 For man, in Christ, is now made partaker in 
 the eternal life of God. This life must carry 
 with it everywhere the prerogatives of sovereignty. 
 Nothing but a boundless creation can be a suitable 
 theatre for a creature raised to the rank of God’s 
 Son, and endowed with His life. 
 
 We have reached, then, our final answer to this 
 question of ages, and in the light of it the mys¬ 
 tery of creation stands revealed. Man is that 
 Image of God for whose production the quarry 
 of the universe has been furnished, and upon 
 which its angelic powers have been long at work ; 
 an image, first in clay and sadly marred by sin, 
 but now restored in Jesus in lines of beauty and 
 strength beyond the touch of time or taint of 
 death. “ Ecce Homo /” said Pilate (Behold the 
 Man !). He spoke better than he knew. For 
 
 even then, with visage marred and flesh striped 
 
 6 
 
62 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 with thongs, He was the One Perfect Man. But 
 the true goal of manhood, the way to which He 
 came to carve out for us, could only be reached 
 through His death and resurrection. And after 
 He had passed along that way and taken His seat 
 on high, then indeed the true Ecce Homo was 
 heard through all the temple of the skies. The 
 model of a Perfect Man had at last been reached. 
 The completed and indestructible Image of God 
 was at last realized. The fruit, for which these 
 scarred fields of creation had long been tilled, had 
 at last been gathered in, the first fruits of a com¬ 
 ing harvest. The Man, for whose palace this 
 masonry of suns and stars had been reared, had 
 now appeared, the Representative of their Maker, 
 and the titled Heir and Sovereign of all His 
 realms. 
 
 All this we are ready to confess concerning 
 Him; but we are slow of heart to believe what 
 Scripture tells us, that He is there as our First- 
 Born brother, that He is bringing us also to His 
 glory. Man the destined lord of the universe! 
 The thought seems so immense we cannot take it 
 in. It seems so arrogant we dare not believe it. 
 And yet, strangely enough, even science, in these 
 last days, begins to accord with this Scripture 
 teaching. She affirms that only on the earth, of 
 all the planets of the solar system, has life reached 
 so high a state of development as in man. Her 
 
WHAT IS MAN? 
 
 63 
 
 sister planets seem to be yet far down on the scale 
 of cosmical order and preparation. While the 
 fiery wildernesses of worlds around us, the fixed 
 stars, cannot themselves be the abode of any such 
 creature, although it would, of course, be pre¬ 
 sumption to affirm this of all the worlds that re¬ 
 volve around them. But so far as science can 
 obse7've, she has nothing to object to, but rather 
 confirms this Scripture view, that man, made in 
 God’s image, is the noblest creature that has blos¬ 
 somed out on these wide fields and the destined 
 lord of them all. 
 
 W e see, then, in the light of this Scripture 
 teaching, the immense significance of the offer of 
 eternal life, through Jesus, to men. It is an 
 offer to bring them to the true goal of their man¬ 
 hood, and to make them joint heirs with Him 
 whom the Father “ hath appointed heir of all 
 things.” And we discover a new meaning in His 
 oft-repeated warnings against the loss of this 
 eternal life and dignity. Men may fail to reach 
 this high goal of their being. They may refuse 
 Christ, and so adjudge themselves unworthy of 
 it. Such cannot hope to come to man’s estate, 
 nor to sit down with Christ on His throne. 
 
 Finally, Christians who are called by God to 
 this fellowship with His Son may see a new 
 meaning in their high calling. What boundless 
 possibilities are contained in it! Can we wonder 
 
64 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 that Paul was ever praying for his converts that 
 God would enlighten them concerning the hope 
 of their calling and the riches of the glory of 
 their inheritance, and enable them to know some¬ 
 thing of this love of Christ, which is an ocean 
 without bottom or shore, and which passeth 
 knowledge, because “it filleth all the fulness of 
 God” ? 
 
I’V. 
 
 ANGELS, AUTHORITIES, AND POWERS. 
 
 Who is gone into heaven , and is on the right hand of 
 God ; angels , authorities , and'powers being made subject unto 
 Him. —1 Peter iii. 22. 
 
 If a man “is gone into heaven,” then the 
 question about a future life for man is set at rest. 
 The whole structure of Christianity rests on this 
 statement that Jesus Christ, who was our fellow- 
 man as well as God’s fellow, has now ascended 
 to heaven. A man, then, has safely passed the 
 ordeal of death, and is now risen on the other 
 side of it. 
 
 This question of a future life for man, which 
 is thus so firmly settled in the Bible, has always 
 been a mooted one in the ranks of unbelief, and 
 grave doubts about it are entertained even in the 
 circles of high and serious thought. 
 
 One reason of these prevalent doubts is found 
 in the fact that modern thought has drifted so 
 much away from the old phraseology in which 
 the truths concerning the future life have been 
 set forth. The world, especially under the teach¬ 
 ings of science, has outgrown the language of a 
 
 6* 65 
 
 e 
 
66 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 more childish age, and is therefore disposed to 
 reject the thing itself, because the dress of words 
 in which it is conveyed is not in the fashion of 
 the times. It is assumed, for example, that the 
 existence of such things as u angels, authorities, 
 and powers” is something which lies altogether 
 beyond the range of our investigation, and which, 
 therefore, belongs to the realm of fancy rather 
 than of fact. 
 
 And yet we find abundant proof of the exist¬ 
 ence of some unseen forces, which we can investi- 
 tigate and handle, and to which science gives 
 names, such, for example, as “gravitation.” Now 
 what if it should turn out that these agents of 
 science are the same as those of Scripture?— 
 that, instead of being blind forces or mere prop¬ 
 erties of matter, they are either identical with 
 or are the manifestation of spiritual intelligent 
 forces?* What if there be not only poetic beauty 
 
 * It is worthy of note that the latest broodings of science 
 over the mystery of the relation between matter and spirit 
 look toward this result,—the investiture of material forces 
 with intelligence. The recent attempts to materialize 
 spirit are likely to end rather in the spiritualization of 
 matter. A late writer in the Nineteenth Century Magazine 
 upon the “ Fallacy of Materialism” asserts that the theory 
 that “ the universe consists entirely of mind stuff,” and that 
 “mental and physical phenomena, although apparently 
 diverse, are really identical,” is the one toward which all 
 the greatest minds that have studied this question in the 
 
ANGELS, AUTHORITIES, AND POWERS. 67 
 
 but literal description in such passages as Heb. i. 
 7, which th6 new version renders, “ Who maketh 
 the winds His angels. His ministers a flame of 
 fire” ? 
 
 Thus does even sceptical science recognize the 
 existence of a realm of invisible powers. These 
 forces are mighty and pervasive, everywhere mov¬ 
 ing on the wheels of this complicated system of 
 nature, filling the earth and the vast heavenly 
 spaces with their activities, flashing on viewless 
 wings through these immense regions, bridging 
 the great chasms of space, and stretching their 
 arms of power across the circles around which 
 sweep the unnumbered worlds. The invisible 
 side of creation is as real even to the eyes of 
 science as the visible. 
 
 Now what does Christianity affirm ? It affirms 
 that this hidden realm of forces, forces to which 
 man is now subject, is a realm of spiritual forces, 
 and that the region of their activity is another 
 region of life for man. It affirms that a man has 
 already passed behind the veil into this higher 
 realm of life. It declares that, in the resurrection 
 of Jesus, a man was transfigured into that form 
 
 right way are tending. This is certainly an approxima¬ 
 tion to the theory concerning angelic powers which runs 
 through these pages, and which the Bible favors if it does 
 not positively teach, that all natural forces are “angels,” 
 living intelligent powers. 
 
68 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 of being which is suited to this unseen world, yea, 
 that in rising into that realm he passed out of that 
 condition of subjection to these cosmic forces, in 
 which man was first created, into a condition of 
 supremacy over them all. Manhood, which in 
 this world is under tutelage and bondage to this 
 system of forces, has, in Christ, been glorified to 
 sovereignty over them. And this is the meaning 
 of this passage when it asserts that Jesus Christ 
 “ is gone into heaven, and is on the right hand of 
 God, angels and authorities and powers being 
 made subject unto Him.” 
 
 We have been accustomed to look at such teach¬ 
 ings of Scripture too much with the childish eyes 
 of a former age. Imagination has peopled this 
 invisible realm with fanciful forms and depicted 
 heaven as a far-off home of rest, where shining 
 ranks of angels await the ransomed spirit and in¬ 
 troduce it to scenes and occupations which have 
 no resemblance to or connection with the things 
 in which we are now interested. 
 
 Hat her should we look at heaven as near us and 
 all around us. And the angels of that unseen 
 world we should recognize in the multitudinous 
 forces of nature which are operating in all the 
 wondrous forms of life and motion with which 
 God’s works are stored. And our Saviour, Jesus 
 Christ, we should now think of as enthroned above 
 all these forces, carrying on His redeeming work 
 
ANGELS, AUTHORITIES, AND POWERS. 69 
 
 through their agency, compelling them to execute 
 His purposes of grace and of correction, and so 
 preparing us, who have learned to call Him Lord, 
 to take part with Him in that universal sovereignty 
 by which He is subjecting all things in heaven 
 and on earth to the will of God, that God may be 
 all in all. To this end He, as our First-Born 
 brother, first-born from the dead, has now entered 
 this temple of the skies. Humanity in Him was 
 cleansed and purified and transformed into the life 
 and light of that unseen realm. And when He 
 entered it all its potent forces recognized Him as 
 its Lord. And we who believe in Him shall be 
 lifted by His mighty power into the same eternal 
 life and glory. 
 
 There is, then, a future life for man, a splendid 
 boundless career. Every day, and all the time, 
 we stand upon the boundaries and brush the out¬ 
 skirts of that unseen world. Its shining hosts go 
 trooping by us on the wings of the morning. 
 They make the clouds their chariots. Their blue 
 eyes look down upon us from the sky. All nature 
 is alive with their ministries. The purblind eye 
 of science looks upon these forces as unintelligent 
 hidden properties of matter. Oh, blind science! 
 These forces are God’s angels. They are minis¬ 
 ters of His that do His pleasure. They are the 
 intelligent eyes in the mighty wheels that move 
 on the mechanism of the universe. And the 
 
70 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN, 
 
 Spirit in the wheels is the Spirit of the ascended 
 Christ, who is gone into heaven, angels and au¬ 
 thorities and powers being made subject unto 
 Him, and being sent forth by Him as ministering 
 spirits unto them who are heirs of salvation. 
 And He is directing all this wondrous system 
 toward that consummation of the future when 
 He shall be manifested as its Lord, and when, the 
 powers of evil being bound, heaven, the unseen 
 world, shall be opened, and golden ladders of 
 communication shall be set up between earth and 
 heaven, and these two now sundered departments 
 of God’s kingdom shall be united, and brought 
 into happy concord, and when His saints shall rise 
 and reign with Him in that holy city which shall 
 come down out of the opened heavens and hang 
 out its banners of light and splendor over this 
 long cursed earth, and when the tabernacle of 
 God shall be with men and He will dwell with 
 them and they shall be His people, and wipe 
 away all tears from their eyes, and there shall be 
 no more death, neither sorrow nor crying, nor any 
 more pain, for the former things are passed away. 
 
■v. 
 
 THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 
 
 For by Him were all things created that are in heaven 
 and that are in earth, visible and invisible , whether they be 
 thrones or dominions or 'principalities or powers; all 
 things were created by Him and for Him. —Colossians i. 
 16. 
 
 We are here taught that creation has two sides, 
 the visible and the invisible. The tilings we see 
 are by no means the only real things in this created 
 system. The invisible, indeed, occupies the first 
 place in the thought of this passage. For among 
 created things these are the things it specifies: 
 “ thrones, dominions, principalities, powers. 7 ’ Not 
 seas, clouds, mountains, or stars are spoken of, nor 
 any sensible objects, but certain hidden powers 
 that pervade and dominate the universe. 
 
 In all ages men have believed in this reverse 
 side of creation. The old mythologies were based 
 upon this idea of nature as the home and the 
 vehicle of hidden supernal powers. The light¬ 
 ning was the arrow of Jupiter, king of gods and 
 men; the thunder, his voice. In the Bible these 
 unseen powers are called “ angels.” 
 
 This is not only the frequent designation found 
 
 71 
 
72 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN . 
 
 in the Psalms and the other poetic books.* The 
 angelic agency by which the stone was rolled away 
 from the door of the sepulchre was an earthquake. 
 (Matt, xxviii. 2.f) 
 
 The science of our day concerns itself chiefly 
 with the investigation of “ things invisible.” To 
 these it gives names such as “ light,” “ heat,” 
 “ attraction,” etc., assuming that these forces are 
 not vital; that they do not belong to the realm of 
 life and intelligence; whereas Scripture contem¬ 
 plates them as living, spiritual powers,—“thrones, 
 dominions, principalities, powers.” Even Chris¬ 
 tians are accustomed to think of these powers as 
 having no special relation to this system of creation. 
 
 The passage we* have quoted asserts that they 
 constitute the other side of it. And it is implied 
 that this side is the most important. Even 
 science is ready to admit this of these forces as 
 she conceives of them.J She has revealed to us 
 
 * Ps. xviii. 10 ; civ. 3. 
 
 f Comp, also Acts vii. 53, with Ex. xix. 8, and Ps. Ixviii. 
 17. 
 
 J It is only within the last thirty or forty years that 
 there has gradually dawned upon the minds of scientific 
 men the conviction that there is something besides matter 
 or stuff in the physical universe, which has at least as 
 much claim as matter to recognition as an objective reality, 
 though of course far less directly obvious to our senses as 
 such lind therefore much later in being detected .—“ Un¬ 
 seen Universe,” p. 70. 
 
THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 
 
 73 
 
 that the things we see and touch are not the only 
 real or important things in the universe, but that, 
 concealed by them, there are other things de¬ 
 manding our attention of surprising interest. 
 
 Indeed, now and then, she seems to approxi¬ 
 mate the truth concerning these powers, as set 
 forth in Scripture.* 
 
 Let us pass to observe some of the ways in 
 which science conducts us behind the region of 
 thing's visible into that of things invisible. A 
 transition into this realm is first made for us by 
 the microscope. It reveals to us arrangements of 
 matter most curious and diversified. Below the 
 surface of things seen there are highly-organized 
 forms of creature life. And these creatures are 
 built up of cells, which are a sort of primary 
 molecules of animate structure. But these cells 
 are themselves structures, and separated in size by 
 ocean-widths from the material atoms which com- 
 
 * A late writer in the Nineteenth Century Magazine 
 says, “ I think it may help us to conceive of mincl as ex¬ 
 isting altogether apart from matter if we observe that ma¬ 
 terial powers and influences appear to be more influential 
 as they become more subtle and more nearly immaterial. 
 We may conceive, in fact, of a hierarchy of powers, in 
 which the lowest grade contains the commonest push-and- 
 pull forces of ordinary human experience; higher grades 
 may contain the invisible forces of nature; and the highest 
 of all may contain pure mind unmixed with baser matter 
 altogether.” 
 
 D 
 
 7 
 
74 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 pose them. No microscope has begun to see the 
 atoms which we are obliged to assume as the pri¬ 
 mary units of matter. We think we see material 
 things, but in the structure of everything we look 
 upon and handle there are unfathomed depths 
 below our power to see, and which must be ex¬ 
 plored if we are to understand the real nature of 
 the substance. Even chemical analysis only takes 
 us a few steps into this region. When we say, for 
 example, that water is composed of so many parts 
 of oxygen and so many of hydrogen, we have got 
 beyond the realm of sight indeed, into the region 
 of invisible gases, but of the atomic structure of 
 these gases and of the forces operating among 
 these atoms we know almost nothing. 
 
 And this suggests that below the region which 
 the microscope can penetrate there is this region of 
 invisible vapors or gases. All the substances we 
 see, if made hot enough, may be made to assume 
 this form. All the matter of the universe, it is 
 supposed, was once in the gaseous form. And a 
 large proportion of it still retains this form. The 
 earth is enveloped by a gaseous ocean some forty 
 miles deep,—the atmosphere, a thing most real 
 and yet invisible. 
 
 But there is a still more remote region of sub¬ 
 stances or forces among u things invisible.” Still 
 less obvious to our senses than the gases are the 
 great natural forces. No man ever saw one of 
 
THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 
 
 75 
 
 these agents. We see only their effects. I do 
 not see the light of the sun. I only see the things 
 the light makes manifest. All nature is pervaded 
 by these subtle, mighty unseen forces. They 
 bridge over the immeasurable chasms of space. 
 They move on worlds and systems of worlds in 
 their courses. They carry on all the operations 
 of nature. And they have their home, as science 
 assumes, in an invisible ether, a vast fathomless 
 ocean, in whose bosom all things float, and which 
 fills all the heights and depths of boundless space. 
 Can we wonder that this passage seems to contem¬ 
 plate “ things invisible” as the most important 
 part of this system of creation ? 
 
 We observe also that the farther we penetrate 
 into this invisible region the nearer do we come 
 to the great active forces which energize and vital¬ 
 ize this system. We have already said that, while 
 science views these potencies as dumb, Scripture 
 invests them with life and intelligence, and speaks 
 of them as “ angels, principalities, and powers.” 
 And so it becomes neither difficult nor irrational 
 for us to take one step farther into this invisible 
 realm. Scripture bids us to take that step and to 
 recognize spirit as the moving cause and the life 
 of this whole system. Science conducts us to the 
 borders of this spirit realm, and there she pauses 
 and hesitates, unable to decide whether or not there 
 is anything across the boundary. Some of her 
 
76 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 magnates declare that we need go no farther than 
 tli-e forces of which we have spoken, and of which 
 she can tako some cognizance, to account for the 
 origin and growth of all things. They stand 
 baffled on this border line between matter and 
 spirit, and because they cannot cross it, they be¬ 
 come Sadducees and deny that there is either 
 angel or spirit or a future life for man. Into this 
 pitfall they stumble, because of their false and 
 fatal assumption that life and intelligence pertain 
 only to organized forms, such as we can see, and 
 that the forces under which these forms originate 
 and develop are themselves non-living. But this 
 word of the Spirit, through Paul, illuminates 
 with its flash this hidden realm, and reveals 
 these forces as either identical with or the uni¬ 
 form manifestations of living powers. And so we 
 are prepared for the idea of the Infinite, Omni¬ 
 present Spirit, the substratum, the cause, and the 
 vital energy of all things. Thus does Scripture 
 lead us with firm tread beyond the region of 
 things visible and even invisible into the presence 
 of God, the Eternal Spirit, Source of . all life, 
 Creator of all things, Former of our bodies and 
 Father of our spirits, in whom we live and move 
 and have our being. No man hath seen Him at 
 any time. No man hath seen the great forces 
 that are subject to Him in this domain, such as 
 gravitation and heat. And yet we are certain 
 
THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 
 
 77 
 
 of their existence by what we witness of their 
 effects. 
 
 Shall we therefore doubt the existence of God 
 because we do not see Him? Or shall we deny 
 the existence of an invisible spiritual world be¬ 
 cause it does not make itself manifest to our 
 senses? Once admit the truth that all nature, in¬ 
 stead of being ruled by blind forces, is pervaded 
 by powers instinct with life and intelligence, and 
 a whole realm of spirit is disclosed to us, one 
 which touches and enfolds us more closely than 
 does the realm of things visible. 
 
 And this realm of invisible powers must have 
 its Lord of hosts, One God over all, blessed for¬ 
 ever ; and these hosts His ministers that do His 
 pleasure. 
 
 But we pass on to remark that from the begin¬ 
 ning; of all things there has been a tendency in 
 the invisible to become visible and manifest. 
 
 Matter, at first existent in gaseous invisible 
 forms, has always been tending toward the solid 
 and visible. The invisible powers, of which we 
 have been speaking, have, for their vesture, these 
 material forms. Nature is often spoken of as 
 “ the garment of God.” It would be more true 
 to'regard it as the visible vesture of u things in¬ 
 visible.” These creature forms are the eidola , the 
 images of the powers of nature, and not of Him 
 
 who is God over all. Hence Scripture everywhere 
 
 7* 
 
78 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 denounces the worship of God through natural 
 objects. It calls it demon worship. (1 Cor. x. 
 20.) There is a descending hierarchy of these 
 powers as well as an ascending. And even the 
 highest are unworthy representatives of the Most 
 High God. They veil their faces before Him, 
 and He charges them with folly. (Job iv. 18; 
 xv. 15.) This first chapter to the Colossians, 
 however, teaches that even the uncreated God has 
 His image, and that He has made Himself mani¬ 
 fest in Jesus Christ, who, especially as risen from 
 the dead, is now the perfected “ Image of the 
 invisible God.” The unseen God Himself was 
 thus to become visible in the form of One who, 
 as the Archetype of all things, toward the pattern 
 of which all things were made, and in whom they 
 now consist or hold together, was to be crowned 
 on the summit of this created system, the true 
 Son and Heir of God and Lord of all. To this 
 pinnacle of glory He was raised, as a man, out 
 of death. And as the glorified man He is now 
 the Image of God. 
 
 But He is now withdrawn from sight. The 
 heavens have received Him. The clouds conceal 
 Him. But the whole stress and drift of New 
 Testament prophecy is toward His “ manifesta¬ 
 tion.” This Hidden One is to “ appear.” Every 
 eye shall see Him. 
 
 Thus not only all “ things invisible,” but even 
 
THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 
 
 79 
 
 the unseen God and the hidden Christ tend toward 
 “ manifestation.” 
 
 And now observe that “ His appearing” is 
 always looked forward to in the New Testament 
 as the opening up to man of the realm of things 
 invisible. It is to be the rift in the cloud land 
 of things seen which shall let through the glories 
 of things unseen. We read that He shall be re¬ 
 vealed from heaven with His mighty angels. 
 When He comes in His glory all the holy angels 
 come with Him. All this implies that the heav¬ 
 ens, the invisible world, shall be opened. It is 
 for the purposes of man’s trial and training that 
 this unseen world is now veiled from him. He 
 is now in darkness in respect to the true knowl¬ 
 edge of God, and wanders far away from Him. 
 
