Wonderful 
 Counsellor 
 Mighty God 
 Father everlasting 
 Prince o 
 
 Moty NAMES m
 
 HOLY NAMES
 
 Bg tfje Same 
 
 FOOTPRINTS OF THE SHYIOUR. 
 
 DEVOTIONAL STUDIES IN THE LIFE 
 AND NATURE OF OUR LORD. 
 
 It is a work which may be read again and again. It is a hook 
 that we imagine will always be kept at hand, to be taken up 
 when the mind is weary with the disputations, the cares, and 
 the frets of the world. It is a book after our own heart. From 
 a London paper. 
 
 With calm, unruffled spirit of confiding trust, increasing as 
 he moves on from point to point, the reader is led from the 
 cradle in the manger to the ascension and the eternal spiritual 
 presence of Christ with His beloved. Christian Union. 
 
 The book is written in a reverent and tender spirit, and in 
 cordial sympathy with the religious needs and experiences 
 of the individual soul. Its style is simple and graceful, and 
 the author's purpose to be helpful appears all through the 
 work. The Chitrihman. 
 
 One volume, i6mo. cloth, gilt top, price, 1.00: white 
 and gold, gilt edge, price, $1.25.
 
 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 interpretation^ 
 of 
 
 of tJje ganger 
 and 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. JULIAN K. SMYTH, 
 
 AUTHOR OF "FOOTPRINTS OK THE SAVIOUR. 
 
 He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you. 2 JOHN xiv. 17. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 1891.
 
 Copyright, r8qr, 
 
 BY ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
 
 2Sntbersttg ^resst: 
 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE, U.S.A.
 
 " (iod hides Himself w'tth'tn the love 
 Of those whom we love best ; 
 The smiles and tones that make our homes 
 Are shrines by Hint possessed."
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 r I "'HE title of this little volume refers to that 
 -*- wonderful list of names applied to the 
 Son of Man in the well-known prophecy : " Unto 
 us a child is born ; unto us a Son is given ; and 
 the government shall be upon His shoulder; 
 and His name shall be called Wonderful, Coun- 
 sellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, 
 the Prince of Peace/' The emotions experienced 
 upon hearing Handel's mighty chorus, in which 
 these holy names, one after the other, are pro- 
 claimed with such power, led the author to make 
 a special study of these five titles. He felt then 
 and he feels more than ever now that there 
 is a power of meaning in them ; that the appel- 
 lations, as well as the order in which they are
 
 PREPACK 
 
 given, are not accidental. The result of these 
 studies is the conviction that there is a beautiful 
 and divinely-intended sequence of ideas in these 
 names and titles ; that they help to interpret for 
 us the story of the manger anil the cross by 
 indicating the different ties and relationships 
 which our Lord by His life on earth sought to 
 establish ; and that in a manner at once impres- 
 sive and helpful they suggest or, more properly 
 speaking, they reveal those spiritual relation- 
 ships which one after another are intended to 
 grow up between the Lord and every follower 
 who is faithful unto the end. Each tie, each new 
 bond formed, is of a more intimate and sacred 
 character than the preceding, until from that 
 first wonder, or admiration with which we regard 
 Him, He becomes at last the peace-giver. 
 
 It is this spiritual side of the Christ-life as it 
 touches and enters into our human life, the pro- 
 gressiveness of it, the helpfulness and the beauty 
 of it, which this little book seeks most of all to 
 express. In two of the earlier chapters, the au- 
 thor has not hesitated to enter with some degree
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 of particularity into the subject of the virgin- 
 birth, stating some principles which he trusts 
 may prove helpful in thinking clearly of this 
 great fact of incarnation. In the Appendix, he 
 has endeavored to emphasize the historic truthful- 
 ness of the person of the Son of Man as revealed 
 in the Gospels, and the divine character of His 
 life and work. In a companion volume, 1 he has 
 tried to make real to thought and affection the 
 Humanity of our Lord. In these pages, and by 
 means of these Holy Names, his main purpose 
 has been to help such as may read this book 
 to think of the Lord's inward presence as a 
 most sacred reality, and a never-failing means of 
 support and comfort. 
 
 However inadequately this purpose may have 
 been fulfilled, this little book is now sent forth 
 with " God-with-us " as its watchword, and this 
 promise of the Gospel as its chief message : " He 
 dwelleth witli you, and shall be in you." 
 
 1 Footprints of the Saviour. 
 BOSTON, October, 1891.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 * 
 
 PACK 
 
 THE HOLY NAMES 13 
 
 A Chapter for Christmas Day. 
 
 I. THE LORD AS THE WONDERFUL . . 37 
 
 II. THE LORD AS THE COUNSELLOR . . 59 
 
 III. THE LORD AS THE MIGHTY GOD . . 81 
 
 IV. THE LORD AS THE EVERLASTING FATHER 105 
 V. THE LORD AS THE PRINCE OF PEACE . 131 
 
 Sppentofe. 
 
 A. THE STORY OF THE VIRGIN-BIRTH. ITS 
 
 AUTHENTICITY 161 
 
 B. A LAW OF CREATION AS APPLIED TO THE 
 
 MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION .... 166 
 
 C. THE PERSON OF THE SON OF MAN IN 
 
 THE LIGHT OF HlS OWN TESTIMONY . 170 
 
 D. A VENERABLE AND REMARKABLE WITNESS 176 
 
 E. THE SIMPLICITY OF THE GOSPEL-RECORDS, 
 
 AND THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT . . 185 
 
 F. THE STORY OF THE REDEMPTION . .189
 
 THE HOLY NAMES.
 
 O TENDER tale of old, 
 
 Live in thy dear renown ; 
 God's smile was in the dark, behold 
 
 That way Hia hosts came down ; 
 Light up, great God, thy Word ; 
 
 Make the blest meaning strong, 
 As if our ears, indeed, had heard 
 
 The glory of their song. 
 
 It was so far away, 
 
 But Thou could'st make it near, 
 And all its living might display 
 
 And cry to it, " Be here," 
 Here, in th' unresting town, 
 
 As once remote to them, 
 Who heard it when the heavens came down, 
 
 On pastoral Bethlehem. 
 
 It was so long ago, 
 
 But God can make it now, 
 And as with that sweet overflow, 
 
 Our empty hearts endow; 
 Take, Lord, those words outworn, 
 
 O ! make them new for aye, 
 Speak "Unto you a Child is born," 
 
 To-day to-day to-day. 
 
 Ho/y Honys, Carols, and Sacred Ballads.
 
 A CHAPTER FOR CHRISTMAS DAY. 
 
 * 
 
 " For unto us a Child is bom : unto us a Son in given : 
 and the government shall be upon His shoulder; and 
 Hit Name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, the 
 mif/kty God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of 
 Peace." 
 
 A /T UCH of the joy which Christmas day 
 A should bring, is in feeling that this 
 old fact of the Incarnation still lives ; that 
 it still is true ; that it still holds the promise 
 of the Divine nearness and loving-kindness. 
 Can we ask more, can we do more than to 
 read the story of the Nativity out of our 
 Gospels ; to try and bring this event before 
 ourselves as distinctly as possible ; to remem-
 
 14 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 her the love, of which it is a sign, the bless- 
 ings, of which it is a source, and then to take 
 the words of this ancient prophecy, and still 
 keeping them in their present tense, say, as 
 expressive of a present joy and a present 
 comfort, " Unto us a Child is born ; unto us 
 a Son is given." 
 
 It was some seven hundred years and more 
 prior to the Nativity that Isaiah uttered this 
 prophecy. A long period ; and yet by direc- 
 tion of Him to Whom "a thousand years are 
 but as yesterday," the prophecy conies to us 
 speaking in the present tense. More than 
 eighteen hundred years are passed since the 
 prophecy received its outward fulfilment in 
 the city of David, more than twenty-five 
 hundred years since it was first proclaimed in 
 Jerusalem ; and still, as we repeat it, we keep 
 proclaiming the fact it holds as a present fact, 
 the promise it offers as a present promise. A 
 thousand years hence, Christian men and
 
 THE INCARNATION A PRESENT TACT. 15 
 
 women will still be saying, " Unto us a Child 
 is born ; unto us a Son is given." 
 
 Now there is something extremely im- 
 pressive in the Divine expectation thus dis- 
 closed, that men would find something ever 
 fresh and gladdening in this fact of the Incar- 
 nation ; that instead of being the close of a 
 promise made years before, a settling up, as 
 it were, of God's account with the Church, it 
 would prove to be the sign and the means of 
 new beginnings, in the world's history, a 
 beginning; and a beginning just as truly in 
 the spiritual history of every true Christian 
 follower. In other words, God, as the Psalm- 
 ist has expressed it, is " a very present help 
 in trouble." With Him it is now, to-day, if 
 we will hear his voice; fresh help, fresh power. 
 And I think we may safely say that, as an 
 aid in thinking of the presence and the sav- 
 ing power of our Lord as perpetual, it was 
 intended that we should say, " Unto us a Child
 
 16 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 is born; unto us a Son is given." That is to 
 say, the Incarnation, by its very nature, is an 
 event which affects all time, all places, all 
 men. It cannot be relegated to the past. It 
 has just as important a place in the world's 
 life now, as on that night when the multitude 
 of the heavenly host poured out their " glory to 
 God in the highest." 
 
 For, put into the simplest possible form, 
 the Incarnation means God yielding Himself 
 to man ; God imparting Himself to man, tak- 
 ing the extreme, the one last step which had 
 not been tried, appearing as the Word made 
 flesh, as the Son of Man; and, on this basis 
 of visible contact and companionship, estab- 
 lishing a new relationship of love and saving 
 power. As the sign and beginning of that 
 new communion of life between God and 
 His children, we celebrate that ever-wonder- 
 ful, ever-beautiful act by which it was inaugu- 
 rated. In thought, we abide in the fields with
 
 WITH BETHLEHEM'S SHEPHERDS. 17 
 
 the shepherds once more as they keep watch 
 over their flocks by night. In thought, we 
 shrink with them as the angel-figure appears 
 to their spiritual sight, and proclaims the 
 good tidings of great joy. In thought, we 
 suddenly see the sky filled with a shining 
 host, and hear the song that has since sung 
 itself into all the world. In thought, we 
 hear the timid shepherds, as the curtains fall 
 upon their dazed senses, asking each other 
 what these things mean ; and climb the an- 
 cient terraces with them as they hurry to the 
 little town hard by. And there we search 
 with them, looking for the sign. What sign ? 
 "A babe wrapped in swaddling clothes, lying 
 in a manger." 
 
 And yet, if our conception of this event be 
 true, the sign and beginning of a new com- 
 munion of life between God and the children 
 of men, the real power and blessing of the 
 Incarnation is greater to-day than it was then. 
 2
 
 18 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 By its very nature, this new communion 
 gathers in strength and reality the longer it 
 exists. The older it grows, the fresher it be- 
 comes. The older it grows, the more it keeps 
 expanding and unfolding itself, both widening 
 and deepening the power of its blessings. So 
 that in a very real and important sense, the 
 Incarnation is more fully and completely a 
 fact to-day than it was when the Babe of 
 Bethlehem was wrapped in swaddling clothes 
 and laid in a manger. The fact, not less than 
 the Child, the fact of God's new relationship 
 with humanity, was in a state of promise, of 
 beginning. But the fact, like the child, was 
 one which was destined to grow. 
 
 And see ! the ancient prophecy puts the 
 fact of Incarnation as present, " Unto us a 
 Child is born ; " but the power of it, -the 
 government which is ultimately to rest on 
 the Child's shoulders, that is not at once ; 
 that shall come with growth, with increase.
 
 SACRED TIES AND BONDS. 19 
 
 And very wonderfully, in this single verse, is 
 sketched a succession or progression of states 
 which God comes to assume for humanity and 
 for every individual. Note them : He shall 
 be called : " Wonderful, Counsellor, the Mighty 
 God, the everlasting Father, the Prince of 
 Peace." 
 
 As indicating what is to be undertaken in 
 succeeding chapters, let me sketch this pro- 
 gression very briefly as it seems to me to shine 
 out in the Lord's own life in the flesh. We 
 shall then easily see how He successively 
 grows into these different relationships with 
 every man, who is gradually developing under 
 the influence of the incarnate life of God. 
 
 At the time of the Lord's birth, what was 
 He to those who looked upon Him ? A won- 
 der. He was not yet a Counsellor, a God, a 
 Father, nor a Prince. But He was a wonder. 
 Amazement filled the hearts of these simple 
 shepherds. This child, a Saviour! ay, Christ
 
 20 HOLT NAMES. 
 
 the Lord ! And the Virgin Mother, as she 
 heard them tell of the song in the heavens 
 which had that night been sung, she, too, mar- 
 velled, and pondered all these things in her 
 heart. And see ! the very narrative tells us 
 how that with the news which the shepherds 
 spread abroad that night, " all they that heard 
 it wondered." To the temple a few days later 
 the Child was carried ; and when the aged 
 Simeon uttered his inspired prophecy, "Joseph 
 and His Mother [it is written] marvelled at 
 those things which were spoken of Him." 
 Yes, the Child was indeed a Wonder, the prom- 
 ises and hopes of years centred in Him. 
 
 And then what is the next stage or sign 
 of development ? In the temple courts He 
 is standing; and now a power of wisdom is 
 shining out of the eager questions and an- 
 swers which issue from those young lips, fill- 
 ing the gray-beard teachers with astonishment. 
 Once more we see Him standing in the little
 
 UNKNOWN WISDOM. 21 
 
 town of Nazareth, iu the old synagogue ; and 
 as He finishes His first address, this was the 
 effect it produced : " And all bare Him wit- 
 ness, and wondered at the gracious words 
 which proceeded out of His mouth." In- 
 deed, one of the early questions concerning 
 Him was, " Whence hath this man this wis- 
 dom ? " The people were astonished at His 
 doctrine. Here, of a truth, was the Coun- 
 sellor, reading the thoughts of men's hearts, 
 answering the questions which they put to 
 Him, in a manner that often excited their 
 admiration. 
 
 But the growth did not stop there. Very 
 lovingly but firmly He began to show forth 
 the power of God, healing the sick, perform- 
 ing many a miracle, and exercising the divine 
 right of forgiving sin. And oftentimes men 
 knelt down to Him in adoration ; and some- 
 times the whole multitude would praise God 
 for all the mighty works which were done
 
 22 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 by Him. And as the end drew near, the ques- 
 tion kept narrowing down more and more as 
 to whether He were not the Son of God ; and 
 His enemies accused Him of blasphemy, because 
 they saw more and more clearly that He was 
 filling the functions of the very God of heaven. 
 But for the disciples, and others who were 
 constantly with Him, He caine to fill a place 
 more wonderful and beautiful than that of a 
 God of might. Listen to His conversation on 
 the night of the Last Supper. Note His 
 attitude towards the loving men about Him. 
 There is but one word that will adequately 
 express it, fatherly. They were reclining 
 about the table, sad at heart because of the 
 treachery and the coming death which He 
 had predicted. Judas rose up and left the 
 room. And when he was gone, the Lord, 
 looking around, we may suppose, upon the 
 men who were there sadly clinging to Him, 
 feeling a fatherly compassion for them, gently
 
 INTIMACIES OF DIVINE LOVE. 23 
 
 said, "Little children, yet a little while I am 
 with you." " Little children ! " In His thought 
 and feeling to them, and in theirs to Him, 
 He had become as a Father. They depended 
 upon Him, clung to Him as children would 
 do ; and it must have been a moment, which, 
 with all the sorrow, contained also much that 
 was precious, when He could feel it right to 
 say: "Little children.'' 
 
 We might think this was the end; but 
 there is one blessing more, the very fruit, 
 shall we not say, of all, peace, peace of heart. 
 And nearly the last words which He speaks 
 to His disciples even after He has called 
 them His children are, " Peace I leave with 
 you, My peace I give unto you." And His 
 first salutation to them, as they are assembled 
 after the Resurrection, is, " Peace be unto you." 
 And as a sign of the peace which comes by 
 His Spirit, He breathed on them, saying, a Re- 
 ceive ye the Holy Ghost."
 
 24 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 Look, then, how beautifully the old proph- 
 ecy has been fulfilled. Wonderful, Counsellor, 
 Mighty God, Father Everlasting, Prince of 
 Peace ! Quietly, step by step, He has as- 
 cended into each one of these relationships, 
 until at the close, in that large upper room, 
 He calls those who are about Him His " little 
 children," and gives them His peace. 
 
 And yet this is but the sign of the still 
 larger fact which we must ever keep before 
 us. What the Saviour did in the flesh, is 
 the living symbol and pledge of what the 
 incarnate life of God patiently seeks to do 
 for us and for all humanity. I believe this 
 prophecy means, that, step by step, the God- 
 in-Christ will be to the life of humanity 
 what the Saviour, while in the flesh, was to 
 those about Him. And if this be true, then 
 here, in this inspired utterance of the prophet, 
 is a foreshadowing of the history of the growth 
 and development of the truth of the Christ-life
 
 THE CHRIST-LIFE IN HUMANITY. 25 
 
 in the world of humanity. For as that truth 
 unfolds and gains in acceptance and power, 
 the Child, the Son, the God-with-us, will be- 
 come, not simply by name, but by experience, 
 the Wonderful, the Counsellor, the Mighty 
 God, the father Everlasting, the Prince ot 
 Peace. Here seems to be divinely expressed 
 a magnificent hope; a sublime expectation; 
 a majestic unfolding of what God's thought 
 and wish towards the world really are. 
 
 From the very first, the Lord has been as 
 a Wonder unto many. And yet, it might be 
 shown that even this state has its successive 
 stages. One may be simply in a state of 
 amazed perplexity over the miraculous fact 
 of the Incarnation. One may stand in rever- 
 ent awe before the thought, the mighty pur- 
 pose, which the fact discloses. Or one may 
 wonder and praise God for the spiritual power 
 and blessedness, which in some degree he be- 
 gins to feel as coming from this incarnate
 
 26 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 life of God. Much of this wonder and rever- 
 ential awe the Christian Church has felt. 
 Some of it has been mixed with superstitions 
 and errors. But much of it has been simple, 
 earnest, heartfelt wonder. And may we not 
 read in this ancient prophecy, a promise that 
 the world of humanity meaning by this, 
 not simply the world of religion, but of a 
 thoughtful, patient, truth-loving science, and 
 of a diligent philosophy shall come to 
 recognize with ever-increasing wonder, God 
 in humanity, as an active, ever-present power 
 in the life of our world. 
 
 But we must press on, great as is the temp- 
 tation to pause and point out some of the signs 
 that this is even now coming to pass. For 
 that is not the end. There are higher levels 
 to which humanity, according to our prophecy, 
 is to rise. I believe this prophecy teaches 
 that a time is coming, when those who seek 
 for spiritual wisdom shall turn with a new
 
 "LEARN OF ME." 27 
 
 power of confidence to Him, of whom it was 
 said, "Never man spake as this Man." I be- 
 lieve that one effect of truer doctrines in the 
 Church will be to send us back all the more 
 directly and trustingly to the life and teach- 
 ing of Jesus Christ ; and that more and more 
 we shall find there " the words of eternal life." 
 Surely we are only in the beginnings of this 
 kind of wisdom. We scarcely realize as yet 
 all that was intended, or the living basis of 
 confidence that was implied, when the Christ 
 said, "Learn of Me." But as we have fuller 
 experience in realizing how this incarnate life 
 does reveal spiritual thoughts, feelings, trials, 
 as no other power of intelligence can, He 
 shall be to us more and more a divine Coun- 
 sellor; and we shall be able to understand 
 with a new sense of certainty, how, through 
 Him, the Word, the Logos, the very creative 
 Wisdom, was made manifest, and accept from 
 His lips that ever-to-be-remembered testi-
 
 28 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 mony : " To this end was I born, and for 
 this cause came I into the world, that I should 
 bear witness to the Truth." 
 
