FROM THE LIBRARY
OF
JOHN WHITEHEAD
1850-1930
PRESENTED TO

BY HIS HEIRS

THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.

THE LOST TRUTHS

OF

CHRISTIANITY.

"Built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets,
Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone. "— Ephesians
ii. 20.

PHILADELPHIA:
J. B. LIPPINCOTT & CO.
LONDON: 16 SOUTHAMPTON ST., COVBNT GARDEN.
1880.

Copyright, 1879, by J. B. Lippincott & Co.

INTEODTJOTOET.

What other death did the Lord Jesus Christ
die besides the death upon the cross ?
What other resurrection did he achieve besides
the resurrection from the sepulchre ?
What was the difference between the life he
laid down and the life he took up again ?
What became of that human nature, prone to
all evil, which he must have derived, by the laws
of heredity, from the virgin Mary ?
What is the meaning of the lifting up of the
serpent in the wilderness in its connection with
the "lifting up" of Christ?
Is our union with Christ to be really the same
thing as his union with the Father, or is it a mere
figure of speech ?
The true answers to these questions involve
the secret of the incarnation, the plan of salva
tion, the process of redemption, and the mystery
of godliness. 1* 5

CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.
PAGE
The Paternal Heredity of Christ ... 9
CHAPTER II.
The Maternal Heredity of Christ ... 43
CHAPTER III.
The Two Deaths and the Two Resurrections . 73
CHAPTER IV.
The Temptations of Christ  105
CHAPTER V.
The Redemption of the Body  143
CHAPTER VI.
The Great Sacrifice  181
CHAPTER VII.
Conformed to his Image  227
Resume  266
7

THE LOST TRUTHS
OF
CHEISTIANITT.

CHAPTER I.
THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OT CHRIST.
We are about to contemplate the miracle of
miracles, the mystery of mysteries, the incarna
tion of the Divine Being in the person and body
of the historical man Jesus Christ : the causes
of that incarnation, the mode or laws of it, and
the effects of it upon mankind. Our best guide
in this investigation is the revealed Word of
God, on account of its plenary inspiration, its
infinite wisdom, and its illuminating power over
the human mind. Notwithstanding the sublim
ity and mystery of these subjects, they are not
unthinkable or incomprehensible ; because such
is our own moral and mental constitution, as
veritable images of God, that the primal truths
A* 9

10 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
of the universe, correctly presented, must fall
easily and naturally into spiritual structures,
which were organically adapted and designed
for their reception.
The knowledge of God is always spoken of
in the scriptures as something attainable and
greatly to be desired.
" And this is life eternal, that they might know thee,
the only true God." Jno. xvii. 3.
" Being fruitful in every good work, and increasing in
the knowledge of God." Coloss. i. 10.
" After they have escaped the pollutions of the world
through the knowledge of the Lord and Saviour, Jesus
Christ." 2 Peter ii. 20.
" I count all things but loss for the excellency of the
knowledge of Christ Jesus my Lord." Phil. iii. 8.
On the other hand ignorance of the truth is
declared to be productive of the greatest evil.
" Walk not as other Gentiles walk, in the vanity of
their mind : Having the understanding darkened, being
alienated from the life of God through the ignorance
that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart."
Ephes. iv. 17, 18.
There are two sources of the knowledge of
God, very different in appearance and character,

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. H
but of great and co-operative value. The first
source is the application of the intellect to grasp
and acknowledge the truths of revelation on the
subject. The second source is simple and earn
est obedience to the revealed will of God, by
which the knowledge of God is increased in us,
through some interior and spiritual way, which
the metaphysicians might call an intuitive pro
cess. "If any man will do his will, he shall know of the
doctrine." Jno. vii. 17.
" Every one that loveth is born of God, and knoweth
God." 1 Jno. iv. 7.
" The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom."
Prov. ix. 10.
It is a law of psychology that affection begets
thought. Affection operating through the agency
of a thought produces the final action or deed.
The love of knowing, manifested in the curiosity
of the child, is the first stimulus to mental activ
ity. The intellectual works of genius are the
product of its emotional life. Kb man can ever
discover, see, and feel the truth unless he yearns
after it, and seeks it for its own sake in the spirit
of a lover. To think clearly one must feel
acutely on the subject of his thought. The old

12 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
saying, ", the wish is father to the thought," is in
one sense always and absolutely true. Pure and
holy affections are the secret causes of elevated
and truthful ideas. Debased affections produce
darkness of intellect and cunning in the place
of wisdom. It is because thought is born of
affection, that the Son or the Divine Wisdom is
begotten of the Father or the Divine Love, and
that no man knows the Father but the Son.
The first spoken word of God was " let there
be light." Light is truth. Truths stored up in
the mind constitute knowledge. The old adage
that " knowledge is power" receives a grand
confirmation in the effect which the knowledge
of God has had upon mankind. The differences
between race and race, between nation and na
tion, between the religionists of one school and
those of another, even the differences between
man and man, depend, underneath all superficial
appearances, on the conception formed of God,
and his relations to the world and the soul, and
the effect which that knowledge produces on the
affections, the thoughts, and the outward life.
Enlightenment on these questions is the root of
new civilizations. Truth revealed from heaven
is knowledge which has the power of creating

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 13
heaven within the heart of the believer. Such
is the use and the power of the Word of God.
Our idea of God must be built up of some
thing in our own consciousness, and our capacity
for understanding what God has revealed about
himself is based upon the similitude which exists
between God and our own spiritual structures
(Gen. i. 26; James iii. 9). The finite human soul
is an infinitesimal image of the infinite divine
soul. We are conscious, on self-analysis, of
having three parts or elements of life, our affec
tions, our thoughts, and our actions. These are
separable in thought, but they are always united
in operation. Each element alone, without the
others, is a mere abstraction, indeed an impossi
bility. We love or desire something : we think
of and devise the means of obtaining it: the
thought is born of the love, and the end is
attained by the affection acting through the
thought outwards into the life. The will, the
understanding, and the proceeding energy united
make the individual, and produce the sense of
oneness or individuality. This is the germ of
thought, by the indefinite expansion of which
we get our conception of the Love, the Wisdom,
and the Power of God, and of the relations of
2

14 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, as end, cause, and
effect. Let us obtain a little clearer conception of this
image, likeness, or similitude of God in which
Ave are created. Man is not the image of God
merely because he is capable of becoming wise
and good, of kuowing and obeying God. Nor
is he an image of God merely because he is com
posed of affections, thoughts, and corresponding
actions. He is an image or finite form of God
because his affections, thoughts, and actions hold
a fixed and organic relationship to each other,
just such a relationship as exists between the
love, wisdom, and creative euergy of God. A
man's affection or love is the primal, central
point of his life, the Father or Creator of the
rest. It produces or begets the whole sphere of
thought, wisdom, understanding, which corre
sponds to the Word, or the Son, sent by and
manifesting the Father. Affection and thought
united and co-operating carry the will into the
outward act which reveals the spirit or character
of the man. This last manifestation is in God
the Holy Spirit or the Holy Ghost. Such is the
similitude which exists by creation between God
and man. A wicked spirit is still in the image

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 15
of God, for his affections, thoughts, and actions
bear the same organic relationships to each other.
But he is a perverted or corrupted image. His
affections are evil and therefore his thoughts are
false, his understanding darkened, and the cor
responding spirit manifested in his life is de
praved and infernal.
We feel that our affections constitute our very
life, and we can easily conceive that the life of
God is a state of perfect, infinite, and divine love.
The most advanced definition of God is that of
the Apostle John, " God is love, and he that
dwelleth in love, dwelleth in God and God in
him." 1 John iv. 16. The old religions and
languages of the world had given him titles
synonymous with life, light, wisdom, goodness,
strength, power, etc., but Christ alone revealed
the truth that the infinite Father is the infinite
divine love. The fact of such a definition ap
pearing in the religious and social chaos of the
times of the worst Roman emperors is one proof
that a new light had been revealed from heaven.
Love is spiritual heat, and as the heat of the
sun is the primary and fundamental force in
nature, so is the divine love the primary and
fundamental force in the universe. The divine

16 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
love is the source of all loves, with their innum
erable degrees and infinite modifications, from
the love of angels and archangels down through
all spiritual and human loves, parental, conjugal,
filial, social, etc., down to the mysterious affec
tion which leads the little insect to provide food
in anticipation for the young it shall never see.
This infinite divine love is the Father, the pro
genitor of all things. And the reason why we
are commanded to love God with all our soul,
and all our heart, and all our mind, and all our
strength, is simply because God has always from
the beginning so loved us, and asks of us only
that reciprocity of affection which is necessary
to our own realization of the infinite blessedness
of his love.
The divine love, unmanifested, is the latent
heat of the universe. Manifested, it becomes
the divine light, containing heat in its bosom.
The scientists tell us that light is only heat in
motion. So wisdom is the activity of love, love
itself in motion. This is the beginning of the
creation, the first begotten, the only begotten of
the Father, the Logos, the Word, the Son, " the
true light that lighteth every man that cometh
into the world." The Son comes forth or pro-

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 17
ceeds from the Father, or when the divine love
is considered as the active agent, the Son is said
to be sent by the Father, the Son being in either
case merely the Father in a communicable form.
The divine wisdom expresses or makes manifest
the mysteries of the divine love by the infinite
wonders of the creation.
The Holy Spirit is the proceeding energy, the
emanation or breathing forth of the essential
qualities of the Father as manifested by the Son.
Thus we have intimations in our own spiritual
constitution not only of immortality, but also
of the trinity of Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Such is the trinity spoken of by John, 1st Epis
tle, v. 7 : " There are three that bare record in
heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy
Ghost, and these three are one." Such also was
the trinity which spake the words, " Let us
make man in our image and after our likeness"
(Gen. i. 26). In the image and likeness of that
trinity man was made. Man is so absolutely
created " after the similitude of God" (James
iii. 9) that no trinity can be truly predicated of
God which cannot also be predicated of man.
The divine love, the divine wisdom, the divine
power, the infinite trinity, is repeated in infini-
2*

18 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
tesimal form in the will, the understanding, and
the effluent life of every human being.
This triune God was the Jehovah, the great I
Am, who revealed himself " by the disposition
of angels" (Acts vii. 53) to the Jewish Church.
Jehovah was not the Father, for the Father can
never be isolated or manifested alone. He was
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit, the trinity be
fore the incarnation. He insists everywhere on
the absolute unity of his nature, and yet he as
sumes the great titles by which he was after
wards known under the form of Jesus Christ or
the Son of God, viz., Saviour, Redeemer, Hus
band, etc.
" Hear, 0 Israel I the Lord our God is one Lord."
Deut. vi. 4.
" I am he : before me there was no God formed : nei
ther shall there be after me : I, even I, am the Lord, and
beside me there is no Saviour." Isaiah xliii. 10.
" For thy Maker is thy Husband, the Lord of hosts is
his name, and thy Redeemer the Holy One of Israel :
the God of the whole earth shall he be called." Is. liv. 5.
" I, even I, am he that blotteth out thy transgressions
for my own sake, and will not remember thy sins." Is.
lviii. 25.
How did this triune God manifest himself to

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 19
the Jewish people ? Not in person, for he was
an infinite Spirit without personality until the
incarnation. He manifested himself through
the ministry of angels. An angel was filled
with his divine influx so as to lose his own con
sciousness entirely, and God spake through this
angel in the first person. Isaiah calls this angel
"the angel of his presence" (lxiii. 9). It appears
in the literal sense that the Lord spoke to Moses
in the burning bush, and was seen by him face
to face on Mount Sinai, but Stephen, who was
no doubt well instructed in Jewish traditions
and opinions, says it was an angel who spoke to
Moses in both places (Acts vii. 30, 38). Jacob,
when blessing Joseph on his death-bed, calls Je
hovah " the angel which redeemed me from all
evil." When John heard the angel saying, "Be
hold, I come quickly," etc., using the first per
son as if he were God himself, he fell at his feet
to worship him as the angel of Jehovah, but was
forbidden to do so, and commanded to "worship
God." In the fulness of time, in the mysterious land
of Judea, and in the reign of Augustus Caesar,
at the turning-point between the ancient and
modern civilizations, this triune Spirit, the Su-

20 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
preme Being, did veritably embody and manifest
himself in the flesh and form of a man (1 Jno.
i. 1-3). This is the most stupendous assertion
which it is possible to make. If it can be sub
stantiated, the incarnation is the central . and
pivotal fact in human history, overshadowing
all others by its transcendent importance. Our
minds, however, demand some clear reasons for
such an extraordinary phenomenon, and some
comprehension of the means by which it was
effected. All these are duly embodied among
the inexhaustible treasures of the divine wisdom
contained in the Word of God, but the church
to which the truth was committed proved in
competent or faithless to its charge. By a false
and vicious system of literal interpretation, it
has lost or perverted the great spiritual truths
of the gospel, and presented us with systems of
theology which are alien and repugnant to our
intuitions and our reason. [/The church itself,
however valuable as a social institution, stands
unwittingly to-day, with its crystallized dogmas,
as the grandest obstacle between man and a true
knowledge of " God in Christ." /
The principal misconstructions, accepted as
truth by a large majority of the christian world,

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 21
and, as we earnestly believe, the most serious
impediments to the growth of Christianity, are
the following:
That God is a Spirit " without body, parts, or
passions," consisting of three distinct persons,
each of whom is separately God, and yet who
altogether constitute but one God.
That the inflexible justice of the first person
of the trinity demands the eternal punishment
of the sinner in hell for his violation of the
divine law.
That the second person of the trinity de
scended to earth in the human form, and was
offered up as a substitute for the sinner, a
bloody sacrifice, appeasing the wrath of the first
person, and enabling him, with a sense of satis^
tied justice, to pardon the sinner.
The second person did not really suffer the
punishment of sin, which is the eternal pain of
hell, but, on account of the dignity of the suf
ferer, the first person accepted the physical
death of the second person upon the cross as
full satisfaction for all the pains and penalties
due for the sins, past, present, and prospective,
of the human race.
Still, no sinner can be acquitted from the pun-

22 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
ishment of hell unless he has heard of and be
lieves in the efficacy of this vicarious atonement ;
and simple faith in it, even at the hour of death,
transforms the whole man, although he may be
black with crimes, into a pure spirit fit for
heaven. It is not our intention in this place to analyze
these vulnerable articles of the church creeds,
these Jalse Christs, of which men say lo ! here,
and lo ! there. We rejoice to know that millions
of dissentient voices in the christian world are
raised against them, a_prophecy of the sure jdis-
integration and approaching end of the whole
system of literal interpretation. We offer in
contrast what we believe to be the genuine pri
mary truths of the Word of God, as taught by
Jesus Christ and his apostles, and which com
mend themselves at once to the mind of man
by their own intrinsic beauty, coherence, and
rationality. God is a Being of infinite love, wisdom, and
power, a Divine Man, after whom our own spir
itual structures are modelled, and He is, like
ourselves, one in spirit and in person.
Man, by violating the divine law, separated
himself, not from the divine love, which is infi-

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 23
nite, but from the divine influxes of life, health,
peace^jmd joy : and thereby plunged himself
into great and ever-accumulating miseries of
mind and body, the consequences or punishment
of sin, here and hereafter.
The increasing power of hell, by the continual
addition of evil men from the earth, and the ac
creting force of hereditary evil were pressing
mankind downwards into an abyss, where they
would have lost free-will and rationality, and
have been finally exterminated, but for divine
interference. God, in his infinite love and desire to save the
race from the bondage and power of sin, pre
pared for himself a body in the womb of a vir
gin, so that he could come forth and live with us
in a human form, which inherited from the
mother, by natural laws, our own evil nature
and proclivity to sin.
Through the medium of that human nature he
was tempted by all the powers of hell and all the
forces of hereditary evil (bearing our sins in his
own body), which he successively subdued and
expelled from his own person, until he crucified
the old Adam in himself, and thoroughly sancti
fied his human nature, until it became a divine

24 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
human nature, in which he lives for evermore, a
Divine Man, the mediator, the resurrection, the
way and the life.
Man is saved from the bondage and power,
and thence from the punishment of sin by faith
in_jthisj)ivine Man, by prayer to him, and_by
obedience to his commandments. He is thereby
brought into such rapport that the Lord Jesus
Christ can expel his evils from him by his divine
power, and communicate his love and wisdom
to him in proportion to his capacity of reception.
Leaving these sublime statements (a portion
of the lost truths of Christianity), which give a
philosophical reason for the incarnation of God,
for further elaboration and reiteration from vari
ous stand-points in subsequent chapters, we now
advance, fully prepared to consider the paternal
heredity of Jesus Christ, and the means by which
the incarnation was accomplished.
"Then said Mary unto the angel, How shall this be,
seeing I know not a man ?
"And the angel answered and said unto her, The Holy
Ghost shall come upon thee, and the power of the Highest
shall overshadow thee: therefore also that holy thing
which shall be born of thee shall be called the Son of
God." Luke i. 34, 35.

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 25
This was the same Holy Ghost, representing
the divine love and wisdom in action, or the
Father and Son effluent in the creative act, which
moved upon the face of the waters, when the
earth was without form and void, and darkness
rested upon the face of the deep. The creation
of the world and the creation of the body of Jesus
Christ were effected by similar and corresponding
processes. Matter, totally inert in itself, is always
impregnated and organized by spiritual forces.
The office of the male parent is evidently to im
part a spiritual impetus or organizing power to
the material ovum of the mother. The life of
the human father is communicated, by fissure or
separation, to the child, and the result is a being,
finite in soul and body. It is not difficult to con
ceive of the Supreme Spirit overshadowing the
organic frame of a woman, and constructing from
her blood-material a human form which would
present externally the imperfect human life of
the mother, and contain interiorly the hidden
powers of the infinite spirit.
To those who know that the prophetic i
songs of the Jewish Church are really the !
voices of Christ soliloquizing with that inner I
self which he called his God and his Father,

26 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the following passages will be pregnant with
meaning :
"The darkness and the light are both alike to thee.
" For thou hast possessed my reins : thou hast covered
me in my mother's womb." Ps. cxxxix. 12, 13.
" My substance was not hid from thee, when I was
made in secret, and curiously wrought in the lowest parts
of the earth.
"Thine eyes did see my substance, being yet unperfect;
and in thy book all my members were written, which in
continuance were fashioned, when as yet there was none
of them." Ps. cxxxix. 15, 16.
" Thou art he that took me out of my mother's womb :
thou didst make me hope when I was upon my mother's
breasts." Ps. xxii. 9.
Paul has a remarkable verse, showing that God,
in coming into the world to make his great sacri
fice for mankind, needed only a human body, like
an envelope, for his purposes, his own life being
the animating spirit.
" Wherefore when he cometh into the world, he saith,
Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, but a body hast
thou prepared me." Heb. x. 5.
Thejgul of Jesus Christ could not have been
a finite, rational soul like ours. Such souls are

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 27
only begotten by the combined action of a human
father and a human mother. / A man born of a
mother alone must have an inner life or soul in
some manner exceedingly different from ours./ Or
did Christ have a specially created finite soul, such
as Adam, being without father or mother, must
have had ? No ; his soul differed entirely from
Adam's, because on one side he had a mother,
he was " made of a woman," and on the other side
he was infinite. He was infinite because no finite
spirit could have claimed, as he did, to have
ascended above and beyond the heavens, and to
have regained the glory which he had with God
"before the world was." No finite spirit could
have claimed omniscience and omnipresence as
he did, and no one less than the infinite could
have assumed that great title of uncreated existr
ence, I Am. Neither could any finite spirit ever
have effected the redemption and regeneration
of the human race.
The supposition that the soul of Jesus Christ
was the second person of the trinity, sent by the
first person to save mankind, is a stupendous
error, the central corruption of divine truth,
which has jdestroyed the whole temple, leaving
not one stone of doctrine logically coherenfjvith

28 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
another. There are no persons in the trinity.
No such word as person applied to the divine
constitution, and necessarily engendering false
conceptions, can^anywhere be found in the Word
of God. The triune God is a Spirit, essentially
one in substance and being. He acquired per
sonality or limitation only by his incarnation in
the body of Jesus Christ. He was then, as he is
now, one God in one person. We may separate
his divine qualities by an imperfect mental pro
cess of our own, and contemplate them one at a
time, birt jin _Him they are one, inseparable and
infinite. The soul of Jesus could not have been
a part or portion of the divine being separated
from the other parts or portions. |lf he was
divine at all, divine in any sense, he was the
triune God himself, Jehovah, the great I Am,/
the Word that was God, the eternal trinity mani
fested in the flesh. It is far easier to believe
that he was God himself than to believe that he
was a son of God.
Let us have clear conceptions of this all-im
portant term, the Son of God. It has three very
distinct significations. A son of God, in the
lowest sense, is one who by regeneration has
become conformed to the image of God, and is

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 29
called the Son of God by adoption. The angels,
and even earthly potentates, have been called sons
of God. t In the highest sense, the Son of God is
the divine wisdom, the first proceeding or mani
festation of the divine love, totally inseparable
from the Father and the Holy Spirit. " No man
knoweth the Son but the Father." Lastly, Jesus
Christ was called the Son of God in accommoda
tion to the finite human understanding, which,
whilst operating in time and space, is more or
less compelled to think, judge, and speak from
appearances. He was born of a woman without
a visible father. . Our ideas of causation impera
tively demand that he must have had a father
who was invisible. THis nature was so divine
that his father must have been God. He is
therefore the Son of God. Such was the reason
ing of the human mind to which the stupendous
revelation of " God in Christ" first came. The
infinite triune Spirit struggling for expression
through the finite structures of the man, Jesus
Christ, appeared to those who beheld him from
an exterior stand-point as the Son of God or the
Son of Man. Note that " the holy thing" born of
Mary was not said to be the Son of God, but it
is stated that it " shall be called the Son of God."
3*

30 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
This doctrine of the trinity in the person of
Jesus Christ is of such vast importance that we
feel constrained to meet several objections urged
against it. At the baptism of Christ it is said
the Holy Ghost descended upon him in the shape
of a dove, and a voice was heard exclaiming,
" This is my beloved Son." This symbolical
representation (for " the heavens were opened"),
designed to teach the unity of Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost in the person of Jesus Christ, has
been perverted into a defence of a trinity in three
persons. The dove, however, was not a person,
but the emblem of an attribute ; nor was the
voice a person (Jno. v. 37), but a sign of confir
mation as to the character and mission of Christ,
as the living manifestation of all the divine attri
butes. If a lamb, a lion, and a serpent were to
be seen through the open heavens, representing
the Messiah, — the lamb that took away the sins
of the world, the lion of the tribe of Judah, who
opened the sealed book, and the serpent that was
lifted up in the wilderness,-/-would it be just to
conclude from such symbols that there were three
Christs, or that Christ existed in three persons ? ']
The tri-personalist, starting with the affirma
tion made in the scriptures, that " the testimony

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. %\
of two men is true," and that " in the mouth of
two or three witnesses every word may be estab
lished," gqes^on to drawjhe inference that the
Father and Son are two different persons, from
the text, " I am one that bear witness of myself,
and the Father that sent me beareth witness of
me" (Jno. viii. 18).
It is plain that witnesses or testimonies to the
truth need not necessarily be men. Christ said
that the scriptures testified of him, and that his
works or miracles were witnesses to the truth of
his mission. The Father, or the divine love,
testified that the sayings and doings of Jesus
upon earth were the divine truth which emanated
from the divine love, or was produced from it
and sent by it. The truth of a theory is proven
by its successful application to practice. The
miraculous and benevolent works of Christ
(springing from the Father within him) were a
proof or a testimony that his claims were well
founded and that his words were true.
If this beautiful spiritual explanation is re
jected, and the absolute literalness of the " two
men" is insisted upon, what follows ? That the
infinite, unmanifested Father, separate from
Jesus Christ, is a human being, like John the

32 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Baptist, the other witness ! The Father is entirely
unmanifested or unrevealed except through Jesus
Christ. When and where did he bear any personal
witness of Jesus Christ ? On the three occa
sions when a voice was heard from heaven saying,
" This is my beloved Son" ? It was to prevent
this misconception, so prevalent now in the
churches, that Christ, after saying, " The Father
himself which sent me hath borne witness of
me," significantly adds, as if fearing that those
voices from heaven had produced a false im
pression, " Ye have neither heard his voice at
any time, nor seen his shape." Love and wisdom
are the Father and Son who mutually manifest
and prove each other.
But, says some one, how can the Father and
Christ be absolutely one, when it is said, " The
Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all
judgment unto the Son"? The divine love or
Father never judges or condemns, because he
loves all infinitely and alike? without respect of
persons. It is the divine truth or Son which dis
criminates, condemns, separates, etc., exercising
the office of judge. yAll this is perfectly plain
when Father and Son are seen to be spiritual quali
ties (not persons) belonging to the same perfect

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 33
being. If the literalist still insists that Father and
Son are two persons on the strength of this text,
why does he falsify the text by building up a sys
tem of theology in which the Father is the judge,
of an inexorable justice, condemning the sinner
to hell, whilst the Son is an advocate standing
by, pleading against the execution of the law?
Some minds are perplexed by the statement so
often made by Christ that he was " sent" by the
Father. How could the sender and the sent be
the same person ? Indeed, how could it be other
wise when we consider the organic relationship
between affection and thought, the will and the
understanding, or the Father and the Son ? The
poet, the artist, the orator send forth their thoughts
(the children of their affections) into the world.
The will sends forth the understanding to devise
the means and modes of its gratification. The
Father creates and sends forth the Son to do his
will, just as heat creates and sends forth light as
its manifestation and its measure. So also Jesus
Christ, having ascended to the Father, sent forth
the Comforter, or the Holy Ghost, to his disciples,
the Holy Ghost being his own personal, effluent,
and communicated spirit.
If Christ and the Father are absolutely one,

34 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
what is the meaning of his sitting on the right
hand of God on his throne ? It means, indeed,
that he is absolutely one with God. God has no
material hand, no spatial right or left, no object
ive throne. The mind instinctively repudiates
these suggestions. We must not permit sensuous
images to impose themselves upon us as if they
were facts and things, wh\ej]jthey are only figures
and symbols. The hand of God igjthe power of
God, the right hand of God is the supreme power
of God. Throne is the emblem of government.
To sit at the right hand of the throne of God is
to be omnipotent, to govern the universe, to have
supreme power over all things in heaven and
earth, — in reality, to be God. And Jesus Christ,
using the same symbolism, promises those who
triumph over the tempter the same absolute
power over sin which he himself achieved by his
union with the Father.
" To him that overcometh will I grant to sit with me
in my- throne : even as I also overcame, and am set down
with my Father in his throne." Eev. iii. 21.
If the literalist and trinitarian will insist upon
seeing with his mind's eye an interceding God
sitting at the right hand of the forgiving God,

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST, gfl
he must also attempt to see all the saints of
Christ's kingdom sitting with him on a throne,
which is simultaneously, somehow or other, the
throne of the Father also. .Surely these ex
planations are sufficient!
The Jews confidently expected a Messiah, and
the Old Testament has many intimations and
predictions of his coming. He is called the
"seed of the woman," the Saviour, the Re
deemer, priest, prophet, king, shepherd, David,
the anointed, the Holy One, etc., etc., but it is
nowhere stated that God shall send his own Son
to redeem mankind. Such a thought would have
been shocking to the very correct Jewish concep
tion of the unity of God. Whatever the people
may have expected, the prophets expressly state
that the Messiah to come was God himself made
flesh among us.
" Out of thee (Bethlehem) shall he come, whose goings
forth have been from of old, from everlasting." Micah
v. 2.
" Behold, a virgin shall be with child, and shall bring
forth a son, and they shall call his name Emmanuel,
which being interpreted is, God with us." Matt. i. 23.
" For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given :
and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the

36 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of
Peace." Isaiah ix. 6.
"I will raise unto David a righteous Branch, — and
this is the name whereby he shall be called, the Lord
(Jehovah) our Righteousness." Jer. xxiii. 5-7.
The disciples and apostles, however slow of
faith and dull of comprehension they may have
been at first, finally recognized Jesus Christ as
the Supreme Being ; even doubting Thomas ex
claiming, " My Lord and my God." John, who
leaned upon his bosom, and who, from love,
knew him better than all the rest, declares that
" he who abideth in the doctrine of Christ, he
hath both the Father and Son" (2 Jno. 9). And
the great apostle of the Gentiles sums up the
whole matter in the lucid statement : " For in
him (Jesus Christ) dwelleth the fulness of the
Godhead bodily" (Coloss. ii. 9). Wherefore, also,
the same apostle calls him, " Jesus Christ, the
same, yesterday, to-day, and forever."
The Lord Jesus Christ himself claimed to be
the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.
1st. He professed to know the mind of the in
finite Father, to speak by his dictation, and to
work by his power. He asserted his omni-

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 37
presence, omniscience, and omnipotence. "• The
Father dwelleth in me." " The Father and I are
one." Iu speaking to the Jews, he called him
self, I Am, the great incommunicable name of
the Supreme Being. Whose son is the Christ ?
asked Jesus of the Jews. They said, David's
son. Why then, said Jesus, does David call him
Jehovah or Lord ? Mark it, christian^ not the
Son of God or of Jehovah, but Jehovah himself.
2d. When Simon Peter acknowledges the Lord
as " the Christ, the son of the living God," the
latter accepts the title, and adds, " flesh and
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my
Father which is in heaven." Whoever hath the
Father, hath the Son also, and the true nature
of Christ, is a matter of spiritual intuition or
revelation, and not of discovery by the natural
man. 3d. That he claimed to be the Holy Ghost is
evident from John xx. 22 : "And when he had
said this he breathed upon them, and saith unto
them, Receive ye the Holy Ghost."
The Lord Jesus, just before his final disap
pearance from human sight, commanded his dis
ciples to teach all nations, " baptizing them in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and
4

38 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
of the Holy Ghost." How was this command
obeyed by the apostles, especially by Peter, who
is said to have received divine intimations as to
the true character of Christ? He baptized his
converts in the name of the Lord Jesus (Acts ii.
38 ; viii. 16), which he never would have done,
had he not considered that name synonymous
with the Father, and the Son, and the Holy
Ghost. The Old Testament ends with a threat, the
New Testament with a blessing: and the con
cluding verse of Revelation, the last words of
God to man ; " the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ
be with you all" is the benediction of the Su
preme Being to every one of his creatures.
Lastly, in addition to the many evidences al
ready given, we beg the reader to note and com
pare the following passages, which assert indi
rectly and, therefore, with peculiar force, the
absolute identity of Christ with the Father :
" Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he
will give it to you." Jno. xvi. 23.
" Whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do."
Jno. xiv. 13.
" Wo man can come to me, except the Father which
hath sent me draw him." Jno. vi. 44.

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 39
" I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men
unto me." Jno. xii. 32.
"Forgiving one another, even as God for Christ's
sake hath forgiven you." Bph. iv. 32.
" Even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye." Colos.
iii. 13.
" And Jehovah sent fiery serpents among the people,
and they bit the people." Numb. xxi. 6.
"Neither let us tempt Christ, as some of them also
tempted, and were destroyed of serpents." 1 Cor. x. 9.
Jehovah in Is. xlviii. 12, says : " I am the first:
I also am the last."
Christ in Rev. xxh. 13 calls himself " the
Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the end,
the first and the last."
" We believe on him that raised up Jesus our Lord
from the dead." Rom. iv. 24.
" Destroy this temple and in three days I will raise it
up. But he spake of the temple of his body." Jno. ii.
19-21. "In the beginning God created the heaven and the
earth." Gen. i. 1.
" In the beginning was the . Word, and the Word was
with God, and the Word was God. All things were
made by him ; and without him was not anything made
that was made. And the Word was made flesh, and
dwelt among us." Jno. i. 1, 3, 14.

40 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
However clear these great truths may be to
our minds, it is not surprising that men who saw
the Lord in the human form, and heard him
pray to the Father and speak of the Holy Ghost
as a power still to come, should have alluded to
the three apparently different manifestations of
the One God. Paul states the truth of the holy
trinity resident in the body of Christ with great
clearness, but his beautiful benediction to the
Corinthians, " the grace of our Lord Jesus
Christ, and the love of God, and the communion
of the Holy Ghost, be with you all," is answerable
for much of the unfortunate tri-theism of the
christian church. The bond between the visible
and the invisible eludes our perceptions, and men
without philosophical instruction are permitted
and sometimes constrained to speak of the One
and Indivisible as if he were two or more. The
apostles make frequent mention of the Father
and the Son, but careful study of their writings
will show, that by the Father they always under
stand the spiritual or invisible, and by the Son
the visible or human aspect of the God-Man,
Jesus Christ. John in all his writings is espec
ially lucid on this point.
If some unbeliever objects that the Infinite

THE PATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 41
Spirit cannot be confined in the body of a man,
we must remind him how grossly and feebly we
/ think, when we do not elevate the mind as far
as possible above time and space. The Infinite
Spirit was not confined to the body of Jesus
Christ, but was all the time ubiquitous or omni
present. Christ declares his own simultaneous
existence in heaven and earth (Jno. hi. 13). An
arm of the ocean jutting far up into a country is
the same ocean that rolls round the world. A
ray of sunlight continuous with the sun is vir
tually the sun itself in the room. If nothing
intervened between the human form of Christ
and the uncreated centre of life, no finite soul
from a finite father for instance, then was the
spirit which animated the body of Christ the
holy trinity, the infinite Father.
There still arise the questions, if these things
be so, if Christ had no father and God no son,
why did not Christ, from the beginning to the
end, assert and maintain his absolute identity
with the Supreme Being? Why did he allude
to the Father as being greater than himself?
Why did he pray so often and so earnestly to
the Father ? Why did he speak of going to the
Father ? And why is it said that at last he did
4*

42 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
actually ascend to the Father ? A perfect solu
tion of all these difficulties will be found by
studying the heredity of Jesus Christ from the
maternal side of the question.
It is surprising that this sublime subject of
the maternal heredity has never been thoroughly
investigated by either theologians or scientists.
The end which God had in view in assuming our
nature, and the effect of his incarnation upon
the world, can never be clearly seen, until we
learn what changes the human nature derived
from the virgin Mary underwent during his
earthly career. Then only can we understand
those marvellous words :
"He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on
him that sent me : And he that seeth me seeth him that
sent me." John xii. 44-45.