 But, we read, when things invisible shall be 
 illumined by the light of Christ’s parousia, u the 
 face of the covering which is cast over all people 
 and the veil that is spread over all nations” shall 
 be taken away, and they shall say in that day, 
 “Lo! this is our God; we have waited for Him ; 
 we will be glad and rejoice in His salvation.” 
 (Isa. xxv. 9.) We read that the tabernacle of 
 God shall then be with men, and they shall see 
 His face. We read that a holy city, whose 
 builder and maker is God, shall come to sight, 
 and that even the light of the sun and the moon 
 shall fade before the supernal light of that day, 
 
80 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 as if the sun itself were but a shadow of a more 
 glorious light beyond, the shadow passing away 
 before the substance. 
 
 Thus iu the economy of God all things, from 
 the beginning, have been tending toward mani¬ 
 festation. Things invisible become visible. Se¬ 
 cret tilings are brought to light. Even God Him¬ 
 self became embodied. And the hidden Christ, 
 the Brightness of the Father’s glory and the ex¬ 
 press Image of His person, must be revealed 
 through the parted heavens which received Him 
 out of sight. And the heavens shall stand open 
 and all things be disclosed in the light of His 
 presence. 
 
 And in order that we may not mistake as to 
 these great promises of the future, we need to 
 guard against the common mistake of divorcing 
 the visible part of God’s creation from the in¬ 
 visible, or of supposing that the realm of things 
 seen is the only realm of life. The seen and the 
 unseen are the two halves of one system; the one 
 answering to the other and revealing it, now, in¬ 
 deed, as through a glass darkly. But hereafter the 
 dark gates of visible things shall be thrown open, 
 and we shall see the splendors concealed behind 
 these walls. And, best of all, “ we shall see Him.” 
 And we shall know God and see His face. 
 
 And here it will be useful for us to observe 
 that the effort of mankind in these last days is 
 
THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 
 
 81 
 
 specially directed toward the conquest of things 
 invisible. We bind an invisible vapor in a har¬ 
 ness of iron and make it our strong untiring ser¬ 
 vant. It drives our steamships across the seas and 
 draws our railroad trains swiftly over the land. 
 The clouds of steam and smoke that escape from 
 these swift-messengers we might fancy to be angels’ 
 wings. They are much nearer being that than we 
 suppose. And so we have trained the lightning 
 to carry messages for us over the earth and under 
 the sea and to audibly repeat our words. And we 
 are compelling the same agent to light up our 
 cities at night with shreds of sunlight. We are 
 storing its dynamic energy in jars and boxes to be 
 transported for use, like a can of milk or a keg of 
 powder. And we talk of catching the mighty 
 force of Niagara, and even of the waves of the 
 sea, and conducting it by wires over the land for 
 man’s use. Such are some of the treasures open¬ 
 ing out to man in this realm of things invisible, 
 which he is only beginning to explore. But these 
 treasures are won now at a fearful cost of toil and 
 blood. These potent agents are not always docile 
 servants. They often burst our bands and scatter 
 death and destruction around. And our best 
 triumphs are but faint fore-gleams of the wonders 
 to be disclosed when unseen things shall be brought 
 to sight with the manifestation of the Lord of 
 this whole realm. 
 f 
 
82 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 Not until then will man come to his true heri¬ 
 tage of these works of God’s hands. Toward 
 this disclosure all things are tending. All nature, 
 all prophecy points that way. Scripture is a 
 written promise; nature, a parable of that grand 
 issue. Human progress is all toward it, although 
 much of it is but a blind, or, still worse, an arro¬ 
 gant attempt to climb into heaven some other wav 
 than up that narrow but shining path along which 
 Jesus reached the throne of universal dominion. 
 There is an arch-deceiver who has ever been mis¬ 
 leading the human race as to its true goal, and the 
 only method of reaching it. From the first he 
 has been persuading man that he can make him¬ 
 self as God. But there is one who is working 
 below all the deep craft of Satan to defeat him on 
 the theatre and at the very crisis of his apparent 
 triumph. God’s plan cannot be thwarted, and 
 He will finally lead man, although by a way he 
 knew not, and which shall so humble him that no 
 flesh will glory in His presence, out into the light 
 of that coming day when the hidden glories of 
 unseen things shall come to sight, and the hidden 
 powers of the universe be made to acknowledge 
 man as their lawful sovereign and to do his bid¬ 
 ding, and both departments of God’s universal 
 kingdom, the visible and the invisible, the heavens 
 and the earth, be bound together into one harmo¬ 
 nious and universal kingdom. 
 
THINGS VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE. 
 
 83 
 
 In the light of this change, which is to pass 
 upon this system of “ things present/’ we can dis¬ 
 cern something of the reason why Scripture pro¬ 
 nounces the things that are seen as “ temporal/’ 
 and why “ the fashion of this world passeth away.” 
 We see also why this region of transient perish¬ 
 able forms becomes a region of temptation and 
 discipline. Our great danger lies in our govern¬ 
 ing ourselves according to these things of time and 
 sense. We walk in the liarht of the things we 
 see, by faith and not by sight. We deem these 
 tangible rewards of fame and wealth and pleasure 
 the only things worth grasping. But the religion 
 of Jesus is a voice from heaven, teaching us that 
 the things we see and prize so much are transient 
 and perishable. It tells us about a life to come, 
 and calls upon us to lose this life in order to gain 
 it. It tells us of a crown of life that fadeth not 
 away, of a continuing city whose glories never de¬ 
 cline, of an inheritance, incorruptible and undefiled, 
 of a kingdom that cannot be moved, of a new 
 heavens and earth wherein dwelleth righteousness, 
 and bids us, as did Paul, to count all things but 
 loss that we may win Christ, and be found in 
 Him, and so attain to the splendors and dignities 
 of that glorified manhood in which He was raised 
 from the dead. 
 
 Taken up, as we are so apt to be, with questions 
 about our eating and drinking, our dress, our 
 
84 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 planting and building; absorbed as we are in our 
 counting-rooms and with our newspapers over the 
 events of the day, busied as we are with specula¬ 
 tions and schemes for money-making or for pleas¬ 
 ure, oh, how we need to have our attention aroused 
 and fixed upon things unseen and eternal! the fact 
 that the true realm of our life is the one that over¬ 
 bounds and overtops this present; that only a thin 
 door separates us from it and from God’s presence 
 which pervades it; that we are but pilgrims with 
 our tents pitched upon these sands of time but for 
 a night before we pass into the realm of the in¬ 
 visible, where is our eternal home. How are we 
 prepared for the change ? Not only are we moving 
 rapidly into that unseen realm, but it is also crowd¬ 
 ing down upon us. Its hidden realities are fast 
 coming to sight. The veil will soon be rent. The 
 Lord is at hand. Soon we must face these mys¬ 
 teries and stand before the Son of man. May 
 God enable us to look not at the things which are 
 seen and temporal, but at the things which are 
 unseen and eternal, and to endure to the end, as 
 seeing Him who is invisible. And so when He 
 shall appear we shall be like Him and appear with 
 Him in glory. 
 
VI. 
 
 THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD. 
 
 Now shall the prince of this world be cast out. —St. John 
 xii. 31. 
 
 The Scriptures make frequent mention of a 
 powerful and malignant being, who is the foe of 
 God and man, and the author of the world’s evil. 
 Thrice in these last discourses of our Lord he is 
 spoken of as “ the prince of this world.” 
 
 In order to arrive at the meaning of this title 
 we observe, first, that there are two principal 
 words of Scripture rendered “ world.” The most 
 frequent of these is xoa/ioq, the primary meaning 
 of which is “ order.” This is one of the char¬ 
 acteristic words of St. John’s writings, in whose 
 gospel alone it occurs more than seventy times, 
 and who never uses It refers primarily to 
 
 this present order of nature,* and secondarily to 
 mankind as developed into social and govern¬ 
 mental forms under this world-system. Or, more 
 concretely, it means the human race.f It also 
 denotes the present order of things as the seat of 
 
 * John i. 10. 
 
 f Matt. v. 14; John iii. 16. 
 8 85 
 
86 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 evil and sin and the source of temptation, as 
 where we are warned to “ Love not the world, 
 neither the things of the world. For all that is 
 in the world, the lust of the flesh, and the lust 
 of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the 
 Father, but is of the world, and the world passeth 
 away and the lust thereof.” (1 John ii. 15, 16.) 
 
 The second principal word is aim. This word 
 leaves out of view the primary thought- of the 
 other, that of natural order, and of the world of 
 mankind as developed under it. Its primary 
 meaning is “ dispensation.” It refers to the 
 course of the world within certain time-bound¬ 
 aries. And hence in the unfolding of God’s pur¬ 
 poses there are successive seons, or worlds. This 
 world or “ age” has its well-defined features and 
 limits. In this view of the “ world” the devil is 
 said to be the god of it. (2 Cor. iv. 4.) 
 
 But especially and repeatedly is he spoken of 
 by Jesus in this connection as “ the prince of this 
 
 Let us now seek to ascertain the meaning of 
 this title. So far as this word represents the evil 
 systems which have grown up under this present 
 order of the world, or the evil, whether physical 
 or moral, which is intrenched in it, we have no 
 difficulty in recognizing the meaning of this title 
 or in confessing to the justice of it. We do not pro¬ 
 pose, therefore, to dwell upon these features of the 
 
THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD. 
 
 87 
 
 devil’s sovereignty, which all acknowledge. Our 
 purpose is rather to inquire whether, in explain¬ 
 ing this title 5 we have any right to empty this 
 word u cosmos” of the main part of its meaning. 
 Has this malign and powerful being, to whom 
 Scripture so often refers, and to whom it gives a 
 variety of names, setting forth differing phases of 
 his evil work, any control of this present created 
 system? Is he in any proper sense the prince 
 of this cosmos ? 
 
 In the previous pages it has been throughout 
 maintained that the universe is pervaded by living 
 powers, which, if not identical with the forces of 
 nature, are the agents by whom these forces are 
 energized and controlled. There seem to be, how¬ 
 ever, two orders of these cosmic forces or angelic 
 powers. Or, at least, there are two classes of 
 effects produced by them. There is an ascending 
 series of effects from chaos to order, from the in¬ 
 organic to the organic, from the inanimate to the 
 animat#, from decay to beauty, from death to life, 
 from sin or lawlessness* to purity and peace. 
 And there is a descending series from order back 
 to chaos, from embodiment to dissolution, from 
 beauty to mire, from life to death, and from moral 
 order to disorder and frenzy and destruction. 
 Whether there are two hierarchies of these forces, 
 
 * 1 John iii. 4, E. Y. 
 
88 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 the constructive and destructive, a kingdom of 
 forces beneficent and life-giving, and one of evil 
 and death, or whether evil effects are due to the 
 excessive and unrestrained actings of forces good 
 in themselves, we may not determine. Scripture, 
 however, seems to carry the idea, at least on its 
 surface, of two separate kingdoms or hierarchies, 
 the one of light, the other of darkness. 
 
 It is affirmed, indeed, that Jesus is now exalted 
 Head over all principalities and powers, . . . 
 and every name that is named in heaven or on 
 earth. (Eph. i. 21.) But we read also that He 
 has not yet put down all rule and authority and 
 power. (1 Cor. xv. 24-28.) 
 
 Again, it is declared that all angels are “ minis¬ 
 tering spirits sent forth to minister for them who 
 shall be heirs of salvation.” (Ileb. i. 14.) And 
 yet we are taught that we wrestle for the crown 
 of life against a hierarchy of evil powers, “ world 
 rulers of this darkness and spiritual hosts of 
 wickedness in the heavenly places.” (Eph. vi. 12, 
 R. V.) While, therefore, all the forces of the 
 universe owe allegiance to the Christ, some of 
 them are not yet subdued to Him. And all evil 
 effects, both moral and physical, are ascribed to 
 their agency. They draw a trail of death through 
 all the regions of created life. Every form of 
 vegetable life has its enemy, its parasite or mildew 
 and blight. Every animal is subject to disease 
 
THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD . 
 
 89 
 
 and to corruption. And lie c< that hath the power 
 of death” is the devil. (Heb. i. 14.) A fortiori, 
 he has the power of disease.* And the forces 
 which produce these effects are seen to be the 
 great natural forces which prevail not only on the 
 earth but throughout creation. The sun smites 
 by day, and the moon by night. For the origin 
 of pestilence and malaria and noxious gases and 
 poisons and the venom in beasts we must go back 
 of mere local causes. The agencies that produce 
 them are inwrought into the fabric of this created 
 system. They are a part of its universal forces. 
 These are all forms of the enemy’s power. (Luke 
 x. 19.) How close and vital and diffusive that 
 power is we may learn from the ascription to the 
 devil of such a title as “ prince of the power of 
 the air.” (Eplies. ii. 1.) 
 
 Not only are there malign forces which perpet¬ 
 uate the reign of evil and of death. Even the 
 beneficent forces of nature are sometimes armed 
 with destructive energy. A cold wave from the 
 north laden with magnetic and vital energies may 
 bring also the seeds of death to hundreds of the 
 feeble and the aged. The forces that are active 
 in raising a storm at sea produce by their com¬ 
 motion salutary effects in the system of nature. 
 And yet these forces may toss hundreds of human 
 
 * Luke xiii. 1G ; Acts x. 38. 
 8 * 
 
90 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 lives into the dragon-jaws of death. When we 
 read the accounts of appalling calamities on land 
 and sea, in which hecatombs of human lives 
 are slaughtered by these fierce powers of nature 
 without a sign of pity, we do not wonder at 
 the fearful indictment which some writers, like 
 John Stuart Mill, have brought in against them. 
 
 Looking at the twofold front which the great 
 
 forces of nature wear toward man, now his kindly 
 
 friends and again his remorseless cruel foes, we 
 
 may ask again, Are there two systems of these 
 
 powers, the one of life the other of death ? Or 
 
 are there, back of them, two orders of spiritual 
 
 powers, both of which are able to wield these 
 
 forces so that they become in the hands of one 
 
 ministers of life and blessing, and in those of the 
 
 other ministers of wrath, as when Satan wielded 
 
 them against Job? Or is the evil in them only 
 
 an excessive and lawless energy, which is hereafter 
 
 to be subdued and bound to the throne of Christ 
 
 and made tributary of blessing to mankind ? We 
 
 may not be able to decide these hard questions. 
 
 But of one thing we may be sure. These forces of 
 
 evil and death, of which Satan is the prince, belong 
 
 to this system of cosmic forces. If not identical 
 * 
 
 with them, their connection is most intimate. We 
 are to recognize that, for His own wise purposes 
 of man’s discipline, God has permitted Satan to 
 usurp control in this cosmos. He is its prince. 
 
THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD . 
 
 91 
 
 And yet, as Jesus affirms in the text, this prince 
 shall be cast out. The resurrection of Christ, 
 toward which this saying is directed, was the 
 triumph of the Prince of life. Henceforth not 
 death but life was to be triumphant master in this 
 cosmos. Its whole history, from the first, is a 
 history of light triumphing over darkness, and 
 life over death. And yet these victories were 
 always followed by fresh defeats. But when the 
 Christ was glorified in eternal life, and crowned 
 head over all things, then the prince of this world, 
 while not yet destroyed, was dethroned. And the 
 Christ must reign until this enemy and his great 
 ally, death, are destroyed. 
 
 We have seen, however, that this prince is not 
 actually, only potentially, dispossessed. Still sin 
 reigns unto death. And still the world remains 
 as a battle-ground on which God’s saints are 
 trained for future warfare and dominion. Hence 
 their present wrestling against principalities and 
 powers. 
 
 These enemies are not the remote impalpable 
 foes that we imagine. They touch us at every 
 point at which we come in contact with this natural 
 system. They gain access along all the avenues 
 of this embodied life. As born under this present 
 natural system, we are now in the enemy’s coun¬ 
 try. The elements of nature, most necessary to 
 our sustenance, such as the atmosphere, pertain 
 
92 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 to His domain. (Eph. ii. 1.) Danger lurks not 
 only in every passion, but in every necessary ap¬ 
 petite. All this may help us to understand some¬ 
 thing of the nature of that far-reaching conflict 
 in which we are engaged. It is a contest with 
 powers that now usurp the inheritance to which 
 redeemed man is destined, and who therefore come 
 down against him in great wrath, because they 
 know their time is short. 
 
 Knowing thus the forms of their attack, and our 
 multiform dangers, we see the need of constant 
 vigilance. We discover the lines along which we 
 are to expect the enemy and how we are to stand 
 guard against him. He meets us along all these 
 well-worn avenues of our physical life. Unless 
 we are armed against him here, we leave the most 
 vulnerable part of our line of battle undefended. 
 Evil tempers and bad humors of body are just as 
 truly his weapons as evil suggestions to the mind. 
 The one indeed breeds the other. It is a man’s 
 body which brings him into relation to this world- 
 system. And it is the devil’s work to debase or 
 enfeeble or madden these life-powers of which 
 the body is the battery and the home. Our hos¬ 
 pitals and lunatic asylums and almshouses and 
 prisons are filled with the wrecks he has made. 
 
 But One stronger than he has come to cast him 
 out. He has spoiled principalities and powers 
 and led captivity captive. 
 
THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD. 
 
 93 
 
 He has triumphed over the whole field of our 
 conflict and won eternal life for man. And this 
 is now His free and loving gift to us. Believing 
 on Him, we get the victory, in the power of that 
 life, over the world, the flesh, and the devil; and 
 so become part of that Conquering Seed, of whom 
 it is written, that the God of peace shall shortly 
 bruise Satan under their feet 
 
"VII. 
 
 THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 
 
 Who hath delivered us from the 'power of darkness and 
 hath translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son .— 
 Colossians i. 13. 
 
 Among the phenomena of nature there is noth¬ 
 ing more striking and suggestive than the contrast 
 between light and darkness. The first creative 
 act in the bringing of order out of chaos was the 
 production of light. “ Let there be light” is the 
 first recorded word of Him by whose Word the 
 heavens and the earth were made. And the suc¬ 
 cessive stages of this sublime work are each 
 marked by “ an evening and a morning,” light 
 breaking in upon and driving away the darkness.* 
 
 This world is still the scene of the struggle be¬ 
 tween light and darkness. This is true of the 
 natural world. But nature is but a mirror, re¬ 
 flecting to us the tokens and operations of spiritual 
 
 * It is an interesting thought that this order is never 
 reversed. It is not a morning and an evening that make 
 a day in Genesis i. Light triumphs over and displaces 
 each period of darkness. Everything in creation and re¬ 
 demption moves forward in this order, until finally light 
 remains the triumphant master. (Rev. xxi. 23-25.) 
 
 94 
 
THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 
 
 95 
 
 powers, which are the real permanent forces in 
 creation. There is a realm of light and of dark¬ 
 ness lying back of these things that appear. There 
 is a struggle between the powers that rule in each, 
 of which the processes of life and growth, of decay 
 and death, in nature are the outward token. It is 
 not merely by a figure of speech that the Bible 
 speaks of this world as a realm of darkness. Its 
 pages glow with the promise of a world to come, 
 in which there shall be no night and no curse, and 
 of which God Himself shall be the light. 
 
 And in contrast with that day of splendor, this 
 present time is night, and the reigning influences 
 in this sphere of things temporal “the power of 
 darkness.” 
 
 This phrase, “ the power of darkness,” implies 
 that there is a personal agent who has originated 
 and perpetuates these malign influences. ITe it is 
 whom Jesus denominates “ the prince of this 
 world,” and whose approach in the final struggle 
 which was then upon Him, He speaks of as “ the 
 hour of the power of darkness.” 
 
 From this power, the text asserts, God hath de¬ 
 livered us. And by way of contrast, the previous 
 verse declares that He hath “ made us meet for 
 the inheritance of the saints in light.” 
 
 We shall now inquire, first, in what respect we 
 were under bondage to this power of darkness, and, 
 secondly, what is the character of our deliverance. 
 
96 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 We have but little idea of the extent and rami¬ 
 fications of the evil power here specified. The 
 terms in which it is described in the Bible indi¬ 
 cate that it is a power coeval and commensurate 
 with this existing order of creation, and that we 
 become subject to it in the fact of our birth into 
 this world-system. This “ power of darkness” is 
 felt not only in the hidden chambers of the heart, 
 and in the reigning spirit of society: it pervades 
 this natural system. And as our embodied being 
 is developed out of this system, and is its micro¬ 
 cosm, we become directly subject to it. We feel 
 this power in all the depressing influences that 
 debilitate and deaden our faculties of body and 
 mind, and finally quench them into the grave. 
 Satan has the power of death and of all the evil 
 influences that produce it. 
 
 And especially is his fatal power felt in those 
 who have known the stirrings of a divine life and 
 are yearning after God. They often go “ mourn¬ 
 ing because of the oppression of the enemy.” (Ps. 
 xliii. 2.) To know God and Jesus Christ His 
 Son is to have the light of life. The power of 
 darkness is put forth to quench this light, to stifle 
 these heaven-born aspirations, and to keep us 
 floundering in the mire and mould of sin. It 
 exerts its potent energy through all the senses and 
 appetites of our nature. The flesh, as the home 
 and medium of the forces that control this natural 
 
THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 
 
 97 
 
 life, is pliant to its sway. The “ lusts of the flesh” 
 testify to its impelling power. Even its necessary 
 appetites are avenues through which the “ rulers 
 of the darkness of this world” assail us. The 
 whole sphere of our embodied life is the arena on 
 which we wrestle with a principalities and powers.” 
 
 This overshadowing power of darkness is not 
 felt by those who are in bondage to it. It is like 
 the atmospheric pressure in this respect. We 
 know that our bodies are constantly subjected to a 
 pressure on all sides of fifteen pounds to the square 
 inch from the surrounding atmosphere. And yet 
 we are not conscious of it. So the power of dark¬ 
 ness rests like a pall and weighs like prison armor 
 upon its subjects ; and yet they do not feel it. 
 But let a man try to escape; let him reach out 
 after God and after that life of holiness without 
 which no man can see Him, and he will soon dis¬ 
 cover that he is loaded down. Christians are the 
 ones who know the most of this power of- the 
 enemy. Jesus measured and coped with its tre¬ 
 mendous force to the utmost limit. He came to 
 deliver man’s nature from bondage to this present 
 evil world. (Gal. i. 4.) And in that nature, He 
 must struggle against its reigning power unto vic¬ 
 tory. In the pressure of this conflict He sweat, 
 as it were, great drops of blood falling to the 
 ground. Nor was He, as we are taught in Ideb. 
 v. 7, insensible to the fear of death. 
 