 And see ! If the Christ-life grows thus in 
 its sublime power of wonder and counsel, the 
 surer are we that He shall exercise yet an- 
 other power, higher than either, yet growing 
 out of both. The Lord's miracles and benefi- 
 cent works were often spoken of as signs. 
 Signs of what ? The mighty power of God. 
 " No man can do these things which Thou do- 
 est," men were bound to exclaim, " except God 
 be with Him." And while the Pharisees tried 
 to raise the suspicion that He might be work- 
 ing through evil power, the effort was una- 
 vailing. "Can a devil open the eyes of the 
 blind ? " it was demanded. And the question 
 was never answered. And when, as seems 
 certain, the Christ-life shall so establish itself 
 among men as to exercise its power to cast 
 out devils, to heal wounds, to restore neglected
 
 CROWNING BLESSINGS. 29 
 
 powers, we shall feel more and more that here 
 is the very might of God. 
 
 Dare we hope for anything more ? Oh, let 
 us not hesitate to give to this prophecy full 
 scope, and hold it as a promise laid up for 
 humanity, that men, who have learned to feel 
 that in the Lord incarnate there is that mani- 
 festation and embodiment of that Divine life, 
 wisdom, power, which cause them to think 
 of Him, as Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, 
 shall also have an inward experience that the 
 communion of life from Him to them, the 
 relation which He sustains to them in every 
 spiritual experience through which they pass, 
 is as near, as tender, as faithful as that which 
 a true father bears to his child. 
 
 And then, as the crowning blessing, will 
 come the realization that the Lord is the 
 Prince of Peace ; that through His might 
 there are no fears, no temptations, which can- 
 not be subdued ; even as the wind and the
 
 30 HOLT NAMES. 
 
 sea sank into a calm at His command; and 
 that as the last best gift of God to men, there 
 is given to those who have faithfully lived 
 and conquered by His Spirit, a joy and rest 
 of soul which does not pass away but abideth 
 forever. 
 
 This same spiritual development might be 
 outlined as applying to our present and indi- 
 vidual life and experience. These names, 
 Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, Father 
 Everlasting, Prince of Peace, they stand out 
 like great white mile-stones on our spiritual 
 journey. In a life that is growing freely and 
 steadily, they mark clearly defined stages of 
 our spiritual growth. 
 
 The Lord, in our first acceptance of Him 
 and in our first efforts to follow Him, should 
 be to us the Wonderful; inspiring simple, 
 delighted, trustful awe for all that He came 
 to do and be. But He should come to be 
 our Counsellor; to whom it is still meet we
 
 YOUTH'S COUNSELLOR. 31 
 
 should run and kneel, and ask youth's best 
 question: "What shall I do that I may in- 
 herit eternal life." As with his growing life, 
 a young man learns of the men who, by force 
 of arms, or of genius, or of intellect, have been 
 leaders in the world; as ways of knowledge 
 open, and the conflict of human opinion sets 
 him to questioning and even doubting, the 
 greater the need of keeping himself true to 
 one Counsellor, who laid upon youth a simple 
 rule of duty, " If thou wilt enter into life, 
 keep the Commandments." 
 
 And then come the labors, not merely nor 
 chiefly of the hands, but of the brain and the 
 heart of manhood; an unsubdued power of 
 selfishness to be grappled with ; temptations 
 without number to be resisted ; disappointed 
 hopes to be borne ; trials to be endured ; pros- 
 perity, it may be, to be experienced without 
 pride, or selfish indulgence, or the stifling of 
 simple, religious states of trust and love. Ah,
 
 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 how sorely, when we are fairly entered into 
 this battling, baffling period of life, do we need 
 the good right arm of " the Mighty God " ! 
 
 And when the Lord has been to a man a 
 mighty God in this sense; when evils, which 
 were so hard to meet, gradually are conquered ; 
 when, according to the prophetic symbol, the 
 heart of stone, under the wonderful touch of 
 those kindly hands, is changed into a heart 
 of flesh ; and the man, for all his hard expe- 
 riences, becomes more tender, more sensitive 
 to good, more willing to act from that good, 
 then his relations with the Lord must become 
 more as the relation of the disciples with their 
 Master during the last days, when He thought 
 of them, and spoke of them, as " little children." 
 What that inward relationship of love really 
 is, many of us cannot yet know. But a fore- 
 taste of it we may have at the communion 
 table; and through that sacramental act, 
 which so beautifully expresses our depend-
 
 REST OF SOUL. 33 
 
 euce on Him for whatever is good and true, 
 we may feel and know that there is a com- 
 munion of life, an interchange, may we not 
 say, of affection and thought ; poor and clumsy 
 on our part ; strong, tender, undying, on His. 
 
 And there, too, in the holy calm that belongs 
 to the communion-hour, the selfish, worldly 
 thoughts put by, the uncharitable feelings 
 kept down ; trying to think, to feel in com- 
 mon what the Lord desires His life to be to 
 us, there, we may gain some slight expe- 
 rience of what it would be for us to be in 
 such a state of life that the Lord might ever 
 be our Prince of Peace. 
 
 Once more recall those names : Wonderful, 
 Counsellor, Mighty God, Father Everlasting, 
 Prince of Peace. And may the Lord be with 
 us in every effort to ascend this shining way!
 
 THE LORD AS THE WONDERFUL.
 
 How silently, how silently 
 
 The wondrous gift is given ! 
 So God imparts to human hearts 
 
 The blessings of His heaven. 
 No ear "may hear his coining, 
 
 But in this world of sin, 
 Where meek souls will receive Him still 
 
 The dear Christ enters in. 
 
 PHILLIPS BROOKS.
 
 jje ilotrt) a tfje t&ottfcerfuL 
 
 * 
 
 " And His name shall be called Wonderful." 
 
 T T TE are to attempt to sketch in this and 
 subsequent chapters the development 
 of the Christ-life in humanity, using as a 
 guide the prophecy which declared that the 
 Child, upon whose shoulder the government 
 shall rest, shall be called Wonderful, Coun- 
 sellor, the Mighty God, the Father Everlast- 
 ing, the Prince of Peace. By the " Christ-life " 
 we mean the very Divine Life itself as mani- 
 fested and brought forth in the person of Jesus 
 Christ our Lord. By "humanity" we mean 
 that life of affection, thought, action, proper 
 to us as human beings. The development of 
 the Christ-life in humanity means, then, in
 
 38 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 the sense in which we are using these terms, 
 the conscious acceptance in increasing fulness, 
 and on successively higher planes, of the Lord's 
 life in our own. 
 
 For consider the very first declaration of 
 this wonderful prophecy : " Unto us a Child 
 is born ; unto us a Son is given." Doubtless, 
 the words were written so, that one genera- 
 tion equally with another might know and 
 believe that the Incarnation, which we may 
 think of as the sign and beginning of a new 
 communion of life between God and His 
 children, was for the sake of all men. And 
 not only that: as expressive of God's near 
 relationship with humanity, the Incarnation 
 exists as an ever-present fact, which makes 
 its appeal to every human being that can be 
 brought to " hear the joyful sound." But by 
 its very nature, this new relationship, this 
 great fact of the " God-with-us." is one which 
 must grow. Gradually, as ways are opened,
 
 GROWING BENEFITS. 39 
 
 it must expand and unfold itself. Gradually, 
 as men's hearts grow more friendly towards 
 it, it must wid<_n and deepen the power of 
 its blessings. So that, as has previously been 
 pointed out, while the fact of Incarnation is 
 put as present, " Unto us a Child is born,"- 
 the power of it, the government which is to 
 rest on the Child's shoulder, that is not at 
 once, but comes with growth, with increase, 
 mounting up through a succession or progres- 
 sion of states and relationships which God 
 comes to assume for every man, and which 
 are so wonderfully described by these Divine 
 names : Wonderful, Counsellor, Mighty God, 
 Father Everlasting, Prince of Peace. 
 
 Here, then, is a fact of immense importance 
 for Christian people to consider: the real and 
 immediate presence of God. Think of the 
 Divine Life as a direct going forth of the 
 creative love and wisdom of God upon every 
 plane and degree of existence. Think of it
 
 40 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 as raying out from One who so accommodated, 
 and, so to say, extended His infinite nature 
 as to occupy, and thus include within Him- 
 self, this plane of existence in which we 
 now are ; rather than as proceeding from One 
 so remote from our present conditions that 
 He cannot be touched with a feeling of our 
 infirmities, cannot, from any experience within 
 Himself, know our frame and remember that 
 we are dust. For that nearer and more im- 
 mediate communion of life is what was ac- 
 complished ultimately by the Incarnation. 
 The birth of Jesus Christ, the ministry of 
 Jesus Christ, was not the coming of a Person 
 separate from God, who should take His place, 
 nor act even as a kind of champion for us. 
 Think of this, rather, as the one long promised, 
 long expected means by which the Divine 
 should become God-with-us. 
 
 See. 1 This Humanity, for all it was so like 
 our humanities in the experiences which it
 
 THE SOUL A LIVING ORGANISM. 41 
 
 voluntarily shared with the children of men, 
 
 was, as we believe, and as the Gospels declare, 
 
 
 conceived, not of man, but of the Holy Spirit. 
 
 In conception, that which is slowly developed 
 into a human being, or soul, is a living organ- 
 ism, composed of altogether spiritual sub- 
 stances. Gradually that primitive form, or 
 spiritual mind, becomes enveloped and pro- 
 tected within successive clothings, until the 
 mother, from the substances of the natural 
 world, silently weaves the swathes and cover- 
 ings which are to serve as a natural or phy- 
 sical body, and make possible its entrance into 
 this outer world. But when we speak of the 
 Incarnation, we are carefully to remember that 
 this primitive form was not, as with us, de- 
 rived from a human father, but was formed 
 or moulded by the Divine; formed, as with 
 men, of those altogether invisible and purest 
 substances of the spiritual world ; formed, 
 therefore, we may be sure, with a perfection
 
 42 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 never present with us, and with a richness 
 and fulness of spiritual good and truth, which 
 also marks a distinction between that and all 
 other humanities in their first state at birth. 
 Moreover, we are ever to remember that the 
 very inmost, that which in us first receives 
 life from the Divine, and is above the plane 
 of our consciousness, was in the Lord's Hu- 
 manity not a created form recipient of life, 
 as with man, but it was the very Divine Life 
 itself. 
 
 In first principles, then, the Humanity, we 
 may say, was Divine. Without the usual 
 agency of a human fatherhood, and thus, 
 avoiding the taint and limitations which go 
 with such a fatherhood, and which are never 
 wholly obliterated, these primitive and alto- 
 gether invisible substances, these first things 
 in the creation of a human organism, were 
 divinely gathered and moulded into that primi- 
 tive form which the Virgin Mary clothed with
 
 " CONCEIVED OF THE HOLY GHOST." 43 
 
 a body. More richly stored than with any 
 man ; pure and true with the purity and truth 
 belonging to the heavens ; gathered and formed 
 by a power of wisdom that does not err, this 
 initial or primitive mind was indeed, as the 
 Gospels declare, a "holy thing." Only in 
 the outer clothing of the natural mind and 
 in the successive wrappings furnished by the 
 woman-nature, did it share our weakness. But 
 primarily, essentially, it was born with the 
 capacity of becoming Divine, through the re- 
 moval of whatever was imperfect or limiting 
 and through complete union with the Divine. 
 
 And now think of this mind and nature to 
 which we give the general name "Humanity," 
 formed, we may properly say, under the Divine 
 auspices, not avoiding the way of entrance 
 into this world by which we all have come, 
 and yet taking its start, receiving its very 
 first or primitive form, from the very Divine 
 Itself, think of this Humanity as specially
 
 44 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 created that it might become the perfect in- 
 strument by which the Divine might come 
 and dwell among us. Through many ages 
 Jehovah God had filled angels with His 
 Spirit, and so had made Himself present 
 throughout the universal heavens. And me- 
 diately through the heavens, His Spirit had 
 gone forth to the sons of men. But a time 
 came, according to prophecy, when a cloud 
 of iniquity spread itself between God and 
 humanity, so dark, so dense, as to become 
 almost impenetrable to the purer influences 
 from above. And then the Lord God took the 
 last, the extreme step ; " bowed the heavens," 
 as the Scripture expresses it, "and came 
 down," not as at Sinai, with lightning-flash 
 and thunder-clap ; not by suddenly standing 
 upon the earth in the fulness of His glory ; 
 but, as the Scriptures had long ago declared, 
 by the seed of a woman, by the formation 
 and birth of the Humanity of Jesus Christ;
 
 SON OF MAN AND SON OF GOD. 45 
 
 to be the special instrument, by which in 
 time the very love and wisdom and spirit of 
 God might gradually come down into these 
 humbler planes of life in which men dwell, 
 and become so established in them as hence- 
 forth always to exert an immediate and saving 
 influence upon them. 
 
 Very like our humanities, in all that per- 
 tains to the growth of the natural body and 
 the natural mind, was the Humanity of our 
 Lord. The same tenderness and helplessness 
 of the infantile body; the same possibility of 
 weariness, hunger, thirst, pain; the same ex- 
 posure, too, in the lower planes of the mind, 
 to the assaults of evil, resulting in internal 
 struggle, temptation, and combat. And yet, 
 while humbly, ay, most gratefully acknowl- 
 edging this strange likeness, which makes 
 such appeal to our faith and love, we should 
 never forget that tmlikeness, that difference, 
 by which the Lord could be not simply Son
 
 46 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 of Man, ("man of sorrows and acquainted 
 with grief!"), but also, in the strictest and 
 highest sense, Son of God, having all power 
 in heaven and on earth. We should ever re- 
 member that, differently from us, that primi- 
 tive form or mind, around which the mother 
 simply weaves the clothings proper to the 
 natural world, was divinely begotten. In it, 
 therefore, was no such limitation or inherent 
 imperfection as belongs to us. Eather, it was 
 born with the capacity of becoming divine, 
 through union with the Divine, and through the 
 removal of what, in a relative sense, we speak 
 of as imperfections. For even " the heavens 
 are not clean in His sight." 
 
 And so we think of this Humanity of Jesus 
 Christ as so formed and born as to be able to 
 serve as a perfect instrument by which the 
 Lord God might come and dwell among us ; 
 might so express and adapt His love ; might 
 so shape and accommodate His truth ; might,
 
 BOWING THE HEAVENS AND COMING DOWN. 47 
 
 in a word, so set Himself to our human con- 
 ditions and needs, as to establish Himself in 
 this plane of existence, and forever after sus- 
 tain a relationship as near and immediate to 
 men of the earth as to angels of highest 
 heaven. 
 
 Gradually this was accomplished. Gradu- 
 ally the Divine Life of love and wisdom came 
 into the several planes which by incarnation 
 existed in the Humanity of Jesus Christ, re- 
 moved whatever was limiting or imperfect in 
 them, and made them Divine. First, those 
 which were inmost or highest, and on a line, 
 may we not say, with the life of the holiest 
 angels ; then those next below. And thus in 
 this invisible and quiet way, the Divine kept 
 coming down into these planes of life in which 
 angels are ; established Himself in those de- 
 grees, making them Divine in Himself, removing 
 every least imperfection, filling them, glorify- 
 ing them, making them one with Himself.
 
 48 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 And later on, this same process began to take 
 place in the lower degrees of thought and 
 affection, those in which we now are. And 
 here the process was more slow. For here, 
 there were more imperfections. Here, too, 
 there was a stronger appearance of separate- 
 ness from the God from whom the Humanity 
 was living. Here were direct assaults from 
 evil spirits ; here were experienced the de- 
 spising and rejecting of men ; here, amid depths 
 of sorrow and anguish which we cannot 
 fathom, was the putting away of every least 
 thought or wish which loving friends, which 
 cruel enemies, which bodily dangers, ay, which 
 " the pains of hell " could prompt, and which 
 looked to self-vindication, to self-preservation 
 even. And here, in these lower planes of 
 thought and affection, which we find it so 
 difficult to even moderately control, and 
 which lie so near to the senses of the body, 
 as easily to be seduced by its fallacies and
 
 MAKING THE HUMANITY DIVINE. 49 
 
 appetites, here, too, was carried on that same 
 process, which we have thought of as taking 
 place in the higher or heavenly degrees. 
 Every imperfection, every human or earthly 
 limitation was removed, until here, too, in the 
 planes of life in which we now are, not ex- 
 cepting even the physical, the divine of the 
 Lord became established. These degrees of 
 life were made divine in Himself; so that His 
 last words to the world were : " Lo, I am with 
 you always." And this, too, is His promise : 
 " Where two or three are gathered together in 
 my name, there am I in the midst of them." 
 " In the midst, " not spiritually far away, 
 but right here in these very planes and de- 
 grees in which we are thinking and feeling. 
 
 Whether the explanations which have been 
 offered in this chapter have in any way helped 
 to make this great and fundamental doctrine 
 of the Incarnation of the Humanity of Jesus 
 Christ more intelligible to the reader, we can
 
 50 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 not know. But if anything has been said 
 which has made this truth seem a little clearer, 
 I am sure we shall agree as to why, in that 
 brief but expressive list of names, the signifi- 
 cance of which we are to study, the very 
 first appellation to be applied to the Child 
 of Bethlehem, should be "the Wonderful." 
 Wonderfully, indeed, was He given ; and won- 
 derful the purpose for which He came. Even 
 those who knew no more than that a Saviour 
 had been born felt something of that strange 
 wonder with which even now we turn to this 
 ever-living fact. Amazement filled the hearts 
 of the simple shepherds. And all to whom they 
 broke the news that night wondered. Joseph 
 marvelled, as the aged Simeon, with the child 
 in his arms, poured out the prophecy concern- 
 ing Him. But with an awe yet deeper, the 
 Virgin mother, from whose lips I doubt not we 
 have all these tender narratives of the birth 
 and early days; she, " the highly favored," kept
 
 THE WONDERFUL. 51 
 
 all these things and pondered them in her 
 heart. 
 
 And the thought comes : We must not let 
 the wonderfulness die out of this ever-blessed 
 story. In the present unwillingness to accept 
 as truth anything which cannot be demon- 
 strated to be such to or by the senses ; in the 
 present craze for evolving truth out of the 
 collected experiences of mankind, and ignoring, 
 as childish, truths and knowledges which are 
 given as a revelation from above, we shall do 
 well to remember that it was declared of the 
 Child of Bethlehem, " His name shall be 
 called, Wonderful." We would not keep the 
 Incarnation as a mystery. We believe that it 
 is possible for the spiritual intelligence to see 
 the truthfulness of it. We believe it is even 
 possible for the spiritual intelligence to under- 
 stand in a degree how the Incarnation could be 
 true. But even for such, the fact, the Child, 
 the near and perfect relationship into which
 
 52 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 the Lord has come, should awaken and keep 
 awake a sense of wonder. These words are 
 written, well knowing that the natural rea- 
 son of man, which looks no further than to 
 nature for causes, is by instinct sceptical of 
 anything which presents itself as a distinctly 
 spiritual fact ; and that those who look no fur- 
 ther than into the substances of nature for 
 the origins of life, are declaring the impossibil- 
 ity of the virgin-birth. But remember, we are 
 standing merely on the plane of effects, not 
 causes; and he is but a sensualist who will 
 not let his thought, his faith, rise to a plane of 
 life and of truth where the senses, instead of 
 asserting themselves as masters, are well con- 
 tent to be as servants, bringing to the spiritual 
 intelligence such materials as are available for 
 the illustration and confirmation of divine 
 things. 
 
 To preserve a faith in the actuality of the 
 Divine, to stand before it in reverence, is
 
 REVERE THE HIGHEST. 53 
 
 surely a blessing, and one which, under right 
 conditions, cannot but exert a powerful influ- 
 ence upon the inner workings of a man's life. 
 To lose that faith, for one may lose it, to 
 turn to nature or to self as a god, is to shut 
 up the heaven of the soul Revere the high- 
 est ! Eevere the best ! Have faith in the 
 wonderful ! 
 
