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 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
AUG 27 1B98 
 
SERMONS 
 
 ON 
 
 THE APOSTLES' CREED 
 
 A. ST. JOHN CHAMBRE, D. D. 
 Rector of St. Anne's Church, Lowell, Mass. 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 THOMAS WHITTAKER 
 
 2 AND 3 BIBLE HOUSE 
 
£4 
 
 The Library 
 of Congress 
 
 WASHINGTON 
 
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 . Copyright, 1898, 
 By A. St. John Chambeb 
 
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 THE WORSHIPPERS IN ST. ANNE'S CHURCH 
 
 THIS VOLUME IS AFFECTIONATELY 
 
 DEDICATED 
 
 (iii) ^ 
 
PREFACE 
 
 These sermons were delivered during the 
 winter of 1897-8, in the ordinary course of 
 pulpit ministrations, and were prepared under 
 the pressures and duties attendant upon the 
 care of a large parish. As they were deliv- 
 ered, so they are printed. 
 
 They were not designed as a critical or ex- 
 haustive treatment of the subjects considered, 
 but as helps to the understanding and appre- 
 ciation of the several articles of the Creed. 
 Some who heard them thought that they would 
 be useful to others, and urged their publica- 
 tion. 
 
 In presenting them in this form, it is hoped 
 (v) 
 
vi Preface 
 
 that they will prove helpful to those who shall 
 read them, in quickening the spiritual life, and 
 in strengthening allegiance to " the faith once 
 for all delivered to the saints." 
 
 The Eectoey, 
 
 St. Anne's Church, 
 
 January 31, 1898. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. INTRODUCTION 1 
 
 II. "I Believe in God" 14 
 
 III. "And in Jesus Christ" . . . ; 25 
 
 iv. "suffered under pontius pllate, was 
 
 Crucified, Dead, and Buried". . . 36 
 
 V. "He Descended into Hell" 48 
 
 VI. "The Third Day He Rose Again from the 
 
 Dead" 59 
 
 VII. Ascension— Session 71 
 
 VIII. "To Judge the Quick and the Dead". . 83 
 
 IX. "I Believe in the Holy Ghost" 95 
 
 X. "The Holy Catholic Church" 107 
 
 XI. "The Communion of Saints" 119 
 
 XII. "The Forgiveness of Sins" 130 
 
 XIII. "The Resurrection of the Body" .... 141 
 
 XIV. "The Life Everlasting" 153 
 
 (vii) 
 
I. 
 
 rNTEODUCTION. 
 11 That they may be sound in the faith." Titus i. 13. 
 
 We have a Creed. More precisely, we have 
 two Creeds. One is called the " Apostles' 
 Creed," and is that which is used regularly in 
 Morning and Evening Prayer. It is, also, 
 sometimes called the " Creed of the Catechu- 
 mens," or the "Baptismal Creed," because it 
 was, in the early church, taught to those who 
 were preparing for the Sacrament of Holy 
 Baptism ; and indeed is now in the Baptismal 
 Office of this Church, and all " sponsors" and 
 " witnesses " assert their faith in it, as does the 
 adult for himself when about to receive that 
 Sacrament. The other is called the " Nicene 
 Creed," or otherwise, the " Communion Creed," 
 because properly belonging to the office for the 
 Celebration of the Blessed Sacrament of the 
 
Introduction. 
 
 Body and Blood of our Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 This Nicene Creed, however, is only a longer 
 and more definite statement, for the most part, 
 of the articles contained in the Apostles' Creed. 
 In all essential particulars, the two Creeds are 
 identical. This being so, I do not need to 
 further particularize at this time, since it is 
 not of the Nicene form — the form elaborated by 
 the Council of Nicsea in A. D. 325 — that I de- 
 sire especially to speak, but of that much more 
 ancient form, that shorter form, which we know 
 as the Apostles'. Not that we are to consider 
 that this Creed was formulated by the Apostles 
 themselves, which is not the case. It is only a 
 tradition, whatever the foundation it may have, 
 that the twelve Apostles composed it — each 
 Apostle in turn, at a meeting for that purpose, 
 pronouncing a definite paragraph or article. 
 Nevertheless, it may be very properly accepted 
 as, and called the Apostles' Creed, since it gath- 
 ers together, and emphasizes in concrete form, 
 the main features of Apostolic faith and teach- 
 ings. In certain parts the very words used by 
 
Introduction. 
 
 the Apostles in their writings are found embodied 
 in the Creed — and every article may be gath- 
 ered from, and clearly proved, by the Epistles 
 of the New Testament, or the Gospels of our 
 Blessed Lord as left to us by the Apostles, or by 
 Evangelists instructed by His Apostles. From 
 the very earliest days of the Church this Creed 
 was, in substantial respects as now, in existence 
 and use. In simpler form than at present, it 
 may be, at first, but always substantially the 
 same. We need trouble ourselves, therefore, 
 not at all about the origin of this Creed. It is 
 sufficient that we know that it dates from the 
 earliest times, and that it embodies the " Faith 
 once for all delivered to the saints, 9 ' which has 
 always been the faith of the Church, as it is the 
 faith of the Church to-day, and as it will be the 
 faith of the church while the church shall 
 continue to stand. The Church will stand un- 
 til the "consummation of all things," for it is 
 the promise of Him who cannot err, and who 
 has "all power in heaven and earth," that "the 
 gates of hell shall not prevail against it." Let 
 
Introduction. 
 
 it be carefully noted, at this point, that the 
 Apostles' Creed is a statement of facts in relation 
 to, and in connection with Christianity, of the 
 facts which underlie Christianity, and without 
 which it has, and can have, no existence. 
 These facts cannot be eliminated from the New 
 Testament without destroying the New Testa- 
 ment. Whenever they are eliminated, in whole 
 or in part, Christianity is marred and disfigured 
 in the exact proportion to the elimination. 
 This, however, need not now be emphasized. 
 But the statement is an important one, that the 
 Creed is a summary of facts, a gathering together 
 of the essential elements of the Christian Re- 
 ligion. It is a setting forth of what, according 
 to the New Testament, and the teaching of the 
 Church, is necessary for a Christian to know 
 and believe to his soul's health and welfare. 
 The Creed is not an elaboration of doctrines, or 
 a setting forth of doctrinal opinions or theories. 
 In other words, it is not a statement of what we 
 think, or suppose, or guess, or speculate about 
 the doctrines of our religion, but a declaration 
 
Introduction. 
 
 of acceptance and belief in certain indisputable 
 facts of Christianity as set forth in Holy Scrip- 
 ture. The word " Creed," as we know, is from 
 the Latin, Credo, "to believe," or "I believe"; 
 and these things which we believe are the facts 
 appertaining to our holy religion. These facts 
 are put in the tersest language, and in the short- 
 est possible compass. The Creed thus is not a 
 theological treatise. The difficulty often is, 
 that religious bodies other than the Historic 
 Church, often put forth theological confessions 
 to which they attempt to compel implicit cre- 
 dence. Because these leave no free play to the 
 human faculties, no real freedom of thought, no 
 room for spiritual insight quickened by the Holy 
 Ghost, no possibility of any progress in the 
 knowledge of the truth revealed by God, there 
 has been rebellion on the part of men. The 
 complaint has been, not without a show of jus- 
 tification, that there has been thus a stifling of 
 the intellect, resulting in a deterioration of all 
 spiritual power, sometimes ending in the neglect, 
 or even the denial of all Christian teaching. 
 
Introduction. 
 
 This objection cannot be urged, with justice, 
 against the Apostles' Creed. That leaves the 
 widest possible scope for the exercise of the in- 
 tellectual powers, and for the quickening and 
 enlightening influences of God's Holy Spirit. 
 Within the limitations of the facts stated, 
 which are established verities, there is utter- 
 most liberty to the children of God, who are 
 invited, even commanded to judge what is 
 right. 
 
 There are definite and permanent advantages 
 in such a Creed as the Apostles'. As a matter 
 of experience, every person, at least every per- 
 son who lives a life that has any real force in it, 
 good or bad, has a Creed. It may not be a 
 Christian Creed, or in any sense a religious 
 Creed, but the power by which his life is guided 
 is the Creed which impels him. That which 
 he believes, in which he believes, that shapes, 
 moulds, controls his life, and he is more and 
 more the kind of man that his Creed makes him. 
 It does make a difference what a man believes, 
 and believes in. He believes that money is the 
 
Introduction. 
 
 chief good, and it becomes the main spring of 
 all his efforts. He bends himself to its acqui- 
 sition, body, and mind, and soul. He may gain 
 the end sought, that in which he believes ; but, 
 if that is all, it is, to say the least, unworthy of 
 the spiritual and immortal nature. Or, a man's 
 Creed may be pleasure, or education, or art, or 
 merely secular advantage and attainment in 
 whatever light viewed. He believes in this 
 world, in this life, and in what these can yield ; 
 and he is, and is more and more, the kind of 
 man that his faith necessitates. He does not 
 reach, as he cannot reach, any spiritual heights, 
 or attain to a life that is really divinely noble. 
 Some Creed a man has, and must have. It is 
 certainly of importance what is his Creed, what 
 is its character, what is that to which it tends, 
 and to which it leads him. The Apostles' Creed 
 reaches above what is of the earth earthy, it 
 touches the spiritual and eternal, it unfolds and 
 enforces the divine. Here is a calm statement 
 of a Christian's belief, so quiet, so confident, 
 so assuring as to steady and inspire the soul. 
 
8 Introduction. 
 
 As a being alone in a universe so vast and so 
 complicated, there is need for something to 
 steady the bewildered and perplexed powers, 
 and to make the soul strong for the life it lives, 
 the duties it must discharge, and the trials, 
 temptations, and sorrows it must meet. This 
 faith is put into words. "I believe." I be- 
 lieve in God, in God the Unchanging, the Infi- 
 nite, the Eternal. I am not alone, I am not 
 helpless. I believe in God ! So with regard to 
 the other articles of the Creed. Here is a 
 power to a man's life, that cannot otherwise 
 than mould, uphold, and transform. It takes 
 him apart from, and separates him from, and 
 makes him other than the temporal and trans- 
 ient — it allies him with everlasting spiritual 
 verities. 
 
 Other purposes also are served by a Creed, 
 which are both helpful and necessary. In the 
 life of humanity there are centrifugal forces 
 forever operating. Not only do nations divide 
 themselves from nations, with the rivalries and 
 jealousies and interests that are so rife, but the 
 
Introduction. 9 
 
 same is true of communities, of families and of 
 individuals. It seems practically impossible to 
 make men realize common interests— that men 
 cannot live to themselves. Nations are con- 
 cerned for themselves, and families for them- 
 selves, and individuals for themselves. Their 
 interests often seem to be antagonistic. To 
 save from their flying apart absolutely, some 
 centripetal force is an essential; but this can 
 only be found in religion, and only as that re- 
 ligion is expressed in words — in a Creed. A 
 common religious formula can and does, cer- 
 tainly as nothing else can, or ever has done, bind 
 men and nations together. They converge to 
 this centre, and find that they all have common 
 interests and common hopes. A common faith, 
 and the impulse derived therefrom, unites in- 
 dividuals, and families, and communities — and 
 serves to hasten the time when the universal 
 Brotherhood of man in the common Fatherhood 
 of God shall be recognized and acknowledged. 
 Without a Creed that were impossible of reali- 
 zation. To that end we must not only believe 
 
10 Introduction. 
 
 in God, but in God as the Father Almighty — 
 and this faith must needs be expressed in so 
 many words. 
 
 In another direction also the Apostles' Creed 
 is of the utmost value. Though it may not so 
 have occurred to many, yet such a Creed is a 
 necessary key to the understanding of God's 
 Holy Word, and to the apprehension and ap- 
 preciation of its promises with regard to man 
 and his destiny. The Bible is a many-sided 
 Book. Rather it is a series of book — of books, 
 some of them written more than a thousand 
 years apart, and having of course different au- 
 thors. These authors often lived in places far 
 removed the one from the other; and they 
 wrote upon specific matters, and to serve spe- 
 cific purposes. The Bible as a whole, reveals 
 God's progressive dealings with humanity, and 
 His progressive unfolding of Himself to men's 
 knowledge. It shows humanity in its pristine 
 glory, in its fall, in its possible redemption. It 
 converges steadily to Calvary ; and from Calvary 
 is the flashing of the light that illumines all 
 
Introduction. 11 
 
 darkness and the shadow of death, and opens 
 the gates of everlasting life and glory. The 
 splendor and power of Inspiration rest upon 
 the Bible. But, certainly to ordinary minds — 
 and humanity is made up of ordinary minds — 
 a key is needed to open the treasures of the 
 sacred writings to the heart, and to insure that 
 Christians may be sound in the faith. We 
 have the key in the Apostles' Creed, the out- 
 come of the teaching Church, of that Church to 
 which Jesus Christ Himself promised the gift 
 of the Holy Ghost to abide with it, and to lead 
 it into all truth. This Creed, embracing the 
 substantial historic features and facts of Chris- 
 tianity, becomes a guide. Without such a guide 
 we may fail to read aright. With it, we cannot 
 read amiss, since the Creed itself is definitely 
 scriptural. 
 
 Much more might be said as to the value of 
 such a Creed ; but sufficient, it may be, has been 
 outlined to show that it is not without interest 
 and importance to the Christian. This will be 
 realized more fully, as the Creed itself, in its 
 
12 Introduction. 
 
 different articles, shall be presented for con- 
 sideration. Meanwhile, its intense personality 
 challenges our attention. It is the expression 
 upon our part, as the disciples of Jesus Christ, 
 of our personal individual faith. It is not, as 
 we use it, what others believe, but what I 
 believe — I, for myself, as though no other be- 
 ing existed except myself— I, as a living being, 
 a spiritual being, traveling through this world 
 into an eternal world, as destined to a life of 
 immortality. " I believe 
 
 "In God the Father Almighty, Maker of 
 heaven and earth : 
 
 "And in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord: 
 Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of 
 the Virgin Mary: Suffered under Pontius 
 Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried : He de- 
 scended into hell ; The third day He rose again 
 from the dead : He ascended into heaven, And 
 sitteth on the right hand of God the Father 
 Almighty: From thence He shall come to 
 judge the quick and the dead. 
 
 "I believe in the Holy Ghost: The Holy 
 
Introduction. 13 
 
 Catholic Church: The Communion of Saints: 
 The Forgiveness of Sins : The Resurrection of 
 the body : And the Life everlasting. Amen" 
 
II. 
 
 "I BELIEVE m GOD." 
 
 "Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, which was 
 and is and is to come." Bev. iv. 8. 
 
 11 To us there is but one God, of whom are all things, 
 and we in Him." 1 Cor. viii. 6. 
 
 "In the beginning God created the heaven and the 
 earth." — Genesis i. 1. 
 
 The Apostles' Creed says, " I believe in God 
 the Father Almighty, Maker of heaven and 
 earth." 
 
 The Holy Scriptures and the Creed agree ab- 
 solutely in the setting forth of God, of God as 
 a Father, of God as Almighty (a Being of 
 sovereign power), and of God as the maker of 
 all things. Practically, the sacred writings are 
 full of passages having a direct bearing to this 
 end. To quote them would take all the time 
 that can be devoted to a single discourse, and 
 then they would not be exhausted. So far as 
 the Bible is concerned, however, one passage of 
 
 14 
 
"I Believe in God." 15 
 
 definite statement as to any truth is sufficient; 
 and for our purpose to-day, the passages taken 
 for a text affirm explicitly the declaration of 
 faith contained in the Creed. As Christians we 
 affirm — each one personally and as a single in- 
 dividual, — belief in "God the Father Al- 
 mighty, Maker of heaven and earth." The 
 reticence of Holy Scripture is as wonderful as 
 are its revelations. It is as remarkable for 
 what it does not make known, as it is for what 
 it declares to us. It reveals God — perhaps it 
 may be more correctly said, it assumes God, as 
 a self-existent Being', — but it enters into no 
 argument for or concerning His existence, and 
 it tells us nothing of the essential character or 
 mode of His Being, It may be — no doubt it is, 
 — because of the limitations of our humanity, 
 which will not allow us now to comprehend all 
 the deep things of God ; though it may be, that 
 when these limitations shall be removed, as we 
 believe that some day they will be, we shall 
 come to know more and more, and as the 
 eternities shall speed on, more fully apprehend 
 
16 "I Believe in God." 
 
 -what God is, and enter more completely into 
 the measureless depths of His glory. But only 
 God, in any absolute way, can now or ever 
 comprehend God. Only the Infinite can sound 
 the abysses of the infinite. Only He who is 
 " without beginning of days or end of years n 
 — to whom eternity is a perpetual present, — can 
 see and understand all the complexities and in- 
 tertwinings that reach from the infinite past 
 endlessly on and over into the infinite future. 
 Man is finite, and because finite is " cabined, 
 cribbed, confined," bounded by sense and time, 
 limited in the operations and applications of his 
 faculties. It is outside the province of man, 
 therefore, outside of his powers, outside of wis- 
 dom and humility, to demand demonstrable 
 mathematical proof of the being and existence 
 of God. Corroborations of the fact of God is 
 all he has a right to ask for, or to expect — and 
 these may come from his own divinely im- 
 planted intuitions, if he will allow them to wit- 
 ness, and from the universe about him, if he 
 will listen to its teaching. Beyond this, to 
 
"/ Believe in God." 17 
 
 know God, if we shall know Him in any measure 
 of fulness, to any adequate satisfaction to our 
 nature, He must be known as He reveals Him- 
 self, or by His will and power is revealed to us 
 by another. He has progressively revealed 
 Himself to the world. In an important sense 
 He progressively is revealed to, and is appre- 
 hended through revelation by the soul. The 
 knowledge of God possessed by the little child, 
 or the youth, is not the knowledge possessed by 
 the mature Christian, who has learned to know 
 him through stress of toil and trial and sorrow, 
 through the manifold experiences of life. Cer- 
 tainly the careless, and indifferent, and sinful, 
 cannot know God in any adequate way — can- 
 not know Him in the way of obedience, of 
 righteousness, of love and peace. But the 
 child, and the youth, and the mature man or 
 woman, if at all earnest, can say, with equal 
 force and fervor, and the fulness of conviction, 
 and to the help, and comfort, and stay of the 
 heart, " I believe in God." The heart answers 
 to the declaration that God is, and rests in the 
 
18 "J Believe in God." 
 
 answer, and we express this assurance and con- 
 fidence when we say, " I believe " — that is our 
 faith — to us " the evidence of things not seen." 
 We bow in the consciousness of one higher 
 and mightier, more enduring, more eternal than 
 ourselves; and in our conscious dependence 
 thereupon, and our conscious need, we adore 
 and worship, and hope and trust. He is to us 
 the " Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God Almighty, 
 which was, and is, and is to come." 
 
 But the revelation of God is much more, and 
 much nearer than mere existence or being. 
 That God is a Living Personal Being, is, in- 
 deed, involved in the very idea of God — of 
 any idea that has any adequate meaning to our 
 souls, growing out of our sense of dependence 
 upon a higher power. The personality of God is 
 most clearly and definitely taught in the sacred 
 Scriptures, and is emphasized by our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. So far as the Scriptures are concerned, 
 it is impossible to escape from this fact. Nor 
 otherwise, would the idea of God, in any vital 
 way, affect our souls, our lives, or our conduct. 
 
