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Loio^uo to doownont oot trop grand pow Mra raproduit en un seui ciich*. il est film4 i partir de I'angle supArieur geuche. ds gauche k droite, et de haut an bes. en prenent to nombre d'imogaa n i c oa ao lro. Lee d togromre o o autoanta 1 2 3 4 5 6 MKatooorv anouinoN mr cnmh (ANSI and SO TIST CHART N*. 2) Some Features of the Faith A POPULAR mscussKm OF CERTAIN CARDINAL POINTS OP GHMSIIAN DOCTRINE BT JOHIf ARTHUR SHAW, M.A. AttkHt tf "Some Pluues of Clerical life." **n» Ttim ta th« "Ood bf merciful unto «», and bUi» u»: and thew M the light of Bit eount*nance. and b« mer- e{/ia unto ut: "That TKyaway may bf knotm upon farth; ny taring health amontj all nations. "Let the people praise Thee, O God; yea, let Mthtp*9pUprii»$ TkM." 14B YOVMG CHVUCMMAN CO. 1 »oa -1 Nil k To th« Memory Y DEAR MOTHER. This Book la Affectionately Dedicated CONTENTS. CHAPTER I. God— The Theistic position from the Church's sUnd- ptdnt. No proof offered— A glance at the situation— Few coo verts by proof— Christian Thdam cannot be put on paper — (2) Language cannot fully embody religion, e.g., try to describe "Father"— A child may know it; a sags may eoow short of it— The Church's way alone adequate. CHAPTER II. CuATloif— (3) Many theories, none satisfying— Authority needed— Revelation possesses this— The character of its assertic. i — Man's position in creation — (4) His like- ness and unlikeness to other creatures— His equipment for rulership— The image of God— His freedom, of the highest kind, yet not absolute— (5) Conditioned but not curtailed —A God to the world under him, a smi to God— Adam not perfect, but perfectly equipped— (6) Innocence not perfec- tion—Our Lord's character not merely innocent — Adam's ail entrance on a career— Elements of man's nature (7) Two parts or three? Soul and spirit thought to be distinct — Unsatisfactoriness of tripartite division— More platonic than biblical— "In whom my soul is well pleased"— Man's soul not a third nature between body and spirit — The preSxistence of souls— (8) Idea born in Eastr-Condemned by first Council of Constantinople— The breath of life Creation of the soul — Our Lord's resurrection — Indissol- ubleness of body and soul — A kindred subject — (9) Is the soul transmitted? Subject anciently not discussed on its merits— Tertullian's and Augustine's treatment— Tra- 4 HOM£ FKATrKE8 UK TUX FAITH. ducianism and Creationimn — OnoMidednenA of both views — (10) Danger of half tiutha— Unite the view*— Tradudan- ina and Deism — Great names on side of Tradududna — Creationiiim always foremoat in esteom — (11) ReaHons pro and con — Soul not uninfluenced by transmitted body — Effaet of Adam's act— The Church's doctrine of Origimil Sin, anticipated— (12) Not impaired bjr CreatioBism — Man's raiaon d'etre (13). CHAPTER III. The Fall — (14) Tlw orij;in of original evil — Silence of Holy Scripture checks curiosity — The Bible not a heap of miscellaneous knowledge — Its design to remedy, not to explain evil — Hopeless guewsox at origin of evil — Existence of evil, our true starting point — Humanity in rudimentary state — (16) The acorn not the oak — The balanced nature — Attribute of frei> wil' — Man may move towards or from his true destiny -Two us])octH of nian'i* poHition, two outlooks — On one hand all is Qod — Man a mote in the sunHhine — On the other, man himself is supreme — ( 16) Everything inferior to him — Man's way lies between these two opposites — De- pendence in spiritual world, means supremacy in material world — ^The dual outloidc viewed without sin — Contemplation not enough to develop man's nature — Temptation must sea- son — The serpent (17) — Insinuation — Overstatement — Ruler ra. ruled— Hie second Adam's Temptation — ^Adam to subdue the world, is sulxlued by the world — Eve ovoi- powered by Satan— (18) Facts of the fall symbolized— The desirable presented in independence of Ood — Bodily hunger not impelling force to Adam's sin — (19 Supreme rulership — ^Figure of eating — Godward prospect abandoned for an unattested hope, a lie — Man seduced through medium of his affection — Yet willingly seduced — (20) Significance of our Lord's ever present compassion for our race — Weeping over Jerusalem — Absence of questions to alBicted — ^Milton's poetic inter tation — This feature of man's case a stimulant to ho; riow we are individually affected — (21) The popular SOMK im*' JUS OF THK VAITH. coMsption — Not MtUfactory but ewmnt— Di<><>redit«bl« MUMt of thit currency— The difficulty atAted- -(22) Not of the Church*! making — The oppoaite error — Unitarianiitni — The hereay condemne«l in fifth wiitury — iVlagianittm — (23) Pelkgius el ol tried— Settlement left to Biahop of Rome — lanoeent I. eondemna PelagiuM — Pope Zoeimua can- cela Innocent'a finding — I'elagiuM ubaolvetl — Accuaera branded "vagabonda"— Auguatine'a attitude to Pelagiua iui< ekanged by tbia — Hia charge ai{«inat Roman r'»rgy — Em- peror now takes case in hand- Decides agaii '•elufjiuH, tbia law iaaued April 30, 4 1»— council of Can \e rivet* Emperor'a d«eiafc»— Pelagiua baniahad from Home— Man- ning and rnfallibility— (24) The Hoiy Spirit alone infal- lible— Augustine's process c' reasmilr;, — Mode of trans- miaaton — OBoatieiam — ^Artak.'' (i.— Neatoriffiiiam, all kindred — As a' monasticisiii and uomnn theoloj^y — ( 25) Auj^i'^t- ine an irreclaimable Maniehean — The Church's doctrine of the m«tt«r. CHAPTER IV. Orkjinai. Sin — (2(1) Subject already touched ujm)!! — Depth of root responsible for this, and present return to "man's nature"— Sn not inherent in mD 'ter— Adam and Eve at first guiltless beinps — Our I^hI'h own Bo) The beauty of holiness, and the righteousness of God- Isaiah liii., "Lo, I come"— (126) Knowledge of Saviour- How great the sacrifice— God's will, the creature's good 14 SOME FEATUBKS OF THE FAITH. — The first Adam a dissident — hattj homage of Second Adam — (127) Christ's Sacrifice to righteousness of God — Creator's honor and creature's good — (128) Many ideas of Messiah — The Messiah does not pursue expected course — Sew death in His path — (129) Bodily bruising not the worst — Hiding of the Father's face— The Cross the climax— Perfect Sacrifice rends veil of temple — We gaze adoringly on the Cross' finality — The gibe "come down from the cross" — (180) Triumphant hatred begets it — Qethsemane proves God's will for man possible and best — The image of God restored by Gethsemane — (131) Gethaemane and the three chosen ones — (132) Were they representatives? Humanity's possible — The parable — Our sleeping perception — Man's attitude now m^at be that of gratitude and humility — (133) Fountain-head of humanity established — (134) The Divine means of reaching us — The Church — The womb of the new birth — Holy method in manner of reaching us — This shown, our state and God's nature — ( 135) Our "word" and "deed" to be said and done — Apply tlie means of grace established — Brief definition of the Atonement — Aged sceptic and the missionary, an incident — (136) Gladstone's words — (137) Eden lost and gained by "eating" — (138) To eat and know why we eat, our part — We only come at best to the distributing point — The merit all Christ's — (139) Our latent Judaism — Inward feeling wanting — Merit deemed to be in declining the sacred Elements — Our con- sciousness of sinfulness and desecratioii — ^Unfitness for Holy Communion — Some wholesomeness of sentiment — Shown by opposite — Shocking spectacle of designing for- wardness — Its rarity — Notwithstanding wholesomeness, the attitude is wrong — The Church of God is no mere court of justice — A court of appeal — It destroys and scorns all regu- lar procedure — (140) Pulpits in the porch — "Not good enough to communicate" — ^Peculiarity of this defence — Periods of worthiness — These how secured — ^Mere oblivion trusted to— Works of supererogation — Faithfulness above perfect — Christ refused for individual saviours — Christ or ourselves — ^No real choice — ^Appeal to our heads, not to our SOIIK FBATUBM OF THE FAITH. 15 feelings — This Chiist'd plan — Our's differs from it — Belief in ourselves rather than in God's word— (141) On which our hope is suspended — The parishioner must think — ( 142) Never more fit than now on his own plan — Non-participat- ing himself, what is his opinion of those who p«rt«lcet— ' Do they to themselvef meet hia ideal? — Nothing more pre- posterous — (143) The Holy Eucharist no parade-ground — The fitness that unfits — Parishioner who sees a real sinner partake — (144) Popular notion of communicants as ainleaa evidenced — Godly discipline of the Primitive Church re* jected for individual tyranny — (145) Consequences — But what of this black sheep? — (146) Our Lord answers the query— By His word and deed — Peter's denial and Peter's sermon — The godless foremost to condemn — Our Lord does not — ^The Church a hospital — (147) She waits no Udding to extend rescue — Our neighbor's case merely not ours — (148) Docs not the Bible condemn obtruders — The exhortation to communion (omitted by compilers of Amer- ican Prayer Book) accentuates St. Paul's warning to Corin- thians — EflTect of this passage on the many — (149) It ap- plies to none of these — (150) "Unworthily" torn from its context, is a general prohibition — ^Examination of the word "worthily" — Forgiveness of sins not generally believed— (151) Light of nature again demanding the impossible — Make our sins unreal, or wipe them out before coming to God — Do we know what Christianity mi. Only one class considered here — (152) Those who do not enjoy the highest happiness they might— The apostle's awful denun- ciation only once merited — The Agape or Love feast Chrysostora's account of it— (153) Dean Alford's correction of a detail— St. Augustine's "Answer to Faustus" instruc- tive—Agape forbidden by St. Ambrose— ( 154) The Church's custom since early days — Excesses condemned by St. Paul, arose out of Agape— This abolished for over a millennium-^ Fulmination obsolete— ( 155) This letter gave rise to the "spirit" meaning of "unworthiness" ?— To this, two pertinent observations— St. Paul's design in writing First Epistle to Corinthians— The Hellenic mind and its difficulties— Differ- ences between sin condemned in Corinthians, and sins of 16 80M£ FEATUBS8 OF THF. FAITH. today— Two, and striking^InAvidiMl •iafulncM not touched on by apostle— ( 150) They oonceincd administra- tion of the ordinances — Passages set to>fetlier — Historical reference to the times— (167) Socraten gives account of temple feast*— Passage from Xenophon— Tliis outline fllled in from other source*— Vice in whole Roman Empire inten- sified in Greece and focussed in Corinth— Religious conse- cration of licentiousness there— St. Paul's picture of Cor- inth in first chapter of Romans — St. Paul's material — (158) His first and second congregations at Corinth— Undermin- ing teachers in apostle's absence— St. Paul's teaching and the deealogue— Ref nns— (1S9) Minatory language due to adminiHtration — Cu . we put non-conimunicants to-day in class with Corinthian banqueters?— ( 100) Two cases in- stanced — The mother of a family— A young person tempted after preparation— (101 ) The Holy Eucharist administered properly to-day — Faults in opposite direction— ( 162) Set- ting requirements too hi^i— An obaenration of Bingham's— Offending "one of these little ones"— Corinthian banquet on one hand, "offending one of these," on the other- The Church does not "break the bruised reed"— Other causes of non-partaking— Controversial works— Human war about God's peace— Long quotation from Hooker— (103) Hooker's divisions of Christianity three— Our's in this age four- (164) Plain statement of the four beliefs— Of these the first and second hold literal interpretation of the words, "This is my Body"— These joined under Transubstantiation for convenience— ( 105) No discourtesy to Lutheran body— ( 100) The carnal, the spiritual, and the negative views— Between two logical extremes where is Anglican ground?— (167) The three offices for Holy Communion traced to the conse- cration—Two agree to a change— What is the change?— Dis- course of our Lord at Capernaum— A year later the Lord's Supper— Mere rhetoric impossible— The quivering flesh of the Redeemer, repellant— Is there nothing known to us as at once itself, and more than its apparent self?— We are justly called debtors— (168) Waiters in the capitalist'* offiee— His treatment of us and of his promise to us The cheque he orders to be written out— His signing it— The SOMS VSATVBSS Or THE FAITir. 17 change made by the aignature — Money or not money? — The Romanist »ay« it ia gold— ( 160) The sectarian aaya it it intrinaically valueless— \o miracle, but true wealth— ( 170) Talce this imagery to the pew during a celebration of the Holy Communion — Christ's promise eluinu^d — Kvery step !a Liturgy authorized— All awaita Uia aignature— THg given. Hit aign-nMBual atanda in Heaven— (171) Conceptions right everywhere else, wrong here — World-conscience silent here— Christ alone dominates all— "To them and in them My Body"— Rmnneiation of the world In ita beat ideala— Ad- hesion to these robs us of peace after Holy Communion— (172) God held untruthful, or we enthralled— Thia influ- ence makea the freed walk in chain*— (173) The Church'a prayer for both pardon and peace— Indeterniinateness sr,i- OU8— A closer view of the waiter on the rich friend— (174) His warranty— Real need the due oeeaaion— Aid to bif ade- quate—Three suppositions — Showing negative view impious — Of our right and left neighbors we say to one, we will not have it. and to the other, we dare not have it— Romaniat does not undervalue what is offered— ( 175) He might par- take at our altars — We cannot, however, agree that chequea are always written on gold. SOME FEATURES OF THE FAITR CHAPTER L 00I>-^(THZ THKISTIC position) FBOIC THB chuboh's wist of view. §1. Co PBOVE the existence of God, fonns no part of the design of the present undertaking. We may, however, not unprofitably glance for a moment beyond the borders of faith, and en- deavor to discover the actual position of the hostile camp. The Avork of proclaiming the blcssid vorities of Cliristian Theism through the instrumentality of dry reasoning, can derive but little encourage- ment from the history of past efforts in this direc- tion. Those who have ably stood forth in defence of the faith, against unbelief, tell us that their books have, for the most part, been left unread by 20 80MX nSATUBES OF THE FAITH. those for whom they were specially written, and that even their public oral presentations of our case have failed to attract those who openly oppose tlie Christian position. That so little good should arise from reasoning out our faith before those who disavow it, when we receive the courtesy of their attention, is not so wonderful as might at first sight appear; for while we may, perhaps, not iinreasonably expect that the due treatment of Christianity should se- cure its triumph in any competition with such claims as infidelity can lay to our confidence; yet defeat in argument is not a very winning kind of introduction to anything, however desir- able. The small results of apologetic labors, as re- gards converts to our side, is otherwise accounted for when we remember how poor and how unin- viting a thing the religion of Christ (which is the phase of Theism with which we are concerned) is, when its full life is sought to be infused into the very inadequate corporeity of language. It is a patent impossibility to put our holy religion on paper. Language, the most forceful and lucid, can never be Christianity; and tliorefore the honest sceptic, even if he devote himself studiously to the SOME FEATURES OF THE FAITH. 21 work of reading our apologists in order to gain a knowledge of our religion, can never realize through the imperfect medium of words, a concep- tion which at every point transcends, evades, and overtaxes the capacities of discourse. The very name by which Christians are di- vinely taught to address God, may serve in a hum- ble way to illustrate this. To sons only is it given to understand the ful- ness of meaning which that word "Fa<^her" conveys to those who are privileged to use it. Imagine anyone who, either by a strange misfortune, or by deliberately tearing out of his nature all trace of it, is utterly wanting in the faintest sense of what a father is to a son — imagine this difficult thing — and we may well despair of giving any proper notion of the matter to such an one, es- pecially if we are restricted to the slender pos- sibilities of description. §2. But even the closest and most intimate observa- tion of the bearing of worthy fathers towards their children will not compass for an onlooker, that unique and incommunicable knowledge of a parent which belongs exclusively to sons and daughters. And thus it is with God in religion. We are not permitted to know Him speculatively. We 22 SOME FEATUBES OF THE FAITH. must rather become as little eliildreii — begin where we ought to have begun at first. We must be actually born again into His family, and have the consciousness of this high sonship woven into the warp and woof of our being, and thus be trans- formed into a proper fitness attaining rightly to the great truth of Theism — ^that Qod is. From the poverty of the conception of God which is acquired in any other way, we may per- haps judge that God never designed that He should be made known to any great extent by carefully wrought out, worded demonstrations of His exist- ence.* The Church's way secures a duly reverent ap- proach to the Divine Presence, and prevents the idle presumptuous gaze of unadoring spectators, in effecting which, the Church acts as friend to the world. • Note A. CHAPTER II. THE CBEATION (OENESIS OF MAN). §3. CHE MIND of num has in all ages tried of its own strength to fathom the mystery of irmn s or- igin. It has again and again produced brilliant theories, but they have satistied no one. The hu- man heart does not readily surrender to a theory, which after all, is only one of many theories. Authoritative assertion is necessary. Philos- ophy does not possess this; and Science, the only human thing that can possibly wear anything like authority, after achieving much that is most use- ful to religion, learnedly confesses its failure. It is through Bevelation alone, that we get any information on the subject; and the character of that information is in every way becoming to its high source. It is no theory. Nor is it that kind of author- ity which we are accustomed to see bolstered up 24 SOME FEATUBX8 OF THE FAITH. by elaborate defences. It is the calm assertioii of fact; which unthout ado of any kind, without any anned preparation against gainsaying, breaks on the mind like the sun upon the morning — "God created man in His own Image ; in the linage of God created He him."* §4. In th inspired account man occupies a dig- nified position between the realm of created ex- istences on the one hand, and God on the other; between creation and the Creator. If we under- take to examine man as we should analyze any of the creatures over which he is placed as ruler, we shall find that we come upon something in his na- ture, for which all the rest of creation provides us with no canon, and of which we shall have no means of measurement or comparison. He is, indeed, "a limb of the great body of nature un- winding himself from out of the swaddling bands of the natural life, and siubject to the natural laws for the development of his species,"! but this does not outline his whole being. He is something more than this ; something there is in him which plainly overruns these limits, evincing his fitness for that rulership to which he is called, and for the noble office of reflecting God to the eye of all crea- • Nott B. f itartenm. SOME FCATUHK OF THE FAITH. ' 25 tures below him — all of which Holy Scripture means when it predicates of him that he is ''made in the Image of God." Man stands forth before all created beings as their noblest and fairest type. This he has on his bodily side; but it is not this whidi reoeives or can receive the gift of likeness to God. A crea- ture — the highest and most complete of all crea- tures — has impressed upon it, and breathed into it a something which bestows rank and fitness for a life that is more than creaturely. Man is a spirit as well as an animal, and in this spirit which God breathed into the animal form of man, lie all those rich possibilities which constitute his pe- culiar dignity. §5. This life is free in the highest sense, but the higb-^'-* sense is not the absolute. Absolute free- d<^ )m our present point of view, without any- thii ^ jiore being su-d of it, might suggest the most eccentric and even dangerous course, like that of a ship in mid-ocean, and under full sail, without pilot or rudder. This is not the freedom that Adam realized in the first flush of self-n8cious- ness. His sense of freedd- nature in miniature and actual commencement, every child is indebted to Gd to create an immortal soul; it is acknowledged that this is, without controversy, a startling feature of the sin of unchastity, and yet even this sin could not be committed except by God's permission. Permit- ting sin in any form or degree to exist, it is not in- conceivable that the Almighty should, now and then, as here, show us the enormity of the draft it makes upon Divine patience. §12. It is also said against Creatianism, that since it makes each soul to ho a separate, distinct and altogether new manifestation of the Divine will — ' fresh creation from the hands of God — it offends against the Catholic doctrine of Original Sin ; or else, if it do not, it is guilty of the graver ofifence of attributing to Qod the creation of a thing in 38 SOME FSATUBES OF THE FAITH. itself essentially siufiil. But the Church's teach- ing of Original Sin does not encourage the notion that the soul is an unsympathetic tenant of the body, or that it is uninfluenced \ty the body. The soul may, indeed, be a clear ray of light, so to speak, proceeding from the throne of Gof\, but it may have blended with it a tint emanating from its physical organism, a shade which past history can possibly explain, and which colors all objects, more or less, that are presented to it. Adam, as he stood forth from the creating hand of God, though possessing unbiased freedom to proceed along his course of Godward develop- ment, took the momentous step in the opposite direction, which destroyed the original relation- ship existing between soul and body, and gave to the latter a prominence and a force that did not belong to it, thus destroying the Divine adjustment of the component parts of man's nature. If Adam then, under the fairest circumstances and without a single discord ringing in his being, was overcome by the lower of the two principles (called by theologians the Cosmical and the Spir- itual) that should have maintained their holy and proper balance in him; how shall any child of Adam, inheriting a nature in which this downward tendency is propagated, give promise of better SOME FEATURES OF THE FAITH. 39 things? And, failing thus to give such promise, shall we lay the blame impiously upon the Creator ? It is the defect of the due subordination of the lower to the higher phase of our nature, the wrench which Adam's fatal act gave to the balanced mechanism of our being — the adjustment by our first parents, as opposed to the adjustment effected by God — whidi makes every child born into the world so unworthy of the Creatorship and Father- hood of God. This is the Church's doctrine of Original Sin, and this is not impaired by the show- ing of Creatianism; for neither the soul nor the body is of itself the man. Nothing less than the union of both makes the person, the man; and in this unity, this person, the defect lies. Each person is thus, at birth, defective; and incapable, in a way that Adam himself was not originally incapable, of attaining to his destined goal. But this blight does not j .rst sully the soul. It hampers and thwarts it, and only grad- ually oven onies it. The new-created, uninherited part may liioreforc, at birth, be stainless; and yet at the same time the sum of the pa '^^s — the person — ^may be a thing of sin. §13. If it is permitted us to reverently se^ for God's reasons for creating man, it may be said 40 SOME FEATUBES OF THE FAITH. without undue pretensions to knowledge of so high a matter, that it is contrary to His nature to be alone. He would have about Him, admitted to His presence, and blest by a promise of union with Himself, those fitted to appreciate His acts, and to oopv them (the most robust praise) to the limits of their powe -s. Here is the rm$on d'etre for man's existence — ^this and the prospect of our prt^ressive felicity — a reason and purpose in keep- ing with His own revelation of Himself to us, with the unfailing providraces of nature in their prodigal ministry to human wants, and with the invitation to which all that is sound and good within us responds, to make our home (even while our feet rest on this green earth) in the very bosom of God. CHAPTER III. THE FAI^L. §14. E SHALL expend no time in trying to fathom the mystry of the origin of evil ; nor spin any web of speculation over the blank void which here meets us. There are not wanting many such ing^uities, but thej only serve to make our ignorance the more apparent The silence of H0I7 Scripture on this subject is voiceful enough to those who are in earnest. It brings home to the souls of devoutly inquiring men, the fact that this knowledge would be but a useless encumbrance, serving only to flivert our attention from its one legitimate object, which is, not the origin of, but the remedy for evil. Tt reqiiires but a glance at the Word of God to see tliat it is composed of no promiscuous heap of knowledge aimlessly thrown tether. A grand desi^ is discernible in it, which is all the more 42 80MX FEATURES OF THE FAITH. forcibly impressed upon the reader of the Bible, by the striking absence of other order, and of all literarv form. That design, -vvhieh nobody can fail to notice, is a great evidence of the Divineness of the Bible. Into that design, however, enlightenment as to the ^nesis of evil does not enter ; and no one who possesses any just conception of the true character and office of Holy Scripture, can help feeling, that if it did so enter, such enlightenment would be a lamentable declension from the true attitude of a revelation from God the Father to His lost, sinful children; an unaccountable turning aside of the compass-needle of inspiration; and a veritable bathos, expressive more of human than of Divine workmanship. When we see, as we cannot help seeing, the significance that is to he attached to the silence of Holy Scripture regarding the entrance of evil into the world, it is surely an undertaking marked by no conspicuous prudence, to attempt, with the history of past efforts before us, to con- struct any tower of Babel, with which to supple- ment the imperfect f uhu >f Holy Writ. The fall of man is so tremendous a fact, and so thoroughly endorsed by all human experience, that man, alive to his true inter^ts, can hardly be thought so wanting in seriousness as to waste SOME FSATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. 