New Testament Christianity

CHAPTER I.

INTRODUCTORY.

A NUMBER of phrases are in current use to distinguish what in the New Testament itself is significantly called "the Faith" from modern teaching and practice where these differ from that Faith. In addition to "New Testament Christianity," there are "Primitive Christianity," "Apostolic Christianity," and "Christianity as at the First." There is also the fuller formula, "The Faith and Practice of the Church of Christ as perfected by the Apostles."

Sometimes the propriety of all these is called in question. It is asked, "Why speak of Primitive, or Apostolic, or New Testament Christianity? What other Christianity, properly so-called, is there? If you say, for example, Primitive Christianity, you imply the existence of another Christianity, that is, Modern Christianity. But anything of modern origin is not Christianity. Far better drop the epithets and simply say 'Christianity,' discarding everything else which bears the name as not entitled to be called Christianity at all."

There is much weighty truth in the position just stated. Our situation is much like the Apostle Paul's, when, speaking of "a different gospel" than the Gospel he preached, he added, "which is not another." So, no doubt, when we speak of Modern as compared with Primitive Christianity, it is to be insisted on, that, as far as the former is a different Christianity, it is not really Christianity, but a perversion of it, by alteration of, addition to, or subtraction from the only Christianity which is properly so called.

Even the dictionaries give very little liberty to include under the name "Christianity" anything not sanctioned by Him whom Christendom calls Master and Lord.

Thus the Standard Dictionary defines Christianity as "1. The doctrines and teachings of Jesus, the Christian Religion. 2. The state of being a Christian, or of living in conformity with the teaching of Jesus Christ. 3. [Eng.] Ecclesiastical Jurisdiction, as, a court of Christianity." Thus, except for that third item, which is marked off as local, the word is defined as denoting that which comes from Christ, and nothing else.

Now, if the word "Christianity" were really and invariably so used, we might gladly dispense with these objectionable adjectives, Primitive, Apostolic, New Testament, and the like. But we find it in use, in a loose way, to cover and name all that passes for Christianity.

We agree that words which are used in the New Testament for the Faith, or any element of it, should be employed in their New Testament sense, especially by those seeking to restore Christianity as at the first. This should be done even when such words are often used loosely, or in a sense differing from that of the New Testament. But the word "Christianity" is not a New Testament word, and it seems only necessary to define the sense in which we here employ it. This we do by prefixing the limiting words, "New Testament." The Christianity for which we here contend in opposition to whatever else is popularly so called is the Christianity authorized by Christ and presented in the New Testament.

We admit that, as popularly used, the word "Christianity" often includes more in many directions, and sometimes less in other directions, than is authorized by Christ. Amid this varied mixture commonly called Christianity, we would lay down the discriminating principle, "What Christ taught, instituted, or authorized, can be learned from the New Testament, and from no other source; hence of all that mass of teaching, and of institutions, which disfigure Christendom today, we distinguish as Christianity strictly so called that which is sanctioned by the New Testament.

We now pass from defining our theme, to dwell, in the remainder of this introductory chapter, on its importance.

"Christianity is Christ." This is the title of a recent book which gives the substance of a great many recent books bearing on the definition and defence of Christianity. To these books additions are being constantly made. The trend of many minds is to the position that Christ Himself is the substance and the sole authority of Christianity.

Now, it is obvious what an emphasis is this placed on the New Testament. By common consent this small volume contains all that is certainly known about Jesus Christ. To learn His character, His work on earth, and His teaching there is no other authentic record to which any one can refer. Many think the portraiture of Christ contained in the Gospels proves the writers to have been supernaturally helped in their writing; but even if this is not accepted, the fact remains that her and in the "Acts of Apostles" and the "Epistles" is the only historical account of the Beginning of Christianity, the only record which shows what Christ was and what He authorized.

One of the additions just made to the literature which presents Christ as central to Christianity - "Faith's Certainties," by R.J. Drummond, D.D. - has a chapter entitled, "The Primary Record of Christianity - the New Testament." That chapter has a weighty beginning, as follows: "Every one knows where to turn if he wishes to learn what Christianity really is. Every one knows where to point an inquirer. The New Testament is the record of Christianity, the indispensable document for acquiring first-hand knowledge of what it is in germ, essence, and perfection."

This position, which sends us to the New Testament as containing all that is essential to Christianity, and, indeed, all that is properly called Christianity at all, is most grateful to us, because it does honour to the book only that it may do primary honour to the author of Christianity, Jesus the Christ. By means of the book we get back to the Person - Christ; and find in Him, and the teaching He authorized, the Christianity which is Christianity indeed.

But it is further grateful to us because in reality it is not practically different from the position taken by Protestantism when it refers to the Bible as the religion of Protestants, and assures us of the alone-sufficiency of Holy Scripture; as, for instance, in the sixth article of the Church of England: "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation: so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of the faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."

No contradiction is involved in accepting the whole Bible and yet regarding the New Testament as the final source of our knowledge of Christianity in its essence and perfection. In giving a preparatory character to the Old Testament we simply follow the lead of the Scriptures themselves. No one who takes the New Testament as giving the teaching of Christ can deny, or desire to deny, the divine origin of the Old Testament and the Mosaic Dispensation of religion. But what is divinely given is, in a certain sense, divinely removed. Thus we read in Scripture, "The priesthood being changed, there is made of necessity a change also of the law." The position, CHRIST PRE-EMINENT AND FINAL, is involved in those eloquent opening words of the Epistle to the Hebrews: "God having of old time spoken unto the fathers in the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, hath at the end of these days, spoken unto us in His Son."

While, then, the New Testament itself teaches us that the Old Testament dispensations and arrangements were of divine origin, it also teaches us that the Old has given place to the New, and is no longer in force.

At the same time, there can be no mistaking the position taken up by Christ and His Apostles as to the finality of the Christianity the New Testament reveals and records. The word "Christianity" does not occur, but what we here mean by "New Testament Christianity" is expressed by such summary expressions as "the Word," "the Truth," "the Gospel," and "the Faith." We may recall what Paul says of the Gospel: "But though we, or an angel from heaven, should preach unto you any gospel other than that which ye received, let him be anathema"; and Jude's well-known description of the Faith as "the faith once for all delivered to the saints."

Commenting on these pregnant words form Jude, the Rev. Alfred Plummer, M.A., D.D., says: "No other will be given, for there is no other. Whatever may be delivered in future cannot be a gospel at all. The one true Gospel is complete and final, and admits of no successors and no supplements."

It being accepted that "the faith once for all delivered" is the only religion in the world today having Divine authority, two consequences follow:

The obligation fearlessly to refuse submission to any other form of religion:
the true nobility of fearing to refuse obedience to that religion Divinely given.

There arises, then, from the presence of New Testament Christianity, two kinds of fear - one ignoble, and the other noble.

Ignoble Fear.

When men are seeking to exercise over us improper authority, it is ignoble to fear to refuse submission. Such fear is degrading, and sacrifices that human liberty which is our birthright, without which human life loses its high value and character; such fear sacrifices that freedom which, as Cowper says, is "Cheap when blood-bought: thrown away when sold."

It is a conviction that accompanies religion everywhere and in every age that the only proper authority is God. "Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve," is the dictum, not of the New Testament only, but of all religious consciousness. It is accordingly equally a universal conviction that, in religion, to bow to any authority but God's is to accept slavery and to yield the very citadel of our manhood.

No more exalted examples of true courage are afforded by the history of humanity than are found in those cases where men, for conscience toward God, have refused that obedience to man which they knew to be due to God only.

One of the most thrilling and ennobling features of the Old Testament is its record of the sufferings for conscience sake of those who have been well-named "the Hebrew Nonconformists." Typical of them are the heroic three who were sure their God was able to deliver them, but who said that, whether it pleased Him to deliver them or not: "Be it known unto thee, O King, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up."

Add the even more numerous instances of fearless refusal during the Christian era. This era began, as we saw, with the establishment of a divinely revealed and authorized Faith! Alas! men soon began to adulterate that pure fountain - there came a great apostasy. But, from the Apostolic age onwards, there was a constant succession of believers in Christ, who refused to submit to what were but the teachings and commandments of men. That stream of heroic resistance to human authority in religion became greatly strengthened at the Reformation.

Thank God, that stream has continued to increase. It is a long stretch from Luther at Worms, saying, "I cannot do otherwise, so help me, God," to Fairbairn saying at Westminster, "We will not submit," but the principle and spirit are the same.

Thus in all ages humanity manifests the same consciousness that to yield to man, out of an ignoble fear of human power, what it due to God only, is to accept a slavery, the chains of which degrade and bind - what ordinary slavery cannot touch - the higher spiritual nature.

Now, accepting the divine origin of New Testament Christianity, and regarding all additions to it as merely human, with the heroes of faith above referred to, we must hold it an unworthy fear which would deter us from rejection of human traditions and from refusal to give reverence to any faith but that once for all delivered to the saints.

Noble Fear.

There is the other side, however. We need only remind ourselves her that in all our conduct to fear to do wrong is more becoming and manly than the false courage that violates conscience. The truth is expressed in the words:

"I dare do all that may become a man:

Who dares do more is none."

Hence in Scripture "the fear of the Lord" is not only extolled as "the beginning of wisdom," but also regarded as in harmony with man's noblest self. The Puritans were fearless in their opposition to men because they feared God. No man need think he is cultivating a sentiment less than the noblest when he acts from fear of God.

It is true that "perfect love casteth out fear." But that is a fear we do not here speak of - the fear that has torment. The fear that "trembleth at God's word" also knows God's love, and is as full of joy as of reverence. Those who have this fear of God can fulfil the Psalmist's exhortation and "rejoice with trembling."

The Epistle to the Hebrews presses this aspect of a proper fear upon us. After describing in chapter i. the great Speaker of this, the final, dispensation, we are asked in chapter ii. how we can hope to escape punishment if we neglect to hear Him. It is urged that our condemnation is greater, and sorer, than was theirs who set at nought the Law of Moses. How shall we escape if we neglect so great salvation? Escape, it is implied, is less likely because of the gracious character of the Revelation through the Son. Is this not obviously the right view?

We conclude, therefore that as New Testament Christianity, and it alone, has divine authority, while no fear should be ours in rejecting all humanisms in religion, even though mistakenly named Christianity, we shall be wise and true to our noblest manhood if we fear to neglect New Testament Christianity.

In this endeavour briefly to define, and show the importance of, New Testament Christianity, we have pointed out that it alone has Christ's authority, and it alone can be obeyed implicitly by us without loss of manliness, and that, rather, fear to refuse obedience is the truest form of courage. But we plead not only the authority but the perfection of New Testament Christianity as a powerful claim which is possesses upon our regard and upon our joyful, practical acceptance.

In the chapters which follow, considering in detail the great features of the Faith, one by one, this perfect adaptation to our need is, we hope, made manifest; but meantime we state the claim upon the general ground that we admit Christianity to be of divine origin. If the Faith, and it only, is from God, then it must be adapted to man's need. This will be felt to be emphatically a necessary conclusion, especially in view of the frequent claim of Christ to be a Saviour, one who came for the very purpose of meeting man's spiritual needs.

If, then Christianity as delivered once for all was perfect, it follows that any change, whether in the way of addition or subtraction, must mar that perfect adaptation. Suppose an invalid who had, like the woman in the Gospels, tried many physicians, and is not benefited, but rather has become worse. Suppose this invalid to hear of some physician with a remedy for his disease. The physician is sent for, gives instructions and supplies the medicine, saying that it is just the thing required. But let us further suppose that the invalid, perhaps not liking its taste, alters the medicine, and does not recover. Who would be to blame? If the physician was told that his prescription had been added to, or some ingredient left out, or his instructions not followed, he would surely say, that if his remedy was perfectly suited to the case, the alterations must have rendered it unsuitable!

