YALE UNIVERSITY
LIBRARY

From the Library of
CARLETON HAZEN

fc_ ^d^d cS /Z.

ol, -6Csi4 vfZISLtZ. y/^^Vi

£isz~£i-<f

Present Day Theology

A POPULAR DISCUSSION OF LEADING DOCTRINES
OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH

BY
LEWIS FRENCH STEARNS
LATE PROFESSOR OF CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY IN BANGOR THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

WITH A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH BY
GEORGE L. PRENTISS
PROFESSOR IN UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY

NEW YORK
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS
1893

Copyright, 1893, by
CHARLES SCRIBNER'S SONS

TROW DIRECTORY
PRINTINQ AND BOOKBINDINQ COMPANY
NEW YORK

CONTENTS

PAGE
Biographical, Sketch, ... .... v
I. The Natural Revelation of God, ... 1
II. The Redemptive Revelation  18
III. The Evidences of Christianity, ... 36
IV. The Meaning of the Miracles, .... 58
V. TnE Holy Scriptures,  75
VI. Inspiration,  92
VII. The Kingdom of God  110
VIII. Jesus the Christ, . . .... 129
IX. Christological Problems,  152
X. Relation of Christ to God and the Creation, 170
XI. The Trinity,  189
XII. The Christian Conception of God, . . . 209
XIII. The Plan of God, . ... .228
XIV. Creation, . . .... 248
XV. The Providence of God,  264
XVI. Man,  282
XVII. The Nature and Guilt of Sin, .... 301
XVIII. Sin and Man's Race Relations, .... 321
XIX. Man's Condition as a Sinner, .... 343
XX. The Redemptive Work of Christ, . 361

IV CONTENTS PAGE
XXI. The Redemptive Work of Christ, . . . .381
XXII. The Redemptive Work of Christ, . . . 402
XXIII. Election and Predestination, . . . 424
XXIV. Justification by Faith, . ... 440
XXV. The New Life,  457
XXVI. The Other Life,  476
XXVII. The Day of the Lord,  502
The Present Direction of Theological Thought in the
Congregational Churches of the United States, . 531
Index of Subjects  547
Index of Scripture Passages,  564

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Lewis French Stearns was born at Newburyport,
Mass., on March 10, 1847. His father was the Eev.
Jonathan French Stearns, then pastor of the Federal
Street Presbyterian Chnrch in that ancient town. The
maiden name of his mother was Anna S. Prentiss. He
was the second of three children. The eldest, Seargent
Prentiss Stearns, Consul-General at Montreal under
President Arthur, is now living in that city, and his sis
ter Annie is the wife of Dr. Austin Scott, President of
Butgers College, New Brunswick, N. J. He had good
reason to rejoice in his parentage. It made him heir,
along several lines, to the oldest and best religious life
of New England. On his father's side it allied him with
a ministerial family noted through successive genera
tions for admirable personal qualities, piety, and wide
influence. Dr. O. W. Holmes, in his poem " The School-
Boy," described it as
 a saintly race that never could,
From youth to age, be anything but good.
On his mother's side he inherited some of the pleas-
antest, as well as worthiest, memories of Cape Cod and
the Old Colony, and of Maine, in the eighteenth and first
third of the nineteenth century. All the roots of his
being ran back into the rich Puritan and Pilgrim soil of
the seventeenth century.

Vi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
In the autumn of 1849 his father accepted a call to
the First Presbyterian Church of Newark, N. J. Here
Lewis spent his boyhood, and this was the home of his
student years. Newark at that time was a leading cen
tre, in New Jersey, of Presbyterianism, as also of social
culture, professional talents, public spirit, and success
ful manufacturing industries. Its history was full of
honored names. The First Church especially abounded,
both then and through all its previous annals, in men
prominent alike in Church and State. It was a good en
vironment for the growth of solid virtues. And Lewis
showed, while still a child, a keen susceptibility to the
best influences about him. He was marked, even as a
little boy, by striking individual traits. The observing
eye of his aunt, the author of " Stepping Heavenward,"
was early attracted to him, and he soon won her spe
cial affection — an affection that ripened into a life-long
friendship. Her letters contain frequent allusions to
him. Here is a passage from one to his mother, dated
Newark, August 14, 1851. Lewis was then four and a
half years old, and his aunt occupied the parsonage,
while his parents were absent on a journey :
All is going on well at your house. Luly is perfectly well and
the very best of boys, and you would smile to see him in his papa's
place at the breakfast-table, while I occupy yours, each of us as
grave as a judge. He comes up every morning and waits on me
down to breakfast, looking as neat as a pink.
A few weeks later, in another letter, she pictures him
as bursting with joyous excitement and racing "like
mad," with a little cousin, up and down a Sound
steamer. His brother thus depicts some of his traits
as a boy and a student :
His first real preparation for college began at the Newark
Academy, then, as now, the leading school in Newark. Here he

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH vii
worked hard and showed that aptitude for acquirement and pains
taking thoroughness- in his studies which afterward so distin
guished him. He mastered everything as he went along, and had
a relish for study for study's sake. Besides the regular curricu
lum, which consisted of the ordinary English branches and the
rudiments of Latin and Greek, he took up of his own volition and
outside of school the study of German and French, and of experi
mental chemistry. For the latter he fitted up a laboratory in the
attic of the old parsonage where we then lived, and carried on
such experiments and investigations as the limited means at his
disposal would permit. He constructed a rough camera out of a
cigar-box and the lens of a magic lantern, and astonished us by
taking some very fair photographs of neighboring objects. It
was at this time, and I mention it as an interesting development
of his many-sided character, that he meditated the invention of a
new language, and with infinite care and patience proceeded to
establish for it an alphabet and grammar. Of course this task
was, after a while, and before it had taken complete form, aban
doned, but it showed the bent of his mind and his confidence in
his inventive faculty. About this time, too, he edited a weekly
paper, which was neatly written out in manuscript, and read be
fore the school. A little later on he printed copies of them on
a little hand-press which had been given to him, and distributed
them among his mates.
He was very fond of music and no mean musician, although
mainly self-taught, playing fairly well on both the piano and the
flute, and when his eyes first began to trouble him and interfere
with his work, whiling away many a weary hour with one or the
other. He had a peculiar affection for cats, and they seemed drawn to
him, and as far back as I can remember he had one or more of
these pets attached to him, and his whimsical humor showed it
self in the odd names he gave to them.
He was the soul of the domestic circle, interesting in conversa
tion, quick at repartee, full of wit, with a keen sense of the ridic
ulous and a'rare art of putting things, and the idol of the chil
dren. Wherever he was, there was sure to be fun and frolic.
The home at the old Newark parsonage was one of
almost ideal comfort and sweetness. All gracious influ-

viii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
ences conspired to bless it. Strength and beauty were
in it. The father was an eminently wise as well as good
man; cultured, social, public-spirited, of commanding
influence, and a model of pastoral fidelity. The mother,
a woman of rare attractions and force of character, shed
brightness upon all about her. An aged and saintly
grandmother, his brother and sister, to all of whom
Lewis was deeply attached, completed this Christian
home. Its hospitable doors were constantly opening
also to welcome kindred and friends from New York and
New England, whose visits and conversation formed no
small element in the education of Lewis Stearns. His
uncle, President Stearns, of Amherst College, was one of
these visitors ; and another, coming much oftener, and
laden always with the good cheer of learned, as also of
unlearned and merry talk, was Henry Boynton Smith, of
New York, Professor in Union Theological Seminary.
Among the early and most intimate friends of Lewis
was Eichard Wayne Parker, Esq., of Newark, who gives
the following recollections of him :
We were brought up together in Newark. For several years he
was my classmate at the Academy. In 1862 he went to Andover
to study at Phillips Academy, and I followed him the next year.
We entered Princeton together and were close companions during
all the college course, graduating in 1867. In the classics he was
the undisputed first of his class. For a year or more we were at
~ the Columbia Law School. In 1871 1 joined him in Europe, and
we travelled three months together — together night and day. If
anybody knew him well, I did. Even as a boy he thought, stud
ied, and acted for himself ; and he seemed to feel and realize the
duties, ambitions, problems, and mysteries of life with an inten
sity that marked all he said or did. He had a natural earnestness
of character, united to an almost feminine sensibility that ren
dered the simplest situation grave to him, in its surroundings and
possibilities. I never knew anyone who seemed to me to hate
evil as he did. I have re-read my diary of 1871, and noted the

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH IX
record in it of his horror of Carlsbad gambling, of European
morals, and of all those foreign customs and ways abroad that
are so contrary to our American ideas of true living. I have al
ways regretted that he gave up the bar. Great as he was in the
ology, I believe his peculiar gifts of mind and character qualified
him to be greater still in the law. The first and foremost thing
about him was his love of truth. He made early and strong
friendships ; nor was one of them ever broken.
Early in 1869 his mother died, and not long after he
decided to devote himself to the ministry of the Gospel.
His theological studies were pursued at Princeton Sem
inary, 1869-70 ; at the Universities of Berlin and Leip
zig, 1870-71 ; and at Union Seminary, in the city of
New York, 1871-72. In October, 1873, he was or
dained and installed over the Presbyterian church at
Norwood, N. J. During his short ministry in this place
he greatly endeared himself to the people. His imme
diate successor testifies to the strong impression which
his manly and Christian qualities — especially his pasto
ral kindness, sympathy, and gentle ways — left upon the
little parish. Many years later I myself witnessed a
touching illustration of the enduring power and tender
ness of this impression. In 1876 he accepted a call to
the Professorship of History and Belles-lettres, in Al
bion College, at Albion, Mich. Eesigning in 1879, on
account of a serious affection of the eyes, he returned to
his father's house, where he spent the next year in
varied literary work, trying his hand at a novel for one
thing, and in learning the expert use of a typewriter.*
I was brought into very close intimacy with him at this
* The story (writes a friend) bore the title of " Camp Out," and was
based upon his own experiences in the Adirondaoks. It was charmingly
written and would, no doubt, have attracted many readers by its com
bination of fancy and imagination, by its delicate humor, and by its
bright pictures of nature. The MS. had just been sent to the pub
lisher when the call to Bangor came.

X BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
time and observed with delight the growing breadth,
power, and maturity of his culture, both literary and
theological. Finding me one day busied with " The
Life and Letters " of his aunt, and worried at the pros
pect of reading the tangled " proofs " of my undecipher
able MS., he begged that I would let him type-write it
for me, meeting my refusal with the assurance that it
would be a real labor of love. And so the whole MS.,
neatly type-written by him, passed into the hands of
the printer.
About this time he was called to the chair of system
atic divinity in the Theological Seminary at Bangor, Me.
In a letter dated August 22, 1880, and addressed to the
Eev. S. H. Hayes, a trustee of the seminary, I thus ex
pressed my opinion of him :
And now as to the position in Bangor. In my judgment he is
admirably fitted for a chair of theology, mentally, morally, and
spiritually. I know of no man of his age whom I regard as his
superior in such qualifications. He comes of one of the oldest
and best New England stocks, is an accomplished scholar, a
thoughtful, earnest Christian, has had experience as a pastor and
academic teacher, is at once liberal and conservative in his temper,
is full of enthusiasm for truth, understanding thoroughly the
problems of modern thought and the great questions of the day,
and would impress himself strongly, I should expect, upon young
men under his care. I think he rather prefers Congregationalism
to Presbyterianism, a touch of heredity, perhaps. As a son of
Maine, I feel a hearty interest in Bangor, and should certainly
think the seminary fortunate, and the faculty also, if he should be
called to its chair of theology.
He accepted the call after painful hesitation and only
at my urgent persuasion and that of his father, protest
ing that he was not qualified for the chair of theology,
either mentally or spiritually. His modesty was not less
striking than his ability. From the first, however, he

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XI
approved himself to be the right man in the right place,
uncommonly gifted alike as a teacher and thinker. His
inaugural address,* delivered in June, 1881, at the close
of the seminary year, attracted wide attention and
showed plainly that a new theologian of the type of
Henry Boynton Smith was coming upon the stage. A
single extract will indicate the quality and scope of this
address :
The great body of Christians in this country have never aban
doned the belief that Jesus Christ is in the highest sense God.
In the denominations which are the rightful heirs of the primi
tive churches of the land there is no difference of opinion upon
this subject.
But, while we hold thus firmly to Christ's divinity, our age has
rejoiced to learn with new power the meaning of his humanity.
The devotion with which the gospel history has been studied, the
great number and popularity of the lives of Christ which have
appeared during the last three or four decades show the direction
of current thought. It is in the man Christ Jesus that this gen
eration has been taught to discover the God who was manifest in
the flesh. It is when we see the marks of his human suffering
and feel in our inmost hearts his brotherhood with us that we cry,
as Thomas did, " My Lord and my God ! "
The system of Christian doctrine must find its centre in Christ.
The old reformed theology, the theology of Calvin and of the
Westminster and Savoy Confessions, the theology of our Ameri
can Calvinistic churches centred in the decrees of God. It was a
high thought to begin thus back in the eternal purpose of the
Almighty, and from that transcendent stand-point to develop the
whole system of Christian faith. The result was a logical, powerful,
most coherent whole. In all the modifications of Calvinism, from
Edwards to Emmons, that centre was maintained ; but it is so no
longer. Long ago Christian thought, quietly and scarcely aware
of the change it was undergoing — a revolution almost as great as
that through which science passed in its transition from the Ptol
emaic to the Copernican system — detached itself from the old
centre and began to swing freely around the new. The former
system, with all its elevation of the divine sovereignty, was nar-
* See The New Englander for January, 1882, vol. v., p. 82.

Xii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
row and mechanical. Its theodicy failed just where it was most
needed. It placed the doctrine of election, which is true and
scriptural as the practical corollary of the divine efficiency in re
generation and sanctification, at the forefront and subordinated
everything to it. In it the elect were everything, and everything
was for the elect ; but the new theology finds another centre. It
is fitting that Christ, who is the historical centre of the Christian
religion, as he is the vital centre of his church, should be the cen
tre of the theological system. About him all the truths and doc
trines group themselves.
His ten years at Bangor, both in the seminary and in
the religious and social life of the town, were marked by
varied activity as well as ever-growing influence and use
fulness. Sailing up the Penobscot for the first time, on a
lovely October day, he was captivated by the beauty of
the place, and soon became very fond of it. Early in
1882 its attractions were greatly enhanced by his mar
riage to Miss Elizabeth Mann Benson. This auspicious
event allied him also by fraternal ties to his colleague in
the faculty, Professor Sewall. The new home brought
him constant help and gladness, and called into play
charming domestic qualities. The recollections of my
repeated visits to it are delightful. " Life broadens and
grows more beautiful in every way, as I go forward into
it," he said. As husband, father, friend, and neighbor he
seemed to me one of the sweetest, truest, and most com
panionable of men. What a picture, for example, was
the sight of him leading his little daughter by the hand
through the fine seminary grounds ! In walking with
him along the streets of Bangor I observed that every
body appeared to know and to like him. He was a
special favorite of his neighbors, the late ex- Vice Presi
dent Hamlin and Chief-Justice Appleton. In this re
spect he resembled his famous uncle, S. S. Prentiss,
whose society and talk fascinated old men of wisdom and

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xiii
culture quite as much as his oratory electrified the com
mon people. Nor was Professor Stearns's usefulness con
fined to Bangor. His influence, both as theologian and
preacher, was soon felt throughout Maine. It was his
mother's native State ; old kindred and friends of hers
met him wherever he went ; while interest in the semi
nary and his seminary work deepened more and more
into a lively interest in the prosperity of the churches
with which from the first the institution had been very
closely associated.
Early in 1890 Professor Stearns delivered a course of
lectures in Union Seminary on the Ely foundation. He
was not a little perplexed in selecting a subject for this
course. In a letter to me, dated May 29, 1888, he
wrote :
Do tell me if you have any more suggestions about the subject
for the Ely lectures. As I think the matter over, without being
able to get any help from reading, my mind gravitates as before
to a doctrinal subject. What do you think of " The Argument
for the Truth of Christianity derived from the Doctrine of the
Atonement ? " If the atonement is — as undoubtedly it is — the
central doctrine of Christianity, so that the cross is not only the
symbol of our faith but the exponent of its inmost and most es
sential meaning, then there ought to be in it a stronger evidence
for the truth of the whole system than that which can come from
any other source. Instead of maintaining a continual attitude of
defence respecting this central doctrine, acting as if we ourselves
doubted its reasonableness, we ought, like Paul, to run the stand
ard of the cross up to the masthead and draw our great proof of
the truth of Christianity from " Christ crucified," even though it
seems at first "unto the Jews a stumbling-block and unto the
Greeks foolishness." If we can show that "the foolishness of God
is wiser than men, and the weakness of God stronger than men,"
then we base our evidences upon a solid rock. I recognize the
difficulty of all this, especially the difficulty of mediating between
the Christian consciousness and the natural consciousness with re
gard to a doctrine which is in a sense esoteric ; but I can't help

Xiv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
thinking that I see light with regard both to the matter and the
form of the argument. Quite likely I should fail, but the very at
tempt would open the way for some one else. Sooner or later the
argument must be brought into prominence. The old external
evidences from miracles and prophecy are now inadequate ; the
• popular thought of our day treats them with scant respect. The
argument from Christian experience is impregnable, but it is of
limited applicability. Christianity has got to stand or fall by its
essential doctrines. We have got to show that in the moral and
spiritual sphere— to say nothing of the lower spheres— they consti
tute the only practical working hypothesis, that is, the only hypo
thesis that will correlate and explain the facts. I seem to see a
renewal of Constantine's vision, with the flaming cross pointing
the way to the apologetics of the future, 'Ew tovtw vUa ! The doc
trine of the atonement is the doctrine of the cross.
He finally chose as his theme "The Evidence of
Christian Experience," which he treated with such skill,
learning, and spiritual discernment as deeply to impress
all who heard him. While preparing the Ely lectures
his eyes gave him constant trouble, and would have
forced him to abandon the task, had not the eyes of his
wife been ever at his service. Alluding to this trouble
in the letter just quoted he adds : " It is the experience
of Tantalus to live in the midst of books and not to be
able to read them. Yet I doubt not the Lord has some
good end in view in appointing me this discipline."
The discipline was at times severe, and for more than
twenty years imposed upon him painful limitations both
in study and in his work. But he bore it bravely and
without murmuring. His faith in the ruling hand of
God, touching all things that concerned his life, whether
great or small, was unswerving.
In the early summer of 1890 Professor Stearns re
ceived a unanimous call from the Union Seminary in the
city of New York to the chair of Systematic Theology,
made vacant by the resignation of Dr. Shedd. After

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XV
long deliberation and sharp mental struggles, he declined
the call on the ground that he could not take the sem
inary pledge. A few extracts from his letters will ex
plain the attitude of his mind on this point. The first
was written in November, 1889 ; the other two were
written after he had received the call to New York.
What a time you are having about revision ! It seems as if the
storm-centre had left Congregationalism and were concentrated
over Presbyterianism. I have expected the question to come up
sooner or later, but did not suppose that the demand for revi
sion would be so extensive and loud. I trust you will do the
work thoroughly and not by halves. For my own part, I have
not so much objection to the Westminster Confession as some
have. But it is a millstone around the neck of any denomination,
such a system of doctrine as that. It is not simply its Calvinism
but its dogmatism all through. Haven't we got out of leading-
strings yet, and are we not to be trusted to be evangelical ? I
used to feel the pressure when I was a Presbyterian pastor. It
did not satisfy me to know that I was only expected to take the
Confession for substance of doctrine. I am a great deal more or
thodox now than then, and I ascribe it largely to the entire free
dom of thought I have had here among the Congregationalists.
It is not that my theology would be unacceptable to the direc
tors and constituency of Union Seminary, but that my conscience
will not allow me to subscribe in what would be for me a strained
and non-natural sense. If revision were consummated the case
would be different. Meantime it is my misfortune (if anything
that is according to God's will is a misfortune), to receive this
very honorable and generous call in the period of transition, too
early to share in the benefits of revision, and too late to ignore
what is involved in subscription as the Confession stands at pres
ent. ... I am not an Arminian, but I am not a Calvinist in
the sense in which I have supposed the Westminster Confession
to be Calvinistic.
What troubles me about the Confession is not the ipsissima
verba but the system. It seems to me that the whole Confession is
based upon the view that salvation is placed within the reach of
only a part of mankind. To the rest, though they have a larger

Xvi BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
or smaller measure of common grace, the power to accept Christ
is never given. This doctrine, if I rightly apprehend the subject,
dominates the whole system of the Confession.
If not ready to accept all his conclusions on the sub
ject, I none the less admired the manly spirit and the
high sense of duty which governed his own decision in
the case.*
He resumed his labors at Bangor without regret, for
his own conscience had closed the door to the wider
sphere offered him in New York. Bangor, too, had for
him its special attractions. The students admired and
loved him ; he was happy in the confidence and affec
tion of his colleagues ; and he liked the theological quiet
and seclusion of the place. I have never known a man
so able and highly trained who troubled himself less
about position or reputation in the world. " I have not
(he wrote me) so far as I know, an ambition outside of
the work God has given me here, but I have a strong
ambition to do that well."
About this time he was requested to write a paper on
" The Present Direction of Theological Thought in the
Congregational Churches of the United States," to be
read by him before the International Congregational
Council at London, in July, 1891, as a representative of
Bangor Seminary. Owing to the state of his health he
at first declined the appointment ; but at the urgent de
sire of the trustees of the seminary he reconsidered the
matter and consented to go. His paper was listened to
with the greatest interest and received unstinted praise
* While the question of accepting the call to New York was pend
ing, he made a visit to my summer home in Vermont, in order to meet
there President Hastings of Union Seminary, and to confer with us
on the subject. It was our last interview with him, and left upon us
both an ineffaceable impression of the noble sincerity, tenderness, and
strength of his Christian character.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xvii
from all quarters. Its effect is thus described by Dr. N.
G. Clark, the honored Secretary of the American Board,
who was present on the occasion :
He appeared on the platform a comparatively unknown man ;
he left it standing side by side with Dale and Fairbairn — a rec
ognized leader. Though taking no further prominent part in the
services, his paper was referred to again and again in the sub
sequent discussions. We doubt if any paper was more influential
in affecting the thought and sentiment of the Council. It was
needed to give form and proportion to the religious sentiment of
our English friends, and to hold them fast to the great fundamen
tal truths of Christianity while revolting from excessive dogma.
This was a valuable service rendered to the English delegates in
the Council. Professor Stearns helped the American delegation to
realize, as never before, just the progress we had made on more
conservative lines. Some one was needed to do just what he did,
to represent the progressive conservatism of the great body of rev
erent Christian thinkers, not only of our denomination but the
best Christian thought of all.*
At the close of the Council he, together with his wife,
made a journey to Norway, and then passed several weeks
in Dresden. Soon after reaching home he was elected a
corporate member of the American Board, and appointed
preacher for its next Annual Meeting. His last literary
labor was Henry Boxnton Smith, which he had been re
quested to prepare for the " American Eeligious Leader
Series." It appeared soon after his death, and was re
ceived with much favor. It is an excellent piece of bio
graphical work — bright, discriminating, and true to the
life. On February 9, 1892, after a brief illness, Professor
Stearns, then in the forty-fifth year of his age, passed
suddenly away from earth. His last hours were full of
the peace which comes of humble submission to God's
will and childlike trust in the Divine Saviour. Once and
* The London address will be found at the end of this volume.
b

Xviii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
again he said, " I die in the old faith." Not since the
triumphant departure of Edward Payson, in 1827, also in
his forty-fifth year, had a greater loss befallen the Con
gregational churches of Maine. Nor was the loss con
fined to Maine or to Congregationalism ; it was keenly felt
by Christian scholars in all New England and through
out the country. A genuine theologian, fully equipped
for his work by rich gifts of both nature and grace, is a
rare product of our own or any other soil. And Lewis
French Stearns had just come to be recognized as such
a theologian. The tributes to his memory were truly
surprising for their number and quality ; they came
from far and near and were all of a piece.* Those who
knew him best admired and loved him most ; but none
really knew him without admiring and loving him. He
was every inch a man ; and his whole manhood, while
seasoned through and through with the sweet charities
of the Gospel, was inspired also by very resolute convic
tions of truth and justice. He hated all the unfair and
wrongful means, which even good men are sometimes
tempted to use in the furtherance of what they deem
righteous ends. He held it as much a sin to bear false
witness against an infidel as against a Christian ; against.
a Unitarian or Eoman Catholic as against the most or
thodox Protestant. He was explicit and decided in his
opinions about parties and schools and individuals ; nor
in expressing them did he hesitate to make free use of
the weapons of wit, and even ridicule, which he knew
well how to wield ; but whether advocate or assailant,
* That of his colleagues will be found in the very thoughtful and
discriminating Memorial Address by Professor F. B. Denio, printed in
• the Andover Review for July, 1892. Not less striking were the trib
utes of trustees of the Seminary and old friends, in Maine and else
where, which almost filled the whole number of The Christian Mirror
for March 12, 1892, and also the Word and Work for March, 1892.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH xix
he held fast to his own veracity and honor. And this fine
quality, which marked his personal character, pervaded
his teaching, his writings, and all his influence as a
Christian scholar. I never knew one more ingenuous
and whole-hearted in the inquiry of truth. In this
" love-making or wooing " of truth, as Lord Bacon calls
it, his will, his conscience, and his best affections were
not only in full unison with the intellectual energj', they
were part and parcel of it.
In argument his power lay very much in the patience
and scrupulous care with which he studied, as well as
the fairness with which he recognized, the strength of
his opponent's position. It came also in part, as I
think, from the sense of humor, which was one of his
marked characteristics and led him to look at things in a
broad and generous way. This quick sense of humor
enlivened his whole home-life and was a special charm
of his familiar talk. It relieved the intensity of his
mental action, and served to lubricate the wheels of high-
wrought feeling and conviction. Both in the natural
and in the spiritual spheres how much the cause of truth
owes to this genial quality! The same traits that
marked him as a seeker after truth and as a Christian
scholar, gave him his power as a teacher. The testi
mony of his pupils on this point is most interesting. A
member of the Class of '82 writes :
In all he said we discerned the humble spirit of a sincere seeker
after truth, striving to make his own deeper thought and experi
ence of aid to us in forming clear and accurate opinions. He
never seemed dogmatic ; but we had no doubt of the positiveness
of his views. As we learned to know him we felt that his faith
was firmly buttressed by conviction of truth won in his own men
tal and spiritual conflicts. So conscientious was he in allowing
full weight to the ideas of others, that some who heard him but
seldom may have feared that he granted too much to those who

XX BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
differed from him in religious views ; but we who sat at his feet,
day after day, realized that his Christian courtesy was joined with
unyielding loyalty to the great truths for whose promotion the
seminary was founded. Under his direction theology seemed no
longer a dull consideration of dogmatic systems of the past, but a
living study of practical bearing upon the life and thought of the
present. He was more than a wise teacher. Behind his office
and shown in all his official as well as private intercourse with us
was the spirit of a devoted Christian, who felt in his own experi
ence the helpful power of the truth he taught.
A member of the Class of '84 writes :
I entered the seminary after a painful and protracted period of
doubt on almost every point of revealed religion. From the first
I felt a peculiar helpfulness in the class-room of Professor Stearns.
And this help did not arise alone from the fact that he taught
theology ; it came from the man himself. Whether correctly or
not, I felt that here was a man who himself had known doubts
and had fought through them to the truth. That he had settled
all questions that vex the scholars, I did not think, nor do I now.
He was keenly sensitive to all the questions of the higher criti
cism; he had more than a passive sympathy with newer state
ments of religious truth, and his mind was plainly open to the
entrance of new light. I should say that he had known much of
impatience with the older and sterner and more dogmatic the
ology, and had not swung back quite to it at that time. I do not
know that he ever did ; yet I have evidence from all later classes
that in every successive year of his work he showed signs of in
creasing willingness to accept the old definitions, in some cases
where the newer theories did not supply definitions which seemed
to him to fit the facts. As an illustration, the anthropomorphic
representations of God were very distasteful to him in our time ;
yet it was told me that later he did not hesitate to assert that God
was really " angry " with the wicked, at least was what no other
word would so nearly express. This representation to me, was in
harmony with the impression I received of him as a man of singu
larly open mind, never stagnant, never satisfied with present vis
ions of truth, always eager for larger visions, and for statements
that would exactly fit the facts. He could not from his nature

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXI
help seeking for scientific accuracy in statement ; when he did
not find it, he never pretended to have found it.
It was this fact in his intellectual make-up, which made him
the farthest from a dogmatic teacher. He was so scrupulous in
his fairness, that he sometimes seemed to have no opinion him
self in his effort to let us see all opinions ; indeed, as I have sug
gested,, it is probable that he did not feel so sure on some points
as some teachers ; he was himself a student with us, with wonder
ful reach of vision, grasp of all the elements in the problem, and
an analytic faculty which was keen as a Damascus blade. If he
did not tell us where the truth lay, he never left us in doubt as
to where it could not lie. This element in his method was of un
told value to me, in my then condition, and laid me under a last
ing debt of gratitude to Professor Stearns.
A member of the Class of '86 writes :
In the class-room, in the prayer-meeting, in the pulpit he
always helped me, but more than by what he said, he has inspired
me by what he was. By his unremitting toil, his unassuming
spirit, his fortitude in the time qf tribulation, he has fulfilled the
prophecy that a man shall be as a hiding-place from the wind, and
a covert from the tempest, as rivers of water in a dry place, as the
shadow of a great rock in a weary land.
He was practical, he was spiritual. I felt that he was near to
me and yet far above me. Many times as he has entered the
class-room or walked through the seminary grounds, I have said
to myself : " He is communing with God."
" There are, in this loud, stunning tide
Of human care and crime,
With whom the melodies abide
Of the everlasting chime :
Who carry music in their heart
Through dusty lane and wrangling mart,
Plying their daily task with busier feet,
Because their secret souls a holy strain repeat."
One more extract from these grateful tributes must
suffice ; it speaks for the Class of '93.
It seems impossible in a few words to say anything at all ade
quate about that character which was so bright, so many-sided,

xxii BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
and withal so simple, so transparent. In the class-room or out of
it, in society or in the home, his bearing was always that of a re
fined Christian gentleman. He never varied, he never changed,
except to show more and more to those who knew him the beauty
of his richly endowed nature. Great as our loss is, yet our gain is
greater in having been the last class to sit under his instruction,
and to receive the parting benediction of a life that was so full
of God and Christ. His dying message to us was in these words :
" Tell my dear Middle Class that nothing is of importance to them
except to know Jesus Christ as their divine Lord and Master."
We who so recently were accustomed to meet him day after
day can testify that the ineffable charm of his character lay in
the fact that he lived so near to Christ. His Saviour was a living,
ever-present Saviour. He drank deeply of the water of life, and
always seemed to be overflowing with the great, joyous truths re
vealed by God in Christ. There was something spontaneous in
every word that he uttered. The prayer, offered at the beginning
of each recitation, never failed by its simple directness to impress
us with the solemnity of the work before us. And so everywhere,
whether in the class-room or prayer-meeting, his strong, earnest
words came from the abundance o'f the heart. His words, but more
than all, his spirit, inspired us with more love for our Saviour, with
a higher conception of the responsibility of our calling, with a more
fervid longing in the prayer, "Thy kingdom come." He taught
us that breadth of view was to be obtained only by prayer, and by
a deep, searching study of God's Word. In a word, by his
own unselfish life and his teachings he helped us to realize the
noble possibilities of an ideal Christian manhood.
The subject of this brief sketch was very dear to me
both for his mother's sake and his own. Had he been
my son or younger brother, I could hardly have loved
him better. His letters, always bright, scholarly, affec
tionate, and full of high aspirations, were to me for years
a solace and refreshment. Intercourse and talk with
him revived the pleasantest memories of his father and
of Henry B. Smith, his father's friend and my own. I
never doubted that he would survive me a score or more
of years, and would yet render invaluable aid to the

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH XXlli
good old cause, which in their day and generation those
two admirable men served so well. But visum aliter Deo.
As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are His
ways higher than our ways. He knows when it is best
to call His children home to Himself. It is a very
blessed thing to follow Christ by faith here in time ; but
how much more blessed still to see Him face to face,
and to follow Him, whithersoever He goeth, in the life
everlasting !
The present volume was written three or four years be
fore Dr. Stearns's death. It aims to set forth and discuss
in popular form the leading doctrines of Christianity.
Had the author's life been spared the work would doubt
less have been carefully revised by him, if not rewritten.
Just before his death he directed that the MS. should be
submitted to his brother-in-law, Dr. Sewall, of Bangor,
Dr. Fisher, of New Haven, and myself ; and that, if we
so advised, it should be given to the public. The fol
lowing letter from Dr. Fisher expresses our common
feeling and judgment : New Haven, December 14, 1892.
Mt Dear Dr. Prentiss : My first particular knowledge of Pro
fessor Stearns was obtained from the reading of his Inaugural Ad
dress at Bangor. The address struck me at once as having " the
true ring." Here, I said to myself, is a theologian who looks at
things with an open eye, sees clearly what are the fundamental
questions, and is capable of bringing to the discussion of them a
sincere Christian spirit, and a refined, cultivated intellect. His
subsequent publications have fully borne out this first impression.
His work on the "Evidence of Christian Experience" is one of
the most noted theological productions of our time. The learn
ing at the basis of it is unobtrusive, but broad and accurate ; the
reasoning is careful ; the religious sentiment that pervades the
book is deep and genuine ; the style is appropriate. The paper
which Professor Stearns read at the Congregational Council in
London was a difficult one to prepare. He had to touch upon

Xxiv BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH
questions which were warmly controverted among Congregation
alists in this country. He spoke with frankness, without the
slightest attempt to take refuge in ambiguities, and yet he spoke
so fairly and judiciously as to win universal commendation. In
his life of Professor Henry B. Smith, Professor Stearns illustrated
his admirable qualifications as a theological critic. There is
thorough insight and genial appreciation. Yet the author's rev
erent regard for the character and teachings of the subject of the
biography, subtracts nothing from the independence of his judg
ment. Wherever he finds occasion for dissent, he does not hesi
tate to express it.
Professor Stearns was one of the few men among us, still com
paratively young, who took up from choice and pursued with ac
knowledged ability and success, the branch of dogmatic theology.
Of late, exegesis and history, along with Biblical theology, have
exerted an unwonted attraction. Professor Stearns did not fail to
lay a strong foundation by making himself well acquainted with
these favorite departments of study. But his chosen field was
dogmatics. He made it his purpose to set forth, in a systematic
form, and to defend on scriptural and rational grounds, the doc
trines of the Christian faith. This circumstance renders his de
parture from life, at an age when his task was incomplete, a loss
which is most keenly felt. A conservative, he was, nevertheless,
the foe of obscurantism. He appreciated the value of that reason
able liberty of religious thought, without which intellectual life
in the church languishes, and progress in the understanding of
Christianity is impossible.
The opportunity which I have had to peruse, in manuscript, the
work of Professor Stearns, which is now to be given to the press,
has convinced me that, although it is not all that he would have
made it to be, it deserves to be published. The comparative lack
of catechetical instruction in families and churches in these days
is insufficiently supplied by Sunday-schools. There is a need of
works that shall present in a clear and orderly manner the doctrines
of the Christian system, and the grounds that justify belief in them.
This benefit, I am persuaded, the proposed volume will confer.
I always thought of Professor Stearns, while he was living, with
respect and affection, and now that he has gone, I cherish for him
a tender regard. But you, who knew him so well, are best quali
fied to do justice to his personal traits. Very sincerely yours,
George P. Fisheb.

PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
i.
THE NATURAL REVELATION OP GOD
Is there a God ? and can He be known ? These are
the two great questions which challenge us, as we stand
upon the threshold of theology, and demand an answer.
They are questions which the majority of men never ask.
The unsophisticated mind, whether in heathen or Chris
tian lands, believes implicitly in the existence of God or
of the gods, and has some conception of the divine nature.
It is only when men begin to philosophize that they be
come sceptics.
It is our lot to live in an age and a land where philoso
phizing is all too familiar. About us, on every side, are
those who deny or call in question the two fundamental
facts of religion and theology, the existence of God and the
ability of men to know Him. We must therefore be ready
to give a reason for the faith that is in ns. It will not be
enough to declare that religion is universal and that the
postulate of religion is God. We must marshal our proofs
and justify our faith to the reason of our fellow-men. This
much even the sceptic has a right to demand of us.
What, then, is the proof that God exists and that He
may be known? Paul has declared it — "Because that
which may be known of God is manifest in them ; for God
hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of

2 PRESENT DAT THEOLOGY
him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
understood by the things that are made, even his eternal
power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse"
(Rom. i. 19, 20). We know that God is and what He is
because He reveals both His existence and His nature to
every man, even to those who do not accept the revela
tion. Over against the atheist's denial and the agnostic's
ignorance we set the Apostle's " what may be known of
God," to yvcoarTov tov Seov over against to SryvaaTOV.
The object of this chapter is to set forth the proof of
God's existence and the knowledge of His nature which
are furnished by His universal revelation of Himself.
I. First, then, the proof of God's existence is the revela
tion of Himself which He has made.
1. Let us stop a moment to inquire what is meant by
revelation. And here the etymology of the word shall be
our guide. It is from the Latin revelare, to draw back a
veil. Revelation is God's unveiling of Himself, His with
drawal of the curtain which hides Him from men. Mis
taken conceptions obscure the simple idea. We have
been used to think of revelation as the communication of
a system of doctrine or of a moral and religious code.
Now, undoubtedly these ideas are included in the complete
conception of revelation. But in its highest and truest
sense the term implies not so much the giving of knowl
edge about God, as the knowledge of God Himself. It
implies an activity on the side of God and a corresponding
receptivity on the side of men. God manifests Himself.
He makes Himself known. Men know Him because He
comes near to them and causes them to realize His
presence. 2. To proceed, when we prove God's existence from
His self-revelation, we do not employ any unfamiliar or
illegitimate method of reasoning. In the same way we
prove the existence of the three other great realities
which share with the knowledge of God the possession of

THE NATURAL REVELATION OP GOD 3
our consciousness. How do we know that the world ex
ists ? How do we know that the invisible spirits of our
fellow-men exist? How dp we know that we ourselves
exist ? The answer is simple. We know the existence of
the world, our fellow-men, and ourselves because they
manifest themselves as realities to our consciousness — in
other words, because they reveal themselves to us. AU
knowledge is in a true sense revelation.
Look at the external world. It appears as a perma
nent and unchanging element in our consciousness. We
cannot think or act except upon the assumption of its
reality. It resists every effort to reduce it to a merely
subjective impression. I cannot doubt that there is real
world there. I know it because it makes itself known to
me. And this truth, which is reached by a psychological
process, is confirmed by the light which physical science
throws upon the matter. It tells us that nothing in
nature is passive. Everything is manifesting itself, and
all that is needed to turn its manifestation into a revela
tion is the presence of a receptive soul. You see before
you a lump of dead matter, metal or stone. You see it ?
What does that mean ? It means that this seemingly
inert mass is instinct with activity, and that it manifests
itself to you through that activity. The shivering mole
cules set in motion invisible waves in the aether, which
break upon the retina of your eye like the surf upon the
beach and carry inward to your soul the knowledge of the
object. There is nothing in the external world that has
not this power of revelation or manifestation. Otherwise
it would be to all intents and purposes a nonentity.
There is truth in Leibnitz's maxim, that what does not
act does not exist, " qui non agit non existit."
Or consider our knowledge of our fellow-men. This,
too, is an indestructible element of consciousness. We
know their existence because they reveal themselves to
us. Outwardly there is nothing to distinguish them

4 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
from the material things by which they are surrounded.
The spirit is invisible. The body is not the man. The
gestures, the looks, the words are only symbols or
mediums. But through words and acts, as well as in
ways which betoken a nearer contact of spirit with spirit,
and which science fails to explain, they reveal themselves
to us, and we can no more doubt the reality of their
existence than we can that of the world.
And so of our knowledge of ourselves. Who questions
the existence of the self-conscious, self-determining Ego
or I ? When we wish to express the highest degree of
assurance respecting anything, we say, " I am as certain of
it as I am of my own existence." But how does self
make itself known ? It reveals itself in consciousness. I
know that I exist because there is the I revealing itself to
me, myself to myself.
Now not different is it with the proof of the divine
existence. We know that God exists because He reveals
Himself to ns. It is a fact which may stand as sure to
us as our self-existence or the existence of our fellow-men
and of the world. We use in its behalf precisely the
same kind of proof. There in our consciousness are
manifestations of the divine. When Herbert Spencer
says that the existence of God is a " necessary datum of
consciousness," he concedes all that the theist needs as the
starting-point of his argument. It is a curious fact that
the philosophers who deny or call in question the divine
existence always do the same by some, if not all, of the
other three realities. The four stand or fall together.
They are the four pillars upon which the edifice of human
certainty rests.
3. We pass now to consider the particular arguments
for the divine existence. After our discussion of the
nature of the proof, we shall not be at a loss to discover
these. Every mode of the divine self-revelation will
furnish us with an argument. Light and heat and gravi-

THE NATURAL REVELATION OF GOD 5
tation are all modes of the sun's manifestation, and they
are all proofs of its existence. If anyone were rash
enough to deny that there is a sun, I should refute his
assertion by presenting these and like evidences. So if
anyone is rash enough to deny the existence of God, the
disproof will lie in the exhibition of the various modes in
which God reveals Himself to us.
We may • accordingly distinguish six different ways in
which the revelation of God comes to us, which furnish
ns with as many lines of argument for His existence.
God makes Himself known in the experiences of the
'religious life, in conscience and the moral order of the
world, in the existence and activities of the human soul,
in the rationality and design evident in the world, in the
existence of the world itself as an effect and dependent
form of being, and in the necessary idea of the Absolute
as it appears in every soul. These modes of the divine
self-revelation give us what the theologians call the
Religious, the Moral, the Psychological, the Teleological,
the Cosmological and the Ontological arguments. Let ns,
so far as our time will permit, consider each.
(1) The religious proof is that which is in some re
spects more readily applied than any other. No learning
or mental discipline is necessary in order to understand it.
It is open at once to the savage and the civilized man, to
the heathen and the Christian, to the child and the per
son of mature age. It is the proof derived from personal
experience in the religions life of the reality and power of
God. In the practical exercises of religion men find
themselves in spiritual contact with God, and know that
they are in such contact. A certainty of God's existence
is awakened which to him who possesses it has the highest
degree of validity. The divine presence is manifested not
only in the intellect but in the feelings and the will. And
just in proportion as a man yields himself to the divine
influence does this assurance of God's existence burn with

6 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
a pure and steady flame upon the altar of his soul. If we
believe that God works in every soul, we shall see reason
to think that this proof to some extent influences every
man, so that even the professed atheist is in his better
moments open to an argument drawn from the experiences
of his own inner life. But the proof finds its full force
only where there is a receptive heart. It is a subjective
certainty which is produced, valid only for the possessor.
Yet even this statement must be qualified, for a strong in
dividual conviction is contagious, and doubtless in many
cases the faith of the individual is the flame at which the
faith of others is lighted. As has been said, it is a proof
which is open to the heathen as well as the Christian.
The true Light lighteth every man that cometh into the
world. But this argument reaches its most complete and
satisfactory form in the experience of the Christian. The
Spirit beareth witness with his spirit that he is the child
of God. The presence of God in- his soul is verified by
his deepest and most sacred spiritual exercises. He who
has learned to know God in Christ has that certainty of
Him which is itself the assurance of eternal life.
(2) The moral argument comes to us along the line of
a twofold revelation of God, namely, in conscience and in
the moral order of the world.
This is not the place to give a formal definition of con
science. Suffice it here to say that it is that within us
which distinguishes between right and wrong and lays ob
ligation upon us to do the right. It stands alone in the
soul as something which although in us is yet not of us.
It speaks with authority, laying commands upon us, testi
fying to a law to which we owe obedience. Its "categori
cal imperative," as Kant calls it, brooks no questioning, and
we cannot but acknowledge its right over us. Now how
shall we explain conscience ? It is not the voice of our
own natures, for our nature struggles against conscience
and would repudiate it, if it could. It is not the voice of

THE NATURAL REVELATION OF GOD 7
our fellow-men, for of that conscience is itself the judge.
We explain it best when we regard it as the mouth-piece
of a higher voice, even the voice of God. And the God
thus revealed to us is a personal Being. Only a personal
will can command our will. When in the silence of our
souls conscience raises her voice of command or threaten
ing, from the Sinai-height of a righteous law the living
God Himself is speaking to our souls.
And there is also a moral order at work in the world
which reveals the existence of God. Human society is
built up upon the foundation of the moral law. Its in
stitutions require for their normal and successful working
conformity to the principles of right. Thus immorality
breaks down the family and injustice the state. The
world is so constituted that in the long run, if not at every
time and in every place, right conduct brings happiness
and wrong conduct brings suffering. And more than this,
there is evidence that a righteous Will is ruling the
world, so that slowly but surely the right is triumphing
and the wrong is going under. Even disbelievers in a
personal God, like Matthew Arnold, are compelled to rec
ognize a "Power not ourselves that makes for righteous
ness." It is true that in a world of sin like ours there are
many facts that seem to break the force of this argument.
But rightly understood, instead of telling against the di
vine existence, they point to a life beyond the present, in
which the divine righteousness will have full scope to
work out its holy purposes. Kant's chief argument for
the divine existence is derived from these very facts. He
urges that there must be a God to reward suffering good
ness with happiness in another world, and to bring de
served retribution upon prosperous and insolent evil-
doing. (3) Once more God reveals Himself in the constitution
and operations of the human soul. This gives us the psy
chological argument. How shall we explain the exist-

8 PRESENT DAY THEOLOG?
ence of the soul ? Man stands high above both the^ unin
telligent world and the animal. He is a person, with all
that that implies, a self-conscious being, possessed of free
dom, guided by reason, as well as a moral and religious
being. " What a piece of work is man ! How noble in
reason ! how infinite in faculty ! in form and moving,
how express and admirable ! in action, how like an angel !
in apprehension, how like a god ! " But who was the
workman that made this piece of work ? Nature ? Nat
ure is nothing but matter and energy. We must have a
sufficient cause. But here is one that is utterly insufficient.
We explain the statue by the skill of the artist who
moulds the marble. But here the marble makes the
statue. Or is the cause evolution ? Evolution is nothing
but a law ; it is not a cause ; and even as a law evolution
fails to explain the soul of man. None but a Spirit,
higher and greater than the human spirit, can be the cause
of this wondrous being. Nor must we confine our argu
ment to the constitution of the soul. Its activities re
quire for their explanation the presence and power of a
higher Spirit, in whom we " live and move and have our
being." " The spirit of man is the candle of the Lord."
Only upon the assumption that God exists and that He
energizes in every soul can we explain the ongoings of the
soul itself.
(i) The teleological argument is derived from the rev
elation of the divine thought in nature. The world is
instinct with reason. It is not an aggregate of accidental
forms but an ordered system. Everywhere there is ration
ality, that is, relations which only reason can discover and
which can be explained only upon the assumption that
they are the result of a supreme Reason. What we call
the laws of nature, the observed uniformities in the opera
tion of the natural forces, are ideal principles, the expres
sion of thought, inherent in things as their regulative
principles, yet not to be explained through matter and

THE NATURAL REVELATION OF GOD 9
energy. The fabric of nature is built up upon mathe
matical principles, like the work of the human engineer.
Agassiz could as truly as beautifully call the " natural
system " of zoology " a translation of the Creator's
thoughts into human language." Or, to take an example
even more striking, consider the beauty in nature. What
is beauty ? Not matter, not energy, not any combination
of matter or energy. We have all heard of the artist who
mixed his colors with brains. The colors of nature are
mixed with brains. Mind alone perceives beauty. Mind
alone can have originated it. It demands for its explana
tion a supreme Beauty, One " altogether lovely." And
then, when we come to the adaptations of nature, with their
evidences of design, the argument becomes even more
convincing. Purpose, skill, design alone explain the ad
justments of the heavenly bodies, the relations of the
vegetable and animal kingdoms, the process of develop
ment from the protozoon to man, the adaptation of organs
to their functions, the arrangements of human society,
the events of human history.
There was a time, not long since, when the theory of
organic and inorganic evolution seemed to have shattered
the argument from design. But closer acquaintance with
this wonderful hypothesis, which, although yet unproved
and doubtless greatly to be modified, carries with it so
great a weight of probability, has shown that it is a friend
rather than an enemy of the argument from evidences of
design. It has taught us to look less at the part and more
at the whole. It has revealed to us a vast plan slowly
wrought out from the beginning. It has given us an ex
planation of many parts of the divine work, where before
we had to receive it as a mere mystery of power. It has
enlarged our view of the divine Wisdom which from the
beginning has been shaping all things with reference to
" That far-off divine event,
Toward which the whole creation moves."

10 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
(5) Again, God reveals Himself as the First Cause of
the world and the Ground of its continued existence. The
cosmological argument bases itself upon the principle of
causality. The world about us is an effect. We begin
with any object and go backward in time, seeking its ulti
mate cause. But each cause proves to be itself an effect,
and we go on indefinitely in a fruitless search till we
are lost in an endless series. We fare no better when we
seek a ground for all things. Everything is dependent
upon something else. Starting from any point, we may
go outward in space, seeking something on which all things
depend, but which itself depends on nothing. But again
we are baffled. And thus our logic brings us to a divine
First Cause, One who has made all things and in whom all
things consist, the Creator, the Preserver, the Governor of
the Universe.
Here, once more, popular objections are raised from the
side of evolution, popular, I say, because the true man of
science agrees with Huxley when he says (Nineteenth
Century, vol. xix., p. 202) :
"Now it appears to ine that the scientific investigator is
wholly incompetent to say anything at all about the first
origin of the material universe. The whole power of his
organon vanishes when he has to step beyond the chain
of natural causes and effects."
But there are many, not so wise, who think that evolu
tion does away with the necessity of a Creator. Yet what
is evolution ? As has been already said, it is only a law, not
a cause ; it shows us the method but not the power which
has brought about the present forms of the inorganic and
organic worlds. Evolution itself requires a divine Cause
behind it. Clerk Maxwell said ("Life," p. 330), " I have
looked into most philosophical systems, and I have seen
that none will work without a God." The same may be
said of evolution, whether we regard it as a philosophy or

THE NATURAL REVELATION OF GOD 11
as a working hypothesis of science : it will not work with
out a God — an ever-present, living God, continually ener
gizing in nature. Moreover, there are gaps in the natural
history of the universe which evolution has never filled
up and probably never will fill up — besides the original
creation, the transition from inorganic matter to life, and
the transition from the animal to man. We might add,
though with more doubt, the transition from the vegetable
to the animal, and from some of the species to their next
following species. If everywhere in the course of evolu
tion God's providence is required, at these points we have
need of His creative power.
Or will it be said that matter and energy are eternal
and that in them we find the First Cause ? A more fu
tile claim could not be made. Neither matter nor energy
exhibits any of the attributes of a First Cause. The
molecules or atoms of matter, infinitely numerous in the
universe, are distributed into between sixty and seventy
different classes, in which absolute uniformity of size and
vibratory motion prevails — a uniformity which, as Sir
John Herschel and Clerk Maxwell have shown, proves
them to possess " the essential character of a manufactured
article." The latest theory of the constitution of matter,
Sir William Thomson's theory of " vortex atoms " in an
absolutely homogeneous and f rictionless fluid, requires a
Power above that of matter or energy for the creation of
the original atoms. Even farther is energy from mani
festing the attributes of a First Cause. The principle of
the conservation of energy shows that the amount of
energy in the universe is limited. The law of the dissi
pation of energy proves that the energy available for
work is slowly being frittered away in the form of heat.
The same mechanical principles which make a perpetual-
motion machine impossible show beyond a peradventure
that the energy of the universe will, unless now unknown
causes should begin to operate, come to a standstill. But

12 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
what has an end must have had a beginning. Thus we
are brought back to the necessity of a First Cause, or
what Aristotle called a Primum Movens, a Power which
initiated the motions of the universe.
(6) Finally, we have the ontological argument, de
rided by all superficial thinkers, but profoundly signifi
cant to every truly philosophical mind. God reveals Him
self in the necessary idea of the Absolute or Infinite.
When we look at the finite things about us, things that
have had a beginning and will have an end, things that
change and decay, things that exist only as they depend
upon other things, things that are imperfect, inevitably
there arises in the mind the idea of some Being or some
thing that has eternally existed, that is unchangeable,
that is self-existent and independent. This idea asserts
itself with necessary force. We cannot think without it.
It is a " necessary datum of consciousness." Men cannot
rid their consciousness of it. They may -deny its exist
ence, but it is there all the same. They may call it by
some other name, but it shows the same attributes.
They may claim to prove the divine existence without
this proof, but they always smuggle it in somewhere in
the course of their argument. For the idea of the Abso
lute is there. As the Wise Man has said (Eccles. iii. 11,
R. V., margin), God has set eternity in our heart. Now
we argue that a necessary idea is true. The idea of the
Absolute proves the existence of the Absolute. If we
distrust our necessary ideas we fall into universal scepti
cism. We do not claim that this argument, any more
than the others taken singly, proves the full theistic con
ception of God, but we claim that it does prove the exist
ence of an Absolute Being. And we cannot doubt that
this idea is itself a token of the presence of the Deity
Himself in our souls.
II. We have left, in the second place, the task of gath
ering together the knowledge furnished us by the natural

THE NATURAL REVELATION OF GOD 13
revelation of God. By the same investigations which
prove that God is, we learn what He is. The knowl
edge of His existence and His nature are inseparable.
Herbert Spencer, indeed, declares (" First Principles,"
p. 46, Am. ed.) that it is the " deepest, widest, and most
certain of all facts, that the Power which the Universe
manifests to us is utterly inscrutable." But the agnostic
is not even consistent with himself, for he declares that his
Unknown not only exists but is a Power or a Cause. The
truth is that we cannot know that God is without at the
same time knowing much of what He is. Herbert Spen
cer arbitrarily admits the validity of our two last argu
ments and repudiates all the rest. But it is a matter for
rejoicing that the prevalent philosophy of our time is
not atheistic. The Christian theist says to the agnostic
with his Unknown God, what Paul said to the Athenians,
" Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare we
unto you." (See H. B. Smith's " Apologetics," p. 45.)
Let us now look more closely at the knowledge of God's
nature which has come to us along the line of the proof
for the divine existence. We reverse the order in which
the proofs were presented. First, we have what may be
called the ontological attributes of God. He is the Abso
lute or Infinite, self-existent, independent of all other
beings, capable of existing out of relation to all things,
although we know Him only in His relations to the things
which He has made. He is One, for if there were two
or more absolutes, none would be absolute. He is the
Eternal, who was and is and is to come, the one Being su
perior to all limitations of time. He is the Unchanging
One, the same yesterday, to-day, and forever. He is
superior to all limitations of space, yet omnipresent and
everywhere active in space.
Next, we have revealed to us what we may designate
the cosmological attributes of God. God is the self-caused
Being. The question is often asked, after we have been

14 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
inquiring for the cause of the universe, "What is the
cause of God ? " It is not a foolish question. We not
only have a right to ask it but ought to ask it. The law
of causality has its rights even in the presence of God,
who gave it to us. But the answer to the question does
not carry us outside of God. He is His own cause. He
is at once cause and effect. The old Nicene Fathers
availed themselves of this fact — though most theologians
would to-day hesitate to follow them in their use of it
in their explanation of the inner relations of the Trinity.
And then God is omnipotent. His power is without
limit. He has made all things. He is the ground of all
things. He preserves them in existence. He governs
them in His providence. I said that God's power is un
limited. Let me guard the statement against misunder
standing. I do not mean that it is not limited by His own
nature and will. God is not mere power. His power is
limited by His wisdom and justice and love. Moreover,
there are certain limits of His own making in the creature.
There is a true sense in which the material creation limits
God. There is a still more significant sense in which
human freedom limits the divine power. But these limi
tations God has Himself constituted. He could at any
time, if He wished, remove them. Along the line of the
revelation which gives its force to the cosmological argu
ment we are brought close to the personality of God.
The whole weight of our reasoning respecting the First
Cause goes to show that it is a Will. It is will alone
which explains the power which the universe manifests.
Yet the cosmological reasoning rather suggests than proves
this. We must look further.
God's revelation of Himself in the rationality of nature
and in the human soul, as we have investigated it in con
nection with the teleological and psychological arguments,
first allows the personality of God to dawn in full-orbed
splendor upon us. A person is a self-conscious and self-

THE NATURAL REVELATION OF GOD 15
determining being. The great truth which Christian the
ism lays its first, and in some respects its chiefest, emphasis
upon is the personality of God. Among the personal at
tributes we give the foremost place to God's spirituality.
He is not material. His essence is like our higher essence.
Then He is a Being of infinite knowledge, who does not
reach knowledge and truth by slow processes like us, but
has all knowledge and all truth from the first, yea, is the
Source of all knowledge and all truth. All possible things
and all actual things are present to His thought. Next,
He is possessed of infinite wisdom, conceiving the highest
ends and reaching them by the best means. Once more,
God is free. The power of choice which is the deepest
element in our manhood is an attribute of God, who is
none the less free because He always uses this power
aright. In Him freedom and necessity meet in that highest
form of freedom, what the philosophers call "real free
dom," which is a moral, though not a natural necessity.
Again, God, like us, is possessed of feeling. All that
is purest and best in human sensibility is found in God.
And, as has been already remarked, God is the highest
Beauty, as He is the source of all finite beauty.
God's revelation in conscience and the moral order of
the world gives us the knowledge of His moral attributes.
He is the Holy One, the Being utterly opposed in His
nature to all evil, who gathers into one all possible moral
perfections. He is the Truth. The uniformity of nat
ural law is a manifestation of God's truth in the sphere of
nature. It finds its fullest manifestation in his utter
ances to men. God is the Righteous One. To every be
ing He gives his due, the suum cuique, with absolute im
partiality. His righteousness is manifest in the main
tenance of His own rights, in rewards and punishments
and grace among other rational beings. God is the Good
One. He sets before Him as His end in dealing with His
creatures their highest well-being and happiness.

16 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
God's revelation in religious experience furnishes us
with the highest attribute of all, which we may call the
religious attribute, namely, the divine Love. God is Love.
It is His nature to give. He finds His highest good in
the good of others. He is greatest when He stoops low
est. He is happiest when He serves.
The question will be raised, Is it true that all men pos
sess such a knowledge of God as has just been delineated ?
Do not facts point to a very different conception of God
among the great majority of men ? The only honest an
swer will be the affirmative. All the forms of the divine
revelation are open to every man. All the arguments
which have been enumerated are within the reach of
every man. But all men do not put the true interpreta
tion upon the divine revelation. All men see the same
sun, but it does not look alike to all. The botanist and
the child look upon the same flower, but the botanist sees
what the child cannot see. God's natural revelation is
made to a sinful race, and there are influences at work in
men which tend to obscure the revelation to a greater or
less extent. Hence the almost infinite diversity in the re
ligious beliefs of men. Each man has a spiritual defect of
vision, which distorts his apprehension of God, a kind of
spiritual astigmatism, of which he may be wholly unaware.
And then society and even physical nature have been so
corrupted by sin that the revelation comes to the individ
ual to a considerable extent through a disturbing medium.
So it happens that few men, in their natural state, attain
a true knowledge of God as He reveals Himself in nat
ural ways. Especially is this the case with respect to the
moral and religious revelation of God.
Such a description of the divine nature as has here been
given is unknown among the lieathen. Once only has it
been approximately reached. In the days of decaying re
ligion in Greece and Rome philosophy came like a fresh
west wind to blow away the clouds of heathen mytholo-

THE NATURAL REVELATION OF GOD 17
gies and modes of thought, and the sun of theism shone
forth for a little with almost unobscured radiance. But
that was an exception — one of those exceptions that prove
the rule. The natural revelation, as we have seen it, is
that revelation seen by the aid of Christianity. To us the
absurdities and immoralities of heathenism seem strange
in view of God's universal revelation, and doubtless the
heathen are, as Paul says, without excuse when they turn
from the light they have to ways of life which their own
consciences declare to be sinful. But we must remember
that we approach the investigation of the natural revela
tion, with all the light which God's gracious revelation in
Christ has to throw upon the subject. Even though we
may not have experienced the grace of Christ's salvation
in our hearts, the clarifying and helpful influences of
Christianity are all about us.
We are now prepared to state our knowledge of God, as
it comes to us through the natural revelation, in few and
simple words. What better can be chosen than those of
the good old " Shorter Catechism," which we older people
learned at our mother's knees, but which our children here
in New England know but little of, while to their great
loss we put nothing in its place : " God is a Spirit, infi
nite, eternal, and unchangeable, in His being, wisdom,
power, holiness, justice, goodness, and truth." Wise and
happy is he who believes these words with all his heart
and lives up to his belief.
2

II.
THE REDEMPTIVE REVELATION
Christian Theology takes for granted the reality and
the truth of the universal revelation of God. It finds a
place in its system for all the doctrines of Natural Theol
ogy — such as the divine existence, God's attributes, His
providence, and the like — gladly welcoming and appro
priating all the light that comes to it from this source. It
is not, however, chiefly concerned with the general revela
tion. The distinctive truths of the Christian faith are de
rived from a higher revelation — a revelation which, though
destined for all men, was at first given to only a part of
the human race and is even now unknown to the majority
of men. This is sometimes called the special revelation
to distinguish it from the universal, or the supernatural in
contradistinction from the natural. But we best express
its distinctive characteristics when we call it the redemp
tive revelation.
It is to this redemptive revelation that I wish to call
your attention at the present time. I shall endeavor to
show why it has been given, in what it consists, what
methods God has followed in making it, through what
stages it has run in reaching its culmination in Christ.
The proof that it is what it claims to be will be given on
another occasion.
I. The purpose of this revelation, as the epithet redemp
tive implies, is redemption, or, as it might with equal truth
be stated, the establishment of God's kingdom in a world
of sin.

THE REDEMPTIVE REVELATION 19
The necessity of such a revelation lies in the fact of
sin. In a world of holy beings the natural revelation
would suffice for all spiritual and temporal needs. There
would be an unobscured vision of God and undisturbed
communion with Him. I do not mean to say that there
would be no need in such a world of higher and fuller
manifestations of God, as the spiritual receptivity of its
inhabitants was matured and enlarged. I do not deny the
possibility that if our race had remained sinless, the
divine Son would have become incarnate for the perfect
ing of the race — though I confess my utter inability to
do more, than speculate upon the subject. But there
seems to me every reason to believe that in that case the
higher revelations would come simply and normally in the
line of the natural revelation. They would be a part of
it. It would be as it is in the case of the child and the
parent. From the first the child stands in full commu
nion with its father and mother. But the parental love is
revealed in ever new and higher manifestations as fast as
the child's soul is opened to receive them. There is simply
an enlargement and development of the original relation.
But alas, we do not live in a holy world. It is a sinful
world. Every man becomes a sinner so soon as he be
comes a responsible actor in the world. That great law of
the spiritual universe which Christ has expressed in the
words, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see
God," operates in its negative form in every sinner. Be
cause they are impure and sinful they do not see God as
He is. He reveals Himself to them, but they do not re
ceive the revelation, or they put a false interpretation
upon it. The spiritual eye, instead of being single, is evil,
and the whole soul is full of darkness. And this dark
ness is increased by the fact that not only is the soul shut
off from a true knowledge of God by its own sin, but so
ciety is permeated with sin and the effects of sin. No
man can form his beliefs and opinions in entire indepen-

20 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
dence of his fellow-men. He is inevitably influenced by
the beliefs and opinions of those about him, as well as by
the prevalent modes of thought, customs, notions of the
society in which he lives. Now in a sinful world the sin
ful social environment tends to obscure the knowledge of
God. Herein lies the great power of corrupt religions
over their votaries. And then, once more, even nature is
no longer the pure medium of the divine revelation. The
effects of sin are manifest in the natural world itself. The
human body begins its career with an inherited nature
that is physically depraved and that is, like the soul in its
inherited tendencies to sin, the occasion of sin. .The con
sequences of sin are manifest in various disturbances of
material nature. The original nature as it came from the
hands of God no longer exists. The creation has been
made subject to vanity (Rom. viii. 20). For all these rea
sons the natural revelation is not sufficient. It furnishes
sinful men with neither the knowledge nor the help which
they so sadly lack. The view it gives of God is imperfect
and distorted. It discloses no relief from the guilt and
power of sin. The need of the world lost in sin is for re
demption. It is the object of the redemptive revelation to supply
this need. God makes Himself known in new aspects
and new ways, that thus He may deliver the sinful race
from all the evils into which it has fallen. Redemption
is a term of very wide import, both negatively and posi
tively. It means not only the salvation of men from the
guilt of sin, but the carrying of them forward to that per
fect and sinless manhood for which they were created.
It means not only the rescue- of individuals from an evil
world, but the deliverance of the race itself and its attain
ment of the divine ideal— so that whatever may be the
case with individuals, the race as a whole shall be saved.
It implies the renovation of all the institutions of society
and all the activities of mankind. It will not be com-

THE REDEMPTIVE REVELATION 21
pleted until the natural world is redeemed, " the creation
itself also delivered from the bondage of corruption "
(Rom. viii. 21), including the redemption of the body in
the resurrection and the restoration of material nature to
its true condition — or more than that, its participation in
" the glorious liberty of the children of God." The same
great purpose is expressed by the conception of the king
dom of God. In the sinful world God's rightful dominion
has been subverted. He rules by His power but not by
the free consent of His subjects. Redemption is the re-
establishment of His sway. As fast as it advances God's
kingdom comes and His will is done in this world of sin.
The redemptive revelation is a means to redemption or
the establishment of God's kingdom as an end. This is
its purpose, its final cause. In all its manifestations it is
subordinate to this object. This determines its form and
manner, as well as its contents. This explains the fact
that it is chiefly concerned with the moral and religious
attributes of God, and only incidentally with the meta
physical, physical, and intellectual attributes so fully
brought to light by the natural revelation.
One point deserves a moment's notice before we leave
this branch of our subject. The view just taken of the
redemptive revelation may seem to imply that this revela
tion is an afterthought of God, consequent upon human
sin, while the natural revelation expresses the original
divine intention. There is indeed an element of truth
here, in so far as sin comes in conflict with the divine
ideal, which we must regard as at least logically first in
the eternal thought of God. This conception of the re
demptive revelation, however, does not give us the whole
truth. In God's eternal plan, sin was foreseen and pro
vided for. God knew that the world He created was to
be a sinful world. And so while, undisturbed holiness
might be the ideal, sin and redemption were the deter
mining elements in the divine purpose. The redemptive

22 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
revelation was no more an afterthought than the natural
revelation. God meant that the two should work side by
side, both performing their parts in carrying out His
great work of salvation.
II. We pass now to consider- the contents of the re
demptive revelation. And here, as in dealing with the
natural revelation, we must be on our guard against the
notion that revelation consists only or chiefly in doctrinal
instruction. This notion, which has been widespread and
inveterate, has wrought great confusion in Christian
thought, and it has been one of the most meritorious
services of modern theology that it has succeeded to so
great an extent in supplanting it by a larger and truer
conception of the redemptive revelation. That revelation,
like all revelation, is a self-manifestation of God, an un
veiling of Himself, a disclosure of His being and His
ways. It gives us not merely a knowledge about God but
a knowledge of God. The doctrinal instruction which it
contains, and I would not deny that this constitutes one of
its important elements, has for its object to bring men
directly to God Himself, that they may see Him as He is.
There is another misconception, closely related to that
just mentioned, which we shall also do well to avoid.
This is the identification of the redemptive revelation and
the Holy Scriptures. Undoubtedly the Bible is a constit
uent element of the revelation. It is one of the most im
portant, in some respects the most important, channels
through which the revelation of grace comes to us. We
may even in a true sense call it itself a revelation of God.
But, strictly speaking, the Bible is not the revelation but
the record of that revelation. There was a revelation
before there was any Bible. It might now exist even if
there were no Bible. The Bible is a means and not an
end. The end of revelation is the manifestation of God
Himself. The Bible is a blessed book to those who find
God in it and through it. But, so far as we are concerned,

THE REDEMPTIVE REVELATION 23
it is no better than any other book unless we find God by
its means.
The redemptive revelation, then, is the manifestation of
God as the Redeemer, as the God of grace. As its object
is redemption, so it makes known to men what they need
to know for their redemption. Its contents may be
viewed under two aspects— as a revelation of God's nature
and character, and as a revelation of His redemptive
work. Let us consider each of these aspects.
The redemptive revelation is intended to give men a
new view of God's nature and character. It takes us to
the highest point in the knowledge of God and reveals
Him as the perfect Love. Of this supreme divine attri
bute the natural revelation gives some vague hints but no
certain knowledge. At most it suggests a mild and com
placent benevolence which is often obscured, and at times
seems to be completely obliterated, by His sterner attri
butes as they are manifested in the darker aspects of nat
ure. It is only when God Himself comes to meet us in
the redemptive revelation that we begin to grasp that
depth of meaning which is expressed by the Christian
word " love." When He manifests Himself as the Sa
viour, we first understand that He is a Being to whom it
is more blessed to give than to receive, that it is His joy
to impart Himself to others, that He finds His greatness
in condescension and self-denial, His highest good in seek
ing the good of His creatures, that He is merciful and
compassionate, ready to pardon and to save even the chief
of sinners. A new light dawns upon the soul when God
teaches it the meaning of those wonderful words, " God
so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth on him should not perish but
have everlasting life." A part of this revelation of God's
love is His manifestation of Himself in His personal rela
tion to men as the Father, the universal Father who seeks
and would save every erring child, and in a still higher

24 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
sense the Father of those who give themselves to Him.
Another element in the revelation of love, still more ten
der, is the manifestation of God as Son, the divine Word
who stoops to earth, becomes incarnate, dies for our re
demption, raises our manhood in His own person to the
throne of God. And still another element is the revela
tion of God as the Spirit, the indwelling God, the spiritual
life of man, who holds the soul in union with the Father
and the Christ, thus giving to the redemptive revelation
its most profound and sacred meaning. Nor should we
forget that accompanying the revelation of God's love
there is a higher manifestation of His holiness, of the
utter separation of God from all sin and evil, and of His
awful purity, in the light of which we discover the true
extent and depth of the guilt of sin. And out of this
revelation of God's holiness flows a profounder disclosure
of His righteousness, as a power both of salvation and of
judgment. And then, the redemptive revelation is a manifestation
of God's work of grace. It discovers to us that great sys
tem of redemptive agencies which God has established for
the salvation of mankind. God is seen from the first
active for the recovery of His lost world. Behind the
scenes and coming only now and then into sight there is
a vast redemptive machinery. God Himself, the holy
angels, good men, institutions divinely established and
guided, all work together to save the sinner and build up
the saint. God's providence is enlisted in the blessed en
terprise. The incarnation of the divine Son, his human
ministry, and the atoning death upon the cross, by which
provision is made for the pardon of sin, reveal to us some
of the most important aspects of this system of redemp
tive agencies. The work of the risen Christ, the King of
the divine kingdom, seated at the right hand of the maj
esty on high, and the work of the Holy Spirit whom he
sends, make known still other aspects. The way of salva-

THE REDEMPTIVE REVELATION 25
tion is disclosed to the sinner, justification by faith in
Jesus Christ. Regeneration, the new life, and all the
other saving facts and truths of the Christian system form
a part of this wonderful revelation of the divine grace,
this manifestation of the redemptive power of God. To
it also belong the discovery of the heaven of the blessed,
the assurance of the triumph of redemption on earth,
the second coming of the Redeemer, the resurrection, the
judgment, the doom of the wicked, the perfecting of the
race in the eternal blessedness, the new heavens and
the new earth.
III. Such, briefly stated, are the contents of the re
demptive revelation. We inquire now as to its method.
It is easy to see that God, in making such a revelation,
must proceed in a very different way from that which He
follows in the natural revelation. The knowledge of God
and His work of grace, which has just been outlined, can
not, from the nature of the case, be given to a sinful race
all at once and in all its fulness. Revelation implies not
only a revealer but a mind to receive the revelation.
There must be a receptivity on the part of those to whom
the revelation comes. And the psychological obstacle,
which the lack of such receptivity presents, cannot be
removed by a mere exercise of power. In making the
human soul what it is, God has set limits to His own oper
ations. A new idea cannot be inserted into a mind as a
nail is driven into a board. It is doubtful whether even a
miracle would make a two-years-old child understand the
solution of a problem in the differential calculus. Now,
what would be psychologically impossible in the case of a
child, because contrary to the laws of human development,
would be still more impossible in the case of a race not
only in its moral childhood but sunk in sin. Before the
revelation can be made the receptivity for it must be cre
ated. God, even with the help of the supernatural means
which He employs, must begin at the bottom and work up.

26 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
The revelation could be made, no faster than it could be
received. And when once received, it must be made so
to operate upon the already awakened receptivity as to
stimulate it, and enlarge it, and prepare it for still further
revelation. Let us look at some of the more important elements in
the Divine method.
1. The relation of the supernatural to the natural.
We call the redemptive revelation supernatural for two
reasons : First, because its purpose — namely, redemption
— is not provided for in the natural revelation ; and
secondly, because some of the chief agencies employed do
not belong to the system of natural forces as manifested
in the ordinary operations of the physical and spiritual
worlds. It is in this latter sense that we ordinarily call
the revelation supernatural. Among these supernatural
means are those operations of God in external nature to
which we give the name of miracles, and that divine influ
ence upon the human soul which we call inspiration, and
those interferences of God in the affairs of men and
nations which — though we cannot call them, strictly
speaking, miracles — go beyond the laws of His ordinary
providence. This supernatural or miraculous working of
God is what gives its distinctive character to the redemp
tive revelation. Remove it and reduce all to the level of
the natural, and the revelation ceases to be redemptive
and Christianity becomes a mere " republication of the
religion of nature." It was by these supernatural agen
cies that God was able to reach a race so far fallen that
they could not be found and raised by natural means.
It was by them that God, so to speak, secured a fulcrum
for His lever and was able to do His redemptive work.
But although these agencies were indispensable, God
used them with a wise economy. Wherever it was pos
sible He employed natural means. If we take the revela
tion as a whole, in all its long history, although the-su-

THE REDEMPTIVE REVELATION 27
pernatural is everywhere present in it, yet the natural forms
a much larger element. God's method was to graft the
supernatural upon the natural, and when it became incor
porated into the natural to subject it to the laws of the
latter. Accordingly, there was no conflict between the
two, except in so far as the natural order had become cor
rupted by sin. And this suggests a very interesting con
sideration. There is reason to believe that when God
made use of the supernatural, He always had disturbances
in the order of nature which were produced by human sin.
Where nature had become perverted, the supernatural
came in as a healing and restorative influence, tending to
bring nature back to its normal condition, or, in other
words, to overcome the false nature and re-establish the
true nature. And in so far as nature was what God had
made it, it fell in with the new influences and served them.
2. The redemptive revelation began with individuals.
It was not made to all mankind, as is the case with the
natural revelation. God was concerned to get in the first
place a foothold for the redemption which He was to be
stow upon mankind. It was not so important that many
should be affected superficially as that a few should be
deeply and truly. Then they could be the bearers of the
revelation to their fellow-men. Accordingly, the redemp
tive revelation was based upon election, which has been
tersely and beautifully defined by a modern theologian as
" a method by which God uses the few to bless the many "
(Bruce, " Chief End of Revelation," p. 80). We are so wont
to associate the doctrine of election with certain philo
sophical questions which have grown up about it, that we
miss the simple meaning which makes the conception so
important in the Bible. All through the history of His
kingdom God's method of reaching the race has been the
elective method. The election was of two kinds, individ
ual and national. The individuals chosen were men of
high moral and spiritual attainments, whom God had been

28 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
providentially preparing for His purpose. They were men
with good stuff in them, men of spiritual insight, personal
piety, and, above all, men of great devotion to God, ready
and willing to do His will. How much their own free
will had to do in making them fit instruments for God's
work we may not be able to say. Doubtless it was a
most important element in the problem. But we must
not forget that election has roots that run back into the
eternal plan of God, and that He had the largest share in
making them what they were. They were not perfect
men. Often they had great faults, and sometimes even
great moral blemishes. But they were men whom God in
His wisdom chose because He saw that He could use
them. Sometimes their very faults, overruled by God,
were made to advance His work. And then, besides the
individuals chosen, God selected a nation to be the bearer
of His grace to men. Israel had the high privilege of be
ing the Chosen People, chosen not for its own sake alone
but to bring a blessing to the whole human race. Finally,
election culminates in Jesus Christ, God's Chosen One,
divine yet human, at once the bearer of the revelation to
mankind -and himself the highest revelation of God.
3. Again, the method of the redemptive revelation was
educational. This feature has been clearly recognized by
theologians only in comparatively recent times. To a
man who was not a professed theologian, the German lit
terateur Lessing, belongs the credit of having brought
into distinct view what has proved one of the most fruit
ful conceptions of modern theology, a conception that is
undoubtedly as Biblical as it is truly scientific. The prin
ciple which Lessing laid down in his famous book on the
Education of Mankind (" Die Erziehung des Menschenge-
schlechts") is, "What education is to the individual, reve
lation is to the race." Education is a twofold process;
on the one side there is a preparing of the soil and a sow
ing of seed, on the other a culture of the growin°- plant.

THE REDEMPTIVE REVELATION 29
Thus God proceeded in His redemptive dealings with the
race. Individuals and nations have been fitted to receive
the divine truth, and it has been imparted to them, as
they were able to receive it. At the same time they have
been prepared and enabled to impart it to others, to pass
on the torch which had been lighted and placed in their
hands. In this education God used both supernatural
and natural means. He concentrated upon His chosen in
struments such influences, spiritual, moral, secular, as
were adapted to bring them to a knowledge of Himself
and His ways. He put them through long courses of
training. He thus lifted them up fo the level of the rev
elation He had to make, and when once they became pos
sessed of the revelation, the revelation itself became one
of the educational influences.
Most clearly and strikingly is this method illustrated in
the case of the great men of Bible times. Such names as
Abraham, Moses, Isaiah, Peter, John, Paul recall to our
minds processes of training always long, generally difficult
and painful. Even the Master himself was a pupil in
the divine school, and was fitted for his public ministry
only after thirty years of discipline. Then consider the
education of Israel. The whole Old Testament is occupied
with it. From the Chosen People in the wilderness to
the Chosen People at the time of Christ the stride is im
mense. During all the intervening period the process
was steadily advancing. We are too apt in thinking of
Israel at the time of Christ to have regard only to the ele
ment in the nation which opposed the Saviour and denied
his Messiahship. He came unto his own, and his own
received him not. But this very Israel which rejected
the Saviour had possession of the divine truth by which
Jesus was prepared for his work. It had in it the men
and women who were ready to receive his Gospel. The
fulness of time had come. Plumanly speaking, the in
carnation would have been an impossibility until Israel

30 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
had reached this stage in its religious development. And
the reaching of this stage was the result of God's long
schooling. Nor shall we forget the education of the heathen na
tions, not indeed by supernatural means, yet not for that
reason the less real, which was going on, during all the
history of Israel and which prepared them to receive the
Gospel when God's time had come.
4. Once more, as the thonghts'with which we have just
been engaged have prepared us to realize, God's method
in the redemptive revelation is progressive. The revelation
came in the form of a sacred history, and it follows the
law of all history, progression from the lower to the
higher, the law of historical evolution. Some of the most
telling analogies and illustrations of this process of histori
cal growth are taken from the realm of organic life, and
it is interesting to observe that our Saviour himself freely
employed them. The law of the kingdom of God, as he
expressed it, is, " First the blade, then the ear, after that
the full corn in the ear " (Mark iv. 28). But the prog
ress is not merely that of ordinary history. There is
everywhere that mingling of the supernatural with the
natural which we have discovered to be characteristic of
the redemptive revelation in all its parts. There is a
striking analogy between this process and that which has
been passed through in the evolution of the forms of the
natural world. Unless we take the view of the extreme
evolutionists, who place evolution in the place of God, at
certain points in the history of the natural world God
must have interposed with creative acts. But in every
case the new element, as soon as it became incorporated
into the natural order, became subject to the laws of the
natural development. The new fact exists first merely in
the germ ; it develops into its mature form by a natural
process. So with the divine revelation. It is this histor
ical character of revelation which gives the Bible its great

THE REDEMPTIVE REVELATION 31
charm, and makes it so different from the sacred books of
other religions. Compare it, for example, with the Koran,
a book in which the historical element is totally absent. It
presents us with a full-grown revelation, with no historical
preparation and no opportunity for further growth.
It follows from the progressive character of the redemp
tive revelation that the earlier stages are relatively imper
fect. As compared with the fulness of grace and truth
revealed in Jesus Christ, the highest point reached by
the Old Testament revelation seems low and inadequate.
From the nature of the case it could not be otherwise.
What Paul said in view of the contrast between the pres
ent and the future life, the Old Testament prophets and
teachers might have said in regard to the contrast be
tween their stage of revelation and that which was to come
in Christ, " We know in part, and we prophesy in part.
Now we see in a mirror darkly " (1 Cor. xiii. 9, 12). The
revelation recorded in the Bible can never be rightly
judged unless this fact be borne in mind, and due allow
ance made for it. The truth of the lower stage is relative
and imperfect. " When I was a child, I spake as a child,
I felt as a child, I thought as a child ; now that I have
become a man I have put away childish things " (1 Cor.
xiii. 11). Children know things under imperfect forms.
Their stage of development permits no more. It is not
enough to say that in -the lower stage we have only a lesser
quantity of truth, which is supplemented in the higher.
It is a less perfect truth, a truth that is only relatively true.
The fuller truth of manhood does not only add something
to the childish view ; it corrects it. " When that which
is perfect is come, that which is in part is done away "
(1 Cor. xiii. 10). All of its truth is taken up into a higher
truth, while its imperfect element is thrown away as a
husk from which the kernel has been taken. Our Saviour
himself recognizes this principle in the Sermon on the
Mount. He says that he came not to destroy but to ful-

32 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
fil the law (Matt. v. 17). But he proceeds to fulfil it by
bringing its precepts up to the level of a loftier morality
than the Jew of the Old Dispensation from his stage of
knowledge could possibly find in them (Matt. v. 17-48).
As has been beautifully and truly said, " Jesus puts him
self under the law, so far as it is divine, above it, so far
as it is Mosaic" (Orelli, "Old Testament Prophecy," Eng.
Trans., p. 57). In the earlier stages of revelation — and
measurably in all its stages — God adapts His method to the
understanding of men. He exercises a certain condescen
sion to human infirmity and imperfection. As Calvin has
said, " For who, even of the meanest capacity, understands
not that God lisps, as it were, with us, just as nurses are
accustomed to speak to infants?" ("Institutes," Bk. I., ch.
xiii., § 1).
It is thus we are to explain some of the chief difficulties
which present themselves in the study of the Bible. The
relative imperfections of the Jewish Law, the moral prob
lems involved in the history of the Canaanitish wars, the
apparently defective morality of even inspired Hebrew
thought, as evidenced, e.g., by the imprecatory Psalms,
the moral and spiritual inferiority of the Old Testament
to the New, are to be regarded as inevitable incidents of
the process of revelation.
IV. In conclusion, let us look briefly at the stages of the
redemptive revelation. This part of our subject has been
to some extent anticipated.
According to the Biblical record, God has revealed Him
self in two great dispensations of His grace, which we
designate respectively as the Old and the New.
1. The Old Dispensation is connected with the history
of the Hebrew nation and its preparation to be the bearer
of the redemptive revelation to mankind. It falls into the
three stages of the Patriarchal, the Legal, and the Propheti
cal. As in the New Dispensation, the dominant idea is
redemption, or the coming of God's Kingdom. But here

THE REDEMPTIVE REVELATION 33
the external or temporal redemption overshadows the
spiritual redemption, so far as the present is concerned,
while the deliverance from sin and the establishment of
God's Kingdom as a spiritual reign of God belongs largely
to the future. In the patriarchal period God makes Him
self known as the one true God, as distinct from the
heathen divinities. He manifests His power and His
holiness. His revelation is confined to a single family.
With them a covenant is established. To them a promise
is given, which clearly, though in very general terms, as
sures them that through their instrumentality the whole
race is to receive the divine revelation and to be visited by
the divine grace. In the legal stage a people is chosen, a
law of constitution given, institutions religious and political
founded, a fuller revelation made of the holiness of God.
The idea of the kingdom of God, only partially realized
in the Jewish commonwealth, makes its appearance. The
institutions of this period are typical, turning men's
thoughts to a divine salvation which is only vaguely un
derstood. In this period the promise is reasserted. The
Chosen People know that they have been selected to be
the channel of God's blessings to mankind. In the pro
phetic period, as God trains His People in the hard school
of suffering, punishing them for their sins and teaching
them their dependence upon Him, the hope of the future
becomes the prominent element in the revelation. . The
coming Kingdom of God and the spiritual redemption fill
up the prophet's horizon. The advent of the Messiah, the
Redeemer and the King of the divine Kingdom, is more and
more clearly descried. The redemptive work of the Christ,
and especially his atoning work as the vicarious sufferer
for the race, begins to appear. A New Covenant of spir
itual import, the blessed gift of which is the forgiveness
of sins, is promised (Jer. xxxi. 31 seq.). The heathen na
tions are to be gathered into the Kingdom and made par
takers of the divine redemption.
3

34 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
2. And now the New Dispensation dawns. It is in
Jesus Christ that the redemptive revelation reaches its
consummation. Hitherto God had revealed Himself, so
to speak, at second hand, through men and by historical
and natural agencies. Now He becomes incarnate in the
person of the well-beloved Son. The Word becomes
flesh. The only-begotten Son, which was in the bosom of
the Father, declares Him (John i. 14, 18). He can say
to the perplexed disciple who asks that he may be shown
the Father, " Have I been so long time with you, and
dost thou not know me, Philip ? he that hath seen me
hath seen the Father " (John xiv. 9). His wondering
followers hear him say, " All things have been delivered
unto me of my Father ; and no one knoweth the Son save
the Father ; neither doth any know the Father save the
Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal
Him" (Matt. xi. 27). Jesus Christ is %e present God.
By his teaching and his work he fulfils the Law. He
preaches the redemption from sin, the Gospel of grace.
He establishes the Kingdom of God in his own person
and calls all men unto it. By his death he makes pro
pitiation for sin. By the sending of his Spirit he founds
the Christian church and sets in operation the agencies
by which the world is to be redeemed and God's kingdom
established on earth. Through him life and immortality
are brought to light. He gives the assurance of the final
triumph of the Kingdom and the overthrow of evil.
The redemptive revelation was completed by Christ's
disciples. Men who knew him, who had imbibed his
spirit, who had learned the truth from his lips, were
filled with the Holy Spirit and enabled to make known
the truth which he could not reveal fully and clearly
while he was on earth, because it could only be under
stood and received in the light of his finished work and
his. entrance into his kingly glory.
With Christ and his disciples the redemptive revela-

THE REDEMPTIVE REVELATION 35
tion is finished. It has been given in its completeness to
mankind and needs only to be appropriated. All that
men need to know of God and His ways, in order that
they may be delivered from sin and its consequences, and
restored to the lost birthright of the sons of God, has
been revealed to them. If they will, they may know God
as He is and find in Him the supply of all their needs.
For this is eternal life that they should know the only
true God and Jesus Christ whom He has sent.
One final question : Is there to be any higher revela
tion of God ? In one sense, yes. In the blessedness of
heaven, and still more in the final state, we shall know
God even as also we are known. Yet it is doubtful
whether that should be called a new revelation. Rather
will it not be the full appropriation of the present reve
lation, when every hindrance is removed ? Sin will be
gone, the spiritual vision will be clarified, and we shall see
God in all the perfectness of His redemptive revelation.

III.
THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY
It may seem almost absurd to attempt to present, in a
single chapter a subject like this, upon which whole libra
ries have been written. And certainly the difficulty of
doing so with any degree of success is very great. Yet,
even at the risk of giving scarcely more than a dry enu
meration of the proofs, I shall make the trial. A bird's-
eye view is unsatisfactory enough, but it has its value. It
often opens the way for a more careful examination, to
which it serves to give intelligent direction. So I hope it
will be in our case. If this brief survey of the great field
shall lead anyone to a thorough and thoughtful study of
the subject, my purpose will have been amply fulfilled.
Before passing to the evidences themselves, let me say
a word on the nature of the proof. Here, as in the case of
the argument for the divine existence, the. revelation is
itself the proof, in what it is and what it does — its nature
and its effects. As there we sought for the different
methods of the divine revelation and found in each an
argument, so here. Only it is to be observed that here
we have to do with a revelation that is more complex and
difficult of exhibition, so that it will not be so easy to give
an exhaustive and logical presentation of the arguments.
A word, also, respecting the point of view from which
the evidences are to be presented. We can readily see
that the proof will vary in its form according to the class
which it is desired to reach. The Christian who seeks to
justify to his intellect the faith that long ago carried con-

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 37
viction to his heart ; the honest inquirer respecting the
truth that is as yet unverified in his experience ; the young
man or woman who is making the transition from an in
herited to a personal faith ; the unbeliever who actively
opposes Christianity ; the heathen who is entangled in the
prepossessions and prejudices of a false religion — these
different classes need each to be met with a different
handling of the arguments. But there is one stand-point
which seems to be central and to furnish a rallying-point
for all the others. It is that of the Christian who, already
convinced in heart and head of the truth of Christianity,
is asked for a reason of the hope that is in him. If he
can with rational argument make good his position, if he
can clearly show the strong foundations on which his faith
rests, the task is accomplished. He gives to each class
the answer which it needs. It is from this point of view
that I ask you to consider the subject.
The proof falls, naturally, into two branches :
I. The Experimental Proof.
II. The Confirmatory.
Under the latter head we shall distinguish a number of
subordinate arguments.
I. We begin with the proof which is at once the sim
plest and the most convincing, namely, that from personal
experience. Christianity does not come to men primarily as a sys
tem of doctrine demanding the assent of the intellect, but
rather as a practical remedy for sin asking the consent of
the will to its application. The Gospel offers pardon for
sin on the ground of Christ's atoning work, restoration to
fellowship and sonship with God, and the grace of the
Holy Spirit as the power by which sin may be overcome
and holiness attained. The means or instrument by which
this blessing is appropriated is faith in Christ — a faith
which consists primarily in trust, an act of the will, a giv
ing of one's self in entire submission into the hands of the

38 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
Saviour. Now this offer can only be tested in one way,
that is, by a personal trial. It belongs to the realm of
inward and personal experience. And those who have
fully and fairly tried it have never found it to fail. The
result of faith is that experience which we call conversion
or regeneration, the change of heart, in which God brings
the soul into an entirely new relation to Himself. Sin is
forgiven, God makes Himself known as the personal
Father, Christ begins (to use Paul's striking language) to
" dwell in the heart by faith," the Spirit bears witness
with our spirits that we are the sons of God, a new direc
tion is given to the will, so that the converted man may
be truly said to have died unto sin and to live unto right
eousness. The Christian is a new creation. Old things
have passed away ; behold, all things have become new.
Horace Bushnell has expressed in glowing language the
nature and results of the initial faith of the Christian life
(" Life," p. 192 seq.) :
" Christian faith is the faith of a transaction. It is not
the committing of one's thought in assent to any proposi
tion, but the trusting of one's being to a Being, there to
be rested, kept, guided, moulded, governed, and possessed
forever." " It gives you God, fills you with God in im
mediate, experimental knowledge, puts you in possession
of all there is in Him, and allows you to be invested with
His character itself."
Now here is God personally present and active in the
very soul, manifesting Himself as He does not to the
world. I am not speaking of the high-wrought mystical
experiences which some Christians claim to have had, but
of the normal experiences which all Christians have had.
This presence of God is a reality which cannot be doubted.
The certainty which it produces possesses the highest va
lidity. It is a first-hand knowledge. It is like the knowl
edge we have of our nearest and dearest friends, the

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 39
knowledge that reveals to ns their inmost nature. It is
the knowledge of a great crisis which has given to life a
new meaning. Or if there has been no such definite ex
perience, as in the case of those who have been brought
by Christian nurture through a gradual process into the
fulness of the Christian life, it is like the first knowledge
of a parent's love which antedates and lays the basis for
all other knowledge. How wonderful are its first effects,
the peace and rest and joy it produces, the new relation to
God and men and the world ! Jonathan Edwards's de
scription of the first effects of his own conversion is repre
sentative (" Life," p. 61) :
"The appearance of everything was altered; there
seemed to be, as it were, a calm, sweet cast of appearance
of divine glory in almost everything. God's excellency,
His wisdom, His purity and love seemed to appear in
everything; in the sun, moon, and stars ; in the clouds and
blue sky ; in the grass, flowers, trees ; in the water and all
nature."There are doubtful Christians, but in all normal Chris
tian experience the reality of God's presence in conver
sion is the one fact that can never be doubted, the fixed
point in the spiritual life. Many a Christian has gone
cheerfully to martyrdom to attest the truth of his convic
tion, saying with Paul, " I know whom I have believed.''
Nor is this all. The Christian is not obliged, in order
to justify his faith, to appeal to the past alone. There is
a growing and cumulative experience in the Christian life
which is a perennial proof of the truth of the Gospel.
The Christian's fellowship is with the Father and His
Son Jesus Christ. It is a personal relation. Spirit meet
ing spirit in a communion as real and certain in its way as
any that exists between man and man. In this blessed
intercourse eternal life has begun (John xvii. 3). God's
help is given in difficulty, His comfort in sorrow, His

40 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
strength in weakness, His guidance in perplexity. In the
work of sanctification in which sin is overcome and the
soul is formed into the image of Christ, and in the work
of the Kingdom, in which we are fellow-laborers with
God, His Spirit is the power of whose constant presence
and aid we are abidingly conscious. In all these expe
riences God becomes better known, and His redemptive
revelation more and more truly realized. The Christian's
certainty is thus constantly growing. " The path of the
just is as the shining light, which shineth more and more
unto the perfect day " (Prov. iv. 18).
This, then, is the strong foundation upon which the
Christian's faith rests. The Scriptures teach that this
inner certainty, this invincible conviction is wrought by
God Himself by the power of His Holy Spirit actually
present and working in the soul (John vii. 37-39 ; xvi. 12-
15 ; Rom. viii. 16 ; 1 Cor. ii. 4, 5 ; 1 John v. 6-10). To
this testimonium Spiriius Sancti, this witness of the
Spirit, the Protestant Reformers delighted to appeal in
their controversies with the Roman Catholics, who found
their authority in church and Pope. This always has been
and always will be the ultimate proof. We know the ex
istence of the sun because his light and warmth and life
are all about us. We know God and Christ and all the
revelation of God's grace because they are within us.
The child or the savage knows the existence of the sun as
truly, though not with as much fulness and precision of
knowledge, as the scientist. The humblest Christian, ig
norant of all the knowledge of the schools, who perhaps
has never heard of the Evidences of Christianity, knows
the truth of the Christian revelation with as much cer
tainty as the most learned theologian.*
* In the author's manuscript are these pencilled lines : "Add to the
experience of the individual that of the Christian church." For that
we must now refer the reader to one of his former hooks—" The Evi
dence of Christian Experience."

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 41
It is true that there is something private and personal
about this proof. The certainty upon which it is based is
a subjective certainty. It is always possible for the un
believer to deny it, to declare that he has had no such
experience, and that he sees no reason to regard it as any
thing else than a delusion — in many cases doubtless sin
cere and pious, but still a figment of the imagination.
The Christian readily admits the subjective character of
the argument. Indeed, he asserts that it could not be
different. It is not the only kind of knowledge in the
world which is the property of the individual rather than
of mankind. The blind man's eyes must be opened be
fore he can see the world in all its beauty. Only the
artist's training will give one the artist's susceptibility and
skill. He who will understand love and self-sacrifice must
himself have loved and denied himself. And not differ
ent is it in the highest sphere, out of which men are shut
not only by lack of training but by sin. " 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 discerned" (1 Cor. ii. 14).
Accordingly, the great effort of the Christian minister,
and every other Christian worker, must be to bring men
to the trial of Christianity. All other arguments are
weak in comparison with that of personal experience. If
the will can once be brought to make the trial, then
assuredly the divine light will pour into the soul. And
let us not ignore the influence of the Christian's personal
conviction in bringing unbelievers, and especially the
earnest seekers after light who cannot fairly be classed
with unbelievers, to the truth. A real belief can never
be mistaken for mere make-believe. There is attractive
power in it. It is the bridge over which many a soul
passes to personal faith. After our Saviour's conversation
with the woman of Samaria, as we are told, " many of the
Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of

42 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I
did." But when he came into their city their faith be
came no longer second-hand, but personal. " Many more
believed because of his own word ; and said unto the
woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying ; for
we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed
the Christ, the Saviour of the world " (John iv. 39-42).
II. We come now to the Confirmatory Proof. The
inner certainty of personal experience seeks, like all such
knowledge, external verification. For this it finds abun
dant material. The redemptive revelation makes its pres
ence known in many ways and each furnishes an argu
ment for its reality and truth.
1. We begin with the argument derived from the Nat
ure of the Christian System. This is closely allied to the
experimental proof and might even seem, if not carefully
examined, to be a repetition of it. It is, however, in real
ity quite different. In the experimental argument the
proof is derived from the personal knowledge in the re
ligious life of the facts and truths which constitute the
redemptive revelation. In the argument now before us
these same facts are subjected to the tests of the reason.
It is argued that the revelation is true because it is ra
tional, or, to state the argument more specifically, because
it is consonant with the character of God and the needs of
men. This is the line of proof which has been developed
with so much power and beauty by Erskine of Linlathen
in that book which has brought conviction to so many in
quiring souls, the "Remarks on the Internal Evidence for
the Truth of Revealed Religion." Erskine called it the
internal evidence, because it is drawn from the internal
facts of the Christian system, rather than from miracles
and prophecy and the outward effects of Christianity.
The redemptive revelation is what we should rationally
expect from the character of God. All men have a knowl
edge of Him through His natural revelation. This is in-

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 43
sufficient for their needs, but it is sufficient to give them
much true knowledge respecting the divine character.
Now it is reasonable to suppose that such a Being would
interpose to furnish His sinful creatures with the knowl
edge and help they need for their salvation. And when
we come to examine the revelation which the Scriptures
and Christian experience declare to have been given, we
find that it is in all respects worthy of God. The divine
love, the Fatherhood of God, the stooping of God to earth
in the incarnation, the revelation through Jesus Christ
the God-man, the atoning death upon the cross with its
disclosures of the depths of divine compassion, the send
ing of the Spirit, the establishment of the Christian
church, the bestowal of pardon upon guilty sinners, their
restoration to sonship, the promised triumphs of the King
dom, the blessedness of heaven, the final subduing of
evil — these are facts and truths which bear the divine
stamp upon them. Men could not have invented such
ideas. Only the all-holy One Himself could be their au
thor. If these things be not of God, then there is no
God. We pronounce unhesitatingly against the claims
of heathen religions, because their conceptions of God are
not worthy of God. We pronounce as unhesitatingly in
favor of Christianity because its conceptions of God are
worthy of God.
Moreover, the redemptive revelation is precisely adapted
to the needs of sinful, lost men. The way of salvation
through faith in a crucified Saviour who has made atone
ment for human sin, so that God speaks His justifying
word of grace before a single act of true holiness has been
achieved, is just what is needed to give men the courage
and the motive to enter upon that life of obedience and
service which is the true end of their being. What sin
ners need is not so much knowledge as spiritual power,
and this is what Christianity gives them by its method of
redemption and the divine bestowal of the Holy Spirit.

44 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
They need a career, and this they find in the Kingdom of
God. The methods of salvation which other religions
offer are not adapted to human wants. The Christian
method is.
I said that in this argument we subject the redemptive
revelation to the tests of reason. Let me qualify my
statement. I do not assert that reason in its natural state
is capable of sitting in judgment upon the Christian reve
lation. It is inevitable that to the reason of the man who
has had no personal experience of God as He has revealed
Himself in Christ these facts should in many respects
seem to be foolishness. It is to the regenerate reason
alone that the argument with which we are concerned car
ries its full force. The eye must be single before the
whole body can be full of light. And yet even the natu
ral reason can recognize something of the intrinsic beauty
and verisimilitude of the Christian system. The anima
naturaliter Christiana, as Tertullian so finely called it,
the soul which is by nature Christian, even before it
comes to Christ, finds in Christianity oftentimes a truth
which takes possession of the reason, and leads the will
to the humble acceptance of the Saviour. So it was with
Augustine. So it has been to many a soul since his day.
2. The heart of the redemptive revelation is Christ.
The whole revelation is concentrated in him as in a focus.
When, therefore, we pass to the consideration of the ar
gument from the Personality and Character of Christ, we
are simply continuing the proof from the nature of the
Christian system. We shall look at his human life, with
no assumptions respecting his divinity, leaving to the
conclusion all inferences as to his higher nature.
Jesus Christ was the child of poor and uneducated
peasants. He was born in one of the smallest towns and
brought up in one of the most despised towns of a coun
try that had no status among the nations, either politically
or intellectually. He had no advantages in the way of

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 45
early education. His occupation was that of a mechanic,
his associations chiefly with the humble and unlettered.
His environment was not such as to favor the production
of a great man. Look first at the moral greatness of this
man's life and character. It was a life of spotless purity.
On this point we have not only his own testimony and
that of his disciples, but his life is before us in the four
Gospels, in its perfect words and works. To call it " the
great moral miracle " is scarcely to use a metaphor. And
then it was a life of entire self-sacrifice, of constant com
munion with God. To live in his presence gave one a
new idea of God.
Then look at Christ's teachings. Even unbelief stands
with uncovered head before the Sermon on the Mount,
and confesses that here is the perfect morality. Never
man spake like this man. After nineteen centuries the
moral ideal which Jesus exhibited still towers above the
world's practice like some lofty unclimbed mountain.
And the impression- made by the morality he taught is
only increased when we consider his spiritual teachings
and his Gospel of salvation.
Even more wonderful was the plan of Christ, the estab
lishment of a kingdom of God, which is to grow until the
whole race shall be brought under its sway. Other men
have had their schemes of universal conquest, the Alex
anders and Caesars ; but their plans were contracted and
short-sighted. The means they employed were material.
The means Jesus employed were spiritual. Their plans
failed utterly. Christ's plan has from the first been ad
vancing steadily in its fulfilment, until no thoughtful
mind can doubt its final complete success.
This man claimed to be divine. He declared that he
had come to earth to be the Saviour of mankind. He
calmly asserted that he was to judge the race and assign
to men their final destiny. He maintained that this des
tiny would depend upon the personal relation of men to

46 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
him and his gospel. He appropriated all the predictions
of the ancient prophets. And the impression which he
made upon his followers was such that, one and all, they
asserted his divinity, some in language even stronger than
he employed.
And then, what a death was that of Jesus — a death vol
untarily accepted, a death avowedly for the salvation of
the race. By it men were led to realize the divine love
and self-sacrifice. Every incident in the painful history
of the Saviour's last days and hours was worthy of the
man and correspondent to his claims. We gather our
parallels from the benefactors and martyrs of mankind,
but the comparison is all that is needed to show how
wholly unique is the death of Jesus Christ.
Now, what shall we say of all this ? How shall we ac
count for this man and his work and the claims he made ?
Science calls for a sufficient cause for every phenomenon.
What is the sufficient cause, the adequate explanation of
this wonderful phenomenon in human history ? Once
unbelief labored to prove that he was an impostor. But
the facts made that explanation so utterly ridiculous that
no respectable unbeliever would dare to advance it to-day.
So the endeavor has been made to substitute for it the
view that he was a fanatic or amiable enthusiast. But
the calmness, the self -poise, the forethought, the " sweet
reasonableness " of the man make that explanation almost
as inadequate as the other. Defeated here, unbelief has
tried to show that the marvellous picture of Christ which
the four Gospels contain is the production, either wholly
or in part, of the evangelists, or of the first disciples,
whose fond imaginations the evangelists have reported.
But the stream can be no greater than its sources. Those
humble Galilean peasants could not have invented such
a character as that. The explanation fails to do more
than involve its authors in new difficulties. Nor are these
difficulties diminished if the theory of myths is appealed

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 47
to in their behalf, for it still remains to explain how such
myths, so utterly different in their quality from the com
mon myths of history, could have arisen.
There is but one satisfactory and adequate explanation,
and that is the simple one that Jesus was what he claimed
to be and what his disciples believed him to be — the Son
of God, the Saviour of the world. That life of Jesus
stands as an unsolved puzzle in the midst of human
history unless we accept the assertion that he was the
Word made flesh. If we refuse to admit it, we throw
away the key to human history. And what shall we say
of God and religion if this be not true ? Said Charles
Kingsley (" Westminster Sermons," pp. 5-16) :
" Consider but this one argument. It is no new one ;
it has lain, I believe, unspoken and instinctive, yet most
potent and inspiring, in many a mind in many an age. If
there be a God, must he not be the best of all beings ?
But if he who suffered on Calvary were not God, but a
mere creature, then, as I hold, there must have been a
creature in the universe better than God himself. . . .
Man has fancied to himself for eighteen hundred years a
more beautiful God, a nobler God, a better God than the
God who actually exists."
3. Still another argument is derived from the Relation
of Christianity to the History of the World. It would
take us quite too far afield were we to attempt to treat
this argument with any degree of fulness. The salient
points alone can be indicated. The proof is teleological
in its character, exhibiting a manifest providential rela
tion. It aims to show that Christ and Christianity came
in "the fulness of the time" (Gal. iv. 4), that all the
movements of earlier history converge in the Gospel and
find their meaning in it.
Look first at the relation of Judaism to Christianity.
The Jews were the people of hope. Their golden age, as

48 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
has been strikingly said, lay not in the past, like that of
other nations, but in the future. Their history, taken by
itself, is a torso. To understand Judaism it must be
viewed in the light of Christianity. We have seen in a
previous chapter how the Hebrews were separated from
all the other nations of the earth, made the recipients of
a pure monotheism, trained by centuries of suffering and
vicissitude to become the teachers of mankind. Any
other race would have utterly disappeared in the mis
fortunes which befell Israel. But the Chosen People sur
vived, retained the consciousness of their mission, saw
ever more clearly the future that lay before them. The
coming kingdom of God and the Messiah appeared more
and more fully upon the prophetic horizon. The germs
of doctrines that had power to transform the world lay
waiting to be fructified in their religious system. The
Gospel came as the fiulfilment of the long history, the ex
planation of its meaning, the key to its problems. Christ
came as the fulfilment of the messianic ideal. And be
fore we leave this branch of our subject, let us take a
single glance at the condition of the Jewish nation when
Christ appeared. The conquests and political oppression
of their later history had scattered the Jews over the
whole Roman Empire. Especially were they concentrated
in the great centres of civilization — Rome, Corinth, Alex
andria, Antioch. The Diaspora, or Jews of the disper
sion, had taken on a measure of Roman civilization.
They had learned to speak the Greek language, the lingua
franca of the times. Their contact with heathenism had
at once strengthened their faith in monotheism and made
them less rigid in their religions ideas and more ready to
welcome new light. Thus was the way opened for the
spread of Christianity by their means.
In the relation of heathenism to Christianity a like prep
aration and providential connection may be recognized.
I referred in the last chapter to the providential training

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 49
of the heathen nations. Their whole history bears witness
to it. There was an intellectual preparation for Christian
ity in ancient culture. The literature, art, natural science,
and especially the philosophy of Greece, shaped that
wonderful language which was to carry the Gospel to the
ends of the known world and furnished the forms of
thought which the religion of the Crucified was to ap
propriate and consecrate to its higher uses. How great is
the debt which the Christian church owes to Plato's
philosophy, and who can doubt that there was a divine
connection between the Academy and the Gospel ? There
was also a moral preparation in the religions of the
ancient world. Imperfect and perverted as they were,
yet they kept alive the sense of need for a higher and
truer revelation. And when they lost their power and
sank into corruption, in the presence of the fearful im
morality which had gained the upper hand at the time of
Christ, the way was opened for earnest men to find in the
pure ethics of Christianity and the moral motive power
which it furnished in its redemptive system, that perfect
religion of which their souls stood in need. Nor must
we forget the political preparation for Christianity in the
history of the heathen world. The Persian conquests —
to go no further back — consolidated Asia and Africa
about the eastern end of the Mediterranean. Alexander
carried the Greek language and literature over the Orient.
Finally Rome appeared upon the scene, and the most re
markable political organization ever known, the Roman
Empire, held the civilized world under its sway. With
out this preparation Christianity would have been, hu
manly speaking, an impossibility. With it the spread of
the religion of Jesus was secured. The ancient world
was like a great mass of combustible material waiting for
the spark that should set it afire. Christ came and soon
it was blazing far and wide. The mind must be dull
indeed which can Contemplate the wonderful history of
4

50 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
the heathen world before the Saviour's coming and not
see in it a manifest preparation for his religion.
4. Again, we find an argument in the Miracles which
accompanied the redemptive revelation. During the last
century and the earlier part of our own this was the fa
vorite proof, with which only the argument from prophecy
was placed upon an equal footing. The Christian thought
of our day has reacted from what was undoubtedly a too
exclusive reliance upon these arguments. Moreover, we
understand the nature of the miracles and their relation
to the Christian revelation better than we did. It is my
intention to devote a chapter to the nature and true mean
ing of the miracles, and I shall therefore speak very briefly
with regard to them at the present time. Miracles are
not, as the old Apologetics taught, divine credentials at
tached externally to the revelation for its authentication.
They are a part of the revelation itself. They are not
violations of the laws of nature, but events which cannot
be accounted for by physical forces or human agencies and
which therefore are ascribed to a higher Cause. They are
not known as miracles simply by the power manifested
in them — that would not distinguish them from the mir
acles of evil beings — but by their manifestation of God's
grace in redemption. When the redemptive revelation ap
pears in the realm of physical nature operating immediately
and supernaturally upon it, we have a miracle. Now the
miracles had for those who first beheld them a very high
value. It was not possible to deny that here was a more
than human power at work. Of course it was open to the
caviller to declare that it was a diabolical agency, as the
scribes and Pharisees did with respect to Christ's miracles
(Matt. xii. 22-30). But the soul that was willing to re
ceive them and that saw in them the manifestation of the
divine grace, must have been at once awe-struck and con
vinced. For us they have a different value. We do not
see them. We have to prove the miracles before we can

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 51
use them in proof. But when we have accepted the moral
miracle of Christ's person and work and have experienced
in our own souls the regenerating influence of God's
spirit, which if not a miracle is in many respects so like
one, we are prepared to accept as true the miracles which
the Bible relates. It is difficult to believe that Christ
should have wrought such wonders in the spiritual world
and not have wrought equal wonders in the material
world. And when we find that the miracles are inextric
ably connected with the history of the redemptive revela
tion and especially with the history of Christ, we can dis
cover in the connection of the two an evidence that has its
great value of the truth of both. Pascal says, " Doctrines
must be judged by miracles ; miracles must be judged by
doctrines." This is no mere reasoning in a circle. In the
connection between the miracles and the revelation, in the
adaptation of the one to the other, we have a perfectly
legitimate argument. And the more we know of the men
who relate these miracles to ns, the more impossible it is to
think that they either invented them or imagined them.
5. Next comes the argument from the Predictions of
the Bible. Prophecy is part of the very texture of the
Christian revelation. The prophets were God's inspired
messengers, they carried His word to men. Prophecy
was not altogether prediction of future events. It was
largely concerned with present events. But prediction
was an essential element in it. Over and over again the
truth of God's prophets and their difference from the
false prophets are proved by the fulfilment of their pre
dictions. The predictions of Isaiah and Jeremiah respect
ing the Assyrian and Babylonian captivities— to take no
other instances — stand in the Bible as unimpeachable evi
dence of the truth of the revelation of which they form a
part. More interesting, and as proof no less cogent, is the
long series of predictions of the Messiah, beginning with
the first promise of the seed of the woman which was to

52 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
bruise the serpent's head, gathering strength in the pros
perous days of the kingdom when David and his immedi
ate descendants sat upon the throne as types of the coming
One, deepening and revealing the vicarious sacrifice of the
Servant of God in the days of the Captivity, and standing
out distinct and circumstantial on the last pages of the Old
Testament Scriptures. How shall we explain it? the
prophecy and its fulfilment in Jesus the Christ ? How
shall we explain the progressive fulfilment of the prophe
cies of the Old Testament, re-emphasized and expanded
by the Saviour himself, respecting the establishment of
the kingdom of God ? The world has nothing like this to
show elsewhere. I grant that the argument from prophecy
has not always been wisely managed, that there has been
a tendency to find fulfilments in cases of doubtful applica
bility. But making all necessary deduction for an apolo
getic zeal that has not been always according to knowl
edge, the fact remains that from the first a great system
of prediction has entered into the fabric of the redempt
ive revelation, and that so far as history has advanced it
has verified by its fulfilments the truth of the things pre
dicted. And as the world moves on, and the history of
the world is made, doubtless there will be new and still
stronger evidences derived from this source.
6. We know a cause through its effects. The practical ar
gument, among the external proofs, for Christianity is what
it has accomplished. We may consider what it has done
for individuals and what it has done for the world. One
of the most telling evidences of its truth is in the change
of individual hearts and lives. It does transform men.
The fact is undeniable. Even if it is an imagination, it is
an imagination that has the power to make new men. It
shows itself in the life. It has its root in faith but the
tree and the fruit are right character and good works.
Said one of the early church Fathers (Athenagoras, " A
Plea for the Christians," ch. xi.) :

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 53
" Among us you will find uneducated persons, and arti
sans, and old women, who, if they are unable in words to
prove the benefit of our doctrine, yet by their deeds ex
hibit the benefit arising from their persuasion of its truth ;
they do not rehearse speeches, but exhibit good works ;
when struck, they do not strike again ; when robbed, they
do not go to law ; they give to those that ask of them, and
love their neighbors as themselves."
It is probable that the majority of those who become
Christians in the stricter sense of the term have been first
impressed and attracted to Christianity by the godly lives
of believers, fathers, mothers, friends, people the reality of
whose faith they could not doubt because it manifested it
self in the life.
But the argument may be drawn not only from the ef
fect of the Christian religion upon individuals, but also
from its effect upon the world. Our Saviour declared
that the establishment of the kingdom was to be a grad
ual process, which he illustrated by the analogy of the
leaven in the mass of dough and the growth of the plant
from the seed. Now so far as human history has ad
vanced, the kingdom of God has steadily advanced, trans
forming the world in its progress. First, there is the
spread of Christianity. This is not the highest form of
the argument, for mere numbers and territorial extent do
not prove the truth of religion ; yet it is not without its
value when rightly stated. The few disciples gathered
about Jesus at the time of his death had increased by
the end of the first century to 500,000; by the end of
the second to 2,000,000 ; by the end of the third to
5,000,000 ; by the "end of the fourth to 10,000,000 ; at
the close of the tenth to 50,000,000 ; at the close of the
fifteenth to 100,000,000 ; until in the year 1880 the whole
number of Christians was reckoned at 410,900,000 (Dor
chester's "Problem of Religious Progress," p. 515 ; Fisher,
in his " History of the Christian Church," p. 580, places

54 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
the number at the present time somewhat lower, namely,
388,000,000). Thus about a third of the race have be
come at least nominally Christian. The value of these
numbers is increased when we remember the obstacles
Christianity had to encounter, especially at the outset,
that it went directly counter in its teachings to the natu
ral inclinations of men, that it was despised and ridiculed
by the more intelligent classes, that the means employed
were purely spiritual. In later times both the forms and
the methods of Christianity became to a large extent
worldly, but probably the change proved a hindrance
rather than a help to the progress of the Christian religion.
But even when all abatement has been made for the cor
rupt influences which have invaded it, the steady advance
of the religion of the Cross is the great wonder of history.
Other religions have had their periods of success, but none
has shown this sure and steady growth and this ability to
hold its own in spite of all opposing influences.
The argument becomes far stronger when we pass from
the numbers to the transforming effects of Christianity.
The kingdom of God has been coming with steady prog
ress since the Holy Spirit was given on the day of Pen
tecost and as steadily it has changed the moral aspect of
the world. It has come without observation, working
from within outward, as a spiritual principle, first reno
vating the hearts of men, then regenerating society. To
its influence we owe the wonderful moral change the
world has undergone since the days of classical heathen
ism. Christianity has brought about the general recogni
tion of the dignity and worth of manhood. It has ef
fected the gradual abolition of slavery. It has secured
the amelioration of legal systems. It lias elevated wom
an, created the Christian family, given to the world the
blessings of the Christian home, asserted the rights of
children. To it we are indebted for our institutions of
charity. Christianity has been the motive power in the

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 55
overthrow of class distinctions. In religion it has, after
many struggles, secured to men the right of private judg
ment in matters of conscience, a right which the hierar
chical churches still resist, but which they are powerless
permanently to withhold. It has established new methods
in politics and government, and is destined to exert a still
greater influence upon them in the future. It has brought
about, in a measure at least, the recognition of the
brotherhood of nations, and we know that the time must
come, sooner or later, when under its benign influence
men will beat their spears into pruning-hooks and nations
learn war no more. Nor shall we forget, in this survey of
the triumphs of Christianity, that the greatest intellectual,
social, and moral movement of modern times, the Prot
estant Reformation, began in a revival of faith in Jesus
Christ. And then, consider the present power of Christianity.
We have but to compare the Christian and the heathen
nations, or the nations in which the Christian faith exists
in its purity and those in which it has become corrupted,
to see how great and beneficent is the influence of Chris1-
tianity. The presence or absence of Christianity means
the presence or absence of civilization in the highest sense
of the term. Compare England and Germany with
Turkey and China. See what the labors of Christian
missionaries have accomplished in the civilization of the
islands of the Pacific. Consider the way in which the civ
ilization of Christian countries differs according to the
purity or degeneracy of their faith, the difference between
England and Spain, between Protestant and Roman Catho
lic Canada. Is it said that civilization is the cause rather
than the effect, that when Christianity has finished its work,
civilization will exist without it? Then look at the at
tempts that have been made to retain civilization without
Christianity, at France during the Revolution, at Paris
when the Commune had possession of it in 1871. Of all

56 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
villains the civilized is the worst. Doubtless civilization
can exist for a time without Christianity. The better
educated classes, which have received a Christian training
and a Christian morality, can cast aside Christ, and play
ing with a superficial culture and a more superficial phil
osophy call it religion or even an improvement upon relig
ion. But take away the religion of the masses, and will
they retain morality and philanthropy, and respect for gov
ernment ? No, close upon the heels of the agnosticism of
our times come nihilism, and atheism, ready to overthrow
religion, morality, government, and all the sanctions by
which the perpetuity and well-being of society are main
tained. As we look out over the world and seethe great forward
movement in every department of human effort which
characterizes our age, we discover that the work is being
done chiefly by a few nations. What are the nations that
exert this regenerating power ? The three great Protes
tant nations, England, Germany, and the United States.
Can we doubt that their influence and success is due to
the religion of Jesus ? To them, if they are true to Christ,
belongs the future of mankind. They, like Israel of old,
are Chosen Peoples. Let them realize the mission that
has been committed to them, let them seek to build up
the kingdom of God, and the day of the world's redemp
tion will speedily come. Let them be untrue to the task
God has given them to do, and He will give to other na
tions worthier of it the privilege of carrying to its success
ful completion God's plan for the uplifting and renova
tion of the race.
Such, then, in brief outline, are the evidences of Chris
tianity, the grounds of the Christian's faith. We do not
accept with credulity a system imposed upon us by our
fellow-men. We do not follow our feelings or our imagi
nation. We believe because we find in our faith the
highest reason. We look within, and there is an experi-

THE EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY 57
ence of God's presence and power, and of the grace of
Christ, the reality of which we cannot doubt. We look
without, and we discover in what the religion of redemp
tion has accomplished the evidence of its truth. And
when those who are not Christians doubt, we ask them
only to deal with this subject as honestly as they would
with any other, and to subject it to as reasonable tests.
He who asks will receive ; he who seeks will find ; to him
who knocks it will be opened.