"I Believe in God." 19 
 
 It is impossible to predicate any attributes, or 
 powers, or affections, thought, feeling, purpose, 
 knowledge — of an impersonality. Neither as 
 toward an impersonality, could there be justi- 
 fied or conceded any claim of obligation or re- 
 sponsibility on the part of man. The founda- 
 tions are taken away from any religion — call 
 that religion by whatever name we will, — - 
 when the personality of God is denied. We can 
 ask nothing, we can expect nothing, we can 
 receive nothing, except from a Person. We 
 cannot escape then, from the thought of God 
 as a Living Personal Being. As Christians 
 this thought is essential and necessary, and 
 cannot, without the inevitable ultimate rejec- 
 tion of Christianity, be ignored or denied. It 
 is that which we confess in the creed, when we 
 say that we " Believe in God the Father Al- 
 mighty." There is no fatherhood without 
 personality — nor is there any fatherhood with- 
 out the attributes and qualities which belong 
 to that relationship. This relationship, more- 
 over, as it is attached to God, we can know and 
 
20 "I Believe in God." 
 
 apprehend only as we know it in connection 
 with ourselves. The name of Father would 
 have no adequate meaning to us otherwise — 
 and we are not mocked with words without 
 meaning to our hearts or minds. That would 
 be playing with the tenderest and deepest feel- 
 ings of our nature — it would be the mockery of 
 all our intuitive conceptions of what ought to 
 be. We would be helpless in this strange, 
 sad world, with nothing to lean upon, without 
 a guide, and with no light beyond. But to us 
 "there is one God, the Father, of whom are 
 all things, and we in Him." He is " the Father 
 of the spirits of all flesh." " God has made of 
 one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on 
 all the face of the earth." We have a Father 
 God — a God who is a Father in a true and ab- 
 solute sense. " My heart and my flesh crieth 
 out for the living God," was the expression 
 wrung from the burdened heart of the Prophet 
 and Psalmist of Israel in the olden days. 
 "Shew us the Father and it sufficeth us," was 
 the longing cry of the disciple to our Lord 
 
U I Believe in God." 21 
 
 Jesus Christ. It is the cry of humanity in all 
 the ages. God, the Living God, the Personal 
 Father. This is the revelation of God that is 
 made to us ; and this is the God in whom we 
 believe, if we believe aright. That this God 
 is, is the attestation in the Creed, enshrined as 
 a fact therein forever. In the light of it we 
 open the Scriptures, and all the fulness of their 
 blessed teaching in this connection flash with 
 more and more significance and splendor upon 
 us, and our hearts respond to the revelation, 
 and find rest and joy in believing. No other- 
 wise would or could God be to us what He can 
 be, and what He is. The sense of His power 
 and glory only, would blight — so great, so vast, 
 so fearful, so all overwhelming is it. We are 
 as nothing before mere power, however glori- 
 ous. It dismays and crushes. But before God 
 as the Father Almighty — the all powerful 
 sovereign Father — the heart is quiet, and throbs 
 with the joy of confidence and hope. There is 
 One who has an interest in us, and cares for us. 
 He can do infinitely more and better for us 
 
22 "I Believe in GodP 
 
 than we can ask or think. He can guide, sus- 
 tain, and bless. He can draw us with the cord 
 of His mighty love, can forgive, and can save. 
 He can lighten our darkness, soothe our an- 
 guish, and make even our bitterest afflictions 
 to redound to our welfare, whether for this 
 world or for the world to come. It cannot be 
 His fault, if fatherly love and blessing do not 
 rest upon our heads and hearts — it must be the 
 fault of our own blindness, our own neglect, 
 our own rebellion and persistent sin. " I be- 
 lieve in God the Father Almighty." 
 
 What fulness of meaning, what height and 
 length and depth of significance, what grounds 
 of confidence and hope and trust, are brought 
 to the mind and heart, by the further declara- 
 tion that this God and Father is the " Maker of 
 heaven and earth." All things are of His crea- 
 tion, all subsist by His will and power — and 
 this, whether they be the things that are seen, 
 or the things that are not seen. For " heaven 
 and earth" is a comprehensive term. The 
 things that are seen are but the reflection of 
 
"1 Believe in God." 23 
 
 the things that are unseen. The universe that 
 we look upon, though we see it only in its 
 parts, is but the reflection of an unseen uni- 
 verse, whose glories are more transcendent. 
 The visible creation is a manifestation of the 
 mind of God — the material clothing of the 
 spiritual conception of the eternal and infinite 
 Maker. So the splendors that the works of 
 God's hands flash all about us, are but shim- 
 mering hints of the splendors that lie back of 
 all— of the splendors in which God Himself has 
 His Being, and into the radiance of which His 
 faithful children have the promise that they 
 shall come at last. All things are of God the 
 Father. We, also, are His offspring. This is 
 the vision that breaks upon us, in this first 
 clause of the Apostles' creed — this, and much 
 more, infinitely more than we can now present 
 or even suggest. To the fact thus presented, 
 we are asked to conform our lives. Of His 
 children God asks obedience, and service, and 
 love ; and He is not, and cannot be satisfied 
 otherwise. We should make then the words of 
 
24 "/ Believe in God," 
 
 the Creed our own, as having vital power over 
 heart and soul. They must not be only a lip 
 utterance. " I believe in God the Father Al- 
 mighty, Maker of heaven and earth," 
 
III. 
 
 " AND IN JESUS CHKIST." 
 
 Jesus "Saith unto them, but whom say ye that I am? 
 and Simon Peter answered, and said, Thou art the Christ, 
 the Son of the Living God." St. Matthew xvi. 15, 16. 
 
 " When the fulness of the time was come, God sent forth 
 His Son, made of a woman." Galatians iv. 4. 
 
 "And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us, 
 (and we beheld His glory, the glory as of one only begotten 
 of the Father,) full of grace and truth." St. John i. 14. 
 
 In the Apostles' Creed, every worshipper de- 
 clares, each one personally and individually, 
 44 1 believe in Jesus Christ His only Son our 
 Lord, Who was conceived by the Holy Ghost, 
 Born of the Virgin Mary." 
 
 As to the facts stated in this article of the 
 Creed, it were easy to quote Holy Scripture in 
 demonstration, to the full extent of this ser- 
 mon. But this is not necessary, since no one 
 at all familiar with the New Testament, can for 
 a moment be in doubt as to the teachings 
 
 25 
 
26 "And in Jesus Christ" 
 
 therein contained, with regard to the genera- 
 tion and the birth of Jesus Christ, and what is 
 claimed for Him, and what He claims for 
 Himself. The passages taken as a text, serve, 
 therefore, merely as suggestions for the line of 
 this discourse, in the consideration of this 
 affirmation of the Creed in its application to us. 
 The opening sentence of the Creed, " I believe 
 in God the Father Almighty/' emphasizes over 
 and above and beyond what was unfolded to 
 you last Sunday, the eternal, essential Father- 
 hood of God, and an eternal, essential Sonship. 
 He who is without beginning of days or end of 
 years, "the same yesterday, to-day and for- 
 ever/' is revealed to us as a Father. If a 
 Father, then there never was a time when He 
 was not a Father, and there never can be a 
 time when He will not be a Father — just as, 
 since He is God, He was God always, and will 
 be God forever. It is equally true, in parity of 
 reasoning, that Jesus Christ, who is made 
 known to us as the " One who was, and is, and 
 is to come/' "the same yesterday, to-day, and 
 
"And in Jesus Christ." 27 
 
 forever," is the Eternal Son of God. That is 
 to say, Jesus Christ was in the beginning, that 
 is from everlasting, with God, His Only Son. 
 He is the only begotten of the Father ; begot- 
 ten before the world was made, Holy Scrip- 
 ture affirms. In the same sense, no other was 
 or is the Son of God. Always with the Father, 
 He is partaker with Him of His essential 
 Being, and power, and glory — even as He Him- 
 self declares, " I and My Father are one." To 
 this end is that magnificent Proem of St. John, 
 41 In the beginning was the Word, and the 
 Word was with God, and the Word was God. 
 The same was in the beginning with God. All 
 things were made by Him, and without Him 
 was not anything made that was made." Holy 
 Scripture declares, that God " created all 
 things by His Son," whom He " hath made 
 heir of all things," thus Lord of all things, thus 
 our Lord. To Him is given preeminence, as the 
 promised Messiah and Saviour of a fallen 
 humanity, having the assurance that " to Him 
 every knee shall bow, and every tongue confess 
 
28 "And in Jesus Christ" 
 
 that He is Lord, to the glory of God the 
 Father." God is, indeed, as has already been 
 shown, the Father of the spirits of all flesh — 
 the Father of the entire human race. But He 
 was a Father before humanity was created. He 
 is the Father of men, as their Creator. In an 
 advanced, and more tender, and closer sense, 
 He is the Father of all who are believers in 
 Jesus Christ His only Son. They are his chil- 
 dren by adoption — for they thus become the 
 brethren of Jesus Christ in spiritual relations, 
 and as such are with Him heirs of God, and 
 joint heirs to the inheritance that is incorrupti- 
 ble, and undefiled, and that passeth not away, 
 — the inheritance of heaven. But Jesus Christ 
 remains His only Son, and our Lord, since He 
 is with God from eternity, to be " revealed in 
 the fulness of the times," that He might make 
 known God to men, and open to them the 
 gates of everlasting life and glory. 
 
 Into the depths of the mystery of all this — 
 and confessedly there is mystery here, — we 
 may not be able to enter, nor need there be 
 
" And in Jesus Christ" 29 
 
 any attempt to enter. We must remember 
 that we are in the region of the mysterious the 
 moment we touch religion at all. That has to 
 do with God, with the soul, with eternity. In 
 these matters we walk by faith, not by sight. 
 But the things of faith are as real and as po- 
 tent, as the things of sight can be. We walk 
 by faith, however, and not by sight, in other 
 directions than that of religion ; and we do not 
 for a moment hesitate thus to walk — indeed 
 we cannot do otherwise than so walk. What 
 is the electric current, rather what is what we 
 call electricity, we do not know. No one 
 knows, nor can we or any see it. But that it 
 is, we do not doubt. From birth to death we 
 are in the mysterious in a thousand directions. 
 That we are here, in the midst of this vast and 
 wondrous universe, is a mystery. Our very 
 being, with its marvellous capacities, with its 
 infinite aspirations and possibilities, and with 
 its consciousness of eternity, is a mystery as 
 great as any that presents itself to us as we 
 walk through this life. " Ye believe in God, 
 
30 u And in Jesus Christ. 11 
 
 believe also in Me," Christ says. Our reply 
 must needs be, " I believe in God the Father 
 Almighty .... and in Jesus Christ His 
 only Son our Lord." 
 
 Of the entering into this human sphere of 
 action of our Lord Jesus Christ, this eternal 
 Son of God, the Holy Scriptures are definite 
 and explicit. Supernatural, of necessity, and 
 for manifold reasons, it must have been — rea- 
 sons, which will more and more appear and ap- 
 peal to us, in the progress of these discourses. 
 
 That He might come to men, that He might 
 have an existence among men in this world, 
 and be seen and known and understood of men, 
 and bring God within human ken and vision, 
 the revelation is that He was " conceived by the 
 Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary." The 
 eternal Sonship and Lordship, the preexistent 
 and exalted nature, is thus pronounced with 
 precision and with emphasis. Unique in His 
 Being, in His relation to God the Father 
 from before the world was made, He is unique 
 in the manner in which He comes into this 
 
"And in Jesus Christ." 31 
 
 world of ours, taking upon Himself our nature. 
 By this union of the divine and the human — 
 this taking upon Himself, taking up into and 
 welding the human with the divine, — human 
 nature is exalted, — there is a new man in 
 Christ Jesus, and death in Adam is made life 
 eternal in Christ Jesus our Lord. What man 
 may be in Christ, is thus set forth — what men 
 will become who are in Christ, is thus assured. 
 Made anew in Christ by the washing of regen- 
 eration, by Holy Baptism, and nourished and 
 dominated by His life, we become " members 
 of Christ, children of God, and inheritors of 
 the kingdom of heaven." " In Christ Jesus old 
 things pass away — all things become new." 
 There is here, as it were, a new start for hu- 
 manity. It fell away from God, and more and 
 more terrible was the estrangement, and deeper 
 and deeper the degradation, and more appalling 
 the darkness. But God's Eternal Son, "con- 
 ceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the Virgin 
 Mary," began a new life upward, a spiritual 
 heritage, a new life for man of ever increasing 
 
32 " And in Jesus Christ" 
 
 purity, righteousness, light and glory. This 
 has, in a measure, been realized since Christ's 
 birth into the world. It will be realized more 
 and more — for the nations of this world are to 
 become the kingdoms of our God and of His 
 Christ. In Christ is seen what man may be, 
 and ought to be — a glorified manhood. So, not 
 of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the 
 will of man, but of God, the Eternal Son was 
 "made flesh, and dwelt among us, full of grace 
 and truth (and we beheld His glory, the glory 
 as of the only Begotten of the Father "). 
 " When the fulness of the time was come, God 
 sent forth His Son, made of a woman." 
 
 The promise to humanity from of old was, 
 that God would send One into the world who 
 should be a Lord and a Saviour. The world 
 was laden with the burden of this promise 
 when Christ came — longing for one who should 
 take away the darkness, destroy sin, and heal 
 the woes of the human race. The eyes of men 
 were holden — for this revelation, as all others, 
 must break upon souls as they are ready to re- 
 
"And in Jesus Christ." 33 
 
 ceive it. So when Christ came He was re- 
 ceived by few, rejected by many. That is the 
 story through the ages, until nations shall be 
 born in a day, and the whole world shall re- 
 ceive Him whose right it is to reign. But 
 always have there been those who have re- 
 ceived Him, served Him, and loved Him. 
 When He was with His disciples on one occa- 
 sion, He asked them "Whom say ye that I 
 am?" and Simon Peter, answering for the col- 
 lege of the Apostles, declared, " Thou art the 
 Christ, the Son of the Living God." This was 
 the recognition of His divine character and 
 nature, and of His divine mission as the hope 
 and the salvation of the world. 
 
 There are two dangers to which we are ex- 
 posed, with regard to our conceptions concern- 
 ing God, and as to the relations existing be- 
 tween God and men. In the first place, to 
 measure God by what we know of ourselves. 
 We, however, are conditioned upon every side, 
 and are subject to manifold limitations. We 
 are frail, fallible, imperfect, sinful. To meas- 
 
34 "And in Jesus Christ" 
 
 ure God by what we know of ourselves, there- 
 fore, is most dangerous, and must be infinitely 
 inadequate. We cannot know all of God, by 
 any power of our own. He dwells in the light 
 that is unapproachable. To think that we, of 
 ourselves, can know God in any absolute way, 
 is to waken pride of intellect, and to evoke a 
 Bpirit of familiarity on our part toward God 
 which is most unfitting and deplorable. God 
 is the High and Holy One, before whom we 
 should bow in reverence and awe, and whom 
 we should approach in deepest humility, as de- 
 pendent upon Him, and needing His loving 
 care and guidance, and His pitying compassion. 
 In the second place, there is the danger of 
 thinking, that as we cannot know all of God, 
 therefore God cannot at all make Himself 
 known to us. Far removed from us, as God, 
 God may be ; but as God, He is always near to 
 us. He has revealed Himself to men. He 
 has come, as it were, into our very lives — even 
 into our everyday life, — in Jesus Christ His 
 Son our Lord. The revelation of God to men 
 
11 And in Jesus Christ" 35 
 
 He makes in the " man Christ Jesus," — for 
 Christ is true man, as He is true God. Would 
 we see God, we must look into the face of 
 Christ. u He that hath seen Me," He says, 
 "hath seen the Father." "No man hath seen 
 God at any time — the only begotten Son, which 
 is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared 
 Him." "He that knoweth Me, knoweth the 
 Father also." " He is the brightness of the 
 Father's glory, and the express image of His 
 person " — " Immanuel, God with us." 
 
 So we say, " I believe in Jesus Christ His only 
 Son our Lord : Who was conceived by the Holy 
 Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary." 
 
IV. 
 
 "SUFFERED UNDER PONTIUS PILATE, WAS 
 CRUCIFIED, DEAD, AND BURIED." 
 
 " Pilate .... delivered Jesus, when he had scourged 
 Hiin, to be crucified .... aud they bring Him into 
 the place Golgotha .... and they crucified Him. 
 Now when the evening was come .... Joseph of 
 Arimathea .... went in boldly unto Pilate, and 
 craved the body of Jesus .... and he gave the body 
 to Joseph, and he .... laid Him in a sepulchre which 
 was hewn out of a rock, and rolled a stone unto the door 
 of the sepulchre." St Marie xv. 15, 22, 25, 42, 43, 45, 46. 
 
 In the Apostles' Creed, the reading is: " Suf- 
 fered under Pontius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, 
 and buried." 
 
 We have in the Creed, then, the simple, his- 
 torical statement of the facts as recorded in 
 the New Testament. There is no elaboration 
 — no comment. But in the strong, sad, self- 
 restraint of these words, how awe-inspiring, 
 and how suggestive they are ! The article in 
 the Creed, in its entirety is, " I believe . . . • 
 
 36 
 
"Suffered under Pontius Pilate. 11 37 
 
 in Jesus Christ His only Son our Lord : Who 
 was conceived by the Holy Ghost, Born of the 
 Virgin Mary ; Suffered under Pontius Pilate, 
 Was crucified, dead, and buried." Thus is 
 placed before us, so far as His contact in the 
 flesh with humanity is concerned, the earthly 
 life of the Redeemer — born, suffered, died and 
 was buried. 
 
 He suffered. Suffering covered His life, 
 and hemmed it in. The shadow of suffering 
 was before Him, and upon Him, even when 
 actual pangs of anguish did not rack His body. 
 Bodily suffering, however, was not all — there 
 was that, at times in its extremest forms, — but 
 He suffered also in spirit, as sensitive natures al- 
 ways must when misunderstood, maligned, re- 
 jected. He suffered thus, especially, as all 
 generous natures would, in view of the con- 
 ditions about Him in the world — conditions of 
 ignorance, sorrow, sin, and death. But of all 
 this the Creed is silent. 
 
 He was crucified. The nature of crucifixion, 
 and the attendant pains, are not unfolded. Its 
 
38 "Suffered under Pontius Pilate" 
 
 uttermost brutality is left in its own darkness. 
 This is in accordance with the usual reserve of 
 Holy Scripture, where reserve is possible and 
 natural. In this case reserve may well be ob- 
 served by us. It is not the brutality of pain 
 that moves — rather the contemplation deadens 
 the sensibilities. Pain has its place and mean- 
 ing, but only in view of the end to be gained, 
 and not for its own sake. As a Roman punish- 
 ment, crucifixion was harsh, cruel and shame- 
 ful. Our Lord Jesus Christ " endured the 
 cross, despising the shame." 
 
 He was dead. He, the Lord of life and of 
 glory, knew death. He " tasted death for every 
 man." He went through that experience, that 
 He might by and by deliver those who through 
 fear of death were all their lifetime subject to 
 bondage. His death is the attestation of His 
 real humanity — "it is appointed unto all men 
 once to die." Under every accompaniment 
 that could make death trying and terrible, He 
 died. Died, for no fault of His, cruelly be- 
 trayed, forsaken, outraged, in pain and storm 
 
" Suffered under Pontius Pilule." 39 
 
 and darkness, in the strength and promise and 
 flash of His manhood's life. He was dead. 
 
 He was also buried. The grave closed in 
 upon Him, and held Him during three days. 
 There could then be no doubt that He was 
 dead — to this end He was buried. There is an 
 essential relation between this burial of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ, and subsequent events, 
 which will in due time be presented to our 
 views. Stress, therefore, is laid upon the fact 
 by the Creed. That He was buried glorifies 
 henceforth every grave of earth. It cannot be 
 a dreadful, a hopeless thing to lie therein — 
 surely not to the believer in Christ — for the 
 Son of God was buried. 
 
