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 Nash, Charles Ellwood, 1855 
 1932. 
 
 The saviour of the world 
 
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 Princeton Tlieological Seminary Library 
 
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iWanuals of JTaitl) ant! Dutj?, 
 
 EDITED BY REV. J. S. CANTWELL, D.D. 
 
 A SERIES of short boo]fs in exposition of prominent teachings 
 of the Universalist Church, and the moral and religious 
 obligations of believers. They are prepared by writers selected for 
 their ability to present in brief compass an instructive and helpful 
 Manual on the subject undertaken. The volumes are affirmative 
 and constructive in statement, avoiding controversy, while specifically 
 unfolding doctrines. 
 
 The Manuals of Faith and Duty are sold at 25 cents each. 
 Uniform in size, style, and price. 
 
 I. THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. By Rev. J. Coleman Adams, 
 
 D.U., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 
 n. JESUS THE CHRIST. By Rev. S. Crane, D.D., Sycamore, 111. 
 
 m. REVELATION. By Rev. I. M. Atwood, D.D., President of 
 the Theological School, Canton, N. Y. 
 
 IV. CHRIST IN THE LIFE. By Rev. Warren S. Woodbridge, 
 Medford, Mass. 
 
 V. SALVATION. By Rev. Orello Cone, D.D., President of 
 Buchtel College, Akron, O. 
 
 VI. THE BIRTH FROM ABOVE. By Rev. Charles Follen Lee, 
 Boston, Mass. 
 
 Vn. THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. By Rev. Charles Ell- 
 
 woou Nash, D.D., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
 Vm. THE CHURCH. By Rev. Henry W. Rugg, D.D., Providence, 
 R. I. 
 IX. HEAVEN. By Rev. George Sumner Weaver, D.D., Canton, 
 
 N. Y. 
 X. ATONEMENT. By Rev. William Tucker, D.D., Camden, O. 
 XI. PRAYER. By Rev. George H. Deere, D.D., Riverside, Cal. 
 
 published by the 
 UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE, 
 
 Western Branch : 69 Dearborn Street, Chicago. 
 
JUanuate of JFaitl) anti ©utg. 
 
 No. VII. 
 
 THE 
 
 SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES ELLWOOD NASH, D.D. 
 
 The Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the World. 
 
 1 John iv. 14. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 UNIVERSALIST PUBLISHING HOUSE. 
 
 1895. 
 
Copyright, 1895, 
 By the Universalist Publishing House. 
 
 Sant&ersttg ^rega: 
 John Wilsok and Son, Cambridge. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 INTKODUCTORY. 
 
 Section Page 
 
 I. The Claim and its Significance . . 6 
 
 11. Reality of the Claim 14 
 
 III. The Claim Admissible 25 
 
 IV. Why a Saviour? 29 
 
 V. What is it to be saved? 35 
 
 VI. The Problem 39 
 
 VII. Man needs Salvation 44 
 
 VIII. Men cannot save Themselves ... 51 
 
 IX. Man needs a Personal Friend ... 56 
 
 X. One Perfect Saviour needed and 
 
 One only 65 
 
 XI. How is Christ a Saviour? .... 73 
 
 XII. The Gift of Life 98 
 
 XIII. What a Saviour! 101 
 
"STfjc iuorlli sits at t])t feet of Cijrist 
 2Enknoh)mg, falmU, anU unconsokti; 
 Ht get sball toudj ?^is garnunt's (oltl, 
 ^nti feel t\)t fjeabcnlg ^lc\)tmist 
 transform its berg Hust to C&olti.'* 
 
 J. G. Whittier. 
 
 (Sreat !)arm mag be tione ig tntsconceiijing t\}t person 
 of (JT^rist; but tf]e greatest Ijarm — tbe onlg immtti'gateti 
 barm — is Hone tobcn be Hcng tbat somebobj fflroti is in 
 tint antJ in \}im most of all. 
 
 Prof. Marcus Dodds, D.D. 
 
THE 
 
 SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 INTRODUCTORY. 
 
 THE theme of this essay might well have 
 been discussed under the inclusive titles 
 of other volumes which have preceded it in the 
 series of Manuals. Between the gaps, however, 
 of the treatment of those titles, necessarily 
 meagre as prescribed by a strict page-limit, the 
 editor finds room for the line of study pursued 
 herein. 
 
 The theme itself is central, spermatic. In 
 our times the real incidence of infidelity is at 
 this point. The most vital challenge of un- 
 belief is that which casts suspicion upon the 
 perpetual mastership of Jesus; while the re- 
 sources of Christian apologetics are more and 
 more being called in from merely tactical or 
 ornamental outposts to rally around this doc- 
 trine as the very bleeding heart of the Gospel. 
 
6 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 The object of our little book is not to defend 
 but to interpret the right of Jesus to the title 
 "the Saviour of the World;" to show what 
 occasion there is in human need and in the 
 divine plan for such a Saviour ; to indicate the 
 methods by which Jesus effects the task, and to 
 point out his qualifications for the immense 
 undertaking. 
 
 I. — The Claim and its Significance. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth claimed to be the 
 Saviour of the World. This, indeed, was his 
 dominant and most distinctive pretension, the 
 essence and aggregate of all his claims. What- 
 ever else he professed to be and to do was 
 subsidiary to this supreme office. In his 
 self-apprehension, sonhood, messiahship, am- 
 bassadorial function, and "miracle" power 
 were each but a part of the absorbing whole of 
 his Saviourhood. That, above every other rela- 
 tion, expresses the motive, method, mission of 
 his life. 
 
 So familiar is this claim that our ears are 
 dull to its import. Its very magnificence and 
 audacity render it difficult to seize. The initial 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 7 
 
 proposition above is, however, offered in good 
 faith; its terms are meant to be literal and 
 precise; every item is premeditated and em- 
 phatic. In the scientific sense of the words, 
 we repeat that Jesus claimed to be the Saviour 
 of the world. 
 
 The full weight of this postulate can best be 
 felt by first estimating each member separately. 
 
 1. It is Jesus himself that testifies, -r— Note, 
 first, that what we allege is the self-conscious- 
 ness of Jesus, his deposition on his own behalf, 
 — not any extravagant post obit laudations of 
 certain over-fond, half-hypnotized admirers. 
 The witness of apostles and evangelists has of 
 course its own value; but here we have the 
 "mind of Christ." The self-appraisement of 
 Jesus is of the very texture of the Gospel 
 record, expressed in his words, implied in his 
 philosophy, assumed in his attitude, necessary 
 to his authority. It cannot be detached and 
 discharged from the narrative, except by a 
 violence of a priori tyranny which tears the 
 story to tatters, leaving scarcely a shred upon 
 which faith may hang with confidence. The 
 claim as put forth by Jesus is not casual nor 
 incidental; it is central, italic, inevitable. 
 
8 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 appearing consistently and characteristically 
 throughout his sayings and doings. It is not 
 ecstatic but calm and noi'inal ; not covert but 
 pronounced ; is urged without apology or proof, 
 and equally without sign of vanity or of embar- 
 rassment; is emphasized in each of the four 
 Gospels, though more definitively in that accord- 
 ing to John; and must be regarded as one of 
 the most distinguishing marks of the doctrine 
 of Jesus. 
 
 The very conception of such a claim is a sur- 
 prise and a marvel. It was not one to be easily 
 invented by the infatuation of that age. Other 
 heroes have aspired to world-wide dominion; 
 but who had dreamed of the possibility of a 
 mortal man swaying and moulding, not the 
 behaviors, professions, opinions, but the very 
 characters of universal humanity ? What a 
 mind must have been his who first entertained 
 the thought of salvation for the whole world! 
 What measureless assurance in the boast by any 
 man, of power vested in him to achieve that 
 stupendous result! There are moral as well as 
 material impossibilities. The evangelists were 
 not competent to the originality, the grandeur, 
 the hardihood, of such an invention. 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 9 
 
 There is even less likelihood that, if they 
 could have fabricated the vision of such a con- 
 quest for their hero, they would have imposed 
 upon him the peril of sounding his own trumpet 
 before men. At first blush, such a pretension 
 would seem to argue only a maudlin or insane 
 conceit. It would more readily excite derision 
 or contempt than command credence and hom- 
 age. It is probable that no other great Founder 
 of a Religion ever put forward such personal 
 claims. Not Confucius, assuredly, who humbled 
 himself rather before the superior merits of 
 ancient teachers : " I cannot bear to hear myself 
 called equal to the sages and the good. All 
 that can be said of me is, that I study with 
 delight the conduct of the sages, and ins-truct 
 men without weariness therein. " Not Gautama 
 the Buddha : " The Perfect thinks not that it is 
 he who should lead the brotherhood, or that the 
 Buddhist order is dependent upon him. Why, 
 then, should he leave instructions in any matter 
 concerning the order? " Not Socrates, who said 
 to his pupil Alcibiades: "Unless it please God 
 to send us some one from Him to instruct us, 
 do not hope ever to succeed in reforming the 
 morals of men. The best course we can take is 
 
10 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 to wait patiently. Yes, ... we must wait till 
 some one comes. " In a word, the almost excep- 
 tionless humility of great men is proverbial. Is 
 it, after all, humility, or rather a deep sense of 
 real limitation to which shallow souls do not 
 attain ? Jesus too acknowledged limitations, 
 but not with any hint of deference to other men. 
 Before the Father only he made obeisance; as 
 to men he asserted mastery and lordship. Was 
 this mere egotism ? Was it monomania ? Or 
 was it a true and tremendous self-revelation ? 
 Whatever answer we find for these questions, 
 whether we regard the claim as a blemish or an 
 effulgence in his character, the claim remains 
 as a substantive element in the teaching of 
 Jesus. He claimed to be the Saviour of the 
 world. 
 
 2. An actual Saviour, — Next, the claim is 
 that Jesus really saves, and is to save, men. 
 He is not merely an experimenter or endeav- 
 orer ; not a would-be reformer ; not a weaver of 
 pleasant dreams; not simply a preacher of sal- 
 vation, but actually a saver of sinners. His 
 announcement of the fact is not weakened by 
 any accent of uncertainty. He never says "I 
 wish," or "I '11 try," or "It may be." No mere 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. H 
 
 assurance of sympathy or promise of effort is 
 extended. The ability to do whatever is needed 
 is serenely assumed or boldly alleged. He not 
 only wants to save or will try to save, — he ean 
 save, he ivill save. This is uniformly his tone. 
 The outcome of his mission is, indeed, con- 
 ditioned but not contingent. He engages un- 
 qualifiedly to effect the result, but recognizes 
 also the perplexities of the problem to be solved. 
 He lets it be known that his method is one of 
 persuasion and education, not of bare compul- 
 sion; that he proposes to respect the individ- 
 ual's liberty of choice; that there are inexorable 
 requisites, — such as faith, repentance, obedi- 
 ence, the birth from above, the baptism of the 
 Spirit, — without satisfying which no one can 
 be saved. These conditions are presumed ; they 
 are imjylied, not as preliminary to salvation, 
 but among the elements which define salvation. 
 They indicate just what needs to be done, what 
 constitutes the predicament of " the lost, " what 
 work a Saviour has before him. Merely to 
 analyze and announce these conditions a phi- 
 losopher, or at most a prophet, would suffice; 
 it is the business of a Saviour to meet them, to 
 get them fulfilled. To cite these as limiting the 
 
12 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 triumphs of Jesus is simply to affirm his impo- 
 tence, to argue that because there is something 
 to do, therefore it will be not done ! Jesus cer- 
 tainly did not offer just to explain the nature 
 and terms of salvation, but pledged himself 
 actually to save the world. 
 
 3. The ivhole world to he saved. — Thirdly, the 
 ability and purpose to save are said to involve 
 all men in their beneficent operations. The 
 variety of expression given to this assumption 
 seems to preclude every rational demur, which 
 does not repudiate the historicity of the record, 
 or impugn the authority of Jesus. Let the 
 array of evidence below speak for itself. 
 
 4. The only universal Saviour. — More yet, 
 much more did Jesus claim, — more than 
 genuine saving power, more than world-wide 
 victories. He presented himself as the Saviour 
 of men ; that is, the only adequate and unlimited 
 Saviour. 
 
 He recognized, to be sure, the value of the 
 service rendered by others. He did not claim 
 a monopoly of virtue or helpfulness. He ac- 
 knowledged other prophets of God: their work 
 he came not to destroy but to fulfiL They too 
 in their degree were saviours, but not able to 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 13 
 
 carry the process clear through. He honored 
 their endeavors, but declared their insufficiency. 
 He was wholly without jealousy in the matter, 
 generously welcoming the alliance of those even 
 who denied his authority, saying with fine hos- 
 pitality, " He that is not against us is for us. " 
 Nevertheless he asserted his own primacy, not 
 as a boast, not as a merit, not as an ambition, 
 but simply as a fact, — this in language that 
 shows no trace of intended metaphor or hyper- 
 bole, — tranquil, straightforward, consistent, 
 decisive. 
 
 It is sometimes said that Jesus "claimed 
 nothing for himself, " — a capital error. Not 
 "as an end," if you please, but surely "as a 
 means," he claimed a great deal for himself. 
 In the very foreground of his teaching he placed 
 himself, his office, his mission, his dignity, his 
 authority, dwarfed and subordinated there only 
 by the supreme majesty of the Father. He, 
 quite as much as his disciples, admitted "no 
 rival near the throne." His own language far 
 more than theirs insists upon his undisputed 
 mastership over the faiths and fruits of the dis- 
 cipleship that professed allegiance to him, sub- 
 ject, always, it may be well to reiterate, to his 
 
14 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Father and our Father, his God and our God 
 (John XX. IT). 
 
 This then is the significance of our proposi- 
 tion. With an accent upon every word, Jesus 
 claimed to be the Saviour of the world. This, 
 we say, is his own plain declaration concerning 
 himself, not the flattery of his followers, not 
 the slow accretion of myth-making centuries. 
 If anything in the canonical records is trust- 
 worthy as history, this self-estimation is so. 
 We do not at this point touch the inquiry 
 whether the claim itself is credible. We only 
 affirm that Jesus actually made the claim in all 
 its radicalness and magnitude. 
 
 Let us appeal to the texts for evidence which 
 justifies this ascription. 
 
 II. — Reality of the Claim. 
 
 We cannot undertake within the dimensions 
 of our small volume to develop this evidence 
 fully. Yet what we cite will probably be ample 
 for all who are content to leave the veracity of 
 the records unimpeachcd. 
 
