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THE GOSPEL
IN
THE GOSPELS
THE GOSPEL
IN
THE GOSPELS
BY
WILLIAM PORCHER DuBosE, M.A., S.T.D.
AUTHOR OF " THE 8OTERIOLOGY OF THE NEW TESTAMENT "
"THE ECUMENICAL COUNCILS"; PROFESSOR OF
EXEGESIS IN THE UNIVERSITY OF THE SOUTH
SECOND EDITION
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
91 AND 93 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK
LONDON AND BOMBAY
1906
COFYIGHT, 1906
BY
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
A U rights reserved
FIXST EDITION, JANUAY, 1906
REPRINTED, JULY, 1906
SECOND EDITION, OCTOBER, 1906
Th Plimpton Press Norwood Mass. U3.A.
Co
SILAS McBEE
TRUE FRIEND
AND
FAITHFUL CRITIC
PREFACE
THE title of the present volume is intended to in
dicate that, while it aims to be an exposition of the
whole Gospel of Jesus Christ, it does not purpose to
be a whole or final exposition of that Gospel. It looks
forward definitely to a further and fuller expression
of it. We have here to do with the Gospel, not in its
developed utterance as that of the New Testament or
of the Church, but only so far as it is contained in our
canonical Gospels or can by ourselves be deduced from
them. My own position is that, while the Gospel as
an act or fact is complete in Jesus Christ Himself, the
rationale of its operation hi human salvation is best
interpreted and stated by St. Paul. My true objective
point has therefore been the completer construction
of the Gospel according to St. Paul, to be treated in a
volume to follow the present one. That the epistles
of St. Paul are an interpretation only, and not a trans
formation nor even an essential modification, of the
Gospel of our Lord is next to the hope of casting a
single new ray of light upon the nature of the Gospel
itself the point which I have most at heart to prove
in the end.
Indeed, in opposition to what is claimed in high
quarters to be the well-nigh acknowledged conclusion
viii Preface
of present criticism, my own firm conviction is that
the variant conceptions of the Gospel in the New Tes
tament, so far from being different gospels, are con
sistent and mutually completive aspects of the one
and only Gospel. In proportion as we conceive the
Gospel of God in its entirety and in its immensity, in
just that degree do all scriptural, as well as all truly
Christian and catholic, statements of it, no matter how
partial and seemingly contradictory in themselves,
fall into their proper places and serve to magnify the
greatness and harmony of the whole. If the Gospel
is divine at all, it is the divinest fact of the universe,
the final cause of creation, the end for which all else
exists. Mistake any one fragment or aspect of it for
the whole, and all the other fragments and aspects will
be involved in confused and hopeless contention with
it for the usurped position. Let the whole stand out
for itself in its complete proportions, and every part
falls of itself into its proper place, and is confirmed
and supported in it by every other part.
On the other hand, however necessary it is for us to
know the whole Gospel in order to know any part, it
is equally necessary if we would know the whole that
we shall not ignore or neglect any one or more of the
parts. Besides other grievous consequences, it is only
as we do full justice to the claims of every least frag
ment of the Gospel, that we can guard legitimately or
effectively against the fatal withdrawals from the unity
of Christianity of the parts that are denied rightful
expression within it. Moved by these considerations,
I look forward to an entrance into the full mind of the
Preface ix
New Testament by way of a comprehensive comparison
of all its diverse points of view and variant expressions
of the Gospel.
Not only so, but in this volume itself, which is
but part of the proposed plan, I have recognized the
fact that even within the narrower limits of the Gospels
which give us our record of the Gospel, there are not
only possible but actual diverse impressions of what
the Gospel is; and that not only is full justice due to
each such impression, taken by itself and for its own
sake, but that the very fullest justice to each is the only
way of arriving at the truth of all, or at the truth of the
whole of which they are the complementary and neces
sary parts. The one great lesson that must forerun
and make ready the Christian unity of the future is
this: that contraries do not necessarily contradict, nor
need opposites always oppose. What we want is not
to surrender or abolish our differences, but to unite
and compose them. We need the truth of every va
riant opinion and the light from every opposite point
of view. The least fragment is right in so far as it
stands for a part of the truth. It is wrong only when,
as so often, it elevates into a ground of division from
the other fragments just that which in reality fits it to
unite with and supplement them.
What has been said may indicate at least the spirit
and temper in which the study before us is sought to
be conducted. I speak here, of course, only in general
ities; the concrete application or use of the principles
enunciated must be found and judged in the book
itself.
x Preface
As a matter of form rather than of substance, I feel
that there will be a question as to the success with
which the promise of method or procedure has been
carried out in the volume before us. The matter is
treated in the following order: (1) the Gospel of the
Common Humanity, (2) the Gospel of the Work, and
(3) the Gospel of the Person of our Lord. And each
of these is to be considered, as far as possible, by itself
and independently of the others. There are those who
hold the first of these and not the other two, or the first
two and not the third at least in the full sense hi
which we think Christianity includes them all. And
we were under obligation to do full justice to the point
of view of all. If I have succeeded but imperfectly
in doing this, if I have at times, contrary to promise,
run the lower position up into the higher, or anticipated
the higher in the lower, it is at least a question where
the responsibility lies. It may be that what I myself
believe to be, not three gospels, but three aspects or
stages of one and the same Gospel, may indeed be so.
And it may be that they themselves do, of themselves
and in spite of us, so run up together into one, that it
is impossible for us, however honest we may be in the
effort to do justice to each by itself, to keep them apart;
so predetermined are they, and determined, to find
each its own meaning and fulfilment, not in the sep
arate truth of each, but hi the united and common
truth of all.
So let us agree to disagree, if conscientiously we must,
in all our manifold differences; and, bringing all our
differences together, let us see if they are not wiser
Preface xi
than we, and if they cannot and will not of themselves
find agreement in a unity that is higher and vaster
than we.
W. P. DuBosE
SEWANEE, St. Luke s Day, 1905
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
PREFACE vii
INTRODUCTION 1
PART FIRST
THE GOSPEL OF THE EARTHLY LIFE
OR
THE COMMON HUMANITY
PAGE
I. The Impression of the Earthly Life of Jesus . . 15
II. The Growth and Preparation of Jesus 28
III. The Divine Sonship of Humanity 42
IV. The Son of Man 51
V. The Kingdom of God 63
VI. The Authority of Jesus 74
VII. The Blessedness of Jesus 86
VIII. The Beatitudes 97
IX. The Beatitudes Continued 109
X. The Death of Jesus 119
PART SECOND
THE GOSPEL OF THE WORK
OR
THE RESURRECTION
PAGE
XI. The Saviour from Sin 131
XII. Sin and its Treatment 142
XIII. The Sinlessness of Jesus 154
XIV. The True Baptism and Baptizer 166
XV. The Resurrection 180
xiii
xiv Table of Contents
PART THIRD
THE GOSPEL OF THE PERSON
OR
THE INCARNATION
PAGE
XVI. The Problem of the Person 199
XVII. The Mystery of the Birth 210
XVIII. Ideal Pre-existence 221
XIX. The Gospel in St. John 234
XX. The Logos 248
XXI. The Incarnation . . . 260
XXII. The Trinity 274
INTRODUCTION
INTRODUCTION
THE question of the present is, and we may safely
assume that more and more the question of the future
is going to be What is Christianity ? There was
probably never a time when more, and a more real,
interest was felt in the truth of Christ and Christianity.
There was certainly never a time when so many and so
conflicting conceptions existed as to the meaning of
Christ and Christianity.
When the necessity was first laid upon Christianity
to define itself, the process by which it did so was one
of gradual and progressive but strict and thorough
going exclusion. Not only was nothing permitted the
name which contradicted the nature, but nothing that
fell short at any point of the totality of the truth of
Christianity, as Christianity understood itself. It was
not only the truth and nothing but the truth, it was
the whole truth or nothing, the highest or none. What
ever may be said of the spirit or temper in which to too
great an extent this process of exclusion was carried
out to the bitter end, from no point of view can we with
propriety deprecate the result of it. God may have
made the wrath of man as well as his zeal and devotion
to praise Him, but humanly speaking no other spirit
or temper, and no other method, could have effected
the working out to its logical conclusion and expression
3
4 Introduction
the principle or truth implicitly contained in Chris
tianity.
Unquestionably truth is one, and only error is mani
fold. Truth is one and is a whole, and not seldom we
can say that that which is less than the truth is as un
true as that which is contrary to it. But, for all that,
there may be a time when for the truth s sake a very
different temper, and a very different and even an
opposite method, may be most proper and most useful
in dealing with it. I propose with what right or
propriety only the result can determine to treat
the sadly vexed question of Christianity by a process
the reverse of that which was necessary in the begin
ning, by a process of inclusion rather than of exclusion.
So far from saying that only that is true which is the
whole truth, I bring forward the complementary and
not contradictory fact that that which has in it any
part of the truth is so far true. I hold that the Gospel
of Jesus Christ is so true and so living in every part
that he who truly possesses and truly uses any broken
fragment of it may find in that fragment something
just so much of gospel for his soul and of salvation
for his life. In testing and illustrating this fact, if it
be such, it will not be necessary for us to examine each
one of the parts into which Christianity is broken up
in these days. There are a few stages or degrees of
faith in Christ and Christianity in one or other of which
every phase worth considering is contained and under
which it may be sufficiently considered for our purpose.
In the first place, there is many a profoundly re
ligious and shall we not say Christian ? soul,
Introduction 5
including now some of the greatest upon earth, whose
faith in Jesus may be expressed somewhat as follows:
They will not undertake to say anything of our Lord,
theirs as well as ours, before His appearance by birth
in the world or after His departure by death from it.
On such points as these they are at the best, or at the
most, agnostic. But between these two points of birth
and death, in the earthly life lived in common with us
all, in the simple fact that Jesus Christ was the man
He was and lived the life He lived, they find as much
of gospel and of salvation as, they think, humanity
can or humanity ought to receive on this earth. What
or how much that truly is, it shall be our first task care
fully and sympathetically to examine and measure.
Let us call this gospel, or so much of the Gospel as
this, the gospel of the earthly life, or of the common
humanity, of our Lord.
In the second place, in reading the Gospels and try
ing to understand them according to their intention, it
cannot escape the attention of most of us that, however
essentially and completely human we see the life of
Jesus to be, still we cannot but also see that as human
it transcends the ordinarily possible limits of the human.
There is no one of the Gospels, there was no Gospel
before the Gospels, which does not end necessarily,
which does not from the beginning mean to end, in the
resurrection. But it is not only that; in our Lord s
own clear consciousness, in the unquestioning con
cession on the part of all the records, of His personal
sinlessness, we have a fact which as much transcends
the powers and limits of all other earthly life as His
6 Introduction
resurrection does. The Gospel from the beginning
was not at all that Jesus most perfectly represented
our common nature or illustrated our human life, but
that He brought with Him something into our nature
and life which was not there before, and raised them
into something which was not themselves or their own,
and to which they could attain only in and through
Him. What that was was expressed hi the Christian
consciousness that Jesus Christ is the human, but the
divine-human, conqueror and destroyer of sin and of
death. Let us call this second phase or stage of the
Gospel the gospel of the resurrection.
In the third place, however sincerely and genuinely
human we may regard the life and life-work of Jesus,
when once we have recognized in His accomplishment
or attainment as man that which transcends human
accomplishment or attainment however it may be
in the line of man s higher nature and destiny we
have raised inevitably a further question. How does
this man break through or pass beyond the possibil
ities of universal human nature as it is? How does
that which is born of the flesh become in Him more
than flesh ? The immediate answer was and is : The
work wrought in humanity through the life in it of
Jesus Christ was no mere act of humanity, however
exceptional. It was a work wrought by God in hu
manity. If, on the one side, it was humanity fulfilling
or completing itself in God, it was only so because, on
the other side, it was equally and primarily God ful
filling and completing humanity in Himself. How
then was the so unique or exceptional personality of
Introduction 7
Jesus to be accounted for or explained? Was He
only a human individual exceptionally blessed or
graced ? Or, while perfect man, was He, just because
perfect man, something more than man ? Perfection
is no mark of our common humanity, and needs a very
high accounting for. So from the beginning begins
a questioning which Christianity answers for itself in
the gospel of the Incarnation.
There is no form of faith in Jesus Christ true enough
to be called a gospel or vital enough to be a salvation
which, measured by its own self-limitation, may not
be classed under one or other of these several " gospels,"
or phases or stages of the one Gospel. I claim for
each that, if it be real and vital and true so far as it
goes, it is, so far as it goes, a gospel, and brings in it
just so much of salvation.
Our interest in these days in so far undertaking an
advocacy of partial truths of the Gospel is no, true or
false, sympathy with partial truth, but interest in the
truth itself, whole and perfect. The fact of which we
are not yet fully aware, and gainst which we have not
yet sufficiently guarded, is this: that the so-called whole
of truth is quite as apt to ignore or pervert the parts,
as the parts are to be blind to the other parts and to
the whole. So true is this, that it is a common fact
that in larger and more catholic forms of Christianity
not merely aspects but important truths and even
living powers of the Gospel are so lost to sight and use
that we may have to go outside to find them at all,
perchance in some fragmentary sect which has been
driven outside by its overpowering sense of the im-
8 Introduction
portance or necessity of knowing and using them. It
is no weak concession then, or condescending charity,
that ought to lead us to do full justice to what we con
sider mutilated or incomplete conceptions of Chris
tianity. We ought to go to them in humility, to learn
of them sides and uses of the truth which it may well
be they understand better than ourselves. So I go,
for example, to the gospel of only the earthly life and
the common humanity of our Lord to learn many a
lesson and catch many a vision and inspiration of the
truth as it is in Jesus, which I am sure is lost to those
of us who in the higher ignore the details of the so-
called lower side of that divinely human life.
We are to study the Gospel as it is to be found in the
Gospels. And there is a threefold view of the Gospels
somewhat corresponding to the three stages of the
Gospel which we have been considering.
The first and main function of at least the Synoptic
Gospels would seem to have been purely reportorial.
By far the larger part of them is pure record. They
are reports, without note or comment, of our Lord s
appearance or appearances, where He went, what He
said and did. Never were there writings in which
there was so little of the writers, so clear and uncoloured
an impression of their subject. But this is not abso
lutely or entirely so. Before our Gospels attained
their present form there had been no little reflection
upon the whole earthly appearance, and no little inter
pretation of the words, the work, and the person of
Him who had left so deep a mark upon the world.
Introduction 9
Now the time has passed when men are able to ques
tion the historical personality or identity of the man
Christ Jesus. And the time has passed too when they
can depreciate the uniqueness and permanence, not
to say finality, of His impression upon human history
and human destiny. No less is the time past when
our Gospels can be resisted or rejected as in the main
truthful and true reports of how Jesus appeared and
what He said and did in His life on earth. But there
are men, among the greatest, and scholars the most
learned, the most conscientious, the most devout, who,
while able to accept so much of the Gospels as is of
pure record, find themselves unable to receive what
they conceive to be the results and additions of later
reflection upon and later human interpretation of the
actual facts of the Gospel.
No one can deny that it is legitimate for a properly
equipped criticism by which I mean a criticism
competent to judge of spiritual as well as natural facts
and phenomena to apply the strictest historical tests
to the historical facts of Christianity. Making the best,
which means also the most critical, use of their mate
rials, profound and devout students construct out of the
records as we have them the truest, completest, and
most self-consistent conception they can of the person
of the great founder of Christianity. In doing this they
pass by or reject those elements which seem to them
inconsistent or incongruous, as not belonging to the
objective fact to be reported but originating in the sub
jective impression and interpretation of the reporters, or
of later believers generally. Such a mode of treatment
10 Introduction
is not only not to be condemned, but it is not to be
avoided. But it will be a long time before a critical
acumen sufficiently true and adequate, spiritual enough
as well as scientific and philosophical enough, will be
generally developed to give us permanent results on
this line. Meantime each succeeding and temporarily
successful such attempt will be subjected to the tests
of time and ever-enlarging experience, and will survive
or perish according to its truth or falsity. Still we
shall never attain to the larger and truer criticism of
the future except as we are trained in the cruder and
confessedly still imperfect criticism of the present.
And it is only through the growth and discipline of
the critical faculty and function, of the powers of dis
crimination and judgment, that we can be educated
to a higher understanding, appreciation, and enjoyment
of the highest truth. In the first stage, therefore, of
our study of the Gospel I shall follow, as best I may, in
the track of the critics. I shall endeavour to admit
nothing in the Synoptic Gospels and as of the Gospel
which the best present criticism will not admit as
pure record, as being of the objective truth of which
they are the truthful reporters.
We have recognized the fact that beside the bare
record or report of objective fact which constitutes the
bulk of the Synoptic Gospels, they all more or less
abundantly contain matter that may or may not be
objectively true also, but that is the subjective con
ception and interpretation of the objective facts on the
part of the writers, or of the Church which they repre
sent. This Christian or Church interpretation takes
Introduction 11
two directions and assumes two forms. It is first an
interpretation of what we call " the work " of our Lord,
meaning by that the purpose and result of His whole
human life as, for example, atoning, redeeming,
new-creating, etc. It is often, of course, difficult to
separate between pure record and subjective inter
pretation, inextricably intermixed as they are. As an
instance, the account of the intimate connection be
tween the successive ministries of John the Baptist and
Jesus is doubtless largely simple report of the facts.
It is common to all the Gospels and seems to have been
from the first the starting point of the public life and
of all the stories of Jesus. Yet I think we shall see
that in the form which the narrative has uniformly
assumed there has been already embodied, in the con-
ti ast between John and Jesus, and more especially in
the significance of their respective baptisms, a state
ment and interpretation of the whole work of Jesus
than which nothing could be more comprehensive or
exact. With regard to all subsequent reflection and
interpretation of the life and work of Jesus it must be
at least admitted that it is separable in thought from
the objectively true facts which it undertakes to explain.
At the same time it has itself to be understood and
accounted for. We have seen that the ultimate and
complete form assumed by reflection upon and ex
planation of the life-work of Jesus Christ is to be found
in what I have called the second phase of the Gospel,
the gospel of the resurrection : Jesus Christ the con
queror of sin and destroyer of death, the author and
finisher of holiness, of righteousness, of eternal life.
12 Introduction
The other direction taken by Christian reflection
has to do with not the work but the person of our Lord.
But it was not the less inevitable, and has equal claim
to validity. Admit the nature of the work, and you
cannot escape or avoid the question of the person of
the worker. There may be doubt as to whether or to
what extent this question is raised or answered in the
Synoptic Gospels. Whether or no what we call the
Gospel of the Infancy is at all part of the record, or at
any rate of the primitive or original record, this at least
is certain about it. It did not belong to the very earliest
form of either oral or written gospel, which began, as
in St. Mark, with the public life, and knows, or at least
includes, as yet nothing of the previous private history
of Jesus. When it is later included, it may indeed be
so as fuller record of facts, to fill out a completer nar
rative from more perfect information. But unques
tionably there was a further motive for its introduction.
The question was up of the mystery of the person of
the Lord. It is not answered in the Gospel of the In
fancy it is true. In all the stories of the birth there is
nothing which affirms or necessarily postulates a pre
vious personal existence. But at least the line of
reflection and interpretation is entered upon which
finds no possible or satisfactory close until it completes
and expresses itself in the Prologue of St. John, that
is to say, in the Gospel of the Incarnation.
PART FIRST
THE GOSPEL OF THE EARTHLY LIFE
OR
THE COMMON HUMANITY
THE IMPRESSION OF THE EARTHLY
LIFE OF JESUS
WE are, in this part of our work, to study the Gospel
upon the lower plane of the common humanity which
our Lord shared with ourselves. From the records
of which we are to make use we exclude not only the
Fourth Gospel, but the Gospel of the Birth and Infancy
and whatever other portions of the Synoptic Gospels
may reasonably be supposed to belong to a later stage
of gospel representation. Confining ourselves then
as nearly as we may to the primitive gospel of pure
record, we are prepared to make to criticism the fol
lowing admissions:
In the first place, the historical appearance of Jesus
Christ, taken as a whole, was distinctly and completely
a human appearance. He made a great, a boundless
claim upon human faith and allegiance, but it was not
a claim which He Himself based upon any essential
personal difference between Himself and the common
or universal humanity. He did not demand allegiance
upon the ground of His being more than man, but
solely upon the ground of what He was as man. He
nowhere in His lifetime asserts, or was understood by
those who stood nearest Him to assert, His divine
15
16 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
personality. The highest claim He admits is that in
response to Peter s confession: Thou art the Christ,
or Thou art the Christ of God, or in the fullest form
reported Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living
God. These were all alike well understood Messianic
expressions. The Messiah was to be in a very high
sense the representative and expression of God s pres
ence upon earth, but in no sense, as yet, which implied
his own personal deity. Indeed the passive form
and signification of the word Messiah or Anointed One
emphasized the fact that the essence of Messiahship
was humanity indwelt and sanctified by Deity. This
is not at all to deny that there was a higher claim in
volved in our Lord s personality. But the claim did
not appear, was not asserted, in His earthly life. The
claim of divinity was to rest solely upon what He was
and accomplished in humanity, and it waited upon
that consummation to assert itself. Meanwhile, Jesus
whole appearance was, as we have said, distinctively
a human one, a man indeed always with God, and
with whom God always was, but still always, in His
highest knowledge, in His most mysterious powers, a
man. Even after His resurrection He is still to St.
Peter "Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved unto you
of God by mighty works which God did by Him in the
midst of you."
Upon what grounds in His lifetime did the Apostles
accept our Lord s Messiahship ? Not, certainly, upon
any which had been anticipated or expected as signs of
the Messiah. Not chiefly, I think we may say, upon
the ground of His possession and exercise of mysterious
Earthly Life of Jesus 17
powers. To the mind of His time He Himself had to
distinguish those powers from those of Beelzebub by an
appeal to their opposite quality or character. He depre
cated, and trusted not Himself to, a faith that rested only
on miracles. I think we may say that what He was
really believed on for was Himself, what He was as
man. It was His divinity indeed, but a divinity mani
fested or visible to them only in the quality and charac
ter of His humanity, in the perfection of His human
holiness, in the spiritual power of His human life. Why
did they cling to Him through every trial of their faith ?
To whom else, having even imperfectly known Him,
could they go ? To them He had the words, already
to them He was The Word, of eternal life. That
was His permanent credential, and that was His
only plea.
If we turn to those who still in our own day decline
to go for their gospel beyond the earthly life and the
common humanity of our Lord what answer will
they give for clinging to His person and finding their
salvation in His life? I think we may say that the
answer as it has shaped itself to that question is some
thing like the following: Humanity continues, and will
always continue, to believe and to find itself in Jesus,
because Jesus embodies and expresses to humanity
the truth of itself; the truth, the beauty and the good
ness of itself. And truth, beauty, and goodness are
the sum of what is of value, and ought to be of interest,
to humanity. But why and how does Jesus Christ
represent to us all that? We do not know; we need
not know. He does; we accept the fact, because it is
18 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
self-demonstrating; we cannot go the length of the
explanations, because we believe they extend beyond
the limits of our knowledge or proof.
Well, let us go just so far, and no farther, and find
in so much the truth and power contained in it. We
believe in Jesus because we find in Jesus the truth and
good that most concern us, the truth and good of our
selves. Men of profoundest thought and of sincerest
life in our own time have, in spiritual and moral ex
tremity, found salvation in Jesus Christ, simply because
they discovered in Him what did not exist for them
without Him a meaning and a reason for human
existence and human life. The revelation to us, no
matter how it comes, of the truth, the meaning, the
reason, the good, the value, and above all the way,
the secret, of the infinitely interesting and important
mystery we call life, ought to be to us surely nothing
short of a gospel and a salvation.
The personality and life of Jesus could never have
taken, and still less could maintain in perpetuity, the
hold it has upon the world, if it were not true to the
facts of the world. If Jesus Christ were not the truth,
the beauty, the good sought by all the best thought and
touched by all the best experience of humanity
humanity would not have given Him, would not give
Him, its highest, its final allegiance. Every knee
would not bow to Him, every tongue confess Him Lord.
It will be interesting to recall a few of the leading prin
ciples of our Lord s life and character, and to correlate
them with the best that has been thought or done
before or apart from Him.
Earthly Life of Jesus 19
In the first place, Jesus took definite part with the
West against the East in making the distinctive note
of life not apatheia but energeia. Thought, desire,
will were not to be abjured and disowned in despair,
through the overpowering sense of their futility. Life
was not to be reduced to zero through their renuncia
tion, but raised to infinity through their affirmation
and satisfaction. The life of Christianity is a life of
infinite energy because it is a life of infinite faith and
hope. It can be all things, do all things, endure all
things. It feels no limit in itself, it sets no limit to
itself, short of absolute perfection. It sets no limit to
knowledge, because it believes itself made for the truth,
and that the truth best worth knowing, the truth of self
and of life, will more and more reveal and verify itself
to us the more we know and love and live it. It sets
no limit to desire, but covets earnestly the best things.
It is conscious of an infinite poverty, and finds in it only
the potency and promise of an infinite riches and satis
faction. Pleasure and happiness are not things to be
denied and mortified. They are to be placed and
found in the right objects, and to be swallowed up but
not lost in the blessedness of the perfect life. And so
finally it sets no limit to will, to activity, to achievement
and attainment. If our wills are ours only as we sur
render them to the larger will that comprehends and
embraces all our wills are His only as we have made
His ours, and have found in His the highest freedom,
realization, and satisfaction of our own. And so not
only as against the aged pessimism of the East, but
equally against the most modern fatalistic necessi-
20 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
tarianism of the West, Jesus Christ raises to the highest
pitch the universal human sense and consciousness of
personal freedom and of eternally and divinely free
personality.
In the second place, Jesus Christ makes Himself at
one with the earliest and best ethical thought of the
West in that He places the issues and decision of life,
and the happiness that is the sense or consciousness
of life, not without but within us, not in the action upon
us of environment, but in our own free and personal
reaction upon environment. Environment is the con
dition, but we are the causes, of life and its blessedness
or the reverse. Aristotle had said : It is the energies,
the acts and activities, of ourselves, of our own souls
that control, that determine and constitute happiness.
Nature makes us nothing; it constitutes us, by the pos
session and use of reason and freedom, to make our
selves all that in life we, that is we humanly, personally,
become. It is the essence of personality that it is made
to be the maker of itself. Now Jesus Christ em
phasizes and deepens this great fact or truth of life
when He says to us : The kingdom of Heaven is within
you. He Himself had found and entered the kingdom
of Heaven. He had discovered the meaning and had
experienced the blessedness of human life, even such
a life as outwardly His own was. We shall see as we
proceed, as the essential difference between Him and
all others, that all that human philosophy in even an
Aristotle could conceive or express, He was. More
than that, He was all that He Himself taught. The
kingdom of Heaven was all in Him, because His life
Earthly Life of Jesus 21
realized and embodied all that constitutes and belongs
to the kingdom of Heaven.
In the third place, Jesus Christ is the great, the only,
interpreter to us of the meaning and reason of human
environment as we find it. It is not only that environ
ment is the condition of life, that we determine ourselves
only through our response to its action upon us. If
we are to take actuality as we find it, if we deal not
with theory but with actual conditions, our conclusion
must be that only in an environment of evil can good
determine or realize itself. Even in that lower world
of mere animal evolution in which there is so much of
purely natural or physical evil, and which we pronounce
so inexplicable a mystery, can we see how there could
have been the evolution of sensuous pleasure only
through and in contrast with the sense of pain. But
the question enters much more into the field of our
experience and understanding when we pass into the
world of moral action and life. Within the sphere of
finite activity the development of moral good appears
to be absolutely conditioned upon an environment of
moral evil. To take it at once in its most developed
form, there is no holiness possible or thinkable for us
which is not a distinct attitude towards, a definite
action upon, what we know as sin. If we did not know
the one we should not know the other. Jesus Christ
was no exception. His holiness was a resistance unto
blood to sin. The moral significance of His death was
that it was a death to sin. His perfection was accom
plished through His personal attitude, His moral or
spiritual superiority, to the things He suffered. There
22 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
ought to be no mystery to us in the outward experiences,
in the temptations, the fierce trials, the afflictions and
sufferings of Jesus Christ. We ought to know that
the moral victory He won, the spiritual height He
attained, could not have been won or attained by Him
as man except through such an outward experience,
except in reaction and conflict with such a world of
spiritual and moral evil. The perfect realization by
Jesus Christ of all that is true, beautiful, or good in
humanity as personal response to all of spiritual, moral,
and natural evil that met and assailed Him in His
outward life, is God s answer, if not to the full mean
ing and necessity, yet to His own use in the world
of actuality of the mystery of evil.
But, in the fourth place, the contribution of Jesus
to the truth and meaning of human life goes nearer
still to the heart of the matter. In the " virtue " of the
Greek, the "righteousness" of the Hebrew, and the
"holiness" of Christianity, we have three types or
standards of human conduct and character. With
the Greek man himself was the measure and the end.
The ideal man was he who the most symmetrically,
perfectly, and happily realized or fulfilled himself.
As in plastic art he strove to express the perfect balance
or proportion of physical beauty, so by a higher spiritual
aesthetic perception and measurement he endeavoured
to portray the fair features and proportions of the
moral ideal, the "beautiful and good" in humanity.
But the ideal man, if he combined in himself elements
of both the beautiful and the good, the aesthetic and
the moral, inclined very much more in the direction
Earthly Life of Jesus 23
of the former than of the latter. Self-respect, supreme
regard for one s "own fair personality" was the dom
inant if not the sole motive. The ideal was a beautiful
one, and true in so far as the highest beauty must neces
sarily approximate the true and the good. But there
was still too much in it of egoism to allow of its identi
fication with these.
The Hebrew saw in his standard and measure of
human life and conduct something vaster and more
objective than the perfection and beauty of his own
earthly personality. The law with him was something
more than that of nature or his own finite nature. The
Greek or Roman virtue was the following or fulfilling
of nature, the realizing of manhood. The Hebrew
righteousness was the recognition of a law, and behind
the law a personality, infinitely beyond and above
himself or his own. The tribunal before which he
bowed was not his own right reason or the wider wis
dom of the community revising his private judgment.
There was a judgment seat more awful than the aes
thetic taste of the individual or the public opinion of
society. The power not himself that made for right
eousness, no matter how it came or how it revealed
itself to him, was to him the sum of all reality. We
need not in this connection dwell upon this conception
of the standard or measure of life further than to re
member that it was an objective universal law other
than which there could be no rule or principle of obliga
tion in the heavens above or in the earth beneath.
The Hebrew point of view, while relieving the stand
ard of the finite human subjectivity which made man
24 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
alone the measure, was in danger of the opposite
extreme of making the law too wholly objective; and
we may add, of separating the power or presence
behind the law too far from human life. If the law
had needed to be made more objective and universal,
it needed now again to become more subjective and
more human. It was the problem in process of solu
tion, how to combine the opposite truths of immanence
and transcendence. Jesus Christ, by not stopping at
the law but going at once behind and beyond it, by
recognizing the fact that no objective law can produce
subjective life or righteousness, because law is only
the outward form, the expression or letter, of the in
ward substance which we call spirit, Jesus Christ
took the third and final step which completes the
account of human life. If the passage had needed to
be made from finite subjectivity to infinite objectivity,
equally necessary was the passage made once for all
by Him from the infinite objective to the infinite sub
jective, from the absolute without us in the form of law
to the absolute within us in the form of spirit. The
essence of the moral teaching of Jesus was the change
of venue from the tribunal of law to that of spirit. The
act of humanity in His own person was most exactly
expressed in the words: "Who through the eternal
Spirit offered Himself without spot." In Him eternal
law had given place to eternal spirit, the letter that
killeth to the spirit that giveth life.
We are considering the truth of Jesus just now not
from the standpoint of Christianity but in its correla
tion with other reflections and conclusions upon human
Earthly Life of Jesus 25
life. And so we may ask ourselves : What is this eternal
spirit through which Jesus Christ has realized forever
for us the true meaning and end of humanity ? Let
us try briefly to answer this question. Science more
and more recognizes the universe as one, and as a uni
verse of order. Now what is the unity and the order
that constitute the reality of the universe? In the
order in which it appears to us, it is first material or
physical, and then moral, and then spiritual. Which
of these is the real ? In the actual evolution of our
individual selves, we are first purely physical, and then
psychical, and finally spiritual or personal. Which
of these is we? Do we find the reality of ourselves
in the physical, the psychical, or the personal the
spiritual and moral self ? Man is not what he is
in process, but what he is when complete. He is, as
Aristotle teaches us, his highest part. Everything is
to be defined by its end, by what it will be when its
becoming is completed and it is perfect. If we are to
interpret this universe as a whole, in the light of that
which is its manifest direction and logical end, we
cannot but conclude that the natural order exists as
the necessary condition of a higher moral order, which
in turn has no meaning or possibility except as the
form or expression of a yet higher spiritual or personal
order. It is absurd to object to this that the moral
and spiritual orders are still so far from existence.
There is nothing contradictory or impossible in the
immediate existence of a material order, and yet even
that was a matter of inconceivably slow evolution.
An immediate moral or spiritual order is impossible,
26 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
because by its very nature it must evolve or constitute
itself. As surely as gravitation or evolution are laws
of the universe, is righteousness a law of the universe,
and behind and before them all is that spirit of which
alone righteousness is the law, the ultimate truth and
reality of the universe. Jesus Christ is the fulfilment
of nature and the realization of humanity because He
is the embodiment of the moral and spiritual order,
not only the infinite law but the eternal spirit of the
universe.
But we have not yet given a real definition of the
eternal spirit which Jesus Christ embodied and re
vealed. His contribution to life was the truth which
is at once first and last, that there is no human
good but goodness. We can know good first only as
our own. That existence itself, that life or anything
pertaining to life, is a good, we can only know as we
experience the pleasure, the value, or worth of them
for ourselves. But the good which as such we can
first know only as our own we can then, by necessary
inference, know and will to others as theirs. And
this is the origin and essence of goodness. Man is
never from the first an individual but always a social
being. He has his existence in, with, and through
others. He lives and becomes all that constitutes
himself only in concrete relationships and in actual
personal exchanges between himself and them. A
man can be a good man only by fulfilling his natural
relations, by being a good son, brother, husband,
father, friend, neighbour, citizen. And as this is his
only impersonal goodness, so is it his only personal
Earthly Life of Jesus 27
good. He cannot realize himself except in, with, and
through others. His universe is so constructed, his
life is so constituted, that there is no good for him
except goodness. He cannot love himself except as
he loves others as himself. He cannot find himself
except as he loses himself in others. Jesus saw and
not only perfectly expressed but perfectly embodied
the fact that goodness or love is the secret and the
essence of human life. And of human only because
of all life. It is the beginning and the end of all reality.
As the natural exists only for the moral, so the moral
is only the outward expression, the law, of the spiritual.
And the spiritual, which is the real, is infinite and
eternal goodness. The real law of the universe is the
law of righteousness, and the true soul and life of
righteousness is the spirit of love, whom the world
calls God.
It follows not only naturally but necessarily from
the above that Jesus, calling Himself always Son of
Man, that is, true, essential manhood, should
speak of Himself as having come into the world not to
be served but to serve, to be the servant of all, even to
the point of giving His life for all. Love, service,
sacrifice, these He has, not made, but revealed in
His person and human life to be the spirit and law and
reality of the universe.
II
THE GROWTH AND PREPARATION
OF JESUS
WE have been considering our Lord s earthly life
from the standpoint of conceptions of life in general.
We come back now to study it from the point of view
and in terms of the distinctively Christian records. If
our Gospels are to be supposed to include properly
only the report of the public ministry (as defined in
Acts 1: 21, 22), we must remember that Jesus appears
in that ministry at the age of thirty, with full qualifica
tion and authority to discharge its functions. There
was no apparent question within Himself of Himself,
and no questioning of Him on the part of those capable
of feeling the force of His authority. It is to the records
so limited as though He had come into the world fully
equipped for His part in it. But if Jesus was human,
He was so not only in what He was at His height, but
in the process by which He attained that height and
became what He was. If we are to know Him, with
out which it is impossible to know His life or His life-
work, we are obliged to take into account the contribu
tion of the thirty years of preparation for His ministry.
The traditions of our Lord s youth later prefixed to
the records, brief as they are, are, when we consider
28
Growth and Preparation of Jesus 29
them carefully, singularly probable in matter and exact
and illuminating in expression. The child Jesus, we
are told in St. Luke, after the circumstances of His
birth and the formalities of His circumcision, presenta
tion, etc., have been narrated, grew and waxed
strong, filled with wisdom: and the grace of God was
upon him. The general terms are practically identical
with those just before applied to John the Baptist:
The child grew and waxed strong in spirit. They are
in either case descriptive of a normal, purely human,
not only physical but spiritual, youthful development.
But in the case of Jesus the description is more explicit,
as doubtless the growth described was fuller and more
complete. In the first place, the child grew and ma
tured pari passu in all the elements or parts of a com
plete human development, physical, intellectual, spir
itual. It is added : Filled, or properly filling, becoming
more and more full, of wisdom. Emphasis is naturally,
perhaps unconsciously, laid upon the inward and out
ward means and process by which we shall see the
wisdom was acquired, and the necessary progress of
its accumulation. Wisdom is in itself, as Aristotle
defines it, the product only of time and experience.
And then, most significantly of all, come the words:
And the grace of God was upon him. It in no way
militates against the perfect humanness of Jesus to
know that from the first, in a more complete way than
through the prophets or John the Baptist before or
St. Paul afterwards (who believed in his separation
from his mother s womb), God was preparing to reveal
or express Himself through Him. That, as we have
30 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
seen, was just the gist of the long promised messiah-
ship which Jesus was later to assume. The grace of
God is a quality communicated or imparted. It is
something which, creaturely or humanly, we have not
of ourselves, for which we are dependent and which
we can receive only from the personal source of all
personal life. It is identical with the spirit of God,
that eternal spirit which lies behind all law material or
spiritual, and which is the ultimate reality or fact of
the universe. That divine spirit lay upon Him from
the beginning, and wrought through Him all that
through it He humanly accomplished or became. We
cannot for a moment blind ourselves to the truth that
God was the objective source and cause, and the ob
jectively apprehended and known cause, of all the
subjectively and humanly attained heights of the
earthly life of Jesus Christ.
The above account of the beginnings of our Lord s
life is consistently taken up and continued in the equally
brief description of the incident which throws additional
light upon it at the age of twelve. After narrating
that incident, to which we shall return, St. Luke pro
ceeds : And Jesus advanced in wisdom and stature,
in wisdom as in age and physical development, and
in favour with God and men. There is definite prog
ress and new interpretation expressed in the last clause.
The word here translated favour, and elsewhere other
wise, is the same term grace which we have been just
discussing. Jesus advanced in grace with God and
men. It is in reality the same grace viewed at different
points, first as operating objectively from God upon
Growth and Preparation of Jesus 31
Jesus, and then secondly as operating subjectively in
Jesus towards God and men. The spirit that comes
from God as His appears in us as ours. There is no
more exact or beautiful designation of the spirit that
Jesus was of than is conveyed by the word Grace. As
between Him and God it is the response of God within
Him to God without. As between Him and men it is
the eternal spirit looking humanly on earth upon men
as God looks upon them from heaven. We have in
this little touch a glimpse of the spiritual attitude at
once towards God and towards men that was growing
with the growth of Jesus and that was to be the sole
key to the explanation of His whole life and ministry.
It already manifested itself in His youth in a gracious-
ness of spirit and manner with men which gave Him
favour with them, far as yet as they were from fathom
ing its true depth and significance. We speak of the
sweet reasonableness of Jesus. The peculiar quality
we are trying to catch and fix is better expressed in
terms of the heart than of the head. The sweet rea
sonableness rests upon a deeper and sweeter sympathy
which drew Him to all men and draws all men to Him
if they will but let themselves see and know Him. It
is with the heart rather than with the head that we
understand and know one another. The pure in heart
see men as well as God as they are, and have the sweet
reasonableness to deal with them as they should.
Closely connected if not identical with the spirit or
temper just described is the faculty of spiritual per
ception or intelligence which so struck the doctors in
their conversation with Him in the temple. The
32 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
power to " understand " whether things, men, or
God lies deeper than the mind or than the natural
affections. It consists in a universality of spirit that
at-ones us with the objects to be understood. Jesus
was among the doctors to learn, to be taught. They
were amazed at His teachableness, at His quickness
to comprehend, His ready response to instruction.
There was in Him the opposite of the individualism
which is the expression of only one s particular self.
The universal and eternal in Him sought to make Him
one with all. And so He thirsted and was mature
beyond His years to enter into the spirit of those Scrip
tures which had been not only the literature but the
life of God s people from the beginning. In a word,
there were in the youthful Jesus all the human condi
tions of divine knowledge, and therefore there was in
Him more and more the fulness and perfection of divine
knowledge.
The unity of spirit that characterized the youth and
the later ministry of our Lord may be briefly illustrated
in one or two points. In St. Luke s first description
of His public appearance the comment upon the im
pression produced is as follows: And all bare Him
witness, and wondered at the words of grace which
proceeded out of His mouth. The words of grace,
or the gracious words the meaning includes both.
There was first the manner that betokened the spirit,
the temper or disposition, w T hich actuated Him in
speaking. It was the spirit of God speaking in Him.
And then there was the matter of His speaking, than
which nothing could better express the substance of
Growth and Preparation of Jesus 33
His ministry. It was the grace of God bringing
through Him salvation to men. It has been re
marked that Jesus loved best in the Scriptures the
prophet Isaiah and the book Deuteronomy. The les
son He had read in the synagogue was from the
former :
The Spirit of the Lord is upon me,
Because He anointed me to preach the gospel to the
poor:
He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives,
And recovering of sight to the blind,
To set at liberty them that are bruised,
To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.
" He anointed me to " that then was the meaning
of the anointing, the mission of the Anointed : to bring
down God s spirit and grace and salvation, in a word
God s eternal life, and establish it in a kingdom of God
upon earth.
In the later preaching of our Lord, St. Luke reports
Him as saying: If ye love them that love you, if ye do
good to them that do good to you, if ye lend to them of
whom ye hope to receive what thank have ye ? The
word not improperly rendered thank or thanks means
something more than that. It is again the word grace :
What grace have ye ? Not only what thanks or reward,
not only what men will recognize and be grateful for,
but what is the only motive of any true disposition or
act towards others, namely, the spirit and grace of God.
Therefore St. Luke reports our Lord as continuing:
But love your enemies, and do them good, and lend,
never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and
34 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
ye shall be sons of the Most High: for he is kind to
wards the unthankful and evil. Be ye merciful even
as your Father is merciful. These last words open a
view into what was the heart and soul of our Lord s
preparation and qualification for His ministry. Rather,
they suggest the truth of all that He was to be or ac
complish in and for humanity. It has always been
recognized that the supreme human act and attain
ment of Jesus Christ was that He truly conceived and
perfectly realized the fatherhood of God and so the
divine sonship of men. The growth of Jesus was the
development in Him of this conception and the progress
of this realization. When His parents, after their
three days search, found Him in the temple, and re
proached Him with the fact that they had sought Him
sorrowing, His reply was: Why should they have
sought Him ? Where should He be but in His Father s
house, interested and engaged in His Father s business ?
All truth was expressed for Him in that divine relation
ship, all duty or pleasure was contained in the life-long
and life-filling task of fulfilling it. Taken alone we
might seem to read too much into our Lord s use of
these words in this His first recorded utterance. But
they are very far from standing alone. When the
preparation was over and the great call and commission
to the ministry was given and received, the divine
recognition of His qualification and fitness for the task
came to Him from Heaven in the words: Thou art my
beloved Son ; in thee I am well pleased. The prepara
tion for the true Messiahship is the realization of the
true sonship. The fulness of the divine spirit involves
Growth and Preparation of Jesus 35
the impartation of the divine nature and the reproduc
tion of the divine life, and that is the essence and truth
of divine sonship.
But the preparation was not wholly over with the
commission. The awful burden and task imposed
by the latter necessitated another, a more conscious
and thorough, going over of the whole ground of the
former. The entire temptation in the wilderness turns
upon the fact and foundations of the human divine
sonship of Jesus. He was there on trial as the repre
sentative of humanity. There in and upon His person
were pending and depending the destinies of humanity.
We are to understand that temptation, if we understand
it at all, as the supreme test and the decisive if not yet
final vindication and establishment of man s sonship
to God. This statement will necessitate a partial
analysis of the brief story.
The account of the temptation is, in the first place,
a report of actual experiences subjective if not
objective of our Lord in the crisis of His entrance
upon His ministry. But, in the second place, the
account is given in language which is plainly not literal
but symbolical. And this very fact gives it a signifi
cance and an application far wider than that of an
individual experience; it makes it universal. Further
more, our Lord Himself expresses the principle and
application of each temptation withstood in terms as
universal as humanity itself: It is written, Man shall
not live by bread alone; It is said, Thou shalt not tempt
the Lord thy God. Such maxims of conduct are
definitely human, and these Jesus establishes at the
36 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
beginning as principles and foundations of His kingdom
of the divine life on earth. These are that rock upon
which, except a man build, his house cannot but fall.