 Our Lord Jesus Christ was the perfect man. 
 His humanity is never questioned in these days. 
 In other days, heresies, in certain ways more 
 spiritual than any of modern times, did ques- 
 tion it, and resolve the Christ into an appear- 
 ance only, a phantom. But to-day, men make 
 much of His humanity — accepting that as a 
 fact beyond doubt, as indeed it is. But Jesus 
 
40 "Suffered under Pontius Pilate" 
 
 Christ as the perfect man, however He may be 
 spoken of as such, is but dimly realized, and is 
 scarcely acknowledged in any true way. Certain 
 sides of the character of our Lord are seized 
 upon, and emphasis is laid upon these, often to 
 the utter ignoring of all other sides. His per- 
 fect humanity — humanity in its divine nature, 
 as exemplified in Christ — that is not what is 
 meant as men often speak of the Saviour. We 
 dwell upon His pity, His compassion, His for- 
 giveness, and the like; but in these qualities 
 alone the perfect man is not presented. There 
 are to be considered in Christ Jesus, His stern 
 justice, His hatred of all sin, His condemnation 
 of all un charitableness, His loyalty to truth, 
 His love and service of God. But these are 
 not often dwelt upon — sometimes they are 
 wholly ignored so far as influencing life and 
 action. Yet these are elements in any ade- 
 quate conception of what must constitute a 
 perfect humanity — these are characteristics 
 without which a perfect humanity were an 
 impossibility. 
 
"Suffered under Pontius Pilate" 41 
 
 Jesus Christ was the perfect man. The 
 Creed tells us, that He " suffered under Pon- 
 tius Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried." 
 
 The Passion of Christ must be full of a 
 meaning that is vital to the world. The mere 
 statement of the Creed might be made of 
 others than the Lord. In a literal way, even, 
 other men suffered under Pontius Pilate, and 
 were crucified, dead, and buried. But in these 
 words the Creed enshrines the fact, that Jesus 
 Christ, God's only Son, our Lord, who was 
 conceived by the Holy Ghost, and born of the 
 Virgin Mary, — that He suffered under Pontius 
 Pilate, and was crucified, dead, and buried. 
 The sweep of the nature and the mission of 
 Christ is comprehended herein — the love and 
 purpose of God the Father Almighty — the life 
 and destiny of the human soul. 
 
 In the light of this, it is impossible to rest in 
 any theory that would make the Passion of 
 Christ (and in this word I mean to embody the 
 facts as stated by the creed) — it is impossible to 
 rest in any theory that would make the Pas- 
 
42 "Suffered under Pontius Pilate" 
 
 sion simply an object lesson, an example of 
 endurance, a showing forth of a spirit of mere 
 sacrifice of self for the sake of truth or for the 
 sake of men. All this may be contained in the 
 Passion of Christ — all this no doubt belongs 
 therein, — but all this only would not lift His 
 Passion into any preeminence, or make it 
 preeminently a condition of life and strength 
 and comfort to the world, to be this so long as 
 the world should last. Certainly, all this 
 would not emphasize the sufferer as the ade- 
 quate and all powerful and all sufficient 
 Saviour of men. The Passion of the Eternal 
 Son of the Father must rise above all this, 
 and mean infinitely more than all this — or 
 there would seem to be a waste for which can 
 be rendered no adequate cause. Suffered, 
 crucified, dead, and buried. These words raise 
 the question. Why? To what end? 
 
 " Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh 
 aw r ay the sin of the world ! " This is the ex- 
 clamation with which the appearance of Jesus 
 Christ was greeted by John the Baptist. " The 
 
"Suffered under Pontius Pilate." 43 
 
 Lamb of God " — the Lamb to be slain — the 
 Lamb upon which the sin of the world should 
 be laid — the Lamb that should bear it away, and 
 hide it forever. The Lamb, as it were slain from 
 the foundation of the world, for us men, and 
 for our redemption from sin. Apart from the 
 fact of sin, then, and of humanity's condemna- 
 tion under it, and because of it, the Passion of 
 Jesus Christ, as God's Eternal Son, has no 
 meaning, and is explicable under no Possible 
 reasons the human mind can furnish. We 
 stultify ourselves, we stultify the word of God, 
 we stultify all the history of the world, when 
 we attempt to escape from this position. " Sin 
 reigns over all men, for that all men have 
 sinned." Somehow, at sometime, sin entered, 
 and moral and spiritual death has been univer- 
 sally the result. Nay, in a sense that may not 
 be overlooked, the awfulness and darkness of 
 physical death itself can be traced to sin. It is 
 sin that makes death terrible to men. 
 
 It is sometimes the fashion to try to make it 
 appear that all sin is simply ignorance, a mis- 
 
44 " Suffered under Pontius Pilate." 
 
 take on the part of man as to what constitutes 
 his interests, at the most a misfortune arising 
 from man's inherent nature, and the conditions 
 in which he finds himself, and the limitations 
 by which he is hedged about. But this 
 position cannot be sustained. The most 
 gifted, those educated to the last degree, 
 those whose environments are the richest and 
 best, are often the expressions of sin in its 
 completest forms. Sin is not only of the body. 
 It has planted its roots in the soul itself. 
 There are sins of the spirit as really as of the 
 flesh — nay, it is sin in the soul that works out 
 in the flesh. There is no escape from this fact. 
 The stain of sin is in humanity. It has worked 
 its work of evil through all the ages. It works 
 its work of evil now — and it will so continue to 
 do, save as a new divine life enters into man, 
 and transforms and transfigures — a new life 
 from above. How this can come, and through 
 whom, the world needs to know. Man cannot 
 eradicate sin from himself — only "the blood of 
 Christ can cleanse from all sin." The true 
 
11 Svffered under Pontius Pilate." 45 
 
 vicariousness of Christ's Passion must be put 
 over against the fact of sin, with all the shame, 
 and woe, and curse that sin brings, if we would 
 understand that Passion at all adequately. He 
 suffered because of sin. He died the just for 
 the unjust, to bring men to God. 
 
 How the Passion of our Blessed Lord touches 
 God and affects Him, I need not now consider. 
 In any absolute sense, we do not know the way 
 in which Christ's sufferings and death move 
 God — but that the atonement reaches Godward 
 is clearly taught. Men have tried to solve the 
 mystery — and have failed. As a mystery, it 
 cannot be solved. Every imaginable theory 
 has been advanced, each in turn to be aban- 
 doned as incomplete or inadequate. We can- 
 not know all things; but we do know that it 
 has pleased God to give His Son, His only Son, 
 to die for us, and to make reconciliation for us 
 by the death on Calvary. The chasm between 
 God and man is bridged. God comes to man 
 — man comes to God. This the Passion of 
 Jesus Christ has accomplished. 
 
46 " Suffered under Pontius Pilate" 
 
 On the other hand, measurably at least, we 
 can understand, and be touched by, the fact of 
 Christ suffering for our redemption. It is not 
 Calvary only that measures the suffering of the 
 Son of God — nor any other single act of His 
 Passion — not even the agony of Gethsemane. 
 As the perfect man His whole nature was attuned 
 to suffer as none other could suffer, or ever has 
 or ever can. His capacity for suffering was in 
 the measure of His perfect nature — as in the 
 case with all men. His Passion stands there- 
 fore alone. But it was not for Himself, but for 
 humanity. This is the attestation of His 
 boundless love. Out of His love He gave 
 Himself for us. So we are drawn by the cords 
 of His love, and by consecration to Him are 
 lifted into His own divine life, and are made 
 one w r ith Him as He is one with God. We, 
 who must suffer, are thus, also, taught to suffer 
 with Him, to bear our sufferings, and with Him 
 to realize those sufferings as working out for us 
 an exceeding and eternal weight of glory. But 
 we can bear suffering, and suffering can be a 
 
"Suffered under Pontius Pilate.'''' 47 
 
 blessing to us, only as we bear it with Christ 
 as His disciples. Only as we are His disciples, 
 do we at all realize the meaning of the Atone- 
 ment, and know the meaning of salvation by 
 the blood of the Lamb. Suffering accepted 
 and borne in Christ purifies and glorifies. Such 
 suffering is never a sign that God has for- 
 gotten or forsaken, but is the evidence of 
 His love in the enlarging of our natures unto 
 the redemption of our souls. Through such 
 suffering there is an entrance into an eternal 
 life and glory. 
 
 " I believe that He suffered under Pontius 
 Pilate, Was crucified, dead, and buried." 
 
V. 
 
 "HE DESCENDED INTO HELL." 
 
 "Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the 
 Spirit ; by which He also went and preached to the spirits 
 in prison." 1 Si. Peter iii. 18, 19. 
 
 The article in the Apostles' Creed declares : 
 11 He descended into hell." 
 
 Although in the very earliest forms of the 
 Creed, to which forms I have already called 
 your attention, the article of the "Descent 
 into hell" is not found, yet at an early day 
 it became a part of the Creed. It is clearly 
 traceable as an important part of the teaching 
 of the church in the second century. This 
 was not confined to one section of the church, 
 but appears in various places. That, whatever 
 they may mean, the words of the Creed are 
 strictly Scriptural there can be no question. 
 Let me at the outset, however, ask you to 
 divest yourselves of the idea very commonly 
 
 48 
 
"He Descended into Hell." 49 
 
 attached to the word "hell," as a place or con- 
 dition of suffering only. That is not the primal 
 meaning of the word. As an English word, it 
 comes from the Saxon, and means an enclosed 
 and covered place of greater or less dimensions. 
 Thus, to place a roof upon a house was called 
 "helling." The original of the present form 
 of the Apostles' Creed is in Greek, and the 
 Greek word translated hell is Hades ; and this 
 word Hades corresponds to the Hebrew word 
 Sheol) and is a translation of that word; and 
 Sheol, in Old Testament usage, means the 
 abode of the departed, — the dwelling place of 
 the dead, who abide there after the sorrows or 
 the joys of earth. In popular thought, Hades 
 came to be separated into departments, respec- 
 tively for the good and the evil, who waited 
 the consummation of all things in the last great 
 judgment. The rubric in our Prayer Book im- 
 mediately preceding the Apostles' Creed, tells 
 us, thus harmonizing with what has been said 
 that the words "He descended into hell "mean 
 " He went into the place of departed spirits." 
 
50 "He Descended into Hell" 
 
 The words are not found in the Nicene form of 
 the Creed. But omission in this case is not to 
 be taken as denial — since the church cannot 
 deny in one place what it affirms in another. 
 It is implicit in the Nicene Creed — it is explicit 
 in the Apostles' Creed. 
 
 Holy Scripture contains much more that 
 touches this article than is sometimes sup- 
 posed; and as there is commonly very little 
 clear thought, even on the part of some Church 
 people, upon this subject, the consideration of 
 the Scriptures becomes of very great impor- 
 tance. I pass over at present what the Old 
 Testament says with regard to Sheol, and look 
 only at the New Testament language as to 
 Hades, and the New Testament teaching in con- 
 nection with it — but I do this only so far as 
 the Creed is concerned. Quoting from the six- 
 teenth Psalm, the words, " Thou wilt not leave 
 my soul in hell," the Apostle in the second 
 chapter of the Acts applies them directly to our 
 Lord Jesus Christ : " Thou wilt not leave my 
 soul in hell, (hades) ; neither will thou suffer 
 
"He Descended into Hell" 51 
 
 thine Holy One to see corruption. " There is 
 here, it will be observed, a clear distinction 
 made between soul and body — the soul shall 
 not be left in Hades — the body shall not see 
 corruption in the grave. St. Paul, in the tenth 
 chapter of his Epistles to the Romans, asks, 
 "who shall descend into the abyss " (obviously 
 Hades) ? (" that is to bring up Christ again 
 from the dead.") The use of the word 
 44 abyss " precludes the idea of the grave only. 
 Again, St. Paul says, in the fourth chapter of 
 the Epistle to the Ephesians, "now that He 
 ascended, what is it but that He also descended 
 first into the lower parts of the earth? He 
 that descended is the same also that ascended 
 up far above all heavens." The opposites here 
 are the heavens and the lower parts of the 
 earth; and in the lower parts of the earth 
 Hades was popularly located. But St. Paul, in 
 his second chapter to the Philippians, unfolds 
 more fully the idea, when, speaking of Jesus 
 Christ, he says : " Wherefore God also hath 
 highly exalted Him, and given Him a name 
 
52 "He Descended into HelV 1 
 
 which is above every name, that at the name 
 of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in 
 heaven, and things in earth, and things under 
 the earth " — that is to say, and as in the margin 
 of the Bible we are told, there shall bow to the 
 rule of Jesus Christ, " angels, living men, and 
 the dead," those in the place of departed spirits. 
 St. Peter, in the third chapter of his first Epis- 
 tle has these words, " For Christ also hath once 
 suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that 
 He might bring us to God, being put to death 
 in the flesh, but quickened by the spirit," that 
 is, quickened in His disembodied spirit : — " by 
 which also He went and preached to the spirits 
 in prison " (in the prison of Hades). In the 
 fourth chapter he further speaks of those, 
 " who shall give account to Him that is ready 
 to judge the quick and the dead. For for this 
 cause was the gospel preached also to them 
 that are dead, that they might be judged ac- 
 cording to men in the flesh, but live according 
 to God in the spirit " — in other words, that the 
 .dead might also be prepared to face the right- 
 
"He Descended into Hell" 53 
 
 eous judgment of Christ, they having had the 
 Gospel preached unto them. 
 
 The teaching that may be thus gathered from 
 these Scriptures, is that which the Creed would 
 affirm, when it declares that Jesus Christ, who 
 "was crucified, dead and buried, ,, "descended 
 into hell. ,, He went into the place of departed 
 spirits — for what purpose, and to what end, the 
 New Testament, as quoted, reveals to us. No 
 doubt there was the conviction on the part of 
 the Church, in placing this article in the Creed, 
 that it was necessary in order to accentuate the 
 correspondence of the life and death of Jesus 
 Christ with all human life and death, and the 
 application of His atoning work to all men. 
 The words are further needful to complete any 
 adequate idea of the true sacrifice of Jesus 
 Christ for the sin of the whole world. After 
 all, merely to affirm that He was dead and 
 buried, would leave the possible doubt as to 
 His actual death, or as to the efficacy of His 
 death except to those living on earth in His 
 day, or to those on earth who should believe ia 
 
54 "He Descended into HellP 
 
 Him in days to come. But that He was dead 
 cannot be doubted, nor that that death was for 
 all the race of Adam, when we know that the 
 Body remained in the grave, while Christ Him- 
 self in His human Soul went away into the 
 world of the departed. Soul and Body were 
 parted by death — this only is death. 
 
 See how all this unrolls itself to mind and 
 heart, and how far reaching are the results. 
 Jesus Christ " tasted death for every man." 
 " He came to seek and to save that which was 
 lost." " There is no other name given under 
 heaven among men, whereby we must be 
 saved, but the name of Jesus Christ. ,, Not to 
 know Christ, or of Christ, is not to be saved, 
 or to have the opportunity of salvation. But 
 to those who know Him, or of Him, to them is 
 the opportunity given. The Historic Church, 
 in its best days, was never burdened with the 
 weight of the difficulty as to the condition of 
 those who lived and died before God sent His 
 Son into the world, " that whoever believeth on 
 Him might not perish." The early Church— 
 
11 He Descended into Hell" 55 
 
 for the most part the whole Church before the 
 Reformation, — holding fast to the doctrine of 
 the " descent into hell " — into the place of de- 
 parted spirits, — believed that the " spirits in 
 prison/' those who had not known Christ on 
 the earth, had the gospel preached unto them 
 by the blessed Lord Himself, so that they also 
 if they would accept Him might be saved in 
 the "day of the Lord." The Reformed 
 Churches, losing sight of this article, or of its 
 true intent, have felt the weight of this burden 
 — and it has often been a burden crushing to 
 devout and earnest and loving hearts. But 
 God is not unjust or unmerciful. His mercy is 
 over all His works. When the fulness of the 
 times was come, God sent forth His Son, made 
 of a woman. In the flesh, Jesus Christ made 
 satisfaction for the sin of the world; and then 
 that His sacrifice might be known to all, and 
 be applicable to whomsoever would accept it, 
 when His earthly Passion was completed, and 
 He was "dead and buried, ,, "He descended 
 into heir' — He went and preached His gospel 
 
56 u He Descended into Hell" 
 
 to the spirits in prison. The light of the 
 knowledge of the glory of God in the face of 
 Jesus Christ hath shined in the dark places of 
 His dominions. So it could be said of Jesus 
 Christ, that when He ascended up on high, 
 "He led captivity captive" — for doubtless 
 many believed His preaching, and were born 
 out of their darkness into His glory. 
 
 It has been unfortunate, that the Church in a 
 corrupt period lost sight of the deep signifi- 
 cance in the reserve of the Creed, and passed 
 beyond its legitimate suggestions, and built up 
 a theory concerning the place of departed spir- 
 its, and a practice in connection therewith, that 
 was disastrous to the Church's highest life. It 
 developed a doctrine of Purgatory; and, as 
 claiming to hold the keys of the kingdom of 
 heaven and the keys of Hades, the church as- 
 serted the power to release from this Purgatory 
 at its will. It is not my purpose now to speak 
 particularly about the doctrine of Purgatory, 
 nor of the abuses associated therewith. The 
 doctrine, as such, was overthrown at the Refor- 
 
"He Descended into Hell. 11 57 
 
 mation period, and its abuses ceased. But the 
 reaction in certain ways went too far, and the 
 Reformed Church almost lost sight of the fact 
 that a place of departed spirits is brought to 
 our attention in Holy Scripture — a condition in 
 which spirits wait the day of God, and His 
 righteous decisions. Thither, to those who 
 know Him not in the flesh, Christ went when 
 He died, and to them made known His salva- 
 tion. Beyond this, however, Holy Scripture is 
 silent — and in this reserve we must needs rest. 
 We cannot be wise above what is written in the 
 Bible — we cannot know beyond what God has 
 revealed. 
 
 The early church, as already intimated, made 
 a distinction in the world of departed spirits, 
 pending the resurrection. The dead in Christ 
 were in Paradise, at rest, in peace and in joy, 
 having the light of God upon them — their in- 
 completeness to be made more and more com- 
 pleteness, and whatever was lacking in beauty 
 and holiness to be supplied, until at length 
 they should come to the Beatific Vision, when 
 
58 "He Descended into Hell" 
 
 the King should present them before God with- 
 out spot or blemish. For them it was, that the 
 early Church never ceased to pray that the light 
 supernal might be theirs. In every Celebration 
 of the Holy Eucharist especially were they re- 
 membered, the Church thus attesting, that on 
 earth, and in the world of the departed, there 
 is a true " Communion of Saints." 
 
 But this, also, may be borne in mind, — that 
 as our Lord came once to earth, and made u once 
 for all" a "full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice " 
 for sin, leaving the Church and the Sacraments 
 to do His work, so it may be assumed, He went 
 once into the place of departed spirits to make 
 known to them who needed it His finished sac- 
 rifice. So far as is revealed, we know no more. 
 They that believe here shall be saved — they 
 that believed there found there the salvation of 
 Christ. We here are responsible for faith and 
 conduct now. This is the time of our proba- 
 tion. To-day is the day of salvation — to-day, 
 if we harden not our hearts. Believing now, 
 we rest in hope of redemption. 
 
VI. 
 
 "THE THIED DAY HE EOSE AGAIN FROM THE 
 DEAD." 
 
 "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also 
 received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the 
 Scriptures ; and that He was buried, and that He rose again 
 the third day according to the Scriptures." 1 Cor. xv. 
 3, 4. 
 
 The language of the Apostles' Creed is: 
 "The third day He rose again from the dead." 
 
