III.—PLUS ULTRA VS. NE PLUS ULTRA.

[An Address Delivered Before Eminence College, June 10, 1881.]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN OF EMINENCE COLLEGE:—It has ever been a delight to me to meet with the faculty and students of Eminence College on these festive occasions. It is but natural that the hearts of those who have gone out from these classic halls should turn on these gala days, and in feeling if not in fact, renew the fond associations of the past. They are oases in the desert; well-springs to the thirsty soul in the journey of life. I should, therefore, be untrue to myself, and unjust to you, were I not to confess to a pardonable pride in the privilege of addressing for the second time one of the graduating classes of this renowned institution. The subject on which I shall to-day address you is

"Plus Ultra vs. Ne Plus Ultra."

Spain is the great southwestern peninsula of Europe. It juts out between two seas as does no other country of that continent. Before the discovery of America by Columbus, the Spaniards prided themselves on the supposed fact that their country was the last point of solid land on the earth westward. Beyond them, they thought, there was nothing but a vast expanse of water—a shoreless ocean—a mystery never to be solved. Consequently the early coins of that country, in order to give prominence to this idea, were indented with a picture of the pillars of Hercules, the two great sentries on each side of the straits of Gibraltar. Encircling these pillars on their coins was the inscription, ne plus ultra—nothing beyond. They imagined, therefore, that they constituted the limits of creation; that beyond them there was nothing. Consequently, as in creation the last is the best, they gave to themselves the preeminence. In this proud idea they rested and praised the Lord. In their own estimation, therefore, they constituted the ne plus ultra of God's favored people. Thus they constituted another proud monument of man's folly and ignorance, from which it is well to take warning. In course of time, however, Columbus conceived the idea of another world west of Spain. After long years of discouragement, sufficient to crush the spirit of all but those of noble impulses and high resolves, he was permitted, with a small fleet, utterly insignificant in this age, to sail westward. He thus discovered the new world whose existence, if ever known before, had faded from the memory of man. On his return, when the Spaniards became convinced that a great continent lay to the west of them, they were compelled, humiliating as it was, to change the inscription on their coins, encircling the pillars of Hercules, to plus ultra—more beyond. This the demonstrated truth demanded. Thus the discovery of America took the ne off of their proud motto, thus teaching them a lesson which should be a lesson to the world. Their negation was changed to an affirmation. Their boasted limit of creation was changed to an acknowledgment of the unknown beyond. Thus it has ever been in man's proud history. Thus it will doubtless continue to be till we know as we are known. "Whether there be knowledge, it shall vanish away; for now we know only in part, but then shall we know even also as we are known."

The first thought with which I would impress your minds to-day, especially the minds of those who go out from this institution with the honors of graduation, is that there is something beyond—the plus ultra of a collegiate education. One of the most fatal mistakes in securing a collegiate education is, that this is all. If one of you entertains the idea to-day that your education is "finished," you will be a failure. We hear much in this age about a "finished education" in college. Alas! there is too much truth in it. The education of many is thus "finished," and their progress in life is also finished. A college course is not the end, but simply the means, of an education. This is simply the foundation, not the structure. On this you are to hereafter build; otherwise the foundation will be worthless. Without the after building the foundation itself will decay. This is alike the teaching of the history of man and the Son of God. On this foundation, therefore, I would urge you to build, not for time only, but for eternity. On it you should erect a noble structure, at once an ornament and a blessing to your race. This can not be done in a day. Patience and perseverance are the price of success. You must learn to "labor and to wait."

How often do we see the scintillations of genius within college walls, of which we see or hear nothing after the day of graduation? On that day the sun of their brilliancy seems to set forever. Why is this? Simply because they think their graduation is the ne plus ultra of their literary life.

It is not what we learn in college, but what we learn after leaving it, that makes us what we are in after life. The value of a collegiate education consists not in the amount of information it imparts, but in a preparation for the accumulation and use of information. Not simply the best minds, but the best students are those who win the prize in the end. Not the best students in college, but the best students after leaving it, are those who make the world feel their power. Many study hard for the honors of graduation, and beyond this seem to have no aspirations. If this is their ne plus ultra, then it is worthless. This institution does not educate you for graduation; it graduates you for education. Without this end in view, its labors would better cease. An institution is honored not by what its students know on the day of commencement, but by what they know and do ere they matriculate in the great university of worlds. It is, therefore, young ladies and gentlemen, to this end and not to this hour, that your teachers have faithfully labored to bring you. Without this in view, you will miss the grand purpose of your education thus far.

Doubtless many of us know men and women who have not grown an inch since the day that they went out from these or other halls of learning. They may have promised much at the beginning. On their success high hopes were built. Loving hands were impatient to wreathe their brows with the garlands of victory. But, alas! those hopes have been blighted and those garlands have withered. We see them in the pulpit, at the bar, and in all the other vocations of life. They are failures, not for want of mind, but for want of application. They have not followed up their victories, and their victories have turned to defeat. They have been resting on the honor of faded laurels, that in their freshness so become you to-day. To gather these was the ne plus ultra of their efforts, and hence the end of their success. Therefore, if any of you to-day look upon your graduation as the consummation of your literary struggles, let me exhort you to change your motto, and, like the Spaniards, on the birth of the new world, discard the idea of a possessed ultimatum, and imprint upon your banner plus ultra—more beyond.

As most of the graduating class are ladies, I feel the necessity of speaking especially of their hopes and prospects. Till recently, the hindrances of woman's education and literary position have been great and discouraging. But, thanks to the religion of Jesus, her disabilities have in Christian lands been removed. Woman was the crowning workmanship of God, and she has received the crowning blessings of Christianity. By the blessing of Christianity, the intellectual and spiritual powers of woman are encouraged. The world is often dazzled by her genius, astonished at her resources, and subdued by her spirit. She has stood in the halls of learning, walked in the groves of science, and gathered laurels on the mountains of fame. She has stimulated the world's genius, soothed its passion, and strewed her pathway through it with the sweetest flowers. Women have ever been the world's brightest angels of mercy—

"Whose company has harmonized mankind, Soften'd the rude and calmed the boisterous mind."

There are positions in the world for which woman was not made. The finishing touches of creation's wondrous works were too delicate to fit her for the political arena, the command of armies, or the founding of empires. She was made for higher and holier ends than these. She is adapted to a work more noble and more enduring. Her empire is in the heart, and her scepter one of spiritual dominion. Here she is a queen, and reigns without a rival. While there is a limit to her appropriate field of action, there is no limit to her power. Some one has said: "The current of female existence runs more within the embankments of home." This is true, but her influence overflows those banks and inundates the world. Her influence may be compared to the sparkling rivulet that bursts from the mountain peak, then winding its way to the valley below, it flows gently onward for thousands of miles, through rugged hills and fertile plains, bathing the feet of great cities and slaking the thirst of great countries, augmented by its tributaries, till, bearing upon its bosom the commerce of a nation, it pours its flood of waters into the world's great ocean. As our grand Mississippi will readily yield to an infant's touch, and yet bear upon its bosom the proudest vessels of man's invention, so is the tenderness and the power of woman's influence.

I have spoken of woman being the "last of creation." This expression is generally used in a false sense. She was last because God created on an ascending scale. She was, therefore, last in creation and first in redemption. She gave to the world its Saviour, and first proclaimed His birth from the dead. She was His best friend while He was here, and has been most devoted to His cause during His absence. Hence where Christianity goes woman's power is felt. The extent to which woman is honored marks to-day with unerring certainty the extent of a nation's civilization.

Young ladies, you have before you a field of golden opportunities. Only thrust in your sickles and reap. In this age and country there are great potentialities to every young lady of a good mind and a pure heart. Let no one, therefore, be discouraged. Remember that there is something beyond—the plus ultra of a well-begun life.

Having urged the necessity of plus ultra as your motto, as against ne plus ultra, I may drop some profitable hints as to the attainment of success. You know that one may give good advice, though he may not have profited by it himself.

In the first place, everything depends on work. Intense application is the price of success. The world's benefactors are the world's hard workers. "Tickle the earth with a hoe, and it will laugh at you with a harvest." But it closes its fists against those who extend to it an idle hand. Many people contend that the world owes them a living, and grumble that it does not pay the debt. What have they done for the world to bring it into their debt? The world owes every man a living when he earns it by honest toil, and not before. Those who sow with a stingy hand may expect to reap a scanty harvest. You should, therefore, in whatever vocation you may elect, strive to succeed on this principle; otherwise you will not deserve success.

You should not be discouraged because surroundings are not favorable, and hope seems long deferred. Be not impatient of results. Do your whole duty, and leave the consequences with the Lord. Never strive to be great. Few men become great this way, and they never deserve it. True greatness comes as a result of devotion to principle and duty. The highest and noblest success comes through a spirit of self-forgetfulness.

Learn to be indifferent to surroundings. You need not catch the "spirit of the age" unless the "spirit of the age" is worth catching. When you contemplate Marquis de Condorcet, in the dark days of the French Revolution, hiding in a lonely room in the city of Paris, while its streets ran red with noble and innocent blood, quietly writing a book whose subject was, "Man's Certain Progress to Liberty, Virtue, and Happiness," you will understand what I mean.

