BR 125 
 .B7 
 Copy 1 
 
 TREND OF THE AGES, 
 
 JOHN tf, BSYET, DJ 
 
 "M 
 
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 
 
 Bfcias 
 
 Chap Copyrights 
 
 Shelf sQ-T. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
THE 
 TREND OF THE AGES. 
 
 BY 
 
 JOHN H.' BOYET, D.D., 
 
 Author of "Christian Science Exposed,'* 
 and "Church Government." 
 
 IiOTJISVIKLE, KY. 
 BAPTIST BOOK CONCERN. 
 
 1900. 
 
 } 
 
97033 
 
 L ibrwry of Congress 
 
 Co*E8 Received 
 DEC 31 1900 
 
 ', ~. Copyright entry 
 
 SECOND COPY 
 
 Ueiiwsd to 
 
 OHDEK DIVISION 
 
 JAN 4 19Q1 
 
 
 Copyright, 1900, 
 
 Br JOHN H. BOYET, D.D., 
 
 LOUISVILLE, ky. 
 
INSTEAD OP A PREFACE. 
 
 Adequate causation is the explanation of all 
 phenomena. Why should there be an intermin- 
 able war of words in the mere technology of 
 religion? In Him we live and move and have 
 our earthly being, for, He giveth life and breath 
 and all things. 
 
 Religion is inwrought in the subjective and 
 constitutional law of our moral being. The 
 Christ character is vital and remedial wherever 
 it appears in human history or is felt in human 
 experience. 
 
 The natural and the supernatural are one. 
 The miraculous and the non-miraculous are only 
 terms in which we speak of the usual and the 
 unusual in nature. Nature and grace are one, 
 and differ only in the manifest form of the divine 
 imminence. It is only the measure of intelligence 
 necessarily applied in the emergency. 
 
 Religion is not the exceptional in life. Relig- 
 ion is life. Life is not a thing apart from the 
 ordinary in man. Religion is the ordinary in 
 man. Vice is not the absence of religion, but 
 that which is vicious in the psycho -physical life 
 of a being who cannot escape the religious aspect 
 
iv Instead of a Preface, 
 
 of life impinged upon material form. The truth, 
 therefore, is one whether expressed in terms of 
 theology or of biology. The struggle is be- 
 tween mind and matter, between life and death. 
 The flesh lusteth against the spirit and the spirit 
 against the flesh. 
 
 Religious experience is incidental to the strug- 
 gle going on in the evolution of time, and his- 
 tory records the facts of human experience. 
 God is in his world, and the record of all good 
 is accredited to him in the annals of all human 
 experience. All good is evidence of divine im- 
 minence, and he is as apparent in the usual as 
 the unusual. 
 
 The character of God is not manifest in the 
 mysteries, but in the beneficent. The beneficence 
 of the Christ character in human experience is 
 an evidence of the life more abundant; and it 
 matters little whether it is called supernatural, 
 or the natural in greater measure. 
 
 The life more abundant was at high tide in 
 Jesus of Nazareth, and manifested itself in aton- 
 ing measure. That which was necessary in the 
 trend of the ages was expressed in terms of law, 
 and that which met these demands expressed 
 itself in legal terms. 
 
 In moments of high psychic communion with 
 the life more abundant, the prophets foreshad- 
 owed its fixed expression in the character of the 
 
Instead of a Preface. V 
 
 Nazarene, and in Him we have the perfect type 
 of what shall be in the golden age to come. 
 This is the truth as it is in Jesus Christ, who 
 said: "I am the way, the truth, and the life." 
 The truth of Christian dogma is one with the 
 truth in Christ. The truth as it is, and the 
 truth as it is in Christ, differ only in the fullness 
 of expression. The truth can never be fully ex- 
 pressed in terms of theology nor of biology. 
 We look for a new heaven and a new earth 
 wherein dwelleth righteousness. When these 
 shall appear in the consummation of the ages, 
 the way, the truth, and the life shall be one in 
 essence and expression. The pulpit, the labo- 
 ratory and the spade are instruments of the Holy 
 Spirit in confirming unto us the prophecy of the 
 redemption of life in man. Only in different 
 tongues are they conveying the same divine 
 thought to humanity, and thus uniting in one 
 cosmothetic movement. The unknown is com- 
 ing nearer, and earth shall soon hear in every 
 sound and see in all phenomena the same story 
 of a world redeemed. 
 
 In the progress of this movement this little 
 book is dedicated to the Love Slaves of The Christ. 
 
 John H. Boyet. 
 
THE TREND OF THE AGES. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 MIRACLE AND DEVELOPMENT. 
 
 "When the morning stars sang together and all the 
 sons of God shouted for joy." 
 
 Through time the Christ is marching. History- 
 is but the record of a great mind-movement upon 
 physical organism. In mid- ages stands the cross, 
 and we are far down the march of time as it is 
 marked by the world incidents of the past. The 
 terminal inflorescence of the earthly divine man- 
 ifestation makes haste now, and soon the social 
 Christ flower will appear in its unfading bloom. 
 Enough of its beauty already appears to help us 
 much in our study of the divine anthotaxis. 
 
 Really the flower is one, and in its expansion 
 it is centrifugal, or from center to circumfer- 
 ence. And when it has, in its fragrant beauty, 
 described the circumference of earth and time 
 it will have but one meaning and one charm. 
 "Christ is all and all." 
 
 What a day of the Lord Almighty. What a 
 splendid scene to the eyes of the heavenly hosts 
 when Adamic life took form from the dust of the 
 
Miracle and Development. 7 
 
 ground and stood forth a complete miracle. Six 
 successive periods had removed the earth's gar- 
 ment of cloud and its swaddling band of thick 
 darkness, and the fixing of the sun, moon and 
 stars in the heaven had prepared the earth for 
 the dwelling of man. Somewhere in Asia, per- 
 haps where the flowers were already blooming 
 along the banks of the Euphrates and while the 
 new-made birds were singing their morning song 
 of gladness, the morning stars and the sons of 
 God joined in the first glad vocal prophecy of a 
 subdued world. 
 
 In man's primitive form they caught the first 
 glimpse of a far-away and ultimate purpose as 
 from his face beamed the evidences of psychic 
 consciousness and intelligent action. Before 
 their eyes hung the mists of unfolding centuries, 
 but the light of prophetic virtue shined upon the 
 pages of far-off time; and, instinct with the emo- 
 tions of psychic triumph, they sang earth's pre- 
 lude in the metre of a world redeemed. 
 
 In this first man there was the possibility of 
 the fall, and in his complex being there was 
 foreshadowed all the passions of malice and 
 hate with which to channel the earth for a river 
 of blood. 
 
 Beneath the outward form of beauty was 
 the heart-beat which when poisoned by a sin- 
 gle act of disobedience was to drive the engines 
 
8 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 of destruction through long ages holding the 
 problems of human suffering and woe. And yet 
 there was a miracle. Material form stood erect, 
 instinct with intelligence and life, and pro- 
 claimed the final triumph of mind over all the 
 material issues involved. Thousands, and even 
 millions, may fall in the wreck of ages and gen- 
 erations, till the mastery of mind in and over 
 matter is complete, but this final triumph was 
 the prophecy of man's psychophysical being. 
 
 He who by arbitrary miracle gave to human 
 mind and will its cosmogonal existence and 
 abode had an ultimate purpose, and foresaw the 
 trend of the ages, and his plan comprehended the 
 end from the beginning. To him who is from 
 everlasting to everlasting the centuries are but 
 as an incident and a thousand years as but 
 a day. His wisdom is manifold and his plan is 
 multiform. He is in his works and his power is 
 beyond the emergencies and contingencies of all 
 time. The fall was not the obliteration of the 
 soul upon which the divine might impinge as the 
 life of the soul had done upon material form. 
 The fact that that which is born of the Spirit is 
 Spirit was definitely fixed in the mind of God, 
 and the creation of man was only the miraculous 
 beginning of a great spiritual movement upon 
 the material forces of the earth which he had 
 made. 
 
Miracle and Development. 9 
 
 The souls of men were made conscious of this 
 movement almost from the beginning, and it im- 
 parted to earth its hope of final regeneration. 
 Along the trend of the ages the emotions of 
 earth's millions produced by faith and hope have 
 broken forth in a song which answers back to 
 the time when the morning stars sang together 
 and all the sons of God shouted for joy; and, 
 thus, the supernatural proclaims the fulfillment 
 of the world's first prophecy in miracle. 
 
 The creation of a human soul involved the 
 human possibilities of the visible manifestation 
 of the kingdom of heaven, and in the nature of 
 that soul was projected a great spiritual move- 
 ment upon the forces of nature which God in- 
 wrought in the creation of the world of material 
 and animal being. In the history of that day we 
 read the prophecy of the incarnation of the di- 
 vine life of the Christ, in whom was to be sub- 
 jected all the psychic and cosmic forces of 
 psychophysical humanity to the Christ charac- 
 ter. In the history of that incarnation we read 
 the prophecy of another incarnation of the 
 Christ life in all the relations of human lives, 
 while in the character of the first incarnation we 
 read the prophecy of what the last shall be. 
 
 Thus it will be seen that by an involution as 
 well as an evolution the Father's world govern- 
 ment has been dispensational, and it suggests 
 
10 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 the necessity of different methods and processes 
 in different ages of the world. 
 
 Man's privilege and duty is not to form a con- 
 ception of what God is, and therefore what he 
 must have done before he made the world, but, 
 rather to permit a conception of his multiform 
 plan and manifold wisdom from what he is doing 
 in the world. Thus we shall see him in his 
 works and in his word. We will no longer vainly 
 read the Bible in the light of our own feeble con- 
 ception of God or the differentiated conceptions 
 of his attributes. We will therefore cease to fix 
 him apart from the world by some immutable 
 law of his being vainly imagined by us, and by 
 that law fixing all things in fate. "Theology" 
 will become less important to us and "Bibliol- 
 atry" will become paramount in reading the 
 signs of our times. Thus we will study the law 
 and the prophets till in the evolutions of time 
 we shall identify the first incarnation of the 
 Christ. 
 
 Then in the light of his character we shall 
 read the prophecy of the future. Thus we shall 
 hardly fail to feel the power of his Spirit and 
 catch his meaning when he says, "If ye continue 
 in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; 
 and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall 
 make you free." 
 
 The difference between mere variety and that 
 
Miracle and Development 11 
 
 of a distinct species is as clearly defined in the 
 moral world as in the vegetable or animal king- 
 dom. In the moral trend of the ages there were 
 no new species appearing from the time the 
 morning stars sang together, till the angels sang 
 to the shepherds by night in the fields near 
 Bethlehem, the city of David. 
 
 Along the history of long centuries we see no 
 distinct miracle of this kind. But in the devel- 
 opment of God's multiform plan we see marked 
 evidences of the presence of manifold wisdom 
 and supernatural power in the production of dis- 
 tinct varieties of the same species. These were 
 epochal in character and marked the beginning 
 and close of sub-dispensational eras. The sec- 
 ond distinct world-era began with the flood, 
 when all that was best in the psychic nature of 
 a fallen race manifested itself in one family. 
 The third world-era began with the destruction 
 of the Tower of Babel, when God made of one 
 blood, all nations to dwell on all the face of the 
 earth. The fourth world-era began when God 
 made covenant with Abraham that in his seed 
 all families of the earth should be blessed. 
 What is called by the naturalist or scientist the 
 conservation of law, was nothing less than the 
 supernatural Christ evolving what was possible 
 in the wreck of a fallen image and treasuring it 
 up in a narrow compass to scatter it abroad in a 
 
12 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 new era until the soil should be ready for his 
 miraculous and visible appearance in the begin- 
 ning of a new dispensation. Here the new spe- 
 cies appeared in whom men were to be new 
 creatures in Christ Jesus, by a new birth from 
 above. This was the mystery hidden from other 
 ages, but now made known by his holy apostles 
 and prophets. The explanation of this mystery 
 shows how it was involved in the era beginning 
 with Abraham and evolved in the development 
 of an hundred and forty and four thousand of 
 the seed of Abraham whose psychic nature was 
 susceptible to the spirit of inspiration and rev- 
 elation; and who, in the fullness of the dispen- 
 sation of times (eras) were recognized as the 
 church of first-borns and constituted the Bride 
 of the Christ. 
 
 The preservation of the divine character in 
 Christ's earthly life was the conservation of the 
 personal divine life in the human soul and form 
 of the Son of Mary, and thus, in the ascension 
 and enthronement of that soul and form, re- 
 deemed and sanctified humanity impinged upon 
 the divine government to give the world a dis- 
 pensation of free grace. 
 
 Thus in human form he obtained the promise 
 of the Father and shed forth on the day of Pen- 
 tecost the Holy Spirit to begin the reincarnation 
 of the Christ in the social relations of human 
 
Miracle and Development. 13 
 
 life. On that day was celebrated, on Mount 
 Zion, in Jerusalem, the marriage of the hundred 
 and forty and four thousand of the seed of Abra- 
 ham to the offspring of David through the eter- 
 nal spirit. 
 
 Thus the age of wedlock began; and "The 
 Spirit and the Bride say, come, and let him that 
 heareth say, come, and let him that is athirst 
 come, and whosoever will, let him take of the 
 water of life freely." 
 
 The miracle of Christ's birth, life, death, res- 
 urrection, ascension, enthronement and descent 
 upon his bride on the day of Pentecost is one, 
 varying only in visible form and marking the 
 close of one and the beginning of another dis- 
 pensation in the great spiritual movement upon 
 the natural forces of this world. It involves the 
 possibilities of our dispensation as the miracle 
 of the first Adam involved the possibilities of 
 the first. 
 
 Nowhere is it indicated that all the minor de- 
 tails of human experience which are effected by 
 causes more or less remote, nor even the salva- 
 tion or loss of all persons, were fixed by divine 
 decree, nor that they were even considered as 
 necessarily involved in the carrying forward of 
 a predetermined purpose. 
 
 But all of God ? s works were known to him 
 from the beginning and the end of each dispen- 
 
14 The Trend of the Ages, 
 
 sation was certain. That which is effected by- 
 remote causes may be or seem to be, in an his- 
 torical sense, incidental to the progress of a 
 divine movement, and still in no sense reflect the 
 mind or character of the divine being. They 
 are explainable upon the hypothesis of another 
 being, and the Bible tells us who he is. 
 
 The entrance of Satan by invasion into the 
 physical appetites and desires of man's psycho- 
 physical being vitiated his moral character and 
 affected his attitude towards God. This mani- 
 fests itself in the individual and imperils the 
 soul in the gloom of a lost race. 
 
 Humanity was lost in Adam, and the second 
 Adam came to save humanity. His plan inci- 
 dentally and necessarily saved the souls of an 
 hundred and forty and four thousand Jews, 
 while the work of the Devil, incidentally, but 
 not necessarily, results in the loss of millions. 
 
 If we may think of an alternative, and it is not 
 clear that we may not, we may believe that had 
 not the race have fallen in Adam, perfect purity 
 would have been maintained in all the relations 
 of human beings. In such a case the creation 
 of a human soul would have been a complete 
 prophecy, in itself, of the final and complete 
 triumph of mind over matter. 
 
 There would therefore have been a necessity 
 for only one incarnation and manifestation of 
 
Miracle and Development 15 
 
 the Christ. This would have certainly come in 
 the material and social relations of this world, as 
 it certainly will come, since he has once come in 
 the flesh and put away sin by the sacrifice of 
 himself. 
 