CHAPTER II.
THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST.
There is no such thing as miracle in the sense
of violated law. Miracles are changes in the
natural order of things induced by the influx
of spiritual forces. If we understood the rela
tions between the spiritual and natural worlds,
and how the forces of the spiritual world flow
into the natural, constructing, animating, and
incessantly modifying the forms of the cosmos
(for that is the true order of creation), we might
have no more difficulty in comprehending how
¦water was turned into wine, or how the manna
in the wilderness was daily materialized from
the atmosphere, than we now have in compre
hending, or rather in thinking we comprehend,
the most familiar facts of chemistry.
Genuine miracles are legitimate tokens or
signs of the presence and power of God, be
cause the spiritual changes which produce, by
the secret laws of creation, corresponding mirac-
43

44 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
ulous changes in the physical world, are the
movements of divine providence or the works
of the hand of God. When man has no key to
their solution, he thinks they are wonderful de
viations from the course of nature, designed to
convince his understanding and compel his faith.
\ \ This, however, is never the case. The miracles
i i of Christ were always effects or consequences of
/ / the spiritual work he was performing, and never
mere physical wonders to compel the faith of
those who witnessed them. This is evident from
the fact, that where faith was most deficient and
miracles were most needed on the common
theory, they were least accorded (Matt. xiii. 58
and Mark vi. 5, 6).
The birth of Jesus Christ from a virgin mother
without a human father was no violation of nat
ural laws. It was only a unique event, without
precedent and without recurrence, but perfectly
natural and credible. God breathed into the
newly-made body of Adam " the breath of life,"
thereby creating a finite soul adapted to a finite
body. Procreation of finite souls and bodies
through the conjoined action of father and
mother has been the law of reproduction ever
since. No man born of two parents in such a

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 45
manner could ever be theJSon of God except in
a symbolical sense, as having been conformed"
by obedience to the image of God. Still less is
jt possible for a man so born to lay any just
claim to being God himself.
The question is, how can the Supreme Being
take on the flesh and form of a man ? The an
swer will depend upon the motives which pro
duce his incarnation, upon what he expects to
do in the human body he has assumed. It would
have been a miracle but not an impossibility for
God to have materialized a full-grown human
form from the elements of nature, and to have
presented himself to us in person without a
mother. /He woulcL_however, in that case have
been human only in shape, not in spirit.,/ He
would have been the Divine Being plus so much
mineral matter, suddenly transmuted into or
ganic forms. He wouldJiavfi_lia(l no genuine
points of contact with our infirm human nature.
He could nnt-have . felt and thought like a man
bearing the pressure of hereditary evil : nor
have experienced those proclivities to sin, which
caused him to be tempted in all points as we are.
These are the essentially diagnostic points of/
Christ's character and mission.

46 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Such a body, however, would have enabled
him to fulfil the mission accredited to him in
the orthodox theologies. He might have uttered
all his wonderful sayings and teachings, might
have performed all his miracles, established his
church, and finally he might have suffered on the
cross, and achieved the resurrection and ascen
sion : and still he would not have accomplished
the one thing needful for the redemption of man
from the power of sin. That one thing needful,
the scriptures fully declare, was to assume a
weak, feeble, human nature, prone to evil as we
are, inheriting from Adam down to Mary the
accumulated infirmities of the race, to bear our
iniquities in it, and to regenerate that nature by
resisting all sin and temptation, to crucify and
bury its lusts and falsities, to purify it, sanctify
it, glorify it, and make it a divine nature, per
fectly accommodated as an envelope to his own
indwelling spirit, in which he could dwell for
ever as a Divine Man, and be a perpetual medium
or mediator between God and man.
To effect this organic work of redemption it
was necessary for the Lord to be born of a
woman. Nor could the jgrjjatjmdof the incar
nation have been attained, had he been~born of

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 47
an immaculate mother. If Mary had been a
woman of sinless perfection, herself almost di
vine, the product of her conception by the Holy
Ghost would have had a human nature wholly
djffei^nt_from. ours. He never could have suf
fered or been tempted, or borne our sins in hi3
own body and serfsational life, or become perfect
by sufferings and by good works. He " was
made sin for us," that by remaining sinless
under all pressure he might destroy the works
of sin. Christ's human nature was not perfect
at first, but was made perfect; it was not di
vine in the beginning, but was made divine. It
was in this gradual advance from the human to
the divine, that the secret of the incarnation
and the scheme of redemption were embodied.
The immaculate conception of the mother would
have rnj]djimpOTsilDie_tixe mast-esaential part.of.
thej3acrifiae_of Christ.
The true object of the incarnation being dis
covered, it is clear that the only road open to
the Divine Being was through the body of a
woman, himself being the impregnating and
creative power, instead of the ordinary paternal
influence. This was seen or foreseen by the
poets and prophets of the ancient religions, and

48 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
a redeemer to be born of a virgin was a familiar
prophecy in both hemispheres of our earth. It
is_ comprehensible, so far as any act of crea
tion is comprehensible at all, that the triune
Spirit overshadowed the organic structures of
a woman, and prepared for himself a body,
which was born as we are. In so doing, how
ever, as God never violates his own laws, he sub
jected himself, as each of us is daily subjected,
to all the conditions and limitations of time and
space. This_is_ji_fjaiCjLjQ£_jT^
i tance. The history and labors of Jesus Christ
cannot be properly understood without a full
consideration of those conditions and limita
tions. The Lord Jesus Christ must have been subject
to the laws of heredity, and to all natural laws,
i just as we are. On the spiritual side, omnipo-
' tent, omniscient, omnipresent ; on the natural
side he was a Jew, with all the family and na
tional characteristics. He grew and developed
as we do : he thought and felt finitely as we do.
He endured the troubles, trials, vexations, and
physical sufferings incident to every ordinary
human life. He feltjnore powerfully and bit
terly than we do (on account of superior spiritual

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 49
perceptions) the presence and the pressure of
hereditary evil. He was tempted in every re
spect as we are, and advanced successively and
gradually, by conquest over temptations, to a
realization of the life within him. The infinite
cannot think, feel, or act on_ the infinite scale,
through a finite medium. Structure always de
termines function, and the capacities of his mind
were determined by the organization of his brain
and nervous system. As, however, that organi
zation was pre-arranged and effected by himself,
it was exactly adapted to the work he had to do,
and the mission he had to fill.
His transcendent inner life struggled continu
ally, and with great suffering to his human na
ture, to express itself adequately in his outer
life, to shape the outer life to the infinite spirit
ual ideal glowing within him. Bound down by,
the inexorable limitations of timeand space,
he could_not and did_not feel himself to be the
Supreme^Beiag^ Hence arosfijxis- double-con
sciousness, and the jpp^renjfc_^^tinctic^ in his
own mind brtweeji_Father__and_ Son. We are
unconscious of a great deal of our interior psy
chological life : he was unconscious of almost
the whole of his. The love and wisdom which

50 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
came down to his own human perceptions, al
though so stupendous and divine to us, were as
nothing to the infinite love and wisdom which
could not possibly be revealed through finite
forms. He felt his human personality just as
we feel ours, but he felt a higher power pene-
[trating him, a will within a will, his inner or
divine self, dictating his words, controlling his
actions, and speaking and working through him.
That inner selfj .too vastjtojjg^comprehended by
his_ finite brain-structure, he called his Father.
To go to that Father, to be glorified or macfe
one with that Father, was the constant prayer
and the supreme aspiration of his life.
Christ derived from his mother his whole
physical structure, with its atomic arrangement,
its tendencies, capacities, and physiological pe
culiarities, all that constitutes the animal or sen
suous-corporeal life. The experiments and ob
servations on animal reproduction tend to show,
that the organs of higher activity, such as the
nervous and muscular tissues, are derived from
the father, whilst those of the lower or vege
tative system come from the maternal influence.
Corresponding to this fact, the interior or spirit
ual life of man seems to come from the father,

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 51
and the exterior, natural, and sensuous life, more
closely connected with the bodily organs, to
(come from the mother. It is certain that we
get a great deal more from the mother than the
mere bodily frame, because the mental and
moral characteristics of the maternal parent are
frequently very conspicuous in the offspring.
The Greek language has two words for the
soul, nous and psyche. The Romans also had
two words, mens and anima : one expressing the
higher or interior, the other the lower or exte
rior degrees of its life. Our language has un
fortunately no word to express the nature of the
spiritual life derived from the mother, probably
because we have no positive knowledge on the
subject. The mental part which we receive from
the mother is evidently that which is connected
with the sensuous and bodily life, and it is plain
that Christ could only have derived from the
mother the hereditary proclivity to evil and the
liability to be tempted, which were absolutely
necessary for the redemptive work he had under
taken. He was born in sin, just as our beauti
ful, helpless, and unsinning infants are. He had
the old Adam latent in him, just as it is in us.
It attempted to burst forth with activity every

52 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
day of his life, but was restrained and crucified
and destroyed by the divine spirit within him.
He took upon himself our evil nature, even the
worst and lowest parts of it. David was unwit
tingly but prophetically using the language of
Christ when he exclaimed, " Behold I was
shapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother
conceive me." Ps. Iv. 5.
Inherited evil is a complicated and terrible
thing. To-day in its totality is the result of all
the ages. Every effect we observe in nature is
the last issue of innumerable antecedent causes.
Our organizations are the complex outcome of
the successive generations from Adam down to
our own parents. The qualities of our ancestry
are latent, in some form or other, in every one
of our tissues. The character and habits of re
mote progenitors, involved in the structures of
descendants, are sometimes made to evolve or
show themselves again in the lives of the latter.
This is called atavism, and the secret life of
Christ exhibited the phenomena of atavism on a
transcendent scale. God took upon himself a
1 human form which involved, by heredity, all the
' capabilities and possibilities of our nature for good
or evil. By a process of evolution which only the

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 53
infinite spirit could accomplish, he opened them
all out, came into spiritual contact with them all,
bore their sins and sinful impulses in his own
body as if they were his own, overcame them
and cast them all out, and ascended to heaven in
a divine human form, from which every trace of
the carnal nature was extirpated forever.
That Jesus Christ inherited all the spiritual
states of the human race is designed to be
taught in the two genealogies given by the evan
gelists. There are three truths connected with
these genealogies which are. of very great inter
est. In the first place, they are traced through
Joseph, the husband of Mary. The ceremony
of betrothal or espousal was of more importance
at that time with the Jews, and far more im
posing, than the marriage itself. It was de
signed to signify the union of souls, the genuine
spiritual conjunction which should always pre
cede the material union. The interior spiritual
qualities of Joseph and his line were thus con
joined with those of Mary and her line, and
concentrated in the mental structure of Christ.
If Mary had conceived of the Holy Ghost before
the espousal took place, the genealogy would
have been confined to Mary and her line, but

54 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
/Jesus could not then have taken upon himself
| all the hereditary spiritual states of the Jewish
I people.
j Secondly, the genealogy of Matthew is a de
scending genealogy, and begins with Abraham,
including, therefore, only Christ's relations to the
Jews. Christ came down from heaven through
the machinery, as it were, of the Jewish dispen
sation, clothing himself with the spiritual states
of the Jewish Church and people as with a gar
ment, so that he could fulfil the law and the
prophets in his own personal experiences and
history. Thirdly, the genealogy of Luke is an
ascending genealogy, beginning with Christ and
running up through Abraham on to Noah, and
finally to " Adam which was the son of God."
Luke gives the story of John the Baptist and the
story of Christ up to his baptism and the begin
ning of his ministry, at the age of thirty, the
legal period for entering on the office of priest.
Then follows the ascending genealogy, to show
that the mission of Christ was something under
taken for the entire human race, that he as
sumed all human nature, became at last the new
Adam and the universal man, uniting the entire
creation with God.

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 55
Before we proceed any farther, we must as
sure and strengthen our positions by showing in
the words of the scriptures, that Christ took upon
him our own mental and moral states, suffered
an obscuration of the divine light within him,
and only came to a perfect union with that light,
by successive and painful steps, through temp
tations and prayers and sufferings even unto
death, for this, and not tha-crucifixion, is the
secret of our redemption.
That he took upon him our mental and moral
states :
" Who made himself of no reputation, and took upon
him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness
of men :
" And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled
himself, and became obedient unto death." Phil. ii. 7, 8.
" For we have not a high-priest which cannot be
touched with the feeling of our infirmities, but was in all
points tempted as we are, yet without sin." Heb. iv. 15.
" God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful
flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh." Horn.
viii. 3.
" Wherefore in all things it behooved him to be made
like unto his brethren." Heb. ii. 17.
" For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no
sin." 2 Cor. v. 21.

56 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
That he progressed, step by step, from point
to point, towards perfection :
" Jesus increased in wisdom and stature and in favor
with God and man." Luke ii. 52.
" Though he were a Son, yet learned he obedience by
the things which he suffered ;
"And being made perfect, he became the author of eter
nal salvation unto all them that obey him." Heb. v. 8, 9.
" I do cures to-day and to-morrow, and the third day
I shall be perfected." Luke xiii. 32.
"And for their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also
might be sanctified through the truth." Jno. xvii. 19.
" Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me :
nevertheless, not my will, but thine, be done." Luke xxii.
42. " My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?"
Matt, xxvii. 46.
" Touch me not, for I have not yet ascended to my
Father." Jno. xx. 17.
" My Father is greater than I" (Jno. xiv. 28), com
pared with, " I and my Father are one." Jno. x. 30.
That his progress was marked by temptations,
and sorrows, and sufferings :
" Who in the days of his flesh, when he had offered up
prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears
unto him that was able to save." Heb. v. 7.

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 57
" I have a baptism to be baptized with ; and how am I
straitened till it be accomplished !" Luke xii. 50.
" Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say f"
Jno. xii. 27.
" Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrow
ful, even unto death." Matt. xxvi. 38.
"And being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly :
and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling
to the ground." Luke xxii. 44.
"In all their afflictions he was afflicted." Isaiah
lxiii. 9.
" A man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.
" Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our
sorrows. " He was wounded for our transgressions, he was
bruised for our iniquities.
" He was oppressed, and he was afflicted : yet he
opened not his mouth." Isaiah liii. 3-7.
" The sorrows of death compassed me, and the pains
of hell gat hold of me." Ps. cxvi. 3.
These extracts, with many others that might
be made, and the whole tenor of the gospels and
the epistles, show that the Lord Jesus Christ
took on a weak, carnal human nature from his
mother, prone to all evil: that he advanced step
by step towards perfection, and that his progress
was marked by temptations and terrible mental

58 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
sufferings. The psychological experiences or
inner life of Christ was the great invisible field
where the battle for our salvation was fought.
What was the mere physical execution upon the
cross, an every-day death he shared with thou
sands of others, in comparison with that life
long crucifixion and death of the evil nature
inherited from the mother, and in comparison
with the awful struggles that raged in the heart
of the Son of Man between the divine nature
and the concentrated powers of darkness both
upon earth and in hell ?
The psychological mystery in the life of Christ
was the internal conflict, by means of innumer
able temptations, between his human and his
divine nature, whereby he " made both one,"
breaking down the middle wall of partition
between them, abolishing the enmity in his own
flesh and body; thus making "in himself of
twain one new man" (the Divine Man), and " so
making peace." This divine labor was the
atonement or reconciliation between God and
man, between the spiritual and the natural, the
heavenly and the human, the Jew and the Gentile.
The Divine Man was henceforth the Saviour, the
Mediator, the intercessor, the eternal bond of

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 59
union between God and man. And God so
wrought that " he might gather together in one
all things in Christ, both which are in heaven
and which are in earth."
It was the carnal human nature, fJie_maternaL
element, which constituted " the old man which
is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts." It
was the paternal or_djvine element, displacing
the former, that was " the new man which, after
God, was created in righteousness and true holi
ness." The death of the former and the resur-
' rection of the latter were simultaneous and
mutually progressive. Under the influence of
the maternal principle, he was tempted by devils,
persecuted by men, and led into suffering and
death. He then prayed earnestly to the Father,
and exclaimed, " The Father is greater than I."
In proportion as he rose into the newness of the
^ divine life, by dying to the inherited carnal na-
¦ ture, he had clearer views of the Father, showed
him to his disciples more plainly and less in
Sparables (Jno. xvi. 25), and in his moments of
\ greatest triumph he felt that he and the Father
were one. Even after his resurrection he had
not perfected the union of the two natures (Jno.
xx. 17). His ascension or disappearance from

60 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
human sight was the signal that he had ceased
to be man looking upward to God, and had be^-
come the Divine Man, the alpha and the omega,
embracing all extremes in his arms of love.
The preceding statements throw great light
upon the following otherwise obscure passages
of the evangelist :
" This spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe
on him should receive : for the Holy Ghost was not yet
given ; because that Jesus was not yet glorified." Jno.
vii. 39.
"It is expedient for you that I go away, for if I go
not away, the Comforter will not come unto you ; but if
I depart, I will send him unto you." Jno. xvi. 7.
The giving of the Holy Ghost and the coming
of the Comforter are made contingent upon the
glorification of Christ, or the absolute union of
the glorified human nature with the essential
divine nature. The triune God before his in
carnation operated upon the world through the
Holy Spirit; but the Divine Man, or God in
Christ, since the ascension, operates by means of
the Holy Ghost or Comforter, a far more per
sonal, humanizing, life-giving, spiritualizing, re
generating power. It is the effluent life of the
Divine Man, and it will lead into all truth those,

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. Q\
and thosjLQ_nly? who believe in the Divine Man,
and who, by a life of obedience to his command
ments, become thoroughly conformed to his
image. The Holv__GLost is the Holy Spirit
humanized or incarnated in Christ.
We are now ready to formulate for our reader
the remainder of what we have called the lost
truths of Christianity ; and we beg him to sus
pend his judgment until they have been duly
unfolded, at the risk of considerable reiteration,
and thoroughly substantiated by the Word of
God. The triune God, in the human nature of Jesus
Christ derived from the mother, was brought
into a contact, otherwise impossible, with all the
evil and unregenerate impulses of the race ; bore
the assaults of all the devils in hell in his own
spirit and body; " was made sin" — the old Adam
— for the world; resisted all evil, subjugated the
powers of hell, crucified the lusts of the flesh,
died to sin, exchanging for his carnal nature a
sanctified, glorified, absolutely divine human
nature, the new man, the new Adam, the first
infinitely regenerate being, " the first-born among
many brethren," " the first fruits of them that
'slept," " the first begotten from the dead," not
6

62 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
from the death of nature, but from the death of
sin. The life he laid down was the life of the carnal
nature derived from the mother. The life he
took up was the life of the new man, the new
Adam, thoroughly obedient to the divine will,
the divine human nature, one with the Father.
His death, which saves us, was the crucifixion
of the^old man of sin, assumed for our redemp
tion ; his resurrection, which is our hope, is the
resurrection in the soul of the new divine man
in place of the old human Adam ; and this re
demptive work was entirely independen^of_his
physical death upon the cross, which was only
the last and most terrible of his temptations.
Our regeneration is a perfect repetition, in in
finitesimal form, of the glorification of the Lord
Jesus Christ, achieved in the same manner by
the crucifixion and death of the old nature, and
the resurrection and ascension in us of the new
man, " created in Christ Jesus."
We attain to this regenerate state by becom
ing partakers of the nature of the Divine Man,
eating his spiritual flesh, and drinking his
spiritual blood, and thus growing more and
more Christ-like or God-like through faith and

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. Qg
obedience, until our life is " hid with Christ in
God." It is impossible to comprehend the beauty,
sublimity, unity, and absolute orthodoxy of these
propositions until we get clear ideas of the scrip
tural significations of some very important words,
— life, death, resurrection, blood, sacrifice, atone
ment, etc. These will be fully considered in
subsequent chapters. In the mean time we may
advantageously pursue the question of the ma
ternal heredity a little farther.
What became of the carnal human nature
which the Lord Jesus Christ put off, and which
we, his disciples, following his example, are to
crucify and bury ? We must clearly understand
that the carnal mind is not changed into the
spiritual mind.
"Because the carnal mind is enmity against God:
for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed
can be." Eom. viii. 7.
" For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit, and the Spirit
against the flesh, and these are contrary one to the other."
Gal. v. 17.
Christ was himself, by the perfect regeneration
of his human nature, the first-born into the new

64 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
kingdom of God. The new birth is the creation
and development of a new creature. Itjs not_
the old creature reformed or reconstructed. The
Lord did not reform the evil nature derived from
the mother, but resisted and cast it off entirely.
He absorbed and retained all the hereditary good,
for such good was already his own, since "there
is none good but God," and all goodness in man,
apparently self-derived, is really the life of God
in him. We imitate him in the regeneration,
retaining the good, rejecting the evil, and subor
dinating the human life to the divine life which
he imparts to us. But our regeneration, unlike
, his, is never perfected. However great our con
quest over evil may be, we must always be with
held from rushing into it again, not by our own
(resolutions, but by the power of the Lord.
We finite creatures can never get rid of our
relationships, because we are and must forever
remain finite. However vast and diffused may
be our sympathies : however eagerly our spirits
may run to grasp all things, to know all things,
to love all things, we can never in this world or
the next exceed our fixed bounds. We will for
ever be limited and local, will retain a sense of
our consanguinities, and be drawn together by

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 65
spiritual attractions, varying indefinitely in direc
tion and power. It was not so with Jesus Christ.
The glorification of his human nature, or its
coalescence with the divine, was so perfect, final,
and exhaustive, that he rose above all limitations
of time and space, expanding beyond all local,
family, social, or national surroundings : became
not only cosmopolitan but cosmical, not only cos-
mical but universal, the alpha and omega, the
first and the last, the Divine Man. His love and
care extends to all alike, the evil and the good,
the just and the unjust. His ways are not as our
ways, nor his thoughts as our thoughts, because
he is infinite. , He is no longer the Son of Mary,
for he has put off everything, physical or spiritual,
that he ever derived from her./ From his present
infinite stand-point he can only regard her, out
side of that love which she shares with all his
creatures, as a necessary medium or piece in the
mechanism whereby he descended from the spir
itual into the natural world.
Mary, beautiful in her humility, her tender
ness, and her devotion, was not the mother of
God, but of a feeble, suffering, human form,
which God condescended to inhabit for awhile.
All that she contributed for his use was put off
6*

66 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
or destroyed in the terrible struggle between the
deity and the powers of hell. She stands now
in heaven, radiant in saintly glory, bereft forever
of her child, herself a child of God, with only
the grand consolation of knowing that the Lord
Jesus Christ, in the hour of his supreme agony,
when he was giving the finishing stroke for the
salvation of the world, remembered her with
loving care, and gave her in charge to the dis
ciple who lay nearest to his own heart.
What became of the material body of Jesus
Christ? The answer to this question is irrele
vant to the subject-matter of our volume, for we
expect to show that his spiritual death and his
spiritual resurrection are the supreme facts of
christian theology ; and these would have taken
place, no matter what physical death he died,
and no matter what became of his material body.
Still it is a point of great philosophical interest,
and we had as well state our opinion, as it con
stitutes one block in the coherent edifice of our
faith. If Christ really ascended into the glory which
he had with the Father before the world was,
then he certainly left behind him everything,
both spiritual and natural, which he derived

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 67
from his human mother. /it is unsatisfactory
to be told that these things were mysteriously
changed./ The_natural is never changed into
the spiritual, nor the finite into the infinite.
When our souls are withdrawn from the body,
it is left to the operation of chemical and me
chanical laws to which we are all subject as finite
creatures. If an infinite soul withdraws from a
finite body, what follows ? If the ray of the in
finite life and power which gives form and con
sistence to a stone or a tree could be separated
from all other rays and totally withdrawn , would
not the stone or the tree be instantaneously re
solved into their elements or even into utter
nothingness? S_uch was the disposition made
of Christ's material body.
The same instantaneous resolution into its
original elements occurred to the body of Eli
jah at his translation, which was typical and
prophetic of the similar change in the Son of
Man. This is vastly more comprehensible than
the idea that a material body of flesh and blood,
and of so many pounds weight, arose from the
sepulchre, appeared and disappeared from human
sight, and finally ascended into our atmosphere
and soared away through the sidereal abysses, as

68 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
if heaven was a far-off material place. We can
acknowledge a thousand things which are above
reason, but not one that is contrary to reason.
We can accept the mysterious, but not the pre
posterous. / Christ then appeared to his disciples in a spir
itual body ? ' Certainly, and ouly to his disciples,
for no eye of unbeliever beheld him after his
crucifixion. (See Acts x. 40, 41.) A spiritual
body is one which appears only to those whose
spiritual eyes are opened, and its appearance
varies with the spiritual states of those who be
hold it. This accounts for his various appear
ances to Mary Magdalen, to the two disciples on
the way, to Peter by the seaside, to Thomas in
the closed room, to the three disciples on the
mount, and to John in the isle of Patmos. Since
his incarnation, it is perfectly feasible, without
violation of law, spiritual or natural, for Christ
to open our spiritual eyes and to appear to us in
the human form, and no two persons would ever
see him in precisely the same manner, and the
statement of very different persons would differ
so greatly as to confirm instead of invalidating
the fact of his appearance.
We have a spiritual body coexisting with and

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 69
in our natural body. At death it is withdrawn
from the physical frame and lives forever in a
spiritual world, organically adapted to its struc
ture and its faculties. This is our resurrection.
The spiritual and the physical universes are en
tirely distinct from each other, and they both
will last forever./ This earth will never be de
stroyed, but will remain as God's footstool and
creative work-ground to eternity. / The material
body will never be resuscitated, because it will
never be needed. We have no material resur-
rection. We are to conform to Christ's spiritual
death and to his spiritual, not his material resur
rection. Unlike us in the events which preceded
his birth, he was unlike us in the events which
followed his death. His ¦ physical resurrection
simply meant that his infinite soul drew itself
totally or infinitely out of all its finite surround
ings and wrappages.
To return from this digression, Paul says that
Christ is a priest forever after the order of Mel-
chisedec, who was first King of righteousness,
representing the triune God, and afterwards the
King of peace, representing the mediator or
Divine Man, and of whom he gives the follow
ing extraordinary definition :

70 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
"Without father, without mother, without descent,
having neither beginning of days nor end of life; but
made like unto the Son of God." Heb. vii. 3.
The Son of God was "without father," be
cause he was the Father himself; "without
mother," because he put off every thing that
made him apparently her son; "without de
scent," because he is the uncreated life, from
whom and by whom all creatures have their
being ; " without beginning of days," because he
was " ancient of days" when born as a human
babe; without "end of life," because it is im
possible for the uncreated life ever to cease or
die. It was only the Son of Mary that died on
the cross : it was only the carnal nature derived
from Mary that perished during the work of
redemption. The Divine Being, the same yes
terday, to-day, and forever, was only more
thoroughly revealed to us as the Divine Man.
The following resume' of the titles or terms
which have been explained will help to define
and fix our progress to the present point of our
undertaking. The divine love, divine wisdom, and divine
power correspond to the Father, the Son, and
the Holy Spirit.

THE MATERNAL HEREDITY OF CHRIST. 71
They constitute the Holy Trinity, one and in
divisible, the uncreated God.
This Trinity is the Jehovah and Lord of the
Old Testament.
This Trinity is the soul which animated the
body of the man, Jesus Christ.
Obscured by accommodation to our finite per
ceptions, this incarnate Trinity was called the
Word, the Son of God, and the Son of Man.
Son is a term applied to the visible manifesta
tion of the Divine Being : Father to the same
Being, invisible or unmanifested.
The Holy Ghost or Comforter is the effluent
life or power emanating from the conjoined
Father and Son.
The name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Ghost is the Lord Jesus Christ.
The Lord Jesus Christ is the Supreme Being,
the Divine Man, one in spirit and in person,
" Our Father" in heaven, and the sole object of
our worship.
Let us rise above apparent into the light of
genuine truth. Let us attach only their true
value to terms which were given or permitted
as helps to our feeble, finite, and partial compre
hension; and let us concentrate our thoughts,

72 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
our hearts, and our prayers on the Lord Jesus
Christ alone. We will then receive a new influx
of light and power into our minds, and be de
livered from that involuntary tritheism which is
the burden and the bane of the Christian Church.
The christian who sincerely believes that Jesus
Christ ascended into heaven with his human
body, and who accepts the statement of the in
spired apostle, " For in him dwelleth the fulness
of the Godhead bodily," can surely offer no ob
jection to our definition of the Supreme Bei-'g as
the Divine Man.