That it how the case stands as between New Testament Christianity and any other so-called Christianity, consisting of "the Faith," or part of the Faith, and some human additions to it. To the extent of the change, it is less suited than the unadulterated and undiminished "word of the truth of the Gospel" to meet the needs of mankind.

This illustration is commended by the fact that Jesus chose the figure of a physician by which to describe His relation to man's need, and at many points the analogy helps us to feel the importance of not altering His remedy. It often happens that a patient may claim to have enough knowledge of his own physical nature to judge of the means prescribed by his physicians; but in the case of the divine Physician, who can claim to know our need and what is required as fully as He does? On the other hand, a patient is often quite ignorant of his body and its ills, but he knows that if the doctor understands the case, and he in faith follows his instructions, the cure will come, as surely as it would if the patient understood the case himself! Now that is how we stand with the great Physician. It is for the divine Physician to give instructions; ours to receive these in faith and act upon them. As His knowledge if perfect, we must assume His arrangements are so too; and as our knowledge is limited, although we shall be more intelligently appreciative where we know that he is right, any criticism or alteration made by us is manifestly at once conceited and injurious.

In thus presenting our argument we do not wish to suggest that the Christianity of Christ is fully seen under the figure of the physician. Christianity is adapted to man both as a sinner and as man - it is food as well as medicine. Perhaps no figure fully sets its resources forth, but our illustration will show the nature of the reason from perfect adaptability, and it will be found to be applicable to all the elements of the Faith, whether viewed under some figure or quite literally in themselves. This conclusion is confirmed from experience. We think that if the principal changes which were made in New Testament Christianity by admixture of Judaism, philosophy, and priestism were examined, it would be found that in every instance the original is the better. That thoughtful men realize this to be the case is the motive of all those reformatory movements which have sought to get back to the Christianity of Christ.

Here, however, we do not wish to enter into details. Paul once said, "Let God be found true, but every man a liar." The saying looks unfair on the surface, but is reasonable to the last degree in such a connection as that in which he uses it. And the reason we now give for preferring Christianity as at the first is similar. In Romans, the point is, that if a man says he is not, and God says he is, a sinner, it is more likely that the man has made a wrong estimate than that God has done so. In like manner, if a man says, for example, that the teaching of Rome about the Virgin Mary, and the place given to her, is a helpful addition to the New Testament Christianity, and that he finds the system of Rome better suited to him than the simple approach to God in Christ of the New Testament, we should think it more reasonable to conclude that that man had wrongly estimated his experience than that the Faith once delivered needed to be perfected by such human additions. The same conclusion follows in every case in which original Christianity has been altered by human wisdom. It is a case of "painting the lily."

CHAPTER II.

GOD.

IN the list of themes which go to make up an outline of New Testament Christianity few are likely to object if we decide to begin with God as the very foundation of all.

In saying so we do not forget that Christ began His instruction by asking, not, "Do you believe there is a personal God?" but, "What think ye of Me? Hence we have sympathy with a recent writer who, in view of the tendency, in our day especially, of abstract thought to find difficulties in reasoning out the existence of a personal God, preferred to begin with a question of history, and ask men to consider, first of all, the truth about Jesus Christ. He held that honest thought about Jesus Christ would lead them ultimately to believe in God.

It is a mistake, however, to think that Jesus began with His question, "What think ye of Me?" in order to lead those He taught to believe in God. Just the reverse of this is the truth. He began there because His hearers already believed in God as revealed in their Scriptures - what we now call the Old Testament. What He desired them to grasp was the truth, the fundamental truth, of His own teaching, namely, that He, Jesus, was "the Christ, the Son of the living God."

In beginning, then with the question about God, or rather the New Testament truth about Him, we are in absolute harmony with the fundamental truth in New Testament Christianity. That truth is, we repeat, the statement that "Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God." But it will be seen that the basal truth in this proposition is the existence of a personal God. It is clear, therefore, that not only is God fundamental to all religions, so that we must say with the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "he that cometh to God must believe that He is"; but it is specially fundamental to Christianity, for he that believes, as Christianity requires that Jesus is the Son of the living God, must first believe in the existence of character of this one true and living God.

A reality which meets us at every turn in considering all theses that constitute New Testament Christianity, is specially noticeable in its thought about God, and may be emphasized here. We refer to

The amount of Truth it assumes.

On almost every important subject there is a nucleus or kernel assumed as already understood and accepted. Our present theme exemplifies what is meant. The New Testament assumes, brings over, so to speak, from the Old Testament its assumption that "God is," and those great truths about His Personality, Character, and Work which are the principal contents of the Old Testament.

To dwell on these pre-suppositions here is not deemed wise or necessary, but we desire strongly to recommend the consideration of this feature of the New Testament Christianity and its bearing on the question of its perfection and completeness. The truth on this perfection and completeness evidently does not mean that it has not its roots in the soil of the Old Testament. It rather claims, on the one hand, to be understood in the light of the old truth; and, on the other, to complete and glorify that previous revelation.

Returning to our present subject, the definite article in the original of the New Testament often calls attention to the truth assumed concerning God. Thus the Gospel of John begins with, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with the God" - as if to say, "Observe, we take it for granted that you know about the God spoken of in our Scriptures." Similarly, Hebrews begins not simply "God," but the God who spake in divers portions and in divers, manners, in old time, to the fathers in the prophets hath at the end of these days spoken unto us by His Son.

Great as was the nucleus or germ this introduced and accepted from the past, the growth of this knowledge which "came through Jesus Christ" was greater. It completed and glorified the old.

In view of all this, our New Testament theology, using that word in its primary sense as meaning a discourse concerning God, may best be viewed in a three-fold division: (1) His Existence; (2) His Character as accepted; (3) The further Revelation of God made by Jesus Christ.

1. HIS EXISTENCE.

Neither in New Testament nor in Old is there any formal setting forth of the reasons for which we ought to believe that, to use the terse phrase of the Epistle to the Hebrews, "He is." In the New Testament the writers evidently assume the view of God contained in the Jewish Scriptures; and in the Old, it might almost be said that there, too, the existence of God is taken for granted. This seems done in the very first verse of the Bible, in the well-known words: "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

On reflection, however, this first verse of Genesis contains in it the very essence of what is presented in our modern "Evidences" as reasons for believing in the existence of the Supreme Being. There was no need to state that in the beginning was God; it was wise and impressive simplicity merely to tell what God did, and leave us in the possession, by necessary implication, at once of the idea that a God capable of creating the universe existed, and of the proof that He did so in the heavens and earth of which the existence and exercise of the power of God are demanded as the cause. It is easily seen, in reading the Old Testament, that this reliance on the proof which the universe and men's own consciousness afforded, was common to those who believed in God. One of the Psalm-writers in effect declares that the Creator must be Himself possessed of such personal powers as He has endowed man with, saying, "He that planted the ear, shall He not hear? He that formed the eye, shall he not see?"

The bringing over of this way of looking at the question into the New Faith is well seen in Paul's references to the subject. Thus, in restraining the heathen from worshipping them, Barnabas and Paul spoke of "the living God, who made the heaven and the earth and the sea, and all that is them is: who in the generations gone by suffered all the nations to walk in their own ways. And yet He left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful reasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness. And to the more learned Athenians Paul says: "the God that made the world and all things there, He, being Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands. .... Certain even of your own poets have said, For we also are His offspring. Being, then, the offspring of God, we ought not to think that the Godhead is like unto gold, or silver, or stone, graven by art of man's device."

Note especially the view implied here, much used today, that the Creator must possess personality, intelligence, feelings, and will, such as He has endowed His creatures with. But the Pauline passage which is likest our modern way of stating the case is that in Romans first. He maintains that only by "holding down the truth in unrighteousness," only by "refusing to have God in their knowledge," was it possible for men to be unaware of the existence of God and of His everlasting power and divinity. "Because," he writes, "that which may be known of God is manifest in them. For God manifested it unto them. For the invisible things of Him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even His everlasting power and divinity."

It is true that the proof of the existence of a Supreme Being is generally divided into separate sections, as, for example, those used by C.A. Row, M.A., which are as follows:-

The argument founded on the principle of causation.
That founded on the order of the universe.
That founded on its innumerable correlations and adaptations, commonly called the argument from final causes.
That furnished by conscience, and the moral nature of man. But in reality the three that follow are embraced in the first.

"Causation" here means that man is so made that he cannot help but think that every phenomenon or effect must have a cause. We sometimes say "adequate" cause. But the word is unnecessary, for what is not sufficient to account for an effect is not its cause at all. Observe this conviction - every phenomenon has its cause - is not one come to by a course of reasoning. It is a part of our very consciousness, and cannot be made surer by reasoning. It is nearer to us than any conclusion drawn out by reasoning. It is inherent in our nature, and if we cannot trust it, we cannot trust any reasoning, for all reasoning on all subjects is based upon it.

It matters not, then, whether it is the universe as a whole or the various signs of mind contained in its innumerable objects, such as order and adaptation, the argument is the same. The only cause which can account for what we see is a Great First Cause, itself uncaused. We may quote Mr. Herbert Spencer: "The assumption of the existence of a first cause of the universe is a necessity of thought." This First Cause the Bible calls God, and speaks of not as a thing, but as a Person.

We have referred to the principle of Bible writers that the powers which man possesses must be possessed by man's Creator - "He that planted the ear, shall he not hear?" We, being God's offspring, ought not to think of Him as like gold or other materials things. Now undoubtedly this, too, is one of the best things in modern "Evidences." Our human consciousness, rather than our reasoning, refuses to conceive that any nature we possess can be higher than that possessed by our Maker. Since, then, man has thought, desire, will, and personality, God must be at least such a Person, but, in view of His works, beyond all thought, greater in wisdom, holiness, and purpose. Creation may not prove Him to be infinite, but it is surely a sufficient index that he is so. "The everlasting God, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary, there is no searching of His understanding."

II. HIS NATURE AND CHARACTER, AS INTRODUCED INTO CHRISTIANITY FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT.

In reading the New Testament, it is evident that the writers build and rely upon the knowledge of God they had received from the Old Testament. Sometimes distinct reference is made to their Scripture statements, as when the Unity of God is in evidence. Thus Paul's words, "If so be that God is one," in Rom. iii., and James's statement, "Thou believest that God is one," in chapter iii. of his Epistle, are both of them references to Deut. vi. 4, "Hear, O Israel: the LORD our God is one LORD: and thou shalt love the LORD thy God, with all thine heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy might." He is repeatedly on Old Testament authority described as righteous and faithful, and also when it is said that He "is full of pity and merciful."

In brief, all that had been gradually revealed of The Name of God as God Almighty, Jehovah, the Holy One, the Lord of Hosts, in the Jewish Scriptures, is in the New Testament pre-supposed as the truth concerning the Nature and Character of God.

Many have spoken as if a contrast existed between God as portrayed in the Old Testament and in the New respectively. The view of His Character in the Old is said to be stern; in the New, mild and loving. This is a mistake, however, due, perhaps, to the fact that the stern aspect of His Character is in the Old more frequently presented than in the New, and to the transcendent manifestation of His love which is necessarily made only in the New, in the fulness of the time, and through the coming of the Son of God.

But so far as words, sincere and strong, can convey it, the loving character is affirmed again and again in the Old, and the stern aspect in the New. Thus the formula as announced to Moses in Exod. xxxiv. 6, "The LORD, the LORD, a God full of compassion and gracious, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy and truth," is reiterated, like the ringing of the bells of heaven, throughout the Old Testament Scriptures right up to Joel ii. 12, 13, where it is used most wooingly to persuade to repentance: "Yet even now, saith the LORD, turn ye unto Me with all your heart, and with fasting, and with weeping, and with mourning: and rend your heart and not your garments and turn unto the Lord your God: for He is gracious and full of compassion, slow to anger, and plenteous in mercy, and repenteth him of the evil."