 1. That Jesus himself made the claim will 
 appear in the fact that all the references given 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 15 
 
 under the following heads are to his words, and 
 not to any opinion or commentary of others, 
 which, for the present, we exclude. 
 
 2. That he claimed the power and prerogative 
 of an actual saver of men — not a mere phi- 
 losophizer or philanthropist — is evinced as 
 follows : — 
 
 He is the "bread of life," which will infalli- 
 bly appease the hunger and thirst of those who 
 come to him (John vi. 35). 
 
 He is " sent " from the Father, not simply to 
 propose a scheme or offer a chance of salvation, 
 but "that the world should be saved through 
 him " (John iii. 17). 
 
 He is the " door " that opens, not into an 
 opportunity merely, but into effectual salvation 
 (John X. 9). 
 
 To those that " labor and are heavy laden " he 
 promises (through coming to him and wearing 
 his yoke) not sympathy alone, but assured rest 
 (Matt. xi. 28, 29). 
 
 To his sheep he gives (not offers) eternal life 
 (John X. 28). 
 
 He has received "authority over all flesh," 
 that he should give eternal life (John xvii. 2). 
 
 He has " power on earth to forgive sins " 
 (Mark ii. 10). 
 
16 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 To the centurion his pledge is, " I will come 
 and heal " thy servant (Matt. viii. 7). 
 
 " The Son of man is come to seek and to save 
 (not seek to save) that which was lost (Luke 
 xix. 10). 
 
 " I came that they may have life ; " not " if 
 they choose," but unequivocally may have it 
 (John X. 10). 
 
 "I am the light of the world," not I am will- 
 ing to be, or ambitious to be, but / am (John 
 viii. 12). 
 
 And his full competency to meet all these 
 self-imposed obligations is summed up in the 
 immense affirmation, "All power (authority) 
 hath been given me in heaven and on earth" 
 (Matt, xxviii. 18). 
 
 These are fair specimens of an habitual use 
 of language than which nothing more confident 
 or explicit can be conceived. There is no diffi- 
 dence of self -distrust, no dismay before appar- 
 ently insuperable tasks, no misgiving as to the 
 ultimate outlook. He believes in himself; he 
 feels able to "save to the uttermost (i. e., com- 
 pletely) them that draw near unto God through 
 him " (Heb. vii. 25). 
 
 In all this there is no countenance whatever 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 17 
 
 for the pettifogging suggestion, begotten of cer- 
 tain creed exigencies, that a distinction is to be 
 made between the potential Saviour which Jesus 
 is to all alike, and the actual Saviour he is to 
 some ; or that Jesus or anybody else can be a 
 saviour to those he does not really save. These 
 are speculative refinements (where they are not 
 rank absurdities) which are wholly alien to the 
 unvarnished, matter-of-fact modes of Jesus' 
 speech. He came not to propound a theory, but 
 to execute a task, — that of reintroducing the 
 Father to his children and effecting a reconcili- 
 ation between them. That task he expected to 
 accomplish in due time, because he felt himself 
 to be adequately endowed thereto, and that as 
 God's representative having limitless resources 
 failure was out of the question. Such are the 
 tone and posture that characterize him at all 
 times. 
 
 3. The very texts which assert his actual 
 saving influence assert also its world-wide scope. 
 He customarily thought and apoke of himself, 
 not as a saviour merely, but as. a saviour 
 of mankind, — of the whole world.. Thus the 
 proof under each particular largely dupli- 
 cates that under the others. To the citations 
 
 2 
 
18 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 already quoted we may, however, add the fol- 
 lowing : — 
 
 He came " not to judge the world but to save 
 the world " (John xii. 47). If it be objected that 
 "the world" may mean the race, rather than 
 every human being (though how it is possible to 
 save the race without saving every member of 
 it has not yet been shown), at least the passage 
 proves that the outlook and hope of Jesus were 
 not local, national, nor transient in their reach, 
 but humanity-wide and humanity-long ; a min- 
 imum interpretation scarcely less awesome than 
 the plenary one. 
 
 "All that the Father giveth me shall come to 
 me," and shall be "in no wise cast out" (John 
 vi. 37). Nothing of that gift shall be lost (39). 
 Does this mean merely that he will save those 
 whom he will save ? How many are given ? Is 
 not this the answer: "The Father hath given 
 all things into his hand " (John iii. 35 ; xiii. 3), 
 and has " given him authority over all flesh " in 
 order expressly that he may " give eternal life " 
 to all (John xvii. 2). 
 
 When he has completed his labors "there 
 shall be one flock, one shepherd " (John x. 16), 
 which certainly negatives the dogma of two 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 19 
 
 flocks forever, one in heaven, one in hell. On 
 this prophecy, the only logical alternative of 
 Universalism is annihilation. 
 
 On condition that he be " lifted up from the 
 earth," — a condition which was presently satis- 
 fied by the Cross, or, if not by the Cross, by the 
 Ascension, — he " will draw all men unto (not 
 toward) himself " (John xii. 32). Only invinci- 
 ble prepossession could imagine this pledge to 
 be satisfied by race evolution, instead of by the 
 lifting up of each individual soul to the side of 
 the Master. 
 
 Finally, the limitless outstretch of his plan 
 and ambition is given voice in the farewell 
 commission which enjoined the apostles to go 
 forward with his work, — to "go into all the 
 world and preach the Gospel to every creature " 
 (Mark xvi. 15). 
 
 It is not here pretended even to outline the 
 argument for the final universal victory of the 
 GospeL The point we emphasize is, that Jesus 
 regarded himself as sent to save the world, — 
 not a race, not a generation, not a class, but 
 mankind past, present, and future. If there 
 are those professing loyalty to him who cherish 
 misgivings as to his ability to accomplish so 
 
20 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 much, let us hope that none will be disposed to 
 cast suspicion upon the sincerity of his aspira- 
 tions or the universality of his sympathies. He 
 has sketched for us his own portrait in that of 
 the good shepherd, who could not endure to 
 miss even one lamb from his flock, but persisted 
 in his search for that straying one "until he 
 found it " (Luke xv. 4). It is certain that this 
 compassionate, Christ-taught age would not 
 tolerate any would-be saviour who did not at 
 least yearn for the recovery of all the lost. 
 
 4. Jesus affirms his own peerlessness and in- 
 dispensableness in terms that cannot be mis- 
 taken : "Every one that hath heard from the 
 Father and hath learned cometh unto me " (John 
 vi. 45). That is, along the line of his spirit- 
 ual evolution, however originated and promoted, 
 every man, taught of God, comes at length to 
 Jesus, — comes, so to say, to complete the 
 higher, the university course of heavenly in- 
 struction, whose rudiments may have been 
 learned elsewhere. 
 
 "I am the way, and the truth, and the life. 
 No man cometh to the Father but by me " (John 
 xiv. 6). That is, through the eyes of Christ 
 men gain their first transfiguring sight of the 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 21 
 
 Immense Fact, through the vitalizing touch of 
 his spirit they first effectually lay hold of the 
 Father. Towards the Father by other assist- 
 ance, it may be : to the Father only by his. 
 
 Not merely to start, but also to perfect the 
 higher life, through all the processes of its 
 growth, is Christ indispensable. "As the 
 branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it 
 abide in the vine, so neither can ye except ye 
 abide in me. . . . Without me ye can do noth- 
 ing " (John XV. 4, 5). Strong words, easily trav- 
 estied and made grotesque, but containing at 
 their lowest valuation an amazing claim of pre- 
 eminence and universal serviceableness. 
 
 As indicative of the uniqueness and exalta- 
 tion of his position : " One is your master, and 
 all ye are brethren " (Matt, xxiii. 8, 10). If 
 "all ?/e," then all men; if ''your master," then 
 the master of all other masters. 
 
 He rejects the hollow homage of those who 
 seek to flatter him with "Lord, Lord," not, 
 however, because he declines the title, but 
 because of the falseness of their motive. Else- 
 where he frankly claims that distinction : " Ye 
 call me master and lord, . . . and so I am " 
 (John xiii. 13). 
 
22 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 He constantly claims for his words and acts 
 the authority of God Himself, who operates 
 through him. Not in his own strength but in 
 God's he challenges the world. " My doctrine 
 is not mine but His that sent me ' (John yii. 16). 
 " Neither came I of myself but He sent me " (John 
 viii. 42). "The Son can do nothing of himself 
 but what he seeth the Father do " (John v. 19). 
 "He that honoreth not the Son honoreth not 
 the Father " (John v. 23). " He that despiseth 
 me despiseth Him that sent me " (Luke x. 16). 
 "As the Father knoweth me, even so know I 
 the Father " (John x. 15). " No man knoweth 
 who the Father is but the Son, and he to whom 
 the Son willeth to reveal him " (Luke x. 22). 
 
 Thus intimately related to the Father, he is 
 identified also with the fortunes of men. He 
 himself must share their sympathies and mingle 
 with their destinies. He asserts a perpetual 
 claim upon their remembrance (Luke xxii. 19). 
 Belief in him is a condition of salvation (John 
 iii. 36). Apparently a certain assimilation of 
 the very substance of his personality is requisite 
 (John vi. 53). The church is to be his church 
 (Matt. xvi. 18). He must be confessed before men 
 (Matt. X. 32). For his sake disciples should be 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 23 
 
 ready to sacrifice life itself (Mark viii. 35). Dis- 
 cipleship consists in following Mm (John xii. 26). 
 And, finally, before Mm shall the nations be 
 gathered for judgment, and he is to pronounce 
 the penalty and assign the reward, according to 
 men's actual or implied treatment of Mm (Matt. 
 XXV. 31-46), where, although it is clear that he 
 means to accent principles rather than mere 
 personal loyalty to himself, it is not less clear 
 that he assumes for himself not only a con- 
 spicuous, but the capital and commanding func- 
 tion in the great assize. 
 
 Without pausing to compute the precise range 
 of each of these extraordinary claims we cannot 
 evade their general and consistent impression. 
 Of all great teachers Jesus was assuredly the 
 most egoistic. He made his personality an 
 integral part of his system. He did not trust 
 the truth to its own merits merely, but came to 
 bear witness to it (John xviii. 37). The tone of 
 " authority " which was marked in the Sermon 
 on the Mount was present in all his acts and 
 utterances. His manner, without being arro- 
 gant, was strongly assertative ; and we may say 
 of his whole style and assumption that "never 
 man spake like this man." 
 
24 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 The proof, then, is ample: there is here no 
 chance of mistake. Jesus did unquestionably 
 claim to be the Saviour of the world. Assum- 
 ing the validity of the Gospel narratives candid 
 exegesis can yield no other conclusion. We 
 cannot say that the conclusion rests upon slav- 
 ish adhesion to the letter of a few texts, for the 
 texts are not few, and the interpretation is not 
 founded on uncertain words alone, but upon the 
 total effect and tendency of the record. We 
 cannot say, These claims are metaphorical, or 
 they are instances of oriental over -statement, 
 and therefore of slight significance, without 
 employing canons which evaporate the whole 
 narrative into mere speculative mist. We 
 cannot, by repudiating the Fourth Gospel as 
 merely a piece of fond theorizing by some 
 visionary and sentimental convert of a post- 
 apostolic period, clear the way for a strictly 
 " naturalistic " conception of Christ, for the 
 essential claim above developed remains in the 
 other evangelists. 
 
 A single alternative is presented: either to 
 cast overboard the whole story as incredible, — 
 the Rationalistic verdict; or, accepting it as 
 historically valid, to attempt to make it intcUi- 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 25 
 
 gible to ourselves, by tracing its philosophy 
 and its practical applications, — the rational 
 procedure. 
 
 III. — The Claim Admissible. 
 
 It is natural that this claim by one member 
 of the human family of precedence and pre- 
 eminence over all the others should not pass 
 without challenge. It seems at first an immod- 
 est and exorbitant pretension. We are better 
 pleased with the self-effacement of Confucius, 
 the silence of Buddha, the semi-pessimism of 
 Socrates. Nevertheless we cannot decline to 
 inspect the credentials which accompany the 
 claim, or to suspend judgment till the evidence 
 is in. 
 
 There are two influences before which the 
 reluctance of mere prepossession must give way 
 in favor of the claim of Jesus. 
 
 First of these is the impregnable testimony of 
 the records. As criticism has not been able to 
 confute the authenticity and genuineness of 
 these records as, on the whole, trustworthy eye- 
 witness accounts of real occurrences ; as exege- 
 sis cannot explain out of those records the 
 
26 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 unmistakable attitude of dominance and author- 
 ity which Jesus assumed ; so the character and 
 career of Jesus make it insupposable that he 
 was romancing in these professions, or that he 
 was temporarily "beside himself," or was other- 
 wise misleading or misled in his self-represen- 
 tation. The mind of Jesus was too calm and 
 quick to leave him the prey of weak illusions. 
 The candor, the integrity of Jesus are pledges 
 that he would not utter what, unless it were 
 sublimely true, could only be pitiful and sui- 
 cidal bombast. Where the alternative of faith 
 in seemingly unlikely doctrines is such a rejec- 
 tion of historical data as proclaims a far more 
 irrational confidence in the a priori assumptions 
 of the intellect, — where refusal to be bound by 
 adequate testimony amounts to saying, "If the 
 facts do not agree with my opinions, then so 
 much the worse for the facts," — truly reason- 
 able minds cannot long waver in doubt. The 
 kernel of the matter is this : It is far more 
 pro))able that Jesus was justified in his claim, 
 than that he should deceive or be deceived 
 about it. 
 