 The new species appeared in the second Adam. 
 The Spirit of God breathed upon the face of the 
 deep and prepared the earth for the abode of the 
 first Adam, and then God created him by distinct 
 miracle. 
 
 The same Spirit breathed upon the abyss of 
 man's fallen nature till it was ready for the sec- 
 ond distinct miracle, and then xhe second Adam 
 was conceived in the womb by the Lord God Al- 
 mighty. Christians are of this species, and 
 some day will rise in character and type to 
 the measure of the fullness of the stature of 
 Christ. 
 
16 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 PREDESTINATION IN THE TREND OF THE AGES. 
 
 Since the sacred Scriptures are to be regarded 
 as authority touching the religion of rational be- 
 ings their harmony and consistency must be 
 maintained. It is not necessary to show that 
 unconditional election and predestination as a 
 distinct proposition is inconsistent with the 
 moral accountability and consequent free agency 
 of man. As separate and distinct propositions 
 they are at war with each other and can never 
 be harmonized. One deals with man in the most 
 arbitrary manner as to his origin, conduct and 
 destiny, while the other takes account of his in- 
 telligence and seeks to govern with beneficent 
 limitations. To suggest both as the plan of 
 governing the same people at the same time and 
 under the same circumstances is to forfeit all 
 claim of intelligent authority. No sane man can 
 admit the divinity of such a suggestion. 
 
 The right of government in either form may 
 be admitted, but the possibility of both at the 
 same time with the same people is out of the 
 question. The human mind is incapable of such 
 an admission. On this account Christians with 
 
Predestination in the Trend of the Ages. 17 
 
 common loyalty to the Bible have warred with 
 each other; one party practically denying the 
 doctrine of predestination and unconditional 
 election, and the other practically denying the 
 doctrine of man's personal accountability. Each 
 party have been compelled to admit that there 
 were things in the Bible which they could not 
 understand. Not that the language in which 
 these things are set out is incomprehensible, but 
 because the things set out seemed to contradict 
 other things which they were sure the Bible 
 taught. Is human reason to surrender at this 
 point? I say it is not. There is a point where 
 human reason must surrender, but it is not 
 where the Bible is surrendered as a revelation 
 from God to man. 
 
 Some things are hard to be understood because 
 of our attitude towards them, but if they are in 
 the Bible we ought to be willing to change our 
 attitude in order to understand them. But if 
 predestination and man's free agency are both 
 taught in the Bible, how is an honest man to 
 change his attitude towards one without chang- 
 ing his attitude towards the other? If he ignores 
 the one because he holds to the other, he can, if 
 he regards them as distinct and unrelated prop- 
 ositions, only take kindly to one while propor- 
 tionately abandoning the other. If they are 
 both taught in the Bible, one of two things is 
 
18 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 true. Either the Bible has no claims upon 
 rational beings or else the two doctrinal propo- 
 sitions are relative to each other. The relation 
 of the one to the other can never be found in the 
 government of the same people at the same 
 time, because one suggests a government radi- 
 cally different from the other. 
 
 Every student of the Bible and of the human 
 race must recognize that law and order have 
 been a development so far as this world is con- 
 cerned, and that this development has a compre- 
 hensive history. In the making of this history 
 is found the relation of one form of government 
 to another as one stage of development is neces- 
 sary to another in the general advancement 
 towards God's ultimate purpose. Thus it may be 
 seen that doctrinal propositions which seem to 
 be essentially in violent conflict with each other 
 when applied to the same people, time and cir- 
 cumstances may still be in perfect harmony when 
 viewed in their historical relation. 
 
 Predestination is not merely a formulated doc- 
 trinal statement without a history. It is not the 
 analysis of a divine attribute, but an inspired 
 historical statement of what God has done. 
 History never exactly repeats itself in the prog- 
 ress of development. Things are similarly 
 related when seen in the light of historical de- 
 velopment towards a great end, but until the end 
 
Predestination in the Trend of the Ages. 19 
 
 of development is reached the government under 
 which the development is carried forward is ever 
 changing in form. This is the history of pre- 
 destination; and it is necessarily so. When the 
 act of predestinating a thing has accomplished 
 the purpose of predestination, the thing pur- 
 posed takes the place of direct and arbitrary 
 predestination. Thus it appears in history that 
 from the beginning things are becoming less 
 and less miraculous, and thus it will continue 
 until all things will naturally wear the yoke of 
 a divinely developed government. Then that 
 government will take the place of every pre- 
 destinated means for its development. 
 
 The Bible simply reveals the facts which were 
 necessary in God's governmental control towards 
 the end purposed in the beginning. All benefi- 
 cent government, though necessarily arbitrary 
 in the beginning, seeks, through the process of 
 development, the emancipation of the human 
 mind and will. In the process of development 
 some things are necessarily predetermined, while 
 other things are purposed indirectly through 
 the means directly and arbitrarily predestinated. 
 Behind every free government, guaranteeing the 
 right of personal choice, there has been the use 
 of direct, arbitrary and predetermined author- 
 ity. And in the front of every divine movement 
 of this kind the beneficence of divine govern- 
 
20 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 ment manifests itself in the right of personal 
 free choice. The right of personal choice is the 
 thing purposed, and the thing which makes it 
 possible is the thing predetermined. When the 
 right of choice, therefore, is established, it 
 necessarily displaces those things which were 
 formerly predestinated, but are now the subjects 
 of free choice. 
 
 The trouble between religious factions has 
 been in their failure to see that the relation 
 which predestination sustains to the right and 
 power of personal free choice, is an historical 
 one. The unalterable purpose of God is, and 
 has been, so far as we know the history of his 
 dealings with men, that man should ultimately 
 possess the right in himself to choose that which 
 is good for him. What he has directly and arbi- 
 trarily predestinated as a means to this end must 
 of necessity in the development of this ultimate 
 purpose, give place to the thing purposed. Thus 
 it is that while predestination and personal ac- 
 countability, while thought of as doctrinal prop- 
 ositions applied contemporaneously, are in deadly 
 conflict with each other and antagonizing the 
 divine claims of the Bible over human reason, 
 they are, when viewed in the light of an his- 
 torical necessity, in perfect harmony. The end 
 clearly justifies the means in this case, and not 
 only satisfies the enlightened mind that the Bible 
 
Predestination in the Trend of the Ages. 21 
 
 is the book of God, but inspires the heart also 
 to praise him for his wonderful wisdom and 
 goodness manifest to the children of men. 
 
 The necessity for having predestinated some 
 men to eternal life must appear at a moment's 
 thought. If ever the Gospel was to become the 
 power of God unto salvation to every one that 
 believeth, the way must be prepared for it. 
 Some men must be arbitrarily chosen, and, pre- 
 pared in kind, for its introduction. The king- 
 dom of God must be harmonious in the means of 
 its introduction. Aliens cannot be used in estab- 
 lishing its principles, which are foreign to earth's 
 population. The predestinating act by which 
 men were chosen must be practical as well as 
 arbitrary. The act of predestinating and choos- 
 ing them, therefore, must involve the arbitrary 
 infusion into them of the very nature of the 
 government of heaven. Here is a miracle, and 
 this is the law of Biogenesis. This law blocks 
 the way of progress at the border line of every 
 distinct stage of development. But each sep- 
 arate stage in the earthly development of the 
 kingdom of heaven is an enlarged promise of the 
 fulfillment, until at last (Mark 1:14,15) Jesus 
 came into Galilee preaching the Gospel of the 
 Kingdom of God, and saying, The time is ful- 
 filled, and the kingdom of God is at hand; repent 
 ye, and believe the Gospel. 
 
22 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 The meaning of the law and the prophets 
 which were till John, and every means for the 
 establishment of the kingdom of God in its Gos- 
 pel form on earth, are now explained in the light 
 of the Gospel which in the beginning of the full- 
 ness of time says: "Except ye repent, ye shall all 
 likewise perish." 
 
 Predestination is fatalism by whoever or what- 
 ever a thing is unalterably predestinated. What- 
 ever is predestinated has its fate fixed in the act 
 of predestinating or predetermining it. Herein 
 is the distinction between the ultimate purpose 
 of God and the thing predetermined. A pur- 
 pose may be predetermined upon, but it is not 
 the thing predestinated. The thing purposed is 
 the meaning of the thing predestinated, and ex- 
 plains the reason for the predestinating act. 
 The rationale of predestination is that some 
 things are not arbitrarily determined. While 
 they are related to the thing fated more or less 
 remotely, as effect is related to cause, they do 
 not sustain the same relation to a first cause as 
 that which was unalterably fixed by the original 
 act of predestination. This is the meaning of 
 related influences in the progress of develop- 
 ment. Thus we trace the history of what we 
 are and what we enjoy, mutually affecting each 
 other in earth's civilization, back to a time of 
 absolute miracle, when the first thing affecting 
 
Predestination in the Trend of the Ages. 23 
 
 our present destiny was necessarily predeter- 
 mined in the most arbitrary manner. The grad- 
 ual removal from absolute miracle in the prede- 
 termination of things to the natural in the deter- 
 mination of the human will is but the gradual 
 transfer of the right to choose, which is propor- 
 tioned more and more to the individual as he as- 
 cends the scale of human development. We are 
 given the right to choose and determine as we 
 become capable of choosing and determining. 
 
 The development and consequent introduction 
 of free choice as a factor in determining what 
 the individual shall do and what shall happen to 
 him does not in the least change the nature of 
 the government whose trend has been constantly 
 in that direction since its arbitrary and miracu- 
 lous beginning. While the limitations of gov- 
 ernment multiply and the government of heaven 
 becomes less arbitrary as to what man shall do 
 and be, it does not become less arbitrary as to 
 the results of wrong doing. While it is a trans- 
 fer of responsibility it is not a change of the 
 grounds of responsibility. History therefore is 
 only the fulfillment of God's purpose to make 
 man responsible when he is capable of free per- 
 sonal choice. 
 
 In the beginning man did not choose to exist 
 on the earth, because he could not; but God de- 
 termined it for him. But now we see much that 
 
24 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 contributes to health and long life fully commit- 
 ted to man's use and keeping. He also has the 
 means and power of self-destruction subject to 
 his will, and is free to us them, as many do. The 
 same is true of man's spiritual being. He was 
 made a living soul without his consent, but the 
 means and power to improve or damage his spir- 
 itual condition are now subject to his own voli- 
 tion. The means and manner of putting the 
 laws of health and of spiritual well-being under 
 man's volitionary control describe almost the 
 limits of predestination as recorded in God's 
 dealings with men. There is a period in which 
 a child must be governed arbitrarily, because it 
 is unable to choose, and is therefore not respon- 
 sible. So it was with an infant world. There 
 comes a time in the child's development when it 
 naturally assumes the function of choice in some 
 things, and the arbitrary in its government gives 
 way to that extent. So it has been in the devel- 
 opment of our world, which is the child of our 
 Father's care. 
 
 This divine thought of humanity has advanced 
 in the progress of the world's government to 
 where the Gospel invites the individual to be- 
 come the child of him who is the Father of all 
 that is good. The exact time when the child 
 actually becomes responsible is not perhaps well 
 marked and defined, but it is more and more rec- 
 
Predestination in the Trend of the Ages, 25 
 
 ognized till at last it is fully and authoritatively 
 acknowledged. So it was till the first Pentecost 
 after the Lord's resurrection. Since then, "The 
 Spirit and the bride say, come; and let him that 
 heareth say, come; and let him that is athirst 
 come; and whosoever will, let him take of the 
 water of life freely." Till then the transfer of 
 responsibility for the loss of the soul was not 
 authoritatively announced, though it may have 
 actually passed to the individual in many cases. 
 Till then the arbitrary involved the election of 
 the individual to salvation, while since then 
 every one is exhorted to make his peace, calling 
 and election sure. 
 
 Predestination involving the election of some 
 to salvation even before the foundation of the 
 world has become an historical fact, and its place 
 is found in the history of those things which 
 were. It has no place in doctrinal truth. It in 
 no sense describes the essential character of him 
 who is the way, the truth, and the life. He is all 
 inclusive, and only he who wills not to trust, 
 know and love him is excluded from participa- 
 tion in his beneficent character. Predestination 
 involving the unconditional election of some to 
 eternal life was never intended to be understood 
 as a doctrinal principle unalterably associated 
 with the nature of the Trinity. It is ever 
 mentioned in terms of merest incident which 
 
26 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 associates it with historical expedients in the 
 development of God's wonderful plan of the 
 ages. Thus, in Eph. 3:1-12, Paul explains his 
 own conversion, call and qualification in relation 
 to God's plan of saving the Gentile world. 
 Paul's conversion, though declared by him to 
 have been out of due season, was wholly mirac- 
 ulous as well as supernatural, and in speaking of 
 those unconditionally predestinated to eternal 
 life he includes himself and gives the reason for 
 it: 4 'That I should preach among the Gentiles 
 the unsearchable riches of Christ," and, "To the 
 intent that now unto the principalities and pow- 
 ers in heavenly places might be known by the 
 church the manifold wisdom of God." This, he 
 says, was according to the eternal purpose which 
 he purposed in Christ. While unconditional 
 election is inconsistent with free choice in the 
 same person, it is according to the purpose of 
 free choice in the further development of God's 
 plan of the ages. Hence, he says: "Unto him 
 be glory in the church by Jesus Christ through- 
 out all ages, world without end. Amen." 
 
 Through the manifold wisdom of God, involv- 
 ing every necessary expedient, including the 
 qualification arbitrarily imposed upon some in 
 their unconditional election to eternal life, the 
 light breaks through the church and is vocalized 
 in a world-wide song of freedom. 
 
The Bride of the Christ. 27 
 
 CHAPTER III. 
 
 THE BRIDE OF THE CHRIST. 
 
 "And I looked, and, lo, a Lamb stood on Mount Zion, 
 and with him a hundred forty and four thousand, having" 
 his Father's name written in their foreheads." Rev. 14:1. 
 
 This scene of earth which was pictured to 
 John in his vision is full of interest as well as 
 meaning, because it is associated with Mount 
 Zion in Jerusalem and marks the beginning of 
 the present dispensation of the Holy Spirit, 
 when the Spirit and the bride began with united 
 voice to say, come, to whosoever will, to take the 
 water of life freely. 
 
 In pointing out who they were as well as their 
 number, we identify them in their connection 
 with God's plan in the redemption of our race 
 and their appearance then and there. They will 
 no longer stand apart from the great throng of 
 the redeemed as an anomaly of divine love and 
 favoriteism, but will appear as a necessary part 
 of one harmonious movement, and as one of 
 the most interesting incidents in the trend of the 
 ages. 
 
 That they were the elect bride of Christ, and 
 that this scene represents their marriage to the 
 
28 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 Lamb through the eternal Spirit on the day of 
 Pentecost after our Lord's resurrection, there is 
 no room to doubt. That they were the complete 
 number of those chosen before the foundation of 
 the world, and called along the ages, being con- 
 formed to the image of Christ that he might be 
 a first-born among the many brethren, and that 
 they constituted the church of first-borns, whose 
 names were written in heaven, which Paul also 
 associates with Jerusalem, is as certain as that 
 the Scriptures are best seen in their own light. 
 
 With the establishment of their identity with 
 the elect bride the conclusion that they were 
 visibly represented as a completed number on 
 the day of Pentecost by the hundred and twenty, 
 with whom and upon whom rested the visible 
 signs of a perfect union with Christ, is indis- 
 putable. While the evidence may not appear in 
 the form of positive proof, it is nevertheless con- 
 clusive. 
 