CHAPTER III.
THE TWO DEATHS AND THE TWO RESURRECTIONS.
It is astonishing that the life, death, and resur
rection of the Lord Jesus Christ should have
been viewed by the church in such a purely literal
manner, when the scriptures abound in plain
declarations or unquestionable intimations that
the true weight of these words is to be found in
their spiritual signification. Paul, by the inspira
tion of the Holy Ghost, taught with great clear
ness that the death and resurrection which we
are to experience in imitation of Christ's ex
ample, are spiritual phenomena, a death to sin
and a resurrection to holiness of life. The earlier
christians, however, were converts from Judaism
or paganism, in a terribly dark and sensual age,
and seemed incapable of rising above merely
literal conceptions. The crucifixion and the re
appearance from the sepulchre made such an
astounding impression upon their senses, that
they construed them to be the central facts of
theology. This literal interpretation has been
d 7 73

74 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
an_ mcubus upon the mind of the church ever
since, and the most beautiful passages of the
apostle have been considered dark and obscure
sayings, which have puzzled and divided the
commentators. The scheme of redemption, founded upon the
physical death of Christ, has always been one of
the stumbling-blocks in the path of Christianity.
As men become more enlightened, and the de
mands of the scientific, rational, and critical spirit
become "more and more exacting, its difficulties
increase; and at present it stands as a useless
encumbrance, and a hindrance to the reception
of purer, clearer, more elevating, and more scrip
tural teachings. /The church itself would quickly
modify its opinions on the subject but for that
sweet and strong faith which is born of the heart
and not of the head. / It points to the long line
of saints and martyrs, to the purity and holiness
of life so often attained in christian communion,
to the humanizing and civilizing influence of its
precepts, and to its many conquests over the
world, the flesh, and the devil : not knowing,
alas ! that all its graces and virtues and triumphs.
would have been indefinitely increased, had it
retained uncorrupted the faith delivered to it by

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 75
the apostles, — faith in the unity of the Divine
Man~71n~the death which he died to our carnal
nature, in the resurrection which he made into
the divine life, and in the efficacy of his^piritual
flesh and blood to transform us into his image,
so that we shall die with him, and rise with him,
and live with him, being partakers of his divine
nature. The reader must not suppose that we intend
to spiritualize away the meaning of the death of
Christ. We intend to give his physical death
and resurrection their true value, and to show
that he suffered a spiritual death, and achieved
a spiritual resurrection of far more transcendent
importance. His physical death and resurrec
tion were significative of his relations to the law
or the Jewish economy. Every incident of his
life was connected with the fulfilment of that
law. He was himself the divine word which
had spoken through Moses and David and the
prophets, and he made every prophetic utterance
good in word and deed. " I am not come," said
he, " to destroy the law, but to fulfil."
Christ was not only the culmination of proph
ecy, but himself the last of the prophets. The
prophet was a representative character, who

76 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
showed the people the divine will and taught
them the divine truth : and the things done to
him were typical of the spiritual state of the
Jewish Church, and of the manner in which
they received and treated the divine truth. Under
this law of representation Ezekiel was compelled
to lie upon his right side so many days, and then
upon his left side so many days, and to eat cakes
mixed with the excrement of an ox : all, as he
expressly declares, " to bear the iniquity of the
house of Israel." For a similar representative
reason, Isaiah, the prophet, was compelled to go
) barefoot and naked for three years ; and another
i prophet, Hosea, was compelled to take a harlot
1 into his house, in order to represent the adulter-
I ous condition of the Jewish Church when it was
\ lusting after other gods. The divine truth, per
verted and falsified through the media of the
corrupt and sensual Jewish people, received such
direful representations.
Christ bore in his person the iniquities of the
Jewish people who had stoned the prophets, and
killed those who were sent to teach them the
truth. The result to him of that prophetical
office was, that they hated and despised him,
tempted and persecuted him, laid snares for him

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 77
and betrayed him, rejected and scourged him,
crowned him with thorns, smote him, spit upon
him, mocked and insulted him, and finally cruci
fied him between two thieves : for even so had
they done in spirit to all the beautiful divine
truths he had taught them, and which constituted
the kingdom he would have them obey. To for
sake and deny the divine truth is to " crucify the
Lord afresh" (Heb. vi. 6). His resurrection repre
sented the indestructibility and omnipotence of
the divine truth. The physical death and resur
rection of Christ were thus the culminating
representations of the state of the Jewish people,
whose city and government were soon afterward
utterly overwhelmed. The law of types and
shadows did not terminate at the birth, but at
the death of Christ.
The Lord's mission was twofold : to fulfil to
the last iota of the law the prophecies connected
with the closure of the great Jewish economy,
by means of which he himself, the living God,
had been present upon earth in a series of types
and correspondences. And, secondly, to prepare
a new and everlasting medium of conjunction be
tween God and man, a Divine Humanity, in which
he could forever work to save mankind from the

78 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
power and the effects of sin. The former part
of his mission terminated by his physical death
on the cross, when he exclaimed, " It is finished."
The latter and diviner part of his mission involved
the spiritual death and the spiritual resurrection,
which we are about to consider. The termina
tion of this marvellous work is alluded to in those
strange words of the evangelist (how strangely
they must have sounded to the hearers !) :
" Father, the hour is come.
"I have glorified thee on the earth: I have finished
the work which thou gavest me to do.
" And now, 0 Father, glorify thou me with thine own
self with the glory which I had with thee before the world
was. " And now I am no more in the world, but these are in
the world, and I come to thee." Jno. xvii. 1-11.
These two great parts of his divine work upon
earth were no doubt interpenetrating and co
operative, and the one is unintelligible without
the other ; but the secret of the incarnation and
the plan of redemption cannot be properly under
stood unless each is considered separately as well
as both conjointly, and unless the physical death
of Christ, and the spiritual death he died to his
carnal nature, are traced to their different causa-

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 79
tions, and themselves again considered as causes
producing very different effects.
We can now advance, understandingly, to con
sider that great spiritual redemptive work which
our Lord achieved in his own consciousness for
the salvation of mankind.
There is a physical or animal life, — the organi
zation and animation of material substances by
the inflowing of spiritual forces :
" And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly
the moving creature that hath life." Gen. i. 20.
" They are dead that sought the child's life." Matt.
ii. 20.
" Take no thought for your life, what ye shall eat, or
what ye shall drink" Matt. vi. 25.
There is a physical death, — the cessation of
inflowing spiritual forces to animate any longer
the organic form :
" They came to Jesus and saw that he was dead
already." Jno. xix. 31.
" They sought false witnesses against Jesus to put him
to death." Matt. xxvi. 59.
" It is appointed unto all men once to die." Heb. ix. 27.
Physical death, which is only the transition of
our life from one stage of being to another, is a

80 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
necessary and appointed step in the order of crea
tion. It is not the punishment of sin. Spiritual
death is the punishment or inevitable effect of
sin. " In the day thou eatest thereof thou shalt
surely die," said the Lord to Adam. And yet
Adam lived in the world hundreds of years after
his act of disobedience. But his spiritual death
or alienation from God began at once. Physical
death was not brought in by sin, nor has Christ
abolished it, nor will he ever deliver the human
race from its power, either on this earth or on
anj' earth in the sidereal universe. If man had
continued in the perfect order of his creation, his
physical death would have occurred without dis
ease or suffering. It would have been a beautiful
ceremony of translation from a lower to a higher
sphere, like that of Elijah. Life is never lost,
and there is never any real break in its continuity.
Man passes into the spiritual world minus nothing
but his material body, which slowly disintegrates,
by chemical decomposition, after the withdrawal
of the attractive and constructive forces of the
spirit. " First that which is natural," says Paul,
" and afterward that which is spiritual."
All life above nature or the world is spiritual.
Evil spirits as well as good spirits exist forever

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 81
in spiritual bodies and in spiritual worlds, com
posed of spiritual substances, between which and
the substances of the natural world there is a
discrete degree or impassable gulf, so that one
can never be changed into the other. They are
parallel lines which never meet. But the scrip
tural theology makes a special or technical ap
plication of the word spiritual, as meaning the
good life contrasted with the evil life, the heav
enly life with the earthly, the regenerate life with
the carnal life, or that which lives without God
in the world.
The following sentences from the Word of
God are voices which speak to us plainly and
beautifully of a life entirely above our sensuous
nature :
" I am the resurrection, and the life : he that believeth
in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live." Jno. xi. 25.
" To be spiritually minded is life and peace." Eom.
viii. 6.
" I am crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live ; yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me." Gal. ii. 20.
" He that hath the Son hath life : he that hath not
the Son, hath not life." 1 Jno. v. 12.
" Whoso eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath
eternal life." Jno. vi. 54.
D*

82 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
By disobedience to the known will of God, by
yielding in temptation, by neglect of duties, and
by self-indulgence, this heavenly life within us
may grow cold and faint, and sicken and die.
This is the spiritual death so often alluded to in
the scriptures.
" The soul that sinneth, it shall die." Ezek. xviii. 20.
" The wages of sin is death." Eom. vi. 23.
" To be carnally minded is death." Eom. viii. 6.
" She that liveth in pleasure is dead while she liveth."
1 Tim. v. 6.
"He knoweth not that the dead are there (in the
house of the harlot) ; and that her guests are in the
depths of hell." Prov. ix. 18.
" Follow thou me : and let the dead bury their dead."
Matt. viii. 22.
" 0 wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me
from the body of this death ?" Eom. vii. 25.
" The hour cometh and now is, when the dead shall
hear the voice of the Son of God." Jno. v. 25.
"Awake thou that steepest, and arise from the dead,
and Christ shall give thee light." Eph. v. 14.
This death in trespasses and sins, this utter
extinction of the religious life, is, on the other
hand, by antithesis, the life of sin, the vital
essence and joy of the carnal nature.

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 83
" For the flesh lusteth against the Spirit." Gal. v. 17.
" The carnal mind is enmity against God." Eom.
viii. 7.
" Who walk after their own ungodly lusts : sensual,
having not the Spirit." Jude xvii. 18.
" For all that is in the world, the lust of the flesh, and
the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life, is not of the
Father, but is of the world." 1 Jno. ii. 16.
" The natural man receiveth not the things of the
Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him: neither
can he know them, because they are spiritually dis
cerned." 1 Corinth, ii. 14.
The moving power of this carnal or unregen-
erate life is the love of self and the world, con
trasted and antagonistic powers to the love of
God and the neighbor. This is the life of the
pampered senses, of the lusts of the body, and
all uncleanness, of pride, vanity, and ambition,
of selfishness and self-righteousness, of covetous-
ness, hatred, cruelty, envy, and the whole fear
ful catalogue of evil passions and sinful desires.
This is the composite life of that " flesh and
blood" which cannot inherit the kingdom of
God. The evil hereditary impetus of this life,
accumulating from Adam to the time of Christ,
was hurrying the whole race headlong into the

84 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
lowest depths of evil, until Tiberius, Nero, and
Caligula would have become the common types
of mankind, and the perishing civilization of the
old world would have sunk into barbarism, and
from barbarism into universal bestialism : had
not Christ appeared upon the earth, " in the
likeness of sinful flesh," subjected himself to the
bondage and temptations of the senses, taken
on himself this very carnal life in all its fulness,
endured its burdens, suffered its tortures, subju
gated its power, and crucified it in his own con
sciousness, until it died utterly within him, and
he rose from the conflict, sanctified and glorified
in a Divine Humanity, which is evermore to those
who believe, the way, the resurrection, and the
life. Some minds seem to shrink from the biblical
doctrine that Jesus Christ assumed our carnal
and sinful nature ; just such a nature as our
little infants have, with the old Adam, the old
serpent, the old man of sin, lying dormant in
the heart, ready to spring into life on the first
occasion. It was a physiological and scientific
necessity arising from his maternal heredity. It
could not have been otherwise. It was only in
such a nature that God could come into contact

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 85
with evil without annihilating the race, and by
temptations subdue and destroy it. The death
of Christ to all the allurements and temptations
of the carnal nature was the death which he
tasted for every man, and not his death upon the
cross. The sufferings of Christ, of which we are
to be partakers, were the mental sufferings which
he endured during his struggles with the world,
the flesh, and the devil, and all without sin. Let
us contemplate carefully this death of the carnal
nature and the coincident resurrection into spir
itual life, which are the keys to the secret of the
incarnation and the redemption of man.
"And Jesus answered them, saying, The hour is
come, that the Son of man should be glorified.
" Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except a corn of wheat
fall into the ground and die, it abideth alone ; but if it
die, it bringeth forth much fruit.
" He that loveth his life shall lose it ; and he that
hateth his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternal.
" If any man serve me, let him follow me ;, and where
lam, there shall also my servant be." Jno. xii. 23-26.
These verses describe the whole mission of
Christ. Follow the train of thought, He had
two natures, — the carnal and sinful nature de
rived from the mother, and the divine nature, the
8

86 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Father dwelling in him. He was glorified and
the Father was glorified in him, in proportion as
the divine nature triumphed over the human,
and wrought or moulded it to its own will. The
carnal and sinful nature (the corn of wheat) had,
however, to perish before the spiritual or divine
nature could take its place and bring forth much
fruit. Whoever loves or clings to the carnal life,
will necessarily lose the spiritual life ; but he who
hates the carnal or worldly life, shall find and
keep the eternal life. He who would serve God
must follow him in the regeneration ; must hate
and lose his carnal affections, and bring forth the
rich fruit of the heavenly nature. Thus, and
thus only, can the servant be where the master
is, or enter into the same states of feeling and
life with his Lord.
The above paraphrase will enable us to under
stand just as clearly this kindred passage from
the same evangelist :
" Therefore doth my father love me, because I lay
down my life, that I may take it again.
"No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of my
self. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to
take it again. This commandment have I received of
my Father." Jno. x. 17, 18.

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 87
Notwithstanding the singular phraseology, it
is apparent that he did not take up the same life
which he laid down. The corn of wheat which
died was not the one that brought forth much
fruit. That was a new germ inside of the old
grain. The life he hated was not the one he
kept forever. " Thou sowest not that body that
shall be," says Paul, in unison with this thought.
The life he laid down, or gave up, or cast off was
the carnal life derived from the mother. The
life he took up or elevated was the spiritual life
which he derived from the Father. And he
made this exchange at no man's bidding, from
no earthly or human motives, but from the im
pulsion of the divine love, " the Father's com
mandment," for both the will and the power by
which he accomplished it was from the Father
working in him.
That the carnal life, with all its spiritual con
sanguinities and relationships, is to be entirely
abandoned and hated, is taught in that remark
able sentence : " If any man come unto me, and
hate not his father, and mother, and wife, and
children, and sisters, and brethren, yea, and his
own life also, he cannot be my disciple." Luke
xiv. 26. And the verse succeeding it confirms

88 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the signification, "And whosoever doth not bear
his cross, and come after me, cannot be my dis
ciple." Whoever does not lead a life of self-
denial and self-sacrifice, abandoning all carnal
motives, and actions, and relationships as I am
doing, cannot imitate me and learn of me so as
to be truly my disciple. "Ye that love the Lord
hate evil" (Ps. xcvii. 10). The Lord hates, and
we must hate, evil principles and qualities, not
evil persons, and no man is commanded to hate
his natural father and mother.
The death of Christ to his carnal nature is
still more explicitly stated in the following ex
tracts :
" For in that he died, he died unto sin once : but in
that he liveth, he liveth unto God." Eom. vi. 10.
" Because he hath poured out his soul unto death (his
hereditary human soul or carnal nature), and he was
numbered with the transgressors." Isaiah liii. 10.
" In the end of the world (of the old dispensation) he
appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself (by
the sacrifice of his human selfhood or carnal life).''
"Forasmuch then as the children are partakers of
flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the
same (took on him that carnal nature of flesh and
blood which cannot inherit the kingdom of God) ;
that through death (death to the carnal nature) he

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 89
might destroy him that had the power of death (spir
itual death), that is, the devil." Heb. ii. 14, 15.
The work of Christ in his own soul, his inner
consciousness, can be best seen by the corre
sponding work of his Holy Spirit upon our
souls. He is our great model and exemplar.
What he did we are to do. The apostles de
scribe the christian as doing exactly what Christ
had done before him and for him.
" i" protest by your rejoicing which I have in Christ
Jesus, I die daily." 1 Cor. xv. 31.
" Dying, and behold, we live." 2 Cor. vi. 9.
" Though our outward man perish, our inward man
is renewed day by day." 2 Cor. iv. 16.
" For thy sake we are killed all the day long." Eom.
viii. 36.
" Ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the
world." Coloss. ii. 20.
" If we be dead with him, we shall also live with him."
2 Tim. ii. 11.
" Hereby we perceive the love of God for us, because
he laid down his life for us : and we ought also to lay
down our lives for the brethren" (to sacrifice our carnal
selfhood for their benefit as he did for ours). 1 Jno.
hi. 16.
" They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with
its affections and lusts." Gal. v. 24.
8*

90 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" Our old man is crucified with him (with the old man
of his carnal nature) that the body of sin might be de
stroyed." Eom. vi. 6.
"Always bearing about in the body, the dying of the
Lord Jesus (dying daily to our carnal nature as he
did to his ownj, that the life also of Jesus (his resur
rection or spii'itual life) might be made manifest in our
body." 2 Cor. iv. 10.
" Precious in the sight of the Lord is the death of his
saints" (their death to all carnal and earthly things).
Ps. cxvi. 15.
" Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord,"
for they rest from their labors, and their works
do follow them (Rev. xiv. 13). That is, blessed
are they who have died to the carnal life even as
the Lord died to his, for they are freed hence
forth from all the toils of temptation, and the
works of that righteous life into which they have
risen will continue forever.
Physical life and physical death are never
mentioned in the Word of God, except in the
historical sense, — i.e., as historical events. Spir
itual life and spiritual death are the constant bur
den of revelation ; how to save men from one
and lead them into the other. The physical
death of Christ had nothing to do with the sal-

I I

> 1

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 91
vationofmankind, except as a small part of a
stupendous whole. It was a representative ful
filment of the Jewish law under their established
economy of types and symbols./ The phenomena
of Christ's spiritual life contain the whole phi
losophy of redemption. He died to sin, he lived
to righteousness. He crucified his carnal na
ture, he rose with a divine nature. The spir
itual and the carnal are antipodal. He who is
alive to one is dead to the other. To pass from
the spiritual to the carnal is the death of the
soul ; to pass from the carnal to the spiritual is
life eternal. A spiritual man is carnally dead :
a carnal man is spiritually dead. As there are
two lives and two deaths, so there are two resur
rections. When the spiritual life grows cold and
dead, and the man rises into the evil delights of
the carnal nature, we have the resurrection of
damnation; when a man dies to all carnal and
worldly things and rises into true holiness, we
have the resurrection into eternal life. This is
the resurrection which the Lord Jesus accom
plished on an infinite scale, and this is our sole
hope of the spiritual life and of heaven.
Without denying the fact of the literal resur
rection of Jesus Christ, its proper significance,

92 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and its mighty effect upon the world ; and with
out entering into the vexed question, whether
our physical bodies will rise in the same man
ner, in a different manner, or not at all : we
must insist with the direct earnestness of truth,
that when our Lord says, "I am the resurrection
and the life," he makes no allusion whatever jo
the disposition of his^ natural body, or of our
natural bodies, but is speaking of that resurrec
tion from the death of the carnal nature, which
is the sign and seal of our redemption from sin,
and the pledge that we shall never die any more
in a spiritual sense.
That the infusion of spiritual life into those
who are " dead in trespasses and sins" is a resur
rection from the dead, is evident from the resus
citation of the dry bones of the valley to " an
exceeding great army," so magnificently de
scribed in the 37th chapter of Ezekiel, which is
a prophecy of Christ's kingdom ; and from the
words of the prophet, " Thus saith the Lord, 0
my people, I will open your graves, and cause you
to come up out of your graves, and bring you
into the land of Israel (the heavenly Canaan).
And ye shall know that I am the Lord, when I
have opened your graves, 0 my people, and have

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 93
brought you up out of your graves, and shall put
my spirit in you, and ye shall live."
The passage from spiritual death into spiritual
life is the scriptural resurrection.
" You hath he quickened (already while still living
in nature) who were dead in trespasses and sins."
Ephes. ii. 1.
" He that heareth my word, and believeth on him that
sent me, hath everlasting life (even now), and shall not
come into condemnation, but is passed from death unto
life." Jno. v. 24.
" We know we have passed from death unto life (are
already risen from the dead), because we love the
brethren." 1 Jno. iii. 14.
" Since by man came death, by man came also the
resurrection of the dead.
" For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all
be made alive." 1 Cor. xv. 21, 22.
The last quotation may be thus paraphrased
and made more comprehensible :
As by the corruption of the human nature
through Adam spiritual death came into the
world, so, also, by the assumption of the same
nature and its redemption, did Christ achieve its
resurrection from the dead. In the corrupt hu
manity of Adam we die, in the restored humanity
of Christ we live.

94 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
As the death of the Lord Jesus was his death,
mental, emotional, and sensational, to the carnal
nature derived from Mary, so his resurrection
was the rise and growth in him of the divine
spirit which he called his Father. His progress
ive union with the Father indicated the exact
measure of his death to the inherited human
nature, and his corresponding resurrection into
the divine nature. When the Jews and some
of his own disciples are sorely puzzled at his
" hard saying," that " whosoever eateth my flesh
and drinketh my blood shall have eternal life,
and I will raise him up at the last day ;" he
gives them a solution of the difficulty in the
words, " Doth this offend you ? What and if ye
shall see the Son of Man ascend up where he
was before ?" John vi. 62.
How does this apparently inadequate answer
solve the difficulty ? The ascension of the Son
of Man to where he was before, or the union of
Christ with the Father, is the resurrection itself,
the veritable passage from the carnal to the di
vine, the appointed and infinite way from death
to life. Who can accompany our Lord in this
resurrection, feel its power, and share its glory ?
Those who by eating his flesh and drinking his

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 95
blood become " partakers of his divine nature."
The end of their labors, the final effect the last
day, or at the last, is, that they are raised from the
dead by the power of the similar resurrection of
Jesus Christ. Seeing, moreover, that the whole
subject of his death, resurrection, and ascension
was liable to be misconceived by the spirit of
literal interpretation, he adds the significant
words, as much needed now as then, " It is the
spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth no
thing; the words that I speak unto you, they are
spirit and they are life." He plainly meant, be
ware of taking my sacrifice, my blood, my death
and resurrection for merely natural events : they
are spiritual phenomena.
In the same spirit of literal interpretation
Peter quotes the words of David as prophetic of
the resurrection of Christ :
" My flesh also shall rest in hope.
" For thou wilt not leave my soul in hell ; neither
wilt thou suffer thy Holy One to see corruption.
" Thou wilt show me the path of life : in thy presence
is fulness of joy : and at thy right hand are pleasures
for evermore." Ps. xvi. 9-11.
These words are undoubtedly true in the letter,
as Peter construed them : but how much deeper

96 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and richer is their spiritual meaning ! Read it
thus: My carnal nature shall rest in hope. My
human nature shall be redeemed to the uttermost;
for thou wilt deliver my soul, sinless and untainted,
from the hell and the corruption of the carnal life:
I shall then rise from death into life : shall at
tain the fulness of thy presence, perfect union
with thyself, and sit at thy right hand, or possess
thy omnipotent power in peace and joy forever.
The apostle Paul is the great authority for
the doctrine that the death and resurrection of
Jesus Christ, by which we are saved, are spirit
ual phenomena. He sometimes deals in literal
isms, or descends justifiably to the level of the
churches to whom he wrote: but his applica
tions of spiritual meaning, considered by some
the obscurest part of his writings, are really the
most brilliant and instructive. His famous pas
sage of comparison between the natural and the
spiritual body is reserved for a chapter in which
we shall unfold the biblical doctrine of the per
fect purification and redemption of our physical
life. We are engaged at present in comparing
Christ's spiritual death and resurrection with
our own. Hear the man who had special reve
lations of the Lord Jesus Christ :

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 97
" How shall we, that are dead to sin, live any longer
therein ?
" Know ye not, that so many of us as were baptized
into Jesus Christ, were baptized into his death (pledged
to die as he did) ?
" Therefore we are buried with him by baptism into
death (the death of the carnal nature) : that like as
Christ was raised up from the dead (from the death
of the carnal nature) by the glory of the Father, even
so we also should walk in newness of life.
" For if we have been planted together in the likeness
of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resur
rection (his death to sin, his resurrection to holiness) :
" Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with
him (with his carnal nature), that the body of sin
might be destroyed, that henceforth we should not serve
sin. " For he that is dead (to the carnal nature) is freed
from sin.
" Now, if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we
shall also live with him :
" Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead (the
death of the carnal nature) dieth no more ; death hath
no more dominion over him.
" For in that he died (to the carnal nature), he died
unto sin once : but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God.
" Likewise reckon ye also yourselves to be dead indeed
E 9

98 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
unto sin, but alive unto God through Jesus Christ our
Lord." Eom. vi. 2-11.
How plainly it is here taught that our cruci
fixion of the old man, our death to the carnal
nature, and our resurrection into newness of
life, are processes accurately corresponding and
analogous to similar processes of crucifixion,
death, and resurrection which Jesus Christ un
derwent! How illogical to insist that on our
side the phenomena are spiritual, but on Christ's
side they are simply natural events ! The cojn-
mentators are sadly confused. Poor Matthew
stupidly remarks, " our dying to sin is an act
of conformity to Christ's dying for sin." Sher
lock, just as far from the mark in relation to
Christ's death, suddenly rises to a just spiritual
conception of his resurrection : " We must con
sider his resurrection, not as his returning to life
again, but as his living to God, his advancement
into his spiritual kingdom : and so our walking
in newness of life is a conformity to his resur
rection." None of them can see that he took
on " sinful flesh," "became sin," died to sin, and
was yet sinless. Scott helplessly exclaims, "As
the blessed Jesus was in himself wholly free
from sin, it seems impossible to find any satis-

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 99
factory meaning for the words ' He died unto sin
once' !"
What does the apostle mean by obtaining " a
better resurrection" through sufferings for Christ
(Heb. xi. 35), unless it be an ascent into a higher
j or better state of the moral life ? Surely, better
or worse cannot be predicated of a material resur
rection. The absolute spiritual identity of the chris
tian's resurrection and Christ's resurrection is
taught by the apostle in the following extract :
" Even when we were dead in sins (God) hath quick
ened us together with Christ,
"And hath raised us up together, and made us sit to
gether in heavenly places in Christ Jesus" ("heavenly
places'' means heavenly states of the spirit). Eph. ii.
5, 6.
Here the resurrection of the disciples is said to
have happened already with Christ's, even whilst
still living in the flesh.
One more lucid passage from the apostle to
the Gentiles ought to settle this interpretation
beyond the possibility of dispute :
" That I may know him, and the power of his resur
rection, and the fellowship- of his sufferings, being made
conformable unto his death ;

100 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" If by any means I might attain unto the resurrection
of the dead.
" Not as though I had already attained, either were
already perfect : but I follow after." Phil. iii. 10-12.
We can have no fellowship with the sufferings
of Christ, except by resisting the terrible temp
tations of the carnal nature as he did. We can
not conform to his death in any other manner,
but to die as he did to all the allurements and
influences of our sensual life. The power of his
resurrection, which Paul so yearns to know and
feel, is his power to draw us up and elevate us
into that state of perfect moral and spiritual
beatitude which he himself attained by the
crucifixion of his human selfhood.
i That the Lord Jesus Christ himself underwent
the new birth and experienced the whole process
1 of regeneration is evident from the 3d chapter
[ of John. He explains this new birth to Nicode-
mus as a spiritual work effected by invisible and
almost imperceptible influences, producing a to
tally new character. Nicodemus exclaims in
amazement, " How can these things be ?" The
Lord answers, " Art thou a master of Israel, and
knowest not these things ?" and then adds the
remarkable words, " Verily, verily, I say unto

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 101
you, We speak that we do know, and testify that
we have seen." That is, I tell you from my own
individual experience that these things are so.
And to continue the paraphrase, he goes on to
say, if you do not understand my plain and prac
tical teachings, it will be impossible for you to
comprehend the spiritual mystery of the new
life. No one has hitherto achieved it or under-
'st.ood it, for " no man hath ascended up to
heaven" except myself. . This ascension was
clearly not the ascension from the earth to
j heaven accomplished after the resurrection, but
a spiritual ascension, or an entrance into the
kingdom of God, an ascent from the life of the
flesh by a new birth into a state of heavenly and
spiritual perceptions. And the manner of his
regeneration is taught in the following sentences
when he compares himself to the serpent lifted
up by Moses in the wilderness, the wonderful
meaning of which will be unfolded in a subse
quent chapter.
Whatever, 0 Christian, may have been the
baptism, the sufferings, the temptations, the
sanctifi cation, the death, the resurrection, and
the glorification of Jesus Christ; the scriptures
teach us that we are to pass through entirely
9*

102 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
similar spiritual states, so that we may be one
with him as he is one with the Father : and that
in this manner he is the great exemplar, the
model, the door, the way, and the life. Our
Lord speaks of his disciples as " ye who have
followed me in the regeneration," and his words
are shorn of their beauty and power, if we do
not see that we are to " walk even as he walked,"
and to die with him and rise with him even in
the present human life.
" Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ
Jesus." Phil. ii. 5.
" Christ also suffered for us, leaving us an example
that ye should follow his steps." 1 Pet. ii. 21.
" These are they which follow the lamb whithersoever
he goeth." Eev. xiv. 4.
" Conformed to the image of his Son." Eom. viii. 29.
" As many of you as have been baptized into Christ,
have put on Christ." Gal. iii. 27.
" As the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our con
solation also aboundeth by Christ." 2 Cor. i. 5.
" Be thou partaker of the afflictions of the Gospel."
2 Tim. i. 8.
" For in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted,
he is able to succor them that are tempted." Heb. ii. 18.
" Ye are they which have continued with me in my
temptations." Luke xxii. 28.

TWO DEATHS AND TWO RESURRECTIONS. 103
"Dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world."
Coloss. ii. 20.
" If we be dead with him, we shall also live with him :
" If we suffer, we shall also reign with him." 2 Tim.
ii. 11, 12.
"For their sakes I sanctify myself, that they also
might be sanctified." Jno. xvii. 19.
" Sanctified in Christ Jesus." 1 Cor. i. 2.
" If ye then be risen with Christ, seek those things
which are above." Coloss. i. 3.
" In the likeness of his resurrection." Eom. vi. 5.
" The glory which thou hast given me, I have given
them." Jno. xvii. 22.
" That we might be partakers of his holiness." Heb.
xii. 10.
" Joint heirs with Christ : if so be that we suffer with
him, that we may be also glorified together." Eom. viii.
17. How brilliantly and tenderly these old familiar
passages shine in the light of the spiritual truths
we have announced! How clearly do we see
that we also have two deaths and two resurrec
tions : a death to nature and a resurrection into
the spiritual world; and a death to sin and a
resurrection into holiness of life ! We must lay
down the life of the flesh and take up the life of
the spirit, even as Christ laid down the life of

104 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the human nature derived from his mother, and
took up or entered into the divine life which he
called the Father. His death to all the evils of
humanity was a grander event than his death
upon the cross. His true resurrection, or spirit
ual ascension to his Father, infinitely transcended
in importance his emergence from an earthly
sepulchre. Let us now advance, with the gospel
pages as our guide, to consider the means, so
little understood, by which the Lord Jesus effected
the crucifixion of his carnal nature, his spiritual
resurrection, and his final unitlon with the Father;
so that now he is neither Father nor Son, but
the Divine Man, that liveth and was dead, and
behold ! is alive for evermore, having the keys
of death and of hell.

CHAPTER IV.
THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST.
Evil can in no manner approach or assault
the Divine Being. " God cannot be tempted
with evil, neither tempteth he any man," says
the apostle James. The devils were sometimes
tortured by the mere approach of Jesus Christ,
shrouded and concealed as his divine nature was
by the dark and thick wrappages of our earthly
life. The triune Spirit could annihilate the entire
evil world, both in hell and upon earth, by a
breath of his mouth. „ But the wicked life of both
earth and hell is so woven together that devils
and men would be destroyed at the same time.
The ways of God are infinitely merciful. He
destroys none. His whole desire is to create, to
save, to love. He deals with evil in two ways :
in this life, by redemption from its power by
the ministry of love, and with the sinner's con
sent : in the next life, by isolation from the good,
E* 105

106 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and by the necessarily severe and yet ever pater
nal government of hell.
How then could Christ be tempted of the
devil? Only by assuming our sinful and evil
nature to its uttermost. No human nature derived
from a human mother could have been perfect,
or even good. It must have had all the qualities
and tendencies of the human heart, which the
prophet, declares is " deceitful above all things,
and desperately wicked; who can know it?"
There can be no temptation unless there be a
desire to do evil. It would have been utterly
absurd for the devil to have offered the kingdoms,
of the earth to the Creator of the world in the
enjoyment of his divine consciousness, as a bribe
inducing him to worship his own infernal majesty.
But when God bowed the heavens and came
down, limiting himself in time and space, when
he entered into our own sinful and obdurate naT
ture, and felt and thought as a mere man, then
the devil could approach him with reason, for
Christ then bore in his human soul, along with
all other evils, the concentrated fire of all the ill-
starred ambitions that ever tortured and wrecked
humanity. What false, cunning, and direful spirit first

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 107
whispered to the young church of Christ, that he
suffered the punishment of our sins ? The
nature of his sacrifice will be considered here
after, but we cannot understand -his temptations
until we recognize the fact that he bore our sins
in his own body, — the sinsthemselves, and not
the punishment of them. Christ could not be
punished for sins he had not committed, for sin
alone brings its own punishment. He could not
assume the punishment for sins of which he was
not guilty. It would have violated the relations
of cause and effect, and it would have been con
trary to good morals and to common sense. J The
scriptures nowhere assert that he suffered the
penalties of sin. ; The penalty of sin is the worm
that dieth not, and the fire that is never quenched.
The penalty of sin is to be more sinful, and there
fore more and more miserable. Christ suffered
for our sins, on account of our sins, as every one
does more or less for the sins of others, but he
infinitely. He took on our sinful nature ; he was
bruised for our transgressions, he was wounded
for our iniquities ; he bore our sins in his own
body ; he took away our sins ; he washed' us clean
from sin in his own blood ; | and all this with
out ever standing one moment in the sinner's

108 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
stead or suffering one iota of the punishment of
sin. /
He actually " became sin" for us, and lived in
our " sinful flesh," immersed in the local and the
finite, — buried in the grave, we might say, the hell
of our sensual nature, in wdiich he was fearfully
but vainly tempted, feeling the whole pressure of
hereditary evil as if it was his personal and only
life, and struggling against its awful influences
by urgent prayers to what seemed to him at times
a remote and separated power. His sufferings, so
often alluded to by the apostles as something dif
ferent from his crucifixion, arose from his temp
tations, — those life-and-death struggles between
the divine spirit dwelling within him and the
hereditary evil nature which that spirit subdued
and cast out. The incarnation was instituted
to obtain a field wherein God could be tempted
to all sin as man is tempted, and to prepare, by
conquest in temptation, a divine human form to
serve as an eternal base of operation, from which
he could perpetually succor and save his strug
gling children. It is important, therefore, to
bring into clear light the nature and uses of
temptation from the scriptural stand-point.
The life of men and spirits, angels or devils,

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 109
is in their affections. What a man really loves,
underneath all disguises, reveals his nature, be
cause it is a manifestation of his life. The life
of the good is the love of the good, the true, and
the useful ; the life of the evil is the love of the
evil, the false, and the sensual. Each one clings
to his life with the utmost tenacity. When the
life is assaulted and in danger, all creatures are
in anxiety and pain, and resist to the utmost.
The instinct of self-preservation, or the spirit of
self-defence, is the most powerful feeling, passion,
or emotion in men or animals. They die hard
and unwillingly. Exactly so does the love or life
of evil in man maintain itself in existence with
the utmost effort and obduracy, and dies only on
compulsion. Temptation is an assault upon the life's love, a
struggle for supremacy between the good and the
evil, the spirit and the flesh ; and as they are
opposites, so that one can never be amalgamated
with, or transmuted into, the other, it is a battle
for life, and the final issue is the utter extermina
tion of one or the other force. " No man can
serve two masters : for either he will hate the
one, and love the other; or else he will hold to
the one, and despise the other" (Matt. vi. 24).
10

HO THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" Choose ye this day whom ye will serve" (Josh.
xxiv. 15).
Only those who are in mixed states of good
and evil can be tempted. There are two classes
which undergo no temptations, — the perfectly
good and the perfectly evil. " God cannot be
tempted with evil." Christ in his victorious,
divine humanity can never more be tempted.
Angels who are totally separated from evil things,
in that heaven which is antipodal to hell, can
never be tempted ; and the saints whose life is
" hid with Christ in God" have passed beyond the
reach of the tempter. On the other hand, those
are no longer tempted who have destroyed their
consciences and quenched the strivings of the
Holy Spirit, and are dead in trespasses and sins.
They have sunk, like the devils to whom they
are interiorly linked, below the point of tempta
tion. They tempt others, but they are no longer
tempted. A sinful nature is not sin. Sin only comes in
when temptation is yielded to. A man may have
a disposition organically evil, prone to every ex
cess, but if, by the power and grace of God, he
controls his passions and abstains from all wick
edness, he is so far sinless. Such was the case

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. HI
with the human nature of Jesus Christ. By the
constant resistance to evil and the increasing
descent of the divine life, the sinful nature is
gradually subdued, worn down, cast off, and ex
tinguished. So long as the soul can experience
temptation, some evil is still left alive in it.
Christ's evil was altogether inherited and alto
gether destroyed.
When the spirit of God moves upon the chaos
of the human soul, and creates that divine light,
the conscience, the temptations of life begin.
The sensual and selfish elements of our nature
resist the sacred influences of truth with their
utmost strength, struggle desperately for their
existence, and are only subdued by great and re
peated conflicts, recurring day by day, until they
grow feebler and feebler, and at last, either in
this world or the next, recede entirely, or perish
fighting to the last, leaving the field of life and
victory to the child of God.
There is no possible deliverance from the
power of sin except by conquest in temptation.
" Every man is tempted when he is drawn away
of his own lust and enticed" (James i. 14). By
temptation our evil natures are roused into ac
tivity and brought to the surface. We thus learn

