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 Faith 
 
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 life 
 
 
 
FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 'CONFERENCES' IN THE ORATORY 
 OF PRINCETON SEMINARY 
 
 BY 
 
 OCT 9r^ ] 
 
 BENJAMIN B. WABFIELD 
 
 PROFESSOR IN THE SEMINARY 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 FOURTH AVENUE & 30th STREET, NEW YORK 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 
 BOMBAY, CALCUTTA, AND MADRAS 
 
 1916 
 
Copyright, 1916 
 BY BENJAMIN B. WARFIELD 
 
PRESIDENT OF WILSON COLLEGE 
 SOMETIME PRESIDENT OF LAFAYETTE COLLEGE 
 
 A BROTHER BELOVED 
 IN THE FLESH AND IN THE LORD 
 
TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Cause of God (1 Kings 19:9) 1 
 
 Old Testament Religion (Psalm 51:12) 14 
 
 The Wrath of Man (Psalm 76:10) 24 
 
 : For Christ's Sake (Matt. 5 :11) 32 
 
 This- and Other-Worldliness (Matt. 6:33) 43 
 
 Light and Shining (Mark 4 :31-35) 53 
 
 ; Childlikeness (Mark 10:15) 65 
 
 " The Glory of the Word (Jno. 1 :1) 81 
 
 Looking to Men (Jno. 5 :44) 93 
 
 y A Half -learned Christ (Jno. 6:68:69) 103 
 
 The Conviction of the Spirit (Jno. 16:8-11) 116 
 
 Christ's Prayer for His People (Jno 17:15) 128 
 
 The Outpouring of the Spirit (Acts 2:16, 17) 135 
 
 Prayer as a Means of Grace (Acts 9:11) 146 
 
 Surrender and Consecration (Acts 22:10) 154 
 
 ,. The Summation of the Gospel (Acts 26:18) 165 
 
 The Spirit's Testimony to Our Sonship (Rom 8:16) .... 179 
 
 The Spirit's Help in Our Praying (Rom. 8:26, 27) 193 
 
 All Things Working Together for Good (Rom. 8:28) 202 
 
 Man's Husbandry and God's Bounty (1 Cor. 3:5-9).. . . 211 
 Communion in Christ's Body and Blood (1 Cor. 10:16 
 
 -17) 222 
 
 The Spirit of Faith (2 Cor. 4:13) 231 
 
 - New Testament Puritanism (2 Cor. 6:11—7:1) 243 
 
 ^ Paul's Great Thanksgiving (Eph. 1 :3-14) 259 
 
 Spiritual Strengthening (Eph. 3:16) 267 
 
 The Fulness of God (Eph. 3:19) 279 
 
 The Sealing of the Holy Spirit (Eph 4:30) 289 
 
 -7 Working Out Salvation (Phil. 2:12, 13) 298 
 
 vii 
 
viii TABLE OF CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Alien Righteousness (PhU. 3:9) 314 
 
 Peace With God (PhU. 4:7) 326 
 
 The Heritage of the Saints in Light (Col. 1 ;12) 340 
 
 The Hidden Life (Col. 3:1-4) 350 
 
 Entire Sanctifieation (1 Thess. 5:23, 24) 361 
 
 The Mystery of Godliness (1 Tim. 3:16) 373 
 
 The Inviolate Deposit (1 Tim. 6:20, 21) 385 
 
 The Way of Life (Tit. 3:4-9) 393 
 
 The Eternal Gospel (2 Tim. 1:9, 10) 402 
 
 Communion with Christ (2 Tim. 2:11-13) 415 
 
 Prayer as a Practice (James 5 :16) 428 
 
 God's Holmess and Ours (1 Pet. 1 :15) 440 
 
 Childship to God (1 Jno. 2:28—3:1) 448 
 
n^HOSE who are unfamiliar with the life of Princeton Theo- 
 logical Seminary and desire to learn something of the nature 
 and the early history of the "Conferences "held in the "Oratory" 
 of the Seminary may be referred to the Life of Archibald Alexander 
 by his son, James W. Alexander, pp. 420 ff ; the Life of Samuel 
 Miller by his son, Samuel Miller, vol. ii, p. 400; and the Life 
 of Charles Hodge by his son, A. A. Hodge, pp. 453 ff ; with the 
 last of which may be compared the Preface to Conference Ad- 
 dresses by Charles Hodge. 
 
FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 THE CAUSE OF GOD 
 
 1 Kings 19:9: " What doest thou here, Elijah? " 
 
 The history of Elijah suppHes us with one of 
 the most striking, and, we may add, one of the 
 most instructive, sections of the Old Testa- 
 ment. With him begins the wonderful history 
 of Prophetism. Through him we obtain a glimpse 
 which we would not willingly lose of God's deal- 
 ings with His people: His faithfulness to them 
 when they were unfaithful to Him; His unre- 
 mitting efforts to withdraw them from sin and 
 keep them in that intimate and obedient relation 
 to Him in which alone was safety to be found. 
 
 At first sight the narrative may appear ob- 
 jective to a fault. We are told nothing of who 
 Elijah w^as, how he had been trained, whence he 
 came as he passes across the page of history. 
 In the midst of Ahab's wicked rule suddenly he 
 stands before the idolatrous King and pronounces 
 the curse of God, which for his sake should fall on 
 the land which he had polluted with his apostasy. 
 And as suddenly as he appears, so suddenly he 
 withdraws again. Hidden at Cherith or at Zarep- 
 
g FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 hath for a period measured by years, he appears 
 on the scene of public history once again as un- 
 expectedly and as much a messenger from on 
 high as at first. Everywhere he goes the powers 
 of heaven accompany him, and his appearances 
 and disappearances are almost as sudden as the 
 bolts of heaven themselves. 
 
 But, however rapid the action, and however 
 much, at first view, the narrative may seem to 
 wear the appearance of objectivity; however 
 much it may seem to be concerned only with the 
 history of Israel and God's endeavour through the 
 words and works of His prophet to awaken His 
 people to righteousness and rescue them from the 
 slough of their idolatry; the story of Elijah yet 
 manages to be primarily and above all else the 
 story of Elijah. Somehow, as in music some- 
 times a secondary strain is carried on, shot through 
 the dominant theme of the composition, in har- 
 mony with it and yet separable from it, and need- 
 ing but a little emphasizing to make it the chief 
 burden of the whole; so within the bosom of this 
 narrative of how God sent His prophet to Israel 
 with His thunder-message calling it back to the 
 service of Him, of how He dealt thus faithfully 
 with His people and sought to save them from 
 themselves and for Him, there lies, not hidden, 
 but embraced and preserved for us, the touching 
 account of how God dealt with and trained the 
 prophet himself. As Jesus, when He sat in the 
 
THE CAUSE OF GOD 3 
 
 judgment hall of Annas offering Himself a victim 
 for the saving of the world, yet had time to turn 
 a significant glance upon Peter as he stood deny- 
 ing Him before the courtyard fire, and thus saved 
 His poor repentant follower in the saving of the 
 world; so God in His use of Elijah for the teach- 
 ing of Israel also found time to train the heart 
 of the prophet himself. 
 
 These chapters are crowded with teaching for 
 us. We must select, from the wealth they bring 
 to us, some one thing on which our minds may 
 especially dwell to-day. Let it be this instruc- 
 tive element in them: God's way of training His 
 prophet. Let us observe in the case of Elijah 
 how God dealt with him in His grace so as to 
 bring him to a better knowledge of himself, of 
 God and of the nature of the work to which he 
 was called. When once we approach the narra- 
 tive with this purpose in view, it becomes diflScult 
 to see anything else in it. We forget Israel in 
 Elijah. Israel seems only the instrument upon 
 which and by means of which Elijah's heart and 
 soul were taught. We have in a word empha- 
 sized the subordinate strain until it becomes domi- 
 nant; and the very possibility of this is a clear 
 proof that the subordinate strain was planted in 
 the music by the Great Composer, and that it was 
 meant that our ears should hear it. 
 
 We are told, we say, nothing of the early life, 
 the early training, or directly, of the character of 
 
4 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Elijah. He appears suddenly before us as the 
 messenger of God's wrath. Like his great anti- 
 type — who was greater, our Lord being witness, 
 than even he — he is a voice from the wilderness 
 crying the one word, Repent! He is the human 
 embodiment of the wrath of God. AMierever he 
 goes destruction accompanies him. Drought, 
 fire from heaven, floods of rain, death for the ene- 
 mies of God, follow hard on his footsteps. He is 
 embodied law. And as such he is a swift witness 
 against his people. Obedience, repentance, strict 
 account, these form the essence of his message. 
 
 God chooses appropriate instruments for His 
 work. And we have reason to believe that the 
 sternness of Elijah's mission was matched by the 
 sternness of his aspect and the sternness of his 
 character. We are therefore justified in having 
 said that he was, not merely the messenger of 
 God's law and wrath, but their embodiment. He 
 was by natural disposition, as framed under prov- 
 idential circumstances, and by \artue of the side 
 of God which he had as yet apprehended, nothing 
 loath but rather naturally inclined to act as the 
 witness of God against his people, well-fitted to 
 call down the vengeance of God upon them and 
 to delight in the overthrow of His enemies. He 
 was in danger of thinking of God only as a law- 
 giver and the just avenger of His wounded honour. 
 Hence arose the necessity of the training of the 
 prophet. Every incident of his career, as it is 
 
THE CAUSE OF GOD 5 
 
 recorded for us, entered into this training. As 
 we cast our eye over it, we observe that what 
 Elijah needed to be taught was (1) dependence on 
 God; (2) fellowship with man in his sufferings; 
 (3) confidence in God's plans; and (4) a sense 
 of their essential and broad mercifulness. 
 
 These lessons are brought home to him by 
 means of two stupendous miracles over nature, 
 wrought for the purpose of teaching the people 
 that Jehovah and He alone is God, — so closely 
 intertwined were the two lines of Divine work, 
 the training of the people and the training of 
 Elijah. No sooner had the prophet declared to 
 the apostate King the word of God sent to him, 
 "As the Lord, the God of Israel liveth, before 
 whom I stand, there shall not be dew nor rain 
 these years but according to my word," than a 
 special personal message came from the Lord to 
 him saying, "Get thee hence, and turn thee east- 
 ward, and hide thyself by the brook Cherith, that is 
 before Jordan. And it shall be that thou shalt 
 drink of the brook, and I have commanded the 
 ravens to feed thee there." Thus it was brought 
 about that both Israel and Elijah were simul- 
 taneously learning the lesson of the littleness of 
 man before God. But diversely. Israel was 
 learning that it could not with impunity break 
 God's law; Elijah that even God's servants de- 
 pend on Him for their every want. The self- 
 willed nation was learning to submit to its Lord; 
 
6 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 the perhaps too self-confident prophet was learn- 
 ing the weakness of flesh and man's utter depend- 
 ence on his Maker. 
 
 In the silence of the wilderness, hidden in one 
 of those torrent-clefts which fall into the Jordan 
 valley, Elijah was dependent on God's hand for 
 his daily food; on the water which flowed at 
 first in quantities full enough for his needs over 
 the rocks of the brook's bed, but gradually grew 
 less and less until it trickled in drops scarcely 
 numerous enough to moisten his parched lips; 
 on food brought to him by the unclean ravens. 
 Thus gradually he learned to sympathize with his 
 suffering fellows and to rest on God. It was meet 
 that he who seemed to have the dominion of the 
 heavens in his hands, who prayed that it should 
 not rain and it rained not, should share in the 
 want which resulted; and should learn to sym- 
 pathize with poor suffering, even if sinful, human- 
 ity, like that greater one who was yet to come and 
 learn also how to sympathize with us through His 
 participation in our griefs. How fully he learned 
 his lesson the subsequent narrative tells us in the 
 beautiful story of his dealings with the widow of 
 Zarephath with her cruse and barrel, and her sick 
 and dying child — one of the most Christlike nar- 
 ratives among all the Old Testament miracles. 
 Thus then as Israel was prepared for repentance, 
 the prophet was prepared inwardly to be a fit 
 messenger to his suffering brethren, bringing 
 
THE CAUSE OF GOD 7 
 
 them relief from their sore affliction. We re- 
 peat it, God sends His messages by fit instru- 
 ments. 
 
 And so, in due time, Elijah comes to bring the 
 famished land relief. We all remember the story 
 of the tremendous scene wherein Elijah — the 
 "prodigious" Tishbite, as an old author calls 
 him — challenges the prophets of Baal to meet him 
 in a contest of worship on Carmel, and defeats 
 them by simply calling on his God; and then 
 draws down rain on the parched ground by the 
 almighty virtue of his prayer. No scene of higher 
 dramatic power is to be found in all the world's 
 literature. As we read, we see the prophet ruling 
 on the mount; we see him bent in prayer on the 
 deserted summit; we see him when, the hand of 
 God upon him, he girded up his victorious loins 
 and ran before the chariot of Ahab, the sixteen 
 miles through the driving storm, from Carmel 
 to Jezreel. No scene we may say could have 
 been more nicely fitted to his mind or to his nature. 
 Here the king of men was king indeed and his vic- 
 tory seemed complete. But God's children must 
 suffer for their triumphs. Were there no thorns 
 in the flesh, messengers of Satan, sent of God to 
 buffet them, there would be no one of men who 
 could serve the Lord in the scenes of His triumph 
 without grave danger to his own soul. And 
 Elijah needed to learn other lessons yet. He 
 needed to learn that God's victories are not of the 
 
8 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 external sort and are not to be won by the weapons 
 of men. 
 
 How quickly after the triumph comes the mo- 
 ment of dismay. "And Ahab told Jezebel," says 
 the simple narrative, "all that Elijah had done, 
 and withal, how he had slain the prophets with 
 the sword. Then Jezebel sent a messenger unto 
 Elijah, saying, *So let the gods do to me and more 
 also, if I make not thy life as the life of one of 
 them by to-morrow about this time.' And when 
 he saw that, he arose and went for his life and came 
 to Beersheba." Thus, Elijah has his lesson to 
 learn again after his miracle. We need not won- 
 der at his sudden flight. It is the price that strong, 
 fervent spirits pay for their very strength, that 
 they suffer a correspondingly strong reaction. So 
 it was with the prophet's antitype, John the Bap- 
 tist, when in the prison he lost his faith and sent 
 to ask Him whom God had Himself pointed out 
 to him on the banks of Jordan, whether, indeed, 
 He was the Coming One. So it was with Peter 
 also, who could venture on the waves, but only 
 to cry, "Lord save me, I perish"; who could 
 draw his sword and smite the High Priest's ser- 
 vant, but only at once to deny his Lord at the 
 challenge of a servant maid. So now it was with 
 Elijah. God's hand had been outstretched at his 
 call. He had shut up the heavens at his bidding 
 and had nourished him at Cherith and given him 
 miraculous sustenance at Zarephath, and the 
 
THE CAUSE OF GOD 9 
 
 widow's son back from the grave. He had sent 
 down His fire from heaven and dehVered the 
 priests of Baal into his hand and opened the 
 heavens at his prayer. But Elijah could not 
 trust God, now, to deliver him from a woman's 
 hate; and that, although her very message bore 
 in it the betrayal of her weakness. 
 
 Was there not a deeper spring for this distrust 
 still.? With all his training, Elijah did not as 
 yet know his God. His life had fallen on evil 
 days, times of violence that demanded violent 
 remedies for their diseases. And he could not 
 beheve in the efficacy of any but violent remedies. 
 Fresh from Carmel and the slaughter of the priests 
 he was impatient of the contuiuance of evil, and 
 expected the miracles of Carmel to be but the 
 harbinger of the greater miracle of the conversion 
 of the people to God in a day. \Mien Elijah 
 awoke on the morrow and found Israel altogether 
 as it had been yesterday, he was dismayed. Had 
 then the triumph of yesterday been as nothing.? 
 Was Jezebel still to lord it over God's heritage? 
 What then availed it that the fire had fallen from 
 heaven? That the false priests' blood had flowed 
 like water? That the rain had come at his bid- 
 ding? Was the hand of God outstretched only 
 to be withdrawn again? Elijah loses heart be- 
 cause God's ways were not as his ways. He can- 
 not understand God's secular modes of working; 
 and, conceiving of His ways as sudden and mirac- 
 
10 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 ulous only, he feels that the Most High has de- 
 serted His cause and His servants. He almost 
 feels bitter towards the Lord who had let him 
 begin a work which He leaves him without power 
 to complete. Hence Elijah must go to the wil- 
 derness to learn somewhat of the God he serves. 
 After his first miracle of closing the heavens, he 
 learned what man was in his sufferings and in his 
 needs. Now he has opened the heavens and is to 
 learn what God is and what are the modes of His 
 working and the nature of His plans. 
 
 There is no mistaking the purpose of God in 
 leading the prophet into the wilderness; nor the 
 import of the teaching He gives him there. The 
 disheartened prophet, despairing of the cause of 
 God because all things had not turned out as he 
 had anticipated, throws himself on the desert 
 sands to die. But there God visits him; and leads 
 him on to Horeb, where the Law had been given, 
 where it had been granted to Moses to see God's 
 glory, the glory of the Lord, the Lord God, mer- 
 ciful and gracious, slow to anger and plenteous in 
 mercy and truth. Reaching the Mount the 
 stricken prophet seeks a cave and lodges in it. 
 And then the word of the Lord came to him with 
 the searching question, '* What doest thou here, 
 Elijah.^ " We do not need to doubt that there 
 was reproof in the question; but surely it is not 
 reproof but searching inquiry that forms its main 
 contents. The Lord had Himself led Elijah here. 
 
THE CAUSE OF GOD 11 
 
 for his lesson. And now the Lord probes him 
 with the deepest of questions. 
 
 After all, why was Elijah there? The question 
 calls for reflection; and reflection which will bring 
 light with self-condemnation; and with the self- 
 condemnation, also self -instruction. " What doest 
 thou here, Elijah? " The honest soul of the prophet 
 gives back the transparent truth: "I have been 
 very jealous" . . . and so on. Here we see dis- 
 trust in God and despair of His cause; almost 
 complaint of God, for not guarding His cause bet- 
 ter; nay, more, almost complaint of God that He 
 had left His servant in the lurch. The Lord deals 
 very graciously with His servant. There is no 
 need now of reproof; only the simple command 
 to go forth and stand upon the mount before the 
 Lord. And then the Lord passed by; first a 
 great, strong wind rent the mountains and brake 
 in pieces the rocks before the Lord; but it was 
 not in the wind that the Lord was. And after 
 the wind, an earthquake; but the Lord was not in 
 the earthquake. And after the earthquake, fire; 
 but the Lord was not in the fire. And after the 
 fire, a sound of gentle stillness. Elijah does not 
 now need to be told where the Lord is. The 
 terror of the storm, of the earthquake, and of the 
 flame, is as nothing to the awesomeness of the 
 gentle stillness. "And it was so, when Elijah 
 heard it, that he wrapped his face in his mantle, 
 and went out and stood in the entering in of the 
 
12 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 cave." Did he already begin to suspect that he 
 had mistaken the storm that goes before Jehovah 
 for Jehovah's self? The terror of the law for the 
 very hand of Him whose essence is love? The 
 terrible preparation for the Gospel for the Gospel 
 itself? But there is still no word of direct instruc- 
 tion. Only the old question still sounds in his 
 ears. "And behold there came a voice to him 
 and said *What doest thou here, Elijah?'" To it 
 he returns the same answer as before; but surely 
 in deep humility of spirit. Be that as it may, how- 
 ever, the Lord proceeds to tell him that He has 
 yet work for him to do and sends him back with 
 instructions which imply that there is a long future 
 for the fruition of His plans. And whether at 
 once or more slowly we cannot doubt that the 
 lesson had its effect and Elijah learned not to 
 lose hope in God's cause because God's ways in 
 accomplishing it are not our ways. 
 
 How full all this is of lessons to us! Let us at 
 least not fail to learn from it: (1) That the cause 
 of God does not depend on our single arm to save 
 it. "I, I only, am left," said Elijah, as if on him 
 alone could God depend to secure His ends. We 
 depend on God, not God on us. (2) That the 
 cause of God is not dependent for its success on 
 our chosen methods. Elijah could not under- 
 stand that the ends of God could be gained unless 
 they were gained in the path of miracles of mani- 
 fest judgment. External methods are not God's 
 
THE CAUSE OF GOD 13 
 
 methods. (3) That the cause of God cannot fail. 
 EHjah feared that God's hand was not outstretched 
 to save and fancied that he knew the dangers and 
 needs better than God did. God never deserts 
 His cause. (4) That it is not the Law but the 
 Gospel, not the revelation of wrath but that of 
 love, which saves the world. Wrath may pre- 
 pare for love; but wrath never did and never will 
 save a soul. 
 
 We close then, with a word of warning and one 
 of encouragement. The word of warning: We 
 must not identify our cause with God's cause; 
 our methods with God's methods; or our hopes 
 with God's purposes. The word of encourage- 
 ment: God's cause is never in danger; what He 
 has begun in the soul or in the world, He will com- 
 plete unto the end. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION 
 
 Psa. 51:12: "Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation." 
 
 "And David said unto Nathan, I have sinned 
 against the Lord. And Nathan said unto David, 
 The Lord also hath put away thy sin." It may al- 
 most seem that David escaped from his crime too 
 easily. We may read the narrative and fail to 
 observe the signs of that deep contrition which 
 such hideous wickedness when once recognized 
 surely must engender. There is the story of the 
 sin drawn in all its shocking details. Then Nathan 
 comes in with his beautiful apologue of the ewe- 
 lamb, and its pungent application. And then we 
 read simply: "And David said unto Nathan, I 
 have sinned against The Lord. And Nathan said 
 unto David, The Lord also hath put away thy sin." 
 After that comes only the story of how the child 
 of sin was smitten, and how David besought the 
 Lord for its life and finally acquiesced in the 
 Divine judgment. One is apt to feel that David 
 was more concerned to escape the consequences 
 of his sin than to yield to the Lord the sacrifices of 
 a broken and a contrite heart. Does it not seem 
 cold to us and external, David's simple acknowl- 
 edgment of his sin, and the Lord's immediate re- 
 mission of it? We feel the lack of the manifesta- 
 
 14 
 
OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION 15 
 
 tions of a deeply repentant spirit, and are almost 
 ready, we say, to wonder if David did not escape 
 too easily from the evil he had wrought. 
 
 It is merely the simplicity of the narrative 
 which is deceiving us in this. The single-hearted 
 writer expects us to read into the bare words of 
 David's confession, " I have sinned against the 
 Lord," all the spiritual exercises which those words 
 are fitted to suggest and out of which they should 
 have grown. And if we find it a little difficult to do 
 so, we have only to turn to David's penitential 
 Psalms, to learn the depths of repentance which 
 wrung this great and sensitive soul. One of them 
 — perhaps the most penetrating portrayal of a truly 
 penitent soul ever cast into human speech — is 
 assigned by its title to just this crisis In his life; 
 and I see no good reason why this assignment 
 need be questioned. The whole body of them 
 sound the depths of the sinful soul's self-torment 
 and longing for recovery as can be found nowhere 
 else in literature; and taken in sequence present 
 a complete portrayal of the course of repentance 
 in the heart, from its inception in the rueful review 
 of the past and the remorseful biting back of the 
 awakened heart, through its culmination in a true 
 return to God In humble love and trusting confi- 
 dence, to its issue in the establishment of a new 
 relation of obedience to God and a new richness 
 of grateful service to Him. 
 
 Let us take just these four. Psalms 6, 38, 51, 32. 
 
16 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 In Psa. 6 sounds the note of remorse — it is the 
 torment of a soul's perception of its sin that is 
 here prominently brought to our most poignant 
 observation. In Psa. 38, the note of hope — not 
 indeed absent even from Psa. 6 — becomes dom- 
 inant and the sorrow and hatred of sin is coloured 
 by a pervasive tone of relief. In Psa. 51, while 
 there is no lessening of the accent of repentance 
 there is along with the deep sense of the guilt and 
 pollution of sin which is expressed also a note of 
 triumph over the sin, which aspires to a clean 
 heart and a steadfast spirit and a happy service 
 of God in purity of life. While in Psa. 32, the 
 sense of forgiveness, the experience of joy in the 
 Lord, and the exercises of holy and joyful service 
 overlie all else. Here we trace David's penitent 
 soul through all its experiences; his remorseful 
 contemplation of his own sin, his passionate reach- 
 ing out to the salvation of God, the gradual re- 
 turn of his experience of the joy of that salvation, 
 his final issuing into the full glory of its complete 
 realization. 
 
 In some respects the most remarkable of this 
 remarkable body of pictures of the inner experi- 
 ences of a penitent soul, is that of Psa. 51. It 
 draws away the veil for us and permits us to look 
 in upon the spirit in the most characteristic act 
 of repentance, just at the turning point, as it de- 
 serts its sin and turns to God. Here is revealed 
 to us a sense of sin so poignant, a perception of the 
 
OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION 17 
 
 grace of God so soaring, an apprehension of the 
 completeness of the revolution required in sinful 
 man that he may become in any worthy sense a 
 servant of God so profound, that one wonders in 
 reading it what is left for a specifically Christian 
 experience to add to this experience of a saint of 
 God under the Old Testament dispensation in 
 turning from sin to God. The wonderful depth 
 of the religious experience and the remarkable 
 richness of religious conception embodied in this 
 Psalm have indeed proved a snare to the critics. 
 "David could not have had these ideas," says 
 Prof. T. C. Cheyne, brusquely; and, indeed, the 
 David that Prof. Cheyne has constructed out of 
 his imaginary reconstruction of the course of re- 
 ligious development in Israel, could not well have 
 had these ideas. These are distinctively Chris- 
 tian ideas that the Psalm sets forth, and they 
 could not have grown up of themselves in a purely 
 natural heart. And therein lies one of the values 
 of the Psalm to us; it reveals to us the essentially 
 Christian type of the religion of Israel; it opens 
 to our observation the contents of the mind and 
 heart of a Spirit-led child of God in the ages agone, 
 and makes us to know the truly Christian charac- 
 ter of his experiences in his struggle with sin and 
 his aspirations towards God, and thus also to 
 iJnow the supernatural leading of God's people 
 through all ages. 
 
 For consider for a moment the conception of 
 
18 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 God which throbs through all the passionate lan- 
 guage of this Psalm. A God of righteousness 
 who will not look upon sin with allowance; nay, 
 who directs all things, even the emergence of acts 
 of sin in His world, so that He may not only be 
 just, but also "may be justified when He speaks 
 and clear when He judges." A God of holiness 
 whose Spirit cannot abide in our impure hearts. 
 A God of unbounded power, who governs the 
 whole course of events in accordance with His 
 own counsels. But above all, a gracious God, full 
 of lovingkindness, abundant in compassion, whose 
 delight is in salvation. There is nothing here 
 which goes beyond the great revelation of Ex. 
 34:6, "a God full of compassion and gracious, 
 abundant in lovingkindness and truth; keeping 
 lovingkindness for thousands, forgiving iniquity 
 and transgression and sin." Indeed the lan- 
 guage of the Psalm is obviously modelled on this 
 of Exodus. But here it is not given from the lips 
 of Jehovah, proclaiming His character, but re- 
 turned to us from the heart of the repentant sin- 
 ner, recounting the nature of the God with whom 
 he has to do. 
 
 And what a just and profound sense of sin is 
 revealed to us here. The synonymy of the sub- 
 ject is almost exhausted in the effort to complete 
 the self -accusation. "My transgression, my in- 
 iquity, my sin;" I have been in rebellion against 
 God, I have distorted my life, I have missed the 
 
OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION 19 
 
 mark; I have, to express it all, done what is evil 
 in Thy sight — in the sight of Thee, the Standard 
 of Holiness, the hypostatized Law of Conduct. 
 And these acts are but the expression of an inner 
 nature of corruption, inherited from those who 
 have gone before me; it was in iniquity that I 
 was born, in sin that my mother conceived me. 
 Shall a pure thing come from an impure? Nay, 
 my overt acts of sin are thought of not in them- 
 selves but as manifestations of what is behind 
 and within; thrown up into these manifestations 
 in act, in Thine own ordinance, for no other 
 cause than that Thy righteous condemnation on 
 me may be justified and thy judgment be made 
 clear. For it is not cleanness of act merely that 
 Thou dost desire, but truth in the inward parts 
 and wisdom in the hidden parts. Obviously the 
 Psalmist is conceiving sin here as not confined to 
 acts but consisting essentially of a great ocean of 
 sin within us, whose waves merely break in sinful 
 acts. No wonder the commentators remark that 
 here we have original sin "more distinctly ex- 
 pressed than in any other passage in the Old Tes- 
 tament." Nothing is left to be added by the 
 later revelation in the way of poignancy of con- 
 ception — though much is, of course, left to be 
 added in developed statement. 
 
 Accordingly, the conception of the radicalness 
 of the operation required for the Psalmist's de- 
 liverance from sin, is equally developed. No sur- 
 
20 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 face remedy will suffice to eradicate a sin which is 
 thus inborn, ingrained in nature itself. Hence the 
 passionate cry: Create — it requires nothing less 
 than a creative act — create me a clean heart — 
 the heart is the totality of the inner life — and 
 make new within me a constant spirit — a spirit 
 which will no more decline from Thee. Nothing 
 less than this will suffice — a total rebegetting as 
 the New Testament would put it; an entire mak- 
 ing over again can alone suffice to make such an 
 one as the Psalmist knows himself to be — not by 
 virtue of his sins of act which are only the mani- 
 festation of what he is by nature, but by virtue 
 of his fundamental character — acceptable to Him 
 who desires truth in the inward part; nay, noth- 
 ing less than this can secure to him that stead- 
 fastness of spirit which will save his overt acts 
 from shame. 
 
 Nor does the Psalmist expect to be able, un- 
 aided, to live in the power of his new life. One 
 of the remarkable features of the doctrinal sys- 
 tem of the Psalm is the clear recognition it gives 
 of the necessity, for the cleansing of the life, of the 
 constant presence and activity of the Holy Spirit. 
 "Take not thy holy Spirit from me and uphold 
 me with a spirit of willingness." Thine to lead, 
 mine to follow. Not autonomy but obedience, 
 the ideal of the religious life. The operations 
 of the Holy Spirit in the sphere of the moral life, 
 the ethical activities of the Spirit, His sanctifying 
 
OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION 21 
 
 work, are but little adverted to in the Old Tes- 
 tament, and when alluded to, it is chiefly in 
 promises for the Messianic period. Here, David 
 not merely prays for them in his own case, but 
 announces them as part of the experience of the 
 past and present. His chance of standing, he 
 says in effect, hangs on the continued presence 
 of the Holy Spirit of God in him; in the up- 
 holding within him thereby of a spirit of wiUing- 
 ness. 
 
 Thus we perceive that in its conception of God, 
 of sin, of salvation alike, this Psalm stands out 
 as attaining the high-water mark of Old Testa- 
 ment revelation. It was by a hard pathway that 
 David came to know God and himself so inti- 
 mately. But he came thus to know both his 
 own heart and the God of grace with a fullness 
 and profundity of apprehension that it will be 
 hard to parallel elsewhere. And it was no merely 
 external knowledge that he acquired thus. It 
 was the knowledge of experience. David knew 
 sin because he had touched the unclean thing 
 and sounded the depths of iniquity. He knew 
 himself because he had gone his own way and had 
 learned through what thickets and morasses that 
 pathway led, and what was its end. And he 
 knew God, because he had tasted and seen that 
 the Lord is gracious. Yes, David had tasted 
 and seen God's preciousness. David had ex- 
 perience of salvation. He knew what salvation 
 
22 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 was, and He knew its joy. But never had he 
 known the joy of salvation as he knew it after 
 he had lost it. And it is just here that the spe- 
 cial poignancy of David's repentance comes in: 
 it was not the repentance of a sinner merely, it 
 was the repentance of a sinning saint. 
 
 It is only the saint who knows what sin is; for 
 only the saint knows it in contrast with salva- 
 tion, experienced and understood. And it is only 
 the sinning saint who knows what salvation is: 
 for it is only the joy that is lost and then found 
 again that is fully understood. The depths of 
 David's knowledge, the poignancy of his con- 
 ceptions — of God, and sin, and salvation — car- 
 rying him far beyond the natural plane of his 
 time and the development of the religious con- 
 sciousness of Israel, may be accounted for, it 
 would seem, by these facts. He who had known 
 the salvation of God and basked in its joy, came 
 to know through his dreadful sin what sin is, 
 and its terrible entail; and through this horrible 
 experience, to know what the joy of salvation is — 
 the joy which he had lost and only through the 
 goodness of God could hope to have restored. 
 In the biting pain of his remorse, it all becomes 
 clear to him. His sinful nature is revealed to 
 him; and the goodness of God; his need of the 
 Spirit; the joy of acceptance with God; the de- 
 light of abiding with Him in His house. Hence 
 his profound disgust at himself; his passion- 
 
OLD TESTAMENT RELIGION 23 
 
 ate longing for that purity without which he 
 could not see God. And hence his culminat- 
 ing prayer: "Restore unto me the joy of Thy 
 salvation." 
 
THE WRATH OF MAN 
 
 Psa. 76:10: — "Surely the wrath of man shall praise thee." 
 
 The Seventy-sixth Psalm is represented by a 
 very old tradition — it is already embodied in the 
 Septuagint version — as a hymn of praise to God 
 for the destruction of Sennacherib. There is no 
 reason why this tradition may not be supposed to 
 preserve the truth. But its truth or falsehood 
 does not particularly concern us. The Psalm 
 was in any case written upon some such occasion 
 as the destruction of Sennacherib. It celebrates 
 a great deliverance wrought by the power of God; 
 a deliverance beyond all expectation, wrought by 
 God alone. The essence of its representation is 
 that Jehovah is a man of war, above all comparison 
 great. When He enters the field, all the machin- 
 ery of conflict stops. The lightning-like arrows 
 which fly from the bow cease in their courses; 
 the shield and the sword fall helpless to the ground; 
 the stoutest-hearted with their chariots and horses 
 drop into the inactivity of death. For Jehovah 
 is terrible. None can stand before Him when 
 His wrath begins to bum but a little. 
 
 As the Psalmist contemplates the certain de- 
 struction that befalls all the foes of Israel, when 
 Jehovah speaks, he rises from the particular to 
 
 24 
 
THE WRATH OF MAN 25 
 
 the general. He proclaims the praises of the 
 eternal and universal providence of God, as it is 
 illustrated in the great fact that even the most 
 violent passions of men are under His control, 
 and conduce only to the fulfilment of His ends. 
 "Surely," he cries, "the wrath of man shall praise 
 Thee, and the residue of wrath Thou wilt restrain," 
 or "the residue of wrath wilt Thou gird upon 
 Thee." The fundamental sense is that the ebul- 
 litions of the wrath of man, however violent and 
 outbreaking they may be, are, nevertheless, like 
 all else that occurs, under the complete control of 
 God and are employed by Him as instruments for 
 working out His ends. Like all else that comes to 
 pass, then, they illustrate God's glory. For the 
 rest, the passage teaches, according as we con- 
 strue the last half of the verse, either that all the 
 wrath of man which would not conduce to the 
 divine glory God restrains and does not permit 
 to manifest itself in action, so that the complete- 
 ness of His control over man's wrath is what is 
 emphasized; or else, that after all the wrath of 
 man raging in its utmost fury has exhausted itself 
 in vain struggles against the rising wrath of Je- 
 hovah, there remains to Jehovah, in opposition 
 to it, the fullness of wrath, with which He girds 
 Himself for action, so that the resistless might of 
 Jehovah as over against the puny weakness of 
 man is what is emphasized. We need not now 
 attempt to decide between the two interpreta- 
 
26 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 tions; it is enough to fix our minds on the main 
 declaration — this to wit: that the wrath of man 
 also is under divine control, and it too, like all 
 else that occurs in the world, conduces only to 
 the divine glory. 
 
 It is well for us to remind ourselves of this great 
 fact in a time like this. It may seem to us as if 
 the fountains of the great deep were broken up 
 and the world were on the point of being over- 
 whelmed by the violence of human passion. Men 
 seem to have broken away from the government 
 of conscience, and even from the guidance of the 
 common instincts of humanity. The whole earth 
 appears to have become a churning mass of rage. 
 We see millions of our fellow-creatures flying at 
 one another's throats in a ruthless struggle, and 
 whole countries harried and reduced to ruin. 
 Up from the battle-fields, and up from the v;asted 
 lands behind the battle-fields, rise only cries of 
 rage and despair. It is good for us to remember 
 that the Lord God Omnipotent reigns over all. 
 That all this welter of blood and iron He holds 
 well in hand. That none of it would have oc- 
 curred without His direction; that nothing can 
 occur in it apart from His appointment; and I do 
 not say merely that He will overrule it all for 
 His glory, but that all of it will conduce to His 
 praise. For, "surely the wrath of man is to Him 
 for praise, and the remainder of wraths will He 
 restrain." 
 
THE WRATH OF MAN 27 
 
 It may be hard for us to understand or even to 
 believe it — for our sight is dim and the range of 
 our vision is narrow — but all things work together 
 under God's governing hand for good. Even the 
 things which in themselves are evil, in all their 
 workings work together for good in this world of 
 ours; for it is God's world after all, and He is the 
 Governor of it, and He governs it for good, and 
 that continually. John Calvin reminds us that 
 though Satan may rage about like a roaring lion 
 seeking whom he may devour, yet he has a bit in 
 his mouth and it is God who holds the reins. 
 "Oh, Assyrian, the rod of My anger," cries Je- 
 hovah. It was for his own ends — lust of con- 
 quest, delight in power — that the Assyrian on his 
 part was doing it. He knew not that he was but 
 the instrument in God's hands for working higher 
 ends, and that when they were secured, the sword 
 would drop from his inert fingers and he would 
 himself fall on sleep. "Glorious art Thou and 
 excellent," sings the Psalmist, "more than the 
 mountains of prey: the stout-hearted are made a 
 spoil, they have slept their sleep; and none of the 
 men of might have found their hands. At thy 
 rebuke, O God of Jacob, both chariot and horse 
 are cast into a dead sleep." In the midst of the 
 turmoil of war, let us remember that war too is of 
 God, and that it, too, will in His hands work for 
 good: that even the wrath of man shall be to 
 Him for praise. 
 
28 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 But there is more than even this in the Psalm 
 for our learning, at least by implication. We 
 read in it not only of the wrath of man, but also 
 of the wrath of Jehovah; and the wrath of Je- 
 hovah is set over against the wrath of man as 
 greater than the wrath of man — greater, more 
 lasting, more prevailing. None can stand when 
 the wrath of Jehovah only begins: when all other 
 wrath is quenched the wrath of Jehovah abides — 
 He girds Himself with it and is terrible to the 
 kings of the earth. We must not then fall into 
 the fancy that all wrath is evil, and that we must 
 always and everywhere suppress it. There is a 
 righteous anger, as well as an unrighteous. Else 
 we would not read, "Be ye angry, and sin not." 
 If to be angry were already sin, we could not be 
 exhorted not to sin in our anger. God is angry. 
 He is angry with the wicked every day. His 
 wrath is revealed from heaven against all that 
 work iniquity. If it were not so, He would not 
 be a moral being: for every moral being must 
 bum with hot indignation against all wrong per- 
 ceived as such. That is precisely what we mean 
 by a moral being : a being which knows right and 
 wrong, and which approves the right and repro- 
 bates the wrong. If we do not react against the 
 wrong when we see it, in indignation and avenging 
 wrath, we are either unmoral or immoral. 
 
 Therefore also, Christ was angry. The Gos- 
 pels are filled with instances of the manifestation 
 
THE WRATH OF MAN 29 
 
 by Him of the emotion of anger in all the varieties 
 of this emotion: from mere annoyance, as when 
 He rebuked His disciples for forbidding the chil- 
 dren to be brought unto Him, to burning indigna- 
 tion, as when the imfeeling Scribes would not 
 permit Him to heal the suffering on the Sabbath 
 day — yes, even to what the Evangelists do not 
 scruple to call outbreaking rage which shook with 
 its paroxysm His whole physical frame, as when 
 He advanced to do battle with death and sin — the 
 destroyers of men — at the grave of Lazarus. Even 
 the Lamb feels and shows wrath. Christ is our 
 perfect example. And if we are to be His perfect 
 imitators, we not only may, but must, be angry; 
 we not only m.ay, but must, exhibit wrath — when- 
 ever, that is, good is assaulted and evil is exalted. 
 We too, must be found, on proper occasion, with 
 the whip of small cords in our hands; we too, 
 must not draw back when righteousness is to be 
 vindicated or when the oppressed are to be res- 
 cued. In this sense too, the wrath of man is to 
 God for praise. We please Him when we are 
 righteously angry. He who never feels stirring 
 within him the emotion of just indignation is not 
 like God in that high element of the image of 
 God in which he was made — His moral nature. 
 Indignation is an inevitable reaction of a moral 
 being in the presence of wrongdoing, and it is 
 not merely his right, but his duty to give it play 
 when righteousness demands it. 
 
30 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 No doubt we are to seek peace and ensue it. 
 But this is the peace not of the condonation of 
 evil, but of the conquest of it. We are to con- 
 quer evil in ourselves. We are to know no in- 
 ordinate anger. We are to be slow to anger and 
 quick to put it aside: we are not to let the sun 
 go down upon our wrath. We are to remember 
 that anger is a short madness, and not trust our- 
 selves too readily in wreaking it on others — even 
 when we think it righteous: not avenging our- 
 selves, but giving place to the wrath of God, 
 knowing that in His own good time and way He 
 will avenge us. W^e are to conquer it in others: 
 by the soft word which takes away anger, by the 
 patient endurance which disarms it, by the un- 
 wearying kindness which dissolves it into repen- 
 tance and love. Love is the great solvent; and 
 love is the bond of peace. Where love is, there 
 wrath will with difficulty live, and only that 
 wrath which is after all outraged love can easily 
 assert itself. But so long as there is wrongdoing 
 in the world, so long will there be a place in the 
 world for righteous indignation. 
 
 It is only when the world shall have been re- 
 made and there is no longer anything in it that 
 can hurt or destroy that the lion and the lamb shall 
 lie down together — because now the lion has 
 ceased to be a lion. These things are to us an 
 allegory. They mean that peace is the crowning 
 blessing of earthly life and comes in the train of 
 
THE WRATH OF MAN 31 
 
 righteousness. Peace is, in the strictest sense, a 
 by-product and is not to be had through direct 
 effort. He works best for the world's peace who 
 works for the world's righteousness. It is only 
 when the world shall come to know the Lord and 
 obey Him, that the peace of God can settle down 
 upon it. We may cry, "Peace, peace," and there 
 be no peace. But he who cries, "Righteousness, 
 righteousness," will find that he has brought peace 
 to the earth in precisely the measure in which he 
 has brought righteousness. Jesus Christ is the 
 Prince of Peace, because He takes away sin; and 
 you and I are workers for peace when we preach 
 His Gospel, which is the Gospel of peace just be- 
 cause it is the Gospel of deliverance from sin. Sin 
 means war, and where sin is, there will war be. 
 Righteousness means peace, and there can never 
 be peace where righteousness has not first been 
 realized. 
 
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE 
 
 Matt. 5:11:— "For My Sake." 
 
 "He came to his own and his own received him 
 not." Though they had been for generations 
 under the tutelage of the law, the schoolmaster 
 to lead them to Christ; though the forerunner 
 had come to prepare the way before Him, pro- 
 claiming repentance to be the gate to His spiritual 
 kingdom; yet He found the majority of the people 
 inflamed by earthly hopes and passions and 
 wedded to their expectation of a kingdom of 
 flesh, in which they as kings and priests should 
 revel in the discomfiture of all their enemies. 
 Consequently we find our Lord taking an early 
 opportunity in His ministry, w^hen He saw the mul- 
 titudes before Him, to teach them the real nature 
 of the kingdom which He came to found. In this 
 aspect, the Sermon on the Mount is closely anal- 
 ogous to the marvellous discourse on the Bread of 
 Life, recorded for us in the sixth chapter of John. 
 In both alike our Lord found Himself in the pres- 
 ence of a carnal-minded crowd whose hopes were 
 set upon an earthly kingdom of might and worldly 
 glory, and who sought Him only in the hope that 
 through Him they might gratify their ambitious 
 aspirations. In both alike the purpose of the 
 
 32 
 
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE 33 
 
 Divine teacher is instruction and sifting, or sifting 
 through instruction. They knew not of what 
 spirit they were; He would open to them the 
 nature of the work He came to do, the nature of 
 the spiritual kingdom He came to found. 
 
 By historical necessity, the Sermon on the 
 Mount is, then, the proclamation of the law of 
 the kingdom. How beautifully it opens! Not, 
 as the listening crowd, hanging eagerly upon the 
 lips of the wondrous teacher, expected, with a 
 clarion call to arms, or a ringing promise of re- 
 ward to him who fought valiantly for Israel. 
 Not as we might expect, with a stinging rebuke 
 to their carnal hopes and a stern correction and 
 repression of their ungentle spirit. But gently 
 and winningly, wooing Ihe hearers to the higher 
 ideal, by depicting in the most attractively simple 
 language the blessedness of those in whom should 
 be found the marks of the true children of the 
 kingdom. When the Lord speaks to His chil- 
 dren it is not in the voice of the great and strong 
 wind that rends the mountain and breaks in 
 pieces the rocks, nor in that of the earthquake, or 
 of the fire, but in that still small voice or "sound 
 of a gentle stillness" in which He spoke to Elijah 
 in the mountain. The Lion of the Tribe of Judah 
 had come and He opens His mouth and blesses 
 the people in the voice of a Lamb. 
 
 Look at this ninefold twisted cord of the be- 
 atitudes and learn what the followers of the Lamb 
 
34 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 must be. As we look does it seem a mirror giving 
 us back the lines and features of our own faces? 
 Or rather, some strange picture of an unknown 
 race brought home by some traveller to a far 
 country — a race of almost unhuman lineaments, 
 so different are they from our own? Indeed, 
 here is the portrait of the dwellers in a far land, 
 even a heavenly; here we trace in living charac- 
 ters the outlines of those who live with God; the 
 citizens of His kingdom whose home and abiding 
 city is above, where Jesus is on the right hand of 
 God. They are not of lofty carriage — but "poor 
 in spirit"; nor are they of gay countenance — 
 they "mourn" rather, and "hunger and thirst" 
 eagerly "after the righteousness" which they lack 
 within themselves; they are "merciful, poor in 
 heart, peacemakers." Surely then, they are well- 
 esteemed among men! Nay, this is another of 
 their characteristics. They are supremely lov- 
 able; but men hate them. They are persecuted 
 for their very righteousness' sake. But they have 
 their reward. Blessed are they — nay, "blessed are 
 ye — when men shall reproach you and persecute 
 you and say all manner of evil against you falsely 
 for Christ's sake. Rejoice and be exceeding glad, 
 for great is your reward in heaven." 
 
 The promises of Christ are not earthly but 
 heavenly. He promises His servants evils here 
 below; so true is it that "prosperity is the blessing 
 of the Old Testament, adversity of the New." 
 
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE 35 
 
 Yet in the midst of all this lowliness and evil, 
 they are blessed. As heaven is higher than earth 
 so high is their blessedness above any earthly 
 success or glory or delight. Though they see 
 their earthly house of this tabernacle being hter- 
 ally worn away, then, by afflictions oft and en- 
 durances many they need not faint; for even this 
 affliction is light in comparison with the weight 
 of yonder glory. More, they may rejoice and be 
 exceeding glad, for great is their reward in heaven. 
 The more suffering for Christ here, the more 
 glory with Christ there. As an old writer has 
 it, the more the vessels of mercy are scoured here, 
 the more may they be assured that God wants 
 them to shine there; the more clear it is that we 
 are being preserved not in sugar but in brine, the 
 more clear that God is preserving us not for a 
 season but for eternity. The last of the beati- 
 tudes thus pronounces blessed those who suffer 
 affliction for Christ's sake and bids them rejoice 
 and be exceeding glad, because their reward shall 
 be great 
 
 Let us punctually observe, however, that it is 
 not affliction in itself that is pronounced blessed. 
 It is affliction for Christ's sake. This is the key- 
 phrase which locks up the whole list of beatitudes. 
 For Christ's sake. It is this that transmutes pov- 
 erty of spirit into heavenly humility, that brings 
 comfort to the mourning, and glorious riches to 
 the meek, and plenty to those that hunger and 
 
36 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 thirst after righteousness. It is this that has been 
 the spring of mercy in the merciful, of purity in 
 the pure of heart, of peace in the peacemakers. 
 And it is this and this only that makes it a glory 
 to endure the scoffs and revilings and persecutions 
 of men. As truly as we may say that the blessed- 
 ness of affliction and persecution is due to its re- 
 lation to the reward, is due to the fact that it is 
 the gateway to the kingdom, so also may we say 
 that it depends on its cause. For Christ's sake 
 is the little phrase that points us to its source and 
 law. 
 
 When we selected these three words, "For my 
 sake" as the centre of our meditation this after- 
 noon, therefore, we elected to ask you to give 
 your attention this hour to the great determining 
 motive of the Christian life, above which the 
 Scriptures know no higher, above which no higher 
 can be conceived. Christ adverts to it as the 
 great moving spring of Christian activity and en- 
 durance in the ninth beatitude. When reproach 
 and persecution and reviling are endured on 
 Christ's account, then and then only are we 
 blessed. But this is not the only place or the most 
 moving way that this motive is adduced. The 
 Scriptures are full of it. Let us sum up what we 
 have to say of it in two propositions. (1) For 
 Christ's sake is the highest motive which could 
 be adduced to govern our conduct. (2) For 
 Christ's sake ought and must be our motive in all 
 
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE 37 
 
 our conduct. In other words it is the grandest 
 and most compelling, and we should make it our 
 universal and continual motive, in all our conduct 
 of life. 
 
 Let us consider then, the greatness of this motive 
 as a spring of action, and here let us observe, first, 
 that its greatness as a motive is revealed to us by 
 the greatness of the requirements that are made 
 of us on its account. This ninth beatitude is an 
 example in point. Men are expected to endure 
 reproaches and persecutions and all manner of 
 evil for Christ's sake. That is, "for Christ's 
 sake" is expected to sweeten the bitterest cup, 
 and to make every affliction joyful to us. Dis- 
 graceful scourgings, unjust imprisonments (Matt. 
 10:18), burning hates (10:22), malignant slanders 
 (Luke 6:22), death itself (Matt. 10:39), and that 
 with the utmost refinement of cruelty and the 
 deepest depths of disgrace; all these are enumer- 
 ated for us as things before which no Christian 
 should hesitate when it is for Christ's sake. All 
 these are things which Christians have joyfully 
 met with praises on their lips for Christ's sake. 
 The enumeration in the eleventh chapter of He- 
 brews is but a bare catalogue of what since then 
 has been endured with delight by those who bore 
 this strengthening talisman in their bosom. For 
 Christ's sake. These too have had trial of mock- 
 ings and scourgings, of bonds and imprisonments, 
 of stonings and sawings asunder, and of long 
 
38 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 lives of privation in deserts and eaves and have 
 for Christ's sake witnessed a good confession. 
 These all, in one word, have testified to us the 
 supreme strength of the motive "for Christ's 
 sake," by joyfully suffering everything for Christ, 
 that they might be glorified with Him, becoming 
 sharers in His sufferings that they might be par- 
 ticipants in His glory. 
 
 And this leads us to observe, secondly, that the 
 greatness of this motive is revealed to us by the 
 greatness of the promises that are attached to 
 living by it. So in this ninth beatitude, those 
 who are afflicted for Christ's sake are pronounced 
 blessed, and are called upon to rejoice and be ex- 
 ceeding glad, because — because, so it is added, 
 "great is your reward in heaven." And so is it 
 everywhere. "Every one" it is said, without 
 exception (Matt. 19:39), "every one that hath 
 left houses or brethren or sisters or fathers or 
 mothers or children or lands for my name's sake, 
 shall receive a hundredfold and shall inherit eter- 
 nal life." Thus it is that those whose eyes are 
 opened may see the recompense of the reward 
 and may be enabled to account the reproach of 
 Christ greater riches than the treasures of Egypt. 
 He that denieth Christ before men may, indeed, 
 receive the applause of men; but men pass away 
 and their applause is empty air. But, he that 
 denieth men for Christ's sake is received into the 
 eternal habitations. "He that findeth his life 
 
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE 39 
 
 shall lose it; but he that loseth his life for my sake 
 shall find it." If we suffer with Him so also shall 
 we be glorified together with Him (Rom. 8:17). 
 There is, indeed, no limit to the reward promised; 
 truly "great is our reward in heaven." And the 
 greatness of the motive may be justly measured 
 by the greatness of the reward. As high as heaven 
 is above earth, as long as eternity is beyond time, 
 as great as perfection is above lack, as strong as 
 stability is above that which endureth but a 
 moment; so high is the heavenly reward above 
 the earthly suffering and so strong is the motive to 
 act for Christ's sake. 
 
 But, thirdly, let us observe that the greatness 
 of this motive is revealed to us by the fact that 
 God honours it as the motive of His own most mys- 
 terious acts of redemption. He not only asks us 
 to do for Christ's sake what is hard for us, but He 
 Himself for Christ's sake does what is hard for 
 Him. What could be more difficult for a just and 
 holy God than to pardon sin and take the sinner 
 into His most intimate love and communion.^ 
 Yet for Christ's sake God does even this. "I 
 write unto you, little children," says the beloved 
 Apostle, "because your sins are forgiven you for 
 his name's sake" (1 John 2:12). All the instru- 
 mentalities of grace are set at work in the world, 
 only for Christ's sake. It is for His sake that we 
 are accepted by God, that we have the gift of 
 the Spirit, that we are regenerated, adopted, jus- 
 
40 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 tified, sanctified, glorified. Nay, even the little 
 things of life are for His sake. It is not only for 
 His sake that we are received by God, but for 
 His sake that we are treated even here and now 
 while yet sinners as God's children, allowed free- 
 dom of access to the Throne of Grace, and have 
 all our petitions (little and great alike) heard and 
 answered. "Verily I say unto you," says the 
 Saviour, "whatever ye shall ask in my name, that 
 will I do" (Jno. 14:13). 
 
 And thus we are led finally to observe that the 
 greatness of the motive rests on the greatness of 
 Christ's work for us. As He has stopped at noth- 
 ing for our sakes, so we must not stop at anything 
 for His sake. All that we are and all that we 
 have are His. And as He has loved us and given 
 Himself for us, so must we love Him and give 
 ourselves to Him. Behind the phrase "for thy 
 sake" lurks thus all the motive power of a great 
 love, the fruit of a great gratitude. As we can 
 never repay Him for our redemption, so there is 
 nothing that we can pause at, if done for His 
 sake. Is not this the core of the whole matter.^ 
 What difference will it make to us what men may 
 judge or what they will do? Need we hesitate 
 because they consider us beside ourselves.^ If 
 this is lunacy, it is a blessed lunacy! Nay, shall 
 we not rather say with the Apostle of old, " whether 
 we be beside ourselves it is to God. . . . For the 
 love of Christ constraineth us." And why should 
 
FOR CHRIST'S SAKE 41 
 
 the love of Christ constrain us? "Because we 
 thus judge, that if one died for all then all died; 
 and He died for all that those that live should no 
 longer live unto themselves, but unto Him who 
 for their sakes died and rose again." Yes, here 
 it is : for our sakes He died and rose again. And 
 because He died for our sakes, we shall live for 
 Him, yea, and if need be, for His sake also die. 
 Is there, can there be asked, a stronger motive 
 than this.f^ 
 
 Or need we ask at this point how universal is 
 this obligation — how far, into what details of life, 
 we should carry it as our motive .^^ It is clear that 
 there can be no call so great that this motive 
 should not dominate it; we must be glad and will- 
 ing to go to death itself "for His sake." But 
 perhaps, the other side needs emphasis too. Can 
 there be a call so small that this motive need not 
 govern us.^ Nay, we are bought with a price and 
 are asked not only to be ready to die, but also 
 (sometimes a harder task) to be ready to live for 
 Christ. Whatever we do, however small, how- 
 ever seemingly insignificant — must needs be for 
 Him. We are now new creatures — no more 
 worldlings but Christ's children; let us see to it 
 that we live like Christ's own children; doing all 
 we do for Him and for His sake. So the Scrip- 
 tures teach us to do: "Whatsoever ye do in word 
 or in deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus, 
 giving thanks to God the Father through Him." 
 
42 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 "Whatsoever ye do, do from the soul, as unto the 
 Lord, and not unto men; knowing that from the 
 Lord ye shall receive the recompense of the m- 
 heritance." (Col. 3:17, 23.) As Christians, let 
 us be Christians, recognizably followers of Christ, 
 doing His will in all we do and trying our duty at 
 every stage simply by these questions: Is it ac- 
 cording to His will.^ Does it subserve His glory? 
 Is it for His sake? So doing, we cannot but ap- 
 prove ourselves before man and God as followers 
 of Him. 
 
THIS- AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS 
 
 Matt. 6:33: — "But seek ye first his kingdom and his righteous- 
 ness; and all these things shall be added unto you." 
 
 This verse is in a sense the summing up of the 
 whole lesson of the Sermon on the Mount up to 
 this point. This great discourse had opened 
 with an enumeration of the classes to whom the 
 advent of the kingdom would bring joy and bless- 
 ing, in whom the leading characteristic is seen to 
 be other- worldliness. It then proceeded to enun- 
 ciate the law of the kingdom, which demanded 
 holiness before God rather than external right- 
 eousness before men. At the nineteenth verse of 
 the sixth chapter the summing up begins with a 
 direct appeal to lay aside care for earthly things 
 and to set the mind on heavenly things. This 
 summing up culminates and finds its fullest ex- 
 pression in the verse before us: "But seek ye first 
 the kingdom of God and his righteousness; and 
 all these things shall be added unto you." This is 
 the precipitate of the whole sermon; in a few 
 words it contrasts the two cares which press on 
 man, the two seekings which may engage his at- 
 tention. It does not commend to us a nerveless 
 life of Buddhist-like retirement from desire and 
 destruction of activity. It presupposes in all 
 men who are men, desire, energy, activity directed 
 
 43 
 
44 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 to a goal. But it discriminates activities and 
 goals. We are to seek. But not what the heathen 
 seek — worldly ease and goods and advantages. 
 We are to seek heavenly things. Hence, it bans 
 one class of seekings and commends the other. 
 Our chief end is not to gain earthly things but 
 heavenly. 
 
 Approaching the verse somewhat more closely, 
 we observe of it — that it is a protest against prac- 
 tical atheism. There is a formal atheism of opin- 
 ions and words and reasonings which declares 
 that there is no God and seeks to sophisticate the 
 understanding into believing that there is none. 
 This the Bible describes as an open folly: the 
 fool has said in his heart, There is no God. But 
 even when the lip and the mind behind the lip 
 are true to right reason and confess that there is 
 a God who rules the world and to whom Ve are 
 responsible in our every thought and word and 
 deed, there is often a practical atheism that lives 
 as if there were no God. Formal atheism denies 
 God; practical atheism is guilty of the possibly 
 even more astounding sin of forgetting the God it 
 confesses. How many men who would not think 
 of saying even in their hearts. There is no God, 
 deny Him practically by ordering their lives as if 
 He were not.^^ And even among those who yield, 
 in their lives, a practical as well as a formal ac- 
 knowledgment of God, many yet manage, prac- 
 tically, to deny in their lives that this God, ac- 
 
THIS- AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS 45 
 
 knowledged and served, is the Lord of all the earth. 
 How prone we are to limit and circumscribe the 
 sphere in which we practically allow for God! 
 We feel His presence and activity in some things 
 but not in others; we seek His blessing in some 
 matters but not in others; we look for His guid- 
 ance in some affairs but not in others; we can 
 trust Him in some crises and with some of our 
 hopes but not in or with others. This too is a 
 practical atheism. And it is against all such prac- 
 tical atheism that our passage enters its protest. 
 It protests against men living as if they were the 
 builders of their own houses, the architects of their 
 own fortunes. It protests against men reckoning 
 in anything without God. 
 
 How are we to order our lives .^ How are we 
 to provide for our households — or, for our own 
 bodily wants.? Is it true that we can trust the 
 eternal welfare of our souls to God and cannot 
 trust to Him the temporal welfare of our bodies.? 
 Is it true that He has provided salvation for us 
 at the tremendous cost of the death of His Son, 
 and will not provide food for us to eat and 
 clothes for us to wear at the cost of the directive 
 word that speaks and it is done.? Is it true 
 that we can stand by the bedside of our dying 
 friend and send him forth into eternity in good 
 confidence in God, and cannot send that same 
 friend forth into the world with any confidence 
 that God will keep him there.? O, the prac- 
 
46 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 tical atheism of many of our earthly cares and 
 earthly anxieties! Can we not read the lessons 
 of the birds of heaven and the lilies of the field 
 which our Father feeds and clothes? What a 
 rebuke these lessons are to our practical atheism, 
 which says, in effect, that we cannot trust God 
 for our earthly prosperity but must bid Him wait 
 until we make good our earthly fortunes before 
 we can afford to turn to Him. How many men 
 do actually think that it is unreasonable to serve 
 God at the expense of their business activity? 
 To give Him their first and most energetic ser- 
 vice? How many think it would be unreasonable 
 in God to put His service before their provision for 
 themselves and family? How many of us who 
 have been able to "risk" ourselves, do not think 
 that we can "risk" our families in God's keeping? 
 How subtle the temptations ! But, here our Lord 
 brushes them all away in the calm words, "Seek 
 ye first the kingdom of God and his righteousness ; 
 and all these things shall be added unto you." 
 Is this not a rebuke to our practical atheism? 
 But the verse does not take the form of a re- 
 buke; it takes the form of an appeal; and we 
 observe next of it, therefore, that it is an appeal 
 to make God's kingdom and righteousness the 
 prime objects of our life. And looking closely at 
 it we see that it is not an empty appeal but in- 
 cludes a promise. We are, primarily, to make 
 God's kingdom and righteousness our chief con- 
 
THIS- AND OTHER- WORLDLINESS 47 
 
 cem; but, doing so, we shall more surely secure 
 the earthly things we need. The passage does 
 not proceed on the presumption that we do not 
 need these earthly things; it asserts our need of 
 them. It does not proceed on the assumption 
 that they are not to be in their appropriate place 
 and order and way the objects of seeking. It 
 merely corrects our mode of seeking them. We 
 may seek them without and apart from God or 
 we may seek them in and of God. It tells us that 
 the former way — the atheistic way, in which we 
 seek to provide for ourselves — is the way not to 
 get them; the latter way in which we seek them 
 in and from God is the way to get them. Who 
 can doubt it.? 
 
 In the first place we have God's promise. He 
 tells us that if we will seek first His Kingdom and 
 His righteousness He will add all these things. He 
 tells us in effect that to godliness there is the prom- 
 ise both of this world and of the world to come. 
 Men find it hard to believe this. It is a standing 
 problem of the wise of the earth and has been 
 from Job's day down. But we have the promise. 
 
 In the next place we may add, despite the diffi- 
 culties of life and the clouding of judgment, it, 
 after all, does stand to reason. Isn't, after all, it 
 the best way to secure the reward, to enter into 
 the service of the King.? And God is the King 
 of all the earth. How shall we obtain the goods 
 of the earth better than by hearty service of the 
 
48 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 King of the earth? True we shall obtain them as 
 gifts and not as acquired by us. But is not the 
 best path for man, to seek them at His hands? 
 The King suffers not His faithful servants to 
 want. 
 
 But more fundamentally still, we may add that 
 it belongs to the very nature of things. If we 
 want to enjoy those earthly goods which God has 
 placed in this world for the benefit and use of His 
 children, the best way to secure their enjoyment 
 is obviously not to seek to do it individually but 
 socially. It is a social axiom that everything that 
 betters the condition of society as a whole increases 
 our enjoyment of our material goods. A savage 
 acquires a pot of gold. How shall he enjoy it? 
 His fellow savages covet it; and who shall secure 
 it to him? He is liable to be waylaid at night for 
 it. Every bush hides an enemy; the poisoned 
 arrow may fly upon him from any tree; his sleep 
 is driven from him as he seeks to protect his life. 
 Hidden by friendly darkness he may bury his 
 treasure under some great tree in the tangled 
 forest; and anxiously guard its neighbourhood lest 
 he may have been watched and still be bereft of 
 it. In such conditions there is no enjoyment of 
 the treasure for him; he can enjoy only the pro- 
 tection of it. But, now, he is a wise savage and 
 instead of giving his energies to protecting his 
 treasure, he gives it to civilizing his people. Out 
 of the savage tribe rise the rudiments of a state; 
 
THIS- AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS 49 
 
 the majesty of law emerges— protecting under 
 its powerful aegis the person and property of its 
 citizens. What a change! No need of hiding 
 the treasure now. He can wear it displayed upon 
 his person. He now can enjoy at least its pos- 
 session. But a higher stage is still possible; the 
 community may be not only civiHzed but Chris- 
 tianized; Christian principles take the place of 
 external laws; love the place of force. And he, 
 touched with the same spirit, goes about with his 
 treasure, transmuting it into aid for the suffering 
 and needy. Now he is truly enjoying it, enjoying, 
 not only protecting it, not only possessing it but 
 using it. When such a time fully comes to this 
 world of ours — that is what we mean by the Mil- 
 lennium — the kingdom of God has come for 
 which we daily pray in the prayer our Lord has 
 taught us, when men no longer prey on one an- 
 other but help and support one another. 
 
 Meanwhile how shall we approach it.^ By cur 
 Lord's prescription— by seeking the kingdom of 
 God and His righteousness. In proportion as we 
 seek and find this kingdom, in the measure in 
 which we bring it into practical life in the narrow 
 circle around us, is it not necessarily true that we 
 shall have and enjoy the best goods of this earth.? 
 Is there not a deep foundation in the nature of 
 things for our Lord's promise: "Seek ye first the 
 kingdom of God and his righteousness; and all 
 these things shall be added to you?" Is not this 
 
50 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 the most hopeful way to obtain and hold and 
 enjoy these other things? 
 
 But it is time for us to take note of another and 
 the most characteristic element in this appeal. 
 When we observe it narrowly we will see that it is 
 not an appeal to seek the kingdom of God and 
 His righteousness on the ground that this is the 
 best way to obtain the other goods. It does not 
 say: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness" "because" — but simply "and" 
 — "and all these things shall be added unto you." 
 It is a fact that Godliness has also the promise of 
 this life, but that is not the reason why Godliness 
 should be sought. It is a better reason that it 
 has the promise of the life to come. It is a bet- 
 ter reason still that it is Godliness. Nor does our 
 passage itself fail to bring this out. It does not 
 say "and all these things shall be your reward." 
 It does not propose to pay us for seeking God's 
 Kingdom and righteousness by giving us earthly 
 things. It says: "and all these things shall be 
 added unto you." The Greek word is not the 
 word for pay, reward, but for the small gratuitous 
 addition to the promised wages, given as we should 
 say "in the bargain." The worldly goods that 
 come to us are in a word here represented not as 
 our reward, but as something "in the bargain." 
 The appeal of the passage is made to rest else- 
 where; that is, in the contrast between goods 
 earthly and goods heavenly. We are to seek the 
 
THIS- AND OTHER-WORLDLINESS 51 
 
 heavenly, not for the sake of the earthly, but for 
 their own sake. For, as Paul says, after all the 
 Kingdom of God is not meat and drink but 
 righteousness. And our passage sets, as Bengel 
 points out, this celestial food and drink over 
 against the earthly. 
 
 Herein resides the "hft" of the passage. It 
 places the highest good before us — God and His 
 righteousness — fellowship with God; and pries at 
 our hearts with this great lever of. Who will seek 
 earthly food and drink when they can seek the 
 kingdom of God and His righteousness.? In the 
 restitution of the harmony between man and God 
 thus involved, every blessing is included. Here is 
 something worth losing all earthly joys for. Here 
 is something worth the labour of men, the very end 
 of whose being is to glorify God and enjoy Him 
 forever. Would we not purchase it with loss of all 
 earthly — if we can speak of loss in the exchange 
 of the less for the greater.? Will we not take this 
 for our seeking when in addition to this great 
 reward, we shall have also "all these things added 
 to us".? See the tenderness of our Lord in this 
 constant regard for our human weakness. 
 
 And there is another tender word in the pas- 
 sage when restored to its right reading, which 
 reaches down into our hearts to summon another 
 motive from their depths, whereby we may be led 
 to seek God's kingdom and righteousness. The 
 fact that this is the best way to obtain these very 
 
52 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 eaTthly blessings which we need may be a suffi- 
 cient motive. The glory of the things sought 
 may be a higher and more prevailing motive. 
 But there is a more powerful one still; it is 
 love — love not to a principle but to a person. 
 And our Lord does not fail to touch on this. 
 In its right reading the passage does not run: 
 "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and His 
 righteousness," but " Seek ye first His king- 
 dom and His righteousness." And the ante- 
 cedent to "His" is "your heavenly Father." 
 Here our Lord is tugging at our hearts. " For 
 your heavenly Father knoweth that ye have 
 need of all these things. But seek ye first His 
 kingdom and His — your heavenly Father's — 
 righteousness; and all these things shall be added 
 unto you." Did we say the passage is a protest? 
 Did we say it is a command.? Do we not now 
 see that it is rather a pleading .^^ O, the subtlety 
 of love! Love speaks here to us; will not love 
 respond in us.'^ Under such pleading what can 
 we do but seek first our heavenly Father's 
 kingdom, our heavenly Father's righteousness.'^ 
 And because He is our Father, we are sure both 
 that we shall find it, and with it — how compari- 
 tively little it seems now! — whatever else we 
 need, added to us. 
 
LIGHT AND SHINING 
 
 Mark 4:21-25: — "And he said unto them. Is the lamp brought 
 to be put under the bushel, or under the bed, and not to be put 
 on the stand? For there is nothing hid, save that it should be 
 manifested; neither was anything made secret, but that it should 
 come to light. If any man hath ears to hear, let him hear. And 
 he said unto them, Take heed what ye hear: with what measure 
 ye mete it shall be measured unto you; and more shall be given 
 unto you. For he that hath, to him shall be given: and he that 
 hath not, from him shall be taken away even that which he hath." 
 
 One of the peculiarities of our Lord's method 
 of teaching is His repeated use of a number of fav- 
 ourite sayings — or maxims, we may call them — in 
 varied connexions and in differing applications. 
 This gives a remarkable piquancy to His speech 
 and must at the time have served the double 
 purpose of fixing the several teachings which He 
 embodied in these gnomic sayings firmly in the 
 minds of His hearers, and of attracting them to the 
 matter of them as something peculiarly weighty. 
 In the passage before us we have a cluster of 
 these "proverbs," all of which meet us elsewhere 
 and sometimes with other applications, but which 
 are combined here to give pregnancy and force 
 to the specific message of this passage. Here is 
 the beautiful parable of the lamp. Here is 
 the amazing paradox of secrecy in order to open- 
 ness. Here is the crisp proverb that ears are 
 
 53 
 
54 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 given for hearing. Here is the simile of equitable 
 measures. Here is the gnome of the relation of 
 possession to receptivity. No one of these is a 
 stranger to readers of the Gospels. They are 
 found elsewhere also in much the same connexion 
 as here; but they are found elsewhere also in 
 other connexions. They are marshalled to- 
 gether here to give wings to a specific teaching. 
 
 What is that specific teaching .^^ 
 
 Well, there is too much in it — too much depth 
 of suggestion, too many implications of meaning, 
 for us to attempt to draw it all out at once. But 
 we may direct our attention to at least four 
 things that lie on the surface. Obviously this 
 cluster of sayings lays before us an important 
 declaration, presses on our attention an urgent 
 exhortation, reveals to us a profound philosophy 
 of life, and founds on this a serious warning. 
 Let us attend for a moment to these four things. 
 
 The important declaration that is made in 
 these sayings amounts to this: that there is no 
 esoteric element in Christian teaching. This is 
 the primary suggestion of the parable of the lamp 
 and the explicit assertion of the startling paradox 
 which immediately follows it, to the efiPect that 
 "there is nothing hid save that it may be man- 
 ifested, neither has anything been made secret 
 save that it might come abroad." For a lamp 
 exists, the parable tells us, for no other purpose 
 but to illuminate; it comes not to be put under 
 
LIGHT AND SHINING 55 
 
 the bushel or under the couch, but on the stand — 
 that its light may shine. And, the paradox adds, 
 there is to be nothing cryptic or apocryphal in the 
 whole sphere of Christian teaching. It is, in 
 effect, the very contradiction of Christianity as 
 truth, to imagine that it can exist for any other 
 end but to serve the purpose of truth — to en- 
 lighten. 
 
 The strength of our Lord's emphasis on this 
 important declaration just on this occasion finds 
 its explanation of course in the need that had 
 arisen to guard from misapprehension His own 
 methods of teaching. For a change had just 
 been introduced into His modes of instruction, 
 from which His disciples might be tempted to 
 infer that Christianity was a double system, 
 with an esoteric and an exoteric aspect. Our 
 Lord, who had hitherto spoken plainly, had sud- 
 denly begun to speak in parables; and He had 
 not concealed from His disciples that His object 
 was to veil His meaning. Was there not intro- 
 duced thus the full-blown system of esoterism? 
 It is to correct this not unnatural inference that 
 our Lord declares so emphatically that the truth 
 He is teaching — even in parabolic form — is a 
 lamp, and has for its one end to shine; that what 
 is now hid and made secret under this parabolic 
 veil, is hid and made secret not that it may not be 
 made known, but just that it may be made known. 
 The impulse to use parables thus arises from wis- 
 
56 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 dom and prudence in teaching, not from a desire 
 to conceal. He teaches in parables in order 
 that He may teach; not in order that He may 
 not teach. This method of veiled teaching, in a 
 word, is forced on Him by the conditions under 
 which He is teaching and arises from the state 
 of mind of His hearers; it is not chosen by Him 
 in order to conceal His meaning, but in order to 
 convey it to those for whom it is intended. It is 
 with Him either to teach thus or not to teach at 
 all; and He consequently teaches thus. This is 
 the fundamental doctrine of parabolic teaching. 
 I do not say it is the whole account to be given of 
 it; we may see in the sequel that there is more to 
 say, and that the adoption of paraboHc teaching 
 has a punitive side — as, indeed, it could not fail 
 to have — with reference to those who could and 
 would not endure sound doctrine; whom it puz- 
 zled, therefore, rather than instructed. But this 
 is the fundamental account of it. 
 
