oyr s *rv^ ' YT, BM^nE^^^KJWlM 
 
 x^V^-'^XV ;-::* ";.^ 
 
 ' ^-''V^-'.^^v " : J/ 
 '^;;- X --*^/v -:>\ '! V 
 
 in i 
 
 tn 7 //ft iJf? : .i -< HlX\&
 
 THE CEEED OF THE CHKISTIAN.
 
 THE 
 
 CREED OF THE CHRISTIAN. 
 
 BY 
 
 CHARLES GORE, M.A. 
 
 OF THE COMMUNITY OP THE RESURRECTION, 
 
 CANON OF WESTMINSTER, 
 LATE FELLOW OF TRINITY COLLEQE, OXFORD. 
 
 1898. 
 
 LONDON: WELLS GARDNER, DARTON & CO. 
 
 3, PATERNOSTER BUILDINGS, E.C. ; 
 
 AND 44, VICTORIA STREET, S.W.
 
 (Fourth Edition.) 
 1898.
 
 PREFACE TO GOODWILL SEBIES. 
 
 IT is proposed to issue a series of little books under the above 
 title consisting of articles already published in the Magazine, 
 Good/will. I am glad to begin the series with Canon Gore's 
 articles, which have already helped so many people to a true 
 appreciation of the meaning and worth of the Christian 
 Dogmas. If there is a demand for this little book, I shall 
 proceed to publish the excellent articles on the Italian Masters 
 in the National Gallery, by Rev. A. S. Hewlett, and the Hearts 
 of Oak, by the Rev. F. G. Phillips. These will be illustrated. 
 
 JAMES ADDERLEY, 
 
 Editor of Goodwill.
 
 PEEPACE. 
 
 THIS book consists of articles entitled Fundamentals, pub- 
 lished in GOODWILL in 1894-5. I have assented to their 
 republication, and have revised them and made some ad- 
 ditions to them for that purpose, simply because they 
 appear to have been found useful by Christians of different 
 kinds anxious for fuller information about the meaning of 
 
 their religion. 
 
 C. G. 
 
 St. Cecilia's Day, 1895.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 PAOB 
 
 What are Dogmas? 1 
 
 The Fatherhood of God 6 
 
 What are Christian Dogmas ? ... . ... 14 
 
 A Dialogue on the Holy Trinity ... ... ... 18 
 
 Revelation, or the Word of God 26 
 
 Thb Incarnation of the Son of God ... ... ... 35 
 
 Sin and Redemption ... ... ... ... ... 40 
 
 The Atonement ... ... ... ... ... ... 47 
 
 The Holy Spirit The Giver of New Life 55 
 
 The Bible in the Church 61 
 
 The Inspiration of Scripture ... 6T 
 
 The Church the Household of Grace 74 
 
 Faith and Grace 79 
 
 The Holy Eucharist or Holy Communion 85 
 
 The Apostolic Succession ... ... ... ... 91 
 
 Our Unseen Enemies and Friends ... ... ... 97 
 
 The Other Side of Dsath . 10?
 
 THE CREED OF THE CHRISTIAN. 
 
 arc Dogmas? 
 
 Tho* truths in. manhood darkly join, 
 Deep-seated in our mystic frame, 
 We yield all blessing to the name 
 
 Of Kim that made them current coin : 
 
 For wisdom dealt with mortal powers 
 Where truth in closest words shall fail, 
 When truth embodied in a tale 
 
 Shall enter in at lowly doors. 
 
 was once a wise man caDed Socrates. He was 
 an Athenian, and the people of Athens were in- 
 tellectual and philosophical to a degree never yet equalled 
 among men. Naturally therefore they were fond of 
 argument, and held the power of brilliant and persuasive 
 speech in the highest esteem. 
 
 But intellectual and brilliant as they were, they were not 
 in the habit of thinking or speaking exactly. They did not 
 know what they did know, and what they did not. They 
 mistook a well-sounding argument for a real truth. This
 
 2 What are Dogmas ? 
 
 Socrates saw, and he felt it to be his mission to convince 
 his fellow-citizens of ignorance, to teach them to define 
 their thoughts and to use words exactly. If they could 
 get into the habit of exact thought, he saw they would be 
 able to distinguish between a merely plausible argument 
 and the truth, and would begin to make real progress in 
 knowledge. So he would always question men about the 
 words they used. He would stop the flow of some 
 eloquent speech about courage, with the question, 
 " What is courage ? " and very soon it appeared, under 
 his cross-questioning that the eloquent speaker had very 
 vague ideas what courage really means. If he merely 
 cared for his reputation, he grew very cross at being thus 
 shown up : but if he was a man sincerely anxious to get at 
 the truth, it made him serious and careful, and he began 
 to make progress. 
 
 Now, we need a Nineteenth-Century Socrates. We 
 are, many of us, keenly interested in intellectual questions, 
 in politics, social matters, or religion. We are captivated 
 by a ready speaker with his flow of words. We catch up 
 ideas, and repeat them. But we do not think exactly ; 
 we do not use words exactly ; so we do not see through 
 fallacies; we do not distinguish true arguments from 
 sophistries. 
 
 I will take an example. We often in religious dis- 
 cussions hear or read of denunciations of dogmas : 
 "barren dogmas!" "mere dogmas!" " ecclesiastical dog- 
 mas ! " " incomprehensible dogmas ! " " irrational dogmas ! " 
 " dogmas that a plain man can'i see the use of ! " Now, 
 in this sort of language there is great confusion of thought, 
 and therefore it leads to no real progress. A Socrates
 
 who should cross-examine one of us, would convince him 
 that the evil was not the " dogma " itself, but the 
 misuse of it. Every good thing can be misused even 
 liberty. So can dogma. But it is a good thing misused, 
 none the less. 
 
 A dogma is a (supposed) truth, stated in such a plain 
 way that it can be used as a tenet, or part of the creed of 
 a society of men, and be taken for granted in all the affairs 
 of life, and serve as common standard of reference. Thus 
 the statement which forms the basis of the American 
 Declaration of Independence, and so of the Constitution 
 of the United States the statement that "All men are 
 born free and equal " is a dogma. It is a statement of a 
 (supposed) truth, turned into the tenet of a society of 
 men. It has become a social creed. No society of men 
 can get on without ideas that are in this way taken for 
 granted. Thus it is evident that what is evil is not 
 dogma, but some misuse of dogma. 
 
 A religious dogma, for example, may be (1) untrue, or 
 ill-grounded and unwarranted, or (2) it may be useless and 
 inapplicable to human life, or (3) it may be uttered by a 
 teacher in such a way as not to commend it to the 
 conscience and reason of his hearers. 
 
 If it is untrue or uncertain, it ought not to be uttered 
 as a tenet of the Christian society : if it is really inap- 
 plicable to human life, it is certainly not a tenet of 
 that most practical of all societies the Christian Church : 
 if it is uttered offensively, the teacher needs to be taught 
 how to "commend himself to every man's conscience." 
 But all this misuse of dogma does not come near to 
 touching its real value, rightly used.
 
 4 WTiat are Dogmas ? 
 
 In fact, nothing is so necessary for human society as 
 the common recognition of truths, converted into maxims 
 or accepted principles to inspire and regulate the common 
 life, 
 
 Darius, the king is said to have summoned all his great 
 men from out his vast empire to decide which of three 
 young men gave the best answer to the question, " What 
 is the strongest thing in the world ? " The first wrote, 
 " Wine is the strongest." The second wrote, "The king is 
 strongest." The third wrote, "Women are strongest 
 but above all things, Truth beareth away the victory." 
 
 Each in turn tried to prove his case. But the last 
 proposition finally commended itself to the judgment of 
 the assembled host. "And all the people then shouted, 
 and said, ' Great is the Truth and doth prevail.' " 1 
 
 This is a right decision. In our days we do not need 
 to be convinced that wine or, at any rate, beer and spirits 
 has a great deal of power ; nor do we need convincing 
 that kings or, at any rate, governments can do a great 
 deal. Nor do we need convincing of the power of women. 
 But we do need to remind ourselves of the social power of 
 accepted truths. Great is the truth and prevails. 
 
 Read the early chapters of the Acts those early 
 chapters which Thomas Carlyle contrasts in their effective 
 brevity with the wordy volumes of the French political 
 philosopher. , Bead those few chapters with their fasci- 
 nating account of the early Christian community. Why 
 did they live so effectively, so socially, so fraternally, so as 
 to irresistibly attract men and women to join them ? 
 Because they Relieved religious truths in common, and 
 * Esdras iv. 41.
 
 What are Dogmas ? 
 
 with all their hearts ; they " continued stedfastly in the 
 apostles' doctrine " ; they had (in other words) a creed, or 
 accepted dogmas. 
 
 Thus they believed that God was their Father ; that 
 He had given His Son in their nature to redeem them ; that 
 He had sent his Holy Spirit to dwell in their hearts and to 
 give them both knowledge of His Name and power in 
 human life ; that they had been born again in Holy 
 Baptism, and were fed in Holy Communion all together, as 
 brothers in one common family, with the divine and human 
 life of the Son of Man. These were their dogmas. They 
 are still ours. They are called the doctrines of the Hoi} 
 Trinity, of the Incarnation, the Atonement, the Sacra- 
 ments, the Church. 
 
 Will you give your attention to such a short account 
 as you will find in this book of these and such-like funda- 
 mental truths of the Christian religion ? 
 
 If I can help any men or women to see the meaning 
 of these dogmas (1) That they are true and can be 
 proclaimed on reasonable grounds ; (2) that they have a 
 direct application in human life ; (3) that they should 
 commend themselves to a (good) man's conscience I am 
 sure I shall have done them a service. 
 
 For we need accepted religious truths that is, dogmas 
 to give power to our common life.
 
 3FattjerIjoo6 of 
 
 I say to thee, do thou repeat 
 
 To the first man thou mayest meet 
 
 In lane, highway, or open street 
 
 That he and we and all men move 
 
 Under a canopy of love 
 
 As broad as the blue sky above. 
 
 * * # # 
 
 That we on divers shores now cast 
 Shall meet, our perilous voyage past 
 All in our Father's house at last. 
 
 ANE elementary dogma of the Christian religion is the 
 ^ Fatherhood of God. In popular idea it is the very 
 opposite of a dogma. Nothing seems less to savour of 
 " dogmatic religion " than the truth that God is our 
 Father, and all we are brethren. For the present, how- 
 ever, we will leave aside the question, whether or not it 
 is a dogmatic truth, and betake ourselves to the con- 
 sideration of its meaning. For, in fact, though it seems 
 the most familiar idea, and the most certainly Christian, 
 Christian people are very often found to be sadly puzzled 
 as to its real meaning. In part, this is due to the 
 influence in England of the great but misleading teacher 
 Calvin of Geneva, who led people to believe that multi- 
 tudes of human beings are from the moment of their 
 creation appointed by the absolute will of God to ever- 
 lasting condemnation. In part, on the other hand, it is
 
 The Fatherhood of God. 7 
 
 due to the loose and unscriptural notions of those who 
 are sometimes called Latitudinarians, who would rob the 
 doctrine of God's Fatherhood of all its severity. 
 
 Now in a certain sense the Fatherhood of God or Gods 
 is a truth held in almost all religions. All men tend to 
 believe that they derive their life from their God. St. 
 Paul could quote the Greek poet to the Athenians as 
 saying that " we are all the offspring of God : MI that is 
 to say, that God is the Father of all men. But that we 
 derive our life from God though, in a sense, it leads on 
 to all else is by itself but a little part of what Christians 
 mean by His Fatherhood. 
 
 I. 
 
 By God's Fatherhood, we mean His Impartial Love. 
 Back behind all in this world which seems so cruel, so 
 unjust, so unequal, Christians believe there beats the 
 heart of a Father, a heart of impartial love. This truth is 
 constantly stated or implied in the New Testament. 
 " God is love," and " With God is no respect of persons." 
 " Ye call on the Father, Who, without respect of persons, 
 judgeth according to every man's work." 2 A very 
 pleasant idea, this impartial love of God we sometimes 
 feel inclined to say but it is contrary to plain facts. 
 One man is much tempted; another hardly at 'all. 
 One man has every kind of advantage in life; another 
 every drawback. One man knows the whole Christian 
 truth; another is in what is called, "heathen darkness." 
 And yet it is supposed that the Christian faith is 
 necessary to salvation. Is all this justice ? Is all this 
 impartial love ? 
 
 l Acts xvii. 28-29. 2 1 John iv. 87 Acts x. 34 } 1 Peter i. 17.
 
 8 The Fatherhood of God 
 
 Well, I will not examine this sort of objection in de- 
 tail, but I will take it as it stands. 
 
 Xor will I discuss for the moment why there should 
 be all this inequality among men, or to what extent it is 
 God's will, and to what extent, on the other hand, man's 
 sin has brought it about. But, taking all the manifest 
 inequality of the world as it stands, I ask, does it 
 contradict the idea of God's impartial love ? No, it does 
 not ; because God views each man and judges him in the 
 light of all his advantages and disadvantages. He thinks 
 a good deal of .,. kind words from one whose temper is 
 naturally irritable, and very little of the same words from 
 one who finds it easy to be pleasant. He makes light of 
 the temperance of a respectable gentleman who would 
 shiver at the bare idea of being drunk, but He highly 
 esteems the temperance of one whose circumstances are 
 full of temptations to drink. In a word, in forming His 
 estimate of us, God never forgets what our natures and 
 opportunities are, and he judges us according to them. 
 
 No doubt, one reason why our nature and our oppor- 
 tunities are so unequal is because of the divine system 
 of election, that is, because God chooses special people 
 for special privileges. But does this election mean 
 favouritism? Most certainly not. The Jews were the 
 "elect" among all the ancient nations for the knowledge of 
 the true God, but did this mean they were "favourites " ? 
 Hear the prophets repudiate the idea. " You only," says 
 God by the mouth of Amos, " You only have I known of 
 all the families of the earth, therefore will I visit upon 
 you all your iniquities."^ This is a truth of which the 
 3 Amos iii. 2.
 
 The Fatherhood of God, 9 
 
 Old and New Testaments are full, and a truth which the 
 elect are sadly unwilling to learn that in proportion to 
 our election is our responsibility. One man is elect to 
 riches, another to some special power, such as the gift of 
 ready speech or of singing, another to a good natural 
 disposition, others (as Christians) to the true knowledge 
 of God in Christ. And each sort of election brings its 
 corresponding responsibility. On the other hand, no man 
 is responsible for any truth or gift which has not been 
 entrusted to him. The heathen, for instance, who have 
 not known the Gospel, are not responsible for their 
 ignorance of it. God is a Father a Father of impartial 
 love. He " will have all men to be saved," and we can be 
 quite certain that none will fall short of salvation for any 
 deficiency in capacity or in opportunity. God's Father- 
 hood means this impartial love, and He has eternity to 
 work in to fill up to the full measure of satisfaction those 
 natures which in this life have seemed to have but poor 
 chances, yet have made the best of the chances they had. 
 
 n. 
 
 God's Fatherhood means His Individual Love. With 
 God every man counts for one, and nobody counts 
 for more than one. This does not mean that all men are 
 meant to be equal in position, for we are naturally unequal 
 in capacity; so much so that, as we are often told, if we 
 were all made equal in position on Monday morning, we 
 should be unequal again by Saturday night. But it does 
 mean that all men are equally valuable in God's sight, 
 and that He wills that everyone should have a real oppor- 
 tunity of making the best of himself. In God's sight no
 
 10 The Fatherhood of God. 
 
 man is lost in the crowd, and God, Who can see what goes 
 on in each man's heart, has eternity to carry out His 
 Divine designs. This is a truth which in this disordered 
 and crowded world it is difficult to keep in mind. God 
 really loves each man, as if there were none other in the 
 world to love. " Say not thou in thine heart : I shall not 
 be remembered from above; for what am I among so 
 many people, and what is my soul among such an infinite 
 number of creatures." 4 God creates and loves and has 
 His eye on, not all only, but each. Does it seem im- 
 possible to believe this? Think, then, how in our own 
 case, as knowledge advances and broadens, it becomes also 
 less vague or general, and more particular. The school- 
 master knows his boys better than a stranger. That is, 
 he knows them more particularly. So it is with action. 
 The good surgeon, for instance, differs from the bad 
 surgeon, because he acts less by mere general rules, and 
 with more individual insight into particular cases. Carry 
 this thought up and apply it to the perfect God. God's 
 perfection means that the universal range and scope of the 
 Divine knowledge and operations, as over all creatures 
 whatsoever, diminishes nothing from their particular appli- 
 cation. God knows you and me, and acts upon you and 
 me, as if there were none other in the world for Him to 
 know and act upon. And this truth of God's individual 
 love, Jesus Christ specially connects with His Name of 
 Father. 
 
 For all that a Calvin may have said then, God's 
 Fatherhood means His impartial and individual love for 
 every human being. 
 
 * Ecclus. xvi. 37. 6 e.g., Matt. x. 29-30.
 
 The Fatherhood of God, 11 
 
 m. 
 
 But it means also His Jealous Love for all that 
 Latitudinarians may say. 
 
 Jealousy is mostly used in a bad sense, of the ex- 
 aggerated claims which one man may make on another 
 husband on wife, friend on friend. But there is 
 a right sort of jealousy, a more or less exclusive 
 claim of a right sort ; such, for instance, as a husband 
 makes on a wife, a wife on a husband, a father on a 
 child. Thus, God is a jealous God, because as the 
 Father of spirits, He must make the claim of a father on 
 the hearts of His children. "If I be a Father, where is 
 mine honour." Yes, if God were our Maker only, He 
 might be satisfied with an external service and a routine of 
 observance. But because He is our Father, He cannot be 
 satisfied without finding in us the response of sons. Ac- 
 cording to our opportunities, no doubt, is His demand ; 
 but according to our opportunities, the demand is certainly 
 made and is inexorable. 
 
 Milk-and-water Christianity forgets this. But it 
 makes itself heard in all the tremendous sternness of 
 the Son of Man. We are made for sonship. Sonship is 
 union of heart and life and mind. God seeks in us a 
 desire for His fellowship corresponding to His offer of 
 love. And because God is a Father, and unchangeably a 
 Father, therefore He must be wrathful, with an un- 
 alterable anger, against sons who will not behave towards 
 Him like sons. Do not let us forget that God is not less 
 awful because He is a Father.
 
 12 The Fatherhood of God. 
 
 IV. 
 
 It follows from this, that God must punish us when 
 we sin against Him that His Fatherhood means not 
 only Lore, but Discipline. " If we are without chas- 
 tisement, whereof all are partakers, then are we bastards 
 and not sons." 8 We are not yet going to consider 
 anything so difficult as the origin of sin, or the terrible 
 hold which it has got on human hearts and on the world. 
 But the existence of sin is a fact of experience, and it is 
 a fact of experience also that not without suffering are 
 men cleansed from it that there is no purgatory without 
 pain, whether in this life or beyond it. Thus our Father 
 is a Q-od of discipline. " He scourgeth every son whom 
 He receiveth," even as the " beloved Son," was the " Man 
 of Sorrows." 
 
 V. 
 