43 liis fleeting time in continuous and hopeless guesses as to how this dread reality could have had its coninicneenient. , All wise and telling investigation begins with the existence of evil. This is the starting point of the Scriptures themselves; and without going any further back, the distance from this point to our true goal is sufficiently great for our allotted three-score-years-and-ten to compass. Men lost in ' mine or other subterranean pas- sage had better (and in any rational, respectful conception of them they would) lose no time in wild speculating on the probable causes of the sur- rounding and perilous darkness, but would turn their whole attention in the direction from which they hoped for a ray of light, and the promise of rescue.* §15. We have seen that Adam in Paradise was not endowed with a perfection, attained, as it must have been if possessed, without any effort on his part. A perfection thus unwon, would have left him no race to run, no development to achieve; hardly would it have left him the power of volun- tary obedience. The real perfection which we must attribute to him was one, not of attainment, • Nott c. 44 SOME F£ATVBXS OF THE FAITH. but of equipment. In a word, instead of being en- dowed with perfection, he was given the where- M'ithal to attain that perfection. He :od only on the threshold of his career. Paradise was Paradise by reason of the large pos- sibilities which it unbosomed to our first parents. God gave to man the gift of existence — humanity in a rudimentary condition — ^not in a state of com- pletenesg. The ideal of man is not satisfied by conceiving of him as merely holding on to life, retaining a foothold in Paradise. Something is to be achieved. Life is a talent committed to him of which he must make the most. His destiny and full glory are not present things. Adam's is not the rounded maturity of the full-grown oak, but rather the inspiring promise of this, which lies in the acorn, if an illustration from the world of nature may be used of the soul. Entering on existence with a nature dulv bal- anced between heaven and earth — between the spiritual and the natural— man's course lies on- ward and upward, where along the path of holy obedience his true goal is reached. But the heavy attribute of free-will makes the opposite to this also possible. Adam may move either forward or backward, towards God or to- wards the mere animal, for he is a oomponnd of •SOilK KKATI KKS OK TIIK FAITH. 45 both. It 19 possible for him, like (Christ, so to live as to (sec Appendix 4) spiritualize his body, and exalt it into the sphere of spirits; and it is also possible for him so to live as to degrade and debase his complex nature into a rivalry of the brutes. Of these two courses, the one 18 a true and nonnal, the other an abnormal and false development. The divine plan, upon which Adam was formed, laid down every detail of preparation necessary for his life purpose ; but to put all this into motion, is the part left for man's own proper act The two factors — God and the animal — are not more truly present in man, than is the conscious- ness of the two aspects of his position wb.ich these offer to him. On the one hand, all is God, God the source and God the end of all things; and man is but as a mote in the imiversal sunshine, though a mote consciously akin to that space-tilling Pres- ence. While there is present glory for man here in his sense of affinity with Qod, the contrast be- tween the immensity of God and the infinitesimal littleness of man, mak^ man's true attitude, even though he is buoyed with the hope of fuller, richer, more abundant life, an attitude of humility. Growth (and it would seem that as long as there is anytiung material in man this must be the 46 BOUM FEATUBSS OF THB FAITH. law which gowrns him), ordorly growth, is the process by which glory is presented to man : attain- ment only through a course of ever-increasing de- velopment For it is necessary that man, to be the niler of all created existences, should first learn to govern himself. §16. On the other hand, the prosi)ect shows man as himself supreme, and all creatures doing him homage; a monarch, indeed, and such by Divine rifrlit. Nothing is there in his wide realm rrith will* h ho may stoop to confer. Everything about him j)roclaims its inferiority to himself. On every liand tlironghont the ample extent of his em- pire, all that meets his eye, speaks by flattering contrast of his own exaltation. All Creation seems united in a deep conspiracy to swell the glory of human sovereignty. Between these two spheres, therefore, man is called to hold his even, righteous way. There is mnch need for caution. Dependency in the spir- itual world balances supremacy over all flesh. Such is the double aspect without, which corre- sponds with the (h;al . dii -Ise of man within. And such is man as made in the image of God, that he can behold this two-si,i, ,; j.i.-iure without sin, the contemplation of ahich has not the nature of sin; SOME FKATt'REX OF TIIK I A ITU. 47 fur the due lia^ ai(»nious relationshi, of these ^{•lieres, tli(> ..iie to tlie other, is whu. . fitted man with faculties ii«h'(niatel_\ to perix'tuate. Ihir eoiif('iM|)hui(Mi is nut MutHeieut of itself to effect man's free !»elf-»ie\eh>iniient. This peerlew being must be brought witiiin the range of temptation. "And the Lord God e<.ni manded the man saying, of every true of the gar- den thou mayest freely eat, bat of the tree of the knowledge of good and eril thou shalt not eat of it, for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou ahalt surely die" (Gen. ii. 16-17). g IT. And now appears on the scene that mysterious heiiig, the serpent, whom St. John identifies with the Devil ( liov. xii. <»). The work of tliis evil <'iie is Ix'cun hy first insinuating doubt — "Yea hath God said r and -Yi^ sliall not surely die," as preparatorv to the masterstroke which imme- diately foHows in that very deadly form which falsehood may be made to wear— an ovrrstate- ment: "Ye shall be as gods," that is, ye shall at- tain to the highest pitch and perfection of your develi^ent, a shorter route than that of wait- ing through a tedious, indefinite period for it. How much more seemly that the sublime ruler of *S SOME FEATURES OF THE FAITH. the earth and all that is tlierein, should not be forced to undergo the same natural, maturing pro- cess which is common to the lowest forms of life, but should thus spring at one bound into unap- proachable supremacy— into deity I This expan- sion of thr brief, succinct account of the temptation given in Genesis, with the first Adam as the cen- tral figure, shows it strictly analogous to the temp- tation oflforcfl to our Lord (the second Adam) in tlie wilderness. "Again the Devil taketh Him up into an exceeding high mountain, and showeth Him all the kingdomt^ of the world and the glory of them, and saith unto Him, All these things will I give Thee, if Thou wilt fall down and worship me" (Matt. iv. 8, 9). In both cases the attack was made at the outset of the career. In both eases the temptation is to anticipate and overreach the legitimate process of attainment— to grasp at the ]mze before the race is begim— and to hold it in the Devil's name, or, failing this, in man's own or ajiy name, but not to hold it of God. To have perceived, to have appreciated, assim- ihitcd, and made liis own, tlie supreme, beneficent will of the Creator, was for Adam to have put all the noble energies of his new being into fresh play, and to have succeeded. This he did not do; but with his commission fresh upon him to subdue SOME FKATURE8 OF THE FAITH. 49 the world, i^ermitted himself to be subdued by the world. Created, as we have said, with a nature eompounded of kinship with the world beneath him, and with God above him, the normal eourse of his activity lay in his btnng to the world what God was to him ; in a word, in his lx?ing himself, with his uncreated part dominating the world- sympathies within him. §18. All that we can make of the rest, the proeess by which this awful step was determined, is that Eve, overpowered by that mysterious being, the serpent, threw the full vast weight of her captive reason into the scales, along with Adam's own temptation towards absolute mlership (lyingly ..ffered) ; and thus was effected the overthrow of God's image in man. Th(> inspired story of num's fall, relating as it does to that dim verg(> between wlmt we nni know, and what we eannot quite grasp or liiivc adeciuate realization of, fittingly jtresents its wcjolitv faets softened down to our eajtaeity l>y an instructive symbolism. Of this symbolism, the fruit of the forbidden tree, the fruit which Adam ate, thus signifies the attractiveness of the world in its false iudtJixM:.!- 50 SOME FEATVBES OF TUB FAITH. euce of God, the desirable presenting itself to man, without any mention of whence it comes, or of the hand that bestows it; without any i«ference or acknowledgment to God. §19. Bodily hunger was not the impelling force which urged Adam to his impious act. The fair, flattering promise which the fruit, and the interpretation put upon it by the serpent, gHvc to tlio part of Adam's nature most susceptible to such seduction, namely, "to be as gods,"— su- pivnio lulcrship in his own right— this was the true cause. Tlie figure of (>ating shows that "the knowl- edge of good and evil" signifies more than the comprehension of the fact that good has its oppo- site. A figure which embodied, for example, the act of looking, would have been strong enough for this; hut "eating" emphatically means appropria- tion, tlie taking into the system of the thing, here the experiencing of the evil. To have had tlie knowledge of good and evil as nn intellectual parallel to the consciousness of the difference l)etween the meanings of the words MiK'k mul white, was not to have forfeited Par- SOME FEATURES OF VIIE FAITH. 51 adise. But to have voluntarily cast away the Go— humanity and the god- ward impulse— man hath here put asunder. The image of God is wanting. And in ita place we find the image of man ; man after the fall. The 66 SOME FEATURES OF THE FATTU. tiny human compass, to our eye so perfect and beautiful, is, nevertheless, charged Mrith a false polarity, and is thus errant from the first. The difference between the infant and the man is only the difference between the bud and the flower. Both are identical in nature, and both are recognized as such in Holy Scripture. CHAPTER V. THE SAVIOUR. §29. Ill ^^-^T then, is there for man ? What does W or can the future hold for him ? Can what has heen lost ever be recovered? This is the grand question. The answer is two-fold : it cannot, and it can. From the side of liunianity, no effort can go forth, however suhliuie, which possesses the slightest promise of wrestin.i^ Ijuck from fate this lo: t glory, for which the worhl is ever yearning, and yearning most, perhajis, amidst the fairest scenes of its own abundance. "Wherefore do ye spend money f.jr tiiat which is not bread, and your labor for that which sat- isfieth not?" asks the prophet Isaiah, and in ask- ing, stamps the whole long Sisyphian enterprise of earth, in which generation after generation exhausts the flower of its strength in the chase after perfect happiness, as hopelessness itself. 68 SOME FEATUSR8 OF THE FAITH. Thei'e are many things which it lies iu the awful power of man to do, but which, once done, eonstittite calamities with which humanity is not fitted to cope. And of all such calamities, we stand face to face with the greatest, and the dire original, in the Fall of man. To rise superior to this evil, it is not enough to say that the noblest achievements of man have come short. It is not enough to say that, were the world to behold tJio spectacle of some lofty spirit, tower- ing so far above the rest of onr race as to exhaust by his individual merit the atoui"*;;- capacity of hu- man nature on our behalf, that this effort woidd miserably fail of success. I'he truth is only state the Apostles, to be baptized into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost— in the first case >"('kinjr renassion of the fruit sins; in the latter of the root, or original sin. Tt eaiiiiot escape the notice of anyone who is ;it ill] faiuilijii- with tli,. ^;^l>je('t matter of tlie ^ (IctVctivc in certain respects here and iliere, and only need- ing a correcting hand to set all right again. On the contrary, His whole treatment of man- kind is that of one who is satisfied that patching 80 SOME FKATUBKS OF THE FAITH. is futile, and that nothing less than the recasting of the whole mass will suffice. Consequently, in seeking to learn how He brings home to us His w<»ndrous aehievemeut of salvation, we naturally look for one of those telling figures, those considerate references to fa- miliar ideas, by which He is wont to bring the ki^ things of His own doing, down to the level of mr grasp. And kere we do not look in vain. Such a %are He has not failed to give us; and the famil- iar object to whieh He likens our union with Ilim, is one which is wholly satisfactory to every sincere seeker of a Saviour, and fasily within the uuder- standiug of the least iniaiiinative. Standing in the uiidst of a lost world, sur- rounded bv men witii the seal of their perdition stamped upon them, the Saviour who has aomv to do a gracious work, and who knows that He has within Himself the creative power to re-make iMs spoiled material, humwity, well knows all tte features of our case, and how to deal with it. Tlie sin and misery' which He saw about Him, brought to His mind, undimmed and unobscured by the thousands of years that intervened, the fa- tal, causative act of Adam in Eden, the ruinous effect of that act upon our first parents* har- SOME FEATUKE8 OF THE FAITir. 81 monious being; then the transmission of tlii^ de- fective nature to every succeeding age and indi- vidual; and lastly, the inevitable produet--the miserable, unholy present, instinct with unsatisfied yearning. He looks along this whole vista which terminates at His feet, and beholds only the sol- itary figure of Adam in Eden, in the first pulsings of his and our wrecked nature. There the iritole r.f the present, and of every present siaee tke Fall, was embodied. To change this ever-r«cur- ring, pitiable present, the action of the Saviour must bo far-reaching indeed, and tliorough. U laust not lose sight of Eden, and of all that tran- spired there. ^ In Adam, as we have seen, we all lay as possi- bilities. From that ancient trunk, time has pro- duced a luxuriant growth, and shown all. the latest shoot as well as the earliest, equally i>oisonous. The close connection of the newest sprout here, with the parent trunk, is faithf^ noted. The Saviour reviews the whole ; and &m edbnly begins the eternal overthrow and tmmstrml^ of the whole. § 38. M§m the root, present in all the branches, shall give plMe to Christ ^ root, equally present ifi ttf &e l«»B<^it. 82 SOME FEATURES OF THE FAITH. riie Adamic tree, producing its branches by {ivneration, shall witness the Christ-Vine multi- plying His branches by regeneration. By birth, each of us becomes a branch of the false vine ; by the new birth we shall, through sheer mercy, be made branches of the true Vine. To those whom the Saviour has chosen out from the world and made His disciples, He said, ''I am the Vine, ye arc the branches," "'He that abideth in Mo, and I in him, the same bringeth forth much fruit, for without Me ye can do nothing." "If :i iiiiin al)inier a misoiAnilation of the possihilitin ^ tl» sitM- 1it Merely on ^ thr^h
mpt and blamo; but rather to dodicato it utterly to God, to present it iis a habitation for the Holy Ghost, and to exercise it in the servieo of ITim who is content, now and through all eternity, to wear it at the right hand of God on high. In fact, it would almost seem that our Blessed Lord, not content with vindicating the right of the body to equal consideration and value with the soul, was inclined at times to make it paramount. His very choice of the vine— of so visible, tangible, and familiar an object — as the great type and model of our union with Himself, is witness of this. §41. There is a difficulty with many, however, in bringing themselves to admit this position in re- ligion for the body and its outwardness, and though we seldom meet with any confession in so many words, of such unwillingness, there is no lack of evidence of its widespread, misleading influence. That any outward act affecting the body, any visible, physical form or ceremony, such for in- SOME PKATUBKS OF THE FAITH. 87 stance as the application of water in Baptism, can have any deep, eternal significance in a relig- ion which is so conspicuously and avowedly one of the heart, is offensive to the judgment of not a few people of whose devoutness we cannot doubt The revulsion produced in such minds by the high ehiini made for such outward features, is not, however, the result of calm, prayerful eontempla- tion of tlie whoh' ease, with the words of the Saviour before the mind ; hut springing up within us as it doe.^ naturally, and without any etl'ort, we must seek the cause deej) down in tlie very slrue- ture of the heart of man. First, it is hard for us children <.f Adam t.-r the old nature struggles hard for its litV. wit!,,,, us ) to wncede that ''there is no health in us" ; and,siui- ple as the Baptismal requirement is, it sorely sifts us to the core. We confess with reluctance, that we.all, in the loins of Adam, effected such impious and eom- plete ruin of our prospects, as to render fatite and vain our most heroic efforts to right ourselves. That any thing of moment affecting our best interests can be done, and we have no part in it, is a vicious blow to human pride, and one which we are constitutionally disposed to spare ourselves. Constructed as we are, there is on the other MMdocorr nwumoN tbt chmr (ANH and SO lOr CHART N». 2i 88 SOME FEATURES OF TilE FAITH. liand nothing so soothingly satisfactory to our bribed reason, as to feel that we in a measure buy our blessedness from heaven, by bringing to the ex- change certain marketable treasures of good within ourselves. The mind seldom enters with any kindly en- ergy, however, into the dutiful task of finding out to what, or to whom, we owe what we bring, or think we bring. *'By faith we are saved" — here in this "sound and most wholesome doctrine" we rest our subtle, unconscious vindication of human worth; with argumentation born of instincts closely allied to those which prompted Saul to save some darling things from a ruin which God had commanded him to make ruthlessly complete (I. Sam. xv.). Faith saves us, purchases redemption ; and this "faith" we can produce within the limits of our own resources. Our humanity can still achieve this thing, and when we think we have successfully wrought it out, we come to the font, or to the altar rails as the case may be, and there «y down our freight of merit, and strive as wc m • to believe that we are about to receive as a free gift, that which we have done everything in our power to render a thing of barter and exchange. Faith may truly be said to be the hearing and SOKE FKATUBSS OF THE FAITH. 89 believing the voice of the Saviour which says, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest;" but the impres- sion which that Divine voice makes upon us is pre- cisely the counterpart, in depth or shallowness, of our consciousness of our own proper worthlessness. Let the foundation of Faith be well laid in the inviolable conviction of our true condition before God, and we have warranty for a living, fruitful faith on the hearing of the Saviour's voice. Let us, on the other hand, fail to do justice to this fundamental fact ; let us lean to the fond, lingering mistake, that from the embers of human resource or hope, some spark may still be blown into a flame that shall illumine our darkness, and promise to lessen the difficulties of recapturing Eden— let us loan to this, and what is the result as regards faith i The result plainly is, that as this is but the old Pelagian lie, and we cling to it, we are only repeating the unhappy work of Adam, and putting the Saviour irrevocably from us ; an act of impiety to which even Adam did not attain. §49. Coming thus to the sacrament of Baptism, it is not very wonderful that we should be disposed to attach very little value to a rite, so simple and 90 SOME FEATUBES OF THE FAITH. SO external as the application of a little water ; an act not only outward and bodilyj and therefore, we think, unavailing in religion, but an act above all which owes nothing whatever to vs. Here, doubtless, is the real difficulty; and difficulty it certainly is ; leveling us to the true level of our powers in the struggle for salvation. But this difficulty ought to be understood by us a little better than it is. We should know that it is because so much is due to God, that so little is to be credited to our- selves: and further than this, we should realize that the kernel of the difficulty lies in our failure — perhaps our stubborn unwillingness — to acknowledge all this. As regards the Saviour's part in Baptism, it is hardest for us to conceive of a Nature so in- effably nobler than our own, and so unmeroenary, with all our experience gained from a world whose well understood maxim and motto is, "Nothing for nothing." Then, too, a superficial gauging, by common- place ideas, of the office which water performs in this sacrament, very naturally leads to an unsat- isfactory estimate. But it is little wonderful that the light of reason, which guided us with such poor euaseaa SOMS FEATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. 91 hitherto, should continue to misguide us here, where it is as ungracious as it is impious to attempt to exercise it critically. No one who understands — ^that is, takes the trouble to understand — ^the true situation, can have any quarrel with the simple features of this momentous sacrament; for (if it be permitted us to have any opinion of the fitness of any of our Blessed Redeemer's 'iistitutions), we may see how^ fairly it sets forth man's expression of despair through sin, his abandonment of the Sisyphian task of trying to recover the irrecoverable, and his embracing tlie free gift which the Saviour has to bestow; while on God's part it is gracious to in- finity, in all it conveys and the little it imposes ; even though so just in its pivotal requirement, that man shall acknowledge that he is but dust — unhallowed dust, which God consents to re- animate. Thus obedience and deathless gratitude become us rather than questioning. The bripf fonnelity stands, in its simplicity, like a wall of adamant between man and presump- tion. Having failed utterly to right ourselves, and every attempt towards this end, no matter how promising, only succeeding in fastening our chains 92 SOME FEATUKBS OF THE FAITH. more ti(^tly upon us, beoauae proceeding inm a wrong and unholy principle, viz., that of tmtting to a something which is not Qodf we are in no po- sition to surest from resources which have so fa- tally confounded ourselves, improvements upon the plan of our Lord and Saviour. That plan, as laid down by our Redeemer, who surely deserves to be trusted both to know and to do what is best, and only what is necessary, is Baptism, in its out- ward and visible, and its inward and spiritual phases. To tamper with either of these is awful, in its sullen hostility to the ways of GU>d. § 43. The Church of God, following closely in the steps of the Apostles, has from the first, faithfully guarded this entrance to the true life and immor- tality. ? To those who would endanger the proportion of the Faith by thinking of the outward part, or, as it were, the body of the Sacrament of Baptism, as the whole of the Divine ceremony, she presents, for closer study, the teaching of our Lord Jesus Christ concerning the conditions of life in the branches of the vine, wherein it is plainly set forth, that the most careful grafting, if unduly trusted in, may only result in adding a dead branch to the vino — SOME FSATUBjBS OF TBX FAITH. 