112 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
our true condition, for no man knows himself
until he is tempted; see our inner character;
and measure what our Lord, from his own fear
ful experience, calls "the depths of Satan" (Rev.
ii. 24). Man in temptation is thrown powerfully
on his own free-agency, being brought into states
of crisis where decision is absolutely necessary,
and he is compelled to choose between opposite
and conflicting powers. Although it does not
appear so, the Lord is more intimately present
with the soul in temptation than at any other
time. Consequently, so soon as victory is achieved
in any temptation, the Lord is more closely con
joined to us than before ; the character is puri
fied and strengthened; the power of evil over
us is diminished; a new will is born and grows
in us ; we become more open to truth and its in
fluences ; evil spirits recede and angels approach.
We enter into states of peace, consolation, and
joy. We rest from our labors, and are secretly
prepared by divine grace for fresh and more de
cisive combats
Temptation includes all the assaults of the
world, the flesh, and the devil, the cares and
anxieties of life, and all the trials, struggles,
sorrows, sufferings, and tribulations incident

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. H3
upon a contest for supremacy between good and
evil, the spirit and the flesh, our higher and our
lower nature. It is a doctrine of the Word of
God that good spirits and evil spirits, however un
conscious we may be of the fact, are engaged and
antagonized in these conflicts ; that we hold the
determining weight and final decision in our own
will ; and that all power of resistance against evil
is derived from the Lord alone, that power being
accorded to the supplicant in proportion to the
depth of his humility and the extent of his faith.
Temptation being the only road to heaven, it
is well for us when the spiritual truths, by which
we endeavor to regulate our lives, stir up the
animosity of our evil passions, — those wild beasts
in the wilderness of our heart, which must be
expelled before that wilderness can be made to
blossom like a garden in the kingdom of God.
Temptation is, therefore, a necessary and in one
sense a desirable thing.
"My brethren, count it all joy when ye fall into
divers temptations ; knowing this, that the trying of your
faith worketh patience." James i. 2, 3.
" Blessed is the man that endureth temptation : for
when he is tried, he shall receive the crown of life."
James i. 12. 10*

114 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" If need be, ye are in heaviness through manifold
temptations." 1 Peter i. 6.
"Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffei :
behold, the devil shall cast some of you into prison that
ye may be tried." R\ v. ii. 10.
" He knoweth the way that I take : when he hath tried
me, I shall come forth as gold." Job xxiii. 10.
" For thou, 0 God ! hast proved us : thou hast tried
us as silver is tried." Ps. lxvi. 10.
In the messages to the seven churches, our
Lord promises those wonderful rewards, which
imply salvation and eternal bliss, in each case
" to him that overcometh," as to those who had
fought bravely and conquered. In his last mes
sage, he expressly declares that he gives power
over evil to the christian, just as by his own
victory in temptation he acquired for himself
omnipotent power over all things in heaven and
earth. " To him that overcometh will I grant to
sit with me in my throne, even as I also over
came, and am set down with my Father in his
throne." Rev. hi. 21.
And again : "He that overcometh shall inherit
all things, and I will be his God, and he shall be
my son ;" showing that, by conquest in tempta
tion, we come to hold the same relationship to

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. J 15
Christ which he does to the Father. As he
called the Father " my Father and your Father,
and my God and your God," so now since his
ascension are we justified in calling the Lord
Jesus Christ our Father and our God.
Although temptation is so useful, and indeed
necessary, a state of perfect deliverance from sin,
and therefore from continued temptation, is of
all things the most earnestly to be desired.
"Because thou hast kept the word of my patience
(hast obeyed the word or law of my own sufferings
by following my example), I also will keep thee from
the hour of temptation, which shall come upon all the
world, to try them that dwell upon the earth." Eev. iii.
10. The state of peace and joy which follows when
evil has been subdued in temptation is " the rest
which remaineth for the people of God" (Heb.
iv. 9). This is the sabbath of the soul, when we
cease from our own works, which are the real
causes of temptation. This is the rest promised
to all the weary and heavy-laden, who come unto
Christ (Matt. xi. 28, 29). It is the rest of those
who are dead in the Lord, and have, therefore,
ceased from their labors.
Many passages have already been adduced to

116 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
show that Jesus Christ became progressively
united to the Father by a long course of tempta-
tions and sufferings. The scriptures are so rich
in illustrations of this fact, and it is one of such
central and transcendent importance, that we
must strengthen our positions by a few more
extracts. " If any man will come after me, let him deny him
self and take up his cross and follow me.
" For whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and
whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."
Matt. xvi. 24, 25.
To follow Christ is not a physical but a spir
itual movement. It is to imitate his example
and obey his precepts until we are like him in
character. It is only by self-denial and cross-
bearing that we follow Christ, and imitate him
in losing or abandoning the carnal life and find
ing the spiritual life in its stead. The cross by
which we are saved is the life-long cross of
temptation and suffering which Jesus bore for
our sakes. " The offence of the cross" to the
Jews and the Greeks was not that God hung
upon a cross to save mankind, but that God
should become an humble and obscure man,
leading a life of self-denial and sacrifice, tempta-

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 117
tion and misery, for the sake of his unbelieving
creatures. Let the modern christian beware lest,
while clinging to the cross upon which Christ
hung, he takes offence at the holier cross which
Christ bore for us.
" Who his own self bore our sins in his own body upon
the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto
righteousness." 1 Peter ii. 24.
He bore our sins (mark it well) — not the pun
ishment of our sins, but our sinful nature — " in
his own body," in his own human and carnal
nature derived from the mother. He bore them
notably " on the tree" or during the crucifixion.
But the word here translated " on" means also
lo, and the full meaning is, all the way to the
tree, not only on the cross, but all the way from
the manger to the cross. And he bore our sins
— for what purpose? — in order to die to them, to
put them away by the sacrifice of all human de
sires, so that we, imitating his example, bearing
our cross, might also become dead to sin with
him, and live with him to righteousness.
" Ye are they which have continued with me in my
temptations" (evidently meaning through the whole
course of his ministry).
" And I appoint unto you a kingdom, as my Father

118 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
hath appointed unto me" (and I, therefore, give you
the. power over evil, which I myself have obtained
through these temptations). Luke xxii. 28, 29.
" Consider him that endured such contradiction of sin
ners against himself (such terrible assaults and temp
tations), lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds.
" Ye have not yet resisted unto blood, striving against
sin" (as Jesus Christ your Master did, both at Geth-
semano and on the mount of crucifixion). Heb. xii.
3,4. Mark the very great significance of those
words, "striving against sin." Paul does not
contemplate Jesus Christ on the cross as pa
tiently suffering the punishment of the sins of
others, but as himself resisting unto blood,
striving against sin, which occurred most power
fully in the last great temptation made by all the
combined powers of hell against the integrity
and unselfishness of his spiritual life.
" For in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted,
he is able to succor them that are tempted." Heb. ii. 18.
" The Lord knoweth (yes, by personal experience) how
to deliver the godly out of temptations." 2 Peter ii. 9.
" In the world ye shall have tribulation : but be of good
cheer, I have overcome the world." Jno. xvi. 33.
When, how, and where did Jesus Christ over-

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. H9
come the world in his natural life ? Is it not
plain that the victory alluded to was one he
achieved in the secret chambers of his own soul,
a victory over the world, the flesh, and the devil ?
We have explained how Christ could assume
our sinful nature and remain sinless, dying a daily
death to its baleful influences. But some one
might suppose it was an easy thing for Christ,
with the supreme God dwelling within him, to
resist any temptations which could be offered to
human nature. It must be remembered, not
only that Christ possessed a human nature prone
to all evil as we are, but that he also had with it
a finite human understanding from his mother,
which only became illuminated in proportion as
he surrendered his own intellectual selfhood and
humbly accepted the divine wisdom : and also a
finite human will from the mother, which strug
gled for its own life, and resisted the divine will
just as our wills resist it. " Not my will, but
thine," he is still compelled to say, and with
great difficulty of self-surrender, when almost in
sight of the cross. The divine will and the divine
power, or the Father, only came down into him
and manifested itself through him, as he sur-
rerluered his own will and his own intellect, and

120 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
sank into those deep states of humiliation (" he
fell upon his face"), when his human nature
recognized its own utter and absolute helpless
ness in the presence of evil. His human nature,
like ours, had no innate power for good. He
was left entirely alone to fight the battles of
temptation, although he knew theoretically just
as we do, that he was not alone, but the Father
was with him.
" I have trodden the wine-press alone : and of the
people there was none with me.
"And I looked, and there was none to help, and I
wondered that there was none to uphold : therefore mine
own arm brought salvation unto me." Is. lxiii. 3-5.
We are. quite as finite in spirit as we are in
body. We come into contact with an exceed
ingly small portion of the spaces, objects, and
people of the natural world. Our limitation to
similar small areas of thought, feeling, action,
and consociation in the spiritual world may be
fairly presumed. Each human soul is tempted
only by an infinitesimal portion of the powers
of evil. The pressure of evil exerted upon any
man from natural or spiritual sources must be
exceedingly light, almost inappreciable, in com
parison with the pressure brought to bear upon

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 121
Jesus Christ, who was infinite on the spiritual
side, and who therefore came into direct contact
with all the evil forces of the universe, which
were concentrated upon his bosom, and at
tempted to break down his will and control his
actions, whilst Jhis individual consciousness of
life was like ours, finite and human. He stood
like an inverted pyramid, with the whole press
ure of the superincumbent mass resting upon
one point, and that point the infirm human na
ture derived from his mother Mary. The suffer
ings, death, and extinction of that nature are
matters of profound and almost inconceivable
mystery. Yes, truly, we cannot fathom the deep things
of Christ, nor catch more than a glimpse at the
meaning of his transcendent labors. We see a
tragedian assume the character and imitate the
actions of some great villain, and we are aston
ished at the strength of the impersonation. In
the actual tragedy in which Christ played the
supreme part, he not only assumed the charac
ter of all sinners at once, but he received into
his own heart and soul and will the terrible and
cruel and desperate impulses to commit every
crime ever committed by man. It was in this
E 11

122 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
manner, staggering under the weight of the sins
of the world, that he became sin for us, and bore
our sins in his own body, and resisted even to
blood, striving against sin. By ceaseless efforts
and lonely watchings, by prayers and tears and
" strong crying" and blood, he remained sin
less, he triumphed, he crucified the old Adam,
" destroyed the body of sin," and rose into
newness of life, one with the Father, and re
sumed the power and glory he had before the
world was.
What happened visibly to Jesus at his baptism
happens spiritually to all of us, who deny our
selves, take up our cross, and follow him in the
regeneration. Said he not, " Ye shall indeed
drink of the cup that I drink of: and with the
baptism that I am baptized withal, shall ye be
baptized" ? So soon as we are initiated into the
spiritual life of the gospel, represented by bap
tism, the heavens are opened unto us, the spirit
or grace of God descends upon us like a dove,
and the voice of Jesus Christ, the Father of our
souls, pronounces his loving approval, and adopts
us as his children : " this is my beloved son."
And " immediately," as Mark expresses it, we
are driven into the wilderness to be tempted of

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 123
the devil : for the moment a divine truth enters
I our hearts to regulate our lives, the evil forces
yof our nature are roused into activity, and or
ganize every conceivable measure to deny, re
pudiate, and destroy it.
"And immediately the spirit driveth him into the wil
derness. "And he was there in the wilderness forty days,
tempted of Satan : and was with the wild beasts ; and
the angels ministered unto him." Mark i. 12, 13.
The three great temptations of our Lord in the
wilderness were no doubt generic and symboli
cal, involving innumerable spiritual mysteries in
their meanings. We get no more conception of
their immensity from the meagre statements of
the letter, than we could of the physical geogra
phy of the three great continents, Europe, Asia,
and Africa, from their outlines on a map an inch
square. / What is visible to us of the Word of
God is only our own little horizon in comparison
with the entire universe. (We can see plainly,
however, that these three great temptations cor
respond to three degrees or states of evil which
exist in our own natures, and which, no doubt,
assaulted our Lord every day of his life, for his
temptations were continuous and violent, even

124 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
from his childhood to his crucifixion. Luke says
the devil only departed from him "for a season."
The first temptation which came to Christ,
and which comes first to us all, is a temptation
to violate natural laws in order to appease or
gratify the demands of the senses, " command
this stone that it be made bread" (Luke iv. 3).
We are always tempted to find our life, happi
ness, and pleasure in the lowest and most ex
ternal things of the world, as if they were the
bread of heaven. This is sensualism in all its
various forms. So long as these things are kept
in their proper places and true order, regarded
as mere stones, they are useful and right, but
when we live by them and for them, neglectful
of the spiritual life, the word that proceeds out
of the mouth of God, we sink to the mere ani
mal plane of existence.
The next temptation (in Luke's account) is to
grasp to ourselves all the power and glory in the
kingdom of the world, regardless of the rights
and claims of all our fellow-beings./ The sins
of ambition and covetousness are boundless in
their aspiration. ) They grow by what they feed
upon. No unregenerate man was ever satisfied
with the wealth, power, or glory he achieved,

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 125
but ever thirsted for more with an appetite that
could never be satiated. This is the devilish
self-worship which excludes the worship and the
service of God.
The next temptation is to override all natural
and spiritual things from a sense of our own
importance and perfection. This includes self-
righteousness, pride, vanity, self-conceit, and
contempt for others, with all their brood of
wickedness and folly. / This temptation occurred
upon the temple at Jerusalem, to indicate that
the root of all these evils is in some horrible cor
ruption of the religious instinct. J The self-right
eousness of the Pharisee, ancient or modern, the
pride of the unregenerate man, the vanity of the
fashionable woman, and the self-coneeit of the
fool are closely akin to each other, for passions
and follies, like persons, have their consanguini
ties. Spiritual pride, the tap-root, is the greatest
and subtlest of all sins, and the Word of God
declares, that harlots and publicans may enter the
kingdom of heaven sooner than those who are
strictly moral and obedient to the ordinances of
religion, and are yet secret victims (alas, how
often unconsciously to themselves !) of this terri
ble passion. n*

126 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
These three great evils, typified in the three
temptations, viz., self-gratification, self-aggrandize
ment, and self -righteousness, the trinity of the self
hood, are the fountain-heads of all the sins and
miseries of the race. They constitute the hell
of the human heart in this world, and their con
tinuance after death is " the worm that dieth
not, and the fire that is never quenched." It
j was our Lord's great work upon earth to_take
' all these evil stateg_nppn himself, to feel their
! direful influences in his own heart, and to cast
them out forever by the divine strength derived
from the Word of God, the spiritual wisdom of
which he quotes in defence and reply to every
suggestion of the devil.
/ Temptation is the school of progress, the lad-
Vder of spiritual ascent from height to height.
Temptations were the preparations of Christ for
his redemptive work. Divine wisdom for his
teachings and divine power for his miracles were
only given in proportion as he subdued the self
hood of his carnal nature. New and special
preparations were necessary for each succeeding
conflict. Hence it was sometimes said that his
hour was not come. His first miracle, the turn
ing of water into wine, could not have been per-

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 127
formed had he not already elevated his own life
from a natural to a spiritual stand-point of thought,
feeling, and action, which was represented by the
conversion of the liquid from a lower to a higher
type. He could not cure the deaf, or the dumb,
or the blind, or the lame until he had removed
the corresponding spiritual infirmities from his
own hereditary life. The devils had to be cast
out of his own heart and mind, by the anguish
of prayer and fasting, before he could expel them
by his word from the bodies of men, or give his
disciples the power to do the same. The old
Adam, the carnal nature, had to die and be
buried in himself, and he had to feel the rising
of the new man injn's ognsoul, before he could
recall the dead Of the natural world to life : and
his tears and groans at the grave of Lazarus had
more to do with his untold experiences on the
spiritual than w'ith_those upon the_jnatural side
of his being. And all the above reflections con
firm a most important statement already made,
that miracles are not arbitrary violations of nat
ural laws, but effects in the natural world of the
operation of spiritual laws which we do not
understand. That wonderful commotions were going on in

128 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the spiritual world connected with the incarna
tion of God in Christ, is apparent from a great
many circumstances mentioned in the Word of
God : from the repeated opening of the heavens :
the appearance of angels and devils, the reap
pearance of Moses, Elias, and other saints : the
kingdom of heaven being assaulted by violence :
the fall of Satan like lightning from heaven : the
judgment and casting out of the prince of this
world : wrestlings with principalities and powers
and the rulers of darkness : the tortures inflicted
upon evil spirits by the approach of Christ : his
descent into hell and preaching to spirits in
prison : and from the astonishing declaration of
Peter that the terrible prophecy of Joel (2d chap
ter) was being fulfilled in his own times. These
events were dependent upon the single fact, that
the Creator of the world had taken on the form
of man, in which he could contend through
temptations with the spirit of evil throughout
the universe (heaven, earth, and hell being the
theatre of his actions), could overthrow and
subdue it, liberate men and angels from its as
saults, restore order and safety, free-will and free-
agency, shed forth the spirit of divine wisdom
into the hearts and minds of men, and save

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 129
them forever from the bondage and the power
of sin.
When the spiritual philosophy of history comes
to be studied fromJhe_proper stand-points, it will
be discovered that the divine truth imparted by
Jesus Christ to those who believed in him, by-
breaking away the terrible incubus of hereditary
evil, was one of the most efficient causes of the
rise and progress of modern civilization. Bar
barians and semi-civilized nations are not people
progressing upwards from mere animal life to
wards higher conditions. NQr_are they cages of
arrested development. They jare degradations^
from better types, sunk down beneath the weight
of ignorance, superstition, and hereditary evil.
It is the pressure of this hereditary evil and its
corresponding falsehood which weighs them
down, and has a constant tendency to sink them
lower. When the true doctrine of the Divine
Man, who conquered all hereditary evil in him
self and who therefore can subdue it for others,
shall be preached to the heathen, as it was in its
purity and power during the firsttwo centuries,
they: will_b^_conve.rted._to Ohristianityjwith great
rapidi tyj, jan d not b ef ore .
The pain of temptation and the efforts of evil
¦p*

130 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
spirits to accomplish their ends are always pro
portioned to the magnitude, the purity, and the
intensity of the love assaulted. The more we
advance in regeneration, the keener our moral
sensibilities become, until it is positive anguish
to feel the approach of sin in ourselves or to wit
ness it in others. What must have been the suf
ferings of our Lord as he approached nearer and
nearer to a union with the Father, when he not
only contemplated the ravages of sin in the uni
verse, but felt the horrible burden of it in his
own soul ! His disinterested love for the whole
human race, and his resolution to sacrifice him
self utterly for their salvation, concentrated the
powers of hell against him in that struggle in
the garden of Gethsemane. It was a temptation
to waver in his course, to abandon his great work
as hopeless or useless, to fall short of the divine
ideal which stood ever before him. So tremen
dous was the pressure upon him, that the human
mind, derived from his mother, through which
as a piece of mechanism he was working, almost
gayejway. He prayed the Father to let the cup
pass from him, — the bitter cup of the uttermost
death to all the delights of the unregenerate
nature ever experienced by man. Hell was

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 131
struggling for its life, present and future, against
God finited in man, and the fate, perhaps the
existence of the universe, depended upon the
issue. Our Lord had left all the disciples but his three
favorites at the entrance of the garden, as being
unfit or unable to comprehend the scene which
was to follow. He penetrates with his three
faithful followers more deeply into the shadows
of the place, which must have appeared to him
like the shadows of hell. At a certain point they
also could accompany him no farther. He must
go alone, for he was entering into mysterious
depths of thought and feeling which no finite
soul can ever comprehend. "He began to be
sore amazed and to be very heavy : and saith
unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful unto
death: tarry ye here and watch." Think of such
language proceeding from the mouth of God !
Even at this age_we_ discern little .more thanjhe
disciples. We peer into the darkness, which
seems to rest also upon our own minds. We see
Jesus fallen upon his face, and we wonder at his
humiliation. We note the drops of blood trick
ling from his brow, and we are amazed at his
sufferings. We hear a few words whose mean-

132 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
ing we cannot fathom. We catch the grand
finale, " not my will, but thine, be done." We
know that the universe has been at stake, and
that the Divine Man has conquered, but we can-
in2t^ojnjjrehend. Like the disciples, we are
stupefied, we " wist not what to sav/' At last
our Lord emerges from the gloom of Gethsem-
ane, which means in the Hebrew tongue, an
oil-press, anointed afresh with the holy oil of
divine love, and advances towards that last great
battle on the cross for the salvation of the world.
The crucifixion wTas radiant with the terrors
and the splendors of both eternities. The reality
bewilders imagination, and the wisdom of futurity
can never measure the depths of its meaning.
The few glimpses we have caught of it are
thoughts which have burned like suns into the
heart of mankind. All the enemies whom the
Christ had ever driven back, rallied and com
bined for a last assault. The old voices of the
wilderness were heard hissing about the cross,
" If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down."
The jeers, the curses, the defiance of the priests
and the rulers, of the soldiers and the people,
were but faint images and shadows upon the
earth of the fearful storm which hung round

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 133
and attempted to overwhelm him from the spirits
of the nether world. The infinite love remained
unshaken. " Father, forgive them, they know
not what they do," was his prayer for men and
- devils. But how great a cloud must have over
shadowed the intellectual perceptions of the di
vine sufferer, when he was driven to exclaim in
his agony, " My God, my God, why hast thou
forsaken me ?" That obscuration of the divine
light was infinitely terrible but brief. When
he bowed his head and exclaimed, " It is finished,"
Golgotha, the place of a skull, became the_graye
cjMi^lasJjfragment of his carnal nature ; and the
inscription above his cross, " The King of the
Jews," — the Jewish dispensation having ended
at that moment, — was changed by spiritual light
into the King of Kings and Lord of Lords.
We get nearer to the spiritual life or heart of
Jesus in the Psalms than in any other portion
of the Word of God, not excepting the evangel
of John, that psalm of the New Testament.
David, the soldier, the poet, the prophet, was
only a man after God's own heart, because he
expressed representatively and prophetically the
deepest feelings of the heart of God which were
communicable to man. On the changeful and
12

134 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
sometimes slender experiences of his own career,
he built up, by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit,
and unconsciously to himself, the most sublime
anticipations of the feelings and thoughts of Jesus
Christ in all the conditions of his earthly life.
We have in these eternal songs the very voices
of the Son of Man as he moved among men. We
hear his constant appeal to the heavenly Father
for his help and benediction, his sighs and moans
in the agony of temptation, his burst of indigna
tion against the wicked and the oppressor, his
curse of extinction upon the principles of evil,
the low cry from the depths of his humiliation,
and the tender wails of his infinite despair. On
the other hand, like day coming after night, we
catch his joyful songs of deliverance, the exulta
tions of his glorious triumphs, his anthems of
gratitude and praise, and the far-off chant of his
ascending and glorified soul.
A few examples from chapters obviously pro
phetic will illustrate to great advantage the
mental sufferings of Christ in his temptations.
The following is the cry of a drowning man
sinking in a dark and deep place, utterly alone,
with the curses of the unseen enemies who are
attempting to destroy him ringing in his ears :

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 135
" Save me, 0 God ; for the waters are come in unto my
soul. " I sink in deep mire, where there is no standing : I am
come into deep waters, where the floods overflow me.
" They that hate me without a cause are more than the
hairs of mine head : they that would destroy me, being
mine enemies wrongfully, are mighty.
" Let me be delivered from them that hate me, and out
of the deep waters.
"Let not the waterflood overflow me, neither let the
deep swallow me up, and let not the pit shut her mouth
upon me." Ps. lxix. 1-15.
We can imagine, as we read the ensuing words,
the sorrows and utter loneliness of the Son of
Mary, with a human nature like, and yet unlike,
all others, including all human natures, striving
unto blood against sin, but sinless, unaided, in a
divine isolation, alternately rising into the ex-
stasies of the divine life, and sinking into the
extremities of human despair :
" My heart is smitten, and withered like grass ; so that
/forget to eat my bread.
" By reason of the voice of my groaning my bones
cleave to my skin.
" / am like a pelican of the wilderness : I am like an
owl of the desert.

136 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" I watch, and am as a sparrow alone upon the house
top. " Mine enemies reproach me all the day ; they are sworn
against me.
" I have eaten ashes like bread, and mingled my drink
with weeping.
"Because of thine indignation and thy wrath, for
thou hast lifted me up and cast me down." Ps. cii.
4-10. In the 22d Psalm, which begins with one of
our Lord's own exclamations on the cross, we
have a fearful glimpse into one of the interior
chambers of the crucifixion :
"My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?
why art thou so far from helping me?
" Our fathers trusted in thee : they trusted, and thou
didst deliver them.
" But I am a worm, and no man ; a reproach of men,
and despised of the people.
" All they that see me laugh me to scorn : they shoot.
out the lip, they shake the head, saying,
" He trusted on the Lord that he would deliver him :
let him deliver him, seeing he delighted in him.
" Be not far from me ; for trouble is near ; ' there is
none to help.
"Many bulls have compassed me: strong bulls of
Bashan have beset me round.

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 137
" They gaped upon me with their mouths, as a ravening
and roaring lion.
" I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out
of joint : my heart is like wax.
" My strength is dried up ; my tongue cleaveth to my
jaws ; and thou hast brought me into the dust of death.
" For dogs have compassed me : the assembly of the
wicked has inclosed me : they pierced my hands and my
feet. " I may tell all my bones : they look and stare upon
me. " They part my garments among them, and cast lots
upon my vesture.
" But be not thou far from me, 0 Lord : 0 my strength,
haste thee to help me."
One more selection from these terrible ex
periences of Christ, which are involved and em
balmed in the imperfect utterances of David.
We have heard him wailing through the weird
verses of the prophet in his despair, in his isola
tion, and in his agony, but here is a cry from the
sepulchre itself :
" I am counted with them that go down into the pit : I
am as a man that hath no strength.
" Free among the dead, like the slain that lie in the
grave, whom thou rememberest no more : and they are
cut off from thy hand. 12*

138 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" Thou hast laid me in the lowest pit, in darkness, in
the deeps.
" I am shut up, and I cannot come forth.
" Wilt thou show wonders to the dead ? shall the dead
arise and praise thee ?
" Shall thy loving-kindness be declared in the grave ?
or thy faithfulness in destruction ?
" Shall thy wonders be known in the dark ? and thy
righteousness in the land of forgetfulness ?
" Lord, why castest thou off my soul ? why hidest thou
thy face from me?" Ps. lxxxviii. 4-14.
Surely David never wrote these things con
cerning himself, or of his own imagination.
The hands may be the hands of Esau, but the
voice is the voice of Jacob. Let one read the
Psalms attentively and prayerfully, remembering
always that they are the voices of Jesus in his
sufferings, his prayers, his temptations, and his
triumphs, and he will learn better than any dog
matic theology can teach him, how Christ be
came sin for us, and suffering and death for us :
and also how he became repentance and humil
iation and prayer for us : and obedience and
faith and righteousness and redemption for us :
and how truly, infinitely and forever, he is the
way, the resurrection, and the life.

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 139
The reader has now obtained some glimpse of
the stupendous mission of Christ, the Divine
Man, which we expect still further to unfold and
to prove : a mission worthy of an infinite God.
Not to descend upon earth, dividing the Godhead
into impossible persons : not to appease the
imaginary wrath of a Father who was one with
himself: not to suffer the inadequate punishment
of sins he never committed : not to satisfy with
bloody sacrifice a justice which never asked any
thing of the sinner but to look to him and live.
These are metaphysical dreams of the half-
pagan imagination of the first centuries of the
church, unable to comprehend the organic and
spiritual truths of the gospel. Look at the true
mission of our Lord. The life of Jesus Christ
was coextensive with the universe. The highest
heights and the deepest depths were one in his
hand. Jehovah himself bowed the heavens and
came down in person to save his children from
the power of sin, nojt_by_a j^eless. judicial pro
cess or forensic proceeding against himself or a
supposed son, but by a hand-to-hand conflict
with hell, and with the primal sources of evil.
He executed judgments in the spiritual world,
whose effects reached to all the heavens and all

140 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the hells. He released the spirits of old dis
pensations who for ages had been kept in prison.
He wrestled with the combined hereditary and
actual wickedness of the human race. He over
came all the evil forces of the universe. He
glorified a human form in which he lives for
ever, — a Divine Man. ^He thereby opened the
way from God to man, " a new and living way,
which he has consecrated for us, through the
veil, that is to say, his flesh," thus clearing away
all obstructions, restoring to man his rationality
and his free-agency which the power of hell
would have destroyed, saving him from himself
and from all others, adopting him, through faith
and obedience, as a child, new risen from the
dead, and placing him as a new Adam in a con
dition where a new Eden and eternal life are
possible. How was this miraculous work effected ? Out
side of the spiritual and natural machinery ne
cessary for his purposes, theactiye_agencies in
his work.w^e^ejnptation, obedience, faith, and
prayer. Christ's life was the crowning miracle
of obedience to the internal dictates of that
higher nature he called his Father. His faith
was boundless as his love, married to it and

THE TEMPTATIONS OF CHRIST. 141
working with it : a faith synonymous with right
eousness, the sacred instinct of his childhood,
the guiding spirit of his mature life ; and in its
culmination, the divine truth of his Godhead,
which illumines the heavens and gives light to
the world.
AndpraverJ Prayer is communion with God,
the meeting and the conjunction of the human
and the divine, a mediator like Christ himself.
It is the breath of the spiritual life, the means
of the redemption of the body, and the sane-
tification of the soul. The Lord's house was
called the house of prayer. The Lord's life
upon earth _was a continual prayer. He went
often and for long periods into mountains and
groves and solitary places to pray. He taught
his disciples to pray in words which unite
heaven and earth. His strength, his wisdom,
were born of prayer. The Heavens opened
when he prayed. He became one with the
Father by prayer. Prayer was his meat, his
drink, his revelation, his light, his peace. His
sweetest word on the cross was a prayer for those
who hated him without cause. Dost thou won
der, 0 Christian ! that he answers prayer ? He
stands forever knocking and listening at the

142 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
door of thy heart, and praying for admittance.
Open to him and speak to him in prayer.
We begin now to see clearly that God came
into the world to save us, not frorn_jhe punish-
jrnent of sin, but from sin itself. " Thou shalt
call his name Jesus, for he shall save his people
from their sins." He entered our own physical
sphere in such a manner that, by the common
physiological laws to which we are all subjected,
he clothed himself with our weak, sinful, human
nature as with a garment. By means of the pro
clivity to sin so inherited, he underwent the most
terrible temptations, and made an actual conquest
of all the powers of hell in his own person.
Faith, prayer, and obedience bring us into such
rapport with him, that his own power over sin
is communicated to us, so that sin may not only
be forgiven, but totally eradicated. How utterly
he sanctified or glorified himself in spirit and in
body, and how far his righteousness may be im
ported (not imputed) to us, will next engage our
attention.