The symbolism of the story of the temptation is sug
gested by the history of Israel as spiritually interpreted
in the book of Deuteronomy. That history itself has
always been accepted as symbolical of human life in
general: the divine fatherhood and the great salvation;
the promise of a land of rest and fruition ; the condition
and then the trial of the people s faith, the temptations
in the wilderness; the failure to enter in because of
unbelief. In contrast and reversal of Israel s tempta
tion and defeat we have the picture of Israel s tempta
tion and victory. The particular passage that gives
form to the later story is the following (Deut. 8: 1-3):
And thou shalt remember all the way which the Lord
thy God led thee these forty years in the wilderness,
that He might humble thee, to prove thee, to know
what was in thy heart, whether thou wouldst keep His
commandments or no. And He humbled thee and
suffered thee to hunger, and fed thee with manna,
which thou knewest not neither did thy fathers know;
that He might make thee know that man doth not live
by bread only, but by everything that proceedeth out
of the mouth of the Lord doth man live. The lesson
of life as seen in the Scriptures, Old and New, is in the
first place that life comes from its divine source and
not from the earthly media through which it is received.
And secondly, that life, in all its potencies and prom
ises, can be possessed and enjoyed only through faith.
And faith comes only through trial. The highest and
Growth and Preparation of Jesus 37
latest energy and act of our personality, that by which
we conquer the world and transcend earthly limita
tions and conditions, is not attained easily and pain
lessly. "That the proof of your faith, more precious
than gold that perisheth though it is proved by fire,
might be found unto praise and glory and honour."
The conception and realization of divine sonship with
all its implications is not a plain and easy thing for flesh
and blood. Even after the vision of the bared arm of
the Lord in his redemption from Egypt, it was not
easy for Israel to feel the presence or keep hold of the
promises, to remember or exercise his divine sonship,
in the land of sand and dearth. Very straight home
to him went the temptation : If thou art the son of God,
command that these stones be made bread. If thou
art, doubt is the beginning of all weakness, and the
certain cause of all human failure. Men enter not in
because of unbelief. But how in a world like this
shall we believe that we are the sons of God, with
power therefore to be what God is ? Jesus Christ has
shown us the way, by Himself entering in and so open
ing it to all. It was not plainer or easier for Him than
for us to know Himself son of God, and so to have
grace and power to perform a son s part in the world.
If the heavens had opened and proclaimed Him son,
it was only in recognition of the fact that by faith He
had known and made Himself son. Even after that
mighty demonstration and confirmation of His faith,
the conditions under which, as He foresaw, He was
entering upon a humanly impossible task were enough
to drive Him into the wilderness of doubt and despair.
38 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
How should He accomplish the task before Him, the
hopeless task of human salvation ? Comparing the
means with the end, how could the temptation not
assail Him: If thou art the son of God, command
these stones that they be made bread ; of these
stones raise up children unto Abraham! I do not
undertake to say just what were the elements that
entered into this first temptation of our Lord. Only
this I seem to see clearly: the whole question of faith,
the whole human hold upon the reality of the divine
fatherhood and upon the power and the promise of
human sonship was at issue in it. If man is son of
God; if there is warrant for faith in that divine fact; if
human faith can and will lay hold upon it and conquer
its way to eternal life, then that is our gospel and
our salvation. And all this was and is done by human
ity in the person of Jesus Christ. He fought the
battle, He proved the possibility of the victory, He
showed us the place and revealed to us the secret of
the power.
The lesson of the second temptation was scarcely
less important. We are not more apt or prone to want
faith, to be ignorant of the power of God which is ours
unto salvation, than, having faith, or thinking we have
it, to tempt God by presuming upon it. We are con
stantly expecting of faith, and complaining of not
having from it, not only what it is not its function to
give, but what the giving to us would be our worst
undoing. We little realize how much, as believers,
we expect to have done for us which we do not do for
ourselves. But it is never the purpose of grace to
Growth and Preparation of Jesus 39
make us anything which we are not at all the pains, and
the pain, of making ourselves. Nothing indeed can be
added to us, in the true sense of us, which does not as
truly proceed from us as from the higher source which
only makes it ours by enabling us to make it ours.
All that comes to us from God, and as God s, such as
His spirit, His grace, His life, comes to us at all only as
we too have so made them our own that they appear in
us only as ours. It is only by the spirit we are of that
we may be recognized as children of God. Whose spirit,
God s or ours ? Only the one if the other. The life
of Jesus Christ was the opposite of one of enthusiasm
or fanaticism. What He most truly was He was not
by miracle but humanly, after the way of a man,
of God because of Himself, of Himself because of God
because a man is only himself in and with and
through God. Though it may not appear at once,
the outcome of the second temptation was the victory
of hope, as that of the first was the victory of faith.
Hope is of ourselves as faith is of God, as to their
objects. As faith is the realization of all God in and
with us, so hope is the realization of all ourselves in
and with God. Because we know that all things are
possible with God, therefore we know that we can be
and do all things. What we want is God in us, in
what we are. The religion that craves miracles is a
religion that seeks a sign outside itself because it lacks
assurance in itself. If it knew God in itself by faith,
and itself in God in hope, it would ask no proof outside
of that. Our Lord s own religion was one not of out
ward sign but of inward reality. He demanded to
40 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
be received for the substance, Himself and not for
the accidents, His miracles.
Without going too much at length into the meaning
of the third temptation, I would offer the following
suggestions for its interpretation. Our Lord had His
own way of entering into the authority and glory of
His Messianic kingdom. When the hour for it was
come, He lifted up His eyes to heaven and said, Father,
the hour is come; glorify thy Son, that the Son may
glorify thee! And God glorified Him as He glorified
God, in, we may be sure, the divinest way, the way of
Gethsemane and Calvary. A few months before,
when Jesus was beginning to prepare His disciples for
the way in which He was to be glorified, Peter took
Him and began to rebuke Him, saying, Be it far from
thee Lord; this shall never be unto thee. But he
turned and said unto Peter, Get thee behind me, Satan :
thou art a stumbling-block unto me: for thou mindest
not the things of God, but the things of men. If it was
a temptation of Satan to shrink from entering upon
His kingdom in the divine way, surely it was Satan
himself in the human temptation that assailed Him
to establish that kingdom in just the opposite way,
upon the principles not of love and service and sacri
fice, but of pride and ambition and earthly self-exalta
tion. To surrender one s soul to such motives as these
is to fall down and worship Satan. Pride, or the wor
ship of Self, is the subtlest, the first and the last, of
human temptations. Even when one has given one
self in faith and hope to God, it creeps in in spiritual
form to poison and corrupt the joy and exaltation that
Growth and Preparation of Jesus 41
belong of right to these. Jesus could recognize and
accept the glory which is the reward of spiritual victory,
and in that moment detect and exclude every trace of
self-seeking or self -exaltation. He could perfectly
lose Himself in the act in which He most perfectly
found Himself. The only true humility is that of
perfect love. One can lose oneself only in preoccupa
tion with that in others which takes and fills the place
of self. The power to do this, which is the triumph
of divine love, is the only secret of putting behind that
opposite spirit which is of the devil.
Thus the issue of the three temptations was the de
cisive, though not yet the final and complete, victory
of the three great principles which are the spiritual
foundations of the kingdom of God Faith, Hope,
Love. As they were the constituents of our Lord s
own divine human life, so are they the constituents of
that selfsame life as He imparts it to us by His spirit
in us.
Ill
THE DIVINE SONSHIP OF HUMANITY
As we have seen that the realization of a divine son-
ship, not so much in human nature as in human life,
was the end and achievement of the earthly life of
Jesus, it may be well to delay a little upon the attempt
to see more exactly what that sonship signifies. And
it may be as well to put the question in the form
suggested above: Are we to find the divine son-
ship made so much of by our Lord in a fact of nature
or in an act of life? It is an old and familiar issue
among us: Did Jesus Christ find man son of God, or
did He make him so? When we are baptized into
Christ, are we thereby only declared to be, or are we
thereby made, children of God ? I shall not so much
undertake to decide between these two views as attempt
to state the truth of both. But we must admit at once
that, on the surface at least, the stress of the New Testa
ment and the Church is much more on the second view
than on the first. They seem to make little of the
natural sonship and much of the spiritual, the com
municated or acquired. Our sonship originated with
and dates from Christ. It exists only in Him, and
can be ours only as we are in Him, by the grace of God
upon us and the grace of God in us. We can find the
42
The Divine Sonship of Humanity 43
explanation of this only, I think, in an analysis of the
fact and meaning of sonship in general.
What then do we mean by sonship, word or thing?
All through nature life reproduces itself; like begets
like. But we do not apply the terms father and son
to vegetable or animal relationships of begetter and
begotten. In their case the relation is only a natural
one in which themselves have no part, for the reason
that, in the true sense, they have no selves. In the
case of even the higher animals that which is begotten
is like that which begot it by the sole fact of its begetting,
though it should never know its parent or any member
of its species. But a man is not a man, in what is
distinctive of man, by being merely born of man. He
would never become man apart from, or except through,
subsequent personal association with man. What
essentially differences man from the brute, what ac
cording to Aristotle constitutes his higher and dis
tinctive part, actually comes to him not by physical
birth but by personal association. I say actually, not
of course potentially. But whatever of spiritual or
personal potentiality a human being inherits by birth
is as though it were not until it is elicited by the second
birth of intercommunication and association. It is
born not of blood but of intelligence and affection and
will and self-activity. So we may say that in that
which truly constitutes it, that which separates it from
mere vegetable and animal generation, sonship is a
personal and not a physical relationship. It comes
through knowing and realizing itself. Of course we
may say that it could not know itself if it did not already
44 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
exist. And in this is the truth of the natural sonship.
But when we endeavour to fix the true meaning and
content of sonship we find that that mere potential
existence is actual and practical non-existence.
The clearest statement of the matter seems to me to
be afforded by Aristotle s account of virtue. No man is
virtuous by nature, for the simple reason that virtue
is not a natural but a personal quality. It is not virtue
except in so far as it has come through oneself, con
sciously, voluntarily, and of choice. Yet virtue is the
most natural thing in the world, and vice the most
unnatural. Virtue is the fulfilment of our nature,
but it is our fulfilment of it, and it does not really exist
prior to our act and activity in its production. Nature
constitutes us not virtuous, but to become so, to make
ourselves so. And it so constitutes us by making us per
sons, by endowing us with reason to know and will to
act of ourselves. Just so it is with our sonship to God.
What is natural in it is a mere potentiality which,
actually and practically, is equivalent to non-existence.
It is of course no small thing that we are by nature
endowed with spiritual and personal potentialities;
that is the condition of all else we may be or become.
Yes, but it is only the condition, out of which we
may become all sorts of opposites and contradictories.
The potentiality to be virtuous or to be children of God
is equally the potentiality to be vicious and children
of the devil. Shall we say that we are these too by
nature ? If it is more natural to be child of God than
of the devil, that can only mean that in ourselves be
coming the one we will more perfectly realize ourselves
The Divine Sonship of Humanity 45
than in becoming the other; that in fact one is our doing
and the other our undoing. But the being one or the
other is act of ourselves and not fact of our nature.
In the case of our Lord s own human-divine sonship,
the stress in the Gospels is laid not upon the natural but
upon the spiritual part or side of it. He is son because
He knows and realizes His sonship. The divine recog
nition at His baptism is a recognition not of what He
was potentially by His birth, but of what He was, and
had humanly become, in His life. God was well
pleased with Him. That was no commendation of
any mere fact of nature, human or divine. It was
satisfaction with His human life, with what He had
grown to be under all the conditions and circumstances
of His earthly preparation. And when Christianity
came finally to appraise and define the divine sonship
revealed in Him, that which it saw in Him was no fact
of mere nature, but the act of His militant and tri
umphant life. It saw and recognized and placed His
sonship in the perfection of His holiness and the victory
of His life. He was Son, perfected forevermore by
the things He had suffered. He was the Son of God
with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the
resurrection of the dead.
The impression that Jesus speaks habitually of the
universal, and therefore natural, fatherhood of God
I have no disposition to deny or to minimize. But
even that must be modified by the fact that for the
most part those to whom He speaks of their heavenly
Father are those whom He is addressing as disciples.
And on the other hand, our Lord says very little di-
46 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
rectly of men in general as sons or children of God.
Rather He urges us so to be and act that we may become
sons or children of God. He promises those who are
of the spirit of God that they shall be called sons of
God. And He even speaks in one place of the holy
dead as sons of God, being sons of the resurrection.
The disposition of a school not merely of thought
but of very deep and active life in the Church to bring
forward and emphasize the natural divine sonship of
all men, I not only sympathize with but share. But I
do so because I see in it more or, rather, more be
cause I see in it an evangelical spirit than a natural
fact or truth. It is a truth in Jesus rather than in
nature. What is primarily manifested to us in Jesus
Christ is God s essential disposition, and therefore
His eternal purpose, towards mankind. We see that
purpose not only expressed, but, as we believe, realized
for us in the person of Jesus Christ. Whom God fore
knew He foreordained to be conformed to the image
of His Son, that He might be the firstborn among many
brethren. So deep a hold has this divine disposition
and its operation in the world taken upon us through
the Gospel of Jesus Christ that it seems to us now
almost a natural fact, and we wish all men to see it so,
and so make it so. The fact is, however, that all men
are sons of God not by nature but by grace. Pro
vision is so made in the love and grace and fellowship
of God, which means in Jesus Christ, that all men shall
be sons of God, that we say that in Him all men have
been made and therefore are sons of God. And so we
tell all men that they are sons of God and have only to
The Divine Sonship of Humanity 47
realize in order to make it so. What first came to us
as a revelation of grace in Christ has become so part
of us that we now hold and proclaim it as a fact of
nature prior to Christ.
It is hardly possible to stop here and not go on into
a later stage of Gospel representation. We have in
what has been said so far, and in which we have not
gone beyond the proper limits of the Synoptics, the
ground of reality in the divine sonship realized in
humanity by Jesus Christ upon which the later de
veloped truth of regeneration, the necessity of a new
birth from above, securely rests. We have seen that
even earthly sonship is not a mere physical fact, but is
the product of a second birth, the birth of the idea in
the mind and the heart and the life. It is the truth
and the spirit in the person and not the fact in the
nature that constitutes it. We might say that it is
born not of the immanental natural nexus but of trans
cendental personal association and relationship. So
still more is it with the divine fatherhood and sonship.
The relation is one still less of physical fact and more
of spiritual act. It is the birth of an idea, which is a
divine truth and reality, in the mind and the We. And
so we say that divine sonship is born of the Word and
the Spirit, the Word being the objective divine ex
pression to us of the truth of sonship, and the Spirit
the subjective divine realization in us of the fact of
sonship. We could not have been born of God in the
sense of the new life of humanity in Jesus Christ with
out a divine revelation. By which I mean a not
immanental but transcendental communication from
48 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
without, from above, of a Word and a Spirit, a Truth,
and a Grace to appropriate it. We are begotten again
not of corruptible seed, not of blood, but of incorrupt
ible, through the word of God which liveth and abideth.
Jesus Christ Himself is the revelation, the communica
tion from above of the Truth and the Grace by which,
objectively to us and subjectively in us, the eternal life
of God is made ours.
What I have described as a mere potentiality of son-
ship, in which our natural relation to God consists,
St. Paul treats as a foreordination or predestination
to sonship. Of course a predestination of God is a
predestination of nature. What we are to be in the
end it must have been our nature in the beginning to
become; according to the saying of Aristotle, that
What a thing shall be when its becoming has been
completed, that we call the nature of the thing. But
there is this difference, that according to the Gospel of
Christianity the end of humanity is not by immanental
completion from within, what we might call natural
evolution, but by transcendental addition from without.
We acquiesce in an absolute immanental evolution of
things but not of persons, because just the distinction
of a person from a thing consists in its power to be in
a relation of objective, transcendental, relative inde
pendence of evolution. What else are consciousness
and freedom and personality? How else are there
such facts as transgression and sin, and by conquest
of these holiness and righteousness ? Humanity was
predestinated in the fulness of time to something more
than natural relation to God, viz., to personal asso-
The Divine Sonship of Humanity 49
ciation with God. And in this association and inter
course, in objective union and communion with God,
it was to find its completion. But if in the nature
of things man was to communicate with God objectively,
it was in the nature of things that God should com
municate with man objectively. There must be the
descent of Word and Spirit from above, if there was to
be the answer and ascent of faith and spirituality from
below. Christianity knows God, not where it cannot
know Him, in His remoteness in Himself, but where
and as alone it can know Him, in His Word of revela
tion to it and in His Spirit of participation and fellow
ship with it. And so man was foreordained unto
sonship to God through Jesus Christ; not by opera
tion or in course of nature, but by personal act of him
self, by act of himself in conjunction with the
act of God making him son through Jesus Christ.
In the birth from above there is an act of generation
and an act of conception. The generation is by the
Word which is the sperma or seed, the conception is
by the Spirit which enables us to receive the Word.
In other words, the Word is the principle of objective
divine revelation, the Spirit that of subjective human
appropriation. The Word aptat Deum homini, the
Spirit aptat hominem Deo. And so is accomplished
the uniting into one of the life of God and the life of
man.
We have gone far ahead of the representation to
which we were to limit ourselves in this first part, and
I return to ask how much of the truth, we may say the
philosophy, of all this is to be found already in the bare
50 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
fact of the realized divine sonship of Jesus in His
earthly life. That life viewed in its most pronounced
and acknowledged humanity was far more than hu
manity. And what more there was in it, as we think
and believe, the perfection of the divine spirit, the divine
nature, the divine life how was it there ? Not by
consequence of any metaphysical truth or fact as to
His nature or person, but by life-long act and attitude
of Himself humanly towards a corresponding eternal
divine act and attitude towards Him as son of man.
The divine fatherhood was perfected in His sonship
by the fact that His sonship perfectly conceived and
realized or reproduced the divine fatherhood. When
humanity was foreordained to be conformed to the
image of the Son of God, that He might be the first
born among many brethren, and when it was called to
enter upon and fulfil that divine predestination, what
was it called to do ? It was, in the first place, to see,
what it was impossible for it to see without revelation,
the eternally purposed and the eternally accomplished
truth of God in man and man in God. And then, it
was called to be, what it could never be without the
inspiration of divine spirit and power, as perfectly as
Jesus Christ is what Jesus Christ is son of God.
IV
THE SON OF MAN
THE more we examine into it and ponder over it,
the more important grows the question: Why, among
various designations, does Jesus elect so habitually to
call Himself by that of Son of man ? It cannot be
merely because that had been a more or less common
title applied to the expected Messiah. It was charac
teristic of Jesus that He was much more concerned
with the realities of the new than with the figures of
the old dispensation. We are still too apt to think we
understand or have explained the realities of the Gospel
when we show that they express and fulfil some figure
of the Old Testament. The figure may have adum
brated the fact; the fact too much transcends the figure
to be fully explained or adequately interpreted by it.
We may understand the Old Testament in the light of
its fulfilment in the New. We cannot understand the
New in the dim light of its prefiguration in the Old.
The Gospel of Jesus Christ can be seen and under
stood only in the white light of its own utter and inde
pendent truth. There was a reason in itself why our
Lord selected that term to express or describe Himself.
When we come to examine and compare all the differ
ent connections and senses in which Jesus uses or
51
52 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
seems to use the designation Son of man, we do not
find the answer to our question so plain or easy. Evi
dently He means by it to identify Himself in some very
deep and universal way with humanity as such. What
do we mean by humanity as such? We may adven
ture a few explanations upon this point.
In the first place, humanity as such means humanity
in its simplicity, its reality, its universality. As such,
humanity was not known among those who controlled
its destinies, by its teachers and its rulers, in the days
of our Lord s earthly life. It was buried and lost
under a hopeless weight of traditional, conventional,
and artificial distinctions and regulations. The insti
tution or the law, social, political, and above all relig
ious, was everything and the man was nothing. Man
existed for the established order, not the established
order for man. Society, the state, or the church
and they were practically one was for itself or its
official representatives, and man as man, in his relation
to it, had ceased to be considered. Now, as between
these two, Jesus took His position not, as we shall
see, on the side of the individual against the established
order, but in behalf of humanity against a perverted
established order. The Son of man for our sakes
became poor; He had not where to lay His head; He
took to Himself no special privilege of birth or wealth
or class or office. He stood upon His manhood. And
the name by which He called Himself expressed that
attitude towards existing conditions. Son of man had
indeed in Hebrew usage become about synonymous
with man, but it carried the little additional force of
The Son of Man 53
man qua man. That which is born of man is man,
shares the common nature, is to be defined by the uni
versal predicates. That identification Jesus had taken
upon Himself; in that universality, or commonness
with all, He knew and named Himself.
But that identification and self-designation had the
effect, in the second place, of recognizing and em
phasizing the true nature, the dignity and value, of
bare manhood as such. There was never a higher
vindication and expression of manhood than in the
words: The sabbath was made for man, and not
man for the sabbath. The sabbath, yes, and every
other natural or human institution. The great truth
grows until it finds its logical utterance in St. Paul s
description of the dignity of man in Christ: Let no one
glory in men that is, in human dignities and dis
tinctions. For all things are yours; whether Paul, or
Apollos, or Cephas, or the world, or life, or death, or
things present, or things to come; all are yours; and ye
are Christ s; and Christ is God s.
The conception of the inherent dignity of humanity,
universally recognized as owing so much to the attitude
of Jesus Christ towards it, has been abundantly vin
dicated and illustrated by both modern philosophy
and science. Kant first demonstrated the philosoph
ical fact that there can be no "end in itself" which
cannot be an end to itself. Only that which has " being
for self," which can know, feel, possess, enjoy, or value
itself, can be an end either to itself or to anything else.
If we ask what all evolution is for, there is nothing else
in all we can know of evolution for which it can be but
54 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
man. It cannot be for itself apart from man, because
apart from man it has no self for which to be. It is
perfectly legitimate to conclude, not only that evolu
tion as known by science has no further task than the
further and higher development of the spiritual or
personal qualities and destiny of man, but also that if
from the beginning there was any end or purpose in
evolution a,t all, that was it. Some such philosophic
and scientific cosmical conception as this, we shall see,
underlay the entire New Testament interpretation of
itself.
In the third place, Son of man in the mouth of Jesus
carries with it the idea not only of universal meaning
and of inherent dignity, but also of self-realization.
The true Son of man is He who has properly conceived
and realized His manhood. By assuming to Himself
the title Jesus assumes that He has done this. The
Son of man is Lord of the sabbath. This He could
claim only for Himself individually. He as man was
above the sabbath, above the law, above the temple,
above every natural or human institution, why ?
Because He was the attained and accomplished end
for which they were all instituted. There are two
errors against which we have very carefully to guard
ourselves. The first is the idea that Jesus set Himself
against the established order, against outward institu
tions, as such. He was the furthest from doing this.
What He did set Himself against was the sin of an
order or an institution, divinely established to serve
an end, setting up itself as the end; sacrificing the true
end to itself instead of itself to the end; reversing the
The Son of Man 55
divine law by being in this world to be served instead
of to serve. He did not object to the visible temple.
The zeal of it even ate Him up. What He did object
to was that His Father s house which was to have been
a house of prayer had been converted into a den of
thieves, that men were making merchandise for them
selves out of what had been instituted for the service
of God. Every ordinance of God was God to Him.
He was indignant not at the consecration of means to
ends, but at their desecration to other ends or at their
blasphemous elevation into ends in themselves. And
so the second error against which we need to guard
ourselves is the thought that even Jesus in His humanity
could have been above the sabbath or above the law
any otherwise than through having obeyed and ful
filled them. Nothing can dispense us from the humble
and devout use of divine means except the fact of hav
ing through their appointed use as means attained
the ends for which they were instituted. This was
wonderfully illustrated by our Lord s own acts and
attitude throughout His life. He submitted to every
ordinance of man or God, except when it was possible
for Him to honour its spirit only by violating its letter.
When He said, Think not that I am come to destroy
the law ; I am come not to destroy but to fulfil, there
was included in that purpose not only the law in any
higher sense but the Jewish law in every essential
detail. Not only had He been Himself circumcised
but He rose above and beyond the fact of outward
circumcision only by fulfilling its inward meaning and
purpose. So St. Paul and others, although Jews, felt
56 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
themselves absolved from the obligation of circum
cision, not because it was an outward ordinance, but
because in that as in every other respect they felt them
selves "fulfilled in Christ; in whom they had been
circumcised with the circumcision made without hands,
in the putting off of the body of the flesh, in the circum
cision of Christ." The law of sacrifice was abrogated
only through the true sacrifice once for all, in which all
the meaning and the truth of sacrifice is forever ex
pressed and fulfilled. Jesus Christ is the end of the
law for righteousness, not because there was or is not
the need of a law of righteousness, but because He is
the righteousness for which the law exists.
In pursuing our reflections upon the senses in which
our Lord used the term Son of man or rather perhaps in
this case the sentiments or impulses which uncon
sciously led Him to take it to Himself, we might make
a fourth point of the following. Indeed it is involved
in what has been already said, and only needs a little
more emphasis. Jesus we say was the enemy of all
mere formality or conventionality, which was to Him
hypocrisy. But it was not the mere hypocrisy that so
deeply troubled Him. It was the inhumanity under
lying it that moved Him to the depths. They watched
Him on a certain occasion to see whether He would heal
on the sabbath day; that they might accuse Him.
Perceiving their thoughts, He puts to them the direct
question, Is it lawful to do good on the sabbath day ?
When they held their peace, He looked round about
upon them with anger, and then bade the man stand up
and be healed. But his anger was not at their legalism
The Son of Man 57
in making so much of mere outward observance. St.
Mark gives a deeper reading of His heart. He was
grieved at the hardening of their heart. What man is
there of you, He asks, and there is in the Greek an
evident emphasis upon the use of the word man
Who is there among you with the heart of a man,
that shall have a sheep, and if it fall into a pit on the
sabbath day, will he not lay hold upon it and lift it out ?
How much is a man of more value than a sheep ! Where
fore it is lawful to do good on the sabbath day. It is
not hypocrisy but inhumanity that grieves Him ; except
that all hypocrisy, all unreality, all shallowness or
stopping short of the deep meaning and truth of things,
is selfishness and inhumanity. Reality is humanity,
because it is love and service and sacrifice.
I said, under the third head just above, that our
Lord, in taking to Himself the title Son of man, at once
identified Himself with all humanity and distinguished
Himself from it. He is the truth of it, and so is Lord
of all that pertains to its life. When He says, as He
does, That ye may know that the Son of man hath
power on earth to forgive sins, I do not think He is
merely claiming for humanity at large the divine
right and function of mercy and forgiveness. His
words have reference to His own Messianic mission,
which was, as we shall see, by the taking or put
ting away of sin, to bring humanity to God, and
so bring it to itself. From the beginning of His min
istry of humanity He had exhibited His skill and power
to deal with human ills. He began with the ills most
in evidence, those of the body. But He was not to
58 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
stop with or upon these. His axe was to be laid at the
root of all ill. We cannot suppose that the permanent
ministry of Christ and of Christianity was to be the
immediate healing, without the use of human means,
of the physical or natural ills of the world. His min
istry began with these because it was only through the
diseases of the body that He could reach those of the
soul. But His power to heal the former was only a
parable of His power to heal the latter. That ye may
know that the Son of man hath power on earth to for
give sins then saith He to the sick of the palsy,
Arise, take up thy bed and walk. Christianity is
humanity, and must therefore deal with all ill that is
human. It must even deal in many respects with
physical evils before it can touch the springs of spiritual
and moral evil. But its real mission and function is to
reach and heal the natural through the spiritual and
the moral. Its permanent method is to treat causes
rather than symptoms. If I should attempt to explain
humanly the distinctively human right and power of
Jesus to forgive or to take away sin, it would be some
what on the following lines. The inherent right to
represent God depends upon the extent to which we
inherently represent Him. If one through perfect
actual realization of the divine fatherhood should per
fectly realize his own sonship, he would be no longer
only a servant in his Father s house. He would be a
son, entitled to speak in his father s name and with
his father s authority. When the son has reproduced
the father s spirit and embodied the father s law, then
he has not only authority but commandment and
The Son of Man 59
obligation to express and administer his father s will.
In the perfection of His humanity, Jesus Christ was
upon this earth as God. And that perhaps is the ex
planation why, even before His advent, the Messiah of
the Old Testament, while always man, is often spoken
of in terms of, and interchangeably with, God Him
self. There is perhaps a yet deeper truth involved in
that of the Son of man. This, namely: That, if God
is ever to be spiritually and personally in the world at
all, it will be only through the Son of man; that is to
say, through the growing divinity of man. It will be
consummated when the Son of man shall be Humanity.
The divine Father of all can be in all only as all realize
or actualize the divine sonship. But the great truth
of our Lord s relation to the taking away of sin, and
so at-oneing humanity with God, belongs to a later
stage of our inquiries.
In the next place, our Lord speaks most pointedly
of Himself as Son of man in those connections in which
He is foretelling those most human experiences of the
trials and afflictions that await Him, and also of His
own victory over them, especially, His death and
resurrection. In a certain place (Romans 5: 1-5) St.
Paul tells us, in view of what has happened in Christ
Jesus, that we ought as Christians to do three things:
We ought to be at present peace with God, with whom
by faith we see ourselves eternally at one. We ought
to rejoice in hope of that actual and entire identifica
tion with God which shall be our final glory. And if
these two, then ought we also to glory in the tribula
tions by which He became, and we also shall become,
60 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
what He is. There is nothing our Lord so insists
upon as the necessary relation of the Son of man to
the things lie suffered. It became God, we may say
reverently that it was necessary for God, in bringing
many sons to glory, to perfect the captain of their
salvation through suffering.
And finally, and perhaps most strikingly of all, it is
impossible for any criticism to sever our Lord s own
conception of Himself as Son of man from the truth in
His mind of His second advent, His perpetual coming
in the world, and the great final coming to judge the
world. It is in metaphysical and logical sequence with
all that has gone before, that St. John should represent
our Lord as describing the two great functions of the
Son of man as giving life, or raising the dead, and
executing judgment. He Himself discharges these
two functions because He is Son of man. As the divine
end of humanity, its truth and reality and therefore its
predestination, it belonged to Him not only to have
come but to be always coming. It was His right to
foresee not only His true coming begin soon after His
apparent departure, but His complete coming con
summated in a great and universal final Advent. And
in the very nature of it His coming is a perpetual and
an everlasting act or process of divine judgment. He
came not into the world to condemn the world, but to
give life to the world. His proper function is life-
giving, a life-giving that is both resurrection and re
generation. But if God sent not His Son into the
world to judge but only to save it, it cannot but be that
His coming is in itself a judgment. He that believeth
The Son of Man 61
on Him is not judged, but he that believeth not is
judged already, because he hath not believed on the
name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is
the judgment, that men loved the darkness rather than
the light. We cannot get around that reasoning. In
some form or other, in some terms or other, it will
always be coming home to us. Stripped of all conven
tional or ecclesiastical language, Jesus Christ means
to every human being the truth, the reality, the worth
and the blessedness of himself. That is always with
him or before him for acceptance or rejection, for
realization or ruin. All human life is judgment, which
is primarily only separation between those who are
and those who are not, those who do and those who do
not what it is appointed for all in life to be and to
do. If to live, to be ourselves, to do our part, is appro
bation, justification, blessedness, what can failure to
do these be but reprobation, condemnation, and
wretchedness ?
The truth that final judgment is to be by the Son of
man carries this further thought. Nothing is said in
the New Testament of a divine wrath against sinful-
ness as a universal fact or condition. Nothing is said
of a final condemnation of human transgression of the
divine law. It is recognized that by nature we cannot
but be sinners. It is recognized that our highest de
votion to and aspiration after the law of God is weak
through our human flesh.
There is infinite pity and compassion, infinite mercy
and forgiveness, for sinners. Our Lord, or St. Paul,
or St. John after Him, have no condemnation for sin-
62 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
ners. All their condemnation is for those who are not
sinners, who do not know themselves to be such, who
do not know in themselves what it is to be such, who
will not to be, and will not be, saved from their sin.
THE KINGDOM OF GOD
ALTHOUGH both John the Baptist and Jesus came in
succession preaching in identical terms the kingdom
of God, yet they preached it and meant it in a very
different spirit. So much so that John to the last
found it hard to recognize what he had himself prepared
for in his successor. When he sent from his prison to
inquire of Jesus whether He were indeed he that
should come, or were they to look for another, Jesus
answered him with signs of the kingdom, but it is by
no means certain that those signs would satisfy John.
He was cast in a severer and more legal mould. Jesus,
while taking occasion, on the departure of the mes
sengers, to speak in the highest possible terms of John
as a prophet and representative of the old dispensation,
seems to recognize that he had not been born anew of
the spirit, or born into the new spirit, and so after all
his preparation for the kingdom of God had not truly
seen or entered into the kingdom of God. He was the
friend of the bridegroom, who had prepared the bride
for the heavenly nuptials, but he did not witness the
union. And so Jesus declares that he who within the
kingdom of God was least was greater than John.
The kingdom of God must therefore be something
63
64 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
very definite and very positive. And yet from Jesus
own preaching of it we find it very difficult to define it
positively. Perhaps in this respect too the kingdom
of God was to come " without observation," not in word
but in deed, to be seen and judged only in its fruits.
We must therefore, as before, collect its meaning and
frame our definition of it as best we may from the whole
tenor of our Lord s teaching and action.
We might say in general that the kingdom of God is
simply and literally what the words express, not any
thing of God but God Himself in humanity. But if
we should agree upon this, we should at once disagree
upon what this means. With many it would mean no
more than the prevalence and influence within each
man of his own subjective conception of God. With
others who have more of the sense of God as One with
whom we may hold objective relations, the kingdom
of God will be an actual presence and operation of
God in us, as we say, by His Spirit. And still others
may go the whole length of holding the kingdom of God
to be that permanent and eternal incarnation of God
in humanity which we see not only realized in the in
dividual person of Jesus Christ, but to be consummated
in the universal humanity of which He is the head.
Leaving then for the present so general a definition as
that, let us examine the matter more in detail.
Is it possible that that which was John s stumbling-
block in the ministry of Jesus was that it seemed to
him to lack positiveness and decision; that there was
not enough in it of the Law which he knew, and too
much of the Gospel which he could not understand?
The Kingdom of God 65
John s kingdom was the kingdom of righteousness,
Christ s the kingdom of mercy and goodness. There
are many evidences of this in the very different atti
tude of Jesus from that of John in His dealing with the
actual sins of actual men and women. One would say
from this point of view that the kingdom of God is the
spirit of God manifested in Jesus Christ as pure Good
ness, that is to say, as pure love and mercy and
forgiveness. This is manifested from the beginning
in the impression of Jesus as one who went about doing
good; in His profoundly sympathetic response to the
appeal of every form of human misery; in His declara
tion of His mission as Son of man to seek and to save
that which was lost; in His consorting with publicans
and sinners rather than with the righteous and the rich.
And surely as we saw that our Lord s chosen designa
tion was Son of man, so we may say that the essence of
His religion was humanity.
We cannot say truly that the kingdom of God is
goodness, unless we know clearly what goodness is.
Jesus naturally met evil on the outside, and so He ad
dressed Himself first to the evils of the body and of the
outward condition. But that was not His end or aim.
Missionaries to the slums of a great city or to a crowded
foreign heathen population might go first with relief
funds and appliances, with hospitals and improved
sanitation and healthier and more decent methods of
dressing and living. It is Christian to do so because
Christianity is humanity wherever or however applied.
But humanity that goes no further than that is not
Christianity. Christianity is not Christianity until it
66 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
is applying its axe to the root of the evil and the
wretchedness of the world, until its business is with sin
and with God s salvation from sin. It is not the Gospel
nor the kingdom of God nor salvation to men that they
shall be made the objects only of all the mercy and the
goodness of the universe. Nothing can be done merely
to us or for us that will save us. To be loved, to be
sympathized with and helped, to be shown mercy and
forgiven, to be the objects of the most unconditional
divine grace, are a very great deal. But these are
the merest circumstances of human salvation, they
are not salvation itself. No one saw more clearly
than our Lord that life and blessedness is not in
what is done to us, but only in what we ourselves
are and do. He did not mean the story of the
Prodigal Son to be to us the beginning and the end
of the Gospel. At least, He did not unless we include
in its teaching not only the perfect and unconditional
love and goodness of the father, but, as the consequence,
not cause of that, the complete repentance and self-
restoration of the son. The goodness of God leadeth
us unto repentance. Nothing else can so lead us to
repentance or can make repentance so effectual unto
salvation; but it is our repentance and what comes
of it in ourselves that constitutes and is our salva
tion. Therefore, Jesus quickly and decisively passes
from the consideration of men as the mere recipients
or objects of the goodness of God, of which He
was the almoner, to the higher thought of them as
the subjects of the divine goodness, as partakers
and sharers of the divine spirit and nature and life
The Kingdom of God 67
of love and goodness. The creditor who owed ten
thousand talents could by no possibility have dis
charged the debt, and his lord had compassion on him
and freely forgave him all. But when that same ser
vant showed no mercy to the fellow-servant who owed
him an hundred pence, what was become of the mercy
and goodness that had been shown him? We can be
recipients only as we are sharers and dispensers of the
grace of God. And that is not an arbitrary condition
upon God s part. All that God has to give is, in the
nature of it, capable of being received and possessed
and enjoyed only as it is used. And it can be used as
God uses it only as it is used, not for ourselves, but
upon all in the measure of their claim upon us. How
otherwise is it possible to have and to employ and to
enjoy God s spirit and nature, and life of love and grace
and goodness ?
All that God has to give us is goodness, because
properly understood that is all that God is Himself.
And goodness is ab initio, not only what we are in our
selves and do of ourselves, but what we are and do to
others than ourselves. But there is no exaggerated
or impracticable unselfishness or altruism in that. As
we have before pointed out, goodness is our own and
our only good. A man s true pleasure or happiness
or blessedness or good is to be found in the abundance
of his life, which means in the abundance of what he is
and does. And what can he be or do except in relation
and interchange with others, in mutual offices of love
and goodness ? The whole tenor of our Lord s teach
ing and example is to the effect that the res or matter
68 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
of our salvation is not in what God is to us or does for
us, but in the result of that upon and in ourselves. It
is not the being loved but the loving with a divine love
that is our salvation. It is not the receiving but the
showing mercy, not our being forgiven but our forgiving,
that Jesus Christ is concerned about, not because God
is in want of, in the sense of lacking, what we are or can
do, but because He knows that that alone is what we
want or lack. We do not take sufficient account of
the inseparable condition attached to all God s gifts of
grace. We can receive freely only what we give freely,
and the blessing contained and intended in the gift is
to be found by us not in the freely receiving but in the
freely using and giving. We need pray to be forgiven
our debts only as we forgive our debtors. For if we
forgive not, neither does our heavenly Father forgive
us. Blessed are they that show mercy, for they shall
receive mercy.
The kingdom of God, then, is not a kingdom of good
ness as too many of us understand goodness. It is a
kingdom not of absolute and unconditioned mercy
shown to us, but of divine and therefore unconditioned
mercy and goodness exercised by us. In other words,
it is a kingdom not only of goodness but of righteous
ness, or rather of the unity and identity of these. John
the Baptist need not have feared that Jesus was going
to compromise or relax the law. He was going to
magnify it. Except your new righteousness of grace,
He was to say to His disciples, shall exceed the old
righteousness of law, ye shall not enter into the king
dom of heaven. He was not to lower the standard of
The Kingdom of God 69
personal perfection, but to raise it to its limit in infinity:
Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect. He
was not by what so many of us call goodness to put up
with human imperfection, to condone human weak
ness, to let down the demands of human obligation
and responsibility. But He was to effect a higher pur
pose and accomplish a higher result in the matter of
all these, not by the old impossible method of exacting
a righteousness that could not be rendered, but by the
new and practicable method of imparting a righteous
ness which could be received, and which could and
should be none the less our righteousness because not
ours but God s in us. That the spirit that I am now
of, the new nature into which I have grown, the life I
live by the faith of the Son of God, are all not mine
but God s who lives in me, makes them none the less
mine who also live in God.
The point is that the desire to make the Gospel a
gospel of goodness, so called, shown to us, and not of
righteousness to the utmost required of us, is the com-
pletest possible travesty and contradiction of goodness.
The world is slowly educating up to the point of seeing
that the worst unkindness to a rational and free per
sonality is the kindness of ministering a natural or
physical good at the expense to him of moral or spiritual,
by which we mean personal, good. A man s life is not
in the abundance of the things he possesses, but in him
self. If in increasing his possessions we diminish him,
we have wrought him the worst injury in our power.
The highest mercy to a man is to spare him no require
ment of his own manhood. God spared not His own
70 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
Son, but gave Him up to all that earth or hell could do
against Him. To have spared Him whatsoever of His
humiliation would have been to rob Him of just so
much of His exaltation. The kingdom of God, then,
is not weakness. It is no weakness in God, no lower
ing of His demand upon us to return to Him with the
usury of actuality all that He has committed to us in
potentiality, no sparing us any jot or tittle of the labor
or the pain that, if we are to be made at all, must of
necessity go to the making of us. And therefore,
equally, it is no weakness for us. So far from God s
purpose in Christ being to do anything for us or in
stead of us which therefore we are not to do ourselves,
it is a call to us to be all, to do all, and to suffer all that
Jesus Christ Himself is, did, or suffered. If we are to
be near Him in His kingdom, we must have drunk the
cup that He drank and been baptized with the baptism
that He was baptized withal. We must have died the
death He died and attained the resurrection that He
accomplished.
The story of the Prodigal Son may be used to illus
trate the whole method of the kingdom of God. We
will confine ourselves to the most general application
of it as giving an account of the return, reconciliation,
and restoration of the soul that has been far separated
from God by sin. The thing to be illustrated is not a
material separation or one of outward space and con
dition. It is an alienation, a drifting apart, of mind
and character and life, a long widening and far widened
breach of spiritual sympathy and personal unity.
What the son is brought to and experiences in the far
The Kingdom of God 71
country is not the straits and discomforts of physical
poverty, but the inherent consequences, the evil and
the wretchedness, of sin. Sin is an evil not only
spiritual and moral but also natural; and what he felt
first was doubtless the natural ills into which he had
sunk. But whatever he wished, what he wanted was
not relief merely from these. The story would never
have been told if its end had been restoration only to
that. The restoration was not to outward conditions
but to himself, and that through reconciliation or
spiritual at-one-ment with the father and the home.
How was that internal and essential reunion to be ac
complished? The natural first answer would be
through the self-reformation and conversion of the son.
The change away having been his alone, the change
back must be equally his own. Certainly, the father
alone could not effect the reconciliation, whatever
might be his disposition. In the thing to be illustrated,
what is wanted is the change or conversion of the son
himself. But suppose that, as is the case, such a
spiritual self-restoration is a natural and a moral im
possibility. That can only mean that salvation is an
impossibility. And so it is, of the son and by the son
himself. If it is to be accomplished it must be by
the father and the son in co-operation. And that
co-operation must depend upon a personal attitude or
disposition towards it on both sides. On the part of
the son it is not amiss that the most outward experiences
of the wretched consequences of his sin should first
awake his consciousness of loss and want. But the
matter would not go far if that did not lead further,
72 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
to remorse and repentance and the desire not only to
restore his condition but to recover himself. This in
turn could not but lead to the consciousness that as it
was he who had sinned, so it must be he who should
put away his sin. The obligation of his own part in
the matter surely could not be felt too strongly. The
law must press its claims, and he must feel those claims
to the very uttermost. It is only after he has tested to
the limit the possibilities of the law, or his own possi
bilities under the law that is to say, after he has
fully proved his own will to save himself that he is
prepared for further and other conditions of salvation.
In the case of our heavenly Father we do not know
how far His providence and prevenient grace is oper
ative in our own least and earliest part in the process,
but certainly our part must be there. We must have
felt the law and tested our own will and strength to
obey it before His grace can intervene. When we have
come, or have been brought or properly, both to
that point, then may be revealed to us the beginnings
of His part in the matter. I say then, for nothing can
be revealed to us until we are prepared to apprehend
and receive it. The philosophy of God s part may be
expressed by a return to the illustration of the parable.
What could never have come to the son through the
law of himself can and does come to him in the end
through the grace of the father. Taken back at once
and completely, just as he was, into his father s heart
and home, all his sin and shame as though it was not
and had never been, himself in the best robe and with
the ring of perfect not only reconciliation but eternal
The Kingdom of God 73
union upon his hand, treated as though he were already
all that his father s son should be, what effect would
all that love and grace, all that fulness of fellowship
and that atmosphere of goodness, have upon the son ?
It would deepen his remorse and increase his penitence,
but it would go far beyond that. The perfect faith
and trust in the father s restoration of him to sonship
would give him heart for and hope in his own inner
restoration to sonship. The objective fact would
create the subjective spirit, and day by day he would
not only be in faith and hope, but be becoming in spirit
and reality, more and more the son of his father.