 And somehow this hope comes : although 
 many may not acknowledge with their lips the 
 Divinity of the Lord ; although they may not 
 in their thought rationally perceive it, still, to 
 nearly every man or woman who at heart is 
 trying to lead the Christian life, the Saviour 
 is inwardly cherished as the Wonderful; the 
 fullest, the most perfect embodiment of the 
 divine life among men. Call Him a man 
 among men ; and yet there is no Christian but 
 would deem it a sacrilege to claim equality 
 with Jesus of Nazareth. Something here that 
 is different ; that never seems to lose its per-
 
 54 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 feet height ; something that men keep coming 
 back to with new questions, with fresh expla- 
 nations ; something that affords a view of the 
 Divine Life as it can be seen nowhere else ; 
 something that keeps drawing out the deepest 
 confidences of the human heart. It is well 
 so ; for, as the Psalmist says, " The fear [that is, 
 the reverence] of the Lord is the beginning of 
 wisdom." First, " the Wonderful." Let the 
 children's first thought and knowledge of Him 
 who came even as a child, be of His perfect 
 wisdom and love. Let them feel that through 
 Baptism they are to bear His Name, and as 
 the old baptismal service puts it, " continue 
 Christ's faithful soldiers and servants unto 
 their life's end." Other names will be spoken 
 into their ears, as youth advances ; the deeds of 
 many a hero whom the world holds dear in its 
 memory will be recounted. Shall these dim 
 the brightness of that earlier vision of per- 
 fect life ? The gentleness, the truth, the
 
 THE SUPREMACY OF THE CHRIST. 55 
 
 faithfulness of it ; the holiness of purpose ; 
 the revelation made here of what God is and of 
 what man should be; of the power of self- 
 sacrifice, of the sacredness of service, shall He 
 who embodied all this and more than this, ever 
 cease to be to our thought " the "Wonderful ? " 
 And if we should see in Him something more 
 than man, than hero, than example ; if we 
 should see in His Humanity the perfect instru- 
 ment, " conceived of the Holy Ghost, born of 
 the Virgin Mary," capable of being glorified 
 and of being the means by which the very Di- 
 vine Life of love and wisdom could gain and 
 forever retain an immediate presence with men 
 on earth, would the wonder grow any less ? 
 For such, has not the Psalmist rightly spoken : 
 " I will remember the works of the Lord : 
 surely I will remember thy wonders of old ? "
 
 THE LORD AS THE COUNSELLOR.
 
 IN the way that He shall choose 
 
 He will teach us, 
 Not a lesson we shall lose, 
 
 All shall reach us. 
 
 Strange and difficult indeed 
 
 We may find it, 
 But the blessing that we need 
 
 Is behind it. 
 
 All the lessons He shall send 
 
 Are the sweetest, 
 And His training, in the end, 
 
 Is completest. 
 
 HAVEEGAL.
 
 Cfje Horti a# tfje Counsellor, 
 
 * 
 
 " And His name shall be called . . . Counsellor" 
 
 T)Y the Lord as the Counsellor, we think 
 *-^ of Him with special reference to His 
 making the Divine Truth known to men. 
 With the ordinary teacher, we should think 
 of this as involving the learning of facts and 
 principles, rationally apprehending them, and 
 then imparting them to others. We should 
 think of the teacher as one who serves as a 
 mediator between Truth on the one hand, 
 and those who are in ignorance of it on the 
 other. Moreover we should think of the 
 Truth as not only separate from, but as supe- 
 rior to the Teacher. 
 
 Now, turn for a moment to the Gospel of 
 St. John. As the apostles linger about the
 
 60 HOLT NAMES. 
 
 table of the Last Supper, weighed down by 
 the thought that He is to be betrayed and 
 withdrawn from them, He, trying to revive 
 their drooping spirits, tells them that although 
 He is going from their sight, He is in reality 
 going to prepare a place for them, where, by 
 a way which they know, they may rejoin 
 Him. And one honest soul, not ashamed to 
 show his ignorance, and feeling, no doubt, that 
 he would rather keep Him as He was with 
 them there than run this chance of a reunion 
 after death, bluntly declares that they know 
 neither the place nor the way of which He 
 is speaking. We can easily imagine that this 
 declaration was either openly or silently ac- 
 quiesced in by all. And here did indeed seem 
 to be a fatal obstacle to that quiet certainty 
 of heart, which the Lord was trying to estab- 
 lish among them. Here was that spirit of 
 doubt and spiritual ignorance, which so often 
 springs up in the human heart, and just as
 
 "HOW C4N WE KNOW THE WAY?" 61 
 
 the Divine consolations seem likely to become 
 complete, and the portal of death is quietly 
 swinging open to reveal itself as a way to 
 eternal life, waives faith back, and cries, as 
 if to one who has disappeared behind that 
 portal, "We know not whither thou goest; 
 and how can we know the way?" 
 
 What feelings that cry of Thomas awakened 
 in the Lord's heart, as they sat there on that 
 last night, in the quiet upper chamber, who 
 shall tell ? Three years He had taught Thomas 
 Didymus and his fellow-disciples. What more 
 could be said ? " We know not whither Thou 
 goest ; and how can we know the way ? " 
 There they seemed to have to part from Him. 
 And then, as they listened, there was made 
 an answer far more wonderful than the promise 
 He had just held out to them. Few and sim- 
 ple the words are; and yet no saint, no sage, 
 no reformer, no prophet, nor seer of whom we 
 have ever heard, has thought to utter those
 
 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 words. Ponder them I " I am the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life." 
 
 It has been the claim of many a wise and 
 devout man, that he could point out the right 
 way ; could make known the truth ; could 
 lead the inquirer to the true source of life. 
 But who has ever deliberately said : " I am the 
 Way, the Truth, the Life ? " We will narrow 
 our inquiry down to the one term which im- 
 mediately concerns our subject. Who has ever 
 said, " / am the Truth ! " Truth, which in its 
 purest and naked principles exists neither with 
 men, nor angels, but with God only ! Truth, 
 which is the order itself underlying the Lord's 
 Kingdom ; nay, which is the veriest reality in 
 the universe ; the form of the very Divine 
 Love or Life, forever guiding it in its creative, 
 regenerating work; that internal light, yea, 
 that substance of substances, by the reception 
 of which man becomes man ! Think of Truth 
 in this its large and exalted meaning, and not
 
 THE CHRIST AND THE TRUTH. 63 
 
 simply as a little book-knowledge, or some pet 
 idea or doctrine which one has fondly labelled 
 as " truth," and then turn to this Figure who 
 quietly says, "I am the Truth!" 
 
 Do we say or think, "The Lord could not 
 have used this language in so important a 
 sense." Ah, was it not the case that men's 
 thoughts and interpretations were always fall- 
 ing far short of His meaning ? And do we 
 imagine that in this instance we are a little 
 ahead of Him ; and that He little knew what 
 was involved in this identity between Him- 
 self and the Truth ? And was He also falling 
 short of the full meaning of His words when 
 He said : " I am the Light of the world ! " or, 
 "The words that I speak unto you, they are 
 spirit and they are life?" Was He speaking 
 below the range of our best thought, when 
 He made His identity with the Truth the 
 very ground of His divine royalty, saying to 
 the Eoman governor, " To this end was I born,
 
 64 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 and for this cause came I into the world, that 
 I should bear witness to the Truth"? 
 
 Here, now, is a subject of immense impor- 
 tance: the Lord's relation to the Truth. By 
 the promise of Scripture; by the experiences 
 of the Christian Church, whose very existence 
 rests upon that Kingdom of the Truth of 
 which He declared Himself to be King; by 
 the testimony of the hearts of many genera- 
 tions who have turned to Him for the words 
 of eternal life, the Lord has been pre-eminently 
 man's spiritual Counsellor. Eighteen centuries 
 have but verified this claim. In all that ap- 
 pertains to spiritual life, there is no Christian 
 man but must feel that in some degree the 
 Lord is his Teacher. We say "in some de- 
 gree," because all may not see alike the ex- 
 tent, nor the real basis of this claim. The 
 Lord stands before Christian men to-day as 
 the One of all others who can show them the 
 way of spiritual life, who can teach them the
 
 "MY WORDS SHALL NOT PASS AWAY!" 65 
 
 Truth. Why? By what right? What gave 
 Him the right to say; "Heaven and earth 
 shall pass away, but my words shall not pass 
 away ?" And yet the history of human thought 
 upon every subject of knowledge is a constant 
 shifting from one form and statement and be- 
 lief to another, new facts brought to the eye ; 
 old ones seen in new relations and in new 
 light. And yet that claim put forth in the 
 realization of such changes, "heaven and 
 earth shall pass away," confidently assert- 
 ing the immutability of the judgments of His 
 mouth, " my words shall not pass away ! " 
 Again we ask, upon what does such a claim 
 rest ? How can we know that the truths 
 which the Lord taught are the very truths 
 which He thought them to be ? How, to 
 point our question still more directly to the 
 special subject before us, can we know that 
 the Lord is, of all others who ever have been 
 or ever may be, the supreme, the absolutely
 
 66 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 sure teacher in spiritual arid divine things, so 
 as to be not only in name but in very fact 
 our Counsellor? 
 
 Do not imagine for a moment that such 
 questions are asked from any love of discus- 
 sion. Nor let us say, This is not a " practical " 
 subject ; it does not affect me in my present 
 spiritual condition with its vexations, cares, 
 conflicts. If we would make and keep our 
 religion practical it must be founded on real- 
 ity, not book-knowledge simply ; not sen- 
 timent merely ; but fact, truth. The Christ 
 declares himself to be that reality, that fact, 
 that Truth. Ascertain that; see it to be so; 
 and our religion shall not float in air, shall 
 not moulder away in books, shall not dream 
 itself away in weakly sentiment. It shall 
 be founded upon a Rock. So that when the 
 rains descend, and the floods come, and the 
 winds blow and beat upon our spiritual house, 
 it shall not fall because founded upon a Rock.
 
 BEGINNING OF THE HUMAN ORGANISM. 67 
 
 Strive we then to understand, not so much 
 how the Lord knew Truth, as how, and in what 
 sense, He became Truth, so that he could de- 
 clare His identity with it. And here I must 
 ask the reader to recall what was presented 
 in the preceding chapter, as to the assumption 
 and the nature of the Humanity born into the 
 world. The very primitive form, or, as we 
 have spoken of it, " initiament," around which 
 the substances of the natural world were woven 
 by the mother in the form of a physical body ; 
 that was not material, was not natural, did 
 not even have the limitations which inevi- 
 tably adhere to one derived of a human 
 fatherhood. With every individual, that first 
 form or beginning of the human organism is 
 distinctly spiritual, and is composed of spirit- 
 ual substances. Around this are successively 
 formed the swathes and coverings of the 
 natural mind and spiritual body, and, outer- 
 most of all, the natural or physical body.
 
 68 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 But in the conception and birth of the Hu- 
 manity of our Lord, that first or primitive 
 form was not derived from a human father, 
 but was formed or moulded by the Divine; 
 formed, as with men, of those altogether in- 
 visible and purest substances of the spiritual 
 or heavenly world ; formed, therefore, we may 
 be sure, with a perfection never present with 
 us, and with a richness and fulness of spirit- 
 ual good and truth, which also marks a dis- 
 tinction between that and all other human 
 natures in their first state at birth. This Hu- 
 manity was thus formed and born in order 
 that it might be the perfect instrument by 
 which the very Divine Love and Wisdom 
 could become known, established, and thus 
 be immediately present on every plane and 
 degree of angelic and of human life. To put 
 it in another way, it was the one instrument 
 by which God could think and feel in just 
 the plane of life in which we are thinking
 
 TRUTH DIVINE KNOW ABLE. 69 
 
 and feeling, or in which angels think and 
 feel ; and, as a result of bringing His Divine 
 Love and Wisdom into these human and 
 angelic planes, and establishing them there, 
 becoming immediately present in them. 
 
 And now, do we not begin to see what we 
 are searching for: how the Humanity of the 
 Lord could become Divine Truth, so that 
 He could say, " I am the Truth " ? Simply, 
 for in this view of it, it is simple, by 
 the Divine Wisdom coming down successively 
 into each one of the degrees of that nature, 
 from highest to lowest, removing every slight- 
 est imperfection in them, and establishing 
 itself in those planes or degrees of life. 
 
 We have had occasion to notice that as 
 a process, this descent of the Divine into 
 the degrees of the Human first took place in 
 those which were highest. Let me illustrate. 
 We will think of that plane of angelic life, 
 the highest, in which they dwell of whom
 
 70 HOLT NAMES. 
 
 it is said, " They always behold the face of 
 my Father who is in heaven." Such are 
 represented by the Lord as being in spiritual 
 association with little children ; drawn to 
 them no doubt because of their love for what 
 is pure and innocent. Love, mercy, peace, 
 innocence, these are all qualities of that 
 celestial plane of being. By creation every 
 mind has that degree of life; and if he will 
 but carry the work of regeneration far enough 
 so as really to become in spirit a little child, 
 he will come into the full use and enjoyment 
 of that degree after death. But the quality 
 of that life, pure as it is, is not Divine. It 
 is angelic, celestial; but not Divine. It has 
 its limitations. And by making that plane 
 of life Divine in the Humanity of the Lord, 
 we mean the removal of those limitations, 
 so that on that plane love was perfect, abso- 
 lute, God's own love. 
 
 See ! the parable of the Prodigal Son will
 
 ABSOLUTE LOVE. 71 
 
 help us. We might think of the relative 
 difference between the perfect love of our 
 Heavenly Father and the highest form of 
 celestial love, as being something like the 
 difference between the father's and the elder 
 brother's love for the profligate who had come 
 home in shame. Such unconditional forgive- 
 ness ; such absolute love ; such joy over the 
 boy who has come back in tatters, without 
 a word of bitterness, or of wounded love, 
 that was something which the elder brother, 
 for all his fidelity and virtue, could not un- 
 derstand. And something like this same dif- 
 ference exists, doubtless, between the love of 
 the highest angels and the Saviour-love of 
 God, who is kind to the unthankful and to 
 the evil, and sendeth rain on the just and 
 on the unjust. Think you they could enter 
 into the depths of that love which took this 
 strange way of coming to men ; which could 
 love on through every form of shame or
 
 72 HOLT NAMES. 
 
 abuse ; which felt no bitterness ; desired no 
 vindication ; encircled, yet forced itself upon 
 no one ; lent itself, spent itself freely, utterly, 
 for the good of all men ! Why, this love of sav- 
 ing, of building up, of giving joy, of reciprocal 
 union, this is the very Divine Life itself. 
 God, and God alone, is such Life. 
 
 And just as on this highest or celestial plane 
 of life, so on every succeeding plane or de- 
 gree, the limitations and imperfections pecu- 
 liar to each were, in the Lord's Humanity, 
 put off, and the perfect love and wisdom of 
 the Divine, keyed, we might say, so as to be 
 in harmony with it, were substituted and es- 
 tablished. And this same process included 
 even the degrees of life in which the natural 
 mind of man is. And here of course the 
 imperfections were much greater, and the 
 substitution of Divine for human ways of 
 thinking and feeling much more difficult and 
 slow. And yet as the way was prepared, the
 
 THE LORD THINKING AND FEELING AS GOD. 73 
 
 Divine of the Lord came down into these 
 planes no less than the higher ones, and 
 made them Divine. We think and feel as 
 men; the Lord, standing in our place, and 
 amid our conditions, learned to think and feel, 
 and does so now, as God. 
 
 And so, in this marvellous yet ever silent, 
 hidden way, step by step, in every degree of 
 human life, the Lord, first thinking and feel- 
 ing as the angels and as we do, gradually put 
 away all the limiting things of their and of 
 our thought and affection, and then came to 
 think and to feel divinely. And with this 
 glimpse of the change which was wrought in 
 His Humanity, what a new power of meaning 
 there is in such language as " The words that 
 I speak unto you, I speak not of myself ; " 
 "My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent 
 me ; " "I can of Mine own self do nothing ! " 
 The apparent duality all disappears. The 
 Lord is telling us that the wisdom and the
 
 74 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 power are not such as can be spoken of as 
 belonging to a human state. They are not, as 
 men are fond of saying, the result of any "nat- 
 ural development." Kather they are the very 
 Divine Wisdom and power of Love accommo- 
 dated to and brought down into these human 
 planes of thought and affection. " If I bear 
 witness of Myself, My witness is not true." 
 Here, may we not say, is His way of telling 
 us that by no amount of natural development 
 or self-intelligence could Divine Truth be set 
 forth before men. On the other hand, His wit- 
 ness is true, because the wisdom from which 
 He speaks is the Divine Wisdom come down 
 in Him into the planes of our human life. 
 
 To one to whom this doctrine of the Divine 
 Humanity appears as true, how perfectly it ex- 
 plains the Lord's meaning when He said, "I 
 am the Truth." Nay, more, how it establishes 
 the ground of Christian confidence! The 
 Lord's words are true, because He speaks not
 
 THE GROUND OF CHRISTIAN CONFIDENCE. 75 
 
 of Himself, not from any intelligence re- 
 sulting, as men are apt to think, from long in- 
 tellectual training or a power of self-derived 
 intelligence, but from a wisdom which is 
 Divine. 
 
 And yet, to know how this was is only for 
 the sake of knowing that it is. Little the 
 people knew, as they thronged about Him to 
 hear Him tell of the Kingdom of Heaven, 
 how it was that He had such wisdom. And 
 yet they came to Him with their questions; 
 marvelled at His teachings ; and rightly said, 
 "Never man spake like this man." And if, 
 though dimly as yet, we may understand some 
 of the things which then were hidden, it surely 
 must be to the end that more confidently, 
 more unreservedly even than the people of old, 
 we may go to Him for the words of eternal life. 
 
 To know that the Lord, by that work of 
 glorification which was carried on in His Hu- 
 manity, became the Divine Truth ; that what
 
 76 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 He has told us about our present lives, our 
 spiritual needs, about eternal life, about the 
 Divine Providence must be true because it 
 was Truth Speaking ! Amid the changing 
 of opinions ; the man-made religions which 
 spring up, and totter, and fall ; amid the false 
 Christs and false prophets which beckon for a 
 following, how precious, how restful this blessed 
 certainty which still quietly stands among us ! 
 We who may be asking, " What shall I do that I 
 may inherit eternal life ? " we who may be say- 
 ing with Philip, " Show us the Father ; " we 
 who in some failure, or sin, or travail of soul 
 may some day feel the need of the Divine con- 
 solations, and the word and the touch of One 
 whom we feel to be true, forget not where 
 Truth is. 
 
 " Amid the weak, One strong, 
 
 Amid the false One true, 
 Amid all change, One changing not, 
 One hope we ne'er shall rue.
 
 THE LORD AS THE COUNSELLOR. 77 
 
 In whose sight all is Now, 
 In whose love all is best: 
 The things of this world pass away, 
 Come, let us iu Him rest."
 
 THE LORD AS THE MIGHTY GOD.
 
 " THE very God ! think, Ahib ; dost thou think ? 
 So the All-Great, were the All-Loving too 
 So, through the thunder conies a human voice 
 Saying, ' heart I made, a heart beats here! 
 Face My hands fashioned, see it in Myself. 
 Thou hast no power nor may'st conceive of mine, 
 But love I gave thee, with Myself to love, 
 And thou must love Me who have died for thee ! ' ' 
 
 BROWNING.
 
 * 
 
 .ffis name shall be called . . . the mighty God." 
 * 
 
 r I ^0 be able to read these few words and 
 feel that they are made true through 
 the life and nature of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
 is a triumph, surely, of Christian faith. " Be- 
 lieve in God ; believe also in Me," our Lord 
 exclaimed. The God-like and the Christian- 
 like, were they not linked together ? " My 
 Lord and my God ! " Into the mind of the 
 awestruck Thomas, God and the living Lord 
 entered through one single thought. " Beware," 
 wrote the Tarsus Jew, "lest any man spoil 
 you through philosophy and vain deceit, after 
 the tradition of men, after the rudiments of 
 the world, and not after Christ. For in Him
 
 82 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead 
 bodily." From their worship of " the un- 
 known God," the Athenians were exhorted to 
 turn the thoughts of their hearts to Him by 
 whom God was become God-manifest. 
 