 E q 9 
 
98 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 Every soul, born of God, knows something of 
 the Christian conflict, as a struggle against physi¬ 
 cal forces which have power to enfeeble and de¬ 
 prave this embodied life, and to break down and 
 scatter into dust the casket in which it is enshrined. 
 But all do not know that it is along these avenues 
 that we are to expect Satan’s assaults, and that, in 
 this region, we suffer under “the oppression of the 
 enemy.” Many good people make light of the 
 idea that the devil has power to assail us through 
 the body. They account for all its disorders by 
 the operation of what they call natural laws, and 
 smile when the idea of Satanic temptation is 
 suggested. But the very meaning of the title 
 “ prince of this world” is, that somehow the 
 power of Satan has come into the whole sphere 
 of natural law. Scripture, indeed, recognizes no 
 blind agents in nature. Its forces of nature are 
 living powers. And among these forces is this 
 tremendous power of darkness. All the ties 
 which connect us with this system of nature be¬ 
 come avenues for its malign influence. Bodily 
 disorders are, therefore, messengers of Satan to 
 buffet us, as was Paul’s thorn in the flesh. Even 
 such infirmities as that which bowed together, for 
 eighteen years, the woman whom Jesus healed, 
 and which might have been due to an ordinary 
 rheumatism, He ascribed to Satan. (Luke xiii. 16.) 
 
 All this, however, does not exclude the thought 
 
THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 
 
 99 
 
 that the region of the mind is also pervaded by 
 this power. We read that the god of this world 
 blinds the minds of them that believe not. Their 
 understanding is darkened. The opinions that men 
 frame, in this condition, are formed with one set 
 of their faculties, their spiritual organs, benumbed. 
 They cannot discern the things of* the Spirit of 
 God. Hence we may know what value to put 
 upon the political and scientific wisdom of men 
 so disabled. It is foolishness with God. And 
 the works of men in this condition are designated 
 works of darkness, with which Christians are 
 exhorted to have no fellowship. Not only gross 
 sins, such as rioting and wantonness, strife and 
 envying, are so denominated. But all contempt 
 of God, all denial of His being and His truth, 
 and of the approach of His day of judgment, 
 which will be a day of light and glory, is proof 
 that one is under the power of darkness, sleeping 
 in the night. A man’s soul may be aroused to 
 great activity in some lines of thought and action. 
 He may be what is called “a live man” in science, 
 in politics, in business, or even in religion, and 
 yet, in the view of God, he may be sleeping in 
 the night under the fatal potions the god of this 
 world administers. How little do men know of 
 this subtle, fearful power of darkness, amusing 
 them with all the signs of life and the phantas¬ 
 magoria of light, and yet holding them spell- 
 
100 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 bound under its stupefying sway. It is only 
 when the Spirit of God arouses them to resist it, 
 that they begin to realize how powerless they are 
 to deliver themselves from this dire bondage. 
 
 But we pass to notice the character of that 
 deliverance of which Christians are the subjects. 
 For of them it is said, “ Ye were formerly dark¬ 
 ness, but now are ye light in the Lord ;” “ Ye 
 are all the children of light and of the day. Ye 
 are not of the night, nor of darkness.” (1 Thess. 
 v. 4, 5.) 
 
 We observe, first, of this deliverance that God 
 
 has effected it. “ Giving thanks unto the Father, 
 
 who hath delivered us.” As the slaverv was so 
 
 •/ 
 
 abject and its consequences so fatal, we needed a 
 Divine deliverer. Such an one we have in God. 
 This chapter exhibits our deliverance as purposed 
 by His loving heart and accomplished by His 
 mighty power. This is the first lesson of salva¬ 
 tion, that we are helpless, and that God is our 
 loving, Almighty Saviour. We have said some¬ 
 thing of the extent of the power of darkness 
 pervading this present constitution of the world 
 and our embodied being as organized under it, 
 for we “ were by nature children of wrath, even 
 as others.” But this chapter summons us to con¬ 
 template and admire a plan of wider scope and 
 a power of broader sweep, the eternal, resistless 
 power of God, directed by a heart of infinite love, 
 
THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 
 
 101 
 
 interposing to rescue us from the power of dark¬ 
 ness and translate us into the kingdom of His 
 dear Son. 
 
 We observe, also, that the text speaks of our 
 deliverance in the past tense. It is a thing accom¬ 
 plished. The victory of Jesus, in our nature, over 
 all the power of the enemy, was our rescue. It 
 was won for us. And when God raised Him from 
 the dead we were also raised and delivered in 
 Him. His conflict with Satan and with death 
 was not for Himself alone. It was a great pub¬ 
 lic transaction. He was the Second Man, the 
 Lord from heaven. He stood for us in this trial. 
 In the view of God, then, our deliverance is 
 effected, although its results are being gradually 
 and progressively wrought out in us and in the 
 church. We were in Christ, in the sense that our 
 new life and being were contained germinally in 
 Him when He died for us and rose again. Hence 
 we are said to have been crucified with Him, and 
 quickened with Him, and raised with Him, and 
 seated with Him in heavenly places. But this new 
 life did not become actual in us until, in the way 
 of faith on Him, we were born of God. And 
 now it is possessed by us only in spirit, not yet in 
 body. Hereafter, at the redemption of the body, 
 our transformation and deliverance will be com¬ 
 plete. But as this work is all of God, and cannot 
 
 fail, as it is the sure and necessary result of that 
 
 9* 
 
102 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 eternal compact of grace which constituted us one 
 in life and destiny with Christ from the beginning 
 of all things, His Word is not content, especially 
 when it brings to view the Divine side of this 
 work, as in this chapter, to employ anything but 
 the past tense. He hath delivered us. 
 
 A primary feature of this deliverance is the 
 forgiveness of sins. This is brought to view in 
 the next verse. “ In whom we have redemption 
 through His blood, even the forgiveness of sins.” 
 The power of darkness must retain its hold upon 
 us so long as we are under the guilt and power of 
 sin. But such is our partnership with Christ in 
 His great transaction that He, as our Covenant 
 Head, paid our penalty and so redeemed our lives 
 from destruction. And His death was the death 
 of this old nature, born and reared, as we have 
 seen, under the shadow of this realm of darkness, 
 and hence the death of its sin. The old nature, 
 it is true, has not yet actually died in us, nor have 
 its sins been slain. They remain to hinder and 
 distress us. But the Word of God is here pre¬ 
 senting great results, as they appear to His mind, 
 who sees the end from the beginning, and with 
 whom former things are no more present than 
 things to come. And it is the prerogative of faith 
 to estimate these things, not as they appear to sight, 
 but as God views them. And hence we are, by 
 faith, to regard all our inborn and inbred sin, and 
 
THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 
 
 103 
 
 all our actual transgressions, which are the rivulets 
 from this corrupt fountain, as forgiven. Just in 
 proportion as we accept these full results of our 
 redemption, and realize that we are cleansed, will 
 we enter into and perpetuate that communion with 
 God which is our life. Unforgiven sin is an im¬ 
 penetrable barrier between the soul and the light 
 of His countenance. But when we accept His 
 Word upon its face, and believe that God has 
 graciously given us such standing in Christ as puts 
 us on the ground of complete forgiveness, then the 
 cloud melts away, and the smile of our reconciled 
 Father brings peace and purity to the heart. 
 
 Moreover, this deliverance, which is here said to 
 be accompanied by translation into the kingdom 
 of His dear Son, introduces us into both the pro¬ 
 tection and the life of that kingdom. Its pro¬ 
 tection secures us from the machinations and 
 assaults of the power of darkness. And its life, 
 which is the eternal life of God, endows us with 
 an energy which enables us to rise superior to all 
 the downward drag of this malign power, and to 
 death, which is the hour of its supreme action. 
 
 Still another item in our deliverance is here 
 brought to view. We are said to be made “ meet 
 for the inheritance of the saints in light/ 7 This 
 
 is also the necessarv result of what Christ has 
 
 %/ 
 
 done for us. Our Father is not satisfied with 
 merely rescuing us from the power of darkness. 
 
104 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 He has far better things in store for us than mere 
 salvation. He has an inheritance prepared which, 
 in contrast with the darkness of this world, is the 
 realm of light. 
 
 His Word is freighted with the promise of a new 
 creation, which shall supersede the old. These 
 fair fields, the product of His creative power and 
 skill, are not always to be eclipsed by this present 
 darkness. A great light shall one day break 
 through it. And Satan and his brood shall be. 
 driven into regions of outer darkness. And then, 
 the day of glory, of which God and the Lamb 
 are the everlasting light. Far deeper than the 
 foundations on which Satan has reared the throne 
 of his kingdom of darkness are those of that 
 kingdom, prepared from the foundation of the 
 world, spoken of in the text as “the kingdom of 
 His dear Son.” Into this kingdom we are even 
 now translated. And such is the nature of the 
 fellowship into which we are called with Christ, 
 that for this inheritance of the saints in light we 
 are even now made meet. 
 
 And for the accomplishment of this overthrow 
 of the power of darkness, and our complete and 
 eternal deliverance from it, the context assures us 
 that the Father hath now raised Him to the highest 
 seat in heaven. He contemplated, indeed, this 
 grand issue from the beginning of creation. For 
 we read here that by Him, who is our Deliverer, 
 
THE POWER OF DARKNESS. 
 
 105 
 
 were all things at first created, whether they be 
 things on earth or tilings in heaven. And He is 
 the Head of the body, the church, who is the 
 beginning, the first-born from the dead. We have 
 said something of the far-reaching power of the 
 ruler of this world’s darkness. But here we learn 
 that our triumphant Lord made and holds in the 
 hollow of His hand all these adverse powers. And, 
 moreover, that they, in their blind rage, are them¬ 
 selves but workers in that eternal plan which shall 
 issue in the exaltation of Christ and His church 
 to the perpetual ownership and dominion over 
 this vast heritage created by His hands. Around 
 that throne, on which the Father seated Him as 
 the Head of the body, the church, there now 
 centre those lines of power and blessing that reach 
 out to the remotest past and radiate over all the 
 future, and which shall lift us, as by the hands of 
 mighty angels, above all the downward pressure 
 of the power of darkness and death, and out 
 of the dungeon of the grave, until, witli all the 
 saints in light, we shall stand upon His holy 
 mountain, transfigured and glorified with Christ, 
 in raiment white as the light, and prepared to 
 enter with Him upon those administrations of 
 His kingdom, which shall fill the earth with the 
 knowledge of His glory, and flood the heavens 
 with a brighter light than that which shines from 
 suns and stars. 
 

 THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 
 
 Howbeit that was not first which is spiritual , but that 
 which is natural; and afterward that which is spiritual. 
 The first man is of the earth , earthy: the second man is 
 the Lord from heaven. As is the earthy , such are they also 
 that are earthy: and as is the heavenly , such are they also 
 that are heavenly. And as we have borne the image of the 
 earthy , we shall also bear the image of the heavenly .—1 
 Corinthians xv. 46-49. 
 
 This passage occurs in the course of that sub¬ 
 lime argument by which the apostle established 
 the faith of the Corinthian church in the resurrec¬ 
 tion of the dead. No topic is more prominent in 
 the sermons and letters of the apostles. In their 
 view the resurrection of the saints was that arch 
 of triumph which God is building over the chasm 
 that separates earth from heaven, the realm of 
 death from the realm of life; and of that arch 
 the resurrection of Christ was the keystone. 
 
 In the first verse of this passage a general 
 principle is announced, which pervades all God’s 
 works and ways, and in accordance with which 
 
 the resurrection must proceed. “ Howbeit that 
 106 
 
THE NATURAL AND TIIE SPIRITUAL. 107 
 
 was not first which is spiritual, but that which is 
 natural; and afterward that which is spiritual/’ 
 
 Let us observe, first, how this principle applies 
 to the works of God in creation, and, secondly, 
 how it requires, as the succeeding verses state, our 
 resurrection from the dead. 
 
 The human mind, in every age, has cherished 
 the conviction that the works of God in nature 
 reveal Him. The heavens declare His glory. 
 And on the earth, fields, floods, and mountains, 
 teeming with life and beauty, and pouring out 
 their treasures for man’s sustenance and delight, 
 have ever spoken to him of God. And yet, in 
 every age, men have forgotten that nature is now 
 but a shadowy and imperfect revelation of Him. 
 It is crowded, indeed, with the symbols of His 
 glory. It is a grand store-house of patterns of 
 things in the heavens. But a symbol is not the 
 thing itself, nor is the pattern of a thing that 
 
 and affections^ should 
 terminate. This prime mistake lies at the root 
 of that universal sin of the race,—idolatry. The 
 things that are made have been a veil, which 
 God has hung out of heaven, inscribed all over 
 with testimonies to things invisible. They have 
 revealed His eternal power and Godhead. But 
 men have mistaken the creature for the Creator. 
 They have transferred to it their homage and 
 service, and have crowded and shrouded the glory 
 
 upon which our thoughts 
 
108 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 of the incorruptible God within the limits of its 
 corruptible forms. And hence their debasing 
 worship and service of the creature. Arid this is 
 still the germ of all ungodliness in our day and in 
 Christian lands. Naturalism is now the great foe 
 of Christianity. The great effort of the enemy, 
 in every age, is to blind men to the knowledge of 
 God, whom to know is eternal life, by substituting 
 in their minds God revealed in nature for God 
 revealed in Christ. Liberal Christianity, so called, 
 is but a disguised form cf this old error of the 
 Wicked One. In subtle and unsuspected ways 
 it summons men to the study and admiration of 
 God in nature, as an adequate and supreme reve¬ 
 lation of Himself, and reduces the meaning of 
 the life, the death, and the resurrection of Jesus 
 within its sphere. 
 
 But the distinctive teaching of the Bible as to 
 this point is, that nature, as now constituted, is 
 not the final and complete revelation of God ; that 
 it is merely the shadow of a concealed substance, 
 the transient and corruptible form of that which 
 is incorruptible and abiding; that the likeness 
 of anything in heaven, earth, or sea, nor the 
 likeness of man, as now subject to sin and death, 
 is not an adequate image of God, but that 
 Christ, the new and risen Man, is His only true 
 image; that He, through resurrection, has be¬ 
 come the Head and harbinger of a new crea- 
 
THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL . 109 
 
 tion, before which the fashion of things present 
 passeth away. That which is natural waxeth 
 old and must vanish away before that which is 
 spiritual and eternal. 
 
 And yet, in the order of God’s working, that 
 which is natural must precede. It was His pur¬ 
 pose, from the foundation of the world, to fill the 
 wide realms of space with works of His hands, 
 which should be forever lighted with His glory, 
 and at the altar of whose temple His intelligent 
 creatures should commune with Him and see His 
 face. The heavens and the earth shall some day 
 be so lighted with His splendor, and all created 
 forms shall become the mirrors of His glory. But 
 first, as preparatory to this final stage, and for the 
 wise and mysterious ends of human discipline, He 
 has constructed this present order, which is made 
 subject to vanity and blighted with sin and death. 
 That which is first is natural. He has made it 
 the battle-ground on which the Light which shall 
 bathe the new creation shall first triumph over 
 darkness, and the Life, which shall be its anima¬ 
 tion and joy, shall first triumph over death. He 
 has filled it with traces of things unseen and 
 eternal; prophecies of things to come; promises 
 of the beauty that knows no blight, the splendor 
 that knows no waning, the life that knows no 
 taint and no decline. But it is still a fading, 
 evanescent system, “ in bondage to corruption,” 
 
no MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 waiting itself, with us, to be delivered into the 
 liberty of the glory of the children of God. 
 
 We are not, therefore, to despise this present 
 world. For things present are the vestibule to 
 things to come. We are to use it without abuse, 
 and estimate at their true value the tokens of our 
 Father’s presence and the pledges of His care and 
 goodness with which it abounds. Nor are we 
 to despise the use of things natural, as avenues 
 by which we attain to the knowledge of things 
 spiritual. There are many ways in which this 
 principle, “ Howbeit that which is first is natural,” 
 applies to the regulation of our conduct in this 
 present world, and even to the development of our 
 spiritual life. But we are ever to keep it in its 
 true and subordinate place. We are not to “set 
 our affections” upon it. For it is of the very 
 essence of the Christian’s position in this world 
 that the death and resurrection of Christ have set 
 him free from bondage to it, and that his true life 
 and portion lie no longer in the sphere of natural 
 things, but in that spiritual realm into which 
 Christ has risen, and in which our life is hid with 
 Him. (Coloss. iii. 1-4.) 
 
 But we pass to observe that, as is the natural 
 system, so, also, is man, its highest creature and 
 exponent. He is first, natural. He belongs to 
 this present order. The first man is of the earth, 
 earthy. He is made out of the elements and 
 
THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. HI 
 
 ministered to by the forces that pervade it. He 
 is in bondage to its necessities and inflamed by its 
 appetites. We notice that this passage does not 
 describe a special class of men, such as are swayed 
 by earthly desires and instincts. The teaching of 
 the Spirit is that all men, the first and typical man 
 from whom all are derived, are of the earth, 
 earthy. He places this first man in contrast with 
 another order of man, the spiritual, the Second 
 Man, the Lord from heaven. As this present natu¬ 
 ral system is but a temporary scaffolding around 
 that temple of creation, eternal in the heavens, 
 of which God is the maker and builder, so the 
 natural man is but a fleeting and perishable form 
 of manhood, fading like the grass, to be followed 
 by a new order of men who, in the power of an 
 incorruptible life, derived from the Second Man, 
 shall stand at the summit and enter upon the 
 possession of the works of God in that day when 
 He shall make all things new. 
 
 It is of the utmost importance to a correct 
 understanding of the divine scheme of salvation, 
 of which this chapter discourses, and whose issue 
 is the resurrection from the dead, that we should 
 clearly perceive, first, that this present system of 
 substance and force, which we call nature, and 
 which is shadowed with evil, is to be displaced by 
 another system wherein dwelleth righteousness; 
 and that there are distinct types or forms of man- 
 
112 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 hood pertaining to each. The first man is, like 
 the system to which he belongs, made subject 
 to vanity and corruption. Over him, over the 
 whole field of his enterprise and his grandest 
 achievements, sin reigns unto death. The Second 
 Man has been raised out of it and above it to be 
 the Lord and Possessor of that coming order, out 
 of which everything that defileth and maketh 
 a lie is cast, and over which Satan can never again 
 trail this dark shadow of death. Into the first 
 order of humanity we are born by nature. To the 
 second order we must be born from above, of God. 
 That which is born of the flesh is but flesh. That 
 which is born of the Spirit is spirit. And, except 
 a man be so reborn, he cannot see the kingdom 
 of God. For, as we all partake of the nature of 
 the first earthy man, we all share in the sin which 
 infected it and in the curse of death pronounced 
 against it. “ Such also are they that are earthy.” 
 And they cannot lift themselves out of this rank 
 of being. This is a work of new creation. Only 
 God can raise the dead. They cannot possibly 
 constitute themselves worthy inheritors of the 
 kingdom of God. For u flesh and blood cannot 
 inherit the kingdom of God, neither doth corrup¬ 
 tion inherit incorruption.” And so we need an 
 Almighty Saviour to bring to us an eternal life 
 and invest us with a heavenly manhood. 
 
 And such an One we are here told of. The 
 
THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 113 
 
 Son of man came down from heaven. Because 
 of His heavenly origin and nature, He was able 
 to carry our flesh and blood nature unscathed 
 through the trials and temptations of this earthly 
 state. And then He laid it down in death, a sacri¬ 
 fice for the sins of the world, and rose again on 
 the other side of death in that form of pure and 
 spiritual and heavenly manhood which cannot sin 
 and cannot die. And in this new rank and order 
 of manhood He has become not only the Head of 
 the new creation, but the source to us also of that 
 new life-power, which becomes in us a power of 
 regeneration; of renewal in spirit now, and here¬ 
 after of transformation in body also. In this way 
 we, who are born at first natural and earthy men, 
 receive power to become the sons of God. We 
 are quickened into the life which is spiritual and 
 eternal, and shall be raised to the same rank of 
 heavenly manhood. For “as we have borne the 
 image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image 
 of the heavenly.” And the instrument by which 
 this quickening power reaches us is the Word of 
 God about His Son. To receive that Word is 
 to receive Him. We are born again, “not of 
 corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the 
 Word of God, which livetli and abideth forever.” 
 (1 Peter i. 23.) 
 
 And what a glorious destiny is this ! The First 
 
 heavenly Man is now Lord of the whole unseen 
 h 10* 
 
114 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 realm of nature and of life. All the boundless 
 fields of light, which God has spread through 
 space, are His domain. All the powers that flash 
 through this system and move on its wheels are 
 His servants. He, as the Image of the invisible 
 God, is the acknowledged sovereign of this vast 
 estate, and it is being fitted up to show forth 
 His praise. And we also, as sharers in His life, 
 must share in His dignity. We shall bear the 
 image of the heavenly manhood, which, through¬ 
 out God’s empire, must be acknowledged as the 
 representative of His authority, the executer of 
 His designs, and the channel of His grace and 
 bounty. 
 
 Such is the meaning of that inspiring hope of 
 the gospel, unto which we have been begotten, who 
 have learned to love and confide in Jesus, who 
 died for us and rose again. 
 
 We thus discover that the salvation, brought 
 nigh to men in the gospel, is something more than 
 escape from coming wrath. It promises something 
 more than a safe harbor after the storms of this 
 life, or an asylum in which we shall be forever 
 sheltered from its ills. It promises something more 
 than purity. It reveals a heavenly state which 
 is more than inactive enjoyment or entrancing 
 worship. It discloses a definite purpose of God 
 concerning this present world. It must pass away. 
 It heralds another, in which redeemed man shall 
 
THE NATURAL AND THE SPIRITUAL. 115 
 
 rise to the highest rank of being and possession. 
 It affirms that man, as descending in the line of 
 nature from Adam, is unfit to inherit God’s king¬ 
 dom, and reveals One who is Son of God as well 
 as Son of man, who came to lift us into His rank 
 of being, and make us joint administrators in 
 His kingdom. We are to take part with Him in 
 those administrations of power and blessing b y 
 which He shall first rescue the earth from the 
 destroyer’s reign, putting down all rule and au¬ 
 thority and power, until even the last enemy, 
 which is death, is destroyed : and by which He 
 shall extend His benign and healing sway, in ever- 
 widening circles, to the remotest confines of this 
 created system. Such is the sublime trust the 
 Father has confided to the hands of the First 
 heavenly Man, “ that He might reconcile all things 
 unto Himself, whether they be things on earth or 
 things in heaven.” And in the execution of it, 
 and in the glory which pertains to it, He is not 
 ashamed to call us brethren. This, then, is our 
 high calling in Christ Jesus, of which we are 
 exhorted to walk worthy. 
 