CHAPTER V.
THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODT.
It is remarkable that Jesus Christ speaks of
himself almost invariably as the Son of Man,
whilst every one else, even the devils, called him
the Son of God. It is the Son of Man who
teaches and performs miracles, who is tempted
and rejected, who is crucified and buried, who
rises again, ascends to heaven, and is to return
to judge the world. Christ even seems at times
to evade the title Son of God. "Art thou the
Son of God ?" asks the high-priest. " Thou
sayest that I am : but ye shall see the Son of
Man coming in the clouds of heaven," etc.
When the Jews charge him with blasphemy for
making himself God, or the Son of God, he re
minds them that the law had also called them
'.'gods" and " children of the Most High." More
than eighty times in the gospels he speaks of
himself as the Son of Man. Seldom does he
143

144 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
tell any one directly that he is the Son of God.
In the fulness of his heavenly love, he seeks
out the poor man who had been born blind, and
who had been thrust out of the synagogue, and
asks him, " Dost thou believe on the Son of
God?" The question, "Who is he, Lord?"
receives the paraphrastic answer, " Thou hast
both seen him, and it is he that talketh with
thee." There were strong reasons for his adhering to
the title, Son of Man, during his earthly career.
He was the Son of Man in reference to the ma
ternal heredity. By his descending spiritual life
he glorified that human nature until he became
the universal man, the Divine Man. Limited,
on his material side, to time and space, bound
down by the sensations of a human personality,
he could not, in his states of humiliation, feel
himself or realize himself to be the Divine Being.
Hence his reply to one who called him "good
master." " Why callest thou me good ? there
is none good but one, and that is God." To the
mind of Jesus the Son of God was the infinite
divine wisdom, the first manifestation of the infi
nite divine love, absolutely one with the Father
and the Holy Spirit, and inseparable from them,

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 145
and therefore incommunicable to man. The tri
une God (Father, Son, and Holy Spirit) was his
own soul, the life that dwelt within him, which
he called his Father. That triune life manifested
through an imperfect and suffering human nature
was called by others, in accommodation to ap
pearances, the Son of God, and by himself the
Son of Man.
In this view of the matter we have a clear ex
planation of that obscure sentence, " Whosoever
speaketh a word against the Son of Man, it shall
be forgiven him : but whosoever speaketh against
the Holy Ghost, it shall not be forgiven him, nei
ther in this world, neither in the world to come."
One may be forgiven who denies or rejects the
divinity of the man, Jesus Christ, on the ground
that the external evidences are not sufficient to
satisfy his reason : but he who repels the opera
tions of the Holy Ghost, the effluent power of
the Divine Man, evidently cuts himself off from
the very sources of spiritual and eternal life.
This statement could not have been made about
the Son of God, and shows forcibly the differ
ence between the infinite and the finite form of
God, the latter or Son of Man being subjected to
the ordinary laws of human criticism.
G 13

146 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
There was another good reason why Jesus so
steadfastly calls himself the Son of Man. It was
a term specially applied to the prophets. The
Spirit of the Lord addresses the prophet Eze
kiel as the " Son of Man" about ninety times.
Christ was a prophet, the last and greatest
prophet (Deut. xviii. 15 ; Luke xxiv. 19). It
was in his representative character as a prophet,
a Son of Man, bearing the iniquities of the
people, that Christ was persecuted, betrayed,
scourged, and crucified. His external human
life was connected with the Jewish economy, a
fulfilment of the law, and his physical death
belongs to the historical part of that waning dis
pensation. His great representative character
in the external sphere of Jewish life occupied
Christ's mind in his dealings and speeches with
the scribes and Pharisees. His communion with
the disciples was more interior. He explained
to them the parables which left a cloud upon the
mind of others. He showed them more plainly
of the Father, and gave them glimpses also of
his spiritual death and resurrection, the true
secret of the redemption of the world.
The Lord Jesus Christ, in his limitations the
Son of Man, in his glorification the Divine Man,

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 147
effected in his own person the redemption of our
whole nature, spiritual, intellectual, moral, sen
sational, and corporeal. The entire man, from
first to last, from inmost to outermost,. " flesh
and bones" as the Scriptures call it, was purified,
glorified, sanctified, and made divine. In that
great fact, a physiological as well as a spiritual
fact, and in that alone, lies the possibility and
the hope of our perfect regeneration, which in
cludes the sanctification of the soul and the re
demption of the body. / A very small portionjof
/this divine possibility has ever been realized
upon earth, because the key to it was lost in the
very first ages of the church in its terrible strug-,
gle with paganism. I Truth flows only through*^
preordained and orderly channels. If the chan
nels be obstructed or changed in direction, the
power of truth is lost. Knowledge of the Divine
Man and his mission, faith in him, and prayer
and obedience to him, are the means by which
the kingdom of God is to come to men, and his
will to be done on the earth as it is in the
heavens, for all of which we are commanded to
pray. When the Diyine Man becomes the su
preme and sole object of faith, prayer, and obe
dience, the perfect regeneration of the human

148 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
racje_jdll_ibllow, and, ai_corresjjmidiiig redemp
tion of the physical nature surrounding it.
Redemption of the body ! mysterious words !
What does the apostle mean ? Let us see them
in their connection.
" For if ye live after the flesh, ye shall die : but if ye
through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye
shall live.
" For as many as are led by the Spirit of God, they
are the sons of God.
" For the earnest expectation of the creature waiieth
for the manifestation of the sons of God.
"Because the creature itself also shall be delivered
from the bondage of corruption into the glorious liberty
of the children of God.
" For we know that the whole creation groaneth and
travaileth together in pain until now.
" And not only they, but ourselves also, which have the
first fruits of the Spirit, even we ourselves groan within
ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption
of our body." Eom. viii. 13-23.
' It is almost incredible that this fine passage,
involving so many beautiful things, should have
dwindled down in the hands of the commenta
tors to point to almost nothing but what Cole
ridge calls that old Egyptian superstition, the

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 149
resurrection of the material body J Let us turn
from Apollos (the literalist), who, notwithstand
ing he may be " fervent in spirit" and " mighty
in the Scriptures," knows " only the baptism of
John" (the literal system of interpretation), and
let us learn of Aquila and Priscilla, who can ex
pound unto us " the way of God more perfectly."
Acts xviii. 26.
The whole creation is out of joint, " groaneth
and travaileth together," good men, wicked men,
I animals, and even inanimate nature, feeling
'more or less acutely, according to their station
on the scale, the disturbances, disorders, and
miseries produced in the world by the original
and continued violation of divine laws.
Animals share with us many phenomena of
sensation, memory, instinct, imagination, and
reason. They exhibit so strongly our evil tem
pers, our greediness, destructiveness, cruelty, re
venge, envy, jealousy, and other wicked passions,
that it is easy for us to believe that they come
from a common source, whatever that may be,
and that animals feel with us " the bondage of
corruption," or the power of evil, without the
rational knowledge of it or capacity of resist
ing it. 13*

150 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
There are many low states of human life and
feeling, lifted very little above the grade of
animal existence* destitute of truth, steeped in
sensualism* which are symbolically and fitly
represented by fierce, mean, and vicious animals.
The tiger, the hyena, the serpent, have their
dens in our human hearts also, and when we ob
tain a true cosmic psychology, we shall discover
the subtile threads of life which bind together
the man and the beast.
Even the believer, who has experienced " the
first fruits of the Spirit," groans in his secret
heart, that he too has the animal element rising
in constant rebellion against his higher nature ;
and prays for the redemption of his body, the
perfect subjugation of it to the laws of spiritual
life, as the final and only satisfactory pledge of
his " adoption" into the kingdom of God.
The cause of all this is that the world is dead
in trespasses and sins, that it lives to the flesh,
and of the flesh reaps corruption. The cure is
" the manifestation of the sons of God." Who
are the sons of God ? Those who are " led by
the Spirit" and " mortify the deeds of the body,"
so as to live no longer after the flesh. This great
event, so earnestly expected by the creature, is a

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 151
descent of the kingdom of heaven into our souls,
and down into our outward and sensuous life, so
as to redeem our bodies perfectly from sin and
to deliver the natural world from all evil. This
is the true second coming of the Lord, a re
incarnation of his Spirit in the souls, bodies, and
outward lives of all men, for those who cannot
bear his presence, like the evil spirits of old who
entered the swine, will willingly throw them
selves headlong into a deeper hell. The time is
at hand !
This work of perfect redemption must begin
in the drurch, for the church is the spiritual
centre and~heart of the world. The church
lives in the religious instinct of man, and is
universal and invisible. It will begin there just
as soon as the members learn to know, love, and
worship the Divine Man; and him only, and not
before. It will spread by divine power from the
centre to all the circumference, involving every
degree of life, and every shade of character,
until all things feel the heavenly influence.
When the wilderness of our own hearts blossoms
like the rose, and the wild beasts which haunted
it have changed or perished, then will be fulfilled
the glorious prediction of the prophet.

152 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the
leopard shall lie down with the kid ; and the calf and
the young lion and the failing together ; and a little
child shall lead them.
" The cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones
shall lie down together : and the lion shall eat straw like
the ox.
" And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the
asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cock
atrice's den.
" They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy
mountain : for the earth shall be full of the knowledge
of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea." Is. xi.
6-9. This perfect state of man and nature is not
the millennium of the book of Revelation (which
admits only of a spiritual interpretation), but is
the future permanent condition of this earth,
when it shall be redeemed by the power of
Christ. Churches may come to an end, dispen
sations may perish, but the earth abideth, and
can never be moved (Eecl. i. 4 ; Ps. civ. 5) ; be
cause the physical universe is the basis and foot
stool of the spiritual universe, and they coexist
forever, as soul and body. The scriptural " end
of the world" is the endjxLa given dispensation
oftrjifji. The end of the Jewish world was in

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 153
the time of Christ: the end of the apostolic
world is in our own times. "A new heaven and
a new earth" is a new system, a new order of
things springing out of the old, a new life, spir
itual and natural, internal and external. The
church of the future already dawning will be
the church of the Divine Man, in which the
redemption of the body, so earnestly hoped and
waited for, will be the sign and seal of adoption.
We build our faith in this permanent physical
restitution of all things upon the teachings and
promises of the Word of God, especially in re
lation to the lifting up of the serpent as a type
of Christ's redemptive work ; and to the restora
tion and union of Egypt, Assyria, and Israel
(Is. xix. 22-25), which represent the sensual,
rational, and spiritual states of our life. Our
faith is made doubly sure by the fact that Jesus
Christ took on our human nature with all its
animal propensities, contended with the wild
beasts and subdued them, achieved for us in his
own person a perfect emancipation from evil,
that " glorious liberty of the children of God,"
and stands forever in that divine human nature,
ready to give to those who look to him and be
lieve, his own infinite power over sin.
o*

154 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
What is the body ? Not merely the chemical
combination of gases and minerals of so many
pounds weight, constituting the anatomical
frame ! That physical body has no life of its
own. To admit it is to surrender everything to
materialism. It owes its properties, shape, func
tions, movements, etc., etc., to a spiritual life
flowing into it from above. When that spiritual
life is withdrawn from it, it breaks up and disin
tegrates into its original elements, and the man
continues to live on forever, in a spiritual body, a
purer, happier, and better life, if he is righteous,
than he could have ever enjoyed in the material
limitations of time and space. The term "body"
, is used in the scriptures in a strictly philosophical
sense, and it is highly important that we form a
1 clear conception of its meaning, so as to rise into
} spiritual light out of the bondage of literal and
\ carnal interpretations. Let us bring together
t some striking examples of the use of this word,
\ and by analysis and comparison endeavor to
'frame a satisfactory definition.
" If thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of
darkness." Matt. vi. 23.
" That the body of sin might be destroyed." Eom.
vi. 6

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 155
" Who shall deliver me from the body of this death I"
Eom. vii. 24.
" Take, eat, this is my body." Matt. xxvi. 26.
" Fellow-heirs of the same body." Bph. iii. 6.
" Christ shall be magnified in my body." Phil. i. 20.
" / bear in my body the marks of the Lord Jesus."
Gal. vi. 17.
" For we are members of his body, of his flesh, and
of his bones." Eph. v. 20.
It is very clear that the external or visible
body is not meant in any one of these sentences.
Paraphrase them and the philosophical idea of
body becomes more distinct. If the eye of the
mind, the directing power, be evil, the whole
life will stumble in darkness. The body of sin
is the organized power and influence of sin.
The body of this death is the totality of that
evil life which leads to death. The Lord's body
which we are to eat is his spiritual nature or life
of which we partake. Fellow-heirs of the same
body, that is, of the same assemblage of prom
ises, blessings and direct influences from Christ.
Christ magnified in our body is Christ mani
fested and glorified in our character and outward
life. To bear in the body the marks of the Lord
Jesus is to show his governing power in the daily

156 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
work and conversation. To be members of the
body of Christ, of his flesh and his bones, is to
become identified with his life and love, from
first to last, in our whole nature, both spiritually
and naturally considered.
A body, then, in the scriptural sense, is the
assemblage, concatenation, or totality of all ex
periences (thoughts, feelings, and actions) in the
same sphere or plane of life. Natural bodies,
spiritual bodies, celestial bodies (1 Cor. xv. 40),
differing from each other in substance and glory,
are the assemblages or totalities of experiences
on so many different planes of life.
This definition is finely illustrated by Paul in
his greatly misunderstood statements about the
natural body and the spiritual body. The natural
body is the assemblage of all our experiences of
affection and thought in the life of nature, with
out grace and without God in the world. The
spiritual body is the totality of all the experiences
of the regenerate life. In the resurrection from
the dead, which is only the passage from spiritual
death to spiritual life, the natural body is sown
or buried, and dies, whilst the spiritual body
comes forth like the germ or heart of the grain
of corn, and takes the place of the other. The

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 157
decay of the one and the germination of the
other are so simultaneous, coincident, and pro
portionate, that it appears as if one was trans
muted into the other, which is a sheer impossi
bility. " So also is the resurrection from the dead. It is sown
in corruption; it is raised in incorruption.
" It is' sown in dishonor ; it is raised in glory : it is
sown in weakness ; it is raised in power.
" It is sown a natural body ; it is raised a spiritual
body." 1 Cor. xv. 42-44.
All of which is wisely prefaced by the cau
tionary declaration, " that which thou sowest is
not quickened, except it die : and that which thou
sowest, thou sowest not that body that shall be."
The verses immediately succeeding prove beyond
all doubt that Paul is speaking of a spiritual
death and a spiritual resurrection.
" And so it is written, The first man Adam was made
a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening
spirit. " The first man is of the earth, earthy : the second
man is the Lord from heaven.
"And as we have borne the image of the earthy, we
shall also bear the image of the heavenly" (v. 45, 47,
49). 14

158 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The first Adam is the natural body, in its phil
osophical sense, the last Adam is the spiritual
body. We first bear the image of the earthy, or
live the life of the senses, or a sensual, ungodly
life : we die to that image, and rise into the image
of the heavenly or into the spiritual life, which is
the Lord from heaven. A " living soul," such
as was breathed into the first Adam, is very dif
ferent from "the quickening spirit," which comes
from Jesus Christ. All men have living souls,
devils have the same. The living soul is the
carnal, earthy, unspiritual nature, "the flesh and
blood" of Paul's theology, which cannot enter
the kingdom of heaven ; which, if not crucified
and buried here, will live forever in the evil state
called hell. The " quickening spirit" is the power
of the resurrection, the entirely new creature, the
new Adam, the kingdom of God in the soul, the
life of the Lord Jesus Christ in the man.
Our Lord's natural body, according to the
Pauline philosophy, was the totality of all his
experiences in the human nature derived from
his mother. It was the carnal nature which was
sown and died. His spiritual body represented
the totality of the spiritual life rising within
him. That body was symbolically revealed to

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 159
his disciples on the mount of transfiguration
when their spiritual eyes were opened to see its
splendors. The natural body or carnal life was
sown in weakness, dishonor, and corruption,
never to rise again ; for the spiritual body, in
corruptible, powerful, glorious, had taken its
place. So it is in our own regeneration. The
weak, the dishonorable, the corrupt, is never
changed into the spiritual, but it is separated and
perishes absolutely and forever. Our regenera
tion is not the change of one thing into another,
but a substitution of a new thing for an old one,
and the translation from a lower to a higher de
gree of life.
" Except a man be born again, he cannot see the king
dom of God.
" That which is born of the flesh is flesh : and that
which is born of the Spirit is spirit." John iii. 3, 6.
" Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new
creature : old things are passed away ; behold, all things
are become new ;
" And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us
to himself by Jesus Christ." 2 Cor. v. 17, 18.
From this stand-point we see clearly into the
meaning of that obscure sentence.
" Wherefore henceforth know we no man after the

160 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
flesh : yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh,
yet now henceforth know we him no more." 2 Cor. v. 16.
When the soul rises from spiritual death, it
ceases to feel, think, judge, or act from the old
natural stand-points. It is dead to them all
whilst still living in the world. It knows noth
ing any more according to the flesh. All things
are spiritual to it, because it feels, thinks, and
acts always from spiritual centres. It sees Christ
no more as the Son of Mary, striving unto blood
against the powers of hell, but as the Divine
Man throned above all the heavens. We may
be sure that the apostles sat down in the king
dom of heaven with Mary Magdalene without
having any such thoughts or feelings as arise in
our minds on contemplating her life previous to
her regeneration. It had ceased to be with them
a possible subject of contemplation. The carnal
passes utterly away, as Isaiah declares : " They
are dead, they shall not live ; they are deceased,
they shall not rise : therefore hast thou visited
and destroyed them, and made all their memory
to perish" (xxvi. 14). This does not allude to
wicked persons^ but to our own wicked states, of
life. This natural body, living soul, or carnal life,

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 161
which Christ perfectly redeemed in his own per
son, includes all we have in common with ani
mated nature; our natural desires and pleasures;
our memory and its uses ; everything we obtain
by the employment of our five senses and our
physical powers ; all our knowledges and sciences ;
everything indeed, below the spiritual life. For
the spiritual life is something wholly different :
something entirely beyond the reach of the nat
ural : never to be discovered by it, or known,
felt, or discerned by it : something indeed which
the natural must die in order to obtain. The
natural life may- masfer all sciences, control na
ture, construct philosophies, and build up splen
did civilizations, without having any^jspiritual
light whatever in it, or any, the faintest, capacity
for conceiving or inheriting the kingdom of God.
There is no continuity between the spiritual and
the natural, all we have of the former having
been revealed from heaven, and coming to us,
day by day, only by the secret and personal opera
tions of the Holy Spirit.
This natural degree of life, separated from the
spiritual, is represented in scripture symbolism
by the land of Egypt, the most ancient and won
derful seat of arts and sciences. The deliverance
14*

162 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
of the children of Israel from the bondage of
Egypt, in its spiritual sense, is a magnificent
panorama of the struggles and sufferings of the
soul in its escape from the power and bondage
of the natural life. It is a grand chapter in the
psychology of regeneration. The promises and
curses respectively pronounced upon Egypt by
the prophets become beautifully clear, when we
remember that the Egypt meant belongs to the
geography of the soul, and is the carnal state of
life, the love of self and the world, separated
from the spiritual life, or the love of God and
the neighbor. The Lord* appeals, to-day and
always, to the strongest feeling of gratitude of
which we are capable, when he says to us, " I
am the Lord, thy God, who brought thee up out
of the land of Egypt."
Ezekiel (xxix. 14, 15) prophesies that our natu
ral or carnal life shall not be permitted to rule
over the higher, or rational and spiritual life, but
shall be reduced in the order of divine provi
dence to its proper and lowest place.
" / will bring again the captivity of Egypt, and will
cause them to return into the land of Pathros, into the
land of their habitation ; and they shall there be a base
kingdom.

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 163
" It shall be the basest of the kingdoms ; neither shall
it exalt itself any more among the nations : for I will
diminish them, that they shall no more rule over the
nations." Jeremiah prophesies (xliii. 12) in language of
great beauty, that the Lord will destroy the wor
ship of self and the world, which is the life of
our carnal nature, will subdue that nature en
tirely to himself, giving it that peace that passeth
understanding. "I will kindle a fire in the houses of the gods of
Egypt ; and he shall burn them, and carry them away
captives : and he shall array himself with the land of
Egypt, as a shepherd putteth on his garment : and he
shall go forth from thence in peace."
Isaiah prophesies (in chapter xix.) all the trou
bles and sufferings of our carnal nature under
the type of Egypt and its final and total subjuga
tion to the love and worship of God. [ The whole
chapter applies to our own times.) The follow
ing verses are the foundations of our hope for
the triumph of religion over scientific naturalism.
" In that day shall there be an altar to the Lord in
the midst of the land of Egypt, and a pillar at the bor
der thereof to the Lord.

164 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" And it shall be for a sign and for a witness unto the
Lord of hosts in the land of Egypt : for they shall cry
unto the Lord because of the oppressors, and he shall
send them a Saviour, and a great one, and he shall
deliver them." (v. 19, 20.)
Sodom, destroyed by fire and brimstone for
its notorious wickedness, denotes a still deeper
depth of evil than Egypt, the utter sensualism
of the natural degree of life. Babylon repre
sents the false and corrupt religious idea of the
carnal life, for even the carnal life has its re
ligion, full of cunning and selfishness, self-right
eousness and spiritual pride, intolerance and
vanity, pomposity and love of dominion, and
concealing deep within its bosom more am
bition, cruelty, and sensuality than all the rest.
Babylon is not confined to Rome. It exists
with more or less vitality in every ecclesiastical
sphere, and in every human heart. Babylon,
Egypt, and Sodom is a trinity found in human
nature everywhere. This explains that very re
markable verse, Rev. xi. 8, " Iu the streets of
the great city (Babylon), which spiritually is
called Sodom and Egypt, where also our Lord
was crucified." Our Lord is always crucified or
the divine truth rejected, which is the same

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 165
thing, by the orders of mind indicated by Bab
ylon, Egypt, and Sodom ; nor could such people
ever have been redeemed, had not our Lord de
scended to their level, taken on himself their
states of life, " as a shepherd putteth on his
garment," crucified, destroyed, and cast out
the Babylon, Egypt, and Sodom within himself ;
and thus prepared a perfect, divine human na
ture, capable of embracing, purifying, and saving
all the outcasts in every degree of life.
That the apostles felt and taught the possi
bility of a perfect conquest over the world, the
flesh, and the devil of our natural and sensual
life, because Christ had achieved the same vic
tory, is evident from the whole tenor of their
writings. " Put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make no pro
vision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof." Eom. xiii.
14. " Know ye not that your body is the temple of the
Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and
ye are not your own f" 1 Cor. vi. 19.
" They that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with
the affections and lusts." Gal. v. 24.
" He is the saviour of the body." Eph. v. 23.
" Who shall change our vile body (our wicked sensu-

166 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
ous life) that it may be fashioned like unto his glorious
body (his regenerate, perfect human life), according
to the working whereby he is able to subdue all things
unto himself" (to. subordinate every element of our
earthly nature to his divine will). Phil. iii. 21.
" Ye are complete in him (from the highest spiritual
to the lowest sensual).
" In whom also ye are circumcised (purified from
fleshly lusts) with the circumcision made without hands,
in putting off the body of the sins of the flesh by the
circumcision of Jesus Christ" ("the circumcision of
Jesus Christ" is his own purification from the lusts
of the flesh). Coloss. ii. 10, 11.
" That we may present every man perfect in Christ
Jesus." Coloss. i. 28.
" Who gave himself for us that he might redeem us
from all iniquity." Titus ii. 14.
" Forasmuch then as Christ has suffered for us in the
flesh (endured all our sensual temptations and cruci
fied them in himself), arm yourselves likewise with the
same mind (fight against evil in his spirit), for he that
hath suffered in the flesh hath ceased from sin (hath
triumphed over it through temptations) :
" That he should no longer live the rest of his time in
the flesh, to the lusts of men, but to the will of God." 1
Peter iv. 1, 2.
" / beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 167
God, that ye present your bodies a living sacrifice (as
the Lord's was), holy, acceptable unto God, which is
your reasonable service." Eom. xii. 1.
One of the grandest promises of the redemp
tion of the body from the lusts of the flesh is
contained in some remarkable words of John,
which, like the rest of the Word, have suffered
severely from the spirit of literalism, led by sen
suous imagery to false interpretations.
"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in fhe wilderness,
even so must the Son of Man be lifted up :
" That whosoever believeth in him should not perish,
but have eternal life." Jno. iii. 14, 15.
" And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will draw all
men unto me.
" This he said, signifying what death he should die."
Jno. xii. 32, 33.
The meaning of these wonderful words can
only be seen when we understand what is meant
by serpent, and what by lifting up a serpent from
the earth. The Lord is called a lamb in refer
ence to the infinite innocence, peace, and purity
of his nature. He is called a lion, as emblem
atical of the majesty and strength of the infinite
divine truth which he manifested to the world.
The serpent is used as the symbol of our sensual

168 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
nature, the life of the senses which he took upon
himself, and which he purified and spiritualized
into a state of perfect obedience to the higher
faculties. This conquest was illustrated by affix
ing a brazen serpent to the top of a military ensign
or banner, for such is the meaning of the word
translated " pole." It was a trophy of Christ's
victory over the flesh and blood of his human
nature. As that victory was only obtained by
the crucifixion and death of all he derived from
his mother, the " lifting up" plainly signified the
death he should die to the carnal nature, and his
elevation or resurrection into that divine natural
life which has " power over all flesh."
The people were bitten by fiery serpents
(Numb. xxi. 5-9), because they loathed the
bread of heaven and hungered for the food of
Egypt, that is, because they turned away from
the teachings of spiritual truth, and gave them
selves up to the lust of the flesh. They were
cured by looking up to the brazen serpent, be
cause the glorified humanity of Jesus Christ,
thereby represented, is the only means of the
purification and elevation of the soul, and of
the redemption of the body from the power and
bondage of the carnal life.

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 169
The first three persons at the sepulchre (ac
cording to John) to verify the truth of his literal
resurrection, were those who were typical of the
three degrees of his spiritual resurrection, of
which they were partakers : John, who lay upon
his bosom, the lamb of the church, the emblem
of its love : Peter, the lion of the church, the
emblem of its divine truth : and Mary Magdalene,
the redeemed harlot, the serpent lifted from the
earth towards heaven. All these were lifted up,
glorified, united in him who, being lifted up
himself, draws all men unto him. " I in them,
and thou in me, that they may be made perfect
in one."
The sensuous life is an excellent thing when
it is kept in its proper place of subjection to the
higher rational and spiritual life within us. The
serpent is then " the subtlest of the beasts of the
field," and the emblem of worldly circumspec
tion and wisdom. Our Lord himself says, "Be
ye wise as serpents and harmless as doves." The
serpent was therefore worshipped in Egypt as the
god of health, happiness, and wisdom. The ser
pent was not Lucifer fallen from heaven. The
serpent was present in the garden of Eden, not
as an intruder, but as one object of a creation
H 15

170 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
which God had pronounced " good" ; and as a
necessary part in a perfect whole : just as our
natural appetites under spiritual control and
supervision are the foundations of our life, ap
proved and sanctioned by God. Therefore in
the prophetical pictures of the restored paradise,
the serpent, representing in that connection the
subdued and regulated life of the senses, is
always a necessary element in the scene.
The serpent or our sensuous nature was the first
sinner or cause of sin. He sinned by distrusting
and disbelieving the Word of God, and persuad
ing the higher faculties to submit themselves to
his guidance, to seise and appropriate what he
considered good and wise and pleasant, in open
violation and contempt of divine law. There lies
the whole secret of sin and its miseries. It is a
sin repeated every day by the serpent within our
selves. The serpent, or sensuous life, separated
from God, having shut the ear to the voice of
revelation unfolding the divine will, and having
broken by disobedience the order of life insti
tuted by divine wisdom, sinks degraded to the
earth, lives for itself alone, and is the spirit of
self-love, and the love of the world. It hence
forth becomes a poisonous serpent, distilling

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 171
the venom of spiritual death. In its aggre
gate or associated and personified form, it is
" the dragon, that old serpent which is the devil
and Satan," the father of lies, the author of
evil, the scourge of mankind, whose final place
is " the lake that burneth with fire and brim
stone." That the wicked and sensual life of men is
described and denounced under the serpent em
blem can be proven by many passages from the
Word of God. A few will suffice :

"Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers! how can ye
escape the damnation of hell f" Matt, xxiii. 33.
" Their vine is of the vine of Sodom, and of the fields
of Gomorrah:
" Their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel
venom of asps." Deut. xxxii. 32, 33.
" In that day the Lord with his sore and great and
strong sword shall punish leviathan, the piercing serpent,
even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the
dragon that is in the sea." Is. xxvii. 1.
" They hatch cockatrice's eggs, and weave the spider's
web : he that eateth of their eggs dieth, and that which
is crushed breaketh out into a viper." Is. lix. 5.
" Though his wickedness be sweet in his mouth, though
he hide it under his tongue ;

172 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" Yet his meat in his bowels is turned : it is the gall
of asps within him." Job xx. 12, 14.
" Look not thou upon the wine when it is red ;
" At the last it biteth like a serpent and stingeth like
an adder." Prov. xxiii. 31, 33.
" The wicked are estranged from the womb : they go
astray as soon as they be born, speaking lies.
" Their poison is like the poison of a serpent : they are
like the deaf adder that stoppeth her ear." Ps. lviii. 3, 4.
" The way of a serpent upon a rock .-
" Such is the way of an adulterous woman ; she eateth
and wipeth her mouth, and saith, I have done no wicked
ness." Prov. xxx. 19, 20.
The first curse in the scriptures is pronounced
upon the serpent, the sensual principle, which
is ready to violate natural, human, and divine
laws for its self-gratification. The first promise
in the scriptures is that the seed of the woman
(Christ in his human, not in his divine nature)
shall bruise the head of the serpent. Self-love,
the fountain of all sin, is the head of the ser
pent, and this is bruised, weakened, and destroyed
by the power of the divine truth which is im
parted to us in Christ Jesus. Hear his own
promise to subdue for us the lusts of the flesh
and every other enemy of our spiritual life :

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 173
" Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents
and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy : and
nothing shall by any means hurt you." Luke x. 19.
When Moses asked for some evidence where
with to convince the Israelites of the truth of his
mission, the Lord gave him a miracle to perform,
which involved in its meaning the uses of the
church, of the revealed word, and of the incar
nation itself, viz., the elevation of human nature
from the sensual into the rational and spiritual
life. " And the Lord said unto him, What is that in thy
hand ? and he said, A rod.
" And he said, Cast it on the ground. And he cast it
on the ground, and it became a serpent; and Moses fled
from before it.
" And the Lord said unto Moses, Put forth thine hand,
and take it by the tail. And he put forth his hand, and
caught it^ and it became a rod in his hand." Exod. iv.
2-4. A rod or staff in the hand of a man is a source
of strength, comfort, and defence, and represents
the sensual principle, when it is in the hands or
under the control of the rational or spiritual
man, who uses it as an instrument for his own
15*

174 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
purposes. Thrown upon the ground the rod be
comes a serpent, because the sensual principle,
separated from the higher life, and made self-
controlling, becomes degraded and grovelling,
poisonous and destructive. It is then typical
of the sensual man, whose wisdom is cunning,
whose love is lust, " whose God is his belly, and
whose end is destruction." The curse pro
nounced upon the serpent was that he should
go upon his belly and eat dust all the days of
his life. The sensualist grovels in the flesh and
feeds upon filth. The scientist, undirected by
revelation, does the same thing on a little higher
scale, confining his range of observation to natu
ral things, and mistaking stories for bread and
shadows for realities. The psalmist, describing
the degradation of the spirit separated from God,
exclaims, " For our soul is bowed down to the
dust : our belly cleaveth unto the earth. Arise
for our help and redeem us." Ps. xliv. 25, 26.
How to elevate the serpent from the earth, so
that it shall become a staff of support in our
1 ands, is the supreme question of life. We
cannot do it by our own strength. But Jesus
Christ has declared, " In my name — ye shall
take up serpents." Mark xvi. 18. The whole

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 175

world is at present in the wilderness, bitten by
fiery serpents. " Bitten by serpents" is the an
guished cry of every human soul in its secret
confessions to itself or its God. The cure is at
hand. " When ye have lifted up the Son of
Man, then shall ye know that I am he," — the
Father. Lift up that brazen serpent in your
heart. It is Christ's humanity purified from all
fleshly lusts. Its redemption has given him in
finite power over all flesh (Jno. xvii. 2). Lift
him up in your heart : believe, look to him and
live. He will draw your affections away from
all earthly things, draw them up heavenwards to
a union with his own chastened and purified
soul. " 0 thou that hearest prayer, unto thee
shall all flesh come" (Ps. lxvi. 2).
A last illustration of the fact that our redemp
tion in the Lord Jesus Christ is complete and
perfect from head to foot is found in that beau
tiful sacrament of humility which he instituted
just before the passover, when he washed the
feet of his disciples. The fact that this story is
only told by John is very significant. It is so
heavenly in its spirit that he only was permitted
to tell it. John was the favorite disciple of our
Lord. He lay in his bosom. The Lord's mother

176 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
was committed to his charge. He received by
inspiration the last great revelation from God.
His words are full of the deepest thoughts of
Christ and of his profoundest love. He alone
tells the beautiful story of the woman taken in
adultery and her forgiveness. He alone de
scribes the resurrection of Lazarus, that greatest
of miracles, which illustrates, in the spiritual
sense, to what depths of hell, what, abysses of
corruption the divine love can descend and reani
mate and lift up the human soul. He alone tells
this story of Christ's uttermost social humility ;
and the strangest thing is, that he records it in
stead of the Lord's supper, as if it was something
equivalent or superior to it. The most pro
foundly spiritual of the apostles must surely
have attributed to this incident a character and
an importance of which_we_^hgve_ had. no_con-
cep^c-ji. Peter could not comprehend the meaning or
even see the propriety of such an act of divine
condescension. " Thou shalt never wash my
feet," said he. " What I do, thou knowest not
now, but thou shalt know hereafter," was the
language of Jesus. Peter represented the truth
which is the foundation of the church. Docs

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 177
.that church comprehend to-day anything more
ab~out this mystery than it did then ? The lesson
of fraternity, humility', and brotherly love was
on the surface, apparent to the simplest under
standing. What profound spiritual signification
lay at the bottom of it ?
John prefaeesThe narration of this apparently
simple rite with words of more solemn grandeur
than those which announced the institution of
the holy supper or the crucifixion itself :
" When Jesus knew that his hour was come that he
should depart out of this world unto the Father, having
loved his own which were in the world, he loved them
unto the end.
" Knowing that the Father had given all things into
his hands, and that he was come from God and went to
God; " He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments,"
etc. Jno. xiii. 1, 3, 4.
Jesus was about consummating the conjunc
tion of his human nature with the divine nature
(departing from the world to the Father, going
back to God), and loving his own who are still
in the world (subject to the assaults of the carnal
spirit), he loves them to the end, not of his life
H*

178 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
or of time, but to the utmost extremity and
.lowest abysses of their nature. "HeTiad taught
them his spiritual doctrines, made them par
takers of his flesh and blood, and now "he riseth
from supper," lifts himself up into a^till higher
jitate of life, preparatory to making a deeper de
scent than ever before ; for the heights to which
he ascended and the depths to which he descended
were equal. His laying aside his garments indi
cated that he was about teaching some deeper
and more celestial lesson than could be con
veyed in the external forms and outward ap
pearances of truth. None but those who had
partaken of his spiritual nature could receive
this final service at his hands, understand what
he was doing, or imitate his example.
The feet are the lowest and last portions of
the body, the basis and foundation of the human
superstructure. They represent the sensual and
lowest part of our life, that which is in contact
with the earth, and upon which the rest is built
up. The purification of this sensual state by the
truths adapted to it is the last and crowning act
of divine mercy, and can only be effected by
one possessed of omnipotent power. It is one
of such supreme importance that our Lord ex-

THE REDEMPTION OF THE BODY. 179

claims, " If I wash thee not, thou hast no part
' with me." No matter how much internal puri
fication and enlightenment has taken place, it
has no solid basis, no fructifying effect until the
Lord's life has been brought down into our daily
external, social, and sensual life, and has made
all the latter entirely correspondent with itself.
Wonderful though it be, it is not impossible.
" Wherefore he is able to save them to the utter
most that come to God by him, seeing he ever
liveth to make intercession for them" (Heb. vii.
25). This is but half the lesson : hear the rest and
ponder its meaning. " If I then, your Lord and
Master, have washed your feet, ye also ought to
wash one another's feet." This is the sacrament
of solidarity, a foreshadowing of the commune
of Christ (Jno. xvii. 21-23). No man is saved
by himself : the gates of heaven are shut to him
who tries to enter alone. The true christian life
is consecrated to the purification and elevation
of others. The redemption of the individual
body is only achieved by our co-operation with
the Lord in the redemption of the larger com
posite bodies of the church and of the world.
We must bear one another's burdens as Christ

180 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
bore ours, take on one another's states, enter
into all heights and depths of human love and
sympathy, labor by example and precept for the
reign of absolute temperance, chastity, industry,
righteousness, and truth, and consecrate our
selves humbly and perfectly to the civil, social,
and physical purification of human life, in its
lowest phases and without respect of persons,
until Christ shall build up, by us and through
us and including us, that redeemed form of So
ciety, that perfect Man, in whose image he shall
behold his own glory as in a glass forever.