93 8 branch which, because it did not exhibit the object of its ingrafting by drawing its life from the Vine-Stock, has brou^t down upon itself ihe doom of being cast forth and consigned to the bam- ing. To those on the other hand, who, in the joy and consolation of having eyes that see, and ears tliat hear, and hearts that understand the object of the Saviour in this grafting, viz., eternal Ufe in Jesus Christ, and therefore such life as is in Jesus Christ, so fasten their wrapt gaze on that great boon as to think little of the Divinely ap- pointed steps thereto, and having omitted to give these steps that attention which is their just due, finally arrive at denying their right to such atten- tion—to all such the Church faithfully presents the full gospel truth, that this precious gift is made to those only who observe the conditions, so fully and mercifully within our reach, which the Sav- iour is careful to lay down as a thing He requires of all who would profess and call ther, selves Christians. "Make disc:ples (or Christians) of all nations, baptizing them into the K^ame of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost"; and ''Whosoever (believes and) is baptized shall be saved." The contemplation of the great Salvation which the Saviour brings to man, fosters in him de- 94 SOME FZATVSE8 OF THE FAITH. sire, and with de«ire for this gift is generated a true heart-wanning towards the Divine Giver; but attractive and full of heavenly sweetness as this state may even be, it is nevertheless not that union which our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ teaches and requires. Probably the best that can he said of it is that which our Lord said to the scribe in the gospel his^'' ' — "Thou art not far from the kingdom of Go^ ' . xii. 34). But encouraging as th." »8, it is an emphatic assertion in substance that entrance had not ac- tually been made, in the case of the scribe, into the kingdom of God. Branches in the Vine, and discipleship accord- ing to the will and plan of the Saviour, are there- fore not thus effected. No matter how the surrounding trees may bow and do kindly, cordial obeisance to the true Vine, yet imless they are duly grafted into that Vine, they are apart from it — apart from the Source of life, and are still impotent. "Apart from Me ye can do nothing." Jesus Christ, who "created the world with power and restored it by obedience," asks of those who would be saved, one act of obedience, and that of a character which cannot be vefused Him except by the manifestation of present unfitness, MOMK I KATUKE8 OF THE FAITH. 95 or want of true desire for His Salvation: which two expressions are but longer wayi of saying that such persons reject Christ. Attachment to the person of Christ, and the possession of much of what is popularly called "goodness," no matter how true and unselfish, if the will of Christ, being known, is still neglected, constitute only a beautiful and pathetic failure in the direction of Christianity; and it is unneces- sary to point out that such "spiritual" union (so- called) with Christ is shockingly unspiritual in the tmMt sense of the word, because (1) of its want of sympathy with the spirit of Christ, which is, above all else, loyalty to the will of God: and (2) because this mere sentimental attachment to the person of Christ, makes no visible, marked break with self-reliant Adamisni. It does not dutifully submit to that formal, declarative act, by which confession of error is made, abandonment of an unholy course is effected becomingly, and readiness to accept unmerited mercy is devoutly shown. Now this gratuitous waiving of any part of the requisite ceremony of restoration, by such ab- ject petitioners as we are, is surely a bold species of indevoutness; but when we remember that the ceremony in question has been not only sanctioned 96 SOME FEATITBSS OF THE FAITH. and referred to, but instituted and commanded as the one plan of the Saviour, by the Saviour Himself, where is the piety that does not shudder at the thought of deliberately ignoring it ? No account has to be given by us to human reason here as to the efficacy of so limple and outward a rite. To know the will of Qod, and to obey itf is all our coiMsem. "To obey is better than sacrifioe, and to hearken, than the fat of nuns.** §44. To fail here U, by implieati<»i and extension of the prindple, to impeach before the bar of human wisdcmi all such beneficent acts of our Lord Jesus Christ as that which preceded His "Ephphatha," and the opening of the eyes of the blind man: "And He took him aside fro*, the multitude, and put His fingers into his ears, and He spit and touched his tongue." It is to impeach every union of the spiritual with the material. It is to impeach the very being of the Saviour Himself, whom we know only through His flesh and blood. It is to run fair for the haven of Manichean- xsm. §45. Heart-warming towards Jesus Christ, from •OjCS FXATtmSB OP THE FAITH. 97 whatever cause, which shows with such glowing beauty when contrasted with that state of heart and mind and life in the baptized which is repre- sented by the dead or dying branch, must, never- theless, not be mistaken for Christianity. Let it be allowed to be "not far from the kingdom of God" ; and in the face of the fact that the Sftvionr hat given and enjoined but one mnuw c of making Chrudiana out of non-Chr diam, vi«., hy hapiiting ihem—thi» is all it can !«. Besides, what is there impelling us, wIimw is the rationality that forces us to consider fiinem for ingrafting to be the full equivalent of, aye, preferable to, the ingrafted state itself 9 How can we hope to make it plain that the existence of vitality in the branch which we wvuld ingraft, ia our warrant for foregoing the operation of grafting ? Is it not, on the contrary, our best human reason for proceeding with the grafting? And finally, could anyone with any shadow of wis- dom, ingraft a branch which gave no such indi- cations (where such indications were possible) of life, and fitoess for the ingrafting? Now in this living condition of the branch before ingrafting, we have unerringly set forth the very desirable state of those who, not yet baptized, manifest real love for, and even likeness 98 80M£ F£ATUKES OF TUX FAITH. to the Saviour — a love and a likeness which shame and condemn those who, having been duly united to Him, have obstructed the life that should have come into them, and obstructed it, too, by a love for, and a likeness to what is hostile to their Sav- iour — the World, the Flesh, and the Devil. §46. But we must not ■compare the best that exists outside of the Vine (which is true meetnoss for .sharing the life of that Vine), with the worst that claims a regular and real union v/it^ the Vine; for we know that it is possible, alas! to prove the existence of true bnmehes of that Vine, which are now dead from cauiea above mentumed: and are doomed apparency only to be cut off and cast into the fire. We must, in all reason, compare the best of one thing with the best of another, if we would at- tain to a righteous and just appreciation of the relative merits of those compared things. Let us hasten to do this. To pick out from among men one who could satisfy every conception of a fit representative of all that is possible in godliness, stem righteousness, yes, even knowledge and love of Jesus Christ, out- side of the pale of Christian Baptism, would be an undertaking which, though imperative here. SOMK FSATUHU 01* TUX VAITB. 00 it were bopeleti to attempt to do Mtufaetorilj, but for one consideration: and that is, that our Lord Jesua has Himself authoritatively undertaken thir (lifHcuIty for ua, and we have only to accept Hia judgment. He has indeed pointed out one, w'lose name wir 'OMAv no antagonism to the clain.: John the Bap t, the forerunner and announcer of the world's Saviour. Our Lord rot only points us to John the Baptist, and says, ''Among them that are bom of women, there hath not risen a greater tlian John the Baptist," but He immediately proceeds to institute the very comparison we ourselves now wish to make, and for our Lord's treatment and settlonent of this matter erezy Christiaa man and woman must feel devout thankfulness. For if this selection had to be made by erring men, it might — indeed it would almost certainly — have l)een wrongly done: or being done justly, it might, and even more certainly would, have been dis- l)elieved. Our Lord makes a comparison which is not that of the best among the non-baptized, with tho best of those who have been baptized, which is all that fairness requires; but a mu.^h more forcible comparison and ntra8t, and one divinely in- tended to place that new existence, new develop- 100 SOME FEATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. ment to which Baptism admits, upon an elevation, the true glory of which we are to understand from the extreme inequality of the comparison, from the fact that tho earliest stage of discipleship here (among the baptized) transcends maturity of spir- itual attainments elsewhere: "Verily I say unto you, among them that are bom of women, there hath not risen a greater than John the Baptist, noiwUhatanding, he thai is least in the kingdom of heaven, is greater than he." If this need opening it is this: John the Baptist is the very best of tin »so who have not been admitted into the Christian Church by its initial rite of Baptism; and yet the least within that Divine Society — the least of those, possibly, who are in any living degree branches — is greater than even John the Baptist. That our Lord means the Church by His favorite expression, the Kingdom of Heaven, is put beyond all controversy by His parable of the tares, and His exposition of that parable (Matt. xiii. 24, 31).* • "The drift of the parable is to represent auto na the pres- ent and fatnre state of the Kingdom of Heaven— the gospel Church. . . . The visible Church is the Kingdom of HeaTen ; though there be many hrpocrites in It, Christ rules it as a King ; and there Is a remnant in It that are the subjects and heirs of Heaven. ..... The Church Is the King dom of Heaven on earth" (Matthew Heanr. im loeo.). SOME FEATUUKS OF TIIK FAITH. 101 §47. The existence of teaching upon the subject of liaptism which is not consonant with apostolic truth, has certainly, side by side with its awful evil, one good effect: it drives us back upon the original defences of the faith, it obliges us to re- view the Church's long struggle with man-made conceptions of the truth committed to her; and calls us once again to mark well her bulwarks. In this walk round Zion, we discover the re- peated instances of that to which attention has al- ready been attracted, that the tendencies to irreg- ular teaching which mark our day, are not at all peculiar to our day; but have appeared again and again l)ack through the centuries. These tenden- cies produce new names, but the names are often only the new faces of very old foes. Manicheanism, with its abhorrence of matter, as being essentially evil, is the deadly root from which springs the unwillingness to give due regard to the outward phase of the Sacrament of Bap- tism; while the hydra-headed hope— that within the limits of our old nature, if we would only do it the fullest justice, there is a potency which leaves us little to desire from without ourselves— is the unmistakable evidence that Pelagianism is too 102 SOME FEATUBB8 OF THE FAITH. deeply rooted in our Adamic nature, to ever cease to trouble any generation of Christians. §48. "Go ye into all the world and make Christians of all nations, baptizing them into the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, and teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded; and lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world. Amen." The observing of all things whatsoever the Saviour has commanded, is the complement of that first obedience, bom of, at least, misery and hope- lesane^ whidi seeks and unde^oes Baptism, and upon which the Saviour may be said to re-create humanity; for the "good" of which Baptism is the simple instrument, is a "good" essentially in its nature above the reach of the creature. It is an act which regards the cardinal features of the very structure of the creature — man. This reconstruction of man by the Saviour, or more accurately, the restoring, by Him, of the original Divine balance lost by Adam, and by Adam lost for each and all of us, is the work of the Saviour in Baptism; a work with which every being less thau the Creator is unfitted to grapple. But when this miraculous, creative act is ac- complished, faithfully and truly upon that full SOME PEATtTBES OF THE FAITH. 103 and reverent obedience, Baptism, which is so viv- idly illustrated by the grafting of a branch into the Vine, then begins man's work— "observing all things," etc.— without which the ingrafting must oome to nothing. The following illustration is humbly sub. mitted. Conceive a railway engine which, by some rashness, has been hurled from the track, and, rolling down the embankment, rests, after a complete revolution upon all its wheels, at the bottom. By no conceivable exertion of its loco- motive power, can it recover its normal condition on the rails. Every effort to right itself must only imbed it more deeply and hopelessly in the lower ground. There is nothing in all the fine machinery of which it consists, that can afford any hope of surmounting the embankment and regain- ing the firm, necessary rails. The creator of the engine— man— must again use that creative power, his intellect, in order to remedy the disaster. And now what do we notice in the application of this friendly, superior power that comes to the rescue! The mighty forces of the wrecked loco- motive lie all inert and ignored, because of their uselessness here, and this whole ponderous thing of strength itself becomes a dead weight upon another and greater strength. 104 SOME KKATUKES OF THE FAITU. The engine is taken up bodily by a power not at all its own, and is set a second time where it was alone designed to operate — on the rails. §49. The power that was useless, or only destruc- tive, when exerted in the fallen condition, and which was utterly unable to recover the lost posi- tion, is now the required force to propel the righted locomotive along its legitimate course. The case of the railway engine is man's case. From the moment of their wrecks, nothing good can be done by either; no self-righting is to be thought of. But once rescue — ^that giant mercy — is ex- tended, and the Creator again puts forth the cre- ative power, each is competent to do acceptable work. The Xlllth Article of the Church of Eng- land, which deals with this subject, is therefore true to the mark, though a casual reading of it, in the light of a self-valuing world, makes it sound harsh : "Works done before the grace of Christ, and the inspiration of His Holy Spirit, are not pleas- ant to God, forasmuch as they spring not of faith in Jesus Christ, neither do they make men meet to receive grace or (as the school lUtuors say) de- SOME FKATUHES OF THE FAITH. 105 serve grace of congruity ; yea rather, for that they aro not done as God hath willed and commanded I hem to b(> done, we doubt not but they have the nature of sin." Alan's work, in any meritorious sense, begins after Baptism ; of which more, shortly. The imagery of the railway engine, replaced upon the rails, makes two other important and pertinent facts very clear. If the righted loco- motive, now that it has an opportunity to apply its energy with the prospect of doing good instead 01 harm, fails to make any such duo effort, trust- iiij: to what has beoii done for it, the work of res- cue will have been best( in vain; for it rests as far from its propor jroal as when it was a wreck ; if again, this hefri-nded engine only puts forth a part of its strength, and that spasmodically, the defect of application is certain to be registered in the space by which it will fall short of attaining it* proper and possible destiny. § 50. The instructive inferences from the creature of man's handiwork to the creature of God's, need no elaborating. There is one thing of which we could wish to be quite sure, and that is, that neither the one nor the other, as they ppeed nobly on their course, 106 SOME FEATVBSfl OF THE FAITH. shall forget their debt of obligation and grr titude ; and instead of it permit their success to be con- sidered as self achieved. With regard to those to whom we have referred above, and who do not think outward Baptism necessary in order to effect a fusion with Christ, this analogy of the lomotive is singularly un- complaisant. The imagination cannot sustain the picture of a railway engine proceeding along the low ground where it has fallen, in a kind of sym- pathetic parallel with the rente designed by its maker; especially when this impossible road-bed is chosen as an improvement upon the rails.* When man in Baptism has been, by an act of Divine grace, restored to his Paradisiacal pros- pect, he must exert all the powers within him to do what is expected of him. His goal has to be reached, and the reaching it crowns his career. Before he was righted by a Saviour's achieve- ment, this goal was impossible. The Saviour's achievement has now rendered it possible, hut it has not beatoweu it. * The conception recalls a scene In the HIppolytus of Euripides, equally unmeant to be ludicrous, where the hero Is dragged along the rocky beach, by his runaway coursers, and seems to derive considerable comfort, between the bumps, from muttering pathetic ejaculations about what a model young man he Is. But HIppolytus bad not refused rescue ; and never pro- posed ttiis e^tro-cbarlot careering as an improTement upon tMtter-known metlio^ CHAPTER IX. IITFAKT BAPTIBIC. §61. TILL that has been said about the first formal i^l and Divinely appointed application of the work of the Saviour to mankind individually, may seem to refer exclusively to those who have at- tained to years of discretion, and to leave the Church's custom of baptizing tender infants in need of some explanation. The existence of a body of modern Christians who have found man's share in the restored rela- tionship with God to be so considerable, that chil- dren are, in their opinion, impossible candidate, makes it a decent courtesy to review the Church's reasons for pursuing here, as elsewhere, amid the ever-changing scenes of Churdi-Iife, the change- less tenor of her way. 108 80MX nCATUBM OV THX VATTO. §52. The pivotal difficulty ia this : children cannot repent, and how then can they be baptized? Which is the same as saying, children cannot understand a l)cnefit, and how can they be bene- fitted ? The light of nature is assumed to ad- vance the objection. If we could be sure that the light of nature be the supreme arbiter of this question whether children ought to be baptized or not, we might be inclined to concede something perhaps of what the Antipaedo-Baptists, or (as they are now called) Baptists, say, regarding the inability of infants to meet the requirement of repentance as preparatory to Baptism ; and to see less wrong in their rending the body of Christ, to establish an independent sect upon so apparently slender a basis (Eph. i. 23 ; Col. i. 24). § 53. But the light of nature oonld not sare us, in its sufficiently long trial-time before the wnning of Christ our Bederaner, and we must therefore, however reluctantly, take it down from its hig^ pedestal, and make way for the reverent hearing of the mind of Christ, as expressed both by the words and deeds of the inspired writers of the New Testament •OH* nuTUBn OF rum faith. 109 The light of nature, into whose constitn- ente negation of human merit before God does not ratdily enter, if not bo wholly, as may at first light he imagined, on the side of excluding chil- dren from federal relationship with Chrirt, be- cause of their incapacity to undentand and to give intelligent assent to the obligations that go with all covenants. Does not the latest child bom in our land, of British parents, really enter as fully into the right of the covenant of citizenship, as a Minister of the Crown or the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court ? The knowledge and intelligent assent of the latter does not gain for him over the ignorance and impotence of the former, any more extended or more real protection. Place the two in a foreign country temporar- ily, and malicious treatment at the hands of that country brings no more help to the Minister or the Chief Justice from his own country than that which would be extended to the bfant. They are both citiaens, both claim all that their country can do for them, and the claim in both cases is honored. The child therefore enters into the covenant of citizenship, and the obligations as well as the bene- fits of citizenship belong to it as fully as they do 110 80XB ntATDBM OV THB VAXTB. to the mature British subject ; only the nation, in its requirement of each, is satisfied with the pos- sible, and docs not demand from either iiwt which is beyond his powen. Britifh And United States children are not held at aliens before the law until they can intelligenily take the oath of aUegianoe. §64. This ray of the light of nature, therefore, casts a rather forbidding hue upon that representation of the kingdom of God which it was invoked to confirm; for it shows all the kingdoms of this world as incomparably its superior. §55. The law of nature and of nations puts children in the power of their parents: and parents are divinely placed in that relationship to their chil- dren which God Himself occupies toward the par- ents. "Honor thy father and thy mother, that thy days may be long in the land which the Lord thy God giveth thee." Through the object-lesson of earthly father- hood, it is thus designed that we shall all learn to understand that otherwise inexplicable, blessed actuality — that blending of mercy and judgment which is the summarized character of God. •OM« FKATUBXS OF THE FAITH. HI Part'uts therefore iK-iiig the natural guardians of their children, have a right to transact the busi- neM pert«:-!iug to my iutcrosts of their children. §56. And with the iUugtnition of the privilege of citizenship in mind, we may fully agree with Bishop Burnet's dictum : "What contract, soever they (the parents) make, hy which the child does liot lose, but is a gainer, these do certainly bind the child." ^ St. Peter, in urging Baptism upon his hearers «ays (Acts ii. 39) : "The promise is unto you' «nd to your children ;» and his audience well kne J what that meant. Their minds reverted at once not only to the right of admission into the cove^ nant with God by circumcision, which their in- fants enjoyed as Jewish children, but to the ex- tonsion of this privilege to the children of heathen and idolatrous parents who had become Jews. These too, had the right of entry into covenant With God, a n>ht hinging on their parents' wilL §57. St. Paul, in deciding the question as to whether one of the parties in a married state, who had be- eome a Christian, while the other remained a hea- then, ought to continue to live with the heathen 113 soMB nxTvmm or tuk pjutii. fponie, Claras that tlie union mutt be main- tained; for there it a oommunication of bletwng from the Obriatian to the heathen ; and adds that if this were not to, the children of this union must be regarded as unclean, that i«, untittod to l)e ded- icated to God ; Imt now are thoy "holy," that is. eligible through the one parent to enter into formal relationship with, and under the avowed protection of, God. For the word "holy," as the word "saint," ie used by the apodtle as referring to the federal, rather than to the inner personal oonditistiniony in an indirect but very effective manner. We have remarked that it is not for the opin- ions of these ancient writers that we go to them concerning this subject, but in order that we may interrogate them as to what they saw and knew to be the custom of the Church in their days. The peculiarity of Tertullian's witness to In- fant Baptism as being a custom of the Church in his (lays, is that it is all his ovm individual and privat<> opinion that he gives us, whic'h,as such, IS of no use to us; but its value to us lies in its possessing also the character of evidence, and tliat of the very best kind: for he argues against the common practice of the Chureli, and tries to change it to his own way of thinking, which was. 118 SOMK FEATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. that not only inf ints, but all persons that are un- married or in widowhood, ought to be excluded from Baptism. Tertullian, who became and con- tinued until his death a leader of the heretical Montanist sect, is thus the first great advocate for the exclusion of children from the sacrament of Baptism. Origen lived and flourished a few years later than Tertullian in the early part of the third cen- tury. He says: "Everyone is bom in original sin. What is the reason why the Baptism of the Church which is given for the remission of sins, is bv tlio custom of the Church given to infants also ( Infants are baptized because by the sacra- ment of Baptism the pollution of our birth is taken away. Except one be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven." He says again that "the Church re- ceived the order of baptizing infants from the apostles."