 But, secondl}^ it must be granted that this 
 claim of Jesus seems much less absurd and 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 27 
 
 incredible in our day than it might have seemed 
 when he announced it, a mere youth, in Pales- 
 tine. Nineteen centuries have done a great 
 deal for the reputation of that youth. The 
 figure of Jesus has not been obscured by the 
 mighty growths of the ages. We have often 
 found him right, against the world. His literal 
 words have not seldom brought us closer to 
 truth than all the attempted accommodations of 
 them to the taste or convenience of men. After 
 so many futile experiments and efforts to 
 "climb up some other way," the discovery that 
 the Gospel is actually the " power of God unto 
 salvation " is reflecting back a deeper and wider 
 authority upon the man of Nazareth. The tide 
 which swelled from the foot of the Cross has 
 rolled down the centuries, and now laps with 
 its skirmish waves the shores of every land, 
 without symptom of ebb or exhaustion. The 
 Pentecostal Word, addressing at this moment 
 nearly five hundred peoples and tribes " each in 
 their own tongue, " and the spirit of the Master 
 re-embodied in thousands of evangelists who are 
 yielding up their lives to " preach the Gospel to 
 every creature " in his name, prove that he was 
 not an ephemeral incident but a permanent 
 
28 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 factor in the world's regeneration, as he claimed 
 to be. And while human benefactors are mul- 
 tiplying in every nation, and a countless host 
 find their hearts burning with desire like Jesus 
 to "go about doing good," these happy omens 
 are everywhere being accompanied with a 
 stronger emphasis, a more intelligent, more 
 dignified, more vital emphasis upon allegiance 
 to Jesus as the true captain of our salvation. 
 At a hopeless disadvantage are those who wish 
 to limit the function of Jesus to that of a Name, 
 a Memory, a one-time Fact, and fail to recog- 
 nize his vital connection with his disciples as 
 Lord and Saviour. And where history has al- 
 ready done so much to justify his claims, faith 
 can readily do the rest. It would seem that 
 only those who know nothing or care nothing 
 for this splendid vindication can now refuse 
 to "crown him lord of all." 
 
 This Manual is written in simple fidelity to 
 the claim of Jesus to be the world's Saviour. 
 It is written, also, in the confidence that, since 
 God has chosen that plan, there must be pro- 
 found reasons for His selection of one man to 
 be the guide and helper of all his brethren. An 
 attempt is here made to indicate some of those 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 29 
 
 reasons, by a study of the nature of man, the 
 problem of his evolution, and the fitness of 
 Jesus to meet an actual need. A full treatment 
 of so fundamental a theme would, of course, far 
 exceed the limits of these brief pages, as well 
 as the capacity of their author. Such outline 
 suggestions as may here properly be offered, 
 will be grouped under these several heads. 
 Why a Saviour ? How a Saviour ? What 
 A Saviour! 
 
 lY. _ Why a Saviour ? 
 
 A clear and rational answer to this question 
 is specially incumbent upon those who profess 
 liberal or " advanced " theological opinions. 
 
 We know the philosophy by which Evange- 
 lical dogmatics vindicate the necessity for a 
 Saviour. If we grant their premises we must 
 admit the argument is very clear-cut and logi- 
 cal. By sin, they say, man has gotten himself 
 into a hopeless predicament. He has created a 
 debt which it is impossible for him ever to dis- 
 charge by liquidation, and the proper penalty is 
 endless imprisonment and torture. He cannot 
 recover himself because the fatal effect of his 
 
30 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 wrong-doing has been both to pervert the judg- 
 ment and to paralyze the will, so that he cannot 
 if he would, and would not if he could, turn 
 about and serve God. But even if he were able 
 at once to eschew all evil and practice all right- 
 eousness, that would not wipe out the record of 
 the past; nor can he accumulate any stock of 
 merit to stand off as a sinking-fund against the 
 old debts, for it is no more than his duty to do 
 each moment all that God requires, and there 
 is no surplusage after each day's payment of 
 service is met. Thus, on one hand, he is beset 
 by the blight and pressure of infinite Justice, 
 which demands full satisfaction, under penalty 
 of final doom for every affront to the majesty of 
 Divine Law. On the other hand, he is a slave 
 to his sins, and a hopeless debtor to his past, 
 without power or right to effect the smallest 
 mitigation of his sentence. 
 
 In this dilemma, it is obvious that salvation 
 can come only through a Saviour. It is not 
 clear, indeed, what any Saviour can do for him 
 under such conditions without abrogating some- 
 how the supposed claims of Justice. But it is 
 clear that the sinner himself is helpless; and 
 as the conception of the divine government is 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 31 
 
 mechanical, it becomes easy to imagine a 
 mechanical remedy applied in ceremonious def- 
 erence to the scheme. Thus a Divine Being, 
 even the Eternal Deity, intervenes to quench 
 the claims of justice by himself sustaining the 
 penalty which guilty men have incurred, and to 
 clothe them with his own infinite merits so as 
 to expunge their guilt and make them " whiter 
 than snow." 
 
 If we repudiate this theory as irrational and 
 childish we are bound to supplant it with a 
 better one. In fact, however, the -natural revolt 
 against a presentation so discouraging to man 
 and so discreditable to God has accentuated two 
 sentiments which tend to disincline not a few 
 to the whole New Testament suggestion of sal- 
 vation through a Saviour sent from God. 
 
 a. First, resenting the dogma which describes 
 them as vitiated through sin in their essential 
 nature, so that they have become "wholly 
 defiled in all the faculties and parts of soul and 
 body," "utterly indisposed, disabled, and made 
 opposite to all good, and wholly inclined to all 
 evil " (Westminster Confession, chap. vi. 2, 4), 
 men have come to lay splendid but exorbitant 
 stress upon the dignity, independence, suffi- 
 
32 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 ciency of the individual life. In that mood 
 they are apt to bridle at any offer of outside aid 
 as impertinent and intrusive. Especially have 
 the growing spirit of liberty and the achieve- 
 ments of the human mind under the spur and 
 privilege of freedom kindled self-confidence and 
 made men unwilling to accept benefits as babes 
 and weaklings. In the pride of his power and 
 his performance a strong man may well exclaim, 
 What need have I of a Saviour ? Am I not 
 capable of self-direction ? Do I not know what 
 is right ? I will not surrender my will to 
 another. I will be the architect of my own 
 spiritual fortune as I have been of my material 
 success. 
 
 This is good, grand in its royalty of manly 
 self-reliance, but our friend does not mean all 
 he says. Absolute independence, single-handed 
 conquest of the universe, is more than any man 
 dreams of. We profoundly respect his spirited 
 protest against the mendicant, crawling posture 
 of what is sometimes called religion; but we 
 are sure that he too is finite, has his needs and 
 his self-chosen masters, and will not finally 
 shut the door in the face of any genuine friend- 
 ship which proffers him its support. 
 
THE SAVIOUK OF THE WORLD. 33 
 
 h. With a large circle the word "culture" 
 has come to express a competing and superior 
 aspiration to take the place of salvation. But 
 what if salvation and culture, truly defined, are 
 after all identical ? Salvation, as merely an 
 escape from the deserved penalties of our mis- 
 deeds, is not an ambition that can stir the 
 noblest pulses of our nature. Neither is cul- 
 ture, as mere belles lettres, refined speech, and 
 polished manners, an ideal that can fully satisfy 
 our highest yearnings. With sounder defini- 
 tions, however, it will not be difficult to make 
 the two conceptions match, if indeed they do 
 not melt indistingiiishably into one another. 
 
 One feature of the culturist philosophy,, as 
 commonly affected, stands somewhat in the way 
 of the pretensions of Jesus. It is that which 
 made Matthew Arnold, as its chief apostle, 
 scoff at the personal allegiance which has 
 flushed the hearts of millions of Christians with 
 proud discipleship. It is a reluctance to agree 
 to any standard as fixed, or any ideas as settled, 
 in the presumed interest of open-mindedness 
 and progress. It is a benevolent hospitality 
 towards all truth and all goodness, which fails 
 to discriminate between the good, the better, 
 
 3 
 
34 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 and the best, and brands as narrowness and 
 Jacobinism all energetic fealty to a chosen 
 cause. It is a sort of indifferentism, which 
 finds itself equally comfortable and at home in 
 the most opposite schools, and objects to the 
 incisiveness of parties or sects as savoring of 
 Pharisaism. With a consistency which adds 
 little merit to its character, it puts no greater 
 value upon life than upon learning, and esteems 
 manners the peer of both. In its estimate the 
 scholar rather outvies the sage, while either 
 overshadows the saint. Especially does it con- 
 demn any display of ardor, as the fever or the 
 fanaticism of ill-balanced natures. 
 
 Now all this, and much more like it, is not 
 so bad in itself — for it is, on the whole, a 
 rather amiable and innocuous extravagance of 
 moderation — as it is in the resistance it offers 
 to the influence of a personal Saviour. Doubt- 
 less with many it is a mere fad, and represents 
 only one of the protean and evanescent forms 
 into which an intrinsically selfish disposition 
 translates itself. So far as it is really serious, 
 however, it will tend to counteract its own 
 theory by the very enthusiasm its pursuit may 
 inspire; and when it discovers itself at last as 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 35 
 
 a Cause, as perhaps a personal discipleship to 
 some recognized leader, as a crusade thrilled 
 with a very Philistine zeal, it will have pre- 
 pared the way for a welcome to the mastership 
 of the best developed, most ripened, and most 
 cultivated soul of the ages, Jesus who was 
 called the Christ. There are many school- 
 masters that lead men to the Gospel, and in the 
 end culture will be found not the least or worst 
 of them all. 
 
 Y. — What is it to be Saved ? 
 
 As the basis of our attempted answer to the 
 question of this chapter, we need first to get in 
 mind precisely what salvation means, what it 
 is that Jesus is supposed to accomplish for men. 
 The subject has been well and amply treated in 
 a previous volume of this series.^ We offer 
 here only a definition. 
 
 Salvation is, of course, from something. 
 From what ? The prevailing theories say, spe- 
 cifically, from the punishment due to sin, from 
 "hell." With more breadth and thoroughness 
 we might say, generically, from all the conse- 
 
 1 No. T. *' Salvation." By Orello Cone, D.D. 
 
36 THE SAVIOUR OF TPIE WORLD. 
 
 quences of sin. To this, howeA'er, we must 
 addj from sin itself, whether regarded as the 
 act or the impulse. 
 
 Our definition is not so different from the 
 usual one as may be fancied. It is similar in 
 principle, but it is more radical and more 
 intelligent. What we equally see is that 
 through his errors and iniquities man is irt 
 trouble. Salvation is the getting him out of 
 his trouble. To the average thought, that will 
 be adequately effected by securing him entrance 
 after death into a safe and splendid place — 
 heaven; which involves his rescue from a hor- 
 rible place — hell, into which he was liable 
 to be thrown without remedy. To our thought, 
 the trouble is in the man himself, and can be 
 cured only by bringing him back and out and 
 up to the normal life of a child of God. 
 
 In a single word, salvation is a synonym of 
 perfection, the full and glorious evolution of 
 human nature into its highest, its divine estate. 
 Nor need we pause for any petty dispute as 
 to the meaning of perfection. Matthew Arnold's 
 idea of it, from the standpoint of culture, as 
 "an increased spiritual activity, having for its 
 characters increased sweetness, increased light. 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 37 
 
 increased life, increased sympathy," — if by the 
 excessively modest participle " increased " we 
 may understand, as it seems we must, matured, 
 ripened, unalloyed, supreme, — will answer 
 very well also from the standpoint of religion. 
 We should perhaps prefer to say, — in loyalty 
 to our habits of spiritual thought and expres- 
 sion, — that man will be perfect when the God- 
 hood within him is fully formed and sovereign ; 
 when all the features of the divine image which 
 constitute him an heir of heaven, a scion of 
 eternity, a child of the Father, are brought out, 
 balanced, and brightened, so that he becomes, 
 according to his scale and calibre, a regnant 
 member of the universal hierarchy, of which 
 God is at once the norm and the everlasting, 
 unapproachable Head. The lines which that 
 development must take we find in Jesus, so 
 that to our Christian type of thinking, perfec- 
 tion or salvation is simply to become like 
 Christ. But this, in different terms, is sub- 
 stantially equivalent to Mr. Arnold's phrases 
 quoted above. In plain words, a saved man is 
 a man at his best, in the completest use and 
 enjoyment of all his powers. He is a man 
 getting the most out of life, because he lives in 
 
38 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 harmony with realities, bends gracefully to the 
 inevitable, and utilizes promptly the available. 
 He is a man who has decided that it is better to 
 side with God than to fight against him; better 
 to conform to Nature than to get caught in 
 her remorseless wheels; better to live in light 
 than darkness, in peace than in strife, and who 
 therefore comes early into his inheritance as a 
 prince of the house of God. 
 
 We employ here untechnical terms, in order 
 to clarify and emphasize the fact, that salvation 
 in any true view of it is not an unintelligible 
 mystery, nor a mechanical contrivance against 
 which freedom and sanity revolt, nor a fell 
 necessity to be avoided as long as possible and 
 embraced at last only because the alternative is 
 even worse; but is the equivalent of progress, 
 of happiness, of personal power, of that enlarge- 
 ment of capability and of outlook which makes 
 man the true lord of creation; and therefore 
 something to be prized, to be eagerly sought, to 
 be secured at any cost as the pearl of greatest 
 price. 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 39 
 
 YL — The Problem. 
 
 Now, understanding salvation to be humanity 
 raised to its highest possible powers, and assum- 
 ing the Father's benevolent purpose to push 
 men forward to that destiny, how should he 
 proceed ? In particular, would he have occa- 
 sion to employ the offices of such a Saviour as 
 Jesus represented himself to be ? In other 
 terms, how can the function claimed by Jesus 
 be fitted into the scheme of universal law and 
 natural development with which recent science 
 and philosophy have acquainted us ? This form 
 of inquiry seizes boldly, I think, the inmost 
 pith and point of the prepossession which some 
 feel against such a mission as Jesus sought to 
 achieve. 
 
 Does there exist in the nature of things or 
 in the nature of man any necessity for the 
 services of a universal Saviour ? 
 
 An assumption of wide authority in present- 
 day thinking, which is taken to have intuitive, 
 axiomatic force, is this : We need not expect 
 God to do for man what he has made man capa- 
 ble of doing for himself. The ground of this 
 
40 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 canon seems to lie in a prior assumption, that 
 the Creator will not stultify himself, will not 
 retract or violate his own plans. If he has 
 lodged a capacity in man, that can only signify 
 that he intends man to do something with the 
 capacity, the thing for which it is fitted. The 
 ultimate accomplishment of that thing is pro- 
 vided for and guaranteed in the endowment. If 
 afterwards he takes the task off man's hands, 
 the bestowal of useless capacity was without 
 excuse. Not even infinite Resource is entitled 
 to squander itself. The logic applies not only 
 to the event, but to the time and manner of its 
 appearance. If it were desirable that the event 
 should come to pass in any other way or at 
 another time than those in which it would regu- 
 larly be produced by the interaction of the 
 capacity and its conditions (all supposititiously 
 known to the Bestower) then the capacity or 
 conditions should have been adjusted at the 
 start to that desideratum, or the promise of the 
 outcome have been withheld by withholding 
 the capacity. It is insupposable that God 
 should blunder, or should retreat from any 
 utterance he has put forth. 
 