If such is the rationale of the only possible true recon
ciliation and restoration to union of earthly father and
son, why shall it not be the true image and shadow of
the reconciliation we so sorely need with our Father in
heaven ? To come back to Him is to come back to our
real selves. But however eternally complete in Him
are all the conditions for our return; however our sin
has quenched none of His love, nor abated aught of
the readiness or the sufficiency of His grace; however
He waits to receive us back into full fellowship with
Himself and to make our sins as though they had
never been, still even He can go no further unless
there be in us the will and the purpose to arise and
come to Him, not alone for the betterment of our state,
but for the complete and perfect moral, spiritual, and
personal union and oneness with Him of ourselves.
VI
THE AUTHORITY OF JESUS
THE characteristic of our Lord s ministry which
made the most immediate and left the most permanent
impression was the principle or quality of authority.
It is not only that it was perforce conceded to Him by
others, but that He unqualifiedly assumed it for Him
self. The two aspects in which this authority presents
itself to us might be distinguished as the authority of
truth and the authority of power.
The authority of our Lord s teaching might be de
scribed as that of originality and finality. The origi
nality was the more apparent and striking because it
was in such complete contrast with the very principle
of all teaching that had gone before. The principle
of that teaching had been that of an unquestioned
and unquestionable external authority, the authority
originally of God speaking from heaven, and then of
a long accumulating and consolidating body of tradi
tional exposition and interpretation scarcely less author
itative or irreformable. Instead of that the truth itself
was present and spoke for itself in Jesus, and He spoke
immediately and directly from Himself as being or
embodying the truth. The question arises in studying
the Sermon on the Mount, for example, In what
74
The Authority of Jesus 75
capacity, as being Who or What, does Jesus utter that
great body of truth? Is He speaking there as God,
and with the outward infallible authority of a proclama
tion from heaven ? Or on the other extreme, is it only
the highest reach and utterance of wisdom in the heart
and from the lips of an earthly sage ? On the face of
the evidence of the utterance itself, and in the absence
of any explanation on our Lord s own part of the
authority by which He spake, I would give the follow
ing at least provisional and temporary answer. On
the one side this teaching cannot and will not interpret
itself as the tentative and incomplete wisdom of human
reason and conscience so far as they have attained.
On the other side, whatever its ultimate source, it does
not come to us out of the mouth of Jesus with the im
mediate or unmediated force of an utterance from
heaven. Jesus Christ speaks to us simply in the ca
pacity and with the authority of the inherent and
essential truth of the things He says. I speak that I
do know, and testify that I have seen, that is all the
authority He will give us. No matter whence or how
the truth, the authority of the truth is that it is the
truth. Of course our Lord does say always, My truth
is not mine but His that sent me, but what authority
had He for saying that, or what proof could He give
of it ? At the last the only authority lay in the fact of
its being the truth, and all the proof simply in the power
of the truth to prove itself. I repeat, then, that the
immediate capacity in which Jesus Christ taught was
that of the truth which He taught. That was the truth,
whether divine or human or both, but the whole actual
76 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
truth of humanity, of human existence, human life,
human destiny. He was Himself that truth in
carnate, personal, consummated. And He was not
only the truth consummated, but the consummation
or consummating of the truth; not only the truth and
life of humanity, but the process or way by which
humanity comes to the knowledge of its truth and
attains to the living of its life.
The truth for which Jesus Christ stands is distinctly
and definitely the truth of man, of human life. And
when He says of it, I speak that I do know and testify
that I have seen, He means that what He says of it is
matter of His own personal human experience. He
has Himself been through the whole of human expe
rience, and is competent to testify as a witness to all
that is in it. He knew what was in man, because He
was Himself all of man. The fact that from the first
opening of His mouth as a teacher Jesus speaks with
the authority of perfect truth does not contradict the
fact that He had humanly learned the truth. Almost
the first step, for example, in His public ministry was
to set Himself outside of and in opposition to the whole
spirit and principle and method of the religion in which
He was born. Shall we not suppose that the grounds
of that opposition had been accumulating and the
form of it taking shape in His heart and mind long
before His public attitude was assumed ? At twelve
He was deeply interested and concerned with what
was going on in the temple, and during the eighteen
intervening years He was doubtless more than an
annual visitor to what in His conception was, or ought
The Authority of Jesus 77
to be, the holy city. If He held His peace outwardly
during that time, what was going on within ? And so
not only with part but with the whole of the wisdom with
which He spoke and acted, we shall doubtless have to
go further in seeking a reason for its being so far be
yond the attainment of all other human experience,
but we need not on that account deny it to be the fruit
and result of a true human experience.
The difficulties multiply upon us when we pass from
the authority of truth to that of power on the part of
our Lord. What is this? A new teaching! they
exclaimed on His first public appearance, according
to St. Mark. But it is something more than a new
teaching, for, With authority He commandeth even
the unclean spirits, and they obey Him. Unquestion
ably, Jesus was accepted as having power not only
over the spiritual and physical ills of human nature,
but over disorders even of external nature. With
regard to many of the difficulties involved here, we may,
so far as our purpose is concerned, quickly dispose of
them. The fact or facts, for example, of demoniacal
possessions; the commentators do not hesitate to say
now of the possessed that one was an epileptic and
another a madman. To Jesus they were possessed
of demons. What of that ? If Jesus Christ, in all the
human and divine truth of Him, whatever that be, were
come to-day instead of two thousand years ago, would
He not speak and think in terms of human thought
and knowledge and speech of to-day ? If not, then
what ? In terms of the thought and speech of men
two thousand years hence? And if He should think
78 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
the thoughts and speak in terms of the science of to-day,
would there not be the same difficulties two thousand
years hence that we have with the thoughts and speech
of two thousand years ago? The abiding truth of
Jesus Christ is within and behind and wholly inde
pendent of the ever changing phases or stages of human
knowledge. The setting has from time to time to be
altered to adapt it to the changing focus or vision of
advancing science, but what is really of the jewel within
does not change with it; it is Jesus Christ the same
yesterday, to-day, and forever.
We have to meet fairly and frankly the fact that the
very conception of miracle is a real and a growing
stumbling-block to the thought, and I may say the con
science, of to-day. We have to take account of this
prejudice, and do it the justice to understand it. We
may say that it is due, first, to the world s growing
observation and experience of the inviolability and
uniformity of natural law. With that growth miracle
has gradually disappeared, not, assuredly, because
facts have changed, but because our understanding
and interpretation of facts have changed. We assume
that if we understood all facts, all facts would appear
to us natural. But, secondly, with that change another
has followed, or is following, more slowly. We have
learned or are learning to see God less and less in
transcendences of nature, and more and more in the
perfect unity and order and wisdom of nature. We
?eel that the whole work of God is one and of a piece,
that addition or interference or reparation from without
would be a confession of imperfection or failure. The
The Authority of Jesus 79
natural has become to us more divine than the non-
natural or the contra-natural. But more than that,
in the third place, we ought long ago to have been
sensible of the positive injury that has come to the
world through the misapprehension that the true super
natural is a condemnation or in any respect whatever
a supplanting or displacing of the natural. The true
supernatural is only the truer and higher natural. It
is God not without but within the natural, helping us
not to discard but to realize or fulfil the natural, on the
lines of its own truer because higher and completer
nature. The life of Jesus Christ, because it is higher
than nature can carry us, or than we can carry our
selves in our own fulfilment of the law of nature, is not
therefore contrary to nature. It is our own highest
nature and that alone is the true supernatural
not to be completed by nature, nor to be able of our
selves to fulfil the law of self-completion, but to find
the completion at once of our nature and ourselves in
highest union and association with God. The world
still wants miracle in its Christianity, to the untold
damage of itself and the utter contradiction of Chris
tianity. Was it better that the earth should be grad
ually delivered from the curse of plague and pestilence
by science and sanitation, by the natural process of
self-cleansing and sweetening, or that in the stead of
that the old so-called Christian method of miracle in
response to prayer and fasting should have sufficed,
and saved the trouble and expense of the cleansing and
the sweetening? And so, in the mass or with the in
dividual, there are natural causes of natural ills which
80 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
are best dealt with only by natural science, which is
the knowledge of natural causes, and by natural art,
which is the acquired skill to apply that knowledge.
Anything that could and did supplant the necessity for
science and art would be destructive of a very large
part of human life, and would be a direct contradiction
of Him who came that we might have life and have
it more abundantly.
The injury that comes to us from the unwhole
some demand for miracle is more apparent as well as
more real in our inner than in our outer life. Chris
tianity ought to be not only the most spiritual but the
most natural life in the world. The life of faith in
God ought to be the life of the highest activity of our
selves, and of the completest fulfilment not only of
every potentiality, but every relation and obligation
of our nature and our natural condition. But there
is a not undeserved charge against Christians of weak
ness, as compared with the more positive and active
life of the world. And then comes the charge against
Christianity itself, that it weakens the character through
relieving the man of the responsibility and the task of
self-realization, of working out his own salvation. His
life-work has been done for him or instead of him, and
"he is contented to be a sinner saved by grace." Is it
not true that we are constantly expecting miracle to
be wrought in our behalf, that we are looking to God
to have done for us or to do in us that the whole benefit
of which consists in our doing ourselves ? No, Christ
is our salvation only because He is the power of God
in us to work out our own salvation. If instead of
The Authority of Jesus 81
being that, He were instead of that to us, He would be
not our salvation but its opposite. Now miracle is
something instead of nature and instead of ourselves,
whereas the Christianity of Jesus Christ is what we
see in Himself, God indeed and the power of God, but
God so in nature and so in man that it only completes
the nature and perfects the man. There is no Holy
Ghost in me save as the spirit that I myself am of, and
there is no Christ in me save in what I am myself. And
if God be truly in me by His Word and His Spirit, He
is so not to supplant or to displace my nature or my
personality, but only to complete them on their own
lines and perfect them in their own activities. We can
see, then, how there may be some ground of prejudice
against the conception of miracles, at least as we have
misunderstood and abused it.
Yet there can be no doubt that Jesus possessed the
extraordinary powers ascribed to Him and performed
the works we call miracles. There is less and less
disposition to deny that, the more apparent it becomes
that there are psychic and spiritual forces as yet latent
in human nature of which we know not whereunto the
future development may reach. Such powers were
existent and manifested themselves in our Lord s time,
and, like all other human powers, for evil as well as for
good. The devil as well as God could make use of
them. It is not inconceivable nor perhaps improbable
that there may be a spiritual and divine use for those
powers, of which our Lord gave us the highest indica
tion, of which we have not as yet made true experiment,
and therefore have not true experience. Assuredly,
82 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
there is more to be accomplished than our religion or
our science have accomplished for the spiritual and
the natural ills of mankind through the mind and
through the faith of men. On the part of religion,
may it not be from a lack of mental and spiritual sus
ceptibility on our part, the absence of a due response
of mind and heart, that the truth and the love of God
do not work greater wonders in our lives, not only
spiritual and moral but physical also ? May it not be
one more of the many reproaches of our Christianity
as it is, that many have to go outside, if not of it, yet of
its organized fellowship, to find that power of God unto
salvation of soul and body which was its promise to
us ? Whatsoever lies dormant in us of natural poten
tiality to be found and healed in soul or body by truth
and love acting directly upon mind and heart, let it by
all means be awakened and developed. It will not
militate against, but rather will work with, the true
principle that God s grace and power must work in
and with and through ourselves and our own activities,
and not simply for or instead of us.
Let us see how our Lord Himself regarded His won
derful powers. Unquestionably, in a very large sense,
He considered Himself to be in the world as a divine
physician of the ills and the sicknesses that are in it.
In how large a sense, I think we can only begin to realize
in our later interpretations of His work and person.
I believe, as I have said, that our Lord s permanent
function was to treat causes, or the cause, and not
symptoms ; and symptoms only indirectly, as they could
be temporarily alleviated, and would be ultimately
The Authority of Jesus 83
removed by the removal of the cause. In other words,
He came to take away sin, and by consequence all the
consequences of sin. But at the first He needed to
produce an adequate impression upon the hearts and
minds of men of not only His disposition and mission
but also of His authority and power to be the divine
helper and healer. Of this there was no doubt or ques
tion in His own mind, and it imparted to Him that
aspect of authority which took away all doubt or ques
tion from the minds of those who were the subjects of
His power. They were the subjects, and not merely
the objects, of His power. He carried them along with
Himself in their healing. On their part it was mind
or heart or faith healing. He told them to be well, to
arise and walk, to look up and see. And they did it.
Could not we in many ways do it too, if only we would
believe and know ? What we have, first and perhaps
chiefly, to note in connection with our Lord s miracles
is the way in which He Himself deprecated the element
in them of mere sign or wonder. With Him they were
simply parts of His mission and power to help and heal.
St. Matthew describes them as fulfilling the prophecy,
Himself took our infirmities, and bare our diseases. And
ever as He wrought them there are evidences that all this
dealing with outward conditions is but preliminary to a
further and a higher aim. The miracles are but parables ;
the power to heal sickness is but proof of the power to
heal sin. But that ye may know that the Son of man
hath power to forgive sins (then saith He to the sick
of the palsy), Arise, take up thy bed, and go unto thy
house. And he arose and departed to his house.
84 The Gospel 0} the Earthly Life
There are other miracles that it would be more diffi
cult to give a reason for or attempt an explanation of;
such, for example, as His mysterious sympathy with
and power over the operations of nature. However
that is to be accounted for, or disposed of, our ignorance
need not seriously concern us. At any rate it sym
bolizes to us this great truth: The more we are at one
and are one with God, the more are we so with every
thing else within and without us, and the more as
we shall perhaps know in the future have we the
sympathy and co-operation not only of our whole
selves but of all nature around us.
We were brought just above face to face with our
Lord s authority and power to deal with sin. The
further question of that must be reserved for our second
part, upon the interpretation of His work. Another
larger claim, to be similarly reserved, is expressed at
the close of St. Matthew s Gospel: All authority hath
been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye
therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing
them into the name of the Father and of the Son and
of the Holy Ghost; teaching them to observe all things
whatsoever I commanded you; and lo, I am with you
alway, even unto the end of the world. But even these
are not yet all the ascriptions to Jesus, or the claims by
Him of that exousia, that divine prerogative, which we
have so far only partially traced through the Gospels.
In our Lord s last address to His Father, before leaving
the world, according to St. John, He speaks thus:
Father, the hour is come ; glorify thy Son, that the Son
may glorify thee: even as thou gavest Him authority
The Authority of Jesus 85
over all flesh, that whatsoever thou hast given Him, to
them He should give eternal life. And this is life
eternal, that they should know thee the only true God,
and him whom thou didst send, even Jesus Christ.
The eternal life which He describes as His authority
and power to impart are spoken of at length as being
possessed here on earth ; but He goes on to pray, Father,
that which thou hast given me, I will that, where I am,
they also may be with me; that they may behold my
glory which thou hast given me; for thou lovedst me
before the foundation of the world.
When we come to interpret these later claims of
divine authority, I shall endeavour to show that, while
they go beyond the earlier ones we have been consider
ing, and project themselves into all the future of huniau
life, not only here but hereafter, yet they are all, the
earliest and the latest, precisely along the same lines
and mean the same thing.
VII
THE BLESSEDNESS OF JESUS
A STUDY of the beatitudes will give us the highest
illustration possible of the leading principles of what
we have been discussing as the gospel of the common
humanity and the earthly life of our Lord. Blessed
ness is the highest expression as it is the highest reach
and attainment of that life. The life of Jesus would
not be a gospel to us if it were not a revelation and a
promise of human blessedness. We see in Him the
meaning, the value, the worth, which not only justifies
to us and reconciles us to our life and its conditions as
they are, but enables us to find in it the highest satis
faction of which our natures are capable and the highest
enjoyment to which our spirits or personalities can
attain. We have already seen that while personal
pleasure or happiness or even blessedness can never
be the motive, it is in fact the measure and the condi
tion, of the highest activity. Mere instinct or mere
duty can never lift us to our height. In the first place,
perfect functioning or activity is perfect pleasure or
happiness or blessedness, as the function is particular,
general, or universal, and is lower or higher in the scale.
And, secondly, as the perfection of the activity heightens
the pleasure, so reflexively the perfection of the pleasure
86
The Blessedness of Jesus 87
is necessary to the complete heightening of the function
or activity. We can be or do perfectly only that which
we supremely love, and which therefore it is our
supreme pleasure, happiness or blessedness, as the case
may be, to be or to do. Blessedness, therefore, let us
repeat, is at once the measure and the condition of the
perfect Me. Aristotle states the principle somewhat
as follows : Pleasure, he says, speaking of even the lower
true pleasures, completes a function in two senses.
In the first place, it is its completion; like the bloom
on the peach or the cheek, it is the final touch which
marks the acme of the act or activity. In the second
place, it causes its completion, by infusing into the act
or activity that without which it cannot complete itself.
When, therefore, our Lord comes to speak of blessed
ness, He is describing His own life, and the life that
should be ours, in its very fulness and completeness.
The first question is as to the fact, actual or possible,
in human life as it is, of such a blessedness. Our
Lord s testimony is to the fact of its actuality, and
therefore of its possibility. And let us pause to ob
serve that it is testimony on His part. It is not the
immediate revelation of omniscience, but the witness
of human experience. He knew that there is a blessed
ness in human life, because He had found it and was
in possession of it. He spoke in the name and with
the authority of it, and He declared it that others might
seek and find and have part with Him in it. The
beatitudes are the revelation of His own humanly dis
covered and humanly experienced secret of blessedness.
There is not one of the human conditions or causes of
88 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
it which He gives that He had not Himself tested and
proved to the utmost. There is not one of the ingre
dients in the cup of it that He had not drunk to the
bottom. It is true here as always, that He spake that
He Himself knew and testified to that He Himself had
experienced. He had known the poverty which is the
condition of the kingdom of heaven, the sorrow without
which one cannot experience the divine consolations,
the meekness through which He was destined to in
herit the earth; He had hungered and thirsted for
righteousness and been filled ; He had known the mercy
to others which is the only mercy to ourselves; through
the purity of His human heart He had seen God; in
His perfect ministry of peace with God and peace among
men He had reached the acme of human attainment,
and tested what it is not only to be called but to be the
Son of God. He had known, too, and experienced
the blessedness of, persecution and reproach and false
witness and rejection.
As all the causes and conditions so all the rewards
and enjoyments of this blessedness are described by
our Lord as to be found within this present life. Blessed
are not shall be hereafter those of whom He is
speaking. For theirs is not shall be the kingdom
of God and its rewards. Even where He speaks in the
future, as He continues to do, it is evident that He is
speaking of cause and effect here and not hereafter.
Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be com
forted. No chastening or affliction is at the moment
joyous; it is only afterward that it yieldeth peaceable
fruit. But afterward, in time; if we cannot reap it in
The Blessedness of Jesus 89
time, there is no assurance that we can do so in eternity.
St. Paul thanks God that the afflictions of Christ had
abounded upon him, not only because thereby he had
come to know for himself the comfort that aboundeth
through Christ, but because he was thus enabled to
comfort others with the comfort wherewith he was
himself comforted of God.
Nothing assuredly better than a blessedness that
begins in poverty and sorrow, and has its earthly end
in persecution, could illustrate the great truth that the
issues of the kingdom of God are within ourselves, that
it is the energies and activities of our own souls in which
the abundance of our life consists, and which therefore
control, or determine and constitute, our happiness.
It cannot be too often repeated that it is not environ
ment but our own reaction upon environment that
blesses or curses us. The same environment is equally
calculated to make and to mar opposite responses to it.
Identical conditions produce the hero and the coward.
The career of Jesus Christ so far as it is a revelation to
us from God, or so far as it is a demonstration to us of
a fact in itself, reveals and demonstrates to us this
truth: that human conditions rightly interpreted and
rightly acted upon are the best conditions for the pro
duction of a divine human life and blessedness.
If we wish to go more into the details of the blessed
ness of Jesus, we must analyze the separate beatitudes,
and this we shall proceed to do with at least one or
more of them. In the two most definite statements
by our Lord of the nature and purpose of His earthly
mission, the opening address at Nazareth and the reply
90 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
to John in prison, He repeats an expression which is
the keynote of His ministry : He anointed me to preach
the gospel to the poor; and, The poor have the gospel
preached unto them. As the Gospel to the Poor was
the divine commission, so was it the human credential
of His Messiahship. Who are the poor? Are they
the secularly or earthly poor, or the spiritually and
heavenly poor ? It is a mixed question in the Gospels,
just as we have seen that it is an open question whether
our Lord s actual ministry was one of general humanity
or for the specific taking away of sin. If we read the
whole of the two passages quoted from above, we shall
see that all the Messianic functions release to the
captives, recovering of sight to the blind, liberty to the
bruised; or, The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers
are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised up
are such as, while they have their material prototypes,
may be interpreted as spiritual only, the material be
coming mere figure or symbol of the spiritual. We
have seen how Jesus Himself strives always to bend
the lower to the higher, and the fact that while in St.
Luke He speaks of the blessedness of the poor in gen
eral, in St. Matthew He limits the expression to Blessed
are the poor in spirit, or the spiritually poor, may be
only another instance of His desire gradually to spirit
ualize His mission.
We limit our question, then, to Who are the poor in
spirit? Several lines of answer tempt us in different,
and perhaps all of them true, directions; the deepest
truths are the most many-sided. But let us begin at
least by looking for our Lord s own interpretation.
The Blessedness of Jesus 91
The saying must be taken in connection with many
others, such as these : They that are whole need not the
physician, but they that are sick; I am not come to call
to extend the gracious divine invitation to enter the
kingdom to the righteous, but sinners; I am come
that they that see not may see. They that are whole,
they that say they see, they that are already righteous,
or think they are, are not objects because they are in
capable of being subjects of His mission. The blessing
of the kingdom is not for them, because they cannot
know the blessedness of it. Perhaps the strongest
expression of the state of mind that shuts out from the
blessedness of Jesus is to be found in the words, Be
cause thou sayest, I am rich, and have gotten riches,
and have need of nothing; and knowest not that thou
art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and
naked : I counsel thee to buy of me gold refined by fire,
that thou mayest become rich; and white garments,
that thou mightest clothe thyself, and that the shame
of thy nakedness be not made manifest; and eye-salve
to anoint thine eyes, that thou mayest see.
No doubt the above covers briefly the general ground
of the practical application of the first beatitude, so
far at least as the first condition of blessedness is con
cerned. It does not touch the second point involved,
the content of the blessing attached. But so far as we
have gone, may we not attempt to go a little deeper and
touch the philosophy that underlies all the divine
teaching? Jesus Christ seems to attach a blessedness
not alone to our consciousness of the fact, but to the
fact itself, of our natural, or in ourselves, poverty and
92 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
blindness and sin and death. In the first place, does
He not at least exaggerate our natural condition ? And
if He does not, then how, in the second place, can He
consistently call it blessed? It seems to me that the
reason of both positions may be made apparent. The
religion of Christianity rests on two facts, the one of
our nature and the other of ourselves. The first is the
deficiency of our nature, and the second is the insuffi
ciency of ourselves. With regard to the first, Bishop
Butler teaches us in substance somewhat as follows:
We are, as constituted by our nature, deficient beings.
That is, in order to be complete, we need ourselves to
supplement or add something to our nature. The
deficiency is to be supplied by the addition of what we
call habit. Habit, which results from our own acts,
and forms our own character, and determines our own
destiny, is thus something which we ourselves add to
our nature, and which as we thus add it becomes a
second nature which is only an extension or further
completion of the first. Now, the deficiency of our
nature at the first is a positive blessing, because it is
the condition of our acquisition of the second and
higher nature which is that of personality. Suppose
we could not become more than merely what our nature
makes us. Suppose the mysteries, but none the less
surely the facts, of our own consciousness and freedom,
our power to determine ourselves by our own acts and
habits and character, did not enter into the matter and
make persons of us. The deficiency of our nature is
a blessing because it calls for and makes possible the
higher development of our personality.
The Blessedness of Jesus 93
There is a second truth no less important to the
final and entire ascent of our humanity than the first.
If our nature was deficient in itself, it is equally true
that we are insufficient in ourselves for the yet higher
reaches for which our nature prepares us and for which
our personal lives and characters are intended to qualify
and fit us. Insufficiency does not absolve us from the
obligation of ourselves working out our complete and
eternal destinies. It only implies that we can do so
only in conjunction with something else. Now to have
been complete in and of ourselves would have been to
be incapable of becoming more or greater than we are,
or are capable of making ourselves. Christianity, on
the contrary, holds out to us the promise and the hope
of a sympathy and a union with all things, with the
mind and spirit and life of the source of all things,
which will make us infinitely more and greater than
ourselves. It thus begets, or rather addresses and
develops, what is already a part of us and only needs
to be brought into consciousness by personal experience,
the sense of insufficiency and the need of what will
alone suffice for the attainment of the fulness of our
life. That is it of which our Lord speaks, when He
says that He is come that we might have life and might
have it more abundantly, more abundantly than
nature can supply it to us, or than we can multiply it
of ourselves. He is come to bring God into our lives,
and with God all those powers and promises of the
kingdom of God, which will suffice to make us not
only all that we are but also somewhat of what God is.
This is also what St. Paul experienced, when, entreating
94 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
to be relieved of the mortal infirmity he discovers in
himself, he is answered from above himself, My grace
is sufficient for thee: for my power is made perfect in
weakness. Whereupon he cries, Most gladly therefore
will I rather glory in my weaknesses, that the strength
of Christ may rest upon me. Wherefore I take pleasure
in weaknesses, in injuries, in necessities, in persecu
tions, in distresses, for Christ s sake: for when I am
weak, then am I strong.
I have said before that Jesus Christ nowhere con
demns us for the deficiencies of our nature, nor for the
insufficiencies of ourselves. He does not find fault
with us that, in and of ourselves, we are constant vio
lators of the eternal spirit that should animate us, and
transgressors of the eternal law that should regulate
and control us. He finds fault that we have not enough
of the spirit to know that we violate it, nor apprehension
enough of the law to know that we transgress it; that
we have not enough of holiness to want it, or of right
eousness to hunger and thirst after it. Blessed are
they who know their own insufficiency, their own
poverty and weakness, sufficiently to feel their need of
the powers of the world to come, of the kingdom of
God in their souls. And not only so; not only are they
blessed who know their poverty and feel their need,
but blessed is that poverty and that need in itself.
That we are insufficient in ourselves for the holiness,
the righteousness, the eternal life that are necessary to
complete us; that only God in and with us can suffice
for them; that without God we cannot compass the
spirit or accomplish the law of our own perfection, only
The Blessedness of Jesus 95
means that God has made us not for ourselves and our
own finiteness, but for Himself and His infinity, and
that we are violating ourselves and transgressing our
law in falling short, or in being willing and satisfied to
fall short, of that.
The distinction among or between men which the
New Testament recognizes and consistently makes,
which our Lord Himself always makes, is not that
some are sinners and some are not, but that some are
so content to be sinners that they know not that they
are sinners, while others are so convinced and con
victed by the spirit of holiness of their own unholiness,
and by the law of righteousness of their own unright
eousness, that they are conscious only of sin in them
selves. St. Paul is exactly in the line of Christ when
he says that it was never the end or expectation of the
law to make us righteous. The only righteousness the
law could produce would be a righteousness of our own
in obedience to the law. But it would be a very low
law that we could obey. When you have made the
law as high as God Himself, you will want God Him
self in you to enable you to fulfil it. By the law, then,
is only the knowledge of sin. When the law has made
sinners of us, has convinced and convicted us of sin,
it has discharged its function. When it has prepared
us for and turned us over to God who alone suffices
us, or fills up our own insufficiency, for holiness, right
eousness, and life, then it is functus offlcio, and ready
to be abolished, as John the Baptist was swallowed up
in the greater light of Jesus Christ. Blessed then are
we even that we are sinners, if we know our sin; if
96 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
through knowledge of the curse of sin we have been
brought to the knowledge of the blessedness of holiness,
and if through experience of our weakness against sin
we have come to experience the power of God unto
salvation from sin.
We are hardly prepared as yet to enter into what I
conceive to be the meaning of the other half of the first
beatitude, the nature and extent of the reward attached
to a true poverty of spirit. For all we have said of the
kingdom of heaven or of God, I think we need the
higher interpretations of our Lord s work and person
in order to realize all that is ours in the possession of
that kingdom. Some one has said, The kingdom of
God is everywhere if we could but see it ; and yet, alas,
almost nowhere, because so few of us can see it. The
fault indeed is all in our seeing. Jesus Christ has not
come so much to create the kingdom of God without
us, as to create within us the power to see it. I am
come, He says, that they which see not may see. What
He saw and what He would have us see is: all the
eternal love that God the Father is, ours; all the infinite
grace that God the Son is, ours; all the perfect fellow
ship or oneness with ourselves that God the Holy Ghost
is, ours. If all this is ours, then all things are ours,
and all blessedness is indeed ours.
VIII
THE BEATITUDES
WE may touch more lightly upon the other beatitudes,
not so much to give an analysis or exposition of them
selves as to illustrate more clearly some of the features
of the earthly life and character of Jesus Christ. For
from our present point of view that character and life
are our gospel and our salvation.
Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be com
forted. It must already have struck us that the grounds
or conditions of blessedness adduced by our Lord are
largely those which would seem to us rather those
of un-blessedness. Poverty, sorrow, persecution, re
proach, rejection, how can these be grounds of
blessedness ? We have already touched upon this
point, but there is something in it the rationale or
philosophy of which needs to be brought out more
plainly. Aristotle teaches us how, especially in morals,
opposites result from the same causes or conditions.
Not only out of identical conditions do cowardice and
courage arise, as the conditions are differently met,
but the conditions of difficulty, danger, pain, and fear,
which make cowards of us, are precisely the only ones
which could beget courage or heroism in us. We
cannot be brave except under circumstances calcu-
97
98 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
lated to produce fear and cowardice. So precisely the
occasions and opportunities and temptations that
yielded to and overcome by are the causes of sin, re
sisted and overcome are the causes of holiness. They
are necessary to the one as to the other. Constituted
as we are, we attribute our sin to what we call the flesh.
We must just as truly attribute our holiness to that
same flesh. For if we have no sin that does not come
through yielding to the flesh, neither do we know any
holiness which is not acquired by and which does not
consist in the conquest of the flesh and its subduing to
the spirit. This is easier to see than the fact that even
our happiness or blessedness, certainly in the higher
reaches of it, cannot be found in freedom from sorrow
but only in the enduring and overcoming of sorrow.
First for the fact, and then for the explanation of it.
As to the fact, assuredly it was so with Jesus Himself.
In the world, He said, ye have tribulation; but be of
good cheer, I have overcome the world. His own
blessedness had been, and theirs must be, one not of
conditions but of conquest and victory over conditions.
The conditions calculated in themselves to produce
sorrow were just those which overcome were necessary
to produce joy. Thenceforth to St. John faith was
the power to overcome the world, not only its sin
but its sorrow.
The explanation of the necessity of sorrow to blessed
ness seems to me to be this: The highest blessedness
comes to us in the sense of our highest selves. It is
the reflex condition of our highest states and energies
or activities. Now these can be expressed only by the
1
The Beatitudes 99
X ZlZZiA&l^^
terms holiness, righteousness, life. Let us take the
first of these, the one most distinctive of Christ and
Christianity. Holiness, we say, is freedom from sin.
For us at least, situated and constituted as we are, that
is no true or sufficient definition. Our holiness is no
mere freedom from sin; it is a definite relation to, a
definite attitude against, sin. It is a hatred of, a sorrow
for, a resistance to, an overcoming of, sin and all
these to the point of at least meaning and intending,
if not yet attaining, the putting away of sin. I speak
only for beings like ourselves when I say that the con
summate joy of holiness would be incomprehensible
and impossible save through a corresponding and equal
sorrow for sin. Lower joys or satisfactions might not
be so dependent upon the experience of their opposites,
but for us there can be no love of good which is not a
hatred of evil, and no joy of what we should and would
be that is not born of sorrow for what we are.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
There is an interesting historical as well as philo
sophical side to this beatitude. The question is as to
the disposition of men towards men, which is the ulti
mately true and essential one, and which must there
fore prevail in the end and possess the earth. It is a
curious fact that in all the great answers to the question
of human relationship and conduct, the same term has
been selected to express the ideal, and that equally in
all the inadequacy of the term has been felt and
expressed. Men, according to Aristotle, in the spirit
and temper of their dealings with one another, should
be controlled by a disposition which he calls meekness
100 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
or mildness or gentleness. The term is the best we
have, he says, but it is inadequate; it is not positive or
strong enough. Moses stands out as the type of the
Hebrew righteousness; he might be said to have been
the creator of it. And we speak of the meekness of
Moses as though that were his distinguishing trait.
But surely we have all felt the inadequacy of the term
meekness to express the character or disposition of
Moses. Our Lord seems to have selected the same
term to express His own fundamental disposition.
Take my yoke upon you, He says, and learn of me.
For I am meek and lowly in heart; and ye shall find
rest unto your souls. And yet we too feel that the
word meek is scarcely the one to describe Jesus. We
feel even that too much application of that term to Him
has weakened the popular conception not only of Him
self but of Christianity. It has contributed perhaps to
the too negative and colorless interpretation of His
great principle of non-resistance. The question is,
as I have said, what is the true and perfect temper of
man toward man, especially in the difficult and trying
circumstances of human life. We may depend upon it
that every really great answer to this question will be
found to contain some, and perhaps many, elements
of the truth. The Greek meekness, as the ideal tem
per, will rest upon the conceptions of reasonableness
and moderation. The right reason, the power to see
things as they are, is the natural basis of mutual under
standing, and so of harmony and peace. When we
add to this self-control, freedom of the will from preju
dice and passion, we seem to have both the intellectual
The Beatitudes 101
and the moral conditions of the ideal temper. The
lack is that even in the forbearance and magnanimity
of the Greek there is, if not too much regard for the
propriety or nobility of one s own attitude, yet too little
regard in comparison for what St. Paul calls " the things
of the other."
In the so-called meekness of Moses there is a lofty
unselfishness, a great humility, a perfection of zeal and
devotion, which momentary weaknesses and impa
tiences scarcely detract from. The Law and the
Prophets between them were productive of great types.
But the perfection of human spirit and temper waited
still for its realization and manifestation. When
Jesus speaks of the meek, He speaks of Himself. He
speaks of that attitude towards men under all possible
conditions of provocation and trial which He had
deliberately made His own and which never deserted
Him under any temptation to the contrary. The
general attitude or disposition of Jesus towards in
dividual men and towards the world of men was one
not without its natural and mighty temptations to the
contrary. When He was symbolically taken up into
the exceeding high mountain and shown all the king
doms of the earth and the glory of them, we know not
what visions and temptations of greatness and power
and natural possibilities and opportunities passed
through His mind. But they found no lodgment there.
The prince of this world had nothing in Him. There
were opposite spirits, opposite dispositions and atti
tudes, that contended for the possession of Him, but
from first to last He knew but one. All self-seek-
102 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
ing, even the highest, the most spiritual, all pride or
ambition or self-glorification of any kind, was of the
devil, and was bidden to get behind Him. The Son
of man, the ideal, the true, the eternal man can know
or own but one spirit, one temper, one attitude or dis
position upon earth, and that is, not to be served but
to serve, to be not lord but servant of all. And there
was no provocation of private or individual treatment
against Himself that Jesus Christ had not to meet and
treat, and He met and dealt with each with its own
application of the universal temper that characterized
Him in all. I do not know how we can define or de
scribe in abstract terms the peculiar meekness, or what
is attempted to be expressed by the meekness of Jesus.
The thing is ever more and greater, and even different,
from its best expression. That is why God never gives
us definitions or descriptions of things, but always
manifestations of the thing itself. As to the meekness
spoken of in this beatitude we can only say that it is
the universal attitude of Jesus Christ, and so the essen
tial Christian attitude, in all the personal relations of
men, and under all circumstances of possible provo
cation or trial or temptation. Of course its essential
quality is love, the love that never faileth, that can
adapt itself to eveiy case and preserve its identity under
every transformation, that can be all things and yet
always the same thing.
But the interesting point about the beatitude is this:
the perfect assurance of Jesus that the right, the true
attitude of man toward man will be the ultimately
successful and surviving attitude. The meek shall
The Beatitudes 103
inherit and possess the earth. The spirit and temper
and disposition of Jesus, because it is the fittest, be
cause it is that which alone gives true meaning and
value to life, because it is the only bond of perfect rela
tionship and intercourse among men, will survive and
prevail. And has not the history of our Lord s own
throne and sceptre and kingdom on earth, in spite of
our unchristian want of faith and courage and devo
tion in sustaining and extending them, more than vin
dicated His confidence and His promise ? On what
other foundations could He have built a surer and
more abiding dominion over men and possession of
the earth than that He has built upon Himself and His
own eternal attitude toward us and among us ? The
one law of that kingdom is that each of us in it shall be
what He is, and that in every possible complication of
mutual intercourse or relation we shall be each to each
what He is to us all. What would be the consequence
if that spirit should indeed inherit and possess the
earth ?
If one wishes to carry out the principles of the king
dom of Christ by the letter of the Sermon on the Mount,
he will doubtless encounter great difficulties. The
letter of non-resistance, for example, as there stated
without qualification, might be impracticable in actual
and general practice. Non-resistance to the evil-doer
might be the greatest evil we could render him. But
does not our Lord Himself by such sayings as this,
Cast not your pearls before swine, lest they trample
them under foot, suggest to us that the most unquali
fied statement of universal principles is intended to be
104 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
qualified by common sense and by particular circum
stances? The one principle underlying all Christian
dealing with one another is that in every case we are
to consider all " the things of the other," and not merely
to assert ourselves against him. Now the things of
the other must include not alone his immediate or his
material good, but still more his moral good, or his
spiritual and personal good. If one acts with the
wisest and best reference to all that, it may well happen
that he might be most truly carrying out the spirit in
actually violating the letter of the divine precepts.
Our Lord shows no disposition to give us dispensation
from the use of our own reason and judgment and
"perception in particulars." If our Christianity truly
possesses that spirit of Christ, without which we are
none of His, it can be trusted to deal with the letter of
His commands.
In the fourth beatitude we have what is technically
if not really the heart and soul of the theology of both
the old and the new Scriptures: Blessed are they that
hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be
filled. With the Greek man is the measure. To
stand well with one s self, to be true to one s own norm
or standard or ideal, is the end. With the Hebrew
God is the measure. To be right with God, to stand
right with God but on the ultimate only ground of
being right with Him that is the end. The right-
ness of the universe, righteousness as the universal law,
the ultimate triumph of righteousness all appearances
or all facts to the contrary notwithstanding, the sole
obligation to be on the side of righteousness all condi-
The Beatitudes 105
tions or all consequences to the contrary notwithstand
ing that was Hebrew theology and Hebrew law.
The letter of the Old Testament law, whether natural,
moral, civil, or ceremonial, was the truest and best
expression of the law of God. Our Lord did the op
posite of setting Himself against the letter of the law.
There was not one jot or tittle of it that He abolished
or supplanted otherwise than by most exactly and
completely fulfilling it. It is the highest of rights to
be able to say I love, it is the greatest of wrongs to
say that best thing, and then not love. It is the blackest
of sins to use a rite or a ceremony which says so much,
which means so much, which ought to be so much, and
yet to use it without anything in mind or heart or life
of all that it says and means and ought to be. The
Pharisee, in making the letter all, made it not merely
nothing but very much worse than nothing. In taking
the place of, it practically displaced and abolished
what it was intended for. That which was made for
man, for humanity and mercy, as the sabbath, was
made an excuse for inhumanity and the denial of
mercy. That which was ordained for God and piety,
as the temple, was made a place and a cover for selfish
merchandise and earthly gain. The circumcision of
the flesh was made to do duty for the mortification
and purgation of the spirit. Sacrifice as in the
saying, I will have mercy and not sacrifice had
become the synonym of its own opposite and denial.
In nothing else than in their opposite theories and
practice of righteousness does the essential contra
diction of the spirit of Jesus to that of His place and
106 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
day manifest itself more clearly, a contradiction which
explains the tragedy of His life.
But to forget the false and look only upon the true,
and upon the only true! To be right with God, to
know His will and to do it! No Hebrew lawgiver or
prophet, assuredly, hungered and thirsted more after
that than did Jesus. None was more consumed with
zeal for His Father s house or His Father s business.
It was His meat and drink, a food that again and again
lifted Him above the need or the want of earthly food
so that almost He lived not upon bread at all but
only upon the word of God. Lo, I come to do thy
will, O God ! by the which will, by the which perfect
doing of the Father s will, we are all sanctified. But
if Jesus had no less zeal for righteousness than law
giver or prophet, He had also more knowledge of what
God s righteousness is. To say that God is infinitely
right, that His law is infinite righteousness, is only a
formal statement or truth about Him. It says that
what He is is right, but it does not say what He is
or consequently, what is right. Jesus knows better
what right or righteousness is because He knows better
what God is. God is Love, love of all things, espe
cially love of all that can know and share His love.
God loves love because love loves love. The only
true zeal for God, the only right or righteousness, is
love. That is the only real definition because it is
the only one which gives the res, the thing or matter
or content, the substance, of God or man or holiness
or righteousness or life. Love is not only the spirit or
law, it is the eternal actuality or reality whose are the
The Beatitudes 107
spirit and the law, of the universe. And it is that, all
to the contrary notwithstanding. All that opposes
that is only the opposite out of which that is born, out
of which that is surely coming day by day, and aeon
by aeon; is surely coming and will assuredly come at
the last to the uttermost. Yet in that age, and in every
age, men could and can be consumed by a zeal for God
which conceives it its duty and makes it its business to
put love out of its heart and to trample love under its
feet! Righteousness can set itself against mercy, and
zeal against charity!
Our Lord does not say, Blessed are the righteous,
but, Blessed are they that hunger and thirst after
righteousness. He allies Himself with us with whom
righteousness is no fact of our nature nor any achieve
ment of ourselves. It is something we have not and
want, something we cannot attain and look for from
outside ourselves. We do not hunger and thirst for
that which is in or of ourselves, but only for that which
comes to us from without and yet upon which our very
lives depend. It might perhaps have been otherwise
in almost anything else, but in spiritual things it must
needs be so. Righteousness is the most personal thing
in the world. It is the act and activity of ourselves.
It is nothing if not of our own desire and choice and
will and entire personal effort and activity. But we
cannot supremely want or desire that which is already
ours, or which we can easily ourselves get. The rela
tion to righteousness and the attitude towards it ex
pressed in this beatitude is the ground upon which
St. Paul s later developed doctrine rests exactly and
108 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
securely. We are just or righteous before God, not
for any actual or possible righteousness of our own,
but because we see in Jesus Christ a divine righteous
ness, a righteousness of God, made ours by grace on
God s part, and by faith on ours. Because that right
eousness is the supreme object of our desire; because
we look upon it as the supreme end and intention of
our lives ; because we accept it as God s word of promise,
of power, and consequently of fulfilment, as regards
ourselves; and so appropriate it to ourselves by faith
and enter upon the possession of it in hope, so God
accounts it ours already, as He will make it ours in the
end.
IX
THE BEATITUDES Continued
BLESSED are the merciful, for they shall obtain
mercy. Our Lord used no more characteristic ex
pression, none that more exactly defined His own
spiritual temper or that more completely differentiated
it from that of His opponents, than the saying, Go ye,
and learn what this means, I desire mercy and not
sacrifice. The end of the law, the soul of right
eousness, the essence of sacrifice, is love, is mercy.
And yet, as we have begun to see, each of these
greatest things in the world, the law, righteous
ness, sacrifice, had come to stand for the opposite
of love or mercy. The law meant the letter, not
as the expression of but as substitute for the spirit.
Righteousness was the scrupulous observance of forms
that had killed the life they were instituted to keep
alive. And the sacrifices were come, in our Saviour s
own mouth, to express the denial and contradiction of
that very sacrifice which His life and death so perfectly
exemplified. The word and the thing, however mis
used, can never cease to be the essential content and
the essential expression of Christianity. All love or
mercy is only so in actual service, and all service is such
only in sacrifice. The only true sacrum factum in the
109
110 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
world is the act of giving ourselves. We may give
ourselves in many ways and in many degrees, but it is
never real sacrifice unless its spirit is love and its form
is mercy. We have seen that that which our Lord
encountered, and in opposition to which His whole
ministry took shape, in the spirit of His time, was not
so much the formality, the hypocrisy, the deadness
which prevailed, as that worse thing that underlay it
all, the total absence of sympathy, pity, compassion,
love. These are the things that fill and constitute and
make life. These are the fulfilling of the law, the
works of righteousness, the offerings up of sacrifice;
and under the consecrated names of law, righteous
ness, and sacrifice, to be daily performing acts not
only devoid but contradictory of these, that was to
Him the great and unforgivable offence.