You must learn to think; to think regardless of surroundings; to think only of the thing of which you wish to think; and on this to concentrate the whole power of your mind. This requires careful training; but this only is education. With this you have full command of all your resources; without this they avail but little. The great motive power of the world is thought. Information without thought is simply a peddler burdened with stale wares on a dead market. It is not what one knows, but what he can produce, that makes the world feel his power. Hence one must be a producer as well as a receiver. The world's thought must be regenerated in his own mind. He should turn the world's dead facts into living thoughts—"Thoughts that breathe, and words that burn."

Avoid fickleness of purpose. Decide to do something in harmony with your endowments and the will of God, and do it. Many people of fine attainments and intellectual powers are spending their lives trying to decide for what purpose the Lord made them. Before they determine what they are good for, the world is certain to decide that they are good for nothing. Life is too precious to be spent in hesitation. He who vacillates will do nothing. Concentration is power. The rays of the sun that would hardly warm an infant's hand will, when concentrated by a lens, blister the palms of the hardiest sons of toil.

If we would make life a success, we must live for a purpose. He who lives simply for the sake of living, has no just conception of life. Those who live for the gratification of the flesh should remember that the goat lives for the same purpose. How humiliating the thought, that so many of the cultured, as well as the ignorant; the rich as well as the poor; the "cream of society" as well as its dregs, are thus living on the low plane of animal life! The grand distinction between man and the brute creation is in his spirit nature. Without spiritual culture, every thought, every aspiration, every gratification, is of the earth earthy. How sad, then, to see the gaudy "butterflies of society" spending their lives without a thought above that which alone can lift them forever above the plane of animal life! It is sad thus to think, but sadder still 'tis true. The enjoyment of "society," therefore, must not be your ne plus ultra, else life will be a failure.

In order to the highest success, you should live fast, but not in the world's bad sense of that word. I simply mean that your life should be intense. Mere existence is not life. Life is action. Life is not measured by time, but by experience. It is our duty, therefore, to live all we can in the time allotted us. The patriarchs lived longer than we, but we may live more than they. This is a grand age in which we live. We may now live more in fifty years than Methuselah did before the flood. The time is short. Hence if we would live much we must live fast.

But here I anticipate an objection. You say, "We shall shorten our days by fast living." Not by this kind of fast living. The world will never be troubled for burying ground for those who kill themselves simply by hard work. It is not work, but worry, that wears men out. We have too much friction in our lives. This must be stopped. An hour's passion will tell more on the constitution than a week's work. The largest amount of action, with the smallest amount of friction, is the problem before you; and he is the wisest philosopher who gives to us its best practical solution.

I wish now to invite your attention to mistakes that men have made in supposing that their knowledge was the ne plus ultra of human wisdom. Time was when the alchemists thought they possessed the ne plus ultra of human knowledge, and that wisdom would die with them; yet their knowledge is now to chemistry what astrology is to astronomy. It is a superstition on whose claims no scientist would dare to risk his reputation. Now chemistry is the ne plus ultra of human wisdom, and every man is a fool who does not hold the key to the secret chambers of its hidden treasures! But how long till we shall have a new chemistry that will render the old a bundle of laughable folly? The fact is, by the advancement of human knowledge we demonstrate that our ancestors were a set of fools, and our posterity will doubtless pay us the same compliment! The philosophy of history should teach us to be modest, and to keep as our motto plus ultra versus ne plus ultra.

Modern science has demonstrated that of all unreliable things, ancient science is the most unreliable. We should, therefore, expect to eventually see modern science remanded to the same category. One of the greatest inventors of the age, Mr. Edison, whose inventions have had to do wholly with modern science, tells us that he has been constantly thrown off the track and misled by the frauds of science. He thus expresses his estimate of the authorities in modern science:

"They [the text-books] are mostly misleading. I get mad with myself when I think I have believed what was so learnedly set out in them. There are more frauds in science than anywhere else.... Take a whole pile of them and you will find uncertainty, if not imposition, in half of what they state as scientific truth. They have time and again set down experiments as done by them, curious, out-of-the-way experiments, that they never did, and upon which they have founded so-called scientific truths. I have been thrown off my track often by them, and for months at a time. You see a great name, and you believe it. Try the experiment yourself, and you find the result altogether different.... I tell you I'd rather know nothing about a thing in science, nine times out of ten, than what the books would tell me—for practical purposes, for applied science, the best science, the only science, I'd rather take the thing up and go through with it myself. I'd find out more about it than any one could tell me, and I'd be sure of what I know. That's the thing. Professor this or that will controvert you out of the books, and prove out of the books it can't be so, though you have it right in the hollow of your hand all the time and could break his spectacles with it."

Thus it is that these authorities have been weighed in the balances and found wanting. This is a marvelous age, an age of unsurpassed invention and discovery of truth, but it is not the ne plus ultra of human wisdom—if we are to take any lessons from the past ages.

The wave theory of sound, which has been regarded as a settled scientific fact since the days of Pythagorean, is now vigorously attacked, and the adherents to the orthodox ground will have to rally their forces and reconsider their proofs, if they save the theory from slumbering among the follies of the past.

In the past few years the world has been startled by the bold theory of evolution, as advocated by Darwin, Haeckel, Huxley and others. Many have felt uneasy about the foundations of our faith. But such alarm is all premature. The glaring contradictions of one another of these modern apostles of a "gospel of dirt," and their self-stultification, are enough to convince any thoughtful reader, that if the race has not developed from apes, a few of them bear marks of descent from asses! The credulity of this class of men is simply marvelous. They can believe that a moneron can be developed into a man, but can not believe in a miracle! Their wonderful development of a moneron into a man terminates with the boundary line of time, and thus the ne plus ultra is reached of their "infinite progression!"

In order to a proper appreciation of the present life, we must be deeply impressed with the nature of that which lies beyond. No one can well spend the present life who does not spend it in view of the life to come. Man must properly appreciate himself before he can live in harmonious relations with his being. No man can have that appreciation of himself essential to a true life, who believes that his ancestors were monerons and mud-turtles!

While there are many striking resemblances between animals and man, just such as we should expect to find from the hand of the same Creator, who began farthest from himself and worked to his own divine model, yet there are striking differentiae which demand profound consideration. Animals come into the world with the knowledge of their ancestors. The beaver knows just what its ancestors knew before the flood. It is born into the world with that transmitted knowledge. Its posterity will know no more during the millennium. On the contrary, man is born into the world an intellectual blank. However wise his parents, he inherits not one idea. He knows absolutely nothing except what he learns—learns from teachers and by experience. It would be incomprehensibly strange if man in his development from a mollusk, should accumulate inherited knowledge till he reaches the ne plus ultra of terrestrial life, and then by a sudden break in the chain of nature lose it all, and come into the world a born fool!! This would be "development," "natural selection," and the "survival of the fittest," with a vengeance! Here is a chasm between man and the lower animals, made by the hand of God, that human wisdom can never bridge.

In his intellectual, moral and spiritual development, man starts from zero. God has thus ordained it. He is dependent on progression for all that he is and all that he is to be. God simply gives him a start in this world, with the numberless ages of eternity before him for infinite advancement. The idea, therefore, that "death ends all" nips in the bud this grand conception of man's greatness, and blights forever that which is noblest and truest in his nature. To regard this life as the ne plus ultra of man's development, is to charge nature with a freak of folly, and an abortion in her best works. Men may laud human virtue for human virtue's sake; but if man is but the moth of a day, the fire-fly whose phosphorescent light flashes for a moment and then goes out in eternal night, his virtues are but the tales of the hour that have their value in the telling. If this life is all there is of man, then he is the most unmeaning portion of the creation of God. There is for him no perfection, no satisfying of his inherent wants, and the whole of his existence is a sham and a fraud. As Young has beautifully said:

"How poor, how rich, how abject, how august, How complicate, how wonderful, is man! How passing wonder He who made him such! Who centered in our make such strange extremes, From different natures marvelously mixed, Connection exquisite of distant worlds! Distinguished link in being's endless chain! Midway from nothing to the Deity! A beam ethereal, sullied, and absorbed! Though sullied and dishonored, still divine! Dim miniature of greatness absolute! An heir of glory! a frail child of dust! Helpless immortal! insect infinite! A worm! a God!—I tremble at myself, And in myself am lost. At home, a stranger. Thought wanders up and down, surprised, aghast, And wondering at her own. How reason reels! O, what a miracle to man is man! Triumphantly distressed! What joy! what dread! Alternately transported and alarmed! What can preserve my life? or what destroy? An angel's arm can't snatch me from the grave; Legions of angels can't confine me there."

It is only when we thus look beyond this life, and contemplate his relation to the Deity, that we realize the true dignity of man.

It is natural that you should desire power—power to bless the race and bring it nearer to God. Do not be discouraged if you do not find this power clothed in the world's pomp and parade. The most God-like power comes not in this way. God works by quiet forces that man may scorn but can not equal. Behold that mountain of ice in the polar sea held by the relentless grip of a winter's frost. All the engineering power of man could not shake it upon its throne. All the locomotives in the world could not move it an inch. But nature unveils her smiling face when the springtime comes, the sun sheds upon it his gentle rays, noiseless as the grave, too mild to hurt an infant's flesh, and soon these mountains of ice relax their grip and glide away into the great deep! This is power. This power you may possess, and should strive to possess, through the gentle forces of a regenerated nature, till the quiet influences you exert for God will pass beyond the bounds of time and be expended on a shoreless eternity.