On the other hand, the God of love and peace in the New Testament is one who punishes iniquity, a consuming fire, to fall into whose hands is a terrible thing. The Old Testament saints rejoice in forgiveness as an experienced fact, as, "Blessed are they whose iniquities are forgiven and whose sins are pardoned, blessed is the man unto whom the LORD doth not reckon sin." "Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits, who forgiveth all thine iniquities." On the other hand, the New Testament revelation of God's love did not prevent those who taught it from speaking of Him in language no less stern than that of the Old; did not prevent them from arguing that as, under the Law, God justly punished every transgression and disobedience; that as a man that set at nought Moses' Law dieth without compassion on due proof of guilt: so he that rejecteth, not law, but great salvation, shall be counted worthy of still sorer punishment.

There is, then no difference in the character attributed to the Divine Being; there is, it may be, a seeming difference due to the differing circumstances.

Another difficulty which many feel with God in the Old Testament, as His Character is made apparent by His treatment of men, is solved by the same consideration. Some of His deeds, for example, the command to offer up Isaac, and that to extirpate the Canaanites, do not always approve themselves to our conscience as right, not to speak of tenderness. The case resembles that of a father in the training of a child. The son, when he is full-grown, and in full fellowship with his father, may have momentary visions of former parental insistence on obedience even to enforcement by corporal chastisement. But he realizes that his father was probably just as tender than as now, and can easily believe that if he knew the details which led his father to punish him in his former immature condition, he would approve.

The principle involved in this is implied in Christ's words, in which He explained that the law of divorce was allowed under the Law "because of the hardening of their hearts" - it was the best that could be done in the circumstances. By the exercise, as far as we can, of the historic sense, transporting ourselves into the circumstances, we find much is seen to be the best for the moral advancement of the race, in the circumstances; and for the rest, we do not doubt it was so, though we may be unable to see it, so far removed as we are from the circumstances, and these only partially known to us.

It is clear the New Testament writers brought from these Old Testament narratives no unworthy views of God, and they quite escaped, as we have seen, the other extreme, of thinking of God, as seen in Christ, as deprived of the righteousness and firmness necessary to support His moral government. The Old Testament view of God was beautiful in its tenderness, sublime in its majesty, but it needed a stronger light - the light of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.

III. AS REVEALED IN CHRIST.

New Testament Christianity claims, as a feature of its own, to possess and present to mankind a special revelation of God. Not less than this can be understood by the statement of John i. 18: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared Him." Especially are we bound to conclude that it is the work of Jesus Christ to make God known, when we remember that in the verses which culminate in the statement quoted we have been told of Jesus Christ that he was, as the Word, with God, and was Himself God, that as the Word He was made flesh, became incarnate. We do not wonder that this unique Person, the Word that was God made flesh, is finally called the only begotten Son of God, and it is claimed for Him that He has declared the invisible God.

This ability to reveal God is one of the powers special to Himself, to which Jesus Christ referred. In the Gospel according to Matthew - some mistakenly think this kind of language is confined to John - Jesus is reported to have said: "All things have been delivered unto Me of My Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father; neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him." Fuller and more homely, but to the same effect, is the classical passage in John xiv.: "No one cometh unto the Father, but by Me. If ye had known Me, ye would have known My Father also: from henceforth ye know Him, and have seen Him. Philip saith unto Him, Lord, show us the Father, and it sufficeth us. Jesus saith unto Him, Have I been so long time with you, and dost thou not know Me, Philip? He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father."

In harmony with these statements the Epistles tell us that the Son of God was the "effulgence of God's glory, the very image of His substance," "the image of the invisible God"; expressions which describe Jesus Christ as presenting to men, in a higher measure and kind, the knowledge of God.

What was the special revelation of God made by Jesus Christ? There can be no doubt that he revealed God as Father and as love, though these two are one - the love is the Father's love. In the Gospels it is the term "Father," applied by Jesus so constantly and firmly to God, which arrests a reader fresh from reading in the Old Testament about God. It is an echo of the Gospels when Peter writes, "If ye call on God as Father," and his words, "God as Father," exactly describe what was peculiar in Christ's representation of God.

The expression "like as a father" is once applied to God in the Old Testament, and undoubtedly it is not simply the idea of Fatherhood we owe to Christ. His revelation is only understood when it is regarded, in distinction from mere words, as personal. There are fathers and fathers; and such Fatherhood as God's it was impossible to communicate by merely likening Him to the best of human fathers. So the revealer must be divine, as we have seen, and be able, as the unique Son of God, to show us the Father.

In like manner, in grasping the revealed LOVE of God, no progress is made so long as it is thought that Jesus simply announced that God is love, using the word "love" as it was understood before He spoke. It was not a verbal but a personal revelation He made. The personal revelation gave meaning to the verbal. No word can rise above its source. Before we can understand the significance of the word we must see, must experience, the reality for which it stands. This is the ground the New Testament - though without a word of philosophizing - occupies, in harmony with the profoundest philosophy. It refers in every instance, when it is meant to make known to us the measure of God's love, to the ACT OF GOD in sending, giving, sacrificing for us, the Son of His love. "Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins."

We may note, in closing, another remarkable feature of the view of the Supreme Being presented to us in the New Testament faith. As we have seen, the Unity of God was emphasized under the Old Testament dispensations. That Unity is maintained in the New, but an unexpected revelation appears in the New as to the nature of God's Unity. It is seen that His nature admits of Him acting as three Persons; for the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit are each spoken of as a Person and as God. This Unity is no doubt mysterious; but God in three Persons is more satisfying to the mind than the conception of a simple Unity, which would leave us to think of God existing without society and without love in eternity before Creation began. If God is Three in One, then He had society within Himself. Accordingly Jesus, in communion with His Father, said: "Thou lovedst Me before the foundation of the world!"

CHAPTER III.

THE BIBLE.

I. THE NEW TESTAMENT.

THE order in which the great elements of Christianity have in the past been discussed has been, First, GOD; then, THE WORD OF GOD - THE BIBLE. Of late years some have rather inclined to give the Bible a much less central character - a view fairly represented by the position of the chapter on the Bible, as well as by the contents of that chapter, in Mr. Denney's work, "Studies in Theology."

It is pleaded, as one reason, that Christianity existed before the New Testament. The Church of Christ arose through the preaching of the Gospel before the writing of the Gospels. The Church produced the New Testament, not the New Testament the Church. It is, as Robert J. Drummond, D.D., of Edinburgh, remarks, an "arresting fact that Christ, our Master, wrote nothing. No letter of His remains, no diary, no pages of autobiography." Nor did the Apostles write until perhaps twenty years after the Church, on the Day of Pentecost that followed our Lord's ascension, began. To quote again from Mr. Drummond's statement in "Faith's Certainties": "The Church lived on tradition. Its position was very much like that of all communities in pagan lands when first they gather round the missionary. ... It often means a generation before they have any Bible but the spoken word."

We, of course, concede this; yet, when the inference is drawn that Christianity is independent of the New Testament, we find that conclusion is the very opposite of the truth.

The fact is, that a review of the manner in which Christianity began shows that it was essential to its continuance and purity that "the tradition" which first produced and sustained Christianity must be preserved in the form of inspired writing.

Let us briefly review these beginnings of Christianity. Our position that the New Testament is essential is proved incidentally by the very fact that for such a review we have no choice but to go to the New Testament. If the historic reliability of the New Testament were denied, we should be unable to form any distinct idea as to the origin of Christianity. Fortunately, those who deny that the New Testament is necessary to Christianity do not deny that the account this Book gives of the origin of Christianity is substantially true. Now, in the course of this account, we specially emphasize the fact that we are told that Jesus, before His death, promised the Holy Spirit to His Apostles; and that, after His death, resurrection, and glorification, He did send them the Spirit. Then the preaching which produced the Church began. On Pentecost, and afterwards, the Apostle Peter, to use his own words, "preached the Gospel ... by the Holy Spirit send forth from heaven." These Apostles, and Paul as one born out of due season, in all they did claimed to be directed by the Holy Spirit, and proved their claim "by signs and wonders, and by manifold powers."

Now, even if it had pleased God that these miraculous powers should be perpetual in the Church, the Apostolic witness, being that of eye witnesses, could not be perpetual.

As these original witnesses could not continue for ever, at an early stage their testimony concerning Jesus was committed to writing. Thus that "tradition" which was essential to the founding of Christianity was preserved for its continuance. Thus the Christ-truth was prevented from being altered and deteriorated, as nothing but a continual miracle could have prevented, had it been left to be passed on orally from generation to generation.

Seeing, then, that the inspired testimony and teaching of the Apostles was essential to Christianity at the beginning, the New Testament, containing that testimony and teaching, has been found essential to Christianity ever since. From the time the Apostles fell asleep the New Testament has presented the facts about Jesus necessary to faith in Him. Those who have preached Jesus have gained their knowledge from its writings. The necessity of this inspired record is seen by reading the apocryphal Gospels, and by noting the vagaries of scholarship. Every now and again some great mind presents some view of Jesus which is different from the Jesus of the New Testament; and only by the influence of this Book do we today keep our conception of Him from being mutilated and lost in the fancies of the human imagination.

The same considerations which show us how essential the New Testament is to our having any reliable conception of Christianity go to support the conviction that it is inspired.

Regarding this Book simply as reliable history, we see that in the early years, from Pentecost onwards, the outstanding feature in the history of the early Church was the

Guidance of the Holy Spirit.

The language used in John's Gospel is clear and remarkable, and leaves us in no doubt as to the fulness of the inspiration promised to the twelve Apostles; and, as the Acts of Apostles affirms, this was actually received by them. The Spirit was to take Christ's place, so to speak - be to them another Comforter or Advocate. This Advocate was called the Spirit of Truth; was to abide with them for ever; and was to teach them all things, and bring to their remembrance all things that Christ had spoken unto them (John xiv.). It was distinctly promised that this Advocate would guide the Apostles "into all truth." After His resurrection, too, Christ again referred to the coming Spirit, and charged them to tarry in Jerusalem until, by the coming of the Holy Spirit, they should be "clothed with power from on high" (Acts i. 4, 5, 8).

In reference to the Apostle Paul, Jesus appeared to him for the very purpose of qualifying him to be an Apostle, enabling him to testify to the central fact of His Resurrection. He evidently had the absence of personal intercourse with his Master during Christ's life on earth compensated by special visions and revelations afterwards. He speaks of the exceeding greatness of these revelations (2 Cor. xii. 7); and we find him declaring that he received of the Lord what he had communicated to the Corinthians concerning the Lord's Supper. His possession of the Holy Spirit, alike to work miracles and inspire him as to his teaching, is affirmed in many places in his Epistles.

In all this we simply array the things recorded in the New Testament. They are not obscure hints, but plainly-made statements; and if they are rejected, the reliability of the New Testament as a history of "the early days of Christianity" is destroyed. These statements about the guidance of the Apostles, including Paul, are so wrought into the texture of the history that he who rejects them could not reasonably believe the statements about Christ and its history generally.

Nor was the supernatural agency of the Holy Spirit confined to the Apostles. By the laying on of the Apostles' hands others received the gift. So that the gift of prophecy (teaching inspired by the Spirit) was recognized and is spoken of alike in the Acts and in the Epistles.