 Therefore, if man has the power (under exist- 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 41 
 
 ing conditions) of self-salvation, without other 
 outside aid than is involved in the laws and 
 opportunities of growth by culture, then we may 
 be sure no such superfluous aid has been 
 extended. Per contra^ if a Saviour has been 
 sent, it must be there was a work for him to do, 
 which in his absence would have failed. 
 
 Such is a very popular and somewhat magis- 
 terial style of reasoning. We must admit that 
 it has certain force and validity. In one direc- 
 tion, however, it needs to be guarded against 
 fallacy. It is not easy to set speculative limits 
 to the expansion of the human powers by mere 
 interior development. Each man's nature seems 
 indefinitely elastic, and, given time enough, 
 capable of all things. The mind of Shakspeare 
 is perhaps the mind of any boor, only in a more 
 advanced state of evolution. We cannot fix 
 upon any generic difference between genius and 
 mediocrity. There is only more of one than of 
 the other, more apparently of bulk and more of 
 intensity. The science of our time has been 
 accumulated item by item from the separate 
 labors of a host of del vers and climbers. 
 Largely it is the product of skilled observation, 
 partly of expert judgment in the choice and 
 
42 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 origination of hypotheses, and in determining 
 eligible means for testing them. At last we 
 have the amazing mass, not a single peak, but 
 range upon range of Himalayan heights, piled 
 up as it were by teaspoonfuls. With ample 
 leisure and competent faculties the sum of it is 
 more than any mind can master in a mortal 
 life ; and it is growing faster than we can follow 
 it. Yet if we ask. Why could not any individ- 
 ual, working up from the very bottom all alone, 
 without guidance or aid of any sort, save what 
 the light within him supplied, make at length 
 for himself all the discoveries which have ever 
 been made, and verify all the data now accepted, 
 only give him time enough, — though we cannot 
 deny the possihillty of such a performance, we 
 feel that the question is preposterous. Prac- 
 tically, w^e see that eternity would be too short 
 for the most gifted vision to see for itself 
 everything there is to see. 
 
 Yet in this instance who can say what the 
 ca'pacity lodged in mind is equal to, so as to 
 decide what supplementary aids Divine power 
 is permitted to afford, to secure a given result ? 
 Manifestly time is an element even in His plans 
 to whom a thousand years are as a day. There 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 43 
 
 is a possibility that an oak might grow from an 
 acorn dropped into a shallow crevice of solid 
 rock, by the slow nourishment of air and moist- 
 ure, and the accretions of dust about its naked 
 roots, together with the crumbling bit by bit of 
 the boulder. But we could not thence argue 
 that Providence would never furnish more favor- 
 able conditions. Precisely so, because there 
 may seem a metaphysical possibility that the 
 soul of a man should evolve " the wisdom that 
 is from above," and the moral muscle which 
 defies temptation, simply from its own study 
 and experience, in the absence of any superior 
 counsellor or exemplar, we cannot insist that 
 the schoolmaster and the hero are an imperti- 
 nent superfluity. Culture is capable of much, 
 but left to itself would perhaps be too tedious 
 for the patience of average humanity. 
 
 Besides, it should be added, there is in man 
 not only a capacity for self-help, but a capacity 
 also for helping others, which, by the very 
 logic we are estimating, must have been in- 
 tended for use. We are not, therefore, justified 
 on any ground in pretending to entire self-suffi- 
 ciency, or in sneering at the office of the 
 reformer, the philanthropist, the Saviour who 
 
44 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 seeks, in the spirit of a noble altruism, to be in 
 some sense and measure his brother's keeper. 
 
 The problem before us, then, is not whether 
 in an absolute way it can be proved that man- 
 kind could not possibly have got along without 
 Jesus ; but whether his proffer of friendship is 
 not quite analogous to the familiar processes 
 of Providence, and clearly advantageous to a 
 struggling race, whose destiny is thereby ex- 
 alted and hastened. I think we may satisfy 
 ourselves, without leaving the broad and open 
 path of common experience, that there was 
 room and a demand for precisely the work which 
 Jesus undertook. 
 
 yil. — Man Needs Salvation. 
 
 The first and foundation fact to be emphasized 
 in estimating the value of the services of Jesus 
 is this: Man is not saved, and it is to his 
 interest, and the interest of "the whole crea- 
 tion," which "groans and labors in pain" on 
 his account, to get saved. 
 
 On the threshold of any investigation into the 
 actual state of men we are met with the hideous 
 and appalling fact of sin. The thing may be 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 45 
 
 variously regarded as error or disease or imper- 
 fection, or wanton criminality ; in any guise it 
 calls for vigorous corrective treatment. 
 
 a. If we diagnose it as ignorance merely, we 
 may look upon it with more complacency, and 
 treat it as a very venial offence. In our soft- 
 ness and pity we must not forget, however, that 
 ignorance may itself become crime, and that 
 stupidity is no protection against the penalties 
 of violated law. Wilful ignorance is self-con- 
 demnation to darkness and exile. Nature does 
 not force her treasures upon shut eyes, nor 
 clamor her psalms into stopped ears. The 
 mind of some men is like a splendid palace, 
 filled with the glories of art and literature, and 
 the memorials of heroism, of which only the 
 servant's kitchen and the stable are ever opened 
 to view. Imagine an eagle, made to look the 
 sun in the eye, trying to flap about in the 
 dark like a bat; or a nightingale affecting the 
 screech of a peacock, — that is man floundering 
 in the mire of ignorance. Salvation for him 
 in that estate is science. It is the oculist skill 
 which draws the curtain and cleanses the pane, 
 that he may see what light is and what it 
 reveals; it is the aurist art which lifts the 
 
46 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 gates and drenches his barren soul with music. 
 Nature is rich, and ready to make any man her 
 prot^g^ and heir-apparent. Ignorance is the 
 fool "who mocks at her advances and thinks 
 himself smart in dodging her rescuing hand. 
 "This is the damnation," said Jesus, "that 
 light is come into the world, and men loved 
 darkness rather than light." From that des- 
 perate plight does it need any argument to 
 prove that man needs to be reclaimed ? 
 
 h. If we interpret sin as disease^ then it 
 comes to us that salvation is a word closely 
 allied in its origin with a word which signifies 
 health, — the root of the word salubrity. Say 
 that the sinner is an invalid, suffering, con- 
 sciously or unconsciously, the pangs and perils 
 of interior corruption. In that state he is a 
 burden to himself and a terror to his fellows, 
 for all sin-sickness is both infectious and con- 
 tagious. (Thank God that health is also self- 
 propagating !) The sick man is a prisoner, — ■ 
 the prey in his cell of evil germs that find his 
 condition fat and tender to their tooth. This 
 is hell, — not a dungeon where a fierce Tyrant 
 incarcerates those who offend him, but the hole 
 into which the self-poisoned sinner has put 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 47 
 
 himself by his abuse. Well, the way in is the 
 way out ! The world is a hospital, and all men 
 are patients. True enough. Then they need 
 medicine, diet, exercise; need to be coddled 
 and stimulated until normal energies can assert 
 themselves. Let the treatment be heroic if 
 necessary. Often pain can only be cured by 
 more pain, as fire draws fire, or a blister on 
 the surface relieves congestion and inflamma- 
 tion within. The torpor of conscience is not 
 unlike the lethargy of morphine, only to be 
 broken by resolute shakings and enforced 
 activities against the sufferer's drowsy protest. 
 Classify the invalid where you will, his sin is 
 morbid, maggoty, and needs a thorough purg- 
 ing. Do not think to secure the sinner immu- 
 nity from the Saviour's visit on the plea that 
 his distemper needs only the physician's, not 
 the preacher's craft, for is He not the great 
 Physician who restores to sanity and perfect 
 soundness those who undergo his treatment ? 
 
 c. Perhaps you prefer to describe sin as 
 imperfection merely; to say that man's blem- 
 ishes are not those of an ideal fallen, twisted, 
 shattered, but rather the rawness, awkward- 
 ness, boniness of a gosling state, an unfledged 
 
48 THE SAVIOUR 0¥ THE WORLD. 
 
 but improving and hopeful stage. True again. 
 And we will not be so ungracious as to reflect 
 upon these angularities and disproportions, 
 considering how long a journey up the incline 
 of evolution man has already come. If we find 
 him brutish we will recollect that he was once 
 
 — at least in his lineage — wholly a brute. 
 But we do not see more clearly the wide differ- 
 ence between what he is and what he was, than 
 between what he is and what he may be. He 
 has made good progress, but we are impatient 
 for still more. As an embryo he needs hatch- 
 ing and nursing that he may come to maturity. 
 Salvation, from this point of view, means food, 
 training, discipline, culture, evolution. It 
 means the perfecting of that which is confessedly 
 imperfect, the filling of emptiness, the refining, 
 tuning, mellowing of the instrument, the pol- 
 ishing of crudities, and lopping off of excres- 
 cences, — a natural and rational process, which 
 is by no means completed when the faculties 
 attain a state of equilibrium and self-mastery, 
 
 — which implies the exit of sinning, — but, 
 keeping pace with the enlarging outlook and 
 infinite possibilities of man, may be prolonged 
 through eternity. Yes, say that man is a 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 49 
 
 child, a suckling, if you please, and that his 
 falls are nothing more than incidents in the 
 learning to walk, yet it is surely not a final 
 stage, and by as much as it points towards a 
 manlier and matarer future, it emphasizes the 
 fact we are asserting, that salvation — in the 
 sense of full-orbed powers — is what we need 
 but have not yet achieved. 
 
 d. But truly none of these views penetrates 
 to the lowest root of sin or suggests its full 
 significance. It is a deeper view which regards 
 sin, not with mild tolerance as ignorance, nor 
 with mere compassion as disease, nor with 
 bustling ministration as a condition of baby- 
 hood, but also with abhorrence and loathing as 
 a rebellion against law. Man is ignorant, but 
 he has also refused to go to school; he is sick, 
 but partly by his own prodigal excesses ; he is 
 a babe, but that does not justifiy his imperious 
 preference for being lugged about in nurse's 
 arms, rather than put his own feet to the floor. 
 He is not merely the pathetic victim of the 
 plague, nor an inexpert wayfarer flung down by 
 competitive forces that handle him with robber 
 brutality, violently filching his substance, and 
 leaving him bruised and half dead upon the 
 4 
 
50 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 ground. He has been particeps criminis, tribu- 
 tary to the transaction; he has deliberately 
 swallowed the poison that gripes him, has 
 rushed forewarned into the ambush, has trifled 
 with and squandered his opportunities. The 
 seminal difficulty is with his will, which he has 
 wasted and weakened by wantonness, or rotted 
 by impure indulgence. He is sometimes that 
 prodigal son, who clung to his uncleanness 
 long after he must have learned its criminality ; 
 who did not stop short of spending the last 
 remnant of his patrimony in the bestial revel, 
 and who, as poor in spirit as in purse, found 
 courage at last only in starvation to seek a 
 refuge in the outraged clemency of a good 
 father. Here is a case which cannot well tarry 
 for delicate and dilettanti experiments with 
 sugar of milk and other saccharine remedies. 
 To be worth anything to himself or his race 
 this man needs a will renewed, a purified 
 heart, a kindled aspiration. He is a sinn^, 
 not wholly by defect, or by disease, but by 
 desire and determination, and he needs pardon 
 and deliverance from his demon, and a com- 
 mission from on high to newness of life. And 
 as his is the most critical and characteristic 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 51 
 
 type of human distresses, Jesus did wisely when 
 he offered himself as pre-eminently a Saviour 
 from sin, above all from wilful and deliberate 
 sin. 
 
 Is not this a universal description ? Who is 
 he to whom its terms do not apply ? Whether 
 in ignorance, sickness, imperfectness, or wan- 
 tonness, all have " sinned and come short of the 
 glory " of the possible and ideal human life. 
 To the entire race, therefore, and not merely 
 to any class, the truth belongs, Man needs 
 salvation. 
 
 VIII. — Men cannot save Themselves. 
 
 I speak here of the individual rather than of 
 the race. The proposition is, that if each man 
 were left, unbefriended, to the mere unfolding 
 of his life from within, wholly denied incentive 
 or assistance from without, the result would be 
 relapse, not progress, for each and all. Pro- 
 gress, that is, salvation, is guaranteed not more 
 by the vital principle within than by a well- 
 adjusted order of helps from without. 
 
 This lesson we may read in Nature at large 
 as interpreted by recent evolution concepts. 
 
52 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 There development is determined and directed 
 not more by special characteristics of the inte- 
 rior life-force than by the play and pressure 
 upon it of the exterior environment. The law 
 of progress is framed from the interaction of 
 these mutually resilient factors. Conditions 
 alone do not make the creature ; neither is the 
 creature independent of conditions; but in the 
 matrix of auspicious conditions the intrinsic 
 active principle grows to more and more. By 
 this law man's upward movement is prescribed. 
 While never the helpless puppet of his situa- 
 tion, he invariably reflects his situation. To 
 damn him it is often enough to thrust him 
 down among hellish agencies ; to save him, lift 
 him amid heavenly inspirations. "Evolution- 
 ists tell us," says Mr. Drummond, "that by 
 the influence of environment certain aquatic 
 animals have become adapted to a terrestrial 
 mode of life. " Even so, " by the influence of 
 environment," by the friendship of Nature 
 (which is the embrace of God) man is to be 
 exalted from the terrestrial to the celestial 
 type. Not in the hermit shell of attempted 
 isolation, but through the social incitements of 
 the fraternity of Nature's phenomena, does man 
 find real liberty and real life. 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 53 
 
 Man cannot, if he would, wholly isolate him- 
 self, nor shake off the fellowship of his sur- 
 roundings. Even the atoms have their likes 
 and dislikes, their traditions, boon compan- 
 ions, and brotherhoods. Man is social by 
 nature, and the bitterest cynicism will not 
 avail to dissolve the bonds of wedlock which by 
 an eternal decree have mated him to his kind 
 and to his lot. His absorbent faculties draw 
 moisture from the very atmosphere ; the wind- 
 wafted germs of human custom and human 
 activities, however he may try to put distance 
 between himself and them, will lodge and fruc- 
 tify unwittingly in his bosom. Lay his course 
 as he may the winds and tides will not be 
 ignored, and will deflect him towards their 
 lines. History is deposited within him at 
 birth ; the past claims him as its offspring ; 
 and current ideas and institutions and modes 
 touch his plastic soul with moulding fingers. 
 The stars fight for him or against him; the 
 Eternal Spirit and the spirit of his times com- 
 bine to " shape his ends, rough-hew them how 
 he will." 
 