In conclusion, then, let me urge you to live for eternity, and let the life that now is be with reference to that which is to come. Then will you progress from the low plane of our terrestrial sphere to association with God, and eternity alone will mark the ne plus ultra in intellectual and spiritual development toward the Divine Being.



PART III.—SELECTIONS.



NEW TESTAMENT VIEWS OF CHRIST.

I.—CHRIST THE LAMB OF GOD.

"Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away the sin of the world" (John i. 29)

The New Testament presents a many-sided view of Christ. From each point of view he appears in a new relation, and we study him in a different character. We can see but one side of a mountain by approaching it from only one direction. We must view it from every point from which it presents a different aspect, before we have seen it as it is. So we should study Christ in the many characters in which He is introduced upon the sacred page, that we may understand more of the many dear relations He sustains to us. The more we know of Him in His various relations, the more we will love Him and the better we will serve Him.

We therefore purpose a number of articles under the general title of "New Testament Views of Christ." They will appear, we trust, with as much regularity as the press of other matters will permit.

After the temptation, Jesus returned to where John was baptizing, and began the work of gathering about Him His apostles. On different occasions, as Jesus moved among the multitudes during this visit, John pointed Him out as the Lamb of God. And John said, "I knew him not; but he that sent me to baptize in water, he said unto me, Upon whomsoever thou shalt see the Spirit descending and abiding upon him, the same is he that baptizeth with the Holy Spirit. And I have seen and borne witness that this is the Son of God" (John i. 33, 34). Both before and after this statement, John calls Him the Lamb of God. John knew that He was to make the Messiah manifest to Israel by His baptism, for God had told him so. He did not know Jesus to be the Christ till after His baptism, yet he shrank back from the idea of baptizing him, and pleaded his unworthiness. He was worthy, and specially appointed of God, to make manifest the Messiah, but gave way under a sense of unworthiness at the thought of baptizing his cousin, Jesus of Nazareth! What a flood of light does this pour upon the private life of the Son of Mary! John knew Jesus as a man; and while he doubtless had hopes that He was the long-promised One, he did not know it, and could not base his refusal of baptism on that ground. John was baptizing for the remission of sins, and required those whom he baptized to confess their sins, and his knowledge of the spotless life of Jesus caused him to shrink at the thought of administering to Him such a baptism. Thus impressed with the purity and innocence of Jesus, it is not strange that he should call Him the Lamb of God.

But innocence is not the only prominent feature in contemplating Jesus as a lamb. The idea of sacrifice to which innocence and purity are essential has pre-eminence. The first accepted offering on the earth, of which we have an account, was a lamb. It was offered in faith; hence by divine direction. That Abel saw anything in it beyond an act of simple obedience to God in an arbitrary appointment, we have no reason to believe. He did what God directed, and because it was directed. This is the essential element of obedience in all ages, regardless of the thing required. Nothing else can be the "obedience of faith."

What different conceptions had God and Abel of that sacrifice! Abel saw in it only a "firstling of his flock." God saw in it His own Son—"the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world." Not only so, but on this account was it directed. The fact that this was not revealed to Abel, shows that God intends us to obey Him in what He directs, without being concerned about the reasons He has for the requirement. He who sees the end from the beginning makes the first in execution conform to that which is to be last. Hence, the first act of worship, and every subsequent act, from the divine point of view, harmonizes with the perfection which in the fullness of times, was given us in Christ Jesus. The lamb of Abel borrowed all its value and significance from the Lamb of God. While we are enabled to see this through the development of the scheme of redemption, he was not; and the fact that his act of simple obedience in ignorance of God's far-seeing purposes is recorded as an example for us, is of unspeakable value to the child of faith.

During the four thousand years in which God was preparing the world for Christ, both in patriarchal and Jewish worship, a lamb without spot or blemish was the most prominent offering for sin. In every case the offering was made as directed, and when made, the worshiper was assured that his sin was forgiven. Christ is our sin-offering—the Lamb of God that takes away our sins—and we must present Him before God as divinely directed. We may build no strange fire on God's altars. We may substitute nothing for Christ as an offering for sin, and no ways of our own for God's way, in His presentation.

In viewing Christ as the Lamb of God—the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world—the prominent feature of His saving relationship to us is His blood. Hence we are redeemed, not with silver and gold and perishable things, "but with the precious blood of Christ, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot." As a Lamb, Christ is sin-atoning. His power to save is not in the innocence of His life, but the merits of His death. The sacrifice of an innocent life is God's wisdom and power to save the world. Let us remember it was for us He was led as a lamb to the slaughter; that our sins were laid upon Him; that He was bruised for our iniquities; that He bore our sins in His bosom on the tree; that by His stripes we are healed; that in His innocent life and sacrificial death, we behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world.



NEW TESTAMENT VIEWS OF CHRIST.

II.—CHRIST THE BREAD OF LIFE.

"I am the bread of life. Your fathers did eat the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which cometh down out of heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down out of heaven; if any man eat of this bread, he will live forever; yea, and the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world" (John vi. 48-51).

When the Israelites came out of Egypt and started on their wilderness journey to the promised land, they found themselves without sustenance. The land furnished no supplies. In this respect they were cut off from earthly resources. In their emergency they cried unto the Lord, and God gave them bread from heaven. Each day they gathered the necessary supply. The amount for the Sabbath was gathered the day preceding. Beyond this there was no collection for future use. An effort to save it proved a disgusting failure. Forty years did the daily supply of manna fail not, till they reached the land that God had promised.

The bread on which God fed His people from the land of bondage to the land of Canaan was a type of Christ. This is asserted by both Paul and the Saviour. As such it is worthy of careful study.

1. The Israelites were wholly dependent on the daily bread which God gave. This was a want which the world could not supply. They must feed upon the heaven-supplied food or die. So is every one thus dependent on the bread of life. The world can not supply the wants of the child of God. He needs a daily food which the world does not produce. The world is to him a spiritual desert. He can not look to it to meet the wants of his spiritual nature. Being born from above, he has to live from above. When he seeks to gratify the cravings of his carnal nature by turning back to the flesh-pots of Egypt, he languishes and dies.

Be it remembered that this bread of life is Christ. It is not some theory about Him. It is not some system of theology of man's formulation. Men may feed upon systems and theories till their souls are dwarfed and starved. Such feeding makes partisans and cold-blooded sectarians, without imparting divine life to the soul. We must come directly to Christ. Through His holy word we must study Him, assimilate our lives to His, feed upon Him as the bread from heaven, and drink in of His gracious spirit. The world took knowledge of the saints of old, that they had been with Jesus. And so it may now easily decide as to those of such holy companionship.

2. Christ is the bread of life. As such He has to be appropriated. There is no virtue in bread to sustain life until it is appropriated and assimilated to the system. Men may starve within reach of abundance. God supplies the bread of life, but He does not compel men to eat it. They are urged to eat and live, but they may refuse and die. Oh, the millions in our land who are starving for the bread of life, when it is offered them day by day! Unless we eat the body of the Son of God we have no life. Our salvation, therefore, depends upon eating. Yet there is no virtue in the act of eating. The virtue is in the thing eaten. It is not putting on your coat that makes you warm, but the coat after it is on. Faith is a condition of salvation; but there is no power to save in believing. The saving virtue is in the thing believed. So we may substitute nothing for that which God has given. We must eat the bread which God provides, else all our eating will be in vain.

3. It is well understood by all classes that the wants of the physical man need to be daily supplied. To meet these demands, is the chief concern of the great mass of humanity. Observe that young man. He is in the vigor of robust manhood. He has just enjoyed a night's refreshing sleep and a hearty breakfast. His system seems to be overflowing with an excess of vitality. He goes forth to his work boastful of his strength. But how many hours is it till nature cries aloud for the replenishing of his strength? How long can he live on the boastful supply of his physical manhood? A few days finds him as helpless as a babe. So essential is physical food to physical life.

Nor is spiritual food less essential to spiritual life. As new-born babes we need the unadulterated milk of the word, that we may grow thereby. As men and women, we need the strong meat adapted to our maturity. The great mistake is in trying to live the spiritual life without spiritual food. The strong men in Christ are the good feeders. Those who feed upon the bread of heaven will develop in that which is heavenly. No man has religion enough at the start to take him through life, unless he dies early. The foolishness of the five foolish virgins consisted in their not taking an additional supply of oil. So it is now with every one who does not daily replenish his supply of spirituality. He who tries to live without communion with God—in reading, in praying, in meditation and obedience to the divine will—will end in shameful failure.

Christian character is a growth, not a divine impartation. God does not give spiritual strength in an arbitrary way. He provides the means to that end. If we use them, strength results. If we neglect them, we die in feebleness. The means in the figure before us is the bread of life, and the bread of life is Christ. There is an absolute necessity, therefore, for feeding upon Him. From Him all spiritual strength is derived. He is the source of all life. He said to His disciples: "Without me, ye can do nothing." As the branch draws its nourishment and fruit-bearing qualities from the vine, so we draw all spirituality and fruitfulness from Christ. We are fruitful in proportion as we abide in the Vine; and we are strong in proportion to our feeding on the bread of life.