IT.
THE MEANING OF THE MIRACLES
John in prison had fallen into momentary doubt as to
the messiahship of Jesus. Accordingly, he sent two of
his disciples to the Master with the question, "Art thou
he that should come, or do we look for another ? " The
answer was, " Go and show John again those things which
ye do hear and see : the blind receive their sight, and the
lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the
dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached
to them" (Matt. xi. 4, 5). The proof which Jesus had to
furnish was twofold, his words and his works, his gospel
and his miracles. If these bore upon them the sure marks
of their divine origin, then but one conclusion was pos
sible, that Jesus was the Christ.
In our own times one half of this evidence is widely dis
credited. The miracles are felt by many to be a burden
rather than a help to Christianity. Popular scepticism
directs its most successful assaults against the miraculous
element in the Christian system. It must be confessed
that even the defenders of Christianity show a certain
timidity in dealing with the subject. Partly this is the
result of an undue emphasis laid upon the miracles in the
evidences of Christianity, which has brought about its in
evitable reaction. But still more it is the result of a mis
understanding of what miracles are. They have been
regarded too much as mere acts of power, designed to
arouse wonder and thus perforce to compel belief in the
divine mission of prophets and apostles and the Christ

THE MEANING OF THE MIRACLES 59
himself. The moral and spiritual meaning, which belongs
intrinsically to them, has not been sufficiently perceived,
nor has their organic connection with God's great work
of revelation and redemption. If the reality of the mir
acles is made to rest upon mere testimony, even though it
be the testimony of the best and most self-sacrificing, of
men, the task of vindicating them must always be most
difficult, so that by the time we have made out a fair case
for them, they have become of but little use in the evi
dences of Christianity. But if we can show that the mir
acles are part and parcel of God's redemptive revelation
itself, that they are in their moral character as expressive
of God's grace as any words uttered by inspired lips, that
they reveal truths that no mere words could make known,
in a word, that revelation and redemption would be im
perfect and maimed without miracles — then the work of
proving their reality becomes comparatively easy and their
use in the proof of Christianity invaluable.
It is my purpose to show, so far as I can in a single
chapter, what is the true meaning of the scriptural miracles
and the place they occupy in the Christian system. I am
sure that, even though I should succeed only in part, there
are some who will be helped and strengthened in their
faith by a fuller understanding of this difficult subject.
I. In the first place, the miracles presuppose the dis
turbance of the order of physical nature by sin. That
there is such a disturbance every thoughtful person must
admit, whether he looks for knowledge on the subject to
the teachings of scripture or the facts of experience. We
do not stand in our true relation to the world about us.
Man was made to have dominion over nature. That is
the truth the Bible declares upon its first page. It is the
truth prophesied by the evolution of the lower orders of
being in the earlier history of the world. It is the truth
borne in upon us by all our observation of the world as it
is to-day.

60 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
To begin with what is nearest to us : in the true relation
of things our souls should have dominion over our bodies.
The body was meant to be the obedient organ of the
spirit. Nothing could be more striking than the differ
ence between the animal and man in this respect. With
out denying the reality, within certain limits, of animal
intelligence, yet it is evident that instinct or inherited
habit has a far larger influence in the bodily actions of
the animal. The new-born calf or colt is to a great extent
already in possession of the bodily activities which it is to
use in after life. It has no infancy and but a very short
childhood. It has but little to learn and it learns it
quickly. But in the case of man how different. How
enormous is the change from the utter helplessness of in
fancy to the full activity of maturity. And the whole
process of education, by which the mature state is at
tained, is a continuous process of the mastery of the soul
over the body. An animal walks at birth. A child learns
to walk, gaining by slow degrees the power to use its mus
cles and limbs. Still more complicated and difficult is the
learning to talk and the learning to think connected with
it. We do not see how the brain is slowly exercised to
its work, by what processes its delicate machinery is put
into gear and trained to work. But the slightest consid
eration suffices to give us an inkling of the wonderful truth.
Nor is it needful to do more than allude to the equally
marvellous processes by which the bodily dexterities of
later life are attained. Watch once the practised fingers
of the musician as they fly over the keys, and think of the
mastery of the mind over the body thus manifested. There
is no limit to the possible power of our free wills over the
physical organisms associated with them. And undoubted
ly it was meant that the control should be perfect, that
our bodies should become in all things the willing instru
ments of our spirits, and especially that they should carry
out the behests of souls devoted to holy ends.

THE MEANING OF THE MIRACLES 61
But how far is the actual from the ideal ! Our bodies
are not and never become what they were meant to be.
Sinful influences, running through long lines of ancestry
to our first parents, have impaired our physical constitu
tion. We come into the world disordered, born to weak
ness, sickness, and death. In every pain we bear, in ev
ery failure of our physical powers by which we are hin
dered in our work, in the sensitiveness and irritability
which turn the harmony of body and soul into discord,
we have the witness to the confusion sin has wrought.
Still more in death. Death is not natural. It is the one
unnatural, utterly unnatural experience of the world.
Christianity may take away even now its sting. Christ's
redemption may even throw a glory around death as the
entrance into the heavenly blessedness. But until the res
urrection day brings the final conquest over death, it will
be the great evidence of the confusion sin has wrought
in nature. For man was not made to die. Death, that
to the brute is natural, is to man the subversion of his
true destination. It is the superficial sentiment of popu
lar religion that tries to comfort the mother who has laid
away in the grave the precious body of her child by tell
ing her that death is beautiful. The Bible never repre
sents it so.
Infirmity, disease, death come to us as the result of
others' sin, the corporate sin of the world, in the conse
quences of which we all participate. But our own sin
produces the same result, adding to the heritage of disor
der into which we are born. How many there are who
with bodies weakened, strength gone, ability for useful
work crippled, life fast ebbing, must confess that their
own sin has made it so.
And it is not only in our relation to our bodies that the
disorder which sin has brought into the world is manifest.
Sin has disturbed man's relation to external nature. On
the broad scale of the world's life this is manifest enough.

62 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
The pride, the avarice, the cruelty of man have turned
many of earth's most lovely regions into a desert. War
with its devastation has altered the very climate of the
regions over which it has swept. Think how the selfish
greed for wealth — and that is merely one of the manifes
tations of sin— is to-day cutting down our forests, im
poverishing our soil, filling up our rivers and harbors.
Sin has turned man's relation to the animal creation,
which should be a relation of protection and friendship,
into a relation of enmity and tyranny. How little we
think of destroying a whole race of song-birds to gratify
the pride of a foolish fashion ! And what is true of men
in the large is true of us as individuals. Nature, which
was made to be our friend, which ought to be the willing
and obedient servant of a holy will, is treated as our
enemy. We fear her. We oppress her. We turn from
her. How we huddle ourselves together in cities and
banish from us every vestige of nature as God has made it.
How we shut ourselves up in dark houses and stew our
selves with unnatural heat. Anything rather than to let
God's bright sunshine tinge our cheeks with its glow or
God's pure air fill our lungs and send the warm blood ting
ling through our veins.
It is sin that crowds the poor together in narrow alleys
and festering tenement-houses. It is sin that feeds them
with poisoned food. And because man has fallen out
with nature, nature has her revenge. She torments us
with her tempests and floods and droughts. She kills us
with her miasma and her cholera. She fills our cities with
discomforts and distresses. She hides her brighter aspects
from us. Longfellow tells us in melodious verse of the
naturalist Agassiz, how
" He wandered away and away
With Nature, the dear old nurse,
Who sang to him night and day
The rhymes of the universe.

THE MEANING OF THE MIRACLES 63
And whenever the way seemed long,
Or his heart began to fail,
She would sing a more wonderful song,
Or tell a more marvellous tale."
That is the way it ought to be with us all. But how few
are on such terms with nature ! For the great mass of
the race it is far different. Even those whose life is
spent in outdoor labor, in the open field, still realize the
primeval curse of sin, the most of them wringing with
weary labor and sweat of brow only a scanty livelihood
from a reluctant soil.
II. In the second place, a miracle is a divine restora
tion of the true order of nature. The old definition of
miracles, which was accepted by friends and pointed the
attacks of enemies, was that it was a violation or suspen
sion of the order of nature. Now there is a measure of
truth in this definition. A miracle does break in upon
the order of nature to which we are accustomed. It is
the result of the immediate operation of the First Cause.
It produces effects which are extraordinary and inexplica
ble upon the common principles of physical science. But
if the facts which have been already brought forward are
true, then the common order of nature is not the true
order of nature. In our common experience of nature
we do not see it in its true character. In many respects,
indeed, the world is what it was when God first made it.
Matter, energy, with their properties and laws, remain un
changed. So far as the world is uninfluenced by man, it
goes on just as it did ten thousand or a million years ago.
But where man has come into contact with nature and
human sin has spread its blight, a false order of nature
has entered. Now it is just here that the miracle has its
sphere. Elsewhere God continues to work through His
ordinary Providence by means of second causes. But
here His power is put forth directly to correct what has
become disarranged. The miracle consists not so much

64 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
in the immediate interposition of God. Indeed, the dis
tinction between the mediate and the immediate, the in
direct and the direct working of God is one of man's
making, and it is doubtful whether it has any real mean
ing except in our thought. But whether the distinction
be important or not, it is not so much the divine interpo
sition as the correction of the disturbed course of nature
which constitutes the miracle.
The truth of this position becomes obvious when we
examine the miracles recorded in the Bible. This, and
this alone, gives them an adequate explanation. Take,
first, the miracles of the Old Testament. The most of
them fall into two great groups, 4he miracles of the Exo
dus and the miracles of the two great prophets Elijah
and Elisha. The first group is composed of the ten
plagues by which the Egyptians were brought to let the
Israelites go out of their bondage. These were miracles
of judgment and mark the lowest stage among the Biblical
miracles. They were all miracles in external nature. It
is said by one of the most eminent of modern Old Testa
ment scholars (Oehler's " Old Testament Theology," Am.
trans., p. 70) that " the order of their succession stands in
close connection with the natural course of the Egyptian
year from the time of the first swelling of the Nile, which
generally happens in June, to the spring of the following
year." Now what was the character of these miracles?
how were they restorations of the true order of nature ?
The answer is obvious. In the primitive constitution of
nature, the natural forces work together for the punish
ment of sin. They do so to a certain extent even now.
Many sins are avenged by nature. But more are not.
As things are, so great has the disorder become that in
very many cases these forces work in the interests of sin.
Men like Rameses II. in ancient times, and Napoleon in
modern times, so far avail themselves of the resources
of science, by which nature is brought under the con-

THE MEANING OF THE MIRACLES 65
trol of man, that they employ the powers of nature in
the interest of their greed or tyranny or lust. But
these great plagues were a divine restoration of the pow
ers of nature for the time being to their true use, to
punish crime and to uphold and deliver oppressed inno
cence. In the second group of Old Testament miracles we still
find miracles of judgment, but miracles of pure mercy be
gin to be mingled with them, anticipations of God's gra
cious revelation in the New Dispensation. The poor and
famishing are succored, the diseased are healed, the dead
are raised. But these miracles of grace and mercy find
their full realization in the miraculous works of Christ.
His miracles are all of mercy. The two which seem at
first to be of a different character, namely, the withering
of the barren fig-t»ee and the permitting of the demons to
enter into the herd of swine, are, when rightly understood,
no exceptions. The larger number of the Saviour's mira
cles are restorations of those disorders of nature which
have befallen the human body through sin. The rest, such
as the making of the wine at the wedding of Cana, the
walking on the water, the feeding of the hungry multi
tudes, point to a power over nature which man is to have
when he is freed from the dominion of sin and stands
once more in his true relation to nature.
Let us look for a moment at the miracles which concern
the human body. We know but little in these days of
possession by demons. The malady which in our times
comes closest to it is insanity. So clear-headed and
broad-minded a man as Charles Kingsley has left on rec
ord his sober belief that some cases of madness can only
be explained by the assumption of demoniac possession.
But be that as it may, in the time of Christ the powers
of evil seem to have gotten possession in some cases of
the human body. It was one of the effects of sin, not
necessarily of personal sin, often probably of ancestral sin.

66 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
It was an awful token of the humiliation which has be
fallen man, of a subjection to evil through his physical
nature which puts him on a lower level than the ani
mal. And when the Saviour spoke the word, and the
demons came out, leaving the poor victim once more sane
and well, in the sphere of the delivered body the true
order of nature was restored. So in the case of the dis
eases which the Master healed. To one who sees the world
as it is and compares it with what it might be and what
it ought to be, the existence of disease is a fearfully sad
fact. Where man ought to stand, so much higher than
the brute he stands actually lower. For disease is almost
unknown among animals except as they have come under
the blighting influence of human 6in. But when the
Saviour came, the ravages of disease were stayed and the
natural order was restored. The blind received their
sight, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the deaf
heard. What a moment it must have been to those dis
eased ones when they heard the Master's quiet words,
" Be thou clean ! " and tho blood poured gladly through
their veins in all the glow and eagerness of perfect health.
And then, the miracles of raising from the dead. Death
seems the most hopeless of all the evils which have come
in the train of sin. The physician may heal disease, or
even nature may in part repair her own work of evil.
But nature and physician stand alike helpless before
death. Yet the miracle brings back nature even in this
extremity. Christ stands before the sepulchre and calls,
" LazaniSj come forth ! " and the dead man appears once
more alive and well. In one home at least the rightful
reign of life is re-established, the tears of sorrow are wiped
away, and for a time at least the curse of sin is removed.
Though in very different ways, the miracles all show
themselves to be a restoration of the true order of nature,
alike the miracles of judgment and the miracles of mercy.
III. We are next led to ask, What is the purpose of the

THE MEANING OF THE MIRACLES 67
miracles ? The answer is, It is to reveal God as the God
of redemption. They are a constituent and most necessary
part of a great scheme or system of revelation which aims
at the redemption of mankind or the establishment of
God's kingdom in a world of sin. This redemption, as it
is described in the Bible, is many-sided. It includes far
more than the salvation of individual souls from the guilt
of sin, though undoubtedly that is in many respects the
most essential element in it. But it includes the redemp
tion of the race of men and of the world itself from all
sin and all the consequences of sin, even to the carrying
forward of the race and the world to that goal of per
fected development which they would have reached had
not sin entered the world. If we could once grasp in our
Christian thought the largeness of this scriptural concep
tion of redemption, it would give a new aspect to all our
Christian work. God's kingdom is to move onward until
every enemy of man is vanquished— guilt, sin, suffering,
death, Satan, hell — and what of sin and evil remains in
corrigible finally excluded from the redeemed world.
God's revelation of redemption was from the first two
fold, a revelation in words and in works. The words
were the teachings of holy men, consecrated and inspired
prophets, culminating in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The
works were the miracles of these same prophets and the
culmination of the miracles in the wonderful works of
Christ. I do not mean that there were not other works
merely providential. But the miracles were the essential
part of the revelation in works. Now in this system of
revelation the words and the works are inseparably united.
The revelation would not be complete as a revelation of
redemption if either element were absent. We should not
know God in His full character as a Redeemer if we had
merely the teachings of Moses without those wonderful
works of judgment as the result of which God was
enabled to lead the Children of Israel out of Egypt with

68 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
a high hand. We should not know Jesus Christ as the
personal revelation of God, as the God manifest in the
flesh, unless we had not only the words such as never man
spake, but also his gracious miracles. As a matter of fact,
those who reject or make light of the miracles of Christ
always reject or make light of his divinity. In their in
trinsic nature the miracles are a revelation of God — not
merely of His power, but also of His holiness and His love.
They stand in the same relation to the revelation in words
that the looks and gestures and touch and all the minis
tries of outward act do to the words of our fellow-men.
Christ has taught us as much of the love of God by his
healing of the palsied man as John has by all three of
his epistles. The miracle of the wedding-feast of Cana
was a visible smile of God upon one of the most impor
tant and tender experiences of life. The healing of
Malchus's ear gives us a deeper insight into the mind of
Christ than man}7 of his longest discourses.
It was doubtless essential to the purpose of the miracles
that they should be signs pointing from outward things
to inward and spiritual realities. There is such a corre
spondence, divinely constituted, between the physical and
the spiritual that the one is ever the sj'mbol of the other.
Nature furnishes us with the alphabet by which we read
off the secrets of the soul. The bodily members and their
functions not only give us the terms by which we describe
the invisible operations of the mind, but they furnish us
with analogies by which alone we are able to understand
the nature and workings of the mind. Who could put
into thought or speech the idea of a spiritual joy or suffer
ing, if there were not bodily pleasures and pains with
which to compare it ? Or could we hope to push our way
through the intricate mazes of metaphysics if we had not
the analogies of the material world as a clue to guide our
every step ? So in the miracles there was a symbolizing
and expression of spiritual things. The physical disease

THE MEANING OF THE MIRACLES 69
was the sign of the far deeper inner disease of sin ; the
leprosy of the body, of the leprosy of the soul. The
bodily blindness was an outward token of the spiritual
blindness. And when Christ healed these diseases, it was
a sign of the spiritual healing — often, indeed, it was ac
companied by the spiritual healing, so that Christ added
to the words of comfort for the body the medicine for
the soul, " Thy sins be forgiven thee ! " Indeed, parallel
with the outward miracles we find a corresponding series
of spiritual miracles. Blessed he who had the insight to
see the latter through the former. Blessed those who can
do so now.
But our reasoning respecting the miracles has prepared
us to find a further meaning in them, and I cannot but
think that it was their chief meaning. They were pledges
of the redemption of nature. They give to mankind the
assurance that the disorder into which the course of nat
ure has fallen through sin is at last to be fully restored.
They are, as the epistle to the Hebrews calls them,
"powers of the world to come." They point to a time
when nature will be purged from all the effects of sin and
brought into her true relation to God and to man. That
such a time is coming the scriptures clearly teach. It is
a part of that consummation of all things which is associ
ated with the second advent of our Lord. Glowing pict
ures of this completion of redemption in the physical
world are given in the Revelation of St. John. We read
of a time when there shall be " a new heaven and a new
earth." Then " God shall wipe away all tears from their
eyes ; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow,
nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain." Nor is
it in the imagery of the Apocalypse alone that this final
state is described. Paul tells us that " the last enemy
which shall be destroyed is death," and that " death shall
be swallowed up in victory." He tells us of a " redemp
tion of the body." He declares that " the creation itself

70 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
also shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption."
Peter writes of " new heavens and a new earth, wherein
dwelleth righteousness." The human body will become in
that glorious resurrection day free from death, from sick
ness, from weakness and from pain, the perfect instru
ment of the redeemed spirit, a spiritual body perfectly
adapted to a spiritual state. Nature, healed of all her dis
orders, will be brought into complete subjection to man,
and through man to God, and will minister at once to
man's holiness and his happiness. God's kingdom will be
established alike in man and in nature.
Of this redemption of nature the miracles are an antici
pation and a pledge. They are outward and visible illus
trations of the final state. They furnish to all who can
understand their meaning an undeniable proof of the cer
tainty and completeness of God's redemption. They are
evidences of the truth of Christianity that speak for them
selves. We receive them as we receive the words of
Christ and the Apostles, not so much because we can ad
duce good testimony in their behalf but because they
carry their truth written plainly upon them. Other re
ligions lay claim to miracles. But only Christianity gives
mankind such miracles, such a system of " powers of the
world to come." When one has come to understand them
and see their relation to the whole scheme of revelation,
the acceptance of them raises far fewer difficulties than
their rejection. It is as easy to dispense with Christ's
ethics as with his miracles.
IV. But we have still to ask the question why miracles
do not occur at the present time ? In answering the ques
tion I shall take it for granted that there are no miracles
now, in spite of the fact that their continuance is claimed
by some persons. That there are many remarkable cases
of bodily healing in our own times no one will deny. Few
Christians would deny that in many cases such cures have
been the result of faith and prayer, though not without

THE MEANING OF THE MIRACLES 71
the use of natural means. But true miracles there are
none. Incurable disease is not cured. Dead men are not
raised from the dead. Hungry multitudes are not fed
with a few loaves and fishes. Nor is there any reason to
suppose that any faith, however great, would to-day bring
about such results. Why is this ? Is not human need as
great as it ever was ? Is not God as inercif ul ? Is there
not as much demand for outward evidences of God's pres
ence and power?
The reason why the miracles have ceased may be briefly
given. It is for the same reason that the revelation itself,
as a supernatural revelation, ceased. It was' not God's pur
pose to save the world by the mere exertion of His own
power, but by the slow, protracted process of moral influ
ences. Men could not, indeed, save themselves. For this
they had neither the knowledge nor the power. And
therefore God gave them a supernatural revelation, and
through the work of Christ and the mission of the Holy
Spirit, has established in the world a system of redemptive
agencies by means of which men may be saved. But He
has so arranged things that no man is saved except by his
own free acceptance of the divine grace. Nay more, He
has so far entrusted men with the ministry of the divine
grace that redemption goes forward in the world only as
men carry it forward. In spite of all the immense ma
chinery of divine redemptive power at work in the world,
not a soul would be brought to God if men did not bestir
themselves to carry the gospel to their fellow-men. This
is God's method. Thus, and in no other way, His king
dom comes and His will is made to be done on earth.
Now in this method of God's redemption the natural is
included. The disorder of nature has come as the result
of sin, the natural evil as the result of the spiritual evil.
The restoration or redemption of nature is to follow the
same order. It will come as the result of increasing right
eousness, the redemption of nature as the result of the

72 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
spiritual redemption. And from the nature of the case
this must be a slow and long-protracted process. For
men are so linked together through heredity and in their
social relations that the spiritual renovation only grad
ually effects the physical renovation. Yet it is surely
progressing as the race is more and more permeated with
the Christian life. Disease is slowly diminishing as men
grow better. The length of life is increasing. The prog
ress is doubtless slow enough, but it is none the less real.
Christianity is teaching men a new conception of their
duty to their own bodies and to the world about them.
It is indeed true that we owe the advance in large degree
to civilization and science. But we can never adequately
explain it unless we bear in mind that it is Christian civ
ilization and Christian science, and that outside of the in
fluence of Christianity civilization and science have ac
complished no such results. Slowly men are getting their
rightful control over nature and using their dominion to
advance the welfare of the individual and the race. And
in spite of the many abuses and injustices that prevail, I
do not doubt that under the influence of Christianity the
physical well-being and happiness of men is steadily in
creasing, from century to century, if not from year to
year. We are prepared, then, to understand why the miracles
were not continued. It was not needful and it was not
best. God never intended thus to restore the disturbed
order of nature. But a few sick folk were healed by
Christ. Scarcely a ripple was made on the sea of human
misery. Only here and there an unfortunate, like the
blind man the Saviour healed, was selected, that the works
of God should be made manifest in him. What was in
tended was to give men by a few striking examples the
assurance that in the divine redemption all nature was
included, the disordered human body and the disordered
world. But the process was to be slow and by the opera-

THE MEANING OF THE MIRACLES 73
tion of natural law, and the consummation was to be
reached only in the world to come. To give this pledge,
a few instances were all that were needed. It was enough
that men should perceive the powers of the world to
come. Nothing would have been gained, so far as God's
purpose was concerned, by repeating the miracles in every
age. It would have been merely to make them common
and therefore unmeaning. It would have been as need
less as to send the Master or the apostles in every age to
repeat the gospel which was once for all given to the
would in that first age.
Moreover, it is far better for us that the miracles, espe
cially the miracles of healing, should not continue. As
things are at present, the disorder of nature is not an un
mixed evil. It is the check which God has placed upon
sin, and the means by which He disciplines men in holi
ness. The chief incentives to the acceptance of God's
grace and to perseverance in His service come from the
suffering and sickness and death which are in the world.
We have no evidence that the men and women whom
Christ healed when he was on earth were made better
Christians than those upon whom he performed no mira
cles. That which alone has intrinsic value in the world
is spiritual health. The physical well-being is of use
only when it is in the service of holiness. And as things
are, it is better that men should suffer and better that
they should die. It is better that they should through
much tribulation enter into the kingdom of God. Enough
if they have the assurance that in the sequel, when all sin
shall have ceased, all suffering and sickness and death and
all the disorders of nature shall also cease. Enough if,
as the world grows better, they see the spiritual redemp
tion slowly but surely drawing the physical redemption
after it.
What, then, is the lesson of the miracles ? It is a lesson
of faith. It is said of Christ when in his own country

74 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
that he did not many mighty works there because of their
unbelief. If we are to use the miracles aright we must
neither distrust their reality nor be credulous as to their
continuance. What is needful is that we have that in
sight into their purpose which will enable us to see their
essential place in God's redemptive revelation, and that
sure trust in God's promise which will make us certain in
all the darkness of this world of the final and glorious
completeness of God's redemption. For surely^ God's
kingdom will come and His will be done on earth, and the
earth shall be His once more, and sorrow and sighing shall
flee away.

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES
When Paul spoke of the Jewish Scriptures as " The
holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto sal
vation through faith which is in Christ Jesus " (2 Tim. iii.
15), the new Testament was in process of formation, and
no one at that time imagined that it was to take its place
by the side of the Old. Yet if the Apostle had realized
what was to come, he would not have hesitated to use the
same language, with even stronger emphasis, of the whole
Bible. We may, then, appropriately employ his words to
introduce the subject of the present discussion — the Holy
Scripture of the Christian Church.
I. Our first inquiry respects the nature and general
characteristics of the Bible. What manner of book is it %
We speak of it as a book or the Book. But in reality
it is not a single book, but rather a whole library. It is
composed of sixty-six different books, dealing with a great
variety of subjects, and emanating from different periods.
Of these books the first thirty-nine belong to the history
of the Jewish nation during the period antecedent to the
final and complete loss of their political independence.
They are written in Hebrew. They constitute the larger
part of the religions literature of the Jewish people. They
are sacred books at the present time to both the Jews and
the Christian church. The other twenty-seven belong to
the century which began with the birth of Christ. They
are written in Greek, at the time of their composition the
language of common intercourse among the different races

76 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
who were united under the sway of the Roman Empire.
These books are peculiar to Christianity. They constitute
the major part of the religious literature of the apostolic
church. But the Bible is not a mere random collection of ancient
books. Many as are the centuries over which they extend,
widely diverse as are the topics they discuss, one common
subject runs like a golden thread through them all, and
binds them into a perfect unity. They all treatiin some
way or other of God's redemptive revelation, and of the
establishment of His kingdom in the world. Some deal
with the revelation in its historical aspects. Some give
us the divine law, and exhibit the revelation as it was em
bodied in the institutions of the Jewish Theocracy. Some
record the inspired messages of prophets and apostles.
Some reflect the pious life produced by the redemptive
revelation. Others still describe the life and deeds and
teachings of the incarnate Word, the culmination of the
divine self-manifestation, the visible presence of the di
vine redemption. Others exhibit the first triumphs of
the kingdom of God in the early days of the Christian
church. Others disclose the future of redemption. But
all are connected in some way with the one theme. Or,
since Jesus Christ is the core and essence of the redemp
tive revelation, we may say that all relate to him — the
Old Testament books typically and prophetically, the New
directly. A closer examination of this unity amid diversity —
epluribus unum — shows that it is an organic unity. The
Bible is an organism. It is one of the great services
which formal philosophy has rendered in modern times
that it has given us the category of the organic as applied
to spiritual things. Strictly speaking, we have here an
analogy rather than an absolute truth. The organism be
longs, in the full sense of the term, to the realm of non-
sentient life. Unless we are to accept the view which has

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 77
been 60 brilliantly and plausibly pressed upon us in late
years, that natural law is identical with spiritual law, we
must admit as much as this. But the analogy is so close
and so luminous that we may take it almost as a law. Or
rather, we may say that it is only in the light of this anal
ogy that we can fully understand the similar, though in
some respects different, spiritual law. Now an organism is
a whole, pervaded by a common life, of which the parts are
reciprocally means and ends, and work together for a com
mon end, in which each finds its fullest meaning and real
ization. The typical example is the human body, in which
all the members work for the well-being of the whole.
Paul employs this analogy with great power in describing
the functions of the members of the Christian church (1
Cor. xii. 12). " For as the body is one," he says," and hath
many members, and all the members of that one body,
being many, are one body ; so also is Christ." Mod
ern social and political science has applied the analogy
with great success to human society, the body politic.
Now it is this analogy which best explains the nature of
the Bible in its unity and diversity. The redemptive
revelation or the kingdom of God gives us the unity. The
different books all stand related to this central principle.
Each book and each division of the Bible contributes its
share to the common end. And it is only by their diver
sity that we have that wonderful fulness and many-sided
ness which are so characteristic of the Bible. Thus the
Old Testament gives the preparation for the gospel and
'the New the fulfilment in Christ. In the Old Testament,
as the old saying so strikingly puts it, the New lies latent ;
in the New the Old lies revealed (In Vetere Testamento
Novum latet ; in Novo Vetus patet). In the Old we have
history, law, and prophecy, each throwing its particular
light upon the common facts. In the New Testament,
gospels, epistles, the history of the Acts, and the prophec}'
of the Apocalypse bring to our knowledge the divine re-

78 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
demption, each from a different point of view. The value
of our fourfold Gospel has been often remarked. How
much more we know of Christ because we can change our
standpoint from the Synoptics to John, and from Matthew
to Mark and Luke !
This organic relation of the parts of the Bible also fur
nishes us with a standard by which we can judge their
relative importance. In one way of looking at the mat
ter, they are of equal importance, because all are in some
way contributory to the common purpose. Who shall
say that any member of the body is not needful ? But in
another way of regarding the matter, they are of varying
importance. " The eye cannot say to the hand, I have no
need of thee : nor again, the head to the feet, I have no
need of you " (1 Cor. xih 21). And yet no one will deny
that the eye may become more important than the hand;
and certainly, although one leads a maimed and imper
fect life without feet, yet life is possible without them,
while life without the head is impossible. So we rank
the books of the Bible according to the closeness of their
relation to that redemptive revelation which is the com
mon life of all. The Gospels occupy the foremost place.
If we were to be deprived of the Bible by degrees,
book after book, we should doubtless leave them to the
last, for they are the head and heart, the vital mem
bers of the scriptural body. They give us the essential
facts of the Christian revelation. On this principle our
missionaries generally begin their work of translating the
Bible into the languages of the heathen to whom they'
minister with the Gospels, and they translate the New
Testament before beginning upon the Old. In like man
ner they commonly take first in the Old Testament the
Psalms, in which, as in no other book, the revelation of
the Old Dispensation is summed up and the glories of the
New anticipated. So we judge that the epistle of Paul
to the Romans is of more importance than the epistle of

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 79
James, because the former 6tands in more direct relation
to Christ and the central truths of the Christian revelation.
On this principle we give a comparatively low place in the
scale of importance to the book of Esther, in which the
name of God is not once mentioned, or to the book of
Ecclesiastes. Nevertheless, while there is this difference
in relative importance, each has its place. The book of
Esther supplies an important link in the history of the
kingdom of God. Ecclesiastes makes clearer to us the
problems and perplexities which beset religious thought
during the later days of the Old Dispensation, enabling
us to better understand the people to whom the redemp
tive- revelation came, and so more clearly to comprehend
the revelation itself.
We are thus prepared to state more precisely what the
Bible is. It is the record of the redemptive revelation.
It is not the revelation itself. It is not sufficient to say
that it contains the revelation. It is the authentic docu
ment of revelation, the written reproduction of it. The
transfer of facts and truths from mind to mind is made
by language, and language finds its permanent form in the
written docninent. The redemptive revelation, as we have
seen in a former chapter, is a great system of facts and
truths, through which men are brought to the personal
experimental knowledge of God, as the God of grace.
These truths and facts can be passed over from those who
first received them, and experienced the revelation of
which they formed a part to others only by language, and
if they are to be preserved for all ages this language must
find written form. Indeed, in the historical process of
revelation itself, the earlier stages could be preserved and
the cumulative effect secured only in this way.
But the definition just given, while it truly expresses
the nature of the Bible, is too meagre to suggest the rich
ness of the fact. The Bible is like no other record of
facts or truths. All documents and books enable us to a

80 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
certain extent to live into and ourselves experience the life
of which they are the expression. In history, in poetry, in
philosophy, in the fiction that is true to life, we are taken
out of ourselves and made partakers of the thoughts and
experiences of other persons, and it may be other ages.
But the Bible has the power, as no other book, to bring
us into the heart of its subject. It is the mirror of reve
lation. It is almost the revelation itself, so that it need
not be a matter of surprise that popular thought identifies
it with the revelation. As we read it, we live the sacred
history through. God is manifested to us in supernatural
ways, as to the holy men of old. We sit with Abraham
at the tent door as the heavenly visitants come to him.
We stand with Moses, astounded, before the bush that
burns and is not consumed. The woes of the royal
Psalmist wring our souls. We behold with Isaiah the
glory of the Lord exalted upon His throne, and the angels
veiling their faces and crying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God
Almighty. The stern denunciations of Jeremiah sound
like a clarion call in our ears. We walk to and fro with
the disciples and hear the Master's words and see his won
derful works. We share the deep thoughts of the apos
tolic church when the Spirit descends on the day of Pente
cost. And if, as we read, our hearts are open to receive
the blessed influences which pervade this Book of books,
we discover in our own experience the same Father, the
same Saviour, the same Holy Spirit, and the forgiveness
and strength and blessedness of their redemption.
II. We inquire, in the next place, what grounds we
have for accepting the Scriptures as the authentic record
of the redemptive revelation. Here I can speak only in
generalities. The subject is too complex for me to follow
it into its details.
The Bible, like the revelation it records, has been a
growth. For the most part the records were made con
temporaneously with the events to which they relate. All

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 81
history seeks the permanence of the written chronicle.
Even the annals of- the earth's changes and crises before
the advent of man have been preserved in the strata of
its rocks. Human history makes its deep impression upon
the men who act in it or live while it is fresh in memory,
and they are impelled to commit it to writing. The his
tory of revelation, even though no divine provision had
been made for its preservation, must needs have found its
chroniclers. As it was, the same God who made the
revelation secured its recording by choosing the historians
and moving them to undertake the work. But the men
themselves seem to have had no conception of the great
ness and far-reaching importance of their task. " They
builded better than they knew." Their thoughts were
upon the present. They aimed to influence their contem
poraries or their immediate successors. Each did his own
particular task, availing himself of the occasion that pre
sented itself, with present ends in view. Then when
other generations had come upon the stage, and the events
and facts which composed the revelation had become in
distinct in the popular memory, these old records of God's
dealings with men became precious and were sacredly pre
served. Thus the Canon, or collection of sacred books,
grew up, by a natural process, behind and in which we
may recognize the supernatural working of the God of
redemption, guiding both the individual writers and the
church which gathered and guarded their writings.
We owe the Old Testament in its present form particu
larly to the Jewish church. To the Jews " were com
mitted the oracles of God " (Rom. iii. 2). In all their re
ligious and political vicissitudes they clung to the sacred
books and brought them into the unity of what we call
the Old Testament. The collection was complete in the
form in which we now possess it at the time of Christ.
We have not only the testimony of our New Testament
to this effect, but that of Josephus. We can trace it still
6

82 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
farther back through the apocryphal book of Maccabees
and the Septuagint translation into the Greek, completed
in the third century before Christ. But the question is
asked, Upon what grounds did the Jews admit these books
into the Canon ? I reply, upon weighty grounds. In the
first place, the Jews of our Saviour's time stood in the
line of an historical tradition running back to the begin
nings of the Hebrew nation. These writings were directly
connected with that history. Many of their authors were
among the great national heroes. Again, these books all
stood in a direct and organic connection with the great
system of redemptive revelation, upon which the religious
faith and institutions were founded. Once more, these
writings disclosed, as they do to-day, the immediate im
pression of the divine Spirit under whose influence they
were composed. I. do not assert that all three of these
tests could be applied to every book of the Old Testament,
or that any of them were applied in a scientific way. But
they do seem to have been employed in such a way as
practically to accomplish the result. And here I may
mention the fact that Christ gave his sanction to our
present Old Testament. It is not necessary to sup
pose, in order to be loyal to the Saviour's divinity, that
he solved all the problems of Biblical criticism by mere
omuiscience. But we can scarcely suppose that he who was himself
the perfect revelation of God, who possessed the Spirit
without measure, and whose religious life was nourished
by the study of the Old Testament, could have fallen into
any serious error respecting the record of the preparatory
stages of the revelation which culminated in himself. In
saying this I do not mean that when Jesus speaks of
Moses as the author of the Law, he settled the difficult
questions respecting the authorship of the Pentateuch.
In such matters he may have merely reflected the opinion
of his contemporaries. What I mean is, that he must

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 83
have judged with practical certainty between the authen
tic record of revelation and extraneous writings.
The early Christians accepted the Old Testament from
the Jews, but not without subjecting it to tests of their
own. They found Christ in it. They knew that it
was able to make them " wise unto salvation through
faith which is in Christ Jesus" (2 Tim. iii. 15). At first
it was their only Bible. The writings which compose
our present New Testament came into existence without
observation and with no thought on the part of their au
thors that they were forming another collection of sacred
writings. The occasions upon which they were written
were for the most part of merely local importance. Apos
tles and apostolic men committed to writing the current
stories of Christ's words and works. One narrated the
history of the early church and the missionary work of
Peter and Paul. Others wrote letters of counsel and in
struction to the infant churches. Then, when the genera
tions which knew the apostles and the first work of the
church had passed off the stage, and it became needful
to have an authentic record of the Christian revelation,
these books were gathered and added to the Old Testa
ment. And here again the grounds upon which they
were admitted to the Canon were strong and decisive.
There was an historical tradition which traced these books
directly back to the apostles and their companions. These
were the books which stood in organic connection with the
revelation itself. In them the spiritually-minded Chris
tian recognized the presence of the Spirit of God.
Both in the Old Testament and the New there were
certain books which were for a time in doubt, like Ezekiel
and Ecclesiastes in the former, and the epistle to the
Hebrews and the Apocalypse in the latter. In each of
these cases there were difficulties in the way of an imme
diate judgment. But ultimately the church decided to
accept them on the ground of the principles to which ref-

84 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
erence has been made. So the church has wavered in its
attitude toward the so-called Apocrypha both of the Old
Testament and the New ; but with regard to these books
also a final decision was reached in their exclusion from
the Biblical Canon.
But it must not be supposed that we accept the Bible
to-day upon the authority of the church, ancient or
modern. That authority has its weight, as it ought to
have. But we have other tests. Christian scholarship
subjects the Bible, as a whole and in its parts, to the proof
of historical and literary criticism, and shows that better
grounds can be given for the acceptance of the books which
compose it than for most works of ancient profane lit
erature. I do not say that Biblical criticism has left all
our old notions of the authorship and composition of the
Biblical books undisturbed. Thus, to take a single in
stance, even conservative scholars now generally admit
that the Pentateutch is largely made up of earlier docu
ments and that Moses cannot be called its author in the
original sense in which he was formerly supposed to be
such. But Biblical criticism has amply sustained the au
thenticity of the Bible as a whole and the right of the
individual books to a place in the Canon. Then the
Chi-istian to-day goes to the Bible with a personal knowl
edge of the reality of the revelation it records, as well as
of the results it has accomplished in the world, and this
knowledge is a most cogent evidence for the authenticity
of the book which narrates the history of the entrance
of that revelation into the world. It is the book which
brings him the gospel, which shows its power to make
him wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ
Jesus. It is the guide-book which leads us to Christ and
along the path of the Christian life to the blessedness of
heaven. The more we use it, the more does it prove itself
true in the test of practice, as it has proved itself true in
the experience of God's children in all ages. There is no

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 85
test of a guide-book like this, that it leads us to the land
we seek and carries us safely through it, so that its second
hand knowledge brings us to first-hand knowledge and is
verified by that first-hand knowledge. And then, the
Christian to-day who is led by the Spirit of God recog
nizes in the Bible the work and the presence of that
Spirit. III. We ask now respecting the necessity of the Bible.
And here the answer is to a considerable degree antici
pated. The Scriptures are essential to the highest spiritual
well-being of the individual Christian and the church.
We have been careful in our discussions to distinguish
between the redemptive revelation and the Scriptures
which record it. The distinction is a most important one
for many reasons. There have been considerable periods
in the history of God's people when important portions of
the revelation have been unrecorded and yet have done
their work upon the hearts of men. A hundred years
passed before our New Testament was generally accepted,
during which time the revelation lived in oral tradition,
and thousands of souls were converted and saved by it.
We might even conceive of circumstances under which
the same thing could occur to-day. Our missionaries
generally make converts before they translate the Scrip
tures. And yet, for the normal existence and growth of
Christianity, the Scriptures are a necessity. It is not
enough that souls should be brought to Christ ; it is need
ful that they should be brought in the right way. It is
not enough that they should acknowledge Christ in their
lives ; they should be built up in right Christian character
and brought to do, in right and fruitful ways, the work
of God's kingdom. Granting that men might have a
genuine knowledge of God's revelation in Christ through
personal experience without the agency of the Scriptures,
that knowledge would inevitably be one-sided, imperfect,
and even, in many of its elements, false. Christians do

86 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
not by the new birth spring immediately into perfectness,
either of character or knowledge. Sin and the spiritual,
moral, and intellectual disturbance which sin produces still
remain in greater or less measure in every Christian. The
spiritual eye of the best Christian is near-sighted and
wrong-sighted. Hence the need of a standard and guide
by which the individual imperfections and errors may be
corrected. This the Bible affords. Here the redemptive
revelation is given in its primitive simplicity. It is por
trayed by men who were supernaturally guided by God
and guarded, so far as the revelation itself was concerned,
from the false and one-sided views into which ordinary
men fall, by the prophets and apostles, by the Christ him
self. Take the individual Christian life to-day in its nor
mal and best form, and you find it owes its origin and its
growth to the Bible. The true Christian is the Bible
Christian. He glories in his Christian experience. He
would not exchange it for forty thousand Bibles. But he
knows that the Bible first brought him into that experience
and that it has nourished and sustained it. And so he
does not put his individual experience above the Bible, but
rather aims to correct and shape it by the Bible. He is
like the near-sighted man, who rejoices that he sees out of
his own eyes and would not give his own sight in exchange
for any stories of others or help of books, yet who corrects
his defects of vision by the assistance of better eyes than
his. And if the Bible is so important to the individual, still
more to the Christian church. It is doubtful whether
there ever would have been a church, after the first
Christian century had passed away, if there had not been
a Bible. It is on the Bible that the church is based and
to the Bible that it owes its continued existence. In all
the controversies, doctrinal, ecclesiastical, and moral, which
have torn Christendom since the days of the apostles, conr
troversies which have often threatened to destroy its very

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 87
existence, the Bible has been the rallying-point of all true
Christians. The Bible view has always triumphed in the
end. Who can tell into what vagaries of doctrine and
practice the church might have run, and, humanly speak
ing, would have run, had it not been for the Bible stand
ing like a rock in the midst of the waves of controversy
and maintaining the unchanging and perfect truth of
God ! So the errors into which the church has fallen,
and in which so large a section of the church is still in
volved, arose from the neglect or subordination of the
Bible. When the Roman church put tradition and the au
thority of the church upon the same level with the Bi
ble it made certain all the abuses and errors of its later
career. And when Protestantism came forth from Ro
manism, it vindicated its right of existence and its claim
to be the true representative of the universal church
by planting itself upon the sole authority of the Bible.
When to-day, or in any age, Christians place a creed, or a
theology, or a form of government, or a mode of worship
on a level with the Bible, they fall away from the true
Christian and Protestant position. The Christian con
sciousness has its importance and its inalienable rights.
But whether it be the consciousness of the individual or
the collective consciousness of the church, it is human
and subject to error, and it must be measured and judged
by the standard of the Bible.
IV. This brings us, in the last place, to consider the
authority of the Bible. What do we mean when we give
the Bible this high place ? The reproach is often cast
upon Protestants of having put a book in the place of the
Pope and church, a " paper Pope," to whose authority
they bow with a superstition quite equal to that of their
Romish fellow-Christians. But the charge rests upon an
entire misapprehension of the Protestant position. When
we call the Bible the supreme authority.in all matters of
faith and practice, we are not exalting the Bible as a

88 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
book, but as a record of God's redemptive revelation.
The authority to which we bow is not that of a book or
of our fellow-men, but of God Himself. As the West
minster Confession says, " God alone is Lord of the con
science" (Confession of Faith, ch. xx., sec. 2). Or, as
Paul puts it, " There is no authority but of God " (Rom.
xiii. 1, see Greek). It is because the Bible brings ns
God's self -revelation in authentic and original form that
we submit ourselves to it as our highest guidei Espec
ially it is because the Bible gives us the mind of Christ,
our Divine Lord and Saviour, the Way, the Truth, and
the Life, that we accept it as our authority. But the
Bible as a mere book has no authority. We bow in al
legiance to the ever-living Father, the present Christ, the
indwelling Spirit, whom we see working in the world
about us for the redemption of mankind, whose gracious
communion and efficiency form a part of our own experi
ence. It is because the Bible reveals them to us, because
it gives us the history of their redemptive grace, and so
makes known their will and interprets our experience to
us, that we acknowledge it as our supreme rule of faith
and practice.
The sober-minded Protestant Christian is, therefore,
not a Bible-worshipper. His Bible is a means, not au end.
It is worth just as much to him as it gives him of God
Himself. It is an authority to him as the chart and the
" Nautical Almanac " are to the mariner, when they enable
him to make a good landfall. When the traveller stands
upon the Gorner Grat, with that never-to-be-forgotten sea
of frozen billows rising before him, the panorama in his
guide-book is his authority just in so far as it enables him
to identify the details in the scene upon which he is gaz
ing. Hence the importance, if the authority of the Bible is
to be recognized in its true meaning, of correct principles
of interpretation. It is possible so to abuse the Script-

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 89
ures that they are misleading rather than helpful. How
often theologians have been guilty of this misuse, making
the Bible support their theories, to the utter disregard of
its real meaning ! No wonder that the notion has become
widely prevalent that the Scriptures can be made to teach
anything. How often indolent Christians, who prefer
to cull a few proof-texts here and there rather than to
search the Scriptures, have allowed themselves to become
entangled in erroneous views of God and His truth ! " The
Devil can cite Scripture for his purpose," and even the
children of God allow themselves to be imposed upon by
his exegesis. If the Bible is to be our authority, we must
study it faithfully and rightly. Let us briefly glance at
the requisites for its understanding.
We must study it under the guidance of God's Spirit.
The revelation with which it is concerned is spiritual, and
both revelation and record for their right apprehension
require spiritual discernment. The first qualification of
the Bible student, as of the theologian, is the prayerful
frame which seeks direction from the Author of truth.
Augustine laid down the principle that faith must precede
knowledge (Fides prcecedit intellectum), and certainly it
holds good with respect to study of the Scriptures. He
who will understand a work of art must have something
of the artist's spirit. He who will understand God's reve
lation as it is recorded in the Bible must have God Him
self for his Teacher.
We need to study the Bible in the light of the expe
rience and teachings of the Christian church. If we re
ject the authority of the church, it does not follow that
we are to reject its helpful guidance. Eighteen centuries
of Bible study lie behind us, and although many mistakes
have been made, to a great extent an understanding has
been reached of the true meaning of the Bible, and reached
by both theoretical and practical ways. We cannot afford
to ignore the fund of Scriptural knowledge which has thus

90 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
been gathered. In the great essentials a far larger degree
of unanimity has been reached than is commonly sup
posed. We do not to-day approach the Bible as discov
erers in a new land ; we are passing over ground every
foot of which has been trodden a million times by eager
feet. We must study the Bible closely and critically, accord
ing to the methods we employ in the interpretation of
other books. When we treat it as a mere collection of
oracles, to be taken separately and at random, apart from
their context and without reference to the purpose of the
book in which they occur, we degrade the Bible and show
disrespect to Him whose revelation it brings to us. There
are difficulties in the way of understanding the Scriptures
arising from the fact that they were written in languages
strange to us, and under circumstances very different from
ours. But these difficulties may be surmounted, even by
the ordinary reader who is unacquainted with the original
tongues, with far less labor than is generally supposed.
Let us honor the Bible by coming to it with the confidence
that it is a rational book and that it can be understood if
we read it in rational ways. Surely we shall not be put
to shame.
And then, we must study the Bible with the recogni
tion of the historical and progressive character of the reve
lation it records. When we seek for the divine authority
which it conveys to us we shall remember that the re
demptive revelation was made " by divers portions and
in divers manners " (Heb. i. 1). The Old Testament has
not the same authority for us that the New has, because
the higher revelation of the latter modifies, and renders
to some extent superfluous, that of the former. So in
the New Testament, there are many things that are
to be explained in the light of local and temporary
exigencies, and we in our different circumstances must
exercise wise discrimination to distinguish the principle

THE HOLY SCRIPTURES 91
from the precept, the eternal truth from its ephemeral
form. But he who studies the Bible faithfully, using all spirit
ual and rational means for its understanding, will not fail
to find in it the authority he needs for his guidance in this
world and his assurance of blessedness in the next. More
and more it will be " a lamp unto his feet and a light unto
his path" (Ps. cxix. 105). By its aid he will be brought
into the presence and counsel of God and enabled to be
come a fellow-laborer with Him in building up His king
dom. Let us pray that this may be so with all of us.
And let us also pray that the church of Christ may return
with more simplicity and humility to the position of primi
tive Christianity and primitive Protestantism, the sole au
thority of the Word of God as given to us in the Bible.
The words of the Westminster Confession of Faith (chap.
i., sec. 10) deserve to be written in letters of gold :
" The Supreme Judge, by which all controversies of re
ligion are to be determined, and all decrees of councils,
opinions of ancient writers, doctrines of men, and private
spirits are to be examined, and in whose sentence we are
to rest, can be no other but the Holy Spirit speaking in
the Scripture."

VI.
INSPIRATION
Lsr the chapter on the Holy Scriptures I purposely re
frained from touching upon the subject of their inspira
tion — partly because, there are advantages in considering
the Bible as a record of revelation before raising the ques
tion whether any special divine influence was exerted in
its composition, and partly because the great importance
of the doctrine of inspiration makes it worthy of a sepa
rate treatment. To this subject we shall now address our
selves. Unquestionably it involves especial difficulties.
No Christian doctrine is at the present time more widely
discussed. It is a stumbling-block to unbelievers and a
perplexity to many earnest Christians. Even Christian
theologians, while generally admitting that there is a true
sense "in which the biblical authors were inspired, differ
widely in their explanations of what inspiration was. It
is, therefore, incumbent upon us to approach the subject
with modesty and candor, not for the purpose of confirm
ing our preconceived opinions, but with the earnest desire
to discover the truth and a hearty reliance upon the Spirit
of truth.
I. We are met at the outset by the fact that the Scrip
tures, through which we gain our chief knowledge of the
nature and circumstances of the redemptive revelation,
teach a doctrine of inspiration much broader than that
which we designate as the doctrine of the inspiration of
the Scriptures. The former is the generic doctrine ; the
latter is a special case under it. We need for the proper

INSPIRATION 93
understanding of the scriptural inspiration a knowledge
of inspiration in the broader sense.
From the beginning of His redemptive revelation God
worked through chosen instruments. His purpose was to
save man by men. We have seen, when dealing with the
subject of revelation, how these men were selected and
educated for their work. Agencies natural and super
natural were brought to bear upon them to fit them for
the parts God had for them to play in the establishment
of His kingdom. But it was not sufficient that they
should be trained until their souls were provided with the
requisite natural and spiritual qualifications. The work
was one for which human powers would not suffice. It
was needful that there should be a supernatural equip
ment. God Himself, through the Holy Spirit, must act
in and through them, not as God ordinarily works by
means of second causes, but with a direct access and effici
ency of the First Cause. This was inspiration. We may
define it as an official endowment with the Holy Spirit
for ends connected with the redemptive revelation or the
establishment of God's kingdom. It belonged to the first
introduction of the redemptive revelation into the world.
It ceased when this was completed. Whatever tasks were
necessary to the full carrying out of God's plan of revela
tion might have this special influence of the Holy Spirit.
Thus, to look first at the Old Testament, Moses was
endowed for his work as the deliverer, lawgiver, and ruler
of Israel. The power by which he made known God's
will to the Chosen People and to Pharaoh, and by which
he performed the great miracles of judgment and redemp
tion, was the extraordinary and supernaturally given power
of God (Ex. iii. 11, 12, iv. 1-23). He is said to have
been possessed of the divine Spirit (Numb. xi. 17 seq.).
The judges were inspired to govern Israel and fight her
battles in the age of demoralization which followed the
conquest of the Promised Land. We are told that Gid-

94 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
eon, Jephthah, and Sampson performed their deeds of
valor, by which the nation's life was preserved and God's
redemptive work forwarded, by the power of the Holy
Spirit (Judges vi. 24, xi. 29, xiii. 25). Three classes of
functionaries represented God in the Theocracy, mediat
ing between. Him and His people, carrying out His re
demptive work and establishing His kingdom — prophets,
priests, and kings. They were all men specially endowed
for their work ; at least this was the case when they were
faithful to their office. Their endowment with the Holy
Spirit was symbolized by their anointing, the solemn con
secration setting them apart to their work. The divine
Spirit was given to Saul when he was anointed and mani
fested its presence by the gift of prophecy. When he
proved unfaithful, the Spirit was taken from him and
given to David (1 Sam. x. 6, xvi. 13). The typical in
stance of Old Testament inspiration is that of the proph
ets. They were God's especial confidants and organs.
They received His messages and made them known to
men. In many cases they were empowered to perform
miracles. Occasionally the conduct of the government
was committed, for a longer or shorter time, to their
hands. To them the divine Spirit was given in especial
measure. They were by way of eminence the " men of
the Spirit " (Hos. ix. 7, see Hebrew). Everywhere in the
Old Testament their prophetic power is ascribed to the
Holy Spirit (Numb. xi. 25-27; 1 Sam. xix. 23, 24; 2 Sam.
xxiii. 2 ; Neh. ix. 20, 30 ; Ezek. ii. 2 ; Zech. vii. 12 ; Mic.
iii. 8). But the inspiration of the prophets, priests, and
kings of the Old Dispensation was imperfect, and, as time
went ou, there emerged in the prophetic consciousness the
presentiment of a complete realization of the ideal of in
spiration in the Messiah (Is. xi. 2, xiii. 1, Ixi. 1), while
far off upon the utmost horizon of inspired vision ap
peared the assurance of a wonderful outpouring of the
Spirit upon the church of the future (Joel ii. 28, 29).

INSPIRATION 95
We pass to the New Testament doctrine of inspiration.
The Saviour came. In him the prophetic predictions
were fulfilled. At his baptism he was set apart for his
redemptive work. God gave His approval. The descend
ing dove and the baptism with water symbolized the gift
of the Holy Spirit by which he was endowed for his
work. This was the anointing, the official capacitation for
his redemptive ministry, by which he was recognized as
the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, the divinely
human Prophet, Priest, and King (Matt. iii. 16 and par
allel passages). He possessed the Spirit without meas
ure (John iii. 34). In his inaugural address in the syna
gogue at Nazareth he appropriated the Old Testament
prophecy of his inspiration (Luke iv. 18; cf. Is. Ixi. 1 seq.).
All his messianic work was done through the Spirit, his
preaching, his miracles, his sacrificial death, his resurrec
tion. He alone of all God's servants, since he was at once
Son of God and perfect man, was the perfect medium
of the Spirit. He was himself the perfect revelation of
God. The instruments of Christ in the founding of the
church and the first work of the kingdom were the twelve
apostles. Comparatively early in his ministry the Saviour
began to promise them the special indwelling of the
Spirit to capacitate them for their work. When they were
brought before kings and governors, he told them, they
should not take heed what they should say, for the Spirit
should give them the needed utterance (Matt. x. 16-20
and parallel passages). But most clearly and fully were
his promises of the Spirit given them in that tender and
wonderful discourse which followed the Last Supper, and
which John has recorded. The Saviour himself must
leave them. They could not understand his person or do
his work while he was with them. But after his death
and ascension the Holy Spirit was to be given them as his
representative and their helper, the Paraclete. He would

96 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
equip them for their work, taking the things of the risen
Christ and giving them to them, leading them into all the
truth, bringing to their remembrance all that Christ had
said unto them, revealing the things to come. Through
them He would convince the world of sin and righteous
ness and judgment (John xiv. 16, 17, 26, xv. 26, 27, xvi.
7-15). The deepest view of this last discourse regards it
as intended primarily for the apostles and their associate
workers for the kingdom in the first age of Christianity*,
and only secondarily, like an overflowing cup, for the
Christians of the coming ages. The Saviour's promises
began to be fulfilled on the day of Pentecost. The visi
ble symbols of that marvellous occasion may be compared
with the audible voice and descending dove at the baptism
of Christ. The real event was the invisible outpouring
of the Spirit, by which the church was capacitated for
its work of converting the world to Christ. The tongues
of fire and the speaking in strange languages were em
blems of the work the apostles and their companions had
to do, the conquest of mankind by the foolishness of
preaching. The descending Spirit brought gifts unto men
from the risen Christ (Eph. iv. 8), some supernatural, some
natural. . So far as He dwelt in the early Christians super-
naturally they were inspired. Paul has given us in the
epistles to the Corinthians and the Romans a full account
of these charisms, or gifts of grace (1 Cor. xii.-xiv. ;
Rom. xii.). They were of the nature of the gifts bestowed
upon the Old Testament prophets, official endowment for
work connected with the redemptive revelation. They
were partly supernatural, as we have said, and partly natu
ral. So far as the work required more than the natural
powers of the first teachers of Christianity could accom
plish, the supernatural inspiration, with its supernatural
powers, was given. In the strength of it the apostles
and apostolic men proclaimed the gospel, received revela
tions from God, wrought miracles. Paul could say of his

INSPIRATION 97
gospel, " Which things also we speak, not in the words
which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost
teacheth " (1 Cor. ii. 13). The foundation work of the
New Dispensation was done by inspired men.
Before leaving this branch of our subject we must
briefly answer the question, What was the nature of this
inspiration of which the Bible gives such abundant ac
count ? We have seen that, first of all, it was distinct
ively supernatural. On this point no one who reverently
studies the facts can have the slightest doubt. This was
not the working of human genius, even in its highest ex
ercises. Neither was it that gracious illumination and
power of the Holy Spirit granted to Christians in all ages.
Take the miracles as affording a crucial test. Genius and
spiritual capacity are utterly incapable of explaining them.
They were performed through the supernatural aid of the
Holy Spirit. The same may be said of prophecy, though
the proof is not at first so evident. Nevertheless, inspi
ration did not suppress the individuality of the inspired
man. He was not like the heathen mantic, or his modern
congener the spiritualistic medium, in whom the personal
consciousness is either entirely destroyed or reduced to a
minimum. He was the free, self-conscious agent of the
divine purpose, a fellow-laborer with God, working with
intelligent and sympathetic co-operation under the direc
tion of his Master. His natural talents and spiritual capac
ities, instead of being suppressed, were the indispensable ba
sis and condition of his inspiration. The same Spirit of
God who dwells in every man as the source of all natural
endowments, and dwells in the pious soul as the motive
power of all spiritual illumination, sanctification, and activ
ity, dwelt in the inspired soul, a soul of high natural gifts
and religious attainments, to qualify it for great tasks con
nected with the introduction of the redemptive revelation
into the world. The prophet was never more himself
than when he was under the influence of the divine
7

98 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
Spirit. All his powers were quickened and elevated. It
was an anticipation of that true relation to God which
shall come when sin has ceased and the normal -and ideal
manhood has been attained by redemption. Yet it is to
be noted that while inspiration rendered the inspired
man capable of performing the special task connected with
revelation, receiving and communicating truth, working
miracles, predicting the future, governing God's people, or
whatever it might be, it did not render him perfect or
infallible in other respects. He was not yet the perfect
man, but only an imperfect, sinful, feeble servant of God,
made strong for a particular task, and remaining imperfect
in all matters lying outside of that task.
II. Such is the background which the general doctrine
of inspiration affords us. We come now to the special
subject of the inspiration of the Scriptures. Are the
Scriptures inspired ? that is the next question which meets
us. Or it may be better to put the question in a slightly
different form, namely, Were the sacred writers inspired
to write the books which constitute the Bible ?
In entering upon the proof that the Bible is thus in
spired, let us recall what the Bible is. We have seen
that it is the record of the redemptive revelation. We
have also seen that it is a complex whole, an organism
consisting of many members. We must bear this con
stantly in mind in discussing the question of its inspira
tion. The method of procedure often followed is precisely
the opposite. The Bible is treated as if it was a mere
random mass of ancient literature, of which the parts
stand in no real connection with each other. A single
book is taken, out of its relation with the rest, and the
question is asked, Is it inspired ? And if, as may readily
be the case, the book happens to be one which is some
what remotely connected with the central facts of the re
demptive revelation, the conclusion is hastily drawn that
there is no such thing as Scriptural inspiration. But no

INSPIRATION 99
method could be more false than this. Our starting-point
must be from the Bible as a great organized whole, and
each part must be judged in relation to the whole. Who
can understand a single member of the body if it is
viewed as a mere mass of bone and flesh without reference
to the organism of which it forms an integral part ? Who
shall determine the question whether any portion of the
body contains the common life, if it be examined alone
and by itself ? If we have good reason to believe that the
Bible in its unity is an inspired book, we shall have com
paratively little difficulty in dealing with its component
parts. Now the Bible, as we know with the greatest certainty,
was for the most part written by the very men whom we
also know to have been inspired in the more general sense,
that is, by men who were God's instruments in perform
ing the great tasks of His kingdom, and for this purpose
were under a special influence of His Spirit. As regards
the Old Testament, some uncertainty surrounds the ques
tion of authorship. As we have seen reason to believe, it
has undergone several recensions and its books were not
all originally in their present form. Nevertheless, there
can be no doubt that by far the larger part of the Old
Testament was composed by inspired men, such men as
Moses, David, and the prophets, men who certainly were
inspired for other purposes. So far as the New Testa
ment is concerned, the writers were almost exclusively of
this class. They were either apostles ,or companions of
the apostles, whom we know to have shared the apostolic
inspiration. Now, of course, it is possible that these men
were only inspired for other purposes, to reveal God in
word and deed, or perhaps only to understand and receive
the revelation and to perform the miracles by which it
was outwardly authenticated. It is possible that we are
to call the Bible inspired only in the sense that its more
important parts are the work of men thus inspired, so that

100 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
the inspiration belongs primarily to the revelation, and
only secondarily and indirectly to the record. And yet,
when we consider the importance of the Bible, that it was
to be in all ages, after the first, the rule of faith and prac
tice, both for the individual and the church, that it was
to be the source of the Christian's knowledge of the reve
lation in its primitive and normal form, it would be strange
if this most important element in the redemptive revela
tion, this means by which its work was to be carried on in
all the Christian ages, was not the result of a special and
supernatural influence of God's spirit in the men who com
posed the biblical books. Otherwise inspiration would
seem to fail just where it was most needed. These con
siderations afford a strong presumption for the inspiration
of the Scriptures in a primary rather than in a merely
secondary and indirect sense.
But to pass from presumptive to positive proof. The
Bible itself bears evidence of having been prepared under
such a special influence of the Holy Spirit. Consider the
relation of the parts to the whole. It was scarcely possi
ble that the writers, left to their own unassisted powers,
should prepare books which derived their chief value from
their relation to others of which these writers were wholly
ignorant. Yet nothing is more evident to the thoughtful
reader of the Scriptures than that this is the case. The
inspiration of some of the books, as, for example, the
book of Esther, seems to have consisted just in this, that
their writers were, capacitated by the Spirit to forge just
the link that was needed for a certain part of the great
chain. Then the contents of many of the books give clear
evidence of inspiration. This is the case in so far as they
are themselves revelations. For revelation always mani
fests inspiration. Their teachings manifest a divine guid
ance. Take, for example, Paul's wise counsels in his
epistles, going so far beyond the mere good sense of an
ordinary uninspired Christian. The fact that Paul never

INSPIRATION 101
once trips, that he never confounds the temporary and the
permanent, in these casual letters, is to my mind a strong-
evidence that he was inspired in writing them. Again,
the form of the biblical writings bears in many cases evi
dences of inspiration. I do not believe that there is any
evidence of what is commonly called verbal inspiration,
that is, of the dictation of the very words of the Scripture
by the Holy Spirit. But I cannot doubt that the lan
guage bears the marks of the inspiring God, that here is
a sacred language, which iu its plastic state was moulded
by the Spirit who was guiding these men in the composi
tion of the most wonderful book that was ever written.
And then there is this significant fact, that just in propor
tion -as a Christian is led by the Spirit of God does he
recognize the presence of the Spirit in the Bible in these
and other ways. It has " spiritual things for spiritual
men " (1 Cor. ii. 13). And in saying this, I do not mean
merely that they find a revelation in it, but that it dis
closes itself to them as itself in a true sense divine.
I have left till the last the testimony which the Bible
furnishes respecting its inspiration. The scriptural au
thors say very little of the circumstances under which they
composed their books. In a few instances we discover a di
vine direction to write (Ex. xvii. 14, xxxiv. 27, 28 ; Numb.
xxxiii. 2 ; Deut. xxxi. 19 ; Is. viii. 1, xxx. 8 ; Jer. xxx. 1, 2,
xxxvi. 2 ; Ezek. xxiv. 1, 2 ; Rev. i. 19). But these are the
exception rather than the rnle. It is only when we come to
the New Testament, and read the language of Christ and
the apostles respecting the Old Testament Scriptures, that
we have clear and explicit testimony. There can be no
doubt, it seems to me, that our Saviour regarded the He
brew Scriptures as inspired. The formula, " It is writ
ten," with which he appeals to the Old Testament, shows
that he regarded its teachings as authoritative. He di
rectly asserts the inspiration of David in the composition
of the Psalms (Matt. xxii. 43). It is the Scripture which

102 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
he says cannot be broken (John x. 35). The apostles
also constantly quote the Old Testament with formulas
which evidence their belief in its inspiration, " The Holy
Ghost saith," " God saith by the mouth of His servant,"
and the like (Acts i. 16, iv. 25 ; Rom. xvi. 26 ; 1 Cor. ix.
9,10; Heb. iii. 7, ix. 8). Paul declares that "whatso
ever things were written aforetime, were written for our
learning, that we through patience and comfort of the
Scriptures might have hope " (Rom. xv. 4). Peter is speak
ing of the Scripture when he says that " prophecy came
not in old time by the will of man ; but holy men of God
spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost " (2 Pet.
i. 21). In the great proof passage (2 Tim. iii. 16) the
context clearly shows that when the apostle affirms that
" every scripture inspired of God is also profitable for
teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which
is in righteousness," he is speaking of the Old Testament
as a whole.
It may be admitted that the New Testament does not
vouch for its inspiration in the same strong terms which
it employs with reference to the Old. The writers were
not aware that they were doing a work so important and
far-reaching in its effects. But we shall not forget the
Saviour's promise of the Spirit to lead them into all the
truth, and to bring to remembrance the things which he
had told them. We can hardly suppose that these prom
ises failed of their fulfilment when the gospels and epis
tles were written. And in several instances, at least, the
writers use language which betrays their consciousness of
inspiration (1 Thess. ii. 13 ; 2 Thess. ii. 13-15 ; 1 John
i. 3, 4; see also Eph. ii. 20). In 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16 the
Pauline epistles are declared to have been written through
a divinely imparted wisdom, and are placed on a level as
" Scriptures " with the books of the Old Testament.
For these reasons we do not hesitate to affirm the in
spiration of the Bible. We make this affirmation of the

INSPIRATION 103
Bible as a whole and of its parts as well. In doing this
we do not affirm the same kind or degree of inspiration in
all its parts. We do not affirm that the men who wrote
the Bible and the men who collected the books into the
Canon received the same divine assistance. Our conten
tion is that God's Spirit presided in supernatural ways
over the composition and formation of the sacred Book of
the Christian religion.
III. The most difficult portion of our subject is still to
be investigated. What was the nature of the inspiration
of the Bible ? What were its limitations ? And here we
shall be aided at the start by what we have learned re
specting inspiration in the broader sense of the term. As
the kings and prophets and apostles were capacitated by
the indwelling Spirit for precisely the work in the estab
lishment of God's kingdom which He had for them to do,
so the sacred writers. Their task was to furnish an au
thentic and adequate record of the redemptive revelation,
a record that should give to later ages as full and clear a
knowledge of the introduction of that revelation into the
world as it is possible for human language on the written
page to furnish. This they did. We have had our atten
tion called in the previous chapter to the adaptedness of
the Bible to its purpose. Was there ever a book written
which had the power so to carry the mind back into the
past and to make it fresh and real ? The mingling of the
historical and the didactic, the skilful adjustment of prose
to poetry, of ethics to theology, of sentiment to high rea
soning, the fulness, clearness, and many-sidedness of the
narration and exposition make the Bible wholly unique
among books, whether religious or secular. The inspiring
Spirit working through the human instruments made it
the book it is, able to make the individual wise unto sal
vation, and to build up the church on its most holy faith.
Wherever we look, we see in it the presence and power of
the Holy Spirit.

104 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
If, now, we look at the human instruments employed,
there is every reason to conclude that they, like the organs
of inspiration in the broader sense, did their work as the
free, self-conscious fellow-laborers with God, rather than
as passive tools in His hands. There have been times in
the history of the Christian church when the sacred
writers were supposed to have been like the unconscious
instrument upon which the musician plays as he will, or
at best as amanuenses to whom the Spirit dictated His
message for mankind, sentence by sentence and word by
word. But of such an overpowering influence there is not
the slightest trace in the Bible itself. On the contrary,
the sacred writers seemed to have worked in free co-op
eration with God. There was no suppression of personal
ity or of individual peculiarities. Isaiah, Paul, and John
write each vn propria persona, each with his own style
and diction, each expressing the divine truth in his own
forms of thought. Like the sunlight that pours in mani
fold beauty of coloring through the stained glass windows
of some great cathedral, the divine Spirit manifests Him
self in almost infinite variety and richness through the
writers of the Bible.
But we must go further and ask, Did inspiration ren
der the sacred writers infallible ? The answer requires
careful discrimination. Infallibility is a relative term.
We ask, infallible in what respect ? If the question be,
did inspiration render the Scriptures a complete, ade
quate, true, intelligible record of revelation, so that he
who studies them aright may attain to a complete and un
erring knowledge of the saving truths and facts of that
revelation, I should not hesitate to answer the question in
the affirmative. I do not see any reason to doubt that
God accomplished His purpose, and that he so guided the
writers of the Bible that they were preserved from frus
trating that purpose. It is sometimes said that the relig
ious and moral contents of the Bible, or the religious and

INSPIRATION 105

moral truth which it teaches, are infallible. And though
this statement seems to me defective, since it lays no
stress upon the great historical facts which belong to the
very essence of revelation, I would gladly accept it in the
general sense which it is meant to convey. The Christian
church has tested the Bible iu this respect now for well-
nigh eighteen centuries, and it has found it just what it
was intended to be, with no essential fault or blemish.
If it were fallible as a record of revelation, we might well
despair of reaching Christian truth.
But there is another sense in which we may ask'whether
inspiration rendered the sacred writers infallible. Did it
render them infallible in matters which lay outside the
scope and purpose of their inspiration, in matters not di
rectly connected with the revelation which they had to
record, or only incidental to the record ? We can easily
conceive that it might have been so. But we have no
right to assume that it is so until we have examined the
facts. Some theologians begin with the a priori princi
ple that the Bible must be absolutely inerrant, and boldly
assert that this is the case, not only in matters which per
tain to the great purpose, but in all matters whatsoever.
But if the facts show that this was not the case, which
honors God the most, to accept his method of making a
Bible as the best, or to insist that He followed the method
which we think best ? Everyone has heard of that King
Alphonso of Castile, in the thirteenth century, who is re
membered chiefly for having said that had he been pres
ent at the creation he could have given the Creator some
good advice about matters which he himself thought
wrong. And there are not a few Alphonsos at the pres
ent time who occupy a very similar attitude toward the
Bible. It seems a very good and pious thing to insist
that the Bible is absolutely without error. But nothing
is good or pious that is contrary to facts. Lord Bacon
("Advancement of Learning," Bk. I.) speaks of offering

106 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
" to the Author of truth the unclean sacrifice of a lie,"
and raises the question, An oportet mentiri pro Deo? —
whether it is right to lie for God ? Nothing has done
more harm to the cause of Christianity than the well-
meaning but mistaken defences which have been em
ployed. Now a careful examination of the facts shows that in
spiration did not render the sacred writers infallible in
everything, however infallible they may have been in that
for which they were inspired. Let us look at the subject
in detail so far as our time will permit.
1. Inspiration did not render the biblical authors scien
tific historians. So far as the history was essential to the
revelation there is every reason to believe that they gave
it accurately. But literary men had not then learned to
write with that painstaking and conscientious accuracy in
minor details which modern historians have attained. In
this respect the sacred writers were not in advance of their
age. So we find some discrepancies between them, largely
in figures, some of which may be due to later transcrib
ers, but which cannot all be thus explained (compare
Numb. xxv. 9 with 1 Cor. x. 8 ; 1 Kings vi. 1 with Acts
xiii. 20 ; Gen. xlvi. 26, 27 with Acts vii. 14 ; 2 Sam. xxiv.
9 with 1 Chron. xxi. 5 ; 2 Chron. xxiv. 20 with Matt.
xxiii. 35). Matthew, by a slip of the pen or a confusion
of thought, quotes a passage as from Jeremiah which is
really from Zechariah (compare Matt, xxvii. 9 with
Zech. xi. 12, 13). A typical instance is the discrepancy,
which never has been and probably never will be ex
plained, between the Synoptic evangelists and John re
specting the day and time of the Last Supper.
2. Inspiration did not render the sacred writers scientists
and philosophers. No good end would have been accom
plished by pushing them thus in advance of their age.
They use the language of contemporary belief respecting
the world and the human soul. Only in those instances

INSPIRATION 107
where revelation and science occupy common ground do
we find them rising to the level of more recently discov
ered truth.
3. Inspiration did not render the sacred writers scien
tific interpreters of the Old Testament. The New Testa
ment authors were profoundly convinced of the inspira
tion of the Old Testament. They believed that it was
throughout, in virtue of the revelation which it recorded,
a prophecy of Christ and the Kingdom of God. They
recognized the fact that the whole history of Israel and
all its institutions were fulfilled in the New Dispensation.
Accordingly, they used the Old Testament with great
freedom in proving the truth of Christianity. A modern
exegete would be sure that he was using the exact words
of the earlier writing and in the precise sense it was in
tended to convey. The New Testament writers took little
pains to attain scholarly exactitude. Accordingly, we find
that while they are right in the spirit of their quotations,
there are often defects in the letter. It was an error of
form rather than of substance when Matthew said, " He
came and dwelt in a city called Nazareth ; that it might
be fulfilled which was spoken by the prophets, he shall
be called a Nazarene " (Matt. ii. 23). No such words are
to be found in the Old Testament. But its deepest teach
ings relate to the rejection and humiliation of the Messiah.
A careful examination of the quotations in the New Tes
tament from the Old, must give the death-blow to the doc
trine of verbal inspiration, though it will not cast doubt
upon the deep spiritual understanding of the older Script
ures on the part of the apostles and apostolic writers.
4. Inspiration did- not raise the men who stood on the
lower planes of revelation to the position of those who
occupied the higher and stood close to the Saviour. Moses
does not write like Isaiah, nor Jeremiah like Paul. The
tone and spirit of the imprecatory Psalms are not those
of the beloved disciple. It cannot be denied that there

108 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
are evidences of a lower morality in the Old Testament
than iii the New. The prophets write many things which
the apostles could not have written. The men of the older
age stood far in advance of their uninspired contempo
raries in all the essentials of their message, but they were
not wholly free from the limitations of their times.
Such are some of the facts. The sphere in which they
lie is not that of revelation. They belong to the circum
ference, not to the centre. Judged by every true criterion
they are unimportant. They do not contradict inspiration.
Rather they are limitations incidental to inspiration. But
they are facts, and facts are sacred things, which no man
may lightly tamper with. We must accept them and find
a place for them in our doctrine of inspiration. They
are like the nettle which stings and wounds when it is
handled gingerly but is harmless when grasped with a
strong hand. For my part, I do not regard them as diffi
culties in the way of the Bible, but rather as recommenda
tions to its acceptance. I can see how the Bible can much
better accomplish its purpose by not offering us infalli
bility in non-essentials, how thus God has made it a more
human and intelligible book, and has guarded us against
that worship of the letter which blinds men to the Spirit.
In conclusion, a single word about biblical criticism. It
is right that Christian scholarship should reverently sub
ject the Bible to its tests. The Bible is not like the ark
of the Lord which no unconsecrated hand might touch.
It is the human book made for everyday use, a book which
God has not been afraid to put alongside of other books
where it might be freely subjected to the test of the sur
vival of the fittest. There is a certain sensitiveness, which
has its origin in right and true feelings, about treating the
Bible like other books by inquiries into its origin and his
tory and efforts to unravel the problems of its composi
tion. But biblical scholarship, while it has been used in
the interests of unbelief, has been of untold benefit to

INSPIRATION 109
the Christian church. It has given to faith some of its
strongest supports, and it is steadily increasing our knowl
edge of divine truth. Wherever there are facts there
must be science. If God is a reality, we have a right to
learn more of His person and His nature by every method
which the resources of science supply. And if the Bible
is a book at once divine and human, it must offer to a
reverent science one of the most inviting and fruitful
fields for research. Let us have faith in the old Bible.
It is not so weak that we need fear it will get broken in
the testing. We need not be afraid to subject it to the
most vigorous tests. It is like the pure gold that will
come out of the fire and from under the hammer unin
jured. Much of the disquietude which is felt in our
times respecting the work of biblical criticism arises from
a tacit and unconfessed distrust in the Bible. And it
will disappear when Christians come to see that the very
methods which at first alarm them are leading to the com
plete and invincible proof of the truth and unfailing effi
cacy of the sacred Book.

VII.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
We have reached the point where we pass from those
preliminary topics which constitute what is called Funda
mental Theology to the system of Christian doctrine or
Systematic Theology. As we enter the new region, we
seek some general truth which shall be to us at once a
starting-point and a guide for our future investigations.
This truth we find in the doctrine of the Kingdom of
God. In our Saviour's teachings the kingdom was made
of prime importance. He began his ministry with the
proclamation, " The kingdom of God is at hand ! " (Mark
i. 15). It was through this truth that he linked his mes
sage with the teachings of the Old Testament. His pub
lic addresses were largely occupied with expounding the
nature of the kingdom. His prophecies had reference to
its ultimate triumph. The doctrine of the kingdom is
the doctrine in which the teachings of the Scripture find
their common center. The same may be said of the system
of Christian truth. If I were asked what has been the
greatest achievement of recent theology, I should say that
it was the revival of this doctrine of the kingdom and its
restoration to its proper place in the theological system.
And not only in systematic theology has the prominence
given to this truth in recent times been important. It
lias worked with fruitful results in the departments of
Christian ethics, of Church history, and of practical theol
ogy. I have no doubt that when the Christian church
once begins to realize the meaning and importance of this

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 111
great truth and fact of the kingdom, with all that is in
volved in it, a new era will dawn upon it. And the in
dividual Christian also needs to understand this truth,
which above all others has the power to lift men out of
their selfishness and isolation into their true relation to
God and Christ and their fellow-men. It is the germinal
doctrine which holds in its bosom the potency and prom
ise of all the rest. The man who understands the king
dom of God will understand all that is essential in the doc
trines of Christ, the atonement, justification by faith, the
new life, the last things — in a word, the system of Chris
tian truth.
Let us pass to the examination of this great doctrine.
I. We ask, what is the meaning of the term kingdom
of God. Our Saviour lias given us a description, which
is to all intents and purposes a definition, in the petitions
which he taught his disciples to pray, " Thy kingdom
come. Thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven."
The latter petition is explanatory of the former. The
kingdom consists in the doing of God's will on earth as it
is done in heaven ; it comes just in proportion as this re
sult is attained. The idea of the kingdom implies three
things, a world of sin, an ideal of perfection, and a reali
zation of this ideal in the world by means of redemption.
It implies a world of sin. Sin is the patent fact, which
we need no Bible to tell us of. Here it is, and here it
has been from the beginning of human history. Its ex
istence is presupposed in all the teachings of the Script
ure. That great problem which has perplexed religious
and philosophical thought in all ages, the origin of evil,
is discussed only incidentally and with no attempt at a
complete solution. The divine eternal plan is represented
as assuming the future existence of sin in the world, and
as providing for it in creation, providence, and redemption.
God determined to permit the sin, into which he knew
that men would fall of their own free will. Certainly it

112 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
was not because he did not hate it. And however we are
to explain His reasons, He meant to overrule sin for good ;
may we not reverently say, for a higher good than could
be attained without it ? At any rate, God's plan of the
kingdom from the first presupposed the existence of sin.
Men are fallen, alienated from God. They rest under His
condemnation. They have lost their rights and privileges
as children of God, those birthright prerogatives which
belong to them in virtue of their creation in the divine
image. Human society in all its ramification is permeated
with sin. Its institutions all are tainted with it. The
world is full of misery and suffering, the effects and the
punishment of sin. The human body has become subject
to death and disease. Even material nature has caught
the contagion and groans and travails in pain. Beyond
the death-line there are tokens of worse evils and retribu
tions in the other world as the result of sin. It is a lost
world. The kingdom of God implies the existence of an ideal
of perfection. It is the peculiarity of man that he is pos
sessed of ideals. He has caught the secret of his true
being, though he may not know how to become what he
knows he was made to be. The evolutionists who explain
the higher attributes of the human soul by their theory
have no explanation to give of the existence in the soul
of an ideal. If man has come from below, how has he
discovered what lies beyond ? Why is it that he keeps
asserting for himself kingly rights, though he has never
had a sceptre in his hand ? What right have men like
Herbert Spencer to forestall the future progress of the
race by telling ris of what is to be when man is perfectly
evolved ? How do we know, upon their principles, that
man is not already fully evolved ? According to the evo
lutionists sin is natural, it belongs to the stage of devel
opment which man has reached. Why, then, prate of
a coming time, when moral perfection is to be attained by

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 113
the individual and society ? Only theism can give us the
key to the existence of human ideals ; and only Christianity
can take the key and open the lock. Man was made like
God and for God. The law of love to God and man, to
which every conscience gives more or less distinct witness,
is the true law of man's being. The sinful order of
tilings is wrong ; it ought not to be. Christianity reveals
the higher order. The ideal of humanity is not an im
agination, but a reality. There is one realm of the uni
verse where intelligent, moral, spiritual beings, like our
selves, live and are what they ought to be. Heaven is the
ideal actualized. There God's will is done, freely* cheer
fully, fully. The holy beings are in perfect communion
with God. His law is written on their hearts. They are
not so much subjects as children. They stand in right
relations with each other. Doubtless they are in right re
lations with the material world.
And then, the kingdom implies a process of redemption
by which the ideal is to be realized in the world. We
can conceive of the kingdom without redemption. In the
heavenly state the kingdom has been present since the
creation. It needs not to come, for it is always present.
But the kingdom, so far as we are concerned with it, is a
kingdom that is to come in a world of sin. The only
way in which it can thus come is by redemption. This
has been God's plan from the first. We often speak of
redemption as if it were an afterthought on the part of
God. But it is not so represented in the Scripture. The
sacred writers go into none of those harmless but useless
speculations with which theologians occupy themselves, as
to what would have been the state of things if man had
not sinned, whether the Son would have become incarnate
and the like. God was in no doubt as to what was to be.
From the first redemption was in His thought. The
world was created by Christ and for Christ. Believers
were chosen in him before the foundation of the world.
8

114 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
The kingdom that was to be established was a redemptive
kingdom. Men were to be rescued from sin and restored
to sonship. The will of God was to be done. All the
ravages of sin were to be repaired. The earth was to be
made like Heaven. And as far as the kingdom has ad
vanced it has been through a redemptive process realiz
ing the heavenly ideal in the sinful world. We some
times represent the progress of Christianity by a map upon
which the countries where heathen beliefs prevail appear
in deep shadow, while the Christian lands are in the light.
To those who have watched the process from the heaven
ly state, the history of the world has been the slow pass
ing of an eclipse, the steady conquest of the light over
the darkness. Wherever sin remains and men are unre
deemed there is deep shadow, wherever God's will is done
the victorious light.
II. Next consider the founding of the kingdom.
Our Saviour began his ministry, as has been already
noticed, with the proclamation that the kingdom of God
was at hand. How are we to understand his words ? Did
the kingdom then for the first time enter the world ?
We often speak as if this were the case and call the Sav
iour's work the founding of the kingdom. But we must
beware that we do not fall into error through lack of
careful discrimination. If the kingdom of God exists
wherever His will is done, then it must have existed from
the beginning of human history. Redemption began with
the Fall. From the days of Adam there has been a god
ly race, always some few men who walked with God and
lived in the light. In this way of looking at it, the king
dom did not first enter the world when Christ came.
And yet his words were true. The kingdom comes with
greater and greater fulness. It came when redemption
began its work among men, when Adam and Eve left
their Paradise with nothing of comfort or hope hut God's
promise. It came in a far truer and higher sense when

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 115
Jesus Christ performed his redemptive work. In its
highest and fullest sense it is still to come when Christ
shall return in glory at the Last Day. We distinguish a
preparatory stage, a work of foundation-laying, the prog
ress of the fnlly equipped and advancing kingdom, and
the final consummation.
The period of the Old Dispensation was the prepar
atory stage. First the kingdom was realized, partially
and incompletely in individual and family life. There
was no organized dominion of God, no commonwealth in
which His rule was outwardly expressed. There were
those who held allegiance to God, but they were scattered
and disunited. Then came the founding of the nation of
Israel. God chose a people to be the recipients of His
grace and the instruments of His will. They were bound
to Him in solemn covenant. He was their King and they
His subjects and children. Here was an organized rule of
God. In the Theocracy, with its religious and political
institutions, the kingdom found a more perfect realization.
But still it was far from complete. The Theocracy was
always short of its ideal. And its ideal was not the high
est. It was but an external fulfilment, at the best, of the
idea of the kingdom. Its law was adapted to a compar
atively low stage of religions progress. Its institutions
were temporary and imperfect. Its prophets, priests, and
kings failed to perform the work that was committed
to them. Everything was educational and preparatory.
This was the time when prophecy revealed the fact that
the true kingdom of God lay in the future, that it was a
spiritual kingdom, that it was to include all mankind, that
the Messiah was to be its King and that it was to be
based upon his redemptive work.
The foundation of the kingdom, in the full meaning of
the term, was laid by Jesus Christ, the incarnate Son of
God. He taught mankind what the kingdom is, in all
the depth of spiritual meaning which belongs to the idea.

116 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
In his own person the kingdom was for once fully realized
on earth. He did God's will perfectly. In his person
heaven was brought down to earth and the prayer he
taught his disciples answered. His atoning death, by
which it -became morally possible for the holy God to for
give human sin and receive the sinner back to His fellow
ship, was in the deepest sense the foundation-laying of
the kingdom. Retroactive as well as prospective in its
efficacy, Christ's sacrifice was essential to the very exist
ence of the kingdom on earth. His resurrection com
pleted the work.
The actual work of the kingdom, in its full potency
and meaning, began when Jesus the Christ, the God-
man, who died and rose again, ascended into heaven
and sat down as King upon his Father's throne, and
when he sent his Spirit to found the church on earth.
Thenceforward the kingdom was fully realized, not as
yet indeed in extension but already in quality. The
kingdom had come. The true reign of God had
begun. And yet we still pray, Thy kingdom come ! the process
is slow, the work of redemption is gradual. We wait for
that second coming of the Lord when the kingdom shall
be realized in its completeness, when the earth shall be
the Lord's, and when at the name of Jesus every knee
shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth, and
things under the earth, and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father
(Phil. ii. 10? 11).
III. The organization of the kingdom is the next point
which demands our attention. The kingdom is not merely
the union of good men on earth in common loyalty to
truth and duty. It is not merely Christianity working by
its self-propagating power. It is a union of God and men.
It is not an earthly order of things but a heavenly order.
Its headquarters are in heaven though its work is on earth.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 117
It is the union of heaven and earth, of the things unseen
and eternal with the things seen and temporal. It is a
great living palpitating organism, every part instinct with
vitality. At its head is God reigning through Christ His Son.
He is the living God, omnipresent, everywhere active, the
God whose power supports and governs the whole uni
verse, material and sentient. So far as we know, the es
tablishment of the kingdom here is His great end. If
there are other ends dearer to Him, they have not been
revealed to us. Natural theology, as well as Scripture,
reveals to ns the providential government of God. This
is not the same as His government in His kingdom. The
former extends to all creatures, inanimate and animate,
good and evil, alike ; the latter is confined to those who
freely and gladly accept His sway. But the providential
government of God finds its chief end in the establish
ment of His kingdom. The God of grace is the God of
nature. He guides all things, the ongoing of nature, the
movements of society, the lives of individuals, with refer
ence to the kingdom. Christ the divinely human King is
on the throne. A member of the human race holds the
reins of providence, and all things work together for good
to them that love God (Rom. viii. 28). And God and
Christ stand in personal communion with the members of
the kingdom through the Holy Spirit. Not more real is
the intercourse of man with man than the intercourse of
God and Christ with their fellow-laborers on earth. There
are earthly governments that make themselves felt every
where throughout their domains. No village so small, no
house so remote, that the power of the king is not known,
and loved or feared or hated. But such an illustration
can give us but the feeblest idea of the presence and
activity of God in His kingdom. However insignificant
a Christian may be, if he is a true son of the kingdom, all
the power of God is enlisted in his behalf and the Om-

118 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
nipotent is nearer to him than his closest friend, so that
it is no wonder "Satan trembles when he sees
The weakest saint upon his knees."
Associated with God and Christ in the organization of
the kingdom are the holy angels. What other interests
these pure and beautiful beings may have we do not know.
Only one thing has been revealed to us, their connection
with the establishment of God's kingdom on earth. The
author of the epistle to the Hebrews asks, " Are they not
all ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for them who
shall be heirs of salvation ? " (Heb. i. 14). Our Saviour
tells us that there is joy in heaven over one sinner that
repenteth (Luke xv. 7, 10). With the angels in the bless
edness of heaven are the souls of those who have passed
from the Church Militant to the Church Triumphant, the
spirits of the just made perfect, who hover over us, a great
cloud of witnesses watching us as we run the race set be
fore ns (Heb. xii. 1).
Finally, all good men belong to this goodly fellow
ship of the kingdom. They form one great brotherhood,
through which that liberty, equality, and fraternity which
has been the dream of earnest men in all ages is to be re
alized. This is the true tie that binds men together, the
one tie that can never be broken. We do not begin to
realize it. We do not see the invisible bonds that unite
us to every true Christian the world over. But they are
there all the same, and by and by we shall understand it.
IV. Let us look more carefully at the nature of the
kingdom. It is entered by the new birth. The sinful will cannot
turn itself to God. It must have divine help. There
must be forgiveness. The whole heart must be changed.
Life has to receive a new direction. This can be accom-

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 119
plished only through faith in Christ who has made atone
ment for our sins and by the power of the Holy Spirit.
Jesus said with an emphasis which left no room for mis
understanding, " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a
man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God "
(John iii. 3). Thus only can the sinner become a child
of God and an heir of the eternal inheritance. This is
the first great doing of the will of God. It opens the way
for the higher and fuller doing of that will in the pro
gressive sanctification of the Christian life and in the ser
vice of God in the tasks of the kingdom.
The progressive nature of the kingdom has already
been referred to. But it needs to be strongly empha
sized. Christ likened the kingdom to the seed and the
leaven. It is its nature to propagate itself, to spread
from man to man, from nation to nation, from institu
tion to institution of society. Because the divine life
works in it, it cannot remain stationary. It passes from
stage to stage of growth, from insignificant germs to
generous blossoming and splendid fruitage. From the
feebleness of the Apostolic church to the present extent
and strength of Christendom its movement has been
steadily onward. There have been, indeed, periods of
apparent retrogression, but they have been like the re
cession of the waves upon the beach as the tide comes in,
a gathering of strength for a new advance.
Again, the kingdom is spiritual. When Pilate ques
tioned Jesus as to the nature of his royal office as the
Messiah, his answer was, " My kingdom is not of this
world" (John xviii. 36). As we have seen, its object is
to bring heavenly principles into earthly affairs. To the
Pharisees who were looking for a political redemption
Jesus said, " The kingdom of God cometh not with ob
servation : neither shall they say, Lo, here ! or, There !
for lo, the kingdom of God. is within you " (Luke xvii.
20, 21). It begins in the soul and works outward. It

120 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
aims to transform the world by the power of the truth
and the invisible working of the Spirit of God. It es
chews all recourse to brute force. God respects the free
dom of the will which he has made. He will have volun
tary and cheerful service or none at all. By this test we
can discover the difference between the kingdom and
those false imitations of it which men set up. The Rom
ish system has claimed that the kingdom of God and
the church of Rome are identical, but it has given the
lie to its claim by its use of earthly power to advance the
kingdom, by its claim to temporal dominion, by its perse
cutions, by its denials of the rights of conscience.
Once more, the law of the kingdom is the law of love.
In love to God and love to our fellow-men the divine will
finds its fulfilment. This is the law which God Himself
follows. When He makes it the rule for men, He calls
on them to become like Himself. " God is love ; and he
that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God and God in him "
(1 John iv. 16). Love is the communication of self to
others. In its highest exercise, as we know it in the re
demptive work of Christ, it is self-denial or self-sacrifice.
Service is the essence of love. " Whosoever will be great
among you, let him be your minister ; and whosoever will
be chief among you, let him be your servant; even as
the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to
minister, and to give his life a ransom for many " (Matt.
xx. 26-28).
V. Next consider the agencies which God employs in
the establishment of the kingdom. Here we are met by
the remarkable fact that while the whole enginery of di
vine power in providence and redemption is enlisted in
behalf of the kingdom, yet God has so arranged things
that the work is done by men. God's plan from the first
has been the salvation of man by men. In all His re
demptive efficiency he has used human instruments, indi
viduals and nations. Here lies the explanation of the in-

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 121
carnation. The Word was made flesh that the Saviour
might be a man. To-day a Man sits upon the throne of
the universe and wields the sceptre of universal power.
We mark, however, a difference between the earlier
and later stages of the kingdom's history. During the
periods of preparation and foundation-laying, and during
the first age of the Christian Dispensation, God employed
supernatural means in the great work. This was needful
in the first introduction of the redemptive revelation and
the first establishment of the machinery of the kingdom.
Inspiration, miracles, and the other supernatural agencies
served to give the kingdom a foothold in the hearts of
God's chosen ones who were to go forth and scatter the
gospel seed broadcast in the world. But when the initial
establishment of the kingdom was thus effected, the su
pernatural means became unnecessary. For God works
as truly and effectively through second causes as when He
sees fit in part or wholly to dispense with them, and the
supernatural or miraculous, in the sense in which we are
using the terms, is always employed with a wise economy.
God now employs only natural agencies, through which
His divine power works, and by which He accomplishes
His purposes of grace. Let me repeat : God is as truly
present in the natural as in the supernatural. The Holy
Spirit is as really active in the Christian to-day, though
subject only to His ordinary and normal influences, as in
the inspired prophet or apostle eighteen hundred or three
thousand years ago. And redemption is as truly a divine
work when it is accomplished through the permanent and
constantly efficient operations of God's grace, as when it
employs a miracle to reach its end.
God has not only committed the work of the kingdom
to individual Christians ; he has also established certain
great corporate agencies or institutions, in which individ
ual Christians unite, and through which they accomplish
their special tasks. These are what are sometimes called

122 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
the great " teleological organs" of human society. First
among them may be placed the Family and the Church.
So important are both, and so vitally essential to the pro
gress of the kingdom that one is at a loss to which to give
the precedence. The family is the oldest and most funda
mental. It is most closely connected with the beginnings
and decisive developments of moral and religious life.
God honored it by making it the basis of the primitive
covenant in which the redemptive work of the kingdom
began. " In all ages the success of the kingdom has largely
depended upon whether the family has been true to the
great end for which it was established. On the other
hand, the church is the distinctively religious institution.
It was most closely connected with the work of Christ.
It is more exclusively devoted to the advancement of the
kingdom through the preaching and teaching of the Gos
pel. The church is often identified with the kingdom of
God. But this is to wholly misapprehend it. It is no
more identical with the kingdom than is the family. It
is true that the members of what we not very happily
call the invisible church are the same as the subjects of
the kingdom. But there the resemblance ends. The
two stand teleologically connected. The kingdom is the
end, and the church a means to that end ; and it is only
one means, though in some respects the most important,
alongside of a number of others. We cannot use the
two terms indiscriminately without falling into confusion.
Test it by saying, " Thy church come ! " instead of " Thy
kingdom come! " Here are two altogether different ideas.
Still another of these corporate agencies, established
for the advancement of the kingdom, is the State. Our
secularized modern governments are so disjoined from
the true ends which they should subserve that we do not
readily recognize the ideal. Yet there can be no doubt
in a Christian mind that the state receives its authority
from God, the universal King, and that it holds it only

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 123
for the purpose of promoting the interests of the king
dom. After these three great institutions come a number of
subordinate yet scarcely less important agencies, labor,
commerce, the trades and professions, science, art, litera
ture. If they are largely used in the interests of sin, this
is their abuse and not their true function. They derive
their importance from their relation as means to the king
dom as an end, and the great work of redemption will
not be complete till they have been consecrated to their
true purpose. And meantime the work of the individu
al Christian will be effectual in proportion to his under
standing of the relation of these agencies to the kingdom.
How much, for example, the Christian man of wealth can
do when he realizes that God has given him his proper
ty that he may use it for the great cause. What a new
aspect science assumes, when we come to see that all its
discoveries and all its manifold applications to the useful
arts may be made to subserve the divine purpose of re
demption. VI. We are thus prepared to understand the true scope
of the kingdom and the future that lies before it. While
it is, as we have seen, a spiritual kingdom, yet it takes into
its comprehensive embrace all human interests. It be
gins with the individual human will and works outward
until, like the leaven in the mass, it has penetrated to
the circumference of humanity and even to the sphere
of physical nature. Redemption will not be accomplished
until all the consequences of the Fall have been repaired
and the race and the earth itself carried forward to the per
fection for which the divine purpose destined them. Ac
cordingly, the kingdom comes not only in the distinctive
ly religious sphere, but also in that which we, not with en
tire accuracy, distinguish as the secular. The distinctive
ly spiritual redemption ought indeed to be placed first.
But we cannot stop there. The kingdom is to come in

124 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
the regeneration of society, in all its institutions, in all
its corporate interests, in its spirit and tone. It is to come
in the redemption of the human body from disease
and the dominion of death, that great process which is
to be consummated by the resurrection. It is to come
in the deliverance of nature from the bondage of corrup
tion and the restoration of the right relations between
man and nature. We must, therefore, beware of too nar
row a view of the kingdom. We may not confine it to
the things of the church. We must recognize the fact
that our Lord is King in the secular sphere as truly as in
the religious, and that in this view nothing is common or
unclean. The true Christianity is not that which sepa
rates itself from the world and selfishly wraps itself in
the mantle of its own salvation, but that which goes out
into the world in the spirit of the Master, to win it and
all that is in it to him. Viewing the subject thus, we
shall see that the kingdom comes not only in the additions
of converts to the church and the building up of Chris
tians in holy living, but in the establishment of better
principles of business, in the equitable settlement of the
relation between capital and labor, in the moral reforms by
which deep-seated social vices or abuses are overcome, in
the elevation of politics, in the advance of civilization, in
the cessation of war, in improved sanitary arrangements
in our cities, even in the prevention of cruelty to animals
and the increasing sense of obligation to avoid waste and
needless destruction in the use of the products of material
nature. The Christian who grasps the conception of the
kingdom cannot be narrow-minded. His interests are as
wide as the earth itself. Perhaps no great man of
modern times has so fully comprehended this truth as the
missionary Livingstone. When he turned aside from the
distinctively religious work of his calling to explore the
unknown interior of Africa, there were many to criticise
him for what seemed to them an abandonment of the ca-

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 125
reer to which he had devoted his life. His profound
words, uttered apparently without a thought that he was
saying anything great, deserve to be held in unfailing re
membrance :
"As far as I am myself concerned, the opening of the
new central country is a matter for congratulation only in
so far as it opens up a prospect for the elevation of "the
inhabitants. ... I view the end of the geograph
ical feat as the beginning of the missionary enterprise. I
take the latter term in its most extended signification, and
include every effort made for the amelioration of our
race, the promotion of all those means by which God in
His providence is working, and bringing all His dealings
with men to a glorious consummation. Each man in his
sphere, either knowingly or unwittingly, is performing
the will of our Father in Heaven. Men of science, search
ing after hidden truths which, when discovered, will, like
the electric telegraph, bind men more closely together, sol
diers battling for the right against tyranny, sailors rescu
ing the victims of oppression from the grasp of heartless
men-stealers, merchants teaching the nations lessons of
mutual dependence, and many others, as well as mission
aries, all work in the same direction and all efforts are
overruled for one glorious end " (" Livingstone's Travels,"
pp. 718-719).
We shall not forget that the kingdom of God is to be
established here in this earth. There is a notion of the
work of Christianity which always is more or less preva
lent in the minds of those who hold narrow views of the
kingdom, that represents the chief or only aim of redemp
tion to get individual souls out of this world and safe into
heaven. But this is not the biblical view. According to
the Scriptures, the kingdom is to come here. This earth
is to be redeemed. The human race is to be brought to
Christ here. The chorus of praise is to ascend from the
voices of living men in Asia and Africa and the rest of
the habitable globe. The whole thought of prophets and

126 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
apostles is concentrated upon this consummation. To
such an extent is this the case that they pass lightly and
with great silences over the state of the dead between the
time of their departure from this world and the Judg
ment Day. The glorious hope is of the Second Coming,
which is a coming to this world and marks the consum
mation of the kingdom here. Here the kingdom is to be
established. This planet and the living races on it are to
be redeemed. And somehow at the Last Day those who
have entered into the rest of the heavenly state are to be
brought back to earth, that they may share in the glory
of the Saviour's triumph. On every side the question is
raised in our age, What is the true motive of Christian
missions ? Is it the doctrine of eternal punishment ? Is
it the command of Christ ? We fear lest the decision
one way or the other of the dispute respecting probation
in the other world will " sever the nerve of missions."
Yet there might be an end of controversy if we would
only understand the teachings of Christ and the apostles
on the subject of the kingdom. It is to be established
here, on the very soil which sin has defiled. The dark
shadow is to be lifted and the planet is to emerge from
its moral eclipse. This was the fact that underlay the
command of Christ. To bring about this consummation
is the task of every Christian, so far as his power and op
portunity go. It is the great motive of the Christian
church. It is the great motive which animates God and
Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Moral philosophy in all ages has busied itself with the
quest for the highest good, the summum bonum. The
Christian finds it in the kingdom of God. " Seek ye first
the kingdom of God!" (Matt. vi. ^d. This is the
" chief end of man," whether Chrisftrneor unconverted.
This is to be the avowed and followedWim of every fol
lower of Christ. This was pre-eminenbj^ the Saviour's
own aim while he was on earth. This is what gives the

THE KINGDOM OF GOD 127
kingdom its organic unity and brings God and all good
beings into one through the Holy Spirit.
And for our assurance in our life of faith and labor for
God we have the promise of Jehovah Himself that the
great end shall be at last attained. The kingdom shall
come in its perfection of glory and beauty. Christ shall
be acknowledged as King of kings and Lord of lords.
And we, if we are faithful, shall share in the triumph.
Our earth, the dear earth we love, shall be once more
God's. I say to thee, do thou repeat
To the first man thou mayest meet,
In lane, highway, or open street,
That he, and we, and all men move
Under a canopy of Love,
As broad as the blue sky above :
That doubt and trouble, fear and pain,
And anguish, all are shadows vain ;
That death itself shall not remain :
That weary deserts we may tread,
A dreary labyrinth may thread,
Through dark ways underground be led ;
Yet, if one Guide we will obey,
The dreariest path, the darkest way,
Shall issue out in heavenly day ;
And we, on divers shores now cast,
Shall meet, our perilous voyage past,
All in our Father's home at last.
And ere thou leave him, say thou this :
Yet one word more, — they only miss
The winning of that final bliss

128 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
Who will not count it true that Love,
Blessing, not cursing, rules above,
And that in it we live and move.
And one thing further make him know,—
That to believe these things are so,
This firm faith never to forego,
Despite of all which seems at strife,
With blessing, and with curses rife,
That this is blessing, this is life.
Richard Chbnevix Tbenoh.

VIII.
JESUS THE CHRIST
Henei Taine, speaking of the difficulties which attend
the writing of history, uses the following language : " For
the past three hundred years we have been more and more
losing sight of things in their full and complete sense ;
subject to the constraints of a domestic, many-sided and
extended education, we fix our attention on the symbols
of objects rather than on the objects themselves ; instead
of on the ground itself, on a map of it; instead of on
animals struggling for existence, on nomenclatures and
classifications, or at best on stuffed specimens displayed
in a museum ; instead of on men who feel and act, on sta
tistics, codes, histories, literatures, and philosophies; in
short, on printed words, and worse still, on abstract terms
difficult to understand, and deceptive, especially in all
that relates to human life and society " (" Napoleon Bo
naparte," New Princeton Review, vol. iii., p. 154).
The same difficulties are encountered by the theolo
gian. He is dealing with facts, not with abstract concep
tions, still less with words. He moves in the midst of
spiritual realities, whose existence is as certain as that of
continent and ocean, mountain, river, and forest. But he
is tempted at every step to forget his facts and to take up
instead with notions or words. Especially is this true of
the great fact of doctrine which now comes before us —
Jesus the Christ. We lose ourselves in scholastic discus
sions respecting Christ's person, or we dwell upon the his
tory of his earthly career until we forget that he is any-
9

130 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
thing but a history. And yet all the while there is the
living Christ himself ruling from the throne of the uni
verse, active everywhere iu the world by his providence,
and dwelling in every Christian heart through his Spirit.
He is the fact of facts, by which alone the world and
humanity are intelligible. If the Christian revelation is
in any true sense the self-manifestation of God which it
claims to be, if there is a real kingdom of God, then the
presence and redemptive efficiency of Christ mean every
thing. We might as well study astronomy and forget
that there is a sun, or physics and ignore the existence of
gravitation and heat and light and electricity, as to study
theology and forget the living Christ, the same-yesterday,
to-day, and forever.
If, therefore, we take up the doctrine of Christ histori
cally, and discuss those doctrinal formulas by which the
church has attempted to express the mystery of his di
vinely human person, if we speculate concerning the deep
Christological problems, let us all the time remember that
he himself is here to-day with us, the One who is the first
and the last and the Living one, who was dead and is alive
forevermore (Rev. i. 18). Greater than our theology,
greater than all our doctrines of Christ and our specula
tions about him is the Christ himself.

"Our little systems have their day ;
They have their day and cease to be ;
They are but broken lights of thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they."

I. The early Christians made confession of their faith
in the brief words, Jesus is the Christ. What did these
words mean ? To answer the question we must go back
to the Old Testament. From the first the redemptive
revelation has had a forward look. Attention has often

JESUS THE CHRIST 131
been called to the fact that while the heathen nations had
their Golden Age in the past, the Jew looked for it in the
future. Everywhere during the Old Dispensation we dis
cover lines running up in the direction of a higher revela
tion and converging in a personal center.
One line of approach to the Christ is through the Old
Testament mediators, prophets, priests, and kings, who
were God's instruments in making His redemptive revela
tion. In them the divine Spirit dwelt as an endowment
of power for the great tasks connected with that revela
tion. We have seen in a previous chapter that this in
spiration was an anticipation of that perfect inspiration
which was predicted for the Messiah. Still another line
of approach is through the theophanies in the person of
the Angel of Jehovah. This mysterious Being, who
spoke in the name of Jehovah and to whom divine hon
ors were paid, appears at all the great crises of Old Testa
ment history — at the destruction of the cities of the Plain,
at the announcement of Isaac's birth, at the moment when
Abraham was about to offer up his son, at Penuel where
Jacob wrestled with him, at the burning bush when the
divine call was given to Moses (Gen. xxii. 11, 12, 15,
xxxi. 11, 13, xxxii. 30, Ex. iii. 2, 4). As the " angel of
God's presence " he accompanied the Children of Israel in
their journeyings through the wilderness (Ex. xxxiii. 14 ;
Is. lxiii. 9).
Again, everything in the Old Dispensation tends to
ward a closer and closer union between Jehovah and His
people. At first there are occasional glimpses of the
divine glory, as when God appeared to Abraham and
Moses. Then there is the constant abiding of the Shek-
inah in the holy of holies of the tabernacle and the
temple. Then come the predictions of the " coming of
Jehovah." The earth was to see in a sense yet unknown
the presence and glory of the Lord. The mighty God
Himself was to come, bringing judgment to the wicked

132 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
and redemption to His people. He was to set up His
kingdom on earth and dwell forever with men (Psalm
xcviii. 9 ; Is. xxxv. 4, xl. 3, 10).
And then, most important of all, because most definitely
pointing to the Christ that was to appear, is the prophecy
of the Messiah, the anointed King, who was to sit upon
the throne of David and establish the kingdom of God.
There is a foreshadowing of him in the first vague prom
ise to our fallen parents of the seed of the woman which
should bruise the serpent's head (Gen. iii. 15). The pre
diction grows more definite in the promise to Abraham,
Isaac, and Jacob, of the seed in which all the nations of
the earth should be blessed (Gen. xii. 3, xviii. 18, xxii. 18,
xxvi. 4, xxviii. 14). At last, in clear and unmistakable
language, the dying Israel foretells the King in whom the
royal line of Judah was to culminate (Gen. xlix. 10).
The heathen prophet Balaam, moved by the divine
Spirit, predicts the coming of the kingdom and its Sov
ereign (Numb. xxiv. 17 seq.). Then the stream of Mes
sianic prophecy begins to broaden and deepen. The ever
lasting kingship is promised to the house of David (2
Sam. vii. 12-16, 25).
The great Messianic Psalms describe different phases
of the Messiah's person and work, his divine Sonship,
his sufferings, his triumph over death, his session at the
right hand of God, his glory, his everlasting priesthood,
his world-wide dominion (Psalms ii., xiv., lxxii., ex.).
As the kingdom of Israel is rent in twain and the two
realms thus formed are torn by internal dissensions and
threatened by foreign foes, and especially when the Jews
have been carried into exile, the coming of the Messiah
occupies to a great extent the prophetic thought. He is
represented as filled with the divine Spirit. Divine at
tributes are ascribed to him : " His name shall be called
Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting
Father, The Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his gov-

JESUS THE CHRIST 133
ernment and peace there shall be no end, upon the throne
of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to es
tablish it with judgment and with justice, from hence
forth even forever" (Is. ix. 6, 7; cf. Mic. v. 2 seq.). The
great unknown Prophet of the Exile tells of the suffering
and victorious Servant of God, and in language that might
almost pass for prediction after the event, so exact is it
even in details, the sufferings and death of Christ with
the glory which should follow (Is. xl.-lxvi., especially
Iiii.). Daniel in vision beholds the mysterious Son of
Man coming in the clouds of heaven, sees bestowed upon
him " an everlasting dominion which shall not pass away "
(Dan. vii. 13 seq. ; cf. ix. 24-27).
And so when the Christians of apostolic times, many of
them fresh from Judaism, and all of them believing that
the Old Testament contained a divine revelation, con
fessed their faith in the words Jesus is the Chkist,
they meant that in him all the predictions of the earlier
revelation respecting " him that was to come " were ful
filled. They saw in him the perfect Mediator between
God and men, of whom the ancient prophets, priests, and
kings were imperfect types ; he was, like the angel of the
Lord, the theophany, the manifestation of the divine pres
ence ; in his humanity abode the Shekinah, the indwelling
of God, as in a new and holier temple ; he was Jehovah
come to earth for judgment and redemption ; he was the
Messianic King, the Ruler of Israel and mankind, the Sov
ereign in the long-promised and now established kingdom
of God. All this and more they ascribed to him who sat
upon the throne, and summed it all up in that one word
Christ. II. But let us go back and consider the teachings of
the Bible respecting the pre-existent Christ. Who was
this Being who fulfilled all prophecy by becoming Jesus
Christ? We shall not expect to find the answer clearly given

134 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
while the Saviour was still on earth. When the disci
ples, after his ascension, came to understand his kingly
glory, the Holy Spirit taught them the nature of his pre-
existent glory. Before that time the psychological condi
tions for the understanding of the mystery were not
present. It was one of those subjects respecting which
Jesus told his disciples just before his death: "I have
many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them
now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth is come, he
will guide you into all the truth" (John xvi. 12, 13).
Jesus himself said little of his pre-existent state. Yet
he did make a few significant utterances upon the subject,
which have been preserved by that disciple whose eagle
eye afterward saw deepest into the mystery. He speaks
of his being sent into the world (John v. 36, viii. 42, x.
36, xviii. 37). He declares that he came down from
heaven (John vi. 38). In controversy with the Jews, who
denied his knowledge of Abraham, on the ground that he
was not yet fifty years old, he gave utterance to the as
tounding assertion, " Before Abraham was I am ! " (John
viii. 56-58). In his prayer of high-priestly intercession at
the close of the Last Supper he referred in solemn lan
guage to the glory which he had had with the Father be
fore the world was (John xvii. 5). All this is little, but
it is enough, taken in connection with his assertions of his
divinity, to show his claim to have existed in participation
of God's eternity.
The two apostles from whom we derive our chief knowl
edge of the pre-existent Christ are Paul and John. It is
interesting to notice that they were the two who had the
fullest and truest conception of his exalted glory after his
ascension — Paul, the apostle, to whom at his conversion
was vouchsafed the vision of the risen Christ in the daz
zling light of his divine majesty — John, the disciple, who
leaned on the Saviour's breast at the Last Supper, and in
the marvellous vision on the isle of Patmos, was taken up

JESUS THE CHRIST 135
into the heavenly glory and saw the King in his beauty.
According to Paul, the Christ before his incarnation was
the Son of God, the eternal Son of the eternal Father, the
sharer of His essential Deity (Rom. viii. 3, 32 ; Gal. iv.
4; Col. i. 13 seq.; Phil. ii. 6 seq.). In that magnificent
passage in the first chapter of Colossians, in which the re
lations of the Christ to the whole universe — God, world,
angels, and men — are set forth, he is described as " the im
age of the invisible God, the first born of all creation " —
image as being the revelation of God, first-born in the
sense of superiority to the whole creation ; " for in him
were all things created, in the heavens and upon the
earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones
or dominions or principalities or powers ; all things have
been created through him, and unto him ; and he is be
fore all things, and in him all things consist," that is, hold
together or have their continued existence (Col. i. 15-17).
Could his Deity be described in language more impres
sive ! It seems marvellous that anyone who accepts the
Bible as true can read those flowing words and then de
clare the eternal Being, Creator and Preserver of all
things, who became incarnate in Jesus the Christ, to be
less than God. But there is still another passage, equally
magnificent, with a lyric power which shows how nearly
allied are poetry and religion, in which Paul traces the
career of the Christ from the primitive heavenly glory
through the earthly humiliation back to the heavenly
glory again (Phil. ii. 6-11). How does he here describe
the pre-existent Christ ? As " being in the form of God,"
that is, as having his essential and eternal existence in the
divine, or as being possessed of a divine nature; while
equality with God is represented as his right, his personal
possession, which he temporarily and freely relinquishes
for the purpose of carrying out his mission of redemptive
love. In this connection I may mention the language of
the epistle to the Hebrews, probably not written by Paul

136 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
yet closely related to his teachings. Christ is described
before his incarnation as the eternal Son, the Creator of
all things, the Being who upholds all things by the word
of his power, the effulgence of the divine glory, the very
image of God's substance, who reveals God as the light
reveals the sun, or the impression the seal that made it
(Heb. i. 2, 3).
And then we come to John's teachings. His Gospel
begins with the eternal pre-existent state. He who be
came incarnate is declared to be the eternal Logos or
Word, the principle of the divine self-revelation. In the
beginning he was with God, and He was God (John i. 1).
There is no reason to believe that John in this solemn
declaration which is the caption of his Gospel means less
than he says. The whole Gospel is only a carrying out of
this main theme. If John had not used these words the
truth would have been implied in his declaration that.the
exalted Being of whom he tells was the Creator of all
things, the Source of all light and life, spiritual, intellec
tual, physical, in the universe. He was the only begotten
Son who is in the bosom of the Father (John i. 1-18).
Such was the Being who " became flesh and dwelt among
us." The New Testament gives us reason to believe that long
before the incarnation, indeed from the beginnings of hu
man history, the Logos was the active agent of revelation
and redemption in the world. He was " the true light,
even the light which lighteth every man that cometh into
the world " (John i. 9 ; for the rendering of the verse see
Meyer's " John," and Dwight in Godet's "John," Am. ed.,
in loc). The deepest insight into New Testament truth
tends to confirm the teaching of the Fathers respecting
the " Logos Spermatikos," the divine Word in the soul
of every man, who leads even the heathen to the truth.
It was the "Spirit of Christ" that spoke through the
prophets of the Old Dispensation (1 Pet. i. 11 ; cf. iii.

