GIFT OF 
 
 J^^ *^-r^ <*~-*J\ ' 
 
A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 BY 
 JOHN LEARD DAWSON 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH & COMPANY 
 1912 
 

 P . 
 
 
 
 COPYBIGHT, 1912 
 
 SHERMAN, FRENCH 6 COMPANY 
 Printed in U.S. A. 
 

 "Read and study as if God had spoken directly 
 to you. And do it with as little bias from the creeds 
 of the church as is safe. This whole theological 
 world has not yet been circumnavigated. Push out 
 into the sea and explore farther than anyone has 
 . . . The Holy Ghost is to-day in the world, 
 seeking for prophets, and grieved because he does not 
 find as many as he wants." 
 
 PROF. L. T. TOWNSEND, 
 Sacred Rhetoric Lectures, 
 Boston University, 1875-6. 
 
Never say you think as other people think simply 
 to please them, not even when those other people 
 have acquired the right of calling themselves by such 
 names as churches, associations, synods, conventions, 
 conferences, assemblies or councils. It would be bad 
 for you and not much better for them. You need 
 your own self-respect and the approval of that God 
 who made you a rational being that you might weigh 
 and decide for yourself in matters of every sort. 
 These people, too, need the thought you are able to 
 add to theirs quite as much as you need that which 
 they are able to add to yours; and the less they feel 
 that need the greater it is. Therefore be true to 
 your intellect that you may be true at once to your- 
 self and all other men. Even though you cannot 
 deny that there must be undetected error mixed with 
 your truth, be not abashed, but say out your word 
 bravely; for the case is no better with them. 
 
 The old heresies did not have salt enough in them 
 to preserve them even to our time; and there are only 
 a few sincere things extant with more of vanity and 
 less of truth in them than portions of the ancient 
 orthodoxies, they are all so mixed with the old pa- 
 ganisms. And are they not, at the same time, all 
 very distressingly of our own flesh and blood, too 
 our very own? 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Truth wins its way slowly. It is well, however, 
 for us to remember that it does so surely. No 
 part of it can always remain either covered up 
 or lost. It is now established that God's general 
 method in creation was that of those long upward 
 processes which we indicate by the word evolu- 
 tion; and if the interpretations represented by 
 this volume are correct, it will eventually be every- 
 where confessed that his method in redemption is 
 the same. The aim in creation was to bring mat- 
 ter to its highest possibilities by allying it with 
 the vital, the moral and the spiritual, as these 
 exist in man ; and the goal of redemption will be 
 attained when man reaches that summit where 
 the spiritual in him will assimilate all else to itself, 
 causing even his coarse clay to disappear in the 
 process. Indeed this work might, not too unsuit- 
 ably, have been entitled "Evolution through 
 Christ." 
 
 The Twentieth Century version of the New 
 Testament has been used, not because it was 
 regarded as absolutely correct at every point, 
 but because it is in present day English, and 
 because by using it in place of improved transla- 
 tions which he himself might have attempted, the 
 author could give all his readers the opportunity 
 
PREFACE 
 
 of verifying his quotations. The Old Testament 
 passages, on the other hand, have, as a rule, been 
 drawn from the English revision of 1885. 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PAGE 
 
 I INTRODUCTION ....... 1 
 
 II GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS AND MAN'S SIN 20 
 
 III JESUS AS A SIGN 34 
 
 IV THE MAKING OF JESUS 45 
 
 V THE CONSCIOUSNESS^ OF JESUS ... 66 
 
 VI JESUS AND THE H;OLY SPIRIT ... 85 
 
 VII THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS . . . 103 
 
 VIII JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER , . .117 
 
 IX JESUS THE REVEALER OF THE FATHER 136 
 
 X THE KINGDOM AND CHURCH OF JESUS 152 
 
 XI JESUS THE REDEEMER OF His CHURCH 168 
 
 XII JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT . . .186 
 
 XIII JESUS AND THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM . 203 
 
 XIV JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SlN . . . 232 
 
 XV JESUS THE BEARER AWAY OF SIN . . 246 
 
 XVI JESUS THE MEDIATOR AND INTERCESSOR 261 
 
 XVII JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS . . . 279 
 
 XVIII JESUS AND THE PERFECT ETHICAL CODE 294 
 
 XIX THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS . . . 301 
 
 XX JESUS THE DELIVERER FROM DEATH . 321 
 
 XXI JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY . . 350 
 
 XXII JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR . . . 369 
 
 XXIII CONCLUSION . . . . . . . 388 
 
 INDEX . 422 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 It is safe to assume that righteousness is every- 
 where the same in its character and its operations, 
 that it never exists apart from love, and that men 
 can and do detect its presence where it is dis- 
 played and its absence where it is not displayed; 
 and that this is as true when we come to the con- 
 sideration of theories touching God's dealings 
 with our race as it is in matters of less scope and 
 moment. 
 
 In the pages which follow I have used both the 
 Old and New Testaments as books composed of 
 writings which represent the ideas of God and his 
 righteousness which existed in the minds of lead- 
 ing thinkers of the Israelitish race at various 
 times during several centuries of the history of 
 that remarkable people. These ideas I have 
 regarded as partly true and partly false. I have 
 taken the ground that the false was very largely 
 the contribution of the priests, who were guilty of 
 every sort of greed and oppression ; while the true 
 was set forth in a growingly worthy manner by 
 the prophets, who scorned all that was base and 
 sordid and unfair, preached high ideals in the 
 name of God, and accepted ruin, torture and even 
 
2 A iUACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 death, rather than degrade their manhood by 
 unworthy concessions to priestly, popular, or 
 royal power or prejudice. 
 
 I have assumed that all teaching, which is gen- 
 uinely Christian, must not only accept but also 
 incorporate, everything in the way of verified 
 science which reaches us, whether from the pen of 
 a Darwin or a Wallace, an unbelieving Haeckel, 
 with his 4000 radiolaria in the proof, or the Dar- 
 winian Jesuit, Father Wasman, with his 4000 
 species of ants. But I have not assumed that 
 the final word of science on the question of origins 
 has yet been spoken. I have even questioned 
 whether either the word God or the word Nature 
 taken by itself, is the one the use of which is cal- 
 culated to throw most light upon the various 
 phases and stages of world formation, or the 
 whole history of our own planet. 
 
 I may cite here one of the latest words of the 
 great Ernest Haeckel. On page 94 of his "Last 
 Words on Evolution" he says: 
 
 "We may instance, as a peculiarly interesting fact 
 in the psychic life of the unicellular radiolaria, the 
 extraordinary power of memory in them. (The ital- 
 ics are mine.) The relative constancy with which 
 the 4000 species transmit the orderly and often 
 complex form of their protective flinty structure 
 from generation to generation can only be explained 
 by admitting in the builders, the invisible plasma- 
 molecules of the pseudopodia, a fine 'plastic sense of 
 distance,' and a tenacious recollection of the archi- 
 
INTRODUCTION ' '$ 
 
 tectural power of their fathers. The fine, formless 
 plasma-threads are always building afresh the same 
 delicate flinty shells with an artistic trellis-work, and 
 with protective radiating needles and supports al- 
 ways at the same points of their surface." 
 
 Continuing he refers to Ewald Hering's word 
 concerning memory as "a general function of 
 organized matter." And this word of Hering's 
 has certainly a very wide application, if memory 
 is involved in all repetitions of a given act, which 
 are to be witnessed in the successive generations of 
 given species of living organisms. 
 
 Memory of this sort is to be found in the vege- 
 table as well as in the animal world. It stands 
 revealed, too, every time a crystal takes shape or 
 a chemical combination is effected. Hydrogen is 
 never exploded in the air without remembering to 
 take up one unit of oxygen for every two of its 
 own, and so to form water. Water itself never 
 forgets to expand when freezing. In short each 
 element has a perfect memory touching its own 
 ways and a perfect memory also for the possibil- 
 ities of other elements in relation to itself. When 
 we come to chemical marriage we find each ele- 
 ment perfectly schooled in the allowable and the 
 forbidden, and never witness a case of miscegena- 
 tion, though perhaps we do see some instances of 
 mismating, which are speedily followed by a 
 loosening or a complete severance of the tie. We 
 never find the sweet briar mistaking its peculiar 
 fragance for that of the hedge rose, nor the fir 
 

 
 ':' iA RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 putting on the garments of the spruce, nor the 
 birch those of the maple. And the tree which 
 lives its life altogether alone from the start has 
 as good a memory as the one that is in the way of 
 getting lessons from its elders. The truth is 
 that memory, in the sense in which these great 
 scientists have used it, is common to all matter, 
 whether organized or otherwise it is as truly the 
 inheritance of the element hydrogen as of the 
 radiolaria. 
 
 How shall we account for this? Laws are 
 only constantly applied rules or forces steadily 
 used in given directions. What or who applies 
 them? Nature? Nature is everything in gen- 
 eral and nothing in particular. Haeckel's latest 
 word is "that the highest concept, God, lies in 
 those laws themselves those great eternal, iron 
 laws, based upon the very nature of things, 
 according to which the entire world proceeds." 
 
 We have three things here, or two things and 
 a person. We have "the great eternal iron laws," 
 "the very nature of things upon which they are 
 based" and "lying in those laws themselves the 
 highest concept, God" ; and it would seem that 
 while "God" is but "the highest concept," or idea, 
 of some human mind, "the great eternal iron 
 laws" manage to carry on the work of a person 
 infinite in every highest attribute known to man, 
 upheld, as these laws continuously are, by "the 
 very nature of things" ! Among their other 
 achievements these "great eternal iron laws" put 
 
INTRODUCTION 5 
 
 memory into things animate and inanimate, in 
 such a triumphant way that they simply never 
 forget! This is a stupendous achievement. But 
 while one agrees at once that the thing has been 
 done, one pauses before the description of the 
 doer and asks himself whether, with God and 
 great eternal iron laws to choose between, he 
 would not have changed God from "the highest 
 concept" to an infinite person, and regarded him 
 as doing everything according to the counsel of 
 his own will in the irresistible manner suggested 
 by "the great eternal iron laws" of our scientist. 
 That done, God would also appear in the case as 
 himself "the very nature of things." 
 
 This is what I have done. And, besides, I have 
 taken the liberty of suggesting that it is as Life 
 that God has been producing and fashioning all 
 things from the first. Laws are dead iron things, 
 Nature is vague and indefinite, but, as all men 
 know, Life has in it intelligence, with both the 
 memory and the imagination, of which so many 
 evidences are to be found by the student of things 
 past and present on this planet and elsewhere. 
 Life possesses also, as every man knows, Volition 
 and Conscience. Above all, it possesses love. 
 Surely it is upon this Life, as the very nature of 
 things, that the laws are based, according to 
 which the entire world proceeds. Every evolu- 
 tionist knows that the movement of things has 
 been upward from the start and that it is upward 
 still. The higher characteristics of Life are con- 
 
6 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 stantlj subjugating to their uses the lower; and 
 these on their part are not crippled or crushed, 
 but exalted and glorified in the process. 
 
 The blind man's concept of the central body of 
 our planetary system is not the only sun there is. 
 But for the existence from of old of that vast 
 center of attraction and source of light and heat, 
 neither he nor his concept would ever have found 
 a place on this planet. "God, the highest con- 
 cept," is but a testimony to the existence of God, 
 the foundation and, at the same time, the builder 
 of all that is. To do as Haeckel does and make 
 "great eternal iron laws" the vast Creator of all 
 things, is to ask men to believe that nature places 
 law above personality. But this is an achievement 
 contrary to all human experience and, therefore, 
 miraculous. If one must have miracles, he need 
 not be blamed if he prefers to trace them back 
 to the will of an infinite person, for this does not 
 contradict experience. Moreover the infinite per- 
 son simply must do surpassing things, if he acts 
 at all, and a worthy personality can neither be 
 inactive nor fail to do deeds worthy of himself. 
 These latter conclusions also are based upon 
 experience. It was the self-manifestation of the 
 all embracing Personality that produced "the 
 highest concept." This statement, if I under- 
 stand Haeckel's latest positions, is one which he 
 himself might not dispute. 
 
 No one need entertain any misgivings touching 
 inspiration and revelation. That matter is sim- 
 
INTRODUCTION 7 
 
 ply a question of demand and supply in a world 
 which science has uncovered before our eyes in 
 such a way that we see in it strength forever 
 revealing itself in all loving helpfulness, and so 
 making weakness more and more savingly ac- 
 quainted with it. The parent birds with their eggs 
 and then their fledgelings, the whole story of 
 family life and home-training, in our own race, 
 and the delight men take in making themselves 
 known, in every uplifting way possible, to their 
 animal servants and pets, till these actually 
 acquire the power of intelligently and gladly 
 co-operating with them in carrying out their 
 desires, all exist as so much standing testimony 
 to this fact. That which appears upon the sur- 
 face of things testifies concerning that which lives 
 at their center. Life is the same from the gyrat- 
 ing electron onward. The center of the atom 
 reveals itself to every electron of the group by 
 holding it safely in leash. So God reveals him- 
 self wherever conscience is allied with thought and 
 volition by holding men hard to himself as the 
 Right and the Good. Personal themselves they 
 cannot but see him as also personal, and the 
 source of personality in themselves, nor fail to 
 realize that he is pouring his own thought and 
 purpose into them more and more. If this is not 
 true of absolutely every man, it is certainly true 
 of the race taken as a whole. 
 
 I have passed by the question of the author- 
 ship of the various portions of the New Testa- 
 
8 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 ment as one of literary and historical, rather than 
 theological or practical importance; and I have 
 shown my confidence in the general soundness of 
 Harnack's most recent position as to their dates. 
 The most important of them historically seem to 
 me to have been written, eschatological sections 
 and all, prior to the destruction of Jerusalem in 
 70 A. D. 
 
 My exegesis of some of the eschatological sec- 
 tions themselves will reveal a departure from the 
 teachings of both the Pre-millennarian and Post- 
 millennarian schools. The New Testament 
 writers believed in the immanent Christ as they 
 believed in the immanent God. It will be found, 
 too, that the resurrection of the dead is viewed as 
 only an incident in connection with the triumph 
 of Life in its highest manifestations. These 
 changes in New Testament interpretation have 
 for years seemed to me inevitable, if we are ever 
 really to know what it was these writers indicated 
 by the terms which they employed in this connec- 
 tion. 
 
 And, finally, as to the matter of the redemp- 
 tion of the race itself, the thought of the past has 
 seemed to me wholly inadequate. The question 
 is not one of slight importance. The Fall, how- 
 ever interpreted, is a racial fact. Through it 
 men became, or become, self-centered, selfish, God- 
 renouncing, with their careers sadly soiled by sins 
 and crimes, and their consciences uneasy. 
 
 The Son of God came to buy men back from all 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 this. To buy back whom? The race as a race, 
 or only a limited number of individual men and 
 women? To buy back how? Completely, or 
 only in part? To buy back where? Here, while 
 the race still lives its earthly life? Or will that 
 full redemption be experienced only through the 
 conversion of our flesh to spirit, and our removal 
 as a race to some better world than this? Would 
 this be a genuine redemption at all ? Or are we to 
 abandon the doctrine that the Divine ideal for our 
 race, which the Fall interfered with, or at least 
 postponed, was that it should be introduced to a 
 long and unbrokenly hply career of upward pro- 
 gress here upon the earth? 
 
 Present day thought rejects the Calvinian ioc- 
 trines of predestination and a limited atonement. 
 We declare that it was never the purpose of God 
 to save only a fraction of mankind, that Christ 
 died for all, that the gospel message is for all 
 alike, and that the Holy Spirit moves in equal 
 love upon all hearts. We affirm that the rea^n 
 why one man is won to righteousness while nis 
 brother perseveres in sin, finds its true answer 
 in the freedom of the human will. We are sure, 
 that is to say, that God's purpose to save touches 
 our race as a whole. But we are equally sure, 
 too, that to this day that purpose is far 
 from being uniformly victorious. Men still love 
 darkness rather than light, and live and die 
 impenitent. Human depravity is still a fact 
 which cannot be ignored, for it constantly reveals 
 
10 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 itself in many detestable, as well as ordinary sins 
 and crimes. What then? Is God's redeeming 
 purpose and plan never to achieve more than a 
 partial victory on this planet? Is the race to 
 remain substantially what it is now to the very 
 end? Is the question of the seeker of salvation 
 always to be, How may I learn so to live in this 
 world as to get safely out of it? Is this world 
 never to become a universal school for the 
 cultivation of universal holiness? Is it al- 
 ways to be just a hospital, in which some men, 
 and some men only, will recover from the malady 
 of sin, and go forth to the unending enjoyment 
 elsewhere of moral and spiritual health? 
 
 These questions are not of slight importance. 
 They really mean this. Is there to be a redemp- 
 tion of the race at all, or only a redemption out 
 of the race of a limited number, from generation 
 to generation, including the last? Up to the 
 present this is what has really taken place. Only 
 some out of each generation attain to a life 
 that is worthy, while vast numbers never learn to 
 even nobly aspire. How are things to be in the 
 future? Practically as they are now in every 
 respect? Or are they slowly and steadily to 
 improve, till a day dawns in which sin shall have 
 given place to holiness in every individual of the 
 generation then alive upon our planet? In short, 
 is sin to live on here as long as our race does, or 
 will our Lord Jesus Christ persevere in his vic- 
 tories over it, till he has utterly exterminated it 
 
INTRODUCTION 11 
 
 and introduced our race to its spiritual Eden of 
 holy joyous consecration to God? 
 
 By our manner of answering these questions 
 we say whether we believe in the actual redemp- 
 tion of our race, as an earthly one, or not. 
 Believing that the Redeemer came, poured out his 
 soul in death for the race, was raised from the 
 dead, exalted to God's right hand and gifted with 
 all power on behalf of the race, is one thing; and 
 believing that he will accomplish his task in any 
 complete way is quite another. The complete 
 salvation of the race from the stand- 
 point of Glory in heaven could be accomplished 
 only through the final recovery from sin and suf- 
 fering to holiness and blessedness of every mem- 
 ber of it, from the first man down to the last of 
 his descendants the recovery from sin and suf- 
 fering of every Cain as well as every Abel, of 
 every Jezebel as well as every Elijah. We think 
 we have no sure ground in either scripture or 
 experience for such a doctrine as this. But tta 
 question before us now is whether there is any 
 scriptural basis for the conclusion that a time is 
 coming when our race, as it will then be found 
 upon the earth, will stand before God separated 
 from all its outward sins and inward depravities, 
 together with all the disastrous consequences now 
 associated with these, and fulfilling in every 
 respect its high destiny, having been raised at 
 last through the toil of the redeeming ages to the 
 very image and likeness of God. 
 
12 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Jesus taught his disciples to pray in the inter- 
 ests of the Kingdom of God "Thy will be done 
 on earth, as in heaven." Is that prayer ever to 
 receive its full answer? Is there one in heaven 
 who does not do God's will completely and gladly? 
 And will the prayer be fully answered as long as 
 there is one left upon the earth who does not do 
 that will in the same manner? 
 
 Such a redemption of our race as that indicated 
 above would include three things in particular. 
 The first of these would be the entire removal from 
 the earth of all willful opposers of that right- 
 eousness which the Son of God came to make uni- 
 versal. This entire removal of the wicked whether 
 accomplished through converting grace or the 
 slow operations of the law of the survival of the 
 fit, or of both together working along parallel 
 lines, would eventually place our earth in the sole 
 possession of the righteously disposed. I have 
 used the words "righteously disposed" instead of 
 the word righteous, because all round righteous- 
 ness of life always means so much more than right 
 dispositions, implying, as it does, right knowledge 
 and the necessary moral strength at the var- 
 ious points of human activity two things in 
 which the Christian of to-day, like his brother of 
 other times, displays an all too evident lack. 
 
 The second thing, therefore, which the redemp- 
 tion of our race must include is its full develop- 
 ment in all that pertains to intellectual and voli- 
 tional activity along the lines of right conduct. 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 The race must be brought to the point where each 
 member of it will always know the very thing he 
 ought to do, and will always be prompt in his 
 response to the voice of each duty he meets. And 
 since the body, and particularly the brain, is the 
 instrument both of the intellect and the will, the 
 redemption of the race must include such thor- 
 ough expansion or repair of that instrument as 
 will fully fit it for the highest service it can be 
 called upon to render. It must be brought up 
 to perfection for the acquisition and retention of 
 knowledge, on the one hand, and for carrying out 
 the behests of the will, on the other. Disease 
 must disappear and physical readiness, zest and 
 courage must become universal and triumphant 
 among men. There can be no perfect moral or 
 spiritual health in a physically diseased race. 
 Physical disease, as long as it continues, must 
 impair that health by weakening the understand- 
 ing or the will or both. 
 
 All power in heaven and in earth has been given 
 to Jesus in the interests of his kingdom. He 
 reigns and must "reign as king until God has put 
 all his enemies under his feet." As king he is also 
 Judge of all men, with full authority to gather 
 from his kingdom all that hinders and those who 
 live in sin (Matt. 13:41). On the other hand 
 there are no heights of holiness to which he is 
 unable to show the feet of his people the way. 
 And while he was here in the flesh, when did he 
 ever meet disease and death without delivering 
 
14 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 their victims if these victims themselves, or their 
 friends, were willing to accept his aid? 
 
 It will be ours now to discover, if we can, how 
 far and by what means the apostolic church 
 believed our Lord Jesus Christ would work out the 
 redemption of our race here upon the earth. But 
 a word on the genuine interpretation of scripture 
 ought to precede this search. 
 
 When we approach the Bible asking what its 
 teachings on any matter are, there are some 
 things which we ought particularly to remember. 
 Its books and letters are not detached literature, 
 which might have been produced anywhere and at 
 any time in the world's history. Each was writ- 
 ten with the definite end in view of instructing 
 and helping some particular people or class, which 
 existed at the time its writer did his work. Every 
 phrase and sentence and paragraph had a definite 
 meaning for the writer, which he was seeking to 
 convey to the minds of those who were to be his 
 first readers. Our first question, therefore, to- 
 day must be What did John or Peter or James 
 try to teach the men of his generation by means 
 of this or that paragraph or sentence or phrase? 
 And until we have made this discovery we have 
 nothing on which to rely for present use. 
 
 There are no second meanings. The first sense 
 is the true sense and the only one. The language 
 used to describe one event may chance to describe 
 quite accurately more than one event of a like 
 sort which may occur later ; and it may be quoted 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 for the purpose centuries or millenniums after it 
 was first penned. But no sober-minded man 
 would assert that the earlier writer must there- 
 fore have foreseen every incident which his lan- 
 guage was fitted to portray. There may be second 
 or third or even many applications of given 
 descriptive statements, but, let me repeat it, there 
 are no second meanings. The statements of scrip- 
 ture are not things to juggle with. Each was 
 penned for the one purpose of conveying to other 
 minds than that of the writer, some truth or fact 
 which he wished the men of his own time to know. 
 
 "Our Salvation is nearer now than when we 
 accepted the Faith. The night is almost gone; 
 the day is near." (Rom. 13 :11.) What "Salva- 
 tion" and what "day" did Paul have in his mind 
 when he wrote these words? That is the first 
 question for me to answer, and if I cannot answer 
 it as he and the Roman Christians would have 
 done, I must confess that I know nothing about 
 the meaning of the passage. I may use the lan- 
 guage of it to describe some situation, past, pres- 
 ent, or future, which I may have in my mind, but 
 I get at its meaning only as I come to know what 
 the situation was which Paul had in his mind 
 when he penned it. 
 
 The New Testament writers themselves knew 
 how to harness the words of earlier authors to 
 the service of their own pens. Examples are 
 easily found. The last nine verses of the sec- 
 ond chapter of Matthew present three of them 
 
16 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 "Out of Egypt I called my Son;" 
 
 "A voice was heard in Ramah, 
 Weeping and much lamentation; 
 Rachel, weeping for her children, 
 Refused all comfort because they were not;" 
 
 and 
 
 "He will be called a Nazarene." 
 
 The first of these passages was taken from 
 Hosea 11 :1. That prophet, however, had no 
 thought of the coming of the child Jesus up from 
 Egypt when he wrote it. On the contrary his 
 look was backward. His attention was fixed upon 
 a most important event in the early history of his 
 people, when Jehovah called them as his "Son" 
 out of Egypt. Still the words were suited to 
 describe precisely the event in the life of Jesus 
 which Matthew was recording, and because they 
 came up in his mind as he wrote, he used them for 
 that purpose. Similarly the language which he 
 quoted in connection with his description of 
 Herod's slaughter of the innocents, and which 
 shows us Rachel, the dearly beloved wife of Israel, 
 who had been buried at Bethlehem, weeping for 
 her children there ruthlessly put to death, and 
 refusing all comfort, was applied by him in a 
 very telling way. At the same time we would 
 make a very great mistake if we should assume 
 that Jeremiah wrote them foreseeing Herod's act. 
 The one thing the prophet had in his mind was the 
 
INTRODUCTION 17 
 
 snatching away of Rachel's children into the expa- 
 triation of the Babylonish captivity. 
 
 Finally, "He shall be called a Nazarene" is not 
 a quotation at all, but an ingenious adaptation. 
 The thing Matthew did here was this. He put an 
 historic statement in the future tense that he 
 might read into it a wealth of past prophecy. 
 None of Israel's seers had foretold that Jesus 
 would become a resident or citizen of Nazareth. 
 But they had declared that Jehovah's anointed 
 one would be despised. They had also said that 
 he would be called Netzer, a branch, or germ, or 
 sprout; and the root portion of the name Naza- 
 reth was Netzer or Natzer. With this fact and 
 one or both of these prophecies in his mind Mat- 
 thew read their sense into the word, and declared 
 that the prophets had said "He shall be called a 
 Nazarene," a despised one and, at the same time, 
 the one germ or sprout of our race's coming 
 greatness. But, as I have stated, no prophet 
 had ever predicted that Jesus would reside in the 
 town of Nazareth, which is the fact Matthew was 
 recording. 
 
 In getting at the meaning of the scriptures, as 
 of all other writings, the one question which must 
 never be lost sight of is What did the writer 
 have in mind when he penned his words? and not 
 What application can I make of them? or 
 What sense can I read into them? In the pages 
 which follow I shall strive to keep this fact always 
 in view, and when dealing with such phrases as 
 
18 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 "the coming of the Son of Man," "the close of 
 the age" and "the last days," shall seek first of 
 all to discover what the great teachers who used 
 them tried to convey to the minds of their hearers 
 and readers by their means. 
 
 I shall also keep in view another fact, namely, 
 that a progress in revelation is as evident on the 
 pages of the books of the Bible, as the corres- 
 ponding progress in knowledge and ideas is in 
 the general literature of the world. Men's 
 thoughts of God were kept widening. In some 
 cases this was as true of the individual teacher as 
 it was of the generations that succeeded each 
 other. Paul on the subject of the resurrection of 
 the dead, and the corresponding change which he 
 believed would take place in the living, until it 
 finally transformed nature itself, is a striking 
 example of this. To properly interpret the Bible 
 therefore, on any theme, it is necessary not only 
 to collate the passages which deal with that point, 
 but also to arrange them in the order in which 
 they were written, beginning with the earliest. 
 
 "He has made an end of Death, and has brought 
 Life and Immortality to light by that Good News, 
 of which I was myself appointed a Herald and 
 Apostle" (2nd Tim. 1:10, 11) is a word Paul 
 wrote of his Lord in the last letter that ever came 
 from his pen probably. But who can hope to say 
 what lengths and breadths and depths and heights 
 these words had for Paul himself unless he will 
 study every earlier word of his upon the subject, 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 beginning with the first, which is contained in 1 
 Thess. 4:13-5:3, and was written perhaps four- 
 teen years or more previously. It is all too easy 
 to twist the scriptures to one's own undoing as a 
 reasonable being. Indeed it would be well for us 
 if every time we take the Bible into our hands, 
 we would very devoutly say to ourselves "Here 
 there is need for discernment" (Rev. 13:10). 
 
II 
 
 GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS AND MAN'S SIN 
 
 It is too late a year of our Lord in which to 
 entertain the suggestion that there may be some 
 defect in the divine righteousness. No one, how- 
 ever, need shrink from the idea that there may be 
 something defective in his own notions concern- 
 ing that righteousness. It may even be desirable 
 that most of us should assume that there is. 
 
 More than thirty years ago a preacher so 
 young that he was still looking forward to his 
 ordination dealt with a phase of our subject in 
 these words : 
 
 "Some scientists have taken the ground that man 
 can originate living organisms. They have said, Get 
 the right kinds of matter together in the right pro- 
 portions, then subject them to the necessary condi- 
 tions and operations, and living creatures will result. 
 More than once the experiment has been tried. More 
 than once, too, men have claimed success only to 
 own to failure afterwards, however. We are not 
 yet able to turn dead matter into living. We can- 
 not manipulate life, any more than we can weigh 
 it with our scales or comprehend it. 
 
 "But imagine, now, that it is possible for men 
 versed in science to make living creatures out of dead 
 
GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 21 
 
 matter. Suppose Mr. Huxley able to do this. Sup- 
 pose him able to create beings of many sorts, and 
 that it is in his power to produce two creatures, a 
 male and a female, from whom would spring a numer- 
 ous race. Suppose also that Mr. Huxley has the 
 power of seeing all down the future, and of know- 
 ing all this race would do and all that would happen 
 to it from the beginning to the end of its existence. 
 Suppose, too, that he sees that if he should create this 
 first pair, it would remain happy for only a brief 
 time, and then fall into the deepest suffering and 
 degradation, carrying with it all the generations of its 
 offspring from the first to the last. 
 
 "Suppose, now, that with all this in his knowledge, 
 and without devising any means of alleviating the suf- 
 fering, or of counteracting the evil he foresees, Mr. 
 Huxley should create that first pair, making them so 
 that they might possibly avoid the wrong-doing and 
 wretchedness, but knowing absolutely that they would 
 not avoid it; what would we think of Mr. Huxley for 
 doing it? We would say that it might have been al- 
 lowable for him to have created the first pair, but that 
 foreseeing the consequences, as he did, it was both un- 
 fair and cruel for him to create them so that they 
 would give birth to an offspring like their fallen 
 selves. Every theologian would condemn him, and 
 Arminian and Calvanist alike would brand him 
 wretch. 
 
 "But does not this supposed creation of Mr. Hux- 
 ley bear an exact analogy to what God's creation of 
 man would have been apart from redemption? . . . 
 
 "Let us look more closely into this matter. We say 
 God created Adam and Eve able to stand, yet free to 
 
22 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 fall. Personally they were, therefore, justly held 
 guilty for their transgression. God foresaw their fall 
 but did not cause it. But turn your eyes to their 
 descendants. God fixed two laws upon Adam and 
 Eve. The first was, Be parents; the second, Beget 
 and bear children like yourselves. After the fall this 
 second law became, Beget and bring forth a sinful 
 race. 
 
 "Birth into the world would be an unmitigated 
 curse apart from redemption. Each child born under 
 the circumstances would have had to lay the blame 
 somewhere. It could not have laid it upon itself. 
 No child has anything to do with its own birth, much 
 less with being born sinful and wretched. Neither 
 could it have laid the responsibility upon its parents, 
 for they would have been as parents are now, under 
 law to God himself in the matter, and each birth that 
 took place would have occurred, as each birth does 
 now, in obedience to His law, written in the very 
 nature of both the father and the mother. The in- 
 creasing race of men (if the race could have sur- 
 vived) would, if they could have known God at all, 
 have had to look upon him as a monster, who took de- 
 light in confusion, anguish and death. If God had 
 created men for such a fate, what sense of justice 
 there could have been in his universe under such con- 
 ditions would have risen on all sides to curse him to 
 his face. That sense of justice would, in hate and 
 loathing, have said "God foreknew that the race 
 he thought of creating would be supremely and for- 
 ever wretched, and yet he created it !" 
 
 These are plain words and they make it clear 
 that man's sin and God's righteousness can never 
 
GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 3 
 
 be considered apart from each other. So this 
 young preacher continued: 
 
 "I want to say further on this head that while it 
 is true, in one sense, that creation was the foundation 
 for redemption, it is equally true in another sense, 
 that redemption was the foundation for creation. 
 We have seen that God could not have withheld re- 
 demption from our race, as a whole, without treating 
 it unjustly. His wish and purpose were plainly that 
 there should be a numerous race, and not simply two 
 individuals. His wish for a numerous race, and his 
 justice and love, together with his foresight of the 
 fall, forced upon Him, as it were, the necessity of a 
 redeeming plan. Had his wisdom been unable to de- 
 vise such a plan, his love and his justice would have 
 held him back from creating man at all. 'That he 
 might be just* is one of Paul's own words." 
 
 Continuing 1 , this same young man asked: 
 
 "Does some one say, You would make redemption 
 the vindication of creation? I reply Yes; I believe 
 that to God himself it was and is that. And, as for 
 us, it is the only vindication that has reached us. I 
 go further still and say, that we cannot yet see how 
 even it is a sufficient vindication. Cannot yet see, I 
 say. We can believe it now and expect to see it by 
 and by. Only that. We walk by faith here, as long 
 at least as we continue to believe the scriptural doc- 
 trine of endless sin and endless suffering as a pos- 
 sibility, if not a certainty, for some." 
 
 These positions are impregnable. Even divine 
 
24 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 might does not make right. The essential 
 demands of justice are not difficult to discern, and 
 the Judge of all the earth must surely be at least 
 as good as our Huxleys. 
 
 As definite a choice as was ever made by the 
 divine mind was that of continuing a sinful race 
 upon this planet, and that choice would have been 
 as sinful as the race itself, had not his righteous- 
 ness made sinful men only that it might redeem 
 them. Redemption, therefore, is neither a divine 
 afterthought, nor a divine work of supereroga- 
 tion, but a work demanded, and entered into, by 
 infinite justice. 
 
 The New Testament writers most definitely rec- 
 ognize this. The author of The Revelation saw 
 Jesus as "the Lamb that has been sacrificed from 
 the foundation of the world." (Rev. 13:8.) 
 Peter writes of him as at once a sacrifice and a 
 ransom for those to whom his letter was ad- 
 dressed, and declared that he was "destined for 
 this before the beginning of the world." (I Pet. 
 1:19, 20.) Paul adds: "This God did to prove 
 his righteousness ... as a proof, I repeat, 
 at the present time, of his own righteousness, that 
 he might be righteous in our eyes, and might pro- 
 nounce righteous the man who takes his stand on 
 faith in Jesus." (Rom. 3:25, 26.) Elsewhere 
 Paul makes it very clear that when God pro- 
 nounces a man righteous, "who takes his stand on 
 faith in Jesus," that man's faith has already seen 
 in Jesus the deliverance from sin itself, which he 
 
GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 25 
 
 could by no means work out on his own behalf. 
 God pronounces righteous only the man whom he, 
 at the same time, makes righteous. So in giving 
 Jesus to the world, and calling upon all men to 
 take their stand on faith in him as their Savior 
 from sin itself, He was proving to men that it was 
 only "in his forbearance he had passed over the 
 sins that men had previously committed" (Rom. 
 3:25) ; and that he might, in view of his purpose 
 regarding both that past, and the holy and uni- 
 versal new order of things he was establishing 
 through Jesus; satisfy all men that he had con- 
 tinued to maintain a sinning and suffering race, 
 only that he might redeem it from all iniquity 
 and exalt it to a glory of righteousness, far be- 
 yond all its present powers of comprehension. 
 
 From one of Paul's viewpoints, therefore, the 
 atoning work of Christ was God's most potent 
 apologia pro vita sua his most powerful apolo- 
 getic. It is easy to see how much such an apolo- 
 getic was needed, and how far men still are from 
 perceiving its full force. Even as things have 
 been under redemption, more than one woman has 
 said to her husband, when conditions had been 
 rendered all but unendurable, and through no 
 guilty act of their own, "Renounce God and die" ; 
 and few indeed of the men who have listened to 
 such counsel have been Jobs. But the appeal has 
 not been made in vain, and gradually it will 
 smooth the wrinkles out of all foreheads, and 
 steal the bitterness from even life's chief woes. 
 
26 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Through the gospel of Jesus Christ, God has re- 
 vealed himself as the Trinity as the Father who 
 loves all his afflicted and straying children, and 
 sent the Son in whom he could always delight to 
 enlighten and bless them; the Son himself as un- 
 dertaking the task with a perfect devotion towards 
 both his Father and his needy brothers, and as suf- 
 fering and dying for them without a murmur, 
 though it was their own hatred towards his perfect 
 goodness that nailed him to his cross ; and the Holy 
 Spirit as the invisible omnipresent and almighty 
 friend, instructor and uplifter of all. It was in 
 view of this infinite apologetic that Paul exulted 
 when he wrote: "God puts his love for us beyond 
 all doubt by the fact that Christ died on our 
 behalf while we were still sinners." (Rom. 5:8.) 
 And the first generation of Christians caught 
 but the vision which was held in reserve for our 
 whole race before even the world we inhabit was 
 launched upon its varied career. 
 
 It will be well for us to notice next that the 
 necessity for that divine forbearance towards 
 sin which impressed Paul, was one which God 
 imposed upon himself, when he became man's 
 creator. He chose to create, foreseeing all, and 
 knowing that if he created the race, it would, for 
 hundreds of generations, be made up of sinners 
 incapable of self-redemption. He foreknew that, 
 in the very nature of things, as he himself would 
 make them, not one child of Adam would be respon- 
 sible for his birth into the world with a depraved 
 
GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 21 
 
 nature, which was sure to lead him astray that 
 whatever might or might not be true concerning 
 our first parents, this would certainly be true 
 of their descendants. He foreknew also that 
 apart from continuous enlightenment by himself 
 Adam's race would know nothing at all about 
 righteousness, and that to save them into right- 
 eousness he would have to do a great deal more 
 than simply enlighten them that they would have 
 to be created anew, indeed. Deliberately he chose 
 such a race for himself ignorant, that he might 
 enlighten it; sinful, that he might make it holy; 
 hateful and hating the highest, that he might 
 fill it with his own loftiest love. To be forbear- 
 ing towards such a race was simply to stand by 
 his choice, and go forward under a necessity of 
 his own creation. Whatever responsibility has 
 stood in association with the inherited ignorance 
 and sin of each generation, has been God's, not 
 man's. No man and no generation could possibly 
 be called to an account for more than the sins, 
 which he or it had chosen in the face of a light 
 and a help, which made the choice really avoid- 
 able. Apart from the work of divine redemp- 
 tion, which includes moral enlightenment, that is 
 to say, there could be no such thing as moral 
 responsibility for any son of Adam. God's very 
 forbearance towards men becomes a reality only 
 as his redeeming light and aid are consciously and 
 willfully rejected. Precisely as far as men are 
 without light, or without power to live up to the 
 
28 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 light they have received, their sin is a missing 
 of the mark, or the symptom of a moral disease; 
 and their guilt is that of the child, that has in- 
 herited from its parents partial blindness, along 
 with some other deeply disabling maladies. It is 
 its doom to suffer for no fault of its own, and 
 because God ordained it should be so. God linked 
 sin and suffering together and doomed our race, 
 at least after the first pair, with which, accord- 
 ing to the Bible, it began, to both; and he made 
 the suffering, on both the physical and the moral 
 side, the lot of even those who are too young, or 
 too ignorant, to choose the wrong which incurs 
 the pain or the weakness under which they labor. 
 God has loaded the body, the intellect, the affec- 
 tions and the will of our race, with the penalties 
 he has attached to sin. He has made innocence 
 to suffer with guilt in this mystery of his govern- 
 ment. 
 
 In the last named fact do we not find the sug- 
 gestion that he deals with men differently from the 
 standpoint of the individual conscience? For if 
 the individual suffers in his innocence as well as 
 in his guilt, surely his conscience is left out of the 
 account so far. What he endures he suffers as 
 a member of the race, and not as a being endowed 
 with an individuality which forces him to stand 
 out also in an accountability to God which is 
 personal and solitary. 
 
 Now what of the New Testament? Has it any 
 word concerning such a distinction? Do its 
 
GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 29 
 
 writers tell us anything about the solidarity of 
 the race, on the one hand, and personal responsi- 
 bility on the other? Above all, have they, in ad- 
 dition, some word that will show us how far, 
 in their opinion, God holds the individual man ac- 
 countable for the sins of his heart and life? How 
 far was sin to them a missing of the mark, or a 
 disease of the moral nature, and how far was it 
 a deliberate, wickedly-chosen and guilty thing? 
 
 The answer is easy. They faced the situation 
 and expressed themselves clearly. Their memory 
 of the teaching of Jesus guided them, and their 
 grasp of the first principles of justice did the 
 rest. They knew that the moral quality of an 
 action must be sought for in the purpose from 
 which it springs. They knew, too, that the man 
 who is not aware that the action he contemplates, 
 or the disposition he cherishes, is wrong, can pur- 
 pose neither disobedience towards God, nor any- 
 thing unrighteous towards his fellow-men, under 
 any conditions whatever. So to them ignorance 
 excused men and knowledge rendered them cul- 
 pable. They believed a man must know he is 
 breaking a law he should obey, if he is to be held 
 guilty in the act he does, and that the purpose 
 must be consciously wrong, if the formal act of 
 transgression is to be set down as sinful. Paul, 
 for instance, declared that "sin! cannot be charged 
 against a man where no law exists." (Rom. 
 5:13.) And this word, read in the light of Luke 
 12:47, 48, and John 15:22, 24, cannot be inter- 
 
30 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 preted otherwise than as meaning that the place 
 where the law must exist, to make the transgres- 
 sor of it guilty before God is in the knowledge of 
 the transgressor himself. 
 
 Paul made another distinction, which is to be 
 found in one of the climaxes of the great classi- 
 cal passage on sin in his letter to the Romans. 
 
 "When I do the very thing I want not to do, 
 the action is no longer my own, but that of sin 
 which is within me." (Chap. 7:17.) Here he 
 looks upon sin, not as any proper feature of his 
 character, or constituent of his personality, but 
 as some foreign thing which has somehow got a 
 victorious footing within him, and now acts it- 
 self out in spite of him. 
 
 No word truer to human experience than this 
 was ever penned. Evil habits are common 
 enough, but their commonness does not prevent 
 us from being in continual astonishment at their 
 power. No boy with his first cigarette between 
 his lips, no man taking his first sip of an in- 
 toxicating beverage, can be persuaded that so 
 simple an act may very soon mean the tighten- 
 ing upon him of fetters that he will vainly attempt 
 to break. He smiles at every well-meant warn- 
 ing, because he feels sure that the strength of his 
 own manhood is behind his unchained will to keep 
 it forever free. And when he does find himself 
 helpless to do more than struggle, he knows that 
 his slavery was not self-chosen that he had 
 chosen its very opposite from the start, and had 
 
GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 31 
 
 scarcely dreamed of what was before him. His 
 ignorance was played upon. He had been de- 
 ceived and was now being mocked by his foe. 
 
 Let a man face all the sins of his life and defy 
 them to hold him any longer in their grip. Let 
 your man be one who has never fallen under the 
 power of even one of the habits, which we call 
 foolish or bad. Give him the most favorable con- 
 ditions possible. Let him be a very Saul of Tar- 
 sus or a John Wesley, in what the world calls 
 rectitude and high ambition. Yet the day will 
 come to him when he will cry the cry of the man 
 who knows himself to be held in a bitter bondage 
 which he never consciously chose, and which he 
 has come to loathe with a miserable helpless loath- 
 ing, that can scarcely voice itself intelligibly. 
 He will feel as if all the sin of all his dead 
 grandsires had come out of the dark and ghastly 
 past, to force him down with cruel bony hands, 
 when he is fully resolved to step upward, instead, 
 into the light of a worthy morning. And the 
 feeling about his dead grandsires will be true to 
 the facts, and no mere "as if." 
 
 "In Adam all died." Heredity can be terrible. 
 Each man is the net resultant of all the forces 
 that produced him, plus that God-given, better, 
 feebly-aspiring something, which he knows to be 
 himself himself bound to a dead body which he 
 can by no means shake off himself crying 1 
 "Miserable man that I am! Who will deliver 
 me?" 
 
32 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Now what is the fact behind this fact? When 
 a man can truly say of his wrong-doing: "It 
 is no longer I that do it," what are we bound to 
 affirm besides? When we remember that the fact 
 of his helplessness was the same before he real- 
 ized it as it was afterwards, what are we to say? 
 This that up to the very limits of his helpless- 
 ness, he is no more to blame for not doing his 
 proper work in God's world, than is the strong 
 man whose system has been invaded and rendered 
 helpless by the typhoid bacillus. Further, his 
 very delusions are themselves a part of his dis- 
 ease, and he cannot escape until his malady has 
 been met and mastered by a delivering power 
 stronger than either itself or him, and he is being 
 led up to health and vigor. 
 
 To the conclusion that the place where the law 
 of God must exist, to make its transgressor guilty 
 before him, is in the knowledge of the transgres- 
 sor himself, we must now add, therefore, this 
 other word, that up to the very limits of each 
 man's helplessness to avoid his transgressions, the 
 divine /righteousness must hold him personally 
 guiltless. The victim of typhoid cannot fairly 
 be held accountable for the full work of a healthy 
 man. Sin is, in one of its phases, a disease for 
 the existence of which no man, since Adam, can 
 be held responsible. This is New Testament 
 teaching. And, according to that same teach- 
 ing, it was the darkness of our ignorance that 
 brought the Light of the World to our relief, the 
 
GOD'S RIGHTEOUSNESS 33 
 
 awfulness of our disease that brought the great 
 Physician to our side, and our helplessness in our 
 bitter bondage that brought the Mighty Deliv- 
 erer to our rescue. 
 
 Over against this obligation of God to man, 
 self-imposed and self-recognized, lies our own ob- 
 ligation to him. Each man knows himself to be 
 individually responsible to God and feels that 
 he has been a sinner against him on his own 
 account. This consciousness of personal guilt 
 arises out of the fact that God has been known 
 to us as the God of Salvation from both our sins 
 and sinfulness to a greater extent than we have 
 availed ourselves of his sanctifying grace. But 
 the bitterest cry that breaks from human lips 
 and lifts itself to Heaven, is wrung from human 
 hearts, not by this guilt, but in view of that help- 
 lessness through sin's disease or bondage, which 
 makes the life of righteousness impossible without 
 Heaven's help. Our joy is that He who made 
 and maintains the need for infinite help has be- 
 stowed that aid from the start, and with grow- 
 ingly glorious results. 
 
 Here, then, we have reached this one clear fact, 
 that the plan of 1 redemption, in which the Incarna- 
 tion was wrapped up from the beginning, found 
 its primeval necessity in the righteousness of the 
 Infinite Love. 
 
Ill 
 
 JESUS AS A SIGN 
 
 A sign is some visible thing which represents 
 an invisible reality greater than itself. Christian- 
 ity has three of these signs. Two of them we 
 call sacraments. They are Baptism and the 
 Lord's Supper. In baptism the outward and 
 visible act of applying water to an individual who 
 has been presented for the purpose of undergo- 
 ing the rite, represents an invisible act indefinitely 
 greater than itself. So also the visible act of 
 one who partakes of the Lord's supper repre- 
 sents an indefinitely greater invisible act. 
 
 Water is invaluable as a food and also as an 
 instrument of cleansing. Associate it with a 
 cleansing agent in a Turkish bath institute and 
 it means physical cleansing for all who come and 
 submit to certain conditions. But associate water 
 with one who is authorized to use it in baptism, 
 and let him apply it to the persons of those 
 who are presented for the rite, and the act of 
 the baptizer represents that invisible act of the 
 Holy Spirit, by which He purifies the hearts of 
 those who believe in God as the God of their 
 personal salvation through Jesus Christ. 
 
 Bread is invaluable as a sustainer of physical 
 84 
 
JESUS AS A SIGN 35 
 
 life, and unfermented wine is the very life of the 
 grape the very life of the grape plant itself, 
 indeed, since it produces the seed, or plants in 
 embryo, of all future vineyards. Unfermented 
 grape juice and bread taken together, therefore, 
 are a sign of, or represent, physical life and its 
 sustenance. And when you set portions of them 
 apart for use in connection with the spiritual 
 religion of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the rite 
 which we call his Supper, they then represent him 
 as at once the Spiritual life and the spiritual 
 nourishment of all those who continously receive 
 him by obedient faith, just as obediently they 
 partake of the bread and wine themselves in the 
 Supper. 
 
 But before either of these symbols could be 
 chosen on earth, one had to be chosen in heaven. 
 The thing it was to represent was the divine love 
 for our sinful race. It had to be something that 
 could actually set forth the infinite thing that was 
 to be represented. It had to be something also 
 that even the worst man could understand and 
 appreciate. The use of water in baptism could 
 be understood and appreciated as symbolizing 
 moral and spiritual cleansing. Partaking of 
 bread and wine in the Lord's Supper could be un- 
 derstood and appreciated as showing forth the 
 reception of Christ as the inbringer and sustainer 
 of spiritual life in those who believe in him. But 
 what could stand as a symbol of that love of 
 the triune Jehovah, which stoops and suffers and 
 
36 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 dies, that it may win bad men to holiness and 
 peace and enduring riches? Could men have 
 guessed ? 
 
 The divine solution of the problem, when it 
 first met human eyes, was a babe. But this babe 
 would have been no solution at all, if it had died in 
 childhood. For then it would have represented 
 innocence, apart from conscious intelligence and 
 personal choice, and God in himself cannot be 
 truly represented thus. Each babe is God-like in 
 its possibilities, but a babe must live on for years 
 if these possibilities are ever to become the actual 
 facts of character, which men can see and ad- 
 mire and love. The son of Mary, lying there in 
 the manger, receives homage, because the spirit 
 of prophecy has already seen him as the glorious 
 man he afterwards became. It is not the babe, 
 but the man the babe so soon became, that is 
 approached with bended knee. Could it have been 
 true that he was to die in infancy, the spirit of 
 prophecy would never have been awakened con- 
 cerning him, and he would have gone to a grave 
 that would in a few short years have been name- 
 less and forgotten. The worship of a babe, as 
 a babe, is no true part of Christianity. 
 
 Man is at once a common being on this planet, 
 and the most exalted in his attributes of all its 
 inhabitants. So high is he in comparison with 
 every other earthly being, that he is arbiter of 
 the destinies of them all. One man is of more 
 worth than every creature besides. So man is the 
 
JESUS AS A SIGN 37 
 
 highest being that man can become acquainted 
 with upon this planet, short of God himself. And 
 if God had to be seen by bad men, not directly 
 but through another, that other had himself to 
 be a man, and a man worthy of the God for whom 
 he was to stand. So the babe was born and grew 
 to years as the Son of God and the Son of Man. 
 And so utterly human was he that those who grew 
 up with him, in the same home even, never dreamed 
 of him as being essentially different from them- 
 selves. He began his public career and gathered 
 disdiples about him. They were impressed by 
 his superiority, but after his transfiguration, 
 which three of them witnessed, and even after 
 he came back to them from the dead, he was still 
 so truly human to them, that they asked him if 
 he was not now at last going into their politics 
 to restore the kingdom and place Israel at the 
 very forefront of the nations. 
 
 We sometimes grieve over this blindness of 
 theirs, as we call it. But after all they were not 
 blind to the main fact. In Jesus they saw God. 
 They saw he was human but they saw also that 
 he represented their God that his human life 
 was a sign of the life of God, and, at length, that 
 it stood for every infinite attribute of God, and 
 specifically for the love that stoops and suffers 
 that it may win bad men out of sin into holiness, 
 out of trouble into peace, and out of poverty 
 into wealth. 
 
 They saw, too, that he was a sign of God not 
 
38 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 as in his heaven making all well with his world, 
 but of God among men, dealing with everything 
 on the spot. Instead of saying as they looked 
 upon him, and as later they remembered him, 
 "God's in his heaven," they said, God's in his 
 world "Immanuel, God is with us !" 
 
 Jesus Christ, the man who was the Son of 
 God was not himself an infinite fact, but a finite 
 one, and painfully finite. He was limited on 
 every side, andj is limited still, though less so than 
 when here in the flesh. His sinless and wholly 
 beneficient career, standing before his first fol- 
 lowers in its solitary grandeur, made them say 
 that God was here in one life. And when the 
 Holy Spirit came upon themselves, and then upon 
 the sinful men to whom they preached him as 
 Savior, and soon upon Gentiles as well as Jews, 
 they saw that his life of seeking the lost had 
 represented the universal presence of God here 
 doing the same thing. 
 
 "I know not where his islands lift 
 Their fronded palms in air; 
 I only know I cannot drift 
 Beyond his love and care." 
 
 This is the vast lesson that comes to us through 
 the incarnation. The babe in the manger is in 
 itself a fact of deep interest, but if this fact had 
 stood alone, it would never have won power 
 enough to get itself heralded down the ages, 
 nor would there ever have been a Christmas or 
 
JESUS AS A SIGN 39 
 
 a year of our Lord. Babe and man, Jesus Christ 
 is a visible sign that represents an infinite reality, 
 and that reality is the universally present love 
 of God for bad men. Luke represents Jesus him- 
 self as declaring 1 that, just as Jonah was, in spite 
 of himself, a sign of God's holy love towards the 
 wicked, but repentant, Ninevites, so he himself was 
 a sign of that same love towards the men of his 
 generation. (Luke 11:30.) And, according to 
 the fourth gospel he continually kept this fact 
 at the front. 
 
 He was great so great that his early follow- 
 ers felt it was in every way fitting that he should 
 speak of the lowliest member of his kingdom as 
 greater than John the Baptist the greatest 
 prophet of the olden time. (Luke 7:28.) But 
 his greatness both as helper and teacher was seen 
 most of all in the fact that he was a sign, and 
 represented an invisible authority, help and wis- 
 dom which were indefinitely greater than his own. 
 So he is brought before us in the fourth gospel 
 as saying : "The Son can do nothing of himself ; 
 he does only what he sees the Father doing." 
 (John 5:19.) "When you have lifted up the 
 Son of Man, then you will understand that I 
 am what I am, and that I do nothing of myself, 
 but that I say just what the Father has taught 
 me. ... I always do what pleases him." 
 (John 8:28, 29.) "The Father is greater than 
 I." (John 14:28.) 
 
 Such language can bear but one meaning. 
 
40 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 It teaches us that the early followers of Jesus 
 saw their chief cause of joy in the fact that 
 he represented in the visible a corresponding 
 invisible personality greater than himself 
 greater in authority, in might, in knowledge 
 and in goodness. To them he was God with- 
 in the limits of the highest possible manhood of 
 his time, and represented the infinite deity. He 
 was a sign, and, according to the New Testament 
 writers, the precise fact which he came to repre- 
 sent was the continuous presence of the holy lov- 
 ing God among men. These writers did not hold 
 the doctrine of an absentee deity, but of an omni- 
 present God, who could not be absent anywhere 
 for even one moment, if he wished. 
 