 We have here in the fewest words possible, 
 the declaration of a stupendous fact. As a fact 
 it has fastened itself upon the consciousness of 
 the world, through which it has ploughed itself 
 now these nearly nineteen hundred years — so 
 that millions in the past, and millions in the 
 present, have found therein their highest in- 
 spiration and their profoundest joy. It is not 
 too much to say, that the declaration of this 
 fact has influenced the thought and life of men 
 as has no other since the world began. Where 
 
 59 
 
60 "He Rose again from the DeadP 
 
 it is accepted, there, strive to account for it as 
 we may from any other point of view, we have 
 the highest civilization the world has ever 
 known, the highest reach of human righteous- 
 ness, of charity, and of good-will toward God 
 and men. In the conciseness of the language 
 of the creed, however, there is no attempt to 
 unfold all this, or even to suggest the fulness 
 of the significance of the fact. There is no 
 dwelling upon its strangeness or its wonderful- 
 ness — and no attempt to describe or picture it 
 to our minds or hearts. It is simply "The 
 third day He rose again from the dead." He who 
 rose again from the dead on the third day, was 
 He whom the Creed sets before us as the only 
 Son of God, who "was conceived by the Holy 
 Ghost, Born of the Virgin Mary; Suffered under 
 Pontius Pilate ; Was crucified, dead, and buried " 
 — who also "descended into hell," that is, went 
 into the place of departed spirits. This same 
 Christ, on the third day after His burial, rose 
 again from the dead. He was taken dead from 
 the cross of Calvary; and He was buried in a 
 
"He Rose again from the Dead. 11 61 
 
 rock-hewn tomb, to the door of which was 
 sealed a huge stone. He was really dead — for 
 soul and body were parted asunder (and this 
 separation of soul and body is what constitutes 
 actual death), for in His spirit u He went and 
 preached to the spirits in prison," while yet His 
 body rested in the grave. But His "soul was 
 not left in hell " — neither did " His body see 
 corruption. " There was again a reunion of soul 
 and body, which was life, and the living Christ 
 came forth from the riven tomb. This the Creed 
 affirms. This we believe — is what each one, 
 personally and individually, declares that he 
 believes every time the Creed is recited. "I be- 
 lieve " . . . . that "the third day He rose 
 again from the dead." 
 
 Had Jesus Christ not risen from the dead, all 
 that is before stated of Him would go for noth- 
 ing. It would leave Him at best, an heroic man 
 who suffered for his convictions, however base- 
 less those convictions might be esteemed. But 
 even this conclusion could scarcely be accepted 
 — rather He would appear as one who pretended 
 
62 "He Hose again from the Dead? 
 
 to be what He was not, and to effect that for 
 which He had no power. Then, indeed, all 
 that is claimed for Him, and all that He claimed 
 for Himself, would be in doubt or in abeyance, 
 for a crowning act of verification would be 
 wanting. This can be found — so far as we can 
 see, could be found — only in His resurrection. 
 That proclaims divine power, and substantiates 
 every, claim. He who has power over life and 
 death may well be conceded to have all power 
 on earth and in heaven — power to be also the 
 Saviour of all who should accept Him — power 
 to open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. 
 He who has this power, is also thereby assured 
 a Divine Being as really as a human being. He 
 can be none other than the Eternal Son of God, 
 44 Immanuel, God with us." If He did not rise 
 from the dead, then, so far as we can see or 
 know, He was merely man, and by no process 
 of reasoning or imagining can He be an all-suf- 
 ficient Redeemer of the world from its sin and 
 woe — nor of any single human being in the 
 world. Then all He said, and all He did, died 
 
il He Rose again from the Dead" 63 
 
 with Him — and He can influence or affect the 
 world only as a Socrates or a Plato, but in no 
 sense as a Saviour. If, however, He rose again 
 from the dead, then all concerning Him that 
 reaches up to that event, and all concerning 
 Him that unrolls from that event, as revealed 
 to us in Holy Scripture, and as is enshrined in 
 the Creed, fit together in richest significance and 
 harmony, a harmony that is absolute and per- 
 fect. Here is the keystone of the revelation 
 of God, as in Jesus Christ reconciling the world 
 unto Himself. It is the keystone of Christianity 
 as a divine system for the regeneration and the 
 redemption of a fallen race. Take this away, 
 and we have no revelation of redemption, no life 
 and immortality brought to light, no one who 
 is able to save to the uttermost those who come 
 to Him. Then, God is still to the world the 
 great Unknown — He has not come into the life 
 of men, to make Himself known in His infinite 
 love, and to draw to Himself out of sin and 
 darkness, and sorrow and despair, the hearts of 
 the children of men. 
 
64 "He Rose again from the Dead. 1 ' 1 
 
 11 But now is Christ risen from the dead." 
 44 The third day He rose again." 
 
 It was said a little while ago that true death 
 lies in the separation of soul and body. 
 That is death in the last analysis — that is 
 death in the light of Christianity. When God 
 made man He " breathed into him the breath 
 of life," and man became a 44 living soul." 
 Take away the soul, and the breath of life is 
 gone from the body — there is death. I am not 
 now concerned with causes that may so work 
 upon man as to make his body no longer able 
 to retain the soul, or to be a fit tabernacle for 
 it; but there can be no physical death, no 
 actual death, until the soul departs from the 
 body. In the case of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 as already seen, soul and body were parted. In 
 the resurrection, soul and body were reunited. 
 He who by His own divine will laid down His 
 life, by the same will took it again, after three 
 days, and came forth — came forth the same 
 being. The same, and yet not the same ; for 
 in that death and in that resurrection (how, is 
 
a He Rose again from the Dead" 65 
 
 not made known to us) was effected a change 
 that prefigures, and was undoubtedly meant to 
 prefigure the change that death and the resur- 
 rection shall effect in us. In relation to Jesus 
 Christ it was a glorified humanity that was re- 
 vealed by His resurrection — it was humanity 
 no longer conditioned and limited by time and 
 space, or by material elements that enter so 
 largely into flesh and blood, but which are not 
 the only elements nor the vital. I may not an- 
 ticipate here, however, what will be more 
 naturally considered under another article of 
 the Creed. 
 
 In the old days a servant of God asked the 
 question, "If a man die, shall he live again ?" 
 The great heart of humanity asks that question 
 forever. Man is so constituted that, unless he 
 has brought himself to another condition of be- 
 lief, or unbelief, the thought of not living be- 
 yond the present is appalling. To lose love, 
 light, knowledge, aspiration, progress, in blank 
 annihilation, is to sever the nerves of all joy 
 and all energy. To say farewell forever to 
 
66 "He Rose again from the Dead" 
 
 those dear to us as the apple of the eye, to lose 
 forever all of beauty seen or dreamed, to pass 
 into unconsciousness of self and of all that has 
 entered into the imagination of the heart, is to 
 oppress and depress with a sense of loneliness 
 and agony that is unutterable. But God has 
 so made man that, after all, the consciousness 
 of eternity, and of life in eternity, lies deep 
 within him. Yet not so, but that, apart from 
 revelation, he still asks the old question as to 
 immortality. It is answered in Jesus Christ, 
 who " The third day rose again from the dead." 
 We believe, and believing rejoice with joy 
 unspeakable and full of glory, that one who 
 once stood upon this earth stood upon the 
 other side of death and the grave, and came 
 back to assure us that death does not end all. 
 His resurrection is the promise and the 
 prophecy of ours. It is not merely that He 
 rose into another world than this. That would 
 tell us nothing. It is, that He came back from 
 death and the tomb, bringing life and immor- 
 tality to light. He came back, and men saw 
 
"He Rose again from the Dead" 67 
 
 Him and talked with Him. Here where death 
 seems the final stage of human life, was one 
 who had passed through death, and was alive 
 again. Is it any wonder that the apostles and 
 believers were filled with a great hope and a 
 wondrous joy ? 
 
 But it is not only that the knowledge and as- 
 surance of life beyond the tomb is brought to 
 us. That were much indeed — but that only 
 would not wholly satisfy. All we might like 
 to know is not revealed ; for eye hath not seen, 
 nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, 
 the things which lie in the life beyond. But 
 so much is revealed to us as seemeth wise to 
 God, and as perhaps we are able to receive. At 
 least, with reverence, we may gather from what 
 is suggested or made known, something con- 
 cerning that immortal life, which shall be to us 
 comfort and strength. That life certainly is 
 not conditioned or limited as of necessity this 
 life is. Here time and space condition us, and 
 the material limits us. It were well to grasp 
 clearly this thought and what it involves. In 
 
68 u He Hose again from the Dead" 
 
 our humanity we grow old, because of our 
 physical being, and the succession of time. But 
 in the spiritual world there is no succession of 
 time, and we are free from the material. The 
 ever present " now " of eternity shuts out every 
 idea of ageing — there is no such thing as grow- 
 ing old — we are the same forever, with the dew 
 of the splendor of ageless strength and vigor 
 in every faculty of our being. In the same 
 sense, space there will not be a factor in our 
 consciousness, as it is here where we are lim- 
 ited by it. We shall be in the infinitude of the 
 spiritual. Where we shall desire to be, there 
 we shall be. Where we desire to see, we shall 
 see. This is the teaching of those wondrous 
 appearings and disappearings of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ after His resurrection. Suddenly 
 He was with His disciples, through closed and 
 bolted doors, on the way to Emmaus, by the 
 waters of Galilee, on the Mount of the Ascen- 
 sion. They knew Him, when it pleased Him 
 to reveal Himself by touch or look or voice. 
 Through His glorified humanity He was 
 
"He Rose again from the Dead." 69 
 
 known. We shall know each other there — 
 shall know and be known. Behold then, how 
 the resurrection of Jesus Christ binds the 
 present and the future, this life and the life be- 
 yond. The one is the extension of the other — 
 the one is complemented by the other. There 
 are not two lives of men, but only one con- 
 tinuous life, divided by the article of death 
 into the here and the hereafter. The life we 
 live beyond the grave is the same life we live 
 here — the same, yet not the same as to condi- 
 tions and limitations. If this be so — and 
 surely it is so — then as is this life here, in es- 
 sential moral or spiritual character, so it will be 
 there ; and we must and ought to think of what 
 that life shall be to us, and of what we may or 
 can do here to make that life what we would 
 have it to our souls. It will be colored by the 
 life on earth. What we shall be when death 
 shall come is what we shall be after death. 
 Would we enter into that life pure, just, par- 
 doned, saved, then must we be found in Christ 
 Jesus our Lord. To be in Christ, to be His 
 
70 "He Rose again from the Dead." 
 
 disciples, serving, loving Him, trusting ever- 
 more in His redemption, that is to know the 
 power of His resurrection, that is to rise with 
 Him, and to be with Him in glory everlasting. 
 
 44 1 am the way, and the truth, and the life," 
 Christ says. He also says, " I am the resurrec- 
 tion and the life." " Blessed,'* therefore, "are 
 the dead who die in the Lord. Yea, saith the 
 spirit, for they rest from their labors, and their 
 works do follow them." 
 
 44 1 believe " . • • . that " the third day 
 He rose again from the dead." 
 
VII. 
 
 ASCENSION— SESSION. 
 
 "So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was 
 received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of 
 God." St. Mark xvi. 19. 
 
 The Apostles' Creed states it in this way : 
 "He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the 
 right hand of God the Father Almighty." 
 
 In the sermon on the article in the Creed, 
 " The third day He rose again from the dead," 
 I endeavored to make clear some conclusions 
 that were deemed of importance if we would 
 have a fair understanding of what the resur- 
 rection of our Lord Jesus Christ involved. It 
 was pointed out, that while our Lord was the 
 same Being after the resurrection that He was 
 before His death upon the cross of Calvary, in 
 all essentials of humanity, of personality and 
 identity, yet He was not the same, since He 
 was evidently freed from the conditions and 
 
 71 
 
72 Ascension — Session. 
 
 limitations of time and space, and of the phys- 
 ical and material. That change took place in 
 Him, having passed through death and the 
 grave, which rendered Him independent of all 
 such conditions and limitations. His then, was 
 a glorified, a spiritualized humanity, such as is 
 promised that ours shall be when we also shall 
 have passed through the same experiences. 
 The natural body shall give place to the spirit- 
 ual body — when this " mortal shall have put on 
 immortality." So it was, that Jesus Christ, in 
 His risen state, was thenceforth able suddenly 
 to appear when and where He pleased, and as 
 suddenly to disappear, and this as we are 
 taught, through a period of forty days. He 
 was not, however, it will be borne in mind, 
 constantly with His disciples during those forty 
 days — that is, He was not living with them as 
 He lived with them in the days and years be- 
 fore the Crucifixion. But He was with them 
 again and again, at intervals, appearing and dis- 
 appearing as He deemed best, to speak to men 
 of the kingdom of God. At the close of the 
 
Ascension — Session. 73 
 
 forty days, the disciples went out to Bethany, 
 and there the Saviour appeared to them, gave 
 them His last commands, and lifted up His 
 hands and blessed them : and then a cloud 
 rested upon Him, and He was received up out 
 of their human sight. One most important 
 lesson — one, at least — was thus impressed upon 
 the minds and hearts of the disciples. They 
 had learned to believe that Jesus Christ was 
 never far from them — that He was near them, 
 with them, though unseen by their mortal eyes, 
 as really as He was with them when their eyes 
 were opened to know Him by the sea of Ti- 
 berius, or in the " breaking of the bread." 
 They would now continue to believe this — to 
 believe in the near and real and perpetual pres- 
 ence of their Master, — now, when He should 
 be seen by them no more in any mortal w r ay — 
 now, when, as the sacred Scriptures and the 
 Creed express it, " He was received up into 
 heaven, and sat upon the right hand of God." 
 By faith they would continue to behold Him, 
 to know His presence — by faith they would 
 
74 Ascension — Session. 
 
 continue to walk with Him, and to talk with 
 Him. They would be true and loyal in their 
 religious life, and brave and patient and glad, 
 "as seeing Him who is invisible." This was 
 the blessing that should evermore abide with 
 them — the blessing that may abide with us also, 
 as we learn to believe what is written of the 
 Lord Christ — and the blessing is expressed in 
 the Saviour's own words, "blessed are they 
 that have not seen, and yet have believed." 
 
 This nearness and presence of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, though invisible, we need to bear in 
 mind when we think of the Ascension into 
 heaven, and the Session at the right hand of 
 God the Father Almighty. The language, we 
 must remember, is necessarily human, in order 
 to appeal to human understanding, and the 
 words used do express an absolute though 
 transcendent fact. The fact, however, out- 
 reaches and passes beyond, the mere literalness 
 of the words themselves : The words " as- 
 cended," " sitteth at the right hand of God." 
 We are not, in using these words, to think of our 
 
Ascension — Session. 75 
 
 blessed Lord as far removed from us, or from 
 the world, nor as, in some far away region, sit- 
 ting as men here sit beside another. The idea is, 
 rather, that the Saviour is now in the splendor 
 of another mode of existence, and in the posses- 
 sion of the exalted glory and power which are 
 His by virtue of His inherent divine na- 
 ture, and His redemptive work. The eter- 
 nal Son of God was made man, and hum- 
 bled Himself even to the death of the cross. 
 Having accomplished His earthly mission, He 
 has returned to the glory that He had with 
 God before the world was made. But He 
 has returned as the God-man, with a name that 
 is above every name, that at the name of Jesus 
 every knee should bow, and every tongue con- 
 fess that He is Lord. He is now, and ever- 
 more, Saviour and King — the Lamb as it were 
 slain — and the everlasting High Priest. In 
 this sense He is ascended into heaven. In this 
 sense He sits at the right hand of God the 
 Father, In this sense He is the perpetual sacri- 
 fice for the sin of the world, and the High 
 
76 Ascension — Session. 
 
 Priest who ever liveth to make intercession for 
 us before the eternal throne. Thus He is not 
 removed from His disciples. He is not removed 
 away from this world. He is near to and with 
 all believers. They know Him, though the 
 world may not ; they hear His voice, though 
 the world may be deaf to its wondrous music. 
 They see Him and know Him, especially, pre- 
 eminently, in the " breaking of the bread " — 
 in the Sacrament of His Body and Blood, which 
 He Himself has instituted as the everlasting 
 memorial of His sacrificial offering " for us men 
 and for our salvation," — they see Him therein, 
 though the world may look upon it as merely a 
 lifeless form. But consider further, as the 
 Resurrection of Jesus Christ was the comple- 
 ment of His death and burial, and essential in 
 bringing to our knowledge a life beyond the 
 grave, so the Ascension is the complement of 
 the Resurrection from the dead, and essential if 
 the world should know of an unending, undy- 
 ing life in Him, and that He is eternally a 
 Saviour. The Resurrection did make known 
 
Ascension— Session. 77 
 
 that one who once stood as man on this side of 
 the grave, stood also on the other side, and 
 then came back to attest that death does not 
 necessarily end all, but that life is beyond the 
 grave, and consciousness of existence, and ac- 
 tivity of being. But that this should be a final 
 and endless condition would not be clear. 
 Having died once, there might be death again. 
 This point, however, is now settled. He dieth 
 no more. Physical death comes once only. 
 There is then the life that never ends. Ap- 
 pearing and disappearing, thus showing how 
 close is the spiritual and eternal to us, He at 
 length passed for evermore into the unseen. 
 He was received up into heaven. The life be- 
 yond is sealed to us as a life, which we having 
 entered there shall be no more death. Immor- 
 tality is assured to us. Is it strange in the 
 light of this, that the " Ascension M is made by 
 the Church one of the great festival days of the 
 Christian year, to be ranked with Christmas 
 and with Easter ? See also how wonderfully 
 the " Ascension " brings to our attention the 
 
78 Ascension — Session. 
 
 correlation of all the acts of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. All things that He did, together with 
 all that He was (all that He claimed to be, or 
 that is claimed for Him in Holy Scripture), are 
 seen related indissolubly the one with the 
 other. No act of His Passion, His death and 
 burial, His descent into hell, His Resurrection, 
 His Ascension and Session at God's right hand, 
 stands alone, or can be spared ; and all these 
 things stand out in their full meaning and 
 glory only as we realize the greatness and 
 grandeur of His divine nature, as set forth by 
 the Creed, and the reality and wonder of His 
 redemptive work. 
 
 These reflections, moreover, serve to answer 
 in a very real way the question sometimes 
 raised, why our Blessed Lord did not remain 
 on earth as the visible head of His Church, i 
 guiding it through the ages to the times of the 
 consummation of all things. That could not 
 be for the reasons already advanced. There is 
 a sense moreover, in which the influence of one 
 departed from us is immeasurably greater than 
 
Ascension — Session. 79 
 
 any present influence. It needs the removal 
 from our sight to make that influence realized 
 and permanent. The constant presence habit- 
 uates to the conditions and environments, 
 until they become commonplace, and are ac- 
 cepted as the natural. It was expedient, need- 
 ful, that Jesus Christ should depart for His 
 disciples' sakes, for the world's sake, in order 
 that that thought and feeling and contempla- 
 tion might be raised above and beyond the 
 sense of time and space, and be concentrated 
 upon the spiritual and eternal. Then, to be 
 forever with His disciples, with His Church, He 
 must go away. There would then be a greater 
 nearness, a perpetual spiritual nearness, an 
 eternally abiding nearness. " Lo," He said, prior 
 to His Ascension, and as He was about to bless 
 them for the last time, " Lo, I am with you 
 alway, even to the end of the world." 
 Though without conditions or limitations of 
 time or space, as we have seen, our Blessed 
 Lord was able to present Himself to His dis- 
 ciples during the forty days between His Resur- 
 
80 Ascension — Session. 
 
 rection and the Ascension, yet those appear- 
 ances found the disciples conditioned and 
 limited. Now that He is ascended, however, 
 and we can see Him no more with our earthly 
 eyes, conditions and limitations of time and 
 space are no longer applicable to us. Wherever 
 we are, however we are, by night or by day, in 
 storm or calm, in peace or perplexity, in hope 
 or fear, in joy or in sorrow, we may know His 
 presence and His nearness. To the soul that is 
 knit with Christ, every place is Jerusalem, or 
 the upper chamber, or the way to Emmaus, or 
 the banks of the waters of Galilee, or the 
 mountain of Bethany, where the Saviour may 
 be met and known. Spiritually, after all, there 
 is something better, stronger, clearer, more cer- 
 tain, and more satisfying than sight, and that 
 is insight — the spiritual perception and cogni- 
 zance of the unseen. " Faith is the substance 
 of things hoped for, the evidence of things not 
 seen." Our Lord has ascended into heaven, 
 and is exalted at the right hand of God, but still 
 He is with the Church, and with His people. St, 
 
Ascension — Session. 81 
 
 Stephen saw heaven open, and the Son of Man 
 at the right hand of the Father. So may we 
 see Him, and know Him — our Lord, our King, 
 our Saviour. He is still forever mindful, for- 
 ever careful, forever compassionate and loving; 
 yearning for the affection and service and devo- 
 tion of His disciples, and ever making inter- 
 cession for us. His mediatorial work thus goes 
 on perpetually, and He pleads His sacrifice for 
 humanity, and His wounded hands are stretched 
 out beseechingly or in blessing. 
 