JESUS THE CHRIST 137
18-20, according to a widely accepted interpretation).
Paul says that the "spiritual rock" which followed the
Israelites in the wilderness was Christ (1 Cor. x. 4, 5).
We cannot doubt, if we accept the New Testament doc
trine in its general principles, that the divine Logos was
present in every revelation of God during the Old Dispen
sation. For this reason the New Testament writers, and
even Jesus himself, apply without hesitation to the Mes
siah Old Testament language of which the original refer
ence is to Jehovah (Matt. xi. 10 ; Heb. i. 8-12 compared
with Psalm xiv. 6, 7, and cii. 25-27 ; Rom. x. 13 with
Joel ii. 32 ; 1 Cor. ii. 16 with Isaiah xl. 13 ; 1 Cor. x. 22
with Deut. xxxii. 21).
Summing up these Scriptural data, we may say that he
who became incarnate in Jesus the Christ was truly God,
distinguished from the Father as the Son, the Word, the
Image, the Effulgence, of God, second in the Godhead yet
not less than God. Whoever will call this truth in ques
tion must seek his arguments outside of the Bible. The
pre-existent Christ was God.
III. We are now to examine the Scriptural doctrine of
the Christ on earth. Our chief difficulty will arise from
the richness of the material. Yet I shall hope to make
the main points clear.
The first fact which meets us is the incarnation. " The
Word became flesh" (John i. 14). He "who being in
the form of God, counted not equality with God a prize
to be violently retained, emptied himself, taking the form
of a servant, being made in the likeness of men " (Phil. ii.
6-8). Though he was rich, yet for our sakes he became
poor, that we through his poverty might become rich
(2 Cor. viii. 9). The object of the incarnation was re
demption. "God so loved the world that He gave His
only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him
should not perish but have eternal life" (John iii.
16, 17).

138 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
The New Testament writers, true to the Old Testa
ment prophecies of the Messiah, teach us that the Saviour
was a true man. From his birth he was subject to the
law of human growth and development ; he " advanced in
wisdom and stature " (Luke ii. 40, 52). In outward ap
pearance he resembled other men (John iv. 9, xx. 15).
He manifested the ordinary human wants, the need of
sleep, hunger and thirst (Matt. viii. 24 ; John iv. 6, xix.
28). All human sensibilities stirred in his soul and re
vealed themselves in his looks and acts — -joy, love, sym
pathy, distress, agitation, sorrow even to tears, anger
(John xi. 5 ; Mark x. 21 ; Matt. ix. 36, xxvi. 38 ; John
xiii. 21 ; Mark iii. 5). He possessed a human soul and
spirit. His knowledge and his power were limited. He
could be tempted. Like other men he prayed to God
(John xii. 27 ; Luke xxiii. 46 ; Mark xiii. 32 ; Matt. iv.
1-11 ; Heb. ii. 17, 18 ; Mark i. 35 ; John xvii. 1 ; Luke xi.
1). He, in this also like other men, left this world by the
gate of death.
At the same time, while Jesus was true man, he was
a unique man, in many important respects different from
all other men. His birth was a stupendous miracle, for
he was "conceived by the Holy Ghost" and with no
human father " born of the Virgin Mary " (Matt. i. 18-25 ;
Luke i. 26 seq.). All the important junctures of his life
were signalized by angelic visitations — his birth, his temp
tation, the agony in the Garden, the resurrection, the as
cension (Luke i. 26 seq., ii. 9 seq. ; Matt. iv. xi.; Luke xxii.
43 ; Matt, xxviii. 2). Mention has been made, in the chap
ter on "Inspiration," of the Saviour's endowment with
the Holy Spirit at the baptism — an inspiration which went
far beyond that of the greatest prophets, and which we
must understand rather as giving egress to the divine
power proper to his nature than as enduing him with an
extraneous capability. Thus inspired, he spake as never
man spake and performed his miracles. Nor shall we in

JESUS THE CHRIST 139
this connection fail to notice the uniqueness of Christ's
death and the marvel of his resurrection.
The unique manhood of Jesus appears most strikingly
in his moral perfection. He was that " moral miracle," a
perfect man. We are too apt to speak of the Saviour's
holy character and life in negative terms, calling him the
sinless man. But in him there was something more than
sinlessness, even supreme moral perfection, an outflowing
perfection which has given mankind a new ideal. He
alone of all the descendants of Adam seems to have been
from the first without inherited taint or tendency to sin.
Even before his birth the herald angel called him " that
holy thing " (Luke i. 35). The temptations to which he
was subjected after his baptism and at later periods in his
life were undoubtedly real ; " he suffered being tempted "
(Heb. ii. 18). But Satan found nothing in him and re
tired from the assault baffled and defeated (Matt. iv. 1-18 ;
John xiv. 30). We have his own assertions, implied and
direct, that he was sinless (Matt. vii. 11 ; Luke xi. 13,
xiii. 3 ; John viii. 46, x. 36). And what is even more
significant, his life and words, as they are recorded by the
Evangelists, bear out his testimony. We search in vain
for a flaw in that spotless life. With one voice and in
explicit language his disciples declare that he knew no sin
(Acts iii. 14 ; 1 Pet. i. 19, ii. 22, iii. 18 ; Rom. viii. 3 ; 2
Cor. v. 21 ; Heb. iv. 15 ; 1 John ii. 29, iii. 7). And what
a picture do they all give us, drawn with reverent hand
out of their loving remembrance of his personality and
life, of his love, his self-sacrifice, his devotion to the truth,
his entire obedience to the divine will.
Let me mention still another feature in his unique man
hood. He was the central and universal man, the typical
man, in whom all the excellencies of the race are compre
hended and who stands in a direct relation to every man
in the race. The title by which he most frequently des
ignated himself was " the Son of Man." It was a Mes-

140 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
sianic name, taken from the prophecy of Daniel (vii.
13 seq.), where the Messiah is described under this title as
coming in the clouds of heaven to take possession of his
kingdom. But Christ so used it as to show that he -in
tended by it to express his peculiar relation to mankind
(Matt, viii. 20, ix. 6 ; Mark ix. 9 ; Luke ix. 22 ; John v. 27).
Paul took up the conception and developed it in his doc
trine of the Second Adam, the new spiritual Head of the
race, who has come to redeem men from the consequences
of the first Adam's sin (Rom. v. 12 seq. ; 1 Cor. xv. 22,
45 seq.). The author of the epistle to the Hebrews dwells
upon the universal brotherhood of the Christ, which is
the ground of his high-priestly office (Heb. ii. 17, 18, iv.
14, 15, v. 7-10).
Nor is this period without its evidence of the Deity of
the incarnate One. Christ himself did not often refer to
it. He would not have been understood had he done so.
But he never denies it, always implies it, and sometimes
even asserts it. His life itself bore on it the marks of
divinity. As when the sun shines from behind heavy
clouds, only now and then glimpses and flashes revealed
the presence of the God in him, but when they gleamed
forth there was no mistaking them. His sinlessness in a
world of sin receives its best explanation if we suppose
him to have been divine as well as human. His whole
tone and bearing raised him above the level of humanity.
He claimed to be greater than the greatest prophets of the
Old Dispensation (Matt. xii. 41 seq., xxii. 41-45). They
were merely instruments of a higher power, receiving
their authority from above. He acted in his own author
ity, at once God's agent and His equal. Thus he set his
authority above that of Moses, " It hath been said, An eye
for an eye. . . . But I say unto you, That ye resist
not evil!" (Matt. v. 38, 39). Mark that "imperial I."
which no mere man could honestly have used. In like
manner his miracles were performed in his own name,

JESUS THE CHRIST 141
" I will ; be thou clean ! " (Matt. viii. 3). And as he
claimed to be greater than the greatest prophets, so he
claimed to be greater than the temple, in whose holy of
holies dwelt the divine Shekinah (Matt. xii. 6). He
called himself the Way of entrance to the kingdom of
God, the Door, the Good Shepherd (John x. 7, 11, xiv.
6). He summoned men to personal faith in himself
(Matt. xi. 28-30; John iii. 16). He claimed authority
to forgive sins (Matt. ix. 2 ; Luke v. 20). He offered
himself to the world as the source of spiritual life and the
supply of all spiritual needs (John v. 26, vi. 48, vii. 37).
He made loyalty to him superior to the claims of kindred
and friendship (Matt. viii. 22, x. 37). He declared that
he was the Judge of mankind, both now and at the Last
Day, and that the criterion of judgment was the personal
relation of men to him (Matt. xxv. 34-46 ; John v. 22,
27). As the Lord of life, he is to call men forth from
their graves at the resurrection, as he called back the
dead Lazarus to life (John vi. 39, xi. 25).
In these things the divinity of the Christ is implied.
But he made more direct claims. The term Son, as
Christ uses it when speaking of his Father in heaven, in
many instances undoubtedly implies unity of essence with
God. In the discourses recorded in the first three Gos
pels this is probable ; in those which John has preserved
it is certain (Matt. xi. 27, xxvi. 29 ; Mark xiii. 32 ; John
iii. 16, and often). It is a most significant fact that
Christ, in speaking to his disciples of God, never calls Him
" our Father ; " in one instance he is at pains to distin
guish his own relation to God from that of his disciples
in language which utterly precludes misunderstanding :
" I ascend unto my Father and your Father, and to my
God and your God " (John xx. 17). The apostle John
has preserved for us some of the most striking utterances
of Christ respecting his divine nature. He identifies him
self with God in such a way in the work of redemption

142 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
that even his dependence, becomes an evidence of a com
mon nature (John v. 19, 30). He declares that to see
him is tantamount to seeing the Father (John xiv. 9).
The same honor is due to him as to the Father (John v.
23). When he says, " My Father worketh hitherto, and
I work " (John v. 17), he co-ordinates his work with that
of the Father in a way no mere man could. As we have
seen in another connection, he declared his divine pre-ex
istence, and in such language as to imply that he was still
the same divine personality, "Before Abraham was /
am ! " (John viii. 58). Finally, he makes the explicit as
sertion, " I and my Father are one ! " (John x. 30).
And in using this passage I do not deny that he means to
say primarily, "I and my Father are one in our efficiency,
one in our power ; " but my contention is that this unity
of power can only be explained upon the ground of unity
of essence, and that Jesus so understood it (see Dwight, in
Godet's " John," Am. ed., vol. ii., p. 485). It is true that
Christ said to his disciples just before his death, "My
Father is greater than I " (John xiv. 28), but the appar
ent contradiction disappears when we see that he is con
trasting his state of humiliation, which then had reached
its nadir, with the heavenly glory soon to be his when all
the Father's power would be in his hands. " If ye loved
me, ye would rejoice, because I said, I go unto the Father;
for my Father is greater than I." We may even find
with Horace Bnshnell in these words one of the most
convincing proofs of Christ's divinity ; " How preposter
ous for any mere human being of our race to be gravely
telling the world that God is greater than he is ! " (" God
in Christ," p. 125). The Jews better understood what
Christ meant and took up stones to stone him, in accord
ance with the Mosaic punishment of blasphemy : " For a
good work we stone thee not," they said ; " but for blas
phemy, and because that thou, being a man, makest thy
self God" (John x. 33; cf. v. 18, vi. 42, viii. 52 seq.).

JESUS THE CHRIST 143
At the last he was tried and executed upon this very
charge of blasphemy (Mark xiv. 61-64; John xix. 7).
His accusers knew, and he did not deny, that being a man
he made himself God. That was the mystery of his in
carnation and his work. To those who had no spiritual
understanding of his teachings, and would not open their
hearts to his influence, no wonder this was a stumbling-
block. And yet here and there was one to whom a
glimpse of the truth came as the explanation of every
thing. The heathen centurion who superintended his
crucifixion was moved to exclaim, " Truly this man was
a Son of God ! " The doubting Thomas, after his resur
rection, cried, unrebuked by the Master, " My Lord and
my God ! "
I shall refer under the next head of our discussion to
what the apostles have to testify respecting the deity of
Christ. Their thoughts are chiefly on the risen Saviour,
and they feel no need of entering into the question of his
divinity when on earth, but they always take it for
granted. They never think of explaining his later glory
as an apotheosis, such as the heathen claimed for their
heroes, the assumption of a man into the deity and his
enduement with divine attributes and honors. Incarna
tion and apotheosis are two entirely different conceptions,
and the former was the doctrine of the apostles. " We
beheld," says John, "his glory, the glory as of the only
begotten of the Father," and, " The life was manifested
and we have seen it and bear witness " (John i. 14. ; 1
John i. 2).
It is to be borne in mind that this was the time of the
Saviour's humiliation. He had come to earth to perform
that great work by which the kingdom was to be estab
lished as a kingdom of redemption, and he was to be pre
pared for his Messianic kingship. It was not until his
resurrection that he was " declared to be Son of God with
power" (Rom. i. 4). Paul tells ns that, in taking upon

144 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
him the "form of a servant," "lie emptied himself" of
his divine glory and of the exercise of his divine at
tributes (Phil. ii. 7). He not only subjected himself
to the necessary limitations of humanity, but to the lim
itations of one who in a sinful world was "made like
unto his brethren," and " was tempted in all points, like
as we are, yet without sin" (Heb. ii. 17, iv. 15). In the
prosecution of his work of salvation he passed through
the successive stages of infancy, childhood, youth, and
manhood, subjecting himself to the physical, intellectual,
and spiritual restrictions of each period. Even during
his active ministry, when the glory of the divine was only
partially concealed by the veil of flesh, his omnipotence
and omniscience were both subordinated to the limitations
of his humanity and his redemptive work. As part of
his mediatorial vocation, he shared in human pain and
misery, and endured sorrows peculiarly his own. " The
Captain of our salvation was made perfect through suffer
ing " (Heb. ii. 10). And then he endured the cruel death
of the cross. How this could be, how he could be divine
and yet endure all these human sufferings of his humilia
tion the sacred writers do not attempt to explain. They
give us merely the facts.
IV. We come now to the teachings of the New Testa
ment respecting the ascended Christ. With the resurrec
tion and the ascension everything is changed. This is
the true coronation of the Messiah. The promised throne
of David is the throne of God, and now the Son of David
for the first time sits upon it. While on earth, he was
the heir in the far country among the wicked husband
men, who plotted to kill him that the vineyard might be
theirs (Mark xii. 1-12). Now he had found the way of
the cross the way of light, and had entered into the pos
session of his kingly glory. While he was still on earth
there were a few who believed that he was the Messiah,
but it was only by way of anticipation. The apostles be-

JESUS THE CHRIST 145
held his glory upon the Mount of Transfiguration, but it
was only as a prophecy of that which was to come after
his resurrection. His ascension was necessary not only
that his disciples might understand that he was the King,
but also that the ground for the understanding might be
supplied. They could not know that he was the Christ
in all the significance of the Messianic office, because he
was not actually installed as the Christ. The proof did
not come till the day of Pentecost. Then the descent of
the Holy Spirit, and the power given to the disciples to
preach the Gospel and perform miracles, gave the unde
niable evidence that Jesus was indeed the Messiah, and
that he was sitting upon the throne. On that day the
disciples were able for the first time to say, in the words
of Peter, " Let all the house of Israel know assuredly,
that God hath made that same Jesus whom ye have cruci
fied, both Lord and Christ " (Acts ii. 36).
Some of the disciples had actual glimpses of the King.
The first martyr, confronting the unbelieving Jews, whom
he was vainly endeavoring to convince that Jesus was the
Messiah, " full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly
into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing
on the right hand of God," and died with the cry, " Lord
Jesus, receive my spirit " (Acts vii. 55-60). He mani
fested himself in all his glory to the persecutor Paul,
while on his way from Jerusalem to Damascus, and he
was won to the faith in Jesus the Messiah. From this
time forward there is no doubt in the minds of the disci
ples as to who and what Christ is. He had declared just
before his ascension, "All power is given unto me in
heaven and in earth " (Matt, xxviii. 18), and they knew
by what they saw going on about them, and what they
experienced in their own inner lives, that this was indeed
true. They called the glorified Jesus the Christ, taking
the title with which prophecy had made them familiar.
Or else they called him Lord, employing the Greek word
10

146 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
Kurios, the Septuagint translation of Adonai, the term
used in the reading of the Old Testament as a substitute
for the sacred and unutterable name Jehovah. It is in
teresting to note that they applied it indiscriminately to
God and Christ, with no sense of inconsistency in calling
the two by the same title, so that it is often difficult to
tell whether the Father or the Son is meant— much as to
day in our common religious speech we designate either
Father or Son as Lord (James v. 8, 10, 11). According
to the apostolic conception Christ is at the " right hand of
God," that is, he shares in the divine glory and govern
ment. He is the Son, in a sense which implies participa
tion in the divine essence (Rom. viii. 3 ; Gal. iv. 4). The
apostles associate him with the Father, on equal terms, in
their benedictions as the author of spiritual blessings, or
with the Father and Holy Spirit (Rom. i. 7, xvi. 20, 24 ;
1 Cor. i. 3, xvi. 23 ; 2 Cor. i. 2, xiii. 14 ; Gal. i. 3, vi. 18 ;
Eph. i. 2, vi. 23, 24). They represent him as the final
Judge of all (1 Cor. iv. 5 ; 2 Cor. v. 10 ; 2 Thess. i. 6-10 ;
2 Tim. iv. 1, 8). Divine attributes are ascribed to him
(Rev. i. 18, xxii. 13). He is an object of worship to the
disciples (Acts vii. 59, 60 ; 1 Cor. i. 2 ; Phil. ii. 9, 10 ; 2
Tim. iv. 22 ; Heb. i. 6 ; Rev. i. 5, 6, v. 11, 12). And then
they call him God. It is true that the passages in which
he is so designated are all disputed by those whose doc
trinal system compels them to deny the Deity of Christ,
but the best modern exegesis, with a distinctness that
only grows more emphatic as New Testament scholarship
advances, defends the evangelical interpretation. Thus
Paul in the epistle to the Romans (ix. 5) speaks of the
Israelites, " whose are the fathers, and of whom is Christ
as concerning the flesh, who is over all, God blessed for
ever ; " and in the epistle to Titus (ii. 13) he calls the Re
deemer "our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ" (see
Dwight, in " Meyer's Commentary," Am. ed., on both
these passages). Nor is it a matter of surprise that John,

JESUS THE CHRIST 147
who in the Prologue of his Gospel called the pre-existent
Logos God, in his First Epistle says of him, " This is the
true God and eternal life " (1 John v. 20).
The apostles lay the chief emphasis, in their references
to the ascended Christ, upon his divinity. But they do
not ignore his humanity. As he ascended into heaven,
the angel declared, " This same Jesus which is taken up
from you into heaven, shall so come in like manner as ye
have seen him go into heaven " (Acts i. 11). In his ex
alted glory he is still the man Christ Jesus, the Mediator
between God and men (1 Tim. ii. 5). He is " the same yes
terday, to-day, and forever" (Heb. xiii. 8). The epistle
to the Hebrews shows how, as the divinely human, he who
was tempted on earth can still be touched with the feeling
of our infirmities (iv. 15). John saw him in the visions of
the Revelation still bearing the traces of his earthly life,
the Lamb that had been slain, the One that liveth and was
dead (Rev. i. 18 ; v. 6). There upon the throne of the
divine majesty he sits, at once divine and human, and in
him humanity is exalted to the divine glory. Thus he
waits until redemption shall be complete and his enemies
vanquished, then to return to earth in glory. He shall
judge the earth, and at the name of Jesus every knee
shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth and
things nnder the earth, and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father
(Phil. ii. 10, 11).
V. Such are the facts from which the Christian church
has derived its doctrine of Christ. Christ was the eternal
Son of God. To carry out his redemptive work he be
came man, yet in such a way as to remain God. In one
unique personality God and man were united. He is still
the God-man, not now in the state of humiliation, but ex
alted as the King in the divine kingdom. These simple
Christian truths shine in their own light. But the church
had a long struggle to maintain them, and four centuries

148 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
passed before it succeeded in so formulating its doctrine as
to be able to defend it against all assaults. To this doc
trine and the steps by which it was attained we must now
for a little while give our attention.
The apostolic age was not over before heretics began to
pervert the scripture teachings concerning Christ. The
Docetists denied the true humanity of the Saviour. They
held that he assumed not a real body but only the appear
ance of one, and thus they sought to bring the doctrine
into accordance with their belief in the inherent evil of
matter. Perhaps the apostle John has reference to this
sect in his epistle when he asserts so emphatically the
coming of Jesus in the flesh (1 John iv. 2, 3 ; 2 John
7). The Ebionites went to the other extreme, denying
the true divinity of Christ. They made him a mere man,
the son of Joseph instead of the Son of God. Next come
the Arians, the rationalists of the early church. They
could not deny the pre-existence of Christ yet were un
able to admit his Deity. According to their view he was
the highest of all created beings, made before time be
gan, and constituted God's agent in creation. He was not
of the same essence with the father but of a different
essence. This superhuman and superangelic, yet not di
vine, being became incarnate in Jesus. The Semi-Ari
ans, who sought to steer a middle course between the
Arians and the Orthodox Christians, maintained the view
of Origen, admitting the eternity and divinity of the Lo
gos, but denying that he was God in the highest sense of
the term. According to their doctrine he owes his exist
ence to the will of the Father. He is not of the same
essence with the Father, but of a similar essence (not
homoousios but homoiousios).
The first of the great ecumenical Councils of the Chris
tian church was held at Nice, under the auspices of tho
Christian Emperor Constantine, in the year 325 a.d. The
Arian and the Semi- Arian doctrines were both repudiated

JESUS THE CHRIST 149
and the Deity of Christ asserted in the fullest and most
explicit terms. The creed adopted by that Council, and
reaflirmed in the following words, says of Christ :

I believe " in one Lord Jesus Christ, the only-begotten
Son of God, begotten of the Father before all worlds,
Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made,
being of one substance with the Father ; by whom all
things were made ; who, for us men and for our salvation,
came down from heaven, and was incarnate by the Holy
Gho6t of the Virgin Mary, and was made man ; he was
crucified for us under Pontius Pilate ; he suffered and was
buried ; and the third day he rose again, according to the
Scriptures ; and ascended into heaven, and sitteth on the
right hand of the Father ; from thence he cometh again,
with glory, to judge the quick and the dead ; whose
kingdom shall have no end."

Thus both the Deity and humanity of Christ were re
cognized in the doctrine of the church. But the questions
relating to the personal union of the two were left unset
tled. Hence a series of new controversies, occupying
more than a century longer. The Apollinarians taught
that in the incarnation the Logos became the spirit of the
Christ, so that his humanity consisted only of the body
and the soul which man possesses in common with the
animal, but lacked the reason, which is the distinctive
characteristic of mankind. The Nestorians, while admit
ting that Christ was truly divine and truly human, yet
separated the two natures to such an extent as practically
to sever the personal union and leave a mere ethical
union between them. The Monophysites went to the
opposite extreme, teaching that Christ after his incarna
tion had but one nature, a nature at once divine and
human. The fourth ecumenical Council, held at Chalcedon, a.d.

150 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
451, gave final shape to the doctrine of Christ's person.
It declared that :
" Jesus Christ is perfect in his Godhead, and the same
is perfect in his manhood ; he is truly God and truly
man, of a rational soul and a body ; he is consubstantial
with the Father as to his Deity, and the same is consub
stantial with us as to his humanity, and like us in all
respects, sin excepted. He was begotten of the Father
before the ages as to his Deity ; but in these last days he
for us and for our salvation was born of the Virgin Mary,
the mother of God, as. to his humanity. He is one and
the same Christ, Son, Lord, only-begotten, existing in two
natures without mixture, without change, without division,
without separation ; the diversity of the two natures not
being at all destroyed by their union in the one person,
but rather the peculiar property of each nature being pre
served and concurring in one person and one subsistence."
The same great truths are expressed in the simple lan
guage of the " Westminster Catechism : " " The only Re
deemer of God's elect is the Lord Jesus Christ, who being
the eternal Son of God became man, and so was, and con-
tinueth to be, God and man, in two distinct natures and
one person forever."
From the days of the great controversies which received
their final settlement at the Council of Chalcedon, there
has been substantial agreement in the Christian church
respecting the person of Christ. The few who have dis
sented from the Orthodox doctrine have been an insignifi
cant fraction of the body of Christians. The Unitarian
movements of our own time in Great Britain and Amer
ica, though they have attracted attention on account of
the high character of their leaders and the philanthropic
aims which they have cherished, have occasioned no ap
preciable division in the Christian church. The vast
majority of Christ's followers accept the Orthodox doc-

JESUS THE CHRIST 151
trine. They accept it not because it is Orthodox, but be
cause they believe it to be biblical and true.
More than any other doctrine of the Christian system
this expresses the unity of the church. The scattered
churches of Christendom are one in their confession re
specting the Christ. The swarthy Abyssinians, the mem
bers of the Oriental communions, the Greeks, the Roman
Catholics, the many Protestant denominations, agree in
the acceptance of this central truth of the Christian faith.
Great though their differences are in other respects, here
they are united. Jesus the Christ is their divine and hu
man Lord. Let us, therefore, hold fast to this precious
truth by holding fast to the divine Christ himself, who
ever lives and rules, our Saviour and our King.

IX.
CHRISTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS
It is my purpose in the present chapter to discuss
several of the more difficult problems connected with the
doctrine of Christ's person, and to give some account of
the theories by which the theologians have attempted to
solve them. The region of speculative theology which we
shall thus enter may seem to those who are not familiar
with it barren and uninviting. Certainly on its lofty up
lands the atmosphere is attenuated and cold, and there is
little to satisfy either the intellect or the heart. Never
theless, theological speculation is not without its value.
The brave and honest attempt to solve an insoluble prob
lem brings its reward. Although from the nature of the
case it must fail in its main object, it discovers aspects of
truth which would otherwise be overlooked. It stimulates
the mind to deep and fruitful thought upon the great
subjects with which it deals. And best of all, it teaches
us the boundaries between the known and the unknown,
the knowable and the unknowable. It is a great thing in
theology, as indeed in all sciences, to know our ignorance.
But there are two kinds of ignorance. One is the super
ficial and unthinking kind which hinders all true theo
logizing. The other is that docta ignorantia, that learned
ignorance, which is the result of much study and thought,
and which confesses its limitations because it has learned
just where they lie and just what they are. It is the latter
which we need in theology. In a science so high, where
the Infinite and His relations to the finite are the objects

CHRISTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 153
of investigation, every fact is but an island of knowledge
encompassed by a sea of mystery. It is the man who has
followed speculative theology in all its lofty flights and
has thus learned both its strength and its weakness, who
comes back with the spirit of a little child to the confes
sion of Paul, " We know in part." " As for perfection or
completeness in divinity," says Lord Bacon, with a wisdom
far in advance of his age, " it is not to be sought. For he
that will reduce a knowledge into an art, will make it
round and uniform ; but in divinity many things must be
left abrupt and concluded with this : O altitudo divitiarum
sapiential et sciential Dei ! quam incomprehensibilia sunt
judicia ejus, et investigabiles vio3 ejus ! " (O the depths
of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God !
how unsearchable are his judgments, and his ways past
finding out ! Rom. xi. 33).
I. The first of the problems before us concerns the
Reason for the incarnation. Would the Word have be
come flesh had it not been for sin and the consequent
need of redemption ? The traditional answer to this ques
tion is in the negative. The great majority of thinkers
in the Christian church have agreed with Anselm, who in
his " Cur Deus Homo ? " — Why did God become Man % —
made the redemptive work the ground of the incarnation.
Had Adam stood his probation successfully, it is said, God
would have brought the race forward to its goal by an
other and shorter way. It was to correct the havoc
which sin has made in God's fair creation that the eternal
Son of God became man.
On the other hand, it is held that the incarnation would
have taken place had there been no sin. There are traces
of this view in the writings of the great church father
Irenaeus. It was maintained by Rupert of Deutz in the
Middle Ages. It has been revived and presented with
great force and plausibility by some of the most distin
guished speculative theologians of recent times in Ger-

154 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
many, notably by Martensen and Dorner. They teach
that since the race was created for the God-man, it needs
him for its perfection as well as for its redemption. He
is the Head of mankind; without him the race would be
incomplete. Had Adam remained holy, Christ must still
have needs come, to sum up all things in himself, the
things in heaven and the things upon the earth (Eph. i.
10). This view is commonly held in connection with a
larger scheme of doctrine. God's relation to the world
has been from the first one of self-communication and
self-revelation or self-expression. Creation is the begin
ning of the process of which the incarnation marks the
culmination, and the final establishment of the kingdom
the completion. God communicates His perfections first
to the material world and makes it a true though imper
fect expression of His nature. Then in man, created in
His own image, he finds a truer and higher medium and
object. The individual and the race each body forth in
their own way the perfections of the divine, and God
finds in them a temple for His indwelling. But still the
self-communication and self-revelation are imperfect and
relative. Only broken and scattered rays of the divine
light are manifested. The indwelling of God is, so to
speak, external and partial. But in the incarnate Son,
Jesus the Christ, God finds the perfect embodiment of
His perfections, the true and adequate image of the divine.
In him the self -communication and self -revelation are not
relatively but absolutely realized. There is no separation
and scattering of the rays from the divine light, but they
are concentrated as in a focus, so that he is the " Light of
the world." God dwells in him, not externally, not as a
different Being coming from without, but through the
Logos as the perfect indwelling of the Deity, in the holy
of holies of the perfect temple. He possesses the Spirit
without measure. Christ now becomes the Perfecter of
the race. He gathers a holy manhood about him, to

CHRISTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 155
whom he imparts his Spirit, bringing them into like
ness with himself and uniting them with God. No man
attains the end of his creation except through Christ.
Apart from him he remains in his spiritual nonage. And
equally the race needs him for its completion. Through
the Christ the indwelling of God in mankind is consum
mated, and the church, which is the body of Christ, is
His everlasting temple. Of course, if this scheme of doc
trine be true, it follows that the incarnation is essential to
the evolution of humanity apart from the fact of sin.
Now the beauty of this speculation is not to be denied,
nor the new aspects of truth which it brings to light.
Nevertheless, there is little in the Scriptures to sustain it.
The redemptive revelation, through which alone we have
any knowledge of the incarnation and the God-man, bases
itself entirely upon the fact of sin. And the existence of
sin and the need of redemption are the only reasons given
for the coming of Christ. It was redemptive love that
led the Father to send His only-begotten Son, " that who
soever believeth on him should not perish but have eter
nal life" (John iii. 16). Christ says himself that he came
to save the world (John xii. 47). His mission was to seek
and save that which was lost (Luke xix. 10). " God was
in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not reckon
ing unto them their trespasses " (2 Cor. v. 19). The very
passage upon which those who teach an incarnation apart
from sin principally rely, seems to make redemption
through Christ's blood an essential part of his coming
(Eph. i. 7). So far the presumption of the New Testa
ment seems to favor the traditional view. The other
theory may be true, but certainly it does not seem to be
scriptural. And yet, have we reached the bottom of the matter ?
Are not both views, so far as they attempt to answer the
question what would have been, had there been no sin,
speculations ? What right does the Bible give us to sup-

156 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
pose that God ever meant that this world should be with
out sin ? Do not misunderstand me. I am not teaching
the so-called supralapsarian doctrine that God efficiently
caused sin, that so He might manifest His glory in the
salvation of the elect and the perdition of the non-elect.
Undoubtedly Adam and his successors have freely sinned.
But did not God from the first know all this ? Did He
not determine in His eternal plan to permit the sin which
would be freely committed ? And did He not construct
the world and create man upon the assumption of sin ?
Was not redemption, which implies sin, a part of the origi
nal decree ? Was it not woven into the very fabric of this
earth and its human race ? Sin was no surprise to God,
which redemption came in afterward to correct. Christ
was from the first intended to be the sinner's Saviour, and
the redeemed were " chosen in him before the founda
tion of the world " (Eph. i. 4). To understand what God
would have done, had there been no sin, we should have
to go back into the counsels of eternity and know all the
infinite possibilities of God. Sin does exist, and Christ
has come that he might redeem us from it, and he is to
the sinful world, and every soul in it who accepts his
grace, both Redeemer and Perfecter. But beyond this
we cannot go. We pass out of the realm of knowledge
into that of mystery.
II. Another problem relates to the possibility of the
incarnation. In the person of Christ the infinite and the
finite are united. The mighty God has become man. We
ask, like Nicodemus, when Jesus told him of the new
birth, " How can these things be ? " Is not this concep
tion of the God-man self-contradictory ? Are not Deity
and humanity incommensurate forms of existence ? Are
we not dealing with words rather than with facts, when
we talk of a union of the divine and the human in a
single personality ?
Theology has not left these questions wholly unan-

CHRISTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 157
swered. It has done its best to solve the problem before
us. It shows, in the first place, that the theistic concep
tion of God— which is the Christian conception— lays
the basis for the doctrine of the incarnation in its view of
the relation of God to His creatures. The deistical notion
of God, which separates Him from the completed crea
tion, confining His agency to sitting apart, as Carlyle
says, and guiding it, and seeing it go, leaves no place for
an incarnation. But Christianity accepts no such meagre
doctrine of God's providence. Rather it regards God as
immanent iu all the activities of the material world and
of man. His presence and power are everywhere. Sec
ond causes are permeated with the First Cause. Instead
Of the finite being separated from the Infinite, it is every
where full of the Infinite. The finite is the appointed
means for the revelation of the Infinite. There is a true
sense in which God has His abode in every atom, and
manifests His power in every transformation of energy.
Christian theism finds an element of truth in pantheism
as well as in deism. It avoids the errors of both. It
holds to both the immanence and the transcendence of
God. But its doctrine of the divine immanence removes
some of the most forcible objections to the incarnation. If
the Infinite dwells in every grass-blade, there is no self-
contradiction in the idea of His indwelling in the Christ.
Again, man was made in an especial sense for the di
vine indwelling. He was created in the divine image.
He attains his true ideal only when his soul becomes the
temple of the Holy Ghost. However much of mystery
there may be about it, every Christian realizes in his own
experience this inward presence and abiding of God. If
the mighty God can enter the soul of ordinary men and
make his abode there, if this was the purpose for which
men were created, then is it altogether strange that He
should find in a higher and fuller sense His abode in the
perfect humanity of the Christ ?

158 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
So much for the hints in explanation of the incarnation
which are suggested by the nature of the creature. There
are others which come to us when we consider the charac
ter of God. The Christian revelation has given us a
conception of God that is wholly new. There are indeed
faint intimations in nature and the ethnic religions that
God is love. But only Christianity makes known the full
meaning of the truth. The essence of love is self-
bestowal, the giving of self for the good of others. It
finds its highest exercise in the sacrifice of self. It is
greatest when it stoops the lowest. This is the side of
God's character which redemption reveals to us. His
glory is in His condescension. He does not demean Him
self when He takes upon Him the sins and sorrows of
men ; rather He manifests His greatness. " Thus saith
the high and lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose
name is Holy : I dwell in the high and holy place, with
him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit " (Isaiah
lvii. 15). Now it is in accordance with the character
of God, as thus revealed, that He should condescend to
take up His permanent abode in humanity through the
incarnation, and especially that He should do it for the
sake of redeeming a lost race. God could not have done
a thing more Godlike than this.
But while these considerations go far to meet the diffi
culties which arise respecting the possibility of the incar
nation, I am far from asserting that they explain the
transcendent fact itself. It is and must ever remain a
mystery. It is unlike every other fact in the whole range
of existence. The more deeply we ponder it, the greater
become the length and breadth and depth and height of
its incomprehensibility.
III. Still another problem is that of the Kenosis or
self-emptying of the divine Word. Paul tells us that the
eternal Son,*who was in the form of God and thought
it not robbery to be equal with God, " emptied himself,

CHRISTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 159
taking the form of a servant, being made in the likeness
of men " (Phil. ii. 6, 7). John tells us that " the Word
became flesh " (John i. 14). Now how much do these ex
pressions mean ? We know that Jesus Christ was born
an infant, increased in wisdom and stature, passed through
childhood and youth to manhood, lived for thirty years the
life of an ordinary man, in pursuance of his redemptive
ministry went about for three years or more doing good,
suffered, died, rose from the dead — all before he ascended
to his heavenly glory and sat down upon the throne of
God. We know that during all this time he was sub
ject to human limitations, hungered, thirsted, slept, expe
rienced human weakness in body and mind. We know
that in some things he was ignorant (Mark xiii. 32), and
that, while the divine power was at his disposal, he exer
cised it only in the performance of his miracles, which
were few when we consider the extent of his activity.
Are we, then, to understand that when the Logos became
flesh he emptied himself of the divine attributes ? Did
the divine nature conform itself to the limits of the human
nature ? Or did the divine nature remain, in all its integ
rity, in full possession of the divine attributes ? Was
Christ, as to his Deity, omniscient, omnipotent, and omni
present, while in his humanity he was ignorant, weak, and
confined to a single place ?
The traditional theology accepts the latter alternative.
It believes it necessary if we are to maintain both natures
in their integrity. While the babe Jesus lay slumbering
in the manger at Bethlehem, the eternal Son was in the
full exercise of his divine attributes, manifesting the di
vine glory in Heaven, upholding the whole creation by
the word of his power, governing all things by his prov
idence, present in the utmost corner of the universe.
When the human Jesus was suffering his agony in the
Garden and dying on the cross, his divine nature was in
the full enjoyment of the heavenly blessedness. Only

160 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
through his connection with the humanity of Christ could
the divine Son be said to have been tempted. Merely
the human in Christ sorrowed and suffered, for God is
ever supremely happy and incapable of suffering. The
advocates of this theory have always asserted that the
God-man was but one person. Yet they have generally
held that there were two consciousnesses in him, the one
divine and the other human.
On the other hand, many modern theologians have at
tempted to explain the mystery by a very different line of
speculation. They are especially concerned to maintain
the unity of Christ's person, even at the expense of the
integrity of his two natures. Prominent among these
theologians are Gess, Thomasius, and Godet. They find
their starting-point in the Lutheran Christology. Luther,
in order to maintain his doctrine of the actual presence
of Christ's body in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper,
taught that in the glorified Christ the attributes of the
divine nature are communicated to the humanity, so that
the latter is omnipresent, omniscient, and omnipotent.
The theologians of whom I am speaking apply the same
theory to Christ in the state of humiliation, only trans
posing the relation. They hold that while Christ was on
earth the attributes of the human nature were communi
cated to his Deity. We have seen that Paul calls the
act by which the Logos became incarnate, an emptying of
himself, a Kenosis, if we employ the Greek word (Phil.
ii. 7). What was this Kenosis ? was it a mere renuncia
tion of the divine glory, or was it something more ? The
answer of these theologians — who are called, by way of
eminence, Kenotists, and whose theory is similarly desig
nated the Kenosis theory — is that the Logos emptied him
self of the divine attributes, some say of all the divine
attributes, others, only of those which belong to God's re
lation to the world. By a process of self-limitation the
divine Son reduced himself, as it were, to the dimensions

CHRISTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 161
of humanity. He relinquished his omnipresence, omnis
cience, and omnipotence. He divested himself of his
eternal self- consciousness. In a word, he retained only
the bare divine essence.
The theory finds a typical form in the Kenosis doctrine
of Gess. He holds that, in the incarnation, the Son not
only assumed a human nature, but actually became a hu
man soul in a human body. The act and process of self-
limitation by which the incarnation was effected may be
illustrated by the phenomena of sleep in ordinary human
experience. What is it to go to sleep ? It is to relinquish
for a time the attributes of our spiritual being, to renounce
our self-consciousness, and to pass into a state of uncon
sciousness. The soul is present in sleep, but it is present
as bare essence ; its attributes are quiescent. Gess calls
attention to the fact that we generally enter into the state
of sleep by an act of free choice and volition ; we will to
sleep, that is, we will to reduce our souls to a state of un
consciousness and passivity. Not dissimilar was the ex
perience of the Son when he became man. By an act of
free self-determination he divested himself of his divine
self-consciousness and his divine attributes and became
the infant Jesus. There was but one self-consciousness
in the babe on Mary's knee, namely, that which belonged
to it as a human being just entering upon life, and en-
swathed in this self-consciousness, lying dormant there,
reduced to these human and infantile dimensions, was the
eternal self -consciousness of the divine Son, which he had
thus freely relinquished for the purposes of redemption.
As the child increases in wisdom and stature the divine
nature is proportionately rehabilitated. With the growth
of the human self-consciousness the divine self-conscious
ness reappears. The boy Jesus in the Temple already
calls God his Father in a higher sense than other men, and
is stirred with presentiments of his great work. The bap
tism brings him into the full consciousness of who and
11

162 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
what he is, and of his redemptive mission. The complete
rehabilitation of the divine attributes and functions comes
with the ascension to God's right hand, which ends the
period of humiliation and begins the state of exaltation
and glory. Now he is God not only in essence but in the
possession and exercise of all the divine qualities.
Another speculation, designed to occupy middle ground
between the traditional view and the Kenosis theories, is
that of the great German theologian Dorner. It is com
monly called the theory of Progressive Incarnation, a
designation which, however, is not wholly satisfactory.
Dorner holds with the advocates of the traditional doc
trine that during the whole of Christ's earthly life the
Logos remained in the full possession of the divine attri
butes and self-consciousness. He differs from them, how
ever, in his view of the theanthropic or divinely human
person of Christ. The common view has been that the
person of the Logos became the person of the God-man, so
that the humanity, apart from its union with the divine
nature, is impersonal. Dorner maintains that the the
anthropic person is the result of the union of the two nat
ures. The " I " of the Christ is not the " I " of the eternal
Logos, but a new " I," a new center of self-consciousness
and self-determination, which has been constituted through
the uniting of the divine with the human. Accordingly,
the humanity of Christ is no more impersonal than the
divinity ; the two find their common meeting-point in the
one personality of the God-man. Now at the incarnatiou
the Logos united himself truly to the human nature, so that
it could be said that " the Logos was from the beginning
united with Jesus in the deepest ground of his being, and
the life of Jesus was always a theanthropic life " (Dorner,
" Glaubenslehre," § 104, vol. ii., p. 431). This union, how
ever, was at first relatively external and incomplete. The
newly established personality partook of the human limita
tions of the child Jesus. But as in the process of growth

CHRISTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 163
the theanthropic personality was developed, the Logos
communicated himself more and more fully to the hu
man nature of Christ and the union betw.een them became
more and more complete. This gradual welding of the
two natures into closer union may be illustrated by the re
lations of the soul and body in the ordinary human being.
In infancy soul and body are truly united, but not com
pletely united. The whole process of growth and educa
tion is a progressive blending of soul and body. The
body is brought under the mastery of the soul, so that it
becomes its perfect instrument in all its activities. The
soul comes to interpenetrate the whole body. It is not in
a mere figure of speech that we say of the musician that
his soul was in his fingers. In Lowell's poem, when *the
student goes into his library and takes the volumes from
the shelves, the way in which he touches the leaves tells
the story of his soul's love for them :
" ' We know the practised finger,'
Said the books, ' that seems like brain.' "
The analogy helps us to understand the way in which
the union between the Logos and the human Jesus was
consummated. At first it was real but incomplete ; but
as time went on, and Jesus increased in wisdom and
stature, and in favor with God and man, the Logos be
stowed himself more and more fully, and the two nat
ures became more and more intimately connected. At
first the union was what might be called a natural or
physical one. As the process of growth proceeded it be
came more and more an ethical or moral union. There
was on the human side a sinless development of character,
an opening to receive the divine. There was on the di
vine side an impartation of the divine perfections and a
closer and more intimate indwelling. This moral union
was consummated in the death of Christ, when the divine

164 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
and the human became perfectly united in the accomplish
ment of redemption. It was manifested in its perfection
at the resurrection and ascension, when the Christ en
tered upon the exercise of his divine prerogatives.
What shall we say of these various theories ? It is not
very difficult to criticise them. In each there are ele
ments of truth, which we gladly recognize, as well as de
fects which render their full acceptance impossible. The
traditional theory rightly emphasizes the integrity of the
two natures after the personal union has been constituted.
It will not allow the Deity of Christ to be in the slightest
degree infringed upon. It is true to the Gospel teachings
when it finds the original centre of personal ljfe rather
in* the divinity than in the humanity. The Christ who
could say, " Before Abraham was, I am," and speak of the
glory "which I had with the Father before the world
was," certainly regarded the " I " which spoke as identical
with the "I" of which pre-existence was predicated.
God was in Christ in a truly personal sense reconciling
the world unto Himself. And yet it cannot be denied
that this view, by so sharply distinguishing the divine
from the human, raises very grave difficulties. The idea
of a double consciousness seems to sever the personal
unity. The human experience of the Saviour, his phys
ical, mental, and spiritual development, his temptation,
sufferings, and death, loses its significance if it is to be
predicated of his human nature alone while his divinity
had no direct participation in it. It is difficult to see
in what true sense the Logos emptied himself in the in
carnation. There is a duality in the doctrine which we
strive in vain to remove. The Kenosis theory relieves the
difficulties just mentioned. It emphasizes the reality of
the incarnation as an actual entering of the Logos into
union with humanity. When the self-limitation has been
effected, all duality disappears. There is but one con
sciousness, one process of development. The earthly ex-

CHRISTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 165
perience of Christ belongs to the entire God-man and not
merely to his human nature. The divinity, as well as the
humanity, is all there in that one being, Jesus Christ. So
long as we are dealing with the facts of the Gospel his
tory this theory carries smoothly onward. But there is
another side to it. What is this self-emptied Logos, di
vested of the divine attributes, only partially possessed of
the divine consciousness ? Is he divine ? We say that
the divine essence remains, though stripped of its attri
butes. But what is essence without attributes ? It is
possible for a being to relinquish the exercise of its attri
butes and remain itself, but when the attributes them
selves are, relinquished, what is left ? Modern philosophy
does not allow the old idea of qualities separable from
substance ; it teaches rather that a substance consists in
its qualities. Take away from the stone that lies at your
feet its extension, color, impenetrability, and other prop
erties, and yon have nothing left but that metaphysical
ghost which philosophers have called the "thing in it
self," which has no existence except in the mind. The
Kenosis theory removes one set of difficulties by raising
another far more serious. It explains Christ's earthly
life at the expense of his divinity. The theory of pro
gressive incarnation is not open to so great objections.
It undoubtedly gives a luminous and beautiful explana
tion of the facts of Christ's earthly life. There is some
thing novel and helpful in the idea of the reciprocity ex
isting between the divine and human natures and their
gradual mutual interpenetration and progressive union.
But Dorner's view of the constitution of the theanthropic
person, which is essential to the theory, gives rise to grave
doubts. Christ does not speak as if his person went no
farther back than the incarnation. He said, " The glory
which I had with thee before the world was." This is
not a new personality, constituted by the union of the di
vine and the human natures ; it is in some true sense the

166 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
personality of the Logos. If it be urged that the per
sonality of the Logos was not personality in the full sense
of the term, since it belongs to the tripersonality of the
Trinity, which must be subordinated to the unipersonality
of God, still I affirm that the personality of the Logos,
such as it was, must have been the central and essential
element in the personality of the God-man. Dorner's the
ory, like the others, only partially solves the problem.
What, then, shall we say ? The answer is plain. The
problem is insoluble with our present knowledge. Each
of the theories is valuable as far as we can make it work,
and no farther. We acknowledge the laudable purpose
and the loyalty to scriptural truth in all of them. They
all of them aim to do justice to the various elements of
the wonderful doctrine. Each emphasizes a class of facts
which the others fail to bring into their deserved promi
nence. But the problem is too great. It has, and al
ways must have, its mysterious side. Somehow or other,
in some real and true sense, the Word became flesh. He
laid aside his heavenly glory and relinquished for a time
the exercise of the divine attributes. The divine person
became a theanthropic person. There was a real submit
ting to human limitations. The Son of God took part in
some true way in the development of the human Jesus.
It was not merely the human nature that passed from in
fancy to childhood, and from childhood to youth and
manhood, that was tempted and suffered and died and
rose again ; it was the God-man, the divinely human per
son. It was he who was weak, and in some things igno
rant. It was he who prayed to the Father. In him God
had a truly human experience and wrought out a salva
tion that was the work at once of God and man. There
was one consciousness, covering an extent vastly greater
than ours, yet as truly one. During all the state of hu
miliation there were reminiscences of the glory before
the world was, and presentiments of the power and divine

CHRISTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 167
majesty in the future. Such are the facts which the New
Testament seems to require us to accept. But we admit
that we are incompetent to explain them. The farther
we penetrate into the mystery, the profounder it becomes.
The theologian who has pondered the subject for years,
and studied all the theories, cannot answer the questions
which his own little child puts to him.
IV. There still remains the problem of the present
nature of the Christ. He has ascended into glory and
sitteth at the right hand of God. If the divine was sub
ject to human limitations on earth, it is so no longer.
The exaltation of the Christ has restored all that the self-
emptying took from him. He is once more in the exer
cise, as well as in the possession, of the divine attributes.
But what is the relation now of the divine and the hu
man in him ? How does his person stand related to his
natures? Undoubtedly in the main there has been no
change. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, to-day, and
forever. He is, and continueth to be, God and man, in
two natures and one person forever. All the wealth of
his human experience is preserved, and through his man
hood he is still our merciful and faithful High-Priest.
But have his divine attributes been communicated to
his human nature ? He promised his disciples that he
would be with them always, even unto the end of the
world (Matt, xxviii. 20). How is this presence effected ?
Is the human nature omnipresent since the glorification
of Christ ? So say the Lutherans, as we have already
seen, moved thereto by their doctrine of the Lord's Sup
per. That Christ's human nature should be present in a
true sense in a thousand worshipping assemblies at the
same time, and communicated to every one who partakes
of the consecrated bread and wine, this must be the case.
And even though we may hold a wholly different doc
trine of the sacrament, there is much in the theory of
Christ's human omnipresence to commend it to our accept-

168 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
ance. The ordinary view in our branch of the Protes
tant church is that Christ is present only by his Spirit.
His humanity is circumscribed and local. It is now in
heaven, the place where God manifests His highest glory.
It is as truly absent from us as are our friends who have
passed from earth and gone to be with him. We ask,
what it means for Christ to be with us by his Spirit ? Is
it not a real presence ? When he dwells in our hearts by
faith (Eph. iii. 17), is it not a real indwelling ? Is he in
reality far from us in his humanity ? And so to those
who think most deeply on this subject, and with most
real longing for personal communion with the human
Christ, the Lutheran view has great attractiveness, even
though they may not see their way clear to accept it.
But when all is said, we find that we are once more in the
realm of mystery. That Christ is with us in his human
ity we know. But how it is effected we do not know.
We must accept the fact in the silence of faith and leave
its explanation to the time of fuller knowledge.
And so it is with all the aspects of this wonderful doc
trine of Christ. It stands alone, a fact unmatched in the
whole realm of knowledge. As has been truly said, we
cannot explain it because it is unique, because there are
no other facts of the same class with which we may com
pare it. If we take it as a mere doctrine, that is, as a
series of propositions, it is easy enough. We can readily
string together the words that define and describe the
person of Christ, thinking we understand them because
they are logically combined. But it is different when we
think deeply upon the fact. It is fact, the reality of
which we cannot doubt. It rests upon a solid historical
basis in the scriptural record. We cannot explain the life
and character of Jesus upon any other assumption than
that of his divinity. But the fact itself, how wonderful,
how passing knowledge ! We accept it, not because we
can explain it, but because it explains everything else.

CHRISTOLOGICAL PROBLEMS 169
And so we leave the paths of the intellect, which carry us
into darkness and mystery, and follow the humbler but
brighter path of Christian faith, striving to know the
Saviour personally and to live in his strength. In this
way there is the certainty of higher knowledge. The life
of love and faith opens vistas through which we see deep
into the heart of the mystery. Now we know in part
and prophesy in part. But it shall not always be so.
We have the promise that at last we shall " see him as he
is" (1 John iii. 2). When that which is perfect is come,
that which is in part shall be done away. So let us wait
in patience.

X.
RELATION OF CHRIST TO GOD AND THE CREATION
Evekt thinking man must have some theory of the
first principles and causes of things, and when he puts
it into systematic form and applies it to the different
spheres of being— the Infinite, the world, and man — it
becomes a philosophy. Paul thus sets forth his philos
ophy : " For by him were all things created, that are
in heaven, and that are on earth, visible and invisible,
whether they be thrones, or dominions, or principalities,
or powers : all things were created by him, and for him.
And he is before all things and by him all things consist,
and he is the head of the body, the church : who is the
beginning, the first-born from the dead ; that in all things
he might have the pre-eminence " (Col. i. 16-18). The
apostle, true to the Gospel which he preached, finds his
explanation of things in redemption, and in him who is at
once the source, the agent, and the goal of redemption,,
Jesus the Christ. In his conception the facts and truths
of the universe center in the Redeemer. He is the Me
diator who binds together God, the higher intelligences,
the world, and humanity. In him are hid all the treas
ures of wisdom and knowledge (Col. ii. 3). Over against
the " wisdom of this world," the lore of the Jewish Rab
bins, and the philosophies of Greece and Rome, Paul sets
"Christ, the wisdom of God" (1 Cor. i. 20, 24).
But it is not my purpose at this time to present the
doctrine of Christ as a philosophy. Rather I desire to
bring out some aspects of the doctrine, thus far only

RELATION OF CHRIST TO GOD AND THE CREATION 171
touched upon, that are connected with the relations in
which the Saviour stands to God and the creation. Nev
ertheless, I shall be glad if an incidental result of our dis
cussion shall be to emphasize the fact which is essential to
the idea of the doctrine as a philosophy, that Christ is the
key to the great problems of the universe. It is thus that
we shall best prove the reasonableness of this central fact
of the Christian system. Like all the great fundamental
truths with which the human mind has to do, it is rooted
in mystery. We saw this when, in the last discourse,
we examined the important Christological problems and
frankly admitted our inability to solve them. But the
doctrine of Christ, though it may be in itself mysterious,
evidences its reasonableness by the light it throws upon
other facts. It is like the sun, into which we cannot look
for its excess of brightness, but which is the light of all
our seeing.
I. We consider, first, the relation of Christ to God.
He is the eternal Son, the Word, the Image, of God.
Doubtless these terms are used in part to describe God's
relation to the world. But they convey also a deeper
meaning, giving us a glimpse, though imperfect, into the
internal life of God. Especially is this the case with the
term Son. It points to an eternal fact in the divine ex
istence. There is Fatherhood and Sonship in God. There
is a relation which finds its best analogy and expression in
the words which describe one of the closest and tender-
est of earthly relations. What are the essential character
istics of the bond which exists between the human father
and son ? A common nature, love, fellowship, community
of purpose and act. Such is the relation of the divine
Father and Son. The Deity is not a bare unity. There
is in it a fulness of life. There is a reciprocity and in
tercourse of love, a mutual dependence, a unity which is
a union of differences. But shall we push the analogy
further? The human child owes his existence to his

172 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
father. Is it so with the divine Son? We cannot ad
mit an absolute beginning. That would carry us back to
the old Arian heresy. But many Orthodox theologians
have taught an eternal generation of the Son — and have
darkened the subject by words which convey no intelli
gible meaning. Again, the human son is a distinct person
from the parent. They possess a common nature but not
the same nature. And at first it seems as though we
might find the same distinction between the divine Father
and Son. But, as we shall see, when we come to the doc
trine of the Trinity, these two possess the same essence,
and though we call them " First Person " and " Second
Person," we do so in a technical theological sense, which
is not the same as that in which the term person is com
monly employed. We maintain the iripersonality of
God only so far as it is consistent with the unipersonality
of God. All the great theologians, from the days of
Augustin, have admitted the inadequacy of this word per
son. But let us not think that the Father and the Son
are less than persons. Rather we have here a relation
which transcends our conceptions of personality. And we
are to hold fast to the terms Father and Son as bringing
us nearest to the understanding of the transcendent fact.
The title which John applies to the pre-existent Christ,
the Word, directs our thought chiefly to the self-revelation
of God, yet it does not exhaust its meaning in the exter
nal relation of revelation. When he says that the Word
" was in the beginning with God " (John i. 1, 2) he points
to an eternal inward relation. The Word is the vehicle
of our thought. It is, so to speak, the objectified thought.
Max Muller has recently written a book to prove that
thought is impossible without words. And whether or
not he goes too far, yet this at least we may say, that
there is little thought which is not either in words or
what stands for words. When we think a subject over,
we put it into words and see how it looks. The word is a

RELATION OF CHRIST TO GOD AND THE CREATION 173
man's alter Ego, his other self. So was the Word the eter
nal self-expression of the Deity, the objectified thought
of God, His other self, His companion. It was in the
mirror of the Word that God saw His eternal plan re
flected. We come back to that relation of confidence
and love and mutual intercourse which the term Son ex
presses. Son and Word suggest different aspects of the
same ineffable truth.
There remains the designation of the pre-existent
Christ as the Image of God. This also seems to apply
not only to the revelation of God, but also to His internal
being. The idea it suggests is not unlike that conveyed
by the term Word. In His image God sees Himself and
finds, as it were, another self. Here once more is the
intercourse and reciprocity of love. We take the three
together — Son, Word, Image — and find in them the cer
tainty and the sufficient, if not complete, expression, of
the mysterious relation of the Son to the Father.
The langnage I have used may have seemed to imply a
reference solely to the pre-existent Christ. But this was
not my meaning. The exalted Christ, the God-man, sit
ting to-day upon the throne of majesty above, so far as
his divine nature is concerned, stands in this relation to
God. He is still the Son, the Word, the uncreated
Image. But this is not the whole. He is man as well as
God, and his two natures are bound together in the unity
of his theanthropic person. And this means that in some
ineffable but real way, humanity has been taken into the
life of the Deity, and that not temporarily but forever.
We talk of the marvels of the Gospel. It is a marvel
that God should have stooped to redeem mankind, that
He should become incarnate, that for thirty-three years
He should have experienced the vicissitudes of human
life, that He should have tasted death, in the dying of
the Christ. It is a marvel that we should be forgiven
and assured of salvation. It is a marvel that God should

174 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
take up His abode in our sinful hearts through the Holy
Spirit, that we might become "partakers of the divine
nature" (2 Pet. i. 4). It is a marvel that God should
permit us to dwell forever with Him. But an incompara
bly greater marvel is this eternal union of tlie Deity with
manhood in the person of the Christ. Man shares the
counsels of God. Man sits upon the throne of power.
Man wields the sceptre of government. Our great High-
priest is the Man, who suffered and died, who on earth
was tempted in all points like as we are. We talk of the
dignity of manhood. Here is the foundation of it all. It
is because through Christ our humanity is thus forever
united with God, that we may hope to be forever with
Him. The manhood of the God-man is the great magnet
in the center of the universe which is drawing all men
unto it. The Christian sees the true humanity there in
Christ, and he is dead, and his life is hid with Christ in
God (Col. iii. 3).
And then, the Christ is the revelation of God. The
terms which we have discussed in their reference to the
internal relations of God all have their outward look as
well. The Son is the Father's messenger. The Word
makes known the divine nature and purpose, and does the
divine work. The Image bodies forth the divine being.
In reality the two facts stand in the closest connection.
It is because the Son stands in his own peculiar rela
tion to the Deity in its internal nature that he becomes
the principle of revelation. Only God can reveal God.
There can be no intermediary that is of a lower essence
than God. And only God can perform the divine work
of redemption. The Mediator must be divine. For he
comes not merely with a knowledge about God, but with
the actual manifestation of the divine nature and power.
It is not, however, the divine Son alone who is the Re
vealer and Saviour. It is the Christ, the God-man, the
incarnate Son. Manhood was made receptive of the di-

RELATION OF CHRIST TO GOD AND THE CREATION 175
vine. It was created not only by Christ but for Christ.
The revelation which Christ makes is of the divine in
humanity, of the Infinite in the finite. He gives a pict
ure and representation of God, as it were, in miniature.
The divine Son works out a perfect human sonship in his
human nature, so that when the testimony came from the
opened heavens, " This is my beloved Son in whom I am
well pleased" (Matt. iii. 17), it was one theanthropic son-
ship that was meant, the divine Sonship expressed in a
perfect human sonship. So the uncreated Image of God
was stamped upon the humanity in such a way as to make
a perfect human image of God. Man was created at first
in the divine image and sin marred the work. Christ
restored it in his own humanity. And then, the divine
Word found utterance in those human words such as
never man spake.
It was a wonderful method of self-revelation which
God chose, the method of the incarnation. While he was
still on earth, in his state of humiliation, Christ could say,
" He that hath seen me hath seen the Father " (John xiv.
9). To everyone who had the spiritual eyes to see him as
he was, he was God on earth. His character, his words,
his acts all bore the impress of the divine upon them.
And still more should he be to us who live in these latter
days the revelation of the divine. For now he is upon
the throne. We see him as he is. We can take that mar
vellous picture of his earthly life which the New Testa
ment records, and add to it the personal knowledge of
the Saviour which has come to us through the experience
of his gracious presence and power. In the synthesis of
a living faith the Christ, who eighteen centuries ago
walked with weary feet the rough roads of Palestine, and
the King in his glory, the Messiah of God, are one. It is
our privilege to receive the answer to the Apostle's prayer,
" That Christ may dwell in your hearts by faith " (Eph.
iii. 17).

176 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
To know God is the great need of mankind ; not to
know Him merely in an intellectual way, but in that per
sonal and spiritual knowledge which John says is eternal
life (John xvii. 3). For this the soul cries out. For such
knowledge the world has longed and labored and sought
during all the ages of human history. How little has been
the success ! What conceptions have not men formed of
God ! Every absurdity of which men are capable, every
atrocity which the devil's ingenuity has ever devised, has
been ascribed to our Creator and Father. In Jesus Christ
mankind has received the perfect revelation. Here and
here alone is the truth in its simplicity and its greatness.
II. Let us now look for a moment at the relation in
which Christ stands to the higher intelligences of the
universe. The existence of such beings is clearly taught
by the Scriptures. They are the invisible background of
the redemptive revelation, coming into visibility at all
its great crises. I speak of the angels as higher intel
ligences. In some respects they are higher, in others
lower, than man. In power and purity they are above
him, fit to dwell in the presence of the Most High and do
His bidding. When Christ taught us to pray, " Thy will
be done in earth as it is in heaven," he set the angels
before us as a model. But in other respects the angels
are lower than men. They are pure spirits. They do not,
therefore, stand in those manifold relations to the mate
rial world which belong to man, who is at once spirit and
body. If organization is a test of rank in the hierarchy
of the universe, man stands above the angels. Of him
it can be said, as it cannot of the angels, that he is the
microcosm, the universe in miniature, for in him all the
spheres and departments of the universe find their living
center. Martensen has truly said :
" Although the angel, in relation to man, is the more
powerful spirit, man's spirit is nevertheless the richer and

RELATION OF CHRIST TO GOD AND THE CREATION 177
the more comprehensive. For the angel in all his power
is only the expression of a single one of all those phases
which man, in the inward nature of his soul, and the rich
ness of his own individuality, is intended to combine into
a complete and perfect microcosm " (" Dogmatics," Eng.
trans., p. 132; see the whole passage, pp. 127-136, to
which 1 would express my obligations).

The divine Son " took not on him the nature of angels ;
but he took on him the seed of Abraham " (Heb. ii. 16).
In .these high beings the law of service is perfected.
They are " ministering spirits, sent forth to minister for
them who shall be heirs of salvation " (Heb. i. 14).
They live not for themselves but to do the work of God's
kingdom. To the angels Christ stands in an original and intimate
relation. He created them and assigned them their rank
and place in the universe. They attended him in all his
earthly life and ministry. They are his messengers and
ministers in his heavenly glory. His redemptive work
has broken the power of Satan and his kingdom of fallen
angels. They are to appear before his judgment-seat
and receive their final doom (2 Pet. ii. 4; Jude 6).
The same redemption is to bring together in blessed rec
onciliation all things in heaven and on earth, and to sum
them up in him (Col. i. 20 ; Eph. i. 10). At the name
of Jesus every knee shall bow, of things in heaven, and
things in earth, and things under the earth, and every
tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of
God the Father (Phil. ii. 10, 11).
III. We come to the relation of Christ to the world.
It would have been a bold claim on the part of the
apostles, had they not been guided by the Spirit of reve
lation, that Jesus of Nazareth, the man who went about
with them in the days of Pilate's Procuratorship, was the
Maker of the universe. But this was what they asserted.
12

178 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
For they held that united with that manhood and behind
that veil of flesh was the Creator Himself. When they
looked upward to Christ, the King upon the throne, they
recognized in him the power and wisdom that called the
universe into being. No language could be more explicit
than that of John, who gives this truth the foremost
place in his Gospel, the unknown author of the epistle
to the Hebrews, who likewise presents the facts in the
opening words of his book, and Paul, who makes it an es
sential element in his Christian philosophy. Consider
what it means. Think of the immensity of the planet
On which we live. T^n^haJtae^acmr flight in thought
across the nip^ty millions of miles Iteitween us and the
sun. Thej/pass from star to star, where jail measure
ment fairs, beyond the farthest point ofjright the tele
scope reveals. He inadag^t^jji^tJjj^JSf'Srd who became
flesh and dwelt anj@*Pg*u8, the Being who in his divinely
human person is" to-day our King and Saviour, our elder
Brother. Or if our minds are confused bjr the thought
of greatness in space, consider the infinite complexity
and beauty of the smallest organism, as the microscope
discloses it to us. And then, he not only made, but
he upholds and guides them all. " In him all things
consist " (Col. i. 17). He has held together from the
first this universe of atoms and forces. He has been
the source of all energy 'and activity and life, the life of
the natural world as he is the life of the soul (John i. 4).
It is his wisdom that has been displayed in the progress
of evolution out of the primitive chaos into the cosmos,
the building of the planetary system, the shaping of our
earth, the formation of its physical features, the develop
ment of its living forms, the long, slow, wonderful pro
cess of upward-climbing movement from the protozoon
to the man. Christ, the Word who became flesh. The
words come too easily, and our thought cannot keep pace
with them. We believe it but we do not realize it. It is

RELATION OF CHRIST TO GOD AND THE CREATION 179
at once the strongest argument against Christianity and
the strongest argument for it. To the understanding it
is impossible, mere vaunt of good-hearted but weak-minded
Christians. But there is a divine audacity in the doctrine
which to the spiritual mind is the proof of its truth. Here
is a pass-key which opens so many locks that we cannot
discard it. It is because Christ explains everything that
we believe him indeed Lord of all things. When his sun
rises, the shadows flee away.
The world was made that it might be the theatre for
Christ's redemptive work. Looking at the subject broad
ly, we may say that the whole universe was made for this
purpose ; for, as we have seen, all orders of being are con
cerned in some way or other with redemption. But more
particularly our own earth was made for this end. Here
God's kingdom was to be established. Here the divine
Son was to become incarnate, to live and die. Unbeliev
ers often declare that Christianity has lost its meaning,
since the Ptolemaic system of astronomy has given place
to the Copernican. Christianity makes this planet the
center of the universe, the object of God's especial love,
upon which His greatest efforts have been expended. But
science has shown that the earth is but an insignificant
speck in the fathomless depths of space, an unimportant
satellite of one of the lesser suns. Some of our modern
apologists have been at great pains to prove, and with not
a little plausibility of argument, that the earth is the only
planet in our system habitable by beings like ourselves,
and that there is little reason to suppose that the other
heavenly bodies possess systems of planets like our own
(Ebrard, " Christian Apologetics," Eng. trans., vol. i., pp.
353-365). It is not the size of our earth or its position in
the universe which gives it its importance. The poet says,
" Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.''

180 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
So we may say, " Better a little world like ours with man
on it and God purposing to redeem it, than a thousand suns
each a thousand times the size of ours." And even sup
posing that the other worlds were all inhabited, it would
not prove that this earth was not of more importance
in God's sight than all the rest. God's standard of im
portance, as it has been revealed to us in the Gospel,
is very different from ours. The greatest need lays the
greatest claim upon His love. Just as there is joy in
heaven over one sinner that repenteth, more than over
ninety and nine just persons which need no repentance
(Luke xv. 7), so there may be joy in God's heart to la
bor for the redemption of one sinful world like ours, com
pared with which his rejoicing over a thousand unfallen
worlds is as nothing. And were there a thousand fallen
worlds in which God had manifested Himself as the Re
deemer through Christ, each of them would be a center, in
which the love and efforts and hopes and sympathies of
God and all holy beings would be bound up. We shall not
let science, with all its unquestionable truths, rob us of
the meaning of those sublime words, " God so loved the
world that He gave His only-begotten Son " (John iii. 16).
It is this destination of the world to be the theatre of
Christ's redemption that explains the existence of what is
otherwise an insoluble mystery, namely suffering, disease,
and death. God knew that men would become sinners,
and He intended to provide salvation for them. And so
He arranged things in such a way that this world should
be a place of discipline and trial. Suffering and death
were the check upon sin which He provided, the means of
spiritual growth, the punishment for incorrigible wrong
doing. In a world that was to be sinless they would have
been an anomaly. In a world of sin, where redemption
was to be the great object of God's activities, they are a
blessing. The divine Word who created this world, es
tablished that law of suffering and death which was to

RELATION OF CHRIST TO GOD AND THE CREATION 181
afford the means of his own atoning work when he should
become incarnate in the Christ. From the first the " sign
of the Son of man," the mark of the cross, has been on
the earth. The fossils of the oldest rocks are in a true
sense types of the Christ ; they prophecy the Saviour's
death. The doctrine of Christ and his redemption emphasizes
the difference between Christianity and most of the hea
then religions and philosophies in their view of the ma
terial world. Heathenism regarded matter as evil ; re
demption consisted in deliverance from it. Christ teaches
us the excellency of matter. Christ made it, in the per
son of the Logos. He manifested his relation to it when
" the Word became flesh." It is a matter of no small im
portance that Christ on his human side became a link in
the chain of evolution. Though he was divine, and though
his human birth was a miracle, entirely out of the sphere
of natural development, yet he condescended to enter into
the realm of nature. He took to himself matter, an ani
mal nature, a human nature. In the light of the incarna
tion let no man call the material world common or un
clean. Christ has shown us its true character. And as he
thus entered nature and eternally linked himself with it,
so he gave the assurance of the redemption even of physi
cal nature. We have touched upon the subject already.
We shall come to it again in the doctrine of the resurrec
tion. But the fact cannot be too often asserted and em
phasized. There is no physical disorder that shall not
be righted, no evil that shall not be overcome. This is
Christ's world, not the Devil's world. The pledge of his
ownership and its final regeneration is the material body
of the glorified Christ. At the Last Day he is to return
in like manner as he ascended into Heaven (Acts i. 11), tQ
eomplete the redemption of the material world, as well as
the redemption of the race.
IV. This brings us to the relation of Christ to mankind.

182 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
The divine Word was not only the Creator of the higher
intelligences and the world, but also of man. In an es
pecial sense he was the creator of man, since he made him
in the image of God, and he, as we have seen, was the
eternal uncreated Image of God. As men, we bear the
image of the Son. It is in virtue of this fact that we are
by birthright the sons, the children, of God. Since from
the first God knew that men would sin and that thus the
image of God in them would be defaced, the birthright of
sonship renounced, the Logos made man that he might be
redeemed. The manhood which he made was the man
hood in which he was to become incarnate, that he might
restore the marred image and give men back their lost
sonship. God sent His Son that we might receive the
adoption of sons (Gal. iv. 4, 5).
I pass over the work of the Logos for mankind before
his incarnation, to which reference has been made in a
previous chapter, and come to his earthly life as the God-
man. He was the ideal man. The perfect manhood which
was in the thought of God, when He through the Logos
created the first member of the race, was wrought out and
realized in the life of the Christ. Adam never attained
this ideal. He was indeed created sinless and destined
for the good. He was " very good " (Gen. i. 31) in the
sense that no evil had yet entered into his life to mar it.
But he stood at the beginning of his career when he fell.
He was but a child, far from having reached the maturity
of manhood in God's kingdom, which lay in the divine
ideal. Men, since him, have been imperfect specimens of
humanity. Only one man has ever begun at the begin
ning and gone steadily forward to the goal, and that man
was the Christ, the Second Adam. It was in the moral
character and development of Christ that he especially
exhibited the true manhood. There is no reason to be
lieve that he was appointed to show forth in his bodily

RELATION OF CHRIST TO GOD AND THE CREATION 183
nature the ideal of physical beauty which human art par
tially succeeds iu representing. Christ possessed a true
human body. But it was only after his resurrection that
it became the glorious body to which the believer's body
is finally to be conformed (Phil. iii. 21). Art has caught
only glimpses of the glory that is to be. It was the spir
itual beauty of the human ideal which Christ exhibited
while on earth. He lived entirely for the kingdom of
God. He realized the kingdom perfectly in his life, for
it was his meat to do the will of his Father in heaven, and
he did it perfectly, even as it is done in heaven. His re
lation to God was that of perfect filial love. As we have
already observed, the divine Son expressed his nature in
a perfect human sonship, the two corresponding to each
other like the seal and the impression. He loved man
kind with a perfect love. In him were united perfect
self-forgetfulness and perfect self-sacrifice. That spirit of
brotherhood which is at last to make the race one was ex
emplified in him. He possessed that many-sidedness which
belongs to the highest ideal of manhood. His love and
interest took in the whole world with all its individuals,
all its spheres of activity, and all its institutions. Christ
was the most public-spirited man that ever lived. He was
not only the redeemer, but the philanthropist and the re
former. He was the model of the good citizen, while in
the humbler spheres of life he was the model son and
brother, the kind neighbor, the true and faithful friend.
Then notice how the elements were mixed in him, strength
of intellect, extending to marvellous insight into nature
and man ; strength of will, that wise, deliberate choice of
good, which is true always to the right, yet never runs
into wilfulness or stubbornness ; depth and tenderness of
sensibility. Christ blended the tenderness and gentleness
of womanhood with the strength and firmness of man
hood^ the simplicity of the child with the shrewdness of
the man of the world.

184 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
Christ attained this character by passing through a com
plete and wholly human moral development. He climbed
the ladder of moral perfection slowly and by discipline.
He was made perfect by suffering (Heb. ii. 10). He
was tempted in all points like as we are. There are those
who think that such a process of moral development
implies imperfection and sin. But this is not the case.
There may be growth where there is no imperfection.
Christ attained at each stage in his moral development
the perfection appropriate to that stage, until he had
reached the highest. There are some, also, who think
that in order that Christ's experience should be altogether
human and that he should be able to sympathize with us
as our High-priest, he should have had some personal ex
perience of sin. At least, they say, he must have been
born with that sinful nature or those tendencies to sin
which all men inherit from their ancestors. But they are
wrong. The perfect manhood is a sinless manhood, sinless
from the start, and free from every taint of sin, even an
cestral proclivities to sin. That Christ might attain the
ideal of humanity, he must start where Adam started,
not where we start, and he must go right onward without
tripping or falling till he reached the goal. Christ was
not like us or tempted like us in all points. It was not
needful that he should be. Or rather, it was needful that
he should not be. People have an idea in these days that
the reformed drunkard can do more for his fallen fellows
than he who never fell. I doubt it. But however it may
be with us, who are sinners at the best, in the case of
Christ the sinless development was essential to his capaci-
tation for his saving work.
Moreover, Christ was — and in a still higher sense is —
the universal man, the Head of the race, the second
Adam. Men are made to be under heads. There are
individuals everywhere in society who rule over their fel
lows by a divine right. " There is no power but of God ;

RELATION OF CHRIST TO GOD AND THE CREATION 185
and the powers that be are ordained of God " (Rom. xiii.
1). In the family, in the state, in society, in business, in
literature, in art, there must be leaders. The solidarity
of men includes not only their union but then- union un
der individual men. The qualifications for headship in
humanity are twofold — natural endowment and character.
A man who is to be a leader of his fellows must be a born
leader. He must have a many-sided nature, a strong will,
a large and capable intellect, quick sensibilities and sym
pathies. The majority of men are born to follow the lead
of others. Not one in a thousand has the qualities which
enable him to think and act for himself, to say nothing of
his thinking and acting for others. But the born leader
is a king from his infancy. The children in their plays
follow his lead. But leadership demands something more
than natural qualifications. Character gives the finishing
to what nature begins. Character is the man's own, the
outcome of his. free will. It lies in the great life-choices
which he makes and the habits which he forms in ac
cordance with these choices. Character begins in self-
conquest. He who will rule must first reduce the realm
within to subjection. The true king is he who has the
kingdom of God set up in his soxd, a kingdom in which
he is a humble subject. Even worldly selfishness catches
something of the secret of greatness and prudently denies
itself that it may thus gain influence over men. But in
every case there is the deliberate choice of great ends and
a long process of self-discipline by which the character
thus established is confirmed. If you will find the secret
of Luther's power over men, look to his struggles with his
own heart in the monastery at Erfurt. When a man is
thus doubly fitted for his work, he goes to his divinely
ordained task with true kingly power. Men know him
for what he is and accept him as their leader.
Jesus Christ was destined to be the leader not of a part
of the race, but of mankind ; not in a single sphere, but

186 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
in the sphere of universal manhood. The first Adam
was the head of the race only because he stood first in
the line. His relation was physical rather than spiritual.
The second Adam was the Head in all that raises man
above the animal, at once leader and redeemer. He pos
sessed both the qualifications of which I have spoken. He
was a born king. All those qualities which enable a man
to hold sway over his fellows were his from the start.
The world has never seen such a large-brained, clear-sight
ed, many-sided man, with strength of will and breadth of
sympathies like his. We catch a glimpse of this won
derful natural endowment in the words and acts of the
twelve-year-old boy in the temple. Of him might be
used, in a far higher sense than the poet meant them, the
words Shakespeare puts into Antony's mouth as descrip
tive of Brutus :
" His life was gentle ; and the elements
So mixed in him, that Nature might stand up
And say to all the world, ' This was a man ! ' "
But Christ did not only possess this natural endowment,
he built upon this foundation the noble edifice of his
character and work. The thirty years which preceded his
ministry are passed lightly over in the Gospels ; but there
is no reason to suppose that they were less decisive in
his case than in that of other men. They were the years
when his character was formed, when he made the choice
of God's kingdom as the chief end of all his living, when
he strengthened his resolves by habits slowly and pain
fully established. The fact that he never sinned does not
alter the other fact, that he became what he was through
discipline, self-denial, submission to God's will. When
Satan tempted him, he found in him not only the God
but the self-controlled, disciplined man, against the rock
of whose thoroughly formed character his temptations

RELATION OF CHRIST TO GOD AND THE CREATION 187
were shattered like the winter surges when they beat
against the crags on our Maine coast. When, therefore,
the Saviour entered upon his ministry all recognized him
as a leader, and the good and true flocked about him,
while the evil and faithless fought against him with an
almost demoniacal rage. Israel was looking for a leader,
looking for the Christ, and the word on every lip was, "Is
not this he ? is not this the Christ ? "
But there was still another stage through which the Sa
viour was to pass before he became in truth the Head of
Mankind, the second Adam. His work of redemption on
earth completed his qualification for his high office as the
King of men. I shall not go far into this subject, for we
shall go over the same ground when we come to the con
sideration of Christ's work. Here but a few words. The
years of his ministry brought him into contact with the
men he came to save. He learned all the misery of man
kind. He took human suffering and sin upon his heart.
That strange power men have to enter into each other's
experiences enabled him to enter into the understanding
of sin as no other man ever did — or could. Then he,
too, suffered. The wrath of men wreaked itself upon his
innocent head. He was subject to contumely, to reproach,
to persecution. Finally, he was slain, slain by those whom
he loved and had come to save, by a mockery of justice.
Death, that awful consequence of sin, in which God's
wrath against sin is expressed in all its rigor, fell on him,
though sinless, because he was the sinner's Saviour. I
shall not speak here of his atonement. I am concerned
only to show how Christ was thus fitted for his kingly
office, how he became the Head and Leader of the race,
the Second Adam. The captain of our salvation was
made perfect by suffering. It was thus he became the
Captain, the Leader and King, that he is. No kingship
was ever won by fairer and completer effort. He is our
Lord to-day because he went through all the toilsome way

188 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
of his humiliation and suffering that he might gain the
crown. So is he our Redeemer and our King — Redeemer
because King, and King because Redeemer.
In conclusion, let me say a word touching a current con
troversy. The question is earnestly discussed in our times
whether theology as a system is Christocentric or Theo-
centric, whether it centers in Christ or in God. Is the
governing principle by which its orderly system is devel
oped derived from the doctrine of God or the doctrine of
Christ ? I do not attempt to decide the question. But I
wish to call attention to the results of our discussion in the
present chapter. Does not Christ stand in such a relation
to the great facts with which theology has to do that he
throws upon them that central light by which alone they
can be understood ? Must we not, if we will know God,
the universe, and man, first know something of Christ %
The God of nature we know by the natural revelation.
But the God of grace, how can we know Him except as
we see him in the face of Jesus Christ ? And how can
we know the world and man, except as we view them
in their relation to him who is at once Creator and Re
deemer ?

XL
THE TRINITY
St. Augustin begins one of the books in his treatise on
the Trinity with the following words : " I pray to our
Lord God Himself, of whom we ought always to think,
and of whom we are not able to think worthily, in praise
of whom blessing is at all times to be rendered, and whom
no speech is sufficient to declare, that He will grant me
both help for understanding and explaining, that which I
design, and pardon if in anything I offend " (De Trim,
V. i. 1). We may well take the prayer as our own as we
enter upon our present discussion. The doctrine of the
Trinity is in some respects the most sacred in the Chris
tian system. It carries us into the inmost secrets of the
Deity. Into this sanctuary of the Christian faith we do
not enter by the way of worldly knowledge, but by him
who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life. We know the
Trinity through the Christ, and the doctrine of the Trin
ity is a corollary of the doctrine of the Christ.
I. We begin by a brief examination of the scriptural
teachings on the subject ; and first we look at the Old
Testament. We often hear it said, that the doctrine of
the Trinity belongs exclusively to the New Testament.
But this is not the fact. It is true that, like all the
distinctive truths of the Gospel, the doctrine of the
Trinity is found in its developed form only in the later
and crowning dispensation of the redemptive revelation.
These truths, however, all have their roots in the revela
tion of the Old Testament, and that of the Trinity is no
exception. The essential elements of the doctrine are

190 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
two, the divine unity and the divine trinality. Both of
these elements must be maintained, if the truth is to be
held in its completeness. In the Old Testament the unity
is emphasized, and we can discover good reasons why this
should be the case. In the first place, the trinality of God
could not be understood in its relation to the unity until
the incarnation had thrown its light upon it. And then
— what was perhaps an even more cogent reason — the first
need of Israel, the people chosen to be God's special in
strument in His redemptive revelation, was to be deliv
ered from the idolatry of the surrounding heathenism. In
the presence of polytheism in its worst and most seductive
forms, the divine unity must be emphasized. Jehovah
revealed Himself as the one God. The fundamental com
mandment was, " Thou shalt have no other gods before
me " (Ex. xx. 3). The Israelite confessed his faith then,
as he does to-day. in the words, " Hear, O Israel ; the
Lord our God is one God " (Deut. vi. 4).
But strict as was the monotheism of the Old Testament,
it contains in it the elements of the doctrine of the Trin
ity, which in the light of the higher revelation we can
clearly discover. Our examination of the doctrine of
Christ has shown us that, in the theophanies of the Old
Testament and the predictions of a divine Messiah, there
are intimations of a Being who is at once God and yet dis
tinguishable from Jehovah. The facts do not permit us
to say that Christ is predicted in the Old Testament
merely as a human King. Moreover, the Old Testament
doctrine of the Spirit distinguishes between God and the
mysterious agency through which He works in nature and
man. It is true that the Spirit is regarded by the sacred
writers for the most part as the impersonal power of God.
But more and more, as revelation advances, there is a ten
dency to ascribe personality to the Spirit ; and whether or
not the personality is recognized, the Spirit is in the high
est sense divine, and all that is needed to make the per-

THE TRINITY 191
sonality appear is the higher truth of the Spirit's office
which Christ was to reveal. I am not asserting that the
Israelites themselves, even those who stood on the moun
tain-tops of inspiration, recognized a Trinity. All I as
sert is, that when they were brought to the higher revela
tions of the Gospel, they found enwrapped in their old
doctrine of God all the elements of the doctrine of the
Trinity. The New Testament discloses the truth in all its ful
ness. There are indeed those who declare that, because
we find only a few passages in which the elements of the
doctrine are brought together with something of the ex
actitude of a doctrinal statement, the New Testament evi
dence for this great fact is meagre and insufficient. But
these few passages do not furnish us with the chief evi
dence upon which Trinitarians rely. The whole theolog
ical basis of the New Testament is Trinitarian. The fol
lowing facts appear on almost every page : God is one ;
the Father is God, yet distinguishable from the Son and
the Spirit ; the Son is God, both in his pre-existent and
incarnate states, yet distinguishable from the Father and
the Spirit ; the Holy Ghost is God, yet distinguishable
from the Father and the Son. Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit are all described as personal. We find these facts
not only expressed in the direct statements of the sacred
writers, but implied in all their teachings, appearing wher
ever we can perceive the drift and tendency of their theo
logical thought. The redemptive grace of God is ascribed
to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost alike. They all appear
in the divine activities by which the work of God's king
dom is carried forward. The divine attributes are freely
attributed to all. In a word, the threefold cord of this
great doctrine is everywhere inwoven in the texture of the
New Testament.
But while this is the case, I am far from undervaluing
the few texts which bring the elements of the doctrine

192 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
together with something of the exactitude of a theological
formula. The most important of these is the so-called
" baptismal formula : " " Go ye therefore and make dis
ciples of all the nations, baptizing them into the name
of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost "
(Matt, xxviii. 19). In order to appreciate the full force
of these words, we must consider by whom they were
uttered and under what circumstances, as well as the
purpose for which they were uttered. They were our
Saviour's last words before his ascension, the " great
commission " which he gave his disciples, and which
was to be their guide during all the ages of the Christian
church. They related to the most important rite of
the church. They were words which our Saviour knew
would be repeated as each new convert, during the cen
turies to come, should be admitted to the Christian
brotherhood. What occasion could have been more sol
emn and significant? Moreover, we must remember
what the terms employed meant to those first disciples.
The name of God carried with it to the Jewish mind the
whole meaning of the divine nature. To us names are
arbitrary and inexpressive. We call our children John,
Hannibal, Anna, Helen, according to our kindred, our
associations, or our fancy ; and, so far as any real signifi
cance in the names is concerned, we might as well invent
new names, or designate persons by numbers, as they
do the prisoners in the galleys. But it was not so with
the Hebrew. All his names were significant, and most
of all the names of God. The divine names were rev
elations. At first God was called El Shaddai, the Al
mighty God (Gen. xvii. 1). He was the powerful Being
who protected His people and brought judgment to their
enemies. Then He revealed Himself under the covenant
name Jahveh or Jehovah (Ex. vi. 3), the great I Am, the
free, independent God of the redemptive revelation, unde
termined in His action by anything outside of Himself.

THE TRINITY 193
The Saviour concentrates his revelation of God as the
God of grace in a new name. He is the Father. This is
the name which points to the establishment of the New
Covenant, as that of Jehovah did to the Old. His own
name, too, is significant of his nature and relation to God,
that name in which he directs his disciples to pray (John
xiv. 13). But in his last command, as he gives directions
respecting the sacred rite of admission to the Christian
church, he gives the name which sums up in its complete
ness the revelation of the Gospel, the Triune Name. He
does not say, " Baptize into the names of the Father, Son,
and Holy Ghost," but " into the name" It is One in
Three, the God who is at once Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Every time that a child is sprinkled with the em
blematic water and is recognized as a member of God's
kingdom dejure, and a member of the visible church de
facto, and every time that a convert from heathenism or
the world is in the same way clothed with the highest
privileges of the Christian name, the sacred doctrine of
the Trinity is reaffirmed.
To this most important text may be added the apostolic
benediction, " The grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and
the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost
be with you all " (2 Cor. xiii. 14) ; and the striking lan
guage respecting the charisms of the primitive church,
" Now there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit.
And there are diversities of ministrations, and the same
Lord. And there are diversities of workings, but the
same God, who worketh all things in all " (1 Cor. xii. 4-
6). (Compare with these Eph. iv. 4-6 ; Rom. xi. 36.)
II. But I pass to consider the formulation of the doc
trine in the Christian church. From the first it was held
simply and unreflectingly by all Christians. It was only
as controversy arose that the church found it needful
to furnish a philosophical statement of the great truth.
The development of thought upon the subject was direct-
13

194 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
ly connected with the controversies respecting the person
of Christ. Indeed, the discussion of the doctrine of the
Trinity formed a part of the Christological discussion.
If Christ was divine, God in the fullest and highest
sense, both before and after the incarnation, then the
Deity is not a bare undistinguished unity. The question
respecting the divinity of the Holy Spirit was one of
minor importance, to be settled according to the issue of
the main controversy. We have already touched upon
the Christological disputes, but it will be needful briefly
to refer to them again, so far as relates to the subject be
fore us. First, however, let it be noted that the inade
quate or heretical theories arose. from laying undue em
phasis upon one or the other of the two essential factors
of the scriptural doctrine, the unity and the trinality of
God. Ebionism put the entire stress upon the unity,
making God one in the sense of the Old Testament, and
reducing Christ to the level of mere manhood, while there
was no talk of a Trinity even in the lowest sense. Then
came Sabellianism in the third century, also emphasizing
the divine unity, yet teaching at the same time the Deity
of Christ, and, while not altogether excluding the trinal
ity, still giving it a quite subordinate place. According
to this view the names Father, Son, and Spirit do not
designate eternal distinctions in the Godhead, but phases
or aspects under which God has revealed Himself in time.
In creation and the Old Dispensation God revealed Him
self as the Father ; in the Incarnation .and the Redemptive
work of Christ as the Logos or Son ; in the Christian Dis
pensation as the Holy Spirit. But God in Himself is
eternally one, and when redemption is completed these
temporary modes of manifestation will have served their
purpose and God will return into the unity of the Monas.
Arianism, in the fourth century, which we have already
considered in its relation to the person of the Redeemer,
also endeavored, while laying the chief emphasis upon the

THE TRINITY 195
divine unity, to retain the trinality, and so made the Trin
ity an association between God and two exalted yet created
beings, the Son and the Holy Spirit, neither of whom
was divine in the true sense of the term. Semi-Arianism
taught the eternity of the Son and the Spirit, but would
admit only a likeness in essence to God, not their true
Deity. Finally, Tritheism asserted the trinality with
such emphasis as to destroy the unity. Father, Son, and
Holy Spirit are all divine in the highest sense ; but they
are three Gods, not one, so that the line which separates
Christianity from polytheism is passed.
Between the rocks and shoals of these erroneous views
the Christian church, holding fast to the simple teachings
of the New Testament, steered its way. The doctrine,
which was formulated in the creeds of Nicaea and Con
stantinople, has been accepted by the great majority of
Christians in all ages, not because it was proclaimed by
universal councils, but because it has commended itself to
the Christian consciousness of the church as scriptural
and true. The Orthodox doctrine, as we may truly call
it — not as stigmatizing opposing views, but as affirming
the common faith of Christendom — lays equal emphasis
upon the unity and the trinality of God. All that is
essential to it may be stated in the following propositions :
1. God is One ;
2. The Father is God ;
3. The Son is God ;
4. The Holy Spirit is God ;
5. Father, Son, and Spirit are eternally distinct.
Whoever can accept these propositions has all that is
vital in the Orthodox faith.
But let us state the great truth in the technical terms of
theology. God in His essence or nature is indivisibly
One. To this one nature belong the divine attributes, in
finity, eternity, immensity, immutability, omnipotence,
omniscience, wisdom, holiness, righteousness, truth, and

196 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
love. There are not three Eternals, but only one Eternal.
This one God is a personal Spirit. Herein Christianity
agrees wholly with the theology of the Old Testament,
and is as truly and profoundly monotheistic. But the
higher revelation goes further and discloses in the unity
of the Godhead three eternal distinctions, which are
called, in the technical language of theology, hypostases
or persons. The term person is not employed here as we
understand it in the ordinary use of language. Ever since
the days of Augustin it has been taken in a special and
unusual sense. A person in the common use of the term
is an individual, separate from other individuals. But
Father, Son, and Holy Spirit are not persons in this sense.
Three human individuals may be said, as members of the
same class, to possess a common nature ; they are all men.
But the three divine persons possess the same nature, the
one identical essence. They do not divide it, they do not
share it ; it is their common nature in the sense that each
possesses the whole in its indivisible unity. Moreover,
there is a true sense in which God in His unity is a person.
This is recognized alike in the common speech of men
and in the language of the Christian consciousness. Ac
cordingly, we must understand the tripersonality as exist
ing consistently with the unipersonality of God. We de
fine a person as a self-conscious, self -determining being, a
subject, one who can use the pronoun I to describe itself.
Now, the three persons of the Trinity are distinguished
as in some sense distinct, self-conscious, and self-determin
ing subjects. They use the pronouns I and Thou. Christ
speaks of the " glory which I had with Thee before the
world was" (John xvii. 5). The names Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit imply some such personal distinctions.
Nevertheless, we cannot suppose that these personalities,
these Egos or Selves, are bounded off and separated from'
each other, as is the case with men. Rather we are led
to suppose that in the one self-consciousness of the infinite

THE TRINITY 197
God there are three distinct centers of self-consciousness,
three distinct Egos which spring from and are merged in
the one divine Ego. There is not entire agreement among
Orthodox theologians upon this point, and with good rea
son. Who can find out the Almighty unto perfection ?
Is it strange if the personality of an infinite Being is
something far more complex and far higher than person
ality in finite men ? The closeness of the relation between
the three persons is indicated in the teaching of Orthodox
theology, that in each act of any one of the persons the
other two participate. The Father does nothing alone,
but in conjunction with the Son and the Holy Spirit.
Thus when the Son became incarnate, the whole Godhead
participated in the act.
According to the Orthodox doctrine of the Trinity, the
terms Father, Son, and Holy Spirit designate the re
spective characteristics and the reciprocal relations of the
three persons or hypostases — that is, they are not merely
descriptive of their relations to the world and men, but
truly denominate the internal relations of the Trinity.
The Father stands in such relations to the Son as render
these names fitting, and the relation of the third Person
to both is such as is appropriately described by the title
Spirit. These names also point to the fixed order or gra
dation which exists between the three persons. The three
hypostases are equal in that each possesses the common es
sence ; each is God in the highest and truest sense. But
in their mutual relations there is a priority. The Father
is the Head, the Source, so to speak, of the Trinity. He
is in order — not, indeed, of time, but rather of mode of
subsistence — before the Son. The Son stands in order
after the Father. There is a sense in which he is depend
ent on the Father. The Holy Spirit comes after both
and is dependent upon both. There is, in a word, such a
relation that we properly use the designations, first, sec
ond, and third persons of the Trinity, and it would not be

198 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
proper to transpose this order. The relation of which I
am speaking is commonly designated by theologians the
" subordination " of the Son to the Father, and of the
Holy Spirit to the Father and the Son. It is to be dis
tinguished from that erroneous doctrine of subordination,
of which Semi-Arianism is the best and highest example.
The true subordination relates to the persons, but not to
the essence. The false subordination extends to the es
sence itself. According to the Semi-Arians, the Son,
though an eternal Being, is not God in the highest sense.
He derives his existence from the Father. He is on the
lower side of the line which separates the infinite from
the finite. The true subordination is wholly a matter of
the hypostases or persons. Father, Son, and Holy Spirit,
are each God in the highest sense ; each is Infinite in the
highest and fullest sense. But between these distinctions
of the Infinite Being there exists this relation of order,
this subordination. It is in view of this fact, as Calvin
says, that the Father is called by way of eminence, God.
His words are :
" Since the peculiar properties of the Persons produce
a certain order, so that the original cause is in the Father,
whenever the Father and Sou or Spirit are mentioned to
gether, the name of God is peculiarly ascribed to the
Father ; by this method the unity of the essence is pre
served, and the order is retained ; which, however, dero
gates nothing from the Deity of the Son and Spirit " (In
stitutes, " Trans, of Presb. Board," vol. i., p. 136).
All the great theologians of the Christian church, since
the days of the Council of Nice, have accepted this doc
trine of subordination. (It has been asserted that
Augustin is an exception, but this is denied by Dr. Shedd.
See " The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers," vol. iii. , p. 4).
It is important that it should be understood, if we are to
do justice to the teachings of the Scripture and the utter-

THE TRINITY 199
ances of the Christian consciousness. Orthodoxy requires
that we should recognize the one divine nature as belong
ing in the fullest and highest sense to Father, Son, and
Holy Ghost, but it equally requires that we should rec
ognize the relation of priority and subordination (in the
sense which has been explained) existing between the
three persons.
III. I turn with a sense of relief from this branch of
our subject. The controversies of the church have been
largely concerned with the philosophy of theology. This
has been the case especially with the doctrine of the
Trinity. The question at stake has been of immense im
portance. The Greek letter iota, which distinguished the
homoiousion from the homoousion, the doctrine of the
likeness of nature in Father and Son from that of the
sameness of their nature, marked a gap, the tremendous
width and depth of which only those can realize who are
familiar with the history of the church, and who know how
the lower views of Christ and the Holy Spirit have al
ways led to an ultimate abandonment of the distinctive
doctrines of the Christian system. Nevertheless, the con
troversy has turned on the form rather than the matter of
the great Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It has been
looked at rather as a conception of the intellect, an ab
straction, rather than the living fact that it is. So it has
often happened that Christians, who have had erroneous
doctrinal views upon the subject, have yet stood in such
close personal communion with the Triune God, that
their faith has put to shame the accurate but lifeless ortho
doxy of their fellow- Christians. I ask you, then, to turn
for a moment from the philosophical form of the doctrine
and consider its contents.
What are the facts which the Christian doctrine of the
Trinity brings to our knowledge ? It reveals to us not a
God who is a bare unity, dwelling alone through the ages
of eternity, shut up in the contemplation of His own per-

200 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
fections, and emerging from His solitude only when He
creates a world. Rather it makes known to us a God in
whom there is an eternal fulness of life. There is in Him
at once unity and plurality. He is- self-sufficient, not in
the sense of being wrapt up in solitary self-contemplation,
but rather in the sense of containing in Himself all the
elements of a blessed and holy fellowship. The New
Testament gives its crowning revelation of God in the
declaration, "God is Love" (1 John iv. 8, 16). In what
sense is this true ? only in His relations to His creatures ?
or is He love in His eternal essence ? Christian theology
has always replied that He is eternally and essentially
love. But what is love to God ? If we think of Him
only in His unity, it is hard to avoid the conception of a
self-love which is not far removed, if at all, from that
selfishness which is the principle of sin. It is not to be
denied that God has often been so represented, that the
impression has been created that He is the supremely self
ish Being — so that unconsciously men have allowed the
conceptions of God and the Devil to change places in
their minds. But the doctrine of the Trinity reveals the
fact that God is Love in the truest sense. In the eternal
existence of God there is that plurality which alone
renders love possible. For love implies personal relations
of some sort. It is a self-communication, a self-bestowal.
There must be fellowship, something that answers to
society among us. Doubtless the relation of the blessed
Three is far closer than any relation between man and
man. I have no wish to teach the Tritheistic doctrine of
a " social Trinity." But allowing for the coexistence of
tripersonality with unipersonality in God, still there is
that reciprocal communion, that relation of self to self,
which love requires for its existence. God is Love. That
is the key which unlocks the mystery of the Trinity.
But farther — the doctrine of the Trinity throws light
upon this life of love in the Deity. There is Fatherhood

THE TRINITY 201
and Sonship there. I have touched upon this subject in
the last chapter; but it will do no harm to repeat. The
relation of parent and child has its archetype in the God
head. Natural theology teaches us to look at the Deity as
exalted in majesty far above mankind, as the great Ruler
whose will is law, and whose law is fate. Christianity
brings God near to us in its teaching of the eternal Father
and the eternal Son. Its revelation to us of the precious
truth that God is our Father rests back upon His eternal
Fatherhood. And then there is Sonship in the Godhead.
There is that relation, at once of dependence and co-opera
tion, which belongs to the son who is in the closest inti
macy with his father. We get a glimpse into the eternal
fact through the revelation which has been made in time.
The Son is the recipient of the divine plan ; he is the
Logos, the Divine Reason, in whom the ideas of God are
mirrored. As the Son he is the Creator ; the Father
makes the world through him. In the person of the
Christ he comes to us as the Revealer and the Saviour.
Only the Son can reveal the Father, for he alone know
eth the Father. Only the Son can redeem the fallen race,
for he alone can bring the Father's love and redeeming
grace to us. The Holy Spirit completes the Trinity. He
is the personal Life and Energy of God. He is the meet
ing-point of the Fatherhood and Sonship, dependent upon
both, yet freely co-operative with both. He completes
the circle of love and fellowship and knowledge ; in him
the full tide of the divine life is carried back to its source.
The most complete analogy of the relation of the Holy
Spirit to the Deity is found in the relation of the human
spirit to the man himself. " For who among men," says
Paul, " knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of
the man, which is in him ? even so the things of God
none knoweth, save the Spirit of God " (1 Cor. ii. 11).
Our power of self-knowledge, that inner sense by which
we turn back the light of our consciousness upon the

202 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
powers and operations of the soul, by which we know
ourselves at once as subject and object, as personality and
thought, gives us an imperfect yet true idea of the divine
Spirit. But the office of the Spirit can be best under
stood through His workings in the world. Whenever
God comes into direct contact with the creature, it is
through the Spirit. The presence of the divine energy
and life in the new-created universe is described as the
" brooding of the Spirit upon the face of the waters "
(Gen. i. 2). The omnipresence of God in nature is
through the Spirit. He is the source of physical energy,
and of the life of vegetable and animal. He is the life
of the human spirit. Through Him God dwells in every
soul. It is the workings of the Spirit which the Pantheist
perceives when he discovers his universal, infinite Sub
stance under the shifting forms of the phenomenal world.
The unknown Power of the Agnostic is the omnipresent
Spirit. In the work of redemption the Spirit brings to
men the knowledge and power of God. He dwells in
prophets and holy men to inspire them for the parts they
have to play in the kingdom of God. He brings to men
the redemptive grace of the Father and the exalted
Christ. It is His work to touch the sinner's heart, to ef
fect the new birth, to dwell in the Christian as the Spirit
of holiness, to make intercession for him in his prayers
to God, to be his constant Guide and inward Monitor.
He is the present and uniting power of God in the Chris
tian church.
Such is the God whom we worship, the God of infinite
Love, Three in One, Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
IV. It remains to speak of the reasonableness of the
Christian doctrine of the Trinity. This is called in ques
tion by all the opponents of the Orthodox faith, and too
often Trinitarians themselves so far justify them in their
position as to assert that the doctrine cannot be defended
upon rational grounds, but is to be received simply upon

THE TRINITY 203
the authority of revelation. Now, there is undoubtedly
an element of incomprehensibility or mystery in this doc
trine. But this is due to the fact that it is a doctrine of
God, not that it is the doctrine of the triunity of God.
From the nature of the case the Infinite must be beyond
our comprehension. We can only know Him in part,
through finite analogies and forms. It is enough if we
have some true knowledge of Him. We can never ex
pect to grasp in our little thought the infinite reality. If
our doctrine of God is to be rejected because there is in it
an element of mystery or incomprehensibility, then Or
thodox and Unitarians alike might as well surrender at
once to the Agnostics. But while admitting the mystery
which belongs to our doctrine, in common with every other
attempt to describe the Infinite Being, we deny that this
mystery attaches exclusively, or even particularly, to the
conception of Him as Three in One. Nay, rather, al
though we readily confess that we should never have come
to the knowledge of the Triune God without the aid of
revelation, we affirm that, having thus obtained this
knowledge, we have the highest grounds in reason for
maintaining it.
In the first place, there is no a priori objection to the
doctrine. God stands alone. He is not a member of a
class, with the other members of which we can compare
Him. We can know Him only as He makes Himself
known, and there is no more reason in the nature of things
why He should be a Unity than why He should be a Trin
ity. Facts must decide who and what He is. It is, indeed,
declared that God cannot be at the same time One and
Three, because it is a mathematical impossibility. The
objection has been urged by generations of grave Unitari
ans, who, perhaps, have really thought they have refuted
Orthodoxy in this cheap and easy way. But it is difficult
to see how they could have been in earnest. A mathe
matical absurdity might have been accepted during the

204 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
Middle Ages alongside of the doctrine of transubstantia
tion. But the greatest intellects of the centuries since the
Reformation have not given themselves to any such fool
ishness. The slightest examination of the doctrine is suf
ficient to show that God is not held to be One in the same
sense in which He is Three. Moreover, the analogies of
finite things all go to show the absurdity of the objec
tion. Everywhere in nature unity coexists with plurality.
Science has not yet succeeded, and probably never will
succeed, in getting rid of the duality of mass and energy
which exists in the unity of matter. Unity in plurality is
the distinctive mark of all organic life, from the lowest
vegetable to the highest animal. The unity of the human
soul exists only in conjunction with a plurality of facul
ties. In truth, if God is a bare unit, He is the only one
of which we have any knowledge. If we are to know
God at all, it can be only through His resemblances to
finite things, but here the analogies are all against the
Unitarian view. So far as the coexistence of unity with
plurality in the Deity is concerned, reason certainly favors
the Trinitarian doctrine.
Again, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity shows its
reasonableness when viewed in relation to the ethnic re
ligions. Natural theology, under the perverting influence
of human sin, has resulted in false faiths. But we may
learn something of the truth from the very distortions to
which it has been subjected. We cannot suppose that
there are no elements of reality in the heathen theologies.
Now heathenism has vibrated constantly between two con
ceptions of the Deity. The one is polytheism. The God
head is divided into a multiplicity of gods, yet with a
vague idea, more or less clearly expressed, of an underly
ing unity. The other heathen conception of God is the
pantheistic. The Deity has been confounded with the
world. Here the divine unity is emphasized, though with
a recognition, more or less distinct, of a plurality — none

THE TRINITY 205
the less real and significant because it is a plurality of
manifestation rather than of essence. Now there is an
element of truth in each of these views. The error, like
most human errors, is itself a distorted truth. The Chris
tian doctrine of the Trinity gives the full truth after which
heathenism has been blindly groping, the Unity in Plural
ity, the Triune God. (See some interesting remarks on
this point in Hodge's " Popular Lectures on Theological
Themes," p. 129 seq.). The bare monotheism which the
Unitarian maintains has no place in the ethnic religions.
It is to be found only in the Judaism of the synagogue
and Mohammedanism, both of which are perversions of
the religion of the Old Testament (Delitzsch, " Christ-
liche Apologetik," p. 263 seq.). Nor will it ever meet
the spiritual needs of men. The heart of humanity cries
out after the living God. Christian missions, in the glo
rious work of rescuing the heathen and bringing them
into the kingdom of God, must come to benighted souls
with the Gospel of a Triune God and an incarnate Sav
iour. Once more, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity mani
fests its reasonableness upon philosophical grounds. The
great question of speculative philosophy concerns the nat
ure of the Ground and Cause of all things. Is it matter
or is it Spirit ? is it impersonal or personal ? Material
ism, pantheism, agnosticism, deism, theism, are the differ
ent answers which the philosophies give to these questions.
Here, too, as in the ethnic religions, we may find in each
view an element of truth, unless, indeed, we except the
bare materialism which reduces everything to matter and
physical energy, turning the lowest of the second causes
into the only cause. Now what philosophy needs is a
conception of the First Cause, which will unite all these
elements of truth — the incomprehensibility of God which
agnosticism teaches, the immanence of God in the world
which pantheism teaches, the transcendence of God which

206 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
is the distinctive characteristic of deism, and the person
ality of God which is the especial glory of theism. How
can this need be supplied? The only answer is, By the
Christian doctrine of the Trinity. It teaches, first of all,
with the profoundest emphasis and deepest insight, the
personality of God. It points to a God who is wholly dis
tinct from the world, capable of existing with no world,
its Creator and Governor. It finds an especial expression
of the truth of the divine transcendence in its doctrine
of the Father. But it declares with equal emphasis that
God is immanent in nature and in man. The doctrine of
the Holy Spirit represents the truth of pantheism. The
infinite Power that is everywhere present, the reality of
which the energy and life of nature are the manifestation,
is the Spirit of God. He is the substratum of the human
spirit, the light of our intellectual seeing, the source of
all that is pure and holy in us. Moreover, by the incar
nation God has become immanent in the world in a pecu
liar and wondrous way for our redemption. The Word
has become flesh, the Father has come to us through the
Son. And then, the doctrine of the Trinity leaves un
touched the mystery and incomprehensibility of the Deity,
which agnosticism asserts. It discloses to us but a glimpse
of the divine nature, leaving ns on the shores of the God
head, while the infinite ocean rolls far out beyond the ut
most verge of our horizon. The personality of God can
be defended with full philosophical force only by the help
of the doctrine of the Trinity. How is self-consciousness
possible in God ? In man it is developed by an experience
in which the world and our fellow-men are indispensable
factors. I cannot know that I am I, until I have distin
guished myself from the not-I, from the universe of mat
ter and spirit about me. Self -consciousness involves three
factors. I must know myself as subject, I must know my
self as object, I must know that subject and object are one.
Now this cannot be without the aid of the not-self, the ex-

THE TRINITY 207
ternal world. No world, no personality. Now how is self-
consciousness possible in God ? The question is not a fool
ish one. A very large number of the acutest philosophers
in all ages have not only asked it but have declared that it
could only be answered in one way. They have said that
God must have a world in order to attain to self-conscious
ness and personality. This is the stronghold of pantheism,
with its eternal world, as the eternal ground of self-con
sciousness in God. The Christian doctrine of the Trinity
is the one foe which this view cannot withstand. If God is
eternally Three in One, then all that is necessary for self-
consciousness and personality is eternally present and ac
tive in God. He needs no world through which to come
to self -consciousness. He might create no world, and still
He would be the eternally personal God.
Finally, the Christian doctrine of the Trinity manifests
its reasonableness upon grounds of Christian experience.
This is the strongest and only certain proof of the doc
trine. The Christian in his life of faith and love knows
the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit. Each of the Three has
been concerned in the beginnings and the progress of his
religious experience. In prayer, in service, in all the ex
ercises and circumstances of his Christian life he has had
that knowledge of the Triune God which is eternal life.
The great fact is as open to the natural man as to the
spiritual man, but it can be perceived and understood only
by him who opens his whole being to receive the things
unseen and eternal. It has been truly said, "He who
has not felt the drawing of the Father to the Son, and
cannot say, 'Not I live, but Christ liveth in me,' and
has not heard within the unutterable groanings of the
Holy Spirit, he from the nature of the case will neither
know nor wish to know the Trinity of God " (Delitzsch,
" Apologetik," p. 275). If we desire to know the truth of
this doctrine, let us try the method of experience. The
poet Whittier, in his verses entitled " Trinitas," tells how

208 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
he tried to solve the problem of the Trinity by intellect
ual methods :
" At morn I prayed, ' I fain would see
How Three are One, and One is Three '.
Bead the dark riddle unto me.' "
He sought the answer in the writings of the theo
logians : " That night with painful care I read,
What Hippo's saint and Calvin said,
The living seeking to the dead !
" In vain I turned, in weary quest,
Old pages, where (God give them rest !)
The poor creed-mongers dreamed and guessed."
It was in vain. But he had been out that day in the
world. He had felt the presence of God in nature and
seen His wisdom and His love. He had seen a pure
woman come with helping words and deeds to a fallen
sister. A voice in his own soul had spoken of hope and
salvation for such lost sinners. So while he still prayed
came the answer :
" Then something whispered, ' Dost thou pray
For what thou hast ? This very day
The holy Three have crossed thy way.' "
" ' The equal Father in rain and sun,
His Christ in the good to evil done,
His voice in thy soul ; — and the Three are One.' "
And so it must be to us all. Reason may give us
strong grounds, apart from experience, of the wonderful
truth. But the truth itself will dawn in its full-orbed
beauty only upon the soul that sees the Triune Lord Him
self with the eye of faith. To such an one the Trinity is
no more a hard doctrine, a formula which is to be ac
cepted because it belongs to the creed of Orthodoxy ; it
is the living fact which gives life and the world their
meaning.