 And so it has been throughout the history 
 of the Christian Church ; so it is now. Some 
 portion, at least, of His followers, associating 
 their thoughts of Him with their thoughts of 
 God, and when they looked for Divine help 
 in meeting their trials or resisting their evils, 
 turning instinctively to Him who invited just 
 this kind of approach and appeal when He 
 said, " Come unto Me all ye that labor and 
 are heavy laden." Men's thoughts of this 
 Saviour-Lord have not been always clear, 
 are not now. They have often been widely 
 different. And yet it would seem as if there 
 have always been some who have found com- 
 mon ground in simply thinking of the Lord as 
 the Saviour of their souls ; as One who stands
 
 HEART-CLINGING. 83 
 
 related to them and to their inmost thoughts 
 and feelings and needs, as would be impossible 
 to any man or angel. To Him in trial-hours 
 their thoughts have turned. His name has 
 rested on their lips as they " fell asleep." By 
 Him they have been cheered and strengthened. 
 From Him has come a peace which passeth 
 all understanding; as if once again He trod 
 upon life's sea, and to the winds and the waves 
 cried, " Peace, be still ! " 
 
 Very wonderful, very beautiful, and, we have 
 no right to doubt, very real has been and still 
 is this simple looking, this heart-clinging to 
 the Friend of publicans and sinners. What 
 pains have been and are endured in this 
 name ! What struggles against the sins of 
 one's heart have been and still are carried 
 on because of Him ! The history of Christ 
 the Lord, as He has lived it again and again 
 in men's hearts, who shall write us that ? 
 The thoughts He has illumined ; the longings
 
 84 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 He has inspired ; the maimed, the blind, the 
 palsied things of our nature on which He has 
 laid those kindly hands ; the dead thoughts 
 and feelings that have come to life through 
 Him; the possession and tormen tings of devils 
 that have been brought to an end ! Again we 
 say, who shall write for us this spiritual his- 
 tory of the Saviour Lord, with its lowly begin- 
 nings ; its gentle counsellings ; man's doubting 
 and adoring; the following aud forsaking; the 
 selfish and evil things in us trying to silence, 
 to arrest, to kill and bury Him out of sight; 
 and then, for some, after severe temptation, 
 the coming forth in still greater power and 
 deathless victory! 
 
 Very real this spiritual history is, too real 
 to be overlooked or denied in any attempt to 
 understand the Eedeemer's life. Indeed, it 
 seems certain that it is this spiritual help 
 and reality of the Son of Man which has 
 kept and still keeps Him in an altogether
 
 THE ENDURING POWER OF CHRIST. 85 
 
 different position and relation with us from 
 any other being of whom men have knowl- 
 edge. How has faith in the Redeemer so 
 persistently endured, when urged under the 
 form of dogmas which appear to be so foreign 
 to the real truth of the Gospel ? Think of 
 the intolerance, the persecutions, the abuse of 
 spiritual power through the lust of dominion, 
 which have brought such misery into the 
 Church itself, and engendered such wwChrist- 
 like thoughts and feelings. See the Church 
 of to-day divided, bearing different names; 
 more tolerant, perhaps, and yet each sect jeal- 
 ous of its respective doctrines, practices, and 
 titles ; all claiming, it may be, a desire for 
 unity, but certainly not formed into that 
 united and altogether loving communion into 
 which surely the Church of Christ shall some 
 day come. 
 
 And then, how strange it seems that the 
 power of the Redeemer's life should have
 
 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 endured through all these things ; strange, 
 until its spiritual reality is remembered ; 
 until it is recognized as exerting an influence 
 upon the spiritual life of man, having still 
 the power to call out trust, to comfort, to 
 inspire, to remove evil. That this power is 
 what it might be and yet will be, if with 
 truer thoughts and humbler hearts we would 
 turn to its living source, is not for a moment 
 pretended. But even then, this remains : if 
 the spiritual experiences of pure and devoted 
 followers, some of them known to us, but many 
 more, whose names, uncelebrated, are yet writ- 
 ten in heaven, if these inward experiences are 
 true, this fact is certain : there has been from 
 the beginning and still is an influence, a power 
 of the Spirit, which radiates from the risen 
 and glorified Lord, and which, through the 
 experiences of those whose hearts have been 
 opened to it, attest not simply its reality, but 
 its uplifting, life-giving power. While the
 
 SPIRITUAL REALITY OF CHRIST'S LITE. 87 
 
 scholar is " weighing the evidences " as to the 
 authenticity of this or that passage; while 
 the theologian is at work on the "formulas 
 of faith," yonder man, who is trying to meet 
 some trial, or to be faithful in some duty, 
 or seeking protection from some evil, turning 
 humbly, trustfully, appealingly to his Saviour, 
 and into whose heart there comes a new 
 feeling of courage, of pure desire, of pro- 
 tection, that man, is he not gaining a 
 living testimony of the loving presence and 
 power of the Kedeemer's life? Something of 
 this there has always been, from the moment 
 that the Saviour, in being withdrawn from out- 
 ward gaze, said, " Lo, I am with you always." 
 And this it is, which, supported by the simple 
 story of the Gospels, has, in spite of false 
 teachings, abuses, denials, kept the Godliness 
 of Christ as a fact among those who take 
 His name. It is a part of the history of 
 the Christ-life which cannot be forgotten nor
 
 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 lightly put aside. Though we ourselves should 
 have had but little of this inward experience, 
 that does not render us free to ignore or 
 to make light of the testimony of those who 
 have. 
 
 And more : It is, we are convinced, from this 
 side, rather than from doctrinal argument, that 
 the sole Divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ can 
 best be approached. For of this we may well 
 be sure : the presentation of a doctrine, how- 
 ever true, is but one step in the formation of 
 faith. For faith is an inward thing. Essen- 
 tially it is a state of interior confidence, 
 resulting from a preception that a tiling is 
 true. Not always does such a faith express 
 itself in words, nor even in a well-ordered 
 series of thoughts. To have faith as a grain 
 of mustard-seed is not, necessarily, to have 
 a belief concerning God which is theologically 
 exact ; but it is, in simple, heartfelt confidence, 
 to do the things which the Lord declares to
 
 PRACTICAL BELIEVING. 89 
 
 be right, humbly, faithfully, religiously. If a 
 man has that kind of faith and really prac- 
 tises it, what mountains of selfish love may 
 he not have removed ! True doctrine helps 
 to make plain to a man's thought the confi- 
 dence he feels. To that extent it enlarges and 
 strengthens it. It gives it form. It enables 
 him to examine and understand it. The man 
 feels fortified. False doctrine, on the other 
 hand, may confuse, and may even make faith 
 blind. But in either case it is essential to 
 remember that faith is dependent upon an 
 internal disposition and inclination, and not 
 simply upon theological or doctrinal state- 
 ments. No wonder, then, that we should 
 find the Lord saying : " No man can come 
 unto Me except the Father which hath sent 
 Me draw him;" words which, in their sim- 
 plest meaning, may well teach us that man 
 cannot be driven to accept the Lord as a 
 Saviour by any outside power of argument,
 
 90 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 nor by doctrine alone, nor by human exhor- 
 tation alone. 
 
 And so, while the subject of the Lord as 
 the mighty God might, of all others which 
 we shall consider, seem to suggest a theologi- 
 cal treatment, it has appeared to us that the 
 most hopeful side from which to approach it 
 is this side of spiritual experience upon which 
 we have chiefly dwelt. The favorite texts on 
 which we rely for proof of the Lord's Divin- 
 ity might easily be brought together. Nor 
 would it be difficult to show how, if we deny 
 this Divinity, we actually compromise the Son 
 of Man, make Him declare things concerning 
 His divine descent and union with the Father ; 
 make Him claim powers and assume relations 
 with mankind, which were either a dream, an 
 exaggeration, or a deception. But the texts 
 and the arguments are familiar. We should 
 not gain much by another use of them. Be- 
 sides, in the two preceding chapters, we have
 
 PRACTICAL HELP. 91 
 
 tried to state with some degree of particular- 
 ity some things which might be of help, not 
 in proving this Divinity, but in enabling us to 
 see, if possible, how the Lord could and did 
 assume a human nature; how it was a per- 
 fect instrument by which the Divine Love 
 and Wisdom would come down and become 
 established in all the successive planes of 
 angelic and human life; and how, because of 
 such a corning, God is immediately and sav- 
 ingly near to all men. This much, as an aid 
 to clearer thinking, have we tried to do. But 
 far more desirous should we be to learn some 
 of the spiritual results of this presence ; to 
 know something about this influence, this 
 power, that we associate with the Lord. And 
 if we can see that it has a power over evil, 
 that now, as in the days of old, it is the one 
 force that can set us really free from the 
 devils of our nature ; can cure, can .bless, can 
 forgive, shall we not be learning in the best
 
 92 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 of ways that the Lord was indeed rightly called 
 in prophecy " the Mighty God " ? 
 
 And here is a point worth remembering : the 
 people's thoughts of the Lord as divine, and 
 the Lord's power over evil, are invariably as- 
 sociated together. Nay, there is something 
 more remarkable yet : evil spirits themselves 
 recognized His power as divine ! "What have 
 we to do with Thee, Jesus of Nazareth ? . . . 
 I know Thee who Thou art ; the Holy One of 
 God" What was it provoked the Pharisees, 
 so that they accused Him of blasphemy ? He 
 was sitting in a house teaching, when through 
 an opening in the roof a helpless cripple on 
 his pallet was let down at His feet. And 
 looking at that sufferer as he lay there before 
 Him, He quietly said : " Man, thy sins be 
 forgiven Thee." And instantly the thought 
 arose in the minds of many of the bystanders, 
 "Who is this which speaketh blasphemies? 
 Who can forgive sins but God alone ? " He
 
 DIVINE MINISTRATIONS. 93 
 
 was sitting in a Pharisee's house. The cus- 
 tomary bathing of the feet, the kiss of salu- 
 tation, the anointing, all had been omitted; 
 until the sinful woman knelt down at those 
 feet and wept, and kissed and poured oil upon 
 them. And He who came to call sinners to 
 repentance said to the woman : " Thy sins are 
 forgiven." But the Pharisees, and those who 
 sat at meat, said, " Who is this that forgiveth 
 sins also ? " 
 
 Oh, how often was that word " forgive " on 
 those lips ! How often was He giving release 
 from some bondage of evil ! How closed and 
 hardened and embittered the life of the little 
 publican of Jericho had been, until one day 
 the Friend of publicans stood at his door; 
 and to the amazement, we doubt not, of the 
 despised man whose soul opened .to this new 
 influence of love that had sought it, declared, 
 what God alone has the right to declare : 
 "This day is salvation come to this house."
 
 94 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 Let us seriously consider this feature of 
 the Saviour's ministry. When He stated His 
 Divine character and descent, many were 
 mystified, many were offended : and there 
 were always some ready with an argument 
 with which to try and humble Him. When 
 they saw some of His miracles, they were 
 amazed; and some were ready to declare that 
 one of the prophets was come back to them. 
 But when they heard Him forgive men of 
 their sins, when evil spirits were made sub- 
 ject to His word, then the thought of God 
 came instantly into their minds. "It was 
 never so seen in Israel," the multitude ex- 
 claimed in awe, as the dumb man was de- 
 livered of his evil tormentor. In vain some 
 of the rulers pretended that He was working 
 from evil power. Would a kingdom so divided 
 against itself stand ? But this let them re- 
 member : " If I cast out devils by the spirit 
 of God, then the kingdom of God is come
 
 THE POWER THAT CONQUERS EVIL. 95 
 
 unto you." "By the Spirit of God!" To 
 Him, then, to the people, to the spirits of 
 darkness, this power over evil was the surest 
 sign of the presence of a Divine Power. And 
 that fact we may safely enlarge so as to in- 
 clude our own spiritual experiences. When, 
 through the Lord's power, any evil is removed, 
 repented of, put away, forgiven, then may we 
 justly feel that for us, at least, the prophecy 
 has been fulfilled : " His Name shall be called 
 the Mighty God." 
 
 The power that conquers evil is the Lord's 
 power. First, by showing us what evil is. 
 This we must have noticed: while the Lord 
 was ever ready to forgive, while He tried to 
 lead those who were in sin to feel that with 
 Divine help they could live in newness of 
 life, He never condoned evil. He never said 
 of it, as some try to say of it, "It is only 
 an appearance." He never called it, as 
 some are trying to call it, "undeveloped
 
 96 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 good." Is not this more nearly His estimate ? 
 Evil is life perverted ; it is using for self-grati- 
 fication the powers and blessings which were 
 intended for unselfish joy and usefulness. 
 That kind of life is the very opposite of the 
 Divine Life. That kind of life, persisted in, 
 results in ever-increasing selfishness, in inor- 
 dinate indulgence, in a complete turning away 
 from God. Such associate themselves with 
 those who are in similar delights of evil, not 
 only with men, but still more intimately with 
 evil spirits, whose delight it is to encourage 
 these selfish loves, and fill them with burnings 
 and jealousies. "He that committeth sin is 
 the servant of sin." Evil is enslaving, debas- 
 ing, weakening. Life thus perverted brings 
 unhappiness, suffering. Very significant is the 
 fact that the Lord so often associated sin with 
 disease. Why say to the sick of the palsy, 
 " Thy sins be forgiven," but that in the Lord's 
 sight the helpless body of the man before Him
 
 MORTAL INJURIES. 97 
 
 was a perfect image of a helpless condition of 
 the spirit into which sin may finally bring 
 man. And why, when they were complaining 
 about His eating with publicans and sinners, 
 should He say, " They that are whole need not 
 a physician, but they that are sick"? Was 
 it not, in part, at least, that we might know 
 that evil does injure the soul; and that, if 
 unremoved, the mind becomes vitiated and 
 unfitted for the kind of life for which it was 
 intended ? 
 
 And then the Lord's treatment of those in 
 sin. He was ever ready to forgive : but did 
 He ever spare them, if we must use that 
 word, the knowledge of their sinfulness ? Did 
 He ever say to any such, " You are the victim 
 of circumstances ; this evil of yours is not as 
 bad as it seems " ? Was not the first step 
 always a confession of sin, seeing it in its 
 true light, and then abjuring it ? And then 
 was not the next step a looking to the Lord,
 
 98 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 and an effort to walk in the new way which 
 He had opened before them ? Were they not 
 led to feel that the power by which they were 
 delivered was a holy power ? " If I by the 
 Spirit of God cast out devils ! " Was not that 
 the experience ? Nothing out of the sinner's 
 own life. No "native good," as some fondly 
 say, suddenly flattered into life and growing 
 so prodigiously, as by its sheer bulk to crowd 
 out evil. 
 
 The woman weeping at His feet; the man 
 of Gadara sitting quietly by his Eedeemer ; 
 Zaccheus ; Peter, as he sinks upon his knees 
 with the cry, " Depart from me, for I am a 
 sinful man, O Lord," all these seem to 
 bear one common testimony. They have been 
 in evil; they are bitterly aware of their sin- 
 fulness ; but through the Lord a change has 
 come, a deliverance has been wrought, a new 
 life begun. 
 
 And to-day, is there any true deliverance
 
 RESTRAINED BUT NOT CONQUERED. 99 
 
 to be gained from evil except by seeing its 
 sinfulness : turning from it, and with the 
 Lord's help trying to live in newness of life ? 
 Know we of any power greater than that by 
 which the Lord our Redeemer triumphed, 
 and helped others to triumph ? There is 
 much hiding of evil; covering it up with 
 little social graces and proprieties ; holding 
 it in bounds through motives of prudence and 
 expediency. But who does not know that 
 that is not deliverance from evil ? Who 
 does not know that that brings no true rest ? 
 The Lord's way is the one sure way. To 
 any and all who are conscious of some evil, 
 might we not feel that the Lord says this : 
 " Do not try to excuse the evil. Do not try 
 to make it appear less than it is. Do not 
 try to lay the blame of it at somebody's door. 
 Confess the wickedness of it. Confess that 
 it is a transgression of the divine laws of life 
 which I have taught you. But do not fear :
 
 100 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 if you desire to be free, turn to Me ; I will 
 strengthen your heart. And when the evil 
 returns, firmly say, ' I do not will this, be- 
 cause it is a sin against the Lord.' So, little 
 by little, you shall receive a new power to do 
 good ; will feel an ever-increasing joy in it ; 
 and will be led into the way of peace." 
 
 See how beautifully the Lord's life is in- 
 tended to develop among us : First, He calls 
 out our wonder, our admiration, our reverence : 
 " His Name shall be called Wonderful." Then 
 when we begin to wish to know more about 
 life and its duties, He presents Himself as 
 our Guide, our Teacher, the Divine Truth 
 Itself : " His name shall be called . . . 
 Counsellor." But when the real battles of 
 life begin, and we feel the encroachments of 
 sin, and begin to fear, after many bitter ex- 
 periences, that the contest is too great for us, 
 then what a blessing to feel the hand that
 
 SPIRITUAL TEMPTATIONS. 101 
 
 is not shortened that it cannot save ; to grow 
 into the use of a power so sure besides our 
 own; to gain little by little through that 
 power true freedom of soul ! 
 
 And something more : If life is advancing 
 in a truly spiritual way, its experiences will 
 deepen; the temptations become more subtle 
 and less palpable ; ay, take the form, some- 
 times, simply of heart- weariness, of pain of 
 mind, with no assignable outward cause. Such 
 states are beyond the touch of human hands; 
 are not seen by our own eyes. And for that 
 very reason one feels helpless in such suffer- 
 ing. But some day we may be able to look 
 back, and recognize these two facts: (1) These 
 states of dejection and of pain, for which we 
 could find no apparent cause, were not be- 
 cause of any sickness of the body, but re- 
 sulted from assaults made upon our spiritual 
 life. (2) And another truth we shall learn: 
 when in such states, and the soul was faint,
 
 102 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 the power of the Lord's life came and gently 
 brought us out of them; protected us with 
 His life ; fought for us. 
 
 And by such rescuings, and by the power 
 offered at every turn with which to resist 
 evil and keep true, we shall know then, better 
 even than we can now know by any force of 
 argument, that the Lord is spiritually present 
 with men ; and that that presence, because 
 so constant, so sure in its might, so unfail- 
 ing in its mercy and forgiveness, is divine, 
 the very presence of God.
 
 THE LORD AS THE EVERLASTING 
 FATHER.
 
 O LOVE ! Life ! our faith and sight 
 
 Thy presence maketh one ; 
 As through .transfigured clouds of white 
 
 We trace the noonday sun, 
 
 So, to our mortal eyes subdued, 
 Flesh-veiled, but not concealed, 
 
 We know in Thee the Fatherhood 
 And heart of God revealed. 
 
 WHITTIER.
 
 j tf>e <berlatitt0 father, 
 
 * 
 
 " And His name shall be called . . . the everlasting 
 Father." 
 