 We may see this from an illustration. Take 
 as such the teaching which was the immediate 
 occasion of these remarks of our Lord's. He 
 had just been delivering the first cycle of the 
 parables of the Kingdom. Why had He taught 
 the fundamental facts as to the Kingdom in par- 
 ables? Briefly, because He could not have taught 
 them in any other way. For His conception of 
 the Kingdom was at just the antipodes of that of 
 the people He was addressing. Should he have 
 
LIGHT AND SHINING 57 
 
 plainly and didactically proclaimed just what 
 their error was, just what the truth was? He 
 certainly would have been understood in that 
 case. But there would have been an end to His 
 teaching and so of His mission as Teacher. And 
 so, instead, He told them some beautiful stories. 
 In these stories He embodied the whole funda- 
 mental doctrine of the Kingdom. What was the 
 effect? To those open to His instruction the 
 whole doctrine of the Kingdom was conveyed. 
 Those not receptive to it were simply puzzled; 
 instead of being outraged and driven to violence, 
 they were simply puzzled and thrown back into 
 dull inertia. When He said, the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is like the sower, and the like, they could 
 only look perplexed and shake their heads. The 
 Kingdom of Heaven as they understood it was 
 like nothing less than these things. What could 
 He mean? And thus He obtained opportunity — 
 the Great Sower that He was — to sow His seed 
 and to exemplify His own parable. Meanwhile 
 receptive souls pondered and understood, under- 
 stood, that is, more or less. For even His own 
 disciples, nay, the Apostles themselves, were not 
 yet capable of receiving the truth in its purity 
 and entirety. And, accordingly to them too. He 
 taught as occasion offered, in parables, by which 
 He lodged the truth in their minds that it might 
 germinate and grow. 
 
 Nothing is more obvious than that this wise 
 
58 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 prudence in the mode of disseminating the truth 
 has nothing in common with esoteric teaching; 
 and our Lord's broad denial of esoterism was as 
 justified as it was needed. A lamp that is shaded 
 is shaded, not for the benefit of the lamp, as if it 
 were too good for common use, or existed for some 
 other end than enlightening, but for some extrinsic 
 end. There may be a violence of wind from which 
 it needs temporary protection; there may be weak- 
 ness of eyes which require guarding. So with the 
 truth which Jesus came to teach. It is not too 
 sacred for the knowledge of men; it exists to be 
 known. But it may require temporary protec- 
 tion from violent opposition; it may require 
 veiling because of the weakness of men's under- 
 standing. Hence it is spoken under the veil of 
 parables. But this is that it may be spoken, 
 that it may be made known, and not that it may 
 be concealed. No crypticism, no apocryphalism 
 is in place here ! 
 
 Accordingly, then, within this declaration there 
 is embodied also an urgent exhortation. It is 
 interlaced with the declaration in this passage of 
 Mark^so as to be scarcely distinguishable from it. 
 Elsewhere it is brought out most explicitly and 
 with tremendous emphasis. It is an exhortation 
 to the recipients of the truth to see to it that it is 
 not quenched in the darkness of their own hearts, 
 but permitted to act in accordance with its nature 
 as light — to shine. In Matthew, for example, we 
 
 i 
 
LIGHT AND SHINING 59 
 
 read: "Even so let your light shine before men, 
 that they may see your good works and glorify 
 your Father which is in heaven." Here it appears 
 only in the way of implication. Jesus says in 
 eflFect: The truth I am delivering in this veiled 
 form is, like all truth, of the nature of light; it 
 comes to enlighten; temporarily it is veiled, but, 
 emphatically, it is hid only that it may be man- 
 ifested; it is made secret only that it may come 
 to light. Ye are my chosen witnesses; to you I 
 say with significant emphasis, "If any man have 
 ears to hear, let him hear." There is a subtle 
 implication that not the truth only which He 
 spoke is the lamp, brought to be put on the stand; 
 but these disciples of His, to whom the truth has 
 been brought, have been lighted by the truth, 
 and having been lighted, are lighted that they too 
 may shine. In effect, there is a solemn commis- 
 sion given here to His disciples — not to His 
 Apostles only, but (as. verse 10 shows), to the 
 whole body of His disciples, to see to it that what 
 He is now preaching in parables shall be in its 
 due season brought out on the housetop. There 
 is careful provision made, in a word, for the cul- 
 tivation of the seed He was now sowing. He was 
 speaking in parables — the times required it — but 
 they are to see to it that what is thus taught 
 veiledly shall in due time be announced openly. 
 
 No doubt, in this whole procedure, there is di- 
 vine sanction given to the principle of wise adap- 
 
60 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 tation of our preaching to times and circum- 
 stance. But, O, how easy it is to misapply this 
 principle and pervert it to cowardly ends of per- 
 sonal profit. Preach to our times? Yes, of 
 course. But preach what to our times? Our 
 Lord's example does not give warrant to the sup- 
 pression of unpalatable truth. It only sets an 
 example of how still to preach the unpalatable 
 truth while staving off for the fitting time the 
 inevitable rupture, and providing for its full 
 proclamation in the end. He spoke in parables? 
 Why in parables? First, because by speaking in 
 parables, He could still teach the unpalatable 
 truth. If He had been willing to suppress the 
 unpalatable truth He would have had no need of 
 preaching in parables. There will be no need of a 
 veil if we remove the thing to be veiled. And 
 secondly, because He would so teach the unpala- 
 table truth, that men must needs hear it before 
 they know what they are hearing, and thus He 
 would catch them with holy guile. You see 
 there is nothing here so little as an example of 
 suppression of the truth. There is only an exam- 
 ple of finding a way to preach to men, despite 
 their opposition, what they do not choose to hear. 
 Christ does not yield to men; He triumphs over 
 men. And this is the commission He gives to us: 
 Let your light shine! Do not think you are imi- 
 tating Him when you quench your light; when 
 you permit the clamours of men to drown your 
 
LIGHT AND SHINING 61 
 
 voice of teaching. You imitate Him only when, 
 despite men's opposition, you find a way to make 
 your voice heard and the truth with which you 
 are charged a power among them. Silent, Christ 
 was not; compromising. He was not; He was 
 only persistently inventive in modes of procla- 
 mation. You imitate Him least of all when you 
 put your light under a bushel or under a couch; 
 to be like Him you must let your light shine. 
 
 It is already clear to us, no doubt, that there is 
 implicit in this passage a fully developed philos- 
 ophy both of teaching and of life. Why did 
 Christ preach in parables? To conceal the truth 
 or to teach the truth? The proper answer is, 
 of course, both. The two are not mutually ex- 
 clusive. Fundamentally we say, it was in order 
 to teach the truth. Proximately it was, of course, 
 so far to conceal the truth as to be able to teach 
 it in the circumstances in which He stood. People 
 who would not listen when He told them plainly 
 what the Kingdom He came to found was like, 
 would listen to His story and so have the unpal- 
 atable truth told them before they were aware. 
 But this is not the whole story. There is more 
 to be said and Christ says it. Truth so taught 
 becomes a touchstone and discriminates among 
 men. When Jesus said "the Kingdom of God 
 is like to . . ." that was an opening familiar 
 enough to the whole body of His audience. The 
 most rigid Pharisee, the most fanatical zealot 
 
62 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 would prick up his ears at that. But when He 
 went on and told them what — in His view — the 
 Kingdom of God was like, what would the Phar- 
 isee, what would the zealot, make of that? Noth- 
 ing. The disciples themselves could not make 
 much of it. The others naturally could make 
 nothing. Thus, the method of teaching by par- 
 ables, certainly did not succeed in illuminating all. 
 The plainest teaching under heaven could not 
 have illuminated those minds. They were too 
 filled with preconceptions, prejudices, personal 
 desires, to be accessible to the truth. How could 
 veiled teaching dispel their darkness? It could 
 only avail to make the darkness of their minds 
 deeper; they could only say in puzzlement, "We 
 do not understand ! " How can the glorious King- 
 dom of Heaven — God come to triumph over Is- 
 rael's foes, how can this be like the sower sowing 
 His seed, and the like? So our Saviour explains 
 that the teaching is given to them in parables, 
 that seeing they may see and not understand. 
 In effect, parabolic teaching becomes the test of 
 men. Whether men understand or do not under- 
 stand the teaching veiled in the parable, is the 
 revelation of their state of mind and heart, or, as 
 it is fashionable nowadays to call it, of their 
 receptivity. Parabolic teaching then comes into 
 the world as a rock of decision; those who are 
 open to the truth understand, those not open to 
 the truth do not understand. 
 
LIGHT AND SHINING 63 
 
 Observe how pointedly our Lord develops this 
 idea in the later verses of our passage; with what 
 piercing directness He asserts the effect in the 
 last verse of all : For he that hath to him shall be 
 given, and he that hath not from him shall be 
 taken away even that which he hath. Here is 
 the underlying philosophy of parabolic teaching; 
 and along with it of all teaching. And is it not 
 so, our own hearts being the judge.? Let the 
 parables fall on the ears of one instructed in the 
 Kingdom of Heaven and how beautifully rich in 
 their teaching they are. Points of attachment 
 are discovered at every step and the conceptions 
 that rest half-formed in us are developed in the 
 richest manner. Let them fall on the minds in 
 which no thought of the Kingdom of Heaven was 
 ever lodged; and they are but as rocks in the sky. 
 All teaching as to divine and heavenly things is, 
 in a measure, parabolic; we can reach above the 
 world and ourselves only by symbols. All such 
 teaching comes to us, then, as a test, and the prox- 
 imate account of its varied reception may be 
 found in the condition of the ears that hear it. 
 Have we ears to hear this music. f^ Or does it 
 beat a vain jangling discord only in our ears.^* 
 The philosophy of the progress of the Kingdom in 
 the world rests on the one fact — the condition of 
 the hearer. He that has ears to hear, hears; 
 he that has no ears to hear this music, remains 
 unmoved. 
 
64 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Accordingly, then, the passage culminates in 
 a great warning. "Take heed how ye hear." 
 And this warning is supported by the verses al- 
 ready incidentally adduced: "With what measure 
 ye mete . . ." ; "He that hath . . . ; He that 
 hath not ..." The warning is, of course, of 
 universal application. It is spoken here to 
 Christ's immediate disciples, and it is most im- 
 mediately a warning to them to look with care 
 and loving scrutiny on the teaching He was giv- 
 ing about the Kingdom. Do you not fail, it 
 says, to hear and ponder; to understand and 
 profit by this teaching. But it stretches further. 
 As we, too, are His disciples it comes in these 
 times also to us. Let us not fail to-day to hear 
 and ponder and understand and profit by the 
 teaching brought to us by these pungent words! 
 
CHILDLIKENESS 
 
 Mark 10:15: — "Verily I say unto you. Whosoever shall not re- 
 ceive the Kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter 
 therein." 
 
 The declaration embodied in this verse, ap- 
 parently very simple, and certainly perfectly 
 clear in its general sense, is not without its per- 
 plexities when examined in its detailed implica- 
 tions. The occasion of its enunciation was an 
 incident in the life of our Lord which manifests 
 His beautiful tenderness as few others of those 
 narrated in the Gospels. In the prosecution of 
 His mission He went up and down the land, as we 
 are told, "doing good." It was characteristic 
 of His teaching that the common people heard 
 Him gladly. It was of the essence of the benefi- 
 cent impression that He made that He drew to 
 Him all who were afflicted and were suffering 
 with diverse diseases. 
 
 The Evangelists stud their narratives thickly 
 with accounts of how the people flocked to him, 
 bringing all their sick and receiving from Him 
 healing of body and mind. This appeared to 
 His closest followers well worth while. It was all 
 part of his office as One sent from God to heal the 
 hurt of Israel. But the people did not stop 
 there. Mothers brought their babies also to Him, 
 
 65 
 
66 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 and asked Him to lay His hands on them and bless 
 them, too. Here His disciples drew the line. 
 These babies were not sick and did not need the 
 healing touch of the Great Physician. By the 
 very fact that they were babies they were incap- 
 able of profiting by His wonderful words. To 
 intrude them upon His attention was to interfere 
 unwarrantably with His prosecution of His press- 
 ing labors, and to supplant those who had superior 
 claims on His time and strength. So the dis- 
 ciples rebuked the parents and would fain have 
 sent the babies away. 
 
 But the Lord, perceiving what was toward, was 
 moved with indignation and intervened with His 
 great, "Let the little children come to me, pre- 
 vent them not." And taking them in His own 
 arms. He laid His hands on them and blessed 
 them; the word employed being a very emphatic 
 one, meaning a calhng down fervently of blessings 
 upon the objects of the prayer. The mothers 
 went away comforted, bearing their blessed babies 
 in their arms. 
 
 What a picture we have here of the Master's 
 loving -kindness ! It is not strange if, when we 
 read the narrative, we stop, first of all, to adore 
 and love Him. It is a revelation of the charac- 
 ter of Jesus; and what can we contemplate with 
 more profit than the character of Jesus .^ But 
 we soon begin to realize that the incident is 
 freighted with instruction for us relatively to 
 
CHILDLIKENESS 67 
 
 our Lord's mission as well, and to question what 
 messages it brings us from this point of view. 
 We ask why was our Lord "moved with indigna- 
 tion" at His disciples for intercepting the ap- 
 proach of the mothers with their babies to Him. 
 They meant well; surely He needed protection 
 from unnecessary and useless draughts upon His 
 energies. Indignation was certainly out of place 
 unless there was some very harmful misunder- 
 standing somewhere. 
 
 And so it begins to dawn upon us that the dis- 
 ciples ought to have known better. And that 
 means ultimately that they ought to have 
 known better than to suppose that Jesus' mis- 
 sion was summed up in instruction and heal- 
 ing. Were this all that it was, it had been right 
 enough to exclude the babies from His pres- 
 ence. Only if He had something for these babies 
 too; only if His blessing on them — not needing 
 healing and incapable of instruction — neverthe- 
 less, brought to them the supreme benefit; would 
 it be a crime to shut them out from His oJ95ces. 
 Whence we may learn that the blessing which 
 Jesus brought was something above His instruc- 
 tion and superior to His healing ministry. A 
 great physician, yes; a prophet come from God, 
 yes; but above and beyond these, the bearer of 
 blessings which could penetrate even to the help- 
 less babes on their mothers' breasts. 
 
 Perhaps if the disciples stopped short of this, 
 
68 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 it is not inexplicable that men of to-day, having 
 proceeded so far, should show a tendency to stop 
 right here and utilize this much gain with such 
 devotion that they do not stay to search further. 
 We have obviously here a warrant for infant 
 baptism, they say. For does not Jesus declare 
 that infants are to be permitted to come to Him 
 and are not to be hindered — aflSrming further 
 that the Kingdom of Heaven is of such, and taking 
 them in His arms and blessing them.^ And can 
 His Church, representing Him on earth, do less.^^ 
 Must not His Church suffer the infants to be 
 brought to Him and take them in her arms and 
 mark them with His name and bless them.'^ Nay, 
 say others, this and more: A warrant here for con- 
 fidence in the salvation of infants. For how can 
 we believe that He who on earth so tenderly and 
 solemnly took them in His arms and blessed them, 
 forbidding their access to Him to be hindered, 
 will now in heaven refuse to receive them when 
 they come flocking to His arms? And does He 
 not distinctly declare that the Kingdom of God 
 belongs to such; and does that not mean first of 
 all — whatever else it may mean — just this simple 
 thing, that infants as such are citizens of His 
 heavenly kingdom and must be accredited with 
 all the rights of that heavenly citizenship.^ 
 
 It is no part of my purpose to stop and examine 
 the validity of these inferences. Let it be enough 
 for us to-day to note clearly, merely that they are 
 
CHILDLIKENESS 69 
 
 inferences. And having noted that they are in- 
 ferences, let us for the moment at least pass them 
 by, and engross ourselves in the teaching which is 
 explicit and for the sake of which, therefore, we 
 must suppose that the incident is recorded. For 
 our Lord did not leave His disciples to draw in- 
 ferences from the incident, unaided. He draws 
 one for them; and that one is what we have 
 chosen as the subject of our meditation to-day. 
 In this inference He withdraws our minds from 
 the literal children He had taken and blessed, 
 and focuses them upon the spiritual children who 
 should constitute the Kingdom of Heaven. 
 
 You will observe that He passes at once from 
 the one to the other. When He says "For of 
 such is the Kingdom of God," He does not mean 
 that the Kingdom of God consists of literal in- 
 fants, but rather of those who are like infants. 
 You may assure yourselves of this by turning to 
 the first beatitude: "Blessed are the poor in 
 spirit; for theirs" — or "of them" — "is the King- 
 dom of heaven." That is to say, the Kingdom of 
 heaven belongs to — or is constituted of — the 
 "poor in spirit." So, here, if what were in- 
 tended were that the Kingdom of God belongs to 
 — is constituted of — infants, we should have: 
 "For of them''— or "theirs"—" is the Kingdom of 
 God." What we do have, however, is not that, 
 but, on the contrary, "For of such as they — of 
 their like — is the Kingdom of heaven." The 
 
70 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Kingdom of heaven is declared, therefore, to be 
 constituted not of children but of the childlike. 
 And the declaration is at once clinched by the 
 words of our text, introduced by the solemn 
 formula "Verily," "Verily I say unto you, Who- 
 soever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a 
 little child, he shall in no wise enter therein." 
 
 The message which the incident is made by our 
 Lord to bring us, therefore, — and which, accord- 
 ingly, the passage directly teaches us with no 
 inferences of ours — does not concern either in- 
 fant baptism or infant salvation, but distinctly 
 the constitution of the Kingdom of God. The 
 Kingdom of God, it asserts, is made up, not of 
 children, but of the childlike. And that con- 
 cerns directly you and me. The Kingdom of 
 God, our text asserts, is made up of people like 
 these children whom our Lord took in His arms 
 and blessed. And that being so, we are warned 
 that no one can enter that Kingdom who does not 
 receive it "hke a little child." This is as much as 
 to say, not only that childlikeness characterizes 
 the recipients of that Kingdom, but that child- 
 likeness is the indispensable prerequisite to en- 
 trance into it. It certainly behoves you and me 
 who wish to be members of the Kingdom of God 
 to know what this childlikeness means. 
 
 Well, many think at once of the innocence of 
 childhood. The statement is, in effect they say, 
 that the Kingdom of God consists solely of those 
 
CHILDLIKENESS 71 
 
 who are in their moral innocence like children. 
 Only such can enter it. A grave difficulty at once 
 faces us, however, when we enunciate this view. 
 That is that Jesus does not seem elsewhere to 
 announce innocence as a — as the — condition of 
 entrance into the Kingdom which He came to 
 establish. On the contrary, He declared that He 
 came not to call the righteous, but sinners, and 
 announced that His mission was to seek and save 
 what is lost. The publicans and harlots. He tells 
 us, go into the Kingdom before the righteous 
 Pharisees. To give point to this we note that in 
 Luke's narrative the parable of the publican and 
 pharisee praying in the temple immediately pre- 
 cedes the account of our present incident, and is 
 placed there evidently because of the affinity of 
 the two narratives. It would read exceedingly 
 oddly if the publican was justified and the phar- 
 isee, with all his righteousness, rejected, and im- 
 mediately afterwards it were asserted that the 
 Elngdom was solely for the innocent. No, there 
 is nothing clearer than that Jesus' mission was 
 specifically to those who were not innocent — that 
 it is characteristic of those who enter His Kingdom 
 that they do not feel innocent — that, in a word, 
 the Kingdom is built up from and by the "chief 
 of sinners" like Paul, and those who say of them- 
 selves that "if any man say he hath no sin he is a 
 liar, and the truth is not in him," like John. Not 
 the "righteous" but "sinners" Jesus came to save. 
 
72 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Remembering the pharisee and publican, shall 
 we not say, then, that the trait of childhood here 
 celebrated is, if not exactly innocence, at least 
 humility? It was precisely humility that char- 
 acterized the prayer of the publican and our 
 Lord elsewhere commends humility as in some 
 sense the primary Christian grace. "Blessed," 
 He says in that first beatitude, which we have 
 already cited, "blessed are the poor in spirit, for 
 theirs — of them — is the Kingdom of heaven." 
 Is not this an express parallel to our present pas- 
 sage, saying in plain words what is here said in 
 figure.'^ When we read, then, that the Kingdom 
 of heaven belongs to those who are childlike, and 
 only he can enter it who receives it as a child — is 
 not the very thing meant, that none but the 
 humble-minded, the poor in spirit, can possess 
 the Kingdom? Indeed, is not this very thing 
 spoken out in so many words in a closely related 
 previous incident when Jesus took a child and set 
 it among His disciples, as they were disputing 
 as to who should be greatest, and bade them to 
 humble themselves and become as that little 
 child if they would be great m the Kingdom of 
 heaven — enforcing the lesson moreover with a 
 declaration almost the sa,me as that of the text: 
 "Verily I say unto you, Except ye turn and be- 
 come as little children, ye shall in no wise enter 
 into the Kingdom of heaven"? It certainly 
 seems as if in that passage at least the humility 
 
CHILDLIKENESS 73 
 
 of little children is just the thing signalized, and 
 entrance into the Kingdom is hung on the pos- 
 session of that specific virtue. 
 
 Even in that passage, however, it may be well 
 to move warily. Is humility the special charac- 
 teristic of childhood? To become like a child 
 may certainly be an act of humility in one not a 
 child, and it is very intelligible that our Lord 
 should, therefore, tell those whom He was ex- 
 horting to become like a child that they can only 
 do it by humbling themselves. But is that quite 
 the same as saying that humility is the charac- 
 teristic virtue of childhood, or that a humble 
 spirit is the precedent condition of entering the 
 Kingdom of heaven .^^ We seem to be in danger of 
 reading the passage too superficially. Our Lord 
 tells His disciples that they cannot enter the 
 Kingdom which He came to found except they 
 turn and become like little children; and He tells 
 them that they cannot become like little children 
 except by humbling themselves, and, therefore, 
 that when they were quarrelling about greatness 
 they were not "turning and becoming like little 
 children." But He does not seem to tell them 
 that humility of heart is the characterizing quality 
 of childlikeness; in this statement it is rather the 
 pathw^ay over which we must tread to attain 
 something else which is the characterizing quality 
 of childlikeness. Childlikeness is one thing; that 
 by which that state is attained is another. 
 
74 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Much less is humility suggested to us in our 
 present passage as the constitutive fact of child- 
 likeness. These babies that Jesus took into His 
 arms, in what sense were they lowly minded, and 
 the types of humility of soul? If they were like 
 other children of their age, they were probably, 
 so far as they showed moral characteristics at all, 
 little egotists. There is no period of life so 
 purely, sharply, unrelievedly egotistic as infancy; 
 and there is, consequently, no period of life less 
 adapted to stand as the typical form of that 
 lowliness of mind which seeks another's, not one's 
 own, good. 
 
 Others have gone further and I think done bet- 
 ter, therefore, when they have suggested that it is 
 the simplicity of childhood, its artlessness and 
 ingenuousness, which is the trait which our Lord 
 intends when He declares that the Kingdom of 
 Heaven is made up "of such" as they, and that 
 no one who does not receive that Kingdom like a 
 child — that is, in childlike simplicity and ingen- 
 uousness — shall enter into it. Above everything 
 else the mental life of a child is characterized, 
 perhaps, by directness. It lacks the sinuosities, 
 double motives, complications, of the adult in- 
 telligence. The child does not think of "serving 
 two masters," but gives itself altogether to one 
 thing or the other, and possesses at least the 
 single purpose if not always that precise single- 
 ness of eye which our Lord commends. We know 
 
CHILDLIKENESS 75 
 
 what an encomium our Saviour passed on that 
 singleness of eye because of which the whole body 
 should be full of light; and what an echo of this 
 teaching His apostles sound in the praise of that 
 singleness of heart or simplicity of soul in which 
 they make the Christian disposition to consist. 
 May it not, then, be this lack of duplicity in 
 thought and feeling, this clear simplicity of heart 
 which results in singleness of devotion, that our 
 Lord declares here to be characteristic of child- 
 hood and of those spiritual children who alone 
 may be true disciples? 
 
 This is a very attractive idea; but attractive as 
 the idea is, it seems a little artificial and not easily 
 deducible from the passage itself. It might fit 
 very well in the eighteenth chapter of Matthew — 
 and, indeed, would give a far better sense there 
 than the conception of humility; but it seems to 
 be outside the scope of our present passage. 
 These children were mere babies — and in what 
 clear and outstanding sense are babies charac- 
 terized by simplicity of heart and singleness of 
 soul.^^ 
 
 We feel, then, that a great step is taken when 
 others step in and suggest that the particular 
 trait which our Saviour has in mind when He de- 
 clares that only the childlike can enter His King- 
 dom is the trustfulness of the child. Here we 
 touch, indeed, what seems really the fundamental 
 trait of the truly childish mind, that colors all its 
 
76 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 moral life, and constitutes, not merely its dominant 
 but we might almost say, its entire disposition — 
 implicit trustfulness. The age of childhood is, 
 above everything else, the age of trust. De- 
 pendent upon its elders for everything, the whole 
 nature of the child is keyed to trust; on trust it 
 lives, and by means of trust it finds all its means of 
 existence. Its virtues and its faults alike grow 
 out of trust as its fundamental characteristic. 
 There is no picture of perfect and simple and im- 
 plicit trust discoverable in all the world com- 
 parable to the picture of the infant lying peace- 
 fully and serenel}^ on its mother's bosom. And 
 we must remember that this is the spectacle that 
 our Lord had before Him. The mothers were 
 bringing their babies to Him to be blessed; He 
 looked at them as they approached; and, observ- 
 ing the utter trustfulness of the attitude of the 
 child reclining in the nest of its mother's arms. 
 He announced that here is the type of the King- 
 dom of God and of its children. In these trust- 
 ing babies He saw the symbol of the citizens 
 of His Kingdom. "Of such as these," He de- 
 clared, *'is the Kingdom of God"; and then He 
 added that no man who did not receive the King- 
 dom like one of these little trustful babies, could 
 even enter it. Trust, simple, utter trust, that is 
 the pathway to the Kingdom. 
 
 We cannot doubt that in thus directing its 
 attention to the trustfulness of little children 
 
CHILDLIKENESS 77 
 
 as their characteristic trait, the mind has been 
 turned in the right direction for the proper un- 
 derstanding of our Lord's declaration. But even 
 yet, I think, we have scarcely reached the bot- 
 tom fact. You will observe that all the supposi- 
 tions hitherto made move in the subjective sphere. 
 Dispositions of mind alone have been suggested; 
 men have been seeking to discover the disposi- 
 tion of mind which is most characteristic of child- 
 hood; to which we may suppose, therefore, that 
 our Saviour, referred, when He declared that His 
 disciples must be like children if they would enter 
 His Kingdom. But our passage says nothing 
 of dispositions of mind; and why should we.^^ 
 
 Why not seek an objective characteristic here? 
 These babies, which Christ took in His arms — 
 what dispositions of mind had they.^^ We must 
 now revert to the narrative, and observe with 
 care that these children were, in point of fact, 
 mere babies. Perhaps we have been thinking of 
 them rather as well-grown children, and picturing 
 them as standing around our Lord's knees, giving 
 Him eager, if wondering attention, as He spoke to 
 them. Nothing of the kind. They were babies 
 in arms, perhaps of only a few weeks or months 
 old, perhaps of only a few days. TJiey had no 
 disposition of mind. Luke calls them distinctly 
 infants, and speaks, therefore, of their being 
 brought as remarkable: "They were bringing to 
 Him even their babies." And that is the reason 
 
78 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 why the disciples rebuked their parents for bring- 
 ing them — mere babies who could get nothing 
 from the Master. The same thing is less clearly 
 but equally really suggested in the other narra- 
 tives; we read that they were brought; that 
 Jesus took them in His arms, and the like. We 
 must think of them, then, as distinctively babies. 
 What dispositions of soul were characteristic of 
 them.^ Just none at all. They lay happy and 
 thoughtless in their mother's arms and in Jesus' 
 own arms. Their characteristic was just helpless 
 dependence; complete dependence upon the care 
 of those whose care for them was necessary. 
 And it would seem that it is just this objective 
 helpless dependence which is the point of com- 
 parison between them and the children of the 
 Kingdom. 
 
 What our Lord would seem to say, then, when 
 He says: "Of such is the Kingdom of heaven," is 
 that the Kingdom of heaven is made up of those 
 who are helplessly dependent on the King of the 
 Heavens. And when He adds that only those 
 who "receive" the Kingdom like a child can 
 enter into it He seems to mean that the chil- 
 dren of the Kingdom come into it hke chil- 
 dren of the world into the world — naked and 
 stripped of everything, infants who are to be 
 done for, who can not do for themselves. 
 There is every indication of this as our Lord's 
 meaning. Among others we note that the rec- 
 
CHILDLIKENESS 79 
 
 ord of the incident is followed immediately in 
 all three Gospels by the record of the incident 
 of the rich young man — which goes on, you see, 
 to illustrate the same idea. For what was the 
 trouble with the rich young man? Just this: 
 that he could not divest himself of everything and 
 come into the Kingdom naked. "He had great 
 possessions." "How hard, children," — this "chil- 
 dren" is possibly a reminiscence of His demand 
 that they should be "like children" — "children, 
 how hard it is for a rich man — or for anyone — to 
 enter the Kingdom of heaven." Into this King- 
 dom we can enter only as poor and naked and 
 helpless as children enter the world. That we 
 have nothing is the condition that we may have 
 all things. Perhaps it may not be too much even 
 to say that what the passage teaches is that we 
 enter the Kingdom of heaven as we enter the 
 world only by a birth — a birth which comes to us 
 — which we do not secure. In that case we have a 
 parallel passage in the third chapter of John which 
 is one of the very few passages in John where the 
 term "Kingdom of God" occurs. 
 
 The upshot of it all is, then, this: that the 
 Kingdom of God is not taken — acquired — laid 
 hold of; it is just "received." It comes to men, 
 men do not come to it. And when it comes to 
 men, they merely "receive" it, "as" — "like" — 
 "a Httle child." That is to say, they bring noth- 
 ing to it and have nothing to recommend them to 
 
80 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 it except their helplessness. They depend wholly 
 on the King. Only they who so receive it can 
 enter it; no disposition or act of their own com- 
 mends them to it. Accordingly the Kingdom of 
 God is "of such as little children." The helpless 
 babe on the mother's breast, then, now we can 
 say it with new meaning, is the true type of the 
 Christian in his relation to God. It is of the 
 very essence of salvation that it is supernatural. 
 It is purely a gift, a gift of God's; and they who 
 receive it must receive it purely as a gift. He 
 who will not humble himself and enter it as a 
 little child enters the world, in utter nakedness 
 and complete dependence, shall never see it. 
 
THE GLORY OF THE WORD 
 
 John 1:1: — "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was 
 with God, and the Word was God." 
 
 The first verse of the Gospel of John contains 
 one of the most weighty statements of the deity 
 of our Lord in the New Testament. It is not 
 the only weighty statement, much less the only 
 distinct statement, of the deity of our Lord in 
 the New Testament. Rather, the whole New 
 Testament is a testimony to our Lord's deity; 
 and we can read no part of it sympathetically 
 without catching this note sounding through it. 
 
 Particularly we need to disabuse our minds of 
 the banality by which the Synoptic Gospels used 
 to be distinguished as the Gospels of the human 
 Jesus, from the Gospel of John as the Gospel of 
 the Divine Jesus. The Synoptic Gospels teach 
 the deity of Jesus as truly and, indeed, as em- 
 phatically as the Gospel of John, though not in 
 precisely the same manner. Whatever else 
 William Wrede did or did not do with his book on 
 the Gospel of Mark, he made it impossible for- 
 ever afterwards to look upon Mark as a naive col- 
 lection of all that His followers could recall of the 
 human Jesus; and Johannes Weiss will not be 
 gainsaid when he points out that the Jesus of "the 
 
 81 
 
82 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 oldest Gospel" has already advanced far toward 
 the Jesus of the latest Gospel. He is to be crit- 
 icized only for speaking of an "advance" in this 
 connexion, and of that *' advance" as not 
 quite complete. Recent critics are fairly falling 
 over one another in their rush to recognize that 
 the conception of a Divine Messiah was not only 
 Primitive-Christian, but Pre-Christian, and that 
 belief in the deity of Jesus, was, therefore, al- 
 ready included in acceptance of Him as Messiah. 
 We meet no new thing, then, when we read in 
 the first verse of John's Gospel a crisp declara- 
 tion that Jesus is God. But we do meet some- 
 thing new in the manner in which this declaration 
 is made. It would not be quite exact to say that 
 it is new that John begins his Gospel with a dec- 
 laration of the deity of Jesus. Mark also begins 
 his Gospel with a declaration of the deity of Jesus; 
 if, at least, the reading is right which makes him 
 use the term, "the Son of God," in his opening 
 sentence — "The beginning of the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ, the Son of God." It can hardly be main- 
 tained that the "Son of God" is not to be under- 
 stood here in its ontological sense. The differ- 
 ence between the Synoptics and John here is only 
 a difference in what we may call their mode of 
 approach to the common theme. It would not 
 be misleadingly expressed if we said that in the 
 Synoptics the divine nature of the man Jesus is 
 exhibited, while in John the human life of the 
 
THE GLORY OF THE WORD 83 
 
 divine Word is portrayed. In this sense, John 
 does take his start from the deity of our Lord as 
 the Synoptics do not. The deity of our Lord is 
 made by John his point of departure in his dehnea- 
 tion of this divine hfe in the world, while the Syn- 
 optics take their start from the birth of Jesus, 
 or the opening of his public ministry. 
 
 It is due to this difference that John's Gospel 
 alone opens with a prologue, which takes us back 
 at once into the depths of Eternal Reality, and 
 tells us who and what that being actually was, 
 whose life-history in the world is about to be 
 depicted. There is probably no more pregnant 
 piece of writing in the world than this prologue to 
 John's Gospel. And there is no part of this preg- 
 nant prologue more pregnant than its first verse. 
 There are just seventeen words in it; we can 
 count only eight different words in it: but these 
 few words are simply bursting with significance. 
 In the first place, our Lord is designated here 
 by a unique name, and that a name big with 
 meaning. And then, under this unique name, 
 three declarations are calmly made of Him — so 
 calmly as almost to betray us into taking them as 
 mere matters of course — each of which, separately 
 considered, is of tremendous import, and the three 
 together, in combination, of more tremendous 
 import still. When we have read these three 
 limpid sentences — *'In the beginning was the 
 Word, and the Word was with God, and the 
 
84 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Word was God" — we have read things which 
 even the angels, desiring to look into them, might 
 well despair of plumbing. 
 
 When we say that the name given here to our 
 Lord — the "Word" — is unique, we have, of 
 course, the New Testament only in mind. And 
 even so, to be absolutely exact, we must note 
 that John repeats it a little lower down in this 
 prologue, when he tells us of this Word, here de- 
 clared to have been in the beginning, with God, 
 and Himself God, that he became flesh; and in- 
 deed echoes it in the opening words of his first 
 Epistle and in a splendid description of the con- 
 quering Christ in the Apocalypse. These in- 
 stances, however, do not abate the fact that this 
 designation belongs in a very special sense to 
 these opening clauses of John's prologue. There 
 is nothing to prepare us for it here: it just sud- 
 denly appears before us in these three great dec- 
 larations in unrelieved startlingness. And per- 
 haps the most striking thing about it is that John 
 does not present it to us as a mysterious designa- 
 tion of Jesus, as a remarkable designation of Him, 
 or, we must add, even as a new designation of 
 Him. He employs it quite simply and without 
 apparent consciousness that he is doing anything 
 either startling or new. 
 
 That it is not a new designation of our Lord to 
 either John or to his readers, is already apparent 
 from the fact that no emphasis falls on it what- 
 
THE GLORY OF THE WORD 85 
 
 ever. It occurs three times, it is true, in these 
 three short clauses. But the words are so ar- 
 ranged that the emphasis is always thrown else- 
 where — on what is asserted of the Word, not on 
 the designation itself — while the designation ap- 
 pears as a matter of course. And the employ- 
 ment of the same designation in the opening 
 words of the contemporaneous First Epistle of 
 John is a clear proof that it was not first applied 
 to our Lord in this prologue. We must dismiss 
 from our minds, therefore, the fancy that John 
 invented the designation, "The Word," for our 
 Lord. We must suppose it to have been a current 
 designation of our Lord in the circles for which 
 John was writing, and that it needed no explana- 
 tion from him of its meaning. 
 
 Whence the term came, and precisely what 
 it means when applied to Jesus, are, of course, 
 another matter. We cannot talk of its being 
 borrowed from Philo, or from the philosophy 
 which Philo represents. There is nothing more 
 certain than that John does not use it in the 
 sense which it bears in Philo, or in the philosophy 
 which lies behind Philo. It is not much more 
 likely that it was borrowed directly from the 
 native Jewish speculations, which, like the specu- 
 lations of Philo and those whom he most closely 
 followed, are governed by the need for something 
 to mediate between the transcendent God and 
 the world of space and time. But this general 
 
86 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 type of thinking was very widely diffused, and 
 the modes of speech which it developed naturally 
 penetrated, in more or less modified meanings, 
 much more deeply into the life and language 
 of the people than the conceptions these modes of 
 speech were invented to express. All terms 
 of this sort have their roots in some system 
 of thought, but come to those who ultimately em- 
 ploy them with a varied history behind them, in 
 the course of which they have lost much of the 
 shades of suggestion with which they started, and 
 have picked up others on the way. We have no 
 safe guidance to their meaning on the lips of any 
 given speaker, except his actual usage of them. 
 And to judge by John's actual usage of the term, 
 "the Word," applied as a designation to our Lord, 
 it has travelled far indeed from its Neo-Stoic or 
 Philonian beginnings — if those were its begin- 
 nings — ^before it reached his hands. What he 
 means by it is obviously so different from what 
 Philo or the Neo-Stoics meant by it, that, in most 
 important respects, it is its precise contradiction. 
 What is clearest about it is that he uses it as a 
 designation of Jesus of the highest import, as 
 attributing to Him properly divine functions, if 
 not directly a properly divine nature. As a man's 
 word is the expression of his being, so, when Jesus 
 is spoken of as the Word by way of eminence, that 
 is, as the Word of God, He is designated as the 
 manifested God. 
 
THE GLORY OF THE WORD 87 
 
 Speaking thus of Jesus by this great designation, 
 John makes three assertions concerning Him, 
 In the first of these he declares His eternal sub- 
 sistence. In the second, His eternal intercom- 
 munion with God. In the third, His eternal 
 identity with God. Let us look briefly at these 
 three great assertions in turn. 
 
 The first of them runs in our English version 
 thus: "In the beginning was the Word." This 
 rendering, however, scarcely brings out its full 
 sense. The words are so ordered in the original 
 as to throw all the emphasis — and it is a strong 
 emphasis — on the words, "in the beginning," and 
 "was." The verb "was," in other words, is not a 
 mere copula, but a strong assertion of existence. 
 We might perhaps bring part of its meaning out 
 by changing the order of the words and reading: 
 "In the beginning the Word was.'* What is de- 
 clared is that "in the beginning" — not "from the 
 beginning" but "in the beginning," — when first 
 things began to be, the Word, not came into being, 
 so that He might be the first of those things which 
 came into being, but already was. Absolute eter- 
 nity of being is asserted for the Word in as pre- 
 cise and as strong language as absolute eternity of 
 being can be asserted. The Word antedates the 
 beginning of things; He already was — the imper- 
 fect of continuous existence — when things began 
 to be. Go back now to the first verse of Genesis, 
 of which there is an obvious echo here, and read 
 
88 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 that in the beginning God created the heavens 
 and the earth — the Hebrew periphrasis for the 
 universe. The Word already was before God 
 thus began to speak things into existence. We 
 cannot be surprised, then, to read in the next 
 verse, with the emphasis of accumulated asser- 
 tion, that "all things" without exception "were 
 made by Him, and apart from Him there was not 
 one thing made which has been made." The 
 Word was not made; He always was. All that 
 has been made was made by Him. 
 
 To this great assertion of express eternity of 
 being, there is now added in the second clause an- 
 other equally great assertion; or rather a greater 
 assertion, for these three clauses are arranged in a 
 climactic series. "In the beginning the Word 
 already was — and the Word was with God." 
 This new assertion is still under the government 
 of the words, "in the beginning": it declares the 
 eternal mode of existence of this eternally ex- 
 istent Word. And the mode of existence declared 
 for Him places Him in an ineffable immediacy 
 of relation to God. The phrase, "with God," 
 is not the common expression for "with God," 
 but a more pregnant one. It intimates not merely 
 co-existence, or some sort of local relation, 
 but an active relation of intercourse. The Word, 
 existing from all eternity, exists from all eternity 
 in intercommunion with God. His eternal exist- 
 ence was not a solitary one. A relation is as- 
 
THE GLORY OF THE WORD 89 
 
 serted; and a relation implies a duality. The 
 relation which is asserted is a very intimate one; 
 and it is a distinctly personal one. There can 
 be intercourse only between persons. When it is 
 said, then, that the Word "was" — it is still the 
 eternal "was" of continuous existence — "in the 
 beginning" in communion with God, the eternally 
 distinct personality of the Word is not obscurely 
 suggested. From all eternity the Word sub- 
 sisted alongside of God in personal intercom- 
 munion with Him. He has been from all eternity 
 God's Fellow. 
 
 The intimacy of the relation intimated is start- 
 lingly brought home to us by a later phrase of 
 this prologue. Here we are told in language of 
 almost unexampled pregnancy that the Word — 
 called on this occasion by the tremendous name 
 of "God Only-begotten" — is (the timeless pres- 
 ent of eternal existence) ceaselessly, not merely 
 in, but "into the bosom of God." This is the 
 expression for the closest and most intimate re- 
 lation conceivable for persons; and the language 
 in which it is cast conveys the idea at once of a 
 continuation of its unbroken continuity and of its 
 ceaseless renewal. It is in this intimacy of com- 
 munion that the Word is declared to have been 
 eternally "with God." 
 
 But even this great assertion is not enough to 
 declare of the Word. There is a supplement to 
 even it; and a supplement which is so far a cor- 
 
90 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 rection that it seems purposely added to prevent 
 it from being supposed that enough has already 
 been said. The Word is not merely even thus 
 closely associated with God; He is God Himself. 
 "And the Word was with God — and the Word was 
 God." Eternally subsisting alongside of and in 
 communion with God, the Word is yet not a 
 separate Being over against God. In some deep 
 sense distinct from God, He is at the same time in 
 some high sense identical with God. 
 
 It is difficult to reproduce in English the strength 
 of this assertion. The term "God" not only oc- 
 cupies the position of emphasis, but is placed in 
 immediate juxtaposition with the words "with 
 God" of the preceding clause, and, therefore, in 
 sharp contrast with them. The term "God" 
 thus comes out with a tremendous corrective 
 force. "The Word was with God, do I say — nay 
 God is what the Word was!'' The rapidity of the 
 movement of thought and the stress thrown thus 
 on this new assertion are extreme. The meaning 
 is that John was not willing to have the one state- 
 ment made without its complement being at once 
 added to it. He wishes us to understand that it is 
 too little to say of the Word even that He is God's 
 co-eternal Fellow. We must say of Him that He 
 is the eternal God's very self. 
 
 The term God in this great assertion is without 
 the article. This does not weaken the affirmation. 
 It is primarily merely a grammatical fact. The 
 
THE GLORY OF THE WORD 91 
 
 predicate regularly lacks the article; quasi- 
 proper names, like "God," require it only when 
 an individualizing emphasis is necessary. The 
 bearing of the absence of the article here on the 
 force of the assertion is that thus there is thrown 
 into relief the quality of Godhood in the God with 
 whom the Word is identified. Whatever makes 
 God the Being which we call God, that John 
 affirms the Word to have eternally been. Thus 
 the Word is with the utmost energy and explica- 
 tion asserted to be all that God is; and yet the 
 correction of the assertion that the Word "was 
 with God" as incomplete, is not pushed into a 
 contradiction of it as untrue. The Word, though 
 identical with God, is not in such a manner iden- 
 tical with God, that he may not also be declared 
 to be "with God" — in communion with God. 
 There remains a duality of Persons standing in 
 the express relation of intercommunion, while 
 there is established an identity of Being. What 
 is asserted is that He who has been eternally with 
 God has been at the same time in an ineffable 
 fashion eternally God's self. 
 
 Certainly these are three tremendous assertions 
 which John makes here of that Word, who, hav- 
 ing become flesh, we know as Jesus Christ — eter- 
 nal subsistence, eternal intercommunion with 
 God, eternal identity with God. The conception 
 in which they can combine is certainly not an easy 
 or a simple one. It is what we know as the doc- 
 
92 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 trine of the Trinity. In telling us who and what 
 Jesus Christ really is, John thus introduces us to 
 the doctrine of the Trinity. If we were told 
 nothing about the Trinity except what we are 
 told in this single verse, it would yet lie before us 
 in its whole principle. There is no other key 
 which will unlock the mj^stery of the eternal Being 
 of the Word as here described to us. We are but 
 expressing John's meaning, then — in other words, 
 but nevertheless nothing but his meaning — 
 when we declare that Jesus Christ is the Second 
 Person of the Adorable Trinity. This is, in 
 brief, what John teaches us in the first verse of his 
 Gospel. 
 
LOOKING TO MEN 
 
 Jno. 5:44: — "How can ye believe, which receive glory one of 
 another, and the glory that cometh from the only God ye seek not?" 
 
 The fifth chapter of John marks one of the great 
 turning points of his narrative. Up to this point, 
 he has given us great typical representations of 
 how Jesus wrought faith in the hearts of His 
 hearers — at Jerusalem (in the case of Nicodemus), 
 in Samaria (in the case of the Samaritan woman), 
 in Galilee (in the case of the nobleman of Caper- 
 naum). Now he begins to show us the develop- 
 ment of the opposition. With the fifth chapter 
 the conflict begins; and in three great typical in- 
 stances, each gathering around a miracle, we see 
 how Jesus' work gathered opposition to itself, 
 until opposition culminated in the black tragedy 
 of His death. Here we have laid bare the springs, 
 nature and deeds of unbelief. 
 
 Not that we have no longer an exhibition of 
 Jesus begetting, by word and work, faith in His 
 life-giving Person. In each instance in which the 
 process of the hardening of unbelief is pictured to 
 us, there is a picture of faith too, in contrast with 
 it. The impotent man, the man born blind, the 
 family of Lazarus, are heroes of faith, and nothing 
 can be more beautiful than the manner in which 
 
 93 
 
94 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 it is shown how simple, unsophisticated faith fixed 
 itself on Jesus. But on each occasion of faith- 
 begetting work, blind unbelief hardened itself to 
 deeper and deeper blackness, and it is this progress 
 which forms the salient feature of the narrative. 
 
 In the fifth chapter the grounds of unbelief 
 are laid bare to us, as rooted in an essentially self- 
 seeking and worldly spirit. No part of the chap- 
 ter is unimportant for understanding the lesson 
 which is most pointedly expressed in the verse 
 more especially before us. The miracle out of 
 which grew the discourse, of which this verse is 
 the culmination, is, of course, appropriate to its 
 lesson; and the conversation and discourse are 
 carried inevitably up to this end. 
 
 The miracle was wrought on an impotent man, 
 and out of it was to grow the discourse which was 
 to uncover the impotence of sinners, on their own 
 part, to believe in the Saviour of the world. Long 
 had the man lain helplessly by the very pool of 
 healing, where the ordinary means of cure were; 
 but he had no power to make a healing use of 
 them, nor was there any to help him — until Jesus 
 passed by and spoke the wonderful word of heal- 
 ing to his weary soul. But it was on the Sabbath 
 day, and the Jews, the types of that Pharisaic 
 religiosity which loved to make long prayers on 
 the corners of the streets and to make broad their 
 phylacteries to be seen of men, whose religion in a 
 word was a religion for men to mark and praise, 
 
LOOKING TO MEN 95 
 
 at once judged that the due observance of the 
 Sabbath law was of more importance than the 
 heahng of a diseased sinner. At once are brought 
 into contrast the religion that seeks God's ap- 
 proval and that which seeks the applause of men. 
 Jesus meets the healed man and bids him sin no 
 more; they meet Jesus and in their rage at the 
 disregarding of their laws seek to slay him. 
 
 Our Lord does not permit the contrast to pass 
 unnoticed. And this is the burden of His dis- 
 course. All He did was of the Father and to the 
 Father and for the Father; and sought only His 
 approval. All they did was of man and to man 
 and for the approval of man. His eye was turned 
 upwards, theirs downwards. And, therefore, they 
 were impotent to believe in Him; though He, the 
 water of life, was in their reach, they could not 
 reach out and take and live. How could they be- 
 lieve, though in word and work the Father was 
 bearing witness to Him, when they cared nothing 
 for the Father, but only for men; when they were 
 receiving glory from one another and not seeking 
 glory from God, the Only One. 
 
 Now note: — 
 
 (1) Our Lord asserts that the Jews were unable 
 to believe. He asserts a true inability to faith in 
 them; but by no means allows that they have 
 thereby become irresponsible. How can ye — how 
 are ye able to — believe.'^ 
 
 (2) He traces this inability to its source in a 
 
96 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 wrong disposition. He asserts that the reason 
 that they could not believe was because of their 
 condition of mind and heart. How are ye able to 
 believe, seeing that ye are receiving glory one of 
 another and seek not the glory that cometh from 
 the Only One.? 
 
 (3) The special sin that darkened their eyes to 
 Christ's truth and worthiness as one sent from God 
 was the sin of hving for the world's eye, not God's; 
 of seeking the world's applause, not God's ap- 
 proval. They wished a Messiah for worldly 
 glory, not for salvation. 
 
 The passage will teach us then : 
 
 (1) That a true inability may well consist with 
 responsibility; an inability that rises out of the 
 moral condition and is constituted by the im- 
 manent choice. 
 
 (2) That the habit of living for the applause 
 of our fellow men in religious things is deadly to 
 the religious affections and life, which in their 
 very nature are Godward and must look upwards 
 only to Him. 
 
 (3) That from God alone can true glory come; 
 and He is the sole source of the Christian's 
 glory. 
 
 There can be no doubt that our Lord asserts 
 of these Jews that they could not, were not able, 
 had not the ability to believe. And He assigns 
 the reason for this; a reason not derived from any 
 outward compulsion, and not due to any lack of 
 
LOOKING TO MEN 97 
 
 evidence. They had sent to John and John had 
 testified to Jesus, and if they would look to the 
 Scriptures they witnessed to Him; nay, would 
 they look to heaven, heaven itself bore witness 
 to Him in His wonderful works. They were 
 caught in a network of evidence. Whence it all 
 the more fully follows that if they believed not, it 
 was due to some inabihty. Yes, a true inability, 
 an induration of beheving tissue which rendered 
 it unable to react to any testimony, however 
 great. But this inabihty did not render them 
 irresponsible for their lack of faith. Our Lord 
 closes His discourse with a solemn asseveration 
 that they did not need Him to accuse them to the 
 Father: "There was one that accused them, even 
 Moses, on whom they had set their hopes. For if 
 they believed Moses, they would have believed 
 Him, for he wrote of Him." In a word, our Lord 
 arraigns them for their inability to believe, not as 
 though it was an excuse for their lack of faith, but 
 as though it was the blackest item in the indict- 
 ment against them. They could not believe, but 
 it was because of their wicked hearts, because 
 they had set their hearts on earthly things and 
 cared not for the heavenly. 
 
 And now we understand why the healing of the 
 impotent man is the miracle out of which this dis- 
 course grows. All Christ's miracles are parables. 
 For thirty-eight years this man had lain there just 
 alongside the healing floods, and he was impotent 
 
98 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 to use them for the heahng of his disease — neither 
 had he anyone who could apply them to him. 
 And here before these Jews stood One offering 
 the water of life, and they were impotent to reach 
 out their hand to take it, because they were re- 
 ceiving their glory one frt)m another and sought 
 not the glory that comes from the Only One. It 
 is the impotence of man by his natural powers to 
 believe — be the evidence never so convincing — 
 that Jesus would teach us by His parable and by 
 His discourse. The impotent man might have 
 ocular evidence every time the water moved of its 
 healing virtues. What good did the demonstra- 
 tion do him, when he could not reach out and take 
 the healing floods.^ These impotent Jews might 
 have, did have, demonstrative evidence that the 
 Lord of Life stood before th'em. John had 
 spoken, God in His word had spoken, God by 
 sign and miracle had spoken. And yet what good 
 did evidence do them so long as they could not 
 believe, because their hearts were set on the earth 
 and not on the heavens? 
 
 Is it not plain to you that it is not evidence alone 
 that produces faith .^ Did the abundant evi- 
 dence of the Divine mission of Christ convince 
 the Jews; who sought His life the more vindic- 
 tively for every item of evidence they could not 
 resist; who answered His demonstration of deity 
 by hanging Him on the tree? Nay, be the evi- 
 dence never so perfect, we cannot believe who have 
 
LOOKING TO MEN 99 
 
 evil hearts of unbelief. Never until that Divine 
 voice, freighted with supernatural power, which 
 said to the impotent man, Arise, take up thy bed 
 and walk, has sounded with a personal message to 
 our souls, do we gain the power to believe, though 
 Moses himself and the law written in our hearts 
 pronounce us inexcusable. 
 
 Now as we have learned a doctrinal lesson from 
 our text, let us learn also a practical one. Surely 
 the text teaches us that the habit of living in 
 religious things for the observation and applause 
 of our fellows is deadly to all religious affections, 
 and, indeed, to all religious life itself. Nor could 
 it indeed be otherwise. Are not the religious af- 
 fections in their very nature God ward .^^ And is 
 not the religious life dependent on our preserving 
 in ourselves an attitude of dependence and recep- 
 tivity with reference to God.^^ Turn our eyes from 
 Him, and religion in any true sense of the word is 
 gone. Rites may remain; forms may remain; 
 genuflections and prayers may remain; a strict 
 mode of life may remain, but not religion. The 
 husk of religion — like the shell of nuts — may en- 
 dure when the kernel is gone; it is often harder 
 to destroy the hull and husk than that subtle 
 kernel, for which alone the husk exists. But of 
 what worth is the husk after what it was formed 
 to protect is gone.^^ Of course this is not to con- 
 demn the outward forms of religion. This is in- 
 volved in the very figure used. Like the shell of a 
 
100 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 nut, it is needed; needed for the protection and 
 preservation of the kernel. But without the ker- 
 nel? That is a different matter. 
 
 As ministers, we have, and we ought to recog- 
 nize it, special temptations to religiosity, as 
 distinguished from religion. We are profession- 
 ally religious men. Let the lesson come home es- 
 pecially to us then, that the habit of being relig- 
 ious for the eye of men is deadly to true religion. 
 It does not follow that we ought to be careless of 
 our influence over men. It only follows that we 
 ought to be careful with respect to what we in- 
 fluence them. We should set an example to 
 them to be truly religious, lovers of God and 
 seekers only of His approval; and not only to seem 
 to be religious. How subtle the temptation is! 
 How grand a thing to have the reputation of being 
 the most religious man in the community, the 
 most careful in our religious services, the most 
 punctual in our religious duties! Well, the Phar- 
 isees were all this. No men in the land were more 
 religious; they were models for all men in the 
 strictness of their lives. And they could not be- 
 lieve! There is a better thing than having the 
 reputation of being religious; and that is being 
 rehgious. And the difference is just this: That 
 the one has praise of men and the other of 
 God. 
 
 And thus we are led to lay emphasis, in closing, 
 on the third point of teaching which I would have 
 
LOOKING TO MEN 101 
 
 you receive from our text: that all true glory 
 comes from God only. This is the pointed an- 
 tithesis of the text; and Christ uses it as the suf- 
 ficient uncovering of the failure and folly of the 
 Jews. They received glory from their fellow men, 
 and did not remember that true glory comes from 
 God only. It is hard for men to feel this. We 
 do so long after the approval of our fellows. Men 
 go in crowds. Truth has a poor show, when the 
 tide sets against it. How hard it is to face the 
 gibes of our companions. "Old Fogy," "Nar- 
 row-minded" — these are not very bad words in 
 themselves, but they have a baleful power. How 
 natural to desire to be "in the swim"! How 
 delightful to feel the approval and to enjoy the aid 
 of our fellows pressing us on. It is human to love 
 human applause and to seek it. 
 
 But it is Divine to stem the tide for God. Jesus 
 preached unpopular truth. Men could so little 
 endure it that they crucified Him for it. Paul 
 preached unpopular truth, and suffered a thousand 
 deaths for doing so. Will we say that they were 
 wrong? After all, it is only when the "vox populi" 
 is really the "vox dei"as well, that we can afford 
 to follow it. When the "vox populi" stands in 
 opposition to the "vox dei," let us breast it at all 
 hazards! In other words, let it be the "vox dei" 
 that we unhesitatingly and unwaveringly follow; 
 and if the "vox populi" agree with it, so much the 
 better for the "vox populi." As ministers of 
 
102 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 God's grace let us make up our minds firmly and 
 once for all to seek His glory and not men's. After 
 all, is it not to his own Master that every man 
 stands or falls? 
 
A HALF-LEARNED CHRIST 
 
 Jno. 6:68, 69: — "Simon Peter answered him. Lord to whom 
 shall we go? Thou hast the words of eternal life. And we have 
 believed and know that Thou art the Holy One of God." 
 
 The first impression made on us by this re- 
 sponse of Peter's to our Lord's pathetic appeal, 
 "Surely ye too will not wish to go?" is the nobil- 
 ity of the confession which it contains. We are 
 not surprised to find one of the commentators, 
 therefore, speaking of it as "this immortal reply "; 
 nor are we surprised that it is commonly treated 
 by commentators and expounders alike from 
 this point of view. Thus, for instance, one ex- 
 pounder develops it as a "serious answer" to our 
 Lord's "searching inquiry"; and finds in it, (1) 
 a "reverential address" — "Lord"; (2) a signifi- 
 cant inquiry," which is only a "strong way of 
 asserting not alone that our Lord's disciples in- 
 tended to adhere to Him, but that they reckoned 
 Him the only Teacher, Messiah, Saviour, to whom 
 they could adhere" ; (3) a "confidant avowal" — 
 viz., that He had the words of eternal life; and 
 (4) a "simple confession," that they saw in Him 
 none other than "the Holy One of God," — God's 
 own incarnate Son. 
 
 Now, we should certainly be sorry to miss this 
 103 
 
104 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 side of the matter. Surely, the verse does con- 
 tain, fundamentally, a confession of Peter's and 
 through him of the apostles' faith; and assuredly 
 this confession is, in contrast with the thought 
 of Jesus entertained by the crowds which had 
 been flocking to Him, a very noble confession, 
 which explains why the twelve cleaved to Him 
 in the midst of the general defection that had now 
 set in. At bottom, this confession does mean 
 that these men were seeking in Jesus satisfaction 
 for spiritual and not carnal wants; and that they, 
 therefore, understood Him incomparably better 
 than the crowds of carnal men which had hitherto 
 surrounded Him; and that, finding satisfaction in 
 Him for their spiritual needs, they could not leave 
 Him as the others left Him, however puzzlingly 
 He spoke, but could not fail to recognize in Him 
 the very consecrated messenger from God whom 
 their hearts craved. 
 
 To mean this was, at that time and in those cir- 
 cumstances, to mean almost incredibly much. 
 But it is not to mean everything. There is an- 
 other side to the declaration, and this other side 
 is obviously the side that was in John's mind when 
 he recorded it. For clearly he does not put it 
 forward as a supreme confession, marking a com- 
 plete appreciation of Jesus' person and claims, 
 and standing out, therefore, in startling and in- 
 structive contrast with the unbelief of others, to 
 the manifestation of which the whole preceding 
 
A HALF-LEARNED CHRIST 105 
 
 chapter is consecrated — as exhibiting in a word 
 the immense contrast of the fullness of the apos- 
 tles' faith and appreciation with the slowness or 
 rather grossness of heart of the lesser followers of 
 Christ. On the contrary, he presents it evi- 
 dently as standing in contrast, indeed, with the 
 unbelief and incapacity to believe of the others, 
 and therefore marking out the apostles as 
 Christ's especially faithful followers; but as, 
 nevertheless, exhibiting more fully the great crisis 
 that had come into our Lord's life by showing how, 
 even among His closest companions, there existed 
 no full appreciation of Him in His work and claims. 
 When Jesus, out of the midst of the scenes that 
 lay about Him, turned to this innermost circle of 
 His followers with the sorrowful inquiry: "Surely 
 ye too will not go away!" — Oh, the pathos of it! — 
 He obtained no doubt a reassurance. No, they 
 would cleave to Him. And this reassurance must 
 have been a balm to His wounded human spirit. 
 But the reassurance He obtained was so little 
 to His mind, that He felt it necessary to meet it 
 with a rebuke: "Was it not I that chose you — the 
 twelve; and of you, one is diabohcal!" This very 
 confession was an element, thus, in the crisis 
 through which He was passing, the manifestation 
 of how little even those who were nearest to Him 
 really understood Him or were ready to carry on 
 His work. 
 
 Surely it will not be without its lessons to us to 
 
106 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 seek, without derogating from the essential nobil- 
 ity of the confession, to trace out also the elements 
 of incompleteness that enter into it, and that 
 make it less than what a confession of Christ 
 ought to be. 
 
 First of all, then, we notice that there seems to 
 be an element of boastfulness in this confession. 
 This suggests itself by the obtrusion of the personal 
 pronoun. We might read our English version and 
 think of the emphasis falling on the beheving 
 and knowing which is asserted. We cannot so 
 read the Greek. The emphasis falls rather on 
 the "we." "And as for us," says Peter, "we at 
 least" have believed. Peter is contrasting him- 
 self and his fellow apostles with others and priding 
 himself on the contrast. We will remember that 
 our Lord had just said, "The words that I have 
 spoken unto you are spirit and are life; but there 
 are of you some who do not believe." Peter 
 seems to swell with pride to think that he is not 
 of these. Repeating his Master's words, he says, 
 "Thou hast words of eternal life, and as for us, 
 we at least have believed!" You see Peter is 
 Peter himself in this confession. How often do 
 we find him pushing forward with his rash and 
 boastful words. "That be far from Thee, Lord," 
 he cries on a similar occasion — to receive the sharp 
 rebuff, "Get thee behind me, Satan!" "Although 
 all shall stumble," he had yet to boast on still 
 another occasion, "yet will not I. If I must die 
 
A HALF-LEARNED CHRIST 107 
 
 with Thee, I will not deny Thee." We all know 
 with what sorrowful sequence. And so here; "As 
 for us, we, at least, have believed." We perceive 
 the pride in his faith which dictated the words. 
 And now we understand the sharpness of our 
 Lord's rebuke, with its emphasis on the personal 
 pronoun. "You boast yourselves," replies Jesus, 
 "that you at least have believed — was it after 
 all you that believed in Me, or I that chose you — 
 the twelve? And even so, of you, one at least is 
 a devil ! ' ' Poor Peter — always boasting and always 
 getting the "Get thee behind me, Satan." 
 
 How plain the lesson to us is. A warning, 
 clear, sharp, overwhelming, against all spiritual 
 pride. I am afraid that we too are prone to pride 
 ourselves on what we have only received, as if 
 by our own power we had done these things. 
 There is nothing more unlovely than pride in 
 spiritual things. Do we not feel it moving in us 
 sometimes, however, in the precise form in which 
 it attacked Peter here.^^ Are we not inclined, not 
 merely to felicitate ourselves, but also to boast 
 ourselves that we have believed in Jesus, as if it 
 were the mark of some peculiar excellence in us? 
 But, brethren, if we do indeed believe, who, who 
 is it that has made us thus to differ? Is it that 
 we have believed, or that He, our Lord and Mas- 
 ter, has chosen us? Surely it is not we but He 
 who deserves the glory. Let the "Soli Deo 
 Gloria" ring ceaselessly in our breasts. For, we 
 
108 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 may well believe it, not pride but humility is the 
 root of the Christian life; not boasting of ourselves 
 but glorying in God the Saviour is becoming in 
 us. God give us that small measure of humility 
 which will be willing to acknowledge that it is 
 of Him and not of ourselves that we are partakers 
 of Christ. So shall we learn Peter's lesson: "It 
 is not ye that have believed, but I that have 
 chosen!" 
 
 We notice in the second place that Peter's 
 confession in its form looks very much like what 
 we may perhaps call a counsel of despair. "Lord, 
 to whom shall we go," he asks, "Thou hast words 
 of eternal life?" Here, too, our English version 
 may lead us astray as to the tone of the remark. 
 There is no emphasis on the "Thou"; there, in- 
 deed, is no "Thou" at all in the Greek. Christ's 
 person, in other words, is not put prominently 
 forward. It is rather conspicuously kept in the 
 background. Neither is there any article to give 
 significance to "words of eternal life." We do 
 not read ^'the words of eternal life" as if Peter 
 recognized in Jesus' words their supreme peculi- 
 arity, that they were themselves spirit and life. 
 The phrase is purely general; Peter has found 
 "words of eternal life" in Jesus' talk; that is all. 
 In fact, there is little more here than an echo of 
 our Lord's words a few verses earlier. Our Lord 
 had declared that the words He had spoken were 
 words of spirit and life; Peter echoes that Jesus' 
 
A HALF-LEARNED CHRIST 109 
 
 words were words of eternal life. It is to his 
 credit that he recognizes them as such; it shows 
 that he is really at bottom spiritually minded. 
 But we cannot help feeling that — like echoes in 
 general — there is some lack of substance in this. 
 There appears to be exhibited acquiescence rather 
 than intense conviction. Peter was, as a spirit- 
 ually minded man, in search of spiritual nourish- 
 ment; his heart was keyed to and set upon eternal 
 things — the everlasting welfare of his soul rather 
 than the temporal pleasure of his body. He finds 
 satisfaction in Christ. He finds such satisfaction 
 in Him as he had found in no one else. He can- 
 not look with anything but dismay at losing Him. 
 He recognizes Him as unique among the teachers 
 of Israel and rejoices in Him as such. But there 
 he seems as yet half inclined to stop. And to 
 stop there is to stop fatally short of a true appre- 
 ciation of Jesus. For there is something negative 
 rather than positive attaching to this position. 
 It would, doubtless, be going too far to say that it 
 all amounts to no more than satisfying oneself 
 with Jesus in the absence of a better. But there 
 is a suggestion of such a state of mind in it. "Will 
 you too leave me.'^" Jesus asks. "Why, to whom 
 should we go?" is the reply; "Thou hast words of 
 eternal life." There is no adequate entering into 
 the supremeness of Jesus' claims here; there is 
 only a recognition that none better than He could 
 be found. Now, it is not its uniqueness that 
 
no FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 makes a thing really precious to us. That 
 is a negative attribute. It is the appreciation 
 of the positive content of preciousness in any- 
 thing which makes the thing unique — because 
 nothing conceivable could surpass it or take its 
 place. 
 
 It is well worth our while, brethren, to ask our- 
 selves seriously to-day if we are perhaps our- 
 selves adhering to Christ only because, and so far 
 as, and while, we have no one else to go to.^^ Is 
 our reason for enrolling ourselves His summed up 
 only in this — that we know no better.'^ Well, it is 
 certain that we shall never know a better. For a 
 better does not and cannot exist. Because He is 
 the Supremely Best. Better recognize this at 
 once, however, and feel the uplift of His glory! 
 "Christ and other Masters" — in collocation — is 
 derogatory to Him. His uniqueness is absolute, 
 not relative; and our attitude to it must be a posi- 
 tive and not a negative one. There is enthusiasm 
 demanded here. Let us be bound to Christ by a 
 true appreciation of what He actually is, and we 
 will never question whether perchance we may not 
 some time discover a better; and will never feel an 
 impulse to express our devotion to Him in such 
 words as these, "We must cling to Him because 
 we know not to whom else to go." No, no, we 
 must cleave to Him because He is such that to 
 separate from Him would be to separate from all 
 that makes life worth living, all that gilds this 
 
A HALF-LEARNED CHRIST 111 
 
 world or blesses the next. This is the attitude 
 that does justice not to what we would fain find 
 in Him but to what He really is. 
 
 And this leads us to notice an element of (shall 
 we say?) selfishness in Peter's confession. Peter 
 adheres to Jesus because — so he says — he does 
 not know where else to find the blessings which 
 Peter wants. Now Peter was a spiritually minded 
 man and he was not seeking earthly but heavenly 
 good. This is greatly to his credit. It shows a 
 high and noble nature, with high and noble aspira- 
 tions, living on a high and noble plane, above all 
 the dross which satisfies so many men. But it 
 is possible to be selfish even on this high plane; 
 and a dash of this selfishness seems to show itself 
 in Peter's confession. He cleaves to Christ, for 
 what reason,^ Because his longing for words of 
 eternal life is satisfied by Christ. It would be 
 going too far to say that Peter clung to Christ for 
 what, as the coarse saying goes, he could get out 
 of Him. But this coarse language hints at the 
 true state of the case. Surely we will feel that 
 there is something lacking in this attitude, the 
 attitude which cleaves to Jesus because we do not 
 know where else to go to obtain what we want, 
 even though we want the highest good — eternal 
 life itself. Does it not place it on a distinctly 
 lower plane than that fine self-abandonment 
 which cleaves to another, like Ruth to Naomi, 
 out of pure appreciation and love? Think of 
 
112 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Ruth and think of Peter: do not we feel that 
 Ruth was living on a higher plane? 
 
 Now, I am not going to preach to you the gospel 
 of "disinterested love" in the sense of the mystics. 
 You all know the fine story of the vision of a 
 woman going forth with fire and water, to burn 
 up heaven and put out hell, that men may here- 
 after love God neither for fear of hell nor for desire 
 for heaven, but for His Lovely Self alone. We 
 feel the inspiration of it. But we feel doubtless 
 that there is something a little too absolute in its 
 antithesis. There is a proper self-seeking — a 
 proper place for self-love — to which Jesus Him- 
 self appeals, and which should be operative to 
 draw us to Him. It is not wrong, but distinctly 
 right, to long for heaven and to fear hell. xAnd 
 that we find all the higher wants of our souls satis- 
 fied in Christ is surely no mean commendation of 
 Him to us. The desire for eternal life is no low 
 longing. He who can supply this desire is worthy 
 of our adherence and love. 
 
 There is assuredly a place in life for all these 
 things. But after all, they are not quite the 
 highest things. They are the things with which 
 we should begin, not those with which we should 
 end. Let us come to Christ for our own sakes — 
 for our own sakes how can we not come to Him ! — 
 but when, having come to Him for our own sakes, 
 we find all that He is, let us learn to love Him and 
 cleave to Him for His own sake. For His own 
 
A HALF-LEARNED CHRIST 113 
 
 sake, because He is altogether lovely and One to 
 be desired above our chief joy. Why, even in 
 these earthly unions, which we call marriage, we 
 take the loved one "for better, for worse." Shall 
 we take Jesus only for better.? And should the 
 worse come to the worst, are we to leave Him and 
 seek some other one who seems to us to have words 
 of eternal life.'^ There is a sense, let us try to un- 
 derstand that, in which it would be better, in- 
 finitely better, to perish with Jesus, than to live 
 without Him. Thank God, such an alternative 
 can never occur. With Him is life, and nothing 
 but life; life ever more and more abundantly. 
 But it is well worth our while to distinguish and 
 to see that we love Him and cleave to Him, not 
 merely for the life that is in Him for us, but for all 
 the glorious perfections that are in Him Himself. 
 To do this we must, of course, know Him as He 
 is and in all that He is. And here we see the 
 final flaw in Peter's confession. He had not yet 
 come to know Christ fully. And that is, doubtless, 
 the ultimate reason of all the other shortcomings 
 we have found in it. Had he known Christ fully, 
 he never would or could have confessed Him only 
 thus — with a boastful spirit as if he had found 
 Christ out instead of having been found by Him; 
 with half-hearted zeal as if He were only the best 
 he had yet found; and with a somewhat selfish 
 outlook as if it were only because he could obtain 
 from Him satisfaction for his felt needs. I am 
 
114 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 not blaming Peter for not yet knowing Christ 
 better. It rather is wonderful, when all is con- 
 sidered, that he knew Him actually so well, and 
 was ready boldly to declare Him, in the face of all, 
 to be "God's Holy One." It was a great thing 
 for Peter to have seen this clearly; and a great 
 thing for him to have been ready to announce it 
 in the presence of the great defection which was 
 going on at the moment. Herein lies the nobility 
 of this noble confession. But there is a great deal 
 more than this to be known and confessed about 
 Jesus, and Peter afterwards learned it. 
 
 The point of importance to us is, Have we 
 learned it? We may be quite sure that our whole 
 attitude to Christ will turn on the fullness and the 
 intimacy with which we know Him. We have no 
 such excuses as Peter had for not knowing Christ 
 in all the fullness of His Being and all the splen- 
 dour of His Nature. Surely, He must, for instance, 
 be something more to us than "the Holy One of 
 God" — "God's saint" — that is to say, no doubt, 
 by way of eminence, the one whom God has 
 chosen and consecrated and endowed for His ser- 
 vice. We have seen how in Peter's case even, 
 such a knowledge of Him did not suflfice to make a 
 full confession. And surely He must be something 
 more to us than "the historical Christ" — espe- 
 cially if we begin to doubt or bicker over what 
 history it is that we will accept as a trustworthy 
 account of this "historical Christ." Christ the 
 
A HALF-LEARNED CHRIST 115 
 
 Teacher, Christ the Example, Christ the Founder 
 of the Kingdom of God, Christ the King — surely 
 He must be something much more than even all 
 these to us if we are to confess Him aright. The 
 historical Christ, yes, but also the exalted Christ. 
 Christ our Prophet, yes, and Christ our King; but 
 also Christ our Priest and Christ our Sacrifice. 
 Christ that died and also Christ that rose again. 
 The Son of Man and also the Son of God. To 
 Peter as yet He was not all these things, though 
 Peter was feeling His way towards them. To us 
 He is all these things, and more, even Christ, 
 the All in All. Ah, brethren, if we could only see 
 Him in His beauty, how our hearts would go out 
 to Him! No boastful, half-hearted, selfish con- 
 fession then! Only adoration and joy and un- 
 speakable satisfaction in Him! Let us see and 
 know and confess Him, as He is, and in all that 
 He is! 
 
THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 Jno. 16:8-11: — "And he, when he is come, will convict the 
 world in respect of sin, and of righteousness and of judgment: of 
 sin, because they believe not on me; of righteousness, because 
 I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more; of judgment, be- 
 cause the prince of this world hath been judged." 
 
 These chapters which contain the closing dis- 
 course of Christ to His disciples are wonderingly 
 dwelt upon by every Christian heart, as the deep- 
 est and richest part of the riches of this Gospel. 
 That we may obtain an insight into the marvellous 
 words which we take as the subject of our med- 
 itation to-day, it is essential for us to realize the 
 setting which our Lord gave them in the midst 
 of this discourse. He had described to His dis- 
 ciples the conditions of their life, in continuous 
 union and communion with Him, purchased as 
 they were by His death for them and elevated to 
 the lofty position of His special friends from whom 
 He withholds nothing — not even His life itself. 
 Then He had opposed to this picture of their exal- 
 tation, a delineation of their condition in the world, 
 opposed and hated and persecuted and slain ; while 
 they, on their part, were to bear quietly their wit- 
 ness, endure their martyrdom, and trust in their 
 Redeemer. But was this all.? Were they con- 
 demned to a hopeless witness-bearing through all 
 
 116 
 
THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT 117 
 
 the coming years, while the world triumphed over 
 them and in them over their crucified Lord? 
 What an end to the hope they had cherished that 
 this was He who should redeem Israel! 
 
 No, says the Lord, not the world but they were 
 to win the victory; the laurel belongs by right not 
 to Satan's but to His own brow. But we will not 
 fail to notice the air of reproof with which He 
 opens the section of His discourse which He has 
 consecrated to an exposition of the victory over 
 the world which He intended that they — as His — 
 should win. "But now," he says, "I am going 
 to Him that sent me, and no one of you asketh 
 me, 'Whither goest thou.^^', but because I said 
 these things to you, sorrow hath filled your hearts." 
 They had, indeed, expected Him to redeem Israel. 
 It was therefore that they had given Him their 
 trust, their love; that they had left their all to 
 follow Him. But now sad days had come; and 
 they saw their trusted Lord on the eve of giving 
 Himself up to death. Was not this a dashing of 
 their hopes .^^ And had they, then, been so long 
 time with Him and had not learned that the 
 Father had ten myriads of angels who were en- 
 camped about Him and who would bear up His 
 every footfall lest by chance He might dash His 
 foot against a stone .^ Nay, that He had Himself 
 power to lay down His life and to take it again .^^ 
 How could they look upon this coming death as 
 an interference with His plans, the destruction of 
 
118 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 their hopes, and so sorrow as those without hope, 
 instead of rejoicing as those who see the bright 
 promise of the coming day in the east? 
 
 On the hnes of these needs of the babes with 
 which He had to deal, our Lord disposes His com- 
 forting words. The sorrow of their hearts He 
 deprecates, not merely because He might expect 
 them to rejoice like friends in His approaching 
 departure to the higher and better life, but be- 
 cause He might expect them, after so much that 
 He had done in their sight and spoken in their 
 hearing, to have confidence in His mission and 
 work, and to know that the power of Satan could 
 not prevail against Him. What a spectacle we 
 see here ! The Master girding Himself for His last 
 stroke of battle with the joy of victory in His eyes, 
 while His surrounding friends are with stream- 
 ing tears anointing Him for burial! He plants 
 His foot firmly upon the steps of His Eternal 
 Throne; and they smite their breasts with the 
 sorrowful cry, " We had hoped that thou mightest 
 have been He that should have redeemed Israel! " 
 No wonder that He gives them the loving rebuke, 
 " But now I go my way to Him that sent me," — 
 to Him that sent me; on the completion of His 
 work, then; not as balked, defeated, — " and no 
 one of you asketh me ' Whither goest thou? ', but 
 because I have said these things sorrow hath filled 
 your hearts." 
 
 Note how our Lord presses forward His per- 
 
THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT 119 
 
 sonality here. " But I tell you the truth " — 
 none of you has asked me, but I lovingly 
 volunteer to tell you, — "It is good for you that I 
 go away." This departure is not a forced one, by 
 way of defeat and loss; it was planned from the 
 beginning and is part of the great plan by which I 
 am to redeem not only Israel but the world. Note 
 the emphatic "I": "It is good for you that I 
 go away." Why this emphasis .^^ Because there 
 is another to whom this work has been committed 
 and whose offices are necessary for the consum- 
 mation of the work. "Because unless I go, 
 the Helper will not come to you; but if I go, I will 
 send Him to you ; and it is He who, on His coming, 
 will convict the world as to sin, and as to right- 
 eousness and as to judgment." 
 Let us observe: — 
 
 I. That Christ proclaims the victory. 
 
 II. That He announces the agent through 
 
 whose holy offices the victory will be 
 realized in the world. 
 
 III. That He describes the manner in which 
 
 the victory will be realized — by con- 
 victing the world. 
 
 IV. That He names the three elements in 
 
 which this conviction takes effect — sin, 
 righteousness and judgment. And finally, 
 
 V. That He points out the means which the 
 
 Spirit uses to bring home this conviction, 
 in each element, to the hearts of men. 
 
120 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Christ, I say, proclaims here the victory. Why 
 are ye fearful, O ye of little faith? he says in 
 effect to his tearful disciples. I go to the Father, 
 and the world will hate you as it hated me, and the 
 world will persecute you and the world will slay 
 you. But still the world is conquered. It is not 
 because Satan is victor that I go to the Father; 
 it is because I have completed my work, because 
 redemption has been won, and I go to take my 
 place upon the throne, that from that throne I 
 may cause all things to work together for your 
 good, — that from it I may send the Helper forth 
 to you, who will convict the world. 
 
 Here He announces the agent through whom the 
 victory is to be realized in the world. He has 
 won the victory; the Spirit is to apply His work 
 that the fruits of the victory may be reaped to the 
 full. A new age has dawned on this sin-stricken 
 world; the Prince of the Power of the Air is de- 
 throned; the Prince of Peace reigns. Henceforth 
 men strive not single-handed against the spiritual 
 hosts of wickedness in high places; they have a 
 Comforter, Advocate, Helper, Paraclete ever at 
 their right hand, and He will give them the vic- 
 tory. It will be observed that Christ is here 
 dealing with His apostles, not merely as individ- 
 uals striving against the sin that is within them, 
 but as His Lieutenants, leading His hosts against 
 the sin that is in the world. The world may per- 
 secute them — and slay them. But they will win 
 
THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT 121 
 
 the victory; by the power of their Helper they 
 will lead captivity captive. 
 
 Hence the nature of the victory that is to be 
 realized in the world is here declared for us. It 
 is a moral victory, a spiritual victory, and its 
 essence is not physical subjection but mental and 
 moral conviction. That Christ dies, that His 
 followers are imprisoned, persecuted, slain, in no 
 wise detracts from the victory; these things are 
 disparate to it; they move on different planes and 
 cannot conflict. What the Helper is to do is to 
 convict the world; and in this conviction rests 
 their victory. 
 
 It is easy to see that this was a hard saying. No 
 doubt when it was spoken it fell like a deeper 
 knell on the hearts of the apostles; instead of 
 comforting, it pained, instead of encouraging, 
 it slew. But then, Christ was not yet risen and 
 their eyes were holden that they should know 
 neither Him nor His victory. But turn to Pen- 
 tecost. Then the Spirit came as He was prom- 
 ised and gave the convicting power to Peter's 
 sermon that here was announced. See the joy in 
 the victory, the exulting courage of the apostles, 
 from that day to the end. Paul declares that he 
 spoke not in the wisdom of the world but in the 
 demonstration of the Spirit and in power. Al- 
 though he uses a different word, what he means by 
 the demonstration of the Spirit seems to be what 
 Christ here promised under the name of the proof. 
 
122 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 convincing, conviction of the Spirit. This phrase 
 of Paul's, indeed, is perhaps the best verbal com- 
 mentary on our passage. The best actual com- 
 mentary is found, doubtless, in the narrative of 
 the results of the apostolic preaching in the Book 
 of Acts. This, then, is the victory; not an ex- 
 ternal one over men's bodies, but the conquest of 
 the world to Christ by the demonstration of the 
 Spirit in the proclamation of the Gospel, whereby 
 the world is convicted of sin and righteousness and 
 judgment. The conquest is a spiritual one; the 
 apostles are the agents in it; but the source of the 
 power is the Holy Ghost — our one and true Helper 
 in the world, who convicts the world of sin and 
 righteousness and judgment. 
 
 We approach now the center of our subject 
 and perceive what it is that the world is convicted 
 of by the demonstration of the Spirit. The Sav- 
 iour pointedly discriminates between the three 
 elements: As to sin, as to righteousness, as to 
 judgment. Conviction of the world is the work 
 of the Holy Ghost. Conviction as to what.^^ (1) 
 As to sin. The world which as yet knows not sin 
 is convicted of it as the first and primary work of 
 the Holy Ghost. It is not without significance 
 that this is placed first. There is a sense in which 
 it underlies all else, and conviction of sin becomes 
 the first step in that recovery of the world, which 
 is the victory. Once convicted of sin, another 
 conviction is opened out before it. (2) It may 
 
THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT 123 
 
 then be convicted of righteousness, that is, of 
 what righteousness is and what is required to form 
 a true righteousness, and (3) it may be convicted 
 of judgment, that is, of what judgment is, what 
 justice requires and its inevitableness. These 
 two together form the correlates of sin. It is 
 only by knowing sin that we can know righteous- 
 ness; as it is only by knowing darkness that we 
 know hght. We must know what sin is and how 
 subtle it is, before we can realize what righteous- 
 ness is. We must know how base the one is be- 
 fore we can know how noble the other is. We 
 must know the depth that we may appreciate the 
 heights. In like manner we must know sin in 
 order to know judgment. We mu^t know sin in 
 its native hideousness that we may understand its 
 ill-desert, and perceive with what judgment the 
 sinner must be judged. So, too, we must know 
 righteousness to know judgment. Not only the 
 depths of sin, but also the heights of righteousness 
 are involved in the judgment. Sin on the one side, 
 righteousness on the other; these give us our true 
 conviction of judgment. And the work of the 
 Holy Ghost in the world is declared to be convic- 
 tion; and by convicting men He conquers the 
 world. The Gospel is preached and it everywhere 
 brings a crisis to men. Shall they hear or forbear? 
 Some hear; to some it is hid; but on all the con- 
 viction takes effect. Sin is made known; right- 
 eousness is revealed; judgment is laid bare. And 
 
124 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 men convicted of their sin have but a choice of the 
 righteousness or judgment. 
 
 For our Saviour does not leave us in ignorance 
 of the import and instruments of this threefold 
 conviction. 
 
 (1) "Of sin," he says, "because they believe 
 not on me." This does not seem to mean that 
 there would be no sin save for rejection of Christ, 
 but that the proclamation of Christ is the great 
 revealer of sin, the great distinguisher of men. 
 When Christ is preached the touchstone is ap- 
 plied and men are convicted of being sinners and 
 of the depths and hideousness of their sin by their 
 exhibited attitude towards the Son of God. The 
 Gospel is never hid save to them whose eyes the 
 god of this world has blinded, lest they should see 
 the glory of the Saviour and come to Him and be 
 saved. There is no revelation of character so 
 accurate, so powerful, so unmistakable, so inev- 
 itable, as that wrapped up in the simple question, 
 "What think ye of Christ.?" Like a loadstone 
 passing over a rubbish heap, His preaching draws 
 to His side all that is not hopelessly bad. And all 
 who come not are demonstrated to be sinners, and 
 the depth of their sin is thus revealed. 
 
 (2) "As to righteousness," he adds, "because 
 I go to my Father and ye see me no more." This 
 seems to mean that the fact of Christ's completed 
 work, closed by His ascension to His primal glory, 
 is the demonstration of righteousness. Convicted 
 
THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT 125 
 
 of sin, the world is also convicted of righteousness ; 
 that is, of the need of a righteousness such as it 
 cannot frame for itself, and such as will match in 
 its height, the depth of its own sin. This is 
 brought to light only in the Gospel, in which a 
 righteousness of God is revealed from faith to 
 faith. The convicting of the Holy Ghost con- 
 sists no more of a conviction of human sinfulness 
 and need of salvation than it does of the perfect 
 righteousness of Christ wrought out on earth and 
 sealed and warranted by His triumphal departure 
 from this world. Men are convicted of sin, be- 
 cause of their unbelief in Christ: of righteousness 
 because of His finished work. 
 
 (3) But there is one more step. "As to judg- 
 ment, because the Prince of this world has been 
 judged." If there is a sin, and a righteousness, 
 there is also a judgment. And men must know 
 it. The third element in the Spirit's demonstra- 
 tion is the conviction of men of the overhanging 
 judgment. This He performs by means of the 
 obvious condemnation in Christ's person and work 
 of the Prince of this world, involving those who 
 hold of his part in the same destruction. That 
 the world and all that is in it is of the Evil One, 
 that there is no life in it and no help for the chil- 
 dren of men, is one element of the Spirit's testi- 
 mony to the preached Gospel; that this world 
 is under condemnation and reserved for the eternal 
 fire is but another element of it. Everywhere 
 
126 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 where the Spirit carries His demonstration men 
 know what judgment is, and they know it by 
 perceiving the judgment of the Evil one. 
 
 We should not permit to slip from our minds 
 that we have here the Saviour's own exposition 
 of the method and manner of His spiritual con- 
 quest of the world. This conquest is assured. It 
 is the Spirit who performs it. And the method 
 of His work in it is by accompanying the preached 
 word with His demonstration and power. This 
 demonstration of the Spirit consists in convicting 
 the world of sin, of righteousness, and of judgment. 
 Is conviction of sin then, we may ask, necessary to 
 salvation .f^ Is conviction of sin the first step of 
 salvation? Let those smitten souls at Pentecost 
 answer, who cried aloud. Men and Brethren, what 
 shall we do.^^ Is conviction of righteousness neces- 
 sary to salvation.'^ A convinced and convicted 
 appreciation of the needs of our soul which alone 
 can be found in. Christ Jesus .^^ Ask him who has 
 proved to us that the whole world lies alike under 
 the wrath of God, and that by the works of the 
 law no flesh can be justified, and who adds to 
 this word of terror the only word of hope: But 
 now apart from the law a righteousness of God 
 has been revealed, even the righteousness of God 
 through faith in Jesus Christ, unto all them that 
 believe; for there is no difference, for all have 
 sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. And 
 as to conviction of judgment, ask Felix, who 
 
THE CONVICTION OF THE SPIRIT 127 
 
 trembled as this same Paul reasoned of right- 
 eousness and temperance and judgment to come. 
 Assuredly, my brethren, would we be saved, 
 we must know what sin is, we must know what 
 righteousness is and where it may be found, and 
 we must tremble before the judgment which that 
 righteousness must pass on our sin. Christ has 
 performed His work, and with the shout of "It 
 is finished" upon His lips, has ascended to His 
 throne on high, and there, seated by the right 
 hand of God, He has shed forth this which we 
 even now see and hear. The Spirit is in the 
 world and wherever the Gospel of God's grace is 
 faithfully preached He attends it with His dem- 
 onstration and power. And what does He dem- 
 onstrate to our souls .f^ That we are sinners; 
 that we need a God-provided righteousness; that 
 otherwise we must partake in the judgment of 
 the Prince of this world. This is God's way and 
 it is the only way. Let us be fully assured of it! 
 
CHRIST'S PRAYER FOR HIS PEOPLE 
 
 Jno. 17:15: — "I pray not that thou shouldst take them from the 
 world, but that thou shouldst keep them from the evil one." 
 
 The text suggests strongly the contrast be- 
 tween the world and heaven, and the relations 
 which the servants of Christ bear to each. The 
 world and heaven are contrasted ideas; con- 
 trasted places, and contrasted states. And the 
 peculiarity of the relations which Christians bear 
 to these contrasted places and states is that they 
 may be at the same time in very express relations 
 to both. Our Lord Himself, while walking this 
 earth of ours as a man among men, was yet in the 
 bosom of the Father. And the Christian, His 
 follower, while still in the world, the object of the 
 world's hate and the recipient of its persecution, 
 may yet be in the heavenly places with his Lord. 
 Let us resolve the paradox, by considering in turn : 
 
 I. Our Lord's idea of "the world." 
 II. His idea of heaven. 
 III. His desire for His followers. 
 
 It is often said, and this is the first thought 
 that occurs to us on facing this paradox, that our 
 Lord's idea of "the world," as recorded in John, is 
 an ethical rather than a local one. But this must 
 not be taken too exclusively. Our present verse 
 
 128 
 
CHRIST'S PRAYER FOR HIS PEOPLE 129 
 
 is the disproof of too exclusive an attribution of 
 the ethical idea to the Lord. Christ prays that 
 his followers should not be taken out of the world, 
 but yet should be kept from the evil. In this 
 single prayer, the word "world" is used in quito 
 a variety of implications. In the fifth verse it 
 means apparently the universe, as a creation. In 
 the eleventh verse, it is equivalent to the earth, 
 with the implication that it is the world of man 
 that is in mind. It is plainly the world of man 
 in the fifteenth verse. But as man is sinful man, 
 it usually in this sense has the connotation of what 
 we call the sinful world, and this sense comes out 
 strongly in the ninth verse, where Christ's follow- 
 ers are contrasted with the world, and more 
 strongly still in verses fourteen and sixteen, where 
 the world is said to hate the good, and so also in 
 the twenty -first and twenty-third verses. In a 
 word, then, the term world means usually the 
 world of mankind, which, because man is uni- 
 versally sinful, comes to bear the implication of 
 the world of sinful man, which then is brought 
 into contrast with Christ's children in whom the 
 power of sin is broken and a radical divergence 
 from the world begun. Accordingly, when they 
 come to Christ, they come "out of the world," 
 even though they remain in the world. The 
 "world" therefore designates a place, but this 
 place as the abode of man, and this man as sinful. 
 And though there is an ethical colouring to the 
 
130 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 term, yet this ethical colouring does not constitute 
 its essence. Because there is an ethical colouring 
 to it Christ represents His people as gathered out 
 of the world; and because this ethical colouring 
 does not constitute its essence, we can, neverthe- 
 less speak of them remaining in the world while 
 kept from its evil. 
 
 The idea of heaven, as the contrast to that of 
 the world, must, therefore, partake of this two- 
 fold sense. It is primarily a place, to which 
 Christ's children would be removed if they were 
 taken out of the world. But as the world is a 
 bad place, so heaven, its contrast, is a good place; 
 and those who are good are, therefore, already in 
 principle in it. Therefore Paul tells us that our 
 citizenship is in heaven, and that we may even 
 here and now be with Christ in the heavenly 
 places. The word "heaven" does not occur in 
 this prayer. It does occur in the introduction to 
 it, where we are told that "Jesus, lifting up his 
 eyes to heaven, said Father," as if His pure eyes 
 pierced the wall of space and saw the Invisible 
 One. Heaven is, therefore, in this context, the 
 place where God is in His manifested glory, in 
 contrast with the world where the "god of this 
 world" manifests his power for a season. Ac- 
 cordingly our Lord speaks of it as the place where 
 God can be known and enjoyed, or with more per- 
 sonal point and pathos, as the place where He 
 Himself should be, in His destined glory which 
 
CHRIST'S PRAYER FOR HIS PEOPLE 131 
 
 was also His primal glory; where He, as He is, 
 and not as, in His humiliation. He has seemed, 
 should be and be manifested, and where His 
 children should be partakers of His glory. 
 
 And now what is Christ's desire for His people? 
 
 It is certainly not that they should remain in 
 the world, in its ethical sense. Already they had 
 been given Him out of the world, and therefore 
 they were no more of the world — no more than 
 Christ Himself was. The truth had already been 
 given them, that truth which should free from 
 sin, — God's own name had been manifested to 
 and in them, — and they were in radical opposi- 
 tion to the world, so that the world hated them. 
 Accordingly His prayer distinctly is that they 
 should be kept from that evil which constituted 
 the very characteristic of the world, and that their 
 sanctification should be continued in the truth. 
 He does not desire them to remain in the world in 
 this sense. He has instituted a radical contrari- 
 ety between them and "the world" ethically con- 
 sidered; and He is providing for this contra- 
 riety to widen into an ever broadening gulf. 
 
 Just as certainly, it is not that they should 
 remain always in the world, in its more local sense. 
 The tone of joy with which the Lord notes that 
 the time of His sojourn on earth is over and He is 
 ready to re-enter His heavenly glory is unmis- 
 takable. Equally unmistakable is the tone of 
 sadness with which He adverts to leaving His 
 
132 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 followers in the world. They are in danger there; 
 in danger from the world's hate; and in danger 
 from the world's temptation. They are away 
 from their true and proper home there — in the 
 enemy's country — not householders at home, but 
 soldiers on duty, pilgrims on their journey. He 
 longs for them to enter their rest. And though 
 He leaves them joy and the means of more joy 
 in the word of truth. His desire for them is some- 
 thing higher than they can find here below. Nay, 
 His distinct "will" for them is that they also may 
 be with Him where He is to be; that they may be- 
 hold His glory; that they may share in that glory. 
 He wishes for them what His servant afterwards 
 declared to be "far better," that they too like 
 Him should go out of the world and enter into 
 glory — where Christ is on the right hand of God, 
 where God dwells and His knowledge is, and where 
 love is perfected in all. 
 
 But it is that they may temporarily remain in 
 the world, out of which they have in one sense 
 already come, but in which, in the other sense, 
 they are still left, while kept from the evil 
 of it. 
 
 Why? Well, for one thing, for their own sakes 
 — that they may be sanctified. God's name has 
 already been manifested to them; God's words 
 have already been given them; and they have re- 
 ceived them; and men hate them for it. The 
 good work is already, therefore, begun with them. 
 
CHRIST'S PRAYER FOR HIS PEOPLE 133 
 
 Its fruits are already shown in their radical de- 
 parture from the world and the world's conse- 
 quent hatred. But the work is not completed. 
 Therefore, the Saviour prays that "they may be 
 sanctified in the truth," that "they themselves 
 also may be sanctified" in truth, just as He had 
 been. They are to remain in the world then for 
 their own sakes that the good work begun in them 
 may be perfected unto the end. This appears as 
 needful. Not, of course, as if they might not 
 conceivably, like the dying thief, be prepared 
 for heaven in a moment. God's almighty grace 
 can work wonders. But that is not God's or- 
 dinary way; the muscles of holiness must grow 
 by practice; hence temptation itself and trials are 
 blessings. Hence, too, it emerges that sanctifi- 
 cation is to take place in this life, in the ordinary 
 provision of God. God's children are to remain 
 in the world for their sanctification. 
 
 For another thing, for others' sake. God's 
 plans need their presence in and work for the 
 world. They are not the whole harvest, but the 
 first fruits only. And that the first fruits may 
 share in the harvest, it is needful to have them 
 stay and labour here. They are to be the seed — 
 ** the good seed are they who ..." And after a 
 while this sowing is to ripen into a goodly in- 
 gathering. Accordingly, our Lord prays not only 
 for them but for them also who believe — through- 
 out the whole future — on Him by their word. His 
 
134 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 glance takes in His whole Church, of all the ages; 
 and these are to abide for it. 
 
 For still another thing, for the sake of the world 
 itself. There is a testimony to be borne to the 
 wicked world itself. "The wicked world," ap- 
 parently, because in contrast here not only with 
 those whom Christ left behind, but also with 
 those who should believe on His name through 
 their word. The world is to be convicted of sin 
 and convinced of Christ's mission and glory. His 
 own are to remain in the world and to propagate 
 and grow into a mighty, unitary Church, in order 
 that the world itself may know that the lowly 
 Jesus whom it has despised and rejected is none 
 other than the Son of God; and that these lowly 
 followers of His, despised and persecuted by it, 
 are loved of the Father even as the Father loves 
 Him. The mighty testimony of the Church of 
 God! How little we are bearing it! How we 
 ought to bestir ourselves to it! 
 
 And then, finally, we must say also, for the 
 Son's own sake. For He, too, reaps advantages 
 from their abiding below. So, and humanly 
 speaking, so only, may His mission be vindicated 
 and His glory manifested to the world, in His 
 Church; may His glory be fully manifested to 
 His own, when at last they come to Him; may 
 His love then be perfected in them. 
 
 For these reasons, at least, it is well that Christ's 
 people remain for a season in this wicked world. 
 
THE OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT 
 
 Acts 2:16, 17: — "This is that which hath been spoken through 
 the prophet Joel. ... I will pour forth of my Spirit." 
 
 In any attempt to estimate the significance of 
 the outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, consid- 
 ered as the inauguration of the New Dispensa- 
 tion, the following two considerations must be 
 made fundamental. 
 
 The Spirit was active under the Old Dispensa- 
 tion in all the modes of His activity under the 
 New Dispensation. This is evinced by the rec- 
 ords of the activities of the Spirit of God in the 
 Old Testament, which run through the whole 
 series of the Spirit's works; and by the ascription 
 by the writers of the New Testament of all the 
 working of the Spirit of God in the Old Testament 
 to their own personal Holy Ghost. Thus, for 
 example, the inspiration of the Old Testament 
 prophets and writers is ascribed to the Holy 
 Ghost (2 Pet. 1:21; 1 Pet. 1:11; Heb. 3:7, 10:15; 
 Matt. 22:43; Mark 12:36; Acts 1:16, and 28:25). 
 The authorship of the ritual service of the sanc- 
 tuary is ascribed to Him (Heb. 9:8). The leading 
 of Israel in the wilderness and throughout its 
 history is ascribed to Him (Acts 7:51). It was in 
 Him that Christ preached to the antediluvians 
 
 135 
 
136 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 (1 Pet. 3:18). He was the author of faith then 
 as now (2 Cor. 4:13). 
 
 Nevertheless, the change of dispensation con- 
 sisted primarily just in this: that in the New Dis- 
 pensation the Spirit was given (so John 7:39; 
 16:7; 20:22; Acts 2). 
 
 The problem, therefore, is to understand how 
 the New Dispensation can be thus by way of dis- 
 crimination the Dispensation of the Spirit, char- 
 acterized by the giving of the Spirit, while yet He 
 was active in the Old Dispensation in all the modes 
 of His activity under the New. For the solving 
 of this problem we shall need to exercise a humble 
 courage in embracing the standpoint of Scripture 
 itself. 
 
 In order to do this, we must observe that the 
 operations of the Holy Ghost were forfeited by 
 man through sin. Adam enjoyed the influence 
 of the Holy Spirit and it was through the Spirit's 
 inworking that Adam was enabled to withstand 
 temptation, and by it that he might have been 
 led safely through his probation and afterwards 
 confirmed in holiness. When Adam sinned he 
 lost the gift of original righteousness, indeed, but 
 with it also the gift of the Holy Ghost, and the 
 depravation into which he and his posterity 
 sank — according to the fearful history recorded 
 in the first chapter of Romans — has lying at its 
 foundation the deprivation of the Holy Ghost's 
 influences. 
 
THE OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT 137 
 
 The Lord never, indeed, wholly turns away from 
 any work of His hands; did He do so, it would fall 
 at once on the removal of His upholding hand, 
 like the unhooped barrel, back into nothingness. 
 In His providence, and in what we call His com- 
 mon grace. He continues to work among even 
 His sinful creatures who have lost all claim upon 
 His love. But just because they are sinful, they 
 have forfeited all the operations of His grace and 
 deserve at His hands only wrath. After the sin 
 of Adam, the whole world lies in wickedness; and 
 just because it lies in wickedness it is deprived 
 of the inhabitation of the Spirit of holiness. 
 
 But though the race has thus by its sin for- 
 feited the right to the inward work of the Holy 
 Ghost, God may in His infinite grace restore the 
 Spirit to man, as soon as, and in so far as. He can 
 make it just and righteous so to do. In the aton- 
 ing work of Christ, He has laid the foundation 
 for such a restoration in righteousness. But we 
 are dependent on the Scriptures to inform us how 
 far this restoration extends intensively and ex- 
 tensively. We are not authorized to argue that 
 because of the remedy for sin offered in Christ, 
 God must or may treat sin as if it never had ex- 
 isted, so that all that the race has lost in Adam is 
 restored in Christ, and that for all the sinful race 
 alike. It may be consonant with what we could 
 wish to be true, so to argue. But it is obvious 
 that were this, in fact, the state of the case, 
 
138 lAlTlI AND LIFE 
 
 th(* Titer, would luivc Ix'rn rcstorcrl in Christ, from 
 the inoincnt ol' Aihim's fiill, and would have been 
 continued iji holy development unbrokenly. 
 Adam's sin wouhJ, in that case, have been a ben- 
 efit to the race; it would have curtailed its pro- 
 bation and placed the nice at once at tin; goal of 
 attainment which h.id been promised to obedi- 
 ence. Obedience and (iisobedience obviously 
 would, in th.it case, have been all one; the end 
 ol)tained would have been precisely the same. 
 Whence it woidd follow that Ailam's probation 
 was a mere farce, if not even that the Divine re- 
 gard for moral distinctions was a pretence. 
 
 Nothing can be more obvious according to either 
 Scrii)tnre or the experience of the race than that 
 this course was not taken. The Lord did not, at 
 once, treat sin as if it had never occurred. He 
 did, inch'cd, at on(!e institute a remedial scheme 
 by which the ed'ect of sin rrnght be obliterated 
 to the extent and in the mariner whic'h was pleas- 
 ing to His glorious judgment; but clearly it was 
 not |)lea,sing to Dim, on I he basis of the atone- 
 ment, to set aside the fad of sin altogether. ITow 
 far, on this basis. He was pleased to set aside the 
 fact of sin and restore to men the Spirit of holiness 
 of whom they had been deprived on account of 
 sin, we are wholly dependent u|)()n His Word to 
 tell us. 
 
 On the basis of the Scriptural declarations, it is 
 perfectly evident that it was not the plan of God 
 
TUK OnTPOTIRFNG OF TTIIO SIM HIT 1.S9 
 
 to rcslon' I lie lo.sl, Spiril, lo man universally. 'Vhr. 
 (ircadfnl fact, .slarcs ns full in tli<' face that, God 
 lias llioii^dil w<ll l<» \rnvr soiric men <'t(Tnally 
 vvillioiil IIk' Spiril of liolirH'ss. 1 1 is ohvions l,li;il, 
 in I lie cxrculion of Mis pl.-iri of <iis(TiininaLion 
 afiion^ irMMi, il, w.js fioI His plan lo <lisl,ril)iit(; the 
 saving operations of His Spiril, e(jnally tliroii^Ii 
 eillier si)a('e or time. His sov<'rei^nly shows it- 
 self not only in f)assin^ hy one individujil and 
 ^'ranlin^ His /^q;ie<' l,o ;inolli<*r; l>nl also in i)assin^ 
 hy one nnlion, or one ;i^e, ;iiid ^r.irilin^ His ^rae(^ 
 lo another. And in His insernl;d)le wisdom it 
 has obviously heen His plan to eonfin<' IIm^ op(Ta- 
 lions of His ^vncv Ihrouf^h many a^M's to on<; 
 people of His choice, passing hy llw rial ions of the 
 world at lar^'e, arul leaving IImmu to I heir sin. 
 This is IIm' riManiri^' of llie choice of Israel and IIk; 
 divine ^niidance of llial, chosen people. 
 
 W<' cannot fa I horn all the i)uri)ose of (iod in 
 I his dis[)osition of His ^'rac<'. W<' may Me<' (h*- 
 reclly, however, that III us a, twofohi <'rid was se- 
 cured. Sin was allowed t,o work ilself out on the 
 sta^<' of a, world-wide life, willi the result that it 
 cxhihii.ed all ils horror and all its lu'lplessncss. 
 And ^ra<'e conlinuously had its lroi)hies on the 
 sialic of Israel itisli life. Israel thus served as a 
 foil to exhihit t}i<' corrui)l.ion of the nalions; 
 and at the sanie lime pr*es<'rved th<' continuity of 
 (iod's people thr'oii/^h lime and suf)plied the 
 starting' point for the universal extension of His 
 
140 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Kingdom when at length the set time for its in- 
 auguration should come. At all events, it is a 
 fact that the Scriptures, on which we are depend- 
 ent for all knowledge of the work of God's Spirit, 
 confine all their declarations of the work of the 
 Spirit through these gathering years to the theo- 
 cratic people. Only within and for the benefit of 
 the theocracy does the Spirit of God work from 
 Adam to Christ — from the first man through 
 whom came death to the Second Man through 
 whom came redemption. 
 
 And now we are, perhaps, in a position to under- 
 stand the contrast between the first and second 
 dispensations, when the second is called the Dis- 
 pensation of the Spirit, inaugurated by the visi- 
 ble outpouring of the Spirit at Pentecost, al- 
 though the Spirit had been the guide of Israel, 
 and the sanctifier of the people of God from the 
 beginning. The new dispensation is the Dispen- 
 sation of the Spirit, whether we consider the ex- 
 tent of the Spirit's operations, the object of His 
 operations, the mode of the Divine administra- 
 tion of His Kingdom, or the intensity of the Spir- 
 it's action. 
 
 The new dispensation is the dispensation of the 
 Spirit because in it the Spirit of God is poured 
 out upon all flesh. This element in the change is 
 made emphatic in the predictions w^hich prepared 
 the way for it — as in the prophecy of Joel which 
 Peter quotes in his Pentecostal sermon; and it is 
 
THE OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT 141 
 
 symbolized in the miraculous attestation by 
 which it is inaugurated — in the tongues that dis- 
 tributed themselves on the heads of the agents 
 of the new proclamation — "as if of fire" — and 
 in the "gift of tongues" by which the universality 
 of their mission was intimated. Here is the central 
 idea of the new dispensation. It is world-wide 
 in its scope; the period of preparation being over, 
 the world-wide Kingdom of God was now to be 
 inaugurated, and the Spirit was now to be poured 
 upon all flesh. No longer was one people to be its 
 sole recipients, but the remedy was to be applied 
 to all peoples alike. 
 
 The new dispensation is the dispensation of the 
 Spirit, again, because now the object of the Spir- 
 it's work is, for the first time, to recover the world 
 from its sin. Of course, this was its ultimate 
 object from the beginning; but during the period 
 of preparation it was only its ultimate, not its 
 proximate object. Its proximate object then 
 was preparation, now it was performance. Then 
 it was to preserve a seed, sound and pure for the 
 planting; now it was the reaping of the harvest. 
 It required the Spirit's power to keep the seed 
 safe during the cold and dark winter; it requires it 
 now to plant the seed and water it and cause it 
 to grow into the great tree, in the branches of 
 which all the fowls of the air may rest. The 
 Spirit is the leaven which leavens the world; in 
 Israel it is that leaven laid away in the closet until 
 
142 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 the day of leavening comes; when that day comes 
 and it is drawn out of its dark corner and placed 
 in the heap of meal — then, indeed, the day of the 
 leaven has come. Or to use a figure of Isaiah's, 
 during all those dark ages the Kingdom of God, 
 confined to Israel, was like a pent-in stream. 
 The Spirit of God was its life, its principle, during 
 all the ages; it was He that kept it pent in. Now 
 the Kingdom of God is like that pent-in stream 
 with the barriers broken down, and the Spirit of 
 God driving it. 
 
 The new dispensation is, once more, the dis- 
 pensation of the Spirit, because now the mode of 
 the administration of God's Kingdom has be- 
 come spiritual. This is in accordance with its 
 new extent and its new object, and is intended to 
 secure and to advance its universality and its 
 rapid progress. In the old dispensation, the 
 Kingdom of God was in a sense of this world; 
 it had its relation to and its place among earthly 
 states; it was administered by outward ordinances 
 and enactments and hierarchies. In the new dis- 
 pensation the Kingdom of God is not of this 
 world; it has no relation to or place among earthly 
 states; it is not administered by external or- 
 dinances. The Kingdom of God now is within 
 you; its law is written on the heart; it is admin- 
 istered by an inward force. Where the Jewish 
 ordinances extended, there of old was the King- 
 dom of God; where men were circumcised on the 
 
THE OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT 143 
 
 eighth day, where they turned their faces to the 
 Temple at the hours of sacrifice, and whence they 
 went up to Jerusalem to the annual feasts. A 
 centralized worship we say; for the Temple at 
 Jerusalem was the place where God might be 
 acceptably worshipped and they were of the 
 Kingdom who owned its sway. Now, "where 
 the Spirit of the Lord is, there is the Church" — 
 as Tertullian and Irenseus and Ignatius tell us; 
 wherever the Spirit works — and He works when 
 and where and how He will — there is the Church 
 of God. We are freed from the outward ordi- 
 nances. Touch not, taste not, handle not; and are 
 under the sway of the indwelling Spirit alone. 
 An inward power takes the place of an out- 
 ward commandment; love shed abroad in our 
 hearts supplants fear as our motive; a Divine 
 strength replaces our human weakness. 
 
 Finally, we may say that the new dispensa- 
 tion is the dispensation of the Spirit, because now 
 the Spirit works in the hearts of God's people 
 with a more prevailing and a more pervading 
 force. We cannot doubt that He regenerated and 
 sanctified the souls of God's saints in the old dis- 
 pensation; we cannot doubt that He was operat- 
 ing creatively in them in renewing their hearts, 
 and that He was powerfully present in them, 
 leading them in right paths. "Create within me 
 a new heart and renew a right spirit within me" 
 is an Old Testament prayer; and it must repre- 
 
144 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 sent an Old Testament experience. And yet we 
 seem to be not merely authorized but compelled 
 to look upon the mode of the Spirit's work as 
 more powerful and prevailing in the new dispen- 
 sation than in the old. For in these new times, 
 God seems to promise not only that He will pour 
 out His Spirit upon all flesh, but that He will pour 
 Him out in an especial manner on His people. 
 In what sense would the fact that He will pour 
 out the Spirit on the seed of Israel be character- 
 istic of the new dispensation, if there were not 
 some advance here on the old.^^ Such a passage as 
 Ezekiel 36:26 or Zech. 12:10 would seem to mean 
 as much as this: that the Holy Spirit will work 
 so powerfully in the hearts of God's people in the 
 new time, that the sanctification which had lagged 
 behind in the«old should be completed now. That 
 is to say, there is here the promise of a holy 
 Church. This too, no doubt, is of progressive 
 realization. After a number of Christian cen- 
 turies we have cause still to weep over the back- 
 slidings of the people of God as truly as Israel had. 
 But Christ is perfecting His Church even as He 
 perfects the individual, and after a while He will 
 present it to Himself a holy Church, without spot 
 or wrinkle or any such thing. 
 
 Surely it must mean much to us that we live 
 in the dispensation of the Spirit, a dispensation 
 in which the Spirit of God is poured out upon all 
 flesh with the end of extending the bounds of 
 
THE OUTPOURING OF THE SPIRIT 145 
 
 God's Kingdom until it covers the earth; and 
 that He is poured out in the hearts of His people 
 so that He reigns in their hearts and powerfully 
 determines them to do holiness and righteousness 
 all the days of their lives. Because we live under 
 this dispensation, we are free from the outward 
 pressure of law and have love shed abroad in our 
 hearts, and, being led by the Spirit of God, are 
 His Sons, yielding a willing obedience and by in- 
 stinct doing what is conformable to His will. 
 Because this is the dispensation of the Spirit we 
 are in the hands of the loving Spirit of God whose 
 work in us cannot fail; and the world is in His 
 powerful guidance and shall roll on in a steady 
 development until it knows the Lord and His 
 will is done on earth as in heaven. It is because 
 this is the dispensation of the Spirit that it is a 
 missionary age; and it is because it is the dispen- 
 sation of the Spirit that missions shall make their 
 triumphant progress until earth passes at last 
 into heaven. It is because this is the dispensa- 
 tion of the Spirit that it is an age of ever-increasing 
 righteousness and it is because it is the dispensa- 
 tion of the Spirit that this righteousness shall 
 wax and wax until it is perfect. Blessed be God 
 that He has given it to our eyes to see this His 
 glory in the process of its coming. 
 
PRAYER AS A MEANS OF GRACE 
 
 Acts 9:11: — "For behold, he prayeth." 
 
 We read these words, "For behold, he prayeth," 
 of Saul of Tarsus, immediately after the account 
 of how, when he was journeying from Jerusalem 
 to Damascus on his persecuting errand, he was 
 smitten to the ground by the Divine hand and 
 raised again by those gracious words — how gra- 
 cious, how inexplicably gracious they must have 
 seemed to him! — which promised him service for 
 the very One whom he was now persecuting. 
 And when we read them our first thought is likely 
 to turn on the appropriateness of prayer in the 
 circumstances. Thus the theme is obviously sug- 
 gested of prayer as the appropriate expression of 
 the renewed sinner's heart. On this subject I 
 I shall not, however, speak to you just now. I 
 wish to call your attention, rather, to another sub- 
 ject for meditation which also lies in our passage, 
 though perhaps not so prominently. That is, 
 Prayer as a means of Grace. 
 
 If we look closely at this verse we shall see that 
 it suggests prayer as a means of grace. You will 
 notice that it reads, ''For behold, he prayeth, and 
 he hath seen" a vision of Ananaias coming to him 
 to restore him to sight. ''For behold he prayeth 
 
 146 
 
PRAYER AS A MEANS OF GRACE 147 
 
 and''; that is, this statement is given as a reason, 
 and as a reason why Ananaias should now go to 
 him. And the reason is that Paul is now pre- 
 pared for the visit. And the preparation con- 
 sists of the two items that he is praying and that 
 he has seen in a vision Ananaias coming. In 
 other words, that he is in a state of preparedness 
 for the reception of grace in general is evidenced 
 by his being in prayer; while he is prepared for 
 Ananaias' coming in particular through the vision. 
 The passage thus represents prayer as the state of 
 preparedness for the reception of grace; and, 
 therefore, in the strictest sense as a means of 
 grace. We purpose to look at it for a few mo- 
 ments in this light. 
 
 Even if we should not rise above the naturalis- 
 tic plane, I think we might be able to see that the 
 attitude into which the act of prayer brings the 
 soul is one which especially softens the soul and 
 lays it open to gracious influences. Say that we 
 hold with those who believe in prayer, but do not 
 believe in answer to prayer. Well, is not the 
 mental attitude assumed in prayer, at least, an 
 humble attitude, a softening attitude, a bene- 
 ficfal attitude .f^ Do we not see that thus the very 
 act of prayer by its reflex influence alone — could 
 we believe in no more — will tend to quiet the soul, 
 break down its pride and resistance, and fit it 
 for a humble walk in the world. ^^ In its very na- 
 ture, prayer is a confession of weakness, a con- 
 
148 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 fession of need, of dependence, a cry for help, a 
 reaching out for something stronger, better, more 
 stable and trustworthy than ourselves, on which 
 to rest and depend and draw. No one can take 
 this attitude once without an effect on his char- 
 acter; no one can take it in a crisis of his life with- 
 out his whole subsequent life feeling the influence 
 in its sweeter, humbler, more devout and restful 
 course; no one can take it habitually without 
 being made, merely by its natural, reflex influ- 
 ence, a different man, in a very profound sense, 
 from what he otherwise would have been. Prayer, 
 thus, in its very nature, because it is an act of 
 self-abnegation, a throwing of ourselves at the 
 feet of One recognized as higher and greater than 
 we, and as One on whom we depend and in whom 
 we trust, is a most beneficial influence in this hard 
 life of ours. It places the soul in an attitude of 
 less self-assertion and predisposes it to walk simply 
 and humbly in the world. 
 
 The significance of all this is, of course, vastly 
 increased, when we rise above the region of natur- 
 alism into that of supernaturalism. If when we 
 believe only in prayer but not in its answer, if 
 when we look only for a natural, reflex influence 
 on our life of the attitude into which prayer 
 brings us, we can recognize in it a softening, 
 blessing effect; how much more when we perceive 
 a Divine person above who hears and answers the 
 prayer. If there were no God, we can see that it 
 
PRAYER AS A MEANS OF GRACE 149 
 
 would be a blessing to men to think there was a 
 God and throw themselves at His feet in prayer. 
 If there is a God who sits aloft and hears and an- 
 swers, do we not see that the attitude into which 
 prayer brings the soul is the appropriate attitude 
 which the soul should occupy to Him, and is the 
 truest and best preparation of the soul for the 
 reception of His grace? The soul in the attitude 
 of prayer is like the flower turned upwards to- 
 wards the sky and opening for the reception of the 
 life-giving rain. What is prayer but an adoring 
 appearing before God with a confession of our 
 need and helplessness and a petition for His 
 strength and blessing.^ What is prayer but a 
 recognition of our dependence and a proclamation 
 that all that we dependent creatures need is 
 found abundantly and to spare in God, who gives 
 to all men liberally and upbraids not.^ What is 
 prayer but the very adjustment of the heart for 
 the influx of grace .'^ Therefore it is that we look 
 upon the prayerful attitude as above all others the 
 true Christian attitude — just because it is the 
 attitude of devout and hopeful dependence on- 
 God. And, therefore, it is that we look upon that 
 type of religious teaching as, above all others, the 
 true Christian type which has as its tendency to 
 keep men in the attitude of prayer, through all 
 their lives. 
 
 Every type of religious teaching will inevitably 
 beget its corresponding type of religious life. 
 
150 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 And that teaching alone which calls upon man to 
 depend wholly on the Lord God Almighty — our 
 loving Father who has given His Son to die for us 
 — for all the exercises of grace, will make Chris- 
 tians whose whole life is a prayer. Not that other 
 Christians do not pray. But only of these Chris- 
 tians can it be said that their life is an embodied 
 prayer. In so far as any Christian's life is a 
 prayerful life, pervaded by and made up out of 
 prayer, it approaches in its silent witness the ideal 
 of this type of teaching. What other attitude is 
 possible to a Christian on his knees before God but 
 an attitude of entire dependence on God for His 
 gifts, and of humble supplication to Him for His 
 favour? But are we to rise from our knees only 
 to take up a different attitude towards God.^ Says 
 one of the greatest thinkers of modern times: 
 "On his knees before God, every one that has 
 been saved will recognize the sole efficiency of 
 the Holy Spirit in every good work. ... In a 
 word, whoever truly prays ascribes nothing to 
 his own will or power except the sin that con- 
 demns him before God, and knows of nothing 
 that could endure the judgment of God except it 
 be wrought within him by the Divine love. But 
 whilst all other tendencies in the Church preserve 
 this attitude so long as their prayer lasts, to lose 
 themselves in radically different conceptions as 
 soon as the Amen has been pronounced, the Cal- 
 vinist adheres to the truth of his prayer, in his 
 
PRAYER AS A MEANS OF GRACE 151 
 
 confession, in his theology, in his Hfe, and the 
 Amen that has closed his petition re-echoes in 
 the depths of his consciousness and throughout 
 the whole of his existence." That is to say, for us 
 Calvinists the attitude of prayer is the whole 
 attitude of our lives. Certainly this is the true 
 Christian attitude, because it is the attitude of 
 dependence, and trust. But just because this 
 is the attitude of prayer, prayer puts the soul 
 in the attitude for receiving grace and is essen- 
 tially a means of grace. 
 
 But once again, prayer is a means of grace be- 
 cause it is a direct appeal to God for grace. It is 
 in its very innermost core a petition for help and 
 that is — proportionately to its sphere — for grace. 
 The means — the most direct and appropriate, 
 the most prevailing and sure means of obtaining 
 aid from a superior, is to ask for it. If a com- 
 munity desires a boon from the government, it 
 petitions for it. The means above all others by 
 which we are to obtain God's blessing is natu- 
 rally and properly to petition for it. It is true 
 that all prayer is not petition. The Apostle gives 
 us a list of the aspects of prayer in 1 Tim. ii:l sq. 
 under the names of "supplications, prayers, in- 
 tercessions, thanksgivings." All these elements 
 enter into prayer. Prayer in its full conception 
 is then, not merely asking from God, but all in- 
 tercourse with God. Intercourse, indeed, is the 
 precise connotation of the standing word for 
 
152 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 prayer in the New Testament — the second in the 
 list of 1 Tim. ii:l, translated in our version sim- 
 ply "pra^^ers." The sacred idea of prayer "per se 
 is, therefore, to put it sharply, just communion 
 with God, the meeting of the soul with God, and 
 the holding of converse with Him. Perhaps we 
 would best define it as conscious intercourse or 
 communion with God. God may have com- 
 munion with us without prayer; He may enter 
 our souls beneath consciousness, and deal with 
 us from within; and because He is within us we 
 can be in communion with Him apart from prayer. 
 But conscious communion with Him is just prayer. 
 Now, I think we may say, emphatically, that 
 prayer is a means of grace above everything else 
 because it is in all its forms conscious communion 
 with God. This is the source of all grace. When 
 the soul is in contact with God, in intercourse 
 with God, in association with Him, it is not only in 
 an attitude to receive grace; It is not only ac- 
 tually seeking grace; it is already receiving and 
 possessing grace. And intercourse with God is 
 the very essence of prayer. 
 
 It is impossible to conceive of a praying man, 
 therefore, as destitute of grace. If he prays, really 
 prays, he draws near to God with heart open for 
 grace, humbly depending on Him for its gift. 
 And he certainly receives it. To say, Behold he 
 prayeth! is equivalent, then, to saying, Behold a 
 man in Christ! Dr. Charles Hodge used to 
 
PRAYER AS A MEANS OF GRACE 153 
 
 startle us by declaring that no praying soul ever 
 was lost. It seemed to us a hard saying. Our 
 diflSculty was that we did not conceive "praying" 
 purely enough. We can, no doubt, go through the 
 motions of prayer and not be saved souls. Our 
 Saviour tells us of those who love to pray on the 
 street corners and in the synagogues, to be seen 
 of men. And He tells us that they have their 
 reward. Their purpose in praying is to be seen 
 of men, and they are seen of men. What can 
 they ask more.^ But when we really pray — we 
 are actually in enjoyment of communion with 
 God. And is not communion with God salva- 
 tion? The thing for us to do is to pray without 
 ceasing; once having come into the presence of 
 God, never to leave it; to abide in His presence 
 and to live, steadily, unbrokenly, continuously, 
 in the midst of whatever distractions or trials, 
 with and in Him. God grant such a life to every 
 one of us ! 
 
SURRENDER AND CONSECRATION 
 
 Acts 22:10:— "What shall I do. Lord?" 
 
 When Paul was stricken to the ground on his 
 way to Damascus by the glory of the risen Christ, 
 bursting on him from heaven, he had but two 
 questions to ask: Who art thou, Lord? and What 
 shall I do. Lord? By the first he certified him- 
 selt as to the person before whose majesty he lay 
 prone; by the second he entered at once into His 
 willing service. 
 
 In this, too, Paul's conversion is typical. No 
 one can call Jesus Lord save by the Holy Ghost; 
 but when the Holy Ghost has moved with power 
 upon the soul, the amazed soul has but two ques- 
 tions to ask: Who art thou, Lord? and What shall 
 I do, Lord? There is no question in its mind as 
 to the legitimacy of the authority claimed, as to 
 its extent and limitations, as to its sphere, as to 
 its sanction. He whose glory has shone into the 
 heart is recognized at once and unquestioningly as 
 Lord, and is so addressed no less in the first ques- 
 tion than in the second. Who art thou. Lord? 
 is not a demand for credentials; it is a simple in- 
 quiry for information, a cry of wondering adora- 
 tion and worship. And it is, therefore, followed 
 
 at once with the cry of. What shall I do, Lord? 
 
 154 
 
SURRENDER AND CONSECRATION 155 
 
 In this latter question there unite the two es- 
 sential elements of all religion, surrender and con- 
 secration — the passive and active aspects of that 
 faith which on the human side is the fundamental 
 element of religion, as grace is on God's side, when 
 deahng with sinful men. "What shall I do. Lord? " 
 In that simple question, as it trembled on the lips 
 of Paul lying prostrate in the presence of the 
 heavenly glory, there pulsated all that abnegation 
 of self, that casting of oneself wholly on Christ, 
 that firm entrusting of oneself in all the future to 
 Him and His guidance, — in a word, the whole of the 
 "assensus" and "fiducia," which (the "notitia" 
 being presupposed) constitute saving faith. And 
 saving faith wherever found is sure to take this 
 position, perhaps not purely — for what faith of 
 man is absolutely pure.^ — but in direct propor- 
 tion to its purity, its governing power over the 
 life. Surrender and consecration, we may take 
 it then, are the twin key-notes of the Christian 
 life: "What shall I do, Lord.^^" the one question 
 which echoes through all the corridors of the Chris- 
 tian heart. 
 
 And as our life as ministers of the Gospel is 
 nothing else but one side of our Christian life — 
 the flower and fruit of our Christian life — sur- 
 render and consecration must be made also its 
 notes. It is in direct proportion as they are made 
 its key-notes that we may hope for success in our 
 ministry; for only in this proportion are we 
 
156 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Christ's ministers and not servitors of our own- 
 selves. Let us, then, approach this holy calling 
 in this spirit, the spirit of Paul before us and of 
 every child of Christ through all the ages. Let us 
 now as we enter these halls to begin or to re-begin 
 our preparation for the great work before us, have 
 no reservations — that we will serve the Lord in 
 this sphere, but not in that; that we will serve 
 Him to this extent, but not to that; that we will 
 serve Him in this mode, but not in that. Let 
 surrender and consecration be our watch-words. 
 "What shall I do, Lord.^" — ^let that question be 
 the spirit of all our lives. 
 
 And now let us observe what is involved in such 
 a spirit. I think we may say this much on even a 
 surface survey of the matter — (1) that there is an 
 element of humility that enters into it; (2) that 
 there is an element of true dignity that enters 
 into it, and (3) that there is an element of power 
 that enters into it. Humility, dignity, power — 
 at least these three things. 
 
 Humility — what a difference in this regard be- 
 tween Saul the Pharisee and Paul the Christian! 
 Before his conversion Saul seems to have had no 
 doubt of what he should do. His fundamental 
 characteristics seem to have been those of the 
 type of character which we call masterful. He 
 was a man of decision, of energy; somewhat self- 
 sufficient, as indeed a Pharisaic training was apt 
 to make one; little inclined, one would think, to 
 
SURRENDER AND CONSECRATION 157 
 
 defer to the guidance of others. We must guard 
 against supposing him to have been a man of 
 violent and wicked impulses, as we may be misled 
 into fancying by his career as a persecutor and 
 his own words of subsequent sharp self -rebuke — 
 after his eyes were opened. A man of deep relig- 
 ious heart at all times, set on serving the Lord, 
 his very vices were but the defects of his virtues. 
 But somewhat headstrong, opinionated, undocile, 
 perhaps; bent on serving God with a pure con- 
 science, but constitutionally apt to go his own way 
 in that service — for the God of Israel had never 
 bidden him persecute the saints, and that was an 
 outgrowth, we may be sure, of his habitual self- 
 direction. What can I do to glorify the God of 
 Israel — we may be sure that he had often asked 
 himself that very question — nay, that it was always 
 echoing through his soul and was the lode-star 
 of all his life. There was nothing small or little 
 in Paul's Pharisaic life; no reserves in his devo- 
 tion to his ideal, and no shrinking from labor, or 
 diflSculty, or danger. Paul never was a place- 
 seeker, never was a sycophant, never was self- 
 indulgent, or self-sparing. The elements of a 
 great character wrought in him mightily. What 
 he lacked was not readiness to do and dare; what 
 he lacked was humility. And the change that 
 took place in him on the road to Damascus was 
 in this regard no less immense than immediate. 
 It was a totally new note which vibrated through 
 
158 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 his being, that found expression in the humble in- 
 quiry, "What shall I do. Lord?" It is no longer 
 a question directed to himself: "What shall I 
 do? — what shall /, in my learning and strength 
 and devotion — what shall I do to the glory of 
 God?" It is the final and utter renunciation of 
 self and the subjection of the whole life to the 
 guidance of another. "What shall I do, Lord?'' 
 Heretofore Paul had been, even in his service to 
 God, self -led; hereafter he was to be, even in the 
 common affairs of life, down to his eating and 
 drinking, God-led. It is the characteristic change 
 that makes the Christian; for the Christian is 
 particularly the Spirit-led man : they that are led 
 by the Spirit of God, they are the sons of God. 
 And as the Christian more and more perfectly 
 assumes the attitude of a constant and unre- 
 served "What shall I do, Lord?", he more and 
 more perfectly enters into his Christian heritage, 
 and lives out his Christian life — the very key- 
 note of which is thus easily seen to be humility. 
 
 Dignity — there is an element of dignity which 
 enters into this attitude also. For humility is 
 not to be mistaken for a degrading supineness. 
 Lowliness of mind is far from being the same with 
 lowness of mind. When Paul ceased to be self- 
 led and became Christ-led, he did not by that step 
 become low in mind or morals; it was a step up- 
 wards, and not downwards. There is a lurking 
 feeling in most of us, no doubt, that our dignity 
 
SURRENDER AND CONSECRATION 159 
 
 consists just in our self-government. Self-suf- 
 ficiency is its note, or, as we perhaps prefer to 
 call it, self-dependence. That man is really a 
 man, we are prone to think, who carves out his 
 own fortune, rests on his own efforts, and seeks 
 favour and certainly direction from no one. Now 
 there is a proper basis for this feeling; we need 
 courageous men who call no man master and 
 swear in the words of none; this self-centred, 
 self-poised, and independent nature is one of the 
 best gifts of God — cultivate it! But it is very 
 easy for a proper self-pride and a high-minded in- 
 dependence to pass into a very improper self- 
 sufficiency. We were not intended to defer with 
 servile incapacity to any fellow-creature's direc- 
 tion; but there is a place for authority in the 
 world after all; and as liberty must not be allowed 
 to lapse into licence, so independence must not be 
 permitted to degenerate into self-assertion. God 
 did not create mankind atomistically but as a 
 race; and it is the part of true dignity to find our 
 true relations and to subject ourselves to them. 
 It is not a mark of manhood to separate ourselves 
 from the bands that unite mankind into an organ- 
 ism, but to take each his place in the organism 
 and thoroughly to fill it. 
 
 He who hitches his chariot to a star is not 
 thereby sinking to a lower status. True as this 
 is in worldly matters it is superlatively true in 
 spiritual aflPairs. The man led by the Spirit of 
 
160 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 God — the Christ-led man — is the man of highest, 
 and not of lowest, dignity. As it is the mark of a 
 Christian man that he is "under orders," so it 
 is the source of all his dignity that he is "under 
 orders." With that odd . penetration into the 
 essence of things, which so often characterizes 
 the words of Rudyard Kipling, he seems to have 
 grasped and set forth this fundamental fact of the 
 Christian life in the refrain of one of his "Barrack 
 Room Ballads." He says: 
 
 " The 'eathen in 'is blindness bows down to wood and 
 stone — 
 'E don't obey no orders, unless they is 'is own." 
 
 The point is, of course, the fine soldierly concep- 
 tion of the value of order and discipline; the sol- 
 dier recognizes the fact that he is "under orders" 
 as the source of all that gives value and worth to 
 his life; his coming "under orders" was his trans- 
 mutation from a "hoodlum" into a "soldier"; 
 the discipline of the army has made, as we say, a 
 man of him. But Rudyard Kipling has so 
 phrased his refrain as to make it hint a far wider 
 and higher truth. The characteristic of heathen- 
 ism, as he sees it, from this soldier-like point of 
 view, is precisely that the heathen man — like the 
 hoodlum, — that the heathen world — like a mob — 
 obeys no orders; each man goes his own way; is 
 left, as the Scriptures say, to his own devices. 
 On the other hand, the characteristic of the Chris- 
 tian man is that he has orders to obey — he is 
 
SURRENDER AND CONSECRATION 161 
 
 "under orders." And the soldier, conscious of 
 all that being under orders is to him — of what it 
 has wrought in him — of how it has given him 
 self-respect, a sense of his value, a consciousness 
 of dignity and worth, — sees in this parallel fact 
 the essence of Christianity. The Christian man 
 is the man who is under orders; the heathen, he — 
 who like the man in the slums — obeys nothing but 
 his own caprices. 
 
 Rudyard Kipling was, perhaps, speaking more 
 wisely than he knew; for what is the primary 
 characteristic of Christendom but just this, — that 
 God has taken charge of it, given it His orders, a 
 revelation we call it; while heathendom is with- 
 out this book of general orders. And what is the 
 characteristic of the Christian man but just this: 
 that he has found his Captain and receives his 
 orders from Him? "What shall I do, Lord?" — 
 that is the note of his life. And is it not clear 
 that it is the source of an added dignity and worth 
 to his life? Just as the soldier is nothing but the 
 hoodlum licked into shape by coming under orders 
 — under the establishing and forming influence of 
 legitimate and wise authority — so the Christian is 
 nothing but the sinner, come under the formative 
 influence of the Captain of us all. 
 
 Power — it lies in the very nature of the case 
 that such a coming under orders is the source of a 
 vast increase also of power. For it is at once to 
 find our place in a great and powerful organism. 
 
162 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 So the soldier finds it, though this is not the 
 primary fact of his betterment which he per- 
 ceives as a result of his coming under orders. 
 That, as Kipling rightly sees, is the subjective 
 effect on himself, the increase of self-respect and 
 of general dignity and conscious worth which 
 comes to him. But the increase of power also is 
 a factor of high moment. A cog wheel is a use- 
 less piece of iron by itself; but in its legitimate 
 place in the machine it works wonders. An in- 
 dividual is as nothing in this seething mass of 
 humanity which we call the world; be he never 
 so energetic he can work no effect, but all his ac- 
 tivity is like the aimless dashing of a moth about 
 the destroying flame. But let him find his true 
 place in the organism of humanity, and the weak- 
 est of us becomes a factor in the inevitable rush 
 of the whole towards its destined end. See, then, 
 the element of power in the question, "What 
 shall I do. Lord?" For we must keep fully in 
 mind that this human race of which we are mem- 
 bers is not simply a chance aggregation of indi- 
 viduals, like a mass of worms crawling restlessly 
 this way and that as the native impulse of each 
 directs. It cannot be atomistically conceived. 
 It is an organism, in which each individual has 
 his appointed place and function. It is not 
 merely the dictate of wisdom but the condition of 
 eflSciency and power that we should each find this, 
 our place, and fulfil our own function. 
 
SURRENDER AND CONSECRATION 163 
 
 If sin had never entered the world, this would 
 doubtless be an easy task; we should each fit well 
 into the place in which we find ourselves and 
 should fulfil our required functions smoothly and 
 easily, and each in his appointed measure advance 
 the race to its destined goal. But sin has spoiled 
 all; and the disjointed mechanism lies broken 
 and dismantled and unable to work at its task. 
 It is, therefore, that Christ Jesus has come into 
 the world, the head of a new humanity, for the 
 restoration of the race to its harmony with itself, 
 the universe, and its appointed work. It is only 
 through Him and through His direction as the 
 Captain of our salvation that we may discover 
 or occupy our place in His Church, which is only 
 another name for reorganized humanity. There- 
 fore the noble figure of Paul, which compares the 
 Church to a body and us to members in particular. 
 How shall the members of a body act? Each 
 going his own way, independently of and incon- 
 siderately of the others.^ Where then would be 
 the body.f^ But how find our true place and task 
 in this organism of the body of Christ.^ There 
 can be but one way and that way is pointed to by 
 Paul's question, "What shall I do. Lord.?" He 
 and He only can appoint to their functions the 
 members of His body, and thus the way of con- 
 tinued humility and dignity is easily seen to be 
 also the way of power. 
 
 Take another example from military affairs. 
 
164 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 What shall the soldier in battle do, if he would 
 wish to be effective as a factor in the result? 
 Go his own way, or obey orders? Let each seek 
 to go his own way, and that army is doomed. 
 But let each only strictly obey orders, and if 
 the leading is wise and sure — as our leading under 
 our Divine Captain is — the end is certain victory. 
 Each soldier may seem to himself isolated as he 
 makes his way through the underbrush; he can 
 see no companion; he can hear no neighbour. It 
 may seem to him that on his sole arm is laid the 
 whole burden and heat of the day. Let him but 
 obey orders and he is, on the contrary, a link in 
 the one great design, and after a while, as the 
 brushwood is threaded and the open plain is 
 reached, the bugle sounds the charge, and out he 
 charges — all by himself — to find suddenly that 
 he is not by himself. Out of the ground as it 
 seems, to the right and to the left of him, others 
 start up — who have obeyed orders like himself — 
 and they sweep a united band to the victory. 
 Brethren, that is the way we are to conquer the 
 world; and our part in it is just to obey orders. 
 "What shall I do. Lord?" is to be our one ques- 
 tion, and simple obedience to the response our 
 one duty. Ah, in all our ministerial life, if we 
 value success — the success of Christ — let us make 
 Paul's question the one single, simple matter of 
 our lives. Let "Lord, what shall I do?" be our 
 sole chart for all the journey of life. 
 
THE SUMMATION OF THE GOSPEL 
 
 Acts 26:18: — "To open their eyes, that they may turn from 
 darkness to light, and from the power of Satan unto God, that 
 they may receive remission of sins and an inheritance among 
 them that are sanctified by faith in me." 
 
 We are given in the Book of Acts three accounts 
 of Paul's conversion — one by Luke in the course 
 of his history of the advance of the church, and 
 two from the lips of the Apostle himself in ad- 
 dresses reported by the historian in the course of 
 his narrative. The account in the apology which 
 the Apostle in chains made before King Agrippa 
 is the fullest account of the three, and especially 
 in the report it makes of the words spoken by 
 Jesus to Paul. We may be especially grateful 
 for this. For these words are simply marvellous 
 in the compressed fullness of their content and 
 the richness of their teaching to us, even after 
 the passage of so many ages. 
 
 The superior completeness here of the narrative 
 of what passed between the Lord in heaven and 
 him whom He would make a chosen vessel for the 
 conveyance of His precious Gospel to the world, 
 is already apparent in certain preliminaries to 
 the main declaration — comparatively unimportant 
 no doubt, but not without their significance. 
 Here only we are told that the ascended Christ 
 
 165 
 
166 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 addressed the future Apostle in the Hebrew dia- 
 lect, — the sacred tongue in which all the prophets 
 had spoken and Moses, when they foretold His 
 sufferings and how first out of the resurrection of 
 the dead He should proclaim light to the people 
 and to the Gentiles. Here only also are we told 
 that to the sad inquiry, "Saul, Saul, why perse- 
 cutest thou me?" was added that proverbial say- 
 ing, "It is hard for thee to kick against the pricks" 
 — intimating that like the harnessed ox he was 
 in the hands of a master who would direct his 
 path whither He would, and it was useless for him 
 to strive against the performance of the duties 
 which were appointed him. Better accept the 
 commission given you and perform the work of 
 the Lord assigned to you, with joy that you are 
 chosen to serve the Lord, than to seek hopelessly 
 to go your own way. 
 
 But it is not until we reach the words by which 
 Saul was commissioned to be the Lord's Apostle 
 that the full richness of this report breaks upon us. 
 * 'Arise and stand upon thy feet" — so the record 
 of the words runs — "for it is for this that I have 
 appeared to thee; to ordain thee as a servant and 
 a witness both of those things because of which 
 thou hast seen me and of those things because 
 of which I shall appear to thee, delivering thee 
 from the people and from the nations, unto whom 
 I send thee." Here is Paul's appointment to 
 the apostleship. Was ever man appointed to an 
 
THE SUMMATION OF THE GOSPEL 167 
 
 oflSce in a manner so authoritative or with words 
 so decisive? Christ comes from heaven itself 
 to make the appointment. The appointment is 
 to the work of a servant, a servant of Himself. 
 The nature of the service required is that of wit- 
 ness-bearing; "a servant and a witness," that is, 
 a servant whose service is witnessing. The mat- 
 ter to be witnessed to is provided by the appointer: 
 "a witness of that with respect to which I shall 
 appear unto thee." The witness is to add noth- 
 ing of himself but to testify only what he has 
 heard, what he has seen with his eyes, what he 
 beheld and his hands have handled. And as the 
 scope of the testimony is thus set him so also is 
 its sphere; it is to be borne to the "people and 
 the peoples" — to Jew and Gentile, — unto whom, 
 says the voice, "I send you" — with majestic em- 
 phasis on the "I." 
 
 Truly it is to the office of a servant that Paul 
 is called, a servant with a specific work to do and 
 with specific instructions how to perform it. Thus 
 he was made an "apostle," an apostle by the 
 same call to the same work which all the apostles 
 had received. It is even odd how perfectly 
 Paul's commission accords with the very terms 
 given to his fellows: "Go, and make disciples of 
 all the nations . . . and lo, I am with you always, 
 even to the end of the world." "The people and 
 the Gentiles unto whom I send thee" — here is 
 the universal commission; he is to go to Jew and 
 
168 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Gentile alike, to all the world. "Delivering thee 
 from the people and from the Gentiles, unto whom 
 I send thee" — here is the accompanying promise 
 of "Lo, I am with thee." xAnd note the nature 
 of the apostolic promise. It is not that Paul 
 shall suffer no harm from Jew and Gentile, that 
 he shall not be hard-bested, baffled and perse- 
 cuted. How could Paul the prisoner have re- 
 peated such a promise as that.^^ It was that he 
 should not be balked in his witness-bearing to 
 them; that through divine intervention he should 
 be successful in performing his duty as a servant 
 and witness. Here, says Calvin, we see the 
 Divine hand instilling courage into His servant 
 for his task by assuring him of Divinely given 
 success and at the same time forewarning him of 
 the cross he was to bear. He shall need deliver- 
 ance; but he shall have it. 
 
 What then is the task laid upon this servant? 
 We have it already adumbrated in the call. He is 
 called to serve as a witness. Witness-bearing is 
 his one function. But in the wonderful words 
 which are more particularly before us to-day, we 
 have it opened out to us in all its richness. I 
 send thee to all peoples, says the heavenly King, 
 in imposing upon him His mission: I send thee 
 to all peoples, "to open their eyes." There we 
 have in the briefest compass possible, the whole 
 apostolic mission. The apostles are sent into a 
 world, blinded by sin, sunk in the darkness of 
 
THE SUM]VL\TION OF THE GOSPEL 169 
 
 soul that comes from sin, "to open men's eyes." 
 Witness-bearers as they are, their duty corre- 
 sponds with their equipment: they have received 
 of the Lord, let them impart of what they have 
 received to others. They have only to "open 
 men's eyes," to open them to a clear vision of 
 their state, of their danger and destiny, and of 
 the love of God in Christ which has provided a 
 reprieve from the danger. 
 
 To what end are they to open men's eyes? 
 "To the end," says the heavenly King, "that they 
 may turn from darkness to light, and from the 
 power of Satan to God." As the whole apostolic 
 duty consists in opening men's eyes, so the end 
 for which they perform this duty consists wholly 
 in the "conversion" of men; they are to open 
 men's eyes to the end that men may "turn" — 
 turn "from darkness to light and the power of 
 Satan to God." 
 
 Why should they thus turn? The heavenly 
 Xing condescends to explain even this to us. It 
 is that "they may receive forgiveness of sins and 
 inheritance among the saints." Those who are 
 in darkness and under the tyranny of Satan, 
 having had their eyes opened to their true state 
 and the provision for their relief made by a lov- 
 ing God, may turn from the darkness to light 
 and from the power of Satan to God. The con- 
 dition of so doing is to have their eyes opened. 
 This the Apostle was to perform. The effect of 
 
170 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 so doing was to receive forgiveness of sin and a 
 lot among the saints. This God was to do; and 
 He alone could do it. Turning to God, they re- 
 ceive from God these blessings. 
 
 How then do they receive them? The heav- 
 enly King does not omit to tell us plainly, though, 
 no doubt, it is involved in the nature of the case. 
 If, by turning to God, they receive from God 
 these blessings, it must needs be by faith that 
 they receive them, for what is faith but a looking 
 to God for blessings .f^ Nevertheless the ascended 
 Christ fails not to state the matter for us and to 
 state it in a manner and in a position in the sen- 
 tence which throws upon it a tremendous em- 
 phasis. "By faith" He says; and He says more, 
 — "by faith in Me." And there is where the 
 Christianity of the declaration comes in. 
 
 One might be sent to open men's eyes without 
 being a Christian. Socrates was so sent; and he 
 opened men's eyes to much that was true, and 
 right, and good; and Sakya Muni was so sent; 
 and Zoroaster and Confucius; and since them a 
 host have been so sent, who, by their investiga- 
 tions into nature or their profound philosophy, 
 have made men to know things, and, let us hope, 
 have made men's darkness less intense — though 
 we must never forget that the world by all its 
 wisdom does not know God. Men might be 
 even sent to open men's eyes as to their religious 
 state — so that their religious darkness might be 
 
THE SUMMATION OF THE GOSPEL 171 
 
 ameliorated and they be led to see some rays of 
 religious light, and to long to be delivered from 
 the power of Satan and to turn to God — without 
 being Christians. Even should we say that we 
 are sent to op en men's eyes that they may turn 
 from darEness to light and the power of Satan to 
 Gqd^nd so might obtain forgiveness of sins and a 
 lot with the sanctified — the proclamation might 
 remain not yet Christian. Nor would the mere 
 addition of the words "by faith" Christianize it. 
 But when we say that all this is obtained by faith 
 in Jesus, and say this as the ascended Jesus has 
 said it here — then, indeed, we have a Christian 
 proclamation, or let us rather say, the Christian 
 proclamation. For in these words we have the 
 very essence of Christianity. 
 