XII.
THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD.
We have come to the point where we need to consider
the moral character of God. It is a subject of untold im
portance in theology, and until we come to clear views re
specting it we cannot take a single step forward. Most,
if not all, the errors in divinity have arisen from false or
confused notions of the divine character. We cannot rest
satisfied here with the highest conceptions of natural the
ology. It is just in the doctrine of God's moral attributes
that the natural revelation is most defective. In a world
of sin we need a higher revelation. It is not merely that
there are facts in nature and human society which we
cannot reconcile with God's infinite perfections ; we lack
the subjective basis for the perception of His moral and
spiritual character. The true image of God in men is
blurred. Our Saviour states the law of spiritual knowl
edge, when he says, " Blessed are the pure in heart, for
they shall see God " (Matt. v. 8). But we are impure.
Hence the need of the redemptive revelation. And we
have now to ask, What is the character of the God whom
this redemptive revelation makes known to us ? Espe
cially we need to know how He has been revealed to us in
the person and teachings of Jesus Christ.
" And one cried to another and said, Holy, holy, holy is
the Lord of Hosts" (Is. vi. 3). "He that loveth not,
knoweth not God ; for God is love " (1 John iv. 8). These
two passages express what is distinctive in the Christian
conception of God. He is holy and He is love. Or, more
14

210 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
briefly, we may say, He is holy love (Luthardt, " Kom-
pendium der Dogmatik," 7te Aufl., p. 92 seq.). This is
the truth which I wish to explain and apply in the present
chapter. I. Holiness and love are not different attributes of
God, but the same attributes seen under different aspects.
As Professor Henry B. Smith says, " The divine love is
taken most truly as equivalent to the divine holiness"
(" System of Christian Theology," p. 37). Holiness may
be called the formal aspect of God's character. It brings
to view the moral perfection of God, His separation from
all that is in the slightest degree sinful or evil. " God is
light, and in him is no darkness at all " (1 John i. 5). It
is the perfect purity, the absolute goodness of God.
But at the best there is something negative about this
conception of God. Holiness tells us that there is such a
thing as moral perfection, but not what it is. It gives us
the form, but not the contents of the fact we are seeking.
In what does this absolute goodness which we call holi
ness consist ? The answer is, that it consists in love.
Love gives us the material or essential principle of God's
moral nature. Our previous discussions have familiarized
us with the definition of love. It is self-bestowal, self-
communication. The being who loves finds his own high
est good in the good of others. I do not say that he
finds his own highest happiness in the happiness of
others. This is true, but it is not the whole truth, and it
is a truth which at most finds only a partial realization
in a world of sin. The highest good here spoken of is
the highest well-being, which is primarily moral good and
only secondarily happiness. Love may be known through
its opposite, selfishness. Selfishness is self-seeking, the
making one's own happiness the chief end. Its principle
is isolation. But love looks away from self, it seeks to
give rather than to receive. Its principle is sacrifice, by
which I mean not necessarily privation or pain, but the

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD 211
bestowal of one's best on others. Suffering may become
an element in sacrifice when it is exercised in a world of
6in, but even then it is incidental, rather than essential,
to it. God's love may be the bliss, unalloyed by suffer
ing, of His eternal being as the blessed Trinity. It may
be the happy bestowal of His perfections upon the pure
spirits in heaven. It may be the love that takes upon
itself suffering and privation for the redemption of a
fallen race. But in every case it is sacrifice, the free giv
ing of self to others. He is no God wrapped up in the
isolation of a selfish concern for His own happiness. If
He were, He would no longer be the holy God, for such
selfishness is the very essence of sin. It is His nature to
go out from Himself, to communicate Himself and His
blessedness to others. The Bible tells us, indeed, that the
chief end of God is His own glory ; but it also tells us
that His highest glory is realized in redemption, and that
His chief end is the establishment of His kingdom, which
is a kingdom of love and grace.
II. The Bible in all its parts teaches that God is holy
love. This is what distinguishes it from every other re
ligious book. With different emphasis in different stages
of the redemptive revelation, but everywhere with clear
recognition of their essentiality, the two aspects of the di
vine perfection, the holiness and the love, are consistently
asserted. The Old Testament gives greater prominence to the
formal aspect, the holiness of God. It is easy to see why
this was the case. The Israelites were surrounded by
heathen nations who were addicted to the most degrad
ing kinds of idolatry. The conceptions of God current
among these idolaters were low and unworthy. Sinful
men attributed to their deities all their own worst pas
sions and vices. Heathenism, even in its highest forms,
did not hesitate to ascribe moral evil to God. Or if in
the dualistic religions it was able partially to avoid this

212 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
error, it was only by dividing the sway of the world be
tween two principles, the one of good and the other of
evil, and leaving it uncertain which has the upper hand.
The gods of Greece, according to the representations of
their own votaries, broke every commandment of the
Decalogue. They were murderers, liars, adulterers, re
vengeful, cruel. The most unblushing licentiousness was
practised at the shrines of many of their deities, under
their supposed sanction. The worship of Moloch, with
its slaughter of innocent children, throws a lurid light
upon the idolatry of Palestine. Now the great lesson
God had to teach Israel was, that He is holy. This is the
key-note of the Old Testament. It is struck at the very
beginning of the redemptive revelation. The utter and
irreconcilable difference between Jehovah and the so-
called gods of the heathen lay in the fact that He was a
Being of perfect goodness, while they were unholy and
evil. Abraham gives his confession of faith when he
asks, " Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right ? "
(Gen. xviii. 25). Only a divine revelation could have
given him such a conception of God as that. The He
brew word which is translated holy points to God as
separated from all that is sinful and unclean. The ex
istence of Israel as the Chosen People was based upon
the holiness of God — " And ye shall be holy unto me :
for I the Lord am holy, and have severed yon from other
people, that ye should be mine " (Lev. xx. 26). " Be ye
holy ; for I am the Lord your God " (Lev. xx. 7). The
Law was intended not only to teach the Israelites how
to become holy, but to impress upon their minds the holi
ness of God. All the institutions of the Jewish The
ocracy were intended to emphasize this great truth. The
Tabernacle and the Temple, with their elaborate cere
monial, the consecration of the priests, the anointing of
the kings, the call and inspiration of the prophets, all
turned the thoughts of the pious Israelite to the glorious

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD 213
holiness of his God. The divine dealings with Israel in
the long course of the sacred history tended to the same
end. The two strains which constantly sound forth from
the prophetic message, redemption and judgment, tell of
God's perfect goodness and His unconquerable aversion to
all sin. And out of the divine holiness flowed the faith
fulness, the truth, and the j ustice of God.
But while God's holiness is emphasized in the Old
Testament, the material aspect of the divine perfection is
not ignored. It could not be, for love is essential to re
demption, and redemption is the great theme of the
earlier, as of the later, revelation. The choice of Israel as
God's peculiar people and all His dealings with them in
the long course of their history were the outcome of love.
" The Lord had a delight in thy fathers to love them, and
he chose their seed after them, even you above all
people, as it is this day " (Deut. x. 15). " The Lord
loveth the gates of Zion " (Ps. lxxxvii. 2). God is the
Father of Israel (Deut. xxxii. 6, 19 ; Jer. xxxi. 9, 20).
The true Israelite recognized in all God's relations to His
people the constant evidences of His love. Nevertheless,
the holiness was more manifest. There was a narrowness
about the Old Testament standpoint which prevented the
full revelation of the divine love. Love is something that
cannot be made known by merely talking about it. It
must be experienced to be understood. It was present in
God's heart and redemptive work from the first, but it
could only gradually be brought into the sphere of human
life, so that men could see it for what it was. At the
most the Old Testament dispensation of God's kingdom
was confined to Israel. The pious Israelite was impressed
with the idea of God's love to his nation rather than to
himself as an individual, and the thought of a universal
love, extending to all nations and to every individual of
the human race, was too great for him. It is only in the
predictions of the coming dispensation and the spiritual

214 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
kingdom of God, that we discover anticipations of the
great truth, or rather I may say, the great fact, which was
to transform the world. The prophets^ standing on the
mountain height of inspiration, see on the far horizon of
the future the new covenant, with its divine forgiveness
and the divine love and Fatherhood for all mankind.
When we pass from the Old Testament to the New we
come into an entirely new sphere of revelation. The ele
ment of holiness no longer receives the stronger empha
sis. This is laid upon the love of God. The holiness is
not ignored. It is as constantly and consistently asserted
as in the Old Testament. It is everywhere taken for
granted. Christ and the Apostles uphold with unvary
ing earnestness the absolute moral perfection of God.
There is One good, that is, God. One jot or one tittle
shall in nowise depart from the law until all be fulfilled.
The faithfulness, the truth, the justice of the divine char
acter are taught in the same terms, and often with stronger
emphasis, than in the earlier revelation. Nevertheless,
the chief stress is laid upon the love of God. Men were
now to be taught in what the holiness of God consisted,
and to understand that it was love. This was possible
now, because the divine love had actually come in all its
fulness into the sphere of human life. God had given
the supreme proof of His love in the gift of His Son. It
was not to be a mere matter of words, but the fact was
to be made manifest. In the person of the Saviour the
divine love entered the world. He was, as we have seen,
the eternal object of the love of God in the mystery of
the blessed Trinity. Now that God's love was turned
manward, he came, bringing to man, for the redemption
of the race, the whole love of Father, Son, and Holy
Spirit. Jesus was the personal, visible love of God. He
showed men the Father. All his acts and all his words
bore the stamp of love upon them. His death upon the
cross gave mankind an idea of unselfish sacrifice which

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD 215
showed itself by its greatness and depth to be divine.
He taught men how to love, revealing to them the beauty,
the blessedness, the holiness of self-sacrifice. He made
them know the truth of what at first seems a paradox,
that whoso will save his life shall lose it, and whoso will
lose his life for Christ's sake shall find it. He revealed
to them the truth that greatness consists in service, since
even God has shown His highest glory by stooping to
mankind and enduring suffering, shame, and death iii the
person of the Christ. " The Son of man came not to be
ministered unto but to minister, and to give his life a ran
som for many " (Matt. xx. 28).
The Saviour's teachings concerning the love of God
found especial and striking expression in his doctrine of
the Fatherhood of God. Only the eternal Son knew the
Father (Matt. xi. 27 ; John i. 18), and now he had come
to make known to men the blessed fact that the eternal
God is the Father of men. All the tender relations which
subsist between earthly parents and their children are
illustrative of the relations in which the Almighty stands
toward sinful humanity. Christ taught men to see even
in the ordinary operations of the divine providence the
evidences of God's fatherly love. But still more in the
operations of His grace. " When ye pray, say, Our Fa
ther ; " "If ye, then, being evil, know how to give good
gifts unto your children ; how much more shall your heav
enly Father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him ? "
(Luke xi. 2, 13).
What Christ teaches with so much earnestness, his dis
ciples proclaim with equal emphasis after his ascension.
The Spirit of the risen Christ continues to utter through
his inspired followers the message of love and of the di
vine Fatherhood. Upon it all their teaching was based.
This was what rendered their preaching a Gospel— a mes
sage of good tidings.
Several facts impress themselves with especial force

216 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
upon us as we examine this New Testament revelation of
the divine character. First among these is the universal
ity of the love of God. The distinctive mark of the Old
Dispensation is its particularism ; that of the New is its
catholicity. God's method of election, according to which
a single people was chosen and educated to be the bearer
of His redemption to mankind, made it impossible that
the breadth of the divine grace should be revealed at
first. It was always a fact, but men did not know it as
such. But the New Dispensation was universal. " God
so loved the world that he gave his only-begotten Son "
(John iii. 16) — not Israel, not certain individuals in the
race, but all mankind. All the barriers that existed be
tween men were broken down by the assertion of this
great fact. Henceforth there was neither Greek nor Jew,
bond nor free. The Apostles went out preaching a Gos
pel for all men, a love of God as broad as mankind. God
is the Father of all men ; every man is His child. The
redemption which Christ wrought out is for all. He said
himself, "And I, if I be lifted up from the earth, will
draw all men unto me " (John xii. 32). His inspired dis
ciples said, that he by the grace of God tasted death for
every man (Heb. ii. 9), and that God "willeth that all
men should be saved and come to the knowledge of the
truth " (1 Tim. ii. 4). In making these statements, I am
aware that the New Testament speaks especially of the
love of God to those who by faith have become partakers
of His grace, and that He is more commonly called the
Father of such. This is what is to be expected, since the
love of God can be made perfect only where it is accepted
and returned by human love, and since the relation of fa
therhood exists in its fulness only where the reciprocal
relation of a genuine sonship has been established, a son-
ship that involves the free and joyous recognition of the
divine Fatherhood. But most emphatically do I deny
that the New Testament confines the divine love and Fa-

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD 217
therhood exclusively to believers. Rather it represents
them as universal, so far as God is concerned. The re
striction is not His, but that of the sinful men who will
not accept His love. The divine redemption which
Christ has wrought is a redemption for the race. It is
full and free. It is complete, and all men have to do is
to accept it. Men may know it or be ignorant of it, but
all the same God loves them and is their Father, and is
bending over them in paternal longing for their good. It
is their fault if they reject His love and turn love into
holy wrath. The parable of the Prodigal Son is the story
of God's relation to us. While the son is spending his
substance in riotous living, and when he is feeding on the
husks, the father is still his father, keeping a place for
him in his heart and home, ready to welcome him with
outstretched arms and the kiss of reconciliation when he
returns (Luke xv. 11-32). The relation of fatherhood,
which has from the first existed, is the basis of the recon
ciliation and restoration.
A second fact which impresses itself upon us in this
connection is the undeservedness, so far as men are con
cerned, of this divine love. This is what gives it its char
acter as redemptive love. No other religion has grasped
this idea, and no other except this could, since no other is
divine. If it is the nature of all love to give, God's love
has discovered the true secret of giving. He bestows His
favors on the unthankful and unworthy. " Herein is
love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and
sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins " (1 John
iv. 10). " God commendeth his love toward us, in that,
while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us " (Rom. v.
8). This is where the conception of God as holiness falls
so far behind that of Him as love. Mere holiness would
suggest a dealing of God with men upon principles of
mere justice, the quid pro quo. According to this idea of
God's character men would get their deserts, no more and

218 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
no less. But love follows a very different principle. It
utterly refuses to be limited by desert. The ill desert,
the sin of men, is a call to a higher exhibition of grace.
The love of God goes not where it is best deserved, but
where it is most needed and where it will do the most
good. There is joy in heaven over one sinner that repent-
eth, more than over ninety and nine just persons which need
no repentance (Luke xv. 7). " Man's extremity is God's
opportunity." One of God's chief reasons for permitting
sin to exist may have been that He might be able to man
ifest His grace as He could not otherwise.
Still another fact at which we must glance before we
leave this branch of our subject is the purpose of the divine
love. It is to produce love in men. Redemption is the
restoration of love in men by means of the love of God.
The Old Testament motive is, as we have seen, " Be ye
holy, for I am holy ; " the New Testament is, " We love
him, because he first loved us" (1 John iv. 19), and "If
God so loved lis, we ought also to love one another " (Ib.
iv. 11). There is nothing like love to call forth love.
There is a contagious power in it which nothing else has.
Nothing will so evoke all latent germs of nobleness. Un
less the heart is utterly obdurate it must yield at last to
this gentle, persuasive, all-powerful influence. Here is
the wonderful secret of God's method, so different from
any method that man ever devised or could ever think of
devising, for overcoming sin and restoring the soul to the
beauty of holiness. No one except God could have de
vised it. It has that simplicity which belongs to truth
and nature. It is like the law of gravitation in the physi
cal sphere, bringing all things into unity. Compare it
with our poor human devices for raising men out of their
degradation by education, by culture, by reform. What
do they amount to, unless they borrow something of God's
method ? What the light and heat of the sun are in the
natural world— the source of all life and activity and

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD 219
wholesomeness — the love of God is in the spiritual world.
God is love. Those short words unlock the mysteries of
the universe.
III. We are now ready to appreciate the importance of
these facts in theology. It cannot be overestimated. For
theology is the science of God and divine things ; it views
the creation only in its relation to God ; it considers man
in his divine connections as a being made by God and for
God. Hence everything turns upon the conception of
God which theology maintains. And it is not enough to
have a correct conception of God in His physical and on-
tological attributes, or even to think rightly regarding His
wisdom and His knowledge. We have to do exclusively
with moral and spiritual subjects, and the question of
questions for us to answer must be, What is the moral
and spiritual nature of God ? It seems strange that so
little is made of this in our treatises on theology. Every
thing else has ample discussion, but this is neglected.
And yet upon this everything depends.
We need to bear in mind that we are dealing here with
facts. It is the living God with whom theology has to
do, not with an abstraction of the intellect. The distinc
tion between truths and facts, upon which every profound
thinker since the days of Plato has laid such stress, needs
to be jealously maintained. The question is not what
views of God's moral character best express our highest
ideals, but what is the actual moral character of God ?
Let us in theology have the courage of our convictions, if
we have any. Let us believe that God is, and that He is
a rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. It is the
part of children, not of men, to play with puppets instead
of realities. This universe is a very real thing, and our
life in it is equally real. What is the nature of its Cause
and Ground ? Is the world the battle-field of moral forces
which gain no settled victory, the good now triumphant
and to-morrow defeated, in endless and hopeless ebb and

220 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
flow ? Or is there a dominance of evil, as the pessimist
claims? Or is there a Being who is just, according to a
certain low standard of justice, but without pity or love ?
Or is the regnant power, which extends to everything and
embraces everything, that love which Christ came to earth
to reveal, that holy love which seeks to restore mankind
to perfect love ? Is there a Fatherhood so comprehensive
and minute that not a sparrow falls to the earth without
its compassionate regard, and the very hairs of the hum
blest head are numbered ? These are questions of untold
importance. They have to do not with speculations but
with facts. We may turn over in our thought month
after month, and year after year, the ontological problems
of the Trinity, or the interesting questions connected with
the Kenosis of Christ, or the grave inquiries of eschatol
ogy. We may, after years of thought, be as far as ever
from solving them, and yet we can lie down at night and
sleep sweetly, though we be ignorant of their truth. Yea,
we may lie down and die with them unsolved, waiting for
that fuller knowledge which shall come when the partial
shall be done away and we shall know even as we are
known. But the question of God's moral character is one
we cannot for a day leave unanswered. The sweetest sleep
is embittered if we know not what is the nature of the
God who rules us. Death is a terror if we are ignorant
of the God into whose presence we are to be ushered.
Now there is no excuse for ignorance on this subject, so
far as those are concerned who have the Bible and have
thus the opportunity to know God as He has revealed
Himself through Jesus Christ His Son ; yea, more, who
have experienced in their own souls the forgiving grace of
God in Christ and the regenerating and sanctifying power
of the Holy Spirit. It is not only their privilege but their
duty to understand God as He is, and to make known the
blessed truth to their fellow-men. And the theologian,
above all others, as the professed teacher of the highest

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD 221
truth, cannot neglect the fundamental facts of his sacred
science. The theological system that begins in confused or
false conceptions of God will end in a caricature of God.
The truth respecting God which Christian theology has
to maintain is that which we have found in the Bible,
namely, that He is holy love. Both factors in the one con
ception need to be carefully guarded. God is not holiness
without love nor love without holiness. Our temptation,
in discussing the great questions of theology, is to vibrate
between the two extremes which these aspects of God's
perfection present, when viewed apart from each other.
We unduly emphasize the holiness or the love. We want
the form at the expense of the contents, or the contents
to the detriment of the form. We do not readily hold
the two together in their inseparable unity. It is hard to
say which error is the greater. Both have wrought in
calculable mischief in theology.
We may not abridge the holiness of God. This is a
temptation to which we are constantly subject. Because
we are sinners, we find it difficult to conceive of an abso
lutely holy Being. We think that God is altogether
such an one as ourselves (Ps. 1. 21). Or even, if we be
lieve in the abstract that He is holy, we attribute to Him
dispositions and acts which are morally indefensible.
Thus we think of Him as an easy-going, merely benevo
lent Being, to whom sin is a comparatively small matter,
who lets men go on pretty much as they please, and is
ready always upon evidence of sorrow for the past to for
give and forget. The effect upon our theology is disas
trous. Instead of being the Governor and Controller of
His universe, moral as well as material, He becomes in
our thought a Hoi faineant, an inefficient Sovereign, who
looks idly on while His subjects get the upper hand and is
too kind to interfere. The result is a low view of sin.
Unless God is absolutely holy, sin is not absolutely evil ;
it is infirmity rather than sin, a necessary incident of hu-

222 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
man growth, an indication of our finiteness rather than
our guilt. When our conception of sin has become thus at
tenuated, redemption loses its significance. For what is
the pressing necessity of deliverance if sin is only a rel
ative evil and God views it with indulgence ? What men
need, if this be the true view, is not redemption but train
ing, not deliverance but culture. Accordingly, the death
of Christ, instead of being a moral necessity, without
which God could not be at once just and the sinner's Jus-
tifier ; instead of being an actual making good and repara
tion for human sin; instead of removing the obstacles in
the divine holiness to the forgiveness of sin ; in a word,
instead of being an atonement in the only true sense of
the term — the death of Christ, I say, becomes merely a
manifestation of the divine love to mankind, necessary
only in so far as it affords the highest evidence of God's
willingness to forgive — a matter, in fine, of relative rather
than absolute necessity. The atonement undervalued, the
question arises as to whether the incarnation was neces
sary, or even whether it is reasonable to suppose that God
actually became man. The incline, down which one so
easily glides into Arianism and Humanitarianism is per
ilously near. Moreover, the other distinctive doctrines of
the Christian system are, each in its own way, affected.
Regeneration becomes reformation. Faith becomes an
intellectual acceptance of doctrines about God. The
Christian life loses those high motives which arise from
the recognition of the kingdom of God, viewed as a king
dom of redemption, as the great end of Christian striving.
Finally, those stern words which Christ spoke respecting
the destiny of the ungodly, and which the loyal and sin
gle-minded Christian accepts because he believes that the
Saviour who has taught him all things best worth know
ing understands this hard subject better than he, are ex
plained away, and a universalism, which Christ carefully
refrained from teaching, substituted for them.

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD 223
Let me not be misunderstood in what has just been said.
I do not mean to assert that all who hold inadequate views
of the holiness of God fall into these errors. I am only
showing to what such views lead when carried out to their
legitimate consequences. Moreover, where they are not
thus carried out, they exist as a tendency which works
disastrously in theology and the Christian life. We need
to maintain with unyielding firmness the scriptural doc
trine of the absolute moral perfection, the holiness, of
God. We must often go back to Sinai and learn anew
the truth Jehovah taught the Chosen People amid the
thunderings and lightnings of the desert mountain.
Otherwise we can never rightly estimate nor truly teach
the meaning of Calvary.
But it is equally important that we should not abridge
the love of God. This is a temptation which is experi
enced in all ages of the Christian church, and which has
especially assailed those who hold high but narrow views
of the divine holiness. The two great men who have done
so much to shape the theology of Christendom, Augustin
and Calvin — men whose names should never be mentioned
without reverence and who have been most reviled by
those who have known them the least — have not escaped
this error. We have seen that the Old Testament revela
tion of God, in which the chief emphasis was laid upon
His holiness, had a certain narrowness about it which was
incidental to the stage of development of God's kingdom
to which it belonged. So far as it contained a doctrine of
the divine love, it was presented in the form of particular
ism. It was the love of God to Israel, and not to the
world. Now there are many theologians who find it hard
to advance beyond the Old Testament standpoint. Al
though God has proclaimed His love to mankind and re
vealed Himself as the universal Father, although He has
freely offered the finished redemption of Christ to all who
will accept it, they still teach a particularism which nar-

224 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
rows the largeness and freeness of the Gospel. I am not
anxious to dwell upon the extreme form in which this
view has been taught, according to which God bestows
upon only a part of the race the opportunity to embrace
the salvation wrought out by Christ, while the rest are con
demned to everlasting punishment on account of Adam's
sin — a sin, whose guilt may be enhanced by their personal
transgressions, but from whose baleful consequences they
have no power to extricate themselves. This scheme of
doctrine is not held so widely as it once was, and where it
is held, it is rendered practically innocuous by the quali
fications and concessions made by its advocates. Doubt
less these concessions involve more or less of inconsis
tency ; but, as Neander says, when criticising Augustin
for breaking the iron chain of his system by admitting the
freedom of Adam's will in the first transgression, this is a
" noble inconsistency, which grew out of the victory of the
religious, moral feeling over the logical and speculative
tendency of his intellect " (Torrey's " Neander," vol. ii., p.
685). There is, however, a widely prevalent view of God's
character, of which I wish to speak. It does not, like that
just mentioned, go to the extreme of shutting off a portion
of the race from the opportunity of salvation, but it never
theless unduly restricts the divine love. According to this
view, every human being begins his earthly career under the
frown of God, a child of wrath. Not only is he estranged
from God but God is estranged from him. God is His
creative Father, that is, God has called him into existence
and bestows upon him the common blessings of His prov
idence—causing His sun to rise upon him and His rain
to fall upon him — but God is not his moral and spiritual
Father. God does not love him, in any but that general
and common benevolence which is bestowed upon all His
creatures. The sinner enters into God's love only when
his sins are forgiven and he is born by regeneration into
the kingdom. Then for the first time God becomes his

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD 225
Father in the spiritual sense of the term. Then for the
first time he has the right to say the Lord's Prayer. Then
he comes for the first time into relation to the grace of
Christ and the Holy Spirit.
Now I know that there is an element of truth in this
view. It is true that the sinner by his sin separates him
self from God and draws upon himself the divine displeas
ure. It is true that so long as he continues in his sin he
can lay no claim upon the divine love. He has no right,
except as God gives him the right, even to say, " Father,
I have sinned against heaven and in thy sight ! " Love
for its full exercise requires the action of both parties.
Fatherhood cannot manifest itself in its complete depth
and tenderness, unless there is an answering spirit of sou-
ship. Moreover, it is true that it is possible for God's
child, made in His image, blessed by His love, to so tear
himself away from God and alienate himself from Him,
that God finds it a moral necessity to turn from him, and
to leave him to the consequences of his sin. The love of
God in its relation to the finally and irremediably obdurate
becomes a displeasure, yea, even a holy wrath, which finds
expression in punishment, and which we hesitate whether
to call love at all — though it seems to me that we ought to
regard it as still love, though thus changed. But when
every element of truth in this theory is conceded, I cannot
but think that in its main positions it is unscriptural and
therefore erroneous. God's love is not so narrow and
grudging as this. His Fatherhood is not confined to a
part of mankind. Through Christ He has made provision
for the redemption of all mankind. His love made the
world and brought the race into being. His love has at
tended mankind in all the long history since the creation.
His love first gives us our individual being. We are born
into His love. The infant who enters this sinful world,
with the disadvantage of the tendencies to sin it has in
herited from its ancestors, is enfolded from its first breath
15

226 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
in the Father's love. Christ gave his estimate of God's
relation to children when he said, " Of such is the king
dom of heaven," and " In heaven their angels do always
behold the face of my Father which is in heaven " (Matt.
xix. 14, xviii. 10). When the infant comes to the age of
responsibility and goes astray, as every child of man does,
led by the temptation of the world without and the evil
tendencies within, God's paternal love still follows it.
Even where the prodigal goes into the far country the
Father's love goes with him. God longs and yearns and
labors to bring back His child to Himself. He speaks
through His providence, through His Spirit, by the mouth
of preachers and parents and friends. All life long He
follows His child, and will not let him go while there is
any hope. And at the last, if God's love has been stub
bornly refused and there is no more that divine mercy and
compassion can do, the damning guilt which calls for pun
ishment is not the guilt of Adam, not the infirmity or the
inevitable sin, if there be such, of the man, nor even the
great and inexcusable individual sins, but the great crown
ing guilt of rejecting this persistent love of God. We can
see enough to be sure that this is the case with those who
are brought up in Christian lands and hear the Gospel of
God's grace. We have faith to believe that it is so in the
case of the heathen. There is no man, however remote,
however ignorant, however insignificant in human esti
mation, to whom God is not a Father and who is not all
his life long surrounded by the divine love. The love of
God is like the air of heaven ; it belongs to all men. It is
theirs whether they know it or not. God is as much the
Father of the Hindoo or the Chinaman as your Father or
mine. The poor degraded black man of the Congo,
though he knows it not, lives and moves and has his being
in the divine love. Indeed, God must love him in some
respects more than He does us. It is the nature of love
in men to bestow itself where there is most need. How

THE CHRISTIAN CONCEPTION OF GOD 227
dare we think that God's love is less compassionate than
ours ? He is not going to take advantage of the heathen's
ignorance to make him suffer a heavier punishment in the
other world, but will make it more tolerable for him at
the day of judgment because of this very ignorance.
Where such a view of God's character is held, the
Christian's work in the world will be cheerful and hopeful.
His theology will be full of God's own light. A world
that originated in God's love and is going onward in God's
love and moving steadily toward the consummation of
God's love, must be a good world, in spite of all that, for
the time being, looks dark and perplexing. If theology is
ever to be a power in the world, it must accept this view
of God and be penetrated through and through with its
influence. In the ancient church, John, the Apostle of
love, who pierced farthest into the depths of the Saviour's
Gospel, was called " the theologian ; " he had found the
secret of the science of God when he taught that " God is
love." The words of the poet Gambold, which Erskine of
Linlathen loved to quote, impress the same truth :
"I'm apt to think the man
That could surround the sum of things, and spy
The heart of God, and secrets of His Empire,
Would speak but love — with him the bright result
Would change the hue of intermediate scenes
And make one thing of all theology."
God is holiness. God is love. Such is the Bible doc
trine of the divine character. It is easy to say it. It is
not so easy to accept it and apply it. It is a- truth men
learn better in their closets on their knees than in books,
better in active work for Christ and God than in the theo
logian's lecture-room. Slowly — very slowly — the world
and the church are learning to know the holy love of God.
And just as fast as it is known, the world is becoming a
new world. When it is fully known redemption will be
complete.

XIII.
THE PLAN OF GOD.
The subject upon which I am now to speak affords a
beautiful illustration of the fact that true thinkers in all
departments of human investigation meet and agree in the
highest truth. Genuine science, following the indications
of reason and design in the world, is led back by sure and
undeviating steps to a primal purpose, out of which all the
varied forms of the universe have come. The philosophy
which, undeceived by the false lights of pantheism, agnos
ticism, and materialism, seeks to interpret the universe by
what is highest in it and not by what is lowest, finds satis
faction only in an eternal Reason, of whose conscious pur
pose finite things are the expression. Christian theology,
drawing its inspiration alike from the natural and the re
demptive revelations, is borne upward to the truth of God's
eternal plan. Men as different in their modes of thought,
and the times in which they lived as Augustin, Plato, and
Agassiz are here on common ground.
The doctrine of the divine plan belongs, however, in a
peculiar sense to theology. It is a postulate of science and
philosophy ; it is a revealed mystery of theology, which
not only teaches the fact but discloses its inmost mean
ing. Revelation enables us to take the daring flight into
the timeless thought of God, and from this transcendent
height to view the whole course of things in time — crea
tion, providence, redemption, God's work, nature's ongo
ings, man's history.
It is a test of the mettle of a theologian, or indeed of

THE PLAN OF GOD 229
any thoughtful Christian, whether he is willing to ascend
to the height of the divine plan. Weaklings soon grow
faint and are glad to return to the level plain where
everything is smooth and easy. But strong men are
made stronger by the ascent and the glorious prospect
which rewards it. They come down out of the Mount, as
Moses did, with their faces aglow with the light of God,
and all sublunary things henceforth look differently to
them, being suffused with a new and divine meaning. It
is the fashion in these days to speak slightingly of Calvin
ism. I do not mean to go out of my way to defend it.
But this I do say, that to Calvinism, above all other re
ligious systems, belongs the credit of having dared to deal
honestly and bravely with the plan of God. It has faced
truth at its highest point and has not allowed itself to
be frightened away by difficulties. Herein has lain its
strength. This is what has drawn strong thinkers to
ward it and made it the nurse of strong thinkers and
strong Christians. I grant that Calvinism has been so
absorbed in the thought of God's sovereignty that it has
often forgotten His love, and has failed to recognize the
freedom of the human will. But let us not, while correct
ing its defects, turn from the sources of its power. The
faults of our age lie in the opposite direction. We need
more iron in our blood. We need the vigor of the Al
pine air.
I. We will look first at the nature of the divine plan.
It originated in the holy love of the Triune God.
God was indeed complete in Himself ; love, joy, and life
found their full satisfaction in the inner relations and ex
periences of the Trinity. Nevertheless, it is the nature
of love to give. God would not remain shut up in the
blessedness of His own internal life. He determined to
surround Himself with created beings, to whom He might
manifest His glory and communicate His perfections.
He was full, teeming with all holy and blessed things, and

230 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
He desired to have those about Him who would share
His riches. The Bible often represents God's motive in
resolving to create as His own glory. This appears at
first sight to be a selfish reason. But that is not the
meaning of the Scriptures. The glory of God which is
spoken of, His declarative glory, as the theologians call
it, consists in the manifestation of His perfections and
the communication of them to His creatures (Edwards's
" Chief End of God in Creation," Works, vol. iii., p. 81
seq.). The noble impulse which leads the artist or the
poet to give expression to their ideals in painting or verse,
in order that others may share in the fulness of their ge
nius, is akin to God's motive when He seeks His glory
(Smith, "System of Christian Theology," p. 136 seq.).
God's glory is the manifestation of His love.
The goal of the divine plan, the great end at which it
aimed, was the establishment of God's kingdom or re
demption. To this all else was subordinate. This was
what gave unity to its infinite diversity. The material
universe was to be the theatre of this great work, intelli
gent beings the actors in it ; its history was to run through
the ages, the God-man was to be its author and finisher.
I know that in thus stating the end of the divine plan I
have implied the existence of sin as an essential element
in it, for of course there could be no redemption if there
were no sin. But it seems to me that the New Testa
ment requires this. It never represents God as contem
plating the existence of a universe without sin. We shall
discuss the relation of the divine plan to sin farther on.
It is enough here to say that the universe which took
shape in the eternal thought of God was one in which
sin was to abound while grace should yet more abound.
There were to be intelligent beings who should never sin,
and realms into which sin should never enter, and they
were dear to God and had their important place in His
purpose. But the interest of God's plan centered in the

THE PLAN OF GOD 231
drama of redemption, the establishment of the kingdom
of God in a world of sin. To this the rest was subsidiary.
The angels who should never sin were to be " ministering
spirits, sent forth to minister for them who shall be heirs
of salvation " (Heb. i. 14).
Accordingly, the plan stood in an especial connection
with Christ. He was the eternal Logos, who represents
in a particular sense the reason of the Deity. And so it
was in him that the plan was formed. God beheld the
universe that was to be and all the process of redemption,
mirrored in the Word, who was to be the Mediator,
Creator, and Revealer. Moreover, the God-man was the
central fact in the plan. His incarnation and redemptive
work formed its very core. Christ and redemption were
facts inwrought in the very substance of the creation.
All things were created by Christ and for him (Col. i. 16).
Bethlehem and Calvary shone like brilliant lights in the
eternal purpose of God.
I have spoken of the unity of the divine plan. It is
hard for human thought to grasp it. We form our plans
in broken and piecemeal fashion, a part to-day, the rest
to-morrow. We set our end before us, and then painfully
and slowly work out the methods and decide upon the
means by which we shall attain it. But not so, God. His
thought is intuitive and perfect. His plan is complete
from the first. We conceive of it as consisting of separate
decrees, successively determined upon. But this is our
infirmity of thought. There is only one decree, though it
consists of many parts or members. These parts have no
order or succession of time. Logically one may come be
fore another, but not temporally.
The eternal plan is all-comprehensive. It extends to
everything, even the most minute. It is a sign of our im
perfection as finite beings that we grasp so few things in
our thought. The general, like Alexander or Napoleon,
who carries in his mind the plan of a campaign in its mul-

232 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
titude of details, is regarded as a genius. But God is in
finite; He is omniscient and omnipotent. Nothing is too
great for Him and nothing is too small. His plan, like His
providence, was universal. The great General did not let
slip one detail of the great campaign against sin which was
to be fought out in His universe. The world He was going
to create was one in which not a sparrow should fall with
out His notice, and all things should work together for
good to the lovers of God. All things were to be subsid
iary in one way or another to redemption and nothing was
neglected, because nothing was unimportant. The rain
drop on my window, the battle of Waterloo, the death of
Christ, all had their place in that perfect plan. The laws
and operations of nature, the events of history, the good
and bad acts of individual men were included in it.
There were to be no surprises to God, nothing for which
He had not provided. He was from the first to have the
reins in His hands and guide the universe to its appointed
goal. The Westminster Catechism does not put the fact
too strongly when it says that God " hath foreordained
whatsoever comes to pass."
Again, God's plan is unchangeable. We find our plans
imperfect or unmanageable and alter them to suit our pur
poses. But God's plan was perfect from the first and
needed not to be changed. He did not make a new plan
when Adam fell ; redemption was a part of the first plan.
God has no afterthoughts. In the infirmity of our finite
minds we speak as if He had, but this is not the fact.
When the Bible speaks of God as repenting, as refraining
from threatened punishment, as altering His methods of
dealing with mankind, it views His actions not from the
standpoint of eternity but of time. There is change in
His providence but not in His decree. It is change to us,
not change to Him. The change itself was a part of the
one eternal plan. God always meant to change, and by
this changing in time He upholds the immutability of His

THE PLAN OF GOD 233
decree. The free acts of men, which seem to make God
alter His purposes, were themselves included in the eter
nal purpose.
Once more, the plan of God is free. He did not form it
from any necessity, unless it be the necessity of love which
is the highest freedom. He might have formed no plan,
content to dwell forever in the blessedness of His own
Triune life. He might have formed an entirely different
plan. When His purpose was formed there was no being
but Himself in existence. All possibilities were before
His infinite mind. He knew all that might be of things
material or things spiritual, and all the combinations of
these things in their infinite variety. All possible systems
or universes were open to Him. God was not in a hurry,
for this was eternity, not time. He knew what He was
about. He did what He pleased. There is truth again in
these words of the Catechism, " The decrees of God are
his eternal purpose, according to the counsel of His will,
whereby for His own glory He hath foreordained whatso
ever comes to pass." It is God's freedom in His plan
which the Bible and theology emphasize when they attri
bute it to His "good pleasure." Out of all the possible
universes, each one of which He knew in all its details
down to the fall of a sparrow, He chose the one He pre
ferred, and that choice was His plan. The language I use
may seem strong ; but it is not too strong to describe the
eternal plan of the Infinite God.
II. We pass to consider the relation of the divine plan
to the various spheres of existence which it contemplated.
First we will look at the realm of necessity, that is, at all
the departments of being below the free and rational be
ings. We shall meet here with no serious difficulties. But
the view of the universe thus given us is at once beautiful
and impressive. In the book of Proverbs a striking delin
eation is presented of the divine plan, so far as it relates
to the material universe. The Wisdom of God is per-

234 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
sonified and represented as telling the tale of His decree.
Indeed, the Wisdom who speaks is, as one of the most
competent authorities upon Old Testament theology says,
" the plan of the universe which proceeded from God "
(Oehler, " Old Testament Theology," Am. ed., p. 542).
"The Lord possessed me in the beginning of his way,
before his works of old. I was set up from everlasting,
from the beginning, or ever the earth was. When there
were no depths, I was brought forth : when there were no
fountains abounding with water. Before the mountains
were settled, before the hills was I brought forth : while
as yet he had not made the earth, nor the fields, nor the
highest part of the dust of the world " (Prov. viii. 22-26).
By the eternal plan of God the nature of created things
was established, their laws immutably fixed, and the whole
course of nature settled. Modern science, especially by
its so widely accepted hypothesis of evolution, presses
upon every thoughtful mind the necessity of assuming
such a plan. The present vast diversity of forms, inor
ganic and organic, is the result of the operation of mat
ter and energy according to law. Nothing has come by
chance or accident. The long process of evolution from
the primitive unorganized substance of the universe to the
harmony and variety of the present has been the result of
necessary causes working according to fixed laws. Star
dust, systems, worlds, the molten globe, continents and
seas, mountains and rivers, vegetation, animal life, the
wonderful profusion of inorganic and organic forms, have
come each in its place and time. If there could have been
a scientist with mind large enough and knowledge great
enough to see the new-created universe, he would have
been able to calculate from it all the course of natural his
tory with all the certainty with which the astronomer to
day figures out an eclipse. But how shall we explain the
primordial conditions out of which the harmony of the
Cosmos has flowed ? A slightly different arrangement of

THE PLAN OF GOD 235
the primitive atoms, and a wholly different universe would
have resulted. The possible combinations of those atoms
and their forces were infinite, and each would have resulted
in a universe different from the rest. How shall we ex
plain the fact that just this universe came, and no other?
We are inevitably carried out of science, by the pressure
of science itself, into the realm of theology. The only
satisfactory explanation is that which is furnished by the
eternal plan. (See Jevons, " Principles of Science," vol. ii.,
p. 434 seq., pp. 462-464). There in the eternal thought of
God the problem of the universe was worked out in all its
complicated processes even to its minutest details. The
scientist, taking for his investigation some little province
of the vast universe, traces out the results of the divine
plan, and, as Kepler so strikingly expressed it, "thinks
God's thought after Him."
III. We begin to face the real difficulties of our sub
ject when we consider the relation of the divine plan to
human freedom. We need to advance cautiously and to
guard ourselves on every side. We cannot afford to im
peril human freedom. It is a fact of essential importance
in morals and religion. Human responsibility depends
upon it, and apart from it we cannot vindicate the divine
justice in its relation to man's character and conduct.
Freedom is a very real thing. The moral consciousness
of every man testifies to its reality, even though his intel
lect may repudiate it. Determinism in all its forms is
subversive of all true theology, ethics, and philosophy.
But God's plan in its all-comprehensiveness is also a real
ity. Bible and reason alike teach us that God is infinite
and perfect. We cannot conceive of His leaving anything
uncertain or unprovided for. A God who is taken by sur
prise is no God. Let us hold fast the two facts, God's
all-embracing plan and human freedom, even though we
cannot reconcile them. Both are true. Let neither suf
fer detriment.

236 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
God's plan established human freedom. He desired to
have in His universe beings who should do His will not
by compulsion but of their own free choice. This was
what made Plis universe a moral universe instead of a
merely physical one. The whole plan centered in those
moral facts of which human freedom was the essential
condition. We may be sure that God would respect what
He had thus made and what was of so much importance
in His great scheme.
But more than this — God's plan included the free
choices and acts of men. He did not mean that there
should be one class of activities in the universe, and that
the most important, beyond his knowledge and control.
As His omniscience worked out the problem of necessity
before He formed his plan (if we may be allowed to speak
of a before and after in the eternal thought of God), so it
worked out the problem of freedom. He knew how each
man would use his freedom, under all the possible con
ditions of life, before He determined to create the man
and to put him into those circumstances. As memory in
us goes back and perceives the free acts of our fellow-men,
or as insight into character, within certain limits, goes for
ward and predicts the future free acts of men, so God's
omniscience went out into the possibilities of freedom and
compassed all the free acts of all possible men. Then He
formed His plan in full view of all that was to be. The
fall of Adam, the faith of Abraham, the Saviour's stop
ping by Jacob's well, the crucifixion at the hands of the
Jews, were all free acts, and they were all in the divine
plan. Reason teaches us that it must have been so, and the
Bible reaffirms the truth. The predictions which form so
large an element in the Scriptures imply God's foreordi-
nation of the free acts of men.
" But," says the Arminian, " it is only in a qualified
sense that we are to represent God's plan as extending to
the free acts of men. We admit that He foreknew them.

THE PLAN OF GOD 237
But He decreed them only in so far as He foreknew them.
The decree is conditioned upon the foreknowledge." But
the Arminian fails to reach the full truth. It may be
granted that the plan depends in part upon the omnis
cience of- God. But omniscience is not foreknowledge.
The plan is one. How could God foreknow, until He
had determined to create ? Foreknowledge has to do not
with possibilities but with certainties. Suppose God did
know that Paul, if he were created and sent from Jerusa
lem to Damascus and should see the risen Christ and have
His grace offered to him, would of his own free choice re
pent and believe: did He foreknow that Paul would freely
repent and believe until He had determined to create him
and send him from Jerusalem to Damascus and offer him
salvation through Christ ? The foreknowledge is condi
tioned upon the decree, not the decree upon the foreknowl
edge. I repeat, God's plan is one. He knew all the pos
sibilities of His own action and of human freedom, in all
their complicated connections and intricate interlacings,
and the world which He determined to create out of all
the possible worlds was the one which has existed with
all the events necessary and free which have actually
transpired. God knew what He was about and meant
that that should be which has been.
" But," asks the Arminian once more, " is not this to
destroy freedom altogether ? Is it not thus reduced to a
mere name? " This is not so easy a question to answer,
and the answer which Calvinists have often given to it
has been a confession of its justice. If the doctrine of
freedom which Jonathan Edwards teaches, in his "Treatise
on the Will," be true, then it is a mere- name and the
divine decree is maintained at its expense. Nevertheless,
I think that an answer can be given which will enable us
to preserve freedom intact, while we maintain the divine
decree in its absoluteness — not an answer that will recon
cile the Infinite with the finite, for that is impossible, but

238 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
an answer which will meet the objection. The divine
plan does not make the free act necessary ; that would of
course be a contradiction, it would be making it unfree.
It exerts no efficient influence upon the human will. It
rather establishes the freedom of the choice. All that it
does is to render it certain to God, and there is in this
certainty nothing which is at variance with liberty.
When the time comes for me to choose, I am not the less
free because God who has given me my freedom knows
how I am going to choose, and has determined to allow
me to choose in the way I please. I could do the opposite
if I chose to do it ; only, that Spirit of God who besets
us behind and before compassed my choice when I was
still a possibility in the divine choice, and God planned
to let me have my way. I believe that this is a sufficient
answer to the Arminian. The difficulty of reconciling the
Infinite with the finite, in this relation of God's decree
to man's freedom, I cheerfully admit. But the difficulty
does not belong to those who hold this doctrine exclu
sively ; the Arminian has equally to face it. * The Ar
minian admits that God foreknows the free acts of men,
but if He foreknows them, are they not certain, and if
they are certain, how can they be free ? So strongly has
this difficulty been felt that a few theologians of our
time, who have been unwilling to admit the coexistence of
the divine decree and human freedom, have denied the
foreknowledge of God, so far as the free acts of men are
concerned, thus purchasing peace upon this point at the
expense of God's absoluteness, leaving God in helpless
ignorance as to how the history of His universe is to come
out! IV. But we must go still further into the discussion of
this difficult subject. The relation of the divine plan to
human sin is the subject which now confronts us. The
difficulties are certainly great, but let us face them bravely
and serenely. We have to do here not so much with

THE PLAN OF GOD 239
opinions as with facts, and facts are sacred things how
ever hard it may be to explain them. What are the
facts? God is absolute — that is one. His omniscience,
His decree, and His foreknowledge extend to all things.
Sin exists — that is the other. Can we refrain from put
ting the two things together and admitting that God
meant that sin should exist ?
But we cannot stop here. The bare facts do not suffice.
The questions are asked, and most pertinently, " How can
God mean that sin should exist? Is not sin the one
thing above all others hateful to God ? Is it not contrary
to His revealed will ? How can God decree that which
He hates ? " Now we must not answer these questions in
such a way as to impeach the divine holiness. We affirm
with the strongest emphasis God's opposition to all sin.
He is of purer eyes than to behold iniquity, His pure
and holy nature is utterly contrary to evil. It is alto
gether repugnant to Him. From one end of the Bible
to the other God is represented as the stern and uncom
promising enemy of all sin. He is light and in Him is no
darkness at all. Better let God's absoluteness go, better
think of Him as weak and ignorant and finite, than to
allow a single spot, however small, to rest upon His per
fect holiness.
How, then, shall we answer the questions just referred
to ? By distinguishing, as theologians in all the Christian
ages have done, between the efficient and permissive de
crees of God. There are some things which God means
to have come to pass because He intends by His own
efficiency to bring them to pass. There are other things
which He means to have come to pass only as allowing
others to bring them to pass. Human sin belongs to the
latter category. When we say that God decrees it we
mean that He determines not to prevent it, to permit
human freedom to have its way in that which is contrary
to the divine command. He does not thus approve of it

240 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
or in the least abate His utter opposition to it, but for
wise reasons He determines to allow it. You ask, " Is it
not contrary to His will ? " I reply that the term will is
ambiguous ; it may mean God's decree, it may mean His
desire and command. Sin is contrary to God's will in
the latter sense ; it is not contrary to His will in the
former sense. We sometimes let our children do wrong,
because we think it wiser not to prevent them, better to
let them suffer the consequences, while all the while our
command and our desire are against it. In snch a case
we have like God a decretive and a preceptive will, a will
that is carried out and a will that is frustrated.
" But," it is asked once more, " why put the sin into
the divine plan ? Is it not enough to say that God could
not prevent it ? Do we not sufficiently explain the sin
when we attribute it to its true cause, the free-will of
man ? " This would be to deal with the matter far too
superficially. God could have prevented it, if He had
seen fit so to do. Granting that He could not make a
man free and not free at the same time, so that freedom
is always capable of abuse; yet He might, had He chosen
so to do, have refrained from creating the beings who sin ;
He might have made them without freedom; He might
have placed them in circumstances in which there was no
temptation to the sin. Take the case of Adam. God
might have made no Adam, and there would have been
no fall. He might have kept the tempter out of the
garden. Moreover, on the assumption that the permission of sin
does not form a part of God's plan, what a world we have !
There is no doubt that sin is the most important of all
facts in the world. It is the awful reality, which no man
in his senses can deny. And yet are we to suppose that
it has come in spite of God, and that He did not mean it
to be so? Did the Devil and Adam make it a different
world from what God intended ? Do not, I beseech you

THE PLAN OF GOD 241
answer yes, because you want to have it so. Face the
facts. You purchase relief from one class of difficulties
at a price too tremendous. You leave God no longer on
the throne but put Him in a position where any of His
subjects can get the better of Him. However great the
difficulties in such a view, leave the reins in God's hands.
The holy God, for wise reasons, has determined from the
first to permit all the sin which has taken place, not be
cause He did not hate it, not because He could not have
prevented it, but because on the whole He thought it best
to permit it. The presumptuous sinner who thinks He
has got the better of God is utterly mistaken. God in
the solemn stillness of eternity thought upon that sin ;
He determined to allow it; He has provided for it in
His plan, for its thwarting and its punishment. The poor
foolish sinner in the abuse of his freedom cannot escape
from God. The great and glorious plan of God goes
steadily forward to its accomplishment, in spite of the
sinner's rebellion and even by means of it.
V. And thus we are brought into the central and inmost
difficulty of this great subject : Why did God see fit to
make the permission of sin a part of His plan ? What
were His wise reasons ? How shall we vindicate God's
wisdom in the permission of sin ? It is the problem of the
Theodicy. Let us face this, too, not with the hope of
doing what no man has ever done, that is of solving the
problem, but that we may discover how far our present
finite knowledge allows us to go in the direction of a
solution. But first, let me say that this problem is not confined to
any one system of theology, or even of religion. Sin ex
ists, and every thinking man must give some explanation
of it. If there be a God, His relation to it must be ex
plained. Every theology and every philosophy finds itself
sooner or later compelled to essay the task. Heathenism
has generally found relief in ascribing evil to the nature
16

242 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
of things. Its gods are themselves unholy. Or the uni
verse is divided between a principle of good and a princi
ple of evil. Or, as Buddhism conceives it, sin and evil are
inherent in existence and annihilation is the only good.
Philosophy has sought relief in the denial of the evil of
sin, attributing it to the finiteness of man or regarding it
as a necessary but temporary stage in his development.
Christianity alone has furnished an explanation that can
be said to have at all met the difficulty.
The typical Christian treatment of the subject is found
in the famous Theodioee of Leibnitz. According to this
great philosopher, God had before His eternal thought all
possible systems — systems without evil either natural or
moral, and systems with evil of both kinds in every possi
ble proportion and combination. He chose the system
under which we live, the universe which He actually cre
ated, because it was the best. The sin and the natural
evil inherent in it are the necessary means of the greatest
good. This " Optimism " of Leibnitz was accepted and fur
ther developed by the New England theologians, Edwards,
Hopkins, Bellamy, and their compeers. They silenced ob
jectors by asking whether God might, if He would, have
formed a wiser plan and created a better world. If a
world with no sin in it would have been better, why did
not God choose it ? This theodicy, which has otherwise
much to commend it, was deprived of real value by the
doctrine of the will held by both Leibnitz and the New
England theologians. They taught a determinism which
reduced freedom to a mere name and made God to all in
tents and purposes the Author of sin. The distinction
between the permissive and efficient decrees of God,
while in terms retained, was practically abandoned. Men
were what God has determined they should be, some
saved, to the glory of His grace, some lost, to the glory of
His justice.
The theodicy of Leibnitz emphasized the divine effi-

THE PLAN OF GOD 243
ciency to the extent of obscuring, if not of ignoring, hu
man freedom. It was natural that theories should arise
in which the human factor in the great problem should be
emphasized. One of the most notable of these was that
advanced by Dr. N. W. Taylor, of New Haven. He did
not put his theodicy into the form of a positive assertion,
but modestly affirmed, that "it may be impossible that
God should exclude all moral evil from a moral system,
and of course from the best moral system." God might,
had He desired to do so, have chosen a system in which
human freedom had no place, but having chosen a system
involving freedom, it might be that He could not prevent
all sin in it. Sin might be necessarily incidental to a
moral system. Even God cannot make a thing to be and
not to be at the same time, and it might be that God in
making men free by that very fact made it certain that a
certain amount of sin would follow. Undoubtedly this
view affords a fitting corrective to the other. But it may
be questioned whether it does not go too far in its sugges
tion that God may not be able to prevent all sin in a
moral system. Freedom is not such an uncontrollable
power that God could not keep it in bounds by moral
means if He desired to do so. God prevents all sin in
heaven with no detriment to freedom. He might have
established such a system as would have insured the right
use of freedom in every part of His universe. The possi
bility of sin is essential to freedom, but not the p.sfcuaiity
of it. There are moral systems and moral systems. It is
not a matter of course that every moraLsystem is the best
system. Both these theodicies represent elements of the one
truth. We must hold fast, on the one hand, to the sov
ereignty of God, the reality of the divine plan ; and, on
the other, to the reality of that freedom which God's plan
has established and which He surely will respect. This is
the best system. It is the best moral system. God per

244 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
mitted the present amount of sin and suffering because it
was wisest to do so. Looking at the universe as a whole,
considering the ends God had in view, it is a better uni
verse than it would be had God permitted no sin. Sin
is man's work not God's, but God knew what He was
about when He determined to permit a certain amount of
it in His world. He meant to work out a higher manifes
tation of His love and a higher type of human character
than would be possible without it, in a word, to secure a
greater good.
Our great trouble in dealing with this subject is that we
look at God's plan only in relation to sin, whereas we
should look at it equally in its relation to redemption.
We need to follow Paul's line of thought in the fifth
chapter of the Epistle to the Romans, in which he tells us
that " where sin abounded grace did abound more ex
ceedingly ; that, as sin reigned in death, even so might
grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life
through Jesus Christ our Lord " (vv. 20, 21). Let us look
at the world into which we are ushered by birth. It is a
world in which sin and God's grace are working together,
and in which suffering and death serve as checks and pun
ishments upon sin and as means of discipline in holiness.
In the midst of these influences our freedom develops and
our probation is passed through. There are tremendous
risks, but there are glorious rewards. The soul that goes
through -the struggle of sin and grace, through the tribu
lations and sufferings of life, that knows the love of Christ
and learns the lessen of his cross, and then passes through
death into eternal life has canse to thank God that the
world is just what it is. ^It can even borrow Augustin's
words, " O blessed sin which was worthy to have such and
so great a Redeemer ! " I can see how a theodicy that
gave no place to human freedom would be a mockery ; but
if we can believe that God gives to every soul the power
and the opportunity to obtain the salvation which Christ

THE PLAN OF GOD 245
has wrought, the case becomes different. I believe with
all my heart that He does give to every soul, whether in
Christian or heathen lands, both power and opportunity.
I believe that the advantages of the world in which we
live far outweigh its disadvantages. 1 believe it is a bless
ing to be brought into such a world and to have a chance
to win its glorious prize, and this not only in spite of the
risks, but even because of the risks. And I believe that
those who are finally lost are lost wholly through their
own fault, because they would not accept the grace so
freely offered to them, and that for them, looking at it
not from the standpoint of their failure but of the oppor
tunity God gave them, it was a blessing that they were
brought into the world.
The story is told of old Dr. Beecher, when he was a
professor in Lane Theological Seminary, that he was one
day lecturing to his students upon the objections to the
doctrine of free agency. " He had compared," says the
narrator of the anecdote, " the tremendous perils and fear
ful responsibilities of such an endowment on the one hand,
with the glorious privileges and possibilities which it in
volved on the other, when suddenly, snatching off his
spectacles, he drew a picture of an assembly of all God's
intelligent universe summoned into a quasi state of exist
ence, in which they should be capable of understanding
the reasons for and against being created, clothed with the
responsibility of free agency, and permitted to decide the
question for themselves. Then, leaping from his chair,
and walking back and forth upon the platform, he poured
out, in a few short, pithy sentences, the peril of falling
and the damnation of hell on the one side, and the bless
edness of standing and the possibility of restoration by
divine love and the heights of immortal glory to be
gained on the other, and then, as if standing in the place
of the Creator Himself, and putting the question to vote,
Shall I create or not create ? he made the shout go up as

246 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
the voice of ten thousand times ten thousand, ' Create,
Create ! '"
No thoughtful and candid Christian will claim that,
when all is said, we have a complete theodicy. We may
discover in their great outlines God's reasons for giving
the permission of sin a place in His plan, but much will
still be left to faith. Sin is an awful thing, and there is
an awful amount of sin in the world. The earth is full of
suffering which seems to bring no higher blessing. And
then there is the dark mystery of the future life, eternal
retribution. We must have faith. We must have pa
tience. The final and perfect theodicy will not come till
the Day of Judgment. Then God will show to the uni
verse the perfect wisdom and justice, yea, the holy love of
all His works. In the light of the end the divine plan
will be glorious. When God, the Builder, has " made the
pile complete," we shall duly praise God the Architect.
God's plan originated in holy love ; it is carried out in
holy love ; it will be consummated in holy love. That
love compasses the universe about and enfolds it in its
embrace. God's hand is everywhere. Nothing is in vain.
God's eternal purpose was a purpose of redemption in
Christ Jesus our Lord. That is our strength, our safe
guard, our joy, our hope.
In conclusion, a word about the value of this doctrine.
It is not one of the essential ones. Those who are unwill
ing to accept it may be in all essentials as good Christians
as those who make most of it. It has, however, its very
great importance. As I said at the beginning of this chap
ter, it makes strong Christians. There are times in the
life of the individual, and nations, and the race, when evil
seems to get the upper hand in the world. The devil
seems to have gotten the better of God. The cause of ho
liness and truth suffers. Then we fall back on the eternal
plan of God. He has known all this from the beginning
He has the reins in His hands and will not let them go.

THE PLAN OF GOD 247
He will cause the wrath of man to praise Him, and re
strain the remainder of wrath. Behind this strife and
turmoil, this vacillation and doubtfulness of the struggle,
is the eternal plan of the eternal God. No one can thwart
Him. We are free, but He is sure. His will will be done.
Especially are we never to forget that redemption is the
central fact in the plan. This is God's great end in His
dealings with the world. He will carry it through. The
universe is to be one in Christ the Saviour.

XIV.
CREATION
God has carried His eternal plan into execution by His
three great "works" — as the theologians call them — of
Creation, Providence, and Redemption. In the present
chapter we shall discuss the first of these. The cosmog
ony or story of creation, at once a history and a poem,
contained in the first and second chapters of Genesis is
the chief source from which the Christian doctrine is de
rived. The truths here asserted are taken for granted
elsewhere in the Bible. It is only in the New Testament
teachings respecting the relation of creation to the person
of the Saviour and redemption through him that any ad
vance is made in the later Scriptures upon the simple
foundation doctrine of this Prologue to the Word of God.
I. The Biblical cosmogony does not stand alone. Al
most all the ethnic religions of the past and the present
have also their stories of creation. In their more impor
tant features these cosmogonies have a common likeness.
They all go back to a time when the things which now
surround us were non-existent. They show how by suc
cessive stages the heaven and the earth and all the varied
forms of the universe came into being. Some of them
are very beautiful and suggestive. We are all familiar
with the Greek myth of creation which Hesiod has pre
served — -how at first there were only Chaos and Eros, or
Love, how under the influence of the latter, as the princi
ple of order and harmony, Chaos was divided into Tar
tarus and Earth and the Earth gave birth to the Heaven

CREATION 249
and the Sea, how— still under the influence of Eros— the
Heaven and the Earth produced the Titans and the Cy
clops, how the Titan Chronos begat Zeus and the gods,
and how at last the race of men sprang from the soil. One
of the most interesting cosmogonies, which stands in close
relation to the Biblical, is the Chaldasan Genesis which
George Smith deciphered from some broken clay tablets
discovered at Nineveh and now in the British Museum
(see Smith's " Chaldsean Account of Genesis," p. 62 ; cf .
"Records of the Past," vol. ix., p. 115 seq.). "When
above were not raised the heavens," this account begins,
" and below on the earth a plant had not grown up ; the
abyss also had not broken up their boundaries ; the chaos
(or water) Tiamat (the sea) was the producing mother of
the whole of them." Then it goes on to describe the
creation of the great gods, the separation of the sea and
the land, the creation of the heavenly bodies, the estab
lishment of the seasons and the creation of the beasts.
The Scriptural account of creation bears in many re
spects a close resemblance to these heathen. cosmogonies.
But as soon as we begin to examine it carefully we find
that it is marked by great and essential differences. The
Bible alone gives ns the pure theistic conception of God,
as the absolute Being, the self-existent Creator. The hea
then traditions are all vitiated by some radically wrong
conception of God and of His relation to the world.
Emanistic, pantheistic, or dualistic elements are present in
almost all of them. Generally the starting-point of crea
tion is the chaos, out of which all things come. The
gods themselves are created, so that the cosmogonies are
theogonies as well. But the account of Genesis puts first
the self -existent God. The universe is due to His fiat.
There is no pre-existent material and no blind process of
development. The chaos is itself of His making and His
Spirit " Dove-like sits brooding on the vast abyss."

250 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
From the first, God is represented as freely creating by
the word of His power.
We have here a fact which can only be explained by
the assumption that this wonderful cosmogony of Genesis
is the result of divine revelation and inspiration. Where
it originally came from we do not know. Undoubtedly it
antedates the book of Genesis in its present form. Not
unlikely it is the substance of a primitive tradition handed
down orally from generation to generation. The heathen
cosmogonies may be perverted forms of the same tradi
tion. But whatever be the origin of the Biblical cosmog
ony, it bears the evidence of its truth upon it and shines
in its own light, which is a divine light. Its truth, as it
is set off by the dark background of the heathen traditions,
shows it to be from God. The religions thought of man
has not in its highest flights gone beyond the doctrine of
this first chapter of the Bible.
II. But the Scriptural account of creation does not come
into competition with the heathen cosmogonies alone.
There is also a scientific cosmogony. Physical science does
not, indeed, attempt to account for the origin of the uni
verse, but it does carry us back to a time when only the
primitive elements existed, and discloses to us the processes
and the order in which the present inorganic and organic
forms have come into being. Astronomy, geology, and
the other physical sciences furnish us with a natural his
tory of the universe, the substantial truth of whieh we
cannot doubt.
Does the Scriptural cosmogony agree with the scien
tific ? The question is asked by each new generation, as
the discoveries of physical science enlarge our knowledge
of the past. Do the Book of Revelation and the Book of
Nature coincide ?
The question is one of fact rather than of theory, and
it is not so easy to answer as might at first appear. The
Bible is not a scientific treatise. It was given us for pur-

CREATION 251
poses wholly religious, as Cardinal Baronius said, "to
teach us how to go to heaven, and not how the heavens
go " (Lenormant, " Beginnings of History," Am. trans.,
Pref., p. x). We cannot, without further ado, make out two
schemes, the one representing the facts of revelation and
the other those of science, and place the two side by side.
The Bible and the physical sciences do, indeed, in the case
before us, deal with the same subject, but they approach
it from wholly different directions, deal with it in an alto
gether different way, and aim at totally different ends.
The selection, arrangement, and treatment of the facts are
determined by the difference of motive.
Physical science, when it deals with the past history of
the universe, is concerned wholly with second causes. It
traces out, so far as the means at its disposal permit, each
link in the long chain of the world's development. It
aims at completeness of detail, at the discovery of the
genetic relations, at chronological order. It divides the
past into ages and periods, and endeavors to fill each with
its proper contents, describing the physical conditions, and,
when life has appeared, the flora and fauna. Exactitude
is its great end. Facts are of more value to it than ideas.
As we have seen, it confesses its incompetence to ac
count for the origin of the universe. So it does not
trouble itself with questions about the dependence of
things. If there are spiritual beings higher than man, it
has nothing to do with them. It admits the presence of
final causes in nature only grudgingly. It enters into no
discussion of the spiritual and religious relations of things.
I may be sure that geology will give me the history of the
past in a scheme in which every discovered fact has a
place, and in which the order of causal dependence and
time is rigidly followed.
Not so the Bible. It is essentially a religious Book. It
is only incidentally, if at all, that it touches upon the sub
jects with which science is concerned, and when it does

252 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
so its motive is religious. It deals with God and divine
things, and it treats the history of the world's past only as
it stands related to God. There is no reason to believe
that the sacred writers ever turn aside to teach their
readers the facts of science or philosophy. Its object is
redemption. The Fall has not rendered men incompetent
to discover scientific or philosophical truth, and revelation
affords no royal road to such knowledge. It is the moral
and spiritual darkness of man's soul which the Scriptures
aim to enlighten. It is true that all truth, spiritual, moral,
and intellectual, is one, and the light which the Bible
gives upon religious subjects often illumines to a greater
or less extent the other spheres of knowledge. But, ex
cept so far as this is the case, the Scriptural writers in all
matters of merely human knowledge share the limitations
of their contemporaries. All those popular misconcep
tions of the facts of nature which belong to the unscien
tific mind, and which modern science is only slowly over
coming, are to be found in the Bible — not indeed in its
teachings, but in its modes of thought and expression.
This is one of the facts which give the Bible its great
value as a book intended for common men.
The cosmogony of Genesis corresponds to the general
character of the Bible. The ends it contemplates are
wholly religious. It aims to describe the beginnings of
the world, so far as they, are necessary to the understand
ing of redemption or the establishment of God's kingdom,
which is the great subject of the Bible. Thus it shows
that the God of creation, who is also the God of redemp
tion, is the personal God. It tells ns that the universe is
due to His free self-determination and in no sense the re
sult of necessity. It points out to us the fact that crea
tion advanced through successive stages to its culmination
in man, created in the divine image and the subject of
God's kingdom. In opposition to all theories of the uni
verse which would make God in any sense the author of

CREATION 253
evil, it solemnly declares, as each cycle of creation is com
pleted, " And God saw that it was good," concluding the
whole account with the words, " And God saw everything
that He had made, and behold, it was very good." Thus
the way was opened for the narrative of the introduction
of sin into the world by the abuse of human freedom.
Finally, it shows how in God's creative activity, and His
rest at its close, the foundation was laid for the institution
of the Sabbath, which was destined to be of such untold
importance in the religious history of mankind.
These are the great ends at which the cosmogony of
Genesis aimed, and which determined the selection and
arrangement of the facts. It would not be strange if the
result were a very different arrangement from that which
the scientific cosmogony gives. Such a result would not
in any way impugn the truth of the account as a part of
the divine revelation or throw any discredit upon the in
spiration of its author. The chronological order might be
only the framework for an arrangement that was largely
topical. But, as I have already said, the question is not
so much of theory as of fact. What do the facts show,
agreement or disagreement? In reply, I must confess
that I do not find such absolute agreement as is claimed
to exist by some of the more zealous harmonists. There
is not the slightest evidence that the author of the cos
mogony knew anything about the Nebular Hypothesis,
and considering the discredit into which that hypothesis
has fallen among men of science in our own time, we
need not regret that this is the case. Neither do I see any
reason to believe that he knew anything about the pro
cesses by which our globe passed from the gaseous to the
molten state, and from the molten to the solid, and by
which the present relations of earth and atmosphere were
established. It would be going quite too far to assert that
he had any acquaintance with the sciences of botany and
zoology and their principles of classification. Whoever

254 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
the author of this marvellous cosmogony was, and from
whatever sources, under the guidance of the divine Spirit,
he derived his knowledge of the universe, there is nothing
to show that he was vouchsafed any prophetic anticipations
of the discoveries of modern science.
Nevertheless, when these qualifications are made, it
seems to me that there remains a very remarkable agree
ment between the two cosmogonies. So far as the par
ticular purposes and the peculiar limitations of the two
points of view permit, the cosmogony of revelation and
the cosmogony of physical science correspond. It is evi
dent that we have before us the same facts, though beheld
in different lights and from a different angle. This seems
to be one of the cases which shows how the light of revela
tion in spiritual things can throw a real though shadowed
illumination upon other fields of knowledge. The best
modern Hebrew exegesis admits that the days of Gene
sis were not literal days of twenty-four hours each, but
day-periods, of indefinite duration. Like God'6 Sabbath,
which according to our Saviour has continued since the
conclusion of creation (John v. 17), His creative days were
aeons. Within the framework of the Hexaemeron, or
six-days' work, the Biblical cosmogony presents a num
ber of facts in which it shows itself in striking accord with
the teachings of science. It places first in the activities
of the universe the production of light, making it precede
the creation of the heavenly bodies. The creation which
it describes involves a long process, running through suc
cessive ages, with intervening periods of natural develop
ment. It sets forth the true order of evolution, the inor
ganic world, vegetable life, the lower and higher animals
and man. It connects man, so far as his lower nature is
concerned, with the material world, while it refers his in
tellectual and spiritual powers to the direct inbreathing of
the divine Spirit. The differences in detail between the
two cosmogonies become insignificant, when we take into

CREATION 255
account the different objects contemplated and the neces
sary limitations of the two standpoints. The over-zealous
harmonist, who will press every detail into exact corre
spondence, lays himself open to the sneer of the sceptic.
But the sober-minded theologian, careful to discriminate
between the things that differ, and ready to admit all real
divergencies, can show, over and above the minor differ
ences, an agreement which can only be explained upon
the assumption that this primitive story of creation is the
simple truth, and therefore in essential harmony with the
truth as brought to light by the investigations of physical
science. It remains, before leaving this branch of our subject, to
speak briefly of the relation of the Biblical cosmogony to
the scientific theory of evolution. I say, the scientific the
ory, for there is a philosophical theory of evolution which
is in principle irreconcilable with theism, and of course
with the account of creation in Genesis, and of which,
therefore, it is needless for me to speak here. The scien
tific theory does not attempt to account for everything. It
is a hypothesis which has proved valuable for the explana
tion of extensive tracts in the realm of nature, especially in
the organic sphere, but which is far from claiming to ex
plain the origin of the universe, or to bridge over all the
gaps in its history. Now, the statements of the first
chapter of Genesis leave abundant room for the application
of any moderate and really scientific theory of evolution.
The Hexaemeron, with its steady progress forward and up
ward, and its confinement of God's creative activity to
the introduction of the fundamental forms of finite ex
istence, almost seems to have been arranged so as to ad
mit within its framework the operation of such a law as
that of evolution. Evolution, rightly understood, is
simply the method of God's providence in the physical
world. It is in no. way opposed to the creative action of
God. The latter is the necessary condition of the former ;

256 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
the former is the carrying out and fulfilment of the
latter. As in the redemptive revelation the supernatural
and the natural were combined, new elements introduced
by means of inspiration and miracle, and then these new
elements themselves followed the course of ordinary his
torical development, so in the progress of the world's
primitive history God at certain epochs introduced new
forms of existence by His creative efficiency, and these
forms thereupon entered into the course of evolution
under the ordinary operations of natural law. In both
alike the power of God is operative.
TTT. We have now come to the point where we must
look more closely into the nature of creation. What is
creation ? The word has often been abused and made to
do duty for conceptions altogether foreign to it. Thus it
has been said that God's preserving providence is a con
tinual creation, with the result of confusing two ideas that
are wholly distinct. So theologians have spoken of an
eternal creation, or have explained it as the moulding and
shaping of a pre-existent material. But, in spite of these
erroneous interpretations, the meaning of the word crea
tion, as used in the Scriptures, and in the language of com
mon life — which in this case perfectly agrees with the
teachings of sound theological science — is perfectly clear.
Creation is a new beginning. It implies that something
has been brought into existence that did not previously
exist. God is the absolute First Cause. Finite things
have not had an eternal being, as He has had. Mattel-,
energy, life, spirit, are not self-existent. There was a time
when they began to be.
Theology affirms that creation is "out of nothing.''
This definition is a stumbling-block to many, but it seems
to be essential, rightly understood, to the theistic, and so
to the Christian, doctrine of creation. It denies that there
is any eternal substance outside of God, like the unformed
substance, the Kyle amorphos of the Platonic philosophy,

CREATION 257
out of which God has shaped all things. It also denies
that God has made things out of His own essence, or that
they are in any sense an emanation from Him. Its mean
ing is simply that which has just been assigned to the
word creation : God has called into being something that
did not before exist. " God said, Let there be light ; and
light was." The nothing of which we speak is not viewed
as a kind of material out of which things have been made.
The author of the Epistle to the Hebrews clearly expresses
the idea of creation out of nothing, when he says, " By
faith we understand that the worlds have been framed by
the word of God, so that what .is seen hath not been made
out of things which do appear" (Heb. xi. 3). The objec
tion has been raised that creation out of nothing implies
an effect without a cause — exnihilo nihil fit, out of nothing
nothing is made. But no mistake could be greater than
that which this objection implies. We ascribe the effect
to the greatest and most potent of all causes, the will of
the absolute Being Himself. The maxim that nothing
comes out of nothing has no application at all to creation.
It belongs wholly to the realm of created things, and has to
do, not with the operations of the First Cause, but entirely
with second causes. It is simply another statement of the
principle of finite causation, or of the scientific law of the
conservation of matter and energy. All that it affirms is,
that in the world as now constituted every finite effect
must have a finite cause. It tells us absolutely nothing
about the origination of the universe. That can only be ex
plained through the free determination of an infinite Will.
Can we form any conception of creation ? Certainly
not any adequate conception. Creation is unique ; we can
find nothing like it in the whole range of our knowledge.
It is the infinite act of an infinite Being, a way that is
higher than our ways, and that springs from a thought
that is higher than our thoughts. No man ever saw it,
and no man could understand it if he did. It could not
17

258 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
be perceived through the senses. It is impossible to pict
ure it to the imagination. Suppose you or I had been
present— if such an anachronism be supposable — when
God created life, what should we have seen ? Nothing.
Before the creative act there would have been inorganic
matter, afterward protoplasm ; but we should not have
known that life was there until it began to produce its
effects. God's creation is not an act which comes with
the tempest, the earthquake, or the fire, but with the still
small voice. Like the miracle, which is also an infinite
act of the infinite Being, a direct manifestation of the
First Cause, creation is invisible. When Christ multiplied
the loaves and fishes so as to feed the five thousand, who
of all the multitude beheld the process ? Before there
were five loaves and two small fishes, afterward the
loaves and fishes multiplied a thousand-fold. Do you
imagine anyone stole the secret of that miracle ? Did
anyone see the water change into wine ? It is of the very
nature of a miracle thus to elude all observation and in
this sense to be incomprehensible, and creation is like it in
these respects. And yet, while I would thus strongly
emphasize the element of mystery in creation, it seems to
me that we may find some analogies in the sphere of our
experience which will throw a little light upon its nature.
God has created man in His own image, and the Infinite
is mirrored in the human soul as in no other form of
natural existence. It is to our own spirits that we go
when we wish to gain the highest knowledge of which we
are capable respecting the nature and activities of the di
vine Spirit. Now, there are at least two operations of the
human soul which may be compared, though so much
lower, with the creative acts of God, and it is interesting
to note that a recognition of this fact has led men to call
both of these classes of operations creative. The first is
the action of man's free will. This does not indeed have
the power to bring into being a new thing in the material

CREATION 259
world, but it does produce something new in the spiritual
world, by which the direction and operation of material
forces may be altogether changed. Man has the power
which the brute has not — by a choice which is spiritual,
and a volition which is equally spiritual — to set free
energy and .produce great changes in the external world.
The President of the United States sits in the White
House, and touching an electric button, starts the great
Corliss Engine hundreds of miles away in the Exposition
building at New Orleans. How came that to pass ? By
a choice and a volition, setting free and directing the
energy in a few molecules of the brain. The physical
force, I grant, was not created ; it was only directed.
But what was that spiritual energy which has the wonder
ful power of directing physical energy ? Was it not a new
thing ? did not the free will act creatively, and have we
not here an analogy, true so far as it goes, even though it
may not go very far, of that infinite creative activity of
God, by which matter and energy were first brought into
being and the human soul itself called out of non-exist
ence into reality? The other operation of the soul to
which we ascribe a creative quality is the imagination. It
is illustrated in some of its highest exercises by the artist's
work. He has indeed, to a certain extent, the material of
his • constructive thought in the things of the external
world and the ideas which are the common property of
man. But artistic genius does more than arrange. The
common language of the race expresses a real truth when
it declares that the artist creates. Forms of beauty ex
pressive of noble ideals make their appearance under the
magic touch of his brush or chisel. They had no previous
existence. There is in them an element that is new. So
the poet or the writer of fiction sets new ideas before us,
or characters which live and move in the world of
thought, if not in the outside world, and have untold
power to influence the lives of men. I readily admit that

260 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
all this is but a far-off imitation of what God has done in
His infinitely higher and better way. But I cannot but
think that those who have felt the glow and sense of
power which the creative work of art engenders, can un
derstand, though dimly, something of God's work and the
joy He felt as He beheld His masterpieces issuing from
His hand and saw that they were " very good."
IV. We have thus far dealt chiefly with the doctrine of
creation which belongs to a theistic natural theology.
But there is also a distinctively Christian doctrine of
creation. The germs of this higher view are to be found
in the cosmogony of Genesis ; its fully expanded form in
the New Testament. To these Christian elements in the
doctrine we shall now address ourselves.
Creation is the work of the Triune God. Father, Son,
and Holy Spirit have each their part in it. It originated
with the Father, it was executed by the Son, it was carried
out through the Holy Spirit, or, if I may so speak, the
Spirit was the immanent principle of creation. But in an
especial sense creation was the work of the Son. We
have touched upon this truth when treating of the rela
tion of the Christ to the world, and need speak of it only
briefly here. He who was to become incarnate that he
might redeem the fallen world, was the Maker of the
world. He laid the basis of redemption in creation. • He
preformed the world which he made to the redemption
which he was to accomplish. The world was thus from
the first in a peculiar sense his own. It bears the mark
of the Son upon it. The eternal power and Godhead
which it makes known is in a peculiar sense the power
and Godhead of the Son. The world he created was the
world into which he was himself to enter by taking its
material and spiritual form upon him and becoming a
link in its evolution. This was to be the theatre of his
highest self-manifestation in the drama of redeeming love.
It was from the first, by right of creation by the eternal

CREATION 261
Logos, Christ's world. The devil might gain the upper-
hand for a time, but he was only the usurper certain to be
destroyed by the rightful King. Man made in the image
of God was made by the Logos the uncreated image of
God, in his own image and likeness, and his dominion
over nature was a dominion which belonged to him in
virtue of his relation to the divine Son.
Creation originated in the love of God. This is the
same fact which met us when we were considering the
eternal plan of God. It was the overflowing love of
God, seeking new objects upon which to spend itself, that
led Him to create. The sin which has so marred the
creation and made it so difficult to perceive its original
nature as it issued in its primitive goodness from the di
vine hand, blinds us to this fact, which it is the object of
the gospel to reveal again to us. If we could see things
as they are, we should not doubt it, and now that God has
made it known to us through the work of Christ, it is our
duty to believe where we cannot see, and to look forward
in full confidence to that time when God shall show us
that He has done all things in love. In creation God
made that He might give, and gave that Pie might make.
We have seen before that love is self-bestowal. In the
creation of the world the self-bestowal which had found
its satisfaction in the perfect blessedness of the holy
Trinity, found new objects by making finite beings.
But self-manifestation is closely connected with self-be
stowal. God also created that He might express His per
fections in the finite universe. Creation was a revelation
of God's self. The world is what it is because God is
what He is. As the painting or statue makes us ac
quainted with the artist's thought, so the creation makes us
acquainted with the character and thought of God. Even
the material universe reflects God's attributes. "The
heavens declare the glory of God ; and the firmament
showeth his handy work" (Psalm xix. 1). The reason

262 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
which the Apostle Paul gives why the heathen are with
out excuse in their sin, is that " the invisible things of
him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being
perceived through the things that are made, even his
everlasting power and divinity " (Rom. i. 20). The
" everlasting power and divinity " are the essential glory
of God, His infinite perfections, His attributes. Nature
is not merely a hieroglyphic by interpreting which we can
learn God's thought and will ; it is itself a manifest word
of God ; it bears His impress upon it ; it is a revelation of
Him. God did not make something altogether different
from Himself when He created the world ; He produced
a finite similitude of Himself. Therein lies the reason
for the idolatry into which mankind has been constantly
falling. The heathen have recognized in nature some
thing divine, but they have not distinguished between the
copy and the original, between the reflection and the
reality. So they have " exchanged the truth of God for
a lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than
the Creator, who is blessed forever " (Rom. i. 25). It was
meant that men should " look through nature up to nat
ure's God." The divine perfections are manifested only
partially in the individual forms of the natural world;
they express each some phase or aspect of God's glory ;
there shines on each some ray from the perfect Light.
But God has concentrated His self-revelation through the
finite in the being who is the culmination of the long
series of creations. Man was made in the image of God.
He does not express merely a single aspect of the divine
perfection, but is the finite representation of God's
spiritual essence. In him we do not merely discover scat
tered lights which suggest the glory of the perfect Sun,
but the Orb of Light itself is imaged in its perfect form
and beauty in this highest of all the creatures. I will not
anticipate what is to be said hereafter respecting the divine
image. Suffice it now to call attention to the fact already

CREATION 263
noticed, that the creation of man in God's image lays the
basis for the incarnation, in which the Word became flesh
and the eternal Son wrought out in hnman life the per
fect sonship. Sin has marred the divine image in us,
but when we wish to know God as He is, we can turn
from ourselves to the perfect Man Christ Jesus, and see in
him the perfect image of the perfect God. And more
and more as Christ comes to dwell in us and to change us
into his own image, we can discover in our own souls the
lineaments of God. The pure in heart see God.
Finally, Creation had for its object redemption, or the
establishment of God's kingdom. It thus was the first
step to the carrying out of the eternal plan of God, which
also aimed at redemption. The world was to be the
arena of that highest display of God's love, the salvation
of the fallen race. Man was to be the subject of redemp
tion, the son of the kingdom. Christ the Redeemer was
here to be incarnate. If God was omniscient and had
from eternity formed His plan of redemption, we cannot
doubt that when He called the universe into being, He had
clearly in His thought all the wonderful history that was to
transpire in it. Sinai and Calvary were made with reference
to the Law and the Gospel. Of course, if this view be true,
creation was effected with reference to the future existence
of sin in the world. All that issued from the divine hand
was pure and good. But God knew that man by the abuse
of freedom would mar the perfect works of God ; He had
permissively ordained that it should be so. And so He
made a world which provided restraints and punishments
for sin, as well as facilities for a work of redemptive grace.
Thus God's work was done. The morning stars sang
together and all the sons of God shouted for joy. The
six days' creative toil was finished, and God rested on
the seventh day from all His work which He had made.
Now begins human history and with it human sin, while
God enters upon His work of redemption.

XV.
THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD
We have discussed the subject of creation, and now we
ask, What is the relation in which God stands to the world
which He has created ? It is easy to see that this is a
question not only of theoretical, but also of vast practical,
importance. For here we are in the world, and we need
to know whether God is here also, and whether He is con
cerning himself with its ongoings. Is He a God afar off,
dwelling in some remote Heaven, not troubling Himself
with the affairs of this world, its material processes, the
life of plant and animal, the joys and sorrows of men ?
Is He like those gods of whom Tennyson tells us in " The
Lotos-Eaters," who
" Lie beside their nectar, and the bolts are hurled
Far below them in the valleys, and the clouds are lightly curled
Round their golden houses, girdled with the gleaming world ;
Where they smile in secret, looking over wasted lands,
Blight and famine, plague and earthquake, roaring deeps and
fiery sands,
Clanging fights, and flaming towns, and sinking ships, and pray
ing hands ? "
Is He such a God as that ? Or is He the God who is
everywhere present and active in His world, who is di
rectly interested in all its affairs, from the fall of a spar
row to the fate of an empire, from the beauty of the lily
to the provision for the wants of His people ?
Thank God, the Christian revelation answers these
questions with no uncertain sound. No doctrine in the

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD 265
whole range of religious truth is taught by the Bible more
unequivocally or with greater fulness. In the presence of
those false views of God and His relation to the world with
which our age abounds, we need, therefore, to proclaim
with the strongest emphasis the simple but profound truth
of God's providence which comes to us through the Script
ures, and is verified by Christian experience.
I. The Christian doctrine of providence is distinctively
theistic. It declares that the Absolute Being is the liv
ing, personal God, and asserts His free disposal over nat
ure and man. He is not the unknown God of agnosti
cism, who is hidden behind the impenetrable veil of the
finite, and of whom we are certain only that He is the
cause and ground of all things. He is not the impersonal
and unconscious God of pantheism, who is lost in the
world and can in no sense be said to control it. He is
not the " absentee God " of deism, who has left his world
to its own ways since He has brought it into being, and has
done so for the wise reason that He has had no power to
interpose in its affairs. The God of providence made the
world for Himself, He sustains it in being, He is a factor
in all its activities, He is its free Ruler. The relation in
which He stands to the world through His providence is as
close and vital as that in which He stood in its creation.
The providence of God may be considered under three
aspects, as preservation, immanence, and government. We
will look at each of these.
1. By preservation is meant God's providence as exer
cised in maintaining His creatures in being. According
to the deistical view of the universe, the world when once
created is self-existent. God has, it is true, the power to
annihilate it, if He will — at least this is admitted with re
spect to the material world — but unless He sees fit to do
so, it will continue to exist. But the scriptural teaching
points to a closer relation of God to the creation than this.
Finite beings continue in existence only by a constant ex-

266 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
ercise of the divine power. If this were for an instant
withdrawn, they would cease to be, as the shadow ceases
when the substance which casts it is removed, or as the
light ceases when the lamp is extinguished.
The continuance of material things is due to the up
holding and preserving power of God. The scientific law
of conservation, according to which the quantity of matter
and energy in the world remains always the same, and can
be neither increased nor diminished by any processes now
at work or under the control of man, is simply the expres
sion of the uniformity of the divine preservation in the
material sphere. Matter and energy are the constants of
the universe, but it is only because God is behind them.
It is for this reason, and this only, that we can speak of
the uniformity of causation. Moreover, God maintains
the properties and laws of matter and energy. The great
cosmical arrangements by which the perpetuity of life on
our planet is maintained are due to the same preserving
power. God Himself has given us the promise that,
" While the earth remaineth, seed-time and harvest, and
cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night,
shall not cease " (Gen. viii. 22).
In like manner God's preserving providence is the cause
of the maintenance of life. What is life ? Is it an inde
pendent entity, a principle which has the power to co-or
dinate the activities of matter, or is it only a function
of matter, something which could be explained entirely
by matter and energy, if we only had the key to its mys
tery ? In either case it is upheld in being by God's con
stant energizing. The life of plant and animal alike is
due to the divine preservation. Death is the result of the
withdrawal of His supporting power. " Thou takest away
their breath," said the Psalmist, speaking of the animal
creation, " they die and return to their dust. Thou send-
est forth thy spirit, they are created ; and thou renewest
the face of the ground " (Ps. civ. 29, 30).

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD 267
So also God preserves the human spirit. As its first
existence was the result of a divine inbreathing (Gen. ii.
7), so its continuance is the result of God's power con
stantly exercised (Ps. xxxvi. 6, lxvi. 9 ; Job xxxiv. 14,
15). It is commonly asserted that the human soul is pos
sessed of what is called " natural immortality," that is,
that it is indestructible, and theologians often go so far as
to say that God could not annihilate a soul if He desired.
But there is not a hint of such a doctrine in the Bible,
and those who think that by asserting it they can refute
the nnscriptural doctrine of the annihilation of the un
godly, purchase relief at quite too high a price. If God
should withdraw His power from the soul, it would sink
into nothingness, and if it be true, as the Bible seems to
teach, that no soul is ever thus " cast as rubbish to the
void," it is not because God cannot annihilate it, but be
cause He will not. Moreover, God maintains the powers
of the soul in existence. The intellect, the sensibility, the
will, the free agency of man, the activity of conscience,
are possible only upon this condition. " In him we live
and move and have our being " (Acts xvii. 28). Even
more strikingly is the spiritual life dependent upon God.
For what is the spiritual life ? It is the right relation of
the soul to God, the state of things in which God's favor
is granted to man and man lives in communion with God.
" This is life eternal, that they might know thee the only
true God, and Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent " (John
xvii. 3). When the soul is by faith united with God, He
pours into it His own divine life. When men sin against
Him he withdraws His gracious influences, and the result
is spiritual death.
2. Another element in God's providence is His imma
nence. Preservation has to do with the maintenance of
the creation in existence. Immanence has to do with
its activities. God does not only uphold things and let
them work according to their properties and laws ; He

268 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
Himself works in them and through them. He is the
First Cause not merely in the sense that He is the Creator
and Preserver, but also in the sense that He energizes in
the second causes. This is the great element of truth
among all the errors of pantheism. God does not stand
on the outside of His creation, but is everywhere present
and active in it. The dew-drop and the grass-blade evi
dence the presence and power of God as truly as the sun
or the planet. The Bible gives great prominence to this
doctrine of God's immanence. Indeed, it goes so far, es
pecially in the Old Testament, that sometimes it seems as
if the second causes were entirely swallowed up in the
First Cause. The sacred writers drew no sharp line of
demarcation between the divine and the creaturely activ
ity. They did not hesitate to ascribe all natural events to
God. " Thou visitest the earth," said the Psalmist, " and
waterest it, thou greatly enrichest it ; the river of God is
full of water ; thou providest them corn when thou hast
so prepared the earth. Thou waterest her furrows abun
dantly ; thou settlest the ridges thereof ; thou makest it
soft with showers ; thou blessest the springing thereof "
(Ps. lxv. 9, 10). God's immanence merges here into His
government, but the former is more prominent. Our Sa
viour presents the same view. His thought, in describing
the operations of nature, is not upon the second causes,
but upon the First Cause. God clothes the grass of the
field, gives man his daily bread, causes the sun to rise
and the rain to fall (Matt. vi. 26-30, vi. 11, v. 45). Even
the free acts of men are not put outside the sphere of the
divine causality, as a deistical philosophy would fain have
them. In the evil choices and acts of men, it is true, the
causality is wholly human ; the relation of the First Cause
to the creaturely cause is here strained to the point of
severance. But in the good, though still free, choices
and acts of men, God is active. We work out our own
salvation with fear and trembling, while God worketh

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD 269
in us to will and to do of His good pleasure (Phil. ii.
12, 13).
Now, undoubtedly this truth of God's immanence runs
close to pantheism. But, as has been remarked, it gives
us the truth, anu' not the errors, of pantheism. It does
not destroy the distinction between God and the creature.
The second cause has been so made that God can work
through it, but this does not make it either God or a
power of God. In our work we grasp and use our instru
ments from the outside. God has the power to enter His
instruments and use them from within. But in both cases
they are instruments. The forces of nature are not the
power of God, although His power is manifested in and
through them. The old definition of the laws of nature,
which makes them modes of the divine operation, is cor
rect only if we understand it to refer to the modes of the
divine operation through the forces of nature. We may
not be able to draw the line of separation between the
divine energy and finite energy, but such a separation ex
ists. The one is spiritual ; the other is physical. The re
lation between the two may in a measure be illustrated by
the relation between the finite spirit and the body with
which it is united. Who can distinguish between mind-
energy and brain-energy ? Yet who but the materialist
doubts that the distinction exists.
It has always been the temptation of Calvinism, in the
emphasis which it has laid upon the divine factor in re
demption, to push the doctrine of the divine immanence
to such an extreme as to reduce second causes to mere
manifestations of the First Cause. This tendency reached
its culmination in the Hopkinsian theology, which flour
ished in New England during the last, and the early part
of the present, centuiy. We find traces of the doctrine
of divine efficiency, as it was called, in the writings of
Jonathan Edwards, but it is expressed in its fully de
veloped form in the works of Hopkins and Emmons.

270 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
According to this view, God is the efficient cause of all
things and events. Dr. Hopkins says, "The immediate
exertion of divine power is the proper efficient cause of
every event ; so that all power is in God, and all creatures
which act or move, exist and move, or are moved, in and
by Him" (Works, ed. 1852, vol. i., p. 165). Dr. Em
mons, the daring theologian of Franklin, who did not
fear to draw any of the consequences which his logic
seemed to require, declared, " To suppose that either
angels or men can act independently of God, is to sup
pose that they themselves are gods." " He exerts his
agency in producing all the free and voluntary exercises
of every moral agent as constantly and fully as in pre
serving and supporting his existence " (Works, ed. 1860,
vol. ii., p. 454). Thus God was made the author of
sin, human freedom was reduced to a mere name, and
men, good and bad alike, became puppets in the hands of
God. But the dangers which attend this doctrine of the di
vine immanence should not blind us to its importance, or
drive us into the deistic conception of God's relation to
the world. The First Cause is present and active in
matter and energy, in vegetable and animal life, in the
human soul, in the spiritual life.
3. God's providence reaches its highest exercise in His
government. This is His providence in the strictest sense
of the term. It is the relation in which God stands to
His creatures as their free Disposer. There is, it is true,
a sense in which He is free in preservation and imma
nence, but it is a freedom exercised in maintaining a
fixed and unchangeable order, a freedom which has for its
effect necessity. Doubtless God could at any moment
turn the uniformity of nature into chaos ; but it is certain
God never would do so. But in His government His
freedom does not move along the fixed grooves of an un
changeable order. He, attains His great ends by such

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD 271
means as His wisdom determines, and guides and controls
His creatures according to His will.
God thus freely governs the inanimate world. Deism,
which regards the universe, when once created, as self-
sufficient, protests even more loudly against the divine
government in nature than, against preservation and im
manence. It declares that there is no room in the uni
verse for the free activity of God. All things are
governed by law. Finite effects can be produced only by
finite causes. The divine interposition, which the doctrine
of providential government assumes, is excluded by the
scientific conception of the world. If God did thus inter
pose, there would be evidence of it ; there would be effects
which could not be explained by natural causes. But this
is not the case. So far as man's observation extends,
there is nothing which cannot be accounted for by the
operation of natural forces. And yet, in spite of these
objections, we claim that God does exercise free control
over nature. We claim it upon the authority of revela
tion. The Scriptures stand or fall with this doctrine.
The words of the Psalmist express the invariable teaching
of the Bible : " Whatsoever Jehovah pleased, that hath
He done, in heaven and in earth, in the seas and in all
deeps " (Ps. cxxxv. 6). We also claim that this doctrine
is an essential element of the theistic conception of God.
To assert any less than this would be to give God less
' power in His universe than man possesses. We are able,
in virtue of our freedom, to employ the forces of nature in
such a way as to bring about our ends. We do it not in
opposition to natural law, but in accordance with it. It is
by this dominion over material nature, bestowed upon
him by God at his creation, that man has built up the
wonderful fabric of modern civilization. He thus brings
about innumerable effects which nature, left to herself,
would never accomplish. And shall God have less con
trol over nature than we ? Shall men be able to bring on

272 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
a rain by burning a prairie or firing off a quantity of gun
powder, and God not be able to answer His children
when in time of drought they cry to Him for rain ? I
know that it is said that in the case of men the efficient
cause is visible ; we see the human power working among
the natural causes ; but in the .case of God we see no such
evidence of a higher causality. I freely grant that there
is a difference, but the difference lies chiefly in the fact
that man has a body, and that so we are able to localize
the spiritual cause, while God, who is pure Spirit, is
hidden from us. But if we admit that the human will,
that unseen spiritual power, by setting free an infinitesimal
amount of energy in the material substance of the brain,
can set in operation a train of physical and material pro
cesses which will result in the explosion of a mine, or the
starting of complicated machinery a thousand miles away ;
I do not see what difficulty there is in supposing that the
divine Will, by the liberation in any part of the uni
verse of minute quantities of energy, may accomplish the
greatest results. It is not possible to give a full physical
explanation of any outward effect of the free-will of man.
The tests of physics and chemistry do not begin to be
delicate enough to take account of the hidden process which
takes place in the brain. Why is it impossible that God
should produce effects in nature by a similar hiding of
His power ? It is not through the efficient causation of
the will that we know its operations in the case of men, •
but rather by its final causation, by the rationality of the
effects. So, when in the operations of nature we see a
rationality which irresistibly directs our thoughts to God,
we need not be troubled if we cannot discover just the
point at which His Will, working as an efficient cause, set
in operation the train of physical causes by which the re
sult has been accomplished. A child's touch can set in
motion the avalanche which will overwhelm a whole vil
lage. The touch of the divine Will upon an atom might

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD 273
produce the storms which scattered the Spanish Armada.
I can understand how men who deny human freedom may
deny the divine government ; if they are consistent, they
will go further and'deny the existence of God Himself.
But I do not perceive any rational ground upon which
those who hold that there is such a power as free-will in
man, can call in question the control of God over nature.
But God's providential government is not confined to
the natural world ; it extends also to the realm of spirits.
God rules in the affairs of men and the higher intelli
gences. From the nature of the case His government as
sumes a different character when it has to do with free
beings. He respects the freedom which He has made.
He lays no compulsion upon the will of His rational
creatures. But He rules none the less truly because His
government is a moral government. This is what the
Bible teaches from one end to the other. " He doeth ac
cording to his will in the army of heaven, and among the
inhabitants of the earth : and none can stay his hand, or
say unto him, What doest thou ? " (Dan. iv. 35). His
government extends to the free acts of men. " A man's
heart deviseth his way ; but the Lord directeth his steps "
(Prov. xvi. 9). Christians are " His workmanship, created
in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared
that we should walk in them " (Eph. ii. 10). He rules in
human history. " The kingdom is the Lord's ; and he is
the ruler over the nations " (Ps. xxii. 28). Even the sin
ful acts of men are under His control. The evil which
Joseph's brethren plot is turned into good (Gen. xiv.
5-8). God causes the wrath of men to praise Him, and
restrains the remainder of wrath (Ps. Ixxvi. 10). He
overrules the sin of the Jews and Pilate for the ac
complishment of His purpose of redemption (Acts ii. 23,
iv. 27, 28). The influences which are brought to bear are
moral. The human will is guided by motives which
leave full play for the exercise of freedom. Reward and
18

274 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
punishment play their part. But in one way and another
God carries His purposes through, and men do His will
either in glad co-operation or in spite of themselves.
II. A number of special problems meet us, as we take
the subject of God's providence into more careful consid
eration. 1. The first concerns the extent of God's providence.
The deistic tendency of which mention has been made,
when it has been overcome on the open battle-field of the
doctrine, entrenches itself, as in a sort of last ditch, in the
denial of the universality of God's providence. Cicero
voiced this denial in his well-known words, "The gods
take care of the great things and disregard the small"
(" De Natura Deorum," II. 66). But there can be no ques
tion what is required by the teachings of Scripture and
the theistic conception of God. His providence is par
ticular as well as general. It extends to the minutiae of
His universe as well as to the great operations and events
of its administration. Nothing is too small for the infi
nite God. He numbers the very hairs of our heads (Matt.
x. 30). Such care for the least of His creatures, so far
from being derogatory to the almighty God, is rather the
evidence of His almightiness.
2. Another interesting question relates to the subject
of special providence. This is often confounded with
God's particular providence, but it is not the same. The
particular providence extends to all beings and events.
The special providence is God's government when di
rected to results of especial or extraordinary importance,
whether connected with the great interests of His king
dom or the welfare of individual members of it. Special
providence is denied on the ground that it implies par
tiality on the part of God. Now, God is not partial in the
sense of being inequitable. He maketh His sun to rise
on the evil and the good, and sendeth rain on the just and
the unjust (Matt. v. 45). We have reason to believe that

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD 275
none of His children ever cry to Him in vain. Even in
His spiritual dealings with men, though there are some
dark problems which we cannot easily solve, we do not
doubt that He gives to all, at some time and in some way,
all the grace that is needful for salvation. Nevertheless,
God does not deal with all alike. His wisdom leads Him
to choose the best means by which to attain His great
ends, and in so doing He is continually concentrating His
providential activity upon certain points. In His work of
redemption the interests of the kingdom are of more im
portance than those of any individual in it, and some
individuals are of more importance in relation to the pro
gress of the kingdom than others. So there are occasions
in the individual life when God's providence becomes
peculiarly manifest, as in its great crises and deliverances.
The Bible is full of such special providences. Its funda
mental doctrine of election by which the individual is
chosen by God and fitted for especial work in His king
dom, is pre-eminently a doctrine of special providence.
3. Again, the question is asked, Is there such a thing
as chance ? The view of God's providential government
which has been taken, and which I verily believe to be
the scriptural view, leads us to reply without hesitation in
the negative. When we look at the events of the world
about us from the lower side, leaving out of view God's
relation to them, we may legitimately speak of chance,
though even here physical science comes in with its teach
ings respecting the universality of law, and bids us remem
ber that we use the word in a very limited sense. But in
the higher sphere we may use the word only as expressive
of our ignorance of the divine purpose. Here, to bor
row Pope's phrase in the " Essay on Man," all chance is
direction which we cannot see. " The lot is cast into the
lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the Lord"
(Prov. xvi. 33).
4. Once more, our subject brings before us the re-

276 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
lation of God's providential government to prayer. Here
also we must avoid the deistical tendency which conceives
of God as unable to take any active part in the ongoings
of His world. Such a view makes prayer a mere form, or,
as Bushnell says, " a kind of dumbbell exercise, good as
exercise, but never to be answered " (" Nature and the
Supernatural," p. 452). The Bible doctrine of prayer im
plies such a providence as that which we have been con
sidering. It is an asking for things which God alone can
give, and which He does give in answer to our petitions.
The Bible saints prayed for food and raiment and rain, and
victory over their enemies, and help in their daily life, as
well as for the blessings, which are distinctively spiritual.
They believed that God had control of nature and of man,
and that He disposed of events so as to bring about re
sults which would not have been brought about except for
their prayers. Thanksgiving, adoration, confession had a
part in those Bible prayers, but everything converges in
the request for definite blessings. Now, if the doctrine of
God's providence which I have presented is true, if God
freely controls the realms of nature and man, and if in
this there is nothing inconsistent with the teachings of
physical science truly so called, I see no reason why we
should not hold as genuine and comprehensive a doctrine
of prayer to-day. Only let us guard against the other ex
treme, which gives man the power through prayer to dic
tate to the Almighty what He shall do and not do. God's
freedom and power as the Governor of the universe are
guided by wisdom and love. Because He can give us all
that we ask, it does not follow that He will. The decision
lies not with us, but with Him. He has encouraged us to
come to' Him in all our needs, temporal and spiritual, ad
dressing Him as " Our Father." But in our ignorance
we shall inevitably ask for many things which are not
best as regards the interests of His kingdom, and there
fore not best for us. The right of petition is freely given

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD 277
us. The right of decision belongs to Him. Our prayer
should always have the proviso, " Thy will be done ! "
The notion that if we have a sufficient amount of faith
we can carry the will of God by storm, is most unscriptural
and pernicious. But we should come to Him with the
full persuasion that He is able to give, and that He will
give all that it is wise for us to have, and that He is " a
Rewarder of them that diligently seek Him." He may
not see fit to give what we ask, but He will always be
stow His blessing.
5. The most serious of all these problems is that which
concerns the relation of God's providence to sin. But I
shall refer to the subject here only very briefly, because
we have already encountered its difficulties in discussing
the divine plan. Providence is simply the execution of a
part of the plan in time, and stands in the same relation to
sin as did the plan itself. Unquestionably we must admit
that the divine providence extends to all the sinful acts
of men. God has brought the sinner into the world and
keeps him here in spite of his sin. The environment
in which he is placed with its mingled good and evil is
due to the wise arrangement of God. God supplies the
conditions by which the choice out of which the sin comes
is made possible. But while all this is true, the author
ship of sin, and the responsibility for it, belong to the
man himself. In no sense is God the author of sin. He
hates it and is always working against it. The fact that
for wise reasons He has permitted the present amount of
sin is in no way opposed to His perfect love and holiness.
He has provided for its removal by redemption and for
its restraint by punishment. In the end He will, turn it
against itself and make it subservient to the establishr
ment "of His kingdom.
HI. As we concluded our consideration of the doctrine
of creation by an examination of its distinctively Christian
aspects, so we may do in the case of the doctrine before

278 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
us. A theistic natural theology and the Christian theol
ogy which the Bible makes known to us contain a com
mon doctrine of providence, so far as the more general
features are concerned, but the redemptive revelation adds
some new and higher facts.
1. The chief end of providence is the establishment of
the kingdom of God or the redemption of mankind. This
furnishes us with the key to all the divine operations in
nature and in the human sphere. This is the fact which
brings into unity all these varied and complicated oper
ations. All that God does, whether in the realm of nature
or in that of grace, is a means to this great end. What
to us seems dark and meaningless is so only because we
do not perceive its connection with the establishment of
the kingdom. 'The darkness is in us, not in God's provi
dence. If we could see things in their true relations, all
would be light. Slow is the process by which the infinite
Wisdom attains its results, but it is very sure. Nothing
is in vain. The operations of nature, the events of human
history, the vicissitudes of individual human experience,
all co-operate under the divine guidance to bring about
the high consummation. How beautifully are we taught
this truth by the Bible, that handbook of the divine prov
idence! We call its annals of the Hebrew nation and
the early Christian church sacred history, not because it
was intrinsically more sacred than the history of our own
times, but because the sacredness of it is made manifest.
The veil is lifted and the divine background is revealed.
We see each event, whether in the fortunes of nations or
of individual men, standing in its true relation to God and
His work of redemption. The lesson is that there is such
a relation in all ages. When Christians come to realize
the full meaning of God's providence in its relation to the
establishment of His kingdom, history will be written
after a new method. The Bible will give the pattern.
The historian will be a prophet. It will be his business

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD 279
to interpret the divine providence, and show how all the
events and movements and changes of each age are con
nected with the fulfilment of God's purpose of grace.
Just here also lies the test of individual faith. We need
to learn the full application of those deep words of Paul,
" We know that all things work together for good to them
that love God, to them who are the called according to
his purpose " (Rom. viii. 28). It is because the believer
is a member of God's kingdom, identified with it, God's
worker in it, that nothing but good can befall him. For
if all God's providence aims at the promotion of the king
dom, and the Christian is a constituent element in the
kingdom, then, from the nature of the case, his good must
be promoted by all things. " God is for him, and who
can be against him ? Neither death, nor life, nor angels,
nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come,
nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature,
shall be able to separate him from the love of God
(Rom. viii. 31, 38, 39).
2. Providence belongs to each of the three Persons in
the blessed Trinity. With respect to each of the three,
revelation gives us a distinct and characteristic element of
the doctrine we are discussing.
Providence originates with God as Father, and the
Bible has given us a doctrine of providence which is
rooted in the Fatherhood of God. The ethnic religions
have their glimpses of a beneficent providence. Zeus, the
head of the Greek Pantheon, is even called the Father.
But it was reserved for the Christian revelation, and par
ticularly for Jesus Christ himself, to disclose the truth
that in all His acts and ways the God of providence is the
Father of His creatures. The hand which rules the uni
verse is guided by love. Behind every dark event, yea in
it, is the Father's gracious power.
The agent of providence is the divine Son. The pre
serving providence of God belongs especially to him.

280 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
"In him all things consist" (Col. i. 17). He upholds
all things by the word of his power (Heb. i. 3). "In
him was life ; and the life was the light of men " (John i.
4). The providential government of the world belongs
also to him. But the chief and most notable Christian ad
dition to the doctrine of providence relates to the risen
Christ. The incarnation brought mankind into a new re
lation to God. Since the Saviour has ascended to God's
right hand, the Godman sits upon the throne of the uni
verse, and there is a true sense in which man rules the
world in his person. For the purpose of completing the
redemptive work and establishing the kingdom, all au
thority has been given him in heaven and on earth. To
him has been committed the providence of God. Until
the work is done, the holy manhood of the Christ will
thus participate in all the operations of providence. It is
Jesus Christ who is guiding the destinies of the universe.
As the King of the kingdom he is also the Lord of provi
dence. " He must reign till he hath put all his enemies
under his feet." " And when all things have been sub
jected unto him, then shall the Son also himself be sub
jected to him that did subject all things unto him, that
God may be all in all" (1 Cor. xv. 25, 28).
It is through the Holy Spirit that God's providence is
accomplished. Wherever the Creator comes into contact
with the creature, it is through the Spirit. He is the
principle of the divine immanence, the indwelling God.
He is the omnipresent energy of God. By His free
movement and operation in the world the divine govern
ment is accomplished. Through Him God acts upon the
hearts of men. He touches the conscience and influences
the will. But more particularly, He carries out God's
providential work in redemption. He comes to men as
the Spirit of the risen Christ, with all the power of His
redemptive grace, and brings the divine influences to bear
upon their souls. Then, when the soul is brought to

THE PROVIDENCE OF GOD 281
Christ and born again, He is an indwelling providence,
shaping it into accordance with the image of Christ, and
inspiring it for every good word and work.
We thus complete our examination of the Christian
doctrine of providence. We have distinguished the theis
tic conception of providence from that deistical view of
God's relation to the world which to all intents and pur
poses excludes Him from His own creation. We have
considered in detail each of the three great factors in the
divine providence — preservation, immanence, and govern
ment. The more important problems connected with the
doctrine have been examined. Finally, the distinctively
Christian elements have been brought before us. It is one
of the most important doctrines of the Christian system.
Well for us, if we can apprehend it, and believe it, and
apply it to our own lives.

XVI. MAN*
" What is man ? " The Psalmist's question is asked
anew in every age by every thoughtful soul. On every
side of us are mysteries. God and the world are enigmas
to which we can give only scanty solution. But man is
in many respects the greatest mystery of all. He is, as
Augustin has said (Confessions, Bk. iv., ch. 14), " a great
deep," which we cannot fathom. What is this I, this
thinking, willing, feeling Self, that strives and loves and
sins and dies? What is this race of men about me, this
seething current of souls like mine, moving onward inces
santly from the cradle to the grave ? An ffidipus was
found to answer the Sphinx's riddle. The creature
which, being born four-footed, afterward becomes two-
footed, and then three-footed, is Man, the creeping infant,
the vigorous youth and adult, the aged pilgrim leaning on
his staff. But who can answer that harder riddle, What
is man ? What GCdipus will slay the Sphinx who asks it
and give us rest from her persecutions ?
One satisfactory answer has been given, and only one.
It is that of the Bible. It seems to me that, as the cen
turies pass, we do not advance a single step beyond it.
Human science and philosophy have told us much about
man. They give us his place in the scale of being, they
describe his animal functions and analyze his mental pow
ers, they trace his history and his achievements, they
throw some light upon his probable future. But what
man is they do not tell us. The Bible, on the contrary,
* This subject is also treated by the author in an article entitled
" The Christian Conception of Man," in the Andover Review, vol. i p
465.