 They were all Jews. Rev. 7:4. So were those 
 chosen before the foundation of the world. Eph. 
 1:12-13; Rom. 8:29; 11:2. They were guileless. 
 Rev. 14. So were the true Israelites who be- 
 came disciples of Christ. John 1:47. They 
 were first fruits. Rev. 14:14. So were the 
 elect. Eph. 1:12; Jas. 1:18. First fruits here is 
 in the nature of the case the same as first-borns, 
 which the elect are called and by which they are 
 
The Bride of the Christ 29 
 
 designated as a church. Heb. 12:23. And here 
 it is associated with Mount Zion as are the hun- 
 dred and forty and four thousand. They fol- 
 lowed the Lamb whithersoever he went. Rev. 
 14:4. This is just what the first Jewish disciples 
 did. They were not defiled with women. Rev. 
 14:4. Neither was the elder son who repre- 
 sented the elect Jew in the parable of the prod- 
 igal. Luke 15:31. They wore no robes, neither 
 did the elder son, for they needed none to cover 
 their shame, as did the prodigal and the in- 
 numerable company who came out of great trib- 
 ulations. We have seen that they were all Jews, 
 and if constituting the church, which was the 
 Bride, that church would be Jewish as to nation- 
 ality. 
 
 When described as a city the Bride is wholly 
 Jewish. Moreover Christ called his Jewish fol- 
 lowers a city. Matt. 5:14. He also said they 
 were the light of the world. Matt. 5:14. The 
 nations are to walk in the light of this city which 
 is called the Bride, the Lamb's wife. Rev. 21 :24. 
 Here appears the object and purpose of election. 
 The world was in darkness and needed light. 
 The church of first-borns was an inspired church, 
 and thus they were like a city set on a hill and 
 illuminated with a heavenly light. In the light 
 of that city on a hill the nations of them that are 
 saved are walking to-day, and will continue to 
 
30 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 walk in it till a company which no man can num- 
 ber will stand, not with the Lamb on Mount 
 2a ion, as did the hundred and forty and four 
 thousand on the day of Pentecost, but before 
 the throne and before the Lamb, in the end of 
 the ages. And they will have washed their 
 robes and made them white in the blood of the 
 Lamb. The old dispensation closed with the 
 gathering together of the residue of the hundred 
 and forty and four thousand Jews who had the 
 Father's name written upon them. These were 
 the remnant which had survived according to 
 the election of grace. This dispensation will 
 close with an innumerable company out of all 
 nations and kindreds and people and tongues. 
 
 Paul was one of the elect, but, as he says, 
 born out of due time. He was one of the first- 
 borns, but born into the visible family of the 
 elect after Pentecost. Thus John saw him (Rev. 
 14:6), as the elect apostolic messenger (angel) 
 to the Gentiles, having the everlasting Gospel to 
 preach to every nation and kindred and tongue 
 and people. There was a Gospel which pro- 
 claimed the kingdom at hand. It was limited to 
 the scattered sheep (elect) of the house of Israel, 
 and to the time of Christ's earthly ministry. 
 But this is the Gospel of the great commission 
 to all nations and to all time till the consumma- 
 tion of the ages. 
 
The Bride of the Christ 31 
 
 The first was necessary to the latter as the 
 election of the church of first-borns before the 
 foundation of the world was necessary to the 
 election of believing Gentiles in sanctification of 
 Spirit and belief of truth. Thus the hundred 
 and forty and four thousand stood with him that 
 the blood-washed millions might stand before 
 him when the great day of his wrath is come. 
 Paul says that one was the foundation and the 
 other is builded thereon. And in this explana- 
 tion he finds himself a prisoner of Jesus Christ 
 for the Gentiles. He says the grace of an elect 
 apostleship was given to him that he might 
 preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable 
 riches of Christ. To the intent that now unto 
 the principalities and powers in heavenly places 
 might be known by the church the manifold wis- 
 dom of God. And here nearly the whole of his 
 letter to the Ephesians might be read into this 
 chapter. 
 
 What manifold wisdom is manifest in the dis- 
 pensational methods of that spiritual movement 
 which marks the trend of the ages towards the 
 final revelation of God's ultimate purpose. How 
 vain must be the attempt of any one to take 
 a group of passages from the Bible which relate 
 to God's dealings with men in one age of the 
 world and thus convey an idea of what he must 
 do and how he must do it at all times. 
 
32 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 And yet this is what many call theology. As 
 in the development of the human body the silent 
 forces of nature employ different methods at dif- 
 ferent stages, so God has done with the race 
 from its infancy, and thus he will do till it is 
 perfected in righteousness. 
 
 The love of God is the one great anomaly and 
 is as uniform in the wars of Israel as in the 
 peace and quiet of the home in Bethany. The 
 hundred and forty and four thousand do not 
 stand apart in the revelation of his dealings 
 with men, but illustrate only the harmony of 
 contrast in the same but multiform plan. 
 
 Those chosen in Christ before the foundation 
 of the world are not of divine f avoriteism, but of 
 the divine favor manifested through them to all 
 men until the time of his perfected kingdom. 
 
 Through their appointment and the revela- 
 tion to them of the mystery which was hid in 
 God the redeemed shall all at last be brought 
 into the unity of the faith and of the knowledge 
 of the Son of God, unto a perfect man, unto the 
 measure of the stature of the fullness of Christ. 
 
His Foreknowledge. 33 
 
 CHAPTER IV. 
 
 HIS FOREKNOWLEDGE. 
 
 The heart question of partially enlightened 
 men as to the perfect foreknowledge of God as 
 the ground of predestination is answered in the 
 explanation of God's manifold wisdom. The 
 perfection of mind is not manifest in taking 
 cognizance of all intermediate incidents, but in 
 its ability to grasp the end with certainty from 
 the beginning. The mind of God is not ex- 
 pressed perfectly in what the world is or has 
 been, but in what it is to be, "Known unto the 
 Lord are all his works from the beginning," and 
 ' 'Whom he did foreknow he also did predestinate 
 to be conformed to the image of his Son." That 
 Christ, the Son, might be a first-born among 
 many brethren is the reason given. That which 
 essentially forms the thing given as the reason, 
 describes the limits of foreknowledge and pre- 
 destination as accurately as the things fore- 
 known and predestinated determined the thing 
 purposed and effected by it. What he predesti- 
 nated was equal to any emergency, and it was 
 not essential to his manifold wisdom that he 
 should take cognizance of everything which 
 
 3 
 
34 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 might oppose itself in its impotency to hinder. 
 Thus he gave the prophets to see the end and 
 things afar off. What we have to be thankful 
 for in reading the Bible is that in the course of 
 events God's manifold wisdom in dealing with 
 incidents has been as perfect as his foreknowl- 
 edge of the things which he predetermined. 
 Thus he perpetuates his active sovereignty. 
 Had he at any time chosen to take cognizance of 
 all future events so as to decree them, we would 
 now be deprived of the active sovereignty of 
 God, who in manifold wisdom continues to rule 
 over us. 
 
 The manifold wisdom of God makes the ends 
 of beneficent government as certain as the pre- 
 determination of all intermediate events; and it 
 admits of another explanation of sin and its re- 
 sults in human experience without imputing 
 them to his decrees. It preserves him, in 
 theory, as an active sovereign forever, while it 
 makes the devil responsible for sin as the Bible 
 teaches. It is not necessary to say that God 
 could not have predestinated everything. It is 
 only necessary to say that he did not. This we 
 can say without denying his power to take 
 cognizance of everything beforehand so as to 
 decree it. But if we say that he did predestinate 
 and decree everything, we deny to him ever 
 afterwards the right and power of his manifold 
 
His Foreknowledge. 35 
 
 wisdom. If, as those who contend for universal 
 predestination, we strive to determine what God 
 had done from our conception of what he is or 
 must be, we will always be unhappy in our con- 
 templation of him and his works. 
 
 But if we will permit a conception of him from 
 what he has done and is doing, we will be happy 
 in every thought of him, as the Father of our 
 spirits. For "He so loved the world as to give 
 his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth 
 on him should not perish, but have everlasting 
 life." Christ as a propitiation, through faith in 
 his blood, was set forth in the faith of Abraham 
 beforehand, to declare his righteousness at this 
 time, that he might be just and the justifier of 
 him that believeth in Jesus. 
 
 The manifold wisdom of God included all his 
 decrees, but it did not bind him to the inviolable 
 rule of predestinating everything. Otherwise 
 his wisdom could not be manifold. Even the 
 power to foreknow does not involve the neces- 
 sity of foreknowing all things. Power and 
 right, whether resident or conferred, involves 
 an occasion of choosing, and even men choose 
 not to know. They even decree that they will 
 not take cognizance of things beforehand, and 
 thus refuse to be responsible for them. In 
 speaking of the abominations of Israel and 
 Judah, afterwards, God said: "It had not come 
 
36 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 into my mind that they should do such things. " 
 Nevertheless he did know that out of Judah 
 there should come a governor that should rule 
 his people. He had a purpose in national Israel 
 and decreed some things concerning it; and for 
 the rest he dealt with them in manifold wisdom, 
 sometimes afflicting them and scattering them 
 abroad, and sometimes repenting of what he had 
 thought to do unto them, but always equal to 
 what their case demanded. 
 
 The true idea of God's providential dealings 
 with Israel is expressed in Ps. 47:4: "He shall 
 choose our inheritance for us." It was to be 
 continuous, involving the future as well as the 
 past. The choosing was to be as continuous as 
 the blessings of their inheritance. Thus he has 
 dealt with individuals as a benevolent Father, 
 as well as Maker, and thus he has dealt with na- 
 tions and the world. Thus he is dealing with us 
 to-day under the reign of Christ whenever we 
 allow that he may. The unconditional election 
 to salvation of the prophets pointed to the com- 
 ing of him who said: "Ye shall know the truth, 
 and the truth shall make you free." He became 
 the end of the law for righteousness to those 
 who believe, as a knowledge of him frees us 
 from mental blindness and consequent slavery. 
 
 Hence, he says, "If the Son make you free ye 
 shall be free indeed." When he had finished his 
 
His Foreknowledge. 37 
 
 work and brought his followers to know him and 
 the power of his resurrection, he asserted that 
 all authority was given unto him in heaven and 
 in earth, and commanded them to make disciples 
 of all nations, promising to be with them at all 
 times to the end of the ages. Referring again 
 to the predestined and miraculous conversion of 
 Paul in the most arbitrary manner, showing that 
 he was a previously chosen vessel, though born 
 out of due season, we note that his commission 
 to the Gentiles was to open their eyes, and to 
 turn them from darkness (mental blindness) to 
 light (mental freedom) and from the power of 
 Satan unto God, that they may receive forgive- 
 ness of sins, and inheritance among them that 
 are sanctified by faith. 
 
 No longer does the election and salvation of 
 the soul depend upon a divine decree, but upon 
 how we choose to use the opportunity when 
 turned from darkness unto light by the Gospel 
 which has now become the power of God unto 
 salvation to the believer. The soul depends no 
 longer on what God foreknew, but upon what it 
 has learned and knows of Christ by the Gospel. 
 This is the last, and now the only hope. "How 
 shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation 
 which at the first began to be spoken by the 
 Lord and was confirmed into us by them that 
 heard him? God also bearing them witness 
 
38 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 both with signs and wonders and with divers 
 miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according 
 to his own will." 
 
 Christ was a first-born among many brethren 
 Who were predestinated to be conformed to his 
 image. These were all foreknown, predes- 
 tinated, called, justified, sanctified, and glorified 
 before Paul wrote his letter to the Romans. 
 Speaking of those whom the Father had given 
 him, Christ said, "As I am in the world, so are 
 they in the world." And, "The glory which 
 thou hast given me, I have given them." They 
 were in the world that the world might know 
 that the Father had sent the Son, and they had 
 been conformed to the image of the Son. They 
 had been glorified (illumined), inspired for their 
 relation to and position in the world, just as 
 Jesus has been prepared for his according to the 
 foreknowledge and determinate council of God. 
 Christ had given them the Father's word and 
 not his own. He had kept them in his Father's 
 name as the Father's sovereign miraculous gift 
 in predetermining who and what they should be. 
 The experience of the Saviour must have been 
 peculiarly thrilling as the time grew near in the 
 development of God's plan of the ages when the 
 line hidden from ages past should be crossed and 
 the announcement made that men are now 
 responsible for the salvation or loss of their own 
 
His Foreknowledge. 39 
 
 souls, in their own sovereign right of choice. 
 He had manifested the Father's name to the 
 men whom the Father had given. He had given 
 them the very words which the Father had 
 given to him and they had received them. He 
 saw them as vessels of honor prepared unto 
 glory and holding the mystery of life for ages 
 yet unborn. No wonder that he now prayed, 
 ' 'Keep through thine own name those whom 
 thou hast given me. " ' 'I pray not for the world, 
 but for them which thou has given me, for they 
 are thine." 
 
 "The mystery which in other ages was not 
 made known to the sons of men is now revealed 
 unto his holy apostles and prophets by the 
 Spirit; that the Gentiles should be fellow-heirs, 
 and of the same body, and partakes of his prom- 
 ise in Christ by the Gospel.*' Through these 
 men whom he was about to leave in the world 
 the knowledge of God and the throne of his 
 power was to be stretched out to the farthest 
 limits of nations yet unborn. They were to 
 preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable 
 riches of Christ. And to make all men see 
 what is the fellowship of the mystery which 
 from the beginning of the world was hid in 
 God who created all things by Jesus Christ.- 
 To the intent that now unto the principalities 
 and powers in heavenly places might be known 
 
40 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 by the church the manifold wisdom of God. 
 What a church of first-born ones was that which 
 should rise just beyond the world's great trag- 
 edy clothed with the power of a Pentecostal 
 blessing, and with the authority, conferred in 
 occular manifestations of heavenly wisdom, to 
 proclaim in the haunts of ignorance and vice, 
 and also in the centers of learning, that the 
 times of this ignorance God winked at, but now 
 commandeth all men everywhere to repent. And 
 yet what awful trials lay in the path of these 
 men partially unseen as they were moving to- 
 ward the pivotal point where Jesus cried, ' 'Now 
 is the crisis of this world." The struggle was 
 on, and the world of mind was feeling after 
 God who had fixed the times before appointed. 
 Human will and volition were reaching out the 
 hand with feelings of uncertainty through the 
 mysterious consciousness of material form upon 
 which life had impinged. But the Father kept 
 the men, whom he had chosen, in his own name, 
 until the darkest hour was past. Then Christ 
 reappeared in resurrection life clothed with 
 all authority in heaven and earth. Humanity is 
 glorified in me. "And ye shall receive power 
 after that the Holy Ghost is come upon you. 
 And ye shall be witnesses unto me in Jerusalem 
 and in Judea and Samaria and unto the utter- 
 most parts of the earth." And when the day of 
 
His Foreknowledge. 41 
 
 Pentecost was fully come they were all of one 
 accord in one place ready for the Son to be glo- 
 rified in them. What a oneness of heaven and 
 earth that day when the line was crossed. "I in 
 them, and thou in me, that they may be perfect 
 in one." "Suddenly there came a sound as of a 
 mighty rushing wind and filled all the house 
 where they were." "Christ is exalted to be 
 a prince and a Saviour." "He has granted re- 
 pentance and remission of sins." "Whosoever 
 calleth on the name of the Lord shall be saved." 
 "The promise is unto you and to your children, 
 and to them that are afar off, even to as many as 
 the Lord our God shall call." 
 