 Were all this thus set forth as involved in 
 the ascension and exaltation of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, — were all this in the remembrance and 
 consciousness of Christian men and women, 
 what a power their lives would be, and what a 
 strength and joy would come to them, and to 
 the world. We would overcome the world — 
 and not be overcome by it. We would not be 
 blinded by sense and time — we would realize 
 the unseen and eternal. We would walk in the 
 light of the smiles of God, and amid the splen- 
 dors which enwrap the ascended Saviour ; and 
 
82 Ascension — Session. 
 
 seeing Him who is invisible, we would be 
 changed into His image, and in the radiance of 
 that transfiguration we would pass from glory 
 unto glory, until we also should be with Him 
 where He is, redeemed and perfected, and 
 saved. 
 
 m 
 
 " I believe " . . . . that " He ascended 
 into heaven, And sitteth on the right hand of 
 God the Father Almighty. ,, 
 
VIII. 
 
 "TO JUDGE THE QUICK AND THE DEAD." 
 
 "And while they looked steadfastly toward heaven as 
 He went up, two men stood by them in white apparel ; 
 which also said, Ye men of Galilee, why stand ye gazing 
 up into heaven ? This same Jesus, which is taken up 
 from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye 
 have seen Him go into heaven." Acts i. 10, 11. 
 
 11 For the Father .... hath committed all judgment 
 unto the Son." St. John v. 22. 
 
 "Him God raised up the third day, and shewed him 
 openly ; . . . . and He commanded us to preach unto 
 the people, and to testify that it is He which was ordained 
 of God to be the judge of quick and dead." Acts x. 40, 42. 
 
 In the Apostles' Creed, the affirmation of the 
 fact thus set forth, is in the words, " From 
 thence He shall come to judge the quick and 
 the dead." 
 
 As has already been shown, all the preceding 
 articles of the Apostles' Creed, down to the 
 one now to be considered, were, each one in 
 itself, separate and complete. But, as also 
 
 83 
 
84 " To Judge the Quick and the DeadP 
 
 shewn, each article pointed forward and led up 
 to, and associated itself with the article that 
 immediately followed. The Birth of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ was the prelude to, and involved 
 His entire earthly Life, and Passion, and Death. 
 It would have had no distinctive meaning 
 otherwise. There would appear no sufficient 
 reason for its being so unique, so supernatural 
 in its method. The death of our Lord would 
 be incomplete in its results, as applicable to the 
 entire human race from its beginning to the 
 final act of its career, were it not followed by 
 His descent into hell — into the place of de- 
 parted spirits, to preach to the spirits in prison, 
 — and His rising again from the dead. That 
 establishes the fact that there is life on the 
 other side of the grave ; — but the Resurrection 
 must be followed by the Ascension, if we would 
 know the endlessness of that life, and the 
 eternal presence of Christ with the Church — ■ 
 the Church on earth and the Church in heaven. 
 So the Ascension, the going away of the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, reaches forward to and involves 
 
"To Judge the Quick and the DeadP 85 
 
 a reappearing, a coming again. Christ's own 
 words to His disciples are, " I go to prepare a 
 place for you ; and if I go and prepare a place 
 for you, I will come again, and receive you 
 unto Myself; that where I am there ye may be 
 also." This coming again would seem to be 
 the natural, the inevitable, in order to the com- 
 plete and final manifestation of the absolutely 
 perfect harmony of all God's ways with men — 
 of His righteous, and just, and merciful deal- 
 ings with His human creatures. Before the 
 universe the moral government of God is to be 
 justified. The entire humanity, and every indi- 
 vidual member of it, shall see and know, and ac- 
 knowledge, whatever the result may be, that 
 God is holy, just and true. 
 
 Why should there not be a final climax in 
 human history? How can there be an escape 
 of a crisis — a judgment decisive — in the his- 
 tory of humanity ? There are no valid grounds, 
 so far as can be logically discovered, for the 
 conception that there shall not be at last a 
 winding up of this present human economy — 
 
86 " To Judge the Quick and the Dead" 
 
 an end of the present conditions, and of all 
 human life, life, that is, on this earth. Things 
 as they are have not been so from everlasting. 
 Nothing is more certain than that the world 
 began to be. " In the beginning God created 
 the heaven and the earth." Humanity began 
 to be. God created man, and breathed into 
 him the breath of life, and man became a liv- 
 ing soul. Things as they are will not go on 
 forever. That also is a fact, than which noth- 
 ing is better established. At some time, this 
 world itself will burn out and die. Human- 
 life, life on this earth, will not continue end- 
 lessly. At some time it must cease. A dead 
 world can sustain no life. Were it intended 
 that human life should continue endlessly here, 
 then, in the light of Holy Scripture, there 
 could be no consummation of all things spirit- 
 ually, which yet is that toward which all things 
 tend according to divine revelation. The 
 earnest expectation of creation, St. Paul de- 
 clares, waits and watches for the manifestation 
 of the sons of God — waits, and watches, and 
 
11 To Judge the Quick and the Dead? 87 
 
 agonizes, for that which shall take the place of, 
 and transcend the present. There must come 
 a time, then, when human life shall cease, and 
 spiritual life shall be supreme — when all the 
 dead shall know the life that does not end, and 
 they that are alive shall be changed— when a 
 new order shall be entered upon, and conditions 
 shall obtain which shall be final. Otherwise, 
 there would be only mockery in the promise, 
 " there shall be no more death." 
 
 The real, full meaning of this world, of this 
 life, is not yet made known to us. It certainly 
 is not revealed to our satisfaction. As we look 
 upon the ages, and scan the history of humanity, 
 the want of harmony is so apparent that we 
 are appalled at the contemplation. Always, 
 everywhere, things are broken and fragmentary. 
 Men are born to die. Nations arise, achieve 
 greatness and glory, and then decay and pass 
 away. Civilizations come and go. Babylonia is 
 suppressed by the Persian, the Persian falls be- 
 fore the Greek, Greece and Egypt are domi- 
 nated by the Roman ; and the great empire of 
 
88 "To Judge the Quick and the DeadP 
 
 Rome, almost compassing the earth, itself at 
 length crumbles before the encroachments of 
 barbarian hordes. All along, the ages show the 
 marks of moral convulsions, and make known 
 the ravages of sin, and we hear the sighs of 
 broken hopes and broken hearts. What does 
 it all mean? To what does it all tend? It 
 cannot be that so it shall be forever. That 
 would be the contravention of God's purpose 
 in creation — the proclamation of God's im- 
 potence — or the impugning alike of His justice, 
 His mercy, and His wisdom. 
 
 Assuredly, thus far human existence, of it- 
 self, gives no key to its profound enigma. Nor 
 does it, of itself, attest in any way, the har- 
 mony of God's moral government. The prob- 
 lem here has always been realized — it has al- 
 ways troubled — it has often appalled and over- 
 whelmed. It must so continue — or to establish 
 and demonstrate, and that to an on-looking 
 universe, that God in creation is just and true 
 and merciful, it would seem that there must be 
 a manifestation of God in a judgment that shall 
 
" To Judge the Quick and the Dead" 89 
 
 appeal to all, close present complexities, and 
 open future eternal conditions. This is what is 
 revealed as that which shall be. li For He 
 cometh, for He cometh to judge the earth : and 
 with righteousness to judge the world, and the 
 people with His truth. " "He hath appointed 
 a day," St. Paul declares, "in the which He 
 will judge the world in righteousness by that 
 man whom He hath ordained ; whereof He 
 hath given assurance unto all men, in that He 
 hath raised Him from the dead." Holy 
 Scripture is laden with teachings to this effect, 
 and in complete agreement with what has thus 
 far been advanced. 
 
 " But of that day and that hour knoweth no 
 man," and no man can know. This indeed is 
 explicitly stated by our Lord Himself; and 
 this, rightly understood, is the teaching of the 
 Apostles, and of Holy Scripture throughout. 
 The language of the Sacred Volume, the words 
 especially of the Apostles, have again and again 
 been misunderstood, or perverted, under the 
 desire on the part of man to know what God 
 
58 "He Descended into Hell" 
 
 the King should present them before God with- 
 out spot or blemish. For them it was, that the 
 early Church never ceased to pray that the light 
 supernal might be theirs. In every Celebration 
 of the Holy Eucharist especially were they re- 
 membered, the Church thus attesting, that on 
 earth, and in the world of the departed, there 
 is a true " Communion of Saints. " 
 
 But this, also, may be borne in mind, — that 
 as our Lord came once to earth, and made "once 
 for all" a "full, perfect and sufficient sacrifice " 
 for sin, leaving the Church and the Sacraments 
 to do His work, so it may be assumed, He went 
 once into the place of departed spirits to make 
 known to them who needed it His finished sac- 
 rifice. So far as is revealed, we know no more. 
 They that believe here shall be saved — they 
 that believed there found there the salvation of 
 Christ. We here are responsible for faith and 
 conduct now. This is the time of our proba- 
 tion. Today is the day of salvation — to-day, 
 if we harden not our hearts. Believing now, 
 we rest in hope of redemption. 
 
VI. 
 
 " THE THIKD DAY HE KOSE AGAIN FROM THE 
 DEAD." 
 
 "For I delivered unto you first of all that which I also 
 received, how that Christ died for our sins according to the 
 Scriptures ; and that He was buried, and that He rose again 
 the third day according to the Scriptures." 1 Cor. xv. 
 3, 4. 
 
 The language of the Apostles' Creed is: 
 " The third day He rose again from the dead." 
 
 We have here in the fewest words possible, 
 the declaration of a stupendous fact. As a fact 
 it has fastened itself upon the consciousness of 
 the world, through which it has ploughed itself 
 now these nearly nineteen hundred years — so 
 that millions in the past, and millions in the 
 present, have found therein their highest in- 
 spiration and their profoundest joy. It is not 
 too much to say, that the declaration of this 
 fact has influenced the thought and life of men 
 as has no other since the world began. Where 
 
 59 
 
92 " To Judge the Quick and the Dead. 11 
 
 years the end would come. Then the Blessed 
 Lord would appear in judgment, and then 
 should be the millennium. 
 
 But all this, resulting from the conditions 
 named, and a false method of exegesis of Holy 
 Scripture, proved itself, as the ages rolled on, 
 as not in harmony with the revelations of God. 
 It is not made known when the Second Advent 
 shall be. When we consider carefully the 
 teaching of the Sacred Records, we find only 
 the fact given, that our Lord " shall come to 
 judge the quick and the dead." He shall come ; 
 but when we know not. He shall come — and 
 that shall be the closing of this present economy, 
 and the introduction of the spiritual universal 
 reign of Christ, — a reign, in its final complete- 
 ness in the restitution of all things, not on 
 earth, but in heaven. 
 
 As the day is not known, the call to the 
 world is to watch. In patience and in faith- 
 fulness, we are to wait. We are to discharge 
 the duties laid upon us. We are to strive 
 steadily, assiduously, to attain unto the stature 
 
" To Judge the Quick and the Dead" 93 
 
 of perfection in Christ Jesus. We are to live 
 unto God, and for humanitjr. We are to make 
 our calling and election sure. The day will 
 dawn, far off, it may be, when He shall come. 
 Meanwhile, we may well consider that crises — 
 days which are to us days of judgment — are 
 forever coming. For these we should be pre- 
 pared ; for these we should prepare ourselves. 
 These and the hour of death itself, are but pre- 
 monitions, prophecies of the coming of the Lord 
 to judge the quick and the dead, when God's 
 moral government shall be justified, who is 
 merciful and gracious, but who by no means 
 clears the guilty. 
 
 We may not picture to ourselves in any 
 arbitrary way, how or what shall be the form 
 of that judgment. It will be, however, under 
 the flashing gaze of Him who was once slain, 
 but is now exalted. It will be the flashing 
 upon each consciousness the knowledge of 
 personal character, and the result. Evil will 
 not, cannot stand justified before the light that 
 will fall upon it — and evil, while evil, must 
 
62 "He Rose again from the Dead. 11 
 
 to be what He was not, and to effect that for 
 which He had no power. Then, indeed, all 
 that is claimed for Him, and all that He claimed 
 for Himself, would be in doubt or in abeyance, 
 for a crowning act of verification would be 
 wanting. This can be found — so far as we can 
 see, could be found — only in His resurrection. 
 That proclaims divine power, and substantiates 
 every claim. He who has power over life and 
 death may well be conceded to have all power 
 on earth and in heaven — power to be also the 
 Saviour of all who should accept Him — power 
 to open the kingdom of heaven to all believers. 
 He who has this power, is also thereby assured 
 a Divine Being as really as a human being. He 
 can be none other than the Eternal Son of God, 
 " Immanuel, God with us." If He did not rise 
 from the dead, then, so far as we can see or 
 know, He was merely man, and by no process 
 of reasoning or imagining can He be an all-suf- 
 ficient Redeemer of the world from its sin and 
 woe — nor of any single human being in the 
 world. Then all He said, and all He did, died 
 
"He Rose again from the Dead" 63 
 
 with Him — and He can influence or affect the 
 world only as a Socrates or a Plato, but in no 
 sense as a Saviour. If, however, He rose again 
 from the dead, then all concerning Him that 
 reaches up to that event, and all concerning 
 Him that unrolls from that event, as revealed 
 to us in Holy Scripture, and as is enshrined in 
 the Creed, fit together in richest significance and 
 harmony, a harmony that is absolute and per- 
 fect. Here is the keystone of the revelation 
 of God, as in Jesus Christ reconciling the world 
 unto Himself. It is the keystone of Christianity 
 as a divine system for the regeneration and the 
 redemption of a fallen race. Take this away, 
 and we have no revelation of redemption, no life 
 and immortality brought to light, no one who 
 is able to save to the uttermost those who come 
 to Him. Then, God is still to the world the 
 great Unknown— He has not come into the life 
 of men, to make Himself known in His infinite 
 love, and to draw to Himself out of sin and 
 darkness, and sorrow and despair, the hearts of 
 the children of men. 
 
96 "J Believe in the Holy Ghost." 
 
 main of mystery, of the supernatural ; we are 
 treading upon holy ground. But, in so far as 
 we have revelation, we may consider. 
 
 The Apostles' Creed, it will be observed, en- 
 ters into no explanation or even suggestion of 
 the nature, or being, or character of the Holy 
 Ghost. Nor does it tell, in so many words, for 
 what is the Holy Ghost, or how anything is ef- 
 fected by the Holy Ghost. That Creed remains 
 as from the beginning. It became necessary, 
 however, for the sake of the Church, in the 
 Nicene Creed to expand the declaration, which 
 therein is in the words : " I believe in the Holy 
 Ghost, the Lord and Giver of Life, Who pro- 
 ceedeth from the Father and the Son : Who 
 with the Father and the Son together is wor- 
 shipped and glorified ; Who spake by the Proph- 
 ets." Here we have the explicit declaration of 
 personality; and of power, and of unity of 
 nature with God the Father and with Jesus 
 Christ His only, His Eternal Son. The Holy 
 Ghost proceeds " from the Father and the 
 Son " — partakes therefore of the same nature, 
 
"/ Believe in the Holy Ghost.' 1 97 
 
 of the same being. The Holy Ghost is " Lord 
 and giver of life " — has therefore like power 
 with the Father Almighty, who is maker of 
 heaven and earth, and who made man and 
 breathed into him the breath of life ; and like 
 power with the Son, who is " the way, and the 
 truth, and the life," in whom is "life, and the 
 life is the light of men." Our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, though " very man," is, as we have al- 
 ready seen, presented to us as "very God." 
 He is Lord of all. So the Holy Ghost is repre- 
 sented, and is presented to our faith as " very 
 God of very God " — a personality divine and 
 real as the personality of God the Father, or as 
 the personality of God the Son. Equally 
 "with the Father and the Son," therefore, the 
 Holy Ghost is "worshipped and glorified." 
 The same honor is accorded to the Holy Ghost 
 as to the Father and the Son, and the same glory 
 is ascribed to Him. This is in harmony with 
 the inscription so constantly heard in the 
 Church : " Glory be to the Father, and to the 
 Son, and to the Holy Ghost "—the eternity of 
 
66 "He Hose again from the Dead." 
 
 those dear to us as the apple of the eye, to lose 
 forever all of beauty seen or dreamed, to pass 
 into unconsciousness of self and of all that has 
 entered into the imagination of the heart, is to 
 oppress and depress with a sense of loneliness 
 and agony that is unutterable. But God has 
 so made man that, after all, the consciousness 
 of eternity, and of life in eternity, lies deep 
 within him. Yet not so, but that, apart from 
 revelation, he still asks the old question as to 
 immortality. It is answered in Jesus Christ, 
 who " The third day rose again from the dead." 
 We believe, and believing rejoice with joy 
 unspeakable and full of glory, that one who 
 once stood upon this earth stood upon the 
 other side of death and the grave, and came 
 back to assure us that death does not end all. 
 His resurrection is the promise and the 
 prophecy of ours. It is not merely that He 
 rose into another world than this. That would 
 tell us nothing. It is, that He came back from 
 death and the tomb, bringing life and immor- 
 tality to light. He came back, and men saw 
 
"He Hose again from the Dead" 67 
 
 Him and talked with Him. Here where death 
 seems the final stage of human life, was one 
 who had passed through death, and was alive 
 again. Is it any wonder that the apostles and 
 believers were filled with a great hope and a 
 wondrous joy ? 
 