 And now, perhaps, we shall be able to under- 
 stand why, ever since the Book of Acts has been 
 written, men have been accustomed to look upon 
 this little verse as one of the most pregnant in the 
 whole scope of revelation, and why they have 
 learned to call it the "Breviarium Apostolicum," 
 the "Summarium Evangelicum." It is the com- 
 pendium of apostolic duty. It is the summation 
 of the Gospel. It tells the Apostle briefly that 
 his one duty is to "open men's eyes"; it tells the 
 world briefly that the Gospel consists in forgive- 
 ness of sins and a title to eternal life through faith 
 in Jesus. Out of one and out of the other it ex- 
 tracts the core and holds that up to us for our un- 
 
172 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 distracted contemplation. As such it surely is 
 worthy of our most serious consideration. 
 
 There is another circumstance about it which 
 gives it an especial claim on our attention. These 
 are the words of the ascended Christ. Men 
 to-day seem to find it very difficult to discern an 
 authority in religion. Surely we cannot trust 
 the mere "ipse dixit" of men in the affair of the 
 salvation of the soul ! Let us find firm footing for 
 our feet ! And so the cry has risen, Back to Christ ! 
 Back even from the apostles whom He commis- 
 sioned to make Him known to men; back to 
 Christ Himself! But when we go back to Christ, 
 a new doubt seizes the wavering soul. Was not 
 Christ, too, in the time of His sojourn on earth, 
 a man? Mayhap — so it is suggested — mayhap 
 He not only walked as a man and spake as a man, 
 but thought as a man and taught as a man. Can 
 we trust even His deliberate declarations in the 
 days of His flesh? Well, if we are earnest in all 
 this, we may find relief for our souls in a passage 
 like the one before us. In it we have gone back 
 to Christ. It is He who speaks these words to us. 
 And we have gone back, not to the earthly Christ 
 but to the heavenly Christ. It is not the Christ 
 in His humiliation but the Christ in His glori- 
 fication who here speaks to us. He has put off 
 the Servant-form, and been exalted to the right 
 hand of the Majesty on High; and He rends the 
 heaven to give to men from the very Throne, this 
 
THE SUMMATION OF THE GOSPEL 173 
 
 "Breviarium Apostolicum," this "Summarium 
 Evangelicum." It may, indeed, be that Hke an 
 Old Testament hero we are ourselves unstable as 
 water — "like the surge of the sea driven of the 
 wind and tossed" — and cannot feel our footing 
 firm though the Eternal Rock be beneath our 
 feet. But surely if we are earnestly in search of a 
 secure basis for our faith, the word spoken from 
 heaven by the exalted Christ supplies it to us; 
 making known to us what the duty of the Apostle, 
 and of us, too, the successors of the Apostles in 
 witnessing to the Word, is, and what the Gospel 
 is to which as Christ's messengers we are to bear 
 witness. 
 
 Approaching the passage in this spirit, let us 
 mark well the supreme lessons it brings to us, as 
 messengers of the grace of God in the Gospel — as 
 seekers of the salvation that is in Jesus. 
 
 Mark, then, first of all, the function which the 
 Ascended Jesus assigns to His witnessing servants. 
 It is summed up in a single term — it is "to open 
 men's eyes." Now, of course, the eye of the 
 heart can be opened only by the Spirit of God; 
 and it is not this unperformable duty which 
 Christ lays on His servants. But the eyes of 
 the mind are opened, in a lower sense, by the pres- 
 entation of the truth and it is this that the Lord 
 requires of His servants. They are "witnesses"; 
 their duty is not to tickle men's ears or to allay 
 their fears; their duty is to make known the 
 
174 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 truth, though it is precisely the truth that is not 
 agreeable to their ears and that arouses and 
 gives leash to their most terrifying fears. What 
 men need is to have their eyes opened, and the 
 duty laid on Paul and on all who would be fol- 
 lowers of Paul is to open men's eyes. That it 
 was in this sense that Paul understood his com- 
 mission is obvious from the succeeding context. 
 He was not disobedient to the heavenly vision, he 
 tells the king, but having been sent to open men's 
 eyes, that they might turn to God, he preached 
 the Gospel of repentance and turning to God, 
 bearing his witness to small and great alike. So 
 will we, too, fulfil our commission as messengers 
 of God's grace. We owe, as ministers, a teaching 
 duty and our prime duty — our one duty — is to 
 teach : we must open men's eyes. 
 
 We must not fail to mark the honour which is 
 thus put by the Ascended Jesus on what we have 
 learned to call by way of eminence, the Truth, — 
 or, the Gospel message. Everything is made to 
 turn on that. It lies at the root of all. The 
 Apostle's duty is to open men's eyes. Whatever 
 of salvation may come to men comes subsequently 
 to that and as an outgrowth of this root. "Truth 
 is in order to godliness" — that is a true formula. 
 But it must not be read — should we wish to re- 
 main in harmony with the Ascended Christ — as 
 a depreciation of the value of "truth" and 
 "knowledge" (its subjective form), but as an 
 
THE SUMMATION OF THE GOSPEL 175 
 
 enhancement of their importance. Truth exists 
 only to produce godliness; that is true and needs 
 to be kept constantly in mind. But no truth, no 
 godliness, — that, too, is true and that, too, needs 
 to be kept fully in mind. The only instrument 
 in your hands or my hands for producing godli- 
 ness is the truth; we are not primarily anything 
 else but witnesses to truth; and the truth of God 
 is the one lever by which we can pry at the hearts 
 of men. Preach the Word; that is our one com- 
 mission. And it is no more true that the Word 
 cannot be preached without a preacher, than that 
 the preacher cannot preach without a Word. 
 Men are in darkness, they need light, and we are 
 sent to give it to them. 
 
 It is equally important to observe that the im- 
 plication of our Ascended Saviour's words of 
 commission as to the condition of men, is that 
 they are in darkness. That is the reason why 
 they require to have their eyes opened. In what 
 darkness let the Apostle who received the com- 
 mission elsewhere tell us. As to the Gentiles, he 
 tells us sufficiently in the first chapter of Romans; 
 they have held back the knowledge of God in un- 
 godliness until their foolish mind is darkened and 
 they cannot know God; and under what bondage 
 to Satan this has brought them, let the cata- 
 logue of evils with which that chapter closes in- 
 form us. Nor are the Jews in better case: for a 
 Veil lies on their hearts also which will not be 
 
176 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 taken away except on turning unto the Lord. 
 The dense darkness in which men live, the terrible 
 bondage into which they have been brought; this 
 is part of the revelation of the Ascended Saviour, 
 connected with which is the necessary implication 
 of their hopelessness apart from the preaching of 
 the Gospel. The appointed means of breaking 
 this darkness is the proclamation of the Gospel 
 by which alone can men's eyes be opened. 
 
 As it is the single duty laid by the Ascended 
 Christ on His messengers that they shall open 
 men's eyes, the single duty He lays on their 
 hearers is correspondingly that they should turn 
 from the darkness to the light, and (what is the 
 same thing) from the power of Satan to God. 
 It is, of course, as evident that men cannot turn 
 from darkness to light, from the tyranny of Satan 
 to God, in their own strength, as it is that men 
 cannot open other people's eyes by their own 
 power. As in the one case, so in the other, the 
 immanent work of the Holy Spirit is not excluded 
 because it is not mentioned. But as in the one 
 case, so in the other, the action of man is required. 
 Christ requires His apostle to "open men's eyes" 
 — that is, to proclaim the truth which opens their 
 eyes. Christ requires their hearers to turn from 
 the darkness to the light, to shake off their bond- 
 age to Satan and turn to God. In both cases. He 
 requires the "sowing" and "watering," while it is 
 He alone who gives the increase. What we need 
 
THE SUMMATION OF THE GOSPEL 177 
 
 to mark is that in this we have the one require- 
 ment of the Gospel. All that the ascended Christ 
 demands is that when the light is brought to the 
 eye the eye shall follow the light; that when the 
 darkness is made visible to it as darkness, it 
 shall not cling to the darkness by preference; that 
 when Satan and God are set before it, it shall not 
 choose Satan's bondage rather than the liberty 
 which is in God. 
 
 Let us mark now the declaration made by the 
 Ascended Christ of the benefits received from the 
 Gospel. Those who under the message turn from 
 Satan to God receive "remission of sins and a 
 share with the sanctified," and that is to say, they 
 receive a complete salvation. For what does man 
 want in this world of darkness and subjection to 
 Satan.f^ What but, on the one hand, remission of 
 the sins by virtue of which alone he can be held 
 under Satan's tyranny, and, on the other, a title to 
 the bliss prepared for the saints.^ Here are the two 
 sides of what is technically termed Justification, 
 proclaimed as the essence of salvation from heaven 
 itself. Freedom from sin — that is the negative 
 side; an inheritance among the saints — that is 
 the positive side. Saints may have an inherit- 
 ance — a lot or share — in bliss on their own ac- 
 count. But surely a sinner has no right to share 
 it with them. Not even if his sins be forgiven 
 him has he a right to share it. Enough for him 
 that his sins are forgiven. On what ground shall 
 
178 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 he receive so great an additional reward? But 
 the Gospel offers him not only relief from the 
 penalty of sin but a place among those who are 
 sanctified. "Who have been sanctified" — that 
 he cannot yet say of himself. But by God's 
 grace he has a title to a place among those who 
 can say it. Holy angels and sanctified men — 
 they stand before God's face forever. 
 
 Nor must we fail to mark the emphatic ad- 
 junction of the means by which they receive these 
 gifts — the instrumental cause of their reception 
 of them. The Ascended Jesus says it is by faith, 
 and adjoins the emphasized definition — "that 
 faith which is in Him." Thus the whole procla- 
 mation is bound together. Paul is to be Christ's 
 witness. What he is to preach is what he has 
 seen of Him and is to see of Him. It is Christ 
 that is preached. It is the preaching of Christ 
 which is to open blind eyes and lead men to turn 
 to God. It is, therefore, through faith in this 
 preachment of Christ that men are to receive for- 
 giveness and adoption; through faith in the Christ 
 preached that all the reward comes. Surely here 
 is the centre of the Gospel. Ministers are sent 
 forth to open men's eyes; men's eyes are opened 
 that they may turn to God; men turn to God to 
 receive forgiveness and acceptance; men receive 
 this forgiveness and acceptance by faith — the 
 faith that is in Christ. 
 
THE SPIRIT'S TESTIMONY TO OUR 
 SONSHIP 
 
 Rom. 8:16: — "The Spirit himself beareth witness with our 
 spirit that we are children of God." 
 
 "The Spirit himself beareth witness with our 
 spirit that we are children of God." This is one 
 of the texts of the Bible to which the Christian 
 heart turns with especial longing and to which 
 it clings with especial delight. On it has been 
 erected the great Protestant doctrine of Assur- 
 ance — the great doctrine that every Christian 
 man may and should be assured that He is a 
 child of God — that it is possible for him to attain 
 this assurance and that to seek and find it is 
 accordingly his duty. So much as that it cer- 
 tainly, along with kindred texts, does establish. 
 The Holy Spirit Himself, it affirms, bears witness 
 with our spirit that we are children of God; and 
 then it goes on to develop the idea of childship to 
 God from the point of view of the benefits it 
 contains — "and if children then heirs, heirs of 
 God and joint heirs with Christ." 
 
 It is quite obvious that the object of the whole 
 is to encourage and enhearten; to speak, in a 
 word, to the Christian's soul a great word of 
 confidence. We are not to be left in doubt and 
 
 179 
 
180 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 gloom as to our Christian hope and standing. A 
 witness is adduced and this no less a witness than 
 the Holy Spirit, the author of all truth. We are 
 not committed to our own tentative conjectures; 
 or to our own imaginations and fancies. The 
 Holy Spirit bears co-witness with our spirit that 
 we are God's children. Surely, here there is firm 
 standing ground for the most timid feet. 
 
 No wonder that men have seized hold of such 
 an assurance with avidity, and sought and found 
 in it peace from troubled consciences and hesi- 
 tating fears. No wonder either if they have some- 
 times, in their eagerness for a sure foundation for 
 their hope, pressed a shade beyond the mark and 
 sought on the basis of this text an assurance from 
 the Holy Ghost for a fact of which they had no 
 other evidence, if, indeed, they did not feel that 
 they had evidence enough against it; an assur- 
 ance conveyed, moreover, in a mode that would be 
 independent of all other evidence, if, indeed, it 
 did not bear down and set aside abundant evi- 
 dence to the contrary. This occasional use of 
 the text to ground an assurance which seems to 
 the observer unjustified if not positively negatived 
 by all appearances, has naturally created a cer- 
 tain amount of hesitation in appealing to it at all 
 or in seeking to attain the gracious state of as- 
 surance which it promises. This is a most un- 
 profitable state of affairs. And in its presence 
 among us, no less than in the presence of a some- 
 
ASSURANCE OF SONSHIP 181 
 
 what exaggerated appeal to the testimony of the 
 Spirit, we may find the best of warrants for seek- 
 ing to understand just what the text affirms and 
 just what privileges it holds out to us. 
 
 And here, first, the text leaves no room for 
 doubt that the testimony of the Holy Spirit 
 that we are God's children is a great reality. This 
 is not a matter of inference from the text; it is 
 expressed by it in totidem verbis. Exactly what is 
 affirmed is that "the Spirit himself beareth wit- 
 ness with our spirit that we are children of God." 
 The actuality of the Spirit's testimony to our 
 childship to God is established, then, beyond all 
 cavil; it is entrenched in the same indeclinable 
 authority by which we are assured that there is a 
 Spirit at all, that there is any such thing as an 
 adoption into sonship to God, or that it is possible 
 for sinful mortals to receive that adoption, — the 
 authority of the inspired word of God. That the 
 Spirit witnesses with or to our spirits that we are 
 children of God is just as certain, then, as that 
 there is such a state as sonship to which we may 
 be introduced or that there is such a being as the 
 Spirit of God to bear witness of it. These great 
 facts all stand or fall together. And that is as 
 much as to say that no Christian man can doubt 
 the fact of the testimony of the Spirit that we are 
 children of God. It is accredited to him by the 
 same authority which accredits all that enters 
 into the very essence of Christianity. It is in 
 
182 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 fact one of the elements of a full system of Chris- 
 tian truth that must be acknowledged by all who 
 accept the system of Christian truth. 
 
 It would seem to be equally clear from the text 
 that the testimony of the Spirit is not to be con- 
 founded with the testimony of our own conscious- 
 ness. However the text be read, the "Spirit of 
 God" and "our spirit" are brought into pointed 
 contrast in it, and are emphatically distinguished 
 from one another. Accordingly, not only does 
 H. A. W. Meyer, who understands the text of the 
 joint testimony of the Divine and human spirits, 
 say: "Paul distinguishes from the subjective 
 self-consciousness, I am the child of God, the 
 therewith accordant testimony of the objective 
 Holy Spirit, Thou art the child of God"; but 
 Henry Alford also, who understands the text to 
 speak solely of the testimony of the Spirit, borne 
 not with but to our spirit, remarks: "All are 
 agreed, and indeed the verse is decisive for it, that 
 it is something separate from and higher than all 
 subjective conclusions" — language which seems, 
 indeed, scarcely exact, but which is certainly to 
 the present point. It is of no importance for 
 this whether Paul says that the Spirit bears wit- 
 ness with or to our spirit; in either case he dis- 
 tinctly distinguishes the Spirit of God from our 
 spirit along with which or to which it bears its 
 witness. And not only so but this distinction is 
 the very nerve of the whole statement; the scope 
 
ASSURANCE OF SONSHIP 183 
 
 of which is nothing other than to give the Chris- 
 tian, along with his human conclusions, also a 
 Divine witness. 
 
 Not only, then, is the distinction, here emphat- 
 ically instituted, available, as Meyer reminds us, 
 as a clear dictum probans against all pantheistic 
 confusion of the Divine and human spirits in 
 general, and all mystical confusion and inter- 
 smelting of the Divine and human spirits in the 
 Christian man, as if the regenerated spirit was 
 something more than a human spirit, or was in 
 some way interpenetrated and divinitized by the 
 Divine Spirit; but it is equally decisive against 
 identifying out of hand the testimony of the 
 Spirit of God here spoken of with the testimony of 
 our own consciousness. These are different things 
 not only distinguishable but to be distinguished. 
 The witness of the Holy Ghost is something other 
 than, additional to, and more than the witness of 
 our own spirit; and it is adduced here, just be- 
 cause it is something other than, additional to, 
 and'more than the witness of our own spirit. The 
 whole sense of Paul's declaration is that we have 
 over and beyond our own authority ,a Divine 
 witness to our childship to God, on which we may 
 rest without fear that we shall be put to shame. 
 
 It is to be borne in mind, however, that dis- 
 tinctness in the source of this testimony from that 
 of our own consciousness is not the same as sepa- 
 rateness from it in its delivery. Paul would seem, 
 
184 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 indeed, while thus strongly emphasizing its dis- 
 tinct source — namely, the Divine Spirit — never- 
 theless to suggest its conjunction with the testi- 
 mony of our own spirit in its actual delivery. This, 
 indeed, he would seem frankly to assert, if, as 
 seems most natural, we are to understand the 
 preposition in the phrase "beareth testimony 
 with," to refer to our spirit, and are to translate 
 with our English version, "The Spirit itself bear- 
 eth witness with our spirit." So taken, the con- 
 junction is as emphatic as the distinction. It 
 must not be overlooked, however, that some 
 commentators prefer to take "our spirit" as the 
 object to which the testimony is borne: "the 
 Spirit beareth witness to our spirit" — in which 
 case the emphasis on the conjunction of the tes- 
 timony of the Spirit of God with that of our spirit 
 may be lost. I say, may be lost: for even then 
 the preposition in the verb will need to be ac- 
 counted for; and it would seem to be still best 
 to account for it by referring it to our spirit — 
 "the Spirit itself beareth its consentient witness 
 to our spirit," its witness consenting to our spirit's 
 witness. And I say merely that the emphasis 
 on the conjunction may be lost; for even if this 
 interpretation be rejected and the force of the 
 preposition be found merely in the accordance of 
 the witness with the fact, by which it is the truth 
 and trustworthiness of the testimony alone which 
 is emphasized; nevertheless the connection of the 
 
ASSURANCE OF SONSHIP 185 
 
 verse with the preceding one is still implicative of 
 the conjoined witness of the two spirits. For it 
 is in our crying "Abba, Father," that the wit- 
 ness of the Spirit of God is here primarily found — 
 the relation of this verse to the preceding being 
 practically the same as if it were expressed in the 
 genitive absolute — thus: "the Spirit which we 
 received was the Spirit of adoption whereby we 
 cry Abba, Father,— the Spirit Himself testifying 
 thus to our spirit that we are children of God." 
 
 The fact that the conjunction of the two wit- 
 nesses thus dominates the passage, however its 
 special terms are explained, adds a powerful reason 
 for following the natural interpretation of the 
 terms themselves and referring the preposition 
 "with" directly to the "our spirit." It is with 
 considerable confidence, therefore, that we may 
 understand Paul to say that "the Spirit himself 
 beareth witness together with our spirit that we 
 are children of God," and thus not merely to imply 
 or assert — as in any case is the fact — but pointedly 
 to'emphasize the conjunction, or, if you will, the 
 confluence of the Divine testimony with that of 
 the human consciousness itself. Distinct in its 
 source, it is yet delivered confluently with the 
 testimony of our human consciousness. To be 
 distinguished from it as something other than, 
 additional to, and more than the testimony of our 
 human consciousness, it is yet not to be separated 
 from it as delivered apart from it, out of connec- 
 
186 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 tion with it, much less, in opposition or contra- 
 diction to it. "The Spirit of God," says that 
 brilUant young thinker whose powers were the 
 wonder, as well as the dependence, of the West- 
 minster Divines, "is not simply a martyr — a wit- 
 ness — but co-martyr — qui simul testimonium dicit 
 — he bears witness not only to but with our spirit; 
 that is, with our conscience. So that if the wit- 
 ness of our conscience be blank, and can testify 
 nothing of sincerity, hatred of sin, love to the 
 brethren, or the like, then the Spirit of God wit- 
 nesses no peace nor comfort to that soul; and the 
 voice that speaketh peace to a person who hath 
 no gracious mark or qualification in him, doth not 
 speak according to the Word, but contrary to 
 the Word, and is, therefore, a spirit of delusion." 
 — "So that in the business of assurance and full 
 persuasion, the evidence of graces and the testi- 
 mony of the Spirit are two concurrent causes or 
 helps, both of them necessary. Without the evi- 
 dence of graces, it is not a safe nor a well-grounded 
 assurance; without the testimony of the Spirit, 
 it is not a plerophory or full assurance." And 
 then he devoutly adds: "Therefore, let no man 
 divide the things which God hath joined to- 
 gether." 
 
 These remarks of George Gillespie's will al- 
 ready suggest to us the function of this testimony 
 of the Holy Ghost, as set forth by Paul as a co- 
 testimony with the witness of our own spirit. It 
 
ASSURANCE OF SONSHIP 187 
 
 is not intended as a substitute for the testimony 
 of our spirit — or, to be more precise, of "signs 
 and marks" — but as an enhancement of it. Its 
 object is not to assure a man who has "no signs" 
 that he is a child of God, but to assure him who 
 has "signs," but is too timid to draw so great an 
 inference from so small a premise, that he is a 
 child of God and to give him thus not merely a 
 human but a Divine basis for his assurance. It 
 is, in a word, not a substitute for the proper evi- 
 dence of our childship; but a Divine enhance- 
 ment of that evidence. A man who. has none of 
 the marks of a Christian is not entitled to believe 
 himself to be a Christian; only those who are 
 being led by the Spirit of God are children of God. 
 But a man who has all the marks of being a Chris- 
 tian may fall short of his privilege of assurance. 
 It is to such that the witness of the Spirit is super- 
 added, not to take the place of the evidence of 
 "signs," but to enhance their effect and raise it to 
 a higher plane; not to produce an irrational, un- 
 justified, conviction, but to produce a higher and 
 more stable conviction than he would be, all un- 
 aided, able to draw; not to supply the lack of 
 evidence, but to cure a disease of the mind which 
 will not profit fully by the evidence. 
 
 We are here in the presence of a question which 
 has divided the suffrages of Christian men from the 
 beginning. The controversy has raged in every 
 age, whether our assurance of our salvation is to 
 
188 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 be syllogistically determined thus : the promise of 
 God is sure to those who believe and obey the 
 Gospel; I believe and obey the Gospel; hence 
 I am a child of God : or is rather to be mystically 
 determined by the witness of the Holy Spirit 
 in the heart. Whether we are to examine our- 
 selves for signs that we are in the faith, or, neg- 
 lecting all signs, are to depend on the immediate 
 whisper of the Spirit to our heart, "Thou art a 
 child of God." The debate has been as fruitless 
 as it has been endless. And the reason is that it is 
 founded on a false antithesis, and, being founded 
 on a false antithesis, each side has had something 
 of truth to which it was justified in clinging in the 
 face of all refutation, and something of error which 
 afforded an easy mark for the arrows of its op- 
 ponents. The victory can never be with those 
 who contend that we must depend for our assur- 
 ance wholly on the marks and signs of true faith; 
 for true assurance can never arise in the heart save 
 by the immediate witness of the Holy Spirit, and 
 he w^ho looks not for that can never go beyond a 
 probable hope of being in Christ. The victory 
 can never be with those who counsel us to neglect 
 all signs and depend on the testimony of the Holy 
 Spirit alone; for the Holy Spirit does not deliver 
 His testimony save through and in confluence 
 with the testimony of our own consciences that 
 we are God's children. "All thy marks," says 
 Gillespie with point, "will leave thee in the dark, if 
 
ASSURANCE OF SONSHIP 189 
 
 the Spirit of Grace do not open thine eyes that 
 thou mayest know the things which are freely 
 given thee of God"; and again with equal point, 
 **To make no trial by marks and to trust an in- 
 ward testimony, under the notion of the Holy 
 Ghost's testimony, when it is without the least 
 evidence of any true gracious mark ... is a 
 deluding and an ensnaring of the conscience." 
 
 It is obvious that the really cardinal question 
 here, therefore, concerns not the fact of the testi- 
 mony of the Holy Spirit, not its value or even its 
 necessity for the forming of a true assurance, but 
 the mode of its delivery. It is important, there- 
 fore, to interrogate our text upon this point. The 
 single verse before us does not speak very decis- 
 ively to the matter; only by its conjunction of the 
 testimony of the Spirit with that of our own spirit 
 does it suggest an answer. But nowhere than in 
 these more recondite doctrines is it more neces- 
 sary to read our texts in their contexts; and the 
 setting of our text is very far from being without 
 a message to us in these premises. For how does 
 Paul introduce this great assertion.^ .As already 
 remarked, as practically a subordinate clause to 
 the preceding verse, with the virtual effect of a 
 genitive absolute. He had painted in the seventh 
 chapter the dreadful conflict between indwelling 
 sin and the intruded principle of holiness which 
 springs up in every Christian's breast. And he 
 had pointed to the very fact of this conflict as a 
 
190 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 banner of hope. For he identifies the fact of the 
 conflict with the presence of the Holy Spirit work- 
 ing in the soul; and in the presence of the Holy 
 Spirit is the earnest of victory. The Spirit would 
 not be found in a soul which was not purchased 
 for God and in process of fitting for the heavenly 
 Kingdom. Let no one talk of living on the low 
 plane of the seventh chapter of Romans. Low 
 plane, indeed! It is a low plane where there is 
 no confiict. Where there is conflict — with the 
 Spirit of God as one party in the battle — there is 
 progressive advance towards the perfection of 
 Christian life. So Paul treats it. He points to 
 the conflict as indicative of the presence of the 
 Spirit; he points to the presence of the Spirit 
 as the earnest of victory; and on this experi- 
 ence he foimds his promise of eternal bhss. 
 Then comes our passage, introduced with one 
 of his tremendous "therefores." "Accordingly, 
 then, brethren," — since the Holy Spirit is in you 
 and the end is sure, — "accordingly, then, we are 
 debtors not to the flesh to live after the flesh, but 
 to the Spirit to live after the Spirit. . . . For as 
 many as are being led" (notice the progressive 
 present) "by the Spirit of God, these are sons of 
 God, for" (after all), "the spirit that ye received 
 was not a spirit of bondage, but a spirit of adop- 
 tion, whereby we cry Abba, Father, — the Spirit 
 Himself bearing witness with our spirit that we 
 are children of God." "The Spirit Himself" 
 
ASSURANCE OF SONSHIP 191 
 
 bearing this witness? When? How? Why, of 
 course, in this very cry framed by Him in our 
 souls, "Abba, Father!" Not a separate wit- 
 ness; but just this witness and no other. The 
 witness of the Spirit, then, is to be found in His 
 hidden ministrations by which the filial spirit is 
 created in our hearts, and comes to birth in this 
 joyful cry. 
 
 We must not fancy, however, that, therefore, 
 the witness of the Spirit adds nothing to the syl- 
 logistic way of concluding that we are children of 
 God. It does not add another way of reaching 
 this conclusion, but it does add strength of con- 
 clusion to this way. The Spirit is the spirit of 
 truth and will not witness that he is a child of 
 God who is not one. But he who really is a child 
 of God will necessarily possess marks and signs 
 of being so. The Spirit makes all these marks and 
 signs valid and available for a true conclusion — 
 and leads the heart and mind to this true con- 
 clusion. He does not operate by producing con- 
 viction without reason; an unreasonable conclu- 
 sion. Nor yet apart from the reason; equally 
 unreasonable. Nor by producing more reasons 
 for the conclusion. But by giving their true 
 weight and validity to the reasons which exist 
 and so leading to the true conclusion, with Divine 
 assurance. The function of the witness of the 
 Spirit of God is, therefore, to give to our halting 
 conclusions the weight of His Divine certitude. 
 
192 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 It may be our reasoning by which the conclusion 
 is reached. It is the testimony of the Spirit 
 which gives to a conclusion thus reached inde- 
 fectible certainty. It is the Spirit alone who is 
 the author, therefore, of the Christian's firm as- 
 surance. We have grounds, good grounds, for 
 belie\^g that we are in Christ, apart from His 
 witness. Through His witness these good grounds 
 produce their full effect in our minds and hearts. 
 
THE SPIRIT'S HELP IN OUR PRAYING 
 
 Rom. 8:26, 27: — "And in like manner the Spirit also helpeth 
 our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the 
 Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which 
 cannot be uttered; and he that searcheth the hearts knoweth 
 what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession 
 for the saints according to the will of God." 
 
 The direct teaching of this passage obv-iously is 
 that the Holy Ghost, dwelling in Christian men, 
 indites their petitions, and thus secures for them 
 both that they shall ask God for what they really 
 need and that they shall obtain what they ask. 
 There is here asserted both an effect of the Spirit's 
 working on the heart of the believer and an effect 
 of this. His working on God. Even Christian 
 men are full of weakness, and neither know what 
 they should pray for in each time of need, nor 
 are able to pray for it with the fervidness of desire 
 which God would have them use. It is by the 
 operation of the Spirit of God on their hearts 
 that they are thus led to pray aright in matter 
 and manner, and that their petitions are rendered 
 acceptable to God, as being according to His will. 
 This is the obvious teaching of the passage; but 
 that we may fully understand it in its implica- 
 tions and shades it will be desirable to look at it in 
 its context. 
 
 The eighth chapter of Romans is an outburst 
 193 
 
194 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 of humble triumph on the Apostle's part, on real- 
 izing that the conflict of the Christian life as de- 
 picted in the seventh chapter issues in victory, 
 through the indwelling of the Holy Ghost. Evil 
 may be entrenched in our members ; but the power 
 of God unto salvation has entered our hearts by 
 the Holy Ghost and by the prevalent working of 
 that Holy Spirit in us we are enabled to cry Abba, 
 Father; and being made sons of God are consti- 
 tuted His heirs and co-heirs with Jesus Christ. 
 Not as if, indeed, we are to be borne withbut 
 effort of our own into this glorious inheritance — 
 "to be carried to the skies on flowery beds of 
 ease." No! "Surely we must fight, if we would 
 win." For, after all, the Christian life is a pil- 
 grimage to be endured, a journey to be accom- 
 plished, a fight to be won. Least of all men was 
 the Apostle Paul, whose life was in labours more 
 abundant and in trials above measure, liable to 
 forget this. It is out of the experiences of his own 
 life as well as out of the nature of the thing that he 
 adds, therefore, to his cry of triumph a warning 
 of the nature of the life which, nevertheless, we 
 must still live in the flesh. If "the Spirit Him- 
 self beareth witness with our Spirits that we are 
 the Sons of God," and the glorious sequence fol- 
 lows, "and if children, then heirs, heirs of God and 
 joint heirs with Christ," no less do we need to be 
 reminded further of the condition underlying the 
 victory — "if so be that we suffer with Him that 
 
HELP IN OUR PRAYING 195 
 
 we may also be glorified with Him." To share 
 with Christ His glory implies sharing with Him 
 His sufferings. "Must Jesus tread the path alone 
 and all the world go free.^" Union with Him im- 
 plies taking part in all His life experiences, and we 
 can ascend the throne with Him only by treading 
 with Him the pathway by which He ascended the 
 throne. It was from the cross that He rose to 
 heaven. 
 
 The rest of this marvellous chapter seems to be 
 devoted to encouraging the saint in his struggles 
 as he treads the thorny path with Christ. The 
 first encouragement is drawn from the relative 
 greatness of the sufferings here and the glory yon- 
 der; the second, from the assistance in the jour- 
 ney received from the Holy Ghost; and the third 
 from the gracious oversight of God over the whole 
 progress of the journey. This whole section of 
 the chapter, therefore, appears as Paul's word of 
 encouragement to the believer as he struggles on 
 in his pilgrimage — in his "Pilgrim's Progress" — 
 in view of the hardships and sufferings and trials 
 attendant in this sinful world on the life in Christ. 
 It is substantially, therefore, an Apostolic com- 
 mentary on our Lord's words, "If any man would 
 come after me, let him deny himself and take up 
 his cross and follow me;" "he that doth not take 
 up his cross and follow after me, is not worthy of 
 me." These sufferings, says Paul, are inevitable; 
 no cross, no crown. But he would strengthen us 
 
196 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 in enduring the cross by keeping our eye on the 
 crown, by assuring us of the presence of the 
 Holy Spirit as our ever-present helper, and 
 by reminding us of the Divine direction of it 
 all. Thus he would alleviate the trials of the 
 journey. 
 
 Our text then takes its place as one of these en- 
 couragements to steadfast constancy, endurance, 
 in the Christian life — to what we call to-day 
 "perseverance." The "weakness," "infirmity," 
 to which it refers is to be taken, therefore, in the 
 broadest sense. No doubt its primary reference 
 may be to the remnant of indwelling sin, not yet 
 eradicated and the source of all the Christian's 
 weaknesses. But it is not confined to this. It 
 includes all that comes to a Christian as he suffers 
 with Christ; all that is included in our Lord's 
 requirement of denying ourselves and taking up 
 our cross. Paul's life of suffering for the Gospel's 
 sake may be taken by us, as it, doubtless, was felt 
 by him as he penned these words, as an illustra- 
 tion of the breadth of the meaning of the word. 
 He who would live godly must in every age suffer 
 a species of persecution; a species, differing in 
 kind with the tone and temper and quality of 
 each age, but always persecution. He who would 
 follow after Christ must meet with many opposers. 
 A strenuous life is the Christian life in the world; 
 it is appropriately designated a warfare, a fight. 
 But we are weak. And the weakness meant is in- 
 
HELP IN OUR PRAYING 197 
 
 elusive of all human weaknesses in the stress of 
 the great battle. 
 
 The encouragement which Paul offers us in this 
 our confessed weakness, is the ever-present aid of 
 the Holy Ghost. We are not to be left to tread 
 the path, to fight the fight, alone; the Spirit ever 
 "helpeth" our weakness, "takes our burden on 
 Himself, in our stead and yet along with us," as 
 the double compound word expresses. He does 
 not take it away from us and bear it wholly Him- 
 self, but comes to our aid in bearing it, receiving 
 it also on His shoulders along with us. In giving 
 this encouragement of the ever-present aid of the 
 Spirit in our weakness, the Apostle adds an illus- 
 tration of it. And it is exceedingly striking that, 
 in seeking an illustration of it, the Apostle thinks 
 at once of the sphere of prayer. It shows his 
 estimate of the place of prayer in the Christian 
 struggle, that in his eye, prayer is really "the 
 Christian's vital breath." Our weakness, he 
 seems to say, is helped primarily by the Spirit 
 through His inditing our prayers for us. Per- 
 haps this will not seem strange to us if we will fitly 
 consider what the Christian life is, in its depend- 
 ence on God; and what prayer is, in its attitude of 
 dependence on God. Prayer is, in a word, the 
 correlate of religion. The prayerful attitude is 
 the religious attitude. And that man is religious 
 who habitually holds toward God, in life and 
 thought, in act and word, the attitude of prayer. 
 
198 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Is it not fitting, after all, that Paul should encour- 
 age the Christian man, striving to live a Chris- 
 tian life — denying himself and taking up his 
 cross and following Christ — by assuring him 
 primarily that the Holy Ghost is ever present, 
 helping him in his weakness, to this effect that his 
 attitude towards God in his conscious dependence 
 on Him, should be kept straight? For this it is 
 to help us in prayer. 
 
 Nor can it seem strange to us that Paul adverts 
 to our need of aid in prayer in the very matter of 
 our petitions. It is worth noting how very vitally 
 he writes here, doubtless, again out of his own ex- 
 perience. "We know not what we should pray 
 for," he says, "in each time of need" — according, 
 that is, to the needs of each occasion. It is not 
 lack of purpose — it is lack of wisdom, that he in- 
 timates. We may have every desire to serve God 
 and every willingness to serve Him at our imme- 
 diate expense, but do we know what we need at 
 each moment.? The wisest and best of men must 
 needs fail here. So Paul found, when he asked 
 thrice that the thorn in the flesh might be re- 
 moved and stayed not till the Lord had told him 
 explicitly that His grace was sufficient for him. 
 How often we would rather escape the suffering 
 that lies in our path than receive of the grace of 
 God! Nay, a greater than Paul may here be our 
 example. Did not our Lord Himself say, "Now 
 ismy soul troubled; and what shall I say.? Father, 
 
HELP IN OUR PRAYING 199 
 
 save me from this hour." Quick though came the 
 response back from His own soul, "But for this 
 cause came I unto this hour: Father, glorify thy 
 name," yet may we not see even in this momentary 
 hesitation a hint of that uncertainty of which all 
 are more or less the prey? It is not merely in the 
 recalcitrances of the Christian life — God knows 
 we have need enough there ! — but it is not only in 
 the recalcitrances and the mere unwillingnesses of 
 the Christian life that the Spirit aids us; but in the 
 perplexities of the Christian life too. Under His 
 leading we shall not only be saved from sins, but 
 also from mistakes, in the will of God. And thus 
 He leads us not only to pray, but to pray "ac- 
 cording to the will of God." 
 
 And now, how does the Spirit thus aid us in 
 praying according to the will of God.^ Paul calls 
 it a making of intercession for us with groanings 
 which cannot be uttered; making intercession for 
 us or in addition to us, for the word could have 
 either meaning. It is clear from the whole pas- 
 sage that this is not an objective intercession in 
 our behalf — made in heaven as Christ our Medi- 
 ator intercedes for us. That the Spirit makes in- 
 tercession for us is known to God not as God in 
 heaven, but as "searcher of hearts." It is 
 equally clear that it is not an intercession through 
 us as mere conduits, unengaged in the intercession 
 ourselves; it is an intercession made by the Spirit 
 as our helper and not as our substitute. It is 
 
200 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 equally clear that it is not merely in our natural 
 powers that the Spirit speaks; it is a groaning of 
 which the Spirit is the author and "over and 
 above" our own praying. It is clear then that 
 it is subjective and yet not to be confused with our 
 owTi prayings. Due to the Spirit's working in 
 our hearts we conceive what we need in each hour 
 of need and ask God for it with unutterable 
 strength of desire. The Spirit intercedes for us 
 then by working in us right desires for each time 
 of need; and by deepening these desires into un- 
 utterable groans. They are our desires, and our 
 groans. But not apart from the Spirit. They 
 are His; \\Tought in us by Him. And God, who 
 searches the heart, sees these unutterable desires 
 and "knows the mind of the Spirit that He is 
 making intercession for the saints according to the 
 will of God." 
 
 Thus, then, the Spirit helps our weakness. By 
 His hidden, inner influences He quickens us to the 
 perception of our real need; He frames in us an 
 infinite desire for this needed thing; He leads us 
 to bring this desire in all its unutterable strength 
 before God; who, seeing it within our hearts, can- 
 not but grant it, as accordant with His will. 
 Is not this a very present help in time of trouble.^ 
 As prevalent a help as if we were miraculously 
 rescued from any danger? And yet a help 
 wrought through the means of God's own appoint- 
 ment, that is, our attitude of constant dependence 
 
HELP IN OUR PRAYING 201 
 
 on Him and our prayer to Him for His aid? And 
 could Paul here have devised a better encourage- 
 ment to the saints to go on in their holy course and 
 fight the battle bravely to the end? 
 
ALL THINGS WORKING TOGETHER 
 FOR GOOD 
 
 Rom. 8:28: — "And we know that to them that love God all 
 things work together for good, even to them that are called 
 according to his purpose." 
 
 There is a sense in which this verse marks the 
 climax of this glorious eighth chapter of Romans. 
 The whole chapter may properly be looked upon 
 as the reaction from the depths of the seventh 
 chapter. The key-note of that chapter is sounded 
 in the despairing cry, "O wretched man that I 
 am, who shall deliver me out of the body of this 
 death." The key-note of this is sounded in the 
 blessed shout, "If God is for us, who is against 
 us?" In the seventh chapter Paul uncovers the 
 horror of indwelling sin; in the eighth he reveals 
 the glory of the indwelling Spirit. The Christian 
 life on earth is a conflict with sin. And therein is 
 the dreadfulness of our situation on earth dis- 
 played. But we are not left to fight the battle 
 alone. The Christian life is a conflict of God — 
 not of us — w^ith sin. And therein is the joy and 
 glory of our situation on earth manifested. As 
 sinners we are in terrible plight. As the ser- 
 vants of God, fighting His battle, we are in glori- 
 ous case. 
 
 The whole eighth chapter of the Romans is a 
 202 
 
ALL WORKING FOR GOOD 203 
 
 development of the blessedness which arises from 
 the discovery of the Holy Spirit within us, as the 
 real power making for righteousness which is in 
 conflict with indwelling sin. It opens with the 
 proclamation that the liberation of the sinner is 
 effected by the presence in him of the "law of the 
 spirit of life." It proceeds by dwelling on the 
 blessings that are ours by virtue of this great fact 
 of the indwelling Spirit. First, a new and uncon- 
 querable principle of life and holiness is implanted 
 in us (1-11); next, a new relationship to God, as 
 His sons and heirs, is revealed to us (12-17); 
 still further, a new and unquenchable hope is 
 made ours (18-25), which has respect amid what- 
 ever sufferings attend us here to the supreme 
 greatness of the reward. Lastly, a new support 
 in our present weakness is granted us (26-30). 
 
 The section from verse 26 to verse 30 is thus re- 
 vealed to us as one of the grounds of the Chris- 
 tian's encouragement amidst the evils of life. 
 It was not enough for Paul to paint the coming 
 glory. Even in the present weakness we are not 
 left without efficient aid. It is true that in this 
 weakness — it is part of the very weakness — we 
 cannot be sure what we need and cannot even 
 pray articulately; we can only, like nature itself 
 (vs. 22), groan and travail in pain, for we scarcely 
 know what. But there is one who knows. In 
 these very inarticulate groans the Spirit's hand 
 is active; and the searcher of hearts according to 
 
204 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 whose appointment it is that the Spirit inter- 
 cedes for saints, understands and knows. There 
 is no danger, then, that we shall fail of the needed 
 help. Maybe we do not know what we need — 
 God does. He can and will read off our groans 
 of pain and longing in terms of intelligence and of 
 love. "For we know that with those that love 
 God, God co-worketh in respect to all things unto 
 good." There is nothing that can befall us which 
 is undirected by Him; and nothing will befall 
 those that love Him, therefore, which is not di- 
 rected by Him to their good. 
 
 The fundamental thought is the universal gov- 
 ernment of God. All that comes to you is under 
 His controlling hand. The secondary thought is 
 the favour of God to those that love Him. If He 
 governs all, then nothing but good can befall those 
 to whom He would do good. The consolation 
 lies in the shelter which we may thus find beneath 
 His almighty arms. We are weak, we are blind; 
 He is strong and He is wise. Though we are too 
 weak to help ourselves and too blind to ask for 
 what we need, and can only groan in unformed 
 longings. He is the author in us of these very 
 longings — He knows what they really mean — 
 and He will so govern all things that we shall reap 
 only good from all that befalls us. All, though for 
 the present it seems grievous; all, though it be 
 our sin itself, as Augustine properly saw and as 
 the context demands (for is not the misery of the 
 
ALL WORKING FOR GOOD 205 
 
 seventh chapter the misery of indwelling sin, and 
 is not the joy of the closing verses of the eighth 
 chapter the joy of salvation from sin?) — all, there 
 is no exception allowed: in all things God co- 
 operates so with us that it can conduce only to 
 our good. Our eternal good, obviously; be- 
 cause it is throughout the good of the soul, the 
 good of the eternal salvation in Christ, that is in 
 evidence. 
 
 We say this is the climax of the eighth chapter 
 of Romans. After this nothing remains but the 
 psean of victory that fills the concludmg verses. 
 If there is not only a power withm us making for 
 righteousness to which the final victory is as- 
 sured; not only an inheritance far surpassing the 
 present evil, awaiting us; but also everything that 
 befalls us is so governed that it, everything, is for 
 our good and befalls us only because it is for our 
 good; why we certainly are m excellent case. 
 
 It is possible to say, indeed, that there is noth- 
 ing revealed here which deserves to be thought of 
 as the culmination of a specifically Christian en- 
 couragement. What, indeed, is here announced 
 that devout souls have not always possessed.? 
 In what does this fervent declaration, for example, 
 go beyond the philosophy of Joseph in the world's 
 early prime — in the simple days of patriarchal 
 faith— when, looking back on the fortunes of his 
 own chequered life, on the plots of his brethren 
 against his person when sold by them into Egypt, 
 
206 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 and the marvellous befallings which came to him 
 there, he said to them at the last, "As for you, ye 
 meant evil against me; but God meant it for 
 good, to bring to pass as it is this day ? " Did not 
 Joseph already hold the secret of Paul's consola- 
 tion — that God is Lord of all, that nothing comes 
 to us except by His ordering, that therefore to 
 those who serve Him, all that occurs to them, black 
 as it may seem to their short vision, is meant for 
 good and will bring to pass the peaceable fruits of 
 joy and righteousness? Nay, did not that half- 
 heathen Jew, the son of Sirach, who wrote the 
 book of Ecclesiasticus, have adequate under- 
 standing of the whole matter, when he wrote, in a 
 context which magnifies the all-reaching power of 
 God, "For the good are good things created from 
 the beginning ... all these things are for good to 
 the godly," adding on the other hand, that evil 
 things are equally created for sinners and what is 
 good for the godly is turned into evil for sinners? 
 Lideed, is there anything here to which the 
 heathen themselves could not attain.^ Can we 
 forget, for example, that beautiful discussion in 
 the tenth book of the Republic in which Socrates 
 reasons with Glaucon on the rewards of virtue.^ 
 Must we not suppose, he urges, that the gods accu- 
 rately estimate the characters of men, and know 
 thoroughly both the just and the unjust? And 
 must we not suppose that they look with friendly 
 eye upon the just and with enmity upon the un- 
 
ALL WORKING FOR GOOD 207 
 
 righteous? And must we not suppose, still further, 
 that they will be good to those whom they recog- 
 nize as their friends, and grant them every good — 
 excepting, of course, only such evil as is the con- 
 sequence of their former sins? "Then, this," 
 Socrates continues, "must be our notion of the 
 just man, that even when he is in poverty or sick- 
 ness, or any other seeming misfortune, all things 
 will in the end work together for good to him in 
 life and death : for the gods have a care for anyone 
 whose desire is to become just and to be like God, 
 as far as man can attain His likeness by the pur- 
 suit of virtue." What is there in Paul's assevera- 
 tion that goes beyond this calmly expressed con- 
 viction — the very language of which is so closely 
 assimilated to Paul's — except a little characteristic 
 fervency of tone? 
 
 Well, it is to be admitted at once that there is 
 much in Paul's great statement which is not pe- 
 culiar to it. The assurance of God's providential 
 conduct of the whole complex of the universe that 
 He has made; the conviction that in His control 
 of the details of life He will not forget those who 
 are specially well-pleasing to Him; the firm faith 
 therefore that the path of happiness is to see to it 
 that we are well-pleasing to God ; that, as all that 
 occurs is of God's ordering, so all that occurs to 
 the friends of God will work out good to them — 
 this is, of course, of the very essence of natural 
 religion, and he who really believes in a personal 
 
208 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 God clothed with ethical attributes, must needs 
 believe it. All the more shame, then, when men 
 who profess to believe in such a God — to be The- 
 ists — relax the height of this great and most fun- 
 damental faith, as many of the heathen have done; 
 as some even of our modern Christian teachers 
 have done, asking doubtfully or denyingly, for 
 example, whether God sends trouble, as if trouble 
 could come to one of God's beloved ones without 
 His behest, — and totally failing to retain, we will 
 not say Paul's height, but even the height of the 
 higher heathenism, which could see that it is a 
 higher as well as a truer view that trouble is an in- 
 strument of God's good to God's friends. Never- 
 theless, there is more in Paul's statement than was 
 reached by the heathen sage; something more even 
 perhaps than underlies the more enlightened and 
 more penetrating view of Joseph. 
 
 We cannot stop to develop the differences in 
 detail. But we may note briefly at least one of 
 the most fundamental of them, one so funda- 
 mental that it transforms everything. 
 
 This is the difference in the ground of the assur- 
 ance which is cherished. The ground on which 
 the heathen sage founded his conviction was the 
 essential righteousness of the expectation. God 
 owes to those who love Him different treatment 
 from that accorded to those who hate Him. Pos- 
 sibly we may think that the modern heathen rise 
 a step higher when they substitute the idea of 
 
ALL WORKING FOR GOOD 209 
 
 goodness for that of bare righteousness, and say 
 that God will do good to those who love Him be- 
 cause He is essentially love and will do good to all 
 men. The ground of Paul's assurance is some- 
 thing far higher. It is not merely an inference 
 from a conception of God not obviously validated 
 by a broad survey of His works. It is not even 
 an inference from the ineradicable and thoroughly 
 authenticated conviction that He is righteous. It 
 is an express declaration of God's own. It is a 
 "revelation from heaven" spoken by the lips of 
 prophets and of the Son Himself. 
 
 To the heathen God is to bless His friends be- 
 cause they are His friends; to Paul they are His 
 friends because God blesses them. The whole 
 basis of the heathen's conviction is a judgment in 
 righteousness; it is purely abstract; if a man is 
 righteous then God must treat him as such. 
 Granted. But, is a man righteous .^^ I — am I 
 righteous.'^ If a man is righteous, God will, un- 
 doubtedly, treat him as such; God owes him good 
 and not evil. But I — I myself — how will God 
 treat me? Will that depend on whether I am now 
 righteous? And on what my past sins deserve? 
 Well, w^ho is now righteous? And what do my 
 past sins deserve? For the righteous man — who 
 has no present and no past sins to come into con- 
 sideration — this may be satisfactory enough. But 
 where is that righteous man? This is what we 
 mean by saying that the heathen's proposition is 
 
210 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 purely abstract. It is true enough; but it is of 
 no personal interest to sinners. 
 
 Paul was thinking not of righteous men but of 
 sinners. It is concerning sinners that he is talk- 
 ing, concerning those who had had and were having 
 the experience of the seventh chapter of Romans. 
 Essentially different, his good tidings to sinners 
 from the cold deduction of reason which Plato 
 offers to the just! And this is the exact differ- 
 ence: righteous men amid the evils of earth seek 
 a theodicy — they want a justification of God; 
 sinners do not need a theodicy — all too clear to 
 them is the reason of their sufferings — they want 
 a consolation, a justification from God. Paul's 
 words are in essence, then, not a theodicy but a 
 consolation. Such a consolation can rest on noth- 
 ing but a revelation; and Paul founds it on a rev- 
 elation which he represents as of immanent knowl- 
 edge in the Church: "We know," says he, "that 
 all things work together for good to them that 
 love God." We bless God that we know it! For 
 we are sinners, and what hope have we save in a 
 God who is gracious rather than merely just? 
 
MAN'S HUSBANDRY AND GOD'S BOUNTY 
 
 1 Cor. 3:5-9:— "What then is Apollos? And what is Paul? 
 Ministers through whom ye believed; and each as the Lord gave 
 to him. I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. 
 So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that water- 
 eth; but God that giveth the increase. Now he that planteth and 
 he that watereth are one: but each shall receive his own reward 
 according to his own labour. For we are God's fellow- workers: ye 
 are God's husbandry, God's building." 
 
 These verses form a natural section of this 
 Epistle. The Corinthians had sent a letter to 
 the Apostle, making inquiries on several important 
 matters. But when the Apostle came to make 
 reply, he had matters to speak to them about 
 which were far more important than any of the 
 questions asked in their letter. Trusty friends 
 had reported to him the serious deterioration 
 which the Corinthian Church was undergoing, 
 the strange, as we may think them, and certainly 
 outbreaking, immoralities into which they were 
 falling. Chiefest of these, because most funda- 
 mental and most fecund of other evils, was the 
 raging party spirit, which had arisen among them. 
 Greek-like, the Corinthians were not satisfied 
 with the matter of the simple Gospel, in whatever 
 form, but had begun to clothe its truths (and to 
 obscure them in the act) in philosophical garb 
 and rhetorical finery; and had split themselves 
 
 211 
 
212 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 into factions, far from tolerant of one another, 
 rallying around special teachers and glorifying, 
 each, a special mode of presentation. So far 
 had this gone that the rival parties had long ago 
 broken the peace of the Church, and were threat- 
 ening its unity. 
 
 Paul devotes himself first of all to the sham- 
 ing of this spirit and the elimination of its results. 
 In doing so he cuts to the roots. He begins with 
 a rebuke of the violence of the Corinthians' party 
 spirit, sarcastically suggesting that they had made 
 Christ, who was the sole Redeemer of God's 
 Church and in whom were all, a share; and so par- 
 celled Him out to one faction — as if others had 
 had Paul to die for them and had been baptized in 
 his name, and so on. He then sets himself seri- 
 ously to refute the whole basis of their factions and 
 to place firmly under his readers' feet the elements 
 of the truth. To do this, he first elucidates the 
 relation of wisdom — philosophy and rhetoric, we 
 would say now — to the Gospel; pointing out that 
 the Gospel is not a product of human wisdom and 
 is not to be commended by it; although, no doubt, 
 it proclaims a Divine wisdom of its own to those 
 who are capable of receiving it. Thus he de- 
 stroys the very nerve of their strife. Then, with 
 our present passage, he turns to the parallel oc- 
 casion of their strife and explains the relation 
 of the human agents through which it is propa- 
 gated to the Gospel. This he declares to be none 
 
MAN'S HUSBANDRY AND GOD'S BOUNTY 213 
 
 other than the relation of hired servants to the 
 husbandry of the good-man of the farm. Pro- 
 ceeding to details, Paul and Apollos, he declares, 
 are alike but servants, each doing whatever work 
 is committed to him, work which may no doubt 
 differ, externally considered, in kind, though it is 
 exactly the same in this — that it is nothing but 
 hired service, while it is God that gives the in- 
 crease. There is no difference in this respect; 
 not that the work is not deserving of reward; 
 reward, however, not as if the increase was theirs 
 but only proportioned to the amount of their 
 work as labour. The harvest is God's; that har- 
 vest which they themselves are. They, the 
 labourers, are fellow-labourers only, working for 
 God. They, the Corinthians, do not belong to 
 them; they are God's husbandry, God's building. 
 
 Thus the Apostle not only intimates but em- 
 phatically asserts that the Church of God is not 
 the product of the ministry; no, nor is any indi- 
 vidual Christian. Every Christian and the Church 
 at large is God's gift. God sets workmen to labour 
 in His vineyard; and rewards them richly for 
 their labour, paying each all his wages. But these 
 labourers, it is not theirs to give the increase, nor 
 even to choose their work. It is theirs merely to 
 work and to do each the special work which God 
 appoints. The vineyard is God's and so is the 
 increase, — which God Himself gives. 
 
 Now, looking at this general teaching of the 
 
214 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 passage in a broad and somewhat loose way, we 
 see that the following important truths are in- 
 timated. 
 
 (1) Christianity is a work which God accom- 
 plishes in the heart and in the world. It may even 
 be said to be the work of God : the work that God 
 has set Himself to do in this dispensation, and 
 hence the second creation. 
 
 (2) Shifting the emphasis a bit, we perceive 
 that the passage emphasizes the fact that Chris- 
 tianity is a work which is accomplished in the 
 heart and in the world directly by God. 
 
 (3) Men are but God's instruments, tools, 
 "agents" (ministers) in performing this work. 
 They do not act in it for God, that is, instead of 
 God; but God acts through them. It is He that 
 gives the increase. 
 
 (4) All men engaged in this work are in equally 
 honourable employment. If one plants and an- 
 other waters and another reaps, it is all "one." 
 They are all only fellow-labourers under God; equal 
 in His sight and to be rewarded, not according to 
 what they did, but according to how they did it. 
 This would not be true if man made the increase; 
 but the reaper no more makes the harvest than 
 the sower. Nor would it be true if the reaper had 
 the increase. But it is not the reaper's "field." 
 He is a hired labourer, not an owner. It is God's 
 field. Each gets his wages; little or much ac- 
 cording to the quality of his work. Wages are 
 
MAN'S HUSBANDRY AND GOD'S BOUNTY 215 
 
 measured fey labour, not results. And therefore it 
 is all one to you and me, as labourers in God's field, 
 whether He sets us to plough, plant, water or reap. 
 
 Looking at these truths in turn: 
 
 What an encouragement it is to the Christian 
 worker to know that Christianity is, so to speak 
 (in the figure of the text), the crop which God the 
 great husbandman has set Himself to plant and to 
 raise in this "season" in which we live. There- 
 fore this dispensation is called "the year of sal- 
 vation." And therefore, when pleading a little 
 later with these same Corinthians to receive the 
 grace of God not in vain, Paul clinches the ap- 
 peal with the pointed declaration that now, this 
 dispensation, is that accepted time, that day of 
 salvation, at last come, to which all the prophets 
 pointed, for which all the saints of God had 
 longed from the beginning of the world. It is 
 therefore again, leaving the figure, that this same 
 Apostle declares that our Lord and Saviour has 
 for the whole length of this dispensation assumed 
 the post of the Ruler of the Universe, in order that 
 all things may be administered for the fulfilment 
 of His great redemptive purpose; in order that 
 all things may, in a word, be made to work to- 
 gether for good to those that love Him. Li a 
 word, God is a husbandman in this season which 
 we call the inter-adventual period; and the crop 
 that He is planting and watering and is to reap is 
 His Church. 
 
216 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 No wonder our Saviour declared the Kingdom 
 of Heaven like unto a sower who went forth to 
 sow; who spread widely the golden grain, and 
 reaped it too, a harvest of many-fold yield. For 
 God's husbandry cannot fail. Other husband- 
 men are not in this wholly unlike their hired ser- 
 vants: they plant and water, — but they cannot 
 compel life; and what may be the results of their 
 labour they know not. The floods may come, the 
 winds may blow, the sun may parch the earth, 
 the enemy may destroy the grain. But God gives 
 the increase. It is therefore that the Redeemer 
 sits on the throne, that floods and rain and sun — 
 all the secret alchemy of nature — may be in His 
 control, that "all things shall work together for 
 good to them that love Him." There, I say, is 
 our encouragement. Christianity is the work of 
 God, the work He has set Himself to do in this 
 age in which we live. As we go forth as His ser- 
 vants to plant and water, we may go upheld by a 
 deathless hope. The harvest cannot fail. WTien 
 the sands of time run out and God sends forth 
 His reapers, the angels, there will be His harvest 
 thick on the ground — and the field is the world. 
 The purpose of God stands sure. We may not be 
 called to see the end from the beginning. But if 
 God calls you and me to plant or to water, it is 
 our blessed privilege to labour on in hope. 
 
 All this is just because the result is not ours to 
 produce or to withhold. It is God that gives 
 
MAN'S HUSBANDRY AND GOD'S BOUNTY 217 
 
 the increase. As Christianity is the work which 
 God has set before Himself to accompKsh in this 
 age; so Christianity in the world and in the heart 
 is a work which God alone can accomplish. It is 
 not in the power of any man to make a Christian, 
 much less to make the Church — that great or- 
 ganized body of Christ, every member of which is 
 a recreated man. Why, we cannot make our own 
 bodies; how much less the body of Christ! If 
 in this work Paul was nothing and Apollos noth- 
 ing, what are we, their weak and unworthy suc- 
 cessors! This is the second great lesson our pas- 
 sage has to teach us; or, rather, we may better 
 say this is the great lesson it teaches, for it was 
 just to teach this that it was written. The fault 
 of the Corinthians was that they had forgotten 
 who was the husbandman, who alone gave the in- 
 crease. Hence their divisions, making Christ only 
 the share of one party, while others looked to Paul 
 or Apollos or Cephas, just as if they stood related 
 to the harvest in something of the same way as 
 Christ. Nay, says Paul, Christ alone is Lord of 
 the harvest. It is God alone who can give the 
 increase. 
 
 Paul had reason to know this in his own 
 experience. He knew how he had been gath- 
 ered into the Kingdom. He was soon to ac- 
 quire new reason for acknowledging it, in that 
 journey of his from Ephesus to Macedonia, in 
 which, while his heart was elsewhere, all unknown 
 
218 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 to himself God was leading him in triumph, 
 compelling ever-increasing accessions to his 
 train. Nor did he ever stint his declaration of it. 
 Thus, take that passage (Eph. 2:10), where he, 
 completing a long statement of God's gracious 
 dealings with Christians in quickening them into 
 newness of life, without obscurity or hesitation 
 outlines the whole process as a creative work of 
 God. " For it is by grace that ye are saved, through 
 faith: nor is this of yourselves, it is God's gift; 
 not of works, lest some one should boast. For 
 we are His workmanship — creatures — created in 
 Christ Jesus unto good works, which God hath 
 afore prepared that we should walk in them." 
 This is Paul's teaching everywhere: that as it is 
 God who created us men, so it is God who has re- 
 created us Christians. And the one in as direct 
 and true a sense as the other. As He used agents 
 in the one case — our natural generation (for none 
 of us are born men without parents), so He may 
 use instruments in the other, our spiritual regen- 
 eration (for none of us are born Christians where 
 there is no Word). But in both cases, it is 
 God and God alone who gives the increase. 
 
 Let us not shrink from this teaching; it is the 
 basis of our hope. Though we be Pauls and Apol- 
 loses we cannot save a soul; though we be as elo- 
 quent as Demosthenes, as subtle as Aristotle, as 
 convincing as Plato, as persistent as Socrates, we 
 cannot save. And though we be none of these. 
 
MAN'S HUSBANDRY AND GOD'S BOUNTY 219 
 
 but a plain man with lisping lips, that can but let 
 fall the Gospel truth in broken phrases — we need 
 no eloquent Aaron for our prophet. We need 
 only God for our Master. It is not we who save, 
 it is God ; and our place is not due to our learning 
 or our rhetoric or our graces, it is due to the hon- 
 ouring of God, who has mercy on whom He will 
 have mercy, and whom He will, He hardens. 
 
 Hence we have the great consolation of knowing 
 that the responsibility of fruitage to our work does 
 not depend absolutely on us. We are not the 
 husbandman; the field is not ours; its fruitage is 
 not dependent on or limited by our ability to 
 produce it. All Christian ministers are but God's 
 "agents" (for that is the ultimate implication of 
 the term used), employed by Him to secure His 
 purposes; God's instruments, God's tools. It is 
 God who plans the cultivation, determines the 
 sowing and sends us to do it. Now this is to 
 lower our pride. Some ministers act as if they 
 owned the field; they lord it over God's heritage. 
 More feel as if they had produced all the results; 
 made, "created," the fruit. They pride them- 
 selves on the results of their work and compare 
 themselves to others' disadvantage with their 
 neighbours in the fruits granted to their ministry. 
 This is like a reaper boasting over the sower or 
 ploughman, as if he had made the crop it has been 
 allowed him to harvest. Others feel depressed, 
 cast down, at the smallness of the fruitage it has 
 
220 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 been allowed them to see from their work, and 
 begin to suspect that they are not called to the 
 ministry at all, because the work given them 
 to do was not reaping. And herein is the con- 
 solation: just because we are not doing God's 
 work for Him, but He is doing His own work 
 through us; just because we do what work He 
 appoints to us; not we but He is responsible for 
 the harvest. All that is required of stewards is 
 that they be found faithful. 
 
 Hence — and this is the final and greatest con- 
 solation to us as ministers — it ought to be a mattei* 
 of indifference to us what work God gives us to 
 do in His husbandry. Reaping is no more honour- 
 able than sowing; watering no less honourable 
 than harvesting. Men disturb themselves too 
 much over the kind of work they are assigned to, 
 and can scarcely believe they are working for God 
 unless they are harvesting all the time. But in 
 the great organized body of labour it is as in 
 the organized body to which Paul compares the 
 Church later: if all were reapers, where were the 
 sowing, where were the cultivating, where the 
 watering? And if no sowing, and no watering, 
 where were the reaping .^^ It is not ours to deter- 
 mine what work we are to do. It is for us to de- 
 termine how we do it. For none of us will fail 
 of our wages and the wages are not proportioned 
 to the kind of work, as if the reaper because he 
 reaped would have all the reward. The field 
 
MAN'S HUSBANDRY AND GOD'S BOUNTY 221 
 
 is not liis, and the harvest is not his. He does 
 not get the crop because he reaped it. He gets 
 just what the planter and waterer get, his wages. 
 Wages, I say, not proportioned to the kind of 
 work, but to the labour he does. Each one, says 
 Paul, shall receive "his own reward" according 
 to his own labour. The amount of labour, not the 
 department of work, is the norm of our reward. 
 What a consolation this is to the obscure work- 
 man to whom God has given much labour and, 
 few results; reward is proportioned to the labour, 
 not the results ! And this for a very good reason. 
 God apportions the work on the one hand and 
 gives the increase on the other. But it is we that 
 do the labour. And, of course, we are rewarded 
 according to what is done by us, not God. Let 
 us then labour on in whatever sphere God gives 
 it to us to labom', content, happy, strenuous, un- 
 tiring, determined only to do God's work in God's 
 way; not seeking to intrude into work to which He 
 has not appointed us, and not repining because He 
 has given us this work and not that. Each one 
 to his own labour, and God the re warder of all! 
 
COMMUNION IN CHRIST'S BODY AND 
 BLOOD 
 
 1 Cor. 10:16, 17: — "The cup of blessing which we bless, is it not 
 a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, 
 is it not a communion of the body of Christ? Seeing that we, 
 who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the 
 one bread." 
 
 There are few injunctions as to methods 
 of interpretation more necessary or more fruitful 
 than the simple one. Interpret historically. 
 That is to say, read your text in the light of the 
 historical circumstances in which it was written, 
 and not according to the surroundings in which, 
 after say two thousand years, you may find your- 
 self. And there is no better illustration of the 
 importance of this injunction than the interpre- 
 tations which have been put on the passages in 
 the New Testament which speak of the Lord's 
 Supper. Little will be hazarded in saying that 
 each expositor brings his own point of view to the 
 interpretation of these passages, and seems in- 
 capable of putting himself in the point of sight 
 of the New Testament writers themselves. He 
 who reads the several comments of the chief 
 commentators, for instance, on our present pas- 
 sage, quickly feels himself in atmospheres of very 
 varied compositions, which have nothing in com- 
 mon except their absolute dissimilarity to that 
 
 222 
 
CHRIST'S BODY AND BLOOD 223 
 
 which Paul's own passage breathes. If we are 
 ever to understand what the Lord's Supper was 
 intended by the founder of Christianity to be, we 
 must manage somehow to escape from the com- 
 mentators back to Paul and Paul's Master. Here 
 then is a specially pressing necessity for inter- 
 preting according to the historical circumstances. 
 
 The allusion to the Lord's Supper in our pres- 
 ent passage, it will be noted, is purely incidental. 
 The Apostle is reasoning with the Corinthians on 
 a totally different matter; on a question of casu- 
 istry which affected their every-day life. Im- 
 mersed in a heathen society, intertwined with 
 every act of the life of which was some heathen 
 ordinance, the early Christian was exposed at 
 every step to the danger of participating in idol- 
 atrous worship. One of the places at which he 
 was thus menaced with what we may call con- 
 structive apostacy was in the very provision for 
 meeting his need of daily food. The victims of- 
 fered in sacrifice to heathen divinities provided 
 the common meat-supply of the community. If 
 one were invited to a social meal with a friend, it 
 was to an idol's feast that he was bidden. If he 
 even bought meat in the markets, it was a por- 
 tion of the idol sacrifice alone that he could pur- 
 chase. How, in such circumstances, was he to 
 avoid idolatry.^ 
 
 The Apostle devotes a number of paragraphs in 
 the first Epistle to the Corinthians to solving this 
 
224 FAITH AXD LIFE 
 
 pressing question. The wisdom and moderation 
 with which he deals with it are striking. His 
 fmidamental proposition is that an idol is nothing 
 in the world, and meats offered to idols are noth- 
 ing after all but meats, good or bad as the case 
 may be, and are to be used simply as such, on the 
 principle that the earth is the Lord's and the full- 
 ness thereof. But. side by side with this, he lays 
 a second proposition, that any involvement in 
 idol worship is idolatry and must be shunned by 
 all who would be servants of the One True God 
 and His Son. ^Miether any special act of par- 
 taking of meats offered to idols involves sharing 
 an idol worship or not, will depend mainly on the 
 subjective state of the participant: and his free- 
 dom with respect to it is conditioned only by his 
 debt of love to his fellow Christians, who may or 
 may not be as enlightened as he is. The Corin- 
 thians appear to have been a heady set and the 
 Apostle evidently feels it to be the more pressing 
 need to restrain them from hasty and unguarded 
 use of their new-foimd freedom. He does not 
 urge them to treat the idols as nothing. He urges 
 them to avoid entanglement with idolatrous acts. 
 And our passage is a part of his argument to se- 
 cure their avoidance of such idolatrous acts. 
 
 The argument here turns on a matter of fact 
 which would be entirely lucid to the readers for 
 whom it was first intended, but can be fathomed 
 by us only by placing ourselves in their historical 
 
CHRIST'S BODY AND BLOOD 225 
 
 position. Its whole force depends on the readers' 
 ready understanding of the nature and signifi- 
 cance of a sacrificial feast. This was essentially 
 the same under all sacrificial systems. The eat- 
 ing of the victim offered whether by the IsraeUte 
 in obedience to the Di\Tne ordinances of the Old 
 Covenant, or by the heathen in Corinth, meant 
 essentially the same thing to the participant. 
 Therefore the Apostle begins the passage by ap- 
 pealing to the intelligence of his former heathen 
 readers and submitting the matter to their natural 
 judgment. He asks them themselves to judge 
 whether it is consistent to partake in the sacri- 
 ficial feasts of both heathen and Christian. This 
 is the gist of the whole passage. 
 
 Participation in a sacrificial feast bore such a 
 meaning, stood in such a relation to the act of 
 sacrifice itself, that it was ob^-ious to the meanest 
 intelligence that no one could properly partake 
 both of the \'ictims offered to idols and of that 
 One Victim offered at Calvary to God. To feel 
 this as the Corinthians were expected to feel it, 
 we must put ourselves in their historical position. 
 They were heathen, lived in a sacrificial system, 
 and knew by nature what participation in the 
 victim offered in sacrifice meant. We may put 
 ourselves most readily in their place by attending 
 to what Paul says here of the Jewish sacrificial 
 feasts, which he adduces as altogether parallel, 
 so far, with the significance of the same act 
 
226 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 on heathen ground. "Consider Israel after the 
 flesh," he says, "are not those that eat the sac- 
 rifices, communicants in the altar?" Here it is 
 all in a nut-shell. All those who partake of the 
 victim offered in sacrifice were by that act made 
 sharers in the act of sacrifice itself. They — this 
 body of participants — were technically the offerers 
 of the sacrifice, to whose benefit it inured, and 
 whose responsible act it was. Whether a Greek, 
 sharing in the victim offered to Artemis or Aphro- 
 dite, or a Jew sharing in the victim offered to Je- 
 hovah, or a Christian sharing in that One Vic- 
 tim who offered Himself up without spot to God, 
 the principle was the same; he who partook of 
 the victim shared in the altar — in the sacrificial 
 act, in its religious import and in its benefits. 
 Is it not capable of being left to any man's judg- 
 ment in these premises, whether one who shared in 
 the One Offering of Christ to God could inno- 
 cently take part in the offerings which had been 
 dedicated to Artemis .^^ 
 
 The point of interest for us to-day in all this 
 turns on the implication of this argument as to 
 the nature of the Lord's Supper in the view of 
 Paul and of his readers in the infant Christian 
 community at Corinth. Clearly to Paul and the 
 Corinthians, the Lord's Supper was just a sacri- 
 ficial feast. As such — as the Christians' sacri- 
 ficial feast — it is put in comparison here with the 
 sacrificial feasts of the Jews and the heathen. The 
 
CHRIST'S BODY AND BLOOD 227 
 
 whole pith of the argument is that it is a sacrificial 
 feast. And if we wish to know what the Lord's 
 Supper is, here is our proper starting point. It is 
 the sacrificial feast of Christians, and bears the 
 same relation to the sacrifice of Christ that the 
 heathen sacrificial feasts did to their sacrifices 
 and that the Jewish sacrificial feasts did to their 
 sacrifices. It is a sacrificial feast, offering the 
 victim, in symbols of bread and wine, to our par- 
 ticipation, and signifying that all those who par- 
 take of the victim in these symbols, are sharers in 
 the altar, are of those for whom the sacrifice was 
 o£Pered and to whose benefit it inures. 
 
 Are we then to ask, what is the nature of the 
 Lord's Supper .f^ A Babel of voices may rise about 
 us. One will say. It is the badge of a Christian 
 man's profession. Another, It is the bloodless 
 sacrifice continuously offered up by the vested 
 priest to God in behalf of the sins of men. His- 
 tory says, briefly and pointedly, it is the Christian 
 passover. And, so saying, it will carry tis back 
 to that upper room where we shall see Jesus and 
 His disciples gathered about the passover meal, 
 the typical sacrificial feast. There lay the lamb 
 before Him; the lamb which represented Himself 
 who was the Lamb slain before the foundation 
 of the world. And there was the company of 
 those for whom this particular lamb was offered 
 and who now, by partaking of its flesh, were to 
 claim their part in the sacrifice. And there 
 
228 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 stood the Antitype, who had for centuries been 
 represented year after year by lambs like this. 
 And He is now about to offer Himself up in ful- 
 filment of the type, for the sins of the world! 
 No longer will it be possible to eat this typical 
 sacrifice; typical sacrifices were now to cease, in 
 their fulfilment in the Antitype. And so our 
 Lord, in the presence of the last typical lamb, 
 passes it by and taking a loaf, when He had given 
 thanks, broke it and said. This — I hope the em- 
 phasis will not be missed that falls on this word, 
 this — no longer the lamb but this loaf — is my 
 body which is broken for you; this do in remem- 
 brance of me. And in like manner also the cup 
 after supper, saying, This cup is the New Cove- 
 nant in my blood; this do in remembrance of me; 
 for as often as ye eat this bread and drink this 
 cup, ye proclaim the Lord's death, until He come. 
 How simple, how significant, the whole is, when 
 once it is approached from the historical point of 
 view. The Lord's Supper is the continuation of 
 the passover feast. The symbol only being 
 changed, it is the passover feast. And the eating 
 of the bread and drinking of the wine mean pre- 
 cisely what partaking of the lamb did then. It is 
 communion in the altar. Christ our Passover is 
 sacrificed for us; and we eat the passover when- 
 ever we eat this bread and drink this wine in 
 remembrance of Him. In our communing thus 
 in the body and the blood of Christ we partake of 
 
CHRIST'S BODY AND BLOOD 229 
 
 the altar, and are made beneficiaries of the sacrifice 
 He wrought out upon it. 
 