 This comes out very clearly in Matthew 1 :23 
 where we learn that the early church applied to 
 Jesus the prophecy of Isaiah 7:14. The one 
 thing Isaiah was seeking to impress upon Ahaz 
 was that God's abiding presence in Jerusalem 
 made an alliance with Assyria unnecessary and an 
 impertinence. When Ahaz obstinately refused to 
 be convinced, the prophet burst in upon him with 
 the declaration that God would force a sign upon 
 him, and that the sign would be this. While he 
 was still trusting in the armed hosts of Assyria, 
 one absolutely a non-combatant, a young girl- 
 mother, would so realize the protecting presence 
 of God for herself and her babe, and for all the 
 other babes and mothers of Judah, that she would 
 name her child Immanuel God is with us. To 
 
JESUS AS A SIGN 41 
 
 her that presence would remain as the greatest 
 fact of all for the quieting of her fears; and it 
 would also be the greatest fact of all for Judah as 
 a whole. Such protection and deliverance as re- 
 mained possible in connection with the unbeliev- 
 ing and perilous policy of Ahaz and his foolish 
 fear-haunted advisers, would arise out of the 
 infinite fact for which that child would stand, 
 as long as he bore the name his mother would 
 give him. Centuries passed. Ahaz and all his 
 royal successors to David's throne passed also. 
 Another maiden was to be the mother of a son, 
 and Matthew says that before the child was born, 
 an angelic messenger informed the maiden's 
 betrothed husband that this prophecy of Isaiah 
 would be fulfilled over again in this new child, 
 because they would call him, too, "Immanuel 
 a word which means, God is with us." And Luke 
 says that when, after the child was born, they 
 carried him to the temple as the first born son 
 of the family, an aged prophet named Simeon 
 took him into his arms and said: "This child is 
 appointed to be ... a sign. . . ." 
 (Luke 2:34.) 
 
 Matthew and Luke recorded these things be- 
 cause the church had come to realize that Jesus 
 stood for the fact that the invisible God is every- 
 where present for the salvation of men. That 
 presence meant political or temporal deliverance 
 in Isaiah's day, but to the Christian believers for 
 whom "Matthew" and "Luke" were written, it 
 
42 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 meant every spiritual good their hearts could 
 crave, either for themselves or others. 
 
 To show how large this fact bulked in the 
 thought of the apostolic church, we may note a 
 few other New Testament words. "Members of 
 God's household," is one of Paul's descriptions 
 of the body of Christian believers at Ephesus. 
 (Eph. 2:19.) But these believers were only the 
 same in privilege as all the other believers of that 
 and succeeding times. God at home with his 
 children, or God's children at home with him, is 
 the thought conveyed to the mind by this word. 
 
 That they thought of God as really dwelling 
 here, with his people as his children, is made very 
 plain in 2nd Cor. 6:16-18, where Paul makes the 
 fact the basis of a call to the deepest worship 
 and the highest possible holiness. 
 
 Finally, in Chapter 21 of the Revelation the 
 fact is presented in the most inclusive way. "And 
 I saw the Holy City, Jerusalem, descending new 
 out of Heaven from God, like a bride adorned in 
 readiness for her husband. And I heard a loud 
 voice from the throne, which said 'See! the tab- 
 ernacle of God is set up among men. God will 
 dwell among them, and they will be his people, and 
 God himself will be among them, and he will wipe 
 away all tears from their eyes. (Rev. 21:2-4.) 
 He showed me Jerusalem, the Holy City, 
 descending out of heaven from God, filled with 
 the glory of God . . . (verse 10). 
 
 "And I saw no temple there, for the Lord, our 
 
JESUS AS A SIGN 43 
 
 God, the Almighty, and the Lamb are its temple. 
 The city has no need of 'the sun or the moon to 
 shine upon it, for the glory of God illuminated 
 it,' and its lamp was the Lamb. 'The nations will 4 
 walk by the light of it ; and the kings of the earth 
 bring their glory into it. Its gates shall never 
 be shut by day,' and there will be no night there. 
 And men will bring the glory and honor of the 
 nations into it. (Verses 22-26.) . . . 
 
 "And the angel showed me 'a river of the Water 
 of Life,' as clear as crystal, issuing from the 
 throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of 
 the street of the city. On each side of the river 
 was a tree of Life which bore twelve kinds of fruit, 
 yielding its fruit each month ; and the leaves of the 
 tree were for the healing of the nations. 'Every- 
 thing that is accursed will cease to be.' The 
 throne of God and of the Lamb will be within it, 
 and his servants will worship him ; they will see his 
 face and his name will be in their foreheads." 
 (Rev. 22: 1-4.) All this splendid imagery, 
 drawn largely from the older prophets, conveyed 
 one clear message to the hearts of the early Chris- 
 tians. God, as in Christ, was omnipresent 
 among men, "reconciling the world to himself, not 
 reckoning men's offences against them." (2nd 
 Cor. 5:19.) The glory of his holy love shone 
 forth in and through his church, enlightening, 
 alluring and claiming men as his own, and bless- 
 ing them with every good; and that glory would 
 shine on till all peoples were won, and the whole 
 
44 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 race found itself permanently rejoicing in the 
 presence of God himself, and in the possession of 
 every bounty in his gift. And Jesus Christ, the 
 Lamb, was already the sign and pledge of it all. 
 (Rom. 8:32.) 
 
IV 
 THE MAKING OF JESUS 
 
 Each true man is always in the making. His 
 making begins centuries before his birth and con- 
 tinues as long as he consciously chooses the bet- 
 ter instead of the worse and the higher good in 
 succession to the lower. Our Cromwells and Lin- 
 coins, our Shakespeares and Goethes, our Luthers 
 and Wesleys, our Darwins and Wallaces and Hux- 
 leys and Haeckels, our Hugos and Dickenses, our 
 Jameses and Bergsens have not sprung from the 
 Veddahs of Ceylon, the African Bushmen or the 
 Australian "Blacks." Heredity of race is a 
 mighty factor in human affairs, and a race must 
 itself have arrived at greatness before it can 
 produce the intellectual, moral and spiritual 
 giants of the world. 
 
 Jesus sprang from God's spiritual aristocracy, 
 from a race that knew him, had fellowship with 
 him, and rejoiced in his righteousness and his 
 love, till their intellects and imaginations guided 
 their pens into the production of a religious litera- 
 ture incomparable at once in its grandeur and its 
 sweetness, its sublimity and its tenderness. Of 
 Israel it has well been said that "the voices of 
 her seers and singers sound silvery and soft 
 
 45 
 
46 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 through the centuries." And it is quite as true, 
 on the other hand, that the lightnings and thun- 
 der peals of her Sinai awe men's hearts at all the 
 ends of the world. Jesus himself recognized the 
 fact that the beginnings of his manhood were to 
 be found as far back as Abraham at least. He 
 sprang from no one of the peoples that were 
 "far off," but from the one people that was 
 "near." (Eph. 2:17.) Whatever, therefore, re- 
 mains to be told besides, it is certainly true that 
 all the available advantages of the religious and 
 spiritual sort, derivable from a given race of men, 
 were made the personal inheritance of Jesus. No 
 other race existing upon the planet at the time, or 
 that had ever existed upon it, could have conferred 
 half as much. If the Greek stood supreme in 
 purely intellectual acumen or subtlety, and the 
 Roman in his genius for government, the Jew 
 was still more a master in things pertaining to 
 the spirit. Jesus was of the tribe of Judah and 
 "belonged to the family and house of David." 
 (Luke 2:4.) It may also be said in passing that 
 all that is true of Jesus in this respect is true, 
 too, of John the Baptist, only John sprang from 
 the tribe of Levi and the family of Aaron. (Luke 
 1:15.) 
 
 Three other things besides race are worthy of 
 consideration in connection with the birth of every 
 child. These are immediate parentage, prenatal 
 influences and environment. Taking these up in 
 the order in which I have just named them, and 
 
THE MAKING OF JESUS 47 
 
 leaving the scientific question of parthenogenesis 
 for discussion in another place. I may note first 
 of all that Joseph and Mary are introduced to 
 us as among the most spiritually minded of their 
 pious race. In them the animal instincts and 
 passions are under the strictest control, and their 
 ruling desires and motives are drawn from the 
 will of God as that will touches them individually, 
 rather than as it reaches them in a general way 
 through the pages of their scriptures and the 
 voices of their religious instructors. They are 
 personally and particularly consecrated to all 
 that he may at any time reveal to them as duty. 
 They are living, that is to say, in conscious, vital, 
 sanctifying and informing relations with the di- 
 vine Spirit, just as were Zecharias and Elizabeth 
 and those aged frequenters of the temple at Jeru- 
 salem, Simeon and Anna. In short, no parents 
 could have been found for Jesus to excel in moral 
 and religious character those who are brought 
 before us by the two New Testament writers who 
 described them. 
 
 However the Church may finally decide the 
 question of the Virgin Birth, Joseph's relation to 
 the child was very important before it was born 
 as well as afterwards, for he stood at least in 
 loco parentis to it in the most intimate way for 
 weeks or months before he took his young wife to 
 Bethlehem for the enrollment, and incidentally the 
 accouchment. Where the relations of a husband 
 to his wife are of the ordinary kind and he is 
 
48 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 the father of the child that is to be born, the 
 moral and spiritual atmosphere in which he lives 
 his life, whether it is positively good or positively 
 bad, constitutes no inconsiderable part of those 
 influences of the prenatal sort which are helping 
 to give character and bias to the nature of his 
 offspring. The constant presence in a home of a 
 peculiarly stealthy imbecile has been known to 
 prenatally blast more than one child's life, through 
 its effects upon the imagination and general nerv- 
 ous condition of the mother. A mother often 
 transfers to her unborn infant's body the out- 
 ward things which impress her mind, or indelible 
 marks to represent them, and has been known to 
 convey to it in this way, and to an extraordinary 
 extent, both the outward appearance and low 
 mentality of a bear or other animal, by which 
 she has been startled at some critical moment. 
 Jaundice, through one sight of a person suffer- 
 ing from it, has been communicated with such 
 force and effect that the child was born only to 
 die of the malady in a few days, while the mother 
 herself remained healthy and vigorous, or too 
 little affected by the disease to show any appreci- 
 able symptoms of it. Such a case came under 
 my own notice about four years ago. 
 
 It is related of Constantin Von Tischendorf 
 that the remarkable visual powers which enabled 
 him to deal successfully with, ancient manuscripts, 
 which to most others were undecipherable were 
 probably due to the fact that his mother, alarmed 
 
THE MAKING OF JESUS 49 
 
 at the peril created for her unborn child through 
 the effect produced upon her mind by a sight 
 she had had of some blind person, instantly 
 passed into unceasing prayer; that it might never- 
 theless be born capable of seeing. This has been 
 regarded as a case in which the ruling mental 
 state of a mother resulted in the double achieve- 
 ment of superior organs of sight, to begin with, 
 and then the ambition to use them to the utmost 
 in the service of that God to whom she had made 
 her continuous petition on the child's behalf. 
 Prenatal influences supplied by mothers must be 
 classed among the primary things in the lives of 
 their children. 
 
 Considered from this point of view the stories 
 of Matthew and Luke are of very deep interest 
 for students of the life of Jesus. If they are 
 historical in their central testimony, his concep- 
 tion by Mary was brought about through the in- 
 visible and physically unfelt embrace or over- 
 shadowing of the Holy Spirit. All of conscience 
 and the religious emotions of which her fine 
 nature was capable was aroused in the case, while 
 everything pertaining to sexual passion was either 
 stilled or else left slumbering where it had never 
 yet been awakened. The one pleasure offered her 
 was that of motherhood for God, and this was 
 bound up with the terrible peril of being publicly 
 disgraced as a consequence by a man to whom 
 she had already been betrothed. In this unre- 
 served consecration to God she was soon joined 
 
50 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 by Joseph himself, and in that dedication of body 
 as well as spirit they both continued until the 
 child Jesus was heralded by angels near Bethle- 
 hem, and 1 by "a star in the East." Thus the deal- 
 ings of the Holy Spirit with the thoughts and 
 purposes of Mary and afterwards of Joseph, 
 must have filled her with such a sense of God, 
 and of submission to and joy in his will, as con- 
 stituted the divinest of all possible prenatal in- 
 fluences for the child she was to bear. If we re- 
 ject the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as 
 a fable of the pious imagination, we must at least 
 accept this, unless we reject also the doctrine 
 of the Virgin Birth itself; in which case the in- 
 fluence of heredity in this instance would remain 
 to be emphasized, of course. 
 
 Heredity and prenatal influence if the Son of 
 God actually became a man, and not the mere 
 phantasm of a man, to ignore these two potent 
 factors in each human life is to blink out of sight 
 matters which are essential to anything like a 
 complete understanding of the elements which 
 entered into the personal inheritance and original 
 endowment of Jesus. 
 
 Coming now to the early environment of Jesus 
 the first thing to be taken into account is the 
 fact that he was through all his first years under 
 the immediate guidance of the strong common- 
 sense and spiritually instructed piety of Joseph 
 and Mary themselves. And if the visits of the 
 shepherds and the Magi, and the flight into 
 
THE MAKING OF JESUS 51 
 
 Egypt and return are not legends, Mary and 
 Joseph were specially impressed, after his birth 
 as well as before, regarding the honor and the 
 obligation which had been thrust upon them of 
 bringing up this child in the most particular 
 way for God. This gave a seriousness and ear- 
 nestness to their lives which must have been dis- 
 tinctly felt by their acquaintances, but most of 
 all by him, with his highly sensitive mind and con- 
 science. That they were faithful to their duty 
 and opportunity from the first is made clear 
 by the accounts of his circumcision, his presenta- 
 tion in the temple at Jerusalem at the end of 
 Mary's days of seclusion, when the spirit of 
 prophecy in Simeon and Anna woke to such glow- 
 ing expression, and his presentation again as a 
 Son of the Law at the age of twelve years. What 
 his home had already been made to him came out 
 in several ways on this occasion. In the first place 
 the boy Jesus stands before us so deeply inter- 
 ested in questions of religion that he forgets the 
 arrangements for the home journey through the 
 liveliness of his thoughts in this direction. When 
 Joseph and Mary after missing him returned to 
 the city in search of him, "they found him in the 
 Temple Courts, sitting among the teachers, now 
 listening to them, now asking them questions, 
 with all who listened to him marvelling at his 
 intelligence and his answers." (Luke 2:46, 47.) 
 In reply to their chiding he spoke to them of 
 the supreme attractions of his Father's House in 
 
52 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 words which, if they mystified them, yet caused 
 them to see at once that he was not casting off 
 their authority or despising their care or their 
 instructions, but that he had come to think of 
 God as his Father, quite probably through some 
 word Mary herself had dropped in his ear con- 
 cerning a difference between his origin and that 
 of his brothers and sisters, and which she had at 
 least for the moment forgotten. Finally taking 
 him to his home again they found him obedient 
 during still other years, while "he grew in wis- 
 dom and gained the blessing of God and men." 
 (Luke 2:51,52.) 
 
 His home was undoubtedly a great instrument 
 in his making. It must be remembered, however, 
 that this house did not exist apart from the 
 synagogue where Mary and Joseph worshiped 
 their God and studied his word in company with 
 their neighbors, taking Jesus with them from Sab- 
 bath to Sabbath and, when his age warranted it, 
 encouraging him to take his part in the exercises 
 and discussions. Every man who had definite 
 thoughts of his own and some ability to express 
 them would find his opportunity to speak in his 
 synagogue, and the more a man's utterances ap- 
 pealed to his fellow students of the scriptures, the 
 oftener he would be looked to to address them. 
 It can scarcely have been otherwise than that 
 Jesus developed his deep acquaintance with the 
 Old Testament writings and his supreme gifts 
 as a teacher quite largely through the use he 
 
THE MAKING OF JESUS 53 
 
 made of his opportunities in this same synagogue. 
 
 Added to the home and synagogue there were 
 the carpenter's shop and the town, with the broken 
 heights surrounding the basin-like site. What- 
 ever can be gained in precision of thought by 
 means of manual training, and in conscience 
 towards the public in connection with years of 
 constant endeavor to give it full value for its 
 money in suitable materials and work accurately 
 and faithfully done, Jesus got out of that carpen- 
 ter's shop. In it, too, he met his fellow townsmen 
 in a more informal and intimate way than perhaps 
 anywhere else. There they uncovered their 
 thoughts and feelings in the most unconventional 
 ways and approached and discussed the questions 
 in which they were interested, with the least pos- 
 sible of reserve. Whether working in the pres- 
 ence of another or watching another work has 
 the greater power of provoking the confidences 
 of self-revelation, who shall say? And the man 
 who has nothing evil to hide bears with him the 
 constant challenge to others to hide nothing from 
 him. In this carpenter's shop Jesus learned very 
 fast what was in men, and how to read their hearts 
 by means of the tones of their voices, their flit- 
 ting changes in facial expression, their uncon- 
 scious gestures, and their general bearing from 
 time' to time, till at length he observed and judged 
 as by intuition and knew his man almost, if not 
 quite, at a glance. 
 
 There was one characteristic of his fellow 
 
54 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Galileans, which Jesus counted a good thing even 
 in Nazareth. This was their readiness to die for 
 their country and their religion. Is it too much 
 to say that to live among them was to drink in 
 that spirit of patriotism which, being religious at 
 the same time that it was political, was also the 
 splendid spirit of the martyr? So with his un- 
 sullied purity and deeper spiritual insight it was 
 impossible for him to grow up otherwise than as 
 the strongest and most unselfish patriot of them 
 all. They told him of their expectations touch- 
 ing the early coming of their Messiah to free them 
 from the yoke of Rome, and his eyes kindled as 
 he listened. At first nothing was clear to his 
 mind but the fact that the prophecies must be 
 fulfilled, and that the time was near. He no more 
 knew on which side God's anointed would arise, 
 nor on what precise lines he would proceed with 
 his work when he did appear, than his neighbors 
 did. But no one felt so deeply as he, or studied 
 as he did the words of the prophets about the 
 Coming One. 
 
 By and by both the shop and the town grew 
 too narrow for the tumult of his thoughts, and 
 he was often under the open sky alone, drinking 
 almost unconsciously the lessons which the lily 
 and the growing grains and the grasses, the 
 beasts of the field and the birds of the air, the 
 shadowed gorge and the towering height, the 
 glory of the rising and setting sun and of the 
 nightly sky, the clouds bathed in sunlight, chas- 
 
THE MAKING OF JESUS 55 
 
 ing- each other in light fleeciness across the face 
 of the moon, or gathering blackness and bursting 
 in loud storm upon the world, have to teach the 
 willing hearted. His Father spoke to him through 
 nature, as well as through man and through the 
 scriptures. 
 
 Probably Jesus visited Jerusalem from time to 
 time in connection with the great yearly festivals, 
 and as he grew somewhat familiar with both it 
 and the people along the road or roads by which 
 he journeyed back and forth, became more and 
 more deeply convinced that the great basal need 
 everywhere was moral and spiritual, and that no 
 political movement or achievement could be much 
 worth while to the Messiah, or anyone else, until 
 this need was met. Brooding thus there some- 
 where came to him a day in which his heart al- 
 most stopped its beating, while he listened to a 
 voice coming out of that Infinite, which is al- 
 ways nearness as well as distance, and saying 
 You yourself are the One for whose coming your 
 people wait. Whether this voice came to him be- 
 bore he learned that his cousin John was already 
 heralding the Coming One, who shall say? All 
 we are sure of is that the voice was insistent and 
 accompanied by such authority that he yielded, 
 sure that it was no other than that of his Father. 
 Meantime during all these years he had been 
 building up such a piety as had made him a 
 recognized pattern among the good, and probably 
 also an offense to the wrongly disposed about 
 
56 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 him. When has it ever been different with the 
 wholly consecrated ones of our earth ? And would 
 it not be most so in the case of the incomparable 
 man? Accordingly when Jesus presented him- 
 self at the Jordan for baptism by John, he was 
 immediately met by the strongest possible testi- 
 mony to his own spiritual attainments. John, who 
 had declared of the Coming One beforehand 
 "I am not worthy to stoop down and unfasten his 
 sandals" (Mk. 1 :7) delayed Jesus now with 
 the word "It is I who need to be baptized by 
 you ; why then do you come to me ?" and Jesus 
 had to overrule his objections by insisting: "Let 
 it be so for the present, since it is fitting for us 
 thus to satisfy every claim of religion." (Matt. 
 3:14, 15.) 
 
 The point which stands out clearly here is that 
 in the making of Jesus the supreme factor was 
 always the revealed will of God. Both John and 
 Jesus were moving on lines which were indicated 
 to themselves alone, to begin with. Two things 
 had to be made plain to John first that the Mes- 
 siah was somewhere in Israel and about to be re- 
 vealed and then that he was the one man to act the 
 part of his forerunner and Herald; while Jesus 
 had to become convinced that he was himself the 
 Messiah and in duty bound as such to go to John 
 for Baptism. Neither was, or could have been, 
 induced to do what he did until he was satisfied 
 that his inwardly received instructions were from 
 God and unmistakable; and always afterwards 
 
THE MAKING OF JESUS 57 
 
 each spoke of himself as one who had been sent 
 by God to say and do the very things, which he 
 was both defending and emphasizing when he made 
 this claim. It is also true that each took the step 
 first required of him, with no precise knowledge 
 as to what his second step would be. The con- 
 secration of Jesus to the work of his Messiahship 
 was, therefore, an all-embracing act, as far as 
 his own individual life was concerned, and in- 
 cluded duties and experiences of many sorts which 
 he was to perceive and face only as his career 
 developed. A consecration of this kind is not 
 entered into excepting through a faith in God, 
 which commits everything for good and all to his 
 almighty wisdom' and love, and looks to and trusts 
 him for guidance and all desirable protections 
 from day to day ; and nothing can be so humbling 
 and, at the same time, so exalting to the human 
 spirit as this. In myself I am nothing, but in 
 my God I am always fully informed and duly 
 strengthened for my tasks as they arise, was 
 the testimony of Jesus from first to last. Al- 
 ways he had a sufficiency, yet was never self-suffi- 
 cient ; he was always complete, yet never per- 
 fected. For the task of one day was constantly 
 being succeeded by the more difficult task of the 
 next, and it was his, as it is ours, to receive wis- 
 dom to see and courage to do only in the measure 
 demanded by the conditions of each given time. 
 .His career was always being made for him and 
 he for his career. That it was not, because it 
 
58 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 could not have been otherwise with him who was 
 "in all points made like his brothers" (Heb. 2:17) 
 that he might become "the Leader and Perfect 
 Example of our faith" (Heb. 12:2) is one of the 
 claims put forward by the writer of the New 
 Testament letter to the Hebrews. 
 
 Another thing, which as a matter of course 
 entered into the making of Jesus, was a special 
 divine enduement for the purposes of the work 
 which it was his to do. This enduement is rep- 
 resented as having been given him in addition to 
 all that he had received for the development and 
 maturing of his sinless manhood, and for reach- 
 ing the decisive conclusion that he himself was the 
 Coming One whom John was announcing in com- 
 plete ignorance as to his identity. Another 
 point clearly indicated is that Jesus, realizing 
 his need of additional divine aid, left the water 
 with which he had been baptized, praying as he 
 advanced, and was then baptized with the Holy 
 Spirit. And the next record is that it was 
 through the influence of this enduement rather 
 than of his own motion, that he very soon with- 
 drew to the wilds to battle with and overcome 
 those popular ideas concerning the Messiah in 
 the midst of which he had grown up, and which, 
 had he been guided by them, would have blighted 
 his career by ruining his personal character and 
 losing him the favor of God. No less than this 
 is implied in the three answers which at last he 
 
THE MAKING OF JESUS 59 
 
 was able to draw from the heart of the scriptures 
 which he knew so well 
 
 1st. "It is not on bread alone that man is to 
 live, but on every word that comes from the 
 mouth of God." 
 
 2nd. "Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy 
 God." 
 
 3rd. "Thou shalt do homage to the Lord thy 
 God, and worship him only." 
 
 Each of these shows how strictly personal he 
 felt his battle was, and that he had been drawn 
 into a tremendous struggle for the integrity 
 before God of his own manhood. The principle 
 upon which he acted was that there is no genuine 
 integrity whatever which does not include all that 
 God demands, and that a man can really serve 
 his people in the capacity of leader only as he 
 ignores or rejects everything in their ideals which 
 is not in harmony with God's revealed will. The 
 fierceness of the battle he waged in spite of the 
 richness and freshness of his divine enduement 
 (or was it in a sense because of this enduement?) 
 is evidenced by the forty days of fasting credited 
 to him in the accounts we have of it. It was no 
 set mechanical fast such as John's disciples and 
 the Pharisees kept, but one of the natural, be- 
 cause strictly spiritual, sort. The combat was so 
 severe and continuous that he had no attention 
 to spare for the calls of hunger, until his victory 
 was finally won. 
 
60 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Here then is another factor which entered into 
 the making of Jesus, according to his biographers. 
 The fine unbreakable steel of his spirit was forged 
 in the fiercest fires of temptation, that it might be 
 truly tempered in the sovereign, holy and loving 
 will of his Father. His biographers make much 
 of this fact. They point out again and again 
 that he who was "in all points made like his broth- 
 ers," was also "in all points tempted in like man- 
 ner with them." (Heb. 4:15.) And they most 
 distinctly link the idea of suffering with this fact 
 of temptation. "He himself suffered under temp- 
 tation" (Heb. 2:18) is the ground on which the 
 writer of the letter to the Hebrews bases his teach- 
 ing that he is now "a merciful as well as faithful 
 High Priest in man's relations with God." And 
 he plainly declares besides that this was one of 
 the ends kept distinctly in view by the Father 
 through the whole process. He even goes fur- 
 ther and states that, since the Son of God was a 
 man, there was no other way, because it is only 
 through having himself suffered by having been 
 tempted, that any man can be brought into a 
 genuine or intelligent sympathy with those who 
 are tempted. Indeed he startles us by at least 
 seeming to go farther still, and to state by impli- 
 cation that the same sort of necessity exists in 
 the nature of God himself; and that the incarna- 
 tion has as one of its ends the building up of an 
 intelligent and particular sympathy with men in 
 the very heart of the divine Father. And he leaves 
 
THE MAKING OF JESUS 61 
 
 us asking whether the sympathy of God with men 
 has not always been the mighty living thing which 
 was more than guessed of old, because the incar- 
 nation was a fact in the divine heart "before the 
 creation of the universe," when, as Paul assured 
 the Ephesians, they "were chosen in their union 
 with Christ." (Eph. 1:4.) According to these 
 writers one thing is quite certain. All the 
 thought and feeling of God touching our race 
 was from the very first bound up with all he pur- 
 posed and felt concerning the incarnation. The 
 two were absolutely inseparable, and the heart of 
 God could not have been what it has always been, 
 had this not been so. 
 
 The ministry of suffering in the making of 
 Jesus is still further emphasized by the writer of 
 "Hebrews." So it is perhaps from the view-point 
 of his declarations that the fact can be best ap- 
 proached. It may be enough to quote these two 
 words from this author to show how definitely he 
 thought that Jesus was gradually fitted for the 
 place which he now holds and the power which he 
 wields in connection with the divine scheme for the 
 redemption of our race, and what an important 
 part his sufferings played in the process : 
 
 "It is indeed fitting that God, for whom and 
 through whom all things exist, should, when lead- 
 ing many sons to glory, make the author of their 
 salvation perfect through suffering (Heb. 2:10); 
 and 
 
 "Son though he was he learnt obedience from 
 
62 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 his sufferings; and being made perfect, he be- 
 came to all those who obey him the source of eter- 
 nal salvation." (Heb. 5:8, 9.) 
 
 The fitness of a person for any given office or 
 vocation must always depend first upon what he 
 definitely knows, and secondly upon what he really 
 is. Now no man can ever know more than he has 
 had the time and opportunity to learn, nor can 
 anyone be strong and capable, or recognized as 
 such, who has not been subjected to appropriate 
 tests. To understand and appreciate the needs 
 of men one must not only be a man himself, but 
 must also have endured the sorest trials through 
 which they pass. For he can know these dis- 
 tresses for what they actually are only through 
 having experienced them. And if a man's work 
 is to be that of relieving and comforting his fel- 
 lows, this is the only line along which he can be 
 made competent for his tasks. Our writer boldly 
 applies all this to Jesus. He declares that he 
 was born a babe, and had to be trained for the 
 office of High Priest and Savior. And since his 
 work was to be that of lifting men to the height 
 of complete obedience to God, even where that 
 obedience might involve them in the loss of every- 
 thing, including life itself, he had himself to go 
 this way. Only so could he learn what obedience 
 to the utmost is, or have it called forth and tested 
 in his own life, and so be fitted to lead and inspire 
 others along that path. 
 
 The lot of other men was often to suffer be- 
 
THE MAKING OF JESUS 63 
 
 cause they sinned. This was not the case with 
 him. Always when he suffered it was because he 
 obeyed his Father. It was so in the wilderness. 
 Had he yielded, he would no longer have suffered, 
 being tempted. Instead he would have suffered, 
 having sinned. It was the same in Gethsemane 
 and on the cross. Had he turned back and re- 
 fused to enter the garden, he would have escaped 
 the agony of that sweat of blood out of which he 
 emerged triumphant, and experienced instead the 
 deadlier tortures of an accusing conscience and 
 his Father's frown. And the cross, if he had 
 reached it nevertheless, would not have wrung 
 from him the same "My God, My God, why hast 
 thou forsaken me?" (Mark 15:34), but one of 
 deeper anguish still, and of a lasting awfulness. 
 His prayer was always that he might be lifted to 
 the full height of his Father's will concerning him. 
 His agonies, his cries, his tears are so many proofs 
 of what his obedience cost him. And the lessons 
 he learned were for him only as they were for 
 others besides. He recognized this. In his own 
 estimation he was the kernel of wheat that falls 
 into the ground and dies rather than "remain 
 solitary." (Jno. 12:24.) The purpose of his 
 obedience was manward at the same time that it 
 was Godward. He knew indeed that it was only 
 in dying for his fellows, because in the wrong- 
 headedness which arose from their wronghearted- 
 ness they would have it so, he could continue his 
 life of obedience. "This," he said, "is the com- 
 
64 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 mand which I received from my Father." (Jno. 
 10:18.) So through his sufferings he was made 
 complete in and for the service of men, at the same 
 time that he was made complete in and for his 
 service towards God. 
 
 The final teaching of these writers is that it 
 was strictly in view of this acquired and fully de- 
 veloped fitness of Jesus that he was raised to his 
 present glory and service in connection with the 
 salvation of our race. It was because he at 
 length reached his fully tested perfection in obe- 
 dience on behalf of others that "God himself pro- 
 nounced him a High Priest of the order of Mel- 
 chiezedek." (Heb. 5:10.) To these words Paul 
 adds: 
 
 "He appeared among us as a man, and still 
 further humbled himself by submitting to death 
 to death on a cross. And that is why God raised 
 him to the very highest place, and gave him the 
 Name which stands above all other names." 
 (Phil. 2:9.) 
 
 He who was born the son of Mary was fash- 
 ioned by the divine will until, made complete for 
 the vast work which he became a man to do, he 
 was lifted by God to the place of supreme honor 
 and opportunity in connection with all the needs 
 and possibilities of our race, with the assurance 
 that by this means all these possibilities will cer- 
 tainly be realized. And since every man must 
 grow with the growth of the undertaking which 
 he is successfully carrying forward, and particti- 
 
THE MAKING OF JESUS 65 
 
 larly in cases which are constantly presenting 
 fresh and difficult problems, it is not unreason- 
 able to think of Jesus as one who is still having 
 his capacities developed, while he advances in self- 
 realization through the steady exercise of his 
 powers, and moves onward toward the day in 
 which the finished product of all his toils is to be 
 taken over by the Father himself. (I Cor. 
 15:24-28.) 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 
 
 Each child begins life by studying objects ex- 
 ternal to itself, including its own fingers and toes. 
 Then it slowly finds out how it should adjust itself 
 towards these things and persons, and by and by 
 reaches its first clear I-ought. But so dim is its 
 vision of both the inward and outward realities in 
 the case that for years it has to be continually 
 recalled from a world of day-dreams into which 
 it is forever being led by its imagination, 
 prompted by its instincts; and sometimes physi- 
 cal maturity is reached by an individual who is 
 still dreaming of himself as something he is not, 
 and looking out upon the world about him through 
 a mist of unreality, which either pains or delights 
 his eyes. 
 
 To be able to take the true measure of one's 
 powers through reading one's nature correctly, 
 particularly at the moment when the task of one's 
 life has to be faced, and to know that the thing 
 which seems to challenge one is really his own 
 task, is one of the essential things in connection 
 with the opening of a great and successful career. 
 It is this ability which inspires men with that 
 sense of obligation in connection with given tasks 
 
 66 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 67 
 
 which we speak of as a call a 1 divine call, because 
 it is never developed apart from that voice which 
 reaches us from the hidden deeps of the Infinite 
 Personality. The higher the task the greater the 
 need. 
 
 The other thing essential to the greatest ca- 
 reers is that abiding sense of the Infinite Person- 
 ality, which, penetrating all veils and over-leap- 
 ing all barriers, arrives at the place where IT is 
 known as HE, His presence as embracing, inter- 
 penetrating and upholding all things and all per- 
 sons, his plan as one and of infinite scope, the 
 purpose associated with it as incapable of being 
 finally thwarted and therefore certain to reach all 
 its far off goals, and his nature as one in which 
 all great attributes inhere complete and perfect 
 Heyond our highest dreams. When God has be- 
 come such to a living soul his service seems to that 
 soul almost too high and holy to be attempted at 
 all, and we see an Isaiah standing before his vision 
 with a "Woe is me" breaking from his lips. But 
 as he stays on with his vision a purifying and a 
 power cleanse and transform him until he accepts 
 his task with his "Here am I, send me," trumpeted 
 to the four winds by a consecration which is pre- 
 pared to go all lengths. 
 
 In the realm of consciousness Jesus had to be- 
 gin at the beginning, like every other babe, and 
 like every other human being he passed in its turn 
 through each stage from first to last. This at 
 least is how his biographers state the case. Our 
 
68 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 first glimpse of him as a conscious being uncovers 
 for us three phases of his inner life. The first of 
 these is intellectual, the others moral and spir- 
 itual. He was twelve years of age at the time, 
 and had accompanied Joseph and Mary to Jeru- 
 salem. Their duties done, Joseph and Mary 
 joined the company from Galilee and started on 
 their homeward journey. Towards the close of 
 the first day of travel they missed Jesus, and 
 when they discovered that he was certainly not in 
 their group at all, they at once returned to the 
 city in search of him. There they found him the 
 following day sitting among the Rabbis listening 
 to them and asking them questions, which, with 
 his answers to their return quizzings, awakened 
 their wonder. He had even then become conscious 
 of the existence and importance of some of life's 
 chief problems. He did not know everything. 
 He had simply gone far for his years. And soon 
 Joseph and Mary were astonished in their turn, 
 for when she chided him for what she regarded as 
 his unfilial behavior his answer conveyed a rebuke 
 along the same lines : 
 
 "What made you search for me? Did not you 
 know that I must be in my Father's house?" So 
 already his consciousness had been invaded, and 
 was permeated, by the fact of his divine Sonship, 
 and his whole being was responding in happy obe- 
 dience to the highest authority we men can ever 
 know. This is at once the least and the most we 
 can safely affirm. His consciousness was then, 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 69 
 
 as always, distinct from that of his Father; and 
 that it was a truly human consciousness in the es- 
 timation of Luke is most clearly proven by that 
 writer's next word: 
 
 "However he went 1 down with them to Nazareth, 
 and submitted himself to their control . . . 
 And Jesus grew in wisdom as he grew in years, 
 and 'gained the blessing of God and man.' ' 
 (Comp. I Sam. 2:26.) 
 
 To be conscious of duty to God as our Father 
 as carrying with it the highest possible obliga- 
 tion, and of ordinary filial duty as standing in the 
 closest relations with that, is to have reached the 
 true level of human beings ; and to grow in wis- 
 dom as we grow in years in such a fashion as to 
 deserve the commendation of God, on the one 
 hand, and of men, on the other, is to pass one's 
 youth in the one truly normal way ; and to the 
 very extent to which an individual falls below 
 that he is a sinner and abnormal. In both his 
 inner consciousness and outward conduct the life 
 of Jesus was conformed to the highest human 
 standards from the first; and the highest human 
 standards are the only true ones. But let us go 
 a step further. 
 
 All growth in knowledge implies ignorance, for 
 knowledge and ignorance, like light and darkness, 
 cannot exist in one and the same place at one and 
 the same time. If there is nothing of one to re- 
 cede in a given mind there can take place in that 
 mind no increase of the other. This statement 
 
70 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 would be quite superfluous but for the fact that 
 so many men have learned to do their thinking 
 about Jesus under the influence of the theory that 
 he wasi always practically omniscient, and so quite 
 unconsciously to blink out of sight the fact that 
 he began his human career in the stall at Bethle- 
 hem with a mind as completely unfurnished as that 
 of any babe of to-day. All thinking about the 
 person of Jesus which stands associated with the 
 virtual denial of this first postulate of Matthew, 
 Luke and the writer of the letter to the Hebrews, 
 is necessarily false to a degree. 
 
 Jesus never forgot the incompleteness of his 
 knowledge, and never shrank from confessing it 
 either by implication or direct statement. Apart 
 from it his temptations, his fears and his ago- 
 nized prayers could never have taken their places 
 in his life. His consciousness of ignorance made 
 for him, as it has made for each other member of 
 our race, some of his sorest trials. But for it 
 our New Testaments would never have contained 
 the words : 
 
 "Our High Priest is not one unable to sympa- 
 thize with our weaknesses, but one who has been in 
 every way tempted, exactly as we have been . . . 
 Jesus in the days of his earthly life offered 
 prayers and supplications, with earnest cries and 
 tears, to him who was able to save him from 
 death; and he was heard because of his devout 
 submission." (Heb. 4:15; 5:7.) Each man's 
 consciousness is continually revealing itself in his 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 71 
 
 deeds and words. It is because he perceives or 
 judges himself to be this or the other that any 
 given man takes the place he does before the 
 world. John the Son of Zachariah and Elizabeth 
 perceived or judged himself to be the herald of the 
 long expected Messiah. Therefore he stepped 
 forth from the wilderness seclusion into which he 
 had retired for the completion of the deep mus- 
 ings, which had been kindling his consecrated de- 
 sire and imagination, and began to declare the 
 kingdom of God at hand, and to preach the bap- 
 tism of repentance, that his people might expe- 
 rience such a divine forgiveness as would fit them 
 to enter and act their holy part in that kingdom. 
 And over against this consciousness of John stood 
 that of Jesus by means of which he perceived or 
 judged that he was the long looked for Messiah 
 himself. For how many days or weeks either of 
 them was aware of his true character and destiny 
 before taking the inevitable step, we are not in- 
 formed, but there was a definite moment when the 
 inner eye caught the vision, or the inner tribunal 
 rendered the verdict, in each case. Prior to that 
 moment character and career alike were for many 
 years not even surmised, then for a longer or 
 shorter time surmised only, but then and always 
 afterwards neither could have taken any other 
 course than he did take, without consciously 
 withdrawing himself from the direction of God. 
 This was as true of John as of Jesus, and 
 as true of him who "was in all points 
 
72 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 made like his Brothers" (Heb. 2:27) as of John. 
 
 What a true man once sees he can never unsee. 
 And no true man can put his hand to the plough 
 and afterwards look back. (Luke 9:62.) So 
 John and Jesus met at the Jordan and Jesus 
 was baptized by John "to satisfy every claim of 
 religion." (Matt. 3:15.) In that act the con- 
 secration of both reached completeness. John 
 had now performed the supreme act connected with 
 his mission, and Jesus had definitely and publicly 
 devoted himself to his Messianic career, receiv- 
 ing a divine as well as a human baptism in con- 
 firmation of his personal convictions. (Matt. 
 3:16.) 
 
 Still he did not enter at once upon the work 
 which lay before him. Why? His ignorance 
 stood in the way, and he realized the fact. Two 
 wholly different paths lay before him, both 
 wrapped in mists which were for the moment quite 
 impenetrable even to his clear vision. Like his 
 brothers he was compelled to study each new 
 situation, and only thus could he know it for what 
 it really was. He was true to the Divine Spirit 
 which had come upon him and that Spirit led him 
 into the seclusion of the wilderness. Arrived there 
 he became so absorbed in the study of his problem 
 that he forgot food, and so disturbed, let us be 
 assured, by the difficulties facing him in the path 
 which soon began to reveal itself to him as the 
 only one he could tread in the company of his 
 Father, that forty days and forty nights passed 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 73 
 
 before he could enter that path with confidence. 
 Mark, as well as Matthew and Luke, tell us of 
 this experience and Matthew and Luke agree that 
 the specific temptation of this period was to make 
 an improper use of the power with which he had 
 been endued, and that this temptation looked in 
 three directions the supply of his own physical 
 need without due reference to the will of God; 
 the adoption of presumptuous sensational and 
 spectacular methods for advertising his person 
 and mission ; and the attempt to win world-wide 
 dominion after the prevalent political type, that 
 is to say, through ignoring the universal Father- 
 hood of God and resorting to physical force. 
 
 When Jesus emerged from this season of deep 
 reflection he knew himself as the Prince of Peace 
 and the prophet of the non-combatant. Once for 
 all he had decided that none of his servants, ex- 
 cepting the slow-learning yet fiery-tempered 
 Peter, nor even the sinless angels of his Father, 
 could do deeds of physical violence either to pro- 
 tect him personally, or to further the interests 
 of his work. (Matt. 26: 52-54; John 18:36.) 
 Accordingly we are told by Luke that when, 
 "moved by the power of the Spirit Jesus returned 
 to Galilee . . . and went on the Sabbath 
 into the synagogue at Nazareth" he read from 
 the book of the Prophet Isaiah 
 
 "The spirit of the Lord is upon me 
 For lie has consecrated me to bring Good News to 
 the poor. 
 
74 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives 
 
 and restoration of sight to the blind, 
 To set the oppressed at liberty, 
 To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 
 
 All his wonders were to be accomplished by 
 spiritual means and through the application of 
 righteous laws. Matthew was so impressed by 
 this fact that when Jesus responded to the Phar- 
 isaic plots to put him to death by seeking com- 
 plete privacy in a spirit which raised its voice 
 and its hand only to comfort and heal every dis- 
 eased and distressed one who came within their 
 reach, he declared that all this was "in fulfill- 
 ment of these words in the prophet Isaiah 
 
 " 'Behold ! the Servant of my Choice, 
 
 My Beloved, in whom my heart delights ! 
 
 I will breathe my spirit upon him, 
 
 And he shall announce a time of judgment to the 
 
 Gentiles, 
 
 He shall not contend nor cry aloud, 
 Neither shall any one hear his voice in the streets ; 
 A bruised reed he will not break, 
 And a smouldering wick he will not quench, 
 Till he has brought the judgment to a victorious issue. 
 And on his name shall the Gentiles rest their hopes !' " 
 
 (Matt. 12:14-21) 
 
 Another incident in harmony with this decision 
 of Jesus may be cited here. When after he had 
 fed a multitude of five thousand, besides women 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 75 
 
 and children, and "his disciples had filled twelve 
 baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves 
 which were left after all had eaten, and he dis- 
 covered that they were intending to come and 
 carry him off to make him a king," who could 
 feed a prodigious army of fighting men with little 
 or nothing in the shape of a commissariat depart- 
 ment ! "he retired again up the hill, quite 
 alone," horror-stricken and discomfited (Jno. 
 6:12-15). 
 
 Slowly and late it would seem to us from the 
 evidence before us, Jesus became aware of a very 
 painful relationship which it was his to sustain 
 towards his people the relationship of Judge. 
 He saw that he would be compelled to judge them 
 as a nation and condemn all but a remnant. 
 Jerusalem and its temple would disappear, amid 
 unspeakable horrors, and that within the life time 
 of some into whose faces he looked as he taught. 
 So intense was his patriotism that he could not 
 contemplate this prospect without losing his self- 
 composure, sometimes even to bitter tears and 
 words broken by sobs. (Matt. 23:37; Luke 19: 
 41-44; Luke 23: 27-31.) So Jesus was more and 
 more consciously burdened as he approached his 
 cross. Elsewhere I shall try to show that the cup 
 he could scarcely bring himself to drink was this 
 bitter cup of becoming the condemning judge for 
 his people as a whole. Readers of John 15:22, 
 24 will see how the terrible fact invaded the quiet 
 of his spirit even while he was making himself 
 
76 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 the comforter of his disciples in the stillness of 
 the Upper Chamber. 
 
 His office of Savior to his own people was never 
 absent from his thoughts and he was always con- 
 sciously yearning over them. It was his to have 
 saved them from their sins first, and through that 
 to have saved them from utter political and social 
 disruption and disorganization. Hence it was 
 that he took up John's message and made it the 
 first theme in the preaching of his disciples, who, 
 according to John's gospel, soon surpassed John 
 the Baptist himself in the numbers they were able 
 to bring to repentance and baptize. 
 
 But, as we have already seen, he was less and 
 less appreciated as a Savior and more and more 
 desired as a king of the ordinary worldly sword- 
 bearing and war-waging type. His people dis- 
 appointed him and he in turn disappointed them. 
 They would not follow him into spiritual union 
 with his Father, and he could not give himself 
 to them as the ruler they craved. As he became 
 increasingly conscious of this impossible situation, 
 and found that every wonderful deed that he 
 wrought was so misinterpreted that it only served 
 to estrange them more and more from the ideal 
 which he cherished on their behalf, he began to 
 remonstrate and entreat in the manner of Matt. 
 11, and to speak of them to his disciples after the 
 fashion of Matt. 13:10-17. John tells us how 
 from this viewpoint he declared to them "You 
 refuse to come to me to have Life," and asked re- 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 77 
 
 provingly and, at the same time, beseechingly 
 "How can you believe in me when you receive 
 honor from one another, and do not desire the 
 honor which comes from the only God?" (5 :40, 44.) 
 The faith of the Roman centurion and the per- 
 sistent believing pressure of the Syro-Phoenician 
 woman cheered and enlightened him ; and before 
 the end he saw that many will come from East 
 and West and take their places beside Abraham, 
 Isaac and Jacob in the kingdom of Heaven. 
 (Matt. 8:5-13.) So when about the end "some 
 Greeks" sent word to him through Philip of 
 Bethsaida that they wished an interview with him, 
 Jesus, forgetting for the moment his deep and 
 abiding sorrow, exulted thus "The time has 
 come for the Son of Man to be exalted. . . ." 
 His sorrow reasserted itself again till it wrung 
 from him a cry and prayer of distress, but he was 
 able to dismiss it once more and further exult 
 "Now this world is on its trial. Now the spirit 
 that is ruling this world shall be driven out ; and 
 I, when I am lifted up from the earth, shall draw 
 all men to myself." In the Upper Room, too, 
 he was largely victorious over that depression of 
 spirits which was so soon to become overwhelm- 
 ing, and could exhort his disciples to believe in 
 him as confidently as they believed in God, and 
 assure them that he was the Truth and the Life 
 and the One Way* to the Father He was the Vine 
 and they the branches, while his Father was the 
 Vinegrower! What a significant word in rela- 
 
78 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 tion to himself as well as in relation to them! 
 What a holy calm was his, too, while he breathed 
 forth there his high-priestly prayer, saying 
 again and again "Father," and just once "Holy 
 Father 1" But in this also, though sinless he was 
 like his sinful brothers He could not per- 
 manently make the far off good, which greeted 
 his eyes so comfortingly at times, fill the place 
 of the other immediate triumph upon which his 
 desires had fixed themselves, and which only the 
 bad hands of his own nation had thrust beyond 
 his reach. He was not only capable of heart- 
 breaking disappointment he actually suffered it. 
 One thing, however, never failed him the con- 
 sciousness of his Father's presence and approval, 
 and of his personal union with him. In all his 
 perplexities and in every distress of his he was 
 sure that his life was bound up in the life of God. 
 "I always do what pleases Him," he said. My 
 Father is the Vinegrower doing what he will with 
 me, his Vine. Looking up at the graveside of 
 Lazarus he called out to that Father this confident 
 word "Thou hearest me always." Turning once 
 to look his critics full in the face he said, "The 
 Father and I are one," and again, "In truth I tell 
 you, before Abraham existed I was." It was in 
 conformity with this last word that Jesus prayed 
 in the Upper Room "And now do Thou honor 
 me, Father, at thy own side with the honor which 
 I had at thy side before the world began. 
 For thou didst love me before the beginning of 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 79 
 
 the world." (Jno. 17:5, 24.) All three synop- 
 tics agree that he testified on oath during his 
 trial before the Sanhedrin that he was the Son 
 of God. Was this the expression of a self-per- 
 ception or of a self- judgment? Did he reach the 
 place where at last he knew God and himself 
 directly as Father and Son, or was his affirmation 
 a logical conclusion from unstated premises, a 
 self- j udgment ? 
 
 However this may have been, his consciousness 
 was personal and individual, and it was that of 
 a man. In spite of that union with his Father 
 which he was able to assert so confidently and 
 strikingly, his desires sometimes conflicted with 
 his Father's purposes so painfully that his pray- 
 ers were strong cryings mingled with tears, and 
 his will acquiesced only when he came to see his 
 Father's way for him too clearly to resist any 
 longer. His wishes, like ours, clouded his vision, 
 and sometimes, like ourselves, and notably at the 
 end, his wish that things could have been ordered 
 otherwise than they were, forced him to question 
 his Father's will again and again. The Son of 
 God was the Son of Man and he was wondrously 
 and gloriously human. 
 
 The only way a true sane man can be known 
 is through his consciousness as that consciousness 
 reveals itself, with or without purpose, in his words 
 and acts. Jesus was such a man. It is interest- 
 ing to guess what conclusions the early church 
 theologians would have reached, had they studied 
 
80 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 their Lord from this scientific standpoint, instead 
 of mixing their philosophy and hermeneutics for 
 the production of dogmas as they did. They 
 knew how to anathematize and even slaughter 
 each other in their pious rage over homoousion 
 and homoioiwion, as these Greek words stood re- 
 lated to the person of Jesus, and over the ques- 
 tion whether he possessed one or two natures, 
 and whether there were in him two wills, one 
 human and the other divine. The party which 
 could in the end muster the biggest fighting force 
 was orthodox, to be sure! For was not Jesus 
 Christ himself a great warrior who rode upon a 
 white horse, with his name "King of Kings and 
 Lord of Lords" written upon his robe and his 
 thigh? And did he not "judge and make war"? 
 They merely failed to observe that the one sharp 
 sword he wielded "came out of the mouth of him 
 who sat upon the horse !" 
 
 Suppose, however, that they had looked into 
 the consciousness of Jesus for reliable informa- 
 tion on these points, what would they have found? 
 If they had humbly consulted the records of his 
 life which they possessed, as we possess them now, 
 asking, as they did so, what in act and word and 
 disposition of his, calculated to throw light on 
 these questions, lay embalmed in these writings, 
 what conclusions would they have reached? 
 
 Reading Paul's letter to the Romans they would 
 have found this word: "According to the inward 
 man I delight in the law of God ; but I see a dif- 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 81 
 
 ferent law in my members, warring against the 
 law of my mind and bringing me into captivity." 
 They might well have been tempted by a word like 
 this to the conclusion that in sinful men there are 
 two natures and two wills. And this classical 
 passage does not stand alone. There is a similar 
 one in his letter to the Galatians 
 
 "For the flesh eagerly opposes the Spirit, and 
 the Spirit the flesh ; for these are hostile to each 
 other." And in all likelihood the word "Spirit" 
 here stands for the marshaled and fighting forces 
 of good in each sinful man, while the word "flesh" 
 represents the forces of evil resident in each. It 
 is, on the other hand, not an unusual thing at 
 all for a man to call upon the forces of good 
 resident in himself to come to his aid so that he 
 may act his part worthily. This fact also seems 
 to point to something like a duality of natures in 
 men the higher and the lower, the better and 
 the worse. Such is the consciousness of sinful 
 men. 
 
 Now what of the consciousness of him concern- 
 ing whom the best informed testimony affiirms 
 that "he never sinned" that "he has in every 
 way been tempted, exactly as we have been, but 
 without sinning?" Did he ever speak of himself 
 as the possessor of two natures or two wills? 
 Did he in any strait or any distress call upon 
 his higher, his divine nature and will, to assume 
 full control, and instruct or guide him up out of 
 the ignorance or weakness of his human nature? 
 
82 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 The answer is easy. There cannot be found any- 
 where even one poor hint that he ever did. The 
 distinction which he saw so clearly was not that 
 between a divine nature and will and a human 
 nature and will in himself, but that between him- 
 self in his entirety and his Father. To that 
 Father and never to his own divinity he continu- 
 ally rendered his worship and service. It is to 
 him we owe that teaching concerning the Holy 
 Spirit upon which the doctrine of the Trinity has 
 been erected. When at the time of his baptism 
 Jesus came up from the water praying, we are 
 told that "the heavens opened, and he saw the 
 Spirit of God descending, like a dove, and alight- 
 ing upon him." Yet we have no hint that he ever 
 prayed to the Holy Spirit any more than that he 
 prayed to himself. The Father was his sole ob- 
 ject of adoration, and to him alone he fled from 
 his human ignorance, weakness and awful dis- 
 tresses. Nor did he ever instruct his disciples to 
 pray to any other but this same Father in heaven. 
 It may be well for me to do no more here than 
 simply point out these facts. It cannot, how- 
 ever, prove otherwise than helpful for us to main- 
 tain the viewpoint from which we can distinguish 
 clearly between the doctrines which have arisen 
 directly out of the consciousness of Jesus, and 
 the ones which have sprung from those of sinful 
 men like ourselves. Praying in the name, or as 
 the agents, representatives and brothers of Jesus, 
 is a thing clearly enjoined by himself, but out of 
 
THE CONSCIOUSNESS OF JESUS 83 
 
 his consciousness there never flowed to any man 
 the command to pray either to himself or the 
 Holy Spirit. He simply taught his disciples to 
 call upon and adore "My Father and your 
 Father, and my God and your God." (Jno. 
 20:17.) 
 