 But it is not only that the knowledge and as- 
 surance of life beyond the tomb is brought to 
 us. That were much indeed — but that only 
 would not wholly satisfy. All we might like 
 to know is not revealed ; for eye hath not seen, 
 nor ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, 
 the things which lie in the life beyond. But 
 so much is revealed to us as seemeth wise to 
 God, and as perhaps we are able to receive. At 
 least, with reverence, we may gather from what 
 is suggested or made known, something con- 
 cerning that immortal life, which shall be to us 
 comfort and strength. That life certainly is 
 not conditioned or limited as of necessity this 
 life is. Here time and space condition us, and 
 the material limits us. It were well to grasp 
 clearly this thought and what it involves. In 
 
100 "/ Believe in the Holy Ghost." 
 
 the Sacred Scriptures, is not to be considered 
 as an expression of the energy or power of God, 
 or an influence or effluence from God, or as a 
 manifestation (as it were) of a certain side of 
 the character and purpose of God in His rela- 
 tion to the world, or to the souls of men. Our 
 Lord, in view of leaving His disciples, says, " I 
 will pray the Father, and He shall give you 
 another Comforter, that He may abide with you 
 forever; even the spirit of truth: whom the 
 world cannot receive, because it seeth Him 
 not, neither knoweth Him" " The Comforter, 
 which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will 
 send in My Name. He shall teach you all 
 things." "It is expedient for you that I go 
 away : for if I go not away, the Comforter will 
 not come unto you: but if I depart I will send 
 Him unto you." " And when He is come He 
 will reprove (convict) the world of sin, and of 
 righteousness, and of judgment." " When He, 
 the spirit of truth, is come, He will guide you 
 into all truth." " He shall glorify me : for He 
 shall receive of mine, and shall shew it unto 
 
"I Believe in the Holy Ghost." 101 
 
 you." In the Acts of the Apostles, Ananias 
 was declared by St. Peter to have lied to the 
 Holy Ghost ; and this declaration is followed by 
 the statement that Ananias had not " lied unto 
 men, but unto God." It would be impossible, 
 obviously, to lie to an influence or an effluence, 
 or to mere energy or manifestation of power or 
 glory. We can lie only to a person. Just so, 
 also, a Comforter must be a person, in order to 
 reach and master the soul's needs. 
 
 Obviously, then the Creed, when it puts upon 
 our lips the words, "I believe in the Holy 
 Ghost," intends that we shall express our faith 
 in and concerning the Holy Ghost as to per- 
 sonality, as to co-equality with the Father and 
 the Son, as to cooperation with the Father and 
 the Son in the enlightenment and the redemp- 
 tion of the world. The doctrine of the Trinity 
 is thus implicitly, if not explicitly, set forth in 
 the Creed — although of course, the word " Trin- 
 ity" does not appear there. In the relation 
 of the Godhead to humanity, we have Father, 
 Son, and Holy Ghost — the Son the only be- 
 
70 "He Rose again from the DeadP 
 
 disciples, serving, loving Him, trusting ever- 
 more in His redemption, that is to know the 
 power of His resurrection, that is to rise with 
 Him, and to be with Him in glory everlasting. 
 
 "I am the way, and the truth, and the life," 
 Christ says. He also says, " I am the resurrec- 
 tion and the life/' " Blessed," therefore, " are 
 the dead who die in the Lord. Yea, saith the 
 spirit, for they rest from their labors, and their 
 works do follow them." 
 
 " I believe " . . . . that " the third day 
 He rose again from the dead." 
 
VII. 
 
 ASCENSION — SESSION. 
 
 "So then after the Lord had spoken unto them, He was 
 received up into heaven, and sat on the right hand of 
 God." St. Mark xvi. 19. 
 
 The Apostles' Creed states it in this way : 
 44 He ascended into heaven, And sitteth on the 
 right hand of God the Father Almighty." 
 
 In the sermon on the article in the Creed, 
 44 The third day He rose again from the dead/' 
 I endeavored to make clear some conclusions 
 that were deemed of importance if we would 
 have a fair understanding of what the resur- 
 rection of our Lord Jesus Christ involved. It 
 was pointed out, that while our Lord was the 
 same Being after the resurrection that He was 
 before His death upon the cross of Calvary, in 
 all essentials of humanity, of personality and 
 identity, yet He was not the same, since He 
 was evidently freed from the conditions and 
 
 71 
 
104 U I Believe in the Holy Ghost." 
 
 is that the gates of hell have not prevailed 
 against it — and never can, notwithstanding 
 the machinations and the boasts of its enemies. 
 Just so far, and wherever the Church has 
 allowed the Holy Ghost to control and guide, 
 it has been pure and triumphant. But just so 
 far as it has failed to be so guided and con- 
 trolled, it has fallen away from truth and right- 
 eousness, and has been impotent in its work 
 and influence in the world. This is true of the 
 Church through all the centuries, and is true 
 to-day. What is true of the Church as a whole, 
 is also true of every portion of the Church, of 
 each local expression of the Church, sometimes 
 designated as a Parish. It is quite possible, we 
 are assured in the Sacred Volume, to grieve the 
 Spirit, to do despite to the Spirit, to quench the 
 Spirit — to sin a sin against the Holy Ghost that 
 has never forgiveness. It is quite possible to do 
 this on the part of a local Church, or a branch 
 of the universal Church, or even on the part of 
 the whole Church at a given time. When that 
 comes to pass, there is a time of darkness and 
 
"J Believe in the Holy Ghost." 105 
 
 of spiritual death — there is a falling away from 
 the "Faith once for all delivered to the saints." 
 This is, also, equally true as regards individual 
 Christians. In a way which God only knows, 
 in a way to us a mystery that we cannot fathom, 
 but in a way most real, most true, most certain, 
 the Holy Ghost comes to us in Baptism, and 
 again in the sacred rite of Confirmation. He 
 abides with us, sealing us to the day of sal- 
 vation; for every Christian is explicitly de- 
 clared to be the Temple of the Holy Ghost. 
 But St. Paul warns, and the warning is again 
 and again renewed, that the Holy Ghost may 
 depart from us, that we can grieve Him away, 
 and that "if any man defile the temple of God, 
 him shall God destroy : for the temple of God 
 is holy, which temple ye are." Otherwise, the 
 spirit to us is joy and peace. We go from 
 glory unto glory by the spirit. The spirit 
 enables us to cry, " Abba, Father." We are 
 led by the spirit — led into all truth, and in the 
 way of holiness. Submissive to the life giving 
 power of the spirit, we may be sure that every 
 
106 "/ Believe in the Holy Ghost: 1 
 
 good thought, every lofty ideal, every noble as- 
 piration, every sweet and gentle purpose, is of 
 Him. He takes of the things of God and of 
 Christ, and shews them unto us, as we are true 
 and faithful and humble. Day by day, under 
 the spirit's guidance, we know more and more 
 of God and of divine things, and of the right- 
 eousness and blessedness of the salvation which 
 is in Christ Jesus our Lord, and more and more 
 are sanctified unto the Lord our God. 
 44 1 believe in the Holy Ghost." 
 
X. 
 
 " THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH." 
 
 "The God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory 
 . . . . hath put all things under His feet, and gave 
 Him to be head over all things to the Church, which is His 
 body, the fulness of Him that filleth all in all." Ephesians 
 i. 17, 22, 23. 
 
 The Apostles' Creed says : " I believe " 
 . . . . in " the Holy Catholic Church." 
 
 In the earliest form of the Creed, it was, "I 
 believe in Holy Church " ; holy, because of the 
 indwelling of the Holy Ghost, and because in- 
 stituted to develop and establish holiness in 
 men. Specifically, however, the consideration 
 of this discourse is with the title, " Catholic," 
 since it is that word which is often misunder- 
 stood, misinterpreted, and misappropriated. 
 
 Like the word " Trinity," the word " Cath- 
 olic" is not found in Holy Scripture. But 
 that which the word Trinity is meant to ex- 
 press, we do find very fully and very clearly 
 
 107 
 
108 " The Holy Catholic Churchy 
 
 set forth in the Word of God, which treats at 
 large of God the Father, God the Son, and 
 God the Holy Ghost. So, with regard to the 
 word " Catholic," while it is not used in the 
 Bible, that for which it stands, and that which 
 in the Creed it is meant to affirm, is most cer- 
 tainly to be gathered from the sacred writings. 
 It may be well to observe at this point, that 
 any Creed at all universally accepted and used 
 in the Church would be found in the second 
 century. The last of the Apostles, St. John, 
 did not pass away until the close of the first 
 century, or the opening of the second ; and, of 
 the first century there were less than seventy 
 years of evangelization from the time of the 
 death of the Saviour to the end of the century. 
 In the Creed in general use in the second cen- 
 tury, it is demonstrable that essentially the 
 same truths are set forth that we find in the 
 present Apostles' Creed. Later, the word Cath- 
 olic came into use, and was placed in the Creed 
 as expressive of very profound meanings in 
 connection with the Church. There was a 
 
" The Holy Catholic Church." 109 
 
 necessity for this, which could not be ignored. 
 The word was in use in the Church, however, 
 long before it found its place in the Creed ; and 
 I when it was introduced therein it added noth- 
 ing to the meaning of the word Church, but 
 simply expressed what the Church conceived 
 itself to be in the light of the Gospel of Jesus 
 Christ, and the teachings of the Apostles. At 
 first, moreover, the primal idea attached to the 
 word was that of universality, as though we 
 should say, " The Holy Universal Church." 
 That is, the Church was designed to be Christ's 
 world-wide kingdom. St. Ignatius says, " Where 
 ever Jesus Christ is, there is the Catholic 
 Church." St. Cyril says, " The Church is called 
 Catholic, because she extends through the whole 
 world, from one end of the earth to the other." 
 The Church writer Faustinus asks, with greater 
 amplification, "What is the Catholic Church, 
 but the people who have been dedicated to 
 God throughout the world?" And then adds, 
 "As different members make up the complete- 
 ness of the human body, so a variety of nations 
 
110 " The Holy Catholic Church. 11 
 
 and races, agreeing in the faith, form the body 
 of Christ." But very soon, and by a necessary 
 requirement, the word Catholic had attached 
 to it another important significance. Already 
 Faustinus anticipated this, almost prophetically, 
 when he speaks of races and nations agreeing 
 in the faith, as constituting the Catholic Church. 
 Heresies sprang up in the Church almost at 
 once, and were especially rife in the third 
 century; and parties broke away from the 
 Church on questions of doctrine or discipline. 
 Then the word Catholic, as applied to the uni- 
 versal Church, took on the meaning also of 
 "orthodox " — meaning adherence to that which 
 the Church had received from Christ and the 
 Apostles, that which the Church believed and 
 taught. This is the sense in which it has ever 
 since been used in the Creed, and the sense in 
 which it is used to-day. It still retains the 
 meaning of universal ; but it means in addition 
 to that, the " continuing in the apostles' doc- 
 trine and fellowship, and in the breaking of the' 
 bread, and in the prayers." That is, it means 
 
"The Holy Catholic Church." Ill 
 
 the Church that was instituted by the Lord 
 Jesus Christ, holding the faith, possessing the 
 ministry, and administering the sacraments, as 
 ordained by Him. To believe in the Catholic 
 Church was thus to differentiate it from all 
 heresies, and from all schismatical or hereti- 
 cal sects which had parted from it. It is seen, 
 therefore, that the word is exclusive and in- 
 clusive. It does not mean merely universal. 
 It does mean that; but it also involves the 
 holding of the faith in all its integrity and ful- 
 ness, and whatever else belongs to the Church 
 according to the Scriptures. It is inclusive of 
 all this ; but it is exclusive of all heresy and 
 schism, and of all unrighteousness and evil. 
 Thus, as illustrative of this idea, St. Cyril, 
 Bishop of Jerusalem, tells his people, " When 
 you are abroad in foreign cities, do not enquire 
 for the Church simply, because the heretical 
 sects venture to call their assemblies by that 
 name, but ask for the Catholic Church." That 
 meant much more, and what was much better 
 — even the true Church of the living God. We 
 
112 " The Holy Catholic Church." 
 
 are not to read out of the Creed what is in the 
 Creed, and what is intended to be there by the 
 mind of the Church, any more than we are to 
 read into the Creed what it does not contain, 
 and what the Church does not intend that it 
 shall teach. Through all the centuries this that 
 I have described is the meaning attached to the 
 word Catholic, and is the meaning that it has 
 to-day in the historic Church, and in its legiti- 
 mate branches. Catholic Christians were those 
 who held the Apostolic faith and discipline — 
 none others were so accounted. " Know," says 
 one writer, " that this one Catholic Church is 
 planted in all the world, and be sure that you 
 adhere steadfastly to her communion. There 
 are, it is true, other churches .... so- 
 called, but you have nothing in common with 
 them, .... for their faith and practices 
 differ from that which Christ commanded and 
 His Apostles delivered." This language has 
 always expressed the convictions of the .Holy 
 Catholic Church through all the centuries unto 
 the present moment. 
 
" The Holy Catholic Churchy 113 
 
 It may be discerned now, also, how this 
 conception of the Church is that of a concrete, 
 visible company. The Church of God is not, as 
 some affect to think, something that cannot 
 be seen — that is intangible — that if known at 
 all, is known only to God. This idea of the 
 Church, though often held, is wholly indefen- 
 sible. Our Blessed Lord instituted a visible 
 corporate organization. He declared, that He 
 would build His Church on the rock of the con- 
 fession made by St. Peter, who declared 
 Him to be the Christ the Son of the living God 
 — and, except as this Church could be seen and 
 known in the world, there would be no mean- 
 ing to such language. If, in this Church, one 
 sinned against his brother, our Lord com- 
 manded that brother, other means failing, to 
 tell it to the Church — certainly not to an un- 
 known, invisible company, but to an acknowl- 
 edged corporate body. The Apostles wrote to 
 the Church, as in its branches it was established 
 in this or the other city. They wrote, of 
 course, to bodies composed of men and women 
 
114 " The Holy Catholic Church." 
 
 living in the flesh. The Church of Christ, so 
 far as this world is concerned, is that company 
 of believers who hold to the faith of Christ and 
 the Apostles, with which is the three-fold min- 
 istry of Christ's appointment, and in which 
 there is administered the Sacraments which 
 He ordained and established. We believe in 
 the Holy Catholic Church — a Church — a body 
 of believers. Catholic, because of what has 
 already been stated. Holy, because in the 
 New Testament, St. Paul says of Christians, 
 " Ye are a chosen generation, a royal priest- 
 hood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, that ye 
 should shew forth the praises of Him who hath 
 called you out of darkness into His marvellous 
 light." 
 
 Surely nothing can be clearer or more de- 
 cisive than this. 
 J This Holy Catholic Church is presented to us 
 in Holy Scripture as, and is so called, " the 
 Body of Christ." " The church which is His 
 body," is the way in which the New Testament 
 expresses it. This is not a mere figure of speech, 
 
" The Holy Catholic Churchy 115 
 
 or merely a metaphorical statement. On the 
 contrary, it is the declaration of a most real, a 
 most vital fact and truth. It expresses the 
 close and intimate relation which exists be- 
 tween the Lord Jesus Christ and His Church. 
 Just as all our members go toward the con- 
 stituting of our body, but are not ourselves 
 (for we are something apart from our bodies, 
 though conjoined with them), so all the mem- 
 bers of the Church go toward the constituting of 
 the Body of Christ, while yet they are not the 
 Christ — He is conjoined with it. Our bodily 
 members, which are not ourselves, nevertheless 
 enable us to express ourselves to others and 
 upon the world. The members of Christ's 
 Body, the Church, enable our Lord Jesus Christ 
 to express Himself in the world and to the 
 world. This is what we mean when we speak 
 of Jesus Christ as being incarnate in His 
 Church. It is what we mean when we speak of 
 the prolongation of the incarnation of Christ in 
 the world. It is through the Church, and by 
 the Church, and in no other way, so far as is 
 
116 " The Holy Catholic Church." 
 
 made known to us, that Jesus Christ unfolds 
 Himself to the world, to bring the world into 
 His likeness — into purity, and truth, and right- 
 eousness, and into the beauty of holiness, — and 
 to disseminate in the world peace and good will 
 to men. It is in this w r ay that the world is 
 being enlightened and inspired, lifted out of 
 sin and sorrow and darkness and death, and 
 saved with an everlasting salvation. What a 
 wondrous, and blessed, and far-reaching truth 
 is thus presented to our consideration. How 
 much we need to know and realize it, if we 
 would have a true and adequate conception of 
 all the rich meaning that is enshrined in the 
 words, the Holy Catholic Church. By the in- 
 dwelling of the Holy Ghost, for the Holy 
 Ghost dwells in the Church, the Church is for- 
 ever setting forth Christ, and Him crucified 
 and exalted for the sanctification of the Church 
 and the redemption of the world. The Church 
 is thus the channel of the gifts of Christ to 
 humanity, the organ by which He is winning 
 the world unto Himself. What would the 
 
" The Holy Catholic Churchy 117 
 
 world be to-day, but for the Church ? It would 
 lapse into the heathen darkness and degradation 
 that it knew before Christ came. It may be 
 objected, that the Church is itself incomplete 
 and imperfect. Yes, for in all its members it is 
 not yet wholly subject to the law of Christ, and 
 does not submit to the guidance of the Spirit. 
 So much the worse for, and so much to the con- 
 demnation of its unfaithful members. Never- 
 theless, it is pressing toward the prize of its 
 high calling. However it may seem to fail, it 
 has that within it which ever and again attests 
 itself with purifying and uplifting power ; and 
 sooner or later it will go forth "fair as the 
 moon, clear as the sun, and terrible as an army 
 with banners " for the regeneration of the 
 world, and for its complete and absolute 
 obedience to the Cross. It touches now, and 
 will more and more touch, with its blessed 
 spirit, every class and condition, every weal 
 and woe, every sorrow and joy. It is even now 
 the only salt of the earth — the only light and 
 life of men. It is the breath of God from the 
 
118 " The Holy Catholic Church. 11 
 
 mountains of heaven, gradually but surely 
 sweeping away all mists and darkness, and 
 vivifying all things with a divine and endless 
 life. 
 
 "I believe .... in the Holy Catholic 
 Church." 
 
XI. 
 
 "THE COMMUNION OF SAINTS." 
 
 li Ye are come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the 
 Living God, the Heavenly Jerusalem, and to an innumer- 
 able company of angels. To the general assembly and 
 church of the First Born, which are written in heaven, and 
 to God the judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made 
 perfect." Hebr ews xii. 22,23. 
 
 The Apostles' Creed says: "I believe in 
 . . . . the Communion of Saints." 
 
 The passages of Holy Scripture, quoted as a 
 text, and taken from the Epistle to the He- 
 brews, it is not my intention to unfold at this 
 time in all their meaning. They are designed, 
 in however partial a way, to illustrate the gen- 
 eral subject of this sermon. I would, however, 
 remind you, that those words are not occupied 
 with any consideration of the future life and 
 world as contradistinguished from this life and 
 world. They refer to conditions of this life in 
 their relations to another life. The writer to 
 
 119 
 
120 " The Communion of Saints. 11 
 
 the Hebrew Christians draws sharp distinctions 
 between Christianity and Judaism, shewing the 
 immeasurable superiority of the former over the 
 latter, with its larger hopes and more blessed 
 privileges. He assures them that they were no 
 longer come to "the mount that might be 
 touched, and that burned with fire, nor unto 
 blackness, and darkness, and tempest. " They 
 were not at Mount Sinai. They were now 
 come to Mount Zion, which was the city of 
 God, the heavenly Jerusalem. They were 
 come to the vision and the gracious ministries 
 of an innumerable company of angels. They 
 were come into the Church of the First Born, 
 whose names are written in heaven. They 
 were before God the judge of all; and were 
 now, and evermore in sympathy and in com- 
 munion with all these, with all this, and with , 
 the spirits of just men made perfect, the saints 
 who had passed from earth, and were at rest 
 within the realms of Paradise. All this is in 
 accordance with the idea of the Catholic 
 Church, the Church which is one, the Church 
 
<{ The Communion of Saints. 11 121 
 
 which is the Body of Christ, of which Body He 
 is the Head. This entire body, the members of 
 which, however widely separated, and living 
 or dead, are one body, constitutes the temple of 
 the Holy Ghost — in which the Holy Ghost 
 dwells, energizing, enlightening, exalting, per- 
 fecting, unto the Day of the Lord. So it is, 
 that Christians are assured by the Apostle St. 
 Paul, that they are not " strangers and foreign- 
 ers, but fellow-citizens with the saints, and of 
 the household of God ; and are built upon the 
 foundations of the apostles and prophets, Jesus 
 Christ Himself being the chief corner stone : 
 in whom all the building fitly framed together 
 groweth unto an holy temple in the Lord : in 
 whom ye also are builded together for an habi- 
 tation of God through the Spirit." 
 