MAN 283
does tell us. It takes us up to a higher point of view, and
shows ns man in his relation to God. It throws upon
him the light of heaven and eternity, and in that light it
treats of his origin, his nature, his history, and his des
tiny. And lo, what we seek has been found ; the riddle
has been solved.
As we pass from the doctrine of God to that of man, I
hope we shall be able to maintain this Bible standpoint.
It is a fault of our treatises on theology that their anthro
pology, or doctrine of man, is largely developed from the
lower side, and that it involves us in questions of human
science and philosophy without disclosing the higher
truth which we are striving to reach. Theology is the
science of God. It is concerned with the world and man
only in their relation to God. Let our anthropology be
at the same time divinity. The secret of man is to be
found in God.
I. We begin by asking concerning the chief end of
man. The answer which comes most readily to our
minds is that of the Assembly's Catechism, couched in a
phrase so apt as almost to make us believe in the continu
ance of inspiration, " Man's chief end is to glorify God
and to enjoy Him forever." It will not be from any lack
of reverence for these time-honored words, that I shall
give another answer, but that our statements here may
correspond with those already made. Indeed, the differ
ence between the two answers will be only in form. We
have seen that the chief end of God in His eternal plan
was the establishment of His kingdom or redemption.
This also was His great object in creation, as it is in His
providence. Now, the chief end of God's plan and work
is the chief end of man's being. He exists for the king
dom of God or for redemption. He freely carries out
this purpose of his creation, when he obeys the Saviour's
injunction and seeks " first the kingdom of God and his
righteousness " (Matt. vi. 33). This is the hidden treas-

284 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
ure, the pearl of great price, compared with which all
other objects of human life and effort sink into insignifi
cance (Matt. xiii. 44-46).
This destination of man for redemption or the kingdom
of God implies a number of more specific facts. The first
of these is the existence of sin. Our discussion of the
divine plan, as well as of the doctrines of creation and
providence, has prepared us for the acceptance of this
fact. God has always known that man would abuse his
freedom. From the first He intended to permit sin to
exist, that He might overrule it for a greater good. Re
demption, which is conditioned upon sin, was as much a
part of the plan as creation and providence. Redemption
was not an after-thought on God's part ; it was a fore
thought. The only kingdom which God contemplated, so
far as this world was concerned, was a kingdom that was
to be established by redemption. Man's chief end is,
therefore, the chief end of a sinner, and to be attained
only by salvation. But this does not imply that sin is an
essential element in the idea of man. On the contrary, it
is a divergence from the true idea of man, resulting from
the misuse of freedom, which God has indeed for wise
reasons permitted, but neither approved nor efficiently
brought about. In his true idea man is holy, and the
whole aim of the divine working in redemption is to de
stroy his sin and make him holy.
The doctrine of man's chief end, accordingly, implies
that he was made to love and obey God. This is the
meaning of the kingdom: it is the state of things in
which God's will is perfectly done and the command
obeyed, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy
heart and with all thy soul and with all thy strength and
with all thy mind." The kingdom comes just in so far
as this result is reached. Redemption is at once the pro*
cess by which the result is reached and the result itself i
Sin is the abnormal fact in man. It is what ought not to

MAN 285
be. The recognition of it which is implied in the chief
end, as it has been stated, is wholly de facto and in no
respect de jure. God has permitted it only that He
might destroy it. The normal man .6 the heavenly man,
washed in the Saviour's blood, made perfectly clean and
holy, purged from all selfishness, in whose heart burns
ever the pure flame of perfect love.
Again, man's destination for the kingdom or redemp
tion implies that he was made for communion and fellow
ship of God. He was not meant to be an independent
being, living in his own strength and for his own pur
poses. When the sky shuts him in and he lives for ma
terial things, and has no personal knowledge of God and
intercourse with Him, the world with all its beauty is a
prison-vault and man falls short of his true being. As
Augustin says, " Thou, O God, hast made us for thy
self, and our hearts are restless till they find their rest in
Thee ! " (Confessions, Bk. I., ch. 1). " This is life eter
nal, that they should know Thee, the only true God, and
him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ " (John
xvii. 3). With God is the fountain of life. Fellowship
with Him is the proper state of man in this world, and it
carries with it the certainty of the unending blessedness
in the other world. Because man is made for the king
dom, he is made for heaven.
Moreover, man as made for the kingdom was made for
Jesus Christ, the King of the kingdom, the Redeemer of
mankind. He is the Head of mankind, the Son of Man.
He died for all men. He has raised mankind in his own
person from earth to heaven. He is the source of all
spiritual blessings. The work of the kingdom is his
work. He lays rightful claim upon the obedience of all
men. To die is to be with him. He is the glory and
the blessedness of the heavenly state. In his coming,
human history is to culminate. He is to call the dead
from their graves and to judge men and angels. In the

286 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
final state he will be the Husband of the mystic Bride his
church. Once more, the chief end of man is the chief end not
merely of individuals, but of mankind. There is an ideal
of manhood in the race toward which human history
moves, and which is to be attained by redemption. Men
were not made to live in isolation, but to form a holy
society, a temple for the indwelling of God. The idea of
the kingdom involves union and organization. There is
to be not only love to God but love to men — sonship and
brotherhood. The kingdom is realized in this world just
in so far as men are brought into their true relations to
each other. In the consummation all men are to be
united into one under Christ the Head, and the church is
to be coextensive with mankind. The individual attains
his true end only in connection with his fellow-men, as he
lives among them and labors for them in love. In com
mon with all the children of God the world over, his aim
is to build up the kingdom, employing for this end the
divinely ordained institutions of the church, the family,
the state, and those other instrumentalities by which God
realizes the purpose of His kingdom.
Finally, the destination of man for the kingdom im
plies his dominion over the natural world, material and
sentient. The world does not in its own right belong to
the kingdom. Man is the medium through which it is
brought into connection with God's great purpose. It was
meant that man should be at once the lord and the high-
priest of nature. Human sin has brought the creation
under the bondage of corruption, and made man a servant
where he should be a master. But redemption will even
here restore what has been lost ; " the creation itself also
shall be delivered from the bondage of corruption into the
liberty of the glory of the children of God " (Rom. viii.
21), and man shall recover his rightful dominion.
II. We ask next, What are the peculiar characteristics

MAN 287
of man, which fit him for the high end of his existence ?
We are thus brought to the scriptural account of man's
creation and the other teachings of the Bible respecting
man's nature.
There are two narratives in Genesis of the creation of
Adam, one in the first chapter, the other in the second,
the latter supplemented by the account of the origin of
woman. The first is a part of the great history of the
world's creation. Man is represented as the highest and
greatest of God's works, created at the close of the sixth
day, made in God's image, appointed to dominion over
the lower orders, and pronounced " very good." The
second account, which is the composition of another
writer, the so-called Jehovist, describes the method of
Adam's creation. " The Lord God," we are told, "formed
man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nos
trils the breath of life ; and man became a living soul "
(Gen. ii. 7). Then follows the narrative of the creation
of woman, who was miraculously produced from the body
of the man.
If now we look more carefully at these two records of
creation, the peculiarity of man's nature and his difference
from the other orders of being become evident. Let us
look first at the account of the second chapter. Here
that which distinguishes man from the lower orders of
animate beings is not that he was made from the dust of
the earth ; the bodies of the animals have the same origin
(Gen. i. 24, ii. 19). The distinction does not lie in the
fact that man has in his nostrils the breath of life ; the
same is true of the animal (Gen. vii. 22). It does not
consist in the fact that man was a living soul ; for the
animal also is a living soul (Gen. i. 24, Hebrew). There
is, however, a distinction, and a very marked one. It
consists in the immediate divine efficiency, which the ac
count so strongly emphasizes. Man does not become a
" living soul " until the Lord God has Himself breathed

288 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
into his nostrils the breath of life. Man is an animal and
made like the other animals, with this great exception,
that his distinctive principle is the result of an especial
divine inbreathing. In virtue of this he is not a mere
animal, but a " being breathing thoughtful breath."
There is in him a higher life than that of the animal.
The account of the first chapter describes the same pe
culiarity of man by saying that he was made in God's
image, after His likeness (Gen. i. 26). The best modern
exegesis finds no difference between the two terms, image
and likeness, except that the latter is explanatory of the
former. Man's distinction lies in the fact that he was
made like God. We, therefore, ask, in what respects is
he like God? In what does the divine image consist?
There are three methods by which we may answer this
question — by examining the later biblical teachings re
specting the nature of man, by comparing him with the
animal and determining the points in which they differ,
and by comparing him with God and thus discovering
the respects in which they agree. These three methods
of approach will all lead us to the same result. Let us
examine them in reverse order.
Our argument for the divine existence was based upon
the truth that man is like God. We looked into our own
souls, and taking their highest qualities and powers, freed
them in our thought from all the imperfection which be
longs to our finite and sinful natures, and ascribed them to
the Infinite Being. " The descent into our own souls is
the ascent to God." Now we have to reverse the process.
We have by the aid of revelation reached a much higher
conception of God than natural theology could give us.
Those qualities and powers in which we resemble God are
His image in us. Of course we are not like Him in His
infinitude. Neither are we like Him in His holiness,
though the first man before the fall was like Him in this
respect in a sense in which we cannot be. Nor are we like

MAN 289
Him in possessing a bodily or animal nature. The like
ness lies in the fact that both God and man are spirits,
possessing the attributes of personality, freedom, ration
ality, moral powers, and the capacity of love. Man is
like God a personal being. He knows himself as an I,
the permanent, indivisible subject of all his powers and
activities. His consciousness is semiconsciousness. He is
a rational being, who knows what he is and where he is,
who looks before and after, who knows the Infinite and
Eternal, who has an intuitive knowledge of the true, the
beautiful, and the good. He is a free being, who pos
sesses that sovereign capacity, the power of choice. And
when I speak of freedom, I do not mean what the theo
logical and philosophical determinists of our time call by
that name, that spontaneity which man possesses in com
mon with the animal. I mean freedom in the true sense
of the word, the ability to choose between opposite
courses, the power by which character is formed and
whieh, when rightly used, can bring men into that higher
freedom which consists in the perfect conformity of the
will to the law of right, " the liberty of the sons of God."
Man also is a moral being. As free he is under law,
and this law, which is the expression of the holy nature of
God, belongs to his own nature in its true idea. God and
man have the same chief end, the establishment of the di
vine kingdom. Conscience is the never-failing witness of
the divine law and of the righteous authority of Him iu
whose image we have been made. Lastly, man is like
God in that he is capable of those relations and that atti
tude of will which constitute love. As God in His in
most nature is love, so man is love, in ideal if not in ac
tuality. Love is consonant to his nature. Only when he
loves God with all his heart and his neighbor like himself,
does he attain the completeness of the divine image. It
is in this sense that man is a religions being. He is made
for love to God and that love of God which is bestowed
19

290 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
upon all who stand in fellowship and communion with
Him. We reach the same result when we examine the
characteristics in which man differs from the animal.
Man is personal ; the animal is impersonal. Man has
self-consciousnesss ; the animal has consciousness, but does
not know itself as a self. Man is rational ; the brute is
irrational, as the Bible says, " it has no understanding "
(Ps. xxxii. 9). Man is free, impulses and motives influence
him, but do not control him ; the animal is under neces
sity, its impulses are its masters. Man is a moral being,
under law which he has power to obey or disobey ; the
animal is not moral, he knows nothing of the law of his
being, God works in it to will and to do of His good
pleasure, but it has no power to work out its destiny by a
free and conscious co-operation with God. Man is cap
able of love ; the animal has natural affections which are
prophetic of the higher exercises of man, but which are
quite distinct from love. Man is a religious being ; the
animal stands in no conscious relation to God.
The third method of determining the nature of the
divine image in man is to examine the scriptural teach
ings respecting his peculiar characteristics. We must
make allowance here for the fact that the Bible deals
chiefly with man as fallen. But we shall have no
trouble in recognizing the great outlines of Biblical doc
trine on this subject. The Bible teaches that man is a
spirit, a personal being, rational, free, moral, made for
love. These are the attributes of humanity which make
him the proper object of God's redemptive grace, and
which are to attain their ideal completeness in the heavenly
state. The conception of man which is most prominent
in the Scriptures, and which most truly indicates his like
ness to God, is that expressed by the term sonship. God
is the Father of all men, the heavenly Father (Matt. chh.
v.-vii.). Paul, preaching to the heathen Athenians, ap-

MAN 291
propriates the words of the Greek poet Aratus, " We
are also his offspring " (Acts xvii. 29). Luke calls Adam
the " son of God " (iii. 38). The common designation of
the Christian, who by God's grace has begun to realize in
himself the true idea of manhood, is a son or child of
God. Now, sonship, like the image, implies likeness to
God. The son is of the same nature with his parent,
possessed of the same powers, following the same aims.
He is under the parent's law, which is the common law of
the household. He stands in intercourse and communion
with his father. His true relation to the parent is one of
love, the love of both. It is one thing to be a worh of
God, like the animal or the material thing ; it is very dif
ferent to be a son of God.
We have thus come along these three lines of approach
to the same result. The image of God in man, by which
he is fitted for his chief end, consists in his spiritual be
ing, his free rational and moral personality, created in
love and for love.
III. In what has been said thus far, I have implied
that man continues even in his fallen state to possess the
divine image. But it is time that I should to some ex
tent qualify my statements. Upon this point there is a
wide divergence among the theologians. Some, like
the Greek and Latin Fathers, have distinguished between
the image and the likeness, the former consisting in man's
rational nature and the latter in his moral perfection ;
the likeness has been lost by the Fall and only the image
retained. Others, like our New England theologians,
have held that the image consisted in the moral perfection
and that sin has destroyed it. The truer statement is
that the image has been retained, though marred and de
faced by sin. But before this question can be discussed,
we must consider another more fundamental matter. The
image of God in man differs from its archetype in God in
that it is at first an image only partially realized. The

292 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
image is a germ which is capable of development and
which God meant should develop. There is a natural
basis and the potency and promise of a complete achieve
ment. The divine nature is eternally perfect. There is
no development in God. His nature and His character
are eternally the same. Not so man. The divine image
given him at the start is an outline which he is to fill up.
He is made for growth. He is to form his own char
acter. He is to build upon the basis of his natural like
ness to God a spiritual likeness, wrought out by his own
free will through the freely imparted grace of God. His
natural sonship is to become by his own free choice and
the power of God's Spirit a holy spiritual sonship. We
must therefore distinguish between the image as original
endowment and the image as destination. The two are
not distinct and separable. They are different aspects of
the same organism, different stages in its growth.
Now, we cannot doubt that man has retained the divine
image since the Fall. The Bible distinctly so declares
(Gen. v. 1, 3, ix. 6 ; 1 Cor. xi. 7 ; James iii. 9). Son-
ship, which is equivalent to the image, remains, and God
is the heavenly Father even after men have ceased to
recognize Him as such. Nevertheless sin has come in to
disturb the development of the image. Instead of becom
ing like to God in the free directions of their wills to His
service, men have turned from Him into self-service.
Accordingly, not only has the growth been checked and
perverted, but the natural basis of the growth has been
affected. Man possesses the same godlike nature and
powers which God gave him at first, but they do not re
tain their primitive efficiency. There is, therefore, a
true sense in which we must say that the divine image in
us has been defaced. For this reason there is need of re
demption, and redemption will accomplish a twofold
work : it will restore the image to its pristine beauty and
perfectness, and carry forward its development to its com-

MAN 293
pletion. This is what is implied in those New Testa
ment passages which represent it as the work of God in
Christ to form the divine image in us. There is a "new
man which after God has been created in righteousness
and holiness of truth " Eph. iv. 24). It is this new man,
" which is being renewed unto knowledge after the image
of him that created him" (Col. iii. 10).
IV. I pass to speak of the relation in which Christ
stands to the divine image in man. Attention has already
been called to the fact that man was made for Christ, the
King of the divine kingdom, the Redeemer of mankind.
But man was not only made for Christ; he was made by
him. The eternal Logos, who became incarnate, was the
Creator of man, as he was the Creator of the world.
Moreover, he was in his eternal Sonship in a peculiar
sense the archetype of man. The Logos is in his infinite
and eternal Person the image of God. Paul says that he
is " the image of the invisible God " (Col. i. 15). In the
Epistle to the Hebrews we are told that he is the very
image of God's substance (i. 3). The created image of
God in man is the finite reproduction of the uncreated
image of God in the Logos. That Sonship which belongs
to the inmost essence of the Deity is mirrored in the son-
ship which belongs to the nature of man, and which
reaches its full realization in redemption.
But even thus we do not exhaust the relation of Christ
to the divine image in man. The Godman in his human
ity is called in the New Testament the image of God (2
Cor. iv. 4). He could say to his disciples, " He that hath
seen me hath seen the Father " (John xiv. 9). In the in
carnation the uncreated image and the created image met
in perfect union, as perfect seal and perfect impression.
The eternal Son wrought out in humanity a perfect hu
man sonship, so that the Christ is God's Son both in his
divinity and his humanity. The divine image in the hu
man Christ was perfect in its beginnings, as in Adam, and

294 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
it was made perfect in the completeness of a holy devel
opment. Accordingly, in Christ we have the ideal of hu
manity realized in all its fulness. He is the one perfect
specimen of the human race. He has shown us what man
can be, and what by God's grace he is yet to be. Sin has
made all other men imperfect specimens of humanity.
Were it not for Jesus Christ we might well despair of
anything better. But the Second Adam has proved to
us that our ideal is not a mere imagination. Thus he is
our pattern. Thus the blessed hope which redemption
sets before us is that we shall be conformed to the image
of Christ, and just so far as redemption does its work in
us, this hope is realized. " Whom he foreknew, he also
foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son,
that he might be the firstborn among many brethren"
(Rom. viii. 29). " As we have borne the image of the
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly " (1
Cor. xv. 49). " We know that when he shall appear, we
shall be like him " (1 John iii. 2). This future conforma
tion to the image of Christ is anticipated by God in His
justification of the sinner. He sees in hirn not the dis
torted image of God which sin has so sadly marred, but
the perfect image of the Saviour with whom he is united
by faith, that image which is finally to be realized in all
its completeness, and for the sake of the Saviour and his
work accepts him in the fullest sense as His child.
V. There are several important questions touching the
relation of theology to philosophy and physical science,
which are brought to our notice by the doctrine we are
discussing, and which it would not be right to pass in en
tire silence.
1. The first concerns the elements of which man is com
posed. Does revelation give any sanction to materialism ?
and if not, does it tell us whether man's nature is twofold
or threefold, a dichotomy or a trichotomy ? Now, there is
no reason to believe that the Bible was intended to teach

MAN 295
philosophy and science. We have seen this to be true
when dealing with the subject of the world's creation,
and there is no ground for introducing another principle
here. The attempt to extract from the scriptures an in
spired psychology is mere folly. The conceptions of hu
man nature found in the Bible are the popular conceptions
of the various ages in which the scriptural books were
written. Doubtless a new content was put into these con
ceptions, so far as the spiritual truth which revelation has
to teach came into contact with them. But more than
this we cannot expect. Nevertheless, it is not too much
to say that the scriptural doctrine of man excludes cer
tain philosophical doctrines. As between the materialistic
and spiritualistic theories of man, the Bible is far from
being neutral. It unequivocally teaches the existence of ,
a higher, spiritual principle in man. He is not merely
a material being, but a being in whom a higher life is
present. In his ideal, man is a unity, body and spirit in
closest union. Death, the consequence of sin, breaks this
unity for the time ; but in the resurrection it is to be re
stored. Between death and the resurrection the spirit is
separated from the body. There is a doctrine which has
in late years acquired some prevalence in the Christian
church, and which is based upon a materialistic philosophy.
I refer to the theory of " conditional immortality," which
in the form commonly held asserts the non-existence of
the soul between death and the judgment. It finds a
certain support in the teachings of some of the Old Testa
ment writers, though a careful study of the passages shows
that it is without satisfactory foundation. It gains a
specious appearance of truth by the device of interpreting
the New Testament according to the principles and defi
nitions which it claims to find in the Old. But its best
refutation is to be found in the violence which it does to
all sober and honest exegesis. I shall speak of this theory
again when we come to eschatology. It has served the

296 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
one good purpose of showing that materialism is irrecon
cilable with the teachings of revelation. Indeed, consis
tently carried out, it leads to the subversion of revelation
itself and the denial of the divine existence.
The question respecting the number of constituent ele
ments in man is more difficult, but far less important.
The Bible terms are used with great latitude. Such
words as body, flesh, soul, heart, spirit have a well-recog
nized central core of meaning, but shade off into an in
definite penumbra of different significations. The most
that can be claimed by the trichotomists, who hold to the
threefold division of human nature, namely, into body,
soul, and spirit, is that there is in the Bible a general
usus loquendi favoring their view. Their theory breaks
down the moment they attempt to prove a uniform and
invariable usage in the Bible. Nothing more seems to be
taught than the naive conception of man as consisting of
a body or animal nature animated by a higher spiritual
principle. The one man may be designated from either
side of his being, as flesh or spirit, or with reference to
the union of the two, as soul. In the New Testament
somewhat sharper distinctions are drawn, and there is an
approximation to our distinction between body and soul
as two distinct and separable entities ; but even here the
language is popular and not philosophical.
2. What, now, shall we say of the relation of the theory
of evolution to the scriptural doctrine of man ? The
Bible gives a detailed account of man's creation ; the
theory of evolution denies creation and puts derivation by
descent through the operation of natural selection in its
stead. The Bible attributes to man a nature and powers
different from those of the animal, not only in degree but
in kind ; evolution explains man's nature and powers as
developed from those of the animal. The Bible excludes
materialism ; the theory of evolution seems to require it.
Now, with all liberality toward the doctrine of evolution —

MAN 297
and I have enough to believe that it contains a vast
amount of truth and is applicable to extensive tracts of
nature — I do not think that that form of it which finds in
natural selection the full explanation of man is consistent
with the teachings of the Bible. I may be wrong in this
statement, and would speak modestly upon the subject. I
should not wish to stake the truth of Christianity upon
the decision one way or another of a point like this. But
it does seem to me that the Bible, both in the accounts of
man's creation and in the later teachings respecting man's
nature, attributes to him something which differs heaven-
wide from anything we find in nature, and the origin of
which cannot be explained by the operation of the forces
and laws in the spheres below man. Personality, self-
consciousness, rationality, freedom, conscience, the re
ligious nature, have some prophetic anticipations in the
lower orders, but they are in principle new. There is a
gap between the highest animal and the lowest man
which the theory of evolution is utterly incapable of
bridging over.
But there is a more modest application of evolution to
man with respect to which the theologian's attitude is
very different. It is that which is made by such men
as Wallace, who discovered the law of natural selection
contemporaneously with Darwin, by Mivart, the Roman
Catholic scientist, and by our own distinguished country
man, Professor Dana. According to this view, man's
lower nature is the result of evolution by descent from
the animals, but his higher spiritual principle is due to
a creative act of God, supplementing the evolution by
second causes. This form of the theory may be true or
untrue, but there is nothing in the Bible to contradict it.
Indeed, the account of the creation in the second chap
ter of Genesis almost seems framed to admit it : " God
made man out of the dust of the ground " — there is the
evolution, and the divine making is by providence rather

298 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
than by creation. " And breathed into his nostrils the
breath of life"— there is the creative act, the introduction
of the higher principle. "And man became a living
soul "—there is the starting-point for the progress of the
race. But I will not say that the writer of this wonder
ful story meant to leave the way open for any theory of
science ; he had higher ends in view. All that need be
said is, that the way was left open. It is a matter of
small importance to us whether or not we are derived on
our lower side from the animals. However that may be,
we belong on that side to nature. We share one great de
partment of our being with the animals, the vegetables,
and the inorganic world. We are dependent for our
bodily, and so indirectly for our spiritual, life upon the
world below. Every day I am doing what I can, as I eat
my necessary food, to build up my body out of the flesh
of animals and the tissues of vegetables ; and why should I
be so nice as to shrink from the thought that my ances
tor a thousand times removed was, as Darwin has de
scribed him, " a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail
and pointed ears, probably arboreal in its habits, and
au inhabitant of the Old World ? " (" Descent of Man,"
vol. ii., p. 372). There is nothing degrading to us in such
a connection with the animal world. The lower orders
are as God made them, good for their purpose and free
from moral evil. All that man has to be ashamed of is
his own sin and its consequences. In view of this he
might well hide his face before God's unfallen creatures,
however humble iu the scale of being. When he shall
be redeemed, he will be glad to own his relationship to
the dumb creatures which God has given him to rule
over, and to be their mouth-piece to praise the great.
Father who has made them and him.
3. Another interesting, and in many respects important,
question relates to the common origin of man. The ac
counts of creation in Genesis seem to teach that the race

MAN 299
has descended from a single pair. There are also a num
ber of passages occurring later on in the Bible, which
teach the same view (Gen. vi. 7, 8, vii. 21, viii. 1 seq. ; Acts
xvii. 26). The scriptural doctrines of the universal sinful
ness of man and of redemption by Christ are based upon
the assumption of the common origin of the human race.
This is the teaching of Paul in the epistles to the Romans
and the Corinthians, in which he contrasts the first and
the second Adams (Rom. v. 12 seq.; 1 Cor. xv. 22). Here
again we should be cautious about resting the weight of
the question respecting the truth of revelation upon the
solution of such a problem as this. Christian men, like
Agassiz, have maintained the plural origin of mankind,
and yet have held to all the essential truths of the script
ural system. At the present time, however, there can
scarcely be said to be a conflict upon this point. Modern
science agrees with the Bible in teaching the common ori
gin of the race. Anatomy and physiology teach the
specific unity of man. Ethnology points to one original
fountain-head, probably in Central Asia, from which all
the streams of human emigration have flowed. The sci
ence of religion discloses common traditions and mytholo
gies. The science of language exhibits a convergence to
ward a common center of the various languages of man
kind. Finally, the theory of evolution speaks through
Professor Huxley in favor of the monogenistic view : " I
am one of those," he says, " who believe that at present
there is no evidence whatever for saying that mankind
sprang originally from any more than a single pair"
(" Origin of Species," Lecture V.).
4. Finally, the question arises respecting the origin of
the individual soul. Three theories have been held. The
first, and the one which has had the widest currency, is
that which ascribes each soul to a distinct creative act of
God. Another, which bears the name of Traducianism,
maintains that the germ of the soul is passed from parent

300 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
to child at the same time with the germ of the body,
and after a similar manner. Still another view, which
was held by Origen in the third century and can count a
few distinguished modern theologians in its favor, claims
for the soul a pre-existent state in another world before it
entered upon the experiences of this life ; according to it,
" Our birth is but a sleep and a forgetting."
But revelation is wisely silent upon this subject. We
are at perfect liberty, so far as its teachings are concerned,
to hold whichever of the three theories most commends
itself to our reason. Probably the majority of Christians
will always favor some form of the first-mentioned view,
or Creationism, as it is commonly called. Even though
they may be willing to admit that there is no such creative
activity as produced the first'man, still they will prefer to
believe that the divine power is active in the origin of
each new spirit in a more special way than when other
things come into existence. We cannot but believe that
there is in each human being something altogether new,
that as each man's life is " a plan of God," so each man
himself possesses a special divine endowment springing
from a special divine originative act, which we can only
designate by the term creative.
As man is the highest and noblest of earthly creatures,
so his creation fitly finishes the symphony of creation,
"the diapason closing full in man." What honor God
has bestowed upon him and what love ! What meaning
there is in those words, " God so loved the world that he
gave his only-begotten Son " (John iii. 16).
Thus far, while recognizing the existence of sin, we
have dwelt chiefly upon the ideal aspects of man's nature.
In our next chapter we shall pass to the consideration of
that abuse of freedom which has wrought such havoc in
God's fair creation.

XVII.
THE NATURE AND GUILT OF SIN
The guiding principle of our discussions thus far has
been the doctrine of the redemptive kingdom of God.
This doctrine, as we have had repeated occasion to observe,
implies the existence of sin in the world. God was not
surprised by the entrance of sin ; it was not forced against
His will into the sphere of His moral government. He
intentionally permitted it, because He meant to turn it
against itself and make it subservient to His grace. We
have now reached the point where we must give especial
attention to this subject of sin, and we shall still find in
the doctrine of the redemptive kingdom the clew to guide
us through its intricacies. I am anxious that we should
avoid the mistake, into which theologians have too often
fallen, of treating sin merely in its philosophical aspects
or as a fact of natural theology. There is no truth in the
theological system which has a more distinctively Christian
character. It finds no adequate expression outside of
Christianity. Sin has darkened the soul in nothing more
than in the knowledge of itself. The fact, it is true, is
patent. All religions, all philosophies recognize the ex
istence of moral evil. But we seek to know something
more of it than the mere fact of its existence, and it is not
until we view it in the light which the Christian revelation
has thrown upon it and see its relation to God's kingdom,
that we discover its true nature and meaning.
I. Standing, then, upon the vantage-ground of the re
demptive revelation, we ask, What is sin ? The answer

302 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
may be given in few words. It is the deviation of maris
will from his chief end. In the last chapter we had the
subject of the chief end brought clearly before us. The
great end of God's purpose and actions is the final object
of man's existence. He was made for the kingdom of
God. He fulfils the divine intention in creating him
when he " seeks first the kingdom o'f God and his
righteousness." It is his duty as a rational being, pos
sessed of moral knowledge and freedom, to set this chief
end always before him and to pursue it constantly and un-
deviatingly. The way to the attainment of his proper end
is a straight path turning neither to the right nor to the
left. Now, so far as the human will does not follow this
path, so far as it turns to either side in its choices and
volitions, it sins. It is interesting to notice that the He
brew word most frequently employed in the Old Testa
ment to convey the idea of sin, and its Greek counterpart
in the New Testament, both signify to miss the mark ; sin
is wrong aiming of the choice and a wrong direction of
the act.
This general definition of sin may be further explained,
if we consider the subject from two different points of
view, negatively and positively, in what it is not and what
it is.Viewed negatively, sin is disobedience to the divine
will. This is essentially the same as the definition already
given. For the kingdom of God is realized wherever the
divine will is accomplished. Our Saviour has taught us
to pray, " Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth
as it is in heaven " (Matt. vi. 10). But when God's will
is disobeyed, the kingdom is hindered ; the sinner is not a
filial subject of the King, but a rebel. It is the same
thing when we say, in the words of the Assembly's Cate
chism, that " Sin is any want of conformity unto, or trans
gression of, the law of God." The law is the expression
of the divine will as the rule of human conduct. In it

THE NATURE AND GUILT OF SIN 303
God's will lays its righteous demands upon man's will.
The chief end and the means by which it is to be attained
form the subject-matter of the law. Its great outlines are
written upon the heart of every man, and are witnessed by
the voice of conscience. Paul has shown in the first two
chapters of the Epistle to the Romans that even the
lieathen have this general knowledge of the law, so that
they are " without excuse " in their sin. But the law finds
a far fuller exposition in the redemptive revelation. The
first efforts of revelation were directed to the deepening in
men of the sense of sin, and the divine law is taught
more and more fully from the days of Moses onward, till
we reach the complete spiritual statement of it in the Ser
mon on the Mount. The law is the rule by which we
measure the moral state of man. Whatever does not con
form to it, whatever in any way transgresses it, is sin.
But we must be careful lest this definition of sin lead
us into inadequate, and so false, conceptions of its nature.
The term law is employed by many in such a sense as
to give a very different meaning to it from that which
the Bible teaches. It is used impersonally, to designate
merely the inherent principle of human conduct. As a
force, or a material substance, or an organism, have each
their law, that is, their established mode of operation, so
has man. Now, let me not be misunderstood. I do not
deny that the term law may be rightly used in this sense,
or that any deviation from this law is sin. What I affirm
is, that the complete meaning of the term will carry us
far deeper. Our Saviour, basing his teachings upon the
precepts of the Old Testament, summed up the law in the
two great commandments, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy
God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all
thy mind," and " Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself "
(Matt. xxii. 37-39). But this exposition of the law car
ries us above the commandment to the personal God who
commands and reveals to ns the fact that our true relation

304 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
to Him is one of love, that is, one of -fellowship and com
munion, of love on His side, as well as obedience and love
on ours.' He has made God known to us as our Father,
who has crowned us with loving kindness and tender mer
cies. Moreover, he has revealed to us the divine grace in
redemption : " God so loved the world that he gave his
oniy-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth on him
should not perish but have eternal life " (John iii. 16). It
is this Father, this God of grace, yea, even it is this Sav
iour himself, who speaks to us in the law, and who reveals
His will by His Spirit and providence, calling us to spe
cial services in His kingdom. Here is a present God, to
whom that redemptive kingdom which is our chief end is
dear above all things, who is bound to us by tenderer ties
than our dearest earthly friend. Now, sin is in its deepest
meaning the rejection of this God. It is disobedience to
our Father, alienation from Him, rejection of that son-
ship which is ours by birthright. It involves a rupture of
the state of communion with God. It means going out of
the Father's house and into the far country. In the case
of those who know Christ and the grace of redemption
which has come to us through him, it means the rejection
of this utmost manifestation of love and mercy. In a
word, it means all that wrong and wretchedness which
Jesus has pictured in that most wonderful of all stories,
the parable of the Prodigal Son. I do not mean that one
need go so far as the Prodigal did in order to become a
sinner. What I assert is that in every sin, be it small or
great, this element is present, this rejection of the Father's
love, this disobedience to the Father's will. It may even
go so far as to become that enmity to God, of which the
Apostle speaks in the eighth chapter of Romans (v. 7).
So far we have looked at sin upon the negative side,
considering its opposition to the true manhood. But we
shall not understand it fully until we have also examined
its positive side. Thus considered, sin may be defined as

THE NATURE AND GUILT OF SIN 305
selfishness. We say it is positive because it does not
merely consist in a deviation of the will from the chief
end of man, but the setting of a wrong chief end. We
were made for the kingdom of God ; but it is possible for
us to usurp the place that belongs to God and put Self
upon the throne. It is our duty to love God supremely ;
but it is possible to love ourselves supremely. It is just
this that every sinner does, just in so far as he sins. He
makes himself the center around which his moral life re
volves. Instead of following the law of love, which finds
its highest blessedness in giving, he follows the law of
selfishness, which finds its highest blessedness, or thinks it
does, in taking. In saying that sin consists in selfishness,
I do not mean to say that all self-love is sin. There is a
true love of self which is not only commendable but ob
ligatory. We find it recognized in the command to love
our neighbor as ourself. But the true self-love is subor
dinate to the love of God. It views self as an instru
ment of God in the establishment of His kingdom. It
finds its own chief end in God's chief end. But selfish
ness puts the love of self before the love of God. It
seeks to attain a false independence by going outside of
the sphere of the divine kingdom. It puts God second.
Herein lies the inherent falsity of sin. It does not gain
what, it seeks, it does not find the blessedness it promises
itself. Selfishness is not really self-love ; rightly under
stood, it is self -hatred. It is a vaulting ambition which
o'erreaches itself. For man has only one chief end, and
the chief end which sin substitutes does not take its place,
but brings only disappointment and sorrow. This is why
the Bible so often calls sin folly and the sinner a fool. A
fool is a man who thinks he is getting everything when in
reality he is throwing away everything; he gains the
whole world and loses his own soul ; he is like the foolish
dog in the fable, who loses the meat from his month as he
snaps at the meat of the dog reflected in the water. In
30

306 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
all sin, be it great or little, there is this selfishness — and
this folly.
Before we leave this branch of our subject, 1 wish
briefly to refer to the light thrown upon this question of
sin by the person and life of Jesus Christ. In him we
have a perfect specimen of holy manhood, and therefore
he is the standard by which we may measure other men.
Accordingly, Christlikeness is holiness and un-Christlike-
ness is sin. Whatever in the character and life falls
short of " the measure of the stature of the fulness of
Christ " (Eph. iv. 13) is unholy. When we make the or
dinary manhood of the world about us our standard and
compare ourselves with each other, we may seem good
enough. But when we place our lives alongside of
Christ's, the case is different. There is a taint of sin in
our best deeds. Even those theologians who teach that
some Christians attain perfection in this life, hesitate to
declare that it is such a perfection as belonged to the Sav
iour. In all normal Christian experience increased knowl
edge of Christ brings a deeper sense of sin, and a more
vivid realization of its extent and power.
II. We have next to seek the essential principle of sin.
The definitions already given show us what it is. Now
we inquire concerning its source. Upon this point a
variety of theories have been held by theologians. Some
have endeavored to explain the existence of sin by a
dualistic theory of the universe. Over against the holy
God is a Principle of Evil, to which all sin is to be as
cribed. Commonly this view, which found typical ex
pression in the manicheism of the early Christian church,
is associated with a doctrine of the intrinsic evil of matter.
Sin is therefore incident to this earthly life, in which the
soul is entangled in a material body and thus for the
time separated from God, its true source and life. But
the Bible gives no countenance to such a view as this.
God is supreme in His universe. Satan, though powerful

THE NATURE AND GUILT OF SIN 307
and capable of doing great mischief, is a finite being,
created by God and wholly under His control. Matter is
not evil, but good ; it becomes evil only as it comes under
the influence of sin. Another theory ascribes sin to the
sensuous nature of man, that is, his lower or animal nat
ure, the flesh, as distinguished from the spirit. But this
explanation also is unsatisfactory. The animal nature is
good in itself. When the eternal Word became flesh
(John i. 14), and lived a perfect human life in the flesh,
he proved that there is nothing intrinsically evil in it. It
is true that the sensuous nature of man is the source of
many of his sins, but it is also true that the worst sins
emanate from the higher nature. The worst villains, the
Iagos for example, are free from the sins of the flesh. It
is true, too, that Paul ascribes inherent sinfulness to the
flesh ; but Paul uses the term not to designate the lower
nature of man as it is in itself, but the whole man in so
far as he is under the influence of sin. It is not the flesh
which is the cause of sin, but sin which has corrupted the
flesh, as it has corrupted the whole man. Still another
explanation finds the essential principle of sin in the
finiteness of man. This view has taken various forms.
At present it finds expression in the popular evolutionary
philosophy — which, let me say, as I have done before, is
always to be carefully distinguished from the more modest
scientific theory of evolution. According to this view,
sin is a necessary stage in human development. It is
partially evolved conduct. It belongs to a period when
man is only partially conformed to his environment.
There is in it nothing intrinsically evil. It will more and
more disappear as the process of evolution goes on.
" Paul," said a witty English clergyman (Dr. Raleigh),
"cried out in his deep consciousness of sin, 'O wretched
man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of
this death ! ' Our modern philosophers, with their new
ethics, exclaim, boastfully, ' O progressive creature that I

308 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
am, who shall help me to evolve myself ! ' " But this
theory is as incompetent as the other to furnish us with
the real principle of sin. Sin is not normal but abnormal.
It indicates not progress but retrogression. The natural
man becomes no holier in the progress of evolution. Sin
becomes in many respects worse as the world grows older.
The world as a whole is doubtless far better than it was a
thousand years ago, but the civilized sinner who has fallen
heir to all the benefits of human evolution is worse than
the savage sinner.
There is one explanation, and only one, of the origin of
sin which is satisfactory. It is that which ascribes it to
the abuse of human freedom. Its essential principle is to
be found in the perversion of one of God's best gifts.
In order that we may understand what this means, let
us look more carefully at this subject of freedom. We use
the term in several different senses. Thus we say a man
is free when no constraint is laid upon him from without.
This is what is called freedom of action It is the kind of
freedom of which the slave is deprived and for which he
sighs, the freedom for which the prisoner longs, the liberty
which the patriot dies to defend. Then there is what is
called " real freedom," or, as the Bible calls it, " the free
dom of the sons of God." This consists in holiness, in
conformity to our chief end. The Christian is free, he-
cause he is going, forward in the path in which he was
made to move, while the sinner is a slave because he is
subverting his true end and has brought conflict and con
fusion into his moral life by leaving the path for which
he was destined. But when we speak of sin as originating
in the abuse of freedom, we use the term in neither of
these senses. We mean by it that power of choice which
is the characteristic of man as a rational and moral being,
and in virtue of which he is able to determine to which of
the various ends or objects of action which are presented
to him he will direct his energies. The brute is moved

THE NATURE AND GUILT OF SIN 309
by impulses operating from behind. He has no choice in
the true sense of the word. But man sees before him the
ends of action. He understands their nature. He has
his bearings in the universe, and, as we say, "knows what
he is about." There are impulses, in him as in the animal,
which impel him toward certain ends, but he is able to
hold them in check while he deliberates intelligently upon
the nature of these ends and chooses between them. The
brute is governed by his impulses ; the man governs his
impulses, or has the power to do it.
In motives which impel men toward action there is an
element of impulse, but it is transformed by the presence
of a higher rational element. We are not compelled by
motives. It is indeed true that no rational action is pos
sible without motives, but the choice from which the ac
tion proceeds is made in view of motives and on the ground
of them, but not because of them. The efficient cause of
choice is not the motive but the free man himself. De
terminism denies this. It says that the motives are the
efficient causes of action. The difference between the man
and the brute, according to the determinist, is that the
man has reason and conscience while the brute has neither,
but otherwise their action is the same. Determinism uses
the word freedom, but means by it merely freedom of
action, not freedom of choice. Jonathan Edwards asks,
whether it is not freedom enough to be able to do as we
please ? Dr. Nathaniel Taylor, who taught the freedom
of the will in the full meaning of the term, replied, No —
in order to be free, a man must be able not only to do as
he pleases but to do as he doesn't please. The beast does
as he pleases. But the beast's spontaneity is not freedom.
I emphasize this point, because in our day 'the drift of
philosophical and scientific thought is toward determin
ism, and there are evidences that the tendency in theology,
which has for the last generation been in the other direc
tion, is beginning to follow the popular current. It is a

310 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
significant and not altogether edifying circumstance that
we hear theologians appealing to Mill and Spencer in sup
port of a doctrine of freedom, which is really a doctrine of
necessity, paltering with us in a double sense, while scien
tific necessitarians like Professor Huxley piously aver that
they are orthodox followers of Jonathan Edwards. And
yet I do not hesitate to affirm that upon the maintenance
of the doctrine of man's true freedom depend some of the
most precious truths of ethics and theology. Without
freedom there can be no such thing as responsibility, holi
ness, sin, guilt,agrace, punishment. I am not sure that I
might not go further and affirm that the rational proof of
the divine existence is impossible, except as we reason
from a finite personality, and therefore, from a free per
sonality (for there can be no such thing as personality
without freedom) to an Infinite Personality.
We are free. But we have been made so with a pur
pose. Man has his law as well as the brute. But while
the brute follows his law with necessity, moved by the
vis a tergo of irrational impulse, man has been so consti
tuted that he is only under obligation to follow his law,
not under necessity. He is to do it rationally and freely,
without constraint, from love to the good and God.
Herein consists the pre-eminence and excellency of man,
and the wisdom, power, and love of God are manifest in
the creation of such a being. God would have some
creatures in His universe who would serve Him freely.
But let the fact be emphasized that man was made free
that he might use his freedom aright. He was made for
the kingdom of God. Nevertheless, this freedom to attain
his chief end, to love and serve God, from the nature of the
case involved a power to the contrary. Instead of using
his power of choice aright, as God intended he should,
man may use it wrongly. Instead of employing his free
dom to choose in such a way as to attain that real free
dom which is the liberty of the sons of God, he can so

THE NATURE AND GUILT OF SIN 311
use it as to sell himself into the slavery of sin. Now in
this abuse of freedom, this using of it for wrong and self
ish ends, lies the essential principle of sin. It is the per
version of a power given for good ends. We need go no
farther than the will of man to explain it. I shall show
hereafter that our inherited tendencies and our sinful en
vironment play their part in seducing the will to sin, but
the real causality lies in the will itself, or rather in the
man who exercises the will, and the true explanation of
the sin is to be found in his wrong choice. Before leaving
this branch of our subject, let me say that in asserting
that God gave man his freedom that he might use it to
attain his chief end, I have uttered nothing inconsistent
with the fact that God knew that men would sin and or
dained to permit them to sin. So far as sin has a place in
the divine plan, it is in its true nature as wholly due to
man and not at all to God. God has made man to be
good, and that he is not good is his own fault. In thus
speaking of man's destination, we speak of man as he
ought to be. The divine plan includes not only what
ought to be, but what is.
III. A distinction is commonly and justly made by the
ologians between sin as a permanent state of the will and
the manifestation of that state in individual acts of trans
gression. It is to the latter that the term " actual sin " is
applied, designating not real sin as opposed to imaginary
sins, but the sin of act as opposed to the state of sin from
which it proceeds. To properly appreciate this distinc
tion, we must enter somewhat more deeply than we have
done into the subject of the will and its freedom. There
are two different functions of the will to which the
psychologist calls our attention, the one choice, the other
volition. In choice we select one of the various objects
or ends of action as that toward which we will direct our
energies. In volition we put forth energy for the attain
ment of the chosen end. The choice of itself brings

312 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
nothing to pass ; it belongs purely to the soul. The voli
tion is what brings to pass, and it has the power to pro
duce effects beyond the soul. I choose to sing a hymn,
but I do not sing until I have put forth a volition, which
in some mysterious way sets the machinery of the brain
and nerves and the muscles of the vocal apparatus in oper
ation. Now freedom belongs primarily and directly to
the region of choice. Volition may be abortive, as in the
case of the paralytic or the prisoner who is under out
ward constraint, but the choice is free and no constraint of
body or other outward power can affect it. Yet choice
has its limitations and its laws. The popular idea of free
dom is that it is an ability to choose at any moment in
any way. But this is far from being the fact. Our full
freedom is exercised in only a comparatively few cases of
choice, while in the common choices that we are com
pelled daily and momently to make, we exercise only a
modicum of freedom.
In order to bring this fact before us let us avail
ourselves of a distinction current among philosophers,
between ultimate, subordinate, and supreme ends of ac
tion, and the choices which correspond to them. An ul
timate end is one that is in some sense an end in itself ;
it is one that dominates an extensive department of our
lives, as, for example, the profession or business a man
pursues is an ultimate end of his action. A subordinate
end is one that is a means to an ulterior or ultimate end,
as, for example, a journey to a distance, which a man of
business has in contemplation, is an end subordinate to the
great end which his business furnishes. A supreme end
is the highest ultimate end. In strictness there is only
one supreme end, the chief end of man, which is the king
dom of God ; but, as we have seen, a man may make him
self his supreme end. Now our choices correspond to
these ends and vary accordingly. As the ultimate ends of
life are comparatively few, so our ultimate choices are

THE NATURE AND GUILT OF SIN 313
few. The great majority of our choices are concerned with
subordinate ends. The supreme choice is narrowed down
to the one issue, God or Self. Freedom is exercised chief
ly in our ultimate choices, and especially in the supreme
choice. It is the peculiarity of these choices that while
they may be made in a moment, they extend over long
periods, the supreme choice being a choice for eternity.
They are what we call permanent choices. They begin as
acts of choice, but they are maintained as states of choice.
A man chooses a profession. It is a choice for life. He
remains, so long as he pursues the profession, in a perma
nent state of choice. In this state he is not only free, but
it is the highest exercise of freedom. Now all the daily
choices which this man makes with respect to things in
any way connected with his profession are subordinate to
this main choice, which is always present. You go to one
man and say, " Come with me ; I want to show you a fos
sil which has just been found in a quarry a couple of miles
away." He answers, "No, I cannot; I am too busy."
Yon go to another with the same invitation, and he says,
" Wait till I get my coat and hat, and I'll be with you."
What is the difference ? The first man was a lawyer, his
permanent choice reaches out to the great ends of his pro
fession. He was free in choosing not to go with you, yet
the permanent choice which governs his life had far more
to do with his answer than the momentary choice. The
other man was a geologist. He was free to stay at home,
but the permanent choice which governs him was in line
with your invitation. Under other circumstances the law
yer might have gone and the geologist have stayed at
home, but it is easy to see that the choices of the moment
were subordinate to their ultimate and permanent choices.
To the region of ultimate choices belongs character.
When a man makes an ultimate choice, he makes a char
acter. That is to say, he introduces an element of fixed
ness into his life. Freedom is the very opposite of li-

314 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
cense. The man who has no ultimate choices which abide
permanently with him is not free. It is the caprice of the
child which manifests itself in a mere snarl of contradic
tory choices and acts. We are able to live in society be
cause men have such permanent and abiding choices, and
we can count with a fair degree of certainty upon their
acts. Character in the highest sense comes when a man
has made the supreme choice of the kingdom of God,
when his freedom is permanently enlisted in the service of
the Father and His Son Jesus Christ. You can count
upon such a man. You know that when temptations come
to him he is certain not to yield to them, not because he
is not free to do so, but because his permanent choice, in
which his freedom is chiefly embarked, will dominate his
subordinate choice. It would be wrong to say that the
Christian who is approached with a temptation to dis
honesty is not free when he resists it, but you must look
for his freedom chiefly in the great permanent choice
which dominates his life, not in the momentary subordi
nate choice.
But while character begins in our permanent choices, it
runs out into our habits. These belong to the sphere of
volition and outward act. Bodily actions when repeated
form a bodily habit, that is, the body tends to act in the
line thus marked out. So volitions repeated form a voli-
tionary habit. Now the repetition of volitions involved in
the continued exercise of a permanent choice and the cor
responding subordinate choices forms a habit which reacts
upon the choice itself, both the ultimate choice and the sub
ordinate choices, and strengthens them. We thus surround
ourselves with a bulwark of defence. It is also to be noted
that the habits thus formed, and which constitute the body
of character as the permanent choice constitutes its soul,
have a certain independence. Suppose the ultimate choice
to be changed — as it always can be, since it is free — then
the new choice finds itself at cross-purposes with the old

THE NATURE AND GUILT OF SIN 315
habits. These habits in such a case may even bring about
outward acts in direct opposition to the prevailing choice,
and where they do not, they form strong motives to in
fluence the man in his subordinate choices.
Now to return from this long philosophical disquisition
— all of which will have its bearing upon our future in
vestigations in theology — to the subject with which we
started, the sins of state belong to the ultimate and su
preme choices of men, while the sins of act belong to the
subordinate choices and to the volitions and habits depen
dent upon them. It is in character that our sins of state
are rooted. Let a man's ultimate choices be wrong and
we have a deep-seated and abiding condition of wrong.
Let his supreme choice be for self instead of for God and
His kingdom, and the man's whole state is wrong. The
Bible applies the term heart to the inmost condition of
the will. An evil heart is a permanent choice of self and
the world rather than of God and the good. Now the sins
of act, the momentary sins, are the expression of the sin of
state. It is because the supreme choice is wrong that the
subordinate choices are wrong, and that the volitions and
habits are wrong. " Out of the heart come forth evil
thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false
witness, railings " (Matt. xv. 19). A man is free and
therefore responsible when he commits an outward act of
sin, but we must look for the full explanation of his sin
not merely to the modicum of freedom exercised in the
choice of the moment, but to the sinful permanent choice
which governs the man's life. That is the root of all sin.
Yet it is to be noted — lest our theory should be stated so
sweepingly as to prove untrue to facts — that a man's su
preme choice may be changed, by God's grace become a
choice of the kingdom, and yet sins of act occur. In this
case, we must look rather to the deep-seated habit which
biases the man in his subordinate choices for the explana
tion of the actual sins than to the main choice which

316 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
is now good. It is only slowly that old habits of soul
and body are worked out and supplanted by the new
habit which a different choice produces. Nevertheless, in
time, what Dr. Chalmers calls " the expulsive power of a
new affection," that is, of a new choice, will prevail.
IV. We have still to look at the guilt of sin and certain
correlative ideas or facts closely connected with the con
ception of guilt.
By guilt in the deepest sense of the term we mean the
responsible authorship of sin. " Guilty or not guilty ? "
is the question with which the prisoner is addressed at the
bar of justice ; " Didst thou do that of which thou art ac
cused, and do it responsibly, or didst thou not ? " Guilt
is a personal matter. It implies that the causality of sin
is in the guilty person. It is sin imputed to him because
it is his. It also implies that the guilty person was free
and therefore responsible. It carries with it the idea of
ill-desert or unworthiness. There is also another element
in guilt, namely, exposure to the just displeasure of the one
who has been wronged by the sin, and therefore primarily
exposure to the just displeasure of God. But this second
element is dependent upon the first. The sinner is guilty
in the sense of being exposed to the divine displeasure be
cause he is guilty in the sense of being the responsible
author of the sin. In no strict sense of the word guilt can
we call a man guilty for a sin not his own ; if we some
times use such language, it is in a qualified and semi-figu
rative sense.
There are degrees of guilt in sin. This is a fact recog
nized by all theologians. As the Assembly's Catechism
says, " Some sins in themselves, and by reason of several
aggravations, are more heinous in the sight of God than
others." The Old Testament distinguishes between
" sins of infirmity," for which atonement was provided,
and "presumptuous sins," which admitted of no atone
ment (Lev. v. 10; Numb. xv. 30; Ps. xix. 12, 13).

THE NATURE AND GUILT OF SIN 317
Oar Saviour also distinguished between different degrees
of guilt (Matt. x. 15 ; xi. 22 seq. ; Luke xii. 48 ; John
xv. 22, 24 ; xix. 11). There is one sin of which the guilt
is supreme ; it is the rejection of God's redeeming grace.
For it no atonement is possible, because it involves a re
jection of atonement (Heb. vi. 4-6 ; x. 26, 27 ; 1 John
v. 16 ; 2 Pet. ii. 20 seq.). I will not enter into the question
as to whether this sin of definitive rejection of God's grace
is identical with the so-called "sin against the Holy
Ghost" (Matt. xii. 31, 32; Mark iii. 28-30; Luke xii.
10). At any rate they are alike in this, that both involve
a turning away from the divine love and mercy and so
leave nothing more for God to do. From this highest
degree of gnilt downward, there is a scale of decreasing
degrees of guilt. In every case the degree of guilt de
pends upon the amount of knowledge, and the amount of
freedom or ability to exercise freedom in choice. But all
sins involve some guilt, and even the least sin exposes
us to the just displeasure of a just and loving God, our
Father and our Friend, as well as onr Judge.
We have thus suggested to us the relation of punish
ment to sin. Guilt and punishment are correlatives.
The middle term which connects them is the divine dis
pleasure, the exposnre to which is an element in guilt, and
which is itself the root and deepest element of punish
ment. It is the reaction of God's holy nature against sin.
The sinner wrongs God, he brings disorder into the sphere
of His moral government, he separates himself from God,
he treats his loving Father with ingratitude and sets His
will at naught. The sinner is able to do this because
he is free, and God respects the freedom. He has made.
But God does not view sin with indifference. Its guilt
consists in the fact that it is sin against Him, and He
shows His sense of its guilt by His displeasure. This is
that "wrath of God," of which the Bible speaks so often,
and which Paul says, " is revealed from heaven against

318 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men " (Rom. i. 18).
God's displeasure, when it is realized in its true meaning,
is itself the direst punishment. Our true life is in God.
Our blessedness is in communion with Him. But let us be
separated from Him, let conscience witness to the divine
displeasure and show us the clouded face of our Father,
and no punishment could be greater. There is no expres
sion in the Bible which more vividly describes the extreme
of punishment than those dreadful words, " the wrath of
the Lamb." But the divine displeasure is only the root
of punishment. It displays itself in outward acts. Here
we have first those natural consequences which God has
attached to sin, and which are none the less a divine pun
ishment because they have that uniformity which belongs
to the ordinary operations of nature. Death is the most
notable and certain of these consequences, and suffering
of body and mind is the most common form in which
they are manifested. Then there are the more special
divine inflictions or judgments which are visited upon sin
through God's punitive providence.
In the background of punishment, at once natural con
sequence and divine infliction, is the suffering of the
other world, in which the soul is separated from God and
the society of the good, and left to its own dark thoughts
and deeds. Punishment is commensurate with guilt. It
is retributive, and for every sin there is a corresponding
recompense of retribution. It has been said that every
sin deserves eternal punishment ; but such an assertion
seems to me untrue, as it is certainly unscriptural, for it
reduces all sins to a common level, and makes no dif
ference between the momentary selfishness of a child and
the black treason of a Judas. Btit every sin has a pun
ishment proportioned to its guilt. The object of punish
ment is, primarily, the salvation of the sinner. The divine
love finds expression in the divine displeasure and mani
fests itself in outward punishment, that it may bring back

THE NATURE AND GUILT OF SIN 319
the wayward child to his home and his Father's heart.
Punishment in its first intent is a blessing in disguise.
But there is a limit to the divine forbearance, and when
punishment fails to fulfil its primary purpose, when the
sinner obstinately refuses to return to God, punishment
enters upon another phase and exercises another function :
it becomes God's means of nullifying the evil effects of sin
and putting the sinner in a position where he can do no
more mischief. In saying this, I do not mean to imply that
this final punishment is not retributive. All punishment
is retributive, but this is also coercive and repressive.
But the mention of the primary office of punishment,
as intended to bring the soul back to God, suggests another
fact or moral principle closely related to guilt and punish
ment. I refer to atonement. The sinner is separated
from God by his guilt and under punishment. How shall
he be brought back ? What is needed is reconciliation. It
takes two to make a quarrel, and it also takes two to make
up the quarrel. Now between man and God, as between
man and man, there can be no reconciliation without atone
ment. Some amends must be made for the wrong done,
some reparation rendered, some satisfaction given. This
opens the way for reconciliation and affords a just ground
for it. Atonement is not the same as punishment, though
the two are very closely related. Punishment is inflicted
by the one wronged, atonement is rendered by the wrong
doer. The sinner bears his punishment, he renders atone
ment. Atonement is in its deepest essence a matter of the
sinner's will, as punishment is in its deepest essence a mat
ter of the divine will. Atonement may express itself in
some outward act or gift or offering, but the real atone
ment is a spiritual offering, a sacrifice of the heart. Pun
ishment and atonement come close together when, as is
sometimes the case, the atonement consists in the patient
bearing of the punishment with full acknowledgment of
its justice. When atonement does its work, that is, when

320 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
it is accepted, the result is reconciliation, displeasure is
turned into favor. The outward effects of punishment may
still continue, but when the displeasure is gone, the root of
the punishment has been cut off and it ceases in any real
sense to be punishment. In such a case " there is no more
condemnation," but peace and blessedness. I have spoken
of this subject of atonement at this stage of our inquiries
only that I may show the sinner's attitude toward God
and his need of atonement if he is to be reconciled to
God. We shall consider hereafter his inability to render
God any adequate atonement, and still later we shall in
vestigate that central and wonderful truth of the Gospel,
the doctrine of Christ's vicarious atonement, God's way of
salvation for the sinner.
Such is sin — the anomaly of the universe, the blot upon
the creation which God made very good, the disgrace of
mankind. The more we study God's Word, and the fur
ther we advance in Christian experience, the profounder
will become our sense of the exceeding sinfulness of sin.
When men begin to make light of it, to call it by mild
names, to regard it as infirmity and to ignore its guilt,
they have entered upon a path that leads away from the
Gospel. Christianity measures the guilt and the baleful
importance of sin by the fact that God Himself became
incarnate and in the person of Jesus Christ died upon the
cross for our redemption from it. When we pray, " Thy
kingdom come," we pray that sin may cease, that sin
ners may become reconciled to God, that Satan may be
trampled under feet. What we need as Christians is to
see sin as it is, in all its awful evil, that so we may know
what Christ is and join him in his fight against it. If the
Christian's work in the world may be expressed in its pos
itive aspect as the service of God in His kingdom, it may
be expressed negatively, with equal truth, as a warfare
with Christ and all good beings as our fellow-soldiers,
against sin.

xvm.
SIN AND MAN'S RACE RELATIONS
If you wish to know whether a man is a theologian,
turn to his Greek Testament, and if it opens of its own
accord to the fifth chapter of Romans, and you find the
page worn and brown, you may safely set him down as a
devotee of the sacred science. Upon the twelfth verse
libraries have been written. It belongs to a passage
which, more than any other in the Bible, has been the
occasion of theological controversy. The interpretation
of its last word has furnished the point of divergence to
the great schools of divinity. Let us not, however, sup
pose that the controversies which have been waged about
this verse are to be measured in importance by the place
they occupy in histories of Christian doctrine. On the
contrary, while they have brought much truth to light,
and have done much to preserve precious Gospel teach
ings, they have also done much to discredit theology. In
the silence of the Bible theologians often run riot. It has
been so here. A simple fact of vast importance is taught
in this verse, and has been left without explanation. The
fact we need to hold fast, but we should respect the
reticence of revelation, and if we speculate and theorize,
we should hold our theories lightly, and with tolerance for
the theories of others, ready to confess that we know in
part and prophesy in part.
We have considered the nature of sin as it appears in
the individual. Now we have to look at it in the race
and to examine its effects upon the individual in his con
nection with the race.
21

322 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
I. The whole race is infected with sin — all men are sin
ners. To prove this from the Bible I do not need to
cite particular texts of Scripture, like Solomon's words,
" There is no man that sinneth not " (1 Kings viii. 46), or
James's, " In many things we all stumble " (iii. 2), or to
refer to those wonderful first three chapters of the Epistle
to the Romans in which Paul shows by incontestable facts
that Jews and Gentiles alike " have sinned and come short
of the glory of God " (Rom. iii. 23). For the universality
of sin is one of the postulates of the Gospel system. It is
implied in the scriptural teaching respecting the universal
need of salvation, in the Old Testament law, in the insti
tution of sacrifice, in the Jewish rite of circumcision, in
the doctrine of atonement by Christ, in the call to repent
ance, in the universal offer of the Gospel, in the ordi
nance of baptism. One man, and one only, Jesus the
Christ, has lived without sin. His holiness is the pure
white light in which every life appears dark and spotted.
There are those whom the Bible does indeed call righteous,
but a closer examination of the facts shows that, as Calvin
says (Com. on Psalm v. 12), they "are not so called on ac
count of the merit of their works, but because they aspire
after righteousness." When sometimes in a moment of
self-confidence a Christian is tempted to think that he has
passed beyond the power of sin, his presumptuous thought
is checked by the stern words of John, " If we say that
we have no sin we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not
in us " (1 John i. 8). All normal Christian experience
confirms the scriptural doctrine upon this point. Tl;e
nearer a man gets to Christ, the more he feels the power
of the Holy Spirit, the more profound becomes his reali
zation of his own sin, and the more surely does he recog
nize the same evil in all his fellow-men. Nor need we
appeal merely to the experience of the Christian; the
common consciousness of mankind affirms the universality
of sin. Heathenism, with all the imperfection of its con-

SIN AND MAN'S RACE RELATIONS 323
ception of sin, is farthest from attempting to deny that
all men are sinners. Modern literature is full of confes
sions of this sad yet incontestable fact. Listen to Lord
Byron as, in language quite as strong as that of the Bible,
he teaches this doctrine :
" How beautiful is all this visible world !
How glorious in its action and itself !
But we, who name ourselves its sovereigns, we,
Half dust, half deity, alike unfit
To sink or soar, with our mixed essence make
A conflict of its elements, and breathe
The breath of degradation and of pride,
Contending with low wants and lofty will
Till our mortality predominates,
And men are — what they name not to themselves,
And trust not to each other." *
The fact stands undeniable. All men, heathen and
Christian, converted and unconverted, children and adults,
are sinners.
II. How now shall this fact be explained ? If men are
free, how comes it that they all abuse their freedom and
become sinners ? Freedom explains why some are sin
ners, but not why all are sinners. Must we not look
further than men's freedom if we are to account for the
universality of sin ?
Revelation answers the question by its doctrine of the
Fall. "By one man sin entered into the world." Men
are not mere individuals, but members of a race. To
understand the universality of sin we must go back to
the beginnings of mankind.
It will not be possible at this time to enter into all the
details of the wonderful history which is narrated in the
second and third chapters of Genesis. We shall be able
•Manfred, Act i., Scene 2. See Mozley' s Lectures and other Theo
logical Papers ; Original Sin asserted by Worldly Philosophers and
Poets.

324 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
to look only at its salient points. Like the account of
creation, the narrative of the Fall has its counterpart in
the traditions which come to us through the ethnic relig
ions. But the story in Genesis is distinguished from these
venerable lieathen legends by the absence of all non-
theistic and unworthy elements. Its profound truth does
not need to be proved ; it shines in its own light. I see no
reason to doubt its historical reality. To those Christian
theologians who hold that it is "true but not actual,"
it may be conceded that the truth is presented in part in
the form of symbols — the trees of the knowledge of good
and evil, and of life, were no ordinary trees — but there is
every ground for accepting the personages described as
real, and the events as having actually taken place.
We have seen that God created man good. He came
from the divine hand a perfect being. The divine image
shone forth from him in its untarnished brightness. All
his faculties and powers were complete and in perfect
working-order. Intellectually he was fully equipped for
his life-work, not indeed the paragon of knowledge the
old theologians represented him, but in all the vigor of his
new and untried powers, a man in capacity though still a
child in acquisition. Morally also he was perfect, though
this likewise was the perfection of the starting-point, not
of the goal. He was more than innocent and less than
holy. Made good, he was also made for the good. The
different elements of his nature were perfectly balanced
and worked together in undisturbed harmony, the lower in
subordination to the higher. The bias of his nature was
toward good. He stood in communion with God, whose
love was upon him and whose Spirit dwelt in him, and to
whom his natural affection turned in glad response. He
was in the kingdom of God, so far as one can be in it by
nature. Be was in it by birthright and possession, in a
higher sense than this can be said of the little children of
later times, concerning whom our Saviour declared that

SIN AND MAN'S RACE RELATIONS 325
" Of such is the kingdom of heaven." Above all, he had
free-will and the power to attain the chief end of his
being without slip or fall. He might have been what
Jesus Christ was, perfect in all his moral development.
In order to give our first parents the opportunity to
attain moral and spiritual maturity, God subjected them
to a process of education. He made external nature a
means of training them in practical knowledge and wis
dom, and revealed Himself to them that they might learn
their true destination. But it was not mere education.
We might conceive of these first children of God be
ing subjected only to such influences as would help them
forward to their goal. But God chose another meth
od, namely, education by probation. By probation I un
derstand not merely trial, but trial under mixed influ
ences, evil as well as good. God knew the end from
the beginning when He permitted the Serpent to enter
Paradise. The problem of the permission of temptation
is in principle the same as the problem of the permission
of sin, which we have already considered. God meant to
overrule the evil for a higher good. He knew by His
eternal omniscience that man would sin, and had taken
up the Fall into His great plan, but He intended that
where sin abounded grace should much more abound
(Rom. v. 20) ; the Fall was to open the way of redemption
through Christ.
When considering the degrees of guilt, we distinguish
two kinds of sin, a sin of weakness and a sin of deliberate
presumption. The first sin was of the former kind. The
parents of the race were beguiled into transgression by
a superhuman Evil Being. The Serpent offered Adam
and Eve a real good/ but he would have them obtain it by
unlawful means. " Eritis sicut Deus!" Ye shall become
like God. To fully realize the divine image is human
duty. " Be ye holy, for I am holy " God says to us. " That
ye may be the children of your Father which is in heav-

326 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
en," says Christ. But there is a right and a wrong way
of becoming like God. The right way is by obedience
to Him, by trust and dependence upon Him. Our first
parents used their freedom to choose the wrong way of
attaining the right end. They sought to reach their chief
end by going outside of the kingdom of God. The fruit
of the tree was only the occasion of the wrong choice;
both in God's purpose and man's thought it was a means
to an end beyond itself. Adam and Eve had not much
moral knowledge, but they had enough to understand that
first law of the kingdom of God, that God's will is to be
done under all circumstances in God's way, that obedi
ence is duty and disobedience sin. In their disobedience
against the light of a consciously recognized obligation to
God lay their guilt, a guilt that cost them Paradise. Yet,
after all, it was a Fall, not a deliberate act of rebellion
against God, and it left them still capable of redemption.
There was a sin of a deeper dye, a sin that shuts out even
from divine help, which our first parents had not com
mitted. The consequences of sin followed close upon the heels
of the first transgression. By it our first parents turned
aside from the pursuit of their chief end and put them
selves outside of the kingdom of God. The relation of
communion and fellowship in which they had stood with
God was broken. The divine displeasure, which is the
root and deepest element of all punishment, rested upon
them. They were deprived of the special influences and
indwelling of the Holy Spirit, and only the more exter
nal influences of the Spirit in conscience remained. Con
science itself witnessed to God's displeasure, raising its
voice in condemnation and filling them with a shame
which led the guilty children of God to hide themselves
from the face of their heavenly Father and to try to con
ceal their nakedness from each other. The expulsion from
Paradise symbolized and turned into outward punishment

SIN AND MAN'S RACE RELATIONS 327
the separation from God and His kingdom. There were
also inward consequences. The abuse of freedom dis
turbed the machinery of man's spiritual powers, hitherto
so nicely adjusted and working in such perfect harmony.
A wrong character was formed by the wrong choice.
Self-love, which is good when subordinated to the love of
God, became selfishness. The natural bias toward God
and His kingdom became transformed into a bias toward
sin. The law of habit began to work to fix the evil char
acter which had been initiated. A corrupt nature was
formed, for which our first parents were responsible, be
cause it was the result of their own sin, and which became
an inward source of temptation to new sin. Finally, the
divine penalty, which had been threatened in case of dis
obedience, fell upon them ; they became subject to death.
Undoubtedly the death here referred to is physical death,
the separation of soul and body and the accompanying
dissolution of the body. Man was made to be a unity, as
we know from the doctrine of the resurrection. Sin has
destroyed that unity. The spirit and the body are so ad
justed that the disorder of the former brings about the
destruction of the latter. The divine threat went into im
mediate execution. The first act of transgression gave
man, in place of the glorious body which God created, such
a " mortal body " as that of which Paul speaks (Rom. vi.
12 ; viii. 11). Death is ever the great outward and visible
proof of the divine punishment of sin, and thus it becomes
the symbol of the spiritual disorder and of the eternal
consequences of that disorder. There is a spiritual death
and there is a punishment that is eternal death.
But we shall not do justice to the scriptural teachings
respecting the Fall if we stop at this point. Our first
parents were not left to themselves when they had sinned.
I have before insisted that redemption was not an after
thought. Grace began to work as soon as man sinned.
The promise of redemption through the seed of the wo-

328 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
man was given before the culprits were expelled from
Paradise. They found God outside the garden as well as
in it. Without removing the natural consequences of sin,
He granted His forgiving grace to His fallen children,
on the ground of the redemptive work of Jesus Christ.
The kingdom of God was opened to them once more, upon
different conditions indeed, but with the blessed assur
ance that the effects of the Fall should yet be overcome.
This did not make Adam's transgression less a sin or him
self less a sinner. It put him into a new relation to God,
in which, though he deserved nothing, yet there was a
possibility that by God's grace he might still have all.
III. Such was the first sin, and such its effects upon
those who committed it. But we still ask, How did this
first sin give rise to the sins of the countless millions of
mankind ? Upon this point the Bible gives us no infor
mation. The fact that there is some kind of causal con
nection between Adam's transgression and the sins of his
descendants is implied in the third chapter of Genesis. It
is hinted at in the fifteenth chapter of 1st Corinthians
(verse 22), where we are told that "in Adam all die;"
for it is the teaching of the Bible elsewhere that death
is the punishment of individual sin. The fullest treat
ment of the subject is to be found in the fifth chapter of
Romans, verses 12-21. It is indeed only incidentally
that Paul speaks of it. He is enlarging upon the great
ness of the blessings which have flowed to mankind from
the redemptive work of Christ, and enforces the truth by
a comparison between Christ and Adam, in which he
shows that the benefits which have resulted from the
obedience of the former have far exceeded the evils
which have resulted from the disobedience of the latter.
He has in mind rather the universal consequence of death
which has fallen upon all men as the effect of Adam's
transgression than the universal sin which has come from
the same source. Yet when in the 12th verse we are told

SIN AND MAN'S RACE RELATIONS 329
that " through one man sin entered the world, and death
through sin ; and so death passed unto all men, for that
all sinned," a causal connection of some sort between the
first sin and the universal sin is certainly indicated, and
this whether we understand the words, "for that all
sinned," to designate directly the transgressions of indi
vidual men or to point in a figurative sense to a participa
tion in Adam's transgression. In the latter understanding
of the clause its meaning would be analogous to that ofthe
words referred to a moment ago, " In Adam all die," which
does not mean that all men actually died when Adam died,
but that inasmuch as they all died in consequence of his
transgression they may be figuratively regarded as partici
pating in his death. This causal connection between the
first transgression and the sins of Adam's posterity is im
plied throughout the whole passage ; but it comes to the
clearest statement in the 19th verse, where we are told
that " through one man's disobedience the many," that is,
as the context shows, all mankind, " were made sinners."
But even here the nature of the connection is not stated,
and we look in vain for any explanation. There are, it is
true, certain other passages in the Bible, upon which theo
logians rely to prove their theories respecting the connec
tion, but when they are subjected to a full and impartial
exegesis they turn out to be utterly valueless so far as the
subject before us is concerned.
How shall we explain this reticence of revelation ? I do
not know. Perhaps it is better for us to respect it than
to try to explain it. A sufficient reason may be that the
silence of the Bible concerns the philosophy of sin, and
that it is no object of the Bible to teach philosophy. The
important facts are that men are sinners, and that sin en
tered the world in the beginnings of the race.
Nevertheless, we may not leave the subject here. No
adequate theological knowledge of the doctrine before
us is possible without some consideration of the various

330 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
theories which have been held respecting the relation of
the universal sin to Adam's transgression. Moreover, it
is right that we, while reverently accepting the reticence
of the Bible and candidly confessing our ignorance, should
give such explanation as we can. It is not wrong to spec
ulate and philosophize. The wrong comes in when on
the ground of our speculations and philosophizings we
begin to dogmatize.
IV. There is no more interesting chapter in the history
of Christian doctrine than that which relates to the sub
ject before us. The profoundest thought of some of the
greatest theologians and philosophers has been devoted to
the doctrine of sin. I can give here only the most meagre
outline. We begin with the theory of Augustin. This great
man, who had been brought by God's grace out of a life of
sin, and through many intellectual and spiritual errors into
the freedom and grace of the Gospel, was profoundly con
vinced of the impotency of the sinful human will, and the
entire dependence of man upon God's grace. This led
him to lay the strongest emphasis upon the divine predes
tination. It led him, also, so far as our doctrine is con
cerned, to seek the closest causal connection between the
sin of Adam and the sinfulness of his descendants. Start
ing from the premises of the Platonic realism, Augustin
taught that the whole race was in Adam when he sinned.
It was consequently the personal transgression of each
member of the race. Our individual existence begins
with birth, but there is a pre-existent state in our an
cestors. Now, since we were all in Adam, we all sinned
when he sinned. Consequently, when we begin our indi
vidual existence we are burdened with the guilt and the
consequences of Adam's sin, and for the best of reasons
— because it was our own sin. We come into the world
with a depraved nature inherited from Adam, which is
sinful and the source of sin. This corrupt nature is called

SIN AND MAN'S RACE RELATIONS 331
" original sin," to distinguish it from the actual sins which
we commit as individuals. But the sinful nature gives
rise of necessity to actual sin. Our wflls have no power
to choose the good, or, as Augustin puts it, we are free
only to do evil. On account both of the transgression
of Adam and our corrupt nature we are guilty and con
demned. We are born into the world under sentence of
eternal punishment, and can be delivered from it only by
the unmerited grace of God.
Precisely the opposite of this stern theory was that of
Augnstin's great opponent, Pelagius. He had been brought
up in the Greek church, where much emphasis was laid
upon the freedom of the will. He held that we come into
the world as free as Adam, and without either guilt for his
trangression or a corrupt nature inherited from him. The
only connection between Adam's sin and that of his pos
terity which Pelagius would admit was that arising from
the evil effects of Adam's example. Our first parents stood
at the head of the line and set an example of sin, which
most of their descendants have followed, though Pelagius
claimed that not a few men have led perfect lives.
The prevalent theory of the Middle Ages sought to
avoid the extremes of the doctrines of Augustin and Pe
lagius. The church of Rome taught that Adam before
the Fall possessed an especial endowment of divine grace
by which his lower nature was kept in subordination to
the higher. By the Fall he lost this " superadded gift "
and his nature was corrupted. We are born into the her
itage of his sin and guilt. We, like him, are deprived of
the divine grace whieh he had before the Fall, and herein
consists our original sin, which renders us guilty before
God. We also inherit from him a disordered nature, or
concupiscence, which, however, is not in itself sinful. By
baptism original sin is washed away and the divine grace
restored, and while concupiscence remains, and is the
source of temptation to sin, we have free-will to resist it.

332 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
The Reformers held in substance the theory of Augus
tin, though they made little use of the theory of realism
by which he explained our connection with Adam. The
first important modification among Protestants of the Au
gustinian doctrine was the so-called Federal or Covenant
Theory, according to which God established with Adam a
" covenant of works " in behalf not only of himself but all
his posterity. Adam was made the representative of all
mankind, and upon his choice hung the moral and spiritual
destiny of the race. He fell, and, so far as their relation
to God was concerned, the race fell with him. Conse
quently, we come into the world resting under the guilt
of Adam's transgression, which is imputed to us because
he was our federal representative, while we inherit from
him the corrupt nature, or original sin, which was the
result of his transgression. The practical results of this
theory are the same as those which flow from the Au
gustinian, the only difference being that the oneness with
Adam is a legal rather than a personal union. The
Federal theory binds us with the same iron chain of guilt,
condemnation, and helplessness.
A more decided modification of the Augustinian posi
tion, though not differing in its practical results, was the
theory of Mediate Imputation, taught by French Protes
tant theologians of Saumur about the middle of the seven
teenth century. This theory represents men as coming
into the world not with the double guilt which the Au
gustinian and Federal doctrines teach, but with only the
guilt which arises from the corrupt nature, or original sin,
which we inherit from Adam. Adam's sin is not imputed
directly to us, but only indirectly or mediately through
our inherited corruption of nature.
A more decided departure from the older views was in
volved in the Arminian views on the subject. The theo
logians of this school held to the existence of original sin,
by which men are exposed to God's wrath and rendered

SIN AND MAN'S RACE RELATIONS 333
incapable of doing His will ; but they also taught a uni
versal grace by which the effects of the Fall are nullified
and all men are capacitated to accept the invitations of the
Gospel and attain their chief end.
The old doctrine of sin among our New England fathers
was the Federal theory, as stated in the Westminster Con
fession of Faith. The result, however, of that remark
able movement which is known by the name of the New
England Theology, and which began in the teachings and
speculations of Jonathan Edwards, was to introduce some
important changes. The theologians of this school denied
the imputation of Adam's sin, either directly or mediately.
Men, they said, are guilty only for their own sins. They
also denied that we inherit a corrupted nature or original
sin. The only original sin, declare Hopkins and Emmons,
was the sin of Adam. Their maxim was that "All 6in
consists in sinning ; " there can be no sin that is not the
outcome of a man's own choice. Yet they did not deny
the connection between Adam's transgression and the sins
of his posterity ; on the contrary, these theologians made
much of it in their system. They found the connection
in what they called a "divine constitution," that is, an
arrangement of God's providence by which, as the result
of Adam's sin, each member of the race begins his moral
career with a sinful choice, his first moral act being a sin
ful act. We cannot go behind this divine constitution ;
it is so because God has made it so. These stalwart New
England theologians were strict determinists ; they held a
doctrine of "divine efficiency," which made God, to all
intents and purposes, the author of all human acts, good
and bad alike. Their theory was that God, on account of
Adam's sin, so orders things as to make our first choice
a sinful choice. It was reserved for Dr. N. W. Taylor, of
New Haven, one of the greatest in the long line of New
England theologians, to rescue the doctrine from the ex
tremes into which it had run, while at the same time he

334 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
retained all the more important results that had been won
in the struggles with the old Calvinistic doctrine. He
taught that as the result of Adam's sin men came into
the world with a bias or tendency to sin, which is not the
efficient cause but only the occasion of their sins. Through
the operation of this bias and the circumstances in which
they are placed, all men sin, but they do it freely and not
from necessity. Dr. Taylor repudiated the doctrine of
the divine efficiency and maintained the true freedom of
man. He left the way open for one further step, which
very many, if not most, of the later theologians of New
England have taken, namely, the explanation of the bias
or tendency to sin through inheritance from our ancestors,
and ultimately from Adam.
V. The way is now open for us to attempt a theological
statement of our own upon this most interesting subject.
We shall use the history of speculation aright, not so
much by allowing ourselves to wonder at the vagaries of
the theologians as by seeking the elements of truth which
their theories contain, and seeking to combine them into
one consistent whole.
We have to do with the relations of the individual to
the race. Let us, before we attempt to solve the problem
of the connection of Adam's sin with ours, look at this
matter. We are not mere individuals, we are members
of a race. The race is an organism, that is, it is a whole
composed of parts or members, which are reciprocally
means and ends, and which work together for the attain
ment of the end which belongs to the whole. The race
is not merely the aggregate of the individuals which be
long to it. It has an existence that is over and above the
existence of its members. When we speak of man we do
not mean the same thing as when we speak of men. So
there are smaller unities in the great unity of the race,
each of which is composed of many individuals. There
are nations, and when we speak of them we do not mean

SIN AND MAN'S RACE RELATIONS 335
merely the sum total of people who live in a certain coun
try, but a body that has its own peculiarities, a moral per
son, if we may use the term, which has its own character
istics, its own mission, its own destiny. The family is
another unity in the larger unity with its own peculiar
life and function.
Now we cannot understand a man if we look at him in
his mere individuality. We must view him also in his
relation to mankind. Indeed a man could not become a
man, if he were left to himself. He is like a fruit that
must have a tree to grow upon. Cut him off and he
leads an imperfect life, if he leads any at all. There is a
connection between men which makes them dependent
upon each other for well-being and growth, which gives
them common fortunes, common joys and sufferings, com
mon destinies. We are all under the law of solidarity, as
it is called. We are bound up in a common life. We
cannot keep the effects of our acts to ourselves ; they go
on vibrating into other lives. We are affected by all the
influences about us. If, then, we are to explain what a
man is and what he does, we must distinguish three
elements in his life — hereditary influence, environment,
and freedom.
Modern science, especially in connection with the theory
of organic evolution, hate brought into prominence the ef
fects of heredity. An important part of what we are
comes to us from our ancestors. We inherit their bodily
peculiarities, their mental aptitudes, their dispositions,
good and bad. Blood tells. We did not choose our
fathers and mothers, but much of what we are depends
upon the fact that they were they, and not other "people.
We are chips of the old block. The peculiarities of re
mote ancestors come out in us. Augustin was struggling
with a great truth when he taught our oneness with Adam.
We have pre-existed in our ancestors, and our lives are, in
a true sense, a prolongation of theirs.

336 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
But even more important than our inheritance is the
environment into which we enter. In the most formative
period of life, when our wills and our whole moral and
spiritual nature are plastic, we are brought under the play
of the strongest moral influences, good and bad, which
exist in the world. There is home in the first place.
How much of what is most important in our after-life is
taken in with our mothers' milk ! What a moulding power
parents and brothers and sisters and all the home sur
roundings have over ns ! It makes an enormous difference
whether a child is brought up in a Christian home or a
pagan home. Then there are the influences of companion
ship, of the school,' of the church, of the business we en
ter, of society generally, of literature, of politics. What a
steady and constant pressure of influences there is upon
us from every side !
In the midst of these influences, hereditary and en
vironing, freedom has its opportunity and its mission.
At first it is almost powerless under the pressure from
within and without. But gradually it finds its strength.
It is far from being omnipotent, but though it cannot do
all things, it can do much. It can modify the inherited
nature. Evil dispositions which came to us from our
parents or parents' parents can be gradually overcome.
Good dispositions can be fostered. Mental aptitudes can
be developed. Then the free-will reacts upon the envi
ronment. We are not only influenced but we can exert
influence. For good or for evil we can accept or resist
the forces that act upon ns. As one after another the
choices of life are passed over from parents and teachers
and employers to the child and youth, the opportunity
comes to use freedom in determining the tenor of our ex
istence and establishing our future. Character is some
thing each man forms for himself. He does not inherit
it. It does not come to him from his environment. It is
his own.

SIN AND MA'N'S RACE RELATIONS 337
Now, as I have already said, if we will explain a man's
life and work, we must look at these three things —
hereditary influence, environment, and freedom. Let us
look at the three in connection with the subject of sin.
In the first place, sin has affected us in our inherited nat
ure. When Adam sinned he brought disorder into his
moral and physical nature. This disorder, which was a
source of temptation to further sin, and as the result of
repeated sins became a fixed habit, a corrupt nature, was
transmitted by Adam to his descendants, who in turn
passed it on to theirs, with such increments of evil habit
as their own sin produced. It is true that Adam and his
descendants, being under the divine grace, made good
choices and formed right habits, which they also trans
mitted to their posterity ; but these influences were not
sufficient to counteract the evil influences. So it hap
pens that we all, proximately, as the result of the sins of
our immediate ancestors, and ultimately, as the result of
Adam's sin, come into the world with a disordered or cor
rupt nature. This nature is not itself sin, nor is it sinful
in any strict sense of the word. We may call it, if we
please, in deference to accepted theological usage, original
sin ; but we use the word sin in this case in a very dif
ferent sense from what we do when we are speaking of
our own evil choices and their consequences. We are not
responsible for our corrupt nature, nor does it entail guilt
upon us. God views things as they are, and he does not
hold us guilty unless we are truly guilty. Nevertheless,
this inherited nature is a source of strong temptation to
sin. It acts upon our wills with a mighty pressure. It is
a traitor within the camp, that often leads us to an igno
minious surrender of our freedom. We may even so far
yield to it as to identify ourselves with it and become re
sponsible for it. But we may, if we will, resist it, and at
last, in the other life, if not in this, wholly overcome it.
Just as we overcome our self-formed evil habits by a new
22

338 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
choice which gradually forms new habits, so this inherited
habit may be by God's grace gradually overcome.
Then, sin is everywhere in our environment. Looking
first at the inmost environment, the Holy Spirit does not
dwell in us at the first to exercise those special influences
which Adam possessed. We have indeed the indwelling
of the Spirit, in and through conscience, by which we
know our duty to God and our fellow-men, and especially
in Christian countries the gracious workings of the Spirit
attending God's revelation of grace are brought to bear
upon the soul. But in conscience and grace the Holy
Spirit comes to us, so to speak, from without, and only
enters the inmost life as we open our hearts by a free and
conscious act to receive Him. Moreover, we enter into a
world where sin abounds. Our parents are sinful, our
friends are sinful, sin is rooted in all the institutions of
society. Satan is active everywhere. The world is a
wicked world. Even nature is affected and is a source of
temptation to sin. The divine grace, it is true, is, as has
just been said, also working in the world, but the kingdom
of God has not yet so far advanced as to have overcome
the evil. From our earliest infancy, along with influences
of good which tend to make us holy, the temptations to
sin come in upon us from every side. If our inherited
nature is a traitor within the camp, the full attack of the
enemy comes to us from without. We are not responsi
ble for this sinful environment. So far as it affects us
necessarily and without our consent, it entails no guilt
upon us. Doubtless there are many things in every life
which to men appear sinful, but which the Searcher of
Hearts knows to be merely natural effects of our surround
ings, over which we could have no control. The rampant
wickedness in which the people of Sodom and Gomorrah
found themselves placed will not be counted against them
in the day of judgment, so far as they did not consent to
it by their own free choice (Matt. x. 15 ; xi. 24). Never-

339
theless, we have a power of resistance which enables us
to brace ourselves against, and by God's grace finally to
overcome, the evil influences of our surroundings. Our
responsibility depends upon our attitude toward the sin
about us, our acceptance or resistance of it, according to
the knowledge and ability which we possess.
It is under the pressure of these influences that our
freedom is developed. God has placed us in a state of
probation and gives us our spiritual education in a school
of mingled good and evil. As a matter of fact we all sin.
To a greater or less extent we consent by our free choice
to the temptations which come to us from our disordered
nature and our sinful surroundings. This is sin. It
begins with the first moral activity of the child. If not
counteracted by the divine grace, it becomes at last that
confirmed choice of self and rejection of God which ship
wrecks the whole man. When we reach the period of full
moral responsibility, and find ourselves confronting the
great question of life, the kingdom of God or the service
of self, we discover that we have already, by many acts of
choice, for which we have been responsible just in propor
tion to our knowledge and freedom, to a great extent de
cided the question against God. We are sinners. All
that can be said is that we have not sinned away our
day of grace. That we cannot do until with full knowl
edge and purpose we reject God's proffered grace.
Now in large part we can explain the universality of
sin through heredity and environment: but not alto
gether. The essential element in sin is freedom. That
must be held fast at all hazards. If we let that go, sin
ceases to be sin, and responsibility and guilt vanish with
it. There is therefore an inscrutable factor in our prob
lem, and we may as well confess it. Free choice is always
inscrutable. It is an ultimate fact. We may explain
why a man did so and so in part by the motives which
influenced him, but only in part ; as regards the accept-

340 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
ance of the motives we can only say that he did so, he
chose so, and that is the end of it. It is the same with
this universal choice. We explain it in part by the cor
rupt nature and the environment, we can see that there is
also a partial explanation in the fact that rationality and
freedom have their beginnings and growth under these
influences and are affected by them in their immaturity
and weakness when they have not as yet gained power
to resist. Freedom is not the absolute power that some
persons think it to be. Let the child grow up in an
absolutely holy environment like that of heaven, and in
all probability — perhaps I should say in all certainty — he
would always make the holy choice. He would not be
such a fool as to use his freedom in any other way. But
here it is different. " The web of our life is a mingled
yarn, good and ill together." Sin does not stand alone ; in
every soul it is connected with much that is good. When
we speak of the universality of sin, we do not mean a sin
that shuts out all good ; we do not mean the unmixed sin
of those beings who have said,
" Evil, be thou my good ! "
Nevertheless, when all is said, I come back to the as
sertion that there is an inscrutable element in the fact
before us. We cannot deny the universality of sin. We
may not deny the freedom of man in sinning. If the
question be asked, Why not ? may there not be a sin that
is not free ? I answer, No — such a sin is not a sin in any
true sense of the word ; conscience does not condemn us
for it, we cannot believe that God holds us responsible
for it. There are difficulties on both sides of every great
question. Our duty is to accept the side that presents the
fewest difficulties. To my mind the few difficulties which
are connected with the admission that there is a free
choice in every sin are as nothing compared with the
difficulties which arise upon the opposite assumption.

SIN AND MAN'S RACE RELATIONS 341
What, then, is our doctrine of the connection between
the transgression of Adam and the universal sinfulness of
the race ? It is simply this : As the result of Adam's
sin, all men come into the world with a corrupt or dis
ordered nature, inherited from their ancestors, which, in
connection with the sinful influences of their surround
ings, leads them all into sin. But this disordered nature
is only the occasion of their sin, while the true cause is
their free choice.
In conclusion, let me call attention to the fact that the
effects of our free choice and the effects of heredity and
environment are so mixed and tangled in our inner life
that it is almost, if not wholly, impossible to separate
them. We have no power to judge each other ; we can
not rightly judge ourselves. Only He who has made us
and watched over us from the beginning, who has per
mitted the evil for which we are not responsible to enter
our lives and has surrounded us with His grace, has the
knowledge and the skill to unravel the tangled skein of
our inner lives. He is the Judge. When our hearts con
demn us, God is greater than our hearts and knoweth all
things. The God-man who combines in his exalted per
son the omniscience and the perfect righteousness of God
with the human experience in which he was " tempted in
all points like as we are yet without sin," will conduct
the judgment of the Last Day. The lesson of our sub
ject is one of charity for each other and great compas
sion. We are none of us free from sin ; we may none
of us judge our brother. There is profound theology
and philosophy, as well as fine poetry, in the words of
Robert Burns:

"Then gently scan your brother man,
Still gentler sister woman,
Though they may gang a kennie wrang,
To step aside is human :

342 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
One point must still be greatly dark,
The moving why they do it ;
And just as lamely can ye mark
How far perhaps they rue it.
"Who made the heart, 'tis He alone
Decidedly can try us,
He knows each chord — its various tone,
Each spring — its various bias :
Then at the balance let's be mute,
We never can adjust it :
What's done we partly may compute,
But know not what's resisted."

XIX.
MAN'S CONDITION AS A SINNER
The patient student who works his way through the
long and voluminous history of the doctrine of sin is im
pressed with the fact that most of the theologians who
have discussed this difficult subject have fallen into one
or both of two errors, which have greatly impaired the
value of their conclusions. In the first place, they have
ignored the divine grace in their consideration of sin.
The " natural man " whose condition they have portrayed
is a sinner utterly separated from God in a world where
the only divine influences are punitive. But such a sinner
is an imaginary being, not a real one. The natural man,
as he actually exists, lives in a world where God's grace,
based on the redemptive work of Christ and administered
by Christ through the Holy Spirit, is everywhere at work.
The sinner with whom we have to do is not the soul that
is irremediably lost and shut out from God's presence, but
the lost soul which God is still seeking, the one lost sheep
for whose recovery the Good Shepherd has left the ninety
and nine.
The other error has been the shifting of the emphasis
of the doctrine from the point where the Bible places it,
namely, the moral condition of adult and fully respon
sible sinners, to the point of greatest theological, as well
as philosophical difficulty, namely, the moral condition of
infants and little children. Now the Bible is not ad
dressed chiefly to children. It tells us almost nothing
about infants, except to assure us, in the Master's name,

344 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
that " Of such is the kingdom of heaven." The children
who have come to the age when they " know good and
evil " are treated as sinners and as needing divine grace,
but little is said of the character and extent of their sin.
And yet most of the theories of the theologians turn upon
the condition of the new-born child in its inward state and
its relation to God's punitive justice. Dr. Emmons was
so perplexed by the possibility that infants might live for
a while before they began to sin, that he was obliged to
have recourse to the hypothetical annihilation of infants
dying in this undecided state. Now I do not say that the
moral state of little children is not a legitimate subject for
speculation ; we have ourselves to some extent considered
it in the last chapter. But I do emphatically deny that it
is the important element in the doctrine. We can afford to
confess considerable ignorance respecting the moral begin
nings and early development of children. But it is of vital
importance that we should have decided views respecting
the moral condition of those who have come to years of
responsibility and to whom the warnings and invitations
of the Saviour and his apostles are chiefly addressed.
Let us have these two errors in mind that we may
avoid them in dealing with the subject which now comes
before us, namely, the condition of man as a sinner.
1. Our moral development takes place in a state of pro
bation. God has put us into the world that He might
educate us for His kingdom, that is, that He might lead
us by moral and spiritual influences to freely choose and
pursue our chief end. The method He has chosen for the
attainment of this result is education by probation. I
have referred to this divine arrangement when treating the
subject of the Fall, and have incidentally touched upon it
in the attempt to explain the universality of sin. Now I
wish to speak of man's condition as a sinner under pro
bation. And first, let us ask, what is meant by probation ?
The term has come into prominence in the recent dis-

345
cussions in theology, and it is important that we should
clearly understand its meaning. Bishop Butler, who per
haps more than any other man has been instrumental in
bringing this conception into theological currency, says :
" The first and most common meaning of it seems to be
that our future interest is now depending, and depending
upon ourselves; that we have scope and opportunities
here for that good and bad behavior which God will re
ward and punish hereafter ; together with temptations to
one, as well as inducements of reason to the other."
Again, he speaks of it as " implying in it trial, difficulties,
and danger " (" Analogy," Pt. I., ch. iv.). The peculiarity,
then, of a probation is, that it involves the decision of the
will respecting the great ends of life in a mixed state. On
the one side there are temptations to sin ; on the other,
not only the " inducements of reason," of which Butler
speaks, but all the varied influences of the divine grace.
Moreover, probation involves a mingling of natural good
and evil. On the one side are the common mercies of life
and those good things temporal and spiritual which are
the result of God's grace working in the world. On the
other, are the evils which have come in the train of sin,
and which are the manifestation of the disorder produced
in the natural world by sin. Death reigns and none es
cape its hand. Pain and sorrow are everywhere. We are
surrounded by discomforts, difficulties, perplexities, dan
gers. Disease is at work on every side. In view of the
solidarity in which men stand, we must regard these evils
as entailed upon the race. It is, indeed, true that in the
strict sense of the terms sin, guilt, and punishment, they
can be applied only to the free acts of individuals and their
personal consequences. But there is a true sense, though
not the highest and strictest, a semi-figurative use of lan
guage which yet conveys a most important truth, in which
we may speak of a race sin, a race guilt, and even a race
punishment. Just so far as the individual is a branch of

346 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
the common trunk and shares the general life, he partakes
of and is immersed in the common moral evil and its ef
fects. He belongs to a fallen race, a lost world, an " evil
and adulterous generation." Only we should remember
that there is another side to the fact ; through Christ's re
demptive work the influences of God's grace and their ef
fects are operating in the world. In the same semi-figu
rative but real sense in which we call the world a lost
world and speak of a race punishment, we may speak of a
redeemed world and a race redemption. This is the theme
of that wonderful passage in the Epistle to the Romans,
" O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver me from
the body of this death? I thank God through Jesus
Christ our Lord" (Rom. vii. 24, 25). The corporate
evil, beginning in sin and running out into death and its
attendant evils, is matched by the corporate blessings
beginning in Christ's official obedience and running out
through the mediation of human faith and holiness into
life and its attendant benefits. " As through one trespass
the judgment came unto all men to condemnation ; even
so through one act of righteousness the free gift came
unto all men to justification of life " (Rom. v. 18).
Now in giving us our moral development in a world in
which sin and grace are struggling for the mastery God
undoubtedly acted with deliberate purpose and foresight.
The universal sin had a place permissively in His eternal
decree, and He arranged the world with reference to it.
It was to be the peculiarity of man that, being a sinner,
he should make his decisions and attain his moral and
spiritual maturity in a mixed state, that is, through a
probation. It was under these circumstances that God
meant to establish His kingdom. Undoubtedly other
methods were open to God. He seems to have employed
a different method in the case of the angels. He does so
in the case of the human beings who die in infancy. Bnt
there is every reason to believe that, on the whole, the

man's condition as a sinner 347
method which God has employed is the best for men
who were to be sinners. Perhaps we might even go far
ther and say that it is better to be a sinner under proba
tion than to be sinless without probation ; but I realize the
difficulties of such a position and do no more than sug
gest it. It is true that probation involves some very great
risks. It involves the possibility of falling into irreme
diable sin and makes such a fall easy enough for all who
yield to the allurements of sin. But, on the other hand,
there are great and more than counterbalancing possibil
ities, and the whole power of God's grace is enlisted upon
their side to make them actual. Even the evils of which
we have spoken are made means of good in God's econ
omy of probation. Sin itself, the one absolute evil, can
yet be overruled for good in the individual life, as it is in
the history of God's kingdom. God can turn it into an
incentive to holiness, and often does so. This is particu
larly the case with the sins of frailty which play so large
a part in every life and do not involve an irremediable
breach with God. There is truth in Longfellow's version
of Augustin's words, " That of our vices we can frame
A ladder, if we will but tread
Beneath our feet each deed of shame."
Then those evils which have come upon the world in con
sequence of sin, and which we call " natural " to distin
guish them from " moral " evil, or sin itself — these evils,
I say, are intended for our good, in so far as they are
checks upon sin and means of discipline and training in
holiness. Pain and sorrow are evil in themselves and
could not exist in a perfect world. We have the promise
that in the perfected kingdom of God they will be done
away. In the heavenly city of which John tells us in the
Revelation there shall not be " mourning or crying or
pain any more " (Rev. xxi. 4). But in such a world as

348 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
this, with its temptations to sin, pain and sorrow are the
divine instruments in the work of redemption. Where
sin gets the upper hand, and the soul is moving steadily
and swiftly toward destruction, God calls a halt by send-
in»* sickness or some other form of trouble. That He
may strengthen the spiritual life of His children, He sub
jects them to the discipline of suffering or bereavement.
These evils may come as the direct consequence of per
sonal sin, or they may come as the result of the corpo
rate sin ; they may come according to the uniformly work
ing laws of the material and moral spheres, or they may
come through the more special operation of the divine
providence moving freely in the spheres of nature and
the soul. Where the sinner is separated from God they
bear the aspect of punishment, since they have their ori
gin in the divine displeasure ; what we have called in a
semi-figurative sense the race punishment may thus, with
out changing its outward character, become a personal
punishment in the strictest sense of the term. Yet even
for this class there is always, while the period of proba
tion lasts, an element of grace in the punishment. Its
object is to lead to repentance — as this is indeed the pri
mary object of all punishment. Where the sinner is
reconciled to God and united to Him by a personal faith
these evils bear the character not of punishment but of
fatherly chastisement, and are tokens of the divine love.
They may even be inflicted, or permitted to come, not on
account of any particular sins, but rather for the strength
ening and upbuilding of the Christian life and the fitting
for service in God's kingdom. I may speak in similar
language of death. This is the universal consequence of
sin. It deserves, if anything does, to be called the race
punishment, and certainly should be so called if we are
careful to understand the term punishment in the re
stricted sense whieh has already been referred to. Death
befalls every member of the race, alike the bad and the

man's condition as a sinner 349
relatively good. Infants who have committed no per
sonal sins nevertheless die. But death is, on the whole,
in a world like this, a blessing. It also is a check upon
sin and an incentive to holiness. God has no more po
tent agency in bringing men out of their sins into the
kingdom of heaven. The fear of death works with
power on many souls. The certainty of death and the
uncertainty of the time when it may come, the constant
danger of it, make us realize that we have here no abid
ing city, turning our thoughts from the things seen and
temporal to the things not seen and eternal. The death
of those who are nearest and dearest to us disengages our
affections from this world. In view of the great tasks
which God sets before us, the thought of death makes us
say, like the Master, " I must work the work of him that
sent me, while it is day : the night cometh, when no man
can work " (John ix. 4). In so far as men are unrecon
ciled to God, death is to them not merely the race punish
ment but a personal punishment, which carries with it
" the dread of something after death." To God's children,
who have been forgiven and taken into His family once
more, death is chastisement and discipline, but no longer
punishment. " The sting of death " has been removed
when God's displeasure has been changed into favor.
But still it is the great reminder to them of what they
are apart from the divine grace.
The real nature of this probationary state in which
man, the sinner, is placed becomes manifest when we view
it in the light of Christ's earthly life. It is a matter of
no small importance that the one perfect man passed
through the same probation which we are experiencing,
and that he was made perfect through its sufferings and
its death. The Saviour, it is true, was not here from
necessity, as we are. He humbled himself and became
subject to the evils of this life for our sake, not for his
own. But there is deep significance in the fact that by

350 present day theology
thus submitting to the trial, the temptations, the suffer
ings, the contradiction of sinners and the death, which be
long to our probation, he wrought out that life which is at
once our pattern and the pledge of our final redemption.
He showed that these things are not evil in themselves,
but only when the free-will yields to them and so makes
them evil. To him the promise was fulfilled in all its
completeness, that " all things work together for good to
them that love God " (Rom. viii. 28). In a different world
there could have been no such Redeemer, and in a world
where the Master was, it is good for the disciple to be ;
where the One has triumphed, the other can be " more
than conqueror " through his grace.
II. In presenting the subject of probation I have so far
anticipated topics which belong to a later stage of our
discussion as to speak of the believer as well as of the still
unforgiven sinner. But our concern at present is with the
latter, the so-called "natural man." The point I wish
now to make is, that the unconverted sinner is wholly al
ienated from God. We have seen that there are certain
generic or ultimate choices which constitute character and
give moral tone to extensive departments of a man's life.
These determine the nature of the subordinate choices
which are auxiliary to them. We have also seen that
there must be a supreme choice which will dominate the
whole spiritual and moral life. When the issue is fairly
presented to any soul, God or self, the kingdom or the
world, a man's will must accept one side or the other of
the alternative. There is and can be no middle ground ;
we cannot serve God and Mammon. But this supreme
choice will inevitably affect all the choices which are sub
ordinate to it, that is to say, all the other choices of the
man, with their accompanying volitions and acts. This is
a necessity of our moral constitution, and is characteristic
of that free personality which makes the difference be
tween man and the animal. Now let a man's supreme

man's condition as a sinner 351
choice have for its end not the true chief end of man, the
kingdom of God and His righteousness, but self and the
world — let it, in other words, be a sinful choice — and all
the man's subordinate choices, with their corresponding
volitions and acts, will be influenced by it. There will be
a taint of sin in everything that such a man chooses and
everything that he does. His moral life is poisoned at
the fountain, and every drop in the stream which flows
from it is infected. The nnregenerate sinner may do
many pure and noble acts, but since they are not done
with the highest motive, namely, from love to God, there
will be this defect in them. God alone may perceive it,
but it is there. Such a man may have kept all the com
mandments from his youth up, yet the Master will say to
him, " One thing thou lackest," and that one thing will
De the highest good, withont which every other good is
imperfect and to some extent evil.
This alienation from God involved in a wrong supreme
choice, and manifesting itself in all the choices and acts,
constitutes that condition which theology technically calls
total depravity. The term is an unfortunate one, because
it conveys a false, or, at the least, an ambiguous meaning.
In the popular conception the word depravity is synony
mous with wickedness, and the doctrine of total deprav
ity is supposed to teach that the unconverted man is as
wicked as he can be, a monster of sin, in whom there is
nothing good. In spite of all assurances to the contrary,
many good Christian persons suppose this to be the teach
ing of orthodox theologians. As soon as a technical term
comes to convey a wholly false meaning, it has outlived
its usefulness, and there is no reason why we should hold
on to this and thereby lay ourselves open to all sorts of
misapprehensions. Let the term total depravity go. At
the same time, however, we must be careful that we do
not, to use the expressive phrase of the Germans, " empty
out the child with the bath." By whatever name we call

352 present day theology
it, there is a real truth here, of vast importance in our
Christian teaching and preaching. The unforgiven sinner
stands in a wholly false relation to God, the main purpose
of his life is utterly wrong, and every thought and word
and act is affected by it. He may be good in all his re
lations to his fellow-men, so far as the world can judge, ,
but while he is all wrong toward God, there is an evil'
virus even in these.
In taking this position we need not ignore the good
there is in such a man ; on the contrary, we ought to be
able to appreciate it more truly at its real worth. The
good act of an unconverted sinner is better than a bad act.
The pure, high, true, and noble deeds of such a person
have their intrinsic value, and should receive the com
mendation of every lover of good and truth. There is a
vast amount of real unselfishness and integrity and truth
fulness and purity among those who are still separated
from God. All this has its moral value, and even its cer
tain reward. Nay, such character and acts may pave the
way for a truly Christian life. Often the good lives of
unbelievers have been the silver steps up which they have
been led by God's grace to the golden throne of a Christian
life. The Christian will, if he be a true Christian, be the
first to recognize and approve such lives. Doubtless God
does the same. There is a profound lesson in the Gospel
narrative of our Saviour's meeting with the rich young
man. Jesus, we are told, " beholding him, loved him."
He was not far from the kingdom of God (Mark x. 21).
But when all credit has been given to the good qualities
and acts of the unconverted man, there is still left this
fatal defect, this deep-lying evil. We need to bear this in
mind in our Christian teaching and preaching, and with
out ceasing, to urge the sinner first of all to be reconciled
with God.
The statements I have made need to be somewhat qual
ified with reference to the points referred to in the begin-

man's condition as a sinner 353
ning of this chapter. In what has been said I have
spoken not of infants or little children, but of persons who
have reached such a degree of moral maturity as to be
able to make the great choice of life. I do not undertake
to say when that maturity is reached. Doubtless some at
tain it much earlier than others. The supreme choice of
life does not require the same experience of the world and
intellectual advancement as some of the other important
choices which we have to make. But the mind develops
slowly, and the development of freedom advances pari
passu with the other powers. It would be doing violence
to the simplest facts of psychology to say that little chil
dren, who have not reached the point where they can
make any of the great choices of life, whose wills are still
to a great extent enwrapped in the parental will, and
whose choices have to be largely made for them, are
wholly alienated from God. Character has not yet been
formed, and unity has not come into their moral and spirit
ual life. They are doubtless sinners and do many things
against their consciences ; they do those things which they
ought not to do, and leave undone those things that they
ought to do. But the great issue of life lies before them.
If they are being brought up under consecrated parental
nurture, their growing freedom may be so guided from
stage to stage that they will never wander from the fold
of the Good Shepherd ; but when the time of full respon
sibility comes they will, as a matter of course, and with
scarcely the consciousness of a struggle, confirm the paren
tal choice of the supreme Good, made for them in their
helpless infancy and publicly sealed by baptism. But even
if this is not the case, even though all the influences about
them may be debasing, they have not yet reached the
point of free and deliberate rejection of God. There have
been Christians in times past who have taught that little
children are totally depraved ; perhaps there are those
who teach it still. But I need scarcely say that there is
23

354 present day theology
not a hint of such a doctrine in the Bible, and that it finds
no support in experience. The little ones are sinners and
need a Saviour, but they still are guiltless of the " great
transgression." We may say of them, as our Saviour him
self said, " Of such is the kingdom of heaven " (Matt. xix.
14). The modern evangelical church has recognized this
truth in its now universal doctrine of the salvation of in
fants and children dying before the age of responsibility.
Another qualification must be made in our doctrine. It
is not to be forgotten that the sinner is still in a state of
probation. The condition in which he finds himself is
one of mixed influences, sin on one side, God's grace on
the other. This is the time of decision, the day of grace.
While there is life the gates of mercy remain open and
God's invitations are given. The supreme choice may
have been made, and made against God, but there are
still opportunities and motives to reverse this choice.
Men are free, and so long as God gives their freedom the
field in which to operate, they can choose in either way.
The divine forbearance waits long, and many are the souls
who by His grace are brought, after years of sinful living,
to give themselves to the Lord Jesus Christ. I do not
deny that men may, to all intents and purposes, irrevocably
commit themselves, even in this life, but the Bible does
not seem to me to teach that God utterly forsakes any soul
60 long as the probationary period continues. But there
is a different state of things in the other world. The time
of probation is ended. The invitations of God's grace are
no longer given. In the sinner's environment there are no
holy influences. He is still free. He could, if he would,
still turn from sin to God, but in the absence of the mo
tives of God's grace he has no desire to do so, or if he has
some feeble desire, it is not deep-rooted in his moral nat
ure. In this state the choice is fixed, and there is a moral
certainty that it will remain so. Here, then, we have an
alienation from God that is not only complete but fixed

355
and irremediable. This is a very different state of things
from that which exists in this life, with its probationary
character, and the two states should not be confounded.
It is one thing to be lost ; it is another to be finally lost.
III. Moreover, the unforgiven sinner rests under the di
vine displeasure and is exposed to the divine punishment.
I have already touched upon this subject in a previous
chapter, but I wish to speak of it more particularly here.
We have seen that God's displeasure is the root of all
punishment, that it is this which makes the outward evils
which befall the sinner punishments in the true sense of
the word. Now the " wrath of God," His holy displeas
ure, abideth on the unforgiven sinner. He is in a state
of punishment. All the evils of life bear this character.
Death, which hangs over him like a dark pall, or like a
coming storm whose black clouds are soon to break over
him, is penal to him. Then, in addition to these earthly
punishments, the doom of eternal death rests upon him.
This is not the place to consider the subject of retribution
in all its length and breadth, but it should be asserted
here with emphasis. The unforgiven sinner is a doomed
man. He has nothing to plead in stay of the punishment
which awaits him. He is under condemnation. The di
vine law, which is holy, just, and good, condemns him, for
he has not kept it and is resisting its fundamental com
mand of love to God. Still more does theGrospel of God's
grace through Jesus Christ condemn him. To such a man
" our God is a consuming fire," and there is " a fearful
looking-for of judgment." Practically he is judged al
ready. To all intents and purposes he has judged himself.
For judgment is not external to a man, but is rooted in his
sin. But while emphasizing this solemn truth, let me say
again that I am not speaking of little children. So far as
children are sinners, God's displeasure rests upon them
in a degree and to an extent proportionate to their sin and

356 present day theology
guilt, both of which I should be far from denying. But
God's displeasure is a matter of degree. The displeasure
that involves condemnation to eternal punishment may be
the same in kind with that which is called forth by the
angry word of a three -year-old child, but it is not the
same in degree. Eternal punishment is not threatened iu
the Bible against little children. God punishes them
according to their deserts, when He punishes them at
all, and we have reason to believe that on the ground of
Christ's sacrifice of atonement He saves them when they
die in the period of partial responsibility. Moreover, the
condition of the unforgiven sinner, as exposed to eternal
punishment, is very different from that of the sinner in
the other world, who has already entered into his final
punishment. God's wrath does not work itself out in
this probationary period. He waits still to be gracious.
He desireth not the death of the sinner. He mingles
even punishment with grace. He is still a Father and
bestows upon the prodigal all the love and grace that are
possible while he is still recreant. In wrath He still re
members mercy.
IV. Once more, the unconverted sinner is unable to
attain his chief end apart from God's redemptive grace.
Inability is not inconsistent with freedom. In order that
we may choose, the objects of choice must be within our
knowledge and our reach. Otherwise we have no motive
to choose, and choice without motives is at once irrational
and impossible. I am perfectly free to choose to go to
London to-morrow, but if I have no money to go, and no
reasonable expectation of getting any, if duty and conven
ience alike keep me here, if, moreover, the thought of
going has never entered xny mind, I shall be without mo
tives to go, and so unable to use my freedom in choice.
But suppose a friend brings me a thousand dollars and
tells me how all my work at home may be provided for,
and. urges me to go on account of my health, and sets be-

man's condition as a sinner 357
fore me the pleasures of the journey, then all at once the
choice that was before practically impossible becomes pos
sible. There is no change in my freedom, but there is a
great change in the conditions for its operation. Before,
I was free but unable — that is, unable to use my freedom.
Now, I am both free and able. But mark that the ina
bility under which I labored was not a physical inability
but a moral inability.* Now the sinner, by his sin has
fallen into a state of inability. He is unable to keep
God's law. He is unable to attain salvation. His free
will remains, but he is in no condition to exercise it in
this sphere of activity. By his sin he has separated him
self from God. But man is so constituted that he cannot
attain his chief end apart from God and out of commu
nion with Him. Moreover, he cannot of himself come
once more into communion with God. It takes two to
make a quarrel and it takes two to make a reconciliation.
The sinner must be forgiven and restored to God's favor
before he can enter again upon the pursuit of his chief
end. But he cannot make God forgive him. God must
decide what He will do and what He will not do. It is a
condition of things very like what often occurs in our
human relations. One man wrongs another and the two
become alienated. The wrong-doer may desire to have
the old relations restored, but he cannot restore them un
less the wronged party comes voluntarily to meet him.
He is free, but he is utterly unable to live in the old rela
tions. No physical power is of any avail here. The wall
between the two men is an invisible one, but not all the
steam-engines in the world could supply power enough to
pull it down. Yet let the man who has been wronged
say the one word, " I forgive you," and the wall falls
of itself. Now, such is our relation to God. We cannot
* " Has the sinner ' power to the contrary ? ' " What do you mean-
power of choice, or power of action ? The former he has, the latter
he has not. (A pencilled note by the author.)

358 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
come back to Him unless He is willing to forgive and re
store us, and we are entirely dependent upon him in the
matter. If He does not grant His grace, if He does not
furnish some basis for reconciliation and offer His for
giveness to us, we must remain forever separated from
Him. The inability is not a physical or natural inability;
it is a moral inability, but it is stronger than any physical
force could render it. The sinner in the presence of the
requirements of God's law finds himself compelled to say,
in the language of Paul, " I am carnal, sold under sin "
(Rom. vii. 14). He is, in the impressive words of the
Saviour, " the slave of sin " (John viii. 34). He is also
responsible and guilty, for his own sin has brought him
into this condition, and we are responsible not only for
our choices but for the results of those choices.
This is one of the vital truths of the Christian system.
The great central fact of the Gospel, redemption by
Christ, is conditioned upon the utter moral helplessness
of the sinner apart from Christ. Once teach that he is
able in his own strength to work out his salvation, and the
whole Gospel system is undermined and brought to de
struction. Nevertheless, here, too, we must make some
needful qualification. I am speaking here of the mature
sinner and not of the child. I do not deny that the cor
rupt nature which the child inherits is a hindrance to its
spiritual career, and that God's grace is needful for the for
giveness of its sins. There is a relative inability in the
little child, due rather to nature than to choice, or only
partially due to choice, which ought not to be ignored.
But the utter helplessness of the fully responsible sinner
is not merely the result of nature within and the sinful en
vironment, not merely the result of the sins of infirmity
which characterize childhood, but still more the result of
.his mature free choice. Christ said to his disciples, "Ex
cept ye turn and become as little children, ye shall in no
wise enter into the kingdom of heaven." I do not believe

MAN'S CONDITION AS A SINNER 359
that this saying teaches the sinlessness of children, but it
does seem to imply that there are hindrances in mature
years which are not present in childhood. Yet let me not
be misunderstood. I am ready to admit that even the
child's sin raises a barrier between it and God which He
alone can throw down.
We must not, however, look at the sinner's inability
alone and by itself. God has not left His children in
the helplessness into which they have fallen. " While we
were yet sinners Christ died for us " (Rom. v. 8). Through
the Saviour's redemptive work God has provided atone
ment and reconciliation. What we could not do He has
done for us. He so loved the world — this guilty, fallen,
helpless world — that He gave His only - begotten Son.
Christ has tasted death for every man. His work is uni
versal in its scope. Every hindrance in God to the sinner's
reconciliation is removed. It is true that this work of God
through Christ is not made known to every man, that
there are millions of the human race to whom the blessed
Gospel has never come. Nevertheless, we have reason to
believe that in some way or other God gives the benefit
of Christ's work to every soul, so that no soul is left in its
helplessness and guilt. We believe this not because it
would not be just for God to leave the sinner to the con
sequence of his sins — otherwise grace would be no more
grace — but because it would not be like God to do so,
because it would not be in accordance with the love
and mercy which have been revealed through Christ,
and because the New Testament gives such abundant rea
son to regard the work of Christ as universal in its intent.
But the sinner is shut up to the way God has opened.
" There is no other name under heaven, given among men,
whereby we must be saved." Even those who never learn
of Christ here, will, if they are saved, wake up on the
other side to find themselves in his arms and cleansed by
his blood.

360 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
I ought also, as I have done before, to distinguish be
tween the sinner's state under probation and in the other
life. The inability under which the unregenerate man
labors in this life is indeed absolute in the sense that it
shuts him out from all possible self-salvation. But it is, as
we have just seen, met and provided for by God's grace.
When the divine help comes to him his freedom is per
fectly competent to the acceptance which God requires.
Like a compass needle which has been held in a wrong
position by a concealed mass of iron, but which swings
freely when it is removed, the will which has been para
lyzed or rendered unable to act by the sinful choice, be
comes free to choose under the influence of God's grace.
Very different, however, is the state of things in the other
world. There the sinner who has rejected the utmost in
fluences of the divine grace, is left to himself, and his in
ability has nothing to counterbalance it. He is still free,
no physical inability prevents his choice, but there is a
moral inability which leaves him hopeless. That is the
awful feature of that awful state. The sinner is what he
is and where he is, because he will not seek God, and yet
he is in a position, brought about by his own free choice,
where, morally speaking, he cannot do other than he does.
The subject with which we have been engaged gives us
our transition to the doctrine of redemption. Already we
have to some extent anticipated it. We are thus the bet
ter prepared to enter upon the examination of it. We are
all sinners. We are in a state of probation. Apart from
God's grace we are altogether alienated from our heaven
ly Father, under His displeasure, doomed to punishment,
helpless in our sin. Looking at the one side alone, we may
well cry, " O wretched man that I am ! who shall deliver
me ? " But blessed be God, we can reply to our own ques
tion, " I thank God, through Jesus Christ our Lord ! "

XX.
THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST*
(1. Revelation and Atonement)
In our theological inquiries we have thus far kept
steadily in view the chief end of God's plan and of man's
existence, the redemptive kingdom of God. We have
seen that this chief end implied the existence of sin, not
as desired by God, nor as in any way due to His efficiency,
but as the result of the abuse of human freedom permit
ted by God because He meant by His grace to overrule it
for a higher good. We have seen that sin is hateful to
God, and that it renders the sinner guilty and helpless be
fore Him. Now we have come to the point where we
shall consider God's provision for the redemption of the
sinner from his sin — or, as I should say, broadening
the subject to its full dimensions, for the redemption of
the lost and guilty world. It is by this provision that the
foundation for God's kingdom has been laid, and that the
kingdom has been rendered possible in this world of sin
ners. The term redemption, as used in theology, is one of
very comprehensive meaning. It includes not only all
that God has done and will do for the deliverance of man
kind, but the actual deliverance itself. When it is com
plete, those who have accepted God's grace will be freed
from the guilt and power of sin, carried on to their
* For a further presentation of the subject by the author, the reader
is referred to a sermon published in The Word and Work, Bangor, Me.,
March, 1892, and to the Andover Review, vol. v., p. 44.

362 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
spiritual destination, delivered from punishment, made
conquerors by the resurrection over death, and made par
takers of the heavenly blessedness. The race as a whole
will be delivered from sin and all its consequences, and
carried forward to its goal. Physical nature, so far as its
destiny is bound up with that of man, will be delivered
from the bondage of corruption. The sin and evil still
left in the universe will be conquered and reduced to com
plete subjection, and finally excluded from the domain of
holiness and love. In a word, the kingdom of God, with
the completion of redemption, will have come in all its
fulness, and that prayer which Christ taught us will be
answered. In this broad sense of the term we shall be
concerned with the subject of redemption during all the
remainder of our inquiries. It is customary, however, to
distinguish between the provision for redemption and the
actual carrying out of that provision. The two branches
of the divine work are not wholly separable, and no sharp
line can be drawn between them. Nevertheless, the dis
tinction is a good one. For the present, then, we shall be
engaged only with the first of the two aspects of re
demption, namely, the divine provision for the salvation
of mankind.
If our time permitted a complete exhibition of the sub
ject, we should go back to the beginnings of human
history. The provision for redemption antedated the
Fall. Believers were chosen in Christ before the founda
tion of the world (Eph. i. 4). Our first parents had not
been expelled from Paradise when the redemptive work
began. To present the subject fully, it would be needful
to trace the whole process of divine grace throughout the
history of the Old Dispensation. But for our purposes it
will be sufficient to consider the work of Jesus Christ the
Redeemer. In him and his work the whole redemption
is concentrated. All that preceded finds its fulfilment
and its deepest meaning in his saving deeds.

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 363
I. It is important that we should understand Christ's
work in its completeness. It is so large, so many-sided, and
so comprehensive, that we are apt to look only at individ
ual aspects of it, and as a result to fall into imperfect and
even erroneous views respecting it. The traditional theol
ogy has endeavored to avoid this danger by distinguishing
three factors in the Saviour's work, namety, what he did
as a Prophet, a Priest, and a King. These so-called " of
fices " of Christ do not furnish us with an exhaustive an
alysis of his works, but they are admirably fitted to guard
us against the one-sided view of which I have spoken, and
most theologians avail themselves of their use. We say
substantially the same thing when we distinguish in the
Saviour's work the elements of revelation, atonement, and
direct work in and upon individuals and the world.
* These three factors in the Saviour's work may in a
general way be arranged chronologically. His public
ministry on earth is especially connected with his pro
phetic activity. His priestly work is naturally associated
with his death. The resurrection and ascension were the
introduction to his kingly functions in their highest exer
cise. Nevertheless, while this is the case, all three ele
ments are present during the whole of the Saviour's of
ficial activity. One is more prominent than the rest, but
all are there. Everywhere in the cord by which the Sav
iour has bound together heaven and earth these three
strands are visible. During his ministry Christ not only
revealed God and preached the Gospel ; he also took upon
him the sins of mankind and shared their sufferings, he
interceded for them with the Father, and as a Ruler over
nature and man he performed his miracles, drew all men
unto him and exercised royal dominion over all who were
of the truth. The death of Christ not only effected atone
ment, but was a profound revelation of the divine love and
a glorification of the Saviour (John xii. 23 ; xiii. 31), so
that in a true sense the cross was his throne. Now that

364 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
he sits at God's right hand and rules as the Messiah over
the universe and in his church, he reveals the divine char
acter and will through his Spirit, and in his priestly inter
cession carries on his atoning sacrifice.
It is needful that we should keep in mind all these
features of the Saviour's redemption. In all these ways
he saves us. If any one of the three great factors in his
work be neglected, our understanding of this great doc
trine will be imperfect. Almost all the errors into which
theologians have fallen upon this subject have resulted
from asserting one of the three elements at the expense
of the rest. It has been thus especially that confusion
has been introduced into the doctrine of the atonement.
The subject of Christ's redemptive work is a large and
complicated one. It is easy to become so absorbed in the
details as to lose sight of the great outlines. We shall do
well to be on our guard against the danger.
But while all of these factors in Christ's saving work
need to be borne in mind, it is to be noted that a special
and central importance belongs to the atonement. In this,
as in neither of the others, the saving power of Christ's
redemption is concentrated. The revelation is pre-emi
nently a disclosure of God's atoning love. The kingly
functions of the ascended Lord are based upon the atone
ment and involve its application to mankind. The death
of Jesus is the great central fact of redemption. There
is a sense in which we can know nothing, while engaged
with this doctrine, but Christ and him crucified.
II. We shall look first at Christ's work as revelation —
the so-called prophetical office. Old Testament prophecy
— taking the term in its larger sense as inclusive of all
the divine self-revelation through inspired men — antici
pates and prepares the way for this part of our Saviour's
work. We can, indeed, say with truth, that the prophecy
of the Old Dispensation was itself his work, since the
prophets uttered their messages through the " Spirit of

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 365
Christ " (1 Pet. i. 11). The divine Logos from the first
manifested God to men. In the Saviour's ministry, as
has already been stated, the prophetical function was the
most prominent one.
Among the various forms of Christ's work as revela
tion the first which meets us is his doctrine. He was pre
eminently a teacher. He came to men not only with the
divine grace, but with the divine truth, not only with life,
but with light (John i. 4, 14). From the first the Word
plays a most important part in the work of redemption.
Men cannot be saved by truth alone. Socrates thought
that they could, and that all that is needful for mankind
in order to moral betterment is the knowledge of what is
right ; but his theory failed in practice because men are
not merely ignorant, but also wilfully sinful. Yet truth
has its place in the work of salvation. It is the pioneer ; it
opens the way for the entrance of the divine grace. Be
cause men are rational they must be approached through
the reason ; thus only can access be gained to the heart.
Christianity has always had a preaching element in it, and
always will have until its task is completed. The subject
of Christ's teaching was the Gospel — the glad tidings of
salvation. He proclaimed the coming of God's kingdom,
and made known the conditions of entrance to it. He
taught men the high and blessed truth of God's Father
hood. He taught them their own sin and the abounding
mercy and forgiveness of God. He told them of his aton
ing death and the eternal life through him. He unrolled
to them the future of his kingdom. How could the saving
work be accomplished if Christ had not bestowed upon
mankind this precious truth of the Gospel ?
Again, there was a revelation through Christ's person.
I have treated this subject in the chapters on Christology,
and may, therefore, pass lightly over it here. But it is a
most important element in the redemptive work. Christ
himself, this divine man, was to his contemporaries and

366 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
to all ages a source of the profoundest knowledge which
man has ever received. He was a revelation of God.
His words to Philip point to this great truth : " He that
hath seen me hath seen the Father " (John xiv. 9). A
new conception of the divine love and righteousness and
truth dawned upon the minds of those who saw and
heard him, as it dawns upon us to-day as we read the
Gospels. Moreover, he revealed man to himself. In him the
ideal of humanity became real. It is here that we come
into contact with the doctrine of Christ's example, which
is so frequently taught in the New Testament and im
pressed with so much earnestness. " Let this mind be in
yon 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). The example of Christ
has been represented by Unitarians as constituting the
essence of his atonement, and as a result evangelical Chris
tians have felt a certain shyness about giving the doctrine
its place among the elements of the redemptive work.
But unquestionably it has a place among them. The fault
lies not in saying that we are saved by the example of
Christ, for that is perfectly true as far as it goes, but in
stopping short there and making that the whole. The
" imitation of Christ " is necessary to the full salvation of
the Christian, though it must be based upon his atoning
sacrifice and his kingly grace bestowed through the Holy
Spirit. The " new-man," the " Christ formed within "
the Christian, is the reproduction of the perfect manhood
revealed to us in the Saviour's holy life.
Once more, there was a revelation through the works
of Christ which forms a part of his redemptive activity.
His miracles, as has already been shown, were of this
nature. They made known the redemptive grace of God
and Christ to men in the most striking and convincing of
ways. In them the final redemption of nature was guar-

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 367
anteed and the salvation of the soul illustrated and proved
by the salvation' of the body. Nor need we confine our
thought to the miracles. All the deeds of the Christ were
a revelation. His ways were God's ways, and they were
ways of grace and truth. We see on the small scale of
the Master's earthly ministry what God is doing on the
large scale in the redemptive work of the ascended Christ.
The death of Christ, the great atoning deed, is the crown
ing revelation.
III. We come now to Christ's work as atonement — his
priestly office. By his atonement we mean that part of
his redemptive work which had for its object the securing
of the forgiveness of human sin, or the provision for
reconciliation. It is to be carefully noted that the atone
ment is not the same as the reconciliation. The former
opens the way for the latter and makes it possible ; the
latter can come only as the result of the former. The
atonement is that element in Christ's work by which it
was made morally possible for God to be just and the
sinner's Justifier (Rom. iii. 26), the atoning act was the
death of Christ upon the cross.
I shall devote the remainder of this chapter to the
presentation of the scriptural teachings respecting the
Saviour's atoning work, leaving to the next the more dis
tinctively doctrinal treatment of the subject.
1. The doctrine of the atonement has its roots in the
Old Testament. None of the great truths of Christianity
is more fully anticipated and foreshadowed in the earlier
revelation than this. We may distinguish at least four
distinct lines of approach to the New Testament doctrine.
The first of these is found — as the accepted designation
of the office of Christ which we are considering indicates —
in the Old Testament institution of priesthood, and espe
cially in the high-priesthood. The priests differed greatly
from the two other classes of functionaries, the prophets
and kings. These latter represented God before men in

368 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
revelation and government. The priests, on the contrary,
though in like manner appointed by God, represented men
before God. It was their duty to stand between the sin
ful people and the holy Being against whom they had
transgressed, and to present the sacrifices which the Law
prescribed for the removal of guilt and the obtaining of
forgiveness. Theoretically all the Israelites were priests,
as they were prophets and kings, but practically, since
they were all sinful and thus far from the ideal, only a
single tribe were designated to this office, and of this tribe
only a single family performed the more sacred offices of
the priesthood. Everything in the priestly ordinances
and ritual tended to emphasize their holiness. They
must be without physical blemish, of blameless life, and
during the exercise of their priestly functions must refrain
from wine or strong drink. They were solemnly conse
crated and set apart to their office, with rites which were
intended to bring distinctly into view the sacredness of
their work. At their head was the high-priest, the great
official representative of the people in matters of sin and
atonement and in the sacrificial ritual. It was he who
went once a year into the holy of holies of the tabernacle
and temple and presented the sacrificial blood before the
mercy-seat, upon which appeared the Shekhina, the visi
ble token of the divine presence.
The second line of approach to the New Testament
doctrine of atonement is closely related to the first. It is
found in the Old Testament sacrificial system. The
essential idea of sacrifice is self -surrender. Man expresses
his dependence upon God and devotion to Him by the
gift of something precious to him. The gift symbolizes
and declares the gift of his will, himself, to God. But
since men are sinners and separated from God something
more than this is necessary. Some atonement must be
rendered that so the divine displeasure may be removed,
the offender's sin forgotten, and he be restored to fellow-

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 369
ship with God. In the sacrifices of the heathen the need
of atonement is expressed and an attempt is made to
render it. The Jewish sacrificial system differs from the
heathen in that it is a divine provision for meeting this
human need. The virtue of the offering lies not in its in
trinsic value, but in the divine ordainment on the ground
of which it is offered and accepted. God gave to His chil
dren this method of securing forgiveness for their sins.
The blood of bulls and of goats accomplished nothing, but
was made the means by which the repentant soul obtained
God's blessing ; God gave it its value as an atonement.
Let us stop for a moment to look at the ritual of
the sin-offering, in which the idea of atonement is ex
pressed with especial fulness. The offerer brought an
animal, of certain prescribed kinds and without blem
ish, to the tabernacle or temple, and presented it for
sacrifice. He laid his hands upon its head and solemnly
set it apart for its appointed use. It was to be his offer
ing, to take his place before God. He then killed it.
The priest, who was standing by, caught the blood in a
basin and presented it to God by carrying it into the holy
place and sprinkling or rubbing it upon the horns of the
altar. The significance of the act lay in the use that was
made of the blood. " The life of the flesh is in the blood ;
and I have given it to you upon the altar to make atone
ment for your souls ; for it is the blood that maketh
atonement by reason of the life " (Lev. xvii. 11). This is
the key-passage which opens the Old Testament doctrine.
The word translated atonement means a covering. The
pure blood of the victim is represented as covering
before God the impure life of the sinner, and so making
it possible and right for God to forgive him. The sym
bolism of the sacrifice is " a life for a life," vicarious
atonement, atonement by substitution. Not that there is
a real and valid substitution here ; therein lies the imper
fection of the animal sacrifice and the prophec\ of a better
24

370 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
sacrifice ; but God graciously accepts it as sufficient. The
sacrifice is a sacrament, " the visible sign of an invisible
grace ; " its atoning power is of God's appointment and
rests upon an atonement not yet revealed. I have said
that the sacrifice involves substitution, that it is vicarious.
But let me not be misunderstood. I do not wish to teach,
as some do, that we are to find in it a vicarious punish
ment, a penal substitution. It has been said that in the
symbolism of the sacrifice the victim bears the punishment
of death due to the sinner. Of this there is not a hint
in the Old Testament. It is not a death for a death, or
a punishment for a punishment, but a life for a life. Vi
carious atonement and vicarious punishment are not the
same thing.
A third and very important line of approach to the New
Testament doctrine is to be found in the teachings respect
ing the suffering Messiah. Alongside of the teachings of
the prophets respecting the Messiah's kingly glory there
runs a sadder strain, a prediction of pains and labors and
even death to be endured, of rejection and insult from his
own people. The twenty-second Psalm narrates in lan
guage which seems more like history than prophecy the
incidents of the crucifixion. The fifty-third chapter of
Isaiah recounts the sufferings of the Servant of God,
" despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and ac
quainted with grief." It tells us in unmistakable language
the story of his vicarious death for our sins, how " he was
wounded for our transgressions and bruised for our iniqui
ties," how " the chastisement of our peace was upon him,
and with his stripes we are healed," how " the Lord hath
laid on hiin the iniquity of lib all." The circumstances of
his shameful death are predicted. The prophet calls him
a "guilt-offering," and declares that "he bare the sin of
many and made intercession for the transgressors." It
would be difficult to express in a clearer language the
idea of a vicarious atonement.