4. God permitted Israel to gather manna for one day only at a time. So in teaching His disciples to pray, the Saviour said: "Give us this day our daily bread." Our bread of life is a never-failing supply. There was no need of laying up manna, for God gave a fresh and abundant supply every morning. This daily supply never ceased till their pilgrimage was over. Of this they had assurance. Hence an attempt to lay up a supply for future use was to distrust the God of their fathers. The true bread of heaven is as unfailing as was the typical bread of the wilderness. God's people will ever have an abundant supply of that bread of which, if a man eats, he shall never hunger. Hence the Saviour says: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world."

5. The world has been greatly concerned about food for six thousand years. The gratification of the appetite has both blessed and cursed the race. Life has ever depended upon food; hence food has been the chief concern of man. During the history of the world the race has been ignorant of the processes of digestion and assimilation. They have known nothing of the chemistry of this source of life. They have gone on from age to age building up their bodies by taking food, wholly ignorant of the process by which it was done. The value of the thing eaten has never depended on a knowledge of the process by which it was assimilated. We thank God that it is thus with the bread of life. We may never expect to comprehend the "mystery of godliness" in this life. Just how the bread of life enables us to live forever, we are not concerned to know. It is enough for us to know that it is so. Let us, then, appropriate this rich provision of God's grace, and the blessing will be ours.



NEW TESTAMENT VIEWS OF CHRIST.

III.—CHRIST THE WATER OF LIFE.

"Jesus answered and said unto her, Every one that drinketh of this water shall thirst again: but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life" (John iv. 13, 14).

"Now on the last day, the great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink" (John vii. 37).

"And did all drink the same spiritual drink: for they drank of a spiritual rock that followed them: and the rock was Christ" (I. Cor. x. 4).

Twice was a rock smitten by Moses in the wilderness to supply the Israelites with water. The first was at Rephidim, in the wilderness of Sin, during the first year of their Exodus, before they came to Mount Sinai. The second was at Kadesh, in the wilderness of Zin, in the fortieth year of the Exodus. It is evident that the apostle refers to the first of these, though we can hardly think, with most commentators known to us, that he does so exclusively. The fact that the rock followed them, as a type of Christ, in their wilderness life, demands that it be from the beginning, rather than the end, of their journey. And the fact that many who drank of it fell in the wilderness, requires the same conclusion. But for reasons yet to appear, we think the two are considered as one. The miracle was in all respects the same in the second as in the first. There was the same dependence for life on the second as the first. There was the same necessity that the second rock or stream should follow them as there was of the first; for they were yet a long way from Canaan, with a waterless desert before them. We can, therefore, see no reason why the first should be a type of Christ and not the second.

Was it the stream or the rock which followed the Israelites? Paul says the rock. But commentators seem generally to agree that the "rock" is here put by metonymy for the water of the rock, Barnes says, "It would be absurd to suppose that the rock that was smitten by Moses literally followed them in the wilderness." Just why it is more "absurd" to suppose the rock followed them, than the stream from a stationary fountain at Horeb, we are wholly unable to see. Let us look at the facts and probabilities in the case.

We must keep in view the important fact, as mentioned in the last chapter, that these people were dependent on God. They had seen the mighty hand of God in their delivery, and now they were to be taught dependence on Him, as the only source of life. They had, therefore, to be sustained by miraculous food and miraculous drink. The country supplied neither food nor water. The miraculous supply of water was as great a necessity as that of bread. For two or three millions of people, with their flocks and herds, a large stream, even a small river, would be required. It is also true that their cattle had to have food, as well as themselves. Just how this was furnished, we are not told. Here is a large field for conjecture. It is generally held that the river continued to flow from a stationary source at Horeb, and that it irrigated the country in its following of the people, and thus caused vegetation for the flocks and herds. But in the fortieth year they are again found without water. Why was this? What had become of the river that had followed them from the first year, if it was the river, and not the rock, that followed them? On this point we can not refrain from quoting Macknight and Barnes, as examples of how learned commentators, led by a theory, sometimes drop their readers into a perfect abyss of darkness. Macknight says: "For as Wall observes, from Horeb, which was a high mountain, there may have been a descent to the sea; and the Israelites during the thirty-seven years of their journeying from Mount Sinai may have gone by those tracts of country in which the waters from Horeb could follow them, till in the thirty-ninth year of the Exodus they came to Ezion-gaber (Num. xxxiii. 36), which was a part of the Red Sea a great way down the Arabian side, where it is supposed the waters from Horeb went into that sea." Barnes says: "Mount Horeb was higher than the adjacent country, and the water that thus gushed from the rock, instead of collecting into a pool and becoming stagnant, would flow off in the direction of the sea. The sea to which it would naturally flow would be the Red Sea. The Israelites doubtless, in their journeyings, would be influenced by the natural direction of the water, or would not wander far from it, as it was daily needful for the supply of their wants. At the end of thirty-seven years we find the Israelites at Ezion-gaber, a seaport on the eastern branch of the Red Sea, where the waters probably flowed into the sea (Num. xxxiii. 36). In the fortieth year of their departure from Egypt, they left this place to go into Canaan, by the country of Edom, and were immediately in distress again by the want of water."

These comments involve several objectionable features. (1) The Israelites were guided in their course by the pillar of cloud and fire; not by the stream of water on its course to the sea. (2) Paul says the rock followed them; not that they followed the river. (3) We can not allow that when God sets out to work a miracle, He is defeated by natural causes. The idea that the river ran into the sea, and left the children of Israel without water, just because the situation would naturally lead to that result, is to let go the miracle and have God defeated, because the surroundings are not favorable! The idea that God could cause a river to flow from a flinty rock, and then have to leave it to seek its natural way to the sea, leaving His people destitute when the surface of the country would be in the way of its natural flow, is equaled only by admitting that God created the heavens and the earth, but could not give sight to the blind or call Lazarus out of the grave. We, therefore, repeat the question, If the river followed the people, what became of it when they came into the wilderness of Zin?

On the hypothesis that it was the rock which followed them, just as Paul says it was, there is nothing unreasonable in the supposition that for some cause, not given, God withheld the flow of water to chastise them for their wickedness, as He did in other ways, and make them realize their dependence. As favoring this idea, when they were destitute the second time, and cried unto Moses in their distress, God told him to gather the people together and speak unto the rock. Not only was there a suitable rock present for the second river of water, but it seemed to be a particular rock. Hence designated "the rock." Our conclusion is, therefore, that the two rocks were one; that it followed the Israelites during their entire journey to Canaan, supplying the people with the fresh out-gushings of its crystal stream. That rock was typical of Christ, and the blessings of Christ are never stale or stagnant, as the water from a fountain in Horeb would have been, after winding its sluggish way through the parched desert of Arabia.

"That rock was Christ." That is, it was a type of Him. All those transactions were typical. "Now these things happened unto them by way of types; and they were written for our admonition."

"A dry and thirsty land where no water is," well represents this world to one who has not an ever-present Saviour as the fountain of the water of life. As the Israelites would have perished without the crystal flow from the flinty rock, so perishes the world without Christ. There is no appetite more distressing than thirst. There is nothing more delightful than the cooling draught to the parched throat. Oh, to those who thus "thirst after righteousness," how delightful it is to be "filled"! "As the heart panteth after the water brooks, so panteth my soul after thee, O God." Only the thirsty can appreciate drink; so only those who first feel the need of a Saviour can experience the joy of salvation. Not only shall the thirsty soul be satisfied that drinks of the water of life, but it shall "become within him a well of water springing up unto eternal life." This refreshing and ever-present fountain of life flows for all. "If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink." To slake one's thirst at this fountain, is a foretaste of the river of life that flows from beneath the throne in the eternal city of God. Many who drank of the typical water of the wilderness, fell under the displeasure of God, and died short of the promised land. Hence we should be careful to live ever near to the water of life, that our thirsty souls may be continually supplied, and our strength renewed. Only by being constantly refreshed can we be saved from perishing in the wilderness and kept unto the land of God beyond.



NEW TESTAMENT VIEWS OF CHRIST.

IV.—CHRIST THE SON OF GOD.

"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God" (Matt. xvi. 16).

"Whosoever shall confess that Jesus is the Son of God, God abideth in him and he in God" (I. John iv. 15).

"And who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" (I. John v. 5).

In one sense all men are sons of God. In a much dearer sense all Christians are sons and daughters of the Almighty. But the relationship of Christ to the Father is infinitely above this. He is the Son of God. God is His Father by direct production, without the agency of a human father. The same divine power that can create life through the agency of man, can create it without such agency. Hence there is nothing to stumble over in the idea of the miraculous conception, to one who fully accepts the God of the Bible in the character in which He is revealed as a divine creator. To accept God as the creator of heaven and earth, and then stagger at His performance of any miracle is a logical absurdity.

Jesus claimed to be the Son of God in the high sense that involved equality with the Father. He said: "I and the Father are one." On account of this relationship, "He thought it not robbery to be equal with God." His enemies understood that this equality was involved in His claim; hence they charged Him with blasphemy in making Himself equal with God.

This was a high claim on the part of the Nazarene. He claimed to be more than a man. When some said that He was John, or Elijah, or Jeremiah, or some one of the prophets, they underestimated Him according to His claim. The greatest prophet, or inspired teacher, that had ever appeared among men, even if raised from the dead as the special messenger of God to His people, could not meet the demands involved in the claim of Jesus, that He was the Son of God.