 The primary lesson of our text to-day is, then, 
 that in partaking of the Lord's Supper we claim a 
 share in the sacrifice which Christ wrought out on 
 Calvary for the sins of men. This is the funda- 
 mental meaning of the Lord's Supper as a sacri- 
 ficial feast. The bread and wine of the Lord's 
 Supper represent the body and blood of Christ; 
 but they represent that body and blood not abso- 
 lutely but as a sacrifice — as broken and outpoured 
 for us. We are not to puzzle our minds and 
 hearts by asking how His blood and body become 
 ours; how they, having become ours, benefit us; 
 and the like. We are to recognize from the be- 
 ginning that they were broken and outpoured in 
 sacrifice for us, and that we share in them only 
 that, by the law of sacrificial feast, we may partake 
 of the benefits obtained by the sacrifice. It is as a 
 sacrifice and only so that we enter into this union. 
 A second lesson of our text to-day is, that in 
 the Lord's Supper we take our place in the body 
 of -Christ's redeemed ones and exhibit the oneness 
 of His people. The text lays special stress on this. 
 The appeal of the Apostle is that by partaking of 
 these symbols Christians mark themselves on the 
 one hand off from the Jews and heathen, as a body 
 apart, having their own altar and sacrifice, and, 
 on the other hand, bind themselves together in 
 internal unity, for "by all having a share out of 
 
230 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 the one loaf, we who are many are one body be- 
 cause there is (only) one loaf." The whole Chris- 
 tian world is a passover company gathered around 
 the paschal lamb, and by their participation in it 
 exhibiting their essential unity. When we bless 
 the cup of blessing, it is a communion in the blood of 
 Christ; when we break the loaf, it is a communion 
 in the body of Christ; and because it is one loaf, 
 however many we are, we are one body, as all shar- 
 ing from one loaf. The Apostle very strongly em- 
 phasizes this idea of communion here; and it is ac- 
 cordingly no accident that we have so largely come 
 to call the Lord's Supper the "Communion." It 
 is the symbol of the oneness of Christians. 
 
 Another lesson which our text to-day brings us 
 is that the root of our communion with one an- 
 other as Christians lies in our common relation to 
 our Lord. We are "many," says the Apostle; 
 that is what we are in ourselves. But we "all" 
 — all of this "many" — are "one" — one body, be- 
 cause there is but one loaf and we all share from 
 that one loaf. Christ is one and we come into 
 relations of communion with one another only 
 through our common relation to Him. The root 
 of Christian union is, therefore, the uniqueness, 
 the solity of Christ. There is but one salvation; 
 but one Christian Kfe; because there is but one 
 Saviour and one source of life; and all those who 
 share it must needs stand side by side to imbibe it 
 from the one fountain. 
 
THE SPIRIT OF FAITH 
 
 2 Cor. 4:13: — "But having the same Spirit of faith, according 
 to that which is written, I beUeved, and therefore did I speak; 
 we also believe, and therefore also we speak." 
 
 This verse is a declaration on the Apostle's 
 part of the grounds of his courage and faithfulness 
 in preaching the glorious Gospel of Christ. The 
 circumstances which attended his proclamation 
 of this Gospel were of the most oppressive. In 
 the preceding verses we have a picture of them 
 which is drawn by means of a series of declara- 
 tions which rise, one after another, to a most 
 trying climax. He says that in the prosecution 
 of his work he is in every way pressed, perplexed, 
 pursued, smitten down. Here is a vivid picture 
 of the defeated warrior, who is not only pressed 
 by the foe, but put at his wits, ends, — not merely 
 thus discouraged but put to flight, — not merely 
 pursued but smitten down to the earth. A lurid 
 picture of the befallings of Paul as a minister of 
 Christ amid the spiritual conflicts on this side and 
 that, in Galatia and in Corinth! Nevertheless 
 things have not come to an end with him. Side 
 by side with this series of befallings he places a 
 contrasting series which exhibits the marvellous 
 continuance of the Apostle in his well-doing, in 
 spite of such dreadful happenings to him. Though 
 
 231 
 
232 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 he is in every way pressed yet he is not brought to 
 his last straits; though he is in every way per- 
 plexed, yet he has not gone to despair; though he 
 is pursued yet he is not overtaken; though he is 
 actually smitten down he is yet not destroyed. 
 
 In the prosecution of Paul's work as a minister 
 of Christ, there is thus a marvellous co-existence 
 of experiences the most desperate and of deliver- 
 ances the most remarkable. It is as if destruc- 
 tion had continually befallen him; yet ever out 
 of destruction he rises afresh to the continuance 
 of his work. In this remarkable contrast of his 
 experiences the Apostle sees a dramatic re- 
 enactment of Christ's saving work, who died that 
 He might live and might bring life to the world. 
 In it he sees himself, he says, ever re-enacting the 
 putting to death of Jesus, that the life also of 
 Jesus may be manifested in his body. As Jesus 
 died and rose again, so he daily dies in the service 
 of Christ and comes to life again; and so, abiding 
 in life, he is ever delivered to death for Jesus' 
 sake that the life also of Jesus might be manifested 
 in his mortal flesh. Oh, marvellous destiny of 
 the followers of Christ, in the very nature and cir- 
 cumstances of their service to placard before the 
 world the great lesson of the redemption of 
 Christ — the great lesson of life by death ; to man- 
 ifest thus to all men the life of Jesus and the life 
 from Jesus springing constantly out of His death. 
 Thus the very life-circumstances of Paul become a 
 
THE SPIRIT OF FAITH 233 
 
 preached Gospel. They manifest Christ and His 
 work for souls. They manifest it. For the dying 
 is for Paul and the life for his hearers. 
 
 Now Paul gives a twofold account of those cir- 
 cumstances in which he preached the Gospel. He 
 assigns them ultimately to the purpose of God. 
 This great treasure of the glorious Gospel has been 
 put into such earthen vessels for the very pur- 
 pose of more fully manifesting its divine glory. 
 In contrast with its vehicle, the power of the mes- 
 sage is all the more discernible. It is just that 
 the exceeding greatness of its power may be seen 
 to be of God that it is delivered to men in vessels 
 whose exceeding weakness may be apparent. On 
 the other hand, that these earthen vessels are able 
 to endure the strain put upon them in conveying 
 these treasures, is itself from God. Paul at- 
 tributes it to God's upholding power, operating 
 through faith. That in the midst of such trials 
 he is enabled to endure; that though smitten down 
 continuously he is not destroyed; that though 
 dying daily he still lives with a living Gospel still 
 on his lips; it is all due to the support of his firm 
 conviction and faith. "So then, it is death that 
 worketh in us, but life in you, and having the 
 same Spirit of faith, according as it is written, I 
 believed and, therefore, did I speak; we also be- 
 lieve and therefore speak, since we know that He 
 that raised up Jesus shall raise us up also with 
 Jesus, and shall present us with you." Here are 
 
234 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 the sources of the Apostle's strength and of his 
 courage. It is only because of his firm faith in 
 the Gospel he preaches that he can endure through 
 the trials into which its service has immersed him. 
 With a less clear conviction and less firm faith in 
 it, he would long ago have succumbed to the evils 
 of his life and his lips have long ago become dumb. 
 But he believed; and, therefore, though earth 
 and hell combined to destroy him, he could not 
 but speak. Let earthly trials multiply; beyond 
 the daily deaths of earth there was an eternal life 
 in store for him; and the more he could rescue 
 from death to that life, the more multiplied grace 
 would redound to increased thanksgiving and 
 abound to God's glory. In the power of this 
 faith the Apostle can face and overcome the trials 
 of life. 
 
 There are many important lessons that may 
 come to us from observing this declaration of the 
 Apostle's faith. 
 
 Beginning at the remoter side we may be sur- 
 prised to observe that he seeks the noi-m of his 
 faith in the Old Testament saints. "Having the 
 same Spirit of faith," he says, "according as it is 
 written, I believed, and therefore did I speak" — 
 referring for the model of faith back to the words 
 of this hero Psalmist. Now we may not be ac- 
 customed to think of the Old Testament saints as 
 the heroes of faith. The characteristic emotion of 
 Old Testament religion, we are accustomed to say^ 
 
THE SPIRIT OF FAITH 235 
 
 was awe or even fear. The characteristic ex- 
 pression of it is summed up in the term, "The fear 
 of the Lord." The New Testament on the other 
 hand is the dispensation of faith. And if we have 
 consideration only for the prevaiHng language of 
 the Old Testament this is true enough. The 
 word "faith" is scarcely an Old Testament word; 
 it occurs but twice in the English Old Testament, 
 and it is disputable whether on either occasion 
 it fairly — or at least fully — represents the He- 
 brew. Even the word "to believe" applied to 
 divine things is rare in the Old Testament. 
 
 But the word and the thing are different matters. 
 And it may be doubted whether the conceptions 
 of awe, fear, and of faith, trust, are so antagonistic 
 as is commonly represented. Certainly rever- 
 ence and faith are correlative conceptions. A 
 God whom we do not fear with religious rever- 
 ence, we cannot have such faith in as the Apostle's. 
 And certainly the New Testament writers do 
 always look to the Old Testament saints as the 
 heroes of faith. This is the burden of one of the 
 most magnificent passages in the New Testament, 
 the eleventh chapter of Hebrews. And of others 
 too. It is the faith of Abraham which is the 
 standing model of faith to both Paul and James; 
 and it is he who both in the subjective and ob- 
 jective senses of the word is represented to us as 
 the Father of the Faithful. Let it be allowed 
 that these heroes of faith lived in the twilight of 
 
236 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 knowledge; knowledge and faith stand in rela- 
 tion to one another, but are not the measure of 
 one another. If there can be no faith where there 
 is no knowledge, on the other hand it is equally 
 true that the realm of dim knowledge is often the 
 region of strong faith, — for when we walk by sight, 
 faith has no place. No; he that believes in Jesus 
 whom he has seen, must yield in point of heroism 
 of faith and the blessedness promised to it, to 
 him who having not seen yet has believed. Those 
 great men of God of old, not being weak in faith, 
 believed in the twilight of revelation, and waxing 
 strong, died in faith; and we could wish nothing 
 higher for ourselves than that we might be like 
 them in their faithful faith. 
 
 It is observable next that the Apostle attributes 
 the faith of the Old Testament heroes to whom he 
 would direct our eyes as the norm of faith, to the 
 work of the Holy Ghost. He felicitates himself 
 not merely on having the same quality of faith 
 with them. He looks deeper. The ground of 
 rejoicing in their fellowship is that he shares with 
 them the "same Spirit of faith." "Having the 
 same Spirit of faith," he says. It may be doubted, 
 once again, if we should have naturally spoken in 
 this way. We may be accustomed to think of the 
 Holy Spirit as an esssentiall}' New Testament pos- 
 session; and to conceive, in a more or less for- 
 mulated manner, of the saints of the Old Testa- 
 ment as left to their own native powers in their 
 
THE SPIRIT OF FAITH 237 
 
 serving of God. Heroes of faith as they were, it 
 would be peculiarly difficult, however, to believe 
 that they reached the height of their pious at- 
 tainment apart from the gracious operations of 
 the Spirit of God. Or shall we say that only in 
 New Testament times men are dead in sin, and 
 only in these days of the completed Gospel and 
 of the New Covenant do men need the almighty 
 power of God to raise them from their spiritual 
 death? 
 
 Certainly the Bible lends no support to such a 
 notion. Less is said of the gracious operations of 
 the Spirit in the Old Testament than in the New, 
 but to say less of it is one thing and its absence is 
 quite another. And there is enough in the Old 
 Testament itself — by prayer of Psalmist that the 
 Holy Spirit should not be taken away from him, 
 by statement of historian that through the Spirit 
 God gave this one and that one a new heart, by 
 assurance of prophet that the Spirit of God is the 
 author of all right belief and of all good conduct, — 
 to assure us that then, too, on Him depended all 
 the exercises of piety, to Him was due all the holy 
 aspirations and all the good accomplishments of 
 every saint of God. And certainly the New Tes- 
 tament tells us in repeated instances that the Holy 
 Spirit was active throughout the period of the Old 
 Dispensation, in all the varieties of activities 
 which characterize the New. The difference be- 
 tween the two lies not in any difference in the utter 
 
238 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 dependence of men on Him, or in the nature of 
 His operations, but in their extent and aim with 
 reference to the Hfe of the Kingdom of God. Our 
 present passage is one of those tolerably numerous 
 New Testament ones in which the gracious oper- 
 ations of the Spirit in the Old Covenant are as- 
 sumed. Paul here tells us that the faith of the 
 Old Testament saints was the product of God's 
 Holy Spirit; and he claims for himself nothing 
 more than what he asserts for them. "Having 
 the same Spirit of faith," he says. He is content — 
 nay, he is full of joy — to have the same Spirit 
 working faith in him that worked faith in them. 
 He claims no superiority in the matter. If he 
 has a like faith, it is because he is made by God's 
 grace to share in a like fountain of faith. The one 
 Spirit who works faith is the common possession 
 of them and of him; and therein he finds his high- 
 est privilege and his greatest glory. What David 
 had of the operations of the Spirit, that is what 
 Paul represents as the height of Christian privi- 
 lege to possess. 
 
 It may not be wholly needless to observe further 
 the naturalness of Paul's ascription of faith to the 
 working of the Holy Spirit — whether under the 
 Old or the New Dispensation. He means to ex- 
 press the confidence he has in the glorious Gospel 
 which he proclaims. He does not say, however, 
 simply "having a confident faith." He says, 
 "having the Spirit of faith," the same Spirit of 
 
THE SPIRIT OF FAITH 239 
 
 faith which wrought in the Psalmist. So much 
 was faith to him the product of the Spirit that 
 he thinks of it in terms of its origin. Clearly to 
 him, no Spirit, no faith. Faith is, therefore, most 
 absolutely conceived by the Apostle as the product 
 not of our own powers but of the Spirit of God, 
 and it is inconceivable to him that it can exist 
 apart from His gift. 
 
 We may sometimes fall short of the Apostle's 
 conception and fancy that we can — nay, that we 
 must — ^first believe before the Spirit comes to us. 
 No, it is the Spirit who gives faith. Faith is the 
 gift of God in its innermost essence; and the 
 Apostle continually thanks God for it, as His gift. 
 We find it enumerated in Gal. 5:23 among the 
 fruits of the Spirit; in 1 Cor. 12:7 we find it among 
 the gifts which the Spirit distributes to men. In 
 our present passage it is emphasized as the work 
 of the Spirit, by its being used as a characterizing 
 description of the Spirit. We do not describe 
 or define a thing by something which is common 
 to it and others. The possession of a vertebral 
 column will not define a man; and we should 
 never use the designation of vertebrate as a syn- 
 onym of man. That the Spirit is called the 
 "Spirit of faith" means that faith does not exist 
 except as His gift; its very existence is bound up 
 in His working. Just as we call Him the Spirit of 
 life, the Spirit of holiness, and the like, because 
 all life comes from Him and all holiness is of His 
 
240 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 making, so, when Paul calls Him the Spirit of 
 faith, it is the evidence that in Paul's conception 
 all faith comes from Him. 
 
 It matters not where faith is found — under 
 the Old Testament or the New — in Psalmist or in 
 Apostle — or in the distant believers of the Twenti- 
 eth Century, — it matters not what degree of faith 
 is present, weak, timid faith which scarcely dares 
 believe in its own existence, or strong faith that 
 can move mountains, — it matters not what of 
 divine things be its object, God as our Ruler and 
 Governor, the Scriptures as His Word, Christ as 
 our Saviour; if it exists at all, in any time, in 
 any degree, the Holy Ghost has wrought it. He 
 is the Spirit of faith and faith is His unique 
 product. 
 
 Finally, it will be of interest to us who are 
 charged with the same duty of proclaiming the 
 Gospel of salvation with which the Apostle was 
 charged, to take especial note that he attributes 
 that supreme faithfulness and steadfastness which 
 pre-eminently characterized his work in the Gos- 
 pel to a Spirit-wrought faith in the Gospel which 
 he preached. The secret, he tells us, of his ability 
 to continue throughout his dreadful trials in the 
 work to which he had been called; the secret of 
 his power to faint not, that is, not to play the 
 coward, but to renounce the hidden things of 
 shame and refuse to walk in craftiness or handle 
 the Word of God deceitfully; the secret of his 
 
THE SPIRIT OF FAITH 241 
 
 power to preach a simple Gospel in honest faith- 
 fulness in the face of all temptations to please 
 men, and to preach the saving Gospel in the face 
 of all persecution — was simply that he had a 
 hearty and unfeigned faith in it. When we really 
 believe the Gospel of the Grace of God — when we 
 really believe that it is the power of God unto 
 salvation, the only power of salvation in this 
 wicked world of ours — it is a comparatively easy 
 thing to preach it, to preach it in its purity, to 
 preach it in the face of a scoffing, nay, of a trucu- 
 lent and murdering world. Here is the secret — 
 I do not now say of a minister's power as a preacher 
 of God's grace — but of a minister's ability to preach 
 at all this Gospel in such a world as we live in. 
 Believe this Gospel, and you can and will preach 
 it. Let men say what they will, and do what they 
 will, — let them injure, ridicule, persecute, slay, — 
 believe this Gospel and you will preach it. 
 
 Men often say of some element of the Gospel: 
 "I can't preach that." Sometimes they mean 
 that the world will not receive this or that. Some- 
 times they mean that the world will not endure this 
 or that. Sometimes they mean that they cannot 
 so preach this or that as to win the respect or the 
 sympathy or the acceptance of the world. The 
 Gospel cannot be preached.^ Cannot be preached.'^ 
 It can be preached if you will believe it. Here is 
 the root of all your difficulties. You do not fully 
 believe this Gospel! Believe it! Believe it! and 
 
242 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 then it will preach itself! God has not sent us 
 into the world to say the most plausible things we 
 can think of; to teach men what they already 
 believe. He has sent us to preach unpalatable 
 truths to a world lying in wickedness; apparently 
 absurd truths to men, proud of their intellects; 
 mysterious truths to men who are carnal and can- 
 not receive the things of the Spirit of God. Shall 
 we despair? Certainly, if it is left to us not only 
 to plant and to water but also to give the increase. 
 Certainly not, if we appeal to and depend upon 
 the Spirit of faith. Let Him but move on our 
 hearts and we will believe these truths; and, even 
 as it is written, I believed and therefore have I 
 spoken, we also will believe and therefore speak. 
 Let Him but move on the hearts of our hearers 
 and they too will believe what He has led us to 
 speak. We cannot proclaim to the world that 
 the house is afire — it is a disagreeable thing to 
 say, scarcely to be risked in the presence of those 
 whose interest it is not to believe it? But be- 
 lieve it, and how quickly you rush forth to shout 
 the unpalatable truth ! So believe it and we shall 
 assert to the world that it is lost in its sin, and 
 rushing down to an eternal doom; that in Christ 
 alone is there redemption; and through the Spirit 
 alone can men receive this redemption. What 
 care we if it be unpalatable, if it be true? For 
 if it be true, it is urgent. 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PURITANISM 
 
 2 Cor. 6:11-7:1. — "Our mouth is open unto you, O Corinth- 
 ians, our heart is enlarged. Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are 
 straitened in your own affections. Now for a recompense in like 
 kind (I speak as unto my children), be ye also -enlarged. Be not 
 unequally yoked with unbelievers: for what fellowship have right- 
 eousness and iniquity.? or what communion hath light with dark- 
 ness.'' And what concord hath Christ with Belial.? or what portion 
 hath a believer with an unbeliever? And what agreement hath a 
 temple of God with idols? for we are a temple of the living' Ood; 
 even as God said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I 
 will be their God, and they shall be my people. Wherefore come 
 ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and 
 touch no unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be to you 
 a Father, and ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Lord 
 Almighty. Having therefore these promises, beloved, let us cleanse 
 ourselves from all defilement of flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness 
 in the fear of God." 
 
 It is not easy to determine with exactitude the 
 circumstances which gave occasion to this striking 
 paragraph, which stands out so prominently 
 on the pages of Second Corinthians as almost to 
 separate itself from its context and form a whole 
 of its own. Of two things, however, we may be 
 reasonably sure. There was a party in the Corin- 
 thian Church which we may perhaps fairly de- 
 scribe as the party of the Libertines; and out of 
 this party, too, there had arisen an opposition to 
 the leadership of Paul, and a tendency to accuse 
 him of insincerity and self-seeking in his work 
 
 243 
 
244 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 at Corinth. We must picture the Apostle, there- 
 fore, as compelled to defend himself and the pur- 
 ity of his ministry, in this Epistle, not only against 
 a narrow Judaistic formalism, with its touch not, 
 taste not, handle not, but also against a loose 
 worldliness which was inclined to adapt its Chris- 
 tianity to the usages current in the heathen society 
 about it. Differing in everything else, both par- 
 ties agreed in unwillingness to subject themselves 
 unreservedly to the guidance of Paul; and in de- 
 fence of themselves represented hfm as acting 
 towards the church from interested motives. 
 
 Bearing this in "mind, we may readily under- 
 stand how, when in the course of his self-defence 
 the Apostle has been led to dwell upon the hard- 
 ships he had suffered in the prosecution of his 
 mission, he should break off suddenly with an 
 appeal to his Corinthians to separate themselves 
 from heathen practices and points of view, and 
 themselves to walk worthily of the Gospel they 
 professed. "See, O Corinthians," he exclaims, 
 "how freely I am speaking to you, how widely 
 open my heart is to you. You find no constraint 
 on my part with reference to you; the only con- 
 straint there is between us lies in your own hearts. 
 Give me what I give you — I am speaking as to my 
 children; open wide your heart to me. Seek not 
 your standards of life in the unbelievers about you. 
 Remember who you are and what you should be 
 as organs of the Holy Spirit; and be not content 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PURITANISM 245 
 
 until you have attained that perfect holiness 
 which becomes the children of God." So the 
 Apostle transforms his defence of his ministry 
 into an exhortation to his readers, in which he 
 again exercises his ministry of love in a disinter- 
 ested plea to them to walk worthily of the Gospel 
 of hohness. 
 
 Dr. James Denney in his commentary on this 
 Epistle, published in "The Expositor's Bible," 
 heads the chapter in which he deals with this 
 section, "New Testament Puritanism." On the 
 face of it, this is a very good designation for it. 
 The note of Puritanism, which is the note of sep- 
 aration, certainly throbs through the section. 
 "Come ye out from among them and be ye sep- 
 arate, saith the Lord" — that assuredly expresses 
 the very essence of Puritanism. Or, perhaps, we 
 may more precisely say that it is exactly that con- 
 formity with the world which, above all things, 
 Puritanism dreads, that Paul here declares, almost 
 with indignation, to be inconceivable in a true 
 Christian. "For what fellowship," he demands 
 "is there between righteousness and iniquity? 
 Or what communion is there for light with dark- 
 ness? Or what concord of Christ with Belial? 
 Or what part has a believer with an unbeliever? 
 Or what agreement has a temple of God with 
 idols ? " Here certainly is Puritanism at the height 
 of its expression. 
 
 Nevertheless we must be careful not to give the 
 
246 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Apostle's exhortation a turn which does not be- 
 long to it. The Apostle is not here requiring of 
 Christians a withdrawal from the world, consid- 
 ered as the social organism; and most certainly 
 he is not asking of them to segregate themselves 
 into a community apart, between which and the 
 mass of men there shall be no, or only the least 
 possible, intercourse. On a former occasion, when 
 addressing these same readers, he does indeed 
 command them not to keep company with forni- 
 cators. But he immediately adds that he means 
 this aloofness only as a disciphnary measure 
 towards sinning brethren. If a man who is called 
 a Christian be a fornicator. Christian fellowship 
 must be withdrawn from him, that it may be 
 brought home to him that a man cannot be both a 
 Christian and a fornicator. But, says the Apos- 
 tle, I do not mean that you should not associate 
 with fornicators of the world; else you would 
 need to remove out of the world — a thing, he im- 
 plies, which would be manifestly impossible; and 
 let us add, for the leaven which is placed in the 
 world, grossly inconsistent with the prosecution of 
 its function in the world, which is to leaven the 
 whole mass. And if we will scrutinize our pres- 
 ent passage closely we shall quickly see that the 
 separation which the Apostle is urging here, too, 
 is not separation from men but from evil — apply- 
 ing, indeed, to the Corinthians in the way of ex- 
 hortation what our Lord prayed for in behalf of 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PURITANISM 247 
 
 His followers, not that they should be taken out 
 of the world, but that they should be kept from 
 the evil of the world. The exhortation: "Come 
 ye out from among them and be ye separate, 
 saith the Lord," is immediately followed by the 
 explanation, "And touch no unclean thing." And 
 the whole exhortation closes with a poignant 
 prayer that they may "cleanse themselves from 
 every defilement." It is not from their fellow- 
 men that the Apostle would have Christians hold 
 themselves aloof; it is from the sin and shame, 
 the evil and iniquity, which stains and soils the 
 lives of so many of their fellow-men. This is the 
 Apostolic variety of Puritanism. 
 
 The opposite impression is perhaps fostered 
 among simple Bible readers by the phrase which 
 stands in the forefront of the exhortation in our 
 English Bibles: "Be not unequally yoked to- 
 gether with unbelievers." This certainly appears 
 at first sight to represent any commerce with 
 unbelievers as indecorous and to forbid it on that 
 account. This impression is wholly due, however, 
 to the awkwardness of the rendering given to an 
 unusual Greek phrase. This Greek phrase is an 
 exceedingly awkward one to render; and I am 
 not sure that it is possible to give it an English 
 equivalent which will convey its exact sense. The 
 figure which underlies it is, no doubt, the yoking 
 together, in the bizarre way of the East, incon- 
 gruous animals for labour, say an ox and an ass. 
 
248 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 And the English version is a very creditable effort 
 to bring the figure home to the English reader; 
 for surely such a yoking of incongruous animals 
 together is a very unequal one. Yet the English 
 phrase fails to express the exact shade of meaning 
 of the Greek term. This does not say: "Be not 
 unequally yoked together with unbelievers" but 
 rather, "Become not bearers of an alien yoke 
 along with unbelievers" — or, in other words, 
 "Take not on yourselves a yoke that does not fit 
 you, in order to be with unbelievers." You see 
 the point is very different from that which is often 
 taken from the English phrase. What is for- 
 bidden is not that we should company with un- 
 believers; but that we should adopt their points 
 of view and their modes of life. It is a question, 
 in other words, not of intercourse, but of standards. 
 What the Apostle is concerned about is not that 
 his converts lived in social communion with their 
 heathen neighbours; this he would have them do. 
 What he is concerned about is that they took 
 their colour from the heathen neighbours with 
 whom they lived. He wished them to be leaven 
 and to leaven the lump; they were permitting 
 themselves rather to be leavened ; and this made 
 him indignant with them. 
 
 We see, then, that the Apostle's urgency here 
 is against not association with the world, but 
 compromise with the worldly. Compromise! In 
 that one word is expressed a very large part of a 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PURITANISM 249 
 
 Christian's danger in the world. We see it on 
 all sides of us and in every sphere of life. We 
 must be all things to all men, we say, perverting 
 the Apostle's prescription for a working ministry; 
 for there was one thing he would on no account 
 and in no way have us be, even that we may, as 
 we foolishly fancy, win the more; and that is, 
 evil. From evil in all its forms and in all its man- 
 ifestations he would have us absolutely to separate 
 ourselves ; the unclean thing is the thing he would 
 in no circumstances have us handle. Associate 
 with the world, yes! There is no man in it so vile 
 that he has not claims upon us for our association 
 and for our aid. But adopt the standards of the 
 world? No! Not in the least particular. Here 
 our motto must be and that unfailingly: No 
 compromise ! 
 
 The very thing which the Apostle here presses 
 upon our apprehension is the absolute conflict be- 
 tween the standards of the world and the standards 
 of Christians; and the precise thing which he re- 
 quires of us is that in our association with the 
 world we shall not take on our necks the alien 
 yoke of an unbeliever's point of view, of an un- 
 believer's judgment of things, of an unbeliever's 
 estimate of the right and wrong, the proper and 
 improper. In all our association with unbelievers, 
 we, as Christian men, are to furnish the standard; 
 and we are to stand by our Christian standard, in 
 the smallest particular, unswervingly. Any de- 
 
250 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 parture from that standard, however small or 
 however desirable it may seem, is treason to our 
 Christianity. We must not, in any ease, take the 
 alien yoke of an unbeliever's scheme of life upon 
 our necks. 
 
 Interesting to us as this exhortation itself is, 
 and important beyond expression for the guidance 
 of our lives, it, perhaps, yields in interest to the 
 grounding which the Apostle supplies for it in an 
 explanation of the essential springs of a Chris- 
 tian's life. This grounding he gives in a series of 
 rhetorical questions, by means of which he sets 
 forth the absolute contrariety of the Christian's 
 and the unbeliever's points of view, sources of 
 judgment and principles of conduct. The order- 
 ing of these questions is such that they begin by 
 setting over against one another the obvious con- 
 tradictions of righteousness and iniquity; and 
 then proceed in a series of rapid and convincing 
 antitheses until they end in setting the believer 
 and the unbeliever over against one another as 
 the embodiment respectively — at least in prin- 
 ciple — of those contradictions, righteousness and 
 iniquity. "What fellowship have righteousness 
 and iniquity," the Apostle demands in support of 
 his exhortation not to take on themselves the 
 alien yoke of unbelievers, "or," he continues, 
 "what communion has light with darkness? or 
 what concord has Christ with Belial.^ or what 
 portion has a believer with an unbeliever? or — 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PURITANISM 251 
 
 clinching the whole matter with a reference to the 
 source of the entire contrast — what agreement has 
 a temple of God with idols?" 
 
 The force of the appeal lies in the necessary — 
 and inevitable — identification, as we go on through 
 the series, of each pair with the preceding; so 
 that with the fundamental "righteousness" is 
 identified the light; and, of course, Christ; and 
 because he is Christ's, the believer, who is the 
 temple of the living God: and with the funda- 
 mental iniquity is identified the darkness, Belial, 
 and the unbeliever, because he is the worshipper 
 of idols and partaker of the idolatrous point of 
 view. The reason, then, why a Christian must 
 not take on himself the alien yoke of unbelievers 
 is just because it is to him alien; he is in and of 
 himself, because a believer in Christ and, there- 
 fore, a temple of the living God, a different, a con- 
 trary, an opposite kind of being from the unbe- 
 liever; and it is, therefore, incongruous in the 
 extreme for him to put his neck in the same yoke 
 with an unbeliever, seek to live on the same plane, 
 or consent to order his life or to determine ques- 
 tions of conduct by his standards, in any degree 
 whatever. 
 
 Now it is just in this contrast drawn by the 
 Apostle between the believer and the unbeliever — 
 in its firmness, its clearness, its extremity if you 
 will — that we discern the most interesting, the 
 most important, teaching of our passage. Ac- 
 
252 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 cording to the Apostle, obviously, there are two 
 kinds of men in the world, believers and unbe- 
 lievers. And these two kinds of men stand over 
 against one another in complete, not only con- 
 trast, but contradiction; as complete contra- 
 diction as righteousness and iniquity. There can 
 be no compromise between them any more than 
 between righteousness and iniquity. There may 
 be intercourse — mutual action and reaction — but 
 never compromise. 
 
 The Apostle is far from saying, of course, that 
 in any given individuals this fundamental con- 
 tradiction is fully manifested. It finds its com- 
 plete manifestation only in the abstract — in the 
 contrariety of righteousness and iniquity; and 
 in the full concrete manifestation of righteousness 
 and iniquity in Christ and Belial. Between 
 Christians and unbelievers the manifested con- 
 tradiction is only relative. Compromise there 
 ought not to be — in principle there can not be — 
 but compromise in fact there is. Christians are 
 not, like Christ, pure embodiments of righteous- 
 ness; they require exhortation not to admit in- 
 iquity into the governing principles of their life. 
 Alas, alas, though they are temples of the living 
 God, they are far, far from having no commerce 
 with idols. The Apostle recognizes all this. On 
 his recognition of it he founds the urgent exhorta- 
 tion of our passage. Nevertheless he founds this 
 exhortation also on the fact that this contradic- 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PURITANISM 253 
 
 tion exists in principle — that Christians, like 
 Christ, their Lord, are in principle righteousness, 
 and that unbelievers are, like Belial, their lord, 
 in principle iniquity. It is because Christians 
 are thus in principle holy and unbelievers are thus 
 in principle unholy that he proclaims that it is 
 incongruous that Christians should adopt their 
 standards of life from unbelievers, who are not 
 merely their opposites but their contradictories; 
 so that there can be no mean between them but 
 every one must be one or the other. 
 
 There are then, according to the Apostle, two 
 kinds of men in the world, believers and unbe- 
 lievers; and these two kinds of men stand in con- 
 tradiction to each other. One may conquer and 
 eliminate the other; but there can be no mixture 
 between them. The ultimate source of the fun- 
 damental difference between them he finds in the 
 indwelling in Christians of the Holy Ghost: "Or 
 what agreement hath a temple of God with idols .^^ 
 For we'' — emphatic here, in contrast with the un- 
 believers, "as for us, we are a temple of the living 
 God." The influx of the Holy Spirit into the 
 heart constitutes, then, a new humanity. Over 
 against those who have not the Spirit, and who 
 are, therefore, as another Scripture puts it, 
 earthly, sensual, devilish, — the children of Belial, as 
 this Scripture suggests, — those who have the Spirit 
 are a new creation, with new standards and new 
 powers of life alike. There can be no compromise 
 
254 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 between such opposites. It has become custom- 
 ary among theologians to speak of these two kinds 
 of men as the men of nature and the men of the 
 palingenesis; or as it is now becoming fashionable 
 to call them, once born and twice born men. 
 They who are born of the flesh are fleshly; and 
 they only who are born of the Spirit are spiritual; 
 and to the spiritual man belong all things. The 
 message which Paul brings to us in this passage is, 
 then, that we who are spiritual, because we are 
 believers in Christ Jesus, have in principle the 
 righteousness which belongs to Him, and though 
 it may not yet appear what we shall be, we must 
 in all our walk comport ourselves as what we are, 
 the temples of the living God, having the powers 
 and potencies of a new, even a Divine, hfe within 
 us. The ultimate reason why the Christian man 
 is not to compromise with the world is, because 
 as a Christian man, he is a new creature, born 
 from above, with the vigour of the Divine life itself 
 moving in him and with an entirely new life- 
 course marked out for him. Why should — ^how 
 can — such an one put his neck incongruously 
 within the yoke of worldly policy or self-seeking, 
 or evil-living with unbelievers; and seek to de- 
 flect his Spirit-given powers to a life on this lower 
 plane and for these ignoble ends.f^ O, says the 
 Apostle, O, Christian men, this is surely impos- 
 sible to you; do you not see that in the power of 
 your new life you are to — ^you must — take an 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PURITANISM ^55 
 
 utterly new course, directed to a new goal, and 
 informed with new aspirations, hopes and striv- 
 ings? 
 
 On the basis of this great declaration the Apos- 
 tle erects, then, his exhortation. Nor is he con- 
 tent to leave it in a negative, or merely inferential 
 form. In the accomplishment of the Spirit-filled 
 life he sees the goal, and he speaks it out in a final 
 urgency of exhortation into which he compresses 
 the whole matter: "Having, therefore, such 
 promises as these (note the emphasis), beloved," 
 he says, "let us purify ourselves from every de- 
 filement of flesh and spirit and perfect holiness in 
 the fear of God." It is perfection, we perceive, 
 that the Apostle is after for his followers; and he 
 does not hesitate to raise this standard before the 
 eyes of his readers as their greatest incitement to 
 effort. They must not be content with a moder- 
 ate attainment in the Christian life. They must 
 not say to themselves, O, I guess I am Christian 
 enough, although I'm not too good to do as other 
 men do. They must, as they have begun in the 
 Spirit, not finish in the flesh; but must go on unto 
 perfection. 
 
 What are they to cleanse themselves from.^^ 
 Every defilement — every kind of defilement — not 
 only of the flesh but of the spirit. Aiming at 
 whsii? At the completion of holiness in the fear 
 of God ! The Apostle does not tell them they are 
 already holy — except in principle. They ob- 
 
^56 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 viously were not already holy — except in princi- 
 ple. They were putting their necks in the alien 
 yoke of unbelieving judgments. They were con- 
 tenting themselves with heathen standards. They 
 were prepared to say, O, the Lord doesn't ask 
 all that of us; O, there is nothing wrong in this; 
 O, I guess it will be enough if I am as good as the 
 average man; O, you can't expect me to live at 
 odds with all my neighbours ; O, these things are 
 good enough for me. Such compromises with the 
 spirit of the world are wrong; and the Apostle 
 tells his readers plainly that they are unworthy of 
 them as Christian men. They were, if not born 
 to better things, yet certainly born anew to better 
 things. Let them turn their backs on all such in- 
 consistencies and live on their own plane of life 
 as believers, believers in Christ, Christ the Light, 
 Christ our Righteousness. Let them remember 
 they are temples of the living God and have no 
 commerce with idols. 
 
 No, they were not perfect — except in principle. 
 But in principle, they were perfect; because they 
 had within them the principle of perfection, the 
 Spirit of the Most High God. Let them walk in 
 accordance with their privileges, then, on a level 
 with their destiny. Hear God's great promise. 
 And having these promises, cleanse yourselves; 
 O, cleanse yourselves, the Apostle cries; cleanse 
 yourselves from every defilement whether of flesh 
 or spirit, and so perfect — complete, work fully 
 
NEW TESTAMENT PURITANISM 257 
 
 out to its end — holiness in the fear of God. Let 
 your standard be the hoHness of the indwelHng 
 Spirit whose temples you are. Let your motive be, 
 not merely regard to the good of others, much less 
 to your own happiness, but joy in God's gracious 
 promises. Let your effort be perfect sanctifica- 
 tion of soul and body, cleansing from all defile- 
 ment. Let your end be, pleasing God, the Holy 
 One. In a word, says the Apostle in effect, here 
 as elsewhere: O, ye Christians, work out your 
 own salvation in fear and trembling, for it is God 
 who is working in you the willing and the doing 
 according to His own good pleasure. 
 
 We perceive, thus, in the end that the thing 
 Paul is zealous for is the holiness of his followers. 
 For in their holiness he sees the substance of their 
 salvation. We are saved by Christ and only 
 Christ; and Christ is righteous; both for us and 
 unto us. For it is by grace that we are saved, 
 through faith; and that not of ourselves, it is the 
 gift of God — not out of works, lest we should 
 boast, but unto good works, which God has afore 
 prepared that we should walk in them. And if we 
 walk not in them — are we, then, saved .^^ Holiness 
 of life is, I repeat, precisely the substance of sal- 
 vation, that which we are saved to, that in which 
 salvation consists. If then we are in Christ Jesus, 
 shall we not live like Christ Jesus .^^ "If we are 
 in the Spirit, shall we not walk by the Spirit?" 
 This is Paul's final exhortation to us; since we are 
 
258 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Christ's, and the Spirit dwells in us and we are 
 the temples of the living God, let us be careful of 
 good works; let us, remembering the great prom- 
 ises He has given us, cleanse ourselves from all 
 defilement of body and soul; and let us perfect 
 holiness in the fear of God, so that we approve 
 ourselves His children and He will be to us as a 
 Father and we shall be to Him sons and daughters. 
 
PAUL'S GREAT THANKSGIVING 
 
 Eph. 1 :3-14, especially 3 — "Blessed be the God and Father of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, who hath blessed us with every spiritual blessing 
 in the heavenly places in Christ." 
 
 If we would know how Paul felt about the gos- 
 pel of the grace of God, by which he was saved, 
 we could not do better than go to "the great 
 thanksgiving" with which he opens the epistle to 
 the Ephesians. The epistle to the Ephesians is, 
 of course, not singular in beginning with a thanks- 
 giving to God. That is Paul's customary method 
 of beginning his letters. But it is, perhaps, sin- 
 gular in the marvellous richness and fervor of the 
 thanksgiving with which it begins. And this is, 
 perhaps, due to what we might have thought an 
 entirely unimportant circumstance. The Apostle 
 was accustomed to draw the theme of his thanks- 
 giving from the special conditions and attain- 
 ments of those he was addressing. But, unlike 
 his other letters, this was addressed neither to an 
 individual friend and fellow-worker, nor to a 
 separate church with its special circumstances 
 fresh in the Apostle's mind. There was in this 
 case, therefore, no particular subject of thanks- 
 giving, peculiar to the person or church ad- 
 dressed, pressing in on the Apostle's mind and 
 requiring mention. He was thrown back on 
 
 259 
 
260 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 what was common to Christians to thank God for 
 in behalf of his readers. And that is as much as 
 to say he was thrown back on the great funda- 
 mental theme of the Gospel. Now, Paul's fervour 
 always rises when he is face to face with the first 
 principles of the Gospel. 
 
 What Paul returns thanks to God for here, is 
 nothuig less than the salvation in Christ. And 
 with what magnificence of diction as well as depth 
 of feeling and comprehensiveness of view he deals 
 with it! The salvation in Christ involves, nat- 
 urally, the saving action of the whole triune God : 
 and it is easy to make out a trinitarian distinction 
 in the parts of this long ascription of praise to God 
 for His salvation. Many expositors have, there- 
 fore, so divided it. And in any event it is useful to 
 note that there is described to us here the loving 
 activity of God the Father in salvation (in verses 
 3-6), of God the Son (in verses 7-12), and of God 
 the Holy Spirit (in verses 13-14). This successive 
 adduction of the work of the persons of the trin- 
 ity in salvation would seem, however, only an in- 
 evitable incident of any full description of the 
 process of salvation; for in it all three persons of 
 the trinity are, of course, concerned. And it is 
 more useful to us, therefore, as an indication of the 
 place which the doctrine of the trinity held in 
 the mind of the Apostle, than as a principle of 
 division of the thanksgiving before us. They 
 gravely err who imagine that the trinity is only 
 
PAUL'S GREAT THANKSGIVING 261 
 
 rarely or incidentally alluded to in the New Tes- 
 tament. On the contrary, it forms the underlying 
 presupposition of the entire account of salvation 
 given in the New Testament; and its elements are 
 continually cropping out in the New Testament 
 descriptions of the saving process. It lies in the 
 very nature of the case, therefore, that a trini- 
 tarian suggestion should be visible through this 
 description of the salvation in Christ. 
 
 The principle of arrangement in the present 
 instance would seem, however, to be what we 
 would call chronological, rather than economical. 
 We would seem to be following more closely the 
 natural lines of the development of the passage, 
 if we note that Paul traces in it the salvation in 
 Christ for which he blesses God, consecutively, in 
 its preparation, execution, publication and appli- 
 cation: in its preparation (verses 4-5), its execu- 
 tion (verses 6-7), its publication (verses 8-10), 
 and its application (verses 11-16), both to Jews 
 (verses 11-12) and to Gentiles (verses 13-14). 
 Thus he brings before us the whole ideal history 
 of the salvation in Christ, from eternity to eter- 
 nity — from the eternal purpose as it formed itself 
 in the loving heart of the Father, to the eternal 
 consummation when all things in heaven and earth 
 shall be summed up in Christ as under one head, 
 and He shall be ready to restore the now perfected 
 kingdom to the Father, that God may again be all 
 in all. So looked upon, this splendid passage ex- 
 
262 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 hibits lucidly its true character as a compressed 
 history of the kingdom of God in the world — an 
 apostolic precis of human history conceived from 
 the point of view of the Divine activity in the es- 
 tablishment and development and consummation 
 of the kingdom. 
 
 Let us observe how the contemplation of the 
 unrolling of this great historical process affects 
 the Apostle's own mind and heart. This is re- 
 vealed to us in the intense fervour that informs the 
 whole passage — which is not a measured expres- 
 sion of the Apostle's thanks to God, but can be 
 literally described as an inextinguishable burst 
 of praise. Its keynote is struck in the opening 
 word — "Blessed!" Note the reiteration of the 
 term: ''Blessed be God who hath blessed us with 
 every spiritual blessing!" It is easy to perceive 
 where Paul's mind and heart were when he was 
 writing down these words. When a man's lips 
 can frame only this one word — "Blessing, bless- 
 ing, blessing!" we know what is in his heart. 
 We should not fail to observe the ingenious, and 
 more than ingenious, for it is the ingenuity of the 
 heart, correlation of the term "Blessed" here, as 
 applied to God, with the same term as applied to 
 man. Paul blesses God because God has so highly 
 blessed man: only, God blesses with deeds while 
 man can bless Him only with words. But the 
 thing to be especially observed is the joyful grat- 
 itude, the delighted wonder, the swelling praise 
 
PAUL^ GREAT THANKSGIVING 263 
 
 that fills the Apostle's heart, as he contemplates 
 what man has received in the salvation of Christ. 
 He thinks and speaks of it as summing up in 
 itself every conceivable good. Blessed be God! 
 he cries. Why? Because He hath blessed us! 
 How.? With every possible blessing! For that 
 is what this outburst of praise means. Every 
 conceivable blessing, says Paul, is poured out on 
 us in the salvation in Christ. And the form of 
 the language shows that he means this to the utter- 
 most. 
 
 As the Apostle goes on to describe the blessings 
 received in the salvation in Christ, it would almost 
 seem as if his pen had run away with him. Only 
 it is not a matter of the pen, but of the heart: it 
 is not a question of words, but of the feelings. But 
 it must needs be confessed that the Apostle has 
 so accumulated phrases at this point in the fervour 
 of his emotions of gratitude and praise that it is 
 very diflficult to follow him in his heaped-up 
 epithets. He is not content to say that in the 
 salvation in Christ, God has blessed us with 
 "every kind of blessing." He adds two further 
 characterizations which seem to pile Pelion on 
 Ossa and which distress us as we unavailingly 
 strive to rise to the height of the great argument. 
 "Blessed be God," he cries, "who hath blessed 
 us — in every kind of spiritual blessing — in the 
 heavenlies — in Christ." What are we to make of 
 this chain of threefold enhancement? 
 
264 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 No wonder the commentators are divided as 
 to how the successive clauses are to be related to 
 one another. When the heart speaks, there is 
 such a fullness of meaning that the analyzing 
 .understanding stands sometimes aghast at the 
 task set it. Are we, it asks, to take these clauses 
 in one continuous string, each qualifying the im- 
 mediately preceding? Or, are we to take them 
 as parallel to one another, each further explaining, 
 in the light of the preceding, the one matter of the 
 nature of the blessing adverted to? In other 
 words, is this what Paul praises God for — "that 
 He has blessed us in the salvation in Christ with 
 every kind of Spirit-given blessing that is in the 
 heavenly places in Christ": so that he affirms 
 that all the blessings that heaven contains are 
 poured out on us by the Spirit, nay, that all the 
 blessings deposited in Christ, Christ the exalted 
 Conqueror of sin and death, seated now in heaven, 
 clothed with all power in heaven and earth in be- 
 half of His people, His body. His church, are lav- 
 ished on us by His Spirit sent forth to minister to 
 the heirs of salvation? Or is it rather this that 
 the Apostle praises God for — "that He has blessed 
 us with every possible kind of blessing that is 
 given by the Spirit of God — that is to say with 
 specifically heavenly things, supernatural things, 
 those precious heaven-born gifts which are so 
 much greater and more to be desired than any 
 earthly things — that is to say, rather, with Christ 
 
PAUL'S GREAT THANKSGIVING ^5 
 
 himself, in whom are hidden not only all the 
 treasures of knowledge and wisdom, but of blessing 
 as well, and who is Himself so much greater than 
 all His gifts that in Him are summed up all and 
 more than all that we can mean by every kind of 
 blessing"? One or the other of these things is 
 what Paul seems to have meant. It is hard to 
 say which: and it is probable that expositors will 
 always differ as to which. 
 
 It does not seem to be of much importance, to 
 be sure, after which fashion we analyze this great 
 utterance of a full heart. For in either case, has 
 not Paul said everything that could be said, to 
 declare the blessing that has come to men in the 
 salvation in Christ the supremest blessing man 
 can conceive, nay, as "what eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard, and what hath entered not into the 
 heart of man, what God hath prepared for them 
 that love him.^^" As he permits what God has 
 prepared for them that love Him to display itself 
 before his astonished eyes, Paul is overwhelmed 
 with a sense of the blessing it brings to sin-laden 
 men. What wonder if we are overwhelmed with 
 his description of what he saw! What God has 
 prepared for them that love Him ! Ah ! here is the 
 key-note of the passage. It is all of God. It is 
 not of our deserving : it is not of our doing. It is 
 all of God. It is, therefore, that Paul blessed 
 God for it all with such fervour of language. Were 
 it of man, in any of its items, so far the voice of 
 
266 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 his praise would be stilled. And it is, therefore, 
 that he simply sows his expressions of grateful 
 praise with asseverations of the origin of all our 
 blessings in Christ in God's gracious purpose, and 
 with acclamations of praise to Him alone for its 
 gift. The fundamental note in all Paul's praise is 
 the note of "soli Deo gloria." All that comes to 
 man in this salvation is of the grace of God alone, 
 a grace prepared of God in eternity past, poured 
 out on us now in the sovereign work of the Spirit, 
 and to abide on us to the eternities to come in ac- 
 cordance with His gracious purpose — all to the 
 praise of the glory of His grace. It is for this 
 cause, says the Apostle, that when he heard that 
 his readers now believed in Christ, he turned his 
 eyes in thanksgiving to God — ^because to believe 
 in Christ is of God, and he that believes in Christ 
 is in the hands of His unutterable grace. It is 
 obviously only another way of saying that "if 
 God be for us, there is none who can be against 
 us." And it is this thought that moves the Apos- 
 tle with the deepest emotion of praise. 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTHENING 
 
 Eph. 3:14-19, especially 16: — "That he would grant you, accord- 
 ing to the riches of his glory, that ye may be strengthened with 
 power through his Spirit in the inward man." 
 
 This certainly may be fairly called one of the 
 great passages of the Bible. Note the series of 
 great topics which are adverted to in it: the in- 
 ward strengthening of the children of God by the 
 Holy Ghost, the continual abiding of Christ in 
 their hearts, their rooting and grounding in love, 
 their enlargement in spiritual apprehension, even 
 to the knowledge of the unknowable, their filling 
 with all the fullness of God. Surely here is a cat- 
 alogue of great things for God's people! These 
 great topics do not lie on one level, however, set 
 side by side as parallel facts, but are exhibited 
 in special relations the one to the other. Paul is 
 praying here for these high blessings to descend 
 on the Ephesian Christians. But he does not 
 pray for them simply as a bunch of blessings, arbi- 
 trarily selected to be on this occasion sought at 
 the great Father's hands — the Father of these 
 Ephesian Christians too, because He is the God 
 of the Gentiles as well as of the Jews, and from 
 Him every fatherdom derives its name. Here are 
 rather a connected body of blessings which go 
 naturally together: one being the ground and an- 
 
 267 
 
268 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 other the effect of the one great thing he craves 
 for his readers. 
 
 The central thing he prays for is spiritual 
 strengthening. "I bow my knees to the Father 
 that He may give to you to be strengthened by 
 His Spirit in respect to the inner man." Spiritual 
 strengthening, then, that is the main thing that 
 he prays for. By the mere term "spiritual 
 strengthening" two things might be suggested to 
 us. We might think of spiritual as distinguished 
 from physical strengthening. Or we might think 
 of strengthening by the Spirit as distinguished 
 from some earthly agency. The Apostle's prayer 
 includes both ideas. He prays that we may be 
 strengthened in the inner man; that is, for the 
 strengthening of our spirit, in distinction from the 
 body. And he prays that we may be strength- 
 ened with respect to the inner man by God's 
 Spirit; that is, for the Divine strengthening of our 
 inward man. And this, I say, is the substance of 
 his prayer — that we may be strengthened with 
 respect to the inner man by the Spirit of God. 
 All else is descriptive of this and tells us what it is, 
 and what it results in ; and so enhanees our idea of 
 what spiritual strengthening is. 
 
 First, Paul tells us somewhat further what it is. 
 It is identical, he tells us, with the abiding of 
 Christ by faith in our hearts. Of course it is not 
 absolutely certain what the relation of this second 
 clause is to its predecessor. It might express the 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTHENING 269 
 
 aim or end of the spiritual strengthening, or (what 
 comes to practically the same thing) its result, as 
 well as (as we should take it), its more precise ex- 
 planation. As it is followed by a series of ex- 
 pressly telic clauses, formally introduced by the 
 proper telic particle, it would seem most natural 
 to take it as epexegetical of the preceding clause. 
 "I bow my knees to the Father, . . . that He may 
 give to you, according to the riches of His glory, 
 to be strengthened with might as to the inner 
 man — to wit, that Christ may abide in your 
 hearts by faith." To be sure, the sense would not 
 be essentially different if we took it otherwise — ^to 
 the end that, or so that, Christ may abide in your 
 hearts by faith. In the one case it tells what the 
 spiritual strengthening consists in — ^it is identical 
 with the abiding of Christ in the heart; in the other, 
 what it eventuates in, — it issues in the abiding 
 of Christ in the heart. In either case the thing to 
 be noted is that it is not the coming of Christ into 
 the heart that is spoken of, but His abiding in the 
 heart; and that it is just this idea that receives 
 the emphasis in the sentence, the position of the 
 words being such as to throw a strong stress on 
 "abiding." 
 
 Two things result from this. The first is, that 
 Christ is supposed to have already entered the 
 hearts of those whom the Apostle is praying for. 
 It is not a question of His coming but of His abid- 
 ing. The Apostle is not praying that his readers 
 
270 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 should be converted; but, presuming their con- 
 version, that they may be spiritually strengthened. 
 The second result is that the spiritual strength- 
 ening is contingent on, or let us rather say, is 
 dependent on the abiding presence of Christ in 
 their hearts. The indwelling Christ is the source 
 of the Christian's spiritual strength. This is, of 
 com-se, not to set aside the Holy Spirit. But he 
 has read his New Testament to little purpose who 
 would separate the Holy Spirit and Christ: 
 Christ abides in the heart by the Spirit. The 
 indwelling of the Holy Ghost is the means of 
 the indwelling of Christ and the two are one and 
 the same great fact. We are strengthened in the 
 inner man with might by the Holy Spirit, be- 
 cause by the operation of the Spirit in our hearts, 
 Christ abides there — thus and not otherwise. 
 And here we learn then the source of the Chris- 
 tian's strength. Christ is the ultimate source. 
 His indwelling is the ground of all our strength. 
 But it is only by the Spirit — the executive of the 
 Godhead in this sphere too — that Christ dwells in 
 the heart. It is the Spirit that strengthens us, 
 and He so strengthens us that He gives us 
 "might" in our inner man. The way He does 
 this is by forming Christ within us. 
 
 The Apostle is one of the most fecund writers 
 extant, and thus it happens that he does not leave 
 the matter even there. It is by the Spirit that 
 Christ dwells in us — that is the objective fact. 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTHENING 271 
 
 But there is a subjective fact too, and the Apos- 
 tle does not fail to touch it — it is by our faith, 
 too, that Christ dwells in us. "That Christ may 
 abide in your hearts by your faith," he says. He 
 does not say "by faith" merely, though he might 
 well have said that, and it would have covered the 
 whole necessary idea. But, in his habitual full- 
 ness of expression, he puts in the article, and thus 
 implies that he recognizes their faith as already 
 existent. They are Christians, they already be- 
 lieve, Christ is already dwelling in them by faith; 
 he prays that He may abide in them by their 
 faith. The stress is everywhere laid on contin- 
 uance. May God strengthen your inner man, he 
 says, by His Spirit. That is to say, he adds, may 
 that Christ whom ye have received into your 
 hearts by faith abide continuously in your hearts 
 by that faith of yours. As much as to say, Christ 
 is brought into your hearts by the Holy Ghost. 
 He abides there by that Holy Ghost. May God 
 thus continually strengthen your hearts by His 
 Spirit, and that, even with might. I pray to Him 
 for it, for it is He that gives it. But do not think, 
 therefore, that you may lose hold on Christ. It 
 is equally true that He abides in your hearts by 
 your faith. When faith fails, so do the signs of 
 His presence within: the strengthening of the 
 Spirit and the steady burning of the flame of 
 faith are correlative. As well expect the ther- 
 mometer to stand still with the temperature 
 
272 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 varying as the height of your faith not to index 
 the degree of your strength. Your strength is 
 grounded in the indwelhng Christ, wrought by 
 the Spirit by means of faith. 
 
 Thus we have laid before us the sources of the 
 Christian's strength. It is rooted in Christ, the 
 Christ within us, abiding there by virtue of the 
 Spirit's action quickening and upholding faith in 
 us. And only as by the Spirit our faith is kept 
 firm and clear, will Christ abide in us, and will 
 we accordingly be strong in the inner man. 
 
 Such then is the nature and source of the Chris- 
 tian's strengthening. What does it issue in.^ 
 How does it exhibit itself.? Briefly, the Apostle 
 tells us, in love and knowledge. "May God 
 grant you," he says, "to be strengthened as to 
 the inner man by His Spirit, that is, the abiding 
 presence of Christ in your hearts, to the end that 
 being rooted and grounded in love, you may be 
 fully enabled to apprehend. ..." The end of 
 the prayer is, then, expansion of spiritual appre- 
 hension. May God grant that you may be 
 strengthened with might ... to the end that you 
 may be full of strength to apprehend. The ap- 
 propriate result of strengthening is that they may 
 have full strength. The Apostle accumulates 
 words expressive of strength to enhance the idea. 
 He uses three separate words, but all impinging 
 on the one idea, that he wishes his readers by 
 the Holy Spirit's operations to be raised to the 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTHENING 273 
 
 capacity of spiritual apprehension indicated. 
 "God grant that ye may be empowered (relative 
 and manifested power) with might (inherent 
 general power), with which ye may have full 
 strength (as your own endowment) to appre- 
 hend. ..." This then is the proximate end of the 
 prayer: Expansion of heart for the apprehension 
 of spiritual things. "God grant that you may be 
 strengthened with might by the Holy Spirit in 
 the inner man, that you may have full strength 
 to apprehend. ..." These things to be appre- 
 hended are too great for man's natural powers 
 He must have new strength from on high given 
 him to compass them. He may by the Spirit be 
 raised to a higher potency of apprehension for 
 them. God grant it to you ! 
 
 What are these things .^^ The Apostle speaks 
 quite generally about them. He says "that ye 
 may have full strength to apprehend with all the 
 saints, what is the breadth and length and height 
 and depth. ..." His mind is for the moment 
 not on the thing itself but on the bigness of the 
 thing. It is because the thing is so big that they 
 need strengthening in the inner man before they 
 have full strength to apprehend it. Yet it is not 
 something for these special readers alone, but for 
 all Christians. This strengthening the Apostle 
 asks for is the heritage of the saints. The Apostle 
 prays not that we may be expanded in spiritual 
 apprehension by these great ideas, but up to 
 
274 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 them. This expanding is not to be done by them, 
 but by the Holy Ghost. To enhance our con- 
 ception of how big they are, he gives us a sample, — 
 for that the last clause here is not adjoined as a 
 parallel but as a subordinate clause seems indi- 
 cated by the particle by which it is adjoined and 
 as well by the concluding words "unto the whole 
 fullness of God," which appear to return to a 
 quite general idea : that ye may have full strength 
 to apprehend with all saints what is the breadth 
 and length and height and depth and to know the 
 "knowledge-surpassing love of Christ." 
 
 Here is a sample of the broad and wide and high 
 and deep knowledge to apprehend which we need 
 to have our minds stretched: the quality of the 
 love of Christ. It is too high for us; we cannot 
 attain unto it. Do we wonder that the thing the 
 Apostle prays for is that we should be strength- 
 ened in the inner man by the Spirit of God, that 
 we may have full strength to apprehend this? 
 Do we wonder that he speaks of this and such 
 knowledge as too broad and wide and high and 
 deep for us, not to be apprehended save by him 
 in whose heart Christ abides? If, indeed, Christ 
 be in us — then, possibly, we may know Christ 
 without us. But surely in no other way. Here 
 then is the gist of the matter, as to the end of our 
 strengthening in the inner man. It is to give us 
 full strength for the apprehension of these great 
 and incomparable mysteries of our faith. 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTHENING 275 
 
 But in that fullness of the Apostolic speech 
 to which we have already alluded, Paul does not 
 content himself with simply saying this. He so 
 says it as both to suggest an intermediate step 
 in the attainment of this large spiritual appre- 
 hension, and to indicate a still higher goal. He 
 suggests, I say, an intermediate step. He does 
 not say simply, " God grant you spiritual strength- 
 ening, that you may have enlarged spiritual ap- 
 prehension." He says, "God grant you spiritual 
 strengthening that, having been rooted and 
 grounded in love, you may have enlarged spiritual 
 apprehension." Here then is an intermediate 
 link between the strengthening by the Spirit and 
 the enlargement of our spiritual understanding. 
 It is "love." The proximate effect of the Spirit's 
 work in empowering the inner man with might is 
 not knowledge but love; and the proximate cause 
 of our enlarged spiritual apprehension is not the 
 strengthening of our inner man, but love. The 
 Spirit does not immediately work this enlargement 
 of mind in us; He immediately works love, and 
 only through working this love, enlarges our ap- 
 prehension. The Holy Ghost "sheds love abroad 
 in our hearts." Love is the great enlarger. It is 
 love which stretches the intellect. He who is 
 not filled with love is necessarily small, withered, 
 shrivelled in his outlook on life and things. And 
 conversely he who is filled with love is large and 
 copious in his apprehensions, Only he can ap- 
 
276 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 prehend with all saints what is the breadth and 
 length and height and depth of things. The 
 order of things in spiritual strengthening is there- 
 fore: (1) the working by the Spirit of a true faith 
 in the heart, and the cherishing by the Spirit of 
 this faith in a constant flame; (2) the abiding of 
 Christ by this faith in the heart; (3) the shedding 
 abroad of love in the soul and its firm rooting in 
 the heart; (4) the enlargement of the spiritual 
 apprehension to know the unknowable greatness 
 of the things of Christ. 
 
 There is yet one further step, for even this spir- 
 itual apprehension is not its own end. "God 
 grant," says the Apostle, "that you may be em- 
 powered with might by the Spirit, so to have 
 full strength to apprehend the great things of 
 God" — but he does not stop there. He adds "to 
 the end that you may be filled unto the whole full- 
 ness of God." Here is the goal at last. And 
 what a goal it is! We were weak — ^for it was 
 "when we were without strength" that Christ 
 died for us. We are to be strengthened, strength- 
 ened by the Spirit, by means of the constant in- 
 dwelling of Christ, the source of all good. We are 
 to be strengthened so as to know, to know the 
 great things of God (read some of them in the 
 parallel passage. Col. 1 :11). But not that we may 
 know for the mere sake of knowing. What good 
 would such a bare knowing do us? We are to 
 know that we may be "filled unto all the full- 
 
SPIRITUAL STRENGTHENING 277 
 
 ness of God." Look at this standard of fullness. 
 "Unto" — not "with" — it is the standard, not the 
 material. God's fullness is not to be poured into 
 us; we are to be raised toward that standard of 
 fullness, not in one particular but in all — unto the 
 whole fullness of God. It may mean unto the 
 fullness which God possesses; or it may mean 
 unto the fullness which He provides. It may 
 mean either that the enlargement of our spiritual 
 apprehension is a means toward obtaining all 
 the wonderful goods that God has in store for us; 
 or it may mean that by it we shall be brought to a 
 height of attainment comparable only to His at- 
 tainments. No matter which it means. It is 
 enough in either meaning for any Christian's hope. 
 But there is no reason to doubt that it does mean 
 the greatest thing: we shall be filled unto the 
 whole fullness of God. We shall be like Him, 
 and like Him only of all Beings in the universe. 
 It is a giddy height to which our eyes are thus 
 raised. No wonder we need spiritual strength- 
 ening to discern the summit of this peak of 
 promise. 
 
 Of course it does not mean that we are to be 
 transmuted into God, so that each of us will be 
 able to assert a right to a place of equality in the 
 universe with God. Of course, again, it does not 
 mean that God is to be transfused into us, so that 
 we shall be God, part of His very essence. It 
 means just what it says, that God presents the 
 
278 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 standard towards which we, Christian men, are to 
 be assimilated. We are to be made like Him, 
 holy as He is holy, pure as He is pure. Our eyes, 
 even in the depths of eternity, will seek Him tow- 
 ering eternally above us as our unattainable 
 standard towards which we shall ever be as- 
 cending, but we shall be like Him; He and we 
 shall belong to one class, the class of holy beings. 
 We shall no longer be like the Devil, whose chil- 
 dren we were until we were delivered from his 
 kingdom and translated into the kingdom of God's 
 dear Son. No more shall we be what we were as 
 men in this world, still separated from God by a 
 gulf of moral difference, a difference so great that 
 we are almost tempted to call it a difference of 
 kind and not merely of degree. Nay, we shall, 
 perhaps, be more like God than even the holy 
 angels are; in our head, Christ Jesus, we shall be 
 in Him who in a pre-eminent sense is like God. 
 The process of the "filling" may take long; it is 
 but barely begun for most of us in this life; but 
 that is the standard and that the goal — "we shall 
 be filled unto the fullness of God"; and it shall 
 never cease. Such is the goal of the spiritual 
 strengthening spoken of in our text. 
 
THE FULLNESS OF GOD 
 
 Eph. 3:14-19, especially v. 19:— "That ye may be filled unto all 
 the fullness of God." 
 
 The Epistle to the Ephesians is the poem among 
 the Epistles. Its whole fabric is wrought in a 
 grandeur of language, corresponding to the lofti- 
 ness of its thought. The main subject of the 
 Epistle is God's infinite and unspeakable mercy to 
 the Gentiles, and the Apostle busies himself with 
 two chief ends. These are (1) to beget in his 
 readers an adequate sense of the immensity of 
 their privilege, in the mercy of God, in that He 
 has chosen them before the foundation of the 
 world, redeemed them in Christ and called them 
 by the Spirit out of their former Gentile darkness 
 and alienation to be sharers in the glorious fight 
 of the Gospel, and to be admitted into the very 
 household of God; and (2) to quicken them to a 
 proper apprehension of the duties that grow out 
 of their changed relation and life. 
 
 The noble prayer of the Apostle's, which the 
 present passage constitutes, stands at the end 
 of the first section of the letter. Li that section 
 he has described in the most lofty and glowing lan- 
 guage the privileges which have been so freely 
 granted his readers by God, in Christ. That 
 section had been, it is true, closed at the end of 
 
 279 
 
280 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 the second chapter; and the Apostle begins the 
 third chapter with a clause meant to make the 
 transition to the* second subject that weighed on 
 his heart, the duties, arising from their very con- 
 dition, pressing upon his readers. But he has no 
 sooner begun the transition than he interrupts 
 himself to give expression to a thought which 
 struggled within him for utterance, concerning 
 the relation of his own apostleship to the announce- 
 ment of God's unsearchable riches to the Gentiles. 
 Having unburdened his soul with praise to God 
 for calling him to be the instrument in His hands 
 for working out this glorious broadening of the 
 boundaries of His Church, he resumes the sen- 
 tence that had been broken off and makes the 
 transition to the declaration of the duties of his 
 readers, once more resumed, by means of a fer- 
 vent prayer to God for their perfection in the 
 Christian life. 
 
 This prayer is one of the most wonderful pas- 
 sages ever penned even by this wonderful Apostle. 
 Look at it in its parts. 
 
 First, we observe to whom the prayer is offered. 
 It is to "the Father," name of love and gratitude. 
 But note how the Apostle expresses his sense of 
 what this word "Father" means when applied to 
 the all-merciful and all-glorious God. He calls 
 Him not merely "the Father" but "the Father 
 from whom every fatherhood in heaven and earth 
 is named." His is not a figurative fatherhood; 
 
THE FULLNESS OF GOD 281 
 
 He is not addressed as Father because we find 
 some things in Him which remind us of the ten- 
 derness and love of our parents and so apply to 
 Him, as in a figure, the name we have learned to 
 love in them. On the contrary, His is the normal 
 fatherhood; His is not derived by figure from 
 theirs, but theirs is the poor and broken shadow 
 of His. He is the Father of our Lord and Sav- 
 iour Jesus Christ: the gloss, though a gloss, is a 
 correct interpretation, and the closeness and in- 
 timacy and love of that relation is the norm from 
 which every fatherhood in heaven and earth is 
 named. What we know of fatherhood — dear as 
 the name has become to us through our earthly 
 relations — is but a faint shadow of what He, the 
 true Father, first of Christ and then of us in 
 Christ, is to His children. After his glowing 
 outline of what God had done for his readers — 
 Gentiles as they were, born in sin and hitherto 
 living in sin — in receiving them into His very 
 household and making them its members, not 
 friends merely but His children, the Apostle's 
 fervour cannot address Him in less full recognition 
 of His glorious fatherhood than this: the Father 
 of fathers, the normal, perfect, ideal father, of 
 which all other fatherhood is but a broken and 
 poor imitation, — "the Father, of whom every 
 fatherhood in heaven and earth is named." 
 
 Next, let us observe the measure of the gifts 
 prayed for: "according to the riches of his glory." 
 
282 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 No earthly measure, but only according to the 
 richness of that glory of the great God pictured 
 in His majesty, power and love in all the preced- 
 ing chapters. The gifts of Him who giveth to all 
 men liberally, were according, not to their desert, 
 not to their prospective usefulness, not even ac- 
 cording to their needs which are greater than 
 either, but away above all these, according to the 
 riches of God's glory — the glory of the Father 
 from whom every fatherhood in heaven and earth 
 is named. 
 
 Next, observe the thing that is prayed for, in 
 this marvellous prayer. And here there is a be- 
 ginning and a middle and an end. The blessing 
 which the Apostle craves for the Ephesians is 
 nothing less than this: that they may be filled 
 unto all the fullness of God, that is, that all of 
 God's inestimable treasures of spiritual blessings 
 — life, strength, love, holiness, — shall be poured 
 out immeasurably imto them, — ^that they should 
 be filled with all those spiritual perfections which 
 assimilate them to the fullness of God. 
 
 The Apostle craves nothing less than that divine 
 perfection which belongs to children of God, for 
 his readers. But he knows that God does not 
 deal magically with His children: there are 
 means without which the end is not to be had. 
 And this end of Christian perfection of life and 
 heart, the being holy as God the Father is holy, 
 the being perfect as God is perfect, is not to be 
 
THE FULLNESS OF GOD 283 
 
 had save in the path which God has marked out as 
 leading to the goal. And the Apostle prays not 
 for the goal but for the path which leads to the 
 goal. Knowledge is in order to holiness and it is 
 knowledge of the Gospel for which Paul prays for 
 his readers, that they may by it be enabled to 
 be "filled unto all the fullness of God." He prays 
 that they may "apprehend with all the saints 
 what is the breadth and length and height and 
 depth," and that they may "know the love of 
 Christ that passeth knowledge." It is this love 
 of Christ that he has been speaking to them about 
 for the whole of the Epistle, the love of Christ 
 that led Him to immolate Himself for them be- 
 fore the foundation of the world, that led Him to 
 come into the world and suffer and die for them in 
 the fullness of time, that led Him now that He 
 has been taken up to the Father's right hand to 
 send forth the Spirit to call them inwardly, and 
 the Apostle to call them outwardly. This love 
 of Christ which the Apostle would have them 
 know, in order that they may become holy, is 
 briefly comprehended in the Gospel. And he 
 prays for them to have an adequate apprehension 
 of the riches of the "Gospel," the glad tidings of 
 Christ's love, in order that they may be filled unto 
 all the fullness of God. 
 
 But why pray for such knowledge? Is knowl- 
 edge to be had by prayer, or by publication.'^ 
 Certainly not without publication, and Paul had 
 
284 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 published it in his long visits in Ephesus and his 
 journeys through Asia; and he had just repub- 
 lished it in the whole of the former part of this 
 Epistle. But such knowledge as he desires for 
 his readers is not to be had by mere publication. 
 It is not merely that they may hear the Gospel, 
 not merely that they may be, in an intellectual 
 and mechanical way, informed that nothing can 
 account for Christ's work but love, love compelling 
 Him to leave His glory behind Him in heaven 
 and come to earth as a servant to save men, that 
 he wishes for them. He wants them to under- 
 stand, feel, and realize this; in the language of the 
 present passage, to apprehend it in its height and 
 breadth and length and depth : to have a realizing 
 sense of it. For this, something more than mere 
 informing is needed: even a preparation of the 
 heart. Let the husbandman fling the seed never 
 so widely and strew them never so thickly: if 
 there is no prepared soil, how can he hope to have 
 a harvest? So the knowledge which the Apostle 
 desires for his readers is not merely external mind- 
 knowledge, but the real knowledge of full feeling 
 and apprehension; knowledge not of the mere 
 head but of the heart. And for this, something 
 more is needed than the mere proclaiming of the 
 Gospel, which may be grasped in its propositions 
 by the mere mechanical action of the intellect: 
 even a new heart. Spirit-made and Spirit-deter- 
 mined. 
 
THE FULLNESS OF GOD 285 
 
 Accordingly, this is not all that the Apostle 
 prays for. As this is a means to the end sought, 
 that they may be filled unto all the fullness of 
 God, so there is a means even to this means — 
 that the Spirit should prepare their hearts. And 
 this also he prays for: "that ye may be strength- 
 ened with power, through His Spirit, in the in- 
 ward man; that Christ may dwell in your hearts 
 through faith." This is first. Then, this is to 
 "the end that being rooted and grounded in 
 love, ye may apprehend and know the love of 
 Christ." This is second. Then, this knowledge 
 is in order that we may be "filled unto all the 
 fullness of God." This is the end of all. 
 
 We note then first of all, the comprehensiveness 
 of this prayer. Is there any blessing not pro- 
 vided for in it.f^ That our souls may be taken 
 possession of by the Spirit and Christ may dwell 
 in us by faith. That we may have a perfect and 
 realizing knowledge of the Gospel. That we may 
 be filled unto the very fullness of God. Is there 
 any good thing lacking? 
 