* * "The fathers who lived at the end of .^^ second century, however mxuA they were nilaed aboTe their predeceeaom In power and range of thought, were trained by that earlier gener- ation which they surpassed. They made no claims to any fresh diecoTerlee la Chrlitlan troth : rayod for the door. What is pnssi^^ ta a nature like mine, is easily possible to viod. The SOMIE FXATUBX8 OF THE FAITH. 141 reality of my true act givea me appreciation of the reality of Ood'a. §78. Ill addition to tlu'se promises of tlie Saviour, wo have the passage in St. James (v. 14, If)): "Is any sick among you ? Let him call for the- elders of the Church, and let them pray over li m, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord, and the prayer of faith shall save the sick and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he have com- mitted sins, they shall be forgiven him." These, and many other portions of Holy Scripture, «how the foundation an- we must put ourselves back through centuries, and <»4e bv side 146 SOME FEATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. with the apostles and writers of the New Testa- ment. Sin, to their eyes, lias its range as it has in our own experience, from indiscretion to deadliest crime. But the lapses of Christians of to-day do not suggest very readily the great lapse, which, from the nature of the case, was ever present to the minds of the first disciples, namely, a formal abjuration of the religion of Christ, and a return to that of heathenism and its idols, or to J udaism. The strongest passages of all those that can bo arrayed against the hope of forgiveness for bap- tized Christians who dishonor their Christian vows, are to be found in the Epistle to the lie- brews : "For it is impossible for those who were once cnU(jMcned and have tasted of the heavenly yifls and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, an i have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to re- new them again unto repentance ; seeing they cru- cify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and ]mt llini to an open shame. For the earth which drinketh in the rain that cometh oft upon it, and bringeth forth herbs meet for them by whom it is dressed, receiveth blessing from God; but that which beareth thorns and briars is rejected, and is BOMB FEATUSE8 OF THE FAITH. 147 nigh unto cursing; whose end is to be burned" (Heb. vi. 4-8). And further on in the same Epistle : "Lot us hold fast the profession of our Faith without wavering (for lie is faithful that prom- ^^^) .... not forsaking the assembling of ourselves together as the niann(>r of some is : but exhorting one another : and so niueh the more as ye see the day approaching. For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins; but a certain fearful looking for of judg- ment, and fiery indignation, which shall devour the adversaries. "He that despised Moses' law died without mercy under two or three witnesses : Of how much sorer punishment suppose ye shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the spirit of grace f . . . But call to remembrance the former days in which after ye were ilium! nnted (baptized) ye endured a great fight of afflictions .... Now the just shall live by faith, hut if any man draw back, my soul shall have no pleasure in him. But we 148 SOME FEATURES OF THE FAITH. are not of th'^m who draw hack unto perdition, but of them who believe unto the saving of the soul." Both of these strong passages refer to the crowning sin of Apostasy, and the ceremonial re- nunciation of Christianity for Judaism; and should not be used by careless handlers of the word of God as if these utterances of the apostle could be conveniently coupled on to any and every ordi- nary sin that daily dogs our footsteps. "The words in the Epistle to the Hebrews," says Bishop Burnet, ''do plainly import those who, being not only baptized, but having also received a share of the extraordinary effusion of the Holy Qhost, had totally renounced the Christian relig- ion, and apostatized from the faith, which was a crucifying of Christ anew. "Such apostates to Judaism were thereby in- volved in the crime and guilt of the crucifying of Christ, and the putting Him to open shame. "Now persons so apostatizing, could not bo re- newed again by repentance, it not being possible to do anything towards their conviction that had not already been done: and they hardening them- selves against all that was offered for their convic- tion, wore arrived at such a degree of wickedness that it was inip(»ssil»lo to work upon them. There SOMK KEATLKKt* OF TIIK FAITH. 149 was nothing left to be tried, that had not been al- ready tried and proved to be ineflFeetual." § SO. The fifth chapter of St. .John's first Epistle, which speaks of a "sin not unto death" which may obtain foi^giveness, and of "a sin unto death" for which we are not advised to pray, culminates with clearness and force in the last verse : "Little chil- dren, keep yourselves from idols," and speaks throughout as unmistakably of apostasy to heath- enism, as the forbidding passages in the Epistle to the Hebrews do of apostasy from the faith of Christ to Judaism. Now it will be seen at once that these {)ortions of Holy Scripture are not easily applicable to tin lives of baptized men and women of to-day. In fact, dealing as they do with apostasy alone, they are not even to be applied to all times and kinds of apostasy itself. It was the severe error of the Novatians to make no difference in extent of guilt between those who (loniod the faitli by lapsing into idolatry in the third century under the terrible persecutions of the Emperor Decius ; and those in the first cen- tury who, having received the wondrous outpour- ing of the Holy Ghost, and the extraordinary gifts and powers that accompanied it, deliberately 150 SOME FEATURES OF THE FAITH. turned their backs upon all this light, and without equal stress of circumstances, reembraoed their native darkness. Thus the schismatic Xovatian and his numer- ous followers in the third century (for he may justly be called the first anti-pope), though they erred in severity while acting from the legitimate motive that the Church ought to use great caution about readmitting lapsed idolators back into her fold, are not to be charged with the modem error of applying these passages of Scripture to any other sin amongst Christians than that which was in the minds of the inspired writers — the capital sin of Apostasy. § 81. Of the "sin unto death" of which St. John speaks, we have now the data for framing a defini- tion: it is this formal spurning of the Christian Creed, after endowment with the miraculous gifts of the Tloly Spirit (the sin of apostasy mentioned in Heb. vi.) ; and the "sin not unto death" for which the ajjostle bids us pray, would seem plainly to be all the other sin that flesh is heir to, since only this one phase or kind above mentioned is excepted. The words of St. John in the third chapter of his first epistle — "He that committeth sin is of SOME FKATVKKS OF THE FAITH. 151 the devil, and whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin and cannot sin because he is born of God" — must be understood in the larger and wider sense of our not permitting ourselves in the delib- erate practice of known sins. §82. The great guilt, however, of Christians sin- ning against grace, in the beaten paths of ordinary vice, is not in anywise minimized or left to an obscure position in the Scriptures. St. Paul declares that ''if any man defile the temple of God, him shall God destroy, for the temple of GJod is holy, which temple ye are" ; and demands further of the same Christians: "Know yo not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the Kingdom of God ?" "Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolators, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abus- ers of themselves with mankind, nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extor- tioners, shall inherit the Kingdom of God. And such were some of you ; but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God." He ends this uncompromising declaration with the exclamation : "What, ? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in 152 SOME PKATVBIS OF TH« VAITH. you, which ye have of God, and ye an not your ownf* §83. Of the sill of ''blasphemy against the Holy Ghost,'* which our Lord solenuily declares to be beyond the pale of Divine pardon either in this world or in the world to come, we may observe that it is a state of mind rather than a single act of gin; a state of such awfulnesa tiiat our Lord docs not actually charge it against even those cavil- ling Pharisees (Matt. xii. 22-32) who impiously and in defiance of all true evidence, attributed the work of God the Holy Ghost to Beelzebub, the prince of the devils. The temptation to this sin was peculiar to tlie time of our Lord and His apostles, when all that the wisdom, power, and love of God coujd do was done, as it never was before or since, to -eclaim tne perverted minds of men to truth. To deliberately and determinedly stifle convic- tion in the presence of all this, exhausting the re- sources of Heaven only to contemn them, and in spite of the human understanding itself to remain an entniy to truth and light— this state of mind, totally inconceivable to our minds in the case of ?ane people, is the unpardonable sin of blasphemy against the Holy Ghost. "All things of extreme SOMK nUTITBXS OF THE FAITH. 153 severity in a doctrine that is so full of grace and racrcy as the gospel is, ought to bo restrained u much as may be. From thence we infer that those dreadful words of our Saviour ought to be re- stnined to the subject to which they are applied, and ought not to be carried further. Since mir- ades have ceased, no man is any more capable of this sin*' (Bishop Buraet). We may therefore conclude, says Bishop Har- old Browne, that "severe as some passages of Scrip- ture are against those who sin wilfully against light and grace, and strict as the discipline of the oarly Church was against all such offenders, there is yet nothing to prove that heinous sin, committed after Baptism, cannot I.o pardoned on repentance. The strongest and severest texts in Scripture seem to apply not to persons who have sinned, and seek repentance; but to Apostates from the faith, who are stout in their apostasy and hardened in sin." I 84. WTI iiN wt i.iok Out. th«^ wpom rht C^iirtiAii W'>r]d, ui -ie' tlia a m oi y i t the regen- erate, the luajorir \ , rhaps, an m tbe wrong side of the line which w. have draw. V u.^n amiable godlessi ^ and essential Christ? n' v, we are not to conchiJe thai he work of the Saviour is a failure. ^h n < t first parents in Paradise was, as V ' h ' a calamity which lay beyond the powf ' " iu right ; but with the baptized world whoia B again led captive, it is not so. Tbm ^8t8 to a large extoit a&er Bap- t ia h to sober men to the great struggle ^ «e them, but it must not didiearten. This sin \^ich mars the life of Christians, and ^ throws tiM faint hearted into despair, what iE FtUTCKES 01- TIJK FAITH. li>."i 10 it after II but tlie temponury, tnument mprem- acy of the old natin over the ne- victory for the 1 menf of rhe flesh over th« ^t.u the death stn. i,'glp, 1 1 a v even be, of the Admrn ^^An- ciple w n nan ? V nv case, all ia not lost for Christianitv. This s\ is what every soldier of dirist is instructed xpect throughout the whole course of that life ch opens to him at his Baptism. BetwvRH tiie hosts of Iwptized men and women, therefore, who, consciously or unconsciously, do not wage the battle they sol^nnly vowed to wage against the misleading principle of the old man within them, between this large section of the world and the world's Saviour, there ia a path pru vided for returning feet; a bridge which Divii mercy ever guards and leaves open for the r culpable of deserters. This bridge is repentance. The apostles ever point to it. The Sa\ Himself locates it in a manner deserving tin- tention and gratitude of every man and woman who would be called a rational, thinking being. §85. In considering its nature, we meet with a mis- conception which claims a place, and is welcomed withm the minds of a very large portion of mod- 156 SOME FEATUBES OF THE FAITH. em Christians, viz., the making the return of an erring Christian to spring only from his thrilling and overpowering love for his Ifeavpniy F«thpr ; and his experiencing an intense, insupportable agony at separation from Him. If this teaching were true, it would place the great bulk of nominal Christians in a position which it is dreadful to contemplate ; for as a great, perhaps the greater portion of them, never attain all at once, and before their return, to any condi- tion of heart or mind which can honestly be said to resemble this, they are not unnaturally led to believe that no return is possible for them; at least for the present. This, of course, is said with- out ignoring the influence of the alluring myth, which makes its abode in the secret chambers of every human heart (unless challenged by an in- structed faith) — the fond hope, that doubtless, no matter what the requirement is, or can be, which is to fit us for union with our Creator, a day will somehow come when a dimly conceived but fully credited good fortune will put us in possession of the needful qualification for eternal bliss. But for the present (and that is all we have to hope from, as it is also the only battle-ground on which our great enemy seeks his victories), there is a stolid conviction of the impossibility of return. SOME FXATITBES OF THE FAITH. 157 Now all this, though claiming to be, and by many accepted as Christian truth, is plainly antagonistic to the teaching of Christ. No man who preaches or sanctions such doc- trine, has any true warrant from Jesus Christ for his zeal. §86. Let us, for one moment, be close students of the manner in which our Lord and Saviour has done His gracious work, and dealt with the ditH- culty before us. He has not, we may be sure, proclaimed a bridge over this gulf without having actually secured a sure and certain retreat from all phases of unfaithfulness and desertion; and what He proclaims as a reality, we cannot, with- out the greatest impiety, reduce, or permit to be reduced, to a myth, such as is done very effectually by all who make the Saviour to demand mntuvity in spirituality, where He only invites a beginning; to demand, in short, a man's work froui a child. It cannot be too earnestly maintained, that tlie Saviour bas made it wholly i)racticable for Clirist- ian people who fall into sin, possible even for thos,, who unhappily have long continued its chained bondsmen, to return to His most holy ways, and to the peace-giving course of right: if only an offi- cious and spurious dogmatism would allow His 158 SOME FEATUBSg OF TBE FAITH. gracious dealing with our sin-smitten race to have its sway. §87. In that priceless illustration, enshrined within the heart of the gospel — the parable of The Prod- igal Son — ^humanity possesiieB the full and clear revelation of God's attitude toward all returning sinners, and periiaps especially toward repentant Christians — ^the returning sons of the household. Here we find the lower, cosmical principle working on the impetuous iuipulses of youth, and leading the professed soldier of Christ captive, through the snare of skilfully chosen, inviting promises. Trusting to these promises of better- ment, ihe son leaves his father's house — the telling picture of youth leaving th vr«iys of God. Time ripens for the promises to I'var fruit, but the har- vest is disappointing; it is u f limine. And now frowning circumstances b^n their sobering process, as all frowning circumstances in life are apt to do, for however short a period. Observe, however, where the process takes place. It is the popular theology that to be of any the slightest value, this change or sobering must begin with the heart ; that anything else is hypocrisy, and altogether unworthy of a moment's consideration. SOKE FEATUKte OF THS FAIT«. 1W$ And yet not one word in all this parabif' is said about the heart ; not one word, that is, akmt the Bcm's heart, though much about the father's. Wfa^ 1» ewdd no loniger feed m proiuioe», and ke«»4oot&ed huuger gnawed, the ami mmoke to his true einrw M iin nws pgmpms, or, in tke pregnant woitte «f the Swiof, fin etam t» himself/' Now if we stumbled on tliie story in another kind of literature, and at a ^aat when we had no preconceived doctrine to make good, what could we say of the magnanimity of ^s young man's awakening ? That he was overwhekned with true filial love for his father ? That irrespective of his present circumstanees and necessities, a sudden longing for the sweet scenes of his childhood, for the endearments of home, and for the sound of his beloved father's voice, overcame and unmanned him to such an extent that he could no longer con- tinue to remain at this heartless distance from such cherished objects of his affections ? Should we say all this of him ? Or should we not rather say, simply, that he was destitute, and remembered that his la^r had plenty f There can be no question as to wiuLi we should say: for we dionld expnss what w» are al<»e 160 SOMB PXATUBS8 OF THX FAITH. justified in thinking, namely, that the words, "he came to himself/' mean, he came face to face with his own true interests ; nothing more or less. The loftiest disposition which this yoimg man manifested hj his awakening act, we should be compelled to acknowledge was nothing more than mere sobriety, evinced by a common-sense sum- ming up of the situation, with the plain, well- grounded conviction carrying everything before it, that he was the loser. To adorn this young man with all the quali- ties of godly sonship, revived in their sweetest odor, is to copy the example of those who in our day, though not yet in our country, make heroes of criminals, and decorate their prison cells with lavish offerings of flowers, making honest folk almost find it in their hearts to arraign the un- biased decisions of justice as monstrous inhuman- ity to man. Those, likewise, who from some potent cause within themselves, of which perhaps they are un- conscious, but of which we have glanced at the his- tory, seek to rehabilitate the Prodigal, and erect him into a fountain of filial tears, must remember that they do so at the cost of lessening the gracious fatherliness of the Father, which is, beyond all mistaking, the great point of the Saviour's parable. SOMB PEATI7BS8 OF THE FAITH. The famine— affliction, disapjwintuu-nt, the failure of hopes, the lessening of life's chances with the lessening of the sands of life, and the con- sciousness of unprofitableness overshadowing and pervading all— this is calculated to transform the dreaming, drifting prod^al of all ages, not indeed into an angel of tenderest sensibilities, but into the sober, thinking man; and our point is, that this at least is within the reach of all Christian people, who have "erred and gone astray" from the way which they solemnly dedicated themselves at their Baptism. AtuI so the Saviour's bridge for such sinners, is a real bridge ; one which they can actually cross; not a thing swung at an imijossible elevation, nor one blocked by impassible barriers. The Lord Jesus Christ therefore, in thus mak- ing this Prodigal Son, with qualities of heart and head so low on the scale of j.ossibility, an instance of acceptable repentance, proclaims, and author- izes His duly commissioned ministry to proclaim, that if the heart be wanting i.i promptings to re- turn to our heavenly Father's house and to ,.ur home, the head may, by the expenditure of as mudi energy as it requires to redton up our bankruptcy, lawfully and fitly use the words originally voic^ by a not very saintly soul: "I will arise and -o 162 SOME FEATVBE8 OF THE VAITH. to my father, and will say uuto him, Father, I have sinned against heaven and before thee, and am no more worthy to be called thy son ; make mc as one of thy hired servants;" and we have the fullest warranty for promising to every member of that vast class of which the Prodigal of the Gospel parable is the Divinely chosen type, the same gracious reception and pardon which the Prodigal himself experienced. §89. Repentance may thus be said, in the case of baptized persons, to be the dawn of sober sense upon a career sadly marred and distorted by the absence of it. This dawn is acceptable to our Redeemer, be- cause it gives the first restored glimpse of Him through the rising mists of worldliness and sin, so far as we can well trace it. It is acceptable because it is the true beginning of the full, clear day. This order of repentance, thus understood, coming first, and afterwards its maturer develop- ments, is faithfully set forth in the verse : "O give repentance true and deep To an Thy lost and wand'ring sheep, And kindle In their hearts the flre Of taoir tare and pttt* dtaln." SOME FEATUKKS OF THE FAlTil. 163 But the difference between the dawn and the tiay is not more real and indisputable, than that iK tween the incipient acceptable repentance of the Prodigal, and repentance in the fullest and most mature state. §90. Now, in commonly discoursing of Repentance, it is most natural that the fuller idea should to a large extent monopolize the whole use of the term, just as when the name Xapoleon is mentioned or referred to without further specification, we usu- ally think of the greatest personage who w.ts known by that name in history, that is, of its founder, though there are at least two other world- known princes who bear the very same designation. But this tendency of the busy world to use a word in its strongest sense, must not be permitted to betray us into the error of beHeving this sense to be exhaustive, and the only legitimate meaning. The voice of the multit ude may go for much in imposing its summary decisions, it may oblige us for the most part to think of the full light of noon- «lay when it speaks of daylight; but the weary watchers of the night (the picket on a kopje in South Africa, for instance), must not be brow- beaten into a confession of misapprehension, for believing that that which they see appearing in 164 80MX FSATUBU 09 THX VAITH. grey streaks on the horizon is the actual approach of day. For whatever we call it, the important fact re mains that die end of the night has come. Au- other period of time has emerged. And certain it 18, that no noontide has ever come, or can oome to us, without such a preceding and Iwralding dawn. We must therefore take due cognizance of this essential consideration. If we happen to be asleep when the light b^ns its diurnal course, if we are familiar with no earlier clearness than that of a sun high in the heavens, we must not advance our experiencf wbi' V only means lack of observation and of lu- curaf., and accessible knowledge, as conclusive evi- dence that no such earlier light has any real ex- istence. When we talk of life with all its joys and sor- rows, we oftenest mean that sphere of action in which grown persons only participate : but yet no dispute can arise as to whether children and in- fants have a just claim to a part in illustrating the meaning of that word. This is but another instance of how a portion of the meaning of a word often arrogates to itself the entire term. And further, as we must not SOME FKATUBES OK l llK FAITH, 106 deny to this repentance of the Protligal, which so forcibly su^rg(..st8 the dawn, the full registration of «ctiiality and preciousness ; so also we must not ..(•(•iipy ourselves with dogniatizitifr .,s to which of the two states— the lesser <.r the fuller repentance —is the more deserving and appreciable in God's sight. In that sheet-anchor for the shifting meaning of the word Repentance—the para Die of the Prod- igal Son— our Blessed Lord has plainly given us to know that He accepts the naked second thought, all unattired and unadorned as it may be. The garments do not make this child; and here, too, "the body is more than raiment." The goodness of Qod lea^ to repentance (Rom. ii. 4), and whether this be the new-bom lml)e of repentance, or that babe grown to fulness of stature, the thing is the same, though we refer to it at different periods of its development. §91. Repentance then means a change of mind on reflection ; taking another and riper view of things of the supremest moment to us as rational beings. The pitiless inadequacy of that teaching which barricades the road left open by Christ Himself, for the return of those who are becoming, through 166 SOME FEATURKS OF THE FAITH. the instnunentalitj of circumstances — those un- hotued preadiers of God — disenchanted with all godless schemes of happiness, is seen plainly in the light of the fact that here alone, in this diort, fleeting, uncertain life, is offered to us the one and only sphere wherein the mercy of the Saviour is designed to operate for our salvation, and wrap us to Himself. Once the curtain falls on this life's brief day and hides us f 'om our kindred, the pa- tient, crucified Saviour ceases forever to be such, and is transformed into the Judge Eternal, before whom we must stand on our own slender merits, if we have neglected, from any cause or misappre- henaion, to draw npon His. ''We must all stand before the judgment seat of Christ" Qod, having c(Hnmitted His Chnreh into the hands of men and not of angels, well knowing what was in man, this conscioamees on the part of the Christian priesthood, of responsibilitj, wedded to an inherent liability to err, ought to make us alive in every fibre of our being, to the awfulness of ex- cluding the sunshine and the rain from this deli- cate flower which may at any time spring forth from the ruins and the rubbish of a mis-spent lifo. "\Mioso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in Me, it were better for him, that a mill- stone were hanged about his neck, and that he were SOME FEATURES OF THE FAITH. 