 God's Fatherhood means, indeed, an infinite readiness 
 to forgive. There is no limit to the number of times 
 that God will accept our imperfect repentances, and en- 
 courage us to begin afresh. As long as we are capable of 
 returning to choose God, God is assuredly willing to 
 receive us. But all the same, we cannot fail to see that 
 the Father may be finally driven to reject his sons. We 
 can be sure that every man will have the fullest oppor- 
 tunity of knowing God and making his peace with Him 
 in this life or beyond it. But supposing a man has 
 ^one on refusing opportunities, and sinning against his 
 6 Hebrews xii. 5.
 
 The Fatherlwod of God. 13 
 
 light till he has finally destroyed all the good that was in 
 him, and taken evil to be his good and Satan to be his 
 God. . . what can be his last end, but to be banished 
 from the presence of his Father? This is a terrible 
 thought to which we shall have to return. Meanwhile, let 
 us be content to have thought for awhile together of the 
 simplest of Christian truths the Fatherhood of God 
 for simple as the truth is, experience shows that Christian 
 people prove very often strangely ignorant of its meaning. 
 Does it not make all the difference in the world to us 
 if we really believe that we have a heavenly Father ? If 
 we really know that the Almighty Governor of the whole 
 world is not a tyrant, but a Father who overlooks no 
 soul that He has created, but attends to each and cares 
 for each, and claims the love and service of each, impar- 
 tially and individually ; and who, if for a while He hides 
 His face from us, and disciplines us with sharp punish- 
 ment, will certainly at the last give us the fullest measure 
 of satisfaction of which we are capable if we know this, 
 I say, may not we feel the sun always shining in our 
 hearts ?
 
 are gljrfettcm Dogmas? 
 
 And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
 With human hands the creed of creeds 
 In loveliness of perfect deeds 
 
 More strong than all poetic thought. 
 
 IT surprises people to be told that the Fatherhood of 
 God is a Christian dogma. They think that it 
 belongs to "undogmatic religion." I suppose they 
 imagine that a truth cannot be a dogma unless it has 
 an unpleasant sound. But a Christian dogma does 
 not mean an unpleasant truth, but a truth which everyone 
 who would be a Christian is bound to believe ; a truth 
 accepted by Christians, without question, as a starting- 
 point for their life and work. And the Fatherhood 
 of God is one of these accepted Christian truths. 
 People who are not Christians may borrow it and hold 
 it, for it finds an echo in every heart "the testimony 
 of the soul naturally Christian" yet, in historical fact, 
 it came into the world as a part of Christianity, in 
 the sense, at least, in which I tried to explain it in 
 the last chapter. 
 
 More than this, it is a Christian dogma because 
 no one has real grounds for believing it certainly and 
 securely, but one who recognizes that Christ is God 
 and that He rose from the dead. For however obvious
 
 Wliat are Christian Dogmas? 15 
 
 it seems, when life smiles upon us, that God is our 
 Father, it is in fact very difficult to believe it when the 
 spectacle of pain and failure is all around us, and our 
 mind is filled by it. Then the Fatherhood of God 
 seems an idea contradicted by experience, an idea which 
 nature scouts and turns to ridicule. 
 
 How did Christ make it credible ? Not by explaining 
 the mystery of pain, for He gave not one word of 
 explanation, but by revealing the Love of God in pain 
 and through pain. If some bright angel had come 
 down from heaven with a message that " God is Love," 
 we could not have believed it. We should have said, 
 " These are fine words, but we know the facts, and the 
 facts of experience contradict this fine message." Only 
 the Man of Sorrows could have made us believe that 
 it is true. 
 
 And if He had been mere man He would not have 
 proved its truth. He would only have been one of 
 many martyrs, and it would have been no proof of 
 Divine Fatherhood that the best of men, after a life of 
 suffering and rejection, should have been harried to 
 death on Calvary. But Christ claimed to be the Son 
 of God, one with the Father in spirit and mind and 
 being. His love is therefore God's love. It was no 
 one else than the very Son of God who took our nature, 
 entered into our pain, and clothed Himself in all the 
 
 i *fc 
 
 unmerited suffering and failure and ignominy which 
 seems such an argument against the divine love. Out 
 of the very heart of pain and failure He manifested 
 that self -sacrificing love which is nothing else than 
 i's love; and by His resurrection on the tliird day
 
 16 What are Christian Dogmas f 
 
 from the dead, finally proved the divine love triumphant 
 through pain and over pain. 
 
 Henceforth men have not indeed a clear, logical 
 account to give of the meaning of suffering, and why 
 it is allowed in God's world. Pain still remains a 
 mystery. But they have something better than an 
 explanation. They have facts. If Jesus of Nazareth 
 is indeed the Son of God made man, and if He rose 
 from the dead, then it is quite certain and plain to all 
 men (1) that God is a loving father; (2) that through 
 all pain and failure the purpose of God still works on 
 to its triumphant issue, as Christ, seemingly defeated 
 in death, rose again the third day from the dead, 
 King of kings, and Lord of lords. 
 
 This is what I mean when I say that in order to 
 have a real reason for believing securely and certainly 
 that God is our Father, in spite of the pain of which 
 the world is full, we must believe that Jesus is Son of 
 God, and is risen from the dead. 
 
 Now you will understand why I call the Fatherhood 
 of God a Christian dogma. Now, also, I can explain 
 briefly, and once for all, what is the ground of all 
 Christian dogmas. They are simply those truths which 
 a man must hold if he is to share the life which Christ 
 brought into the world : and if he is to have fellowship 
 in the faith, the hope, the love which He made possible. 
 This faith, hope, and love, this Christian life, is based 
 on truths which were imparted to men, or confirmed 
 to them, by Jesus Christ in His example and in His 
 teaching. This life, with the truths on which it rests, 
 was committed by Christ to His Apostles, and through
 
 What are Christian Dogmas? 17 
 
 them to the visible society or church which is to 
 represent Him in the world until the end. Christian 
 dogmas, then, are simply statements of those truths 
 which are the necessary background or basis of the 
 Christian life. 
 
 For their justification we make appeal in part to 
 experience, past and present to the life which, in 
 fact, has been lived ever since the beginning of 
 Christianity by those who have really believed these 
 truths. We ask men to pay attention and see what 
 peace, what strength, what hope, what love has come 
 of believing. Can such a beautiful and constant result 
 be due to anything else than that these truly Christian 
 men and women have got at the secret of human life, 
 and have power to live noble lives because they have 
 a hold on eternal truth ? But we appeal also to history 
 to the Gospels which tell us of what Christ was, what 
 He claimed to be ; how He lived and suffered and taught 
 and died and rose again, and reigns for ever; and to 
 apostolic Epistles and Acts, which tell us how His 
 first disciples thought of Him. That we have very 
 good reason for believing that these documents are 
 genuine and contain authentic history, I am sure. 
 I a.m sure also that anyone who studies them as 
 impartially as he would study ordinary history, will 
 come to this conclusion also. But at present I am 
 concerned not with justifying the Christian dogmas, 
 but only with explaining them. So, if you please, I 
 will go on to interpret, as best I can, the doctrines 
 of our religion, and to show you how close a bearing 
 they have on common human life.
 
 Dialogue on Hje <$olB 
 
 Most ancient of all mysteries 
 
 Before Thy Throne we lie ; 
 Have mercy now most merciful, 
 
 Most Holy Trinity. 
 
 When heaven and earth were yet unmade, 
 When time was yet unknown, 
 
 Thou in Thy bliss and majesty 
 Didst live and love alone. 
 
 T WAS walking out on Sunday when I was joined by 
 -* my friend, Mr. Plainman, and we took a walk 
 together. He told me he had been reading the earlier 
 chapters of this little book in the form in which they 
 originally appeared in Goodwill, and had learned that 
 I was preparing to write about the doctrine of the 
 Holy Trinity. " You will be clever," he added, " if 
 you make that credible to a man of my sort. I went 
 to church on Trinity Sunday to hear Canon Wakemall 
 preach, but long before we got to the sermon I had 
 lost my temper, I can tell you, over the Athanasian 
 Creed. ' The Father is God, the Son is God, and the 
 Holy Ghost is God, and yet there are not three Gods, 
 1)iit one God. 1 This seems to me little better than 
 nonsense, and contrary to what we used to learn when 
 we did addition sums together at school. * So last 
 Sunday I went to the Unitarian Chapel, and I heard
 
 A Dialogue on the Holy Trinity. 19 
 
 a sermon there about the Fatherhood of God which 
 seemed to me full of a practical sort of religion. Why 
 can't we be satisfied with believing, like the Unitarians, 
 in one God, our Creator and our Father, without adding 
 on to this a doctrine of the Trinity, which seems to 
 insult one's common sense?" 
 
 " Well," I said, " but supposing we haven't ' added 
 on* anything to the belief in one God, our Creator, 
 and our Father, what then? You were good enough 
 to say you had read some of these papers of mine on 
 Christian doctrines. Did you read what I said about 
 the Fatherhood of God ? " 
 
 " Yes, I did," he said, " but my mind is like a sieve 
 for these religious discussions. I can't keep hold of 
 them. However, I believe what you said was that, 
 with all the evil and misery in the world, men would 
 not have been able to believe in the Fatherhood of 
 God, meaning his love, without the revelation of it 
 given by Jesus Christ. I must admit I think there 
 is truth in that. You know how my Mary has been 
 ti-ying to comfort our poor neighbour whose wife has 
 just died with her first child. She has been trying to 
 persuade the poor, heart-broken, despairing fellow of 
 the love of God. But she said, truly enough, that one 
 could not have the face to mention Divine Love in the 
 neighbourhood of such agony as his, if it were not the 
 Man of SOITOWS who assured us of it." 
 
 "Well," I said, "if you are disposed to grant that 
 Christ's love is God's love that is, that Christ is really 
 the Son of the Father in Heaven, sent to reveal His 
 character in our human nature. I shall not have much
 
 20 A Dialogue an the Holy Trinity. 
 
 more to persuade you of, for you can hardly then 
 doubt the doctrine of the Trinity." 
 
 " I am disposed to grant that," he said, " at any 
 rate for the moment and for the sake of argument. 
 But does it carry me all the way you think ? " 
 
 " Yes," I said, " the doctrine of the Trinity is only 
 putting into a short formula what is implied in all our 
 Lord's language about His own relation to the Father 
 who sent Him, and the Spirit whom the Father and 
 He were to send to accomplish His work. You are 
 fond of climbing mountains, and you know how a 
 surface of rock which looks flat and uniform from a 
 distance seems broken up and complicated enough as 
 you get near to it. So, as we got nearer to G-od, or 
 rather, as He came nearer to us, the distinctions in His 
 nature began to come out. Seen from a distance, as in 
 the Old Testament, He seemed merely one and single. 
 As He came nearer to us in the coming of the Son and 
 the Spirit, we grew to see that the one God is manifold 
 as well as one. There is a Father sending and a Son 
 sent to reyeal Him, and a Spirit proceeding from Him 
 to give life. So it is that the one Name of the Lord 
 God becomes the Name of the Father, and the Son, 
 and the Holy Spirit. It is only Grod coming nearer to 
 us, so that we see more distinctly the relationships in 
 which His being consists. It is only to put this in 
 other words to say that the Apostles, in coming to 
 know God more familiarly through Christ, came to 
 believe in Father and Son and Spirit as part of their 
 experience. They had come to know God to be Father 
 through their fellowship with the Son and by the power
 
 A Dialogue on the Holy Trinity. 21 
 
 of the Spirit which had come upon them. All that 
 the Church did after this was to put this revelation 
 into a short formula, which should express and protect 
 the truth about God which had been received from the 
 Apostles." 
 
 " But how," asked my friend, " can a doctrine be 
 revealed truth when it seems to be nonsense? How 
 can three persons be one God ? If the Father is God, 
 the Son is God, and the Holy Ghost is God; here, 
 then, are three Gods, according to the law of simple 
 addition ! " 
 
 " I do not think it would become a thoughtful man," 
 I replied, " to reject the doctrine of the Trinity on this 
 ground. At any rate, Professor Huxley would not 
 allow you to. He once said as much in a private letter 
 which he gave me leave to quote ; and I learned his 
 words by heart, for I thought they might be useful. 
 'I have not,' he said, 'the slightest objection to offer 
 a priori (that is, on grounds of reason) to all the 
 propositions of the three creeds. The mysteries of the 
 Ohurch are child's play compared with the mysteries 
 of Nature. The doctrine of the Trinity is not more 
 puzzling than the necessary antinomies (that is, con- 
 tradictions) of physical nature.' l I am sure, my good 
 friend, if you read what any scientific writer says about 
 the ether which is ike vehicle of light and heat, you will 
 find it all ' metaphysical ' and ' incomprehensible ' enough. 
 
 "This ether is described to us by physicists as 
 diffused through all space : but though it is everywhere 
 it cannot be discovered anywhere, and when its properties 
 1 Quoted in Bampt on Lecture, 1891 (Murrays), p. 29(5.
 
 22 A Dialogue on the Holy Trinity. 
 
 are examined, it seems to be at once a solid and a fluid. 
 This is mysterious indeed, and passes our limited power 
 of imagination, but, nevertheless, it appears to be true, 
 and is regarded as true by the scientific world. 
 
 "Or, again, have you ever thought steadily about 
 your own inner self, with its will and reason and feelings ? 
 Do you not know how your feelings often go against 
 your will or your reason ; or, again, your reason against 
 your feeling and your will? They seem very distinct 
 these parts of your nature. They are plainly three 
 different things. But yet, for all their distinctness, 
 your inner self is one. You are one being, not many. 
 Even this consideration of your own nature may teach 
 you that what is one may be at the same time also three." 
 
 " Do you mean that a man like Huxley would tell 
 me it is reasonable to believe that one God is three 
 Persons ? " 
 
 "Huxley would recognise," I replied, "that the primary 
 elements of nature are mysterious, that human language 
 can express them very imperfectly, and that even human 
 thought finds itself baffled to conceive about them what 
 still it must believe. In regard to the nature of God, 
 the Christian Church was compelled by its experience of 
 Christ to believe that in the unity of the one God is 
 the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and she chose 
 gradually, with much hesitation and many apologies, the 
 best words she could find to express the mysterious truth." 
 
 " But, at least," he said, " you will admit that if the 
 doctrine of the Trinity is a real revelation, it is a quite 
 unpractical truth, and one which it would be as well 
 to keep out of sight as much as possible."
 
 A Dialogite on the Holy Trinity. 23 
 
 " I admit nothing of the kind," I replied : " quite 
 the contrary. It is only the belief in the Trinity which 
 enables one to think about God at all, or to worship Him 
 with any degree of intelligence and satisfaction." 
 
 "Don't be paradoxical," he said. 
 
 "What I said may be paradoxical or not," I made 
 rejoinder, " but it is true. Tour Unitarian friend would 
 tell you, would he not, to believe in and to worship 
 one eternal God, who is one without any distinction 
 of persons ? Well now, I say, how can I think of such 
 a God as a living or loving being in Himself at all? 
 This "Unitarian God is a mere first cause, or supreme point 
 of government, without life and love in His own being." 
 
 " What do you mean ? " he said. 
 
 "Do you admit," I asked, "that God existed before 
 all creation a living, loving God ? " 
 
 " Yes," he said, " I suppose all believers in God admit 
 as much as this." 
 
 " Well, then," I went on : " how can there be life 
 without productiveness, or love without someone to 
 love? If God is eternally alive He must have been 
 eternally productive, eternally fruitful. If He was 
 eternally loving, there must have been an eternal object 
 of His love. Now, little as we can penetrate into the 
 depths of the being of God, if we believe in the Trinity 
 we can at least perceive that God was eternally alive, 
 eternally moving, eternally productive. The Father was 
 ever expressing Himself in His ' Word,' or ' Image,' or 
 ' Son,' and the Father and the Son together were having 
 fellowship in the Spirit of Life, the product and the 
 loy of both. God is one, but in this unity there ia
 
 24 A Dialogue on the Holy Trinity. 
 
 productiveness and fellowship, and therefore life and 
 love. God is mysterious, no doubt, but in that mystery 
 there is something intelligible, something akin to our- 
 selves. We know what life is in our own case, we 
 know that our life is only possible because we can 
 express ourselves in what we say or do or produce, and 
 because we can think about some object, and love 
 some other. Life is fruitful and social, and must be 
 fruitful and social if it is to be life at all. Thus it is as 
 social beings, as operative or fruitful beings, that we 
 are made in the image of God, because God is in Him- 
 self productive and social God in the fellowship of 
 His eternal .being : Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. God 
 is love. We cannot, again be it said, explain God. 
 The depths of God are unsearchable. We must mostly 
 be silent and adore. But at least the one God in 
 Trinity is a mystery full of warmth, and life, and 
 comfort. The mystery of the Unitarian's God is some- 
 thing unintelligible; something which sheds no light on 
 our human life, which helps us in no way to understand 
 how human life, social and fruitful, is made in the 
 image of the eternal life of God." 
 
 "I always thought," he said, "that it was only the 
 spirit or mind of man that was made in God's image." 
 
 "No," I replied, "it is man altogether man as a 
 social being in the family, the State, the Church that 
 reflects God's life, and is made in His image." 
 
 There was silence awhile, and as my friend was 
 turning to go home, I said : " Have I persuaded you 
 that the doctrine of the Trinity is full of meaning for 
 human life."
 
 A Dialogue on the Holy Trinity. 25 
 
 " I don't know," he said ; " these things are puzzling. 
 I can't keep theological arguments in my head. But 
 I will tell you what I will do. I will read some of 
 the G-ospels and attend to Christ's language about 
 Himself, and the Father, and the Spirit. I can't say 
 I am convinced at present." 
 
 And with that I had to be content. I consoled 
 myself by reflecting that he was more likely to be brought 
 to worship God by the study of the Gospels than by 
 any words of mine; and to worship is certainly the 
 way to know. But I determined that our argument 
 should be written down for my readers to judge whether 
 I am not right in what I maintained: (1) that the 
 doctrine of the Trinity is only the putting into such 
 words as we can utter of what was disclosed about God 
 when He came near to men in the appearing of the 
 Christ and the mission of the Holy Spirit 1 ; (2) that 
 the doctrine of the Holy Trinity that is, the doctrine 
 that God is in Himself eternally productive, social, 
 operative helps us both to think about Him and to 
 worship Him with intelligence, and enables us to recognise 
 that human life can be in His image only by becoming 
 continually more operative, more fruitful, more social. 
 
 1 See for example St. Matt. xi. 27 ; xii. 32 ; xxviii. 19 ; and 
 St. John ziv.
 
 Revelation, or ifye "p>or6 of 
 
 Strong Son of God, immortal Love, 
 
 Whom we, that have not seen Thy face, 
 By faith, and faith alone, embrace, 
 
 Believing where we cannot prove: 
 
 Thine are these orbs of light and shade j 
 Thou madest Life in man and brute ; 
 Thou madest Death; and lo! Thy foot 
 
 Is on the skull that Thou hast made. 
 
 Thou wilt not leave us in the dust; 
 
 Thou madest man, he knows not why; 
 
 He thinks he was not made to die ; 
 And Thou hast made him; Thou art just. 
 
 Thou seemest human and Divine, 
 
 The highest, holiest manhood Thou; 
 Our wills are ours, we know not how. 
 
 Our wills are ours, to make them Thine. 
 