 Next we note the significant order of the re- 
 quests. First, the work of the Spirit in the 
 heart; second, the realizing knowledge of the 
 Gospel; third, the Christian life. Men some- 
 times seek other orders. We hear the cry around 
 us daily of first the life, then the doctrine. Paul's 
 order is, first the doctrine, then the life. We 
 hear the cry around us of first know, then believe. 
 
FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Paul's order is, first believe, then know. And as 
 this is of theological importance to-day, as well 
 as of practical importance in all days, observe it 
 more closely. We have confined ourselves to 
 broad outlines. Paul, however, writes with such 
 rich fullness that every detail is counted in, in 
 its proper place. What in detail is his order of 
 salvation .f^ Just this: first, the Gospel is pro- 
 claimed; secondly, there is the preparation of the 
 heart by the Spirit; thirdly, then faith and Christ's 
 indweUing through faith; fourthly, through this 
 indwelling we grow strong to apprehend the truth 
 of Christ's love; fifthly, by this apprehended 
 knowledge we are enabled to live a Christian life. 
 Search and look : and you will find the same order 
 everywhere in Paul and in the New Testament. 
 
 We observe then, finally, that the prayer that 
 Christ may dwell in our hearts by faith is the 
 opening prayer to a series. This is not the end 
 but the beginning: and just because it is a Di- 
 vine beginning it is a beginning that has in itself 
 the promise and pledge of the end. If we have 
 this we will have all. 
 
 (1) It itself rests on a preparation of the heart 
 by the Spirit : " That ye may be strengthened with 
 power through the Spirit in the inward man." 
 The idea here is a communication of power to the 
 soul. We almost seem to be reading the West- 
 minster Confession, for exactly what "power" 
 here means is "ability." The soul then lacks 
 
THE FULLNESS OF GOD 287 
 
 "ability" until moved upon by the Holy Ghost. 
 The whole soul is there; the Spirit does not give 
 it more faculties. But it is weak. The action of 
 the Spirit is to strengthen it and the strengthening 
 takes place by an infusion of "ability." Now the 
 soul can exercise faith, and it exercises it. Faith 
 lays hold of Christ. And so the enabled soul 
 through faith obtains the indwelling of Christ. 
 This indwelling of Christ is mediated by faith, 
 and the exercise of faith is rendered possible by 
 the strengthening of the soul by the Holy Ghost, 
 by the infusion of "power," "ability." 
 
 (2) It consists in the constant presence of 
 Christ in the soul. Presence is predicated of God 
 wherever He manifests Himself, whether in the 
 Temple by the Shekinah or in Israel or in the 
 Church or in the individual. The indwelling of 
 Christ is then the manifestation of Christ's power. 
 The agent by which Christ manifests Himself to 
 the soul is the Holy Ghost. So that the indwell- 
 ing of Christ and the indwelling of the Spirit is 
 one and the same. But the Spirit does not enter 
 the soul to separate Christ and the believer but to 
 unite them, and hence this indwelling draws 
 Christ and the soul into communion. Christ 
 dwells in us, that is, is present in us, quickening 
 all our activities and making us but members of 
 His body of which He is the directing Head. 
 
 (3) It issues hence into all Christian senti- 
 ments and activities. First the Apostle mentions 
 
288 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 love; "being rooted and grounded in love" is 
 the intermediate step to the apprehension of 
 Christ's love. Love apprehends love. Out of 
 this Christ-filled and Christ-led heart, we are able 
 to see His love and to appreciate it. Hence, next, 
 knowledge. And then, out of this knowledge, 
 life. 
 
 Now, observe as to Christ's indwelling: (1) 
 Christ may dwell in us; (2) He dwells in us 
 through faith; (3) His dwelling in us is the source 
 of all our knowledge of the Gospel and of all our 
 Christian walk. 
 
THE SEALING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 Eph. 4:30: — "And grieve not the Holy Spirit of God, in whom 
 ye were sealed unto the day of redemption." 
 
 It is Paul's custom in his epistles to prepare 
 for exhortation by the enunciation of truth; to 
 lay first the foundation of fact and doctrine, and 
 on that foundation to raise his appeals for con- 
 duct. The Epistle to the Ephesians is no excep- 
 tion to this rule. The former chapters of this 
 epistle are a magnificent exposition of doctrine, a 
 noble presentation to Paul's readers of what God 
 has done for them in election and redemption and 
 calling, and of the great privileges which they 
 have obtained in Christ. To this he adjoins, 
 according to his custom, a ringing appeal, based 
 on this exposition of truth and privilege. This 
 appeal to his readers is to live up to their privi- 
 leges, or, in his own words, to walk worthily of 
 the calling wherewith they were called. The 
 whole latter or practical part of the letter is thus 
 expressly based on the former or doctrinal part. 
 And this is true of the exhortations in detail as 
 well as in general. Paul wrote always with vital 
 connectedness. There never was a less artificial 
 writer, and none of his epistles bears more evi- 
 dent traces than the Epistle to the Ephesians of 
 having been written, as the Germans say, "at a 
 
 289 
 
290 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 single gush." All here is of a piece, and part is 
 concatenated with part in the intimate connec- 
 tion which arises out of — not artificial effort to 
 obtain logical consecution — but the living flow of 
 a heart full of a single purpose. 
 
 Take, as an example, the beautiful appeal of our 
 text. The Apostle is not perfunctorily or me- 
 chanically repeating a set phrase, a pious plati- 
 tude. He is making an appeal, out of a full 
 heart, to just the readers he has in mind, in just 
 their situation; and under the impulse of his own 
 vivid appreciation of their peculiar state and con- 
 dition. On the basis of the privileges they had 
 received in Christ he had exliorted them gener- 
 ally to an accordant inner and outer conduct; and 
 he had presented these general exhortations both 
 positively and negatively. Now he has come to 
 details. He has enumerated several of the sins 
 to which they in their situation were liable, per- 
 haps, in a special degree, sins of falsehood, wrath, 
 theft, unbecoming speech. Shall they, they, the 
 recipients of this new life and all these Divine 
 favours, fall into such sins ? He suddenly broadens 
 the appeal into an earnest beseeching not so to 
 grieve the Holy Spirit of God in w^hom they were 
 sealed unto the day of redemption. That they, 
 too, had this sealing, had he not just told them? 
 Nay, had he not just pointed them to it as to 
 their most distinguishing grace .^^ It is not by a 
 new or a merely general motive by which he would 
 
THE SEALING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 291 
 
 move their hearts. It is distinctly by the motive 
 to which he had already adverted and which he 
 had made their own. It was because he had 
 taught them to understand and feel that they, 
 even they, Gentiles according to the flesh, had 
 been sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise, as 
 an earnest of their inheritance, and could count 
 on this being a living and moving motive in their 
 minds — or rather it is because he himself felt this 
 great truth as real and as a motive of power — that 
 he adduces it here to move them to action. 
 
 If we are«to feel the motive power in the appeal 
 as Paul felt it and as he desired his readers to feel 
 it, we must approach it as he approached it and 
 as he desired them to approach it, namely, 
 through a preliminary apprehension and appre- 
 ciation of the fact underlying the appeal and giving 
 it force. To do this we should approach the con- 
 sideration of the text under some such logical an- 
 alysis of its contents as the following. First, we 
 should consider the great fact on which the appeal 
 is based, namely, that Christians have been sealed 
 by the Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption. 
 Secondly, we should consider the nature of this 
 sealing Spirit as the Holy Spirit, and the pain 
 which all sin must bring to Him as the indwelling 
 and sealing Spirit. Thirdly, we should consider 
 the nature and strength of the motive thence 
 arising to us, who are the recipients of His grace, 
 to refrain from the sin which grieves Him, and 
 
292 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 to seek the life of holiness which pleases Him. 
 Time would fail us, however, on this occasion 
 fully to develop the contents of these proposi- 
 tions. Let us confine ourselves to a few brief 
 remarks on (1) the nature of the basal fact on 
 which Paul founds his appeal, as to our position 
 as Christians; and (2) the nature of the motive 
 which he seeks to set in action by his appeal. 
 
 The fundamental fact on which Paul, in the 
 text, bases his appeal to a holy life is that his 
 readers, because Christians, "have been sealed 
 in the Holy Spirit unto the day of redemption." 
 Now, "sealing" expresses authentication or se- 
 curity, or, perhaps, we may say, authentication 
 and security. It is, then, the security of the 
 Christian's salvation which is the fact appealed 
 to; the Christian is "sealed," authenticated as a 
 redeemed one, and made secure as to the comple- 
 tion of the redemption; for he is sealed unto the 
 day of redemption. 
 
 The reference to Paul's teaching, in a former 
 chapter, as to the grace given to his readers, will 
 help us to understand the fact here adduced as a 
 motive to action. There we have the fuller state- 
 ment, that these Christians had had the Word of 
 the Truth, the Gospel of salvation, preached to 
 them; that they had heard it, and had believed 
 it; and then, that they had been "sealed with the 
 Holy Spirit of promise," in other words, the Holy 
 Spirit who works out all the promises to us to 
 
THE SEALING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 293 
 
 fruition; "who," adds the Apostle, "is an earnest 
 of our inheritance," an earnest being more than a 
 pledge, inasmuch as it is both a pledge and a part 
 of the inheritance itself. Then the Apostle tells 
 us unto what we were thus sealed by the Holy 
 Spirit of promise, who is Himself an earnest of 
 our inheritance, namely, "unto the redemption of 
 God's own possession" unto the praise of His 
 glory. 
 
 Let us read these great words backwards, that 
 we may grasp their full import. Christians are 
 primarily the purchased possession of God: God 
 has purchased them to Himself by the precious 
 blood of His Son. But, the purchase is one 
 thing, and "the delivery of the goods" another. 
 Their redemption is, therefore, not completed 
 by the simple purchase. There remains, accord- 
 ingly, a "day of redemption" yet in the future, 
 unto which the purchased possession is to be 
 brought. Meanwhile, because we are purchased 
 and are God's possession, we are sealed to Him 
 and to the fulfilment of the redemption, to take 
 place on that day. And the seal is the Holy 
 Spirit, here designated as the "Holy Spirit of 
 promise" because it is through Him that this 
 promise is to be fulfilled; and the "earnest of our 
 inheritance" because He is both the pledge that 
 the inheritance shall be ours, and a foretaste of 
 that inheritance itself. The whole is a most 
 pointed assertion that those who have been bought 
 
294 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 by the blood of Christ, and brought to God by the 
 preached Gospel, shall be kept by His power unto 
 the salvation which is ready to be revealed at the 
 last day. 
 
 The great fact on which Paul bases his appeal 
 is, therefore, the fact of the security of believers, 
 of the preservation by God of His children, of the 
 "perseverance of the saints" — to use time-hon- 
 oured theological language. We are sealed, ren- 
 dered secure, by the Holy Ghost, unto the day of 
 redemption: we are sealed by the Holy Spirit, 
 the fulfiller of the promises, and the earnest of 
 our inheritance, unto the full redemption of us, 
 who are God's purchased possession. The fact 
 the Apostle adverts to is, in a word, that our sal- 
 vation is sure. 
 
 How is this a motive to holiness.^ Men say 
 that security acts rather as a motive to careless- 
 ness. Well, we observe at least that the Apostle 
 does not think so, but uses it rather as a motive to 
 holiness. Because we have been sealed by the 
 Spirit of God, he reasons^ let us not grieve Him by 
 sin. Men may think that a stronger appeal might 
 be based on fear lest we fall from the Spirit's 
 keeping; as if Paul should rather have said. Be- 
 cause you can be kept only by the Spirit, beware 
 lest you grieve Him away by sinning. But Paul's 
 actual appeal is not to fear but to gratitude. Be- 
 cause you have been sealed by the Spirit unto the 
 day of redemption, see to it that you do not grieve. 
 
THE SEALING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 295 
 
 bring pain or sorrow to this Spirit, who has done 
 so much for you. 
 
 It is not to be denied, of course, that the motive 
 of fear is a powerful one, a legitimate one to ap- 
 peal to, and one which in its due place is appealed 
 to constantly in the Scriptures. It is, no doubt, a 
 relatively lower motive than that here appealed 
 to by Paul; but as Bishop Doane once truly said, 
 most men are more amenable to appeals addressed 
 to the lower than to those addressed to the higher 
 motives. When men cease to be of a low mind, 
 we can afford to deal with them on a higher plane. 
 I have no sympathy, therefore, with the view, 
 often expressed, that man must not be urged to 
 save his soul by an appeal to his interests, by an 
 appeal to the joys of heaven or to the pains of 
 torment. You all know the old story of how St. 
 Iddo, once, when he journeyed abroad, met an 
 old crone with a pitcher of water in one hand and 
 a torch ablaze in the other, who explained that 
 the torch was to burn up heaven and the water to 
 quench hell, that men might no longer seek to 
 please God because of desire for one or fear of the 
 other, but might be led only by disinterested love. 
 History says that St. Iddo went home wondering. 
 Well he might. For on such teachings as this 
 he should have to forego the imitation of his Lord, 
 who painted to men the delights of the heavenly 
 habitations and forewarned men to fear him who 
 has power after he has destroyed the body also 
 
296 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 to cast into hell, where, so He says, their worm 
 dieth not and the fire is not quenched. The mo- 
 tives of fear of punishment and vision of reward, 
 though relatively low motives, are yet legitimate 
 motives, and are, in their own place, valuable. 
 
 But the Apostle teaches us in our present pas- 
 sage that the higher motives too are for use and 
 in their own place are the motives to use. Do not 
 let us, as Christian ministers, assume that our 
 flocks, purchased by the blood of Christ, and 
 sealed unto the day of redemption by the Spirit, 
 are accessible only to the lowest motives. "Give 
 a dog a bad name," says the proverb, "and hang 
 him." And the proverb may be an allegory to us. 
 Deal with people on a low plane and they may 
 sink to that plane and become incapable of oc- 
 cupying any other. Cry to them, "Lift up your 
 hearts" and believe me you will obtain your re- 
 sponse. It is a familiar experience that, if you 
 treat a man as a gentleman, he will tend to act 
 like a gentleman; if you treat him like a thief, 
 only the grace of God and strong moral fibre can 
 hold him back from stealing. Treat Christian 
 men like Christian men; expect them to live on 
 Christian principles; and they will strive to walk 
 worthily of their Christian profession. 
 
 So far from Paul's appeal to the high motive of 
 gratitude here, then, being surprising, it is, even 
 on the low ground of natural psychology, true 
 and right. The highest motives are relatively 
 
THE SEALING OF THE HOLY SPIRIT 297 
 
 the most powerfuL And when we leave the low 
 ground of natural psychology and take our stand 
 on the higher ground of Christian truth, how sig- 
 nificant and instructive it is. If the Holy Spirit 
 has done this for me; if He in all His holiness is 
 dwelling in me, to seal me unto the day of re- 
 demption, shall I have no care not to grieve Him? 
 Fear is paralyzing. Despair is destruction of effort. 
 Hope is living and active in every limb, and when 
 that hope becomes assurance, and that assurance is 
 recognized as based on the act of a Person,' lovingly 
 dealing with us and winning us to holiness, can we 
 conceive of a motive to holiness of equal power .f^ 
 Brethren, we must not speak of such things 
 historically only. We are not here simply to ob- 
 serve how Paul appealed to the Ephesians, as he 
 sought to move them to holy endeavor; nor to 
 discuss whether or not this is a moving manner of 
 dealing with human souls. His appeal is to us. 
 The fact asserted is true of us, — we are sealed by 
 the Holy Spirit to the day of redemption. He is 
 in us too as the Holy Spirit whom sin offends, and 
 as the loving Spirit who is working in us towards 
 good. Do we feel the pull of the appeal.? Shall 
 we listen to and feel and yield to and obey Paul's 
 great voice crying to us down through the ages: 
 "Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God in whom ye 
 were sealed unto the day of redemption"? Com- 
 mune with your souls on these things to-day! 
 
WORKING OUT SALVATION 
 
 Phil. 2:12, 13: — "So then, my beloved, even as ye have always 
 obeyed, not as in my presence only, but now much more in my 
 absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for 
 it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good 
 pleasure." 
 
 Nothing could be more fundamental to Paul's 
 conception of salvation than his teaching as to its 
 relation to "works." He is persistently insistent 
 that this relation is that of cause rather than of 
 effect. The "not out of works, but unto good 
 works," of Ephesians 2:9, 10, sounds the key- 
 note of his whole teaching. In "good works," 
 therefore, according to Paul "salvation" finds its 
 realization: the very essence of salvation is holi- 
 ness of life, " sanctification of the spirit." And 
 equally in "salvation" "good works" find their 
 only root: and it is only on the ground of the 
 saving work of God that men may be hopefully 
 exhorted to good works. As it is pregnantly 
 stated in the passage from Ephesians we have al- 
 ready adverted to, God has prepared beforehand 
 good works, to our walk in which we are intro- 
 duced by a creative act on His part, in Christ 
 Jesus (Eph. 2:10). Accordingly Paul's epistles 
 (as is the whole New Testament), are full of par- 
 ticular instances of appeals to conduct based on 
 the inception and working in us of the saving ac- 
 
 298 
 
WORKING OUT SALVATION 299 
 
 tivity of God (e.g., 1 Thess. 2:12; 2 Thess. 2:13- 
 15; Rom. 6:2; 2 Cor. 5:14; Col. 1:10; Phil. 1:21; 
 2:12, 13; 2 Tim. 2:19). Possibly in the words of 
 our text we meet with the most precise expression 
 of this appeal. Here the saint is exhorted to 
 "work out his own salvation" just because "it is 
 God who is the worker in him of both the willing 
 and the doing, in pursuance of His good pleasure." 
 If there is an antinomy involved in this colloca- 
 tion of duty and motive, it is in this passage cer- 
 tainly brought to its sharpest point. There are 
 also many minor matters of interest in the lan- 
 guage of the passage, which attract us to its study. 
 Let us try to see briefly just what the Apostle 
 says in it. 
 
 It will be useful to bear in mind from the be- 
 ginning that the exhortation is addressed not to 
 sinners but to saints: it is to "the saints in Christ 
 Jesus" (1:1), that Paul is speaking. That is to 
 say, this exhortation has reference not to entrance 
 into Christian life but to the prosecution to its 
 appropriate goal of a Christian life already entered 
 into. This is already advertised to us by the 
 very verb used. Paul does not say simply "work 
 your salvation," but "work out your salvation" — 
 employing a compound verb which throws its 
 emphasis on the end, "bring your salvation to its 
 completion." It is also involved in the contextual 
 connection. This exhortation closes a paragraph 
 which had begun (1:27) with the appeal, "Only 
 
300 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 let your manner of life be worthy of the gospel of 
 Christ"; and it closes it with a reversion to the 
 same dominant thought. These Philippian read- 
 ers already stood with the Apostle in the fellow- 
 ship of the gospel : his earnest desire for them was 
 a complete realization in life of all that the gospel 
 meant. They had entered upon the race; let 
 them run it through to the goal. They had in 
 principle received salvation in believing; let them 
 work this salvation now completely out in life. 
 At the opening of the letter Paul had expressed 
 his confidence that, as God had begun a good work 
 in them. He would perfect it until the day of Jesus 
 Christ (1:6). He now exhorts them to strive to 
 attam the same high end. "Work out your own 
 salvation," i.e., work it completely out, advance 
 it to its accomplishment, bring it to its capstone 
 and crown it with its pinnacles. 
 
 Had it not been brought into doubt by some 
 students of the passage, it would seem a work of 
 supererogation to pause to assure ourselves that 
 what Paul has in mind in his exhortation to "work 
 out salvation" is primarily the attainment of 
 ethical perfection. The eschatological reference 
 of "salvation" must not, of course, be obscured. 
 But neither must it be obscured that the pathway 
 that leads to the eschatological goal of salvation 
 is that walk in good works unto which Christians 
 have been created in Christ Jesus, that "fruitage 
 of righteousness" which is through Jesus Christ 
 
WORKING OUT SALVATION 301 
 
 unto the glory and praise of God, with which the 
 Apostle longs to see the Philippians filled "against 
 the day of Christ" (1:10, 11). When he exhorts 
 his readers at the close of this paragraph "to 
 work out their own salvation," he obviously has 
 the same thing in mind which he had at its be- 
 ginning, when he exhorted them to "let their 
 manner of life be worthy of the gospel of Christ"; 
 and the same thing which he explains in the course 
 of it to include steadfastness in testimony to the 
 gospel, love to the brethren, humility of mind and 
 the like Christian virtues. In the acquisition and 
 cultivation of such graces they would be "working 
 out their salvation," realizing in life in its ever- 
 growing completeness what is involved in "sal- 
 vation" as its essential contents. 
 
 The form and language in which the exhortation 
 is cast are naturally coloured by the situation in 
 which the writer found himself at the moment 
 and the condition in which he conceived his 
 readers to stand. For the Apostle was no ab- 
 stract essayist, but wrote out of a burning heart, 
 as a practical man to practical men, eager to meet 
 the actually existent state of affairs. He had 
 himself been interrupted in the midst of his work 
 and cast into prison: he was labouring under deep 
 anxiety lest his violent removal from the care 
 of the infant churches should unfavorably affect 
 their Christian development. He had, there- 
 fore, already described at considerable length how 
 
302 FATIH AND LIFE 
 
 his imprisonment had not elsewhere injured the 
 progress of the gospel (1:12 sq.), and had sought 
 to separate the Philippians from dependence on 
 his initiative (1:27). He very naturally reverts 
 to the same consideration now and makes his 
 absence from his hearers only a reason for re- 
 doubled exertions on their part, even hinting, per- 
 haps, that they should know that, after all, each 
 man must busy himself with "his own salvation," 
 and the help he can obtain from others must be in- 
 significant. This surely is, in part at least, the 
 account to give of the emphatic pronoun — "work 
 out your own salvation" — immediately connected 
 as it is with the reference to the effect which his 
 presence or absence should have on their activity : 
 "not as if (you did so), only because I was pres- 
 ent, but now much rather because I am absent, 
 work out your own salvation." It is as much as 
 to say, that the things that have happened to me 
 fall out in your case, too, rather for the furtherance 
 of the gospel : for if you have ever in any measure 
 depended on me, my very removal should stir 
 you up to increased effort — for after all it is your 
 own salvation not my joy that is primarily at 
 stake for you. It is possible meanwhile that this 
 emphasis on "your own" may be, in part, due 
 also to a reference back to the work of Christ so 
 touchingly portrayed in the immediately preced- 
 ing context : if Christ was willing to do and suffer 
 all this for the salvation of others, should not you 
 
WORKING OUT SALVATION 303 
 
 be willing to do and suffer in imitation of Him, for 
 your own salvation? But in any case the main 
 account of the emphasis thrown on the words 
 would seem to be found in the reference to his 
 readers' possible over-dependence on Paul's in- 
 itiative. 
 
 One of the chief dangers in which the Apostle 
 had found the Philippians to stand arose from a 
 tendency among them to pride and high-minded- 
 ness, or, rather, perhaps, we should say, to party 
 spirit, and to selfishness (2:1-4). It was, there- 
 fore, that he was led to devote the early part of 
 this chapter to urging them to beware of faction 
 and vainglory and to cultivate lowliness of mind: 
 and it was on this account that he adduces for 
 their imitation Christ's great example of self- 
 humiliation for the good of others (2:5 sq.). Of 
 course allusion to their most prominent ethical 
 danger could not be absent from this closing ex- 
 hortation, in which he sums up his desire for their 
 ethical perfection. It is natural, therefore, that 
 the Apostle, after his gracious conciliatory habit, 
 should pause at the outset to recognize the gen- 
 eral submissiveness of disposition which his readers 
 had hitherto shown, in accordance with the ex- 
 ample of Christ: for the back reference of the 
 words, "even as ye have always submitted," to 
 the "becoming submissive even unto death" of 
 verse 8 is unmistakable. And it is due, doubt- 
 less, to the same clause that he throws so strong 
 
304 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 an emphasis, in the very exhortation itself, on the 
 spirit in which they were to "work out their own 
 salvation," namely, "with fear and trembling," 
 that is to say, with due recognition of their hum- 
 ble estate in the sight of that God whose servants 
 they were, and whose salvation they were now 
 exhorted to use all diligence in realizing. 
 
 We must pause a moment on these words, 
 "with fear and trembling." For the immense 
 emphasis that is thrown upon them constitutes 
 them, as has been convincingly pointed out by E. 
 Schaeder, the hinge of the passage. The effect of 
 this emphasis is that Paul does not here exhort his 
 readers so much to "work out their salvation" as 
 to work it out specifically "with fear and trem- 
 bling." What he says in effect is, "Let it be with 
 fear and trembling that you work out your own 
 salvation." The whole force of the exhortation, 
 in fact, accumulates on these words, "with fear 
 and trembling." It is to the preservation of this 
 state of mind in the working out of their salva- 
 tion that the Apostle is really urging his readers. 
 Now it is undeniable that there seems something 
 strange in this. Why should the Apostle lay 
 such stress on "fear and trembling" as the char- 
 acterizing spirit of the Christian effort.^ Is 
 Christianity, after all, even more than Judaism, 
 which Hegel (though mistakenly) called the re- 
 ligion of fear j)ar excellence, just the religion of 
 slavish terror — every step in the cultivation of 
 
WORKING OUT SALVATION 305 
 
 which is to be driven on by "fear and trembling"? 
 What becomes then of that fundamental tone 
 which resounds through every sentence and word 
 and syllable of this very Epistle to the Philip - 
 pians — that of "rejoice in the Lord" (3:1)? What 
 harmony can exist between the two exhortations: 
 "Let it be specifically with fear and trembling 
 that ye work out your own salvation," and "Re- 
 joice in the Lord always; again I will say. Re- 
 joice" (4:4)? What union can there be between 
 such carking anxiety and abounding joy, as twin 
 states of heart characterizing the entire Christian 
 walk? It is certainly puzzling to find the Apostle 
 throwing the stress of his exhortation on these 
 words; and it deserves our most careful scrutiny. 
 This puzzle is only increased when we observe, 
 as we must observe at once on reading the ex- 
 hortation itself — that is, the twelfth verse — in its 
 context, that Paul's purpose is obviously to en- 
 courage not to frighten his readers, to enhearten 
 not to dishearten them in their Christian walk. 
 WTien we consider the inducements which he 
 brings to bear on them to give force to his exhor- 
 tation, we cannot believe that its nerve is fear 
 lest they should after all not attain the end, 
 but rather assurance that the end shall be cer- 
 tainly gained. For Paul places this exhortation 
 between the two most powerful encouragements 
 that could possibly be brought to bear upon a 
 Christian's conduct — the example of Christ and 
 
306 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. ''So then, my 
 beloved," he says, in introducing the exhortation. 
 And this "so then" looks back upon and takes 
 hold upon that marvellous exposition of the self- 
 abnegation of Christ and His consequent great 
 reward, which the Apostle had given in verses 
 5-11. "So then" — seeing then that you have 
 this great example so plainly and so powerfully 
 set before you, in imitation of it and inspired by 
 its great lesson — do you "work out your own sal- 
 vation." This exhortation is, to be sure, broad- 
 ened beyond the specific application of the pre- 
 mise; the particular exemplary act adduced from 
 Christ's great transaction is His self-abnegation, 
 "accounting others better than Himself"; and 
 the exhortation to the Philippians to "work out 
 their own salvation" includes more than a rec- 
 ommendation of self-abnegation. The logical 
 nexus, of course, lies in the fact that the special 
 fault of the Philippians, fresh in the Apostle's 
 mmd as requiring eradication, as they advanced 
 toward Christian perfection, was precisely that 
 high-mindedness which was slow to look on the 
 things of others as well as on their own things; and 
 the special virtues they needed to cultivate in 
 completing their salvation were just those vir- 
 tues of self-abnegation to which the example of 
 Christ would inspire them. Hence the fitness of 
 this example to their case. But there seems no 
 fitness in it to ground a specific appeal to "fear 
 
WORKING OUT SALVATION 307 
 
 and trembling" as the proper state of mind in 
 which they should prosecute their working out of 
 their own salvation. Awe, reverence, humility, 
 yes: these would be suitable frames of feeling 
 for him who would work under the inspiration of 
 such an example. But fear and trembling, — anx- 
 ious dread lest failure after all should be the 
 end of endeavour, — how could the example of 
 Christ's great act of humiliation, issuing in so 
 tremendous a reward, fitly call out such a state 
 of mind? 
 
 The case is similar with the support which the 
 Apostle brings to his exhortation from the other 
 side. "Let it be with fear and trembling," says 
 the Apostle, "that you work out your own salva- 
 tion, for^^ — and this "for" looks forward to and 
 takes hold upon the sharpest possible assurance of 
 divine aid. "For He that worketh in you both 
 the willing and the doing, in pursuance of His 
 good pleasure, is none other than God." Surely 
 this tremendous assertion of the implication of 
 God Himself in the work he is exhorting his readers 
 to prosecute, affords no reason why they should 
 carry on that work in the grip of a dreadful fear 
 lest they should after all fail. We must not neg- 
 lect the emphasis that falls on the word "God" 
 here — second only to that which falls on the words 
 "with fear and trembling," so that in effect these 
 two ideas are brought into sharp collocation, and 
 each enhances the stress thrown on the other. 
 
308 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Nor should we neglect to notice, what has been 
 well brought out by Kiihl, that Paul is adducing 
 here a general proposition — one in one form or 
 another familiar to all readers of his epistles — the 
 great truth central to his whole system of doc- 
 trine, that "it is God who in all matters of salva- 
 tion, is the energizer in men of both the willing 
 and the doing, in pursuance of His good pleasure." 
 It is the same great fact that the Apostle planted 
 at the root of the confidence of his Ephesian read- 
 ers (1:11), when he traced all the blessings that 
 had been brought them to the purpose "of Him 
 who worketh all things after the counsel of His 
 own will." It is the same great fact that rings 
 out in the triumphant cry of Romans 8:31 — "If 
 God be for us, who can be against us." Surely, 
 when he placed the Almighty Arms beneath them, 
 the Apostle cannot have intended to instil into 
 his readers a more poignant sense of the uncer- 
 tainty of the issue of their labours, and to justify 
 to them a demand that it shall be especially "in 
 fear and trembling" — in doubt and terror as to 
 the result — that they must prosecute their great 
 task of "working out their own salvation." The 
 great fact that he adduces is awe-inspiring enough. 
 How solemnizing the assurance that God works 
 in us all our good impulses! How fitted to teach 
 us humility and beget in us a godly fear as we 
 walk the pathway provided for us ! But how little 
 fitted to lead us to despair of the result, to live 
 
WORKING OUT SALVATION 309 
 
 in dreadful uncertainty as to the outcome! "K 
 God is for us, who is against us ! " 
 
 The context, then, certainly lends no support 
 to the emphatic words "with fear and trembling," 
 if they be taken as an exhortation to an attitude 
 of doubt and hesitation — to the presentation of a 
 fear of failure as an incitement to diligence in 
 labour. On the contrary, the context demands 
 an encouraging, not a warning, note for the ex- 
 hortation. This raises the suspicion that we may 
 have mistaken the sense of Paul in the use of the 
 phrase "with fear and trembling." And a closer 
 scrutiny confirms this suspicion. The colloca- 
 tion of the two words "fear" and "trembling," it 
 seems, had become something of a set formula 
 with the Apostle, possibly grounded in the usage 
 of the two together in such passages of the Sep- 
 tuagint as Genesis 9 :2, Is. 19 :16; and this formula 
 seems no longer to have had the value to him of 
 the two words in combination, but rather to have 
 come to express little more than the proper rev- 
 erence due to a superior. For example, in Ephe- 
 sians 6:5, when the Apostle exhorts servants to 
 be obedient to their masters "with fear and 
 trembling," he can scarcely intend to recommend 
 to servants a spirit of craven fear before their 
 master's face. Did he not rather wish to com- 
 mend to them an appropriate recognition of the 
 distance between master and slave, and the re- 
 spectful reverence befitting the relation in which 
 
310 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 they stood? So in 2 Cor. 7:15, when we are told 
 that the Corinthians received Titus "with fear 
 and trembHng," we are surely not to understand 
 that they received him with a vivid dread lest 
 they should fall short of winning his favour, but 
 rather simply that they received him with the 
 respect and obedience due to his official position 
 as one set over them in the Lord. Similarly, in 
 1 Cor. 2:3, the Apostle surely means only to say 
 that he acted in his work at Corinth with due 
 respect to his commission and subjection to the 
 Spirit who accompanied his preaching with His 
 power. 
 
 In a word, it is clear enough that in the phrase 
 "with fear and trembling," we have to do with a 
 set formula, which, in the Apostle's mind and 
 lips, finds its reference to the attitude of depend- 
 ence, reverence and obedience befitting an in- 
 ferior, and is, therefore, especially related to the 
 ideas of submissiveness and subjection. It owes 
 its place in our present passage obviously to its 
 correlation with the immediately precedent phrase, 
 "As ye have always obeyed" (verse 12), which 
 itself goes back to the obedience of Christ's great 
 example (verse 8). If Chrysostom, therefore, is 
 formally wrong in, without more ado, para- 
 phrasing it by "with humility of spirit," he is not 
 so far astray as might at first sight be thought in 
 the substance of the matter. What the Apostle 
 would seem to say, in effect is just this: "As ye 
 
WORKING OUT SALVATION 311 
 
 have always hitherto been submissive, so let it 
 be with the same submissiveness of spirit that ye 
 bring your salvation to its completion, seeing 
 that, as you know, the energizer who works in 
 you both the willing and the doing is God, in pur- 
 suance of His good pleasure." It is to reverence, 
 obedience, humility in their Christian walk in 
 the consciousness of the same power of God oper- 
 ating in them, to which he exhorts his readers; 
 not to terror and dread lest after all their labour 
 they might yet prove to be castaways. It is not 
 the difficulty of the task that he is emphasizing; 
 but the solemnity of it. 
 
 It is under the encouragement of these two great 
 facts, then, that Paul here stirs up his Philippian 
 readers to the sacred work of advancing in the 
 Christian walk steadily to the great end — the ex- 
 ample of Christ and the interior working of God 
 in their hearts. We have ventured to speak of 
 the latter as the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. 
 The Holy Spirit is not mentioned by name. But 
 it is obviously His indwelling work that is ad- 
 verted to; and accordingly the seventh chapter of 
 Romans, with its sequel in the eighth chapter, 
 really provides an extended commentary on this 
 passage. The process which is there displayed 
 to us, as the new power not ourselves making for 
 righteousness is implanted in the heart, and from 
 that vantage ground wages its victorious war 
 against the sin still entrenched in the members. 
 
312 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 is here compressed for us into one sharp, crisp 
 word of declaration. The Christian works out 
 his own salvation under the energizing of God, to 
 whose energizing is due every impulse to good that 
 rises in him, every determination to good which 
 he frames, every execution of a good purpose 
 which he carries into effect. And in view of the 
 great fact that this power within him making for 
 righteousness is none other than God Himself, 
 surely the only proper attitude for the Christian 
 in working out His salvation is one of "fear and 
 trembling," — of awe and reverence in the presence 
 of the Holy One, of submission and obedience to 
 His leading, of dependence and trust on His 
 guidance. This, in effect, seems to be the Apos- 
 tle's meaning. It is, in a word, an uncovering of the 
 sources of sanctification, and a reference of it as to 
 its origin in every step to God's gracious activities. 
 
 We may then perhaps attempt a paraphrase of 
 the passage. "So, then, my beloved, in view of 
 Christ's great example of self-abnegation — even 
 as ye have always obeyed, so now, not as if it were 
 only because I was present, but much more just 
 because I am absent, let it be in a spirit of rever- 
 ent submissiveness that you carry your salvation 
 to its completion. For remember that He that 
 effects in you not only the willing but also the 
 doing, is none other than God Himself. And He 
 does it in pursuance of His good pleasure." Or 
 more at large : " Under the inspiration of this great 
 
WORKING OUT SALVATION 313 
 
 example that Christ Jesus has set us, an example 
 of humble submission even down to death, and 
 of His consequent reward, I may repeat and 
 strengthen my exhortation to you. I gladly allow 
 that you have never been failing in submissiveness 
 of spirit. When I was present with you I saw it 
 and rejoiced in it. I trust it was not due to my 
 presence only that you were able to exhibit so 
 Christlike a disposition. After all, it is not my 
 pleasure but your own salvation that should pri- 
 marily engage your thoughts. And if my presence 
 were, indeed, useful to you, how much more effort 
 should you make, now that I can no longer be 
 with you and you are thrown on your own re- 
 sources. Nay, let me not so speak. You are not 
 in any case thrown on your own resources. Let it 
 be with godly awe in your hearts and reverent 
 fear of mind that you engage in this solemn work. 
 For it is, you remember, none other than God 
 Himself who prompts you to the effort, — whose it 
 is to effect within you both the wish and the per- 
 formance : and this He does in the prosecution of 
 His blessed purpose of good towards you. It is 
 in His hands that you are in this work: it is thus a 
 holy work — in the prosecution of which you may, 
 therefore, well put off the sandals from your feet. 
 In devout submissiveness, then, carry it on, with 
 all diligence, and depend on no creature's impulse or 
 help : it is God who in it works in and through you 
 and so fulfils His gracious will with respect to you." 
 
THE ALIEN RIGHTEOUSNESS 
 
 Phil. 3:9: — "And be found in Him, not having a righteousness 
 of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is 
 through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is of God by faith." 
 
 "When we attempt to gain an apprehension of 
 Paul's doctrine of salvation on the ground of an 
 alien righteousness," remarks Professor George 
 B. Stevens, "we must bear in mind that Paul was 
 waging an intense polemic — the great conflict of 
 his life." The remark is true enough in itself, but 
 will scarcely warrant Professor Stevens' inference 
 from it, namely, that we must be careful therefore 
 not to take Paul's statements in this matter au 
 pied de la lettre; that we must expect (and will 
 find) ascertain exaggeration in his language at this 
 polemic point, a certain one-sidedness in his as- 
 sertions; and be, therefore, prepared to tone down 
 the extremity of his statements to more reason- 
 able proportions. From this warning of Pro- 
 fessor Stevens' we may, perhaps, learn this much, 
 however: that Paul's statements at this point are 
 radical and leave little room for that nice balancing 
 so dear to the hearts of so-called "moderate" 
 thinkers, by which they would fain retain some 
 room for glorying in the flesh while yet joining 
 in the universal song of the saints of God, Gloria 
 Deo Soli. 
 
 314 
 
THE ALIEN RIGHTEOUSNESS 315 
 
 It is clear, at once, that the forms of Paul's 
 language at least do not easily lend themselves 
 to the notion that, though Divine aid is requisite 
 to salvation, yet the fundamental movement 
 thereunto must be of man's own making; or 
 even that, though salvation is predominatingly 
 from God, yet this is not to the exclusion of the 
 necessity on man's part of at least assent and con- 
 sent to the Divine working; that if the basis of 
 the Divine acceptance of man is to be found in 
 the work of Christ, at least faith is demanded of 
 man as the condition on the performance of which 
 alone will this acceptance be accorded to him. It 
 is something like this that Professor Stevens 
 wishes to reserve to man as his part in salvation. 
 And it is in his effort to rescue this to man from 
 the obviously unwilling hands of Paul that he is 
 led to remark that Paul's language must be inter- 
 preted as that of a headlong controversialist, 
 who in his zeal falls into "a certain one-sided- 
 ness" in his representations, and keys his reason- 
 ings so high that they must be taken rather as 
 "purposely one-sided argumenta ad hominem" 
 and do not fairly set forth perhaps Paul's whole 
 thought on the subject. Whence, we say, it 
 seems perfectly clear that the language of Paul, 
 taken as it stands, excludes even so much of a 
 human element lying at the basis of salvation. 
 What he says — whatever he means — is obviously 
 that our own righteousness — in every item and 
 
316 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 degree of it — is wholly excluded from the ground 
 of our salvation; and the righteousness provided 
 by God in Christ is the sole ground of our accept- 
 ance in His sight. According to his express 
 statements, at least, we are saved entirely on the 
 ground of an alien righteousness and not at all on 
 the ground of anything we are or have done, or 
 can do, — ^be it even so small a matter as believing. 
 For the rest, true as it is that in this matter 
 Paul was involved in an ineradicable conflict with 
 the Judaizers — in what may be with good right 
 called indeed "the conflict of his life" — it is 
 very easy to press beyond the mark in our esti- 
 mate of the effect of this conflict upon his thought 
 or even upon his language. After all, Paul's in- 
 terest in the ground of human salvation was a 
 positive one, rather than a negative one. In the 
 providence of God he was led to develop his doc- 
 trine of salvation for the benefit of his disciples in 
 conflict with Judaizers; and we view it to-day 
 in the forms of statement given it under the neces- 
 sities of that controversy. But there is no reason 
 to believe that he would not have taught precisely 
 that same doctrine of salvation, though, doubt- 
 less, in different forms of statement, had he been 
 required to meet erroneous teaching of a totally 
 different kind, proceeding from a wholly different 
 quarter — that is, if we really believe that the 
 essence of his doctrine is the truth of God, given 
 him by revelation, and not merely his personal 
 
THE ALIEN RIGHTEOUSNESS 317 
 
 position assumed to hold standing ground for him- 
 self as a determined opponent of the old Jewish 
 party in the Church. In other words, the con- 
 flict with the Judaizers was not first with Paul and 
 his doctrine of salvation second, either in time or 
 importance; but, on the contrary, his doctrine of 
 salvation was first and his controversy with the 
 Judaizers both subsequent and consequent to it. 
 He did not hold this doctrine of salvation because 
 he polemicized the Judaizers, but he polemicized 
 the Judaizers because he held this doctrine of 
 salvation. He did not attain this doctrine of sal- 
 vation then in controversy with the Judaizers, 
 but he controverted the Judaizers because their 
 teaching impinged on this precious doctrine. 
 Though, therefore, the forms in which he states the 
 doctrine in these epistles take shape from the fact 
 that he is rebutting the assaults on it and the 
 subtle undermining of it derived from the con- 
 ceptions of the Judaizers, the doctrine stated is 
 prior in the order of time and thought in his mind 
 to the rise of the danger to it which he is repelling 
 in these expressions. The interest and impor- 
 tance of this to us is that it thereby is brought to* 
 our clear consciousness that Paul's fundamental 
 interest in this matter turns not on the violence 
 of his conflict with the Judaizers but on the pro- 
 fundity of his conviction of the truth of his po- 
 sition. Whenever he replies to the Judaizers' 
 assault in whatever sharpness of rebuke and 
 
318 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 keenness of polemic thrust, his primary interest 
 is not in silencing his opponents but in uphold- 
 ing his teaching. 
 
 We could not have a better illustration of this 
 than in the passage now before us. The whole of 
 it is suffused with an emotion which is far deeper 
 and far purer than polemic zeal. Nowhere do 
 Paul's polemics burn more fiercely. Nowhere is 
 his language sharper or his expressions more "ex- 
 treme." But nowhere is it clearer that his heart 
 is set on higher things than on the refutation of 
 errorists whom he would correct; and nowhere is 
 it less legitimate to pare down his expressions to 
 the level of mere controversial violence. The 
 Apostle as he opened the third chapter of this 
 Epistle was contemplating drawing it to a close. 
 "Finally, my brethren," he says, using the familiar 
 formula for introducing the concluding words, — 
 "finally, my brethren," he says, closing the let- 
 ter, as is his wont, with some striking fundamen- 
 tal thought that would abide in the mind of his 
 readers as a last message to their souls, — "finally, 
 my brethren, let your joy be in the Lord." This 
 is no mere formula of farewell, as some, misled 
 by the "rejoice" — which is to be sure an ordinary 
 formula of epistolary salutation — ^have imagined. 
 The conception of Christian rejoicing is a funda- 
 mental note of this letter, and here it has all the 
 emphasis that this gives it. And it is not merely 
 the idea of rejoicing that is here emphatic, but 
 
THE ALIEN RIGHTEOUSNESS 319 
 
 the added idea of rejoicing "in the Lord." "Fi- 
 nally, my brethren," says the Apostle, "let your 
 joy be in the Lord." Ah, this is where the 
 Apostle's heart is as he opens this paragraph — 
 this is the thought he would leave with his readers. 
 "Let your joy be in the Lord" — not in your- 
 selves, but in the Lord. We should say, perhaps, 
 rather. Let your boast be in the Lord; let your 
 glorying be only in the Lord. It means funda- 
 mentally the same thing. The Apostle would 
 bring his letter to a close by reminding his readers 
 of the very core of the saving proclamation. 
 They are saved — not self -saving souls. Let them 
 rejoice, let them continually joy, in the Lord ! 
 
 This is not a new theme with the Apostle. It is 
 rather one of his favourite subjects, this of boast- 
 ing in Christ Jesus. He is conscious that he 
 harps on it. But he is not ashamed of harping 
 on it; it is the heart of the Gospel and he is not 
 ashamed of the Gospel of Christ. But he makes 
 a quasi-apology for so harping on it. "I know 
 this is repetitious," he says at once, "but I like 
 to say it, and it may be useful to you." "To 
 write the same things to you, to me on the one 
 hand is not irksome, but to you on the other it is 
 safe." It is a joy to Paul to cry over and over 
 and over again, "Let your joy be in the Lord"; 
 in Him only put your boasting; in Him alone do 
 your glorying; and it is a safe thing to impress on 
 his readers. At the mention of this, the floods of 
 
320 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 polemics rush in. Paul remembers those who 
 were endangering the purity of this attitude of 
 dependence on the Lord alone in his flocks, and 
 remembering them, what can he do but burst out 
 with renewed warnings? 
 
 So the letter does not close, after all, at this 
 point, but instead, we have the sharp exhortation, 
 "Mark ye the dogs! Mark ye the evil workers! 
 Mark ye the concision!" Why does his polemic 
 burn so hotly against these men? Simply be- 
 cause they endangered that attitude which he was 
 impressing on his readers, and in which the whole 
 Gospel consisted for him — the attitude of entire 
 dependence on Christ to the exclusion of every- 
 thing in themselves. Accordingly his rapid and 
 clearly cut speech leaps at once into the reason: 
 "Mark ye the concision, — the concision I say, the 
 mere imitation; for we are the circumcision, the 
 real sealed ones to God, who worship by the Spirit 
 of God and boast in Christ Jesus, and put no con- 
 fidence in the flesh." 
 
 We do not need to follow the subsequent turns 
 of the polemic into which the Apostle here enters. 
 It is enough for us to note that the language abun- 
 dantly confirms the interpretation of the drift of 
 the paragraph and the intent of its opening words 
 on which we have insisted. Paul exhorts his 
 readers "to let their joy be in the Lord," and he 
 repudiates the concision on the express ground 
 that their claims are antagonistic to a purely 
 
THE ALIEN RIGHTEOUSNESS 321 
 
 spiritual worship, to boasting in Christ Jesus alone 
 and the withdrawal of all confidence from the 
 flesh. This is that to which the Apostle is en- 
 gaged in exhorting his readers therefore — ^boasting 
 in Christ Jesus alone and the removal of all con- 
 fidence in the flesh. We all know how richly he 
 develops this idea in the following words — enu- 
 merating his own high claims in the flesh and as- 
 serting roundly that all of them are but as refuse 
 to him in the matter of salvation. Christ Jesus is 
 all. The language of our text is but the elabora- 
 tion of this vital idea in other and more precise 
 language. All that he is, all that he has sought 
 after, all that he has done, — though from a fleshly 
 point of view far superior to what most men can 
 appeal to — all, all, he counts (not merely useless 
 but) loss, all one mass of loss, to be cast away and 
 buried in the sea, "that he may gain Christ and 
 be found in Him." On the one side stand all 
 human works — they are all loss. On the other 
 hand stands Christ — He is all in all. That is the 
 contrast. And this is the contrast re-expressed 
 more formally in our text: "not having my own 
 righteousness that is out of law, but that which is 
 through faith in Christ, the righteousness that 
 is from God on faith." 
 
 The contrast is between the righteousness which 
 a man can make for himself and the righteousness 
 that God gives him. And the contrast is abso- 
 lute. On the one, in the height and the breadth 
 
322 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 of its whole idea — we cannot exaggerate here — 
 Paul pours contempt, as a basis or, nay, even the 
 least part of the basis, of salvation. On the other, 
 exclusively, he bases the totality of salvation. 
 The outcome is, that not merely polemically but 
 fundamentally, he founds salvation solely on an 
 alien righteousness, with the express exclusion 
 of every item of our own righteousness. The 
 whole contents of the passage demands this as 
 Paul's fundamental thought. 
 
 Now, it is not necessary for us, on this occasion, 
 to stop to analyze in its details Paul's thought; 
 to show by detailed exposition how utterly the 
 righteousness rejected by him is rejected and how 
 exclusively the righteousness laid hold of by him 
 is trusted in, and how completely the ground of 
 our trust is cleansed by Paul from every scintilla 
 of human works. It will suffice for the present to 
 accept the discrimination he makes in the large 
 and to try to realize how fully to him the totality 
 of the Gospel lay just in this discrimination. The 
 Gospel, to Paul, consists precisely in this: that 
 we do nothing to earn our salvation or to secure 
 it for ourselves. God in Christ does it all. 
 
 It is easy, of course, to brand such an assertion 
 as immoral. Men were not slow to brand it as 
 immoral in Paul's day, and men are not slow to 
 brand it as immoral ("unethical" is their way of 
 phrasmg it) to-day. "What," they say, "we are 
 to do nothing! Christ does it all! Nothing de- 
 
THE ALIEN RIGHTEOUSNESS 323 
 
 pends on us! Not even our believing! Then, let 
 us eat, drink and be merry!" They do not stop 
 to consider that the repetition against those who 
 draw this doctrine from Paul's teaching, of pre- 
 cisely the same charge that was urged against 
 Paul, is the last thing which could be needed to 
 prove that Paul has not been misunderstood when 
 he is interpreted as advancing by set purpose just 
 this doctrine. Paul does not meet the charge by 
 explaining that he wishes his words concerning 
 the exclusion of all our righteousness from the 
 ground of salvation to be taken cum grano sails; but 
 by explaining that, being saved not indeed "out of 
 works" but certainly "unto good works," we 
 cannot walk in sin and yet be saved. This posit- 
 ing of a new antithesis, not out of works but unto 
 good works, clinches the essence of his doctrine, 
 and may be adopted by us as the sole defence it 
 needs against the accusations of men. 
 
 You remember how Mr. J. A. Froude in a 
 famous essay adduced as a speaking evidence of 
 the "immorality of Evangelicalism," the well- 
 known revival hymn beginning: 
 
 "Nothing either great or small. 
 Nothing, sinner, no; 
 Jesus did it, did it all. 
 Long, long, ago." 
 
 What was particularly offensive to him was the 
 assertion that 
 
324 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 "Doing is a deadly thing. 
 Doing ends in death"; 
 
 and the consequent exhortation 
 
 "Cast your deadly doing down, 
 Down at Jesus' feet, 
 Stand in Him, in Him alone. 
 Gloriously complete." 
 
 It is, nevertheless, the very cor cordis of the Gos- 
 pel that is here brought under fire. The one anti- 
 thesis of all the ages is that between the rival 
 formulse: Do this and live, and, Live and do this; 
 Do and be saved, and Be saved and do. And the 
 one thing that determines whether we trust in 
 God for salvation or would fain save ourselves is, 
 how such formulae appeal to us. Do we, like the 
 rich young ruler, feel that we must "do some good 
 thing" in order that we may be saved? Then, 
 assuredly, we are not yet prepared to trust our 
 salvation to Christ alone — to sell all that we have 
 and follow Him. Just in proportion as we are 
 striving to supplement or to supplant His perfect 
 work, just in that proportion is our hope of sal- 
 vation resting on works, and not on faith. Ethi- 
 cism and solafideanism — these are the eternal 
 contraries, mutually exclusive. It must be faith 
 or works; it can never be faith and works. And 
 the fundamental exhortation which we must ever 
 be giving our souls is clearly expressed in the words 
 of the hymn, "Cast your deadly doing down." 
 Only when that is completely done is it really 
 
THE ALIEN RIGHTEOUSNESS 325 
 
 Christ Only, Christ All in All, with us; only then, 
 do we obey fully Paul's final exhortation: "Let 
 your joy be in the Lord." Only then do we re- 
 nounce utterly "our own righteousness, that out 
 of law," and rest solely on "that which is through 
 faith in Christ, the righteousness of God on 
 faith." 
 
PEACE WITH GOD 
 
 Phil. 4:7: — "And the peace of God, which passeth all under- 
 standing, shall guard your hearts and your thoughts in Christ 
 Jesus." 
 
 The exact phrase which we have given as the 
 subject of our reflection this afternoon, though 
 one of the most familiar phrases in our religious 
 speech, has a very slender claim to be looked upon 
 as Biblical. It occurs but once in the Bible 
 (Rom. 5:1), and then, as it seems to me (though 
 on this the commentators differ), not in its fun- 
 damental sense, or in the sense in which it is prob- 
 ably most prominent in the minds of most of us 
 here this afternoon, but in its subjective sense of 
 consciousness of peace with God. The thing de- 
 noted by the phrase is of course a frequent and 
 basal idea in Scripture, though not expressed by 
 the exact phrase now before us. The correlated 
 terms "enmity," "reconciliation," "peace," occur 
 with sufficient frequency and express what may 
 properly be called a fundamental idea of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 We are told that we are naturally "enemies" of 
 God, that God looks upon us as such, and that we 
 cherish the feelings appropriate to that condi- 
 tion — being enemies in our minds by wicked 
 works, and because of a carnal mind necessarily at 
 
 326 
 
PEACE WITH GOD 327 
 
 enmity with the Holy God. This enmity we are 
 told Christ has "abolished," "slain" on His cross, 
 "reconciling" us with God by His propitiatory 
 work. As a result of this "propitiation," we are 
 told, He has made "peace" (Eph. 2:18); and, 
 therefore. He is called "our peace," and His Gos- 
 pel, "the Gospel of peace" (Rom. 10:15; Eph. 
 6:15). His whole work was "that we might have 
 peace in Him" (Jno. 16:33), and His gospel con- 
 sisted in "preaching peace by Jesus" (Acts 10:36). 
 Even in the Old Testament prophecy. He is prom- 
 ised as the "Prince of Peace" (Isa. 9:6), and it is 
 clearly perceived that He is such because the 
 "chastisement of our peace shall be on Him" 
 (Isa. 53 :5) ; in other words, because that punish- 
 ment by which our sins are expiated and we are 
 reconciled with God should be borne by Him. 
 
 There is no lack, therefore, of the most explicit 
 enunciation in Scripture of the fact which our 
 phrase expresses; it is rather one of the pervading 
 representations of Scripture that we are at en- 
 mity with God and can have peace with Him only 
 in the blood of Christ. Only it so happens that 
 the connection in which the word "peace" occurs 
 most frequently in Scripture is one which raises 
 our eyes rather to God as the giver of peace than 
 emphasizes the fact that it is with Him that the 
 peace is established. "Peace from God" hap- 
 pens, therefore, to be a commoner Scriptural 
 locution than "peace with God." "I will give unto 
 
328 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 him my covenant of peace" (Numb. 28:12), 
 though not spoken with this broad implication 
 may almost be represented as the primary promise 
 of the Old Covenant, under which the longing of 
 God's people expressed itself in the assurance that 
 "He would speak peace with His people and to 
 His saints" (Psa. 85:8). Wherefore that Old 
 Covenant saint upon whose glad eyes the dawn of 
 salvation had fallen, expresses his joy that the 
 coming of the Day-spring from on high was a 
 promise that now, at length, the feet of God's 
 people should be guided in the way of peace (Luke 
 1:79). Accordingly Jesus represents the result of 
 His work as giving peace to His followers (Jno. 
 16:33) — "My peace I leave with you, my peace I 
 give unto you" (Jno. 16:27), and His disciples 
 going everywhere "preached peace by Jesus" 
 (Acts 10:36). It is the "peace of God" that 
 passeth all understanding, that the Apostle would 
 have rule in the hearts of His converts (Phil. 4:7); 
 and the prayer that "peace from God" should be 
 on them became the fixed form of Apostolic ben- 
 ediction (Rom. 1:7). 
 
 This pervading longing for peace and promise 
 of it as one of the most precious gifts of God, cer- 
 tainly enhances our sense of its value. Perhaps 
 we may say that the chief difference in the feeling 
 of the two terms "peace from God" and "peace 
 with God" is that the primary emphasis in the 
 former falls naturally on subjective peace — 
 
PEACE WITH GOD 329 
 
 though by no means to the exclusion of objective 
 peace; while, with the latter the reverse is the 
 case. When we speak of "peace from God" 
 coming upon us, of the peace of God that passes 
 all understanding "sen trying" our hearts and 
 thoughts, of the peace of Jesus which He left with 
 us, when He added: "Let not your heart be 
 troubled, neither let it be fearful," we necessarily 
 think first of all of the deep sense of inner peace 
 and satisfaction which pervades the hearts of 
 none in the world who have not "found their 
 peace" as we say, in Christ. On the other hand, 
 when we speak of "peace with God" our thoughts 
 go primarily back to that great transaction on 
 Calvary when He who is our peace reconciled us 
 to God by His cross, having slain the enmity 
 thereon; and we who were alienated in our wicked 
 minds from Him were brought nigh in the blood 
 of Christ. We cannot think of the one, indeed, 
 without thinking of the other; nor can one exist 
 apart from the other. We cannot have peace of 
 heart, until our real and actual separation from 
 God is bridged by the blood of Christ. We can- 
 not have the breach between God and us healed 
 without a sense of the new relation of peace steal- 
 ing into our hearts. And possibly we cannot do 
 better to-day than just to realize how inter- 
 dependent the two are and how rich the peace is 
 which we obtain in Christ Jesus. 
 
 To this end, let us consider (1) the utter lack of 
 
330 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 peace which man suffers by nature; (2) the full- 
 ness of peace brought to us by Jesus; and (3) the 
 process by which this peace is made the possession 
 of the mind and soul. 
 
 It is a curious thing if you look at it, how little 
 peace man out of Christ, that is, apart from God 
 and His right relation to him, has in the world; 
 how utterly out of joint he is — at war, in fact — 
 with even his physical environment. Every 
 other creature finds a place for itself in nature; 
 nature cares for them all. "She spreads a table 
 for the tiger in the jungle, for the buffalo on the 
 prairie, for the dragon-fly above the summer 
 brook." But she spreads no table for man. 
 Foxes may have holes and the birds of the air, 
 nests; but like his Lord, man has no place in na- 
 ture where he can safely lay his head. As a mere 
 animal, he is the weakest and most helpless of all, 
 with no natural covering to keep him warm, with 
 no natural weapons to protect himself, with no 
 speed for escape, and no cunning for hiding. The 
 sun burns him and the winter freezes him. A 
 brilliant writer, upon whom I am drawing very 
 freely in these paragraphs, calls him justly, the step- 
 child of time. Revelation accounts for it by the fall. 
 Man stood at the gate of Eden, an exile, facing a 
 wild world, a world of briers and thorns, of hos- 
 tile fears, of death. What man out of Christ 
 thinks of it, the myths he has invented tell us; 
 from the shrinking terror of the fetish worshipper 
 
PEACE WITH GOD 331 
 
 at every old bone or bit of stick, to the weird 
 shapes and glowing myths of our own Scandina- 
 vian fathers. Man knows himself to be at war 
 with the world. 
 
 It is much if he can get his food. Most do not. 
 But food does not satisfy him. " Put an ox in a 
 fat pasture beside a clear stream and the ox is as 
 happy as an ox can be. The hungry tiger with 
 reeking jaws, tearing the slaughtered buffalo, is 
 happy to the utmost limit of tiger nature." But 
 after man has conquered nature, he is still not at 
 peace with her. He is no happier in the palace 
 than in the hut. 
 
 " In the cool hall with haggard eyes 
 The Roman nobly lay; 
 Then rose and drove in furious wise 
 Along the Appian Way. 
 
 He made a feast, drank fierce and fast 
 And crowned his head with flowers. 
 
 No easier and no swifter passed 
 The impracticable hours." 
 
 Man assuredly is at odds with nature; but not 
 only with nature, there is something deeper than 
 that. Man is at odds with himself. So that, 
 even though he were not the stepchild of nature 
 and all that is external to him existed only to do 
 his pleasure, so that like the lotus-eaters he could 
 merely lie and be happy; man would not be 
 happy. The deep unrest of his nature has a 
 deeper cause than merely his lack of physical ad- 
 
332 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 justment to his environment. He is out of joint 
 with himself. He has a conscience and knows the 
 right. But he also knows what is not right. And 
 this sense of sin, ineradicable instinct in every 
 soul, is the source of a restless uneasiness which 
 knows and can know no peace. His very dis- 
 quietedness with nature receives half its terror 
 from it. If man merely felt that he must manip- 
 ulate nature for his comfort, he might, at least, be 
 inwardly easy or troubled only by those natural 
 anxieties for the future that cluster around the 
 questions, What shall I eat, and what shall I 
 drink, and wherewith shall I be clothed. But his 
 inward unrest clothes nature with a thousand 
 terrors; her forces become avenging furies, her 
 thunders the voice of an accusing God, her light- 
 nings and tornadoes — her quietly working poisons 
 of miasma and disease — become the tools of God's 
 anger. Because he is a sinner, man's inward war 
 is inflicted on his outward environment. And 
 his conscience it is that will give him no peace. 
 
 But neither is conscience the ultimate fact. 
 As the terrors of nature are due to the fact that 
 they are not ultimate but point upwards and in- 
 wards to the war in the heart, so the terrors of 
 conscience are due to the fact that they, too, are 
 not ultimate but point upwards to a higher Power. 
 Conscience is the voice of God proclaiming war 
 in man; and through it man knows that he is not 
 at peace with God. Hence its pain and terror. 
 
PEACE WITH GOD 333 
 
 Everywhere, man knows that because he is a 
 sinner, he is at enmity with God. Man's sense 
 of enmity with God is the source of all his terror, all 
 his unrest, all his misery. It is ineradicable and 
 universal. It must abide so long as man knows he 
 is a sinner. But so long as it abides, he cannot be 
 other than miserable. 
 
 Now the Apostle, in the text, recognizing this 
 state of things, promises us as if it were the fun- 
 damental blessing, the peace of God. And he 
 promises it to us in language which exhibits his 
 high appreciation of its nature. He calls it, a 
 peace that passes all conception. And he prom- 
 ises it as something that will guard or "sentry" 
 our hearts and thoughts — as if it were able to 
 keep us pure and holy as few things can. Let us 
 note then in opposition to the restlessness of man's 
 heart by nature the surpassingness of God's peace. 
 
 And here, note especially, the universality of 
 this peace of God; how it supplies the whole lack 
 of peace in which we are by nature. 
 
 It is fundamentally peace with God. "But 
 now in Christ Jesus ye that once were afar off are 
 made nigh in the blood of Christ. For he is our 
 peace, who made both one, and broke down the 
 middle wall of partition, having abolished in his 
 flesh the enmity, even the law of commandments 
 and ordinances, that he might create in himself 
 of the twain one new man, so making peace; and 
 might reconcile them both in one body unto God 
 
334 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 through his cross, having slain the enmity there- 
 by." Christianity does not come crying peace, 
 peace, when there is no peace, and when we know 
 there is no peace. It does not come crying that 
 God is love and nothing but love, and the Father 
 of all, not at enmity to us, not needing any recon- 
 ciliation. It comes recognizing the enmity and 
 laying an adequate foundation for peace. It rec- 
 ognizes our sin and guilt and offers an atonement 
 for it. It recognizes our condemnation and makes 
 provision for its reversal. It institutes peace out 
 of war, and that by a method which commands our 
 assent as complete, availing, effective. Thus it 
 makes peace between us and God. 
 
 And just because it does not talk of a peace 
 already existing when our hearts know there is 
 war, it relieves also our unrest of conscience and 
 brings us to peace with ourselves. Looking upon 
 the satisfaction of Christ, the heart can comfort 
 itself in the knowledge of a reconciled God and 
 receive His promises that on the basis of that 
 atonement the Spirit shall come and work peace 
 in the soul. 
 
 And once again, this peace of soul mightily 
 works to produce peace in our environment, for 
 now the soul no longer looks upon the external 
 world as its enemy and no longer on the laws of 
 nature as purely natural forces, grinding out evil 
 for it. It sees that in nature and above nature a 
 Father sits — truly a Father, now, that He is rec- 
 
PEACE WITH GOD 335 
 
 onciled to us in Christ, and that all Providence is 
 in His hands, touching us. In nature itself — in 
 history — the reconciled soul meets God and per- 
 ceives everywhere the hand of One who loves him 
 and cares for him. Amid all happenings he is 
 peaceful and serene; he knows nothing can harm 
 him now; he knows nothing can take away his 
 peace; he knows that all things shall work to- 
 gether for good to him. The external world is no 
 longer his enemy, but his friend. 
 
 In our absorption with the weightier matters of 
 the fundamental reconciliation of the soul with 
 God in Christ and the operation of the Spirit 
 working peace in us, we are apt to neglect this ele- 
 ment of peace, in which we are ourselves at peace 
 in the world, no longer orphans but communing 
 with God in all our happenings. How important 
 an aspect of the matter it is may be advertised 
 to us by the comfort which the theologians of the 
 school of Ritschl find in it, the only form of com- 
 munion with God they acknowledge, and how it 
 fills their hearts to be able by the revelation of 
 Christ to look on the world as God's Kingdom in 
 which His children are not orphans but sons of a 
 living God. 
 
 The inestimable value of the peace of God is 
 apparent next from the reasonableness and surety 
 of this peace. There may be a peace which is not 
 reasonable; a peace which is not assured. The 
 worldly man's peace on which he strives to stay 
 
336 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 himself is of this kind ; the peace of a drunkard in a 
 house on fire, the peace of a lunatic who fancies 
 himself a king, the peace of a fool who cries Peace ! 
 Peace! when there is no peace. Such a peace can 
 be maintained only by shutting our eyes to what 
 we are and where we are and the relations that 
 actually exist about us and between us and God. 
 Any accident that calls us to ourselves destroys it. 
 Any ray of true light arising in our conscience ex- 
 tinguishes it. And when evil and death come, 
 where is it then.^^ But God's peace is a rational 
 peace, and a stable peace. It arises not from 
 shutting our eyes to our real state, but from open- 
 ing them to it, and the more our eyes are open and 
 the more we reahze our real condition, under- 
 standing what Christ is, what we are, and what 
 He has done for us, the more peace flows into our 
 hearts. The more searching the light we turn on 
 the scene, the more glorious the prospect. Light 
 turns a false peace into torment. Light awakes 
 in the countenance of the true peace, happy smiles. 
 
 Is this peace ours.'^ How can we obtain it? 
 Whence obtain it.^^ We must distinguish. It is 
 not our peace; it is God's. We do not make it; 
 He makes it. But we can by God's grace enjoy 
 it more and more. 
 
 (1) Its foundation is, of course, in Christ and 
 Christ's work. It can be had on no other basis, 
 in no other way. "Being justified by faith, we 
 have peace with God." We cannot go about to 
 
PEACE WITH GOD 337 
 
 establish it; we should be doomed to utter failure. 
 We are by nature at enmity with God. No peace 
 can be found until that enmity is removed. It 
 cannot be removed by aught but a perfect sac- 
 rifice, a perfect righteousness. Christ alone can 
 do it. For the inestimable peace of God, there- 
 fore, we must look to Christ. It can have no 
 other foundation than His perfect work. 
 
 (2) Its formation in us is, of course, by the Holy 
 Ghost. We cannot produce it for ourselves, even 
 on the basis of Christ's work. A fountain cannot 
 rise higher than its source and a sure and stable 
 peace — an everlasting peace — an infinite and per- 
 fect peace — must be the work of Him who is Him- 
 self all this. "Now the works of the Spirit 
 are love, joy, peace." 
 
 (3) But the cultivation of it is placed by God's 
 grace in our hands. Christ may have died for 
 us; the Spirit may have applied that death sav- 
 ingly to us; and yet we may still hold back from 
 the full consciousness of our safety; wrong 
 thoughts and feelings may stand in our way. We 
 are at peace with God; our conscience knows it. 
 But we may so seldom look to Him who is our 
 Peace, and so much to ourselves, that we fail to take 
 the true comfort and joy of our changed position. 
 
 Hence a good old writer (William Bridge) 
 draws two useful distinctions: a distinction be- 
 tween Fundamental Peace and Additional Peace; 
 a distinction between Dormant Peace and Awak- 
 
338 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 ened Peace, — peace in the seed and peace in the 
 flower. Fundamental Peace, he tells us, is that 
 peace which naturally and necessarily arises from 
 our justification; those who are justified by faith 
 have peace with God. We cannot cultivate 
 this, we have it; it cannot be less true or be made 
 more true. But it is objective. There is, then, 
 the subjective peace, founded on this: the addi- 
 tional peace that arises from the sense of our jus- 
 fication. This we may neglect to cultivate; it 
 may be lost for a time. As the thief breaking in 
 at night can steal the accumulated income 
 hoarded in the safe, but cannot steal the capital 
 invested in the land ; so the great thief of the uni- 
 verse, Satan, may take away our additional peace 
 but never the fundamental. So we may also 
 speak of Dormant peace — a peace we have ever 
 in heart but do not realize always ; and Awakened 
 peace, which manifests itself to the soul. 
 
 On the one hand, the wicked man may give him- 
 self great comfort till the day of death comes, but 
 when trouble breaks forth upon him, he is at 
 length awake. The sin and guilt were in his heart 
 always; they lay sleeping there, but now they are 
 awakened. So the German poet sings: 
 
 The heart hath chambers twain. 
 
 Which inhabit 
 Sweet joy and bitter pain : 
 Oh joy, take thou good heed! 
 
 Tread softly, 
 Lest pain should wake indeed! 
 
PEACE WITH GOD 339 
 
 Just so, on the other hand, men may have a 
 great reservoir of true peace within them, and 
 yet have never drawn on it for the supply of their 
 needs. After a while the need arises that breaks 
 the retaining wall and the whole soul is flooded 
 with peace. This is peace indeed! O, that we 
 may have this peace! Not merely Fundamental 
 peace — though that is the main thing — but Addi- 
 tional peace; not merely Dormant peace, but 
 Awakened peace — the sense of being at peace 
 with God. 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SAINTS IN LIGHT 
 
 Col. 1:12: — "Giving thanks unto the Father who made us meet 
 to be partakers of the inheritance of the saints in Ught." 
 
 Our passage is one of those fervent descrip- 
 tions of the blessed state of the saved soul in 
 which the writings of Paul abound. It occurs in 
 the midst of the prayer which he says he has been 
 offering for the Colossians ever since their con- 
 version. The Colossians were not brought to 
 Christ by his own preaching, but by that of his 
 faithful minister in the Gospel, Epaphras. And 
 when Epaphras brought him the good news of the 
 turnmg of the many at Colossse from darkness to 
 light, the heart of the Apostle overflowed with 
 thanksgiving. From that day, he says, he has 
 been continually thanking God for the Colossian 
 Christians, and mingling with his thanks earnest 
 petitions for their Christian walk. 
 
 The gist of his petition is that they — so lately 
 brought to Christ and so surrounded by danger — 
 should be filled with the knowledge of God's will 
 in all wisdom and spiritual understanding, so that 
 they might walk worthily of the Lord unto all 
 pleasing. Two points are to be noted here. 
 
 The thing which Paul desires for the Colossian 
 converts is that they may, in their walk and con- 
 versation, be well pleasing to Christ. This is 
 
 340 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SAINTS IN LIGHT 341 
 
 expressed by means of a term of rather startling 
 strength; a term which in its classical usage bore 
 an implication of cringing subjection to the whims 
 of another and was applied to the sycophant and 
 the flatterer. Of course, the nobler association 
 with Christ voids it of its unworthy suggestions, 
 but there is left on the mind a strong impression 
 of the fullness of the devotion which the Apostle 
 would fain see in the lives of Christians to 
 their Lord. External service — eye service — is not 
 enough ; our thoughts must run ahead of the com- 
 mand and all our lives be suffused with this prin- 
 ciple — that we may be well pleasing to Christ. 
 This is what the Apostle asks in behalf of the Co- 
 lossian converts. 
 
 The second thing to be noted is that Paul ex- 
 pected this perfection of service to be mediated 
 by perfection of knowledge. What he directly 
 asks for is that these converts may be filled with 
 the knowledge of God's will in all wisdom and 
 spiritual understanding — and the word used here 
 for "knowledge" is the term for precise, full, ac- 
 curate, profound knowledge. He prays directly 
 that they may have the knowledge — in order that 
 they may walk worthily of their Lord unto all 
 kinds of pleasing. Obviously it seemed to the 
 Apostle that the pathway to a right life lay through 
 a right knowledge. It was only as they knew the 
 will of God that they could hope to please Christ 
 in action. Knowledge comes thus before life and 
 
342 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 is the constructive force of life. Thus the Apostle 
 teaches us the supreme value of a right and pro- 
 found and exact knowledge of Divine things. 
 Not as if knowledge were the end — life, undoubt- 
 edly, is the end at which the saving processes are 
 directed; but because the sole lever to raise the 
 life to its proper height is just right knowledge. 
 It is life — the right life — that the Apostle is pray- 
 ing for in behalf of the Colossians: but he repre- 
 sents knowledge — right knowledge — as possessing 
 the necessity of means to that life. 
 
 The nature of this right life is perhaps suflS- 
 ciently outlined in the single phrase in which Paul 
 gives expression to his longing. He says that he is 
 asking that the Colossians may walk worthily of 
 the Lord in every kind of pleasing. It is a Christ- 
 pleasing life that he wishes for them. But it is 
 not the Apostle's way to content himself with 
 broad phrases. And he proceeds at once to sug- 
 gest more fully what kind of a life he conceives a 
 Christ-pleasing life to be. There are three char- 
 acteristics which he throws into emphasis. It 
 must be a fruitful life. It must be a stable life. 
 It must be a thankful life. Here is the way he 
 develops its idea. That ye may walk worthily 
 of the Lord unto every kind of pleasing, he says — 
 (1) by bearing fruit and yielding increase in every 
 good work, through the knowledge of God; (2) 
 by being strengthened in every sort of strength 
 according to the might of His glory, unto all obe- 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SAINTS IN LIGHT 343 
 
 dience and long-suffering; (3) by joyfully giving 
 thanks to the Father, who has qualified us for our 
 share in the lot of the saints in the light. Abound- 
 ing fruitfulness in good works; strong patience 
 in the trials of Hfe; joyful thankfulness for the 
 blessings of salvation; these are the traits of the 
 Christian walk which shall be worthy of the Lord 
 unto all pleasing; these are the marks of that life 
 on which our Saviour will smile. 
 