 * 
 
 T T OW often our Saviour, when He re- 
 * vealed Himself in the flesh, spoke of 
 the Father ! No other name is so often on 
 His lips. More than one hundred and fifty 
 times the evangelists caught that divine 
 name in so much of the conversations and 
 prayers as they have set down in our four 
 Gospels. And very wonderful it is to trace, 
 not so much how often, as in what way, un- 
 der what circumstances, this word "Father" 
 was used. What is the first exclamation 
 that escapes His lips, of which we have any 
 record ? " Wist ye not that I must be about
 
 106 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 my Father's business ? " Divine work wait- 
 ing for those eager hands ! Divine rescuiugs 
 and consolations already looked forward to 
 with eagerness by One who should some day 
 be saying : " I am come to seek and to save 
 that which was lost." Such work was divine. 
 To Himself, to men on the earth, it should 
 appear as divine. They praised Him for His 
 gracious words ; but He told them that He 
 spoke not from Himself but from the Father. 
 They praised Him for His works. " He hath 
 done all things well," they cried ; " He maketh 
 both the deaf to hear and the dumb to speak." 
 But He told them : " The Father that dwelleth 
 in Me, He doeth the works." All the kindly 
 acts, all the sacrifices that were being made 
 for them, the seeking and finding and 
 bringing home once more, He would not 
 let them think of all this as though it were 
 simply the result of human benevolence. 
 Let them know that all this -desire and effort
 
 FATHERLY LOVE. 107 
 
 to redeem and save them was the Divine de- 
 sire. " I came not to do mine own will ; but 
 the will of Him that sent me." For here 
 was a fact for them to learn as they had 
 never learned it before : God is a God of 
 love. He sustains the same relation to them 
 that a good father would to his children, only 
 far more perfectly and unfailingly. It was 
 written in their own sacred books, "Like as 
 a Father pitieth His children, so the Lord 
 pitieth them that fear Him." And yet their 
 chief thought of Him had been that He was 
 a great Ruler; severe in judgment; easily of- 
 fended ; relentless in His punishments. But 
 He who declared that He had come forth 
 from God, and whose purpose it was to make 
 Him manifest, did not speak of Him as a 
 dread monarch, but kept referring to the 
 Father. They need not be afraid of Him : 
 "I say not unto you that I will pray the 
 Father for you ; for the Father himself loveth
 
 108 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 you." Let them enter into their closets, and 
 when they have shut the door, pray to this 
 Father in secret. Yea, let the first words of 
 their petitions be : " Our Father." " And this 
 is the Father's will," He said, " that of all 
 which He hath given Me, I should lose noth- 
 ing, but should raise it up again at the last 
 day." Yes, and this Divine desire that noth- 
 ing might be lost, extends to the least of 
 God's children ; for He said, " It is not the 
 will of your Father who is in heaven that 
 one of these little ones should perish." With 
 steadfast love " their angels " that is, the 
 children's angels " behold the face of their 
 Father in heaven." And all men, if they 
 learn the law of love, shall be the children 
 of this Father who is in heaven; for He, in 
 His love, maketh His sun to rise on the evil 
 and on the good, and sendeth rain on the 
 just and on the unjust. Let them, therefore, 
 strive to be perfect, even as their Father in
 
 THE FATHERHOOD OF GOD. 109 
 
 heaven is perfect. Let them feel sure of His 
 loving care. Not one sparrow shall fall with- 
 out the Father. The Father knows what 
 things we have need of before we ask Him. 
 If we forgive, ttte heavenly Father will surely 
 forgive us. " Be ye merciful as your Father 
 also is merciful." " Fear not, little flock ; for 
 it is your Father's good pleasure to give you 
 the Kingdom." 
 
 How wonderful all these sayings are ! So 
 simple, and yet so all-revealing ! If we could 
 only forget the theological controversies which, 
 we might almost say, have been hammered 
 out of such passages ; if we could but keep our 
 minds free of the thought of separate persons, 
 and come back to this great truth, which the 
 Lord kept impressing upon men's hearts, that 
 however else they might think of the Divine 
 Being, essentially God is a Father; and that 
 this Divine Father, in all His thoughts " which 
 are to us ward," in every heart-throb, is Love !
 
 110 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 And then if we could feel that the Lord, in 
 word, in deed, was manifesting that Father; 
 was acting from and embodying that love 
 which is the essence of the Divine Father- 
 hood ! From that love, in ever-increasing 
 fulness, He acted. " In His love and in His 
 pity He redeemed them." From that fatherly 
 desire to guide and save, He spoke and taught. 
 Every errand of mercy on which He went 
 forth, whether to heal, to befriend, to for- 
 give, was prompted by this same undying 
 love. Well might He say, "I came forth 
 from the Father." He never went forth from 
 any mere purpose of His own. And when 
 His work was done, no matter whether He 
 had been resisted, or mocked, or abused, He 
 always came back to this same state of loving 
 solicitude; never took refuge in thoughts or 
 feelings of self- vindication or retribution. "I 
 go to my Father." And it was this going and 
 returning in perfect love, that kept bringing
 
 SEEING THE FATHER. 1 1 1 
 
 this fatherly or Divine Love in ever-increasing 
 fulness into every act, thought, wish ; so that 
 He could eventually say, " I and the Father 
 are one." No wonder He said in sad reproach 
 to Philip, who asked, " Show us the Father," 
 " Have I been so long time with you, and yet 
 hast thou not known Me, Philip!" Through 
 all the days of their discipleship, had He 
 not been speaking, purposing, coming and 
 going in this spirit of fatherly love ? Did 
 He not embody that love ? Did it not pos- 
 sess and inspire every least thing of His life ? 
 Essentially then, had they not seen the 
 Father ? 
 
 Oh, it seems unspeakably beautiful, this con- 
 stant reference of our Saviour to the Divine 
 Fatherhood in His work, the moment we free 
 our minds from the perplexing thoughts of 
 separate beings or personalities, and allow to 
 the Lord's words a more spiritual quality and 
 intention. We make awkward literalisms of
 
 112 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 His words; when yet His very words were 
 "spirit and life." His words are not used at 
 random. Neither are they used in that stiff, 
 literal way in which we use them. They 
 are sensitive with meaning. This is equally 
 true of His use of names. Did He not see a 
 good reason for naming Simon, " Cephas " or 
 Peter, a stone ? When He would speak of 
 the sufferings of His Humanity, His rejec- 
 tion, persecution, what term does He use ? 
 It is " the Son of Man " that hath not where to 
 lay His head ! It is " the Son of Man " that 
 goeth forth as was determined. It is the 
 "Son of Man" that is to be betrayed. It is 
 the "Son of Man" that must be lifted up, 
 even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the 
 wilderness. Why, the multitudes were quicker 
 than we to catch these spiritual differences. 
 If they came to question Him about some 
 truth, they addressed Him as " Eabbi." When 
 their thoughts were about His Messianic office,
 
 EXPRESSIVE TITLES. 113 
 
 they speak either of the "Messiah" or "the 
 Christ." When, in His saving work, He is 
 removing evil, the very devils call Him "Jesus" 
 (so named because He should save His people 
 from their sius). When, by means of the 
 Truth, He is carrying out the purposes of the 
 Divine Love, He speaks ever of " the Son." 
 But when He would speak of the Love itself, 
 how it is the ever-active and controlling pur- 
 pose or desire from which He is living, then 
 that word "Father" is on His lips. 
 
 Think of but one Divine Being, whose life 
 is Love and Wisdom going forth into infinite 
 forms and varieties of use. Think of the Hu- 
 manity of the Lord, as the special instrument 
 by means of which the Divine Love and Wis- 
 dom might come down and become established 
 in all the successive planes or degrees of an- 
 gelic and human life, make them Divine in 
 Himself, and through them flow forth with a 
 new power of saving help. And then, in this 
 8
 
 114 HOLY NJMES. 
 
 marvellous process, in this amazing work of re- 
 demption and salvation, think of the different 
 states through which the Lord passed, the 
 different relationships which He sustained to 
 men, as expressed by the various names which 
 are employed. There is then no confusion of 
 persons ; but the most wonderful, the most 
 thrilling spiritual delineation of what we may 
 dare to call the story of the Divine Life in 
 its descent to man through the Humanity of 
 Jesus Christ; of the combats of truth, of the 
 appealings of love, of the guidings of wisdom, 
 of joy in salvation, of pain and patience in 
 being despised and rejected. Why, in all that 
 the world has to tell us, whether of the mar- 
 vellous in science, the heroic in history, the 
 beautiful in art, there is nothing that begins 
 to compare with the marvellous, the heroic, 
 the beautiful, which as yet only faintly dawn 
 upon us out of this story of the Divine Life, 
 in its accommodations, its labors, its rejections,
 
 A THRILLING HISTORY. 115 
 
 its victories among men. And what could be 
 of more thrilling interest in our religious 
 studies, than to be able to read that story 
 with some perception and appreciation of the 
 different delicate meanings and phases of it; 
 to see, for instance, that when the term " Son 
 of Man" is used, the experiences of suffering 
 in the Lord's Humanity are being treated of; 
 that when " Jesus " is spoken of, it is the Lord 
 in His efforts to save, that is the theme, 
 efforts which men may so resist, as in mockery, 
 yet sad truthfulness, to place this word "Jesus" 
 over a crucified Saviour, that when " the 
 Christ" is spoken of, it is the Divine Truth 
 trying to gain spiritual supremacy for us ; that 
 when " the Father " is mentioned, it is the Di- 
 vine Love, unwavering, unchangeable, merciful, 
 forgiving, that shows itself for our loving ! 
 
 I would liken this use of the Divine names 
 to the use of what are known as Leitmotifs, 
 which have been made famous through Wag-
 
 116 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 ner's development of them in his music- 
 dramas. Not only is there for every one of 
 the dramatis personae, a motif or musical 
 theme, but in many cases the changing moods, 
 passions, episodes of the several characters, 
 whether of love, of combat, of fear, of victory, 
 are also expressed by their special musical 
 phrases. Very brief and simple these motifs 
 often are ; and yet no matter when they re- 
 cur, through what dissonance of sound they 
 are heard, they carry with them and keep 
 bringing back to the hearer, the story, the 
 eventful mood or episode, with which they 
 are associated. And so, to one knowing these 
 themes, this music, as in the "Tetralogy," is 
 vocal with ideas. It may recount incidents 
 without words ; as in t v he dirge following 
 Siegfried's death, in which by the recurrence 
 of the motifs already made familiar, all the 
 virtues and the life-episodes of the dead 
 the adventures, the fearlessness, the love-life,
 
 INTERPRETERS. 117 
 
 are rehearsed in this noble musical epitome, 
 with an eloquence and expressiveness which 
 the orator could scarcely hope to equal 
 
 In somewhat the same way, as it seems to 
 rne, the several Divine names, as we come to 
 understand and make ourselves familiar with 
 them, may be as so many motifs employed 
 in celebrating the story of the Christ-life in 
 humanity. Think how wonderful this would 
 be. Nay, think how wonderful it is; for 
 have we not in part seen it to be so ? 
 ' : Wonderful," " Counsellor," " Mighty God," - 
 have we not recognized in these appellations 
 distinct phases of the Lord's life in the 
 world, and more especially in the spiritual 
 life of men ? " Sou of Man," " Son of God," 
 " Jesus," " the Christ," can we not already 
 see that these terms are expressive of differ- 
 ent qualities, and we might almost say, epi- 
 sodes in the life of our Lord ? And then 
 this term " Father," can we fail to see that
 
 118 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 it is expressive of Divine Love from which 
 the Lord lived, taught, acted ? 
 
 See, then, what is involved in this promise : 
 " His name shall be called . . . the everlasting 
 Father." When can the Lord, in the develop- 
 ment of His life in us, be called our Father ? 
 He is to us " the Wonderful," when, as the 
 God-with-us, He draws out our wonder, our 
 reverence. He is for us " the Counsellor," 
 when we feel that He is the living embodi- 
 ment of the Divine Truth, and we go to 
 Him in faith with our questions concerning 
 eternal life. He is for us " the Mighty God," 
 when through Him we gain power over our 
 evils. He is for us "the everlasting Father," 
 when we come to act from His love. When 
 a man can truly say, " I delight to do Thy 
 will, O my God; yea, thy law is within my 
 heart," for him the promise is come true : 
 the Lord is become " the everlasting Father." 
 
 Need it be said that this is not accom-
 
 TRUTH AS A PIONEER. 119 
 
 plished at once ? Is it necessary to say, that 
 before we can feel this intimate and alto- 
 gether loving relationship, we must first rev- 
 erence, and then be instructed of Him, and 
 then carry on a long and oftentimes discour- 
 aging struggle against the evils of our nature ? 
 Not that we would make this state seem hard 
 of attainment. And yet we would rightly 
 estimate it. We would, if possible, think of 
 it and look forward to it as no light or sen- 
 timental blessing. Very many, let us hope, 
 are living their lives in the general desire to 
 do what is right. But in this, much of what 
 we do is actuated by a sense of duty. There 
 may be even lower motives by which we are 
 sometimes actuated, such as the desire for 
 reward, the fear of appearing ill, of doing 
 ourselves injury. In this first state of the 
 regenerating life, truth has to take the lead ; 
 and the will comes dragging on behind. It 
 is " I must try to do this," or " I ought to
 
 120 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 do that." It is duty, duty, duty, all the time ; 
 checking ourselves here, spurring ourselves 
 there. It is facing evils, reluctantly turning 
 from vanities, silencing doubts, quelling in- 
 ward mutinies. It is being happy one day, 
 discouraged another. It is being trustful one 
 hour, and anxious and faithless the next. It 
 is crying in a sudden moment of enthusiasm: 
 " Lor.d, I will follow thee both to prison and 
 to death ; " and then again, when faith is 
 cold, and the fires of self-love are blazing, 
 saying to our tormentors, "I know not the 
 man ! " 
 
 And is this the all of religion ? Are we 
 summoned to enter the way of Truth only 
 that we may have to battle, and keep com- 
 pelling ourselves, and be almost haunted by 
 this spirit of Duty ? When man goes forth 
 like Elijah to stand upon the mount before 
 the Lord, is it only wind, and earthquake, 
 and fire that shall sweep, and rumble, and
 
 "GO!" AND "COME!" IN RELIGION. 121 
 
 kindle about him ? Is there no release from 
 these wild gusts of temptations, these trem- 
 blings, and burnings of the spirit ? Is there 
 no silence; no still voice to speak to the 
 troubled heart, and make it feel the nearness 
 and the friendliness of God ? 
 
 Oh, the innumerable multitude on which 
 the eyes of the loved disciple rested, arrayed 
 in white, and palms in their hands, of whom, 
 the angel said: "These are they which have 
 come out of great tribulation. . . . And they 
 hunger no more, neither thirst any more; 
 neither shall the sun light on them, nor any 
 heat." There comes an end to these self- 
 compulsions. For those who will be faithful 
 unto the end, the " Go " in religion shall 
 change to " Come ! " This is a real change ; 
 a change in man's nature. First, Truth must 
 lead the way, and the man with his sluggish 
 or rebellious will must try to follow. It is 
 of this state that we know most now. But
 
 122 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 we are assured that there is another state, 
 and it is sure to follow, if we do not try to 
 avoid the first, in which love takes the 
 first part. There is a reversal. Love flows into 
 thought, impels it, inspires it. What was 
 before a duty is now a delight. What before 
 required effort is now a desire. In this his- 
 tory of religion, which every man lives out 
 for himself, the Lord is more than a wonder, 
 exciting his reverence ; more than a Coun- 
 sellor, teaching him the way of life; more, 
 even, than a mighty God, helping him to 
 overcome his evils. In this new state of har- 
 mony and delight for what Divine Love de- 
 sires, the Lord assumes a new relationship, 
 that of a Father. There is mutual love ; mu- 
 tual joy. And yet I realize how powerless 
 words are to set forth a state so blessed. For 
 " eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have 
 entered into the heart of man, the things which 
 God hath prepared for them that love Him."
 
 TESTIMONY OF THE TWO SACRAMENTS. 123 
 
 Only it is everything to know that such a 
 state is possible ; nay, that such a state 
 shall certainly be if we persist in the life 
 of struggle and duty which is the present 
 experience of most of us. It is everything 
 to know, that by persistent faithfulness one's 
 life shall come into such harmony with the 
 Divine Life, as to insure a relationship as 
 near, as friendly, as mutual, as that of father 
 and son. 
 
 The difference in these states and relation- 
 ships seems to me to be beautifully expressed 
 by the two Sacraments, which stand, the one 
 at the beginning, the other at the close of 
 the Lord's ministry. In Baptism there is the 
 sign of a regenerating work to be accomplished. 
 The Lord is to be acknowledged and followed ; 
 evils are to be removed. "Whether it be the 
 brow of the babe or of the man that receives 
 the sign of the cross, the symbol expresses the 
 same hope. Seen in heaven, seen by men on
 
 124 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 the earth, the sacrament testifies that the per- 
 son baptized should become the Lord's faith- 
 ful follower, and should look to Him for help 
 in removing evil. Such was the sacrament 
 which, at the very beginning of the Lord's 
 ministry, His disciples were permitted to ad- 
 minister in His name. 
 
 But see how different is the sacrament which 
 is instituted on the last night of that loving 
 ministry. These men, who at first followed 
 more in awe than in love, who have been 
 His almost constant companions, are reclin- 
 ing with Him about a table from which they 
 have eaten the Passover meal. For three years 
 they have been taught by Him ; they have had 
 an experience of His love; they have, in a 
 measure, shared His sorrows and joys. And 
 now for the last time on earth they are gath- 
 ered together. No crowds are about to disturb 
 the quiet of that meeting and that parting. 
 In an upper room, away from "the strife of
 
 THE LAST SUPPER. 125 
 
 tongues," away, it must almost have seemed 
 to them, from earth itself, they lingered in 
 each other's companionship. One strangely 
 touching act of loving service He had per- 
 formed, which must have inwardly rebuked 
 the pride which had led them to strive for the 
 best seats, and brought them into a state of 
 humility. For quietly, from one to the other, 
 not even omitting Iscariot, girded with a towel, 
 and bearing a basin of water, He washed the 
 feet of His followers. And when He had 
 taken His place again, with the loved disciple 
 resting His head upon His breast, Judas having 
 gone forth, as they reclined there, a sorrowful 
 tenderness drawing them spiritually near to- 
 gether, He drew from the food before Him 
 the two simplest elements, some bread and a 
 chalice of wine. And to His " little children," 
 as He called them that night, He distributed 
 with words of blessing the bread and the wine, 
 and bade them in the days that were coming
 
 126 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 to celebrate this loving meal in remembrance 
 of Him. We know not with" what looks of 
 anxious, tender love these men met His eyes, 
 as one by one the bits of bread and the chalice 
 found their way from His hands to theirs. But 
 one thing we cannot miss seeing : into what a 
 loving and tender friendship the discipleship 
 of these rude, simple-hearted men had grown ! 
 And the Last Supper, to those who still par- 
 take of it in love, shall always express that 
 near and dear relationship, which "with de- 
 sire " the Lord looks forward to ; and which, 
 when it is once established; brings joy and 
 calm. To receive from Him in love and faith 
 pure affections and thoughts, as the disciples 
 received the symbols of His Body and Blood; 
 to be fed at His table, is to know Him not as 
 a distant God but as a Father, the " Father 
 Everlasting." For that state, when once estab- 
 lished, shall not be destroyed. It shall endure ; 
 and the joy of it shall extend into eternity.
 
 THE FACE OF LOVE. 127 
 
 Do we, then, complain of present struggles ? 
 Do we falter in the strife ? Do we feel held 
 down to the world and its life? 
 
 " What is the world? It is a waiting place 
 
 Where men put on their robes for that above. 
 What is the new world ? 'T is a Father's face 
 Beholden of His sons, the face of love."
 
 THE LORD AS THE PRINCE OF 
 PEACE.
 
 PEACE beginning to be 
 Deep as the sleep of the sea 
 When the stars their faces glass 
 In its blue tranquillity: 
 Hearts of men upon earth, 
 Never once still from their birth, 
 To rest as the wild waters rest 
 With the colors of heaven on their breast ! 
 
 Love which is sunlight of peace, 
 Age by age to increase 
 Till anger and hatred are dead, 
 And sorrow and death shall cease : 
 "Peace on earth and good- will." 
 Souls that are gentle and still 
 Hear the first music of this 
 Far-off, infinite bliss ! 
 
 EDWIN ARNOLD.
 
 ilorD as the prince of peace. 
 
 His Name shall be called . . . the Prince of 
 Peace" 
 
 * 
 
 the names which we have considered 
 as rightly belonging to the Child and 
 Sou, upon whose shoulder, it was declared in 
 prophecy, the government should some day 
 rest, names which, I trust we have come to 
 see, disclose the different relationships which 
 the Lord successively sustains to every man 
 who suffers himself to be divinely led ; is 
 there one that is more beautiful, more ap- 
 pealing than this last title of all ? The 
 Prince of Peace ! How perfectly this seems 
 to describe that wonderful blending of ma- 
 jesty and gentleness, of power and love, of
 
 132 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 energy and calm, which give one such a 
 sense of completeness, of strength, of absolute 
 self-control in this perfect life of all ! " I am 
 meek and lowly in heart," He said. Would 
 any of us gainsay that ? No service so homely 
 but He would perform it; no house so hum- 
 ble but He would enter it ; no obligation so 
 small but He would fulfil it. And yet some- 
 thing in that presence made men feel there 
 was nothing abject in this meekness. " Lord, 
 I am not worthy that Thou shouldst come 
 under my roof," exclaimed the centurion to 
 his would-be guest. Why does yonder man 
 kneel to Him in the boat and cry, "Depart 
 from me, for I am a sinful man, Lord " ? 
 And why, oil the night of the Last Supper, 
 does that same man shrink as His Master 
 kneels to wash his feet, and exclaim, " Lord, 
 Thou shalt never wash my feet " ? Why do 
 these angry men of Nazareth, who had led 
 Him to the brow of the hill with the inten-
 
 GENTLENESS BUT NOT WEAKNESS. 133 
 
 tion of casting Him down headlong, fall back 
 suddenly, and allow Him to pass through their 
 midst unhindered and unharmed ? Why do 
 these demoniacs fall at His feet wallowing 
 and foaming, as if His very presence was 
 more than they could bear? Why does the 
 mob, who have come out, as if against some 
 thief, with lights and weapons, fall to the 
 ground as He quietly advances to them and 
 says, " I am He " ? 
 