 Our little systems have their day; 
 
 They have their day, and cease to be: 
 They are but broken light of Thee, 
 
 And Thou, O Lord, art more than they. 
 
 I HAVE have been trying to explain part of the 
 Christian creed, and more of it I am to go on to 
 explain. And my reason for doing so is that here is the 
 light to live by, and the power to make men free. But 
 the Christian creed is only light and power when it is 
 accepted as the Word of God, as the truth divinely
 
 Revelation, or the Word of God. 27 
 
 revealed, the one religion of redemption for struggling 
 sinning men. Now a good number of people in our time 
 stumble at this notion of one revealed religion. " There 
 are so many religions in the world ; " they say, " is it 
 likely that one will be true and the rest false ? We quite 
 admit that it gives a man great courage and power in 
 life to believe in 'one Name under heaven whereby 
 men must be saved,' but it is after all only a narrow 
 fanaticism." 
 
 Who has not heard some traveller, who has assisted at 
 the worship of different sorts of Christians and witnessed 
 the religious devotion of Mohammedans and Hindus and 
 Buddhists, use this sort of language ? 
 
 Let it be admitted then that there have been and are 
 narrow and fanactical Christians and there are, be it 
 remembered, other vices in the world besides narrowness 
 and fanaticism but the notion of the "one religion "is 
 not itself narrow : it is compatible with the largest-hearted 
 and most liberal reason. Let us think. 
 
 It is certainly a truth of the Bible that God is revealed 
 everywhere and in all things. Nature is nothing else but 
 a gradual disclosure of His power, His order, His beauty. 
 " The invisible things of Him from the creation of the 
 world are clearly seen, being understood by the things 
 that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead," 1 so 
 wrote St. Paul. " There is no creature so small and com- 
 mon but shows us the goodness of God " says the author 
 of The Imitation of Christ. Once more, there is a further 
 revelation of God in humanity. The more truly human 
 men are, the more they recognise as binding on them a law 
 i Bom. i. 20.
 
 28 Revelation, or the Word of God. 
 
 of righteousness, and the more men are conscious of their 
 individuality, the more they learn that the dignity of each 
 single soul lies in obedience to this law. Here then, in the 
 human conscience all over the world, is to be found, more 
 or less, a revelation of the divine righteousness. On this 
 point also let us hear St. Paul. "When the Gentiles, 
 which have not the law (i.e,, the heathen who have no 
 special ' law ' such as was given to the Jews) do by nature 
 the things contained in the law, these, having not the law, 
 are a law unto themselves ; which show the work of the 
 law written in their hearts, their conscience bearing 
 witness, and their mutual reasonings accusing or else 
 excusing one another." 2 This is the universal revelation 
 of conscience. And beside this there is the revelation 
 through prophets. There are men who feel beyond their 
 fellows some truth of God, and, feeling it, proclaim it, and 
 finding response in the duller consciences of their fellow- 
 men, are recognised as revealers of the light, to be 
 honoured and obeyed. This spirit of prophecy is to be 
 found among heathen peoples in a Zoroaster, a Buddha 
 an Aeschylus ; and St. Paul seems to recognise it there, for 
 he quotes to the Athenians a heathen poet, and calls a 
 Cretan poet a " prophet of their own." 3 But that which 
 existed, as scattered sparks, among all nations was, as an 
 ever clearer burning light, among the Jews. Men who are 
 not orthodox Christians, yet recognise that it was given to 
 the Jews to have a pre-eminent consciousness of God. 
 Among them was what an old Father called " the sacred 
 school of the knowledge of God and of the spiritual life 
 for all mankind." And the light of this clearer revelation 
 2 Eom. ii. 14, 15. ~~ 3 Acts. xvii. 28 ; Titus i. 12.
 
 Revelation, or the Wore! of God. 29 
 
 given " in many parts and many manners " * came at last 
 to its climax and fulfilment in " the Light of the World," 
 Jesus Christ, the very Son of God incarnate. It was all 
 one process. He, the Word of God, was always speaking 
 everywhere, and at all times. He " was coming into the 
 world." But at the end of the long process He was not 
 " coming " but " come." The true light shone, and 
 henceforward it "lightens every man" of all ages and 
 nations and classes who will come to receive it. 5 
 
 Now this is no narrow creed. Christianity, the religion 
 of Jesus, is the Light ; it is the one final Eevelation, the 
 one final Keligion ; but it supersedes all other religions, 
 Jewish and pagan, not by excluding but by including all 
 the elements of truth which each contained. There was 
 light in Zoroastrianism, light in Buddhism, light among 
 the Greeks ; but it is all included in Christianity. A good 
 Christian is a good Buddhist, a good Jew, a good Moham- 
 medan, a good Zoroastrian that is, he has all the truth 
 and virtue that these can possess, purged and fused in a 
 greater and completer light. Christianity, I say, super- 
 sedes all other religions by including their fragments of 
 truth in its own completeness. You cannot show me 
 any element of spiritual light or strength which is in other 
 religions and is not in Christianity. Nor can you show 
 me any other religion which can compare with Christianity 
 in completeness of light. Christianity is the one complete 
 and final religion, and the elements of truth in other 
 religions are rays of the One Light which is concentrated 
 and shines full in Jesus Christ our Lord. 
 
 And it all came about, this one continuous revelation 
 4 Heb. 11. 5 See 8t. John, i. 1-18.
 
 30 Revelation, or the Word of God. 
 
 of God, in the way which accords with human experience 
 in other departments. The good things occur first in 
 some one place or time, where the conditions are suitable 
 for their appearance. Then they spread from a centre, by 
 means natural and artificial, over the surface of the earth. 
 The potato plant is good for all men. But it was dis- 
 covered in some one district, and then spread, as occasion 
 served, to accommodate all men. So it is with great 
 thoughts and inventions. So it is with religion. AH the 
 distinct belief in one God which now exists has spread 
 from the faith of Abraham. And the full faith in God 
 Incarnate, in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, began 
 from Jerusalem, and is still spreading, to be the light and 
 strength of all men. It was welcomed by Jews first, then 
 by Greeks, Eomans, Teutons, Celts. It is to be welcomed 
 still by Chinamen, Japanese, Hindoos and races beyond 
 number. It is adapted to all races ; and, as each race has 
 found in it light and life, so each has brought out some- 
 thing more of its manifold power and meaning. It shows 
 its power, moreover, not at one stage of human progress, 
 but at all. It spread in the Roman Empire. It sanctified 
 the life of the middle ages. It gave its impulse to the 
 movements of the Eeformation. It is to be the strength 
 of the coming democracy. For all ages and for all 
 men Christ is to be the light, the one redeemer and 
 emancipator of men. And it is only in all ages and races, 
 and under all forms of society, that its full power and 
 meaning can appear. Christianity is still young and 
 adequate to the future. 
 
 And, wherever the Christian Revelation comes, it 
 cornea with the authority of truth. The utterance of
 
 Revelation, or the Word of God. ''<l 
 
 conscience is always authoritative. Religious truth is 
 always authoritative. It lays its claim on men. At all 
 times and for all men, under all religions, " the light 
 which lighteneth every man " must be obeyed. Every- 
 where it is the same God, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost 
 present, even where His name and nature is not rightly 
 known, present and claiming the allegiance of man. Only 
 where He is most clearly revealed, there He speaks with 
 greatest authority. A good heathen man who is true to his 
 light is always obeying the Word of the one true God. But 
 as that Word makes itself more clearly heard, so it must 
 be more diligently obeyed. And where Christ is clearly 
 known as Christ, there He must be obeyed and accepted as 
 Christ. The twilight is better than darkness. But the 
 full light is better than the twilight ; and to refuse the 
 light and choose the twilight is the same thing as to love 
 the darkness. 
 
 This is the meaning of Revelation. This is the doc- 
 trine of the One Religion. 
 
 Now, I ask, is not this a reasonable, hopeful doctrine 
 much more reasonable, much more hopeful, than the sort 
 of Latitudinarianism which says, more or less clearly, that 
 all religions are on a common level of certainty or un- 
 certainty ? 
 
 This Latitudinarian idea was skilfully expressed by the 
 German poet Lessing, in the old parable of the three 
 rings, put into the mouth of Nathan the Wise. In the 
 time of the Crusades, Saladin the Mohammedan is repre- 
 sented as asking Nathan, the wise Jew, how he determined 
 which religion was true the Jewish, the Christian, or the 
 Mohammedan ; and Nathan replies by a parable. A
 
 Revelation, or the Word of God. 
 
 certain man had a priceless ring, which had the peculiai 
 gift of making its -wearer acceptable to God and man. He 
 left it to his most dearly beloved son, with the injunction 
 that ne in his turn and each of his successors should leave 
 it in the same manner to his best beloved son, who should 
 thereby become the head of the family. The ring passed 
 on till it came to one who had three sons all equally 
 beloved. To each in turn he promised the ring. That 
 none of the three might be disappointed, he had two other 
 rings made, indistinguishable even by himself from the 
 original. One of the three he gave to each of the three 
 sons. Each, after his father's death, claimed to have the 
 true ring, and accused his brothers of imposture. They 
 rushed finally before a judge. He should decide among 
 their claims. " It is the property of the true ring," said 
 the judge, " to make its owner beloved of God and man. 
 Who is the best beloved of his fellows ? " Alas ! No 
 one of the three was beloved of his fellows. Each was 
 selfish and lived only for himself. " Then," said the judge, 
 " let the matter wait for many generations. Let each ring, 
 believed by its possessor to be the only genuine one, go 
 down its own line of descent. Let each owner of a ring 
 strive to make himself beloved for his goodness of all the 
 others. Then, thousands of years on, a wiser judge than 
 I shall decide which is the true ring." 
 
 The parable speaks for itself. Nathan means that no 
 man can "decide which is the true religion. No man is 
 meant to decide it. Perhaps no man will ever be able to. 
 Meanwhile let each hold to his own religion and do his 
 best, and the wise man will recognise that the important 
 matter is not the creed but the conduct.
 
 Revelation, or the Word of God. 3S 
 
 By the mouth of Nathan, Lessing speaks the lati- 
 tudinarian opinion. No one religion can make good its 
 special claim for truth. The important matter is not what 
 a man's creed is, but what his conduct is. 
 
 Now there are many fallacies in this opinion. It is, 
 for example, quite certain that what a man's conduct will 
 be will depend in the long run on what his real creed is. 
 The moral fruits of the Mohammedan creed, for example, 
 are apparent in history ; and they are very different from 
 the moral fruits of the Christian creed. Moreover, a 
 religion to bear its proper fruit at all must be believed in 
 as the true religion. In order to act decisively, we must 
 believe decisively. But I will not now dwell upon this. 
 I would now only ask you to recognise into what a hopeless 
 position this latitudinarian view puts a man's reason. He 
 can really believe his religion only so long as he is ignorant 
 and fanatical. When once he begins to think, all that 
 seemed certain in his mind becomes uncertain. The more 
 wise he becomes, the more vague become his convictions. 
 More wisdom means less knowledge, less certainty, less 
 clearness about God or His will. Is this reasonable or 
 encouraging to reason ? Is it not far more reasonable to 
 believe that in religion as elsewhere there is a possibility of 
 progress in knowledge, a continually clearer light. Every 
 man can know something of God, but the gradually 
 growing knowledge of God which there has been in the 
 world among Zoroastrians, Buddhists, Greeks, Jews, is 
 come to fulness of knowledge in the revelation of Jesus 
 Christ ; in Him all the treasures of wisdom and know- 
 ledge are hid, and here is for evermore a light full and 
 inexhaustible a continually developing possibility of clear 
 knowledge of God.
 
 34 Revelation, or the Word of God. 
 
 Yes, God has been everywhere revealing Himself; in 
 nature, in its power, order, beauty; in man, in his in- 
 dividual and social conscience, in his various sciences, in 
 the movements of human progress ; in his prophets who 
 have received more vividly than others the impression of 
 His glory and His will. In all ways and places God has 
 been manifesting Himself, and all these various and 
 complex revelations come to a centre where He, the one 
 true God, is personally manifested in a human nature, the 
 human nature of Jesus, very man and very God, in whom 
 is the perfect revelation of the Father's nature and the 
 perfect revelation of the capacity and dignity of man.
 
 gnccmtation of tfje $on of 
 
 He who did most, shall bear most ; the strongest shall stand 
 
 the most weak; 
 'Tis the weakness in strength, that I cry for ! my flesh that I 
 
 In the Godhead ! I seek and I find it. Oh, Saul, it shall be 
 A Face like my face that receives thee ; a Man like to me 
 Thou shall love and be loved by, for ever : a Hand like this 
 
 hand 
 Shall throw open the gate of new life to thee I see the Christ 
 
 stand! 
 
 once appeared on our earth, going about doing 
 -*- good, bearing men's sicknesses and carrying their 
 infirmities, One, Jesus of Nazareth, true man in all that 
 makes up human nature, whom those nearest to Him 
 gradually discovered, by the authority of His words and 
 works, by the miracles of His love and judgment and by 
 His victory over death, to be the eternal Son of God. 
 They His first disciples came to believe in His Godhead 
 through their experience of His manhood ; and, coming so 
 to believe, they handed on their faith as an inheritance 
 to the Christian Church, an inheritance which the record 
 of the words and deeds of Jesus of Nazareth, and the 
 perpetual experience of His power in those who believe, 
 has made continually more credible. 
 
 We of the Christian Church believe, then, that the 
 eternal Son or Word of God, Himself very God, the
 
 36 The Incarnation of the Son of God. 
 
 second person of the blessed Trinity, was made very man 
 by taking flesh of the Virgin Mary, and appeared on earth 
 as Jesus of Nazareth to live and work and suffer and die 
 and rise again from the dead and ascend up to the 
 Father's right hand where He was before. 
 
 This dogma will now become the subject for our con- 
 sideration. It seems to some people hard of belief. But 
 we must never forget that this Son or Word of God, Who 
 was made man in Jesus Christ, was, and is, also present in 
 all His creation and in all His creatures. He was at all 
 times everywhere in the world. He was always mani- 
 festing Himself in nature, in the conscience of men, in the 
 movements of society, in the inspiration of prophets. His 
 delight was always with the sons of men. So that His 
 incarnation is not an isolated thing a thing by itself. It 
 is the crown and climax of all that has gone before. He 
 had been gradually becoming more and more powerfully 
 present. He was more present in man than in nature : 
 more present in prophets than in common men : most of 
 all present when He personally took a human nature in 
 which to show Himself. 
 
 This Incarnation is both the disclosure of God and the 
 disclosure of our true manhood, and the fresh start -for 
 sinful humanity. 
 
 I. The disclosure of God. Human nature is so truly 
 made in the image and likeness of God, that God can 
 really make use of it in order to repeal His own character 
 and person. To understand the nature of God by mere 
 thought or argument is difficult or impossible. But we 
 can be taught by an object lesson. The life of Jesus 
 Christ is an object lesson about God. We observe His
 
 The Incarnation of the Son of God. 37 
 
 human love, and authority, and power, and judgment, in 
 His words and in His works : and we know that this 
 human character is the character of very God, who has 
 shown Himself to us in the intelligible, unmistakeable 
 forms of our own nature. What God's justice, mercy, 
 considerateness, severity mean we can clearly understand 
 by the human justice, mercy, considerateness, severity of 
 Jesus, Who, very man, is also very God. 
 
 2. The disclosure of man. What is the true nature of 
 manhood ? What is it to be a real man or woman ? How 
 are we to judge ? We look around and within, and we 
 see a very mixed scene of goodness and badness, love and 
 selfishness, mercy and cruelty, justice and corruption, 
 strength and weakness, purity and uncleanness. Some- 
 times the bad side of human nature seems so masterful, 
 that men have come to the conclusion that human nature 
 is necessarily selfish, and lustful, and cruel, and corrupt. 
 The conscience of mankind has protested against such an 
 idea ; but where shall we find a human nature which does 
 not fail us somewhere ? Is man then a thing made up 
 necessarily of good and evil ? Can there be such a thing 
 as a simply good man ? Is there any standard by which 
 to judge what belongs to man, and what is simply the 
 corruption or spoiling of his nature ? Yes, there is. 
 Jesus of Nazareth is very man. So truly was man made 
 in God's image that God could not merely take a human 
 nature to be, as it were, the veil of his Godhead, but 
 really live a human life without ceasing to be God. He 
 was born as man : He grew in body and mind and 
 character, as men grow : He was tempted and resisted as 
 man : He believed and hoped and feared and prayed as
 
 "8 The Incarnation of the Son of God. 
 
 man : He was in all points tempted like as we are, He was 
 made in all things like unto His brethren, except sin. 
 Thus in Him we see what man's nature was meant to be. 
 Sin is not truly part of it, but the weakening, the spoiling, 
 the corruption of it. Here is One without alloy of 
 selfishness or impurity or cruelty, and for all that, true 
 and real man ; one in whom all men and women can find a 
 human nature completely satisfactory, a human nature 
 which sets the standard, a human nature which shows the 
 real glory of mankind, the human nature of The Son 
 of Man. 
 
 3. The fresh start for humanity. He was in all points 
 like as we are, except sin, But, ah ! what a difference 
 that makes. Philosophers and reformers who have looked 
 below the surface of life and politics, have always de- 
 manded a fresh start for humanity. Plato, the Greek, 
 long ago said there could be no real remedy for the evils 
 of society unless you could make a fresh start. He 
 demanded a blank tablet to draw the lineaments of human 
 life afresh. Centuries later, Thomas Carlyle, in the 
 generation behind our own, scoffed at the Radicals of his 
 day, who seemed to think that a number of legislative 
 reforms and " remedial measures " would set human life 
 straight. Nay, he jeered, these are but quack medicines 
 "Morison's pills." You need something more radical 
 than your radical measures. Radical means what goes to 
 the root. You want a change at the root of human life : 
 a fundamental change ! 
 
 Aye, but sin is so ingrained into our nature, it passes 
 on from father to son. How can there be a radical 
 change? How can we renew the roots of our nature?
 
 The Incarnation of the Son of God. 39 
 
 How can we have a new manhood ? In fact, we cannot, 
 except in Jesus Christ. He alone is the New Man. He 
 alone is man without sin. From Him alone is there new 
 birth. He alone can give, in truth and reality, what Plato 
 and Carlyle demanded. Born of a Virgin, a new creation, 
 true man but new man, He only can give us human 
 nature without sin. " He taketh away the sin of the 
 world." 
 
 But what is sin, and how does He take it away ? Ah ! 
 This is a big question, but we have all of us the most 
 practical and direct interest in trying to arrive at the 
 answer.
 
 tn anfc 
 
 Thy spirit weighs the sins of men, 
 Thy science fathoms all their guilt j 
 Thou sickenest heavily at Thy heart, 
 And the pores open blood is spilt. 
 
 * * * * * 
 
 And Thou hast shuddered at each act. 
 And shrunk with an astonished fear 
 As if Thou couldst not bear to see 
 The loathsomeness of sin so near. 
 
 nPHE language and work of Jesus Christ is full of the 
 thought that mankind needs a fresh start, a new 
 birth ; or, in other words, that mankind needs not merely 
 to progress and be enlightened, but to be redeemed, that 
 is, bought back out of the slavery of sin. 
 
 What is sin ? 
 