 And this unspeakable boon is conferred upon 
 the simple condition of faith ; the faith which 
 first accepts and then obeys, or acts as if it be¬ 
 lieved. Such reward no man can earn. Eternal 
 life is the gift of God. In every sinner, who con¬ 
 fesses his own vileness and unfitness, as an earthy 
 
116 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 man, for God’s kingdom, and who calls Jesus 
 Lord, this life begins. The process by which 
 it is imparted and nourished is mysterious, as are 
 all the processes of life. Jesus compares it to 
 the movements of the viewless wind. It is not 
 necessary that we should be able to analyze or 
 trace it. We are not to detect it by any process 
 of introspection. Its beginnings, like those of 
 natural life, may be all unknown and unmarked 
 by us. We are only to concern ourselves with 
 the Divine Source and Giver; and are assured 
 that, trusting in Him, our faith is itself the dawn 
 of life, and that He will fulfil in us this work of 
 faith with power, until renewed in spirit by His 
 transforming power, we shall hereafter be trans¬ 
 figured in body also into that form of heavenly 
 manhood through which all God’s great designs 
 shall be executed over the field of creation, in the 
 ages to come. 
 
I2C. 
 
 THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 
 
 That ye put off concerning the former conversation the 
 old man , which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts; 
 and be renewed in the spirit of your mind; and that ye 
 put on the new man , 'which after God is created in righteous¬ 
 ness and true holiness .— Ephesians iv. 22-24. 
 
 These and kindred expressions have a strange 
 sound to a man who has not been taught by the 
 Spirit of God to appreciate their meaning. Let 
 us, then, inquire, What is this old man we are 
 urged to “ put off,” and what the new man we 
 are to “ put on” ? 
 
 It is obvious that there is a personal self to 
 whom this exhortation is addressed, and who is 
 responsible to obey it; and who, therefore, is not 
 identical with either the old man or the new. I 
 cannot be exhorted to put off myself, but an evil 
 nature external to myself. Personality resides in 
 the human spirit. This is now embodied in an 
 earthy form, and, by reason of sin, it is enslaved 
 in this natural system. Christ came to emanci¬ 
 pate it from this bondage, to restore it to fellow¬ 
 ship with God, and to endow it with eternal life. 
 
 There are two distinct types of manhood set 
 
 117 
 
118 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 before us in Scripture, and only two. Some of 
 the names which designate these and set them in 
 contrast are “carnal,” “spiritual;” “the natural 
 man,” “ the spiritual;” “ they that are after the 
 flesh,” “they that are after the Spirit;” “the old 
 man,” “the new man;” “ the earthy man,” “the 
 heavenly;” “ the first man,” “ the Second Man.” 
 And more definitely it speaks of the respective 
 heads of these two classes of men as “Adam” 
 and “ Christ.” As to the first man, we read that 
 the Lord God formed him out of the dust of the 
 ground. And hence he is spoken of as “ earthy.” 
 Although endowed by his Maker with a spirit, he 
 is a product of the earth. It yields the elements 
 which compose and nourish his frame. He is said 
 to have been curiously wrought in the lowest parts 
 of the earth. (Ps. cxxxix. 15.) He is the high¬ 
 est efflorescence of all the substances and forces 
 of which the earth is the reservoir, and which 
 pervade the universe. Hence he is also styled the 
 “natural man.” He pertains to this system of 
 nature. So far as we can see, he is its highest crea¬ 
 ture. All the elements and forces, the “ princi¬ 
 palities and powers” of this created system, are 
 somehow related or tributary to him. But this 
 type of man is mortal. “Dust thou art, and unto 
 dust thou shalt return,” was the Creator’s sentence 
 upon him. And since then the Adam and all the 
 successive tribes and generations into which the 
 
THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 
 
 119 
 
 first man has been multiplied have gone back to 
 dust. 
 
 But this mortality is the result of sin. This 
 “old man” dies because, as the text states, it is 
 “ corrupt according to the lusts of deceit.” This 
 indicates the manner in which its corruption be¬ 
 gan. Eve and Adam desired the forbidden fruit. 
 They were deceived by the devil’s lie that they 
 should be as God, knowing good and evil. This 
 deceitful lust led them to transgress. And so 
 “ by one man sin entered the world, and death 
 by sin. And so death passed upon all men in 
 that all sinned.” 
 
 It is most important to know that, since that 
 day, this type of man has always presented the 
 'same essential features. Differences of race, of 
 education, have produced surface changes of char¬ 
 acter. Philosophy and culture have wrought ex¬ 
 terior refinements and mitigations of the original 
 evil. Civilization has softened or concealed its 
 barbarities. And yet, radically, this type of man¬ 
 hood remains unchanged. Wherever you find the 
 descendants of the first man, under whatever skies 
 or auspices, this description remains true, “ Cor¬ 
 rupt according to the lusts of deceit.” If he is 
 not found to be inflamed with sensual lusts, there 
 is vet some vice of the mind; it may be some 
 fine frenzy, or even noble desire, which, however 
 widely or grandly it soars, still swings around self 
 
120 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 as its centre. The fact of man’s mortality is not 
 more universal than this fact of depravity, of 
 which it is the witness. 
 
 In the deepest view, then, this Adamic human 
 nature is the old man of which this Scripture 
 speaks. 
 
 And so the “ new man” is the Christ nature, 
 whose transforming energy is first manifest in the 
 renewing of “ the spirit of the mind,” and, ulti¬ 
 mately, in the refashioning of the body. 
 
 In an important sense, the new man antedates 
 the old. For, in the thought of God, the perfect 
 image of Himself, as it was to be realized in man¬ 
 hood, was the Man, Christ Jesus. Not Christ 
 after the flesh, as is now the common misconcep¬ 
 tion, but the Christ of the new creation. (2 Cor. 
 v. 16, 17.) Adam w^s only a figure of Him who 
 was to come. A marred and dying manhood 
 could not be a suitable image of the eternal God. 
 This was realized only in the risen Jesus. All 
 previous processes in creation, and the first forma¬ 
 tion of an image of God in clay, were but pre¬ 
 paratory to the production of this new and incor¬ 
 ruptible manhood, the Perfect Image of Himself. 
 He is, then, “ the New Man.” The first man is 
 of the earth, earthy. He is the Lord from heaven. 
 The first man is natural. The Second Man tran¬ 
 scends the whole realm of nature. He came, in¬ 
 deed, in the likeness of sinful flesh, and so into 
 
THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 
 
 121 
 
 voluntary subjection to this present order. His 
 temptation in the wilderness was essentially the 
 devil’s effort to induce Him to throw off this yoke, 
 and assert His sovereignty over the resources and 
 angelic powers and the kingdoms of this world- 
 system before the time. To this lordship He was 
 destined. But He was only to reach it through 
 resurrection. He must first, through death, purge 
 our manhood from sin and deliver it from the 
 power of death. And therefore, in our flesh and 
 blood, He went down into the depths of this con¬ 
 flict with Him that hath the power of death. The 
 hour of His bodily dissolution was not only the 
 crisis of human redemption. It was the grand 
 trial whether man, as the embodied image of God, 
 should reach the throne to which his Creator had 
 from the beginning assigned him; whether he 
 should triumph over the powers that had hitherto 
 enslaved and destroyed him, and win immortality 
 and sovereignty over this created system. And 
 Jesus, Son of God and Son of man, was victorious. 
 Having spoiled principalities and powers, He 
 made a show of them openly, triumphing over 
 them in it. (Coloss. ii. 15.) Or again, as we read 
 in the chapter preceding the text, “ When He 
 ascended up on high, He led captivity captive and 
 gave gifts unto men. Now that He ascended, 
 what is it but that He also descended first into the 
 
 lower parts of the earth.” We cannot comprehend 
 
 ll 
 
 F 
 
122 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 all these expressions signify. But they teach that 
 Jesus assumed our natural manhood and came 
 into conflict with all the elements and forces, or, 
 in Scripture language, “the principalities and 
 powers” of this natural system, iu subjection to 
 which man became corruptible and mortal; and 
 that, in dying, He went down beneath their yoke 
 in order that, in the power of His sinless and 
 eternal life, He might break that yoke for Him¬ 
 self and for us, and bring up out of the realm of 
 death a regenerated manhood, triumphant over 
 them all. So that “the new man” is not an im¬ 
 proved natural man, subservient still to the laws 
 and forces of the natural system, which return 
 him to the dust from whence he sprang. He is 
 superior to the whole realm of nature. All things 
 are his, whether the world, or life, or death, or 
 things present or things to come. And all things 
 must be put forever beneath his feet. 
 
 Such is the origin and such the character and 
 dignity of the new man, whom in so many and 
 striking ways, the Scripture places in contrast to 
 the old man, blighted by sin and going down to 
 corruption. They are distinct creations. 
 
 We are now prepared to discover the deep 
 meaning of the injunction of the text to put off 
 the old man and put on the new. We see that 
 the ultimate goal of this process is the death of 
 the old, and our complete investiture with that 
 
THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 
 
 128 
 
 new and radiant manhood in which Christ was 
 raised. We have already said that this involves 
 no change in personality. We put off the one 
 as an earthy tabernacle (2 Peter i. 14), and 
 are “ clothed upon with our house which is from 
 heaven.” (2 Cor. v. 2.) And yet that which we 
 put off or on, although not essential to our person¬ 
 ality, is essential in our manhood. For man is not 
 merely a spirit. A disembodied spirit would not 
 be a man. Man is an embodied ima^e of God, 
 holding special place and title in His creation in 
 virtue of his embodiment in it. 
 
 Our destiny, then, is to die with Christ Out 
 of the old creation and live again with Him in 
 the new. And if any man be in Christ, the new 
 creation is in him begun. (2 Cor. v. 17.) And 
 therefore the process of the crucifixion of the flesh, 
 with its affections and lusts, has begun. Our very 
 calling, the first principle of our discipleship, is 
 that we consent that the old man shall be crucified 
 in us. The Christ nature is born in us to this end. 
 And in the power of it we are daily to put off the 
 old man, by mortifying its members, denying the 
 lustful clamors of its flesh, and equally the proud 
 ambitions and vain desires of its mind. Every 
 Christian knows something of this process. These 
 dissatisfactions with an earthly, sensual life, these 
 struggles against sin and the low-born tendencies 
 of an evil nature, these aspirations after God, and 
 
124 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 purity, are the working in us of this Christ-life. 
 But few Christians realize how deep is this pro¬ 
 cess. Jesus leads us all, as He led the first disci¬ 
 ples, by gentle stages, and as we are able to bear 
 it, into the full meaning of this mystery of the 
 cross. 
 
 And yet we must all needs learn this lesson. It 
 is the only way of life, the only path of peace. The 
 more thoroughly we consent to the death of the 
 old man in us, the greater the scope and freedom 
 for the manifestation of the life of the new man. 
 
 This passage also presses home upon us our 
 responsibility in this process. Its accompanying 
 verses specify minutely the sins to which the old 
 man is given,—lasciviousness, uncleanness, lying, 
 stealing, anger, bitterness, clamor, evil speaking, 
 malice. It enumerates some of the manifest 
 graces of the new man,—kindness, honesty, com¬ 
 passion, love, forgiveness, and, as comprehensive 
 of them all, these characteristic features, “ right¬ 
 eousness and true holiness.” We are called to act 
 in all purity of motive toward God and in righteous 
 dealing toward man. Yea, more, as our fellow-men 
 are burdened and cursed with a sinful nature com¬ 
 mon to us all, we must bear with their ignorance 
 and folly, be helpful to their weakness, and com¬ 
 passionate in their misery, and so reflect, in our 
 feeble way, upon them something of God’s loving¬ 
 kindness toward us. 
 
THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 
 
 125 
 
 But in order to any successful suppression of 
 the uprisings of the old man in us, it is very im¬ 
 portant that we recognize that our true standing 
 and life are now in Christ, the new man. In 
 every Christian there is the twofold nature, that 
 which is born of Adam and that which is born of 
 God. The gospel of the grace of God to us is, 
 that the believer on Christ enters into all the 
 benefits of the judgment against our old nature to 
 which He submitted on the cross. In God’s view 
 we there died in Him. We are risen with Him. 
 We have new and eternal life in Him, and there¬ 
 fore we are transferred out of the old category of 
 guilt and condemnation, forgiven, justified, sanc¬ 
 tified in Christ. We are new men in Him. And 
 with this new and triumphant manhood our per¬ 
 sonal being, in God’s view, is forever identified. 
 It is no longer “ I” that does evil, but sin that 
 dwelleth in me. (Rom. vii. 20.) The old man is 
 henceforth but a dying kernel for the new. In 
 God’s economy it is necessary that it remain for a 
 while, as a sort of calyx and shield, a place of ger¬ 
 mination and struggle and growth, of aspiration 
 and of training, for the new man. In this view 
 of it, it is not to be despised nor maltreated, as bv 
 the old ascetics. That which is natural is first, 
 and afterwards that which is spiritual. It is to be 
 hereafter rejected as chaff; but chaff is good in its 
 
 place, and up to the time of the grain’s maturity. 
 
 11 * 
 
126 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 And yet we are ever to remember that the sen¬ 
 tence of death has gone out against the old man, 
 and that our calling now is to put this into prac¬ 
 tical execution, so far as he attempts, in any way, 
 to regain supremacy over our conduct or opinions 
 or motives. We may compel him to do us abject 
 service in our endeavor to serve God, but we are 
 always to keep him under as a servant. Never 
 must he appear as master. 
 
 And this suggests to us that we need specially 
 to guard against the uprisings of the old man in 
 the service of God. It is here that the devil is 
 ever seeking to intrude him, in order that he may 
 degrade our service, which can please God only as 
 offered by the new man, down to the level of a 
 fair shew in the flesh. In our worship this old 
 nature is ever eager, like Nadab and Abihu, to 
 seize the censer of our praise and prayers and offer 
 them with strange fire before the Lord. Like 
 Dathan and Abiram, it is ever on the alert to stir 
 up rebellion against the rule of the Spirit, through 
 the Lord’s anointed servants, and to arrogate to 
 itself their prerogatives. The old man is active 
 in our churches, in our assemblies for worship, in 
 our ecclesiastical councils. He puts on the guise 
 of the new man; he is transformed into an angel 
 of light, and in this character he comes by stealth 
 into the church of God, and becomes the active 
 manager of her affairs, her finances, her holy or- 
 
THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 
 
 127 
 
 dinances. He even raises bis voice in her pulpits, 
 and brings in his damnable heresies, beguiling 
 unstable souls and drowning men in perdition. 
 
 It was these specious, diabolical, actings of the 
 old man within the precincts of the church against 
 which the New Testament epistles give special 
 warning. Already she had begun to be corrupted 
 in both doctrine and practice from this source. 
 And hence the careful, solemn, reiterated teaching 
 of Paul concerning the character of the old man, 
 and the essential need in the Christian life and 
 the life of the church that he be crucified. He 
 must be tracked and exposed in every form in 
 which he trails his footsteps within this hallowed 
 sphere. Alas that the church in these days should 
 heed so little these solemn warnings ! How many 
 Christians, having begun in the spirit, seek to 
 make themselves perfect in the flesh. How many 
 glory in appearance and not in heart. How many, 
 forgetting that they have died with Christ out of 
 this old life, come into subjection, as though they 
 were living in it, to ordinances, such as touch not, 
 taste not, handle not, as if such police restraints 
 upon the old man could ever build up the life 
 of the new. And how many come back into bond¬ 
 age to the traditions of men and the rudiments or 
 elements of the world, as if there were any atmos¬ 
 phere here for the new man to breathe, going into 
 associations of all sorts, in which these rudiments 
 
128 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 are the accepted principles, and mistaking the 
 nurture thev afford for the old man for the culture 
 of the new. The very last form of apostasy, the 
 Antichrist himself, will be the old man, the man 
 of nature, tricked off in the garniture of the new, 
 assuming to be reverenced as such, sitting in the 
 temple of God, and showing himself that he is 
 God. 
 
 Now, our only guard against these multiform 
 betrayals of the truth and these cunning counter¬ 
 feits of the Christ, as they find entrance into the 
 church, or overspread the world with their strong 
 delusions, is to faithfully apply the truth of the 
 text to our own lives. We must search ourselves, 
 as with a lighted candle, to see what evil ways 
 there be in us. Every man’s heart is a micro¬ 
 cosm of the world, and all the actings of human 
 nature in the world around us are germinally 
 there. And not only for our own safety and up¬ 
 building into the life of Christ, but for the salva- 
 tion of our fellow-men and their guidance into the 
 way of life, we must detect and reject the dark, 
 deceitful ways by which the old man, which God 
 has adjudged to death, seeks to live again in the 
 whole sphere of our lives, even in that which is 
 spiritual, and by which he endeavors to dictate 
 and strut and rule even in the church of God. 
 
 We have thus seen that the putting off the old 
 man is a far deeper thing than merely correcting 
 
THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW . 
 
 129 
 
 its vices, and the putting on the new is a higher 
 thing than improving the old. This new cloth 
 cannot be patched on to the old. We need a new 
 garment altogether. The mistake of multitudes 
 is that they suppose salvation to consist in a mere 
 pruning off the vices of the old man. The gos¬ 
 pel of amendment and culture and philanthropic 
 sentiment is now widely preached in lieu of the 
 gospel of Christ. The rejection of the old man 
 includes, indeed, the abandonment of its vices. 
 But the vital feature in God’s way of salvation is 
 the consignment of the old man to death. It is 
 never assumed that he can be radically changed or 
 improved. Hence He saves by raising up in us 
 the new man. We need to know how deep and 
 radical is this salvation of which we are the subjects. 
 We need to stand guard against that ever-present, 
 ever-recurring and subtle error of the Wicked 
 One, which affirms that what is natural must be 
 right. This monstrous dogma of original sin, ex¬ 
 claims the radical, is a crime against nature and 
 against manhood. “We have a right to indulge 
 the propensities and desires which God Himself 
 has given.” Such fail to see that the meaning of 
 this present world-system is, that it is made the 
 training-ground for a new manhood, which alone 
 is worthy to enter upon the possession and enjoy¬ 
 ment of God’s works, and that we rise into this 
 rank of being through the denial and ultimate 
 
130 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 death of the old nature. And the calling of the 
 Christian, as he comes in contact with the evil of 
 the world, and as he learns the true character and 
 end of his dying manhood and the purity and 
 glory of the new, in which he is to appear and in¬ 
 herit with Christ, is to mortify his members which 
 are upon the earth, and to set his affections on 
 things above. It is because of the scope and far- 
 reaching issues of the redeeming work wrought 
 for us in the death and resurrection of Christ, and 
 which is now being wrought out in us, that we are 
 urged to rid ourselves of all the deformities and 
 vices of this dying manhood, which we must soon 
 cast off, and to put on, by anticipation, the graces 
 and virtues of that new manhood in the glory of 
 which we shall appear. It is noteworthy how the 
 several epistles, which set forth these deep things 
 of God, end with the most practical and minute 
 directions for the Christian’s daily temper and 
 conduct. 
 
 We may get from this subject new intelligence 
 of the conflict to which we are now exposed. 
 When the Spirit informs us, as in the next chapter, 
 that we wrestle with principalities and powers, He 
 describes that which necessarily results from the 
 fact that we, as natural men, are quickened with 
 that life which is now contending with these 
 powers for the inheritance of the universe. And 
 hence the conflict comes through every avenue 
 
THE OLD MAN AND THE NEW. 
 
 131 
 
 and tie that links us in with this created system. 
 "Moreover, we need to be warned against despon¬ 
 dency, if our progress in this conflict be not one 
 perpetual victory. Young Christians, especially, 
 are apt to imagine, in the first flush of the new 
 life, that it has vanquished forever all these ene¬ 
 mies; whereas they have, at first, little idea of the 
 scope and versatility of their power. The flesh is 
 not slain in us at one stroke and once for all. The 
 roots of its power lie deep. Their fibres run 
 through the soil of this system of nature and hold 
 us in bondage to it by cords which only death can 
 fully sever, yea, rather, which only the Lord Jesus, 
 descending from heaven with a shout, will finally 
 and forever break. 
 
 We need also to be warned against looking for 
 change and improvement in that which is born of 
 the flesh. Our calling is not to improve the old 
 man, but to put it off. We are not to expect any 
 radical change in it for the better. It may be 
 toned down and repressed. The new man may be 
 so dominant that the old shall be abashed and 
 weakened. We would put no limits to the ex¬ 
 tent to which it may be dethroned and mortified. 
 The Christian may, and ought to, live in the 
 Spirit. But, however obscured and mastered, its 
 character is never changed. Nor is it extinct. It 
 is ready to seize every opportunity for outbreak 
 and rebellion. There are two irreconcilably hos- 
 
132 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 tile natures in every Christian,—-that which is born 
 of the flesh and that which is born of the Spirit. 
 The flesh cannot become spirit. It never can 
 learn to love the things of God. It must gravi¬ 
 tate to earthly things, for its tendencies are as un¬ 
 alterable as the laws of nature, to whose domain 
 it belongs. But it can be disowned and put off. 
 The temper and conduct of the new man may be 
 put on, until they become the habit of the life. 
 This is now our calling, as preparatory to our 
 destiny. And He, who hath called us to it, is 
 able to work in us mightily to this end, above all 
 that we are able to ask or to think. 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 
 
 I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, 
 that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy , acceptable 
 unto God, which is your reasonable service .— Romans xii. 1. 
 
 This passage is often misquoted. The word 
 u souls” is often coupled with the word “ bodies.” 
 But this insertion weakens the force of the passage, 
 which directly exhorts us to devote our bodies to 
 God’s service. 
 