 From all this it can be easily seen that the 
 doctrine of the Trinity can never be truly taught 
 till full account has been taken of the fact that 
 a human consciousness is bound up with the divine 
 consciousness in the working out of God's plan 
 of redemption, the vicegerent of the Father in the 
 realization of the Kingdom of God being the man 
 Christ Jesus the divine Logos, the Son of God, 
 who became this man. He who gives final form to 
 this doctrine must do all his thinking in full 
 view of the life history of God, which is indis- 
 solubly bound up with the life history of the 
 Son of God, who is now known to us as the man 
 Jesus Christ. This history must be written in 
 four periods, the first dealing with conditions as 
 they existed prior to the Incarnation, the second 
 with conditions as they obtained during the life 
 of Jesus in the flesh, the third with conditions 
 as they have existed since his ascension to glory, 
 and will exist until he surrenders the completed 
 kingdom to his God and Father, and the fourth 
 with those higher conditions which must prevail 
 from that moment onward. 
 
 And what of the human consciousness of Jesus, 
 when, the kingdom completed at last, he "surren- 
 
84 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 ders it to his God and Father, and places himself 
 under God who placed all things under him, that 
 God may be all in all?" Will that human con- 
 sciousness then disappear through absorption in 
 the divine? That condition would be Nirvana. 
 But it must either do that or persist forever. 
 Our hearts surely incline us to the latter alterna- 
 tive, but is there any man who can speak here 
 with final authority? 
 
VI 
 
 JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 
 
 Waiving entirely all direct discussion of the 
 doctrine of the Trinity, I may introduce this sub- 
 ject with a general word touching the offices as- 
 signed by the New Testament writers to "the 
 Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit," or, as Paul 
 names them together, "the Lord Jesus Christ 
 . . . God and ... the Holy Spirit." 
 (Matt. 28:19; 2nd Cor. 13:14.) 
 
 The Father is God universally transcendent and 
 universally governing in righteousness and love, 
 that is, in the exercise constantly of due con- 
 sideration for the interests of all his creatures 
 and all his worlds. The Son is God confining 
 himself to the limits of a human personality, in- 
 cluding for a time its physical frailties, its igno- 
 rance, and even its extreme temptableness, and 
 working out under all these disabilities a career 
 so beneficent and praiseworthy that it must at 
 length fill the whole universe with adoring wonder 
 and gratitude. And the Holy Spirit is God uni- 
 versally immanent, pervading and interpenetrat- 
 ing all things and all persons, and carrying for- 
 ward everywhere in all its details an infinite divine 
 plan for the bringing into existence and the per- 
 
 85 
 
86 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 fecting of a vast variety of things and beings, 
 including our human race itself. The Son is 
 brought before us not only as "the man Christ 
 Jesus," but also as the archetypal man, "the 
 First-born and Head or Lord of all Creation" 
 (Col. 1:15; Rev. 3:14); and the Holy Spirit 
 may in the name of correct scientific philosophy, 
 as well as of sound New Testament exegesis, be 
 identified as the one basal, organizing and per- 
 fecting Life of all that is, and author of that 
 infinite variety in unity which exhibits itself on 
 every hand the Son the Norm and the Holy 
 Spirit the Operator in one evolutionary process 
 of illimitable scope (Jno. 1: 1-5). 
 
 If the First-born of all creation was the Ar- 
 chetypal Man and he stood as the norm for the 
 whole process, then clearly the goal of all must 
 find itself in a race resplendent with the various 
 glories of the Archetypal Man himself. But the 
 race found itself allied to the brute and so poorly 
 seized of its high destiny, that it required some 
 one who could both point out the goal and lead 
 in the way to it. Who could possibly do this but 
 this same Archetypal Man? And how could he 
 do it excepting through a full entrance into the 
 life of the race, as he would experience it, if he 
 should be born and grow up and act and suffer, 
 in the flesh, as a genuine member of it? Such 
 seems to be the philosophy underlying the New 
 Testament story of the incarnation. But here 
 also the Norm calls for the Operator, and the Son 
 
JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT &t 
 
 can never be separated from the Holy Spirit. 
 These writers perceived this clearly. 
 
 All through the story of the life of Jesus the 
 Holy Spirit is to be seen as the power upon 
 and behind the Son, just as distinctly as the 
 "Father in Heaven" is to be seen as the directing 
 and controlling authority above Him. In pre- 
 senting this fact I shall begin with the accounts 
 of the resurrection and, moving backwards, con- 
 clude with that of the Virgin Birth. 
 
 In dealing with the resurrection of Jesus a 
 word of his own touching it may be first cited, 
 and perhaps that given in John 10:18 is the best 
 for my purpose "I have authority to lay down 
 my life, and I have authority to receive it again. 
 This is the command which I received from my 
 Father." He always recognized the fact that 
 the authority he wielded was delegated authority. 
 He constantly described himself as having been 
 sent under the strictest orders, and took pains 
 also to make it clear that his instructions did not 
 reach him all at once at the beginning of his 
 career, but gradually as his circumstances de- 
 manded them. When he uttered these words his 
 Father's "command" had reached him to move 
 straight on in his faithfulness as the Son til] 
 he had laid down his life and received it again. 
 To contemplate the first step was to pass at 
 length through his Gethsemane agony, but the 
 thought of the second was a portion of "the joy 
 that lay before him." (Heb. 12:2.) It was on 
 
88 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 the "authority" of his Father's "command" that 
 he looked towards both. But he was not called 
 upon either to take his own life or to restore it 
 to himself after he had, "by the hands of lawless 
 men, been nailed to a cross and put to death." 
 The record is that "God released him from the 
 pangs of death and raised him to life." (Acts 
 2: 23, 24.) And a further word of Peter is 
 "The very Guide of Life you put to death ! But 
 God raised him from the dead." (Acts 3: 14, 
 15.) In writing to the Romans, Paul made two 
 statements on this point which I may note here. 
 "Christ was raised from the dead by a manifesta- 
 tion of the Father's power" (Chap. 6: 4), is the 
 first; and the second (Chap 8: 11) affirms: If 
 the spirit of him who raised Jesus from the dead 
 lives within you, he who raised Jesus from the 
 dead will give life even to your mortal bodies, 
 through his Spirit living within you." In the 
 resurrection, therefore, as in all else the Holy 
 Spirit is the divine Operator. So even if 1st 
 Peter 3:15 should not be translated "quickened 
 by the Spirit," the thing is true nevertheless. 
 The Father's power to raise from the dead and 
 give life to mortal human bodies is manifested, or 
 put forth, by the Holy Spirit. 
 
 In calling attention to the next point I may 
 first remark that Peter and Paul both wrote at 
 least once of the Holy Spirit as the Spirit of 
 Jesus Christ 1st Peter 1:11; Phil. 1 :19 just 
 as Paul in 1st Thessalonians 4:8 writes of "God 
 
JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 89 
 
 (the Father) who gives you his Holy Spirit." 
 The point itself is advanced in these words of 
 Heb. 9:14 "Christ, who through his eternal 
 Spirit offered himself up to God as a victim with- 
 out blemish." While here a man in the flesh 
 Jesus made the Holy Spirit his by receiving him 
 to the full measure of his capacity, so that 
 through his power he might do and endure to 
 the utmost the things required by the position 
 which he had assumed. And the thing here as- 
 serted is that it was through a strength of cour- 
 age and devotion which the Holy Spirit wrought 
 in him that he was able to pass safely through 
 his Gethsemane test and yield himself up un- 
 flinchingly, and in the very "beauties of holi- 
 ness" as an offering to God his Father, in the 
 sufferings and death which followed. 
 
 One of the latest teachings of Jesus himself was 
 that the Holy Spirit would lead his disciples, 
 after his removal from them, in the ways of all 
 necessary spiritual knowledge, and that he would 
 do this partly by quickening their memories, and 
 partly by invigorating their intellectual powers 
 (Jno. 15: 26); that they would in this way be 
 fitted to offer effective testimony concerning him 
 as the Savior of men (Jno. 15:27) ; and that he 
 would so open up the Truth to their minds as to 
 make clear to them each step they would be re- 
 quired to take as they advanced with the task 
 which it was theirs to undertake in his name. 
 (Jno. 16: 13.) Thus Jesus made it plain that 
 
90 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 he most definitely relied upon the operations of 
 the Holy Spirit for both the progress of his church 
 and the conversion of the world. 
 
 He knew how it would be in the case of the 
 small company of followers he was to leave behind 
 him, because he knew how it had been with himself. 
 The servant was to be as his Master. When he 
 stood up in his home synagogue at Nazareth he 
 read from Isaiah "The spirit of the Lord is upon 
 me, etc." and sat down to open his address with 
 the words, "This very day this passage has been 
 fulfilled in your hearing." (Luke 4: 18-21.) 
 And all "the beautiful words that fell from his 
 lips" at other times were uttered under the same 
 mighty inspiration. 
 
 When he passed from his baptism to the long 
 season of spiritual struggle in the wilderness, he 
 went under the guidance of the spirit. (Matt. 4: 
 1 ; Luke 4:1.) Each of the four accounts of his 
 baptism by John gives a most careful statement 
 concerning the divine baptism which stood most 
 intimately associated with it. "Just as He was 
 coming up from the water, the heavens opened, and 
 he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove 
 and alighting upon him, and from the heavens 
 there came a voice which said: 'This is my Son, 
 the Beloved, in whom I delight!' " (Matt. 3: 16, 
 17.) Mark says, not that he saw the heavens 
 opened, but that "he saw the heavens rent apart," 
 as by a mighty force suddenly applied. Luke 
 tells us that it was "when Jesus had been bap- 
 
JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 91 
 
 tized and was still praying" that "the heavens 
 opened, and the Holy Spirit descended, in a visible 
 form, like a dove, upon him." This implies that 
 the dove-like form was seen by others besides Jesus 
 himself. John furnishes us with the testimony 
 of John Baptist on this point "I have seen the 
 Spirit descending out of the heavens, and it re- 
 mained upon him. I myself did not know him, 
 but he who sent me to baptize with water, he said 
 to me : 'He upon whom you see the Spirit descend- 
 ing and remaining upon him he it is who baptizes 
 with the Holy Spirit.' " (John 1 :32, 33.) 
 
 According to this word his baptism with the 
 Holy Spirit was John's great means of identify- 
 ing him as the one person in whose interests 
 chiefly he had himself been commissioned. Accord- 
 ing to it also Jesus was revealed to John Baptist 
 as the receiver of the Spirit for others as well 
 as for himself; and this is certainly true to the 
 very nature of his mission. 
 
 The purpose and value of this baptism are set 
 forth in the words of Peter's address before the 
 company gathered at the home of Cornelius in 
 Cagsarea : "The story, I mean, of Jesus of Naza- 
 reth, and how God consecrated him his Christ by 
 enduing him with the Holy Spirit and with 
 power; and how he went about doing good and 
 curing all who were under the power of the Devil, 
 because God was with him." (Acts 10: 38.) 
 
 This language sets Jesus before the mind as 
 owing his career most definitely to his consecration 
 
92 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 and enduement by God. It was "because God 
 was with him" that "he went about doing good 
 and curing all who were under the power of the 
 Devil." The consecration and enduement were 
 essential things. Before receiving them he was 
 Jesus of Nazareth, superior in goodness and 
 spiritual insight to his neighbors, no doubt, but 
 simply taking his share in his home life, the work 
 of the carpenter's shop, and the life of the town 
 and its synagogue. Along some practical lines 
 he may have seemed to his neighbors, and his own 
 family even, to be considerably deficient. He 
 lacked in what was currently regarded as bargain- 
 ing ability we may be sure. He had no cunning 
 or craftiness, and did not know how to find 
 the blind side of anyone, excepting for the pur- 
 pose of becoming eyes to him. He was probably 
 looked upon as too good-hearted by half, too un- 
 ambitious, over conscientious and altogether un- 
 likely ever to go far in any practical direction. 
 
 Before his consecration and enduement he was 
 just Jesus of Nazareth, religious, thoughtful, 
 generous, but not strikingly strong or command- 
 ingly eminent even in the religious life of the little 
 town itself. He had not yet found his place and 
 his work. He was waiting in the half conscious 
 fashion of the great, whose proper tasks have not 
 yet reached them. Then the breezes bore him 
 tidings of what an awakening of public interest 
 was taking place under the preaching of his 
 cousin John. "The kingdom of God" was the 
 
JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 95 
 
 very word to quicken his pulses. So was the other 
 word "Repent," for his own heart had already 
 told him that this kingdom must belong to no 
 other than a holy nation. What would his part 
 be in this great and growing movement? This 
 question grew upon him until at last it took him 
 to the scene of John's labors and into John's 
 presence. He knew his place and his work at last. 
 He accepted his mission in his heart. He would 
 publicly avow it. But first John must baptize 
 him. John felt unworthy. But his scruples 
 were overborne and the waters of the Jordan 
 touched the Holy One and were themselves made 
 holy for the thought of all the succeeding Chris- 
 tian generations. Jesus knew the tremendousness 
 of this crisis. He went to John praying, came 
 from his hands praying, and, praying still, re- 
 ceived his divine baptism. Then at once Jesus 
 of Nazareth found himself what he has been ever 
 since the anointed and consecrated One, God's 
 Christ, and endued with a power which was to 
 prove adequate to the various features of the 
 whole task which lay before him. And it was 
 the reception of the Holy Spirit into a completely 
 consecrated nature which made all the difference. 
 Thus far everything was clear to the primitive 
 Christian mind. Another question remained, 
 however. What was there peculiar about Jesus 
 of Nazareth that he alone was entrusted with this 
 mission and endued with the Holy Spirit in 
 this supreme way? And how was it that he be- 
 
94 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 came possessed of his singular fitness to be made 
 the divine instrument in the case? The natural 
 general answer was the one which has been given 
 in connection with the same sort of question as it 
 has been asked in view of the lives of great men 
 generally it must have been a matter of original 
 endowment. But how was this endowment 
 secured? The question of parentage came in 
 here. Could merely human parentage ever se- 
 cure so much for any child? The thing was un- 
 believable. What then? They must if possible 
 obtain all the facts of the case. So we have the 
 stories of Matthew and Luke which can be set 
 out in four words Parthenogenesis through di- 
 vine interposition. And what shall we do with 
 these stories? 
 
 Evolutionary science of the materialistic type 
 waves them aside with a superior air, remark- 
 ing as it does so that among the higher orders of 
 living organisms it knows no such things as vir- 
 gin births, and no such things as divine inter- 
 positions among the advancing forces of nature. 
 These are statements which no one can absolutely 
 disprove. But one can accept these and still 
 retain the recollection that nothing very solid 
 can be built upon human ignorance. One may 
 also be free to think, if he cares to, that what we 
 call interpositions are perhaps not interpositions 
 at all. They are not, that is to say, entrances of 
 God into places from which he is usually absent, 
 nor results of an activity on the part of God 
 
JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 95 
 
 where he was inactive before. The divine im- 
 manence must not be forgotten, and wherever God 
 exists he exists as both thought and action. Noth- 
 ing which ought to come into being does so apart 
 from his will, and the more conspicuously neces- 
 sary a given life is the more definitely that life 
 can be traced to God as its source. Indeed God 
 is the source of all life and so of all lives. And 
 it is safe to assume, as I have done in one of 
 the opening paragraphs of this chapter, that the 
 Holy Spirit himself may be identified as the one 
 basal, organizing and perfecting life of all that 
 is, and author of that infinite variety in unity 
 which exhibits itself on every hand ; and that Na- 
 ture with the capital N owes all she is to him as 
 the very soul of her soul. He made her and he 
 sustains her. 
 
 And what does science know about the laws of 
 human reproduction? Do a male and female ac- 
 tually produce a new being like themselves ? Or is 
 their union only the condition of that production? 
 It is certainly quite as safe to take the latter 
 position as the former. What are the facts ? 
 
 Several things are true of the inception of 
 every human life. First of all the event does 
 not take place in obedience to human wishing or 
 willing. The most earnest desires and purposes 
 are often met by nothing but disappointment. 
 On the other hand, where the sexes, even in the 
 marriage relation, regard each other only as com- 
 panion instruments for sensual gratification, the 
 
96 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 inception of a new life is often attained as a 
 distinct triumph over all the obstacles which have 
 with wicked and persistent care been piled in the 
 way. In the second place the event occurs with- 
 out human supervision, and altogether apart from 
 even the consciousness of her who is to play the 
 part of mother in the case. The more closely 
 one looks into the actual physical facts the more 
 apparent this becomes. Two invisible units seem 
 to seek each other in a space which to them is 
 vast, but they find each other. An almost in- 
 finitesimal embrace take place in darkness. Then 
 the human embryo which results, fixes itself as a 
 parasite upon some point, more or less suitable of 
 the living chamber in which it has thus begun its 
 career, and, after undergoing a variety of changes 
 in form, it is forced to take its place in the air 
 and sunshine of this planet, as the most immature 
 and helpless of all sentient creatures. 
 
 During all this period it was not nurtured 
 through the purposing or planning of any man 
 or woman, and the period itself came to an end 
 through no wishing or willing of any mortal 
 whatever. Birth throes, as well as gestation, rep- 
 resent a will which has imposed itself upon the 
 whole animal world a will which is as vast in its 
 scope as it is inescapable, and as wise in its hid- 
 den operations as it is powerful. It is true, too, 
 that, as a rule, the birth-pangs themselves are 
 used to awaken, where it did not exist before, a 
 love strong enough to supply the care required 
 
JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 97 
 
 by the helplessness of the babe. The full breast 
 yearns for the pressure of the infant lips and the 
 soft touch of the tiny fingers ; so the little form is 
 caressed and held close to the heart, and before 
 this vision latent father love leaps up strong to 
 defend and to maintain. 
 
 Nothing, then, is clearer than that the conscious 
 vital purpose which governs the propagation of 
 our race lies elsewhere than in the visible actors 
 or agents themselves. It reveals itself at every 
 step in the process. The immanent God is here 
 as elsewhere a constant and consistent doer, sted- 
 fastly carrying out the purposes of his own wis- 
 dom and love. 
 
 Coming now to the question before us, namely, 
 the conception of Jesus, as it is set forth by Mat- 
 thew and Luke, is there any apparent provision 
 in our humanity for the occurrence of such an 
 event? My answer is this. The personal letter 
 of a living scientist, which now lies before me, 
 refers to Dr. Edward Wilson's book on "The Cell 
 Development and Inheritance," and, ini view of the 
 positions of that great authority, makes this 
 statement: "It is quite safe to say that Par- 
 thenogenesis is by no means uncommon in the 
 lower orders and it remains a wonder that 
 it is not still more common in all ranges of life," 
 when polar bodies and germ cells are so constantly 
 found in the presence of each other in virgin 
 wombs. No possibility, therefore, could be more 
 distinct than this. There is here even the sug-. 
 
98 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 gestion of probability. Can this probability be 
 strengthened by any facts or considerations which 
 are well within our reach? 
 
 Let us look at the story of evolution itself as 
 it reveals the succession of living organisms. 
 This story, as Henri Bergsen well argues, is not 
 that of a chain which was forged link by link, 
 but rather that of several series of ascending 
 steps which were separated from each other by 
 chasms across each of which an upward leap was 
 successfully made, in order that the evolutionary 
 progress might be still triumphantly maintained. 
 Not to name any other such leap, it is still safe, 
 if not too fashionable, to say that our own race, 
 low as it may have been at the start, was reached 
 in this way. At the same time we are undoubtedly 
 related to all the animals below us. To pass up 
 from such a sinning world as that in which Jesus 
 lived, to his own unsinning life, was certainly 
 another leap, and one demanded by the con- 
 science of the race itself, but felt to be impossible. 
 When we look upon him long enough we see 
 clearly that he was a man like every other man, 
 excepting in this one thing he did no sin. But 
 this is a tremendous difference. How did it come 
 about? The New Testament answer is not nega- 
 tived by scientific facts. 
 
 Identify the Holy Spirit with Life; make Him 
 the creator of all things and beings in the order 
 in which they have actually appeared and are 
 appearing ; take parthenogenesis as an established 
 
JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 99 
 
 fact in nature, and confess the possibility of it 
 in every race of beings; and the virgin birth of 
 Jesus is seen to be at least as scientifically prob- 
 able as that living organisms should have appeared 
 in a world of so called non-living matter, al- 
 together apart from any direct action of a liv- 
 ing being either finite or infinite an assumption 
 which the scientific materialist entertains and 
 propounds with a very quick faith. And placing 
 the emphasis upon the word "direct " any one 
 may perhaps receive this latter doctrine calmly, 
 because in that case the axiom touching sufficient 
 causes is not necessarily contravened. The 
 story of living organisms is the history of the 
 upward march of Life the word, which, I an- 
 ticipate, will one day take the place of the word 
 Nature, which has proved so elusive and decep- 
 tive. 
 
 Life with the whole great task of Creation be- 
 fore Him, including the intellectual, the moral 
 and the wholly god-like, proceeded with His task 
 by slow and steady steps for the most part. But 
 here and there He shot upward with a stride or 
 leap. When at length he came to living organ- 
 isms, he built the virgin birth into the regular 
 order of events, and made provision for its occur- 
 rence everywhere, that it might be employed at 
 any stage whatever, opening the way for it when 
 he came to our race just as he had done before. 
 In view of all this is it unreasonable to say that 
 when he wished a race with well-nigh illimitable 
 
100 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 intellectual moral and spiritual possibilities he re- 
 sorted to this provision of his, and placed in the 
 arms of an ape-like mother a child who had no 
 ape-like father; and that when the time was ripe 
 for placing before this splendid race a man who 
 would never display an evil disposition or sin 
 against his own conscience, he did this by putting 
 into the arms of an Israelitish virgin a son whose 
 father was not a sinning man? 
 
 Say that man is related to the whole brute 
 creation on the mother's side, and Jesus is a 
 brother on the mother's side to all other men ; and 
 the whole story is told. 1 You have then given 
 creation its place as a part of God's long toil 
 towards self-realization, without making him it, 
 or it him, in whole or in part, any more than the 
 human mother is her own son, or the human son his 
 own mother. You have given man his proper place 
 at the top of the ascending animal series, and 
 have shown clearly that he was endowed with con- 
 science and his power of knowing God, with a view 
 to having these developed to the fullest possible 
 extent, and made absolutely triumphant in their 
 
 iYet not the whole perhaps. What if the Virgin Birth 
 itself should prove the key to unlock the mystery in which 
 the origin of species is still so closely shut up ! Evolu- 
 tion rightly understood applies only to the development of 
 each species after its appearance. Its work is that of 
 strengthening characteristics and producing varieties. 
 Were the various species themselves brought forth one af- 
 ter another by means of parthenogenesis? A case by no 
 means weak might be made out for this view. 
 
JESUS AND THE HOLY SPIRIT 101 
 
 struggle with darkness and wrong. You have 
 made it plain, also, that Jesus was projected with 
 his unsinning life into the midst of the sinning, 
 yet nobly striving race of men, as, on the one 
 hand, a token to them that their ideal of a human 
 life in every way true to its place and time, was 
 far from being an empty dream, and as, on the 
 other, a guide and an inspiration for every seeker 
 after God's sufficient help and saving smile. You 
 have shown, too, that the highest office of the 
 Holy Spirit here upon the earth is that of unit- 
 ing men to Jesus Christ in a life of supreme de- 
 votion to God and each other. And, finally, you 
 have come to the place where it is seen that Jesus 
 in the flesh is the Holy Spirit's norm in both his 
 creating and recreating work, while the glorified 
 or Archetypal Man, the Son of God himself, is 
 his norm in his work where men come to know in 
 full, as they have been fully known. 
 
 The first human child brought with it but the 
 beginnings of all that was to be realized through 
 its advent. Millennium has had to follow millen- 
 nium in connection with the full realization of the 
 rich and various possibilities which! it carried with 
 it when it came. So Jesus himself was but the 
 beginning of the sinless order among men. He 
 vividly realized this himself, renounced the idea 
 of his completeness in the goodness of God, con- 
 fessed his ignorance and his limitations, and held 
 before his disciples the prospect of larger things 
 to follow his removal from the earth. His com- 
 
102 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 pleteness was that of disposition and purpose as 
 these could be displayed within the limitations of 
 his knowledge, on the one hand, and his social 
 environment, on the other. 
 
 It was his, moreover, not to replace the sinning 
 race by means of a new one, physically, as well 
 as morally and spiritually, descended from him- 
 self. But by slowly lifting the sinning race itself, 
 through intellectual enlightenment, the invigor- 
 ation of the conscience and the clarifying of the 
 spiritual vision, he was to lead it at last beyond 
 every degrading, disabling and painful limitation 
 into the fullness of its inheritance in God. That 
 is to say, the Holy Spirit as Life brought Jesus 
 upon the scene as his final instrument in the reali- 
 zation of that completely holy end, which alone 
 could make the plan of creation itself worthy 
 and glorious. 
 
VII 
 
 THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 
 
 In dealing with this theme one has first to say 
 who Jesus was and is, then ask what it would be 
 for such a person to be sinless, and, finally, to 
 determine, if he can, whether Jesus was really sin- 
 less or not. In giving our answer to the first 
 of these questions we may state an affirmation 
 which comes to us from every side He was a man. 
 The New Testament writers lead the way here, 
 telling us of his birth and infancy, his boyhood, 
 his consecration to God, his temptations and dis- 
 tresses, his prayers to his divine Father, his human 
 agony in Gethsemane and on the cross, and of his 
 death and burial. While they most positively af- 
 firmed his resurrection from the dead and his as- 
 cension to glory, they still spoke of him as 
 "Jesus of Nazareth, a man ..." "and how 
 God consecrated him his Christ by enduing him 
 with the Holy Spirit and with power." (Acts 2 : 
 23; 10: 38.) When Paul asserted the unity of 
 God and the existence of one mediator between 
 God and men, he declared that this mediator was 
 "the man Christ Jesus." (1 Tim. 2: 25.) It is 
 in these same New Testament writers, of course, 
 that we find the doctrine of both his pre-existence 
 103 
 
104 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 and persistence as the Son of God. But con- 
 stantly and consistently they represent him as 
 having become a man, and seem never to have been 
 troubled by any feelings of perplexity in view of 
 his complete humanness. They believed he had no 
 independent authority, but received continuous 
 authorization from his Father. He could not 
 even perform his first miracle without a clear in- 
 timation that it would be well-timed. They 
 taught also that his power to do deeds that were 
 beyond the ability of others did not spring from 
 within, but came upon him from without; and 
 that he himself anticipated that these deeds would 
 be exceeded by those of his followers. They even 
 saw in his life the proof that apart from heavenly 
 aid, incessantly given in answer to prayers that 
 were sometimes associated "with earnest crying 
 and with tears," he would have failed both in his 
 mission and his personal career. And when his 
 earthly task was ended and he was about to pass 
 from their sight to the Father, they understood 
 him to say that the enlarged authority then given 
 him was strictly delegated authority, and would 
 continue only until the Father had through his 
 instrumentality, along with the mightier instru- 
 mentality of the Holy Spirit, secured the complete 
 triumph of the principles of love and truth which 
 he had been sent to exemplify and enforce. In 
 brief, Jesus was, to his apostles, a man while he 
 was here in the flesh, and still a man after his 
 resurrection and entrance upon his glorified ca- 
 
THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 105 
 
 reer in the invisible. That is to say, he was God 
 become man and continuing as such. 
 
 These apostles were Jews, not Greeks. They 
 were, therefore, content to abide without ques- 
 tioning in what they regarded as their world of 
 ascertained facts. They rejoiced in the essential 
 greatness of their Master and Savior. Had they 
 philosophized at all, they would have said that 
 the pre-existent Son of God did not in becoming 
 a man cease to exist. Had he ceased to exist he 
 could not have become a man at all. He had not 
 ceased to exist, but only to exist as God. Hence, 
 though now he was a man, he was divine still 
 the God-mem. 
 
 What they did say, or rather, what they con- 
 tinually assumed, was that everything that he had 
 done as Creator, Upholder, and Revealer, prior to 
 his incarnation, had now to stand associated with 
 the name of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ of God ; 
 since it could be credited to no other either on 
 earth or in heaven. An individual's record at- 
 taches to himself alone, no matter what the 
 changes which may take place in him. So to 
 them he was "Jesus Christ yesterday and to- 
 day yes, and forever." He was the one who 
 came down, stayed here for a time in our human- 
 ity, and then, in our humanity glorified, went up 
 to where he was before. In his own person they 
 saw him lift this humanity of ours, even while he 
 was here in the flesh, to heights only imagined 
 before. And all he did he did as a man. 
 
106 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Accepting, therefore, all that the New Testa- 
 ment writers affirm about the pre-existence and 
 divinity of Jesus, we must recognize that it is 
 as a man that we are to consider him when we ask 
 whether he was sinless or not. But we cannot 
 intelligently proceed with our inquiry until we 
 have first named one of the outstanding facts of 
 our humanity. This fact is ignorance. To en- 
 ter upon a human career is to begin as a babe, 
 with no knowledge at all, and always remain a 
 learner. It must not be forgotten that the New 
 Testament writers present Jesus to us as both a 
 babe and a learner. It is recorded of him that 
 he grew in knowledge in his boyhood. He did not 
 know at the time of his baptism on what precise 
 lines he was to conduct his career, and it was only 
 as he moved cautiously forward that all became 
 clear. During two years or more of his public 
 life he did not think of his ministry as meant for 
 any but Jews. When on his one vacation outside 
 the territory of his own people, he declared to a 
 pleading Canaanitish woman that he had no mis- 
 sion to her or her people. There and later he 
 learned a new lesson regarding his own work. He 
 confessed his ignorance of the time of a future 
 event, and told his apostles, even after his res- 
 urrection, that the Father had reserved "times 
 and hours . . . for his own decision." We 
 have no hint either that he had a wider geograph- 
 ical or literary knowledge than the men of his 
 time. He had no reputation whatever for learn- 
 
THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 107 
 
 ing. What gave him superiority and authority 
 was his amazing spiritual insight. He read the 
 heart of God and the hearts of men as no other 
 ever did, and so was wiser than all others in the 
 essential things of human life. 
 
 His knowledge and originality, even in the field 
 of ethics, can easily be overestimated. He did 
 not originate either "the first and great com- 
 mandment" or "the second." Thou shalt love 
 thy God with all thy powers and thy neighbor 
 as thyself arrived ages before his coming. He 
 found these commandments in the sacred writings 
 of his people, and codified and illuminated them 
 in his teaching. He was ahead of his times on 
 divorce, on oaths, and on the requital of injuries, 
 but he never even hinted at the great moral re- 
 forms of recent years. The Father had not made 
 him acquainted with the "times and hours" in 
 which the great principles he affirmed would work 
 themselves out in these and all other particulars. 
 From the standpoint of the moral reformer, as 
 well as from that of the scholar, he was a man of 
 his own time. 
 
 Now knowledge has so much to do with the 
 correctness of human conduct that no thinker on 
 the subject believes it possible for a life to be 
 lived which is perfect in the sense of being com- 
 plete in every particular, until the time arrives 
 when all the relationships of men toward each 
 other, with all the duties arising out of them 
 shall have become fully known. Ignorance is one 
 
108 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 of the greatest foes to progress, and progress is 
 the one road to perfection. If, then, the perfect 
 life is the life which is complete in every particu- 
 lar, Jesus did not live the perfect life. His times 
 did not make it possible. The best he could do 
 was to live as complete a life as was then within 
 his reach. And he would find it the same to-day, 
 if he were here in the flesh, and living in the most 
 Christian country on the planet. If, therefore, 
 sinlessness and fullblown perfection are to be con- 
 sidered as one and the same thing in connection 
 with a human life, it cannot be claimed that Jesus 
 was sinless. But this is by no means the last 
 word on the subject. 
 
 We have now reached the place where it is 
 necessary to state the self-evident fact that the 
 claim that Jesus was sinless must be judged by the 
 ethical standards of those magnificent men who 
 first put it forward. What did the New Testa- 
 ment writers mean by sinlessness ? After we have 
 discovered this, and decided whether Jesus was 
 sinless in the sense in which they used the term, 
 we can, if we wish, ask whether sinlessness in their 
 sense could be regarded as sinlessness here and 
 now. 
 
 It can be said at once that the principle which 
 guided the New Testament writers in this mat- 
 ter is the common-sense one that the attitude of 
 an individual toward good and evil is not to be 
 found in any outward act whatever, but in the 
 disposition and purpose from which his acts pro- 
 
THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 109 
 
 ceed. They held that to make himself a sinner 
 against God in connection with any given action 
 the doer of the deed must at least fear beforehand 
 that: he would in that way either injure his neigh- 
 bor or disobey or offend his God, or that he would 
 thus disobey and offend his own conscience. They 
 held, that is to say, that as far as ignorance ex- 
 isted it stood forth as a valid excuse for any act 
 or word which was wrong in itself, and that as 
 far as knowledge of its wrongness stood as- 
 sociated with any such word or act in the mind 
 of the doer or speaker of it, that knowledge was 
 proof positive of guilt on his part. Luke and 
 John present the following as words of Jesus 
 himself on this subject: "The servant who knows 
 his master's wishes and yet does not prepare and 
 act accordingly will receive many lashes; while 
 one who does not know his master's wishes, but 
 acts so as to deserve a flogging, will receive but 
 few." "If I had not come and spoken to them, 
 they would have had no sin to answer for; but 
 as it is they have no excuse for their sin. . . . 
 If I had not done among them such works as no 
 one else ever did, they would have had no sin to 
 answer for; but, as it is, they have both seen and 
 hated both me and my Father" (see also John 
 9:41). Paul's words in his letter to the Romans 
 are terse and clear "Where no law exists, no 
 breach of it is possible. . . . Sin cannot be 
 charged against a man where no Law exists. . . . 
 Love fully satisfies the Law." Over against this 
 
110 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 last word may be placed this strong one of John, 
 "Every one who hates his brother is a murderer." 
 Jesus and his apostles after him emphasized 
 knowledge, on the one hand, and disposition on 
 the other. They taught that to love was for the 
 person loving to abstain at once and continually 
 from everything known to him to be injurious to 
 the object of his affections, and to do instead 
 every helpful thing that lay in his power; and 
 that a man should love his very enemies. It was 
 by this high standard that the apostles of our 
 Lord measured him. Let us listen to some of 
 them as they announce the result. Peter says, 
 "He 'never sinned, nor was anything deceitful 
 ever heard from his lips.' He was abused but he 
 did not answer with abuse ; he suffered but he did 
 not threaten." On the contrary, "He 'himself 
 carried our sins' in his own body to the cross, so 
 that we might die to our sins, and live for right- 
 eousness." Peter knew Jesus better than any 
 other man, excepting John, perhaps, and his de- 
 liberate written word is that Jesus never sinned 
 in either act or speech. He never showed wrong 
 disposition, but went to the cross, even, in the 
 spirit of a love that carried every sinner on its 
 heart in yearning for his salvation. John's testi- 
 mony is that "in him sin has no place." He never 
 admitted sin into his nature; so sin never pre- 
 pared itself a room or abiding place there. 
 "Holy, innocent, spotless, withdrawn from sin- 
 ners," is the description given of him by the 
 
THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 111 
 
 writer of the letter to the Hebrews. And his 
 word concerning his own consciousness, according 
 to John 8 :28, 29, was, "I do nothing of my- 
 self. ... I say just what the Father has 
 taught me. ... I always do what pleases 
 him." No sins of presumption, no running be- 
 fore he was sent obedience to the Father repre- 
 sented by every word he uttered and every deed 
 he did; is the claim that welled up from the clear 
 depths of Christ's own knowledge of himself, ac- 
 cording to the writer of the Fourth Gospel. 
 
 Does someone say, "After all, however, he was 
 a man of his own time, as we are of ours, and his 
 obedience was only as far as he knew. We know 
 more of the particulars of human righteousness 
 than he did, just as those who come after us will 
 know more of them than we do. So admitting 
 his claims in full, it must be remembered that he 
 could not have lived a complete human life?" 
 
 Such words as these have a foundation in fact 
 which we have already recognized, and they de- 
 serve careful attention. The first thing that 
 should be said in view of them is this : He con- 
 vinced men whose chief business in our world was 
 the pursuit of righteousness and real holiness 
 that he never once failed where they did that 
 his inner life, as well as his outward, was in per- 
 fect harmony with all of moral good and the will 
 of God that he did know. And they saw so much 
 in his life beyond what they had ever been able 
 to build into their own that they regarded him 
 
A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 as knowing practically everything. Instead of 
 having to make apologies for his ignorance, they 
 stood amazed at his knowledge. This is clear. 
 It is equally clear that no other man ever im- 
 pressed the hearts of his fellows in this manner, 
 and to the same extent. No other man was ever 
 regarded as sinless by the holiest of his contem- 
 poraries, who were at the same time the men who 
 knew him best. Here Jesus Christ stands forth 
 unique and glorious, clothed with the perfect calm 
 which could enwrap only the man whose fine com- 
 posure had never been disturbed by any self-ac- 
 cusings. It was to the holy he seemed holiest, 
 and to them he seemed perfectly holy. 
 
 Now how would a life of this sort be regarded 
 if it should present itself in one of our towns or 
 cities to-day? It would certainly be misunder- 
 stood and persecuted. But how would it im- 
 press men after it had run its remarkable course 
 and. reached its extraordinary termination? If 
 a man should arise among ourselves whose every 
 word and act, and his very dispositions, were, as 
 far as we could see, in perfect harmony with the 
 law of love toward both God and men, from the 
 beginning to the end of his career if he should 
 seem in our eyes never to have been a transgressor 
 in even the slightest particular, but to have given 
 himself without a moment's cessation to the most 
 unselfish service, alike Godward and manward ; 
 would we speak of him as having been sinless or 
 not? 
 
THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 113 
 
 We know what sin is. We have long defined 
 it as any transgression of, or want of conformity 
 to, the law of God. And when we have been 
 asked to define the law of God, we have done it 
 in two ways, and said (1) It is that perfect and 
 complete ethical code which is to be found in the 
 absolute holiness of God himself, and stands 
 partly revealed in the Christian scriptures and 
 elsewhere; and (2) It is that same code as far 
 as it has become a matter of knowledge to any 
 individual whose character or conduct may hap- 
 pen to be under consideration. When we are 
 asked why we have the two definitions, and not 
 one only, we answer that we need the first, be- 
 cause we must keep ourselves reminded that the 
 holiness of God has more of duty and privilege in 
 store for us than any man has ever seen as yet; 
 and we need the second as a standard with which 
 to measure individual accountability, on the one 
 hand, and individual moral worth, on the other; 
 since the first cannot be used in this way at all, 
 on account of the fact that beyond a certain point 
 no man has ever yet known what it is in its va- 
 rious particulars. In other words, no man can 
 test another by the standard of absolute holiness. 
 For no man knows what that standard is, except 
 in part. He can judge only by the particulars 
 he knows, whether it is himself or another he has 
 under scrutiny. So any man who should in dis- 
 position and purpose, as well as in word and 
 deed, live in complete and positive obedience to 
 
114 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 all the requirements of the divine holiness, as far 
 as they have become known to him, would be sin- 
 less from the viewpoint of his own consciousness. 
 And if some man with a larger knowledge of these 
 requirements than any or all of his contemporaries 
 should attain to this complete and positive obe- 
 dience, he would be sinless, not only from the 
 viewpoint of his own consciousness, but also, and 
 even more distinctly, in the unprejudiced opinion 
 of all who knew him. That is to say, if Jesus 
 had led a nineteenth-century life with the same 
 devotion to God and duty that he showed in the 
 first-century life that he actually did live, there 
 would be no hesitation on our part in ascribing 
 sinlessness to him to-day, particularly if he had 
 begun his public career during the second half, 
 beginning, let us say, with 1875. 
 
 Sinlessness is one thing; absolute holiness, and 
 even complete human righteousness, another. It 
 was probably because Jesus, the human learner, 
 had discovered this for himself that he turned so 
 sharply once upon a flattering inquirer with the 
 word, "Why do you call me good? No one is 
 good but God." The New Testament claim for 
 Jesus is simply that he was sinless. 
 
 Jesus was not jealous of those who were to 
 succeed him. He was at once too generous and 
 too sure of himself for that. He knew the future 
 would be his, and rejoiced all the more because 
 those who were to follow him would surpass him 
 in their grip 1 upon the whole human situation, and 
 
THE SINLESSNESS OF JESUS 115 
 
 in the things they would be able to accomplish. 
 He knew that their success would be his, along 
 with the whole new order of things which he came 
 to establish, and retired to superintend under his 
 Father. 
 
 Our conclusion touching the sinlessness of 
 Jesus is this: Complete human righteousness fol- 
 lows upon complete human knowledge along eth- 
 ical lines, and can never be attained apart from 
 it. Jesus came fairly to open up the way for 
 this attainment by living a life in perfect inner 
 agreement with the highest principles that can 
 ever govern a human career, and in complete 
 harmony with the fullest ethical knowledge of his 
 time; that is to say, he came to do, and actually 
 did, all that a man of his time could possibly do 
 along the lines of ethical duty. And in doing 
 this he accomplished a thing which was never 
 done before, and has never been done since. He 
 never failed in either disposition or purpose, but 
 lived towards both God and his fellows, from first 
 to last, a life that was, not only to those holy 
 men who knew him best, but also to his own highly 
 enlightened and sensitive conscience, free from 
 every stain of wrongdoing on the one hand, and 
 of neglected duty on the other. It may be con- 
 fidently added that in achieving this moral and 
 spiritual triumph he reached in principle a height 
 beyond which no man can ever go. For it is im- 
 possible for anyone to do more than live up to 
 his own highest light. And, let me repeat it, the 
 
116 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 glory of that achievement, so far, belongs to 
 Jesus Christ alone. 
 
 Two other questions seem to demand an an- 
 swer before this discussion closes. Was sinless- 
 ness easier in Jesus's day than men find it now? 
 Let each reach his answer as he notes the tre- 
 mendous odds which truth and righteousness had 
 to face in that old world of decayed and aban- 
 doned ideals. Will sinlessness be easier or more 
 difficult when all men have at length, through the 
 spirit of Jesus, been lifted to the high level of 
 complete knowledge of their duties towards God 
 and each other? They will then all be helpers 
 of each other, and 1 they will remember to his glory 
 and praise that he alone kept the sinless way 
 when the task was all but impossible even for 
 himself, because every man he met was to some 
 extent, at least, a hinderer. Knowledge of right- 
 eousness can advance to completeness among men 
 only as their practice of it pursues the same direc- 
 tion. On the other hand, each access of genuine 
 spiritual consecration must inevitably result in a 
 broader vision, until at length, every earthly duty 
 stands forth plain and unmistakable, and each 
 member of our race then inhabiting this planet 
 has been both disposed and empowered to live 
 agreeably with his all-round knowledge of right- 
 eousness Godward and manward. 
 
VIII 
 JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 
 
 No man who has read the New Testament 
 stories of Levi's feast in honor of Jesus, the con- 
 version of Zacchaeus and that other feast in the 
 house of Simon, at which Jesus was more honored 
 by a woman of the street than by Simon himself, 
 and has added to these the twenty-third chapter 
 of Matthew, can doubt the fact that Jesus stood 
 in the most radical way for a reform of the social 
 system of his time and place. And these are not 
 the only instances given us of acts and words of 
 his which show the deep interest he took in social 
 conditions, and the radical manner in which he 
 handled the social problems which confronted him. 
 
 Wherever it was possible he proceeded guard- 
 edly and cautiously with the work which he un- 
 dertook in this direction. He refused to assume 
 the role of a judge in a property dispute and dis- 
 missed the man who tried to get a verdict from 
 him, with this finalizing question 
 
 "Man, who made me a judge or an arbiter be- 
 tween you?" (Luke 12:14). And when an at- 
 tempt was made to draw from him a compromis- 
 ing word on the vexed question whether a faith- 
 ful Jew should or should not pay taxes to his 
 117 
 
118 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Roman conqueror, his reply was as safe as it was 
 skillful and unanswerable. 
 
 "Why are you testing me? Bring me a florin 
 to look at. And when they had brought it, he 
 asked: 'Whose head and title are these?' 'The 
 Emperor's,' they said ; and Jesus replied : 'Pay 
 to the Emperor what belongs to the Emperor and 
 to God what belongs to God.' " Jesus always 
 took the highest ground and spoke as the prophet 
 of God. His appeal was to first principles. And 
 when he saw that this was not sufficiently real- 
 ized he stated the fact tersely and distinctly: 
 "Do not think that I have come to do away with 
 the Law or the Prophets ; I have not come to do 
 away with them, but to complete them." (Matt. 
 5:17.) 
 
 He affirmed the progressive revelation of God 
 and duty, and looked towards that 
 
 ". . . one far-off divine event, 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 But he saw that each generation and each man 
 had his inevitable steps to take in the one general 
 direction, knew the steps which he himself should 
 take, and took them. 
 
 The taking of these steps cost him his life. 
 Had he temporized and compromised he might 
 perhaps have lived on to old age and died in his 
 bed. But he could not have either lived or died 
 thus as the prophet of God, and much less as his 
 San. The man who has "no stomach for martyr- 
 
JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 119 
 
 dom" can never rise to the highest place in the 
 kingdom of God, and makes too low a bid for 
 even the full and lasting approval of his fellows. 
 If Jesus was not an Erasmus in poverty of reso- 
 lution, he was an Erasmus in the perils he had 
 to meet and the odds he had to face, if he went 
 straight on. The same Priest and Lawyer who 
 had stood up in deadly hostility to every great 
 advance and every great reform of the past were 
 still there to be reckoned with. Before the close 
 of the first year of his public career Jesus had 
 abundant evidence of this fact, and was led in 
 view of it to choose a small band,, whom he might 
 furnish as far as possible with his own ideas, and 
 inspire with his own courage and devotion. He 
 made that band twelve, that it might represent 
 all Israel and give proper headship to each of its 
 tribes. (Luke 6 :1-16 ; Matt. 19 :28.) Israel had 
 to be reconstituted. If Jesus saw this vaguely 
 at first, he soon saw it clearly enough to proceed 
 upon these lines, which were at once symbolical 
 and practical. 
 
 The general principle upon which Jesus pro- 
 ceeded in his programme of reform was that of 
 the rights of man. These words may bear an ill 
 savor to the nostrils of some, because of their 
 association with the excesses of a time in which 
 the highest Christian aim, so far as earthly things 
 go, found itself associated with the fiercest 
 renunciation of Christianity, the bible and God 
 himself. The Priest and the Lawyer together 
 
120 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 had by their perfectly devilish oppressions in the 
 name of Christ oppressions of body, mind, re- 
 ligious aspirations and worldly estate secured 
 the flat denial, in the name of all that was holy 
 in manhood, of the name of the divine man which 
 they had so unworthily and so falsely worn. But 
 further they were unable to go. They could not 
 kill out of God's world the original inspiration 
 of God's Christ, and frenzied mob and frenzied 
 legislature and executive alike, proclaimed The 
 Rights of Man, and knew them to be holy. 
 Christ inspired, though he did not direct, the 
 French Revolution. The hate that was in it was 
 not his, but the work which it effected has never 
 been undone. On the contrary, it is still being 
 carried on towards its completion under the eyes 
 of all the peoples. And besides, the unavoidable 
 misunderstanding, which stood associated with it, 
 and for which the Priest and Lawyer were wholly 
 responsible, is fast passing away, and the Christ 
 is evidently about to come to his own in France as 
 never before. Already the Lawyer and a con- 
 siderable body of the Priests are under his direc- 
 tion to do his will as far and as fast as that will 
 becomes known to them. That in many instances 
 they do not recognize the fact makes no differ- 
 ence. Was not the word of Jehovah to Cyrus 
 
 "I will gird thee, though thou hast not known 
 me?" 
 
 The rights of men were always holy to the 
 prophets whether they were the rights of a 
 
JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 121 
 
 Naboth, a Uriah, some poor widow, or the rights 
 of a whole people. Not only Micah and Isaiah 
 but every true messenger of Jehovah besides, was 
 prepared to risk his life in their defense. Prop- 
 erty rights, home rights, the rights of a husband 
 in his wife and the rights of the wife in her hus- 
 band, the rights of parents in their children and 
 of children in their parents, the rights of the 
 ruler over his subjects and of subjects in the pres- 
 ence of their ruler, the rights of men generally 
 in the presence of each other, and above all the 
 right of each Israelite to an unhindered ac- 
 quaintance with, and a worship in spirit and in 
 truth, of the holy and invisible God of his fathers, 
 these rights were continually insisted upon be- 
 fore kings and rulers and at all hazards by 
 Jehovah's prophets all down the centuries. But 
 they were never insisted upon so graciously, yet 
 vehemently, so intelligently and so passionately, 
 as by Jesus himself. It was he first who spoke 
 about the rights of man as man rights of man 
 as man in the presence of his Creator and Moral 
 Governor rights of each man as a man in the 
 presence of his fellows. 
 
 Jesus acknowledged no personal or property 
 rights of the strong, no rights of the rich as dis- 
 tinguished from the poor, no rights of the learned 
 as distinguished from the unlearned, no rights 
 of the morally upright and respectable as dis- 
 tinguished from the fallen and the outcast. The 
 doctrine of human rights which Jesus preached 
 
122 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 was the very antipodes of all this. The weak 
 had a right to the care of the strong, the poor 
 a right to the help of the rich, the sick a right 
 to the aid of the healthy, the ignorant a right to 
 the instruction of the learned, and the fallen and 
 the wretched a right to the loving, patient re- 
 claiming effort of the morally upright and re- 
 spectable. So precisely where the favored classes 
 had been finding rights of a special kind Jesus 
 uncovered duties. Superiority creates the obliga- 
 tion to serve rather than the privilege to enjoy, 
 was his constant teaching. And he brought him- 
 self forward as the supreme evidence of the truth 
 of this doctrine. To his own twelve in their 
 craving for place and honor he said: 
 
 "Those who are regarded as ruling among the 
 Gentiles lord it over them, as you know, and their 
 great men oppress them. But among you it is 
 not so. No. Whoever wants to become great 
 among you must be your servant, and whoever 
 wants to take the first place among you must be 
 the servant of all ; for even the Son of Man came, 
 not to be served, but to serve, and to give his 
 life as a ransom for many." (Mark 10:42-45.) 
 The higher, the stronger and the holier one is, 
 the larger his obligation to serve his low and 
 weak and sinful fellows, is the constant teaching 
 of Jesus. And he goes further yet. He declares 
 that the right of the helplessly sinful to the 
 salvation he alone could bring them was so great 
 because God had created them men, with all a 
 
JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 123 
 
 man's right to truth and holiness, that, in 
 recognition of all the facts, he had to take his 
 place as a man among them, to do, and suffer in 
 the doing, all that needed to be done and suffered 
 in their behalf. 
 
 In the teaching of Jesus, therefore, individual 
 rights are based upon individual needs, and each 
 man's claim upon the help of others becomes in- 
 sistent at the precise point where his power to 
 help himself finds its limit. To Jesus the human 
 race was a family of which his own Father was 
 the head and the provider. Whether Jesus ever 
 distinctly regarded himself as a brother of every 
 man may not be clear, but that he came to be 
 regarded by his followers as a brother to those 
 who received him as their Savior is very evident 
 to the careful reader of the letter to the Hebrews. 
 And was not this conclusion inevitable from the 
 moment he spoke of God to his disciples as "My 
 Father and your Father" just as inevitable as 
 it was that they should have reached the doctrine 
 of the brotherhood of men in general from the 
 "Our Father" which he prepared for all human 
 lips? In the family the supply of need is never 
 a question of earning power to start with. Hus- 
 band and wife do not constitute a family. In 
 Jesus teaching the two are but one from the 
 family viewpoint. In them as thus united the 
 family finds its possibility and, when the union 
 is fruitful, its source. Each new family finds its 
 right to be called such in the birth of a 
 
A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 human babe that has the instant right, though 
 not the instant ability, to look up and call 
 the man and woman immediately concerned 
 father and mother. And before the human 
 court, as well as before Heaven, this right 
 of a child to say father and mother carries 
 with it the right to demand everything- which 
 its weakness and helplessness may require, 
 and for as many years as these may render it 
 incapable of self-support and self -development. 
 It is also true that in the family sickness, physical 
 or moral, makes the same claims as infancy. In 
 other words, in this world of God our Father, 
 the measure of the individual's need, truly taken, 
 is always and in every direction the measure of 
 his rights. Commercial principles of the short- 
 sighted human variety at least, are set at de- 
 fiance under the government of the Father. To 
 him loss is gain and death is life. To gain all 
 love loses all, and in the end love will own all that 
 exists. The goal of our humanity under the 
 leadership of Jesus Christ is an innumerable 
 family in which health and vigor and plenty con- 
 tinue forever, under the care of the infinite 
 Father. (Eph. 3:14, 15; Col. 1:20.) 
 
 This is the direction in which Jesus was looking 
 when he puzzled men with such sayings as 
 
 "It is not those who are in health that need 
 a doctor but those who are ill. I did not rome 
 to call the religious, but the outcast." (Mark 
 3:17.) And as he himself implies in this very 
 
JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 125 
 
 word, his face was always in this direction. We 
 shall never reach the stage of the platitude here, 
 not even when through his church Jesus shall at 
 length see all the long travail of his soul realized 
 in perfected men living in perfected conditions. 
 For the perfected will never be the finished. The 
 infinite must forever be realizing itself in grow- 
 ingly glorious ways. The completion of the 
 Christly kingdom marks the beginning of that 
 which is diviner still (1st Cor. 15:28). 
 
 Noting now some of the applications which 
 Jesus gave to these high principles I may first 
 refer to his teaching on the weekly day of rest. 
 His word is that it represents a human right 
 growing out of a human need, 1 and that its observ- 
 ance must be so ordered as not to bring it into 
 conflict with any other genuinely human interest. 
 He was most insistent at this point ; so much so 
 that one is almost tempted to think that once or 
 twice he even went out of his way for the sake 
 of exposing the absurdity of the Pharisaic no- 
 tions which had made the day in some respects 
 a burden instead of a blessing. Jesus was a 
 Sabbath law reformer. He set out to rationalize 
 it. Rationalize is still a word hated by every 
 Pharisee. As long as his hide-hound, heartless 
 and supercilious race continues to bring forth its 
 characteristic progeny this distrust and dislike 
 of the unfettered human intellect will continue to 
 be cherished. The Pharisee hates that appeal to 
 first principles which throws light upon every 
 
126 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 problem that vexes the human mind and con- 
 science. Jesus, as the antipodes of the Pharisee, 
 placed his whole reliance upon this appeal. He 
 knew that men came into the life of genuine 
 obedience through seeing and knowing the truth 
 of things, and in this way only. So to the 
 Pharisee's word in religious matters do not think, 
 but listen to the voice of your spiritual supe- 
 riors, Jesus opposed the command to think right 
 down to the bed-rock, and build duty upon that 
 alone. And the first thing to be sure about re- 
 garding the Sabbath, he went on to say, is that 
 it was made for man, and not he for it, to be- 
 come its bond-slave. He is its master, just as he 
 is the master of his horse or his house. He is 
 the master of it as man knowing God and not as 
 an animal, however. He is its master as one 
 who needs both physical rest and spiritual re- 
 freshment. And it is forever his to say what 
 precise uses he must make of it in his own real 
 interests. That responsibility has been laid upon 
 him by God. And so I, not as Son of God, but 
 as Son of Man and representative of all Israel, 
 am charged with the distinct duty of assuring 
 you that an irrational Sabbath observance is the 
 very opposite of that which God requires at your 
 hands. Wake up and think, and when through 
 thinking you have come to see what a genuinely 
 rational observance of the day is, then take your 
 rest, on the one hand, and perform your acts of 
 worship, on the other, in the strictest conformity 
 
JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 127 
 
 with the views which you will then entertain. 
 You are not God's slaves, but free men in the 
 enjoyment of a great God-given possession ; 
 therefore play the part of men by being true 
 to yourselves. Of course the Pharisee could never 
 understand anything so sensible as this, and the 
 Pharisee was strong. Jesus could see that he 
 was creating grave perils for himself, but he 
 went bravely on. 
 