This high claim had to be sustained by two distinct lines of testimony—miracles and a sinless life. The purpose of miracles is to establish the claims of the miracle-worker and to glorify God. The miracles of Jesus establish His divine mission and claim to the Messiahship. No man could do the miracles He did "except God be with him;" and God would not be with one who was advocating false claims. The enemies of Jesus understood this; hence they said: "God heareth not sinners." Miracles are the substratum of the foundation underlying our faith.

While the divine claims of Jesus are attested by His miracles, the evidence is crowned by His sublime character. His life is itself among the most wonderful of miracles. As a child of poverty and a son of toil, He lived thirty years among men. When He afterwards claimed to be the Son of God, He had many bitter enemies. They persecuted Him even unto death, and yet not one of them ever pointed to an act of His private life as inconsistent with, or unworthy of, His divine claim. This simple fact speaks volumes as to the purity of His life. The world has contained but one such. The very life which His claims require is the life revealed on the sacred page.

Infidels have ordinarily contented themselves with mere negations. They seem not to realize the fact that in denying some things they are logically bound to account for others. If we deny the claim of Jesus that He is the Son of God, then we have to account for His miracles, His life, the disposal of His entombed body, and the establishment and development of His kingdom. These are facts. As such they have to be accounted for. On the hypothesis that Jesus is the Christ, all difficulty vanishes. On any other, it is more than the world has yet been able to meet. Skeptics laud the character of Jesus as a model of purity, such as the world has never elsewhere found, and yet deny the claim on which was based His mission to men and on which He built His church. How the establishment of a religion upon a known falsehood can harmonize with a life of faultless purity, they do not pretend to tell us, for it is a palpable absurdity. How His disciples could testify on a point of fact in regard to which they could not be mistaken, and surrender all worldly position and comfort, and life itself, to establish a known falsehood in the hearts of men, in which they—the witnesses—could have no personal interest, they leave in the Egyptian darkness characteristic of their system. How can he account for American history and American institutions who denies the existence of Washington, or claims that he was a disreputable impostor? How, then, shall he account for the history and institutions of civilization who denies to Jesus of Nazareth existence as a man of that age and country, or makes Him a base deceiver and vile impostor?

That Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, is the fundamental, pivotal fact in the Christian religion. It underlies every other feature of the Christian system. On it turn the value and significance of every other item of the faith. Everything takes position with regard to this, and derives its value from it. With this, all else stands by divine appointment, and bears the seal of heaven. Without it, the whole system is but as the chaff which the wind driveth away.

When the proposition is established that Jesus is the Son of God, every other feature of the Christian system rests upon authority. Nothing else has to be proved as this does. Before establishing this proposition, the word of Jesus settles nothing. After its establishment, it settles everything. When we accept Him as the Christ, we accept all else on His authority. Hence He says, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" "All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth. Go ye therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit." The making and baptizing of disciples rests upon the authority of Jesus, and that authority is based upon His Messiahship. So of every other item of the Christian system of faith.

The great inconsistency and consequent weakness of the religious world, is in not accepting the simple authority of Jesus as conclusive and wholly sufficient on any matter on which He has expressed the divine mind. As the Son of God and coronated Lord of lords, His authority is supreme, and His word is law. What He says is to be accepted as infallibly true, and the end of all controversy. Whatever He directs is to be done, simply because He directs it. Whatever else we may consider a corroborative reason, the direction of Jesus alone is to determine our action. Only this can be the obedience of faith. And in regard to what He directs, there can be no compromise. The King speaks to be obeyed, not to be argued with. It is His prerogative to command; ours to obey.

Jesus made His authority the controlling principle in His religion. Where this is maintained, the religion of Christ is preserved in its purity. Where it is disregarded, anything follows that the tastes and follies of men may demand. The religion of Christ is pure or corrupt in proportion as His authority is observed or ignored.

The authority of Jesus can not be separated from His appointments. His entire authority is embodied in each of His appointments. Hence he who disregards an appointment of Jesus Christ, disregards His authority. And he who disregards His authority, ignores His Lordship. The man who deliberately refuses to do what Christ directs, ignores the authority of his Lord, and dethrones the Son of the living God. Yet how much of this do we see among men! Not only in the world, but in the church as well. It seems strange that one should make a profession of the religion of Christ, and yet thus ignore His Lordship. The authority of Jesus against a life of indifference in the church, of non-attendance, of want of cooperation in the work of the Lord, against carnality, pleasure-loving, worldliness, the lusts of the flesh, want of spirituality, and such like, is as direct and positive as that against rejecting the gospel of Christ; and yet how many church members, all over our land, are disregarding the authority of Jesus in these matters. Those who make a profession of religion and live in the church without continuing to honor the Lord Jesus by regarding His authority and complying with His will, would better have never known the way of life. The authority of Jesus follows us to the grave, and is never relaxed for a day. His will, not ours, is to rule in our life. Our desires, however strong, are to be subordinated to the mind of Him who gave His life for ours, and said, "all authority in heaven and on earth is given unto me."

It is the height of inconsistency, therefore, to exalt the name of Jesus in words and professions, and speak lightly of, or disregard any one of His appointments. It is not only inconsistent; it is disloyal and wicked. This is the great stumbling-block in our way to the indorsement of Mr. Moody and such men. We care not what else he may be, we can indorse no man who tears in two the commission of Jesus Christ. He who refuses to "speak as the oracles of God speak," in order to promote his work, is not doing the work that God would have him do. We can not honor Christ without honoring His teaching, and we can not honor His teaching by withholding a part of it from those inquiring the way of eternal life. We can honor Jesus as the Son of God only by declaring His whole counsel, and yielding submissively in all things to His divine authority.

This acceptance of Jesus as an infallible teacher, as one whose every word is to be believed simply because He said it, and whose every direction is to be observed simply because He directs it, whose spirit is to be possessed and cultivated to the transforming of the life, till we grow into the divine image and become partakers of the divine nature, is all involved in the "good confession": Jesus is the Christ, the Son of the living God.



NEW TESTAMENT VIEWS OF CHRIST.

V.—CHRIST THE SON OF MAN.

"The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head" (Matt. viii. 20).

"Who do men say that the Son of man is?" (Matt. xvi. 13).

"And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life" (John iii. 14).

It is a matter of profound gratitude that our Saviour was a man. "The Son of man," as well as "the Son of God," was essential to His great work of bringing salvation to the race. In one sense we are all sons of man, but not as He was. He was not simply the Son of Mary and her ancestors. He was the Son of humanity. He was equally akin to the race. He touches humanity at every angle and on every side. While He was the Son of David according to the flesh, He is the kinsman of the race as a partaker of our common nature. "Since the children are sharers in flesh and blood, he also himself, in like manner, partook of the same." He ignored all accidental relationships closer than this shared by the race. The members of His own household obtained not a blessing which He did not as freely bestow on others. The fact that He did not manifest greater partiality toward His mother has been a matter of comment. The simple fact is, that the relationship with which we are concerned, and of which the inspired record treats, is to the race; hence it is not concerned about His personal family affections. His brothers and sisters and mothers are those who hear His word and keep it.

The world has ever had too far-away ideas of God. It has contemplated God at a great distance. It puts Him beyond the stars. Indeed, the stars fade away from view in the distance behind us, as we ascend in imagination to the dwelling-place of the Most High. The world can never be suitably impressed with God's presence while it holds Him at a distance. He can never be sensibly near unto us while we keep Him beyond the stars. Nor can we be influenced by the idea of His presence till we learn that "he is not far from each one of us."

God tried to impress His people anciently with the idea of His presence by various visible manifestations. Abraham realized time and again that God was his present companion and friend. When Jacob saw the ladder reaching to heaven, and angels ascending and descending on it, he said, "Surely, the Lord is in this place." And when Moses drew near to see the burning bush, a voice from its flame demanded the removal of the sandals from his feet, for the ground on which he stood was holy ground.

God impressed Israel with the awfulness of His presence as a Lawgiver, whom the nations were to honor, by His voice from Mount Sinai which "shook the earth." The glorious manifestation of God's presence at the tabernacle, in the midst of the camp of Israel, impressed them with the fact that the God of their fathers was with them; that He was in their midst; that He had not forgotten His covenant; and that He would be with them to sustain them in every emergency till the end. With all this, they often forgot God and went astray. What would they have done without it?

In the person of Jesus, God perfected the divine purpose of bringing Himself into a realized nearness to the human family. He clothed Himself in our humanity, and became one with us. We are thus enabled to look upon Him, to contemplate Him, not as a great, self-existing Spirit, incomprehensible and awful, but as a man. Jesus was a man; and "in him dwelleth all the fullness of the Godhead bodily." He is God manifest in flesh. And as God is thus manifest, would He have us apprehend Him. Just, therefore, as we can appreciate the nearness of Jesus as a loving and sympathizing kinsman, may we appreciate the nearness of His Father and our God.

It is evident that men need a God to whom they can get sensibly near. There is no profit in the worship of a God of abstractions. There is in it no food for the soul. What is there to satisfy the languishing soul in a prayer to the "Great Unknown and Unknowable"? They that come to God must believe that He is. And that "is" is a personal divine being, into whose arms we may cast our helpless selves, and on whose bosom we may pillow our weary head; instead of a great, bewildering, incomprehensible abstraction, "without body, parts, or passions."