 Oh, there was no lack of strength, nor of 
 majesty ! Hero, Prince, King, the sacred books 
 had called Him. And the children of Israel, 
 seizing upon such prophecies, thought He 
 would come and marshal them to victory; 
 that He would visibly restore the throne of 
 their father David. And when they saw Him 
 riding into Jerusalem one day, with a multi- 
 tude about Him, they thought that He had 
 come to be their King, and that the Kingdom 
 of God would suddenly appear. And so, in
 
 134 HOLY NJMES. 
 
 an ecstasy of joy, they covered the road with 
 fronds of the palm, and with their garments ; 
 they waved palm-branches as to a mighty 
 conqueror ; and a great shout went up, " Ho- 
 sanna to the Son of David ! " " Blessed is 
 the King of Israel that cometh in the name 
 of the Lord ! " 
 
 They were right in saluting Him so. Had 
 not the prophet said long ago, 
 
 " Rejoice greatly, O daughter of Zion ; 
 Shout, O daughter of Jerusalem. 
 Behold thy King cometh unto thee : 
 He is just and having salvation ; 
 Lowly, and riding upon an ass ; 
 And upon a colt, the foal of an ass." 
 
 And in that Kingdom which He declared to 
 be His, but which is "not from hence," did 
 not the Seer of Patmos hear this song go re- 
 verberating through the opened heavens : 
 
 " Worthy is the Lamb that was slain 
 
 To receive power, and riches, and wisdom, 
 And strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing."
 
 NOT BY MIGHT BUT BY THE SPIRIT. 135 
 
 The Lord came to establish Himself in 
 power among men ; to be their deliverer 
 from a bondage far worse than that of Rome ; 
 to make bare His holy arm, and fight for 
 them against the assaults of evil power ; to 
 be a Prince, around whose banner they might 
 flock. But did we ever think what it cost 
 the Lord to be a Prince, not of armed hosts, 
 but of Peace? To rule, not by might, nor 
 by power, but by the Spirit ? Have we ever 
 thought how, in that great work of Redemp- 
 tion which He came to accomplish, the seem- 
 ing hopelessness of triumphing through Love, 
 through Truth, must sometimes have been 
 borne in upon Him ? To be a Prince, not 
 through any use of forces and powers such 
 as fire men's enthusiasm and admiration, but 
 by spiritual conquests which we all are so 
 apt to shun ! To be a Prince, not of this 
 world, nor through the might of this world, 
 but of Peace !
 
 136 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 See ! In that mysterious waiting-time, which 
 was spent in the wilderness, before fully en- 
 tering upon the outward work of His minis- 
 try, there was unfolded a view of dominion 
 and of spreading empires which were intended 
 as a temptation. A spirit of darkness by 
 what magic it matters not summoned, as in 
 a vision, the kingdoms of the world. Prov- 
 ince after province, empire after empire rose un- 
 der his touch, until the glory of earth seemed 
 spread out before them. And yet the spirit 
 of evil must have known how gross and 
 cheap dominion of this kind would appear 
 to the Son of Man. What to Him was 
 earthly dominion ? What though the king- 
 doms of this world and the glory of them 
 lay at His feet ? Could He not have claimed 
 the right to say, in words which had been 
 written to declare the power of the advent 
 of God-Messiah, " If I were hungry, I would 
 not tell thee: for the world is Mine and the
 
 A SUBTLE TEMPTATION. 137 
 
 fulness thereof." Why then this vision ? 
 Can we doubt it ? To make that kingdom 
 of Truth and Love, which He has come to es- 
 tablish among men, and which all hell would 
 try to shatter, appear unreal ; to make its 
 establishment seem impossible, except by 
 means of that power and cunning which the 
 tempter only too well personified. 
 
 At every step one can feel the cunning of 
 this suggestion. Did not the people come 
 searching for Him one day, determined to 
 take Him by force, if necessary, and make 
 Him their King ? Did not two of His dis- 
 ciples beg that they might invoke the light- 
 ning to punish those who drove Him from 
 their doors ? Did not Simon Peter, who once 
 before had tried to hold Him back from com- 
 ing persecution, press forward to His side as 
 He stood there in Gethsemane, waiting for the 
 mob to take Him, and whisper eagerly, " Lord, 
 shall we smite with the sword ? " And as He
 
 138 HOLY N4MES. 
 
 hung on the cross, must not this same appar- 
 ent need of force, and the victory that might 
 be won by it, have come to Him through that 
 cruel taunt which they flung at Him : " If He 
 be the King of Israel, let Him now come down 
 from the cross, and we will believe Him." 
 One miracle, put forth for His own safety, and 
 they might believe ! 
 
 Is there not something wonderfully pathetic 
 in this constant refusal to turn away, for so 
 much as one moment, from that Kingdom of 
 the Spirit wherein worldliness and mere force 
 can have no place. Beyond the reach of a 
 " lo ! here," or " lo ! there," it was already 
 springing up in a few faithful hearts. It was 
 promised to " the poor in spirit ; " it was held 
 out to those " who are persecuted for righteous- 
 ness sake;" it is the home of children, and of 
 all who are humble and teachable as children, 
 " for of such," said its founder, " is the King- 
 dom of Heaven." The kingdoms of this world
 
 PALM AND CONTEST. 139 
 
 might rise, or they might fall ; but this 
 "Kingdom of God," lying vast, silent, hidden 
 in humble and contrite hearts, would be 
 an "everlasting Kingdom," and the dominion 
 of its King would endure "throughout all 
 generations." 
 
 No weak, no merely sentimental title that, 
 Prince of Peace ! It was not won without 
 struggle and pain. And it tells of the uncon- 
 querableness of a power, which we, accustomed 
 to a lower rule, where force is met with force, 
 where money and rank seem to have such 
 might, need to cling to and believe in. Do 
 we fret ourselves because of evil doers; and 
 are we sometimes envious against the workers 
 of iniquity? Do we see evil men prospering, 
 and bringing wicked devices to pass ? Have 
 we sometimes seen the wicked in great power, 
 and spreading himself like a green bay-tree; 
 while the righteous apparently fail? 
 
 When thoughts and fears like these oppress ;
 
 140 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 when this world's life, with its seeming power 
 and pressure and tremendousness appears fairly 
 to crowd out and dwarf that Kingdom of 
 the Spirit which the Prince of Peace caine 
 to make supreme, I know of nothing more 
 reassuring than to turn in thought to that 
 scene in the Judgment Hall, with its two 
 figures who stand facing each other. One is 
 a proud, cruel, truculent ruler, watchful only 
 of Eome's power, absolutely indifferent to all 
 questions of a spiritual nature, the very per- 
 sonification of world-might: the other, the very 
 embodiment of unworldliness, no symbols of 
 wealth or power upon Him, standing there 
 in perfect calmness and simplicity, and treat- 
 ing His would-be judge with gentle courtesy. 
 It is a sight not to be forgotten ! The " prince 
 of this world" facing, questioning, eying, the 
 Prince of Peace! The power of earth trying 
 to pass judgment upon the power of holiness ! 
 Human might measuring itself against eternal
 
 WHOM PILATE TRIED TO JUDGE. 141 
 
 Truth and Love ! We all know how uneasy, 
 and then anxious, and then frightened grew 
 this man, who began by declaring, "Knowest 
 Thou not that I have power to crucify Thee, 
 and I have power to release Thee ? " We all 
 know how he tried to escape his responsi- 
 bility; the expedients he resorted to, now 
 sending Him to Herod, now offering to chas- 
 tise Him, now trying to turn over Barabbas 
 instead. And we all know, too, how quiet 
 and reposeful was the bearing of Him whom 
 Pilate tried to judge ; how few and simple 
 were the words which He spoke, and in which 
 He affirmed His Kingship. 
 
 And this is the truth, the lesson of it all 
 to which we should cling: There came to 
 Pontius Pilate a vision of strength, of royalty 
 and grace, before which all human or earthly 
 conceptions and standards utterly broke down. 
 And he gained it through One, who, to the 
 eye that could look upon His form and vis-
 
 142 HOLY NAMES, 
 
 age, appeared friendless, spent, weary. He 
 saw patience, fearlessness, and a certain re- 
 pose that betokened untold strength, in One 
 who could not be frightened,, nor angered, 
 nor crushed. The more they mocked Him, 
 the surer seemed His majesty. The more 
 they did violence, the greater the strength of 
 spirit. The more they sought to destroy Him, 
 the more surely and serenely did He seern 
 to hold His Kingship. 
 
 It was the spiritual, the eternal, proving 
 its might over the natural and temporal. Be- 
 fore this absolute peacefulness of soul, human 
 authority lost its boastfulness and courage. 
 Little the Lord said to Pilate; did not argue 
 with him ; did not threaten him. For the 
 most part He remained silent. Not because 
 he hated Pilate ; but because Pilate needed 
 nothing so much as the sight of One, who, 
 apparently weak and dependent on the gov- 
 ernor's clemency, stood calm and strong
 
 ABSOLUTE SELF-CONQUEST. 143 
 
 through a power of which Pilate knew noth- 
 ing. He does not assail the Kingdom of the 
 Caesars; He simply reveals another that is 
 higher, and against which the powers of the 
 world might beat in vain. 
 
 To one who has had some experience in try- 
 ing to be governed by spiritual, rather than by 
 natural motives ; who knows their difference, 
 in what opposite directions they tend; who 
 knows, too, that with the best of intentions, 
 sometimes, even after we have resolved to act 
 from a high principle, something of self, some 
 fear, some thought of self-interest or advan- 
 tage will spring up in one's path and demand 
 to be heard, to such an one, it must ever 
 remain a subject of the deepest wonder and 
 reverence, that every thought or feeling in 
 the Humanity of our Lord, that might look 
 to self or the world, was entirely subjugated; 
 every word, desire, deed, directed absolutely 
 to divine ends.
 
 144 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 And when, through the Gospel story, we 
 see Him come down from the mountain, 
 where He had been praying, and, in the 
 strength of a renewed consciousness of the 
 Divine Presence which He had thus gained, 
 walk out upon the angry sea ; or when we 
 read of His coming to Jerusalem riding upon 
 an ass, and upon a colt the foal of an ass, 
 while the people hailed Him as King; then 
 through scenes like these, the truth seems 
 to gain form and reality; the truth that the 
 Lord gained absolute power over every form 
 of evil ; placed it, as it were, under His 
 feet ; and that all the lower powers and fac- 
 ulties, whether of the natural mind or physi- 
 cal body, the very powers and faculties 
 which in us are apt to assert themselves as 
 masters, were brought into complete sub- 
 jection to those which were higher. And as 
 we gain a view of that fact in our Lord's 
 life, then we can begin to have some appre-
 
 "OVERCOME THE WORLD!" 145 
 
 elation of what He intended by the exclama- 
 tion : " I have overcome the world ! " The 
 world! The thoughts, the loves, the ways, 
 that belong to the world ; all its fears, its 
 harshness, its retaliations, its love of power, 
 of ease, of approbation ; this world, in which 
 we are now battling, a corner of which we 
 should be glad to really subdue ; He could say 
 of it, " I have overcome the world ! " Say 
 it ; and manifest it ; not simply by symbolic 
 acts such as we just spoke of, but in actual 
 experiences of pain. So that when Judas 
 pressed his lips against His cheek, He spake 
 only in grief; when false witnesses accused 
 Him, He was dumb with silence ; when the 
 coward soldiers buffeted and spit upon Him, 
 there was nothing like anger ; and when they 
 crucified Him, there were no imprecations, 
 but a prayer for their forgiveness. 
 
 We might suppose that this was through 
 
 a supreme effort of self-control ; that by a 
 10
 
 146 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 mighty effort of the will, the lips were not 
 permitted to utter the words of remonstrance 
 and denial and accusation that were ready to 
 be spoken. But I believe there was a fact 
 much more wonderful than that. I believe 
 that all those thoughts and feelings, which in 
 us would have taken arms, and risen in rebel- 
 lion, were being absolutely and forever subdued 
 and cast forth ; that our Lord so entirely over- 
 came this earthly nature, with its thoughts and 
 desires, that though men dragged Hirn through 
 the streets, scourged Him, nailed Him to a 
 cross, jeered at Him, they could not stir up a 
 harsh thought nor an unkind feeling. In 
 other words, this spiritual self-conquest was 
 so complete, the Divine came down so fully 
 into these lower planes of life, that inwardly 
 there was a calm and a peace which nothing 
 could destroy. 
 
 And we may think of this somewhat in 
 this way : Far back in the Lord's human life,
 
 A DIVINE DESIRE. 147 
 
 because of the difference in its origin and the 
 far greater richness of that primitive mind 
 which was Divinely begotten, He was con- 
 scious of a feeling of intense love. Whence 
 that love was, whence that nameless delight, 
 that intense yearning, the little Christ-Child 
 did not at first clearly know. But we may 
 think of Him as gradually becoming conscious 
 of it; and then gradually realizing that He 
 alone had it. We may think of Him as 
 gently learning, through the opened Scrip- 
 tures, whence this love was, and why He had 
 it, and how it was to become His very life. 
 And when the truth of His real mission had 
 grown bright before Him, then how beauti- 
 ful it is to think of Him as planning to 
 bring all that He could of this loving power 
 to others, to bring them new life, the life 
 of His spirit. Not at once could He do this ; 
 nor could He give that Spirit in its fulness 
 until every least hindrance in Himself had
 
 148 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 been removed. " The Holy Spirit was not 
 yet given because that Jesus was not yet 
 glorified." But though not completed until 
 the crucifixion, that work of glorification, of 
 removing everything that looked to evil or 
 was earth-born, and bringing the Divine into 
 union and absolute oneness with the Human, 
 was constantly going on. And as it went 
 on, the Lord experienced more and more in 
 His Humanity the delight of the Divine life. 
 It brought a sense of rest and peace, so per- 
 fect, so profound, that He bade all who were 
 weary and heavy laden as many a time He 
 had been to come unto Him that He might 
 share it with them, and give them rest. And 
 on the night of the Last Supper, the conflicts 
 so nearly over, as they recline about the 
 table, there is within the sorrow of treachery 
 and the knowledge of approaching trials, a 
 calmness of spirit, a peace, which He would 
 fain share with those who are sadly clinging
 
 "NOT AS THE WORLD GIFETH." 149 
 
 to Him. " Peace I leave with you," He says 
 to these friends, these companions, these "lit- 
 tle children " of His ; " My peace I give unto 
 you." That sense of perfect rest and love 
 and confidence, that conquest over evil, that 
 freedom from uncharitableuess, He would have 
 them have. "Not as the world giveth, give 
 I unto you." No, the world's way is to in- 
 dulge and satisfy our selfish wants : His way 
 to overcome them, and in their place to ex- 
 perience a calmness of spirit, a free delight 
 in good, which cannot be taken away. And 
 then He is taken from them ; but only for 
 " a little while," as He had said. And when 
 He comes before them again, this is His sal- 
 utation : " Peace be unto you ! " " And He 
 breathed on them," say the Gospels, "and 
 said, 'Keceive ye the Holy Spirit.'" 
 
 And now it only remains for us to ask, 
 How may the Lord be to us a Prince of Peace ? 
 We have thought of Him as the Wonder-
 
 150 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 ful, when, by the presence of His Divinely- 
 Human life among men, He excites our won- 
 der, our reverence. We have thought of Him 
 as the Counsellor, when, in the confidence 
 that He is the embodiment of the Divine 
 Truth, we go to Him for instruction in the 
 way of life. He is to us " the Mighty God," 
 when through His power we learn to over- 
 come evil. He is for us " the Everlasting 
 Father," when we have an experience of His 
 love, and come to feel a delight in acting 
 from such love. He is to us " the Prince of 
 Peace," when, after His example, having per- 
 severed in shunning evils as sin, the lusts 
 arising from the love of self and of the world 
 are gradually removed, and in their place 
 there is received from Him a blessedness of 
 heart and soul. When there is no longer any 
 combat of the false and evil against the good 
 and the true, when there is no spiritual discord 
 or war, then there is contentment, rest, peace.
 
 YOKES AND LESSONS. 151 
 
 Far away such a state, as a permanent one, 
 may seem to some of us, who know more of 
 struggle and conflict than this deep calm of 
 soul which cannot be destroyed. And yet it 
 is the sure portion of every faithful follower. 
 Into that state the Lord invites all. "Come 
 unto Me, all ye that labor and are heavy 
 laden, and I will give you rest." Not 
 through crying, " Peace ! Peace ! " when there 
 is no peace ; not through any sickly senti- 
 ment, nor morbid state of the feelings, while 
 evil loves are still unsubdued, can we gain 
 that rest of soul. " Take my yoke and learn of 
 Me, . . . and ye shall find rest unto your souls." 
 First, there must be yokes and lessons, les- 
 sons out of this life of Christ our Lord, whose 
 peace came through victory over evil. 
 
 Nor let us be disheartened if this greatest 
 of all blessings, the very fruit of all patient, 
 persistent effort, should be the last in com- 
 ing. Think of the Lord's own experience.
 
 152 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 If what was said above is true, He first 
 perceived with a sense of delight the love 
 that was to be given through Him to men, 
 and with quiet, yet eager joy began " to be 
 about (His) Father's business." But before 
 that desire could be fully realized, there was 
 a period of spiritual combat to be undergone, 
 so that Divine Love might be unhindered. The 
 extent of those inward struggles, the depth 
 and intensity of them, who shall tell? But 
 when they were accomplished, when He had 
 " overcome the world," then peace reigned. 
 
 Answering to these three stages or spirit- 
 ual epochs in the Lord's life, there are three 
 periods in a regenerating man's life. 
 
 First, he enters upon the life of his religion 
 in a state comparatively of spiritual tranquil- 
 lity. He looks forward to the blessedness of 
 it with happy, peaceful expectations; some- 
 thing in the same way that the Lord contem- 
 plated with joy the bringing forth of the
 
 A SACRED EXPERIENCE. 153 
 
 Divine Love. It is a very tender, a very 
 precious time in a man's life. It is the time 
 when a young man or a young woman may 
 feel moved to make an open acknowledg- 
 ment of their desire to live a Christian life. 
 On bended knees, confessing their Saviour, re- 
 ceiving the Church's blessing, a young man 
 or young woman virtually says, " Lord, I will 
 follow Thee." Not for the sake of praising 
 such acts would we speak; but rather to 
 dwell for a single moment upon the joy and 
 tenderness of that state in one's life. If, in 
 Divine mercy, we have had it, we may well 
 think of it and keep it as sacred. If any 
 are considering it, or really looking forward 
 to it, let them feel that it is the Lord's own 
 loving desire for them that has awakened 
 what seems to be their desire for better life; 
 and let them honor it, and confirm it, and be 
 inwardly grateful that the true way of life is 
 opening up before them.
 