The point of the beatitude, however, upon which I
desire most to touch is not the meaning or the impor
tance of mercy, which our Lord s own words and acts
ought to make plain enough to us. It is rather this:
How the weakening and lowering effects of the being
mere objects or recipients of mercy are always by our
Lord Himself counteracted and corrected by the con
dition laid upon us of being subjects no less, or doers,
of mercy. The point has been already touched upon,
but it is of too much importance not to be again and
again emphasized. There is nothing in these days so
presumed upon as the mercy of God. We confirm
ourselves in our indolence and indifference, in our
weaknesses and failures and neglects, in our faults,
our vices, our sins, with the thought that God is merci-
The Beatitudes 111
ful, that it is inconsistent with His goodness that we
should reap the natural consequences of our omissions
and our commissions. There are no allowances needed,
and there are no allowances whatsoever made for us
under the Gospel of Jesus Christ. There was all the
allowance in the world needed, and all made, in nature
and under the law. Where that was demanded of us
which we had not to give, and that required of us which
we were unable to perform, there was need for over
looking and passing by and condoning. But Chris
tianity demands nothing of us that it does not give, and
what it gives it cannot but demand. Suppose that
when our Lord gave to the impotent man by His word
to arise and walk, He had not required of the man on
his part to arise and walk, of what effect or account
would have been the gift? Christianity gives us all
things, but it requires of us absolutely the all things
which it gives us. Not to require of us all things would
be just so far to fall short of giving us the all things.
Of course it requires only as it gives. As it gives only
as we can receive, so it requires only as we can render.
God does not, for example, give us the whole of His
righteousness at once in fact, because we are incapable
of receiving it all instantaneously. But He does give
it to us all, as it is complete in Jesus Christ, in faith
and in hope. God does not therefore require of us in
ourselves now the whole righteousness of Christ. But
He does require of us supremely to desire and intend
it, to believe in it, to hope for it, to appropriate it to
ourselves in anticipation, to work for it and to patiently
wait for it. He means us to mean righteousness as
112 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
He Himself means it, for otherwise how can He give it
to us ? Whatever God may give and however God
may give, beyond our actual reception and use it can
only be ours in faith and hope, and within our recep
tion and use it is ours in fact only as these have made
them so. So, to return to our text, it is a delusion to
suppose that we may obtain mercy otherwise than as
we ourselves feel and show mercy. Only so much of
what is given or done to us becomes ours and enters
into our own salvation as we ourselves give and do of
it. All that is not yet assimilated and converted into
ourselves is ours either not at all, or is ours as yet only
in faith and hope.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
The blessedness promised is the vision of God, and the
condition attached is the purity of our own organ of
spiritual or divine vision. There was nothing upon
which our Lord dwelt more solemnly than upon the
conditions within ourselves of the knowledge of spiritual
things. The hopeless sin of the Pharisees was their
spiritual blindness. They had all but, if not quite,
sinned away the power of spiritual vision. They could
not see the light because they had no longer eyes for the
light. When they had got to the point not only of not
recognizing God in Jesus Christ, but even of seeing in
Him Beelzebub, and so calling light darkness, then
our Lord pronounces them on the brink of the irre
parable, the unforgivable sin, the sin against the Holy
Ghost. And what is that sin, for which in the very
nature of it there is no repentance and from which
there can be no salvation ? It is the sin of having
The Beatitudes 113
sinned away the power of repentance or the possibility
of salvation. Our Lord says that blasphemy against
Himself may be forgiven; indeed, all their sins shall
be forgiven unto the sons of men, and their blasphemies
wherewithsoever they shall blaspheme; but whosoever
shall blaspheme against the Holy Spirit hath never
forgiveness, but is guilty of an eternal sin. The blas
phemy consisted in attributing to Jesus an unclean
spirit, and the guilt lay not in the offence to Him but
in the condition it revealed in themselves. To call
cleanness uncleanness, and light darkness, and good
evil, betrays the last degree of moral blindness, the
atrophy and death of the very organ of spiritual vision.
We may sin against the Word of God, and even in
supposable cases be blameless; because that is a light
without us, and we may be honestly mistaken about it.
Circumstances and conditions of which we are inno
cent may conceal it from us. But the Spirit of God
is a light within us; it is not the outward light for the
eye, but the inward eye for the light; and sin against
that is a different thing. Aristotle asks what sort of
ignorance it is that excuses a man; and answers prac
tically as follows: An objective ignorance, ignorance
of the thing, may excuse; but subjective ignorance,
ignorance in the man, does not excuse. Our Lord
says, The light of the body is the eye. If thine eye be
single, thy whole body shall be full of light. But if
thine eye be evil, thy whole body shall be full of dark
ness. If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness,
how great is the darkness ! The light that is in thee
what is that? It is, not the light for the eye, but
114 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
the eye for the light. The Word of God is the prin
ciple of objective divine revelation to us; the Spirit of
God is the principle hi us of subjective vision, recep
tion, and appropriation of the divine light and life.
If one stood at midnight and could see no light, it
would not be irreparable. The trouble is with the
light, not in the eye. But if he stood at midday and
could see no light, it would indeed be irreparable.
The clear of spiritual vision are the pure, the clean,
in heart. Our Lord calls it the simplex, the simple
or the single, eye; the eye that sees the thing it looks
at because it is not looking at so many other things at
the same time. How mixed and sullied are our
thoughts of God, our communion with God, our ser
vice of God, our very desire for God with other
things ! It is the other things that share us with
Him, and take the larger share that stand between
and hide Him from our sight. Seek ye first the king
dom of God and His righteousness, and all these things
shall be added unto you.
The seventh beatitude must have had a very deep
significance for Jesus Himself. If He meant it with
all the meaning it is susceptible of, it includes and
expresses within itself the whole of His own divine
human blessedness. What was it to Him to be the
great peacemaker between God and man, between
man and man, between all things that are at variance
and in discord in all the world ! And it expresses within
itself also, implicitly at least, the method as well as the
goal and reward of the great reconciliation. It is only
in accomplished and realized sonship that God and
The Beatitudes 115
man, or God and creation, can be and will be made at
one. In no other relation than that predestined one
of sons, the foreordained end of the whole creation,
can the one spirit, the one law, the one life of God
reign through all things, and the universe of God be
at peace. Again and again we cannot but see that the
universal order which is the manifest meaning and end
of things is no mere material or natural order. It is
an order not of things but of wills; it is a moral order,
a kingdom of righteousness. And if a real and abiding
order of wills, then it must be something more and
higher still, an eternal unity and harmony of spirits, a
blessed reign of love. When God shall become the
All-Father in His world through all becoming His sons
or His Son, then shall love and unity reign, and the
task of the great Peacemaker be accomplished.
When St. Paul speaks of God having been in Christ
reconciling the world unto Himself, he adds that unto
us has been committed the word of reconciliation, the
continuation and completion of the mission and min
istry of peace. The work of the Peacemaker goes on
only through the peacemakers. We are ambassadors
for Christ, as though God were entreating by us and
beseeching all to be reconciled. As working together
with God we entreat also. We do not remember as we
should that, as God was in Christ reconciling, so Christ
is in us reconciling; that all the presence or operation
of God or of Christ in the world now and henceforth
is by the working in and through us of the common
spirit and life of them and us. We now are the incar
nation, not only incarnated but incarnating; we are
116 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
the atonement, atoned and atoning. What is doing
upon earth of peacemaking, we are the doers of it. It
is the work distinctively not of the Father nor of the
Son, but of the Spirit. The love of the Father is com
plete, the grace of the Son is finished. Only the task of
the Holy Ghost remains to be accomplished. And what
is that task ? It is first to bring us into the fellow
ship of the life, and then and so to bring us into
the fellowship with the work of God in Christ, which
is also the work of Christ in us. I and my Father are
one, there is the community of life. My Father worketh
and I work, there is the community of work. And the
life and the work cannot be separated; the work is the
life. We say that this is the dispensation of the Spirit.
That can only mean that this is the time for our part
in the dispensation or economy of the world. What
ever be the place or the part of the Holy Ghost in the
divine nature, as the Spirit of Father and of Son, in the
world of men the Holy Ghost has no other place or
part, He cannot otherwise manifest Himself than in
and as the spirit of men. In the spiritual half at least
of God s creation, only that is done which we also do,
only that is accomplished or attained which is accom
plished or attained through us.
There is what we call a present peace, which, as we
shall see, plays no small part in our immediate relations
with God. As the very expression suggests, it is some
thing provisional and temporary. It is the faith and
hope which we have, the possession and enjoyment in
anticipation, of the real and perfect peace which shall
be ours in the future, that future which means to
The Beatitudes 117
us, whensoever and wheresoever, the attainment of
our goal and the consummation of ourselves. For
there is no real peace save in real and perfect oneness
with God, and hi God with all others and all things
else. The present peace lies in the assurance that God
has provided that and holds it in trust for us in Jesus
Christ, and that it is not only ours already in faith, but
that it becomes ours in fact, just so fast as we can our
selves make it so. But from the first we are peace-
havers, only as we are peace-lovers and peace-makers,
and nothing so constitutes us in fact sons of God as
peace-loving, peace-making, and peace-having.
I have after all dwelt so long upon the beatitudes
because to consider them at all convinces us that in
them we have the whole spirit, not only of the whole
teaching, but of the whole life of our Lord. More
over, we have clearly stated in them all the conditions,
the causes, and the rewards, of the Gospel which it is
our object to define. Let us see if we can, in conclu
sion, reduce all these to a unity among themselves, and
so give a more single view of our salvation in Christ.
All that we need or want, to supply our deficiencies or
supplement our insufficiencies ; all that we must be or
do or accomplish or attain for that completeness of
ourselves which is synonymous with our blessedness;
all that perfection of relation with God and others,
which is necessary to the perfect activity and blessed
ness of ourselves; all that attitude toward persons and
things, toward all the particulars as well as the totality
of our environment, which as our own right reaction
upon them is the appointed means of forming our
118 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
characters, determining our personalities, and shaping
our destinies, in a word, everything essential to our
being ourselves, performing our parts, and achieving
our ends, we see realized and illustrated in the person
of Jesus Christ. Therefore we say that the knowing
Him is our Gospel, and the being what He is is our
salvation.
THE DEATH OF JESUS
WE come to the last of the beatitudes, the blessed
ness of persecution, calumny, and martyrdom. I
presume that no view of the Gospel could dispense with
the death of Jesus. Certain it is that all the Gospels
concentrate attention upon that as containing and
conveying the meaning of all that our Lord was or
accomplished upon earth. The significance of the
death has by some been treated as a second thought
even on the part of Jesus Himself; as though failing,
and foreseeing the failure, of realizing an external king
dom in His life, He fell back upon the conception and
plan of an ideal spiritual kingdom to be realized through
His death. The Gospels know no such possible change
of view. The mind of Jesus as they reveal it is from
first to last, and long before those nearest Him could
comprehend it, set upon the kingdom as He actually
founded it, and set against every temptation to any
other conception of it.
Accepting, then, the death as the vital feature in any
possible appreciation of the place and part of Jesus
Christ in human history, what are the different signifi
cances that may be found in it? From the point of
110
120 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
view of this first part there can be but one. In it we
make the Gospel to consist in the acts, character, and
life of Jesus. He was in our human nature, under our
human conditions, in our human life, that the revela
tion of which to us is a gospel and the participation in
which is salvation. Everything, then, in this gospel
turns upon the personal attitude and action and char
acter of our Lord; the manner and matter of man He
was ; the truth, the beauty, the good He found in or put
into our common humanity; the worth, the value, the
blessedness, He drew and enables and teaches us to
draw from it. This being the case, the significance and
value of the death must have lain chiefly if not wholly
in the fact that it is only death that sets the perfect seal
or places the final valuation upon life. Call no man
happy until he is dead, is a very old prescription. And
that, according to Aristotle, because it is not enough
to have lived well, if one has not died "accordingly."
What gives still further significance to the death of
Jesus is that it was not merely a death, but such a death
as fully tested and tried and proved every quality of
His life. The application of such a criterion is neces
sary not only to the testing and measuring of what has
been attained in the life, but equally to the completing
and perfecting of what has been so attained. To stop
short of the final test is to fall short of the final per
fection. For one of the lessons of such a life and death,
of that supreme life and death, is that not only are we
proved, but we are made and perfected by the things
we suffer.
The profit to us, then, of a study of the details of the
The Death of Jesus 121
last hours of Jesus Christ will consist in their perfect
revelation and illustration of the qualities that charac
terized Himself. An analysis of these will be our best
review and confirmation in His death of all that we
have been learning in His life. Referring to types of
which we have spoken of highest human action, and
looking for these in the typical attitude of Jesus during
the night and day of His final trial, we might say from
the Greek standpoint that what most characterized
Him was His perfect self-control or self-possession,
the mastery and command under seemingly impossible
conditions of His reason and His will. Circumstances
could not have been rendered more difficult for the
exercise of these in the long night in Gethsemane of
apprehension and heaviness unto death and agonized
prayer for submission and endurance; in the surprise
and panic and desertion of the early dawn, in which
life and hope and courage are at their ebb ; in the shame
ful and exasperating dragging to and fro from Caiaphas
to Annas, and from Pilate to Herod; in the circum
stances that need no recital of His brutal treatment,
the weary way to Calvary, and the painful hanging
upon the cross. I mention these dark details not to
appeal to that sentimental sympathy which has been
too large a part of our Christianity, but to call attention
to what would be to us the practical impossibility under
such circumstances of one s retaining possession of
one s whole self and one s best self. The right reason,
the power still to see things as they are, in their right
relation and right proportion; and the free will, the
will uninfluenced and unbiassed by selfish passion or
122 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
personal prejudice, these were the Greek test and
measure of the perfect manhood and its highest activity.
We have it perhaps best expressed in what has been so
happily characterized as the sweet reasonableness of
Jesus. And surely never was there more difficult and
therefore more crucial or testing opportunity to exer
cise a sweet reasonableness than when Jesus, looking
down from the cross upon the perpetrators of the typical
crime of the world, could feel as well as say, Father,
forgive them ; for they know not what they do. There
is in these words not only a generous sentiment but a
just and righteous judgment. Even there there was
room for an audire alterant partem, a place for the chari
table construction, an opportunity for finding excuse
and making allowance. And no weak and sentimental
complaisance was there in it, but eternal truth, as well
as boundless love and pity. There is never a situation,
not even in the typical crime, where there is not some
thing of the truth, though it be an exaggerated truth,
that tout connaitre est tout pardonner. To see all the
other side in the extremest case of others against our
selves, to make all allowance, to do all justice, is a
triumph of something indeed higher and more akin
to God than even right reason and just judgment,
something without which under such circumstances
these would be impossible; but it is a triumph of these
also. And so what all His life had illustrated, the death
most perfectly and completely confirmed, of the divine
reasonableness of Jesus, in thought, feeling, and action.
There is not one of the virtues of the Greek catalogue
that may not be illustrated, or paralleled on a greater
The Death of Jesus 123
or a truer scale, in the personal bearing of Jesus Christ.
Even that most Greek of all the virtues, the virtue of
magnificence, the rendering of the great service, the
bearing of the great burden or expense, for the public
weal or the glory of the commonwealth, and in the
greatest way, what was that in comparison with the
act of Him who was all, did all, endured all, gave all,
and all for the sake of the supremest good and the
highest glory of all! And did it all not for the honor
or the fame of it, but at the cost of misunderstanding
and shame and rejection.
When we pass from the Greek reasonableness to the
Hebrew righteousness of our Lord s attitude under the
supreme test, there is much more to say. The prin
ciple involved there is that of obedience, the utter devo
tion of love, service, and sacrifice, to the will and word
of God. We have seen that that which might most
appropriately have been written upon the earthly life
of Jesus are the words, Lo, I am come to do thy will,
O God. Without undertaking as yet to define precisely
what that will was, there is no question that from the
beginning He felt that He had a definite work of God
to accomplish. Now, at least, it is as far as we can go
to say that that work was the sanctifying of human
nature, the righteousing of human action and character,
the perfecting of human life, in His own person. And
so far as His person can touch and influence all other
persons, by revealing and communicating to them the
secret, the meaning, and the motive of human life hi
general, we might say that His work was to be the
sanctifying and righteousing and perfecting of humanity
124 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
in general. At any rate, whatever it might be in its
completeness, our Lord s lifelong devotion to the will
and work of God is confirmed and perfected in His
final sufferings and death. Early in His career He
began to perceive that that was what it was obliged to
lead to. And Jesus was no enthusiastic or fanatical
seeker after persecution or martyrdom. He evaded
and avoided it as long as it was right to do so. And
when it was no longer right to do so, He went with His
face fixed as a flint to meet it, but He went with a natural
human reluctance and heaviness of heart. As His
hour approached, He prayed to be saved from it; as the
cup was presented to His lips, He entreated to the last
that He might be spared the drinking it. But all this
only shows the hardness of the test to which He was
put, and so measures the limit to which His obedience
was willing to go. There were other things He loved;
He loved life ; but above all things He loved the will of
God.
It ought not to be hard for us to understand why
the will of God should have gone so far and demanded
so much; why He spared not His own Son to the very
limit, and delivered Him up to the fateful uttermost.
And Jesus Himself was wise enough to understand,
and great enough to accept. Father, the hour is come.
Glorify thy Son, that thy Son may glorify thee! Only
the perfect cross could win for humanity the perfect
crown. He had a baptism to be baptized withal, and
how was He straitened until He was baptized with it!
But it was the world s travail, and the world s new
birth.
The Death of Jesus 125
But it was not Greek manhood in the perfection of
all the virtues, nor Hebrew righteousness in all the
truth of all the sacrifices, that shone most brightly in
every act and attitude of Jesus in the day of His trial.
It was that which is the divine heart and soul without
which virtue and righteousness themselves are nothing,
and with which they are made divine. It is the pity
and compassion and love of Jesus that, as they had
been the supreme motive of His life, so they burn
brightest in His death. Having loved His own and
who, on His part, at least, are not His own ? He loved
them unto the end. Sympathy, we are told, the bearing
one another s burdens, is the law of Christ. Was ever
sympathy leisure from oneself, forgetfulness of self,
thoughtfulness for others, carried to such length under
such circumstances! The eve of the day is spent in
preparing His disciples. In the garden of agony His
concern is for them : Watch and pray, lest ye enter into
temptation that is, Keep awake, and give yourselves
to prayer, for a great trial is coming upon you. When
the surprise and the seizure come, He comes forward
and says, I am He whom ye seek; let these go in peace.
When Malthus ear is cut off, He rebukes Peter, and
heals the wound. Before the high priests He is only
silent because He knows words are useless. In the
midst of His own cruel and exasperating tormenting,
He has time for a feeling and look of pain and sorrow
for Peter s cowardly denial. In the interview with
Pilate there is a touch of pity and sympathy for the
vacillating governor; he was at least not the most guilty.
Under the heavy burden of His cross He could feel and
126 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
say, Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for me, but weep
for yourselves in sorrowful anticipation of what the
guilty city was bringing upon itself. Under the first
agony of the cross, His thought was of His mother, and
upon a provision for her future care and comfort;
then for His crucifiers, that God would take into
account their ignorance of what they were doing;
then for the penitent thief, that he should be perhaps
the first beneficiary of the pardon He was Himself
earning for all the world. And at the very last, in the
bitter cry, My God, My God, why hast Thou forsaken
me, is there not something which breathes more thought
of the possibility of God s abandoning than of His own
sad abandonment?
There will seem to many to be a vagueness and un-
satisfactoriness in the conclusion, that, after we have
recognized in Jesus Himself the claim of a very definite
mission, purpose, and work in the world, we should
ourselves then find nothing in that work more definite
or explicit than simply the being the man He was.
What more or more definite meaning could He have
had for us, what higher dignity or blessedness could
He have conferred upon us, than the completing of our
nature, the perfecting of our life, the accomplishing
of our destiny ? But in doing that, He did much more
than that. In being the perfect man He was, under
the impossible conditions in which He became so, He
threw a new light upon those conditions which, prac
tically for us, solves the problem or reveals the mystery
of evil. We have nothing to do with a theoretic con
struction of the universe. Our business is to explain
The Death of Jesus 127
what it is, and not why or how it is, or became, what it
is. There is a in the very highest sense natural
sequence and relation, and therefore a natural fitness,
between all that Jesus Christ is in our humanity and
all the circumstances, causes, and conditions under
which and through which He became what He is. It
is not in the power of our human imagination to con
ceive, or of our reason to suggest, how our Lord could
have attained the height of the spiritual and moral
manhood for which He stands, otherwise than under
the conditions and by the process through which He
did actually attain it. The evil that is in the world,
just as it is in the world, is there for this reason, that
the holiness, the righteousness, the spiritual and moral
life, which are our only natural or supernatural com
pletion, perfection, and blessedness, cannot come into
existence except through conflict with and conquest of
just that particular evil of the world. What more do
we want, or what more can we possibly know, than
that ? When we have said that, through simply being
what He was, Jesus Christ has revealed to us what God
is, what we are, why evil is, and how good is to be
achieved and attained, have we not said enough to
explain and justify all the claims that our Lord made
or could have made for His divine mission among us ?
But, for my own part, I am ready to admit that we have
not said all that is to be said. What remains, however,
must be said from yet higher points of view.
We have completed now what I have called the Gos
pel of our Lord s manhood and life upon earth, and I
wish to repeat what was said in the beginning. In
128 The Gospel of the Earthly Life
giving so much space to this part of our study of the
Gospel, the motive is not to make concession, or even
to do justice, to new or modern points of view. It is
rather to endeavour to make for ourselves full proof
and use of the truth, or aspects of the truth, which
modern knowledge, and modern methods of knowledge,
have revealed or opened up to us in the unchanged and
unchangeable Gospel. That the new light does not
change our old Gospel, I hope will be made sufficiently
apparent in the remaining parts of the discussion.
PART SECOND
THE GOSPEL OF THE WORK
OR
THE RESURRECTION
XI
THE SAVIOUR FROM SIN
WE have up to this point endeavoured to confine
ourselves to that in the Gospels which is matter of pure
record. It is impossible to keep the most significant
facts or events quite separate from some explanation
of their significance, but an attempt at least has been
made not to anticipate the Christian interpretation of
the distinctive facts of Christianity. The Gospels, as
we have seen, at least the Synoptics, are to a very
successful degree strictly reportorial. But even in
them there is the beginning of that interpretation which
eventually shapes itself into Christian doctrine and
dogma. How much of this interpretation is the result
of reflection after all the facts it is hard to say. Let
us, to be sure of being fair with ourselves, concede that
it all is, that every trace of later Christian doctrine that
appears in the earlier Gospels is at least of their latest
matter and belongs only to their latest form. There
will still, of course, remain the difficulty of determining
in many particular cases what is of pure record, and
what of later interpretation, but we can do our part to
reduce this to a minimum.
We saw at the close of the previous part that from
a mere record of the earthly life of Jesus, His words
181
132 The Gospel of the Work
and acts, it is difficult to obtain a single definite con
ception of what we call His work, by which we mean
the thing He was on the earth to do and the thing which
He actually accomplished by His life and death. I
propose to show that Christian interpretation began
upon this question at the very earliest possible, and
that it pursued it with undeviating consistency to its
successful answer. We shall first trace its history,
and then discuss its meaning. And we may anticipate
the concurrent conclusion of the New Testament upon
the point in what was perhaps its latest expression of
it: We know that He was manifested to take away sins.
The most significant and characteristic expression
of the result of the Gospel of Jesus Christ is contained
in the words, The Remission of Sin. Remission, or
the putting away, of sin, includes two ideas, or perhaps
more correctly two stages of the same idea. It means
a real putting away by the New Testament process of
sanctification. But it also means the provisional put
ting away by the equally New Testament act of divine
pardon or forgiveness. Each of these two conceptions
plays an important part in the drama of redemption or
final deliverance and freedom from sin. And the com
plete meaning of each and perfect relating of both is
no small part of New Testament doctrine. In tracing
that doctrine through the three earlier Gospels, we
shall take those Gospels as they stand in their critical
integrity, but we will remember that, for example, the
parts relating to the infancy are the latest, and that
whatever there is in them of true record there is also a
decided beginning of later reflection. And even of the
The Saviour from Sin 133
ministry of John the Baptist, while the historical fact
of the intimate connection with it of the career of Jesus
is of much clearer record, yet we must admit that the
form it has insistently taken in every one of the records
shows the determined shaping, as we shall see, of the
final doctrine. But there are the Gospels as they stood
in their first complete forms, and if some of the inter
pretation of the facts by the Church has been read back
into what we think should have been a naked report
of the facts, it does not follow that it is not true inter
pretation. It does go far to prove that that was the
Christian understanding of the facts from the first.
The first page of the Gospels as they stand reports
the fact that Jesus was so named because He it was
the expected one who should save his people from
their sins. His mission and power to do so is explained
by a Messianic relation to God so intimate that He may
be called Immanuel, God with us. In the in this part
quite independent account of St. Luke, the announce
ment of the birth is in the words, Unto you is born this
day a Saviour who is Christ the Lord. And what He
was to be saviour from has already been declared in
the prophecy uttered upon John the Baptist, Thou
shalt go before the face of the Lord to make ready His
ways; to give knowledge of salvation unto His people
in the remission of their sins. When John entered
upon his preparatory ministry, the one burden of his
preaching, the one significance of his baptism, was
repentance unto the remission of sin. We might not
attach so much importance to this burden of John s,
which was the burden also of Jesus , ministry, but for
134 The Gospel of the Work
its so solemn iteration in the very last utterance of our
Lord Himself upon His departure from the earth,
Thus it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and
rise again from the dead the ihird day; and that re
pentance and remission of sins should be preached in
His name unto all the nations. When the Spirit had
descended and the Church entered upon the mission
in which Jesus was to be with it to the end of the world,
what was first of all the message of St. Peter? Him
did God exalt with His right hand to be a Prince and a
Saviour, for to give repentance and remission of sins.
And again, To Him bear all the prophets witness, that
through His name every one that believeth on Him
shall receive remission of sins. St. Paul takes up the
burden : Be it known unto you, brethren, that through
this man is proclaimed unto you the remission of sins.
In his account of his conversion, he repeats the words
of our Lord in sending him to the Gentiles, To open
their eyes, that they may turn from darkness to light,
and from the power of Satan unto God, that they may
receive remission of sins, and an inheritance among
them that are sanctified in me. In all this long and
consistent line of thought, or sequence of truth, as we
have followed it through the Gospels and the Acts of
the Apostles, we shall see how deeply rooted is the
entire system of salvation which St. Paul so wonder
fully elaborates in his epistles. It might all be summed
up in the words, In Christ the remission of our sin,
and the grace and power of our holiness, our righteous
ness, and our life. The writer to the Hebrews follows
not one whit less explicitly : At the end of the ages hath
The Saviour from Sin 135
He been manifested to put away sin by the sacrifice
of Himself. And finally, St. John begins his record
with the Baptist s pointing to Jesus as the Lamb of
God who was to take away the sin of the world, and
sums up his Gospel, as we have seen, in the words,
We know that He was manifested to take away sin.
The next point to be observed is the close and in
variable connection of the remission of sin through
Jesus Christ with His death and resurrection. After
these had taken place, we may safely say that there is
no reference to the remission of sin that is not imme
diately so connected. This may be illustrated by the
fact that the two sacraments instituted to bring us into
relation with the life of Christ distinctly relate us to
Him through His death and resurrection. Through
these and these alone is there any fellowship of life
with Him. The only baptism unto remission of sin
is baptism into a participation in His death and resur
rection. And in the other sacrament that of which we
partake is His body broken and His blood shed for the
remission of sin. It may be said that all this is only
an interpretation after all the events. Yes, but it is
an integral part of all the Gospels, and I think we shall
more and more feel the impossibility of escaping the
conclusion that it is the essential point of the Gospel.
That the Christ should suffer, and rise again from the
dead, and that repentance and remission of sins should
be preached everywhere in His name and preached
as the result of the death and the resurrection I
think that no one who understands the Gospels can
fail to foresee all through them that this is their neces-
136 The Gospel of the Work
sary and predestined conclusion. That it is so, it shall
be our most immediate object to prove.
It will be said that only by reading back into it can
we find any intentional reference in the strict and
proper Gospels to a general or universal remission of
sin through the death and resurrection of Jesus prior
to that event. It would not be strange that it should
be so, even though the thing itself be true. Let us see
just what we do find. I do not wish to press the so-
called locus classicus in St. Matthew and St. Mark any
further than the strictest criticism will go with me.
Our Lord concludes almost the most characteristic
discussion in all His teaching with the famous words,
The Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but
to minister, and to give His life a ransom for many.
The saying is capable of many interpretations, and for
the most part has had a very definite interpretation
imported into it from later thought. But for all that,
to expunge or mutilate the saying itself would be, from
almost any point of view, to rob our Lord of His most
distinctive utterance. That He had a divine mission
for men, and that He was to give His life for it, take
that away from our conception of Jesus, and how much
remains ? We may give different interpretations, but
it is impossible to sacrifice the words themselves; there
is too much of verisimilitude in them. There had
arisen among the disciples the question of precedence
in the kingdom that was to be established. Then
Jesus enunciates the cardinal principle long since
wrought out through or against temptation in His own
life : Ye know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over
The Saviour from Sin 137
them, and their great ones exercise authority over them.
Not so shall it be among you: but whosoever would
become great among you shall be your minister: and
whosoever would be first among you shall be your
servant. There if anywhere is the one distinctive
principle of His life, as we must all agree. But what
is a principle, even the divinest, by itself or upon the
lips ? If our Lord had merely taught that, there would
have been no Gospel. If He had not merely taught it
but lived by it as the consistent maxim of His life, there
would still have been no Gospel. What has made it a
Gospel is not only the added word but the added fact
that the Son of man gave His life to prove, to establish,
and to make it an efficacious and practicable principle
in all human life. From any point of view whatsoever,
if there was gospel or salvation to be found in or through
Jesus Christ, it was a gospel of salvation from sin to
holiness, from death to life, and it was won for us at
the cost of His own life. If the passage under discus
sion were, or if it be, the only one that teaches us out
of our Lord s own mouth that His life was to be the
price of our redemption or salvation, still it is so much
the focus or goal of all His teaching, it is so manifestly
impossible to suggest or conceive any other termina
tion or consummation of His work in or for humanity,
that the thing carries truth in itself and is in need of
no other proof.
We come then to this conclusion, there is not one of
the Gospels that would have been written, there would
be no Gospel at all, if there had not been not only the
death but the resurrection. Each Gospel means that
138 The Gospel of the Work
from the beginning, and could not possibly, as an
organic whole, have terminated otherwise than in that.
What does that mean ? It means this : That, however
the natural earthly life of Jesus, as contained between
His birth and His death, was an integral part, and a
most essential integral part as I am sure we have
seen, of His divine work upon earth, nevertheless it
did not contain in it that which was to make it a
Gospel or constitute it a salvation. That remained
to be added, and it consisted in this: the final fact
of the decisive and complete accomplishment of the
work which our Lord had been given to do upon the
earth through His perfect death and triumphant
resurrection. It has not yet fully appeared, as it
needs to appear, why this was necessary. It is a
turning point in the proper conception of what the
Gospel of Jesus Christ is, and we must therefore
devote a little special attention to the point.
There is a constant if not growing disposition to
treat what we call the revelation of humanity in Jesus
Christ as only humanity s own highest self-revelation
or self-manifestation. Jesus is the wisest, truest, best
of men, on the line of all wisdom, truth, or goodness
among men. There was no cataclysmic break be
tween the spiritual and moral attainment of other men
and His. He was only the acme, the highest in a
continuous series. Then it follows that He Himself
is infinitely short of the final term of the series, because
if He were that final term there would be others behind
Him in unbroken continuity with infinity. If we de
cline to recognize a cataclysm between all others and
The Saviour from Sin 139
Jesus, we must give up all attempt at any real inter
pretation of the Gospels or of the New Testament.
Because from beginning to end of the Scriptural record
there is consistently observed between Jesus and all
others a breach of continuity in the fact that He has
absolutely transcended the limit of actual or possible
human achievement or attainment in the earthly life.
Jesus Christ is Himself the author and completer of
that ideal standard of human holiness, according to
which the degree of approximation is infallibly meas
ured by the sense of still and ever separating distance.
If it is intolerable to us that mortal man should claim
to have reached not only a participation but an equality
of holiness with God Himself, whence have we that
appreciation of either the holiness of God, or what
ought to be the proper modesty or humility of man,
but through the revelation of Jesus Christ? What
true saint is there of the New Testament or of Chris
tianity whose sanctity is not measured by just this
humility? We are familiar with St. John s: If we say
that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves and the truth
is not in us; and St. Paul s: Not that I have already
attained, or am already perfect. But what other
voice has ever been heard in Christianity save that of
only humility as to what we are, and faith only in all
we ought to be in the one only Holy One ? Now the
self-same spiritual consciousness which, when highest
and when truest to itself, is thus most humble, and
humble in the name of Jesus, not only takes no offence
at the claim of a perfect and divine holiness on the part
of Jesus, but finds it inconceivable to think otherwise
140 The Gospel of the Work
of Him than as possessing it. It would only weaken
the testimony of the whole New Testament in the
matter to appeal to particular texts. Any one ac
quainted with the fully self-revealed consciousness of
our Lord Himself, or on the other hand with the entire
manifold record concerning Him, will know that in
neither is there the thought of any, the least, trace of
sin in Him. We are so accustomed to this human
anomaly of the perfection of humility and the utter
sense of personal perfection combined in one, that we
do not sufficiently question it or look as deeply as we
ought into its explanation. To deny it is to give up
Christianity, or else to make of it something totally
different and opposite from itself. To admit it is to
recognize in it such an exception to and transcendence
of human experience as to amount to the spiritual
cataclysm of which we spoke. I will anticipate here
what lies some way before us to make the following
explanation. The coexistence in Jesus of a perfect
human humility, with the entire absence in Him of
what is in us the chief ground of humility, the sin that
none but He has ever surmounted on this earth, is
explicable in this way: While we cannot say that the
holiness of Jesus was only on the continuous or un
broken line of all other human holiness, because in
fact it transcended or passed beyond the limits of that,
yet also we must say that it was a human holiness,
identical with ours in kind, and identical with it in
what we might call its natural history, or the condi^
tions and law of its origin and growth. Now all human
or creature holiness comes through the one only law
The Saviour from Sin 141
of the submission of nature and self, as deficient and
insufficient for holiness, to the one only sufficient source
and cause of holiness. Consequently, the holier one
becomes the more one passes out of all dependence
upon mere nature and all conceit of mere self. These
are left behind in the growing experience of that which,
while it is our ever growing selves, is ever more and
more consciously not of ourselves. The humility in
the holiness of Jesus is the humanness in it; it is the
memory and mark of its earthly history. The human
spirit that becomes more selfless and humble as it
grows more divine will be most so when it has attained
its divine perfection. One of the most beautiful of
the many anomalies of Christian character is that the
more righteous it becomes the less self-righteous it
becomes ; the greater it grows the more modest it grows.
In what I have called the cataclysmic fact of our
Lord s humanly acquired and yet perfectly acquired
holiness, we have already all the spiritual side of the
mighty truth of the Resurrection. Humanity was
already in Him dead to sin and alive to God. There
was more, but there was nothing greater, to follow.
The sinlessness, or more properly the holiness, of
Jesus was every whit as great a miracle, if we
please to call it so, it just as much transcended
ordinary but for Him, universal human experi
ence, as His resurrection from the dead was or
did. Indeed, they were one and the same act, though
separable and separated parts of it. The Conqueror
of sin was the Conqueror of death.
xn
SIN AND ITS TREATMENT
WE will assume a sufficient knowledge of what sin
means, to begin with. If any more exact definition is
needed, it will come out of itself in the discussion. If
sin is not itself a definite and definable thing, at least
its contrary or contradictory, holiness, is so; it may
therefore be defined by its opposite. There is one other
point upon which I desire to be understood at the start.
In studying the problem of sin and its treatment, we
shall probably find ourselves treading in the footsteps
of New Testament and traditional thought on that
subject. Immediately we shall find ourselves using
the language of St. Paul, the first Christian thinker and
interpreter of the matter in hand. If so, it will be only
because we cannot help it. I think that the Christian
doctrine of sin and its treatment was developed in the
New Testament, and primarily by St. Paul, on the only
possible line and in the only possible way. I find
myself, therefore, unable to depart from it, but let it be
understood that we are following it not upon the ground
of its authority, but from the necessity of its truth.
Let the discussion itself show whether that necessity
really exists.
Sin is of all things in the world a personal matter.
142
Sin and its Treatment 143
It is the thing in the world the most independent of
God Himself, and it is independent of Him to the point
of contradiction. Sin, in order to be sin, must be so,
in the language of scholasticism, not only hi its matter
but in its form. We might say that sin is a violation
of the spirit of holiness, or of the law of righteousness.
But there may be a material violation of these which
is not a formal violation of them, and which therefore
is not sin. The material definition of sin would be the
transgression of the law; the formal definition is that
it is the personal, the conscious and voluntary, trans
gression of the law. An animal or an infant or an
idiot might perform an act materially identical with
what would be in a responsible person the worst of
crimes. But there would be no guilt or sin because
that is lacking which not only defines but constitutes
these, viz. : consciousness and purpose or choice. This
is what St. Paul means when he says that sin was
always in the world, even prior to the law; but that sin
is not imputed where or when there is no law. By law
we mean that which in any way expresses or conveys
to our consciousness or our knowledge the distinction
and difference between what we ought and what we
ought not. Until that distinction is born in us there
can be no actual or real sin. The matter of it may
and will be present, but it is not imputed, it cannot be
by ourselves and it is not by God, accounted or regarded
as sin, because the essential condition and constituent
of sin is not yet there. When the law, in any form or
manner, has once expressed and actually conveyed to
us the opposition of ought and ought not, the differen-
144 The Gospel of the Work
tiation of sin and holiness has begun. So by the law
is the knowledge of sin; but where is the knowledge of
sin there is equally the knowledge of holiness, for each
can be known only through its opposite.
Sin and holiness as opposites are a matter of personal
attitude toward one and the same thing. Let us recall
the profound saying of Aristotle, that opposite habits,
virtues and vices, spring and grow out of opposite
attitudes or responses to the same things what we
might call opposite reactions upon the same stimuli.
Precisely what, yielded to and overcome by, creates
in us a vice, resisted and overcome develops in us the
opposite virtue. So far as what we are or become
personally may be said to be due to external causes,
we might say truly that vice and virtue, sin and holiness,
proceed from identically the same causes. That is so
because what we are personally cannot properly be
said to proceed from causes without ourselves; they
must proceed from ourselves. Different personalities
are not produced by different circumstances or con
ditions, but by different attitudes and actions under
identical conditions. What is necessary to make a
sinner is equally necessary to make a saint, and so
each may be said to have been produced by the same
causes.
We may pause to remark that there is nothing in
what has been just said that contradicts the patent fact
that men are actually for the most part what their
times and circumstances make them. No one can
deny that taken in the mass or by the average men for
the most part are overcome by, rather than overcome,
Sin and its Treatment 145
their outward conditions. But under all circumstances
there are men who are relatively different in similar
situations. And so far as this difference is at all that
of good or bad, virtuous or vicious, holy or sinful, it is
wholly due, not to different conditions, but to different
attitudes toward the same conditions.
Sin then being, like holiness, so essentially and dis
tinctively a matter of personal attitude that its very
formal definition turns upon that fact, it follows that
as it can originate only through ourselves, so can it be
put away or separated from us only through ourselves.
None but we can, in the real sense, put away our sin,
because who but we can assume and maintain an
attitude which shall be our own ? Consequently, all
talk in the Gospels or in the New Testament upon the
subject of the remission of sin is based upon a condi
tion in ourselves which is a sine qua non. This con
dition we have now to analyze and investigate. And
because our English expression for it, repentance,
scarcely covers the ground, not merely of the thing,
but even of our proposed discussion, let us for the time
do what some have even wished that our original trans
lators had done permanently, anglicized the Greek
term. The personal spiritual attitude toward sin or
holiness, because an attitude toward one is a correspond
ing attitude toward the other, which alike John the
Baptist and our Lord proclaimed as the condition of
the remission of sin, is expressed in the Greek by the
word metanoia. John the Baptist came preaching the
baptism of metanoia, or repentance, unto the remission
of sins. We have seen how the ministry of John is
146 The Gospel of the Work
carefully expressed in these exact terms by every one
of the Evangelists. We have seen how our Lord at the
close, according to St. Luke, states what is to be
preached in His name precisely in these terms. We
have seen how, as reported in the Acts of the Apostles,
both the Jerusalem apostles and St. Paul did make
just those words the burden of their preaching. We
have seen how St. John in his first epistle states the
end of our Lord s coming to be the taking or the put
ting away of sin. Finally, it will require a separate
special exposition to see fully how the entire doctrinal
system of St. Paul on the subject of what is, inade
quately, termed justification is based upon the truth
of the remission of sin through Jesus Christ upon the
necessary condition of a true repentance. It will
repay us, therefore, to take the three or four words of
the Baptist as a text, and I think we shall find in this
case a careful study of the words a great help to the
discovery of the thing which is the matter of concern.
It is rather strange that in the brief phrase we are
about to discuss there is more or less of doubt or am
biguity in almost every word. The inadequacy of the
term repentance we have alluded to. Between the
Authorized and the Revised Versions the question is
raised whether it is forgiveness or remission of sin that
is the gift of the Gospel. There is reason I think in
the substitution, if only in the fact that the second term
is larger and more inclusive. Again, the two versions
raise the question whether it is repentance for or re
pentance unto remission or forgiveness. The only
word in the phrase that is unambiguous is the indu-
Sin and its Treatment 147
bitable one sins. And yet a large part of the light to
be conveyed to us by our text comes through these
very ambiguities.
The issues of life and destiny turn upon our personal
attitude to the two things we term respectively sin and
holiness. The totality of one s attitude toward each
of these could be expressed adequately by only a very
comprehensive term, such as it would be impossible to
find. The thing is too large to be contained in a single
word. It would be of advantage to adopt in each case
a word of another language into which as a symbol we
might crowd all the meaning of the thing to be expressed
by it Such a suitable word would be metanoia. But,
to avoid the appearance of pedantry, let us return to
our own language, and try to stretch to something like
adequacy two terms which have to carry in them a
very large part of the truth of the Gospel. The two
words are repentance and faith. Let us by repentance
understand the totality of what ought to be one s atti
tude toward that thing in human experience which we
call sin. And by faith let us understand the corre
sponding attitude towards holiness. It is, as we have
so often said, the issue between these two attitudes that
constitutes the turning-point of human life, that im
ports into it the supreme interest and concern of per
sonal probation, and that determines not only the fact
but the final quality and fate of personality. Holiness
and sin bear the same relation to spiritual life and
death that health and sickness do to physical life and
death. The fact that the spiritual issue is made to
depend upon attitudes of our own, or of ourselves, has
148 The Gospel of the Work
its ground in the deeper fact that spiritual life is essen
tially the act or activity of personality; it is something
which we must ourselves be and do. We live and
become ourselves in the act or activity of choosing and
determining what and of what sort we shall be. To
be of the universal and eternal divine spirit is holiness ;
not to be so, or to be not so, is sin. The possibility of
such a choice is the condition of at least human per
sonality, and of all distinctions of personal quality or
character. Without it there could be no good or bad,
right or wrong, holiness or sin.
What then ought to be one s total aspect or attitude
toward sin ? Let us recall the fact that only holiness,
and not sin, is susceptible of positive definition. The
aspect or attitude toward holiness is necessarily that
toward the universally and eternally actual spirit and
law in which God manifests Himself to us. The atti
tude toward holiness is the attitude toward God; it is
faith. Our only possible directions of self-determina
tion are Godward and sinward. The choice between
them is the issue of what we shall be, with all its con
sequences. I say its consequences, because there are
no consequences for us here or hereafter, except such
as not merely flow from but actually consist in what
we ourselves are. What then ought to be the totality
of our attitude toward sin ? It might perhaps be best
expressed in the one word negation. Repentance is
the personal negation of sin; it is the entire opposition
of our entire selves to sin. In the first place, what is
our entire selves ? The attitude required is not one
of the mind only; it must equally be one of the heart
Sin and its Treatment 149
and of the feelings or affections. Nor is that enough;
it must be of the will, and of the effectual will. And
so not merely all the rest, but it must be of the whole
activity and actuality of the man. Repentance must
be the controlling and determining fact and factor of
the life. Such is the metanoia, the new mind, new
heart, new will, new life, and new blessedness of the
Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is the putting and the passing
away of old things, the coming about and the putting
on of new things with us. For there is no repentance
that is not the mere reverse of faith. Faith may be
defined as the personal affirmation of God or of holi
ness. It is the entire setting of the entire man God-
ward or holiness-ward. Faith when it is made perfect
must possess and determine the entire mind and heart
and will and life, and must make the man what its
object is.
We must analyze a little further what we mean by
saying that repentance must be not only an act of the
entire man but an entire act of the man. An act, hi
order to be real and effective, must fulfil two conditions.
In the first place, it must not only be directed to a
definite and single end, but it must from the very be
ginning mean and intend that end. In the second
place, there is no real meaning in an act which only
means and does not attain, or is not certain at some
time to attain, its end. What must be the single and
the definite end of repentance? Our passage gives
the only possible answer. It is the putting away of
sin. Whose putting away ? Who but we can put away
our sin through repentance ? I am the furthest in the
150 The Gospel of the Work
world from saying that we are sufficient of ourselves
to put away our sin. But I am equally certain of the
fact that it is only we ourselves that can put it away.
Let us think of it again. My sin, like my holiness, is
how I myself am disposed, what my own attitude is,
toward the two possible directions of human life and
activity. Will I follow my reason, my conscience, the
spirit of holiness, the law of righteousness, or will I be
turned aside from these by my passions, the innumer
able opportunities of inordinate desire, and the thou
sand external objects that attract and tempt them ?