 Nicetas, an old ecclesiastical writer, asks, 
 44 What is the Church, but the congregation of 
 all saints? Patriarchs, prophets, apostles, mar- 
 tyrs; all the just who have been, or are, or 
 shall be, are one Church ; because sanctified by 
 one faith and life, marked by one spirit, they 
 
122 " The Communion of Saints." 
 
 constitute one body." The key to the idea to 
 be enforced is in the words, " who have been, 
 or are, or shall be." Those who " have been " 
 are those no longer in the flesh, but who have 
 passed on within the veil. But they and we 
 are one Church. The Church here, and the 
 Church beyond the grave, are not two churches, 
 but one church, visible here to us, to God, to 
 the angels and spirits, therein invisible to our 
 mortal eyes, but visible to all in the spirit 
 world. Of this Church, Nicetas further de- 
 clares, speaking of course to those still in the 
 flesh, " Believe, then, that in this one Church 
 you will attain the communion of saints." 
 
 This conception of and belief in the com- 
 munion of saints has been with the church 
 from the beginning, and before it was engrafted 
 in the Creed ; and it is in complete harmony 
 with the teaching of Holy Scripture. Not that 
 the Sacred Writings are explicit upon this sub- 
 ject, or enter into particulars regarding it. 
 Here again the reticence of the Bible is signifi- 
 cant. But the Sacred Volume sufficiently opens 
 
" The Communion of Saints." 123 
 
 the doctrine to justify its acceptance as an ar- 
 ticle of the faith. 
 
 It will be observed, here, that, obviously, the 
 " communion of saints " applies to saints, to 
 those separated unto God by faith in Jesus 
 Christ in the fellowship of His Church. These 
 are they who can apprehend and appreciate, 
 and participate in this communion. In the 
 nature of the case, it can have little or no sig- 
 nificance to others. 
 
 The Holy Scriptures steadily lead up to this 
 conception of the communion of saints. 
 
 Clearly there is unfolded to us, that Chris- 
 tians hold communion with God, because they 
 are the sons of God, as believing in and having 
 fellowship with His only Son our Lord Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 St. John declares, " That which we have seen 
 and heard, declare we unto you, that ye also 
 may have fellowship with us: and truly our 
 fellowship is with the Father, and with His Son 
 Jesus Christ." 
 
 As with God directly, so with Jesus Christ 
 
124 " The Communion of Saints" 
 
 directly, the believer is in communion. He 
 Himself affirms : " All Mine are thine, and 
 thine are Mine; and I am glorified in them ; " 
 and He prays the Father, Himself thus holding 
 communion with God, " That they all may be 
 one : as Thou, Father, art in Me, and I in Thee, 
 that they also may be one in Us . . • . I 
 in them, and Thou in Me; " and St. Paul says, 
 " God is faithful, by whom ye were called unto 
 the fellowship of (into communion with) His 
 Son Jesus Christ our Lord." 
 
 As we hold communion with God and with 
 His Eternal Son, so we hold communion with 
 the Holy Ghost. The Apostolic benediction 
 confirms this : " The grace of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and the love of God, and the commun- 
 ion of the Holy Ghost, be with you all." 
 
 But, having communion with the Father, and 
 the Son, and the Holy Ghost, the Sacred Scrip- 
 tures suggest also a communion with the holy 
 angels. How intimately the angels are in rela- 
 tion to this world, and to humanity, as well as 
 with the heavenly spheres, is indeed realized 
 
(i The Communion of Saints" 125 
 
 when we think how by angels was foretold the 
 birth of the Saviour ; angels herald His ap- 
 proach to earth, singing unto men the good tid- 
 ings that should be to all people ; angels com- 
 forted the Son of Mary in His distresses; angels 
 proclaimed His resurrection from the dead ; 
 angels told at His Ascension how He should 
 come again in like manner as He was seen go- 
 ing up into heaven. Of the angels, the writer 
 to the Hebrew Christians asks, " Are they not 
 all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for 
 them who shall be heirs of salvation ? " Of 
 little children, our Saviour Himself affirmed, 
 " that in heaven their angels do always behold 
 the face of my Father which is in heaven." 
 
 Thus are we led up to the communion of 
 saints — of believers one with another on earth, 
 however widely separated — and with their fel- 
 low-believers, and their beloved in Christ, 
 separated by what we call death. Here, while 
 in the flesh, while doing battle with the world, 
 enduring its toils and privation, meeting its 
 sorrows and bereavements, — here, " We are 
 
126 " The Communion of Saints" 
 
 come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of 
 the living God, the heavenly Jerusalem, and to 
 an innumerable company of angels, to the gen- 
 eral assembly and Church of the First Born 
 which are written in heaven, and to God the 
 judge of all, and to the spirits of just men 
 made perfect." Here and there, therefore, we 
 hold with saints a real, a true communion, or 
 can, if we will. We do hold a very real com- 
 munion with all for whom we care in this 
 world, however far removed from us. We may 
 not see them, we may not hear from them, but 
 we think of them, and love them, and doubt 
 not their thought and love for us. It cannot 
 be otherwise with respect to those beyond the 
 veil of sense and time. 
 
 The doctrine has intense meaning, and very 
 close application, to all who in any considerable 
 degree realize it. It cannot do other than in- 
 cite to a pure living, seeing, as the Apostle re- 
 minds us, that we are surrounded with so great 
 a crowd of witnesses. If we realize it, we 
 must be circumspect in all of life and action. 
 
(i The Communion of Saints." 127 
 
 Surely, also, it must excite to gratitude to 
 Almighty God for the measure of blessed joy 
 that it brings to our human hearts, as they are 
 torn by the bereavements that we experience. 
 We may think of those dear to us, and rejoice 
 that they are living with God in His peace and 
 His love ; and we may rest in the glad hope 
 and certainty of being with them forever in the 
 fulness of God's time. 
 
 What the departed do, or can do for us, is 
 not made clear. What we may do for them, 
 beyond the cry of our hearts that the light 
 supernal may increase upon them, and that we 
 may not grieve them with evil lives, God has 
 not made known. But that we do act upon 
 them, and that they act upon us (if we will 
 allow it to be so), / do not doubt. Those con- 
 stituting the church beyond are as really living 
 and acting in their spheres as we are in ours. 
 This we need to try to make real to us. We 
 are not to think of our dead as laid away in the 
 tomb. It is the body that is there. That 
 which was themselves (manifested through the 
 
128 " The Communion of Saints. 11 
 
 flesh here) exists in greater freedom and per- 
 fectness there. Why not be satisfied ? That 
 all that we may desire to know is not revealed 
 to us, is better, is best. Our questionings may 
 not, cannot be answered now. We could not 
 endure, if they were. God's wisdom is infinite, 
 and His love is true and perfect. Wherefore we 
 must wait His time. It is to fly in the face of 
 God, to seek to have it otherwise in any ways 
 or by any methods which God has not pro- 
 vided. We are not to seek to know those 
 things which God reserves as His own secrets, 
 to be made known when He shall please. No 
 necromancy, no astrology, no clairvoyance, no 
 spiritism, no theosophy, no " science, falsely so 
 called," however named " Christian " — none of 
 these things can unfold to us that which God 
 has not revealed. 
 
 The communion of saints links us, not only 
 with the present, but with all the past and all 
 the future ; with the saints of all the ages. 
 
 We may abide, then, in the truth of the near 
 relation between the seen and the unseen. 
 
11 The Communion of Saints" 129 
 
 That which is seen is but a transcript of that 
 which is not seen. The visible universe itself 
 is but the manifestation to sense of the uni- 
 verse that is invisible. What is unseen, what 
 is the invisible to our mortal vision we may 
 endeavor to picture to ourselves ; but we may 
 be sure that no picture will be in all respects 
 like unto the reality. Eye hath not seen, nor 
 ear heard, nor the heart of man conceived, the 
 blessedness, the beauty, the glory of that which 
 lies with God, and which God at length will 
 flash upon the spiritual gaze of those who shall 
 find His salvation. 
 
 " I believe in ... . the communion of 
 saints." 
 
XII. 
 
 "THE FORGIVENESS OF SINS." 
 
 "Be it known unto you, therefore, men and brethren, 
 that through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness 
 of sins: and by Him all that believe are justified from all 
 things, from which ye could not be justified by the law of 
 Moses.' ) Acts xiii. 38, 39. 
 
 "In whom we have redemption through His blood, the 
 forgiveness of sins, according to the riches of His grace." 
 Ephesians i. 7. 
 
 In the Apostles' Creed we say, each one per- 
 sonally: "I believe in .... the forgiveness 
 of sins." These words are often, very often upon 
 persons' lips, but they sometimes mean very lit- 
 tle. Indeed there are those to whom any ad- 
 equate conception of sin as sin — of sin as the 
 Bible views it — seems to be entirely wanting. 
 Sin is looked upon as of slight consequence or 
 moment, if of any — as mistake, or error, or mis- 
 fortune, or as a necessity of our conditions and 
 limitations. The tendency to so look upon sin 
 
 130 
 
" The Forgiveness of Sins" 131 
 
 is deepened by that subtle spirit of the age, 
 which so saps religious convictions by the elim- 
 ination of all that is supernatural from human 
 life and experience. Even with many Christian 
 believers the sense of sin, and the demerit of 
 sin — its awful nature and consequence, — is not 
 strong; and because not strong, there is the in- 
 evitable weakening of Christian character and 
 energy. Yet there is such a thing as sin — sin in 
 the sense of moral obliquity, of immoral thought 
 and words and deeds, of false relations to God 
 and to our fellow-men, — sin that dwarfs and 
 cripples human powers and progress, and that 
 entails woe and disaster and wretchedness and 
 death. The evidences of this are throughout 
 the wide world, and in all the centuries. Upon 
 humanity is the strain and the stain of sin; and 
 from this, humanly speaking, no way of escape 
 has been found, as indeed, through any merely 
 human power, there is no escape. Civilization 
 does not save from sin, nor does it lessen sin; 
 nor do any of those elements which go toward 
 the formation of what we know as civilization, 
 
132 " The Forgiveness of Sins. 11 
 
 education, art, science, literature, sanitary con- 
 ditions. These are all compatible with un- 
 moral and unspiritual lives. They do not ex- 
 pel sin. They do not make souls pure before 
 God. They may sometimes hide sin or varnish 
 it, but they do not heal it, or save from it. 
 This fact, these facts, no earnest thoughtful 
 mind can disregard or evade, certainly cannot 
 deny. Indeed the fact of sin, and sin's results, 
 the world has been compelled to recognize. 
 Every religion the world knows, or ever has 
 known, shows this. Sacrificial observances are 
 on account of sin — the recognition of which 
 has at times been so great that men have given 
 the fruit of their bodies for the sin of their 
 souls. The purer the religion the deeper and 
 truer has been this sense of sin and its evil. 
 Christianity recognizes it in all its moral turpi- 
 tude, and in all its destructive power. 
 
 It is only in Christianity, however, that there 
 is found any adequate dealing with the fact of 
 sin for its forgiveness and its healing. Other 
 religions, when recognizing sin, may provide 
 
11 The Forgiveness of Sins." 133 
 
 penalty, and require satisfaction; but to for- 
 give, to do away, that only Christianity can 
 offer. 
 
 Nature cannot effect this, though so much is 
 claimed for nature. It never forgives. It can- 
 not heal. It is inexorable in its onward sweep, 
 and it rectifies no mistakes, and renews no op- 
 portunities once disregarded or ignored. The 
 consequences of any violations of nature's re- 
 quirements must be endured to the uttermost — 
 it exacts payments to the last, and remits no 
 debts. Nature may cover over a ruin, as ivy 
 covers a broken cloister wall, but the ruin re- 
 mains. 
 
 Then, since sin is a condition of the soul, and 
 primarily against God, and only secondarily 
 against man ; man cannot (in any real or final 
 way) forgive sin or heal it. We may have a 
 forgiving spirit toward those who have sinned 
 against us, and we must have, if we are to ex- 
 pect God's mercy toward ourselves. We can 
 forgive each the other; but that does not put 
 away, that does not blot out the sin. We may 
 
134 " The Forgiveness of Sins^ 
 
 forgive another, so far as our feelings toward 
 that other is concerned, but we cannot forgive 
 ourselves. He who sins against us, moreover, 
 cannot forgive himself. This fact weighs upon 
 the soul, just in proportion to its nobility and 
 sensitiveness, and refinement, just in propor- 
 tion to its realization of what sin is. In any- 
 absolute way, none can forgive sin but 
 God only. Yet the forgiving spirit must be 
 ours; for if we forgive not, we shall not be 
 forgiven. 
 
 In this sense it is, that it may be said, that 
 society has no power to forgive. Indeed, that 
 is not the province of society, unless society is 
 desirous of destroying itself. The office of 
 society is to restrain and punish the wrong- 
 doer. In any event it cannot, by any power it 
 possesses, make again the life of any person 
 what it was before the evil was committed. 
 Society owes a duty to itself, and to those 
 members of its body that are faithful and true 
 to its requirements of good living. That duty 
 it may not neglect or ignore. That society is 
 
11 The Forgiveness of Sins." 135 
 
 in a deplorable condition, and in the way of 
 danger, when it looks leniently upon sin, or 
 condones the evil. It may, it should, temper 
 mercy with judgment ; but it cannot forgive. 
 Sin, as to society, is the transgression of the 
 law, and the majesty of law, of all law, 
 human or divine, must be maintained and con- 
 served. The law has relations to others, as 
 well as to the one who violates its provisions, 
 and this cannot with justice or even with mercy 
 be overlooked. 
 
 44 The forgiveness of sins," thus, we may be- 
 gin to realize, is of far-reaching moment, not 
 only to the individual, but to all others. To 
 forgive sin is not easy. It is not the simple 
 matter sometime thought. Sin is a fearful 
 thing to the individual, and to the whole 
 world. It strikes at the roots of all that is 
 good and beautiful, and pure and true. It is 
 destructive only, and to the uttermost. As 
 the act of a free moral agent, created in the 
 image of God, its turpitude is to the last de- 
 gree most shocking and appalling. It is thus, 
 
136 u The Forgiveness of Sins" 
 
 to the individual soul that the fact of sin must 
 most fully apply. All sin is against God. Even 
 the sin that is directly against any of our fel- 
 low-creatures is against God. God is in rela- 
 tion to every one, as every one is in relation to 
 Him ; and He is the Just One. This needs to 
 be borne well in mind, when we even think of 
 any forgiveness at all. It cannot be that God 
 can lose sight of others, in His dealings with 
 us because of sin. Our sins, which touch 
 others, and touch God, must be considered and 
 dealt with in view of all relations. Wrong 
 done, as it affects others, must be righted. Sat- 
 isfaction to them must in some way be kept in 
 view, or our forgiveness would be an injustice 
 to them. How great, how difficult, how won- 
 derful is " The forgiveness of sins." How 
 marvellous that God can forgive the individual, 
 and no interest suffer throughout His moral 
 universe ! The otherwise inconceivable fact is 
 made known, that the sin of the soul can be 
 forgiven, and the soul itself cleansed from all 
 sins — and this, so that no other interest shall 
 
11 The Forgiveness of Sins." 137 
 
 be endangered, that all others shall rejoice and 
 be satisfied that thus it is, and that there shall 
 be joy on earth as really as in heaven over the 
 sinner repentant, forgiven, saved. 
 
 " I believe in ... . the forgiveness 
 of sins." " The son of man hath power on 
 earth to forgive sins," is the language of our 
 Lord Jesus Christ concerning Himself. " The 
 blood of Christ cleanseth from all sins," is ex- 
 plicit Apostolic declaration. " The soul that 
 sinneth, it shall die," is the condemnation of 
 the law. But another law intervenes in Chris- 
 tianity. Were it not so, all would be hopeless 
 as to human destiny. " God so loved the 
 world, that He gave His only begotten son " to 
 die for it, that " whosoever believeth in Him 
 might not perish, but have everlasting life." 
 This is the Gospel of the grace of God, which 
 bringeth salvation unto men. The law of death 
 gives way to the law of life evolved by the 
 propitiation effected by Him who took our 
 nature and redeemed it unto Himself. The 
 way of forgiveness, of redemption, is provided 
 
138 " The Forgiveness of Sins. 1 ' 
 
 and marked out by God Himself in the gift of 
 His dear son, " who for us men and for our 
 salvation came down from heaven." By the 
 life, and death and resurrection of our Lord 
 Jesus Christ, provision has been made, by 
 which God can justly, no less than mercifully, 
 forgive sins; by which, as the Sacred Scriptures 
 express it, " He can be just, and the justifier 
 of Him that believeth." To this end atone- 
 ment has been made — atonement that we have 
 received by the cross of Christ; and through 
 the sacrifice of the cross the penitent soul is 
 able to find grace and forgiveness, and salva- 
 tion ; and there is no sin from which the blood 
 of the atonement cannot cleanse, save the sin 
 of wilful and persistent rejection of the power 
 of the cross brought home to the soul by the 
 Holy Ghost. If we believe in the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, there is repentance for sin, as a necessity 
 of the condition, and reformation, and in all 
 possible way restitution and satisfaction ; and 
 then the peace of God is spoken to the heart. 
 Old things then have passed away, and all 
 
" The Forgiveness of Sins." 139 
 
 things have become new. There is a new life, 
 and that new life is a supernatural life. This 
 new life is fostered and fed by the church — in no 
 other way, for the church is Christ's Body on 
 the earth — by its Sacraments, ordained by 
 Christ, which are the channels of His grace, 
 through which perpetually His life flows into 
 our life, transforming, transmuting, transfigur- 
 ing, until we are changed into His image, the 
 image of the Only Begotten of the Father. 
 
 Having repented, having made such amends 
 as is possible, the sting of sin is taken from the 
 heart, we are renewed in the spirit of our 
 minds, we are new creatures in Christ. There 
 is now no condemnation. Sin's wounds are 
 healed, and the sin itself is removed, for the 
 Lamb of God taketh away the sin of the world. 
 Therefore, in Christ, clinging to Him, we are 
 able to look up into the face of God. The 
 Holy Ghost witnesses with our spirits that we 
 are the children of God; and if we are the 
 children of God, then are we heirs, heirs of 
 God, and joint heirs with Jesus Christ, of the 
 
140 " The Forgiveness of Sins." 
 
 inheritance that is incorruptible, and undefiled, 
 and that passeth not away. 
 
 " I believe in ... • the forgiveness of 
 sins." 
 
XIII. 
 
 "THE KESURRECTION OP THE BODY." 
 
 "So also is the resurrection of the dead. . . . It is 
 sown a natural body ; it is raised a spiritual body. There 
 is a natural body, and there is a spiritual body." 1 Cor. 
 xv. 42, 44. 
 
 In harmony with this declaration of St. Paul, 
 the Apostles' Creed contains the affirmation: 
 " I believe in ... . The Resurrection of 
 the body." 
 
 In the Nicene Creed this doctrine is expressed 
 in the sentence. " I look for the Resurrection 
 of the dead." 
 
 That which dies is the body. The soul never 
 dies. When soul and body are divided, there 
 is death, but only the death of the body. 
 Thus, the " resurrection of the body " is equiv- 
 alent to the " resurrection of the dead ; " the 
 44 resurrection of the dead" is equivalent to 
 the " resurrection of the body." So far as the 
 
 141 
 
142 "The Resurrection of the Body" 
 
 essential doctrine of the Resurrection is con- 
 cerned, what is contained in one expression is 
 what is meant by the other. Such is "the 
 mind of the Church." Such, also, is the teach- 
 ing of Holy Scripture, in the Old Testament 
 and in the New. 
 