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 371
I pass over the other predictions regarding the suffer
ing Messiah (such as Zech. xii. 10-13 ; xiii. 7), and turn to
the last element in the Old Testament preparation for our
doctrine, namely, the teachings respecting intercession.
All through the earlier dispensations there are intimations
of the truth that God's servants, who are dear to Him,
can stand between Hiin and their sinful brethren and
secure forgiveness for them. To use the Old Testament
phraseology, such an intercessor, where his plea is ac
cepted, renders atonement for his client's sin (Ex. xxxii.
30 ; Numbers xxv. 13). Abraham, Moses, Phinehas, Sam
uel, and David are represented as thus making interces
sion, standing before God in this vicarious capacity as the
representatives of their sinful fellow-men. The under
lying idea is the same as that of the priesthood ; but
there is this difference, that while the priests brought out
ward and tangible offerings of atonement, the intercessor
brought his own will, a spiritual sacrifice, to atone for his
brother's sin.
2. We come now to the New Testament teachings re
specting the Saviour's atoning work. Here we are per
plexed by the embarrassment of riches. No doctrine of
the Christian system is more fully taught than this. The
Saviour's death, " Christ crucified," is the great theme of
the New Testament, as through type and prediction it is
the hope of the Old. It is also taught distinctly. A fair
and intelligent exegesis cannot fail to find in the teachings
of Christ and the Apostles upon this subject the doctrine
of a vicarious atonement, that is, au atonement through
substitution. I make this assertion with the knowledge
that it will be disputed by many evangelical scholars, but
with the full conviction that it is true — though in thus
speaking, let me again disclaim any thought of asserting
that the Bible teaches the doctrine of " penal substitution,"
as it is called.
Let us begin with the first three Gospels. The angels

372 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
who announce the Saviour's advent foretell his redemp
tive work. " Thou shalt call his name Jesus ; for it is he
that shall save his people from their sins " (Matt. i. 21).
" There is born to you this day, in the city of David, a
Saviour" (Lukeii. 11). The Master did not speak of his
death and its meaning as an atonement in the earlier part
of his ministry. Here was a truth too deep and mysteri
ous for his disciples to bear at first. But it is interesting
to notice that as soon as he had in some measure dispelled
the false notions of the Twelve respecting his Messiahship,
and had received from Peter, as their spokesman, the
great Confession, he began to tell them of the death
which " it was necessary " that he should suffer, and of the
cross which was to teach maukind that " whosoever would
save his life shall lose it, and that whosoever shall lose his
life . . . shall find it " (Matt. xvi. 21-26). On the solemn
Mount of Transfiguration, when a glimpse is given to the
awe-struck disciples of the kingly glory of the Messiah and
his relation to the Old Dispensation, the subject of con
versation between the Saviour and the two representatives
of the older revelation is " his decease which he was about
to accomplish at Jerusalem " (Luke ix. 31). The references
to his death now grow more frequent. The unseemly
ambition of some of his followers and the jealousy of
others gave occasion for the saying that " the Son of Man
came not to be ministered unto but to minister, and to give
his life a ransom for many " (Matt. xx. 28 ; Mark x. 45).
The word " ransom " designates the price paid for the
release of the firstborn of Israel, who were dedicated to
God, or for the redemption of a slave from bondage
(Numb, xviii. 15, 16 ; xxxv. 31, 32 ; Lev. xxv. 47-55).
In the Hebrew the same root is employed to convey the
idea of atonement. The idea conveyed in the Saviour's
words is that of substitution, the vicarious idea. His
life was to be the price paid for the deliverance of men
from sin, a price that was at the same time a sacrifice.

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 373
Amid the sacred scenes of the Last Supper, and in con
nection with the institution of the rite which was to be
to Christians in all ages a solemn memorial of Christ, he
still further unbosomed himself. The sacrificial system
which was prominently before their minds in connection
with the Passover meal which they were now eating, was
about to be done away, because the antitype had come and
the type was no longer needful. The symbol was to find
its fulfilment and realization. As the Old Dispensation
in its legal form had been founded upon sacrifice, so was
the New presently to be. Slaughtered beasts furnished
the blood of the Old Covenant (Ex. xxiv. 3-8) ; the blood
of Christ himself was to be shed for the institution of
that New Covenant, promised by the prophets (Jer. xxxi.
31-34), and now about to be realized. His death was the
vicarious atonement which effected all that the old sacri
ficial system symbolized, and established the kingdom of
God — or, to put it into the simplest language, his death
was to secure for mankind the forgiveness of sins and open
the way for their complete salvation from the guilt and
power of sin. The rite he now instituted was to be the
constant reminder of this truth, as well as a means by
which the benefits of the Saviour's death might be be
stowed upon believers. "This is my body broken for
you." " This is my blood of the New Covenant, which
is shed for many unto remission of sins " (Matt. xxvi.
26-29, and parallel passages). The importance of this tes
timony cannot be overestimated. One of the two great
rites of the Christian church is built upon the doctrine of
the Trinity ; the other upon the doctrine of vicarious
atonement. The agony in the Garden gives us a hint of
the mysterious nature of the Saviour's death. It was not
an ordinary death. His words of intercession for his ene
mies, uttered on the cross, permit us to look far into the
atoning consciousness of the Saviour (Luke xxiii. 34). His
cry of anguish, " My God, my God, why hast thou for-

374 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
saken me ? " reveals the vicarious sufferer immersed in the
tide of human sin and divine punishment, so as for a
moment to seem to himself, though not in reality, under
the divine displeasure as resting on himself personally.
In John's Gospel we find material for the understand
ing of our doctrine no less important than that furnished
by the Synoptical evangelists. At the beginning of the
Saviour's ministry the Baptist publicly denominated him
" the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world,"
identifying him with the Servant of God predicted in
Isaiah, of whom it is said that he was "brought as a
lamb to the slaughter," and that he should " make his
soul a trespass-offering " (Isa. Iiii. 7, 10), representing him
as the vicarious sufferer and sacrifice for human sin. So
later in the Saviour's ministry, the high-priest, Caiaphas,
prophesying in his official capacity, and with a depth of
meaning far beyond his own thought, foretold his vica
rious death for his people. John reports a number of
striking utterances of Jesus bearing upon his atonement.
In his discourse with Nicodemus Christ compared his
death upon the cross to the brazen serpent which Moses
at God's command raised in the wilderness for the healing
of the stricken Israelites : " As Moses lifted up the ser
pent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be
lifted up, that whosoever believeth may in him have
eternal life" (John iii. 14 seq. ; Numb. xxi. 4-9). He
declares that he is " the bread of life," and adds by way
of explanation, " the bread that I will give is my flesh,
which I will give for the life of the world " (John vi.
51). He likens himself to the Good Shepherd, who giv-
eth or layeth down his life for the sheep, a life which
he says he lays down of himself, since he has the right
to lay it down and to take it again (John x. 11, 15, 18).
He illustrated his death by the simile of the grain of
wheat which bears its fruit only when it is cast into the
earth and dies, declared that the hour of his death was

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 375
the hour of his glorification, and in full assurance of his
coming victory over the powers of evil said, " I, if I be
lifted up from the earth, will draw all men unto me"
(John xii. 24-33). At the last interview with his dis
ciples he told them that he was about to lay down his
life in behalf of his friends. The so-called " high-priestly
prayer," which John has recorded in the seventeenth chap
ter of his Gospel, shows us with what thoughts and aspira
tions the Saviour looked forward to his approaching death.
Speaking of the disciples he said, " For their sake I sanc
tify myself," employing the word which designated the
consecration of the sacrificial victim about to be offered
upon the altar.
I am at a loss how to select among the many references
to the Saviour's atoning death in the other books of the
New Testament. The doctrine underlies all the apostolic
teaching and preaching. .It is of fundamental importance
in Paul's great doctrine of justification by faith. After
having shown in the opening chapters of the Epistle to
the Romans that Gentiles and Jews alike have " sinned
and come short of the glory of God," he goes on to de
clare that men can be justified and forgiven only by God's
grace " through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ;
whom God set forth to be a propitiation, through faith,
by his blood " (Rom. iii. 24, 25). Redemption, propitia
tion, blood — the terms are taken from the ritual ordinances
of the Old Dispensation, and represent Christ's death as a
vicarious or sacrificial atonement. No language could be
used which would more distinctly convey this idea to a
Jewish mind. Moreover, he gives the reason why God
has thus " set forth " Christ as an atoning sacrifice, " to
show his righteousness, because of the passing over of the
sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God ; for the
showing, I say, of his righteousness at this present sea
son : that he might himself be just and the justifier of
him that hath faith in Jesus " (Rom. iii. 25, 26). The

376 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
righteousness spoken of is God's judicial righteousness,
which seems to have suffered detriment from human sin,
but which is now shown to have received atonement
through the death of Christ, with the result that God can
without injury to His holiness give free play to His for
giving grace toward all those who believe in the crucified
and living Lord. There is abundant proof without this
passage of the doctrine before us, but there is no state
ment of it in the New Testament more full and unequiv
ocal than this. Here, as nowhere else, the death of Christ
is represented, to borrow the words of Tholuck, as " the
divine Theodicee," the vindication of the divine justice in
the forgiveness of sins.
In the fifth chapter of the same epistle Paul shows
how the atonement has its origin in the undeserved
love of God, who " commendeth his love toward us, in
that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us"
(v. 8). If we are ever tempted to yield to that popular
and yet most erroneous idea that in the doctrine of the
atonement God the Father is represented as the angry
God, to whom God the Son makes propitiation, this
passage should disprove it. The atonement originates
in the love of the Father, as the holiness to which the
atonement is made belongs to the Son equally with the
Father : " God so loved the world that he gave his Son."
The Saviour's work is here represented as a finished re
conciliation. By it God has come into an attitude of re
conciliation toward men. The atonement is objective, the
reconciliation made once for all. In potency and promise
the race is reconciled to God, and all that individual sin
ners have -to do is by faith to accept the reconciliation
(vv. 10, 11). In the great parallel between Adam and
Christ which follows, Paul shows that the benefits which
have accrued to mankind from Christ's work (which is
here called his " obedience ") far exceed the evils that have
been entailed by the Fall, and carries further the thought

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 377
that the race stands in a redeemed relation to God through
Christ — a relation which of course does not relieve the in
dividual from the necessity of personal faith as the sole
condition of sharing in the saving benefits of this relation
(Rom. v. 12-21). In the same epistle Paul shows that the
final cause of the atonement is holiness, or the fulfilment
of God's will in His kingdom : " What the law could not
do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God, sending
his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin,
condemned sin in the flesh : that the ordinance of the
law might be fulfilled in ns, who walk not after the flesh,
but after the Spirit" (Rom. viii. 3, 4).
I will allude to only one more passage out of the many
which occur in the Pauline writings. It is that in the Sec
ond Epistle to the Corinthians (v. 14-21), where the Apostle
urges the great Christian motive arising from the love of
Christ manifested in his atoning death. He died for all,
and so close is his relation to all that it may be truly said
that all died in his death. Since he performed the atoning
act in their behalf it was constructively their act. In this
passage he once more represents Christ's work as a finished
reconciliation : " God was in Christ reconciling the world
unto himself." He has given to His servants the adminis
tration of this reconciliation. They go to sinful men with
the offer of it, beseeching them that, since God has done
His part, they will do theirs and " be reconciled to God."
Then he further describes the atonement in words which
unmistakably teach its vicarious or substitutional character,
though leaving the origination, and in large part the exe
cution, in God's hands, " Him who knew no sin he made
to be sin on our behalf, that we might become the right
eousness of God in him " — that is, God put the sinless One
in some true sense into the sinner's place, treating him as
if he were a sinner, that the sinner through faith in him
might be in some true sense put into his place, and though
sinful be treated as if righteous. This is not vicarious

378 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
punishment, but at the very least it is vicarious atone
ment. The unknown author of the Epistle to the Hebrews has
given us a complete and most important exposition of
Christ's atoning death in its relation to the Old Testa
ment ceremonial system. He follows especially upon those
two lines of approach to the New Testament doctrine, of
which mention has already been made, the high-priest
hood and the sacrifices. Christ in his death is at once
high-priest and sacrifice ; he presents the atonement and
is the atonement. He is " a merciful and faithful high-
priest in things pertaining to God, to make propitiation
for the sins of the people" (Heb. ii. 17). For this office
the Saviour was prepared by his temptations and sufferings
(ii. 18 ; v. 8). His superiority to the high-priest of the
Old Testament is demonstrated. He is a high-priest after
a different order, namely, that of Melchizedek (v. 1-10).
He did not need to offer up sacrifices for his own sins,
seeing that he was sinless, but made one all-sufficient sac
rifice when he offered up himself (vii. 26, 27). The Old
Testament sacrifices were intrinsically insufficient ; " the
blood of bulls and of goats could not take away sin "
(x. 4). But Christ was the perfect sacrifice. The old
sacrifices had to be offered over and over again. The
high-priest year after year went into the holy of holies
with the sacrificial blood on the great day of atonement.
But Christ has been offered once for all a perfect sacri
fice that needs not to be repeated. The virtue of his sacri
fice lay in the perfect surrender of his will to God, " by
the which will we have been sanctified through the offer
ing of the body of Christ once for all " (x. 5-10). So hav
ing offered one sacrifice for sins forever, he has sat down
on the right hand of God, from henceforth expecting till
his enemies be made the footstool of his feet (x. 12, 13).
One has to give a new meaning to the whole Old Tes
tament system in order to find any other doctrine in

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 379
this wonderful epistle than that of a vicarious atone
ment. The passages in the epistles of Peter emphasize the
same aspects of truth, so fully brought out in the Epistle
to the Hebrews and the writings of Paul. , The two ideas
of redemption and sacrifice are continually in this apos
tle's mind (1 Pet. i. 18, 19). He describes the Saviour's
death in language that is an echo of the fifty-third chapter
of Isaiah : " Who his own self bear our sins in his body
upon the tree, that we, having died unto sins, might live
unto righteousness ; by whose stripes ye were healed "
(1 Pet. ii. 24). And in words which remind us of the
fifth chapter of Second Corinthians, he tells us how
" Christ also suffered for sins once, the just for the un
just, that he might bring ns to God " (1 Pet. iii. 18).
It remains only to speak of the Apostle John. The
truth which he records in the utterances of our Saviour,
as given in his Gospel, is amply confirmed by his own
declarations in his other writings. In the First Epistle he
teaches that " the blood of Jesus his (God's) Son cleanseth
us from all sin " (i. 7). He tells us that Christ is " the
propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only, but also
for the whole world " (ii. 2). " He laid down his life for
us " (iii. 16). " Herein is love, not that we loved God,
but that He loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitia
tion for our sins " (iv. 10). Notice how the atonement or
propitiatory sacrifice is represented as originating in the
love of God. In the Apocalypse Christ is represented as
he " that loveth us, and loosed ns from our sins by his
blood " (Rev. i. 6). He is " a Lamb as though it had been
slain " (v. 6), and this is his common designation through
out the book, giving prominence to the atonement even in
the heavenly state. The Lamb is the light and the glory
of the New Jerusalem.
I have not as yet entered into any of those problems
which have made the doctrine of the atonement a theo-

380 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY

logical battle-field. But I think that enough has been
said to show that the Bible contains a distinct and un
equivocal truth to teach on the subject. It does not tell
us in what the inmost essence of the atonement consists.
It gives us but imperfect glimpses into the heart of the
mystery. But it does give us a doctrine, and that, one
capable of being stated in simple and definite language.
It is the doctrine of a vicarious atonement — that is, that
Jesus Christ has rendered to God the amends for our sins
which we cannot render ourselves, and yet which is due
from us, and that thus he has rendered it consistent with
God's holiness to grant us forgiveness and restore us to
His favor. I said that Christ has done this for us.
Rather let me say that God Himself has done it for us,
through Christ. In this great and sacred truth the uni
versal church is one.

XXI.
THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST
(2. The Work of Atonement)
Whatever view may be taken of the Emperor Con-
stantine's vision of the flaming cross — whether it was a
real experience, or, as one of the most recent ecclesiastical
historians suggests, an "optical illusion," or, to be ex
plained as a legend of later growth — -it points to a great
truth. The cross symbolizes what is most essential and
sacred in Christianity. It was not without reason that
the labarum was carried as the standard of the first Chris
tian armies, and that the Crusaders wore the sign of the
cross on shoulder or breast. It has not been without
reason that the church in all ages has made the cross its
emblem. To-day, as in the days of Constantine, we con
quer by this sign. But in taking the cross as its symbol,
the Christian church has given to the doctrine of the
atonement a central and unique place among the truths
which it teaches. By this doctrine, as by no other, it
stands or falls. I say this with no thought of detriment
to the immemorial Protestant claim that the doctrine of
justification by faith is the articulus stantis et cadentis
ecclesiw, the fundamental article of Christian faith, for
this doctrine is rooted in the atonement and receives all
its significance from it. We cannot, without surrendering
what is most essential in Christianity, treat the truth of
Christ's atonement lightly or regard it as of secondary
importance. It is our duty to uphold it in its integrity
and to seek to penetrate, as far as may be, into its deepest

382 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
meaning, and at the same time to give our beki efforts
to commend it as reasonable to the acceptance of those
Christians who are hindered by intellectual or practical
difficulties from accepting it, as well as to defend it
against the attacks of the opponents of Christianity.
I. I wish to speak first of the history of the doctrine,
and hope to be able so to present the facts, even in this
brief survey, as to show that, in spite of differences re
specting the theological explanation of the doctrine, and
of some temporary aberrations from the scriptural teach
ings, the church in all ages has held the essence and core
of this great truth.
In the earlier centuries of the church's history atten
tion was concentrated upon problems very different from
that of the atonement. The person of Christ, the Trinity,
sin and grace, and the nature of the church and the
sacraments, were the subjects about which the primitive
controversies were waged. The central importance of the
Saviour's redemptive work was everywhere recognized,
and the absolute necessity of his death in order to human
salvation universally taught. Just as to-day the ordinary
Christian, uninstructed in systematic theology yet mighty
in the Scriptures, declares with a true and vigorous grasp
on the essential truth of the atonement, that his
" Hope is built on nothing less
Than Jesus' blood and righteousness ; "
so it was with the early church, which with profound
conviction and unvarying constancy affirmed, chiefly in
scriptural language, that the Saviour's death upon the
cross was the vicarious sacrifice for human sin, without an
interest in which no man could enter the kingdom of God.
In connection with this simple unscientific faith there are
anticipations, consisting rather in hints than in systematic
doctrinal statements, of almost all the great theories of the
atonement which have attracted attention in later times.

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 383
The first theory of the atonement which deserves to
bear the name is that which represents Christ's death as
God's ransom paid to Satan for the deliverance of the
souls of men. This singular view, which was first ad
vanced by the two great Fathers of the Church, Origen
(died 254 a.d.) and Gregory of Nyssa (died about 400 a.d.),
and which was very generally held in the church from the
fifth century to the twelfth, was based upon the assump
tion that men, in consequence of sin, have fallen into the
rightful power of Satan. God, who is righteous, must
respect the rights even of Satan. In order, therefore,
that justice may be maintained, and yet the lost race deliv
ered, God sent His Son into the world and offered Satan,
in the person of the God-man, endowed with miraculous
power, a prize more valuable than the whole race. Satan,
accepted Christ in exchange for mankind, and the transfer
was made in the Saviour's death. The race was delivered,
and Satan found in Christ a servant who straightway
became his Master, overthrowing his power, and in the
resurrection and ascension triumphing gloriously. The
grotesqueness of this singular view lies upon the surface ;
but there is a clear recognition in it of the vicarious char
acter of Christ's work, its relation to the divine love and
justice, and its absolute necessity. The vessel was alto
gether an earthen one, sure sooner or later to be broken,
but it did contain and preserve the golden truth.
A far higher key was struck by the great Archbishop of
Canterbury, Anselm, in the eleventh century (a.d. 1033-
a.d. 1109). According to his " satisfaction theory " God
is bound to maintain his honor in the face of human sin,
and can do so only by punishing the sinner or else receiv
ing from him au adequate atonement or " satisfaction " —
which latter was viewed, in accordance with the legal
principles of the time, under the conception of a money
payment. Sinful men cannot themselves make satis
faction, for sin involves infinite guilt, since it is committed

384 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
against an infinite Being. Iu this extremity of man God
finds His opportunity. The divine Son becomes incarnate.
Cur Deus Homo ? is the question which forms the title of
Anselm's treatise, Why did God become man? The
atonement is the answer : only God could make a sufficient
atonement, yet it could be a human satisfaction only if
made by a man. The essence of the atonement, according
to Anselm, consists in the Saviour's voluntary obedience
to God in submitting to the death of the cross. As a sin
less man he did not need to die. So his death upon the
cross was a work of supererogation, to which his own di
vine nature gave an infinite value, and which received
from God an infinite reward. lie did not need this re
ward for himself, since as divine he had no wants. He
therefore passed it over to the account of his human
brethren, and God accepted it as the full satisfaction for
their sin. It is impossible not to admire the ethical and
spiritual greatness of this theory. In some of its subor
dinate details it shows the theological limitations of the
time, and of the Roman Catholic church, in which it orig
inated ; but in all its great outlines it has maintained it
self, and will continue to do so, as expressing the deepest
thought of the Christian church respecting the Saviour's
atoning work.
The Reformation brought still another theory, which is
often, but quite erroneously, identified with the Anselmic.
It is what is often called the theory of " penal substitu
tion." Anselm represented God as standing between the
two alternatives, punishment or satisfaction. The Refor
mation theory insists on punishment in any case, on satis
faction through punishment. The only alternatives which
it admits are, the punishment of the sinner, or the pun
ishment of a substitute. God chooses the latter alterna
tive and sends His Son into the world that he may become
the sinner's substitute in punishment. The God-man takes
the sinner's place, obeys for him the broken law of God,

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 385
and suffers for him the punishment of death. According
to the strict Calvinistic view, he does not do this for all
men, but only for the elect. Those who hold the theory
of penal substitution agree with Anselm in teaching that
the divine nature of Christ gave to his death an infinite
value. The Reformers themselves taught that Christ
suffered not only the punishment of physical death, but
also that of hell. Calvin says, "It was necessary for him
to contend with the powers of hell and the horror of
eternal death. . . . He suffered in his soul the dread
ful torments of a person condemned and irretrievably
lost" (Calvin's "Institutes," Bk. II., ch. xvi ; sect. 10, 11).
Later advocates of the theory have contented themselves
with teaching that the divine nature of Christ gave to his
physical sufferings and death a value sufficient to counter
balance both the temporal and eternal sufferings to which
the elect are justly condemned. The Saviour bears the
punishment, and the sinner who accepts his work by
faith goes free, while in virtue of Christ's vicarious obe
dience to the divine law, God justifies him or treats him
as righteous. No one who realizes how much good has
been accomplished in the world by means of this theory,
and how deeply interwoven it is with the most sacred as
pirations and experiences of multitudes of Christian be
lievers, will speak of it in any other tone than that of re
spect. It conveys the great essential truth of a vicarious
atonement, and makes the sinner absolutely dependent
upon Christ for his salvation. Yet it may be doubted
whether it is not a retrogression from the Ansel mic view
rather than an advance upon it. We may question
whether the Scriptures require us to hold that the Father
punished the Son, in any strict sense of the word punish
ment. And yet I gladly admit that this theory includes
the essentials of the doctrine.
The attacks of the Socinians upon the theory of penal
substitution led to several interesting attempts to modify
25

386 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
it. The Arihinians regarded Christ's death rather as a
vicarious sacrifice than as a substituted punishment. They
did not claim that its intrinsic value was such as to make
it a sufficient atonement for human sin. Rather they
taught that it derived its value from the divine acceptance
of it. God, who was graciously pleased to accept the sac
rifices of the Old Testament, as sufficient, has done the
same in the case of the far more valuable, yet still intrin
sically inadequate sacrifice of Christ. As was to be ex
pected, this Arminian theory, while capable of being so
stated as to include all the essential features of the script
ural doctrine, tended to reduce the atonement to a matter
of only relative necessity ; for if the value of the Saviour's
death was due to the divine acceptance of it, the question
was readily raised, Why might not God do without it alto
gether, and accept the reformation of the sinner as a suf
ficient atonement? Accordingly, this theory gave place
in many quarters to the moral influence view, of which
mention is presently to be made.
One of the most interesting, and on the whole influen
tial, of the modern attempts to explain the doctrine of the
atonement, is the so-called " governmental theory." This
was first advanced by the Dutch jurist, Grotius, in the
first half of the seventeenth century. It reappeared un
der a somewhat modified form, and wholly independently
of the Grotian theology, in connection with that remark
able theological movement, beginning near the middle of
the last century, and reaching in its fruitful results down
to the present time, which we call the New England the
ology. This theory rests upon the distinction between
God's distributive justice, which is concerned with the
divine rewards and punishments in their relation to per
sonal character and desert, and His general or rectoral
justice, which is synonymous with the holiness or love of
God, and which is concerned with God's government as
intended to secure the best good of all intelligent be-

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 387
ings. Distributive justice demands the punishment of the
sinner; but distributive justice is subordinate to general
justice and may be passed over in the interests of the
latter. Now the sufferings and death of Christ were a
divine provision for the satisfaction of God's general jus
tice, inasmuch as they manifested God's hatred of sin and
showed" His earnestness in threatening it with punish
ment. They rendered it consistent with the interests of
God's government to pass over the claims of distributive
justice and to pardon the sinner According to this view
Christ did not bear the sinner's punishment, but a sub
stitute for that punishment ; his sufferings and death an
swered the same ends as would have been answered by
the sinner's punishment. Distributive justice, indeed,
always continues to demand the sinner's punishment ;
but general justice determines the divine attitude toward
the sinner. This theory was the result of a reaction
against the doctrine of penal substitution and labors un
der certain defects which were scarcely to be avoided
under the circumstances. It emphasizes the manward
side of the atonement so strongly as to make it easy to
forget the Godward aspect. But, rightly understood, it
includes and does justice to both sides, and conserves the
essential truth of the scriptural doctrine.
I have referred to the " moral influence " theory. This
made its appearance in the Middle Ages, when it was ad
vanced by the great, but erratic, theologian and philos
opher, Abelard. It has made its appearance many times
during the later history of the church, always as a re
action from the more extreme and rigorous aspects of
the orthodox doctrine. It is simply stated, and from its
freedom from the ethical difficulties which hinder many
minds from fully accepting the common doctrine, has
found wide acceptance. This view denies that the death
of Christ is an atonement in the strict sense of the word,
that is, a necessary condition and prerequisite to the

388 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
removal of the hindrances in the divine holiness to the
forgiveness of sin. It views the death of Christ rather
under the category of revelation than of atonement, as a
part of his prophetical rather than of his priestly office.
It is the great manifestation of the divine love, the pledge
to men of God's eternal readiness to forgive the return
ing sinner. The divine justice needs no other satisfaction
than the repentance and reformation of the sinner. This
theory was presented with great power and beauty by
Horace Bushnell in his " Vicarious Sacrifice ; " but he
found it insufficient, and afterward supplemented it by
a view which finds in God's self-sacrifice, or " making
cost " for sinners, an atonement in some true sense of the
word made by God to Himself— a theory which once
worked out with due regard to Christ's human nature
and his representative relation to mankind, would in
evitably approximate to the Catholic doctrine. The
moral influence theory exhibits au unquestioned truth
which has been too much neglected by the other forms of
doctrine, namely, the manifestation of the divine love in
the atonement. But it does not give us the atonement
itself in any real meaning of the word. It fails to give
us any satisfactory explanation of the twenty-fifth and
twenty-sixth verses of the third chapter of Romans.
I can do no more than allude to the most suggestive
and deeply spiritual work on the subject of the atonement
which has appeared in recent times, that of Dr. J. Mac-
leod Campbell, in which he explains the atonement as a
vicarious repentance and confession of sin — a view which
will not stand the test of careful theological analysis, but
which gives helpful hints in the direction of a clearer rec
ognition of the spiritual and ethical elements in the
atonement. I must also content myself with the bare
mention of the theories which identify the atonement
with the reconciliation or the at-one-ment, according to
the etymology of the word, between man and God, first

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 389
in the holy life of Jesus, by which the kingdom of God
is restored in his person, and then in the restoration of
sinners through the power of the risen Lord working
through his Spirit.
II. Modern theology has begun to learn the true lesson
which the history of doctrine has to teach us, namely,
that in all the earnest efforts which the church has made
to come to an understanding of the great truths which
revelation has bestowed upon it, there has been something
of good, something worthy of recognition and preserva
tion. What we need most of all to do is to subject the
various theories to a careful and appreciative criticism, to
prove all things and to hold fast that which is good. The
remark we hear so often made, that we need all the
theories of the atonement, is indicative of this wholesome
tendency. A doctrine so large and many-sided, that
reaches so deeply into the central mysteries of the Chris
tian system, cannot be adequately expressed in any one
form of words.
It is in this spirit that I desire to attempt a doctrinal
statement, which shall in some measure bring together
the elements of the great truth which we have been con
sidering, as we find them in the Scriptures and in the
speculations of Christian thinkers. I have no theory to
give. Enough if I can give a far-off glimpse of that
building of God, that sacred truth itself, which all the
theories only reveal in part.
The atonement originated in the love of God. He
meant to establish His kingdom in the sinful world. But
sin stood in the way of this end of His plan and works.
The establishment of the kingdom is impossible without
the restoration of sinners. The first step toward com
plete salvation is forgiveness. The door to the kingdom
is reconciliation. But God is not merely love ; He is holy
love. Love is not weak, careless good-nature ; there is in
it a principle of self-preservation and self-assertion, a

390 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
righteousness which guards it from all that would lower
its dignity and sacredness. God cannot, with due regard
to His own holiness, pardon the sinner out of hand ;
atonement must be made for his sin. And yet the sinner
cannot make atonement for himself. He is not only
guilty but helpless. He cannot take the first step toward
righting the wrong he has done to God. He has nothing
to offer to God as an atonement.
" Not the labor of my hands
Can fulfil thy law's demands ;
Could my zeal no respite know,
Could my tears forever flow,
All for sin could not atone."
Therefore God sent His only-begotten Son into the
world, sent him in His love and holiness. Jesus Christ
was perfectly qualified for the work of atonement. He
was the God-man. It was to be a divine atonement. God
was to render the atonement to Himself for man ; it was
to be a divine provision, a gift of divine grace, something
wholly gratuitous, in which men had no share at all.
Nevertheless, it was to be a human atonement, rendered
by humanity to God ; in other words, it was to be a real
atonement and not the mere show of one. God became
man that He might make atonement for man ; He became
the central and universal Man. Because men were all
sinners, and so unfit to render atonement, He made a new
manhood, in and through which He might become recon
ciled to mankind, and which should be the beginning and
rallying-point of a redeemed manhood.
Christ prepared himself for the atoning work by his
human experience. From the first his relation to the race
was vicarious. As we have seen, an atoning element runs
alongside of the Saviour's work of revelation. He entered
personally into our human life, taking upon him its joys
and its sorrows, its prosperity and its adversity. He en-

THE REDEMPTIVE AVORK OF CHRIST 391
dured temptation, trial, and hardship. He took upon his
sympathy and love the woes of his human brethren.
With that power of putting one's self into another's place
which love alone gives, he made human sufferings his
own, and, though sinless, learned the deepest meaning of
sin. No man ever knew sin as Jesus Christ knew it.
The sinner's eyes are always blurred when he looks at his
own sin or that of his neighbor. But Christ understood
it iu all its evil, and understood its relation to God's holi
ness. As God he knew the divine displeasure which con
tinually rests upon sin ; he knew it standing thus over it
and looking down upon it. As man, and that a holy man
sharing the experience of his sinful brethren, he felt the
divine displeasure coming down to him from above, and
looked up to it with a sense of its righteousness and awful-
ness. In his union with sinners it was as if God's dis
pleasure rested upon him also. Nay more, in so far as he
shared in those corporate evils which are a divine punish
ment of sin, a kind of objectivized divine displeasure, he
felt himself under punishment.
Thus Christ was fitted to be our substitute in atonement,
and to render that atonement which we ought to render,
but cannot. We have noticed that there was an atoning
element in the Saviour's whole life. But the atoning act
by way of eminence was his death upon the cross. His
death, his blood, his cross, his giving of his life — such are the
terms by which the Scriptures describe the atoning deed.
What gave Christ's death its efficacy as an atonement ?
The attempt to answer this question will carry us out of
the sphere of distinctly revealed truth into that of human
speculation, and we shall do well to carefully distinguish
between the two and to recognize the necessary limitations
of the latter. There is truth in Bishop Butler's words :
" If the Scripture has, as surely it has, left this matter of
the satisfaction of Christ mysterious, left somewhat in it
unrevealed, all conjectures about it must be, if not evident-

392 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
ly absurd, yet at least uncertain. Nor has any one reason
to complain for want of further information, unless he
can show his claim to it " (" Analogy," Pt. II., ch. v.).
Nevertheless, Butler's caution may go too far. " Uncer
tain" all conjectures must undoubtedly be, but not neces
sarily " palpably absurd." It is our right, if we choose, to
take a purely agnostic position with reference to the inner
and essential principle of the atonement, and to say with
Coleridge, " The mysterious act, the operative cause, is
transcendent. Factum est : and beyond the information
contained in the enunciation of the fact, it can be charac
terized only by the consequences" ("Aids to Reflection,"
Am. ed., 1840, p. 287). But it is equally our right, while
admitting the transcendent element in the problem, to
reverently attempt such a solution of it as our reason,
guided and enlightened by God's Spirit, will permit us to
attain. In the exercise of this right, yet with the distinct
recognition of the fact that " we know in part and proph
esy in part," I would give a twofold answer to the ques
tion, What gave the Saviour's death its value as an atone
ment? It is the answer which, as I believe, results from
a thorough criticism of the various theories which have
been held during the history of the church.
The first branch of the answer concerns the relation of
death to human sin. Death entered the world as the
punishment of Adam's transgression. It has been the
punishment visited upon all sinners since his time ; it
passed unto all men because all sinned (Rom. v. 12).
Through the relation in which they stand to a fallen race,
even infants, who have never sinned personally, die.
Death may be called in a true sense, in virtue of the sol
idarity of the race, the common doom which rests upon
mankind. It is the outward and visible manifestation of
the divine displeasure. It is directly connected with that
false relation to God which we call spiritual death, and it
is the entrance for the unforgiven sinner into that final

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 393
state in which spiritual death works out its consequences
and is visited by the divine punishment, and to which we
give the name eternal death. The Saviour as a sinless
man needed not to die, yet of his own free will he gave
himself up to death, as the representative and substitute
of the sinful race. He put himself, as far as was possible
for the sinless One, into the sinner's place, where he
could realize the greatness of human^sin and of the divine
displeasure which visits sin with punishment. He tasted
death for every man (Heb. ii. 9).
The second branch of the answer relates to the inner
meaning of the Saviour's death. Death has no atoning
value in itself. The dignity and infinite worth of the
Saviour's divine nature did not of themselves make his
death a sufficient atonement. As atonement in the case
of men, when they make it to each other, is always in its
essence moral and spiritual, in whatever outward and sig
nificant act it may express itself, so in the case of the
Saviour. It was the spirit and purpose with which he
suffered that gave his death its efficacy. As the Son of
Man, the Second Adam, he rendered to God that spiritual
reparation or atonement which sinful men ought to ren
der but cannot. We may not be able to understand alto
gether in what this reparation consisted, but we are not
without glimpses of it. The Saviour laid-his will a holy
offering on the divine altar. Acting in behalf of mankind,
with perfect obedience and love, and absolute self-surren
der, he acknowledged the divine justice in the punish
ment of sin and sought the divine forgiveness. It was
not a vicarious repentance, but a vicarious atonement.
Repentance is personal and cannot be performed by an
other ; like faith, with which it is inseparably connected,
it must be a man's own act. Atonement belongs not only
to the individual life, but to the region of mankind's cor
porate unity, where representation and substitution are
possible. .

394 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
Combining the two branches of our answer, we may
say that Christ's atonement consists in this : That as the
Substitute for the sinful race, the God-man endured in
obedience, love, and acknowledgment of the divine jus
tice, the death which is the common doom, and by so
doing rendered to God the spiritual reparation which was
due from man, and without which God could not justly
forgive the sinner. t
In so far as death is the common punishment of sin we
may say that Christ bore our punishment. But we use
the language thus in a very different sense from that in
which it is employed by the advocates of the theory of
penal substitution. Christ did not bear our personal and
individual punishment, either the temporal or the eternal
punishment. He was not punished himself. He took upon
him that consequence of sin which to others is punish
ment. He shared the common punishment voluntarily and
for the purpose of effecting atonement for us, as the child
who dies in infancy shares that punishment involuntarily.
He was no more punished personally than is the child.
We speak of his vicarious death, but the vicariousness lay
rather in the spiritual sacrifice to God, of which the death
was the vehicle and expression, than in the death itself.
He was not our Substitute in punishment, but our Substi
tute in atonement.
III. It remains for me to speak of the reasonableness
of the doctrine of the atonement. Among all the truths
of the Christian system there is none which is more per
sistently assailed than this. The cross of Christ is as
truly to-day, as in the times of the Apostles, " unto Jews a
stumbling-block and unto Gentiles foolishness." The re
ligion that seeks salvation in good works and the phi
losophy that denies revelation unite in opposition to the
doctrine of the atonement. So strong and clamorous is the
opposition that many minds are disturbed and confused by
it, so that to-day there is inside the church, as well as

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 395
outside of it, a great deal of difficulty about the acceptance
of this truth.
Now there are real reasons for the state of things which
we find. In the first place there is a transcendent element,
as we have already noticed, in the doctrine. Like the
doctrines of the Trinity and the person of Christ, it be
longs in part to the sphere of the infinite. In part, at
least, the atonement is a transaction within the Deity it
self. It is only the outward manifestation of it which we
have been permitted to see. The death on Calvary is a
revelation of eternal things. No wonder that those who
judge merely by the standard of finite things should have
difficulty with this mysterious dogma. A second reason
lies in the distinctively Christian character of the doc
trine. It belongs to the deepest core and essence of the
redemptive system. Now this system was given because
of human sin, and it comes into direct collision with the
teachings of reason, so far as reason has been darkened by
sin. There is something repulsive to the natural man in
God's grace, and most of all in this wonderful provision
upon which God's grace is based. A spiritual susceptibil
ity must be present before there can be a full and hearty
acceptance of the doctrine of the atonement. The awak
ened sinner, in despair of his own power, feeling his guilt
and utter helplessness, finds in it just the help he needs.
The Christian, who knows that he has been justified by
faith on the ground of the Saviour's atoning sacrifice,
would almost as soon think of doubting his own existence
as the reality of this foundation upon which all his pos
sessions and all his hopes are based. But the case stands
very differently with him who has had no such experience.
In the defence of the doctrine we must make our appeal
in part to the " Christian consciousness." A third reason
for the hesitation which so many have in the acceptance of
the doctrine lies in its fundamental character. When we
attempt to explain it by human analogies, or, as Horace

396 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
Bushnell puts it in the title of his " Vicarious Sacrifice,"*
from " principles of universal obligation," we find that the
analogies and principles derived from the relations of men
must themselves be explained by the atonement. For ex
ample, we attempt to explain the atonement by showing
what is needful in order to forgiveness, where a human
father and son, or two human friends, have quarrelled.
We fail, and the reason — which we may perceive and may
not — lies in the fact that the human relation is the result
of the atonement. It is true that I am to forgive my
neighbor, so far as my power is concerned, without an ad
equate atonement. But why '? Because Christ has rendered
once for all a universal atonement. We are to forgive be
cause we have been forgiven. The insufficient atonement
which my neighbor makes to me becomes sufficient, and
more than sufficient, when 1 understand what Christ has
done for me and for every man.
Nevertheless, in spite of these especial difficulties in the
way of understanding the doctrine of the atonement, it is
a reasonable doctrine, like all the truths of the Christian
system. The highest proof must indeed come through the
personal experience of the soul that has been " crucified
with Christ ; " but a sufficient answer can be given both to
the cavils of the opponent of Christianity and to the honest
questionings of the Christian inquirer. Let me take up
some of the more common objections and answer them.
1. The necessity of the atonement is denied. It is said
that God is love, that He is always ready to forgive, and
that we dishonor Him when we represent Him as demand
ing reparation. This objection is urged with more force
against the theory of penal substitution than against that
which has been given here, but still it is aimed at any
theory which finds a Godward aspect in the atonement.
In reply, while admitting that God is love, we claim that
His love is a holy love, which will not unrighteously forgive
* First edition.

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 397
the sinner without adequate amends. God must be true to
Himself and true to His moral universe. He cannot deny
Himself. God is not less holy than men, but far more so.
It is said that the human father who would not forgive
his child when he came to him in penitence would be a
monster, and that God must do the same by His human
children. But the two cases are not parallel, for, as has
been already said, the reason why man must forgive is
because God has already forgiven him, and man can do
without an atonement because Christ has rendered-a per
fect one. Moreover, the sinner does not come to God in
penitence until God has furnished him with an atonement,
nor is there any reason to believe that he ever would come
without the aid of the divine grace. But though insisting
that the two cases are not parallel, I claim that, so far as
an analogy does exist between them, it favors the doctrine
of atonement. The earthly father cannot forgive his child
until he has rendered some atonement, even though it may
be inadequate. There must be some acknowledgment of
the father's just displeasure, some confession of wrong,
and these things are of the nature of an atonement.
Without them the father's forgiveness would be inoper
ative. Reconciliation implies action on both sides. The
father could not, in the true and complete meaning of
the word forgiveness, forgive an obstinately rebellious
son. I claim also that the common consciousness of man
kind, as expressed in religious beliefs and customs, testi
fies to the sinner's need of atonement. Doubtless there
has been much of evil associated with the sacrifices of the
heathen, but there is in them a witness to the great truth
which the anima naturaliter Christiana, the soul by nature
Christian, recognizes instinctively, that without atonement
there can be no forgiveness. Even the awful custom of
human sacrifice gives grim testimony to this profound
' moral and religious principle.
2. It is denied that atonement can be vicarious. Every

398 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
man, it is said, stands or falls according to his own per
sonal relations to God. Another cannot step in and take
his place.
But we assert that there is such a relation between man
and man in the race that vicarious action is possible.
The individualistic or atomistic view of men is not sus
tained by true science any more than by true theology.
The solidarity of the race is such that one can and must
act for another. Parents act and choose for their chil
dren. The stronger members of society take upon them
selves the interests of the weaker. For good and for evil
men are bound up together. There is a common life as
well as an individual life. Without the vicarious relation
the great institutions of mankind, such as the family, the
church, the state, the school, business, commerce, would
be impossible. When, then, we consider how deeply
rooted this vicarious principle is in the race, how it makes
itself felt in every department of human life and activity,
especially how important a part it plays in the moral re
lations of men, is it strange that God should have availed
Himself of it to secure the redemption of mankind ? May
we not even suppose that He constituted the race thus, in
order that thus He might redeem it ? If ordinary men
can stand for each other, exercising vicarious powers in
each other's behalf, how much more can the Son of Man,
the Head of the race, who stands in a central relation to
mankind and a personal relation to every soul of man, as
sume this vicarious relation and make vicarious atone
ment ! If Adam was our natural head, why should not
Christ be our spiritual Head ?
3. The atoning act is called in question. It is said
that it is not an atonement. The amends which Christ
makes is not commensurate with the sin of man. What
is there in the death of Christ that should lead God to
forgive sin? We cannot suppose that God took any
pleasure in the death of this innocent Bein^ or received

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 399
any benefit from it. The full force of this objection is
directed against the theory of penal substitution, and em
phasizes the fact that while men are condemned to eter
nal punishment Christ suffers only physical death.
It is not needful for me to defend the doctrine of sub
stitution in punishment, which undoubtedly has its defects.
It will be sufficient to answer the objection so far as it
touches the more general point of atonement. But if the
view which has been advanced be true, that the atonement
consisted not merely in the outward fact of Christ's death,
but chiefly in the spirit and purpose with which he en
dured death, then the objection loses its point. For all
real atonement is a matter of the will. It would be so in
the case of the sinner, if he were able to atone for his
own sin. That which the Saviour gives is that which the
sinner ought to give but cannot. The two are altogether
commensurate. Moreover, that which God receives is that
which is most precious; it is the holy will of the holy
Son of Man, appearing for the race and presenting the
spiritual atonement of the race to Him. The death is the
vesture, so to speak, of the atonement, essential, since all
the natural consequences and physical punishments of sin
are concentrated in death, but valuable only as it covers
and contains the spiritual reparation.
4. It is said that the atonement is immoral, since it
secures forgiveness for those who are unworthy of forgive
ness, and lowers the standard of human obligation. We
are to work out our own salvation and not to depend upon
the merits of another. The doctrine therefore militates
against the divine righteousness and tends to degrade the
divine law. It is scarcely needful to say that this objec
tion is not urged by those who claim that God is always
ready to forgive without an atonement. It has its weight
with many minds which would not be affected by the
arguments of the latter class. It seems to me that it is
worthier of respect than most of the objections brought

400 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
against our doctrine. Nevertheless, it rests upon a mis
apprehension. Atonement is only a part of a great re
demptive system, the object of which is the complete
salvation of the sinner and the perfect establishment of
the kingdom of God. It is a means to an end and derives
its whole importance from this fact. Men are forgiven
that they may be fully saved and only when all the ar
rangements have been made by which this full salvation
is possible. The divine forgiveness is merely the door of
entrance to the kingdom, and once in the kingdom the
moral obligation rests on a man with even stronger press
ure than before. We must not look at the priestly office
of Christ, whereby he secures forgiveness, apart from the
kingly, whereby he sanctifies and saves through the power
of the Holy Spirit. Let us also remember that the atone
ment of Christ secures pardon only for those who exercise
personal faith, and that this faith, if it be genuine, contains
in it the germ of love and holy living. The sinner is not
forgiven and left where he is ; rather he is forgiven, and
by God's grace, appropriated by faith, made holy. I free
ly concede that if this were not the case the atonement
would be hard to reconcile either with the divine right
eousness or the requirements of the divine law. But how
are God's righteousness and law most honored, by leaving
the sinner in his helplessness and ruin ? or by furnishing
him with such an atonement as will open the way for his
complete salvation?
5. An objection, which to some minds is a very serious
one, is derived from the alleged opposition in which the
doctrine of the atonement places God the Father and God
the Son. The two, it is said, are represented as antagon
istic to each other— the Father as requiring atonement,
the Son as giving it— whereas the Scriptures always
exhibit the Father in the same attitude of love toward
mankind as the Son.
This objection bears rather upon our imperfect concep-

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 401
tion of the facts than upon the facts themselves. It is
hard to keep all the elements of the truth in due relation
to each other in our thoughts and language upon this
profound subject. We are apt to use trinitarian language
while speaking of the love of God, and tritheistic lan
guage when discussing the atonement. But, in fact,
Father, Son, and Spirit are all active alike in the love
which originates the atonement and the acts by which it
is carried out. God through the medium of the God-
man makes atouement to Himself for men. The Father
and the Sou were never in closer accord than when
Jesus Christ died upon the cross. I do not deny that
the receiving of the atonement belonged in an especial
sense to the Father and the rendering of it to the Son.
Nor do I deny that there is iu our conception of the
truth a certain straining of the trinitarian relations in
volved in the death of Christ — a straining incident to
the incarnation during the lowest stage in the state of
humiliation — a straining which made it possible for Christ
to utter then, with a meaning which would not attach to
them at any other time, the words, " My God, my God,
why hast thou forsaken me ? " But we have in the teach
ings of revelation the key to the mystery, and may, if we
can penetrate far enough into the inmost meaning of the
Gospel, see how, even in the apparent separation, there was
the closest fellowship. Christ himself has taught us that
he who will save his life must lose it, that greatness con
sists in humiliation. There is in all love a straining of
the inner life, a giving ourselves away that we may find
ourselves again. This is the explanation of the apparent
separation of the Father and the Son. It is God giving
His Son, God sparing not His Son. It is a depth of love
and divine greatness that can be understood only through
a paradox — only as we take together two cries of Christ,
" My God, why hast thou forsaken me ? " and " Father,
into th'y hands I commend my spirit."
26

XXII.
THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST
(3. The Administration of Redemption)
The topics which I wish to discuss in the present
chapter are —
I. The Kingly Office of Christ ;
II. His Work through the Holy Spirit ; and
III. The Scope of his Redemptive Work.
I. The consideration of the third factor in Christ's
work of redemption, namely, his kingly office, brings us
upon ground already traversed in part in our examination
of the doctrines of the kingdom of God and the person of
Christ. The importance of the subject will justify the
repetition which its treatment will involve. It is to be
noted, however, that while the subject-matter is to some
extent the same, the point of view is altogether different.
We shall be engaged in our present inquiries not with the
nature of the redemptive kingdom nor with the dignity
of the messianic King, but with the kingly element iu the
Saviour's work regarded as a divine provision for the
accomplishment of redemption.
Of the three factors of the saving work: — the revelation,
the atonement, and the kingly office — the last is in some
respects the most important. It is the practical element,
directly connected with the execution of redemption.
Revelation is indeed the absolutely essential prerequisite.
Inasmuch as the work is to be carried out through human
agencies, men must know God as He is. The Word must
become flesh and the divine grace and truth be manifested

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 403
through him. We cannot conceive of redemption apart
from the actual presence on earth of God in Christ. So
also the atonement is absolutely essential, a conditio sine
qua non. It is, as we have seen, central in the redemp
tive work, concentrating all that is most sacred and pre
cious in it. It is the throbbing, life-giving heart of re
demption. But both the revelation and the atonement
would remain ineffectual without the kingly office. It is
not enough that the way should be prepared for salva
tion ; there must be an actual salvation. Revelation and
atonement are not self-operative. It would not have been
sufficient to provide these elements of redemption and
leave the world to appropriate them as it could. Men are
to be saved by the truth ; but the naked truth, even
though it was the truth of the Gospel, never did and
never could save any one. Men are to be saved by aton
ing grace ; but the atonement alone never saved any one,
even when accompanied by the truth of the Gospel.
There must be a direct exercise of power, an actual lay
ing hold of sinners and applying the truth, and the aton
ing grace to them — power by which they may be called,
justified, sanctified, saved.
It is this actual application of the divine grace to the
salvation of the sinful world that is provided for by the
kingly office of Christ. The Saviour did not to any con
siderable degree enter upon the practical work of salva
tion during his earthly ministry. He did not intend to
do so. His work was chiefly preparatory. He contented
himself with gathering about him a little band of dis
ciples and educating them to be his instruments in the
great redemptive work which was to begin after his as
cension. He was, indeed, a King while still in this world ;
he showed it in his miracles and in all his messianic activ
ity. But he was rather a king by right than by actual
exercise of authority. It was when he ascended into
heaven and sat down at the right hand of God, that the

404 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
truly kingly work, the work of establishing his kingdom
iu the world, began. We saw, when we were investigat
ing the doctrine of Christ's person, that the real corona
tion of the Messiah took place at his ascension. Not till
then was he ready for his great task of subduing the
world to himself. Then he began to exercise the author
ity which had been given him in heaven and on earth
(Matt, xxviii. 18). Then the term Lord, which his disciples
had begun to apply to him while he was on earth, received
its full messianic meaning.
The kingly office of Christ implies his constant pres
ence and activity in the world. The promise which he
gave his disciples was that he would be with them always,
even unto the end of the world (Matt, xxviii. 20). From
the day of Pentecost onward he manifested his power
through the Holy Spirit. He is the invisible but potent
source of all the work of the kingdom. Christians do
their work as his instruments. Every soul that is rescued
from sin is rescued by him. Each forward movement of
the kingdom is due to his efficiency.
We may distinguish a general and a particular element
in the Saviour's kingly work, the former subsidiary to the
latter. In the first place, Christ rules over the whole universe.
In order that he may accomplish the work of redemption,
God has put into the hands of the God-man the adminis
tration of His providence. The Redeemer is now the
providential Governor. In his person our humanity sits
upon the throne and shares in the government of the
world. The material, intellectual, and moral forces of the
universe are subject to him and he uses them to advance
the kingdom of God. Under his guidance the natural
world is playing its part in the work of redemption. The
stars in their courses fight against the enemies of the
Saviour's redemptive kingdom, and the creation, groaning
and travailing in pain together in its bondage of corrup-

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 405
tion, is made to do its part not only for the salvation of
men, but also for its own deliverance into the liberty of
the glory of the children of God (Rom. viii. 21, 22). All
things in the material sphere work together for good to
them that love God (Rom. viii. 28), because the Saviour
is on the throne. He rules also in human life and history.
The true King of men is the glorified Saviour. Earthly
monarchs and governments possess authority only as they
derive it from him. They are usurpers when they set
themselves up in their own strength and think to rule in
opposition to him. Christian history is fulfilling with
wonderful truth the second Psalm, " The kings of the
earth set themselves, and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord, and against his anointed, saying, Let us
break their bands asunder, and cast away their cords from
us. He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh ; the Lord
shall have them in derision." The warning still holds
good, " Now therefore be wise, O ye kings ; be instructed
ye judges of the earth. . . . Kiss the Son, lest he be
angry, and ye perish in the way, for his wrath will soon
be kindled." Popular thought, even among Christians,
makes a sharp line of separation between religious and
secular things, and confines Christ's activity to the former.
But no view could be more unscriptural and irrational.
The Saviour is, as John calls him, the " King of kings and
Lord of lords " (Rev. xix. 16), not in a metaphorical but a
literal sense. He is the real power in all politics, in all
social movements, in all moral reforms, in all intellectual
progress. He is using all the institutions of mankind to
advance his work — the family, the state, the school, the
church, commerce, and the rest. He was working in and
through the merchants and diplomatists who opened the
door for our missionaries to enter China. Livingstone and
Stanley and Baker were doing his bidding when they ex
plored Africa and prepared the way for the incoming of
the Gospel. So in the narrower sphere of individual life

406 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
Christ is at work, turning, guiding, shaping events, send
ing now prosperity and now adversity, now joy and now
bereavement, changing the current of life and destiny,
holding in his hands the issues of life and death — all with
reference to the great end. This larger providential rule
of Christ is, as has been said, all subordinated to his work
of salvation. It is the method by which he does the pre
paratory, and what we might call the rough work of sal
vation. The world itself was shaped with reference to
this use, and it is a most effective instrument in the Sav
iour's hands. If we only had the faith to apprehend the
things unseen and eternal in the things seen and tempo
ral, we should discover in every running brook and every
breaking dawn, in every event of history and every experi
ence of life, the presence of the Saviour working for hu
man redemption.
In a second and more especial sense Christ's kingly of
fice is exercised in and over his church. This is pre-emi
nently the realm of grace. Paul says, God "gave him to
be head over all things to the church, which is his body,
the fulness of him that filleth all in all " (Eph. i. 22, 23).
I am referring now not so much to the church as an out
ward institution as to what is called the " invisible
church," which is composed of all true believers. It is
here that the kingdom of God has actually come, for here
the sway of the Father and the Saviour is gladly and will
ingly acknowledged. Each soul in this invisible church
has been called by Christ's Spirit, forgiven on the ground
of his atonement, regenerated by his grace, and is being
saved by his power through obedience and sanctification.
These members of Christ's body, his faithful disciples and
followers, are engaged in his service ; it is their life-work
to carry out his work of redemption. It is through them
that he works directly in bringing other souls to his king
dom. Whereas in the broader sphere of his providential
working his instruments are to a large extent unwilling

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 407
agents, here all are by their own free choice devoted to his
service. All the highest work of the kingdom is done by
them. It is not too much to say that since the days of
miracles and direct revelations ceased, no soul has been
converted to the Saviour except through the instrumen
tality of Christian men or women. To them is committed
the ministry of reconciliation ; they build up the church
as an outward and visible institution ; they advance the
kingdom in foreign lands and lead the heathen to the
Saviour of the world. Nay, even Christ seems to have
made the progress of the kingdom in large measure de
pendent upon their exertions, so that their zeal may accel
erate it and their sluggishness — for we are speaking of im
perfect Christians^ — may retard it. We distinguish these
struggling and imperfect believers of the " church mili
tant " from the " church triumphant," the believers who
have fought the good fight and have been saved and per
fected. These two churches are in reality but one, a
single " communion of the saints," and we cannot doubt
that the company of the blessed on high are engaged,
though in ways unknown to us, in the same blessed work
with their militant brethren below.
The broader and narrower conceptions of Christ's king
ly office are connected with the question respecting *the
duration of his rule. Ordinarily in the Bible the reign of
the Messiah is represented as everlasting. "He shall
reign over the house of Jacob forever, and of his kingdom
there shall be no end " (Luke i. 33). At the same time
there is one passage which distinctly teaches a termination
of his reign. Paul speaks of " the end, when he shall de
liver up the kingdom to God, even the Father ; when he
shall have abolished all rule and all authority and power.
For he must reign till he hath put all his enemies under
his feet. . . . And when all things have been sub
jected unto him, then shall the Son also himself be sub
jected to him that did subject all things unto him, that

408 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
God may be all in all " (1 Cor. xv. 24-28). The two ap
parently contradictory utterances can be reconciled, if we
understand that while Christ's rule in the perfected king
dom of God over his people is to be eternal, the broader
rule over the universe for the purposes of redemption is
to cease as no longer necessary ; all evil will then have
ceased and the work of redemption be complete. The
God-man— for it is of him that we are speaking, and not
of the Son in his exclusively divine character — will give
back this providential government to God, and He will be
once more all in all. But the Saviour, divine and human,
will remain eternally the King of his people, the Head of
the messianic kingdom.
II. Such is the provision made in the kingly office of
Christ for the completion of salvation. But the subject
would be but imperfectly treated if I should omit to speak
in this connection of the Holy Spirit. It is through the
Spirit that Christ executes his kingly office. His work
of grace is the work of the Spirit.
The thoughtful reader of the Bible is struck with the
fact that the functions of the Spirit under the two dispen
sations of God's redemptive grace are entirely different.
With the day of Pentecost begins an entirely new activ
ity of the Third Person of the Trinity. Wherein con
sists the difference, and what is the office of the Spirit
under the New Dispensation ? The answer is not far to
seek. Since the ministry and ascension of Christ it has
been the work of the Spirit to carry out his work, to be
his agent in the execution of his redemptive task. The
God-man is in heaven, separated— at least so far as his hu
man nature is concerned — from the world. There he is to
abide until the time of the second coming, when he will
return to bring the work of redemption to its glorious con
clusion. Meantime he exercises his power and manifests
his presence on earth through the Spirit. When he was
about to leave his disciples, he declared that he would not

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 409
leave them orphans, but that he would come unto them.
He promised to send them the Paraclete, or Helper, who
should be his representative. " He shall glorify me," he
said, " for he shall take of mine and shall declare it unto
you" (John xvi. 14). The great practical -work of re
demption was to be done through him : " He, when he is
come, will convict the world in respect of sin, and of
righteousness, and of judgment : of sin, because they be
lieve not on me ; of righteousness, because I go to the
Father and ye behold me no more ; of judgment, because
the prince of this world hath been judged " (John xvi. 8-
11). He was to be the Inspirer through whom the apostles
should be capacitated for their work, in word and miracle.
The Saviour after his resurrection ascended into heaven,
leaving his disciples the assurance, " Behold I send forth
the promise of my Father upon you," and the command,
" Tarry ye in the city until ye be clothed with power
from on high " (Luke xxiv. 49). The promise was ful
filled on the day of Pentecost. The coming of the Spirit
in power was the sure evidence that Jesus was indeed the
Christ. " Being therefore by the right hand of God ex
alted," said Peter, " and having received of the Father
the promise of the Holy Ghost, he hath poured forth this,
which ye see and hear" (Acts ii. 33). It was the begin
ning of the actual salvation, and on the ground of this
manifestation of the redemptive power of the risen Christ,
the Apostle preached the Gospel of the divine grace and
made the free offer of its benefits : " Repent ye, and be
baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ,
unto the remission of your sins ; and ye shall receive the
gift of the Holy Ghost " (Acts ii. 38).
Such in general is the work of the Holy Spirit in re
demption. Let ns now look at some of the details.
It is through the Spirit that Christ performs that larger
providential work in the interests of redemption of which
mention has been made. The Spirit from the beginning

410 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
has been God's agent in His providential operations.
Wherever the Creator comes into contact with the creat
ure, it is through the Spirit. But now the Spirit performs
this office in the execution of Christ's redemptive provi
dence. Through him the Saviour rules in nature, acts
upon the human soul, speaks in every conscience, guides
the course of history.
The Spirit draws men to Christ. It is through his
agency that the risen Saviour enters every soul and be
comes not merely as the Logos but as the God-man, " the
light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world "
(John i. 9). He pleads with men to bring them to Christ.
He gives efficacy to the preaching of the Gospel. The sin
against the Holy Ghost is an unpardonable sin, because
when he is finally rejected Christ has no other means by
which he can reach the soul ; the resources of his grace
are exhausted.
It is through the Spirit that Christ regenerates men.
Faith on the human side opens the closed temple of the
human heart to its rightful owner. By the Spirit the
Father and Christ enter and take possession. So another
and higher life begins. Old things have passed away and
all things become new. The evil choice of self and the
world is supplanted by the holy choice of God and His
kingdom. The Spirit bears inward witness of God's for
giving grace, of peace with God and Sonship. The Spirit
is the medium of the new life of communion and fellow
ship between Christ and the believer, which is the begin
ning of eternal life. The disciple of Christ is united with
his Master as a branch of the true vine (John xv. 1-8).
Christ dwells in his heart by faith (Eph. iii. 16, 17).
Christ performs his work of sanctification by the Spirit,
(Gal. v. 22), and by him capacitates his disciples for the
special duties of their Christian calling (1 Cor. xii. 4-
13). His presence is the pledge of that redemption of
the human body which Christ is to accomplish at the

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 411
resurrection (2 Cor. v. 5). Through his power the child
of God will be saved and glorified.
Especially Christ's kingly work in the church is
through the agency of the Spirit. It is Christ's presence
among his disciples through the Spirit that makes the
church. Through him the members of Christ's body are
bound to him and to each other. The ordinances of the
church, the word, the sacraments, and prayer are made
real " means of grace " by his agency.
III. Our examination of the factors of Christ's re
demptive work is now complete, but we have still to ask
concerning its scope, Was redemption intended for all
mankind or for only a part ? And if it was intended
for all, how is it brought to bear upon those who have
not had the Gospel preached to them ?
The first of these questions is usually stated more nar
rowly, being made to refer to the extent of the atone
ment. But there is no reason why we should not ask it
with reference to the whole redemptive work of Christ.
In making the provision for redemption through the
prophetical, priestly, and kingly work of Christ, did God
mean it for all men, in the sense that it should be freely
offered to all, and that all should have a full and fair
opportunity to accept it ?
There has been from the earliest days of Protestants
a school of theologians who have answered this question
in the negative. They do not deny that Christ's work is
sufficient for all, but they affirm that it was intended only
for the elect, and that it is placed within the reach of the
elect alone. Out of the mass of fallen men God from all
eternity chose a certain number that He might bestow
eternal life upon them. The Saviour's redemptive work
was intended for them, and them alone. They appeal to
those passages in which Christ is said to have laid down
his life for his sheep (John x. 11), to have died for his
friends (John xv. 13-16), to have made intercession for

412 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
his disciples (John xvii. 6-19) ; and to those in which his
death is declared to have been for the elect or for the
church (Rom. viii. 32, 33 ; Eph. v. 25-27).
AU will admit that some are actually saved, and that
others are not, and that God who knows the end from the
beginning has included both classes in His all-comprehend
ing eternal purpose. But it does not follow from this
that God meant to restrict the provision for redemption
to one class. The question is, what has revelation to tell
us on the subject ? Granting that there are a few pas
sages in the Bible which relate to the bearing of the re
demptive work upon those who are actually saved, are
there none- that give redemption a wider scope ? If there
are, common-sense teaches us to interpret the passages of
more restricted import by those of wider bearing, unless
the former are so worded as to distinctly exclude the
latter. Now there can be no question — except to those
who have a theory to maintain — that the Bible teaches
clearly and unequivocally the universality of the provision
for salvation. The offer of the Gospel is made to all
men, in language that is a ghastly mockery, if it is in
tended only for a part. The call is, "Ho, every one
that thirsteth, come ye to the waters ! " (Isai. Iv. 1).
" Come unto me all ye that labor, and are heavy laden,
and I will give you rest " (Matt. xi. 28). " Whosoever
will, let him take of the water of life freely " (Rev. xxii.
17). All men are commanded to repent (Mark i. 15,
Acts xvii. 30). In that wonderful passage in which Paul
compares the effects of Adam's sin with those of Christ's
redemptive work, the latter are made coextensive with
the former : " So then as through one trespass the judg
ment came unto all men to condemnation ; even so
through one act of righteousness the free gift came unto
all men nnto justification " (Rom. v. 18). " This passage
can be limited to the elect only by conceding the conten
tion of the Universalists that all men are elect. Its true

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 413
meaning is that the provision for redemption extends
to all men, and that all men have the opportunity
to appropriate it. There are, besides, a number of pas
sages in which Christ's work is distinctly said to have
been for all men. " Behold the Lamb of God," said
John, "that taketh away the sin of the world" (John i.
29), not the elect, but the world. "God so loved the
world that he gave his only-begotten Son " (John iii.
16). " The bread which I will give is my flesh for the
life of the world " (John vi. 51). We are told that Je
sus, because of the suffering of death, was crowned with
glory and honor, " that by the grace of God he should
taste death for every man " (Heb. ii. 9). John declares,
" He is the propitiation for our sins, and not for ours only,
but also for the whole world " (1 John ii. 2). Paul em
ploys language equally strong. He speaks of " God our
Saviour, who wiileth that all men should be saved and
come to the knowledge of the truth. For there is one
God, one mediator also between God and men, himself
man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all "
(1 Tim. ii. 4-6) ; and of " the living God, who is the
Saviour of all men, specially of them that believe" (1
Tim. iv. 10) ; and of " the grace of God " which " hath
appeared, bringing salvation to all men " (Tit. ii. 11).
In the presence of such strong and explicit scriptural as
sertions it seems needless to argue the case at all. The
teaching of revelation is that the redemptive work of
Christ was intended for all men without exception, and is
placed within the reach of all men, so that if any fail to
secure its benefits, the fault lies with themselves.
It is not so easy to answer the second question which
we proposed to ourselves, namely, how the redemptive
work of Christ is made, available for those who have not
had the Gospel preached to them and so are ignorant of
the divine grace. Upon this point the Scripture does not
give us the information which we desire. Nevertheless, fol-

414 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
lowing the general lines of scriptural teaching, we need
not be wholly at a loss for an explanation. There are two
facts which together suggest such possibilities as to make
it evident that there is no hinderance in the divine order
ing of the universe to the bringing to bear of Christ's re
demptive grace upon every soul. The first of these facts
is the relation of grace into which all mankind has been
brought by Christ's work. God's attitude toward men is
one of reconciliation — not, of course, a complete reconcili
ation, so long as men fail to appropriate the divine grace,
but complete so far as God's sole action can make it.
As the result of the Saviour's work mankind has been
placed upon a Christian basis. There is reason to believe
that in this way every soul, whether knowing what Christ
has done or not, receives the benefit of his work. The
Holy Spirit works upon every heart, and that Spirit is the
Spirit of Christ, and comes with the grace of his redemp
tion. It is a great advantage to hear the Gospel and learn
the story of the cross, but the grace of the cross does not
come to the soul through the ear alone. God is not so
grudging of the grace which He has furnished in His Son
as to give it only to those who can appropriate the gift
with full knowledge of its meaning. No, that grace is
like the blessed light of heaven that pours into every soul,
coming through eye and feeling, coming where there is
knowledge of its nature and where there is not. Now as
every person who has reached the age of moral respon
sibility has some knowledge of God and duty, and may
open or close the sanctuary of his will to such divine
grace as he knows, even those who have not heard of
Christ may receive the grace of Christ, may yield to the
drawing of the Father to the Son and be united to Christ
through the Holy Spirit. The other fact of which I
spoke as throwing light upon the subject before us is the
opportunity of progress in the other life. Salvation will
not be complete nntil all tho effects of sin are removed.

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 415
All that is needful, in order that a soul may be saved, is
that such a beginning should be made through reconcili
ation with God as will give His grace an opportunity to
operate. The other world is to be God's school, and those
who have not heard of Christ here, yet have yielded to
His grace working in their hearts, will have full oppor
tunity to gain the higher knowledge and training which
they need from Christ himself.
Let us look at the special problems which come up in
connection with the general one upon which we are en
gaged. 1. In what relation did the saints of the Old Dispensa
tion stand to Christ's redemptive work ? The Bible tells
us but little upon the subject, but its few utterances and its
general implications are sufficient to show that the faith
ful who lived before the Saviour's light dawned upon the
world and died in faith, not having received the promises
(Heb. xi. 13), were saved on the ground and through the
provisions of Christ's redemptive work. The Epistle to the
Hebrews, which deals more fully with this subject than
any other book of the Bible, declares that Christ's death
took place " for the redemption of the sins that were under
the first covenant," and that it was efficacious for all the
preceding ages of the world (Heb. ix. 15, 26), and after
enumerating the heroes of faith, represents them as joined
with us in the same salvation. The great type of Chris
tian faith is the faith of Abraham, who believed in God
and it was counted to him for righteousness (Gen. xv. 6 ;
Rom. iv. ; Gal. iii. 6 seq.). These Old Testament believers
had some prevision of the Messiah through the types of
the law and the predictions of the prophets, but it was
very vague. But they laid hold by faith upon the God
of redemption, trusting in Him and His grace, and the
grace of Christ, not yet outwardly made known to the
world, but already potent and active, was bestowed upon
them. Their faith was, so to speak, an implicit faith

416 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
which grasped far more than they knew or could under
stand. Doubtless they had to be educated and brought up
to the level of the New Dispensation after they reached
the other world. Possibly there is truth in the venerable
belief of the Roman Catholic church that the Saviour at
his death released them from Hades and took them with
him into heaven, though that view has its difficulties and
improbabilities. At all events they received their full
knowledge of the Saviour and his salvation only in the
other world. " Abraham rejoiced to see my day," said
Jesus, " and he saw it and was glad " (John viii. 56).
2. The question as to the bearing of Christ's work upon
those who die in infancy is of more importance to us. A
third of the race belong to this class. Are they saved,
and if so, how are they saved ? The Roman Catholic
church, which holds that the redemptive grace of Christ
is bestowed upon men only through the priesthood and
the sacraments, teaches that infants dying without baptism
are lost, although this harsh doctrine is mitigated by the
belief that the punishment of such unfortunates is wholly
privative and unaccompanied by actual suffering. The
earlier Protestants also consented to the doctrine of infant
damnation, the Lutherans, like the Roman Catholics, con
signing unbaptized infants to perdition, and the Calvin-
ists taking the same ground with respect to non-elect
infants. But a fairer exegesis of the Scriptures, and a
fuller understanding of the great fundamental principles
of Christianity, have brought the Protestant churches
almost, if not quite, unanimously to the recognition of the
universality of Christ's grace in its reference to this class.
If Christ himself said, " Forbid them not, for of such is
the kingdom of heaven" (Matt. xix. 14), his followers
have no right to exclude any from a share in his redemp
tion. The only power that can tear a soul away from
Christ is that soul's own free will ; if it dies before it has
reached the period of choice, we may be sure that Christ

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 417
will keep his hold upon it. As Dr. Charles Hodge said,
" All the descendants of Adam, except those of whom it
is explicitly revealed that they cannot inherit the kingdom
of God, are saved " (" Systematic Theology," vol. i., p. 26).
But such children are saved not apart from the work of
Christ, but through that work. Though they do not need
to be forgiven for the sins they have never committed,
yet they are members of a sinful race, themselves pos
sessed of tendencies to sin, which would in due time mani
fest themselves, were they left to themselves, and they
need for their perfecting and salvation the grace of that
Saviour who died for all mankind. Death ushers them
into the school of the blessed Master, and their moral
development takes place under his fostering love in the
holy environment of heaven.
3. A far more difficult question confronts us when we
inquire respecting the relation of Christ's redemptive
work to the heathen. The reticence of the Bible, of
which mention has already been made, is nowhere more
striking than here. We shall do well therefore to avoid
all dogmatism respecting this dark subject and to exercise
a generous Christian tolerance toward those who differ
from ns in their conclusions. Certainly, however, we
cannot be mistaken in applying to this class the doctrine
which we have found clearly taught in the Scripture, of
the universality of Christ's redemptive work. The view
which was almost universal in the past, and which still is
so widely maintained, that all the heathen, to whom the
Gospel has not come as an outward message, are lost,
finds no sufficient warrant in the Word of God. There is
something awful in the thought that so large a portion of
the human race " have light enough to condemn them, but
not light enough to save them." This rigorous doctrine
is gradually giving way to a larger and more Christian
belief, and even those who hold it do so rather because
they fear by letting it go to weaken the missionary motive
27

418 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
than because it commends itself to their truer Christian
thought. But if we hold fast to this belief in a universal oppor
tunity to accept God's grace, we need be less strenuous as
to the method by which this result is to be accomplished.
In any case it must be through the Saviour's redemptive
grace and the power of his Holy Spirit.
The theory is widely held in Germany and England,
and has attained considerable currency in this country
during the last ten years, that God gives to the heathen
after death an opportunity to decide for or against Jesus
Christ. The advocates of this view hold that the knowl
edge of the Gospel and of Christ himself is needful in
order that there should be a full and fair decision of the
great question upon which human destiny depends. They
claim that the Last Judgment is the time when God
passes His final sentence, and that until that time the
opportunity remains open for those to accept Christ who
have had no opportunity in this life. Great stress is laid
upon the absoluteness of Christianity and the need that
the Gospel should be brought to every soul. For those
who have not had a probation here, there must be one in
the other world. Appeal is made in support of the view
to those passages in which, according to a widely accepted
interpretation, Christ is said to have preached the Gospel
after his death (1 Pet. iii. 18-20 ; iv. 6) ; but the theory
rests rather upon general theological principles than upon
particular texts.
Another theory, which has found somewhat more gen
eral acceptance, maintains that this life is for the heathen,
as for all men, the time of decision, and that those
heathen who avail themselves of the light they have, are
saved on the ground of Christ's atonement, by an implicit
faith in its essential character, the same as that by which
the patriarchs were saved. Those who hold this view lay
stress upon the universality of the operations of Christ's

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 419
Spirit. They find confirmation of their theory -in the
declaration of the evangelist, that the Logos is " the true
light, even the light which lighteth every man coming
into the world " (John i. 9). Their belief is that every
man has a sufficient probation in this life. The more
candid and thoughtful advocates of this view admit that
they cannot give chapter and verse of the Bible in support
of it, the texts which are ordinarily given not being able
to stand the test of a careful exegesis ; but like the theo
logians who hold the other view, they believe that their
conclusions are based upon the general principles of the
Christian system.
I cannot agree with those who regard the theory of an
extended probation for the heathen as a dangerous heresy,
subversive of fundamental Christian truth. A belief that
is not contradicted by any express utterances of the Word
of God, and does not militate against any of the essential
doctrines of Christianity, and which has for its object the
vindication of the divine righteousness in its dealings
with a majority of the human race, has, it seems to me,
its right of existence, when it is held with due recognition
of our necessary ignorance respecting this dark and diffi
cult subject. The right of theological speculation respect
ing matters upon which the Scripture is silent ought to
be jealously guarded, so long as it does not run into an
over-confident dogmatism. There are many minds that
are helped by this theory as they could not be by any
other, and led by it to a profounder and more genuine
trust in God.
The question, however, whether on the whole the theory
of extended probation is the more satisfactory, and whether
it accords more nearly with the commonly accepted prin
ciples of our evangelical theology, is a different one, and I
am inclined to answer it in the negative. The other view
has indeed its difficulties. But in theology we find few
theories that are wholly free from difficulties, and generally

420 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
have to content ourselves with that which has the fewest.
The view that God gives to the heathen a sufficient oppor
tunity in this life to make the great decision seems to me
the most satisfactory. The Bible everywhere lays its
chief emphasis upon two periods — if we may so designate
them in spite of the fact that one of them has no end — the
present life and the eternal ages subsequent to the Last
Judgment. The intermediate state is passed over with a
remarkable reticence, and is never brought into connection
with the great moral and spiritual processes by which God
establishes His kingdom. This life is the time of de
cision. The Last Judgment is not so much the time for
the determination of individual destiny, as for the vindi
cation of the divine righteousness in the historical work of
redemption — the great Theodicy — and for the assigning
of men to their final state and the establishment of the
eternal order of things. The distinction made by the old
theologians between the particular judgment which takes
place at death, and the judgment of the Last Day, seems
to have the spirit, if not the letter, of the New Testament
in its favor. There is no good reason for assuming that
the intermediate state is a period for the decision of hu
man destiny. If it is a state of probation, it must be a
mixed state, the good and the evil still unseparated— a
view which presents peculiar difficulties.
It is not needful, in order to the making of the great de
cision of life, that men should have a knowledge of Christ
and his redemptive work. It is sufficient if they receive
the benefits of the Saviour's salvation and have his Spirit
working in their hearts. I am far from claiming that they
could make the decision upon a merely natural basis,
apart from the grace of Christ ; all that I assert is that in
order to a decision they need not have the knowledge of
Christ. I am not impugning the principle of the abso
luteness of Christianity, but rather vindicating for Chris
tianity a universal operation in the present life, and not

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 421
merely in the other life. The heathen who feels the
moving of God's Spirit in his soul, and recognizing it as
divine, gives up his will to its influence, thereby decides
for Christ, and I verily believe is accepted by Christ. It
is not the knowledge of faith which makes it " saving ; "
it is its receptivity. God — so I reverently and confidently
believe — saves every man who will let himself be saved.
The smallest and feeblest faith, accompanied by a mini
mum of knowledge, is sufficient, if it is true faith, to
give God's grace a foothold, and He will do the rest.
A distinction should be made between the decision
which is possible in this life, and the education and per
fecting which can, in the case of such lieathen as those of
whom I have spoken, take place only in the other world.
For the latter the personal knowledge of Christ and his
work is undoubtedly necessary. But the soul which has
chosen the highest good it knew will gladly welcome the
persona] manifestation of the perfect Good, the Saviour
Jesus Christ. Let such a soul, with a faith which makes
it susceptible to divine influences, be transferred from its
dark and sinful environment in this world to the school of
Christ, where it will be surrounded with all holy influ
ences, and the work of growth and sanctification will go
on apace.
The question how many heathen are saved is one that
we cannot answer. There is not much to encourage ns in
the outward life of heathendom. But we must remember
that the lieathen are not to be judged by the same stand
ard as those who have been brought up under the light of
the Gospel. God may see what we do not see, a spark of
faith in the soul, which His grace can kindle under better
conditions into a bright flame. The great Gospel princi
ple of justification by faith, with its denial of all possible
justification by works, should lead us to look away from
the outward and hope that God may find a true faith
within. These heathen are not to be saved by their works

422 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
any more than we, but wholly by God's grace. It may
be that a true faith may exist in them in connection with
defects and sins which would render faith in us impossi
ble. The question with God is, whether a man is salva-
ble, and if he is, God finds a way to save him.
When our Saviour uttered his wonderful parables of
the kingdom, the first and most striking had reference to
the sowing of the Gospel seed. The different effect pro
duced in different hearts was made to depend upon a dif
ferent state of those hearts as regarded their susceptibil
ity. The wayside, the rocky places, and the good ground
indicated the difference in this respect (Matt. xiii. 1-23).
The Master did not explain how the hearts came to be in
the condition in which the Gospel found them, but the
fair inference is that the difference lay in the free choices
of the different souls. In other words, there is a pre-
Christian faith — pre-Christian in the sense of preceding
the knowledge of Christ— as well as a pre-Christian un
belief, which practically decide destiny and anticipate the
outward decision which the preaching of the Gospel brings
about. The Saviour seems to have had the same fact in
mind when he said, " Everyone that doeth ill hateth the
light, and cometh not to the light, lest his works should
be reproved. But he that doeth the truth cometh to the
light, that his works may be manifest, that they have
been wrought in God " (John iii. 20, 21). He said to
Pilate, " Every one that is of the truth heareth my voice "
(John xix. 37). Such a pre-Christian faith, which may
render even the most ignorant man a " doer of the truth,"
it seems to me may be exercised by many heathen, who
will in the other world come to the perfect light, and
whose works will then be made manifest that they have
been wrought in God. God only knows how many such
heathen there are. While the Christian church is so
backward in the work of missions to the heathen, we may
well hope that they are very many.

THE REDEMPTIVE WORK OF CHRIST 423
But the question is asked, Does not this generous hope
for the heathen weaken and even destroy the motive of
Christian missions ? I reply No ; most emphatically not.
The great motive of missions is the motive derived from
the chief end of God's plan and of man's existence, the
establishment of God's kingdom. The place where that
kingdom is to be established is here, in this world. What
God is seeking in His redemptive work is to bring this
world to Christ, not merely to bring souls out of it into
heaven. The motive of missions is the motive of the
Gospel everywhere, to bring about the completion of re
demption, to hasten the time when the kingdom of the
world shall become the kingdom of our Lord and of His
Christ (Rev. xi. 15). So long as we delay this work, we
trust that God in His equity will allow no soul to perish
simply for our negligence. But this trust in nowise re
lieves ns from our duty. It is ours to take the Gospel to
our benighted brethren in heathen lands, to give them the
same privileges which we possess, and the same glorious
opportunities. It is ours to roll back the dark shadow
which rests upon the earth. The Saviour's command has
been given us, " Go ye into all the world, and preach the
Gospel to the whole creation " (Mark xvi. 15). The
fact that God will deal equitably with all men and save
those heathen who will permit themselves to be saved
should not encourage us to be remiss, but rather stimulate
us to greater effort.
If we cannot send the missionary to the heathen unless
we are sure that they will all perish if he stays at home,
let us leave the work. But let us hope that God will
raise up a race of men who can preach Christ from a no
bler motive, even from love to their Saviour and their
fellow-men.

XXIII.
ELECTION AND PREDESTINATION
Ooe last topic was the universality of God's grace in
Jesus Christ. But the question arises, Is this all that the
Bible teaches ? Is there not alongside of its universalism
a particularism which demands equally to be taken into ac
count ? A candid study of the Bible permits us to answer
this question only in the affirmative. It becomes therefore
a matter of importance, that, before entering upon the sub
ject of the appropriation of redemption, we should exam
ine this scriptural particularism and show, if we can, that it
is consistent with the universal purpose of Christ's redemp
tive work and the bestowal upon all men of the opportu
nity to accept his grace.
I. We will look first at the teachings of the Bible upon
the subject. The principle of election, as we saw when
considering the redemptive revelation, occupies a promi
nent place in the Old Testament. It was " God's method
of using the few to bless the many." An individual, a fam
ily, a nation, was chosen ; invested with especial blessings
and privileges ; educated by various influences, providen
tial and miraculous ; made the recipient of divine revela
tion ; and thus capacitated for particular functions in
God's great work of establishing His kingdom in the
world. Thus the divine call came to Abraham to get out
of his country and from his kindred, and from his father's
house, unto a land which God should show him, and the
promise was given that he should become a great nation,
and that all the families of the earth should be blessed in

ELECTION AND PREDESTINATION 425
him (Gen. xii. 1-3). In this election the foundation was
laid for all God's future work of redemption. It was an
election of grace, resting not upon the good works of the
patriarch, but upon the divine good pleasure. The sub
jective condition of the election was Abraham's faith ; he
beheved in God, and He counted it to him for righteous
ness (Gen. xv. 6). But this faith, which was the conditio
sine qua non, the receptivity without which the election
would have remained inoperative, was not the ground of
the election, still less its cause ; the efficiency lay in the di
vine grace ; and the faith, although it involved an element
of personal and individual freedom, was in a true sense the
result of the divine education. The election of Abraham
is the great representative or typical case in the Old Tes
tament ; all the other instances follow the same model.
Isaac, the son of promise, was chosen from the two sons
of Abraham. The divine elective grace selected Jacob
and passed by Esau ; " for the children, being not yet born,
neither having done anything good or bad, that the pur
pose of God according to election might stand, not of
works, but of him that calleth, it was said unto her (Re
becca), The elder shall serve the younger " (Gen. xxv.
22, 23 ; Rom. ix. 11, 12). Then the stream of election
broadens and the people of Israel are chosen to receive the
special blessings and privileges of the redemptive revela
tion, and to be the bearers of the divine grace to the na
tions of the earth. Here, also, God is wholly the giver ;
all that Israel has to do is to receive the blessing and carry
out the divine will. " The Lord thy God hath chosen
thee to be a peculiar people unto himself, above all peo
ples that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not
set his love upon yon, nor choose you, because ye were
more in number than any people ; for ye were the fewest
of all peoples ; but because the Lord loveth you, and be
cause he would keep the oath which he sware unto your
fathers" (Deut. vii. 6-8). The principle of election is fol-

426 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
lowed all through the history of Israel in God's prosecu
tion of the work of redemption. The prophets, priests,
and kings, and all God's instruments in the establishment
of the kingdom, are called of God to their respective
tasks. The Judges, Saul, David, Elijah, Elisha, Isaiah,
Jeremiah, were all chosen by God for their particular
work. Finally, the messianic prophecies point to the
Christ as pre-eminently God's Chosen One, elected for
His highest tasks and made the recipient of His greatest
blessings (Is. xiii. 1). The peculiarity of this Old Testa
ment election is that it is concerned exclusively with God's
historical process of redemption. The future life and the
eternal blessedness were not yet revealed. The horizon of
revelation in this stage was the present life. The blessings
which God bestowed were temporal, and the chief end
of the election was service in the kingdom on earth. As
it was an election for time, so it was an election in time ;
there is no word as yet of an eternal decree of God as the
foundation of the choice.
The doctrine — like all the doctrines of the Bible — is
deepened and enlarged rather than changed in the New
Testament. The old point of view is retained, while new
and far higher points of view are attained. The twelve
apostles are called and chosen for their great work in the
establishment of the kingdom of God in its Christian
form (Luke vi. 13-16). "Ye did not choose me, but I
chose you, and appointed yon, that ye should go and bear
fruit, and that your fruit should abide " (John xv. 16). So
Paul was separated from his mother's womb and called^
through God's grace, that he might preach Christ among
the Gentiles (Gal. i. 15, 16). This was still the temporal
election for temporal purposes. No mention was made as
yet of a fixed and eternal element. One of the Twelve,
though elected and called, frustrated the divine grace and
became a reprobate. The Old Testament idea of nation
al election also appears in the New Testament. Israel is

ELECTION AND PREDESTINATION 427
still the Chosen People, but God's election is enlarged to
take in the Gentiles, and when Israel rejects the grace of
Christ its former prerogatives are taken from it, and it
loses its place in the kingdom of God. This is the subject
with which Paul is engaged in the ninth, tenth, and
eleventh chapters of the Epistle to the Romans — a passage
which refers primarily to the great question of national
election, and is intended to vindicate God's righteousness
in His rejection of the Jews by showing that this is due
to their own refusal to accept the Messiah, and that it is
only temporary. Whatever conclusions respecting indi
vidual election may be drawn from these chapters must be
derived from it by way of inference, for it is not directly
concerned with individuals.
The deeper New Testament view begins with the elec
tion of the Christ, which, as we have seen, was predicted
by the Old Testament prophets. He is pre-eminently
God's elect. He receives the divine call and the assurance
of his election at the time of his baptism and on the
Mount of Transfiguration : " This is my beloved Son, in
whom I am well pleased ; " " This is my Son, my chosen "
(Matt. iii. 17 ; Luke ix. 35). But his election is not
merely to earthly service in the kingdom, though that
forms a part of it ; he is chosen to be the eternal King of
the everlasting kingdom. Moreover, his election does not
take place merely in time ; it is an eternal election (Eph.
iii. 11 ; 1 Pet. i. 20). The election of believers corre
sponds to that of Christ and the eternal salvation revealed
through him. They are indeed often called elect in a way
that throws no light upon the nature of their election,
but designates them merely as members of the church of
Christ, which is the true " Israel of God" (Gal. vi. 16),
the Chosen People of the N ew Dispensation, which has
entered into the heritage of Israel's blessings. In a simi
lar way they are called the " saints " or the " called." But
we do not have to look far to discover that in many places

428 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
in the New Testament the name " elect " has a far deeper
meaning. In the first place, the election is derived from
the eternal purpose of God ; it is the result of his pre
destination or foreordination. In the second place, it is
an election to all the privileges and blessings of redemp
tion, especially to the final blessedness. In that wonder
ful passage in Ephesians (i. 3-6) Paul represents believ
ers as " chosen in Christ before the foundation of the
world," as " foreordained unto adoption as sons, according
to the good pleasure of God's will," as "foreordained
according to the purpose of him who worketh all things
after the counsel of his will."
The object of the election is said to be, "that we
should be holy and without blemish before him in love,"
that we should attain the " adoption of sons," that " we
should be unto the praise of his glory," that we should
receive the "inheritance" of redemption (Ephesians i.
3-14). In the Epistle to the Romans (viii. 28-30) Paul
traces in glowing language from the eternal purpose to
the eternal glory. " For whom he foreknew he also fore
ordained to be conformed to the image of his Son, that
he might be the firstborn among many brethren : and
whom he foreordained, them he also called : and whom
he called, them he also justified : and whom he justified,
them he also glorified." Notice that here also the end is
represented as sonship in God's kingdom. Peter speaks
of believers as "elect . . . according to the fore
knowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the
Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of
Jesus Christ " (1 Pet. i. 2). The foreknowledge referred
to in this passage and in Rom. viii. 28, may be that om
niscience of God which we must think of as preceding
His decree, and which is to be distinguished from His
foreknowledge in the theological sense of the term ; but it
is more likely that it is the foreknowledge of the divine
appropriation of the objects of His love and practically

ELECTION AND PREDESTINATION 429
the same as His foreordination. The latter view is taken
by many even of those theologians who deny the Calvin-
istic doctrine of predestination. Luke speaks of believers
as " ordained to eternal life " (Acts xiii. 48).
With regard to these New Testament teachings re
specting election and predestination, four things are to be
said. In the first place, the doctrine is always taught with
a practical purpose, namely, to strengthen God's people
in their confidence, in the midst of the trials and difficul
ties of the Christian life. The motive is well brought out
in the eighth chapter of Romans (vv. 33, 34, 38, 39) :
" Who shall lay anything to the charge of God's elect ?
It is God that justifieth : who is he that shall condemn ?
. . . I am persuaded that neither death, nor life, nor
angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to
come, nor height, nor depth, nor . any other creature, shall
be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in
Christ Jesus our Lord." Secondly, the same books of the
New Testament which emphasize predestination most
strongly teach the universal purpose of the provision for
salvation. Thirdly, these same books lay the greatest
stress upon the necessity of personal faith in order to jus
tification and salvation. This is pre-eminently the case
with the Epistle to the Romans. But faith is man's own
free act. Fourthly, and finally, while the doctrine of
election implies that the rest of mankind are excluded
from salvation, the New Testament always represents the
ground of their exclusion to be their own sin freely com
mitted. II. We come now to the great historical forms which
this doctrine has assumed. They stand like sentries bar
ring our way as we attempt to advance, and we can reach
no satisfactory understanding of this difficult subject un
til we have reckoned with them.
The most famous form of the doctrine, and the one
which on the whole has exerted the greatest influence

430 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
upon the practice and the theology of the church, is that
which is associated with the" names ofthe two men who
stand, in many respects, foremost in the ranks of Christian
theologians, Augustin and Calvin. According to this
view, God from all eternity determined to permit Adam
to fall, and that in consequence all his descendants should
come into the world condemned to eternal punishment on
account of his sin and totally unable to save themselves.
Out of this mass of fallen and helpless men He deter
mined also, from all eternity, to choose a certain number
and appoint them unto eternal life, providing for them
salvation through Jesus Chris't.^TiiTrefee*kuLpr predesti
nation was arbitrary, in the sense that it was not occa
sioned by anything outside of the divine will.,. Grod was
not moved to it by any foresight of f aitk^arnd obedience
in the elect. His decree of/ election was wholly uncondi
tioned. All that the elect have God gives them. He
provides the Saviour. Hfe- enters their souls with irresist
ible grace, and works faith and repentance in them. He
justifies, sanctifies, and saves them. From first to last all
is of God. The believer's will becomes free only when
God's irresistible grace has made it free, and then it is
free only for the good. The rest of mankind are not
elected to destruction, but simply left in their sin and
helplessness. God does indeed by a decree of reprobation
assign them to eternal punishment, but their sin for which
they are punished is their own, and not the result of the
divine decree. More commonly those who hold the doc
trine prefer to speak of preterition rather than reproba
tion. God simply passes by the non-elect and leaves them
to the just consequences of their sins.
No one who is acquainted with the history of the Au
gustinian or Calvinistic theology, and knows how great an
influence for good it has had upon the church of Christ,
will speak of the doctrine which has just been given
merely in the language of disparagement. Calvinism has

ELECTION AND PREDESTINATION 431
had one great and most praiseworthy object, to exalt God.
It has aimed to bring men to the realization of their utter
dependence upon God for all things here and hereafter.
Believers owe their faith not to themselves or anything in
them, but to God alone, working through Christ and the
Holy Spirit. The practical effect of this doctrine has
been to make strong Christians. The men who had come
to believe that they were nothing and God everything,
and yet that Go'd was working in them and through them,
could do their work in the world, since God gave it to
them to do, without fear of men or the devil. The Prot
estants of Geneva, the Huguenots of France, the Cove
nanters of Scotland, the Puritans of the English Civil War,
and our own Pilgrim Fathers, got the iron in their blood
from their Calvinism. But there is another side to this
doctrine. It reduces human freedom to a mere name, so
far as spiritual things are concerned. Faith, instead of
being the free personal surrender of man's will to God is
a divine act, wrought in the soul by overmastering power.
Moreover, the doctrine throws a baleful light upon the di
vine righteousness. The non-elect never have the oppor
tunity for salvation. It is to no purpose to say that they
are justly condemned for their sins ; for the sin is not really
theirs but Adam's, and they are condemned for that which
they have absolutely no power to help. If the arrange
ment by which Adam stood probation for the race was of
God's appointment, then the sin and guilt and misery
which resulted to the race were also of His appointment.
Undoubtedly many who profess to hold the genuine Cal-
vinistic doctrine find some way to evade its ethical diffi
culties at the expense of their logic. But the doctrine
itself is open to insuperable objection. It stands the test
neither of Scripture nor of reason.
The most important rival theory bears the name of the
Dutch theologian Arminius, but it was known long before
his day, and is now held by multitudes who do not call

432 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
themselves Arminians. The doctrine has been presented
in two forms, which are at bottom the same. According
to the first form God's decree of predestination or election
concerns the class of believers. God from eternity deter
mined to save all who believe on the Lord Jesus Christ
and to condemn all who reject His grace. But when the
Arminians are pressed to explain the relation in which in
dividuals stand to the divine plan, they state the doctrine
in a second form : God from eternity determined to save
those individuals whom He foreknew would exercise faith
and obedience, or the divine decree, so far as it relates to
the destiny of individuals, is conditioned upon the fore
knowledge. One cannot but feel respect for the moral earnestness of
Arininianism. If human responsibility is to be maintained
and the divine righteousness vindicated, the reality of hu
man freedom must be admitted. Only upon this con
dition can the Gospel be offered freely to men, and the call
be given to all who will to drink the water of life. Be
tween a theory of election which shuts a large fraction of
mankind helplessly and irremediably out from salvation,
and the Arminianism which opens wide the gates of
Christ's redemption to all who will enter, whether Chris
tian or Jew or heathen, it seems as if there could be no
question what our choice should be. Still, when all is said,
Arininianism also has its difficulties. Its weakness lies in
the direction of the strength of Calvinism. It lays the em
phasis too strongly upon the human factor in conversion
and the Christian life. It does not bring into sufficient
prominence the believer's dependence upon God. It is
commonly connected with a doctrine of possible sinless per
fection, which does harm by lowering the standard of the
divine law to the level of human infirmity. Arininianism,
likewise, fails to justify itself philosophically. To say that
the divine decree of predestination is based upon the di
vine foreknowledge is to state the matter altogether super-

ELECTION AND PREDESTINATION 433
ficially. How could God have any foreknowledge until
He had formed His plan ? If He foreknew that certain
men would accept His grace if it was offered to them, and
that certain others would reject it, and then decreed to
create them and to put them in the circumstances in which
He foresaw they would make these choices, then there
must have been some real sense in which He foreordained
these acts and their consequences. So strongly have some
of the more thoughtful advocates of this theory felt the
embarrassment of their position that they have withdrawn
to the position that God predestinates only the class of .be
lievers, and have denied His foreknowledge with respect
to the choices of individuals, thus maintaining their doc
trine at the expense of the divine absoluteness.
III. The question therefore arises, Is it possible to
formulate a consistent doctrine of predestination, which
shall combine the elements of truth to be found in both
the great theories and avoid the mistakes of both, a doc
trine which shall be Calvinistic in its assertion of the di
vine sovereignty and yet do justice to real truth to which
Arminianism bears witness ? I think it is possible. As
Professor Fisher has well said, " It is a growing convic
tion of students of Scripture and of philosophy that, on the
subject before us, there is more than one hemisphere of
truth. That which both the Calvinist and Arminian
chiefly prized was truth, not error. What each contended
against was the supposed implications of a proposition
which was valued by his opponent from its relation to a
set of implications of a very different sort. Each con
nected with his antagonist's thesis inferences which that
antagonist repudiated" (North American Review, vol.
cxxviii., p. 303). In order to state the true view, we must
go back to the doctrine of the divine plan. When study
ing that subject we found abundant reason for the as
sumption that God's eternal purpose extends to all things
in time — in other words, that He has, to use the language
28

434 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
of the Assembly's Catechism, " foreordained whatsoever
comes to pass." But if this be so, the final destiny of men,
with all the events which lead up to it, must be included
in the divine plan. To omit this great class of events
from God's decree, would be to leave it imperfect and
to make God finite instead of infinite. Whatever takes
place in time was decreed in eternity. If a portion of the
race are saved and the rest lost, it must be because God
meant that it should be so. Predestination is only a
special case under the general principle of the divine plan.
It cannot be denied by any one who admits the omni
science and the omnipotence of God.
Let us, however, make the same qualifications which we
made when considering the eternal plan of God. In the
first place, there is nothing in this view inconsistent with
human freedom. God himself established that freedom,
and made it a reality. His plan did not turn it into a
mere illusion, but simply forestalled it and gave it the
conditions for its exercise. By His omniscience God
knew all the possible free choices of all possible men
under all the possible circumstances in which they
might be placed. In forming the plan which He adopted,
He took up all the free choices which men have made,
and made them constituent elements of His purpose,
thereby turning them from possibilities into certainties,
yet in such a way as to leave them in the fullest sense
free. Only when the decree is formed can we speak of
foreknowledge, which has to do not with possibilities but
with realities. Now under this decree men act with per
fect freedom. Some accept God's grace ; others reject it ;
but both classes are in the truest sense free.
But, in the second place, we must take into account the
distinction between the efficient and the permissive decree
of God. He does not stand in the same relation to good
and to evil. The good has its source in Him, and TTe
seeks by every means to promote it. The evil He hates

ELECTION AND PREDESTINATION 435
and turns from ; He has no share at all in it ; the most
He does is not to prevent it. It is therefore only in ref
erence to the predestination of believers that we can speak
of au efficient decree on God's part. In the case of those
who reject God's grace the decree is permissive only, ex
cept in so far as their punishment is concerned. Now
while it is true that the believer's faith is a free choice,
yet in all that precedes it and all that follows it, God's
efficiency is concerned, while even the faith itself is di
vinely caused in so far as God supplies the conditions
without which the free choice would be impossible.
Christ, the Holy Spirit, forgiveness, the new heart, the
new life, sanctification, perseverance, the final glory, are
all gifts of God's grace. Granting, as we must, that God
has taken the believers faith up into His plan as a con
stituent element, and granting that it is an indispensable
element, still it is altogether insignificant when compared
with the blessings which God bestows. It is in no respect
the ground of the divine election ; that is the pure un
merited grace of God. Faith, as we shall see when we
come to study the subject more carefully, is a receptivity
rather than a causality. It is like the willingness of the
man in peril to let himself be rescued — a willingness
which is indeed indispensable, but in no way the cause of
his deliverance. But God's relation to the sinner is very
different. His sin is of his own making. His abuse of
freedom separates him from God and brings the divine
wrath upon him. If he perseveres in his sin in spite of
the divine grace and forbearance, the most that God does
is to let him go on in his evil ways and to inflict upon
him the punishment which he has drawn upon himself.
While therefore we use the terms election and predestina
tion in their full meaning when speaking of believers, we
do not use them with reference to those who are lost, nor
does the Scripture do so. The latter class do indeed come
into the scope of the divine plan, and we can speak of

436 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
their siu as permissively foreordained, but that is all.
Theologians sometimes designate the divine decree, so far
as it relates to this class, as a decree of reprobation ; but
the term applies not to that part of the decree which has
to do with their sin, but only with the part which relates
to their final punishment.
These two qualifications, derived from the general prin
ciples of the divine plan, serve to remove some of the
chief difficulties in the way of the doctrine before us.
But there is still another point to which reference must
be made. The divine decree of predestination or election
is not inconsistent with the universal intent of Christ's
work and the full and free offer of the Gospel based upon
it. The same plan which foreordains all the events con
nected with human probation and destiny foreordains the
Saviour's work of salvation as a provision for the salva
tion of all men. God willeth that all men should be saved
and come to the knowledge of the truth, and makes the
honest offer of His grace to all men ; nay, more, we have
reason to believe that He presses His grace home upon
every soul and ceases only to urge it when men in their
freedom utterly refuse to accept it. Now the fact that
God's plan also includes the certainty of the result in the
case of each individual does not make the universality of
redemption less a reality. We need not have recourse, in
order to explain the apparent contradiction, to the old
distinction between the secret and the revealed will of
God, though, rightly understood, it has its value. God's
plan does not turn His providence in grace and redemp
tion into a mere mechanism, nor does it make human free
dom an illusion. The certainty it produces is a certainty
for God alone, and not for men ; it is no necessity. Un
less we are to bring the universe to a deadlock, we must
admit that the divine plan in no way interferes with the
divine grace and human freedom. No man is ever pre
vented from accepting Jesus Christ freely offered to him

ELECTION AND PREDESTINATION 437
in the Gospel by anything in the foreordaining purpose
of God ; all that will ever prevent him is his own free
choice. Therefore God in perfect sincerity offers him
His grace in Christ. I admit that, when all is said, there
is a difficulty left. But it is only the old difficulty, which
meets ns outside of religion as truly as in it, the difficulty
of bringing together in our thought God's infinitude and
our freedom. It is a difficulty which is inherent in our
finite minds when dealing with this transcendent subject.
We do not let it trouble us at all in practical matters.
There is no more need that we should do so in our theo
logical investigations.
Our doctrine of election and predestination is, then,
briefly stated, as follows : God by His eternal decree has
predestinated believers to eternal life, not on the ground
of their foreseen faith, yet not without the knowledge of
their faith on the ground of the Saviour's work as a
matter of pure unmerited grace ; and this predestina
tion is such as to leave human freedom intact and to be
wholly consistent with the universal scope of Christ's re
demptive work and the universal offer of the Gospel.
Election does not have regard merely to men as fallen,
but to all the circumstances of men, the Fall included.
This is not the doctrine of the older Calvinism, yet it
may be called Calvinistic as asserting all the essential
truth of Calvinism in its historical opposition to Armin
ianism. IV. It cannot be denied that the doctrine of predes
tination is to many minds, both in the church and out
of it, a stumbling-block. It involves, as we have seen,
some deep metaphysical problems, and can only with
difficulty be so stated as to be intelligible. Is it, then,
worth while to give it a place in the system of Chris
tian doctrine? Many Christians would pass it by alto
gether and concentrate Christian thought upon subjects
more practically important, or that they think more im-

438 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
portant. Milton, who favored Arminianism, with a satire
which was as exquisite as it was unfair, turned the subject
over to the fallen angels in hell, and has told ns in his im
mortal poem (" Paradise Lost"," Bk. ii., lines 555 seq.) how
" Others apart sat on a hill retired,
In thoughts more elevate, and reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will, and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end, in wandering mazes lost."
No wonder he sums up the whole matter with the excla
mation, " Vain wisdom all, and false philosophy ! " But
in spite of Milton's opinion and that of many Christian
thinkers more eminent as theologians than he, I can
not think that we should treat this doctrine thus. It is
not a mere conclusion of philosophy, but a doctrine
plainly and abundantly taught in the Scripture. What
we need to do is not to discard it, but to use it
in the same practical way in which it is employed in
the Bible. It is not a doctrine over which the church of
Christ can afford to become embroiled in theological con
troversy, but one to be used for the edifying and strength
ening of the church and the individual. As regards the
philosophical problems involved, there ought to be a large
and generous toleration. All men will not think alike on
such points. Immense harm has been done in the church
by ill-advised and bitter controversies upon the speculative
questions connected with this subject. One cannot but
think that the Apostle Peter had this abuse of the doc
trine in mind when he said of Paul's epistles — in which
this doctrine is more fully presented than elsewhere in
the New Testament : " Wherein are some things hard to
be understood, which the ignorant and unsteadfast wrest,
as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own de
struction " (2 Pet. iii. 16).
But looking at the subject practically the case is very

ELECTION AND PREDESTINATION 439
different. We need the strength and comfort which this
doctrine alone can give us. The doctrine of election
grounds the Christian life in God. It gives Him the ini
tiative in the work of grace. It places the believer in a
position of entire dependence upon Him. It makes the
Christian's life, to use the expressive phrase of Horace
Bushnell, " a plan of God." The whole process of educa
tion and sanctification by which the child of God is pre
pared for the heavenly blessedness is attributed to God.
He is the controlling power in all our work and service.
We work out our own salvation with fear and trembling,
but it is God who worketh in us both to will and to do of
His good pleasure (Phil. ii. 12). Our faith is something
real and personal, but it has no merit and no spiritual
power in it. Its value lies in the fact that by it we have
been linked on to the eternal decree of God, and have back
of us and around us the infinite power of the infinite God.
He will see ns through. He will not allow one of the
Saviour's sheep to perish, and no one can pluck them out
of His hand. The Christian who grasps these facts, who
understands his absolute helplessness apart from God and
Christ, and his unbounded strength, when united to God
through Christ, has courage, cheerfulness, inspiration, and
power in his work for God.
Viewing the doctrine in this practical light, we may
adopt as our own the language of the Thirty-nine Articles
of the English church : " The godly consideration of Pre
destination, and our Election in Christ, is full of sweet,
pleasant, and unspeakable comfort to godly persons, and
such as feel in themselves the working of the Spirit of
Christ, mortifying the works of the flesh, and their earth
ly members, and drawing up their mind to high and
heavenly things, as well because it doth greatly establish
and confirm their faith of eternal Salvation to be enjoyed
through Christ, as because it doth fervently kindle their
love towards God."