 More than this, the influences that beset him 
 are friendly. The waves of natural circum- 
 
54 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 stance drift succor to his desert shore. He 
 cannot be alone for the Father is with him. 
 Nature herself is moral and carries a God with- 
 in. The " Eternal Energy by which all things 
 proceed " pushes along her tracks His purposes 
 of benevolence. The " Power not ourselves that 
 makes for righteousness " is no far-off, absen- 
 tee arbiter, but incarnate in her very processes. 
 So Nature in her humblest as in her showiest 
 functions mirrors God. Without a Revelation 
 we must learn some time that it is better to do 
 right than wrong, just from the nature of 
 things. A law of recompense brings home to 
 us the virtue of discovering and conforming to 
 the plan of Nature. There is a way that goes 
 smoothly ; there is a way that grates and chafes. 
 There is a way to utilize vital energy to gen- 
 erate more vital energy, and create health, 
 muscle, endurance; there is a way that ex- 
 hausts the energies and leaves depletion and 
 decrepitude behind. An ethical impulse directs 
 the whole process and inevitably lifts the eyes 
 above the phenomena to the supreme Fact. 
 The universe is a unit, and reflects in every 
 phase and feature the designs of the Creator. 
 Suns and systems, seed-time and harvest, the 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 55 
 
 law of gravitation, the song of birds, the heart- 
 beat of the tides, the providences of history, 
 the slow unfoldment of the complex from the 
 simple, the specific from the generic, the high 
 from the low, — all facts, all forces, are priests 
 or acolytes in the great cathedral of creation. 
 "The heavens declare the glory of God, and 
 the firmament showeth his handiwork. There 
 is no speech, no language; their voice is not 
 heard. But their line is gone out through all 
 the earth, and their words to the end of the 
 world." If there were no other Saviour we 
 must still see in this beauteous and beneficent 
 order a progressive purpose, and feel ourselves 
 encompassed by omnipresent Grace. 
 
 Bound thus by universal laws to everlasting 
 purposes, we see how futile is the boast of 
 absolute independence, and the pompous waiver 
 of all sympathy or assistance. Sinful man, 
 ignorant, invalid, fledgling, or rebel, aspiring 
 towards deliverance and striving towards per- 
 fection (which is salvation), dare not stand 
 apart, spurning the uplifts and befriendings, 
 which, as a part of Nature, and a member of 
 the human brotherhood, are proffered him. 
 Amid so many willing friends, it is impious 
 
56 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 for him to insist on holding himself aloof, and 
 pretending to attain the goal without thanks to 
 any. In fact, let him be never so perverse, he 
 is not left alone, for God is "working in him 
 both to will and to do his good pleasure. " 
 
 IX. — Man needs a Personal Friend. 
 
 What next ? Standing at the foot of the 
 slope of his divine destiny, and without ability 
 in himself alone to make the ascent, what staff, 
 what guide, what supporting shoulders shall 
 he secure ? If we grant the aspiration to exist 
 in his soul, and an upward gravitation of 
 Nature, what more can he require to assure a 
 prosperous journey ? 
 
 If we seek the answer in experience, not in 
 mere mystifying speculation, it is near at hand. 
 He needs a friend, a personal sympathizer and 
 auxiliary. And that friend, to exert an upward 
 pull, must stand above him on a summit of 
 larger achievement, must be a bigger and better 
 man than he is himself. True, between equals 
 there may be mutual encouragements, and " two 
 heads are better than one, though one be a 
 blockhead. " Nevertheless, the friend on whom 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 57 
 
 you lean in your weakness, who is to revive 
 your manhood and recrown your faith, must * 
 come to you charged with a fuller faith and a 
 higher message than your own heart just then 
 is voicing. 
 
 The inequalities of human endowment, and 
 the varieties of human experience render it 
 possible for men to be assistant to one another. 
 The moods of mankind, like the crumpled seas, 
 are never on a dead level of uniformity. We 
 are never all at once in the Slough of Despond. 
 Some Helpfuls always remain upon the banks 
 to extend a hand of rescue. No flood sub- 
 merges every peak, or if so an ark floats on 
 its tide till the waters abate. When Peter 
 sinks in the waves, there stands Jesus solid, 
 ready, mighty to save. Always there is some 
 one stronger and wiser than ourselves to whom 
 we can make appeal. The Book of Life has its 
 precedent or its example to interpret almost 
 any case you can bring to it, to inspire your 
 quailing heart in any crisis. In the changes 
 and peculiarities of human fortune each man 
 becomes in his turn an object-lesson to others, 
 to warn or to cheer. And out of the fund of 
 his hard-earned wisdom, your neighbor, other- 
 
58 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 wise your equal or less than that, may become 
 your monitor, your benefactor, your saviour 
 for the hour. How poorly could we spare our 
 friends ! 
 
 But this is not all nor most to the purpose. 
 As mountains rise above their foot hills, these 
 foot hills above the plain, the plain itself above 
 the valleys and gorges that intersect it, and a 
 phenomenal Mont Blanc or Everest reaches for 
 the clouds, and lords it over all ; so humanity 
 lies at varying levels, the multitude below, the 
 few above, dwindling to thin ranks and oc- 
 casional pilgrims, as the heights ascend to 
 where, upon far altitudes, clothed with mist 
 but glorious in the rays of the yet invisible sun. 
 Genius walks alone, herald of coming dawns, 
 and general almoner of the Lord Bountiful. 
 God provides for man's saving not merely gen- 
 eric types but special individuals, not merely 
 trends of influence but living exemplars and 
 leaders. In the march of progress the few are 
 pioneers, the many willing followers, and one, 
 it may be, the Pathfinder. An army requires 
 its scouts and skirmishers, but the great body 
 must hang together in their divisions, brigades, 
 regiments, companies. The scout scents the 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 59 
 
 situation, the skirmisher tests it, the com- 
 mander-in-chief takes his cue from the experi- 
 ment, and passes his orders down through proper 
 official stages to the "common soldier," who 
 does the fighting. Everywhere a similar 
 arrangement obtains. You can count the 
 greatest fighters, fictionists, poets, painters, 
 sculptors, orators, philosophers, statesmen, 
 each upon your fingers. These represent so 
 many forms of human genius at present high- 
 water mark. These everybody extols, every- 
 body studies, everybody defers to as authority. 
 Their sway is world-wide; their circle the 
 horizon. Yet they enjoy no monopoly of abil- 
 ity. Below the topmost rank, but still upon 
 dizzy elevations, dominant over narrower but 
 yet wide circles, rules a lesser but yet splendid 
 order of genius, unbearably brilliant in itself, 
 and only shadowed by the intenser lights above. 
 And so on down, in more numerous but ever 
 shrinking circles, the fact of leadership distrib- 
 utes itself through all ranks. 
 
 The true leaders are not self-constituted. 
 They are providential men and women, for 
 whose appearance no general evolutionary law 
 can give account, and who certainly are not 
 
60 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 mere chance waves that happen to touch a 
 little higher point than their fellows that pre- 
 cede and that chase them. They are appointed 
 pace-makers for the race, select exemplars of 
 vast and thrilling possibilities. Inspired them- 
 selves at last, it seems, by the Eternal Spirit 
 himself, they fling down inspiration upon all 
 strivers. They blaze the new paths, they ven- 
 ture upon forbidden heights, they outface the 
 sphinx with her mocking mystery, they snatch 
 up the gauntlet of the "impracticable," and 
 presently show it subdued to triumphant reality. 
 And when they wave their pennons aloft and 
 cry, "Follow," the race answers back with eager 
 shout, and presses after them. No sacrifice of 
 independence is felt in that discipleship, but a 
 greater freedom in the assured hope of victory. 
 To love for the object of endeavor itself, are 
 added love and loyalty to the chosen leader, 
 and, in the faith that man can do what man 
 has done, the columns advance with a solidity 
 impossible were each man to insist upon his 
 own gait and direction. 
 
 Leadership, personal prophets and exemplars 
 at the front of the great host and each of its 
 divisions, — that is the ordained plan of human 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD- 61 
 
 progress. It is so at home, where parental 
 care points out the path and sustains the tod- 
 dling steps of the young wayfarer. It is so at 
 school, where the wisdom of sage and scientist 
 and scholar is offered the pupil in digested and 
 authoritative forms from kindergarten to uni- 
 versity. It is so at play, where the stronger or 
 more aggressive spirit rules the game by volun- 
 tary concession of the more diffident. It is so 
 in business, where proved sagacity is given 
 almost free rein, and the supposed lessons of 
 the past, crystallized into a regnant though 
 unwritten code, constitute the norm of all legit- 
 imate transactions, save when some adventurous 
 spirit breaks from the tradition, and, if he suc- 
 ceeds, sets the stakes of new traditions. It is 
 so in politics, where the multitude are only too 
 willing to maintain the beaten paths, and where 
 indeed rampant individualism must come at 
 last to chaos and anarchy. It is so in litera- 
 ture, whose canons and models simply report 
 the practice of those who impress themselves 
 upon the many as the ablest and best. Look 
 where we will, we shall find no realm in which 
 the plan does not assert itself. 
 
 We need not therefore be surprised or scan- 
 
b2 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 dalized to see the same providential method 
 operative in religion. Religion is correct 
 thinking, and the best thinkers are bound to 
 instruct and lead the poorer. Religion is puri- 
 fied conscience, and the living illustrator of it 
 becomes perforce the rebuke and inspiration 
 of the disobedient. Religion is exalted emo- 
 tion, — a flame that not only fascinates the 
 gaze but fires the emulation of all who believe 
 in its realityo Religion is fellowship with the 
 Father, and he who enjoys it in any marked 
 degree encourages all others to seek it, perhaps 
 along the very ways which admitted him. 
 
 And as we should expect from the universal 
 analogy, religion has its great Leaders and 
 Exemplars. Each age, each land has produced 
 those "of whom the world was not worthy," 
 who have "fought a good fight," and "kept the 
 faith " according to their light, and who there- 
 fore were looked up to and followed while liv- 
 ing, and being dead yet speak. There have 
 been also a few, a very few, whose lustre was 
 so bright and penetrating that it illumined 
 whole lands, and though centuries have elapsed 
 continues to shine to the comfort and strength 
 of multitudes. It is, perhaps, an amazing fact 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 63 
 
 that the nearest to us in point of time of these 
 confessedly great Founders of Religions finished 
 his earthly career more than twelve centuries 
 since, and the date of the best of the others, 
 save one, goes back thousands of years'. Modern 
 enlightenment and culture, with all their rich 
 benefits, have not produced a name worthy to 
 be named by the side of the Indian or the 
 Chinese sage, much less beside that of the man 
 of Nazareth. The heights to which these 
 masters attained have appeared to others unat- 
 tainable. They have been teachers of teachers, 
 and saviours of saviours. Their wise words 
 have edified millions, and their gentle spirits 
 have sweetened and softened the temper of the 
 world. 
 
 Does it seem now that these results could 
 have been effected in any other way ? Can 
 truth ever gain by itself the authority with 
 which a truth-formed life invests it ? Can 
 preaching ever have the force of practice ? Can 
 mere descriptions of the beauty of goodness 
 move men like the actual goodness of a good 
 man ? We can, of course, think of every truth 
 as firmly grasped and clearly stated in a writing 
 which shall be infallible as to accuracy, but 
 
64 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 dissociated from any living exemplar. We can 
 suppose men to attain to the conception of the 
 most perfect ideals, without the presentation 
 before them of any life embodying those ideals. 
 But in these impersonal forms is it likely that 
 the truth would be so appreciated, or the ideals 
 become springs of motive, as when an actual 
 character bears witness to the truth and illum- 
 ines the ideal ? We may insist that truth 
 ought to be its own authority, but we cannot 
 blink the fact that most men settle first the 
 authority, and afterwards sit at his feet to learn 
 the truth. And if this does not prove this 
 method of salvation to be inevitable and neces- 
 sary, it proves it to be actual, which is of far 
 more consequence. 
 
 We thus come near to the verification of our 
 thesis. Jesus offered himself as a personal 
 Saviour, in the faith that the world required 
 something more than . philosophy or science, 
 more than culture or evolution for its full sal- 
 vation. And we have now seen that the actual 
 chief saving influences brought to bear upon 
 human life have operated through the genius 
 for religion of a few pre-eminent persons, and 
 through the power of winning personal disciple- 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 65 
 
 ship, which enlisted in their service, as expo- 
 nents of their doctrine and products of their 
 ministry, millions upon millions of believers. 
 It is not the pulpit that sways the future, but 
 the personal consecration of the lives that an- 
 swer to its appeal ; and the power of the pulpit 
 itself is not its philosophy nor its eloquence, 
 but the manhood which utters itself through 
 these. Jesus was surely right in offering a per- 
 sonality, not a theory, as Saviour of the world. 
 
 X. — One Perfect Saviour nei^ed, and only 
 One. 
 
 What we have been saying goes to show that 
 many persons have been saviours in a degree, 
 — that, in fact, all men are saviours, after 
 some fashion, in their turn; but a few have 
 been saviours in a pre-eminent degree. Jesus, 
 however, claims an exclusive prerogative, not 
 denying or depreciating the good influence of 
 others, but stamping it as distinctly inferior to 
 his own. Now, is it rational to suppose that 
 all humanity must be debtor to any one person 
 less than God ? Should we not rather expect 
 different saviours-in-chief, each illustrating in 
 5 
 
66 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 superlative degree some function of the mani- 
 fold office, — a peerage rather than a kingship 
 of saviourhood ? As it may never be decided 
 whether Homer or Shakespeare was the supreme 
 poet, whether Hannibal or Napoleon was the 
 abler soldier, why not leave the primacy of 
 Jesus also an open question ? 
 
 In answer it might suffice to remind our- 
 selves that it is Jesus who makes the claim, 
 and to reflect what verdict history has passed 
 upon his credentials. But we have no wish to 
 silence debate by thus "moving the previous 
 question," nor to evade the most prying scrutiny 
 of the intrinsic merits of the pretension. We 
 urge instead certain considerations which indi- 
 cate that one Saviour is enough. Of course we 
 mean one such Saviour as Jesus professed to be. 
 