 In the earliest form of the Creed — certainly 
 in the Western Church, the reading was, " the 
 resurrection of the flesh." There was a reason 
 for this, which will appear presently. But no 
 more was meant, as regards the essential signif- 
 icance of the doctrine itself, than was meant by 
 the words, " the resurrection of the body," or 
 by the words, " the resurrection of the dead." 
 The word " flesh," as will be seen, was used to 
 guard the doctrine. 
 
 A very early heresy— for heresies began to 
 be in the Church from the very beginning, — a 
 very early heresy, dating from the days of the 
 Apostles, denied that Jesus Christ rose from the 
 dead in any literal way — denied that the same 
 body came forth from the grave. It was al- 
 leged, that it was His spirit that appeared, 
 
11 The Resurrection of the Body;* 1 143 
 
 and that it was this appearing in the spirit that 
 constituted His resurrection from the dead. 
 These heretics applied this theory to any resur- 
 rection — to our resurrection. The spirit rose 
 into another life — the spirit only, — the body 
 never knew a resurrection. This, however, is 
 not the teaching of Holy Scriptures, and is not 
 that which is meant to be taught by the ac- 
 count that is given of the resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ. That resurrection, and the nature of 
 it, has been already fully presented to you. 
 His body rose again, no matter with what 
 change. It was that body in which He lived 
 and in which He walked among men, and was 
 seen of men, before He died and was buried. 
 It was to emphasize this fact, against the heresy 
 referred to, and against all like heresies, that 
 the word " flesh " came into use. For there 
 was another cognate heresy, which confounded 
 the resurrection of the body as taught in the 
 Sacred Scriptures, with that spiritual rising 
 from the death of sin which is the accompani- 
 ment of Holy Baptism. The true doctrine 
 
144 " The Resurrection of the Body" 
 
 must needs be guarded, therefore ; and the 
 Catholic Church guarded it with the word 
 "flesh." 
 
 But that there might be no misunderstand- 
 ing as to what the Church meant, and what the 
 Church understood and believed to be the doc- 
 trine of the Word of God, we find explanations 
 over and over again in the writings of the 
 Church fathers and doctors. Thus Origen, 
 though in the tendencies of his mind a mystic, 
 says, "Neither we nor the sacred Scriptures 
 assert that those who are long dead shall live 
 again in their flesh, as it was, without having 
 undergone any change for the better." This, 
 you will at once perceive, is in harmony with 
 what I have already advanced in the sermon on 
 the resurrection of our blessed Lord, and in the 
 sermon on His Ascension into heaven. It is 
 also in thorough accord with the teaching of St. 
 Paul as to the change that does take place, how- 
 ever mysterious it may be to us, in the resur- 
 rection, that takes place in connection with the 
 body that is raised again from the dead. 
 
" The Resurrection of the Body. 11 145 
 
 Whatever the word used then, whether " the 
 dead," or "the body," or "the flesh," to desig- 
 nate the resurrection, the idea is not, that the 
 identical material elements, which constitute 
 the human body as we now know it, and which 
 dies and is buried, shall rise again. That gross 
 conception was always a false one, however 
 prevalent it may once have been. It was a 
 conception that entered in a decadent period 
 of the Church, and of the Church's life. It is 
 not what the Bible teaches ; nor is it what the 
 Holy Catholic Church, as such, proclaims. 
 
 The Anglican church, true to its ancient her- 
 itage as a branch of the one Historic Catholic 
 and Apostolic Church, retains the three differ- 
 ent forms of words, that it may forever guard 
 the true doctrine of the resurrection. In the 
 form of the Creed presented at the " visitation 
 of the sick," it is the "resurrection of the 
 flesh." In the Apostles' Creed, it is the "resur- 
 rection of the body." In the Nicene creed, it 
 is the "resurrection of the dead." It means by 
 the use of these terms, just what Holy Scrip- 
 
146 " The Resurrection of the Body." 
 
 ture means, and just what the Church of the 
 ages means; and Holy Scripture and the 
 Church agree, that "the resurrection of the 
 flesh, ,, " the resurrection of the body," " the 
 resurrection of the dead," have substantially 
 the same meaning as touching the doctrine of 
 the resurrection. I say " substantially." The 
 words are not synonymous. But, as used, they 
 have, as they were so designed, guarded the 
 faith ; and the necessity for their use exists to- 
 day, as really as in the past. They guard the faith. 
 They affirm the resurrection of all humanity 
 from the dead. They affirm the resurrection of 
 each individual self-conscious life. They affirm 
 the continuity of that resurrection life with the 
 life that was once lived on the earth. These sev- 
 eral conceptions must enter into, as they be- 
 long with, any full and adequate conception 
 of a true resurrection. It is this resurrection 
 that brings to us the assurance of personal, 
 conscious, life beyond the grave. It is what 
 is meant by the inspired declaration that 
 "life and immortality are brought to light 
 
" The Resurrection of the Body" 147 
 
 by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the 
 dead." 
 
 The resurrection of our blessed Lord is the 
 typical resurrection. There was, in His case, 
 as already seen a real death, the actual separa- 
 tion of body and soul, of His human body and 
 human soul. The Body was laid in the tomb 
 but His soul went to the place of the departed, 
 to " preach to the spirits in prison." His body, 
 however, was not allowed to see corruption ; 
 and His soul was not left in hell. On the third 
 day from His death, His soul came into and 
 quickened the body, and the living Christ came 
 forth, and He was known of men. It was the 
 same body that was buried that came forth. 
 But, in that quickening which was the result of 
 the reunion of body and soul, there was a great 
 change effected, so that no longer was that body 
 limited or conditioned by time or space, or by 
 any of the obstructing forces of the material or 
 simply physical. As the risen Christ could be 
 where He pleased, and when He pleased, in lo- 
 cations however far apart, and independent of 
 
148 " The Resurrection of the Body" 
 
 all impeding or obstructing forces, so it is 
 with regard to all resurrection from the dead. 
 Time will not limit nor condition, neither will 
 space. In that resurrection life, time and space 
 are not known. There it is the eternal now — 
 the eternal here. The body is raised a spirit- 
 ual body — a body hampered no more and no 
 longer with what is physical and material, as 
 the physical and material are known and un- 
 derstood by us in our present relations to them. 
 The metaphysics of all science help to confirm, 
 if not to demonstrate, this view, this certain 
 teaching of Holy Scripture, this revelation from 
 on high. This human body into which God 
 Himself has breathed the breath of life, so that 
 man became a living soul, when it is really 
 dominated by the soul, is, as it were, the form 
 of the soul, that by which the soul expresses 
 itself, manifests itself. But that form, in 
 this view, is the unchangeable, the eternal. 
 In relation to ourselves, we know this, in a 
 measure at least, from the fact (a demonstrated 
 fact) that every material element of our phys- 
 
11 The Resurrection of the Body" 149 
 
 ical being changes, is undergoing constant 
 change, is again and again in the course of an 
 ordinary life eliminated, giving place to other 
 material elements. Thus we have absolutely 
 new bodies, and yet the body is the same body 
 — known and recognized as such by ourselves 
 and by all others. The idea then, popularly 
 held, that matter (so far at least as concerns 
 man and his body) assumes certain shapes or 
 forms, is not strictly true. It were nearer the 
 truth to say, that the human form, that form 
 which expresses, manifests the soul, that form 
 which we call the body, assimilates matter by 
 which to appeal to the senses. That materi- 
 ality may be thrown off absolutely, and still 
 the body remain. This is the condition in the 
 resurrection state. 
 
 Obviously, for the completed perfectness of 
 the human being, the human being as we know 
 him, or ever can know him, there must be the 
 union of soul and body. Man is not man 
 otherwise. Man is soul and body united. Our 
 Lord Jesus Christ took upon Himself our na- 
 
150 "The Resurrection of the Body. 11 
 
 ture, body and soul, and so, only so, was real 
 man. For man to remain man, there must 
 needs be a resurrection, a time and condition in 
 which there shall be forever the reunion of 
 body and soul. When there shall be effected 
 this reunion universally, we do not know, it is 
 not revealed. We know no more about that, 
 than we do of the time when He to whom all 
 judgment is committed shall come again to 
 judge the quick and the dead. But the day 
 will come ! 
 
 St. Paul's argument for the resurrection, and 
 his statement concerning it, is unsurpassed for 
 vividness, and is unanswerable as to its co- 
 gency. There is death, and then the quicken- 
 ing from the dead into a new life. That 
 which is sown in corruption will be raised in 
 incorruption ; that which is sown in dishonor 
 will be raised in glory ; that which is sown in 
 weakness will be raised in power ; that which 
 is sown a natural (a material) body will be 
 raised a spiritual body. As really as there is 
 what to us is but a natural or material body, 
 
11 The Resurrection of the Body" 151 
 
 so there is, back of it, that which gives it real- 
 ity, a spiritual body. Is it any wonder that 
 the Apostle exclaims in view of this, " O death, 
 where is thy sting; O grave, where is thy 
 victory ? " By the resurrection of Jesus Christ 
 from the dead, our resurrection is prophesied, 
 promised, assured, and life and immortality are 
 brought to light. 
 
 In the resurrection, then, is the essence of 
 the personality of each individual, that through 
 which the soul expresses itself. It is person- 
 ality, thus, conscious of itself as what it al- 
 ways was, therefore conscious of others ; there- 
 fore there can be mutual recognition and the 
 reunion of kindred spirits, and a communion of 
 saints. 
 
 But here the solemn thought suggests itself, 
 which we may not, dare not overlook. The 
 soul expresses itself by the body, through the 
 body. It is doing this all the time, as we all 
 know full well. We may stamp the body 
 indelibly, because the soul is taking to itself an 
 indelible character. The purpose of life, the 
 
152 " The Resurrection of the Body. 11 
 
 trend of life, is doing this, as that trend is up- 
 ward or downward. We may not, we cannot 
 with impunity, defile the body, which is the 
 tabernacle of the indwelling soul, and may be 
 the Temple of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 " I believe in ... . the resurrection 
 of the body." 
 
XIV. 
 
 "THE LIFE EVERLASTING." 
 
 "For the life, was manifested, and we have seen it, and 
 bear witness, and show unto you that eternal life, which 
 was with the Father, and was manifested unto us." 1 St. 
 John , i. 2. 
 
 "And we know that the Son of God is come, and hath 
 given us an understanding, that we may know Him that is 
 true, and we are in Him that is true, even in His Son Jesus 
 Christ. This is the true God and eternal life." 1 St. John 
 v. 20. 
 
 "Fight the good fight of faith, lay hold on eternal life, 
 whereunto thou art also called." 1 St. Timothy vi. 12. 
 
 The Apostles' Creed closes with the words, 
 with which also this series of sermons closes, 
 "And the Life everlasting." That is, we de 
 clare, each one personally, " I believe in . 
 
 . . the Life everlasting." They are won 
 derful words, far more so than is generally ap- 
 prehended. We find an intimation of their 
 wonderful meaning, however, if we have care- 
 fully noted them, in the passages from Holy 
 Scripture quoted as a text. They set forth, in 
 
 153 
 
154 "The Life Everlasting." 
 
 a measure, what the Creed has in view in the 
 use of the words, " The Life everlasting. 1 ' 
 
 Life and immortality, an immortal life, we 
 are taught in the Sacred Writings, are brought 
 to light by the Resurrection of Jesus Christ 
 from the dead. Of this I have already quite 
 fully treated in considering the article of the 
 Creed, in which we declare belief concerning 
 our blessed Lord, that " the third day He rose 
 again from the dead," and in the consideration 
 of that other article of the creed, in which we 
 affirm our faith in the "resurrection of the 
 body." Another life, a life beyond what we 
 call death, a never ending life, is revealed, and 
 is brought to our knowledge and attention. 
 That life is not limited by time or space, or 
 conditioned by any of those things which be- 
 long to our existence here # on earth. "This 
 mortal must put on immortality." Mortality 
 involves death. Beyond death mortality ceases, 
 we are no longer mortal, there is no more 
 death, but evermore self-conscious, personal, 
 individual, continued life, immortality. 
 
"The Life Everlasting:' 155 
 
 But the Creed says, " I believe in ... . 
 the Life everlasting." If only immortality, as is 
 sometimes thought, is conveyed by these words, 
 they would seem redundant, seeing that, as al- 
 ready demonstrated, we have immortality 
 brought to light by the resurrection of Jesus 
 Christ. The words, however, are not redun- 
 dant. They do, certainly, contain the idea of 
 immortality. But, they have also another and 
 a fuller teaching. In the Nicene Creed, the 
 declaration of faith is in the words, " I believe 
 in ... . the life of the world to come." 
 These words also convey the idea of immortal 
 existence ; but they carry with them, at the 
 same time, the idea of the nature of that exist- 
 ence for those who are the children of God by 
 the faith of Jesus Christ. 
 
 God made man in His own image, and 
 breathed into Him of His own life, and man 
 became a living soul, partaker of the life of 
 God (not simply of an immortal, a ceaseless 
 life, but also), of the fulness of that life, that 
 
156 "The Life Everlasting." 
 
 divine life which is characteristic of God. God 
 is " holy, just and true." God is love. 
 
 The Creed, in harmony with Holy Scripture, 
 most wisely selects its words. " Life everlast- 
 ing," in the Apostles' creed : the " Life of the 
 world to come," in the Nicene creed. As, of 
 course, is well known, the English words 
 "everlasting" and " eternal" are renderings of 
 the same Greek word. "Everlasting life" 
 and M eternal life " are therefore synonyms. 
 They have precisely the same meaning. Un- 
 questionably, the idea of immortality inheres in 
 the words as used in the Creed : but the word 
 " eternal," or " everlasting," characterizes, and 
 is meant to characterize, to set forth, the nature 
 of the immortality to be enjoyed. There may 
 be immortality without "eternal life." Im- 
 mortality may be associated with the very op- 
 posite of "eternal life," with that which is 
 called in the sacred records " eternal death." 
 Immortality designates continued, undying 
 existence. The quality of that immortality 
 to the redeemed children of God is described 
 
11 The Life Everlasting." 157 
 
 by the expression "eternal," " everlasting " 
 life. 
 
 Thus there is a sharp distinction to be ob- 
 served between these two conditions. There 
 can be no eternal life in the true sense that is 
 not immortal ; but there may be an immortal 
 life that is not an eternal life, the God-like life 
 of the soul. By virtue of our creation at the 
 hands of God, we are all immortal. There is a 
 condition of existence for every soul, that shall 
 know no end. In another state, amid other 
 conditions, in what we call another world, we 
 shall live as self-conscious beings — conscious of 
 ourselves, and of other like lives around us. 
 Our immortality we "cannot away with; " can- 
 not, if we would. Whether we would, under 
 certain conditions, if we could, may be an open 
 question. It is conceivable, certainly, that im- 
 mortality simply, the mere continued existence, 
 might have little value to us, constituted as we 
 are, if that were all. The worth of life, after 
 all, of any life, here or hereafter, consists in the 
 quality of the life, in the kind of life lived. The 
 
158 "The Life Everlasting:' 
 
 passionate desire of the heart, where there is 
 any real earnestness, for immortality, is, for a 
 life no longer " cabined, cribbed, confined/' no 
 longer confused and troubled, no longer 
 limited and conditioned as is the present life — 
 a life free from whatever circumstances shall 
 retard, impede, or obstruct, the free play of all 
 the powers that are possessed. It is not simply 
 life that we want, but more abundant life ; an 
 unageing, but an ever-growing and progressive 
 life ; a fuller, richer, truer, better, more glorious 
 life. This is the character of " the life ever- 
 lasting," of which the Creed speaks. This is 
 " the life of the world to come " as it applies to 
 all believers in our Lord Jesus Christ, who are 
 united to God in Him. 
 
 " I believe in ... . the Life everlast- 
 ing," "the Life of the world to come," that 
 continued, undying life, which shall be to us 
 the God-like life, the life of God in us. We 
 believe that we shall live again, that we shall 
 know immortality. But, we believe much 
 more than this. We believe that we shall 
 
"The Life Everlasting." 159 
 
 have in that immortality, in our conscious per- 
 sonality the inflowing of the divine life, making 
 us fit for and radiant in the light of the Beatific 
 Vision. 
 
 How really and how clearly all this is 
 brought out in the Sacred Writings, may be 
 realized with little examination, when our at- 
 tention is once attracted to the subject. The 
 popular conception that "immortal," and "eter- 
 nal " or " everlasting," have the same meaning, 
 and that meaning only " undying life," finds 
 no justification. Daniel the Prophet speaks of a 
 time, when many of them that sleep in the dust 
 of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, 
 and some to shame and everlasting contempt. 
 All alike awake to immortality : but the quality 
 of the immortality in one case is far otherwise 
 than it is in the other. That which makes the 
 immortality infinitely desirable is designated 
 as "everlasting life." Our blessed Lord said 
 on a certain occasion, " as Moses lifted up the 
 serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son 
 of Man be lifted up : that whosoever believeth 
 
160 "The Life Everlasting: 1 
 
 in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. 
 For God so loved the world, that He gave His 
 only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in 
 Him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life/' Here the blessed life of immortality is 
 distinguished from that which is not blessed, 
 expressed by the word " perish. " St. Paul 
 says, that God will " render to every man ac- 
 cording to his deeds ; to those who by patient 
 continuance in well doing seek for glory and 
 honor and immortality, eternal life." He says 
 further, " He that soweth to his flesh shall of 
 the flesh reap corruption : but he that soweth 
 to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life ever- 
 lasting," the life of purity and joy forever. St. 
 John says, " God hath given to us eternal life, 
 and this life is in His Son," and the declara- 
 tion of the Saviour is, "This is life eternal, 
 that they may know Thee the only true God, 
 and Jesus Christ whom Thou has sent." 
 
 The knowledge of God in Jesus Christ! 
 This involves all that is high and holy, all of 
 love and service, all that is pure and lovely, all 
 
"The Life Everlasting." 161 
 
 that is joyous and blessed, all that can be real- 
 ized by the soul that is in possession of that 
 with which God Himself can be well pleased. 
 
 Because I believe, I, for myself, I personally 
 and individually, as though I alone existed, be- 
 cause I believe what is enshrined in this Apos- 
 tles' Creed, — of God our Father; of Jesus 
 Christ His only Son our Lord, conceived by the 
 Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary, who suf- 
 fered and died and rose again for us men and 
 for our salvation; of the Holy Ghost the Com- 
 forter; of the Holy Catholic Church and its 
 Sacramental life ; — because I believe all this, 
 and whatever else the Creed contains, I, a 
 Christian, redeemed unto God by the sacrifice 
 of Calvary, having my sins forgiven and washed 
 away in the blood of the Lamb, believe that at 
 last I shall come to the Beatific Vision of God. 
 I shall see the King in his Beauty, in the land 
 that is very far off. I shall enter into and real- 
 ize and enjoy, what eye hath not seen, nor ear 
 heard, nor the heart of man conceived, of those 
 things which God hath prepared for those who 
 
162 "The Life Everlasting^ 
 
 love Him. Having kept the faith, having fin- 
 ished my course, a crown of righteousness shall 
 be mine by the mercy of God, and beauty and 
 glory shall break upon me, such as never was 
 on sea or shore. The splendor of God shall en- 
 wrap me, the light supernal of the smile of the 
 adorable Saviour shall rest upon and illumine 
 me. And there shall be no end, and no cessa- 
 tion. Glory shall rise upon glory in ever in- 
 creasing radiance, and bliss shall be ever deep- 
 ening, and knowledge shall increase forever. 
 I shall have life, and more abundant life, with 
 all its bounding, throbbing intensity and limit- 
 less power. This will be " eternal life." 
 
 11 1 believe in • . • . the Life everlast- 
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