CHAPTER VI.

THE GREAT SACRIFICE.

We accept in all the fulness of their meaning
the solemn declarations of the scriptures :
" The blood of Jesus Christ his Son cleanseth us from
all sin." 1 Jno. i. 7.
" Without shedding of blood is no remission." Heb.
ix. 22.
" It is the blood that maketh an atonement for the
soul." Lev. xvii. 11.
" He appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of him
self." Heb. ix. 26.
" Christ, our Passover, is sacrificed for us." 1 Cor. v. 7.
" As Christ also hath loved us, and hath given himself
for us, an offering and a sacrifice to God." Eph. v. 2.
What was the necessity in the nature of things
for this great sacrifice ?
What was the object of it according to revela
tion and enlightened reason ?
What was the nature of it as illustrated by the
typical ceremonies of the Jewish dispensation ?
16 181-

182 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The state of sin being one of separation from
God, the divine plan of salvation must have been
some method of restoring the soul to its union
with God. Union with God means spiritual life,
— the life of goodness and truth, as contrasted
with the natural or carnal life, a life of evil and
falsity. This carnal life, separated from God, is
the concentrated sin and misery of the world,
and its fruition is hell hereafter. The sacrifice
of Christ was necessary to deliver the race from
this fearful condition. Nothing but a revelation
of spiritual light, spiritual love, and spiritual
power could enlighten the darkened mind of
man, elevate his affections above his grovelling
condition, and give him the power of repentance,
obedience, and good works, reverse the order of
his life and bring him into communion with
heaven.
/ The natural man cannot possibly raise himself,
by any spontaneous effort or development, into
that state of life in which the spiritual governs
with supreme power, and the natural affections
and thoughts are wholly subordinate. It is easier
for the leopard to change his spots and the Ethi
opian his skin than for the natural man to be
come a spiritual man. Man must perish without

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 183
spiritual thoughts and affections: he cannot create
them for himself: he must receive them from
another, who has brought them down from some
higher level than his own. This was the divine
work of Christ ; to open the heavens and come
down to man : to take on our carnal life, and
destroy its enmity to God in his own person:
and to stand before us forever as a Divine Man,
a mediator between God and man, bridging over
the chasm between heaven and earth, so that we
may pass through him from one to the other.
What was the object of the incarnation and
the great sacrifice it entailed ? It was not that
Christ might suffer the penalty of sin in the room
of the sinner, so that the latter, having faith in
Christ, might stand justified and sinless before
God. This error was one of the first perversions
of the truth in the primitive church, and with.
otiiex_c^rnrrjfijnis_tliat J^icallv flow from it, it
is_ki^elv__res^onsible^for the darkness, errors,
sijij^anji_fjaihTJ^s^ff the church _in all ages: for if
the fountain head be bitter, how can the waters
issuing from it be sweet ? So_ingrained is this .,
falsity in the heart of the_ church that_it is^held
with the utmost tenacity and tenderness of faith,
and all the virtues and graces which have ever

184 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
adorned the christian character are supposed to
have flowed from its miraculous power. Alas !
those virtues and graces, -whatever they were,
came only from the sincere and devoted worship
of God according to the obscure light_of their
minds and the earnest convictions of their con
sciences. If the church has made in many re
spects a noble record with unjust, distorted, and
inadequate views of religious truth, wbj±_wi]l__
she not achieve when she recognizes the Divine
Man at his appearing (which is daily__taking
place), when Bhe sees him as he really is, and
conforms her lifjeJbo_hi^J^axenly likeness. !
Sin is the violation of divine law, an infraction
of the original perfect order of the universe.
Its immediate effect is to separate us from God,
to close heaven and the heavenly life to our souls,
and to leave us to the love of self and the world.
Thereafter the lower faculties and the sensual
appetites govern instead of serving: and the
divorce between the higher and the lower, the
spirit and the flesh, becomes more and more
complete, until the soul is said to be dead in
trespasses and sins, and can only be resurrected
to a new life by the voice of the Son of God.
The penalty or punishment of sin is the evil

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 185
and corrupt spiritual state which is wrought in
the sinner by his own conduct. From a man he
becomes something analogous to an unclean and
ferocious beast. Do not the drunkard and the
voluptuary bear their punishment in their own
hideous souls and bodies? and are they not pic
tures and prophecies of what all wicked men are
interiorly, and of what they will become here
after? This inwrought, self-evolved, organic
punishment of sin implies separation from God,
alienation from all good things, exclusion from
heaven, association with the wicked, sensual, and
abandoned here and hereafter, and all the painful
and miserable consequences of that association.
The sufferings of this world are all due to sin
and sinners : and the miseries of hell will be no
superadded inflictions of an angry God, but the
woes inflicted upon themselves and others, by
spirits who are all evil, and whose violence is no
longer measurably restrained, as upon earth, by
the presence and the influence of the good. The
sinner is all the time both here and hereafter suf
fering the penalty of his sins. Our sins will
surely find us out.
God governed the Jewish people by a system
of external rewards and punishments which were
16*

186 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
correspondences to their good or evil conduct,
all in accordance with that grand organic law,
that good and evil are self-rewarding and self-
punishing. Go^in3ye£^ojnijinns_or punishes.
Behind all the black clouds of sin which hide
him from man or distort his form and character,
he is the infinitely good, the infinitely merciful.
The evil choose their lot. They " go" into what
Ave call eternal punishment of their own accord.
They are " turned into hell" as cattle are turned
into the pasture they desire. Fish to the sea, the
beast to his den, the bird to the air, evil to evil,
good to good, like to like. Such is the law.
Heaven and hell are but the final adjustments
of internal and external conditions.
The punishment of sin is then clearly that
state which the scriptures call spiritual death.
Physical death never was any portion of the
punishment of sin, and the physical^ death _af.
Christ on the cross_ had no direct influence in
taking away the sins of the world. Even his
spiritual sufferings on the cross were only a small
part of his grand work for the redemption of the
world. By the laws of cause and effect no one
can suffer the penalty of sin but the sinner him
self, for he alone bears in his bosom the evil seeds

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 187
which produce the outward sufferings. If we are
saved from the power and bondage of sin we will
be delivered from its punishment, and there is no
other deliverance. The scriptures are full of ~
precious promises to save us from sin, to purge,
cleanse, wash, purify, redeem, deliver from sin :
to forgive, take away, remember no more, root
out, destroy sin, and free us from it forever: but
they never once Bpeak_of jt_ d^hwerj_fj^m_jthe_.
penalty of sin, by Christ or otherwise.
There is nota shadow of truth in the doctrine,
thaLGiod_refuses to_ accept or justify or forgive
the sinner T until he has paid the penalty or suf-
fered the punishment of the sins he has com
mitted. On the contrary, the invitations to the
sinner in both the Old and New Testament are
free and unlimited, unconditional, and infinitely
tender and beautiful. We have but to confess
our sins and they are forgiven, to repent of them
and they are blotted out, to turn from them and
they are remembered no more forever. We
have but to come and obtain rest, to seek and
to find, to look to him and to live. The ques
tion of the punishment and forgiveness of sin
has no direct connection with the incarnation
and mission of Christ. The true question is that

188 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
of_d^liy^r^n^e_fjrimi_the i power and bondage of^
sin. For that great and glorious object there
was needed a new revelation of divine truth, a
new manifestation of divine power, a descent of
the glory of God into human flesh, a crucifixion
and death of the carnal nature^ and a resurrec
tion of the Divine Man into eternal life and om
nipotent power, — thereby becoming the Saviour
and Redeemer of mankind, by methods compre
hensible and satisfactory to every enlightened
reason. Before we attempt to show how the redemp
tive work of Christ, as described in the pre
ceding pages, was foreshadowed and typified in
the sacrificial ordinances of the Jewish Church,
it will be necessary to cut away some more of
the theological drift, which for ages has ob
structed the channel of scriptural truth.
The orthodox side on this question of atone
ment has a great advantage in the influence over
the popular mind of the signification wrhich that
word has assumed in modern times. Atonement
is now a satisfaction for wrong committed or in
jury done, which is supposed to placate, satisfy,
or reconcile the injured party, so that he takes
the trespasser again into his favor. That is not.

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 189
the meaning_of_the words in the_Hebrew_and
Greeks which are translated atonement; nor was
it the meaning of the word atonement at the
time our Bible was translated into the English
language. The Hebrew word means a covering
or defence. The Greek word means a change
from enmity to friendship. Put the English
word into three syllables, at-one-ment, and re
member that ment is from the Latin noun mens,
meaning mind, and we have at-one-mind, which
is the genuine scriptural meaning of the term.
An atonement is something which brings two
persons, feeling and thinking differently on a
question, to feel and think alike upon it, or to be
of one mind about it. Shakspeare, Spenser, and
all the old English writers so use it.
The incarnation effected our atonement or at-
one-ment because it brought God and man to
gether on a common plane. God became human
in his sympathies and action, a Divine Man;
man becomes godly or godlike, a partaker of the
divine nature. Christ effected the atonement by
hallowing or consecrating a human form, so
that the Supreme Being could live in it and be
thereby present with man forever. The ceremo
nies of atonement in the Old Testament imply a

190 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
systematic consecration to God. Ceremonies are
given by which atonement is made for the sanc
tuary, for the altar, for the tabernacle, inanimate
objects, evidently meaning that those objects are
thereby brought into harmony with the divine
influxes, and sanctified or made fit for the pres
ence and worship of God : sacred places where
the human and the divine could meet and unite
with one heart and mind. And the very same
word applied in this manner to inanimate objects,
is applied to the priests and all the people of the
congregation, and to the blood which is the
atonement or bond of union between the divine
soul and the human soul.
The doctrine of the atonement taught in the
evangelical churches logically involves several
V)ther serious falsifications of divine truth.
Firstly, that the Supreme Being, not content
with the punishment which sin evidently brings
upon itself by the operation of organic laws,
superadds the infliction of eternal pain in some
terrible manner, not with the intention or hope
of reforming the sinner, but as an act of ven
geance for his having wilfully violated the laws
of God. ThiSj. strangely enough, is called the
divine justice^ This faith was the secret cause

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 191
of all the horrible tortures inflicted upon heretics
during the middle ages. People who seriously
believed in such a God, could excuse and perhaps
applaud themselves for imitating his violence and
cruelty towards those who were supposed to be
his enemies, and could even conceive that he cre
ated the greater portion of mankind especially
to be damned, including innumerable infants,
for the greater manifestation of his glory and
justice !
Secondly, that God arbitrarily changed the
punishment of sin, so that the mere physical
death of his Son upon the cross should be equiv
alent to the eternal punishment of hell, although
it had no logical or organic connection with it ;
and that whoever believed on him should be jus
tified and accepted, and have a righteousness
imputed to him which he did not really possess,
but which, by a pleasing fiction a he was supposed
to possess by virtue of his faith.
And, thirdly, that these forensic proceedings
between God and Christ and the sinner as con
tracting parties, effect a change in_th& mind of
flod^jo that his relation to the sinner is entirely
different from what it was before.
The influence of these and all other false doc-

\

192 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
trines upon character, private and national, is
deep, secret, and subtile; extensive and terri
ble to the unconscious victims, who hug their
destructive delusions to their bosoms as if they
were the hope and joy of life ; who would die in
their defence, and who resist their exposure with
an astonishing violence, springing from an honest
sense of duty, augmented by concealed undercur
rents of self-interest and self-complacency. The
abovedoctaines, with all the collateral errors that
grow from and crjir^outjffjthem, have been for
ages of incalculable^ injury to the church and to
society. It is amazing also that no such doctrines
were hinted at by Jesus Christ, or taught by the
apostles, or heard of in the churches for two or
three centuries after Christ. (See Chambers's
Encyclopoedia, article Atonement.) They were
matters of doctrinal development, half christian,
half pagan, fictions of the ecclesiastical imagina
tion, drawn from a few isolated passages here
and there in the scriptures, and especially based
upon a misconstruction of some allusions made
by Paul, in the Epistle to the Hebrews, to the
sacrifices of the Jewish economy and their rela
tion to Christ.

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 193
The word atonement occurs only once in the
New Testament (!), a fact of vast significance ; and
then it is not God who accepts the atonement^
offered by Christ, but we who receive the atone
ment or oneness of mind with God through
Christ. " We also joy in God through our Lord
Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received
the atonement" (Rom. v. 11). How few chris^-
tians who abide in the old error ever thought of_
this fact_L,
Reconciliation, a word analogous to atone
ment, in the sense of bringing into harmony,
occurs in a few passages, which have been
singularly perverted in the orthodox theology
and hymnology to mean that the blood of Christ
pacified or reconciled the Father, so that he
could, consistently with his sense of justice, par
don the sinner. Witness the lines of Charles
Wesley : " Our God is reconciled I
His pardoning voice I hear."
And Isaac Watts's dreadful misrepresentation
of the divine character :
" Sweet were the drops of Jesus' blood
That calmed his frowning face,
Which, sprinkled o'er the burning throne,
Have turned his wrath to grace."
I 17

194 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The simple scriptural truth about this recon
ciliation is, that God's manifestation of love and
wisdom in the person of Christ was reconciling
the sinner and the world to him and his serviee.
God, the infinitely wise and merciful, can never
undergo the slightest change of mind. It was
the sinner who was to be atoned or made at one
with God. It was the sinner who was to be
reconciled, for so the scriptures declare.
" Having made peace through the blood of his cross,
by him to reconcile all things unto himself." Coloss. i. 20.
"All things are of God, who hath reconciled us to
himself by Jesus Christ." 2 Cor. v. 18.
" That he might reconcile both unto God in one body
by the cross." Eph. ii. 16.
" When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by
the death of his Son." Eom. v. 10.
" God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself."
2 Cor. v. 19.
" We pray you, in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to
God." 2 Cor. v. 21.
Propitiation is the last line of defence for
those who believe that God is to be reconciled,
appeased, pacified, etc. They quote from 1 John
ii. 1, 2 :

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 195
" If any man sin, we have an advocate with the
Father, Jesus Christ, the righteous :
" And he is the propitiation for our sins," etc.
The word here translated " advocate" is para-
cleton, which is elsewhere and properly rendered
the Comforter or the Holy Ghost. It means
one called or sent to help, Jesus sent to save us
from our sins. Propitiation, which occurs but
three times in the New Testament, is a bad
rendering into English of a term which in the
Hebrew language means a covering or a defence.
Instead of these verses bearing the construction
that Jesus Christ is an advocate, like a modern
lawyer, pleading to obtain our pardon from God,
the true meaning is simply this : If any man sin,
we have the Comforter (or the one sent) with
the Father, even Jesus Christ, the righteous or
perfect man (Father, Son, and Holy Ghost in one
person), who will serve as a covering or shield
of defence against the power of sin, because he
is the mediator between the human and the
divine. Whilst we deprecate in the most earnest man
ner any use of language which shall suggest to
the mind the existence of two Gods, one stand
ing outside of the other and pleading forensically

196 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
for us: still the true intermediation or interces
sion of Jesus Christ for us is one of the most
beautiful and precious doctrines of the holy
scriptures. When we open the door of the
* heart to the Lord in prayer and faith, he enters
into our spiritual life, takes on our evil spiritual
states, just as he did when on the_earthj_knojEa^
our feelings and our wants, and leadjjtnj^gukkjg
us in prayer to himself, just as if he were.our-
selves, a man again in the flesh, striving against
sin and praying to the Father. It, is thus that he.
comes down to us, conjoins himself with us, and
lifts~us upward with himself in his own divine
aspirations. Such is the mediation and interces
sion to which the apostle alludes in Romans viii.
26, 27 :
" Likewise the Spirit also helpeth our infirmities : for
we know not what we should pray for as we ought : but
the Spirit itself maketh intercession for us with groanings
which cannot be uttered.
"And he that searcheth the hearts knoweth what is
the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession
for the saints according to the will of God."
The word whose misconstruction has tended
most to vitiate the divine truth taught by Christ

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 197
and his apostles is the word "blood." Imperfectly
comprehending or soon forgetting the mystery
of a spiritual death and a spiritual resurrection,
the early christians, new converts from pagan
ism, gave to the blood of Christ a literal and
even carnal interpretation. Itij5_jiowsynony-
mous with his death, and the most tremendous

spiritual consequences are attributed to the phys
ical sufferings and death of Christ which they
were uttgri:yJriC^able_of producing._ Those tre
mendous spiritual consequences were really pro
duced by the crucifixion and death of the carnal
nature which Christ derived from his mother,
and by his resurrection into an endless divine
human life, from which he dispenses his truth
and life to the world.
" The blood is the soul of the flesh" is a scrip
tural assertion and a physiological fact. It is
therefore the life of the body. The spiritual
blood of Christ is his own vital principle, his
divine love and wisdom, his essence, his quality,
the tout ensemble of his spiritual characteristics.
When we speak of the blood of the father show
ing itself in the child, of the blood of families,
the blood of nations, hot blood, boiling blood,
white blood, a bloody spirit, etc., it is clear that
17*

198 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
we do not allude to natural things, but to spiritual
qualities. So it is with the blood of Christ. It
is all that distinguishes Christ from others.
This meaning of blood is the spiritual founda
tion of the holy supper. He sheds or pours out
this inner life of his own for us. He gives us his
flesh to eat, his blood to drink. We feed upon
him by faith, by obedience, by love. We appro
priate his life and become like him in char
acter. That is the way we are saved by the
blood of Christ. That is the way we become
one with him as he is one with the Father,
until our life is " hid in Christ," merged and
lost in his ; so that when assaulted by the devil
we may repeat the beautiful words of Abigail to
David :
" A man is risen to pursue thee and to seek thy soul ;
but the soul of my lord shall be bound in the bundle of
life with the Lord thy God." 1 Sam. xxv. 29.
The medical process of transfusion of blood
illustrates by analogy the spiritual transfusion
which Christ continually offers us. An exhausted,
dying patient, with a current of dark, diseased,
poisonous blood, creeping sluggishly through his
veins, is sometimes revived in a wonderful man-

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 199
ner by the infusion into his circulation of a fresh,
healthy stream from a young and robust subject.
Such a patient is the sinner in a spiritual sense.
When a man drinks in faith the blood of the
new covenant, his old, diseased spiritual life-cur
rent is purged away : he ceases to live from him
self: a different and wonderful moral nutrition
sets in : his whole mental frame is reconstructed
on a nobler, purer model : he becomes veritably
"a new creature"; "created in Christ Jesus unto
good works" and a living "partaker of the di
vine nature."
Let no man be deceived by the sensuous or
material image suggested by the words, shedding
of blood. Shedding or pouring out is as appli
cable to spiritual as to natural things. The love
of God, the grace of God, the spirit of God are
shed or poured forth upon us and for us. " He
saved us," says Paul, " by the washing of regen
eration and the renewing of the Holy Ghost,
which he shed on us abundantly through Jesus
Christ, our Saviour." When our Lord gave the
cup to his disciples and said, "this is my blood
of the new testament which is shed for many for
the remission of sins," he can certainly have had
no allusion to the physical crucifixion or any con-

200 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
sequences flowing from it, for he drank of the
blood himself, and said he would drink of it
again with them in the kingdom of God. The
holy supper, the sacrifices, all union with God
is reciprocal. He sups with us and we with him.
We partake of God's life, and he partakes of his
own life as found and manifested in us.
The blood of Christ in its highest and widest
sense is the life and soul of Christ. In a more
restricted sense it is the divine wisdom, the light
of the world manifesting the divine love. In a
lower sense, and one more fitted to our finite
comprehensions, it is the divine truth revealed
from heaven, which illumines the mind, vivifies
the conscience, and guides into all righteousness.
This is the blood which makes atonement for the
soul, because it brings the soul at one or into
unison with the divine nature and the divine
will. This is the blood which cleanses us from
all sin, because it teaches, directs, supports, and
purifies. This truth is the blood of the Lamb
which overcomes in all temptation. (Rev. xii. 11.)
This divine truth was typified in the blood of the
paschal lamb, which did not mean Christ slain
upon the cross, but Christ pouring forth a steady
stream of spiritual life, of heavenly thoughts and

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 201
affections, for the sustenance, protection, and sal
vation of the human race ; for such was the great
sacrifice of the Son of God.
Sacrificial worship was an expression of grati
tude and praise, and purely symbolical at the
beginning. The firstlings of the flock and the
first fruits of the field oftered to God, represented
the consecration of the soul, with all its affections
and thoughts, to the willing service of deity. As
men became degenerate with the lapse of time,
the primal truths of religion were falsified, as is
usually the case, by literal constructions, and the
knowledge of God was perverted and lost. Gods
were multiplied and became the evil beings pic
tured by the corrupt imaginations of men. Sacri
fices were then made from interested and worldly
motives, to obtain the favor or propitiate the
wrath of deities.
The more angry, vindictive, and implacable
they conceived their gods to be, the richer and
more abundant were the sacrifices made to them.
Human lives were at last offered up, and children
were brought in crowds like lambs and young
birds to the bloody altars of the gods in almost
all the countries of the world. The more corrupt
the religion, the more debased the worshippers,
i*

202 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the higher the height to which arose the fanatical
madness of their sacrificial worship.
When internal or spiritual union with God
was no longer possible, the race would have
rapidly perished, had not God in his mercy
raised up and prepared a peculiar and exclusive
people, among whom he could institute a system
of rites and ceremonies, which contained in cor
responding forms, drawn from patterns in the
heavens, all the spiritual truths of his church, in
which he could still be representatively present,
and govern and bless mankind, from the Jewish
nation as a centre. These forms were covenants
between God and man, mutual pledges, of obe
dience on the one side, and of protection and
salvation on the other.
The first of these covenants was circumcision,
a rite which represented the extirpation of the
lusts of the flesh, without which no one is capable
of making the first step towards a union with
God. The ten commandments or great moral
law was another bond of union between God and
man, and the two tables containing them were
kept with solemn ceremony in the golden ark of
the covenant. The institution of the Sabbath
was a third covenant between Jehovah and his

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 203
people, esteemed especially holy, because it rep
resented a state of mind in which we abstain
entirely from our own labors, our own will, and
our own way, and enjoy the rest and the peace
of God.
The covenant of sacrifice (Ps. 1. 5) was the
most extensive and complicated of all. Whilst
the ordinances on this subject vary greatly in
their character and meaning, the idea of at-one-
ment or reconciliation, in the true meaning of
those words, is universally present. The doctrine
of a substituted sacrifice, to appease an offended
deity, is utterly inapplicable and inadequate to ex^
plain the phenomena. Nor did the Jews under
stand any of the prophetic meanings involved in
their sacrificial rites. It was no shadowy, unreal,
merely typical scene which those old worshippers
were enacting. It was a genuine covenant with
God, and God was present in every ceremony
more directly and tangibly than he ever has been
in this world except in the person of Jesus
Christ. When the sons of Aaron offered strange fire,
they were immediately consumed. When a man,
unsanctified, touched the ark, he fell dead. The
high-priest would have been destroyed instanta-

\

204 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
neously, as by lightning, had he entered the holy
of holies at any time, or in any way, but in the
prescribed manner. The reason was that every
thing in the ritual corresponded to the divine
nature and the divine work, and was a living,
organic means of communion with God. This
subject is too vast for our consideration, but
enough of its general principles will be given to
explain how the great sacrifice of Christ, as we
have defined it, is the foundation-stone of all the
ceremonies of the Jewish Church.
The tabernacle, with its inmost, middle, and
outer departments, represented the three heavens,
or the three degrees of the heavenly life (" heav
enly places in Christ." Eph. i. 3) in which the
Lord can be present and dwell with man. It rep
resents also the Lord himself, who is the life of
heaven, in the three degrees of his divine love,
his divine wisdom, and his divine power, and
in his three elements as Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost. It also represented the church, which is
the Lord's body (even to "flesh and bones"), and
in which his Spirit dwells. It also represented
the regenerate soul because it is the image of
God, conformed to his likeness, as well as a min
iature heaven and a miniature church. It was

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 205
for these reasons that God covenanted to meet
and speak to the people of Israel at the door of
the tabernacle, and so long as they obeyed his
ordinances, to dwell with them and to be their
God. Thus he would be at one with them and
they with him.
The high-priest was representative of the Lord
as to his divine love, serving in the human form
for the redemption of mankind, and acting as
the mediator or intercessor between the invisible
and the visible, between God and man. The
priest was said " to bear the iniquity of the con
gregation" (Lev. x. 17), because the Lord bore
our human nature, and in it sustains for us an
eternal combat with the powers of hell.
The animals offered in sacrifice represented
Christ sacrificing himself for us, so as to unite
us along with himself to the Father ; but as we
are to imitate his example and follow him in the
regeneration, they also represent the sinner offer
ing or consecrating his own life to God, or rather
Christ's life in him as " a sweet savour." The
spiritual significations vary with the offering.
Animals of the herd (bullocks, etc.) represented
the external or human nature of Christ and
our own ; animals of the flock (lambs) repre-
18

206 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
sented the spiritual life of Christ and of his dis
ciples. The living animal offered, voluntarily, with
out spot or blemish, to be slain at the door of
the tabernacle signifies our natural or earthly
life, made pure and blameless, and consecrated
even to death to the divine service. Christ ren
dered this acceptable sacrifice to God, and the
sinner who laid his hands upon the animal he
offered representatively pledged himself to do
the same thing : to be at one with the Father by
following the example of the Son.
The flaying of the animal, cutting it into
pieces, separating part from part, arranging and
putting them together, devoting one portion to
one object and another to another, etc., were in
dicative of spiritual exploration and judgment,
whereby the good is separated from the evil, and
the heavenly elements of the life derived from
Christ, the blood and the fat, unite the soul on
the altar of the Lord with their divine source.
All this was done in the case of Christ in rela
tion to the human nature derived from the
mother, and all this is daily going on in the
heart of the christian who is following the Lord.
The spiritual sacrifices are perpetual.

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 207
The burning of the offering on the altar sig
nified the consecration to God by the fire of di
vine love, which dissipates all impurities and
elevates the whole soul to heaven. The eating
of the sacrifices in the holy place represented
conjunction with God, communication and ap
propriation of his divine life, just as in the holy
supper. The blood and the fat were the all-essential
elements in the Jewish sacrifices. They were so
holy that they were consecrated entirely to di
vine worship, and the Jews were forever pro
hibited from eating either of these articles. The
reason of this was, that the blood and the fat
corresponded to the divine truth and the divine
goodness of Christ (Jer. xxxi. 14), and were
equivalent to his own blood and his own flesh,
and it would have been profanation for the Jews,
who were an external, sensual, and literal people,
to partake of such sacred and spiritual things.
When the priest sprinkled the blood and burned
the fat upon the altar, he acknowledged for the
suppliant, that the wisdom of Christ in him, the
blood, and the goodness or righteousness of
Christ in him, the fat, were the only elements
of his life which were holy and acceptable to

208 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
God, his only bond of connection with heaven,
his only ground for the at-one-ment, or similar-
mindedness with Christ, which would secure his
salvation. The great sacrifice of Christ has a double as
pect to us, according as we contemplate him,
first, as descending from the Father into an in
firm human form, or, secondly, as ascending to
the Father in a 'glorified divine human form.
From the divine stand-point, it was a descent
into the grave and into hell, for such was our
human nature in comparison with the divine na
ture, and a resurrection from them with omnipo
tent power to save our souls to the uttermost.
In his descent, our Lord consecrates his divine
life to the lowest needs of suffering humanity ;
gives us his flesh and blood, his own goodness
and truth, feeds us with the bread of heaven, so
that we may become " partakers of the divine
nature." In his movement of ascent towards heaven,
he crucifies and destroys the hereditary evil
nature derived from his mother, and sacrifices
all the sensual appetites, the thoughts, desires,
and aspirations of the natural life, his own
earthly will and way, to that high and holy

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 209
spiritual life which he felt stirring within him,
and which he called his Father. Whoever ac
cepts him in his descent, believes in him and
trusts him, will be given the power to follow
him in his ascent by a precisely similar course
of spiritual experiences.
The feast of the passover among the Jews
and the holy supper among the christians repre
sent this descending gift of divine life to the
world. When the paschal lamb was eaten, there
was no altar, no priest, no ritual. Churches,
creeds, rituals, may assist us to follow Christ in
his ascent to heaven, but he comes down from
heaven without intermediate earthly agencies
into every individual soul. The passover was
not the sacrifice we render to God, but the far
holier and more mysterious sacrifice which God
renders to us ; yearning to give us his life and to
make us at one with himself.
The Lord Jesus is the lamb roasted with fire,
undivided and without a bone broken, for he
is the infinite love, one and indivisible. He is
the unleavened bread, the pure bread of heaven
without earthly admixture or adulteration. The
bitter herbs are the temptations which he shared
with us. The blood is his divine truth, which
18*

210 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
becomes reason and conscience and faith, when
imparted to us. It is also his mark which dis
tinguishes us from the Egyptians who live in
sensual darkness and at enmity with God. We
take this feast, standing and girded, with staff in
hand, ready for the battle or the march, for this
food is our only life and strength for that great
flight from Egypt, which is, in a spiritual sense,
our escape from hell.
The holy supper is the feast of the passover
with modifications suitable to the new events
which had transpired. The blood is no longer
used as a mere external sign, but is given us
with the flesh as food. This signified the open
ing of a new dispensation in which the divine
truth can be revealed and appropriated to the
uses of a truly spiritual life. The withholding
of the wine (the blood) from the lay communi
cant by the Roman Catholic clergy is significative
of the manner in which they arrogate all spir
itual truth to themselves, and of the spiritual
darkness in which the laity is held.
All the other Jewish sacrifices were done away,
because the spiritual truths they represented were
fulfilled in the personal life and spiritual experi
ences of Christ. All these things are still em-

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 211
bodied in the one life, one person, and one per
petual sacrifice of the Divine Man. The Old Tes
tament, however, conceals beneath its historical
and ritual appearances the infinite treasures of
divine wisdom, and the character and work of
Christ will never cease to be explored and
studied among the sacred archives of the Hebrew
nation. The consecration of Aaron to the office of
high-priest is full of beautiful things, illustrative
of the redemptive work of Christ. It is incon
sistent with the design of this little volume to
enter into a full exposition of this magnificent
theme, but we will present a few points which
are specially clear and instructive. When Mo
ses and Aaron are mentioned, together, Moses
represents the divinity and Aaron the humanity
of Christ, for Aaron was the spokesman or in
strument of Moses, who represented, manifested,
and uttered his thoughts. The ceremony of con
secration was therefore performed by Moses, as
the Father sends the Son, gives him his words
to speak and his works to perform. Aaron is
the man Jesus Christ on the Father's errand of
mercy ; the human nature manifesting the divine
nature.