Just this is my probation, the condition and oppor
tunity of my self-determination; and the answer de
pends upon acts that I myself perform, habits that I
form, and the character which I thus make for myself.
In other words, everything turns upon the settled and
fixed disposition or attitude which I give myself to
ward the complex conditions which, according to it,
make life good or bad. The conditions are indeed
complex, but the decision is a single and a simple one
And it cannot be a half-way or partial one, and at the
same time be sincere and real. The preposition that
connects repentance and remission in our text is a very
important part of it, and that, whether we translate
it for or unto. In the one case it means intention or
purpose, and in the other it imports actual accomplish
ment or result. Repentance means nothing if it does
not intend the whole of holiness, the complete putting
away of sin; and it is ineffectual, it comes to nothing,
if it is never to attain or accomplish that end. The
preposition in question is interesting as that of the end
Sin and its Treatment 151
or the final cause. In a real action the essential and
vital thing is the end, what is intended at first and what
is accomplished at last. Judged by this test, what are
most of our repentances ? A little sense of sin, a little
self-condemnation and sorrow, a little desire to be free
from it, a little purpose to do something to that end.
If we should honestly set ourselves to see just how
much of any of these there is actually in it, it might well
surprise and shock ourselves. Now, if Jesus Christ
teaches anything, and stands for anything, it is a real
and complete repentance based upon a real and com
plete faith, a thoroughgoing and effectual attitude
toward sin and toward holiness, an attitude which shall
be so whole an activity of the whole man that it will
make a complete new man of him. It is this and this
alone which makes the Gospel of Jesus Christ, accord
ing to St. Paul, the power of God unto salvation to
every one that believeth. It is the power of a perfect
holiness, a perfect righteousness, and a perfect life.
Here comes in the instructive and the important
ambiguity of the expression we have been discussing.
Is it only forgiveness or is it an actual and real putting
away from us of sin ? Is it only for or is it actually
unto the full and perfect end of repentance ? The real
and effectual treatment of sin is by its very nature a
joint act or activity of God and man. Only man can
perform it, but man can perform it only through the
Eternal Spirit which is God. When it is accomplished,
it is the whole man who must have accomplished it.
His whole mind and heart and will and activity must
have gone into the accomplishment of it; it must have
152 The Gospel of the Work
been a complete attitude on his part toward sin and
toward holiness, a perfect repentance and a perfect
faith. But equally God must have been in it, and
must have been the doer of it. The whole Spirit of
God must have imparted itself to him, the whole Word
or Truth or Law of God must have fulfilled itself in him.
Now, according as we take the end or final cause of
repentance as purpose in the beginning, or throughout
the process, or as attainment or accomplishment in the
final result, we shall give different senses to the divine
human act of remission; or rather we shall be looking
at it from different points of view. If I am looking at
the entire act of the putting away of my sin in Jesus
Christ both God s and mine I mean the real
putting away, by the actual putting off on my part of
sin and the putting on of holiness. I recognize, of
course, that this is a process of gradual transformation,
an indefinite not to say infinite process of which
the divine holiness is only the limit. But still I see it
as a whole, and the whole can only mean an actual
participation in the holiness, the righteousness, the
life of God Himself. Meantime, just because the
whole process means so much, there arises another
tremendous question of our status with God and with
ourselves at its beginning or throughout its course.
Even a St. Paul or a St. John is infinitely remote from
feeling himself to have attained, or to be without sin.
What is the position of us all, who the more we mean
and intend holiness or righteousness, only the more
feel that we infinitely have not attained and do not
possess it? Here comes in the other sense of remis-
Sin and its Treatment 153
sion not as yet the complete impartation, but already
the perfect imputation to us of the whole holiness,
righteousness, and life of God as realized for us in
Jesus Christ. The moment a human life has really
made Jesus Christ its end, although that end be as yet
only the end of purpose, and infinitely not yet the end
of attainment, that moment God imputes to that life
what it means and intends as though it had already
accomplished it. St. Paul perfectly caught the prin
ciple, and perfectly expressed it in the doctrine which
is the root of his system: Faith is imputed to us for
righteousness; it is reckoned or accounted as being
righteousness.
The common sense or the philosophy of it is not far
to find. It is a principle upon which even we ourselves
act in our imperfect measure. Let us perfectly know
that one fully means a certain act or a certain part
towards us, and that fact establishes a status between
us as complete as though he had already fulfilled it.
Of course, as we shall abundantly see, there is a great
deal more ground for a basis between God and our
selves upon the mutual understanding of a repentance
on our part which means the putting off of sin and a
faith which means the putting on of holiness, but the
above illustration will suggest the true fact that the
divine method in our spiritual treatment can be relied
upon for both common sense and philosophy that
is to say, to be the most perfectly natural and the most
perfectly rational one.
XIII
THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS
WE have seen how the Gospels terminate logically
and naturally in the commission, That repentance and
remission of sins should be preached in the name of
Jesus Christ unto all the nations. We have seen how
precisely so it was preached, and that that from the
beginning was the Gospel. It is most exactly ex
pressed by St. Peter in the words, In none other is
there salvation; for neither is there any other name
under heaven, that is given among men, wherein we
must be saved. We cannot ourselves explain this plain
statement of the Gospel nor enter into the Christian or
Catholic understanding of it except on the assumption
that not only is salvation from sin given in Jesus Christ,
but that salvation from sin was wrought or accom
plished by Jesus Christ. The taking away or putting
away or abolishing of sin was accomplished by an act
on His part, and it was accomplished first in His own
person. He Himself was sinless, not by any mere fact
of His own nature differencing it from ours but
by an act of Himself in our nature, which we too were
to enter into and make our own and so perform for
ourselves in and with Him. He by Himself made
purgation of our sins. This was an act, the act, of His
154
The Sinlessness of Jesus 155
whole life, but an act finished or consummated in His
death. He was manifested to put away sin by the
sacrifice of Himself. Which means that He put away
the sin of the world by primarily putting away sin from
Himself. He destroyed it, to begin with, by His own
death to it, or by putting it to death in its encounter
with Himself. He was manifested to take away sin.
And this He does in two acts. The first is expressed
in these words, And in Him there is no sin; it has been
condemned and abolished in His own person. The
second is, Whosoever abideth in Him sinneth not; it is
abolished in whosoever sincerely enters into Him by
entering into His death to sin and making it his own.
In view of this relation of the death or sacrifice of Jesus
Christ to ourselves, there ought to be no hesitation
from any Christian point of view about such words as
the following: There is one God; one mediator also
between God and man, Himself man, Christ Jesus,
who gave Himself a ransom for all.
The point is that Jesus Christ did by Himself destroy
sin. And now the question is, by what act or by what
process did He do so ? This involves the whole ques
tion of the personal relation of our Lord Himself to the
universal human fact of sin. Let it be understood
that in our present discussion we are not to take into
account any theory of a higher than human personality
of Jesus. He does not do so in His own discussions.
In them all He is Son of man, and He takes His stand
and rests His claims not upon any difference from men,
but upon what He is as man. But Jesus Christ will
forever stand for spiritual manhood, for man in the
156 The Gospel of the Work
perfection of his God ward relation. He embodies in
His person the truth of the divine fatherhood realized
upon earth by the attainment or accomplishment of
human sonship. For our sonship to God is not a
thing that simply is. We have to acquire the divine
nature that constitutes or makes us children of God.
And that nature is holiness. Holiness is in itself what
God is; and in us it is participation in what God is.
It is to share His spirit, and so His character and His
life. Jesus Christ is to us not only the fact but the way
of holiness The Way, as well as The Truth and The
Life. We have in Him the act as well as the fact of
holiness. His holiness, if it was to be ours, had to be
made like ours under the experiences of human life
upon earth. It behooved God, in bringing many sons
unto glory, to make the author of their salvation per
fect through sufferings. It was necessary that He
should taste death for every man. Indeed, if Jesus
were man at all, there is but one holiness and one way
of holiness for man. Just as much as sin for man is
the yielding of his spirit to his flesh, so only is his holi
ness to be acquired through the subduing of his flesh
by his spirit. It is the very condition and nature of
the human spirit that it can come about only through
itself. And it can come about through itself only by
an act of original, self-determined, and permanent,
choice. If it is to be good or bad, right or wrong, holy
or sinful, it must go through an act of free choice be
tween these opposites, and its goodness or badness, its
holiness or its sin, will be simply a name for the per
manent and eternal choice it has made. This is what
The Sinlessness of Jesus 157
we mean by formal freedom, in distinction from the
real freedom which we acquire in the end through the
permanent choice and possession of holiness. But
there can be no real freedom in the end if there was no
formal freedom at the beginning. A holiness or free
dom not wrought out through the pangs and travail
of our own free choice and self-determination is not
our own, and is therefore, so far as we are concerned,
no holiness or freedom at all. We cannot, therefore,
begin to discuss the human holiness of Jesus at all, if
we are not to ascribe to Him the formal freedom which
is the condition and the essence of our own humanity.
But we need not discuss that question in a study of
the New Testament. That, from beginning to end,
is based upon the mighty issue for humanity, decided
once for all in His person as its new head and repre
sentative. As humanity had fallen in Adam, and by
his act or its own act in him, so humanity threw off its
sin and death in Christ, and by His act or by its own
act in His person. We need not concern ourselves, if
we are disposed to do so, about the literal or historical
truth of Adam. If man has sinned or is sinful, it can
be only through himself that he has done or become so.
There can be no sin except through personal responsi
bility. Now, just let us take Adam as standing for
that self or selfhood of humanity, or of every man,
through which it has become and is sinful before God,
as indeed it has and is. The truth then simply amounts
to this, that as man of or in himself (his natural estate,
or Adam) is universally subject to sin and death, so in
Christ has He been redeemed and raised, or has raised
158 The Gospel of the Work
himself, out of that natural condition of subjection to
sin and death. The question is first, as we have stated
it, how did Jesus Christ in Himself, or humanity in His
person, accomplish that act ? The answer which we
will first give and then amplify is : that He accomplished
it humanly through a perfect human attitude toward
sin and toward holiness, sustained throughout His life
and consummated in His death. But for the certainty
of being misunderstood against which I shall do
my best to guard this discussion I should say that
Jesus Christ, or humanity in Him, accomplished salva
tion or holiness through a lifelong and death-com
pleted act of perfect repentance and perfect faith. By
a perfect repentance in the larger sense in which we
are now using it I mean an attitude toward sin that
is unto the putting away of it. And by a perfect faith
I mean an attitude that is unto, that actually attains,
the complete putting on of holiness. Such a repent
ance is necessarily unto death, either the death of
sin in us or the death of ourselves to sin, or probably
both. Such a faith is necessarily unto life, unto the
limit of the completeness of the life of God in us and of
our life in God. In other words, Jesus Christ accom
plished that perfect human act which is in itself the
only perfect human salvation, the perfect putting away
of sin by the perfect putting on of holiness.
The more we consider the matter the more shall we
be convinced, from the spiritual side of it, that for us
there is no real and complete salvation except through
a real death and resurrection. A negation of sin unto
the extinction of it, an affirmation of holiness unto the
The Sinlessness of Jesus 159
realization of it that is what our salvation means,
and that is precisely what Jesus Christ accomplished.
The death that He died, He died unto sin once or
once for all; because it was a complete and perfect
death: the life that He liveth, He liveth unto God.
But still the question remains: Why is the putting to
death of sin in us likewise a death of ourselves unto
sin ? Especially why was it necessary that our sinless
Lord should die to sin ? The answer is that He was
only humanly sinless in that He humanly died to sin.
His lifelong death to sin created and constituted His
sinlessness, or rather His holiness; because there is
no negative sinlessness that is not an act of positive
holiness. The completer answer to this question,
however, will require a going over of the details of what
we may call the formation or evolution of the human
sinlessness of Jesus.
Our Lord, because He was Son of man, and because
He could not be so and be devoid of what is the essen
tial constitution of humanity, entered upon life con
fronted by the one issue that meets us all and makes us
all whatsoever we are. The one issue was that of sin or
holiness. He could only be sinful by yielding to any
of the numerous and ever-present occasions, oppor
tunities, and solicitations of sin that come to us from
without. Equally He could be holy only through re
sisting and denying these same universal and natural
temptations. As we have said, the selfsame conditions
or so-called causes that produce sin are necessary to the
formation of holiness. We cannot say that tempta
tion did not play a part, and a part that was as neces-
160 The Gospel of the Work
sary as it was tremendous, in the spiritual development
of the life and character of Jesus Christ. Let us guard
ourselves from offence in every direction by agreeing
upon the ancient formula : We do not say that our Lord
as man could not have sinned if He willed, but God
forbid that He should have willed. All that we need
to maintain is that our Lord in fact did not sin, not
from necessity of His nature, but in the exercise of His
human will; and that that exercise consisted not only
in the resistance and denial of temptations from with
out that were real temptations, but in something within
that was self-denial, and that in its extremest forms
was self-sacrifice. It is not sin that we are either sub
ject to temptation from without or liable to temptation
from within. It is not only a fact, but the most essen
tial fact, of our human constitution. It constitutes the
issue which makes us persons, which imparts a moral
quality to our acts and lives, and which in enabling us
to be of ourselves enables us also to be of God. That
the essential point in our Lord s early or pre-public
life was, how He had used His human freedom, or what
sort of man He was, is proved, as we saw, by the very
form of the divine approbation of it at the close: This
is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased. Com
mendation such as that, or such an expression of divine
pleasure, is applicable only to human or creature
action, disposition, or character. It recognizes and
approves the human choice and constancy, and re
wards it by laying upon it mighty tasks and painful
tests, as well for its further making as for its more per
fect proving and approving.
The Sinlessness of Jesus 161
We have seen that Jesus brought to His public min
istry a character thoroughly formed, and an attitude
toward life definitely and finally taken. But not so
utterly so but that He could even still be assailed by
yet more subtle and perfect temptations. When He
had withstood and vanquished these too, we are told
that the Tempter departs from Him only for a season.
At the great close, the final crisis which He specially
claims as His hour, the hour that should glorify by
proving and perfecting Him to the limit, unto the death
to sin and unto the life to God and holiness, was
there not still temptation there ? If not, then also
there was nothing there to conquer, or to be exalted
and glorified by. Not my will, but Thine be done!
expresses forever the fact that there was something
within Himself to deny, to sacrifice, through the Eternal
Spirit to offer up as the perfect oblation to the Father.
With regard to the whole general matter of tempta
tion and sin, it is remarkable how St. Paul, St. James,
and St. Peter agree in almost the very terms of their
teaching. They all recognize not only the necessity
but the blessedness of manifold trials or temptations.
The benefits to be derived from them come through
patience or endurance, the power to suffer and survive ;
and they consist in a quality or character which they
unite in calling provedness or approvedness, and which
is the condition of receiving the reward or crown of life.
On the other hand, temptation yielded to produces sin
and death; and here it seems to me that St. James s
account of the process can be shown to be psycho
logically and scientifically exact. Temptation, he
162 The Gospel of the Work
says, does not come from God, but each man is tempted
when he is drawn away by his own epithumia and
enticed. This epithumia is not in itself sin; it is too
strongly rendered lust, and is in reality only the natural
appetites and desires which are an essential part of our
human constitution. But for these we could not live
our natural lives, and but for these we should be in
capable of those very temptations which have just been
stated to be the very conditions, if not causes, of our
supremest blessedness. Epithumia is indeed the only
matrix or mother of sin; in it alone lies our suscepti
bility for sin, and when sin does come it comes only
through appetite and desire. But it is only when it
has actually conceived and borne sin that it becomes
sinful. If our appetites and desires as ours, through
our own complicity with them, by consent and co
operation of our own minds, affections, and wills
have imported into us the sperma or seed of wrong or
false or inordinate gratification and indulgence, then
sin is born in us. And then it comes not from the ex
ternal temptations, nor even from the internal sus
ceptibility or capacity for temptation, but from the
wrong reason and the weak will of the person in not
keeping the appetite or desire to its proper and ordi-
nate object and function. A natural desire which by
our own indulgence in sinful gratification has grown
inordinate or abnormal becomes a lust, and to be
tempted by our lusts in this sense is in itself a sin, be
cause to have such lusts at all is a sin. For this reason,
with men in general, temptation is itself sinful; because
for the most part our temptations come not alone from
The Sinlessness of Jesus 163
external stimuli and internal constitution, but from
habit and propensity bred in us through our own past
complicity, through sinful entertainment and indul
gence, if not always in act yet in thought and sympathy.
It is only beings who like ourselves can reproduce in
consciousness the objects of our desires and pamper
these with the unwholesome food of memory, imagina
tion, and anticipation, who are capable of lusts in the
stronger and sinful sense. But as to have lusts and
indulge them is our sin, just so not to have lusts or
indulge them, by the proper control and sanctification
of our natural desires, is our holiness, and our only
way of holiness. The possibility of the sin is the con
dition of the holiness.
Now let us see how the indubitable facts of our Lord s
sinless human life compel us, as I hold, to construe the
manner and the matter of His holiness. He was born
into and lived our life and was in every respect a man
like unto us. He was born in the flesh, because the
flesh is our lowest and most earthly constituent and
carries in it and with it all the possibilities, all the
weaknesses and temptations and dangers, in a word
all the probation of our earthly life. All these He
met fairly and squarely as a man, and as a man was
thoroughly proved by them and perfectly approved.
Now our Lord did not do that in our nature which no
man within the limits of his own nature or by the exer
cise of only his own powers is capable of doing. He
was not holy by nature, nor righteous by the law. The
impossibilities of humanity were as much impossibili
ties for Him as for us. He bare all our weaknesses
164 The Gospel o] the Work
and carried all our sorrows. He had as much to hunger
and thirst after a righteousness which was not His own
as we have, and He did it infinitely more. If He was
actually holy and righteous as none but He was or is,
it was because He was possessed, and humanly pos
sessed, of a higher secret, a truer way, a more sufficient
power, of human -holiness and righteousness than
human nature in itself contains or human will can by
itself acquire. No man ever so felt in himself the de
ficiency and poverty of mere nature, or ever so con
fessed in himself the impotency and insufficiency of
the human will for the higher purposes of holiness,
righteousness, and life, as did Jesus Christ. It is
because there was never one who so knew His utter
dependence upon God, and therefore so knew what in
God He had to depend on, that there was never one
but He who so perfectly knew God as our holiness, our
righteousness, and our life. But in all this He only
knows what He calls us too to the knowledge of in Him,
and what He promises us that we shall perfectly share
with Him.
Thus, we may conclude, Jesus Christ was indeed
holy in our nature, and therefore our nature was holy
in Him. But He was holy as a man and in the only way
in which a man can be holy. He was holy by the con
quest of sin. And this He was and did, as we too must
be and do, after Him and in Him, not within the
limits of our own nature, nor by the powers of our own
will (and yet not without these too), but through His
all-sufficient way of perfect union and unity with God.
That means that Jesus Christ is the author to us of
The Sinlessness of Jesus 165
everything else because He was the author and finisher
of our faith. The only thing that stands between us
and everything else is the absence or the incomplete
ness of our faith.
XIV
THE TRUE BAPTISM AND BAPTIZER
THE point in the ministry of John the Baptist in
tended in every one of the Gospels to be specially
emphasized is not the tremendous positive importance
of that ministry as a preparation for Christ, unques
tionable as that was, so much as the contrast and
disparity so vividly expressed by John himself between
his own baptism and that which Jesus after him was
to exercise. When we speak of the baptism of John
as no true one, and that of Jesus as the only true one,
we are using the word true in its deeper New Testa
ment sense. It is not that in our ordinary meaning of
it John s baptism was in any way unmeaning or un
true. It contained as much significance and sincerity
as the greater Elijah, the last and most intense of the
prophets, could put into it. Meaning enough John
could put and did put into his baptism. It meant, and
it could not have expressed more strongly, the neces
sity and need of the deepest and the truest repentance.
But all the earnestness and sincerity of John the Bap
tist could not do more than mean and demand the
repentance it symbolized and preached. The true
baptism needed was one which could not only mean
the truth it expressed, but could be the truth it meant.
166
The True Baptism and Baptizer 167
In other words, we have embodied in John the Baptist
all the accumulated fire and intensity of all the Law
and the Prophets, and at the same time the sum of all
the long experience of their weakness and unprofit
ableness without a baptism from heaven with some
thing more. The Law and the Prophets could build
the altar and lay the wood and place the sacrifice, but
it required a greater than Elijah to call down the fire
from heaven to consume this sacrifice. When John
said, I can only baptize you with water, he expressed
the experience of all law and all prophets. We know
and can say and can mean what we want; but who or
what can give us what we want ? It is not in our nature
to possess it, it is not within our powers to create or
acquire it.
We are made not for sin but for holiness, and not for
death but for life. We are constituted by our nature
not only capable of conceiving perfect holiness and
eternal life, but under a necessity of recognizing these,
if we reflect upon ourselves at all, as the true expression
of our nature and the true exercise of our powers.
And that which thus cannot but be a law to us we can
know only as an impossibility. We might on the one
hand deny the impossibility, and, with Kant, while
recognizing the infinitude of the law, say still, I ought
and therefore I can. Or we might, on the other hand,
recognizing the infinitude and therefore the impossi
bility of the law, conclude that it cannot be ours and
acquiesce in something lower and more accessible.
Let us examine briefly each of these alternatives.
With regard to the first alternative, Kant indeed
168 The Gospel of the Work
postulates for us an eternal time in which to fulfil our
infinite law. There is great truth also in the demand
that the law is ours and the obedience or fulfilment
must therefore be our own. In undertaking human
life, in the full meaning of it, we are entering upon an
infinite and eternal task. This task must be possible
in the end, if there be an end to that which is infinite;
or at any rate it must be capable of a real, continuous
and eternal, approximation, and be in that sense pos
sible. But even in that sense it will be possible only
upon the condition that from the beginning and all
along the perfect end is recognized and we mean and
intend nothing short of the infinite and the eternal.
Every thought and act of life from the beginning must
have for its principle and its maxim not less sin,
but no sin at all; and not more holiness, but all the
holiness of God. I recognize the fact that the law is
ours and the fulfilment of it can be only all our own,
and also the fact that an eternal obedience must be
possible for us. But what we want to recognize also,
and what the Gospel of Jesus Christ reveals to us, is
this: that an obedience may be all ours and only ours,
and yet be incapable of becoming ours in isolation or
apart from that without which we are not even our
selves. Our obedience is not God s but ours; but
though it be not God s, yet it is God Himself in us,
enabling us to be ourselves and to render to Him what
is ours. It is true that the infinite law must be eter
nally possible for us; there is no ought where there is
not also a can. But neither the nature nor the will of
man can discover in itself aught but an actual impos-
The True Baptism and Baptizer 169
sibility of its own true law. Its possibility lies only in
the union and unity with God into which humanity is
brought in the person of Jesus Christ, and in the union
and unity with Christ into which we can be brought
only by the power of the Holy Ghost.
The other alternative was to recognize in the in
finitude and impossibility of the law its inapplicability
to ourselves, and to come down to some standard or
measure of life which we feel to be practicable and
attainable. Can we do so and remain ourselves
even the selves to which we have attained ? Suppose
we should succeed in dropping out of our lives the call
to the infinite and the eternal; suppose we should
successfully suppress in ourselves all yearning or
aspiration after anything more than we actually are
or can make ourselves; suppose we should thus limit
and confine our thoughts, our hopes, and ourselves
to what many declare to be the only realities and values
of human life or destiny ; if this result were uni
versally reached, should we still be, and continue to
be, even the inchoate and imperfect men we are now?
No; even if this be the truth and the fact with regard
to human life, we still need to cling to our illusions, for
it is these illusions alone that ennoble us with what
truth or beauty or goodness above ourselves is in us.
There is no one who reflects or cares who does not
in his way believe in, and in his measure practise, both
repentance and faith. He knows dissatisfaction with
what he is; he knows that there is the better, the best,
which he is not and would be. It was a profound
thought of Plato, that all men will The Good, not
170 The Gospel of the Work
the relative but the absolute good. However appetite,
desire, passion may crave and choose the bad, in the
inner man, which is the true self of every man, there is a
will which is "of the good." What is that good? Is
it only something a little better, or even a great deal
better, than we are ? No ; it is to be wholly, completely,
perfectly better than we are. Suppose that our Lord,
in the Sermon on the Mount, had preached a prac
ticable or attainable righteousness, such as we have
been talking about ; suppose He had called us to follow
Him and be just as free from sin and as holy as all of
us are able to be; and had not, on the contrary, bidden
us follow Him infinitely higher than that, and be per
fect even as our Father which is in heaven is perfect;
would He in that case have preached a more truly
human Gospel, or have more powerfully drawn all
men unto Him ?
To us all, if we be men, and just in proportion as we
are men, both repentance and faith are a very great
deal more than we realize. Who does not know dis
satisfaction, sorrow, condemnation, negation, within
himself, of himself? The point is, not only what all
this means, but how much does it mean to us of what
it must mean, and cannot mean less than, in itself. I
repent of what I am that is sinful. Of how much do
I repent, and how much do I repent of it? Do I re
pent of all or of part of my sinfulness, and do I wholly
or only partially repent of it? Surely repentance, if
it is repentance at all, must repent of sin as sin and of
any and all sin. And equally surely it cannot mean
the more or less, the partial, but must mean the whole
The True Baptism and Baptizer 171
putting away of sin. Everything is defined by its end
and there can be no other end or final cause or meaning
of repentance than the putting away of sin, all sin
and a real and complete putting away. Now this
paradox or antinomy within us, that only a completed
holiness can be the meaning from the beginning or the
full expression in the end of ourselves, and yet that such
a holiness is something hopelessly unattainable by us,
finds its perfect solution and reconciliation only in
Jesus Christ. This we shall hope to make clear as we
proceed further; but there is one point which I wish to
reiterate as a matter of the verbal interpretation of the
passage which we have been for some time considering.
That which is desiderated in human salvation; that
which made the law and the prophets, and which
makes all Law and all Prophets, ineffectual, however
true their meaning and earnest their purpose; that
which necessitated and necessitates the true Baptizer
and the true Baptism, is not that men have not always
and everywhere known something of God and some
thing of themselves, something of sin and something
of holiness, something of repentance and something of
faith, but that the more they have known of all
these, the more they have felt that antinomy between
what they ought and what they can. We have re
pentance, but how may we, how can we, no man
can, repent unto the putting away of sin ? We have
faith, but who of us can believe unto the limit, the end,
eternal life ? What we want is an effectual repentance,
a repentance which not only means, but is, the putting
away of sin. Or what is only the reverse of the
172 The Gospel of the Work
other a faith which not only means the putting on,
but which puts on, holiness and eternal life. The an
swer to this one need of human life is to be found only
in Him whom God did exalt with His right hand to be
a Prince and a Saviour, for to give repentance and
remission of sins. Jesus Christ both is in Himself
and is to us the divine gift of such a repentance as is,
as actually accomplishes, the putting away of sin; and
of such a faith as is, as actually attains unto, holiness
and eternal life.
I say that, first, Jesus Christ is in Himself the perfect
metanoia and the perfect pistis. He is that perfect
attitude of humanity toward sin which is its putting
away, both the death of us to it and the death of it in
us. He is that perfect attitude of humanity toward
God and holiness and eternal life which is the putting
on and possession of all these. In Jesus Christ hu
manity has accomplished its salvation through the
perfection of all those dispositions and acts and char
acters which effect and constitute salvation. In Him
it has thrown off its old self of deficiency and insuffi
ciency, of weakness and sin and death, and put on a
new self which is more itself than before, just because
it is itself not in itself but in God. I repeat that salva
tion, to be a real salvation and human salvation, the
only salvation either needful or possible for us, must
be an act of humanity itself, the perfection of its own
negation, renunciation, and annulling of all from
which it needs to be saved, and of its own affirmation,
appropriation, and realization of all to which it needs
to be saved. Nothing that God can do merely for us,
The True Baptism and Baptizer 173
not even anything that God alone can do in us, can
effect or constitute our salvation. Only that can be
our salvation which we ourselves are, and are through
our own doing and becoming. But we can do nothing
and become nothing and be nothing that effects or
constitutes salvation in ourselves or otherwise than in
and through God, who alone is our true and perfect
self. Jesus Christ viewed now wholly on His
human side is humanity in that perfect relation to
God which is the condition of its perfect life in God.
This perfection of relation and of activity with and in
God enables humanity in His person to do that which
otherwise it is weak through the flesh, in its own nature
or in itself, to do. It enables it to carry to the limit
both its negation of sin and its affirmation of holiness,
to attain the metanoia unto death and the pistis unto
life. When therefore we say that Jesus Christ is the
author and finisher, the beginner and ender, of our
faith, we mean that He is the perfecter in His own
human life of all those dispositions, attitudes, habits,
of all that divine human character, through which we
need to work out, and in which we shall possess and
enjoy, our own salvation. All the types and promises
of the Old Testament point out the truth that if it is
humanity that is to inherit, it is humanity that in its
spiritual history was to work out its own inheritance.
It was the woman s seed that in the end was to bruise
the serpent s head. It was Abraham s seed, the per
fect inheritor not of his blood but of his faith, that was
to receive the promises. To all the promises Christ
and humanity are synonymous. All that was to be
174 The Gospel of the Work
done or received by it was done or received in Him.
All that was fulfilled in Him was fulfilled in its name
and by it in His person. Thus the Epistle to the
Hebrews speaks of a promise made not to angels, but
to man or humanity, of headship over the world that
was to come. And this promise we see not yet ful
filled in him or it, not yet in humanity, but we see One
already exalted to that headship in whom in anticipa
tion all are exalted. One has suffered and been per
fected, has tasted death and inherited life, but that
One only as the leader and captain of all : It became
Hun, for whom and through whom are all things, in
bringing many sons to glory, to perfect (first) the cap
tain of their salvation through sufferings.
In the second place, all that Jesus Christ was and is
in Himself, of accomplished and completed metanoia
and pistis, of perfected death to sin and life to God,
all that He is to us and is to be in us. What is preached
to us in His name that is to say, what is preached to
us as ours in Him is the repentance unto remission,
the perfect putting away of our sin, upon which our
salvation depends. We take this to be ours in Him,
as we have already seen, in two senses, or rather in two
stages of one and the same sense. In the first sense
we see ourselves made actually and perfectly sinless
and holy in Jesus Christ. We see in Him that perfect
relation to God and that perfect activity in God which
for us as for Him is in itself holiness and eternal life.
More definitely, and as the consequence of that, we see
in Him that completed attitude to sin that is the very
death of it and to it, and that perfected attitude to God
The True Baptism and Baptizer 175
and holiness that is their real possession which is
the substance and matter of all that must be ours in
order to be saved. It is true we see this actual holiness,
this completed salvation, as ours in the totality only
and the eternity of our relation to Christ, in the realiza
tion of all that is ours in Him. But, however far off
it may be from us or we from it, we cannot and ought
not to think of our salvation as anything less than our
own perfected and completed sinlessness and holiness.
We may be to the depths of our souls grateful and
happy to be sinners pardoned and forgiven by divine
grace. But surely God would not have us satisfied
with that as the end and substance of the salvation
He gives us in His Son. Jesus Christ is the power of
God in us unto salvation. It does not require an
exercise of divine power to extend pardon; it does re
quire it to endow and enable us with all the qualities,
energies, and activities that make for and that make
holiness and life. See how St. Paul speaks of it when
he prays, That we may know the exceeding greatness
of God s power to usward who believe, according to
that working of the strength of His might which He
wrought in Christ when He raised Him from the dead.
The victory of our Lord over sin and death as mani
fested in His resurrection was an exercise on His part
of a spiritual divine power which no enemy was able
to withstand. St. Paul wishes us to understand by
experience that in Christ we are the subjects of that
selfsame divine power unto the perfection of holiness
and the completeness of life.
But, as has been already in part explained, there is
176 The Gospel of the Work
another sense in which we view as ours the putting
away of sin in Jesus Christ. And, although this other
is a lower and only a preliminary or anticipatory sense,
yet it is one which more immediately concerns us, and
which for that reason occupies much of the attention
of the New Testament interpreters of the work of
Christ. Our progressive and final real oneness w r ith
God depends no little, indeed depends altogether, upon
our provisional status and relation with Him in and dur
ing the process of that unification. The wandering of
the prodigal son was a spiritual and not merely local or
material one. What he wanted for his real return was
an internal or subjective reconciliation and restoration
to unity with his father. But if the external return
had not taken place and the external status of father
and son been restored first, there could not have come
about the gradual healing and growth of internal and
real unity. Above all things, such an essentially spir
itual and personal relation as that of father and son
demands that the objective status should first exist in
order that the subjective spirit of sonship should come
into existence by being born of it and nourished by it.
Because we are sons, God sends forth the spirit of His
Son into our hearts, crying Abba, Father. That is
to say, God has first in Jesus Christ established an
objective status or relation of sons. Into this He
receives us by an act of grace on His part and through
no act on ours. He then expects us in this objective
status or relation of pure grace to appropriate to our
selves the relation He has conferred upon us, to make
ourselves what He has made us, to enter into the spirit
The True Baptism and Baptizer 177
and life of the sonship which is ours and become in
wardly the sons that we are outwardly in Christ Jesus.
God s part precedes and conditions and produces ours
in the work of our salvation. He not only is by nature,
but He has made Himself by grace, our Father before
and in order that we may make ourselves His sons by
faith. We love Him as Father because He first loved
us as children. Faith does not originate or create or
give, it only receives and appropriates and realizes.
Just as God calls things that are not as though they
were, because His calling makes them so, even so faith
accepts things as He calls them, and in accepting finds
them so. The father received his prodigal son upon
the terms not of a prodigal, but of a son in good stand
ing; he made it for him as though he had never sinned
and were not in fact a sinner against his love and good
ness; by the very act of accepting and treating him as
though his offence were not, he most effectually re
moved not only the imputation, but all inhering
reality of that offence. And the son himself, in and
by most completely accepting and appropriating the
status of perfect sonship into which he was received,
most effectually restored himself to the perfect spirit
and internal character of sonship.
But in the above illustration, the essential condition
of the reconciliation and accomplished unity of father
and son was a complete right disposition and attitude
on both sides in the matter. There must be on the
side of the father the willingness to accept at once, not
all that was due from the son, but the right attitude
possible for him at the time toward what he had been
178 The Gospel of the Work
and what he would be. And there must be on the
part of the son the readiness to bring no less than this.
Without this much there is nothing to go on, nothing
that can be given or received. Bringing the matter
back to our relation to God, we cannot indeed bring
to Him at once a sin completely put away and a oneness
with Him restored, but we can bring to Him an attitude
toward our sin which means and can never be satisfied
with less than its complete putting away; and we can
bring an attitude toward holiness which means and can
never stop short of the most perfect actual attainment
of the most perfect holiness. If we do in reality and
in sincerity bring this, then God can treat what we
really mean and intend as though it really were, and
by treating them so or calling them so make them so.
But if, on the contrary, we do not in all sincerity and
reality mean or intend so, then God cannot call it so,
nor by calling make it so. For God can give only what
we can receive, and we can receive only what we are in
condition to receive, viz. : what we fully know and feel
the want of and what we truly desire and will and
purpose the possession of.
The true or real baptism, then, is the endowment
from above with that without which we cannot be our
selves or fulfil our law or accomplish the end of our
lives. Jesus Christ was, first, the True Baptized.
There was in Him all that humanity lacks in itself for
self-realization: the perfect relation to God, the perfect
oneness with God in person and in work, the conse
quent power through an effectual metanoia and pistis,
and the divine grace fully operative through these, to
The True Baptism and Baptizer 179
throw off sin and put on holiness. I do not see but
that our Lord s own baptism from heaven was iden
tical with the anointing which constituted Him the
Christ, the impartation to humanity in His person of
all of which it was deficient by nature and for which it
was insufficient in the exercise of its own will or ener
gies. He is thus earth wedded with heaven, man
supplemented and completed by God, the divine Word
and Spirit, truth and love, holiness and righteousness
and eternal life, realized and embodied in creation.
And being the true baptized, Jesus Christ is the True
Baptizer. He brings us into His own relation with
the Father, associates us with Himself in His own son-
ship, and imparts to us the communion and fellowship
of His own filial Spirit. He is thus not only our Christ
but our chrism; the precious oil poured out upon His
head runs down to the borders of His garment, and
anoints His whole mystical person, which is the body
of redeemed and sanctified humanity. He is our
baptizer because He is our baptism. All that He has
become for us He becomes in us by incorporating us
into Himself and endowing us with all the grace and
power of what He Himself is.
XV
THE RESURRECTION
WE have now, I think, the material for the Christian
interpretation of the work of Christ. Our Lord says
at the very last that He has glorified God in that He
has accomplished the ergon or task which God had
given Him to do. That task or work had been a life-
whole and a life-long one, but it was completed in His
death and consummated in His resurrection. We
have come now to sum up all that has been said in an
attempt to define as precisely as we can the meaning
of the resurrection as the consummation of the work.
It is St. Paul who first in Christianity undertook to
interpret the whole spiritual significance of the life and
death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. But I hope
before we are quite done to demonstrate that the entire
logical development of St. Paul s doctrine is from a
germ inherent and essential in the truth itself, that it
was distinctly stated by our Lord Himself, and that
it was the germinal teaching of the Apostles before
St. Paul. In doing so, I shall have to recall and cor
relate the principal conclusions already reached. The
Gospel as such begins with the objective fact of the
taking or putting away of sin by Jesus Christ. It
proceeds with the universal proclamation of the double
180
The Resurrection 181
remission in His name, a remission of present pardon
through faith in Him, and a remission of real deliver
ance through final participation with Him. The
difference between the two is only that of different
stages of relation to the same thing, between the pro-
leptic or anticipatory appropriation of faith and the
progressive and final appropriation and fruition in
fact. What in its totality is included in the accom
plished work of our Lord, and now preached to us in
His name, is that He has in Himself abolished sin and
death, and that we may, in faith now, and more and
more unto ultimate perfection in fact, see in Him
the consummation of our redemption from sin and
death. It is just this truth, as I hope to show, which
is expanded into the entire doctrinal system of St. Paul.
But it had been already preached in principle by the
Apostles from Jerusalem.
It is usually said that St. Paul knows nothing and
cares nothing for the earthly life of Jesus, that all his
interest and concern is with the resurrection and the
risen life. The fact is, I think, that St. Paul is the first
to understand and interpret that life. The earlier
evangelists are mostly recorders of the mere words
and acts of Jesus. As has been shown, for Jesus Him
self the significant and determining facts of His human
life and character had mostly taken place before His
ministry was begun and His disciples brought into
intimate association and acquaintance with Him.
Thenceforth He and they are taken up with His public
relations and dealings. They do record personal
experiences of His, such as the temptations that begin
182 The Gospel of the Work
and end His career, but generally the mystery of Him
self, of His elevation above themselves, of His exalted
authority and personal claims, they simply accept in
their actuality, and make no effort to explain. St.
Paul, on the contrary, sums up all the details of our
Lord s life and focuses them in the one luminous act
in which they manifest their eternal significance. To
him the individual personal life of Jesus Himself is
more than it is to any one else, but all of it was gathered
up and expressed in the one consummate act of His
death, as all the fruits of it were contained in the com
prehensive fact of His resurrection. While to the
Synoptists the incidents of the end are visible and
phenomenal, to St. Paul they are invisible, spiritual,
and eternal. They see mainly the external facts of an
actual physical death and resurrection; he sees these
too, but what he sees in them is the final scene only
of a lifelong encounter with sin and an ultimate com
plete victory over it. In that He died, the death that
He died, He died to sin ; does not that carry with it an
interpretation of the whole earthly career of Jesus,
humanity s champion against the dark mystery of
evil ? In that He liveth, He liveth unto God ; does
not that contain in it the sum of all that was done and
was won in the life and the death ?
The question with us, then, is that of a purely spiritual
interpretation of the death and resurrection of Jesus
Christ, divested at present of any connection with
physical or physiological considerations involved. So,
dissevered from lower complications, and regarded only
in its higher connection and context, our interpretation
The Resurrection 183
will proceed on the following lines: The death and
resurrection, taken together as one, is a spiritual act
at once of consummated holiness and completed or
perfected life. In that act humanity has accomplished
its end and reached its goal. Studied from below
upward, first on the human and then on the divine side
of it, it is in the first place the supreme act of the faith
that was to, and that in that act did, overcome the
world. The promise was, away back, made to faith
that it should be the heir of the divine blessing or
blessedness. But the faith that should inherit could,
in the nature of it, that it should be faith, be nothing
else or less than a faith that could be tried to the utter
most, and that could survive to the uttermost. The
Old Testament is the story of the evolution of faith.
It is a picture of faith in all stages and in all phases.
Everywhere the essence and the measure of faith is the
power to suffer and to live. It must again and again
have the sentence of death not only passed but executed
upon it, but it must be of such a nature that death
itself cannot destroy it. A faith that death can kill is
not faith, because faith is in God who quickeneth the
dead. The faith of individuals or of the nation in the
Old Testament is a faith that dies often and yet that
never dies. It survives not only all other lesser ills,
but even the unsparing judgments brought upon itself
by its failures and sins. Well indeed might Jesus
declare that the whole spiritual teaching and illustra
tion of the Scriptures from beginning to end is one long
object-lesson of death and resurrection. Well might
He more particularly say, Thus it is written, that the
184 The Gospel of the Work
Christ should suffer, and rise again from the dead.
For who is the Christ but the spiritual man, the man
of the perfect faith, and so of the perfect grace, and so
again of the perfected life. The Christ is humanity
anointed through faith with the grace of a risen and
regenerate life. Jesus Christ is thus the true author
and finisher and completer of that faith which over
comes the world and surmounts all the counter-condi
tions of human life and destiny. If we reflect but a
moment upon it, and the more and more we reflect,
we shall see that Jesus could have achieved what He
did and have attained what he is, humanly, only on
the one hand by the faith that overcame and survived
the final evil, and on the other hand by the supreme
trial that not only proved but perfected His faith.
Humanly, then, the death and resurrection of Jesus
was the supreme act of faith by which humanity first
completely realized itself in God. From the divine
side it was, in the second place, the supreme act of grace
by which God first completely realized Himself in man.
It is equally true that Jesus Christ raised Himself from
the dead by His faith in God, and that God raised Him
from the dead by His grace in Him. Neither the
raising nor the rising from the dead is primarily or
essentially a physical act or fact. It is a spiritual
thing, a matter of the mind, of the affections, of the
will, and so of the whole personal life. The man who
knows, loves, wills, and lives God is risen from the
dead. What shall take place in his body after that is
a mere consequence and incident. But in order that a
man shall be so risen he has to put away sin which
The Resurrection 185
stands between him and God, and so, by consequence,
death which stands between him and life. This, we
have seen abundantly, he cannot do within the limita
tions of his own nature, nor within the operations or
possibilities of his own will. For it he must be in such
relation or correspondence with God as that divine
forces and energies shall be at work in him. These
forces and energies are not mechanical, and they do
not work mechanically in us. God does not raise from
the dead by mere fiat, or by exercise of omnipotence.
He gives us the truth, the spiritual and moral beauty,
the divine goodness, which if we truly know and love
and do will be our resurrection from sin and death.
It is not any truth, beauty, or goodness, or these things
in any way that we may be able or may happen to con
ceive them, that will be our salvation. The particular
truth spoken of is the truth of ourselves, and that is not
any thing but only one thing, God s truth of us, the
truth of the divine foreknowledge and predestination.
As God sees us, as He has eternally foreseen and pur
posed us, so has He manifested us to ourselves in Jesus
Christ. If we will see ourselves in Him, and purpose
ourselves in Him, and so finally realize ourselves in Him;
if we seek and find in Him the truth for our minds, the
beauty for our hearts, the good and goodness of our
wills and lives, then in doing so and in having done so
shall we attain the freedom and perfection of life which
is in itself our salvation.
There is in the word grace something of the am
biguity or the duality which we have observed in
other terms. It sometimes expresses an external state
186 The Gospel of the Work
or status into which we have been objectively brought
by an act not our own. And then again it signifies an
internal operation subjectively wrought in us not by
ourselves, or by us not in our own power. The ex
planation is that the gift or grace of God in the Gospel
is a conjoint act first of His Word and secondly of His
Spirit. The Word is, in the very meaning of it, an
objective expression and conveyance to us of what
constitutes our salvation. We see, love, and accept
it as a thing outside ourself not yet our own
because it is still in another and not in ourselves,
and yet our own because the other has pronounced it
and our faith has objectively and proleptically made
it our own. In this way, in Jesus Christ, who is the
divine Word to us of our completed salvation, we are
in a state or status of grace. There has been given to
us and received by us a salvation not our own, and yet
our own, not our own in subjective fact but our own
by objective divine right and title which to faith is
equivalent to fact. Such is the grace of the Word, the
grace of the objective giving and the objective receiv
ing. On the other hand, the grace of the Spirit is that
of a subjective both giving and receiving. It is the
operation within us, ourselves and not ourselves, by
which what is de jure ours is made de facto ours. The
point to be remembered and kept, as distinctive of the
word grace and of the thing expressed by it, is that as
in the grace of the Word there is a gift not from our
selves, so in the grace of the Spirit there is a reception
not by ourselves. Our Lord Himself makes much of
the fact that it is only God within us that can make us
The Resurrection 187
receptive of God without us; no man can come to the
Word except he be drawn by the Spirit.