We are brought into a sacred nearness with God in the life of Jesus. From His bed in the manger to His rest in a borrowed grave, we have a life of abject poverty. He was the friend and companion of the poor. The world is full of poverty, and ever will be. But the poorest of every age and country find a companion and friend, of like sufferings with themselves, in the person of Jesus. The cares and sorrows of life, resulting from poverty, of which the world knows most as a daily burden, were fully realized by Him; and in it all He is a deeply sympathetic friend.

Jesus was a man of labor. The hands so often extended to bless humanity, and through which the cruel nails were driven, were hardened by daily toil. He never did a day's work with which His employers found fault. Long after He had built mansions in the skies for them that love Him, were the houses of His own workmanship standing in Galilee; but when He laid aside His tools to do the work of His Father, no man ever pointed to an earthly house and said, "This job is not in harmony with His claims to be the Son of God." He knew what it was to be tired and hungry. He doubtless knew the meaning of hard work and low wages. It follows, therefore, that every son of toil, every burdened and weary life, has for a gracious Redeemer and providential Saviour one who was "a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief."

Jesus was a man of temptation. He was tempted as no other man was ever tempted. The devil is the author of temptation, and he had a peculiar interest in the temptation of Jesus. Through temptation comes sin. Sin is the yielding of the will under temptation to do wrong. The devil had a special interest in inducing Jesus to sin. He was the representative of the race. Their fortunes were all involved in His. The consummation of His work as a Redeemer required a sinless life. Hence if Jesus could be induced to yield to temptation, the world's hope of salvation was forever gone. It is evident, therefore, that the devil exhausted his resources to accomplish that end. Consequently He was "tempted in all points like as we are," and infinitely beyond what we know of temptation. And He who withstood Satan in every onset has promised to be with us to the end, and suffer us not to be tempted above what we are able, if we only keep Him between us and the enemy of our souls. It is a source of profound gratitude that we have a Saviour who has felt in all its forms the tempting power of sin, who is full of sympathy for us in our temptations, and who has promised to ever be in such our faithful friend. Hence the great apostle to the Gentiles, whose life was full of temptation and trial, gives us a reason why we should "draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace," that "we have not a high priest that can not be touched with the feelings of our infirmities; but one that hath been in all points tempted like we are; yet without sin." This very fact in the character of our Saviour gives us humble boldness to approach the throne of grace that nothing else could give. When we have given way under temptation, and our souls are burdened with a sense of sin, we can come to God through the mediation of Jesus, with a confidence that His sympathy for us has been perfected by the experience of His own earthly life. For Christ was perfected for the special parts of His work by His mission among men. "For it become him, for whom are all things, and through whom are all things, in bringing sons unto glory, to make the author of their salvation perfect through sufferings." "And having been made perfect, he became unto all them that obey him the author of eternal salvation."

In order to accomplish the great work of redeeming the race, Christ had to be a man. He had to be human, as well as divine. Hence it was just as essential that He be the Son of man as that He be the Son of God. He had to make an offering for sin, and that required a human body. Hence he says, "Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not. But a body didst thou prepare for me." He had to be human in order to die, and divine in order to conquer death. Hence, while we exalt His divinity, we must none the less appreciate His humanity. We must not cease to contemplate our Lord and Saviour as the Son of man.



NEW TESTAMENT VIEWS OF CHRIST.

VI.—CHRIST THE GREAT TEACHER.

"We know that thou art a teacher come from God: for no man can do these signs that thou does, except God be with him" (John iii. 2).

"And it came to pass, when Jesus ended these words, the multitudes were astonished at his teaching: for he taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes" (Matt. vii. 28, 29).

"Never man spake like this man" (John vii. 46).

On "the great day of the feast"—the feast of the tabernacles—in the second year of His ministry, Jesus was performing many miracles, and there was great commotion among the people as to whether He was the Christ. The chief priests and the Pharisees sent officers to take Him. But they returned without Him. Then the chief priests and Pharisees said, "Why did you not bring him?" They simply reply, "Never man so spake." These were, doubtless, resolute men who were accustomed to obeying orders. But in this case they did not obey orders, nor even try to do it. Their excuse for not doing so was peculiar. They gave no ordinary or natural circumstances as hindering the execution of orders. They made no plea to exculpate themselves. They simply said, "No man ever spake like this man." How, then, shall we account for this? There was simply an unearthly majesty in the person, the manner and the words of Jesus, that awed them into inaction. The very fact that such men were so unnerved by the presence and words of Jesus, gives us an idea of His majesty as a teacher, and of His power over men. Thus it was that He could cleanse the temple, overturn the tables of the money-changers, drive out the whole crew who were making merchandise of the house of God, and no one resisted. When did the world produce another man whose presence alone awed bold officers of the law into disregard of duty, and the chastised multitude into non-resistance?

Jesus was the world's great teacher, and yet He was never taught. This fact was recognized by those who knew His history. "The Jews therefore marveled, saying, How knoweth this man letters, having never learned?" Jesus explained it by saying, "My teaching is not mine, but His that sent me." This is the only satisfactory explanation that can be given. That Jesus was a man of unequaled wisdom, surpassing infinitely all the great philosophers of renown, is freely admitted by the best informed of modern skeptics. That the world has been influenced by His teaching infinitely beyond what it has been by that of any other man, is not denied. That the world regards His teaching to-day, after eighteen hundred years from the day of His death as a malefactor and His rest in a borrowed grave, as it has never regarded the teaching of another man, is also an admitted fact. How shall we account for such teaching—teaching of such accumulating power over ages and generations of men—when He Himself was untaught? The world can not answer the question except as Jesus answered it: "My teaching is not mine, but His that sent me."

Christ was the only teacher among men who never made a mistake. After nearly two thousand years, during which His teaching has been subjected to the severest scrutiny, He stands without conviction as to a single error. Its ethics, its morals, its righteousness, its philosophy, its wisdom, its accuracy, have stood the test of the most rigid investigation. How can this be accounted for on the hypothesis that Jesus was only a man? The greatest of all other men, with the advantage of the world's best facilities, and under teachers of renown, have furnished the world with teaching full of mistakes and imperfections. If Jesus were only a man, how came it that He was so infinitely superior to all other men? And if thus superior in wisdom, righteousness and purity, how belie Himself in claiming to be infinitely more than a man? It were impossible. The two things are mutually destructive. Jesus furnishes the only explanation: "My teaching is not mine, but His that sent me."

Jesus is the teacher of the science of salvation. Others before Him taught the things pertaining to salvation, but their teaching was all by the Spirit of God, framed with reference to what His was to be.

Others, after Him, taught the way of life, but they taught it as they received it from Him. When He ascended to the Father He sent the Holy Spirit as His advocate. The Spirit imparted to the apostles what He received from Christ. He took the words of the coronated Christ and gave them to the apostles, and they spake as the Spirit gave them utterance (see John xvi. 7, 15). It follows, therefore, that the teaching of the apostles is as infallible as that of the Christ, for it is simply His.

It was not the purpose of Jesus to teach the wisdom of this world. He was not of this world, and His teaching was not with reference to this world. He came from another world, and the things pertaining to another world were the ultimatum of His teaching. The way of salvation is purely a matter of revelation. Man knows nothing about it except what God has revealed through Christ. The same is true as to that from which we are saved, and that to which we are saved. We know nothing of God, heaven, hell and eternity, except that which is revealed. All that we know of sin and its remedy we learn from the great Teacher. The nature and the consequences of sin we learn from the same source. The revelation of God is at once the source and limit of our knowledge of sin and righteousness, and their consequences. In the whole scheme of redemption Christ is the central figure; and on it He is the great teacher and supreme authority.

Christ, as a teacher of law and morals, legislates for the heart. Men can take cognizance only of deeds. They can not know the heart. Hence they can judge it only by outward manifestations. But Christ knew what was in man. Hence He could legislate for man's thoughts, as well as his deeds. Hence He says: "Ye have heard that it was said, Thou shalt not commit adultery: but I say unto you, that every one that looketh on a woman to lust after her hath committed adultery with her already in his heart." Even the law of the Ten Commandments legislated against adultery only as an outward act, but Christ legislates against the thought. In this respect, as in many others, He is unique as a teacher.

Finally, He taught by His own authority. This was the cause of the astonishment at the conclusion of the Sermon on the Mount. "The multitudes were astonished at His teaching; for He taught them as one having authority, and not as their scribes." The scribes taught that which "was said to them of old time," and the traditions of men, but Christ said, "I say unto you." Mark this feature in that discourse. A dozen times does he say, "I say unto you." This was in harmony with that which was predicted of Him as a teacher. "Moses indeed said, A prophet shall the Lord God raise up unto you from among your brethren, like unto me; to him shall ye hearken in all things whatsoever he shall speak unto you. And it shall be, that every soul which shall not hearken to that prophet shall be utterly destroyed from among the people." And in the presence of Moses and Elijah, the great teachers of the past, the divine Father said: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear ye him." All this recognizes one of the fundamental principles in the Christian religion—the supreme authority of Christ. The world seems slow to learn that what He said He said by His own authority, whether personally or through the apostles and prophets; that it needs no other support, and that it is the irrepealable law of the kingdom of God. Because we are not under the law, but under grace, many conclude that we have a religious latitude in which we may legislate for ourselves, forgetting that Paul says we are "under law to Christ."