Consider now the circumstances. (1) There was in the beginning a guidance and inspiration of the Holy Spirit, which supplied the Church with the truth necessary to its increase and sustenance. (2) The New Testament is confessedly the only history we have of that Spirit-guided age, and as a fact is the only source from which the "truth as it is in Jesus" has been available for the continuance and preservation of Christianity. (3) A large portion of this record is acknowledged to be the work of Paul, who claimed to have the guidance of the Holy Spirit; other portions are held, even after much research and controversy, to be the work of other Apostles - Matthew, John, and Peter; and other portions are acknowledged to be written by such men as Mark and Luke, companions of Apostles. If the points now enumerated be all held in mind, they will show how probable it is that the New Testament, so essential to the continuance of the Christianity of Christ and His Apostles, is to be regarded as an integral part of the word of God, the complement and completion of the Old Testament. This conclusion recommends itself by its inherent fitness - a record so essential one is not surprised to find inspired; rather we should be surprised if a Spirit-guided age had not produced an inspired Book. The New Testament shares with the Old other features to be mentioned as proof of the divine origin of both.

II. THE OLD TESTAMENT.

Having seen that there are strong reasons for accepting the New Testament as inspired, it follows that we may, indeed must, accept its authority on the various subjects of which it speaks. One of these is the character of the Old Testament. Throughout the New Testament the writings we now call the Old Testament are taken for granted as an inspired God-given book. The familiar passage in 2 Tim. iii. may stand as an example. Here the Apostle Paul says to Timothy: "From a child thou hast known the sacred writings, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Every Scripture inspired of God is also profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, for instruction which is in righteousness: that the man of God may be complete, furnished completely unto every good work." No one can doubt that the "sacred writings" here spoken of are those which constitute the Old Testament.

Indeed, even if the New Testament could be thought of as ordinary history, we should still be led to see that Jesus Christ, as well as His Apostles, regarded the Old Testament as God's Word. He, like the rest, argued from the following foundation, "the Scripture cannot be broken." Whether He met the Temptations of Satan; corrected His human assailants; or taught His disciples, He used the Old Testament as the authority, the Word of God. So that whether we think immediately of Christ as our infallible Teacher, or of the whole New Testament as the work of the Holy Spirit, we find that the inspiration and divine origin of the Old Testament is a fundamental conception of New Testament Christianity.

From Matthew to Revelation the Old Testament is quoted as giving its testimony to Christianity, and to describe the character of the grace and truth that came by Jesus Christ. The relation of the two Testaments is like that between John and Baptist and Jesus. John's business, so to speak, was to bear witness to Christ, but we know, too how generously Jesus bore witness to John, so that no believer in Jesus can reject His harbinger. In like manner, the support of the Old and New Testaments is mutual. As we see the Scriptures fulfilled in Christ; see the vast variety of predictions about the Messiah - His sufferings, glory, and kingdom - fulfilled, we realize that the New Testament forms a wonderful proof of the inspiration of the Old Testament.

But the support is mutual. From the nature of the case it is the support the Old gives to the New which is prominent in the New Testament. It was allowed, by the Jews, at least, that the Old Testament was of God. What they needed to be proved was that Jesus Christ had a divine claim on their attention, and that a new dispensation had indeed been introduced. This was met by appeals to the Old Testament. The Old Testament was shown on all points, such as the identifying of "Jesus as the Christ," the justifying of men by faith in Him, and so on, to give its emphatic testimony to the divine origin of the New - the prophets, no less than Moses, were found to be "for a testimony of those things" which were afterwards to be spoken. As to illustration, we need only point out that in all matters common to Old and New Testaments, such as the traits of character and conduct which please God, the Old Testament is used as a treasury of example and illustration.

In all this the finality of the New Testament is evident. Jesus Himself recognized that the Old Testament contained adaptations to low spiritual and moral development. Where the New is an advance on the Old, such as the progress of the history of redemption had made possible, the New, not the Old, is God's will for us. The Old is for the New, not the New for the Old. God, who spake in times past to the fathers in the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us in His Son.

III. THE DIVINE ORIGIN OF THE BIBLE.

To what has been said on the inspiration of the New Testament and testimony of the New that the Old Testament also is the Word of God, we may now consider the proofs of the divine origin of the Bible as a whole.

There are certain facts in relation to its production, contents, and history which, taken together, indicate a higher than human origin. Henry Rogers, in his book on the "Superhuman Origin of the Bible" - a most reasonable and convincing book - puts this in the form of an epigram: "The Bible is such a book as man could not write if he would, and would not if he could." He called these peculiarities the unhuman features of the Bible. We may mention a few of these.

(1) The way the Bible speaks of Mankind, and especially of the Jews.

On all hands it is allowed that the Book is of the Jews - it is their only literary possession, and, moveover, it is largely the national history of the Jews and the words to them of their teachers. Now we know that it is the tendency of patriotism to speak well of its own nation and be blind to the faults of its heroes. But the Bible, whether in history or prophecy, is one long indictment of the Jews. Their sins and apostasies are its constant theme. The sins of the heroes and saints, as Abraham and Jacob and David, are also clearly recorded. And what is true of its portraiture of the Jew is true also of its description of mankind generally. According to the Bible, man is fallen, his constant tendency is away from God, and his hope is not in any inherent good qualities which will enable him to rise, but in the saving power of God. Now this is an unhuman feature characteristic of the Bible. Mr. Roberts illustrates these features and their proof of superhuman authorship by reference to those cows by which the Philistines tested whether the ark was supernaturally cared for or not. They put the ark in a new cart, and attached to the cart cows whose calves were to be left behind. The cows, however, of their own motion, went off towards the territory of the Israelites with the ark, lowing as they went, that is, their natural longings would have taken them to their calves, but something else took them to the territory of the Israelites against their natural inclination. And so in the Bible there is this writing of national history, and this speaking of mankind in a form contrary to what men could or would have written had they not been inspired of God. It is a superhuman feature.

(2) Another amazing unhuman Feature is found in the Prophecies of the Bible.

This is one of the standing, perpetual miracles. Take those relating to the Jewish people. Deuteronomy and other places foretell how, if unfaithful, they should be scattered among the heathen; and today, and for thousands of years, the Jews have been a standing proof of the correctness of those predictions. The Jews have been wonderfully preserved as a separate people, but are still a people without possession of a country. Then there are the prophecies relating to cities, such as Babylon and Tyre, and many others. It is not merely that they fell, but they have remained fallen; and details, such as that Tyre would be a place where fishermen dried their nets, have been fulfilled. Now all this is utterly beyond any power man possesses. He is clearly not furnished with an faculty for anticipating the future in human affairs.

(3) Then there is the Unity of the Bible.

When we take up a book by one of our modern writers, whether it be theology or history or fiction, we are not surprised to find it a unit, with a clearly marked plan, the later parts developing what was introduced at the beginning. If parts of the book contradict each other we are surprised. The unity we expect, and are surprised if we find not, is due to the fact that one man has written it all. But when we come to the Bible we have a book composed of parts written severally during, according to the usually received view, sixteen hundred years, and by authors differing widely from each other, from the king to such as Amos, who was not a prophet nor the son of a prophet, but a herdsman and dresser of sycamore trees; from the fisherman to the educated Moses or Paul. That a series of sixty-six pamphlets, written under these circumstances, should form a unity, having a distinct beginning, development, and conclusion, is a unique and wonderful fact. There is no doubt that this unity is there, and that it is of a kind not usually found in even one man's writings. Every part of it is written from the point of view that there is one God, and the idea of that one God, as a God seeking man, dominates the whole book. It is features like this, unhuman features, permeating every book, whether it is prose or poetry, history or ethical teaching, that make the Bible so much a Book apart, all its sections like each other, but differing in detail and in general character from other books.

Then there is the gradual development of the scheme of salvation centring in the promises regarding the Christ and their fulfilment in Jesus of Nazareth.

One of the most remarkable things about this development is the manner in which the New Testament completes the Old. Any one who looks into it finds that the New Testament is as certainly the completion of the Old as the flower is the completion of the growth of the rose tree, yet it was as certainly brought about in direct contradiction to the Jews, the writers and custodians of the Old Testament. Jesus was not the Messiah according to their ideas of the description of the Messiah given in their Scriptures, so they rejected and crucified Him, yet by this very act they fulfilled those Scriptures!

If we were told that a statue, which was a perfect model of a man, every part suitable to every other part, was composed of sixty-six pieces, carved by sixty-six sculptors, some of whom knew nothing about sculpture, during sixteen hundred years, and yet that when put together the result was this harmonious model of the human form - what could we say? Surely there could be no explanation except that these workers had all been inspired in their work by one spirit - the Spirit of the eternal God. And so we believe that the unity of the Bible proves it inspired of God. The last of these features of the Bible here to be named may be covered by two words -

(4) Vitality and Service.

Peter says that Christians have been "begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the Word of God, which liveth and abideth. For all flesh is grass, and all the glory of man as the flower of the grass. The grass withereth, and the flower falleth, but the Word of the Lord abideth for ever." Now, books for the most part are, comparatively speaking, ephemeral - like our little systems, of which Tennyson speaks: "They have their day and cease to be." Sometimes the book has no merit of its own; sometimes, science advancing, a book's contents are rendered out of date; sometimes a better book takes its place. A few do survive from age to age, but most of these appeal to a few persons only.

The Bible has a strange vitality. Voltaire said that in a hundred years from the time when he spoke the Bible would be forgotten, except as a curiosity in the museum. About the time when his prophecy should have been fulfilled the revisers finished their work on the New Testament, and to gain time the whole New Testament was telegraphed to America! Today, the Bible, or a portion of it, can be had in over 400 languages or dialects. Somehow, in spite of its supposed contradiction of science and all the rest, it manages to keep abreast, not to fall out of date, but to be in its moral and spiritual contents in advance of the most advanced portion of mankind.

Men, of course, in testing the book by its service, cannot distinguish sharply between the influence of the Book and the influence of the Christ of which it speaks, but as a fact its influence is known to be always on the side of justice and liberty and social progress. Men may point out that it records and speaks with much plainess of evil things, and say that some portions are not fit to be read. But the influence of the Book is always felt to be a rebuke to every kind of sin. So much depends on the atmosphere and tone of a book as to whether it will recommend or condemn the evils it records or speaks of. The very map of Europe shows the service of the Bible. The countries which at the Reformation chose Protestantism and a translated and open Bible, progressed; those which chose Rome, the priest, and the closed Bible, stood still and then decayed.

That is a true illustration Hastings uses in his tract, "Will the Old Book stand?" when he tells of the old lawyer and young man in the backwoods of America, who were distrustful of the rough-looking old settler who sheltered them in his cabin for a night. They arranged to watch in turn. But when the old lawyer, who was a sceptic (if we remember aright), saw the old man take down a Bible and read a portion, and then kneel in prayer, he lay down feeling perfectly safe. The people who make the crime in this land and in America, whether millionaires or poor people, are not the people who read and love the Bible. They are the people who do not believe in the Bible.

We must be content to leave the evidences that the Bible is of divine origin with these four points:

The impartial way it speaks of man, especially of the Jews;
Prophecy;
Unity;
Vitality and Service.

While, then, it is obvious that the New Testament, as the only historical record of the life, death and resurrection of Christ, and of the teaching of Christ and His Apostles, is essential to New Testament Christianity, it is a joy to find that not only is the New Testament an inspired book, but that so also is the Old Testament, to which we must ever turn to support the claim, define the meaning, and exemplify the teaching of the New.

CHAPTER IV.

THE PLACE OF JESUS CHRIST.

IN writing these outlines of New Testament Christianity, and having selected "Jesus Christ" as its central theme, we think of many a passage which endorses our selection. We quote two from the short but important Epistle to the Colossians: "That in all things He [Christ] might have the pre-eminence." "Where there cannot be Greek and Jew, circumcision and uncircumcision, barbarian, Scythian, bondman, freeman: but Christ is all, and in all."