 What a baptismal benediction of the Holy 
 Ghost in behalf of those who would believe on 
 him through their word! It was the marriage 
 supper of the Lamb. The church of first-borns 
 for whom the whole family in heaven and earth 
 were to be named had made herself ready, and 
 heaven's sovereign power unites with the right 
 of free choice in an age of wedlock. The earth 
 has been in expectancy and heaven has been 
 silent for the space of half an hour. But the age 
 of free grace is about to begin. 
 
 The Gospel is now to be preached to every 
 nation, kindred, tribe and people, and in the cer- 
 emonies of this day the inspired church is to be- 
 come the pillar and ground of the truth. The 
 
42 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 city on a hill has been illuminated and the 
 nations are to walk in the light of it. Well did 
 the scene compare in John's vision with the 
 things which are yet to be. For there stood on 
 Mount Zion a hundred and forty and four thou- 
 sand whom the Father had sealed, and they sang 
 the song which none could learn but the hun- 
 dred and forty and four thousand. These are 
 they which were not defiled with women; for 
 they are virgins. These are they which follow 
 the Lamb whithersoever he goeth. These were 
 redeemed from among men, being the first fruits 
 unto God and to the Lamb. And in their mouth 
 was found no guile; for they are without fault 
 before the throne of God. Christ had loved the 
 church of first-borns whose names were written 
 in heaven and had given himself for it, to be its 
 head, as the husband is the head of the wife; 
 and now he presents it to himself a glorious 
 church, not having spot or wrinkle, or any such 
 thing; holy and without blemish. Its members 
 had been "chosen in Christ before the founda- 
 tion of the world, that they should be holy and 
 without blame before him in love." Now they 
 are joined to him in one body through the eter- 
 nal Spirit. Earth's expectancy gives place to 
 the realization of a new era as heaven's silence 
 is broken by the new song of redemption. 
 Jerusalem, the exalted, becomes the mother of 
 
His Foreknowledge. 43 
 
 us all; and, as God speaks with tongues of fire, 
 the darkness of ages past rolls away and the 
 mystery is explained as Peter stands up to 
 preach. 
 
44 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 CHAPTER V. 
 
 THE MARRIAGE PARTY AND THE GUESTS. 
 
 "For many are called, but few are chosen." Matt. 
 22:14. 
 
 The development of the kingdom of heaven is 
 made manifest in the arbitrary acts of the king 
 preparing for the marriage of his Son. That 
 which was essential to his purpose was fixed in 
 his general plan arbitrarily and beyond all con- 
 tingencies. While many were called, or invited, 
 those who were to be an essential part of the 
 real transaction were chosen, selected, and 
 picked out in such a manner as to involve no un- 
 certainty. 
 
 Others might be guests also, and hence a 
 larger number than the elect, including every 
 Jew, was invited to the marriage supper of the 
 Lamb. It will be observed that invited guests 
 were required to wear a wedding garment, which 
 distinguished them from those present who were 
 an essential part of the marriage party. The 
 word here translated garment is "enduma," and 
 means anything put on; that is, anything put on 
 answering the purpose of such designation. It 
 may be identical with the robe put upon the 
 
The Marriage Party and the Guests. 45 
 
 prodigal, because a long robe (stole) would an- 
 swer the purpose of designation at the marriage 
 supper as well as to cover him at the judgment. 
 
 Here is an invitation to the Jewish nation to 
 prepare for and attend the marriage of the spir- 
 itual children of Abraham to the offspring of 
 David. It was in the fullness of the dispensa- 
 tion of time, or when the time had fully come 
 and the bride had made herself ready. 
 
 That this general invitation to the Jews was a 
 genuine offer of salvation there is no doubt, for 
 Christ, lamenting over Jerusalem, said, "How 
 oft would I have gathered you as a hen gathers 
 her brood, but ye would not." That some or 
 even many of them who were not chosen did ac- 
 cept the invitation as on the day of Pentecost 
 there can scarcely be any doubt, and there were 
 some in company with and even claiming to be 
 a part of the church at Jerusalem who were 
 neither chosen nor saved, as in the case of Ana- 
 nias and Sapphira. 
 
 The wedding garment, of course, is only a 
 figure, but it serves to show the difference be- 
 tween those who were the chosen members of 
 the elect bride and those who were only Jewish 
 guests at the wedding. It is hardly to be ques- 
 tioned that the hundred and twenty who were 
 waiting for the promise of the Father were the 
 visible residue of the hundred and forty and four 
 
46 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 thousand who were doubtless present on that 
 day, for it was the hundred and twenty who 
 were married to Christ in heavenly splendor and 
 a baptism of the Holy Ghost. 
 
 But there were added to them the same day 
 about three thousand souls. The mere visible 
 presence of one on such an occasion would not 
 constitute a guest in any spiritual sense, hence 
 we are bound to conclude that to be a guest con- 
 ferred spiritual benefits which saved the person 
 from being spiritually cast out. 
 
 The chosen were known, foreknown, as such, 
 and the guests were recognized by the wedding 
 garment. One, therefore, neither foreknown 
 and chosen as a member of the inspired bride 
 nor wearing the garment of a guest, was easily 
 detected. 
 
 The Jews understood perfectly that the eter- 
 nally elect were all Jews, but their mistake was 
 that they supposed all Jews were eternally 
 elected to salvation and that when Messiah came 
 the Jewish nation would be his bride. He was 
 teaching differently, as John had also taught, 
 and showing that while all Jews could be admit- 
 ted as guests and saved, they need not expect to 
 be saved because they were Jews. The marriage 
 shall be within the Jewish nation, but with Israel- 
 ites in whom there is no guile. 
 
 No one can say that any church, as a church, 
 
The Marriage Party and the Guests. 47 
 
 was ever baptized with the Holy Ghost except 
 the hundred and twenty on the day of Pentecost. 
 These were inspired as a body, and while others 
 were filled with the Holy Spirit afterwards, 
 these were recognized as the Church of Christ, 
 who had journeyed with him and been witnesses 
 of his resurrection. They were the residue of 
 the chosen few; the Bride, now married to him 
 through the eternal Spirit. From this day on 
 "there was no difference between the Jew and 
 the Greek, for the same Lord over all is rich 
 unto all that call upon him." 
 
 There is a lesson here to be learned. The 
 Jews thought that, because all the chosen were 
 Jews, all the Jews were chosen. Some in like 
 manner think because all the chosen were Chris- 
 tians, all Christians were chosen. He who bases 
 his hope of salvation on the idea that he is 
 chosen to salvation will be like the Jew at the 
 wedding feast, without the wedding garment. 
 Men are not now cast into outer darkness be- 
 cause they are not chosen, nor were they then, 
 but because they will not be genuine guests. 
 
 Some will not come at all, while some think 
 no preparation is necessary in order to come 
 properly and be saved. The Jew is only human, 
 and the mistake of the Jew is the mistake of 
 humanity. This text is the answer to those who 
 presume upon the sovereign power of God to 
 
48 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 save whom he will. It is true that some, a few, 
 are chosen; but to those who despair of being of 
 the few, and feel that they have no claim upon 
 the divine sovereignty, the text also says, "Many 
 are called." 
 
 The trend of the ages has ever been from the 
 few towards the many. In education and knowl- 
 edge and psychic power it has been so, and will 
 continue so until the very gates of the kingdom 
 of God, which at first by arbitrary miracle stood 
 ajar to the few, will in fact stand wide open to 
 all by day and night forever. 
 
 Even now the many are called, and when the 
 veil which hung over the minds of the Jews, and 
 has been made to darken counsel by modern 
 theologians as well, shall be taken away, it will 
 be found that the feast still continues and that 
 all things are ready for all men. 
 
Some Given ; Others Accepted. 49 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 SOME GIVEN; OTHERS ACCEPTED. 
 
 "All that the Father giveth me shall come to me; and 
 him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out." John 
 6:37. 
 
 This is not merely the divine and human sides 
 of the salvation of the same persons, as has been 
 foolishly asserted. He came not, but to the lost, 
 scattered sheep of the house of Israel. Until 
 his earthly mission in the flesh was complete he 
 went to none other. In them and through them 
 he was preparing the way for the world to come 
 to him. The number given to him by the Father 
 was as definite as the purpose for which they 
 were given. At the time he came they formed 
 the residue of those among the Jews which along 
 the ages were the real Israel of God. They 
 were those whom he foreknew as his people ac- 
 cording to the election of grace, of whom Paul 
 said a remnant remained when he wrote to the 
 Romans. He was preparing to finish the work 
 and cut it short in righteousness; and, though 
 the number of the children of Israel be as the 
 sand of the sea, a remnant shall be saved. 
 
50 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 The first-fruits unto God and unto the Lamb 
 were exactly an hundred and forty and four 
 thousand, and they were all Jews. Of this res- 
 idue who were coming to him as sheep that know 
 the voice of the shepherd, he said, "They are 
 not of the world, as I am not of the world." 
 "Thine they were and thou gavest them me." 
 1 'And all mine are thine and thine are mine and 
 I am glorified in them." These were given to 
 Christ that he might be glorified in them, and 
 thus glorify the Father on the earth and finish 
 the work which the Father had given him to do. 
 This he did by giving them the words the Father 
 had given him, and then he prays for the glory 
 he had with the Father before the world was. 
 
 In John 6:39, he says it is the Father's will 
 "that of all which he had given him he should 
 lose nothing. This shows that some were not 
 given to him, for some were lost. But in the 
 next verse he also says that it is the Father's 
 will that every one that seeth the Son and be- 
 lieveth on him may have everlasting life. In 
 the order in which the truth has been revealed 
 and handed down to us we have expressed the 
 Father's will, first, concerning those given to 
 Christ and come to Christ as the inevitable re- 
 sult, and then concerning those who would come 
 to Christ, believing in order to be received by 
 him. The first are his because they were given 
 
Some Given; Others Accepted. 51 
 
 to him, and they shall come to him, for he shall 
 have his own. The rest were not his, for they 
 had not been given to him, but since it is the 
 Father's will that all who come believing shall 
 have everlasting life, he will cast out none who 
 come. The thirty-ninth verse is a message to 
 the remnant according to the election of grace, 
 while the fortieth verse is a message to the 
 world of mankind. One is the gospel of the 
 the kingdom of heaven preached to the scattered 
 sheep of the house of Israel. The other is the 
 gospel of everlasting life, preached to ' "who- 
 soever" will believe on Christ. 
 
 One was preached under the first commission 
 by the seventy, but in no Gentile city, nor in the 
 way which led to the Samaritans. The other is 
 since Pentecost, being preached under the last 
 great commission to all the world. Here is that 
 other angel (minister) afterwards which John 
 saw flying in mid-heaven (center of population, 
 and it was Paul born out of due time, the repre- 
 sentative of a world-wide evangelism) having 
 the everlasting gospel to preach to every nation, 
 and kindred, and tongue and people. Under the 
 first commission the sheep heard his voice and 
 followed him. The lost, or scattered sheep 
 which were not of the fold, or in the fold, he 
 said, must be brought in that there be one fold 
 and one shepherd. It was under this first com- 
 
52 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 mission that he finished the work which he cut 
 short in righteousness. 
 
 There were only an hundred and forty and 
 four thousand, including Paul, who was born out 
 of due time, who in the beginning of the dis- 
 pensation of faith and free grace, that stood 
 robeless and pure with him on Mount Zion. 
 
 Now let us stand before the throne and before 
 the Lamb, at the judgment day, and see the re- 
 sults of the message to whomsoever will. Out 
 of every nation and kindred and tribe, and peo- 
 ple and tongue, there is a great company which 
 no man can number. They have come out of 
 great tribulation. They have washed their robes 
 and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. 
 The prodigal has come home a numberless mul- 
 titude, and is in no wise cast out, but is robed in 
 spotless white. The best robe (stole), a long 
 robe which covers him to his feet. "Blessed is 
 he whose sins are covered." He was not created 
 in Christ Jesus unto good works as was the elder 
 son who was ever with the Father, but he is 
 saved by grace through faith. He has come to 
 himself in a faraway place and returned from 
 feeding swine. He has multiplied in kind under 
 the good news of whomsoever will may come 
 until from every nation under the sun earth's 
 prodigal sons have come to where they are in no 
 wise cast out. They shall hunger no more, 
 
Some Given ; Others Accepted. 53 
 
 neither thirst any more, neither shall the sun 
 light on them nor any heat. For the Lamb 
 which is in the midst of the throne shall feed 
 them, and shall lead them unto living fountains 
 of water; and God shall wipe away all tears 
 from their eyes. 
 
 Those who reject the larger hope for those 
 who were not specifically given to Christ by the 
 Father, and limit the great salvation to the 
 eternally elect, are of the same temper of the 
 elder son when he found that the returning prod- 
 igal had not been cast out. Nevertheless, the 
 fatted calf has been killed. Moreover, it is 
 the sound of music and dancing which excites 
 their envious incredulity. But the music will 
 continue until earth's unbelief will give way to 
 the universal song of a world redeemed. 
 
54 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 CHAPTER VII. 
 
 THE INSPIRED CHURCH ON THE ROCK. 
 
 "Upon this rock I will build my church, and the gates 
 of hell shall not prevail against it." 
 
 Mere ecclesiastical interpretations of Christ's 
 words must be as vain as they are selfish, and as 
 senseless as he who seeks to build a party in the 
 kingdom of heaven. Christ was building a 
 church for himself which was to be his Bride. 
 When presented to himself she was to be with- 
 out spot or wrinkle. She was to be the pillar 
 and ground of the truth. When it was completed, 
 nothing more nor less than the church of first- 
 born ones whose names were written in heaven. 
 It was composed of those whom God foreknew, 
 called, justified, and glorified (illumined), and 
 thus conformed to the image of his Son, that he, 
 his Son, might be a first born among many 
 brethren. "Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona, 
 for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto 
 thee, but my Father which is in heaven." The 
 church of Christ, the Bride, the pillar and 
 ground of the truth, to all future ages, must 
 have a bed-rock foundation. 
 
The Inspired Church on the Bock. 55 
 
 The visible expression of the truth must rest 
 here through the ages. This was to be the one 
 and only pattern for all future churches. It 
 must stand in the annals of history not only as 
 the birthplace of Christendom and the mother of 
 us all, but also securely in the right of inspired 
 and authoritative example. She must be a 
 woman in the moon, clothed with the sun and a 
 crown with stars upon her head. Not only an 
 object lesson, but to the world and to the ages 
 of ecclesiastical thought a source of light to the 
 end of time. 
 
 Resident in her and transmissible must be the 
 light of the glory of God as it shines in the face 
 of Jesus Christ. As the sun brings a succession 
 of days, with nights between, so she must be the 
 one indestructible light which, after seasons of 
 corruption and darkness, shall light the hill tops 
 of coming ages in the revolutions of kindreds 
 and peoples. Back to her who was the Lamb's 
 wife must the nations go for an example and 
 pattern when they rise, again and again from 
 the oppression of ecclesiastical hate. If the 
 time should come when the instruments of per- 
 secution, the very gates of hell, should prevail 
 against those who love and serve Christ alone, 
 to destroy them and their history, there must be 
 one incorruptible and indestructible light in the 
 horizon of the east to meet the gaze of inquiring 
 
56 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 men when the earth rolls back in the revolutions 
 of time. 
 