167 drowned in the depth of the gea" (8t Matt xvuu 6). §92. If those who are sure of their right (because of miuion rather than of merit) with its Mooai- panying assured grace (St. Matt. xxWii. 19, 20), to undertake tlie cure of souls, are guilty of thus iucrcas^iiig tlie difficulties of the Prodigal's return, they iiiust answer the momentous charge at the proper time. But the mind reels at the temerity of those who break through all order, human and Divine, to clothe themselves with power only to shorten the arm of God stretched out to rescue a lost race— these Faahs (II. Sam. vi.), whose good intentions have secured them the world's seal of Ordination, in default of Christ's and His apostles'. §93. We have now to see how this concept of the attitude which God requires in all those who ap- proach Him, agrees with that which the Church outlines in her confessions. (1) In the general Confession, in the offices for Morning and Evening Prayer, the first words that brcijk on the ear show that the compilers of our Book .1 Common Prayer had in their minds the model of repentance supplied them and us bv 168 HOME rKAnmn or tm« faith. our BIciwed Lord Hinuelf, in the parable of the Proflipal Son. The familiar words, "Wo have orrod aud stra.ved from Thv ways like lost shfop, \vc havr followed too much the devices and deBires of our own hearta"; the tutored addressing of God a; "Father,** and "moat ineroifnl," are all suggestive of the fMttem upon whaeh they were framed, and that ia the Saviour'g ide* of the approach of ainful man to God*8 footatool. This is appointed as the fit language of all sorts and conditions of men, who come where two or three are gathered together in His name. It is the Iwrder-lauguapo of the Church, open to the honest use of ail who are tired of the huaks of the world. It is characterized by the absence ( *' all fervor, and is intended to bt^ the plain, matter-of-fact, sober acknowledpinent of mistake, and c.-iisoquent loss. It is the very mirror of our Lord's r( voale l mind on this point, utterly untouched by learned theological opinion, aa it ia unaullied by any other species of human exaggeration. It may seem to some, that in this presentation of the sinner's return to God, too little account has bean taken of the feelings, and the part they play in oonvmimi. SOME FKATURKS OF TUK FAITH. 169 Hilt it must not bo inferred that, because noth- ing; has been said of thorn as essential so far as ..nlitmry oycs can sco, to the "coming to" oneself, thcv are therefore utterly cast aside as either thinierical or unworth )f notice. So far from tliis, they are indeed both a great reality, and a Kpiritual luxury : but impoverished souls must not expeet to makv sucli buiquf ting their daily diet. This is not ill the ordinary food of soldiers of Christ on ufitive service: and the palate must not be permitted to expect it as such. It is rather the counterpart '»f the royal box of chocolate sent to oiir soldiers in Africa, not their daily ration; aiid no soldier was known to misunderstand the (^neon's gift. In fact there are those who, k- CiMiso of the extraordinary dolightfulness which in addition to ifs actuality it possesses, would warn us that this glowing emotion, like tlic iingel of light, is smnetimes counterfeited by the Ev] ; ; n c. The author of the Spiritual Combat* has the fol- lowing : "Sensible devotion arises sometiniPH from na- ture, sometimes from the devil, and sometimes from grace. You will be able from its fruit to discern its source; since if it does not produce amendment of life, your only doubt will be * Lawnnc* SenpoU, Chap. lis. 170 SOME VXATUBXB OF THE FAITH. whether it proceeds from the devil or from nature, and especially if it is accompanied bv a greater relish and sweetness and attachment, and a cer- tain self-esteem. When therefore you shall feel your mind filled with spiritual sweetness, do not stop to dispute about the source from whence it comes : and do not lean upon it nor suffer yourself to be taken off from the thought of your own noth- ingness ; but with grrater diligence and hatred of self, study to keep your heart free from all attach- ment, even to spiritual things, and seek God alone, and His good pleasure ; for in this way the delight — whether it spring from nature or from the devil — will be changed into an effect of grace to you. . . . Dryness may likewise proceed from these three causes — from the devil — from ourselves — from grace." But of the place which our feelings occupy in the sphere of Christianity, more anon. (2) In the oiBce for the Holy Communion there is a notiomble difference in the language of the Confession, a difference which agrees with the idea of repentance that we are her endeavoring to set forth. In the Confewion in the Liturgy, the suppliant is not, as in the otlier form of Confession, the travel-stained wanderer from purlieus of the 80MK FBATUWB8 OF THB FAITH. l7l world ; bat the son on whom the robe, and shoes, and ling of paternal providence, have become familiar objects and evidences of love. Tbo heightening and deepening of feding in the utter- ances here, can need no explanation. That the repentance now should be earnest, and that the wrongnloing should generate "hearty sorrow," and give rise to "remembrances" "grievous to be borne," "intolerable," is as natural as that the grey dawn should broaden and deepen into the warmth of noonday. CHAPTEK XIII. §94. HOLY COMMUNION (iNTBOOUCTOBt). CHE danger here has, for too long, been t^t of digging too deep. If tiie gold is on or near the surface, surely it is nothii^ leas than abmrd to keep on delving to the centre of the earth; as if nothing can bo done in this universe which (5od has made and sustained alone through all the ages, without man's achieving it. Doomed to gain our bread by the sweat of our brow, the race seems unable to view any prospect, except through tlie fiune and dust of this inevitable travail. From the pit which this holy theme has been to them, theologians have thrown up an immense amount of matter. But it has for the most part remained where they left it — at the pit's mouth. Mankind has not noticeably lessened the huge bulk BOia WMUkTowaat ow thb vmth. 173 by any eager appropriation. Accepting the esti- mates of the various miners, the world of Christ- ians has been interested enou^ to quarrel orer the nature ai^ value of what giant Uker has Inrou^t to the surf aee, but ikey htm not taken it away. If this is so, it plak^ ineam tiurt 1^ bmii and wama who e o i p ese the CSiurch of God in ike world, are not as rich, in the highest ridies, as they might be ; and who shall say that if they were, there would to-day be any 'Svorld" outside the Church ? For all that is desirable would then be attributed to its rightful author, and the residue, stripped of the borrowed colors of heaven, and shining in its own sinister light, would become a beacon to the souls of men, not an allurement. §95. Men of clear heads and sound hearts, who grapple with the various problems of litV* and overcome their difficulties; who look far into the future and make effective calculations for their protection therein ; and who, in every department and ramification of that God-given task of "sub- duing the earth,^ bear themselves with gu(^ efeetit, exhibitii^; in their methods the applicaticm oi tite profoundeat policy — men with a record suek as this, eannot be ^tily chained with deltl»rate n^ect, here. Men and wcnnea who inteiygsn^ 174 SOME FEATUBXS OF THE FAITH. apply themselves to their interests in every other quarter, do not offer any presumptive evidence tiiat in this matter — the greatest for whidi understand- ing has been given to man — of getting all the wealth out of the Lord's Supper that it possesses for them, they are criminally lax. Under the high sanction of God, and of right sense, they have reverently entrusted this matter to the accredited Ministry of the Church. They have handed over this great interest of theirs to those who, according to the mind and institution of Christ, are appointed and expected to make the most of it for them, by at least keeping open and unobstructed, the prospect it offers. What returns have been secured them ? This is a fair, a necessary inquiry to be made of him- self by even the humblest member of those who share the weighty responsibility. § 96. It may be said, and with truth, that the returns are not slight; but the question is, has tilt most been made <>f that which has by God and man been committed to the Church ? Has the realky, undiluted and unobserved, been laid bare to the needs of men '. so prosente-i that they may reach it, hody and soul; and roacliui^; j(. may feel the full, ricli satisfaction settle down upon intellect dainis to be, expects its sttvii^ at His liaa learned, I'o manner <>f question. And yet who is satisfied with the outcome^ 176 SOME FKATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. With the chilling and av^ul spectacle which Christendom presents with its huge sections stand- ing each aloof from the rest, and looking with no very marked kindliness on all who do not sul)- scribe to its shaping of Divine truths And, in one case, to its theory of a matter concerning which it is inipietv to have any tiieorv, es})ecially if the acceptance of that theory Ih' made the nn-(Miristian condition of enjoying the untrammelled goodness of God i This spectacle, doubtless, has much to do with the unsatisfactory condition of Christianity amongst us, as individuals, and explains to sonic extent the gap between the actual and the possible for each member of Ae body of Christ which is His Church (Eph. i. 22, 23; v. 23; Col. i. 24). §97. We have said that the putting of a theory of the way in which Christ's mercy is Wought about for us, into the place of that mercy itself, is un- christian; and this strong assertion is, we think, borne ont by the ff^llowing curt "analogy of re- ligion to the constitution and course of nature," if we may Ixirrow Bishop Butler's phrase; an analogy which Iihs Ihhmi violated by all such the- orists, wliir-h we siiall stati> in the form of ii question: How ill would it agree with the broad SOME FKATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. 177 beneficence of the Almighty, upon which the world, and all therein have thriven ever since creation, if man were now to decree, that no single creature in all the earth should partake of the food which omnipotent Fatherhood has brought out of the earth by His inscrutable mir- acle of mercy, until that creature, of whatever order, shall have signed and attested a human theory of how that food is brought into being in the ground; that is to say, until such creature shall have sworn to belief iu a human explaualiod of growth — a thing of which we know absolutely nothing? For science, with all its glorious tri- umphs, stands mute and ignorant in the presence of a blade of gnsa. And yet, w^tthstanding this universal ignor- ance, all His creatures, from the highest to the low- est, have continued t.. i)artake of what God has bountifully provided for their nourishment, and attained their full development without any such unnatural, arbitrary, and imfjoverishing legisla- tion as thi •■. The lin-;, 1 u{)on tens of thousands of Christ- ian tables is daily eat^'n with devout thankful- ness to God, all the while no sinsrle being can any- V liere amongst ns bt found to explain the famiiiar miracle it manifests. 178 SOME F£ATUBX8 OF THE FAITH. We have noticed iii another quarter the sad tendency to make difficult, if not impossible, that yfhieh our Lord Jesns Christ has made easy ; and here we have a learned philosophy undertaking to fill out revelation and give ns Transnhetantiation (a concept as cumhrous as its title), where the Gos- pel only gives us the Body and Blood of Christ Again we meet the human tendency — the reaching out to forbidden power to make another Gospel, a harder Gospel — and all from zeal for God. §98. Is not this jmt what we should have been led to expect, if Chnst our Saviour had deposited His full, ad(H|uate treasurv of merit. His remedy for lost luunatiiry. that is^ to say, "the Bread of Life," at tlie foft of the Sc-ribes and Pharisees, the leaniod heads of tlie Jewish Chnrcl; ; and enjoined thorn to cluhoraf- ' V manufacture it in their mill iiit fitness f,»r rlu j)eojtlc, according to Scribal iUK; Phari-saicai ideas of Htuess i But this is so far from being the course i)ur- sued by our Blessed Lord, that it is the very oppo- site of HiH Divine action in the mi^t^. Our Saviour never cbsige^ tiiat His direct toaehi?ig sWuM filter Ihroi^ tite sdboeii tf Hillel and Shsmmai to the souls of am. The very 7iien, tmi <^Ma si ^^obbl He SOMB FEATUSES OF THE FAITH. 179 fhose as His standard bearers, show r/, that wl ul He brouj'ht to the salvation of the race, required no tiniahini? at the hands of scholarshij There is indeed a time and a place 1 >r erudi- tion, but it is not here. That it has not feared to tread here, however, and that a deadening of Christianity has conse- quently ensued, are two dreadful facts which o:ight to make us all more careful to distinguish Itetween the work of Jesus Christ, and the work of men in the Kingdom of God. That which theologians are able to explain utterly, they may almost be expected to produce. Theologians could not save us in our lost con- dition. Their eflForts therefore, so far as what mankind stood S( u rribly in need of is concerned, come too Into. They must not attempt to do too much for us now. Our theology ought only to seek to be the iri (if preventing obscurations of the Saviour, liis words and His work; like a constabulary force in the stricken camp of Israel, who might have been effective in keeping clear of thronging multi- tudes and of obstructions of all kinds, the line of vision between tl^ brazen serpent and the eyes of the mort distant sufferer. 180 soil K PKATVBn OF THK FAITH. But what insanitary region of the human in- tellect or imagination could (without the aid of subsequent Christian history) have evolved the pic- ture of a fellow-sufferer, a human priest, standing obtrusively in front of this immediate mercy to gasping myriads, the bnusen aerpent, and ruth- lessly exercising what to him was his rightful function, of not only explaining fully, and to the level of the meanest capmsity, how the Divine miracle was wrought; but by demanding from each perishing Israelite, his sworn tusent to this explanation before the sufferer could hope to gain the healing which God, in His infinite mercy, meant him to have direct by merely looking with- out knowing or at least understanding ? IIow iHipious, how awful a thing can misplaced learning, backed by preponderating ecclesiastit-al authority, become I And hoir easilij! Especially in such an nge of ignorance as that in which Tran- substantiation i tok its rise. The savants of our Lord's time were not taken into any partnership or collaboration with Christ. The suflSciency of the Saviour for the task that lay before Him, and in the presence of which the scholar and the boor were fused, undistinguish- able, in the general mass of human impotency, is the dominant fact of the Gospel. 80MC FEATUKKS OF TIIS FAITH. 181 Our Lord who knew what IIo roiiuired, passed this class by. Their special services were uot wanted. The apostles were chosen. The ctjuipmeut of these servants was that they were nu^rely honest men. Their task was to tell what they saw, and to repeat what they heard. They were sturdy, mascnline witnesses. They were never at any time analytical experts. Through the noble service they rendered their Lord, and mankind, we see Christ plainly. If Jesus Christ condescended to explain Ilis fictt!, we have the explanation. Where no such ( xplanation was vouchsafed, the apostles have ven- tured upon none. They did not presume to demonstrate how the Savionr did His great works ; they merely declared that He did them, and described the wonders that were eqnally patent to all the others who beheld them. § 99. From our stdndpoiut as Churchmen, we have on the one hand this earthbom intrus eness, en- tering where angels might fear to treaa, and un- dertaking to expound to us each stage of the process by which the Bedeemer fulfils His words, "This is My body." And failing, as sudi temer- WMOIOCOFf MSOUmON TBT OMIT (ANM wirf BO TiSi CHART fto. 3) 182 SOME FEATUBES OF THE FAITH. ity ever must, to produce intellectual conviction of the truest kind, from vigorous minds who pursue tnith and truth only wherever it leads, force* is introdnood (and that of a kind foreign to the whole method of the Saviour), to hold together the parts of a uon-liunian argument, which is elaborated ex- pressly to satisfy distinctively human inquiries. On the other hand we have a revnilsion of feel- ing produced by this strange gospel, leading other thousands to believe that they are called upon, as it would seem, not so much to attain to a just ap- preciation of what Christ designs for them, as to out-root this monstrous error. These therefore, since they must first do their work of destruction, tell us that there is nothii^ to explain in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, simply, they say, because nothing extraordinary or wonderful has any part in the matter ; and so these, too, fail to satisfy hungering and expectant human- ity, which will not readily believe that there i^;, in our Lord's words instituting this Sacrament, notli- ing more than the highly-wrought langu/» of in- tense Spirituality. If we may again refer to growth in the nat- ural world, whatever we may say about it, it is certainly a fact, agreed to by all. The man who, • Note G. 80ME FKATUREM OF TUE FAITli. 183 after six thousand years of the world's confessed failure, professes to explain this fact to us, and proceeds to beat us if we do not conscientiously accept his explanation, is a liard pclioolmaster in- deed ; while he who, recoiling from this severity, strives to befriend lis by telling us that growth is a sheer delusion, may exhibit kindly qualities of heart, but his liead disqualities him for the guideship he 1ms assumed. CHAPTEB XIV. HOLY couiivmoN (the acosaig sacbifigss). § 100. ¥2^ ENDEAVORING to attain to a just view of ■ the Holy Communion, it will be neoenazy to look a little into some preliminazy matters, and among them, first, to see if tiwre was anything at all similar in the ancient Church of Qod among the Jews. The unity of the Bible, the oneness of the Old Testament with the New, is in no wise more evinced than by the way in which the Jewish Sac- rifices prepare mankind for the Great Sacrifice of Christ upon the cross; and the very real manner in which the Passover foreshadows the Lord's Supper. In this respect, preeminently, the law was our ''schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." SOME FEATUSES OF THE FAITH. 185 We eaimofc {ucture to our minds any oonoep- tion of the Jewish ChiUGh throughout its long history, without giving a central place to, and focussing all the religious aspirations of the peo- ple, so far as outward expression goes, in, their Sacrifices . The solemnity which attached to these, and the reverent, trustful manner in which both priests and people performed the parts that fell to each, in the observance of the several sacrificial feasts, can escape no one; and in the economy of God, was intended to escape no one. § 101. It is not too far from the mark for the ordinary busy man of to-day to summarize and grasp, as at least a vigorous outline of things ancient and Jew- ish, that the religion of the first people of God was one wherein praise to Jehovah took a body to itself in the shape of fragrant incense; and prayer, in the equally physical embodiment of a smoking sac- rifice. They were instructed to believe that in the due performance of certain sacrifices, by duly author- ized servants of God, and iu their attendance at and reliance upon those sacrifices, the taking away of their sins was effected. 186 SOME FKATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. They clung to, and at no inconsiderable cost maintained, these sacrifices, and the instrumenta of worship, for no other reason and with no less hope, than that they were the means, sanctioned, appointed, and commanded by Jehovah Himself, whereby their sins should be obliterated and ut- terly taken away. This was the Jewish mind on this, the greatest subject that occupied the miad of a Jew. And one bred in this reputa' le faith, and fullv conversant with it, but who had been further called by God into the marvellous light of the Gospel, witnesses that the Jews were deluded by no earth- bom dream. In the very connection, however, in which this testimony is given, onr Christian Jew utters the paradox which sums up the whole matter that lies immediately before us : the explanation of which ■Paradox puts things in the fullest and clearest light. St. Paul is this witness at once to the Diviiio varranty for the hope of the Jews in their Mosaic Sacrifices, and to the inherent powerlessness of those sacrifices in and by themselves, to take away sin. So firm is the great apostle in his belief that those sacrifices were efficacious, that he bases the SOME FEATURES OF TUE FAITH. 187 prevailing force of the Sacrifice of Christ on the likeness it bore to the Jewish Sacrifices. These are St. Paul's words : "For if the blood of bulls and of goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctitieth to the purify- ing of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ" (Ileb. ix. 13). This is indisputable endorsement of the Jewish Sacrifices without any qualification whatever, as to the extent to which these institutions of God transcend the vulgar apprehension. But in the very next breath St. Paul says em- phatically, that these sacrifices regarded in and by themselves are impotent and useless. His words are unmistakable: ''For the law having a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image of the things, can never with those sacrifices which they offered year by year, contin- ually make the comers thereto perfect. For then would they not have ceased to be offered. Because that the worshippers once purged should have ' ad no more conscience of sins . . . for it is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins" (Heb. x. 1-4). Here the strained reason is relieved by an as- sertion which comforts, because of its full natural agreement with our ordinary perceptions. And 188 80MC FBATITBKg OW THE FAITH. HOW what are we to do in the face of this contradic- tion : the blood of bulls and of goats takes awav sins ; and the blood of bulls and of goats does not take away sins? §102. The first thing we notice about this paradox of St. Paul's is that the ins'-ired writer himself saw it, and gave it the grt ■ - ninence, with every perceptible intention v * \»King the contra- diction a lash for the laggrrd spiritual discern- ment of his Jewish countrymen. As though he had said. Once take a low, mate- rialistic view of your sacrifices, and you are re- duced to the most pitiable plight There must therefore be a higher significance about these sacrifices of bulls and goats, than their cost in shekels, their weight, their unblemished condition, and the minutiae with which the solemn offering up and eating were conducted by the priests. They stood in the place at least of the real cause of the remission jf the sins of men. These sacrifices w<;re to pass current as worth the full value before God of the trust that was reposed in them. Men were not only inclined to read on the face of them the Divine sanction for hope and con- 80MK rXATUXXB OF THE FAITH. 