 Now it is particularly to the third of these traits 
 of a Christ-pleasing life that our text draws our 
 attention to-day. It is one of the marks of right 
 Christian living when we are joyfully thankful to 
 the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ 
 for our introduction into the blessings of the 
 Christian life. For, more accurately speaking, 
 that is the substance of the thanksgiving which 
 the Apostle desires to see illustrated in the Colos- 
 sian Christians. The terms in which he ex- 
 presses it are worth our careful consideration. 
 "With joy, giving thanks to the Father," he 
 phrases it, "who made us sufficient for a share 
 of the lot of the saints in light." The ground of 
 the thankfulness which he would fain find in them 
 is that supernal act of the Father of our Saviour 
 by which he has introduced us into the company 
 and endowed us with the heritage of the saints. 
 Of course, the reminiscence of our primal estate as 
 aliens from the household of God underlies the 
 thought; but it is not explicitly adverted to until 
 
344 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 the next verse. What is emphasized here is the 
 wonder of the act by which we were transformed 
 into fellow-citizens of the saints, and fellow-heirs 
 with them of God. That, says the Apostle, is 
 the ground of a thanksgiving on our part which 
 should transfuse our whole life and by which our 
 life will be characterized as a Christian one. 
 
 For the development of the thought, let us em- 
 phasize in turn the four chief elements which 
 seem to enter most prominently into it. These 
 words of the Apostle would seem to advise us, 
 then, of at least these important facts : 
 
 1. That the saints have a heritage. 
 
 2. That the heritage of the saints is "in the 
 light." 
 
 3. That it is God and God alone who has the 
 power to introduce men into this heritage. 
 
 4. That it is a matter of profound thanksgiving 
 to men, therefore, when they find themselves in- 
 vested with this heritage — a thanksgiving which 
 should transform their whole lives and make them 
 conscious debtors to God to such an extent that 
 henceforth they should live to Him and His glory 
 should be their one pursuit — in a word, that 
 they should walk worthily of the Lord unto all 
 pleasing. 
 
 That the saints have a heritage is obviously the 
 central implication of the passage. What Paul 
 wishes his readers to be thankful for is their 
 capacitating by the Father for their share "in the 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SAINTS IN LIGHT 345 
 
 inheritance of the saints." Our term "heritage" 
 may indeed be misleading in this connection. The 
 Greek term may not naturally emphasize the same 
 connotations, possibly may not contain all that 
 we are^accustomed to think of in connection with 
 it. It may be better to use the word "lot," for 
 example, and speak of "the lot" of the saints. 
 The main implication is that of a possession which 
 becomes ours, not by our earning it but by gift 
 from another. What the saints obtain is not 
 merited by them, is not theirs by right and their 
 own desert; it is allotted to them. The language 
 is founded on and is reminiscent of the allot- 
 ment of Canaan to the Tribes which composed the 
 ancient people of Jacob. As in that typical 
 transaction the whole land was the gift of God to 
 the people and was allotted to the several tribes 
 and families, each having his own portion, so, in 
 the antitype, the saints are conceived as having 
 in possession their allotted heritage, in which 
 each has his specific portion which is to be his in- 
 disputably and his forever. As under the Old 
 Testament, so imder the New, there remains a 
 land, a country, an abiding home, for the people 
 of God, into which abode the true Joshua leads 
 them to their rest. And this, I say, is the fun- 
 damental implication of the passage. 
 
 The designation of this country of the saints as 
 "in the light" follows a symbolism which per- 
 vades the whole Bible, and the grandeur of which 
 
346 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 is, perhaps, liable to be missed by us through our 
 very wontedness to it. Throughout the Scrip- 
 tures "light" is used as the designation of all that 
 is of consummate and unapproachable perfection, 
 whether in the physical, intellectual, moral or 
 spiritual spheres. In contrast with the darkness 
 of sorrow and peril we have the light of joy and 
 safety; in contrast with the darkness of death we 
 have the light of life; in contrast with the dark- 
 ness of error we have the light of truth; in con- 
 trast with the darkness of sin we have the light of 
 holiness; in contrast with the darkness of de- 
 struction we have the light of salvation. Physi- 
 cally, intellectually, ethically, spiritually, sav- 
 ingly, "light" is all that is pure and true, bright 
 and holy and blissful. And light is the heritage 
 of the saints. It is the sphere in which God lives, 
 for we are to walk in the light as He is "in the 
 light." It is the glorious city built foresquare of 
 luminous stones, in which the saints have their 
 real citizenship and the "light" of which is God 
 Himself. God Himself is "light" and we, as His 
 children, are the "children of light." In Him is 
 no darkness at all, or as the strongly emphatic 
 language of John seems to say, "Darkness is not 
 in Him; no not in any way" — not in the way of 
 physical infirmity, of intellectual error, of moral 
 fault, of spiritual stain, or of sullied blessedness. 
 In Him and in Him only, who dwelleth in light inac- 
 cessible, is there no darkness, — no, not in any way. 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SAINTS IN LIGHT 347 
 
 Meanwhile we fairly wallow in darkness. But 
 for the saints there is a heritage "in the light" 
 that streams out from the Throne of God, that 
 light which is the source and condition of all life, 
 and health, and strength, and all knowledge and 
 righteousness, hohness and bliss. There lapped 
 in the actinic rays of the "light of life," dwell the 
 saints. There each has his appointed portion, 
 his home. There each obtains his own higher 
 qualities of knowledge, righteousness, holiness and 
 bliss; and becoming thus luminiferous is made 
 himself a "light bearer" in the world. All this 
 and more is meant by the Apostle when he tells 
 us of the "heritage of the saints in light." 
 
 Now he tells us further that it is God and God 
 alone who can introduce men into this glorious 
 region of "the light." It is God who is light and 
 all the light that is in the world streams from Him. 
 We, on our part, are under the dominion of "dark- 
 ness," and darkness has filled our hearts. How 
 can we be rescued from the rule of darkness and 
 translated into the kingdom of the Son of God's 
 love? Obviously it is only by an act of God, the 
 Light, Himself shining into our darkened heart. 
 And so the Apostle tells us, declaring that it is 
 God who has made us meet for a share in the heri- 
 tage of the saints. Our English word "meet" 
 probably only brokenly represents the Greek 
 word which he employs. In the Greek word the 
 idea of sufficiency, adequacy, ability, is more 
 
348 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 prominent than that of worthiness, suitability. 
 The notion conveyed is, perhaps, not so much that 
 God has made us fit, worthy, to be in the King- 
 dom of Hght — though that in any event is in- 
 cluded, and as to the thing itself is not inharmoni- 
 ous with the Apostle's main intention; but that 
 He has made us able to enter into this state. Im- 
 mersed in the kingdom of darkness, or worse than 
 that, with the kingdom of darkness within our- 
 selves, we were incapable of entering the kingdom 
 of light. We needed to be made "suflScient," 
 "competent," "adequate," "capable," to be 
 "qualified," "capacitated" for entering into our 
 portion in the allotment of the saints. There was 
 no power in us for entering these light-sown re- 
 gions; our natural home was elsewhere. Only 
 by a creative act of God were we able to enter 
 upon their sacred precincts. 
 
 You see the idea is not that we had the power to 
 enter but not the fitness to abide there; it is 
 that we had no power to enter — the light striking 
 us in the face drove us away because we were of 
 the darkness and incapable of the light. It was 
 God and God alone who made us able to receive 
 a portion in the inheritance of the saints in light; 
 He alone who delivered us from the authority (we 
 were under its authority) of darkness and trans- 
 lated us into the kingdom of the Son of His love. 
 And we will utterly fail to catch Paul's real mean- 
 ing unless we feel profoundly how entirely he as- 
 
THE HERITAGE OF THE SAINTS IN LIGHT 349 
 
 cribes the totality of the transaction by which we 
 are vested with a heritage among the saints "in 
 the light" to God and to God alone. It is to God 
 and not to ourselves — not to our fellow-men, nor 
 yet to angels, — to God and to God alone, that we 
 owe it that our part is with the saints in the light. 
 It is He that has qualified, capacitated, compe- 
 tentized, suflScientized us, for our part in the lot of 
 the saints. 
 
 And it is just on this basis that He calls on us 
 to spend our lives in one long thanksgiving to 
 God, as the one who has enabled us for our share < 
 in the heritage of the saints in the light. Thanks- 
 giving presupposes indebtedness. The nature of 
 the indebtedness is already enshrined in the one 
 word "who made us competent," but it is richly 
 developed in the subsequent verses. We were 
 held under the power of darkness; we have been 
 delivered from it and translated into the Kingdom 
 of the Son of God's love. We were under the 
 curse of sin; we have received in Him redemp- 
 tion, even the forgiveness of sins. In this great 
 rescue we have been made suflScient for both 
 things. There is obviously an objective and a 
 subjective side to it; an ideal and an actual pos- 
 session involved. But the upshot of it all is — 
 that God has taken us out of darkness with all 
 that that involves and placed us in the light, with 
 all that that involves. And as children of the light 
 we must rejoice in the light — which light God is. 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE 
 
 Col. 3:1-4, especially 3: — "Your life is hid with Christ in God." 
 
 We cannot hope to empty so great a text as this 
 into our minds and hearts in the course of a quar- 
 ter of an hour's study of it. It is a great fountain 
 filled with refreshment. But we may like to sip 
 a little of its strengthening waters. To do so, let 
 us in a very simple way just glance at its contents. 
 
 And first we observe that the text assumes a 
 fact. Its opening words, "If then ye were raised 
 together with Christ" posit a fact beneath all 
 that it has further to say. And the resurrection 
 here adverted to implies a previous death; and 
 looking back to the preceding chapter, we find it 
 also mentioned. Here, then, are the two wings 
 of the fact assumed: "If ye died with Christ from 
 the rudiments of the world"; "If then ye were 
 raised together with Christ." At the bottom of 
 all, then, lies this great fact, the fundamental fact 
 of the Christian religion: that Christ died and 
 rose again. On this great fundamental fact 
 everything in our present passage is based. But 
 not upon it as a bare fact, without further sig- 
 nificance than that it happened. For it is no 
 more a fact that Christ died than that He died 
 for our sins; and no more a fact that He rose 
 again than that He rose again for our justification. 
 
 350 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE 351 
 
 This then is the fact assumed in our text, that 
 Christ died for our trespasses and was raised again 
 for our justification. But if He died for our sins, 
 He died to take them away, and His death did take 
 them away. All those for whose sins Christ died, 
 died then with Him in the death which He ac- 
 complished on the cross; died with Him to sin, 
 that they might no longer be sinners. And if He 
 was raised again for our justification. He rose 
 again to usher us into acceptance with God and 
 into all that is involved in that great word, life, 
 and His resurrection has brought us into God's 
 favour and into life indeed. All those for whom 
 He rose again, rose again with Him, therefore; 
 rose again with Him to life that they might live 
 again to God. And here now is the great fact in 
 its fullness which Paul assumes and lays at the 
 base of our present passage: the great fact of the 
 participation of Christians in Christ's death and 
 rising again. 
 
 If we be Christians at all, we are such only in 
 virtue of the fact that when He died. He died for 
 us, and we, therefore, died as sinners with His 
 death ; and that when He rose again for our just- 
 ification, we rose again into newness of life with 
 Him, — the life that we now live is a new life, from 
 a new spring, even the Spirit of Christ which He 
 as the risen Lord has sent down to us. This is the 
 great fact of participation in the saving work of 
 Christ, with all that it involves. And what we 
 
352 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 have here is an assertion that such a participation 
 involves seizing of us bodily and lifting us to 
 another and higher plane. We were sinners, and 
 lived as sinners; we lived an earthly life, in the 
 lowest sense of that word. But now we have died 
 with Christ as sinners and can live no more as 
 sinners; we have been raised together with Him 
 and can live only on the plane of this new life, 
 which is not in sin, not "in the earth," but in 
 heaven. In a high and true sense, because we 
 have died to sin and been raised to holiness, we 
 have already passed out of earth to heaven. 
 Heaven is already the sphere of our life; our 
 "citizenship is in heaven" — we are citizens of the 
 Kingdom of Heaven, and have the life appropriate 
 thereto to live. 
 
 And now we observe, secondly, that on this 
 fact the Apostle founds an exhortation. "If 
 then ye were raised together with Christ, seek 
 the things that are above." The exhortation is 
 simply to an actual life consonant with our change 
 of state. If we have participated in Christ's 
 death for sin and rising again for justification; 
 so that with Him we died to sin and rose again 
 unto holiness; live accordingly. If we have thus 
 died as sinners, as earth born, and earth confined 
 crawlers on this low plane, and been raised to this 
 higher plane, even a heavenly one, of living — 
 show in walk and conversation that the change 
 has been a real one. It is an exhortation to us to 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE 353 
 
 be in life real citizens of the heavenly kingdom to 
 which we have been transferred ; to do the duties 
 and enter into the responsibilities of our new cit- 
 izenship. It is just as we might say to some 
 newly enfranchised immigrant: You have left 
 that country of darkness in which you were bred, 
 where no liberty of action or of worship existed; 
 you have been received into our free America, and 
 have been clothed with the rights and duties of 
 citizenship in this great Republic; now live worth- 
 ily of your new citizenship; be now in life and 
 thought no longer a serf but a freeman. So, Paul 
 says in effect, you have passed out of the realm of 
 sin and death, out of the merely earthly sphere; 
 you have been made a citizen of the heavenly 
 kingdom; do the deeds and live the life conform- 
 able to your great change. 
 
 And we observe, again, that the Apostle de- 
 scribes to us the nature of this heavenly life to 
 which we are committed, by passing out of the 
 earthly into the heavenly sphere through partici- 
 pation in the death and rising again of Christ. 
 " Seek the things that are above." " Set your mind 
 on the things that are above, not on the things 
 that are upon the earth." What is meant by 
 seeking the heavenly things rather than the 
 earthly? We may, at least, say that the following 
 is meant. 
 
 To seek the things that are above, in distinc- 
 tion from those that are upon the earth, means 
 
354 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 primarily to seek what is good and refuse what is 
 evil. It is an exhortation to a moral life as op- 
 posed to an immoral one. It is an exhortation to 
 a life of purity and holiness as opposed to a life of 
 sin. This at least is made evident to us by the 
 immediately succeeding context. For just after 
 giving the exhortation to seek the "things that 
 are above and not the things that are upon the 
 earth," the Apostle explains what the things that 
 are upon the earth are which we are to refuse. 
 "Mortify, therefore," he adds, at once, "your 
 members that are upon the earth; fornication, 
 uncleanness, passion, evil desire and covetous- 
 ness." And he proceeds also to explain what the 
 heavenly things are which we are to seek: "Put 
 on, therefore, as God's elect, holy and beloved, a 
 heart of compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, 
 long-suffering" and the like. These, then, are 
 "the things that are above" which we are to seek: 
 and those "the things that are upon the earth" 
 that we are to keep ourselves free from, and, when 
 they are already in us as members, which we are 
 "to mortify," to "slay." But this is as much as 
 to say that the heavenly life which, as those who 
 have shared in Christ's death and resurrection, we 
 are to live, is, first of all, a moral life, or better, 
 a holy life, a life of purity and virtue, as distin- 
 guished from a life of sin. And this, indeed, fol- 
 lows from its very conception, for our death with 
 Christ was a death to sin and our rising with Him 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE 355 
 
 was a rising out of sin, — which is the death of the 
 soul, — to a new life, spiritual life, which in its 
 very idea is holiness. Before all else, this, then, 
 is to seek the things that are above: to put aside 
 the sin that so easily besets us and to live holily 
 as becomes saints. 
 
 But this fundamental conception — and all in- 
 clusive conception, too, when rightly under- 
 stood — hardly exhausts, when only thus broadly 
 stated, the matter as it lies in the Apostle's mind 
 here. On closer observation we see that the Apos- 
 tle has also a special application of it in mind, 
 and we need to note it. Let us say, then, that the 
 seeking of the things that are above, means here 
 also this : the seeking of the things that are really 
 good in contradistinction to those that are ap- 
 parently good. For if the subsequent context is 
 the professed explanation of the fundamental 
 meaning of the exhortation, the preceding con- 
 text, furnishing the occasion of the special form 
 which the exhortation takes, is the explanation of 
 this. "If, therefore, ye were raised together with 
 Christ." Now, in this preceding context, the 
 Apostle was attemptuig to save his readers from a 
 grave heresy which had shown itself in their region. 
 The characteristic of this heresy was that, along 
 with certain speculative errors, a specific moral 
 teaching was offered: a moral teaching of ap- 
 parently high and lofty nature. The Apostle does 
 not deny that the principles thus pressed upon his 
 
356 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 converts as a rule of life had the appearance of 
 goodness, and of wisdom: "which things have a 
 show of wisdom in severity to the body." He 
 does not deny that there were real evils to be met. 
 There were gross indulgences of the flesh to which 
 men were prone: intemperance, impurity and all 
 the catalogue of such evils. How apparently 
 wise and right to preach: Handle not, nor taste, 
 nor touch! Should Christian men fail to join in 
 this great cyclone of moral reform? If they did, 
 were they not open to the charge of indifference to 
 morality itself — the very mark and sign of their 
 profession of having died to sin and been raised 
 again to righteousness .^^ 
 
 Paul's deliberate judgment is that all such pre- 
 cepts are precepts of men; that their tendency is 
 to enslave men again under the yoke of legalism — 
 men who had become free in Christ. And his 
 deliberate exhortation is, to keep to the path of 
 seeking the really good instead of these apparent 
 goods. His exhortation becomes thus an exhor- 
 tation to seek what we call the religious, rather 
 than the moral way to reform man and the world. 
 When men come saying. Touch not, taste not, 
 handle not, Paul says they are offering you an 
 inoperative mode of saving the world from sin; 
 they are offering you law which only condemns, 
 not grace in which alone is saving power. He 
 says, reject such human commandments, and be 
 content to hold fast to the Head — that Christ who 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE 357 
 
 has created all these things, whose they are, and 
 who has given them to you for use, though, of 
 course, not for abuse. He says, you are living 
 on a higher plane than this earthly one of pre- 
 cepts and prohibitions; see that you live on this 
 higher plane; seek the real good even if you are 
 evil-spoken of, because you refuse a path of ap- 
 parent good, one which has a show of wisdom, 
 indeed, but is no real "specific" against the evils 
 of the flesh. 
 
 But there is yet another special aspect of the 
 exhortation, growing immediately out of these 
 facts, which we must notice. Just because the 
 seeking of the really good as over against the ap- 
 parent good will necessarily bring misunder- 
 standing, and even misrepresentation (for they 
 that called the Master Beelzebub are not likely to 
 mince matters in speaking of his followers), Paul 
 represents the seeking of the thmgs above, as a 
 seeking of the hidden good, as distinguished from 
 the open, publicly recognized good. This life of 
 ours is a hidden life; hid with Christ in God. God, 
 not the world, is the sphere in which it is passed. 
 Christ is it itself. And Christ is now with God. 
 The Christian in seeking heavenly things must 
 not seek to be known of the world to be good, but 
 only to be seen of God. It belongs to the Phar- 
 isee, not to the Christian, to do good to be seen 
 of men. It is a hidden life he leads ; and he must 
 be content to be misunderstood and misrepre- 
 
358 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 sented, even persecuted for righteousness' sake; 
 for him it is not appearances, or even appearance 
 that he seeks; it is only the good. Not that his 
 good shall always be unrecognized. There comes 
 a day of manifestation; "When Christ is mani- 
 fested, then shall ye be manifested with him, in 
 glory." For that day of the revelation of all, he 
 can afford to and he must wait. 
 
 But there is more in this hidden life than this. 
 Here is an intimation of the quiet of the Christian 
 life; here is also an intimation of its perfection. 
 It is better than men know or even dream. The 
 Christian is to refuse men's commands of "Touch 
 not, taste not, handle not," not because he is in- 
 different to morality, but because he has a better 
 morality and a better way. He is not to fall be- 
 hind human morality; he is to transcend it. He 
 seeks not law but grace; he seeks not to make the 
 outside of the platter clean — how diligently men 
 are willing to work at that! — but to make the 
 heart clean. His remedy for the world's ills, as 
 for his own, is — a life hid with Christ in God. He 
 points to Christ who can make pure the heart, 
 from which are the issues of life, and, in His name 
 and as His servant, he refuses all the outward in- 
 operative nostrums which are offered as specifics 
 for the deep disease of humanity; because they 
 have no help or profit in them. He refuses the 
 bad medicine only in favour of the good. 
 
 And now let us pass on to observe that the 
 
THE HIDDEN LIFE 359 
 
 Apostle adduces motives for this heavenly walk. 
 And the motives he presents are three, drawn 
 from the past, the present and the future. 
 
 There is a motive drawn from the past. "If 
 then ye were raised with Christ." The motive 
 presented is our gratitude to our Lord for the great 
 work He has done for and in us. That we have 
 been made partakers of so great benefits is reason 
 enough for striving to walk worthily of Him. 
 This motive is the same as, "The love of Christ 
 constraineth us." 
 
 There is a motive drawn from the present. "For 
 your Hfe is hid with Christ in God." Notice here 
 that Christ is described as, not the humiliated 
 Christ, but the exalted Christ— "He is seated on 
 the right hand of God." The motive presented 
 is that as we all are one with Him, who is exalted 
 to the right hand of God, we are to walk worthily 
 of our high dignity. Noblesse oblige. If we are 
 co-regnant with Christ, how should a king in this 
 world walk? As grovelling in its dust and dirt? 
 As subject to man's petty precepts? No! As 
 superior to all the prescriptions of men and as 
 above all the temptations to evil, because one with 
 Christ and possessing a life hid with Him in 
 God. 
 
 There is a motive drawn from the future. 
 " When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, 
 then shall we also with him be manifested in 
 glory." The vindication, even before men, will 
 
360 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 come. We shall not always be misunderstood; 
 we shall have the reward. And what a reward! 
 Co-manifestation with Christ in glory! Do not 
 our hearts spring within us with hope and 
 
 joy! 
 
ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION 
 
 1 Thess. 5:23-24:— "And the God of peace himself sanctify 
 you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved 
 entire without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 Faithful is he that calleth you, who will also do it." 
 
 There is no feature of Christianity more 
 strongly emphasized by those to whom its estab- 
 lishment in the world was committed, than the 
 breadth and depth of its ethical demands. The 
 "salvation" which was promised in the "Gospel" 
 or "Glad Tidings" which constituted its procla- 
 mation, was just salvation from sin and unto holi- 
 ness. In other words, it was a moral revolution 
 of the most thoroughgoing and radical kind. 
 " Sanctification " is the Biblical word for this moral 
 revolution, and in " sanctification " the very es- 
 sence of salvation is made to consist. "This is 
 the will of God" for you, says the Apostle to his 
 readers in this very epistle, "even your sanctifi- 
 cation." A great part of the epistle is given, ac- 
 cordingly, to commending the new converts for 
 the progress they had already made in this sanc- 
 tification, and to urging them onward in the same 
 pathway. 
 
 No moral attainment is too great to be pressed 
 on them as their duty, no moral duty is too min- 
 ute to be demanded of them as essential to their 
 
 361 
 
362 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Christian walk. The standard the Apostle nas 
 before him, and consistently applies to his readers, 
 falls in nothing short of absolute perfection, a per- 
 fection which embraces in its all-inclusive sweep 
 the infinitely httle and the infinitely great alike. 
 In the verses immediately preceding our text the 
 Apostle had been engaged, as is his wont in all his 
 epistles, in enumerating a number of details of 
 conduct which he wished, especially, to emphasize 
 to his readers. They are not chosen at hap- 
 hazard, but are just the items of conduct which the 
 particular readers with whom he is at the moment 
 engaged required most to have urged upon their 
 attention. But the Apostle would not have his 
 readers suppose that their whole duty was summed 
 up in the items he enumerates. As he draws to 
 the close of his exhortations he therefore breaks 
 off in the enumeration and adjoins one great com- 
 prehensive prayer for their entire perfection: 
 "But may the God of peace Himself sanctify you 
 wholly: and may your spirit and soul and body 
 be preserved perfect without failure, at the com- 
 ing of our Lord Jesus Christ. Faithful is He that 
 calleth you who also will do it." 
 
 Here we have obviously a classical passage — 
 possibly the classical passage — ^for "entire sanc- 
 tification"; and it may repay us in the perennial 
 interest which attends the discussion of the theme 
 of "entire sanctification " to look at it somewhat 
 closely, as such. 
 
ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION 363 
 
 First of all, let us settle it clearly in mind that it 
 is of "entire sanctification " that the passage 
 treats. There can certainly be no doubt of it, if 
 we will only give the language of the passage a fair 
 hearing. It is so emphasized, indeed, and with 
 such an accumulation of phraseology that it be- 
 comes almost embarrassing. The entirety, the 
 completeness, the perfection of the sanctification, 
 of which it speaks is, in fact, the great burden of 
 the passage. In contrast with the details with 
 which the Apostle had just been dealing, and 
 which — just because they were details — could 
 touch the periphery only of a perfect life, and that 
 only at this or that point of the circumference, he 
 here adverts to the complete sanctification that 
 not merely touches but fills not the periphery only 
 but the entire circle of the Christian — nay, of the 
 human — ^life. It is a sanctification that is abso- 
 lutely complete and that embraces the perfection 
 of every member of the human constitution, that 
 the Apostle here deals with. 
 
 Observe the emphatic repetition of the idea of 
 completeness. May the "God of Peace" — and 
 this very designation of God, doubtless, has its 
 reference to the completeness of the sanctification, 
 peace being the opposite of all division, distrac- 
 tion, hesitation and dubitation, — may the "God 
 of Peace," the Apostle prays, "sanctify you com- 
 pletely" — so as that ye may be perfect and want- 
 ing nothing that enters into the perfection of your 
 
364 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 correspondence to the ends for which you were 
 created. And not content with this, he adds 
 explanatorily, "And may your spirit and your 
 soul and your body be preserved entire, perfect," 
 and not that merely, but "blamelessly entire, per- 
 fect"; "blamelessly" — that is, in a manner which 
 is incapable of being accused of not coming up to 
 its idea. 
 
 Observe further the distribution of the person- 
 ality which is to be perfected into its component 
 parts, of each of which, in turn, perfection is de- 
 siderated. Not only are we to be sanctified 
 wholly, but every part of us — our spirit, our soul, 
 our body itself — ^is to be kept blamelessly perfect. 
 The Apostle is not content, in other words, with 
 the general, but descends into the specific ele- 
 ments of our being. And for each of these ele- 
 ments in turn he seeks a "blameless perfection," 
 that the sum of them all — the "we" at large — 
 may be, indeed, complete and entire, wanting 
 nothing. 
 
 Now, no doubt, this enumeration of parts is in 
 a sense rhetorical and not scientific. The Apostle 
 is accumulating terms to convey the great idea of 
 completeness more pungently to us — something 
 as our Lord did when He told us we must love the 
 Lord our God with all our heart and soul and mind 
 and strength. But even so he makes a certain 
 distinction between the three elements he enu- 
 merates, by the accumulation of which he expresses 
 
ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION 365 
 
 completeness most emphatically. His meaning is 
 that there is no department of our being into which 
 he would not have this perfection penetrate, 
 where he would not have it reign, and through 
 which he would not have it operate to the per- 
 fecting of the whole. 
 
 By this double mode of accumulation, we per- 
 ceive, the Apostle throws an astonishing em- 
 phasis on the perfection which he desires for his 
 readers. Here we may say is "Perfectionism" 
 raised to its highest power, a blameless perfection, 
 a perfection admitting of no failure to attain its 
 end, in every department of our being alike, unit- 
 ing to form a perfection of the whole, a complete 
 attainment of our idea in the whole man. There 
 is certainly no doctrine of "entire sanctification " 
 that has been invented in these later days which 
 can compare with Paul's doctrine in height or 
 depth or length or breadth. His "perfectionism" 
 is assuredly the very apotheosis of perfectionism. 
 The perfection proposed is a real perfection (which 
 is not always true of recent teachings on this sub- 
 ject) and the man who attains it is a perfect man 
 — every part of his being receiving its appropriate 
 perfection (and this is seldom or never true of 
 recent teachings). A perfect perfection for a 
 perfect man — an entire sanctification for the en- 
 tire man — surely here is a perfection worth long- 
 ing for. 
 
 Let us observe next that Paul does not speak 
 
866 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 of this perfecting of the entire man as if it were a 
 mere ideal, unattainable, and to be looked up to 
 only as the for ever beckoning standard hanging 
 hopelessly above us. He treats it as distinctly 
 attainable. He seriously prays God to grant it 
 to his readers; and that as the end of his exhor- 
 tation to them to study moral perfection as the 
 aim of their endeavours. 
 
 He does not, indeed, represent it as attainable 
 by and through human effort alone, as if man in 
 his own strength could reach and touch this his 
 true ultimate goal of endeavour. Rather he em- 
 phatically represents it as the gift of God alone. 
 After exhorting men to their best endeavours, he 
 turns suddenly from man to God and besieges 
 Him with prayer. Strive, he says, strive always, 
 do this thing and do that — and so work out this, 
 your ethical salvation. ''But may God Himself — 
 the God of peace Himself" — the stress is on the 
 "Himself." It is in God, in God alone, the God 
 of peace alone, that hope can be placed for such 
 high attainments. 
 
 But cannot hope be placed in God for this at- 
 tainment? The whole gist of Paul's prayer — 
 nay, the whole drift of his discourse — would be 
 stultified, were it not so. Paul's prayer, and the 
 way in which he introduces his prayer, all com- 
 bine to make it certain that he is not mocking us 
 here with an illusory hope but is placing soberly 
 before us an attainable goal. This perfect per- 
 
ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION 367 
 
 fection is then, necessarily, according to Paul, 
 attainable for man. God can and will give it to 
 His children. 
 
 Even more must be said. Paul not only prays 
 seriously for it for his readers, and this implies 
 that it may, nay, will be given them; he defi- 
 nitely promises it to them, and bases this, his 
 definite promise, on no less firm a foundation than 
 the faithfulness of God. May God sanctify you 
 wholly, he says, and the rest of it. But he does 
 not stop there. He follows the prayer with the 
 promise: "Faithful is He that calleth you," and 
 he adds, " who also will do it." Thus Paul pledges 
 the faithfulness of God to the completion of his 
 readers' perfection. And we must not lose the 
 force and pointedness with which he does this by 
 failing to pay attention to the sharp, proverbial 
 character of this pledging clause. It has all the 
 quality of a maxim; and the gist of the maxim 
 is that God, this God of whom Paul was praying 
 our perfection, is not a caller only, but also a per- 
 former. He has called us into the Christian life. 
 This Christian life into which He has called us is 
 in principle a life of moral perfection. And this 
 God that calls is not a God that calls merely — He 
 is a God that also accomplishes. His very calling 
 of us into this life of new morality is a pledge, then, 
 that He will perfect the good work in us which He 
 has begun. "Faithful is He that calleth you: 
 who also is one that shall do." 
 
368 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 The accomplishment of this our perfection then 
 does not hang on our weak endeavours. It does 
 not hang even on Paul's strong prayer. It hangs 
 only on God's almighty and unfailing faithfulness. 
 If God is faithful, He who not only calls but does — 
 then, we cannot fail of perfection. Here you see 
 is not only perfection carried to its highest power, 
 but the certainty of attaining this perfection car- 
 ried also to its highest power. Not only may a 
 Christian man be perfect — absolutely perfect in 
 all departments of his being — but he certainly and 
 unfailingly shall be perfect. So certain as it is 
 that God has called him "not for uncleanness but 
 in sanctification " as the very sphere in which his 
 life as a Christian must be passed, so certain is it 
 that the God who is not merely a caller but a 
 doer will perfect him in this sanctification. Such 
 is the teaching of the text. And assuredly it goes 
 in this, far, far beyond all modern teaching as to 
 entire sanctification that ever has been heard of 
 among men. 
 
 And now, let us observe, thirdly, the period to 
 which the Apostle assigns the accomplishment of 
 this great hope. It is at once evident that he is 
 not dealing with this perfection as a thing already 
 in the possession of his readers. It is not a mat- 
 ter of congratulation to them — as some Christian 
 graces were, for the presence of which in their 
 hearts he thanks God, — but a matter of prayer to 
 God for them. It is a thing not yet in possession 
 
ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION 369 
 
 but in petition. It is yet to come to them. He 
 does not permit us to suppose, then, that the 
 Thessalonians had already attained — or should 
 already have attained — it. He thanks God, in- 
 deed, for their rescue from the state in which they 
 were by nature. He thanks God for their great 
 attainments in Christian living. But he does not 
 suggest they had already reached the goal. On 
 the contrary, a great part of the letter is taken up 
 with exhortation to Christian duties not yet over- 
 taken, graces of Christian living still to be culti- 
 vated. His readers are treated distinctly and 
 emphatically as viatores, not yet as comprehen- 
 sores. Not in and of them, but in and of God, is 
 the perfection which he prays for. What we see 
 is not hoped for, what we pray for is not already 
 attained. Moreover the very pledge he gives of 
 the attainment of this perfection bears in it an 
 implication that it is yet a matter of hope, not of 
 possession. He pledges the faithfulness of God, 
 the Caller. Accordingly, the perfection longed 
 for and promised is not given in the call itself; it 
 is not the invariable possession of the Christian 
 soul. He that is called looks yet for it; it is 
 sought still; and at the hands of the Caller whose 
 faithfulness assures the performance. The per- 
 formance, therefore, still lags. 
 
 It is clear, therefore, that Paul, though prom- 
 ising this perfection as the certain heritage of 
 every Christian man, presents it as a matter of 
 
370 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 hope, not yet seen ; not as a matter of experience, 
 already enjoyed. That it belongs to us as Chris- 
 tians we can be assured only by the faithfulness of 
 God, the Performer as well as the Caller. Can we 
 learn from Paul when we can hope for it? As- 
 suredly, he has not left us in ignorance here. He 
 openly declares, indeed, the term of our imper- 
 fection — the point of entrance into our perfection. 
 "May the God of peace," he prays, "sanctify 
 you wholly and may there be preserved blame- 
 lessly perfect your spirit and soul and body, at the 
 coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. "^^ You see it is 
 on the second advent of Christ — and that is the 
 end of the world, and the judgment day — that 
 the Apostle has his eyes set. There is the point 
 of time to which he refers the completeness of our 
 perfecting. 
 
 And if you will stop and consider a moment, you 
 will perceive that it must be so, for the entire per- 
 fecting, at least, of which the Apostle speaks. 
 For you will bear in mind that the perfecting in- 
 cludes the perfecting of the body also. It is the 
 perfecting of the whole man that he prays for, and 
 this expressly includes the body as well as the soul 
 and spirit. Now the perfected body is given to 
 man only at the resurrection, at the last day, which 
 is the day of the second coming of Christ. Until 
 then the body is mouldering in the grave. Whether 
 spiritual perfection may be attained before then, 
 he does not in this passage say. But the analogy 
 
ENTIRE SANCTIFICATION 371 
 
 of the body will apparently go so far as this, at 
 all events — it raises a suspicion that the perfect- 
 ing of the soul and spirit also will be gradual, the 
 result of a process, and will be completed only in a 
 crisis, a cataclysmic moment, when the Spirit of 
 God produces in them the fitness to live with God. 
 This suspicion is entirely borne out by Paul's 
 dealing with the whole matter of sanctification in 
 this context, and in this whole epistle: as a mat- 
 ter of effort, long-continued and strenuous, build- 
 ing up slowly the structure to the end. There is 
 no promise of its completion in this life; there is 
 no hint that it may be completed in this life. 
 There is only everywhere strong exhortations to 
 ceaseless effort; and strong encouragements by 
 promises of its completion in the end — against 
 "that day." "That day" of judgment, that is, 
 when God shall take account of all men and of all 
 that is in man. 
 
 What is thus fairly implied here is openly 
 taught elsewhere. Men here are not compre- 
 hensores but viatores; we are fighting the good 
 fight; we are running the race. The prize is yon- 
 der. And not until the body of this death is laid 
 aside shall the soul be fitted to enter naked into 
 the presence of its Lord, there expecting until the 
 body shall be restored to it — ^no longer a body 
 of death but of glory. Meanwhile the gradual 
 process of sanctification goes on in soul and body 
 — until the crisis comes when the "Spiritus Crea- 
 
372 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 tor" shall powerfully intervene with the final acts 
 of renewal. 
 
 Certainly the gradualness of this process ought 
 not to disturb us. It may be inexplicable to us 
 that the Almighty God acts by way of process. 
 But that is revealed to us as His chosen mode of 
 operation in every sphere of His work, and should 
 not surprise us here. He could, no doubt, make 
 the soul perfect in a moment, in the twinkling of 
 an eye; just as He could give us each a perfect 
 body at the very instant of our believing. He 
 does not. The removal of the stains and effects 
 of sin — in an evil heart and in a sick and dying 
 body — is accomplished in a slow process. We all 
 grow sick and die — though Jesus has taken on His 
 broad shoulders (among the other penalties of 
 sin) all our sicknesses and death itself. And we 
 still struggle w^ith the remainders of indwelling 
 sin; though Jesus has bought for us the sancti- 
 fying operations of the Spirit. To us it is a weary 
 process. But it is God's way. And He does all 
 things well. And the weariness of the struggle is 
 illuminated by hope. After a while! — we may 
 say; after a while! Or as Paul puts it: Faithful 
 is He that calls us — who also will do it. He will 
 do it! And so, after a while, our spirit, and soul 
 and body shall be made blamelessly perfect, all 
 to be so presented before our Lord, at that Day. 
 Let us praise the Lord for the glorious prospect! 
 
THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS 
 
 I Tim. 3:16: — "And without controversy great is the mystery 
 of godliness. " 
 
 "Confessedly great," says Paul, "is the mys- 
 tery of piety." This does not mean that piety is 
 exceedingly "mysterious." There is no "mys- 
 tery" in piety as such. As Paul means it here it 
 rests simply, objectively on the great fact, sub- 
 jectively on the hearty conviction that God was 
 in Christ reconciling the world with Himself. The 
 word "mystery," in the usage of Paul, does not 
 imply inherent incomprehensibility, but only 
 actual inaccessibility to the natural inquisition of 
 men. Whatever is known by revelation rather 
 than by unaided reason, is, in his usage, a "mys- 
 tery"; and the employment of the word by no 
 means implies that the revelation has not already 
 taken place and the hidden truth been made fully 
 known, but rather just the contrary. The "mys- 
 tery of piety" is thus just "the opened secret of 
 piety." And what Paul affirms of it is that this 
 "opened secret of piety" is confessedly of the 
 highest importance. "Confessedly great" he 
 says, and he throws these words forward with 
 sharp emphasis, "of admittedly the highest im- 
 portance," "is the mystery of piety." 
 
 What Paul is doing in this clause, then, is sim- 
 373 
 
374 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 ply impressing on Timothy's mind as deeply as 
 possible a sense of the supreme value of the Gospel, 
 which he calls a "mystery" only because it is a 
 matter of revelation, but without the faintest 
 implication that it is difficult to grasp when once 
 made known, or that it includes in it any elements 
 of the inscrutable or incomprehensible. Chris- 
 tianity, like other religions, had its mysteries, 
 its sacred truths, made known to its initiates; 
 and these mysteries, as they constituted its very 
 essence, were to every Christian of the most 
 supreme importance — to be carefully guarded, 
 preserved intact, and kept whole and entire, pure 
 and unadulterated, at every hazard. Confessedly 
 great, says the Apostle here with marked emphasis, 
 admittedly of supreme importance, is the mys- 
 tery, the opened secret of Christian piety, the 
 Gospel. 
 
 It is especially worth our while to observe two 
 things here. First, preliminarily, why the Apos- 
 tle is so strenuous in insisting here on the impor- 
 tance of the opened secret of piety, the value and 
 significance of the Gospel. And, secondly, and 
 more at large, because it is this that constitutes 
 the burden of the text, what the Apostle con- 
 ceived to be this " opened secret of piety," that is 
 to say, what he conceived to be the contents of 
 the Gospel which he pronounces here to have 
 such confessed importance. 
 
 We need not delay long on the preliminary 
 
THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS 375 
 
 point. A glance at the context is enough to in- 
 form us that the Apostle insists on the greatness 
 of the Gospel here in order to impress Timothy 
 with the importance of attending to the direc- 
 tions he had been giving him as to the proper 
 ordering of the Church. Somewhat minute pre- 
 scriptions had been laid down especially as to the 
 conduct of public worship and as to the organiza- 
 tion of the Church. In particular the officers of 
 the Church had been enumerated, and the quali- 
 fications for their offices carefully described. At 
 the close of these directions, now, the Apostle 
 adds these pointed words: "I am writing these 
 things to you, though I hope to come to you very 
 soon: but if I am delayed that you may know 
 what sort of behaviour is incumbent in God's 
 house — seeing that it is the Church of the Living 
 God, the pillar and buttress of the truth; and 
 confessedly great is the mystery of piety. ..." 
 You see, his appeal to the confessed greatness of 
 the truth, for the support and propagation of 
 which in the world the Church exists, is intended 
 to impress Timothy with a sense of the importance 
 of the proper ordering and right equipment of the 
 Church for this, its high function. 
 
 It is of the more importance that we should note 
 this, that there is a disposition abroad to treat all 
 matters of the ordering of public worship and even 
 of the organization of the Church as of little im- 
 portance. We even hear it said about us with 
 
376 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 wearisome iteration that the New Testament has 
 no rules to give, no specific laws to lay down, in 
 such matters. Matters of church government and 
 modes of worship, we are told, are merely external 
 things, of no sort of significance; and the Church 
 has been left free to find its own best modes of 
 organization and worship, varying, doubtless, in 
 the passage of time and in the Church's own pas- 
 sage from people to people of diverse characters 
 and predilections. No countenance is lent to 
 such sentiments by the passage before us; or, 
 indeed, by these Pastoral Epistles, the very place 
 of which in the Canon is a standing rebuke to 
 them; or, in fine, by anything in the New Testa- 
 ment. 
 
 On the contrary, you will observe, Paul's point 
 of view is precisely the opposite one. He takes 
 his start from the inestimable importance of the 
 Gospel. Thence he argues to the importance of 
 the Church which has been established in the 
 world, so to speak, as the organ of the Gospel — the 
 pillar and buttress on which its purity and its 
 completeness rest. Thence again he argues to 
 the proper organization and ordering of the Church 
 that it may properly perform its high functions. 
 And, accordingly, he gives minute prescriptions 
 for the proper organization and ordering of the 
 Church — prescribing the offices that it should 
 have and the proper men for these offices, and 
 descending even into the details of the public ser- 
 
THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS 377 
 
 vices. His position, compressed into a nutshell, is 
 simply this : the function of the Church as guard- 
 ian of the truth, that glorious truth which is the 
 Gospel, is so high and important that it cannot be 
 left to accident or to human caprice how this 
 Church should be organized and its work ordered. 
 Accordingly, he, the inspired Apostle — "an Apostle 
 of Christ Jesus according to the commandment of 
 God our Saviour and Christ, our Hope" — has 
 prescribed in great detail, touching both organi- 
 zation and order, how it is necessary that men 
 should conduct themselves in the household of 
 God — which is nothing other than the Church of 
 the Living God, the pillar and ground of the 
 truth. In other words, it is God's Church, not 
 man's, and God has created and now sustains it 
 for a function; and He has not neglected to order 
 it for the best performance of this function. 
 
 To imagine that it is of little importance how 
 the Church shall be organized and ordered, then, 
 is manifestly to contradict the Apostle. To con- 
 tend that no organization is prescribed for it is 
 to deny the total validity of the minute directions 
 laid down in these epistles. Nay, this whole point 
 of view is as irrational as it is unbiblical. One 
 might as well say that it makes no difference how 
 a machine is put together — ^how, for example, a 
 typewriter is disposed in its several parts, — be- 
 cause, forsooth, the typewriter does not exist for 
 itself, but for the manuscript which is produced by 
 
378 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 or rather through it. Of course the Church does 
 not exist for itself — that is, for the beauty of its 
 organization, the symmetry of its parts, the ma- 
 jesty of its services; it exists for its "product" and 
 for the "truth" which has been committed to it 
 and of which it is the support and stay in the 
 world. But just on that account, not less but 
 more, is it necessary that it be properly organ- 
 ized and equipped and administered — that it may 
 function properly. Beware how you tamper with 
 any machine, lest you mar or destroy its product; 
 beware how you tamper with or are indifiFerent to 
 the Divine organization and ordering of the 
 Church, lest you thereby mar its efficiency or de- 
 stroy its power, as the pillar and ground of the 
 truth. Surely you can trust God to know how it is 
 best to organize His Church so that it may per- 
 form its functions in the world. And surely you 
 must assert that His ordering of the Church, which 
 is His, is necessary if not for the "esse," certainly 
 for the "bene esse" of the Church. 
 
 But our main attention to-day must be given 
 to the Apostle's elaboration of the contents of this 
 "truth," or this "mystery of piety," to support 
 and buttress which he tells us the Church has been 
 established in the world. He moves Timothy to 
 zeal in properly ordering the church under his 
 care, by the declaration that "the opened secret 
 of piety," to support and buttress which the 
 Church exists, is confessedly of the utmost im- 
 
THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS 379 
 
 portance. And then he deepens and vitalizes 
 the impression which this declaration is calculated 
 to make by abruptly enumerating the chief items 
 which enter into this "mystery of piety" — this 
 "truth" for which the Church exists. 
 
 This enumeration thus embodies Paul's con- 
 ception of the essence of the Gospel, and takes its 
 place among the numerous brief summaries of the 
 essence of the Gospel which stud the pages of his 
 epistles. It differs from most of them, however, 
 in this circumstance — that it is not couched in 
 language of his own, but the Apostle has availed 
 himself here, as so often in the Pastoral Epistles, 
 of a form of statement current in the churches, 
 which would appeal to Timothy's eye and heart, 
 therefore, with all the force of customary and 
 well-loved words, in which he and the congrega- 
 tion had been wont to express their apprehension 
 of the truth most precious to their hearts. Whether 
 the words thus adduced are derived from some 
 current liturgical form, or from a hymn, or merely 
 from some formulary of accustomed speech, we 
 have no means of knowing. We can only be sure 
 that the whole document is not quoted here and, 
 from the balanced, almost mechanical form of its 
 structure, that the original document possessed 
 an elevated and festal character. 
 
 The choice of the Apostle to adduce the essence 
 of the Gospel from such a current formulary, 
 rather than to frame it out of his own heart, nat- 
 
380 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 urally produces a certain abruptness in the words 
 in which it is introduced. A fragment of current 
 speech, torn out of its own context, is here simply 
 juxtaposed by way of apposition to his own declar- 
 ation, that the Gospel is a supremely important 
 thing, and left to exhibit that importance by its 
 contents. "Great," he says, "confessedly great, 
 is the opened secret of piety," this to wit: "Who 
 was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by the 
 Spirit, observed by angels, proclaimed among 
 peoples, believed in by the world, received into 
 glory." There is not a word to tell us who was 
 the subject of all these transactions; that was a 
 part of the original context of the fragment, and 
 here goes without saying; no one of his readers — 
 least of all his primary reader Timothy, who knew 
 as well as Paul the whole document from which the 
 fragment was derived, — would hesitate to supply 
 the subject, Jesus Christ. What Paul does is 
 simply to avail himself of this fervent fragment 
 and set out the contents of the "mystery of piety" 
 by means of its rapid enumeration of the prin- 
 cipal transactions which concerned the redemptive 
 work of Christ — beginning with the incarnation 
 and ending with the ascension. 
 
 Now, of course, this means that to Paul, Christ 
 is the essence of the Gospel. As everywhere else, 
 so here, he sums up the Gospel in Christ; not 
 Christ, of course, merely as a person, but the ac- 
 tive Christ — or in other words, in the great re- 
 
THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS 381 
 
 demptive work of Christ. And it will repay us 
 to observe in some detail how the redemptive 
 work of Christ is presented to us in this somewhat 
 artificially because artistically ordered fragment 
 of old Christian confessional expression. 
 
 We observe, at once, that the fragment con- 
 sists of a series of six passive verbs, rapidly suc- 
 ceeding one another, with the common subject 
 "Jesus Christ," each further defined by a brief 
 predicative qualification; the verb being put em- 
 phatically forward in each case: He was "mani- 
 fested" in the flesh, "vindicated" by the Spirit, 
 "seen" by angels. . . . We observe next that the 
 clauses are so arranged as to fall necessarily into 
 three contrasting pairs; and yet these three pairs 
 are bound together by the contrast in each case 
 being made to turn upon the contrariety of earth 
 and heaven, or of the flesh and the spirit. Thus 
 we have the successive triads on the one hand of 
 the flesh, the peoples, the world; on the other of 
 the Spirit, the angels, glory. There is no strict 
 chronological order of occurrence followed in the 
 enumeration, but the pairs so succeed one an- 
 other as yet to suggest a beginning, a middle and 
 an end; the inception, the prosecution, the con- 
 summation of Christ's work. On the one hand, 
 he was manifested in the flesh and vindicated by 
 the Spirit. Here clearly His earthly life is in 
 mind, with the stress laid perhaps on its inception 
 in the incarnation and its culmination in the res- 
 
382 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 iirrection. Then we have the declaration that He 
 was seen of angels and proclaimed among the 
 nations. Here the process of the saving work is 
 referred to, — chiasmically adduced. Finally, we 
 read. He was believed on in the world and received 
 into glory. Here the stress is laid obviously on 
 the result of His work. The whole constitutes an 
 exceedingly comprehensive description of the pro- 
 cess of redemption, antithetically set forth in 
 balanced clauses, which advert, one by one, to a 
 characteristic transaction of which Christ was the 
 object. 
 
 Let us now briefly observe the several items of 
 the description, seriatim. 
 
 He "was manifested in the flesh, vindicated by 
 the Spirit." Here we have the redemptive work 
 itself adduced. First, the incarnated life in the 
 flesh — He "was manifested in the flesh"; next, 
 the successful issue of that work, — He "was 
 vindicated by the Spirit." The two clauses 
 together constitute a singularly vivid though 
 compressed picture of the incarnated work of 
 redemption. Note the clear implication of the 
 pre-existence — the deity — of the worker: He "was 
 manifested," — He existed then, hidden from human 
 eyes, before; "in the flesh," — in his pre-existence, 
 then, he was something other than flesh. It is as 
 clear a declaration of pre-existence and incarna- 
 tion as the Johannean, "The Word became flesh," 
 itself. There is a change of state implied, a change 
 
THE MYSTERY OF GODLINESS 383 
 
 by virtue of which what was hidden is now brought 
 to light, and it is brought to Hght because brought 
 into flesh. Note next the perfection of His work 
 estabHshed: He was "justified by the Spirit"; 
 that is to say, though appearing in the flesh, yet by 
 virtue of the Spirit that dwelt in Him, His work of 
 salvation was vindicated; He rose from the dead, 
 and could not be holden of death, and so mani- 
 fested the completeness of His work. 
 
 He was "observed by angels, proclaimed among 
 peoples." Here the progress of the saving work is 
 outlined. It was not done in or for a corner. 
 The object of the wondering contemplation of the 
 hosts of heaven, it is made known also to the in- 
 habitants of earth. Performed in Judea, in a life 
 of confined and limited relations, to all appear- 
 ance, yet it was all the time the focus of the ob- 
 servation of the angels of God, who anxiously de- 
 sired to look into it; and when brought to its 
 glorious completion, it was made the subject of a 
 world-wide proclamation. Obviously it is the 
 glory of the Christ — of the redemptive work of 
 Christ — that is the theme of the whole fragment, 
 and in this couplet we begin to see it come to light; 
 and, indeed, the chiasmic arrangement might well 
 have advised us of it before, what is most glorious in 
 it being thrust forward to attract our first attention. 
 
 He was "believed on in the world, received into 
 glory." Here we have the issue of the work ad- 
 verted to; the earthly and the heavenly issue. So 
 
384 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 little chronological is the ordering that the con- 
 quest of the world by Christ is actually adduced 
 first, while His ascension is adduced last. The 
 order is climactic, not chronological; He has His 
 earthly reward and also His heavenly. In these 
 two items the whole comes to the appropriate end. 
 And now I think we are prepared to see clearly 
 that the whole fragment is a hymn of praise to 
 Christ. He was before all worlds; He was only 
 "manifested" in the flesh and vindicated by the 
 Spirit. He was the object of the contemplation 
 of the angels of heaven and proclaimed in all the 
 earth. He was believed on in the world and re- 
 ceived into glory. It is the Glory of Christ that, 
 according to Paul constitutes the essence of the 
 Gospel. "O, Jesus, Thou art our head, we are 
 thy body!" — so one of God's saints teaches us to 
 pray. "How can the body but participate in the 
 glory of the Head.^ As for Thyself, therefore, so 
 also for us art Thou possessed of that heavenly 
 glory: as Thou sufferedst for us, so for us Thou 
 also reignest. . . . O then, my soul, seeing thy 
 Saviour is received up into this infinite glory, . . . 
 how canst thou abide to grovel any longer on this 
 base earth? . . . With what longings and holy 
 ambition shouldst thou desire to aspire to that 
 place of eternal rest and beatitude into which thy 
 Saviour has .ascended, and with him be partaker 
 of that glory and happiness which he hath pro- 
 vided for all that love him." 
 
THE INVIOLATE DEPOSIT 
 
 I Tim. 6:20, 21:— "O Timothy, guard that which is committed 
 mito thee, turning away from the profane babblings and opposi- 
 tions of the knowledge which is falsely so called; which some pro- 
 fessing have erred concerning the faith." 
 
 This short paragraph looks very much like a 
 concluding summary, added, possibly, by the 
 Apostle's own hand, in which the whole gist of 
 the First Epistle to Timothy is summed up. It is 
 almost as if the Apostle — after all the explanations 
 and exhortations in which he had instructed and 
 encouraged his own son in faith to perform the 
 great duties laid on him in errant Ephesus — had 
 paused suddenly and said in effect, "Hear the 
 sum of the whole matter. Be faithful to the Gospel 
 committed to you and shun all the pretentious 
 show of superior learning which is proving a snare 
 to many.'* Such an exhortation, it is manifest, 
 has its universal and perennial value; and is pe- 
 culiarly applicable to those in our situation. As 
 we begin another year of our intellectual prepara- 
 tion for the ministry of the Gospel of grace, it is 
 especially becoming that we should have in mind 
 that it will be our wisdom too, as it is manifestly 
 our duty, "to keep the deposit inviolate" and to 
 shun the worldly inanities and contradictions of 
 falsely so-called knowledge, by making profes- 
 
 385 
 
386 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 sion of which so many in every age, and in our age 
 too, have gone astray with respect to faith. 
 
 These latest epistles of Paul are commonly 
 called Pastoral because of their direct address to 
 the shepherds of the flock, and every word in such 
 an exhortation as this, in such an Epistle as this, 
 has a quasi-technical value. The key word among 
 these words is the one which I have ventured to 
 render after the Vulgate, "the deposit," and 
 which the Authorized Version deals with by means 
 of a paraphrase: "that which is committed to thy 
 trust." It does not occur very often, but it does 
 occur frequently enough to show that it and its 
 cognate verb are employed by the Apostle as a 
 well-known designation of the Gospel, considered 
 as a body of Divine truth entrusted to those whom 
 God has chosen as its ministers. As such, it 
 stands in very clear relations with another tech- 
 nical term employed by the New Testament writ- 
 ers to describe the function of the ministers of the 
 Gospel, — the term "witness." The Gospel is a 
 "deposit"; the function of the minister is, there- 
 fore, "witnessing." The two ideas, you see, go 
 necessarily together. The witness is in his es- 
 sential nature not a producer but a reproducer; 
 he is not the author of his message but its trans- 
 mitter; his message is, therefore, not of his own 
 devising but something committed to his trust, — 
 a deposit. I do not know where the fundamental 
 significance of the word "deposit" and its impli- 
 
THE INVIOLATE DEPOSIT 387 
 
 cations as to the duty of the minister is more 
 richly developed than in a Fifth Century exposi- 
 tion of this passage, by Vincent of Lerins. His 
 comment is so instructive that I cannot forbear 
 quoting a part of it to you. "What," he asks, 
 "is a deposit?" "It is something," he answers, 
 "that is accredited to thee, not invented by thee; 
 something that thou hast received, not that thou 
 hast thought out; a result not of genius but of in- 
 struction; not of personal ownership but of pub- 
 lic tradition; a matter brought to thee not pro- 
 duced by thee, with respect to which thou art 
 bound to be not an author but a custodian, not 
 an originator but a bearer, not a leader but a 
 follower." 
 
 It is this that Paul means to emphasize when he 
 calls the Gospel a "deposit." I rightly say he 
 means to emphasize this. For he not only calls 
 the Gospel a "deposit," but he sets it as such in 
 contrast with its opposite, and that opposite 
 proves to be just irresponsible speculation. O 
 Timothy, he says, keep the deposit inviolate ! And 
 how is he to keep the deposit inviolate.^ "By 
 shunning the profane inanities and contradic- 
 tions of falsely so-called knowledge." You see 
 the contrast is precisely between the Divine de- 
 posit and worldly knowledge. And he describes 
 this worldly knowledge by epithets which are suf- 
 ficiently discrediting to it. It consists of a mass 
 of inanities and self-contradictions; it is, there- 
 
388 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 fore, not real knowledge but only knowledge 
 falsely so called. No doubt he had his eye on a 
 specific instance, — the nascent Gnosticism, let us 
 call it, which was disturbing the church at Ephe- 
 sus, and to rebuke and correct which Timothy 
 was in Ephesus. But I think that it would be 
 wrong to suppose that the Apostle had this ex- 
 clusively in mind. Rather he seems to be viewing 
 it as a type, of a whole class. Or, let us at once 
 put it as broadly as we think it lay in his own mind; 
 there is no reason to doubt that the Apostle would 
 speak in exactly these terms of any worldly knowl- 
 edge whatever, any form of earthly philosophy or 
 science, that infringed upon or sought to substi- 
 tute itself more or less for the "deposit" of the 
 Gospel of Christ. Any speculation, any philoso- 
 phizing, any form of learning, any scientific the- 
 orizing which sought to intrude itself, in the way 
 of modifying it in the least respect, upon the Gos- 
 pel of Christ, — which is a sacred deposit com- 
 mitted to its ministers not to dilute or to alter or 
 to modify, but to learn, hold, guard and preach, — 
 would be characterized by Paul without hesita- 
 tion as among the profane inanities and contra- 
 dictions of knowledge falsely so called. 
 
 Our memory reverts at once to the splendid 
 passage in the opening chapter of the First Epistle 
 to the Corinthians, in which Paul magnificently 
 contrasts the wisdom of the world with the sim- 
 pHcity of the message of the cross, and passion- 
 
THE INVIOLATE DEPOSIT 389 
 
 ately declares that God has made the wisdom of 
 the world mere foolishness. Yes, there is pas- 
 sion, a holy passion, but real passion, in Paul's 
 renunciation of all human wisdom and declaration 
 that God will destroy the wisdom of the wise and 
 reject the prudence of the prudent. And some 
 of that same passion is throbbing in the vigorous 
 language of our present passage. Not indeed 
 knowledge as such, but all human knowledge as a 
 substitute for, or a modifying force in, the Gospel 
 of Christ, is to Paul a mass of mere profane inan- 
 ities and self-contradictions, to give oneself to 
 which is to miss the mark with respect to faith. 
 Dirt has been illuminatingly defined as matter out 
 of place. Any substance, no matter how previous 
 in itself, if out of place is nothing more or less than 
 just dirt. Gold-dust in your eye is just dirt; wash 
 it out; it is an offence there. Diamonds scattered 
 in your porridge are dirt; cast them out. To the 
 starving man seeking nourishment and life, they 
 are not only an offensive evil but a destructive evil. 
 You all know how Kjng Midas found that gold in 
 the wrong place could become the worst of ills. 
 So it is with knowledge. What, in its proper 
 place, is knowledge, — to be sought, loved and cher- 
 ished as such, to be valued and utilized for its 
 own good ends, — becomes knowledge falsely so 
 called whenever it intrudes into a place not its 
 own; a mass of mere inanities and self-contradic- 
 tions. And it is just this that Paul means here. 
 
390 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 He is not condemning knowledge as such. He, 
 too, would say with the poet — 
 
 "Who loves not knowledge? Who shall rail 
 Against her beauty? May she mix 
 With men and prosper! . . . 
 . . . Let her work prevail." 
 
 But just so soon as it presses beyond its mark 
 and presumes to substitute itself for the Gospel 
 of Christ, or to demand an alteration in that Gos- 
 pel, or a modification of it, however slight, his 
 righteous passion rises. Dirt! he cries, — matter 
 out of place! the profane inanities and self- 
 contradictions of falsely so-called knowledge! 
 
 "Falsely so-called knowledge" — that phrase is 
 his tribute to the value of real knowledge. When 
 thus debauched knowledge ceases to be knowledge 
 and becomes mere "falsely so-called knowledge." 
 "Profane inanities and self-contradictions,'* that 
 is Paul's description of what knowledge out of place 
 is; pressing beyond its mark to become procuress 
 to the lords of hell. For, says he, those that 
 make so much profession of such knowledge are 
 too often observed to miss the mark with respect 
 to faith. The passion that burns in these words 
 rises to sight everywhere in these epistles, when 
 the intrusion of human speculation into matters 
 of faith falls to be mentioned, and quite a choice 
 vocabulary of reprobation might be extracted 
 from Paul's expression of it. On the other side, 
 what a fervour of love is manifested for that " de- 
 
THE INVIOLATE DEPOSIT 391 
 
 posit" which is the Gospel of God's saving grace! 
 He calls it in the present passage, to be sure, sim- 
 ply "the deposit," but I am not sure that the very 
 simplicity of the designation is not surcharged 
 with passionate devotion. "The Deposit," ''The 
 Deposit," ''The Deposit/' "Guard the Deposit," 
 ** Keep The Deposit inviolate." It is as if there 
 were but one deposit conceivable to him and 
 to those to whom he wrote. And see how he 
 claims it as his own, in 2 Tim. 1:12, calling it 
 "my deposit." "I know whom I have believed 
 and I am persuaded— though I fall by the way 
 — yet He is able to keep my deposit against that 
 day." To Paul his deposit was more than life 
 itself. Paul may go— but what then.? "The 
 deposit," "his deposit" is safe in the hands of 
 Him who committed it to him. And then, again, 
 two verses lower (2 Tim. 1:14), "Keep, O Tim- 
 othy, keep inviolate, the beautiful deposit through 
 the Holy Ghost that dwelleth in us." Ah, it is the 
 devotion of Paul for "the deposit" that makes him 
 speak such passionate words against that which 
 would supplement or adulterate it. It is its sur- 
 passing glory which makes dull the glory of that 
 which away from it would itself be glorious. The 
 glory of the world of intellect itself fades like that 
 of the face of Moses, like that of the old covenant 
 in the presence of the new, — by reason only of the 
 glory that surpasses all— the glory of that glorious 
 Gospel of the grace of God. It is, in a word, the 
 
392 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 inherent preciousness of the Gospel, not the in- 
 herent valuelessness of knowledge, that makes all 
 knowledge in contrast with it, but foolishness — 
 but a mass of profane inanities and self-contra- 
 dictions which should not be permitted to intrude 
 into these sacred precincts. 
 
 A practical lesson imposes itself upon us. Preach 
 a full-orbed, a complete Gospel. The deposit is 
 not yours to deal with as you will; it is another's 
 entrusted to your care. The deposit is not your 
 product to be treated as you will ; it is the creation 
 of another placed in your keeping. You are but 
 its witnesses. Bear your witness truly and bear 
 it fully. Keep the deposit inviolate. 
 
THE WAY OF LIFE 
 
 Titus 3:4-7: — "But when the kindness of God, our Saviour, and 
 his love towards man, appeared, not by works done in righteous- 
 ness, which we did ourselves, but according to his mercy he saved 
 us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy 
 Ghost, which he poured out upon us richly, through Jesus Christ 
 our Saviour; that being justified by his grace, we might be made 
 heirs according to the hope of eternal life." 
 
 The short epistle to Titus contains, amid its 
 practical and ecclesiastical directions for the giving 
 of which it was written, two doctrinal statements 
 of quite wonderful richness and compression both of 
 which have been easily brought into the compass 
 of the passage read in your hearing this afternoon. 
 They differ from each other in intent and content, 
 as you will doubtless have observed. But they are 
 alike in gathering into the narrow space of a few 
 words the essence of the Gospel, and expressing it in 
 words of a singularly festal and jubilant character, 
 words which strike the reader as at once precise and 
 comprehensive, as at once theologically exact and 
 peculiarly fitted for public credal use. 
 
 Statements of this kind are characteristic of 
 these latest epistles of the Apostle Paul, which we 
 class together under the common title of the Pas- 
 toral Epistles, and which share not only the late 
 date but also a character appropriate to their 
 
 origin at the end of Paul's life when he was busied 
 
 393 
 
394 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 with consolidating and extending the churches he 
 had founded rather than with the first planting 
 of Christianity in the fresh soil of an unbelieving 
 world. They present the doctrines of Paul, after 
 they had been used, and worn round by use. They 
 represent the sifting down of his doctrinal expo- 
 sitions into compact form; their compression into 
 something like pebbles from the brook ready to be 
 flung with sure aim and to sink into the foreheads 
 of the Goliaths of unbelief. They represent the 
 form which his doctrinal expositions had taken as 
 current coin in the churches, no longer merely 
 Paul's teaching, though all of that, but the pre- 
 cious possessions of the people themselves, in 
 which they were able to give back to him a re- 
 sponse from their listening hearts. They are no 
 longer mere dialectical elaboration of the truth; 
 but have become forms of sound words. As such, 
 such passages are sometimes accompanied by a 
 phrase peculiar to these Pastoral Epistles, which 
 advertises these statements as something other 
 than a teacher's novel presentations of truth to as 
 yet untaught hearers: "This is a faithful saying." 
 "This is a faithful saying" — a "trustworthy say- 
 ing" — in other words, this is a saying well-known 
 among you, that has been long repeated in your 
 ears, that has been tested and found not wanting. 
 This is good coin; and "worthy," it is sometimes 
 added, "of all acceptation." 
 
 Our present passage is one of these "faithful 
 
THE WAY OF LIFE 395 
 
 sayings." "Faithful is the saying," the Apostle 
 adds on completing it, "and concerning these 
 things I will that thou shouldst affirm confidently." 
 Thus he tells us how important, how well-con- 
 sidered, how final and trustworthy this statement 
 of truth is. Let us approach its study in a spirit 
 suitable to so solemn an injunction. 
 
 The first thing that we observe in the passage 
 is the melody that rises from it of praise to God. 
 It is the "kindness of God our Saviour and his 
 love towards men" which sets its key-note. The 
 special terms in which God's goodness is here 
 praised. His "benignity" and "philanthropy," are 
 due, indeed, to the context. The Apostle had just 
 been thinking and speaking about men; and he 
 could not think or speak of them as either "be- 
 nignant" or "philanthropic." He would have 
 them exhorted to be subject to those over them, 
 obedient, prone to good works, and averse to evil 
 speaking and contentiousness, gentle and meek. 
 But such they were not showing themselves. 
 Christians themselves could remember how afore- 
 time they lived in malice and envy, hateful and 
 hating one another. What could be expected 
 from man? WHiat a contrast when one lifted his 
 eyes from this scene of lust and malice and envy 
 and hatred — men striving with one another to 
 surpass each other in doing injury to their fellows 
 — and set them on God, to see His benignity and 
 philanthropy! The whole passage is pervaded by 
 
S96 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 the suggestion of God's kindness and humanity; 
 thrown out into sharp relief by its contrast with 
 man's malice and hatred. Nothing can be ex- 
 pected of or from man; but God has manifested 
 His benignity and philanthropy to us and by 
 them saved us. Man would destroy, God saves. 
 But there is much more than this to be said. 
 The passage is not only pervaded by the suggestion 
 of God's general goodness; it is a psalm of praise to 
 God for His saving love. It sings not only "Gloria 
 Deo " but "Soli Deo Gloria." Our salvation is its 
 subject. It not only ascribes salvation in its root 
 to God's love; it ascribes it in every one of its 
 details to God's loving activities and to them 
 alone; it ascribes its beginning and middle and 
 end to Him and to Him only. The various ac- 
 tivities that enter into our salvation are enumer- 
 ated; and every one of them is declared to be a 
 loving activity of God and of Him alone. This 
 passage is even remarkable in this respect. Even 
 in that classical passage in Ephesians, which is 
 designed to ascribe salvation wholly to God, and 
 to empty man of all ground of boasting, we have 
 faith, at least, mentioned: "We are saved by 
 grace, through faith"; though it is immediately 
 added: "And that not of yourselves, it is the 
 gift of God." But this passage leaves faith itself 
 to one side as not requiring mention. There are 
 no subjective conditions to salvation, in the sense 
 of conditions which we must perform in order to 
 
THE WAY OF LIFE 397 
 
 obtain or retain salvation. It is God alone who 
 saves, "not by means of any works in righteous- 
 ness which we have done ourselves but in con- 
 sequence of his mercy" and of that alone. Not 
 even faith itself, that instrument of reception to 
 which salvation comes, can be conceived of as 
 entering causally into God's saving work. It is 
 He and He alone who saves; and the roots of 
 His saving operations are set deep in His mercy 
 only. If we are saved at all, it is because — ^not 
 that we have worked, not that we have believed, — 
 but that God has manifested His benignity and 
 philanthropy in saving us out of His mere mercy. 
 He has, through Jesus Christ, shed down His 
 Holy Spirit to regenerate and renovate us that 
 we might be justified "by His grace," — in other 
 words, gratuitously, not on the ground of our 
 faith, — and so be made heirs of eternal life. 
 
 Our passage empties man of all glory in the 
 matter of salvation and reserves all the glory to 
 God. But this is not because it does not know 
 how to distribute honour to whom honour is due. 
 Man has no part in the procuring or in the apply- 
 ing of salvation, but there are Three Persons who 
 have; and our passage recognizes the praise due to 
 each, and distributes to each Person of the Holy 
 Trinity the saving operations which belong to Him. 
 *^God . . . according to His mercy, . . . saved 
 us, through the washing of regeneration and re- 
 newal of the Holy Ghost, which He poured out on 
 
398 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 us richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour." The 
 source of our salvation is to be sought in the loving 
 mercy of God the Father. The ground of the sav- 
 ing activities exerted on us is to be sought in the 
 work of Jesus Christ our Saviour. The agent in 
 the actual saving work is to be sought in the Holy 
 Ghost. Here are brought before us God our Lover, 
 Christ our Redeemer, the Spirit our Sanctifier, as 
 all operative in the one composite work of salva- 
 tion. To God the Father is ascribed the whole 
 scheme of salvation and the entire direction of the 
 saving work; it is His benignity and philanthropy 
 that is manifested in it; it is according to His own 
 mercy that He has saved us; it is He that saved 
 us; He saved us through the Holy Spirit; He 
 poured out the Holy Spirit through Jesus Christ: 
 it is His salvation and it is He that has given it to 
 us. To Jesus Christ is ascribed the work of 
 "Saviour" by which the outpouring of the Holy 
 Spirit was rendered possible to God. The nature 
 of His work is not precisely outlined in our pas- 
 sage; but in the preceding passage we are told 
 that "He gave Himself for us, that He might re- 
 deem us from all iniquity." This it is that the 
 Son does for us. To the Holy Spirit is ascribed 
 the actual application of the redemption wrought 
 out by Christ. The items of this application are 
 very richly developed, and the development of 
 them constitutes the strength of the passage. 
 If we will scrutinize the items in which the ap- 
 
THE WAY OF LIFE 
 
 plying work of the Holy Spirit is developed, we 
 shall perceive that they supply us with a complete 
 "order of salvation." We are told that God saves 
 us in His mere mercy, by a renovating work of 
 the Holy Spirit, founded on the redeeming work of 
 Christ; and we are told that this renovating work 
 of the Holy Spirit was in order that we might be 
 justified and so become heirs. Here the purchase 
 by the death of Christ is made the condition 
 precedent of the regeneration of the Holy Spirit; 
 but the action of the Holy Spirit is made the con- 
 dition precedent to justification and adoption. We 
 are bought unto God by Christ in order that we 
 may be brought to God by the Holy Spirit. And 
 in bringing us to God, the Holy Spirit proceeds by 
 regenerating us in order that we may be justified 
 so as to be made heirs. In theological language, 
 this is expressed by saying that the impetration of 
 salvation precedes its application: the whole of 
 the impetration, the whole of the application. 
 And in the application, the Spirit works by first 
 regenerating the soul, next justifying it, next 
 adopting it into the family of God, and next sanc- 
 tifying it. In the more vital and less analytical 
 language of our present passage, this is asserted 
 by founding the gift of the Holy Ghost upon the 
 work of Christ: "which He poured out upon us 
 richly through Jesus Christ our Saviour"; by in- 
 cluding in the work of the Holy Ghost, regenera- 
 tion, justification, adoption, and a few verses 
 
400 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 lower dowii, sanctification; and by declaring that 
 the regeneration of the Holy Spirit is "in order 
 that being justified we might be made heirs." 
 