 There are people who tell us that all that human 
 nature needs is enlightenment. The only real evil is 
 ignorance. This was the opinion of the wise Greek 
 Socrates, and from the way people talk of " education " 
 and " culture," as if it would remove all the troubles of 
 life, you would suppose that many people now hold this 
 same opinion. But it is false and repugnant to the plain 
 tacts. Of course there is a great deal of ignorance in the 
 world, and many of the wrong things that are done are 
 done in mere ignorance, ignorance that is hardly, if at all,
 
 Sin and Redemption. 41 
 
 culpable. Thus truer knowledge would remove a great 
 deal of the evil of the world, and the man is a fool who 
 makes light of the value of good education. For example, 
 years ago, there was a great deal of religious persecution 
 Catholics would burn Protestants, and Protestants Catho- 
 lics, and think that they were doing God service. This, 
 we may say, was due largely to ignorance. It needed only 
 knowledge of the true principles of our religion to let good 
 men see that such a way of dealing with religious opinions 
 which they Mlieved to be wrong, was not at all the way of 
 our Lord. Thus ignorance, I say, is the source of a great 
 deal of evil, and good education will do away with this. 
 But it will not get to the root of the matter. Sin is not 
 ignorance. v 
 
 Once again, there is in the world, beyond all question, 
 a great deal of moral poverty and weakness of nature. 
 Men are born with some moral disease, some criminal 
 tendency, some weakness of will. This is a question of 
 more or less: for all men are by nature more or less 
 inclined to evil in some form or another. This is what is 
 called "original sin." It is the inherited result of the 
 wrong doing, the weakness and wilfulness and ignorance 
 of those who have gone before us, back to the very 
 beginning of our race. This fault or taint of our nature 
 belongs to sin, and is the result of sin. But in the sense 
 in which sin means personal guilt it is not sin of our own, 
 for it is not owr own fault. It belongs to the materials 
 with which nature supplies us the " raw material " we 
 have to work with. It only becomes our fault' when we 
 give way to it and adopt it, or fail to take measures to 
 resist it.
 
 42 Sin and Redemption. 
 
 Sin proper is our own fault. It is, as St. John says, 
 lawlessness. 1 There is in the world no sin but lawlessness, 
 and no lawlessness but sin. Everywhere in nature is the 
 reign of law. The stars and planets in the solar systems 
 move on their appointed courses ; the forces of heat and 
 light and electricity, the various forms of motion, go 
 on each invariably by its own law ; the lif e of each plant 
 or body develops or fails according to law; law reigns 
 over the development of all human faculties and powers. 
 But ... at the centre of man's being there is a 
 mystery. Man is a moral, and not merely a physical 
 being. He can serve with a free service as lawfully as 
 stars or dumb animals, and by his free choice. But he 
 can also rebel. He can know the right and choose the 
 wrong. He may be perfectly enlightened and yet wicked. 
 He may set himself against God, against duty, against 
 law. This is sin in its proper sense. Sin is lawlessness. 
 Sin can, within limits, disturb and disorder God's world. 
 I say within limits, for man is not God, and God has not 
 let go out of His hand the government of the world. la 
 the end the universe will reach the end God intended for 
 it. The Kingdom of God will come. But, by the way, 
 and (so to speak) down to a certain depth, man can 
 disturb the order of God. He can introduce, he has 
 introduced, lawlessness into the world. 
 
 Look at society now ? Is it as God intended ? No. 
 God never intended the lust, the selfishness, the cruelty, 
 the godlessness, which curse society to-day. The life of 
 our big cities, the life of our country places, is a parody of 
 God's intention. 
 
 1 1 John iii. 4.
 
 Sin and Redemption. 43 
 
 " Never did any public misery 
 Eise of itself ; God's plagues are grounded still 
 On common stains of our humanity. 
 And to the flame that ruineth mankind, 
 Man gives the matter or at least gives wind." 
 
 Or look back to primitive man. You see him dimly, in 
 the mist of the past, in a state of savagery. Was that 
 God's intention ? No ; no more than the present condition 
 of civilized man. It was a parody of primitive simplicity, 
 just as our present civilization is a parody of true 
 civilization. 
 
 It has sometimes been said that there is a conflict 
 between religion and science, because, according to science, 
 man begins at the bottom, and gradually improves ; ac- 
 cording to religion, man begins perfect, and then " falls " 
 into corruption, and grows worse. This is shallow talking. 
 For, on the one hand, true science recognises that there is 
 such a thing as degradation and deterioration among men ; 
 it traces out its results in the destruction of great empires 
 and splendid civilizations, and finds it also among savages 
 who have gone backwards instead of forwards. On the 
 other hand, religion, where it knows its own business, 
 never thinks of affirming that God made man perfect to 
 start with. The Book of Genesis suggests no such idea* 
 When the human body was fitted to be the dwelling place 
 of spirit, man, as a spiritual being, began his career ; he 
 was quite imperfect ; he had everything to learn ; he was 
 simple as a child ; " barbarous," if you like. But he was 
 not necessarily sinful. He need not have rebelled against 
 God, and the laws of his own nature. Had he retained 
 his innocence, we cannot doubt that the history of human
 
 44 8in and Redemption. 
 
 development would have been more rapid, more glorious 
 all ! how much more rapid and glorious than, in fact, it 
 has been ; for, in fact, it has been at every stage tainted 
 by sin. The first sin is described in the third chapter of 
 Genesis. That chapter, like its surroundings, is probably 
 rather allegory than history. But it is inspired to teach 
 us the deepest lessons of life. It is inspired to teach us 
 the true character of sin. Sin is not human nature. It is 
 the violation of the law of human nature. It is lawless- 
 ness. It is man refusing God and wanting to be a God to 
 himself, and so failing under trial and putting his nature 
 out of joint. This is always and everywhere the nature of 
 sin. Original sin is the result of actual sins. Actual sins 
 are always acts of will by which men reject God, try to be 
 independent of God, and so violate the law of their nature. 
 Sin is lawlessness. 
 
 Jesus Christ came to perfect human nature, but He 
 came also to redeem it. He came to deal with human 
 nature as sinful. He came both to purge it from the guilt 
 and taint of past sins, and also so to restore and convert 
 the wills of men that they might be free from the com- 
 mission of actual sins in the future. 
 
 How is it then that Jesus Christ is our Redeemer ? 
 
 1. Because He is the Second Adam. Born of a Virgin, 
 He has a perfect manhood, and a new manhood. In Him 
 is a fresh creation of God, free from the baneful inheri- 
 tance of past sins. He is the perfect man, both perfectly 
 developed, and flawlessly pure from taint or stain. 
 
 2. Because, as perfect man, He sets the perfect pattern 
 of human life, and summons all men to conform to it. 
 He sets the pattern of what human life, free from sin, is
 
 Sin and Redemption. -'K- 
 
 Capable of being : the pattern of purity, and love, and 
 devotion ; and He summons all men to be as He is to 
 follow His example, to obey His commands. 
 
 But, as a true physician, He gauges the depth of the 
 malady under which human nature sxiffers. He knows that 
 the true pattern of life will stimulate in men the desire to 
 resemble it. But he knows also that they cannot be as He 
 is without a radical change. " Except a man be born 
 again he cannot see the kingdom of God." " Except ye 
 be converted ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven." 
 But what is this conversion and new birth ? How is it 
 possible ? How is it that "the Lamb of God" takes away 
 the sin of the world ? 
 
 3. Because He makes a perfect expiation for all the sins 
 which men have committed, and sets flowing a fountain of 
 spiritual renewal, of new life, to deliver them for the future 
 from the power of sin. But the meaning of these phrases 
 will serve us for consideration in the chapters that follow. 
 
 Meanwhile, I would summon all social reformers, all 
 persons who desire to improve human life, to see to it that 
 they learn the lesson of the one Great Physician, the one 
 true Eedeemer of man. Education and sanitary reform 
 and political change may do much for human life, but 
 they will never remove the fundamental evil. That 
 fundamental evil is sin. There is no removing of sin 
 but by " the new birth." There is no one who can give 
 " the new birth " but He who first gave bi^'i to man and 
 to all things the Word and Son of God. The only true 
 Eedeemer is the Creator also, who for us men, and for oxu 
 salvation, was incarnate and was made man. 
 
 Look at Him at the grave of Lazarus. "Take ye
 
 46 Sin and Redemption. 
 
 away the stone," He says. 2 There are many stones which 
 lie on the graves of dead humanity, and prevent the free 
 access of the life-giving Word. There are social burdens 
 and political evils ; there are bad dwellings and bad 
 drains ; there is ignorance and hopelessness. " Take ye 
 away the stones." But when ye have done it the dead 
 men will not live. The sick men will not be whole. These 
 are necessary reforms, but they are not the new life. 
 Jesus only is the Resurrection and the Life. He only 
 can say to the dead soul, " Lazarus, come forth." 
 
 2 St. John xi. 39.
 
 Out of the bosom of eternal bliss 
 In which He reigned with His glorious Sire, 
 
 He down descended like a most demissi 
 And abject thrall, in flesh's frail attire, 
 
 That He for him might pay sin's deadly hire, 
 And him restore unto the happy state, 
 In which he stood before his hapless fate. 
 
 And look at last how of most wretched wights 2 
 He taken was, betrayed, and false accused; 
 
 How with most scornful taunts, and fell despite 
 He was reviled, disgraced, and foul abused : 
 
 How scourged, how crowned, how buffeted, how bruised j 
 And lastly how 'twixt robbers crucified, 
 With bitter wounds through hands and feet and side. 
 
 OUR Lord's work for us falls under three distinct 
 heads Example, Atonement, Renewal. Of these, 
 the first two express what He did for us, the last what 
 He does in us. But we are concerned in this chapter 
 only with what He did for us, or in our stead, without 
 any co-operation of ours; and, indeed, with only a 
 part of this : with His work of atonement, or propitiation 
 of God. 
 
 > Jesus Christ our Lord offered to God the Father, 
 
 especially by His death upon the Cross, a sacrifice of 
 
 atonement or propitiation, by the merits of which alone 
 
 1 I.e., submissive. 2 i.e., folk.
 
 48 The Atonement. 
 
 we sinful men can be accepted in spite of our unworthi- 
 ness, and our sins can be forgiven. 
 
 People have made many objections to this article 
 of the Christian Creed, and, indeed, it has often been 
 taught in such a way as to justify these objections : 
 chiefly because Christ's work for us has been separated 
 from His work in us. But it is not my business now 
 to deal directly with objections. My business now is to 
 try and present the truth to you positively and simply, 
 and to commend it to your consciences without any 
 notice of objections made to it. And, indeed, the best 
 way to combat objections is to teach the truth in such 
 a way as not to occasion the objections. And I must 
 say this also: If this truth has been much objected to, 
 it has shown at least as much attractive power. It has 
 appealed everywhere to the heart of sinners. Christians 
 all over the world conscious, as all men but the very 
 careless must be, of sins against God have found it 
 fit in with their innermost wants. Thus there has been 
 no more popular doctrine than this, that "if any man 
 sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ 
 the righteous, and He is the propitiation for our sins." 
 Even among Pagans their ignorant and often horrible 
 sacrifices have been only the attempt of yearning, but 
 untaught, human hearts to find the best substitute they 
 could for the great unknown truth of the Perfect 
 Sacrifice after which they were feeling. 
 
 And I am sure we may take it for granted that 
 a doctrine which has met so universal a human need 
 and found so universal a response in human consciences 
 must be in substance true.
 
 The Atonement. 49 
 
 A sacrifice of atonement, a great act of reparation 
 to God ! Surely if sin is not mere ignorance or weakness 
 or folly, but is an offence against God our Father, with 
 whom we were created to have fellowship, such an act 
 of reparation must have been somehow necessary. A 
 wise and good father knows that he cannot for his 
 son's own sake forgive him when he has done wrong 
 unless he shows signs of sorrow, and any sign of sorrow 
 must be a making amends in whatever way is possible. 
 If a son has outraged his home by drunkenness or 
 violence, the father would fail in his duty as a father 
 if he were to behave to his son as if nothing had happened, 
 and receive him into his confidence again before he had 
 both felt and shown a sorrow for the outrage he had 
 committed; and such sorrow must bring with it a 
 readiness, even a desire, to suffer punishment or to 
 make reparation for what has been done. Merely to pass 
 over and ignore the offence would have this fatal result : 
 the son would grow to believe that his offence was, 
 after all, very natural sort of conduct, and that it did not 
 much matter. He would lose his conscience of right 
 and wrong. 
 
 God our Father for a long time " passed over " 3 the 
 sins of the nations of old. "He suffered all nations to 
 walk in their own ways." These were the times of 
 ignorance that God "winked at." 4 Through all these 
 periods He gave no signs, because, in His wise providence, 
 He left men everywhere to find out for themselves, 
 by slow experience, what a miserable thing a sinful 
 life is a life alienated from God, even though it possess 
 8 Romans iii. 25 (Revised Version). 4 Acts zvii. 30; xiv. 16.
 
 50 The Atonement. 
 
 all the resources of intellect and civilisation. Then 
 man's necessity became God's opportunity. God revealed 
 Himself to mankind in Jesus Christ. He came forth 
 to show man again his true destiny. He advanced with 
 His free offer of pardon and fellowship with Himself. 
 But this free offer of generosity on God's part must 
 have been accompanied by some act on man's part which 
 should show that he recognised the wickedness of sin, 
 that he desired to make amends for it, that he acknow- 
 ledged and respected the holiness of God and the justice 
 of His punishments of sin. And for this moral necessity 
 God Himself the Son of God by His becoming man, 
 makes provision. This is the reason of Christ's atoning 
 act. 
 
 Christ ia not only the Bevealer of God. He is also 
 the Son of Man the representative man. So as man 
 He recognises the divine holiness. He offers to God 
 the sacrifice of a true and strict obedience : and when 
 this obedience involved the sacrifice of His life, He did 
 not shrink even from the shedding of His blood. He 
 offered to God the sacrifice of an obedience unto death, 
 even the death of the Cross. 
 
 More than this : it is the ordinance of God that 
 ein brings evil consequence, not on the sinner only, 
 but on the family, the tribe, the race to which he belongs. 
 This is one way in which God had always been teaching 
 men that they are one body, one family, and that they 
 cannot separate themselves from their fellow-men. 
 Selfishness in men had led them to try and escape from 
 this law, and to have as small a share as they might 
 in the sad burden which human wickedness has laid
 
 The Atonement. 51 
 
 upon our race. But our Lord did not try to escape 
 from the law. He " hid not himself from his own flesh." 
 He entered into the common lot of man. He let Himself 
 feel all the terrible burden. When human sin closed 
 in upon Him in its blindness and its selfishness the sins 
 of Jews and Gentiles, rulers and common people when 
 they rejected Him and maltreated Him and crucified 
 Him, He accepted the awful burden which human sin 
 thus laid upon His shoulders. He accepted it as what 
 the Holy Father willed Him to bear for man's sake 
 the cup which He willed Him to drink. He offered 
 before the face of the Father the perfect sacrifice not 
 only of personal obedience but also of the willingness 
 to bear all the awful consequences of human sin. 
 
 This is the acceptable sacrifice the sacrifice offered 
 in the name of all humanity by the pattern Man: the 
 flawless, spotless sacrifice of a perfect will, a perfect 
 obedience, a patient endurance of other men's sins, 
 showing itself in the willing shedding even to the last 
 drop of His human blood. Upon this human offering 
 made by His own Son in our manhood, the Father looks 
 down. All over the world He had beheld weakness and 
 wilfulness and pollution and selfishness. Now for the 
 first and only time He beholds a human [life and death, 
 perfectly acceptable, rendered to Himself as a voluntary 
 offering. Now for the first time is He perfectly ( " well 
 pleased" in the spectacle of man. Now for the first 
 time is adequate and perfect reparation made in man's 
 name to His offended majesty and love. ., Now does He 
 behold a propitiation which will enable Him without 
 serious moral misunderstanding to bestow upon the whole
 
 52 The Atonement. 
 
 human race a free forgiveness ; available for everyone who 
 will come and throw himself on the love of the Father 
 simply in faith in Jesus Christ the Son. 
 
 This is a great subject, and I have space to say very 
 little. I must be content to leave my readers with these 
 thoughts. 
 
 1. The reason for our Lord's Atonement appears to 
 have lain in the necessity that some great central act of 
 reparation should be made in man's name to the offended 
 majesty and righteousness of God, so that, as it were, God 
 might be free to offer him forgiveness without the 
 conscience of mankind becoming dulled to the true 
 hatefulness of sin. 
 
 2. Christ, who offers the great sacrifice of Atonement, 
 offers it as the representative Man. But He who offers 
 it is also in our manhood very God. So that God 
 Himself supplies the sacrifice which the moral situation 
 requires itself a free gift of His love. 
 
 3. It is available for every man who will accept 
 it in faith. This act of faith is in one way the easiest 
 of all acts. It is the mere recognition of our need 
 and the acceptance of a divine gift free and unmerited. 
 But this act of faith by which a man accepts his forgive- 
 ness is itself the pledge that he takes Christ for his 
 Master, and will grow into union with that obedience, 
 and patience, and zeal for God's honour in which He 
 offered the sacrifice. The offer of pardon and acceptance, 
 for the merit of Christ's sacrifice, to everyone who has 
 faith in Jesus, is of all offers the most liberal. But 
 yet this simple faith is itself the seed of all true righteous- 
 ness.
 
 The Atonement. 53 
 
 But this is a line of thought that we must follow 
 further in another chapter. 
 
 4. It is commonly supposed that Christ suffered 
 for us in order that we might be let off suffering. May 
 I ask my readers to notice that this way of speaking 
 cannot be justified from the New Testament. Christ 
 is there represented as suffering in order (1) that we 
 might be forgiven and reconciled to God; (2) that we 
 might share Christ's life and have fellowship with His 
 sufferings. There is no passage in the New Testament 
 which naturally suggests that there is any sort of suffering 
 which Christ suffered which we are not also called to 
 suffer in our degree. 6 If there is such a passage I wish 
 one of my readers would show it to me. 
 
 5. I spoke above of the " times of ignorance," the 
 " times which God winked at," as lying in the past and 
 being brought to a close by Christ's coming in the flesh. 
 So the New Testament speaks of them. So, in fact, 
 they were brought to an end for all Greeks or Romans 
 who came within hearing of the Gospel. But they still 
 went on for other nations. They went on for hundreds 
 of years for our Saxon forefathers. They are continuing 
 still these times of ignorance for Chinese and Japanese 
 and Hindoos, who have either not heard the Gospel 
 or not really felt it in its power. But for them, too, 
 as for Greeks and Romans and Teutons and Celts, there 
 will come the moment of divine opportunity. And when 
 it arrives the provision is ready. For since Christ 
 appeared and His witness has been borne in the world, 
 
 6 See 1 Peter ii. 21 24 ; iv. 1. This is the general sense of 
 the New Testament.
 
 54 The Atonement. 
 
 wherever the message of the Gospel has gone it has 
 contained in the preaching of the atoning sacrifice the 
 remedy for all careless thoughts about sin. 
 