 Even the similar passage in 1 Cor. vi. 20, 
 u Therefore glorify God in your body, and in 
 your spirit,” is corrected in the Revised Version. 
 It reads simply, “ Therefore glorify God in your 
 body.” 
 
 We shall now consider, first, what is the body; 
 second, what place does it hold in the service we 
 render to God; and, third, how may we offer 
 through it such service as is here described, “a 
 living sacrifice, holy, acceptable unto God.” 
 
 At first sight it would seem to be a simple thing 
 to define the body. And yet our common defi¬ 
 nitions are made from but a single point of view, 
 
 and are therefore partial. The anatomist, the 
 
 12 133 
 
134 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 scientist, has each his definition. And so has the 
 undertaker. It is easy enough to define the body 
 as we see it. It is that animal frame built np of 
 bones and flesh and blood, with its parts knit to¬ 
 gether, its organs adjusted to their functions, and 
 together forming the perfect figure and habitation 
 of a man. The body is all we can see or handle 
 of man. And yet of nothing are we more con¬ 
 vinced than that the body is not the whole of us. 
 There is something: behind and distinct from the 
 vital frame we inhabit. 
 
 Looking further into the constitution of these 
 bodies of ours, we find that they are built up out 
 of the materials of the world, the same gases and 
 minerals that compose the earth, and that blaze in 
 the fiery vapors of the sun and stars. We find 
 that they are sustained and animated by the forces 
 that operate in this realm of nature. And they 
 are the depositories and batteries of these forces. 
 Indeed, if we assume, as we have right to do, that 
 the personality of man resides in the spirit, his 
 body then appears to be that which gives him local 
 habitation and name in this universe. It brings 
 him into relation to this created system. It is his 
 inlet of intelligence concerning it, the instrument 
 by which he acts upon it, and compels its sub¬ 
 stances and forces to become subservient to his 
 use. 
 
 Still more evident is it that it is our present 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 
 
 135 
 
 channel of intercourse and communication with 
 the world of mankind, the mass of embodied 
 human spirits around us. By means of these 
 bodies we know and are known of one another. 
 We come into relations of intercourse and sym¬ 
 pathy with our fellow-men through the magnetic 
 touch of sense with sense, the grasp of hand with 
 hand. 
 
 It follows, then, that the place the body holds in 
 the service we render to God is that of the in¬ 
 dispensable instrument. Disembodied ghosts have 
 no sphere of action in this present world. 
 
 But here the question arises, Does not the 
 Bible teach that the body is essentially depraved, 
 and therefore a most unworthy instrument for 
 this service? The reply is that the term “ body’ 7 
 in Scripture is not identical with the term “ flesh.” 
 Flesh defines a nature, a certain inherent organic 
 disposition of the substances and forces that enter 
 into man’s being toward sin, and by which both 
 body and mind are enslaved. “ The mind of the 
 flesh is enmity against God.” (Bom. viii. 7, R. V.) 
 Man’s whole nature, as built up out of the sub¬ 
 stances and forces of this present world, has come 
 into bondage to corruption. And his body, of 
 course, is the seat of this infection. And hence 
 it must die. But the plan of God’s salvation pro¬ 
 vides for the quickening of men with a new and 
 heaven-born life from Christ. This new birth 
 
136 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 is first in the region of the spirit, which hence¬ 
 forth begins to reduce the disordered elements of 
 man’s being to its sway. The directing spirit of 
 man has lost its full and proper control over these 
 forces that operate upon and through our bodies. 
 Indeed, these forces are themselves in a present 
 condition of ferment and rebellion. For we read 
 that the whole creation is in bondage to corruption, 
 and that the restoring reign of Christ requires 
 that its principalities and powers be brought into 
 such subjection to His sway, as shall put an end 
 to this wreck of sin and death, both in the bodies 
 of men and in the system of creation to which 
 they stand related. 
 
 But, before the final refashioning and redemp¬ 
 tion of our bodies, we are left in this world to be 
 trained for warfare and dominion. We have a 
 regenerate spirit in bodies still unredeemed. Our 
 schooling and trial now is to bring into control to 
 the law of the spirit of life which we have in 
 Christ Jesus the members of our bodies; to master 
 these forces of which they are the depositories, 
 and which are none other than the mighty forces 
 that move through the realm of creation, and to 
 subject them to the service of Christ. Our future 
 exaltation with Him requires that, in this realm 
 where we are now the born slaves of sin and death, 
 we shall become masters. But before we rise to 
 complete dominion with Him we are trained for 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 
 
 137 
 
 it by present tutelage and conflict. So that it 
 enters into the very essence of our discipline that 
 we should learn to keep our bodies under. 
 
 We have thus seen that these bodies are our 
 present instruments of service to God, and that 
 our calling now is to subject them to this service. 
 
 Like a pilot on a dangerous sea along a rocky 
 coast, with here and there a lighthouse, and with 
 the winds blowing in gusts from all quarters and 
 the billows surging beneath, we are not only to 
 guard the ship with its precious freight from 
 wreck, but to catch and subsidize these riotous 
 forces of wind and wave, to compel them to keep 
 us afloat, to All our sails and waft us safely home. 
 These lawless elements that have so long made 
 havoc of man’s nature, subjecting it to the law of 
 sin and death and strewing all these coasts of time 
 with the stranded bodies of men and even with 
 the wrecks of proud nations, these we are to sub¬ 
 jugate and direct into a new channel, the service 
 of God, the end of which is not death, but whose 
 fruit is unto holiness and the end everlasting life. 
 
 We are now prepared to pass on to our third 
 and more practical inquiry, How may we best 
 make this living sacrifice, and make our bodies 
 the ready and efficient instruments of this ser¬ 
 vice ? 
 
 First, we must recognize that our bodies now 
 
 belong to God. We read that their redemption is 
 
 12 * 
 
138 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 future. And yet they are now Christ’s purchased 
 possession. “ For ye are bought with a price; 
 therefore glorify God in your body.’' They are 
 His, not only because He shall ransom them from 
 the grave, but in that they are now the casket 
 which enshrines the redeemed spirit, and through 
 which alone the light of the life He has kindled 
 in us can shine forth in this dark world. God’s 
 title in us extends, therefore, over the whole region 
 of our physical life, so that through it all our 
 spirits may act in obedience to His Spirit. 
 
 And hence we must also recognize that these 
 bodies are the temple of the Holy Ghost, “ which 
 is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not 
 your own.” We have seen that our salvation 
 essentially begins in the quickening of the spirit 
 with new life from the ascended Christ. The 
 great mystery, as well as the unspeakable blessing 
 of the gospel, is “Christ in you, the hope of 
 glory.” That presence hallows and sanctities these 
 bodies. And not only so. It is a mighty, all- 
 subduing power. We have had some glimpses of 
 the wide extent of this command, “Present your 
 bodies a living sacrifice,” and of the potent forces 
 to be overcome. But “ greater is He that is in 
 you than he that is in the world.” “ If God be for 
 us, who then can be against us?” Or what mighty 
 forces, ranging through the heights and depths of 
 creation,can separate us from His love? 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 
 
 139 
 
 The essential element of success in this duty, 
 then, is the recognition of our present relation to 
 God, and of the mighty power by which He works 
 for us, which was displayed in lifting Jesus, our 
 brother man and captain of our salvation, up to 
 headship over all the principalities and powers of 
 creation, and which has, even now, quickened us 
 together with Him, and stands pledged to raise us 
 to the same glorious dominion. And although 
 this dominion awaits us in the life to come, we are 
 called in this life to an earnest and foretaste of it. 
 These lawless forces, that oppress and hinder us 
 through the body, may now be subdued to the 
 reign of the Christ in us. Witness St. Paul, who 
 declared that he kept his body under and brought 
 it into subjection. The word here implies the 
 severest mortification and self-restraint. 
 
 And this throws light upon the question of 
 sanctification. We have no doubt that most Chris¬ 
 tians take far too low views of what the grace and 
 power of God can accomplish in us, and that our 
 poor success is but proof of our weak faith and 
 imperfect consecration. And yet the Word of 
 God does not warrant the thought that the com¬ 
 plete surrender and control of all our life-powers, 
 of which Paul speaks, can be reached by a single 
 step. Such a view implies, we think, a previous 
 short-sighted view of the depth of the self-sacri¬ 
 fice required, and of the far-reaching hostility of 
 
I 
 
 140 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 these life-forces which are to be overcome and 
 tranquillized, and subdued to the reign of Christ. 
 It must never be forgotten, and this some excellent 
 Christians overlook, that it enters now into the 
 very marrow of our discipline in this life that the 
 new man in Christ be shut up in a depraved and 
 dying tabernacle, that our bodies can be brought 
 into submission to the behests of the renewed 
 spirit only by vigorous watchfulness and disci¬ 
 pline, and that, even with the greatest care and 
 restraint, there will be something of the clumsiness 
 and taint of the earthy channel in all the ways by 
 which the new life flows forth from us and seeks 
 expression. One single act of self-consecration, 
 however thorough and sincere, cannot do away 
 with the necessity of** life-long consecration and 
 vigilance and progress in that mastery of self 
 whidh shall enable us always to glorify God in 
 our bodies, and to bind all their imperious and 
 lustful appetites to the horns of His altar. 
 
 And this leads us to speak further of the care 
 and culture of the body as a Christian duty. We 
 have seen that there is a sacredness about it, in 
 that the Holy Ghost has condescended to make it 
 His temple and to employ it in His service. We 
 should, therefore, study and observe the laws of 
 health. The kingdom of God, indeed, is not meat 
 and drink. It is not a system of dietetics. Nor 
 does bodily exercise profit anything in establishing 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 
 
 141 
 
 our position in grace. This is His gift. And 
 yet, called into His family and to His kingdom 
 and glory, we have already seen that we cannot 
 serve Him efficiently with bodies untrained, dis¬ 
 ordered, and rebellious. Nor is a sickly, shattered 
 body the best kind of offering to lay upon His 
 altar. We do not believe, indeed, that sound 
 physical health is so important a factor in our 
 usefulness as is often claimed in these days of 
 muscular Christianity. For it may be only the 
 vigor of the natural man, who receiveth not the 
 things of the Spirit of God, and to whom they 
 are foolishness. Paul, we judge, had an insignifi¬ 
 cant bodily presence, and a painful thorn in the 
 flesh. The power of God is often most conspicuous 
 where infirmities abound. And yet Paul made 
 the best use of all his physical powers. He did 
 not suffer them to be weakened by laziness or self- 
 indulgence. He performed prodigious labors with 
 that frail body of his. And this because he was 
 temperate or self-controlled in all things. There 
 is a vast waste of physical power with most of us. 
 Vital forces are exhausted by irritation and ex¬ 
 citements, by excess of appetites and unregulated 
 emotions and discontents, which the reign of God’s 
 peace in the soul would quell. And then there is 
 a hurry and bustle and fussiness about much of 
 our Christian service which drains our resources, 
 and which would be saved if we were calmly 
 
142 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 waiting upon God for opportunities and anxious to 
 do only His will, without so much interference and 
 compulsion to make things go to suit ourselves. 
 This sacrifice of the body requires, therefore, that 
 we take the best care of it; not coddling it into 
 inactivity or petting it into feebleness or exhaust¬ 
 ing it by an impetuosity which is born of the flesh 
 and not uf the Spirit, but by observing the laws 
 of its health, and by conserving its best powers 
 for the best uses. And especially are we called to 
 the bridling of its appetites. The heroes of faith, 
 in all ages, have been men who curbed appetite. 
 We have referred to Paul as an eminent example. 
 The strong men of the early ages of Christianity 
 were made so by self-denial, what we call asceti¬ 
 cism. It is true that errors crept in to distort 
 their notions of bodily restraint and to sway them 
 from the simplicity of the gospel of God’s grace. 
 But still, their mastery of the body enabled them 
 to be martyrs where we are but feeble witnesses. 
 Paul was no ascetic in the technical sense. And 
 yet he was in fastings often. And still is it true 
 that no man can present his body as a living sac¬ 
 rifice to God who cannot control his eating and 
 drinking, and so allows his spiritual nature to be 
 clogged and dulled by indulgences at table which 
 do not minister to his strength, but which simply 
 gratify his palate and load up his stomach, the 
 laboratory of the life-forces he must use in God’s 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 
 
 143 
 
 service, with work it cannot properly perform. 
 And so with every other carnal appetite and lust. 
 Some of these are especially sins against the body, 
 disqualifying it for the Master’s use. 
 
 And the distempers, engendered in this lower 
 region of man’s nature by excess, stimulate also 
 those vices of the mind which equally waste and 
 disorder the life. Pride, envy, malice, covetous¬ 
 ness, vain ambitions, these also irritate and unchain 
 and unbalance and so dissipate the powers of the 
 soul, which ought to be harmonized to the will of 
 Christ and employed in His service. 
 
 And here we may speak a word of caution 
 against that inertia into which we are apt to fall, 
 and which especially defeats the whole idea of 
 Christian service as a living sacrifice. 
 
 The constant tendency of man’s physical nature 
 is to gravitate into sloth and sluggishness and con¬ 
 sequent enfeeblement of health. This tendency 
 is resisted by activity. Hence the value of work 
 as a means of grace.' 
 
 We need to stand guard against and beat back 
 that languor and debility which are the result of 
 a want of proper employment of our life-powers, 
 and especially in God’s service. There is no elixir 
 of life for the body like the presence in it of God’s 
 Spirit. This is His saving health. This is the 
 joy of the Lord which is our strength. It is just 
 at this point that Satan seeks to defeat the pur- 
 
144 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 pose of our calling, by oppressing in us this new life 
 from God which can vivify us in body as well as 
 soul, and which certainly should overcome that 
 heaviness which so clogs the spiritual life, and 
 makes so many Christians dead lumber in the 
 house of God where they ought to be “ living 
 stones.” 
 
 And this leads us to speak further of the duty 
 of standing guard at all the inlets and outlets of 
 our life in the body against the invisible enemies 
 of our salvation. Man’s physical nature has long 
 been a tramping-ground for these enemies. Satan 
 and evil spirits enter into men now as truly as in 
 the days of Judas and Ananias. The prince of 
 the power of the air is still the spirit that worketh 
 in the children of disobedience. (Eplies. ii. 2.) 
 Our bodily appetites, our mental cravings and 
 emotions, are all inlets at which these enemies may 
 enter. Around all the weak points of the fortress 
 the enemy prowls. We have seen that our con¬ 
 flict is essentially a fight for tile prize of inheritance 
 and dominion in this vast system of God’s works. 
 Our success involves the overthrow of the kino-- 
 dom of darkness, and the advancement of a new 
 race of kings and priests in embodied immortality 
 on to the throne of power. It is a life-struggle, 
 therefore, which provokes Satan to great rage, for 
 his time is short. And God’s word is forever 
 settled in heaven that the seed of the woman shall 
 
THE SACRIFICE OF THE BODY. 
 
 145 
 
 bruise the serpent’s head. This offering of our 
 bodies, then, upon God’s altar enters into the very 
 heart of that conflict against principalities and 
 powers about which Paul writes, and during which 
 he exhorts us so earnestly to stand fast, girt with 
 the whole armor of God. 
 
 And let us never forget that, great as is this 
 conflict, they that be for us are more than they 
 that be against us. Jesus is our Forerunner in it 
 all. In a body like ours, He offered unto the 
 Father the sacrifice of a perfect human life. He, 
 through fierce temptations, in which He agonized 
 unto blood, subdued and held captive all these 
 warring elements of which man’s nature is the 
 seat and bound them forever to His throne. And, 
 through death, He gave the death-wound to him 
 who hath power over them all. He rescued our 
 nature, body and spirit, from his fatal dominion 
 and raised it to the right hand of power in the 
 heavens. And now He is the Friend and Brother, 
 the sympathetic High-Priest to every man who 
 desires a like deliverance and trusts Him for 
 it. 
 
 And let no man imagine that because this is 
 the path of restraint and self-denial, it may be 
 of harsh discipline, that it is therefore a way of 
 sorrow and gloom. Bough though this path may 
 be, it opens out, even in this world, into new and 
 glad regions of life. For it is the carnal mind 
 G Jc 13 
 
146 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 which is death. While to be spiritually-minded 
 is even now life and peace. And beyond, this 
 path opens out into regions of unclouded light, 
 of everlasting dominion and fulness of joy. 
 
2CI. 
 
 PHYSICAL SALVATION. 
 
 Neither is there salvation in any other ; for there is none 
 other name under heaven , given among men , whereby we 
 must be saved .— Acts iv. 12. 
 
 Upon the day of Pentecost the apostles had 
 been endowed with power from on high. They 
 immediately began to testify to the fact that God 
 had raised from the dead the crucified Jesus, and 
 to press home upon the consciences of the Jewish 
 leaders their guilt in putting Him to death, and 
 their responsibility now to repent and to submit to 
 the risen Messiah. 
 
 Th is bold testimony was confirmed by signs 
 from God, one of the most notable of which was 
 the healing of an impotent man, lame from his 
 birth. In response to the word of life spoken by 
 Peter, he received the touch of life from the risen 
 Jesus and was healed. 
 
 Let us now inquire into the meaning and scope 
 of that salvation of which this impotent man was 
 the subject. The bodily condition of this man 
 illustrates the spiritual condition of all men. He 
 was lame from his birth. “ Behold/” says the 
 
 147 
 
148 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 Psalmist, “ I was conceived in sin and shapen in 
 iniquity.” Men are morally lame from their birth. 
 And as to the spiritual side of their nature, Scrip¬ 
 ture pronounces them “dead in trespasses and 
 sins.” They are out of right relation to God. 
 And as He is the source of all life and blessedness, 
 the life of men, under these conditions, must be 
 disordered and diseased. There must be spiritual 
 imbecility and diseased mortal bodies. This man’s 
 malady was the result of sin ; if not his own sin, 
 then that of his ancestors, for the defect was con¬ 
 genital. And the healing which came to him was 
 of both soul and body. He walked and leaped 
 and praised God. 
 
 It is plain that many of the instances of spiritual 
 blessing mentioned in the New Testament were 
 accompanied by physical healing. The word of 
 healing was sometimes, “ Thy sins be forgiven 
 thee.” Peter, before Cornelius, described the sav¬ 
 ing ministry of Jesus in this way, “He went about 
 doing good and healing all that were oppressed of 
 the devil.” Paul, when about to heal an impotent 
 man at Lystra, perceived that “ he had faith to be 
 saved.” (Acts xiv. 9, P. V. margin.) 
 
 Without doubt the apostles regarded the risen 
 Jesus, and presented Him to their hearers, as the 
 source of a new life-power to men, a regenerating, 
 healing power, reaching not only to the springs of 
 spiritual but of physical life. And for aught we 
 
PHYSICAL SALVATION. 
 
 149 
 
 know, these springs are one fountain and not 
 separate. We are accustomed to regard the physi¬ 
 cal effects of salvation, as seen in this case, as 
 merely the signs or proofs of a supernatural 
 spiritual healing. But they are more than simply 
 signs; they are also effects. Such a view as this 
 gives a far truer idea of our necessity as needing 
 salvation, and of how fully our need has been met. 
 W r e say a man needs to be saved. What does this 
 mean? Is it merely that he is in danger of future 
 punishment, or that his moral condition is such as 
 to unfit him for future happiness? It means this 
 indeed, bat more also. It means that the very 
 sources of life in the man have been impaired 
 and defiled. Hence its development has been 
 away from God and out of harmony with His 
 eternal laws. “All sin is lawlessness” writes 
 St. James. And hence there is disorder and ex¬ 
 cess and irritation, and sometimes frenzy, among 
 our life-forces. There are spiritual vices, such as 
 pride and selfishness and envy. And there are 
 disordered physical cravings, carnal lusts that war 
 against both soul and body. So that diseases and 
 bad tempers and derangements in the body are just 
 as truly the fruit of sin as vices of the mind. 
 They are alike the result of a disordered life. 
 Something is wrong in the vital constitution of 
 man, in his original life-endowment. And there¬ 
 fore no remedy can reach the case short of a new 
 
150 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 endowment. When the apostles spoke to men of 
 Jesus as the Prince of life, whom God had raised 
 from the dead, they meant to declare that God 
 had now opened a new fountain of life and heal¬ 
 ing for mankind; one that was to affect us not only 
 by spiritual impressions upon the mind, but as a 
 new stream of life, flowing from the throne of God 
 and of the Lamb, through the whole region of our 
 lives. Hence it was inevitable that this new life- 
 power should demonstrate its energy in the region 
 of the body also. Such bodily healing as that of 
 this impotent man was a more powerful result 
 than that ordinarily witnessed. And yet it differed 
 in degree and not in kind from the blessings in 
 which all believers shared. 
 
 All this is more# apparent when we consider 
 further that bodily disorders are uniformly viewed 
 in the New Testament as manifestations of “the 
 power of the enemy.”* We are but little aware 
 how deep and wide-spread is that malign power 
 which God, for the wise ends of our training for 
 the dignities of an eternal life, has suffered Satan 
 to usurp in this created system. And hence we 
 know little of the far-reaching range of that con¬ 
 flict in which we are now engaged with the ruler of 
 this world’s darkness. The lines of this warfare 
 reach down to the foundations of our physical as 
 
 * See page 89. 
 
PHYSICAL SALVATION. 
 
 151 
 
 well as our moral nature. And therefore the 
 salvation which meets the case is constantly spoken 
 of as a work of "new creation A 
 
 The practical end of this discussion is to urge 
 upon the attention of Christians an aspect of 
 Christ’s saving work which is often overlooked. 
 We seem to think that God’s "saving health” is 
 for the region of the soul, but that He can or will 
 do nothing for us in the region of the body. But 
 we are bold to say that any salvation which does 
 not make itself felt in the region of the body, as 
 well as of the spirit, can never meet our case. 
 The fetters that bind men to sin are no less phy¬ 
 sical than moral. The law of sin which is in our 
 members is in the members of the body. I look 
 over any Christian congregation and ask myself, 
 What are the hindrances to the spiritual life in 
 these persons? I may be told that some are ab¬ 
 sorbed in money-making, others in the pleasures 
 of life, and, in general terms, that they are too 
 much taken up with the things of the world. All 
 true, so far as it goes. But the story is not all 
 told. I find that some are the slaves of bodily 
 appetite, and others are clogged and weighed 
 down with some form of physical infirmity. With 
 some, dyspepsia or a torpid liver beclouds their 
 sky and keeps them spiritless and gloomy. Others 
 have disorder of nerves. Some are vexed with 
 an irascible temper. A large proportion of sol- 
 
152 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 diers in the Christian army are thus in hospital, 
 or otherwise hors clu combat , disabled for warfare 
 or work by some kind of infirmity ; it may be one 
 that is constitutional or hereditary. But, because 
 the maladies which disable them are physical, they 
 regard themselves as excused. They deem it in¬ 
 evitable that they must succumb. They are thus 
 defeated by the enemy, and know not that lie has 
 overcome them, because he has assailed them along 
 the channels of the body, and with physical weap¬ 
 ons. They never imagine that he can have any¬ 
 thing to do with the liver or the nerves. 
 