 154 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 And if, following this tranquil joy and ex- 
 pectation, there comes one that is far differ- 
 ent, a state, of temptation and conflict, 
 let them not be surprised nor dismayed. 
 Was it not the Lord's own way ? " Wist ye 
 not that I must be about my Father's busi- 
 ness ? " There was joy as of heaven in that 
 prospect. But what followed ? The hour was 
 not yet come. To Nazareth He returned, and 
 for eighteen years His life seemed a life of 
 common labor and trial. "Seemed," I say, 
 because in that very experience of self-denial, 
 in the waiting of those long years, in the 
 inward struggles that must have come to 
 Him as day by day He lived that simple, 
 industrious, self-denying life, He was advan- 
 cing far along the perfect way. Step by step 
 He advanced ; was tempted, assailed, weary 
 oftentimes. " I do cures to-day and to-mor- 
 row, and the third day I shall be perfected. 
 Nevertheless I must walk to-day, and to-mor-
 
 A LONG STRETCH IN LIFE. 155 
 
 row, and the day following." Oh, the grad- 
 ual, the almost plodding life of regeneration ; 
 that long and seemingly never-ending second 
 state, with its difficulties and trials, its strug- 
 gles and spiritual weariness ! Many of us 
 know what it is to say, " I must walk to-day 
 and to-morrow, and the day following ! " Al- 
 ways some call for new effort I Always some 
 new state to be attained ! 
 
 And yet, when we see that this period, 
 this long stretch in life, is orderly ; that we 
 cannot expect to stay in that first state of 
 happy expectation, why then there is no 
 cause for discouragement. Let there be the 
 courage to say, " I do cures to-day and to- 
 morrow, and the third day [that third com- 
 pleted state] I shall be perfected." The 
 work will then have been done ; the inter- 
 nal strife will have been ended ; the yokes 
 will have been borne ; the lessons learned. 
 And then comes the promised rest of soul !
 
 156 HOLY NAMES. 
 
 Not a mere time of respite, and then the 
 struggle to be taken up again; but a new 
 state of life, a new condition of spiritual 
 existence; evil subdued and removed, and the 
 Lord our Prince of Peace. 
 
 So the first state of tranquillity passes into 
 the longer one of combat ; and the state of 
 combat, if we remain faithful, leads into end- 
 less peace. 
 
 At the close of these studies, we would 
 make the last words a prayer that we may 
 all, each under the Lord's wise and loving 
 guidance, find Him to be to us, in our quest 
 for the Divine Life, in our search for the 
 Truth, in our struggles with evils and adver- 
 sities, in our desire for good, in our patient 
 waiting for rest from temptation, the Won- 
 derful, the Counsellor, the Mighty God, the 
 Father of Eternity, the Prince of Peace.
 
 " MORE than one I count my pastures 
 
 As my life-path groweth long ; 
 By their quiet waters straying 
 
 Oft I lay me, and am strong. 
 And I call each by its giver, 
 
 And the dear names bring to them 
 Glory as from shining faces 
 
 In some New Jerusalem."
 
 APPENDIX.
 
 APPENDIX. 
 
 A. 
 
 THE STORY OF THE VIRGIN BIRTH. ITS 
 AUTHENTICITY. 
 
 TT is a delight to believe that the Christ is 
 * less a fact of cold theology than ever be- 
 fore. More good is undertaken and done in the 
 name and in the spirit of Him who said," Fol- 
 low Me," than at any time since the Christian 
 Church began. But let us not mistake. With 
 all the personal attachment which it seems cer- 
 tain the Christian world feels in its contempla- 
 tion of the life of the Son of Man, with all its 
 happy enthusiasm for that ideal of charity and 
 unselfish service which He has set before us, 
 nevertheless, the thought with so many both 
 
 in and out of the churches now is, that the 
 11
 
 162 WHY REJECTED? 
 
 virgin birth is hardly to be insisted upon as 
 true; and that for all He was so sinless, so 
 perfect in love, in wisdom, in patient devotion, 
 He yet was sprung from our own race. To 
 account for the story of the virgin birth in the 
 Gospels, it is declared that it grew up " long 
 after " the Lord's death. Says a writer : "These 
 stories about His birth are very late and of no 
 authority. The Jews expected their Messiah 
 to be born in Bethlehem; so, after the people 
 came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah, 
 this belief grew up." 
 
 A very plausible explanation, except that, in 
 this case, it utterly ignores the attitude which, 
 both by word and by deed, the Saviour took, 
 and which led to His final condemnation by 
 the church rulers, who accused Him of blas- 
 phemy on this ground : " For a good work we 
 stone Thee not ; but for blasphemy ; and be- 
 cause that Thou Icing a man makest Thyself 
 God." Furthermore, unless the story of the
 
 A VENERABLE WITNESS. 163 
 
 Nativity, as given in St. Luke's Gospel, be an 
 addition of a later age, that story could not 
 have grown up " many years " after the Sav- 
 iour's death ; for it is now practically conceded 
 by friend and foe that this third Gospel, to- 
 gether with the Acts, was written by one Luke, 
 a companion of Paul. 
 
 It might be claiming too much to declare 
 that the " Ignatian controversy " is settled ; but 
 certain it is that very many regard as authentic 
 the martyrdom of Ignatius in Rome, not later 
 than 11 G A. D., or on the more generally ac- 
 cepted supposition of a twofold expedition of 
 Trajan against the Parthians, that he perished 
 December 20, 107 A. D. In his Epistle to the 
 Ephesians (I quote from the shorter version), 
 he writes : 
 
 " For our God, Jesus Christ, was, according to 
 the appointment of God, conceived in the womb by 
 Mary, of the seed of David, but by the Holy Ghost. 
 . . . Now the virginity of Mary was hidden from
 
 164 JUSTIN MARTYR. 
 
 the prince of this world, as was also her offspring, 
 and the death of the Lord ; three mysteries of 
 renown which were wrought in silence by God." l 
 
 Justin Martyr, whose writings are among the 
 most important that have come dowii from the 
 second century, is known to have lived in the 
 reign of Antoninus Pius; and it is almost 
 equally certain that he suffered martyrdom in 
 the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Approximately, 
 then, the date of his birth may be given as 
 114 A. D., and that of his death as 165 A. D. 
 This is still near to the apostolic age ; and yet 
 in the " Dialogue with Trypho," the genuineness 
 of which is not doubted, appears a full account 
 of the Nativity closely following the narrative 
 as given in St. Matthew. 
 
 " And Joseph," writes this Father, " the spouse of 
 Mary, who wished at first to put away his betrothed 
 Mary, supposing her to be pregnant by intercourse 
 
 1 Epistle of Ignatius to the Ephesians, chap, xviii., xix.
 
 CORROBORATES ST. MATTHEW. 165 
 
 with a man, that is, from fornication, was com- 
 manded in a vision not to put away his wife ; and 
 the angel who appeared to him told him that what 
 is in her womb is of the Holy Ghost. Then he 
 was afraid, and did not put her away ; but on the 
 occasion of the first census which was taken in 
 Judea, under Cyrenius, he went up from Nazareth, 
 where he lived, to Bethlehem, to which he be- 
 longed, to be enrolled ; for his family was of the 
 tribe of Judah, which then inhabited that region." 
 
 And yet it is the spiritual side of the Incar- 
 nation, its meaning, its influence, its relation 
 to us personally, that we are most desirous to 
 understand, and which it has been the primary 
 object of this book to set forth.
 
 B. 
 
 (See Page 41.) 
 
 A LAW OF CREATION AS APPLIED TO THE 
 MIRACULOUS CONCEPTION. 
 
 TV /T AN" is essentially a spiritual being. In 
 the very form of his creation, that 
 which essentially is the man, which loves, 
 thinks, makes plans and efforts for useful life, 
 is spiritual. It certainly is not material. And 
 doubtless very much of our perplexity and 
 unbelief would utterly disappear, if we could 
 break away from the materialism in which our 
 bodily senses try to hold us, and realize that 
 there are forces and substances within matter 
 higher than matter, apart from matter, and, 
 above all, more enduring than matter. Thought, 
 love, are real things. What is there more real, 
 more enduring ? They make up the real things
 
 MAN A SPIRITUAL ORGANISM. 167 
 
 of our life and character. A man's character is 
 not his body. It is not even of it. The body 
 may be maimed, blind, deaf, lame. It may be- 
 come injured ; it may die. But all the time, 
 surely, there is a something, a spiritual nature 
 or organism, which exercises thought, love, 
 and, whether for good or ill, has a general di- 
 recting power over the physical body, which it 
 tries to use for the carrying out of its purposes. 
 Because we can see and handle material things, 
 we make them first ; give them the palm, so to 
 say, for reality. But science is fast doing us 
 a good service by showing us that even in this 
 outward realm of nature there are forces and 
 substances invisible to the naked eye. And 
 what is more, these inner forces and substances 
 of nature prove to be more highly organized, 
 more charged with life and energy, than the 
 things which come within our sight and under 
 our touch. Moreover, they are primary. They 
 are first, and exercise a directing power. Why
 
 168 FROM INMOSTS TO OUTMOSTS. 
 
 limit the law to natural things ? Here is 
 nature's testimony that the kingdom of God 
 and His righteousness is indeed first. First 
 the invisible, the internal, the spiritual ; then 
 the visible, the external, the material. 
 
 For instance, you speak a sentence. There 
 is a succession of sounds ; a birth, as it were, of 
 words. And what was the law by which they 
 were created ? Clearly, this descent of inmosts 
 into outmosts ; first a feeling or intention ; then 
 that intention clothing itself in distinct thought ; 
 and then the thought articulating itself by 
 means of natural speech. The same is true of 
 every free and conscious act. And in agree- 
 ment with this law we are not surprised with 
 Swedenborg's l declaration, that the seed of man 
 
 1 For some, the remark will appear unnecessary, but the 
 author desires to state that the doctrine of the Son of Man 
 which he has tried to set forth in these pages, is stated in its 
 fulness in the theological writings of Swedenborg, to whom 
 the entire Scriptures were a revelation of the Divinity of the 
 Lord Jesus Christ.
 
 FIRST THE SPIRITUAL. 169 
 
 is of spiritual origin, clothed upon by natural 
 substances for the sake of conveyance. 
 
 Turn now to the words of the angel as set 
 down in the Gospel : " That which is conceived 
 in her is of the Holy Ghost." We are prepared 
 to think of this as something wholly spiritual. 
 We are prepared to think of it as the initia- 
 ment used in the formation of the Lord's 
 Humanity. Like the initiament in man, it is 
 composed of the substances of the heavenly 
 world, for it is purely spiritual. And the 
 " miraculous " part of this conception would be, 
 that instead of being derived from man as a 
 father, it is from the Divine ; and through the 
 chosen instrumentality of her who was hailed 
 as blessed among women, this inmost form of 
 human life, containing within itself divine pos- 
 sibilities, became clothed in a natural body, 
 and in the silent, mysterious way, which is the 
 way of all birth, was born into the world.
 
 c. 
 
 THE PERSON OF THE SON OF MAN IN THE 
 LIGHT OF HIS OWN TESTIMONY. 
 
 TT is impressive to note in the Gospels how 
 -*- careful the Lord was that men's reverence 
 for Him should not simply be hero-worship; 
 for the Saviour, even in the days when He 
 was crucified, was not without His admirers. 
 They thronged about Him as He entered Jeru- 
 salem, and made the city ring with their Ho- 
 sannas. They followed Him from village to 
 village; and sometimes, when He withdrew to 
 secluded places that He and His disciples might 
 gain a little needed rest, the people, learning 
 where He was, would come to Him by thou- 
 sands. And well they might ; for He not only 
 healed their sick, but He talked to them as no 
 scribe could do of " the kingdom of heaven,"
 
 FIRST ADMIRERS. 171 
 
 and presented to them a religion of love, of 
 personal kindness and forgiveness, of spiritual 
 equality, of unselfish service, such as was new 
 indeed. And all this excited not only the 
 greatest curiosity and wonder, but the greatest 
 personal enthusiasm. Bright with cunning, the 
 Pharisees tried to explain His miracles by as- 
 cribing them to Satanic power ; but the people 
 quickly replied, " He is a good man," and some 
 went much further, and said, " He must be a 
 prophet ; " whilst others asked point blank 
 whether the expected Messiah Himself could 
 excel His works of miracle and love. So there 
 was much enthusiasm and admiration among a 
 certain class. They would wait for an oppor- 
 tunity to touch the hem of His robe; they 
 would bring their sick and lay them in the 
 streets where it was thought He would pass 
 by. Many of them claimed to be His disci- 
 ples, and went about with Him, and sometimes 
 undertook to do works like Him.
 
 172 HERO WORSHIP. 
 
 And now the thought comes, what would all 
 this mean if the Lord were simply man ? If 
 He were simply man, was it right for men to 
 give, or for Him to receive worship ? Was it 
 right for Peter to proclaim Him the Christ, the 
 Son of God Most High ? Was it right for the 
 Samaritan leper to turn back in the fulness of 
 his gratitude and worship Him ? When John 
 the Evangelist, awed by the vision of the spir- 
 itual world and its wonders, fell at the feet of 
 his angel guide, and would have worshipped 
 him, the angel restrained him and said, " See 
 thou do it not; . . . worship God." Was it 
 best, then, that the Saviour should be wor- 
 shipped if He were only a man, or if the people 
 had no higher thought of Him than that He 
 was a man ? " Why callest thou Me good ? " 
 He asked of the rich young ruler who came 
 and knelt to Him ; '' there is but one good : 
 that is God." And unless the young man felt 
 that he was appealing to the Divine in Him,
 
 TWO IMPORTANT FACTS. 173 
 
 the Lord, it is plain, wished him to see that 
 worship offered to one who was thought of only 
 as a rabbi was not right. 
 
 And the moment we begin to examine this 
 point, we find the Gospels rich in testimony of 
 two facts : 
 
 1. The Lord presented Himself as being 
 essential to man's spiritual life. He is the 
 Bread that cometh down from heaven that men 
 may eat thereof and not die. " Without Me 
 ye can do nothing." " Abide in Me, and I in 
 you ; as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself, 
 except it abide in the Vine, no more can ye, 
 except ye abide in Me." " I am the Way, the 
 Truth, and the Life." " Come unto Me, all ye 
 that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give 
 you rest." 
 
 2. The Lord emphasized at every turn, that 
 He spoke, lived, and acted from the Divine in 
 Himself, and not from Himself apart from the 
 Divine. " The words that I speak unto you, I
 
 174 FAITH OF THE EARLY CHRISTIANS. 
 
 speak not of myself." " My doctrine is not 
 mine ; but His that sent Me." " I can of Mine 
 own self do nothing." The Lord is telling us 
 that the wisdom and the power in Him are not, 
 as men are fond of saying, the result of any 
 natural development ; they are, rather, the very 
 Divine wisdom and power of love received and 
 manifested by Him. 
 
 In this thought of the Divine character of 
 all that the Lord did and said, the early Chris- 
 tians found strength and comfort. Men did 
 believe that life, comfort, saving help, came 
 from the risen Lord. Simple and childlike that 
 faith was, if the annalists of the early Church 
 can be believed. They did not formulate it for 
 a time into theological " articles " of belief. 
 They might not have been able to do so. 
 They were content to believe and feel that the 
 Lord was very near to them ; that He was the 
 Saviour so long promised, Israel's consolation, 
 the world's hope; and, as Paul expressed it,
 
 CERTAINTIES OF BELIEF. 175 
 
 that in Him dwelleth all the fulness of the 
 Godhead bodily. 
 
 We conclude, then, that no amount of critical 
 knowledge can remove these two facts : 
 
 1. That, on the testimony of the Gospels, that 
 Saviour believed that the Divine was in Him ; 
 that He lived, spoke, and acted from that 
 Divine ; and that because of the fulness of the 
 Divine in Him, He could assume powers and 
 relationships impossible to men on the earth ; 
 and, 
 
 2. That His apostles and the early converts 
 believed these things with all their hearts, and 
 looked to Him as having all power in heaven 
 and on earth.
 
 D. 
 
 A VENERABLE AND KEMARKABLE WITNESS. 
 
 "XT 7ITHOUT overlooking the value of the 
 most earnest critical investigations 
 which attempt to determine the character and 
 rightful position of the Son of Man, we be- 
 lieve there is a kind of testimony which the 
 Lord Himself indicated, but which is too often 
 overlooked. 
 
 We will think of Him as He stood there in 
 the synagogue of Nazareth, the people of the 
 little town amid whom He had quietly lived 
 gathered that day to hear Him ; a hush of ex- 
 pectation falling upon them as He unwound 
 the roll of the book of the prophet Isaiah. And 
 when He had found the place for which He was 
 looking, quietly, we may believe, and in a tone 
 of yearning tenderness, He read the beautiful
 
 THE CHRIST OF PROPHECY. 177 
 
 old prophecy, " The Spirit of Jehovah is upon 
 Me, because He hath anointed Me to preach 
 the gospel to the poor ; He hath sent Me to 
 heal the broken-hearted, to preach deliverance 
 to the captives, and recovering of sight to the 
 blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, 
 to preach the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 And then he handed back the roll to the at- 
 tendant ; and with their eyes still fixed upon 
 Him, standing there in the old familiar place, 
 He broke the silence with these words : " This 
 day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." 
 There in his own town He declared Himself 
 to be the Christ of prophecy. A wild, a blas- 
 phemous claim if it were not true. But if 
 true what ? 
 
 The Old Testament teems with predictions 
 concerning the Son of Man, of His work, 
 of His kingdom, of His endless reign. No one 
 denies the existence of these prophecies. They 
 
 had been lying in the Old Testament Scriptures 
 12
 
 178 FOREGLEAMS. 
 
 for years, awaiting fulfilment. What shall we 
 say of them if they should prove to be a fore- 
 shadowing of certain events which are of im- 
 mense importance spiritually to the men of 
 to-day, and this, too, not by merely general 
 or obscure prefigurations, but by references to 
 specific and even minute particulars ? And 
 what light would this throw upon the nature 
 and lawful place in our human life of One 
 whose life should prove to have fulfilled the 
 predictions, both in general and in particular, 
 made centuries before His advent ? We speak 
 not simply of prophecies which outline in gen- 
 eral the nature of the promised Deliverer, as 
 that " the Spirit of Jehovah shall rest upon 
 Him, the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, 
 the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of 
 knowledge and of the fear of Jehovah." Beau- 
 tiful indeed is the description of One of whom 
 it could be said, " Righteousness shall be the 
 girdle of His loins, and faithfulness the girdle
 
 FORESHADOWS. 179 
 
 of His reins." But what if prophecies cen- 
 turies old give events, and particulars of those 
 events, which historical criticism has admitted 
 to be entirely credible ? How happens it, for 
 instance, that David in the Psalms should 
 describe the crucifixion almost as graphically 
 as the Gospels themselves, the gall and the 
 vinegar offered for drink, the dividing of the 
 garments, and the casting of lots for the seam- 
 less vesture ? How comes it that -the twenty- 
 second Psalm begins with the very cry which 
 Jesus uttered on the cross, " My God, my God, 
 why hast thou forsaken Me ! " or that the rail- 
 ings of the mob should be foreshadowed in ev- 
 ery word and gesture, " All they that see 
 Me laugh Me to scorn ; they shoot out the lip, 
 they shake the head, saying, He trusted the Lord 
 that He would deliver Him ; let Him deliver 
 Him seeing He delighted in Him ! " How comes 
 it that Isaiah should foretell the trial, as though 
 he had been by when Jesus was brought as a
 
 180 THE SCRIPTURES FULFILLED. 
 
 lamb to the slaughter, as though he had seen 
 the stripes laid upon His back, and the blood- 
 stained visage, and the body hanging between 
 thieves, making " His grave with the wicked," 
 and the tomb of the rich man of Arimathea 
 in which the body was laid ? Is it said, The 
 writers of the Gospels evidently made their 
 accounts to square with the prophecies ? But 
 these are predictions of facts which no fair 
 historical criticism denies. Xor is it an easy 
 matter, according to the laws of historical or 
 literary evidence, to think of the Gospels as a 
 pious fraud palmed off on the early Christians 
 at a time when the memory of the last agony 
 of Jesus was fresh in every heart. 
 
 Here, then, is a plain fact : the Old Testa- 
 ment contains prophecy after prophecy which 
 the life of Christ fulfilled. Nor is this all. 
 The Lord repeatedly points to His life as being 
 a fulfilment of Old Testament Scripture, where 
 no prophecy was suspected ; as, for example,
 
 " WHICH TESTIFY OF ME." 181 
 
 where He says, " As Moses lifted up the ser- 
 pent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man 
 be lifted up." A statement like this, impressive 
 in itself, becomes still more remarkable when 
 placed with the somewhat broader declaration, 
 that, beginning at Moses and all the prophets, 
 He expounded to two of His disciples in all 
 the Scriptures the things concerning Himself. 
 And this in turn becomes strengthened by the 
 further declaration, " These are the words which 
 I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that 
 all things must be fulfilled which were written 
 in the Law of Moses, and in the prophets, and 
 in the Psalms concerning Me." 
 