In our supreme ignorance we need a teacher—an infallible teacher; and that we have in the person of Jesus. In order to become wise unto salvation, we must hear and learn of Him. In believing what He says, and doing what He directs, we have His divine assurance of salvation from sin and a home in heaven.



NEW TESTAMENT VIEWS OF CHRIST.

VII.—CHRIST THE DELIVERER.

"And he [Jesus] came to Nazareth, where he had been brought up; and he entered, as his custom was, into the synagogue on the sabbath day, and stood up to read. And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah. And he opened the book, and found the place where it was written,

The spirit of the Lord is upon me, Because he anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor: He hath sent me to proclaim release to the captives, And recovering of sight to the blind, To set at liberty them that are bruised, To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord.

And he closed the book, and gave it back to the attendant, and sat down; and the eyes of all in the synagogue were fastened on him. And he began to say unto them, To-day hath this scripture been fulfilled in your ears" (Luke iv. 16-21).

This sublime passage is a quotation of Isaiah lxi. 1-3. It contains several words indicating a character in which the Messiah was to appear, strikingly appreciated by the Jews at the time of the prophecy. Especially from the time of the Babylonish captivity did the Jews make prominent the idea of a deliverer in the person of their promised Messiah. "Release to the captives" and "liberty to the bruised"—ill-treated by their captors—was to them a precious proclamation, looked forward to with great anxiety, when deliverance should be proclaimed and Israel should again be the free and favored people of God.

Since this characteristic was so long appreciated as a matter of prophecy, and Jesus announced its fulfillment in Himself, it is a befitting occasion on which to briefly notice the relation of Christ to prophecy. The understanding of this relationship is important at any time, because it furnishes a valuable class of evidence as to the Messiahship and divinity of Jesus. It is especially so at this time, since infidels are making a special effort to destroy the value of prophecy in this respect; and some from whom we should expect better things seem to be assisting in the work.

A great deal of importance was given to Messianic prophecies during the days of the Saviour and the apostolic age of the church. Indeed, this was the main source of evidence to the Jewish mind that Jesus was the Christ. And the use made of it by Christ and the apostles shows that it was abundant.

When Jesus talked with two of the disciples on their way to Emmaus, on the day of the resurrection, He said to them: "O foolish men, and slow of heart to believe in all that the prophets have spoken! Behooved 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." Here Jesus Himself states that Moses and all the prophets prophesied of Him. And when He had returned to Jerusalem, and stood in the midst of the eleven, He said to them: "These are my words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, how that all things must needs be fulfilled which are written in the law of Moses and the prophets and the psalms concerning me." Thus the books of Moses, and all the prophets, and the psalms, contained teaching concerning the Christ, according to Jesus' own statement; and it was all in the form of type and prophecy. Indeed, types are but forms of prophecy.

Jesus charged the Jews with not believing Moses, and gave that as the reason why they did not believe on Him. He said: "For if ye believe Moses, ye would believe me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings how shall ye believe my words?" Like modern skeptics, they did not believe the writings of Moses concerning the Messiah—did not believe that they referred to the Messiah; hence their value was destroyed, and they did not believe in Jesus. Had they believed these prophecies they would have believed on Christ.

On the day of Pentecost Peter convinced the three thousand by argument from prophecy concerning the Christ. In his sermon in Solomon's porch the argument was likewise based upon prophecy. Paul's manner of preaching (see Acts xvii. 1-3) was to show the prophecies of the Old Testament concerning the Messiah and then show that these were fulfilled in Jesus of Nazareth. Therefore the conclusion was necessitated that He was the Christ. As this was Paul's method, he evidently attached to prophecy the highest possible value. That all the apostles did this is evident from the statement of Peter. Speaking of their being "eye-witnesses of His majesty," and of the infallible signs He gave of His divinity, he says: "And we have the word of prophecy made more sure; whereunto ye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a dark place."

How are we to determine the Messianic prophecies? We unhesitatingly reply, by the example of Christ and the apostles. Three important points are established by their testimony: (1) They teach that such prophecies are numerous, and made by Moses, David, and all the prophets. (2) They quote or refer to specifically, and thus apply, quite a number. It is evident that these are Messianic, because so applied. (3) Since Christ and the apostles designate a large number as Messianic, we are safe in concluding that others are so that are of like character. They are infallible judges, and they furnish us a criterion by which to judge.

It is not true, as claimed, that in order to a Messianic prophecy, the prophet making it must so understand it at the time. On the contrary, Peter tells us that they searched diligently to ascertain the things and the time of them referred to in their own prophecies concerning the sufferings of the Christ and the glory that was to follow. (See I. Pet. i. 10-12). They, therefore, did not understand the things or the time referred to. Since they did not know these, they did not know that the prophecy referred to the Messiah. The same Peter did not understand some of his own utterances on the day of Pentecost. His language here makes the promise of salvation to Gentiles as well as to Jews. But he did not so understand it till he had a special revelation at Joppa and the house of Cornelius.

Nor is it true, as claimed, that a Messianic prophecy must have been so understood by the people before its fulfillment. Many of the Messianic prophecies were not understood as such in Old Testament times. The Saviour charged this want of understanding upon His disciples, and told them that if they had correctly interpreted Moses and the prophets, in this very respect, they would have known that His death was required by such prophecies, and they would not have received the story of His resurrection as an idle tale. Moreover, He charged the Jews that this failure to understand Messianic prophecies, as such, was the ground of their not believing on Him. (See John v. 45-47).

In regard to types, which is a feature of prophetic teaching, and a strong chapter of evidence as to inspiration, Clark Braden says: "There are but few real types in the Bible; that is, there are but few things that men devised and acted with the intention of symbolizing or typifying anything future. There are exceeding few that were devised or acted with that as their sole object." It would be difficult for one to crowd more flagrant error into the same space than the above contains, if he were to make it a specialty. It contains the following positions, all of which are false: (1) That there are but few types in the Bible. (2) That types are devised by men. (3) That types were "devised and acted" by the same party. (4) That they were "devised and acted" by men with the intention of typifying something future. (5) That this, in order to their value as evidence of inspiration, should have been "their sole object." This will do quite well for five lines. We would suggest that God devised types, not men. While men were the actors, they were not the originators. While men may not have intended to typify anything in the case, God did. While types were intended by God to typify something future, this was not "their sole object." God had in them a purpose for the actors in addition to their typical significance. The purpose they then served detracts not from their value as types. As to the comparative number, we prefer Paul as authority. Speaking of the wilderness life of the Israelites, from their baptism in the cloud and in the sea, he says: "Now these things happened unto them by way of types [tupoi], and they were written for our admonition." This history contains numerous types, Paul being judge. Indeed, the patriarchal and Jewish religions were mainly typical. When Noah built the ark to the saving of his house, it is not probable that he thought of anything typical. Certainly that was not the only purpose, nor the main purpose. But Peter says it was a type, all the same.

The fact that God's people did not understand the full significance of their worship, did not destroy its character or its value. The same is true now. While God's oppressed people worshiped in types and symbols which foreshadowed the perfection to come, they were taught by the spirit of prophecy to look with longing anxiety to the coming of a deliverer. While, in debate, we may not rely on a large number of prophecies as Messianic, because the proof is not conclusive, it does not effect the fact that many of them have that character.

To appreciate Christ as a deliverer one must realize his own bondage—the slave of sin, and sold under its power. There is no appreciation of the Deliverer till there is a longing for deliverance, and no longing for deliverance till there is a hatred of bondage. Hence one must have a just sense of the heinousness of sin before he can appreciate Christ as a Saviour.

In coming to this world to deliver us, Christ had, in a sense, to come within the dominion of Satan, and under the assaults of sin. This is typfied by Moses going into Egypt to deliver his brethren. He had to place himself under the reign of Pharaoh, and in order to deliver his brethren he had to deliver himself. The Son of God took upon Him our humanity. This He had to do to make a sacrifice and be a mediator for us. In doing this He placed Himself under the tempting power of sin, and was tempted in all points as we are. He had to save Himself from this condition before He could save us. This was done through death and the resurrection. With Him the old life ceased at the cross, and the new one began from the grave. He conquered Satan—dragged the captor captive—and was forever delivered from his tempting power. "He died unto sin once," says Paul; and we die to sin just where He did, being put to death by the cross. We are buried with Him, and rise with Him to walk in newness of life. Thus the new life begins with us just where it began with Him—from the grave—the grave of baptism in which we are buried together and rise together. The denominational world want to make the new life begin from the cross. But it did not thus begin with Jesus, and Paul says it does not thus begin with us.



NEW TESTAMENT VIEWS OF CHRIST.

VIII.—CHRIST THE GREAT PHYSICIAN.

"They that are whole have no need of a physician; but they that are sick. I am not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance" (Luke v. 31, 32).

"For this people's heart is waxed gross, And their ears are dull of hearing, And their eyes they have closed; Lest haply they should perceive with their eyes, And hear with their ears, And understand with their heart, And should turn again, And I should heal them" (Matt. xiii. 15).

"He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted" (Luke iv. 18).

Several times, either directly or indirectly, Christ alludes to Himself as a physician. In this character He is worthy of careful study.