 And yet the fact is that it is through these very 
 avenues of the body he finds entrance. In these 
 very ways he entangles and imprisons and impov¬ 
 erishes the spiritual life. Sin, be it remembered, 
 is the disorder of the life. It disorganizes and 
 degrades life in all its functions. Its effects, there¬ 
 fore, are as truly apparent in the body as in the 
 mind. And new life from the Spirit of God 
 must give energy and buoyancy through the whole 
 region of man’s life. How, otherwise, can we 
 present our bodies unto God as living sacrifices, 
 and our members as instruments of righteousness 
 to bring forth fruit unto Him ? The truth is, un¬ 
 less the Holy Spirit bless me with His healing, 
 invigorating power in this region, as well as in 
 spirit, then my case is only half met. It is among 
 the life-forces of which my body is the home and 
 
PHYSICAL SALVATION. 
 
 153 
 
 the organ that sin has bred anarchy, and they 
 must be subdued to His sway, if I am to be of use 
 in His service. In the case of an inebriate, for 
 example, his shattered and debased life-powers 
 must be subdued and tranquillized and reorganized 
 around a new centre. 
 
 Now this is precisely the salvation given us in 
 Christ. He is the new Lord of life. We get a 
 new spirit of life from Him, a new life endow¬ 
 ment, stronger than the old life of sin, and able to 
 subdue all the faculties and functions of our being 
 to itself. u He forgiveth all our sins and healeth 
 all our diseases.” 
 
 We are to recognize, indeed, that the complete 
 redemption of the body will be effected only 
 through its resurrection from the dead. Its final 
 triumph over infirmities and disease will come 
 only through its final triumph over death. And 
 yet we have now the first fruits and earnest of 
 that triumph. This miracle of healing was such 
 an earnest. And so, also, was the increased buoy¬ 
 ancy and gladness which characterized the first 
 converts to Christianity, and of which there are 
 many illustrations in our own times. In the Cor¬ 
 inthian church, where there were many who were 
 weak and sickly, this state of things is spoken of 
 as a mark of God’s disfavor, a chastisement for 
 their sins at the Lord’s table. This implies that 
 weakness and sickliness are evils which it was 
 
154 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 expected that the presence of the Holy Spirit in a 
 man would overcome. I do not say prevent or 
 always remove, but overcome. Paul seems to have 
 been much tried with physical infirmities. He had 
 a serious one, a thorn in the flesh. But he was 
 not overborne by them. He did not suffer them 
 to tie his hands or to put him to bed. The power 
 of Christ in him triumphed over all invalidity or 
 weariness or pain, and nerved him to an endurance 
 of labor and fatigue and hardship such as to make 
 his life a marvel of the ages. 
 
 This is what we mean when we say that the 
 salvation of Christ is meant to bless the whole 
 man. It is a thing of broader scope than most of 
 us imagine. On this account we should at least 
 give a candid hearing, if not credence, to those 
 instances of bodily healing in answer to prayer, 
 of which well-attested reports come to us. We 
 cannot, with the New Testament before us, deny 
 that such things are included in the scope of that 
 salvation which Jesus has brought to men. Its 
 power must extend over all the ills of life, either 
 to remove them or to enable us to triumph in and 
 over them. We ought to be no more willing to be 
 enslaved by these than by vicious habits. I do 
 not say that it is promised that we shall escape 
 them. They are now a part of the appointed 
 tribulation through which we must enter into the 
 kingdom of God, inasmuch as they enter vitally 
 
PH YSICA L SA L VA TION. 
 
 155 
 
 into our conflict with the prince of this world.* 
 But it is promised that they shall not capture us, 
 nor sink us down into inertia and despondency. 
 “ For God hath not given us a spirit of fear, but 
 of power and of love and of a sound mind.” 
 
 The view that we have taken of salvation, there¬ 
 fore, is that it is the renewal of man’s life, now 
 blighted and disordered bv sin, and that its effects 
 must be apparent in the whole region of that 
 life, body, soul, and spirit. Even our mortal 
 bodies are quickened or vivified by the Spirit 
 that dwelleth in us. 
 
 Such being the nature of that salvation which 
 man needs, it follows that only divine power can 
 effect it. This alone can reach the seat of life and 
 renew it at its sources. This alone can bind and 
 cast out its enemies. And therefore we are pre¬ 
 pared for the announcement of the text, that there 
 is salvation in no other name than the name of 
 Jesus. The meaning of that name is “ Jehovah 
 will save.” That is the mystery of Christ’s per¬ 
 son. He is Emmanuel, God with us. In a mys¬ 
 terious way God, in Him, has taken hold of our 
 nature. He became our brother-man, bore our 
 sicknesses, was tempted with all our infirmities, 
 subjected Himself to death, and so was made in 
 all things like unto His brethren. All the hidden 
 
 * See page 98. 
 
156 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 workings of the life-forces that operate in us have 
 been explored and experienced by Him. He 
 measured the lowest deep of our need. And 
 through this whole region Pie passed a conqueror. 
 In dying, He won the victory over death. And, 
 in resurrection, He exalted our nature, redeemed, 
 purified, immortalized to the right hand of God. 
 And so He has become the Fountain-head of a 
 redeemed humanity, of a new and eternal life 
 for men. And He is the only source, the only 
 name in heaven or on earth by which we must be 
 saved. We have but one Captain in this matter, 
 the only One who has fought this fight and won 
 this crown and received these gifts for men. And 
 His is a mighty name. We have been taking low 
 and limited views of it. We have thought of its 
 power as restricted to only one region of our dis¬ 
 eased life, not daring to believe that it could guard 
 the whole vulnerable region of the life of the body, 
 not discerning that it is utterly impossible for Him 
 to protect us in one region unless He guard us also 
 in the other. What capable commander would 
 leave one-half of his line of battle, and that the 
 most vulnerable half, undefended? Surely this is 
 no just conception of that power which worketh 
 in us, and which is able to do exceeding abundantly 
 above all that we are able to ask or to think. 
 
 We have not claimed in this discourse that we 
 are to expect Him to work in us such constant 
 
PH YSIGA L SA L VA TION. 
 
 157 
 
 miracle as that we shall never get sick or weary or 
 feel the burden of the manifold infirmities that 
 flesh is heir to. Paul was not exempt from these. 
 Jesus bore them all. But we have claimed, and 
 ought to claim, that He who triumphed over them 
 all, and who now works in us mightily, or would 
 so work if we would trust Him and obey Him, is 
 able to give us the same victory, so that they shall 
 not prove hindrances to our spiritual life and peace 
 and fruitful service, but even helps, occasions, as 
 in Paul’s case, for the more manifest display of 
 His grace and power. 
 
 14 
 
2CII. 
 
 WHAT IS ETERNAL LIFE? 
 
 In hope of eternal life , which God , that cannot lie , prom¬ 
 ised before the world began. —Titus i. 2. 
 
 We propose to institute an inquiry into the 
 nature of the blessing here promised. The most 
 frequent and definite statement of the boon held 
 out to men in the gospel by Jesus, and afterwards 
 by His apostles, is in this phrase, “ eternal life.” 
 
 The word “ everlasting life” occurs but once in 
 the Old Testament (Daniel xii. 2), where it is 
 connected with the promised resurrection of some 
 of them that sleep in the dust of the earth. It 
 occurs in the New Testament nearly fifty times, 
 and many more times by implication. We are 
 safe in calling it the distinctive promise of the 
 gospel. “ God so loved the world, that He gave 
 His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
 on Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life.” 
 
 What is the nature of this promise? Specially 
 we would inquire, Is the gift of eternal life through 
 Jesus Christ a perpetuation of this present gift of 
 life, or is it a gift of a higher order ? 
 
 IAS 
 
WHAT IS ETERNAL LIFE? 
 
 159 
 
 It would be presumptuous in any man to 
 attempt to tell what life is. Science has been 
 pursuing the secret with microscope and scalpel, 
 and tracing its footsteps backward along the ages. 
 And yet she cannot cross the border-line of this 
 mystery. All we know is, that it is from God, 
 the Fountain of all life. Science and Scripture 
 unite in affirming that it is closely connected with 
 this system of creation. Some scientific philoso¬ 
 phers seek to convince us that this system fur¬ 
 nishes from within itself the substratum and the 
 potency of every form of life. And yet con¬ 
 fessedly they have never penetrated to the origin 
 of life. Their conjectures, therefore, are worth 
 nothing alongside of the Bible declaration that 
 “ the Father hath life in Himself,” and that from 
 Him all things live. But He has made nature to 
 be the soil upon which life grows and is nurtured. 
 It is the arena upon which it performs its functions 
 and puts forth its energies. It is the domain it 
 seeks to subsidize for its uses and fully possess. 
 
 And hence we observe that all life in this sys¬ 
 tem of nature seeks embodiment. A body is 
 necessary in order to bring created life into con¬ 
 nection with and dominion over God’s works. 
 Our bodies are centres of the forces that play 
 through this created system ; batteries by means 
 of which they are stored up for our use. I am 
 persuaded that in our prevalent conceptions of the 
 
160 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 gift of life we depreciate embodiment. We. infer, 
 from Scripture, that it is the only form of created 
 life that can possess and enjoy our Father’s vast 
 estate. Hence the importance of that cardinal 
 doctrine of the New Testament, the Resurrection. 
 Even He, in whom creation was headed up from 
 the beginning, became embodied. And in Him 
 the fulness of the Godhead now dwells bodily. 
 Evil spirits appear to be the outcasts from this 
 system. Hence Scripture gives no instance of the 
 appearance of embodied evil spirits, except as 
 they steal into and possess themselves of other 
 persons’ bodies. They even prefer swine to being 
 disembodied. On the other hand, in all the in¬ 
 stances in which good beings from the unseen 
 world appear to men, there was a visible form. 
 
 Looking now at the teachings of science and of 
 revelation concerning the progress of creation, we 
 find that, from the beginning, the Creator has 
 been preparing it to be the domain of embodied 
 life. We find an ascending series of created forms, 
 from plants and creeping things, until the whole 
 is headed up in man, made in the image of God. 
 The account in Genesis is not inconsistent with, 
 and is, perhaps, best explained by the supposition 
 that there was a lower form of human life on the 
 earth before Adam. We are not precluded even 
 from supposing that man, as to his animal nature, 
 is an evolution from the lower forms of life. But 
 
WHAT IS ETERNAL LIFE? 
 
 161 
 
 Adam was the first creation of man with a spir¬ 
 itual nature, capable of knowing God and of im¬ 
 mortality through union in life with Him. 
 
 Adam was a grand step upward in the ascend¬ 
 ing series of life. But our present inquiry is, 
 Has the Creator taken the last step in this advance 
 of life on to the platform of His works? We 
 reply, No. Adam was an earthy man, made capa¬ 
 ble of eternal life. But he lost this great boon by 
 disobedience. Indeed, it was never intended that 
 he should attain and hold it for himself and his pos¬ 
 terity. The casket of his manhood was too frail 
 for such a treasure, his hand too weak for such 
 a sceptre. It was in the mind of God from the 
 beginning of creation to produce on its platform a 
 divine man, immortal in his own nature, as the 
 completed image of Himself, and worthy to wear, 
 as His representative, the crown of this created 
 system. The first man was but a mortal, corrupti¬ 
 ble image of the invisible God, a perishable model 
 in clay of the noble image in the mind of the 
 Divine Artist, which was to hereafter stand on the 
 summit of creation and wear its crown. 
 
 The incarnation, therefore, was another step in 
 the ascending series of creation, the birth into it 
 of a heavenly man. But not the final step, as is 
 assumed in much of the Christian thinking of 
 the day. Its highest exponents, as, for example, 
 
 Joseph Cook, do not avoid this error of making 
 l 14 * 
 
162 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 the incarnation the climax of creation. It can be 
 shown that this is a subtle point of departure from 
 the faitli once delivered to the saints. The resur¬ 
 rection of Jesus in the form of glorified manhood ; 
 that was the culmination of all God’s wondrous 
 working in creation along the ages. To stop short 
 of this, to view the incarnation otherwise than as 
 in order to the resurrection, is only to know Christ 
 Jesus after the flesh, whereas we are henceforth to 
 know Him in this character no more.* It is to 
 forget that if any man be in Christ he is a new 
 creation. The newly created immortal man, the 
 perfect image of the invisible God, was brought 
 to view when Jesus rose from the dead. The ideal 
 manhood which had been the primeval thought 
 of God and the goal of His creative energy was 
 then realized. Before this signal triumph Jesus 
 was in the likeness of sinful flesh. Our flesh 
 and blood, even in Him, could not inherit the 
 kingdom of God. Hence His body was newly 
 created in that fashion of glory in which, as the 
 risen man, He is now seated at the right hand of 
 power. 
 
 At the resurrection of Jesus, then, we have the 
 introduction of the new and final form of em¬ 
 bodied life, the divine manhood. And this is the 
 grand, the culminating revelation of the Word 
 
 * 2 Cor. v. 1G. 
 
WHAT IS ETERNAL LIFE? 
 
 163 
 
 of God, the mystery which in other ages was not 
 made known, and before the splendors of which 
 the light which shines from all heathen systems 
 of religion or of human philosophy or from the 
 highest watch-towers of modern science pales, as 
 does a rush-light before the sun. 
 
 If we were to ask science whether the highest 
 form of created life has yet appeared upon the 
 earth, she cannot tell us. She leads us up through 
 all lower stages of life to the earthy man and ex¬ 
 claims Ecce homo! Behold the man for whom 
 the earth has been so long preparing! But she 
 knows nothing of the coming man. She teaches 
 no doctrine of resurrection from the dead. 
 
 But this Word tells us of a new order of 
 humanity. The Head and Type of it has already 
 been here. He was made flesh and dwelt among us. 
 But through death He passed beyond this mortal 
 sphere out into immortal manhood. And all 
 heaven uttered another Ecce Homo , Behold the 
 man, the final result of God’s wondrous working 
 along the ages, the consummate product of His 
 wisdom, power, and love, worthy to wear the crown 
 of all created things, and to possess all power in 
 heaven and on earth. When Paul, then, speaks, 
 as he does in this salutation to Titus, of the hope 
 of eternal life which God, that cannot lie, promised 
 before the world began, he is speaking definitely 
 of that new order of life which is embodied in 
 
164 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 the new man, Christ Jesus. This is now God’s 
 gift to us through Him. It is not a mere perpet¬ 
 uation of the order of life and manhood in which 
 we were first created in Adam. It is a new en¬ 
 dowment to which we are born again in Christ, 
 and in virtue of which we become sons of God 
 of a new order, a new and higher rank in creation. 
 To this new manhood there pertains that life which 
 is superior to all the forces and substances of the 
 universe. Life, as we see it in these perishable 
 forms, has power to subsidize the elements of 
 nature for its support and to direct its forces for 
 its own ends. But this it does now, not by in¬ 
 herent right, but in the way of warfare and subju¬ 
 gation, and in this struggle its powers ultimately 
 break down. But eternal life must bend all things 
 in heaven and earth to its behest. It must be 
 superior to all principalities and powers. All sub¬ 
 stances must wait upon its needs and all forces 
 become tributary to its aims. The harvest, there¬ 
 fore, for which God has long been ploughing and 
 tilling these fields of creation is not yet complete. 
 A new order of being is to be produced, invested 
 with eternal life. Christ is the first fruits in the 
 new order. But we, also, are “a kind of first 
 fruits.” 
 
 We are told that the whole creation is groaning 
 and waiting for the manifestation of these sons 
 of God. They are its destined lords, and also its 
 
WHAT IS ETERNAL LIFE? 
 
 165 
 
 deliverers. They are that anointed race who are 
 to subdue all its wide realms to the will of God and 
 make them vocal with PI is praise. And they can¬ 
 not be fitted for this high office except as they rise 
 in eternal life triumphant over all the forces and 
 powers that prevail in this system. Man in flesh 
 and blood is not worthy or capable of this dignity. 
 But God, before the foundation of the world, pro¬ 
 vided for the redemption and reinvestment of 
 man for this high office in the power of an end¬ 
 less life. And this, as we have seen, implies cor¬ 
 poreity. Eternal life for man requires his new 
 creation in body as well as spirit. 
 
 In this way alone can he become a perfect image 
 of God and a fit vessel for His eternal praise. 
 
□CIII. 
 
 THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 
 
 Then shall He say also unto them on the left hand, De¬ 
 part from me , ye cursed , into everlasting fire, prepared for 
 the devil and his angels .— Matthew xxv. 41. 
 
 There has been much division of opinion as to 
 the proper interpretation of the judgment scene 
 here described. 
 
 Without stating fully the grounds of our con¬ 
 clusions, we infer: 
 
 1. That this chapter describes a judgment of 
 the living nations of mankind by the Son of man. 
 This, however, does not exclude the thought that 
 His work of judgment comprehends also the gen¬ 
 erations of the dead. But here is portrayed the 
 period of crisis and culmination in His work 
 of judgment, so far as the earth is the arena of 
 it. Other Scriptures, as, for example, Rev. xx., 
 teach that it must ultimately extend itself through 
 all the regions of the dead until even death and 
 hell are cast into the lake of fire. 
 
 2. The standard of judgment is the disposition 
 of men’s hearts toward the Christ, as evinced in 
 
 their treatment of His brethren. 
 
 166 
 
THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 
 
 167 
 
 3. The agent of the divine punishment is the 
 “ everlasting fire, prepared for the devil and his 
 angels.” 
 
 After all the centuries of devout study of the 
 Scriptures concerning the future destiny of wicked 
 men, the church has failed to reach substantial 
 unity of doctrine. There is essential agreement 
 indeed in the received symbols of the orthodox 
 churches. But there are wide differences in the 
 public interpretations of these symbols, and still 
 wider differences in private opinion. In these 
 days religious teachers of every class feel called 
 upon in some way to soften or to remove the 
 harsher features of the doctrine. Very few now 
 believe in the hell of medieval times. Some have 
 taken refuge in the theory of conditional immor¬ 
 tality. They believe that the wicked will be 
 eternally destroyed. Others find relief in the 
 hope of a second probation. Many believe in 
 final restitution. While, within the lines of those 
 denominations, whose creeds debar their adherents 
 from such relief, many seek to preserve their con¬ 
 sistency and their regard for what they believe to 
 be the teachings of Scripture, by remanding all 
 its descriptions of future punishment to the realm 
 of figures. And so they reduce the terrors of hell 
 down to the pangs of remorse, and its fires of 
 vengeance to the sufferings which, in the course of 
 nature, are always consequent upon sin. 
 
168 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 In thus seeking relief from the doctrine of hell- 
 fire, as formulated by the old Roman church, and 
 wielded by her with such terrible force, the Chris¬ 
 tian mind is but obeying a proper instinct. In 
 the larger liberty in which it now moves, it is com¬ 
 pelled to seek a doctrine more in accord with its 
 larger and better idea of God. 
 
 And yet it may well be doubted whether a rev¬ 
 erent submission to His Word will allow us to 
 consign all its dark sayings to the realm of sym¬ 
 bols, because we cannot otherwise explain them. 
 Rather should we wait for that larger understand¬ 
 ing which will enable us to see their place and 
 meaning in that deep plan of God which He is 
 now unfolding in creation and redemption. 
 
 We desire, therefore, to inquire into the mean¬ 
 ing and significance of the terms under which the 
 Bible constantly sets forth its doctrine of future 
 punishment. 
 
 The most emphatic and comprehensive of all 
 the terms which describe this punishment is “ eter¬ 
 nal fire. 7 ’ It is surprising how often in both the 
 Old Testament and the New “ fire” is spoken of 
 as an agent of the divine wrath against sin. Both 
 in the imagery and in the sober statements of the 
 Old Testament we are taught that “ a fire goeth 
 before Him and burnetii up His enemies round 
 about.” In notable acts of judgment fire was the 
 destructive agent. Sodom and Gomorrah were 
 
TIIE EVERLASTING FIRE. 
 
 169 
 
 destroyed by it. And twice in the New Testament 
 are we told that their destruction was an ensample 
 of that which shall hereafter overtake the ungodlv. 
 They suffered “ the vengeance of eternal fire.” 
 (Jude 7.) Nadab and Abihu were consumed by 
 fire because of their rash ministration. The com¬ 
 panies of fifty sent out to capture Elijah were 
 destroyed by fire from God out of heaven. (2 
 Kings i.) 
 
 We are not to overlook, however, the fact that 
 other and slower agents of destruction are also 
 spoken of as “ fire.” Moses (Dent. ix. 3) declares 
 that Jehovah would go before Israel to drive out 
 their enemies as a consuming fire. Again, he warns 
 Israel that, if they should forsake the Lord, He 
 would be to them a consuming fire. (Dent. iv. 24.) 
 Slower destructive agents, such as disease and 
 famine and war, by which men and nations are 
 consigned to death, are also viewed as the burning 
 of His anger against them. Fire is the most rapid 
 consumer of created forms and of human lives. 
 But other agents consume them also. And there- 
 fore all destructive forces, by which men’s lives are 
 broken down and dissolved and creature forms are 
 decomposed, may well be grouped under this one 
 expressive term “ fire.” In the Song of Moses 
 (Deut. xxxii. 22), we find all these destroying 
 agents, by which Israel was to be wasted, grouped 
 together with that fire of hell which shall some 
 
 15 
 
 n 
 
170 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 day burn down to the foundations of this present 
 order of nature and transform it. The whole 
 wide sweep of God’s judgments is viewed as all 
 of one class, and proceeding upon the same great 
 principles. Whether the fire kindled in His anger 
 burns against His people for their sins, or burns 
 up the fetters which hold creation in bondage to 
 corruption, it is but one judgment process. 
 