189 fidence in theia, but a command, well understood as unmistakably given ii oin heaven, was known to lie upon all the nation to accept these and to offer them as mysterious indeed, but nevertheless as real payment in full for their delinquencies before the law. And now when St Paul says that these were at once the means of taking away sins, and in their nature incapable of taking away sins, he must mean that an added value was given them by God, which if kept in view explained how tlioy could be instrumental in taking away sins ; yet if ignored, leaves them poor, slaughtered cattle and nothing more. §103. Now we are bound to cast about us and search among the common things of daily experience, if we know of any similar case, where a thing may be said to be and yet not to be the article it pro- fesses to be. A business community will have no difficulty in discovering that a bank-note occupies this position exactly. One man may call a bank-note monev, another man may den_\ that it is money, and yet both be right in a good and honest sense. Of the dollar bill it may be said, that it has the power of remitting to the extent of the demand 100 80m 7KATITBX8 OF THS VAITH. written on its face, any money debt for the pay- ment of which it is offered. And yet a man may jnstly refuse to accept it as money, urging that it is at best only the promise of money. But we ^11 understand how the paradox is soiv'ed and the confusion allayed. If therefore wo retain this familiar idea of the dollar bill, its value, and its intrinsic worthless- ness, and come with this imagery ready at hand to aid U8 in straightening out the matter St. Paul so forcibly lays before us, we shall understand him thoroug^y, and estimate aocnrately and intelli- gently the office and efficacy of the Jewish Sacri- fice As every bank-note bill, which we conuno • iy hand over to pa^ for the goods we purdiase, has value only in so far as it faithfully represmts a certain amount of gold which may be had on pre- sentation of the note if required ; so the sacrifices of the Jewish Church acquire their value and effectiveness in buying the remission of sins, if we may so speak, in as much as they are the prom- issory notes of Him who cannot lie. They bear His sign-manual, and guarantee that the gold of true atonement shall be fordicoming in the sacri- fice upon the cross of Jesus Christ, the Son of God — ^the Saviour of the world. some irXATUBBS OV TUB rAITU. 191 8104. Until that time arrives, the saorifioM shall pass as the accredited currency of heaven. As soon, however, as the Messiah comes, and tlio true offering is made, all these shall Ix? called ill, their full face value registered, and their pur- c'liiising power acknowledged and honored to the uttermost. But their spiritual value as auxiliary tustru- mcnts in the remission of sins, is due to the volun- tary act of Qod in choosing to use these, instead of any other inpotent kind of thing, as material upon which to write His gracious ^'ntention. Thus they may fearlessly he said to he at once ahle and powerless to take away sins, according to the way we regard them. The blood of bulls and of goats as such, utterly without force or efficacy to wash away human guilt from God's sigi»t; may nevertheless, since the Almighty has WTitten His Divine and inviolable promise of pardon ou them, be said without hesita- tion "to sanctify to the purifying of the flesh." §105. Now that this earth has received upon its sur- face that stupendous reality to which all the sym- bds of atonement pointed, we can readily perceive 192 SOME FEATURES OF TUE FAITH. that f r<»n thii inexlurattiUe trearary of merit, all these ancient and regular Jewish drafts have been duly paid. And so the whole system of saorifioes kno\\'n to the ancient people of Qod, and scrupu- lously maintained by them, commends itself even to Christian eyes as worthy of the wisdom, of the love and faithfulness, of God. And here it may be said that we are under ud obligation to believe that this view of the matter was altogether beyond Jewish apprehensio:. The one central and inspiring popular prospect of the Messiah could not be wholly dissociated from the solemnities of the atonement. "No one could suppose that the slaying of the one goat or the sending of the other into the wil- derness actually expiated the offences of the whole people. As individuals they were accustomed to bring costlier sacrifices for single transgressions, for involuntary transgressions, for transgressions against the merely ceremonial law; it was impos- sible for them to believe that the innumerable sins of all the people of Israel during a wliolf year eould be truly atoned for by a comparatively in- significent offering. "In this lay the safety of the whole service. Had they been permitted to bring individual sacri- fices for individual offences against the moral law 80MK FKATL'KEH OF Till; KAl i tl. 103 — ittcrificcs offered at the cost of the individual offender — there would bav(> l)crii an irresistible tendency to regard the expiation as real and oom- plete. "Rut the two troats of tlic siroat thiv of Atoi»»)- iiK iit wvvo v'uh'd at the public <'•'^t; they •. id not iia{)03e jurden upon a solitary Individual amoti-;st all the thousands of Israel ; and yet they were ) expiate innumerable offences. The sjrm- bolical character of the expiation conid not fail to be recogniaed."* • Dr. Dale, Jnrtok Temple antl ChrintiaH Church. p«a» tM. Iloddvr a atotqrbtoB. CHAPTER XV. HOLY COMMUNION (tHE ATONEMENT). § 106. ITH this view of the use and value of Jewish Sacrifices in our mind, we may turn for a moment to rofloct on the reasonableness of tho place which the Atonement has in our relationship to God. We may perhaps best see it from the point of view of that too large class of persons who, continu- ing on in an irregular course of life, answer the ap- peals of conscience with the cheap (and we shall see how cheap) promise of living some day before death, as a true Christian ought to live. If we would again refrain from too deep delv- ing, and occupy ourselves with actualities pressing and pnaentf we shall be led to take note of the ex- tent to which this false pnnnising is indulged, and 80MS FBATUSES OF THB FAITH. 195 of how much spurious hope and confidence it is the parent. God is right and I am wrong. God cannot change, and as the creature is meant to turn to the Creator, the change of attitude must take place in mc. This I acknowledge. It must come; and when I finish this pursuit which now engrosses me, and to which I stand committed, I shall set my house in order, and live closely to the Christian rule of right. Here this strange but too often perfectly satis- factory promise to self, complacently and with equal frequency, ends. How many a genial soul sees himself wrapped up warmly and securely in "the baseless fabric" of this "vision", which, on close examination, everybody is convinced can only be begotten of a diseased brain; and which stands doubly doomed to disappointment, when we remember the fact witnessed to by the popular proverb, ''Hell is paved with good intentions;" and again wlien we recogOiize, after some honest weighing of the mat- ter, the sin against common sense which we incur by thinking that future rectitude, even when as- sured, can atone for past offences against the eter- nal law of righteousness. 196 SOXB FEATUBBS OF THX FAITH. §107. A man has been running an account with his grocer for years, continually adding to his debt without making any payments. At last a change comes over him. Constraining circumstances, a remnant of conscience and of wholesome minded- ness, induces him to recognize his injustice to this merchant in thus piling up an account beyond the point at which he could reasonably assure himself that it was within the limits of his pnwpects to pay the whole. He will continue this procedure no longer. His household are informed of his new and creditable resolve, that henceforward every purchase made must be paid for, or failing this, the desired goods must be continently done without. Now no matter to how full an extent we render the tribute of approval and praise to this domestic reform, we cannot elevate it into a full and satisfac- tory settlement of the long-standing and formid- able account. It does very well for the future, whenever wo find ourselves confronted with that problem; but as regards the matter in hand, and as a settlement to date of past indebtedness, it has the serious fault of passing the whole thing by, and leaving the SOME FEATURES OF THE FAITH. 197 bulky claim as undiminished and disturbing a reality as ever. The good sense, which in every day business life is shocked by any such irrational notions as these, seems to be painfully absent from that fairy- world into which the religious moods of many per- sons lead them. But Christianity is emphatically not a fairy- land in this sense. Effects are not produced in our holy religion and our relationship to God without efficient causes. § 108. The religion of Christ does not warrant the simple and childish confidence that stem realities can at a breath, or as by some magic wand, be transformed into sheer nothingness, leaving: no more trace of their existence than if they had never been. The very unexplainableness of this fond be- lief, seems to render it attractive and acceptable to untutored minds ; and many there are who, from the feeble use they make of their intellects in the service and worship of God, deserve to be judicial- ly classed as untutored, no matter what their secu- lar attainments may be; "for by their fruits ve shall know Uiffln." 198 SOME F£ATUB£S OF THE FAITH. This merchant's bill cannot be settled by even the very best and sincerest resolution to be honest, and to pay as we go for the time to come. Noble as this determined course may be, and difficult to the self indulged, it is no settlement. What then is to be done ? To turn from the question of victuals to that of vices and their payment, we may remark that our best efforts to serve and obey God, under the in- struction which the revelation of our Saviour Jesus Christ has given us, and with His Divine aid, can only eventuate in our attaining to a point of excel- lenoe which may deserve to be called dutiful, but which has nothing over and above in the way of merit to devote to any weak part in the past ; for we are at best, that is, when our best resolves have been consistently lived up to, ''unprofitable ser- vants." We have done what it was our duty to do, noth- ing more. Tbe debt incurred before this tardy rectitude emerged, remains. § 109. No man likes to think of this. Device after device is embraced in the hope that it may, in a kind of half legitimate way at least, distract the thoughts from the forbidding problem. SOME FEATUBE8 OF TUE FAITH. 199 lu the presence of this question, fairly put, humanity at its best despairs ; and from the first and earliest ages seems instinctively to have de- spaired. It was to meet this hopeless and terrifying de- ficit that sacrifices smoked on Jewish altars, and, whether understood in the high spiritual sense of St. Paul, or less loftily, gave comfort to Jewish hearts ; and did both with indisputable Divine war- ranty. These sacrifices, understood as temporary sub- btitutes, pointed to and stood for a power over and abovt, man's, and which is able achieve what to man is the blank impossibh. The sacrifice of Jesus Christ, consummated on the Cross of Calvary ; the splendour of that life of exalted obedience; the life-blood of incarnate God poured out on this earth, voluntarily, as a friendly act to us in our desperate circumstances, to save us from the appalling, never ending consequences of our folly, this places within the reach of each one of us, the wealth wherewith to pay our large debts. And if we awake all the drowsy faculties of our being into clear recognition of what has actually been done for us, we can pay all that so justly lies against us, to the very last cent. 300 SOKE F£ATUBX8 OF THK VAITH. But we must each give the matter our truest and most serious attention, and that at once. If any man think that because this wealth is wUhin his reach now in this world, and that as he cannot even by any license he might take, overdraw a sinner's share (the deposit is so incalculably large), he may therefore project his career of god- less irregularity indefinitely into the future, he must ponder the grim fact that this giant mercy is suspended on the single thread of this life ; and of all things that hiive an end, life is the very brittlest. § 110. Those who draw the dallier's hope from the good fortune of the eleventh hour labourers in the Vineyard, will be wise to reflect that no one asked these men sooner than the last hour. When our Lord's "householder" of the parable demanded of them, "Why stand ye here all the day idle ?" they say unto him with av honesty that goes undisputed, "Because no man hath hired us." In our Christian land, with the church bells ringing their more than weekly peals, which are also true appeals, there rmains scant refuge in- deed for those dilatory ones who are at the same time, men and women in whom intelligence has not died. 80MX FEATUBKS OF TH£ FAITH. 201 § 111. It may take a large draft in our case. The lateness of the draft may possibly dis- hearten us. But our whole soul, now actively alive, observes that we stand confronted with a double peril; on the one hand our voiccful past crjos for a satisfying justice; on the other lies the supreme risk, which inaction involves, of ('.oing high dishonor to the person and ofSces of Him who stood fortL in our behalf ; and that for the very purpose of wiping out just such accounts as ours. The weightier these are, the greater the honor done the Saviour, in believing that His Sacrifice does not even here fall short of full effectiveness. "Naught can I bring, dear Lord, fr : aU I owe ; Tet let mj full heart what tt can, bestow. Like Mary'a gift, let mj devotion provt!, ForgiTeB gnntlr, how I greatly love." This must be our attitude. This is for us the whole matter. But it explains that otherwise insoluble prob- lem — the forgiveness of sins; that doctrine so familiar to our lips, but in reality so violently opposed to all our experience, as to be a stumbling- block of really colossal dimensions to all of us. Let us examine the difficulty. 202 SOMK FKATUBX8 OF THB FAITH. §112. A man does a crooked, an indefensible act, and in proportion to his spirituality or general moral- ity, experiences inward discomfort and unrest. Conscience registers the deed and rings out the sentence doe to the offence. It cannot do otherwise. This is its native ofBxx. God made it a minister of fact, and it deals with facts; it adds them up and makes no error in the count Where not impaired by a course of violent handling, or dragged from its throne by deliberate abuse, this agent of Gkxi does ita work faithfully and well. It tells the truth ; for it knows nothing, it has no means of understanding or computing anything above or beneath its mathematical process of rigid registration. In men not wholly depraved and besotted, tlioii. this voice is alive, and makes the wrong act to live after it has transpired. Everybody knows what a reputed authority on the subject so eloquently tells us about — "All the deep and shadderii^ chill Which follows fut the d«eda of III." A man of honest purpose, in the main, who feels this disquiet within him on account of ac- gOMK FEATUBX8 OF TUB FAITH. 203 tions involuntarily present to his mind (like faces he never wanted to look upon, and hoped that he never should again behold), is tempted by the over- powering witness of this unimpeachable monitor within, to despair of doing any virtuous and re- ligious duty henceforth, without running into the still greater infamy of hypocrisy. Conscience, the k'st thing that goes to make his individuality, certainly tlie most consistently upright, tells him that he is not what he ought to be; and this is far from encouraging to any self-respecting person: to many indeed if there is no rescue from it, it must be most formidable. Conscience, which he has not the courage, the temerity, to face, is against him; and he knows, and silently acknowledges, that in all this antag- onism anus iler of sacrifice, the heathen no less than the J v; ami the central truth of the Christian creed — C hi i /» voluntary offering of Himself for the siub the world — stiacb a deeply responsive diord hi thi* breasts of those early Christians, but one which they were content to enjoy without analyzing. It was not by their skill as dialeotitians that the apostles forced the attention and conviction of the world: not at all by the faultless method of presentation that their large propositions won their way; it was rather by the stamp of power and 208 SOMS VBATUBES OF THS FAITH. reality that was upon the men, and which pointed to heaps of evidence of their Divine mission, stag- gering to the senses of man, that the apostles dis- armed criticism, and wanned indifference into dis- cipleship. Then, for two centuries, followed a reverent and unquestioning satisfaction with the faith of the apostles, held in the exact language used by the apostles. But the intellect of the Church did at length begin, as it could not fail to do, to pay its homage to the faith so devoutly received and held by so many generations of Christians. "At first Christianity's work was in the main with the heart, and when that was filled, it next asserted its right over the intellect "And perhaps it is not difficult to see a fitness in that disposition of events, which committed the teaching of the apostles to minds essentially receptive and conservative, that it might be in- wrought into the life of man before it became the subject of subtle analysis."* § 116. With Origen in the East, and Irenseus in the W«jt, at the beginning of the third wntury, arose a manifest desire to find some answer for the queries that sprang up in men's minds in oonnec- • Wwteott, CatuM of the Jfew Teittment, pat* 838. SOME FSAT17BX8 OF THS FAITH. 209 tion with the Church's faith in the death of Christ, and the mighty benefits accruing to us from that Sacrifice, made for us and for our salvation. What a ransom was, was sufficiently under- stood ; and that Christ paid the ransom for us by voluntarily giving up His own body and life to death, was firmly believed. But the absorbing (juestion of questions now became this : To whom (lid the Redeemer pay over His priceless ransom ? There seems to have been no great delay be- tween the askini,' and the answering of this, to us, very pertinent question. The fathers solved it to the satisfaction of their own, and apparently of every suceeeding generation for a thousand years. But when we of to-day consider tliat solution, we are forced to recognize the obtrusive fact that each age must do its own thinking, and that the monopoly is given to no one particular age in hmnan history. The plain truth is, that the fathers' solution of this important matter does not satisfy us. In fact it is so far from satisfying us, that we set it aside, not only because it is inadequate and impossible, but because it is shocking. It is said of Luther, that having visited the city of Home, and been eye-witness to the immorality 3*10 SOME F£ATUB£8 OF THE FAITH. and openly uu-Christian lives of ecclesiastics there, both high and low, he went away more convinced than ever before, of the truth and Divine origin of Christianitj. The irresistible reason for this ac- cess of belief on Luther^s part, was, he is said to have affirmed, that no religion less than Divine could survive so much hostility to its existence from its very defenders. The Lutheran (and if it be not Luther's, and if Luther did not actually see what he is said to liave seen, I shall regret the use of the story even as an illustration), reflection is timely when we remember that the fathers taught the world that the life of the Saviour Jesus Christ, was paid as a mnsom to the Devil* Here and there through the world and the cen- turies, we find a voice raised against this teaching; but the main current of Christian thought was, for a millennium, in tranquil agreement with this startling explanation of the great difficulty of the remission of sins, and the grounds upon which the remission rationally rests. §117. Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, at the bo- ginning of the twelfth century, wrote a treatise • "It to hud to M7 whttbw Iloljr Scriptnn i« man iajund by tbOM who umII It or by thoM who defend It" i HE FAITU. 215 was never a burning q\iestion to any general ex- tent; and here it is only proper to remafk, that the reaBons why Christ died, and how our eins are foi^ven by His death, are not necessary to our belief in and our enjoying the entire benefits of His "full, perfect, and sufficient sacrifice, oblation, and satisfaction for the sins of the whole world." § 120. To show the cautious way in which Anselm in his work on this subject, "Cur Deus Homo," pro- ceeds so as not to shock popular and deep-rooted prejudices, I quote his openinj^ sentences, in which he mentions his adoption of the C'atechetical method as the one most suited to his purpose — a choice which a modern writer on the subject thinks skilful as relieving the Archbishop from urging, in his own name, the objections which appeared to him to be fatal to the traditional theory, that Christ died to snatch us from the grip of Satan. "Often," says St. Anselm, "both by word of mouth, and by letter, have I been eagerly asked to write down the explanatory arguments with which I am accustomed to answer those who ask about various points of our faith, for they say that thqr enjoy them, and think them conclusive. . . . The unbelieving often question (deriding Christ- ian simplicity as infatuated), and the faithful 216 SOME FKATUBXI OW THS VAITH. wonder in their own hearts, for what renon, and by what necesaitiy God was made man, and by Hig death, as we believe and oonfeas, gaire His life to the world, since He might have done this by an- other person, whether angelic or htonan; or by His sole will. '•On this point not the learned only, but also many unlearned persona inquire much, and ask tlio reason of it. " Therefore since many desire this subject to be treated, and since the elucidation, though very difficult to carry out, is intelligible to all when completed, and attractive on account of its useful- ness and the beauty of its reasoning; I will try (although what should be enough has been said by the holy fathers on the subject) to show forth to tliose who are seeking, that which God may deign to disclose to me. "And since question and answer is an ea^ way of explaining things, I shall make one of my peti- tioners my interlocutor— Boso shall ask and An- selm shall answer as follows." Then follow twenty-five chapters of the first book and all the chapters but three, of the conclud- ing portion of the work, before the following cour- ageous and enlightened view is given to the world : "I think I have in some measure already an- sons FXATVBIS OF THB FAITH. 217 swered your qucstiou, although a better than my- self could do so more fully, and the reason and eon- ^uenoe of this mystery are greater and more numerous than my intellect or that of mortal man is able to grasp. ''Still it is plain that Qad in no wise needed to do that which we have mentioned; immutable verity, however, so required. "But granting that what that man did, God is said to have done (on account of tlie unity of per- son), yet God needed not to have come down from li'-aven to conquer the devil, nor to act againat hira to set man free as a maker of justice ; but God re- quired man to vanquish the devil, in order that he who had offended God by sin, by righteousness might make reparation. "Inasmuch as to the devil God owed nought save punishment: nor did man, save conquest, that having been vanquished by the devil, he might vanquish him in turn; but whatsoever was re- quired of man, he owed to God, not to the devil." § 121. But the old, and, until Anselm's time, gener- ally received theory of Christ's paying His ransom to the devil, died hard; if we can be sure that it has at last been utterly and everywhere crushed out. 218 SOMS VBATVBKB OV THX TAITH. And now the wny is olear for xm to deal with the great snbjeet aa it meeta otmelves in this ad- vanced age of the life of ib» Chnroh of God. § 122. We have seen that in Adam's fail, more tlian an individual catastrophe was brought about Adam's disobediraoe in the garden of Eden produced evils so wide and far-reaching, that they are utterly unparalleled in the whole history of sin. The way in which this Eden-error reaches even to us of to-day, and aflfocte the latest cliiM bom into the world as thoroughly as it did the immediate offspring of Adam, is, as has Ixmu shown, entirely unaccountable until we understand the extraordinary relationship which our first par- ent bears to the race, in comparison with any of his progeny — our ordinary ance. ors. Ancestry is the stream, at whatever point in its course we take it, looking backwf rds. Adam was the fountain-head of the »Lill waters before they moved an inch on their course. If this fountain-head be kept pure, all is safe from at least overwhelming disaster. Poison this momentous spring, and life is threatened along every bank from the source to the sea ; or in other words, from creation to eternity. The saying, "A stream cannot rise higher than ■OMB PBATtmSS OF TBS FAITH. 21» its source/' holds good, too, when we we thinking of humanity. We may here change the figure from a stream to a tree. If therefore this root or seed be poison- ous as that of the deadly Upas-tree, the latest and greenest shoot uf the bulky growth must exhibit the same poisonous nature as that from which it sp^all^^ Adam's sin therefore, producing distor- tion of nature in him, produces a like dist<)rtion of nature in me; and my mind sees the connection between us clearly. Now if the stream of humanity cannot rise higher than its sinful source, purification must come from a (jiiarter without and above it. The Scriptures tell us that when this parent root of our race took the poison into his life, God, while looking upon the sin, mercifully promised what humanity may reverently term the impossible — ''the seed of the woman shall bruise the serpent's head" (<3en. iii. 15). No «cplanation of the mys- tery was vouchsafed, but hope lived. From that moment, therefore, there were suspended before the consciousnes.