 Upon the solid and peculiar rock of inspiration 
 and revelation Christ built his church of first- 
 borns. Along the ages the stones were being 
 numbered as the numbers of an internal and 
 spiritual Israel multiplied. The preaching of 
 John had served its purpose in making ready a 
 people prepared for the Lord. The remnant 
 according to the election of grace was gather- 
 ing about the Christ, and the revelation of his 
 character and Sonship was being made by the 
 Father to the men whom the Father had given 
 to the Son. How closely must the Saviour have 
 watched for the manifestation of that material 
 character upon which his church rests securely 
 in those whom he taught from day to day. And 
 when through Peter the heaven-born conception 
 found full expression, we learn of what kind of 
 rock it was, and that Peter was a stone of that 
 kicd. * 'Flesh and blood hath not revealed it 
 unto thee; but my Father which is in heaven." 
 
 The word translated church always contem- 
 plates a local assembly. Here it is used with 
 reference to a day when those to whom the rev- 
 elation had been and should be made should be 
 builded together into a local habitation of God 
 through the Spirit. And when the day of 
 Pentecost was fully come they were all with one 
 
The Inspired Church on the Bock. 57 
 
 accord in one place waiting for the promise of 
 the Father. They were to receive power and be 
 made witnesses unto Christ to the uttermost 
 parts of the earth. Suddenly there came a 
 sound, as of a mighty rushing wind, and it filled 
 all the house where they were sitting. And 
 they were all filled with the Holy Ghost. From 
 this day they continued steadfastly in the apos- 
 tles' doctrine and breaking bread, and the Lord 
 added the saved to the church. 
 
 There was nothing wanting on the day of 
 Pentecost to make it the beginning of a new era. 
 There in Jerusalem, on Mount Zion, Abraham 
 and David had built altars to their God. Now 
 an hundred and forty and four thousand of the 
 seed of Abraham stood with the Lamb on Mount 
 Zion, a complete body, and were married to the 
 offspring of David. The revelation of his ex- 
 alted character was made complete, and was in- 
 wrought in the living character of his Jewish 
 disciples by a baptism of the Holy Ghost which 
 marked them as the true Israel of God and des- 
 ignated them as the local and inspired church of 
 first-born ones. 
 
 This was the church of Christ in that peculiar 
 sense in which he said, upon this rock I will 
 build my church. It was ever associated with 
 Jerusalem, and with no other earthly place, as 
 an assembly. As is sometimes said, though im- 
 
58 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 properly, of some men, that church can never 
 die. Its example lives in its own inspired his- 
 tory, and the Spirit which gave it life and power 
 will disclose its genius to nations yet unborn. 
 As the elect Bride of Christ she still witnesses 
 for him and will to the uttermost parts of the 
 earth. Along the track of ecclesiastical history 
 thousands of churches have come near enough 
 to the example given to echo the voice of the 
 Spirit and the Bride, but wherever and whenever 
 humanity believes and obeys it is because the 
 eternal Spirit and the imperishable Bride of 
 Christ, which were built upon direct inspiration 
 and revelation, are still saying, come. 
 
 Isaiah tells us of a time when there should be 
 "a voice crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye 
 the way of the Lord, make straight in the 
 desert a highway for our God." Then he says: 
 * 'O Zion that bringest good tidings, get thee up 
 into the mountain; O Jerusalem that bringest 
 good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength. " 
 "And it shall come to pass in the last days, 
 that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be 
 established in the top of the mountains, and shall 
 be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall 
 flow unto it. " "He will teach us of his ways and 
 we will walk in his paths; for out of Zion shall 
 go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from 
 Jerusalem." 
 
The Inspired Church on the Rock. 59 
 
 In the fulfillment of this, Christ said to two of 
 his disciples on the day of his resurrection: 
 ''Repentance and remission of sins should be 
 preached in his name among all nations, begin- 
 ning at Jerusalem." Every description of the 
 Bride of Christ excludes the possibility of any 
 but Jews, whether described as a city or as a 
 specifically chosen number. "Wherefore it is 
 contained in the Scriptures, Behold I lay in Zion 
 a chief corner-stone, elect, precious, and he that 
 believeth on him shall not be confounded." 
 
 If the word translated church here does not 
 mean a local assembly there is no escape from 
 the Catholic interpretation. It it does mean a 
 local assembly, let some one say which one of 
 the many local assemblies it is, or was, or is to 
 be. It was to be a church right here in this 
 world, or the language in its connection had no 
 significance to those then about to enter upon a 
 new dispensation. It was to be composed of 
 those who had the rock character like Peter. 
 Character which was not human, but created by 
 a direct revelation from the Father of the char- 
 acter of the Christ. It was this inspired church 
 at Jerusalem who gave to Paul the hand of fel- 
 lowship and recognized him as an inspired apos- 
 tle of Christ. It was this church which settled 
 questions for the church at Antioch. It was this 
 church which gave to us the inspired New Tes- 
 
60 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 tament. It is the light of this church which 
 shines to-day and will shine till the stars shall 
 shine no more. 
 
The Bising Temple. 61 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 THE RISING TEMPLE. 
 
 "And are built upon the foundation of the apostles and 
 prophets, Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner 
 stone." Eph. 2:20. 
 
 As a building rises in magnificent proportions 
 and its architectural beauty is outlined in vision, 
 we contemplate the purpose, design, and plan of 
 the architect. We see in the foundation, material 
 and work the evidences of ultimate purpose, and 
 in that which rests upon it we behold the beauty 
 of manifold wisdom. One is builded upon the 
 other until it groweth into a beautiful temple. 
 One part explains the other until the contrast 
 blends in the most splendid harmony. 
 
 We are getting ready for the finishing touches 
 of the Spirit through whom we are elected in 
 sanctification of spirit and belief of truth, are 
 being builded together, fitly framed and grow- 
 ing into a holy temple in the Lord. We are with 
 slight change of figure already sitting together 
 in heavenly places in Christ Jesus, that in com- 
 ing ages he may show his kindness to us and the 
 exceeding riches of his grace. The foundation 
 was laid far back in the ages, when his work- 
 
62 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 manship was created in Christ Jesus unto good 
 works, and now when we are saved by grace 
 through faith the visional harmony and beauty 
 hid in ages past, but now made known by his 
 holy apostles and prophets, is vocalized in har- 
 monious strains of redeeming love as the or- 
 chestra breaks forth in a temple built for the 
 habitation of God. Aliens from the common- 
 wealth of Israel are no more strangers to cove- 
 nants of promise, having no hope and without God 
 in the world, but are fellow-citizens with the 
 saints and of the household of God. The dis- 
 pensation of the fullness of times is come and 
 he is gathering together in one all things in 
 Christ. 
 
 The very stones of the temple are living; and 
 structural harmony becomes a sweet conscious 
 communion, until it bursts forth in song in the 
 heavenly places. Apostles are heard, saying, 
 1 'Blessed be God and Father of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual 
 blessing in heavenly places in Christ. Accord- 
 ing as he hath chosen us in him before the 
 foundation of the world, that we should be holy 
 and without blame before him in love." They 
 saw more plainly than prophets had ever seen; 
 for the mustard seed sown in the darkness of 
 unenlightened human minds was beginning to 
 blossom towards the great harvest. The birds 
 
The Rising Temple, 63 
 
 were beginning to shelter in its branches. 
 Stones, dead in trespasses and sins, were being 
 quickened, and from the quarries of Gentile ob- 
 scurity they were being laid one upon another. 
 The Gospel is now the power of God unto salva- 
 tion, and the nations are trusting in Christ after 
 hearing the word of truth, which is the Gospel 
 of their salvation. The earnest of the inher- 
 itance until the redemption of the purchased 
 possession has been given and those who believe 
 are being sealed with the Holy Spirit of prom- 
 ise. 
 
 How beautiful the prayer which followed this 
 apostolic song of thanksgiving and praise. Paul 
 saw the building rising according to the eternal 
 purpose which was purposed in Christ Jesus and 
 bows his knees to the Father, that he would 
 grant them according to the riches of his glory 
 to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in 
 the inner man, that Christ might dwell in them 
 by faith, and that, being rooted and grounded 
 in love, they might be able to comprehend with 
 all the saints what is the breadth and length and 
 depth and height. "Unto him be glory in the 
 church by Christ Jesus throughout all ages, 
 world without end. Amen." 
 
 God is being worshipped in spirit and in 
 truth. The temple not made with hands is ris- 
 ing. The service is continuous in the progress 
 
64 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 of the work, and each living stone, as the temple 
 rises, confirms the prophecy of its completion in 
 the heavens. What a scene is that foretold and 
 now foreseen! The holy city has come down 
 from God out of heaven prepared as a bride 
 adorned for her husband. She will rise again 
 through the tribulations of those who have 
 washed their robes and made them white in the 
 blood of the Lamb. The coronation day will 
 come and the final dedication of the completed 
 temple. The tabernacle of God shall be with 
 men and he will dwell with them. All tears 
 shall be wiped away, for there shall be no more 
 death, neither sorrow nor crying, neither shall 
 there be any more pain; for the former things 
 are passed away. They have been passing as 
 the temple of freedom rose and now they are 
 passed. And he that sat upon the throne says: 
 "I have made all things new." "It is done." 
 "He that overcame inherits all things." The 
 fearful and unbelieving and abominable, and 
 murderers, and whore-mongers, and sorcerers, 
 and idolaters, and all liars now have their por- 
 tion in the lake which burneth with fire and 
 brimstone. 
 
 Carried away into a high mountain, we have 
 another view of the city as God, first incarnate 
 and then re-incarnate, becomes at last the tem- 
 ple thereof. The circle has been squared with 
 
The Rising Temple. 65 
 
 length and breadth of twelve thousand furlongs, 
 and in it is described a perfect circle. Jasper 
 has developed into an amethyst and pure gold 
 into transparent glass. The moon has disap- 
 peared in the brightness of the sun, and the sun 
 has been eclipsed by the Lord God Almighty, 
 who is the temple and the light thereof. The 
 nations who walked in the light of it are saved. 
 The kings of the earth have brought their glory 
 and honor into it. The gates shall no more be 
 shut, and there shall be no night. 
 
 Life impinged upon matter and the struggle 
 was on. The flesh lusteth against the Spirit and 
 the Spirit against the flesh. Christ came to the 
 rescue, restored to life the right of free choice 
 and reinforced it by the Holy Spirit in a baptism 
 of power, first upon the church of the first-born. 
 This inspired church of the living God became 
 the pillar and ground of the truth, and truth as 
 it is in Jesus has done its work. From the first 
 fruits unto God and to the Lamb has come the 
 final harvest. And now, a great multitude which 
 no one could number of all nations and kindreds, 
 and people, and tongues, stood before the throne 
 and before the Lamb clothed in white robes and 
 palms in their hands, and cried with a loud voice, 
 saying, * 'Salvation to our God which sitteth upon 
 the throne, and to the Lamb;" while the elect 
 messengers fell upon their faces and worshipped 
 
66 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 God, saying, "Amen: Blessing, and glory, and 
 wisdom, and thanksgiving, and honor, and power, 
 and might, be unto our God forever and ever. 
 Amen." 
 
A Church. 67 
 
 CHAPTER IX. 
 
 A CHURCH. 
 
 A church is an incident in the history of a 
 great movement. It is an incidental visible ex- 
 pression of that which is vital in the movement. 
 When all that is vital in a movement in any com- 
 munity is purely Christian, the movement will 
 express itself in the formation of a church. It 
 is as impossible to substitute something else for 
 a church as it would be to set fire to a bank of 
 powder and substitute something else for an ex- 
 plosion. Explosions may differ somewhat in the 
 atmospheric vibration which they produce, but 
 this only proves that one explosion is not a mere 
 mechanical imitation of another. 
 
 The action involves a principle which is the 
 same in every case, and while each explosion is 
 a separate and distinct incident, every one is at- 
 tributable to the same cause. Remote causes 
 producing slight variations have nothing what- 
 ever to do with the nature of an explosion. 
 Neither have remote causes which produce slight 
 variations anything to do with the nature of a 
 church. 
 
68 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 The human form is an incident. It is inci- 
 dentally a visible expression of that which is 
 vital within. It is, therefore, the visible man. 
 But a hand or a foot may be wanting, from acci- 
 dent, without destroying the visible form of the 
 man. A mere alteration is not the destruction 
 of the species. If there were families with only 
 one foot or one hand they would only constitute 
 distinct varieties of the same species. The spe- 
 cies would still be recognizable in the human 
 form. 
 
 A church is an assembly of people incidentally 
 expressing that which is vital in the relation of 
 one member to another. There is danger of 
 mistaking that which is merely functional for 
 that which is vital, as an inexperienced physi- 
 cian may do in treating the body. The inspired. 
 page is given to guide us in the development 
 and in the functions of a church, but a church is 
 the body of Christ. Hence he says: * 'Where 
 two or three are gathered together in my name 
 there am I in the midst." "The letter killeth, 
 but the spirit giveth life." And: "By one Spirit 
 we are all baptized into one body." 
 
 A church may be destroyed without the simul- 
 taneous destruction of its form. When a man 
 commits the rash act of invading the sacred pre- 
 cincts of life and commits suicide, the man is 
 gone while the form remains. So the perfect 
 
A Church. 69 
 
 form of a church may remain when the real 
 church has been destroyed by the rash invasion 
 of material form into the more sacred precincts 
 of our spiritual relations. The essential form 
 of a church, therefore, is wholly different from 
 that which is mechanical. A church is the body 
 of Christ, and not merely a body formed after 
 the pattern which he dictated. It is Christ's so- 
 cial organism. It is the manifest result of the 
 Christ inwrought in the social relations of life, 
 recognized on their every coming together. 
 
 It is not merely the Christ in the individual, 
 nor in several individuals apart from each other. 
 It is a local assembly the social relations of 
 which manifest the Christ when the members 
 worship him together in spirit and in truth. A 
 church therefore exists only in an ideal sense 
 when assembled in one place, and they are mem- 
 bers only who are present. Others are members 
 only in an ideal or legal sense. 
 
 The only thing human to which a church is 
 really incidental is the coming together in one 
 place of those who are possessed of the Spirit of 
 the Christ. The worship is in spirit and in 
 truth, and the real and substantial form appears 
 in the spiritual relation of the worshippers. The 
 human body of a believer is a temple of the Holy 
 Ghost, but the assembling of these temples in 
 one place becomes a city set on a hill and the 
 
70 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 light of it cannot be hid. When the members are 
 all separated from each other there is no body. 
 When the temples are all removed from each 
 other they do not constitute a city. And so when 
 the members of a church scatter they cease to 
 be a church until they come together again. 
 
 We speak of the school as an ideal institution, 
 but there is really a school only when school 
 keeps. We also speak of the day in the same 
 way, but it is day only when the sun is up. 
 There is a church only when believers assemble 
 and the Son of Righteousness rises upon them. 
 
 What a church is in those things which are 
 incidental to remote causes and have nothing to 
 do with its nature and real being, is another 
 subject. Different circumstances which have 
 appeared under different dispensations have pro- 
 duced different varieties of the same species. 
 Christ was in the church in the wilderness for 
 forty years, but the dispensation was different 
 and the circumstances were different from ours. 
 That church which continued for forty years was 
 of the same species, because it was an assembly 
 and Christ was in it. But it was not a Gospel 
 church, nor was it in variety like anything that 
 has been seen since. As an assembly it was in 
 migratory existence for forty years, and when- 
 ever the redemptive purpose of the Christ life 
 appeared it was a church. 
 