 The Old Testament teaching, therefore, while 
 it broadens the use of the term “ fire” so as to 
 include in it all minor consumptive agents, by no 
 means discards literal Areas one and a chief agent 
 in God’s judgments. 
 
 When we turn to the New Testament we find 
 there still less warrant for excluding the literal 
 idea from all its presentations of future judgment. 
 Indeed, in one notable passage (2 Peter iii.), we 
 are just as plainly taught that fire is to be invoked 
 at the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly 
 men as that water was employed at the flood. 
 “The world that then was, being overflowed with 
 water, perished. But the heavens and the earth, 
 which are now, by the same word are reserved 
 unto fire.” When Jesus, therefore, speaks, as 
 He so often does, of “ the fire that cannot be 
 quenched,” “ the everlasting fire,” it may be an 
 easy way for us to evade the force of His words 
 by including them under the vague category of 
 figurative teaching. But what is our warrant for 
 
THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 
 
 171 
 
 this? Is there, then, no everlasting fire, prepared 
 for the devil and his angels? Or, turning over to 
 the words of His apostles, we find them also con¬ 
 stantly speaking of “a day of fire.” Paul writes 
 that the Lord Jesus shall be revealed from heaven 
 with the angels of His might in flaming fire. (2 
 Thess. i. 8.) And in the visions of John the sunset 
 days of this present world are lurid with judgment 
 fires. The same principle of interpretation, by 
 which we found in the Old Testament other agen¬ 
 cies of trial and purgation, of sorting and sifting, 
 and of destruction, included under this general 
 term, applies here also. Christians are forewarned 
 of the “ fiery trial” by which they must l>e tried. 
 But because some divine judgments, of which the 
 process is slow, are thus spoken of, are we there¬ 
 fore warranted in emptying this term “ everlasting 
 fire” of all literal meaning? Surely we are not. 
 The whole drift of Scripture teaching, and the 
 passage already referred to from St. Peter, plainly 
 forbid it. 
 
 Whatever relief, therefore, there is for us from 
 the oppressive darkness of this subject, it cannot 
 be obtained by a flippant concealment, behind a 
 veil of symbolism, of the true meaning of the 
 terms which set it forth. 
 
 We conclude, then, that under the term “ fire” 
 there seems to be included all those agents of 
 divine judgment, of which fire is the chief, by 
 
172 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 which creature forms and human lives are de¬ 
 stroyed. There is a slow fire of God’s anger burn¬ 
 ing against men all the time in the diseases and 
 calamities and vices that consume them. But there 
 are conspicuous acts of judgment impending in 
 the future, when the powers of nature, as the 
 angels of His judgment, shall intensify their work, 
 and when fire shall especially be invoked, not 
 only against ungodly men, but against the cosmical 
 system, under the nurture of which the evil in 
 them has been fostered. For creation, with the 
 creature, is in bondage to corruption. 
 
 And this leads us to consider the force of the 
 adjective “ eternal,” which Scripture so often as¬ 
 sociates with “ fire.” Without entering into the 
 discussion of the question as to whether this term 
 implies a limitless, or an age-long duration, we 
 cannot overlook the fact that the word refers to 
 the character as well as to the duration of that 
 which it describes. There is a fire which charac¬ 
 terizes this present “ age,” or economy of God’s 
 working in creation. Science affirms that the ex¬ 
 isting universe has been born out of fire. And 
 fire is now its predominant feature. Every star 
 that sparkles in the midnight sky, except the few 
 planets near us, is a globe of fire. And these in¬ 
 candescent orbs seem to have been concentrated 
 out of a luminous fiery mist that filled the vast 
 spaces of the universe. The planets are probably 
 
THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 
 
 173 
 
 formed out of detached masses from the central 
 suns, slowly cooled down by radiation, and through 
 the absorption of their heat, rendered latent by 
 chemical combinations among their elements. And 
 thus the eternal cosmical fire is stored up in the 
 substances of nature, and in all the forms which 
 created life takes on. These are all born out of 
 the womb of this seonian fire. And in the whirl 
 of nature’s forces they are all carried back again 
 into the abyss from which they sprang. Their 
 elements are dissolved, sometimes with slow, some¬ 
 times with rapid combustion. So that there is 
 an eternal contest in the universe between the 
 life which, proceeding from God, pervades it and 
 the eternal fire. The life has been capturing and 
 subsidizing the elements in creation toward the 
 ends of its manifestation. And the eternal fire 
 has been claiming back these elements wrested 
 from it, and resolving them again into chaos 
 and emptiness. But life again reclaims them, 
 and has been advancing with triumphant steps 
 along the ages, taking on higher and higher forms, 
 until at last man was produced, the image of the 
 Creator, and formed to *be the receptacle of His 
 immortal life. And yet the man of the earth, 
 the Adamic man, is but a temporary and pro¬ 
 visional vessel for this treasure. He is subject to 
 death. His earthy form, like that of the animal 
 
 races below him, consumes under the slow gnaw- 
 
 15 * 
 
174 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 ing of the eternal fire. Hence the final perfected 
 man must be raised out of this universal grave, 
 in incorruption. The life that was in Jesus tri¬ 
 umphed over all the destructive forces of creation, 
 the devil and his angels,* and so He redeemed 
 the man nature and invested it with His eternal 
 life. And so, at last, there was produced, in Him, 
 the incorruptible man, superior to all the forces 
 of the universe, the perfected image of the in¬ 
 visible God, radiant with His life, the representa¬ 
 tive of His authority, and the Lord alike of all 
 
 * * 
 
 the realms of life, and of death and Hell. And 
 in the power of His resurrection, as we are ex¬ 
 pressly taught (1 Cor. xv. 21-23), shall all the 
 generations of men who have gone down to death 
 be successively recovered from its grasp. 
 
 AVe begin thus to discover what is u the ever¬ 
 lasting fire prepared for the devil and his angels.” 
 It is the eternal cosmic fire of the universe which, 
 like a great dragon, has ever been devouring the 
 creatures born out of its depths. Down into the 
 darkness of this dissolution, this sheol or hell, 
 have gone the generations of mankind. At the 
 judgments which shall attend the Lord’s coming, 
 we are told that these destructive forces shall be 
 in more intense operation. But the character of 
 
 * See remarks concerning “the prince of this world,” 
 page 85. 
 
THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 
 
 175 
 
 their work will be the same,—the work of death. 
 As we have seen, literal fire will be an active agent 
 in these judgment processes. It is probable that 
 there will be new and unlooked-for irruptions of 
 that fiery energy of which the earth and all nature 
 is a magazine. As to the totality and the simulta¬ 
 neousness of these judgment fires much might be 
 said. Suffice it here to say that Scripture teaches 
 that both the earth and the human race survive 
 them. We are interested now, however, in estab¬ 
 lishing the truth that the eternal fire, which is the 
 agent of this destruction, is the same as that which 
 has ever been devouring all material forms. The 
 decay and death of these bodily frames is but the 
 slow gnawing of the tooth of this eternal fire. And 
 therefore we affirm that the underlying thought in 
 all the Scripture phrases which describe it, such as 
 “hell-fire,” “ the fire that cannot be quenched,” 
 etc., is this of remorseless destruction. The fact 
 that the fire cannot be quenched emphasizes this 
 thought that its work cannot be arrested. When 
 John the Baptist declares that the Messiah shall 
 thoroughly purge His floor and burn up the chaff 
 with unquenchable fire,* no thought is farther 
 from his mind than the endless preservation of 
 the chaff in the fire. And so when Jesus warns 
 us to fear one who is able to destroy both body 
 
 * Matt. iii. 12. 
 
176 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 and soul in hell, we have no warrant for assuming 
 that both will be preserved there for an endless 
 combustion. 
 
 The punishment, then, that is held before the 
 sinner in the Bible is that he must become a trophy 
 and a prey to those destructive forces, powers of 
 darkness, of whom the devil is the chief, who 
 are themselves to be finally buried in this grave 
 of fire, and who have been especially active and 
 eager to drag down man into this abyss, because 
 for man there has been provided that triumphant 
 life which cannot be held captive in their domain, 
 and to the chariot-wheels of whose progress they 
 must be bound with everlasting chains. 
 
 We arrive, then, at this point in the solution of 
 this mystery. The punishment of sin is to suffer 
 destruction in this abyss of creation’s fire; the 
 dissolution of the elements out of which we have 
 been built up into this highest form of created 
 life. It is to sink back out of this realm of life 
 and light into utter darkness and chaos. Whether 
 this destruction involves the extinction of the 
 spiritual part of man’s being, or whether it pre¬ 
 cludes any possible recovery, are points about 
 which we shall speak hereafter. But there is one 
 point to which, in passing, we would direct atten¬ 
 tion, and that is that the law of God’s judgments 
 is universal. Not even Christians are a favored 
 class. “ Our God is a consuming fire.” St. Paul 
 
THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 
 
 177 
 
 also writes (1 Cor. iii. 13-15) that their works, 
 if evil, must be burned up, and they themselves 
 saved with the suffering of loss and “ so as by 
 fired 7 And here we may discover the meaning 
 of that baptism of fire which the Messiah was to 
 accomplish in connection with the baptism of the 
 Holy Ghost. His Spirit introduces into us all a 
 cleansing fire of self-judgment. We first accept, as 
 just, the sentence of death against our old nature, 
 which sentence requires that the earthy man shall 
 go down to death and see corruption. And we pro¬ 
 ceed to execute this sentence against its evils. “ The 
 spirit of judgment and of burning 77 thus consumes 
 away the evil of our Adam nature and finally 
 consigns it to the grave. We thus anticipate the 
 just judgment of God which has gone out against 
 all flesh. We conserit that it shall be given over 
 to the fire. We are not saved by a rescue of the 
 old man from this pit of hell. We are saved by 
 the creation in us of a new man which cannot sin 
 and cannot die. And so out of this baptism of 
 fire we rise into the life of God. Unbelievers, 
 who do not submit to this self-judgment, must 
 meet judgment in its more terrible forms in the 
 future. But there is one law alike for all. God 
 is no respecter of persons. If we do not judge 
 ourselves we must hereafter be judged with the 
 world. (1 Cor. xi. 32.) 
 
 What, then, survives the everlasting fire? We 
 
 m 
 
178 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN 
 
 have seen that the life which is beyond its reach 
 is that which is now deposited in Jesus Christ. 
 Out from all bondage to those cosmical forces 
 which claimed man’s nature for destruction, and 
 which are the agents of the divine judgments 
 against it, above the raging of their dissolving 
 fires, He arose triumphant. (Coloss. ii. 15.) And 
 the man nature was exalted in Him to that pin¬ 
 nacle of glory to which it was, from the begin¬ 
 ning, appointed. He came, as Son of man, into 
 the heritage of all things. And our lives are re¬ 
 deemed from destruction as, in the way of faith, 
 thev become linked in with His eternal life. 
 
 We are led, then, to conclude that the “ ever¬ 
 lasting fire” is not a fire of endless torment, but 
 one of inevitable destruction. And this accords 
 with the fact, patent on tile face of Scripture, 
 that every passage which alludes to future punish¬ 
 ment carries with it, in some form, the idea of de¬ 
 struction. The very alternative of the gospel is 
 “ perish” or “have everlasting life.” Men out 
 of Christ must sink down into this hell. Those 
 who are “ in Him” must rise and reign in life 
 eternal. 
 
 One passage indeed seems to be an exception to 
 this uniform teaching. In Rev. xiv. 10, 11, it is 
 stated that a certain class of sinners shall suffer a 
 special torment, the smoke of which ascendeth up 
 unto the ages of the ages. Upon this passage the 
 
THE EVERLASTING FIRE. 
 
 179 
 
 doctrine of an endless torment in hell mainly 
 rests. But, not to speak of the inconsistency of 
 this revolting conception of God with St. John’s 
 definition of Him as love, we submit that one or 
 two such passages in the most obscure book of the 
 Bible cannot set aside the multitude of plainer 
 passages which represent the punishment of the 
 wicked as “ destruction.” Unless we can certainly 
 affirm what person or system is spoken of as “ the 
 beast and his image,” and what the special sin in¬ 
 volved in the worship of them, we are not pre¬ 
 pared to dogmatize upon this passage. In a par¬ 
 allel passage in Isaiah xxxiv., we read that the 
 smoke of the fiery judgment which the Lord should 
 send upon Idumea “shall go up forever.” And 
 yet the promise, through the same prophet, is, that 
 the whole earth shall be renewed. 
 
 If, however, the punishment of sin be this ever¬ 
 lasting destruction in that gulf of fire, out of 
 which all created forms were first evolved, if the 
 eternal fire must thus claim back its own, is it the 
 master of the universe? Shall it forever triumph 
 over life, and will the devil remain the victor in 
 this drama of ages? We have already observed 
 how life has been advancing its conquests along 
 the ages and over the whole field of creation. But 
 its triumph was not signal and final until the risen 
 Man burst the bands of death and spoiled the 
 principalities and powers of its whole realm. 
 
180 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 Henceforth life, in Him, abides, the Master of 
 this created system, the subjugator of all its hos¬ 
 tile powers. He must put down all rule and au¬ 
 thority and power. All enemies must be trampled 
 beneath His feet. And even the last enemy, 
 which is death, shall be destroyed. The devil 
 and his angels, death and hell, all must be cast 
 into the lake of fire. The eternal cosmic fire must 
 prove the final grave of all that is hostile to the 
 reign of life in the universe. The whole creation 
 must be redeemed, renewed, purified. The former 
 things must pass away, and all things be made 
 new. 
 
 Such is the sublime mission of that triumphant 
 Lord of life, the Second Man, whom God has 
 now crowned as King over His wide dominions. 
 And He is the Head of an anointed race, to whom 
 He has given power to become the sons of God, 
 and whom He is not ashamed to call His brethren. 
 He is bringing them to the same glory. And in 
 them we see the high destiny to which, from the 
 foundation of the world, manhood has been as¬ 
 signed in this universe of God. 
 
XIV. 
 
 DESTRUCTION QUA HOMO: 
 
 A NEW THOUGHT ABOUT FUTURE PUNISHMENT. 
 
 We are now prepared to advance a step farther 
 in the attempt to explore the mystery of future 
 punishment. We have found that it is at least 
 probable that the fearful words which describe 
 this punishment refer to the devouring energy of 
 those destructive cosmic forces, of which fire is 
 the chief, by which creature forms are broken 
 down, disintegrated, and dissolved, and human 
 lives are consumed. We now propose to inquire 
 whether this penalty of sin involves the utter ex¬ 
 tinction of man’s being, or his destruction out of 
 manhood. 
 
 There are three principal forms of belief con¬ 
 cerning the destiny of the wicked : 
 
 1. Restorationism, or the doctrine that all men, 
 after adequate punishment, will obtain eternal 
 life and happiness. 
 
 2. The doctrine of conditional immortality, 
 which affirms that wicked men, failing of eternal 
 
 life, will be eternally destroyed. 
 
 16 
 
 181 
 
182 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 3. The doctrine of eternal conscious misery, an 
 endless torment. 
 
 All of these theories quote the Scriptures abun¬ 
 dantly in their support, and insist that the passages 
 which seem to favor the other views shall be sub¬ 
 ordinated to their own proof texts. There must 
 be somewhere a doctrine upon this subject which 
 shall not rest upon isolated texts, but upon the 
 broad foundation of the whole Bible. 
 
 Without presuming to announce such a com¬ 
 plete doctrine, we think that the discussion of the 
 previous pages has prepared us to point out the 
 direction in which it may be found. We have, 
 in this volume, insisted upon the important place 
 which manhood holds in the system of creation, 
 and in the unfolding plans of its Author. We 
 have glanced at the destructive forces against 
 which manhood must contend to win this place; 
 and at the effects of sin in bringing man into 
 bondage to these evil powers, and in thus pre¬ 
 venting him from reaching this high goal. The 
 punishment of sin, therefore, must be that the 
 sinner falls as a victim to this destructive op¬ 
 position. He fails to reach the true end of his 
 being. He is consigned by the Judge, who is also 
 the standard of admission to the high dignities of 
 manhood, to the wrathful energy of these forces, 
 of which the everlasting cosmic fire is the repre¬ 
 sentative and the chief, which make havoc of his 
 
DESTRUCTION QUA HOMO. 
 
 183 
 
 embodied being and destroy him, not utterly, but 
 out of the line of completed manhood. 
 
 Two things come out clearly upon any full in¬ 
 vestigation of Scripture: 
 
 1. All its representations of future punish¬ 
 ment involve the idea of the sinner’s death or de¬ 
 traction of being in some form. Every passage, 
 excepting one or two referred to on page 178, 
 conveys this meaning. Even its pictures of hell- 
 fire, rightly viewed, are not intended to convey 
 the thought of unending torment, but to empha¬ 
 size this thought of consumption of being as the 
 sinner’s doom. All destructive forces in the 
 universe contribute to this result. The law of 
 nature is the law of God. And no created life 
 can survive the operation of this law, except it be 
 linked in, through Christ, with the life of God. 
 
 2. This extinction of man’s being cannot be 
 absolute and final. For it is plainly revealed that 
 all the dead shall be raised, the just and the un¬ 
 just. Such an issue, moreover, would leave Satan 
 master of the field, as concerns that large portion 
 of the race blotted out of existence. 
 
 These variant Scriptures are harmonized by 
 supposing that the destruction threatened is a 
 death out of manhood, a destruction qua homo. 
 Such a conclusion seems to be warranted by 
 these considerations: 
 
 1. Scripture and science unite in teaching that 
 
184 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 man is the highest product of this created system. 
 Scripture further affirms that he is made in the 
 image of God and is the appointed heir to all His 
 works. In his present form of being, however, 
 subject to sin and death, he does not reach the true 
 goal of manhood, nor enter upon his proper in¬ 
 heritance. His present form is provisional, tem¬ 
 porary, perishable. He is now a candidate, in a 
 limited and disciplinary sphere, for that immortal 
 manhood, which is the completed image of the in¬ 
 visible God, and the heir to His authority and 
 estate. The risen Jesus is the first-born in this 
 new order of being, and, as such, all the forces of 
 the universe have been made subject to Him. And 
 Ave are heirs of God and joint heirs with Christ, 
 the u appointed Heir of all things.” (Heb. i. 2.) 
 
 2. Embodiment is essential to manhood. Our 
 bodies are necessary to give us place and title in 
 this system of creation. They are the batteries 
 through which we operate upon its forces, the in¬ 
 struments by which we are put into possession of 
 its domain. This is the prerogative of manhood. 
 And hence the importance of that crowning doc¬ 
 trine of the New Testament, the resurrection of 
 the dead. Embodied immortality is the true goal 
 of manhood. A disembodied ghost is not a man. 
 It becomes an outcast in this system of creation, 
 as were the bodiless demons, who in the first gospel 
 times entered into the bodies of men, preferring 
 
DESTRUCTION QUA HOMO. 
 
 185 
 
 even to go into swine to disembodiment, and whom 
 Jesus cast out. Saints, during the intermediate 
 state, are not disembodied. (2 Cor. v.)* 
 
 * We are far from accepting, however, the explanation 
 of this mystery, adopted from Swedenborg, and now widely 
 received, which makes each man’s resurrection to take place 
 at death, and which empties the many passages which speak 
 of a future signal triumph over death, at Christ’s coming, 
 of their meaning, or denies their full inspiration. (See Dr. 
 J. M. Whiton’s “ Gospel of the Resurrection,” page 266, 
 et passim.) A true doctrine of the intermediate state is 
 rather to be sought in a larger view of the fundamental 
 teaching of the New Testament concerning the relation 
 of believers to Christ. We are uniformly described as “in 
 Christ,” and as so incorporated into Him, as to consti¬ 
 tute with Him one body. The whole body, Head and mem¬ 
 bers, is called “ the Christ.” (1 Cor. xii.'13.) Why may not, 
 therefore, the resurrection body of the Christ provide for 
 all His members an embodied home until each one shall 
 take on for himself a glorified humanity like unto His? 
 If a legion of evil spirits could occupy one human body 
 (Luke viii. 30), why may not the same be true, on the 
 other side, and in the larger possibilities of the heavenly 
 manhood, of the multitude of spirits of just men? If all 
 the branches and twigs of the old trunk of humanity were 
 germinally in Adam, the whole stock of the new manhood, 
 must be in Christ. He is the Vine and we the branches. 
 Each branch of the vine shall become a separate shoot, and 
 itself a vine at the resurrection of the dead. But, before 
 that event, each bud in the vine, in virtue of the fact that 
 it is a bud, must have an embodiment in the parent stock, 
 a germinal body in the glorified body of Christ. And so, 
 durincr the intermediate state, outhomed from the body 
 we are inhomed with the Lord.” (2 Cor. v. 8, Gr.) 
 
 16 * 
 
186 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 3. Disembodiment, therefore, is a death out of 
 manhood. It is failure to attain the true goal of 
 being, which is new creation after the pattern of 
 the glorified humanity of Jesus. It is to be dis¬ 
 crowned and dispossessed; an exile in the system 
 of creation instead of an heir and lord. 
 
 4. Since “ the wages of sin is death,” there must 
 be either utter extinction of being, or the death of 
 the sinner in his 'present form of being. Destruc¬ 
 tion qud homo would satisfy the terms of the sen¬ 
 tence, execute the law, and be the proper and 
 adequate penalty for incorrigible sin. 
 
 5. After the law is thus vindicated by the death 
 of the sinner out of the rank of being in which 
 he was created, it is not necessary to suppose that 
 there is a further positive infliction of torment. 
 There must be the torment of privation, the “ suf¬ 
 fering of loss,” the outer darkness and nakedness, 
 resulting from such degradation from so high an 
 estate. But after the “ eternal fire” of creation, 
 out of whose womb all created forms first sprang, 
 receives back and consumes its own, it is not ne¬ 
 cessary to think of it as a continuous fire of tor¬ 
 ment. 
 
 6. These naked spirits must yet be in the hands 
 of the “ God of the spirits of all flesh.” What 
 He purposes to do with them in the future is not 
 plainly revealed. We have seen that they fail of 
 the glory and blessedness of the world or age to 
 
DESTRUCTION QUA HOMO. 
 