The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ was a
demonstration, not only of the human receptive and
responsive power of faith, but also of the divine com
municative and enabling power of grace. Attention
was called to the fact that while our Lord s entire ex
perience in the flesh was a human one, there was yet
that in it which transcends all other human experience
upon earth. While all other experiences can never
get beyond the fact of still inhering sin, but the more
they advance in holiness are only the more conscious
of the sin that still remains, there is ever in Jesus the
fact and the consciousness of having transcended any
experience of sin. The existence of that fact is the
demonstration of the existence and actual operation in
Him of the superhuman power by which it was accom
plished. The victory of faith is the victory in reality,
not of faith, but of that which operates in and through
faith. Faith is but the condition, grace is the source
and the cause of all in us that is not of ourselves, and
consequently of all holiness or eternal life. Because
faith existed perfectly in Jesus Christ, therefore grace
wrought through Him perfectly. God could accom
plish and did accomplish in Him His perfect work,
and that perfect work consisted in the death that was
a resurrection, the resurrection not only actually of
humanity in Him, but potentially of humanity with
Him. This will bring us to the third sense of the death
and resurrection.
Because the resurrection of Jesus was the completed
188 The Gospel of the Work
triumph of human faith in God and so of divine grace
in man, therefore it is as to its meaning and content the
consummation of all that it is the end of faith to seek
or the function of grace to impart. And so the death
and resurrection taken as one is the complete attitude
toward evil which attains to its putting away, and on
the other hand, or as its obverse, the completed atti
tude toward God and holiness which is the perfect
putting on and possession of them. Therefore it is
that as our Lord had summed up all in His last word
and made the fruit of His work the substance of His
gift, so from that moment what was preached in His
name was an accomplished and adequate repentance
and a completed remission and redemption. Jesus
Christ dead and risen is the realization and manifesta
tion at once of the divine grace that imparts, the human
faith that receives and assimilates, and the holiness,
righteousness, and life that result.
There are one or two New Testament passages by
which I would illustrate the spiritual interpretation of
the resurrection given above. St. Paul opens the epistle
to the Romans with a very exact definition of the Gospel
as he understands it. The Gospel, according to his
statement, is the Gospel of God, concerning His Son.
And then he proceeds to define and describe the divine
sonship realized in Jesus as constituting the essential
principle and truth of the Gospel. The sonship de
scribed is, as we shall see clearly, a sonship of humanity,
first attained by it in His person, and attained by a
process which is traced out for us with great distinct
ness. Jesus Christ, according to the flesh, on the
The Resurrection 189
natural side, in the whole phenomenon of what He was
by virtue of His human nature, came of the seed of
David. But according to the spirit, or on the spiritual
side, in the entire phenomenon of His spiritual mani
festation, He was the son of God. In His own person as
man there was necessity of the double birth, if He was
to be a member not only of the kingdom of earth, but
of that of heaven. Now how did He (humanly) become
son of God, or by what process was He so determined ?
Did he become so by an act of God-determination, or
by an act of self-determination, or by both ? In so far
as He was determined to sonship by the act or opera
tion of the divine grace in Him, He was God-deter
mined. In so far as He was determined to it by His
own act or activity of faith in the divine grace, He was
self-determined. The determination to sonship is the
joint act or operation of God in man and of man in God.
That Jesus Himself in His entireness of human ex
perience was so determined to the sonship He achieved
for us will be demonstrated by what follows. We may
only remark in passing that, as spoken of in the New
Testament, human sonship to God is not matter of
original nature or of inherited nature, but of acquired
nature. Indeed our entire spiritual nature as such is
necessarily self-acquired. It means what we are by
our own self-determination, although as in this case
the determination of ourselves may be dependent
upon God s determination of us.
Jesus Christ, St. Paul goes on to say, was determined
Son of God in what respect ? What was it that the
perfect grace of God through His perfect faith as man
190 The Gospel of the Work
added to Him to complete and constitute His human
sonship ? It was just that which humanity lacked
and needed in itself in order to become sons the
power to become. In order to become sons of God it
was necessary for men to throw off what in themselves
was alien to the divine nature, and to receive from
without themselves what was necessary to kinship
with it. This could be accomplished only by an ade
quate metanoia and a sufficient faith. And that was
just what the last representative of law or prophets had
testified to human incapacity for, without a new baptism
with spirit and power from above. Jesus Christ was
humanity just so baptized; and in consequence of that
baptism He was Son of God with power.
That the above is the true definition of the power
with which Jesus was determined and constituted Son
of God is proved by the following words: Determined
Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holi
ness. The power was distinctly a spiritual one, and
it manifested itself in an accomplished sinlessness or
holiness. According to the spirit may mean the human
spirit, as St. Paul especially contradistinguishes in us
the spirit from the flesh. The flesh is all that we are
by nature or of ourselves, the spirit is what we are by
relation with God and personal communication from
Him. Or the spirit may mean the Spirit of God as
manifested in our spirit. It really means both, because
it is only in our spirit, that is, in what we are, that the
Spirit of God can manifest Himself in us, and equally
our spirit is dead for holiness without the Spirit of God.
It is only as the human and the divine are at one and
The Resurrection 191
are one that we can be possessors of that holiness which
is the divine nature and which constitutes us sons of
God. It is impossible, I think, to read even the Gos
pel of St. John without perceiving that Jesus dwells
in the main upon His human relation to the Father,
upon the sonship into which He has come by the per
fection of His attitude toward God in recognition of
and response to that of God toward Him. And in
deed it cannot but be so, because He can be light or
life, or way of life, to us only in what He as we became,
and we in Him may become.
The important point for our argument remains to
be noticed. All the divine determination and self-
determination of Jesus Christ as son, with power, ac
cording to the spirit of holiness, is the outcome of His
resurrection from the dead. He was, as the Epistle to
the Hebrews describes Him, Son perfected forever-
more by the things He had suffered and done.
Humanity became son of God by His act and in His
person. He was that death to sin and life to God, by
which old things passed away and new things came
into being, by which humanity was born through death
into life. The Thou art my Son, this day have I be
gotten thee, refers for Jesus not to the day of His human
birth, but to the day of His resurrection. The sonship
created and manifested by and in Him was not mere
fact of the former, but was the perfect act of the latter.
It was not on Christmas Day but on Easter that He
was born, for whom we remember no more the pangs
of His birth for joy that a man is born into the world.
192 The Gospel of the Work
For that man is the new humanity, and in His birth
we all were born sons of God.
I will adventure one more illustration from the New
Testament of the spiritual interpretation of the death
and resurrection of our Lord. St. John in the last
chapter of his first epistle is speaking of the faith that
overcomes the world, and he gives a specific definition
of that faith in the words, Who is he that overcometh
the world but he that believeth that Jesus is the son
of God ? Our Lord in His latest words, according to
St. John, had comforted His disciples with the assur
ance, In the world ye shall have tribulation, but be of
good cheer, I have overcome the world. It is implied
that His victory is theirs, and that in Him they too
should overcome. Accordingly, to St. John in the
epistle faith not merely in the word of Jesus but in the
accomplished fact of His victory over the world is our
victory over the world. But what is that victory ? It
consists in the act and fact of attained or accomplished
sonship to God. We can overcome the world only by
being no longer of the world but of God. He that
believes in the sonship of Jesus believes in his own
sonship in Jesus, and in realizing that sonship in faith
realizes it in fact, and so overcomes the world. St.
John proceeds then to give the genesis of human son-
ship to God as it had been realized in the person of
Jesus Christ Himself: This is he that came by water
and blood, even Jesus Christ; not in the water only,
but in the water and in the blood. And it is the
Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is the
truth. For there are three who bear witness, the Spirit
The Resurrection 193
and the water and the blood; and these three agree
in one.
This account of the three witnesses has baffled all
effort at conclusive interpretation, but we may reflect
profitably upon some points in it. When or how or in
what respect can Jesus be said to have come by water
and blood ? Surely not as to Himself, in either the
divine or the human aspect of Him. The context
shows that this coming is in the character and capacity
of human sonship to God : Who is he that overcometh,
but he that believeth that Jesus is the son of God ?
This is he that came. ... It is the realized human
sonship that came in the water and in the blood. There
is some doubt as to what may be meant by the water;
there can be none as to the meaning of the blood. It
is most probable that St. John, having reference to the
gradual perfecting and completion of our Lord s
human relationship to the Father, specifies the two
salient and critical points of that process, the baptism
and the crucifixion. Without prejudice to other senses
of a previous or already existing sonship, there is a
sense in which we may say that Jesus was son of God
by baptism. Baptism means the act of being born
from above which constitutes our sonship to God.
The true and complete act in which human regenera
tion was first realized was the anointing or baptism from
heaven which made Jesus the Christ. At the baptism
of Jesus the heavens were opened and the voice of God
pronounced Him the beloved son in whom He wa&
well pleased. In whatever sense Jesus in His humanity
may or may not have been " made " son of God by His
194 The Gospel of the Work
baptism, it is certain that in that act He received most
direct testimony or witness from God to the fact and
character or quality of His sonship; and we must re
member that in the passage before us St. John is speak
ing of the water, the blood, and the Spirit as not only
the three media, but the three witnesses of the coming
of the son of God. Not in the water only, says the
Apostle. The coming in the water of baptism is only
an initial coming; it is the act of self-devotion, and of
the divine consecration or anointing with which our
sonship begins. It is the putting on of the armor,
between which and the putting it off there is no little to
be done. The baptism of Jesus was no meaningless
form or unreality to Him. It drove Him into the wil
derness to prepare through agony of temptation for
what He had taken upon Himself or what God had put
upon Him. He undertook in water what He was to
execute in blood. Jesus Himself always connected by
the common term the two baptisms of water and of
blood, and so saw the fulfilment of the former in the
execution of the latter. So every baptism in His name
begins in water, but is completed only in the blood of
the perfect death to sin. This then is He who, as author
and completer of our regeneration or divine sonship,
of our death into life and life out of death, came not
only in the consecration to sonship in the water of
Jordan, but in the realization of sonship through the
blood of Calvary. But the water or the blood was
neither in itself, nor both together, sufficient witness.
It is the Spirit in both that is the truth, that constitutes
the reality. It is not our baptism, but what our bap
The Resurrection 195
tism is to us and in us, that is the truth or the reality
of it. And it was not the blood as such of even the
death on Calvary; it was the blood as symbol and
actual expression of the Eternal Spirit in which and
through which the life was offered up without spot to
God. It was the eternal spirit of it all that made that
particular crucifixion what it was, that converted that
particular death into a resurrection unto eternal life.
So, all uniting in and taken together as one, they make
up God s triple witness concerning His Son. And
that witness is this, that God gave unto us eternal life,
and this life is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath
the life.
As the sonship was a resurrection sonship, so the
life is distinctively a resurrection life. It looks back
to, it is conditioned upon, it rests on, the truth of the
initial water and the consummating blood. That is
to say, it must have begun with a whole-minded and
whole-hearted act of self-consecration to God, involv
ing a repentance unto the putting away of sin and a
faith that means and that will be holiness ; our life must
accept and intend all that was accomplished in that of
our Lord, and that is expressed in His death and resur
rection. And what was meant in the water must be
consummated and realized in the blood. We must
in the end have ourselves in the perfection of our re
pentance died to sin and in the perfection of our faith
risen into life. The completed transition from death
into life can to any profit have taken place in another
for us only as by baptism with His spirit it can be
effectuated in ourselves in Him.
PART THIRD
THE GOSPEL OF THE PERSON
OR
THE INCARNATION
XVI
THE PROBLEM OF THE PERSON
AN adequate interpretation of the work of Jesus
Christ cannot but involve and raise a question as to His
personality. We have either to lower our conception
of the work or else to elevate the matter of His person
to the height of an unavoidable and all-important
problem. We have summed up the catholic or prac
tically universal interpretation of the work in the one
word the resurrection. But to that word we have
attributed a far wider signification than is apparent to
any one who does not see it through the whole mind of
the New Testament. It is true that we profess here
to be interpreting only the Gospels, but it would be
absurd, in doing so, to limit our attention so exclusively
to the Gospels themselves as to ignore the way in which
they were understood by the Christian mind of the
time. Our only concern must be to interpret the Gos
pels themselves as exactly and correctly as we can, and
if in this we are assisted to the truth by the mind of
St. Paul, for example, so much the greater gain. The
only thing to be guarded against is the possibility, in
that case, of importing from St. Paul or any other
extraneous source an interpretation which is not at
least implicitly the meaning or truth of the Gospels.
199
200
If it is the truth, it is so much the better that it is also
the mind of St. Paul.
The resurrection, then, means to us so infinitely
more than the physical or physiological puzzle of the
resuscitation of a dead person, that the acknowledged
and perhaps insoluble difficulties involved in that prac
tically do not disturb one who appreciates and measures
the spiritual significance and necessity of the fact.
Christianity has permitted itself to be so mixed up with
and embarrassed by the natural aspects of the case,
that it has weakened its grasp upon the true fulness
and incontestability of the spiritual truth and proof of
the resurrection. For my part, and I think in the
interest of spiritual rather than of physical science
though I believe them to be one I fully share the
current prejudice against mere miracle (at any rate as
we have been understanding it) as explanation for any
phenomenon. I should very much prefer to believe
that in what we call the miracles of our Lord, and
especially in the momentous fact of the resurrection,
there is manifested some higher natural working than
we have as yet been able to correlate with what we so
far know of nature. I am loath to believe that what I
consider the most significant, beneficent, and inter
pretative event in creation should have been inter
jected into it as an interference or amendment. But
at any rate Christianity, I think, can afford to leave
to a lower science what of puzzle there is in reconciling
the differing and often seemingly conflicting spheres
of the spiritual and the physical in human experience.
The problem, for example, of the reconciliation of
The Problem of the Person 201
personal freedom and natural causation will probably
never be solved, and yet the facts will forever continue.
What then, let us recall, is the fuller significance of
the resurrection ? As the death of Jesus, in its spiritual
aspect, was not the fact of a moment but the act of a
lifetime, as the cross went with Him from the cradle
to the grave, and through every minute of every day
as also, He said, it should accompany us, so also
was the resurrection of our Lord a continuous and
unbroken act and fact of His whole life. It was a
consistent breaking through or transcending the limi
tations that bind " all us the rest " in the universal sub
jection to sin and death. The work of Jesus was the
fact of His holiness, and every moment of His holiness
was an act of resurrection, inasmuch as it was a raising
our common nature out of and above its natural state
or activity. The death habitually spoken of in the
New Testament, at any rate in its higher teachings, is
not a physical event. It may and does involve that
too, sooner or later, but even physical death, strictly as
such, always presupposes an interior spiritual death.
Not, I think, that even St. Paul believes that but for
the entrance of sin there would not have been the
natural change of death; only that that natural change
would not without sin have been the dark thing we now,
in consequence of sin, know as death. Rather would
it have been a change and an awakening, a second
birth into a higher life. Sin is not the cause of death
as a natural change, it only makes it death in the un
natural evil and dread of it. So it is only the sting and
curse of death. Extract the sting, remove the curse,
202 The Gospel of the Person
and death ceases to be death in its bad sense, and
becomes only a release and rest from the sorrows of
this world and a blessed entrance upon the activities
and joys of another. And that other is not a future
world only, but an ever present one. It is the kingdom
of God or kingdom of heaven which was established
in this world by our Lord s life work in it. It is the
kingdom of which He Himself said that no one could
see it or enter into it except by a new birth from above,
a birth which is potentially the whole of the death to
sin and the resurrection to holiness and God. All
transference or translation of us from the kingdom of
nature and ourselves into that of God or of heaven,
all the life of grace in us enabling us to be that which
by nature or ourselves we could not be, is the result of
a new birth which is in effect a death and a resurrection.
Jesus Christ accomplished the kingdom of God when
humanity in His person destroyed and left behind it
the whole long dominion and supremacy of sin. In
the destruction of that great first enemy, the last enemy
too was practically destroyed. He who had overcome
sin could not be holden of death. The resurrection
to holiness through the breaking of the power of sin
was the forerunner and condition of the resurrection
to life through the breaking the bands of death.
I do not see how the supreme spiritual fact of the
resurrection in the totality of its meaning could have
been given to the world otherwise than by the palpable
and vivid testimony of His physical reappearance after
death, any more than I can see how His divine author
ity and power to save could have been impressed upon
The Problem of the Person 203
the faith of the world otherwise than by the evidence
of what might without irreverence be called the ma
chinery of His miraculous bodily healings. Yet in
these latter we are obliged to distinguish between what
was accidental and temporary and exceptional and
what was essential, permanent, and universal. We
know very well now what this latter consists in: Jesus
Christ is in the world with authority and power to put
away sin and death and to communicate holiness and
eternal life. This is the ergon which the Father sent
Him into the world to accomplish, and the perpetual
actual accomplishing of which was to be His divine
credential. Now, no one can say that the bringing of
dead men back to physical or natural life again, or
even of sick men to physical health again by other than
natural means, is any part of the essential, permanent,
and universal health and life giving work of Christ.
Whatever necessary purpose those miracles served was
an occasional, temporary, and non-essential one and
ought not to be included in the permanent operation
of our religion. Just so have we to recognize in the
particular and probative resurrection of Jesus Himself
elements and circumstances that were exceptional and
that are no permanent part of that resurrection of hu
manity of which He was first-fruit and author. It is a
part of that general truth enunciated by Irenaeus when
he says that our Lord in se recapitulat longam exposi-
tionem hominis. The whole process of death and
resurrection, of regeneration, and of eternal life in
stituted and inaugurated by Jesus Christ is in the higher
and the highest sense a natural one. It includes not
204 The Gospel of the Person
only the beginnings of spiritual life here, but the com
pletion of physical or natural life hereafter. But the
birth and transition and transformation from the nat
ural which we know to the spiritual or higher-natural
which as yet, in what it shall be, we do not know, we
yet do know this much about, that it is as natural as
any other of the changes by which all life in the crea
tion of God passes from stage to stage and from glory
to glory. Now the human transitions of Jesus, the
changes undergone or accomplished by humanity in
His person, as from sin to holiness and from death to
life, or more exactly from subjection to the law of sin
and death to the freedom and life of holiness, or of the
sons of God, these transitions in Him are not sub
ject to the conditions and laws of change in the same
way as in us. They are marked by features which are
exceptional in His case. I have already called atten
tion to the fact that whereas in our ordinary experience
no one attains to a higher approximation to the divine
nature or holiness than is marked by a more sensitive
consciousness of still inhering difference or sin, Jesus
as the great exception transcends that experience and
attains here on earth a perfect oneness with the Father,
the limit and goal of accomplished sonship. And so
here again, whereas all we the rest, in our passage
through the grave and gate of death into the fulness of
the completed life, have to pass through we know not
what necessary and universal process of natural trans
formation, Jesus within three, or forty, days has ac
complished the entire process and is elevated in His
humanity to the complete life of finished sonship.
The Problem of the Person 205
What I have to say about this at present is not in the
way of, perhaps for us impossible, explanation. It
is only to suggest that there are two aspects and modes
of treatment of the unique or the exceptional in the
human experience of Jesus. There is on the one hand
a physical exceptional and on the other a spiritual
exceptional. With regard to the former, the difficulty
is a natural and therefore a scientific one. The only
question for religion is whether we shall permit the
overwhelming spiritual probability with which through
all the life of Jesus we have come at last to the neces
sity of His resurrection to be met and overcome by the
physical impossibility or improbability which it seems
to us, in our ignorance, to involve. If our faith and
our spiritual appreciation of the invisible all-impor
tant and all-inclusive truth be as great as, I think, its
object requires and justifies, then I think we shall be
able to pass by the natural and scientific difficulties as
exceptional, and so far at least as our own interest
or part in the resurrection is concerned non-essen
tial. Certainly in our present effort to express what
the Gospel professes to be, and what we find it to be,
to us, we may excuse ourselves from the parergon, or
side issue, of reconciling the facts of the spirit with
those of matter.
The spiritual uniqueness or exceptionality in the
case of Jesus we cannot so pass by. It is as much a
miracle in the sphere of the spiritual as the other is in
that of the natural. The attempt to explain it, which
Christianity can in no way evade or avoid, is only an
effort to so account for it as to divest it of the feature
206 The Gospel of the Person
of miracle in the objectionable sense. When our Lord
set up claims that were offensive to His adversaries
among the Jews, it was quite legitimate for them to
raise the point, Who art thou, or Whom makest thou
thyself, that thou makest such claims? If our Lord
did exceptional things, then He was an exceptional
person. And what He did cannot but raise the ques
tion of who He was.
Moreover, the question of who Jesus was very
easily resolves itself into the other, what was His rela
tion to God ? And since that relationship always
expresses itself in terms of His divine sonship, we shall,
in investigating it, be involved once more in the dis
cussion of that sonship, but this time from a higher
point of view than before.
In this higher aspect of the divine sonship of Jesus
there are two lines of inquiry. In the first place, what
are the considerations that force the conclusion, and
what are the grounds upon which the conclusion rests ?
And in the second place, what is the conclusion itself
or the elements of truth that enter into it? With
regard to the first it is necessary to remember this
important fact of human knowledge, that the most
essential conclusions of the human mind are much
wiser and stronger than the arguments by which they
are supported. Such persistent beliefs as that in God,
or in freedom or immortality, are not believed because
they have been or can be proved ; they are forever seek
ing to be proved because they are believed. The proofs
may be worthless and are always changing, but the
beliefs persist. The necessity for believing in a higher
The Problem of the Person 207
nature or a higher personality in Jesus Christ is a
much deeper and a much truer one than is or can be
drawn from particular statements to that effect either
on the part of our Lord Himself or of His biographers
or interpreters. The fact is that Jesus was first more
than man to His disciples, and they then sustained that
faith by corroborative facts and statements. And so
I would rest my statement of the higher being of our
Lord not upon proof texts or passages, nor upon old
arguments drawn from these, but upon the general fact
of the whole manifestation of Jesus Christ, and of the
whole impression left by Him upon the world. Leaving
aside all question of physical miracles, and even of the
physically miraculous in the central and essential fact
of the resurrection, and limiting ourselves to the spiritual
phenomenon of what He was as man in His accom
plished holiness and His perfected life, of what He is in
the faith and the life of all who truly know Him, I say
that as a matter of fact, Jesus Christ is more and greater
than any individual son of man, or than any such could
or can by any special privilege or opportunity become.
Jesus Christ is one of those essential truths that are too
great to be proved, like God or freedom or immortality.
Such truths are their own best if not only proofs. Let
a man, or a time, or the world, or the church, prove
them in life and experience and they shall know them ;
but apart from actual and adequate life and experience
they can never be logically or speculatively demon
strated. Let the world, or let the Church again as at
the beginning, take in the full impression of the fulness
of the truth that was manifested in Jesus Christ; let it
208 The Gospel of the Person
see all humanity and all deity concerned in His person
in the question and decision of human life and destiny;
let it know Him now in the universality and the effec
tuality of His personal relation to every human soul in
time or space, and it will feel for itself the considera
tions that force it to the conclusion of a higher being
in our Lord, and the grounds upon which it has not
been able to resist the necessity of constructing for
itself some theory of such a higher being. The con
viction of such a higher being operative and determi
native in the phenomenon of the higher humanity of
Jesus in no way militates against the reality and in
tegrity of that humanity. The thing to be explained
in Jesus is not something beside or outside of His true
humanity, but the perfection of the power of that
humanity to realize or fulfil itself; and not only to fulfil
itself, but to be the principle and power of all other
humanity to fulfil itself.
As to the form which we must give to our conviction
of the higher being of our Lord, or the separate ele
ments of truth which we must include in our faith in it,
I may suggest several successive steps which we must
take, and upon one or other of which we are liable to
stop, in our progress to the complete truth. In the
first place, the higher reach and manifestation of hu
manity in the person of Jesus might be due to excep
tional and perfect relations into which God elected to
enter with that particular man, in whom God would
demonstrate to all the perfection of the accomplished
relation into which all are predestinated to enter with
Him. No one can doubt the large amount of truth
The Problem of the Person 209
already expressed in that view. The question is
whether we can stop there, or whether the phenom
enon to be explained is exhausted by that interpreta
tion of it. We shall have to give that matter our fuller
attention in another chapter.
In the second place, we may attribute to our Lord a
higher than natural origin in human history, and con
sequently a higher than human nature or than ordinary
human life in it, and yet not hold the fact or the neces
sity of any personal pre-existence on His part. He may
have personally originated or come into being at His
human birth, as we do, and yet not by ordinary human
but by exceptional and supernatural divine generation.
In that case He would have been never a divine person
alone and never a human person alone, but only and
from the moment of His birth a divine-human person,
a person whose conception or motherhood was of
humanity but whose generation or fatherhood was
of God.
Or, in the third place, we may think out these partial
explanations to the discovery of their inconclusiveness,
and so come with the Church to recognize in our Lord
a fuller truth of the personal incarnation of God than
is contained in any half-way theory of it.
XVII
THE MYSTERY OF THE BIRTH
IF we should arrange the subject-matter of the Gos
pels in the order, not so much of the inherent relative
importance of the different parts or topics, as of their
actual influence in the production of these records, it
would probably run as follows: (1) The death and
resurrection. Without these, it is a great question
how much of either Gospels or Gospel there would
have been at all. There is no doubt that these are the
content that mainly determined both, as they are.
(2) The report of the public ministry. However
incomplete and undecisive this would have been with
out the death and resurrection, these too would be
meaningless except as the natural sequence and logical
consequence of the life, the teaching and acts, that had
gone before. (3) The baptism and its attendant cir
cumstances. The manifest though somewhat implicit
purpose of this part of the story is to account for and
explain the spiritual endowment with which Jesus
entered upon and discharged His ministry, the divine
authority and power that manifestly attended His
vords and acts. (4) Latest of all arose the question
of the point which even though first in reality would
naturally come last in apprehension or investigation.
210
The Mystery of the Birth 211
While the order of things in themselves is always for
ward, the order of thought about things is backward,
so that our last knowledge is that of adequate or suffi
cient causes. So Christianity may have rested for a
moment upon the spiritual endowment of Jesus, as
covered by His baptism or anointing with the Holy
Ghost from heaven. But not for long; the explana
tion was inadequate; it was impossible to see in Jesus
only a man approved of God by mighty works and
wonders and signs. The deeper question of His per
son could not but follow after the others and gradually
work its way to the front. As the record of the life had
found it necessary to find a starting point for the min
istry in the acts and facts of the baptism, so it was not
long in going back, behind St. Mark for example, to
find a yet earlier beginning for itself in the account of
the birth. St. John, we shall see, finds it necessary to
go yet further back into the origin of things for suffi
cient antecedent and cause of the Gospel.
It says nothing against the Gospel of the Infancy as
a direct naive record of facts, to recognize a more or
less conscious or unconscious reason or motive for its
introduction. It answered the immediate direct pur
pose of denying the human paternity of Jesus, and
affirming for Him a divine paternity. When we speak,
as we shall, of the motive or purpose in this, it is un
necessary to think of an explicit conscious intention
on the part of the writers or of the Church. The
truth shapes itself instinctively in the mind and ex
pression of men, so that we often do not know why or
how we say the things that are truest. There is no
The Gospel of the Person
part of the Gospels that has quite the poetic elevation
of the Gospel of the Infancy. And yet what, at the
last, one is most impressed with is its spiritual truth;
if there is not the true instinct of the spirit there, in
thought and language, it is nowhere to be found.
Now, what instinct of truth was it that in this effective
way shaped the faith of the Gospel to the affirmation
of not a human but a divine paternity of our Lord ?
I venture to say, that at any living point or period of
Christianity the Christian consciousness concerning
Jesus Christ would instinctively and necessarily have
come to the practical conclusion embodied in the art
less and poetical stories of the birth and infancy of
Jesus. The profound speculative question really though
invisibly at issue in and decided by them is this : Who
and What is Jesus Christ, in His real and essential per
sonality ? The answer which this artless, and yet most
profoundly artful, so-called nursery myth forestalls and
excludes is this, He was no mere natural offspring of
Joseph and Mary. Why not ? Because the product of
every such natural union is an individual human person.
Viewing Jesus Christ in that light it is impossible to
construe Him otherwise than as a human individual,
exceptionally favored by unique relations with God.
The question for the Church then, as for the Church
now or at any time, is, Can we, in the light of all that
Jesus Christ is to the Church and to humanity, His
universality, sufficiency, and ubiquity, can we, I say,
be fully and finally satisfied to see in Him only one of
the sons of men peculiarly favored and most highly
endowed ? I must confess for one, that however con-
The Mystery of the Birth 213
fronted and impressed with the rational and natural
difficulties which we are about to meet in the opposite
view, it is equally impossible for me not to be a Chris
tian, or to be one under the conception of such a man
hood of Jesus as the above. And I believe that in so
saying I am expressing the normal Christian instinct
and experience of the world. Now let us try to analyze
this instinct or conviction.
I shall not, I am sure, after what has gone before, be
charged with neglect or diminution of the human side
or aspect of the work or the person of our Lord. I
believe very thoroughly that the purpose of His being
in the world, and the work He accomplished for hu
manity, is all to be seen only in what He Himself was
as man. I believe that humanity in His person real
ized all itself and attained all its end. But while I
believe that there was nothing revealed or manifested
to us in Jesus Christ, save the perfection of His hu
manity, yet I equally believe that in that perfection
there was infinitely more than the humanity so per
fected. In other words, I see in Jesus not only the
supreme act of humanity in God, but the supreme act
also of God in humanity. The dilemma to which for
a time at the beginning the Church seemed to be shut
up, in the seeming impossibility of holding together
both sides of so great a truth, was the necessity either of
so holding the deity of our Lord as that the humanity
amounted to nothing and was quite incapable of play
ing the important part belonging to it in the work of
its redemption and completion, or else of so holding
the reality of the humanity as that the act and work
214 The Gospel of the Person
of God in it fell too far short of what was actually
accomplished and manifested in Jesus Christ. The
need of Christianity is a conception large enough and
comprehensive enough to transcend this dilemma by
satisfying the demands on both sides.
There are different right ways of looking at a thing.
With regard to the account contained in the story of
the birth of the relation between the divine and the
human in the person of our Lord, we may view the
story either as determining the truth of the matter or
as determined by the truth of the matter. We may
accept it as an authoritative account declaring to us
from heaven the respective parts of the divine and the
human in the joint act of the appearance of Jesus Christ
in the flesh. Or, on the other hand, we may view
the act or fact itself as the essential and real thing,
and the human account of it as only a more or less
adequate expression of the impression produced by
it. For reasons controlling us in our present pur
pose, we are now occupying the second point of view.
We are regarding our Lord Himself as God s word or
revelation, and the mere record of Him as the human
effort (more or less divinely guided and assisted) to
convey the effect of His manifestation in fullest ac
cordance with the truth and meaning of it. Viewed in
this light, I think we shall find the story of the birth
an expression as true as it is beautiful of the permanent
and final Christian conception of the origin of Jesus
Christ consistent with the truth of His person. To
test this aright, we must try to put ourselves in the
place of, to embody in ourselves, the universal, ade-
The Mystery of the Birth 215
quate, ultimate, judgment of humanity, in its highest
experience and understanding of the person and work
of Jesus. If we succeed at all in attaining that point
of view, I am sure that we shall sympathize with the
Gospels in their final form, and with the Church in its
very first act, apostolic and post-apostolic, in repudi
ating any account of our Lord s origin which would
represent Him as merely an individual man, or single
human person, elected as any other might have been
elected to be brought into unique or exceptional per
sonal relations with God. This is precisely what His
natural birth of Joseph and Mary would necessarily
make Him. On the contrary the instinct and reason
and consensus, or common sense based upon experience,
of Christianity persists in and insists upon seeing in
Jesus a vastly more both intensive and extensive mani
festation and operation of God in humanity than is
consistent with that low view. Let any man put him
self in the mental and spiritual attitude of the Apostles,
of St. Paul, St. Peter, or St. John, after the Lord had
become known to them no longer in the flesh but in
the spirit, by which I mean in His risen and divine
humanity, and try to conceive of the Jesus of their
actual personal relations with Him as a man, who but
for the accident of his special election would have been
like one of themselves. It is quite possible and not
only so, but easy and natural to the spiritual Christian
consciousness to see in our Lord a human nature,
a human experience, a human life, broader, deeper,
higher, completer than any of ours, not less but more
human by every feature of difference between it and
216 The Gospel of the Person
our own, subject to every condition, law, or necessity
that binds human life in general, and yet to see in that
exhibition of manhood not only humanly perfect but
humanly perfected before our eyes a manifestation
no less of God Himself present and operative and
actual in all that human activity. The question then
is, Who, now that we have come to know Him, shall
Jesus be to us ? The theory of a dual subject, or double
personality, in Him is an impossibility, and need not
be discussed. Who then shall He be to us who
shall it be with whom we shall have to do, as the sub
ject of all our infinite and infinitely significant personal
relations with Him ? Shall Jesus, as Jesus, fade away
as the mere two thousand year ago medium of God s
self-manifestation to us, with no significance to us in
his own purely human self but that of a memory and
an example ? Or shall we persist to the end in seeing
in Jesus Christ God Himself personally revealed in the
fulfilled and manifested truth of our humanity; in His
actualized human holiness, righteousness, life, God
our holiness, righteousness, life? What we want in
religion is, not to know about God as He may be in
Himself, or as He bears witness to Himself in creation ;
we want to know God Himself in personal relation with
ourselves, and that is just precisely what Jesus Christ
not only expresses but is to each one of us. The human
self in Him was not that of only one of us, but of us all.
It was not one man but humanity that He was. We
were every one present in Him ; as, if we but knew it, He
is present in us every one ; and operative unto salvation
in every one of us who believes and realizes His presence.
The Mystery of the Birth 217
It is not in the interest of our Lord s deity that Chris
tianity objects to the notion of His individual humanity.
It is rather that, according to that notion, we have no
more interest in Jesus, in the individual humanity,
human holiness, human life, embodied in Him, than
that of a distant and isolated example. Whereas,
what Christianity wants, and believes, and is, is ex
pressed in the fact, not at all that God once mani
fested Himself exceptionally and perfectly in one man,
but that God once for all and completely incarnated
Himself in humanity as His Son, and in that all-com
prehensive act made all men His sons potentially,
that is, upon the condition of their, in faith and fact, so
making themselves. Every man, therefore, should go,
not merely back to Christ, in memory or in history, but
to the ever-present Christ, in act and life, as God in
humanity, and therefore in himself, the power and
reality of his own holiness, righteousness, and eternal
life.
Now, independently of any objective authority in
the story itself of the birth of Jesus, let us ob
serve how instinctively and delicately true it is to
the innermost and uttermost consciousness of Chris
tianity as to the Who or What, the origin or
personality, of its founder. It is not to be denied
that it was about to involve itself in a diffi
cult if not impossible physical problem; but for all
that, it was impossible for Christian faith to commit
itself to the idea that Jesus was in such wise son of
Joseph and Mary as that He was the individual human
person that must have resulted from that fact. Rather
218 The Gospel of the Person
was He son of God and man, of heaven and earth, of
deity and humanity, in a vastly more universal union
and relation than would be consistent or reconcilable
with such a supposition. I am very far from saying
that the story of the birth was the outcome of any such
reflection and conscious conclusion on the part of
Christianity at the start. What I believe is that the
truth itself so shaped the mind and the expression of
faith as to keep it in harmony with itself. But how
does the matter so shape itself? Not in an abstract
statement from heaven of the deity and the humanity
of our Lord and of the mode of the union in one per
son. Not in an exact and scientific declaration of the
facts or manner of the generation, conception, and
birth. Rather, in a highly elevated and poetic series
of pictures in which the spiritual and legitimately
imaginative powers are raised to the highest point of
understanding and appreciation of the transcendent
divine fact conveyed; and at the same time the mind
is lifted beyond and above the inexplicable obstacle
of the physical mystery. When the two inevitable
and yet inexplicable seeming miracles of the higher
generation and the resurrection of Jesus Christ are
objected to, the true answer of Christianity is not an
attempted physical explanation or justification of them;
it is rather such a conception, realization, and appre
ciation of the spiritual necessities and realities, not
involved in but themselves involving those mysteries,
that faith intelligently and persistently elects to hold
fast to the divine facts and leave the mysteries in their
own time and way to solve themselves. I say again
The Mystery of the Birth 219
that I am no advocate of miracles. But I do not
believe that the highest acts or events in the earthly
history of God or nature or man are, when viewed as
they ultimately shall be in the light of their sufficient
reasons, or final causes, miracles in any objectionable
sense. On the contrary 7 , they shall be known to be
the most natural of facts, because they are the real
acts, events, and ends for which nature itself exists,
the products or results of which it is but the machinery.
We must now remind ourselves that while the story
of the birth of our Lord gives us in simple and poetic
form the matrix for a doctrine of His higher personality,
it does not go the whole way in the construction of such
a doctrine. For example, in neither St. Matthew s
nor St. Luke s account of the birth is there expressed
or implied the fact of a personal pre-existence of our
Lord. The representations go no further than that
the child born was of divine and not human paternity,
and in consequence was to be called son of God. If
the matter were to go no further than this, the impli
cation would be that He who originated in that act of
divine generation and human conception and birth
was a divine-human being, whose existence dated from
that moment. God, by an inexplicable act in humanity,
produced in Jesus Christ one who, as he was son of no
individual man, so was himself no particular or in
dividual son of man. He was not the son of a man,
but the Son of man ; and so He was not a man but man,
all men and every man, the common humanity in which
all are one and of which He is the essence and the unity.
This would satisfy the Christian consciousness up to a
220 The Gospel of the Person
certain point, but not wholly so and therefore not per
manently so, as we shall soon see. It gives freer scope
to the necessary conception of the universality of our
Lord s humanity and personality. It makes Him
more adequately and comprehensively Immanuel,
God with us, and God in us. It better explains at
once the perfect humanity and humanness of our Lord
and the mystery of the perfection in the humanness or
humanity. It furnishes a more sufficient basis for the
essential truth of Christianity expressed in the phrases,
God our holiness, God our righteousness, God our life.
But if we go so far, we must of necessity go further,
and even so much of the truth as is won by so much
advance finds confirmation and is made secure only by
the fuller truth of a yet further progress.
XVIII
IDEAL PRE-EXISTENCE
WHEN our Lord said of Himself, as reported by
St. John, Before Abraham was, I am, it is not impos
sible that He referred to an ideal pre-existence in the
mind of God. He may have meant that the truth
embodied in Him, the purport and purpose of His
personal presence and His lifework upon earth, was
something always in the mind of God, something
which the faith of Abraham had foreseen and rejoiced
in. At any rate, we shall not for the present go beyond
the abundant matter for reflection contained in even
this understanding of the words. If we trust ourselves
to the mind of the Gospels, the New Testament, and
primitive Christianity, we are not as yet making too
much, but rather too little, of the truth as it is in Jesus.
The eternal significance of that truth, in its relation to
God, the whole creation, and more immediately to
humanity, fills all minds and finds expression in a
variety of independent forms. In our own endeavours
endeavours that should not and shall not cease
while the world lasts to find new interpretation and
new illumination of the divine meaning of our Lord,
we find ourselves inevitably moving along the lines of
primitive thought and life, for the simple reason that
221
222 The Gospel of the Person
those are the only lines on which the matter itself per
sists in thinking and living itself out. In view, then,
of the impossibility of doing otherwise, I shall adduce
and comment upon several of the New Testament
statements of the eternal significance of the truth of
Jesus Christ. When I speak of the eternal signifi
cance, I mean eternal both a parte ante and a parte
post. So significant is the truth of Jesus that in God
Himself it dominates both the eternity of the past and
the eternity of the future. It occupies the divine fore
knowledge and determines the divine predestination.
We will first consider the meaning of our Lord in
His relation to humanity. In Him God is described
as having foreknown and predestined or foreordained
every man and humanity itself. The purpose and
destiny of man from eternity is revealed in Him as
being that of sons of God. We were foreordained
unto a sonship to God not yet realized in man, but
realized in anticipation in that man in whom God has
revealed us to ourselves and given us already in faith
the inheritance, or destiny of sons, which awaits us in
fact. And not only did God in His eternal foreknowl
edge and purpose foreordain or predestine us to be
conformed to the image of His Son, as the firstborn
among many brethren, or the first to realize and mani
fest the divine destiny of all, but in that Son Himself
He preordained as also He in time accomplished the
whole course and process of human redemption and
completion. Every incident or event in the human
experience of His Son befell Him by the determinate
foreknowledge and counsel of the Father, who before
Ideal P re-existence
the seons had determined in His wisdom not only
man s destiny but the mode and method of it. The way
of salvation is expressed in the words, It behoved Him,
by whom and for whom are all things, in bringing many
sons to glory, to make the author of their salvation
perfect through sufferings, supplemented and com
pleted by these other words, And having been made
perfect, He became unto all them that obey Him the
author, or cause, of eternal salvation.
It will be interesting to follow out the above truth
as it is briefly suggested by another writer of the New
Testament. God, we are told, having in various meas
ures and manners spoken to the world through prophets,
spoke to us at last in a son. That is to say, in one who
bore to Himseif the very real and profound relation of
son. The form of expression as well as all the succeed
ing context means to emphasize to the utmost the truth
of sonship as being the res or matter of God s self-
revelation to us in Jesus Christ. God s purpose was
to lead many sons, humanity personally, and there
fore one by one to glory through self-attained son-
ship to Himself. This was to be accomplished through
one Himself perfected for ever as son through the things
He had suffered in a perfect human experience, and
so fitted to impart the truth and grace of perfect son-
ship to those who could themselves attain it only through
such sufferings. Now the point to observe is the man
ner in which the writer speaks of the double eternity
of the truth of that sonship of Jesus, and of humanity
in Jesus. God has spoken to us in a Son, whom He
appointed heir of all things, by whom also He made
224 The Gospel of the Person
the worlds. Dropping for the present all question of
an eternal pre-human personality ascribed here to our
Lord, and interpreting the words only as meaning that
there was accomplished and manifested in Jesus Christ
a human sonship for which and through which the whole
creation of God from eternal beginning to eternal end
was brought into being or existed at all and surely
it cannot mean anything less than this let us reflect
for a moment upon the stupendous importance attached
by it to the divine-human truth of Jesus Christ. We
will throw our appreciation of it into the following
statement: The sonship realized and revealed to us in
Jesus Christ is at once the final and the first cause of
all things, of the whole creation. The universe comes
to its majority and enters upon its inheritance in His
person. If this seems an exaggerated and preposterous
statement, it is nevertheless just what is consistently
and persistently maintained in the New Testament
as a whole. And not only is it in many places, as we
shall see, actually so stated, but the statement itself is
in perfect harmony and keeping with the whole mind
and truth of the sacred record and the faith of Chris
tianity then and since. The argument of the Epistle
to the Hebrews would need a much more detailed
exposition to bring out the full force of its bearing upon
the matter in hand, and I hope to give it in a separate
treatment. Stated now very briefly, the object is to
portray the destiny of man as it has been realized in
anticipation in the person of Jesus Christ, through His
perfect sufferings and sacrifice and His thereby per
fected sonship. Jesus Christ is thus revealed as the
Ideal Pre-existence
meaning and purpose of humanity from the beginning,
and its divine accomplishment or fulfilment in the end.
But the meaning and end of humanity is the meaning
and end of creation, and so the truth as it is in Jesus
acquires not only a universal human significance, but
an eternal cosmical significance.
It may be too much to say that Christianity antici
pates the modern teaching of evolution, but that teach
ing certainly wonderfully adapts itself to the expression
of Christianity. The argument we are tracing assumes
that creation has been by aeons, ages or stages, in which
each lower has been the preparation for the next higher.
As from the beginning, matter has existed for spirit,
and necessity for freedom, so in the later stages the
aeon of law has prepared the way for and is now ready
to give way to that of faith. The appeal of the one is
to the natural powers and accountability of man, which
needed to be first developed and could be so only under
the demands and sanctions of objective law. The
other, through the experienced insufficiency of nature
and impotency of the human will in itself, appeals to a
higher and later development of the nature of man,
whose end and function is to fulfil and be fulfilled by
not self but God, or self only in God. Thus what
we can never be of ourselves through law we shall be
of God through faith. The successive ceons do not
contradict but prepare for and fulfil each other, and
He who is the end of the last is the end of all. So
Jesus Christ who is the end of faith is the end also of
law; the end of spiritual manhood was the predestined
end also of natural manhood, and still more generally
226 The Gospel of the Person
the ends of spirit were those of matter. So the author
of the Epistle to the Hebrews could see in Jesus Christ
not only the end of humanity but the heir of all things.
And because He was final cause of all creation, that for
which the universe exists, therefore was He also first
cause and efficient cause. Because in all rational
production it is the end which determines and sets in
motion the beginning; it is the end which comprehends
and orders all the means, and in which the whole
process consists or holds together in the correlation of
the parts and the unity and consistency of the whole.