 Now what are the practical fruits of this teach- 
 ing? The Apostle says it is faithful teaching, 
 which he wishes to have confidently affirmed, to 
 the end that they which have believed God may be 
 careful to maintain good works. It is encour- 
 aging teaching to believers to tell them that they 
 are not their own saviours but God is their Sav- 
 iour; that their salvation is not suspended on 
 their own works or the strength of their own faith, 
 but on the strength of God's love and His mercy 
 alone; that all Three Persons of the Trinity are 
 engaged in and pledged to their salvation; that 
 Christ's work for them is finished and they are 
 redeemed to God by His precious blood and are, 
 henceforth, God's purchased possession; that it is 
 not dependent on their own weakness but on the 
 Spirit's strength whether they will be brought into 
 the enjoyment of their salvation; that the Spirit 
 has been poured richly out upon them; that He has 
 begun His work of renovation within them; that 
 this is but the pledge of the end and as they have 
 been regenerated and justified, so have they been 
 brought into the family of God and made heirs of 
 eternal life. This is encouraging teaching for be- 
 lievers! Shall they, then, because they are saved 
 out of God's mercy and not out of works in right- 
 eousness which they have done themselves, be 
 
THE WAY OF LIFE 401 
 
 careless to maintain good works? I trow not; 
 and the Apostle troweth not. Because of this, 
 they will now be careful "to maintain good works." 
 Let us see to it then that by so doing we approve 
 ourselves as true believers, saved by God's grace, 
 not out of works but unto good works, which He 
 hath afore prepared that we should walk in them ! 
 This is what the Apostle would have us do. 
 
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL 
 
 2 Tim. 1:9, 10: — "Who saved us and called us with a holy 
 calling, not according to our works, but according to his own pur- 
 pose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times 
 eternal, but hath now been manifested by the appearing of our 
 Saviour Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and 
 incorruption to light through the Gospel." 
 
 Second Timothy is the last letter written by 
 Paul. More than that, it was written during the 
 last days of his life. He had fought his fight and 
 finished his course. What had the Gospel he had 
 preached done for him.'^ What was his attitude 
 towards the salvation in Christ Jesus which he 
 had so long proclaimed, now that life was over and 
 he could look back in a detached sort of a way 
 over its whole course.^ Did it seem to him in those 
 sad disillusioning days as — scarcely worth while .^ 
 
 It certainly is interesting to catch Paul's last 
 thoughts about the Gospel; to learn what that 
 Gospel was and what it was to him as the sands of 
 his life ran out; to compare it with the Gospel he 
 had grasped with such enthusiasm at the outset 
 and propagated with such zeal during the days of 
 his strength and freedom. Well, it is reassuring 
 to find that the Gospel Paul preached at the end 
 was just the same old Gospel he had embraced at 
 the beginning. And more than that, that it was 
 
 the same to him. 
 
 402 
 
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL 403 
 
 Tliere is even an odd echo in the very language 
 he uses here to describe the Gospel of that which 
 he had employed in the earlier, lustier days. To 
 the Romans he had written that he was not 
 ashamed of the Gospel, because it was the power 
 of God unto salvation. To Timothy he gives the 
 exhortation not to be ashamed of the Gospel but 
 to endure manfully in its behalf, with an endur- 
 ance measured only by the power of God mani- 
 fested in the salvation it had brought. 
 
 The echo in the language, I say, is oddly close, 
 because there is no direct connection between the 
 two passages; and when closely scrutinized they 
 are perceived to speak of two very different things. 
 In Romans we have an objective statement; in 
 Second Timothy an intensely subjective one. Li 
 the one case the contrast is with the scorn of 
 the world. Paul will not be deterred by that; he 
 cannot be ashamed to preach a Gospel in which is 
 enshrined the power of God to save. In the other 
 case, the contrast is with the persecution of the 
 world. Timothy is not to shrink back before the 
 dangers that now hang over the proclamation of 
 the Gospel, but to witness straight on, emboldened 
 by the saving power of this Gospel in his own heart. 
 
 One passage is then in no sense a repetition of 
 the other; both are rather embodiments of the 
 same fundamental idea for completely different 
 ends. This fundamental idea is that the Gospel 
 is the power of God to salvation and therefore a 
 
404 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 thing of which no man with a mind to see can 
 possibly be ashamed, and which no man with a 
 heart to feel can possibly be frightened away from 
 proclaiming. Because it has the dynamics of life 
 in it, it stands immeasurably above all the so- 
 called Gospels that men can proclaim. Nay, be- 
 cause it has the dynamics of life in it, he who has 
 it hidden in his heart cannot fear death. 
 
 One sees the enheartening power there is in this 
 perception of the Gospel as the power of God to 
 salvation. We cannot wonder that Paul uses this 
 conception, whether to enhearten himself in preach- 
 ing it despite the scorn of men, or in enheartening 
 Timothy in preaching it despite the persecutions of 
 men. It is natural then that it should crop out 
 here again, where the Apostle would fain put new 
 courage into Timothy in the sad time that had 
 come upon the Gospel proclamation. The propa- 
 gation of the Gospel through the Roman world had 
 hung largely on the arm of Paul. But that arm 
 was now stricken down, and Paul was lying in 
 the Roman prison with nothing to anticipate ex- 
 cept an inglorious death. Something like a panic 
 seems to have fallen upon the little circle of helpers 
 on whom he was accustomed to depend as on 
 hands and feet in the prosecution of his great mis- 
 sionary task. Though in prison and nearing the 
 fatal issue, the burden of the churches still rested 
 on his stricken arm. He enumerates the dispo- 
 sition of the forces he had made and was making. 
 
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL 405 
 
 For the work at Rome, however, he was short- 
 handed and felt helpless. One of those whom he 
 had depended on for the dangerous work there 
 had fled. Only Luke remamed with him; he 
 needed two additional helpers. He turns to Tim- 
 othy and Mark; and it is striking to see him turn 
 to these two in his hour of need, and with obvious 
 trust and confidence in them. On a former oc- 
 casion Mark had forsaken him at a juncture 
 of importance. And many commentators have 
 thought that his general tone to Timothy implies 
 that Paul thought him little endowed with the 
 quality of daring. This appears to rest on a mis- 
 take; the effort which the Apostle makes to en- 
 hearten Timothy for his work does not seem to 
 imply special timidity suspected in him so much 
 as the need of special courage for what he asks of 
 him. At all events, his choice of Timothy for aid 
 in this hour of need and the express encomium 
 which he passes on Mark as one fitted to be his 
 companion in the arduous service asked of him 
 would seem to be a diploma of trustworthiness 
 given to these helpers. We may be sure that he 
 wishes for Timothy and Mark in this sad time 
 to be standing by his side, because he had special 
 confidence in just Timothy and Mark. 
 
 Nevertheless Paul recognizes that there is very 
 special need of courage and boldness for the service 
 he is asking. And in asking the service he points 
 Timothy to the source of strength. That source 
 
406 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 of strength to which he points Timothy is, briefly, 
 the Gospel, conceived as embodying the power of 
 God to salvation. He reminds Timothy first of 
 his hereditary faith; next of his endowment with 
 grace by the laying on of the Apostle's hands; 
 but finally and chiefly of the power of God he had 
 himself experienced in the Gospel which he was 
 called on to preach and for which he was to be 
 ready also to suffer. It was not his human 
 strength that was to be called on for this great en- 
 durance; haply that might soon be exhausted. 
 His endurance was to be limited only by the power 
 of God, of that God who had saved him and called 
 him with a holy calling, not according to any 
 works of his own, but according only to God's 
 own purpose and the grace that was given him in 
 Christ Jesus before times eternal, and has now 
 been manifested by the epiphany of our Saviour 
 Jesus Christ, in His making naught of death, and 
 bringing to light of life and incorruption through 
 the Gospel. 
 
 Surely there is gathered together in this great 
 exhortation everything that could be needed to fill 
 with deathless courage in the behalf of the Gospel 
 even the most timid hearts. Let us try to point 
 out one or two of the things that Paul does here, 
 calculated to enhearten his companion. 
 
 First, we shall certainly take notice that he 
 places beneath Timothy the eternal arms of God 
 Almighty. He lifts the eyes of Timothy from 
 
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL 407 
 
 himself to God, and says to him in effect, There, 
 there is your strength. And observe the pains 
 Paul is at to impress on Timothy that the relation 
 in which he stands to this God, by virtue of which 
 God becomes his strength, is not, in any sense, — 
 not in the remotest degree, not in the smallest 
 particular, — dependent on Timothy himself, or 
 anything that he has done, is doing, or can do. 
 He would withdraw Timothy utterly from the 
 least infusion of dependence on self and cast him 
 wholly on dependence on God, that he may 
 realize that his weakness is not in question, but 
 the whole strength of God is behind him to up- 
 hold him and bear him safely through. 
 
 Therefore Paul describes this God on whose 
 power he would throw Timothy back as one 
 "who saved us and called us with a holy calling; 
 not according to works of ours but according to 
 His own purpose" — where the words "His own" 
 are thrown out with a tremendous energy, — "and 
 a grace that was given to us in Christ Jesus before 
 times eternal," — where the words "was given," 
 not "was promised" or even "was destined for," 
 but actually and finally and unequivocally "was 
 given" us before times eternal, are used with 
 equally tremendous emphasis, to declare that 
 what has appeared in time has been only a mani- 
 festation of what was already done, concluded, ac- 
 complished in eternity. How could this power of 
 God fail us now because of aught we can do, or 
 
408 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 fail to do, when its gift to us is so thoroughly in- 
 dependent of everything or anything that we can 
 do ? Obviously, what Paul is doing is so completely 
 to take away Timothy's consideration of himself in 
 this whole matter of the Gospel that he will trust 
 exclusively in God and feel that, therefore, there 
 can be no failure — just because it is God alone and 
 not he himself on whom the performance rests. 
 
 An appeal to the well-recognized fact that it was 
 thus and thus only that Timothy received his call 
 from God, is nothing other, then, than to cast him 
 back on the Almighty arms and to make him 
 poignantly realize that it is God and not he who is 
 conceived as carrying through the work so begun. 
 "O Timothy," says Paul, in effect, "Faint not! 
 It is not your own strength — or rather weakness — 
 that is here in question; it is the power of Al- 
 mighty God. Do not you remember how you 
 were brought into relations with this God.^^ Was 
 it of yourself that you were called with this holy 
 calling? Nay, no works of your own entered in. 
 It was of His own purpose that He called you; the 
 grace that has come to you was given you from all 
 eternity. What has come to you in time is only 
 the manifestation of what was eternally done. It 
 is this Almighty God who is using you as His in- 
 strument and organ. Nothmg depends on your 
 weakness; all hangs on His strength. Take cour- 
 age and go onward." Thus Paul strengthens 
 Timothy for the conflict before him. 
 
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL 409 
 
 But there is another element in Paul's enheart- 
 ening exhortation which we must not fail to take 
 notice of if we would feel all the subtlety and force 
 of its appeal. Paul not only throws Timothy 
 back on the eternal arms of Almighty God; he 
 fixes his eyes firmly also on an eternal Christ. 
 For not less clearly than in the prologue to John's 
 Gospel itself is the pre-incarnate Son of God 
 brought before us in this great passage. So vivid, 
 indeed, is the Apostle's realization of the great 
 transaction in eternity; so pointed is his repre- 
 sentation of all that has been wrought out in time 
 as but the manifestation of what was already pre- 
 pared in eternity; that it would be easier to read 
 him as throwing an air of unreality over the tem- 
 poral acts than as treating the eternal ones as 
 merely ideal. 
 
 The use of the word "given," the "grace given" 
 to us before times eternal, is already a mark of his 
 intense perception of the reality of the eternal 
 transaction. But this is carried much further 
 by the other terms emphasized. This grace given 
 in eternity is only "manifested" in time; made 
 visible — the conception being that it was already 
 in existence and is only now brought to sight. 
 And in like manner the Christ Jesus in whom the 
 grace was given us before times eternal, can by no 
 possibility be conceived as existing only ideally in 
 this eternity, as if the notion were only that in 
 foresight of Him and His work, the gift of grace 
 
410 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 was determined upon and so His historical life on 
 earth was the logical prius and this eternal trans- 
 action rested on it in prevision and provision. On 
 the contrary, it is His eternal existence that is the 
 actual reality and His historical manifestation is 
 described as an "epiphany" — a term which dis- 
 tinctly describes a glorious apparition of what 
 already exists and now only breaks forth to the 
 illumination of the world. As such it is elsewhere 
 confined in the New Testament to the second 
 coming of Christ, and when here applied to His 
 first coming as fully implies as in the parallel case 
 that He who is thus manifested exists and has 
 existed beforehand gloriously, and now only 
 bursts on Man's astonished sight like the breaking 
 forth of the sun from thick clouds. The grace 
 that was given us before all eternity, was given us 
 in that eternity in Christ Jesus, as the then present 
 mediator of grace; and as the grace then given has 
 only been "manifested" in time, so the Christ 
 Jesus in whom it was then given has only "ap- 
 peared" in time. So clear and vital is Paul's re- 
 alization of the eternal transaction in a word, that 
 the danger would be not that we should read him 
 as speaking of only an ideal eternal pre-existence 
 of His and our Lord, but rather, as giving too little 
 significance to the outworking of the eternal plan 
 in the actual historical realization. 
 
 It is interesting to observe this very complete 
 doctrine of the eternal pre-existence of Jesus 
 
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL 411 
 
 Christ in this epistle, for theological reasons, and 
 more particularly, for biblical-theological reasons. 
 Our interest in it now, however, turns on the use 
 which Paul makes of it for the enheartening of 
 Timothy. By fixing his eyes thus on the eternal 
 Jesus and subtly suggesting that the events of 
 time are (in a sense) but the shadows of the eter- 
 nal realities; that the salvation wrought out on 
 Calvary was but a corollary (so to speak) of the 
 determining transaction in heaven; the Apostle 
 leads his pupil to attach less importance to the 
 course of affairs on earth in comparison with the 
 eternal things thus vividly pictured before his 
 eyes. The fashion of the earth passes away; the 
 heavenly alone abides. This eternal Jesus — ^may 
 He not be relied on quite independently of the 
 temporary appearances of the things of earth .'^ 
 For how many ages did He abide above — before 
 He was manifested as Saviour! He may have 
 removed again into the glory He had with the 
 Father before the world was. But is He, there- 
 fore, non-existent — unable to help? We have 
 seen his epiphany once, when He burst from the 
 skies bringing salvation. Shall we not see it 
 again .'^ Sufferings meanwhile may come — ^per- 
 secutions, trials — above what flesh is capable of 
 enduring. But as the grace of God has appeared 
 already bringing salvation, shall we not be sure 
 that, in due season, there shall be another epiph- 
 any of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ? 
 
412 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Perhaps it is too much to say that the exhorta- 
 tion of Paul bids Timothy to look forward to this 
 second epiphany. But perhaps it is not too much 
 to say that the use of the word here, consecrated 
 elsewhere to our Lord's second coming, and the 
 whole cast of the passage, can scarcely have failed 
 to suggest by analogy this second coming to Tim- 
 othy. And if so, the remembrance of it would 
 add to the force of the exhortation to endurance. 
 In any case, this vision of the eternal Christ forms 
 a substantial element in Paul's great exhortation. 
 
 There is, however, a third element in it that we 
 must be sure that we perceive before we can say 
 that we have appreciated its whole force; it fills 
 Timothy's heart with the sense of an eternal sal- 
 vation. We have seen that it points him back into 
 eternity for the inception of this salvation. There, 
 we will not say merely it was prepared for, pro- 
 vided for; it was rather, prepared, provided. 
 Before times eternal there was a purpose of God — 
 His own sovereign purpose, independent of all 
 works of man — in accordance with which we have 
 in time been called. But there was also more — 
 even a grace that had been given to us already in 
 Christ Jesus, our eternal Lord. And it is in 
 accordance with this grace also that we have 
 been called with a holy calling and saved; in 
 accordance with this grace, existent eternally, and 
 only manifested in time, when Jesus burst on the 
 astonished view of man and abolished death and 
 
THE ETERNAL GOSPEL 413 
 
 brought to light Hfe and immortality. This salva- 
 tion, thus manifested, therefore, is an eternal 
 salvation. There was no time when it was not. 
 Can there be any time when it shall cease to be? 
 
 What we must, above all, however, see to it that 
 we do is to focus our eyes on what this eternal 
 salvation thus manifested in time consists in. It 
 consists in just the abolishment of death and the 
 bringing to light of life and immortality. Ah, 
 this death that Timothy may have been in danger 
 of fearing — that is the real shadow. This salva- 
 tion — so long hidden in the heavens — that is the 
 reality. It may again seem to be hidden in the 
 heavens; death — does it not loom before him as a 
 hideous threat of the immediate future.^^ Nay, 
 the eternal salvation, revealed in Christ Jesus, is 
 revealed in this very act — that He has abolished 
 death and brought Hfe and immortality to light 
 through the Gospel. Surely if Paul can quicken 
 and give life and force to this conception in Tim- 
 othy's mind and heart, his encouragement of him 
 to face persecution and death with him for the 
 Gospel's sake is complete. Then, this threatened 
 death is naught; the Saviour has abolished death 
 and brought life and immortality to light. 
 
 In essence, shall we not say, then, that this 
 appeal finds its deepest root in the assurance of a 
 blessed immortality.^ That it unveils the life 
 beyond the tomb.^ And puts the heart into us 
 that was in Paul when he declared that he viewed 
 
414 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 with unconcern the wearing away of this earthly 
 house because he knew he had a building of God, 
 a house not made with hands, eternal in the 
 heavens? It is because the salvation brought 
 thus to Timothy is not only eternal in its incep- 
 tion but eternal in its endurance, that the appeal 
 has such force. Paul is seeking to fill the heart 
 and mind of his follower with the realization of an 
 eternal salvation, and so to lead him to courage in 
 facing temporal trials. Is it not our wisdom to 
 apply his words to ourselves.^ Shall we, too, not 
 endure as seeing the invisible? 
 
COMMUNION WITH CHRIST 
 
 2 Tim. i2:l 1-13:— "Faithful is the saying: For if we died with 
 Him, we shall also live with him : if we endure we shall also reign 
 with him: if we shall deny him, he also will deny us; if we are faith- 
 less, he abideth faithful; for he cannot deny himself." 
 
 The words which are before us this afternoon 
 form one of those "faithful sayings" taken up by 
 Paul from the mouth of the Christian community 
 and given fresh significance and force by his em- 
 ployment of them to wing his own appeals and 
 point his own arguments to his fellow Christians. 
 It is exceedingly interesting to observe the Apostle 
 thus acting as a member of a settled community 
 with its own standards of belief and maxims of 
 conduct already to a certain degree established; 
 and none the less so that he was himself the 
 foimder of the community, who had impressed on 
 it the faith to which it was now giving expression. 
 The special *' faithful saying" he now adduces 
 bears in it traits which point back to his teaching 
 as the germ from which it had grown, but also to 
 the teaching of our Lord Himself, a witness to the 
 wide diffusion of which in the churches it thus sup- 
 plies. If the phrase, "If we died with him we 
 shall also live with him" is Pauline to the core and 
 takes the mind of the reader irresistibly back to 
 such a passage as Romans 6:8; and the next suc- 
 
 415 
 
416 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 ceeding phrase, "If we endure we shall also reign 
 with him, " reminds us more remotely of such pas- 
 sages as Rom. 5:17; 8:17; the clause which fol- 
 lows that, "If we deny him, he, too, will deny us," 
 cannot fail to remind us of Matt. 10:33, or rather, 
 of the saying of Jesus there formally recorded. 
 
 How this "faithful saying" had been formed 
 in the church, whether merely as a detached 
 gnome, or maxim, which Christians were wont to 
 repeat to one another for their enheartening and 
 encouragement; or, as a portion of some htur- 
 gical form often used in the church service, until 
 its language had become fixed; or as a passage 
 from a hymn that had grown popular, as its 
 rhythmic form may perhaps suggest, it may be 
 difficult or impossible to decide. The way in 
 which the Apostle adduces it appears in any event 
 to bear witness that the words were a current 
 formula in the church, to which he could appeal as 
 such, and which would, from their familiarity and 
 devout, if not sacred, association, appeal power- 
 fully to Timothy's heart. Perhaps we may ven- 
 ture to say that the Apostle himself felt the appeal 
 of these devout associations, and employs the 
 "saying" precisely because it had become by use 
 the natural expression of his own strong feelings, 
 at the moment aroused to a particular fervour. He, 
 the great Apostle, yet leans with comfort on the 
 church's own expression of its faith. What a tes- 
 timony w have here to the solidarity of the church 
 
COMMUNION WITH CHRIST 417 
 
 of God; or, as we prefer to put it, to the com- 
 munion of the saints. And what an enforcement 
 of the great commands that we bear one another's 
 burdens, that we neglect not the assembhng of our- 
 selves together, that we do not indulge the vanity 
 of living each one to himself. The Church is ever 
 to Paul, the inspired teacher of the Church, in a 
 deep and true sense, the pillar and ground of the 
 truth, on the testimony of which he gladly rests. 
 The purpose for which he adduces this partic- 
 ular "faithful saying" is to clinch his appeal to 
 Timothy to steadfast adherence to his high duty 
 and privilege of teaching the Gospel, despite 
 every difficulty and danger besetting the pathway. 
 He appears in this context to be urging three mo- 
 tives upon Timothy to induce him to face bravely 
 the hardships of the service he is pressing upon 
 him. He points him first to the source of his 
 strength: "Remember Jesus Christ as risen from 
 the dead, of the seed of David"; keep your eyes 
 set on the heavenly majesty of the exalted Christ, 
 our King. Surely he who keeps vivid in his con- 
 sciousness that He with whonx he has to do is the 
 Lord of heaven and earth, who, though He had 
 died, yet lived again, and is set on the throne of 
 universal dominion, should have no fear in boldly 
 obeying his behests. Paul points Timothy next 
 to the important function performed by the 
 preacher of the Gospel, faithfulness in proclaim- 
 ing which he is urging upon him as so prime a 
 
418 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 duty that no danger must be allowed to intermit 
 it. It is by it that the elect of God attain the sal- 
 vation destined for them in Christ Jesus. Who 
 will draw back when he realizes that he is a fellow- 
 worker with God in bringing to their salvation 
 God's own elect — those elect whom God has loved 
 from the foundation of the world, for whom He 
 has given His Son to shame and death, and sent 
 His Spirit into the foulness of men's hearts? 
 Surely he who apprehends that it is laid on him to 
 carry this salvation to those whose own it is will 
 never weary in conveying it to them. Let us 
 learn how a brute beast may respond to an appeal 
 to share in such a service of good by reading 
 Browning's "How they brought the good news to 
 Ghent." Shall we be less responsive to such 
 appeals than even the brutes? Lastly Paul plies 
 Timothy with this "faithful saying," the force of 
 whose appeal lies in its subtle blending of encour- 
 agement and warning: encouragement because 
 it tells us what a glorious prospect lies before him 
 who gives himself to Christ unreservedly here; 
 warning because it discloses to us the dreadfulness 
 of the award that lies before him who is unfaith- 
 ful here to the service he owes his Lord. 
 
 "If we died with him, we shall also live with 
 him; if we steadfastly endure we shall also reign 
 with him," but also, "if we shall perchance deny 
 him, he will also deny us"; though of one thing we 
 may be firmly assured, "though we prove faith- 
 
COMMUNION WITH CHRIST 419 
 
 less, He abideth ever faithful, for He cannot deny 
 Himself." Was ever warning and encourage- 
 ment so subtly blended in a single composite ap- 
 peal? So subtly indeed that one remains in 
 doubt whether the appeal comes to its close on a 
 note of hope or on one of despair. Is it that God 
 will remain faithful to His gracious purposes of 
 love despite our weakness; that, though we prove 
 untrustworthy, yet He abides ever trusty — is it 
 on this note of high hope and encouragement 
 that the Apostle's great song sinks down to rest.^^ 
 Or is it rather, that the God who has threatened 
 to deny those that deny Him, will abide ever 
 faithful to this dreadful threat, so that he who dis- 
 owns Him here need cherish no hope that he shall 
 escape the announced disavowal there— is it on 
 this note of profoundest warning that the Apostle 
 pauses? The language is flexible to either sense; 
 the context leaves the way open to either; the 
 appeal would be alike strong under either inter- 
 pretation; but it is strongest of all, doubtless, 
 under the subtle blending of the two, to which 
 the phrasing of the whole "faithful saying" seems 
 to invite us. 
 
 For this "faithful saying" has the characteristic 
 pregnancy and subtlety of all its fellows, which is 
 the hall-mark of all true popular sayings that have 
 passed from mouth to mouth until they have 
 been compacted into the thought of a whole com- 
 munity. For its interpretation we should con- 
 
420 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 fine ourselves primarily to its own narrow com- 
 pass and remember that the context in which it 
 comes to us is not its own original context, and 
 can help us to its interpretation only so far as the 
 propriety of its adduction here is concerned. So 
 looking at it, it is clear that much of the current 
 exposition of its clauses falls away of itself. For 
 example, it seems obvious that the "dying with 
 Christ" here adduced is not physical dying with 
 Christ, martyrdom, but forensic dying with 
 Christ, justification. It is clear that our frag- 
 ment is a fragment of a piece in which the main 
 theme is Christ's work of redemption. It is es- 
 pecially clear that we have no right to supply 
 "with Christ" with the second clause. It is not 
 endurance "with Christ," but "steadfast endur- 
 ance to the end" alone that is intended, and the 
 conjunctive preposition is left off of this verb just 
 to advise us of that. Nor may we omit to note 
 and give effect to the changes of tense: first the 
 aorist, then the present, then the future, then the 
 present again; all of which changes are significant. 
 Lastly, a careful observation of the consecution 
 of the clauses will certainly bid us pause before we 
 fall in with their division into two pairs, the first 
 encouraging, the last warning; a division far too 
 simple to do justice to the subtlety of the whole 
 thought, or even the surface considerations de- 
 rived from the sequence of the tenses and verbs. 
 Let us look at the saying then a moment in its 
 
COMMUNION WITH CHRIST 421 
 
 own light and then ask how it lends itself to Paul's 
 purpose in adducing it here. 
 
 We perceive at once that the passage consists 
 of four conditional sentences which stand, there- 
 fore, in a certain formal parallelism with one an- 
 other. The first of these sentences declares that 
 sharing in Christ's death entails sharing in 
 Christ's life. The idea is a frequent one in the 
 New Testament and must, indeed, in all Pauline 
 churches at any rate, have become long ere this a 
 Christian commonplace. The language in which 
 it is expressed is the same as that which meets us 
 in Rom. 6:8, and stands in express relation with 
 that of, say, 2 Cor. 5:14f. It would be most un- 
 natural violently to separate the statement here 
 from the ordinary connotation of the language. 
 This is reinforced by the fact that the aorist 
 tense is employed, and thus a dying with Christ 
 already accomplished by every Christian who took 
 this language on his lips, most naturally suggested. 
 It is most unnatural, therefore, to understand here 
 a dying with Christ not yet accomplished, per- 
 haps never to be accomplished; the language im- 
 plies rather a dying which has been the invariable 
 experience of every Christian heart. Are we to 
 say that the passage teaches that only if we share 
 in Christ's death in the sense that we like Him die 
 for the Gospel, are we to share in his life.? Or, are 
 we to say that the meaning is rather that every 
 faithful Christian that dies shall live again? The 
 
422 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 latter is too flat a sense to be attributed to our 
 passage; the former, obviously too narrow. The 
 reference is neither to martyrdom, not yet merely 
 to a Christian death. The death here is obviously 
 ethical or rather, spiritual, and yet not quite in 
 the exact sense of Rom. 6 :8, but more in that of 
 2 Cor. 5 :14. The simple meaning obviously is that 
 he who is united with Christ in His death shall 
 share with Him His life also; that all those "in 
 Christ Jesus" as they died with Him on Calvary, 
 as that death which He there died, since it was for 
 them, was their death in Him, so shall share with 
 Him in His resurrection life, shall live in and 
 through Him. 
 
 The appeal is clearly to the Christian's union 
 with Christ and its abiding effects. He is a new 
 creation; with a new life in him; and should live 
 in the power of this new and deathless life. For 
 there is a stress laid also on the persistence of this 
 life and a pointing of the reader to the deathless- 
 ness of the life in Christ. Know ye not, says the 
 Apostle in effect, that if ye died with Christ ye 
 shall also live with Him, and that the life ye are 
 living in the flesh ye live by the power of the Son 
 of God, and it shall last for ever.? The pregnancy 
 of the implication is extreme, but it is all in- 
 volved in the one fact that if we died with Christ, 
 if we are His and share His death on Calvary, we 
 shall live with Him ; live with Him in a redeemed 
 life here, cast in another mould from the old life 
 
COMMUNION WITH CHRIST 423 
 
 of the flesh, and Hve with Him hereafter for ever. 
 This great appeal to their union and communion 
 with Christ lays the basis for all that follows. It 
 puts the reader on the plane — sets him at the 
 point of view — of "in Christ Jesus." 
 
 Now, the second and third clauses present the 
 contrasting possibilities, emerging from the situa- 
 tion presented in the first clause, and belong as 
 such together, as positive and negative state- 
 ments. He who is in Christ may by patient con- 
 tinuance in well-doing abide in union with his 
 Lord, and he shall not fail of his reward. The 
 metaphysical possibility remains open, however, 
 that he may deny his Lord, in which case, he shall, 
 himself, in accordance with our Lord's own ex- 
 press threat, be denied by Him. Observe the 
 precise justice of the contrasting expressions em- 
 ployed in these alternatives. The tense changes 
 first from the aorist to the present, because not 
 tJie act of incorporation in Christ, but the process 
 of steadfast endurance, is in question. The verbs 
 in the apodosis are also varied to meet the exact 
 case; we begin as sharers in Christ's life; if we 
 continue steadfastly in that life we shall share in 
 its glories. The thought is precisely that of Rom. 
 8:16, 17; if we are God's children, we are heirs, 
 joint heirs with Christ, "if so be that we suffer 
 with Him, that we may be glorified with Him 
 also." Only in our present passage the matter is 
 not conceived so distinctly as suffering or as suffer- 
 
424 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 ing with Christ; in preparation for the companion 
 clause yet to come the idea of "with Christ" falls 
 away here. The two cases rest with us — abiding 
 steadfastly or disowning. The "reigning with 
 Christ" is an advance on "living with Christ"; it 
 throws the emphasis on the reward: if we have 
 died with Him we are sharers of His life; if we 
 abide in this life we shall inherit with Him the 
 Kingdom. 
 
 The companion clause presents the other pos- 
 sibility. The "deny" corresponds to "the stead- 
 fast endurance" and Christ's disowning us cor- 
 responds to the "reigning with Him"; both as 
 opposite contrasts. The tense is changed in ac- 
 cordance with the new nature of the case. It is 
 not a matter of continually disowning Him; it is 
 a matter of breaking the continuance of our stead- 
 fast endurance. This is done by an act. Hence 
 the future, expressing the possibility of the act: 
 "should we disown Him," — if we shall disown 
 Him, why then, He (emphatic), also will disown 
 us! This is the dreadful contingency; all the more 
 dreadful on account of three things: (1) the sim- 
 ple brevity of its statement as a dire possibility to 
 be kept in mind and steadfastly guarded against; 
 (2) the express reminiscence of our Lord's own 
 words in Matt. 10:33 carrying the mind back to 
 the most solemn of associations possible to con- 
 nect with the words; (3) the emphatic "He," 
 thrusting the personality of Christ for the first 
 
COMMUNION WITH CHRIST 425 
 
 time upon the consciousness of the reader; as be- 
 fore, He is only gently kept in mind by the impli- 
 cations of the "with." This emphatic "He" is 
 partly due, of course, to the change of construc- 
 tion, by which a new subject is needed for the suc- 
 ceeding verb; though it would be, perhaps, better 
 to say the desire for emphasis is the cause of the 
 change of construction. We might have had a 
 passive verb, "If we deny we shall be denied," 
 with or without the "by Him." But the person- 
 ality of Christ is too strongly felt here for mere 
 suggestion or even for relegation to the predicate. 
 The change to the active construction and the 
 expression of the subject and its expression by the 
 demonstrative "He," all pile emphasis on em- 
 phasis; "If we disown, HE, too (not merely He, 
 but HE, too), will disown us!" This is the climax 
 of the sentence and a fitting pause is reached. 
 "If we died with Him we shall also live with him; 
 if we steadfastly endure we shall also reign with 
 him; but if we shall ever, by any possibility, deny 
 Him, He, too, will deny — us!" The thought is 
 complete with this. Both alternatives are devel- 
 oped. And the effect of the whole is a powerful 
 incentive to abide in Christ. Patient endurance — 
 nay, bold, steadfast, brave endurance — ^has its 
 reward — reigning with Christ. But if we fall 
 from this and disown Christ, do we not remember 
 His dreadful threat: "He, too, can and will dis- 
 own — even us!" 
 
426 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Surely there is nothing required to enhance the 
 terror of this situation. The poignancy of the 
 appeal to steadfast endurance seems scarcely to 
 need heightening. But on the other hand there 
 would seem need for a closing word of encourage- 
 ment to weak and faltering Christians. And there 
 would seem a way open for it. For the very sharp- 
 ness of the assertion that if there is disowning on 
 one side there will be disowning on the other, too, 
 seems to hint something else. The contrast be- 
 tween the present tense of the second clause ex- 
 pressing continuance and the tense of the third 
 clause expressing an act, calls for consideration: 
 "If we continue to — ," "If we shall perchance 
 ever — ." Nothing is said of the continuance of 
 the disowning on either side. Disowning begets 
 disowning. True; but is that all.^^ Shall one act 
 of even such dreadful sin divide us from all that 
 we had hoped for, in a long life of endurance .^^ 
 What shall poor weak, faltering Christians do in 
 that case? It does not seem impossible, to say 
 the least, that the last clause comes in to comfort 
 and strengthen. There is hope even for the 
 lapsed Christian! For "though we prove faith- 
 less, He (emphatic), HE, at least, abides faithful: 
 for deny Himself He cannot!" Deny us He may 
 and will; every denial entails a denial. But 
 deny Himself, He cannot. Our unbelief shall 
 not render the faith of God of none effect. 
 
 If this be the construction, the whole closes on a 
 
COMMUNION WITH CHRIST 427 
 
 note of hope. The note of warning throbs through 
 even the note of hope, it is true, for He who can- 
 not deny Himself must remember His threats 
 also; and no Christian holding this wonderful 
 "faithful saying" in his heart will fail to note this. 
 But the note of hope is the dominant one, and I 
 take it this last clause is designed to call back the 
 soul from the contemplation of the dreadfulness of 
 denying Christ and throw it in trust and hope 
 back upon Jesus Christ, the faithful One, who 
 despite our unfaithfulness, will never deny Him- 
 self — will never disown Himself, — ^but will ever 
 look on His own cross and righteousness and all 
 the bitter dole He has suffered, and will not let 
 anything snatch what He has purchased to Him- 
 self out of His hands. 
 
 In this view of the matter, then, the arrange- 
 ment of the clauses is not in a straightforward 
 quartet — ^two by two — but rather this: 
 
 If we died with Him we shall also live with Him; 
 
 If we endure we shall also reign with Him; 
 
 If we shall deny, He too will deny us. 
 If we are faithless. He abideth faithful, for Himself He camiot 
 deny. 
 
PRAYER AS A PRACTICE 
 
 James 5:16b: — "The supplication of a righteous man availeth 
 much." 
 
 I WANT to speak to you this afternoon about 
 prayer, and I have chosen a text which, if we can- 
 not quite say of it that it brings prayer before us 
 at the height of its idea, yet, certainly, presents its 
 value to us in the most emphatic way. 
 
 Men ask, What is the use of praying? Above 
 all, What is the use of bringing specific petitions 
 to the throne of the Almighty? "To crave boons 
 you know little of, from a God of whom you know 
 nothing at all, save that you have made him in 
 your own image — of what profit can that be?" 
 That is the language of unbelief. 
 
 Much, however, which passes for belief asks 
 practically the same thing in somewhat more 
 chastened forms of speech. This half belief also 
 asks. What is the use of praying? We must have 
 a very low conception of God, it suggests, to sup- 
 pose that He does not know how to govern His 
 universe without our telling Him. Do we really 
 think He will subordinate His wisdom to the de- 
 mands of our folly? Cannot we leave the direc- 
 tion of affairs to Him? If He be, indeed, a good 
 and wise God, must we not leave it to Him? Why 
 rush hysterically into His presence and demand 
 
 428 
 
PRAYER AS A PRACTICE 429 
 
 that the universe be ruled according to our no- 
 tions? Are we competent to give Him advice? 
 Do we fancy that we know what is best even for 
 ourselves, as He does not? He cannot hear us 
 unless He be God; He certainly ought not to 
 hearken to us if He be God. If He is "mighty 
 enough to make laws," why should we think Him 
 "weak enough to break them" at our request? 
 Prayer is in effect an attempt to undeify the 
 Deity and substitute our will for His will. It is 
 not only foolish and immoral, therefore, but su- 
 premely self-contradictory. We cannot attempt 
 it save on the supposition that it is God whom we 
 are addressing; we would not attempt it if we 
 really believed that He whom we are addressing is 
 God. Of one thing, at least, we may be assured, 
 that it is of no use to pray. 
 
 Well, you see, it is precisely to this point that 
 our text speaks. It speaks not of prayer in gen- 
 eral, but of the specific act of petition. "Suppli- 
 cation," our Revised Version calls it. It is that 
 precise act of prayer which is the making of a re- 
 quest, the urging of a desire, the preferring of a 
 petition. And what it says about it is that so 
 far from its being of no use, it is of very great use. 
 "The prayer," — or more specifically, the "peti- 
 tion," the "request," the " supphcation " — "of a 
 righteous man availeth much," "is of great value," 
 "exerts great power." There is another word in 
 the sentence, but as it is of somewhat doubtful 
 
430 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 interpretation and in no way qualifies the sense of 
 the declaration for our present purpose, we may 
 pass it by here. It is variously rendered as quali- 
 fying the prayer of the righteous man that availeth 
 further as "earnest"; or as indicating the source 
 from which such a prayer alone can come, by 
 affirming that it is "inwrought" in him, that is, 
 by the Holy Ghost; or as further describing the 
 value of it as avaihng "in its working." It is 
 obvious that whether we say "the fervent prayer 
 of the righteous man availeth much," or "the 
 prayer of a righteous man availeth much, seeing 
 that it is inwrought," or "the prayer of a righteous 
 man availeth much in its working," the one main 
 thing asserted in every case is that a righteous 
 man's prayer is of high value; that it is strong to 
 obtain its end; that it is fully worth offering up. 
 And this emphatic assertion is buttressed im- 
 mensely by its context. The assertion is made in 
 order to encourage the readers to pray for one 
 another, and for themselves. To pray for one 
 another when they are sick; to pray for one 
 another when they are soul-sick. If any is 
 sick among you, exhorts James, send for the elders 
 of the Church and have them pray over such an 
 one; and the prayer of faith shall heal the sick; 
 yes, and if he have any sin on his conscience, it 
 will heal that sin. And all of you — why, confess 
 your sins to one another — and pray for one an- 
 other, and the prayer will bring healing. Take 
 
PRAYER AS A PRACTICE 431 
 
 everything to God. If you are suffering go in 
 prayer; if you are in joy go in praise. But in any 
 and every case, go. It is strong and reiterated 
 advice, you see. Go continually, go always, to 
 God. Go, go, because prayer is not of no profit; 
 but, on the contrary, the "prayer of a righteous 
 man profiteth much!" And then James supports 
 this central declaration with a most telling exam- 
 ple. It is taken from the Hfe of Elijah. Elijah 
 prayed. He was a man just like us. And he got 
 what he prayed for. And it was no little thing 
 he asked for. He asked for drought and he asked 
 for rain. And he got the drought and the rain 
 he asked for. See, says James in effect, see, how 
 much the prayer of a righteous man is good for! 
 
 It looks as if we could not easily find a stronger 
 assertion of the value of prayer; and of prayer at 
 the very apex of its difficulty as I have said; 
 prayer, specifically as petition. But I do not wish 
 this afternoon to confine our thoughts to this one 
 point- the value of petition, but to take encour- 
 agement from this emphatic assertion of the value 
 of prayer, and direct our minds to a general con- 
 sideration of prayer in the large. 
 
 First, then, the idea of prayer. In its most 
 general connotation, prayer is the Godward ex- 
 pression of subjective religion. Subjective religion 
 is the state of mind consequent on the apprehen- 
 sion of God. Prayer is, therefore, in its most gen- 
 eral sense the Godward expression of that state of 
 
432 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 mind which is consequent on the apprehension of 
 God. In short, all conscious communion with 
 God is prayer. A great many elements, there- 
 fore, enter into prayer. It is not to be confined to 
 petition. Every form of expression of the soul 
 Godward is a form of prayer. Many terms, 
 therefore, are employed in the Scriptures, He- 
 brew and Greek alike, to give expression to the 
 various forms and modes of praying. In some 
 passages several of these are accumulated and 
 that with full consciousness of the variety of 
 mental state and action expressed by them. 
 One of the most formal of these summations 
 occurs at the opening of the second chapter of 
 First Timothy. Here four terms are gathered 
 together to give more adequate expression to 
 what Paul would have us do when we pray; four 
 terms which emphasize the mental movements 
 we call respectively adoration, petition, urgency, 
 thanksgiving. These four elements, at least, 
 ought, therefore, to intertwine in all our acts of 
 prayer. When we come before God, we should 
 come with adoration in our hearts and on our lips, 
 with thanksgiving suffusing all our being for His 
 goodness to us, and making known our desires 
 with that earnestness which alone can justify our 
 bringing them to Him. 
 
 Next, the presuppositions of prayer. Obviously 
 they are the presuppositions of subjective religion. 
 And these may be summed up in the existence. 
 
PRAYER AS A PRACTICE 433 
 
 the personality, the accessibility and the contin- 
 ued activity of God in the world. The Scriptures 
 themselves tell us that to come to God implies 
 that we believe that He is, and that He is the re- 
 warder of those who diligently seek Him. We 
 must really believe in the existence of God and in 
 His care for the works of His hands, or we cannot 
 pray to Him. Not only then cannot the atheist, 
 or the agnostic, or the pantheist, pray; nor yet 
 the deist or the fatalist. But neither can ad- 
 herents of many a variety of our modern thought 
 which baptizes itself with the Christian name, 
 pray as men ought to pray. I have particularly 
 in mind in saying this, on the one hand, those ex- 
 treme advocates of the reign of law in external 
 nature who love to call themselves either spec- 
 ulative theists or non-miraculous Christians; and 
 on the other those extreme advocates of the au- 
 tocracy of the human will, who fancy that the 
 whole cause of liberty is bound up with the self- 
 sufficiency of the human soul. 
 
 The one of these would forbid us to pray for any 
 external want; the other for any internal effect on 
 the soul. So, between the two, they would take 
 away the whole sphere of prayer. Unless we 
 should prefer wisely to look at it from the oppo- 
 site angle, and to say that each refutes the other, 
 and between the two they allow us the whole 
 sphere of prayer. Certainly, that is what the 
 Scriptures do. They authorize, or rather require, 
 
434 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 us to pray both for external and internal blessings; 
 for rain and drought like Elijah; for the healing 
 of sickness like the elders of the Church; for the 
 healing of sin-sick souls like Christians at large. 
 There is, no doubt, a problem of how God an- 
 swers prayers for external effects ; and we may be 
 chary of supposing that miracles will be wrought 
 when special providences will serve the end; and 
 there is a problem of how God answers prayer 
 for internal changes and we may be chary of sup- 
 posing that violence is done to our nature, when 
 confluent action along psychologically indicated 
 lines will suffice. But one thing we must hold 
 firmly to : God answers prayer. And that equally, 
 and equally readily and equally easily, for in- 
 ternal and for external things. 
 
 Now, the conditions of acceptable prayer. Let 
 us study here the simplicity of Scripture. We 
 need not multiply conditions where the Scriptures 
 do not multiply them. And, speaking strictly, 
 Scripture knows of but one condition. It con- 
 duces to the peace and comfort of our souls to 
 remember that there is but one condition to ac- 
 ceptable prayer. It is easiest and best, however, 
 to state this one condition in a twofold manner: 
 objectively and subjectively. There is an ob- 
 jective condition of acceptable prayer and there 
 is a subjective condition of acceptable prayer. 
 The objective condition is that we should have ac- 
 cess to God. The subjective condition is that 
 
PRAYER AS A PRACTICE 435 
 
 we should have faith. The objective and sub- 
 jective conditions are one, because it is only in 
 Jesus Christ that we have access to God and only 
 through faith that we are in Him. 
 
 Whatever may be said of men as men — the 
 creatures of God — you and I have nothing to do 
 with. You and I are not men as men; we are 
 sinners. And sinners as such have no access to 
 God. They may go through all the motions of 
 prayer, no doubt. It is like bodily exercises that 
 profit nothing; one might as will turn a prayer 
 wheel like the Thibetans. It goes no higher than 
 our own heads. For this is of the very essence of 
 sin — that it breaks communion with God. God 
 is deaf to the sinner's cry. He owes the sinner 
 punishment, not favour. In Jesus Christ alone 
 has the breach between God and sinful man been 
 filled in. In the blood of His sacrifice only can we 
 penetrate within the veil. In Him only, as Paul 
 repeatedly tells us, do we have our introduction 
 into the Divine presence. All prayer that is ac- 
 ceptable and reaches the ears of God, therefore, 
 is prayer that is conveyed to Him through Jesus 
 Christ. For sinners the atonement of Christ lays 
 the only basis for real prayer. 
 
 The subjective condition is faith; and faith is 
 the sole subjective condition. No other condi- 
 tion is ever announced in Scripture. And the 
 promises to faith are repeated, emphatic and un- 
 limited. He that prays in faith shall surely re- 
 
436 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 ceive. For faith can no more fail in prayer than 
 in salvation; and if faith and faith alone is not 
 the only but all-sufficient instrument of salvation, 
 then we are yet in our sins and are of all men the 
 most miserable. If any one is puzzled by so un- 
 limited a promise, let him reflect what faith is and 
 whence faith comes. If faith is the gift of God in 
 this sphere, too — as assuredly it is — then faith 
 can no more fail than the God who gives it can 
 fail. Or think you that God will deceive you by 
 working faith in you by His Holy Spirit when He 
 has no intention of correspondingly blessing you? 
 Man-made faith — that might fail; for that is no 
 faith at all. But God-inspired faith, as it is God 
 within you working, so is it sure to find God 
 without you hearkening. That is what Paul says 
 in that great passage in the eighth of Romans 
 about the Holy Spirit groaning within us unutter- 
 ably, and God knowing the mind of His Spirit. 
 It is possibly also what James says in our present 
 passage, when he says that it is an "energized 
 prayer" which is effective. But the gist of the 
 whole matter is that there is no condition of suc- 
 cessful prayer but faith. 
 
 No condition, but not therefore no character- 
 izing qualities, which are always present where 
 faithful prayer is; and the presence and absence 
 of which you and I can observe as marks of ac- 
 acceptable or unacceptable prayer. These are 
 customarily enumerated as sincerity, reverence. 
 
PRAYER AS A PRACTICE 437 
 
 humility, importunity, submission. Many more 
 similar characteristic features of acceptable prayer 
 could be added. We need not dwell on these in 
 detail. 
 
 Lastly, the effects of prayer. These too are 
 both objective and subjective. Which are the 
 more important.^ That depends very much on 
 the specific exercises of prayer which we have in 
 mind; and on the specific things we pray for, 
 if it is of the exercise of petition that we are 
 thinking. 
 
 The main point to emphasize is that prayer has 
 an objective effect. It terminates on God, and 
 does not merely bound back like a boomerang 
 upon our own persons. We do not throw it up 
 towards the heavens to have it do nothing but 
 circle back to smite our own heads. But though 
 this is to be mainly insisted upon, it does not fol- 
 low that prayer may not also have subjective 
 effects; or that these subjective effects may not 
 be of unspeakable importance to us; or even that 
 in some exercises of prayer, they may not be 
 almost the most important of its effects. If the 
 specific exercise of prayer in which we are engaged 
 is adoration or thanksgiving, may not what we 
 call its subjective effects be the most important.? 
 No doubt, if we are engaging in petition, it may 
 be different; may be even here, not must. If our 
 petition be, Father, hallowed be Thy Name! — or, 
 Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as 
 
438 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 in heaven! — no subjective effects can compare 
 with the objective value of the petition. But 
 suppose the petition be, "Give us this day our 
 daily bread!" Or for some lesser blessing "of this 
 life"! Is not the enjoyment in prayer of com- 
 munion with God of more value than any of these 
 things? Let us bless God that man does not live 
 by bread alone; nay, not even chiefly. 
 
 If we seek to enumerate the benefits obtained by 
 prayer, then, I think we must say that they are, 
 at least, threefold. There are the objective 
 blessings obtained by means of the prayer in the 
 answer to its petitions. There is the blessing that 
 consists in the very act of prayer, that commu- 
 nion with God which is the highest act of the soul. 
 There are the blessings that arise from the as- 
 sumption in prayer of the proper attitude of the 
 creature, especially of the sinful creature, towards 
 God. Perhaps these last alone can be strictly 
 called purely subjective. The first we may speak 
 of as purely objective. It is the second in which 
 the highest value of prayer is to be found. 
 
 We must not undervalue the purely subjective 
 or reflex effects of prayer. They are of the high- 
 est benefit to us. Much less must we undervalue 
 the objective effects of prayer. In them lies the 
 specific meaning of that exercise of prayer which 
 we call petition. But the heart of the matter hes 
 in every case in the communion with God which 
 the soul enjoys in prayer. This is prayer itself. 
 
PRAYER AS A PRACTICE 439 
 
 and in it is summed up what is most blessed in 
 prayer. If it be man's chief end to glorify God 
 and enjoy Him for ever, then man has attained his 
 end, the sole purpose for which he was made, the 
 entire object for which he exists, when he enters 
 into communion with God, abides in His pres- 
 ence, streaming out to Him in all the emotions, I 
 do not say appropriate to a creature in the pres- 
 ence of his Maker and Lord, apprehended by him 
 as the Good Lord and Righteous Ruler of the 
 souls of men, but appropriate to the sinner who 
 has been redeemed by the blood of God's own Son 
 and is inhabited by His Spirit and apprehends 
 his Maker as also his Saviour, his Governor as 
 also his Lover, and knows the supreme joy of him 
 that was lost and is found, was dead and is alive 
 again, — and all, through the glory of God's seeking 
 and saving love. He who attains to this experi- 
 ence has attained all that is to be attained. He is 
 absorbed in the beatific vision. He that sees God 
 shall be like Him. 
 
GOD'S HOLINESS AND OURS 
 
 I Pet. 1:15: — "But like as He which called you is holy, be ye 
 yourselves also holy in all manner of living." 
 
 The first chapter of the First Epistle of Peter 
 ranks with the most precious in the Bible. It 
 opens with a singularly rich and beautiful de- 
 scription of what God has done for us, and of the 
 glory of that salvation which He has provided. 
 He has given His Son to die and rise again that by 
 His resurrection from the dead He might beget us 
 anew unto a lively hope. Though we may have 
 to suffer now and enter not yet into this hope, He 
 Himself preserves for us the hoped-for inherit- 
 ance, incorruptible and undefiled; and keeps us 
 by His power for it, until the day comes when we 
 shall enter into it. This glorious salvation He had 
 prepared for us, indeed, before we were born, 
 even from the beginnings of the ages, annoimcing 
 it from time to time through the prophets who 
 well knew that it was for us and not themselves 
 that they ministered, but revealing it in its full 
 glory not even to the angels as it has now been 
 made known to us. Thus Peter makes known to 
 his readers that it was not they who chose God 
 but God who chose them; that their salvation is 
 not dependent on their own effort but rests on 
 God's almighty power; that the inheritance for 
 
 440 
 
GOD'S HOLINESS AND OURS 441 
 
 which they hope in the end is not such an one as 
 they could obtain with human weakness, but such 
 an one as only God could prepare — more splendid 
 than prophets could tell, more glorious than 
 angels could imagine, prepared by God just for us 
 from the foundation of the world. By this far-off 
 glimpse of it, Peter would quicken our hope and 
 awaken our love and gratitude to God. 
 
 "Wherefore," he adds, — turning suddenly from 
 this glorious prospect to stir us up to make this 
 precious inheritance surely our own — "where- 
 fore" see to it that you enter into this hope and 
 lay such hold upon it that it cannot slip away. As 
 we approach the text for the day, thus, we pass 
 from the contemplation of the glorious inheritance 
 of the saints to the most earnest exhortations to 
 make our calling sure. Peter admonishes us by 
 the greatness of the hope that is set before us, in 
 other words, to a mode of life conformable to it. 
 We must gird up the loins of our minds, be sober 
 and set our hope perfectly on this grace that is to 
 be brought to us at the revelation of our Lord. 
 It is ready for us; it is kept in store for us in 
 heaven; when Christ comes it will come with Him. 
 Would we be meet for its reception? How then 
 shall we be made meet for it? We are told first 
 negatively and then positively. 
 
 Christ is our King and to Him we owe our duty. 
 Not with eye service only; not with grudging 
 honour; but as the very children of obedience we 
 
442 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 must offer Him our willing service. And this 
 service which He demands of us is summed up 
 broadly in the negative rule that we must be sep- 
 arated wholly from our former evil desires which 
 we followed in the days of our ignorance, before 
 He recalled Himself to us and made known to us 
 what a glorious inheritance He had for us. Chil- 
 dren of the flesh, born in the flesh, we have lived 
 according to the lusts of the flesh; for who is there 
 that sins not? But now that the eyes of our 
 hearts have been opened that we may see what it 
 is that we have done, and that we may know the 
 evil that we have wrought, we must turn away 
 from evil. This is the negative rule of life. But 
 mere negation brings us nowhere. To separate 
 from sin is not enough; we must go on to positive 
 holiness; "like as He which called you is holy, 
 become ye also yourselves holy in all manner 
 of living.'* Here is the positive rule of life. 
 
 Now let us look at this precept somewhat more 
 closely. Doing so we will observe (1) what it 
 is that we are exhorted to become — holy; (2) 
 in what we are to become holy — in every manner 
 of living; and (3) to what degree we are to become 
 holy in all our life and all its activities, — as holy as 
 God Himself is. In other words, we may ob- 
 serve here (1) that God draws back the veil and 
 exhibits His own holiness to His children; (2) that 
 He makes His hoHness the incitement to them to 
 become holy also; (3) that He holds His own holi- 
 
GOD'S HOLINESS AND OURS 443 
 
 ness forth as the standard of the holiness which 
 they must strive to attain; and (4) that He ac- 
 tually proposes to share this His highest attri- 
 bute with us. 
 
 Observe, then, first, that God here proclaims 
 His own holiness and so exhibits this His crown 
 and glory to His children; "like as He which 
 called you is holy" — "for I am holy." What, 
 then, do we mean when we speak of the "holi- 
 ness" of God? We need not trouble ourselves 
 with the derivation of the Hebrew word, although, 
 no doubt, its etymological sense of division, sepa- 
 ration from, is conformable with its usage. The 
 usage of the word, which is applied primarily to 
 God, and only afterwards and secondarily to those 
 that belong to Him, — especially if we will observe 
 its contrasts — clearly indicates as its central idea 
 that of separation; and specifically separation 
 from the world conceived of as a sinful world. 
 When we call God holy, then, the central idea in 
 our minds concerns His absolute and complete 
 separation from sin and uncleanness. Not that 
 the idea has this negative form as it lies in our 
 minds. There is no idea so positive as that of 
 holiness; it is the very climax of positiveness. 
 But it is hard to express this positiveness in a 
 definite way, simply because this idea is above the 
 ideas expressed by its synonyms. It is more than 
 sinlessness, though it, of course, includes the idea 
 of sinlessness. It is more than righteousness, 
 
444 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 although again it includes the idea of righteous- 
 ness. It is more than wholeness, complete sound- 
 ness and integrity and rightness, though, of course, 
 again it includes these ideas. It is more than 
 simpleness, high simplicity and guilelessness, 
 though it includes this too. It is more than 
 purity, though, of course, it includes this too. 
 Holiness includes all these and more. It is God's 
 whole, entire, absolute, inconceivable and, there- 
 fore, unexpressible completeness and perfection of 
 separation from and opposition to and ineffable 
 revulsion from all that is in any sense or degree, 
 however small, evil. We fall back at last on this 
 negative description of it just because language 
 has no positive word which can reach up to the 
 unscaleable heights of this one highest word, holi- 
 ness. It is the crown of God as mercy is His 
 treasure; as grace is His riches, this is His glory. 
 Who is like unto God, glorious in holiness? 
 
 Such is the challenge of the Old Testament and 
 safely might it be given. The holiness of God is a 
 conception peculiar to the religion of the Bible. 
 None of the gods of the nations was like unto our 
 God in this, the crown and climax of His glory. 
 But it is just this His ineffable perfection that He 
 calls us to imitate. It is just the exhibition of 
 this His glory that He trusts to quicken an un- 
 quenchable thirst in us to be like Him. For ob- 
 serve, secondly, that it is by this exhibition of 
 His holiness that God incites us to holiness. "Like 
 
GOD'S HOLINESS AND OURS 445 
 
 as He which called you is holy, become ye also 
 yourselves holy." "Ye shall be holy for I am 
 holy." God exhibits His glory to us for our 
 imitation and expects the sight of the beauty of 
 holiness in Him to beget in us an inextinguishable 
 longing to be like Him. Holiness is a dread at- 
 tribute. Reverence and awe attend its exhibi- 
 tion. Who can look upon the holy God and not 
 tremble? To the sinful man, no words so quickly 
 spring to the lips when he is brought in sight of 
 holiness as "Depart from me, for I am a sinful 
 man, O Lord!" It is pre-eminently the holiness 
 of God which constitutes the terror of the Lord, 
 and as often as He appears to men we read the 
 record that they feared a great fear. Does its 
 contemplation not silence our tongues and abase 
 our hearts rather than rouse our endeavours and 
 quicken our efforts.^ It is but too true that sin 
 and holiness are antagonistic and that holiness 
 hates sin no less truly than sin hates holiness. 
 Sinful man cannot be incited to holy activity by 
 the sight of holiness; it begets no longing in his 
 heart except a longing to hide himself away from 
 it. When Adam sinned, he no longer wished to 
 meet God in the garden. 
 
 The very fact of the proposal of God to show us 
 His holiness as an incitement to holiness in us 
 means something, then, of infinite importance to 
 our souls. It means that we are no longer averse 
 to all that is good; no longer God's enemies but 
 
446 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 His friends. Peter is addressing here not man as 
 man but Christian men as Christian men. Those 
 to whom he speaks have been bought with a price, 
 have been begotten anew unto a lively hope by the 
 resurrection of Christ from the dead. As God's 
 sons they are already like God, and he only ex- 
 horts them to become more like Him. It is only 
 as God's sons that they could be attracted by the 
 exhibition of His holiness ; it is only as God's sons 
 that they could find in it an incitement; it is only 
 ^.s such that they can hope to attain it. And it is 
 just because we are God's sons that the exhorta- 
 tion is necessary to us. If we are to call on Him 
 as Father we must vindicate our right to use that 
 ennobling name by living as His children. Thus 
 the very proposal of God to incite us to holiness by 
 the exhibition of His holiness to us, is itself an 
 encouragement to and a pledge of our attainment 
 of it. He expects us to see and to feel the beauty 
 of holiness and that means that He has already 
 recreated our hearts. 
 
 Thus we observe, thirdly, that God not only ex- 
 hibits His holiness here as an incitement to us, but 
 also reveals to us by that act His gracious and 
 loving purpose with us. We see God here not 
 calling us up to seek communion with Him in our 
 own strength; but rather stooping down that He 
 may raise us to that communion. For let us ob- 
 serve that it is, after all, communion with Him 
 to which He has summoned us. There can be no 
 
GOD'S HOLINESS AND OURS 447 
 
 communion between the holy and the sinful. He 
 is here beseeching us to hold communion with 
 Him, and He is providing the way by which it may 
 be consummated. The Holy God has by the 
 resurrection of Christ from the dead begotten us 
 again into a living hope and here He holds out to 
 this already formed hope the incitement of the 
 sight of His holiness as the goal to which we must 
 strive to attain. 
 
 It is not unadvisedly that we say that His hoh- 
 ness is here exhibited as the goal to which we must 
 seek to attain. For not only is it in the text the 
 incitement, but also the standard of the holiness 
 for which we are to strive. We are to become 
 holy as God is holy. Of course the finite cannot 
 attain the infinite. But as the asymptote of the 
 hyperbola ever approaches it but never attains, so 
 we are eternally to approach this high and perfect 
 standard. Ever above us, the holiness of God 
 yet is ever more and more closely approached by 
 us; and as the unending aeons of eternity pass by 
 we shall grow ever more and more towards that 
 ever-beckoning standard. That is our high des- 
 tiny and it is not unfitly described as partaking in 
 the Divine Nature. 
 
CHILDSHIP TO GOD 
 
 1 Jno. 2:28-3:3, especially 3:1: — "Behold what manner of love 
 the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we should be called chil- 
 dren of God: and such we are." 
 
 The conception of the divine birth as the root 
 of the Christian Hfe is a specially Johannean one. 
 Not that the other New Testament writers do 
 not also teach all that is expressed by the term 
 "regeneration." But that they teach it prevail- 
 ingly under other figures, such as those of a re- 
 pristination, a new creation, and the like. The 
 Johannean expressions, "to be born again," "be- 
 gotten of God," do not occur at all, for example, in 
 Paul, whose use in a single passage of a similar 
 term only serves to bring out the contrast. There 
 is a corresponding difference in the use by Paul 
 and John of the conception of childship or sonship 
 to God. In accordance with his juridical point of 
 view, Paul speaks of sonship as conferred by adop- 
 tion, and thinks of our acquisition of the rights and 
 the inheritance of sons. In accordance with his 
 essential point of view, John speaks of childship as 
 conveyed through birth and thinks of growing up 
 into the likeness of God. Accordingly Paul pre- 
 fers the term "sons." We are adults received by 
 God's grace into the number of His sons. And 
 John prefers the term "children" or even "Httle 
 
 448 
 
CHILDSHIP TO GOD 449 
 
 children." We are born into the family of God as 
 the infants of His household. 
 
 This difference in the use of the conception of 
 childship is not a difference of doctrine; it is only 
 a difference in the illustrative use of the concep- 
 tion of childship in the setting forth of doctrine. 
 It will not do to say on its ground that John 
 teaches that our sonship to God is due to regener- 
 ation and Paul that it is due to justification. It 
 will not be accurate even to say that John em- 
 phasizes regeneration and Paul justification. What 
 is true is that Paul has adopted the conception of 
 sonship to illustrate the title to life and holiness 
 which we obtain through justification, and John 
 to illustrate the communication of a new principle 
 of holy life to us in regeneration. Paul uses it of 
 an objective fact, John of a subjective one. Paul, 
 to point us to what becomes ours through the work 
 of Christ without us; John, to what is made ours 
 by the working of Christ within us. It would lead 
 to confusion to treat the several passages in John 
 and Paul as if they were teaching us the same son- 
 ship to God. It would lead to even greater con- 
 fusion to suppose that because they illustrate 
 different portions of the doctrine of salvation by 
 the same figure, they teach a different doctrine of 
 salvation, — one by the Christ without us, the 
 other by the Christ within us. 
 
 Perhaps no passage could be pitched upon which 
 would more richly and completely than that be- 
 
450 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 fore us outline to us John's presentation of his 
 doctrine of ehildship to God, begun in regeneration 
 and growing up in ever-increasing sanctification 
 to its goal of likeness to God. It may repay us to 
 run over the points of doctrine that emerge in 
 the course of these five verses. 
 
 First then we are to observe that the ehildship 
 of God of which John teaches us — as truly as the 
 sonship to God of which Paul teaches us — is not 
 a natural but a graciously conferred relation. 
 Neither in John's sense nor in Paul's sense, nor in 
 the sense of any New Testament writer, can we 
 speak of a universal Fatherhood of God. The 
 idea of the All-Father is rather a heathen than a 
 Christian notion; that is to say it is a conception 
 belonging to the sphere of natural religion, voicing 
 the yearning of the human heart to find in its Cre- 
 ator and Ruler something more than a Master or a 
 Sovereign Lord. It contains no more Biblical 
 truth than arises from the fact that according to 
 the Bible we are like God in so far as by our first 
 creation we were made in His image; He is in this 
 sense the Father of our spirits. For from the Bib- 
 lical point of view, sonship presents primarily the 
 idea of likeness. Therefore, the bad are the sons 
 of Belial and the good are the sons of God; and 
 the high name of the children of God is, from Gen- 
 esis to Revelation, reserved for those whose like- 
 ness to Him extends beyond the mere natural 
 fact that they have a spiritual nature similar to 
 
CHILDSHIP TO GOD 451 
 
 God's, to the moral fact that they have a spirit- 
 ual character like God's. 
 
 Holiness of heart, not immateriality of essence, 
 is the ground in the Scriptural view of Divine son- 
 ship. And as men are by nature not holy but 
 wicked, they are naturally the sons of the Devil, 
 the sons of wrath. Sons of God they can become 
 only by an act of Divine mercy. The idea of the 
 universal Fatherhood of God represents therefore, 
 from the Biblical point of view, what God would 
 fain have been when He made man in His own 
 image, creating him in righteousness and true holi- 
 ness; what God still fain would be; not what God 
 is. He is in the Biblical sense, the Father only 
 of those who are renewed unto holiness. So John 
 puts it; so Paul puts it. Paul exhorts his readers 
 to "do all things without murmurings and dis- 
 putings, that they may be blameless and harmless, 
 children of God, without blemish": and John in 
 our present passage represents only those who do 
 righteousness as the children of God. 
 
 To John then, as we say, as to Paul and to the 
 whole New Testament, childship to God is not a 
 natural but a graciously constituted relation. 
 It is so in our passage, "Behold what manner of 
 love the Father hath bestowed upon us, that we 
 should be called the children of God." It is a 
 matter of bestowment; it is a gift. And it is an 
 undeserved and unmerited gift. John cries out 
 in wonder and surprised gratitude at the love — 
 
452 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 not only the greatness, but the high quality of the 
 love — which God bestowed on us, with ' the in- 
 tent of having us called children of God: "Be- 
 hold, what manner of love the Father hath be- 
 stowed upon us to the end that we should be 
 called children of God." And then his feelings 
 overcome him as he contemplates this great, this 
 indescribable, kind of love, and he adds, not as 
 part of the statement but as an unrestrainable com- 
 ment on the statement, "and such we are." The 
 words themselves point out the ineffable mercy 
 and love of God in making us — such as we — chil- 
 dren of God. But these two words of comment of 
 the responding heart of the beloved disciple pierce 
 even deeper into our souls. As he declares the 
 Father's love in making us His children, he cannot 
 help jubilating over the blessed fact. "It is 
 true," he cries, "it is true!" "And we are." As- 
 suredly, to him this is no natural relation. We 
 are the children of God only by the ineffable love 
 of God, constituting us sons. It is not a thing 
 we have by nature but of grace; it is not a thing 
 to which we are born as men, but to which we are 
 born again as Christians; it is not a thing to which 
 all are born, but only those who are born not of 
 blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of 
 man, but of God. 
 
 It is as clear as day, then, that this childship to 
 God, of which John teaches us, is not a product 
 of our own endeavours; it is a gift, a free favour, 
 
CHLIDSHIP TO GOD 453 
 
 from God; and it has its root in the ineffable and 
 indescribable and sovereign love of God. "Be- 
 hold what manner of love the Father has be- 
 stowed upon us that we should be called the sons 
 of God." We have not earned it; the Father has 
 given it; not paid it to us as our just due for effort 
 made, labour performed, righteousness practised; 
 but given it to us out of His free and inexplicable 
 love; not out of His justice but out of His incom- 
 prehensible love. It is a sovereign gift. So the 
 New Testament everywhere and under all its 
 figures represents it; so John always represents it. 
 And it is therefore that he sings paeans to God's 
 love on account of it. "Behold!" "What man- 
 ner of love is this!" "To seek us out and make us 
 the sons of God!" Language could not convey 
 more clearly, more powerfully, the conception of 
 the absolute sovereignty of the gift of childship 
 to God. Elsewhere it is conveyed more didac- 
 tically, more analytically; here it is conveyed 
 emotionally. Elsewhere we are told that it came 
 not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
 will of man, but of God; here we have the answer- 
 ing thrill of gratitude of the human heart at this 
 unexpected, undeserved gift. Elsewhere the sov- 
 ereignty is asserted, explained; here it is ac- 
 knowledged, honoured. Elsewhere it is claimed, 
 here it is yielded, admired, glorified. 
 
 But the passage gives us not merely the origin 
 and source of our childship to God in His love — 
 
454 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 free, and freely giving us this great benefit; it 
 points out to us the evidence of its reality. Though 
 we cannot purchase it by our righteousness, it is 
 freely bestowed, it yet evidences itself through 
 righteousness. It is not by righteousness that we 
 obtain it; but only the righteous have it. As it is 
 sonship to the righteous God that is conferred; 
 as sonship implies likeness ; it follows that the test 
 of such a sonship having been conferred is the 
 presence of the likeness, the presence of the right- 
 eousness. Accordingly we read: "If ye know 
 that He is righteous, ye know that every one also 
 that doeth righteousness is born of Him." This is 
 the test. None but the righteous are sons of God. 
 The Apostle does not say. None but the righteous 
 can become the sons of God. Then it would not 
 be true that the sonship is a free gift of ineffable, 
 sovereign love. But he does say that none but 
 the righteous are the sons of God. 
 
 This is, indeed, essential to his point of view, 
 that sonship hangs on an inward fact. Paul, too, 
 teaches the same doctrine even though he is 
 looking upon sonship as a juridical fact. For God 
 leaves none of those whom He constitutes His 
 sons by adoption without the Spirit of sonship in 
 their hearts, crying Abba, Father; and only those 
 who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God. 
 But much more will John, who is thinking of re- 
 generation rather than justification, under the 
 figure of sonship, teach the same. Only he who 
 
CHILDSHIP TO GOD 455 
 
 doeth righteousness can really be begotten of the 
 Righteous One. That we do righteousness be- 
 comes thus the test and evidence of our sonship. 
 Begetting is the implanting of a seed of life, and 
 it is the very nature of life to live, that is, to man- 
 ifest its essential nature in outward activities. 
 But the seed implanted in this begetting is the 
 seed of holy living; how can it be said to be there 
 if it is not manifested in holy living? It is of the 
 very nature of the thing that only those who do 
 righteousness can have been begotten by the 
 Righteous God unto newness of life. 
 
 But is not John then blending regeneration 
 with sanctification.f^ If none is born of God — 
 regenerated — unless he doeth righteousness, is 
 not this to say that by the mystical act of being 
 begotten of God — regeneration — a man must be 
 made holy, and unless he has been made holy, he 
 is not born of God.^ Yes, and no. For John, 
 while insisting that no one is born of God who does 
 not do righteousness, does not represent him as 
 having already in his new birth attained his goal. 
 An infant is not a full-grown man. Nor is he who 
 is born of God already perfected in likeness to 
 God. John, too, represents this as a growth. 
 He asserts that only those who do righteousness 
 are the children of God; but he claims to be him- 
 self — ^he claims that his readers are — already chil- 
 dren of God. "And such we are." "Are"— 
 already. "Beloved, now we are children of God." 
 
456 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 Does he claim perfected righteousness for himself 
 or them? "If we say that we have no sin, we 
 deceive ourselves and the truth is not in us." Yet 
 throughout our passage, and beyond, he insists 
 with iterated emphasis that the mark of the child 
 of God is that he does righteousness, and that he 
 who does sin is of the devil. There is no contra- 
 diction here. John, too, knows the root and the 
 tree; the flower and the fruit. He, no more than 
 Paul, claims to be already perfect. Even the 
 infant is like his father; and whoever is born of 
 God does righteousness like the Righteous Father, 
 though he does it like an infant, with many a 
 false step, with many a fall. He must, like other 
 infants, grow up and learn to walk in the new path. 
 And so John in our passage does not look upon 
 the new birth as all; he expects a growth and 
 promises it. "Beloved, we are already children 
 of God" — his readers, after that formulated test 
 of doing righteousness, needed assurance of it; 
 "we are already children of God." "And it is 
 not yet made manifest what we shall be" — not 
 yet made manifest! The completed righteousness 
 is not yet present — "we know that if He shall be 
 manifested, we shall be like Him for we shall see 
 Him as He is." Ah, here is the goal on which 
 John sets his eyes! We have not yet the per- 
 fected likeness to our Righteous Father, merely 
 because we are born of God; we must grow up to 
 be altogether like Him. It is a process; a growth; 
 
CHILDSHIP TO GOD 457 
 
 only when the infant becomes a man, is the like- 
 ness complete. 
 
 And, therefore, the Apostle has an exhortation 
 for us as well as an instruction. We have re- 
 ceived in our new birth the germ of our new life 
 of righteousness; but we have not received in it 
 that whole new life in perfection. God never 
 intended to carry us to the skies on flowery beds 
 of ease. The righteousness that we are to do does 
 not consist in that; it does not rest unless and 
 until it is done, done in spite of temptation, in 
 conquest of evil. And so John points our eyes to 
 the completed fruit of our endeavours — true, de- 
 veloped likeness to God — as the goal of effort, 
 and adds his exhortation. Are we born of God? 
 Is the germ within us.? What a glory! But what 
 a glory there is stretching yet beyond! Devel- 
 oped likeness to God! "And every one having 
 this hope within him, purifieth himself even as He 
 is pure." Here is John's prescription for the life 
 of the sons of God. Let us take it to heart and 
 live by it. 
 
 Perhaps, then, we may sum up by saying that 
 in this pregnant passage John gives us : 
 
 (1) The root of childship to God in God's in- 
 effable love. 
 
 (2) The creation of children of God through 
 God's sovereign power. 
 
 (3) The evidence of childship to God in the doing 
 of righteousness. 
 
458 FAITH AND LIFE 
 
 (4) The hope of the children of God, developed 
 likeness to God. 
 
 (5) The duty of the children of God, to purify 
 themselves as God is pure. 
 
 (6) The end of the children of God — ^the as yet 
 unmanifested glory of perfect assimilation to 
 their Father's character. 
 
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