 187 
 
 come. What the “ages to come” may have in 
 store for them is not revealed. Scripture warrants 
 at least a hope that they may be recovered from 
 their outcast state on to a lower plane of embodied 
 life than that occupied by the sons of men, who 
 are exalted to the rank of sons of God.* Their 
 degradation would, therefore, be their eternal pun¬ 
 ishment, without a necessity for their eternal 
 misery. Their destruction from the high rank 
 of completed manhood, and loss of the glory in¬ 
 volved, would be their u everlasting destruction 
 from the presence of the Lord and from the glory 
 of His power.” (2 Thess. i. 9.) Such banishment 
 would be an irreparable loss and degradation. It 
 would be consignment to those outer circles of life 
 and being, which are far away from the central 
 life and glory. But such eternal punishment 
 might not involve eternal woe and agony, nor 
 eternal hatred of God and rebellion against His 
 will. Such banished discrowned outcasts might, 
 in due time, fall into lower ranks of being and 
 condition in that kingdom in which all things 
 must become subject to the one Lord.f 
 
 * See e. g. Ezek. xvi. 53-63; 1 Peter iii. 18-20. 
 f Even St. Augustine, who was one of the most severe 
 of the fathers in his teaching about future punishment, 
 admits that it may consist in degradation of being. A 
 writer in Brownson's (Quarterly Review for July, 1863, as 
 quoted by Dr. Whiton, states that Augustine held that 
 
188 MYSTERY OF CREATION’ AND OF MAN. 
 
 Here, then, we think we have the outline of a 
 doctrine of future punishment in harmony with 
 Scripture, with reason, and with science. 
 
 To recapitulate: the forces of life in the universe 
 are ever reaching out after higher forms. Man is 
 the highest fruit of this created system. But he has 
 not yet reached his ultimate form of being. His 
 body must be fashioned like unto the glorious body 
 of Christ, “ according to the working whereby Pie 
 is able to subdue all things unto Himself.” He 
 is now the “ First-Born from the dead” in this 
 new order of manhood. But He has u many 
 brethren,” who are to “ become the first fruits 
 of God’s creatures.” All of the human race are 
 not chosen to this high honor. Multitudes, to 
 whom even the gospel is preached, u adjudge 
 themselves unworthy of everlasting life.” They 
 do not reach, therefore, this high goal of immortal 
 manhood. They die in their sins, and are destroyed 
 quoad homines. This is the sentence of the law 
 against them. The penalty being inflicted and the 
 law satisfied, God is left free to do with them in the 
 
 “eternal death is a subsidence into a lower form of life, a 
 lapse into an inferior mode of existence, a privation of the 
 highest vital influx from God in order to everlasting life. 
 . . . There is no trace of the idea that those who din in sin 
 lose all good of existence, become completely evil, and con¬ 
 tinue to grow everlastingly in the direction of an infinite 
 wickedness, which merits a corresponding increase of pain.” 
 
DESTRUCTION QUA HOMO. 
 
 189 
 
 future as He will. He cannot indeed raise them to 
 the rank of being attained by those who, now that 
 the glory of Jesus is hidden, have learned to call 
 Him Lord. They have forfeited this high honor. 
 But, on a lower plane of embodied life, and in 
 lower ranks, they may be subjects and servants in 
 that kingdom in which they might have been lords, 
 “ vessels unto dishonor/ 7 but still having a place 
 in our Father’s “ great house.” (2 Tim. ii. 20.) 
 
 Here also we have a doctrine which harmonizes 
 what there is true in each one of the three great 
 divisions of Christian thought upon this subject. 
 Only bigotry can deny that there is a phase of 
 truth in each one of these. But neither of them 
 contains the whole truth. To borrow certain 
 aphorisms from Joseph Cook, as applied to a dif¬ 
 ferent subject, “Neither of these doctrines is true 
 apart from the others. Either one is true with 
 the others.” The truth that is in each of them 
 is necessary to a complete doctrine. 
 
 Now the doctrine advanced concedes, 1. To the 
 destructionists, that the Scripture alternative of 
 life in Christ is death. But it affirms that this 
 sentence pronounced against men is executed in 
 their destruction as men. The sinner perishes out 
 of manhood in such a way as to lose place and 
 title in this highest rank of created being, with 
 its infinite capabilities of knowing God and of 
 inheriting His vast estate. 
 
190 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 2. It concedes to the restorationists the un- 
 worthiness of that view of God which supposes 
 that He must needs make plac£ in His universe 
 for eternal sin and hatred of Himself. It admits 
 that all His creatures may be at last reconciled to 
 Him on lower planes of life and intelligence and 
 position in the grand economy of His kingdom in 
 which He must be all in all. 
 
 3. It affirms, however, that such restoration must 
 perpetuate the disgrace to which the loss of eternal 
 life in Christ subjects the unbeliever. It teaches 
 eternal punishment in an eternal degradation of 
 the sinner’s being from the high rank of sonship 
 to God, and from the true goal of manhood, as 
 His completed image and the lawful heir to all 
 His wide dominions. 
 
2CV. 
 
 THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 
 
 And they sing the song of Moses the servant of God, and 
 the song of the Lamb, saying, Great and marvellous are Thy 
 works, Lord God Almighty; just and true are Thy ways, 
 Thou King of saints. Who shall not fear thee, 0 Lord, and 
 glorify Thy name ? for Thou only art holy: for all nations 
 shall come and worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are 
 made manifest .— Revelation xv. 3, 4. 
 
 There are two songs of Moses given in the 
 Pentateuch, one in the 15th chapter of Exodus, 
 which he sang with the children of Israel after 
 the overthrow of Pharaoh and his hosts in the 
 Red Sea. This is commonly regarded as the one 
 referred to in the text. There is another song of 
 Moses recorded near the close of Deuteronomy. 
 This is especially the song of Moses the servant 
 of God. While the hymn of triumph sung on 
 the shores of the Red Sea lends its spirit to this 
 song in the Revelation, its thoughts are derived 
 mainly from the song in Deuteronomy. The fourth 
 verse, which is the key-note of that song, is here 
 quoted: “He is the Rock, His work is perfect: 
 for all His ways are judgment; a God of truth 
 
 and without iniquity, just and right is He.” This 
 
 191 
 
192 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 is the key-note also of the song in the Revelation. 
 It begins with an ascription of praise to God as 
 the true and righteous One. And the issue in 
 both is the same. In both, the nations rejoice in 
 the manifested judgments of God. 
 
 The song of Moses, then, whose tones are here 
 blended with that of the Lamb, is chiefly the one 
 which, at the command of Jehovah, this servant 
 of God put on record near the close of his life. 
 
 That song, I hesitate not to say, is one of the 
 deepest passages in Holy Scripture. It was uttered 
 at a momentous period in Israel’s history. The 
 wanderings in the desert were now over. The 
 people stood upon the borders of the promised 
 land. Moses, in a series of farewell discourses, had 
 reviewed the way in which the Lord had led them 
 during the forty years, and enforced upon them its 
 solemn lessons. But with prophetic foresight he 
 saw that, notwithstanding the Lord’s special and 
 wonderful dealings with them, the history of Israel 
 in the future would be a succession of failures, as 
 in the past. The Lord’s own people, whom He 
 had loved and chosen, for whom He had so signally 
 interposed, and whom He had carried as upon 
 eagle’s wings through the desert, whom He had 
 borne with and chastened as a father a son, would 
 soon forget and forsake Him. And for such de¬ 
 parture they must be punished. They must fail 
 to enjoy that wealth of blessings which He had 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 193 
 
 • 
 
 just promised them, if obedient, and be wasted 
 and destroyed under the blighting curses He had 
 just threatened, until at last their enemies would 
 gloat in a triumph over them that seemed complete 
 and without remedy. 
 
 In foresight, then, of this sad history, Moses was 
 commanded to write all the words of this song, 
 and to teach it to them for a testimony. It stands 
 here as a monumental witness for God, erected at 
 this solemn juncture in Israel’s history by His 
 most eminent servant, whom God was about to 
 take to Himself. 
 
 The circumstances, therefore, of its utterance, 
 as well as the import of its words, combine to 
 make this one of the most impressive passages in 
 the Bible. And that we do not overestimate its 
 importance is further proved by the frequency 
 with which it is quoted or referred to by later 
 writers. The strains of this song run all through 
 the Psalms. All the prophets borrow colorings 
 from it with which to paint their visions of the 
 future. It is quoted by Paul in his epistle to the 
 Romans, in which he discusses the mystery of 
 God’s dealings with Israel, and their bearing upon 
 the Gentiles, who, in the words of this song, are 
 summoned to rejoice with them. “Rejoice, ye 
 Gentiles, with His people.” And, as we have 
 seen, the strains of this song, which may be called 
 the judgment song, are caught up by the victors 
 in 17 
 
194 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 on the sea of glass, and blended with the redemp¬ 
 tion song, the song of the Lamb. 
 
 We do not, then, exaggerate the importance of 
 this song. It is one of the key-passages of Scrip¬ 
 ture. It opens up whole volumes of the divine 
 administration. 
 
 It presents these salient features: 
 
 1. It recounts God’s gracious dealings with 
 Israel, and unfolds the sad story of their future 
 apostasies. 
 
 2. It affirms that the righteousness of God will 
 be vindicated, and that they must suffer the full 
 measure of wrath their sins deserved. 
 
 3. It anticipates the triumph of their enemies 
 in this result, and especially of a great enemy, 
 who can be no other than Satan, the great foe of 
 God and man. 
 
 4. It declares that the nations, who are to be 
 the instruments of the divine judgments against 
 Israel, must themselves be destroyed before the 
 consuming fire of His anger. 
 
 5. It especially proclaims a series of revenges 
 upon the great enemy referred to. 
 
 6. So broad would be the claims of God’s 
 righteousness in the case, so deep the burning of 
 His anger, that it would finally involve the earth 
 and the system of nature, in which the invisible 
 enemies of God and His people are intrenched. 
 
 This chapter contains the first mention in the 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 195 
 
 Bible of the fire of hell: “ For a fire is kindled 
 in mine anger, and shall burn unto the lowest 
 hell, and shall consume the earth with her increase, 
 and set on fire the foundations of the mountains.” 
 (vs. 22.) Here there seems to be a foregleam of 
 that judgment by fire often alluded to in the New 
 Testament, which, however, becomes to the earth 
 a renovating baptism, cleansing both the heavens 
 and earth from “all things that offend,” and issu¬ 
 ing: in the new heavens and earth wherein dwell- 
 eth righteousness. 
 
 7. These judgments upon the enemies, who had 
 corrupted His people, would issue in their deliver¬ 
 ance : “ For the Lord shall judge His people, and 
 repent Himself for His servants, when He seeth 
 that their power is gone and there is none shut up 
 or left.” 
 
 8. The God, who is to work out these results, 
 here proclaims Himself as the Lord over death 
 as well as life, able to wound and to heal, to kill 
 and to make alive. Not even the triumph of 
 death over His people would defeat His purpose 
 to restore and heal them. Here the resurrection 
 of Christ, which is the grand centre of all God’s 
 redemptive processes, is foreshadowed. 
 
 9. In the future salvation with which He 
 should mercifully bless His land and people, all 
 the nations, who had themselves suffered under 
 the heavy hand of His judgments, were invited to 
 
196 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 rejoice. “The beginning of revenges upon the 
 enemy” should not come to an ending until the 
 whole field had been cleared of these hostile 
 powers, whether intrenched on earth or in the 
 heavens, who had crushed down the human race, 
 Jew and Gentile, into this bondage to sin and 
 death. And so the. song closes : “ Rejoice, O ye 
 nations, with His people: for He will avenge the 
 blood of His servants, and will render vengeance 
 to His adversaries, and will be merciful unto His 
 land, and to His people.” 
 
 The great feature, then, of this song of Moses 
 is, its exhibition of the inflexible righteousness 
 of God and of the dee]), far-reaching judgments 
 required for its vindication. And yet, breaking 
 through the clouds and darkness which are round 
 about His throne, there is the light of His super¬ 
 nal love. Great thoughts of mercy break out at 
 the close. The light that shines here from the 
 sun of righteousness is seen to contain not only 
 the red rays of lurid wrath, but the violet of peace 
 and love. So all God’s Word is a prism which 
 unravels and so reveals to us that glory whose 
 unblended rays we could not gaze upon and live. 
 These two great features of the divine character, 
 righteousness and love, with two corresponding 
 lines of administration, are traced all through the 
 Bible. Even the law which came by Moses was 
 paralleled by a sacrificial system which set forth 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 197 
 
 grace toward the law-breaker. And so the song 
 of Moses, which sings of judgment, sings of mercy 
 at the close. The judgment song breaks out into 
 the redemption song. And these two diverse 
 strains run through all subsequent psalm and 
 prophecy, and leave their traces all along the track 
 of history, both sacred and profane. The history 
 of every Gentile nation, as well as that of Israel, 
 illustrates this. 
 
 But our text shows that the notes of this song of 
 Moses shall hereafter run into unison with those 
 of the song of the Lamb. This means that these 
 parellel lines of divine dealing run together. This 
 book of the Apocalypse warns us that there is a 
 wrath of the Lamb as well as a wrath of God. 
 The tire, of which Moses forewarns us, goes on 
 burning, even under the administration of the 
 Lamb, until all God’s enemies have perished, and 
 Satan is cast into the lake of fire prepared for him 
 and his angels. But the joy of the text is that 
 hereafter the songs of judgment and redemption 
 are blended. No more two, but one song shall 
 fill the vaulted skies. The apparently discordant 
 features of the divine government are to be har¬ 
 monized. Neither is to be sacrificed. The law 
 will not be set aside. But love shall not be foiled 
 of its ends. And men shall glory as much in God’s 
 righteousness, when His judgments are made man¬ 
 ifest, as they rejoice in His love. One anthem 
 
198 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN . 
 
 shall ascend from earth’s ransomed myriads. And 
 that shall not be the song of Moses, nor of the 
 Lamb only, but the song of Moses and of the 
 Lamb. The harmony will be far richer, deeper, 
 for the blending. The minor chords of judgment 
 will melt into the symphonies of love, and flow 
 on with them in one eternal tide of melody. 
 
 The prime lesson we derive, then, from this sub¬ 
 ject is one of calm confidence in God, the Judge 
 of all the earth. “Just and true are all His 
 ways.” There are dark mysteries in the book of 
 divine providence. We are every day staggered 
 by them. There are even darker mysteries in 
 His Word. We read there about an everlasting 
 fire, prepared for the devil and his angels. We 
 hear the lips of Jesus pronouncing the doom, 
 “Depart, ye cursed.” We read of a great day of 
 judgment and perdition of ungodly men. And 
 yet we read that God is love. Jesus came to tell 
 us of His infinite tender compassion. He spake 
 the parable of the prodigal son ; He declared that 
 God so loved the world, not a part of it, but the 
 world , as to give for its redemption His only- 
 begotten Son. We read that His love in Jesus 
 Christ is an ocean without bottom and without 
 shore. How, then, can these things be reconciled ? 
 These aspects of the divine character seem to con¬ 
 tradict and to neutralize each other. Men say, 
 “ No earthly father would punish so his child. Is 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 199 
 
 the heavenly Father less kind?” We may not be 
 able to reconcile these statements. Thank God, 
 it is not our business to reconcile them. We are 
 not required to harden these “ hard sayings” into 
 dogmas, nor compress them into formulas which 
 shall satisfy us, much less silence the cavilings of 
 the unbelieving mind. No human creed is broad 
 enough nor deep enough to take in all that may 
 be known of God. And there are some secret 
 things which, as this song tells us, remain sealed 
 up among His treasures. But while we cannot 
 explain all God’s ways to men, nor harmonize 
 them, we rejoice to know that they are to be ex¬ 
 plained and reconciled. The Bible assures us that 
 the divine administrations are not limited to one 
 age or world, or even to ages. There are ages 
 upon ages to come. The inspired seer transports 
 us here into an age to come, and bids us listen to 
 a song which sings of both mercy and judgment. 
 We hear the tones of the song of Moses and of 
 the Lamb roll down from heaven to earth and 
 ascend again in antiphony from earth to heaven. 
 
 I may not understand, then, these deep things 
 of God. I may not satisfy the cavil of every 
 objector, nor even the honest doubt of the sincere 
 seeker after truth. I may fail to remove the sad 
 misgivings of tender loving souls. But, though I 
 cannot see behind the veil, I can look forward 
 with joy to that time when the covering which 
 
200 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 now hides from us our Father, God, shall be taken 
 away, and we shall see His face. It is enough 
 for me to know that the lurid rays of His wrath 
 and the violet rays of His peace and love blend 
 together in that pure white light which is the 
 splendor and the joy of heaven, and that even the 
 earth shall be filled with the knowledge of this 
 glory as the waters cover the sea. It is enough 
 to know that this song shall fill the high arches 
 of heaven, and be sent back with glad acclaim 
 from the redeemed on earth. “ Great and mar¬ 
 vellous are Thy works, Lord God Almighty; just 
 and true are Thy ways, Thou King of saints. Who 
 shall not fear Thee and glorify Thy name? for 
 Thou only art holy : for all nations shall come and 
 worship before Thee; for Thy judgments are 
 made manifest.” 
 
 A lesson still more practical is, that all God’s 
 discipline of us in this world is designed to pre¬ 
 pare us to sing this song. We have seen that in 
 His discipline of His ancient people, and of the 
 Gentiles also, these counter-principles of a right¬ 
 eousness that cannot abate its claims, and of a love 
 that cannot be balked of its object, stand side by 
 side. One does not vield to the other. So it is 
 with our individual redemption. Which of us 
 cannot recognize these two parallel lines of divine 
 dealing through all our lives past? We all, like 
 the Psalmist, can say, u I will sing of mercy and 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 201 
 
 of judgment.” God’s righteousness has encom¬ 
 passed us on every side. Our sins have found us 
 out. The sins of our fathers have been visited 
 upon us. The rod of His chastisement lias not 
 been spared. We can trace these fatherly cor¬ 
 rections through our business, our households, our 
 whole environment, and in our persons. It is a 
 mistake to suppose that our forgiveness through 
 Christ annuls or sets aside the law by which God 
 has forever attached suffering to sin. The words 
 of Nathan to David show the true doctrine con¬ 
 cerning this. (2 Sam. xii.) By the Lord’s com¬ 
 mand he told the monarch, “ The Lord hath put 
 away thy sin. Thou shalt not die.” His life 
 was redeemed. But it must also now be purified 
 by suffering. And hence the prophet goes on to 
 tell him how he must suffer in his person, in his 
 family, in his kingdom. And the subsequent his¬ 
 tory of David fully illustrates how the fire of 
 God’s anger burnt against him to consume the 
 evil out of his life and to purify and uplift his 
 throne. And here we see how mercy came in. 
 These afflictions were made the salutary means of 
 great good. David often confesses this. God was 
 redeeming him in this way of judgment. And so 
 with us. Our redemption through Christ secures 
 for our old nature of sin no exemption. It is to 
 Christians that Paul writes, “ Be not deceived; 
 God is not mocked : for whatsoever a man soweth, 
 
202 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 that shall he also reap. For he that soweth to 
 his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption.” (Gal. 
 vi. 7, 8.) There is no escape from this law. The 
 redemption of Christ proceeds upon the fact that 
 sentence of death has been passed upon the old 
 man in us and that we have accepted it. When 
 we come to the cross, we confess judgment against 
 ourselves in that character. We consent to die 
 out of the old life of sio that we may live anew 
 in Christ Jesus. And God’s discipline of us 
 accords with this judgment. It executes this 
 sentence. The old self is handed over to death. 
 And wisely, tenderly, as we are able to bear it, 
 the slow fire of His anger burns against all that 
 is evil in our lives. But the anger is only a sur¬ 
 face flame on a deeper fire of love. The chasten¬ 
 ing is for our profit. The light affliction works 
 for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of 
 glory. Hence, with David, we sing, “ Goodness 
 and mercy shall follow me all the days of my 
 life.” We learn to bless the hand that smites, 
 because we know it is our Father’s hand of love. 
 
 So all through our lives these two lines of His 
 dealing run side by side, until, as to the body at 
 least, sin exacts its full wages, which are death. 
 But here the loving hand of Him who wounds 
 and heals, who kills and makes alive (vs. 39), 
 comes in to convert this victory over us of the 
 last enemy into eternal triumph. Dying with 
 
THE SONG OF MOSES AND OF THE LAMB. 203 
 
 Christ, we rise and reign with Him in endless 
 life. 
 
 And so, after all the results of His dealing with 
 us are summed up, and we come to review the 
 way by which He has led us, we shall see how, 
 in the whole conduct of our earthly discipline, 
 Mercy and Truth meet together, Righteousness 
 and Peace kiss each other; how the grace of God 
 in our salvation has only magnified the law and 
 made it honorable. And so, with all God’s re¬ 
 deemed of every land and every name, we shall 
 be prepared to sing the song of Moses as well as 
 of the Lamb. So shall the song of our redemp¬ 
 tion be to us forever richer and purer because its 
 strains are mingled with the song of judgment. 
 And our lives, henceforth harmonized with the 
 life of God, in whom all things live, shall be all 
 the broader and stronger, and so fitted for those 
 ranges of activity and enjoyment which He is 
 preparing for His sons in the coming ages. 
 
 And let us never forget that all this wealth 
 of blessing, this joy out of sorrow, this gold out 
 of dross, this white robe out of tribulation, this 
 crown surmounting the cross, is due to the grace 
 that gave us Christ, the Lamb of God that taketli 
 away our sins. These songs of redemption are 
 the songs of His enthronement as Lord over all. 
 This splendor of heaven and this light that shall 
 yet bathe the earth is not the glory of God alone, 
 
204 MYSTERY OF CREATION AND OF MAN. 
 
 but of God and the Lamb. Even He, as man, 
 was judged for us in the flesh and endured the 
 curse of the law. And we, redeemed by His 
 blood, and reaching the same heights through 
 the same lowly way of the cross, shall sing with 
 Him both of judgment and of victory, and ever¬ 
 more praise Him as the Conquering Captain of 
 our salvation. 
 
 And now unto Him that loved us, and washed 
 us from our sins in His own blood, and hath 
 made us kings and priests unto God and His 
 Father; to Him be glory and dominion for ever 
 and ever. Amen. 
 
 THE END. 
 
/