XXIV.
JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH
Oue Saviour likened the kingdom of heaven to "a
treasure hidden in a field, which a man found and hid ;
and in his joy he goeth and selleth all that he hath and
buyeth that field " (Matt. xiii. 44). The parable may be
applied with truth to the doctrine which we are about to
consider, and which is so essential to the kingdom of God.
More than once in the history of the church it has been
the precious hidden treasure which God's people have
prized so highly that they have been willing literally to
sell all that they had for its possession and maintenance.
So it was in the days of Paul, so at the time of the Prot
estant Reformation. Every great revival of spiritual life
in the Christian church has been preceded or accom
panied by a rediscovery of this truth and its reinstate
ment in its true place in the Christian system.
This doctrine is second to no other in practical impor
tance. It is concerned with questions of such vital mo
ment to every soul, How shall the sinner be reconciled
with God ? how shall he enter the kingdom of heaven ?
what shall he do that he may inherit eternal life ? It
tells us how Christ's redemptive work, and especially his
atonement, are to be appropriated by sinful men.
We shall consider, first, justification or forgiveness, and
then faith.
I. The forgiveness of sins is as truly a doctrine of the
Old Testament as of the New. The difference between
the two stages of revelation does not consist in their

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 441
teachings respecting the fact of forgiveness, but in the
light they throw upon the divine basis of the fact and the
mode in which forgiveness is to be obtained. There are
no declarations in the New Testament of God's mercy and
willingness to forgive stronger than some of those to be
found in the Old. Jn the midst of the strict requirements
of the Ten Commandments} God, while visiting the iniq
uity of the fathers upon the children, upon the third and
fourth generation of them that hate Him, is said to show
mercy unto a thousand generations of them that love Him
and keep His commandments (Ex. xx. 5, 6). When Jeho
vah appeared to Moses on Sinai, His proclamation was,
"Jehovah, Jehovah, a God full of compassion and gra
cious, slow to anger and plenteous in mercy and truth ;
keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, trans
gression, and sin ; and^that will by no means clear the
guilty " (Ex. xxxiv. 6, 7). The sacrificial system, as we
saw when examining the doctrine of the atonement, was a
divine means for the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation
with God, although the offerings of atonement were in
trinsically inadequate for their purpose and availed only
as God accepted them on the ground of the perfect sacri
fice, as yet only vaguely revealed. But when men asked
what they should do with regard to those profounder ele
ments of sin, for which the sacrificial system made no pro
vision, the only reply which could be given them was
that they should repent, return to their obedience, and
trust God's forgiving grace.
It is only when we come to the New Testament that
we learn on what the divine forgiveness is founded, and
by what means it is to be secured. The Saviour connected
forgiveness with faith in himself, proclaiming that " the
Son of man hath power on earth to forgive sins " (Matt.
ix. 6). By the wonderful parable of the Prodigal Son he
taught that the heavenly Father is always ready to forgive
His wandering children. Just before his death, in con-

442 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
nection with the establishment of that sacred rite which
was to commemorate his death throughout the ages of
Christian history, he declared that the sacramental cup
symbolized the blood of the covenant — that is, the
Messiah's covenant predicted by the prophets (Jer. xxxi.
31-34) — " which is shed for many unto remission of sins "
(Matt. xxvi. 26-29).
But it was only after the Saviour had died and ascended
into heaven, that the full truth could be taught. Then
the disciples went everywhere, proclaiming forgiveness on
the ground of Christ's sacrificial death to all who would
have faith in him. The doctrine is presented in its great
evangelical outlines by all the apostles, but by none with
more doctrinal precision and force of argument than by
Paul. It is to him that we must turn, if we desire to
learn the full meaning of the doctrine of justification by
faith. There are difficulties in understanding Paul. They are
due partly to the inability of our language to render ex
actly the Greek words which are the technical terms in the
apostle's discussions, and partly to the differences of our re
ligious surroundings and modes of thought from those of
his day. -But whoever will take the pains to overcome
these difficulties and attain Paul's point of view, will be re
paid by securing the clearest and most far-reaching insight
into the system of Gospel truth which the New Testa
ment affords. Paul's starting-point was the question, How
shall a man be justified, that is, become right with God ?
how shall he secure the righteousness or lightness which
will render him acceptable to God ? The prevalent Jewish
notion— a notion derived from the later teachings of the
synagogue and not to be fairly inferred from the teach
ings of the Old Testament— was that good works justify.
The Jewish teachers argued that if a man keep the law,
he thus works out a righteousness which secures the di
vine favor. Now Paul did not deny that such a righteous-

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 443
ness by the works of the law would be sufficient, if it were
actually attained. On the contrary, he declared that God
will " render to every man according to his works ; to
them that by patience in well-doing seek for glory and
honor and incorruption, eternal life " (Rom. ii. 6, 7).
But Paul denied that as a matter of fact any man does at
tain such a righteousness by works. In the two epistles in
which he especially discusses the subject of justification,
namely, those to the Romans and the Galatians, he de
clares that all men are sinners, Jews and Gentiles alike,
and so are unable to become right with God on the ground
of their good works. This is the subject of the first
three chapters of the Epistle to the Romans, where, after
having shown by the most cogent evidence that both
heathen and Jews are sinners, he sums all up with the
declaration, " There is no distinction ; for all have sinned,
and fall short of the glory of God " (iii. 23), and asserts
that " by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified
in his sight " (iii. 20). Similarly in the Epistle to the
Galatians he affirms that " no man is justified by the law
in the sight of God ; " "for as many as are of the works
of the law are under a curse : for it is written (Dent.
xxvii. 26), Cursed is every one which continueth not in
all things that are written in the book of the law, to do
them " (Gal. iii. 10, 11). It is that bondage and helpless
ness of sinful men, to which reference was made when we
were examining the subject of sin. So far as God's laws
are concerned, all men are bankrupts. His command
ment is exceeding broad, and when we come to under
stand it, we see an end of all perfection (Ps. cxix. 96).
Let a man love God with all his heart, and his neighbor as
himself, and he will be right with God, but alas, who even
begins to do it ?
Now what can be done under these circumstances ? If
righteousness by works is impossible, what shall take its
place ? While men are separated from God by their sins,

444 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
they cannot take the first steps toward obedience and holi
ness. They cannot attain their chief end. Is there no
way by which they may be put into right relations with
God and thus enabled to become what God would have
them ? It is here that the great truth of justification by
faith comes in to solve the problem. It is God's method
of setting sinners right with Himself, in order that
through the grace of Christ and the Holy Spirit He may
save them unto the uttermost. The right relation to Him
self, which men cannot earn by their good works, God
gives as a matter of grace to those who accept it by faith.
Instead of the wholly inadequate self-wrought righteous
ness which is of no avail, there is revealed in the Gospel
" a righteousness of God from faith unto faith " (Rom. i.
17). This idea of a righteousness bestowed by God's
grace was not wholly new. There are traces of it in Old
Testament prophecy. But the New Testament righteous
ness of God is new in being clearly based upon the work
of Christ. We are ^'justified freely byjiis grace through
the redemption that is in Christ Jesus ; whom God set
forth to be a propitiation, through fait,h bj7 his blood, to
show his righteousness^ — 4ltH()"is; tjfocTs judicial righteous
ness — " because of^the passing over of the sins done afore
time, in the forbearance of God ; for the showing of his
righteousness at this present season : that he might him
self be just, and the Justifier of him that hath faith in
Jesus" (Rom. iii. 24-26). On the ground of what Christ
has done through his atoning death, God bestows upon
the sinner in pure grace, if he will accept it by faith, the
right relation with Himself which the sinner cannot attain
in his own strength by his own works ; He justifies him,
that is, sets him right. The sinner is forgiven. He be
comes a child of God, an heir of heaven. The Father's
smile is upon him. He is reconciled with God and has
peace with Him. The Spirit beareth witness with his
spirit that he is a child of the heavenly Father. God's

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 445
displeasure is removed. In a word, the sinner is forgiven,
and this not in the merely negative sense of being de
livered from punishment, but in the positive sense of
beiDg put right in all his personal relations to God. In
this broad sense of the term forgiveness we may regard it
as synonymous with justification. The righteousness of
God, which He bestows upon all who receive it, is essen
tially His forgiving grace.
But justification is not an end in itself ; it is only a
means to an end, and that the chief end of man, his com
plete redemption in the kingdom of God. It brings the
sitiner into the kingdom of God, but the kingdom has
still to come in its fulness in his soul. To be justified is
not the same as to be saved. But justification is the be
ginning of salvation, and it has for its object complete sal
vation. The student of Christian truth who stops short
with the doctrine of justification has only a partial and in
adequate Gospel. God would never justify a man if He
did not mean to save him. If justification by the works
of the law is impossible, it does not follow that the keep
ing of the law is impossible. What Paul means when he
says that we are not under the law but under grace (Rom.
vi. 15) is that so far as our justification with God is con
cerned we cannot base our hopes upon the works of the
law, our trust must be wholly in God's forgiving mercy.
But he does not mean that we are not to obey the law or
that we are under no obligation to obey it. On the con
trary, he magnifies the law, declaring that it " is holy, and
the commandment holy and righteous and good " (Rom.
vii. 12), and he declares that the object of God's justify
ing grace is to put us in a position where we can obey the
law and attain our chief end. Not that we shall ever thus
be able to make our salvation anything but a matter of
grace, but that along the track of grace, through the help
of Christ and the Holy Spirit, we may attain the full
salvation, entire holiness, and obedience in the perfected

446 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
kingdom of God. Thus Paul says in language which is a
key to the whole New Testament doctrine of grace,
" What the law could not do, in that it was weak through
the flesh, God, sending his own Son in the likeness of sin
ful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh ; that the
requirement of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk
not after the flesh, but after the Spirit " (Rom. viii. 3, 4).
Justification is in order to the fulfilment of the law in
God's kingdom. It receives its whole significance from
this fact, and would be meaningless apart from it. In
bestowing His justifying grace, the righteousness of God,
in Paul's meaning of the term, upon us, God brings us
into such a relation to Himself that the inward righteous
ness, at once His work and ours, can be wrought in us.
The imputed righteousness — to use the familiar phrase of
popular theology — is in order to the imparted righteous
ness. This is the answer to the charge of immorality so often
brought against the doctrine of justification — a charge for
which, it must be confessed, some ground has been fur
nished by the loose way in which the doctrine has often
been stated. If God merely forgave the sinner and left
him a sinner, we could not vindicate the divine conduct
from the charge of unrighteousness. In that case justi
fication would be a mere indulgence for sin, and the
question, " Shall we continue in sin that grace may
abound ? " to which Paul replied with an indignant " God
forbid ! " (Rom. vi. 1, 2), might well be answered in the
affirmative. But this is furthest from the truth of the
matter. Justification is but a part of God's great work,
and significant only from its relation to the whole. As
we saw when considering the elements in Christ's re
demption, the priestly work cannot be separated from the
kingly. The same Saviour who has secured forgiveness
through his death is pledged to save us by his life. We
may be- confident of this very thing, that he which be-

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 447
gan a good work in us will perfect it until the day of
Jesus Christ (Phil. i. 6). Moreover, justification is not
granted to every sinner indiscriminately, but only to those
who believe on Christ, and faith is such an act of the hu
man will as implies that the whole set of the sinner's life,
when he has received the divine forgiveness, will be
against sin and toward holiness.
But while I emphasize thus strongly the relation of
justification to the sanctification and complete salvation of
the sinner, let me also emphasize the clear distinction be
tween the justification and the sanctification, between the
imputed righteousness and the imparted or inherent right
eousness. The two are not the same, and they do not
run into each other. When a bone is broken, it must
be set before the process of healing can begin, and the
setting is in order that the fragments may knit to
gether and unite ; but the setting and the healing are
wholly distinct. Justification is the setting of the broken
bone ; it brings the soul into its true relation to God ; it
has sanctification for its object. Sanctification is the
healing, a process wholly different and wholly distinct.
Justification is God's work; sanctification is the united
work of God and man. This is the point of controversy
between Roman Catholics and Protestants. The former
confuse justification and sanctification. According to the
Canons of the Council of Trent, " Justification consists
not in the mere remission of sins, but in the sanctification
and renewal of the inner man by the voluntary recep
tion of God's grace and gifts." Accordingly, justification
is progressive. It is not until a man's faith has become
manifested in good works that he is justified. But Prot
estants claim that justification is complete from the first.
The father of the parable does not leave his prodigal son
outside the house until he has shown his repentance by
his works ; but he goes forth to meet him, and falls upon
his neck and kisses him, and has the best robe put on

448 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
him, had a ring on his finger, and shoes on his feet, and
kills for him the fatted oalf. The sinner is not taken
back into the divine favor by degrees, cautiously and
grudgingly ; but he is restored to all his privileges as a
child of God. This is the only way to make the work of
sanctification, which immediately begins, complete. It is
a work which can go forward only after the relation of
fatherhood and sonship is fully re-established. It is only
by such love that the sinner's love can be made perfect.
" We love him because he first loved us" (1 John iv. 19).
Thus only can that joy and peace and cheerful courage which
are the condition of the Christian life be realized. Accord
ingly, our Protestant churches have jealously guarded this
doctrine of a complete justification. While they have
defended it against Roman Catholicism, they have also
maintained it against those Protestants who have taught a
work righteousness, or have attempted to mingle together
justification and sanctification. There are those who fear
that to admit the fulness and freeness of the divine for
giveness will lower the standard of morality and religion.
But generally they do not understand the true meaning of
the doctrine of justification by God's free grace. And
whether they understand it or not, they greatly mistake
the working of the human soul. There is no motive so
powerful as that of love and gratitude. The Christian
who realizes what God has done for him, who stands in
the midst of the divine grace, seeing it above and beneath
and on every side of him, and knowing that it has been
given lam entirely apart from any merit of his, has an
impulse and a motive to holiness and Christian service
compared with which all other motives are feeble.
II. Our subject is justification by faith. We have con
sidered the divine element, justification ; now let us look
at the human element, faith. The doctrine of faith is
one of large relations. Faith does not belong to the
sphere of Christianity alone, but is a fact of the univer-

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 449
sal religious life, and also of the practical, or, as we often
call it, secular life. It is one of the fundamental and es
sential activities of our human nature. Christianity can
lay no exclusive claim to it ; its pre-eminency lies in the
fact that it furnishes faith with its highest exercise and
fullest satisfaction. We need not, therefore, go to the
Bible merely to discover the nature of faith. We can
get our information directly from life.
What then is faith ? There are certain inadequate defi
nitions which are widely maintained and which have pro
duced great confusion. I will refer to two of them. The
first, which has perhaps the most extensive currency,
makes faith an assent to truth upon the exhibition of ap
propriate evidence. Now all faith undoubtedly is accom
panied by such assent, and it may properly be called an
element of faith. But it is far from being the central and
essential element. There may be such an assent and yet
no real faith. The apostle James fitly describes the faith
that goes no farther than assent: "Thou believest that
God is one ; thou does well : the demons also believe, and
shudder" (James ii. 19). The demons are altogether
orthodox ; they give their assent to the great article of
the Hebrew creed (Deut. vi. 4), but it leads only to dread
and hatred, not to faith. In all ages of the Christian
church there has been this faith of mere assent, while all
true heart-faith was absent. This is one of the half-
truths which often work more mischief than whole false
hoods. No one can measure the harm that this inade
quate notion of faith has worked, and is still working,
among Christians.
The second imperfect definition to which I referred is
that which owes its origin to the description of faith given
by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews in that won
derful chapter in which is presented the muster-roll of the
heroes of faith under the Old Dispensation : "Now faith
is the assurance of things hoped for, the proving of things
29

450 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
not seen " (Heb. xi. 1). There is not the slightest evi
dence that this was intended for a scientific definition of
faith. Rather it describes it, by pointing to one of its
prominent characteristics. It is true that faith has to do
with things which are not perceived through the medium
of the senses. But this is not the essential element of
faith. When the attempt is made to illustrate the nat
ure of faith by the example of the scientist who has to
do with invisible atoms and ethers and forces, the result
is a very pretty comparison between faith in one of its
less essential characteristics and the methods of science,
but we have no true analogy and no real light thrown
upon the nature of faith. It is only in a figure of speech
that we can call the scientist's belief in the invisible ele
ments of the universe faith. In order to turn his belief
into real faith, we should have to suppose on his part a
recognition of the Creator of the universe, which, alas,
iu many of our scientists, is not found. So in the spir
itual sphere, we may have ever so strong a conviction
of the existence of an unseen world, yea, of the unseen
God and Christ, and the life eternal, and yet not have real
faith. I do not think that this definition has done so
much harm as the other, but it has led to great confusion
of thought and consequent misunderstanding of funda
mental Christian truth.
What is faith ? The answer can be given in a single
word : it is trust. It is primarily a relation of one person
to another. We cannot have faith in things or in the
truth, unless there is a person back of them, who is the
primary object of our faith. Moreover, faith implies de
pendence on the one side, and strength and ability on the
other. There is a person who relies, and a person who is
relied upon. The trust implies receptivity upon the side
of the one who has faith, and some kind of communica
tion and bestowal on the part of the one in whom he has
faith. To these particulars we may add the further one,

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 451
that faith is an activity of the whole soul, of the intellect,
the sensibility, and the will. There is an intellectual ele
ment in it ; in order to trust we must know the person
whom we trust, and know something about him. This is
where the assent to truth comes in, or rather begins to
come in. Then there is an element of feeling in faith ;
we cannot stand in this relation to another person without
experiencing certain emotions respecting him, such as
love, reverence, admiration, or the like. Finally, there is
an element of will in faith, and this is the distinctive ele
ment. This is what makes faith a moral activity. There
is choice in it. We may exercise it or abstain from it.
There is always in true faith a laying of our will, to an
extent greater or less, into the keeping of another will.
These three elements are not always present in the same
proportion. Now one is more prominent, now another.
But always in its deepest essence faith is a matter of the
will, of the free choice.
The simplest illustration of faith is that which comes
to us from childhood. The child can do very little for
itself. Its wants are supplied, its comforts furnished, its
choices made, chiefly by others, by parents and friends.
There is no relation in which there is greater dependence
on the one side and more abundant bestowal on the other.
It is true that to a large extent the trust of the child is in
stinctive, and that it is not a matter of free rational choice
as yet to any considerable degree. But this spontaneous
trust, so beautiful and touching, and so rarely put to
shame, is not only a type of the higher moral trust, which
comes with the development of the power of choice and
the moral nature, but it is the initial exercise of the free
will itself. Small though the element of freedom may
be, doubtless it is always present. And what could be
more lovely ? Like the flowers of the field, which neither
toil nor spin, these children in their childish faith do
nothing, yet hold themselves open to receive everything.

452 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
In the wider spheres of life faith is an essential activity
of human nature. Society is possible only as men trust
one another, standing in relations of mutual dependence
and receptivity. Without faith business would languish
and come to an end. A business man's credit, the trust
which he is able to inspire in other men, is always his
best capital. In how many hundreds of my fellow-men
must I have faith in order to go to bed at night with the
quiet confidence that my to-morrow's wants will be pro
vided for ! How do I know that my correspondents will
fulfil the commissions I have given them, and the post-
office do its work, and railroads and steamboats carry the
mails, and my letters come to me, with all in my business
that is so vitally dependent upon them ? Faith, trust—
and a faith and trust that are seldom brought to con
fusion. We come to a higher exercise of faith when we enter
the sphere of religion, but it is the same in kind. The
relation is not between man and man, but between man
and God. There is, however, the same dependence and
need on the one side, and the same strength and bestowal
on the other, and faith here also is trust, an act of the
will, a putting of ourselves into an attitude of receptivity
that what we need may be given to us. And this is
what makes the difference between piety and irreligion,
whether among heathens or Christians. A man may
have altogether inadequate or even erroneous views of
God, and yet have faith in the god or gods he knows.
The idolater who bows down to stocks and stones may
have faith, and so be religious, while the most orthodox
Christian who accepts the ipsissima verba of the West
minster Confession may have none.
As I said, the difference between Christian faith and
the faith of natural religion is not in the nature of this
activity, but in the nature of its object. Christianity
gives faith its highest exercise and its truest satisfaction ;

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 453
therein lies the peculiarity of Christian faith. It is an
eye which is made to see ; it remains the same eye, so
long as it be used, whatever it may see. It is a hand
which may be reached out for any gift, but it remains a
hand alike when a stone is given it instead of bread, and
when it receives the ambrosia of the gods. But what a
blessed thing it is to find the true object of our faith, to
see with our eye and to grasp with our hand the most
precious things of life ! Christian faith lays hold upon
the one thing needful. It is a trust upon the true God
and Jesus Christ His Son. It receives the blessing of
God's redemptive grace.
We are now prepared to see how faith justifies. The
faith of justification is the sinner's personal trust in Jesus
Christ the Saviour. Moved by God's Spirit, attracted by
the invitations of the Gospel, feeling his dependence and
need, seeing in Christ the supply of all his wants, he
freely puts himself into the Saviour's hands that he may
be justified and saved by him, giving himself to God
through Christ. This trust involves a self-abnegation, a
self-emptying, a turning away from all self-help, an utter
renunciation of all reliance upon self-wrought righteous
ness. It is an act of will — free, rational — made in view of
the truth. It involves the highest exercise of the power
of choice, for it is concerned with the chief end of life.
But while it is in this sense an activity of the will, it is a
receptive activity ; it is a stretching out of an empty hand
to receive an undeserved gift. Now faith justifies because
it thus opens the soul to the grace of God and Christ. It
is because the sinner has thus put himself at the disposal
of Christ for time and for eternity, to be moulded and
shaped by him, because he has given up all trust in him
self and thrown himself upon Christ in entire dependence,
that God can for Christ's sake forgive him and reinstate
him in all the lost privileges of sonship. By his faith he
is united to Christ, and God sees him not as he is in him-

454 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
self, but as he is in Christ, and for Christ's sake He for
gives him and begins upon the work of sanctifying him.
The sinner in childlike trust has cast himself npon God
and Christ, and he has received from them the riches of
forgiving grace and the assurance of sanctifying grace.
How different such faith as this is from the acceptance of
a system of doctrines or the yielding to the authority of a
church! How immense the result! Horace Bushnell
has described the true saving faith in the simplicity of the
truth : " Christian faith," he says, " is the faith of a
transaction. It is not the committing of one's thought in
assent to any proposition, but the trusting of one's being
to a being, there to be rested, kept, guided, moulded,
governed, and possessed forever." " It gives you God,
fills you with God in immediate, experimental knowledge,
puts you in possession of all there is in him, and allows
you to be invested with his character itself" (Life of
Bushnell, p. 192 seq.).
We can thus see why there is nothing meritorious in
faith. It is indeed a good work — the best work we ever
do ; it is a work in all reality. But it has no merit.
Faith is valuable not for what it is but for what it re
ceives. It is a vessel which is intrinsically of no worth,
but only for what it contains. It is a hand which may
receive a gift but can give none. This is the nature of
faith always. Some people have the notion that if their
faith were only strong enough or intense enough they could
accomplish anything with it ; they regard it as an omnipo
tent power. But nothing could be more mistaken. The
power is all of God, and faith is only the medium through
which it is received. If God should withhold His gift
faith would remain poor empty faith. It does not follow
that because in the days of Christ and the apostles mira
cles were wrought through the instrumentality of faith,
our faith in these days of God's quieter providential
workings is less genuine. It was not the faith which

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH 455
wrought the miracles, but God who wrought them through
the faith. If God had a reason for miracles then which
He does not have now, it does not follow that our faith
is any the less real. The empty vessel i'eceived one kind
of filling then ; it receives another kind now. That is all
the difference. The vessel itself may be as good, or better
— and certainly the gifts are better for us. No amount of
faith will compel God to give what He does not regard as
best for us. Faith as a grain of mustard-seed is sufficient
to remove mountains, if God has them ready for us to re
move ; and faith mountain-great is insufficient to move a
mustard-seed, if God deems it not best that it should be
moved. Now such an activity as this, which derives all
its worth from what it receives, can have no merit. It
leaves the sinner utterly dependent upon God. All that
he has he has received. All that he hopes for will come
to him of pure unmerited grace. There is no merit in the
fact that the man in peril, around whom a rope is thrown,
does not cast it off, that he co-operates with those who are
saving him. Yet he might never be saved unless he thus
freely gave himself up, and the sinner would never be
saved unless he had faith. Looking at it merely as an in
dispensable condition, faith has a very considerable impor
tance ; but looking at it in relation to the gift of God
through Jesus Christ our Lord, it is as nothing.
I have spoken here particularly of the first act of faith,
the justifying faith by which the sinner enters the king
dom of God. But it is to be remembered that faith is
essential all through the Christian life. It is not only the
condition of justification, but also of sanctification. The
just shall live by faith. All God's gifts come to men
through its medium. It enters into character, for it in
volves a permanent choice and is concerned with the
supreme choice of life. At the first it is an act, a " trans
action," as Bushnell called it ; but it becomes a perma
nent attitude of the soul toward God and Jesus Christ,

.456 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
We often talk as if faith were only for this life. But
Paul tells us that faith, like love and hope, abides (1 Cor.
xiii. 13). It will not be " changed to ^ight," as we some
times say, but when the time of higher vision comes, faith
will merely find a higher exercise. Through all eternity
it will be the hand which will receive God's largess. We
shall never reach a point where our relation to God and
Christ will be any other than that of trust and depend
ence. Such is faith, and such justification by faith. Whoever
understands this doctrine understands the Gospel. Who
ever has a personal faith in Jesus Christ, possesses in him
wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemp
tion (1 Cor. i. 30).

XXV.
THE NEW LIFE
Let us take up once more the clew which has guided us
through all our wanderings in the mazes of theology — the
doctrine of God's redemptive kingdom. The kingdom is
the chief end of God's plan and of man's existence. The
sinner's misery and guilt consist in the fact that he is fall
ing short of his chief end, since by his sin he is outside of
the kingdom and unable in his own strength to re-enter it.
Christ by his redemptive work has provided a way for the
sinner to become once more a member of the kingdom
and attain his chief end in it. Through the divine jus
tification or forgiveness, appropriated by faith, he is ad
mitted to the kingdom so far as his outward relations are
concerned ; God's grace transforms displeasure into favor
and restores the sinner to his lost sonship, making him
an heir of God and joint-heir with Christ. But justifica
tion, with its change of outward relations, is only a means
to an end, namely, to the attainment of the chief end, the
actual redemption. There is therefore need of an internal
change, a transformation of the spiritual life, an actual
achievement of sonship. Amnesty looks forward to re
construction and the attainment of all the ends of citizen
ship. It is of this new life, the actual realization of man's
chief end in the soul itself, so far as this result is attained
in the present world, that I wish to speak at this time.
I. The new life begins in that great spiritual crisis
which we call the change of heart. This is a revolution
of the most radical character. The whole bent and direc-

458 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
tion of the soul is changed. As we have seen, the sin
ner's supreme choice is altogether wrong. He makes self
and the world his chief end. He worships and serves the
creature rather than the Creator (Rom. i. 25). He is self-
centered, revolving in the narrow orbit of a life given
wholly to finite things. In the change of heart there is
a complete reversal of the choice. God and His kingdom,
man's true supreme end, are chosen. The man's life is
no longer self- centered, but God-centered. The narrow
orbit is deserted and the soul enters upon the career of
eternal life. Sin is no longer the governing principle, for
love has taken its place. It would not be true to say that
the change of heart is confined to the will, for the whole
man is involved in it; there is an intellectual transforma
tion and a transformation of the sensibility. But the '
change begins in the will, and in the highest element of
the will, the free choice, and reaches the other faculties of
the man as it moves out from this center. The heart, ac
cording to the scriptural meaning of tile term, is the man
himself, the inmost core and kernel of personality ; it is
the free will. The heart is the seat of character, which
originates in the great permanent choices of the soul.
The change of heart is the beginning of a new character.
The greatness and radical nature of this change cannot
be too strongly emphasized. The Bible terms which are
employed to describe it are none too strong. It is as John
declares it (John i. 13), a new birth ; a birth from, above,
without which a man cannot enter the kingdom of God
(John iii. 3-8). It is a new creation : " If any man is in
Christ, he is a new creature ; the old things are passed
away ; behold, they are become new " (2 Cor. v. 17). It
is a resurrection from the dead : the believer has passed
out of death into life (John v. 24 ; 1 John iii. 14).
This language is, it is true, figurative, but it has none the
less a definite and perfectly intelligible meaning: the
change of heart involves a transformation in the spiritual

THE NEW LIFE 459
sphere so great that it can only be adequately illustrated
by the greatest of all transformations in the natural sphere
— creation, birth, and death.
This change may be considered from two points of
view, the divine and the human. It is the work of God
through the Holy Spirit, and it is the sinner's own work.
Theologians commonly distinguish the two aspects of the
one spiritual transformation as regeneration and conversion.
God changes the heart ; man changes it. Of these two
factors regeneration takes the precedence. The sinner is
utterly helpless apart from God ; he cannot take the first
step in the direction of salvation ; his sin holds him in
bondage. His inability is none the less real because it is
moral and not natural. The invisible chains of our own
forging hold us quite as strongly as any that God might
have forged in our original constitution. Consequently
the need of God's grace is absolute ; no other release is
possible. This grace has come to us and all men objec
tively through the atoning work of Christ. But it must
also come to ns subjectively through the inward work of
the Holy Spirit. We are justified on the ground of what
Christ has done as high-priest; we can be regenerated
and sanctified only through the work of Christ the King,
operating upon our hearts through his Spirit. Otherwise
salvation is impossible, man's chief end can be reached in
no other way. " Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a
man be born from above, he cannot see the kingdom of
God ; " " Ye must be born from above " (John iii. 3, 7).
This work of the Spirit in regeneration has a mysterious
element in it ; it takes place, in part at least, out of the
sphere of our consciousness. The access of God and
Christ to our souls through the Spirit is a fact to which
consciousness testifies ; every man hears the divine voice
in conscience and feels the strivings of the God witlrjn
urging him to follow the better way, and every Christian
has the witness of the Spirit and a personal fellowship

460 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
with the Father and Christ through Him. But this is the
region of the supernatural ; there is in' it an infinite factor
which evades our attempts to analyze and understand it.
We know the work of the Spirit in regeneration from its
results : " The wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou
hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it
cometh, and whither it goeth : so is every one that is born
of the Spirit " (John iii. 8). We know that we have been
born because we have entered the new life. We know
that of ourselves we could not have produced the result.
We cannot doubt that the true cause is that which revela
tion describes and the workings of which we know in our
experience both before and after the change of heart,
namely, that Spirit of God which is also the Spirit of
Christ. The Spirit does not work without means. The New
Testament lays great emphasis upon the " word," or the
truth, as the instrumentality especially employed by God
in regeneration : " Of his own will he brought ns forth by
the word of truth " (James i. 18) ; we have been " begot
ten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible,
through the word of God, which liveth and abideth " (1
Pet. i. 23). But we are not to understand that the Spirit
works, so to speak, at arm's-length or at second-hand;
rather He uses the truth by making it directly effectual ;
He gives it an efficacy which it would not and could not
have in itself. The word without the Spirit is an arm of
flesh. It was only when the Spirit brooded upon the face
of the waters that the divine word worked with creative
power ; there must be a like moving of the Spirit in our
souls. There is also besides the outward word of the
preached Gospel an inward word of God in every soul,
and doubtless, as has already been intimated, there is a
working of the Spirit apart from the word.
We must not regard the working of the Spirit in re
generation as physical. We often call regeneration a

THE NEW LIFE 461
" miracle of grace." But we must remember that all such
language is figurative. The true miracle belongs to the
realm of nature, not to that of spirit. Regeneration is
supernatural in the sense of being due to the direct effi
ciency of God, but it is not miraculous. The operation
of the Spirit upon our souls is moral and spiritual ; it in
volves influences like those which one soul brings to bear
upon another. The best analogy, though of course it falls
far short of the truth, is that which is derived from the
personal relations of men. There are changes of heart
on the lower levels of life, which one soul brings to pass
in another. What moral and spiritual transformations
are thus wrought ! How often we see a rough, uncultured
man brought into an altogether new life by the influence
of a refined and gentle wife ! How often one friend will
bring another, by influence and persuasions, to choices
which change the whole tenor of his life and give charac
ter an utterly different direction ! How is the change
produced ? By influences partly conscious and partly un
conscious, but all moral, all consistent with freedom on
both sides. Such are the influences of the Holy Spirit in
regeneration. The change is brought about morally. It is
beautifully described in the Assembly's Catechism in the
answer to the question, What is effectual calling ? (effec
tual calling being here taken as equivalent to the Spirit's
work in regeneration). " Effectual calling is the work of
God's Spirit, whereby, convincing ns of our sin and mis
ery, enlightening our minds in the knowledge of Christ,
and renewing our wills, he doth persuade and enable us to
embrace Jesus Christ, freely offered to us in the gospel."
This brings us to the human side in the change of heart,
namely, conversion, or, as it is often called in the New
Testament, repentance. The change of heart is as truly
man's work as it is God's work. From the nature of the
case it must be ; for if its central and essential element is
a new choice, our own will must make it. But it is not

462 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
a work which man shares with God, in such a way that we
may distribute it between God and man, saying, God did
so much and man so much. It is truer to say that God
did it all and man did it all. God did it all in that He
furnished power and motive and influence ; it never could
have come to pass without Him. The sinner did it all in
that it was his own choice, like any other choice the out
come of his own will. Here at the highest point in man's
moral and spiritual nature, in the highest exercise of the
human will, God works through man without hindrance,
to will and to do of His good pleasure. This is not a mere
co-operation, or, as it is called in theology, synergism ; it
is a realization of the divine will through the human will.
Yet the human will is free in it. Conversion is not a
natural process but a moral one. It is a choice and a free
choice. The soul is not under the compulsion of the
Holy Spirit. It is never freer than when it is making its
supreme choice. It has power to the contrary and knows
that it has. The divine grace is not irresistible although
it is unresisted. It carries the will with it, but not apart
from the will's free consent. I grant that there is a mys
tery here. So is there in every exercise of freedom.
There is a mystery in the fact that I can change the whole
tenor of my fellow's life, persuading him to make choices
which involve an entire transformation of character in
great spheres of life, and yet he remain free. But I will
not throw away the freedom because it is encompassed
with mysteries. A doctrine of invincible grace, which
denied the true freedom of man in conversion, would land
me in far greater mysteries.
There has been much controversy among theologians re
specting the relation of the two elements iii the change of
heart, and also the relation of the change of heart to
faith and justification. Which comes first, regeneration
or conversion ? Does the change of heart precede faith
and justification? or do faith and justification come first

THE NEW LIFE 463
and the change of heart follow ? I greatly doubt whether
the controversy will ever be settled by the victory of either
party. The process by which the soul passes out of its
lost condition into the kingdom of God is complex ; it is
composed of a number of factors so united as to defy a
complete analysis. It is so with all our moral and spiritual
crises. Here is a young girl, careless, light-hearted, still
a child in thought and act. She gives her heart to the
man of her choice, and lo ! all at once she is transformed
into an earnest, thoughtful, devoted woman. All at once
the stream that ran merrily along the surface has found
deep channels, where it moves slowly and mirrors the
heavens in its depths. Who shall analyze the change,
distributing the factors and assigning them to their re
spective causes, in her will and the will of her lover ?
Who shall say which came first, faith or love ? An at
tempt at such analysis would be absurd. It is not less ab
surd in the case of the great change, the new birth. This
much indeed we may say, that God's activity comes first
in time in the movements which precede the change ; His
Spirit moves upon the soul and drawl it toward Christ.
But when the change takes place, the divine atid the
human elements are united in one inseparable act. We
may say that, logically, the regeneration is first, because
the predominant agency is the Spirit, but we cannot say
that it is first in time. The relation of the change of
heart to faith and justification is equally incapable of
analysis. Faith is one side of the change itself ; or, we
might say, the change involves faith and faith involves
the change. So far as the will- lays hold upon the divine
grace, appropriating it, it is faith ; so far as it makes
choice of the supreme end, it is conversion. But who
shall say that faith and conversion are two distinct acts
of the will, however clearly they may be distinguished ?
The two are only formally different ; they are different
aspects of a single choice. Justification belongs to the

464 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
same complex ; it comes not before or after, but with the
faith and the change of heart, the one indivisible change.
The result of the change of heart is a new man. The
sinner is transformed into a child of God. The old sinful
self is lost and a new self is found, a self which has its
center and its life in God. Love is its principle. The
kingdom of God has begun to come in the regenerate
soul. It is common to say that the change of heart is instan
taneous, and there is a measure of truth in the statement.
The distinction between a supreme choice of self and a
supreme choice of God is a sharp one ; there seems to be
no intermediate ground. We cannot serve God and Mam
mon (Matt. vi. 24). The sinner, in his conversion makes
a complete revolution. Nevertheless, we must somewhat
modify the statement. In the first place, we must distin
guish between the change and the consciousness of the
change ; men are not always able to recognize the precise
time and manner of the change. They may be able only
to say with the blind man, " One thing I know, that,
whereas I was bfind, now I see " (John ix. 25). In the
second place, we must remember that the power of choice
passes through a process of growth and development.
The child reaches the full maturity of freedom only by a
process. Now it is possible under Christian nurture to so
guide the growing freedom of the child that there shall be
a gradual growth into the fulness of the Christian life.
In such cases conversion does not seem to be instantaneous.
Doubtless there is a point somewhere, where the personal
free will takes upon it the full responsibility of the su
preme choice. But it seems not so much a crisis as an
indistinguishable point in a continuous process. I do not
say that such cases are numerous ; but they are likely to
be increasingly numerous as the kingdom of God becomes
more fully established and as the power of Christian nurt
ure is more generally recognized and made use of.

THE NEW LIFE 465
II. Let us next look briefly at the more important
factors of the new life.
First among these I place the union of the believer
with Christ. This is established in justification and the
new birth, and becomes a permanent element in the Chris
tian life. It is a part of the kingly work of the Saviour,
and essential to that complete salvation at which redemp
tion aims. Christ, by his redemptive work, united himself
with the human race, becoming its Head and Saviour.
In justification this relation becomes a personal one, and
in regeneration it becomes an internal spiritual relation.
In the new life this union is the basis and source of the
whole work of grace. The sinner has given himself up to
the Saviour, and the latter abides and works in him
through the Holy Spirit. The Master himself illustrated
the nature of this union by the similitude of the vine and
the branches (John xv. 1-10) : " I am the vine, ye are
the branches : he that abideth in me, and I in him, the
same bringeth forth much fruit : for without me ye can
do nothing " (ver. 5). The apostles compare this union
with the union between the husband and the wife (Eph.
v. 31, 32) ; with that between the head and the members
of the body (1 Cor. xii. 12) ; with that between a building
and its foundation or corner-stone (Eph. ii. 20-22). The
Christian is in Christ : " There is now no condemnation
to them that are in Christ Jesus " (Rom. viii. 1). Christ
dwells in the Christian : " It is no longer I that live, but
Christ liveth in me " (Gal. ii. 20). The sanctification of
the believer is a " forming of Christ " in him (Gal. iv. 19).
This is a union of fellowship, communion, and love, in
which the believer comes consciously into personal rela
tions with Christ and the Father. Christ dwells in his
heart by faith (Eph. iii. 17). He has that personal knowl
edge of the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom He has
sent, which is life eternal (John xvii. 3). It is also a union
of life. The Saviour's life is bestowed through the Spirit;
30 .(

466 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
upon the believer, strengthening and building him up in
holiness and Christian manhood, and capacitating him for
Christian service. It is a foretaste of that closer union
which is to exist in the perfected kingdom of God.
A second factor in the new life, closely connected with
the one just mentioned, is the indwelling of the Holy
Spirit. It is through the Spirit that Christ dwells and
works in the soul. In the new birth the Holy Spirit, who
has access only to the outer court of the sinner's heart and
moves upon it, so to speak, from without, enters the holy
of holies, the sanctuary of the will. Henceforth that is
His home, the place where He does His work. The
Spirit is the agent of Christ, in the process of the new life.
His activity is partly revealed to the believer's conscious
ness : He bears witness with our spirit that we are the
children of God (Rom. viii. 16). It is partly below con
sciousness. It is to be noted, also, that the Spirit is not
only the internal source of our spiritual life, but even of
the redeemed physical life. The body is a temple of the
Spirit, and the Spirit is the earnest of the resurrection (1
Cor. vi. 19 ; 2 Cor. v. 5).
A third factor in the Christian life is faith. In our
theological investigations we are too apt to confine our con
sideration of faith to the beginnings of the Christian life,
attending exclusively to what is called justifying faith.
But faith is a permanent element of the new life. It is
always the subjective condition of all its processes. Paul
said, " The life which I now live in the flesh, I live by the
faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself
for me " (Gal. ii. 20). We may speak as truly of sancti
fication by faith as of justification by faith. The recep
tive attitude which faith involves is essential for the car
rying out of all the divine work. It is thus that the in
ward righteousness, which is as truly a gift of God's grace
as the so-called " imputed" righteousness, is appropriated.
The faith of the Christian life is the faith which " work-

THE NEW LIFE 467
eth by love " (Gal. v. 6). Like justifying faith it is with
out merit, the hand that receives the divine largess.
The last of these factors which I will mention is the fel
lowship of Christians. The believer does not pursue his
career alone. He is a member of a great organism, of
which Christ is the Head and all Christians are members,
the body of Christ (1 Cor. xii.). He is not merely a son
of God, but a brother of all God's children. The king
dom of God is social as well as individual. No man liveth
unto himself in it. The church is the body of believers,
and every Christian is a member of the church, which is
one and universal.
III. Next let us look at the process of the new life, or
sanctification. The Christian when he first enters the
kingdom of God is still a sinner. He stands at the begin
ning of a long road. He has chosen God as his chief
good and made the kingdom his chief end. But such a
choice only slowly works out the results of the old sinful
choices. There remains much land to be possessed.
There is need of a complete salvation, which shall not
leave any of the evil of sin unremoved. God makes no
man perfectly holy by a miracle of grace. The work of
reducing the conquered country of the believer's soul to
harmony and order is gradual. The whole Christian life is
a progressive dying unto sin and living unto righteousness.
In this work God and the believer co-operate. The power
comes from God, but the work is done by man. God
works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure, and
we work out our own salvation with fear and trembling
(Phil. ii. 12, 13). Were the Christian life what it ought
to be, there would be perfect and loving harmony between
God and the believer in the work. Both would pursue
unwaveringly the same great end. As it is, in our feeble
ness and sin we only approximate to the ideal.
The doctrine of sanctification implies that the Christian
is under the divine law. We saw, when considering the

468 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
doctrine of justification, that God's forgiveness is not an
indulgence on the ground of which the believer may
freely sin, but that it has for its object his holiness.
When the apostles say that we are not under law but under
grace, and speak of the law as abolished, they are referring
to the meritorious ground of salvation. The believer,
since he has been and is a sinner, can never claim eternal
life as a reward. It will always be a matter of free grace.
But this does not make the law less binding upon him as
a rule of duty. On the contrary, it is even more bind
ing, since now the hindrances in the way of its observance
are removed and God's Spirit is given to supply the be
liever with moral power. Christianity gives no quarter
to the antinomianism which would deliver the Christian
from the restraints of the moral. It repudiates such a
doctrine with holy horror. The Gospel is through and
through ethical. I know that some will insist that we
cannot maintain this ground unless we admit that good
works are in some way instrumental in securing our sal
vation. They say, " If you teach that men are saved by
God's grace alone and not by their good works, what
motive can you give them to lead them to holiness ?
What use is there in obedience, since salvation is not
dependent upon it ? " But this objection arises from a
wholly inadequate conception of the Christian system.
The chief end of man is not to escape punishment and get
into heaven ; it is to fulfil the divine will in the redemp
tive kingdom. It is indeed true that good works can
never be the meritorious ground of salvation, but they are
an essential element in the salvation itself. The faith
that would rest upon God's justifying grace and not mani
fest itself in good works is no true faith. Justification
and regeneration mean sanctification as truly as the seed
and the warm earth and the air and sunshine mean plant
and blossom and fruit. No man can have the faith which
secures forgiveness and the purpose which initiates the

THE NEW LIFE 469
new life and not have for his great aim and object the
love and obedience which the law requires. Paul asks
the question, " Shall we continue in sin, that grace may
abound?" And his answer is, "God forbid. We who
died to sin, how shall we any longer live therein ? "
(Rom. vi. 1). He teaches precisely the same doctrine as
that of James, which has so often been represented as
contradicting his teachings. The latter says, " What doth
it profit, my brethren, if a man say he hath faith, but have
not works ? can that faith save him ? . . . Faith, if
it have not works, is dead in itself " (James ii. 14, 17).
Good works do not merit salvation, but they are an es
sential element in the salvation itself. Faith alone justi
fies, but the faith that does not press on to love and good
works is no faith at all, but dead, sham faith.
There is still one point at which the doctrine must be
guarded. In saying that good works are not the meritori
ous ground of salvation, I do not mean to say that they are
not meritorious. God approves them, and, if I under
stand the New Testament aright, He even rewards them.
When a man has. been placed by God upon a platform of
grace, his good works have a real though relative value.
They will never merit salvation ; they are themselves the
result not of the believer's unaided efforts, but of the
Spirit of Christ working in him. But God views them
with favor and grants rewards proportioned to them.
Though all the redeemed will be saved solely on the
ground of Christ's work, there seems good reason to be
lieve that there will be differences of reward correspond -
ino- to the different degrees of obedience and faithfulness
in this life.
^Before leaving this branch of our subject, we must en
deavor to answer the question, Whether complete sanctifi-
lation is ever attained in the present life ? On the one
Bide there are those who confidently assert that every
Bhristian can, if he will, reach this state, and that there

470 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
are multitudes of Christians who have already reached it.
On the other side there are those who affirm, with equal
confidence, not only that no man, save Christ alone, has
ever attained perfection in this life, but that no man can
do it. Now theoretically, as it seems to me, the perfec
tionists have a good case. There is no reason in the
nature of things why the Christian should not reach a
condition of perfect holiness in this life. Christ did so,
and while the Christian starts at an immense disadvan
tage as compared with Christ, since he possesses innate
tendencies to sin and sinful habits which are the result of
his old sinful choices, yet he is free and has the aid of
Christ's Spirit. I should be very loth to deny the possi
bility as an abstract possibility ; those who do so, it seems
to me, inevitably weaken the sense of responsibility and
abridge the guilt of sin.
But the question whether men have the abstract power
to become perfect in this life is one thing, and the ques
tion whether any men do so is quite another. The latter,
which is the practical question, must be answered by the
appeal to facts as we find them in the Scripture and Chris
tian experience. Now I deny that facts justify the asser
tion that believers become perfect in the present life.
The Scripture gives no countenance to the view. There
are indeed Bible characters who are called perfect, but as
soon as we come to examine the facts, we find that the
word is used relatively and not absolutely, to indicate their
piety and not their sinlessness. The Bible records many
sins committed by its perfect men. The Lord's Prayer is
intended for all Christians, yet it would be inappropriate
in the mouth of a sinless man. Paul declares himself not
to have already obtained or already to have been made
perfect, but only to be pressing toward the goal (Phil. iii.
12-14). James, writing to Christians, affirms that "in
many things we all stumble " (James iii. 2). John, also
writing to Christians and directly addressing them, sol-

THE NEW LIFE 471
emnly avers, " if we say that we have no sin, we deceive
ourselves, and the truth is not in us " (1 John i. 8). Chris
tian experience in all ages testifies to the same fact. The
most holy Christians, who have made the highest attain
ments in the Christian life, bewail their sins and are con
scious of being far from perfect.
Those who hold the doctrine of perfection do so only
at the price of a complete lowering of the conception of
sin. Of course if we set our standard low, it is easy to
attain it. The Pelagians, who make sin a light matter,
have no trouble in being perfect. The Antinomians, who
deny the obligation of the law so far as Christians are
concerned, simply give sin another name and sin freely
under the guise of holiness, and the Christian world has
had only too sad reason to know what that kind of perfec
tionism means. As for our Methodist brethren — of whose
piety and earnest purpose no one stands in doubt — they
also lower the standard. The sinless perfection which
they claim to attain is like Voltaire's Holy Roman Em
pire ; it is neither sinless nor is it perfection. Wesley
admits that perfect men commit " involuntary transgres
sions " of the law. Another prominent writer upon the
subject quotes with approval, as describing the state of
sinlessness which believers attain in this life, the phrase
of Archbishop Leighton, " imperfect perfection " (Whe-
don, " Doctrines of Methodism," Bibliotheca Sacra, vol.
xix., p. 271). But what is an involuntary transgression of
God's law ? What is imperfect perfection ? The first is
a contradiction in terms and the second is no better. The
best Christian sins — just that and nothing less ; he does
those things which he ought not to do, and leaves un
done those things which he ought to do. His sin does not
consist merely in the involuntary movings of his corrupt
inherited nature or in the involuntary consequences of his
old sins. He sins freely. That which fills with shame
the soul of the best and holiest Christian in his moments

472 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
of self-examination — and most of all such a Christian — is
not the frailty which he cannot help (of which there is
indeed enough), but the sins which he could have helped
and which, notwithstanding, he freely committed. If you
ask me, Why, if he is free, does he not help it? I answer,
That is the mystery of freedom, which I cannot solve.
A free choice is an ultimate fact. But as I have said
before, so let me say now — let not the mystery of free
dom induce us to exchange it for the difficulties and
absurdities of determinism. By God's grace the believer
more and more dies unto sin and lives unto righteousness.
The conquest comes not here, but on the other side of
death. IV. But the Christian's career on earth is not merely
occupied with sanctification, it involves also his service in
the kingdom of God. Every Christian has a vocation.
His life is " a plan of God." He is elected for some par
ticular work in the kingdom. We all recognize this fact
in practice, but it is not sufficiently regarded in our theo
logical discussions, while even in our preaching it is too
often left out of view. Sanctification has to do with the
formation of character. But character is not the be-all
and the end-all in Christianity. It is not even the highest
thing in the Christian life, apart from its effects. Char
acter is a means to an end, and that end is service. We
are to be sons of God in doing as well as in being. The
effort of many Christians seems to be solely or chiefly
directed toward the formation of character. But this
may be, and often is, mere selfishness. Character has its
great preeiousness, but it is a preciousness that is revealed
only in service. Heaven is not to be a mutual admiration
society, where the redeemed will exhibit their characters
to each other, as prize-fighters might show their thews
and muscles. God has put us into this universe to do His
work. There is work to be done in this world, and work
to be done in heaven. The Christian's work here is to

THE NEW LIFE 473
build up God's kingdom. This task has been committed
to men, and every believer has a share in it. He is to
employ in this service both his secular avocation and his
religious opportunities. Each Christian has his own pe
culiar task. The twelfth chapter of Romans and the
twelfth chapter of First Corinthians show what a strong
hold this idea of service had upon the minds of the in
spired leaders of the early church.
But I have time only to mention this subject, though it
is most inviting and suggestive. We must pass now to
our last topic, namely,
V. Christian perseverance.
The Bible seems to teach, and Christian experience to
confirm, the doctrine that God enables all true believers to
persevere unto the end. The Saviour says of his sheep,
"They shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them
out of my hand. My Father, which hath given them
unto me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch
them out of the Father's hand " (John x. 28, 29). Paul
expresses his confidence that He who began a good work
in the Christian will perfect it until the day of Jesus
Christ (Phil. i. 6). In the eighth chapter of Romans the
Christian is represented as bound to God by a chain which
reaches from eternity to eternity, and it is declared that
nothing can separate him from the love of God in Christ
Jesus his Lord. Peter tells us that Christians are guarded
by the power of God through faith unto a salvation ready
to be revealed in the last time (1 Pet. i. 5). Jnde's
epistle ends with a doxology unto " him that is able to
guard you from stumbling, and to set you before the
presence of his glory without blemish in exceeding joy "
(Jude 24). It is true that there is a condition to this
divine grace. It is promised only to those who continue
in faith and in the nse of the means of grace. God does
not grant his salvation in any external way. He saves
men through their own wills, not apart from them, and by

474 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
the use of prayer and the other means of grace. But the
assurance seems to be that the true Christian, who has
that genuine faith which receives God's grace and presses
on toward love and obedience and holiness, will not be
permitted to fall. God will hold fast to him and protect
him from his enemies, as well as from his own sinful
nature. It is true that there are some passages in the New
Testament which seem to teach the possibility of falling
from God's grace (Luke xiv: 34 ; John xv. 4-6 ; I Cor. ix.
27 ; Heb. vi. 4-6 ; x. 26 ; 2 Pet. ii. 20, 21). But these
are either intended to guard Christians against self-confi
dence or to show the danger of those who have mistaken
an imperfect religious experience for genuine faith. The
awful warnings of the passages in the Epistle to the
Hebrews are addressed to Christians in danger of apos
tatizing, and were meant to show that they could look for
no salvation outside of Christianity. They are passages
which the opponents of the doctrine of perseverance, who
base their doctrine upon the freedom of the will, never
dare to use, for they would prove too much for their pur
pose. The chief objections urged against the doctrine of per
severance are that it militates against the freedom of man
and that it tends to beget a false security on the part of
Christians. With regard to the first, it is to be observed
that human freedom has its full exercise in the supreme
choice of faith and conversion, which becomes the perma
nent choice of the Christian life. It is only through this
choice, and not apart from it, that God brings the believer
to the final blessedness. That God should insure to the
man who has freely put himself into the divine hands,
and keeps himself there, the attainment of the chief end
at .which he aims, is conservative of freedom and not sub
versive of it. The other objection is equally inapplicable.
The doctrine of perseverance implies a real faith on the

THE NEW LIFE 475
part of the Christian, but such a faith is inconsistent with
a false security. The doctrine is indeed dangerous to those
who have no real faith, but only think that they have ;
but so is the whole scheme of divine grace dangerous to
them, and the objection could be urged quite as strongly
against the doctrine of justification. To the genuine
Christian it must always be a ground of infinite joy and
satisfaction that the almighty arms are round about him
and that they will never let him go.
This leads me to say, in conclusion, a word respecting
Christian assurance. This grace is rather a privilege than
an essential element of the Christian life. Yet it is a
privilege which every child of God may enjoy. The
Spirit bears witness with the believer's spirit that he is
the son of God. On the basis of this inward witness he
may have a comfortable assurance. He may know that
he is forgiven, that the Father smiles upon him, that
Christ is his and that he is Christ's, and that he is an heir
of the eternal inheritance. This assurance of faith is of
inestimable value. It may include a well-grounded assur
ance of hope, which reacheth forth to that which is within
the veil. As the experience of faith goes on, and the
communion of the believer with the Father and Christ
through the Holy Spirit becomes more and more intimate,
and as the fruit of the Spirit is increasingly manifested
in the life — tho love, joy, peace, long-suffering, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, meekness, temperance, of which
Paul speaks (Gal. v. 22) — the assurance should become
stronger and more invincible. It does so in normal Chris
tian experience. There are exceptions and they show
that such assurance is not vitally essential. But doubtless
the highest and best work for Christ is done only by those
who possess it. The Christian who does not have it will
do well to pray and strive that he may obtain it.

XXVI.
THE OTHER LIFE
We come now to eschatology, the doctrine of the last
things. To us mortals this is an " undiscovered country,"
except so far as revelation has thrown light upon the sub
ject. Steadily we all — to use a phrase of Carlyle's — are
" inarching forward into the mists of the future tense."
But how ignorant we are of what lies before us! The
history of the world in the ages that are to come after we
have passed from the stage is hidden from us ; the experi
ence of the past and the knowledge of the causes now at
work enable us to do little more than make a few shrewd
guesses respecting what is to come. Of that other world
of the future, from which we are separated only by a
breath and a pulse-throb, we know still less.
It becomes us therefore to approach these subjects with
the recognition of our limitations and our dependence
upon him who is the Light of men. Christ knows more
concerning these things than we. If we have had personal
experience of his reality and power in the forgiveness of sins
and the new life, we shall do well to take him as our guide
when we enter this dark region. Many things must be
inexplicable to us, for at the best we shall see as in a mir
ror darkly. But though heaven and earth pass away, his
words shall not pass away. He is the Truth. He has the
words of eternal life. We show the highest wisdom when
we take his teachings and those of his inspired apostles in
their plain simple meaning with childlike confidence. It
is folly, and worse than folly— if we truly accept Christ

THE OTHER LIFE 477
as our Master— to turn and twist his words that we may
put our own meaning upon them. What do we know
upon these subjects ? How far will the little rushlight of
our reason throw its rays into the profound darkness of the
last things ? Can we not trust God ? Have we no faith in
His love and righteousness ? Let us be patient. Let us take
Christ's doctrine as we find it. Let us avoid all doo-ma-
tism while dealing with these solemn themes — the dog
matism of too positive denial, as well as the dogmatism
of too positive assertion. Let us be charitable and tolerant
toward those who, though as loyal as we to Christ, come
to conclusions differing from ours.
The subject which I wish to treat in the present chapter
is the other life. First, we will look at the proof of the
existence of the other life and then at the nature of it. In
discussing the latter point I shall confine myself to what
is called the intermediate state, or the period between
death and the resurrection.
I. We consider, first, the fact of the other life. This is
denied by materialists of all kinds, philosophical, scientific,
religious. The man who will not admit the existence of a
soul, distinct and separable from the body, is compelled to
take this position. The struggle between religion and
materialism is therefore d I'outrance. We cannot here go
into the philosophical refutation of materialism. It would
carry us far beyond the limits which we have thus far
observed. But I cannot be content to deal with the sub
ject of the other life merely as a doctrine of revealed
theology. It is one of the great fundamental religions
truths upon which natural theology also has its decided
word to say.
1. I take up the rational proof of immortality. First,
however, let us understand the fact to be proved ; it is
not the existence of an endless life beyond the grave but
of a continued life. The question we have to answer is,
Does death end all ? The other question, Does the

478 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
soul exist forever ? reason cannot answer ; revelation alone
can tell us. Let us also understand the limitations of the
rational proof for immortality. Reason can give us no
absolute proof of the life beyond. It lies outside of expe
rience ; no man — save he who died and rose again — has
ever crossed the dead-line and returned to reveal its mys
teries. The doctrine of immortality cannot, like the doc
trine of God, be verified in conscious experience. What
the rational argument for the other life can do is to show
us that all the presumptions of nature point toward it, so
that the burden of proof lies upon him who would deny
it. The most reason can claim is that there is the highest
probability that the soul continues to exist after death.
But even this is much. Even the Christian cannot do
without it.
The first argument is drawn from the religious con
sciousness of man. The belief in immortality is universal.
The soul instinctively assumes the existence of a life be
yond the grave. The facts of the world produce this im
pression. Philosophy may deny it, but the simple, un
sophisticated judgment of men in all ages and all nations
demands it. It is not an occasional or accidental belief,
but asserts itself as a necessity of human thought. From
the rude animism of the black African up to the high
reasonings of Plato's Phaedo, the common faith is mani
fested in every conceivable form. It is one of the strands
in the threefold cord which binds the souls of all men to
gether, the truths which Kant represents as postulates of
the practical reason — God, duty, immortality. Now such
a universal belief cannot be a mere imagination. Man's
constitution cannot so deceive him in a matter of such
tremendous importance. Such a universal and necessary
subjective conviction must have a corresponding objective
reality. We come next to the so-called metaphysical argument,
advanced in ancient times by Plato and urged with oreat

THE OTHER LIFE 479
force during the last century by Bishop Butler. As the
argument used to be presented, it started from the assump
tion of the essential simplicity of the soul. Modern psy
chology has led us somewhat to modify the form, while we
preserve the substance, of the proof. We no longer claim
the absolute simplicity of the soul, but we still affirm
that there is such simplicity connected with it, namely, in
personality or self -consciousness. The self, or " I," is the
most perfect unity of which we have any knowledge. It
abides through all our experience absolutely one and the
same. It has no elements which we can distinguish, even
in thought, but is the permanent, always identical, indi
visible subject of all our thoughts and acts. Now the
great physical law of the conservation of matter and en
ergy forbids the thought of annihilation. What we call
destruction in the case of material things means merely
dissolution and change. We burn a stick of wood on our
hearth and it disappears, but the chemist shows us that
not a particle has been lost. The ashes, the smoke, the
carbonic dioxide, contain the wood in another form.
What is death ? We see one side of it, the dissolution of
the body. The dust returns to the earth as it was. There
is no annihilation, but a compound body is reduced to its
original elements. Our bodies during life are in a state
of unstable equilibrium, material particles and forces held
together by that mysterious co-ordinating power which
we call life for lack of a better name. Life ceases and
the elements fall asunder like the particles of the desert
sand-pillar when the revolving wind subsides. But the
self-conscious, self -determining " I " is not thus compound
and unstable ; so far as we know it, it is absolutely one
and simple. What becomes of it ? Is there no law of
conservation in the sphere of spirit ? Have we any right
to assume that it is annihilated ? Do not the analogies
and presumptions of nature point the other way ? I grant
that the materialist will not admit the force of this reason-

480 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
ing ; to him personality is an illusion. But for all others
I claim that the argument, rightly used, has great weight.
It is not demonstrative, but it affords a reasonable proba
bility. It shuts the mouth of the adversary. If he ad
mits the existence of the self-conscious " I," he cannot
present any rational grounds for the denial of its survival
of death. Butler, arguing from the simplicity of the
soul, was obliged to concede that his argument would
prove the immortality of animals ; but if we confine our
selves to man's personality, no such conclusion can be
drawn ; the animal is conscious, but not self-conscious ;
sentient, but not personal.
A third argument is the teleological, based upon the
evidence of a final cause in man. Men exhibit in their
constitution and development a far-reaching purpose.
The powers of man are in worth and capability far beyond
anything else in nature. Man is the microcosm. All the
highest elements of the universe are concentrated in him.
He is the one being in the world that has the power to
understand the world and to make it subservient to him
self. Eternity is in his heart (Eccles. iii. 11). He dis
covers and apprehends the infinite. He is a progressive
being ; there is no limit to his capacity for development.
Now we judge a being's final cause from its powers and
capacities. Viewed in this light how high is the purpose
which man seems created to subserve ! How great are
the ends which he is fitted to accomplish ! And yet no
man attains his end in this world. Scarcely has he
reached the maturity of his powers and begun his work
when disease lays him low and death cuts him off. The
broken shaft is the emblem of human life. We all leave
our task unfinished. With infinite pains we fit ourselves
for our work, we train our powers to the most perfect use,
and then we have to stop. We step out upon the stage
and receive the plaudits of the audience, and just as we
are beginning to play, the curtain falls. Can we believe

THE OTHER LIFE 481
that this is all? Is there such waste in the universe?
Are all of these powers and capacities for nothing?
When a flower in our gardens here in the North comes
only to the bud before the frosts of autumn wither it, we
infer that it was made to bloom in a warmer and more
favored clime. Shall we not reason in the same way with
regard to ourselves ? Must there not be another life, for
which this is a preparation ? Is not that the reasonable
inference ? In physical science we regard that hypothesis
as nearest the truth which best correlates and explains the
facts. Does not the hypothesis of immortality best ex
plain the facts of human life, and is it not reasonable to
accept it as true ?
Once more, we draw an argument from the moral
sphere. Deep seated in the human soul is the sense of
justice. The law which conscience declares, and which is
at work in the world about us, is the law of righteous re
tribution. Goodness deserves happiness ; sin deserves
suffering. There is a fixed connection between right and
blessedness, between wrong and pain. But this connec
tion is not maintained in this life. The good suffer ; the
wicked prosper. There are anomalies that are incapable
of explanation if we look only at this life. The Lisbon
earthquake, with the untold sufferings which it entailed
upon good and evil alike, shakes the faith of multitudes
in God. Successful villany carries away all the prizes of
life, and men ask, " Can there be a God in heaven ? "
But the difficulties disappear if we suppose this life to be
only the vestibule to the other life. We can understand
how in a state of probation and education a state of things
may be temporarily allowed, which would not be per
manently justifiable. Assume the reality of immortality
and all is clear.
Finally, there is a religious argument. This brings us
to the outward edge of natural theology and finds its full
application only in the light of revelation. Man was
31

482 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
made for God and His kingdom. He alone, of all the
beings in the world, is a religious being. He alone has
communion with God and knows himself to be made for
God. He consciously finds his chief good in God, and
knows that the divine love rests upon him. But a being
that is thus related to God cannot be a creature of a day.
He must be made for a higher life than that of the beasts
which perish. The lower orders are mere means to an
end that lies beyond them. But man, made in God's
image and fitted for communion with Him, is in a true
sense an end in himself. There must therefore be a
higher life in which man will live with God. The life of
communion with Him here must find its fruition in the
eternal life.
Upon these arguments the believer in immortality bases
his conviction. He claims that, while the proofs do not
amount to a demonstration, which from the nature of the
case is impossible, they furnish in their cumulative power
an irrefutable presumption in favor of immortality and
render the rejection of the other life unreasonable.
2. But let ns examine the teachings of the Bible re
specting the subject we are considering.
We shall misunderstand the Old Testament doctrine of
the other life, if we see it solely through the medium of
our modern Christian modes of thought. We distinguish
between this life and the other life. Not so the He
brews ; their antithesis was between life and death. The
Old Testament begins with a doctrine of death. Accord
ing to the first chapters of Genesis, it is not natural to
man, but has come into the world as the punishment of
sin. It is natural for the animal to die, but man is not an
animal. What is death ? It is not the mere act of dying,
but the state into which men enter when they die ; and
this state is the opposite of life. By life the Hebrew
meant man's bodily existence on earth, with all that it im
plies, its strength and health and vigor of mind and body,

&

THE OTHER LIFE 483
its possessions, its work, its joys, its fellowship with men
and God. By death he meant the cessation of bodily ex
istence, the loss of life's possessions and joys, the termina
tion of its labors, the relinquishment of its friendships and
its communion with God. There are those who assert
that the Old Testament does not recognize the continu
ance of the soul after death, and that the word death, as
used by the Old Testament writers, is synonymous with
cessation of existence. But nothing could be farther
from the truth. The immortality of the soul is every
where taken for granted, while in not a few instances it is
distinctly asserted. The translation of Enoch and Elijah
implies it. When it is said of the dead that they " have
gone to their fathers," or have been " gathered to their
fathers," and this is distinguished from their burial, there
is a clear intimation of continued existence (Gen. xxv. 8 ;
xxxv. 29 ; xlix. 29, 33). The prohibition of necromancy
in the Jewish law, and the story of Saul's experience with
the witch of Endor, show what was the prevalent view
of the Hebrew people. Sheol, or the underworld, is the
state and place of the dead, in which they are represented
as still leading a conscious existence. When the king of
Babylon dies, the inhabitants of Sheol are moved at his
coming ; they come to meet him and address him (Is. xiv.
9-20). But while the Old Testament represents death as
a state of continued conscious existence, it is true to its
fundamental doctrine that it is the punishment of sin. It
is the opposite of life with its blessedness. Sheol is a
place of darkness, of silence, of forgetful ness, of separa
tion from God's revelations (Job x. 21, 22 ; Psalm xciv.
17 ; cxv. 17 ; lxxxviii. 5 ; Is. xxxviii. 11). The work
of life has ceased, and all are at rest (Job iii. 13-19).
The inhabitants of Sheol are called shades, the " weak or
languid," in distinction from men in this world in the
vigor of their life and activity. The righteous and the
wicked alike go to it. While it is not represented as a

484 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
place of suffering, neither is it represented as a place of
blessedness. Death was regarded as the great evil, life as
the great blessing. All men must die sooner or later ;
but to live long with the enjoyment of God's favor was
the especial reward of righteousness, to die an early or vio
lent death under the visitation of the divine wrath was the
especial punishment of sin. " That thy days may be long
upon the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee" (Ex.
xx. 12) was the promise to those who feared God. " That
soul shall be cut off from among his people " (Ex. xxxi.
14) was the threat to the evil-doer.
It would be a mistake to regard this Old Testament
conception of the existence beyond the grave as given by
revelation. The work of revelation with respect to the
subject was negative rather than positive. The Hebrews
were left to their natural knowledge of the other world,
the action of revelation being confined to restraining them
from the false and pernicious views which were prevalent
among their lieathen neighbors. It was only as time
went on and the divine education of the Jewish religious
consciousness progressed, that the revealing Spirit granted
to a few of the prophets and inspired men glimpses of
something better in store for the righteous, and a punish
ment for the wicked which did not end with the grave,
sufficient only to relieve the awful pressure which rested
upon thoughtful and pious minds in view of the inequali
ties of this life and the common doom of death. Job
catches a glimpse of a life in the vision of God after the
earthly life of suffering and contumely is over : " But I
know that my Redeemer liveth, and that he shall stand at
the last upon the earth ; and after my skin hath been thus
destroyed, yet without my flesh shall I see God, whom I
shall see for myself, and mine eyes shall behold, and not
another " (Job xix. 25-27). The inspired Psalmists have
a presentiment that the righteous shall be delivered from
Sheol, and that God's favor and life shall be manifested

TnE OTHER LIFE 485
in the midst of death : " Thou wilt not leave my soul to
Sheol ; neither wilt thou suffer thine Holy One to see cor
ruption. Thou wilt show me the path of life : in thy
presence is fulness of joy ; in thy right hand there are
pleasures for evermore " (Ps. xvi. 10, 11. Cf. Ps. xvii.
15 ; xlix. 15 ; lxxiii. 23-26. See Delitzsch, " Ueber die
Psalmen " ). This hope is enlarged into the prophecy of
the resurrection (Is. xxvi. 19), and the doctrine of rewards
and punishments in the other world (Dan. xii. 2 seq. ; Is.
lxvi. 24).
The question is asked, why the Old Testament does not
give a fuller and clearer doctrine of the other life. The
answer is not altogether easy, yet we can see some of the
reasons. In the heathen religions with which Israel was
surrounded, and which were continually seducing the
Chosen People from their allegiance to Jehovah, the doc
trine of the other world was associated with the worst
errors and abuses. That these errors might be avoided it
was needful that the emphasis should be placed upon
other things. The great lessons which revelation had to
teach under the Old Dispensation related to the present
life. They were that the highest good of man is to be
fonnd in the favor and love of God, a lesson to be learned
now and here in the presence of the living Jehovah ; and
that God's kingdom is to be established in this world.
When these truths had become the religious property of
mankind, then the curtain might be lifted and the other
world be revealed iu its continuity with this. For the
moral and spiritual destiny of man is to be worked out in
the present life ; the ways we choose here we follow there.
To-day the order is the same ; first we must learn that the
chief end of man is to be realized in the love and service
of God ; then we are ready to understand the meaning of
the life beyond.
The obscurity, which is so remarkable a feature of the
Old Testament teachings respecting the subject before

486 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
us, disappears when we come to the New Testament.
Christ has " abolished death, and brought life and immor
tality to light through the gospel " (2 Tim. i. 10), that is,
the incorruptible or immortal life. But let us not misun
derstand : Christ and the apostles do not devote their
strength to the preaching of immortality, in the sense of
a continued existence of the soul after death. This they
always took for granted, except in cases like that referred
to in Luke xx. 37, when the truth had to be defended
against the materialists of the time, the Sadducees, who
believed neither in angel nor spirit (Acts xxiii. 8). Like
the Old Testament writers, they taught that death is the
common doom. The new element in the Saviour's teach
ing, which gives the New Testament doctrine a character
so entirely different from that of the Old, was along the
line of the truth that
" "lis not the whole of life to live,
Nor all of death to die."
Jesus gave a new and deeper meaning to the words life
and death. He re-emphasized the truth, of which the
old Testament saints and inspired men had not obscure
glimpses, that what makes the present life alone worth
living is the favor of God, and that what alone makes
death worth fearing is His displeasure. But he went fur
ther and revealed the truth, of which, as we have seen, the
Old Testament saints had only a dim presentiment, that
the life which begins here in the favor of God is an eter
nal and incorruptible life, which persists beyond the grave
and turns the darkness of death into light and glory.
" This is life eternal," he said, " that they should "know
thee the only true God, and him whom thou didst send,
even Jesus Christ " (John xvii. 3). It is the spiritual life
which begins in the forgiveness of sins and reconciliation
with God and is nourished and developed in the commu
nion and service of the kingdom ; it is the life grounded

THE OTHER LIFE 487
in Christ's work and flowing from his person. Whoever
has this life does indeed die, but death is not death to
him ; it is swallowed up in life. And the spiritual, work
ing outward to the material through God's ineffable
power, communicates its blessed life to the body, so that
although it returns to the earth as it was, yet it is restored
through the resurrection. Of all this the Saviour's own
resurrection is the proof.
On the other hand, Christ reveals a new significance in
death. Death is the universal doom of sin. But as it is
transformed into blessedness by the eternal life which
comes to the believer through Christ, so it is turned into a
personal doom and darkened and intensified in the case of
those who resist the divine offers of mercy. " The sting
of death is sin" (1 Cor. xv. 56). According to the Sa
viour's teaching, there is a spiritual death, beginning here
in the soul's separation from God, which works itself out
in the sufferings of the other world.
n. We have now to consider the nature of the other
life. Our guide here will be the Bible. Unassisted hu
man reason throws little or no light upon the character
and ongoings of the world beyond the grave.
Revelation distinguishes two great stages in the history
of the other world, separated from each other by the sec
ond coming of Christ, the resurrection and the last judg
ment. The first is called by theologians the "interme
diate state ; " the second is the final state, which reaches
on into the endless eternity. It is with the first of these
stages that we have to do at the present time. It is to be
noted, before we enter upon the further discussion of the
subject, that the New Testament passes somewhat lightly
over the intermediate state. The emphasis of the Bible
is laid upon the present life, the time of the great decis
ions, and the consummation of the kingdom at the return
of Christ in glory. It was upon this latter event, together
with the resurrection and the judgment and the eternal

488 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
state beyond, that the thoughts and hopes of the early
church were fixed, rather than on the state after death.
Nevertheless, though the references of Christ and the
apostles to the intermediate state are few, they are explicit
and sufficient to give us all needful knowledge.
The state after death, according to the New Testament,
is one of conscious existence. This would seem to go with
out saying, considering the fact that it is taught even in
the Old Testament. There are, however, those who deny
it, basing their view upon the literal interpretation of cer
tain Bible words. Many of the advocates of the doctrine of
conditional immortality — of which I shall speak more fully
when we come to the subject of retribution — claim that
man is non-existent during the period between death and
the resurrection. According to these religious material
ists, the soul cannot exist apart from the body, and they
insist that the word death, wherever it is used in the
Bible, signifies cessation of existence. Others, like Arch
bishop Whately, following a similar line of reasoning and
giving a literal interpretation to the word sleep when used
in the Bible with respect to the dead, declare that the soul
at death enters into a state of slumber and thus waits in
unconsciousness the coming of the Saviour and the resur
rection of the dead. But the assertion that the soul can
not consciously exist without the body is wholly without
rational foundation, since we have no experience of such
a state and therefore no basis for any conclusions respect
ing it. And apart from this consideration, the New Tes
tament decidedly contradicts these views. When the
Saviour says that " all live— or are living— unto God," he
uses language incompatible with the idea of non-existence
or unconscious existence (Luke xx. 38). When he de
clared, " Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day ;
and he saw it and was glad," he meant, according to
the only satisfactory interpretation of his words, that
Abraham in the conscious life of the other world had

THE OTHER LIFE
knowledge of the incarnation and earthly life of the Mes
siah (John viii. 56). The parable of the Rich Man and
Lazarus most distinctly asserts a state of conscions exist
ence for both the righteous and the wicked (Luke xvi.
19-31). This parable clearly refers to the state after death
and before the judgment. To say that because it is a par
able it is not to be taken as evidence upon such a point, is
unworthy trifling. A parable is not a fable, but a story of
real events, such as are constantly happening. If Christ
did not intend the narrative to be taken as true in all its
essential details, he concealed his purpose in a way of which
we have no other instance recorded in the gospels. There
may never have been a real Dives or a real Lazarus, but
we cannot doubt that Christ meant to describe a real scene
in the other world, such as might happen with any Dives
or Lazarus. The dying Saviour's words to the thief on
the cross, " To-day thou shalt be with me in Paradise "
(Luke xxiii. 43) lose all significance nnless they referred
to conscious existence ; the shifts to which the advocates
of the theories to which I have alluded have been com
pelled to resort to avoid the clear meaning of these words
throw a most instructive light upon the whole subject. If
the Saviour's promise to his disciples that he would pre
pare a place for them in his Father's house had reference
to the state after death and not to the final state, it adds
additional weight to the view which I have advocated.
Paul's description of the state after death, as " at home
with the Lord," and " with Christ," which is " very far
better " (2 Cor. v. 8 ; Phil. i. 23), loses all its point if any
different construction be put upon it.
Finally, in those portions of the Apocalypse which relate
to the intermediate state, the redeemed are represented as
praising God and the Lamb in the full exercise of all their
conscious powers (Rev. iv. 4 seq. ; vi. 9 ; vii. 9 seq. ; xiv.
1-5 ; xv. 2-4 ; xvi. 7 ; xix. 1 seq.). I know it will be said
that the Apocalypse is a mysterious book, full of symbols

490 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
and figures, and therefore not to be taken into account in
the consideration of a subject so important as that which
we are examining. But I cannot agree with those who as
sert that the one book in the Bible which bears the name of
a " revelation " is a sealed book which reveals nothing. I
know that there are depths of prophetic truth in it which
the plummet of the ordinary interpreter cannot fathom,
but it is, notwithstanding, a plain book written for plain
people. Its symbols are transparent and not opaque. They
are windows through which we see — far-off, it is true, and
transcendent — the realities of the other world. I regard
it not as of less value with respect to a subject like that
with which we are engaged, but rather of more value than
those books of the Bible which are concerned chiefly with
God's kingdom on earth.
The New Testament reveals to us in large but clear
outlines the condition of the departed. We have not all
the details we could wish, but it is not hard to fill in the
picture. So far as the physical conditions are concerned,
the earthly body is left behind and the resurrection body
has not been given. It is accordingly common to describe
the spirits in the other world as disembodied during the
intermediate state. This view is favored by the language
of Paul, who, contemplating the possibility of dying be
fore the second coming of Christ, speaks of the condition
into which he would enter as a being " naked," a being
" unclothed," a being « absent from the body " (2 Cor. v.
3, 4, 8). In Hebrews xii. 24 the blessed dead are called
" the spirits of just men made perfect," and John tells of
the " souls of them that had been slain for the word of
God " crying for vengeance (Rev. vi. 9, 10). Neverthe
less, while the earthly body is absent and the resurrection
body has not yet been bestowed, it is not impossible that
the dead possess some organism through which they can
act upon, and be acted upon, by the material world. We
know too little of the nature of the spirit to speak dogma-

THE OTHER LIFE 491
tically upon a point so imperfectly treated in the Bible.
Whatever the case may be, we need not have the slightest
doubt that the blessed spirits recognize each other and
communicate with each other, as well as with the higher
intelligences. It is amazing how much doubt has been
thrown upon the question of recognition in the other
world. It ought never to have been an open question at
all. It would take a direct revelation to make me believe
that God would permit a state of things so pitiable and
contrary to all that we know of His character as non-
recognition would imply. And I would draw the same
conclusion respecting the activities of the other world.
Doubtless the departed ones, " whether in the body or out
of the body," hear the " unspeakable words " (2 Cor. xii.
3, 4) and engage in the active and glorious service of the
life beyond.
But where are the dead ? This a question whieh has
its difficulties and which all do not answer alike. Some
where the departed must be. Those who talk of states
rather than places in the other world use language which
may have meaning to themselves but which conveys none
to my mind. God, the infinite Spirit, who existed before
He created time and space, may be conceived as existing
in a purely spiritual state, though since the universe has
been created He has also a local relation, as we strive to
show by means of the doctrine of His omnipresence. But
I cannot conceive of the finite spirit as unlocalized. Cer
tainly the Bible never so represents it. But what and
where the places are, is a different question. According
to the Old Testament all the dead are in Sheol. The
Sheol of the Old Testament becomes the Hades of the
New. But it is a remarkable fact that in the New Testa
ment the term Hades is never used with reference to the
state or abode of the righteous. It has been asserted that
the parable of Dives and Lazarus is an exception, and that
both the good man and the bad man are said to be in

492 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
Hades ; but what it does say is, that the rich man " in
Hades lifted up his eyes • • • and seeth Abraham
afar off" (Luke xvi. 23); it does not say that Abraham
and Lazarus were there. On the contrary, the place
which is called " Abraham's bosom " seems to be entirely
distinct, as it is certainly separated from the place where
Dives is by a great and impassable gulf. And whatever
may be the truth respecting this particular passage, the
other teachings of the New Testament respecting the
blessed dead seem to place them in heaven, the abode of
the holy angels and the region in the universe where God
manifests His highest glory. The "Paradise" where
Christ promised the penitent thief that he should be with
him on the day of the crucifixion is, according to Paul,
synonymous with the third heaven (2 Cor. xii. 4), and is
identified by John with the same blessed place (Rev. ii.
7). Paul looks forward to the other world as being with
Christ (2 Cor. v. 1-10 ; Phil. i. 20-26). But everywhere
in the New Testament Christ is represented as being in
heaven since the ascension (e. g. , Phil. iii. 20). The pas
sages in the Apocalypse which have already been quoted
as showing the conscious existence of the dead represent
the redeemed as in the presence of God and the Lamb in
heaven. In view of these facts it seems strange that so many
theologians should insist that the pious dead do not enter
heaven until after the judgment. The common doctrine
of the unlearned Christian, that the souls of believers
go at death immediately into heaven seems to have the
Bible upon its side. If now we ask how this fact is com
patible with the Old Testament teachings, according to
which righteous and wicked alike enter Sheol or Hades at
death, two explanations are possible. The first is that
furnished by the Roman Catholic doctrine of the so-called
Limbus Patrum, which is held in substance by many
Lutheran theologians, according to which the pious dead

THE OTHER LIFE 493
of the Old Dispensation were in a temporary abode in
Hades — the Limbo of the fathers — until the death of the
Saviour, who upon his descent into Hades released them
and secured for them admission into heaven. According
to this view there has been a change in the other world,
corresponding to the changes brought about in this world
by Christ's redemptive, work. The other view, which on
the whole affords a simpler and more satisfactory explana
tion is, that the word Sheol or Hades is a general term
designating the state and place of the dead, but expres
sive rather of Jewish ideas than of revealed truth. Reve
lation, throwing its light upon the other world, shows that
the righteous dead are not, and never have been, in the
general state and abode of the dead, but through Christ's
conquest over death have been brought into the blessed
ness of heaven. The word Hades is accordingly employed
in the New Testament to designate the state of the dead
so far as it has not been affected by redemption. When
the shadow of the divine displeasure rested upon the
whole realm of death, as was the case in the Old Testa
ment, before the higher revelation had been given, all
were said to be in Hades. But when Christ had lifted
the curtain, it was seen that only those who have rejected
God's mercy are really there. H this view be correct, the
change in the use of the word Hades would correspond
very nearly to that which has taken place in the use of
the word death. As the righteous in Christ are delivered
from death, so they are delivered from Hades, and the
Saviour is rightly said to have " the keys of death and of
Hades " (Rev. i. 18).
We pass to the consideration of the mental and spiritual
condition of the dead. The redeemed are, as we have
seen, with Christ. This is the same as saying that they
are in a state of happiness. Christ is the center of
heaven. He is the spring of living waters from whom
all blessings flow. To be in communion with him, and

494 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
through him with the Father, is eternal life, and in the
other world all the hindrances which mar and obscure
this communion are removed. The beatified believer sees
no more as through a glass darkly, but face to face. He
knows no longer in part, but even as also he has been
known (1 Cor. xiii. 12). In having Christ he has all
things. Moreover, he is in the company of the blessed
angels and of the redeemed. Doubtless the earthly ties
of love and friendship, which were for a time broken by
death, are here reknit. Nor shall we doubt that heaven
is a place of activity and service. It is indeed represented
as a rest (Heb. iv. 9 ; Rev. xiv. 13). But rest is a rela
tive term. The redeemed may rest from their earthly
toils and cares and troubles, and yet engage in the most
active pursuits of a higher order. The law of continuity
cannot be so broken that those whose life found its
fullest satisfaction in service here should be without ser
vice there. There are passages in the Bible which appear
to intimate that the saints above, who certainly make one
communion with the saints below, are cognizant of the
events transpiring in the world they have left behind.
The " great cloud of witnesses " look on upon the race
run by the earthly contestants for the prize of God's high
calling (Heb. xii. 1). The Apocalypse represents the souls
in glory as eagerly watching the progress of God's judg
ments on earth and the struggles and triumphs of the
church militant. Christians here below have come, we
are told, " to the spirits of just men made perfect " (Heb.
xii. 23). If the angels are " ministering spirits sent forth
to do service for the sake of them that shall inherit salva
tion " (Heb. i. 14), is it too much to conjecture that our
blessed dead who have gone forth from us are permitted
to hover about us and to minister, under Christ's guid
ance, to our needs ? Christianity gives no sanction to the
doctrines of spiritualism ; it maintains the Old Testament
law against necromancy ; it recognizes the fact that God,

THE OTHER LIFE 495
for wise reasons, does not allow us to hold converse with
those who have gone before ; but it does not shut us off
from the comfortable and inspiring hope and assurance
that the redeemed, who loved ns so much while we were
still together in the flesh, are often near us and are assist
ing Christ in his high task of making all things work to
gether for good to those who love God.
Of the condition of the unblessed in the intermediate
state we can speak less clearly. Revelation only partially
lifts the veil upon their meagre existence. Our Saviour's
profound parable, to which allusion has so often been
made, represents the rich man as in suffering — a suffering
of soul which the material symbols employed do not re
quire us to interpret as physical — as separated by an im
passable abyss from the blessedness of the redeemed, yet
as knowing of their happiness. The lost souls are in
Hades, not in the Gehenna, where they are to be after
the judgment. They are under the dominion of death,
with the consciousness of God's displeasure resting upon
them. This is the real death. The Hebrews under the
Old Dispensation conceived of all, good and bad alike,
entering the dark and attenuated existence of Sheol or
Hades. The New Testament, while teaching that the
righteous are made conquerors over death in heaven,
leaves the unrighteous in Hades, under the power of
death, while the wrath of God abideth upon them.
Abraham in the parable says to Dives, " Between us
and you there is a great gulf fixed " — that is, firmly es
tablished — "that they which would pass from hence to you
may not be able, and that none may cross over from thence
to us " (Luke xvi. 26). How much are these words in
tended to mean ? Do they imply that the condition of all
souls in the intermediate state is fixed ? or are they con
sistent with the possibility of new decisions ? Is the pro
bation of any classes extended into the intermediate state ?
I must confess that this passage seems to me to make the

496 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
probability of such an extended probation very small.
Yet who would deny this possibility, if the Word of God
permits its maintenance, and if it is consistent with the
general teachings of revelation ? I have said in another
connection that I cannot regard this hope, especially as it
is held with regard to the heathen, as the pernicious doc
trine which it seems to many. If there are any souls that
have not heard God's message of love in this life, and have
had no opportunity to make the great decision of life, we
may be sure that God will either give them a probatioti in
the other world, or save them without a probation. But
I have already given the reasons why it seems to me more
probable that God gives all men sufficient opportunities in
the present life to make the great decision than that He
prolongs the period of probation. And if in any instance
He does not do so — as I think must be the fact in the case
of all persons dying in infancy, and perhaps in the case of
some older persons — then I see no reason why they should
have any probation at all. A probation is not a right
which we can claim from God as a matter of debt. It is
not such an inestimable privilege that God is bound in
justice to give it to all beings. It does not seem to me that
there is any evidence in the Bible of an extension of pro
bation into the intermediate state. We have, it is true,
the two " Peter passages " (1 Pet. iii. 18-22 ; iv. 6). But
even supposing that the first of these — upon which the in
terpretation of the other is dependent — refers to a preach
ing by Christ in Hades after his death, and not, as is as
serted by some competent commentators, to a preaching
through his Spirit in the days of Noah, still only a single
class, the antediluvians, is mentioned, and that a class
which had already had an opportunity in the present life
through the faithful teachings of Noah, whom Peter in his
Second Epistle (ii. 5) calls " a preacher of righteousness."
That a new opportunity was giten to these "spirits in
prison " is not said, and it is far too sweeping a conclusion

THE OTHER LIFE 497
when, on the ground of this obscure passage, the assertion
is made that a probation is granted in the other life to
classes which are not even mentioned here. It is also a
significant fact that there is no hint in the New Testament
of such a mixed state as this theory would require. Proba
tion implies a choice made in the midst of mingled good
and evil influences ; but the New Testament reveals to us
only the two conditions, with their appropriate localities,
the one of certain salvation, where all the influences are
holy, the other of irremediable separation from God and
the good. Between the two the " great gulf is fixed."
I would not speak too positively upon this subject. God
knows that I would welcome any larger hope for those who
have fallen short of God's purpose concerning them, not
only for the lieathen and others who have never heard of
Christ through the preached Gospel, but also for those
who have heard of him and have rejected him. I should
rejoice to have all men saved. But the question for me is
not what I should like, but what God likes. I know very
little. God knows all about it. The question with me,
therefore, is, How much hope God's Word justifies me in
cherishing and in preaching to my fellow-men. Better
the silence of faith, than a too eager effort to justify God's
ways to men. I am sure that God is love and righteous
ness, and sure that He condemns no man who has not had
ample opportunity to accept His grace. I think, judging
from all the intimations I can find in the Bible, that God
gives every soul possessed of mature moral capacity such an
opportunity in the present life. It seems to me reasonable
to believe that any souls which have no such opportunity
for any reason — as in the case of those dying in infancy
or of older persons who have not attained their full moral
stature — are saved without a probation. I see no need of
assuming an extension of probation into the intermediate
state, and no scriptural warrant for it. But I would infi
nitely rather accept such a theory, with all its difficulties,
32

498 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
than believe that God wronged a single soul. My sympa
thies are with the advocates of the doctrine of extended
probation when the contest is between them and those who
teach that souls are lost — whether few or many — without
having had the opportunity to accept God's grace.
But if we do not accept the doctrine of extended pro
bation, we must suppose that there is such a thing as edu
cation and development, perhaps discipline and purifica
tion, in the other life. Multitudes of souls go out of the
world — it seems reasonable to believe — in a salvable state
yet altogether unfit for the highest blessedness. A third
of the human race die in infancy before the moral powers
are developed. The best Christians are imperfect and
sinful when they die.
But I must pause, before I enter upon this part of our
subject, to anticipate the objection that I am about to ad
vocate a view tantamount to the Roman Catholic doctrine
of purgatory. Purgatory is neither continued probation
nor is it the education of souls in heaven. It is a place
and state of suffering and expiation for those who, while
certain of salvation, have not made that complete satisfac
tion for their post-baptismal sins which the Roman sys
tem requires. According to the Roman Catholic doctrine
every sin committed after baptism must be punished either
in this life or the other. Purgatory is the place where
the residuum of punishment is inflicted. The length of
the soul's stay in this place of suffering may be shortened
by the prayers of the faithful on earth, the intercession of
the saints, and especially by the sacrifice of the mass.
The suffering— which only according to a part of the
Catholic theologians is by literal fire— is mitigated by the
certainty of heaven and of God's ultimate favor and love.
The majority of Christians have to pass through purga
tory. It is a place entirely distinct from heaven and the
abode of the lost, and it is a place of punishment.
Now in assuming that there is education and discipline

THE OTHER LIFE 499
for souls that are certain of salvation, we differ from the
doctrine of purgatory in every essential point but one.
The one point is the certainty of salvation. The points
of difference are, first, that we suppose all these souls to
be in heaven, not in a different state and place ; and sec
ondly, that we deny their subjection to punishment, af
firming that they are in the full light of God's love and
favor. What we assume is, that heaven is a school, in
which, under the gracious tutelage of God and Christ and
the holy angels, and such redeemed souls as have attained
a higher stage of spiritual development, the weak, sinful,
imperfect souls — the great multitude of children, the
heathen, be they many or few, who are salvable, the vast
numbers born in Christian lands who have professed
Christ, but have had a wholly imperfect Christian experi
ence, all, in a word, who stand on the lower rounds of the
spiritual ladder — are disciplined and trained for that ful
ness of blessedness and service which God has in store for
His children. Nor would I altogether exclude from this
school of Christ any human follower of his, since none of
those who die have attained or become perfect. Viewed
in this way heaven, during the intermediate state, is a place
of growth. It is a busy, active place, where the hindrances
of the earthly life are no longer present and the progress
is steady and glorious.
But, it is asked, Does not this imply that there is sin in
heaven ? In reply I would say that, to my mind, there is
nothing incongruous in the thought that such sin as would
be compatible with a state where all were striving to at
tain the great end of their being, sin of mere infirmity
and frailty and imperfect development, should temporarily
exist there. But I do not feel at all sure that this is the
case. I cannot agree with those who think that death has
no influence upon character. It is a great and radical crisis
to those who are introduced by it into heaven. Let the soul
be separated from the earthly body, with the temptations

500 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
and impulses to sin inherent in it, and let it be brought
into a perfectly holy environment, let it have the vision
of Christ, and supposing the supreme choice of the soul —
as we must assume it — to be for the good, I am not sure
that such a soul will not in a way entirely accordant with
its freedom be delivered from sin, while only its imper
fection and immaturity will be left. It may be that the
immemorial Protestant belief upon this point is right, and
that there is a real truth in the words of the Assembly's
Catechism, that " the souls of believers are, at their
death, made perfect in holiness and do immediately pass
into glory." Of course such perfection must be relative
aud not absolute ; there must be something negative about
it. But may not the holiness which the perfectionists
claim as attained in this life be actually attained, through
the joint action of the regenerate will and the holy envi
ronment, under the powerful influence of the Holy Spirit,
after the " body of this death " has been laid aside and the
sinful environment of earth left behind ? I can conceive
of even a heathen, in whom there was already the germ of
a holy choice, thus turned in an instant from positive evil
and made the docile and humble pupil in Christ's school.
Yet on this whole subject I would speak modestly,
remembering how little revelation has made known to
us on the subject and how incompetent we are to spec
ulate upon it. In any case, the school of Christ must do
its work. The Christian who has made the highest at
tainments here will find himself a mere learner there,
while multitudes will have to learn the very A B C of
the heavenly knowledge and begin at the lowest stage
of the heavenly discipline and development. But what
blessed work it will be for Teacher and scholars, all seek
ing the one great end and animated by the same holy
spirit. There the Saviour's principle will find its perfect
illustration, that the greatest shall be the minister and
the first shall be the bond-servant (Mat. xx. 26, 27). What

THE OTHER LIFE 501
opportunities there will be there for those who have been
taken from this world in the fulness of their powers and
capacity for service in God's kingdom ! They may be the
assistants of the great Teacher. There Eliot and Brainard
may have found the souls of their Red Indians, and Moffat
and Livingstone the souls of their dearly loved Africans.
There some who have been snatched away just as their min
istry for Christ was beginning on earth may find a higher
ministry, which will engage to the full their best powers
and give scope to all the attainments they made below.
But someone will say, " You reject the doctrine of ex
tended probation because it is not taught in the Scripture,
but yon put in its place speculations about education and
development about which the Scripture is equally silent.
Are you not inconsistent ? " I think that there is no in
consistency here, though I freely admit, as I have done
before, that what has been said is largely speculation.
The question is, between the two speculations which, on
the whole, is the most in accordance with the general
principles of Scripture and the suggestions of the Christian
consciousness ? This question each must answer for him
self, or, if he will, refuse to answer it and maintain the
silence of faith. Thank God, Christians can differ upon
this point and still be loyal Christians, humbly submissive
to the teachings of revelation. Let every man be per
suaded in his own mind ; let every man be tolerant of the
speculations of others, remembering the ignorance. One
thing we all know, that God is love, and on that knowl
edge we must all rest, like the trusting child on its
mother's bosom.
Finally, let us remember that the intermediate state —
as the name implies — is not the final state. It is pro
visional and expectant. In comparison with what is to be,
it is an imperfect state. Even the blessed ones in heaven
have not been perfected. God has better things in store
for them.

XXVII.
THE DAY OF THE LORD
There is a marked difference between the attitude of
Christians to-day and that of the early church toward the
great subjects of eschatology. Our thoughts are concerned
chiefly with the life after death and the condition of in
dividuals in it— where the departed are, whether they are
conscious, whether they are in the company of those who
have gone before, what their activities are, how much
knowledge they have about this world and how much
communication with it, whether there is probation or
development in the other world. The early Christians,
under the fresh impulse of Christ's teachings and those
of his inspired apostles, turned their thoughts chiefly to
the earthly future of God's kingdom, and especially to
that great crisis by which the present order of things is
to be brought to a close and the eternal order established.
It was but seldom, if we can judge from the New Testa
ment, that they raised any questions respecting the state
after death, and then only that they might be sure that
those who died in the Lord before the great consumma
tion would be kept in happy communion with the Saviour
and brought with him at his second coming to take part
in the solemn scenes of the last day, and share in the
glory and blessedness of the final and eternal state. Their
thought was not so much of the individual as of the
church and of the kingdom.
We need to put the emphasis where it was placed by
the first Christians. In order that this should be done, it

THE DAY OF THE LORD 503
is not needful that we should lay less stress than we do
upon the condition of the individual in the intermediate
state, but that we should recognize the fact that the inter
mediate state is a temporary and subordinate order of
things and must give way to a higher order, and that the
goal toward which human history, and the history, if we
may call it such, of the unseen world of the life beyond
are alike tending, is the eternal state which is to be ushered
in by the last day. In this point of burning light the two
lines, the one from below and the other from above, find
their meeting-point.
The importance of this readjustment of emphasis is ap
parent as soon as we consider the subject. Christianity is
a historical religion. The kingdom of God is a develop
ment. It is to come by a process and to come on this
earth. This planet, so scarred and seared by sin, is.to be
redeemed. The earth is to be filled with the knowledge
of the glory of Jehovah, as the waters cover the sea (Hab.
ii. 14). The chief end of Christ's redemptive work and of
our labor for the kingdom is not — as we have had occa
sion more than once to observe — to get men safe out
of this world into the blessedness of the other, impor
tant though this is, and necessary as a means to the great
end ; rather it is to bring the whole earth itself under the
sway of the Lord and His Christ. Then, and then only,
can the eternal order of things begin. " The world for
God and Christ ! " is the true battle-cry of Christendom.
We find the right relation of things indicated in the Apoc
alypse, where all heaven, the angels and the redeemed,
are represented as eagerly watching and even taking part
in the struggle of the militant church. Our longings,
our hopes should 'reach forward along the line of the
earthly history of the kingdom to the triumph which is to
begin with the last day. It may seem as if in this way of
looking at it the individual becomes of no importance and
the whole stress is laid upon the general, upon the race,

504 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
and the church. But this is only seeming. The truth is
that the individual is to find his consummation only in
connection with the general ; the triumph of the believer
takes place only in and through the triumph of Christ
and the church. Until the final glory is revealed and the
body of Christ is perfected there is imperfection in the
state of every individual believer, whether in this world or
the other. The social principle, which plays so important
a part at every stage in the development of humanity,
finds its complete realization in the glory of the trium
phant church of the future, the Bride of Christ. The
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews said, speaking of the
relation of the Old Testament saints to the Christian
church, " These all, having had witness borne to them
through their faith, received not the promise, God having
provided some better thing concerning ns, that apart
from ns they should not be made perfect " (Heb. xi. 39,
40). Similar language might be used with reference to
the relation of the individual Christian to the church ;
the promise, the better thing, the perfecting, belongs to
the whole, and to the individual only in connection with
the whole. There is no selfish individualism in the king
dom of God.
I shall speak in this chapter of the " day of the Lord,"
the great crisis which ushers in the final state. I shall
first consider the principles upon which the New Testa
ment prophecies respecting this subject are to be inter
preted, next point out the course of the history of the
kingdom leading up to the last day, including the subject
of the Millennium, and then take up the three great events
of the day itself, the second coming of Christ, the resur
rection, and the last judgment.
I. It is of great importance that we should know how
to interpret the New Testament prophecies respecting the
last day. At the best there is in every prediction, so long
as it is unfulfilled, an insoluble element. But if wrong

THE DAY OF THE LORD 505
principles of interpretation are applied to it, the whole
prediction becomes worse than insoluble ; it is absolutely
misleading. Prophecy is a species of revelation. It aims
to make known important truth, needful for the guidance
of God's children. It must always be a great misfortune
to miss the truth it is intended to teach.
There is a large body of New Testament prophecy re
lating to the subject before us; indeed all New Testament
prophecy is either directly or indirectly connected with it.
Christ was constantly referring to the last day and its
events in his public teachings, as well as in his more pri
vate conversations with his disciples. He made it the
subject of one of his most extended discourses, namely,
that recorded in the twenty-fourth and twenty-fifth chap
ters of Matthew and the parallel passages in Mark and
Luke. It is a theme which continually recurs in the apos
tolic epistles. It is the chief subject of the Apocalypse.
Now there seems to be an unconquerable dualism, not
to say self-contradiction, in these predictions. Our Savi
our connects his second coming now with the destruction
of Jerusalem, now with the end of human history. The
last judgment is solemnly predicted as to come at the end
of the world, but it is also declared that it will come dur
ing the lifetime of some of the disciples (Matt. xiii. 24-
30, 36-43 ; x. 23 ; xvi. 27, 28). In the great eschatological
discourse in Matthew (chaps, xxiv., xxv.), and parallel
passages in Mark and Luke, both the destruction of Jeru
salem and the end of the world are evidently alluded to,
but no exegesis has yet succeeded in separating the two,
although innumerable attempts have been made. The
confusion is made greater by the assurance of the Saviour
that " of that day and hour knoweth no one, not even
the angels of heaven, neither the Son, but the Father only "
(Matt. xxiv. 36 ; Mark xiii. 32). The apostles connect
the last day and its solemn scenes exclusively with the end
of the world, but they evidently expect its advent during

506 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
their own lifetime (Phil. i. 6, iv. 5 ; 2 Cor. v. 1-10 ;
1 Thess. iv. 15 ; Heb. x. 25 ; 1 Pet. i. 5, iv. 7 ; James
v. 8 ; 1 John ii. 18). In the Revelation the time is rep
resented as at hand, the coming of Christ as in the
immediate future (Rev. i. 1, 3, 7, xxii. 6, 7, 12, 20) ;
and is connected with the downfall of the persecut
ing Roman and Jewish powers. But at the same time
it teaches that before the resurrection, final judgment, and
end of the world, there is to be a thousand years of rest,
during which Satan will be bound.
It is not strange that the facts, standing just as they are,
have led to many widely diverse conclusions. Unbelievers
have triumphantly pointed to the discrepancy as an undeni
able proof of the fallibility of so-called revelation. Many
believing scholars have tried to refer everything to the
far-off end of the world. A class of theologians now
somewhat extensively represented, though not generally
recognized as orthodox, have insisted that the last day was
the end of the Jewish dispensation, that Christ's coming
was not so much a coming as a presence — a view which
receives a color of plausibility from the fact that the
Greek word translated coming, parousia, literally means a
presence — and was his spiritual presence in the world
since his ascension. According to this view, there is no
future general resurrection and judgment, but resurrec
tion is the clothing of the soul at death with a spiritual
body, while the only judgment is the so-called particular
judgment which takes place when the soul enters the other
world. The future of the kingdom of God is thus left
outside the view of prophecy.
The difficulty disappears when we apply the right prin
ciples of interpretation. Fortunately those principles are
to be found in the Bible itself. The Old Testament pre
dictions are in large measure fulfilled in the events of the
New Testament, and we are able to gather from the com
parison of prediction and fulfilment the divinely estab-

THE DAY OF THE LORD 507
lished relation between the two. Now we find that the
larger number of the prophecies are not the predictions of
single future events, so that they are — to use a phrase
that has been frequently employed — history before the
event. Rather the prophecy deals with the pragmatism of
history, the relation of its causes to its effect. It reveals
a principle or law or agency gradually working out its
result. Thus the prophecy of the redemptive work of
Christ is the revelation of the consummation of the divine
principle of redemption already working in the world.
The prophecy of the Messiah looks to the complete fulfil
ment of the personal mediatorial principle, which appears
in operation in the earliest stages of the redemptive reve
lation. It is thus that persons and events connected with
the process of working out these principles become types
of the persons and events in which the principles culmi
nate. The redemption of God's people from Egypt is a
type of the spiritual redemption through Christ. Canaan
is a type of heaven. The judgments of God upon the
heathen nations and Israel are types of the last judgment.
The one great cause, God's redemptive providence, follow
ing a certain method or law, gives rise to all these events
and unites them together. So the prophets, priests, and
kings of the Old Dispensation are types of Christ, since
they all manifest the working of the same redemptive
principle which found its complete realization and embodi
ment in him.
Now prophecy does not always, or even commonly,
reach directly across the course of history and lay hold
upon the last things. It is wont to open up some
thing of the course that history is to follow, and to find a
resting-place, before it goes on to the goal, in some com
paratively near though partial fulfilment of the principle
it is concerned with. Thus to a great extent prophecy is
typical ; it has a primary, but partial fulfilment in the
type, and this very partiality points on to the complete

508 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
fulfilment in the antitype. It has, to use the happy
phrase of Lord Bacon, " springing and germinant accom
plishment." The second Psalm has its primary accom
plishment in some monarch of the Davidic line, who is a
type of the Messiah ; but he only very partially and
meagrely satisfies the conditions of the prediction, and the
unfulfilled remainder carries our thoughts on to the com
plete fulfilment in the great Son of David. The prophets
are continually predicting the great redemption of Israel,
and the prediction finds a typical and partial fulfilment in
the deliverance of Israel from the impending danger or
restoration from the existing captivity, but only that the
great deliverance of the future may appear the more dis
tinctly. There thus arises what has been sometimes
called " the perspective of prophecy ; " events widely sepa
rated from each other but connected by a common princi
ple, and so typical and antitypical are represented in a
single view, with no clear line of demarcation between
them and no indication of the long periods of time which
separate them. It is as when we see before us what seems
to be a single range of mountains, but which turns out as
we advance to be several ranges widely separated from
each other. In this way the two advents of Christ are
represented in the Old Testament as one, and it was im
possible until the Christ came to discover that ages lay
between the two ; but the two stand in the closest prag
matic relation, and the first coming is the type of the sec
ond. So the Old Testament fails to distinguish between
the founding of the Messiah's kingdom, which took place
in and through the Christ of the humiliation, and the con
summation of the kingdom with which the present order
of things is to terminate.
Such is the nature of Old Testament prophecy, and
there is no reason to believe that the prophecies of the
New Testament essentially differ in their character. In
many cases, it is true, there are direct predictions of the

THE DAY OF THE LORD 509
last things, but in many other cases the final fulfilment is
mediated by a near and partial fulfilment, which is typi
cal of the final. There is also commonly the same disre
gard of the intervening time.
Now the event which our Saviour chose as the type of
the last day, and as the partial realization and the illustra
tion of his redemption in its aspects both of mercy and
judgment, was the overthrow of the Hebrew common
wealth, and more particularly the event in which this
overthrow was consummated, the destruction of Jerusa
lem. This was to the Jew the solemn and formal termi
nation of the Old Dispensation, with its ceremonial law
and its theocratic institutions. It was a true " end of the
the age " (awreKeta tov at&vwj), namely, of the age of
the Old Covenant, and a type of the end of the world-age.
The disciples, brought up as Jews and taught from their
childhood to accept literally the Old Testament teachings
respecting the perpetuity of the law and the nation, could
scarcely have been more surprised at the end of the world
than at this ending of the Old Dispensation. The coming
of the Christ in power to bring about this result was well
fitted to be a type of the final personal and outward com
ing in glory to bring in the final triumph of the kingdom.
The judgment involved in it was the type of the last
judgment. It is not saying too much even to intimate
that the resurrection of the Christian cause, cast down by
the oppression of Jewish persecution, was the type of the
resurrection of the dead on the last day.
Accordingly, the Saviour portrayed on one canvas the
two series of events, making no clear distinction between
them. In the foreground was the impending overthrow
of Judaism and the destruction of Jerusalem ; gleaming
forth behind it, in solemn and awful grandeur, was the
last day, with its attendant events of the Saviour's coming,
the resurrection, the judgment, and the end of the world-
age. The ages of intervening time did not appear. To

510 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
those who first gazed upon the picture the whole seemed
to be a single group of events. Only as time went on,
and the first series of events transpired, did it become evi
dent how much lay still beyond. The world in its history
must reach the summit of the nearer ridge before it could
be known that the peaks, which seemed to rise imme
diately behind, were far away. But when the first resting-
place was reached, it was intended to be a pledge and as
surance that the goal would be attained in due time. The
same mighty power that brought about the redemption of
the church by the overthrow of Judaism would surely
bring about the redemption of the end, with its judgments
and its glorious consummation.
We have seen that the Saviour himself confessed his
ignorance of the day and hour of his second coining. The
reason is not far to seek. There is always a conditional
element in prophecy. God's redemption is wrought out
through the agency of men. It is certain of accomplish
ment. But the speed with which the process will advance
depends upon the faithfulness and zeal of the human in
struments. When we pray to-day, " Thy kingdom come,"
and beseech the Lord not to delay His advent, we are
prone to forget that we can do much to hasten the con
summation. Now God through His omniscience com
passes even the results of human freedom, and has given
a place to them in His eternal decree. The Father's fore
knowledge is cognizant of the day and the hour. But it
was hidden from the God-man in his state of humiliation,
since it was conditioned upon human freedom. How
much he knew we cannot tell. But we must accept his
own assurance that he did not know all. It may be that
if the mass of the Jewish people had accepted Christ, the
end of the old Judaism and the end of the world would
have been synchronous.
The state of things being such, we cannot wonder that
even inspired apostles did not fully understand the Savi-

THE DAY OF THE LORD 511
our's prophecies. They saw what was near, and judged
that the end was near. If Christ distinctly disavowed a
knowledge of the times and seasons, we need not be sur
prised that the disciples knew even less than the Master.
They had the principle in their possession, but were able
only partially to apply it. We greatly misapprehend the
nature of prophecy when we say that the apostles were
mistaken in their expectation of the speedy coming of the
last day. There is a nearness in days and years, and there
is a nearness in the relation of cause and effect. Iu the
first sense the last day was not near. In the latter sense
it was ; the causes which were certainly to bring about
the end were already visible working ; a great crisis was
approaching, which was at once an end and the beginning
of the end. In the Apocalypse we see the history of the
kingdom advancing ; the overthrow of the persecuting
Jewish and heathen powers was immediately impending,
and the inspired apostle, as he reached the summit of the
first mountain range, beheld the view opening beyond, the
thousand years of Christian progress, and on the other side
the lofty heights of the consummation.
II. Our next topic is the course of events leading up to
the last day. Let us take up the more important of these
events in succession.
1. First among them we may mention the overthrow of
the persecuting Jewish and Roman powers, to which al
lusion has just been made. Besides our Saviour's prophecy
of the destruction of Jerusalem, the first nineteen chapters
of the Apocalypse are devoted to these events, which were
to give the divine seal of approbation to the cause of the
Crucified, and which are represented as engaging the su
preme interest of the blessed ones in heaven. The de
struction of Jerusalem and the surrender of the haughty
Roman power, in the person of Constantine, to Christ were
the two events which signalized the fulfilment of these
predictions.

512 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
2. Next let us consider the progress of the kingdom.
Our Saviour dealt with this subject somewhat fully in his
parables of the kingdom. The growth of the wheat, of
the grain of mustard-seed and the great tree which pro
ceeds from it, the soread of the leaven in the meal, are
the figures by which he illustrated and predicted the his
tory of his cause in the world (Matt. xiii. 24-33). The
work was to go steadily forward until the whole earth with
all its peoples.and institutions should be brought under the
sway of Christ.
This brings us to speak of the Millennium. Probably
many Christians would be surprised to be told that this
much-discussed period is mentioned only once in the Bible ;
but this is the fact. There are, it is true, many passages,
both in the Old and the New Testaments, which predict
a time when Christianity will attain a general prevalence ;
some of them refer to the beginnings, some to the con
summation of the Christian Dispensation, some are wholly
indefinite (Is. xi. 6-9, xxxv., lx., lxv. 20 ; Zech. ix. 9,
10, xii. 10; Mic. iv. 1-4; Matt. xiii. 31, 32; Luke
xix. 11 seq.). But it is only in the twentieth of the Rev
elation (vv. 1-10) that the period of a thousand years,
or Millennium is referred to. The passage is as follows
(Rev. Vers.) :
" And I saw an angel coming down out of heaven, having
the key of the abyss and a great chain in his hand. And
he laid. hold on the dragon, the old serpent, which is the
Devil and Satan, and bound him for a thousand years,
and cast him into the abyss, and shut it, and sealed it over
him, that he should deceive the nations no more, until the
thousand years should be finished ; after this he must be
loosed for a little time.
"And I saw thrones, and they sat upon them, and
judgment was given unto them : and I saw the souls of
them that had been beheaded for the testimony of Jesus,
and for the word of God, and such as worshipped not the
beast, neither his image, and received not the mark upon

THE DAY OF THE LORD 513
their forehead and upon their hand ; and they lived and
reigned with Christ a thousand years. The rest of the
dead lived not until the thousand years should be finished.
This is the first resurrection. Blessed and holy is he
that hath part in the first resurrection : over these the
second death hath no power ; but they shall be priests
of God and of Christ, and shall reign with him a thou
sand years.
" And when the thousand years are finished, Satan
shall be loosed out of his prison, and shall come forth to
deceive the nations which are in the four corners of the
earth, Gog and Magog, to gather them together to the
war : the number of whom is as the sand of the sea. And
they went up over the breadth of the earth, and compassed
the camp of the saints about, and the beloved city : and
fire came down out of heaven, and devoured them. And
the devil that deceived them was cast into the lake of fire
and brimstone, where are also the beast and the false
prophet ; and they shall be tormented day and night for
ever and ever."
It would, of course, be impossible in this chapter to give
a full explanation of this difficult and disputed passage. I
can only briefly speak of the theories which have arisen
from the different interpretations of it.
The first of these is the doctrine of the Premillennial
Coming of Christ. This was widely held in the early
Christian church, especially by the sect of the Montan
ists, who through their excesses brought it into disrepute.
It was revived by the Anabaptists in the days of the Ref
ormation, and is held at the present time by the Second
Adventists and by not a few excellent men in our evangel
ical denominations. The fundamental belief of the Pre-
millenarians is that Christ is to return at some time in the
near future and establish an outward and glorious king
dom on earth. At his coming the saints are to be raised
from the dead and share with him in the government of
the world. The seat of this kingdom is to be the holy
city, Jerusalem. During this period the Jews are to be
33

514 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
converted and brought back to their own land. The
greater part of the inhabitants of the earth are also to be
converted and the time is to be one of universal peace and
blessedness. It is to last a thousand years, at the close of
which period the powers of evil are to be let loose for a
time and to unite in one final assault upon the saints and
the holy city, but are to be destroyed by the power of
Christ. Then will come the second resurrection, namely,
of the wicked, to be followed by the last judgment and
the final awards.
I do not mean to say that the theory is held in pre
cisely this form by all its advocates, but only that this is
a fairly representative statement of it. The doctrine un
doubtedly has in its favor the literal interpretation of the
passage in question, but it involves elements nowhere else
presented in the Bible. The double resurrection seems
excluded by the teachings of our Saviour and the apostles,
and they nowhere intimate that so long a period is to
intervene between the Saviour's coming and the judg
ment ; on the contrary, they group these events together
as parts of the last day. Moreover, the fanaticism and
excess which have been associated with this view have
created among sober Christian thinkers a well-founded
prejudice against it. In saying this, I mean nothing to
the detriment of the very excellent men who favor it to a
greater or less extent.
The other view, which has been commonly held in the
Christian church, is that the Millennium is a period pre
ceding the second coming of Christ during which Chris
tianity is generally to prevail and the principles of the
Gospel to be recognized. It is not a period of precisely a
thousand years, but one of indefinite duration — the num
ber one thousand, the cube of ten, being the symbol of
perfection, and designating the period as one of great
prosperity and blessedness. During this time Christ is to
reign, not in visible personal presence but through the

THE DAY OF THE LORD 515
Holy Spirit and the common methods of the kingdom.
This view abandons the strictly literal interpretation of
Rev. xx. 1-10, and recognizes the fact that there is a
figurative and symbolical element iu the prophecy, corre
sponding to the general character of the book in which it
occurs. The binding of Satan indicates the suppression
of evil and the general prevalence of the principles of the
Gospel during the millennial period. The first resurrection
(in full accordance with Ezek. xxxvii. 1-14, which the
apostle most probably had in mind) is to be understood
as referring to the revival on earth of the cause and spirit
of the martyrs (or perhaps to a raising of the souls of the
martyrs to a place of especial dignity and authority in the
heavenly world), while only the second resurrection is to
be understood as a physical one. This interpretation is
not without its difficulties, but they are far fewer and less
embarrassing than those which arise if the other view be
adopted. It is common among those who hold the view just re
ferred to to regard the millennium as still in the future.
But there are not a few reasons why the theory of
Augustine (" De Civ. Dei." lib. xx., c. 9) commends itself,
that the thousand years is the period of the success and
prevalence of Christianity, and has been in progress since
the conclusion of the days of persecution. This is a time
during which Satan is, relatively speaking, bound, and the
cause of the martyrs, which is the cause of Christ, trium
phant. If it be objected that such a view deprives us
of the Millennium altogether in the sense in which the
term has been immemorially understood in the church,
my answer is, that it only antedates the beginning of it,
while we may still hope that there is in store for us before
the Master's coining such a time of universal Christianity
as the church has been wont to expect. The kingdom of
God is to go steadily on its way, not indeed without great
convulsions and even retrogressions, but still, on the whole,

516 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
with unhindered progress, until he come whose right the
kingdom is.
3. There are a number of passages in the New Testa
ment which lead us to conclude that at some time before
the second coming of Christ, and opening the way for it,
there is to be a grand final massing of the powers of evil,
perhaps connected with a temporary release of the super
natural powers of evil, under a personal head called the
Antichrist. This is to result in a short and terrible con
flict, issuing in the utter overthrow of these enemies of
Christ. Of this final struggle the efforts of the persecuting
Jewish and Roman powers against the early church are
the type and the prophecy. The first great personal type
was the Emperor Nero. (See 2 Thess. ii. 3 seq ; 1 John
ii. 18, 22, iv. 3 ; 2 John 7 ; Matt. xxiv. 24 ; 1 Tim. iv.
1 ; Rev. chaps, xiv.-xvi., xx. 7-10.) Since the Reforma
tion Protestants have been accustomed to identify the
Papacy with the Antichrist. The Westminster Confession
of Faith expressly calls the Pope by this name. But the
most that can be said is, that the Papacy, so far as it has
persecuted the true church, is a type of Antichrist. The
complete fulfilment of the prophecy is still to come. The
Roman Catholic religion, great as are its errors, is not
anti-Christian. 4. The conversion of the heathen is another of the great
facts of prophecy. It is taught in the Old Testament and
also in the New. Our Saviour gave to the church the
commission to go into all the world and make disciples of
all the nations, to preach the Gospel to every creature,
with the assurance that all authority had been given to
him on earth and in heaven, and the promise that he
would be with his followers even to the end of the world-
age (Matt, xxviii. 18-20 ; Mark xvi. 15, 16 ; Luke xxiv.
47-49). He declared that this commission should be ful
filled (Matt. xxiv. 14 ; Mark xiii. 10 ; Acts i. 8). The
Christian church has therefore from the first been a mis-

THE DAY OF THE LORD 517
sionary church. Its work is to carry forward the work of
the kingdom until the whole earth has been brought under
the Saviour's sway. The result is finally to be reached,
through the power of God working by means of human
instrumentalities. The fulness of the Gentiles is to be
brought into the kingdom.
5. Nor are God's chosen people to be forever cast off.
This is distinctly taught in the eleventh chapter of Romans.
" The gifts and the calling of God are without repentance "
(ver. 29). " A hardening in part hath befallen Israel, until
the fulness of the Gentiles be come in ; and so all Israel
shall be saved " (vv. 25, 26). So much is implied in the
fulfilment of the Old Testament prophecies. We are not
indeed to understand, as many do, that the Jews are to be
restored to their political power. That would be opposed
to the spiritual character of the kingdom of God. What
is promised is that the Jews shall be brought back once
more into the divine favor, and receive the salvation which
they have for the time being thrust from them. The won
derful fact of history is the preservation of the Jews amid
all the vicissitudes which have befallen them, and we can
not doubt that it points to the fulfilment of the Scripture
promises. III. We come now to the events of the last day, and
first of all we consider the great event which ushers in the
day, namely, the second coming of Christ. This is the
great fact toward which the whole New Testament looks,
the object of the disciples' longings ; it is the consumma
tion of the long historical process of redemption, the final
act in the establishment of the kingdom. It appears on
the far-off edge of the Old Testament prophetic horizon,
not clearly distinguishable from the first advent, and is
foretold in the predictions of the coming of Jehovah at
the last day for judgment and redemption (Is. xiii. 6-14 ;
Amos v. 18-20 ; Joel ii. 29-3,2, iii. 14-21 ; Zeph. i. 14,
ii. 3 ; Zech. xiv. 1-9 ; Mai. iii. 2-18, iv. 1-3). Only in

518 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
one remarkable passage is the coming of the Son of Man
distinctly foretold (Dan. vii. 13).
We have seen that the time was left wholly indefinite,
hidden even from Christ himself, and so far unknown to
the disciples that they seem to have supposed that the
final coming was to take place during their generation. It
was an event always impending, the causes of which were
actively working and might at any time bring about the
result. The great characteristic of the coining, constantly
reiterated by Christ and the apostles, was its suddenness
and unexpectedness, as in the case of its type the destruc
tion of Jerusalem. " Be ye also ready ; for in an hour
that ye think not the Son of Man cometh " (Luke xii. 40).
" As the lightning, when it lighteneth out of the one part
under the heaven, shineth unto the other part under
heaven ; so shall the Son of Man be in his day " (Luke
xvii. 24). The coming was to be like the coming of the
flood, like the breaking in of a thief at night (Matt. xxiv.
36-44). The apostles echo the Lord's words, "as a thief
in the night " (1 Thess. v. 2 seq. ; 2 Pet. iii. 10).
The Saviour is to come in his kingly glory. Before the
coming he is hidden from the eye of sense. His own
disciples walk by faith, not by sight. The world does not
see him, and men of the world throw doubt upon his ex
istence, and ask, " Where is the promise of his coming ? "
(2 Pet. iii. 4). The coming is to be the outward personal
manifestation of the glorified Christ, his " revelation " or
" manifestation," his apocalypse or epiphany (1 Cor. i. 7;
1 Tim. vi. 14 ; Tit. ii. 13 ; 1 Pet. i. 7, 8). Then every
eye shall see him, not as he was in his state of humilia
tion, but in the glory of his Father. According to the
prophecy in Daniel he is to come in the clouds of heaven
(Dan. vii. 13), that is, with divine glory (Matt. xxiv. 30,
xxvi. 64). The angels are to be his attendants and their
herald trumpets are to announce his advent (Matt. xvi.
27, xxiv. 31).