The application of this great truth in the Scripture above, "Christ is all, and in all" (Col. iii. 11), may not be equally clear to us all. We know, of course, that the primitive Churches did not exclude any man because of his nationality or his place in society. But it might be said, "Entering the Church would not destroy the differences between men. The Gentile who became a Christian would still be a Gentile; the converted Jew would still be a Jew; and in the eyes of society the converted bondmen and freemen were doubtless still bondmen and freemen." What, then, does the Apostle mean when he says that in the Church - for that we take to be the meaning of his "where" - there cannot be Greek or Jew or any of these other distinctions?

Perhaps a little incident which occurred in America, when the States formed their Union, will bring out for force of the Apostle's statement. At the Colonial Congress, Patrick Henry said: "The distinctions between Virginians, Pennsylvanians, New Yorkers, and New Englanders are no more. I am not a Virginian, but an American." The words may not seem to mean much to us, but they were followed then by a great outburst of enthusiasm, and they still mean much in the United States. They mean, of course, that the great new thing they had in common should henceforth overshadow and make them practically forget the distinctions which had previously seemed so important. Their rivalries and jealousies as separate States were to be forgotten in their mutual glory in the Unity of the States. The Apostle's meaning is similar - only he speaks of a more wonderful new mutual feature, uniting those in Christ. They have exchanged the old man, the old sinful will, character, and life, for the new man, the holy will, and character, and life. This new heavenly feature completely annihilates the old distinctions. They forget the old differences in the enthusiasm of being all members of a new humanity. To them now the old distinctions are trivial. The Jew is no longer the proud, circumcised child of Abraham - he is a Christian. The cultured Greek no longer despises the uncultured barbarian - the barbarian, like himself, is a Christian. As Paul sums it up, to all of them now, "Christ is all, and in all." What is true of the Church is true in other aspects.

I. CHRIST IS THE PRE-EMINENT THEME OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.

He must indeed be a careless reader who does not know how completely everything in the New Testament gathers around Jesus Christ. In the same sense as that in which there is neither Jew nor Greek in the church, we may say that in the New Testament, in Christianity as there revealed, there can be neither Moses nor Elijah; neither John the Baptist nor Caiaphas the high priest; neither Peter the Apostle of the uncircumcision nor Paul the Apostle of the Gentiles; neither angel nor archangel; but Christ is all, and in all. Joseph's dreams are fulfilled a second time in his great antitype. Christ is pre-eminent. To His sheaf the sheaves of all the other servants of God do obeisance. To Him, sun, moon, and stars do homage. That this central and all-important place is occupied by Jesus Christ is the Alpha and Omega of New Testament Christianity. It is its first, its easiest, and its most formative message.

(1) Take the Four Gospels.

Here certainly Christ is all, and in all. He is their theme; except to tell of Him no one of them would have been written. And the importance given to Him is all the more striking because of the wonderful restraint of the writers. The evangelists tell you what He said and did, and let the facts produce their own impression. Yet no Life of Christ, written with open, enthusiastic comment, has ever produced so deep an impression of the glory of the Christ as these Gospels, singly, and still more, unitedly, produce on the mind of the reader.

Look at Matthew's record. Jesus is born and is named Jesus because He came to save His people from their sins. He is baptised and John acknowledges His superiority to himself; the heavens open, and the voice of God the Father says, "This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased." He calls His Apostles, works His miracles, gives His teaching, and the Apostles are led to confess that Jesus in the Christ, the Son of God; and He, in a manner perfectly gracious and kingly, accepts that confession. What did that confession mean? Nothing less than this - that the Christ promised in their holy writings, and expected at that time, was depicted in those Scriptures as of the Nature of God as well as of the seed of David; and that Jesus fulfilled the description - was that promised and long-expected Christ, the Son of the living God.

He is transfigured on the Mount, and converses there with the two greatest saints of the Old Testament - Moses, the giver of the Law, and Elijah, its restorer. But these disappear, adding significance to the Divine Message, which came out of heaven, "This is My beloved Son, hear ye HIM." Henceforth Christ is to be all.

Now He begins to speak of His death and resurrection. He is to give His life a ransom for many. His disciples do not understand Him, and seem to make no effort to do so. Controversy with the leaders of the nation arises. The different opponents are all easily foiled in their efforts to entangle Him in His talk. On the main issue, whether the Christ was to be divine as well as human, He completely triumphs. David, he shows, spoke of the Christ as His Lord.

Then follows the upper room, Gethsemane, the judgment, Calvary, and Joseph's tomb. The triumph of the Jews and the despair of the disciples are of brief duration. He rises from the dead the third day. To His disciples He appears, and shows that the death which occasioned them such dismay really fulfilled the Scriptures. Passing from text to text of the inspired writings, he demonstrates that this it behoved the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day.

Lastly, all this claim of His - His Messiahship, including divine nature; vicarious suffering; authority and ability to save - is fully embodied in the simple but dignified and truly "great" commission which he gave to His Apostles, and with which the Gospel according to Matthew terminates: "And Jesus came to them and spake unto them saying, All authority hath been given to Me in heaven and on earth. Go ye, therefore, and make disciples of all the nations, baptising them into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit: teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I commanded you: and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

Such (save one item) is a brief epitome of one Gospel; with previous variation in detail, especially in the fourth, the substance of the three others is the same.

(2) Pass on to the Acts of the Apostles.

Here, too, Christ is all, and in all. The writer intimates that what is here recorded is a continuation of what Jesus began to do and to teach in the Gospels. He continues His work through the Holy Spirit, who, as promised, does not speak of Himself, but shows to the apostles the things of Christ, and these preach Him to the world. They witness to His resurrection; declare Him to be Lord of all; that only in His Name is there salvation. Paul is "apprehended" by Christ. He becomes of all the Apostles the most effective preacher of Christ. It is for Christ he travels and suffers so nobly and indefatigably. Nevertheless, "Not I, but Christ, liveth in me" - his own words - are the best description of Paul's abundant labours. His assertion, "We preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus as Lord," is proved true at every sphere of labour: in the synagogue or on Mars Hill; in Asia or in Europe; at liberty or a prisoner; Christ is all and is in all he does or says.

(3) Examine next the Epistles.

The same pre-eminence is given to Christ, but with even greater fulness. What in Gospels and Acts is merely stated, in the Epistles is explained and applied to Christian life. Romans is but a demonstration that the Gospel of Christ is, and how it is, the power of God unto salvation; Hebrews is devoted to proving that Christ is the fulfilment of the Old Covenant, the substance of which the Old was but type and shadow. The two Corinthians are but a call to glory only in the Lord Jesus Christ, and to submit to Him as Lord. In pleading for unity one can see that Paul relies upon the influence of the very mention of Christ's dear Name. In the first ten verses of 1 Cor. the name occurs ten times. We quote verses 4 to 9: "I thank my God always concerning you, for the grace of God which was given you in Christ Jesus; that in every thing ye were enriched in Him, in all utterance and all knowledge; even as the testimony of Christ was confirmed in you; so that ye come behind in no gift; waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye be unreprovable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ. God is faithful, through whom ye were called into the fellowship of His Son Jesus Christ our Lord." See how he rings the changes on the name! It is music to him; he hopes it will touch the chords of his readers' hearts - "Christ Jesus - Christ - Lord Jesus Christ - God's Son, Jesus Christ our Lord." This but illustrates the manner in which Christ is inwoven into warp and woof, language and thought, of these Epistles, Christ is all, and in all.

In these Epistles it is Christ that justifies, sanctifies, and glorifies. The Church is His body, and Paul's highest ideal of loving and honourable and complete subjection is the subjection of the Church to Christ. What Christ is; has done; is doing; will yet do, are the great motives named to induce Christians to live noble lives - to live indeed as Christ, for He is also their perfect example.

(4) What of the Revelation?

Whatever else is obscure here, there is no difficulty in finding the pre-eminent place occupied in it by Christ. No descriptions of the great theme of the Bible are so impressive as those given here. At first He is seen "like unto a son of man, clothed with a garment down to the foot, and girt about at the breasts with a golden girdle. And His head and His hair were white as white wool, white as snow; and His eyes were as a flame of fire; and His feet like unto burnished brass, as if it had been refined in a furnace; and His voice as the voice of many waters. And He had in His right hand seven stars: and out of His mouth proceeded a sharp two-edged sword: and His countenance was as the sun shining in his strength. And when I saw Him, I fell at His feet as one dead. And He laid His right hand upon me, saying, Fear not; I am the First and the Last, and the Living One; and I was dead, and behold, I am alive for evermore, and I have the keys of death and of Hades."

This wondrous vision is but one of many equally impressive, in which His omnipotence, omniscience, and eternity are set forth. Heaven as well as earth joyfully worships Him. John writes: "And I saw, and I heard a voice of many angels round about the throne and the living creatures and the elders; and the number of them was ten thousand times ten thousand, and thousands of thousands; saying with a great voice, Worthy is the Lamb that hath been slain to receive the power, and riches, and wisdom, and might, and honour, and glory, and blessing. And every created thing which is in the heaven, and on the earth, and under the earth, and on the sea, and all things that are in them, heard I saying, Unto Him that sitteth on the throne, and unto the Lamb, be the blessing, and the honour, and the glory, and the dominion, for ever and ever. Amen. And the elders fell down and worshipped."

In this Book, too, all is obviously subservient to Him. The war is against the Lord and His Christ, and is continued until the kingdom of this world becomes the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ. Almost its closing cry is, Come, Lord Jesus.

We have seen that Jesus is pre-eminent in the Old and especially in the New. The impression grows on the student of the Book until it is beyond expression in words. It is, however, of moment to point out -

II. THE RESULTS OF CHRIST'S PRIMACY BEING EVER KEPT IN VIEW.

New Testament Christianity is like other things, where one general feature being settled, it is easily determined what form certain details must take. In architecture, for instance, there are different styles. If the building is Corinthian, the merest tyro in architecture will exclaim against the barbarism if some Old English form of structure, or Egyptian ornamentation, is introduced. In like manner, once it is seen what place Christ holds in Christianity, it will be found that the mere mention of some things is enough to make us realize their incongruity.

Consider the controversies with unbelief. How much is the whole matter simplified if it is seen that the vital questions are those relating to Christ! If the evidence for His resurrection is left intact, we retain faith in Christ as the Son of God, and the everliving and present. Again, is any inquirer in embarrassment as to what he is to believe in order to salvation? Let him note how the four Gospels aim only to prove one proposition - that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; how in Acts it is Christ that is preached, believed, obeyed; and he will not fail to be strongly convinced that to accept Christ as his Prophet, Priest, and King, and bow to His authority, is all that is required. Paul's question gives the point of view: "Lord, what wilt Thou have me to do?"

We must be content with one other example. Today, we have numerous denominations of Christians, and some who apologise for them. But think of this subject in the presence of the Master. We feel at once how disloyal are these divisions. We know how He prayed that His people might be one as the necessary antecedent to the world believing on Him. And how shocked Paul was at the very idea of any one taking his name, or that of Peter. "Was Paul," he asks, "crucified for you?" How, then, can we look up to Him who died for us and acknowledge, without shame, that in the world we wear most conspicuously the name of Luther, or of Wesley, or of an ordinance, or a form of Church organization? Is this congruous with Christ having the pre-eminence in all things? Wesley, at least, saw that it is not. His lines rebuke such a use of his name; his desire is that -

"Names and sects and parties fall,

Thou, O Christ, art all in all."