* of our race, three tremendous moulding facts; namely, mankind's awful plight: the impossibility of self righting: and the cer- tainty, notwithstanding, of rescue ; and, as we have seen, the whole system of J ewish sacrifices was de- 220 soiu WMAtvmm or turn faith. signed by Ood to keep these ^ree great facts clear aud nnobeourad in the niindi of men, like thm; towering monntain-pMb^ ever preerat import of the words, "Except ye eat the fiesli of the S(.n of Man and drink His blood, ve have no life in von." Not only the Church, but even the world iit its worst, if we interpret aright its discontent with its decked out sin, sighs with relief at the exchange of the forbidden fniit for the Supper of the Lord. § 138. As "all the ills that flesh is heir to," are to he traced to the act of eating in the garden of Eden, so our feasting on the Body and Blood of Christ, means for us freedom from all this evil, both in the present world and in that to which we are hurrying. The achievement of Christ is not meant to stand alone a« a liistoric fact. It is meant to reach us. It was to be no mere demonstration of spir- itual prowess on the part of the Redeemer. It was preeminently a rescue; and to make it this, it must reach its object — the human soul. To eat and drink, is within the reach and capa- SOME FXATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. 243 hility of each of us; the rest, for which t|,is holy Mystery stands, is Iwyoiul us. To cat, and to know why, on what authority, and w itli what hope, we eat; and knowing, to be thankful— this is all our humble part. For in the Sacrament of the Body and Blood of Christ, we come to receive a gift; and not to haiter, nor offer any exchange. It is not a little to know this. It shows and keeps us mindful of just where we stand. Our iiighcst possihle service to CJod niid ourselves in this great matter, is r.. p„t (.urselves iu an attitude for receiving this gracious and timely hoon; to come to the distributing point— tiie altar-rails. This is the kernel-truth. The glory, as the merit of it (the merit that is found at the altar-rails where God and man now inoet), is all God's: ours the honest, thrilling ac- knowledgment of this fact. " Lo, between our sins and their reward, we set the passion of Thy Son our Lord." § 139. And here we may take note of the latent Juda- ism that inheres in us all, and at the very moment that we most need this Divine mercy, religiously keeps us from it. We abstain frou) the Holy ( 'ommnnion because we are twt good enough fo piuiake of it. 244 aOUr, FSATCKKS OF THX FAITH. We have learned so well that feeling— tlio inner testimony and conviction of union with God —is the pith of Christianity, that we recoil in dis- may when we look within ourselves for any war- ranty, any uplifting of our hearts in a confident way, to eat and drink of that holy food. Within the court of conscience — ^that stern judge — and with memory' in the box testifying against us, we wear no very buoyant air. We rather cling to the shadow of merit there may Im; in our refraining from presuming thus far bcyon.j our actual deserts. To go forward and receive tli.« sacred Elements in our present coiidition, we fed would strain all our native sense of fitness, and lay us open to the weighty arraignment of desecra- tion; and so, failing all countenance from within ourselves (since we cannot help ourselves) we per- mit conscience to make out a clear case against us, and we anticipate the echo of the sentence to be pronounced upon us, as guilty on all the counts of the indictment— a judgment to which we are foiced to set our seal. And this conviction carries with it, as a scarcely questioned consequence, the certainty of our unqualifiedness, our interior unfitness for the reception of the Holy Communion. Now, no one will for a moment deny that then? SOMK FE.VTUBES OF THE FAITH. 245 is a great deal of naturalness, and wholesomeu^ of sentiment about this way of looking at ourselvea, when brought face to face with a celebration of the Holy Eucharist. To be wanting in this proper sense of our vileness in the jjresence of the All Jloly. would argue a strange and iujpious ef- frontery. The inhibitory ])ower nianifisted by one who thus refrains from proceeding to the reception of the Blessed Sacrament, from a feeling that to do so would be shocking to his sense of the reverence due to that ordinance, shows such a person to be possessed of moral perceptions of a highly cred- itable character, whatever question may be raised as to the accuracy of his grasp of the teaching of Christ in the matter. The contrast which he presents to the inert Christian, who goes forward to participate only because it would demand too much energy to de- fend the opposite course, wliieli all the while may be felt to be the right one, is the not unworthy contrast of a strong against a feeble mind. While beside the non-participant from any cause, the robber-pietist who aspires to the praises of sanctity for their sweetness, and for the things desirable to which he may maHe them instru- mental, is a shocking spectacle, of whidi let us 246 SOME FEATURES OF THE FAITH. hope the Church of God in our oountry has few instances. And \x't notwithstanding all this, we must I>au8e to consider whether we are right in arriving at our conclusions (if n in regard to our un worthiness, at least as concerns our meeting tho apostolical requirements of would-be communi- cants), arrived at in such faithful accord with what are, after all, only worldly ideals. For is not this the way the matter would be weighed, pro and can, for IIS in any court of justice in the land? And as we have seen, in discussing the subject of Re- pentance, that there is open for sinful man a court of appeal even from the noblest canons of justice which this world knows, ay, even from the deliv- erances of conscience itself, may we not entertaii< the suspicion, that in the presence of the Uoh Communion it is possible that we are in so alto- gether peerless a situation— a situation wherein we contemplate a mighty fact which shatters into fragments all rules of regular procedure, and all reasoning adequate to ordinary courses of events— that it may be quite as improper for us to recede as to advance ? § 140. If our pulpits were transformed from the chancel to the porch, and congregations of Christ- SOAIJC FEATLttES OF THE FAITH. 247 ian worahippen addresaed as they come out of our ciiui-ches, the priest-preacher demanding from each intelligent non-partaki r of the Holy Conmmnion Ills rcasc.ns for this .silent affront to \m Creator iiiul Rcdt'ciner ( in whom hut a few monuMits before he pnhlioly (•(.iifossed his U'lief), it might throw the hunlcii of proof on tlic proper side. Ill the j)reseiit iiistrueted eonditioii of s!iHl to, we uia, aafoly ext/* i t to b« utonned thai however they were labored up < luey were experien<^ and registered in * As to the fnture periods, whose advent ii has made the present un^^KtislMtory itoto lo jwh more rattcmal and eai^ lo hmr thar it <^h«rwi^ would be; how, w may u the of feeling whidi t wm^ , ■ssm to be secured by any agency posseani^^ vmfe ii^ ent uiorit thaa mere distance fi' m, and theref '-^ forgetfi ess f, tlie thiiij^s that n< • disipiiei !i lOn-coii ir ipft* , and whortc forhid' ij; power i placed in i lu- porarv vibrating « a ner^ , rather than m rhe ! aturc of the act or course -If? And does this >i>livii«n, product i v a,i ch-like hiding of our he^, ai^e l :od bliviou, and the annihilation of tbMe now disti iixur features of our case, all beeausp «»ar nwv to trouble us? We t^m)^ m ope that this is so. And thert ^ must a ^wledge that we find our- selves rr i at a CTi is in the natural progress •>f mtr reiii, convictions. it on plank sinks under us. There is nothis? A- in sig^t, but a thing with a rather -tOMB VKATUftK.^ OF THE FAITH. ^40 isavor anie, uud tli is, tin poaiible offective I1CS8 of w.-rka of «u/>cr('r 'jalioii Under all ordiuu , circt uiuce« we should b(> impelled to give this, idea an unqualified rejec- tion; but the pre^ u c^ifeumstanoes are extra- ordinary, for tke^ -«r». Can we make that argunmt stand up i... ^m^t, even to our own Mtitf action, which wi> laaintain that the dolin- qncnt of to-day v h . .^>?tconiings are so keenly felt by him, may hope to w ipe nut these del)ts hy a not merely perfect faithfulness for tlie future, hut hv ii faithfulness (if we eaii eoneelvc tlie word *i '.I- used) over and ahove what is perfect i Cau we find it within ourselves to otfer, even to our selves, the expressed hope, that by a self-invented devotion to self-chosen acts of spiritual drudgery, by a forced offering, that is, of loveless pain, we riiall induce God to cancel the deeds of wrong, whose memory now forbids our receivinjj the holy Body and Blood broken and shed for the remission of sins ? Can we trust ourselves to such a hope as this ? §H1. In running away from the notion of a sinner, with his conscience-attested guilt fresh upon him, receiving the pardon of Gud through the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, do we not clearly foresee the im- 250 SOME FEATUSSS OF THE FAITH. possible region to which our hurried flight will lead us? - For if we refuse the Atonement of Christ, we must of necessity erect ourselves into individual Saviours, whose capacity for atonement by the human device of extra labor or of distasteful labor, it is easier for us to believe will prevail with God; though Ave cannot, as one has said, persuade our- selves that we believe we please God more by eat ing bitter aloes than by eating honey. It is a case of choosing between two Saviours between Christ, and ourselves ; and when the one is God's way, and certain ; and the other way our own, and unwarranted; is it not madness to think that there is really a choice for any of us ? It is, however, more within the lines of proba- bility that reasoning does not usually go so far as this; that in fact with the many it stops short with that species of physical discord that is pro- duced in both mind and body, by the idea of the meeting of sinners— real sinners, whose errors are not mere rhetorical things, but sullying realities into which the full-blooded will itself has entered — and God Almighty. To have heard of Jesus Christ means to know that God has stretched out His hand in mercy, and in mercy of the most merciful kind. SOME FEATUKES OF THE FAITH. 251 It is our heads, let it be noted, tlial liave to do with the acceptance of this mercy; for it is to our heads that Christ ever appeals in all His teaching by illustration and parable ; and yet we seem here to have passed the settlement of the whole momen- tous matter over to our feelings, with the implied agreement that their dictum shall be final and un- debatable. And what does all this mean, no matter liow mncli we are impelled to it by the superior attrac- tiveness of cordiality in religion over mere intel- lectual assent: what does it mean but this — we are ready to believe and trust anything, even the most fleeting, changeable thing within ourselves, in the way of assurance, rather than the word of God? Is it not time for us to recognize to how great an extrat our feelings have been permitted to rule us in this sovereign way; and that it is upon the promises of God through Jesus Christ that all our hopes in this world and the next depend, and not at all upon our variable bodily sensations ? §142. So, then, we must send this non-participant of the Holy Communion back to his i)ew, to do the only due and proper work in order to produce fit- ness, namely, to think, to meditate whether he will accept (since he cannot buy) the free gift of God ; -O^ SOME F£ATUBSS OF THE VASTU. and whether his acoeptanoe shall not be immediate, which is the more reverwit, rather than delayed! For of all the certainties that nearly affect him, none is of more present force, than that he will never be more fit than he is now, in so far as the eye of heaven beholds him ; and seriouH minds will not pay much heed to any other. §143. But if :ie be unfit himself, what can such a non-rp-eiver understand to be the case of those who do go up and partake of this Sacrament ? Is it really true tJiat they are all satisfied with their fitness, and the faultless character of their preparation ? It may be that many a man, conceriicu absorb- ini^y with himself at this moment and who cannot see the way open to him to communicate, lets this summing up of the matter take from his mind a quite complete assent And yet nothing could be more prepost( rous, than that these dutiful Christ- ian men and women should either be thought, or believe themselves to be fit, to partake of the Holy Communion in the sense that they may be fit to sit at their neighbor's dinner table. To have the solemn rite in which is embodied the ineffable pity of God upon ruined lost human- ity, made the place for displaying spiritual excel- SOME FEATVims OP THE FAITH. 253 leiioei — a parade gronsd for those tba« are wiwle, and med not the ^ymeiaii — eaa tlm be Christianv^ ? Surely if these is one i^MMe 6f vm fitness, more than another, ealcnlated t» vdl^x unfit ami inhibit, it is the flMFiMms «f imagining ourselves fit. This will not do. And now the mind of our interrojgated wor- shipper, roused perhaps by this check, masf be led to make a closer survry of those who go up to the altar-rails, and, in consequence, to cliauge his ideas; but knowing how strongly the human heart entrenches itself here, we must not hastily, and without evidence, understand this change of opin- ion as effecting more for our parishioner than the subjective condition of the oonununioants, while it is the thinker himself we wish to see changed. For amongst those who decorously kneel to re- ceive the sacred Elements, does he not see a man whom he hnows to be not only guilty of conduct belying the claims of a Christian, bat a man posi- tively dishonest, and even now clearly within the reach of the law — a man who, in short, if he had his deserts would be forced into his proper place behind the strong bars of a prison ? That such a man should presume to make one of that company and to receive the Sacrament, is 254 SOME FEATURES OF THE FAITU. a shock to our paridiioiier's conception of true re- ligion ; and behold : a new access of self-commenda- tion for his own decent restraint, is thus the only result of a comparison of courses with this bold obtruder. Now it is worth while to notice that nothing can well go farther towards demonstrating that the first mentioned notion entertained of communi- cants, as being a parade of very good people— the flower of the flock, and sinners only by courtesy- is a conception very generally held, than does the anger of our tjrpical parishioner, at the fact that one certainly known io be a sinner, should do such violence to Divine truth as to act upon its warranty and make himself one of this number. "This is a true saying, and worthy of all men to be received, that Christ Jesus came into the >vorld to save sinners." § 145. "In the primitive Church there was a godly dis- eiplino, that at the beginning of Lent such persons as stood convicted of notorious sin were put to open penance, and punished in this world, that their souls might be saved in the day of the Lord ; and that others admonished by their example, might be the more afraid to offend. SOME FKATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. 255 "Instead whereof (until the said discipline may be restored again, which is much to be wished ) "*— What have we got ? A liberty loving people, chafing under, and rejecting this action by the Church: only in order that each wan may himself, without so much as a '•lettrc ,lv ctrhcf," be jury, judge, and jailer t<> his brother. And the brother, aware of the existence <.f this inercih'ss tribunal, in ninety-nine ease out of a hundre.l protects himself from its rigors, by keeping well out of its reach and severely apart from the pro- cession to the throne of mercy. Only the hun- dredth has the courage to run the gauntlet and receive that mercy ! §146. But what of this black sheep, whose actual case (since all that has been alleged against him is pos- sible), we may take as fairly enough stated ? The first thing to be said of the nuitter is, of course, ready to hand in the words of our Lord Himself: "Judge not and ye shall not he judged, for with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged." This command admits of no dallying with the temptation to try, sentence, and hang a brother sinner; our thorough unfitness for which offices, • CoBUBtutloa Serriee. 256 SOME FXATUKn OF THX FAITH. the dealings of our Blessed Lord with certain per- scms in the gospel history, strikingly set forth. If that maiden who, in the hall of the high priest's palace, heard a suspected follower of Jesus of Nazareth, with blasphemous vehemence deny any connection or sjTnpathy with Jesus, had stood by on the morning of St. Petor'« resistless sermon which added three thousand souls to the Church, and recognized in his fervid utterance the same voice which she had heard raised in a cow- ard's unhallowed disavowal of his Friend and Master, she would, not unnaturally, have thought such a man most unfitted for the preacher's office, and the guardian of immortal souls ; and in think- ing so, she would doubtless be followed by the va^t majority of humanity, and especially and with keenest aggressiveness by godless Christians — a tendency which is full of meaning. And yet the Saviour of the world thought dif- ferently, and so very differently, that it was witli full Divine approval, and with Divine aid, that St. Peter triumphed so gloriously that day. §147. No, the Church of Grod is, and we cannot too failMuUy remember it, not a parade ground, hut a giant hospital; and like the hospital — ^her own hegotten child — she does not witUioId her 80MX FBATURKB OF THE FAITH. 257 succor until the magistrate's "not guilty" gives her permission to extend it. Jeras Christ our Saviour is the Great Physician, and we all know His methods, no matter how had our memory may eeem to he at times. §148. When all is said about our neighbor that can be said, it means this : that his disease is merely not ours; hat we all need the aid which the Church was Divinely established and equipped to give us, that is, to administer. How irrational of us, tlien, to wait until we completely rc'('<>v(M- and until our neighbor recovers, so to sj)eak, In'ton' we consent to occupy and let him occupy a cot in the great ward: "Judge Not"! And h e our parishioner, eliating at the daring profanation of a man who is a sinner indeed, tak- ing advantage of that one and only help for sin- ners, is led to inquire of the Bible for a full list of the denunciations it utters against this palpable consecration. He remembers a verse, for one of our Prayer Book exhortations* at Holy Communion gives it considerable prominence: it is St. Paul's words to the Corinthian converts, "He that eateth and •This eihortatlOB Is omitted from the AmerlcAD Prayer Book. 358 SOME PEATVBES OF THE FAITH. drinketk unworthily, eateth and drinketh damna- tion to himself, not oonaidering the Lord's body." This one passage is enough for his purpose: it soothes his mood by the full sanction it gives to his righteous indignation. §149. It would be u matter of profound und pathetic interest to know how many timid, hungering souls in our dinrches, have been chained to their seats by that one text, as effectually as iron links could bind them. God, in His infinite mercy, free them ! For to not one of them, it may safely be said, does that dread warning apply, and, rightly understood, it giv !io countenance to the indigna- tion of the offendc - brother. The circuinstaiK'es under which the stern re- proof, of which it is a portion, was delivered, were exceptional iu the extreme, as will be seen, and are never likely to recur. § 150. But Krst, this word *'unw(»rthily," if taken out of its particular context her': and generally used without the limitations oi that context, be- comes actually prohibitive of all human participa- tion in the Holy Communion ; and thus would do that holy Sacrament more injury than that from SOMX FKATUBKB OF THE FAITH. 259 which St Paul is anxious to protect it at the hands of unseasoned disciples in Corinth : for who, as has been said above, but the really most unfit, could dare to think himself "worthy," in the souse of the word entertained by those whom it drives into the unequivocal iinworthiness of turning their httcka on their Saviour, and refusing the only help- fulness there is really between them and helH "I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance." "Worthily," as the word hangs before the minds of those who, all the while they are really hungering and thirsting after righteousness, yet from a misguided devoutness, turn away from the great Sacrament of Redemption, because of ♦he grating presence of conscious sin — what is ii .et us try to define it, and set it down in black and white, that we may know its every feature, and. above all, whether every feature is of Christ's making. §151. Is it not this?— A miracle in the realm of mercy is required to reach men and women, who know but too well that they are sinners— very fellows of the man qualified for prison— and through faults, perhaps more sullying than many of which the law takes count. A miracle is neoes- 260 801fX FKATUMES Of TBM VAITH. auy to reach the case of these; but that that mi- rade has not remained suspended between Heaven and earth, an unwrought and therefore unreal thing is the announcement which, though every chnroh bell reiterates it, is still in the heart of a Christian land a practically undiscovered fact. By many it may be believed to be a possible reality, in so far as obliterating the sins of other people goes; but as it positively justifies a man's o^vn sinful soul, before the God whom he has offended, it is believed by only the few, "For when we were yet without strength, in due time (^hrist died for the ungodly." "For scarcely for a righteous man will (uie die, yet per- adventure for a good man some would even dare to die. But God oommendetii His love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners Vhrht died for us" (Romans v. 6, 7, 8), And yet hun.an ingenuity (call it rather unbelief) makes it neces- sary, in order to receive this amazing settlement with God and conscience, thai we do what is im- possible, namely, either make our sins unreal, or wipe them out ourselves, before we come to God. Belief in rhe forgiveness of sins that are real sins, through thi .lood of Jesus Christ, with the Church as God's own medium for extending this forgive- ness to the souls of men and women (who aro not SOME FKATURKH OF TUK FAITH. 261 perhaps all conacioiut that they are hungering for it) — this ia the one thing tlie jeaming world can- not bring, as its only legitimate product, to the great settlement. The most it can - stitutcth in the place thereof .My Body, which is the Popish construction; and last: this hallowed food through concurrence of divine power is in verity and truth, unto faithful receivers, instru- njontally a cause of that mystical participation, whereby as 1 make myself wholly theirs, so 1 give them in hand an actual possession of all such saving grace as My sacrificed Body can yield, and aa their souls do presently need, this is to them 278 BOMB FEATUBES OF THK FAITH. and in them My Body; of these three rehearsed interpretations the last hath in it nothing but what the rest do all approve and a<^owledge to be most true, nothing but that which the words of Christ are on all sides confessed to enforce, nothing but that which the Church of God hath always thought necessary, nothing but that which alone is sufficient for every Christian man to believe con- cerning the use and force of this sacrament, finally nothing but that wherewith the writings of all antiquity are consonant, and all Christian <»nfe8- sions agreeable He which hath said of the one sacrament (Baptism) "Wash and be clean," hath said concerning the other likewise, *eat and live.' "If therefore without any such particular and solemn warrant as this is, that poor distressed woman coming unto Christ for health, could so constantly resolve herself, 'May I but touch the skirt of His garment I shall be whole (Matt. ix. 21), what moveth us to argue of the manner how life should come by bread, our duty being here but to take what is offered, and most assuredly to rest persuaded of this — that can we but eat we are safe? "When I beheld with mine eyes aeme small and scarce discernible grain or seed whereof nature SOME FKATUBE8 OK THE FAITH. 