 Here, then, is the blessed truth for us. God hates 
 sin. But "if we confess our sins, He is faithful and 
 righteous to forgive us our sins." For "if any man 
 sin we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ 
 the righteous : and He is the propitiation for our sins ; 
 and not for ours only, but also for the whole world." 8 
 
 8 1 John i. 9 ; ii. 1-2.
 
 of 
 
 O Thou, who keep'st the key of love, 
 Open Thy fount, eternal Dove, 
 
 And overflow this heart of mine, 
 Enlarging as it fills with Thee, 
 Till in one blaze of charity, 
 
 Care and remorse are lost, like motes in light divine ; 
 
 Till, as each moment wafts us higher, 
 By every gush of pure desire, 
 
 And high-breathed hope of joys above, 
 By every secret sigh we heave, 
 Whole years of folly we outlive 
 
 In His unerring sight, who measures life by love. 
 
 TN my last paper I was considering how it is that God 
 * the Father forgives us our past sins by the merits 
 of Christ's perfect sacrifice. Much as there is in this 
 mystery of Atonement which we cannot fathom, the offer 
 of God there made to us is practically plain. If a man 
 come before God in penitence for his sins and with faith 
 in Jesus, God will forgive him his sins that is, will not 
 impute them to him or will reckon them as if they did not 
 exist. 
 
 But does God then "make believe"? The sins are 
 real acts of the man ; they still, though he repent of them, 
 belong to his character. How can God, Who is the True, 
 reckon them as if they were not ? I answer, because God
 
 56 The Holy Spirit the Giver of New Life. 
 
 sees us and deals with us not as we are, but as we are 
 becoming. The truest judgment of any person or thing 
 is one which takes into account what he or it is to become. 
 Why do I buy a cutting of a valuable plant, though it be 
 but a little bit of stick, at a high price ? Because of what 
 it is going to become. So it is that God reckons the 
 penitent and believing sinner at what he is going to become. 
 At present he is not righteous, but his penitence and faith 
 are the seed of a full righteousness yet to grow in him. 
 
 But perhaps, you say, it will not grow. What then ? 
 Ah, yes, alas ! Perhaps it will not grow. Perhaps the 
 man will fall away. Then all the forgivenesses which God 
 has given him on his repentances for his repeated sins 
 will fall away too. Till the last great acquittal at the day 
 of death and judgment, all God's absolutions are pro- 
 visional, not final. So our Lord teaches us in the parable 
 of the unthankful servant. 1 His master, you remember, 
 forgave him his heavy debts when he could not pay them. 
 But he went out and at once behaved hardly and un- 
 forgivingly towards a fellow-servant who owed a trifle to 
 him. When this was known he was summoned back 
 before his master, and found all his own debts back upon 
 him. " He was delivered to the tormentors till he should 
 pay all that was due. So likewise," our Lord adds, " shall 
 My Heavenly Father do also unto you if ye " behave not 
 in a manner becoming those who have had much forgiven 
 them. God's forgivenesses of us are not yet final or 
 irrevocable. 
 
 Now we can see how the matter stands a little more 
 clearly. At the last great acquittal, God will forgive us 
 1 St. Matthew zviii. 23.
 
 The Holy Spirit the Giver of New Life. 57 
 
 our sins finally and for ever, because they no longer belong 
 to our changed characters as Saul the persecutor's sins 
 no longer belong to Paul the apostle. We shall have 
 grown out of them. But meanwhile at the very beginning 
 of our course and again and again upon the road at the 
 first movement of repentance and faith, God forgives us 
 what we have done amiss ; He reckons our sins as if they 
 did not exist, and setting us thus rid of their burden and 
 their bondage leaves us free to run the way of His com- 
 mandments. 
 
 God is never tired of forgiving us in this way. He 
 is never tired of our fresh beginnings. Indeed, there is no 
 real failure in religion except to give up trying ; to refuse 
 any more to be sorry for the past and to make a fresh 
 start. 
 
 But the end of all God's dealings with us, is that we 
 should be made at last actually righteous ; that we should 
 be rid, not merely of the guilt of sin, but of its power. 
 Everything in religion is indeed a means of this one end 
 that we may be brought back into actual living union 
 with God, and this, of course, means actual likeness to 
 God. 
 
 How is this to be? By faith, you say. Yes! "Thy 
 faith shall make thee whole." But what is faith ? It is 
 as it were the open hand, or open mouth, of the human 
 soul. It welcomes God's promise; it expects His gift. 
 What is the gift which it expects and welcomes ? It is 
 the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life. When 
 Jesus was on earth healing man's bodies, it was their 
 faith which made them whole. But how? Because 
 their faith set free to work upon them the healing
 
 58 The Holy Spirit the Giver of New Life. 
 
 "virtue" or power which went out of Christ. Thai 
 healing virtue or power was the virtue and power of the 
 Holy Ghost in His sacred humanity. And still Jesus 
 makes us whole, in soul and spirit first of all, by bestowing 
 upon us out of His sacred manhood the gift of the Holy 
 Spirit. 
 
 God, the Holy Spirit, is, as you know, the third person 
 of the Blessed Trinity. He has always been at work in 
 the world, and especially as the giver of life. All life 
 in nature, in plants, in animals, in man, is His presence 
 and gift. So the human life of Jesus, His human holiness, 
 the strength in which He overcame Satan, and wrought 
 miracles, was His gift. The Father anointed Jesus of 
 Nazareth with the Holy Ghost without measure. And 
 when He rose to the right hand of the Father, this, and 
 nothing but this, was the gift of Jesus to His fellow men 
 the gift of the Holy Spirit. He is the " other Com- 
 forter," or " Helper," who was to take the place of Jesus 
 when he went. 2 Ah ! but that will not half express the 
 truth. " J will not leave you comfortless," our Lord con- 
 tinued, " I will come unto you." 3 " We (My Father and 
 I), will come and make our abode with you." 4 For the 
 three persons of the Blessed Trinity are not separable 
 individuals. They are one personal God. So where One 
 is, All are. The Holy Spirit does not come alone; He 
 in His coming, brings with Him the Son and the Father. 
 This, then, is the great truth of Pentecost. God the 
 Holy Ghost came down out of the sacred and glorified 
 manhood of our Lord, bringing with Him not merely the 
 presence of the Father, but the presence also of the Man 
 
 a St. John xiv. 16. 3 St. John xiv. 18. * St. John adv. 23.
 
 The Holy Spirit the Giver of New Life. 59 
 
 Christ Jesus, the Son incarnate. - That is it ; the Holy 
 Spirit came to dwell in the Church, and in every member 
 of the Church, and He brings with Him all the power, the 
 excellence of the glorified manhood of Christ. The Spirit 
 is the life-giver. But the life which He gives the life into 
 which He implants us, the life with which He nourishes 
 and strengthens us is the life of the glorified Jesus. The 
 rtoly Spirit dwells in us, and for that very reason, it is 
 " Christ in us," the hope of glory. 
 
 Christ in us ! What a mistake Christians make when 
 they think of God of Christ the Son of God as far off. 
 He is our life ; He is within us. 
 
 "Speak to Him then for He tears, and Spirit with spirit can 
 
 meet; 
 Closer is He than breathing, and nearer than hands and feet." 
 
 This is it which makes it so plain how Christ's example 
 is of use to us. People often argue that if Christ was 
 sinless, His example can be of no use to us. Perhaps 
 not, if He were only example. Perhaps His Hie would 
 strike us, so pure is it, with nothing else than despair. It 
 would be too high for us to follow. But in fact His 
 example, and His atoning sacrifice also, are only parts of 
 His work. He who acts for us, as our representative, also 
 acts in us, as our new life. That very Jesus whose life 
 we read of in the Gospels that very Jesus who conquered 
 Satan so that he fled away to hide his head in hell is 
 both before our eyes as our example, and also in us, by 
 His Spirit, as our new life. It is Christ in us, who forms 
 us by His Spirit inwardly upon the model of the pattern 
 which He showed us outwardly. 
 
 Who shall despair then ? However often we fall, we
 
 60 The Holy Spirit the Giver of Neio Life. 
 
 have God ready to forgive us for Christ's sake. And how- 
 ever weak we are, we have Christ in us, by His Spirit, 
 ready to strengthen us, and make us like Hi-m. Never let 
 us despair then. Let us hold on to Jesus, our example, 
 our Sacrifice, our New Life. There is no failure except 
 in ceasing to try; we can never be lost except by de- 
 liberately abandoning God.
 
 in flje fljurcl). 
 
 Here the same Fountain poureth forth 
 Water, wine, milk, oil, honey; and the worth 
 
 Of all transcendent, infinite 
 In excellence, and to each appetite 
 
 In fitness answerable ; so 
 That none need hence unsatisfied go, 
 Whose stomach serves him unto anything 
 That health, strength, comfort, or content can bring. 
 
 "p RACE and truth came by Jesus Christ." 
 
 These are the two great spiritual goods for men. 
 Man needs light for his intelligence, and strength for 
 his will guidance for his mind, and power in his life. 
 Both of these Jesus gives him. But in this paper we are 
 only "concerned with one of them the light, the guidance 
 for the mind, the truth. 
 
 Truth came by Jesus Christ. He declared Himself 
 to be the Truth. And as you read the Gospels you see 
 He cared for nothing more than to impart it. When the 
 world in general would not receive it, He chose those who 
 would His twelve Apostles ; and he gave all His attention 
 to teaching them, not about science, or history, or politics, 
 but about God and man. He taught them the truth 
 about God, His character, His being ; about the Father ; 
 about Himself, the Son ; about the Holy Ghost, whom He 
 was to send. He taught them the truth about themselves. 
 %bout human nature, its capacity, its responsibility, its
 
 62 The Bible in the Church. 
 
 destiny, its sin. He taught them about the kingdom of 
 G-od which was to come, and the Church which was to 
 represent the kingdom, and to prepare for it. This truth 
 He did not write down. Jesus Christ left nothing written 
 behind Him. He left His legacy of truth engrained into 
 the memories of a small body of men by years of intercoure 
 with Himself years in which he was training, teaching, 
 rebuking, helping, encouraging them. When He left the 
 world He left these men to be witnesses of the truth 
 which He had come to reveal : and He first before His 
 death promised, and at Pentecost gave, them a special gift 
 of the Holy Ghost to assist and guarantee what they had 
 gained by natural training. " The Comforter," He said, 
 " which is the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in 
 My name, He shall teach you all things, and bring all 
 things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto 
 you." i 
 
 The Apostles then were left to bear witness to the 
 truth as it is in Jesus, for all generations of men. 
 
 And how did they bear the witness ? " By writing the 
 books of the New Testament," I hear someone reply. Yes, 
 but not first of all. The books of the New Testament 
 were not written to give men their first knowledge of Jesus. 
 They were written for men who already possessed it, who 
 had already been instructed. Will my readers take the 
 pains to look out the following texts in the New Testa- 
 ment in the Revised Version if they have got it (as they 
 should have) ; if not, in the old version : Luke i. 4 ; 
 
 1 Cor. xi. 2, 23; xv. 1-4; Gal. i. 8; Heb. v. 11 vi. 3; 
 
 2 Peter i. 12 ; 1 John ii. 21 ; James i. 19 [E.V.] ; Jude 3. 
 
 1 John riv. 26.
 
 The Bible in the Church. 63 
 
 These texts will make it plain to anyone that the books of 
 the New Testament were written for men and women who 
 had already been taught " the tradition," " the faith once 
 for all delivered," " the first principles " of the Christian 
 religion. The books of the New Testament were intended 
 to remind them of what they already knew, to recall it to 
 their minds, and to build them up in further knowledge of 
 it " that they might know the certainty of those things in 
 which they had already been (orally) instructed." That is 
 to say, oral teaching, or catechising the substance of 
 which is called " the tradition " was the first means of 
 imparting Christian truth. In the Acts we learn how the 
 first Christians were orally instructed in "the Apostles 
 doctrine." 8 
 
 A further study of the New Testament will convince 
 anyone that it is not the sort of book which is calculated 
 to give people their first ideas of religion. All that people 
 need to be taught first is assumed as already known, all, 
 for example, that is contained in our Creed and Catechism. 
 This is not taught but referred to. The name (that is the 
 revelation) of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ; the outlines 
 of the life of our Lord ; the moral duties of religion ; the 
 Church ; the sacraments and their value ; the judgment 
 to come all this (as the texts above referred to will make 
 plain) are presupposed as things already known. 
 
 Not only is this the case, but we can see why it should 
 be. Our Lord intended that men should learn not from 
 books but from persons : all His methods show us this. 
 This is why He taught His Apostles to be witnesses, 
 instead of writing Himself, or teaching them to write. 
 Acte ii. 42.
 
 64 The Bible in the Church. 
 
 And further He did not mean men to learn from mere 
 individual teachers, however much inspired. He formed a 
 Church or organised body, and He left to the Church the 
 duty of being witness to the truth, till He should come 
 again. It is the Church which, as St. Paul says, is " the 
 pillar and ground of the truth." 3 
 
 Thus the Apostles, as we learn in the Acts, founded a 
 branch of the Church in every place, and ordained officers 
 to keep it in order, and to hand on the truth. And when 
 the Apostles were looking forward to their own deaths, 
 they contemplated the truth being carried on by " faithful 
 men," who should succeed them in their teaching office. 
 " The things which thou hast heard from me among many 
 witnesses," wrote S. Paul to the apostolic legate or 
 bishop, Timothy; "the same commit thou to faithful men, 
 who shall be able to teach others also." 4 This is what is 
 called the " apostolic succession," which was intended to 
 secure in every church a due succession all down the ages 
 of authorised and instructed teachers of "the apostolic 
 doctrine." 
 
 So far the truth rests upon tradition. But then every- 
 one knows that " tradition " by itself is not a very safe 
 foundation for truth. After it has been handed down 
 through two or three generations, certain things are sure 
 to have come about. The statement of truth has become 
 hardened and formal; it lacks vital inspiration; it has 
 become corrupted by the admixture of alien elements ; it 
 has beome one-sided through those points which are most 
 popular in one generation having special stress laid on 
 them to the neglect of others. In other words, mere 
 3 1 Tim. iii. 15. * 2 Tim. ii. 2.
 
 The Bible in the Church. 65 
 
 tradition tends to become hard, corrupt and one-sided. It 
 wants continually rectifying, continually recalling to its 
 original type supposing the type a good and complete 
 one, which we know the " Apostles' doctrine " was. How 
 is this to be secured ? Here comes in the function of the 
 Bible. The Apostles, and the Apostolic men who com- 
 panied with them, did not only teach; they also, as 
 occasion served, wrote the books of the New Testament, 
 which the Church collected into one book, and added to 
 the Old Testament Scriptures. Here we have then a 
 continual court of appeal. The living Church must do 
 the teaching in every generation, but the written Book 
 must continually test and correct the teaching. The 
 Church must teach, but the Bible must prove. " Do not 
 believe what I say simply," says an old Church teacher and 
 bishop, Cyril of Jerusalem, in his catechetical lectures, 
 " unless you find the proof of it in the Holy Scriptures." 
 Here is the true ideal the Bishop or Church teaching : 
 the Bible, continually in the hands of all Church people, 
 keeping the teaching pure. 
 
 Now, in my next chapter, I hope to go on to show why 
 the Bible, as an inspired Book, is qualified to fulfil the 
 office of a continual court of appeal. In other words, I 
 hope to write on the Inspiration of Scripture. But, here, 
 I must be content with showing you thus, in outline, what 
 is the place of the Bible, and especially of the New 
 Testament, in the teaching Church. I must be content 
 with having shown you that the truth which, as Christians, 
 we value, does not rest upon one foundation, but two : not 
 on tradition only, but on tradition and Scripture ;" nor on 
 two foundations only, but on three, for I must not forget
 
 66 The Bible in the Chrircn. 
 
 the " unction of the Holy Ghost " the personal illumi- 
 nation given to every Christian. Here are three supports, 
 no one of which is sufficient by itself the Bible, the 
 Church, the individual mind and conscience. 
 
 " These are the three great chords of might j 
 And he whose ear is tuned aright 
 Will hear no discord in the three 
 But the most perfect harmony." 
 
 And now, if this is true, have we not reason to be 
 thankful to the Church of England? Whatever her faults, 
 she, more than any branch of the Church Catholic, holds 
 together Church authority, Bible authority, and individual 
 conscience. The Church of Rome makes much of one; 
 Protestantism makes much of the other two. But the 
 Church of England, like the Church of primitive days, 
 holds these together. She teaches us the tradition first of 
 all, as it is given in the Creeds and the Catechism, and 
 then she puts the open Bible into the hands of all of us, 
 and bids us build ourselves up in the further knowledge 
 of those things wherein we have been instructed ; and, by 
 this further Biblical knowledge which she desires all her 
 children to have, she means that a continually purifying 
 influence should be exercised in the current Church 
 teaching, as " men search the Scripture," and see if the 
 things taught them in sermon and catechism are there 
 indeed.
 
 gnspiraftott of gcripfure. 
 
 It is the looking glass of souls, wherein 
 
 All souls may see, 
 
 Whether they be 
 Still, as by nature they are, deformed with sin j 
 
 Or in a better case 
 
 As new-adorned with grace. 
 
 'Tis the great magazine of spiritual arms, 
 
 Wherein doth lie 
 
 The artillery 
 Of heaven, ready charged against all harnu 
 
 That might come by the blows 
 
 Of our infernal foes. 
 
 npHE Bible, we have seen, is to be our continual standard 
 J- of spiritual truth. We are continually to go back to 
 it and " search the Scriptures, whether the things " we 
 hear and read about God and man "are so" indeed. And 
 the reason why we can use the Bible as a permanent 
 standard of spiritual truth is because the writers of it are 
 " inspired " men. Now we must consider a little more 
 closely what this means. And we will begin with the 
 Apostles. 
 
 The Apostles, we saw, were trained to be witnesses. 
 And when you need to try and convince a doubter of the 
 truth of the Christian religion, you should not argue with 
 him about the inspiration of the writers of the Bible. All 
 that you should try and prove to him is that the Apostlea
 
 68 The Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 were credible and trustworthy witnesses of what they had 
 seen and heard, and that their witness remains with us in 
 the New Testament. But those who are already Christians 
 will believe the Apostles to be witnesses and something 
 more. 
 
 No man can come to believe in Jesus without believing 
 also in the Spirit whom Jesus sent to take His place in the 
 Church. All that can attract men in good Christians, and 
 draw them to believe in God, is the work of this Holy 
 Spirit. He inhabits and breathes his influence into (that 
 is, inspires) all Christian people. But He does not inspire 
 all Christian people equally. "There are diversities of 
 gifts." And the highest gift of inspiration belonged to 
 the Apostles. Thus St. John 1 tells us that our Lord 
 before His death gave them this promise i ^ The Holy 
 Ghost, whom the Father will send in My name, He shall 
 teach you all things, and bring all things to your remem- 
 brance whatsoever I have said unto you." Accordingly 
 St. John believed himself to be inspired. " I was in the 
 Spirit (that is, inspired) on the Lord's day," he writes al 
 the beginning of the Eevelation, 2 and therefore he claims 
 Divine authority for his message or prophecy. 3 So at the 
 beginning of his epistle he writes as one who has un- 
 doubted Divine authority to proclaim " the message which 
 we have heard from God and announce unto you." 4 Just 
 in the same way St. Paul claims that what he preaches is 
 a Divine revelation made personally by God to himself, 6 
 and for this reason he commends the Thessalonians 
 because they received his message, " not as the word of 
 
 1 St. John riv. 26. 2 Eev. L 10. Rev. xxii. 1819. 
 * 1 St. John i. 16. Gal. i. 1116.
 
 The Inspiration of Scriptwre. 69 
 
 men, but, as it is in truth, the word of God." 6 At times 
 indeed St. Paul gives what is only a private opinion of his 
 own as that celibacy is better than marriage for a 
 Christian under circumstances of special strain, and in 
 such a case he expressly says he has not divine authority 
 for what he says ; 7 but this distinction which he here 
 draws between his own opinion and the commandment of 
 the Lord only gives us more confidence in his claim to 
 divine inspiration when he makes it. 
 