 There has been much debate over the question 
 whether Jesus took any definite ground on the 
 subject of war. Here one needs to proceed care- 
 fully. But it is safe to make at least two affirma- 
 tions. The first is this : He held himself com- 
 pletely aloof, as I have shown elsewhere, from 
 every position which would have made him even 
 seem to assume responsibility for the existence 
 or contemplation of armed force. This negative 
 condemnation was as pronounced as it could be 
 made. He simply would not be made a king, and 
 the testimony of Matthew and Luke is that he 
 assumed this attitude at the very opening of his 
 ministry, because he saw with perfect distinctness 
 that the office would have to reach him from the 
 hands of that arch-murderer the devil. 
 
 The second thing which may be safely affirmed 
 here is that Jesus pronounced most strongly 
 against all personal violence. His warning to 
 Peter when he struck Malchus could not have been 
 made more emphatic, and his testimony before 
 Pilate on the subject left nothing to be added. 
 
128 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 At the same time it is quite true that Jesus at- 
 tempted no crusade against either the existence 
 or employment of armed forces. The time was 
 not ripe for that. So he contented himself with 
 stating most distinctly his own attitude towards 
 them, and left his witness and his example to do 
 the work they are so clearly doing at this mo- 
 ment. Personally Jesus was certainly opposed, 
 and consciously so, to every sort of physical 
 violence. And how could this have been other- 
 wise? For Jesus had a perfect passion for jus- 
 tice. And war in the name of justice is mon- 
 strous. Can justice be reached through the tak- 
 ing of unoffending human lives? If rulers did 
 their own bloody work when their quarrels grow 
 hot enough for the appeal to the sword, the mat- 
 ter might look less serious. But even then the 
 case would really be the same. The question 
 whether this man or that, or this nation or the 
 other, is entitled to a given piece of property or 
 territory, cannot possibly be determined through 
 finding out by a bloody test which has the clever- 
 est knack at taking human lives and destroying 
 valuable property. The question is one with 
 which the intellect and conscience alone are fitted 
 to deal, and war or physical violence can never 
 be resorted to without perpetrating a fraud 
 against both. It was this fact which led to the 
 establishment of courts of justice in every land, 
 and to the erection so recently of a court of 
 justice of international scope. 
 
JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 129 
 
 Tennyson heard the pistol shots in the duel 
 between Maud's lovers. Later, too, he heard the 
 lover who survived moaning his moan thus : 
 
 "For front to front in an hour we stood, 
 And a million horrible bellowing echoes broke 
 From the red-ribbed hollow behind the wood, 
 And thundered up into Heaven the Christless code, 
 That must have life for a blow." 
 
 But, as he himself suggests, the awfulness of 
 the echo made by the shot which proved fatal 
 was due to the fact that it reached him mixed 
 with echoes of the voice of Jesus, which repeated 
 his 
 
 "I, however, say to you that you must not re- 
 sist wrong; but if any one strikes you on the 
 right cheek, turn the other to him also. 
 Love your enemies, and pray for those that per- 
 secute you, that you may become Sons of your 
 Father who is in Heaven; for he causes his sun 
 to rise on the bad and good alike, and sends rain 
 upon the righteous and upon the unrighteous." 
 (Matt. 5:39, 44, 45.) 
 
 Jesus forbade the blow which it is most difficult 
 to hinder, that he might thus put a stop to all 
 blows besides. His veto was directed against the 
 very battle which men have thought they must 
 wage in self-defense. And he lived as he taught, 
 going to the cross at last as a positive advocate 
 of non-resistance, on behalf both of himself and 
 of all who called him Master. (John 18:36.) 
 
130 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Looking in another direction we see Jesus doing 
 all he could to educate men into such a practice 
 of truthfulness as would secure the facts in every 
 matter with which they might have to deal, either 
 privately or publicly, against all conscious mis- 
 representation. It was for the sake of this that 
 he attacked the taking of an oath to bind one's 
 self to tell a true story anywhere. Why should 
 a man bind himself to be truthful in one case, 
 unless he were free to confess himself a man of 
 unregenerate speech in the general way? Surely 
 the person who really needed to be dealt with in 
 such a humiliating fashion before a court of law, 
 must be so lacking in fairmindedness as to be un- 
 reliable even then ! He must be accustomed to 
 lying, and how can a man who has trained himself 
 long in prevarication, bring himself to even see 
 the whole truth of a thing during some brief mo- 
 ment, which may make a special demand upon 
 him? The one way to a true statement at any 
 particular time lies through making true state- 
 ments at all times. And the one way to the 
 statement which is in all respects true to fact 
 must always lie through the unswerving pur- 
 pose and effort to be absolutely true in all one's 
 views of things, as well as in each of one's 
 statements concerning them. Therefore said 
 Jesus : 
 
 "Let your words be simply 'Yes' or 'No'; any- 
 thing beyond this comes from what is wrong." 
 And this word is as invulnerable as it was em- 
 
JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 131 
 
 phatic, as important and necessary as it was far 
 in advance of the time. 
 
 In the matter of divorce Jesus took ground 
 equally high. We may assume that his disciples 
 were familiar with the teachings of Hillel and 
 Shammai, and knew that the latter opposed the 
 loose ideas of the former by insisting that a suffi- 
 cient ground for divorce could be found in noth- 
 ing short of adultery. Jesus astonished his dis- 
 ciples in a way which at least suggests that he 
 went so much farther than Shammai himself that 
 he pronounced the marriage tie absolutely in- 
 dissoluble in the very nature of things. 
 
 "Have you not read . . . that the man 
 and his wife become one? So, when once they are 
 married, they are no longer two but one. What 
 God himself, then, has yoked together man must 
 not separate." 
 
 "Why then," they said, "did Moses direct that 
 a man should serve his wife with a notice of 
 separation and divorce her?" 
 
 "Moses, owing to the hardness of your hearts," 
 answered Jesus, "permitted you to divorce 
 your wives, but that was not so at the begin- 
 ning. . . ." 
 
 "If that," said the disciples, "is the position 
 of a man in regard to his wife, it is better not to 
 marry." 
 
 "It is not every one," replied Jesus, "who can 
 accept this teaching, but only those who have 
 been enabled to do so." (Matt. 9 :3-ll.) 
 
132 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 There are two ways of attempting 1 to account 
 for this amazement and dismay of the disciples. 
 One may take the ground that they regarded 
 Shammai as so severe that they stood with Hillel 
 for an easy dissolution of the marriage bond, and 
 were astonished that Jesus, who opposed the 
 severity of the Sabbath laws of the time, should 
 have taken his stand so definitely for strictness 
 here. One has strong reasons, however, for doubt- 
 ing that the disciples were in this matter fol- 
 lowers of Hillel. But if they accepted the teach- 
 ings of Shammai there was no ground whatever 
 for their dismay unless Jesus actually declared 
 that not even adultery was a sufficient ground for 
 divorce. On the other hand, too, would Jesus 
 have said that only those who have been enabled 
 to do so have accepted this, the teaching of God 
 from the beginning, if he was at the same time 
 merely announcing that he stood firmly with 
 Shammai, and went no further. It looks, indeed, 
 as if Jesus pronounced against divorce as ab- 
 solutely on this occasion as both before and after- 
 wards he did against every sort of violence against 
 the person, and as if the words "for every cause" 
 in the third verse, and the words "except on the 
 ground of her unchasity" in the ninth and else- 
 where had been supplied or interpolated by some 
 hand at some time. 
 
 Very clearly if Jesus taught thus on this 
 subject our world has a long way to go be- 
 fore it will be found marching side by side with 
 
JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 133 
 
 him, for it has not yet overtaken its Shammais. 
 
 In short Jesus stood for perfect justice for 
 every human being, and demanded that justice 
 both from the court of law and from society at 
 large. He saw and taught also that justice could 
 never be attained apart from the largest exercise 
 of mercy and love. His doctrine was, as I have 
 tried to show, that helplessness, physical, moral 
 or spiritual, creates the most peremptory rights 
 of all. Justice divorced from mercy and love was, 
 therefore, regarded by him as no justice at all. 
 This is why he dealt so unsparingly with that 
 legal dodge by means of which the "Pharisees and 
 Teachers of the Law" had managed to turn into 
 the coffers of the Temple, which were very largely 
 under their control, so much wealth, which should 
 have been devoted by the heartless religious de- 
 votees concerned to the really pious use of keep- 
 ing their own fathers and mothers back from the 
 dire straits of poverty in the helplessness of their 
 old age. (Matt. 15:3-6.) "Hypocrites" was the 
 one suitable word which Jesus found to place as 
 a label upon this sort of religionist at this time. 
 Later he chose "fools," "blind guides" and "chil- 
 dren of hell" as suitable additions. (Matt. 23.) 
 
 To him, for the man or woman who was down, 
 justice meant a genuine chance to rise. He saw 
 very clearly that ostracism did not provide for 
 this in any adequate way. It simply meant in- 
 stead Get to the devil out of this, for that is 
 where you belong. In ostracism there was neither 
 
134 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 love nor mercy. It was a compound of contempt 
 and hate. What a genuine chance really meant 
 he told in his stories of the lost coin, the lost 
 sheep, and the lost son. It meant all that the 
 utmost strength and skill of love to the utter- 
 most could devise and do for and with the lost 
 man and the lost woman that, and nothing less 
 than that. It meant the coming of God himself 
 in the person of a man into precisely this rela- 
 tionship with outcast men and fallen women and 
 every other sort of sinner. And the coming of 
 this man into this relationship was a call to every 
 happily privileged man and woman to join him 
 in his saving tasks. The moment men and women 
 knew themselves to be the Sons and daughters of 
 the Lord God Almighty they were to understand 
 that they had been taken into the family, or born 
 into it by spiritual regeneration, to be the as- 
 sociates of Jesus in this age-long work. It was 
 for this the church on earth was constituted, and 
 for this it has been perpetuated. Paul knew this 
 when he labored in degraded Corinth. Con- 
 sequently after writing to the church which he 
 organized there "Do not be deceived. No one 
 who is immoral, or an idolater, or an adulterer, or 
 licentious, or a sodomite, or a thief, or covetous, 
 or a drunkard, or abusive, or grasping, will have 
 any share in God's kingdom ;" he was able to add : 
 "Such some of you used to be ; but you washed 
 yourselves clean! You became Christ's People! 
 You were pronounced righteous through the name 
 
JESUS THE SOCIAL REFORMER 135 
 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, and through the Spirit 
 of our God!" (1st Cor. 6:9-11.) 
 
 While here in the flesh Jesus immortalized the 
 names of Levi and Zacchaeus. He immortalized 
 also "a woman who was an outcast in the town" 
 (Luke 7:37). His motto was God's will, which 
 I came to do myself, and to teach others to do, is 
 that every fallen man and woman should be given 
 that genuine chance to rise which can be secured 
 for him only by that perfect justice, which is 
 what it is, because it is forever associated with 
 infinite mercy and love, as well as with infinite 
 wisdom and might! Or more briefly All puri- 
 fied and loving hearts to the rescue! 
 
IX 
 JESUS THE REVEALER OF THE FATHER 
 
 The New Testament writers believed Jesus 
 Christ to be, in the supremest way, the Son of 
 God. Paul, at once the most voluminous and, 
 with one exception, the earliest among them, gave 
 expression to this faith before he! had gone twenty 
 lines in his first extant letter to a Christian 
 Church. Congratulating the Thessalonians, he 
 told them "how, turning to God from your idols, 
 you became servants of the true and living God, 
 and are now awaiting the return from heaven of 
 his Son, whom he raised from the dead Jesus." 
 (1 Thess. 1:9, 10.) They believed him to be 
 God's Son in the same way that any man is the 
 son of his father. Accordingly the gospel of 
 Luke tells us that before he was conceived by 
 Mary, she was distinctly notified of the divine 
 purpose that she should become a mother by 
 means of the Holy Spirit, that she consented, and 
 that a little later, knowing herself to be in a 
 mother's condition, she went some distance to 
 visit her cousin Elizabeth, and was raised to an 
 ecstasy of joy by being greeted on her arrival as 
 "the mother of my Lord." (Luke 1:26-56.) 
 Matthew's gospel supplements this by telling us 
 136 
 
JESUS THE REVEALER 137 
 
 that when her betrothed husband also became 
 aware of her extraordinary situation, he, too, was 
 supernaturally informed and brought into the 
 same spirit of consecration to God's will which 
 she had manifested from the beginning. (Matt. 
 1:18-21.) The early church, therefore, looked 
 upon Jesus as naturally the revealer of God as 
 Father. Since like begets like, they believed that 
 he revealed God, first of all, through his char- 
 acter, and the fourth gospel represents Jesus as 
 saying to his eleven apostles, just before they 
 went with him to Gethsemane: "He who has seen 
 me has seen the Father." (Jno. 14:9.) 
 
 Whether the church reasoned from the re- 
 splendent holiness of the character of Jesus to the 
 fact of his divine Sonship, to begin with, as might 
 be inferred from one at least of the gospel sto- 
 ries (Matt. 16:13-17), or were convinced of that 
 Sonship rather by the things recorded in Mat- 
 thew and Luke, to which I have just referred, is 
 a matter of little practical importance. In what- 
 ever way it was brought about, the early church 
 was from the beginning absolutely convinced that 
 Jesus of Nazareth, the man, was at the same time 
 Jesus Christ, the Son of God. And its members 
 were perfectly responsive to the declaration 
 "No one knows who the Son is, except the Father, 
 nor who the Father is, except the Son and those 
 to whom the Son may choose to reveal him." 
 (Luke 10:22.) 
 
 The distinction between revealing God as God, 
 
138 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 and revealing God as Father, should not be for- 
 gotten. The former revelation greeted the child 
 Jesus in his own home and in the synagogue at 
 Nazareth. Every one he met while he was grow- 
 ing up, was asserting, as his fathers had done 
 before him, and as Mohammedan, equally with 
 Jew and Christian, asserts to-day God is, and 
 there is no God besides. Jesus received that reve- 
 lation from his fellow-countrymen, when it was 
 centuries old. They were also acquainted with 
 and taught him, Isaiah's tender word about God 
 as the Father of the Israelitish race. (Isa. 63: 
 16.) He was their debtor, not they his, so far. 
 The things which Jesus brought to the amazed 
 attention of his time were God's fatherly care for 
 the individual human being down to the very in- 
 fant (Matt. 5 & 6; Mark 10:13-16), and his be- 
 stowal of his holy likeness upon believers in 
 Christ through a real spiritual begetting, which 
 made them his sons and daughters, whether they 
 were descendants of Israel or not. (Jno. 3:3-8; 
 1 Jno. 3:1-10; Matt. 8:11; Rom. 4; Eph. 2:11- 
 22.) And this idea of the Divine Father is be- 
 coming the very core of Christian, teaching in our 
 own day. 
 
 Now in studying Jesus as the great discloser 
 of the divine Fatherhood, and keeping in mind the 
 fact that he revealed the Father partly through 
 his own character and partly by means of his 
 teaching concerning him, we may safely ask at 
 once what phases of the divine character he 
 
JESUS THE REVEALER 139 
 
 stressed. What impressions concerning the divine 
 Father will the New Testament, and particularly 
 the gospels, make upon the mind of the careful 
 reader? Will such a reader, looking upon Jesus 
 as he is to be seen in these, and listening to him 
 as he can be heard through them, come necessarily 
 to regard the Father as stern and severe? Or 
 will he be impressed rather by his kindness and 
 his pitying tenderness? In other words, are the 
 four New Testament histories of Jesus and his 
 teaching better fitted to convey to the mind the 
 tremendous requirements of the infinite holiness 
 which they bring into view, than to awaken in 
 the heart a humble, yet joyful, confidence in the 
 infinitely loving care, and the forgiving help of 
 the God, whom Jesus taught his disciples to call 
 "our Father?" If there is any lack of perfect 
 balance in his life and teaching, on which side is 
 the greater weight to be found? God is holy, 
 God is loving which of these infinite facts did 
 Jesus take most pains to write upon human 
 hearts? Can we be sure, to begin with, that if 
 he stressed one more than he did the other, it was 
 because that one had become obscured, and needed 
 to be drawn forth into clearer light once more? 
 Would any one dare say that either is in itself 
 of less importance for us than the other? 
 
 When we ask all these questions we show that 
 we are not yet on the right track. It can never 
 be forgotten that Jesus impressed John in such 
 a way that he wrote down for all time, not God 
 
140 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 is holiness, but "God is love." And is not the 
 key-note of the whole New Testament to be found 
 in John 3:16? Love is active good-will, and 
 holiness is but a phase of that. Holiness simply 
 means the absence from a nature of all injurious 
 dispositions, desires and purposes, and the pres- 
 ence in it of all helpful ones; and that condition 
 is just an aspect or part of love itself. Holiness 
 is therefore a part of which love is the whole, and 
 the whole is forever greater than any of its parts. 
 We reach the truth here only when we get John's 
 vision, and learn that to be love is more than to 
 be loving. Loving some persons may be as- 
 sociated with hating others (Matt. 5:43-48), but 
 He who is love can hate no person whatever. He 
 can hate only things the things which mar and 
 harm persons, or sin in its various forms. When 
 we say God is loving, we can match that state- 
 ment in another direction by saying that he is 
 holy. But "God is love" is a statement that can 
 never be matched until a part can be found which 
 is as great as the whole to which it belongs. 
 
 It was the greatness of this revelation of Jesus 
 Christ that made him so hard to understand, in 
 both his teachings and his life. Some found it 
 impossible to take in the fact that he could hate 
 no one not even the oppressors of his country- 
 men. His very disciples seem never to have 
 divined, in the days of his flesh, the secret of his 
 steady refusal to look towards the earthly throne, 
 which they thought he would some day be com- 
 
JESUS THE REVEALER 141 
 
 pelled by circumstances to mount. Such a throne 
 would have meant war, and disguise the fact as 
 men may, war is based upon hate. Every armed 
 conflict means either that men want to kill each 
 other, because they have come to hate each other 
 enough for that, without any definite reason which 
 they can name, blindly and brutally; or that, be- 
 cause one of them stands in the way of the other's 
 acquisition or enjoyment of property, or liberty, 
 they have come to hate each other enough to 
 glory in hewing or shooting the souls out of each 
 other. 'it , 
 
 "Hateful and hating one another," and glory- 
 ing in the vengeance they could wreak upon each 
 other, the men of Christ's day could not believe 
 that he meant them individually and collectively 
 to entirely dismiss the law of retaliation, and 
 adopt the gentle method of loving their enemies, 
 doing good to them that hated them and praying 
 for those who despitefully used them and per- 
 secuted them. And when a Caiaphas did under- 
 stand him, it was only, of course, to hate him for 
 his peace policy worse, if anything, than he al- 
 ready hated the Roman, and advise his murder 
 under forms of law. The coming of the Holy 
 Spirit from the Father upon Jesus, in the form 
 of a dove, at the time of his baptism ; his im- 
 mediate impulsion by that Spirit into the wilder- 
 ness, that he might determine the lines along 
 which he would move during his public career; 
 and his rejection there of every suggestion that 
 
142 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 looked in the direction of gathering the people 
 about him, as they were, for the founding of a 
 world-wide kingdom, that would largely rely upon 
 the support of murderous physical force; is the 
 New Testament's way of telling us that, when 
 .Jesus laid himself open to the sneer of being a 
 peace-at-any-price man, and so awakened against 
 himself the bitterest malice of the warlike rulers 
 of his people, he did it under the guidance of the 
 Holy Spirit, and that he might show forth the 
 mind of the Father in the matter. And the 
 further New Testament stories which bring Jesus 
 before us as reproving Peter and healing the 
 wound he inflicted, when he drew his sword to de- 
 fend his master at the time of his betrayal and 
 arrest (Luke 22:50, 51); as informing Pilate 
 "My kingdom is not of this world; if my king- 
 dom were of this world, then would my servants 
 fight, that I should not be delivered to the Jews ; 
 but now is my kingdom not from hence" (Jno. 
 18:36) ; and as even rejecting the thought of hav- 
 ing twelve legions of angels put all his blood- 
 thirsty persecutors out of action by some sort of 
 spiritual jiu-jitsu; show us how, in the opinion of 
 his followers, Jesus felt himself led by the spirit 
 of his Father to his first decision to eschew every- 
 thing that looked in the direction of a compulsion, 
 which did not address itself to the unfettered in- 
 tellect and conscience. Under his Father he was 
 king of the truth and of all who would receive it. 
 (Jno. 18:37.) And all who witnessed his in- 
 
JESUS THE REVEALER 143 
 
 ability to hate even his enemies, looked through 
 him upon his father. (Matt. 5:44-48.) 
 
 The difficulty was that his contemporaries would 
 not believe it. They had not known God as love, 
 or universal Father, and did not want to know 
 him as such. They thought their God as deep 
 a hater of persons as themselves, gloried in the 
 fact that he was almighty, and were simply wait- 
 ing for him to make bare his arm for the slaughter, 
 which they regarded as already overdue. In the 
 meantime they felt there was nothing else for them 
 to do but to prepare for this wholesale butchery 
 by shedding the blood of the one man who most 
 of all stood in the way of it. (Jno. 11:50; 18:- 
 14.) 
 
 If we look in the direction of the social and re- 
 ligious life of men, we shall still see Jesus giving 
 offense, on the one hand, and unspeakable com- 
 fort on the other, because he stood for a love 
 that knew no caste barriers and no depths of 
 sinning that were beyond its embrace. He went 
 so far in this matter that he fell under the sus- 
 picion of being short in patriotism and penetra- 
 tion, if not also in personal purity. Confining 
 ourselves to the gospel of Luke, we shall get all 
 the light we need on the social characteristics of 
 Jesus. .The "righteous" people of the time like 
 many of the "unco guid" of our own, thought of 
 holiness as a moral superiority one of the chief 
 duties of which was to guard its own reputation 
 or sanctity by ostracising those who did not con- 
 
144 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 form to its ideals. This notion of holiness had 
 worked itself out in a political direction, and 
 placed under the social ban every Jew who took 
 office as a collector of taxes under the Roman 
 government. Taking another direction it had 
 ostracised also the fallen woman, and given her a 
 sort of preeminence among wrong-doers by label- 
 ing her "sinner." It may be noted, however, that 
 the seducer and paramour of such a woman does 
 not seem to have fallen under the ban of this 
 holiness distinctly enough to have shared with her 
 either her title or her disabilities. It was that 
 sort of holiness which makes up for its inability 
 to keep the man pure by punishing the woman for 
 her inevitable share in his sin ; and who shall say 
 that such a holiness has even now disappeared 
 from the earth? To pull the sweetness of virgin 
 purity down into their own filth, and then despise 
 their sisters and cast them out of their places 
 in society and the home, because they are no 
 longer pure, has been one of the constant achieve- 
 ments of the male members of our race, in which 
 they have not lacked the too ready assistance of 
 the wronged sex itself. The propriety of such 
 acts of ostracism, in view of the eternal principles 
 of right, could scarcely remain unchallenged for- 
 ever. It was quite certain from the first that 
 some one would rise and ask what the Father of 
 us all was thinking about it. 
 
 According to Luke, Jesus forced the issue. He 
 did it, to begin with, by calling a tax-gatherer 
 
JESUS THE REVEALER 145 
 
 of Capernaum, named Levi, to be one of his inti- 
 mate disciples, and by making himself perfectly at 
 home at a feast which Levi immediately prepared 
 for him at his home, the other guests at which 
 were necessarily tax-gatherers and outcasts. 
 When the inevitable criticisms were voiced, he 
 made the obvious yet to them startling remark 
 "It is not those who are well that need a doctor, 
 but those who are ill. I have not come to call 
 the religious, but the outcast, to repent." Later 
 a Pharisee named Simon invited him to a meal, 
 and while they were still at the table a poor out- 
 cast woman crept to his feet and anointed them 
 with a costly perfume, weeping over them the while 
 the tender tears of her contrition, and wiping these 
 away with her abundant hair, because of her 
 sense of unworthiness, as they fell. When Simon 
 looked his disapproval of Jesus himself, as well as 
 of the woman, he was taught that he had been 
 ignoring two of the most beautiful things in God's 
 world the forgiveness He waits to confer upon 
 the repentant sinner, and the humble tender love 
 which wells up from the depths of such a sinner's 
 nature when that forgiveness has been consciously 
 received. (Luke 7:36-44.) On another occasion 
 when "the tax-gatherers and the outcasts were all 
 drawing near to Jesus to listen to him, but the 
 Pharisees and the teachers of the law found 
 fault 'This man always welcomes outcasts and 
 takes meals with them' " ; he replied by telling 
 three stories, one about a lost sheep, another 
 
146 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 about a lost coin and the third about a lost son. 
 The first of these he concluded with the state- 
 ment: "So I tell you, there will be more rejoic- 
 ing in Heaven over one outcast that repents, 
 than over ninety-nine religious men, who have no 
 need to repent" (Luke 15) ; the second with the 
 like word: "So I tell you, there is rejoicing in 
 the presence of God's angels over one outcast that 
 repents"; while the third, which we may rename 
 The Father and His Two Sons, closes with the 
 last joyful word of the father, on the occasion 
 of the return home, in sorrowing penitence and 
 humble confession, of the son who had turned his 
 back upon purity and thrift, and fallen into sore 
 want into a far off land 
 
 "We could but make merry and rejoice, for 
 here is your brother who was dead, and is alive ; 
 who was lost and is found." 
 
 What is the gist of all this teaching of Jesus 
 but this? You can never make men and women 
 such outcasts but they will still remain your 
 brothers and sisters, and still sons and daughters 
 to the heart of the Father in Heaven. And no 
 one can ever sin himself, or be cast by his fellows, 
 beyond the pale of omnipresent and infinite love. 
 
 Luke's additional story along this same line of 
 the social life of his time that of Zacchaeus 
 can well be left untold. We need only remark 
 as we pass it by, that throughout this teaching of 
 Jesus about his Father, we all but lose sight of 
 his holiness, in the awed wonder awakened by his 
 
JESUS THE REVEALER 147 
 
 amazing love. Not that the former is absent, 
 but that it takes its proper place as a constituent 
 element of the vast love itself. 
 
 Religiously, as well as socially, Jesus had to 
 face perverted notions of holiness. The Jewish 
 religionist taught that the divine holiness was an 
 exacting thing, which ignored to quite an extent 
 the every day needs of men, that it might make 
 them holy in every minutest detail of their con- 
 duct. As interpreters of this holiness the teach- 
 ers of the law multiplied their petty requirements 
 till they made that law a tyranny and all life a 
 burden and a vexation, so that men could no 
 longer think of law and love as the inseparable 
 things they really are. The Sabbath require- 
 ments of these legalistic teachers were perhaps 
 the most irksome of all. No man in crossing a 
 wheat field to attend the Sabbath service in his 
 synagogue, could break off a head of the ripen- 
 ing grain and eat the kernels, for that would be 
 doing three or four kinds of labor reaping, 
 threshing, winnowing and grinding. They taught 
 also that only danger to life could justify any ef- 
 fort on the Sabbath towards the relief or re- 
 moval of pain or disease. Under such conditions 
 the people, of course, soon learned how many 
 evasions could be secretly practised and numbers 
 of these evasions came at length to be provided 
 for by succeeding generations of lawgivers. But 
 the moment Jesus became obnoxious to the Jew- 
 ish leaders, they seem to have made up their minds 
 
148 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 to apply their Sabbath laws in all their remain- 
 ing strictness, at least, to the work he was do- 
 ing. For his part he saw in their attitude one of 
 his great opportunities, with the result that we 
 have in the four gospels the stories of eight in- 
 teresting occasions when, defying their malice, 
 he poured floods of light about their thinkings 
 and doings along this line. 
 
 To begin with, he reminded them of things 
 that had been done, and of others that were still 
 being done with their own consent, against law, 
 including the laws which forbade labor on the Sab- 
 bath. David had entered the ancient tabernacle 
 and taken the sacred shew-bread for himself and 
 his military followers. A man, with but one 
 sheep, might rescue it from a pit on the Sabbath, 
 such was the recognized value of property. On 
 that day, too, oxen and asses were led out to 
 watering places, that they might not suffer from 
 thirst, and any man might pull his boy or his ox 
 out of a well and so save him from perishing. 
 Clearly, therefore, the Sabbath law knew certain 
 reasonable exceptions, and the only question 
 remaining to be dealt with was that of the prin- 
 ciples upon which these exceptions could be deter- 
 mined. One of these, he went on to assert, was 
 the principle of mercy and good-will, and the 
 Sabbath institution itself represented that, for 
 
 "The Sabbath was made for man, and not man 
 for the Sabbath; so that the Son of Man (the 
 man of mercy and love) is lord even of the Sab- 
 
JESUS THE REVEALER 149 
 
 bath," and must be free to exercise his judgment 
 as to what helpful deeds should be done on that 
 day. And he would not be likely to leave a hu- 
 man being, throughout a Sabbath, in a condition 
 of peril or suffering from which he would rescue 
 a brute; because the cry of a man always repre- 
 sents a worth that can never be found in any 
 beast. 
 
 There was again the fact that religious rites 
 were performed on the Sabbath, though they in- 
 volved much labor ; and the male child that reached 
 his eighth day on a Sabbath, was circumcised with- 
 out delay, that the law on that matter might be 
 honored to the utmost. If so much was done to 
 satisfy law, how much might be done to satisfy 
 love the love of the infinite Father? Along 
 these lines, he added "My Father works to this 
 very hour, and" that is why "I work also" along 
 these lines. I follow my Father to show you 
 what he is like. My Father is not Law but Love, 
 and because he is love, the laws he lays down are 
 never to fetter, but always to guide into true 
 liberty and happiness those whom he has made to 
 be his own sons and daughters. 
 
 One might lay beside all this teaching of Jesus, 
 as it comes to us from the first century, much 
 more besides of what he is reported to have said 
 and done as the Son and revealer of the Father. 
 But one further word of his own and another of 
 Paul's must suffice. His own is this 
 
 "The Father is greater than I." 
 
150 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 It was never in the mind of the apostles that 
 the Son of God became a man to make himself 
 the center of human thought and worship. Their 
 conviction was that Jesus no more purposed to 
 assume that position, than that a woman his 
 own mother should be lifted into the place of 
 pitying tenderness and helpful, gracious medi- 
 atorship belonging to himself. To them he was, 
 far beyond and above all others, the revealer of 
 God, and came that man might through him en- 
 ter into such an understanding of God, the Fa- 
 ther of all, as would eventually make all further 
 effort of his on their account wholly unneces- 
 sary. His work as a man was, in their view, to 
 have an end as definite as was its beginning in 
 the manger at Bethlehem, or at the Jordan, 
 where John baptized him and he began to attract 
 disciples. Consequently we have Paul's word in 
 his first letter to the Corinthians "Then will 
 come the end when he surrenders the kingdom 
 to his God and Father, having overthrown all 
 other rule and all other authority and power 
 and when everything has been placed 
 under him, the Son will place himself under God 
 who placed everything under him, that God may 
 be all in all!" (1 Cor. 15:24-28.) 
 
 If the New Testament can be trusted, the the- 
 ology Jesus Christ came to establish and perfect 
 is theocentric, and has the Father as its chief ob- 
 ject of love and worship, with the Son as his 
 greatest Revealer; and the purpose of the Son's 
 
JESUS THE REVEALER 151 
 
 mission was that of bringing all men at length into 
 the place where they would so know and enjoy 
 God in his Fatherhood, as no longer to need 
 either revealer or mediator. That creed of one 
 article "I believe in God through Jesus Christ" 
 suggested by Dr. Denny for the uniting of the 
 scattered fragments of a dismembered Christen- 
 dom, is a good creed, because itsi God is 
 
 "The God and Father of Jesus Christ our Lord, 
 the all-merciful Father" (2 Cor. 1:3), the "one 
 God and Father of all the God who is over all, 
 pervades all, and is in all." (Eph. 4:6.) 
 
X 
 
 THE KINGDOM AND CHURCH OF JESUS 
 
 A study of the Kingdom of God, or of Heaven, 
 of which several New Testament writers make 
 Jesus the head, can be best approached perhaps 
 through Paul's affirmations touching political 
 rulers in general. He declares in the most em- 
 phatic manner that these hold office by divine ap- 
 pointment. They are God's ministers or serv- 
 ants appointed to inflict his punishments upon 
 those who do wrong. They are God's officers 
 devoting themselves to this special work. Ad- 
 dressing the church to which he is writing he asks 
 its members a question which he immediately an- 
 swers for them. "Do you want to have no rea- 
 son to fear the authorities? Then do what is 
 good, and you will win their praise. Therefore 
 he who sets himself against the authorities (by 
 doing evil) is resisting God's appointment, and 
 those who resist will bring a judgment upon 
 themselves." (Rom. 13:1-7.) 
 
 The point unmistakably involved here is that 
 all human government is theocratic, and that the 
 laws of every country are in the main the right- 
 eous laws of God himself. And this point is 
 well taken. Thou shalt not commit adultery, 
 
 152 
 
THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 153 
 
 thou shalt not steal, thou shalt do no murder 
 were as divine at Rome as at Jerusalem, and, 
 upon the whole, as well enforced perhaps ; for was 
 not Jerusalem, the bloody city from of old, al- 
 ways the murderess of the most righteous, includ- 
 ing "the Righteous One" himself? 
 
 Paul saw that the world of our humanity is 
 God's in spite of "the Rulers of the Powers of 
 the Air the various Powers of Evil that hold 
 sway in the darkness around us." (Eph. 2:2; 
 6:12.) It was his faith in God as supreme Ruler 
 which made him so optimistic touching prayer 
 and the ultimate result of all brave battling for 
 the truth in the individual life, in the Church and 
 in the world at large. 
 
 Another thing which Paul saw plainly was that 
 the world could and would become Christ's 
 because it was already God's and Jesus was God's 
 anointed and well-beloved Son. No one can be- 
 stow what is not in his possession, but all that is 
 actually his he can dispose of as he pleases, king- 
 doms and thrones being no exceptions. Paul rep- 
 resents Jesus as already reigning on the earth 
 in his day, and God as continually adding to the 
 number of his subjects. Accordingly one of his 
 words to the Colossiansi was 
 
 "God has rescued us from the tyranny of Dark- 
 ness, and has removed us into the kingdom of 
 his Son." (Col. 1 :3.) 
 
 This tyranny of darkness which existed, and 
 still exists, under the rule of God is the despotism 
 
154 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 of ignorance, self-will and ill-will, which the ethnic 
 religions and governmental codes could but par- 
 tially dissipate and overcome. Further rescue was 
 possible only through further enlightenment as to 
 right conduct and disposition, on the one hand, 
 and through the mighty persuasiveness of an im- 
 measurable love, on the other. But God made 
 both stand forth in the life of Jesus, and so made 
 that life (including the death on the cross) both 
 illuminating and transforming for all who should 
 be brought within the sphere of its influence. As 
 the gospel of the grace of God was preached to 
 men they came under law to Christ, and experi- 
 enced at once a change so vital that they called 
 it now a passing out of death into life, and now a 
 new birth or re-creation. Had it been possible at 
 any time for men to comprehend the whole law of 
 the life of Jesus, and to realize all the power and 
 sweetness of the love of God set forth in him, the 
 race would speedily have been conformed to his 
 likeness in every respect. But we are slow-learn- 
 ing beings and still far from the goal, and only the 
 smaller portion of our race has been removed into 
 the kingdom of God's Son at all as yet. The ty- 
 ranny of darkness is visibly weakening, however, 
 as the kingdom of the Son widens and strengthens. 
 In preparing men for their first introduction to his 
 Christ, God moved with a deliberation waymarks 
 of which we find in the man of the Neanderthal 
 skull and the man of the cranium, femur and two 
 molar teeth found by DuBois in Java a delib- 
 
THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 155 
 
 eration which consumed millions of years, it may 
 be, and we need not wonder if after nineteen short 
 centuries the student of God's work of bringing 
 men wholly under law to his Christ, must satisfy 
 himself with simply reporting progress. 
 
 A word of Paul to the Philippians should be 
 linked on here "Our commonwealth, or the state 
 of which we are citizens, is in heaven." (Phil. 
 3:20.) For it beautifully supplements that 
 word to the Romans with which this chapter be- 
 gan. Heaven is the state of which Rome was 
 but a rude province, incomplete and sometimes 
 wrong in its laws, because of the darkness in which 
 it was still so largely enshrouded, but a province 
 under divine rule nevertheless. Its code of laws 
 needed revision, correction, and many additions. 
 To this end the Son of God had come as Jesus 
 of Nazareth, the Messiah, had finished the work 
 which it was his to do while here in the flesh as 
 the light of the world, had passed again into the 
 invisible heaven from which he had come forth, 
 and was now introducing growing numbers on 
 earth to the consciousness of their direct associa- 
 tion with the King of heaven itself as his sub- 
 jects. Out of this illuminating consciousness a 
 sense of new duties was arising, which would, as 
 Paul believed, secure the needed changes in the 
 codes of earth. In the meantime these codes of 
 earth were themselves heavenly in their origin 
 and authority as far as they were in harmony with 
 the law of Christ, and every man who knew 
 
156 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 himself a citizen of heaven was on that very 
 ground obligated to a life of the most whole- 
 hearted obedience, within these limits, to earthly 
 rulers of whatever name. "For," to quote from 
 Romans again, "they are God's servants ap- 
 pointed for your good. You are bound, there- 
 fore, to obey as a matter of conscience. This, 
 too, is why you pay taxes." 
 
 There are no mystifications here. Earth is 
 literally a province of heaven, or a set of such 
 provinces, if it is viewed nationally. God is the 
 great King, every righteous law is his wherever 
 it is found, and hearty obedience to these laws is 
 obedience to him as true and acceptable as any 
 that is rendered to him in heaven itself. (Acts 
 10:34, 35.) If therefore one is to define the 
 kingdom of God as it is represented here upon the 
 earth, he must say, at the least, that it includes 
 God's government of men in their every day af- 
 fairs through the agency of human rulers. And 
 if he is asked how the kingdom is to come or be ex- 
 tended, his answer will not be that its territory is 
 to be increased until it embraces the whole earth, 
 for it has done that from the beginning, but that 
 its coming or extension must be effected through 
 an increase of the knowledge of God and his right- 
 eous loving will, on the one hand, and of the dis- 
 position and power to do that will, on the other. 
 The light must continue to scatter the dark- 
 ness until the human conscience is fully in- 
 formed, and the dispositions and energies of 
 
THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 157 
 
 men are completely rectified and empowered. 
 Now the New Testament assigns to Jesus 
 all but the supreme place in the accomplishment 
 of this end. His position, with its authority and 
 power and glory is next to God's, and far above 
 that of any other that can be named. He is the 
 great intercessor and the "one mediator." So 
 exalted did he appear in the eyes of his noblest 
 first followers and apostles that at times they 
 almost lost the fact of his humanity in the glory 
 of his divinity. In comparison with him they 
 saw themselves dwarfed and weak and sinful. To 
 know him increasingly, and through the trans- 
 forming ministry of the Holy Spirit in his steady 
 application of that knowledge of heart and life, 
 to grow ever more like him, was their most blessed 
 hope and their loftiest aim. Still they were not 
 unaware either of his humanity itself and of the 
 secondary place in the great undertaking for 
 which it fitted, and to which, at the same iime, it 
 confined him. They believed that his work was 
 that of expressing divinity in the terms of human- 
 ity. Accordingly when Paul presents him as the 
 "One Mediator" he presents him also as "the 
 man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom 
 on behalf of all men." (1 Tim. 2:5.) And the 
 writer of the letter to the Hebrews insists that 
 his fitness for the office he holds as high-priestly 
 mediator arises out of the intensity of his suf- 
 ferings and the consequent force and quickness 
 of his human sympathies. (Heb. 2:5-18; 4:14- 
 
158 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 16.) These writers teach also that his conquest 
 of the world is not being wrought out so much by 
 him as for him. The placing of everything un- 
 der Jesus is the placing of everything under man 
 (Heb. 2:8), and this, according to Paul was the 
 work of the Father 
 
 "For he must reign until God has put all his 
 enemies under his feet . . . And when every- 
 thing has been placed under him, the Son will 
 place himself under God who placed everything 
 under him." (I Cor. 15 :25, 28) ; uttering as he 
 does so his final 
 
 "See here am I and the children whom God gave 
 me (Heb. 2:13). 
 
 "That God may be all in all." (1 Cor. 15 :28.) 
 
 The Hebrew mind found it quite impossible to 
 raise the God-man to the height of pure divinity. 
 The second person of their Trinity was by his 
 very constitution a limited being and in that re- 
 spect a lesser being than the first and the third. 
 According to John's gospel Jesus himself was no 
 exception to this rule, for it reports him as teach- 
 ing at the last that his disciples were to await 
 the coming of a greater one, the Holy Spirit, who 
 was to make his words and his whole earthly ca- 
 reer, as these should be proclaimed by them, 
 mightily effective for the transformation of men 
 both individually and socially. They were to 
 find that through his humanity he had simply be- 
 come rather the chief instrument than the might- 
 iest agent of the Father, and it was as such an 
 
THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 159 
 
 instrument that all power had been given to him. 
 Whether in heaven or on earth men would find 
 in him their highest ideal of devotion to the Fa- 
 ther's will, and would through the Holy Spirit's 
 use of that ideal be at length fully conformed to 
 his image. The Father would thus by degrees 
 make his rule world-wide and all pervasive. The 
 word of the Father to him was 
 
 "Sit thou at my right hand until I put thy ene- 
 mies as a stool for thy feet." (Heb. 1:13.) 
 So, "After he had offered one sacrifice for 
 sins, which should serve for all time, he 
 took his seat at the right hand of God, and has 
 since then been waiting for his enemies to be put 
 as a stool for his feet." (Heb. 10:12, 13.) 
 
 A further thought of Paul is that this King- 
 dom of Christ will endure only until it is com- 
 pleted, and that then it will be finally merged in 
 the universal kingdom of the Father. But this 
 has already been so distinctly indicated that it 
 needs no elaboration. Still it cannot be safely 
 forgotten by those who wish a complete view of 
 the subject. The kingdom of Christ exists for 
 the sake of bringing men fully to God and when 
 this end is reached there will be no further need 
 for its continuance. 
 
 It may also be observed here that the New 
 Testament writers present other phases of the 
 Kingdom besides that of an earthly society con- 
 formed to the law and spirit of Christ. They 
 viewed it as extending far enough into the invis- 
 
160 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 ible to include the most distant abode of men who 
 are no longer here in the flesh. Falling under 
 the deadly hail of stones Stephen prayed: 
 
 "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit" (Acts 7 :59) ; 
 Paul declared to the Philippians : 
 
 "My own desire is to depart and be with Christ, 
 for this would be far better" (Phil. 1 :23) ; and the 
 writer of the Revelation of John heard him pro- 
 claiming: 
 
 "I hold the keys of the grave and of the place 
 of the dead." (Rev. 1:18.) They believed in 
 Jesus as Savior and Judge of the dead as well as 
 the living, and that all the race of mankind was 
 embraced within the bounds of his rule. 
 
 A study of the gospels will reveal the fact that 
 it was his kingdom as distinguished from his 
 church, or as some may prefer to say, his king- 
 dom as including his church, which was constantly 
 in the thought of Jesus. Matthew alone reports 
 Jesus as having named his church all. He tells 
 us of two occasions on which he did it, and says 
 that on the first of these occasions he brought 
 the kingdom of heaven into most direct associa- 
 tion with it. 
 
 On coming into the neighborhood of Cesarea 
 Philippi Jesus asked his disciples this question: 
 
 "Who do people say that the son of man 
 is?" 
 
 "Some say John the Baptist," they answered. 
 "Others, however, say that he is Elijah, while oth- 
 ers again say Jeremiah, or one of the prophets.' " 
 
THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 161 
 
 "But you," he said, "who do you say that I am?" 
 And Simon answered: "You are the Christ, the 
 Son of the living God." 
 
 "Blessed are you, Simon, son of Jonah," Jesus 
 replied. "For no human being has revealed this 
 to you, but my Father who is in heaven. Yes, 
 and I say to you your name is Peter, a Rock, and 
 on this rock I will build my church, and the Pow- 
 ers of the Place of Death shall not prevail over it. 
 I will give you the keys of the kingdom of 
 heaven." (Matt. 16:13-18.) 
 
 It can scarcely be denied that these words in- 
 dicate the distinction between his church and his 
 kingdom which existed in the mind of Jesus. And 
 we may quite safely assume that this distinction 
 is the one which was before the mind of Paul when 
 he wrote Romans 13:1-6, from which I have 
 drawn some conclusions at the beginning of this 
 chapter. He asserted that the state is a di- 
 vine institution as truly as the church, and con- 
 sequently that its righteous laws; are to be obeyed 
 as the very laws of God. He did not there touch 
 upon the fact that through human ignorance and 
 sin church and state alike were marked, and 
 would long be marked, by both imperfection and 
 wrong. But elsewhere he emphasized the limita- 
 tions of the church and taught its members to 
 look forward to a time in which at length a gen- 
 eration would arise that would "reach the com- 
 plete manhood the full standard of the perfec- 
 tion of the Christ." (Eph. 4:13.) 
 
162 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Paul saw that the primitive Christian church 
 found the Roman state guiding men along the lines 
 of the divine righteousness in their every day ac- 
 tivities and that the first business of that church 
 was to give the world correct ideas of God and his 
 worship and lead men through faith in Jesus 
 Christ into lives of active obedience toward God 
 and of positive good-will towards each other. 
 The church was in this way to produce at one and 
 the same time the highest possible order of wor- 
 shipers or religionists and the best possible class 
 of citizens, and to go on with its task until per- 
 fection was attained in both church and state. 
 The work had begun and would proceed to the 
 end in obedience to Christ, on the one hand, and 
 with his character and spirit as its rule and in- 
 spiration, on the other. And since all men were 
 eventually to be taken up into the movement and 
 fully conformed to its life and its law, the result- 
 ing religious and political institutions would be 
 Christ's the church of Christ thus producing 
 the kingdom of Christ among men, growing 
 steadily itself and securing a steady growth for 
 the kingdom. This was the inspiring vision of 
 these earliest followers of Jesus. We cannot 
 doubt that if the apostles found their way 
 into India and China, they regarded the politi- 
 cal rulers of these lands as God's ministers in the 
 same way as they had those of the Roman empire 
 in which they had been brought up, and labored to 
 produce by means of their preaching of Christ 
 
THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 163 
 
 not only the same sort of worshipers, but also 
 the same sort of citizens as before, and that with- 
 out any reference to the various forms of govern- 
 ment then existing in those lands. These were 
 minor things and they left them to undergo such 
 modifications as the new conditions they were seek- 
 ing to produce might require from time to time. 
 At the same time, however, they were so far from 
 being blind to the need of improvement every- 
 where that they looked joyfully forward to the 
 passing away of all, whether religious or politi- 
 cal, that could be shaken, and to the complete tri- 
 umph of that kingdom which cannot be shaken, 
 which they had already received as its citizens. 
 And they rejoiced all the more because it was in 
 obedience to the voice of their God that unstable 
 and imperfect things were to disappear. (Heb. 
 12:26-28.) 
 
 One need not pause to ask whether Jesus or 
 his apostles ever dreamed of some one form of 
 government, or some definite set of laws, to which 
 nothing could be added, and from which nothing 
 could be taken away. It may well be that perfec- 
 tion and variety will never be found incompati- 
 ble with each other in connection with God's gov- 
 ernment of men, any more than it is in connection 
 with their personal characteristics under his cre- 
 ative hand. Not a perfection of uniformity but 
 the perfection of adaptation seems to be one end 
 of the ways of God. The Christian's God is not 
 the God of monotony. 
 
164 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 We have now seen how and why the world of 
 mankind is becoming the kingdom, as well as the 
 church, of Christ, and we may go on to note the 
 manner in which Jesus himself is reported to have 
 talked on the matter. Our material is abundant. 
 We are told that when Jesus urged upon Nico- 
 demus the necessity of the new birth, or birth from 
 above, the argument he pressed home upon the 
 intellect and conscience of that member of the 
 Sanhedrin was the deeply spiritual character of 
 the kingdom of God, which John the Baptist had 
 been preaching for months. It was in view of the 
 holy humility which this kingdom demanded that 
 Jesus insisted upon the birth by water as well as 
 by the Spirit in this case. Nicodemus was in- 
 formed that unless he ceased trusting in his Jew- 
 ish descent or his high standing among men, and 
 publicly confessed his sins and his need of cleans- 
 ing from them in the manner then prescribed by 
 John, he would never see the kingdom. The bap- 
 tism itself was a symbol. But it was also a test 
 which the Pharisees and the Students of the Law 
 rejected, and so frustrated God's purpose in re- 
 gard to them. (Luke 7:30.) Undoubtedly this 
 purpose was that these natural leaders of the 
 Jewish people should be first in their recognition 
 of Jesus as the anointed head of the coming 
 kingdom, and foremost in the work of pushing 
 that kingdom towards the ends of the earth. Je- 
 sus warned Nicodemus that the test was not there 
 in vain, and that if he refused to submit to it, he 
 
THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 165 
 
 would have to bear the consequences in self-ex- 
 clusion from the kingdom. 
 
 It may be as well to assert here that no at- 
 tempt to import into the Kingdom of Heaven, as 
 the phrase was used by Jesus, the idea of a place 
 somewhere in the invisible can ever permanently 
 succeed. Its only invisibility arose out of the 
 fact that it found its place at the beginning in 
 the secret abodes of Christ-like character, pur- 
 pose and possibility. The kingdom Jesus had in 
 mind was that earthly one which he came to es- 
 tablish and carry to its consummation. "The 
 field is the world." "The wheat or people of the 
 kingdom" are the good among men, while "the 
 tares are the wicked." (Matt. 13:38, 39.) 
 
 The parables of the kingdom found in the thir- 
 teenth chapter of Matthew show it in three of its 
 phases. First we see it seeking its subjects 
 among men. Then we see men seeking it as a 
 thing of surpassing value. And finally we see it 
 choosing or rejecting men in view of their good 
 or evil characters. In harmony with all this the 
 burden of John the Baptist's preaching was the 
 absolute necessity of repentance for all who wished 
 the privilege of being its subjects or citizens. 
 And when John was thrown into prison Jesus and 
 his disciples continued to utter the same word. 
 To seek the kingdom of God was also to seek his 
 righteousness and its accompaniments, peace and 
 joy in the Holy Spirit. 
 
 Jesus put upon the lips of his praying disci- 
 
166 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 pies no petition on behalf of the church, but he 
 most definitely asked them to pray "Thy kingdom 
 come. Thy will be done ori earth, as in heaven." 
 He emphasized the obligations of citizenship and 
 insisted that no amount of scrupulous churchman- 
 ship could be accepted in the place of fidelity in 
 the discharge of these. Tithing mint and fennel 
 and carraway seed was not to be neglected, but 
 justice, mercy and good faith were weightier mat- 
 ters of the Law. Washing the hands before eat- 
 ing was of little account, but honoring parents 
 was a fundamental duty of citizenship, and to 
 make a way of escape from it in the name of re- 
 ligion was to imperil the life of the nation by call- 
 ing down upon it the wrath of God. (Mark 7 : 
 10:13.) 
 
 The realization of the kingdom of God upon 
 earth under his Christ required a holy and right- 
 eous citizenship. This sort of citizenship should 
 have characterized the Jewish people. But in- 
 stead they compelled Jesus to denounce them as 
 tenants of a vineyard, who had come to regard 
 themselves as so securely in possession that they 
 could safely refuse to make the returns agreed 
 upon, and even beat or kill all, including his own 
 Son, whom the king sent to remonstrate. 
 
 " 'And that I tell you', continued Jesus, 'is 
 why the Kingdom of God will be taken from you 
 and given to a nation that does produce the 
 fruit of the Kingdom.'" (Matt. 21:43.) 
 
 This new people had to be produced through 
 
THE KINGDOM OF JESUS 167 
 
 the preaching of the gospel of Christ. Agree- 
 able to this fact is the language of the great com- 
 mission. 
 
 "Therefore go and make disciples of all the na- 
 tions . . . teaching them to lay to heart 
 all the commands that I have given them." 
 (Matt. 28:19.) 
 
 In brief the great earthly work of the Church 
 of Jesus Christ is that of supplying the Kingdom 
 of God with subjects, and of inspiring these with 
 the highest possible ideals, until at length the 
 whole race has been led up into all Christliness in 
 its varied pursuits and activities. The Church of 
 Christ exists for the sake of the Kingdom of 
 Christ, which is the New Testament Kingdom of 
 God and of Heaven. 
 
 In the chapter which follows we shall see what 
 Jesus regarded as properly his church, and what 
 that church compelled him to do. 
 
XI 
 JESUS THE REDEEMER OF HIS CHURCH 
 
 According to the New Testament, the idea with 
 which Jesus began his public career 'differed from 
 the Messianic expectations of his people at one 
 point only. They were looking for political de- 
 liverance rather than spiritual, and so were filled 
 with visions of successful statecraft and martial 
 valor; while he set out to achieve spiritual free- 
 dom for them, leaving such political results to 
 follow as it might please the Father to grant. 
 