A Church. 71 
 
 During the earthly ministry of the Christ there 
 was another migratory church. It was composed 
 of Jewish disciples whom God foreknew and 
 called, justified and glorified; conforming them 
 to the image of his Son, that he might be a first- 
 born among many brethren. Christ among them 
 was the life of it. He moulded and animated its 
 social relations, imparting to its members new 
 hopes and new aspirations, developing among 
 them the new-born conception of a spiritual 
 kingdom. 
 
 This was the church of Jesus Christ. He, and 
 not Moses, was its visible, as well as spiritual, 
 head, and in this it differed from any other church 
 in all the ages. It was the visible social body of 
 the visible Christ. 
 
 It was the Jesus Christ church, and the visible 
 Bride of the manifested Saviour. It was the 
 elect Israel of God chosen from among the Jews 
 from before the foundation of the world to be 
 the Bride of his Son in the fullness of the dis- 
 pensation of times. 
 
 At Pentecost it consisted of an hundred and 
 twenty, the remnant of the elect, and the visible 
 residue of an hundred and forty and four thou- 
 sand Jews who had been sealed as the servants 
 of God, whom these hundred and twenty repre- 
 sented when they stood with the Lamb on Mount 
 Zion in Jerusalem, the manifest spiritual seed of 
 
72 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 Abraham, and were married to the offspring of 
 David through the eternal Spirit. 
 
 From this day it became a local church; the 
 local habitation of God through the Spirit, con- 
 tinuing so from day to day in opening a new era 
 in the religious life of the world. It was an in- 
 spired church, built upon the solid rock of a 
 direct revelation of the divine character of Jesus 
 Christ, whose Bride it was. 
 
 Each member, as well as Peter, was a stone of 
 this kind of rock. Christ said of its members: 
 1 'They are not of the world, as I am not of the 
 world." And also, "As I am in the world so are 
 they in the world." They were one with the 
 Father and the Son and constituted the fam- 
 ily of God, through whose words given to them 
 through the Son the world was to believe on the 
 Christ. This church of first-borns, inspired to 
 give the Gospel to others, was a prophecy of 
 what a church should be through the means em- 
 ployed by the Gospel. 
 
 And just so is a real church of Christ now a 
 prophecy in its very nature, of what a church 
 will be in the golden age to come. The ultimate 
 purpose, therefore, in the manifestations of 
 church life and power must be a reversion to the 
 original type, when they were all together and 
 had all things common. They all spake with 
 tongues and prophesied, and so it shall be again. 
 
A Church. 73 
 
 For, on the day of Pentecost, Peter said: "This 
 is that which was spoken by the prophet Joel." 
 The facts will not justify the conclusion that 
 Pentecost was a complete fulfillment of the 
 prophecy of Joel, and Peter should not be so 
 understood. He quotes much more from Joel 
 than was literally fulfilled on that day, but he 
 said this that has happened this day, and is hap- 
 pening, is that; that in kind, of which Joel 
 spoke. What was to be the complete fulfillment, 
 as well as a literal fulfillment, was to be in the 
 last days. 
 
 Then the Spirit is to be poured out upon all 
 flesh, without national distinction, as it was that 
 day upon the hundred and twenty first-borns 
 who constituted the visible elect Bride of Christ. 
 When the last days, or dispensation, of Christ's 
 earthly reign shall come, when he shall have be- 
 come inwrought into every relation of life, and 
 made incarnate in the social order, every social 
 and commercial interest of earth will be changed 
 into the image of his character. 
 
 And then wherever people meet there will be 
 a church, and wherever there is a church there 
 will be ocular manifestations of his power. 
 
 They will all speak with tongues and proph- 
 esy. The future will then be read like history, 
 and be to each one a pleasing story in that golden 
 day. 
 
74 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 This golden age of the ekklesia is not only the 
 hope set before us in the Gospel, but it is also 
 written in the heart of every child of grace. It 
 is subjective and constitutional in the inwrought 
 nature of every believer. The disciples of 
 Christ were not mistaken in the idea that 
 Christ's kingdom was to be in this world, nor 
 were they mistaken in the thought that it was to 
 govern in every earthly relation, though they 
 were for a time mistaken as to the manner and 
 time in which it should come in its complete 
 form. They understood him poorly at first, as 
 many do to this day. 
 
 He sent them forth to proclaim the kingdom 
 at hand; and yet he taught them to pray for the 
 time when it should come in its complete form, 
 when the will of God would be done on earth as 
 it is done by angels in heaven. When that time 
 comes, as come it will, character will be as pure 
 as that of angels and every assembly will be a 
 perfected church. The bush will be a flame of 
 fire that does not consume and every foot of earth 
 will be holy ground. 
 
 While the progressive nature of the kingdom 
 is yet so little understood, it is prophetic in 
 the aspiring hope of every true believer in the 
 world. 
 
 It is incorporated in the subjective constitu- 
 tion of Christ's government, which is written in 
 
A Cliurch. 75 
 
 every believer's mind and heart. Some time 
 this constitutional law will be effective. Some 
 time it will be carried by the Spirit into all the 
 details of life and the golden rule will material- 
 ize in a golden age. Then there will be a church 
 in every home, where they shall daily commem- 
 orate the wedding feast of Pentecost and un- 
 derstand that it was the marriage supper of the 
 Lamb. 
 
76 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 CHAPTER X. 
 
 ELECTION IN SANCTIFICATION. 
 
 "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God the 
 Father in sanctification of Spirit unto obedience and 
 sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ." 1 Peter 1:2. 
 
 "We are bound to give thanks always to God for you, 
 brethren, beloved of the Lord, because God hath from a 
 beginning chosen you to salvation in sanctification of 
 spirit and belief of truth." 1 Thess. 2:13 
 
 In the great workshop is where we learn how 
 things are made. In one we learn how certain 
 machines are made, and in another we learn how 
 other work is done by their use. One piece of 
 machinery is used in the making of another, but 
 the method and process of making each is differ- 
 ent. Such is the religious history of this world. 
 
 Some men have been created and raised up for 
 certain purposes that God might show forth his 
 power in them. Their exceptional character is 
 incidental, and the exceptional method or pro- 
 cess used in their creation is incidental, and is 
 related to the use that is to be made of them in 
 the ultimate manifestation of God's power. The 
 power manifest in them, therefore, is only func- 
 tional, and relates to the further and more per- 
 
Election in Sanctiftcation. 77 
 
 feet manifestation of his power when the thing 
 first designed is accomplished. 
 
 With reference to the method or process of 
 election which fairly and fully manifests the 
 mind and power of God, we must look to the full- 
 ness of the dispensation of times when the offices 
 of those who were incidentally elected to a spe- 
 cial work are producing their results among the 
 masses. Here election is said to be in sanctifi- 
 cation of spirit and belief of truth. It is also 
 said to be according to the foreknowledge of God 
 the Father. Known unto the Lord were all his 
 works from the beginning, but the final process 
 is different from that which was necessary in 
 order to bring it about. 
 
 The election of prophets and apostles and an 
 inspired church to be the Bride of Christ was 
 essential to a revealed religion, while a revealed 
 religion which is divine in its nature involves its 
 own peculiar and final process. The election of 
 the few, therefore, must be separate from the 
 election of the many in point of time and pro- 
 cess. The few were elected before the founda- 
 tion of the world, while the many are elected 
 when they believe the truth and are sanctified in 
 spirit. The few are created in Christ Jesus unto 
 good works, while the many are saved by grace 
 through faith, being sanctified in spirit unto 
 obedience. 
 
78 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 This distinction appears in nearly all of Paul's 
 epistles, but especially in the first chapters of 
 Ephesians and Colossians. In the first twelve 
 verses of Ephesians there is no dodging the 
 consequences of the unconditional and eternal 
 election of those who first trusted in Christ. 
 But the thirteenth verse says: "In whom ye also 
 trusted, after that ye heard the word of truth, 
 the Gospel of your salvation; in whom also, 
 after that he believed, ye were sealed with that 
 Holy Spirit of promise." The few, including 
 those who first believed, were sealed in Christ 
 from before the foundation of the world, while 
 these to whom he is writing were not sealed in 
 him till after they heard the word of truth, the 
 Gospel of their salvation, and until after they 
 had believed. No one can follow Paul intelli- 
 gently through the first three chapters of Ephe- 
 sians without observing evidences of this 
 distinction everywhere. It broadens the scope 
 and possibilities of the dispensation in which we 
 live when we see in it the culmination of God's 
 multiform plan, projected through the ages and 
 distinguished in the very language of inspira- 
 tion as the consummation of the ages. 
 
 This was the time long looked for when the 
 mountain of the Lord's house should be estab- 
 lished in the top of the mountain and all nations 
 should flow into it; when the law of the Lord 
 
Election in Sanctification. 79 
 
 should go forth out of Zion and the word of the 
 Lord from Jerusalem. That day has come, and 
 the Gospel is now the power of God unto salva- 
 tion to every one that believeth, to the Jew first 
 and also to the Gentile. Therein is the righteous- 
 ness of God revealed from faith to faith. The 
 light which first broke upon the hill-tops through 
 a divine] y chosen and inspired few is now shin- 
 lug unto us to give us the light of the knowledge 
 of the glory of God as it shines in the face of 
 Jesus Christ. 
 
 All believers are elect, but all believers have 
 not been eternally elected, neither have all been 
 elected unconditionally. Of the Gentile believ- 
 ers Paul in 2 Thess. 2:13 says: "God hath from 
 a beginning chosen you to salvation in sanctifi- 
 cation of spirit and belief of truth." Peter, 
 writing to Gentile believers, addresses them as 
 "Elect according to the foreknowledge of God 
 the Father, in sanctification of spirit unto obedi- 
 ence and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ. " 
 
 God had a perfect foreknowledge of his multi- 
 form plan of the ages, and now, according to 
 that foreknowledge, those who hear the Gospel 
 and believe are elected in sanctification of spirit 
 and belief of truth, and sprinkling of the blood 
 of Jesus Christ." 
 
 The process of sanctifying the spiritual na- 
 ture of men and the conditions which it in- 
 
80 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 volved, as well as the means under the Spirit 
 dispensation, were as definitely foreknown as 
 were the individuals who were personally fore- 
 known and arbitrarily saved under the former 
 dispensation. Under the old dispensation it 
 was the Father dealing with his Son with refer- 
 ence to those whom he had given him. Now it 
 is the Father and the Son dealing with all men 
 through them. Thus God says to men every- 
 where, "Give diligence to make your calling and 
 election sure.' 
 
 Here is an election to be made sure. They 
 were not exhorted merely to assure themselves 
 of the fact that they had been eternally elected 
 to salvation, but to make their election itself 
 sure. It is not necessary to say that no one will 
 be saved except those who have added all the 
 Christian graces mentioned in the foregoing 
 verses. It is only necessary to say that when 
 they are added their election is as sure as those 
 who were eternally elected. It is not necessary 
 to say, either, that when the election of these is 
 made sure they are possessed of every attribute 
 of character and inspiration bestowed on first- 
 born ones. It is only necessary to say that 
 whatever in the character of the eternally elect 
 which was essential to their salvation is be- 
 stowed on us in our election in sanctification of 
 spirit and belief of truth. 
 
Election in Sanctification. 81 
 
 Conditional election is just as sure and just as 
 complete when we comply with the requirements 
 as if it had been eternal and unconditional. 
 Here the divine government rests securely when 
 tested by reason. No man can complain of the 
 uncertainty of his election when he can make it 
 as sure as an eternal decree. A thing is often 
 less certain by being placed within the range of 
 secondary causes, but it is not less sure when 
 secured through a secondary cause. The man 
 into whom God breathed the breath of life was 
 no more conscious of living than he who is born 
 of a woman. Neither were the church of first- 
 born ones more conscious of their election and 
 consequent acceptance than we may be of our 
 acceptance and consequent election. It is not 
 that which is antecedent which satisfies the hun- 
 ger of the soul and fills one with the peace of 
 God, but the conscious ability to say: "I know 
 that my Redeemer liveth." If I can trim the 
 pencil with which I write as well with a pen- 
 knife, why should I wish it done in the factory? 
 If what God requires will make my election as 
 sure and make me as conscious of it as an eter- 
 nal decree, what else but selfishness and indo- 
 lence makes me praise him more for a decree? 
 Here is the point of the inspired apostolic ex- 
 hortation. God is bringing a world up from in- 
 fancy into the conscious activity of real freedom. 
 
82 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 We have illustrated to us his Fatherhood and his 
 reign, and now the elective franchise and also 
 the official relation of priest and king is placed 
 at our disposal with specific directions given. 
 Thus we are urged to give diligence, and if only 
 by accepting it as a free gift show ourselves 
 worthy of his grace. 
 
 Thus aliens are no more strangers to the com- 
 monwealth of Israel and to the covenant of 
 promise, but fellow-citizens with the saints and 
 of the household of God. And ye who were 
 sometime afar off are made nigh by the blood of 
 Christ. For he is our peace, who hath made 
 both one and broken down the middle wall of 
 partition between us. 
 
Christ at the Very Door. 83 
 
 CHAPTER XI. 
 
 CHRIST AT THE VERY DOOR. 
 
 "Behold I stand at the door and knock. If any man 
 hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him 
 and will sup with him and he with me." 
 
 Every problem of life and of religion is in- 
 volved in the fact that life has impinged upon 
 matter and assumed material form. The philos- 
 ophy of mind at once ceases to be wholly meta- 
 physical and the kingdom of heaven becomes 
 largely cosmogonal. Within the cosmic en- 
 closure, and apart from the pure world of mind, 
 we think, feel, and have a being. Within this 
 being of feeling and thought there are limitless 
 possibilities of joy or pain. 
 
 We may make it the habitation of every vile 
 and unclean thing, or it may be made the ban- 
 queting house of the King of Saints. Within, 
 and not without, is the scene of life's real strug- 
 gles. Here is the storm-center and the battle- 
 ground of the ages, and of every living soul. 
 Here, also, is the scene of all victory and the 
 treasure-house of all trophies, the seat of judg- 
 ment and the palace built for the coronation day. 
 "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God." 
 
84 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 "Behold I will send my messenger, and he shall 
 prepare the way for me; and the Lord, whom ye 
 seek, shall suddenly come to his temple. " He is 
 cosmothetic, but in one respect he is like unto 
 us, in the world only when within the cosmic 
 enclosure of personal thought, feeling, and be- 
 ing. ' 'For he worketh in us both to will and to 
 do." "Behold I stand at the door and knock." 
 
 To the earthly temple of conscious being there 
 is but one door. The five senses may be as 
 many avenues leading to it, but there is only one 
 door to the real house. At that door whatever 
 would enter must knock for admittance. Here 
 the armies of heaven halt in their hitherto tri- 
 umphant march and acknowledge the power of 
 a human soul to remain in darkness for ever. 
 And here the divine one yields to the right of 
 free personal choice. This right has never been 
 denied nor taken from one of earth's sorrowing 
 millions, and can never be till life ceases to be 
 personal. 
 
 There were an hundred and forty and four 
 thousand Jews who constituted the number of 
 the elect. But they were created in Christ 
 Jesus unto good works which God before or- 
 dained that they should walk in them. They 
 were the elder son who was ever with the Father. 
 They were as virgins, and followed the Lamb 
 whithersoever he went. They were first-borns 
 
Christ at the Very Door. 85 
 
 according to the election of grace. The plan of 
 free grace involved their salvation before they 
 were created, that in them God might illustrate 
 the value of offered mercy. Thus the citadel of 
 life has been compassed with a cloud of wit- 
 nesses in the fullness of the dispensation of 
 times. These, from whom no right of choice 
 had ever been taken away, because never given, 
 now walk, with their inspired example, through 
 the avenues of sense while Christ stands at the 
 very door and knocks for admittance. 
 