 This kind of testimony, we maintain, has 
 a right to be considered, in every attempt to 
 determine the question of "evidence." And 
 that the Saviour Himself so thought would 
 seem to be evidenced by His charge, "Search 
 the Scriptures, ... for they are they which 
 testify of Me."
 
 182 THE WHITE TEMPLE. 
 
 Nor is this testimony of necessity limited 
 to remote references to the Light of Life, nor 
 even to open predictions of His advent, His 
 work and sufferings; since He Himself has 
 shown the existence of an occult meaning 
 within narratives apparently free of any tes- 
 timony concerning Himself and His redemp- 
 tion. Something of this has long been recog- 
 nized ; but that much more will be disclosed 
 may confidently be expected. Nor shall we 
 be surprised to find that portions seem- 
 ingly unimportant to us now, bear this same 
 character. 
 
 The building of the temple, for instance ; 
 of how little value that appears to be to us 
 in our present life ! " But He spake of the 
 temple of His body." And what if that snow- 
 white temple, standing upon Mount Moriah, 
 should prove to be a symbol of our Lord's 
 Humanity. What a new meaning would be 
 imparted to all the particulars connected with
 
 WITHOUT SOUND OF AXE OR HAMMER. 183 
 
 it! How expressive the fact, that while it 
 was a-building there was heard within it no 
 sound of axe or hammer ! Noiselessly it grew. 
 Stone after stone, column after column, found 
 their place, until at last it stood forth in all 
 its white beauty. And then we think of 
 those silent years in Nazareth. All we know 
 is what the Gospels tell us : " And the child 
 grew in wisdom, and stature, and in favor 
 with God and man." Slowly, calmly, beau- 
 tifully, that Humanity, which was to be the 
 living temple of Jehovah, grew unto its per- 
 fect state. Did Ezekiel in vision behold a 
 stream flowing from under the threshold of 
 the great temple, small at first, but growing 
 ever wider and deeper until it rolled resist- 
 lessly on, a mighty river ? So from this other 
 temple, the waters of life have been flowing, 
 scarcely felt at first, flowing gently over men's 
 feet, but growing ever deeper the farther we 
 go with it, now at the ankles, now at the
 
 184 THE HEM OF HIS GARMENT. 
 
 knees, now at the loins, and now flowing over 
 the head. 
 
 It would be a long step towards reaching 
 the Truth for which all earnest men are seek- 
 ing, did we find that " the testimony of Jesus 
 is the Spirit of prophecy." There would then 
 remain but one step more : the glad ap- 
 proach in answer to the "Come unto me." 
 It is feared by some that much of what is 
 reported to have been said and done by the 
 Perfect One is but the embroidery worked 
 upon His vesture by loving friends. We 
 may find, on the other hand, that there are 
 those who still divide His garments among 
 themselves. But as for the " embroidery," we 
 have often thought of the kindly words of 
 personal comfort, so simple that they fairly 
 sweep the ground on which we stand, and the 
 many little deeds of miracle and love in which 
 the truth of this all-gracious Life seemed to ter- 
 minate, as the hem of His garment.
 
 E. 
 
 THE SIMPLICITY OF THE GOSPEL RECORDS 
 AND THE MIRACULOUS ELEMENT. 
 
 r I ^HE Gospels come to us in a form bear- 
 ing on their face a mark of simple hon- 
 esty. They are not commentaries. In their 
 letter they are the records of what some 
 plain, true-hearted men saw and heard. That 
 is one of the remarkable evidences of their 
 genuineness, that they do not explain. The 
 facts are given, the sayings of the Saviour, 
 treasured in their memories, are set down 
 without any private interpretation. Take the 
 Transfiguration, for instance. A startling ap- 
 parition, truly, this sudden beholding of One 
 who but a moment before had stood beside 
 them in all human simplicity, now shining 
 as the sun. And yet the fact alone is re-
 
 186 WITHOUT EXPLANATION OR APOLOGY. 
 
 corded, without one word of attempted ex- 
 planation. Take the Resurrection, a theme 
 for the study of Christian commentators ever 
 since ; and yet one very reason for its credi- 
 bility is the perfect simplicity and straight- 
 forwardness of the record, not a comment, 
 never a word of apology or attempted ex- 
 planation, but a plain, brief recital of what 
 was seen and heard. To say that men re- 
 cord their imaginations or preconceptions in 
 a form so terse and historical, is an offence 
 to our common judgment. Besides, the Evan- 
 gelists record it against themselves more 
 than once, that they who were disciples did 
 not understand many of the things that were 
 said and done until all things had been ac- 
 complished, and they could see the full and 
 perfect meaning of their Master's life. They 
 understood not His frequent references to 
 His death and passion; they understood not 
 the " procession of palms " ; Peter understood
 
 NO MIRACLES FOR HIMSELF. 187 
 
 uot the foot-washing. But these things were 
 recorded; and the record becomes doubly val- 
 uable as showing how little of private inter- 
 pretation and idiosyncrasy there was in what 
 was written. 
 
 And here is a fact which, on the assumption 
 so often made that miracles were an invention 
 of the writers, or misconceptions or exaggera- 
 tions on the part of credulous beholders, is 
 to say the least strange : there is no record 
 of a single miracle by the Lord which He 
 performed for Himself. " He saved others," 
 the people cried exultantly, as they watched 
 Him on the cross ; " Himself He cannot save." 
 They mocked Him with His seeming help- 
 lessness, and challenged Him to put forth 
 His power and free Himself. " Let Him 
 come down from the cross, and we will be- 
 lieve on Him." And to my mind the stran- 
 gest miracle in all that holy life is the fact, 
 that throughout all those last scenes of mock-
 
 188 "I HAVE POWER TO LAY IT DOWN." 
 
 ery and suffering He never once put forth 
 His power in His own defence ; that though 
 they made such cruel sport of Him, though 
 they blindfolded Him, and struck Him, and 
 spit upon Him, though they lashed Him, and 
 dragged Him hither and thither, He would 
 not take Himself out of His tormentors' hands 
 nor do them harm ; and that in that last 
 hour, the people reviling, His friends weep- 
 ing, the pains of death and of hell laying 
 hold of Him, He would not deliver Himself, 
 but just died there between the two thieves. 
 And yet if, as is often maintained, it was 
 inevitable that the life of Christ should have 
 been associated with miracle, how strange it 
 is that not one of the Evangelists should have 
 imagined something miraculous in such scenes 
 as these !
 
 R 
 
 THE STORY OF THE REDEMPTION. 
 
 \ LL Christians, surely, can unite in a 
 grateful acknowledgment of the new 
 life of thought and love which the Saviour 
 brought into the world. It has been claimed, 
 that for nearly every precept which the Lord 
 taught its equivalent can be found in some 
 older religion ; that the Golden Rule, for in- 
 stance, which the Christ declared to be the 
 very sum and substance of true religion, was 
 taught by Confucius, although in its negative 
 form. But Truth is old : old as Divinity, 
 for it is a part of it. " In the beginning was 
 the Word." And the test of a teacher's or 
 a reformer's greatness is not so much in an 
 ability to discover new truth, as in securing 
 for Truth, whether old or new, its rightful
 
 190 FACTS OF LIFE. 
 
 place and power. And tins the Lord certainly 
 did. He made truth real, not simply by stat- 
 ing it, however beautifully and clearly, but 
 by being it. 
 
 Take the law of love, which is declared 
 to be the new commandment of the religion 
 of Jesus. Men had been taught again and 
 again the greatness of love. The fatherless, 
 the stranger, the widow, were commended 
 to the merciful care of every true Israelite. 
 But what had been taught, what had in a 
 variety of ways been imaged and represented, 
 gained an actuality and power through the 
 life of the self-sacrificing love of Jesus of 
 Nazareth which nothing can destroy. Is 
 not the same true of the law of service, of 
 humility, of forbearance, of forgiveness ? The 
 Lord has revealed and established these truths 
 as facts, facts made real and beautiful through 
 the experiences of His divinely human life. 
 
 Hence a peculiarity of His teaching, one
 
 191 
 
 which would be taken as a piece of unbear- 
 able egotism if attempted by any one else, 
 His frequent use of the expression, " 1 am." 
 What does He say of meekness and lowli- 
 ness ? " / am meek and lowly in heart." 
 What does He say of the resurrection and its 
 life ? " / am the Eesurrection and the Life ! " 
 There is a way to eternal life : how shall 
 men find it ? The Lord's answer is, " / am 
 the Way." There is a gate, a means of en- 
 trance : but where ? And again His answer 
 is, " / am the Door." That He would have an 
 influence upon the thought and life of men 
 seemed clear: but how does he express this 
 fact ? " / am the Vine ; ye are the branches." 
 " / am the Bread of Life." " I am . . . the 
 Truth." 
 
 In His teachings, then, in His acts of 
 helpful kindness, in His patient ministry 
 of love, we can see the beginnings of that 
 work of liberation which He had come to ac-
 
 192 OPENING THE PRISON DOORS. 
 
 complish. Men were held by false views of 
 their relation to each other. To them "an 
 eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," 
 expressed the whole idea of justice. Labor 
 was regarded as a curse ; poverty a disgrace ; 
 death a horror; and the future life a blank. 
 Very quietly, but with a might that has 
 proved triumphant, these forms of bondage 
 were overcome, and to the poor and the sin- 
 ful doors were opened upon a new life of free- 
 dom. As fast as it was possible, men's eyes 
 were opened to see the vileness of evil, and 
 means were provided for their escape. In 
 Him they saw what true life should be. A 
 few were able to be instructed in some of 
 the mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven. And 
 these the Lord kept about Him. And in 
 order that what He said might be more than 
 a mere matter of learning or of the mem- 
 ory, He let them share some of His work; 
 sent them on little mission tours, that they
 
 KNOWN OF EVIL SPIRITS. 193 
 
 might have an experience of His own love 
 of doing good. In this way their spiritual 
 power and confidence grew ; and when He was 
 removed from their bodily sight, they were 
 helped to believe in His spiritual presence, 
 and went on with their work, strong in the 
 confidence that He would support them in 
 every experience that might befall them. 
 
 But there was another side to this great 
 work of redemption, which was for the most 
 part invisible, and yet which was still more 
 important, for it went deeper; still more mo- 
 mentous, for it dealt directly with the sources 
 of evil power. And see ; here is a single 
 verse in St. Mark's Gospel that will serve our 
 purpose : " And unclean spirits when they 
 saw Him fell down before Him, and cried, 
 saying, Thou art the Son of God ! " Ah, then 
 they knew Him ! then in some way they had 
 met Him! had felt the divine power of His 
 life come upon them as a kind of judgment ! 
 13
 
 194 THE SOURCE OF EVIL. 
 
 " I know Thee who Thou art ; the Holy One 
 of God ! " Again the same cry ! and again 
 it comes from unclean lips ! " Thou art the 
 Christ, the Son of God!" Still this same 
 confession from the devil-legion ! and always 
 this acknowledgment of a Power they could 
 not face ! 
 
 The Lord, need it be said, did not treat 
 evil as an outside blemish. It is no mere skin 
 disease. Its roots are deep. It comes from 
 the heart. And what gives it life ? What 
 gives hate its unnatural fury ? What breath 
 blows upon evil passion until it breaks out 
 into a destroying flame ? What is it that 
 gives a fiendish delight to acts of cruelty ? 
 Man is a spiritual being. He is created 
 capable of receiving spiritual influences, think- 
 ing spiritual thoughts, feeling spiritual affec- 
 tions. Around the souls of infants and little 
 children we love to think there are heavenly 
 influences. Why, we can feel it! And into
 
 THE LAW OF RECEPTIVITY. 195 
 
 all good, noble thought, or unselfish service, 
 comes a kind of inspiration and joy which we 
 instinctively speak of as " heavenly." These 
 influences are as real, as necessary to the soul 
 of man, as light and heat of the sun are to 
 the flower. We do not grow from ourselves, 
 but from the assimilation of spiritual forces 
 and substances which we receive into our life. 
 "A man can receive [or, still better, "a man 
 can take unto himself"] nothing except it be 
 given him from heaven," is the strong way 
 in which the Lord states this law of man's re- 
 ceptivity. And not only do little children 
 have angels about them, who, in their holi- 
 ness, do always behold the face of our 
 Father in heaven, but, on the authority of 
 the Son of Man, "there is joy in the pres- 
 ence of the angels of God over one sinner 
 that repenteth." 
 
 And if this law of association between 
 heaven and what is good in man be true,
 
 196 JUDAS AND SATAN. 
 
 the opposite must also be true. Into evil 
 thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, and 
 the like, flow hellish influences, which give 
 them such corrupting power. Was it not so 
 with Judas ? In his sordid love of gain, he 
 opened himself to a malign power. That power 
 was not slow in coming. "Then entered Sa- 
 tan into Judas surnamed Iscariot," is the 
 statement of the Gospel. Brief enough, and 
 terrible as brief. Not that Satan, as here 
 and elsewhere mentioned, is some one head 
 devil. That is an old heathen doctrine. 
 "Our name is legion, for we are many," 
 cried the evil spirit at Gadara. And just 
 as we use the word Man as applying to the 
 entire human race, so Satan or Devil is a 
 term covering the entire kingdom of evil 
 spirits. And when it is said that Satan en- 
 tered into Judas, we understand the statement 
 to mean that into the false, hateful thought 
 of that apostle, into the mean desire to make
 
 "DARKNESS SHALL COVER THE EARTH." 197 
 
 gain out of One so holy, spirits of evil entered 
 with delight, encouraged his thought, fanned 
 his desire into a flame, until it mastered him, 
 and he did the deed which will always be 
 associated with his name, and which, in the 
 agony of the shame and remorse which suc- 
 ceeded his treachery drove him to self-murder. 
 
 In thz Lord's day these evil influences were 
 evidently in the ascendency. Little by little 
 man had ceased to make use of those spiritual 
 means and powers by which they can be re- 
 sisted and withstood. And as a result, man 
 came more and more under the control of this 
 evil dominion. This baleful, infernal influ- 
 ence, which seemed to spread itself between 
 man and heaven, and which threatened to cut 
 off its light and life and leave mankind to 
 stifle and perish in those poisoned atmospheres 
 below, is what is meant by the darkness 
 which would cover the earth, and gross dark- 
 ness the people. How far that power some-
 
 198 FACE TO FACE WITH EVIL. 
 
 times went is disclosed to us in the cases of 
 demoniac possession. And those cases, we 
 may believe, were disclosed as a sign of a 
 common danger threatening all humanity, as 
 also to reveal the spiritual nature of the 
 Lord's redeeming work. 
 
 For He came face to face with that power ; 
 He came into conflict with it. How ? The 
 apostle has answered that question : "He 
 was tempted at all points like as we are." 
 The human nature assumed by incarnation, 
 although it lived directly from the Divine, 
 called in the Gospels the Father, much as a 
 man's body may be said to live from his soul, 
 was in itself woman-born. It was therefore 
 approachable, not only by men, not only by 
 angels, but by spirits of evil. We frequently 
 read of the Scribes and Pharisees tempting 
 Him, by trying to entrap Him in His speech. 
 Even the unwise affection of Peter, and the 
 hot indignation of the sons of Zebedee, were
 
 " TEMPTED AT ALL POINTS." 199 
 
 forms of temptation to turn Him from the way 
 of self-sacrifice and mercy. But what were 
 these as compared with the assaults made 
 upon His human nature by the powers of 
 evil ! In every way they tried to find and 
 lay hold of some weakness, some fear, some 
 trace of bitterness, some desire for self-pres- 
 ervation, by which they could gain a foot- 
 hold, and turn Him from His purpose. At 
 every point, the Apostle declares, they made 
 their attack. 
 
 But all in vain. When the mob picked 
 up stones to stone Him, they could bring no 
 fear upon Him. When Peter denied Him, 
 they could not prompt Him to utter a bitter 
 word against the man who rushed out into 
 the night in very shame. When Judas kissed 
 Him, there was no hate ; only an exclamation 
 of sad compassion. When false witnesses rose 
 up against Him, there was no word of angry 
 denial or self- vindication. When the cross
 
 200 AFRAID OF THE TRUTH. 
 
 was lifted, there was no denunciation : only 
 a prayer. When the mob hooted and taunted 
 Him, a silence, as of a pity unutterable, was 
 the only answer.' And it troubled them. 
 Somehow the taunts died out as the end drew 
 near. They stood in the gathering darkness 
 in silence. And when it was all over, instead 
 of a cheer, that same rabble at Golgotha were 
 smiting their breasts, and many were saying, 
 "Truly this was the Son of God!" 
 
 And if the power of that perfect life would 
 in a few hours affect the mob of Jerusalem 
 so, how would it be with the spirits of evil, 
 who from the first had been met by a power 
 of truth from which they shrank in fear? 
 Can we not see that gradually this power, 
 which kept coming more and more fully into 
 the tempted parts or degrees of His Humanity, 
 would not only be felt by evil spirits, but 
 would awe them, frighten them, scatter them 
 to their own abodes ? The Gadarenes begged
 
 THE PRINCE OF THIS WORLD CAST OUT. 201 
 
 Him to depart out of their coasts. There 
 was something, about His presence they could 
 not stand. How much more keenly would 
 this be felt by evil beings in the spiritual 
 world. "Would not His near presence act 
 upon them as a kind of judgment, and break 
 the unlawful hold which they had gained upon 
 man ? 
 
 The Lord Himself gives us warrant for such 
 a belief; for He said: "For judgment I am 
 come into this world." " Now is the judg- 
 ment of this world : now shall the prince of 
 this world be cast out." " I beheld Satan 
 as lightning fall from heaven." The power 
 of evil, which had exalted itself to such a 
 height that the very heavens were threatened, 
 was abased. Back to their own places the 
 spirits of darkness fled ; for a Power which 
 they no longer dared to face had conquered 
 them. 
 
 And as a result, what ? Why, man's spirit-
 
 202 GOLDEN LIBERTY. 
 
 ual freedom was restored. A new power of life 
 was given. He could turn himself freely either 
 to good or to evil ; for redemption is not sal- 
 vation, but that freedom of spirit which makes 
 salvation possible. And that freedom, was 
 universal ; it included man everywhere. And 
 being essentially a subjugation of the kingdom 
 of darkness, redemption was just as much for 
 the good of those who never heard the name of 
 the Eedeemer, as for those who stood about 
 Him. 
 
 A glorious redemption truly ! A wonderful 
 deliverance from a monstrous tyranny. Man 
 may indeed be subject to evil influences from 
 within. But this is largely because he invites 
 and indulges them. And even then, if he will 
 but turn to the Lord the Kedeemer, there is 
 no limit to the power which he may call to 
 his aid, save the limit of his own power of 
 reception. 
 
 And this certainly is what we can see to-day :
 
 A NEW POWER OF LIFE. 203 
 
 a growing freedom of thought, a newness of 
 life, a new power of affection, which are grad- 
 ually transforming our existence. And all this 
 in its very first and most immediate cause is 
 traceable, not to any great school of philos- 
 ophy, not to any royal court nor patron, but 
 to this Life that was first seen in far-off Gali- 
 lee, and that quietly taught on sea-shore and 
 mountain. 
 
 There is but one Life that is so felt. If He 
 were mere man, it would not be so. Nor could 
 we rest in Him ; for no purely human being can 
 be the final refuge of those who seek God. But 
 men do rest in the Christ ; men do feel His 
 spirit. The Gospels tell of Him, the Church 
 witnesses Him, but the human heart alone feels 
 Him. And what is this if not a fulfilment of 
 His last pledge made to men on the earth, " Lo, 
 I am with you always ! "
 
 " Nor can the vain toil cease 
 Till in the shadowy maze of life we meet 
 One who can guide our aching, wayward feet 
 To find Himself, our Way, our Life, our Peace. 
 In Him the long unrest is soothed and stilled, 
 Our hearts are filled."
 
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