III. THE OLD TESTAMENT ALSO GIVES THE CHIEF PLACE TO THE CHRIST.

It must be admitted that any one unacquainted with the New Testament would not so readily discover in the Old the pre-eminence of Jesus. The Bible is a whole, and as such may be compared to a monument. The masonry, plain and square at the bottom, may give you no idea of its main and, indeed, only purpose. You glance up the long pedestal standing on the square base, and still you do not see the purpose of either base or pedestal. You look higher still, and you see there the exquisitely, incomparably noble and beautiful figure of a man, and now you grasp the purpose of the whole. So, as you read the Old Testament, unable to grasp a promise here or a prophecy there, you are only conscious of a narrowing of the field of vision. The base is broad, God creating the heaven and earth, and for a time the history of all mankind. Then comes the narrower pedestal, the history of but one chosen race is given. But the promises and prophecies of a MAN, a KING, a SON OF GOD, become so numerous that when you reach the New Testament you are not surprised to find attention fixed on one wondrous descendant of that race. You see now that the Old Testament was but the base and pedestal on which the Saviour of all men should stand. The testimony of Jesus is seen to be the spirit of prophecy; the Law but a tutor to bring men to Christ; the Holy Scriptures of the Old Testament able to make men wise unto salvation, but through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

CHAPTER V.

"JESUS IS THE CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD."

THE reader of the New Testament is impressed not only by the central position everywhere given to Jesus Christ, who is to Christianity as the sun to the solar system, but also with -

I. THE PROMINENCE GIVE TO BELIEF THAT HE IS THE CHRIST, THE SON OF GOD.

In the very first chapter our attention is attracted by the word Christ having the definite article with it - "The Christ." Thus in summing up the genealogy the last great period is said to bring us "from the carrying away to Babylon unto The Christ."

In the second chapter, too, when Herod, intent on finding out the birthplace of Him reported of as "born King of the Jews," gathered together all the chief priests and scribes of the people, his use of the article is striking: "he inquired of them where the Christ should be born." So the Gospel goes on; all through one feels this is its great question - Is Jesus the Christ?

But the place in Matthew which pulls up and compels the cursory reader to note the vehement emphasis put on the belief that Jesus is the Christ is chapter xvi. 13-20. The confession itself is in verse 16: "And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God"; but to feel its gravity one must read the whole - the approach to the question through the thoughts of others; the glowing benediction on Peter which follows his great confession; and the significant hint that all was not yet ready for the truth the Apostles had grasped being openly proclaimed given in the words: "Then charged He the disciples that they should tell no man that He was the Christ."

While one easily gathers that the purpose of the first Gospel is to prove that Jesus is the Christ, it is explicitly stated that this is the purpose of the fourth. These things were written "that he may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God" (John xx. 31). This, too, was the aim of apostolic preaching. What is said of one occasion was true generally - the preacher "reasoned with them from the Scriptures, opening and alleging that it behoved the Christ to suffer, and to rise again from the dead; and that this Jesus, who, said Paul, I proclaim unto you, is the Christ."

It is no mere traditional worship of language which leads us to urge that not only the substance of what the New Testament teaches us to believe concerning its central Person, but also the form in which it was held is worthy of careful investigation and regard. In later centuries Ecumenical Councils laboured to find the best forms of language in which to utter their conviction concerning the nature of Jesus Christ. Assuming, however, the inspiration of the New Testament, we do not doubt that the truth is expressed here at least as fully but also more suitably than in the most laboured of human creeds and confessions.

II. THE MEANING OF THE PROPOSITION, JESUS IS THE CHRIST.

The great confession made by Peter, as recorded in Matthew, is, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God"; but in Mark the second phase is omitted - viii. 29 reads: "And He asked them, But who say ye that I am? Peter answereth and saith unto Him, Thou art the Christ." This suggests that the added words in Matthew are simply explanatory of an important part of what was understood by saying that Jesus is the Christ. If that is so, we arrive at once at the conclusion that the term "the Christ" includes being "the Son of the living God." That it really does so, however, can be easily established, apart from this suggestion arising from comparing the good confession in Matthew and Mark. Hence the great interest in considering what exactly is meant by confessing that Jesus is the Christ.

It is well to proceed here in the most elementary manner. The proposition, Jesus is the Christ, can be divided into the two parts: What is spoken about - Jesus; and what is said about it - the Christ. When we make a statement of this sort we assume that those to whom we make it have already a certain amount of knowledge of the subject or thing spoken about, and also of that which is said about it. When we say, when, that Jesus is the Christ, we suppose that those to whom we speak know at least the outstanding facts about the subject - "Jesus." When Jesus asked, "Who say ye that I am?" He assumed that the Apostles knew Him personally. So for us today, Jesus is the personal name. We know about this Person the He was born in Bethlehem; lived in Nazareth; was baptised by John; wrought miracles and taught the people; was crucified and buried; rose from the dead and ascended to heaven. These are the facts about the subject - Jesus. The proposition asked us to add to all this a conviction about this Person; the new thought lies in the thing said about Him - the Christ. We are to believe that Jesus is the Christ.

It is, then, on the meaning of the term the Christ that attention must be concentrated if we would intelligently either believe or disbelieve that Jesus is the Christ. It is therefore to be hailed with a joy like that of the wise men when they saw the star, that in the New Testament this term, the Christ, has a definite meaning, a meaning all who used it understood.

The term the Christ means the Person who fulfils certain Old Testament predictions. It was agreed on all hands that a Person who should in His character and life fulfil these predictions, answer to the portraiture given in the Old Testament, is the Christ. This may be illustrated by any passage where the term is used in a manner setting forth its meaning. Thus in Matt. ii., already referred to, King Herod asked the chief priests and scribes where the Christ should be born. The sequel shows that he and they were agreed on the meaning of the Christ as One who should fulfil the Scriptures. "They said unto him, In Bethlehem of Judea: for thus it is written by the prophet"; and then they quote a well-known prophecy. As much as to say, the Christ must answer to the picture of Him given in the Scriptures; therefore any one not born in Bethlehem is not and cannot be the Christ.

Take, also, John vii. 41, 42: "Others said, This is the Christ. But some said, What, doth the Christ come out of Galilee? Hath not the Scripture said that the Christ cometh of the seed of David, and from Bethlehem, the village where David was?" One sees here that the speakers were unaware that Jesus actually was born in Bethlehem; but the point to note is now all of them take it for granted that any one to be rightly accepted as "the Christ" must fulfil the description of Him contained in the prophecies.

As another example we refer to the beautiful account of the risen Jesus conversing on the way to Emmaus with the two forlorn disciples: "And He said unto them, O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these things, and to enter into his glory? And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning Himself." The common ground which Jesus and His disciples occupied is clear. They had been upset by His death. Jesus said in effect, "You ought not to be. You and I both understand that he who is the Christ must fulfil the Scriptures. Now, the Scriptures depict the Christ as One who dies and rises again. Therefore My death, being according to Scripture, and followed by resurrection, really proves that I am the Christ."

But there was one feature of the Christ as depicted in the Scriptures, as Jesus Himself pointed out, which His contemporaries had not noticed. Jesus claimed to be David's Lord as well as David's Son. He spoke of Himself as being the Son of God. For this they rejected Him from being the Christ. He on His part maintained that His claim to be divine was a necessary claim. He refused not that His opponents should ask for proof that He was the Son of God. If He gave no proof that He was, then he was not the Christ, because the Scripture portrait of the Christ was the portrait of A Divine One. On the other hand, He held that if he gave the needed proof He should be accepted as the Christ, because the Christ was not only to be born in Bethlehem and the Son of David, but was also to be David's Lord.

The notable passage showing this to be the position as to Messiahship, or Christhood, taken up by Jesus is Matt. xxii. 41-46, and parallels. We quote in full. The reader is asked kindly to note that here, too, the term the Christ is understood equally by Jesus and His opponents to mean one who fulfils the predictions.

"Now while the Pharisees were gathered together, Jesus asked them a question, saying, What think ye of the Christ? whose Son is He? They say unto him, The Son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in the Spirit call him Lord, saying,

The Lord said unto my Lord,
Sit Thou on My right hand,
Till I put Thine enemies underneath Thy feet?

If David then calleth Him Lord, how is he his son? And no one was able to answer Him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions."

This gives the real difference between the position of Jesus and that of the Jews. They differed on the question as to what the Scriptures described as the Nature or Sonship of the Christ. The Jews did not reject Him because He did not fulfil the Scriptures describing His human nature. But all through they took umbrage whenever He claimed divinity - that is, deity - as when he called God His own Father, making Himself, as they said, equal with God; or when He exercised divine prerogatives, as in forgiving sins.

Let us sum up here as to the meaning of the faith that Jesus is the Christ. As Jesus Himself understood it, while it means generally that Jesus fulfilled the Scriptures, it means particularly that he is divine as well as human, David's Lord not less than David's Son.

It will thus be seen that what is usually called "the Divinity of Christ" (using the word "Divinity" as equal to "Deity") is included in the New Testament expression, "Jesus is the Christ". But as in the defective view of the Pharisees to say that Jesus was the Christ would have excluded Sonship, in the Great Confession of Peter the words are added in apposition, "the Son of the living God." In this way the full sense in which Jesus used the proposition is without dispute assured. "Jesus is the Christ," in the Christian sense, does not, as in the Jewish sense, exclude His deity, but deliberately includes it.

It does not appear that Jesus ever needed to use any further proof that Psalm cx. that Christhood included divinity. In recording His question on that Psalm, "If David then called Him Lord, how is he his Son?" the evangelist adds to the effect that the Pharisees were obviously beaten, and did not attempt to refute His position, namely, that the only answer was that David acknowledged this greater Son of his to be also his Lord. "No one," writes Matthew," was able to answer Him a word, neither durst any man from that day forth ask Him any more questions."

But if Jesus had needed to quote other places to prove that the portraiture of the Christ contained in the Old Testament included divinity, one would be greatly interested to know what places He would have quoted. He would, no doubt, have included Isa. ix. 5-7, which foretells of a Child to be born, a Son to be given, whose name should be called Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace - a portrait for which no man, who is only man, could sit. Isa. xl. 3, too, which reads, "The voice of one that crieth, Prepare ye in the wilderness the way of the Lord, make straight in the desert a highway for our God," is applied in Matt. iii. 1-3, to John the harbinger in such a way as to imply that in preparing the way of Jesus the Christ, John was preparing the way of the Lord - that is, of Jehovah. Mal. iii. 1 is also applied to John: "Behold I send My messenger, and he shall prepare the way before Me; and the Lord, whom ye seek, shall suddenly come to His temple; and the Messenger of the Covenant, whom ye delight in, behold He cometh, saith the Lord of Hosts." The application of this verse to John by Jesus as proof that John was much more than a prophet, is only to be understood if it is perceived that Jesus is that Angel or Messenger of the Covenant who, on His appearances in the Old Testament, is spoken to and worshipped, as at once the Angel of Jehovah and Jehovah Himself (Gen. xvii., Exod. iii., Judges vi.).

It is thus apparent that the Psalm our Lord quoted, while enough to prove His view, is far from the only Old Testament passage which exhibits the Christ as divine as well as human; the root as well as the Offspring of David.

III. THE TERM "THE SON OF GOD" AS APPLIED TO JESUS.

In what has been said to show that deity is included in the meaning of the term "the Christ," or "the Messiah," we have suggested that in Peter's great confession the words "the Son of the living God," were added to indicate that "the Christ" was used in that sense. But if the added phrase is taken by itself, it is found that this term also - namely, "the Son of the living God" - marks the deity of Him to whom it is applied.

(1) The Sonship of Jesus is evidently unique, and includes Divinity. Rom. i. 1-4 shows this, for the Apostle puts the human and the divine side by side. We may set this out in the form of a table -

God's Son.
(Human Nature)	(Divine Nature)
(1) Was born	(1) Was declared
(2) of the seed of David	(2) to be the Son of God with power
(3) according to the flesh.	(3) according to the spirit of holiness by the resurrection of the dead.