 The Apostles then claim to be personally inspired in 
 accordance with our Lord's promise, and therefore to be 
 authoritative or perfectly trustworthy teachers of the 
 Word of God. And the earliest Church which knew them 
 personally in all their trials and tribulations, believed them 
 to be all that they claimed to be, and more ; and all down 
 the Christian generations men have gone on putting their 
 claim to the test and finding it true. There is no exact 
 dogma about inspiration which we are required as Church- 
 men to receive, but the reality of the inspiration of the 
 Apostles is an inherited belief of the Church, continually 
 proved true in the consciences and intellects of prayerful 
 Christians. 
 
 Nor did the twelve Apostles stand alone ; round about 
 them were men also inspired, " prophets " like Barnabas 
 and Apollos. 8 From one of such apostolic men we have 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews, and from companions of the 
 Apostles we have the Gospel of St. Mark, the Gospel of 
 St. Luke, and the Acts. A tone of apostolic authority 
 runs through the Epistle to the Hebrews, and respect was 
 
 6 1 Thess. ii. 13. 1 1 Cor. vii. 6, 12, 25. 
 
 8 Acts ad. 24, xiii. 1 ; 1 Cor. iii. 46.
 
 70 The Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 paid to it as to an apostolic book from the earliest days in 
 the Christian Church. It is in fact the fountain head of 
 all that the Church has believed about the High Priest- 
 hood of our Lord. St. Luke in his preface to his Gospel 9 
 only lays claim to accuracy and the fullest opportunity of 
 the best information. But he depends upon the inspired 
 testimony of the Apostles ; and we cannot doubt that the 
 Church of all ages has been right in recognizing that he 
 and the other Evangelist who only collected the best 
 material for their Gospel narratives, and who invented 
 nothing, yet were fitted for their work by a special gift of 
 the Holy Ghost. 
 
 So far then about the inspiration of the New Testa- 
 ment. The belief in this inspiration was made easy at 
 starting by the fact that the first Christians already 
 believed in books written by inspired men the books of 
 the Old Testament. " Every Scripture inspired of God," 
 so St. Paul refers to the Old Testament. 10 And indeed our 
 Lord's language about the Old Testament had put it 
 beyond doubt for faithful Christians that the Old Testa- 
 ment was really inspired, and contained "the word 
 of God."" 
 
 In the Old Testament, as in the New, we find 
 inspiration of different kinds and degrees. The highest 
 kind is the inspiration of the prophets, who claim in the 
 mst direct way to speak the word of the Lord. They 
 were very different men one from another, and were all of 
 them, in their different ways, fallible men; but they 
 
 Luke i. 14. 10 2 Tim. iii. 16. 
 
 11 gee especially St. Luke xxiv. 26, 27, 44, 45; St. Mark vii 13 j 
 St. Matt. v. 18.
 
 The Inspiration of Scripture. 71 
 
 proclaimed a great deal of truth about God : His holiness : 
 His claims on men : His dealings with nations : His 
 purpose for His chosen people : His intention to bring 
 salvation to the Jews and to mankind through a Messiah. 
 And now that the centuries have rolled by, we can be sure 
 that their claims to inspiration, verified and certified by 
 our Lord, by the Apostles and the Church, is a true one. 
 " The spirit of prophecy " in them was " the testimony of 
 Jesus." " No prophecy ever came by the will of man ; but 
 men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost." 1 * 
 
 Nor can we study the Psalms and make them the 
 language of our own prayer and praise, without recog- 
 nising that in spite of imperfections such as belong to 
 the Old Testament time, like the personal imprecations 
 upon enemies which occur in some of the Psalms 13 the 
 spiritual life depicted there in its height and depth and 
 breadth is the work of none other than the Holy Spirit of 
 God. No testimony to this can be stronger than that 
 which Tioly souk in all ages have made and are making to 
 the Psalms. 
 
 In a somewhat different way we recognise Divine 
 instruction in the Old Testament histories. The Book 
 of Genesis opens not with idle fables about how the 
 world came into being like the Pagan mythologies but 
 with an account which, in all spiritual matters is for evei 
 true ; that the one God made all things ; that all thinga 
 are in their true nature and use very good ; that the real 
 misery of man, his " fall," comes not from nature, but 
 
 12 2 Peter i. 21. 
 
 13 Even these imprecations, though they fall short of the Christian 
 
 spirit (S. Luke ix. 54 56), contain important truth about Divine 
 
 judgmonts (S. Luke xviii. 7, Rev. vi. 10, Acts i. 20).
 
 72 The Inspiration of Scripture. 
 
 from his own disobedience ; and that even in his fallen 
 state man is still not left without the providence of the 
 good God, slowly working out His righteous and loving 
 purpose. The truth of the revelation is not affected by 
 our believing that the narrative in which it is conveyed 
 is allegorical and not literal history. The " history " of 
 the Old Testament passes through all the same stages of 
 literary method as any other history. There is allegory 
 and tradition and popular song and dry chronicle and 
 moral lesson; but through them all there runs the inspira- 
 tion of God, so that the record is throughout made to 
 serve a right purpose, and to display not man's vanity but 
 God's providence. And in boot* like Ecclesiastes or 
 Proverbs or Job we see how the Spirit of God can brood 
 over and direct the early thoughts of men as they meditate 
 upon the mysteries of nature and human existence. So it 
 is that in " many parts " and " many manners " God spake 
 of old times unto our fathers. He who spoke was God's 
 Spirit. Thus the Old Testament contains the Word of 
 God. And this Word or message of God came to its 
 highest and fullest and deepest expression in the revelation 
 of the Christ, and in the inspiration of His Apostles. 
 
 This is the common belief of Christians of all ages. 
 The exact nature of the inspiration of the Old and New 
 Testament writers men have often tried to define, but 
 never very successfully. Certainly no one has a right to 
 impose on his fellows any particular belief about inspira- 
 tion, its nature and its limits. But what has been said 
 above describes its general character ; and this, at least, 
 has been always believed about it. And we in our day can 
 take this Christian belief on trust, and put it to the proof
 
 The Inspiration of Scripture. 73 
 
 for ourselves; and in all that concerns spiritual things the 
 things (as they are called) of faith and morals we shall 
 find that this belief is justified to our own consciences and 
 hearts. We shall not try and pick a religion out of the 
 Bible for ourselves the Bible was not meant to be so used 
 but taught, as we are, the Church's common creed, we 
 shall, by continual use of the Bible, build ourselves up in 
 the knowledge of our most holy faith.
 
 of 
 
 Where is tliat fire which once descended 
 
 On the Apostles ? Thou didst then 
 Keep open house, richly attended, 
 Feasting all comers by twelve chosen men. 
 Such glorious gifts Thou didst bestow 
 
 That the earth did like a heaven appear j 
 The stars were coming down to know 
 If they might mend their wages and serve hero. 
 ***** 
 
 Lord, though we change, Thou art the some ; 
 
 The same sweet God of love and light, 
 Restore this day,* for Thy good Name, 
 Unto hia ancient and miraculous right. 
 
 TT has already appeared that Good's gift of saying truth, 
 -*- offered to men in Jesus Christ, is offered them not 
 singly, but as members of the society or Church to which 
 the truth is committed to be handed down. This is 
 according to our nature. The gifts of civilization, the 
 gifts of knowledge and wealth and personal liberty, have 
 come to men only as members of a race or state or 
 nation. So the gifts of religion, the gifts of spiritual 
 truth and grace, are promised to men only in the great 
 Christian society, the Catholic Church. 
 
 That this is the case with Christian truth has already 
 appeared. But it is no less the case with the gifts of 
 1 Whitsunday.
 
 The Church the Household of Grace. 75 
 
 grace giver us in Jesus Christ. It is as the rich depository 
 of this grace that the Church is called " the household of 
 God." 
 
 A household a home. These are words that carry 
 a plain meaning to every heart and head. At home one is 
 comforted, one moves at ease, one is provided for, and 
 one's ordinary wants are satisfied. There, too (if it is to 
 be worthy of the name), there must be peace, order, and 
 discipline. Thus, when the Church is called the " house- 
 hold of God " the word carries with it all these thoughts 
 about home. In the Church men are to be taken out of 
 their solitude and provided for as in a family, and feel 
 about them the warmth of human fellowship. 
 
 Ah, yes! Human fellowship. We must take care 
 that in every one of our Churches, as far as may be, the 
 family feeling is kept up. Members of a church ought 
 to feel themselves taken out of their solitude. By what- 
 ever means it is to be brought about, churches must be 
 true to the divine intention, " He setteth the solitary in 
 families." 2 
 
 But human fellowship is not all. St. John writes his 
 epistle, that his readers "may have fellowship with us," that 
 is human fellowship, but he does not stop there. " Truly," 
 he adds, " our fellowship is with the Father and with His 
 Son Jesus Christ." 3 Here we get to the root of the 
 matter. The Church is the household of God, because, in 
 it, through human fellowship, God the Holy Ghost con- 
 veys to us all the gifts of Christ that is, the gifts of 
 the life of God Himself. 
 
 These gifts of Christ are " the Bread of Life " ; and, as 
 a Ps. bcviii. 6. 31 St. John i. 3.
 
 76 The Church th* Household oj Grace. 
 
 is proper in a household, the bread is given to us at due 
 times and seasons. In the Church is a rich provision for 
 human needs, a rich provision accompanying our life from 
 the cradle to the grave, offering to us at each stage of life's 
 day our " portion of meat in due season." 4 
 
 The beginning of life is to be born, and the beginning 
 of our Christian life is to be " born again of water and 
 the Spirit." In the case of those whose parents are 
 members of the Christian family, or for whom the 
 Church undertakes to be in place of parents, the birth 
 and the new birth, come close together. While still 
 infants they are made " members of Christ " in Baptism, 
 so that the life of Christ may accompany and consecrate 
 the very beginnings of feeling and intelligence. 
 
 Then as the child grows on its independent life 
 begins. And as it passes into boyhood or girlhood this 
 new stage of life is met with a new gift. In Confirma- 
 tion the growing soul is filled with the gift of the Holy 
 Ghost, and thus given its proper share in the priesthood 
 and kingship of Jesus Christ, its Lord. And after that 
 there is continual nourishment. As the life of the body 
 is sustained with regular meals, so the life of the soul is 
 regularly nourished with the body and blood of Jesus, 
 that is, the very essence of His person, human and divine, 
 in Holy Communion. These are the highest gifts of the 
 Spirit, but they are not all. 
 
 Sin may have wrought its destruction in the soul, 
 
 and the Christian may have fallen away from the divine 
 
 fellowship. It may have become dead again in trespasses 
 
 and sins. To meet so grievous a disastei there is the 
 
 4 St. Luke zii. 42.
 
 The Chwrch the Household of Grace. 77 
 
 gift of restoration, "the plank after shipwreck." The 
 sinner confesses his sin, he submits himself to the 
 judgment of the Church in what the Prayer Book calls 
 "Penance," 6 and like a prodigal restored to his family he 
 is welcomed back by absolution into the " holy fellow- 
 ship." Or the time has come when the grown life of 
 A man is to be completed by union with a woman in 
 one flesh. Again the Church is present to sanctify the 
 onion and bless the foundation of a new family in Holy 
 Matrimony. Once again, this or that man is called to 
 take upon himself the high office of a " steward " in the 
 divine household, to administer to others the Bread of 
 Life by which he himself lives. Here again the Church, 
 in its holy Ordination, imparts to him the authority 
 and power for this new ministry. Once more, when 
 grave sickness is upon any Christian, the Church, as 
 in apostolic days, is present with the remedial anointing 
 of the Holy Oil, 6 or, at least, where this rite has been 
 abandoned, with other holy ministries ; and if the sickness 
 be unto death, she stands full of the hope of immortality, 
 to usher the soul into the unseen world. 
 
 Verily the Church is the household of God, the home 
 of our spiritual life, because, at each crisis and turning, 
 she is by our side with a blessed provision for our 
 needs as they occur ; and the provision in each case is 
 a great spiritual gift conveyed through the simplest 
 possible forms, intelligible and acceptable to every head 
 and every heart. For God is a God of simplicity and 
 power, and He gives therefore the highest gifts through 
 the simplest channels. Our nature also is made up of 
 See Article 33 and Commination Service. 6 St. James v. 14.
 
 78 The Church the Household of Grace, 
 
 body and soul, and the gifts for the soul are therefore 
 given us through bodily and visible channels. 
 
 There are many people who have found difficulties 
 in the sacramental system ; but, after all, if this is a 
 true general account of the sacraments and ministries 
 of grace, is it not intelligible to us all? Does it not 
 appeal to what is best and simplest in us ?
 
 and 
 
 If bliss had lien in art or strength, 
 
 None but the wise and strong had gained it ; 
 Where now by faith all arms are of a length, 
 
 One size doth all conditions fit. 
 A peasant may believe as much 
 
 As a great clerk, and reach the highest stature ; 
 Thus dost Thou make proud knowledge bend and crouch, 
 
 While grace fills up uneven nature. 
 
 F SHALL have something more to say in other chapters 
 *- about some of the sacraments, but I want to stop at 
 this point and try to explain a difficulty with which we 
 are often met. Again and again people reply to the sort 
 of teaching about the sacraments which I tried to give in 
 the last chapter " But I cannot attribute so much im- 
 portance to ceremonies. According to the Gospels and St. 
 Paul, it is by faith we are saved." And then by way of 
 proving that the belief of the Church in the sacraments is 
 mistaken, they point to the multitude of baptized people 
 who are living wicked or careless lives, and ask triumphantly 
 whether it is possible to believe that those people are the 
 possessors of the new birth of the Holy Spirit. In view of 
 such a very common objection, I want to make it quite 
 plain that the Christian Church has never taught that 
 either baptism or any of the sacraments can make men 
 good by merely being administered to them. Besides
 
 80 Faith <md Grace. 
 
 sacraments, faith and conversion are "necessary to sal- 
 vation" in the case of each separate individual ; and it is 
 only by an extraordinary mistake that sacraments on the 
 one side and faith and conversion on the other, have ever 
 been torn asunder}in|Christian preaching. 
 
 Suppose two savages looking on at a musician playing 
 a violin. They think they would like to make that noise 
 themselves. So they set upon the performer, and one of 
 them gets hold of the bow and makes off with it, and 
 proceeds to scrape it violently upon all sorts of pieces of 
 wood, and is much disappointed because he cannot induce 
 the horsehair to make any sound at all. And the other 
 gets hold of the fiddle with the catgut strings and carries 
 that into a corner, and, after scraping it diligently with a 
 bit of stick, throws it down disgusted because he too fails 
 to produce any satisfactory noise. You would watch the 
 proceedings of those two savages with some amusement, 
 but in fact their conduct would not be a bad illustration of 
 what one-sided believers in faith and one-sided believers in 
 sacraments have been constantly doing. They have each 
 of them been running off with half a truth ; or trying tc 
 produce by means of one half of a piece of spiritual 
 machinary a result which can only be truly produced 
 by both halves in combination. 
 
 The " bread of life " given us in the " household of 
 God " is like common bread in this, that it cannot nourish 
 or do any good to us unless it be eaten with some appetite 
 and digested into our system. Food given from without, 
 and appetite and digestion supplied from within, are alike 
 necessary to our physical life. So in the same way the 
 sacraments actually convey to us the food of our souls
 
 Faith and Grace. 81 
 
 as a gift given from without, but they do us no good 
 unless there be a spirit in us awake to what is being given, 
 welcoming the gift and ready to " assimilate " or digest 
 it into our spiritual system. 
 
 Think of our Lord's healings. There was a " virtue " 
 or " power " which went out from His sacred humanity, 
 and which made men whole. But it only made men whole 
 if they had faith to desire it and to accept it. Thus it is 
 said of our Lord, at one place, that He " ccull do there no 
 mighty work . . . because of their unbelief." 1 At 
 other times He said to those who "had faith to be 
 healed " " Thy faith hath saved thee," " according 
 to thy faith be it unto thee " not because faith could 
 heal by itself, but because faith gave men the power 
 to desire and appropriate the gifts of Christ. On 
 another occasion, when multitudes " thronged Him," He 
 jjvid of one woman that she "touched Him," because 
 He " perceived that virtue had gone out of Him " * 
 that is, ovt of a great crowd one woman only had 
 the faith necessary to draw out upon herself the 
 blessings which were there for all. So the grace of 
 Baptism or of Holy Communion is the same for all: 
 the gift in each case is what it is by Christ's power 
 and the power of His Spirit in the case of Baptism, 
 it is the sharing in the new life; in the other case, 
 the Body and Blood of Christ, but though multitudes 
 receive the gifts, only some appropriate them by faith; 
 multitudes " throng " Christ, but only a few " touch " 
 Him. 
 
 Now surely we can see why our Lord should have 
 i St. Mark vi. 6, 6; St. Matt. jriii.~6JT 8 St. Mark v. 3084.
 
 82 Faith and Grace. 
 
 said on the one hand, " Except a man be born of water 
 and the spirit he cannot enter into the kingdom of 
 God," 3 and "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of G-od 
 and drink His blood, ye have not life in yourselves," 4 
 and on the other hand, "This is the work of God that 
 ye believe on Him Whom He hath sent," 6 and "Except 
 ye be converted or turn (which is the same as having 
 the will to believe in Christ) ye cannot enter into the 
 kingdom of heaven." 6 Now we can understand why 
 St. Paul should sometimes speak so clearly of the 
 sacraments calling baptism " the laver of regeneration," 
 speaking of our being " baptized into Christ," adminis- 
 tering Confirmation in order to bestow the gift of the 
 Holy Ghost, speaking of our communicating in the 
 Body and Blood of Christ in the Eucharist, reminding 
 Timothy of the gift that was in Him through the 
 laying on of hands 7 and on the other hand should 
 assert so confidently that nothing but faith "justifies" 
 us or commends us to God, and that we have "access 
 by faith into that grace wherein we stand." 8 
 
 Three times over St. Paul states the one necessity 
 hi the Christian religion, by contrast to the mere bodily 
 distinction between Jew and Gentile, circumcision or 
 uncircumcision. Once he says : " Circumcision is nothing, 
 and uncircumcision is nothing, but a new creature,' 1 
 that is the gift of "grace." 9 Next, "neither circumcision 
 availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working by 
 love, 1 ' that is, operative faith. 10 Once more, "Circumcision 
 
 3 St. John iii. 6. * St. John vi. 53. 6 St. John vi. 29. 
 
 * 8 St. Matthew xviii. 3. 
 