 When the door is opened Christ will enter into 
 the soul, and with the soul into the sweetest and 
 most intimate fellowship. When the United 
 States government entered into Cuba by arbi- 
 trary power the very best she could do was to 
 give the Cubans an example of free government. 
 The government must enter into the souls of the 
 Cubans themselves before they can know the 
 sweets of American freedom. By a predestined 
 plan and by arbitrary power Christ's government 
 has entered into the world. But if aliens from 
 the Commonwealth of Israel and the covenants 
 of promise would know him and the power of 
 his resurrection, if they would know the kingdom 
 of God, which is righteousness, joy, and peace 
 in the Holy Ghost, he must enter into them. 
 
 Here is God's cosmic kingdom in its last analy- 
 sis. It is Christianity individualized, when as 
 
86 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 an experiment it has crystallized in one's own 
 being of feeling and thought. It is Pentecost 
 reproduced within the limits of a single person, 
 and the lifting of his horizon to the measure of 
 the infinite. "I will sup with him and he with 
 me." An age of free grace has brought the 
 banquet after the marriage supper, while heav- 
 en's sovereign power waits upon human volition 
 and each sit together in sweetest fellowship and 
 communion. 
 
 Life no longer depends now upon material 
 form, upon which it first impinged and became 
 conscious of cosmic existence. "For to know 
 God is eternal life, and Jesus Christ whom he 
 hath sent." The life which was cosmic now be- 
 comes cosmothetic by reason of an indwelling 
 Christ. 
 
 That which ruled us through a sense of fear 
 is now ruled by us, and we become heirs to an 
 inheritance incorruptible, undefiled, and that 
 fadeth not away. Whether Paul, or Apollos, or 
 Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or things 
 present, or things to come, all are yours, and ye 
 are Christ's and Christ is God's. 
 
 That which in the ages of arbitrary election 
 and predestination opened a highway to the soul 
 of humanity has in an age of free grace made 
 the individual conscious of the fact that he is 
 the door-keeper to his own inner self. And 
 
Christ at the Very Door, 87 
 
 while shut up in darkness till born again one 
 may hear a voice which speaks to him. The 
 voice is not of himself, but speaks from without. 
 It appeals to his thirst for a higher communion 
 and to his desire for a heavenly light. In his 
 own will and in the darkness of his own little 
 home he must decide for himself. He who speaks 
 is responsible for what he proposes. He who 
 hears is responsible for how he decides. What 
 an hour and what a vision of beauty when the 
 psychic consciousness of an earthly being obeys 
 the voice of this divine visitor who comes to 
 abide. 
 
 They shall sit together in the heavenly places 
 and sup together from the very fountain of 
 knowledge. The soul which groped in the dark- 
 ness of its material home, which it loved because 
 it knew no other, now learns from its author 
 from whence it came and whither it shall return. 
 It is the victory by faith of mind over matter 
 when one learns that man shall not live by bread 
 alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of 
 the mouth of God. 
 
88 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 CHAPTER XII. 
 
 THE HOLY SPIRIT REVEALING THE CHRIST. 
 
 "He shall glorify me; for he shall receive of mine, and 
 shall show it unto you." Jno. 16:14. 
 
 As the manifestation of Jesus is the spirit of 
 prophecy, so the manifestation of the Christ to 
 and in the disciples of Jesus is the work of the 
 Holy Spirit when sent into the world as a per- 
 sonal agent of the enthroned son of Mary. Hu- 
 manity is now exalted legally, having impinged 
 upon the throne of power in the form of the 
 risen Christ, and the cause of humanity assumes 
 imperial form. The government of heaven as 
 established on earth, and called the kingdom of 
 heaven, fosters a oneness of that government in 
 heaven and earth, and in this it seeks to identify 
 redeemed humanity on earth with enthroned hu- 
 manity above. The Holy Spirit is the essential 
 as well as the personal agent through which and 
 through whom the assimilation of likeness is now 
 going on. 
 
 As a distinct person in the world the Holy 
 Spirit only knows his work. He is apart from 
 the government except to do the will of Christ. 
 
The Holy Spirit Revealing the Christ 89 
 
 In dealing with men he does not speak of him- 
 self, nor does he seek to reveal himself in any 
 sense. He is as much subject to the enthroned 
 humanity as the humanity was subject to him 
 when Jesus cast out devils by the Holy Ghost. 
 There has been a literal transfer to him who rose 
 from the dead of all authority in heaven and 
 earth, and he who commands us to preach the 
 Gospel to all nations commands the Spirit also. 
 
 The Holy Spirit has no authority now beyond 
 what is delegated to him. Our appeal is to the 
 Christ, and every mercy to us should be accept- 
 ed as if directly from him. It is his authority 
 and his character that clothes the work of the 
 Holy Spirit just as it is to affect us when we 
 profit by it. The Spirit does the work, but there 
 is nothing of himself in what he does. That 
 spirit which exalts the third person is another, 
 and is anti- Christ. 
 
 "He that hath my commandments and keepeth 
 them, he it is that loveth me; and he that loveth 
 me shall be loved of my Father and I will mani- 
 fest myself unto him." Following this is the 
 promise of the Comforter, who was to cause 
 them to remember the words of Christ. The 
 Holy Spirit does not make us forgetful of the 
 words and will of Christ and drive us headlong 
 into a frenzied worship of the third person. The 
 silent flow of the sap in the tree does not attract 
 
90 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 our attention from the fruit on the branches, nor 
 from the root of the matter. It simply takes the 
 substance from the root and silently conveys it 
 to the branches where the fruit appears. We 
 make no appeal to the sap in the tree for fruit. 
 We cultivate, rather, our familiarity with Mother 
 Earth. Many a fair tree in the garden of earth 
 has been blighted by tinkering with the silent 
 forces of nature. 
 
 The Holy Spirit in the individual is much like 
 revealed religion in the world. He is not reveal- 
 ing himself and explaining his work as he goes. 
 His work is like that of a terminal inflorescence. 
 It blossoms first at the apex, and then back to 
 the base of the stem. "Thou knowest not now, 
 but thou shalt know hereafter, " is organic in the 
 very constitution of the kingdom of heaven. 
 Herein is the philosophy of faith in Christ. And 
 this is the harmony between the development of 
 the Christ character in the individual and the 
 development of the Christ government in the 
 world. The internal assimilation of the Christ 
 character effects his world government and de- 
 termines our adaptation to it in form. Thus Paul 
 says: "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless 
 I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me, and the 
 life that I now live in the flesh I live by the faith 
 of the Son of God, who loved me and gave him- 
 self for me." 
 
The Holy Spirit Revealing the Christ. 91 
 
 The office work of the Holy Spirit in and 
 through the disciples of Jesus is but a divine in- 
 cident in the trend of the ages. Its purpose is 
 to glorify the Christ on the earth. It means the 
 triumph of the Christ character in all the rela- 
 tions of life, and the final triumph, therefore, of 
 mind over matter. Men are born of the Spirit 
 into a spiritual kingdom that they may be sus- 
 ceptible to the impressions of the world of pure 
 mind which are to effect the world's redemption, 
 when it shall no longer be subject to law, but to. 
 life. These impressions are conveyed to us 
 through the image of the Christ character. 
 The attention of the disciple is fixed upon the 
 attributes of his character as imaged in the life. 
 of the Son of Man, and not upon the Holy Spirit, 
 who is only the silent and invisible agent, though 
 active in the process. The emotions produced 
 in the disciple by the Holy Spirit in performing 
 his office work are incidental, and while he thus 
 becomes to us the promised Comforter, these 
 emotions are not to be our controlling desire. 
 
 As disciples of Christ we are to be made like 
 him, whether in sorrow or joy. "If any man 
 will come after me let him deny himself and take 
 up his cross and follow me." In the transforma- 
 tion of character the will of the believer and the 
 Holy Spirit are both subject to the Christ. 
 
 There is no example of praying to the Holy 
 
92 The Trend of tlte Ages. 
 
 Spirit nor for the Holy Spirit given in the his- 
 tory of the early disciples, and the practice of it 
 hinders rather than promotes his work in and 
 through us. Christ knows what he wants done 
 in us and how he wants it done. The promise of 
 the Holy Spirit is given to assure us of the cer- 
 tainty, and the divine nature of the comfort and 
 help we are to receive from him, and he prom- 
 ised that he would pray for the Spirit to be sent. 
 It is the same Spirit manifest in the trend of the 
 ages and directing the course of events in the 
 development of the kingdom of God, and fore- 
 shadowing the age following the advent of the 
 Son of Man. He is now imminent in the life of 
 every one who is loyal to the Christ. And it is 
 this divine imminence which is disclosing more 
 and more of the Christ character and thus pro- 
 claims the golden age to come when Christ shall 
 be all and in all. 
 
 The chief desire of the disciple is to be like 
 his Master, and the chief work of the Holy 
 Spirit is to glorify Christ. Hence, it is said: 
 "He shall receive of mine and shall show it unto 
 you." He teaches us what to pray for, not by 
 speaking of himself, but by showing us what he 
 has received of Christ. "He shall not speak of 
 himself, but what he shall hear that shall he 
 speak." Prayer may be made to the Father in 
 Christ's name for anything, with the assurance 
 
The Holy Spirit Revealing the Christ. 93 
 
 that whatsoever it be the Father will give it. 
 If we are loyal to the name of Christ, the Father 
 will send it by the Spirit, but let us remember 
 that the Holy Spirit is the agent of the Father 
 and the Son. He is their agent, to do their will 
 mechanically in us without reference to our 
 thought of him at the time, and the things which 
 he shows us fixes our minds and hearts more and 
 more upon the Saviour whose image we are to 
 bear. 
 
 Our minds shall be more and more enlight- 
 ened, not only as to this fact, but also as to the 
 character of him into whose likeness we are be- 
 ing fashioned. We shall be like him when we 
 shall see him as he is, and this shall be when the 
 Holy Spirit has completed his work in us. We 
 shall grow in graciousness as we grow in the 
 knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. 
 Heaven is coming earthward as we are growing 
 heavenward, and the time shall come when the 
 knowledge of Christ shall fill the earth as the 
 waters cover the sea. 
 
 4 'We ourselves groan within ourselves waiting 
 for the adoption, to- wit, the redemption of our 
 bodies," but that knowledge shall be with power 
 when he shall quicken our mortal bodies by his 
 Spirit that dwelleth in us. 
 
 "The creature was made subject to vanity, not 
 willingly, but by reason of him who hath sub- 
 
'94 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 jected the same in hope." Hence, "the earnest 
 expectation of the creature waiteth for the mani- 
 festation of the sons of God. " ■ 'For the creature 
 itself also shall be delivered from the bondage 
 of corruption into the glorious liberty of the 
 children of God." 
 
 As sure as there is a place where the spirits of 
 the just are made perfect, and as sure as the be- 
 liever is thus perfected by an entrance into that 
 place through the portals of death where he 
 gains a perfect knowledge of Christ, so sure will 
 human life be perfected here when the Christ 
 has been fully shown to men by the Spirit, and 
 the knowledge of Christ shall fill the earth. 
 Knowledge is power, and he said: "All power is 
 given unto me in heaven and earth." Power is 
 what he promised by the Holy Spirit. He shall 
 receive of mine, of my power, and show it unto 
 you. "But ye shall receive power, after that the 
 Holy Ghost is come upon you: and ye shall be 
 witnesses unto me both in Jerusalem, and in all 
 Judea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost 
 parts of the earth." 
 
 The apostolic witnessing will extend to the 
 uttermost parts of the earth, and it will be with 
 apostolic power. This power will become resi- 
 dent and natural in the believer as the world be- 
 comes familiar with its nature, character, and 
 purpose through the office of the Spirit. It will 
 
The Holy Spirit Revealing the Christ. 95 
 
 bring the time when we shall know as we are 
 known. Then we shall be like him, for we shall 
 see him as he is. 
 
96 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 CHAPTER XIII. 
 
 HUMAN FREEDOM HERE ON EARTH. 
 
 Is absolute freedom obtainable only in the 
 spirit world, or is the hope held out in the Gos- 
 pel to the world that now is? That we have not 
 yet attained to the fulfillment of God's earthly 
 purpose is evident, and, since the universal 
 trend has been away from the arbitrary, the 
 miraculous, and the predetermination of things 
 for man towards the determination of things by 
 the human mind and will, we may safely con- 
 clude that his ultimate purpose of earth's re- 
 demption involves an age of absolute freedom. 
 
 Revealed religion is not organization merely, 
 but a movement upon organized matter and 
 forces towards a great end. The religion of the 
 Bible finds man a psychophysical being. In this 
 is found the necessity and the possibility of gen- 
 uine religion. The soul is "entangled in the 
 meshes of vicious cosmogonic consciousness and 
 fettered by the appetites and laws of physical 
 want and desire. Religion is not merely cosmo- 
 thetic. 
 
 While it seeks to regulate the life that now is, 
 it promises the redemption of the soul from its 
 
Human Freedom Here On Earth. 97 
 
 subordinate relation to the material form in 
 which it has been enslaved. 
 
 It is not liberty merely which is promised in 
 the Gospel, but absolute freedom, "If the Son 
 make you free ye shall be free indeed." It is 
 the freedom of the victor, and not merely the 
 liberty of one released. 
 
 Our bodies are the temples of God, and we, 
 his children, are to be given the freedom of the 
 temple. Those who have yielded themselves 
 unto God in the trial of their faith will now find 
 their members subject unto them as instruments 
 of righteousness. 
 
 We are now living in an age of constraint 
 when the Gospel is the power of God. We are 
 removed by the advance of God's multiform plan 
 away from the age of arbitrary miracle and legal 
 restraint to where the historical interpretation 
 becomes prophetic. As the hundred and forty 
 and four thousand on Mount Zion were prophetic 
 of an innumerable company of bloodwashed, so 
 the liberty of the children of God into which we 
 are called by the constraining power of the Gos- 
 pel is prophetic of a golden age of absolute 
 freedom. How far one may conquer by keeping 
 the body under now may not be evenly deter- 
 mined in the experience of all Christians; but 
 as sure as the Gospel has brought an age of lib- 
 erty, so surely will the Spirit bring an age of 
 
98 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 absolute freedom. The ages of miracle and 
 legal restraint prepared the world for an age of 
 Gospel constraint and what is called the right of 
 choice; and this will bring the age when men 
 shall be free. 
 
 Absolute freedom in this psychomaterialism 
 must be freedom of soul, mind, and body. The 
 soul must be free from sin. The mind must be 
 free from fear, and the body must be free from 
 destruction. As long as the soul is hampered 
 by positive laws of overt action in the gov- 
 ernment of the body and life, whether by re- 
 straint or constraint, it is not free. The time 
 must come when the power involving the right 
 of choice is resident in the soul. As long as the 
 mind is fettered by fear, whether as to the de- 
 termination of the will and its moral account- 
 ability, or as to the overt acts of the body 
 involving the physical appearance of danger, it 
 cannot be free. The time must come when the 
 right of choice in harmony with the soul's desire 
 will involve no sense of accountability, and when 
 the position of the body will produce no thought 
 of danger. 
 