In John i. 18 we read: "No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him." As only-begotten Son here He is evidently in contrast with "man." So, too, in John iii. 16, the measure of God's love is His gift of His "only-begotten Son," which surely requires that the Sonship here is so unique as to make this gift an amazing thing. Again, in Rom. viii. 32: "He that spared not his own Son, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things?" we cannot escape the conclusion that to be God's "own Son" is indeed a special kind of Sonship which makes Jesus Christ more than all other things combined. Of this unique Sonship Jesus Himself speaks in Matt. xi. 27: "No one knoweth the Son save the Father, neither doth any know the Father save the Son" - words which express that there is that in the nature of the Son which is the same as that of the Father, and classes the Son with the Father as those who are able to know each other, while it puts the Son in contrast with all others who cannot, as the Son can, know the Father.

(2) The Deity of Christ's unique Sonship is proved by His death.

If John v. 17, 18, viii. 53-59, and Matt. xxvi. 63 be consulted, the conclusion that Jesus regarded His Sonship as including His divine Nature is unavoidable, except by giving up our confidence in His sincere and good character as a man. In these passages we find the Jews regard Jesus as claiming, through calling God His own Father, to be equal with God. In the last of them they condemn Him to death on these grounds as a blasphemer. Now, Jesus either did claim equality with God or He did not. If He did not, then as an honest man he was bound to explain to the Jews that He made no such claim, and so prevent them from committing a great crime. But as He accepted their charge, and died for saying, in the sense they attached to His words, that he was the Christ, the Son of the living God, the meaning of Peter's confession, which was also the good confession which Christ Himself witnesses, stands fixed to mean, in addition to His having generally fulfilled all the predictions of the Christ, that in particular He fulfilled the requirement that the Christ should be divine. Thus no human-made creed includes deity more clearly than the inspired creed of the Apostolic Church - Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

We find another chapter would be needed to deal even summarily with the remaining proofs of the deity of Christ contained in the Gospels and Epistles. To the Word that was with God and was God, yet became flesh (John i. 1-18); to His "equality with God," affirmed in Phil. ii. 1-11; and to His superiority to angels, the Creator of the heavens and earth - the Eternal whose years shall not fail, as described in Heb. i., we can only refer our readers. There is the less need to enter into the exposition of such Scriptures as there is scarcely any disagreement today as to the meaning of the New Testament. There are doubtless many who cannot accept that meaning, yet they acknowledge that the New Testament gives Jesus Christ the pre-eminency and teaches His deity, while they hesitate to accept its teaching.

Our next chapter aims to show the logical necessity for accepting Jesus the Christ as indeed the Son of the living God. For while in the beginning all were required to believe in the Messiahship of Jesus, including, as we see, accepting Him as the Son of God, yet none were expected thus to believe without reasonable proof. That proof centred in HIS RESURRECTION FROM THE DEAD. This proof can be given without assuming the authority of the New Testament, just as it was given before the New Testament existed.

CHAPTER VI.

THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS CHRIST.

"ORDER," it is said, "is heaven's first law." God is a God of order; and it may be because He has made us like Himself that any teaching to which our attention is called is recommended to our mind be being orderly and systematic. We have already seen that the Bible has this recommendation. It has an orderly plan. Christ is its centre. The Old Testament leads you to anticipate Him; and the New Testament describes Him; tells in four-fold narrative the story of His life, and death and resurrection; the preachers preach Christ; the Church obeys Him as her Head; Christ is all, and in all; He is the Alpha and Omega - or, as we might say, the A and the Z, and all the letters that lie between.

In coming to us then, with this Supreme Person, divine wisdom exactly meets our need. If we had had our choice could we have wished anything more adapted to our personal being than that a personal Being should be offered to our minds and hearts? No cold statue of law is here, but a loving Person, to be trusted, loved, and followed!

This adaptation to our case is still further seen in this - it

Affords us the proof we need

to enable us to put our trust in Him. This proof is of various kinds; we are not going to marshal it fully, but wish to make it clear that the intention of the New Testament is to enable each of us to be sure that Jesus Christ is this divine Leader and Saviour. There are some who have an idea that this faith in Christ is a thing that is asked for in an arbitrary way, and think that Christians are persons who simply believe in Christ because the Bible commands them to do so. Now that is as far from being the New Testament of asking for faith in Christ as it can possibly be. See how differently Luke regards the question. In his preface to his Gospel he says that he has made an investigation, traced everything the first preachers had reported, and so now he writes the narrative about Jesus, Mary's Son, the things he has ascertained to be true, that his reader may know the certainty of those things that he had been instructed in. Mark that word certainty. He has satisfied his mind that this narrative about Jesus is no cunningly devised fable, no mere lovely imagining, but a reality as sure as it is beautiful and inspiring.

Take John's Gospel. He tells the story of Thomas's slowness to believe. He shows us his opposition completely overcome, and his faith not rising gradually like the sun in the morning, but appearing like the midday sun emerging from a passing cloud - in fulness and splendour. "My Lord and my God," he exclaims. Oh, for such a faith that embraces Jesus as the Son of God! and John tells us that we, too, may have such a reasonable and well-grounded faith that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God. His whole book, he says, is full of the signs that prove who Jesus is. "These things are written that ye may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing ye may have life in His Name." Thus, in giving us this body of testimony about Jesus, all these facts about Him - His birth, His public ministry, His going about doing good and teaching, His death and His resurrection - our minds as well as our hearts are met. The writers write as men who tell you what they know took place, and they hold that in doing so they are making it possible for us also to repose in faith on Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world.

Do you say, But how am I to know that this account is all true? Here is a variety of incidents: am I to take them one by one and to consider whether each is true; whether, for instance, Jesus really did speak the Sermon on the Mount; did feed the five thousand; did raise the daughter of Jairus, the widow's son, and the brother of the Bethany sisters? Is my faith to result from a continued investigation of each and every one of the particulars about Jesus?

Now here this wonderful adaptation of the New Testament to our minds and hearts is still further seen. It not only places before us one Person to be the one subject of our inquiry, but in the mass of evidence for His being a divinely-sent Saviour there is one fact chosen out, and our attention is concentrated on that one fact; special provision is made to fully satisfy us that this one fact took place. This is a very remarkable thing, but not more remarkable that it is certain and evident to any reader of the New Testament. The proof centres in the Resurrection of Christ. Let us, then, notice somewhat in detail -

I. THAT CHRIST ROSE FROM THE DEAD IS THE CHIEF FACT PROVED IN THE NEW TESTAMENT.

Begin with the Gospels. Jesus Himself takes the lead in emphasizing the importance of His resurrection. Early in His ministry to the leaders at Jerusalem, who desired proof that He had a right to cleanse the temple, He says: "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." When, later, they sought a sign from heaven, some great unconnected portent, He says that the only sign should be that of the prophet Jonah, for as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of the great fish, so should the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth. He repeatedly foretells to the disciples that he is to suffer death, and on the third day will rise. It is, however, when the event comes to be recorded in the Gospels that you see how completely Christ, the Holy Spirit, and the disciples all alike speak and act on the understanding that the one fact which is to be proved true is that Jesus Christ is risen from the dead.

No one sees Jesus rise, but each of the evangelists tells of the unbelief of the disciples, and the gradual way in which the appearances of Jesus to the disciples convinced them that He was risen. Follow on into the Acts of the Apostles. Luke, beginning his narrative of what happened after Christ ascended, tells us that to the Apostles whom he had chosen He also showed Himself alive after His passion by many proofs, appearing unto them by the space of forty days. That the Apostles quite grasped the central character of the fact of the Resurrection is seen in this, that when they proceeded to choose one to take the place of Judas they stipulated that he must be one who had known Jesus, during His ministry, and who could become a witness with them of His Resurrection.

Peter's first sermon, like all apostolic preaching, was a demonstration that the Old Testament had foretold the Resurrection, and a definite statement that they were witnesses to the grand fact - "This Jesus did God raise up, whereof we all are witnesses." In his second address he tells the leaders: "Ye killed the Prince of Life; whom God raised from the dead; whereof we are witnesses." Later we read: "With great power gave the Apostles their witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus."

One can understand how powerful this testimony would be. It was given within a few weeks of the death of Christ, in the city were He was crucified, to the people who crucified Him. The authorities, if they had had the body of Jesus, could have refuted the preaching of the Apostles by producing the body. But they were powerless to oppose; and the fearlessness of the preachers, their evident sincerity, proved by their willingness to be imprisoned, scourged, or put to death, rather than cease to declare the things they had seen and heard - all these circumstances show to us that the testimony to Jesus by bearing witness to this one great fact was convincing because it was well calculated to convince.

But it might be thought this central position of the Resurrection may be due to the fact of this preaching being shortly after the fact, and in Jerusalem. Did these preachers still keep the Resurrection in this chief place when they went further afield and to Gentiles? The reply is a clear and decisive "Yes." When Peter preached to the first Gentiles he was especially emphatic in stating that special care had been taken to provide witnesses to the truth of the fact of the Resurrection. His words are: Him God raised up the third day, and gave Him to be made manifest, not to all the people, but unto witnesses that were chosen before of God, even to us, who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead." Lastly, as to Paul's similar method. We will not detain you to examine His preaching in detail; the familiar 1 Cor. xv. is a host in itself. Some were doubting whether the bodies of the dead saints would be raised again, apparently regarding such an event as impossible. In order to correct them he reminds them that in the Gospel which he had preached the Resurrection of Jesus Christ was central. He passes in review the evidence upon which the fact was believed to have taken place, namely, the various appearances to Apostles and even to five hundred disciples; and, lastly, to Paul himself. He assumes that they will never think of denying that Jesus Rose, and argues that in like manner the power of God will raise others. "In Adam all die; in Christ shall all be made alive."

Utterly transcendent is the important Paul gives to this fact. Christianity, he in effect says, cannot be true if the Resurrection is false. "If Christ hath not been raised, then is our preaching vain, your faith also is vain. Yea, and we are found false witnesses of God that He raised up Christ. ... If Christ hath not been raised, your faith is vain. Ye are yet in your sins." This chapter, then, is undeniable evidence that Paul preached as the Gospel that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day, according to the Scriptures; and also regarded the supernatural fact of the Resurrection of Christ as the great chief fact to be proved true. We are now led to notice -

II. THE VALUE FOR US TODAY OF THE EVIDENCE FOR CHRIST BEING MADE TO CENTRE IN THE PROOF OF HIS RESURRECTION.

(1) As we have seen, it simplifies the work of testing the claims of Christ.

When we ask for the evidence which can convince us in the twentieth century that Jesus is the Son of God, we need to turn to the proof of His Resurrection. Our object is simply to direct your minds into the right way of approaching Christianity; it claims to be strong and triumphant at this point of the Resurrection, and if we desire either to feel its strength for our consolation, or to attack it successfully, we must examine the evidence that Jesus Christ rose from the dead. To either attack or defend it at other points is contrary to its own indications, and is equally unwise on the part of all concerned. God did not take pains to provide us with the same decisive proof for other facts, as the supernatural birth, for instance; and just as it is full of instruction to be sure that the sun is not more certainly the centre round which the planets revolve, than that Jesus Christ is the sun of the system of Redemption, so it is equally instructive to observe that the citadel of the proof that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and our Saviour is the proof, divinely arranged for, that He rose from the dead.

(2) It accounts for the Triumphs of the Gospel.

As we have seen, the preaching of the Apostles, their testimony to the Resurrection, was with great power. At Jerusalem itself thousands, and even a multitude of the priests, were obedient to the faith.