 7 Tit. iii. 5. Eom. vi. 3. Acts xix. 1-6. 1 Cor. x. 16, 17. 2 Tim. i. 6. 
 8 Eom. v. 2. Gal. vi. 15. 10 Gal- ~. 6.
 
 Faith, and Grace. 83 
 
 is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing but the 
 keeping of the commandments of God" that is the 
 actual obedience which is the one end and test alike of 
 faith and of fellowship in the sacraments. 11 These three 
 things are, in fact, but the one same spiritual life 
 looked at from different points of view. 
 
 Now I hope we shall understand that faith and 
 sacraments are in no conflict the one with the other. 
 You have no more got to choose between them, to take 
 one or the other, than, when you want to play the 
 fiddle, you have got to choose between the fiddle and 
 the bow. You will want them both. 
 
 The sacraments, duly administered, supply you with 
 the bread of life, the portions of meat in due season ; but 
 the sacraments will not do you spiritual good, unless you 
 have faith to desire and to use them. And on the other 
 band faith looks to the word of Him in whom it believes, 
 and faith can be nothing but a blind faith, or no faith at 
 all, which refuses to feed upon the spiritual nourishment 
 which Christ has provided for it. And I hope no one will 
 make this teaching about the necessity of faith an 
 argument against the apostolic practice of baptising in 
 their unconscious infancy the children of Christian parents. 
 Who can tell exactly when consciousness in the child 
 begins? But the intention of the Church is that the 
 Christian child shall have its life from the very beginning 
 under Christian influences, and shall find the gifts of the 
 new life lodged within its innermost being as soon as ever, 
 under the loving care of its mother, it begins to exercise a 
 half -conscious faith. 
 
 u 1 Cor. vii, 19.
 
 84 Faith and Grace. 
 
 There are three remarks that I must add. First, that 
 when I have spoken of faith and sacrament, as " necessary 
 to salvation," I mean necessary for those who can have them. 
 Where people have no opportunity of using the sacra- 
 ments, God can give them strength in His own way. For 
 God is not tied to His own instruments. Again, where 
 people have no opportunity of knowing Christ, or believing 
 in Him, Christ can draw them unknowing, and reveal 
 Himself to them even after death. 
 
 Secondly, let me note that faith is a thing of degrees. 
 There is the faith of a converted or converting will, the 
 faith by which a man, perhaps a heathen, first turns to 
 Christ to be accepted by Him; and there is the enlightened 
 and stablished faith of a Christian living in the grace of 
 a regenerate life. And in this, too, there are degrees, for 
 we are to go on " from faith to faith " till faith be lifted 
 into sight. 
 
 Lastly, I have spoken of faith or conversion as practi- 
 cally the same thing. And in fact it is justifiable so to 
 Bpeak of them. Faith is not saving faith except the will 
 go with it ; and the conversion of the will towards God, 
 suddenly or gradually, is nothing else than the self- 
 Bommittal of true faith, handing over our human life to 
 the government of God. You cannot be converted without 
 faith, or really believe without being converted.
 
 or J>ol ommtwiott. 
 
 Louder than gathered waters, 
 Or bursting peals of thunder, 
 We lift our voice 
 And speak our joys, 
 And shout our loving wonder ! 
 
 Angels in fixed amazement 
 Around our altars hover, 
 
 With eager gaze 
 
 Adore the grace 
 Of our Eternal Lover : 
 
 Himself and all His fulness, 
 Who gives to the believer ; 
 
 And by this bread 
 
 Who'er are fed 
 Shall live with God for ever ! 
 
 holy Eucharist is the greatest of the sacraments 
 -* because it stretches so wide and takes in so much, 
 because it is both the divine feast and the altar of perfect 
 sacrifice and the perfection of brotherly fellowship. And 
 it is also the greatest act of Christian worship, because, 
 with the Lord's Prayer, it is the only act of Christian 
 worship which Christ himself instituted. Matins and 
 evensong, prayer meeting and Bible- class, are all good 
 ways of approaching God in common, but there is only 
 one form, of common worship which sanctifies Sunday and 
 festival according to Christ's intention and the custom of
 
 86 The Holy Eucharist or Holy Communion. 
 
 the Church from its very beginnings, and that is the holj 
 Eucharist, the specially Christian sacrifice, the worship in 
 spirit and in truth. 
 
 The holy Eucharist is so great because Christ Himself 
 instituted it ; but much more because Christ Himself is 
 there present. He is present in the whole of the Christian 
 life. " Te are come," says the Epistle to the Hebrews, l 
 " unto mount Zion and unto the heavenly Jerusalem, and 
 
 to Jesus the mediator of the new covenant." 
 
 " Where two or three are gathered together in my name," 
 said our Lord Himself, "there am I in the midst of 
 them." 8 But He is specially present, and in a special 
 manner, in the holy Communion. In that service is every 
 form of devotion prayer, and confession, and hearing the 
 word, and profession of faith, and intercession, and 
 adoration, and praise, and oblation the oblation of the 
 bread and wine, which represent all God's gifts to us, 
 given that we may return them to Him in grateful 
 homage and commemoration, the commemoration of the 
 passion and resurrection of our Lord. And what a com- 
 memoration ! There is commemoration in word and in 
 act by the breaking of the bread and the mingling and 
 out-pouring of the cup. This is dramatic. But what a 
 thrilling drama would that be in which the living spirit of 
 Macbeth or Hamlet should crown each representation with 
 his own actual presence ! Yet in the holy Eucharist all 
 our acts of worship and commemoration are crowned by 
 our Lord's presence, who spiritually, but most really, 
 mingles Himself with our earthly rites and elements, and 
 by the power of the Holy Spirit makes Himself most 
 1 Heb. xii. 22-24. 2 St. Matt, xviii. 20.
 
 'fhe Holy Eucharist or Holy Communion. 8? 
 
 truly there present amongst us in His body and His blood, 
 under the humble forms of bread and wine. 
 
 1. He is there to be our food. Nothing but the very 
 life of God can satisfy the need of man. And Christ, very 
 God made very man, gives Himself in the holy Com- 
 munion to be our food. " He that eateth me," He said, 
 " even he shall live by me." 3 How can this be ? It is 
 done through ordinary material channels. By eating 
 broadband drinking wine, the gifts which vegetable gift con- 
 tributes to our nourishment, pass into us ; and the gifts of 
 animal life by eating flesh." It is thus under the expressive 
 veils of the earthly food, bread and wine, which we have 
 duly offered to God, that the human and divine life of the 
 glorified Jesus His " flesh," which is the spiritual essence 
 of His manhood, and the " blood which is the life 
 thereof" is communicated to us. The earthly priest, who 
 represents the whole Christian people, invokes the power 
 of the Spirit upon the bread and wine ; he blesses them 
 with the recitation of Christ's words of institution, and lo! 
 m a way which passes our power to fathom, like all the 
 deep things of nature and grace, the divine Spirit acts 
 upon the earthly elements and consecrates them so that 
 invisibly and spiritually, yet really, they become in the 
 midst of the Church the body and blood of the glorified 
 Jesus. Verily heaven and earth are here mingled and 
 
 made one. 
 
 " Hail, sacred feast, which Jesus makes, 
 
 Rich banquet of His flesh and blood ! " 
 2. Christ is our food in these holy mysteries, and 
 He is also our sacrifice. Once for all in the self-sacrifice 
 of His passion He offered Himself "a full, perfect, and 
 8 St. John vi. 57.
 
 88 The Holy Eucharist or Holy Communion. 
 
 sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction, for the sins 
 of the whole world." And He presents Himself for ever 
 in the heavenly place in the power of His once made 
 sacrifice. Here in the holy Eucharist, then, we are brought 
 near to His heavenly intercession. " Ye are come .... 
 unto Jesus the mediator of the new Covenant, and unto 
 the blood of sprinkling." 4 He, our priest and victim, is 
 in the midst of us, unseen, but really with us. And the 
 whole congregation offers or pleads His sacrifice to give 
 effect to all their own imperfect prayers for themselves 
 and others. This is our " eucharist," that is, " our sacri- 
 fice of praise and thanksgiving" in the power of the 
 accepted propitiation. 
 
 As Charles Wesley sings : 
 
 " Thou standest in the holiest place, 
 
 As now for guilty sinners slain ; 
 
 Thy blood of sprinkling speaks and prays, 
 
 All prevalent for helpless man ; 
 
 Thy blood is still the ransom found, 
 And spreads salvation all around. 
 
 God still respects Thy sacrifice, 
 
 Its savour sweet does always please ; 
 
 The offering smokes through earth and skies 
 
 Diffusing life and joy and peace, 
 
 To these Thy lower courts it comes, 
 And fills them with divine perfumes. 
 
 We need not now go up to heaven 
 To bring the long sought Saviour down. 
 Thou art to all that seek Thee given, 
 Thou dost e'en now Thy banquet crown, 
 To every faithful soul appear, 
 And show Thy real presence here." 
 * Heb. xii. 23.
 
 The Holy Eucharist or Holy Communion. 89 
 
 3. Christ our food Christ our sacrifice Christ 
 also the author of our brotherhood. " Seeing that there 
 is one bread," says St. Paul, "we who are many, are one 
 body : for we are all partakers of that one bread." 5 The 
 Eucharist is a meal of brothers, and their brotherhood is 
 sanctified and deepened by the life of Christ there im- 
 parted to them and their fellowship in the blessings of His 
 redemption. "See how these Christians love one another!" 
 cried the heathen in early days. And still though there 
 are now many more false Christians than there were in 
 the blessed days when unpopularity and persecution kept 
 Christianity pure still by far the greater part of true 
 human brotherhood in the world comes from the conscious 
 profession of the name of Christ and the fellowship in 
 His body and blood. There is a great and growing 
 amount of real Christian love in the world. But oh! 
 how much more there ought to be. And we may depend 
 upon it that all large restorations of Christian unity will 
 grow out of those smaller measures of reunion among 
 Christians which arise when those who eat the same bread 
 and drink the same cup are at pains to see that they 
 behave with true brotherly and sisterly love one to 
 another, " bearing one another's burdens and so fulfilling 
 the law of Christ." 
 
 Christ is our Food : our Sacrifice : our Unity. And 
 all these three facts depend one on the other. True it is 
 that communicants may assist at the holy sacrifice of the 
 Eucharist when they are not communicating. Even if we 
 cannot communicate every Sunday we should strive to be 
 present every Sunday at the holy Mysteries. But at the 
 fi 1 Cor. x. 17.
 
 JO 'fhe Holy Eucharist or Holy Communion. 
 
 bottom of the matter it will be found that our right to 
 plead the sacrifice depends on our sharing the feast. It is 
 only "in Christ" that we can offer Christ only as 
 members of His body that we can plead in His name. 
 And all that we get from Him we get not for ourselves 
 alone or our own soul's sake merely, but for the whole 
 body. And all our prayers should be for the " whole estate 
 of Christ's Church militant," for the ingathering of the 
 ivhole of humanity, and for the perfecting of the whole 
 body of faithful people living and departed. There should 
 be nothing selfish about Eucharistic prayers. Thus Christ 
 our food, Christ our sacrifice, Christ our unity, is but one 
 Christ ; and we cannot have fellowship with TTim in one 
 way without having fellowship with Him in all. 
 
 " Thanks be to God for Hie unspeakable gift."
 
 Jlposfolic Succession. 
 
 The word and sacraments, the means of grac'j, 
 
 He duly doth dispense ; 
 The flourishes of falsehood to deface 
 
 With truth's clear evidence; 
 And sin's usurped tyranny suppress, 
 By advancing righteousness and holiness. 
 
 in Christian Churches there must be minis- 
 *' ters. How are they to be appointed? It would 
 seem reasonable that, as they must necessarily be for 
 the advantage or disadvantage of certain bodies of 
 Christian people, these people should have a good deal 
 to say to their appointment. This is reasonable: it is 
 in agreement with our best modern idea of representative 
 and elective government, and also it is in agreement with 
 the ideas of the earliest and best Christian ages. We 
 should never forget that the Christian Church laid great 
 stress on the proper election of Christian ministers by 
 those to whom they were to minister. The first seven 
 deacons were chosen by the " whole multitude " of 
 Christians before they were ordained by the apostles. 
 And this precedent was followed for many centuries. 
 In this way the Christian Church gave to the world the 
 first example of representative government. 
 
 This idea of the election, or at least the free accept- 
 ance, of the clergy by their nocks has remained embedded
 
 92 The Apostolic Succession. 
 
 in the forms of ordination in the Catholic Church, but, 
 in most cases, it has long since lost all reality. The 
 system of the middle ages was against representative 
 government. Tudor and Stuart kings were not more 
 favourable to it. Thus the power of making appointments 
 in the Church passed altogether to popes and bishops, 
 kings and patrons. 
 
 We need, therefore, in our English Church a great 
 reform. Speaking for the moment only of the appoint- 
 ment of parish priests, we should set ourselves to 
 accomplish at least this that the nomination of the 
 patron should be communicated to the parishioners before 
 it is confirmed, and that reasonable objections on their 
 part should enable the bishop to require the patron to 
 make another nomination. And again, when an incum- 
 bent had shown himself permanently and seriously 
 incompetent to satisfy the spiritual requirements of his 
 people, a representation by them should enable the 
 bishop to remove him from the cure of souls. 
 
 This is not the occasion to discuss details, nor can 
 we enter at all into the questions connected with the 
 appointment of bishops or the reform of the Church's 
 convocations. But this is certain : that such reforms 
 %s would give to the laity a real voice in the appointment 
 And removal of their pastors are peremptorily needed. 
 
 There is, however, one point which ought to be 
 cleared up before any efforts for practical reform can 
 begin. Who are the laity whose voice ought to be 
 heard with regard to Church appointments ? We mean 
 by these laity Churchmen who are fulfilling their duties 
 <VK Churchmen, not by any means residents or ratepayers
 
 The Apostolic Succession. 93 
 
 hi a certain district. The prophet of Italian democracy, 
 Joseph Mazzini, laid it down that " political rights are 
 only the correlative of political duties done," or in simpler 
 words, "a man cannot ask to exercise any privilege as 
 a citizen unless he is doing his duties as a citizen." In 
 the same way, a man cannot exercise any right as a 
 Churchman unless he is doing his duty as a Churchman. 
 A Christian minister ought to have a "good report of 
 them that are without," 1 and Churchmen had better, in 
 the selection of their ministers, pay a real regard to the 
 public opinion even of those who do not belong to their 
 own body; but they cannot recognise in them any of 
 the formal rights of membership. 
 
 So far we have spoken of the true method of electing 
 Church ministers. But the truest possible election does 
 not make a man a Church minister ; and a bad method 
 of election, though it hinders the efficiency of the minister, 
 does not deprive him, when he is properly ordained, of 
 the spiritual powers which belong to his office. For 
 what is the ministry of the Church ? It is a stewardship 
 in the household of God. The household, which is the 
 Church, and the stewardship which is the ministry, 
 are a provision of the divine bounty to secure that in 
 every place to which the Church reaches, and in each 
 generation, until Christ come again, there shall be a 
 due administration of the divine gifts of truth and 
 grace, and persons qualified to administer them who, 
 by the method of their appointment, shall represent God 
 the Giver, and not men the receivers. They are God's 
 stewards. So the apostles called themselves, 2 and they 
 1 1 Tim. iii. 7. 21 Cor. iv. 1 ; Tit. i. 7.
 
 94 The Apostolic Succession. 
 
 ordained others to fulfil their office in different grades- 
 deacons, 3 presbyters, 4 and others like Timothy and Titu;- 
 who held (as far as ministry is concerned) the full apostolic 
 position. At first it was often the case that these holders 
 of apostolic position were not any more than the apostles, 
 locally fixed in a particular church ; and while this was so, 
 the name "bishop" (or local overseer) was given to the 
 presbyters of each church. But after a time there was a 
 slight change in the arrangement of ofiices, and a corres- 
 ponding change in the use of the names. Each church 
 came to have an apostolic officer, who alone came to 
 be called bishop, with presbyters (priests) and deacons 
 under him. Of these the bishop alone has had the general 
 authority of government, wwrship and teaching, and in 
 particular the power to ordain others to the sacred 
 ministry, and to lay on hands in Confirmation. The 
 presbyters only have shared with the bishop the right to 
 consecrate the Holy Eucharist and to absolve or re-admit 
 penitents ; the deacons have held a subordinate office of 
 teaching and ministering. There have been also minor 
 orders of sub-deacons, readers, doorkeepers, acolytes, 
 exorcists, deaconesses, and others, making a rich supply of 
 human ministries in divine things. Some of these offices 
 have fallen into practical or complete disuse in other parts 
 of the Church and in the English Church. Some of them 
 are now being revived among us. But in regard to the 
 holy orders of bishops, priests and deacons, there is no 
 doubt at all that the Church of England has retained them 
 throughout, and now possesses them. We are linked on 
 
 8 Acts vi. ; Phil. i. 1 ; 1 Tit. iii. 8-13. 
 * Aote xi. 30; xiv. 23; x*. 17-35; 1 Tim. iii. 1-7; Tit. i. 5-9.
 
 The Apostolic Secession. 96 
 
 to the whole of the Catholic Church from the first by this 
 apostolic succession of ministers, and with the apostolic 
 succession we have retained the valid administration of all 
 the Sacraments. 
 
 What do we mean by valid ? We mean ratified, secure. 
 God is not tied to the means of grace of His own institu- 
 tion. Thus He can give grace freely, and we cannot doubt 
 He has given it, where the visible Sacraments are not 
 administered, or not administered duly. 
 
 But we are bound to consider the terms of the divine 
 covenant, the will of our God. The ministry is of divine 
 appointment, and we have no right to tamper with it. Do 
 we not see what havoc has been wrought by men ignoring 
 its value, and so splitting off into a thousand sects r For 
 the apostolic succession of the ministry was intended to be 
 one of the main pledges for the maintenance of the unity 
 of the body. To maintain unity, and to administer the 
 divine covenant of grace and truth this is the purpose of 
 the Christian ministry, and we Churchmen who are de- 
 termined to recognise and to maintain it had better set 
 ourselves to remove all stumbling blocks, such as the bad 
 methods of appointment to Church offices, and the lack of 
 means for the removal of incompetent ministers, that the 
 Church may the better fulfil her holy function, being held 
 in good repute by all men. 
 
 And we must never forget that there is a false sort of 
 " sacerdotalism," (that is, belief in these priestly offices), 
 as well as a true. The true kind of "sacerdotalism" 
 recognizes the truth we have just been trying to state. 
 The false "sacerdotalism" very often docs not recognise it; 
 but whether it does or does not, it shows itself by
 
 96 The Apostolic Succession. 
 
 practically transferring to the clergy alone duties and 
 responsibilities which ought to belong to the whole Church. 
 Care for Christian truth, care for religious education and 
 training, care for Christian worship, care for Christian 
 holiness, these things ought not to be left to the clergy. 
 They belong to the whole Church the whole body of the 
 faithful. And if the clergy wear a solemn dress in the 
 public worship, that is to mark, not the dignity of their 
 own order, but the dignity of that priestly body which is 
 the whole Church in all its grades, which altogether 
 believes in God's Word, and presents itself before Him in 
 holy worship and holy life and holy fellowship of love. 
 