 The power of the Holy Spirit which was upon 
 him had brought him safely through the strug- 
 gle of his initial temptations ; and would not that 
 same power do all that was necessary towards the 
 correction of false ideas and wrong attitudes in 
 the people as a whole? With this work accom- 
 plished the nation would be the true church of 
 God and his chosen evangelizing agency for the 
 enlightenment and salvation of all the world be- 
 sides. Had not this glorious movement kindled 
 the consecrated imaginations of Micah and Isaiah 
 centuries before? And surely what the prophets 
 foresaw would prove no phantom. Micah had 
 said 
 
 "But in the latter days it shall come to pass 
 168 
 
JESUS THE REDEEMER 169 
 
 that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be 
 established in the top of the mountains, and it 
 shall be exalted above the hills ; and peoples shall 
 flow unto it. And many nations shall go and 
 say, Come ye, and 1 let us go up to the mountain of 
 the Lord, and to the house of the God of Jacob ; 
 and he will teach us of his ways, and we will walk 
 in his paths: for out of Zion shall go forth the 
 law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem." 
 And Isaiah had pictured the same magnificent 
 future of spiritual Israel in words no less glow- 
 ing, placing in the foreground one splendid per- 
 sonality "And there shall come forth a shoot out 
 of the stock of Jesse, and a branch out of its 
 roots shall bear fruit: and the spirit of the Lord 
 shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and un- 
 derstanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the 
 spirit of knowledge and the fear of the Lord; 
 and his delight shall be in the fear of the Lord; 
 and he shall not judge after the sight of his eyes, 
 neither reprove after the hearing of his ears ; 
 but with righteousness shall he judge the poor, 
 and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth : 
 and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his 
 mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he 
 slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the 
 girdle of his loins and faithfulness the girdle of 
 his reins. And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, 
 and the leopard shall lie down with the kid: and 
 the calf and young lion and the fatling together ; 
 and a little child shall lead them. And the cow 
 
170 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 and the bear shall feed ; their young ones shall lie 
 down together: and the lion shall eat straw like 
 the ox. And the suckling child shall play on the 
 hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put 
 his hand on the adder's den. They shall not hurt 
 nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the 
 earth shall be full of the knowledge of the 
 Lord, as the waters cover the sea." To these 
 this prophet had added such sentences as one finds 
 in Chapters 42:19; 49:1-7 and 60-62:3, including 
 the one quoted by Jesus in his home synagogue at 
 Nazareth 
 
 "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me; be- 
 cause the Lord hath anointed me to preach good 
 tidings to the meek; he hath sent me to bind up 
 the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty to the 
 captives, and the opening of the prison to them 
 that are bound; to proclaim the acceptable year 
 of the Lord." 
 
 With such thoughts of God's great purposes 
 inspiring him, and his clear sense of the vast de- 
 mands of the situation steadying him, Jesus 
 joined John the Baptist in preaching, Repent for 
 the kingdom of Heaven is at hand, and its right- 
 eousness must be yours to begin with, else you 
 cannot even enter it. There can be no doubt that 
 to Jesus the kingdom of Heaven meant a' reconsti- 
 tuted humanity, and that in his view this reconsti- 
 tution was to be effected through the exchange 
 of love for hate and right for might in every re- 
 lationship of individuals and peoples towards each 
 
JESUS THE REDEEMER 171 
 
 other. This exchange would break down every 
 outer and inner wall of partition that harmfully 
 separated men from each other, so that they 
 would flow together and find themselves one house- 
 hold of God. (Eph. 2:14-22.) The prayer put 
 upon the lips, and the laws framed to govern, the 
 subjects of this kingdom, both alike presuppose 
 this. (Matt. 5:43-48; 6:9-15.) The Kingdom, 
 when completed, will include the church of God, 
 or will itself be included in that church, if any 
 one prefers putting the case in that way. 
 
 For a time Jesus's ministry awakened the larg- 
 est expectations of the people, and the crowds 
 that flocked into the country parts of Judea to be 
 baptized by his disciples, exceeded those which 
 gathered about John the Baptist himself. In 
 this John rejoiced, for he took it as a proof that 
 he had made no mistake when he fixed upon Jesus 
 as the Unknown One, whose forerunner he had 
 undertaken to be. This success lasted until it 
 began to be definitely realized that his idea of 
 the Kingdom of God was after all substantially 
 the antipodes of that which was cherished by 
 rulers and people alike. His own Nazareth en- 
 dured its disappointment until one Sabbath when 
 he declared in its synagogue that Elisha's act of 
 healing the Syrian leper, and Elijah's bestowal 
 of relief upon a widow of Sidon during a season 
 of famine, though Israel had many lepers and 
 needy widows in those times, were both in harmony 
 with the principle that God would always turn 
 
172 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 his back upon his people when, through blind dis- 
 obedience, they ceased to be his in reality; and 
 that he would then bestow his favors elsewhere. 
 Then his city rose against him in a fury that 
 nearly cost him his life, and he escaped south- 
 ward to make his home at Capernaum. 
 
 Here again he prospered until by calling a tax- 
 gatherer named Levi from his very place of busi- 
 ness, to enter the number of his few intimate dis- 
 ciples, and by sitting down with a promiscuous 
 company of tax-gatherers and other social out- 
 casts, at a feast which Levi immediately prepared 
 in his honor, he once more made it abundantly 
 clear that, if the thing he represented was the 
 kingdom of God at all, it was too unpalatable to 
 be received by the leaders of opinion in that re- 
 gion. What use could the kingdom of God have 
 for men of Levi's ilk? The lot as a whole was 
 bad, and no decent society, to say nothing of the 
 Kingdom of God, would have anything to do with 
 it! 
 
 Soon afterwards we find Jesus looking into the 
 heart of the nation at Jerusalem, only to find it 
 angry and contemptuously malicious. The Jew- 
 ish rulers would tolerate no Kingdom of God 
 which ignored their notions of Sabbath-keeping. 
 They would permit the watering of an ox or an ass, 
 and allow any man to rescue his son or his ox 
 from a well, if either should chance to fall into it, 
 on the Sabbath; but they would tolerate no cures 
 of the sick, where life itself was in no immediate 
 
JESUS THE REDEEMER 173 
 
 peril, on that day. Neither would they endure 
 any man who would represent the kingdom of 
 God as non-militant. For was not the Roman 
 there to be cast out, and how could his armies be 
 got rid of except by force? So the presence of 
 this prophet from Nazareth made them as mad 
 with rage as it had made the Nazarenes them- 
 selves, and nothing but his remaining hold upon 
 the pojpular imagination and heart, and the con- 
 sequent necessity of proceeding with his taking 
 off under forms of law, saved Jesus from immedi- 
 ate death. 
 
 Through these experiences it gradually grew 
 upon him that his mission was to prove a failure, 
 so far forth at least as its success depended upon 
 the co-operation of the one church which, through 
 age-long divine processes, had been prepared 
 with this definite office in view. The revelation 
 was most painful. It meant that he must re- 
 vise his first programme. But how? The his- 
 tory of his people and the words of their proph- 
 ets gave him his cue. What could not be accom- 
 plished easily and speedily, because the people 
 were too dark and evil to be used in the work, 
 could be wrought out by a spiritual remnant 
 through a long but glorious agony of toil, involv- 
 ing both tears and blood. The teaching and 
 guiding Servant of Jehovah would also be his 
 suffering Servant. 
 
 When Jesus met this situation, he at once dealt 
 with it as a thing which ought never to have 
 
174 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 been. He faced it first with remonstrance and 
 later with denunciation, followed by an overwhelm- 
 ing grief, that deepened into the dark dismay of 
 that sweat of blood, from which he was rescued only 
 by that love of his Father, to which he resigned 
 himself throughout the struggle. At what pre- 
 cise point in his public career this struggle be- 
 gan we may not be able clearly to determine. It 
 may have been at the time of his rejection at 
 Nazareth. But perhaps his language in the syn- 
 agogue there did not represent an instant rising 
 of his nature to meet a hostility of the existence 
 of which he had until then been unaware, but 
 rather a thought which, like the hostility itself, 
 had been gathering force for some time. It may 
 be, however, that he did not see at first that his 
 own death by violence was involved in the inevita- 
 ble clash of ideals. For he may well have thought 
 in the beginning that his vision was too clear and 
 commanding to be rejected, when he had once set 
 it forth with sufficient plainness. 
 
 The fifth chapter of John shows how he ap- 
 pealed to the intellects and consciences of his hos- 
 tile critics : 
 
 "I have come in my Father's name, and you do 
 not receive me ; if another comes in his own name 
 you will receive him. How can you believe in me, 
 when you receive honor one from another and do 
 not desire the honor which comes from the only 
 God?" In the eleventh chapter of Matthew a day 
 is described in which "Jesus began to reproach 
 
JESUS THE REDEEMER 175 
 
 the towns in which most of his miracles had been 
 done, because they had not repented: 'Alas for 
 you, Chorazin! Alas for you, Bethsaida . . . 
 and you, Capernaum !' ' Through the twen- 
 ty-third chapter of this same gospel we learn 
 that a day came when this "Alas for you !" was 
 repeated in Jerusalem itself, in connection with 
 such an exposure of the character of the Jewish 
 leaders as no man who heard it could ever forget, 
 ending with the words: "Alas for you, Teachers 
 of the Law and Pharisees, hypocrites that you 
 are! You build the tombs of the prophets, and 
 decorate the monuments of religious men, and 
 say, 'Had we been living in the days of our an- 
 cestors, we should have taken no part in their 
 murder of the Prophets !' By doing this you are 
 furnishing evidence against yourselves that you 
 are true children of the men who murdered the 
 Prophets. Fill up the measure of your ancestor's 
 guilt. You serpents and brood of vipers! How 
 can you escape being sentenced to the Pit ? That 
 is why I send you prophets, wise men and Teach- 
 ers of the Law, some of whom you will crucify and 
 kill, and some of whom you will scourge in your 
 synagogues, and persecute from town to town; 
 in order that upon your heads may fall every 
 drop of innocent 'blood spilt on earth,' from the 
 blood of innocent Abel down to that of Zachariah, 
 Barachiah's son, whom you murdered between the 
 temple and the altar. All this, I tell you, will 
 come home to the present generation." 
 
176 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 His biographers made no mistake at this point. 
 They saw that whether he reasoned or expostu- 
 lated or denounced, he did it as a patriot who, 
 besides loving that impersonal thing which men 
 call their country, loved every man, woman and 
 child within its territory, and was deeply dis- 
 tressed by the awful fate towards which he 
 saw they were moving. They did not forget that 
 his reproaches against the three Galileean towns 
 were immediately succeeded by that yearning, 
 "Come to me, all you who toil and are burdened, 
 and I will give you rest!" which has been wooing 
 men to righteousness ever since; and that his de- 
 nunciations of the Teachers of the Law and Phar- 
 isees at Jerusalem had scarcely died upon his lips 
 before, with heaving bosom and breaking voice, 
 he exclaimed: 
 
 "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! she who slays the 
 Prophets and stones the messengers sent to her 
 Oh! how often have I wished to gather your chil- 
 dren round me, as a hen gathers her brood under 
 her wings, and you would not come!" 
 
 In Luke we are told of a time during the closing 
 days of his career, when turning from the ac- 
 claim of his many disciples, and the correspond- 
 ing criticisms of the Pharisees 
 
 "Seeing the city, he wept over it, and said: 
 'Would that you had known, while yet there was 
 time even you the things that make for peace! 
 But now they have been hidden from your sight.' " 
 The same writer remembered also that this love 
 
JESUS THE REDEEMER 177 
 
 voiced itself again, while he was proceeding pain- 
 fully towards Calvary "There was a great crowd 
 of people following him, many being women who 
 were beating their breasts and wailing for him. 
 So Jesus turned and said to them: 'Women of 
 Jerusalem, do not weep for me, but weep for 
 yourselves and for your children.' " (Luke 23 : 
 27-31.) 
 
 The one thing to which love can scarcely bring 
 itself is that its object, however unworthy, should 
 suffer. And perhaps love suffers more through 
 sympathy than its object can suffer through any 
 injuries which may be inflicted upon it. This 
 fact receives its supreme illustration in the sphere 
 of the moral and spiritual. Wrong-doing deadens 
 sensitiveness to mental pain, while righteousness 
 quickens it. The greater the moral distance be- 
 tween two characters, the greater will be the dif- 
 ference in their individual power to suffer for 
 each other. It is therefore true that "the Right- 
 eous! One" exceeded all others in this respect. To 
 him it was an agony, in the first place, that his 
 people were bad and deserved to suffer. And that 
 they were bad was doubly an agony, because they, 
 above all others, had been meant by his Father to 
 attain goodness a goodness which would have 
 fitted them to be the bearers of the message of 
 righteousness and peace to all others. He might 
 reason about the remnant, and find something like 
 rest in the thought of all God could do through 
 them. He might reach the place where he could 
 
178 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 say to his disciples: "Do not be afraid, my lit- 
 tle flock, for your Father has been pleased to give 
 you the kingdom." But how much better after 
 all were these disciples than the great body of the 
 people from whom he had,' drawn them? Did they 
 not persist in retaining the common wrong idea 
 of the Kingdom of God and individually covet 
 the first places in it? Was not one of them a 
 thief and a traitor? And would not all the rest 
 of them, in spite of all his teaching, be ill-informed 
 and weak enough to reckon everything lost, if he 
 should be taken from them with nothing further 
 accomplished? 
 
 So Jesus was torn by questionings, first re- 
 garding his disciples themselves, and then by 
 corresponding questions touching his people as a 
 whole. Those regarding his disciples seem to 
 have been set at rest in the Upper Room or even 
 before the Passover which he ate with them there. 
 They would certainly all be confounded or worse 
 than confounded, by his death, but, Judas ex- 
 cepted, all would, after his resurrection, rally 
 again to their place and work. And if these ques- 
 tions were settled, surely all the others, too, were 
 disposed of. Not yet fully and finally, however. 
 
 The human mind with its limited knowledge, 
 cannot easily reach absolute certainty. One part 
 of the cost to us of this imperfect knowledge is 
 the painful way our most distressing problems 
 have of suddenly opening themselves up afresh 
 after they have apparently been settled out- 
 
JESUS THE REDEEMER 179 
 
 right. Often we reach our chief conclusions only 
 to laboriously review them. And this necessity 
 for review is practically assured each time one 
 wishes his conclusion were unwarranted, for then 
 his heart will not let him rest in it. Now Jesus 
 certainly wished this in regard to his conclu- 
 sion. The great desire of his life, next to that of 
 pleasing his Father, had been that Israel, as a 
 whole, might accept him as its Messiah, just as 
 his few disciples had done. How much it would 
 have meant if it had! His own escape from an 
 ignominous death it would have meant that ! 
 But it would also have meant so much more be- 
 sides. It would have meant the almost immediate 
 salvation of all Israel to spiritual ideals, and so 
 the early realization in a large way of the King- 
 dom of God itself. It would have meant that Is- 
 rael would have filled her true place as the center 
 of an evangelism which would speedily have em- 
 braced all lands, and brought all peoples into the 
 glorious light of God. 
 
 As he passed into Gethsemane under the shad- 
 ows cast by the olives under that passover moon, 
 he began to groan with a deeper agony than he 
 had ever felt before 
 
 "This is what ought to be ! And surely it 
 cannot even now be impossible ! This is the thing 
 that ought to be, yet I am to go to the cross in- 
 stead ! And my nation is to reach, not the place 
 of the glory of the highest service to all the 
 world besides, but a future of hideous darkness 
 
180 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 and pain and shame ! Surely, Father, there must 
 yet be a way out, which I cannot see! My 
 Father, if it is possible, let me be spared this cup." 
 Thus he cried and cried, till the bloody sweat oozed 
 and fell to the earth on which he lay, and he 
 reached for the last time the awful conclusion 
 that nothing in harmony with the moral govern- 
 ment of the world could avert this crowning trag- 
 edy. Then he prayed again, passing as he did 
 so into an almost completely satisfying vision of 
 the whole situation 
 
 "My Father, if I cannot be spared this cup, but 
 must drink it, thy will be done !" 
 
 So our Christ cried his cry and lost the boon 
 he craved, to win instead the place where he could 
 through all the pain and shame, be the Savior to 
 men who were so disappointingly bad, convincing 
 them of their blindness and sin by means of his 
 death, though he could not do it by means of the 
 richest human life that was ever lived in God. 
 
 It has often happened that the thing which 
 ought to have been has proved only the thing 
 which might have been, and the thing which ought 
 never to have been the thing which no available 
 power could avert. Such results stand asso- 
 ciated with the freedom of the human will and the 
 conscious confessed badness and ignorance of 
 men. When Jesus was finally rejected at Jeru- 
 salem the greatest event our sinful world could 
 have known at that period was made impossible 
 for all time; for then the anointed of God was 
 
JESUS THE REDEEMER 181 
 
 sent to the cross by the very people whom he came 
 to build into a church so great and glorious that 
 it would successfully preach the Salvation of 
 God from Palestine to the uttermost parts of 
 the earth. Then, too, was committed a sin and 
 crime as far beyond that involved in the slaugh- 
 ter of preceding prophets and righteous men as 
 Jesus Christ was superior to these. In it, as he 
 himself is reported to have warned them would 
 be the case, was wrapped up, as it were, the guilt 
 of "every drop of innocent 'blood spilt on earth,' 
 from the blood of innocent Abel down to that of 
 Zachariah." And this guilt rested upon the 
 church that Christ came to inspire and lead in 
 the spiritual conquest of the earth. 
 
 Recognition of this fact prepares us for sev- 
 eral words of the New Testament which indicate 
 that, in Christ's view, it was the church rather 
 than the world, for which he paid his life as a 
 ransom or redemption price. In the very nature 
 of the case the church was his first concern. He 
 had a vast work to do, and for its speedy accom- 
 plishment he needed a great host of workers, 
 specially fitted for the discharge of the duties of 
 the various offices which that work involved. 
 That host would be his church; so he thought 
 at the start. And when later he saw his host 
 dwindle to a handful, his concern was correspond- 
 ingly deepened. For his handful was much like 
 the rest, and it also needed redeeming from its 
 false ideals and its deplorable unspirituality. 
 
182 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Then, too, as conversions would take place through 
 its instrumentality, the new believers would be- 
 come an additional part of the church or work- 
 ing force itself. Only so could the world as a 
 whole be lifted into the light of God. This, I 
 say, is why his followers wrote and spoke as they 
 did about his redemption of his Church his buy- 
 ing it for God out of the general body of 
 humanity. 
 
 These writers tell us that "God so loved the 
 world that he gave his only Son," and that Jesus 
 was, because of his sufferings and death, crowned 
 with glory and honor; so that his tasting the 
 bitterness of death should, in God's loving-kind- 
 ness, be on behalf of all mankind. But they 
 never tell us that Jesus Christ loved the world. 
 On the other hand they dwell rapturously upon 
 his love for the church. 
 
 A few of these words ought to be quoted here. 
 When John set out to record the story of the 
 way the Master washed his disciples' feet at the 
 time of the last passover supper 1 he ate with them, 
 he began by stating that 1 "he loved those who were 
 his own in the world, and he loved them to the 
 last." To the Ephesians and to his true child 
 Titus Paul wrote : "Christ loved the Church, and 
 gave himself for her, to make her holy. . . . 
 So that he might himself bring the Church, in 
 all her beauty, into his presence, with no spot 
 or wrinkle or blemish of any kind, but that she 
 might be holy and faultless." "He gave himself 
 
JESUS THE REDEEMER 183 
 
 on our behalf, to deliver us from all wickedness, 
 and purify for himself a People who should be 
 peculiarly his own and eager to do good." 
 
 The Church was on his heart when, in the 
 upper room, he was face to face with the cross, 
 and poured out his soul to the Father "I pray 
 for them. I pray not for the world, but for 
 those whom thou hast given me. . . . Neither 
 for these only do I pray, but for them also that 
 believe on me through their word; that they may 
 all be one . . . that the world may believe 
 that thou didst send me." His feeling was that, 
 first of all, he was the redeemer of his church, 
 and afterwards through it the Savior of the world, 
 or, as Paul puts it, "the Savior of all men and 
 especially of those who hold the Faith." Look- 
 ing in precisely the same direction are the words 
 of John concerning the blood-thirsty advice re- 
 garding Jesus which the high-priest Caiaphas 
 gave the Sanhedrin that unconsciously "he 
 prophesied that Jesus should die for the nation," 
 which should as a whole have been his church, 
 "and not for the nation only, but also that he 
 might unite in one body the children of God now 
 scattered far and wide." 
 
 The heart of Jesus was broken by disappoint- 
 ment. This disappointment voiced itself for the 
 last time when, just before he expired on the 
 cross, he cried out in anguish "My God, my God, 
 why hast thou forsaken me?" And the thing 
 which disappointed him was the sin of his church. 
 
184 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 He ought never to have been called upon to 
 redeem it. But its ignorance and badness, grow- 
 ing out of its lack of spirituality, forced the 
 task upon him. He ought, instead, to have been 
 the church's accepted head from the first. No 
 teaching of the New Testament is clearer than 
 this for one who has come to view that life in 
 its true perspective. He came to his own, and his 
 own ought to have received him. It was theirs 
 to have been in their deepest hearts a theocracy, 
 with their spiritual overtopping their political 
 ambitions. But they were no such thing. On 
 the contrary, their religion consisted in a sincere, 
 but vain, attempt to bend the Almighty to their 
 will, and get the All-wise One to take a reason- 
 able view of things ! They nursed the delusion 
 that, since they had Abraham as their ancestor, 
 God was under large obligations to them, if not 
 actually dependent upon them. 
 
 They were bound to get the worst of it in the 
 end, of course. Counting themselves the first of 
 patriots their rejection of Jesus as no patriot 
 at all cost them everything a patriot holds dear. 
 Because the moral government of God is no poor 
 pretense, that can safely be mocked, the penalty 
 it exacted was the absolute overthrow of their 
 religion, as far as it was represented by sacrifi- 
 cial rites and ceremonies, the permanent breaking 
 up of their political institutions, and their age- 
 long expatriation from a soil so dear to them, 
 that their descendants two thousand years after 
 
JESUS THE REDEEMER 185 
 
 the event, still prostrate themselves to kiss it, 
 when their wanderings permit them the opportu- 
 nity. 
 
 When "the Word became Man" and "His own" 
 stood face to face with him, they found themselves 
 compelled to choose one of two courses. They 
 had either to accept his leadership or "become 
 his betrayers and murderers." God who has from 
 the first triumphed over human wickedness by 
 building- its deeds into his plans (Acts 3:13-19; 
 2:23), foresaw that this church would pursue the 
 latter course, involving itself in the most awful 
 thraldom possible, and decreed that in spite of 
 its ill deserts it should be redeemed (Rom. 11:25, 
 26) ; so that, when it could not, because it would 
 not, be reconciled to God by the life of his Son, 
 God put his love for it beyond all doubt, by send- 
 ing his Son to the cross, to reconcile to himself, 
 through that death, each member of it, and all 
 men besides. (Rom. 5:8-10.) Thus by means 
 of a sacrifice, which ought never to have been 
 necessary, our race is being brought to God. 
 And the whole body of believers continually re- 
 cites 
 
 "Christ loved the Church and gave himself for 
 her" (Eph. 5:25); while individually they ador- 
 ingly add 
 
 He is "the Son of God, who loved me, and gave 
 himself for me." (Gal. 2:20.) 
 
XII 
 JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 
 
 The death of Jesus Christ is the most awful 
 and at the same time the most glorious event in 
 the spiritual history of our race. He was mur- 
 dered by his own people, when he was sent to 
 bless them by turning each one of them from his 
 wicked ways. (Acts 3:6.) But it is also true 
 that he was handed over to death both 1 by his God 
 and Father and by himself. His death was in- 
 cluded in the vast redeeming plan of God from the 
 beginning. It was by his stripes that men were 
 to be healed. After his incarnation this fact be- 
 came at last a part of his human knowledge, and, 
 agreeably to it, he laid down his life, falling as a 
 grain of wheat falls into the earth, to produce a 
 harvest. "Once for all he died for our sins, the 
 innocent One for the guilty many, that he might 
 bring us to God." (1st Pet. 3:18.) By his 
 bringing us to God he reconciles us to him or 
 at-ones us with him. And since his death is the 
 means by which he effects this work of reconcilia- 
 tion and at-one-ment, it has been called his at-one- 
 ing or atoning death. Then another step in 
 thought and its expression has brought it to pass 
 that the death itself is spoken of as the atonement. 
 
 186 
 
JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 187 
 
 This word atonement is often upon the lips of 
 Christian believers, and has been for generations. 
 Still it was not a word of the apostolic church. 
 It occurs but once in the new Testament, namely, 
 in Romans 5:11. And no modern translator of 
 the Greek New Testament uses the word even here 
 but represents the Greek Katallage and Katalasso 
 by the words reconciliation and reconcile. The 
 reason for this is that the word atonement is more 
 or less misleading, while reconcile and reconcilia- 
 tion are not so open to that objection. The word 
 is favored to-day by theologians who entertain 
 certain views touching the purpose of Christ's 
 death. They use it to represent the work which 
 they say he accomplished by his death upon the 
 cross, and which they call his finished work his 
 all-sufficient atonement. 
 
 The work which had to be effected, according 
 to this teaching, was the bringing of God into 
 the place where his wrath against the race of sin- 
 ners he had created, or the offense his holiness 
 had taken in view of their sin, would be so far ap- 
 peased or mollified that he could forgive its in- 
 dividual members forgive them in a body once 
 and for all, if we may trust Principal Forsyth in 
 his "Cruciality of The Cross." On page 89 of 
 this book he declares 
 
 "The conscience finds no rest till it finds in the cross 
 the one final act in which both the goodness and the 
 severity of God are reconciled and inwoven, with the 
 grace uppermost. I meet the atonement where the 
 
188 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 sin of the world is taken away, which carries in it the 
 foregone forgiveness of sins that I dread and yet am 
 sure that I shall do." 
 
 On pages 90, 91 he adds 
 
 "A man with his eyes truly opened to his sin must 
 have a finished work, and a God who has made a 
 full end. A conscience in his state, as soon as it 
 thinks on a world scale, must have a grace and sal- 
 vation which is not benignant only, but gathers up 
 the total moral situation in one act, and settles the 
 great strife for good and all. He must have more 
 than a full forgiveness, he must have a complete re- 
 demption. . . . A man needs something to make 
 him confident that his past sin, and the sin he is yet 
 sure to commit, are all taken up into God's redemp- 
 tion, and the great moral transaction of his life is 
 done. The real complete forgiveness is the appro- 
 priation of the world's atonement." 
 
 The learned principal is by no means easy to 
 follow. On page 78 where he says "The atone- 
 ment did not procure grace ; it flowed from grace," 
 he renounces ideas which simply refuse to quit 
 him. 
 
 The gist of all such teaching is this God had 
 to become a man and die on a cross, or otherwise, 
 as a victim to the malice of those whom, through 
 his incarnation, he had made his fellows, before 
 he could consent to bless our race with his saving 
 mercy. (P. 177.) So in an article of his pub- 
 lished as its leader by the British Weekly of Feb- 
 ruary 10th, 1910, Principal Forsyth supplements 
 
JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 189 
 
 his book by declaring "The death of Christ was 
 the active atonement made to holiness by God 
 himself." 
 
 In examining such a teaching one asks first 
 What is the holiness to which God is said to have 
 made this "active atonement?" Does it reside in 
 himself or outside of him? If outside of him, it 
 must be greater than He, and able to command 
 him; which is absurd. If within him and a part 
 of his nature, then God had to propitiate a part 
 of himself, or an attribute of his own, as one may 
 choose to put it, by offering up a sufficient sacri- 
 fice and expiation to that attribute. And each 
 may think of this as he can. 
 
 The rest of the teaching is that, apart from 
 this atonement this "sacrifice offered by God to 
 holiness" He could not, because of some obsta- 
 cle existing in himself, have forgiven men at all, 
 but that having made this offering, He not only 
 can forgive them, but has actually forgiven every 
 man's sin, past, present and to come; yet only in 
 such a way that each man, to make his forgiveness 
 an actual, or lasting, advantage to himself, must 
 accept it on certain prescribed conditions; other- 
 wise he will be no better off than he would have 
 been if he had never been forgiven at all, and prob- 
 ably much worse off, because every failure to ac- 
 cept will likely be treated as a wicked rejection. 
 (P. 169.) 
 
 Such a teaching raises a number of questions 
 that have often been debated. To deal with any 
 
190 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 one of these in a satisfactory way, it is necessary 
 to take some primary facts and principles into 
 account. This I shall now proceed to do. And 
 my thoughts, like those of Principal Forsyth, shall 
 begin and end with God. 
 
 God is man's creator. Not only did he create 
 the first human pair, but he has been equally the 
 creator of every individual since. For he estab- 
 lished and maintains the law of reproduction, and 
 the associate law that like must beget like. He 
 foresaw the sin of the race before creating it. His 
 perfect prevision saw sin enter the world to work 
 its terrible ravages. Yet he proceeded to create, 
 and proceeds still. The result, as Paul viewed 
 it in his day, is that "all have sinned." God has, 
 therefore, always been responsible for maintain- 
 ing a race of sinners upon the earth. The work 
 of nutrition going on within them, along with 
 their every breath and heart-beat, are each instant 
 dependent upon his will, for to them these are in- 
 voluntary activities, which many of them in their 
 deep misery have often wished might cease; and 
 too often they have rashly stopped them. 
 
 It is no answer to this to say that God has 
 gifted each man with a conscience which tells him 
 that he should not sin. For God has not asso- 
 ciated with that conscience the power that can 
 steadily enable the man to obey it, and so keep 
 himself from sinning. Thus men in their natural 
 state, according to both the Bible and universal 
 experience, are sinners who cannot keep from sin- 
 
JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 191 
 
 ning, no matter how earnestly they may strive 
 to do so. Their consciences make them wretched 
 in their sins, and their moral weakness makes it 
 impossible for them to climb out of the horrible 
 pit and miry clay in which they find themselves 
 sinking. So their most sustained moral endeavor 
 is but the Sisyphus-act of rolling the stone almost 
 to the hill's summit, only to see it roll back to the 
 foot once more, while they experience now the 
 agony of strained effort, and now the bitterer 
 agony of defeat. This is how the Gentile mind 
 pictured the situation. A Jeremiah, on the other 
 hand, cried out: 
 
 "The heart is deceitful above all things, and it 
 is desperately sick: who can know it?" (Jer. IT: 
 9.) And a Paul declared 
 
 "I am earthly sold into slavery to sin ... 
 . . . I find myself doing the very thing that 
 I hate . . . The bad thing that I want 
 not to do that I habitually do ... The 
 action is no longer my own, but that of sin which 
 is within me," and which I can by no means cast 
 out. "Miserable man that I am !" 
 
 To say that sin, with all this slavery and 
 wretchedness, is hereditary, and that it can all 
 be traced back to the fault of the first human 
 pair, is to say too little. The thing is true, but 
 it is only a small part of the truth. The great 
 fact is the one which I have already noticed. The 
 God who knew the end from the beginning and 
 had all things mlhis power, knowing men would be 
 
192 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 such tortured slaves if he brought them into being, 
 did and does bring them into being. And it was 
 he that established the law of hereditary sin. It 
 was he who made it true that 
 
 "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," and 
 gave each child over to the training of a sinful 
 home and a sinful society. His own action made 
 it certain that once sin entered into the world it 
 would be perpetuated. Man a sinner and help- 
 less to rise above his sin, though torturing himself 
 on account of his wrong-doing and wrong-being, 
 is the word which describes the actual moral his- 
 tory of the race. And no man, since the first pair 
 at least, has had any choice in the matter. On 
 the contrary each has just helplessly come and 
 taken his place in one of the miserable sin-cursed 
 generations. 
 
 Unless there is a personal devil with vast pow- 
 ers, God alone is responsible for all. And if there 
 is such a devil, then God is responsible for having 
 created us to fall and remain under his power 
 for all these thousands of years. The first human 
 pair could not, in the very nature of the case, 
 have been responsible for more than themselves. 
 For they could neither shake off their own sin, 
 when once they had fallen under it, nor prevent 
 themselves from passing its crushing weight on 
 to their descendants. 
 
 But if, in the final analysis, the awful presence 
 of sin among men is due to the deliberate fore- 
 seeing choice of God himself in the matter ; and, 
 
JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 193 
 
 as we have seen, there is absolutely no escape 
 from this conclusion; then there are other con- 
 clusions that are equally inevitable. The first 
 of these is that his act needs justification, and par- 
 ticularly in view of the fact that he has treated 
 sin so seriously as to convince men, through the 
 conscience with which he has gifted them, that it 
 ought not to exist. If sin ought not to exist, and 
 yet God opened up the way for its entrance and 
 long perpetuation here, then it must be further 
 true that nothing can justify this act of his, 
 short of some adequate effort on his part to des- 
 troy sin, and bring men as a whole into that life 
 of complete righteousness and holy love for which 
 they feel they were meant. 
 
 It is at this point that the New Testament 
 meets us with its heavenly message, and I shall 
 name five things which it makes perfectly clear 
 
 1. God has from the beginning recognized the 
 obligations under which he placed himself by the 
 creation of our race. John the Revelator brings 
 this fact forward when he writes of Jesus as "the 
 Lamb that has been sacrificed from the founda- 
 tion of the world." The writer of second Timo- 
 thy calls attention to the love of God which "was 
 extended to us through Christ Jesus before time 
 began," or "before times eternal." And one of 
 Paul's words to the Ephesians assures us that 
 "He chose us in him before the creation of the uni- 
 verse." This last word makes the scheme of 
 man's redemption from sin older than the work of 
 
194 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 creation. That is to say, God counted the full 
 cost from the first and took no step towards pro- 
 ducing the race, which he knew would fall into 
 sin, until he had devised the very scheme for its 
 recovery, which filled the New Testament writers 
 with such adoring wonder, and has made the book, 
 into which the unambitious productions of their 
 pens were soon gathered, the greatest in all litera- 
 ture. 
 
 2. Having foreordained the human career of 
 his divine Son, God prepared the large central 
 section of the world of mankind both religiously 
 and politically for his incarnation; so that, as 
 Paul states, "when the full time came, God sent 
 his son." Then, when the visible work of Christ 
 came to an end, that invisible agent, the Holy 
 Spirit, began to use the facts of his life, death 
 and resurrection in such a way as to build up 
 that (with one exception) greatest and most en- 
 during of earthly institutions, the Church of 
 Christ. 
 
 3. God views his sinless Son as his sufficient 
 vindication before the whole universe. Fore- 
 knowing all, he had created and maintained a race, 
 every member of which had been a suffering, self- 
 condemned sinner, whose chief wretchedness had 
 grown out of the fact that no righteous I-ought- 
 and-I-will of his could lift him into the place of 
 purity and goodness that would satisfy even him- 
 self. And there was really nothing on earth to 
 show that God had anything better in store for 
 
JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 195 
 
 the race than moral and spiritual disappointment 
 and confusion no convincing proof whatever 
 that he was not either taking some secret delight 
 in the frightful situation, or finding himself too 
 weak or too unskillful to cope with it. A Pilate 
 was being prepared to 1 ask with a levity too bitter 
 to laugh, "What is truth?" The most earnest 
 souls had been plagued by the thought that the 
 moral government of the world was largely a 
 failure and would remain so. Again and again 
 they had found themselves in the deepest doubt 
 as to whether anything really worth while could 
 result from any man's efforts toward holiness. 
 
 Then the child was born in Bethlehem that grew 
 up unsinning, entered upon a public career on be- 
 half of his people, stood for active good-will in 
 every direction, and that in the face of the deep- 
 est misunderstanding and malice, and died pray- 
 ing for his murderers rather than swerve one 
 hairsbreadth from truth and righteousness. So 
 at length, as Paul puts it 
 
 "God sending his Son in the likeness of sinful 
 flesh, and as an offering for sin, condemned sin in 
 the flesh" (Rom. 8:3) ; to convince men, in the 
 first place, that no sin whatever] had his approval, 
 and that "in passing over the sins done afore- 
 time," he had been exercising "forbearance," with 
 the new and holy order of things continually in 
 view. 
 
 4. Justified thus in his own eyes, and also 
 partly in ours, God looks towards the comple- 
 
196 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 tion of Christ's saving work, when he will be, not 
 only justified, but also glorified in the vision of 
 all. Here again it is Paul who draws aside the 
 veil for us. His first word is 
 
 "And this God did ... as a proof, I 
 repeat, at the present time, of his own righteous- 
 ness that he might be righteous in our eyes." 
 (Rom. 3:26.) And his second word beautifully 
 supplements it 
 
 "As yet we see in a mirror, dimly, but then, 
 when the Perfect has come face to face. As yet 
 my knowledge is incomplete, but then I shall know 
 in full, as I have been fully known." (1 Cor. 
 13:12). 
 
 To these John of the Revelation adds 
 
 "Then I saw new heavens and a new earth 
 . . . The old order has passed away." (Rev. 
 21:1, 4.) 
 
 5. God sees his Son also as the propitation 
 for the sins of our whole race. This word pro- 
 pitiation, used twice only in the New Testament, 
 and both times in first John, looks in two direc- 
 tions, perhaps Godward and manward. God- 
 ward it indicates that Jesus Christ perfectly sat- 
 isfied the Father in his individual earthly life, re- 
 garded both by itself and as the divine-human in- 
 strument by means of which the whole race will at 
 length be raised to the same satisfying height of 
 sinlessness, on the one hand, and of sharing in 
 the divine nature on the other. (2 Pet. 1 :4.) 
 Glancing manward, it notes our hostility to God 
 
JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 197 
 
 and views Jesus Christ as the appeaser of all our 
 wrath against him. (Rom. 8:7-9.) Through 
 him men's understandings are being so enlight- 
 ened that at length they will see that God is love, 
 and will trust him wholly, with not one Job's wife 
 left to utter her exhortation to renounce God and 
 commit suicide. (Job. 2:9.) 
 
 So, according to Paul, Christ is in himself the 
 very place of propitiation where God and men 
 are continually meeting each other, to establish 
 harmonious relations, and where, before all is 
 done, they will realize, through that full divine ex- 
 planation of every issue involved, which resides in 
 Christ himself, the completest reconciliation and 
 the highest mutual satisfaction. (Rom. 3:25) 
 and (2 Cor. 5:17-21.) All true gospel preachers 
 proclaim this story and look towards this goal. 
 It is, therefore, clear that for the question Why 
 did God create man to be miserable physically 
 and morally, his conscience and will out of joint 
 and the former wielding a whip of scorpions? 
 the New Testament has the answer That he 
 might save him, by bringing him into the fullest 
 harmony with himself and his whole environment ; 
 and when this salvation has been fully received, 
 the whole race will exult in it as absolutely suf- 
 ficient. (Rom. 11:25, T. C. N. T.) 
 
 Now in view of all we have seen, what shall we 
 say regarding the nature of the atonement? We 
 have seen that in giving his Son to be the Savior 
 of the World, God discharged to the full a self- 
 
198 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 imposed obligation, and was true to himself as the 
 eternal source of every I-ought that was ever felt 
 or uttered or acted upon in our universe. We 
 whom he made to reason on righteousness, and re- 
 spond to its claims, can clearly perceive the na- 
 ture of this obligation. He simply could not 
 have made himself the creator of our race, fore- 
 seeing its fall into sin without providing for its 
 recovery, and have remained righteous. On the 
 other hand, as the infinitely Righteous One, he 
 could not do an unrighteous thing in any direc- 
 tion. Consequently he undertook our race's res- 
 cue as a matter of course, and arranged for it in 
 the fullest manner before beginning his work of 
 creation at all. Because he is love he created 
 us as 1 beings whom he would care for, and in whose 
 development he might delight; and because he is 
 love he made himself also our Redeemer. 
 
 So far all is clear. The question which as yet 
 is for the most part wrapped in mystery, is how 
 it was that our God, who is almighty love, found 
 sin and suffering unavoidable in connection with 
 his holy plans for our race. We know, however, 
 that some day we shall have this problem also 
 solved for us. 
 
 As our example in obedience towards his Father, 
 and thus our Savior to the uttermost, Jesus was 
 compelled to lay down his life. But the thing his 
 Father required was not his death but his obedi- 
 ence unto death. If he could have been obedient 
 to the utmost in speaking and living the truth, 
 
JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 199 
 
 without provoking the leaders of his people to 
 secure his death by crucifixion, he would have been 
 our race's Savior without dying, quite as effec- 
 tively as he is now. He himself represented his 
 rejection and murder as the crowning act of hu- 
 man wickedness along that line, and fought 
 against it from the first moment he became aware 
 of it as a peril, doing everything in his power 
 both Godward and manward to avert it. It was, 
 therefore, Christ's obedience to the utmost, and 
 not his death considered in itself, that counted. 
 The death itself was simply the worst of all mur- 
 ders. But the obedience associated with it was 
 necessary to our redemption to the same height 
 of devotion to the will of our Father in heaven. 
 It was on this account, and on this account alone, 
 that Jesus laid down his life he could not under 
 the circumstances have been obedient to the ut- 
 most and retained it. Failing at that point of 
 the supreme test, he would have made himself a 
 disobedient sinner, by turning aside from the truth 
 as really as Peter did when he denied all knowl- 
 edge of him. 
 
 How then shall we truly express in brief the 
 New Testament doctrine of the atonement ? Shall 
 we not say this? It stands for the fact that 
 God gave his Son to the death of the cross (1) 
 because his righteous love knew and honored its 
 own obligation to provide us a Savior who could 
 not fail in his task, and (2) because nothing short 
 of obedience to the utmost could have fitted Jesus 
 
200 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Christ to be such a Savior. As representing the 
 utter yielding up of one life to God on behalf of 
 others, Christ's death was a sacrifice. To God 
 it was a satisfaction because it represents the one 
 life in which he has always rested as all it should be 
 in itself, and at the same time, all that is required 
 by him for the full recovery to himself of the 
 whole race. It was a propitiation for the reason 
 that through it the destruction of all the race's 
 sin and enmity against God stands provided for. 
 Because it was a perfectly righteous human life 
 yielding itself up on behalf of its sinning race, it 
 could be called an expiation ; and as the appointed 
 means for bringing men into perfect harmony 
 with God, it can be spoken of as an atonement. 
 But Jesus never became any man's substitute. 
 That idea is essentially immoral, and has been 
 gladly abandoned. 
 
 If all this is true if the righteous love that 
 created us could not find rest for itself except in 
 redeeming us; and if that in Jesus Christ by 
 means of which we are redeemed is his obedience 
 to the utmost on our account; are we not war- 
 ranted in saying that our God, who is love, has 
 always done, is now doing, and will continue to 
 do all that can be done for the further redemp- 
 tion of each succeeding generation of our race, 
 until he has at length lifted it into the fullest 
 fellowship with himself? And are we not dark- 
 ening counsel with words when we talk as if there 
 was something in God himself that had to be dealt 
 
JESUS AND THE ATONEMENT 201 
 
 with by sacrifice, and silenced, and that by himself, 
 before he could bless us with his saving grace? 
 Does not the very word atonement become a stum- 
 bling block, the moment it is used to convey this 
 idea? When we speak of "the death of Christ 
 as the active atonement made to holiness by God 
 himself," or say that God has and has not for- 
 given a soul at one and the same time, we use 
 language of which it can be truly affirmed, that 
 it neither belongs to the field of working ideas, 
 nor pertains to a philosophy that makes anything 
 plain. 
 
 When one is asked to explain how the death 
 of Christ, or, rather, his obedience unto death, 
 is of such infinite value to us, and how God at- 
 ones us with himself by means of it, he need not 
 regard the answer as quite beyond our present 
 reach. Christ was our example in his death 
 quite as truly, and much more convincingly, than 
 in his life. It has been by his obedience unto 
 death that he has redeemed men up to the present. 
 By means of that death the Holy Spirit enlight- 
 ens, convicts, converts, cleanses and girds men 
 with invincible holy might. That is why the 
 New Testament declares that each believer in 
 Christ is saved by his blood, and that for these 
 the cross stands so distinctly in the foreground. 
 Christ's obedience untd death is God's supreme in- 
 strument in lifting men from sin to righteousness. 
 Had his obedience not been equal to this final test 
 it would have proved a poor lever indeed, but hav- 
 
202 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 ing triumphed then as always before, it was the 
 mightiest that even God could provide himself 
 with. 
 
 Man was made to think, and to rise no higher 
 than his own thought. Through Christ God is 
 slowly teaching him to think in the terms of a life 
 which, obeying him to the utmost, rises to sinless- 
 ness, on the one hand, and the completest posi- 
 tive righteousness, on the other. In saving men 
 the Holy Spirit uses only each individual's I-see- 
 and-I-ought, but he lifts each one to the level of 
 that the moment he adopts it as his chief imme- 
 diate object of desire and faith. And the high- 
 est I-see-and-I-ought emanates forever from the 
 cross of Christ, or rather, from the Christ of the 
 cross. God made man to think and to raise him 
 to the level of the highest thought he could give 
 him through Jesus Christ. (1 Jno. 3:1-3.) 
 
XIII 
 JESUS AND THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 
 
 In Israel the priest and the prophet could never 
 agree, excepting when the priest himself was also 
 a prophet. The Priest stood for the shadow, 
 the Prophet for the substance; the priest for rit- 
 ual, the prophet for righteousness ; the priest for 
 services conducted before God, the prophet for 
 services rendered to God; the priest for the out- 
 ward, the prophet for the inward; the priest for 
 the imagination and the emotions, the prophet 
 for the intellect and the conscience as well; the 
 priest for a showy ceremonial and dead offerings, 
 the prophet for living, palpitating holy and right- 
 eous human reality. And because the quarrel 
 was deadly it brought about a contrast of its 
 own. The priest murdered the prophet, and the 
 prophet died for the priest; and only thus could 
 the prophet redeem the priest and lead him up 
 out of his shadows into the light and life of God. 
 Thus it continued through the centuries, the 
 priest always repenting of his father's murders 
 while reddening his hands with his own, in that 
 slow, conservative, yet blood-thirsty stupidity, so 
 vividly portrayed by Jesus himself, when he, the 
 greatest prophet of all time, found himself face 
 
 203 
 
204 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 to face with this same stupidly slow, blood-thirsty 
 and murderous priest. 
 
 The priest and the prophet have continued 
 confronting each other. They live on still, each 
 bearing the same name as the other, and each pre- 
 serving his own characteristics and discharging 
 his own peculiar functions, precisely as in the older 
 days. Once both were Israelites, then both were 
 Jews, now both wear the name of Christ. But 
 now, as then, the first stands for a fact outworn 
 and probably also perverted, the second for the 
 vital fact which is struggling up to victory to-day 
 and will be crowned and reigning to-morrow. Now, 
 also, as from the beginning, it is as perfectly 
 natural for the first to appeal to fraud and vio- 
 lence, physical and intellectual, and the second to 
 make his appeal calmly and fairly to the unfet- 
 tered intellect and conscience; as it is for the first 
 to claim that if you would be convinced of the au- 
 thority of a fact, no matter how unjust or per- 
 verted it may be, all you need do is find out that 
 it had its origin very far back in the years and is 
 not yet quite extinct, and for the second to es- 
 pouse and proclaim his fact on the simple ground 
 of its evident present and future value to the in- 
 dividual and society at large. The priest arro- 
 gates to himself all the respectability that exists 
 anywhere, denounces the prophet as an upstart 
 who never even had a father worth mentioning 
 and knows that the future will be his own because 
 he has already reached the place where he enjoys 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 205 
 
 the same respect and inviolability which men ac- 
 cord to the corpse that is being kept for burial! 
 The priest does not believe much in burials, how- 
 ever, and that for the very good and sufficient 
 reason that the prophets whom he slaughters 
 never stay in their graves, and that he considers 
 himself much more respectably alive than any liv- 
 ing prophet. But he has great faith in the prophet 
 of the past. For he knows this prophet to be 
 alive, though his father slew him. The prophet 
 of the past is therefore his standing miracle, his 
 prodigy, and more impressive to him than even 
 God himself. He judges others by him- 
 self. How could a clod like him be inspired? 
 (How indeed!) Inspired poetically, or along 
 the lines of art or science, he might be, but 
 divinely inspired never! He dismisses the very 
 thought as blasphemous. God and he have no in- 
 tellectual intimacies, though he may feel sure they 
 have certain emotional ones. They never see each 
 other excepting across his altar fires, and then as 
 much as ever more than ever, perhaps God is 
 far off in his heaven. And how could it be dif- 
 ferent with anyone else? So he can never bring 
 himself to see that the prophet of the present is 
 indeed the greater son of that prophet of the 
 past, whose monument was erected yesterday by 
 his father, or just now by himself. He knows 
 no truth but old truth, and no inspiration save 
 that of the past. To him the prophet of to-day 
 is but a fatherless fraud who deserves nothing 
 
206 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 better than the worst that can possibly be meas- 
 ured out to him. So in his fine respectability he 
 rises to the height of misrepresenting and vilify- 
 ing this prophet. In his malicious hatred he can- 
 not let him alone. Growing "frantic" he pur- 
 sues 1 him "even to strange cities," "breathing mur- 
 derous threats." Meanwhile the pursued and 
 persecuted prophet himself reasons, expostulates, 
 entreats, making his unceasing "appeal to men of 
 reason and religion," "suffers because God wills 
 it so, and commits his life into the hands of a 
 faithful creator." (1 Pet. 4:19.) 
 
 The priest of each generation dies to enter upon 
 the infamous immortality of the persecutor 
 and murderer of the prophet, secured for him by 
 that son of his who builds the prophet's monu- 
 ment, and writes the inscription on it in enduring 
 brass. The prophet, on the other hand, can 
 scarcely be said to die. Rather he lives on, mur- 
 dered though he may have been, wears a crown, 
 and enjoys the homage and obedience of a con- 
 stantly increasing number. 
 
 This irrepressible conflict between priest and 
 prophet began early. Its echoes have reverberated 
 in every land which has been distinguished by 
 great and rapid progress. There have been 
 priests and prophets of science and philosophy 
 as well as of religion. And the priest and prophet 
 in politics constituted in Israel, as they do also 
 to-day, as stern a fact almost as the priest and 
 prophet in religion; for whether we take due ac- 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 207 
 
 count of it or not, the one actual form of govern- 
 ment is the theocracy, where every human legis- 
 lator, judge ( and magistrate, including the sov- 
 ereign himself, is but an official under law to 
 God. There is absolutely no escape from this 
 situation. God holds peoples and their officials 
 alike in the place of strictest accountability to 
 himself during every moment of their worthy or 
 unworthy tenure of the positions he gives them. 
 
 I am now to deal in a particular rather than 
 a general way with the priest and prophet in 
 their relations to the sacrificial system which ob- 
 tained under Mosaism, and point out, if I can, 
 how Jesus stands associated with that system. 
 
 Jesus is at once "the Apostle and High Priest 
 of our Religion." (Heb. 3:1.) Just because he 
 is the High Priest, he is also the apostle the 
 man sent, approved and sustained by God to 
 speak for him as his Prophet. The Priest and 
 the Prophet are always united when both are well 
 informed and faithful. Under Mosaism the priest 
 went wrong. It was his departure from reality 
 which put him in a class by himself and precipi- 
 tated that conflict between him and the prophet 
 which I have been indicating. In Jesus both of- 
 fices were blended and harmonized. This is not 
 very clearly recognized. I shall begin here by 
 pointing out the nature of the conflict between 
 the two in Israel itself. In doing this it will be 
 necessary for me to go no further than quote 
 from two or three of Israel's strong prophets. 
 
208 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 I shall begin with the great classical passage 
 in Micah "Wherewith shall I come before the 
 Lord, and bow myself before the high God? 
 Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with 
 calves of a year old? Will the Lord be pleased 
 with thousands of rams, or with ten thousands 
 of rivers of oil? Shall I give my first born for 
 my transgression, the fruit of my body for the 
 sin of my soul? 
 
 "He hath showed me, Oh man, what is good; 
 and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do 
 justly, and to love mercy, and to walk humbly 
 with thy God?" Here undoubtedly the substitu- 
 tionary idea of sacrifice is most strongly con- 
 demned, the prophet going even so far as to make 
 the horrible suggestion that when a man has once 
 struck out on that line he should rest only after 
 he has offered up his own son his best and dear- 
 est possession. He then declares that such sub- 
 stitutionary sacrifices can find no basis in the 
 mind and will of God. Jehovah wanted his wor- 
 shiper himself. He wanted his conscience, his 
 intellect, his will, his loving devotion, the service 
 of all his powers in doing all the good among his 
 fellows that might lie within his reach. What to 
 God were thousands of rams or ten thousands of 
 rivers of oil compared with that? And what to 
 God was the man who went the length of present- 
 ing his son as a substitutionary sacrifice but a 
 murderer ? 
 
 This last thought is the one which seems to 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 209 
 
 have gripped the mind of Isaiah in such a painful 
 way. He writhes in agony as he writes in right- 
 eous rage 
 
 "Hear the word of the Lord, ye rulers of So- 
 dom : Give ear unto the law of our God, ye people 
 of Gomorrah. To what purpose is the multitude 
 of your sacrifices unto me? Saith the Lord: I 
 am full of the burnt offerings of rams, and the 
 fat of fed beasts ; and I delight not in the blood 
 of bullocks or of lambs or of he-goats. When 
 ye come to appear before me, who hath required 
 this at your hand, to trample my courts? Bring 
 no more empty oblations . . . your hands 
 are full of blood." Your substitutionary idea, 
 which has led you to thrust your bloody offerings 
 before me, instead of your own reverently wor- 
 shiping, devotedly obedient and lovingly right- 
 eous selves, has made your very slaughter of 
 your sacrificial beasts an abominable series of 
 murders. "Bring no more empty oblations; in- 
 cense is an abomination unto me ; new moon and 
 sabbath, the calling of assemblies I cannot away 
 with iniquity and the solemn meeting. Your new 
 moons and your appointed feasts my soul hateth; 
 they are a trouble unto me; I am weary to bear 
 them. And when ye spread forth your hands, I 
 will hide mine eyes from you : yea, when ye make 
 many prayers, I will not hear : your hands are full 
 of blood. 
 
 "Wash you, make you clean; put away the 
 evil of your doings from before mine eyes ; cease 
 
210 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 to do evil: learn to do well; seek judgment, re- 
 lieve the oppressed, judge the fatherless, plead 
 for the widow." (Isa. 1:10-17.) 
 
 Coming down across the centuries we find the 
 priest still standing for a worship and a holiness 
 which were the poorest of blasphemous shams, 
 and the second Isaiah exposing him in the very 
 spirit of the first 
 
 "To this man will I look, saith the Lord, even 
 to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit, and 
 that trembleth at my word. He that killeth an 
 ox" (as a substitutionary offering) "is as he that 
 slayeth a man; he that sacrificeth a lamb, as he 
 that breaketh a dog's neck; he that offereth an 
 oblation as he that offereth swine's blood; he 
 that burneth frankincense, as he that blesseth an 
 idol: yea, they have chosen their own ways, and 
 their soul delighteth in their abominations." (Isu. 
 66:3, 4*.) And thus the situation continued, 
 men destroying their own souls and committing 
 spiritual suicide in connection with the most sa- 
 cred rites of their religion. And thus it was found 
 by Jesus himself and those who after him laid 
 the foundations of the Christian church. 
 