 As long as the body is subject to the laws of 
 material being it cannot be free. The time must 
 come when it is subject not to law, but to life. 
 Soul, mind, and body must be made harmonious 
 in the one experience that man lives not by 
 
Human Freedom Here On Earth. 99 
 
 bread, but by the Word which proceedeth out of 
 the mouth of God. Thus the ego is in the 
 spirit; and thus men will live in the spirit and 
 walk in the spirit, and not in the flesh. This is 
 the ideal of personal religion, and as individuals 
 have experimental foretastes of what is in re- 
 serve for them, so the world has had historical 
 foretastes of what is promised in the golden age 
 to come. Herein is a world-wide application of 
 the statement: "That was not first which was 
 spiritual, but that which is natural; and after- 
 ward that which is spiritual." 
 
 The battle is on, and the psychophysical be- 
 ing of man is the scene of what seems to be 
 a deadly strife, but while the old man shall be 
 crucified with his deeds the body shall not be 
 destroyed. God in his manifold wisdom is deal- 
 ing with the problem of life impinged upon mat- 
 ter, and the success of each dispensation of the 
 past is a renewed promise of victory for his ulti- 
 mate purpose in the final and absolute freedom 
 of life in man. Sin has abounded by the law 
 that it might appear sin. Sin has been washed 
 away by the blood of Christ, and now we look 
 for a new heaven and a new earth wherein dwell- 
 eth righteousness. The love of God is being 
 perfected in us by the Gospel, which is the con- 
 straining power of God, and fear is being cast 
 
 out. And the time is coming when the stars that 
 l.ofC- 
 
100 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 hold their festivals around the midnight throne 
 and mock us with their unapproachable glory 
 shall be spread out before us like the islands that 
 slumber in the sea. 
 
 Psychic consciousness which has so long felt 
 after God has found him working in us to will 
 and to do, and the hand that is now reaching out 
 with feelings of uncertainty through the mist of 
 material problems will soon master our earthly 
 situation. The trees which have grown only in 
 the streets of Paradise will then flourish on both 
 shores of the River of Life; and its leaves will 
 heal the nations who were driven from it in our 
 federal head. That which is natural shall have 
 passed away when that which is spiritual is 
 come, and then shall Simon Peter walk the sea 
 without fear of wind or wave. 
 
Prophecy in Experience of Holiness. 101 
 
 CHAPTER XIV. 
 
 PROPHECY IN EXPERIENCE OF HOLINESS. 
 
 Holiness is experienced by whomsoever it is 
 possessed. Sometimes the experience partakes 
 of the historical character of Christ, its author 
 and source. Sometimes it is of the present only, 
 and partakes only of the cleansing efficacy of his 
 blood through the direct agency of the Holy 
 Spirit. Sometimes it partakes of both, and be- 
 comes prophetic of what humanity shall be in 
 the earth's golden age to come. The position of 
 some that perfect or complete holiness is the 
 normal experience made possible from Pentecost 
 on is a fallacy. That was the world's historical 
 foretaste in approximate type. As a prophecy 
 of what is to be, this type has entered into the 
 hopes and aspirations of believers, and is trans- 
 muted into a real experience. 
 
 This real experience is a personal foretaste of 
 that given historically to the world at Pentecost, 
 and is a sure word of prophecy to which we do 
 well to take heed as unto a light which shineth 
 in a dark place. But let us remember that while 
 it is a real light it shineth as yet only in a dark 
 
102 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 place. "When that which is perfect is come, 
 that which is in part shall be done away." 
 
 Of all the inspired writers, Paul has said most 
 of holiness, and we take it largely as an index to 
 his experience. But in this, as in other things, 
 we must rightly divide the word of truth if we 
 would know the real truth as it is in Christ. If 
 we fail to do this we will find Paul's experience 
 as contradictory as predestination and free grace 
 when applied to the same people and time. 
 
 Let us keep in mind that God's dealings with 
 the race has been dispensational in the progress 
 of one great movement. Wherever the border 
 line of a dispensation has been visible, it is 
 marked by miraculous displays of arbitrary 
 power. And while the movement is one in its 
 trend towards one great end, its dispensational 
 character is outlined in the cosmothetic experi- 
 ences of the individual. Thus it will be easy to 
 separate the tangled web of Paul's experience; 
 and then, with the prophetic eye of our own 
 partial and prophetic holiness we shall behold 
 the glory which is promised in the golden age 
 to come. 
 
 There are three distinct types of holiness out- 
 lined in the experience of Paul, as there are 
 three distinct dispensations in the cosmothetic 
 movement of the kingdom of heaven. Accord- 
 ing to the law, by which no man could be justi- 
 
Prophecy in Experience of Holiness. 103 
 
 fied, and which was given that sin might abound, 
 or appear sin, he saw himself blameless, and in 
 all good conscience towards God; but in which, 
 having crossed the dispensational line, he felt 
 himself the chief of sinners. As a believer, 
 keeping the old man under, he struggles with 
 psychophysical consciousness, and cries, "Oh 
 wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me 
 from this body of death. But as a child of hope, 
 having felt the power of Christ's risen life, which 
 foretells an age of perfect freedom, he breaks 
 forth in actual triumph, saying: "Thanks be to 
 God who giveth us the victory through our Lord 
 Jesus Christ." I have seen Christians living in 
 first one and then the other of these dispensa- 
 tional phases of Christian experience, and I have 
 no hesitancy in saying that Christ means for us 
 to make the latter our religious habit until man- 
 ifesting the divinest optimism it will impinge 
 upon the social order of things as an house not 
 made with hands. 
 
 The prophetic experiences through which the 
 Holy Spirit is now carrying us towards the con- 
 summation of the ages are both psychic and cos- 
 mic, both metaphysical and physiological, and 
 they will be until mind has completely and eter- 
 nally triumphed over material form. 
 
 But while the victory of the soul in Christ is 
 certain, the war is real, and the experiences of 
 
104 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 those in the struggle are real. One pressed by 
 the common foe into a backslidden life will ex- 
 perience the fear and forebodings of one under a 
 dispensation of law with its curse hanging over 
 him. One grappling with the problems of faith 
 and courageously battling for the right in 
 Christ's name will feel that he is keeping the old 
 man under. While sometimes in moments or 
 days of ecstasy one hardly knows whether he is 
 in the body or out of the body. 
 
 Some time we shall be able to decide this ques- 
 tion intelligently and know that we are in the 
 body without the experience of recurring war- 
 fare with it. Humanity will some day get its 
 bearings on the heights of Pisgah without re- 
 turning any more to the Valley of Jehosephat; 
 for the final victory for personal and experi- 
 mental holiness shall be contemporaneous with 
 the visible triumph of the kingdom of God. 
 
 The signs of our times are pointing in that di- 
 rection as never before, and the history of a day 
 is big with prophecy of the golden morrow. 
 The diatribe of nations is loaded with dynamite, 
 and above the moan of the ocean's surge the 
 crash of arms speaks in the thunder tones of the 
 cannon's mouth which tells of Armageddon. But 
 the dynamic force which has given the world its 
 trend towards the final triumph of holiness is the 
 Christ Almighty. 
 
Prophecy in Experience of Holiness. 105 
 
 And through him the silent forces of nature 
 are organizing more and more. Men and women 
 are feeling more and more that he who revealed 
 himself in breaking bread, and then vanished, 
 will soon be the manifest bread of life. The ex- 
 periences of holy communion with the Christ are 
 already in many places manifesting him who 
 bore our sicknesses, and who healeth our dis- 
 eases. Spurgeon, and Moody, and Gordon, and 
 Simpson, and many others, have given the 
 world glimpses of a new world wherein dwelleth 
 righteousness and the heart-beat of time brings 
 us nigh unto the golden day. 
 
 With mobs, and riot, and anarchy, and strikes, 
 and threatenings on the one hand, and a mighty 
 hungering, and thirsting, and reading the Word 
 of God anew on the other, men are everywhere 
 panting for freedom. Some are still grappling 
 with legal ideas of reform and groaning under 
 burdens intolerable to be borne. But there is a 
 rapidly growing number who are climbing the 
 heights of experimental holiness, where they 
 will stand with calm assurance in the sunlight 
 which already breaks upon the hill-tops while 
 the cloud-burst threatens those in the valley be- 
 low. 
 
 To Paul these heights of experience were as 
 real as if the day of God had come, and as an 
 inspired man he spoke of them accurately, but 
 
106 The Trend of the Ayes. 
 
 speaking as for himself alone he shows by other 
 experiences that he had not arrived at a perma- 
 nent state of perfect holiness. We are right in 
 taking any one of Paul's expressions of his own 
 experience as the ground of a doctrinal proposi- 
 tion, but we must not apply that doctrinal prop- 
 osition too broadly as covering the whole of our 
 dispensation. They are all dispensational; but 
 they involve the nature of all the dispensations 
 of revealed religion, as the whole of a great 
 movement involves all of its parts. So have 
 the experiences of Christians since; only that we 
 are again approximating the heights of apostolic 
 joy. The prophetic song of apostolic thanks- 
 giving has been projected through the centuries 
 and is beginning to break forth in the acclaim of 
 a world-wide redemption. 
 
He Is Coming and Will Come. 107 
 
 CHAPTER XV. 
 
 HE IS COMING AND WILL, COME. 
 
 The final coming of the Christ is vouchedsaf e 
 to us in a more sure word of prophecy; where- 
 unto we do well to take heed as unto a light that 
 shineth in a dark place. For God, who com- 
 mandeth the light to shine out of darkness, hath 
 shined in our hearts to give the light of the 
 knowledge of glory of God in the face of Jesus 
 Christ. 
 
 If the religion of Christ meant organization 
 merely, and the church a band of people looking 
 for the personal appearance of the Saviour, it 
 would be of far less consequence to the social 
 order of things than it is. World-wide evangel- 
 ization means the reign of the Christ in the social 
 relations of this world. He has come once in the 
 fleshly form of a person to put away sin by the 
 sacrifice of himself, thus securing to men the 
 power of his risen life through the eternal 
 Spirit. Now the Lord is that Spirit; a-nd where 
 the Spirit of the Lord is there is liberty. ' 'And 
 we all with open face, beholding as in a glass 
 the glory of the Lord, are changed into the 
 
108 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of 
 the Lord." 
 
 Religion is a great spiritual movement upon 
 the world's social order, and as it impinges more 
 and more upon the social nature of the individual 
 soul, it brings the Christ more and more into the 
 relations of life. All shall be changed into the 
 same image till the light that appeareth in the 
 East shall shine even unto the West. It is to 
 give the light of the knowledge of the glory of 
 God in the face of Jesus Christ, and this knowl- 
 edge is to fill the earth as the waters fill the sea. 
 
 The broader hope for this world as set out in 
 the Gospel is to know and recognize the Christ 
 in the relations of life as we know his forgive- 
 ness and helpfulness within. That men may 
 attain unto this perfection is to apprehend that 
 for which they are apprehended of Jesus Christ. 
 This is the prize of our high calling for which 
 we press towards the mark. 
 
 This simply means that Christ is sometime to 
 be our life-sphere. He is to come in every rela- 
 tion of life and displace the old with the new. 
 When the world shall know him and the power 
 of his resurrection, he will be the soul of society 
 as certainly as he is now the life of individual 
 character. As individuals put on the new man 
 which is renewed in knowledge after the image 
 of Christ, the social relations of Greek and Jew 
 
He Is Coming and Will Gome. 109* 
 
 will become the world-wide re-incarnation and 
 Christ will be all and in all. 
 
 Thus Christ has been coming through the ages, 
 and thus he will continue to come until he shall 
 fill the earth with his manifest presence and 
 power. "In him was life, and the life was the 
 light of men. That was the true light that light- 
 eth every man that cometh into the world. " That 
 light hath shined into our hearts to give us a 
 knowledge of the glory of God. This light is 
 resident in the believer, because Christ liveth in 
 us. When men shall mortify their members 
 which are upon the earth and put on the new 
 man renewed in knowledge, then in all the rela- 
 tions of life Christ who is our life shall appear 
 and we shall appear with him in glory. 
 
 If the manifestation of Jesus was the spirit of 
 prophecy, the manifestations of the Christ in 
 the social relations of life will be the crowning 
 glory of the Son of Mary. It means the coming 
 of a time when God's ultimate purpose of human 
 freedom shall have reached all the avenues of 
 human intercourse and subordinated all the rules 
 of earthly government to the sanctified will of a 
 redeemed race in whom Christ is all and all. 
 
 In that day ye shall ask what ye will and it 
 shall be done unto you. Now we ask and receive 
 not, because we ask amiss, but in that age no 
 man will ask amiss. We are taught now to imi- 
 
110 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 tate in Christ's name what shall be universally 
 realized in that day. "Give to him that asketh 
 thee, and from him that would borrow of thee 
 turn not away." 
 
 The channels of commerce and the avenues of 
 trade are to be swayed and changed by the emi- 
 nence and power of the coming Christ. The 
 Christ life and character will materialize in the 
 broadest agrarianism. Capital and labor will be 
 on equal terms when Christ shall come in the 
 social order and there will be no trespass. Men 
 will have learned that it is more blessed to give 
 than it is to receive and there will be no want. 
 He that humbleth himself sha'l then be exalted, 
 and the will of God will be done on earth as nat- 
 urally, and in the freedom of choice, as it is now 
 done by angels in heaven. 
 
 The realizations of the golden age to come are 
 outlined in the psychological experiences of the 
 best Christians to-day just as surely as our times 
 were foretold in the prophecies of those who 
 reached the summits of their dispensation and 
 time. 
 
 The Christ was coming then, and the Christ is 
 coming now. The apostles were inspired as 
 were the prophets of old, and their prophecies 
 accord with the aspirations and tendencies of 
 spiritual disposition experienced under the con- 
 straining power of God through the Gospel and 
 
He Is Coming and Will Come. Ill 
 
 by the Holy Spirit. These personal ecstatic ex- 
 periences of aspiring hope are to us a sure word 
 of prophecy which shineth out in the relations 
 of life, and they will shine more and more unto 
 the perfect day. 
 
 Wickedness among the wicked will wax worse 
 and worse as the sham and show of legalism 
 fostered the wickedness of Pharisaical hate at 
 the close of the old dispensation. But with an 
 increasing number in prophetic touch with the 
 source and fountain of light, the consummation 
 of the day of his coming will in the diatribe of 
 nations and the revolution of kindreds and peo- 
 ples leap upon the world as a thief in the night. 
 This essential coming of the Christ will be the 
 crown of his personal appearance in that day, 
 and this is the substance of the world's hope to- 
 day. 
 
 Jesus of Nazareth was the ideal man, but the 
 best of his followers could not then see him as 
 he is. "But when he shall appear we shall be 
 like him, for we shall see him as he is." The 
 reason why it did not then appear what we shall 
 be was that their psychic vision was holden by 
 the laws of physical necessity so that they could 
 not see him as he is, guiding the kingdom of 
 heaven as a movement that cometh not by ob- 
 servation. But when we are made free from the 
 laws of physical necessity by the substantial 
 
112 The Trend of the Ages. 
 
 coming of the Christ, and the relations of life 
 have been corrected by an age of trusting him, 
 our line of spiritual vision will be broadened by 
 what we are in him to see him as he really is. 
 Then at his appearance we shall see that we are 
 like him. Then shall we know as we are known, 
 and he will say to us as he said to John when he 
 saw it afar off: "It is done. I am Alpha and 
 Omega, the beginning and the end." 
 
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