The strength of the evidence for the Resurrection has been often tried, the citadel stormed with new weapons, but ever without success. While the original witnesses whom God had fitted were alive it was impossible to doubt their veracity. After they were gone men attempted to set aside the Resurrection by saying their preaching was a fraud.

III. THE QUESTION AS IT STANDS TODAY.

Against the fraud theory, Paley's argument of the twelve honest men has proved final. No leader now believes that these men were "confederate in evil for purposes of good," or suffered and died to support what they knew to be untrue. It is contrary to human nature to think this possible. Well, what other alternative is there? There are really only three alternatives altogether. This preaching, that Christ rose from the dead, by men who said they had seen Him after His Resurrection, was either

Fraud, Fancy, or Fact.

We have seen it could not be fraud, and if it could not be fancy, then it must be fact. Our own day has seen the attempt made to prove that these early preachers were mistaken.

It being impossible to deny their sincerity, the only way to overcome their testimony was to affirm that they did not really see Jesus, only fancied they did. The theory has been stated with all the brilliancy of the Frenchman, Renan, and the penetration of the German, Strauss. It can never be stated more strongly. But it has failed.

Briefly, the cause of the failure may be summed up under three heads:

That the belief in the Resurrection started up a few weeks after the death of Christ. This kills the mythical theory, which requires time for the gradual growth of the myth.
The body of Jesus. Whether the disciples had the body, or their foes had it, the body of Jesus would have equally destroyed any mere fancy that Christ was risen.
The evidence that the Apostles and early disciples were intelligent men, little likely to commit themselves to be the victims of fancy. The narratives of the gospels, the letters of the Apostle Paul, whose genuineness are beyond doubt, all show that there was careful investigation, and none of the expectation of the Resurrection which alone could create the fancy that He was seen. No, the Resurrection is no fraud, no fancy, but veritable, substantial fact.

But now you will agree that the pre-eminence of Jesus in the Bible, as the chief theme spoken of, is not more truly a feature of the Bible than is this feature of the testimony to Christ - the Resurrection is the fact selected to be the fact proved, the key-stone of the arch of evidence on which rests the claims of Jesus Christ; and that, moreover, both features are immensely valuable in guiding our minds in the consideration of Christianity.

The full beauty and strength of this, however, is not appreciated unless we get an answer to a question, which for its importance we consider separately.

IV. WHY WAS THIS FACT RATHER THAN ANY OTHER MADE CENTRAL?

Why not such a great fact as stilling the storm, or feeding the five thousand, or raising Lazarus? The answer to this question is this: No other fact in connection with Jesus was fitted to prove and set forth all that we are asked to find in Jesus; but this fact is singularly suitable. Let us notice a few things, beginning with the lowest:

(1) We are asked to believe in the holiness of Jesus - that in Him God was ever well pleased.

Now, in every age man has continued to think that death is the result of sin. As Tennyson expresses it -

"Thou hast made him, he knows not why,

He thinks he was not made to die."

Hence man expects that if a sinless one arise he shall not see corruption. And if for any reason he is permitted to die, man expects the holy one to rise again. This is met in the fact of the Resurrection. God did not suffer His Holy One to see corruption. If Jesus had not risen, we could not believe Him sinless. His Resurrection proves Him holy, that God approved Him, and confirms His teaching as the truth.

(2) We are asked to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

The very central blessing expected from the Messiah was life, eternal life. "Ye search the Scriptures, for in them ye think ye have eternal life, and they are they which testify of Me; and ye will not come to me that ye might have life." This thought, that in Him as the Messiah was life for men, was stated in many forms by Jesus. What, then, would have become of the belief in Jesus as the Christ if after raising others from the dead he Himself had remained in Hades and the tomb of Joseph? But now consider especially that other phrase - the Son of God. The Gospels are explicit as to the meaning of this. The Jews crucify Jesus because He made God His own Father, thus making Himself equal with God; and Jesus does not correct them, and say he made no such blasphemous claim. Therefore, the claim of Jesus is to nothing short of deity. And it is His deity that is everywhere referred to as giving efficacy to His work as Saviour. Now, had Christ died and not risen we could not have believed Him divine; but no fact could be more in harmony with His claim than that as the Prince and Author of life; having suffered for our sins, he should rise from the dead. The fact is admirably suited to prove that Jesus Son of the living God.

(3) We are to believe that His death avails as a propitiation for our sins.

The guilty conscience, unsatisfied with the shedding of the blood of animal sacrifices, is asked to believe that the blood of Christ, God's Son, is a sufficient atonement. But had He died and not risen we could not have believed this. Jesus died for our sins, and was raised again for our justification.

To mention but one more point,

(4) we are asked to believe in a living Saviour, who is able to help us to live

a new life, and to raise us from the dead at last.

The believer in Christ is required, and himself desires, to abandon the practice of sin. But sin has often proved too much for him in the past. What hope is there? In the very act in which he, as a believer, is pardoned, he has put before him in the most vivid way conceivable the source of his new life. He is buried with Christ in baptism for the remission of sins, that, as Christ was raised by the glory of the Father, even so he may be raised to walk in newness of life. The divine power that raised Christ, the living Lord that died to sin, but now lives to die no more, is the strength in which the new, holy life of service to God and man is to be lived. Finally, we need an assurance that God will not leave us in the dust. And that assurance is never lost so long as we believe that Jesus died and rose again. Our citizenship is in heaven, from whence we look for a Saviour who shall change the body of our humiliation, and make it like unto His own glorious body by that power whereby He is able to subject all things unto Himself.

We now see the great object placed before us for faith and love and obedience - the Lord Jesus Christ; and the glorious fulness of proof that He is risen, and that that Resurrection proves Him to be all we need - the Holy One - the Christ - the Son of God -the Propitiation for our sins - the living Saviour to help us to live holy lives now, and to raise us to glory hereafter. Our further chapters will assume this foundation, and deal with the will of God as revealed to us in the New Testament.

CHAPTER VII.

THE KINGDOM OF GOD.

NO one can have failed to observe that in the teaching of Jesus Christ a leading place was given to the Kingdom of God. This is seen most strikingly in the Gospel according to Matthew. Here Jesus is ever speaking of the Kingdom of Heaven, or the Kingdom of God (in Matthew He employs both descriptions), and leaves no doubt that in His estimation this is the one thing the possession of which makes men "blessed," the thing to be sought "first," the "Pearl of Great Price," man's Summum Bonum, or Highest Good.

It must always, therefore, be necessary to an intelligent and practical grasp of the mind of Christ, of His purposes in relation to mankind, of His will for those who realize that he is their all in all, that we should be acquainted with His teaching regarding the Kingdom of Heaven.

I. THE USE OF THE TITLE "THE KINGDOM OF GOD" IN SCRIPTURE.

While the theme is prominent in the New Testament, it is found in the Old as well. Indeed, most important subjects of the New have their origin in the Old Testament. When it is seen that the theme is so often referred to, either in the very words - "the kingdom of God" - or in terms with the same meaning, it is not surprising that the words do not always cover exactly the same contents. The general idea - a kingdom that is God's - is always there; but the sense in which it is His, and the extent of it, vary.

Thus is Psalm ciii. 19 we are told that "the Lord hath established His throne in the heavens; and His kingdom ruleth over all"; and in Dan. iv. 3, 34, 35, that "His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom," is "from generation to generation; and all the inhabitants of the earth are reputed as nothing; and He doeth according to His will in the army of heaven, and among the inhabitants of the earth: and none can stay His hand or say unto him, What doest thou?"

There are many such places, especially in the Old Testament Scriptures. These clearly show that the saints of those days had a clear faith in God as having always been, and as always being and to be, absolute King over all things, whether they are intelligent or inanimate, whether willingly subject to Him or not. In this sense, Hell itself is in God's Kingdom. As Milton has expressed it so felicitously:

"He, be sure,

In height, or depth, still first and last will reign

Sole King, and of His kingdom lose no part."

But alongside this universal and everlasting Kingdom of God there is another use of the term, so comparatively confined as to challenge our attention. Thus we read, in 2 Chron. xiii. 8, of "the Kingdom of the Lord in the hand of the sons of David." What is covered by the phrase is merely kingship over the people of Israel, as the words of verse 5 show: "Ought ye not to know that the Lord, the God of Israel, gave the kingdom over Israel to David for ever, even to him and to his sons, by a covenant of salt?"

This Kingdom of God, which began at Sinai, over which Saul, David, and his sons were afterwards made viceregents, was clearly a very, very limited kingdom as compared with God's Kingdom over all and for ever. But if limited in extent, the term is here proportionately deepened in moral and spiritual value. There can be little significance in claiming a place in God's Universal Kingdom when you remember that mere material things as much as intelligences; Satan as much as Gabriel; the most wicked nation as much as the most virtuous are all included.

Obedience to Himself was the ground on which God constituted Israel, in a special sense, His Kingdom. In Exodus xix. 5 we read: "Now therefore, if ye will obey My voice indeed, and keep My covenant, then ye shall be a peculiar treasure unto Me from among all peoples: for all the earth is mine: and ye shall be unto Me a kingdom of priests, and an holy nation."

Thus we note that the term "Kingdom of God" is used in a broad sense, and also in a special sense. There need be no difficulty in this. The Psalmist regarded God's kingship over all as setting forth the greatness of the honour which His nation enjoyed in having the King of all the earth as in a peculiar sense their King:

"Sing praises unto our king, sing praises,

For God is the king of all the earth."

Psalm xivii.

We see that the honour which Israel could claim, of being in a special sense closer and dearer than others, the Kingdom of God, was based on obedience. Israel was distinctly told that this was so, and deliberately accepted the condition. After God promised to make them His nation in a peculiar sense, on condition that they obeyed His voice, "all the people answered together and said, All that the Lord hath spoken we will do."

We need not stop to prove that the Israelites failed miserably in rendering obedience. It is therefore in perfect harmony with all the facts that, just as Jeremiah announced a New Covenant when Israel had broken the First, so Daniel intimates that God would establish another Kingdom among men. Interpreting King Nebuchadnezzar's dream, which he declared to represent four great kingdoms (the last the Roman), the prophet said: "In the days of those kings shall the God of heaven set up a kingdom which shall never be destroyed."

Here we have a third application of our term, the Kingdom of God. The first, that we have named Universal and Eternal, had always been; that we may describe as the Kingdom of God over Israel, had already long been set up; so that this prediction of Daniel suggests another special kingdom of God to be established before the Roman Empire disappeared. This is tantamount to a prediction that Israel would cease to be God's nation as a special kingdom - unless, indeed, He intended to have two special kingdoms at the same time! This is not likely, and as a fact in the New Testament we find both the commencement of a New Kingdom and the termination of the Kingdom of God over Israel.

The first point is proved by the cry of John the Baptist, "Repent ye, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand"; the second is found in Christ's words to the Jews: "Therefore say I unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken away from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof."

Thus, then, God's Kingdom over all did not prevent Him having a special kingdom over one nation, nor superseding the latter by one which was established in the days of the Roman Empire. Nor was this the end. God has one increasing purpose; and even while Christians were spoken of as in the Kingdom of God, it was held before them as the end to aim at, to have richly supplied unto them an entrance into the eternal kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ (2 Peter 1.). This and several other passages where the Kingdom of Christ or God is mentioned, evidently refer to a still future and glorious dispensation of the Kingdom of God.

To sum up. We have four uses of the phrase "kingdom of God," or words of the same import:

The Kingdom of God universal and eternal.
The Kingdom of God before Christ.
The Kingdom of God from Christ's first Advent to His second.
The Kingdom of God in a yet future and glorious dispensation.

This comprehensive view of our theme is very useful. Christians whose minds are much engrossed by the Kingdom of God yet future are apt to think all references to the kingdom of God are to this future kingdom, and to g

PREFACE

NEW TESTAMENT CHRISTIANITY