 For there is nothing perilous in the admission 
 that "there are lords man}^," provided we recol- 
 lect in time that in the highest sense there is 
 only "one Lord, Jesus Christ." Jesus is the 
 Saviour of the world, because he helps men in 
 ways and in a measure which no one else can 
 parallel. But what is peculiar in the method 
 of his ministry is done once for all, and needs 
 not to be duplicated. 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 67 
 
 We must wait until we have studied the pro- 
 gramme of Jesus before we can fully appreciate 
 the essential singleness of his office. But, 
 partly anticipating that inquiry, we may here 
 see: — 
 
 1. That one perfect revelation of truth is all- 
 sufficient, if it really puts the truth before the 
 world with adequate vouchers ; and otherwise it 
 would not be a perfect revelation. Indeed, it 
 is transparent that there could not be a second 
 revelation of the same truth in the same way. 
 Especially must this be true if the revelation 
 involve supernatural elements or supernatural 
 methods. For, while man-discovered truth may 
 require to be corroborated over and over by 
 parallel discoveries by other equally competent 
 but independent investigators, it would ill befit 
 the dignity of God to reiterate a disclosure once 
 plainly made, for the sake of winning credit 
 for his words. The attempt, indeed, to raise 
 up other Christs, to illustrate in their person- 
 alities under differing conditions the same 
 truths and ideals which Jesus illustrated, must 
 result in confusion, divided allegiance, and 
 factional rivalries. Besides, there would be 
 no natural limit to such a process. If two 
 
68 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Christs arc wanted, ^vhy not twenty or twenty 
 thousand, — why not one for every nation, 
 every age, every class, every individual ? Still 
 further, economy of supernatural visitation is 
 necessary to its prestige, and also to the stabil- 
 ity of Nature. There might be supreme reason 
 for intervening once to add elements of salva- 
 tion not adequately provided for in natural 
 processes, but there could be nothing but self- 
 stultification in making that interference a 
 habit. 
 
 Now, Jesus' claim was that he represented a 
 special dispensation of divine dealing with 
 men ; that he came in the nick of time to do 
 what needed to be done at that juncture, and 
 needed to be done in the way he did it; but 
 that the sequel of that particular ministry would 
 so wrap the world in blessing, that no second 
 or successor would be required. The truth 
 once definitely and demonstratively set forth, 
 and vitalized by his embodiment of its practical 
 corollaries in life, would gradually commend 
 itself to the thought and conscience of men, 
 and at last reach and redeem the whole world. 
 Clearly one such revelation was enough because 
 it was all-inclusive. 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 69 
 
 2. Similarly, one perfect exemplar^ one true 
 specimen of a type answers all the questions 
 which a thousand such specimens could answer. 
 It reveals the type itself, settling all disputes 
 on that score ; and it makes a decisive appeal 
 for imitation or discipleship. Jesus' life was 
 a model, available to all alike for study, copy- 
 ing, or admiration. Could a collection of fac- 
 simile models serve the purpose any better ? 
 Would not the multiplicity distract attention, 
 and tend to cheapen the conception itself ? 
 
 The example of Jesus was not, I think, 
 offered primarily for inspiration, but for illus- 
 tration. As a mere spectacle of heroism and 
 high-mindedness it might be duplicated without 
 damage. Still, because of the sovereignty of 
 his endowment, which seemed to render his 
 triumphs a foregone conclusion, the example of 
 a man more like ourselves, winning victories, 
 which we feel we also might win, has perhaps 
 more potency in saying, Go thou and do like- 
 wise. But as an illustration of the power of 
 spirit, of the nearness to his children which the 
 Father desires to realize, of the joy of self-sur- 
 render to truth, the example of Jesus was per- 
 manently peerless. And if we believe in the 
 
70 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 reality of this illustration no other is needed. 
 A repetition of the proof could only echo this ; 
 while standing alone this tells with equal and 
 unabated power upon all the ages. 
 
 3. One other function Jesus claimed, that of 
 mediator between the Father and his alienated 
 children; and this not merely as interpreter or 
 peace-maker, but as the hand which distributes 
 the divine bounty, the communicator of life to 
 the world. There is mystery in this claim ; we 
 may not be able fully to resolve it. It essen- 
 tially differentiates the pretensions of Jesus 
 from those of any other great teacher. It suffi- 
 ces to observe here that such an office empha- 
 sizes the solitariness of his position, and 
 harmonizes well with his claim to sole compe- 
 tency as a complete Saviour. Where supplies 
 are all drawn from one reservoir, a single 
 great main may carry the full flow to where it 
 is tapped for separate needs. Or, to change 
 the simile, one commissary-in-chief at the head 
 of the bureau of distribution is better than 
 divided responsibility. If the current of the 
 divine life passes through Jesus, as adminis- 
 trator, to humanity, that is surely a function we 
 should not expect to see shared with a second. 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 71 
 
 There is nothing illogical, nothing visionary, 
 nothing even anomalous in a solar system 
 which has its octette of greater and lesser 
 planets, its hundreds of asteroids, with one sun 
 at the centre. If we reject the claims of Jesus 
 on supposed grounds of liberty, equality, divine 
 impartiality, we must by the same reasoning 
 depose Buddha, Confucius, Mohammed, Socra- 
 tes and Seneca, Plato and Aurelius, Luther, 
 Calvin, John Knox, John Wesley, and John 
 Murray. If we may admit the lesser leader- 
 ships we may admit the greater, the Greatest of 
 all. For with every due honor to these worthies 
 they were not sufficient and infallible men. 
 The leader needed to be led ; the masters must 
 own a Master; the saviours must themselves be 
 saved! All but one, and even he too in the 
 sense of a normal evolution. God alone is the 
 Saviour of all. But Jesus as his Agent saves 
 the world ! 
 
 The very incomparable greatness of Jesus, 
 the uniqueness of his personality, is argument 
 for the uniqueness of office which he claimed. 
 In the lower courses there must be many stones, 
 but one capstone is ample and best. The glory 
 of humanity tapers as it rises towards God, and 
 
72 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Jesus represents its topmost pinnacle. Rest- 
 ing there in a manner upon all the others he 
 climaxes and completes them, while the electric 
 touch which he catches from the heavens passes 
 downward in generous distribution to the low- 
 liest of all. 
 
 Here then is our justification of the claim of 
 Jesus on its own merits : — 
 
 1. Salvation, meaning progre^ or perfec- 
 tion, is the universal desideratum. 
 
 2. In achieving it, the individual must look 
 outside himself for such helps as Nature, as 
 humanity, as God may afford. 
 
 3. The best of these helps is the personal 
 influence of good men, who have mastered the 
 problems and beaten the enemies which vex us, 
 and are thus qualified to inspire, to edify, and 
 directly to assist us. 
 
 4. Of many such saviours, some are better 
 than others, and it is not irrational to conceive 
 of one as the best of all. And if we can admit 
 the revelation of truth and its exemplification 
 in life to have been perfectly discovered in 
 Jesus, then clearly there needs no second per- 
 formance of this service, which is in its very 
 nature universal in scope and perpetual in 
 authority. 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD, 73 
 
 To man needing to be saved; to man who 
 cannot save himself; to man already helped by 
 many great leaders, comes, in the fulness of 
 time, one universal Helper, true Son of God, 
 true Son of Man, Saviour of saviours, the Lord 
 Jesus Christ. He is the Saviour of the World. 
 
 XL — How IS Christ a Saviour ? 
 
 We have attempted to present a rational view 
 of the need of such a divine visitant as Jesus 
 professed to be. It is in human nature itself, 
 and the conditions of its best evolution, that we 
 find occasion for his advent. We wish now to 
 give equally rational treatment to the question, 
 How shall such a predestined Saviour proceed 
 to save ? The answer, as before, must harmon- 
 ize with the attributes of our humanity and with 
 the established moralities of the universe. 
 
 From the point of view we occupy, it is safe 
 to assume that the method of salvation must 
 be ethical, not magical ; that it will not sup- 
 plant the laws of growth by an arbitrary and 
 miraculous bestowment of sheer gifts; that it 
 will respect the autonomy of the individual 
 soul, and seek to elicit its aptitudes by persua- 
 
74 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 sion and education, never by coercion. Each 
 man will be his own judge and jury ; but he is 
 not his own legislator; and it is the business 
 of a Saviour, as au expert advocate, to win the 
 court's decision by the inherent justice of his 
 cause. Against his appeals, however, he must 
 expect the force of habit, the power of "the 
 world, the flesh, and the devil," "the lust of 
 the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of 
 life," to pull strenuously and long. He will 
 require not only truth but tact, not only tact 
 but patience, and such a sense of the glory and 
 exigency of his enterprise as cannot brook 
 defeat on any terms. No holiday affair, this 
 saving of the whole world. He that under- 
 takes it should look w^ell to his qualifications, 
 and well to his programme, make no mistakes 
 and commit himself to it finally and forever. 
 
 But if he be adequately wise and strong, he 
 can afford to be patient. There is time enough, 
 even all eternity, to work in. No vicissitude 
 can abate the operation of moral laws ; no pro- 
 bationary period, no death line, limit his 
 opportunity of appeal ; no catastrophe destroy 
 the essential beneficence of his endeavor. 
 Religion is native to man; it is reasonable, it 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 75 
 
 is infinitely attractive. "Holiness and true 
 happiness are inseparably connected. " Heaven 
 aims to bless man, not to tyrannize over him. 
 It knows him better than he knows himself, 
 and the destiny it appoints, and to which it 
 ever urges him forward, is precisely the one he 
 is groping obstinately in the dark to secure. 
 Human nature, too, is capable, however per- 
 verted, of all that God demands. Who knows 
 this so well as that Saviour who has himself 
 wrestled with and vanquished our temptations, 
 tasted the dregs of this world and the felicities 
 of " the world to come " ? Jesus addresses 
 himself to his task in sanguine mood. No 
 dreamer either, but one who has caught sight 
 of the " mountain full of horses and chariots of 
 fire " (2 Kings vi. 17), who knows there are 
 "more than twelve legions of angels" at his 
 call. With God behind him and at his side, 
 with eternal realities under his feet, and 
 imperious love in his heart, he will never con- 
 sent to be driven from his plea, nor ever let 
 that man go — whoever he is — without his 
 blessing. 
 
 How shall he go about it to "convince the 
 world of sin, of righteousness, and of judg- 
 
76 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 ment " ? What resources has he ? How get the 
 ear of mankind ? How enchain their atten- 
 tion ? How certify his claims before them ? 
 How win their confidence ? How persuade 
 their minds ? How arrest their headlong plunge 
 into depravity ? How brace their nerveless 
 wills ? How thrill their jaded aspirations ? 
 How cleanse their foul desires ? How outshine 
 the glamour of sense ? How arouse the slum- 
 bering spirit of sonship ? How exorcise the 
 demon of selfishness ? All this and more he 
 must do, not by wholesale but with delicate 
 adaptation to each detail, and to all possible 
 varieties. It is a problem which has seemed 
 insuperable to many great and good men. The 
 best and bravest have only dared to trust that 
 God himself would be equal to it. What was 
 Jesus that he found courage to say, "I will 
 draw all men unto me ? " 
 
 The temple of personal liberty must not be 
 violated. But God has provided for the solu- 
 tion of the problem by making human nature 
 rational and religious. No extent of depravity 
 can ever obliterate these attributes. The logic 
 of salvation is this: Man is mind, therefore he 
 can be made to know ; knowledge lets him into 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 77 
 
 the secret of happiness, which is a godly life, 
 and happiness possesses for him an indomitable 
 fascination; ideals and the exploits of heroes 
 fire him with a spirit of emulation, and the 
 effort to rise increases strength and buoyancy. 
 Finally, the fellowship of electric natures 
 charges his own, replenishes his wasted powers, 
 and fastens his magnetized soul to the infinite 
 battery of creative supply. 
 
 These three things a true saviour must be 
 able to achieve : — 
 
 1. To inform men as to their real status, to 
 enlighten the world, to declare the truths — all 
 the truth that is needful for moral guidance 
 and spiritual uplift. 
 
 2. To supply motive, to generate a passion for 
 righteousness, to make. men ivant to do what 
 they have been taught they ought to do. 
 
 3. To increase strength, to restore the spent 
 vitality, to recrown the will power, and eyiahle a 
 man to do what he wants to do and ought to do. 
 
 Nothing short of this threefold cord will draw 
 the whole world to God. Most schemes of re- 
 demption are defective in one or the other of 
 these influences. Quite generally it is imagined 
 to be sufficient if we preach correct doctrine. But 
 
78 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 not so. Practice always limps far in the rear 
 of professed principles. How to inspire men, 
 — that is a problem by itself. The economy of 
 effectual salvation must master the theory of 
 distribution as well as of production; must tell 
 how to create a market where none exists, 
 that the truth may not only come to its own, 
 but also be received and appropriated by them. 
 Jesus rejected, — that is a common spectacle ; 
 but Jesus conquering his critics and scorners, 
 Jesus persisting, besieging, winning at last the 
 welcome that was at first denied, — that is the 
 spectacle we wait to see. It is not sufficient to 
 be right. The actual Saviour must make men 
 see that he is right, and arouse them to enthu- 
 siastic alliance with him. And even this is 
 not all ; for often the flesh is weak though 
 the spirit is willing. Who will energize the 
 decrepit souls ? None other can completely 
 save. 
 
 Let us see how Jesus operated on all of these 
 lines at once. 
 
 1. Salvation hy the Truth. — "Ye shall know 
 the truth," said Jesus, "and the truth shall 
 make you free " (John viii. 32). Free from 
 what ? Knowledge, of course, saves from ignor- 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 79 
 
 ance, and truth from error. Did Jesus then 
 come as a schoolmaster to teach truth for its 
 own sake ? No, his eye was on the deeper fact, 
 that from ignorance and error comes sin. As 
 sunlight is death to certain noxious weeds, 
 which thrive in damp and darkness, so the rays 
 of truth stab the dreams and delusions of un- 
 schooled natures. We must say then that he 
 purposed a campaign of enlightenment. He 
 would tear the mask from hypocrisy. He 
 would fling wide the doors, let the J»ats and 
 vampires scream and flutter as they might. 
 He feared not the day. He trusted facts. He 
 was the prophet of intelligence and the patron 
 of research. To him the scientific temper 
 owes a debt it is too apt to ignore. One less 
 friendly to the invocation of mere tradition or 
 official authority than Jesus of Nazareth the 
 world has never seen. 
 