THE DAY OF THE LORD 519
His coming is to bring the present order of things to a
close, to bring about the consummation of his kingdom. It
will not be a merely temporary coming, followed by a
return, as in the case of the first advent, but a true
" parousia," a coming to stay ; for thenceforth the Christ
will be always with his people, and the New Jerusalem
shall come down from God out of heaven. But it will
not be to fonnd an outward political kingdom as the Pre-
millennarians teach. The reign of Christ will be a spirit
ual reign, in the hearts of his people. There will no
longer be that discrepancy between the ideal and real
kingdoms, which now prevails, bnt the dominion of Christ
will be realized in all its fulness in the midst of a re
deemed and holy race.
1. The last day is not an ordinary day, but one of
those " days of the Lord," which follow another standard
of time from that to which we are accustomed, one day
being as a thousand years and a thousand years as one day
(2 Pet. iii. 8). It is an epoch rather than a definite time,
like the days of creation, and the day of Sabbath rest
which has followed the completion of God's works. Ac
cordingly, in considering the events of the last day, we
should do well not to bind ourselves too closely to the ideas
of time which the word day in its ordinary use suggests.
2. The second of the events connected with the great
epoch of consummation is the resurrection of the dead.
There are hints of this truth in the Old Testament (indi
rectly in Ezek. xxxvii. 12-14; Hos. vi. 2, xiii. 14; and
directly in Isaiah xxvi. 19 ; Dan. xii. 2). It is referred to
in the Apocrypha (2 Mac. vii. 9, 11, 14, 23, 29, 36), and
it was commonly accepted by the Jews at the time of
Christ, it being the tenet by which the sect of the Phari
sees was distinguished from the Sadducees, the material
ists of the time who denied the future life (Josephus,
" Ant.," xvin. i. 3, 4; "Bel. Jud.," n. viii. 14). Our Saviour
did not therefore announce the doctrine as a new one, but

520 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
rather confirmed it and gave it a new meaning through its
relation to himself. He declared that he, as the Messiah,
had the authority and the power to call the dead from
their graves at the last day. In proof of this power he
performed the most wonderful of all the miracles, the res
toration of the dead to life, in the case of the ruler's daugh
ter, the son of the widow of Nain, and Lazarus (Matt. ix.
18, 19, 23-25 ; Luke vii. 12-15 ; John xi. 11-44). In the
last instance he declared, " I am the resurrection and the
life " (John xi. 25), representing himself as the power and
the source of the resurrection. The great proof of his
power to raise the dead was given in his own resurrection.
The apostles follow close in the track of the Saviour's
teachings. Paul especially, as was natural from his Phar
isaical origin and training, gave a large place to the doc
trine in his preaching and epistles. In the fifteenth chap
ter of First Corinthians he gave the subject a formal
exposition, bringing it into direct connection with the res
urrection of Christ as the great proof and pledge of the
resurrection of believers. Both Christ and the apostles
teach that the resurrection is a future simultaneous event,
to take place on the last day. They never represent it, as
some modern interpreters would fain make them do, as
the rising of the soul at death into a spiritual body. Let
us look more carefully at the great doctrine.
The resurrection is man's deliverance from the power of
death, his physical redemption. We have seen that man
was made to be a unity of soul and body ; both are essenT
tial to the complete man. Sin has severed this connection
through death. Death is not natural to man, bnt the con
sequence and punishment of sin. Even believers, although
death is turned into life through the power of Christ's re
demption, and they pass when they die into the heavenly
blessedness, are under the sway of death in this respect,
that they are separated from the body. Even if they
should have some temporary organism in the intermediate

THE DAY OF THE LORD 521
state, it is not the earthly body. But in the resurrection
death is destroyed, the great physical enemy of man is
overcome ; death is swallowed up in victory (1 Cor. xv.
26, 54). From this time forward man is himself once
more in all the fulness of his essential being.
The doctrine of the resurrection not only recognizes the
fact that the body is essential to complete manhood, but it
also maintains the preciousness and dignity of the body.
The view is widely prevalent that the body is a clog to
man's spirit, and that it will be a blessing to be freed from
it. This was the doctrine of the Platonic philosophy, and
is connected with the notion that matter is essentially evil.
Christianity takes a different view altogether. Matter is
good because God made it. The body is sacred. It par
takes of the divine image. Christ sanctified the body
when he became flesh and took to himself " a true body "
as well as " a reasonable soul." Under the influence of re
demption the body becomes a " temple of the Holy
Ghost " (1 Cor. vi. 19). It is indeed, in the present state,
marred by sin and made subject to death. It is a "body
of humiliation " (Phil. iii. 21), a " corruptible body " (1
Cor. xv. 42), a " mortal body " (Rom. viii. 11). It must
die and decay, returning to the earth as it was. But there
is still in it the germ of a higher life. It will yet attain
its ideal. During the present life the presence of Christ's
Spirit in the believer is the " earnest " of this coming
physical redemption (2 Cor. v. 5). We lay away our dead
in the grave, and our hearts are full of pain that the pre
cious body should be treated thus. It is a pain which all the
thoughts of the blessedness of the soul in heaven cannot
remove. This is the face we loved to look upon. These
closed eyes a little while ago looked the full light of love
into ours. These lips spoke the words that made our
hearts thrill, and met ours in warm kisses. These hands
clasped ours and labored for us with devoted affection.
These feet went to and fro on our errands. What bodily

522 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
aptitudes and dexterities go down here into the silent
dust ! What training of years went to make this body the
delicate instrument it was ! Plow these fingers used to fly
over the keys of the piano! Is this all? Is the body
thrown away like a cast-off garment? Must it be forever
hidden from our sight ? Christ answers, No, a thousand
times, No ! This dust is precious. Nothing of what we
prized will be lost. Every power, every capability, every
possibility, will be preserved. The body, in spite of the
appearance which shakes our faith, is not dead but sleeps,
sleeps in Jesus. The grave is its quiet bed, where it
awaits the last trump. It is " united to Christ," and he is
able to keep that which is committed to his charge until
the last day. The loved one who has gone from us is not
only a far-off soul in heaven but will be reunited with the
body which was so dear to us, and which we have laid
away " in the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to
eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ."
In order to hold this most precious and comforting doc
trine, it is not needful that we should enter into those un
profitable speculations which have so often been indulged
in concerning the identity of the present body and that of
the resurrection. Undoubtedly there will be an ideutity,
for otherwise we could not call it in any true sense a
resurrection. But this identity may be consistent with
great differences. It is not the material particles which
constitute the oneness of the body during the different pe
riods of the earthly existence, but the inward life and the
outward form. Paul answers with great particularity and
clearness the questions which arise upon this subject (1
Cor. xv. 35-58). He rebukes the doubt which asks,
"How are the dead raised? and with what manner of
body do they come? " He employs the same analogy, in
explanation of the relation of the two bodies, which our
Saviour used with reference co his death (John xii. 24),
namely, that of the seed and the wheat which springs

THE DAY OF THE LORD 523
from it. The two are related to each other as one kind
of animal body to another, or as the heavenly luminaries.
Whereas the present body is corruptible, dishonorable,
and weak, the resurrection body will be incorruptible,
honorable, and strong. The present body is a natural or
psychical body adapted to a state of existence in which the
lower or psychical principle of our nature prevails, a life
of eating and drinking and sleeping and marrying and
money-getting, and the like. The resurrection body will
be a spiritual body, that is, not composed of some tenuous
spiritual substance, as some would interpret (for it is to be
a body, not a spirit, material, not immaterial), but a body
adapted to a state in which the spirit, the higher, religious
principle in man will have the predominance, a life of
perfect communion with God and Christ and holy beings,
in which eating and drinking will be subordinate, in
which there will be neither marrying nor giving in mar
riage, but likeness to the angels (Matt. xxii. 30). Paul
further explains the difference between the two bodies by»
showing their relation to Adam and Christ, the one the
natural, the other the spiritual, head of mankind. " The
first man is of the earth, earthy ; the second man is of
heaven. . . . And as we have borne the image of the
earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly."
Elsewhere the apostle tells us that Christ " shall fashion
anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be con
formed to the body of his glory, according to the working
whereby he is able even to subject all things unto him
self" (Phil. iii. 21).
By the resurrection, the completion of redemption, man
will be brought into his right relations on the physical
side to God and the universe. The body was made that
it might be, as we have seen, the temple of the divine
indwelling and the organ of communication between man
and God. The resurrection body will bring the redeemed
into a fellowship and union with God, which in this life

624 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
when the body is corrupted by sin, and in the intermedi
ate state with its absolutely or relatively disembodied con
dition, are impossible. The vision of God will then have
a new meaning, and the personal relation to Christ the
Godman will also have a new closeness and intimacy. I
do not dare to speculate upon a point of which we know
so little, but I do not doubt that we have here a truth of
profound significance.
Moreover, after the resurrection man will once more
stand in his true relation to his fellow-man and to other
intelligent beings. In the present state we meet one
another, as those who look from behind barred doors and
closed windows. We are all more or less strangers to each
other. Our bodies confine and separate us. Our looks
give the lie to our thoughts. We are not what we seem.
The intercourse of even the best Christians is artificial and
imperfect. But the resurrection body will be the perfect
organ of the soul in the blessed fellowship of a holy so-
*ciety. By the resurrection body we shall likewise be
brought into the right relation with nature. Man was
created for dominion over the world. But sin has intro
duced discord and disorder. The creation itself has,
through man's wrong-doing, been subjected to vanity,
even to the "bondage of corruption." It groans and
travails together in pain. Man is only in part its master ;
he is by turns its tyrant and its slave. Bnt the creation is
to be delivered from its bondage and to participate in the
" liberty of the glory of the children of God." The re
demption of our body is to be the redemption of nature
(Rom. viii. 19-23). Through man nature is to be brought
back into its right relation to God and His kingdom ; man
will be her high-priest, to voice her praises to her Maker.
Through the new organism men will be able to exercise
the God-given control over nature, of which an anticipa
tion and pledge was given in the miracles, those " powers
of the age to come."

THE DAY OF THE LORD 525
I have spoken only of the resurrection of believers. But
the Bible does not confine the great physical event to this
class alone. Even in the Old Testament it is predicted,
with reference to both good and bad : " Many of them
that sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to
everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting con
tempt " (Dan. xii. 2). The Saviour said that all that were
in the tombs should hear his voice and come forth, " they
that have done good, unto the resurrection of life, and
they that have done ill unto the resurrection of judgment"
(John v. 29). Paul, giving solemn utterance to his faith
before the Roman governor Felix, declared that there
shall be "a resurrection both of the just and the unjust "
(Acts xxiv. 15). In view of these plain utterances we can
not assert that only believers are to share in the resurrec
tion. On the contrary, this effect of Christ's redemptive
work is universal. " As in Adam all die, so also in Christ
shall all be made alive " (1 Cor. xv. 22). That there are
difficulties in this fact I cannot deny. I do not under
stand why the unbelieving should receive a gift that can
only bring to them " shame and everlasting contempt."
But I am not disposed to make my feelings the standard
of what God should do or not do in a matter of this sort.
Let us receive the utterances of Christ and the inspired
writers as they stand, and leave God to make it plain
when we come to the realm of unclouded knowledge.
This is only a part of that larger and very dark problem
of retribution which we can not now discuss. But whatever
the resurrection may mean for the ungodly, for the chil
dren of God, who will by it attain the full estate of son-
ship (Rom. viii. 19-23), it will be a glorious deliverance
from death and introduction into the highest blessedness
of the life eternal. It should ever be the object of earnest
longing and eager hope. Like Paul, we should pray that
we may know Christ and the power of his resurrection,
and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed

526 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
unto his death ; if by any means we may attain unto the
resurrection from the dead (Phil. iii. 10, 11).
3. The third of the great events which are to signalize
the last day is the final judgment. The judgments of the
Old Testament are temporal and not eternal. It is only in
prophecy that we discover intimations of the judgment of
the last day, which has to do with the issues of eternity,
and this in connection with great temporal dispensations
of God's providence which are types of the great crisis
which lies in the far future. But in the New Testament
the doctrine of the judgment is fully and definitely taught.
Our Saviour frequently refers to it. Commonly he speaks
of the judgment of the last day (Matt. xi. 22, 24, xii. 36),
of which he gives a detailed and dramatic description in
his great eschatological discourse (Matt. xxv. 31-46). But
in the discourses recorded in the Gospel of John he tells
of a judgment which has already begun (John iii. 18, 19,
xii. 31, xvi. 11). In one important utterance he represents
the judgment as both present and future (John v. 22-29).
The apostles reiterate the Saviour's teachings, dwelling
especially upon the judgment of the last day, and teaching
that Christ is to be the Judge. We will consider the more
important elements of the New Testament teaching upon
this solemn theme.
While the Scriptures lay the chief emphasis upon the
judgment of the last day, yet they seem to afford reason
for the distinction made by the older Protestant theolo
gians between the particular and the general or last judg
ment. The particular judgment concerns the individual
soul. It begins in the present life and reaches its defini
tive conclusion at death, when the period of probation is
ended and the soul is assigned to its final destiny. The
general judgment occurs on the last day. It is for men
and angels. It will not decide destiny, but declare it and
assign men to their final states. Of course, those who
teach the continuation of judgment during the intermedi-

THE DAY OF THE LORD 527
ate state will not accept this distinction. Yet all the drift
of New Testament teaching is in the direction of it. The
truth is, every man judges himself when he decides for or
against Christ, and the Saviour only re-affirms this self-
made judgment. Death, as the end of probation, gives it
the character of finality, and the last day makes it known
to the universe.
Christ is the Judge. It belongs to his mediatorial work
and his prerogative as King of the kingdom of God. Men
are to be judged by man ; all judgment has been given to
him because he is the Son of Man (John v. 27). This
office is an essential element of the Saviour's glorification.
" The head that once was crowned with thorns
Is crowned with glory now.''
It follows that all judgment is Christian judgment.
Paul does, it is true, give an exposition of judgment upon
a basis of nature, showing that God will judge every man
according to his works (Rom. ii. 1-16), but this is for the
purpose of proving that God has placed all men upon a
new basis of grace on the ground of Christ's atonement,
and that the benefits of the Saviour's redemptive work are
freely offered to all who will accept them. He makes the
results of Christ's work co-extensive with the evils of the
Fall (Rom. v. 12-21). We have therefore reason to be
lieve that no man will be judged upon a basis of pure
nature, but that all will receive the benefit of Christ's
work. This is the ground of our hope in the salvation of
those lieathen who have not rejected the light God has
given them. They will be judged according to Christ,
and their potential and imperfect faith will for his sake
be counted to them for righteousness. And as this prin
ciple of Christian judgment will inure to the benefit of all
who have not known of Christ in this world, so it will
enhance the condemnation of those who, having known pf
Christ, have rejected him.

528 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
The criterion of judgment is often represented in the
New Testament as the deeds of the earthly life (2 Cor.
v. 10 ; cf. Matt. xvi. 27 ; Gal. vi. 7-8 ; Rev. xx. 12, 13). At
first sight this seems to contradict the other teachings of
the New Testament, according to which men are saved by
the pure unmerited grace of God on the ground of
Christ's redemptive work and not by the merit of their
own works. But a closer examination of the passages
shows that works are not made the ground of salvation,
but only the evidence of the man's moral character and
state ; they include his faith or unbelief and his whole at
titude toward God and Christ. This is beautifully brought
out in the Saviour's vivid portraiture of the scenes of the
last day (Matt. xxv. 31-46). Those who for Christ's sake
have fed and clothed and visited and helped his brethren
are adjudged to have done all this to Christ himself.
Those who failed to do it are regarded as having rejected
Christ. The question is not of merit, but of character
and act and relation to Christ. The ground of acceptance
is, of course, not the works as meritorious good works, bnt
the grace of Christ to which these works are due, and of
the presence of which they are the evidence.
The last judgment is, as we have seen, general rather
than particular. It is not needful that we should regard it
as a great pageant, ordered after the model of human tri
bunals and their processes. We should also bear in mind
what has been said about the application of our common
measures of time to the last day. The peculiarity of the
general judgment is that it is open and public, so that its
processes and its results are known to all souls in God's
universe. It is intended not so much for the decision of
destiny as for the manifestation of it. Its great object is
to vindicate the righteousness of the divine government
as a government of grace through Jesus Christ. It will be
the great Theodioee. Then will the dark things in God's
government be made light. Then will the secret things

THE DAY OF THE LORD 529
be revealed. It will be shown beyond a peradventure
that in all things the Judge of all the earth has done
right. From the nature of the case this could not be
shown during the course of human history. The imputa
tion of unrighteousness has often rested upon God. Even
His own children have often cherished a secret mistrust
that there might be some partiality or inequality in His
ways. But now, in the final outcome of things, it will be
shown that the scales of justice hang even. Even that
darkest and most inscrutable of all God's dealings, the
final punishment of the ungodly, will be shown to be right.
Even the wicked themselves will acknowledge it to be
right, and go of their own accord, like Judas, to their own
place. The devils will believe and tremble.
The revelations of individual human acts and charac
ter, which undoubtedly will be made in the last judgment,
will not be arbitrary, but only such as will be needful to
vindicate the righteousness of God's government. Hence
it is not necessary to suppose that every trivial act will be
exposed. The last judgment has often been presented in
such a way as to render the thought of it shocking to
every sensitive mind, as if then the universe was to be re
solved into a great society for gossip and all unhallowed
curiosity to be gratified. But God will not in the judg
ment forsake the infinite delicacy which belongs to Him
as the Highest and the Holiest. We may be sure that
where it is needful to raise the veil which covers the scars
on His children's lives, He will do it with such tender
love, that they will rejoice that they are able to give
their testimony to His holy dealings ; and where it is
needful to expose the festering sin of the lost, it will be
certainly done with infinite compassion. God will not
taunt and expose to ridicule those whom He condemns.
With the last judgment the eternal age begins. It is
the final scene in the long world age, the conclusion of
human history in its earthly stage. It will be the con-
34

530 PRESENT DAY THEOLOGY
summation of the Saviour's glory. The kingdom of God
will then be complete. All beings will be brought under
the sway of God. The good will be triumphant the uni
verse over. What evil remains will be brought into sub
mission, absolute and final. In the name of Jesus every
knee shall bow, of things in heaven and things in earth
and things under the earth, and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father
(Phil. ii. 10, 11).

THE PRESENT DIRECTION OF THEOLOGICAL
THOUGHT IN THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES
OF THE UNITED STATES.
[A paper read before the International Congregational Council, in
London, July 15, 1891.]

THE PRESENT DIRECTION OF THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT
IN THE CONGREGATIONAL CHURCHES OF THE
UNITED STATES
To understand the present tendencies of theology
among our American Congregationalists, we must look
backward. Our history has been marked by one great
theological epoch, which began with Jonathan Edwards,
and lasted, with inconsiderable intermissions, until past
the middle of our own century. It was a period of intense
theological activity and earnestness. The New England
theology, born as it was in the " Great Awakening," and
nourished by a remarkable series of revivals, was practi
cal in its aims, and full of fire, of energy, of aggressive
power. The time, however, came when the religious life ebbed
and the power of the New England theology declined.
From the first it had its defects. The philosophical ele
ment in it had overshadowed the Scriptural and spiritual
elements. It had been too exclusively concerned with
the questions of scholastic Calvinism. The controver
sies to which it gave rise had turned the thoughts of the
theologians away from the essential and central facts of
Christianity. The preaching had grown abstract, dry, and
powerless, and the people had become tired of it. In the
reaction all theology fell into disrepute.
Other causes tended in the same direction. New prob
lems of church work came, to the front. The press outbid
the pulpit in popularity. The great anti-Christian move
ment, which has been manifest throughout the whole
domain of modern life and thought, made itself felt

534 THE PRESENT DIRECTION
among us. The philosophy and criticism of Germany,
the new religious problems opened up by the theory of
evolution, the agnostic philosophy, turned our thoughts
from the niceties of the Calvinistic system to the defence
of the foundations of religion itself.
Just when the change came it would be hard to say.
Bnt the new state of things became distinctly apparent
after our civil war. Since then we have been passing
through an untheological stage in our history. Doctrine
has been undervalued. Our preaching has been practical
rather than theoretical, ethical rather than theological.
In the sphere of religious thought we have been con
cerned with the great theistic and apologetical questions
which underlie Christianity rather than with the problems
of Christian theology. It has seemed like fiddling while
Rome was burning to discuss the moot points of the
Christian system while the agnostic was triumphantly de
claring that the arguments for the existenceTof a personal
God have been overthrown, and the pantheist was claim
ing to have proved beyond a peradventure that revelation
and miracle have no reality, except in the sense that makes
all thought a revelation, and every common flower that
blooms a miracle. But now, for some time past, it has
been becoming increasingly evident that the time of our
theological eclipse is drawing toward its close. The reac
tion against theology seems about to have lost its force.
We have begun to see that our new conditions require
not the abolition of theology, but its reconstruction. Our
people, who grew so weary of a lifeless preaching of doc
trine^ are crying out for a true and living preaching of
doctrine. ^ Moreover, the great philosophical and apologetical ques
tions have been, to a considerable extent, settled. We no
longer fear that the foundations will crumble beneath our
feet. We have seen the scientific theory of evolution
turned from an enemy to a friend of religion. We have

OF THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT 535
matched the agnostic and pantheistic philosophies by a
theistic philosophy which is far better. We are readjust
ing our Christian evidences, not abandoning Paley and
Bntler, but supplementing them, giving especial promi
nence to the great central evidence from the believer's
personal experience of Christ's redemption.
So we are once more taking, possession of our theolog
ical inheritance. There is a "revival of interest in the
themes of Christian divinity. There can be no doubt
that a new theological movement has begun. Already we
have advanced far enough to be able to judge something
of its nature.
This much of explanation has been needful to prepare
the way for the proper subject of this paper — the present
direction of theological thought among our American
churches. To this I now apply myself. If much of
what I say relates also to the larger movement in religious
thought going on all over the Protestant world, it will not
be strange. Still, our movement has its own distinctive
featnres, and the subject will be presented from our point
of view. If also my own personal equation must be
taken into account, yet I trust my purpose to be an
honest chronicler will be recognized.
The determining factors in our present thought are not
new. They are the principles that belong to us as Protes
tant Christians and as American Congregationalists.
The substance of our theology is to be found now, as al
ways, in the great unchanging facts and truths of Christi
anity accepted in every age of the church. They are clear
ly set forth in onr Congregational Creed of 1883, which,
although somewhat criticised by our conservative men as
not sufficiently precise on two or three points of doctrine,
has never been complained of by the other side, and so
may certainly be regarded as expressing our minimum of
belief. We are also true to what is best in our American Con-

536 THE PRESENT DIRECTION
gregational traditions. We do not repudiate the New
England theology, our glory in the past, but are trying to
adapt it to the changed conditions in which we find our
selves. There are, of course, individuals who would ruth
lessly break our continuity with the past. But the great
body of us have no desire to adopt alien forms of thought.
We have our strong centripetal tendencies, which balance
our centrifugal forces. We do not wish to forget that we
are the theological descendants of Robinson, Cotton, the
Mathers, Edwards, Hopkins, Smalley, Dwight, Emmons,
Griffin, Taylor, or, to come down to later times, of Edwards
A. Park and Henry B. Smith. So, if we speak of a
" new theology," we mean that it is new only as a living
body is new at each fresh stage in its growth, conserving
and fulfilling the one type that runs through all its
changes, and that is neither old nor new.
Thus united to the Christian and our own denomina
tional past, we are moving forward, as God gives us
strength and wisdom, trying to work out a theology
adapted to the needs of the stirring, restless age in which
we live. Let us look now more closely at some of our
present tendencies.
We mark, first, a movement toward a more spiritual
conception of Christianity. It is a part of our birthright
as Congregationalists to emphasize the reality and present
power of the things unseen and eternal — the reigning
Christ, the constant redemptive activity of the Holy
Spirit, the invisible yet all powerful kingdom of God.
But in our theology these facts have not been as clearly
recognized as they should have been. We have been too
prone to regard Christianity as a system of abstract
truths and of remote historical facts. Notions and propo
sitions have been more to us than the great spiritual
realities for which they stand, the sacred events of nine
teen hundred years ago more than the redemptive facts
of to-day.

OF THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT 537
But we are beginning to give the spiritual element in
Christianity its due place. We do not ignore the divine
truths and sacred history which constitute the revelation
once for all given to mankind. To do this would be to
cut the foundations away from under Christianity. But
we see, as never before, that Christianity is far more than
a revelation ; that it is a great system of redemptive
agencies, at work here and now, by which God is building
up his kingdom in the world.
We are coming to understand that it is this recognition
of the invincible reality of spiritual Christianity which is
going to give our theology its great power in the future.
This is the ground of our own deepest convictions of the
truth of the Christian system. Criticism may assail the
historical facts of revelation ; rationalism may urge objec
tions to its doctrines ; but the surf on our coast of Maine
might as easily overthrow the granite cliffs against which
it breaks as criticism and rationalism disturb the Christian
realities which stand firm in the experience of the indi
vidual believer and the church. And so in dealing with
those outside. Our age is intensely realistic. It demands
facts. It bases its philosophy, its science, its practice,
upon experience. If we can show it that there are spirit
ual facts just as real as the facts of the natural world, and
spiritual experience as certain as physical experience, we
gain enormous power over it. Our theologians in their
teaching, and our ministers in their preaching, are more
and more recognizing this secret of our power.
Another sign of the times, indicative of the direction
of theological thought in our churches, is the renewed
study of the Bible. One of the most encouraging features
of the theological interregnum through which we have
passed has been the fact that our ministers and Christian
people have been going back to the sacred volume in a
spirit of earnest and prayerful seeking after divine truth.
Never in our history has there been more thorough, intel-

538 THE PRESENT DIRECTION
ligent, and devout investigation of the Scripture. Plere
also we are faithful to our principles as Congregationalists.
We bate no jot of loyalty to the Bible. It is to us, no
less than to our fathers, the inspired record of revelation,
the all-sufficient rule of faith and practice, the great means
of grace by which we are brought into contact with the
spiritual realities of God's kingdom, and by which the
church of Christ is maintained and edified. We draw our
theology from it. We look to it to correct the onesided-
ness and error of our imperfect Christian experience. The
theological thought of our times aims to return to the
Bible, and to draw fresh draughts from. its fountain of
life and truth.
We do not, however, regard the Bible precisely as our
ancestors did. We distinguish the revelation from its rec
ord. We recognize the diversity of the books that com
pose it, and the progress of the revelation they describe.
We discriminate between its different types of doctrine.
The old piecemeal method of dealing with it, which re
garded each verse as complete in itself, without reference
to the context or the book in which it is found, has fallen
into well-merited desuetude.
We are trying to deal fairly and fully with the facts
brought to light by modern biblical criticism. I think
there are few among us disposed to ignore these facts, as
there are few who would construe them in the interests of
unbelief. To the great body of our thinking men it is not
a question whether the Bible is inspired — that all believe
— but how the doctrine of inspiration shall be stated so as
to express the whole truth. And we are coming more
clearly to understand the great purpose of the Bible —
namely, to bring the church and the individual in all ages
into vital contact with the historic facts, the divine truth,
and the spiritual power of Christianity ; and so to discern
what is essential and what non-essential for the attainment
of that purpose. We are most of us ready to admit that

OF THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT 539
false standards have been set up, that an infallibility in
non-essentials has been demanded which the Bible never
claims, and which, if it existed, would render it less fitted
for its end. We are beginning to see that we may grant
that the sacred writers were not scientific historians, not
philosophers or men of science, not experts in the methods
of scientific exegesis or of literary criticism, and yet may
rest firm in our conviction that they were so directed by
the supernatural influence of God's Spirit as to give us the
perfect rule of faith and life.
A more serious problem confronts us in the facts and
theories of the Higher Criticism. But here also we are
trying to deal honestly with the facts. There is no one
of our evangelical denominations in America more ear
nestly seeking for light on this important range of subjects
than our own. We do not want to settle the questions
thus presented by prejudice, or clamor, or ecclesiastical
authority, but by patient, scholarly, reverent investiga
tion. That the Old Testament, to which our Divine Lord
appealed in all his teachings, will ever be shown to be
anything but a supernatural and inspired book, we do not
believe. But we are sure we are acting in his spirit when
we give a candid hearing to those who claim that our old
theories of the modes and times of its composition were
mistaken. Some of our ablest scholars have accepted, to
a greater or less extent, the new views. But our min
isters and intelligent laymen, who form the jury that
must ultimately decide the case, are more cautious, hesi
tating to give their verdict in a matter of such great
importance till they are sure that all the facts are before
them. And while we wait for the result we rest more strongly
than ever upon the proof of the divinity and truth of the
Bible furnished by the experience of its redemptive power,
the old testimonium Spiritus Sancti internum, which is
ours by virtue of our Protestant descent.

540 THE PRESENT DIRECTION
Again, we are coming more distinctly to recognize the
central place of the living Christ in our theological
thought. It goes without saying that he is supreme in
the Christian life. Our early Congregationalism went
beyond all other systems in asserting his supremacy in
the rule of his people and the world. But in our preach
ing and our theology other elements of Christianity have
too often usurped his place, or a doctrine about him has
been substituted for the Christ himself, or his propheti
cal and priestly offices have overshadowed his kingly.
We are, however, becoming more sensible of the fact
that as the power of Christianity is concentrated in the
living Christ, our King, our Redeemer ; so he is to be the
great theme of our preaching, the central and organizing
fact of our theology. We teach no new doctrine respect
ing him. Our great Unitarian controversy settled once
for all the question of our orthodoxy. The modern pan
theism, which preserves the Christian phraseology, but
really deprives it of meaning, has little if any currency
among us. The Christian positiveness which reduces
Christ's divinity to his moral solidarity with God, has not
met with favor. We have received helpful impulses from
modern German speculations respecting the Incarnation,
the kenosis, and the need of Christ's perfecting work
apart from the fact of sin. But we are less disposed than
of old to speculate upon these high subjects, more willing
to admit the mystery. It is. the Christ himself, in all
his living, saving power, upon whom our thought is con
centrated, whom we strive to hold up to men, and in
whom we find the key to all the problems of religious
thought. The way is thus being opened for a larger and richer
conception of God. The old theology, in dealing with
this subject, looked too much to philosophy, too little to
Christianity. But we are trying to " Christologize " our
doctrine of God, to set Him forth as He is seen in the face

OF THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT 541
of Jesus Christ. It is often said among us that we are
coming to a more ethical conception of God. This is true.
But it is more ethical because it is more Christian, because
it is not of the God of Nature, but of the God and Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is also said that we have
corrected the old view of God which emphasized His tran
scendence at the expense of His immanence, by giving due
place to the latter element. This is likewise true. But
we have not learned the lesson from pantheism, as some
would claim, but from our fuller and truer conception of
Christianity. It is the unchristologized view of God that
unduly emphasizes His transcendence. It is the view of
God through Christ the Mediator which gives the other
element in its proper relation to the whole truth. It is in
Christ and the Holy Spirit that God comes near to ns and
dwells in us", and it is through this wonderful fact that we
learn the reality of God's indwelling in man and Nature
apart from redemption. And thus also the way is opened
for a far deeper and truer understanding of the great
Christian truth of the Trinity.
As we are learning to Christologize the doctrine of God,
so we are learning to do the same by the doctrines of the
eternal plan, of creation, and of providence— especially
the doctrine of the plan. Once, like Milton's fallen angels,
our New England theologians "reasoned high
Of providence, foreknowledge, will and fate,
Fixed fate, free will, foreknowledge absolute,
And found no end in wandering mazes lost."
Tired out by the vain effort we have come to Christ,
and seek in him the solution of the mystery of decrees and
election, sovereignty and free will. If it be Calvinistic to
place God above man, to believe that the destiny of the
universe is in His hands, to hold that sin exists by His
permissive decree and not in His despite, to maintain that

542 THE PRESENT DIRECTION
in the initiation and progress of the Christian life all is of
grace, then, I suppose, the greater number of us are Cal-
vinists. But our controversies on the philosophical aspects
of these subjects are over, and differing opinions respect
ing them do not separate brethren or furnish tests of fel
lowship. In similar language we may speak of our doctrine of
sin. We are trying to view it in the light of its rela
tion to Christ and his redemption. We are thus
kept from yielding to the temptation so strongly pressed
upon us by the prevalent popular philosophies, to make
light of sin. The Puritan conscience is not dulled but
quickened by our present theological tendencies. But the
scholastic questions respecting sin, once uppermost in our
discussions, have lost their old importance. Immediate
and mediate imputation, original sin, the moral status of
new-born infants, are not the subjects which occupy our
thought, but the awful fact of sin itself. To bring to
bear Christ's redemption to overcome it — this is what
seems to us most important ; and the theology that will
do this best seems to us the best theology, even though it
may not solve every theoretical problem respecting the
nature of sin.
We maintain no less strongly than of old the absolute
necessity of this redemption as supernatural and divine.
We are learning that it can be made effectual not only to
save the individual, but to renovate society. Our minis
ters are giving themselves eagerly to the study of sociol
ogy, that they may apply the Christian solution to its
problems. In our doctrine of redemption, while we are
exalting the kingly office of Christ, it is not at the ex
pense of his other offices. We hold as firmly as ever to
his atoning work. The change with respect to it is not
in the way of a weakening grasp upon the fact, but of an
increasing willingness to admit the imperfections of the
theories by which we strive to account for the fact. It is

OF THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT 543'
a common saying among us that the atonement is too large
to be held in the mould of any single theory. Yet I
think that most of us give it a Godward, as well as a
man ward, efficacy. One of the brightest jewels in our
Congregational crown is the memory of Horace Bushnell ;
but our best thought would not admit, unless I am much
mistaken, that this brilliant and spiritual theologian said
the last word on this high theme. What is called the
Catholic doctrine of the Atonement, namely, that Christ's
death was in some true sense the objective ground of the
forgiveness of sin, still commends itself to the larger num
ber of our Christian people.
The whole drift of modern thought, and the pressure
of the movement I have tried to describe, have been con
centrated upon the problems of eschatology. The conflict
of soul upon these subjects through which we have
passed has been no less intense, because we have known
that it was not peculiar to us. The old Calvinism, which
our fathers loyally accepted, left a part of mankind
wholly out of reach of Christ's redemptive grace. When
the New England theology broke the iron ring of this
consistent and logical system by the adoption of the doc
trine of a universal atonement, it was inevitable that new
questions should arise.
During the last decade we have been discussing, as the
world pretty well knows, the relation of the heathen to
God's grace in Christ. The old view, which prevailed
during the last century, and had many advocates until
quite recent times, doomed the lieathen as a mass to perdi
tion. This severe doctrine has been generally abandoned.
Our discussions have not been upon this point, but upon
the question as to the manner and grounds of the salva
tion of those heathen who are saved. The common view
has been that their imperfect faith, based upon their nat
ural knowledge of God and such elements of truth as are
to be found in their corrupt religions, is reckoned to them

544 THE PRESENT DIRECTION
for righteousness for the sake of Christ, who gave himself
a ransom for all, and that so their eternal destiny is
settled on the basis of the decisions of this life. The able
and devoted teachers in our beloved mother theological
seminary at Andover have urged the other view, common
in Germany, that an opportunity is granted the heathen in
the other life, between death and the judgment, to hear
the Gospel and accept or reject Christ. I do not propose
to enter into the merits of our controversy. So far as it
has involved unchristian bitterness, we are ashamed of it.
We are hard fighters on our side of the water, and both
parties have dealt heavy blows. The result of the discus
sion has been to emphasize the silence of the Scriptures
on the subject. The majority still hold the older view,
because it seems to us more in accord with the general
drift of the Scripture and the principles of our New Eng
land theology. But there is an increasing willingness to
admit that our speculations cannot exhaust the possibili
ties of God's redemptive grace, and that a point of this
sort can never permanently be made a test of orthodoxy.
The much more difficult question of future punishment
has not been the subject of important controversy among
ns. But it has profoundly affected us. Our deeper con
ception of Christianity, our enlarged view of the infinite
love and mercy of God, our stronger realization of the
power of Christ's redemption, have united to give this
subject a peculiar painfulness and solemnity. It has
pressed not only upon our theologians, but upon all our
thoughtful men and women. It is a subject of peculiar
difficulty to many of our most promising students of divin
ity. Some among us find relief in the theories of the
"larger hope" and "conditional immortality." If the
greater number continue to hold in substance the imme
morial doctrine of the Christian church, it is because we
cannot convince ourselves that the words of Christ and
his Apostles, fairly interpreted, sanction any other view.

OF THEOLOGICAL THOUGHT 545
It is with us a matter of loyalty to our Master, whose
word is our final authority. Our difficulties and perplexi
ties we cast on him, and leave him to show us at the
Last Day how this awful fact is consonant with love and
justice. Such is the present direction of theological thought
among us, so far as I am able to understand it, and, in the
brief time allotted me, to describe it. The outlook is one
of hopefulness. Our faces are toward the light. As we
are striving for more of the power of Christ in our life, so
we are striving for more of the truth of Christ in our
Christian thought. And we believe that we shall attain
it steadily as the years advance, " till we all come in the
unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of the Son of
God, unto a perfect man, unto the measure of the stature
of the fulness of Christ."
35

I. INDEX OF SUBJECTS

[The indices were prepared by the author's colleague and valued friend,
Professor Francis B. Denio. — Ed.]

Abelard, on atonement, 387.
Abraham, election and faith of, 425.
Absolute, a. necessary idea of the
mind, 12.
Actual sin, 311.
Adam, headship of the race, 186, 332 ;
sin of, 325 seq., and universal sin,
330 seq., 341.
Advents of Christ, in prophecy, 508
seq.
Agassiz, 299.
Agnostic philosophy, inconsistency
of, 12 seq. ; overmatched, 534.
Anabaptist doctrine of Second Com
ing, 5*3-
Angels inferior to men, 176 seq. ;
their place in the kingdom, 118.
Angel of Jehovah, 131.
Animals, under necessity, without
self-consciousness, 290.
Anselm, Cur Deus Homo, 153 ; sat
isfaction, theory of, 383 seq.
Antichrist, 516.
Apocalypse, 83 ; its value, 489 seq.
Apochrypha, 84.
Apollinarians, 149.
Apostles, inspiration of, 95 seq.
Arians, 148 ; arianism, 194 seq.
Arminian objection to God's inclu
sion of man's free acts in His plan,
236 seq. ; view of original sin, 332 ;
theory of atonement, 385 ; doctrine
of election, 431 seq.
Ascension of Christ, necessity and
meaning of, 144.
Assembly's Catechism. See West
minster's.

Assurance, Christian, a privilege,
475-
Athenagoras, the character of the
early Christians, 52 seq.
Atonement, a provision for the for
giveness of sin or reconciliation,
319, 367 ; rooted in the Old Testa
ment, 367 seq. ; typified in the high-
priest and his holiness, 367 ; in the
Old Testament sacrificial system,
368 ; in the teaching of the suffer
ing Messiah, 370 ; and the examples
of intercession, 371 ; the great
theme of the New Testament, 371
seq. ; in the first three gospels, 371
seq. ; John's gospel, 374 ; Paul's
writings, 374 ; originated in God's
love, 376 ; a reconciliation, 376 ; its
final cause holiness, 377 ; epistle
to the Hebrews ; Christ the perfect
sacrifice, 378 ; Peter's Epp. , 378 ; in
John's, 379 ; all teach the doctrine of
vicarious atonement, 379. Essential
in the redemptive work, 403 ; secures
an attitude of reconciliation on God's
part, 414 ; universality of, 411 seq. ;
nature of, its results, its relation to
punishment, 319 ; the doctrine cen
tral and unique in Christianity, 381 ;
history of the doctrine, 382 seq. ; its
importance always recognized, 382 ;
various theories, their excellences
and defects, 383 seq. ; value of the
theories, 389 ; it originated in the
love of God, 389 ; is by God to God,
also by man for man, 390 ; ground
of the efficacy of Christ's death as a
substitute, 391 seq. ; the doctrinal
statement, 394 ; reasonableness of
the doctrine, 394 seq. ; reasons for
objections to the doctrine, 39s ; ob
jections and replies, 396 seq.

548

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Augustin, St., 189 ; subordination-
ism of, 198 ; abridged the love of
God, 224 ; man " a great deep,"
282 ; made for God, 285 ; on the ori
gin of sin, 330; on the will, 331;
doctrine of election, 430 ; theory of
millennium, 515.
Authenticity of the Bible, 80 seq.
Authority of the Bible, 84, 87 seq. ;
supreme as the record of God's re
demptive revelation, 87 ; and giving
the mind of Christ, 88 ; in what
sense infallible, 104 seq.
Baptism into the name of the Trinity,
meaning of, 193.
Baronius, Cardinal, 251.
Bacon, 105 seq., 153.
Baker, 405.
Beecher, Dr. Lyman, the value of
moral freedom, 245.
Believer, union of, with Christ, per
sonal, the basis and source of the
work of grace, 465.
Bellamy, 242.
Bible, see Holy Scriptures.
Biblical criticism, results of, 84 seq. ;
justified, 108; attitude of Congrega
tionalists toward, 538.
Body, a unit with the soul in the ideal
man, 296, 327, 520 : the union disor
ganized by sin, 327, 520 ; dignified
by the doctrine of the resurrection,
521 ; sacred, 521 seq. ; resurrection
body, 523 ; life in, 524.
Bruce, 27.
Buddhism, conception of evil in, 242.
Burns, Robert, 341 seq.
Bushnell, Dr., 543 ; Christian faith,
38, 454 ; divinity of Christ, 142 ;
prayer, 276 ; theory of the atone
ment, 388.
Butler, Bishop, definition of proba
tion, 345 ; satisfaction of Christ,
391 ; argument for immortality, 479.
Byron, testimony to universal sin,
323-
Calling, the Christian, 472 seq.
Calvin, on God's method of educa
tion, 32 ; the Trinity, 198 ; abridged
the love of God, 224 ; Psa. v. 22 :
322; the sufferings of Christ, 385;
election, 430.
Calvinism, strong and weak points,

source of its power, 229, 430 seq. ;
tempted to over-emphasis of divine
immanence, 269; defects of its doc
trine of predestination, and its impli
cations, 431 ; early doctrine respect
ing non-elect infants, 416.
Campbell, McLeod, theory of atone
ment, 388.
Canon, biblical, development of, 81
seq. ; present tests of, 84,
Causation, ex nihilo nihil Jit belongs
to the realm of second causes, 256.
Cause, First, necessity of, 9 seq.
Chalcedon, council and creed, 150.
Chaldean Genesis, 249.
Chalmers, Dr., "Expulsive power
of new affection, "316.
Chance, no, 275.
Change of heart, 457 seq.
Character, in the region of ultimate
choices, 313 ; in the highest sense,
314 ; wrong, how formed, 327 ; Chris
tian, a means to service, 472.
Charisms of the New Testament,
partly natural, partly supernatural,
96 seq.
Cheerfulness, Christian, ground of,
227.
Children, relation to God, 224 seq. ;
moral character of, 343, 353 ; salva
tion of and its ground, 355 seq. ; not
threatened with eternal punishment,
356.
Choice, nature of, 309 ; kinds of
choices, 312 ; relation of, to charac
ter, 313 seq. , and habit, 314; su
preme wrong choice total depravity,
351 ; free, an ultimate fact, 339, 472,
and the essential element in sin, 339 ;
yet not an absolute power, 340.
Christian, the true, a Bible Chris
tian, 86 ; the knowledge of, 38 ; sins,
471 ; the thoughtful, a test of, 228.
Christian Church. See Church.
Christian Conception of God, 209
seq.
Christian Evidences, the new, 534
seq. See Evidences.
Christian experience verifies the
authority of the Bible, 84 ; is cor
rected by it, 85 ; is actual, 37 ; based
on the presence of God in the Trin
ity, 38 seq. ; individual experience,
40 ; that of the Church, 41 ; like
much of the knowledge of mankind,
4i.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

549

Christian life, progressive dying un
to sin and living unto righteousness,
467- See New Life.
Christian nurture, its relation to
change of heart, 464.
Christianity, character of, 42. See
Evidences. Character of, 42 ; a
practical remedy for sin, 37 ; truth
of, tested by practical trial only, 38 ;
effects of, on individual lives, 52 ; its
growth, 53 ; transforming power in
the world, 54 ; present power, 55 ;
Christian and heathen countries
compared, 55 ; present influence of
Christian nations, 56 ; Christian civ
ilization redeeming nature, and
teaching a new conception of duty
to the body, 72 ; relation of, to Juda
ism, 47, to heathenism, 48 ; to Pla
tonic philosophy, and the religions
of the ancient world, 49 ; its future,
537-
Christocentric theology, 188.
Christological problems, their dif
ficulty, 152. See Incarnation, and
Kenosis. The present nature of the
Christ, 167 ; present on earth by the
Spirit, 168.
Christologizing, the doctrine of
God, and other Christian doctrines,
especially that of His plan, 540 seq.
Church, its place in the kingdom,
122 ; experience of, 40 ; owes its
continued existence to the Bible,
86 ; the invisible ruled by Christ,
406 ; ordinances of, means of grace,
411 ; a missionary church. 516 seq. ;
the early, its views on eschatology,
and their importance, 502 seq.
Cicero, denies special providence,
274.
Coleridge, the atonement, 392.
Coming of Christ. See Second Com
ing.
Conditional immortality, the theory
subversive of revelation and implies
a denial of the divine existence, 29s
seq.
Congregationalists, attitude of, to
ward Biblical criticism, 538 ; toward
Christ, 544, and the great Christian
doctrines, 539, 544; creed of 1883,
535 ; their emphasis on spiritual con
ceptions of Christianity, 536 ; theo
logians of the past, 533, 536 ; theo
logical thought of, at the present
time, 533 seq.

Conscience, how best explained, 6 ;
witnesses to the divine law and au
thority of God, 289.
Constantine, 148, 511.
Controversies of the church, about
philosophy of theology, rather than
content of doctrine, 199.
Conversion, effects of, 39; a free
choice ofthe sinner, 461 ; relation of,
to regeneration, justification, and
faith, 462 seq.
Converted sinner, condition of, 467.
Corrupt nature, how formed, 327.
Cosmological argument for God's
existence, 9; attributes, self-caused,
omnipotent, 13.
Cosmogonies, scriptural, heathen,
and scientific, character and value
of, 248-256.
Council of Nice, 148; of Chalcedon,
ISO-
Covenant theory, 332.
Creation, character ofthe narratives
in Genesis, 287 ; the result of in
spiration and revelation, 250; com
parison with heathen and scientific
cosmogonies, 248 seq. ; scientific
cosmogony, science deals with sec
ond causes, the Bible a religious
book, 251 ; cosmogony in Genesis
corresponds to the character of the
Bible, 252 ; the two must differ, 253 ;
yet show wonderful harmonies, 254 ;
relation to evolution, 255. The nat
ure of creation, no eternal substance
outside of God, 256 ; creation caused
by the free determination of an infi
nite will as first cause, 257 ; invisible
like a miracle, 257 ; analogous to the
act of a man's free will, 258 ; or imag
ination, 259. Christian doctrine of,
the work of each person ofthe Trin
ity, 260 ; originated in the love of
God, for His self-manifestation, 261 ;
for His glory, 262, and the redemp
tion of man, 263.
Creationism, probably some form
preferab'e, 299.
Creeds, Nicene, 149; of Chalcedon,
150.
Criticism. See Biblical, higher.
Cur Deus Homo, 384.
Dana, on origin of man, 297.
Darwin, on the ancestor of man, 298.
David, received divine Spirit, 94.

550

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Days of Genesis, epochs, 254, 519.
Day of the Lord, 502 seq. An epoch,
519. Eschatological views of the
early church, 502 ; their importance,
503; New Testament teaching ofthe
last day, 504 seq. ; twofold, 505 ; prin
ciples of prophecy illustrated from
the Old Testament, 50 seq. ; the
near and the remote elements in the
New Testament, 508 seq. Prelimina
ries to the last day are : overthrow of
persecuting powers, 511 ; the prog
ress of the kingdom, 512 ; the work
of Antichrist, the conversion of the
heathen, 516 ; and the Jews are to
become Christians, 517. Events of
the last day, see Second Coming,
Resurrection, Judgment.
Dead, the occupations of, 493 seq.
Death, not natural, 61, 520 ; a sub
version of man's true destination, 61 ;
the result of sin, 61, 520 ; a check up
on sin, 180 seq. ; caused by the with
drawal of God's supporting power,
266 ; the consequence and the pun
ishment of sin, 318, 327, 520 ; a race
punishment, 348, 392, and blessing
and a motive, 349 ; destroyed in the
resurrection, 521 ; the Old Testa
ment antithesis, 482 ; the Old Testa
ment meaning, 483 ; new meaning
given by Jesus, 486 seq. ; spiritual,
487 ; the real, 495.
Death of Christ, vicarious or substi
tutionary, 372 seq.
Decision, life the time of, 420.
Decree of God, includes free
choices, 434 ; efficient and permis
sive, 239, 434.
Decretive will of God, 240.
Deism, has no God of providence,
265 ; denies God's government, 271,
and the universality of His provi
dence, 274.
Deity of Jesus Christ, 137 seq.
Delitzch, on Unitarianism, 205; on
the knowledge of the Trinity, 207 ;
on Psalms, in re immortality, 485.
Demoniacal possession, opinion of
Charles Kingsley, 65.
Depravity, total, a wrong supreme
choice, 351.
Destruction of Jerusalem, pro
phetic significance, 509.
Determinism, its teaching, and er
ror, 308 ; drift of philosophic and
scientific thought toward, 309 ; sub

versive of true theological ethics
and philosophy, 235 ; not to be ac
cepted, 472.
Disobedience to God, the negative
character of sin, 302.
Displeasure of God, evidence of the
Divine estimate of sin, 318 ; may be
turned to favor, 319.
Distributive justice of God, 386 seq.
Divine efficiency, 269 seq. , 333.
Divinity of Christ, the only mode of
explaining his life and character, 168
seq.
Docetists, 148.
Dorner, reason for the incarnation,
154 ; progressive incarnation, 162. .
Dwight, President, Jo. i. 9, 136; xiv.
28, 142 ; Ro. ix. 5, Tit. iii. 13, 146.
Earth, to be redeemed, 503.
Ebionism, 194.
Ebionites, 148.
Ebrard, 179.
Ecclesiastes, value of, 79 ; place
in the canon, 83.
Education, in and for redemptive
revelation, 28 seq. Education a
process of the mastery of the soul
over the body, 60.
Edwards, President, description of
conversion, 39 ; chief end of God in
creation, 230 ; optimism of, 242 ;
divine efficiency, 269 ; the will, 309 ;
original sin, 333.
Effectual calling, regeneration,
461.
Efficiency, divine, 269 seq. , 333.
Efficient decree of God, 239 seq.
Election, defined, individual and
national, 27 ; its roots, 28 ; in Old
Testament, 213, 216 ; Biblical teach
ing of, a teaching of special provi
dence, 274 ; prominence of the prin
ciple in the Old Testament, its nat
ure, 424 ; the human condition, the
efficiency of divine grace, Abraham's
case representative, 425 ; the New
Testament retains the same ideas
and adds a deeper meaning, 426 ;
Christ elected from eternity to be
King of an eternal kingdom, 427 ;
election of New Testament saints
also derived from the eternal pur
pose of God, to the blessings of re
demption, 427 seq. ; New Testament
doctrine practical, coincident with

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

551

the universality of the provision for
salvation, and the requirement of
personal faith, 429 ; historical forms
ofthe doctrine, 429 seq. ,- a consistent
doctrine possible, predestination in
cluded in the divine plan, 433 ; con
sistent with human freedom, effi
cient and permissive decrees, 434 ;
consistent with the universality of
provision of grace, 435 ; statement
of doctrine, 437; its place in
Christian doctrine, 437 ; taught in
Scripture, 438 ; useful for edifica
tion, 439 ; not used in full sense of
unbelievers, 435 ; the Christian's
election, 472.
El Shaddai, 192.
Emmons, Dr. , divine efficiency, 270 ;
original sin, 333 ; children, 344.
End, chief, of man, 468 ; man made
for redemption, 283 seq. ; for the
kingdom of God, 457.
Ends, ultimate and subordinate, one
supreme, 312.
Energy, dissipation of, proves a be
ginning, n ; a constant, because
God behind it, 266.
Environment and sin, 337.
Epiphany of Christ, 518.
Error in doctrine, arising from ne
glect of the Bible, 87.
Erskine, Thomas, 42.
Eschatology. See Day of the Lord,
Other Life. Present thought upon,
543-
Esther, book of, 79.
Eternal death, 327.
Ethnic religions, their narratives of
creation, 248.
Evidences of Christianity, vary ac
cording to the needs of the person
to be reached, 36 ; experimental
proof. See Christian Experience.
Confirmatory proof, nature of the
Christian system, character of this
proof, it might have been expect
ed from God, 42 ; adapted to the
needs of man, 43 ; Jesus Christ, of
whom the truth of Christianity is
the only adequate explanation, 44
seq. ; the relation of Christianity to
the history and religions of the
world, 47 seq. ; the evidence from
miracles, 50 seq. ; and from pro
phecy, 51 ; the effects of Christian
ity, in individual lives, 52 ; in its
growth, 53 ; in its transforming

power in the world, 54 ; its present
power, 55 ; the new Christian evi
dences, 534 seq.
Evil, natural and moral, 347 ; reason
for physical, 180.
Evolution, requires a divine cause
behind it, 10 seq. ¦ placed by some
in the place of God, 30 ; cosmogony
of, 255 seq. ; and the Bible, 296 seq. ;
does not account for sin, 307 ; be
come a friend to Christianity, 534.
Evolution of redemptive revelation,
30 ; mingling of natural and super
natural elements in, 31.
Example of Christ, belongs to His
atoning work, 366.
Experience. See Christian experi
ence.
Ezekiel, 83.

Faith, a receptivity, 435 ; condition
of election, result of gracious edu
cation, 425 ; of Old Testament saints
implicit, 415 ; character and efficacy
of implicit faith, 418; pre-Christian,
422 ; the human element in justifica
tion, 448 seq. ; nature of, erroneous
ideas concerning, 449 ; is trust, a
personal relation, 450 ; illustrations
from childhood, 451 ; from life in
general, in religion the same in kind,
differs in the nature of the object,
452 ; how it justifies, 453 ; without
merit, 454; essential to sanctifica
tion, 455 ; fruit of living faith, 469 ;
necessity of, in considering God's
plan, 246.
Faithfulness of God, rooted in His
holiness, 213.
Fall of Man, 325 seq. ; account in
Genesis historical, 324.
Family, its place in the Kingdom,
122.
Father, God, the meaning of the
name, 193 ; the originator of crea
tion, 260. See Trinity.
Fatherhood of God, nature of, 214
seq.; universal, 224 ; the basis of the
Gospel, 217.
Federal theory, 332.
Fisher, Professor, the Calvinist and
Arminian, 433.
Final judgment. See Judgment.
Finite nature of man, not the origin
of sin, 307.

552

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Forgiveness of sin. See Justifica
tion.
Fossils, types of the Christ, 181.
Freedom, of the will. See Choice.
An ultimate fact, 339 ; true meaning
of, 289 ; importance of the true doc
trine of, 308 seq. ; essential in morals
and religion, 235, 472 ; not license,
313 seq. ; involves control of the
physical world, 271 seq. ; necessity
and uses of, 244 seq. ; its reality and
that ofthe divine plan, not destroyed
by God's foreknowledge, 235 ; de
velopment of, in human life, 336 ; re
sults of its abuse, 327 ; essential ele
ment in sin, 337, 339; not an abso
lute power, 340 ; rarely exercised,
312; compatible with inability, 357
seq.
Fundamental theology, no.
Future life. See Other Life.
Future probation. See Probation.
Future punishment, present Con
gregational views on, 543.
Gambold, 227.
Gehenna, 495.
German thought, influence of, upon
American Congregational thought,
533-
Gess, Kenosis, 160.
Gideon, 93.
Glory of God, what, a purpose of
creation, 262.
God. See Creation, Father, Govern
ment, Holy Spirit, Holiness, Love,
Plan, Providence, Redemptive Rev
elation, Redemption, Son, Trinity.
His existence and nature known
from the natural revelation, 1 seq. ;
the proof the same as that of the ex
istence of men, and of the world, 2 ;
modes of revelation, 4 seq. ; nature
of God thus revealed, 12 seq. ; this
knowledge of God open to all men,
16 ; the God of grace, the God of
nature, His kingdom everywhere,
117 ; nature of the Christian's knowl
edge, 38 ; self-limitations of, 25 ;
names of, their significance, 192 ;
His glory a purpose in creation,
262; work of Father and Son, in
providence, 279 ; unchangeable,
232 ; just, 386 j wise, 232 ; meaning
of His repentance, 232 ; decrees of,
hatred and permission of sin, 239
seq. ; His estimate of moral values,
180 ; Christian conception of, He is

Holy Love, 210 ; this taught every
where by the Bible, 211 seq. ; espec
ially revealed in His fatherhood, 215;
character of redemptive love, 217 ;
importance and results of holding
true doctrine of God's character,
219 ; no excuse for ignorance, 220 ;
holiness not to be abridged, 221 ;
nor His love, 223 ; richer conception
of God in recent thought, 540.
Godet, 160.
Good works, meritorious, relation to
salvation, 469.
Gospel, the marvels of, 173 seq.
Gospels of the foremost importance,
78.
Government, God's, His providence
in the strictest sense, 270 ; of the in
animate world, not to be disputed
unless His freedom is denied, 271 ;
of spiritual beings, 273.
Governmental theory of the atone
ment, 386.
Grace, God's work of, manifested in
redemption, 24 ; the ground of, 328 ;
the relation into which mankind are
brought by Christ's work, 414 ; a
counterbalance for evil environ
ment, 437 ; immediately followed the
first sin, 327 ; work of, 445 ; power
of, 448 ; source of justification and
righteousness, 444 ; the efficient
cause of election, 425 ; gifts of, 435 ;
means of, 411 ; witnessed by the
Holy Spirit, may be exhausted,
410 ; unresisted, not irresistible,
462.
Gregory of Nyssa, 383.
Grotius, 387.
Guilt means responsible authorship
of sin, also exposure to the just dis
pleasure of God, always a personal
matter, degrees of, 316 seq. ; correl
ative and commensurate with pun
ishment, 317.
Habit, how formed, 314.
Hades, 491 seq.
Headship of the race, Christ's, 184 ;
Adam's, 186.
Heart, change of, 457 seq. ; instanta
neous ? 464.
Heathen, salvation of, 417, 420 seq. ;
saved by grace, 422 ; conversion
the subject of prophecy, 516 ; heath
en and Christian countries con
trasted, 55.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

553

Heathenism has vibrated between
polytheism and pantheism, 204-
ascribed moral evil to God, 211.
Hebrews, 83.
Heaven, an ideal of perfection actu
alized, 113. See New Life.
Heredity and original sin, 337.
Hesiod, 248.
Higher criticism. See Biblical criti
cism. Attitude of American Congre
gationalists toward, 538.
Hodge, Dr. Charles, truth in the doc
trine of the Trinity, 205 ; the extent
of redemption, 417.
Holiness is Christ-likeness, 306 ; of
God, a formal aspect of God's char
acter, 210; in what respect the
idea falls behind that of love, 217 ;
is the source of the faithfulness,
truth, and justice of God, 213 ; why
more fully taught in the Old Testa
ment, 221 seq. ; taken for granted
in the New Testament, taught that
it consists in love, 214 ; if abridged,
sin is minimized and the redemption
loses its significance, 221 seq.
Holy Scriptures. See Authenticity,
Authority, Biblical and Higher Crit
icism, Interpretation, Study. Essen
tially a religious book, 251 ; show
what man is in relation to God, 282 ;
nature and characteristics of, 75 seq.;
an organism, of which the redemp
tive revelation is the unifying prin
ciple, 76 ; or the Kingdom of God,
77 ; relation of parts, 77 seq. ; a rec
ord of the redemptive revelation,
22, 79 ; almost the revelation itself,
80 ; their importance for the indi
vidual Christian life and for the
church, 85 seq. ; the arbiter of con
troversies, 86 ; can endure criticism,
109 ; written chiefly by men inspired
in a general sense, 99 ; bear evidence
of preparation under the special in
fluence ofthe Holy Spirit, wiser than
unaided men, 100 ; inspired as a
whole and in the parts, 102 ; not to
be used to prove psychology, 296 ;
yet may imply a philosophy, 295 ;
renewed study of, 537; character of
this study, 538.
Holy Spirit, work of, in Old Testa
ment, 131 ; inspired Old Testament
workers, 93 seq. ; immanent princi
ple in creation, 260 ; agent for the ac
complishment of God's providence,
280 seq. ; represents the truth of pan
theism, 206 ; is God, 191 ; relations in

the Trinity, 201 ; operations in the
world, 202 ; the agent for the execu
tion of Christ's kingly office, 408 ;
represents Christ, capacitated the
disciples to do their work, evidenced
that Jesus was the Christ, 409 ; the
agent for the larger providential
work of Christ, 409 ; renders efficient
the preaching of the Gospel, regen
erating and sanctifying men, 410 ;
unifying the church, 4ir. His
agency in regeneration, 459 ; uses
the truth of the Gospel, work not
physical, 460 ; imparts life of Christ
to the believer, 465 ; His indwelling
a factor in the new life, gives the in
ner certainty to the Christian, 40 ;
speaks in Scripture, the supreme
judge for the determination of all
controversies, 91.
Homoiousios, 148.
Homoousios, 148.
Hopkins, 242 ; divine efficiency, 270 ;
original sin, 3^3.
Hopkinsian theology, relation to Cal
vinism, 269.
Humiliation of Christ's earthly life,
143-
Huxley, on first origin of the uni
verse, 10 ; monogenistic origin of
man, 299 ; the will, 310.
Ignorance, learned and unthinking,
152 ; respecting God inexcusable,
220.
Image of God, defined, retained and
defaced by fallen man, 291 ; as ori
ginal endowment, and as destina
tion, 292 ; Jesus Christ as image,
171.
Immanence of God, works in and
through creation, 267 ; the truth in
pantheism is greatly emphasized in
the Bible, 268 ; often over-empha
sized in Calvinism, 269 seq.
Immortality of the soul, not inde
structibility, 267; denied by ma
terialists, 477; evidence for, pre
sumptive from man's religious con
sciousness, 478 ; from his personal
consciousness, 478 seq. ; from the
capabilities of the soul developed in
this life, 480 ; from the relation be
tween evil and good in this life, and
the religious purpose of man's life,
481 ; positive evidence from the Bi
ble, 482 seq. ; Old Testament revel
ation limited, the reason, 484.

554

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Impulse in a man, in a brute, 309.
Imputation, immediate, mediate,
332.
Inability of sinner, in this life, 357
seq. ; in the future life, 360.
Incarnation, reason for, 153 seq. ;
possibility of, based in God's rela
tion to his creatures, 156 ; grounded
in God's love, 158 ; nature of, 158
seq. ; truly a revelation of God, 175 ;
the strongest argument for and
against Christianity, 178 seq.
Infallibility of the Bible, proper
and improper sense, 104 seq.
Infants, salvation of, 416; moral
character of, 343 seq.
Infirmity, sins of, 316.
Inspiration, broad doctrine of, in the
Bible, 92 seq. ; generic, supernat
ural, yet based upon the natural tal
ents of a person and conditioned by
them , 97 ; special of the Scriptures,
proper mode of considering the sub
ject, the Scriptures an organism, 98 ;
chiefly written by inspired men,
99; the record presumptively in
spired as well as the writers, 100 ;
not dictation, yet language bears
the marks of an inspiring God, 101 ;
testimony from the Bible, 101 seq. ;
nature and limitation of the inspi
ration of the Bible, 103 seq.
Interpretation, Biblical, correct
principles important because of the
importance of the Bible, '88. See
Study.
Infinite, a necessary idea of the
mind, 12.
Intercession, in the Old Testament,
371-
Intermediate state, Bible reticent
upon, 420 ; conscious existence in,
488 ; condition in, 489 seq., 493 seq. ;
its place, 491 ; in heaven, 492 ; ac
tivities of the blessed, 494 ; state of
the unblessed, 495 ; a period of ed
ucation, 498, 421 ; not purgatory,
498 ; may consist with infirmities
and frailties, 499 seq. ; a matter of
speculation, 501.
Iren/eus, 153.
Israel, Election of, 28.
Jehovah, 192.
Jephthah, 94.
Jerusalem, prophetic significance of
its destruction, 509.

Jesus Christ. See Atonement, Chris
tological Problems, Kingly Office,
Redemptive Work, Second Coming.
The proper spirit for the study of
Christ's person, 130 ; a proof of
Christianity in his human personal
ity, his teaching, plan, and its fulfil
ment, claim to divinity, and his
death, 44 seq. ; was educated for
his work, 29 ; his relation to the Old
Testament and to the law, 32 ; the
character of his knowledge ofthe Old
Testament, 82 ; inspiration of, 95 ;
miracles an essential part of his per
sonal revelation, 68 ; the central fact
of the divine plan, 231 ; the arche
type of the divine image in man,
293 ; the redeemer of man to that
archetype, 294 ; man made for him,
285 ; the standard by which to judge
of sin, 306 ; sanctified the body,
521 ; the God-man, that he might
make atonement for man, fitted by
his human experience, 390 ; knew
sin as nobody else did, 391 ; a sub
stitute in atonement, 391, 394 ; rela
tion to our punishment, 394 ; nature
of his work on earth, 403 ; prophet,
priest, and king, 363 ; the source of
our knowledge of the future, 476 ;
place in Congregational thought,
539-
Jesus the Christ, the living, ruling
Christ the great fact of facts, 129 ;
the early Christian confession, 130 ;
Old Testament teaching of the
meaning of the Christ, 131 seq. ; the
meaning to the early Christians, 133 ;
the pre-existent Christ, 133 seq. ;
summary of the Biblical teaching
concerning, 137 ; the Christ on
earth, incarnation, 137 ; Jesus a true
man, unique, 138 ; especially in
moral perfection, 139 ; teachings of
the Gospels and apostles, 139 ;
title, his self-consciousness, and
direct claims, 139 seq. ; the period
of his humiliation, 143 ; the ascend
ed Christ, New Testament teach
ings, 144 seq. ; resurrection and as
cension a coronation, 144 ; mean
ing of the Pentecost, manifestation
to Stephen and Paul, called Lord
and God, 145 ; position and son-
ship, association with the Father,
146 ; apostolic emphasis on the di
vinity, 147 ; the final judge, 146.
Doctrine of the Christian church,
147 seq.
Jesus Christ, relation of, to God and

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

555

the Creation, 170 seq. ; the key to
the problems of the universe, 171 ;
relation to God, Son, Word, Image,
171 ; true both of the pre-existent
Christ and of the exalted God-man,
173 ; Christ the revelation of God,
174 ; relation to angels, 176 ; rela
tion to the world, its maker, 177 ;
that it might be the theatre of his
redemptive work, 179 ; relation to
mankind, 181 ; creator in his own
image, 182 ; the ideal man, 182 ;
character attained through a real
human development, 184 ; nature of
the headship of the race, 184 ; how
gained, 186 ; rules the universe,
129, 404.
Jevons, science requires divine plan,
235-
Jews to become Christians, 517.
Jewish notions respecting justifica
tion, 442 ; persecuting powers to be
overcome, 511.
Josephus, Pharisees and Sadducees,
519-
Judaism, relation to Christianity, 47.
Judges, the Old Testament, 93.
Judgment, final, 487; definitely
taught in the Old Testament, 526 ;
particular and individual, 526 ; Jesus
Christ the judge, the judgment,
Christian judgment, 527 ; the divine
Theodicee, 420, 528 ; its minuteness,
529 ; begins the eternal age, and is
the conclusion of earthly history,
529-
Justice of God, rooted in His holi
ness, 213 ; distributive and general,
or rectoral, 386 seq.
Justification by faith, importance
ofthe doctrine, 440; justification or
the forgiveness of sins, a doctrine of
the Old Testament, 440 ; the basis
and means shown in the New Testa
ment, 441 ; full truth taught only af
ter Christ's ascension, 442 ; teach
ing of Paul, 442 seq. ; a means to
redemption, 445 ; not immoral, 440 ;
not sanctification, 447 ; means sanc
tification, 468 seq. ; relation to re
generation and conversion, afizseq.;
468 seq. ; how accomplished by faith,
453 ; accomplishes personal union
with Christ, 465.
Kenosis, 158 seq.; Scripture evi
dence, traditional view, 159; Lu
theran doctrine and its ground,

160 ; advantages and defects of the
theories, 164 ; the problem insolu
ble, 166.
Kingdom of God. See Redemption.
A redemptive kingdom, 21, 114; its
place in theology, no ; the princi
ple of unity in the Bible, 77 ; the
Summum bonum, 126 ; the purpose
for which man was made, 283 ; the
chief end of God's plan and man's
existence, 457 ; its meaning implies
a world of sin, in ; an ideal of per
fection, 112 ; and a process of re
demption for the realization of the
ideal, 113 ; its founding began with
the fall of man, 114 ; the Old Testa
ment dispensation a preparatory
stage, fully founded by Jesus Christ,
115 ; the actual work of the kingdom
begins after the ascension, 116 ;
organized after a heavenly, not
earthly order, 116 ; God reigns
through Christ, 117 ; the angels as
sociated with God and Christ, all
good men belong to it, 118 ; the
kingdom is entered by the new
birth, 188 ; is progressive, and spirit
ual, 119 ; with love as its law, 120 ;
all divine power enlisted for the
kingdom, work done by men, 120 ;
earlier stages used supernatural
agencies, later came natural agen
cies, corporate institutions are agen
cies, 121 ; especially the family,
church and state, 122 ; and all in
dustries, commerce, and the like,
123 ; it embraces all human inter
ests, 123 ; must not be confined to
the church, 124 ; is to be established
on earth, 125 ; when consummated,
487.
Kingly work of Christ, 402 seq. ,- a
necessary part of redemption, 364.
See Sanctification. Its meaning,
404 ; alone renders the atonement
effectual, little exercised while on
earth, began with the ascension,
403 ; constantly present and active
in the world, embraces the whole
universe, and all departments of
human life, with the purpose of the
salvation of men, 404 seq. ; more es
pecially in and over his church, 406 ;
the duration of the latter to be eter
nal, that of the former, not, 408 ; in
cludes union with the believer, 465 ;
executed through the Holy Spirit,
408 seq. ; as King, Jesus Christ is the
final Judge, 527.

556

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Kings in the theocracy, 94.
Kingsley, Charles, divinity of Christ,
47 ; demoniacal possession, 65.
Knowledge of the Christian, 38.
Last judgment. See Judgment.
Law, in what sense abolished under
the gospel, 467 seq.
Law, a necessity for the brute, a stand
ard for man, 310.
Law of God, definition, 302 ; known
by the heathen, 303.
Leibnitz, Theodicee, its defect, 242.
Lenormant, 251.
Lessing, education and revelation,
28.
Life, maintained by God's provi
dence, 266 ; a time of decision, 420 ;
Old Testament antithesis and mean
ing, 482 ; new meaning given by
Jesus, spiritual, 486 seq.
Likeness to God, in fact of person
ality, 288 ; different from image ?
291.
Limbus patrum, 492.
Livingstone, goal of human activity,
124 seq. ; working for Christ, 405.
Longfellow, 62, 347.
Love implies personal relations, 200 ;
the communication of self to others,
120; the sacrifice of self for others,
210 ; the law of the kingdom, 120 ;
the principle of the new life, 464.
Love of God, the same as holiness,
the essential principle .of His moral
nature, 210; the meaning of re
demptive love, 217 ; why less fully
taught in the Old Testament, 213 ;
how emphasized in the New Testa
ment, 214 seq. , purpose of, to pro
duce love, 218 ; error of abridging,
233 seq.
Lowell, 163.
Luther, doctrine ofthe Lord's sup
per as ground of the modern Keno
sis doctrine, 160.
Lutheran, early doctrine of unbap-
tized infants, 416.
Luthardt, "God is Holy Love,"
210.
Man, a mystery, solved by the Bible,
282 ; his chief end redemption, or
the kingdom of God, 283 seq. ; in
God's image, 262 seq. ; the normal

man a heavenly, 285 ; originally
good, 324 seq. ; true place of, in nat
ure, 59 ; dominion of, over the
body, 60 ; and the world, 61 ; made
for the divine indwelling, 157 ; for
fellowship with God, 285 ; subjected
to disease and death because of sin,
61 seq. ; created for Christ, 175 ;
made for redemption, 283 seq. ; fit
ted for his destination, 286 ; by spe
cial creation, 287, 296 ; in God's im
age, 288 ; by his sonship, 290 seq. ;
Jesus Christ his archetype, 293 seq. ,
a spiritual being, 296 seq. ; made to
be a unity of soul and body, 296,
327, 520 ; sin abnormal, 284 ; free
dom of, as distinguished from the
brute, 308 ; not to be understood in
his individuality, 335 ; ~the race a
unit, 298 seq. ; an organism, 334 ;
the race relation with sin. See Sin,
Condition of, as a sinner, mastery of
creation lost, 524 ; unity of soul and
body destroyed, 327, 520 ; is under
grace, 343 ; moral development is
in a place of probation, 344 ; con
nection with the race, 345 ; doubt
less in the best system for men who
are to be sinners, 346 ; under grace
and natural evils, 347 seq. ; the nat
ure evident when viewed in the
light of Christ's earthly life, 349.
The unconverted sinner wholly
alienated from God, no middle
ground, 350 ; may perform good
deeds and have many virtues, 352.
The unforgiven sinner in a state of
punishment, 355 ; unable to attain
his end apart from God's redemptive
grace, 336 ; this helplessness a con
dition of Christ's redemption, 358 ;
the help ceases with this life, 360.
Martensen, necessity of the incar
nation, 154 ; angels, 176.
Materialism, unequivocally exclud
ed in the Bible, 295 seq.
Matter, requires a creator, 11 ; not
eternal, 249, 256 ; a constant in the
universe, because God behind it,
266 ; heathen and Christian view of,
yet to be redeemed, 181 ; not the
origin of sin, 307 ; is good, 521.
Maxwell, Clerk. God necessary to
philosophy, 10.
Men, known by their self-revelation,
2. 3-
Messiah, prophecies of, 132 ; a suf
fering a foundation for atonement,
370 ; coronation of, 144.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

557

Mill, the Will, 310.
Millenium, mentioned in but one
passage, 512 ; various theories of,
512 seq.
Milton, 438, 541.
Minister, Christian, to persuade
men to make trial of Christianity,
4i-
Miracles, meaning, evidence dis
credited, used with timidity, reason
therefor, 58 ; moral meaning over
looked, a part of redemption, 59 ;
pre-suppose disturbance ofthe order
of physical nature by sin, 59 seq. ,-
are a divine restoration of the true
order of nature, 63 ; miracles of
judgment restore the powers of nat
ure to their true use, of mercy a
restoration of man's dominion over
nature, 65 ; their purpose is to re
veal God as the God of redemption,
66 ; a revelation in works, essential
part of the revelation of redemption,
67 ; pledges of the redemption of
nature, 69. Have ceased as the
supernatural revelation has ceased,
71 ; nature to be restored as the re
sult of a spiritual redemption, 71
seq. ; a proof of Christianity, their
nature, a part of the revelation, value
to spectators, to believers now, 50 ;
criteria, 51.
Missions, nature and motives of, 125,
423-
Mivart, origin of man, 297.
Monophysites, 149.
Monotheism, bare of Unitarianism
not found in the ethnic religions,
cannot satisfy the heart, 205.
Montanists, 513.
Moral attributes of God, 15 ; moral
development of Christ, 184 seq. ,
moral influence theory ofthe atone
ment, 386 seq. ; moral proof of God's
existence, 6, 7.
Moral system, this, its excellences
and dangers, 346 seq. ; moral train
ing of men by probation, 325.
Moses, 93.
MCller, Max, thought needs words,
172.
Names of God, significance, 192.
Natural man, 350 ; " Natural man "
of the theologians, 343 ; natural rev
elation of God, modes of, 4 seq. ;

contents of, 12 seq. ; insufficient on
account of sin, 19.
Natural and spiritual, relation of,
68 ; natural selection, 297.
Nature, physical, a similitude of
God, a revelation, 262 ; character of
its laws, 269 ; common order of, not
the true order, a false order caused
by sin, 63 ; not sin, yet leading to
sm. 337 ! to be redeemed, 69, as the
result of spiritual redemption, 71 ;
man's relation to, 524.
Neander, 224.
Nestorians, 149.
New Life, goal of the redemptive
work, 457; begin* with the change
of heart, 457 ; nature and greatness
of the change, 458 ; twofold aspect,
regeneration and conversion, 4^,9 ;
means, persuasion of the truth, con
version, 461 ; relations, result a new
man, 464 ; factors of the new life,
personal and spiritual union of the
believer with Christ, 465 ; indwell
ing of the Holy Spir.t, faith, 466 ;
fellowship of Christians, 467 ; pro
cess of, see Sanctification, Voca
tion unto special service. 472. See
also Perseverance, and Assurance.
New man, the result of a change of
heart with a principle of love, 464.
New England, doctrine of original sin,
333 ; theology and theory of the
atonement, 386 ; theology, origin,
defects, causes of its decline, 533
seq.
New Testament, authorship of its
writings, 99 ; relation of, to the Old
Testament, 77, 31 seq. ; by what
teaching joined, no ; contrasts with
Old Testament in teaching of God,
211 seq. ; dispensation universal,
216 ; forgiveness in, 442, 441 seq. ;
election in, 426 ; teaching of im
mortality, 486 ; prophecy similar to
Old Testament prophecy, 508 seq.
Nice, Council of, 148 ; creed of, 149.
Noah, 496.
Obedience of brutes to law, and of
men, 310.
Oehler, " Wisdom of God," 234.
Offices of Christ, 363.
Old Testament, its form due to the
Jewish church, 81 ; authorship of
its writings, 99 ; Canon, books of,
admitted on grounds of national

558

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

tradition, and closely connected
with the national history, also in
organic relation with redemptive
revelation, disclose the immediate
impression of the Holy Spirit, sanc
tioned by Christ, 82; relation to
the New Testament, 31 seq., 77 ; by
what teaching joined, no ; contrast
ed teaching respecting God, 211
seq. ; particularism, 223 ; reason of,
216 ; prophecies and types in the
New Testament, 507 seq. ; fulfil
ments of, 517 ; limited in revelation
of immortality, 483 ; reason, 485 ;
forgiveness in, 440 seq. ; teaching
of election, 424 ; salvation of Old
Testament saints, 415.
Omniscience, more than foreknowl
edge, 237 ; includes the free acts of
men, 236.
Ontological argument, 11, 12 ; at
tribute of God, 13.
Optimism of Leibnitz, and New Eng
land theologians, 242.
Orelli, Jesus and the Old Testament
law, 32.
Origen, pre-existence, 300; theory
of ransom, 383.
Original sin, 330 seq. ; Chap. xvii.
301 seq.
Original state of man, 324 seq.
Other life, the limitations of knowl
edge of, source of knowledge, 476.
See Immortality, Intermediate State.
Progressive, 417.
Pain, its place, 347 seq.
Pantheism, no God of providence,
265 ; the truth in it, 268.
Pantheistic philosophy overmatch
ed, 534.
Papacy, the persecuting, a type of
antichrist, 516.
Paradise, symbolic meaning of ex
pulsion from, 326.
Pardon, offered on condition of
faith in Christ, 37.
Parousia, not at Christ's first com
ing, nor spiritual presence in the
world, 506 seq.
Particularism of Old Testament,
216.
Pascal, 51.
Paul's philosophy, 170; his doctrine
of justification, 442.
Pelagius, doctrine of sin, 331.

Penal substitution theory of atone
ment, 384.
Pentecost, its significance, 96, 145.
Perfection, not attained in this life,
469 ; criticism of theories of, 470.
Permission of sin. See Plan.
Permissive decree of God, 239 seq.
Perseverance, teaching of Script
ure, 473 ; objection and answers,
474 seq.
Personality, the likeness of men to
God, its meaning, 288 seq.
Pharisees, 519.
Philosophy, necessity of, 170 ; and
Scripture, on the nature of man, 294
seq. ; its treatment of the problem
of evil, 242 seq. ; of Greece and
Rome, once attained a theistic con
ception of God, 16. Of theology,
the region of controversies, 199.
Physical science, dealing with the
past history of the world, 251 ; re
specting the origin of men, 296 seq.
Physical nature, not the origin of
sin, 307.
Plan of God, belongs also to philoso
phy and science, 228 ; nature of,
originated in the holy love of the
triune God, 229 ; included redemp
tion, and sin, 230, m ; has special
relation to Christ, is a unit, all
comprehensive, 231 ; unchangeable,
232 ; eternal, 433 ; free, 233 ; rela
tion of the plan to the physical
world, 234 ; to freedom, 235 ; estab
lished freedom, 236 ; includes free
acts and choices of men, how ac
cordant, 237 ; relation to human
sin, 238 ; God absolute, sin exists by
His permission in His wisdom, 239 ;
reason for the permission of sin,
and various theories, 241 seq. , the
plan must be regarded in relation to
redemption, value of moral free
dom, 244 ; no theodicy yet com
plete, necessity of faith, originated,
carried on and to be consummated
in holy love, 246 ; not an essential
doctrine, 246 ; every Christian's life
a plan of God, 472.
Plato, argument for immortality, 478
seq.
Platonic philosophy, relation to
Christianity, 49 ; matter evil, 521 ;
realism and sin, 330.
Pope, chance, 275.
Prayer, relation to God's providence,

Index of subjects

559

275 seq. ; proper use of, 276 ; a
means of grace, 411.
Preceptive will of God, 240.
Predestination. See Election.
Prediction, an essential element of
prophecy, as a proof of Christianity,
5L 52.
Pre-existence of men, 300; of
Christ, 133 seq.
Pre-millennial coming of Christ,
statement and criticism of doctrine,
513 "q.
Present tendencies of theological
thought in the Congregational
churches of the United States, and
past history, 533 seq.
Preservation, creation sustained
only by the constant exercise of
God's power, 265 ; matter, energy,
life, 266 ; and the human spirit due
to this power, 267.
Presumptuous sins, 316.
Priesthood of the Old Testament,
367 seq.
Priestly work of Christ, a necessary
part of the redemption, 364. See
Atonement.
Probation, moral development
under, 344 ; Butler's definition, 345 ;
nature and purpose, 325 ; real nat
ure revealed by Christ's earthly life,
349 seq. ; not a right to be claimed,
496 ; extended or future, 418 ; the
theory a right to exist, 419 ; a specu
lation, 501 ; not satisfactory, 419 ;
nor probable, 495 seq.
Prodigal son, meaning of the
parable, 441.
Progressive incarnation, 162.
Prophecy as proof of Christianity,
51 ; nature of, 505, 507 ; nature of
its fulfilments, 507 ; of Old Testa
ment and New Testament, similar
in character, perspective of, 508.
Prophets, in theocracy, 94 ; self-
consciousness not overborne, 97.
Prophetic work of Christ, a neces
sary part of redemption, reveals
God's atoning love, and character,
365 ; man's true nature, pledges the
redemption of nature, 366.
Protestant and Catholic countries
contrasted, 55.
Protestantism based upon the
Bible, 87.

Providence of God, subject impor
tant, fully taught in the Bible, 264 ;
the Christian doctrine is theistic,
265. See Government, Preserva
tion, Immanence. Providence uni
versal, special, 274 ; no chance ; re
lation to prayer, 276 ; to sin ; provi
dence the execution of God's plan in
time, 277 ; the chief end is redemp
tion, 278 ; shared by each of the
Trinity, 279.
Psalms, value of, 78.
Psychological proof of God's exist
ence, 7, 8 ; indicates personality, 14
seq.
Psychology in Scripture, 295.
Punishment, a reaction of God's
nature against sin, correlative with
guilt, 317 ; the natural consequences
of sin, including death, commensu
rate wtth guilt, retributive, primarily
a means of reclaiming the sinner,
318 ; later of nullifying the effect of
sin, closely related to the atone
ment, 319 ; its function in this life,
348 ; future, an exclusion from sal
vation because of sin freely com
mitted, 429.
Purgatory, distinguished from the
intermediate state, doctrine criti
cized, 498.
Race of Man, an organism, 344.
Raleigh, Dr., evolutionary theory
of sin, 307.
Ransom, theory of atonement, 383.
Realism of Plato, 330.
Reason furnishes test for Christian
ity, power limited, 44.
Reconciliation, true nature of,
397 ; reconciliation theory of the
atonement, 388.
Records of the Past, 249.
Rectoral justice of God, 386.
Redemptive love, character of, 217.
Redemptive revelation, the best
designation of the Christian revela
tion, named from its purpose, as
sumes universal revelation, 18 ;
necessary on account of sin, 19 ; to
supply a real and correct knowledge
of God, 20 ; a means to redemption,
or the Kingdom of God, no after
thought, 21 ; contents of, primarily a
disclosure of God, recorded in the
Bible, 22 ; especially of God as Re
deemer, as perfect love, 23 ; as

560

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Father, Son, and as Spirit, a mani
festation of God's work of grace as
Father, Son, and Spirit, 24 ; method
of revelation, 25 ; supernatural, not
provided for in the natural revela
tion, 26; began with individuals,
based upon election, 27 ; educa
tional, 28 ; progressive, an evolu
tion, 30 ; the earlier stages relatively
imperfect, 32 ; the Old Dispensa
tion the first stage, God revealed at
second-hand, 32 ; the New Dispen
sation, God revealed in the Son, the
consummation of the redemptive
revelation, 33 seq. ; a new revela
tion hereafter ? 35 ; this revelation
the unifying principle of the organ
ism of the Bible, 76 ; of words and
of works, 6y ; definition of, mode of
transmission of the earlier stages,
79 ; to be expected from God, 42 ;
worthy of Him, suited to the needs
of men, 43 ; adds new and higher
facts respecting God's providence,
277 seq.
Redemptive work of Christ. See
Atonement, Holy Spirit, Justifica
tion, Kingly Work, Sanctification.
The parts of the work and their re
lations, 402 seq. ; meaning of re
demption, 361 ; beginnings of pro
vision for redemption, 362 ; the three
offices of Christ, 363 ; necessity of
keeping all in mind, center in the
atonement, 364 ; revelation, 364 ; in
teaching, in his person, 365 ; in his
example, and in his miracles, 366 ;
his priestly work, 367 seq. ; scope of
the redemptive work, 411 ; provision
for_salvation universal, 412 ; the race
brought into relations of grace, 413 ;
salvation of Old Testament saints,
415; of infants, 416 ; of heathen, 417
seq.
Redemption, kingdom of, the same
as the kingdom of God, 21 ; re
demption the process of the actuali
zation of the kingdom of God, 113 ;
the largeness of the Scriptural idea,
20, 67, 361 ; revelation of, 67 ; to
restore the pristine beauty and
perfectness of the image of God and
to develop it, 292 ; embraces pri
marily the spiritual, secondarily
what is called the secular, 123 seq. ;
includes the body, 520 seq. ; the key
to Old Testament prophecy, 507;
a purpose of creation, 263 ; the pur
pose for which man was made, 283 ;
the goal of the divine plan, 230 ; the

chief end of God's plan and of man's
existence, 457 ; no afterthought, 113,
284, 327 ; implies that man was
made to love God, 284 ; to have
communion with Him, and is for
Christ, 285 ; it is, for the race, and
implies supremacy over nature, 286 ;
the chief end of God's providence,
278 ; that which throws light on the
problem of evil, 244 ; implies exist
ence of sin, 284 ; presupposes the
helplessness of the sinner, 359 ;
ground of redemption, 326, 328 ;
present Congregational thought on,
542.
Regeneration, nature of, agent in,
459 seq. ; by Christ through the
Spirit, 410 ; relation to conversion,
justification and faith, 462 seq. ; 468
seq. ; not physical, 460 ; is " effectual
calling," 461 ; effects internal spiri
tual union with Christ, 465 ; means
sanctification, 468 seq.
Religions of the ancient world, re
lation to Christianity, 49
Religious proof of God's existence,
5, 6 ; attribute of God, love, re
vealed in religious experience, 15,
16.
Repentance, of God, 232.
Resurrection and ascension of
Christ, the coronation of the Mes
siah, 144.
Resurrection, 487; the double,
515 ; of the dead, Old Testament
hints, 519 ; a physical redemption,
deliverance from the power of death,
520 ; of an identical body, 522 ; a
completion of redemption, 523 ; life
in resurrection body, 524 ; of un
believers, 525.
Revelation. See Prophetic Work
of Christ, Redemptive revelation.
Meaning of, 2 ; implies a revealer
and a mind able to receive it, con
ditioned by the receptivity of the
mind, 25 ; of God within the reach
of all men, not rightly interpreted
by all, yet once so done, 16 ; in
Christ illuminates the natural reve
lation, 17 ; needed to make known
the character of God, 209, 211 seq. ;
a prerequisite to the redemptive
work, 402; in Old Testament limited
as to immortality, 484.
Righteousness of God His forgiving
grace, 445.
Roman persecuting powers, 511.

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

561

Romans, Epistle to, 78.
Roman Catholic, doctrine of justifica
tion, 447 ; of unbaptized infants, of
release from Hades, 416 ; of limbus
patrum, 492 ; of purgatory, 498 seq. ,
countries contrasted with Protestant,
55 ; religion not anti- Christian, 516.
Rome, church of, not the kingdom of
God, 120.
Rupert of Deutz, 153.

Sabellianism, 194.
Sacraments, means of grace, 411.
Sacrificial system of the Old Testa
ment, 368 seq.
Sadducees, 519.
Salvation. See redemption. When
complete, 414 seq. ; includes good
works, 469 ; beginning and comple
tion of, 445 seq.
Samson, 94.
Saul, 94.
Sanctification, distinguished from
justification, 447 ; faith essential for,
455 ; hy Christ through the spirit,
410 ; relation to justification and re
generation, 468 ; not attained in this
life, 469 seq.
Satisfaction theory of the atone
ment, 383 seq.
Saumur, mediate imputation, 332.
Science accords with Scripture as to
divine plan, 234 seq. ; original sin,
335-
Scientific evolution and Biblical
cosmogony, 250, 255 ; tendency in
re the will, 309 seq.
Scriptures. See Holy Scriptures.
Second Advents, 513.
Second Coming of Christ, 487 ; the
consummation of the kingdom, 125,
519 ; Christ's language concerning,
505 ; ushers in the last day, 517 ;
' consummation of redemptive pro
cess, time uncertain, in kingly glory,
518 ; the day of the Lord, 519 ; in
prophecy, 508.
Self, known by self-revelation, 2-4.
Self-consciousness, how possible
in men, 206 ; in God through the
Trinity, 207.
Selfishness, nature of, 210, 305 ; not
self-love, 305 ; the positive element
in sin, 304.

Self-love, not selfishness, 305.
Semi-Arianism, 195 ; Semi-Arians,
148.
Shaddai, El, 192.
Sheol, 483 ; as a place, 491; mean
ing. 493-
Shekinah, 131.
Sin, nature of, 301 seq. , 458 ; to be
understood in the light of redemp
tion, 301 ; disobedience to the di
vine will, 302 ; rejection of the God
of redemption, selfishness, 304 ; un-
christlikeness, essential principle,
abuse of human freedom, 306 seq. ;
sins of state and of act, 311 seq. See
Guilt. Relation to punishment, 317 ;
to atonement, 319 ; gravity of, 320 ;
universal, 321 seq. , began with the
fall, 323 seq. ; the results and penal
ties, 325 ; immediately followed by
grace, 326 ; connection between the
fall and the universality, 328 ; theo
ries of original sin, 330 seq. ; the race
an organism, 334 ; man more than
an individual, heredity, 335 ; envi
ronment, freedom, 336 ; their rela
tion to sin, 337 ; to Adam's sin and
universal sin, 341 ; effects of sin,
112 ; on the spiritual perception,
19 ; disturbs man's true relations
with nature, 61 seq. ; disturbs the
order of physical nature, 59 ; the
cause of death, 327, 392, 520 ; ef
fects of, to be removed by salvation,
414 seq. ; its existence implied in
man's destination for redemption,
not an essential idea in man, an
abuse of his faculties, abnormal,
284 ; the anomaly of the universe,
320 ; included in the divine -plan,
and provided for, 21, 111, 156, 230,
238 seq. ; must always be consid
ered in connection with redemption,
244; relation to God's providence,
277 ; minimized when God's holiness
is abridged, 221 ; useful or necessary
in a moral system ? 242 ; sin of im
perfection in heaven ? 499.
Sin, present Congregational thought
about, 542.
Sinner, man's condition as, 343 seq. ;
as a converted sinner, state of con
verted sinner under divine law, 467
seq.
Smith, H. B., meaning of the relig
ion of the agnostic, 13 ; God's
glory as a motive, 230 ; divine love
and holiness, 210.

562

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

Socrates, why his teaching failed,
365.
Son, is God, 191 ; the executor of
creation, 260 ; subordination of, 198.
Sonship in God, meaning of, 171.
Son of man, meaning, 139 seq.
Sonship of man, the scriptural con
ception of his nature, 290; is the
image of God, remains in fallen
man, 292.
Sorrow, place in this world, 347 seq.
Soul and body, made to be a unit,
296, 327, 520.
Special providence, 274
Speculation, limitations and uses,
152 seq.
Spencer, respecting the absolute,
12 ; the will, 310.
Spirit of Christ, 136 seq. ; an earnest
of the physical redemption, 521.
Spirit of God. See Holy Spirit.
Spirit of man, preserved by God's
providence, 267.
Spiritual body, meaning of, 523;
spiritual conception of Christianity
among Congregationalists, 536 ; life,
486, death, 327, 487 ; and natural
relation of, 68.
Spiritualistic theory of man im
plied in the Bible, 295.
Spontaneity, not true freedom, 289.
Stanley, 405.
State, and the kingdom, 122.
Stephen, view of Christ, 145.
Study of the Bible, importance of,
88 ; to be under the guidance of
God's Spirit, in the light of expe
rience, and the teachings of the
Christian church, 89 ; close and crit
ical, with the recognition of the his
torical and progressive nature of
revelation, 90 ; the results, 91.
Suffering, reason for, 180 seq.
Substitution, symbolic in Old Tes
tament sacrificial system, 368 seq. ,
penal theory of atonement, 384.
Substitutionary death of Christ,
taught in the New Testament, 372
seq.
Supernatural agencies, indispen
sable for revelation, used with wise
economy, 26 ; and natural, not con
flicting, become incorporated, a heal
ing and restorative element, 27.

Supreme, end, 312 ; choice, 313 seq.
Systematic theology, no.
Taine, 129.
Taylor, Dr. Nathaniel, theodicy,
243 ; the will, 309 ; original sin, 333
seq.
Teleological argument for God's
existence, 8, 9 ; indicates personal
ity, 14, 15.
Temptation, the first, nature of, 325
seq.
Tendencies of present Congrega
tional theological thought, 533 seq.
Tennyson, 130, 264.
Testimonium Spiritus Sancti, 40,
539-
Theodicee, of Leibnitz, Taylor, 242 ;
the complete not yet thought out,
246 ; final judgment, the great, 420,
528.
Theistic natural theology, 1 seq.,
278.
Theologian, test of, 228.
Theological, philosophical and
physical science, 294 seq.
Theology, fundamental, systematic,
no ; Christian, assumes the reality
and truth of universal revelation,
18 ; difficulties of, 129 ; proper spirit
of study of, 130 ; Christocentric, or
theocentric ? 188 ; neglected, new
interest in, 534.
Thirty-nine Articles, predestination
and election, 439.
Thomasius, 160.
Thoughtful Christian, test of, 228.
Total depravity, a wrong supreme
choice, 351.
Traducianism, 299.
Trench, 127 seq.
Trichotomy, not proved from
Scripture, 296.
Trinity, the doctrine most sacred,
189 ; Scripture doctrine rooted in
Old Testament, 189 ; why the unity
emphasized in the Old Testament,
190 ; Old Testament elements, the-
ophanies, predictions of the Mes
siah, Spirit of God, New Testament
teaching wholly trinitarian, 191 ;
meaning of the names of God, 193 ;
of baptism into the Trinity, 193 ;
the doctrine held at first by Chris
tians without reflection, 193 ; devel-

INDEX OF SUBJECTS

563

Oped by controversy, heretical ten
dencies, 194 ; the essential points of
the orthodox doctrine, 195 ; triper-
sonal and unipersonal, 196 ; denotes
relations within the Trinity as well
as to the world and men, 197 seq. ;
doctrine reveals God not as bare
unity, but as having fulness of life,
199 ; is love which implies personal
relations, this in God explains the
Trinity, 200 ; relations within the
Trinity, meaning of Fatherhood
and Sonship, 201. The doctrine
reasonable, 202 seq. ; though it con
tains an element of incomprehensi
bility is not pre-eminently mysteri
ous, 203 ; analogies against the Uni
tarian view, reasonable as compared
with the ethnic religions, 204 ; unites
the truths in the various philosoph
ical theories, 205 ; accords with
Christian experience, 207 ; each of
the Trinity concerned in provi
dence, 279.
Tritheism, 195.
Truth of God, rooted in His holiness,
213.
Truth, the means especially em
ployed in regeneration, 460.
Unchangeableness of God, 232.
Union with Christ, nature and ef
fects, Scripture teaching concern
ing, 465*
Unitarian controversy, 540.
Universality of sin, a fact, 322 seq. ;
the reason, 323 seq.
Universe ruled by Christ, 129, 4°4-

Vicarious, death of Christ taught,
372 seq. ; idea in the Old Testament
sacrifices, 369 seq. See Atonement.
Virtues, natural, their value, 352.
Vocation, the Christian, 472.
Volition, not choice, 312.
Wallace, origin of man, 297.
Wesley, perfection, 471.
Westminster Catechism, definition
of God, 17 ; person of Christ, 150 ;
God's plan, 232 seq. ; chief end of
man, 283 ; sin, 302 ; degrees of guilt,
316 ; effectual calling, 461 ; future
life, 500.
Westminster Confession, God the
supreme authority, 88 ; so the Holy
Spirit speaking through Scripture,
91 ; calls the pope antichrist, 516.
Whedon, perfection, 471.
Whittier, Trinitas, 208.
Will. See Choice, Determinism,
Freedom. Augustin's doctrine that
of Pelagius, 331 ; God's, twofold
sense of, 240.
Wisdom of God, 232.
Word, means of regeneration, 460 ;
of grace, 411.
World, known by its self-revelation,
2, 3 ; made to be the theatre of
Christ's redemptive work, 179 ; to
be redeemed, 503.
Wrath of God, 355 ; a matter of de
gree, 356.

IL INDEX OF SCEIPTUEE PAS
SAGES

Genesis.
Chap. Page
i  248, 287
i. 2  202
i. 24, 26  287
i. 31   182
ii  287, 323 seq.
ii. 7  267, 287, 298
ii. 19  287
iii  323 seq.
iii. 15  132
v. 1, 3  292
vi. 7, 8 ; vii. 21  299
vii. 22  287
viii. 1 seq  299
viii. 22  266
ix. 6  292
xii. 1-3  42S
xii. 3  132
xv. 6  415, 425
xvii. 1  192
xviii. 18  132
xviii. 25  212
xxii. 11, 12, 15  131
xxii. 18,  132
xxv. 8  483
xxv. 22, 23  425
xxvi. 4, xxviii. 14... 132
xxxi. n, 13 ; xxxii.
30  131
xxxv. 29  483
xiv. 5-8  273
xlix. 10  ¦. . 132
xlix. 29, 33  483
Exodus.
iii. 2,4  131
iii. n, 12; iv. 1-23.. 93
vi. 3  192
xvii. 14  101
xx. 3  190
xx. 5, 6  441
xx 12  484

Chap.

Page

xxiv. 3-8  373 Chap.

2 Samuel.

Page

vii. 12-16, 25  132
xxiii. 2  94
1 Kings.

xxxi. 14  484
xxxii. 30  371
xxxiii. 14  131
xxxiv.- 6, 7  441
xxxiv. 27, 28  101 viii. 46  322

Leviticus.

V. IO 
xvii. 11 . ..
xx. 7, 26 . .
xxv. 47-55.

316369212 372

Nehemiah.
ix. 20, 30. . . ; 

Numbers.

xi. 17 seq ....
xi. 25-27 
xv. 30 
xviii. 15, 16..
xxi. 4-9 
xxiv. 17 seq. .
xxv. 13 
xxxiii. 2 
xxxv. 31, 32.

9394
316372374 132
371 101
372

Job.
iii. 13-19 ; x. 21, 22.
xix. 25-27 
xxxiv. 14, 15 

Deuteronomy.
.... 190,

vi. 4 
vii. 6-8 
x. 15 
xxvii. 26 . .
xxxi. 19 . . .
xxxii. 6, 19
xxxii. 21 . .

Judges.
vi. 24 ; xi. 29 ; xiii.
25 
1 Samuel.
x. 6 ; xvi. 13 ; xix.
23. 24 

449
425 213443 101
213 137

94

94

Psalms.
ii  132, 4°5i
v. 12 
xvi. 10, 11; xvii. 15 .
xix, 1 
xix, 12, 13 
xxii. 28 
xxxii. 9 
xxxvi, 6 
xiv 
xiv. 6, 7 
xlix. 15 
1. 21 
lxv. 9, IO 
lxvi. 9  , 
lxxii 
lxxiii. 23-26 
lxxvi. 10 
lxxxvii. 2 
lxxxviii. 5; xciv. 17,
xcviii. 9 
cii. 25-27 
civ. 29, 30 
ex 

cxv. 17..
cxix. 96.

94

483
484 267

508 322485261316 273
290 267 132137
485 221268267 132485273 213
4«3 132137
266 132
483 443

INDEX TO SCEIPTUEE PASSAGES

565

Chap. page
cxix. 105  gi
cxxxv. 6  271
Proverbs.
viii. 14  40
viii. 22-26  234
xvi. 9  273
xvi. 33  275
Ecclesiastes.
iii. 11  *  12, 480
Isaiah.
vi. 3  209
viii. 1  101
ix. 6, 7  132 seq.
xi. 2  94
xi. 6-9  512
xiii. 6-14  517
xiv. 9-20  483
xxvi. 19  485. 5*9
xxx. 8  101
xxxv  512
xxxv. 4  132
xxxviii. 11  483
xl.-lxvi  133
xl. 3, 10  132
xl. 13  137
xiii. 1  94. 426
Iiii  133
Iiii. 7-10  374
lv. 1  412
lvii. 15  158
lx  512
Ixi. 1  94. 95
lxiii. 9  131
lxv. 20  512
lxvi. 24  485
Jeremiah.
xxx. 1, 2  101
xxxi. 9, 20  213
xxxi. 31-34. -33- 373- 442
xxxvi. 2  101
Ezekiel.
ii. 2  94
xxiv. 1, 2  101
xxxvii. 1-14  5T5
xxxvii. 12-14  5J9
Daniel.
iv. 25  273
vii. 13 seq. . 133, 14°. 5lS
ix. 24-27  *33
xii. 2  485. 519. 525

Hosea.
Chap. Page
vi. 2  519
ix. 7  94
xiii. 14  519
Joel.
ii. 28, 29  94
ii. 29-32  517
ii. 32  137
iii. 14-21  517
Amos.
v. 18-20  517
MlCAH.
iii. 8  94
iv. 1-4  512
v. 2 seq  133
Habakkuk.
ii. 14  5°4
Zephaniah.
i. 14 ; »¦ 3  5i7
Zechariah.
vii. 12  93
ix. 9, 10 ; xii. 10.... 512
xii. 10-13; xiii. 7... 371
xiv. 1-9  517
Malachi.
iii. 2-18 ; iv. 1-3 ... 517
2 Maccabees.
vii. 9, 11, 14, 23, 29,
36  519
Matthew.
i. 18-25  I38
i. 21  372
iii. 17  175. 427
iv  138
iv. 1-18  139
v  290
v. 8  209
v. 45  268, 274
v. 17, 17-48  32
v. 38, 39  140
vi  290
vi. 10  302
vi. 24  464
vi. 11, 26-30  268
vi. 33  126, 283
vii  290
vii. n  J39
viii. 3  J4i
viii. 20  140
viii. 22  I41

Chap. Page
viii. 24  138
ix. 2  141
ix. 6  140, 441
ix. 18, 19, 23, 25.... 520
ix. 36  138
x. 15  -".-.. 317. 338
x. 16-20  95
x-23  505
x. 30  274
x. 37  141
xi  138
xi- 4. 5  58
xi. 10  137
xi. 22  526
xi. 22 seq  317
xi. 24  338, 526
xi. 27  34, 141, 215
xi. 28  412
xi. 28-30 ; xii. 6  141
xii. 31, 32  317
xii. 36  526
xii. 41 seq. ,  140
xiii. 1-23  422
xiii. 24-30  505
xiii. 24-33, 31. 32--- 512
xiii. 36-43  505
xiii. 44  440
xiii. 44-46  284
xv. 19  315
xvi. 21-26  372
xvi. 27  518, 528
xvi. 27, 28  505
xviii. 10  226
xix. 14  226, 354, 416
xx. 26, 27  500
xx. 26-28  120
xx. 28  215, 372
xxii. 30  523
xxii. 37-39  303
xxii. 41-45  140
xxii. 43  101
xxiv  505
xxiv. 14, 24  516
xxiv. 30, 31, 36-44 . . 518
xxiv. 36 ; xxv  505
xxv. 34-46.. 141, 526, 528
xxvi. 26-29  373
xxvi. 29  141
xxvi. 38  138
xxvi. 64  518
xxviii. 2  138
xxviii. 18  145, 404
xxviii. 18-20  516
xxviii. 19  192
xxviii. 20  167, 404
Mark.
i. 15  no, 412
i- 35; i"- 5  138
iii. 16  95

566

INDEX TO SCEIPTUEE PASSAGES

Chap. Page
iii. 28-30  317
iv. 28  30
ix. 9  140
x. 21  138, 352
x. 45  372
xii. 1-12  144
xiii. 32.. 138, 141, 159, 505
xiv. 61, 64  143
xvi. 15  423
xvi. 15, 16  516
Luke.
i- 33  407
i. 26 seq  138
>¦ 35  139
ii. 9 seq  138
ii. II  372
ii. 40, 52  138
iii. 38  291
iv. 18  95
v. 20  '.... 141
vi. 13-16  426
vii. 12-15  520
ix. 22  140
ix. 31  372
x- 35  427
xi. 1  138
xi. 2  215
xi. 13  139, 215
xii. 10  317
xii. 40  518
xii- 48  317
xiii- 3  139
xiv. 34  474
xv. 7  118, 180, 218
XV. 10  118
xv. 11-32  217
xvi. 19-31  489
xvi. 23  492
xvi. 26  495
xvii. 20, 21  119
xvii. 24  518
xix. 10  155
xix. 11 seq  512
xx. 37  486
xx. 38  488
xxii. 43  138
xxiii. 34  373
xxm. 43  489
xxiii. .46  138
xxiv. 47-49  SI6
xxiv. 49  409
John.
i. 1-18  136
i. 1, 2  i72
i. 4  178, 280, 365
i. 9  410, 419

Chap. Page
i. I...4 34, 137, 143.
159. 307. 365
i. 18  34. 215
i- 29  374,413
m- 3  459
iii. 3-8  458
iii- 7  459
iii. 8  460
iii. 14 seq  374
iii. 16.. 141, 155, 180,
216, 300, 304, 413
iii. 16, 17  137
iii. 18, 19  526
iii. 20, 21  422
iii- 34  95
iv. 6, 9  138
iv. 39-42  42
v. 17  142, 254
v. 18, 19  142
v. 22  141
v. 22-29. ¦ •'  526
v. 23  142
v. 24.  458
v. 26  141
v. 27  140, 141, 527
v. 29  525
v. 30  141, 142
v. 36; vi. 38  134
vi. 39, 42  142
vi. 48  141
Vi-Si  374,413
vu 37.  141
vii- 37-39  40
™i- 34  358
viii. 42  134
viii. 46  139
viii. 52 seq  142
viii. 56  416, 489
viii. 58  142
ix- 4  349
ix. 25  464
x- 7  141
x- "  374. 4"
x- 15. 18  374
x. 28, 29  473
x- 30, 33  142
x. 35  102
x- 36  134.139
xi. 5  138
xi. 11-44  520
xi. 25  141, 520
xi So  374
xu- 23  363
xn. 24  522
xii- 24-33  375
xn. 27  138
xii. 31  526
xii. 32  216
x|i:47  155
Mil. 21  138, 363

Chap. Page
xiv. 6.  141
xiv. 9... 34, 142, 751, 293, 366
xiv. 13  193
xiv. 16, 17, 26  96
xiv. 28  142
xiv. 30  139
xv. 1-8  410
xv. 1-10  465
XV.-4-6  474
xv. 13-16  411
xv. 16.  :  426
xv. 22-24  317
xv. 26, 27 ; xvi. 7-15 . 96
xvi. 8-II  409
xvi. 11  526
xvi. 12-15  4°
xvi. 12, 13  134
xvi. 14  409
xvii. 1  138
xvii. 3 .... 176, 267,
285, 465, 486
xvii. s  134. 196
xvii. 6-19  412
xviii. 36  119
xviii. 37  134
xix. 7  143
xix. n  317
xix. 28  138
xix. 37  422
xx. 15  138
xx. 17  141
Acts.
i- 8  516
i. 11  147, 181
i. 16  102
»• 13  273
»• 33  409
"•36  145
"¦" 38  409
iii- 14  139
iv. 25  102
iv. 27, 28  273
vii. 55-60  145
vii. 59, 60  146
xiii. 48  429
xvii. 26  299
xvii. 28  267
xvii. 29  291
xvii. 30  412
xxiii. 8  486
xxiv. 15  525
Romans.
i  303
\ 4  143
1-7  146
'¦ x7  444

INDEX TO SCEIPTUEE PASSAGES

567

Chap. Page
}¦ lS  317 seq.
]¦ 2°  262
J; 25  262, 458
}]  303
U.I-16  527
\\:6-7  '."." 443
»>-2  81
iii. 20  443
"i- 23  322, 443
111. 24-26  375, 444
iii. 26  367
iv  415
v. 7  3°4
v. 8  217, 35g, 376
v. 10, 11  376
v. 12  321, 392
v. 12-21  140, 299,
328 seq. 377, 527
V. 18  346, 412
v. 20  325
v. 20, 21  244
vi. 1  469
vi 1, 2  446
vi. 12  327
vi. 15  445
vii. 14  358
vii. 24, 25  346
viii. 1  465
viii. 3  13S, 139, 146
viii. 3. 4  377. 446
viii. 6  466
viii. 11  521
viii. 16  40
viii 19-23  524 seq.
viii. 20  20
viii 21  21, 286, 405
viii. 22  405
viii 28  117, 279,
35°. 405, 428
viii. 28-30  428
viii. 29  294
viii. 31  279
viii 32.  135, 412
viii. 33  412, 429
viii 34  429
viii. 38  .279, 429
ix  427
ix. s  J46
ix. 11, 12  425
x  427
x. 13  137
xi  427
xi. 25, 26, 29  5*7
xi. 33  *53
xi. 36  193
xii  96. 473
xiii. 1  88, 185
xv. 4  102
xvi. 20, 24  146
xvi. 26  io2

1 Corinthians.
Chap. Page
i 2, 3  146
i- 7  518
1. 20, 24  170
i- 30  456
"•4.5  40
«. 11  201
»• 13  97, 101
ii- 14  41
ii. 16  137
iv. 5  146
vi. 19  466, 521
ix. 9, 10  102
ix. 27  474
x-4.5  137
x. 22  101, 137
xi. 7  292
x»  96.467.473
xii. 4-6  193
xii 4-13  410
xii 12  77, 465
xii. 21  78
xiii  96
xiii. 9, 10, 11  31
xiii. 12  31, 494
xiii. 13  456
xiv  96
xv  520
xv. 22.. 140,299,328,525
xv. 24-28.. .280, 407, seq.
xv. 26  521
xv. 38-58  522
xv. 42  521
xv. 45 seq.  140
xv. 49  294
xv. 54  521
xv. 46  487
xvi. 23  146
2 Cop NTHIANS.
i. 2  146
iv. 4  293
v. 1-10  492, 506
v. 3. 4  49°
v. 5  466, 521
v. 8  489, 490
v. 10  146, 528
v. 14-21  377
v- 17  458,
v. 19  155
V. 21  I39
viii. 9  137
xii. 3  491
xii. 4  491. 492
xiii. 14  146, 193
Galatians.
i. 3  J46
i. 15, 16  426

Chap. Page
ii 20  465, 466
iii. 6 seq  415
iii. 10, 11  443
!v- 4  135, 146
iv. 4, s  182
iv- 19  465
v. 6  467
v: 22  410, 475
vi. 7, 8  528
vi. 16  427
vi. 18  146
Ephesians.
1.2  146
i 3-i4  428
i. 4  156, 362
!• 7  ISS
i- 10  154, 177
!; 22, 23  405, 406
ii. 10  273
ii. 20  102
ii. 20-22  465
iii 7  168
iii. 11  427
iii. 16  410
iii- 17  175. 4io. 465
iv. 4-6  193
iv. 8  96
iv. 13  306
iv. 24  293
v. 25, 27  412
v- 3i, 32  46S
vi. 23, 24  146
Philippians.
i. 6.  473, 506
i 23  489
ii. 5  366
ii. 6 seq. . . . 135, 137, 159
ii. 7  144, 160
ii. 9, 10  146
ii. 10, 11... 116, 147, 177, 53°
11. 12  439
ii. 12, 13  270, 467
iii. 10, 11  526
iii. 12-14  470
iii. 20  492
iii 21  183, 521, 523
iv. 5  5°6
Colossians.
i- 13-17  135
i- IS  293
i. 16  231
i. 16-18  170
i. 17  178, 280
i. 20  177
ii. 3  280

568

INDEX TO SCEIPTUEE PASSAGES

Chap. Page
iii. 3  J74
iii. io  293
1 Thessalonians.
ii. 13  102
iv. 15  S06
v. 2 seq  518
2 Thessalonians.
i 6-10  146
ii. 3 seq  516
ii. 13-15  102
1 Timothy.
ii. 4  216
ii. 4-6  413
ii- 5  147
iv. 1  516
iv. 10  413
vi. 14  518
u Timothy.
i. 10  486
iii. 15  75. 83
iii. 16  102
iv, 1, 8, 22  146
Titus.
ii. ii  413
ii. 13  146, 518
Hebrews.
i. 2  136
i 3  I36, 280, 293
i 6  146
i. 8-12  137
i, 14.. 118, 177, 231, 494
ii. 9  216, 393, 413
ii. 10  144, 184
ii. 16  177
ii. 17... 138, 140, 144, 378
ii. 18  138-140
iii. 7  102
iv. 9  494
iv. 14  140
iv. 15.. 139, 140, 144, 147
v. 1-10  378
v. 7-10  140
v. 8  378
vi- 4-6  317. 474
vii. 26, 27  378
ix. 8  102
ix. 15,26  415
x. 4-10, 12, 13  378
x. 25  506
x. 26  474

Chap. Page
x. 26, 27  317
xi 1  45°
xi. 3  257
xi. 13  4IS
xii. 1  118, 494
xii. 23  494
xii. 24  490
xiii. 8  147
James.
i. 18  460
ii. 9  449
ii. 14, 17  469
iii. 2  322, 470
iii. 9  292
v. 8  146, 506
v. 10, 11  146
1 Peter.
i. 2  428
i. S  5°6
i. 7. 8  518
i 11  136, 365
i. 18  379
i. 19  J39. 379
i 20  427
i. 23  460
ii. 20, 21  474
ii. 21  366
ii. 22  139
ii. 24  379
iii. 18  ¦  139, 379
iii. 18-20  136 seq., 418
iii. 18-22  496
iv. 6  418, 496
iv. 7  506
2 Peter.
i- 4  174
i. 21  102
ii-4  177
ii- 5  496
ii. 20 seq  317
iii. 4  5lS
iii. 8  519
iii. 10  518
iii. 15  102
iii. 16  102, 438
1 John,
i- 2  143
i 3. 4  102
i. 5  210
i- 7  379
i. 8  322, 471
ii- 2  379. 413

Chap. Page
ii. 18  5°6. 516
ii. 22  5J6
ii. 29  139
iii. 2  169, 294
iii- 7  J39
iii. 14  45s
iii. 16  379
iv. 2  148
iv. 3  148, 516
iv. 8  200, 209
iv. 10  217, 379
iv. n  218
iv. 16  120, 200
iv, 19  218, 448
v. 6-10  40
v. 16  317
v. 20  147
2 John.
7  148, 516
Jude.
6  177
24  473
Revelation.
i. 1, 3  506
i- 5  146
i- 6  146,-379
i- 7  S06
i. 18... 130, 146, 147, 493
i 19  101
ii. 7  492
iv. 4 seq  489
v. 6  147, 379
v. 11. 12  146
vi 9-  489, 49°
vi. 10  490
vii. 9 seq  489
xi. 15  423
xiv  516
xiv. 1-5  48g
xiv. 13  494
xv  516
xv. 2-4  489
xvi  516
xvi. 7 ; xix. 1 seq.. . . 489
xix. 16  405
xx. 1-10  512, 515
xx. 7-10  516
xx. 12, 13  528
xxi. 4  347
xxii. 6, 7, 12  506
xxii. 13  146
xxii. 17  412
xxii. 20  506

6557