212 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Moses first washes him in pure water, equiva
lent to baptism, and signifying external purifi
cation from evils. He then puts the threefold
garments upon him, the coat, the robe, and the
ephod, representing the celestial, spiritual, and
natural degrees of the divine wisdom, all held
together and contained within the embrace of
the " curious" or embroidered girdle, which is
truth in its lowest or outermost degree, the letter
of the Word, which encloses all the spiritual
senses. These garments were made " for glory
and for beauty," and by " wise-hearted" men,
" filled with the spirit of wisdom," as were the
men through whom all the scriptures were re
vealed. He next places the breastplate upon his breast,
containing the Urim and Thummim, the twelve
precious stones, representing the tribes of Israel,
and the whole church of Christ, each member of
which is a living and precious stone borne upon
the heart of his Lord, and responding by changes
of spiritual light to the outpourings of the di
vine Spirit. For, in the beautiful language of
the Word, " They shall be upon Aaron's heart
when he goeth in before the Lord : and Aaron
shall bear the judgment of the children of Is-

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 213
rael upon his heart before the Lord Continually."
Even so does Christ !
Moses then puts the mitre, the holy crown of
the priesthood, upon his head, and adjusts upon
his forehead that golden plate which had " holi
ness unto the Lord" inscribed upon it. The
character is written in the face, and the spiritual
character especially in the eyes and forehead.
Therefore this inscription " holiness unto the
Lord" was borne upon Aaron's forehead be
tween his eyes, and represented the absolute
perfection of Christ's nature. By partaking of
that holiness (Heb. xii. 10), becoming of one
mind with Christ, we are made acceptable because
we are conformable to him. " It shall be always
upon his forehead, that they may be accepted
before the Lord." Moses finishes the prepara
tion of Aaron for his mission by anointing him
and the tabernacle and everything in it with the
holy oil, consecrating and fitting him for his
holy work by pouring upon him the spirit of the
divine love. " God so loved the world that he
gave his only begotten Son," etc.
We have so far beheld the picture of the de
scending God in all his beauty and glory, cloth
ing himself with the very heavens and with all

214 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
the mysteries of divine truth, holy and perfect,
anointed and crowned, bearing his church upon
his heart, and apparently ready to officiate for
the salvation of mankind. / Only apparently
ready, for this sublime being, represented by
Aaron, could not enter upon the offices of the
priesthood without some astonishing preliminary
steps of preparation. He_had to take upon him
self our evil human nature, to bear its burden,
to resist its temptations, even to its crucifixion
and death ; and the sacred narrative takes him
up at the point where the sin-offering and the
burnt-offering are offered for him also, as they
were offered for every sinful soul who took up
his cross and followed his example.
Moses officiated in making the sin-offering and
the burnt-offering for Aaron, representing the
Father, or Christ's inner self, who effected the
purification of our Lord from all hereditary evil,
just as Christ himself, working in us, effects our
purification. The bullock, without blemish, slain
at the door of the tabernacle, represented the
consecration of the Lord's external or natural
life to the divine service. The blood represented
the truth or wisdom of his life, and the fat the
goodness or righteousness of it, which were ac-

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 215
ceptable offerings to the Father. The blood
sanctified the altar as truth sanctifies all of our
worship. The fat brings down the fire of divine
love, because it represents the goodness or love
of Christ. When Aaron offered the first sacri
fice after his consecration, it is stated "there
came a fire out from before the Lord, and con
sumed upon the altar the burnt-offering and the
fat." Now occurs a wonderful statement : " but the
bullock and his hide, his flesh, and his dung, he
burnt with fire without the camp." The Hebrew
adds, " this is sin," — incorrectly rendered in
English, " it is a sin-offering." Fire without the
camp signifies hell-fire. The substances there
lestroved meant sins. The sentence means that

all the evil portion of our Lord's nature derived
from his mother, all the infirmities of the natu
ral and sensual life, internal and external (flesh
and hide), down to the very excrement or filth
of it, was separated from the good portion, the
fat and the blood, and cast into hell.
Christ executed this judgment upon himself
by the divine wisdom which was within him, and
he executes it daily upon us who come to him
with the offering of a blameless outward life,

216 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.

which contains within it the life of the faith and
charity (the blood and the fat) which we derive
[from him. As it was with Christ, so shall it be
with us who are conformed to the likeness of
his death and the likeness of his resurrection.
It is in this way that God is just, and the justifier
of those who present the blood of Jesus (his
appropriated blood) as an acceptable sacrifice.
The ram, which next was oftered, was wholly
burnt upon the altar, and represented Christ's
spiritual nature, which was absolutely pure, and
suitable in its totality to be consumed by the
fire of divine love. There was nothing here to
be separated and cast into hell, because his
spiritual nature w.aa_ entirely without sin. It
was only the outward nature derived from the
mother which bore the evil impulses natural to
the " sinful flesh" of humanity. The blood of
the ram of consecration is applied to the right
ear, right thumb, and right toe, to signify that
Christ hearkened to the command of spiritual
truth, executed it with all his power, and walked
^ ever in the path it set before him.
The next ceremony, with the basket of un
leavened bread, is significative of a still higher
degree of glorification, the imparting of the celes-

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 217
tial love and wisdom of the Father to the Son,
or the ascension of the Divine Man iuto the life
of the highest heavens. When Moses waved the
breast or heart (said to be Moses' part), it indi
cated the union of the ascending Lord with the
infinite divine love, the uncreated life. Nothing
was left but to sprinkle the garments with oil
and blood, and the whole man, internal and ex
ternal, was consecrated to the high-priesthood,
ready for his great work of the redemption of
mankind, bydeading them through experiences
similar to his own, and taking them with him
into heaven.
Let us see what Aaron's sons had to do with
these ceremonies. Aaron's sons are the various
spiritual truths which are begotten or born of
the divine love. In a lower sense they may be
called the sons of God or children of Christ,
"heirs of Christ," regenerate souls made priests to
God. But they are not the High-Priest, and they
are not clad in his magnificently representative
garments, nor are their heads anointed with the
holy oil. They are washed in water like Aaron,
and they have simple garments assigned them,
the garments of faith and humility, and yet called
like their Lord's, "for glory and for beauty."
K 19

218 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
They follow their leader in his glorification.
They lay their hands with his upon the heads
of the slain animals. They share with him in
the sin-offering and the burnt-offering. The
blood of the spiritual degree is applied to their
ears, their hands, and their feet. The offerings
of the celestial degree are laid upon their hands
also, for their old sins have been burnt without
the camp as his hereditary evils were, and they
are ascending with their Lord. They too have
their garments sprinkled with the oil and the
blood, goodness and truth, those infinite inspira
tions to holiness of life. And lastly, they partake
with their great High-Priest of the flesh of the
ram of consecration and of the unleavened bread,
which is the bread of life, a feast prophetic of the
holy supper, in which the Divine Man continues
to sup with us and we with him.
As our conception of the great sacrifice of
Christ depends, jipon the meaning jve_attach_to_
the word atonement, it will be well to confirm
alT the positions we have taken, by a considera
tion of the sacrifices offered on the great day of
atonement, the only day in the year when the
high-priest entered into the holy of holies to
make an atonement for all the sins of the people ;

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 219
the day of their utmost humiliation, in which
they were commanded to do no work, as on a
Sabbath, and " to afflict their souls by a statute
forever." The occasion of the establishment of these
ceremonies was the offering of strange fire upon
the altar of the Lord by the sons of Aaron.
Strange fire means unholy loves or desires, sel
fish and interested motives, the love of self and
the world mingled with the holy things of wor
ship. It represented a state of mind separated
and alien from God, whom they had really ceased
to love and worship, although they kept up all
the external forms. Such was the actual spiritual
state of the whole congregation. The sacrifices
of the day were not designed to obtain the pardon
of God for the sins of Aaron's sons, or for their
own sins, but to bring their own mind and life
into unison with Christ, into a state of at-one-
ment with him, so that his divine life could de
scend into them, and cast out all their evils,
unite them with himself and make them clean
forever. How is this reunion or at-one-ment of the
people with God effected ? Aaron, representing
Christ in his human nature, washes his flesh with

220 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
water, analogous to baptism, and puts on his gar
ments or indues himself with the principles of
divine truth. He then offers a bullock as a sin-
offering for himself, making his own atonement,
or at-one-ment with the Father. He then takes
a censer full of burning coals from the altar of
the Lord, and burns incense before the mercy-
seat, representing the holy state of prayer, praise,
and adoration which exists in the highest heaven
which is nearest to the infinite Father. Having
thus effected his own glorification, he is prepared
to regenerate the sinner, or unite him with him
self. Two goats are presented for the people at the
door of the tabernacle. Lots are cast upon them ;
one goat to be dedicated to the Lord as in the
ordinary sacrifices, and the other to be used as
a scape-goat for special purposes. Aaron had
sprinkled the blood of his own offering, not on
the brazen altar as usual, but on the mercy-seat
itself within the veil, in the holy of holies, indi
cating that only the blood of Christ or the divine
truth can so harmonize and sanctify the soul that
it can stand in the presence of God. He sprinkles
it on the mercy-seat eastward, and in front of the
mercy-seat seven times, indicating that the divine

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 221
truth emanates as one thing, or one ray of white
light, from the sun of righteousness in the spir
itual east, and is manifested in the creation before
God in the infinite wonders contained in the
seven separated rays of divine light.
Aaron then descends to the people or comes
out to the door of the tabernacle, and kills the
sin-offering for the people. He brings this blood
also within the veil, " and does with that blood
as he did with the blood of the bullock, and
sprinkles it on the mercy-seat and before the
mercy-seat." The fat as usual is burned upon
the altar. All this signifies that our regeneration
is identical with the Lord's glorification, that
Christ's blood sprinkled upon the mercy-seat
enables our blood or life, containing Christ's, to
be elevated into heaven and consecrated to God.
The parallelism between Christ and the christian
is still further and most emphatically shown in
the statement:
" And the bullock for the sin-offering, and the goat for
the sin-offering, whose blood, was brought in to make
atonement in the holy place, shall one carry forth with
out the camp ; and they shall burn in the fire their skins,
and their flesh, and their dung." Lev. xvi. 27.
The total separation of our evil nature, hered-
19*

! !
' /

222 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
itary and acquired, from that new nature capable
of being glorified with Christ, because it is Christ
in us, is fully represented in the separation of the
two goats. Our human nature in its mixed state
of good and evil is signified by the two goats.
The Lord assumes our entire nature, and the
/ goat which is consecrated to him is the redeemed
and regenerated natural life, whilst the scape
goat represents the carnal and unregenerate na-
i ture, with all its sins and evils, entirely separated
from the other and east out of us forever.
(¦ The separation of good and evil, represented
above, is a fundamental point in the work of re
generation. | The Lord alone effects this separa
tion, and he never could have done it had he
not^assumed our nature to its lovvestdepths, and_
separatedjthe good from the evil in his own life.
(Isaiah vii. 14, 15). The same thing is indicated
in the cleansing of the leper, where one bird is
sacrificed, and a living bird, after having been
dipped in the blood of the dead one, is let fly
away. The same ideas are involved in the sepa
ration of the tares and the wheat, and that grand
separation of the sheep and the goats, which is
supposed only to take place at the end of the
world.

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 223
i Evil is so deeply inwrought in our natures
that much of the separation must be effected by
/that judgment which comes immediately after
death, but in the Lord's providence the sacrifices
and the separations are going on in our souls
secretly and silently every day of our lives: "for
the word of God is quick and powerful, and
sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even
to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and
of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of
the thoughts and intents of the heart."
The nature of the ceremonies as above ex
plained proves that sacrifice was a covenant or
bond of union between God and man. It would
be a great mistake, however, to suppose that the
Jews had our conception of it. or that _we would
get any spiritual insight into the matter, if we
could ascertain exactly what Moses and his con
temporaries thought about it. The Hebrew word
which we translate "to make an atonement,"
means simply " to cover." The Jews probably
thought that the blood of the atonement covered
or concealed their sins from the eye of God, how
or why they did not stop to inquire. "Blessed
is the man," says the Psalmist, " whose sins are
covered."

224 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
In a fuller application of the same sense, our
selfhood or carnal nature may be said to be
covered or buried and hidden away, when the
blood of Christ or the divine truth has been
appropriated to our spiritual needs. The cover
ing made by the blood of the atonement is also
a defence or protection against evil. In a still
higher sense the blood of the atonement is a
covering like a garment. God is said to cover
himself with light as a garment, and the blood
of Christ or the divine truth is a robe of wisdom,
a garment of righteousness, and when we appro
priate that truth and live by it, we are said to be
clothed upon with the mind that was in Christ
Jesus, and so in the fullest sense to be made one
with him, as he became one with the Father.
In vain, however, do we search the scriptures
for any confirmation of the current theory of the
nature of sacrifices ; that the sinner felt himself
worthy of death, that he offered the animal as a
type of Christ who consented to die in his stead,
and that the offended Father was satisfied with
the blood of the offering, accepted it as if the
sinner had really died, and then felt justified in
forgiving the sinner his trespasses. What Jam e
and_impotent jtheories in comparison with the

THE GREAT SACRIFICE. 225
transcendent, organic truths we have drawn from ,
&£Wo]rd_of_GodJ - "
The atonement of Christ is an at-one-ment
between Christ and man, precisely correspond
ing: to an at-one-ment which he made between
himself and the Father. The blood, or the
divine truth, is the means of that at-one-ment.
Notthe blood which the soldier drew from the
side of Jesus as he hung upon the cross^ for
that deed only represented the violence done
to divine truth by an unbelieving world. We
are made one with Christ by appropriating to
our spiritual sustenance the blood of that divine
life which he gives us in his holy supper. It
is our covering, our defence, our garment of
righteousness. The blood and the fat, which
are the Lord's, only save us when they are found
incorporated in our own souls, so that our life
is his. The following beautiful extracts from John,
who was closely united to the heart of Jesus,
explain the at-one-ment of Christ with the
Father, and of the believer with both in the
person of the Divine Man :
" He that believeth on me, believeth not on me, but on
him that sent me.
K*

226 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" And he that seeth me seeth him that sent me." xii.
44, 45.
" As the Father hath loved me, so have I loved you :
continue ye in my love." xv. 9.
" If a man love me, he will keep my words : and my
Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and
make our abode with him." xiv. 23.
"He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same
bringeth forth much fruit." xv. 5.
" This is my commandment, That ye love one another,
as I have loved you." xv. 12.
" That they all may be one ; as thou, Father, art in
me, and I in thee, that they also may be one in us."
xvii. 21.
" The glory which thou gavest me I have given them ;
that they may be one, even as we are one :
" I in them, and thou in me, that they may be made
perfect in one." xvii. 22, 23.
To obtain this glorious union of the Creator
and the creature was the object of the mission,
the sacrifice, the atonement, the mediation, and
the reconciliation of Jesus Christ !

CHAPTER VII.
CONFORMED to his image.
Worn with suffering, weary of sin, thinking
of the plenty in his father's house, the prodigal
rose to his feet, and said :
" I will go to my father and I will say unto him,
Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee,
" And am no more worthy to be called thy son ; make
me as one of thy hired servants."
When he returned, his father did not receive
him sternly and reply : " You have broken my
commandments: you have wasted my substance
in riotous living : you have disgraced my name-
My hatred of your conduct and my sublime
sense of justice forbid me to forgive and receive
you until you have paid the penalty of your sins.
It is a terrible punishment, but if you cannot
pay this penalty yourself, or get somebody else
to do it for you, you must perish of hunger and
suffer afterwards in hell eternally." This is vir
tually the teaching of the evangelical churches
"227

22S THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
with their forensic "plan of salvation." Is it
true? No! thanks to the grace and the truth
and the mercy of the living God, no! "But
when he was yet a great way off, his father saw
him, and had compassion, and ran, and fell on
his neck and kissed him." This is Christ's own
statement of the feelings of God towards a re
turning sinner.
The universal and unconditional invitations of
the gospel to accept the unasked and free pardon,
the love and the favor of God, have no equals
for tenderness and beauty in the literature of the
world. His Word is so full of these golden sen
tences that one scarcely knows which to select,
or when to stop in the delightful work.
" Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,
and he that hath no money ; -come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price." Is. Iv. 1.
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest.
" Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am
meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your

" For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light." Matt.
xi. 28-30.
" Whosoever will, let him take the water of life freely."
Eev. xxii. 17.

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 229
"Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man
hear my ¦Voice, and open the door, I will come in to him,
and will sup with him, and he with me." Eev. iii. 20.
" I am the bread of life : he that cometh to me shall
never hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never
thirst." Jno. vi. 35.
" Him that cometh unto me I will in no wise cast out."
Jno. vi. 37.
The first movement towards the religious life
is a stirring of the affections. Life begins in the
affections. An infant is a bundle of sensations
and emotions without thoughts. Affections beget
thoughts, as the Father begat the Son. Affec
tions first express themselves by sounds ; and as
thoughts grow from the affections, the sounds are
modified into words to express the ideas gener
ated. Music is older and stronger and sweeter
than language. The Father is music, the Son is
language. The spirit of God moves upon our
hearts first and in that way leads us to the truth.
" No man can come unto me," says Christ, " ex
cept my Father draw him." " We love him,"
says the apostle, " because he first loved us."
" Yea," says Jehovah, " I have loved thee with
an everlasting love : therefore with loving-kind
ness have I drawn thee." 20

230 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The spirit of God not only loves us abstractly :
he seeks us, yearning to find us. Christ came
to seek and to save that which is lost. He com
pares his mission to that of a shepherd leaving
his flock to seek the one lost sheep on the moun
tains or in the wilderness. God touches every
note on the infinite scale of human affection : the
fear of punishment, the hope of reward, the de
sire for ease and rest and spiritual blessings, the
love of knowledge, the yearning for truth, the
reverence of tradition and authority, the sense
of the sublime and the beautiful, the tenderness
of social affections, the pity for suffering, admi
ration for self-sacrifice, our feelings of awe and
humiliation at the mystery and the grandeur of
the universe, and that over-brooding sense of the
spiritual infinities which we can neither grasp
nor fathom. Each and all of these emotions
have brought men to God.
Love excites love. God's love is the primal
cause of the religious instinct. It awakens the
desire to know, to find, to worship, to love, to
possess God. This is the origin of all the re
ligions of the world, past and present. Religions
are never invented : they are evolved. One God
is worshipped under a thousand names and a

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 231
thousand forms. Whatever is good and true in
any system under the sun, however feeble and
imperfect it may be, is the goodness and truth
of Jesus Christ. All tenderness of heart, and
faithfulness of execution and nobleness of life,
heathen, or infidel, or christian, is the working
of the Divine Man in the human soul, and is
bound up in the bundle of life with God's church,
which is one and universal, invisible and indivisi
ble, now and forever.
The cause of the innumerable variations as to
faith and practice is to be found in the varied
organization of the human mind, its place on the
scale of development, its antecedents, surround
ings, and possibilities, its perversion and corrup
tion by hereditary or actual evil, and in all its
relations to the divine truth, its inclination and
its capacity to receive, comprehend, and obey it.
Hence we see the vast importance and power
of truth. The polytheist, the Buddhist, the Ma
hometan, the Jew, the catholic, the protestant,
the unitarian, the Swedenborgian, the deist, the
scientist, have all different conceptions of the
character of God and his relations to the soul :
and they who are nearest the divine truth will
obtain the greatest illumination of mind, and

232 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
may exhibit most clearly in the life the operations
of the divine spirit.
A manjs life can never rise above the level of
his faith. If his faith is in himself he will lead
a selfish and evil life. If his faith is in other
men his life will be servile and unenlightened.
Our whole character is secretly moulded by the
character of the God we believe in and try to
obey. The power of the christian's life is always
proportioned to his approximation to a clear
knowledge of that divine truth which is the
light of the world, and which ever shines with
varying strength and fruitfulness according to
the states of the mind into which it flows.
The restored paradise is only promised when
" the knowledge of the Lord" covers the earth as
the waters cover the sea. Paul speaks truthfully
of " the excellency of the knowledge of Christ
Jesus our Lord." And to us who receive the
truths enunciated in this little volume, it is a
matter of transcendent importance to know and
understand the Lord Jesus Christ as revealed in
his Word, because we do not believe that we are
saved by faith in a judicial atonement, but by an
actual, organic unition of our souls and our bodies
with the soul and the body of the Divine Man.

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 233
See the philosophy of it in a nut-shell. Man
was created in the image of God. He then
obeyed the laws of God, because those laws are
only the natural modes or expressions of the
diviue life with which he was in accordance.
When he violated the laws of God, he became a
perverted form, a distorted medium, a blurred
image. And the very love and wisdom of God,
as they passed into his soul, were converted into
the evil and the false. To restore him to the
image of God, to the lost similitude of his
maker, is the object of religion, the supreme
work of Christ. Jesus Christ is the express im
age and perfect likeness of the glory of God in
the flesh. Imitation of Christ until we are
christlike is the all of salvation. Knowledge of
Christ, faith in Christ, prayer to Christ, obedi
ence to Christ, power from Christ, love for
Christ, union with Christ, until we are so or
ganically conformed to his image that " our life
is hid with Christ in God."
" I in them and thou in me" is the statement
of the mystery of our perfect redemption from
sin. As God was in Christ reconciling the
world to himself, so must Christ be in us, recon
ciling us to his own paternal nature. Wecan-
20*

234 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
not be conformed to the image of a God in three
persons. We cannot be properly and efficiently
conformed to the image of Christ unless we
know him to be the Father, Son, and Holy
Ghost in one divine human person. Let us
have no confusion of ideas, no doubts, no dark
ness, no secret thought of double offices and
triple persons, breaking our crystal-clear concep
tion of the transcendent unity of God. The
God of the christian is not an invisible spirit
like the God of the deist orjhe unitarian, but
he is a Divine Man, having direct power over all
flesh, and capable of appearing before our faces
this moment, without the exertion of any mi
raculous power, just as he appeared to the two
disciples on the highway, or to Thomas in the
closed room, to Peter by the sea, or to Mary at
the sepulchre.
Jesus Christ was the first perfect and the only
infinitely regenerated man. Glorification is infi
nite regeneration. He was therefore called " the
first begotten from the dead," the death of the
carnal and earthly nature, " the only begotten
of the Father," and " the first-born of many
brethren." He was truly our elder brother in
the regeneration, having experienced the new

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 235
birth like ourselves, having died to the works
of the flesh, and risen into the newness of the
life of the spirit. He is our type, our pattern
in the heavens, after whom we are to be con
structed. We take up his cross, we are baptized
into his death: we attain, even in this life, to his
glorious resurrection. By knowledge and faith
we put on his own mind ; by obedience to him
we identify ourselves with his own will; by
prayer to him (and to him only) we partake of
his life and his power until our lives are rounded
into a perfect symmetry with his own.
" We all, with open face beholding as in a glass the
glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image
from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord."
2 Cor. iii. 18.
The crucifixion and death of the selfhood and
the resurrection of Christ in our souls are effected
by the power of Christ alone. We are incapa
ble ourselves of a spiritual thought or a spirit
ual aspiration. As no possible extension of the
physical sciences can ever lead to the discovery
of a spiritual substance, so no natural genesis
of the moral faculties, no perfection of self-cul
ture, can ever develop the spiritual life in man.
One may be temperate and chaste, honest and

236 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
truthful, from selfish and interested motives.
because it is healthiest and wisest, prudent,
fashionable, and rational to be so, and have no
jnore conception of the new birth than Nico-
demus, who asked if a man could enter a second
time into his mother's womb and be born again.
The new birth is " not of blood, nor of the will
of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God."
The scribes and pharisees presented no doubt
many excellent specimens of the social and theo
logical virtues, but their righteousness fell short
of the righteousness of the publican who smote
his breast in despair, and of the harlot who
bathed the feet of Jesus with her tears.
" Prepare ye the way of the Lord" is the cry
still sounding in the wilderness of this world.
Christ is always in the act of coming to us, but
he is hindered by obstructions in the way. A
disorderly external life, an^ intellect darkened by
false conceptions of truth, and a heart corrupted
by sin are the barriers to his entrance. The
outer life can only be perfect when the heart is
full of love and the mind is luminous with the
genuine truth. The torchlight of false religions
and false philosophies is not the light of heaven,
and can never lead to the heavenly life.

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 237
God judges by the heart, the will, the motives;
and every earnest attempt at a better life, in the
midst of imperfection and error, is accepted as a
germ capable of indefinite expansion in a glori
ous hereafter. But those who would live the
life of the kingdom of God now, and marry a
new heaven to a new earth, can only do so by
believing and obeying the spiritual truths re
vealed in the Word of God : and how shall they
distinguish the spiritual from the literal, the real
from the apparent, excejgtthey be taught ?
Purification and repentance are represented
by the circumcision of the Jew and the baptism
of the christian. / In the church of the Divine
Man there is but one thing demanded, and the
power to do that comes only from God, to ab
stain from sin. " Cease to do evil." " Touch
not, taste not, handle not." Abstain. Nine out
of the ten commandments are negative com
mands, prohibitions, "thou shalt not," etc. Obe
dience to these involves the total surrender of
our own wills, the final destruction of our self
hood. Every sin abstained from is a preparation
for the coming of Christ, who brings in with
him the opposite virtue. Cease to be false and
Christ will make you faithful : cease to be glut-

238 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
tonous and Christ will make you temperate :
cease to be licentious and Christ will make you
chaste. / Empty the cup of your own life and
Christ will fill it with his. /When our hearts are
governed by the divine love, when our minds are
guided by the divine wisdom, when our lives are
controlled by the divine power, our bodies will be
truly the temples of the Father and of the Son
and of the Holy Ghost, and our nature will be
conformed to the image of the Lord Jesus Christ.
How are we to be baptized with the baptism
of Christ, to take up the cross, to drink of his
cup, to follow his steps, to crucify with him the
lusts of the flesh, to be conformed to his death,
and to rise with him into newness of life ? This
is the new birth, the regeneration. This is the
path he trod, and this is the only road to the
heavens into which he ascended. He draws us
to it by his divine love, convicting us of sin and
inciting us to contrition. He leads us in it by
faith, born of knowledge, animated by grace and
working by love. He keeps us in it by giving
us the spirit of obedience, and by that mysteri
ous, elevating, and transforming power which
the apostle calls "the power of the resurrection."
Let us successively consider how we are con-

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 239
formed to the image of Christ by the agencies
of faith, sacrifice, prayer, and the Word of God
which conquers for us in temptation.
What is " faith that works by love" ? It is
the intelligent perception of truth, with assur
ance, confidence, and trust in its power, joined
to an aftection for it which impels us to obey it
implicitly, and to manifest in our lives the divine
love from which it originated and to which it
leads. Faith in a falsehood ox a _fa]se religion,
however intense, canjnever produce jthe spiritual
life. The faith of the bigot and the fanatic is
boundless but fruitless. Scriptural faith is not
intellectual assent, but it is faith in the truth,
and the wonderful effects ascribed to faith were
really produced by the truth believed in. Truth
is the object which faith acknowledges, and truth
is all-powerful to cleanse, to sanctify, to save.
Faith in the blood of Christ appropriates to the
soul the divine truth sent forth by the Father to
subdue all evil, and to reconcile all things to
himself. He that believes in the blood of Christ
receives the divine wisdom according to the in
telligence and intensity of his faith, and accord
ing to the measure of his desire and his capacity
to obey the divine law.

240 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" According to your faith be it done unto you .-"
thatij^ according to the nature of the truth you
believe and your earnest acceptance of it. This
is a universal law of the spiritual life.
" He that believeth in me, though he were dead, yet
shall he live:" that is, the power of divine truth
shall raise from spiritual death whosoever be
lieveth on me.
" He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall
he do also .•" the divine truth by which I crucify
my carnal nature shall also do the same work in
him who looks to me in faith. What works did
Christ do which we are to do also ? Certainly
not his miracles. We are to imitate the spiritual
works he performed during the regeneration of
the human nature derived from his mother.
The great sacrifice of Christ was self-sacrifice.
His sacrifice can never be of any benefit to us
unless we sacrifice ourselves in a similar manner.
We are made one with him by following his
steps, and the most important of all these steps
was sacrifice. His sacrifice, as already explained
in the last chapter, was twofold, — an ascending
sacrifice, the surrender of his carnal life and na
ture to the interior dictates of his divine love or
Father, and a descending sacrifice, the consecra-

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 241
tion of himself to the wants of suffering human
ity. By the first sacrifice, he ascended to his
Father, like an aeronaut who rises as he casts
out his ballast. By the second sacrifice, he was
like the descending ray of sunlight which brings
the sun itself into our houses and fields.
It is declared by the apostle that if we die
with him we shall rise with him. We cannot
die physically with him, share his crucifixion or
his bodily sufferings ; but we can share his self-
denial and his self-surrender, his spiritual death.
He abstained from all sin, under all circum
stances, and through all temptations. He repu
diated and crucified all the lusts of the flesh, and
all the thoughts, desires, and aspirations of the
carnal mind. We are to do the same, and we
are to do it, not from interested motives but
simply because he commanded us to deny our
selves, take up our cross and follow him. We
are to hate our life and to lose it for his sake.
We are to lay down our life that we may take it
again. The perfect sacrifice of our own wills to
his will is precisely the sacrifice he offered up to
the Father.
" My meat is to do the will of him that sent me and
to finish his work." Jno. iv. 34.
21

242 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" I came down from heaven, not to do my own will,
but the will of him that sent me." Jno. vi. 38.
" I do nothing of myself, but as my Father has taught
me, I speak these things." Jno. viii. 28.
" Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven." Matt.
vii. 10.
" Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." Matt.
xxvi. 39.
The religion of Christ is altruistic. Egotism
is the spirit of self-love. Altruism is the spirit
of the love of others. Our sacrifice is only half
completed when we have surrendered our wills
to God. We must next lay down our lives for
the brethren. " To do good and to communi
cate, forget not : for with such sacrifices God is
well-pleased" (Heb. xiii. 16). By the sacrifice
of our carnal life we receive spiritual life and
blessing from God. They will not benefit us
unless we give them away to others. Spiritual
life is only given on the condition that we use it
for the common good, for even so did Christ.
It is like the manna which fell in the wilderness,
it cannot be hoarded : it is given day by day, and
exactly enough for the necessities of the day.
Prayers, fastings, self-mortifications, in a state
of isolation and for the salvation of our indi-

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 243
vidual souls, are worse than useless. We have
no part nor lot in the salvation purchased by
Jesus Christ except as we sacrifice ourselves in
some manner for others. And the reason is per
fectly plain, because it is only by doing so that
we can receive the spirit of Christ, become per
manently conformed to his image and be made
partakers of his divine nature. " As my Father
has sent me," he said, " even so send I you."
Meditate, 0 christian ! on this identity of our
mission with Christ's mission.
The sacrifices were never abolished. The let
ter was dropped, the spirit was retained. The
Jewish ordinances are full of spiritual beauty
and instruction : and will be the wonder and
delight of the church in that approaching renais
sance of the literature of ancient symbolisms.
The Jews, in their low state of religious per
ception, may have interpreted the sacrifices ac
cording to the manner of the idolatrous heathen
around them, as bloody offerings made to ap
pease an offended deity: and it is painful to
think how jhe christian church .has committed
itself to such a pagan conception of the sacri
fice of Christ: but the prophets~and inspired
teachers of the Israelites were continually en-

244 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
deavoring to elevate and spiritualize their ideas
on the subject.
" Behold! to obey is better than sacrifice, and to hearken
than the fat of rams." 1 Sam. xv. 22.
" Will I eat the flesh of bulls or drink the blood of
goats ? Offer unto God thanksgiving ; pay thy vows
unto the most High." Ps. 1. 13, 14.
" The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit." Ps. Ii. 17.
" I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and the knowledge
of God more than burnt-offerings." Hos. vi. 6.
" Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams,
or with ten thousands of rivers of oil ? shall I give my
first-born for my transgression, the fruit of my body for
the sin of my soul ?
"He hath shewed thee, O man, what is good; and
what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and
to love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?"
Micah vi. 7, 8.
How are we to effect these great sacrifices to
God and the neighbor ? How are we to realize
this beautiful dream of conformity to the life of
Christ. ? By the power of the human will ? The
boasted iron will which enables its possessor to
change his habits and his associations as he
chooses, to pursue his purpose with inflexible
resolution, and to attain any desired height of

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 245
self-control and self-culture, is born of the self
hood of man ; is_self-loye and the love of the
world in disguise ; and is frequently the direst
obstacle in the way of the reception of Christ.
The new will of the new birth is born of humil
ity and despair. It grows and thrives only by
self-denial. It is the germ which develops in
proportion as the old will, we so much love, is
crucified and dies. It is Christ's will in us, lift
ing us upwards. Hear the one great poetess :
" O aspire I Aspire
Prom henceforth for me I Thou who hast thyself
Endured this fleshhood, knowing how as a soaked
And sucking vesture it can drag us down,
And choke us in the melancholy Deep :
Sustain me, that with thee I walk these waves,
Eesisting 1 breathe me upward, thou in me
Aspiring, who art the way, the truth, the life.''
One of the greatest psychological curiosities in
the life of Christ, when we remember that he
was veritably the Supreme Being under a human
mask, is his constant habit of prayer. Let us
familiarize ourselves with this astounding fact.
"He went up into a mountain apart to pray, and
when the evening was come, he was there alone." Matt.
xiv. 23. 21*

246 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" Children were brought to him that he might put his
hands upon them and pray." Matt. xix. 23.
" And when he had sent them away, he went up into
a mountain to pray." Mark vi. 46.
" Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder." Matt.
xxvi. 36.
" In the morning, rising up a great while before it was
day, he went out and departed into a solitary place, and
there prayed." Mark i. 35.
" As he was praying in a certain place, one of his dis
ciples said unto him, Lord, teach us to pray." Luke xi. 1.
" Jesus also being baptized and praying, the heavens
were opened." Luke iii. 21.
" He withdrew himself into the wilderness and prayed."
Luke v. 16.
" He went out into a mountain to pray, and continued
all night in prayer to God." Luke vi. 12.
" And as he prayed, the fashion of his countenance
was altered." Luke ix. 29.
" Being in an agony, he prayed more earnestly, and
his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling
down to the ground." Luke xxii. 44.
"Jesus lifted up his eyes, and said, Father, I thank
thee that thou hast heard me, and I know that thou
hearest me always." Jno. xi. 41.
What was the meaning and use of these earnest
and constant devotions ? Not merely to set us

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 247
an example. Every word, every deed of Christ
had the weight and the stamp of the infinite.
jHis own great pressing need of strength for the
/ work before him drove him to prayer. Bowed
down by the weight of hereditary evil, and held
in strict limitations by a feeble human person
ality derived from the mother, he sometimes felt
that the God within him was a God very far oft*
and above him. It was only in his most favored
moments that he could exclaim, " my Father
and I are one." It was much oftener, " my
Father is greater than I." It was most fre
quently, " Why hidest thou thy face from me ?
why hast thou forgotten me ?"
Prayer is an opening of the heart and mind to
the influxes of the divine will. Prayer is the
means by which the human and the divine are
brought together, the evils of the one subdued,
and the absolute command given to the other.
So must it be with us. In vain we follow Christ
unless we follow him also in prayer. He becomes
our intercessor and mediator by means of prayer,
for he enters into our hearts and minds, prays
with us and for us, and so lifts us with himself
into union with our higher nature, his Father
and our Father,