The first thing in order to appreciate a physician, is to realize that one is sick. The Saviour says the well need not a physician. It is equally true that the well care not for a physician. Sin is the disease of which Christ, as a physician, is the healer. The disease is deadly. The smallest amount is fatal. The Great Physician alone can heal it. There is no other remedy. When a man is once affected, however much he may keep it under control, and prevent its increase, there is never a diminution of the disease till the remedy of the Great Physician is applied.

There is much senseless talk about depravity that necessarily implies, though its advocates may not so intend, that sin has comparatively little condemnatory force. The idea so often expressed that one must be "a great sinner in order to need a great Saviour;" that if he is only "partially depraved, he needs to be only partially saved;" that he must be "totally depraved in order to be totally lost;" that he must be "totally depraved in order to be wholly dependent on Christ for salvation," and such like, necessarily puts a light estimate upon sin. The idea is, that if one has but a comparatively small amount of sin, he is not wholly lost and utterly helpless, and wholly dependent on Christ. When the simple fact is, that sin is so heinous in its character and condemnatory in its consequences, that any amount of it, whether much or little, renders one as helpless and hopeless and dependent on Christ as if he were totally depraved by nature and doubly defiled by a life of sin. There is, therefore, no necessity for total depravity, in order that man be in an utterly lost and helpless condition without Christ. A grain of strychnine is just as fatal as an ounce, without an antidote.

In order that we appreciate a physician, and avail ourselves of the benefits of his skill, we must have faith in him. Without faith that his skill is superior to ours, and that he can help us, we will not call upon him. If we have faith in him we will do as he directs. The highest evidence of faith in a physician, and the surest way of being benefited by his skill, is in going precisely by his directions. Some years ago the writer had a long spell of typhoid fever. His physician came to see him one hundred and thirty times. After he became convalescent, his physician said to him one day, "In looking back over your case, I can attribute your recovery to but two things—your unyielding resolution and confidence, and your faith in your physician." What did he mean by faith in my physician? What had that to do with it? He explained. "For," said he, "you followed my directions minutely in everything, and for more than seven weeks the least wabble would have turned the scale against you." This was a fine illustration of faith, but theologically he attached to the word a very different idea.

Such must be our faith in the Great Physician that we apply to Him for the treatment of a sin-sick soul. And having called upon Him, we are to follow His directions. On one occasion He said to the Pharisees, "Why do you call me Lord, Lord, and do not the things which I say?" So in this case He would say, "Why do you call on me as a physician, and do not as I direct you?" As well apply to an earthly physician and expect to be healed by faith in his skill, without taking his medicine or following his directions in other respects, as to expect the Great Physician to heal you in the same way. This illustrates the absolute folly of expecting to be "justified by faith only" in the Great Physician of souls, before and without doing as He directs. Our faith in a physician is valuable only as it induces us to take his remedies. When it leads to this, it has fulfilled its only office. When it does not lead to this, it is worthless. So of our faith in Christ. The only value of faith is in its leading to the observance of the divine will. The faith that does this saves, because it leads us to where God saves us. God promises salvation in the doing of His will. "Not every one that says unto me, Lord, Lord, shall enter into the kingdom of heaven; but he that doeth the will of my Father who is in heaven." Faith leads to the doing of the Father's will. In this it performs its only office, and in this it saves. Faith can have value only as it leads to the appropriation and use of the remedies prescribed.

It is often the case that a physician is stationary, and his patients have to come to him in order to get the benefits of his treatment. In such case, the acts necessary to take us to him are essential to our recovery, though they have no virtue whatever except as means of reaching him. So of coming to Christ. Christ does not come to the sinner, as orthodox prayers at the mourners' bench imply; but He invites the sinner to come to Him. "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest." "And you will not come to me that you may have life." Believing on Christ is one thing, and coming to Him is quite another. One must first believe before he will come. Yet, in addition to believing, the orthodox world, so-called, utterly fails to tell us how to come to Christ. They cry, "Come, come," but tell us not how. Christ plainly teaches that we come to Him in obedience. We are baptized into Him; into His body. We put Him on by baptism. Being baptized into Christ is Paul's explanation of how we become the children of God by faith. "Ye are all sons of God, through faith in Christ Jesus. For as many of you as were baptized into Christ did put on Christ." We come to Christ, then, in baptism. This is the first overt act in the "obedience of faith." Our faith, repentance and baptism bring us to Christ; then He, as the Great Physician, heals our sin-sick soul. There is no healing virtue in these things that bring us to Him; but they are conditions of our healing because they are means of our reaching the Physician.

The remedy for sin is the Physician's own blood. That is the only thing in the universe of God that can heal the disease of sin, and remove the ruinous consequences. "The blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses from all sin." The blood of animal sacrifices could not take away sin. "For it is impossible that the blood of bulls and goats should take away sins." Since animal sacrifice could not meet the demands of the law, God prepared a body for His Son in which to make a sacrifice.

"Sacrifice and offering thou wouldst not, But a body thou didst prepare me."

Hence we are redeemed from the curse of sin, not with corruptible things, "but with precious blood, as of a lamb without blemish and without spot, even the blood of Christ." "And without the shedding of blood there was no remission."

It is plain, therefore, that the blood of the Physician is the only remedy. This remedy is freely given when we come to Him.

Jesus said: "As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; that whosoever believeth may in him have eternal life." The Israelites were commanded to look upon the brazen serpent; and they that looked were healed. They had to have faith, in order to look with a view to being healed. Looking was the thing commanded. It was the result of faith. In looking they were healed. But there was no virtue in the looking. Looking, in and of itself, had no power to heal. Still it was essential to the healing. Neither had the thing looked upon any power to heal. There was no virtue in the serpent. The healing power lay back of that. It was in God, who had promised. God did the healing. But while there was no healing virtue in the look nor in the thing looked upon, they were necessary to the healing, because to this end were they commanded. They were, therefore, necessary to bring one to the point in the obedience of faith where God promised to heal. So it is with the Great Healer of souls. They that believe shall in Him find the healing power. Their faith leads them to Him, where the healing power is applied, as the look brought the Israelites to the healing power of God. Our obedience that brings us to Christ is the outgrowth of our faith, just as their look was the outgrowth of theirs. There is no healing virtue in the one nor the other, but they were and are necessary to bring the believer where the healing virtue is.

After all that is said about being saved by faith, and by other things, it is simply true that Christ saves us. He is our Saviour. And He saves us by means of His own blood.

"There is a fountain filled with blood, Drawn from Immanuel's veins; And sinners plunged beneath that flood Lose all their guilty stains."

It is thus that Christ is precious to us as the great Physician of souls. We should give heed to His inviting voice, place ourselves under His continued care, follow His directions, and we shall enjoy a healed and healthful state of the soul.

"The great Physician now is near, The sympathizing Jesus; He speaks, the drooping heart to cheer: Oh, hear the voice of Jesus."



NEW TESTAMENT VIEWS OF CHRIST.

IX.—CHRIST OUR MEDIATOR.

"For there is one God, one mediator also between God and men, himself man, Christ Jesus, who gave himself a ransom for all; the testimony to be borne in its own time" (I. Tim. ii. 5-6).

A mediator is one who comes between alienated parties to effect a reconciliation. He must be the friend, the advocate and equal of both parties. Failing in one of these, he is incapacitated. No one would accept a mediator whom he believed would be wanting in any of these respects in his relations to him. No one is fit to mediate who is not qualified to do justice to both parties. This he can not do unless he knows the rights of both and is the friend of both. He must be unbiased in his judgment and impartial in his friendship. He must be considered the equal of both, in so far, at least, as his knowledge of them and his ability to judge between them is concerned.

A mediator between God and men implies alienation between them. The history of the race shows this to be true. The time was when they were one; when not a feeling or a shadow came between them. The bliss of Eden reached its daily acme when the footfall of God was heard amid its bowers. The hour that He joined their company was that of supreme joy. But man sinned, and then the presence of God was shunned. That which was delightful before is painful now. Such is the principle of congeniality; and such the consequences of sin—to make of heaven a hell. This fact alone should teach us that it lies not within the limits of divine power to make a heaven for sinful men. Separation from God is hell; and with the soul defiled by sin, union is worse than separation.

After the fall of man he could no longer stand in the immediate presence of God, as he was wont to do before. Sin can not approach the divine presence, hence he needed a mediator, one to stand between him and an offended God, through whom he might again be heard and blessed. Mediators of an imperfect and typical character were had in that age of preparation for the coming perfection. But where could a perfect mediator be found to stand between an offended God and rebellious man? Where in all the universe could one be found the friend and equal of both parties? Where could one be found that could stand on equality with God, know what was just and right in regard to Him, and, at the same time know the weaknesses, the wants and the rights of man? Where was one who could poise with one hand the scales of God's justice and gather fallen humanity to his bosom with the other? The boundless dominions of God contained not such a being. Man could not thus act, for the best of men are themselves sinners, and can approach God only through a mediator. The best of men know nothing of God's side of this matter, and they fall below equality with Him, as the earth is below the stars. An angel could not stand between God and men, for he can not descend to equality with fleshly natures, to know their weaknesses and their wants; nor can ascend the heights of divine perfection till he knows the mind and the rights of God. In the Divine Logos, and the Divine Spirit we find, in a sense, equality with God, but no equality with men. How, then, is this great problem, that on which the world's salvation turns, to be solved? The human and the divine must be blended. They must meet and dwell in one. This is accomplished, not by lifting the human up to the divine, but by bringing the divine down to the human. God glories in condescension.