 Yet what he chiefly sought was not science 
 but salvation, salvation through science in part, 
 but as itself the main thing, not an after- 
 thought. He lamented the wickedness of men, 
 but fixed no brand upon their want of culture. 
 He dealt little in learning, and was not himself 
 a scholar nor scholarly. He laid no ban upon 
 
80 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 the pursuit of knowledge in general, but Lis 
 own interest was mainly absorbed in a certain 
 sort of knowledge, in the heavenly wisdom by 
 which the human child knows the divine 
 Father. And while no syllable of his ever 
 depreciated the intellectual powers, he most 
 prized the intuitions of the pure and peaceful 
 heart. 
 
 It was not, therefore, all kinds of truth which 
 Jesus came to teach. He gave no reason to 
 suppose,- — except the reason of love and con- 
 fidence in his amazing genius, — that he was 
 competent to teach many kinds of truth. He 
 was a sympathetic observer of natural phenom- 
 ena, but took note rather of their moral and 
 spiritual suggestions than of their structure or 
 habits, as a naturalist would. This, how^ever, 
 we must believe, was due not to scanty endow- 
 ments, but to deliberate choice. He was con- 
 tent to know less about some things, that he 
 might know all about the highest things. If 
 he lacked in the lore of the student, he com- 
 pensated himself with intimacies which no mere 
 student ever acquires. He was a pioneer in 
 unexplored regions, and what he discovered 
 there was of the utmost preciousness in itself, 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 81 
 
 and of the highest utility to mankind. Upon 
 that knowledge, gained, as he said, by direct 
 eye-witness and audience with God, he relied 
 for the opening of sin-blinded eyes, and the 
 unveiling of the heavens to men who saw 
 nothing in the universe but dirt. 
 
 Was this self-limitation a defect in the 
 lordship of Jesus ? Would he have gained in 
 authority by living in an age like ours, and 
 going in absorbedly for culture and science as 
 the foremost factors in the world's redemption ? 
 Is it a disadvantage to the advocacy of his 
 cause, that we cannot show him at least the 
 peer of the erudite and elegant circles of our 
 time ? Would he grow in estimation if we were 
 able to quote learned dicta from his lips, sol- 
 vents of the special problems which confront us 
 in every realm ? It would seem that those who 
 propose to supersede his spiritual methods by a 
 ^campaign of culture, converting the church into 
 a school-house and the pulpit into a lecture- 
 ship, must have decided against the permanent 
 utility of the simple programme of Jesus. It 
 may be wondered whether such do not experi- 
 ence a sense of humiliation over the meagre 
 equipment of Jesus to cope with the "living 
 6 
 
82 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 questions " of our illustrious period. Be this as 
 it may, we have to confess that there is no evi- 
 dence that Jesus ever turned his attention to 
 polite studies, that he ever read a line of the 
 classics, or affected music or art, or frequented 
 the salon to canvass the movements of the hour. 
 And yet he has been a good deal of a Saviour 
 to many ! 
 
 It by no means follows that the pursuit of 
 literature or science or art is vicious or un- 
 worthy because Jesus neglected such matters. 
 But it does follow that he did not trust to these 
 for the world's salvation. He may well have 
 foreseen that the impulse of nobleness, aspira- 
 tion, sonship would demand many such fine 
 and rich expressions of mind and imagination. 
 But he knew that selfishness, the master-devil 
 that betrays us, is not expelled by the mere 
 transfer of interest from the material to the 
 mental sphere. He sought to control, to trans- 
 figure the very purpose of life. Therefore in 
 his thought the principal thing was to "seek 
 first the kingdom of God and his righteous- 
 ness." This kingdom he set himself to in- 
 troduce, in its nearness and glory, to the 
 apprehension and aspiration of men. 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 83 
 
 His teaching, in harmony with this main 
 object, was simplicity itself: "God, the Eter- 
 nal One, the Holy One, is your ' Father. ' He 
 loves you; do you also love him, with every 
 power of your being. This is the supreme 
 thing. There is another thing like it. As all 
 men are God's children, so are they brethren of 
 one another. Love your brother, love him as 
 your own life. And respect yourself. Be a 
 good, true son of your Father in heaven. Trust 
 him absolutely; he will not fail you. Obey 
 him implicitly at any cost ; he will take care of 
 the consequences. He knows what is well for 
 you ; he is eager to make you great and happy. 
 Do not think to deceive him ; do not think to 
 avoid him. He loves you too much to permit 
 you to escape him. He will not force you ; he 
 seeks a spontaneous fellowship; he will let you 
 suffer the full effects of your own errors and 
 sins if you insist; but he will be ready for you, 
 whenever you will come home, and will give 
 you heavenly joy in his presence. All that life 
 can yield of peace and power and glory shall be 
 yours, if you will only make him your choice. 
 Then you will grow into all great things. I 
 have tried it, and it is so. And I have his 
 
84 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 message to you, inviting you to give him 
 yoflr hearts and to accept his infinite blessing. 
 Come, my brother, my beloved, come with me 
 to our Father. " 
 
 Such in its essence and inmost principle was 
 the simple, tender Gospel of Jesus. Does it 
 seem a modest, almost a meagre thing beside 
 the elaborate rules of Confucius or the complex 
 analysis and prescription of Buddha ? Does it 
 appear to cut no figure in comparison with the 
 large language and bristling information of 
 some of the German or English philosophers ? 
 Nevertheless it has certain features calculated 
 to draw attention, and the more we dwell upon 
 them the more the picture rises in power. 
 
 First, it is concrete ; it deals with questions 
 of life rather than of thought. 
 
 Secondly, it does answer these questions, 
 intelligibly but not superficially. 
 
 Thirdly, it tells us just what above all things 
 we want to know about ourselves, our nature, 
 our duty, our destiny; and it is something 
 sufficient, stimulating, transcendent. 
 
 Fourthly, it interprets to us the play of force 
 in Nature, the sweep of events which bears us 
 along, the meaning of the mysteries which 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 85 
 
 encompass us, and all in two words "Our 
 Father, " — not " Jehovah, Jove, or Lord, " not 
 the "Stream of Tendency," not the "Abso- 
 lute," nor even the Omnipotent, or the Om- 
 niscient, or the Omnipresent, — but just " Our 
 Father." 
 
 Fifthly, it thus furnishes the key to the solu- 
 tion of all problems for whose solution conduct 
 is waiting, in two words, "Sonship," "Brother- 
 hood." 
 
 Sixthly, it reveals Jesus as permanently con- 
 secrated to the service of humanity, and through 
 him it promises that rest and strength towards 
 which all other religions have aspired in 
 vain. 
 
 We do not need to inquire how such a system 
 of truth may be tributary to man's reclamation. 
 Its bearing is obvious, its leverage incalculable. 
 It is possible to urge many claims in behalf of 
 other schemes. It is impossible to hold these 
 doctrines of Jesus for realities and not be trans- 
 formed by them into nobler manhood. They 
 produced that result first of all in himself. 
 Then they metamorphosed a little circle of 
 Galilean peasants into orators, organizers, his- 
 torians, apostles of the mightiest religious 
 
86 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 movement in history. More prolific than the 
 tabled dragon's teeth, there sprang up wherever 
 their seed was sown, not armed warriors, but 
 heroes, martyrs, confessors, saints, of whom 
 the world was not worthy, whose blood and 
 tears freely spilled in testimony to the salva- 
 tion wrought in them, have fertilized the soil 
 of humanity. And in quieter and more com- 
 fortable times, these truths have still a power 
 to pierce the shell of selfishness and perpetuate 
 the splendid line of those whose light, shining 
 in darkness, reveals the good works which give 
 glory to the Father. 
 
 Jesus made no mistake. The truth he told 
 was precisely adapted to his object. It has 
 gone home to the heart of the world ; its leaven 
 works there unseen but irresistibly. " Modern 
 improvements " disclose no flaw in his method. 
 The world is richer in truths of many kinds to- 
 day, but his wisdom co-ordinates and interprets 
 them all. Nor can there be any limit to his 
 conquest short of the boundaries of the earth 
 itself. For he spoke to humanity in its essen- 
 tial elements; and his utterance therefore fits 
 into all the changes and developments that 
 occur. Wherever there lives a man, whatever 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 87 
 
 his class or condition, there stands Jesus say- 
 ing, " My brother, my beloved, come home with 
 me to our Father." 
 
 Was this teaching of Jesus unique and origi- 
 nal ? Might it not have been discovered in 
 due time without him ? Deference to certain 
 prevalent opinions requires us briefly to touch 
 these questions. 
 
 It is common to hear that there is UQthing 
 new in the Gospel. That its ideas, precepts, 
 sometimes its very words, were anticipated by 
 earlier masters of the farther Orient, by Greek 
 and Roman sages, by the Rabbins. And many 
 maxims and fragments of philosophy are cited 
 in proof. To this it has been replied that 
 while the elements, the atoms of the Gospel 
 may have entered piecemeal the minds of other 
 teachers, their composition into one consistent 
 philosophy, the ensemble of their grouping, and 
 the total effect of their presentation by Jesus 
 are distinctly original. This is true, but it is 
 not the whole truth. 
 
 Where else, I would ask, in religion or liter- 
 ature shall we find the parallel or prototype of 
 Jesus' doctrine of the Father ? Not certainly 
 in the Indian and Persian theologies, from 
 
88 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 which it differs, as from other more recent 
 speculations, in the close personal relation it 
 exhibits between the Creator and his creatures. 
 The Gospel does not read like philosophy, but 
 like a chapter of every-day life. The appear- 
 ance of tlie Father upon the scene does not 
 change but only emphasizes the (shall I say 
 idyllic ?) simplicity and spontaneity of the 
 action of the several factors. God is not so 
 much an object of thought, as the dominant 
 figure in the drama. Some have, indeed, made 
 merry over the shallowness of portraying the 
 Deity as a person, but there can be no doubt 
 that such was Jesus' conception. It is prepos- 
 terous, however, to suggest that he found his 
 idea of the Father's personality in the Greek 
 or Roman gods, or in the Hebrew Jehovah. 
 Though traces of resemblance can be pointed 
 out, Jesus' thought was not an evolution of 
 antecedent opinions, much less an echo of 
 them. He struck out in a new direction. He 
 found the Godhead not in power, whether phy- 
 sical or mental, but in moral excellence, and 
 especially in love. From that postulate he 
 never wavered. There is an almost total 
 absence in his teaching even of allusion to 
 those features of Deity which had been cata- 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 89 
 
 logued as wellnigh his sole attributes. He is 
 content to set him forth without reserve or 
 apology as just "the Father," clothed with all 
 moral beauty, and almighty in the spiritual 
 harmonies of his perfect nature. I am not 
 aware that such an idea had ever before entered 
 the brain of man. 
 
 The conception of man, as a corollary of the 
 doctrine of God, shared its features of original- 
 ity. Man is the son of God and therefore him- 
 self divine, not in a thaumaturgic but in a 
 moral sense. Essentially godlike, his servitude 
 to sin is tenfold more shameful, but his pros- 
 pect of deliverance is tenfold more secure. 
 Thus humility and hope co-operate to produce 
 the feminine and masculine aspects of a full- 
 orbed manhood. There is thus a different 
 tone in the precepts of Jesus, — no worship 
 of the past, as in Confucius ; no pessimism, 
 no apotheosis of selfishness, as in Buddha; no 
 fatalism, no sensualism, as in Mohammed; no 
 ethical chill as in Cato or Epictetus. Without 
 flattery, but also without cynicism, the spirit 
 of Jesus' address is this, Acquit yourself as a 
 child of God. 
 
 For myself, I am convinced that only such a 
 
90 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 person as Jesus was could have seen these 
 truths in their verity and completeness. To 
 Natural Theology the problem of evil has 
 seemed to many to offer only the alternative 
 between a theory of impotent Benevolence or 
 of cruel or negligent Almightiness in the Deit}^ 
 Jesus faced the paradox with the words "Our 
 Father," but no other had dared pronounce 
 those words. It may be wondered whether our 
 courage in echoing them is not rather a reflec- 
 tion of the faith of Jesus, than the witness of 
 independent insight of our own. Even after 
 these centuries of disci pleship, were the name 
 of Jesus to be erased from history, I should 
 look for the gradual subsidence of our faith 
 from the heights whereon his authority main- 
 tains it, to a level of doubts and fears which 
 our twilight understanding would not be able to 
 banish. Jesus said, " The pure in heart shall 
 see God. " When our hearts are pure we shall 
 be able to see for ourselves; but that will be 
 when the influence of Jesus shall already have 
 wrought its perfect work within us. 
 
 In all this teaching, therefore, if we are 
 right, Jesus appears as a competent, a complete, 
 yes, the only sulFicient Saviour of the world. 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 91 
 
 2. Salvation hy the Character of Jesus. — 
 Such was .resiis' provision for the enlighten- 
 ment of man as to his nature and duties. But 
 how did he meet the second requisite, that for 
 inspiration, for motive-power, for getting men 
 actually enlisted in his cause ? 
 
 Well, first, the very simplicity and plainness 
 of his teaching, the beauty of its ideals, its 
 touching appeals to the heart, its concrete pres- 
 entation of the Father's care for men (as in the 
 parable of the Prodigal Son) did much to inter- 
 est men in his words. We cannot well get 
 enthusiastic over a mystery nor over an abstrac- 
 tion. We need to see where we are going, and 
 to feel something vital in the occasion, in order 
 to respond with freest self-surrender. Jesus 
 was most happy and strategetic, therefore, in 
 the fitness of his doctrine and the charm of its 
 setting. 
 
 But the chief thing was, that he did not iso- 
 late himself upon a pedestal as a mere teacher. 
 He came down and walked with the people as a 
 brother-man, and worked out the problem of 
 salvation in his own person before their very 
 eyes. 
 
 Jesus was Emmanu-el, God with us: vice 
 
92 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 versa, if you please, he was Man-with-God. He 
 represented the union of the human with the 
 divine; or, better, since the image of God must 
 itself be divine, he represented the human 
 become conscious of its inherent divinity. If 
 we can rid ourselves of the idle suggestion of a 
 duality of nature under one personality, there 
 is light and power in the expression coined to 
 teach that impossible relation, — Jesus was 
 God-Man, or, from the other side, he was Man- 
 God. That is, he realized in his life the iden- 
 tity of humanity with divinity. Thus he was 
 the best possible revelation of God and also of 
 man. The workings of his benignity, the ele- 
 vation of his spirit, the marvels of his power 
 give us far truer, deeper, more vivid ideas of 
 the Father than could any mere speculation. 
 On the other hand, he who sees Jesus sees man 
 at his best, and knows what he himself can do 
 and ought to do. 
 