 May God give to the Church of England now at this 
 time grace to avoid the false " sacerdotalism," and to hold 
 the true !
 
 (|)ur ipnseen (Enemies cm& 
 
 And is there care in heaven ? And is there love 
 In heavenly spirits to these creatures base 
 
 That may compassion of their evils move ? 
 
 There is : else much more wretched were the case 
 
 Of men than beasts ! but oh ! the exceeding grace 
 Of highest God that loves His creatures so, 
 
 And all His works with mercy doth embrace, 
 That blessed angels He sends to and fro 
 To serve to wicked man, to serve his wicked foe. 
 
 How oft do they their silver bowers leave 
 
 To come to succour us that succour want ; 
 How oft do they with golden pinions cleave 
 
 The flitting skies, like flying pursuivant, 
 
 Against foul fiends to aid us militant. 
 For as they fight they watch and duly ward, 
 
 And their bright squadrons round about us plant; 
 And all for love, and nothing for reward. 
 Oh, why should heavenly God to man have such regard P 
 
 VT7HTLE we are speaking of sacramental helps and 
 the supports of Church fellowship, we must not 
 forget the assistance in our spiritual combat which is 
 given us by our unseen personal friends, the saints 
 departed and the angels. Nor when we are thinking 
 of them can we forget our unseen personal enemies, the 
 malignant spirits who have fallen into enmity with God
 
 98 Our Unseen Enemies and Friends. 
 
 Satan and his angels. The belief in angels and devils our 
 Lord found among the Jews when He came. It is, indeed, 
 an instinctive belief, in one shape or another, all over the 
 world. But our Lord, by constant and emphatic state- 
 ments, both purged the belief of the perils of superstition, 
 and confirmed it to us as part of our Christian heritage. 
 No one who believes in Him as the absolutely trustworthy 
 teacher can doubt that we really do have dealings with 
 good and bad spirits angels and devils. 
 
 1. We all know how we are tempted by our own flesh 
 and by the world of men around us. But there are 
 temptations which seem to come, and which our Lord 
 teaches us do come, from another source. Sometimes 
 there is shot into our mind a thought so poisonous, so 
 foul, yet so distinct and vivid, that it seems like nothing 
 but the suggestion of an unseen bad companion. So it 
 very likely ia, and we must remember that the mere 
 suggestion is no more our fault than if it came from a 
 human companion. Sometimes there surges in our mind 
 so evil a tempest of pride and rebellion against God's 
 sovereignty, that it seems to come from the very leader of 
 all that in the universe is in rebellion against God. So it 
 probably does, and we can be on our guard against it 
 accordingly. Sometimes we are utterly in despair, and a 
 voice tells us that it is no use trying that all men are 
 really bad at bottom, and we cannot do better than follow 
 our nature ; the seemingly good men are not much better 
 than hypocrites when we come to know them : or if there 
 are good men, they are made of different material from us; 
 certainly we cannot be anything else than bad, so it is no 
 use trying. That voice come from "the devil," that means
 
 Owr Unseen Enemies and Friends. 99 
 
 " the slanderer " * of men, the king of all cynics, the only 
 inspirer of thoughts of despair. Or once more, do we not 
 often feel that we are deceived in regard to sin that 
 because we were not watchful, a sinful course of action 
 presents itself to us in quite false colours, and we are led 
 to follow it till it is too late to draw back, and then it seems 
 as if everything conspired to show us how deluded we have 
 been ? This is the " deceitfulness of sin," the chief device 
 of the " father of lies," who makes all the false prophets 
 and deceivers of men his mouthpieces and agents. 2 Yes, 
 Satan, " the adversary," " the prince of the power of the 
 air," 3 and all his hosts of darkness, are real beings, who 
 really tempt us as they tempted our Lord. They are at 
 the root of all the moral and much of the physical evil of 
 the world. But as Satan was utterly overcome by our 
 Lord, so that he fled away from His victorious manhood 
 to hide his head in hell, so we, wno have the very spirit of 
 Jesus within us, can fight in His Name and strength, and 
 share His victory. And the victories which in the Name 
 of Jesus we win in the hour of temptation are only the 
 foretaste of the day when Satan and all his angels shall be 
 manifestly put under the feet of the victorious Son of 
 Man. 
 
 2. Meanwhile, as we have devils to tempt us, we have 
 also angels to guard and help us. We know very little 
 about the angels, but we are told that they worship God 
 and behold His face, and that they are ministering spirits 
 for the divine purposes both of mercy and of judgment. 4 
 
 1 Job. i. 9-12 ; Zech. iii. 1. 2 ; Rev. xii. 10. 
 1 Heb. iii. 13 ; 2 Thess. ii. 10 ; Isa. xxx. 10 : John viii. 44. 
 3 Eph. ii 2. * Yeb. i. 14 j S. Matt. xxv. 31 j xxvi. 63.
 
 100 Our Unseen Enemies and Friends. 
 
 Sometimes indeed their presence has been made perceptible 
 as men to men as to Mary, the Mother of our Lord, at 
 the moment of the Annunciation, and to the holy women 
 after the resurrection, and to Peter in the prison. But 
 our Lord speaks of them as pure spirits without sensual 
 natures. He leads us also to think of them as attached as 
 guardians to little children : and the apostles believed them 
 to assist at the worship of the Church on earth, and to 
 attend the members of the Church in their perils, and to 
 learn from the Church fresh depths of the wisdom and 
 love of God ? 6 And when we think how full the universe 
 is of beauties and traits of divine wisdom, of which men 
 are never witnesses, it is a comfort to remember that we 
 are not the only intelligent creatures of God, and that it 
 may well be that angels, of whom we know so little, find 
 their joy and their occasion for worshipping God in all the 
 evidences of beauty and wisdom which the great universe 
 supplies. So our human ministries and our human wor- 
 ship seem but little parts of a great universal ministry of 
 divine service and praise, of which the angels are the 
 instruments, or, as it were, the mediating priests. It may 
 be, for all we know, that there is no creature of God which 
 has not a corresponding spirit of intelligence, high or low 
 a representative angel. 
 
 8. But besides the angels we have other unseen 
 personal helpers the blessed and holy dead. They have 
 ceased to live in our world, but they are alive to God, and 
 ia the "Communion of the Saints" we have fellowship 
 with them. " Ye are come," says the apostolic writer to 
 
 * St. Matt, xviii. 10) zzii. 30; Acts zii. 15 ; 1 Cor. zL 10j 
 
 Eph. iii. 10.
 
 Our Unseen Enemies and Friends. 101 
 
 the Hebrew Christians, " unto Mount Zion and unto the 
 city of the living God, to the heavenly Jerusalem, and to 
 the innumerable hosts of angels . . . and to the spirits of 
 just men made perfect." 6 Not with angels then only are 
 we brought into fellowship, but with the blessed departed. 
 How much they know about us we cannot tell. Nothing is 
 revealed to us. Whether we can have personal intercourse 
 with them by asking their prayers personally for us in our 
 need we cannot tell for certain. It may well be that it is 
 in order that we may worship God only the Father, 
 and our divine and human Lord, and the Holy Spirit 
 that this knowledge is withheld from us. But we do know 
 that they in the unseen world are waiting, like us, for the 
 coming of the kingdom of our Lord in glory, and that we 
 can join our prayer with theirs before the heavenly altar 
 that there may be no more delay ; and we think that they 
 are witnesses of how we acquit ourselves in the struggle 
 which they fought so bravely and handed on to us to 
 finish. Probably we do not gain half the strength we 
 might from this thought of the Communion of Saints. 
 The blessed dead are not separated from the Church, they 
 are only the most advanced part of the Church. They are 
 not only our examples in holy living, nor is it only that we 
 owe to them the heritage of our holy faith : it is also the 
 fact that we and they live one life of prayer and praise and 
 faith in one body in Christ. With them we believe and 
 hope and love and pray : with Mary, the pure and glorious 
 Virgin Mother : with the woman who was a sinner, but 
 who " greatly forgiven " has " greatly loved " : with 
 patriarchs and prophets and apostles : with martyrs and 
 6 Hob. xii. 22-21.
 
 102 Our Unseen Enemies and Friends. 
 
 confessors men, women, and children: with holy teachers 
 and wise pastors and matrons : with those who were con- 
 spicuous in holiness and are held in universal memory as 
 saints : and with those, too, whose struggles and whose 
 victories were known to few or to none, but who " lived 
 faithfully hidden lives and rest in unvisited graves." With 
 all these we are one, and to see and know all these will one 
 day be part of the glory of the vision of God. 
 
 And, meanwhile, while we cannot see them, still they 
 are by far the largest part of the Catholic Church. And 
 it is a comfort when we are deploring the divisions of the 
 Church to reflect that it is only, as it were, the lower limbs 
 of the body of Christ that are on earth. However divided 
 here, all true-hearted followers of Christ are held in 
 fellowship by their common union with our Lord, and also 
 by their union with the Church in paradise, whither the 
 divisions which human sin has caused cannot penetrate. 
 There are no sects or divisions among faithful Christians 
 after death. " And as," says St. Augustine, " the whole 
 Christ is made up of the head and the body, the head is 
 our Saviour himself, and the body is His Church, not this 
 Church, or that, but the Church scattered over the whole 
 world ; nor the Church which at present exists on earth, 
 but the Church to which those also belong, who were 
 before us and who shall be after us to the end of the 
 world."
 
 of 
 
 Therefore to whom turn I but to Thee, the ineffable Name ? 
 
 Builder and Maker, Thou, of houses not made with hands ! 
 
 What, have fear of change from Thee Who art ever the same ? 
 
 Doubt that Thy power can fill the heart that Thy power 
 
 expands? 
 There can never be one lost good! What was, shall live as 
 
 before; 
 
 The evil is null, is nought, is silence implying sound: 
 What was good shall be good, with, for evil, so much good 
 
 more; 
 
 On the earth, the broken arcs j in the heaven, a perfect 
 round. 
 
 VfOTUlNG is more certain than that we all shall die. 1 
 * ' Nothing is more certain to one who believes in Jesus 
 Christ than that death will be for no one of ns the 
 end of life. Thus, if death has a terror for us, it is 
 not so much because of what it can destroy as because 
 of what it cannot: because it neither destroys nor 
 changes our souls, our true selves. We are so apt to 
 speak of dead people as if they were quite different 
 from what in truth they were, that we get to think of 
 death as if it changed our character ; but it does not : it 
 
 1 For my present purpose, I mean the word to cover any 
 " change," which brings our mortal life to an end. 1 Cor. XT. 50-2.
 
 K)4 The Other Side of Death. 
 
 only transplants us out of this world, with which we 
 are so familiar, into another world : transplants us, with 
 the character which in this world we have made for 
 ourselves unchanged, into that unfamiliar world beyond, 
 where God is waiting to see us judge ourselves as He 
 judges us. There, on the other side of death, there is 
 no public opinion to give us a sense of security in wrong- 
 doing or neglecting God's law, no wife or husband or 
 friends to assure us, "it must be all right, for so many 
 people do so," no dissipations or occupations to distract us 
 from the thought of God, but only solitude and an awful 
 silence, in which we shall see ourselves, perhaps for the 
 first time, as we are, irretrievably, in the tremendous light 
 of God. There is a great deal about the unseen world 
 beyond the grave that we do not know at all, or do not 
 certainly know. But here I will give the first place to 
 that we seem certainly to know on the authority of our 
 Lord or by the witness of our own consciences. 
 
 1. We Icnow for certain, as I have said, that death is 
 not the end of life. The human soul or spirit is at death 
 separated from the dead body. The body rests in the 
 sleep of death. The human spirit is said by our Lord to 
 " live to God." What the life of our spirit without our 
 body can be we cannot imagine. All that we know by 
 experience is life in a body, and that is our natural state 
 and will be our eternal state, for 
 
 2. We believe for certain in the Resurrection of the 
 Body. This does not mean that the particles of our former 
 bodies, which were laid in the grave and which have decayed 
 and passed into all sorts and forms of natural life, will be 
 collected together again; but it means that we in our same
 
 The Other Side of Death. 105 
 
 selves shall be reclothed in a spiritual body, which we shall 
 recognize as our own body, probably because it will, as it 
 were, take the form and impress of our own unchanged 
 selves. Anyway, God will give to each a body as it shall 
 please Him a spiritual body. 2 In this life the men of 
 science assure us that every thought we think with our 
 minds has corresponding to it a change in the material 
 substance of our brains. But this correspondence of soul 
 and body will be, we suppose, much more perfect in a 
 spiritual body. The substance of the spiritual body will 
 surely be as much more fine and delicate than our present 
 body as the ether is more fine and delicate than common 
 matter. Thus, our spiritual body will be simply the ex- 
 pression of ourselves. Here, we know, our body half con- 
 ceals our true selves. There, all we are or" think or feel will 
 express itself (we must suppose) without effort or trouble 
 or possibility of concealment or misunderstanding in our 
 glorious, painless, resurrection bodies. At any rate, 
 resurrection bodies we shall have for good, and must I 
 not say for evil also. For if our spiritual bodies then 
 express and do not conceal our true selves, our very bodies 
 may be our condemnation in that day of resurrection 
 which is the resurrection of life to some, the resurrection 
 of judgment to others. 3 
 
 3. For with our Resurrection is certainly connected our 
 last judgment, and this judgment is not only a judgment 
 on our single selves, but also a general judgment on all 
 mankind and on the whole universe of beings. The Day of 
 Judgment ! Who can picture it ? The day when all lies 
 and frauds are exposed and nothing can resist the truth ; 
 2 1 Cor. xv. 3 St. John v. 29.
 
 106 The Other Side of Death. 
 
 when all wrongs are made right and all oppressions and 
 injustices and cruelties are utterly overthrown under the 
 burning wrath of Christ ; and when the meek, the friends 
 of Christ, triumphantly, and before the eyes of all men, 
 possess the earth : the day when every thing and person 
 will seem utterly and simply what it is in Christ's sight, 
 whose truth and meekness and righteousness shall be 
 everywhere and manifestly supreme ; the day when all 
 riddles shall be solved and all the mystery of pain and 
 sorrow interpreted in the glory and triumph of the Lamb 
 that was slain. We cannot picture the day to ourselves, 
 but we can believe in it and let the absolute certainty of its 
 coming expel out of our soul everything that cannot bear 
 the eternal light. 
 
 4. And after the Day of Judgment is Heaven the 
 perfect life where men, being at last perfectly what men 
 ought to be in soul and body, live the perfect life in the 
 perfect city ; adoring God, the Three in One, with all the 
 angelic hosts : beholding God in all things, and all things 
 in God : enjoying all the richness of universal truth and 
 beauty, all the joy of mutual love and fellowship and 
 service, in a progress which can never end, where there can 
 never be lack of novelty or variety, so infinite is the rich- 
 ness of the being of God in whom all spirits live. 
 
 5. And after the Day of Judgment there is also Hell 
 the place or state of the punishment of the wicked : that 
 punishment which is sometimes described in the New 
 Testament as if it were the result of a sentence pronounced 
 by the Divine Judge, like a punishment in a court of 
 law ; * sometimes as if it were the natural consequence of 
 
 * St. Matt. xxv. 41.
 
 The Other aide of Death. 107 
 
 sin, like failure, or disease in this life. 6 This punish- 
 ment of the lost is pictured to our minds under figures of 
 outer darkness and fire and worms, figures which suggest 
 to our mind a state of outcast misery and pain and 
 remorse. 
 
 About this punishment of hell there has been a great 
 deal of unwarranted teaching that has done a vast 
 amount of harm, because it has seemed quite inconsistent 
 with our sense of the Divine justice or love. Thus it is 
 a monstrous crime to teach that any are created by God 
 such that they cannot escape the punishment of hell, or 
 that any can be " lost " simply because they did not know 
 the truth of the Gospel, like the heathen ; or because, like 
 many in Christian countries, they had no real opportunity 
 of knowing and serving God. We can be quite certain 
 that God " willeth all men to be saved," and that, if not 
 in this life, then beyond it, He will give the fullest chances 
 of knowing and loving Him to each soul whom he has 
 created. Again, it is quite without warrant that any have 
 presumed to say that the majority of mankind, or any 
 particular proportion of mankind will be finally lost. 
 About this and about a multitude of other matters we 
 know nothing. But when all these mistakes in teaching 
 have been recognised and corrected, there still remains the 
 terrible truth of which we are assured from the lips of the 
 Incarnate Love, Jesus Christ our Lord, that it is possible 
 for men to hate the divine light, because it interferes with 
 their own lusts or pride, possible for them to go on hating 
 it till they harden themselves against it, till good becomes 
 evil to them, and evil good, till their state is like that of 
 2 Cor. v. 10.
 
 108 The Other Side of Death. 
 
 Satan, and they sin an " eternal sin," which " shall not 
 be forgiven either in this world or in the world to come," 6 
 a sin which shall not be forgiven, surely, only because 
 those who sin it have rendered themselves at last incapable 
 of repenting or desiring to love God. 
 
 It is, I think, quite impossible to read the words of our 
 Lord about wilful sin, and to suppose that He would allow 
 us to think or to teach that everything must come right 
 at the last for every soul. We had better confess that 
 there is very much we do not know, but that there are 
 those of whom we shall say at the last, " Good were it for 
 them, if they had never been born." 7 
 
 5. As to the middle state of waiting between death and 
 judgment we know almost nothing. The best of us die im- 
 perfect, and some, whose final salvation we yet confidently 
 expect, very imperfect and ignorant. Therefore we cannot 
 but think that, in the waiting state, men are cleansed and 
 enlightened: and this enlightening and cleansing can 
 hardly be without pain. So we cannot but suppose. And 
 so Christians have prayed for the departed, that they may 
 find peace and mercy and refreshment and light in that 
 di abode of mingled joy and pain. It is not without a 
 divine purpose that nothing is certainly told us about this 
 middle state. Only we thankfully learn from the words of 
 St. Peter about those who perished in the Flood, that the 
 " Gospel " can be " preached to them that are dead also," 
 so that even death may become to men the occasion and 
 opportunity of a new life. 8 
 
 We have touched on what we know little about. What 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 32 ; St. Mark iii. 29. 1 St. Matt. xxvi. 24. 
 8 St. Peter iv. 6.
 
 The Other Side of Death. 109 
 
 we do know certainly is enough for us to live by. We 
 know that our daily acts form habits, and habits become 
 character, and character tends to become fixed and un- 
 changeable for evil or good. We know that beyond death 
 is judgment, and that the final judgment is to be the 
 restoration of all things to the place for which they were 
 created, or for which they have fitted themselves, in the 
 universe of God which is the Kingdom of Christ. Every- 
 where shall be a divine order. Every will and heart shall 
 acknowledge this order and shall adore the sovereignty, the 
 justice, the goodness of God. "At the name of Jesus, 
 every knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in 
 earth and things under the earth, and every tongue shall 
 confess that Jesus Christ is Lord to the glory of God the 
 Father."* 
 
 Phil. ii. 10. 11.
 
 PBINTXD BT THOS. HIBBEKD, 
 
 57, WALL STBHT, SOUTHGATE KOAD, 
 
 LONDON, N.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 Form L9-Series 444 
 
 3 
 
 fl73
 
 .^SOJ/THERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 
 
 z 
 
 A 000 036 470 3