So Jesus Christ is the perfect expression of God so far
as God has expressed Himself at all, the raying forth
of His otherwise invisible glory, the outward impress
of His secret substance.
The identical truth, in all its length and breadth
and depth, is quite independently expressed in the
Epistles to the Colossians. There too Jesus Christ
has not only a universal human but an eternal cosmical
significance. In Him we have our redemption, the
remission or putting away of our sins; He has recon
ciled us in the body of His flesh through death, to pre
sent us holy unto God. That is to say, in Him we
have died to sin and now live to God. But that is only
the last stage of what He eternally was and is and shall
be to us. He was the entire divine foreknowledge and
purpose and shall be the entire divine completion and
fulfilment. His relation to the Church was His rela
tion to humanity, and His relation to humanity was
His relation to creation, and His relation to creation
was His absolute and universal relation to God. He
Ideal Pre-existence 227
is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all
creation; for in Him were all things created. . . . All
things were created through Him (as efficient cause),
and unto Him (as final cause); and He is before all
things, and in Him all things consist. Language like
this flows easily and naturally out of, and is in the most
perfect consistency and harmony with, the entire New
Testament conception of Jesus Christ. His own per
sonal attitude and claims are explained and justified
by it, and would be by nothing lower or less. We can
see in the light of it, and no otherwise, why in His
name repentance and remission, redemption and
salvation, should be preached to all the world, and
into His name all mankind should be baptized for the
eternal life which He is and which He gives.
This is not yet the whole height of it, and yet I would
affirm that no one who rises to this height of the con
ception of Jesus Christ can for an instant tolerate the
idea that His humanity was but that of an individual
human person in whom God exceptionally revealed
His presence and power. The Lord of glory was not
an individual man in God ; He was all humanity in God,
because He was God Himself in humanity. The
humanity in which God was manifest in the flesh was
our common, our universal humanity. In it He was
no less man than we; in it He knew no other laws or
conditions than ours; in it He wrought out the only
possible redemption or completion for us; in it He
manifested a holiness, righteousness, life, which be
cause they were human and humanly attained may
be ours also ; in Him, because He was what we are and
228 The Gospel of the Person
where we are, we too shall be where and what He is.
But to us He is in His humanity Himself and not
another. Not another in whom He is, but evermore
the One Who He is. Therefore, in corroboration of the
conclusion reached in the previous chapter, from the
larger and higher standpoint which we have reached,
we reiterate the impossibility of seeing in Jesus the son
of Joseph and Mary, because in that case He could not
but have been the individual human person whom
from the higher approach it is impossible for us to
think Him.
It may now be asked, and unquestionably will be
asked, how we shall go about conceiving the derivation
from Mary of a human nature apart from a distinct
human subject or personality. For my part, I might
say that I do not go about it at all. What I am con
cerned about is simply the matter of our Lord s person
or personality, without any responsibility or com
petency for the question of how it came about. The
Gospels do give us a most highly and beautifully poetical
account of that, and the account assists me to imagine
or picture to myself what I can in no wise explain or
understand. I do not at all believe the one divine-
human personality of our Lord upon the authoritative
statement of the story of His birth. Knowing Jesus
Himself as He is known and revealed to us in the New
Testament and in the mind and experience of the
Church, I unhesitatingly recognize in Him and the
more, the more I know Him no single man filled
with God, but the fulness of the Godhead present and
operative in all humanity. The humanity in Him is
Ideal Pre-existence 229
mine and every man s; the divinity in Him is God po
tentially present in every man for salvation, and effi
ciently present and saving in every man who believes.
We are primarily and essentially interested in the
spiritual truth given us in Jesus Christ. We are only
secondarily and speculatively interested in the physical
or metaphysical or scientific explanation of how those
spiritual truths or facts have come about. As I said
in connection with the resurrection, all that may be
said to belong to the machinery of the Gospel ; it is not
the Gospel itself.
What is the Gospel itself, in recapitulation of the con
clusions so far reached by us, may be expressed in an
expansion of St. Paul s definition of the ministry of
reconciliation, to wit, that God was in Christ, recon
ciling the world unto Himself. God may have been
in Christ in different degrees of identity with Him, and
we do not take the words as defining or determining
the degree, further than that the world of humanity -
and apparently, from other passages, the world outside
of humanity was in Christ brought into spiritual
and moral harmony with God. The degree and man
ner of God s being in Christ we deduce not so much
from any particular statement or statements at all as
from the entire phenomenon of the Christ Himself
whose ergon or actual operation in the world was to be
His most exact definition and His most perfect creden
tial. Judging our Lord, then, in the totality of His
manifestation and operation in the Gospel, we come
first with Christianity to the conclusion that we have
here to do with a work wrought in no particular indi-
230 The Gospel of the Person
vidual of our race but in the common or universal
humanity of the whole race. So convinced is Chris
tianity from the beginning that its relation to Christ
is not that to an individual man, who could by no means
be to it more than an historic example and an objective
and remote influence for how can any particular
man that ever lived be the universal presence and the
potential self that Jesus Christ may be to every man !
that there ensues to it the necessity of some mode in
which there may be, and is, the actual presence and
operation of God in a humanity which is not that of
any one man but which every man may know to be his
own, and in which everything done in Christ every man
may know to be done in himself. This universality
of the humanity of our Lord may be vague and inde
finable, and it may very inadequately express the actual
truth as it is in Jesus; but the vagueness is in our con
ception and expression. The universality and poten
tiality of the relation of Jesus Christ to humanity as a
whole and to every individual member of it, however
inadequately explained or expressed by us, remains a
fact and transcends in infinite extent and degree the
possible effect of any relation to any individual son of
man. The fact, then, of such a universal humanity is
the truth of religion. How it shall come about is a
physical or metaphysical problem of tremendous interest
to speculative curiosity, but not an essential part of re
ligious faith. If there should be such a general mani
festation of God in our humanity as we are at present
desiderating and claiming, how should we a priori
expect the physical mode of it to appear to us? For
Ideal P re-existence 231
my part, I should not expect a scientific demonstration
of the natural process. I should look for just such
spiritual evidence to faith that the thing has taken
place, and just such undefined and poetic expression
to sense, as we actually possess in the Gospels and in
the actual and permanent work of the Gospel. I take,
then, the whole story of the Gospel of the birth and
infancy of our Lord as simply so much as God pleased
to reveal to sense and imagination of the physical side
of an act on His part in humanity, the interest and
concern to us in which is chiefly on the spiritual side. We
want to know God in Christ in all the extent and ful
ness and effect of His being there; it is not necessary,
and it would not be profitable, to us to know physio
logically how He came or became there. I accept the
account of the birth without knowing at all how it is
true.
Just as we stand to the problem of the virgin-birth,
so vexing to those who would have a scientific explana
tion of Jesus Christ as an historical physical phenom
enon in the world, so we stand, as has been partially
stated before, to the problem of the resurrection. The
two facts on their spiritual side stand intimately related
and mutually dependent as follows: While it would be
quite possible in itself to represent the earthly career
of Jesus, as without flaw or break, an act of humanity
the act in which, from beginning to end, humanity
fulfils itself yet must we equally, if we are to be true
to the whole manifestation of the truth, be able to repre
sent it as an act of God wrought in humanity. The
subject or person of the divine-human act of that earthly
232 The Gospel of the Person
life is not two but one. Viewed in the human doing
of it, He was man, in all the limitation that is proper
to man, working out in humanity the redemption and
perfection necessary for it in the way possible for it.
Viewed in the divine doing of it He was God, emptied
or shorn of none of His divine attributes in the process
or performance of an act which on God s part was as
much the divinest as on man s it was the most human.
We must in no way even temporarily lower either side
of the divine-human co-operation of God and man in
the act of their mutual reconciliation in Jesus Christ.
Now the reconciliation effected in Christ was a real
reconciliation. It was the bringing of humanity, first
in His own person, into not natural but spiritual unity
with God, and so imparting to it the, not natural but
spiritual, divine nature, the nature of holiness and love.
But the divine spirit and nature in us bring with them
the divine life. As sin in itself and in all its conse
quences is death in all its forms, death spiritual, moral,
and physical, so holiness as the spirit and nature of God
in us is life in all its forms or manifestations, life spirit
ual, moral, and natural. The act of perfect holiness
on the part of our Lord was in itself and in all its con
sequences the act of perfect life. The first enemy
dead, the last enemy dies with it. Because the Devil
through all his temptations found nothing in Jesus of
sin, therefore he had no hold upon Him in death. The
resurrection was a necessary consequence. In the
spiritual drama effect follows cause in the most natural
process and by the most necessary and yet free se
quence in the whole working of the divine evolution.
Ideal Pre-existence 233
He who is at home in the spirit and knows God in
Christ is so entrenched in the higher truth of the Gospel
that he may safely leave to God s time and way the
solution of its acknowledged, to us insoluble, lower
problems.
XIX
THE GOSPEL IN ST. JOHN
ALL our interpretation so far of the higher being of
our Lord is expressed in terms of Christian thought
prior to the writings of St. John; that is, it marks the
progress from the point of view of the Synoptic Gospels
to that of the last of the Gospels. If, apart from any
particular phrases or statements which are always
susceptible of diverse understandings, I should under
take to deduce from the whole mind of St. John his
conception of the phenomenon presented to the world
in the person of Jesus Christ, I should express it as he
himself does in the opening words of his first epistle.
Jesus Christ is to him always the Word first, last,
and complete of God. Now, whatever else or more
that Word expresses and all that God has revealed
or shall reveal of Himself is expressed in Him it is
manifested to us first as a word of life. The Life was
manifested, and we have heard and seen and known it
by every evidence in which it is possible for human
experience to attest itself. What do we mean by The
Life ? We mean the life lived by God, lived humanly
among us by Jesus Christ, lived by us to whom in union
and unity with Himself He imparts it. St. John
preaches the life that all may share it, and our partici-
234
The Gospel in St. John 235
pation in it, he declares, is with the Father and with
His Son Jesus Christ. As to what the life is, he de
clares it to be what God is, viz. : light which means
pure truth, pure holiness, pure blessedness. The lack
or opposite of either of these, ignorance, sin, sorrow, is
darkness and death. If we are walking in the light,
then we know that we have the life. The blood of
Jesus Christ cleanse th us from all sin, because we are
dead to sin by participation in His death and alive to
holiness through experience of the power of His resur
rection. But if, professing to be in Christ and the life,
we are walking in the darkness of spiritual ignorance
and sin and cowardly or hopeless sorrow, we lie, and
do not the truth. The mean or condition of this life
in us is faith; not faith in general, but a very definite
faith in Jesus Christ as the Son of God. The actuality
of His accomplished sonship is the concrete expression
of the life of God realized in humanity. Faith in and
appropriation of that sonship through death and resur
rection makes us sons of God and gives us the victory
that overcomes the world. As Jesus Christ is the sub
stance of our eternal life, so is He the test of it. The
recognition and knowledge of divine sonship in Him,
the seeing the Father in Him as Son, is the evidence
and measure of our capacity to know truth, to love holi
ness, to will righteousness, to live the life of God. He
who believes God in Him has set to his seal that God is
true. He who believes not Him has made God a liar,
because he believes not Him who is God s word and
witness. And the witness, accepted or rejected, is
this, That God gave unto us eternal life, and this life
The Gospel of the Person
is in His Son. He that hath the Son hath the life; he
that hath not the Son of God hath not the life.
Let us reflect for a moment upon the corroboration
given us here of the conclusion to which we have been
already brought. This witness who is the so direct
word of God and word of life to us is personally not
merely one of ourselves, whom God has charged with
a message to us. He in whom God thus speaks is no
less one with us, but He is far more one with God, than
that. It does not make our Lord less man to make
Him very far more God than any one of us can be, or
could become by any degree of human intimacy with
the Father.
When we pass to the Gospel of St. John, we may
properly leave the consideration of the Prologue to the
last, as most probably the deduction or induction of
the apostle from the matter which makes up the body
of the Gospel. Here as in the epistle Jesus Christ is
presented to us primarily and immediately as the divine
light and life of men. No man hath seen God; Jesus
Christ only has declared or revealed Him. He that
hath seen Him hath seen the Father. But the invisible
divine fatherhood is declared only in the divine sonship
realized in humanity and so made visible to men. It
is only sonship that reveals or declares fatherhood any
where, and especially in that revelation of fact, or in
the thing, which is God s only method of expressing
Himself. Just as the life of God was manifested in
our Lord not by any mere declaration of it, but by the
same life lived actually upon earth and exhibited to
human experience and investigation, so the fatherhood
The Gospel in St. John 237
of God is revealed not by anything which our Lord has
to tell us about it, but in the concrete and visible reality
of His sonship perfected before our eyes. The fact in
itself that the necessary effect of our Lord s being in
the world is, first, the imparting of life, and, second, the
execution of judgment, is profoundly recognized by
St. John. God sent not the Son into the world to
judge the world, but to save the world. But just be
cause life accepted is salvation, life rejected is damna
tion. Judgment executes itself or is self-inflicted. If
Jesus Christ is the word of God, and is light and life,
then he who believes not Him is ipso facto judged; he
forfeits all that is involved in being son of God, because
he has not believed on the name of the only begotten
Son of God. He refuses to exercise the faith that
saves, or to accept through it the thing which is salva
tion. The consequence of that is not God s but his
own act.
Jesus Christ Himself, all through St. John s Gospel,
proclaims Himself the resurrection, the regeneration,
the eternal life of humanity. He is the water of life
and the bread from heaven. He quenches all thirst
and satisfies all hunger. In the most impressive and
elaborate way He insists upon the necessity of our
making His life our life, of taking Him into ourselves
by such an act of spiritual reception and assimilation
as that He as the proper food of our souls shall be con
verted into us and we into Him. Such language may
be taken too literally, if we mean by that too materially.
The language of matter is transferred to the things of
spirit, and is then to be interpreted in the sphere of
238 The Gospel of the Person
spirit and not of matter. This, I suppose, is what our
Lord means in the words, It is the spirit that quickeneth ;
the flesh profiteth nothing : the words that I have spoken
unto you are spirit, and are life. But although spiritual
acts and processes are expressed in material terms, they
are not less actual or real. The act of eating and
drinking Christ, though it be not with the mouth nor
with the organs of physical digestion, assimilation, and
conversion, is just as much an act and just as necessary
an act. And moreover, when it is sacramentally asso
ciated or united with it, the spiritual act as certainly
and definitely takes place as the physical ; we eat and
drink Christ as really and as effectually to the life of
our souls as we do the bread and wine to the nourish
ment of our bodies.
The profound truth that the essential claim of Jesus
Christ upon men, and the only ultimate evidence of
that claim, is to be found in the matter of fact of what
He is to them and they to Him, is in several ways most
beautifully and touchingly brought out in the Gospel
of St. John. Things made for each other and incom
plete without each other will naturally seek each other
and come together, unless abnormal conditions and
hindrances stand in the way. Spiritual healing, the
cure of souls, human salvation, is as much a matter of
assisting nature, of merely removing obstacles in the
way of the divine processes, as physical healing is more
and more recognizing itself to be. Spiritual things are so
truly for spiritual men, that they cannot but be true for
spiritual men, if they are truly brought together. God
for the soul and the soul for God ought to carry its own
The Gospel in St. John 239
truth and its own proof, and will if it be not prevented.
To remove that prevention and allow the highest act
in nature to take place, was the work of Jesus Christ
to take away sin and bring God and man together.
The type in nature of all complementary being and the
consequent act or fact of affinity and union is the prin
ciple of sex, and that is made use of all through the
Scriptures in illustration of the relation between God
and humanity. The relation as it ought to be, the
relation as it is marred and ruined by sin, humanity
as in adultery with impure loves and false gods, the
divine patience and forgiveness and grace that would
woo us back into the true love and the true union out of
which alone are the issues of life and blessedness is
not this all the burden of the Word of God ! John the
Baptist realized the task to be accomplished, and felt
the insufficiency for it of any mere man or any only
humanly administered ordinance. He that should
unite God and man must come from above, and the
grace of the sacrament of union must be of heaven.
He was not the bridegroom, but only the friend of the
bridegroom, whose humbler function was only such
human preparation as could be made for His coming.
The gist of the whole matter is expressed in the words,
He that hath the bride is the bridegroom. It is not
that he who is the bridegroom hath the bride, true
as that is also, but the converse. The claim of the
bridegroom to the bride rests in the fact that in her
truest and deepest self, in her divine nature and des-
tinature, she belongs to Him. When He seeks her He
seeks His own, and when she accepts Him she accepts
240 The Gospel of the Person
one who is, in the eternal foreknowledge of the past
and in the eternal predestination of the future, her own.
The meaning of all affinities, the truth of all unions,
the reality of all completion of one thing in another, is
revealed and realized in the act in which God and man,
God and creation, are made one in Jesus Christ.
The same general truth is brought out by our Lord
under another figure. He is the true and good shepherd
whose own the sheep are. He knows them and they
know Him, because they are His, and, in the deepest
natural sense in all the universe of God, in the root and
nature of things, He is theirs. As deep as that, in the
very reality of all right or possession, we are God s and
God is ours! As mutual knowledge is the fruit and
result of mutual natural right and possession, so mutual
love is the perfect expression of it. Because they are
His and He is theirs, therefore He gives His life for
them and gives His life to them: My sheep hear my
voice, and I know them, and they follow me. And I
give unto them eternal life; and they shall never perish.
Jesus Christ is the door; not only the door to the
sheep, the true right of entrance and the entrance of
the true right thing into the minds and hearts and lives
of men, but also the door to God : By me if any man
enter in, he shall be saved, and shall go in and out, and
shall find pasture. I came that they may have life,
and may have it abundantly. As He is the door, so is
He the way: No man cometh to the Father but by me.
As to what that way is, He has left us in no doubt:
Whither I go, He says, ye know the way. It is not the
way of nature; nature is part of the way, but it brings
The Gospel in St. John 241
no man all the way to God. It is not the way of human
wisdom or will ; it is only through our own wisdom and
will indeed that we can come to God, but these of them
selves will never bring us there. It is the way of hu
mility and need and dependence and prayer; the way
of all-enduring patience, all-surviving hope, all-over
coming and conquering faith, all-sacrificing and all-
fulfilling love ; it is the way of the water of baptism, and
the blood of the cross, and the testimony of the spirit.
He has opened for us into the holiest place, which is
God Himself, a new and living way, through the veil,
that is to say, His flesh, and by His blood. It is the
way by which, through the eternal Spirit, He offered
up Himself without spot to God.
The raising of Lazarus, which was the immediate
occasion or cause of our Lord s death, whatever it was
as a miracle, was a mighty parable of the central truth
of Jesus Christ Himself. It enabled Him to claim for
Himself that He is the resurrection and the life. It
prefigured, before His own real resurrection, the fact
that when lifted up He should draw all men unto Him,
as being in Himself and for all the victory over the
world, the resurrection of the dead, and eternal life.
The exousia claimed by our Lord and conceded to Him
in all the Gospels is carried to its highest expression in
St. John. It is not only all authority and power over
the flesh, in the divine might of the spirit, but it is
power and authority over all flesh. What He is in
Himself He is for all, with power to be in all.
This last mentioned truth, of all in Christ and Christ
in all, brings us to another which is developed to its
242 The Gospel of the Person
fullest expression in St. John. We must remember
that in this Gospel, even if possible more explicitly than
in all the others, Jesus at His baptism was revealed to
John the Baptist as He that baptizeth with the Holy
Spirit. That Spirit was His own without measure,
not only to have but to impart. Of His fulness we all
received, and grace for grace. Through that eternal
Spirit He offered up Himself without spot to God, and
the selfsame Spirit in us is the inspiration and the
power of all love and service and sacrifice. The Spirit
was the distinctive promise of God in the Gospel. The
Apostles were bidden by our Lord upon His ascension
to await in Jerusalem the promise of the Father, which,
said He, ye heard from me: for John indeed baptized
with water ; but ye shall be baptized with the Holy
Ghost not many days hence. And the acts of the
Apostles and the life and activity of the Church begin
with that baptism as a birth indeed from above. This
is the account of St. Luke, but it is in the most exact
accord with St. John, who thus describes the most
significant act of our Lord after His resurrection : Jesus
appeared in the midst of His disciples, and said unto
them, Peace be unto you: as the Father hath sent me,
even so send I you. And when He had said this, He
breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the
Holy Ghost: whosesoever sins ye forgive, they are for
given unto them; and whosesoever sins ye retain, they
are retained. The truths expressed in this brief com
mission and mission are as follows: First, as God was
in Christ, the Father in the Son, so in equal reality
and with equal efficacy was Christ to be in His disciples
The Gospel in St. John 243
or in His Church. Their commission and mission was
to be the continuance and permanent exercise and
activity upon earth of the authority and power which
was His own in heaven and upon earth. As He had
always claimed that His work was not His own, but
the Father s, so was their work to be not theirs but His.
But His in them, as the Father in Him ; as He had mani
fested the Father in what He Himself was, so were they
to manifest Him not alone in any official or external
authority, but in the reality and power of Himself in
them. In the second place, the commission recognizes
the fact that the work of the Church is to be precisely
that of Christ Himself, that of reconciliation with God
through remission of sin. The sacramental act as well
as the general ministry of reconciliation and remission
was to be so executed in His name, by His authority,
and with His power, that it should be as though God
Himself did it by them. And the specific gift, as of
God through Him so of Him through them to the world,
was the baptism of repentance unto the death of sin,
and faith unto the life of God and of holiness.
But in the third place, and what was the more explicit
contribution of St. John to the account of the ministry
of our Lord Himself, and that committed by Him to
His Church, is the more formal endowment with
the Spirit, as the power of its exercise and the express
object of its communication. And here, in culmination
and conclusion of this brief resume of the Gospel as
seen by St. John, we must dwell a little more deeply
upon the necessary nature of any Gospel to men as
being one, equally and coordinately, of Word and of
244 The Gospel of the Person
Spirit. The coming to us of a gospel with power is
conditioned not only upon the fact of the objective
communication, but upon that of a corresponding
subjective response. The need of the latter as well as
the former, as coequal and coordinate part of the gift
or grace of God, is not only expressed implicitly in the
necessity of a baptism with the Spirit, but is stated
explicitly in the assurance that the gift in Christ in
cludes the repentance prerequisite on our part as well
as the remission consequent on God s part. But let us
look at the matter itself as it actually and historically
happened, and so interpreted itself in fact. No one
can pass from the general attitude of the first disciples
toward their Lord prior to what was said to have hap
pened on the Day of Pentecost, and the attitude of
those same disciples toward Him after that event,
without feeling the great difference. Without at all
commenting upon the facts or the meaning of that
eventful day, it is perfectly clear that it stands in the
story of Christianity for something scarcely less decisive
than Easter Day itself. If the objective fact of Chris
tianity culminated on Easter, Pentecost was marked
by a subjective revolution in relation and in response
to that fact that was quite its complement and most
effectually its completion. It is impossible to treat as
artistic literary fiction the picture of the powerful but
vague and indefinite emotions and impressions of the
disciples up to the Day of Pentecost, and after that the
surprising change to a clear understanding and a
definite plan and purpose as to the meaning and the
preaching of Christ and the resurrection. Something
The Gospel in St. John 245
had evidently happened which prepared the spiritual
men to whom they were revealed for the spiritual things
that were revealed to them. I have always thought
that we find a pre-intimation of what was more per
fectly to take place, and on a larger scale, in the saying
of our Lord to Peter, Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-
Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto
you, but my Father which is in heaven. And also that
saying of St. Paul, When it was the good pleasure of
God to reveal His Son in me. ... It is always possible
in spiritual things to distinguish between the objective
manifestation to us and the subjective revelation in us.
We may for a long time know spiritual facts without
us, and then suddenly come to an interior knowledge
of them so different from and transcending the other
that it seems to be a difference in kind as well as in
degree. In spiritual things we say that it is the differ
ence between knowing about them and knowing them.
Our Lord Himself distinguishes the light that is within
us, the light of our own power of vision, from the light
without us, the light that comes from the things we see.
It is this interior light, the vision of the spiritual man
for the spiritual thing, that is the function of the Spirit.
It is of this that our Lord says, Except a man be born of
the Spirit, he cannot see the kingdom of God. And so
the most devoted and sincere knowledge and love of
Jesus before Pentecost was but a knowing Him in the
flesh. After that, there was the most real and profound
knowing Him in the spirit. And so to know Him was,
according to St. Paul, a new creation ; it was to be a new
man, dead with Him to sin and alive with Him to God.
246 The Gospel of the Person
Our Lord, according to St. John, taught that His
own function as the Word was to be not superseded,
but succeeded and completed by that of the Spirit.
The Spirit coming after Him was not to supply His
absence but to effect His presence. The new mode
of His presence, not without but within, not in the flesh
but in the spirit, was to be a much more real and
effectual presence. The disciples ought to rejoice
rather than grieve at His taking away, because the
sorrow of His going would for them be swallowed up
in the joy of His return. The Spirit which should
come, not in stead but in fulfilment of Him, would be
the Spirit of truth, because it would bring them to the
knowledge of Him who is the Word of truth : The Holy
Spirit whom the Father will send in my name shall
teach you all things, and bring to your remembrance
all that I said unto you. He shall guide you into all
the truth: for he shall not speak from himself; He shall
glorify me, for he shall take of mine and declare it unto
you. As it is the part and function of the Word to
reveal to us from without the whole truth of God and
ourselves, so is it the part of the Spirit to reveal to us
from within, to open our eyes to see, the meaning and
truth of the divine Word. The Word, as I have fre
quently said, is the principle and medium of objective
revelation. The Spirit is that of subjective apprehen
sion, comprehension, and appropriation. Deep an-
swereth unto deep. The deep of God without us and
above us is inaudible save as it is answered by the deep
of God within us. There is no gospel or salvation for
us which does not come by the Word through the Spirit.
The Gospel in St. John 247
In a way, we may say that that means, by God through
ourselves; but, in a more true way, it means that while
our salvation must be of ourselves as well as of God, we
owe the ourselves in the matter, as well as the divine
part in it, to God, who there as everywhere is All
in all.
XX
THE LOGOS
THE Prologue of the Gospel according to St. John
needs a treatment to itself, because it is the final de
duction from all the matter of all the Gospels, as indeed
from the whole Christian impression of the whole
phenomenon of Jesus Christ. That Jesus Christ was
a divine manifestation, revelation, or expression of
which there could be no doubt could not but lead
to the question, Of what is He the expression ? That
question once raised could not be laid at rest until the
whole answer had been elicited. (1) He is the logos
or divine expression of humanity; that is the most
immediate and self-evident answer. He recapitulates
in Himself not only the whole nature but the whole life
and destiny of man, longam expositionem hominis.
(2) He is the logos of creation, the revelation and antici
pation of the end or final cause of all things. Con
sciously or unconsciously, by reason or by instinct, the
New Testament anticipates in the most remarkable
degree that sense of unity which is the first principle
of modern science. The unity of the natural and the
spiritual, that matter exists for mind, necessity for free
dom, the earth for man, and finally man for Christ as
Christ for God that is all from beginning to end a
248
The Logos 249
drama of evolution as scientific as it is rational and
religious. The knowledge of that fragment of evolu
tion which falls within the experience of our senses, and
to which we limit the term and meaning of nature, is
manifestly not a complete or whole science, because it
is out of the reach of it to correlate what nevertheless
must be held together and must be relatable and re
lated, as, for example, necessity and freedom, or
organism and personality. At any rate, Christianity
from the beginning seemed to see how the natural
creation terminated in man, as man through spiritual
creation is to terminate in Christ. The Adam of St.
Paul is only humanity as end of the old, as Christ is
humanity as beginning and end of the new, the spiritual
which as higher natural was predestined from the be
ginning to supplement and complete the natural. And
(3) Jesus Christ is the logos of God, so far as God is in
any way whatsoever revealed or expressed at all.
Whatever be the historical source and origin of the
logos-language of St. John, I think enough has been
said to show that the truth which finds in it its final
expression is one legitimately developed within the New
Testament itself. Christianity has its own theology,
cosmology, and anthropology, and the unity of all these
is the truth expressed in its Christology. We state that
truth when we say that Jesus Christ is the logos at once
of God, of the Cosmos, and of Man. God, outside of
Himself, is revealed only in the " all things " which we
call His creation. The creation, so far as there is any
end or meaning in it, is interpreted only in man. The
final cause or reason for being of man finds no ade-
250 The Gospel of the Person
quate expression but in Jesus Christ. Let God, the
cosmos, man, and Christ, be fully understood in the
light and in terms of one another, and we have that
complete science which will alone explain all, because
nothing less will include all. Let us look rapidly over
this summary or summation of all truth in Jesus Christ
as logos of all.
The propriety of the term Logos manifests itself first
in the fact that it makes the principle or beginning of
things to be, primarily, what we call intelligence or
reason. I say primarily, because the first principle
cannot be intelligence only. Bare intelligence does
not move to action, has not in itself as such the impulse
to originate. As we must ascribe to the primum mo
bile the idea of things, so must we include in it the feeling
for things which is the condition of will and activity.
The universe had its beginning, not only in wisdom,
but in love. But the Prologue before us begins by
affirming in the very choice of its key word the ration
ality of the universe. Things are the utterance of
thought, and have no existence outside of thought
no matter how substantial their reality within it.
In the second place, the propriety of the word Logos
consists in the manner in which it distinguishes the
principle of the universe from God, while at the same
time identifying it with Him. The Logos is the ideal
or formal principle of things. It is that which expresses
itself in them. But in things as we know them, while
in thought we may distinguish between the formal and
the material principles, they are in fact one and indis
tinguishable. In the same way, when we think of God
The Logos 251
as immanent in the universe, or as the ideal or formal
principle of things, we are apt to make Him so one with
them and part of them as to be indistinguishable from
them. This pantheistic tendency is corrected or pre
vented in Christianity in its very inception by recog
nizing God as immanent indeed in nature or in the
evolution of things, but recognizing Him in them not
substantially but rationally, as one with them not in
substance or being but in reason or meaning. So we
say that the universe is the expression not of God and
yet of God ; not of God because not of God s substance
or self, and yet of God because of God s Logos, or His
thought and will and activity. The Logos so under
stood is both identified with and distinguished from
God. There is room for full immanence without
sacrifice of the truth of transcendence.
The Logos of our prologue justifies itself in this further
respect that, whereas in the speculation of the world
there had been more or less of dualism, this summarily
and effectually excludes it. Dualism sees in the matter
of the universe something independent of its form.
Mind does not create or originate matter, but only
shapes or forms, or informs, a matter existent inde
pendently of itself. Even Leibnitz could claim for
the world only that it was the best possible out of the
material available, a material independent apparently
of God Himself. The Logos of Christianity is not only
the formal or informing principle within things, but
the things themselves exist only within it and are but
the terms or symbols of its self-expression. All things
come into or possess their being only through the Logos,
252 The Gospel of the Person
and nothing enters into existence or exists outside or
apart from it. There could be no possible stronger or
plainer expression of what is true in the idealistic as
contradistinguished from the materialistic origin and
constitution of the universe.
From mere being or existence the prologue passes
at once to the consideration of life; and then as in
stantaneously to that which alone is life indeed, to self-
conscious, rational, human life. In the Logos is life,
and the life is the light of men. In these words we have
the subject-matter of the whole thought of St. John, or
rather the self-representation of Jesus as reported by
St. John. Life is the end, or the highest and final
expression, of being; and all being is but the material
or matter of life. But by life is meant not the lower
forms or stages of it, but only what it was destined to
become, and what it actually becomes when it fulfils
its idea. Thus vegetable or animal life, or even human
life in the womb or in infancy or in the undeveloped
savage state, is not yet life in the most real and essen
tial meaning of it. The essence of life as taught and
manifested by our Lord is to know and determine it
self. Life is not truly life in the supreme sense until
it is such an object to itself as will fully occupy and
exercise those powers of intelligence, affection, will, and
freedom in which selfhood consists. Any life which
does not so know itself as to find in the task of its own
self-fulfilment the activity of the rational, moral, and
spiritual powers that make up personality, is not yet
life in the sense of Jesus Christ. The condition of life,
then, is that it shall know itself; the end or fulfilment of
The Logos 253
life is self-realization through self-knowledge. God
gives us in Christ to have life in ourselves; that is, so
to know ourselves as the object of our self-determina
tion, and to determine ourselves in accordance with our
self-knowledge, as that our lives shall be our own.
The life is the light of men. We may place the em
phasis first upon men; it is the differentia of man to
know life, to enter into its meaning, to perceive its
truth, to appreciate its beauty, or nobility, to be doer
as well as enjoyer of its good. To know life is the
condition of trite living it. But the emphasis is stronger
upon life. The true light of men, the proper object
of human thought and knowledge, life itself, what
it means and what it is to live. Life is not made for
labour, but labour for life ; life is not made for science,
but science for life ; life is not made for service, but ser
vice for life ; life is not made for sacrifice, but sacrifice
for life. All things, even the highest, are but means
to the one end of life. Even the highest act of not
receiving but giving life is itself but the highest means
of life. We can have no higher end than life, and when
we seek to make it yet higher by prefixing "not our
own," only the more for not being our own is it also
our own. The more it is not our own as end in the
sense of motive, the more will it be our own as end in
the sense of result. But we may place the emphasis in
our sentence not upon life, but upon the definite article
which invariably accompanies it not only in St. John
himself but in his report of our Lord. It is not merely
life but The Life that is the light of men. Life is not any
thing, or many things, but one thing. There is one spirit,
254 The Gospel of the Person
one law, one manifestation or expression, one realiza
tion, and one reality of it. In whatever form that is
realized or expressed, it is the divine logos; because it
is the thing expressed, and not merely the expression of
the thing, that makes it the word of God. Jesus Christ
is supremely The Logos, because He alone is the su
preme divine word or expression of the One Life. But
even prior to the historical manifestation of the life in
Christ, the life was to be manifested to man and to be
apprehended by him. To live the life by knowing it
and know it by living it was from the beginning his
differentia as man. The Logos in the sense of God s
truth or reality of life was eternal, and was always to be
manifested as the light and the life of men, as that
which they were to live through knowing, and know in
order to live.
That the light, which was the divine truth or knowl
edge of life, for so long and to such an extent shone in
the darkness of the world, and the darkness appre
hended it not, proves neither that it was not there to
be apprehended nor that the apprehension of it was
not the proper task of man as man. Darkness and
light are correlative things; darkness has meaning or
existence only where the light with reference to which
it is darkness is possible and is the normal thing. The
darkness of the world can mean only that of humanity,
because humanity alone is capable of the light of which
the darkness is the correlative; and to speak of the
darkness of humanity can only mean that the light
exists for it and that its true function is to see or know
the light. Moreover, that darkness too should be
The Logos 255
possible, should actually exist, and should precede the
light, so that^historically light should only gradually
shine out of darkness, is only a part of the universal
principle and working of evolution. And the meaning
of evolution, as interpreted by its final cause, or by its
highest application and expression, is this: that person
ality which is its end is not an original fact of nature,
but an ultimate act of itself. It must become itself,
and it must itself become itself. This being by self
and for self, which is the differentia and the essentia of
personality, as the highest product and final cause of
evolution, exhibits itself in a lower and preparatory
way, even in the evolution of evolution itself. The
law of all life, from the lowest up, is that nothing is
made out of hand, but that everything in a sense makes
itself by its own reactions upon other things. So life
through perpetual strife with environment makes itself
and rises in the scale of being only through its own
victories over environment. There is no reason in
itself why this should be so in the lower stages of evo
lution. The reason emerges and becomes apparent
only in the final stage, in the production of that spiritual
activity which must be self-activity in order to be itself.
All the self-becoming of nature through its own re
actions is but preparation for and prophecy of the free
dom of personality as end to itself and cause of itself.
But not to dwell upon these speculations, the truth
and the condition of rational, personal, or human life
is that it shall know itself in order to fulfil itself, and
should fulfil itself through knowing itself. The very
fact of its darkness involves the truth of its light. The
256 The Gospel of the Person
light was always there to be apprehended. God s mean
ing, or truth, or predestination, of life was not only
in His own mind or reason from the beginning, but it
was immanent in all the aeons of the divine evolution
of it. Light, or knowledge of himself, from the begin
ning awaited man, and man from the beginning
was constituted for and could only be consum
mated by self-knowledge or in the light of his own
eternal truth. To be as we are predestined to be it is
necessary that we shall know even as also we are known.
We are now somewhat in possession of the materials
out of which to construct a connected view of the divine
Logos as portrayed by St. John. He is first with God
Himself, as the utterance or expression to Himself of
what we can only in terms of ourselves designate as
His own mind or reason, will, purpose, and actualized
activity. This self-expression of God, however, has
immediate reference to the cosmos. The Logos of
God is logos of creation, that is, is final and first cause,
reason, and meaning of it; it is the ideal and formal,
or informing, principle immanent in all creation and
working itself out through it. The whole creation is
one and means one thing. All being or becoming is
for the sake of life, and life means only the life that
knows and lives itself, rational, moral, spiritual, per
sonal life. The Logos is logos of this life, and logos
of everything else, only as everything else, as the whole
course of nature, is preparation and part of the life
which is its end or fulfilment.
Now this mind of God, this ideal principle and final
cause of all creation, this divine meaning and truth and
The Logos 257
predestination of man as heir of all, this consummation
of God Himself in all things and of all things in God,
our Prologue identifies with the person of Jesus Christ.
This transcendent importance of the personality of our
Lord appears first in the inevitable comparison of Him
with the man who stood nearest Him as His forerunner
and witness. The highest attainment and glory of man
is to be witness and to bear testimony to the truth ;
because the true progress or elevation of man as man
is to be measured by his approach or propinquity to
the light, by the force of his drawing to self-knowledge
and self-fulfilment. The light for men, and men for
the light; and the man who is most for the light is the
most a man. The light that was always in the world,
and that was the light of every man, was nevertheless
the light of each man only as more or less or not at
all each man in his own activities was for the light.
This gave rise to the occasional appearance of individ
uals, who in the highest degree bore witness at once to
man s capacity for the light and to the light itself as
ready to answer to that capacity. There seems to have
been no instance of a higher witness or testimony of
this sort than in John the Baptist. And yet our Lord
is contrasted with John in this respect and to this ex
tent, that while John represents only the highest wit
ness or testimony that humanity in itself can bear to
the truth, Jesus Christ is in Himself all the truth to
which humanity by its own true drawing to Him bears
witness. The difference is like that between their
respective baptisms. The one is in reality all that the
other can only indicate or signify.
258 The Gospel of the Person
The light that was in the world, and that was the
light of the world because the light of every man,
however it shone in darkness, was to come, was
coming and came, into the world in the person of Jesus
Christ. I do not know to what extent it may be profit
able to speculate upon the reason or the necessity of
such a manifestation of the divine truth of life as in
volved its incarnation in Jesus Christ. It is our wis
dom to understand things as they are, and not always
to account for why or how they are. Any man that
will know Jesus Christ will know that as a matter of
fact He is the truth of God and himself, whether or no
he can give a sufficient reason why or how that truth
was so manifested. But the following question suggests
itself, and may go a little way toward satisfying our
reason upon the matter:
Could sufficient light upon ourselves, our life, and
our destiny have been attained by ourselves, without
the actual revelation to us of all these in Jesus Christ,
to enable us so to know as to be able to realize or fulfil
ourselves ? But even that is not the whole question.
Jesus Christ is not a revelation of mere light, in the
sense of information or instruction; He is not only an
object-lesson or example to us of what life is or means :
He is not so much a manifestation of the life, as Pie is
the life itself manifested ; and He is come into the world
not to show but to give life. The deeper and larger
question then is: Could the life that is God s, and that
was Christ s in our nature, be ours if it had not so come
as it did in Jesus Christ? There is a great distance
between a mere representative knowledge of what
The Logos 259
Christ objectively means to us and a real knowledge
of what Christ subjectively and actually is in us. The
reason or necessity of such a coming to us and in us of
the life itself as Christianity holds and Christianity is,
can only be made apparent by yet deeper conceptions
of Jesus Christ Himself. To that our remaining
chapters shall be given; let us now complete the study
of our Prologue.
When the Logos came into the world, He came to
His own. He by whom it was, and for whom it was,
could surely best claim it as such. When He came
into humanity, He came in a yet closer sense to His
own. Surely, if there be any ownership; if the sheep
are his own to the shepherd; if the wife is his own to
the husband, whose flesh and whose self she is, men
are His own to Him not only by whom they are and
live, but who is to them the divine expression and
reality of their own truth, perfection, and blessedness.
And yet men apprehend Him not, receive Him not,
can abide to be without Him. But to them that know,
accept, and possess Him, He is the truth and life of
themselves, because He is the truth and life of God in
themselves and of themselves in God. This it is to be
children of God, who are born, not of blood, nor of the
will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God. By
the Word and the Spirit, by the divine act of God
Himself as He comes to us and in us, we are born
into the life that is God s, and was Christ s and is
ours.
XXI
THE INCARNATION
THE truth as it is in Jesus Christ consists in the fact,
and our apprehension of it is measured by our appre
ciation of the fact, that it is expressible equally in terms
of man and of God. On the human side our Lord is
the very fact and the very act and the very truth of
humanity itself. We think most truly of Him when
we see in Him the most exact truth of ourselves, and
consequently when we express Him in most exact
terms of ourselves. Whatever He was or did in the
name or in behalf of humanity, humanity itself did and
became in His person. If He was our atonement with
God, it is because humanity in Him at-one-d itself
with God by the one possible act, and in the one pos
sible way, of self-reconciliation and reunion. If He
was our redemption from sin, it is because humanity
in Him, by the one possible attitude toward it and the
one possible victory over it, put away sin from it and
took to it the holiness of God. If He was our resur
rection and our eternal life, it is because humanity
subject in itself to the law of sin and death arose in Him
from the death of sin into the life of holiness and God.
That is to say, the earthly life of Jesus Christ viewed
as a single and complete act must be interpreted not
260
The Incarnation 261
merely as an act of humanity, but as the one act by
which humanity could and did bring itself to God,
make itself one with Him, redeem itself from sin, and
raise itself from death. Only through that one act can
humanity be saved, because that is the one act the per
forming of which is the holiness, righteousness, and
life, in which its salvation consists. He was our atone
ment through the actual making us at one with
God in an act which was per se the accomplishing of
just that thing. He was our redemption by the actual
breaking of the bonds of the slavery to sin from which
we could not liberate ourselves. He was our resurrec
tion and our life through a life-long act in which our
own life in Him, having overcome sin, actually raised
itself also from death.
But the more perfectly we interpret the life of Jesus
Christ in terms of human action and human attainment,
the more certain does it appear that it must be only a
one-sided and half-way interpretation. As surely as
that life was, from beginning to end and through
and through, an act wrought by humanity in God,
just so surely and so completely was it an act
wrought by God in humanity. Just so truly as Jesus
Christ was humanity in God so truly also was he God
in humanity. The perfection of each half of the truth
depends upon the perfection of the other half. When
we get up to the truth at this height we see more
clearly than ever the impossibility of limiting the
humanity which is one side of the nature of our Lord
to that of an individual man, instead of recognizing
in it the common and universal nature of us all; of see-
262 The Gospel of the Person
ing in Him one man instead of all men made one with
God, set free from sin, and raised up from death. But
the very universality as well as the very complete
ness and perfection of our Lord s humanity is the
incontestable and conclusive proof to us of His co
equal deity. The incarnation was not for the pur
pose of exhibiting Godhead but of redeeming and
completing manhood, and the perfection of humanity
in Jesus Christ was the best and truest manifestation
of deity in Him.
While, however, it is primarily in the interest of our
Lord s humanity that we are compelled at last to
recognize equally His divinity, it is no less in the in
terest too of our highest conception and knowledge of
God Himself that we should do so. It shall be the
object of this chapter to do two things. The first shall
be to affirm as strongly as is possible the whole phenom
enon of Jesus Christ in the most absolute terms of His
Godhead. God was in Christ, doing in humanity all
that Christ did, being in humanity all that Christ was
so that, for the time being, we shall wholly abstract
our thought from any consideration of the human
activity and concentrate it upon the divine activity
that wrought in Him for the salvation of men. The
second thing we propose is to prove that the comple
tion and perfection of the conception and appreciation
of God Himself is dependent upon the truth of His
most real and actual incarnation in Jesus Christ.
With regard to the first point we have only to recall
the recent course of our argument. He who is revealed
and expressed to us in the person of Jesus Christ is
The Incarnation 263
He who is eternally first and final cause of all things,
and especially of humanity as that in whose final
destiny all things shall come back into God Himself,
for whom as well as from whom they are. But more
immediately and definitely than that, just what we see
in the humanity itself of our Lord is not what nature
is in it, nor what it is itself in its nature, through the
reason and the freedom by which it is the agent of itself;
but what God is in it, in the eternity of His love, the
infinitude of His grace, and the perfection of His fellow
ship and communion. Man in Christ is what God
makes him, by imparting to Him His Spirit, conforming
him to His Thought or Will or Word, making him par
taker of His nature and liver of His life. In Christ,
God Himself is our holiness, our righteousness, our
eternal life. In these and many other representations
to the same effect, our humanity and our whole human
activity as manifested both in its ideal and in its actual
perfection in our Lord is expressed so absolutely in
terms of God and not of ourselves, that it becomes
difficult to human apprehension to see anything but
God or anything of ourselves in Him at all. It is un
necessary to go further on this line, or longer to insist
upon the (only seeming) paradox that the one truth of
God s absolute self-realization in humanity through
Christ in no wise contradicts, but only explains, man s
absolute self-realization in God through Christ. In
other words, the perfect deity of our Lord and His
complete humanity, so far from mutually excluding,
on the contrary mutually confirm and establish each
other.