279 maketh promise that a tree shall come, and when afterwards of that tree any skilful artificer undcr- taketh to frame some exquisite and curiuua work, I look for the event, I move no question about per- formance either of the one or of the other. "Shall I simply credit nature in things natural, shall I in things artificial rely myself on art, never offering to make doubt, and in that which is above both art and nature, refuse to believe the Author of both, except He acquaint me with His ways, and lay the secret of His skill before me ? Where God Himself doth speak, those things which either for height and sublimity of matter, or else for secrecy of perfomance, we are not able to reach unto, as we may be ignorant without danger, so it can bo no disgrace to confess we are ignorant. Such as love piety will as much as iu them lieth know all things that God commandetli, but especially the duties of service which they owe to God. As for His dark and hidden works, they prefer as be- cometh them, in such cases, simplicity of faith, before that knowledge, which, curiously sifting what it should adore, and disputing too boldly of that which the wit of man cannot search, chilleth for the most part all warmth of zeal, and briageth soundness of belief many times into great hazard. "Let it therefore be sufficient for me, presentr 280 80ME FEAVUSK8 OF TH£ FAITH. ing myself at the Lord's table, to know what there I receive from Him, without searching or enquir- ing of the manner how Christ performeth His pr(»mise; let disputes and questions — enemies to piety, abatements of true devotion, and hitherto in this cause but over patiently heard — ^let them take their rest; let curious and sharp-witted men beat their heads about what questions themselves will, the very letter of the word of Christ giveth plain security that these mysteries do as nails fasten us to His very Cross, that by them wc draw out, as touching efficacy, force and virtue, even the blood of Ilis gored side ; in the wounds of our Re- deemer we there dip our tongues, we are dyed red both within and without, our himger is satisfied and our thirst f orevor quenched ; they are things wonderful which he feeleth, great which he seeth, and unheard of which he uttereth, whose soul is possessed of this Paschal Lamb, and made joyful in the strength of this new wine ; this bread hath in it more than the substance whicli our eyes be- hold, this cup, hallowed with solemn benediction, availeth to the endless life and welfare both of soul and body, in that it serveth as well for a medicine to heal our infirmities and purge our sins, as for a sacrifice of thanksgiving ; with touching it sancti- fieth, it enlighteneth with belief, it truly conform- SOME KKATURES OF THE FAITH. 281 eth U8 unto image of Jesus Christ ; what tliese elements are in themselves it skilleth n«»t. it is enough that to me which take them they are the body and blood of Christ, His promise in witness hereof sufficeth, His word He knoweth which way to accomplish; why should any cogitation possess the mind of a faithful communicant but this : O my God Thou art true, O my soul thou art happy ?"* §164. Hooker, in this lofty passage, confines the teaching on the Lord's Supper to the three great schoofe— the Lutheran, the Roman, and the An- glican. His design, to count the points of union, rather than to emphasize the ditfemnces amongst Vhrisi- ians, is characteristic. But whatever the possibil- ities for this were in Hooker's day and country, we Canadians of to-day know that we cannot for a moment exclude from the divisions of Christen- dom, a fourth school. The teaching of Zwinglius is so deeply en- trenched in Canadian Christianity that if we are to take actuality of practical belief, rather than some shadings of opinion— all however of the one color— we must at once set down the general belief of all our separated brethren of the sects, as neither Pomp. Bk. v.. Chap. 67, sec. 12. y 282 HOME F£ATUB£8 OF THS FAITH. JRoman, nor Lnthenui, nor Anglican — ^bnt Zwing- lian. And yet, for the pnrpoees of oonvenient, oogent illnstntion, it is extremely desirable that we ■honld reduce th^ to three great divisions. How shall we do this ? Let US first secure a plain stat^ent of each of the four beliefs, and then see what two will, through the courtesy of the reader, best go under one head. The beliefs are: (1) Transubstantiation. (2) Consubstantiation, (3) The Beal Spiritual Pres- ence, (4) The denial of any special presence al- together. Transubstantiation is the doctrine of the Church of Rome. As stated by the school- authors and other more subtle reasoners among them, it means that in the Eucharist, after the words of consecration, the whole substance of the bread is converted into the substance of the Body of Christ, and the substance of the wine into the substance of His Blood ; so that the bread and wine no longer remain, but the Body and Blood of Christ are substituted in their places. This, how- ever, is said to be true only of the substance, not of the accidents. The accidents (sudi as color. 80MK FEATURES OF THE FAITH. 28S shape, tube, smell, CMisistence, etc.) all remain nndumged. The subBtance, which is interior to, and lu.t necessarily dependent on, those external accident^*, is that which is converted. Yet we are not to call it a mere spiritual change (though some of their writ^-rs have allowed even this), but the change is a real and miraculous conversion of the substance of the bread and wine into the very body of Christ which was bom of the Blessed Virgin and cruciiied on Calvary. Consubstantiation is considered to be the doc- trine of Luther and the Lutherans. It differs from Transubstantiation in that it does not imply a change in the substance of the elements. Those who hold this doctrine teach that the bread remains bread, and the wine remains wine; but that with and by means of the consecrated elements the tme natural body and blood of Christ are communicated to the recipient. The doctrine of a Real, Spiritual Presence is the Anglican doctrine, and was more • less the doctrine of Calvin and of many foreign reformers. It teaches that (^hrist is really received by faithful communicants in the Lord's Supper: but that there is no gross or carnal, but only a spiritual 284 ttOMK F£ATUBK8 OV TUK FAITU. and Heavenly presence there, not the less real, however, for being spiritual. It teaches therefore that the bread and wiae are received naturally : but the Body .ad Blood of Christ are received spiritually. The result of which doctrine is this — it is bread, and it is Christ's Bodv. It is bread in substance, ( hrist in the Sacrament : and Christ is as really given to all that are truly disposed, as the symbols are: each as they can; Christ as Christ can be given; the bread and wine as they can ; and to the same real purpoem to which they were designed ; and Christ does as really nourish and sanctify the soul, as the elements of the body. The fourth opinion is that of Zwinj lius, wlio taught that the Eucharist is a bare commemoration 01 the death of Christ : and that the bread and wine are mere symbols and tokens to remind us of His Body and Blood.* § 165. Of these four beliefs it will be seen that the first and the second hold that the actual, literal interpretation of the words, ''This is My Body," must be maintained, and thus that the communi- cant must receive the very Body and iJlood, flesh * These definltlona. Id order to arold controversy, are taken from Bltbop Harold Browne on tbe Thirty-Nine Articles. HOME FEATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. and bone, of the crucified Redeemer in the Holy Encharitt— the one changing the substance .if bread and wine into the sacred Flesh and Hlood : the other giving the sacred Body and HU)od, in, with, and under, onlinary bread and wine. These two beliefs, of Transubstantiation, and ronsubstantiation,\ve may therefore most litly join inider the one heading of the more familiar Traw- substantiation ; and otherwise omit from our fu^ ther consideration the doctrine of Consubstantia- tion: not indeed from any arrogant disrespect for the great and learned body which holds that reput- able belief, but because the number of these Christ- ians in Canada is not large. § 166. We shall thus have to deal with exa( tly three great divisions of Christianity, and their three re- spective conceptions of the meaning (»f the Sav- iour's words, "This ^s My Body:" namely, that which maintains the carnal, that which maintains the spiritual, and that which maintains the nega- tive interpretation of the Divine words. Every communicant of the Church of England, as he walks up the aisle of his church to receive the Holy Communion, knows that these three con- ceptions of the Lord's Supper are held, each by 886 80M£ FMATVUU OF TUS VAITU. humet^ God-fearing Canadian hn^ban, wbo an ewTj whit as enlightened as hinuelf. The Romanist believes that the priest's words turn the coniinun elements of bread and wine into the very bleeding Body of the Lonl : but we who think differently must acknowledge tiiat nobody can charge him with undervaluing what i- offered. The 8('|iarated brother of the sects, believes that the prayers of himself and his minister produce their effect upon the recipient only, and make no change whatever upon the bread and wine. Thus, what is offered him, he values at the exact value of bread and wine. Between these two logical positions then — Christ is present bodily in the Holy Eucharist; and Christ in the Holy Eucharist is not present in any manner — where is the standing-room for the Angli<*i\ii l)plicf of a spiritual rresence, -iiice the sacred Elements, bread and wine, are not spir- itual, but substantial ^ § 107. All agree that bread and wine are laid upon the altar or holy table, and in each of the tliree com- mimions, the celebrant or officiating minister offers solenm prayers. When the prayers are ended, two of the three believe that a change has been effected in the Elements, such at least as to make tt07'.«. F£ATUB£8 OF TUX FAITH. 287 thete Elementa not to be confounded with the ordt* nary unconoeorated bread and wine held in re- serve (though occasionally a slovenly Churchman will let crumbs iall and be ashamed to stoop and pick them up). The third believet that the pru ts have pro- duced no difference in he nature ai value of the bread and wine placed on the holy table, from that which remaica in supply. But what is th«~ '^sange ? The startling, climacterical discourse of our Lord in the Synagogue of Capernaum (John vi. 48-60), and then a year later, the setting of the torch to the tinder of that Divine deliverance, by the institution of the Lord's Sapper on the eve of His crucifixion for the world's redemption, all make the Churchman recoil from the vacuous thought, that all this is mere rhetoric; while on the other luuid. the alternative that the cjuiver- ing flesh of the Redeemer is offered, repels him. God guide our judgment! Wo all feel that it is indeed the Body of the Lord — as the Saviour unmistakably says that it is. We mu»t pause for a moment therefore to quiet our honest and devoat perplexity, which cannot L^^ divinely intended to overwhelm us. Is it only in religion that a thing may be itself, 288 SOME FEATUBE8 OF THE FAITH. and yet very nuieh more than its apparent self? Is there nothing in the ordinary experiences of life, that affords anything like a parallel i For our per- plexity will cease to be devout, the moment it wears the look of stupidity. Our condition as we come to the altar rails to partake of the Holy Eucharist, is described in a way that well suits us, when we are called debtors, and debtors who have nought wherewith to pay. We come, then, as very bankrupts, when we accept that timely invitation, "Come unto Me all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest" — rest from our load of debt. We seek the gracious benefaction of one who can pay for us to the uttermost, and we are sure He will be as good as His word, which He has verily given us. §168. How like anxious waiters in the outer office of a princely capitalist who has bidden us apply to him if difficulties should overtake us I Our affairs and the desperateness of their con- dition drive us to seek him, and he does not avoid us. He meets us like a brother. Our story is soon told; and at onoe the faithful clerik receives his orders. SOME FEATUBES OF THE FAITH. 289 The cheque book is taken down. The intention of our friend is duly written on the figured paper, the servitor's work is faithfully completed. The meagre slip of paper is torn from its fellows by the clerk and dutifully placed before his employer, whose eye sees that all is done scrupulously accord- ing to his instructions by this his officer, and then, to the valueless bit of paper, he graciously sets his signature, producing scarcely any noticeable alter- ations in the appearance of the thing, and hands the slip to us. What! A thousand dollars over and above what we asked for, or needed! (God protect us from ingratitude, the human failing.) No great banker on earth but knows and bows to that name. With that cheque in our trembling hands there- fore, and with a soul responding to the splendid deed, we turn on the one hand to our Roman brother, to show him our good fortune. lie sees, acknowledges the reality of the help, and stands aghast at the miracle. It is gold, gold, he says; there is no manner of doubt about it. Let it but fall, and notwithstand- ing its appearance, the ring of the true precious metal will be heard — the copious tumble of mas- sive wealth. On the other hand we turn to our sectarian 290 SOME VSAT17BE8 OV THE FAITH. broiber, and show him the cheridied posMssion we have received, and which was given and accepted with the meaning that it should meet the crisis. To him, as he carefully examines it, it is a very dear and lovable souvenir, honoring to us who are permitted to retain it from such a giver ; but gold it is not, nor of more real intrinsic value than any of its fellows that remain untorn from the cheque book : but it bears a unique and touch- ing message of sympathy, for which we ought to be duly grateful ; and as human nature is prone to remissness both as to the feeling and the expression of gratitude, we must be sure at least to show a proper appreciation of this cordial and inspiring good wish from such a iri&ad. The form it is " make except to Mr. Kittson, for the courtesy of polntlUK oiu an Interesting coln- < Idence. so far as it is such. The lllu.stratlon which a cheque may give to the Church of Knglands interpretation of our Lord's words. "This is My Body." came to the writer s mind while awaiting a subscription to the building fund of a .hurch he was erecting, and which subscription was given by cheque. The donor — a well-known Churchman of Ottawa, and a Sen- ator lately deceased — whose signature, not difficult for the bank- ers to make out, though from Its remarkable paucity of letter* was not so easy for others to understand, by bis touch to the paper, gave light as well as money to hia frloid. The End. APPENDIX. NOTE A. 'See page 22.] "£t une preuve ^ae je vous dia vrai, c'est qne si, pour rvntAr k Dira, il ne devoit Tom m eottter que de soumettre votre raison ft da myBteres qui nous pasBent; si la vie chrdtienne ne vouh offroit point de'autrea diflScultds qne eoiainee contradictiung apparentes, qoHI fmat croire sans les pouvoir comprendre; si la foi ne proposoit point de devoirs p^nibles ft remplir; si, pour changer de vie, il ne lalkdt p*s renoncer aux passions les plus vives et aox attachements les plus chers; si c'Mcit ici une affaire pure- ment d'esprit et de croyance, et que le coeur et les penchants Bouffrissent rien, vout n^auries pins de peine ft vous rendre: vous regarderiez comme des insens^s ceux qui met- troient en balance des difflcult^s de pure speculation, qu'il n'en ooflte rien decroire, avee une Mernitft malheureuse qui, au fond, pent devenir le partage des incrSdules. La faie ne vous paroit done difi9cile que parce qu'elle r^gle les passions, et non parce qu'elle propose des mystSres. C'est done la saintete de ses maximes qui vous rfivolte, plutOt que I'in- comprehensibilite de ses secrets: vous fites done corr« is to know how wt- •re to eeoee to be so; hew we are to be Mved. I^ave those who have reached the land to settle how. and on what reef, the vessel struck; the question with us who cling to the shrouds, or are battling with the surf, is. how to gain yonder blessed shore. In God's name, and by His help get the raging fire put out; and when the fiames are qnenelwd, will be the time to consider how thqr were kindled. Tie the bleeding artery, and when life is saved, find out how it was wounded — when you 'lave plucked the drowning man from the water, and laid uim on the bank, and the color flushes again on bis cheek, and the pulse beats at his wrist, and speech returns to the blue and livid lips, then may you speculate on how he fell into the flood." (Quthrie; Ooafwl in Bzekitl, p. 89.) NOTE D. [See page 112.] "Adam, you know, was created in the image and after the likeness of God ; his frail and imperfect nature stamped with a Divine seal, was supported and exalted by an indwel' ling of Divine grace. Impetuous passion did not exist in him, except as a latent element and a possible evil ; ignorance was dissipated by the clear light of the spirit; and reason, sovereign over every motion of his soul, was simply subjectec ; the will of God. Nay, even his body was preserved from every way- ward appetite and affection, and was promised immortality instead of dissolution. Thus he was in a supernatural state ; and had he not sinned, year after year would he have advanced in merit and grace, and in God's favor, till he passed from Paradise to Heaven." (Newman: Sermons to MUeed Congregation; p. 352-3. ) 300 fiOMK FXATTRKS OF THE FAITH. NOTEE. [8m |MM|« "Sir Tliomns More Hettrth down thr rwlds betwtTn u* and the Church uf Kunie in the mutter of workH thw. 'Uke a* we grant thetn, that no good work of man i» rewnrdablp in henvrn of his own nature, but throuf^h the mere ffoodm'HH of (iod, that list to Mot »o h'nth a price upon no poor a thin);: and that thiit price God xettetli through ChtiHt's paMion, and for that aUo that they Ih- his own works with u»; for gooy this of Sir Thomas More, liow easy if is for men of great capacity and judgment to mistake things writ- ten or spoken, as well on the one side as on another. "Their doctrine, as lie thou};lit. niaketh the works of man rewardable in the world to come through the mere goodness of God, whom it pleaseth to set so high a price upon so poor a tliiiifr: ami ours, that a man doth receive that eternal anil high reward not for his works, but for his faith's sake, by which he worketh: whereas in truth our d(M'trine is no other than that which we have learned at the feet of Christ; namely, that God doth justify the believing man, yet not for the worthiness of his belief, but for his worthiness which is believed, (iod rew.irdeth abundantly everyone which worketh, yet not for any meritorious dig- nity, which is, or can be, in the work, but through Hia mere mercy, by whose commandment he worketh. MOMK PK.%TrK»i OP TIIR FAITH. 301 "Contrariwiie, thvir doctrine in, that pnrr water of itMt hath no Miivor. Init if it piiMH thri|H*, it talceth a |ilt>UHant Hiiiell of the |ii|K> thrniiKli which it paitH- rth : HO, although before grace received, our works do neither HntiMfy nor merit; yrt iift«'r. thoy do lioth thi- one and the other. Kvery virtuoiiM aitiim hath then |>ower in mucIi iwirt to Mtiafjri that if we ouraelvei rommit no mortal ain, no heinouM crime, whereupon to upend tliin treamro of satisfac- tion in our own behalf, it turneth to t)ic iM-nclit of other men's release, on whom it Hhall ph-asc the stewurii of the houM of Crod to eittow it." (Hookf> Keble'n Edition- Sermon II., p. 060, u70, 671.) •The Mtrenjrth of every building, which ia of Ood, Hiandeth not in any man's arms or leffs; it is cmly in our faith, as the valor of Samson lay only in hiH hair. Thia ia the reason, why "p are ao eameatly called upon to f Jifp ouraclvrs in faith. "Not as if this liare action of our minds, whereby we believe the Ooapel of Chriat, were able in itself, aa of itaelf, to make us unconquerable and invincible, like stones, which abide in the building forever, and fail not out. "No, it is not the worthiness of our believing, it is the virtue of Him in whoj.. ve believe, by which we stand sure, as houses that are builded upon a rock. He is a wise man which hath builded his house upon a rock; for he hath chosen a j;ood foundation, and no doubt liis house will stand. But how shall it stand r Verily, by the strenfc'th of the rock which beareth it, and by nothing e'le. . . . For if thou boasteth thyself of thy faith, kno. this, that Christ chose His apostles. His apostles chose not Him; that Israel fol- lowed not the rock, but the rock followed Israel ; and that thou bearest not the root, but the root thee. ,So that every heart must this think, and every tongue must thus speak, 'Not unto us, O Lord, not unto ua,' nor unto anything which is within us, but unto thy name only, «)nly to thy name be- longeth all the praise of all tlie treasures and riches of every temple which is of (Jod. This excludeth all boasting and vaunting of our faith." ( Hooker, Sermcm VI., p. 857-8 ) 302 SOME FEATITBES OF THB FAITH. NOTE P. [See page 130.] "I deal not with open and avowed vice. ... I come among the amiabilitieB, the noblenesses, the stern and lofty virtues of our social life. It is there that the warfare against man's fancied perfection must be prosecuted, and the true nature of that one principle of Christian excellence which is yet to be the light and blessedness of heaven, vin- dicated against all its counterfeits. "It is these virtues which the man of the world and the philosopher equally declare themselves unable to conciliate with the uncompromising denunciations of the gospel. It is these in which I find them most amply justified. The depravity of the world is just its forgetfulness, impatience, contempt of its God; the godless emeUeneea, the unsancti- fied noblenesses of man, are the truest, the most awful proofs of fact. "Hiat the murderer, the adulterer, the thief, should disclaim subjection to his God is sad, but scarcely surpris- ing; the depth, the universality of the rebellion, is seen in the independence of our very virtues upon God; in the vast sphere of human excellence into which God never once enters; in the amiability that loves all but God; in the self-devotion that never surrendered one gratification for the sake of God; in the indomitable energy that never wrought one persevering work for God; in the enduring patience that faints under no weight of toil exc^t the labor of adoring and praising God. "This it is, which really demonstrates the alienation of the world from its Maker, that its beat affections should thus be affections to all but Him; that not the worst alone or the most degraded, but the best and loftiest natures among us, should be banded in this conspiracy to exile Him from the world He has made; that when He thus 'comes to His own,' 'His own' should 'receive Him not' ; that He should have to behold the fairest things He has formed — kindness and gratitude and love — embracing every object but Him- self; the lovelieat feeling* He haa emplaoted taking root, and growing aod Moawmiiiig throui^ tiw world, to bear BOMK FXATUBX8 OF THX FAITH. 303 fruit for all but Him." (Archer Butler. Sermona, Vol. I., p. 140-1. MMsnilbm k Co.) NOTE G. [See page 182.] "The second vicious principle was the right of com- pulsion assumed by the Romish Church: a right, however, contrary to the very nature and spirit of religious society, to the origin of the Church itself, and to its primitive maxims. A right, too, disputed by some of the most illus- trious fathers of the Church — by St. Ambrose, St. Hilary, St. Martin — but which, nevertheless, prevailed and became an important feature in its history. "The right is assumed of forcing belief, if these two words can stand together, or of punishing faith physically, of persecuting heresy, that is to say, a contempt for the Intimate liberty of human thought, was an error which found its way into the Romish Church before the beginning of the fifth century, and has in the end cost her very dear." (Guizot, Hittory of CivilizatUm in Europe, p. 98.) NOTEH. [See page 220.] "I do not deny that this aspect has been given to the Sacrifice of Christ. It has been represented as if the majesty of Law demanded a victim: and so as it glutted its insatiate thirst, one victim would do as well as another — the purer and the more innocent the better. It has been exhibited as if Eternal Love resolved in fury to strike, and so as He had His blow, it mattered not whether it fell on the whole world, or on the precious bead of His own chosen Son. "Unitarianism has represented the Scriptural view in this way; or, rather, perhaps, we should say, it has been so represented to Unitarians — and, from a view so horrible, no wonder if Unitarianism has recoiled. "But it is not our fault if some blind defenders of the truth, have converted the self-devotion of love into a Brah- minieal Sacrifice. "If the work o^ redemptioa be defended by parallels 304 so?! i: KKATURKS OF THE FAITH. drawn from the most atrocious records and principles uf Heathenism, let not the fault be laid upon the Bible. "We disclaim that as well as they. "It malcea God a Caiaphas — it makes Him adopt the words of Caiaphas in the sense of Caiaphas.It represents Him in terms which better describe the ungoverned ra<;e of Saul missing his stroke at David, who has offended, and in disappointed fury, dashing his javelin at his own son Jonathan." (F.W.Robertson. SermotiB, Fir»t Seriet, pp. 136-7.) NOTE I. [See page 227.] "The Lord's death is the perfect revelation of the sin of the world. It is not merely relative goodness that suf- fers: still less is it one party laid low by an opposite sect; He who now suffers the death of a malefactor is the incar- nate Righteousness itself raised high above all parties. This death must therefore be described as the consumma- tion of the world's unrighteousness. "It is not merely an isolated act: all the sin previously developed in human history reaches, in this act, its highest culmination. "To so deep a depth had history now sunk, that those very powers in Judaism and heathenism whose province it was to embody and maintain righteousness upon earth, those spiritual and secular powers unite to crucify the perMHial Ri^teoumess itself. "It is not