 We are not left in any doubt on the question 
 whether Jesus sided with the priest or the prophet 
 in the long controversy. His whole life and teach- 
 ing were those of the greatest of all the prophets. 
 He would let no man put anything whatever in 
 the place of the personal righteousness of high 
 ideals and an unceasing struggle for their at- 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 211 
 
 tainment which his own life exemplified. For the 
 weakest striver he had the tenderest compassion 
 and the most abounding encouragements, but his 
 word for those who would not enter the holy 
 strife was "judgment," while that for the wicked 
 loiterer was, "I know you not." And when he 
 was called upon to express himself on the very 
 point before us he did so by quoting from Hosea 
 6:6, with a reference to 1 Sam. 15:22, where the 
 words are given in which the prophet adminis- 
 tered his rebuke to Saul, when that king at- 
 tempted to atone for his royal disobedience by 
 slaughtering in sacfrifice thousands of bullocks 
 and sheep 
 
 "Go and learn what this means 
 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice' " 
 
 a godlike manhood and no substitute for it what- 
 ever. 
 
 The disciples of Jesus were continually so ham- 
 pered by the priestly idea that they took in but 
 slowly the full meaning of their Lord's life and 
 words, and the full meaning of their Lord's life and 
 death. In their writings the mighty fact set 
 forth by the prophet is often badly blurred by 
 the misty pretensions of the priest. I shall not 
 attempt here to make anything like a full expo- 
 sition of this feature of the New Testament, but 
 content myself with briefly indicating it. More 
 than a dozen theories of the atonement have re- 
 sulted from this entanglement of ideas in the 
 
212 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 apostolic mind, and not wholly from an inca- 
 pacity for clear thinking on the part of subse- 
 quent Christian theologians. "This treasure we 
 have in these earthen vessels, that its all-prevail- 
 ing power may be seen to come from God, and not 
 to be our own" (2 Cor. 4:7), is a word of Paul 
 regarding his own limitations and those of his 
 fellow apostles and Christian co-workers gener- 
 ally; and it looked in directions which he did not 
 perhaps have in mind when he wrote it, though 
 he was well aware always that he was seeing "in 
 a mirror, dimly," and that his knowledge was in- 
 complete and his preaching incomplete. (1 Cor. 
 13:12, 9.) To see dimly is to perceive cloudily, 
 and even misleadingly ; and no teacher can instruct 
 more clearly than he can see the things which he 
 attempts to convey to other minds. That the 
 writer of 2nd Peter recognized a pronounced 
 cloudiness in Paul's writings he makes abundantly 
 evident in these words 
 
 "There are some things in them difficult to un- 
 derstand, etc." The precise point of this writer 
 is that the reader of Paul's writings needed to be 
 well versed in the facts and main purpose of 
 Christianity, and firmly established in his own 
 experience of salvation through Jesus Christ, be- 
 fore giving himself safely to the perusal of some 
 parts of Paul's letters. And if this was true of 
 the most intellectual and most thoroughly schooled 
 apostle of all, it can surely be no offense against 
 the rest to say that the cloudiness which hinders 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 213 
 
 our progress, when we attempt to get a clear 
 idea of the system of thought which lies behind 
 their words, is more than apparent. They found 
 the treasure too vast to be set forth by them in 
 an orderly fashion, and in such a way that each 
 portion of it could be distinctly seen and duly 
 appreciated. And perhaps the old priestly con- 
 ception of things proved more disabling to them 
 than any other thing that can be named. 
 
 In Peter and John and above all in Paul we 
 see the great truth represented by the prophets, 
 including Jesus himself struggling and stumbling 
 towards adequate expression through the rivers 
 of blood shed by the animal victims of the priest, 
 and the blinding smoke from his altars, or 
 through the mists which enveloped the proceed- 
 ings of the Roman law courts ; and never abso- 
 lutely arriving, excepting in such a glorious pas- 
 sage as 
 
 "But all this was the work of God, who recon- 
 ciled us to himself through Christ, and gave us 
 the ministry of Reconciliation to proclaim that 
 God, in Christ, was reconciling the world to him- 
 self, not reckoning men's offences against them, 
 and that he had entrusted us with the Message 
 of this reconciliation." (2 Cor. 5 :18, 19.) With 
 the second Paul, who wrote the letter to the 
 Hebrews, it was different. He, too, struggled 
 and stumbled as he carried his message, but at 
 length he arose to stumble no more, and arrived 
 at the viewpoint from which he read the con- 
 
A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 sciousness of Jesus as no man before him had done, 
 and as few have done since. 
 
 It is interesting to note that as soon as he got 
 this vision he found the text for his discourse in 
 the Old Testament. So human was the heart of 
 Jesus into which he gazed, that he found himself 
 able to put into his lips without change of any 
 kind some words of the fortieth Psalm which he 
 took from the Septuagint version. Hence we 
 read 
 
 "When he was coming into the world the Christ 
 declared 'Sacrifice and offering thou dost not 
 desire, but thou hast provided for me a body. 
 Thou dost take no pleasure in burnt offerings 
 and sacrifices for sin. So I said, "See, I have 
 come" (as is written of me in the pages of the 
 Book), "To do thy will, O God.' " 
 
 "First," he writes, "come the words 'Thou 
 dost not desire, nor dost thou take pleasure in, 
 sacrifices, offerings, burnt offerings, and sacri- 
 fices for sin' (offerings regularly made under the 
 Law) and then there is added 'See, I have come 
 to do thy will.' The former sacrifices are set aside 
 to be replaced by the latter." (Heb. 10:5-9.) 
 
 "He taketh away the first that he may estab- 
 lish the second" is the reading of the authorized 
 version. With this reading the revision of 1881 
 entirely agrees. The Twentieth Century tenta- 
 tive edition paraphrases thus "The former 
 statement is set aside to be replaced by the lat- 
 ter." Weymouth's New Testament in Modern 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 15 
 
 Speech gives us, "He does away with the first in 
 order to establish the second;" while Lloyd in 
 his Corrected English New Testament places this 
 passage before us word for word as we have al- 
 ready seen it in the authorized and revised ver- 
 sions "He taketh away the first that he may es- 
 tablish the second." 
 
 Now what does this writer indicate by "the 
 first" and "the second?" Does "the first" stand 
 for the priestly idea of substitutionary offerings, 
 and "the second" for the prophet's idea that the 
 one offering and sacrifice acceptable to God is 
 the offerer himself in all his various capacities 
 for worship and service? Or does he mix and 
 mingle and confuse things, so that his readers 
 must still keep asking with which of more than a 
 dozen theories of the atonement he stands asso- 
 ciated? We shall see. 
 
 I refuse to devour time here in an attempt to 
 find a safe way through the theory-permeated 
 intricacies of the various translations which lie 
 before me. No man can ever set forth God's 
 truth, or anybody else's, in a translation, until 
 that truth lies in still lake-like clearness in his 
 own mind and heart. Nothing can be more mis- 
 leading than texts which have been thrown out of 
 all true perspective by the violence which has been 
 quite unconsciously visited upon them by dogma- 
 burdened translators. Our writer indicates the 
 successive steps and processes by means of which 
 a sinner may move up from the horrible pit and 
 
216 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 miry clay of his iniquities into the loftiest abid- 
 ing places of saint-hood. What are these steps 
 and processes? Let us follow him as he points 
 them out. 
 
 The first step is that of entering into the will 
 of God as he sees Jesus himself did in desire and 
 purpose, first, and then as occasion and oppor- 
 tunity arise, in word and deed. It is by this 
 will of God that we are purified, sanctified, set 
 apart for a life of strength and sweetness, of 
 powerful acts and tenderest compassions, like that 
 of him whose followers we become the moment we 
 enter into that will after him. 
 
 Each sinner who takes this step, takes it be- 
 cause he has become the subject of a process which 
 is set up and maintained by God himself. The 
 sialvation of mankind has its place in the educa- 
 tional programme of the universe. Jesus Christ 
 is the supreme* object lesson in the way of a prop- 
 erly ordered human life. In him there were gath- 
 ered up and centered all that was true and vic- 
 torious in the life of men as that life ought to 
 be, and in the principles which should govern it. 
 The very heart of his heart was a love, which was 
 absolutely without limit. Every sinner loves to 
 be loved, and most of all to be loved by the holi- 
 est, not so much in spite of, as because of, the fact, 
 which is so painfully clear to himself, that he is 
 bad and hopelessly lost as far as self-rescue is 
 concerned. Mother love, wife love, child love, 
 have a certain redeeming power, but the source 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 
 
 of them all, as represented by God in Christ, far 
 surpasses them in their best possible combina- 
 tion. The holiest love must always be the 
 mightiest. To look upon the holiest love, and to 
 perceive that its infinite eyes, fixed upon me, and 
 overflowing with tears because I am not holy too, 
 but sinful and unworthy and undone, are forever 
 those of him whose human hands, reached down 
 for my uplifting, I nailed to the cross, and that 
 those same pierced hands, mightier than ever, are 
 gripping me even now to carry me up out of all 
 my sins and miseries ; is to realize to some extent 
 that this same holiness of love is being carved 
 deeply upon my consciousness, as the one law 
 which embraces all the legislation which should 
 govern my life now and always. It was because 
 our writer vividly realized this for himself that 
 he was so deeply impressed by these words from 
 Jeremiah 31 :33 
 
 "This is the Covenant that I will make with them 
 
 After those days/' says the Lord: 
 "I will impress my laws on their hearts 
 
 And will inscribe them on their minds." 
 
 Now, also, because he perceived a certain se- 
 quence, hidden from the priest but clear and un- 
 mistakable to the prophet, he broke Jeremiah's 
 word into two portions, and presented these in sep- 
 aration from each other. This is how he put his 
 case "We have also the testimony of the Holy 
 Spirit. For, after saying 'This is my cove- 
 
218 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 riant, etc,' then we have 'And their sins and 
 their iniquities I will no longer remember.' ' 
 
 Now if this language means anything at all, 
 it means! that in the opinion of this writer, the one 
 condition upon which God forgives sins is the 
 sinner's complete surrender and consecration to 
 his will. And he teaches that this surrender and 
 consecration are a human act, on the one hand, 
 and the outcome of a divine process, on the other. 
 The sinner surrenders and consecrates himself 
 to God's will, because God has made that will ap- 
 pear the supreme thing to him. When this act 
 of surrender and consecration has been definitely 
 entered into, God writes his will still more defi- 
 nitely and deeply upon both heart and mind. 
 And when he has by this process actually blotted 
 out the sins of the man, then and not till then, he 
 lifts up the light of his countenance upon him and 
 blesses him with the peace which passes all under- 
 standing. That is to say, God never proceeds 
 blindly in his work of saving a man, never takes 
 anything for granted, never leaves anything un- 
 done which needs doing, never deceives himself at 
 any point; and he never slights or deceives the 
 man with whom he is dealing, but demands and 
 obtains the exercise of out and out good faith 
 both in Himself and in the sinner whom he is 
 transforming into one of his saints. And this 
 clear teaching alone is true to fact. All else is 
 either mystifying or wholly false. 
 
 Forgiveness means the breaking forth of God's 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 
 
 smile upon the sinner and the breaking by God 
 of the enslaving chains of his sins, when with much 
 heartbreak or with little he has turned his back 
 upon his wrong past to enter into the whole will 
 of God so far as that will has become known to 
 him. God's forgiveness is no cold legal trans- 
 action. It is glowingly personal and throbbingly 
 heart to heart. It is a purely Thou and I act 
 and experience. It is the Father's rapturous em- 
 brace of his son who was lost, and the joyful cry 
 "I will give thanks unto thee, O Lord; for 
 though thou wast angry with me, thine anger is 
 turned away, and thou comfortest me. Behold, 
 God is my salvation ; I will trust and not be 
 afraid; for the Lord Jehovah is my strength and 
 my song: and he is become my salvation." (Isa. 
 12:1-3.) 
 
 "Free from the Law, O happy condition," etc., 
 is a song in which the priest rejoices in the se- 
 curity and peace of his refuge of lies. The 
 prophet dwelling in the place of real safety be- 
 side his Lord and Master, sings instead the very 
 words of that Master himself as they appear in 
 the Hebrew version of the Old Testament 
 
 "I delight to do thy will, O my God; 
 Yea, thy law is within my heart/' (Psa. 40:8.) 
 
 "My God, thie spring of all my Joys, 
 The life of my delights, 
 The glory of my brightest days 
 And comfort of my nights." 
 
220 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 "Long my imprisoned spirit lay, 
 Fast bound in sin and nature's night; 
 Thine eye diffused a quickening ray; 
 I woke; the dungeon flamed with light; 
 My chains fell off, my heart was free; 
 I rose, went forth and followed Thee." 
 
 The prophet rejoices in God and in his law, be- 
 cause he has been brought into the life of obedi- 
 ent service towards God, knows that he is co- 
 working with God, and that through entering into 
 his will, he has entered into Himself, where his 
 life is hid with Christ in God. He does not live 
 in fiction but in fact, and his holiness is not con- 
 structive or imaginary but real the very holi- 
 ness of God, translated into the terms of our ig- 
 norance and weakness, to be sure, but growingly 
 worthy of its source. 
 
 So our author is perfectly consistent when, 
 coming to a definite discussion of the faith which 
 saves men, he makes no mention of their past sins 
 or the consequences and penalties connected with 
 them. His face is not towards the past at all, 
 like that of the priest. He had heard his Mas- 
 ter's 
 
 "Follow me, and leave the dead to bury their 
 dead." (Matt. 8:22.) In his view, to be a fol- 
 lower of Jesus was not to mourn over one's low 
 past and plead for an impossible remission of 
 the penalties attached to its sins, but to break 
 away from it utterly and at once, and, with his 
 face towards the glowing light, join his Lord in 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 
 
 his heartily chosen and divinely given task. So 
 his definition of "faith" declares it to be "the hu- 
 man substructure, foundation, or source of things 
 hoped for, and a conviction of the reality of 
 things which we do not see." (Heb. 11:1.) As 
 he brings before us the name and deed of each of 
 his long list of noted men of faith we gather the 
 characteristics of this faith from the things which 
 it wrought through them, and are prepared to 
 say that it is (1) the vision of God as the teacher, 
 inspirer and enabler of men in connection with the 
 accomplishment of his vast redeeming purposes, 
 (2) the quitting of sin and lower good for the 
 highest life and service to which men are called, 
 and (3) a hearty consecration to God's whole will 
 as far as it is known. In other words, saving 
 faith is the source of the highest devotion and the 
 most glorious achievement the very heart of 
 hearts of the hero and the saint. A vast cloud of 
 such heroes and saints of the past surrounds us, 
 he declares, but we are to fix our gaze, not on any 
 one of these, but on Jesus. He far surpasses 
 them all. He is "the File-leader, the Prince 
 Leader, the Leader and Perfect Example of, or 
 in, our faith" our religion of enthusiastic devo- 
 tion to the whole will of God, and blessed expe- 
 rience of his purifying and enabling grace. So 
 in his view that faith of Abraham, which "was re- 
 garded by God as righteousness," was so regarded 
 because it was righteousness itself righteous- 
 ness in vision, in desire, in purpose, in consecra- 
 
222 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 tion, in endeavor the one human substructure 
 or source for all possible righteousness of word 
 and deed. So also is the faith of each truly 
 Christian believer each true son of Abraham. 
 All true faith is the faith of Jesus. Abraham saw 
 Jesus's day because he devoted himself to God's 
 will in the same manner, though so much less per- 
 fectly; and he was glad with the gladness of one 
 whom God, therefore, acknowledged as his friend, 
 while Jesus rejoiced with the larger joy arising 
 from being owned by God as his Son. 
 
 This idea of Jesus as our Leader and Perfect 
 Example is made very prominent in this letter. 
 Indeed, when the writer deals with the saving 
 efficacy of the life of Jesus as that life stands 
 related to ours, he places it in the very forefront. 
 It is through this leadership that he is our 
 Savior at all, and through this leadership that 
 he is our Savior into Heaven itself. When this 
 writer took up the unchangeableness of God's 
 purpose and the unchangeableness of that oath 
 which God took when he swore by himself, as an 
 absolutely safe ground for our human hope, he 
 declared that 
 
 "This hope is a very anchor for our souls, 
 secure and strong, and it 'reaches into the Sanc- 
 tuary that lies behind the Curtain,' where Jesus, 
 our Forerunner, has entered on our behalf." 
 (Chap. 6:16-20.) He says again 
 
 "For it was not into a sanctuary made by 
 human hands, which merely foreshadowed the 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 223 
 
 true one, that Christ entered, but into Heaven 
 itself, that he might appear in the presence of 
 God on our behalf." (Chap. 9:24.) And finally 
 he says 
 
 "Therefore, Brothers, we may enter the Sanc- 
 tuary with confidence, in virtue of the blood of 
 .Jesus, by the way which he inaugurated for us 
 a new and living way, a way through the Sanc- 
 tuary Curtain (that is, his human nature)." 
 (Chap. 10:19, 20.) I 
 
 Now what is the gist of this teaching? May 
 it not be expressed thus? Our human nature, 
 because of its sinfulness, existed as an excluding 
 curtain to prevent us from entering heaven. 
 The Son of God became Jesus, the Son of Mary, 
 and in this manner placed the curtain of our 
 human nature between him and heaven. But by 
 conquering its sinfulness, by "offering himself up 
 to God as a victim without blemish," he opened 
 up a way, a way which no man had ever trod be- 
 fore, "a new and living way," the way of years 
 of unbroken, living human devotion to the will 
 of his Father, terribly difficult though that de- 
 votion became, and so passed into heaven "with 
 his own blood," his life of utter consecration, 
 not as our substitute (who wants a substitute 
 when the problem and prospect is that of getting 
 into heaven?) but "on our behalf" as our Fore- 
 runner, "Our Leader," our Opener of the Way. 
 And what is the rest of the story but that God 
 in Christ was reconciling the world to himself, 
 
A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 and is reconciling the world to himself that he 
 may lead to glory many sons, whom Jesus will 
 not be ashamed to call his brothers, since each 
 one of them will "by virtue of his blood" his 
 life of utter consecration to his Father have 
 passed for himself through this new and living 
 way of utter obedience to God, which Jesus so 
 gloriously inaugurated. This way was an ab- 
 solute fact for him and only relatively so for 
 us. But our hearts are reassured when we turn 
 again to the words of Paul 
 
 "God, in Christ, was (and is) reconciling the 
 world to himself, not reckoning men's offenses 
 against them." God requires of each man only 
 as much as through his help he can render. 
 
 A truer word was never written than this of 
 Principal Forsyth in his Cruciality of the Cross 
 "The atonement does not procure grace, it flows 
 from grace." It was because God loves us that 
 Jesus died on the cross, and not because Jesus 
 died on the cross that God loves us. This com- 
 pelling, transforming, holy, reasonable and al- 
 lowance-making love is the one ultimate fact. 
 God is love. 
 
 What then is the relation borne by Jesus 
 to the sacrificial system? The true one the 
 one maintained by the prophet against the priest 
 through all the generations. No offering pre- 
 sented by man can ever be substutionary, for the 
 simple reason that God can never cheat himself 
 out of his own rights. The continuous Creator 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 225 
 
 of sinful men makes no claim upon them for any 
 further response to his holiness than that which 
 he inspires and enables them to reach. By his 
 own choice he is engaged in the age-long work 
 of lifting them out of their sin into his own 
 holiness, out of their iniquity into his own recti- 
 tude. Slowly he has been giving height to their 
 moral standards ; and that this slow progress 
 may be as rapid as possible, he has given his 
 divine Son to be our human Leader and Perfect 
 Example. His sacrifice was an offering up of 
 himself in a life of obedience to the utmost. He 
 attempted no substitution on his own account but 
 turned away from it with his whole heart and 
 soul. He did this as our Forerunner. He did 
 away with the first; he established the second. 
 It was when he offered up himself as a sacrifice 
 to God in an obedience which was unto death 
 that he became our Prince Leader. We are true 
 followers of his when we also enter into the whole 
 will of God as far and as fast as it becomes' known 
 to us. True religion is no empty dream. We 
 are members of this new yet ancient order of 
 sacrificing priests when we completely obey Paul's 
 exhortation 
 
 "I entreat you then, Brothers, by the mercies 
 of God, to offer your bodies as a living holy sacri- 
 fice, acceptable to God, for this is your rational 
 worship." (Rom. 12:1.) 
 
 In religion, as in everything else, all that is 
 irrational is also false. The one absolutely re- 
 
A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 quired condition of forgiveness is acceptance of 
 God's whole will as far as it is known. First 
 God's law written on the heart, then God's for- 
 giveness. 
 
 Before closing here we may, I think, get a 
 clear glimpse of the true use and advantage of 
 the ancient sacrificial system, and so of the un- 
 speakable benefits arising from the sacrifice which 
 Jesus, the Son of God, made of himself on our 
 behalf. It has always been, and it is to-day, 
 the intention and spirit of the offerer which de- 
 termine whether his offering is to prove a bless- 
 ing or a curse to him. Abel's sacrifice was ac- 
 cepted and Cain's rejected by God with strict 
 reference to the thought and temper of each. 
 So was it also with Abraham, on the one hand, 
 and King Saul on the other. Let us seek for 
 the difference between these worshipers. 
 
 The outstanding rule touching living offerings 
 was that they should be perfect representatives 
 of their kind. If the offering was a bullock, he 
 had to be a perfect bullock; if a lamb, it had to 
 be a perfect lamb. Each was required to rep- 
 resent the life of its kind at its best, and so to 
 be fitted to suggest to the mind of the offerer, 
 in the most lively way, the idea and duty of a 
 perfect life before God on his own account. 
 
 Now each offerer would necessarily maintain 
 one of three possible attitudes towards the per- 
 fect offering which he presented. The man who 
 was a pure formalist would present his offering 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 227 
 
 with no other thought than that his act held a 
 proper and rightful place in connection with the 
 observances of his religion ; and when he was 
 through with his part of the ceremony he would 
 retire with a comfortable sense of duty done. 
 The other two would think more deeply, yet their 
 thoughts would be the very antipodes of each 
 other. The thought of one would be the thought 
 of the priest, the thought of the other the 
 thought of the prophet. The man with the 
 priest's thought would bring his perfect offering 
 and say "O my God, I am imperfect and sinful 
 and must so remain, but I have come with the per- 
 fect offering appointed by thyself. Graciously 
 accept me as I am in view of its perfect merits, 
 even as thou hast promised and agreed to do. 
 Be as good as thy 1 word, O holy Lord God !" And 
 this man with the priest's thought in him would 
 see nothing absurd, outrageous or blasphemous 
 in his prayer. On the contrary it would strike 
 him as being quite modestly and reverently 
 orthodox ! 
 
 But see! the man with the prophet's thought 
 has come with his perfect offering. Listen ! for 
 he is in the attitude of prayer 
 
 "Blessed be thy name, O God of my salvation, 
 who hast heard my prayer and been merciful to 
 me. All my help comes from thee. Thou dost 
 strengthen me to fulfill thy word and keep thy 
 law. Thou dost comfort me greatly, lifting up 
 the light of thy countenance upon me. Yet my 
 
228 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 way is not perfect before thee, and it is with 
 earnest desire and humility that I present to thee 
 this perfect offering, for it tells me that nothing 
 befits me short of a like perfection. 'Teach 
 me and guide me.' 'Let the words of my mouth 
 and the meditations of my heart all become ac- 
 ceptable in thy sight, O Lord my Strength and 
 my Redeemer.' ' Or, coming for the first time, 
 he cries "God be merciful to me a sinner, and 
 lead me into thy whole will." 
 
 This man's perfect bullock and lamb awaken 
 in him the cry for and the expectation of a like 
 perfection. Neither is, or can ever be, accepted 
 in his place. Under God's righteous rule there 
 can be no substitutions. A beast's perfections 
 accepted by God in the place of a man's! Yet 
 the perfections of the beast can give to the man 
 very convincing testimony that he should place 
 nothing short of perfection before himself as his 
 goal. And this was the highest office given by 
 God to the ancient sacrificial system. It was to 
 be a continual reminder that the God who had 
 co-worked with the perfect beast in the attain- 
 ment of its perfection, was also co-working with 
 every man whose heart cried out after a com- 
 plete human life as its chief good next to God 
 himself. And because the perfection of the brute 
 was too low to sufficiently inspire this desire and 
 encourage this expectation in us, God gave us 
 his Son to be our perfect human example and 
 representative. And it is through inspiring and 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 229 
 
 encouraging to victory our desire for a perfect 
 life before God, that Jesus becomes our Savior 
 to the uttermost. (Heb. 10:14-22.) The priest 
 has called him our substitute and has thus largely 
 robbed him of his glory by robbing his obedience 
 unto death of its largest and worthiest results. 
 But the day of the Christian prophet is fast 
 dawning. We are moving up out of the shadows 
 into Christlike reality. 
 
 Under the Christianity of Jesus Christ, 
 as set forth in this portion of the letter to 
 the .Hebrews, the genuine Christian is the 
 prophet who is a priest, and the priest who 
 is also a prophet. Peter had the same idea. 
 Listen ! 
 
 "Come to Jesus then, as to a living stone, re- 
 jected indeed, by men, but in God's eyes choice 
 and precious ; and, as living stones, form your- 
 selves into a spiritual House, to be a consecrated 
 Priesthood, for the offering of spiritual sacri- 
 fices that will be acceptable to God through Jesus 
 Christ." (I Pet. 2:4, 5.) Peter saw, too, that 
 this new order of prophet-priests or priest- 
 prophets was the true Israel and therefore, the 
 very heart of the Kingdom of God upon earth. 
 Listen again 
 
 "But you are 'a chosen race, a royal priest- 
 hood, a consecrated nation, God's own People,' 
 entrusted with the proclamation of the goodness 
 of him who called you out of Darkness into his 
 wonderful Light." (I Pet. 2:9.) To this also 
 
230 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 the writer of The Revelation gives his heartiest 
 assent 
 
 "He made us 'a Kingdom of Priests in the serv- 
 ice of God,' his Father." (Rev. 1:6.) (See also 
 5:9, 10.) 
 
 Naturally the final conclusion of this second 
 Paul is that the sacrifice which Jesus made of 
 himself was the final representative one. T%e 
 beast was too poor, but The Man left nothing 
 further to be accomplished. He had constituted 
 in himself all that God required him to be as a 
 man living his own personal life. He had entered 
 into the whole will of his Father on his own ac- 
 count. He had entered into it also as the Fore- 
 runner and Prince Leader of the race. He had 
 made it at once the duty and the privilege of 
 each man to enter into that will after him. 
 Growing numbers were actually doing this with 
 their whole hearts and souls. As priests under 
 Jesus, our "great High Priest," each of these 
 had made or was still making, a complete sacri- 
 fice of himself, including his body, to God. It 
 was in view of this fact in its initial stage that 
 God had forgiven them, and so would it be to 
 the very end with all who would take the same 
 path. 
 
 That loss of the sense of sin over which many 
 are mourning to-day, is rather a fact for re- 
 joicing. This sense of sin belongs to the priest. 
 To him it has been a great asset and he has often 
 cultivated it in others for his own material en- 
 
THE SACRIFICIAL SYSTEM 231 
 
 richment. We remember Eli's arrogant sons 
 and their flesh-hook with three prongs, which they 
 did not always care to use. (I Sam. 2:12-17.) 
 We recall also some more recent history. In the 
 place of this abidingly distressing sense of sin in 
 Christendom, there is fast waking up the genu- 
 ine Christian prophet's passion for righteousness, 
 individual and social. So men are all the time 
 becoming more practically and, therefore, more 
 truly the followers of our Lord Jesus Christ. 
 This fact will require the attention of a separate 
 chapter. 
 
 Some one may say that this chapter is a plea 
 for the moral influence theory of the atonement. 
 How we delight to label the infinite with our 
 pretty little tags! This chapter has been writ- 
 ten in advocacy of the physical, intellectual, 
 emotional, volitional, moral, spiritual, human and 
 divine fact of the whole saving work of him 
 who said through his prophet, and then through 
 his Son "I desire mercy and not sacrifice" a 
 glorious Christlike humanity, and nothing what- 
 ever in lieu of it. God has of his own motion 
 been making men as they are, and he has at the 
 same time been making them through Jesus 
 Christ all he wishes them to be. He has been 
 much hindered by our false notions. But the 
 whole work is his and he will carry it to its full 
 completion. 
 
XIV 
 
 JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 
 
 The eye of the priest is forever on each sinful 
 past as it matures. It is on this account that he 
 can never close his confessional, or leave his 
 penances behind him, or consider his sacrificial 
 rites at an end. He fancies he can make each 
 wrong past right, or cover it up from the eyes 
 of God, by means of the substitutionary "sacrifice 
 oblation and satisfaction" which he offers. He 
 may even fancy that divine forgiveness means the 
 complete removal of sin's penalty. But deliver- 
 ance from a life of conscious sinning he regards 
 as a practical impossibility. He must always 
 have a bad past to deal with. 
 
 The prophet knows better. Proceeding scien- 
 tifically, that is to say, dismissing all arbitrary 
 theorizing and all crooked textual interpreta- 
 tions, he notes the facts of life as they appear 
 upon its very surface even, and knows that no 
 divine forgiveness ever breaks the indissoluble 
 bond with which God himself has joined sin and 
 suffering for the present life at least, and there- 
 fore that the afflicting and disabling effects of 
 each man's sins can be traced in his body, his 
 intellect and his painfully accusing conscience, 
 232 
 
JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 
 
 after his forgiveness as well as before it. The 
 prophet can also warn the forgiven sinner that 
 some of the consequences of his sins may curse 
 his offspring, and even some of his acquaintances 
 and their descendants, for generations ; and that 
 his own deliverance in the same directions, so far 
 as it is possible at all, can be reached only 
 through the steady observance by himself of 
 God's various laws for the health of the body, 
 the mind and the conscience. But he knows, too, 
 that our salvation from lives of conscious sinning 
 is a most prominent and essential part of the re- 
 deeming work of Jesus. 
 
 The divine forgiveness of sins is first of all a 
 deliverance from sinning. It leaves no drunkard 
 still a slave to his cups, no debauchee in thraldom 
 to his vices, and no sinner whatever the bondman 
 it found him. God accomplishes this deliverance 
 by addressing himself through the morally 
 awakened intellect to the affections and the will. 
 Through causing the sinner to perceive the utter 
 badness of sin in the light of his own holy love, 
 he changes his enjoyment of it into discomfort, 
 and his dislike of goodness in its chief demands 
 into such a longing for it as cannot be satisfied 
 short of complete obedience to God. Along with 
 this revelation of sin and holiness God shows him- 
 self in Jesus as everywhere present to "set free 
 from the control of Sin" the sinner in whom he 
 is at work, and cause him to "become a servant to 
 Righteousness." (Rom. 6:18.) Thus encour- 
 
234 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 aged by the divine inworking the sinner delivers 
 himself over to God's will as far as he knows it 
 through Jesus, and "recognizes the truth that 
 his old self is crucified with Christ, in order that 
 the body, the stronghold of Sin, may be rendered 
 powerless, so that he may no longer be a slave 
 to Sin." (Rom. 6:6.) Then the testimony he 
 and his fellow believers adopt is this 
 
 "Thank God, there is deliverance through 
 .Jesus Christ, Our Lord. . . . What the law 
 could not do, in so far as our earthly nature 
 weakened its action, God did, by sending his Son, 
 with a nature resembling our sinful na- 
 ture. . . . He condemned sin in that earthly 
 nature, so that the requirements of the Law might 
 be satisfied in us who live now in obedience, not to 
 our earthly natures, but to the Spirit. There 
 is, therefore, now no condemnation for those who 
 are in union with Christ Jesus; for through our 
 union with Christ Jesus the Law of the life-giv- 
 ing Spirit has set us free from the Law of Sin 
 and Death." (Rom. 7:25; 8:1-4.) 
 
 I have placed the first verse of the eighth 
 chapter last here to show as clearly as possible 
 the precise nature and force of Paul's reasoning. 
 His teaching at this point is the same as that of 
 the tenth chapter of the letter to the Hebrews. 
 He could not write of saving faith without se- 
 rious obscurity, but he could read its holy fruits 
 out of his own lofty experience. By its means 
 he had been brought into "union with Christ 
 
JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 235 
 
 Jesus." By God's lovingkindness he had been 
 saved through it. (Eph. 2:8.) "By God's 
 lovingkindness," that is to say, he had through 
 it been introduced to the place where he found 
 himself constantly united with Jesus in the de- 
 claration to God himself : 
 
 "See, I have come to do thy will." (Heb. 10 :9.) 
 He had passed out of both God's condemnation 
 and his own, because he had through Jesus passed 
 out of his life of sinning. God's frown and his 
 own rested upon the evil past which he had for- 
 saken. That could never, of course, be other- 
 wise, while he and God remained holy. Neither, 
 while he and God remained holy, could it ever be 
 otherwise than that they should both smile upon 
 his present. He had ceased to belong to his past 
 through quitting it for an ever-living present of 
 devotion to the holy will of God. Through yield- 
 ing himself up to all the requirements of this will 
 that were known to him, he had been taken up 
 into it, and by it had been purified, sanctified, or 
 set apart for a life of obedient doing and suffer- 
 ing, like that of Jesus himself. (Heb. 10:10.) 
 And how could God deny his approval to the 
 character, which, as the God of salvation, it was 
 his special work to impart? And did not God 
 demand of him that he also should give it his ap- 
 proval? 
 
 I have taken pains to elaborate this point be- 
 cause the self-approval of Christ-like men is still 
 viewed with grave suspicion by influential lead- 
 
236 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 ers of Christian thought. And I cannot pass 
 away from it without a further word. Where is 
 there one syllable of apostolic warrant for the cul- 
 tivation of a guilty self-accusing spirit? The 
 man who answers that the seventh chapter of 
 Romans certainly furnishes it, is a man who can 
 believe it possible for a Christian to live in that 
 experience and the experience of the eighth chap- 
 ter at one and the same time; and not only pos- 
 sible but necessary. To him holiness of charac- 
 ter may strike desire through and through, but 
 never the dispositions or the will. He thinks that 
 the joy of salvation arises from the conviction 
 that some one else was holy in our place, with a 
 holiness which on the one condition of humble 
 trust avails for us all, because it is imputed to 
 each believer in all its fullness. We are holy 
 for the most part by proxy. It is ours "to ex- 
 ult in God, through Jesus Christ, our Lord," not 
 because through his obedience unto death we have, 
 by the divine spirit, been brought into the com- 
 pletest conscious reconciliation or harmony with 
 God, but because he died in our place! and was 
 raised again for our justification. God pro- 
 nounces us righteous while he knows we are no 
 such thing, but still the bond-slaves of sin and 
 crying out in anguish, "Who shall deliver me?" 
 So long as we are here in the flesh we can do no 
 better than mingle our bitter cry of actual daily 
 defeat with our paean of triumph over a victory 
 achieved in our human nature by one, whom it 
 
JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 237 
 
 is ours to follow only with our fullest approval, 
 our earnest and abiding faith in his saving merits 
 and our agonized desires ; while our love towards 
 God and our fellows must always remain cold and 
 our wills in a constant state of partial paralysis ! 
 
 All this is simply the old priestly and heathen- 
 ish denial of the genuine Christian doctrine of 
 salvation by God's loving kindness through faith. 
 To justify may mean to pronounce righteous, but 
 in the New Testament it never means to pro- 
 nounce righteous apart from making the individ- 
 ual so declared righteous in himself to the pre- 
 cise length and breadth and depth and height 
 that he is pronounced such. God cannot be 
 mocked by men, and he does not mock himself. 
 He never calls a sinner a saint. Nor does he 
 count any saint more saintly than he actually is. 
 God cultivates reality. 
 
 It is by bringing men into his will into as 
 complete a conformity to his will as they feel called 
 to that God relieves and gladdens their con- 
 sciences. Apart from this there is no true peace 
 of mind, though there may be a false sense of 
 security. The New Testament is full of this 
 teaching. It is not always clearly set forth, but 
 the moment Paul, for instance, feels that he has 
 placed this truth in any peril, he hastens to re- 
 pair his fault. He says 
 
 "Do we, then, use this faith to abolish Law? 
 Heaven forbid ! No, we establish law." 
 
238 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 "What are we to say, then? Are we to con- 
 tinue in sin, in order that God's lovingkindness 
 may be multiplied? Heaven forbid! We be- 
 came dead to sin, and how can we go on living in 
 it?" (Rom. 3:31; 6:1, 2.) Beside this I may 
 place a word of John: 
 
 "You know that Christ appeared to take away 
 our sins; and in him sin has no place. No one 
 who maintains union with him lives in sin; no one 
 who lives in sin has ever really seen him or learnt 
 to know him. My children, do not let any one 
 mislead you. He who lives righteously is right- 
 eous as Christ is righteous. He who lives sin- 
 fully belongs to the Devil, for the Devil has sinned 
 from the first. It was for this that the Son of 
 God appeared, that he might undo the Devil's 
 work. No one who has received the New Life 
 from God lives sinfully, because the very nature 
 of God dwells within him; and he cannot live in 
 sin, because he has received the new Life from 
 God." (I Jno. 3:5-9.) How positive and unmis- 
 takable all this is. And John goes further yet. 
 He declares that God saves into holiness of dis- 
 position as well as into that holiness of the will 
 which is continually represented by right words 
 and deeds. He saves from hatred into love, and 
 he who has not been rescued from hating his fel- 
 low-men, and introduced to the experience of lov- 
 ing them (enemies and all) instead, has not re- 
 ceived the New Life from God at all, but is a child 
 of the Devil still. 
 
JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 239 
 
 He who lives righteously in disposition as well 
 as in desire, in volition, and in word and deed, is 
 a child of God; and to live thus he must be made 
 a child of God through the impartation by God, 
 and the reception by himself, of the new Life from 
 God, and so have the very nature of God dwell- 
 ing within him. There is no salvation through 
 imputed righteousness here. The saved sinner 
 does not wear a Christly robe which only God can 
 see, but one which all the world must recognize 
 as Christly. "He who lives righteously is right- 
 eous as Christ is righteous." And the very na- 
 ture of God coming to dwell within him, his dis- 
 positions also are made Christly, so that he loves 
 as Christ loves. 
 
 To enter into a salvation like this is to find 
 peace of conscience indeed. Where sins no longer 
 exist there can be no distressing consciousness 
 of their existence. Where the will of God is fully 
 entered into and done instead, there must at once 
 be realized a sense of self-approval, which, joined 
 to the divine approval, cannot but give birth to 
 the joy unspeakable to which some apostolic pens 
 testify. It was this peace, this joy, that the writer 
 of the "Hebrews" referred to in these words 
 
 "Once purified" and "Consciences clear from 
 sins." He saw plainly that because Jesus brought 
 all this about in every sinner, who took him as 
 his Savior from sinning, "there is no further need 
 of an offering for sin." (Heb. 10 :2-18.) Actual 
 deliverance from conscious sinning is the problem 
 
240 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 which God has worked out through Jesus for us 
 men under our very eyes. Just one more word 
 from Paul to show how clearly he perceived this 
 
 "But now that you have been set free from the 
 control of Sin, and have become servants to God, 
 the fruit that you reap is an ever-increasing holi- 
 ness, and the end Immortal Life." (Rom. 6:22.) 
 How could the man who wrote this have failed to 
 write also "Indeed, our main ground for satis- 
 faction is this our conscience tells us that our 
 conduct in the world, and still more in our rela- 
 tions with you, was marked by a purity of motive 
 and a sincerity that were inspired by God, and 
 was based, not on worldly policy, but on the help 
 of God." (2 Cor. 1 :12.) There is neither mock 
 modesty nor unworthy silence here. He was 
 neither afraid nor ashamed to say: 
 
 "It is through the love of God that I am what 
 I am, and the love that he showed me has not been 
 wasted." (I Cor. 15:10.) Years later this same 
 man "fixed his eyes upon the Council and began 
 
 " 'Brothers, for my part, I have always ordered 
 my life before God, with a clear conscience, up to 
 this very day.' " (Acts 23:1.) There is no evi- 
 dence whatever that Paul's conscience ever con- 
 victed him of one act of unfaithfulness towards 
 his Master from the day that he was first brought 
 to acknowledge him as such, to the moment in 
 which he sealed his testimony with his blood. 
 Once, as he tells us, a certain physical ailment 
 made his work so hard that 
 
JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 
 
 "I three times entreated the Lord, praying that 
 it might leave me. But his reply has been 'My 
 help is enough for you; for my strength attains 
 its perfection in the midst of weakness.' Most 
 gladly, then, will I boast all the more of my weak- 
 ness, so that the strength of the Christ may over- 
 shadow me. That is why I delight in weakness, 
 ill-treatment, hardships, persecution and difficul- 
 ties, when borne for Christ. For when I am weak, 
 then it is that I am strong." (II Cor. 12:8-10.) 
 
 This is the sense of personal righteousness to 
 which Jesus introduced men after his life upon 
 earth had ceased. He made their past seem un- 
 worthy and evil to them, only to give them such 
 characters and careers as would fill their souls 
 with holy satisfaction, and that before God. He 
 took away the painful sense of sin so thoroughly 
 that in some cases at least it seems to have caused 
 distress only in connection with occasional recol- 
 lections of that past, which, through his loving- 
 kindness they had so thoroughly renounced. What 
 is he represented as having done in this direction 
 in the days of his flesh ? 
 
 He is represented as having done the same then 
 as later. The case of Zacchaeus and of "the 
 woman who was an outcast in the town" prove this. 
 There is nothing in either of these stories about 
 the sense of sin which Jesus awakened. That this 
 sense was awakened who can doubt who has read 
 also the accounts of Peter's denial and Judas's 
 betrayal of Jesus? Yet it receives not one word 
 
242 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 of mention. Why? Because that was not the 
 thing which Jesus emphasized in his dealings with 
 sinful men and women. Jesus was a positive and 
 not a negative reformer a positive and not a 
 negative Savior. He swallowed up all the nega- 
 tives! of the Decalogue in his three positives. 
 "What is the first of all the commandments?" 
 "The first," answered Jesus, "is 'Hear, O 
 Israel; the Lord our God is the one Lord; and 
 thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy 
 heart and with all thy .soul, and with all thy 
 strength.' The second is this 'Thou shalt love 
 thy neighbor as thou dost; love thyself.' ' (Mark 
 12:28-31.) Jesus emptied human hearts and 
 lives of their sins by filling them with his most 
 passionate striving after the highest righteous- 
 ness. He built upon DO, not upon DO NOT, 
 and set men's faces towards the light of the glow- 
 ing future, instead of towards the darkness of 
 the days they had misspent. So his Zacchaeus's 
 words were not those of direct confession at all, 
 but of such a hearty and sturdy profession as 
 led Jesus to declare before all the cavillers 
 
 "Salvation has come to this house to-day, for 
 even this man is a son of Abraham." (Luke 19: 
 9.) With the woman at his feet in the house of 
 Simon the Pharisee it was the same. "Simon, I 
 have something to say to you." "Pray do so, 
 Teacher," Simon answered; and Jesus began: 
 "There were two people who were in debt to a 
 money-lender; one owed fifty pounds, and the 
 
JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 
 
 other five. As they were unable to pay, he for- 
 gave them both. Which of them, do you think, 
 will love him the more?" "I suppose," answered 
 Simon, "it will be the man to whom he forgave 
 the greater debt." "You are right," said Jesus, 
 and then, turning to the woman, he said to Si- 
 mon "Do you see this woman? I came into your 
 house you gave me no water for my feet, but she 
 has made my feet wet with tears and dried them 
 with her hair. You did not give me one kiss, but 
 she, from the moment I came in, has not ceased 
 to kiss my feet. You did not anoint my head even 
 with oil, but she has anointed my head with per- 
 fume. And for this, I tell you, her sins, many as 
 they are, have been pardoned, because she has 
 loved greatly; but one who has little pardoned 
 him, loves but little." 
 
 This was Jesus's way. He transmuted the 
 deepest sense of sin into the most passionate 
 spirit of holy service. He could not have done 
 otherwise and been the Savior he was. The nurs^ 
 ing of regrets is worse than idle and remorse is 
 suicidal. It was along this path that Judas 
 moved bearing the cord which proved as treacher- 
 ous towards him as he had towards his Master; 
 and Jesus flew from his grave to save Peter from 
 it. It is only as our regrets lose themselves in 
 our love for God in Christ that we become posi- 
 tively holy and greatly useful. Therefore this 
 is the one way of salvation to which Jesus intro- 
 duces us. A most essential portion of Paul's 
 
A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 motto was "Forgetting what lies behind." 
 Only as he continually succeeded in doing 
 this did he find himself "straining every nerve for 
 that which lies in front." (Phil. 3:13.) Regret 
 gnaws away the energies and paralyzes aspira- 
 tion, while grateful love catches visions of the high- 
 est possibilities, and harnesses every power for 
 victorious achievement. 
 
 May we not listen to Jesus while he tells us how 
 the Father deals with his sinful children? He is 
 relating the story of the Two Sons and has reached 
 the place where the lost young man, returning 
 from his deep want and shame, and dragging him- 
 self painfully along in his raggedness, is met by 
 his Father, who "saw him while he was still a long 
 way off, was deeply moved, and ran and threw his 
 arms round his neck and kissed him." The 
 wretched prodigal wails out 
 
 "I sinned against Heaven and against you; I 
 am no longer fit to be called your son; make me 
 one of your hired servants." But the father is 
 so deaf to all this that he does not appear to have 
 heard one word. What he has heard is his son's 
 spirit of contrition, and his utter readiness and 
 longing desire to do his whole will, even in the 
 lowest place. So instead of taking him at his 
 word, "the father turned to his servants and 
 said 'Be quick and fetch a robe the very best 
 and put it on him ; give him a ring for his finger 
 and sandals for his feet ; and bring the fatted calf 
 and kill it, and let us eat and make merry; for 
 
JESUS AND THE SENSE OF SIN 
 
 here is my son who was dead, and is alive again, 
 was lost, and is found.' " 
 
 We must make him forget, we must make him 
 forget ; his bad past must be crowded out of his 
 active memory even, by means of the high place 
 and the holy joys we shall make his! This has 
 always been the father's spirit towards his chil- 
 dren who return to him from their wanderings. 
 The Priest's provision is the humbling, painful or 
 costly penance, the Pharisee's the place of the 
 outcast who must never be permitted to forget, 
 while that of the Father is all that belongs to son- 
 ship in that holy mansion, which is our own 
 Father's house. Jesus strengthened to the utmost 
 the spirit of self-reverence, and the conscience 
 which does not accuse. 
 
XV 
 
 JESUS THE BEARER AWAY OF SIN 
 
 The bearer away must first become the bearer. 
 No load can be carried to a distance until it has 
 first been laid upon the shoulders which are to 
 be burdened by it for the time. This fact is most 
 distinctly set forth in one of the symbols of Mo- 
 saism. 
 
 There was each year a supreme day of atone- 
 ment for the Israelitish people. Of the animals 
 figuring in connection with the bloody and un- 
 bloody rites of this day were two goats. Between 
 these there was no difference either in perfection 
 or worth, when they were taken by the Priest 
 and set before Jehovah at the door of the tent 
 of meeting to be chosen by lot, one for Jehovah, 
 the other for Azazel. As soon as the lot was cast, 
 the one that fell to Jehovah was slaughtered, and, 
 as it poured out its life, its blood was caught in 
 a basin and in this basin borne by the high priest 
 through the curtain into the Holiest Place, where 
 it was sprinkled by him seven times upon and be- 
 fore the Mercy Seat. Borne out again it was at 
 length mixed with the blood of the bullock, which 
 seems to have been slain before it, and used in 
 further acts of purification upon the places and 
 246 
 
JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 
 
 furniture provided for the priestly and popular 
 worship. This done the high priest proceeded 
 according to these specifications 
 
 "He shall lay both his hands upon the head 
 of the live goat, and confess over him all the ini- 
 quities of the children of Israel, and all their trans- 
 gressions, even all their sins; and he shall put 
 them upon the head of the goat, and shall send 
 him away by the hand of a man that is in readi- 
 ness into the wilderness : and the goat shall bear 
 upon him all their iniquities unto a solitary land : 
 and he shall let go the goat in the wilderness." 
 
 Thus the goat for Azazel the scape-goat 
 became first the bearer of all Israel's sins, and aft- 
 erwards, under superior guidance and control, the 
 bearer away of these sins. 
 
 Let us be very specific here. These goats were 
 the means of getting Jesus placed before us first 
 as the bearer of our sins, and then as the bearer 
 away of our sins. The writers of the New Testa- 
 ment were Israelites and thought and wrote as 
 such. They could never get away from the re- 
 ligious imagery of their race. Now we shall see 
 as we proceed that, in their estimation, Jesus 
 took the place of both goats, as well as of all the 
 other victims and sin-bearers of the Mosaic ritual. 
 He took the place of the first goat as well as of 
 the second, the place of the second, as well as of 
 the first. 
 
 Fixing our attention now upon the goat for 
 Azazel the scape-goat let us note how he be- 
 
248 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 comes the bearer of sins. He becomes such 
 through their confession. He is neither killed nor 
 wounded. No violence whatever is visited upon 
 him. He is not looked upon with dislike but with 
 favor. He is not regarded with hatred but with 
 affection. The people gather about him and with 
 one voice, through the lips of the High Priest, 
 they say, and rejoice as they say it This is our 
 goat, our goat for Azazel, our scape-goat, our 
 goat that is here for the express purpose of bear- 
 ing and then bearing away our sins. For this 
 goat bless we Jehovah ! Here by confessing our 
 sins we renounce them and part with them forever. 
 Henceforth may they never burden us more ! And 
 they cannot afflict him, for our goat cannot sink 
 under human sins, though he can bear them away, 
 representing as he does, the salvation of our holy 
 God, as he causes the words of our mouths and the 
 meditations of our hearts to flow forth in purity 
 and truth before him, our minds to meditate night 
 and day upon his law and our whole lives to image 
 forth his will. 
 
 The typical priest of Mosaism, of course, never 
 rose to this height. He was earthly, sensual, dev- 
 ilish. He could not see the truth in his own sys- 
 tem. He could not believe in the possible thing 
 the actual blessed deliverance of men from their 
 sins themselves. He could only believe in the im- 
 possible thing namely, their deliverance from all 
 the penalties of their sins. Where faith ceases 
 credulity always begins. The man who cannot 
 
JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 249 
 
 believe in the thing which is rational will always 
 find a place in his creed for the thing which is 
 irrational. The priest named the sins of Israel 
 one after another, placing them with his own 
 hands upon the head of the goat, and then 
 through some mental legerdemain, gazed after it, 
 as it was being led out of his sight by the "man in 
 readiness," under the hazy impression that it 
 was bearing away into the wilderness, not those 
 sins at all, but their various penalties of broken 
 health, intellectual weakness, and moral and spir- 
 itual disability. Or, failing even here, he saw as 
 sin's penalty only the vengeful wrath of an infinite 
 Shylock, who, however, might be won to mercy 
 through the plentiful shedding of blood not hu- 
 man. 
 
 But the prophet in Israel, to whatever tribe 
 he might belong, saw the truth, and rejoiced in 
 the liberty from sinning which it continually as- 
 sured him. To this prophet we owe every uplift- 
 ing thing which the Old Testament contains. To 
 him the service of God always meant an escape 
 from his sins themselves into the holy will of God 
 an escape and deliverance divinely prepared 
 and divinely effected. The rites of his religion 
 in general, and the rites of the day of atonement 
 in particular, all spoke to him of this great sal- 
 vation. Behind them all he saw God himself so 
 distinctly, as the God and Rock of his salvation, 
 that again and again he felt himself in no need 
 of any further continuance, or use, of the ap- 
 
250 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 pointed rites. He met God in the synagogue as 
 well as in the temple, and under the stars as well 
 as in the synagogue, and cried 
 
 "Whom have I in heaven but thee? 
 And there is none upon earth that I desire beside 
 
 thee. 
 
 My flesh, even my heart faileth; 
 But God is the strength of my heart, and my portion 
 forever." (Psalm 73:25-26.) 
 
 Let us now look back. The goat for Azazel 
 must forever stand associated with the goat for 
 Jehovah. There is no confession of sin, and con- 
 sequently, no "remission" or escape from sin it- 
 self, contemplated in the Mosaic ritual apart from 
 the shedding of blood. This is because that ritual 
 contemplated sin to the utmost, as well as salva- 
 tion to the utmost. The two things absolutely 
 must stand together. Salvation to the uttermost 
 implies sin to the uttermost, and sin to the utter- 
 most demands salvation to the uttermost. And 
 sin is to the uttermost when it slays the perfect 
 being, because it declares that, being perfect, he 
 should be slain. Here sin represents the perver- 
 sion of all right thinking, shows us conscience, in 
 the time if its supreme test, saying in the most 
 absolute way I ought, when the only proper word 
 for it is an absolute I ought not ; the will deciding 
 to take life at the point where most of all it should 
 decide to preserve it; and the whole man throw- 
 ing himself] into an act of murder in the very case 
 
JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 251 
 
 in which he should be giving all his powers to the 
 work of approving, exalting and glorifying the 
 being whom he makes his victim. And the pic- 
 ture ^rawn by Mosaism is blacker yet. Intellect, 
 conscience, will, the whole man, must do all this 
 in the name of God, and through God's chief 
 priest. It was the high priest himself who slew 
 the perfect being, Jehovah's chosen one, the goat 
 for Jehovah; and he slew it as the people's repre- 
 sentative. Their vote went that way. Through 
 him they all slew it. The prophet had the true 
 vision when at last he saw and said that each 
 bloody offering testified to a murder, besides other 
 outrages. (Isa. 66:3.) 
 
 First, then, under Mosaism we see an innocent 
 and perfect representative of its kind slaughtered 
 on this one definite ground, among others, that it 
 was perfect. It was on account of its perfection 
 that it was singled out and made a victim. Then, 
 as if this victim had come to life again, we see 
 the very men who slew it gathered about a being 
 just like it, confessing their sins upon its head 
 through the lips of the same high priest through 
 whose hands they had done their deed of slaugh- 
 ter, and then, with him, gazing upon it as it bears 
 their sins away from them into the wilderness, 
 which they propose never to visit to resume them. 
 And all this we say represents Jesus as the bearer 
 and bearer-away of sin. 
 