248 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
We are very close to him in two precious
moments of our life, — the moment of the good
deed and the moment of prayer. We are very
near and dear to him in the prayer of faith,
which is half praise, half triumph : but we are
nearer and still dearer to him in the prayer of
humiliation and suffering, in that cry out of the
depths, from the grave and from the hell of our
own natures, which issued so often from his lips
when he was bearing our sins in his own body.
The prayer which conforms us to the image
of Jesus Christ must be addressed directly to
Jesus Christ. A prayer to the God of the deist,
the invisible and incomprehensible spirit of the
universe, shoots far wide of the mark. Prayer
to a Father, separated in the mind's eye from
the Son, is almost as futile^, its only redeem
ing feature being the implied faith in divine
revelation. These prayers may have a salutary
effect upon the mind on account of the rever
ence, faith, and aspiration involved in them, but
they need the dhect_power_ofJruth,. The an
swered prayers are the prayers addressed to
Jesus. The difference between the frozen zones and
the tropics is due to the slant or the directness

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 249
of the sun's ray. The direct rays come only
from the Divine Man^jJesus Christ, who is the
Father, and the Son, and the Holy Ghost in one
person. Let the christian put these two words of
his together, " No man cometh unto the Father
but by me," and, "he that seeth me, seeth the
Father," andask himself why he should pass by
the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, and pray to
an invisible God who Jhas^ really no existence out-
sideof the Divine Man.
All prayer, however, does not conjoin us with
Jesus Christ, even though directly addressed to
him. " Ye ask and ye receive not, because ye
ask amiss, that ye may consume it upon your
lusts" (Jas. iv. 3). Many prayers are wasted
breath, because neither conceived nor offered in
the spirit of truth. Spiritual instruction is vastly
needed on this point, but the mind, darkened by
doctrinal errors, cannot receive or profit at pres
ent by liejnstructign. It is good to pray to
Christ that he would grant all the reasonable and
righteous desires of our hearts, but it is far better
to sacrifice all the desires of our heart at his feet,
and to pray that every thought and will may be
identical with his thought and his will.
The nirvana of the Hindoos and the "life hid
L*

250 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
with Christ in God" may seem to be similar, but
they are essentially different. The Hindoo be
lieves that by prayer and contemplation his own
consciousness will be lost by absorption into
deity. By being conformed to the image of
Christ, the christian becomes a " partaker of the
divine nature," and, without losing a particle of
his individuality, has the beauty, glory, wisdom,
love, and peace of Christ manifested in his con
scious life forever. "These things I speak in
the world, that they may have my joy fulfilled in
themselves" (Jno. xvii. 13).
However strong the faith, however willing the
sacrifice, however earnest the prayer, we cannot
escape temptations. Temptation is in fact the
judgment, the bringing a man into contact with
good and evil under such circumstances that he
is compelled to choose one or the other, and so
to determine his own character and fate. No
matter to what heights we ascend, what ecstasies
we feel, what joys we experience in the witness
of the spirit, we shall find ourselves sooner or
later face to face with the old enemy again, and
feel the cold iron of his open assault or the
deadly venom of his secret attack. We are
obliged to share the sufferings and the tempta-

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 251
tions of Christ, if we would be partners of his
consolations and his grace. We must frequently
go with him into the wilderness state, feel the
presence of the wild beasts in our own hearts,
hear the cunning voices of the tempters, and
only be saved by the ministration of angels and
the power of the Word of God.
The three great generic temptations which as
sailed our Lord will assail us also in every con
ceivable form, and under so many disguises, that
it will require the utmost self-watchfulness, the
closest self-examination, and the most unflinch
ing self-judgment to meet and detect them. That
trinity of sin, self-gratification, self-aggrandize
ment, and self-righteousness, will never cease its
warfare; its derivative brood of evils will swarm
about us in legions, subtile and venomous, steal
ing into our thoughts, incorporating themselves
with our affections and motives, and thus taint
ing our inner life, frequently without awakening
the conscience, with the poison of hell. How
shall we escape them? How destroy them?
Alas, they are bone of our bone and flesh of our
flesh ! " 0 wretched man that I am, who shall
deliver me from the body of this death ?"
The remedy has been offered : the blood of

252 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
Jesus Christ that cleanseth from all sin ; the di
vine truth revealed to us from heaven and poured
out for us through the personal, historic life of
the Divine Man. If we are not cleansed from
all sin, we have not applied the remedy. Christ
is an almighty Saviour. He offers himself to us
in all the degrees of his infinite, divine life. He
is the lamb of God, who bore our sins in his own
body, and is ready to take them away from us
forever. He is the lion of the tribe of Judah,
who alone could open the sealed book, and who
alone can vanquish the enemies of the soul. He
is the serpent lifted up in the wilderness, a type
of the subjugated and purified senses borne as a
trophy on his conquering banner. We have but
to believe, to come, to look, to obey, to live.
" Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy-
laden, and I will give you rest."
The influence of the Word of God in helping
us to resist temptation and to conform our lives to
the image of Christ is a living miracle. " Sanctify
them through thy truth," said Jesus, " thy word
is truth." And again, " Now ye are clean through
the word which I have spoken unto you." And
yet again, in answer to the temptation of the
devil, " Man shall not live by bread alone, but

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 253
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth
of God." Christ answered every temptation by
a quotation from the Word of God, setting us
an example and pointing out to us a way of in
calculable importance. Science has destroyed
all the charms, amulets, and talismans of the
old religions and the miserable superstitions into
which they degenerated. One talisman remains,
which has a veritable, supernatural, and spiritual
influence, which is very little known or appre
ciated. The Word of God is a living power,
not a mere book like a message from man to
man. The letter or external surface of the Word
of God is an exceedingly small thing in compari
son with its infinite interiors, its spiritual senses,
connecting the church on earth with the church
in heaven, and penetrating far upwards to the
divine wisdom which holds all things in consist
ence. The 119th Psalm is a grand glorification of the
power and uses of the Divine Word. Christ is
there speaking spiritually, unlimited by time and
space, and by the Word he means the whole of
divine revelation to man, historical, prophetic,
and dogmatic, past, present, and to come. The
word, the law, precepts, testimonies, command-
22

254 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
ments, judgments, statutes, etc., etc., are varied
phases of the one grand revelation. A few verses
of this psalm will show us the wonderful nature
of the Word of God, and its living and trans
forming power in the work of regeneration.
" For ever, 0 Lord, thy word is settled in heaven."
" Thy word have I hid in my heart, that I might not
sin against thee."
" Open thou mine eyes that I may behold wondrous
things out of thy law."
" This is my comfort in my affliction, for thy word
hath quickened me."
" Thy statutes have been my songs in the house of my
pilgrimage." " Thy word is a lamp unto my feet and a light unto
my path."
" Unless thy law had been my delights, I should then
have perished in my affliction."
" The entrance of thy words giveth light : it giveth
understanding to the simple."
" Great peace have they which love thy law : and
nothing shall offend them."
" Thou art my hiding-place and my shield : I hope
in thy word."
" Uphold me according to thy word, that I may live."
We here perceive that the Word of God exists
in heaven, is, in other words, the divine mind or

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 255
thought, revealed for angels as well as for men,
and that " wondrous things," not perceptible to
our natural understandings, may be seen by us
when our spiritual eyes are opened to its interior
splendors. We are also taught that it preserves
us from sin : is a shield, a guide, a lamp, a light,
a source of comfort and joy in affliction, the
fountain of life, strength, and peace, and the
means of our resurrection or~ spiritual quicken
ing. The scriptures contain " eternal life" because
they contain the spirit of Christ. The thoughts
of God contain the love of God. Bearing. them
constantly in our minds and hearts, we are
brought nearer and nearer to Christ, and are
more and more conformed to his image. Words
of scripture, fitly chosen, attract the angels to
us, repel evil spirits from us, and stand like
shields of fire between us and approaching sin.
Every thought from the Word of God is a sword
of truth capable of performing miracles in our
defence. We give a few examples of these spir
itual weapons, which may be infinitely varied
from the vast armory of Christ, according to the
special needs of each individual soul.
When the night of the spirit approaches and

256 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
our affections cool in the service of the Lord, as
the earth cools when it turns away from the sun,
knowing that the hour of temptation is nigh, let
us prepare ourselves against it by keeping before
us and frequently repeating, with the most earnest
faith and aspiration, such words as these :
" Watch ye and pray, lest ye enter into temptation :
the spirit indeed is willing but the flesh is weak."
" Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from
evil." " I also shall keep thee from the hour of temptation
which shall come upon all the world."
If the enemy approaches on the side of our
sensual nature, and we are sorely tempted to
violate the divine laws for its gratification, let
us remember the words of the Lord, and repeat
them in the face of the tempting spirit :
" If any man will come after me, let him deny himself
and take up his cross and follow me.
" For whosoever will save his life shall lose it ; and
whosoever will lose his life for my sake shall find it."
" Depart from me, ye evil-doers, for I will keep the
commandments of my God."
If we feel the subtile strivings of the selfhood,
as it reaches out its grasping hand, under many

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 257
plausible pretences, after the worldly treasures
of wealth, ambition, place, and power, let us
check its advance by whispering in its ear :
" Take heed and beware of covetousness, for a man's
life consisteth not in the abundance of the things which
he possesseth."" Get thee behind me, Satan : thou art an offence unto
me : for thou savorest not the things that be of God, but
those that be of men."
If the devil, simulating an angel of light, con
gratulates us on our spiritual advancement, show
ing us how good and useful we are in comparison
with others, let us fall upon our knees in genuine
humility, as Christ fell upon his face in the gar
den, and exclaim :
" Who can understand his errors? cleanse thou me
from secret faults.
" Keep back thy servant also from presumptuous sins ;
let them not have dominion over me."
" And the publican, standing afar off, would not lift
up so much as his eyes unto heaven, but smote upon his
breast, saying, God be merciful unto me a sinner."
The revelation of God to man is so infinite in
its character, that every created being who
searches the scriptures for the words of eternal
22*

258 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
life, exactly adapted to his present and humblest
needs, will surely find them. This is true, be
cause the providences of God are always special
and personal. To believe in a general provi
dence but not in a special providence is an
absurdity. Whatever controls the mass must
control the separate and least parts of the mass.
The same gravitation which governs the move
ments of suns and planets holds atom to atom in
the apple and the dew-drop. God is neither
omnipresent nor omniscient unless he simultane
ously sees, hears, and knows the spiritual con
ditions and minutest wants of every creature in
his universe.
The love and wisdom of the Divine Man
are infinite in that beautiful humanity, so that
every weary and seeking soul can enter into
a direct personal and human rapport with the
sources of divine life and power. To know him
is to see him spiritually, and in the spiritual
world thought makes presence. Hence the in
calculable value of truth as distinguished from
error, and " the excellency of the knowledge of
Christ Jesus our Lord."
To be conformed to the image of Christ is
therefore to follow the Lord in the regeneration ;

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 259
to bear the cross with self-denial, faith, obedi
ence, and prayer ; to seek him in his Word, eat
ing his spiritual flesh and drinking his spiritual
blood ; to be tempted and suffer with him ; and,
finally, to crucify with him our carnal nature, and
to share with him in his spiritual resurrection.
It is thus that we may " grow up into him in all
things," until our lives are united with his 4ife,
even as he was united to his Father.
What is the logical consequence of this veri
table and organic union of our souls and bodies
with the soul and body of the Divine Man ?
The perfect sanctification of the soul and the
absolute redemption of the body. This is the
state of good spirits and angels. It may be
exceedingly difficult on this earth, in the present
age, but it is not impossible, for these glorious
words of encouragement for its attainment were
not given in vain :
" Either make the tree good and his fruit good, or else
make the tree corrupt and his fruit corrupt, for the tree
is known by his fruit." Matt. xii. 33.
" Whosoever abideth in him, sinneth not ; whosoever
sinneth hath not seen him, nor known him." 1 Jno. iii. 6.
" Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin." 1
Jno. iii. 9.

260 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
" For our conversation is in heaven." Phil. iii. 20.
" Conformed to the image of his Son." Eom. viii. 29.
" Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is
none of his." Eom. viii. 9.
"I am crucified with Christ : nevertheless I live : yet
not I, but Christ liveth in me" Gal. ii. 20.
" Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on
me, the works that I do shall he do also : and greater
works than these shall he do ; because I go to my Father."
Jno. xiv. 12.
" I can do all things through Christ which strength
ened me." Phil. iv. 13.
" He that saith he abideth in him ought himself also
so to walk even as he walked." 1 Jno. ii. 6.
" For this is the will of God, even your sanctification."
1 Thes. iv. 3.
" That we may present every man perfect in Christ
Jesus." Coloss. i. 28.
" To know the love of Christ which passeth knowledge,
that ye might be filled with all the fulness of God."
Ephes. iii. 19.
" Be ye therefore perfect even as your Father which is
in heaven is perfect." Matt. v. 48.
Such is the ideal which Christ gave us of the
christian character, a conformity to his own im
age, an ideal faithfully held up by the apostles
and immediate disciples. It was because so

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 261
many members of the primitive church lived up
to this grand regenerate ideal, truly knowing
and conforming themselves to the image of the
Divine Man, that " signs and wonders" accom
panied the spread of the gospel. Had the church
retained in its power and purity the divine truth
committed to it, those signs and wonders would
have continued and multiplied ; the Holy Ghost,
the Comforter, or the effluent life and spirit of
Jesus Christ would have guided his followers,
and the whole world would have been converted
to Christianity. The second coming of the Lord
so earnestly expected by the apostles would have
really taken place. He would have become in
carnate in the sanctified bodies and lives of his
children ; the incorrigibly wicked would have'
been separated and destroyed ; the very face of
nature would have been changed ; and the will
of the Lord would have been done on the earth
as it is in heaven. Such is the trans.cendent and
transforming power of divine truth !
Alas ! the dense ignorance and sensuality of
the world at that time forbade the glorious con-
' summation. Man possesses the faculty of mis
understanding, misinterpreting, and falsifying
the truth, without any consciousness of evil or

\

262 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
intention of error. Truth falsified leads to no
perfection of character, no divineness of life.
Errors and heresies arose upon all sides among
the conflicting elements of the young church of
Christ, the newly-converted Jews and pagans.
Strife, wranglings, dissensions, disputes, vain
babblings, became incessant. The primal truth
of Christianity, the -Unity of God in the one per
son of the Divine Man, became insensibly lost,
literal interpretations and polytheistic influences
being in the ascendant. The more subtle truth,
that we are saved by his spiritual death and his
spiritual resurrection, sqon^followed. Sjtrange
doctrines arose : the doctrine of three persons,
of an offended Father, a second person detached
from the first person on the mission of salvation,
of a bloody sacrifice demanded, of the innocent
suffering in the stead of the guilty, etc., etc.,
f doctrines never taught by Christ and unknown '
to the apostles, the inventions of men, tainted
with paganism, false inferences from premises
still more unfounded.
After the fundamental truths of Christianity
were perverted or lost, the church was shorn of
its genuine spiritual power. It ceased to be able
to convert the Jew or the pagan, and has re-

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 263
mained unable ever since. It has nowhere pene
trated deeper than the rind_of heathenism. With
only half-truths or perverted truths to guide it,
all has been chaos. Questions of eternal mo
ment have been decided by a show of hands and
a count of heads, very few of whom were capable
of any just decision whatever. The ignorant and
the incompetent were in enormous majorities.
The_genuine truths of heaven were branded as
heresies^ Alas ! there was no Comforter to lead
them into truth : for the Comforter only comes
upon conditions, and the conditions were not
complied with.
The ecclesiastical history of Europe, from the
third to the middle of the last century, the dark
est, saddest, bloodiest page of human record, is
proof enough to the rational mind that the spirit
of JesusCErist did not guide and illuminate the
church as a corporate body. Materialized and
carnalized by the spirit of literal interpretation,
and rank with spiritual, political, and social am
bitions, it sank to the level of the philosophies
of the day, and it has only survived the struggle
because, with all its imperfections, it was the
fittest. The mere hem of Christ's, garment is
Better than the full robes of human wisdom.

264 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
We are on the eve, however, of new revolu
tions and of stupendous events. The great
political and social institutions, which, under
the name of churches, patronize and dominate
the religious instincts of man, ai^ujldiyrrnijajejL
honey-combed, and riddled, and are being pre-
pared for astounding transformations. The lost
truths of Christianity are about to be restored
to mankind, and they will do the work which
they might have achieved a thousand years ago,
ihad the primitive church been faithful to its
itrust. The Son of Man is coming to judge the
world in a manner jmtirely unsuspected. He is
shining through his Word with a light never re
vealed before. The two resurrections are taking
place on all sides : that of the wicked to a life
of intensified evil, that of the good to a life of
absolute consecration to Christ. The devil's
commune is organizing for the_ destruction of
the race. Christ's commune is counter-organ
izing for its redemption. The tares and the
wheat are to be separated. The reapers, the
angels, are at hand. We can penetrate no
further through the darkness of the chaos that
impends. We only know that the Lord Jesus

CONFORMED TO HIS IMAGE. 265
Christ, the Divine Man, by his continuous com
ing, will bring forth out of that chaos " a new
heaven and a new earth wherein dwelleth right
eousness."

23

RESUME.
Let us now pass in review, with a little dif
ferent phraseology, and some additional illustra
tions, the fundamental principles which may be
called the lost truths of Christianity, in order that
the reader may compare them with those perver
sions of truth which have taken their place, and
which were drawn from a too literal interpreta
tion of the Holy Scriptures. Meditating then
upon the spiritual desolation of our own times,
he will be able to realize the truth of the words
of the prophets :
" My people are destroyed for lack of knowledge : be
cause thou hast rejected knowledge, I will also reject thee,
that thou shalt be no priest to me : seeing thou hast for
gotten the law of thy God, I will also forget thy children."
Hosea iv. 6.
"My people hath been lost sheep: their shepherds
have caused them to go astray, they have turned them
away on the mountains : they have gone from mountain
to hill, they have forgotten their resting-place." Jere
miah 1. 6.
266

RESUME. 267

I.
God is a Divine Man, one in spirit and in per
son : Jehovah in the Old Testament, Jesus Christ
in the New : infinite and incomprehensible in his
essence, made finite and comprehensible in his
person, for the salvation of his creatures.
Man was created in the image of God, not
vaguely and metaphorically, but actually and
organically: being a composite form of finite
affections, thoughts, and actions, which bear to
each other the same fixed and organic relation
ship of cause and effect which the infinite affec
tions, thoughts, and actions of the Supreme
Being bear to one another.
God's infinite love, wisdom, and power are the
Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the trinity in one
person, corresponding to the will, the under
standing, and the effluent life of the individual
man ; and there is no trinity in God which does
not also exist in his image.
The Godhead can no more consist of three
persons than the human soul can consist of three
persons : and Jesus Christ is Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost in one divine human form.
Love is the Father or progenitor, begetting
Wisdom as a Son, and Love and Wisdom, con-

268 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
joined in an indissoluble marriage, manifest
themselves in the Power of the Holy Ghost.
During the earthly career of Christ, this trinity
appeared to be separated into an invisible Father,
a visible Son, and a Holy Ghost not yet given :
but that separation was^ojdy jm_appearance or an
apparent truth, accommodated to the imperfec
tions and limitations of the human mind : for
God himself is entirely indivisible and unchange
able. The changes in the earthly career of Jesus
Christ were due to the human nature derived
from the mother : changes which He, the un-
changeablei_effected_in the_ human or change
able element which He assumed by the laws of
heredity. n.
The laws of God, spiritual and natural, are the
will of God in operation, the modes and expres
sions of the divine life, productive of perfect
harmony, order, beauty, peace, and joy.
Sin is the violation of these laws, destroying
the harmonic relations between God and man,
and producing discord and disorder and ever-
increasing spiritual and physical misery.
When man first desired to do something con-

RESUME. 269

trary to the will of God, and did it, he broke the
rapport of our human affections with the divine
love or primal source of goodness.
The consequence was an evil state of the will,
divorced and separated from the divine will.
Thence came the whole brood of evil passions.
Evil affections begat as their legitimate chil
dren perverted thoughts and false opinions, thus
breaking the rapport between the human under
standing and the divine wisdom or primal source
of truth.
Evil affections acting through falsities of opin
ion produced a disorderly and wicked life, thus
totally divorcing the spirit and body from the
influxes or influent forces of the Divine Being.
When a man lives in the order of heaven, or
according to the divine will, his affections are
pure and holy, his thoughts wise, and his actions
righteous : his human trinity is in rapport with
the divine trinity.
When he inverts the order of life by rejecting
God and worshipping self, his affections become
selfish and depraved, his opinions erroneous and
his conduct sinful. He brings disorder, pain,
misery, ruin upon himself and others. The
aggregate social state of such beings is hell.
23*

270 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The effects of sin on the man himself, spir
itual and natural, now and hereafter, are the
punishment of sin, and itjtag jio other pun
ishment. It is terribly, hideously, eternally self-
punishing. God's justice is not a legal or governmental
justice in a human sense, but it flows from the
spontaneous operation of organic and eternal laws,
which can neverjje changed or supplemented^
Good is therefore self-rewarding, and evil is
self-punishing in the very nature of things. This
is meant by the kingdom of heaven prepared for
the good and the everlasting fire prepared for the
devil and his angels from the foundation of the
world, or in the very ground-work of the social
frame. Each man creates and carries within
himself his own heaven or hell.
Sins are forgiven or remitted, passed by or set
aside, whenever man ceases to sin and turns to
the Lord, for when he obeys the laws of divine
order, he comes again into the direct current of
the divine life and its blessings.
Sin is a spiritual disease which requires to be
cured rather than to be forgiven, the forgiveness
and the cure being identical, as Jesus taught in
Matt. ix. 6 : " That ye may know that the Son

RESUME. 271

of Man hath power upon earth to forgive sins,
he saith to the sick of the palsy, Arise and take
up thy bed." in.
Man's will having been organically perverted,
he cannot, change his evil nature by any effort of
his own. Without a new will, created in him
by some higher power, he must forever display
the same wicked passions and false ideas and
disorderly life.
Jesus Christ therefore came to save his people
from their sins.
In order to bring man back into harmonic re
lations with himself, the triune God, the Supreme
Being, created a human body in the womb of
the virgin Mary, animated it with his own spirit,
and was born and lived in this world as the his
torical man Jesus Christ.
This was done without the least change in his
omnipresence, his omniscience, and his omnipo
tence : for the infinite can never be diminished
by subtraction nor increased by addition. It
was a divine work of accommodation to the
finiteness of human perceptions, a natural and
inevitable work from the spontaneous expansive-

272 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
uess and creativeness of divine love, adapting
itself to all conditions and contingencies.
The historical man, Jesus Christ, spiritually
connected with the infinite centres of life in a
manner . unlike ourselves, inherited from his
mother an infirm human nature like ours, an
evil and sinful nature in which he was tempted
(without actual sin) in all points as we are, a na
ture distorted like ours from the original divine
order of life and prone to all evil.
Jesus Christ crucified and delivered to death
every particle of the human or carnal nature de
rived from his mother, having borne for us our
sins and iniquities in his own body from the
manger to the cross, not as a punishment, but
as a burden, which he cast off by divine power.
This was done by a displacement of all the evil
passions, false ideas, and proclivities to wicked
actions, which were developed in him by atavism
or the influx of hereditary evil, and the substi
tution of the divine love, the divine wisdom, and
the divine righteousness in their stead.
This may be illustrated in the following man
ner : if all the offices in a government from
highest to lowest are filled by wicked and cor
rupt men, it is an evil government ; but if every

RESUME. 273

officer be removed and a perfect man put in his
place, we have a perfect government without any
change in its organic forms. Such was the work
which God effected in his human nature. It is
still human, but divinely human.
Such also is the change which the Lord effects
in our natures : substituting his will and heavenly
affections, his wisdom and truth, and his prac
tical righteousness for all our infirmities and
iniquities of will, thought, and deed. We are
thus created anew and conformed to his own
image. IV.
By assuming our human nature, God subjected
himself to the ordinary limitations of time and
space, so that he could only think and feel com
paratively as men do under those limitations.
His self-consciousness on earth was thereby
limited to his human nature, and to such portion
of the divine love and wisdom as could descend
and enter into his finite human structures.
All of his own life above and beyond that
self-consciousness appeared to him as a remote
and separated God whom he called his Father,
to whom he prayed and to whom he earnestly
desired to be united.
M*

274 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
It was this finited human nature which was so
sorely tempted by all the powers of evil in earth
and hell.
By gradual and painful steps he regenerated
or glorified this human nature, until it became a
perfectly divine nature. This is meant by his
going away, his ascending to heaven, his becom
ing one wdth the Father.
The redemptive work of Christ consisted in
assuming, by the laws of heredity, an infirm
human nature, full of hereditary evil, dying to it
and emerging from it after terrible spiritual and
physical experiences, in a perfect divine human
form, an infinitely regenerated or glorified man,
the new Adam, " the first-begotten from the
dead," " the first-born of many brethren," the
eternal medium of conjunction between God and
man, the intercessor, the truth, the resurrection,
and the life.
The purification and glorification of this hu
man nature were effected by temptation-com
bats, which brought the divine spirit into contact
with all the hereditary evils of the race and the
very primal sources of evil itself. These he con
quered and subdued in his own person, so that
whosoever applies to him in faith will receive

RESUME. 275

from him by impartation the same divine power
which achieved his own victories.
Christ glorified his human nature from first to
last, from the lowest elements of our sensual life
up to a perfect union with the divine nature, so
that he is symbolically the lamb, the lion, and
the serpent, able to reach and save to the utter
most all the outcasts of sin.
Everything he had derived from his mother
perished in this great work of self-regeneration.
Correspondently every atom of his material body
was resolved into its original elemental form
by dissipation, or instantaneous and total decom
position in the sepulchre. This was repre
sented by a great explosion or earthquake which
rolled away the stone from the mouth of the
sepulchre, whilst nothing was left in the sep
ulchre except the clothing in which he had been
buried. AsChristij_npw, according to his own declar
ation, the God he was before the incarnation and
even before the world was, being both the Father
and the Son, it is well for us to dismiss from our
minds the ideas of fathership and sonsliip, as
having been merely relative, accommodative, and
temporary, and to fix our thoughts upon the Re-

276 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
deemer as the supreme being, the Divine Man —
theLorcT v.
There are two deaths and two resurrections.
One is a physical death, followed by the resurrec
tion of a spiritual body out of the material form.
The other is a death to sin, a death to the car
nal and natural life of man, followed by a resur
rection or quickening of the moral nature into a
transcendent spiritual vitality.
Christ is the resurrection and the life, because
he underwent these processes of spiritual death
and glorification in his own spirit and body, and
from the power thus acquired he can draw, ele
vate, regenerate, and redeem mankind.
Christ is the Mediator and the Intercessor, be
cause he enters into our spiritual states, leads us
and guides us in our prayers and our life, and
lifts us upward to himself by the same means
which elevated and united him to his Father
during his earthly career.
The life he laid down for us was that carnal
life he derived from his mother. The life he
took up again was his own divine life made more
and more manifest in the increasing perfection
of his love and wisdom.

RESUME. 277

The death he tasted for every man was the
death the christian must die also, the death to
all the allurements and influences of our selfish
and earthly nature.
The cross he bore, and which we are to bear
in his name, was the conflict between good and
evil, the contradiction of sinners, the temptations
and the sufferings of the natural man striving
against sin.
He bore our iniquities in his own body; not
that he underwent any punishment of sin for us,
but because he took upon himself, in his whole
human nature, mental and physical, fhejaurdeii
of sin : felt as the sinner feels, desired to do as
the sinner does, was tempted in all respects as
we are bu.t infinitely more fiercely than we are,
suffered in all things as we do : all under the
pressure of hereditary evil without an iota of
actual sin.
His "lifting up" like the serpent in the wil
derness was the elevation of his affections and
thoughts from the lowest level of our sensual
nature into the light and perfect order of the
heavenly life. We must also be lifted up in him
that the old man of sin, the old Adam in us, may
perish as utterly as his carnal nature perished.
24

278 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The Son of Man came "to minister and to
give his life a ransom for many:" that is, he
came to consecrate and devote the energies of his
life to the will of his Father, which was the salva
tion of the human race. The half-shekel which
every member of the Jewish congregation gave
for the support of the tabernacle was called
"a ransom," and also "an atonement for their
souls" (Exodus xxx. 12-16). This little tax or
tribute represented the subjection and obedience
of the soul to God, which united or at-oned
them with him, and saved or ransomed them
from the power of sin. Christ is the great ran
som and the great atonement because his obedi
ence even unto death is the source of our life,
our union with God, and our deliverance from
hell. The blood of Christ was the divine truth
which he manifested, shed, or poured out upon
the world; his very life which he gives for the
spiritual sustenance of mankind ; the means of
reunion or at-one-ment with God.
VI.
Sacrifice has three meanings, all eminently
applicable to Jesus Christ as the great sacrifice.

RESUME. 279

Its primitive meaning is to make holy. Christ
assumed our evil human nature and made it per
fectly holy or divine.
Its second meaning is to offer up to heaven.
Christ offered up for our sakes the sacrifice of a
blameless, righteous, self-denying, obedient, hum
ble, and perfect life, the only possible sacrifice
with which God can be pleased.
Its third meaning is to devote with loss, to
give up or lose something for the benefit of others.
Christ sacrified, gave up, lost, crucified the life
of the carnal nature derived from his mother, so
that he might become a perfectly regenerated
man, the eternal medium of spiritual life to the
world. The sacrifice of Christ was twofold, — a sacri
fice or crucifixion of his carnal nature at the
command or internal dictate of the Father within
him, and the sacrifice of his own life, his good
ness and truth, to the utmost needs of humanity,
whereby he gives us his spiritual flesh and blood,
and makes us actual partakers of his holiness.
In our work of regeneration, we are to make
similar sacrifices, — a sacrifice of our carnal na
tures at the command of our Father, Christ, and
a sacrifice of our lives and labors to the service

280 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
of our brethren. Christ's mission and ours are
identical. We are saved by a union with Christ, pro
cured by conformity to his image, by being cir
cumcised in heart from the lusts of the flesh, as
he was (Coloss. ii. 11) ; by baptism, or initiation
into the truths of the church ; by denying our
selves (abstaining from sin), by taking up our
cross (crucifying our carnal nature), and by fol
lowing his footsteps in faith and obedience and
good works, so as to suffer and triumph with
him in temptations, to die with him to all sin, to
rise with him into newness of life, thus sharing
his resurrection, and, finally, to become one with
him even as he was made one with the Father.
" I in them, and thou in me."
This is the reconciliation with God, the at-one-
ment, or the bringing of man into one mind with
God, the restoration of man to the lost order of
the divine life, and the final harmonic adjust
ment between all subjective and objective rela
tions. The rites and ceremonies and all the phe
nomena of the external history of the Jews con
tain in their spiritual meanings the most minute
details of the glorification of Jesus Christ and

RESUME. 281

the corresponding regeneration of the human
soul. " And beginning at Moses and all the prophets,
he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the
things concerning himself." Oh, the treasures of
wisdom which are concealed under the rude ex
teriors of the ancient word of God !
When will the christian of the present age
who thinks himself rich in divine truths, pos-
jjgssed of much spiritual goods, and in need of
nothing; not knowing that he is poor and miser
able and blind and naked : when will he awake
from his self-complacent lethargy, and seek and
find in the opened Word of God gold tried in
the fire that he may be rich indeed, white raiment
that he may be clothed, and eye-salve that he
may anoint his eyes and see ?
VII.
All spiritual life, truth, and power are gifts of
God, and they are given to man according to the
depth of his humility, the sincerity of his aspira-
tion, and the strength of his faith, not by any
arbitrary enactment or special favors, but in the
organic operation .of eternal and immutable
spiritual laws. 24*

282 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
The religion of Jesus Christ is altruism, or
consecration of self to others. " Bear ye one
another's burdens, and so fulfil the law of
Christ." The law of Christ is not a single com
mand but his entire spirit.
The object of religion is to make us Christ-like
or Godlike. We are only religious^ in the degree
that we imitate and resemble Christ. All else is
sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.
Faith in Christ is the acceptance of the wis
dom of Christ as our guide in life, and it is
saving faith only when the love of Christ is so
wedded to it that it becomes the supreme power
that regulates our affections, our thoughts, and
our conduct in perfect obedience to the divine
will. The new birth is the birth of Christ in the
soul. We are born of the Spirit, when Christ as a
father creates in us a new will, a new under
standing, a new life, a new creature, as his Father
created in him.
For him to do this, we must follow him in the
regeneration, we must be baptized with him, we
must suffer with him striving against sin, we
must be tempted with him, we must be crucified

RESUME. 283

and die with him, and we must rise with him
into the holiness of the divine life.
Every one of his_ miracles must be performed
in our souls, for he performed them in his own.
Our spiritual states are perfectly represented by
blindness, deafness, lameness, palsy, possession of
devils, and death. He has power over all flesh,
and he gives us the same power to conquer all
evil. He will enable us to do " greater works"
than he did, because he contended only against
hereditary evils, but we contend, by his power,
against actual sins.
He demands of us and has promised us his
own victory, the sanctification of the soul and
the redemption of the body. Whole work is
easier than half work in the kingdom of God.
We can realize on earth the " heavenly places in
Christ Jesus." We can live without sin. We
can walk, by his strength, even as he walked.
The charity described by Paul (1 Corinth, xiii.)
as infinitely transcending all knowledge, all faith,
all alms-giving, all outward sacrifices, is the heart
and life of Christ, as it should be manifested in
the individual experience of the christian.
When the trinity in our mental structures, our
will, our understanding, and our life (heart, mind,

284 THE LOST TRUTHS OF CHRISTIANITY.
and strength) is thoroughly subordinated to the
divine trinity in Jesus Christ, his love, his wis
dom, _and_his power, we can then receive in its
true sense the benediction of the apostle, the
grace of the Lord Jesus Christ and the love of
God and the communion of the Holy Ghost.

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