 The rule he elected must have been deliber- 
 ately taken. It is impossible to doubt that 
 he might, had he chosen, have appeared in the 
 character of a savant, a philosopher, a Rabbi 
 like Hillel or Gamaliel, a writer of books, or 
 even a man of affairs, an aspirant after a 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 93 
 
 throne, a great warrior and conqueror. A dif- 
 ferent cast, to be sure, would have been given 
 his whole life by any of these choices ; but had 
 he been bent towards them from his earliest 
 youth, he might have shone in either capacity. 
 We feel instinctively that he chose the very 
 highest and most commanding function, — that 
 of a -good man, master of himself, in touch with 
 God, and thus illustrator, by simple excellence 
 and grandeur of soul, of the possibilities of 
 human nature. The simplicity of his spirit, 
 the singleness of his purpose, divested his 
 person of all mere glamour, and delivered one 
 superlative truth, the most necessary, the most 
 missed of all, — that humanity is divine. To 
 achieve this was enough; to achieve it per- 
 fectly he must forego all other glories and flame 
 in this alone. 
 
 Such a personality is necessarily more than 
 an interpretation; it is a lodestone. It is an 
 authoritative challenge to low ideals, a thorn 
 in the flesh of self-indulgence. Not only its 
 intrinsic loftiness and loveliness, but also its 
 extrinsic advantages appeal to our sluggish and 
 cowardly hearts. It stands there not to mock, 
 but to invite ; it lifts its hand to beckon, not to 
 
94 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 repulse. Its word is not Go, but Come, itself 
 leading the van. Its uncompanioned solitari- 
 ness is an admonition to humility; but its 
 career, its struggles, its servitude to the uni- 
 versal laws by which it has triumphed, inspire 
 us with the hope of imitation, and thrill us 
 with the heroism of endeavor. Its pre-eminent 
 value, however, is in the aspect of reality it 
 gives to the Gospel. Had the ideals of Jesus 
 stood forth only in professions and preach- 
 ments, they must have seemed overdrawn, and 
 might have seemed purely visionary. He in- 
 corporated them in a life, showed them alive 
 and in motion, so to say, in a working-model, 
 and their practicable quality and supreme im- 
 portance were demonstrated. The world could 
 far better spare even the Sermon on the Mount 
 than the historic Christ. 
 
 The character of Jesus was formed upon his 
 own ideals. He was in no respect like those 
 " ungracious pastors " who show others 
 
 ..." the steep and thorny way to heaven, 
 While they themselves the primrose path of dalliance tread, 
 And reck not their own rede." 
 
 He "lived the precepts that he taught," and 
 in nothing came short of their full requirement. 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 95 
 
 This, too, was essential to the full acceptance 
 of his principles; for had he failed in any 
 particular who could have hoped to succeed ? 
 Here again we see him differentiated from 
 nearly all other great teachers. Buddha is 
 perhaps the one exception. He did profess to 
 have attained Enlightenment, the goal of en- 
 deavor. But as his standards were lower, so 
 his task was less exacting; it is certain that 
 Buddha did not live up to the ideals of Jesus. 
 Besides, Enlightenment is not a mark to which 
 all Buddhists may alike aspire. It is the pre- 
 rogative of the specially qualified few. For 
 the multitude Nirvana, that is, extinction or 
 absorption, is the highest hope. But in Jesus 
 it is human nature itself that triumphs, the 
 very nature we all bear, which is thus tested 
 and proved to be actually fit for divine things. 
 
 It was in order to perpetuate this influence of 
 example, no doubt, that Jesus took pains to 
 identify his Gospel with his own personality, 
 and keep alive his memory in the earth. For 
 this reason the disciples of Jesus feel a sense of 
 companionship with their Lord which is not 
 paralleled in any other cult. Lapse of centu- 
 ries, varieties of nationality, changes of civili- 
 
96 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 zation and of custom do not affect this tender 
 intimacy. They forget that he was a Jew, a 
 youth, a "laboring-man"; that he lived nearly 
 sixty generations ago. To them he is a glori- 
 fied human-being, a man of to-day, more real 
 than any other great name, the confidant to 
 whom they entrust their secrets, the counsellor 
 whose words have infallible wisdom. They 
 weep over his sorrows as fresh occurrences; 
 they tremble through the recollection of his 
 vicissitudes ; they celebrate his two chief anni- 
 versaries with unwearied zest; they sing his 
 praises as though to testify their love in his 
 own ears. And because he is thus a present 
 reality not a remote memory, his" example is 
 like a chapter of current experience, wielding 
 its perennial power over mankind. No other 
 appeal or argument has like weight. "Jesus 
 said or did so and so," therefore must we emu- 
 late the model and obey the truth. Sometimes 
 a slavish compliance with the letter of his pre- 
 cept results from the desire to honor his author- 
 ity. Sometimes an extravagant material guise 
 is given to the spiritual intent, as in the costly 
 mummery of high ceremonial days in the 
 church. But anyhow it is Jesus, and not a 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 97 
 
 mere code, who occupies the throne of admi- 
 ration and authority. 
 
 Christianity thus stands before the world not 
 as an adjuration but as an object lesson. And 
 it is obvious how it becomes in this way a 
 generator of motive. It appeals directly to the 
 will-power through the emotions. Awe, aspira- 
 tion, shame, ambition, personal devotion are 
 kindlings of the spirit readily translated into 
 purpose and action. The sight of Jesus — 
 and, it may be quite as much, the sight of those 
 whom Jesus has transformed, the Christians 
 whose lives are in contact with our own — 
 arouses the heart's desire for nobler living, and 
 desire is ever the parent of determination. The 
 Gospel is forever being republished in what the 
 apostle called "living epistles." Every saint 
 is a seed, whence springs a harvest. One hero 
 on the battlefield makes heroes of hundreds. 
 The spark of virtue, caught from the Master 
 and transmitted by human fellowships the 
 world over, is putting fire on the cold hearth- 
 stones of myriads of lives. The process is 
 slower than our impatience would ask, but it is 
 effectual, irresistible, predestined to override 
 all barriers, consume all oppositions, and 
 7 
 
98 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 afford to the travailing Redeemer the satisfac- 
 tion at last of a universal New Birth into his 
 kingdom. 
 
 'O^ 
 
 XII. — The Gift of Life. 
 
 The truth revealed, the inspiration of a per- 
 fect exemplar afforded; what more can a 
 Saviour do ? Jesus said : " The bread of God 
 is that which cometh down out of heaven, and 
 g'iveth life unto the world " (John vi. 33). " As 
 the Father hath life in himself, even so gave he 
 to the Son also to have life in himself " (John v. 
 26). " I came that they may have life " (John 
 X. 10). 
 
 Few words must suffice upon this somewhat 
 puzzling point. I interpret the word " life " in 
 such passages, not specifically as spiritual ex- 
 cellence, but generically as vitality. Emerson 
 wrote : " I would gladly . . . allow the most to 
 the will of man ; but ... I can see nothing at 
 last, in success or failure, than more or less of 
 vital force supplied from the Eternal " (Essay 
 on Experience). We see the need of that life 
 force, but where can we procure it ? We are 
 not surprised that the Creator should impart 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 99 
 
 more or less of it in the birth endowment ; but 
 we shrink from the suggestion that its store, if 
 spent, may be replenished by the way. The 
 fact cannot be determined a priori. If we feel 
 sure of our interpretation, we may be content 
 with the simple authority of Jesus. If he says 
 he can bestow life, why should we doubt it ? 
 But experience also seems competent, after 
 nineteen centuries, to bear witness on the 
 point. What is the explanation of the sudden 
 fullness of energy which at times, under strong 
 religious incitement, seems to come to flagged 
 and enervated natures ? It conquers inveterate 
 appetite; it breaks the spell of associations; 
 it clothes the victim of self-debauchment in his 
 risrht mind. If the word of the beneficiarv is 
 worth anything, he gets it from Jesus. We 
 may prefer to call it the gift of God, but it 
 appears to touch Christ on the road ; it is 
 Christmas that converts Scrooge; it is the very 
 voice of the Nazarene that transforms Saul into 
 Paul. 
 
 No miracle is here assumed, but a divine 
 method. Do we not feel that this is the 
 supreme necessity ? We well appreciate the 
 truth of the Gospel, and would fain follow 
 
100 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Jcsiis, bat we are cold, dull, lifeless. We hail 
 the standard from afar, but our feet are stuck 
 in the mire. Who shall deliver us from the 
 body of this death ? Could Jesus really replen- 
 ish the depleted fund of vitality in the sinner, 
 make him tingle with dynamic in every fibre, 
 it would be like the electric spark that unites 
 the elements which, though in contact before, 
 refused to mix ; it would make men hunger and 
 thirst for the bread and water of life, and seize 
 upon the proffered banquet with avidity. 
 
 Come, holy spirit, heavenly dove, 
 With all thy quickening povi^ers; 
 
 Come, shed abroad a Saviour's love, 
 And that shall kindle ours. 
 
 The human consciousness cannot have been 
 wholly at fault in supposing a visitation of God 
 to be necessary to the torpid soul's recovery. 
 Jesus claimed to be, not the source, but the 
 vehicle of that influx. Just how he keeps liis 
 promise we may not be able to show ; but it is 
 not necessary to postpone our diimcr until we 
 have thoroughly mastered agriculture, milling, 
 the railroad system, and the culinary art, nor 
 to understand all about anatomy, physiology, 
 medicine, and pharmacy, before we take our 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 101 
 
 dose. Let us live, whether with or without a 
 theory of life. Let us first accept the gift of 
 God, and explain it afterwards as we can. 
 
 Thus Jesus satisfies all requisites. He teaches 
 the truth, as only he knew it or could teach it. 
 He proved it practicable, and made it irresist- 
 ibly magnetic by a perfect illustration of it in 
 his character. Finally, into jaded humanity 
 he pours creative life. In all this unique, 
 unparalleled divine, he justified his claim to 
 be the Saviour of the World. 
 
 XIIL — What a Saviour! 
 
 I had intended under this head to discuss the 
 qualifications of Jesus for the stupendous office 
 he came to fill. The preceding argument has, 
 however, seemed to demand for its fair elucida- 
 tion one after another of the considerations which 
 might have been grouped together here, and 
 has so encroached upon the pages of our little 
 book that only one or two are left for a few 
 reflections of a general nature. 
 
 Revert once more to the problem he had to 
 solve. It was not enough that he, a peasant, 
 should press through the abatis of class preja- 
 
102 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 dice to the citadel of honor and power. It was 
 not enough that he should win the suffrages of 
 the people or any momentary triumph of au- 
 thority. It was not even enough that he should 
 conquer the inveteracy of Hebrew tradition, and 
 cope with the disdainful cults of imperial 
 Rome, or with her haughtiness of power, her 
 lassitude of luxury, her ferocity of greed and 
 passion. Incredible as such undertakings might 
 seem, they were scarcely introductory to what 
 he must accomplish. Aiming at nothing less 
 than world-wide dominion, perpetual through 
 the ages, he must forestall the fickleness of 
 human nature; must by one and the same 
 course (for he had only a single brief life to 
 live) conciliate or coerce all varieties of civili- 
 zation ; must commend his message to " all 
 sorts and conditions of men," to the most oppo- 
 site and fiercely contending interests, to rich 
 and poor, the powerful and the humble, the 
 learned and the illiterate ; must anticipate and 
 adapt himself to all discoveries, all evolutions ; 
 must, in short, penetrate to the very centre of 
 human need, and nestle there, immovable and 
 regnant, through all time. 
 
 Except to secure him a first footing, mere 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 103 
 
 external advantages could have helped him 
 little in such a timeless task. Native force 
 would be more than royal birth, and mother- 
 wit than school-learning or the patronage of 
 potentate or party. For a performance at once 
 so delicate and so colossal he must trust to 
 himself. First of all, he must be sure of his 
 own ground, sure of God. That certainty being 
 won, the immutable laws which bind human 
 nature under all its diversities of fortune, an 
 intimate and infallible knowledge of the springs 
 of human action, and the co-operations which 
 Nature is ever ready to lend to those who side 
 with her, would provide his Archimedean lever 
 with which to " move the world. " Jesus fixed 
 upon two immutable, universal truths. First, 
 he that works with God is bound to win. Sec- 
 ond, the pure heart may see God, the willing 
 spirit may understand his ways. Loyal to 
 these truths, he made himself a receptacle of 
 God. That and only that was his secret. 
 Thenceforward his power, his wisdom were as 
 adequate to his undertakings as God's. He 
 was in fact God in the flesh ; that is, as much 
 of God as could be incarnated. His qualifica- 
 tions were divine. 
 
104 THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 
 
 Doubtless to some the figure of that Galilean 
 peasant, trudging the dusty paths of Palestine, 
 making himself the menial of every form of 
 human need, seems disappointing, almost insig- 
 nificant. Art has never been brave or discern- 
 ing enough to take him as he really was, in 
 all his humility. And doting devotion has 
 imagined him possessed of every attribute of 
 magnificence, of every human talent, unable to 
 accept his own definition of greatness as simply 
 capacity for service. But no adventitious aids 
 supported him in his programme of conquest. 
 He had the truth; he was right; he was able 
 to live as he taught; he was the mightiest 
 moral magnet of the ages, pulling tirelessly, 
 unyieldingly, all men toward himself. This, in 
 meagre words, is the whole story. 
 
 But how that story has developed itself in 
 history and in experience ! What a tribute to 
 his accuracy of pretension has been the course 
 of human progress under the spur of his leader- 
 ship! What a tribute to human nature is the 
 proof that truth and goodness are the - most 
 potent factors in its evolution, however hard 
 and hellish it may sometimes seem ! That Jesus 
 understood himself and knew how to effect his 
 
THE SAVIOUR OF THE WORLD. 105 
 
 plans, let the authority of his name in this dis- 
 tant period bear witness ; let the softened and 
 fraternal civilizations of the earth bear witness; 
 let the Christian Church, with all its imperfec- 
 tions, but also with all its costly sacrifice and en- 
 deavor for his sake, bear witness. He has done 
 all things well, so well that we cannot doubt 
 either his purpose or his power in the things 
 yet to be done. He has justified his claim to 
 be the Sayiour of the World. 
 
 THE END. 
 
Princeton Theological Seminary-Speer Library 
 
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