 In this study of Jesus, then, we must first look 
 upon him as the bearer of sin. He is the bearer 
 
252 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 of sin first as the perfect man who, because of his 
 perfect goodness, was murdered, and then as the 
 perfect man in whose presence sinful men stand 
 convicted of their sins, confessing 1 and renouncing 
 them. The lot fell to him first for Jehovah and 
 then for Azazel. The goats were two and he is 
 one and the same Jesus. They were two because 
 the first could not be made to live again after be- 
 ing slaughtered. Jesus is one because it is his 
 to say 
 
 "I died, and I am alive forever and ever." 
 (Rev. 1:18.) Jesus on the cross as the bearer of 
 sin was a familiar thought to the primitive Jewish 
 Christian mind. Peter gave it expression when 
 he wrote "He himself carried our sins in his 
 own body to the cross." (I Pet. 2:24.) This 
 bearing of human sins by Jesus was not mysti- 
 cal but actual. A considerable list of these sins 
 can easily be made out. All sins came upon him 
 there in their root principle of selfishness. Jesus 
 had told his persecutors early that the self-seek- 
 ing spirit could not but prevent their acceptance 
 of him, and that this self-seeking was a genuine 
 renunciation of God himself. (Jno. 5:44.) This 
 self-seeking led these persecutors to the place 
 where "Pilate knew that it was out of jealousy 
 (or envy) that they had given Jesus up to him." 
 (Matt. 27:18.) In the Upper Room Jesus 
 said 
 
 "They have both seen and hated both me and 
 my Father. And so is fulfilled what is said in 
 
JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 253 
 
 their law 'They hated me without a cause.' " 
 (Jno. 15-^4, 25.) At an earlier date he sternly 
 rebuked these men in such words as these 
 
 "You are children of your father the Devil, 
 and you are determined to do what your father 
 loves to do. He was a murderer from the first 
 . . . He is a liar and the father of lying." 
 (Jno. 8:44.) He who reads the story of the trial 
 of Jesus in the light of such statements as these 
 will see that Jesus bore to his cross besides sel- 
 fishness that fruitful mother of all human sins 
 envy, jealousy, hatred, malice, blasphemy, coward- 
 ice, lying, perjury, subornation of perjury, and 
 wanton cruelty and murder. He went to his 
 cross, bore it, and had it bear him, as the per- 
 fectly innocent victim of all these forms of human 
 sin. He bore them in his body, which they slew, 
 sin proving mightier than his physical frame and 
 that which constituted it a living organism. Sin 
 as death crushed out his physical life. 
 
 Thus he bore our sins. But he did not in this 
 act bear them away. On the cross Jesus endured 
 our sins. Neither Judas who betrayed him, nor 
 Peter who denied him with oaths and imprecations, 
 nor Pilate who in his cowardice gave him up to 
 death, when he should have stood by his own ver- 
 dict of acquittal, nor the crowd which voted for 
 his crucifixion, nor the hierarchy which had at 
 last consummated its murderous purpose, was 
 freed from one of his sins or from an atom of his 
 guilt, through the shedding of his blood. Only 
 
254 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 the perverted priestly mind can believe such 
 topsy-turvy teaching. But one moment of serious 
 reflection was needed by any one of the whole un- 
 worthy lot to convince him that his sin and guilt 
 alike were carried to their climax in the moment 
 when their victim, having cried out, "It is fin- 
 ished," breathed out his life to God in the words 
 "Father, into thy hands I commit my Spirit." 
 (Luke 23:46.) It was because the conscience of 
 Judas was true at last, that, in view of this mo- 
 ment and all it meant for him, he rushed to the 
 chief priest in a frenzied act of confession and 
 restitution, and then in the blackness of despair 
 went "to his proper place." How much would it 
 have comforted him to know that his victim loved 
 him still and was even then praying for his mur- 
 derers? Is murder rendered no murder at all be- 
 cause a Jesus, or a Stephen after him, is god-like 
 enough to die wishing for his slayers the mercy, 
 instead of the vengeance, of Heaven ? Nay. The 
 vision of such innocent and surpassing love inten- 
 sifies their sense of guilt. How Peter must have 
 suffered under his crushing consciousness of ill- 
 desert, in view of the part he played during the 
 fatal trial, until Jesus met him in mercy after his 
 resurrection! It was this sense of his own guilt 
 which so distinctly fitted him to charge home to 
 them the more awful guilt of others in such words 
 as these 
 
 "Jesus of Nazareth, a man whose mission from 
 God to you was proved by miracles, wonders and 
 
JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 255 
 
 signs, which God showed among you through him, 
 as you know full well . . . you, by the hands 
 of lawless men, nailed to a cross and put to death. 
 But God released him from the pangs of death 
 and raised him to life, it being impossible for 
 death to retain its hold upon him. ... So 
 let the whole nation of Israel know beyond all 
 doubt, that God has made him both Lord and 
 Christ this very Jesus whom you crucified." 
 
 Were the people comforted when they heard 
 this? Did they reason to the swift conclusion 
 that the resurrection at least had made all things 
 right for them, because it proved that they had 
 simply been playing into the hands of God and 
 helping him towards his triumph over human 
 wickedness in general? Far as their intellectual 
 perversion had gone, it had not gone as far as 
 that. God's triumph thoroughly alarmed them, 
 as well it might. "They were conscience smitten 
 and said to Peter and to the rest of the apos- 
 tles 
 
 "Brothers, what can we do?" 
 
 "Repent," answered Peter. (Act 2:22.) 
 
 Now to get this whole matter before us from 
 the view-point of the Mosaic Day of Atonement, it 
 is necessary for me to proceed to another word 
 of Peter. Addressing numbers of these same per- 
 sons again shortly after the day of Pentecost it- 
 self, Peter urged home these facts 
 
 "You, I say, disowned the Holy and Righteous 
 
256 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 One, and asked for the release of a murderer! 
 The very Guide to Life you put to death! But 
 God raised him from the dead. . . . There- 
 fore repent and turn, that your sins may be 
 wiped away. . . . 'And it shall be that 
 should any one among the people not listen 
 to that Prophet he shall be utterly de- 
 stroyed.' . . . For you, first, God raised 
 up his servant, and sent him to bless you, by 
 turning each one of you from his wicked ways." 
 (Acts 3:14, 15, 19, 26.) The gist of all this 
 is that the great purpose of God in sending his 
 Son into the world was to lead Israel into blessed- 
 ness by leading them out of their sins, but they 
 had utterly rejected this purpose of God and had 
 through their High Priest "put to death" "the 
 very Guide to Life." Just as through that same 
 high priest they had from year to year on their 
 Day of Atonement slain Jehovah's goat they had 
 now through him murdered Jehovah's "Servant," 
 "his Holy and Righteous One." But God had 
 not abandoned his purpose to save them. On 
 the contrary he had raised Jesus up again by 
 bringing him back from the dead, and now he 
 was offered to them afresh as their bearer and 
 bearer-away of sins. In direct view of his liv- 
 ing perfections, his holiness and righteousness, it 
 was theirs to look upon their own sins and 
 recognize their utter badness, theirs to repent of 
 them all, confessing and renouncing them, 
 and seeing them borne away through the di- 
 
JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 257 
 
 vine forgiveness as, in symbol, they had been 
 borne away from year to year by the goat for 
 Azazel. 
 
 Some distinctions must be made here. From 
 the standpoint of man's part in it the death of 
 Jesus was the worst and most indefensible of all 
 murders. And there is really no other stand- 
 point from which to view it. Jesus himself had 
 no part in it except to endure it, under tremen- 
 dous protest, as I have elsewhere pointed out. 
 His Father strengthened him for and during the 
 ordeal, by keeping his heart unalterably set upon 
 that testimony for the truth which it was his to 
 utter and to live. It was a deed of unutterable 
 wickedness, which God in his respect for the 
 human freedom established by himself, could not 
 avert. Every effort of Jesus himself to avert it 
 was also an effort of his Father put forth through 
 him. No other view whatever can be entertained 
 without making our Father and his a partner be- 
 forehand in the most shameful crime which has 
 ever blackened the pages of human history. 
 There is no contradiction to all this in the words 
 of Jesus "I lay down my life to receive it 
 again. No one took it from me, but I lay it down 
 of myself." His was not) the death of the suicide, 
 but of the martyr. These words simply repre- 
 sent that splendid sense of victory in defeat which 
 arose in his mind in connection with his complete 
 entrance into the will of his Father, and that 
 vision of the final outcome of all with which his 
 
258 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Father cheered his heart. (Jno. 10:17, 18; Heb. 
 
 The death of Jesus, therefore, did not procure 
 forgiveness for men. If anything could have 
 made their forgiveness impossible, any one but 
 Jesus himself would have said it was that. As 
 it was, his first prayer on the cross, uttered, prob- 
 ably, while one of the nails was plowing its 
 way through his flesh and bones into the wood, 
 was "Father, forgive them ; they do not know 
 what they are doing." Doubt has been thrown 
 upon the authenticity of this prayer, but it is 
 certainly in full harmony with all the facts of 
 the occasion, as well as with the spirit of Jesus 
 himself. 
 
 What, then, in the mercy of God has the death 
 of Jesus, joined with the fact of his resurrection, 
 accomplished for our race? This. It has done 
 more than all the wickedness of men besides to 
 drive home to their consciences the fact that they 
 are sinners in need of the salvation of God. It 
 did this at Pentecost, has done it ever since, is 
 doing it now, and will continue to do it, until the 
 last sin of all has stood indefensible in its pres- 
 ence. This also it has done, or men might have 
 committed suicide one after another like Judas 
 it has revealed that love of God which endures all 
 things that it may forgive all things, and bears 
 with all sorts of sin, that it may save us from 
 them all. It not only brings to conviction of 
 sin; it brings also to repentance, that is to say, 
 
JESUS THE BEARER OF SIN 259 
 
 to the confession and abandonment of sin, and to 
 such a trust in the mercy and love of God as in- 
 spires to the largest possible acquisition of his 
 whole mind and character. In short, the sending 
 of Jesus into the world by his father and ours to 
 endure the death of the cross, so commends his 
 love to us that our love of sin breaks down before 
 the vision, and we accept and embrace his right- 
 eousness in its stead, to find it transforming us 
 and building itself into our whole character and 
 life. We know that those who slew him ought to 
 have accepted his guidance out of their sins into 
 the righteousness of the Kingdom of God at once, 
 and without reddening their hands with his blood. 
 We know ourselves to be of the same race and 
 character as they. We call their crime our own, 
 and, fleeing from our guilt of the cross, we 
 "draw near boldly to the Throne of Love" to 
 find there, "the pity and love" we need. (Heb. 
 4:16.) 
 
 Finally, it is not the Jesus who died that is 
 the Savior of our race. He offered himself to 
 his people to be their Savior and through them, 
 the Savior of all men besides. But they re- 
 jected and crucified him. It is not Jesus in our 
 mortal flesh who is our Savior. Paul took in this 
 fact and wrote "If we have known Christ as a 
 man in the flesh, yet now we do so no longer." 
 (2 Cor. 5:16.) The Jesus who is our Savior is 
 he who was raised from the dead and placed by 
 his God and Father "above all Angels and Arch- 
 
260 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 angels of every rank and above every name that 
 can be named." (Eph. 1:20, 21.) Yet both 
 are one. "He who went down is the same as he 
 who went up up beyond the highest heaven, that 
 he might fill all things with his presence. And 
 he it is who gave to the Church Apostles, 
 prophets, missionaries, pastors and teachers." 
 (Eph. 4:10, 11.) 
 
 "To him who loves us and freed us from our 
 sins by his own blood in his utmost love and he 
 made us 'a Kingdom of Priests in the service of 
 God,' his Father ! to him be ascribed glory and 
 dominion forever. Amen." (Rev. 1 :5, 6.) 
 
XVI 
 
 JESUS THE MEDIATOR AND 
 INTERCESSOR 
 
 The mediator is the middleman in any trans- 
 action where the principals concerned do not find 
 it convenient or possible to meet each other in 
 person. There are various middlemen, bearing a 
 variety of names and discharging a variety of 
 functions in trade and commerce. Barristers and 
 attorneys are the middlemen of the courts of law, 
 where the principals in each case stand in the 
 background under the name of clients. The mid- 
 dlemen of sovereigns and sovereign states go un- 
 der such titles as plenipotentiaries and ambassa- 
 dors. These are servants who have been given 
 full authority to act on behalf of their sovereign 
 masters. 
 
 A second sort of mediator or middleman is the 
 arbiter or umpire, who is chosen jointly by both 
 the parties in a given dispute, contest or com- 
 petition, to say what is fair and equal between 
 them in the case. He may have much work in 
 bringing his principals to see and conform to 
 the requirements of righteousness, particularly 
 where their difference has become a quarrel, and 
 961 
 
262 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 a dogged obstinacy has been developed on one 
 side or both. 
 
 The office of the intercessor is quite closely 
 akin to that of the ambassador and arbiter, and 
 its functions are very often involved in the work 
 of these. The intercessor pleads with one per- 
 son or power on behalf of another. If he is in 
 the place of an arbiter he may be compelled to 
 plead with each of his clients to give due con- 
 sideration to the other's claims, and to assume 
 the place and attitude required both by the facts 
 of the case and the entirely friendly agreement 
 and relationship which they have in contempla- 
 tion. 
 
 Either ambassador or arbiter may easily find 
 himself in personal peril solely on account of his 
 faithful discharge of the duties of his position. 
 The more he pleads for the rights of the case 
 which he is representing, the more offensive will 
 he make himself to the party who is determined 
 to have his own way, right or wrong. If he per- 
 sists in doing his whole duty, he may even lose 
 his life, in spite of the fact that his person is very 
 properly considered inviolable. 
 
 According to New Testament thought Jesus 
 holds both offices. He is a mediator, and he is an 
 intercessor. He is God's Servant. Then he is 
 the Servant who was sent to men with God's mes- 
 sage. He is also represented as clothed with 
 sovereign powers, and as being in some sense 
 the vicegerent, as well as the ambassador, of 
 
JESUS THE MEDIATOR 
 
 Heaven. This is quite natural, for the ambassa- 
 dor is always a vicegerent to the full extent of 
 the work which it is his to do on behalf of his 
 country or his sovereign. These writers tell us, 
 too, that he pleads, as well as demands, seeking 
 to move by persuasion and by personal influence, 
 as well as by that awe which infinite authority is 
 calculated to inspire. 
 
 So he speaks for God to men. He is also rep- 
 resented as speaking for men to God. He is, 
 therefore, doubly an intercessor, and seems at 
 times rather an arbiter than an ambassador pure 
 and simple. He is as much devoted to the wel- 
 fare of men as to the unfolding purpose of God. 
 
 In his illustrations of the Kingdom of Heaven 
 Jesus represents that Kingdom as "a treasure 
 hidden in a field, which a man found and hid 
 again, and then, in his delight, went and sold 
 all that he had and bought that field; and again 
 as a merchant in search of choice pearls, who, 
 finding one of great value, went and sold every- 
 thing that he had, and bought it." (Matt. 13: 
 44-46.) From the viewpoint of these he set 
 forth "the Kingdom" as capable of becoming the 
 personal possession of "a merchant" or "a man." 
 If this "merchant" and "man" do not stand 
 for Jesus himself, which is doubtful, then 
 they represent that whole class of seekers 
 after the highest and best, who, through all the 
 centuries from the first, have seen in what Jesus 
 bore with him from Heaven to earth, the richest 
 
264 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 treasures of their kind ever brought within 
 human reach. This interpretation harmonizes 
 well with such words of Paul as "God's hidden 
 Truth, even Christ himself, in whom all treasures 
 of wisdom and knowledge lie hidden. 
 For in Christ the Godhead in all its fullness dwells 
 incarnate, and by your union with him, you also 
 are filled with it." (Col. 2:2, 9.) 
 
 When Jesus wished to specify or particularize 
 at this point he emphasized two things truth 
 and life. Before Pilate at the last he was the 
 King of the truth, with everyone who was on the 
 side of truth listening to his voice. (Jno. 18: 
 37.) Those who were constant to his message 
 found out the truth, and the truth made them 
 free. (Jno. 8:32.) "His sheep listened to his 
 voice, he knew them, and they followed him; and 
 he gave them Immortal Life." (Jno. 10:27, 28.) 
 It was thus that he spoke of those whom he at- 
 tracted and inspired. But there was another 
 class which he addressed in terms of rebuke and 
 denunciation "You refuse to come to me to have 
 Life." (Jno. 5:40.) "It is because I speak the 
 truth to you that you do not believe me. You 
 are children of your Father, the Devil, and you 
 are determined to do what your father loves to 
 do. He was a murderer from the first, and did 
 not stand by the truth, because there was no 
 truth in him." (Jno; 10:44, 45.) 
 
 Coming forth from the Father he bore his 
 message in his own person as well as upon his 
 
JESUS THE MEDIATOR 265 
 
 lips. The demands of this message were peremp- 
 tory. The truth and the life were the riches of 
 a divinely created manhood, which was produced 
 in every one who entered into union with him by 
 yielding himself up to the will of God as he did. 
 Entering thus into God's will was entering the 
 Kingdom of God, to be made the possessor of all 
 its blessings all its Truth and all its Life, as 
 these were progressively revealed. To refuse to 
 come into union with him thus was to commit the 
 gravest possible offense against God. It was to 
 turn one's back upon both his authority and the 
 richest benefits he could offer. It was to deny 
 one's self an infinite good, and at the same time 
 to deny the infinite love the pleasure and honor 
 of bestowing that good. 
 
 jJesus saw this so clearly that he could not con- 
 ceal his disturbance of mind in view of it. He 
 was deeply pained by the dishonor that was thus 
 put upon both his Father and himself, and the 
 peril and loss of those who involved themselves 
 in this guilt. Here lay the sin against the Holy 
 Spirit. It was a rejection of the good and the 
 Holy in the fullest possible recognition of their 
 infinite value in themselves. 
 
 Jesus made a clear distinction between this 
 and the rejection of himself personally. That he 
 declared could be forgiven. He could be misun- 
 derstood, and so far as men refused him their 
 confidence and support because they did not know 
 him for what he really was, they did it innocently. 
 
266 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 But no man could consciously turn his back upon 
 the true and the holy, and at the same time be- 
 lieve himself to be in the service of God. Know- 
 ing that he had definitely chosen falsehood in- 
 stead of truth, he could not but know also that 
 he had chosen death in place of life. To do this 
 was to reject God in himself or directly, and not 
 simply to reject him as he could be, and was, 
 revealed in a human life. 
 
 Jesus was God's ambassador. But because the 
 credentials he bore had to be translated into terms 
 of our humanity, they could be sincerely doubted. 
 But truth and holiness, wherever they stood 
 clearly revealed before the eyes of any man, and 
 whatever the thing or person in whom they in- 
 hered might be, presented an authority which was 
 wholly divine, and were rejected, therefore, at 
 the absolute peril of the soul. (Matt. 12:32.) 
 It was on this account that Jesus said at the 
 last 
 
 "They have no excuse for their sin. . . . 
 They have both seen and hated both me and my 
 Father. They hated me without cause" and as 
 "the Way and the Truth and the Life." (Jno. 
 15:22, 24, 25; 14:6.) They have rejected the 
 truth which I have brought to them, knowing it 
 to be the truth of God and they simply would not 
 have the Life I offered them, because it could be 
 made theirs only through their acceptance of the 
 Truth itself, which I announced in their hearing 
 
JESUS THE MEDIATOR 267 
 
 and lived before their eyes. Their rejection of 
 my Father is as complete as their rejection of 
 myself. 
 
 Paul saw himself joined to Christ as an am- 
 bassador and perceived the double effect of his 
 work in that capacity. As it had been with 
 Jesus so was it with him. He was wholly de- 
 voted to God's will in the premises, and he yearned 
 over the sinful men to whom he had been sent. 
 He wished them saved from their rebellion and all 
 its terrible consequences, but only on God's terms. 
 He had no dream that these could or should be 
 changed. It was his to present the Truth and 
 along with it the Life. So was it also with every 
 other apostle and evangelist whom God had as- 
 sociated with him in the work. The choice of 
 accepting or rejecting the things they offered 
 lay with those whom they addressed. And Paul 
 saw that in many cases rejection was only too 
 fatally easy and sure. So we find him joining 
 his Master in quoting from Isaiah 
 
 "Go to this nation and say 
 
 'You will hear with your ears without ever under- 
 standing, 
 
 And, though you have eyes, you will see without 
 ever perceiving/ 
 
 For the mind of this nation is grown dense, 
 
 And their ears are dull of hearing, 
 
 Their eyes also have they closed; 
 
 Lest some day they should see with their eyes, 
 
 And with their ears they should hear, 
 
268 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 And in their mind they should understand and 
 should turn and I should heal them." 
 
 (Matt. 13:14, 15; Acts 28:26-27.) 
 
 We find him also voicing his vision, and his feel- 
 ings thus: 
 
 "We are the fragrance of Christ ascending to 
 God both among those who are in the path of 
 Salvation and among those who are in the path 
 to Ruin. To the latter we are an odor which 
 arises from death and tells of Death; to the 
 former an odor which arises from life and tells 
 of Life. But who is equal to such a task?" 
 (II Cor. 2:15, 16.) 
 
 It is to Paul that we owe the clearest possible 
 statement of the way in which the office of in- 
 tercessor found itself linked with the work of the 
 ambassador or mediator, in his own case. After 
 showing how the mediatorship of Jesus had al- 
 ready established itself as a transforming and 
 re-creating agency among men, and declaring of 
 every one who had thus been brought into union 
 with Christ, that "he is a new creation a new 
 being" he continues 
 
 "But all this is the work of God who reconciled 
 us to himself through Christ, and gave us the 
 Ministry of Reconciliation. ... It is, then, 
 on Christ's behalf that we are acting as am- 
 bassadors, God, as it were, appealing to you 
 through us. We implore you on Christ's behalf 
 Be reconciled to God." (II Cor. 5:17, 18, 20.) 
 
JESUS THE MEDIATOR 
 
 To intercede is to entreat one person or set of 
 persons on behalf of another. Here "Christ" 
 and "God" are the persons on behalf of whom the 
 entreaties or intercessions are represented as 
 being made ; while the persons entreated, or inter- 
 ceded with, are sinful men, the end aimed at being 
 their reconciliation to God. It was God who was 
 appealing and imploring, and he was doing this 
 through men whom he had already reconciled to 
 himself. To fit these men for this work, he had 
 brought them through their union with Christ 
 into such active participation with his saving de- 
 sire and purpose, that they had definitely joined 
 him in his love for their unsaved fellow-men, his 
 yearnings over them and his efforts to reconcile 
 them in both character and life to himself. Thus 
 Paul and his co-workers found themselves in the 
 place of "God's fellow-workers!" (1 Cor. 3:9.) 
 They were God's ambassadors to men and God's 
 intercessors among men. 
 
 Here it can be seen very plainly that the office 
 and work of the intercessor grows directly out of 
 God's love for sinful men. Their sinfulness had 
 made them blind so that they could not see, un- 
 less their eyes were opened; deaf, so that they 
 could not hear, unless their ears were unstopped; 
 and callous of heart, so that they could not feel, 
 unless their hearts were touched in some sovereign 
 way. Then Jesus came as the great physician 
 ambassador, to open blind eyes by means of a 
 stupendous vision, to unstop deaf ears by a touch 
 
270 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 of the divine finger, and to melt human hearts by 
 the oxy-hydrogen flame of divine love. And Jesus 
 the ambassador became also Jesus the intercessor, 
 who pleaded for God with men, entreating them 
 not to give further pain to God's heart by longer 
 persistence in the sins which were burdening them 
 more and more, and would bring upon them over- 
 whelming disaster. "Come to me, all ye who toil 
 and are burdened and I will give you rest!" 
 (Matt. 11:28). My Father sent me to you be- 
 cause he loves you, and he looks upon you as his 
 straying sons and daughters and asks you home. 
 And Paul, as I have already shown, looked upon 
 himself and his fellow evangelists as associate am- 
 bassadors and intercessors, who had been called 
 upon to take the place upon the earth which Jesus 
 had occupied while here in the flesh; so that they 
 were doing their work "on Christ's behalf," as 
 well as for God. 
 
 Here, then, we have God, Jesus and the apostles 
 and evangelists of the primitive Christian Church 
 all set forth as pleading with men to become rec- 
 onciled to God by embracing the life of obedience 
 to truth to which he has always been inviting 
 them. To this we may add two words. The first 
 is this. These agencies are all still at work upon 
 the unfinished task. And the second is that an- 
 other name must be added, namely, that of the 
 Holy Spirit, who Jesus declared would come to 
 guide into all truth, on the one hand, and to 
 "bring conviction to the world as to Sin, and as 
 
JESUS THE MEDIATOR 271 
 
 to Righteousness and as to Judgment" on the 
 other. So the purely divine unites with divinely 
 filled men in the work of interceding or pleading 
 with men still unsaved to "be reconciled to God." 
 Such is the work of intercession man-ward. Can 
 we discover its nature God-ward, if, indeed, there 
 is an intercession with God for men, as well an 
 intercession with men for God. 
 
 That there is an authorized intercession with 
 God on the behalf of men is a clear teaching of 
 the New Testament. Such intercessions find their 
 roots in human love and the divine love alike. To 
 love is to wish well, and to wish well is to ask 
 all besides one's self to aid in making it well with 
 the one who is loved. The more widely, therefore, 
 love is diffused the more intercession will move out 
 towards universality. This is the thought which 
 Tennyson expressed when he wrote in his "Pass- 
 ing of Arthur" 
 
 "For what are men better than sheep or goats 
 That nourish a blind life within the brain, 
 If, knowing God, they lift not hands of prayer 
 Both for themselves and those who call them friend? 
 For so the whole round earth is every way 
 Bound by golden chains about the feet of God." 
 
 And if God pleads with men why should not men 
 plead with God? If God needs the co-operation 
 of men and must find intercessors to secure it for 
 him, why should we find it different on our side? 
 Taking up now some New Testament passages 
 
272 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 on this subject I may begin with Paul's word to 
 Timothy for the churches of which he had been 
 given the oversight: 
 
 " First of all, then, I urge that petitions, 
 prayers, intercessions and thanksgiving should 
 be offered for every one, especially for kings 
 and all who are in high positions." (I Tim. 2: 
 1, 2.) Quite naturally he coupled with this the 
 assurance 
 
 "This will be good and acceptable in the eyes 
 of God our Savior, whose will it is that every one 
 should be saved, and attain to a full knowledge 
 of the Truth." (1 Tim. 2:3.) The God who 
 pleads with all men to be reconciled to him must 
 surely wish to save them, and delight to be asked 
 to do anything towards that end. 
 
 Next I would call attention to Paul's own in- 
 tercessions on behalf of the membership of the 
 churches which he had established or was super- 
 intending. He assured the Colossians that "from 
 the very day" on which Epaphras "told us of the 
 love with which the Spirit has inspired you, we 
 have never ceased praying for you, or asking that 
 you may possess that deeper knowledge of the will 
 of God, which comes through all spiritual wisdom 
 and insight." (Col. 1 :8, 9.) His intercession 
 for his Ephesian fellow-believers were most deeply 
 spiritual : 
 
 "I kneel before the Father from whom all 
 'fatherhood' in heaven and on earth derives its 
 name and pray that, in proportion to the wealth 
 
JESUS THE MEDIATOR 273 
 
 of his glory, he will strengthen you with his 
 power by breathing his Spirit into your inmost 
 soul, so that the Christ, through your faith, may 
 make his home within your hearts in love; and I 
 pray that you, now firmly rooted and established, 
 may, with all Christ's people, have the power to 
 comprehend in all its width and length and height 
 and depth and to understand though it surpasses 
 all understanding the love of Christ; and so be 
 filled to the full with God himself." (Eph. 3: 
 14-19.) 
 
 There is here the strongest resemblance to 
 those intercessions of Jesus in the Upper Room, 
 with which John has made us acquainted: 
 
 "I intercede for them. . . . Holy Father, 
 keep them. . . . I do not ask thee to take 
 them out of the world but to keep them from 
 Evil. . . . It is not only for them that I am 
 interceding, but also for those who believe on me 
 through their Message, that they all may be 
 one that as thou, Father, art in union with me 
 and I with thee, so they also may be in union 
 with us and so the world may believe that thou 
 hast sent me as thy Messenger." ( Jno. 17 :9. 
 11, 15, 20, 21.) It should also be remembered 
 here that Paul asked the prayers of his fellow- 
 believers for himself, as did also the writer of the 
 letter to the Hebrews. (I Thess. 5 :25 ; II Thess. 
 3:1; Col. 4:3; Heb, 13:18.) The earliest of all 
 the Christian writings which have reached us en- 
 joins upon all believers mutual confession of sins 
 
274 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 and mutual intercession. (Jas. 5:16.) And 
 when Jesus was passing 1 into his agony of sup- 
 plication for himself in Gethsemane, did he not 
 ask Peter and James and John to watch with 
 him? And would not their praying for them- 
 selves have been at least a half-voiced praying 
 for him? Was not this what he meant when he 
 asked Peter chidingly "What! could none of 
 you watch with me for one hour?" (Matt. 26: 
 40.) 
 
 There are some other passages touching the 
 mediatorship of Jesus himself to which I should 
 call attention here. They represent it as a con- 
 tinuous heavenly and earthly fact, and are to be 
 found in I Timothy and Hebrews. 
 
 "There is but one God, and one Mediator be- 
 tween God and men the man, Christ Jesus." 
 (I Tim. 2:5.) It is well to note that here 
 "Christ Jesus" is described, not as the Son of 
 God, but as "the Man." We may be sure that 
 this fact is not without significance. 
 
 The passages in Hebrews set before us the 
 thing which he mediates or brings from God to 
 man. It is "the Covenant" (8:6), "a new Cove- 
 nant." (9:15; 12:24.) Nor are we left in any 
 doubt as to the nature of this covenant. "This 
 is the Covenant that I will make with the People 
 of Israel 
 
 "After those days, says the Lord 
 'I will impress my laws on their minds 
 
JESUS THE MEDIATOR 275 
 
 And will inscribe them on their hearts ; 
 
 And I will be their God 
 
 And they shall be my people, etc.' " 
 
 Now to mediate this Covenant as an actual life 
 for men the Son of God necessarily "became a 
 man like other men," and showedi once for all that 
 our humanity can receive God's will in such a 
 fashion as to be governed by it at least as far as 
 it is known, and thus that the Sons of men may be 
 made the Sons of God in deed and in truth. So 
 the life which Jesus mediated was the life of the 
 children of God. Paul and John went the full 
 length of clearly stating this fact. 
 
 " 'And I will be a father to you, 
 
 And you shall be my sons and daughters/ 
 
 Says the Lord, the Ruler of all." (2 Cor. 6:18.) 
 
 "Dear friends, we are God's children now." (I 
 Jno. 3:2.) It may be added here that it was his 
 love for his human brothers and his complete obe- 
 dience to his Father, or, in other words, his un- 
 swerving faithfulness as ambassador and inter- 
 cessor, with a view to the fullest possible communi- 
 cation of this life, that Jesus gave over his body 
 to the death of the cross. So it is truly set down 
 by apostolic pens that he died "on the behalf of 
 men" and "on account of their sins." For it was 
 their sins which slew him, and only his faithful- 
 ness unto death could have supplied them with the 
 object lesson which they needed, or the vision of 
 the Life in its full expression. It is this same 
 
276 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 human faithfulness and obedience unto death, 
 which is represented by all that New Testament 
 phraseology, which is used to set forth the cleans- 
 ing and redeeming power of the "blood" of Jesus. 
 It was a further vision of a similar kind which led 
 him, who before had taken "charge of the clothes 
 of those who were murdering Stephen," to write 
 of personally "supplementing the afflictions en- 
 dured by the Christ, for the sake of his Body, 
 the Church" ; and a later church father to de- 
 clare that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed 
 of the church." It is in this way that the bruis- 
 ing of Jesus was our healing. It is in this way 
 also that "Jesus Christ, the Righteous, is the 
 atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours 
 only, but for those of the whole world besides." 
 (I Jno. 2:2.) Jesus overthrows sin by that di- 
 vine force of persuasion which stands forever as- 
 sociated with his unlimited devotion to both God 
 and men. "If, when we were God's enemies, we 
 were reconciled to him by the death of his Son, 
 much more, now that we have become reconciled, 
 shall we be saved by virtue of his Life." (Rom. 
 5:10.) The end aimed at was not God's recon- 
 ciliation to us, but our reconciliation to God; and 
 when we come to the consideration of the means, 
 we find that if the life of Jesus cannot now be 
 rightly viewed apart from his death, it is still 
 truer that his death cannot be properly thought 
 of apart from his life. 
 
 Approaching from this viewpoint the subject 
 
JESUS THE MEDIATOR 277 
 
 of intercession, I may call attention to three pas- 
 sages. The first is Romans 8:34: "He who died 
 for us is Christ Jesus ! or rather it was he who 
 was raised from the dead, and who is now at God's 
 right hand and is even pleading on our behalf" ; 
 the second is Hebrews 7:25 "That is why he is 
 able to save perfectly those who come to God 
 through him, living forever, as he does, to inter- 
 cede on their behalf"; while "My children, I am 
 writing to you to keep you from sinning; but if 
 any one should sin, we have one who can plead 
 for us with the Father Jesus Christ, the Right- 
 eous" (I Jno. 2:1) is the third. The thing 
 contemplated in each and all of these is complete 
 salvation from a life of conscious sinning to one 
 of unbroken obedience and devotion to God, even 
 in the midst of the sorest trials and sufferings, 
 which the malice of bad men can invent and ap- 
 ply ; and the teaching is that the pleadings of the 
 living Jesus are mightily helpful in this direction. 
 When we ask for some more precise word as to 
 how and why, we are met by such a one as this 
 "So, also, the Spirit supports us in our weakness. 
 We do not know even how to pray as we should ; 
 but the Spirit himself pleads for us in sighs that 
 can find no utterance. Yet he who searches all 
 our hearts knows what the Spirit's meaning is, 
 because the pleadings of the Spirit for Christ's 
 People are in accordance with his will." (Rom. 
 8:26, 27.) Are we not here taught a doctrine 
 which modern evolutionary philosophy has begun 
 
278 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 the serious work of propounding? Deep calls to 
 deep in God himself, while he labors towards self- 
 realization in all portions of his vast creation. 
 All other loves and yearnings are but local ex- 
 pressions of those which in him are infinite and all 
 pervading. The love and yearning of Jesus him- 
 self are local and human, and derive their whole 
 saving power from that infinite source which he 
 named "The Living Father who sent me." (Jno. 
 6:44, 57.) 
 
 The final word, therefore, is this. All media- 
 tion and intercession, the aim of which is the in- 
 crease and absolute ultimate triumph of right- 
 eousness in every being and every relationship ex- 
 isting in our vast universe, moves forth from God 
 and back to God, as a portion of that long toil 
 which he has made his in the interests at the same 
 time of himself and of all besides. And every be- 
 ing who is consciously taken up into the task may 
 know that he is God's fellow-worker towards his 
 own self-realization, the self-realization of his fel- 
 low men, and, through these, towards the self- 
 realization of God himself. 
 
 "That God may be all in all" is the unceasing 
 cry of all the ages, till "the enoV' 
 
XVII 
 JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 
 
 What a man thinks of his Bible from the view- 
 point of ethical codes must largely depend upon 
 the theory he holds as to the main purpose of God 
 ini blessing the world with the book. If he believes 
 that God's chief intention in the matter was to 
 bestow upon humanity, once and for all, a com- 
 plete set of rules for our guidance in every par- 
 ticular of every relationship of our increasingly 
 complex lives, he will consult the book continually 
 with the expectation of finding within it the pre- 
 cise directions he needs in connection with each 
 step that he takes. If, on the other hand, he 
 looks upon his Bible as the principal vehicle of 
 that revelation of himself to men, as Creator, Up- 
 holder, Moral Governor, and Savior, which God 
 saw was absolutely essential to their highest de- 
 velopment and well-being; and as containing only 
 such moral precepts as from time to time repre- 
 sented the growing needs of the people, through 
 whose seers this revelation was given; he will, 
 consciously or unconsciously, do these two things 
 in his own interests : First, he will study the 
 book principally to learn all it can tell him about 
 God, particularly as he stands revealed in the life 
 2T9 
 
280 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 and teaching of his Son, Jesus Christ. And sec- 
 ondly, he will gather from the book all he can find 
 there of a nature suitable for his guidance in the 
 affairs of his twentieth-century life; and when he 
 sees it failing him at some scores of points, he 
 will look into the laws of his own church and 
 country, in the full belief that the same God who 
 guided the Israelite is guiding individuals and 
 peoples still, by giving them new laws suitable to 
 their various additional requirements. 
 
 Few, if any, to-day actually hold any other 
 position toward the Bible than the second of those 
 which I have just described. The debates which 
 have arisen over the question of the Bible and 
 ethical codes have grown out of the fact that some 
 men still think that they regard the first position 
 I have set forth as the correct one, though they 
 do not really so regard it at all. 
 
 First of all, then, let me say that if we could 
 find a man who really holds that the Bible con- 
 tains this complete and perfect code, we should 
 have in our presence an individual capable of be- 
 lieving that all necessary original thinking on 
 questions of moral conduct was done by a few 
 members of one small family of mankind, before 
 the end of the second century A.D. The Bible is 
 a product of the Israelitish mind as divinely en- 
 lightened. This process of divine illumination 
 on the foregoing theory came to an end with the 
 completion of the New Testament. This means 
 that from that date to the end of human history 
 
JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 
 
 there could exist no need for, and therefore no 
 experience of, such divine illumination as was im- 
 parted to and enjoyed by the seers of the Old 
 and New Testaments. The question does not lie 
 here between the illumination experienced by Je- 
 sus and that enjoyed by the Church from the day 
 of Pentecost onward, but between the illumina- 
 tion bestowed upon the Church from Pentecost 
 to the end of the apostolic period, and that ex- 
 perienced by the same church from the end of the 
 apostolic period to the close of the Christian era. 
 For Jesus, according to John, distinctly informed 
 him and his fellow apostles that he had not 
 taught them everything, but that they would 
 themselves enjoy illumination by the same Spirit 
 that had made him the teacher they had found 
 him to be. By that Spirit and not by himself, 
 they would be guided into all they needed to know. 
 Is there anyone who really believes that the 
 church during this brief period actually faced and 
 permanently settled every question with a moral 
 aspect that would become a practical one before 
 the end? 
 
 When one speaks of questions with a moral as- 
 pect he opens up a large field. The world of 
 thought and action was once divided by Christian 
 thinkers into two departments, which were desig- 
 nated as sacred and secular. This is no longer 
 done with any defmiteness, for a certain divine il- 
 lumination has made it clear that thought and 
 action along the "secular" lines demand the guid- 
 
282 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 ance of conscience and the approval of God, and 
 must, therefore, be regarded as also distinctly 
 "sacred." God is king of the whole life, or he is 
 no king at all. 
 
 In morals the personal equation is one of no 
 small dimensions. It can be seen from the stand- 
 point of the choice of one's life-work, and it is 
 very obtrusive sometimes in connection with the 
 questions of foods and recreations. It is gener- 
 ally recognized, for instance, that some men must 
 be preachers of the gospel, or lead a life of con- 
 tinuous rebellion against God. It is also believed 
 that some of these preachers must go to foreign 
 lands with their message, or live under the same 
 condemnation. It is held, too, that, considered 
 as a class, each of these men knows for himself, 
 apart from and often against the opinion and 
 wish of his fellow-men, that he is "called" to this 
 service. Carey is a leading example. But 
 whence came Carey's call? From what ethical 
 code? "Quench not the Spirit" would guide him 
 after the call reached him. But no word of the 
 New Testament laid upon William Carey mission- 
 ary service as his life-work. God spoke to him 
 directly, as truly as he did to the apostle Paul, or 
 any ancient prophet. 
 
 I shall not tarry over the fact that in matters 
 of foods and recreations the duty of abstinence 
 is often determined by purely personal considera- 
 tions, which no ethical code could by any possi- 
 bility deal with in a satisfactory way. "Thou 
 
JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 283 
 
 shalt" reaches one man and "Thou shalt not" an- 
 other in connection with the same act. It is a 
 matter of tradition, if not of history, that John 
 Wesley quit the pursuit of mathematics to avoid 
 sinning against his own soul. The Spirit of God 
 working through intellect and conscience, and 
 often mysteriously instructing men, still illumi- 
 nates and guides the individual. There can, in the 
 very nature of things, be no complete ethical code 
 for the government of any individual life. And 
 God's plan for governing the race is, to an ex- 
 tent not generally recognized, that of dealing 
 with its members individually and directly. Ethi- 
 cal codes, therefore, do not deal with the individual 
 as an individual, so much as they meet him as a 
 member of the social organism. 
 
 Is, then, the ethical code of the Bible in all its 
 particulars fitted to govern men of every clime 
 and age to the end of human history? And is it 
 complete? In other words, does it provide for 
 every phase of human activity that has called, or 
 will call, for righteous legislative control? 
 
 The first fact calling for our attention here is 
 that, when one is asked for the code we are now 
 to discuss definitely, he can only reply that its 
 various items may be found scattered through 
 the various documents of which the Bible is com- 
 posed, and that they cannot be codified, or set 
 forth as a distinct body of laws, without the ex- 
 penditure of much labor. The Bible is not an 
 ethical code. It is something higher. It con- 
 
284 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 tains our most glorious revelation of God. As- 
 sociated with that in the volume, however, are 
 many ethical precepts. But any man who at- 
 tempts the task of codifying these will find him- 
 self compelled to do much sifting, for Christ and 
 his apostles dealt rather freely with at least some 
 portions of the Mosaic legislation. One of the 
 latter, Paul, wrote of Christ that he "broke down 
 the barrier that separated Jew and Gentile and in 
 his human nature put an end to the cause of en- 
 mity between them the Law with its injunctions 
 and ordinances." (Eph. 2:15.) To this he adds 
 in another place, "He cancelled the bond which 
 was against us the bond which consisted of or- 
 dinances and which was directly hostile to us. 
 He has taken it out of the way by nailing it to 
 the cross." (Col. 2:15.) 
 
 There has been much debate as to how far Paul 
 really went in these statements and others which 
 might be cited. But it can scarcely be doubted 
 that he regarded his Lord as having, by his 
 earthly life and his law of Love, not only set 
 aside the elaborate ritual of Mosaism, but super- 
 seded the whole moral code also, through the sub- 
 stitution for it of the single inclusive principle 
 of love. Consequently we find that his own chief 
 aim was neither to master the ethical code of the 
 past, nor to produce a perfect one for the guid- 
 ance of himself and his fellow-believers, but to 
 build up both himself and them in the knowledge 
 of Christ. He saw that "Christ has brought 
 
JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 285 
 
 Law to an end, so that righteousness may be ob- 
 tained by every one who believes in him" (Rom. 10 : 
 4) , and was a legalist no longer. He turned from 
 the Law to the Life, to find a wealth both of in- 
 formation and of motive touching righteousness 
 to which he would have otherwise been a stranger. 
 The least we can say is that the ethical code in 
 which he had been reared became to Paul a poor, 
 dwarfed thing, big enough still to awe the man 
 who loved transgression, but too unenlightened 
 and feeble to help greatly the Christian believer 
 in his pursuit of the holiness of his Master. (I 
 Tim. 1:9.) 
 
 So the ethical code of the Old Testament met 
 with disparagement at the hands of the most in- 
 tellectual and voluminous of the New Testament 
 writers. We cannot present the whole truth, how- 
 ever, without stating besides, that he disparaged it 
 only when he compared it with the one positively 
 and resplendently perfect human life. Considered 
 in itself, he both valued and used it. His letters 
 contain many ethical precepts, original and 
 quoted. He knew that the church needed them. 
 He even accepted for his Gentile converts the 
 regulations passed by the Jerusalem council for 
 their guidance, though soon afterwards he assured 
 at least one of his churches that the man who 
 ignored them with a free conscience in a certain 
 particular showed a more vigorous and intelligent 
 faith than they did who obeyed at this point. 
 (1 Cor. 8:6-8.) 
 
286 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 I should now attempt to define the term ethical 
 code, for it is probably at this point the chief 
 difficulty has arisen. An ethical code is a body 
 of precepts or laws touching conduct, of such a 
 sort that they make an appeal to the conscience. 
 Every law which makes this appeal belongs to 
 the ethical code of the man who receives it. The 
 appeal arises from the recognized righteousness 
 which the law represents. The law may deal with 
 any phase of human life whatever religious, 
 political, social, sanitary, or sexual. All law that 
 through its apparent Tightness appeals to the 
 conscience, is ethical. All legal codes are ethical 
 codes! so far forth as they represent righteousness. 
 To hold any other ground is to introduce con- 
 fusion into both thought and life. Sanitary 
 laws, for instance, are as sacred, though not as 
 fundamental, as religious laws. Man's original 
 and supreme relationship is Godward, and has 
 to do with himself as distinguished from the mate- 
 rial body, which he now inhabits and uses as his 
 instrument for the accomplishment of his work in 
 this world of matter. But he owes to his body, 
 as Paul points out, the duty before God of nour- 
 ishing, cherishing, guarding, and controlling it, 
 not only as his own abode and instrument but also 
 as the very temple of God himself. Every human 
 relationship is! sacred and every duty moral. The 
 Mosaic legislation in all its phases rests firmly upon 
 the recognition of this fact. "Thus saith Jeho- 
 vah" is its very keynote. It may be further said, 
 
JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 287 
 
 too, that the voice of conscience and the recog- 
 nized voice of God never conflict, because the 
 former is so constituted that of necessity it makes 
 itself an echo of the latter. It is only when the 
 voice of God is not recognized by it, or has not 
 yet reached it, that conscience directs into wrong 
 paths. The voice of conscience, therefore, what- 
 ever else it may stand for, represents all that men 
 have learned of the will of God, and when God 
 speaks to men at all, he wakes up their consciences 
 to speak for him. This is true for all the ages. 
 To forget or ignore it is to enter into darkness 
 and pass on to disaster. Consequently all legisla- 
 tion which is recognized as righteous is looked 
 upon as a gift of God to those who receive it, and 
 for the time being at least men rest and rejoice 
 in it. 
 
 God legislates for each time and people through 
 the best combination of intellect and conscience 
 then and there available. So all divine laws are 
 at the same time human, though it is by no means 
 true, on the other hand, that all human laws are 
 also divine. Paul saw how other peoples besides 
 his own were met in this matter, and provided 
 with an illumination and guidance, which they 
 often sadly misprized. (Rom. 1:19-21; 2:14, 15.) 
 And one of the things we are coming to see clearly 
 is that, as God dealt with these, so he dealt with 
 Israel itself. "At many times and in many ways 
 . . . by the Prophets and then by his Son" 
 (Heb. 1:1) he brought their intellect and con- 
 
288 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 science to the recognition and assertion of higher 
 and wider applications of the great principles 
 which should govern all human activities. Prog- 
 ress is one law of our race which never grows 
 old, never dies, and never ceases its operations. 
 Many a legislative enactment dies through being 
 superseded by a better, or because men march out 
 of sight of it, leaving it behind to perish by the 
 wayside. Progress is the fruit of God's working 
 in men and men's working with God. 
 
 We may now ask how the ethical code of the 
 Bible has fared in this respect. Has it had the 
 experience of all other codes? Or does it stand 
 forth to-day as the one magnificent exception? It 
 is no part of my present undertaking to deal 
 with this question exhaustively. All I need to 
 do is to cite one or two instances in 1 which Israel's 
 ethical code has been left behind. To begin with, 
 then, our Lord dismissed the laws of Mosaism 
 governing divorce and the requital of injuries, 
 and also the one touching oaths. The sanitary 
 and land laws of Israel, good as they were upon 
 the whole, were left behind in a body by the fol- 
 lowers of Christ, and that in spite of the fact 
 that the first great leaders among them were 
 Jews. Not even circumcision was allowed to sur- 
 vive. For a little while blood and the flesh of 
 strangled animals, along with foods offered in 
 sacrifice to idols, were forbidden to Christians ; 
 but almost at once, as I have already pointed out, 
 Paul attacked the last-named regulation, and be- 
 
JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 289 
 
 fore long they all passed into oblivion, though the 
 word in regard to them in the beginning was, 
 "We have, therefore, decided, under the guidance 
 of the Holy Spirit," or "It seemed good to the 
 Holy Ghost and to us." At this point New 
 Testament legislation has been dismissed along 
 with that of the Old Testament. It is interest- 
 ing to note, too, that instead of a "Thou shalt 
 not enslave thy fellow-man" in the Decalogue, a 
 law immediately follows that code permitting 
 slavery under restrictions, that is to say, licensing 
 it. Jesus never called up that license law for 
 condemnation in the days ! of his flesh. His 
 apostles, too, worked under it and other like legis- 
 lation, with never a thought of its replacement by 
 universal manumission, so far as we can tell. And 
 no blame is due them because of this. License law 
 is the beginning of prohibition, and those who cen- 
 sure it are simply! out of patience with it, perhaps 
 not too soon, because it is not also the end. Yet 
 after much painful toil Christendom climbed at 
 length to the place where, so far as she herself 
 is concerned, she left behind and below her, not 
 only that law itself, but also all Paul's and Peter's 
 inspired regulations for Christian slaves and their 
 Christian masters. Every intelligent man knows 
 these things, and knowing them believes, whether 
 he realizes it or not, that some portions of the 
 ethical code of the New Testament, as well as of 
 the Old, were never adopted to be permanent. 
 I may now deal with the other question which 
 
290 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 I have undertaken to discuss. Is the ethical code 
 of the Bible complete? In other words, does it 
 provide for every phase of human activity that 
 has called, or will call, for righteous legislative 
 control ? 
 
 In answering the first question I have also an- 
 swered this, but not pointedly. I shall, therefore, 
 proceed to deal with it specifically, with the aid 
 of two illustrative instances. At the Anglican 
 Synod in New Brunswick, recently, one of the 
 rural deans took issue with the bishop on the ques- 
 tion of the prohibition of the liquor traffic, ground- 
 ing his argument upon the fact that this traffic 
 comes in for no condemnation in the New Testa- 
 ment. We must confess that the rural dean was 
 correct in this premise of his argument, and, as 
 I have already pointed out, he might with perfect 
 truthfulness have added that the New Testament 
 is equally deficient when we come to the institution 
 of slavery. Nevertheless the modern command, 
 "Thou shalt not enslave thy fellow," is felt to- 
 day to be quite as sacred and binding as "Thou 
 shalt not steal" or "Thou shalt not bear false 
 witness against thy neighbor." Besides this, all 
 who are even fairly read in the history of the 
 struggle against slavery as an institution know 
 how the Bible was used by the pro-slavery advo- 
 cates in its favor. Their argument was that an 
 institution which the Bible licensed could never 
 be sanely regarded as marked out by God for de- 
 struction. The thing they did not know was 
 
JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 291 
 
 that God did not complete his work as lawgiver 
 in Bible times, but was working still through the 
 intellects and consciences of his own, toward the 
 annihilation of every institution and habit which 
 is opposed to the highest welfare of our race. 
 The rural dean in Fredericton was walking in a 
 like darkness. And when one of the lay members 
 of the Synod' retorted that he did not care whether 
 the Scott or Canada Temperance Act was in the 
 Bible or not, he showed his faith in the fact that 
 God is guiding our civilization to-day as really 
 as he guided either Israel or the Christian Church 
 at the beginning. One need only add that when 
 at length Christendom, as a whole, finds itself liv- 
 ing under an ethical code, one of the most recent 
 additions to which will be "Thou shalt sell no 
 intoxicating beverage," all the truly enlightened 
 will rejoice together that this command also came 
 from God in the same general manner as those 
 previously received by our race, and that others 
 will follow as they are needed. 
 
 That the Bible contains all truth necessary for 
 the salvation of the soul can be gladly accepted. 
 It may also be affirmed with the utmost confidence, 
 that it far surpasses all other ancient writings 
 in the richness and variety of its ethical precepts, 
 and that the New Testament is unique in the em- 
 phasis which it lays upon love as the great govern- 
 ing principle in all right conduct, and the very 
 heart of every righteous disposition. This, how- 
 ever,; is a very different thing from the claim that 
 
292 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 it contains an ethical code lofty enough and com- 
 plete enough for the guidance in all things of the 
 highest Christian civilization; for this claim vir- 
 tually denies God's immutable law of progress, 
 and a host of incontestable facts besides. 
 
 In regard to those fresh additions to our ethi- 
 cal code, which we need from time to time to guide 
 us in connection with the various phases of our 
 advancing civilization, and which represent a 
 righteousness too large to have been set forth 
 by any seer or apostle of the older time, we need 
 entertain no worries. God himself takes care of 
 these, and they always come to us when the time 
 is ripe, like the morning sun when he breaks 
 through black thunder clouds to bless us with his 
 beams. On the other hand, the problem how we 
 may decide as to precisely what is permanent, and 
 what merely temporary, in the ethical code of the 
 book we love most, is not an easy one. Mistakes 
 have been made and will continue to be made here. 
 Still we have, as qualified to hearten us for this 
 task, every divine fact which God has been able 
 to place within the range of our limited vision. 
 The Christ life looms larger as the years pass. 
 Those perfect religious and moral principles, con- 
 sisting of "the first of all the commandments 
 . . . and the second," are still with us. On 
 our lips is the word Immanuel, and, whether we 
 realize it or not, God himself with all his righteous- 
 ness, his wisdom, and his love, enswathes and pos- 
 sesses us, as the very life of our life. 
 
 When modern science was born some men were 
 
JESUS AND BIBLICAL ETHICS 293 
 
 pagan enough to think that it had proved that, 
 after his work of creation, God either emptied 
 himself out of the physical universe, to give free 
 play to a certain set of physical laws, or stayed 
 on only to play the poor part of an observer. 
 Theologians helped to overthrow that notion, but 
 some of the theologians themselves still clung to 
 an old notion of their own that, after God had 
 got himself seers and lawgivers from among a 
 small, but wonderful family of Asiatics, that was, 
 through the longer portion of the period both 
 idolatrous and corrupt, and so blind and rebel- 
 lious at its close, that it had to be scourged out 
 of its territories and chased to the ends of the 
 earth, he retired from his active government of 
 men, leaving them as their sole and sufficient writ- 
 ten guide to the end, only the ethical code given 
 them through these same splendid old-time Asiat- 
 ics. It is well for us that these Asiatics them- 
 selves entertained no such idea, and that we are 
 beginning to understand our Christ and his apos- 
 tles at this point. To be without God in the 
 world, even when one has him in the church, is 
 to live as a pagan, and usually as a pessimist, with 
 no large and worthy hopes. But the new day has 
 dawned, which is to reveal more and more clearly 
 the fact that in Jesus Christ are hid all the fur- 
 ther treasures of legislative wisdom and knowl- 
 edge, which our race will call for in its long 
 climb towards perfection. 
 