264 The Gospel of the Person
Our second position is, that Christianity will always
hold, as essential to its life, to the truth at its highest, of
the incarnation of God in Jesus Christ, not alone for
the completeness of our own salvation, or in the in
terest of our human redemption and completion in
Christ, but no less in the interest of our adequate and
perfect conception of God. To put the case briefly,
and afterwards justify it at length, as true as it is
to us that man would never be man without the full
truth of God s self-realization in him, even so true is it
that God would never be God to us without the very
fullest reality of His incarnation in us. To put the
truth in yet plainer and stronger form, so far as God
is in the world of our experience and is our God, the
supreme fact which we call the Incarnation, and the
supreme act in incarnation which we call the Atone
ment, the Redemption, or the Resurrection, were no
more necessary to make man man, than they were
necessary to make God God. I repeat that as in the
evolution of nature and of humanity, man became man,
in the highest, through the act and in the person of
Jesus Christ, so relatively to us, in the world and in
relation to mankind as heir and interpreter of the world
God became God to us through the act and in the
person of Jesus Christ. We saw how Jesus Christ
was Logos of creation and of humanity, both of which
come to their truth and meaning in Him in the end,
as He was the truth and meaning of them in the begin
ning. We have now to see how He is Logos not only
of creation, natural and spiritual, but of God Himself
as expressed through these. That is to say, it is only
The Incarnation 265
in Him that God not merely manifests what He is,
but in His activity and self-expression through crea
tion becomes what He is. What God is, and all that
God is, is not an abstraction of thought, nor is it ex
pressible merely in words. It exists and can be known
only in acts. Now, which are the divine acts in crea
tion that the most fully reveal God and are God ? Is
God all God, in the complete conception of Him, in
the mere material or natural order of the universe ? If
He were nothing more than substance, or energy, or
cause, in a mechanical construction of the universe,
would He be our God ? Can eternity or immensity or
infinity or the sum of all physical attributes contain or
express Him ? It is only as we pass from the world
of mere necessity or natural order into that of moral
order that God begins to appear in those higher at
tributes and activities which are more expressive of
Himself. The law of wills or of freedom is a higher
law than the law of things or of necessity, and it is no
less actual or real a law. Righteousness is as much a
fact as gravitation or evolution, and the God who is
righteousness is more God than one who is nothing
more than energy. But a God who is a power distinctly
and distinctively not ourselves, who stands over against
us as a law to us and over us, is not yet all our God.
At most He is our Lord or Master, and we are His
obedient or disobedient servants. We may know His
will but not Him, so long as He is outside of us and we
of Him. It is only a God in whom we are and who
may be in us, one who can in a unity of Spirit give Him
self to us and take us into Himself, who can be to us
266 The Gospel of the Person
and whom we can know as our God. When our Lord
said, The true worshippers shall worship the Father in
spirit and truth, in the first place, in the very term
Father He affirms a relation to God which is not that
to a mere creator or cause in a natural order, nor that
to a ruler or lord in a moral order, but that of son to a
father in a spiritual order. In that last relation alone
is there the possibility of the unity and community of
spirit, of nature, and of life, which makes God in the
truest and highest sense our God. And, in the second
place, to worship the Father in spirit and truth means
the knowing, loving, and serving Him not in outward
observance of law or obedience but in interior unity
and likeness of thought, affection, and will, or of dis
position, character, and life. Such a relation or dis
position of God to us and of us to Him involves a new
conception or definition of Him. He is no longer
power or wisdom or justice, which are but physical or
intellectual or moral expressions of Him. He is good
ness or love, which is the highest and last expression
or mode of spiritual being or action.
When we say that God is goodness, or God is love,
we mean that He is so not in representation but in
reality, and not only in inward sentiment but in out
ward action. To say that God is goodness means that
the universe is an activity or process of which goodness
is the sole principle and the supreme end. We cannot,
as with ourselves, distinguish between the divine self-
representation or intention or disposition, and the
actual divine working out of things. What God is He
is in the world of things and in the world of ourselves.
The Incarnation 267
That the universe is goodness does not of course mean
that it is always and everywhere so in present seeming.
It can, in fact, seem good at all only over against a seem
ing of evil whether or no it is necessary to go further
and say, that it can be good only over against an actual
ity of evil. The universe is goodness if its meaning,
its spirit, its law, and its end, are the working out of
the initial and ultimate principle of goodness or love.
The natural but superficial objection to its being so
from the actuality of evil answers itself the more effect
ually the more we reflect upon the truth that goodness
in its highest and truest form can come into the world
only through the overcoming of evil.
The present point is that, whatever God is in Him
self eternally, what He is in the world or in us He is
only in the actual process of the world and of ourselves.
He will actualize or realize Himself, which means that
He will become all Himself, in the world and in us,
only in the totality and the perfection of the world and
us. Whatever, or however much, God may be in a
world of as yet only mechanical motion and order, He
is certainly not all Himself, as we define Him in His
further and higher relations and activities. That is
to say, unless we include in these mere motions of mat
ter the meaning of the future spirit, for which as end
they exist as natural means or conditions. Whatever,
moreover, God may be in a world of finite wills and
relative freedom, as an objective lawgiver and law, of
necessary obedience or of personal righteousness, cer
tainly in that relation or capacity He is not the All
Himself that He may be to us. God is the perfect
268 The Gospel of the Person
Self that He can be to us only in that perfection of
spiritual relation in which He can be to us the perfec
tion of goodness or love, that is to say, in which He
can give His whole self to us and take us completely
into Himself. Then is He our Father, and then may
we worship Him in spirit and in truth, that is, in
unity of internal disposition and in reality of oneness
with Himself.
Our God must be an incarnate God, one with us
not merely in immanence of nature but in the personal
unity of a perfected spiritual relation. He must be
the God and Father manifested to us in our perfect
sonship to Him in Jesus Christ. But God is fulfilled
to us not alone in His humanity in Jesus Christ, but in
all the details and in the totality of His human work
in Christ. And especially does God become His whole
Self to us in the completed act which we call the Cross
of Christ. When we spoke of that act on its human
side or as an act of humanity in Christ, we described it
as the consummate act in which humanity became it
self through making itself one with God. In speaking
of it now on its divine side, or as an act of God in hu
manity, I would describe it as the consummate act in
which God, viewed in His relation to the world and
ourselves, became God to us; not merely manifested but
made Himself the whole or completed Self whom we
know and worship as our God. Relatively to our
selves, I must repeat, in the actual process of the world
as it is, and of ourselves as we are, God is most God,
God becomes to us His highest and most perfect Self,
in the supreme act in which He is the most complete
The Incarnation 269
realization and expression of His own divinest nature
of love or goodness. It is, as I have said, not His
physical attributes alone of eternity, immensity, om
niscience, or omnipotence, that make Him our God.
Neither is it His moral attributes alone, or His objective
law to us, of justice or righteousness. What makes
Him the God He is to us is the fact of His infinite good
ness and love, and that fact becomes fact to us and for
us and in us only in the act by which in Jesus Christ
He once for all and completely made Himself one with
us and so made us one with Himself. The purely
relative and one-sided way of speaking of God as be
coming Himself in Christ, since in Christ alone He
performs the act of at-one-ing Himself with the world
and the world with Himself, in which He is most su
premely love, and therefore most supremely Himself,
is supplemented and corrected in the New Testament,
without any diminution of the truth intended to be
emphasized by it. There, in the eternity of Himself,
or in the timeless beginning of all things, God is always
represented PS, ab initio, meaning or intending in Him
self all that is to be fulfilled in the end, and consequently
as already being in Himself all that, in the actual
process of things or of the world, He is going to become
in them. So, for example, in the predestination of
humanity in the eternity of the future, we have but the
unfolding of His counsel in the eternity of the past.
Eternal love in God and as God defines itself
in the act or process by which it realizes or accom
plishes itself. If we could perfectly know love in God
we should perfectly understand God in the world and
270 The Gospel of the Person
in ourselves; and then we should perfectly know
Christ, for Christ is the self-fulfilment of the divine
love in the world and in ourselves. But, in our finite
apprehension, we proceed, not a priori from the knowl
edge of God to that of love and of Christ, but a poste
riori from the knowledge of Christ to that of love and
so of God. Let us in that order endeavour to construe
for ourselves the exact method and operation of the
love of God in Jesus Christ. Perfect love in order to
fulfil itself needs to know its object from the beginning
and to the end. Not to speak in abstractions, let per
fect love be God, and its object be man, or the creation
as fulfilled in man. We begin then necessarily with
the divine foreknowledge and predestination. Man
must be the object of the eternal love-disposition and
love-purpose of God. Love can will for its object
nothing else or less than its own supreme good, and that
can mean only its own completion or perfection. God,
in willing for man his own or proper good, the good
for which he is constituted and which is necessary to
constitute him, wills for him not only natural good,
the good of outward condition, but moral good and
spiritual good the good of his own good- will and his
own right spirit. In other words, what God wills for
man is not a good of environment, but the good of his
own personal attitude toward and reaction with en
vironment. There is a sense in which we may even
say that the worst environment is the best, since it
demands and elicits the best reaction in order to over
come it. God, then, in willing for man his own highest
good spiritual, must necessarily will for him the condi-
The Incarnation 271
tions necessary to the origination, exercise, and com-
pletest development of that good. The divine love
will spare man nothing of the need, the effort, the pain,
the trial, which are the awful cost of becoming his own
highest and divinest self. The necessity laid upon man
to so become himself is a necessity laid upon God to
let him so become himself. What then shall love do
for man ? It shall certainly not save him from the
supreme necessity of becoming all himself; but it shall
be with him in so doing, in the way and in the degree
the most perfectly conducive to the end of love which
is also the end of the man. God is to us, then, first of
all, divinest sympathy. He does not exempt us from,
but He shares and endures with us and in us, all the
extremest conditions and experiences of human life
and destiny. His eternal love becomes infinite grace,
which in turn develops itself in us in perfect participa
tion or fellowship. Man is not saved from the neces
sity of being man, nor yet from the extremest conditions
of his being so, but he has with him in all the necessary
need, effort, pain, of becoming himself the divine sym
pathy which means, not only God with him and in
him, but God suffering with him and in him. The
real sympathy even of man is not only a sentiment in
him who gives it, but a grace or something imparted, a
fellowship or self-communicated, an actual help and
strength, to him who receives it. What shall we say
of him who not only by right but by act of possession
has made his own the eternal love, the infinite grace,
the self-imparting fellowship of God. All this is just
what Jesus Christ not only means but is, is not merely
272 The Gospel of the Person
the symbol of but the reality. It is not enough to see
all ourselves in Him, unless we equally see all God in
Him. It is the actuality of that consummated relation
between God and us that is the truth as it is in Jesus.
But God imparts, communicates Himself, is with and
in us, in a manner and degree of which the most per
fect human sympathy is a very faint image. If we
would see all the meaning of God with us and in us,
we must see it in the human fulness of what Christ is.
In Him, from what outward condition to which humanity
is exposed was humanity exempt? Through what
weakness or want or pain or effort or trial or sorrow
through which human perfection must be attained was
He not perfected ? Yet what more could God be in
man, or could He have been so much in him, otherwise
than through the conditions and activities of his own
manhood ?
But and this is the point to which our present
argument brings us when man through the perfect
love and grace and fellowship of God in Christ has at
last become himself in all the fulness of his divine pre
destination, has not also God in the consummated act
of His own love and grace and self-fulfilment in man
realized that in which in the highest His selfhood con
sists, and by that fact become His own highest Self in
the world and in us ? We speak of the incredible and
impossible self-lowering or self-emptying of God in
becoming man or in undergoing the death of the cross.
Is the act in which love becomes perfect a contradic
tion or a compromise of the divine nature? Is God
not God or least God in the moment in which He is
The Incarnation 273
most love? Where before Christ, or otherwise than
in Christ, in whom He humbled Himself to become
man, and then humbled Himself with and in man to
suffer what man must needs suffer in order to become
what God would fain make him and the highest and
best that even God can make him I say where
before Christ, or where now otherwise than in Christ
and in the cross of the divine suffering together with
and for man, where in all the story of the universe was
or is love so love, or God so God !
XXII
THE TRINITY
THE truth takes its own forms and expresses itself
in its own ways. Our efforts at defining, proving, or
establishing it are all acts after the event. It is what
it is, and not what we make it. Christianity prevails
in the world in a fact which we have called Trinity,
and which is Trinity, however inadequate and unsatis
factory our explanations of the term or our analyses of
the thing may be. I would describe Christianity in
its largest sense to be the fulfilment of God in the world
through the fulfilment of the world in God. This
assumes that the world is completed in man, in whom
also God is completed in the world. And so, God,
the world, and man are at once completed in Jesus
Christ who, as He was the logos or thought of all in
the divine foreknowledge of the past, so also is He the
telos or end of all in the predestination of the future.
That is to say, the perfect psychical, moral, and spiritual
manhood of which Jesus Christ is to us the realization
and the expression is the end of God in creation, or in
evolution. I hold that neither science, philosophy,
nor religion can come to any higher or other, either
conjecture or conclusion, than that. But now, when
we come to the actual terms or elements of God s self-
274
The Trinity 275
realization in us and ours in Him, we cannot think or
express the process otherwise than in the threefold
form of the divine love, the divine grace, and the divine
fellowship, in operation or action. Putting it into
scriptural phrase, we speak as exactly as popularly in
defining the matter of the Gospel to be, The love of the
Father, the grace of the Son, and the fellowship of the
Spirit. As our spiritual life is dependent upon each
and all of these three constituents, so we can know God
at all only as we know Him in the actual threefold
relation to us of Father, Son, and Spirit.
The first element in the essential constitution of the
Gospel is the fact in itself that God is love. That God
is love means that He is so not only in Himself but in
every activity that proceeds from Him. The very
phrase The love of the Father expresses the whole
principle of the universe. That God is Father means
that it is His nature, or His essential activity, to repro
duce Himself, to produce in all other that which He
Himself is. That God in Himself is love carries with
it the truth that from the beginning all things else mean,
and are destined to come to, love in the end. The
mystery on the way that somehow light must come out
of darkness, that love must needs conquer hate, and
that in everything good seems to be only the final and
far off goal of ill, may puzzle us but it does not disturb
the principle itself. When we come to enter fairly
upon the evolution of the future, the higher not merely
psychical or social or moral but spiritual life and des
tiny of man, all the truth gradually dawns upon us in
the following discoveries, which are already established
276 The Gospel of the Person
facts of spiritual experience: The truth of all spirit is
love; the matter of all law is goodness; God is not
creator or cause only, nor lord or lawgiver only, but
Father of all things, since all things through man are
destined to share His spirit, to be partakers of His
nature, and to reproduce Himself as Father in them
selves as children. In order to be sons of God through
actual participation in the divine nature there stands
in the way indeed the need of a mighty redemption
from sin and an as yet far off completion in holiness ;
but no matter how unredeemed or incomplete, we know
beyond further question that all our salvation lies in
redemption and completion, and that we shall be our
selves and the world will come to its meaning only when
the self-realization of God as Father shall have accom
plished itself in our self-realization as His children.
If we knew the fact only that God in Himself is love,
it would be to us a gospel indeed of great joy, because
it would carry in it the assurance of the highest good,
whatever that might be. But it would be but a partial
gospel, and in fact only a gospel at all through its cer
tainty of proceeding further.
The phrase Grace of the Son expresses that which
perfectly complements and completes all that is meant
by the Love of the Father. What is Fatherhood with
out a correlative Sonship? And what is all love even
in God as its subject apart from its actuality and activity
as grace in man as its object ? The divine propriety
of the terms Father and Son as applied to God cannot
be too much magnified. The distinction between God
as He is in Himself and God as He is in all possible
The Trinity 277
expressions of Himself is one that we cannot think Him
at all without making. The most perfect expression
of love is contained in the statement, that Love loves
love. Its nature is to produce, to reproduce, to mul
tiply itself. Itself is forever the true object of itself,
at the same time that it is ever a going forth from
itself into that which is not itself. This essential prin
ciple of love or self-reproduction is what makes God
eternally Father. But the eternal Fatherhood is actual
ized only in an eternal Sonship. Nothing proceeds
from the Father which is not reproduction of the Father,
and is not therefore Son. Man sees himself now in
nature and destinature son of God. He feels his call
and obligation to fulfil God in him as Father by realiz
ing himself in God as son. His spiritual end and im
pulse is to know as also he is known, to love in return
as he is first loved, to apprehend that for which he is
apprehended of God in Christ. In proportion as he
finds the meaning and truth of his own being in
the reproduction of God, in being son of God, he
finds the meaning and truth of the whole creation
realized and expressed in his own sonship as heir of all
and end of all. And in proportion again as he thus
finds all things meaning and ending in sonship, he
comes at last to see God Himself as realized in the
universal sonship Himself therein realized as Eternal
Father. So it is that in Jesus Christ we see everything
expressed, because everything realized or fulfilled. He
is all truth, because He is the truth of all things God,
Creation, Man. And because He is thus truth and
expression of all, He is Logos of all. What else could
278 The Gospel of the Person
the Logos of all be but Son, or the Son but Logos?
What could perfectly express God but that which is the
perfect reproduction of Himself, or what is perfect
sonship but perfect likeness ?
The Grace of the Son is the divine gift of sonship.
How could we have known God only in Himself?
How could God have been actually our Father without
the actuality of our sonship to Him ? And could we
have known, could we have wanted, could we have
willed, could we have accomplished or attained our
sonship without the gift or grace of sonship in Jesus
Christ ? God, we are told, predestinated us unto son-
ship through Jesus Christ unto himself. He pre
destinated us to be conformed to the image of His
Son, that He might be the first born among many
brethren. In bringing many sons to glory, He gave
to us a Captain of our salvation, an Author and
Finisher of the faith of sonship and so of the sonship
of faith, who was Himself perfected as Son through
the sufferings that are necessary to the perfecting of
sonship in us. We see in Jesus Christ all that is
meant, involved, or implied, in the fact that He is the
divine Fatherhood realized and expressed in human
sonship.
If that fact, viewed in its totality, signifies not only a
human act, nor only a divine act, but a divine-human
act, an act of God in man which is equally an act of
man in God, then we say that Jesus Christ is not
only as well the humanity as the divinity in that act,
but He is the divinity as well as the humanity. He is
not only the gratia gratiata in it but the gratia gratians
The Trinity 279
not only the manhood infinitely graced but the God
head infinitely gracing.
Jesus Christ is therefore to us no mere sample or
example of divine sonship. He is no mere one man
who more successfully than others has grasped and
expressed the ideal of a divine sonship. Neither is He
a single individual of our race whom God has elected
from among equally possible others, in whom as mere
revelation or example to all others to manifest the truth
of God in man and man in God. On the contrary,
Jesus Christ is Himself the reality of all that is mani
fested or expressed in Him. He is as God the grace
communicating and as man the grace communicated.
He is both Generator and generated with reference to
the life incarnate in Him both the sonship eternally
in God to be begotten and the sonship actually begotten
in man. As He was in the beginning with God and
was God, so is He universally with man and is uni
versal man.
When we have thus adequately conceived Christ as
the universal truth and reality of ourselves, and in
ourselves of all creation, and in creation and ourselves
of God, then we are prepared for the conclusion that
we know God at all, or are sons to Him as our Father,
or are capable in that relation of partaking of His
nature or entering into His Spirit or living His life,
only in and through Jesus Christ; because Jesus
Christ is the incarnation or human expression to us of
the whole Logos of God that is to say, of God Him
self as in any way whatever knowable or communicable.
We cannot get at God to know or possess Him other-
280 The Gospel of the Person
wise than as He reveals and imparts Himself; and He
reveals Himself through His own Word and imparts
Himself in His own Son. There and there alone is He
to be known, and there He is all our own. The Logos
who is the eternal Self-revelation of God manifests
Himself as ideal principle, first and final cause, meaning
and end, of creation ; and the end of the whole creation
which manifests God is realized through spiritual
humanity in the imparted sonship of the Everlasting
Son of the Father.
There is yet one other condition of truly knowing
or really possessing God as wholly our God. As God
is unknowable and incommunicable but through Christ,
so is Christ, however perfectly He is in Himself the
self-revelation and self-communication of God, not
so to us but through the coequal action of the Holy
Ghost. There is no knowledge of God in Himself
only, there is no knowledge of God in creation only,
or in others, or even in Christ only, without the answer
ing knowledge of God in ourselves also. It is only like
that answers to like. The deep that answers to deep
must be the same deep. Jesus Christ expected in
every son of man not only the answer of the man in
him to Himself as eternal and universal Son of man,
but the answer of the God in him to the perfect God
head in Himself. Ye cannot see God in me, He says,
because ye have not God in you. No man cometh
unto me except the Father draw Him. I do not wish
to urge the mere conventional language of Christianity,
true as I believe it and helpful as I may find it to my
self. I would if possible speak in the common language
The Trinity 281
of common experience. When we speak of knowing
God, and having God, it must mean knowing Him
where He is to be known and having Him as He is to
be had. Now, whatever God is in Himself, He is
knowable to us only in Jesus Christ, and He can be
our God only as He is conceived in us by the operation
of the Spirit of God and born of the want which He
implants and the faith which He generates.
The doctrine of the Trinity is ordinarily thought of
as the very extreme of speculative reasoning upon the
nature of God. But let us remember that practical
faith in the Trinity antedated any speculative thought
or doctrine of the Trinity. And behind that faith the
fact itself of the Trinity is all that makes God knowable
by us or us capable of knowing God. Before there
was the word Trinity, the new world of Christianity
had come to know God in Christ, and to know Christ
in itself. The entire doctrine developed out of that
actual experience was nothing but a positive affirma
tion and a determined defence of the fulness of the
truth of God in Christ and Christ in us. We can do
no better than conclude this entire exposition of the
Gospel with an interpretation of it in the only terms in
which it is expressible, viz. : in terms of the Trinity.
We have to do now with the Trinity, not as matter
of doctrine nor as object of faith, but as fact in itself.
But at the same time we neither forget nor minimize
the essential Christian conviction that the fact of the
Trinity through the actual operation of God s Word
and Spirit has been so made matter of spiritual observa
tion and experience as to be legitimate object of faith
282 The Gospel of the Person
and material for doctrine. Our object at present,
however, is not to define God but to define the Gospel,
and our contention is that the Gospel is definable in
facts that taken together make up the truth of the
Trinity.
The first condition and constituent of the Gospel is
the fact that God in Himself is love. How do we know
that God is love ? I believe that actually or historically
we know it in Christ in whom the fact of the divine
love is consummated and manifested. But in the light
now of Christianity I believe that it is also philosoph
ically demonstrable that goodness or love is the essen
tial principle and the ultimate end of the universe.
How God is love, not only in antecedent nature but in
the actuality of self-fulfilment in the world, may be
readable too in nature, after the light thrown upon
it by Christianity, but in fact it is known in its
reality only in Christ. Love is no more in God than in
us an abstract disposition or affection. All the love
we know is in concrete relations and the forms of affec
tion determined by the character of those relations.
Human love is marital, parental, filial, etc. out to the
wider and widest forms of national, racial, and human
affinity and affection. The concrete form in which
alone we can know God as love is expressed by our
designation of Him as eternal Father. That gives
shape and definiteness to not only our conception, but
the reality itself of His relation to us and ours to Him,
and no less of how that relation is to be fulfilled. The
full reality of fatherhood comes about in actuality only
in the full realization of sonship, and that therefore
The Trinity 283
must be God s meaning and end for all that is in the
universe of His self-expression. We begin so to antici
pate the truth that is to be expressed in such statements
as that God has foreordained or predestined us to
sonship through Jesus Christ unto Himself, that God
has foreordained us to be conformed to the image of
His Son, and many others to the same effect. But
before we come to these unfoldings of the divine nature
and purpose, let us reflect upon the following ante
cedent truth.
The beginning of all distinction between a panthe
istic and a theistic conception of the world lies in recog
nizing the world as the expression, not of God Himself
or, as we say, " of His substance," but of His
Logos, His Thought, Will, Word. The Logos of God,
then, is not God (6 0e6s) ; we distinguish Him. And
yet certainly the Logos is God (fc6i) ; we identify Him.
Moreover, when once we have conceived and accepted
God as eternal Father, we are in position to assume
that the Logos, not merely as the principle of the divine
self-expression but as God Himself self-expressed,
must manifest Himself universally as Son or in sonship ;
since universal and everlasting Sonship is the only self-
expression of eternal and essential Fatherhood.
The first constituent, therefore, of the Gospel is the
fact in itself of the divine Love in Fatherhood. The
second is, the equal fact in itself of the actualization
of the divine Fatherhood in creature or, definitely,
in human Sonship. The love of the Father fulfils
and manifests itself in the grace of the Son. Love is
grace potentid; Grace is love actu, just as Fatherhood
284 The Gospel of the Person
itself is Sonship potential, and Sonship is Fatherhood
actualized. When we have once seen all humanity
perfected as son in Jesus Christ, it is not hard to see in
Him the whole creation so perfected in man as its head
and as heir of its destiny. And then still less hard is
it to see how we could never have known God as Father
if He had not so fulfilled and manifested Himself as Son.
The hesitation and reluctance to see all God, and
highest God, not only in the humanity but in the deepest
human humiliation of Jesus Christ, is part of the dis
position to measure exaltation by outward circum
stance and condition instead of by inward quality and
character. We find it impossible to recognize or ac
knowledge God in the highest act of His highest attri
bute. We cannot listen to the thought that it is with
God as it is with us, that it only is with us because it is
with God, that self-humiliation is self-exaltation. Not
only in this way do we refuse to know God Himself as
love, but we refuse to understand the universe as love.
If we would but surrender our reason as well as our
heart and will to God in Christ, we should cease to
prate as we do of the mystery and the incomprehensi
bility of things. We could see how our Lord could say
of the cross itself, Father, the hour is come. Glorify
thy Son, that the Son may glorify thee. We lose thus
the supreme lesson of human experience: Not merely
to conjecture that somehow good is the final goal of ill;
but to know by actual trial just how the supremest ills
are the necessary steps to the highest goods. As St.
Paul says, the cross of Christ is foolishness and a
stumbling block only to the earthly wise and the self-
The Trinity 285
righteous. To them that are saved, or are ever so
little being saved, it is the wisdom of God and the power
of God. To know God in Jesus Christ is to know the
divine Logos, through whom alone God is knowable.
It is to know him, not in His inferior activities of phys
ical creation, nor yet in His higher capacity of lawgiver
and law in a world of intelligent reason and free will.
Rather is it to know Him in the act and process of that
self-communication of love, grace, and fellowship, which
is the basis and condition of the only real knowledge.
The third constituent of the Gospel is the fact in
itself of the fellowship of the Spirit. Truly, our fellow
ship is with the Father and with His Son Jesus Christ.
The possibility or potentiality of such a real unity and
community with God must exist somehow beforehand
in our nature as spirit, or in the natural relation of our
finite spirits to the Father of spirits. But the actuality
of spiritual relation or intercommunication which we
call fellowship is no fact of nature but an act or inter
action of spirits. It is not for us to say how, theoreti
cally, spirit can act upon spirit; all that we can do is to
understand how, practically and actually, spirit does
act upon spirit. The most perfect expression of the
actual action of the divine upon the human spirit is
contained in the words, The Spirit beareth witness
with our spirit, that we are the sons of God. Let us
assume the objectivity or truth in itself of the eternal
Fatherhood that is to say, not only Father-relation
but Father- spirit, love, will, purpose or predestination,
etc. of God in Himself. Let us also assume the
objective reality as matter of fact of all that we have
286 The Gospel of the Person
claimed to have happened in Jesus Christ: viz., that in
Him as Logos God revealed Himself in the universe,
and that in Him as Son God fulfilled Himself in hu
manity. In other words, let us assume that all that
God is in Himself as Father has evolved itself through
nature and man in the universal and everlasting Son-
ship realized in Jesus Christ; God in Christ as Son is
actu all that He is potentia in Himself as Father. When
we have assumed all that body of objective truth the
truth in itself of the Father and the Son what remains
still to make it the Gospel to ourselves ? Undoubtedly
something remains. All the reality in the universe can
be no Gospel to us so long as it remains objective, or
until it enters into living relation with ourselves. Of
course, it can never so enter unless there is in us the
natural potentiality of entering into relation with it.
But equally certainly that potentiality can only be
actualized by ourselves. What is necessary within
ourselves to give effect to all that is true without us is a
corresponding response, or a response of correspond
ence, on our part. That correspondence is, I repeat, not
a fact of natural relationship, but an act of spiritual
communication or self-impartation. When the Spirit
bears witness with our spirit, that we are sons of God,
it is not only God who communicates the gracious
fact, but it is God who awakens the humble and grate
ful response, and puts it into our heart to say, Abba,
Father. If we cannot thus know God subjectively in
ourselves, we cannot know God objectively in Jesus
Christ. And if we cannot know Him in His Word
and by His Spirit, we cannot know Him at all.
The Trinity 287
As we can know the eternal and universal Sonship
incarnate in Jesus Christ only in the perfection of the
human sonship realized in Him in other words, as
we can know the Word or Son of God only in the man
Christ Jesus, so we can know the Spirit of God only in
ourselves or in our own spirit. We cannot know any
spirit other than our own otherwise than through a
certain oneness or identity of it with our own. There
must be both an inter-penetration of the two as dis
tinct and the identification of them as one. Hence the
common demand upon men to be of one spirit. What
a subject of reflection then, and of realization or actual
ization, is there for us in the fact of our fellowship, our
participation, with the Father and the Son in the unity
and identity oi a common Spirit. It is in this eternal
Spirit that God Himself is God and is Love. It was
in this eternal Spirit that the whole creation in humanity
offered itself without spot to God in the person of Jesus
Christ; and in that consummate act fulfilled His rela
tion to it through realizing its own relation with Him.
It is through this eternal Spirit, which is God s and
Christ s and ours, that we pass from ourselves into
Christ and through Christ into God.
We have seen that there could have been no Gospel
of God to us except one of objective Word and sub
jective Spirit. All life is defined as internal correspond
ence with external environment. We saw, I think,
long ago that as it is the function of the divine Word
aptare Deum homini, so is it that of the divine Spirit
aptare hominem Deo. On the same line we may say,
that as eternal life is given to us in Jesus Christ to be
288 The Gospel of the Person
received, so is it given to us by the Holy Ghost to re
ceive the life. Our Lord said of the promised Spirit,
that its function should be to bring us to Him. There
would be nothing to which to come if there were no
objective fact and gift of life, there would be no coming
to the life if there were no subjective preparing for and
drawing to the life. How then finally does the Spirit
fit us for Christ and fit us to Christ ? It is the act and
operation of the Spirit, first, that from the beginning,
though yet a very far off, we can already know Christ
as our own. That is the power of faith, which lives
by God s Word and takes what that says as though it
were. To faith Jesus Christ is the divine, not only
revelation but reality of itself from the beginning of the
foreknowledge of God in the eternity of the past to the
end of the predestination of God in the eternity of
the future. To faith Jesus Christ is all the eternal love,
the all-sufficient grace, the perfect fellowship or one
ness-with-it of God, which is salvation ex parte Dei
or salvailo salvans; and no less in Jesus Christ the
perfection of our own faith, hope, and love, our own
holiness, righteousness, and life, our own death to sin,
and our own life to God, which is salvation ex parte
hominis or salvatio salvata. The Spirit thus brings
us first to a perfect correspondence of faith with the
fact of our life of God in Christ. But just because
faith means life, that is, knows, desires, wills, and in
tends it therefore it is it. God already imputes, as
He will impart, and faith already appropriates, as it
will possess, the life which is so believed in. So be
lieving in it we have it already in faith, and as surely
The Trinity 289
shall have it at last in fact. Attuned to Christ by the
anticipatory spell of faith, hope, and love, we shall be
by a natural process of spiritual assimilation trans
formed into His likeness in act, character, and life,
until coming to see Him perfectly as He is we shall be
wholly what He is.
It has not been my object to add to the solution of the
speculative problem of the Trinity. I have only aimed
to show practically and spiritually that if at all we are
to know and worship God in reality as our God, we
must do so as Christianity has always done in
Trinity. We must worship God in the Father, and
the Son, and the Holy Ghost. Because God is, and
is operative for us, not alone in one but in all these.
We cannot but distinguish the Three; it is only in the
completeness of their threefold operation that we can
perfectly know the One.
for tbe Clergy
EDITED BY
THE REV. ARTHUR W. ROBINSON, D.D.
VICAR OF ALLHALLOWS BAEKIKQ BY THE TOWER
Crown 8vo. price $0.90 net per Volume. By mail, $0.96.
THK purpose of the writers of this Series is to present in a clear and attract
ive way the responsibilities and opportunities of the Clergy of to-day, and
to offer such practical guidance, in regard both to aims and to methods, a*
experience may have shown to be valuable. It is hoped that the Series, while
primarily intended for those who are already face to face with the duties
and problems of the ministerial office, may be of interest and assistance also
to others who are considering the question of entering into Holy Orders.
THE PERSONAL LIFE OF THE CLERGY. By the EDITOR.
" It is a short book, but it covers a wide field. Every line of it tells, and
it is excellent reading. Not the least valuable part of the book are the ex
tremely apt and striking quotations from various writers of eminence, which
are placed in the form of notes at the end of the chapters. It is emphatically
a book for both clergy and laity to buy and study." Church Times.
" We are grateful for a little book which will be of service to many priests,
young and old. We need more priests, and such a book may well increase
their number by explaining the nature of the life to which a vocation to
Holy Orders calls men ; but we need still more that priests should realize
the life to which they are called and pledged ; and this thy can hardly fail
to do if they listen to Mr. Robinson s prudent and tender counsels." Church
Quarterly Review.
PATRISTIC STUDY. By the Rev. H. B. SWETE, D.D., Regius
Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge.
"The whole of the work which this little volume contains is most admir
ably done. Sufficient is told about the personal history of the fathers to
make the study of their writings profitable." Church Quarterly Review.
"This is an admirable little guide-book to wide study by one who well
knows how to guide. It is sound and learned, and crammed full of infor
mation, yet pleasant in style and easy to understand." Pall Mall Gazette.
THE MINISTRY OF CONVERSION. By the Rev. A. J. MASOW,
D.D. , Master of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and Canon of Canterbury.
" It will be found most valuable and interesting." Guardian.
"Canon Mason has given a manual that should be carefully studied by
all, whether clergy or laity, who have in any way to share in the Ministry
of Conversion by preaching, by parochial organization, or by personal in
fluence." Scottish Guardian.
FOREIGN MISSIONS. By the Right Rev. H. H. MONTGOMERY,
D.D., formerly Bishop of Tasmania, Secretary of the Society for the
Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts.
" Bishop Montgomery s admirable little book. . . . Into a limited compass
he has compressed the very kind of information which gives one an adequate
impression of the spirit which pervades a religion, of what is its strength
and weakness, what its relation to Christianity, what the side upon which
it must be approached." Church Quarterly Review.
Handbooks for the Clergy continued.
Crown 8vo., price $0.90 net per Volume.
THE STUDY OF THE GOSPELS. By the Very Rev. J.
ARMITAGE ROBINSON, D.D., Dean of Westminster.
" The little book on the Gospels, which the new Dean of Westminster has
recently published, is one to be warmly commended alike to clergy and laity.
Any intelligent person who takes the trouble to work through this little
volume of 150 pages will be rewarded by gaining from it as clear a view of
the synoptic problem as is possible without prolonged and independent
study of the sources." The Pilot (London).
A CHRISTIAN APOLOGETIC. By the Very Rev. WILFORD L.
BOBBINS, Dean of the General Theological Seminary, New York.
" We recommend this handbook with confidence as a helpful guide to those
clergy and teachers who have thoughtful doubters to deal with, and who
wish to build safely if they build at all." Church of Ireland Gazette.
PASTORAL VISITATION. By the Rev. H. E. SAVAGE, M.A.,
Vicar of Halifax and Hon. Canon of Durham.
"This is an excellent book." Spectator.
AUTHORITY IN THE CHURCH. By the Very Rev. T. B. STRONG,
D.D., Dean of Christ Church.
"This is a valuable and timely book, small in bulk, but weighty both in
style and substance. . . . The Dean s essay is an admirable one, and is well
calculated to clear men s minds in regard to questions of very far-reaching
importance. Its calm tone, and its clear and penetrating thought are alike
characteristic of the author, and give a peculiar distinction to everything he
writes. " Guardian.
THE STUDY OP ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY. By the Right
Rev. W. E. COLLINS, D.D., Bishop of Gibraltar.
" We think that this is one of the best things on historical method that has
ever been written. We are aure that it is the best we have ever read. . . . We
nope that the book will be widely used ; it ought to be given to all under
graduates reading for historical honours." Athenaeum.
RELIGION AND SCIENCE. By the Rev. P. N. WAGGETT, M.A.,
of the Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley.
" The main result of this remarkable book is to present the clergy, for
whom it is intended primarily (but we hope by no means entirely, for it
should appeal even more forcibly to the other camp, to the professors than
to the preachers), with a point of view." Church Times.
LAY WORK AND THE OFFICE OF READER. By the Right
Rev. HUYSHE YEATMAN-BIGGS, D.D., Bishop of Worcester.
" A wise and valuable little book. Bishop Yeatman-Biggs knows what he
is writing about ; he has packed into a small space all that most people
could desire to learn ; and he has treated it with sense and soberness, though
never with dullness." Church of Ireland Gazette.
CHURCH MUSIC. By A. MADELEY RICHARDSON, Mus. Doc.,
Organist of Southwark Cathedral.
" Probably scarcely a clergyman in the country would fail to benefit by
Dr. Richardson s fifth and sixth chapters on the clergymen s part of the
church services. Throughout the little book its earnestness and its thought-
fulness for the reader command respect." Record.
INTEMPERANCE. By the Right Rev. H. H. PEREIRA, D.D.,
Bishop of Croydon.
ELEMENTARY SCHOOLS. By the Rev. W. FOXLEY NORRIS,
M.A., Rector of Barnsley, and Hon. Canon of Wakefield.
CHARITABLE RELIEF. By the Rev. CLEMENT F. ROGERS, M.A.
" One of the most practical books of the Series." The Living Church.
THE LEGAL POSITION OF THE CLERGY. By PHILIP VERNOW
SMITH, M.A., LL.D., Chancellor of the Diocese of Manchester.
<&rfdr& ^library of practical
Edited by the Rev. W. C. E. NEWBOLT, M.A., Canon and Chancellor of St.
Paul s ; and the Rev. LD AR WELL STONE, M. A., Librarian of the Pusey House,
Oxford.
Price, $1.40 net per Volume. By mail, $1.50
RELIGION. By the Rev. W. C. E. NEWBOLT, M.A., Canon and
Chancellor of St. Paul s.
" The Oxford Library of Practical Theology makes a good beginning with
Canon Newbolt s volume on religion. . . . The publishers have spared no
pains in making the appearance of the volume as attractive as possible. The
binding, type, and general get up of the volume just issued leave nothing to
be desired." Guardian.
HOLY BAPTISM. By the Rev. DARWELL STONE, M.A.,
Librarian of the Pusey House, Oxford.
"Few books on Baptism contain more thoughtful and useful instruction on
the rite, and we give Mr. Stone s effort our highest approval. It might well be
mode a text-book for candidates for the diaconate, or at least in theological
colleges. As a book for thought ul laymen it is also certain to find a place."
Church Times.
CONFIRMATION. By the Right Rev. A. C. A. HALL, D.D.,
Bishop of Vermont.
" To the parochial clergy this volume may be warmly commended. They will
find it to be a storehouse of material for their instruction, aud quite the beat
treatise that we have on the subject it treats. It is thoroughly practical, and
gives exactly the kind of teaching that is wanted." Guardian.
THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON PRAYER. By
the Rev. LEIGHTON PULLAN, M.A., Fellow of St. John Baptist s College,
Oxford.
" Mr. Pullan s book will no doubt have, as it deserves to have, a large number
of readers, and they will gain a great deal from the perusal of it. It may be
certainly recommended to the ordinary laymen as by far the best book on the
subject available." Pilot (London).
HOLY MATRIMONY. By the Rev. W. J. KNOX LITTLE, M.A.,
Canon of Worcester.
"Canon Knox Little has given us a most exhaustive treatise on Holy Matri
mony written in his best and happiest style, and giving ample proofs of wide
research and deep study of the various subjects, and the essential character
istics of Christian marriage. . . . We would strongly advise the clergy to place
this work upon their shelves as a book of reference, while it forms a complete
manual of instruction to aid them in the preparation of addresses on the sub
ject." Church Bells.
THE INCARNATION. By the Rev. H. V. S. ECK, M.A.,
Rector of St. Matthew s, Bethnal Green.
" The teaching is sound, and the book may be placed with confidence in the
hands of candidates for Orders of intelligent and educated lay people who de
sire fuller instruction on the central doctrines of the Faith than can be provided
in sermons." Guardian.
FOREIGN MISSIONS. By the Right Rev. E.T. CHURTON, D.D.,
formerly Bishop of Nassau.
"We welcome Bishop Churton s book as an authoritative exposition of the
modern High Church view of Missions. It is good for us all to understand It,
thereby we shall be saved alike from uninstructed admiration and indiscrimi
nate denunciation." Church Missionary Intelligencer.
PRAYER. By the Rev. ARTHUR JOHN WORLLEDGE, M.A.,
Canon and Chancellor of Truro.
" We do not know of any book about prayer which is equally useful ; and we
anticipate that it will be a standard work for, at any rate, a considerable
time." Pilot.
Oxford Library of Practical Theology. continued.
SUNDAY. By the Rev. W. B. THEVELYAN, M.A., Vicar of St.
Matthew s, Westminster.
"An extremely useful contribution to a difficult and important subject,
and we are confident it will rank high in the series to which it belongs.
Guardian.
THE CHRISTIAN TRADITION. By the Kev. LEIGHTON PUL-
LAN, M.A., Fellow of St. John Baptist s College, Oxford.
** This book contain* an account of the origin of Episcopacy, the three Oreedt,
the Ancient Western Liturgies and other institutions of the Church. Special atten
tion is also given to the early history of Sacramental Confession and to the principle
of Authority in the Church of England.
BOOKS OF DEVOTION. By the Eev. CHARLES BODINGTON,
Canon and Treasurer of Ldchfield.
" Extremely valuable for its high tone, fidelity to Catholic standards, and
powerful advocacy of reality in private devotion. To those who have never
studied the subject, it should reveal a mine of devotional wealth, yet to be
worked with profit to man and glory to God." Chvrch Times.
HOLY RDERS. By the Rev. A. R. WHITHAM, M.A., Principal
of Culham College, Abingdon.
" For the educated layman who wishes to know what the Church is teach
ing about the minstry, and what the relation of the laity to it really is, thig
is the best book with which we have met." Pilot (London).
THE CHURCH CATECHISM THE CHRISTIAN S MANUAL.
By the Rer. W. C. E. NEWBOLT, M. A., Canon and Chancellor of St. Paul a.
" We think the book should be in the possession of every teacher who can
afford it, and in every Church Library for the benefit of those who cannot.
The Header and Layworker.
THE HOLY COMMUNION. By the Rev. DARWELL STONE,
M.A., Librarian of the Pusey House, Oxford.
" The book meets a distinct want, and is indispensable to all (and surely
they are very many) who desire to have a concise and well-balanced sum
mary of the different opinions which have been held with regard to the
Holy Communion from the earliest days of the Church." Oxford Diocesan
Magazine.
CHURCH WORK. By the Rev. BERNARD REYNOLDS, M.A.,
Prebendary of St. Paul s.
" What is needed is a bright and sensibly written book which will suggest
topics for consideration and the way in which a Christian should view them.
The book before us fulfils these conditions. It is stimulating and sugges
tive, and that is exactly what is wanted." Guardian.
CHURCH AND STATE IN ENGLAND. By the Rev. W. H.
ABRAHAM, D.D., Vicar of St. Augustine s,;Hull.
OUR LORD S RESURRECTION. By the Rev. W. J. SPARROW-
SIMPSON, M.A., Chaplain of St. Mary s Hospital, Ilford.
RELIGIOUS CEREMONIAL. By the Rev. WALTER HOWARD
FRERE, M.A., of the Community of the Resurrection, Examining-
Chaplain to the Bishop of Rochester.
VOLUMES IN PREPARATION-.
THE BIBLE. By the Rev. DARWELL STONE, M.A.
OLD TESTAMENT CRITICISM. By the Very Rev. HENRY
WACE, D.D., Dean of Canterbury.
NEW TESTAMENT CRITICISM. By the Rev. R. J. Know-
LINQ, D.D., Professor of Divinity and Ecclesiastical HUtory in the Uni
versity of Durham.
LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO., New York
I