 A brief chapter will now be devoted to the fur- 
 ther discussion of this one point. 
 
XVIII 
 
 JESUS AND THE PERFECT ETHICAL 
 CODE 
 
 I shall begin at the beginning. What is this 
 perfect ethical code? Is it a thing of the past, 
 present or distant future? And what relation, 
 if any, does Jesus bear to it? 
 
 In answering these questions one may begin 
 negatively and say that an ethical code is not 
 a set of ethical principles, any one of which may 
 be applied to a variety of actions without actu- 
 ally having been made binding in connection with 
 any of them. Legislators sometimes proceed by 
 way of resolution and the affirmation of great 
 principles, as Disraeli attempted to do when he 
 made that famous "leap in the dark," which re- 
 sulted in the passage of the British Reform Bill 
 in 1867; but they never produce even the first 
 item of a code until they begin to make one or 
 more of these principles binding upon men, in 
 connection with one or more of their various 
 activities. When a few years ago the Canadian 
 government at Ottawa affirmed by a large major- 
 ity that the prohibition of the liquor traffic was 
 desirable for the whole Dominion, they added 
 nothing whatever to the code of the country, and 
 294 
 
JESUS AND THE ETHICAL CODE 295 
 
 the traffic remained as free as before. The par- 
 liamentary affirmation that no man ought to sell 
 intoxicating drinks, must be changed into the 
 affirmation that no man shall do it without mak- 
 ing himself liable to certain serious penalties, be- 
 fore it can take its place in the ethical code of 
 the state or church which the parliament governs. 
 Apart from the nature of their sanctions or 
 penalties, there is practically no difference be- 
 tween a legal code and an ethical one, for each 
 represents righteousness as righteousness is under- 
 stood to apply to the various relations of human 
 life at the time and place to which the code be- 
 longs. Such a code, therefore, may represent 
 the authority of a state or a church, or of both 
 acting together or supplementing each other. 
 Any particular code of laws is ethical in reality 
 precisely as far as it represents what is right in 
 itself between one human being and another, and 
 between each human being and God in their multi- 
 plied relationships. And any code to attain per- 
 fection must possess two characteristics. It must 
 represent absolutely nothing but righteousness, 
 on the one hand, and it must represent all of 
 righteousness, on the other. It must contain 
 nothing either false or evil, and it must be com- 
 plete. It must condemn everything that ought 
 to be condemned, and enjoin everything that 
 ought to be commanded and done. As long as 
 it is lacking in either direction it remains im- 
 perfect. 
 
296 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Does this mean that the perfect ethical code 
 can be realized and applied only in connection 
 with a perfect human society? One can sup- 
 pose the existence of a person capable of pro- 
 ducing this perfect code, long before its highest 
 portions could be anywhere applied, but that such 
 a person would actually produce it at such a 
 time is extremely doubtful; for there is an econ- 
 omy in the moral as well as the physical govern- 
 ment of this planet, which makes it pretty certain 
 that no ethical instrument will be forthcoming 
 until it represents an existing need. But, on the 
 other hand, the moment any law is actually re- 
 quired, it is sure to find a framer. Our business 
 just now, however, is not to speculate, but to look 
 into facts. What relation then does Jesus bear 
 to the perfect ethical code? 
 
 Our first answer is that he did not frame it, and 
 never attempted that task. Like other wise men 
 he simply dealt with conditions as he found them. 
 He had no opportunity for giving laws to men 
 as members of the state, because his fellow-citi- 
 zens rejected him. Not even one city stood by 
 him. The moment his aims were understood he 
 was pronounced an impossibility in politics. This 
 happened everywhere, until he was adjudged by 
 the rulers of his nation worthy of only one place 
 a cross outside Jerusalem between two robbers, 
 who also hung upon crosses. He gave no laws 
 for the care of the body considered in itself 
 not one word on diet or medicine or surgery or 
 
JESUS AND THE ETHICAL CODE 297 
 
 sanitation, though he showed a deep interest in 
 the physical health and well-being of men. On 
 matters connected with the training and nurture 
 of the intellect, too, he was all but absolutely 
 silent. He did teach that a man must consent 
 to obey the truth which reached him, or become 
 blind and deaf and past feeling in its presence, 
 but he laid down no rules for school-masters and 
 school-mistresses, or for parents interested in the 
 intellectual development of their children. And 
 apart from his teachings on forgiveness, he gave 
 no hints as to what are the true methods in the 
 treatment of criminals. Yet any human code 
 which is to reach perfection must deal in the most 
 thorough and exhaustive manner with all these 
 phases of human existence. 
 
 Jesus did not even meddle with some matters 
 which men to-day regard as of vast moral impor- 
 tance. Slavery and the drink habit and traffic 
 were two of the greatest blots on the civilization 
 of his time, but no word of his in regard to either 
 has crossed the centuries to us. The slave we 
 know he pitied was the bond-slave of sin. Nor 
 did he blaze forth against political despotisms, al- 
 though he counselled the twelve to avoid their 
 spirit and cultivate instead the spirit of lowly 
 service which he was constantly exemplifying under 
 their gaze. 
 
 With all these facts before us it is quite clear 
 that Jesus did not play the part of the ordinary 
 lawgiver, but accepted the political, social and 
 
298 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 even religious situation as he found it, and al- 
 most in its entirety. Indeed one of his definite 
 words at the end of his career was this "The 
 Teachers of the Law and Pharisees now occupy 
 the chair of Moses. Therefore, practice and lay 
 to heart everything that they tell you." (Matt. 
 23:2.) 
 
 How is it then that Jesus has been regarded 
 as the supreme human lawgiver by such men as 
 Tolstoi, for instance? Because the few injunc- 
 tions which he did lay upon his followers touched 
 life in the most vital way. He was the most con- 
 vinced of all believers in the principle of evolution 
 as it applies in the realm of legislation. So he 
 simply went to the sacred books of his nation, 
 drew from them two sentences and declared these 
 the one fountain of law for all time. Then he 
 proceeded to show how obedience to these prin- 
 ciples would mold the inward and outward life 
 of men in a few of their phases and directions. 
 Here again he made no mistakes, though in one or 
 two essential particulars he went far in advance 
 of his time. His laws forbidding every form of 
 violence will never, because they can never, be even 
 properly understood, until men shall at length 
 have reached the point where they will obey them 
 completely. Then men will also perceive the na- 
 ture of his temptation to make the kingdoms of 
 the world his own by becoming a ruler after the 
 fashion of his own and succeeding, as well as previ- 
 ous, times, and honor him as the Prince of Peace 
 
JESUS AND THE ETHICAL CODE 299 
 
 indeed. Even to-day it is confessed on every hand 
 that he was in himself the incarnation of all the 
 law he voiced, and more. It is also acknowledged 
 that legislative authority resides nowhere in such 
 strength as in the spirit and conduct of a human 
 life. Men are so constituted that they feel their 
 sin rebuked by righteousness itself more than by 
 all righteous precepts, and they can never look 
 upon it with seeing eyes, without knowing them- 
 selves called to its most earnest and devoted pur- 
 suit. The life of Jesus condemns men more 
 sternly than his lips ever did, and woos them to 
 the life of love more persuasively than his uttered 
 "Follow me." 
 
 One of the laws of evolution is this. Each 
 evolutionary process is preceded by an act or 
 process of involution. Nothing can be drawn out 
 that was not first put in. This is true of every 
 great principle and every great life. Put little 
 into a principle and you get little out of it. Put 
 everything in and you can get everything out. 
 The "two commandments" of Jesus represent the 
 broadest possible generalization in the sphere of 
 ethics, and this generalization stands incarnate in 
 his person and conduct. Everything was put in 
 and was there from the start, to reveal itself in 
 its time. Part stands disclosed to-day; the rest 
 is to follow. The relationship of Jesus, therefore, 
 to the perfect code which we have been consider- 
 ing is like that of the sun to practically all the 
 light and warmth our earth has enjoyed from 
 
300 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 the moment it became dependent upon that orb. 
 Out of himself and the great principles of right- 
 eousness which he enunciated all helpful legislation 
 is slowly being evolved in Christian lands, and 
 the process will continue until all lands are Chris- 
 tian and all human laws and institutions attain 
 his own perfection. 
 
 The perfect ethical code is, therefore, not an 
 achievement of yesterday or to-day but of all the 
 days till the time of its predestined completion. 
 It represents the age-long travail of the soul of 
 Jesus, and with it He will be satisfied. 
 
XIX 
 
 THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 
 
 The thought and activity of each age of the 
 church of Christ are conditioned or governed by 
 some leading idea or ideas, which must be very 
 clearly grasped by the church historian before 
 he can hope to place before his readers a really 
 true account of the events and teachings with 
 which he has to deal. This statement is quite as 
 true when applied to the apostolic age as in con- 
 nection with any other age that can be named. 
 It would probably be quite safe to put the case 
 much more strongly than this, for the leading 
 minds of that first Christian age were dominated 
 by certain words of him who spoke as no one else 
 ever did, to an extent never since equaled. It is 
 therefore, the clearest possible duty of the inter- 
 preter of the New Testament writings to give his 
 first attention to this very matter. 
 
 What, then, were the large governing ideas 
 which affected Peter and John and Paul and all 
 the rest, while they were preaching salvation from 
 sin to righteousness to the unsaved, and to the 
 saved the cultivation of every Christ-like virtue? 
 
 The first of these governing ideas was the ab- 
 solute assurance they had that Jesus of Nazareth 
 
 301 
 
302 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 was the Christ, and that as such he had been 
 given by God the Father himself, kingship over 
 our whole race. They never thought of him as 
 the great aspirant to that throne. On the con- 
 trary they saw him firmly and immovably seated 
 upon it. They knew that his foes were many and 
 mighty. But this made no difference. Sitting 
 there upon his throne he was simply looking for- 
 ward in his conquering might to the time when 
 the very last of these enemies would be removed 
 from his kingdom, and none would remain but 
 those who gladly acknowledged his sway. He 
 was king first of all by divine right, but this 
 divine right was so inherent in his very character, 
 that he would finally, and of necessity, win the 
 suffrages of the whole race. 
 "The Lord said to my Master: 'Sit on my right 
 
 hand, 
 Till I put thy enemies as a footstool under thy 
 
 feet.' 
 
 So let the whole nation of Israel know beyond 
 all doubt, that God has made him both Lord and 
 Christ this very Jesus whom you crucified." 
 This was Peter's word the first time he ever opened 
 his mouth to address the public on the claims of 
 his risen master, and it was the word that moved 
 his audience so remarkably. "It is this Jesus 
 whom God has exalted to his right hand, to be a 
 guide and a Savior, to give Israel repentance and 
 forgiveness of sins." In these words and others 
 like them, the fact which is given prominence is 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 303 
 
 that Jesus is a spiritual Savior, but it is not 
 forgotten that he is exalted to God's right hand, 
 and that men must submit to him. Paul stand- 
 ing ini the court of Areopagus at Athens preached 
 the need of repentance in view of our Lord's 
 Kingly office of judge. "He has fixed a day on 
 which he intends to 'judge the world with jus- 
 tice' by a man whom he has appointed and of 
 this he has given all men a pledge by raising 
 that man from the dead." And Paul's first ex- 
 tant letter is full of this idea as it stands asso- 
 ciated with that of our Lord's second coming. So 
 also is the second. Both of these were written to 
 the Thessalonians. And when four years later 
 he wrote to the church at Corinth, he used lan- 
 guage of the most definite sort on this point. 
 "Then will come the end when he surrenders the 
 kingdom to his God and Father, having over- 
 thrown all other rule and all other authority 
 and power. For he must reign until God 'has 
 put all his enemies under his feet.' The last 
 enemy to be overthrown is death ; for God has 
 placed all things under Christ's feet." 
 
 The writer of the letter to the Hebrews said: 
 "He is the radiance of the glory of God and the 
 very expression of his being, upholding all crea- 
 tion by the power of his word; and, when he had 
 made an expiation for the sins of men, he took 
 his seat at the right hand of God's majesty on 
 high, having shown himself as much greater than 
 the angels as the name that he has inherited sur- 
 
304 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 passes theirs." This writer also heard him ad- 
 dressed thus : 
 
 "God is thy throne for ever and ever; 
 Thou, Lord in the beginning didst lay the foundation 
 
 of the earth, 
 
 And the heavens are the work of thy hands. 
 They shall perish but thou remainest; 
 As a garment they shall all grow old; 
 As a mantle thou wilt fold them up, 
 And as a garment they shall be changed, 
 But thou art the same, and thy years shall know no 
 
 end." 
 
 Finally, to quote no more, the author of the 
 Apocalypse saw him gifted with all power, and 
 bearing on his robe, and on his thigh the written 
 words "Kings of Kings and Lord of Lords," 
 and followed him as he wrought out one after 
 another his world- wide conquests. 
 
 If we wish td discover the source of this govern- 
 ing idea, we can easily find it in the teachings of 
 our Lord himself. "The Father Himself does 
 not judge any man, but has entrusted the work 
 of judging entirely to his Son, so that all men 
 may honor the Son, just as they honor the Father. 
 And because he is the Son of Man he 
 has also given him authority to act as judge. Do 
 not wonder at this ; for the time is coming when 
 all that are in their' graves will hear his voice, and 
 will come out those who have done good rising 
 to life, and those who have lived evil lives rising 
 for condemnation." John was responsible for this 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 305 
 
 report of Jesus's words and Matthew for the fol- 
 lowing : 
 
 "All authority in heaven and on earth has been 
 given to me. Therefore go and make disciples 
 of all the nations, baptizing them into the Faith 
 of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and 
 teaching them to lay to heart all the commands 
 that I have given you; and, remember, I myself 
 am with you every day) until the close of the age." 
 
 In direct association with this idea of Christ 
 as actual king and judge of the race with which 
 he had allied himself, there stood in the minds of 
 the apostles and first believers generally, that of 
 his very early coming to perform a stupendous 
 work of deliverance on behalf of his own. This 
 second idea was never very long absent from their 
 thoughts. Indeed it may well be said to have 
 been present there always, particularly after they 
 became the victims of furious persecution. "Turn- 
 ing to God from your idols you became serv- 
 ants of the true and living God, and are now 
 awaiting the return from heaven of his Son, 
 whom he raised from the dead Jesus, our 
 deliverer from the coming wrath," is one of 
 the first words Paul ever wrote to a church ; 
 and he penned it as early as the year 52. 
 Passing over all else on the same subject, which 
 is to be found in Paul's letters to the various 
 churches, we may fix our attention on two writings 
 which were produced about the time (68 or a little 
 later) when he sealed his testimony with his blood. 
 
306 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 I refer to the letter to the Hebrews and the 
 Revelation of John. 
 
 Says the first writer to those whom he addresses, 
 "You still have need of patient endurance, in order 
 that, when you have done God's will, you may 
 obtain the fulfillment of his promise. 'For there 
 is indeed but a very little while ere he who is 
 coming will have come, without delay.' ' On the 
 other hand the "Revelation of Jesus Christ" was 
 his showing forth as ruler of the race and deter- 
 miner of men's destinies. He will be speedily 
 manifested as such, declared this writer "concern- 
 ing what must shortly take place . . . for 
 the time is near," he asserts. A part of his gen- 
 eral message to the seven churches is "He is com- 
 ing among the clouds." Those whose eyes are 
 open can see that the clouds now gathering such 
 blackness are his, and that he is enthroned within 
 them ; and the time will come, when it is too late to 
 be benefited by the sight, in which "every eye shall 
 see him, even those who pierced him ; 'and all the 
 nations of the earth shall wail for fear of him.' 
 So shall it be. Amen." 
 
 Carrying this thought forward into the in- 
 dividual messages to these churches, the writer's 
 word to Ephesus was, "I will come and remove 
 your lamp from its place, unless you repent" ; 
 the word to Pergamos, "Therefore, repent, or 
 else I will come quickly and contend with such 
 men (Nikolaitans, etc.) with words that will cut 
 like a sword"; the word of Sardis, "Unless you 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 307 
 
 are on the watch, I shall come like a thief, and 
 you will not know at what hour I am coming 
 to you" ; the word to Philadelphia, "I will come 
 quickly. Hold to what you have received, that 
 no one may take your crown" ; and to the church 
 at Laodicea, " 'All whom I love I rebuke and 
 discipline.' Therefore be in earnest and repent. 
 I am standing at the door and knocking, so near 
 am I. If any one hears my voice and opens the 
 door, I will go in, and will feast with him, and he 
 shall feast with me. To him who conquers to 
 him I will give the right to sit beside me on my 
 throne, as I, when I conquered, took my seat be- 
 side my Father on his throne." 
 
 One cannot but remark that here we find Peter's 
 idea of an immediate judgment which makes its 
 beginning at the house of God. And as this book 
 opens so it closes. The conditions of entrance 
 into the four-square city which John saw coming 
 down from God out of heaven, and transforming 
 all earthly states and surroundings, are set forth, 
 and the things named which make admission to 
 it impossible. But the one thing insisted upon and 
 reiterated is that the time for the fulfillment of 
 the prophecies is at hand. "I will come quickly," 
 says a voice, "I bring my rewards with me, to 
 give to each man what his actions deserve. So 
 near am I that the wrong-doer will not have 
 time to turn from his wrong-doing, nor the filthy- 
 minded man from his filthiness, nor the righteous 
 man from his righteousness, nor the holy minded 
 
308 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 man from his holiness, before I arrive. 
 Assuredly I will come quickly" (Rev. 22:10-12), 
 he repeats; and "Amen, come, Lord Jesus," 
 is the ready response of those whom he is ad- 
 dressing. 
 
 We know what the author has in mind, for he 
 is writing in the year 68 or a little later. He is 
 recalling the words of our Lord which Matthew 
 recorded. He knows that his Lord is coming in 
 connection with the destruction of the old de- 
 filed Jerusalem, to establish the holy city, New 
 Jerusalem, and to carry on within it that rule 
 which he has already described. His ears con- 
 tinually hear the words "Assuredly I will come 
 soon," and his heart unceasingly responds, 
 "Amen, come Lord Jesus," come and put thy 
 hand publicly and openly to thy great world task, 
 so that all mankind may see thee and bow be- 
 fore the greatness of thy majesty. 
 
 Every note struck by the disciple in this book 
 was struck (in his hearing?) by the Master him- 
 self 36 or 37 years before. The world taken by 
 surprise in the midst of its follies and excesses; 
 the faithful servant abundantly rewarded and the 
 unfaithful one flogged severely and allotted his 
 place among hypocrites ; the wise virgins with 
 lamps ready and oil in their cans, and the foolish 
 ones with no oil can at all, when the bridegroom 
 came, are some of our Lord's pictures of the 
 things which would occur when he came again. 
 And as to the time of that coming, he fixed it most 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 309 
 
 definitely, with the one reservation, that about the 
 actual day and hour, no one had at the time he 
 was speaking 1 , "any knowledge ; not even the an- 
 gels of heaven, nor yet the Son himself, but 
 only the Father." But he constantly taught in 
 the most positive manner that it would take place 
 during the life-time of some who listened to his 
 solemn predictions concerning it. 
 
 Speaking to the twelve as he sent them forth 
 on a tour of preaching and healing, he told them 
 of persecutions they met with only after his 
 resurrection and ascension, and said, "When 
 they persecute you in one town, escape to the next ; 
 for, I tell you, you will not have come to the 
 end of the towns of Israel before the Son of Man 
 comes.'* Later when our Lord, after his trans- 
 figuration, foretold his death, and Peter rebuked 
 him for indulging in such gloomy forebodings, he 
 assured Peter and the rest that discipleship to 
 him meant parting with! much and suffering much, 
 and then went on to say, "The Son of Man is 
 to come in his Father's glory, with his angels, and 
 then he 'will give to every man what his actions 
 deserve.' I tell you, some of those who are stand- 
 ing here will not know death till they have seen 
 the Son of Man coming into his kingdom." We 
 remember our Lord's words of blistering denunci- 
 ation against the leading men among his people. 
 The ever recurring refrain of them was, "Alas 
 for you, teachers of the Law and Pharisees, hypo- 
 crites that you are!" until at length he utters a 
 
310 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 prediction in these words, "You serpents and 
 brood of vipers ! How can you escape being sen- 
 tenced to the pit? That is why I send you 
 prophets, wise men, and teachers of the law, some 
 of whom you will crucify and kill, and some of 
 whom you will scourge in your synagogues and 
 persecute from town to town ; in order that upon 
 your heads may fall every drop of innocent 
 'blood spilt on earth/ from the blood of innocent 
 Abel down to that of Zechariah, Barachiah's son, 
 whom you murdered between the temple and the 
 altar. All this, I tell you, will come home to the 
 present generation." After listening to these aw- 
 ful predictions of our Lord "his disciples came up 
 to him and privately said, 'Tell us when this will 
 be, and what will be the sign of your coming and 
 of the close of the age.' ' And sitting there upon 
 the Mount of Olives Jesus gave them that very 
 complete reply, which covers the whole of the 
 24th and 25th of Matthew, besides a part of Mark 
 13th and Luke 21st. Summarized, the reply was 
 this : Before this coming of mine there will be 
 pretended Christs ; wars and warlike rumors ; fam- 
 ines, pestilences, earthquakes; bitter persecution 
 of you, my disciples ; backslidings from me, and the 
 preaching of my gospel throughout the world as 
 a testimony to all nations. "Then will come the 
 end of this age, with the foul desecration mentioned 
 by the prophet Daniel, standing in the Holy 
 Place (the reader must consider what this means). 
 . . . Wherever a dead body lies, 'there will 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 311 
 
 the vultures flock.' Immediately after the dis- 
 tress of those days, 'the sun will be darkened, 
 the moon will not give her light, the stars will fall 
 from the heavens, and the forces of the heavens 
 will be convulsed.' Then will appear the sign of 
 the Son of Man in the heavens ; and all the peoples 
 of the earth will mourn, when they see the Son 
 of Man coming on the clouds of heaven, with 
 power and great glory ; and he will send his an- 
 gels, with a great trumpet, and they will gather 
 his people round him from the four winds, from 
 one end of heaven to the other." 
 
 The disciples are listening intently, and now 
 they break in upon him with the word, "But 
 when, Master? May we not know the time?" 
 And in the same even tones of assured knowledge 
 and full authority he continued, "Learn the les- 
 son taught by the fig tree. As soon as its 
 branches are full of sap, and it is bursting into 
 leaf, you know that summer is near. And so 
 may you, as soon as you see all these things, 
 know that he is at your doors. I tell you, even 
 the present generation will not pass away, till all 
 these things have taken place. The heavens and 
 the earth will pass away, but my words shall never 
 pass away." 
 
 Nothing is clearer than the fact that the first 
 Christians believed that our Lord's second coming, 
 with all the power and glory and dread which he 
 himself associated with it, would take place be- 
 fore that generation passed away, which listened 
 
312 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 to his) teachings and saw his mighty deeds and his 
 mightier life. 
 
 When these disciples asked the Lord about the 
 sign and time of his coming again, they coupled 
 with that coming what they called "the close of 
 the age." What did they mean by the close of 
 the age? Unfortunately for English speaking 
 peoples, the King James translators called this 
 close of the age "the end of the world," and thus 
 suggested a theme which was not in the minds of 
 these disciples at all. What they wanted Jesus 
 to tell them was, when the order of things then 
 existing would give place to the new and better 
 institutions which he had come to establish. 
 They had very incomplete, not to say false ideas 
 as to what the changes were to be, towards which 
 under our Lord's tuition they had learned to look. 
 But they were sure that he was to bring the old 
 dying age to an end, and introduce an age which 
 would be his own, and great and glorious like 
 himself. 
 
 The age that was going out was to them the 
 age of the Jew, on the one hand, and of the Gen- 
 tile on the other. It was, on the one hand, the 
 age of Mosaism with its doctrine of the divine 
 unity, its bloody sacrifices and endless rites and 
 ceremonies, and its sad lack of real righteous- 
 ness ; and on the other, of heathen idolatries, pol- 
 lutions and tyrannies. To the disciples of Jesus 
 this age was specially represented by Jewish 
 hostility to their Master and his gospel of salva- 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 313 
 
 tion, through the attainment of a righteousness, 
 which to these Jews seemed) so impossible and fool j 
 ish that they rewarded both the thing itself and 
 Him who insisted upon it as their only hope, with 
 the most implacable hatred. These disciples be- 
 lieved in Jesus most confidently, but they wanted 
 more light as to his plans. When would he break 
 down this Jewish opposition, attain the place of 
 king, and successfully cope with every resistance 
 and difficulty besides ? Our Lord's answer was that 
 he would do it at his "coming," and that this com- 
 ing of his would take place within the life-time 
 of the generation to which they themselves be- 
 longed. 
 
 That the apostolic church understood his words 
 in this way is abundantly clear. Let us cite a few 
 passages in evidence, in the order in which they 
 were written. 
 
 "God deems it just to inflict suffering on those 
 who are now inflicting suffering upon you, and 
 to give relief to you who are suffering, as well as 
 to us, at the appearing of the Lord Jesus from 
 heaven with his mighty angels, 'in flaming fire.' " 
 (2 Thess. 1:6, 7, A. D. 53.) 
 
 "There is no gift in which you are deficient while 
 waiting for the appearing of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ, and God himself will strengthen you to 
 the end, so that at the day of our Lord Jesus 
 Christ you may be found blameless." (1 Cor. 1 : 
 7, 8, A. D. 57.) 
 
 "These things happened to them by way of 
 
314 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 warning and were recorded as a caution to us, in 
 whose days the ends of the ages have come." 
 (1 Cor. 10:11, A. D. 57.) 
 
 "Our salvation is nearer now than when we 
 accepted the faith. The night is almost gone; 
 but the day is near." (Rom. 13:11, A. D. 58.) 
 
 It should be noted that "Salvation" in this last 
 passage must of necessity mean a temporal deliver- 
 ance of some sort. For those who were looking 
 for it were already enjoying salvation in the 
 spiritual sense. Between the years 65 and 68 
 Peter wrote "to the people of God who are liv- 
 ing abroad, dispersed throughout Pontus, Galatia, 
 Cappadocia, Roman Asia, and Bithynia . . . 
 who, through faith, are being guarded by the 
 power of God, awaiting a salvation that is ready 
 to be revealed in the last days. At the thought 
 of this," he declares, "you are full of exultation. 
 ... . . It was this salvation that the prophets, 
 who spoke long ago of the blessing intended for 
 you, sought, and strove to comprehend; as they 
 strove to discern what that time could be, to which 
 the spirit of Christ within them was pointing, when 
 foretelling the sufferings that would befall Christ, 
 and the glories that would follow." So Peter 
 made the same distinctions between salvations that 
 Paul did. There was the salvation of the 
 soul which was received as the reward of 
 faith, and there was "a salvation that was 
 ready to be revealed in the last days." How 
 vividly Paul makes this great fact stand out in 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 315 
 
 his latest word on the second coming, as such 
 
 "The state of which we are citizens is in 
 Heaven; and it is from heaven that we are 
 eagerly looking for a Savior, the Lord Jesus 
 Christ. . . . The Lord is near." (Phil. 
 3:20; 4:5, A. D. 61.) 
 
 How beautifully, too, some words of James 
 lend their emphasis here! "Be patient then, 
 brothers, till the coming of the Lord 
 for the Lord's coming is near. . . . The 
 Judge is already standing at the door." (Jas. 
 5:7, 8, 9.) 
 
 The writer of the letter to the Hebrews, too, 
 has a most helpful word, which shows us, on the 
 one hand, that our Lord's death took place at 
 "the close of the age," as the apostolic church 
 understood the phrase, and on the other, that his 
 second coming would be for the deliverance of 
 those who were then eagerly looking for him. 
 "But now, once for all, at the close of the age, 
 he has appeared, in order to abolish sin by the 
 sacrifice of himself . . . and the second time 
 he will appear but without any burden of sin 
 to those who are waiting for him, to bring salva- 
 tion." (Heb, 9:26, 28.) 
 
 Nothing can be clearer than the fact that all 
 the thought and work of the apostolic church was 
 saturated with the idea that its Lord was speed- 
 ily to be revealed in awful majesty, to free them 
 from their foes and introduce a better day. And 
 here again let us remind ourselves that this expec- 
 
316 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 tation was based upon our Lord's own words: 
 "As soon, however, as you see Jerusalem sur- 
 rounded by armed camps, then you may know that 
 the hour of her desecration is at hand. Then 
 those of you who are in Judea must take refuge 
 in the mountains, those who are in Jerusalem must 
 leave at once, and those who are in the country 
 places must not go into it. For these are to be 
 the days of Vengeance, when all that scripture 
 says will be fulfilled. Alas for the women that are 
 with child, and for those that are nursing infants 
 in those days! For there will be great suffering 
 in the land, and anger against this people. They 
 will fall by the edge of the sword, and will be 
 taken prisoners to every land, and 'Jerusalem will 
 be under the heel of the Gentiles,' until their day 
 is over, as it shall be. There will be signs, too, 
 in the sun and moon and stars, and on earth 
 despair among the nations, in their dismay at the 
 roaring of the sea and the surge. Men's hearts 
 will fail them through dread of what is coming 
 on the world; for 'the forces of the heavens will 
 be convulsed.' Then will be seen the 'Son of man 
 coming in a cloud' with power and great glory. 
 And when these things begin to occur, look up- 
 wards and lift your heads, for your deliverance 
 will be at hand. ... I tell you that even the 
 present generation will not pass away till all has 
 taken place. The heavens and the earth will pass 
 away, but my words will never pass away." 
 (Luke 81: 20-28, 32, 33.) 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 317 
 
 Here, then, in one paragraph of our Lord's 
 teaching 1 , is point after point of that which his 
 disciples taught after him. 
 
 But we have not yet exhausted the language in 
 which these apostolic Christians expressed them- 
 selves on the subject which was so dear to them 
 in all their life of doing and suffering. On the 
 day of Pentecost Peter spoke to his vast audience 
 of "the last days" and "the day of the Lord- 
 that great and awful day," and in his second 
 letter he asserts, as taught long before by the 
 Master himself, "the day of the Lord will come 
 like a thief." "You see the day drawing near," 
 the most awful and; yet most blessed of all these 
 last days, was a word "to the Hebrews." "You 
 have heaped up wealth in these last days, you 
 will find that you have heaped up fire," wrote 
 James warningly to the silver-lovers of Jerusalem. 
 "God has in these latter days spoken to us through 
 his Son. . . . Beware of refusing to hear him 
 who is speaking," is another New Testament 
 warning. 
 
 The enthroned Christ reigning, and to reign 
 till all acknowledge his sway ; a coming of his, 
 glorious alike in its terrors and its blessings, 
 to take place very soon; their lives passing in 
 connection with the close of an age, which would 
 end so early, that their days as these dawned and 
 faded, were to be thought of only as the last 
 days, such were the governing ideas, the intel- 
 lectual and spiritual atmosphere in which these 
 
318 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 first Christians lived their hours and did their 
 striving. 
 
 But our presentation of their mental and spirit- 
 ual situation is not yet quite complete. They 
 associated the resurrection of the dead the right- 
 eous dead at least, with the coming of their Lord 
 at the very close of the age. This is as plain 
 as any fact in the New Testament. It comes out 
 most distinctly in Paul's first letter, that to the 
 Thessalonians, written, let us repeat, about the 
 year 52. And Paul never in the slightest degree 
 receded from his first position, but fortified it 
 and kept disclosing the larger facts connected with 
 it. It was probably this common belief that the 
 resurrection of the dead would occur in connec- 
 tion with the Lord's second coming which, through 
 some process of reasoning not easy to guess now, 
 led such men as Hymenaeus and Philetus to con- 
 clude and teach that it had already taken place, 
 and so to bring upon themselves that rebuke of 
 Paul which we find in his second letter to Timothy. 
 
 But what warrant, if! any, had the apostle Paul 
 for teaching as he did on this subject? None at 
 all? Was he quite mistaken? Or had he rightly 
 interpreted his Lord at this point also? 
 
 Jesus said to Martha, "Your brother shall 
 rise to life." "I know that he will," replied 
 Martha, "in the resurrection at the last day." 
 Was this the subject on which Jesus had talked 
 with Mary when "Martha herself was distracted 
 with the many preparations she was making?" 
 
THE ESCHATOLOGY OF JESUS 319 
 
 And did Martha catch enough of the Lord's teach- 
 ing in spite of her worries to enable her to give 
 this intelligent answer to his word about Lazarus's 
 rising? However that may have been, Jesus had 
 taught at least a little publicly on the great 
 theme. "It is the will of my Father that every 
 one who sees the Son, and believes in him, should 
 have immortal life; and I myself will raise him 
 up at the last day. . . . No one can come to 
 me unless the Father who sent me draws him to 
 me ; and I will raise him up at the last day. . . . 
 He who takes my flesh for his food, and drinks 
 my blood, has immortal life ; and I will raise him 
 up at the last day." (John 6:40, 44, 54.) 
 
 Was Paul wrong in his understanding of this 
 teaching of our Lord? Was "the last day," 
 after all, not at the close of the Mosaic age, but 
 a day to be waited for till the close of this Chris- 
 tian era? There is certainly a lively satisfaction 
 for a certain class of minds in being able to point 
 out the mistakes of great men, and the finer the 
 inspiration of the writers and teachers criticised, 
 the keener the enjoyment of their overconfident 
 reviewers. It may, however, be as well for us 
 not to pronounce Paul and the apostolic church 
 generally, in error on these points, till we have 
 heard from them further. 
 
 Whether, however, they were mistaken or not, 
 their lives were certainly lived in the atmosphere 
 of these great expectations. Their Lord reigned 
 and was coming to deliver and gloriously uplift 
 
320 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 his people. Then those of their number who had 
 fallen under the power of death, and those who 
 were yet to fall under its power before the day 
 arrived, would all be raised from the dead; while 
 those who would be alive when he came, would 
 share in the deliverance, and experience a change 
 corresponding to that of the resurrection itself. 
 So lively were these beliefs and hopes that in 
 Thessalonica and Corinth at least they even 
 threatened industry and interfered with the nor- 
 mal life of the family a fact which can be veri- 
 fied by even a hasty glance at 2nd Thess. 3:7-16 
 and 1 Cor. 7:29-35. 
 
 This chapter may serve as a brief introduction 
 to a large subject. Any one wishing some ade- 
 quate acquaintance with the great governing ideas 
 of the apostolic church and the ends towards which 
 all its preaching and living and striving and suf- 
 fering were continually directed must either pre- 
 pare or peruse a word on these three themes 
 Jesus as Deliverer from Death, Jesus and Na- 
 tional Destiny and Jesus as Complete Savior. 
 The three chapters which follow this will, there- 
 fore, be devoted to a discussion of these phases of 
 New Testament teaching. 
 
XX 
 
 JESUS THE DELIVERER FROM DEATH 
 
 The resurrection, considered by; itself, is a post 
 mortem deliverance of the human body from the 
 power of disease and death. At least it is so 
 presented in the Christian scriptures. Accord- 
 ingly we have in Daniel the words : "And many of 
 them that sleep in the dust of the earth shall 
 awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame 
 and everlasting contempt" (Chapter 12:2) ; and in 
 Matthew 
 
 "The tombs opened, and the bodies of many of 
 God' 8, people who had fallen asleep rose, and leav- 
 ing their tombs, went, after the resurrection of 
 Jesus, into the Holy City, and appeared to many 
 people." (Chapter 27:52, 53.) And the resur- 
 rection of our Lord himself was regarded by both 
 Peter and Paul, as all the more a triumph over 
 the last enemy, because his body did not even 
 undergo corruption before its deliverance was ef- 
 fected. (Acts 2 :31 ; 13, 36.) 
 
 But the New Testament writers did not long 
 consider the resurrection as an event which could 
 be thought of by itself. On the contrary they 
 very early came to see that it stood in most inti- 
 mate association with things which were even 
 321 
 
322 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 greater than it was. The body of their Master 
 had escaped corruption, but if that had been all, 
 what would have been the advantage? For flesh 
 and blood, as they knew them, and as we know 
 them, there is no escape from corruption that can 
 be considered permanent. To rescue the body 
 from death is only to see it fall under the power 
 of death again, unless you can have its flesh and 
 blood changed into something superior. So they 
 came to see that, not the resurrection of the body, 
 but its transmutation from the perishable to the 
 imperishable, from the disfigured to the beautiful, 
 from the frail to the strong in a word from an 
 animal body to a spiritual body, was the great 
 event which had taken place in the case of their 
 Master, and that a like change was the thing 
 which they were to anticipate for themselves. 
 And, as we know, they learned to look forward to 
 it with eager longing and expectancy. 
 
 "This I say, Brothers Flesh and blood can 
 have no share in the kingdom of God, nor can the 
 perishable share the imperishable. Listen, I will 
 tell you God's secret purpose. We shall not all 
 have passed to our rest, but we shall all undergo 
 a change in a moment, in the twinkling of an 
 eye, at the last trumpet call ; for the trumpet will 
 sound, and the dead will rise immortal and we, 
 also, shall undergo a change. For this perishable 
 body of ours must put on an imperishable 
 form, and this dying body a deathless form." 
 ("Undergo a change" is from the tentative 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 323 
 
 edition and is most expressive.) 1 Cor. 50-53. 
 
 "And we, also, shall undergo a change," became 
 a favorite text with Paul, and he made it, through 
 the Holy Spirit's enlightenment, a subject of much 
 fruitful thought. "And we, also, shall undergo a 
 change" we who are still living in the flesh when 
 the Lord comes again and we shall not need a 
 resurrection from the dead: the change will take 
 its place so far as we are concerned such was the 
 burden of the apostle's musing. 
 
 Now if we allow ourselves to ponder for a mo- 
 ment, we shall see what large possibilities stand 
 connected with this idea. All we have to do is 
 to hold in our minds the fact that Paul and the 
 Church generally, whether right or wrong, be- 
 lieved that our Lord was coming in judgment, 
 for the destruction of his foes and the deliver- 
 ance of his own, while some of themselves were 
 still living; and that the resurrection of the dead 
 would take place and this change be introduced 
 in connection with that coming; to see how far 
 his reflection might bear him along. The race 
 was to live on, the generations were to follow 
 each other as before, and a change was to be 
 effected in the living, which would make them 
 possessors of spiritual bodies, like those which 
 would be bestowed upon the dead, in connection 
 with their resurrection at the coming of the Judge. 
 How far would this change be carried during the 
 progress of the coming ages? Would it go so 
 far that at length no believer's body would see 
 
324 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 corruption any more than that of the Master 
 did? Might it not even be carried to the point 
 of saving men from disease and death altogether? 
 
 Paul seems to have gone to this utmost length 
 in his study of the matter, or, as we would per- 
 haps better say, in his enlightenment by the Holy 
 Spirit in relation to the subject. Fortunately 
 we know the order in which his books or letters 
 were written, and can follow the current of his 
 thinking. And this we shall now proceed to do. 
 
 About sixteen years after Jesus of Nazareth 
 had revealed himself to Saul of Tarsus, the 
 Jewish arch-persecutor of his followers, as the 
 risen and glorified Messiah ; and about four years 
 subsequent to the definite entrance of the new 
 apostle upon his great life-work, as a missionary 
 to other peoples besides his own ; Paul wrote the 
 earliest of those letters of his which have come 
 down to us the first to the Thessalonians. One 
 of the things which this letter most clearly re- 
 veals is, that these Christian converts of a year 
 or less needed further instruction touching the 
 resurrection than they had received, and that 
 Paul recognized the fact. It would seem that 
 one or more of their number had already died, 
 and that they were troubled by the fear that these 
 and others who might yet fall under the power of 
 disease and death, before that glorious coming 
 of the Master, in which their evangelizer had 
 taught them to believe, would be shut off from 
 every possibility of sharing in the great deliver- 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 325 
 
 ance which he was to effect for his own when he 
 came. Paul's answer to this fear of theirs was 
 a very graphic description of the events which 
 would attend the coming 1 . 
 
 "We do not wish you to remain in ignorance, 
 Brothers, with regard to those who have passed 
 to their rest, that your grief may not bd like that 
 of others who have no hope. For as we believe 
 that Jesus died and rose again, so also we be- 
 lieve that God will bring, with Jesus, those who 
 through him have passed to their rest. This we 
 tell you on the authority of the Lord that those 
 of us who are still living at the coming of the 
 Lord will not anticipate those who have passed 
 to their rest. For, with a loud summons, with 
 the shout of an arch-angel, and with the trumpet 
 call of God, the Lord himself will come down from 
 Heaven. Then, those who died in union with 
 Christ shall rise first ; and afterwards we who are 
 still living shall be caught up in the clouds, with 
 them, to meet the Lord in the air; and so we 
 shall be forever with the Lord. . . . For 
 God destined us not for wrath but to win salva- 
 tion through our Lord Jesus Christ; who died 
 for us that, whether we are still watching or have 
 fallen asleep, we may live with him." (I Thess. 
 4:13-17; 5:9.) 
 
 His teaching here was certainly that the 
 resurrection of believers would be the first earthly 
 response to a glorious coming of Christ, which 
 some of these Thessalonians would in all prob- 
 
A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 ability witness before many years had passed. 
 The precise time of the events no one could tell, 
 but that made them none the less certain. The 
 exact hour of birth-pangs or of the coming of a 
 burglar cannot be predicted, he went on to argue, 
 but birth-pangs and burglaries occur, neverthe- 
 less, and men know that they must not live in 
 utter forgetfulness of them. Nor could any one 
 of that time afford to ignore these stupendous 
 events, for they would not be long delayed. 
 
 It will probably be best for us to defer the 
 general discussion of the resurrection, in its re- 
 lation to the coming of our Lord till we have 
 taken up in their historic order all Paul's words 
 upon it. But before going any further, we must 
 note his assertion here, that after those who died 
 in Christ will arise, "we who are still living shall 
 be caught up into the clouds with them to meet 
 the Lord in the air; and so we shall be forever 
 with the Lord." 
 
 In Revelation we read of the two Christian 
 witnesses who were persecuted and slain that 
 "after three days and a half the lifegiving breath 
 of God entered into these men, and they stood 
 up upon their feet and a great terror took posses- 
 sion of those who were watching them. The two 
 men heard a loud voice from heaven which said 
 to them 'Come up here,' and they went up to 
 heaven in a cloud while their enemies watched 
 them." (Rev. 11:11.) 
 
 Here was an escape of God's people from their 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 327 
 
 persecutors, and reading on we find that it was 
 succeeded by awful judgments upon these per- 
 secutors themselves, and these judgments again 
 by the paean of triumph 
 
 "The kingdom of the world has become the 
 kingdom of our Lord and of his Christ, and he 
 will reign for ever and ever" (Rev. 11 :15) ; and 
 
 "We thank thee, O Lord our God, the Almighty 
 who art and who wast, that thou hast assumed thy 
 great power and reigned. The nations were en- 
 raged and thy wrath fell upon them; the time 
 came for the dead to be judged, and for thee to 
 give the reward to thy servants the prophets, 
 and to the people of Christ and to those who 
 reverence thy name the high and the low alike 
 and to destroy those that are destroying the 
 earth." (Rev. 11:17, 18.) 
 
 Again we have the vision of "the Dragon 
 standing in front of the woman who is about to 
 give birth to the child, so that he may devour it 
 as soon as it is born. The woman gave birth to 
 a son, a male child, who is destined to rule all the 
 nations with an iron rod; and her child was at 
 once caught up to God upon his throne; while 
 the woman fled into the wilderness where there is 
 a place prepared for her by God, to be tended 
 there for twelve hundred and sixty days." (Rev. 
 12:4-6.) 
 
 Being caught up for safety is the idea com- 
 mon to, all these passages, and in the last one the 
 wilderness is linked with the divine throne as a 
 
328 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 place of refuge. They all refer to the same 
 event. The woman is the apostolic church. So, 
 too, are the two witnesses. Or, at the very least, 
 they must be taken as representing that church 
 in its Judaic section. In the woman's escape to 
 the wilderness we read the story of the Church's 
 escape from Jerusalem before that doomed city 
 went down in fire and blood. Its escape was so 
 complete that it might well be figured forth by 
 the bringing back to life and bearing up to 
 heaven in a cloud, of two witnesses for Christ, 
 who represented the whole people as in Zechariah's 
 vision did "the two sons of oil that stand by the 
 Lord of the whole earth." In the account of 
 these two witnesses, too, we have both of the 
 leading ideas of the word of Paul which we have 
 been considering the rising to life on the one 
 hand, and the being caught up in the clouds on 
 the other. Living believers borne into safety 
 (along with those who have been raised from the 
 dead) and afterwards restored to their proper 
 activities here, was the idea Paul had in his mind 
 when he wrote his word about their being "caught 
 up in the clouds ... to meet the Lord in 
 the air," as he descended in judgment. This is 
 the only interpretation which will harmonize with 
 Paul's more fully developed teachings on the 
 general subject, as we shall see. Nor is his rea- 
 son for using such apocalyptic terms hard to 
 guess. The persecutor was near and threaten- 
 ing. 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 329 
 
 The resurrection of the dead and deliverance 
 and refuge for the living believer, are the two 
 ideas, then, with which Paul first meets us. His 
 next word on the subject is found in the fifteenth 
 chapter of first Corinthians 
 
 "We shall not all have passed to our rest, but 
 we shall all undergo a change in a moment, in 
 the twinkling of an eye, at the last trumpet- 
 call ; for the trumpet will sound, and the dead will 
 rise immortal, and we also shall undergo a change." 
 (I Cor. 15:51, 52.) 
 
 We have already noted the fact that the apostle 
 here brings forward in the most confident way, 
 the assertion that those believers who would them- 
 selves be alive in the flesh at the time their 
 brethren who had gone to their rest would 
 be raised from the dead, would find no 
 resurrection awaiting them, but would become 
 the subjects of "a change," such as would make 
 them possessors of imperishable bodies like those 
 of their resurrected brethren. And to pave the 
 way for this new idea, he entered into quite an 
 elaborate discussion of the resurrection itself. 
 In doing so, he declared that the resurrection 
 would be no mere resuscitation that in point of 
 fact the old body of flesh and blood would not 
 rise at all. 
 
 "Some one, however, may ask, 'How do the dead 
 rise?' and 'in what body will they come?' You 
 foolish man, the seed you yourself sow does not 
 come to life unless it dies! And when you sow, 
 
330 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 you sow not the body that will be, but a mere 
 grain perhaps of wheat or something else. 
 God gives it the body that he pleases to each 
 seed its special body. . . ." 
 
 Thus Paul suggested that it was the living 
 germ that mattered most. For the vegetable 
 form which results from the sowing of a seed is 
 derived to only a slight extent from the seed it- 
 self. The form which we are to have is built up 
 almost wholly of outside materials which the 
 living organism has the power of seizing upon 
 and assimilating to itself. What is the germ 
 in man? Paul does not answer further than to 
 assure us that it is very largely, at least, inde- 
 pendent of flesh and blood. It is not the animal 
 life, for it does not build up an animal body. On 
 the other hand he declares that the body it builds 
 up is a spiritual one, and thus shuts us up to 
 the conclusion that it is spiritual in its nature. 
 His teaching,, -therefore, regarding the change 
 which was to be effected in the living, and which 
 was to take the place of the work wrought in 
 the case of the dead, in connection with their 
 resurrection, would clearly seem to be that the 
 life which made them spiritual entities would build 
 for itself a spiritual body, while it still remained 
 in connection with the old body of flesh and blood ; 
 and that this new order of things would be estab- 
 lished simultaneously with the occurrence of the 
 resurrection itself. (Vrs. 53, 54 N. T. in M. S.) 
 
 That this is really what he had in his mind is 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 331 
 
 made clearer still by words contained in his next 
 letter to the Corinthians 
 
 "We are not fixing our attention on what is 
 seen, but on what is unseen; for what is seen is 
 temporary, but what is unseen is enduring." 
 
 Having stated this he went on to tell these be- 
 lievers that it was the seen body and the unseen 
 body that he was contrasting with each other. 
 
 "For we know that if our tent that earthly 
 body which is now our home is taken down, we 
 have a house of (rod's building, a home not made 
 by hands, imperishable, in Heaven. Even while 
 we are in our present body we sigh, longing to 
 put over it our heavenly dwelling, sure that, when 
 we have put it on, we shall never be found without 
 bodies ! 1 For we who are in this 'tent' sigh un- 
 der our burden, unwilling to take it off, yet wish- 
 ing to put our heavenly body over it, so that all 
 that is mortal may be absorbed in Life. And 
 He who has prepared us for this change is God, 
 who has also given us his Spirit as the pledge 
 of it." (2nd Cor. 5:1-5.) 
 
 "We shall never be found without bodies," 
 when once the resurrection is past and the new 
 order set up. "For we who are in this 'tent' 
 sigh under our burden, unwilling to take it off, 
 yet wishing to put our heavenly body over it, so 
 that all that is mortal may be absorbed in Life." 
 
 i "Without bodies" is from the tentative edition. Why 
 obsolete, ugly, misleading, "discarnate" was dragged forth 
 to take its place in the revision, who shall say? 
 
332 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 The mortal absorbed in Life absorbed, taken 
 up, caused to disappear the seen body swallowed 
 up by the unseen body we shall find other words 
 of his on this point in his letter to the Romans. 
 In the meantime let us note what he further says 
 here: 
 
 "And he who has prepared us for this change 
 is God, who has also given us his spirit as a 
 pledge of it." 
 
 We have now before us in Paul's teaching an 
 unseen body enveloping and interpenetrating the 
 seen body of flesh and blood, and the vision of his 
 joy in view of the possibility of that condition 
 entering into the actual experience of himself and 
 those to whom he was writing. Then the "tent" 
 of flesh and blood will not matter so much, he 
 exults. It will no longer be possible to render 
 us bodiless when that time comes. So far Paul; 
 but John's vision of the souls crying under the 
 altar is another proof of the existence of this 
 faith and this yearning in the apostolic church. 
 (Rev. 6:9-11.) With the coming of the Judge 
 and Deliverer they would reach their full felicity, 
 through the attainment of their spiritual bodies. 
 So the living and the dead joined each other in the 
 one great cry. And the souls under the altar 
 "were each given a white robe, and they were told 
 to rest yet a little longer, till the number of their 
 fellow servants and of their Brothers who were 
 about to be put to death, as they had been, should 
 be complete." The wide-spread extent of this 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 333 
 
 yearning is one of the startling revelations of 
 Romans 8:18-25. In this passage Paul tells us 
 that "All Nature awaits with eager expectation 
 the appearing of the Sons of God. For Nature 
 was made subject to imperfection not by its own 
 choice but owing to him who made it so yet 
 not without the hope that some day Nature also 
 will be set free from enslavement to decay and 
 will attain to the freedom which will mark the 
 glory of the children of God." (Rom. 8:19-21.) 
 
 And when we ask what the glory of God's son 
 is to be, Paul answers that it will reach its height 
 in) the realization or attainment of "our full adop- 
 tion as sons the redemption of our bodies." 
 (Rom. 8:23.) 
 
 Now the redemption of the body, in the case 
 of those who had died was to be accomplished by 
 means of the resurrection. But what of those 
 who were alive in the flesh? Paul's answer was 
 that they, also, were to be freed from that en- 
 slavement to decay, or to disease and death under 
 which there had been such long inward groaning; 
 and that Nature was waiting with eager expecta- 
 tion to receive its share of this felicity. Whether 
 by "nature" he described the animal creation, 
 or the animal and vegetable creation both, or 
 more, he opens up a vast field here, and wonder- 
 fully enlarges our view of Christ's saving pur- 
 poses. 
 
 But enlarging the field and multiplying the 
 difficulties to the utmost possible limit only served 
 
334 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 to exalt Paul's Savior in the thoughts of his 
 bond-slave. He knew that his Lord would not 
 fail nor be discouraged till all his work was done. 
 Accordingly, his final word on the subject, writ- 
 ten as, late as the year 68 probably, and found in 
 second Timothy says of our Lord 
 
 "He has made an end of death, and has brought 
 life and immortality to light" (2nd Tim. 1 :10) ; 
 from which we can see that the departing apostle 
 had lost sight of the steps and processes by 
 means of which the goal had to be reached, and 
 stood in the very presence of the consummation 
 itself, with his whole personality bathed in its 
 surpassing glory. But the steps were there still, 
 and it is in order for us now to review them care- 
 fully. 
 
 Our next duty, then, is that of getting before 
 our minds in definite shape the various facts con- 
 nected with the resurrection, which our present 
 study of the scriptures has brought to our atten- 
 tion. It will be remembered that we started out 
 by stating that the resurrection, considered by 
 itself, was a post mortem deliverance of the human 
 body from the power of disease and death. We 
 then found that the New Testament writers very 
 soon saw that to make this deliverance permanent, 
 there must necessarily be associated with it a re- 
 placing of our coarse clay with some substance 
 out of which a body imperishable and spiritual 
 could be built up. They learned at the same time 
 to associate with this resurrectional change in the 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 335 
 
 bodies of the dead, a corresponding change in 
 the bodies of those believers in Christ who would 
 be alive in the flesh when the resurrection 
 of the dead took place. This is made clear 
 by what we call Paul's first letter to the 
 Corinthians, which was written in the year 
 57. In his next letter to this same people he 
 shows us that he had come to entertain an even 
 larger expectation and hope. It had been given 
 him to see that a time would speedily come, when 
 the change in which he believed would involve for 
 the living child of God, the putting on or build- 
 ing up of the imperishable spiritual body "over" 
 the body of flesh and blood; and that at some 
 time in the developing history of the race's re- 
 demption this spiritual body would absorb or 
 entirely replace the body of flesh and blood, and 
 so do away with death altogether, swallowing it 
 up in victory. He declared to the Romans 
 about the same time that, not only God's children 
 but nature also was groaning for introduction to 
 this final "freedom from enslavement to corrup- 
 tion," this "redemption of our bodies." And when 
 he wrote his last letter to Timothy, his one refer- 
 ence to the matter as we have just seen, is that in 
 which writing of the "appearance of our Savior 
 Christ Jesus," he asserts that "He has made an 
 end of death, and has brought life and immor- 
 tality to light by means of the Good News." 
 
 Now all this teaching is very clear, but how 
 shall we bring it into touch with the facts of his- 
 
336 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 tory and of life about us? Certainly the last 
 enemy has not yet been wholly destroyed. The 
 words of the letter to the Hebrews touching our 
 Lord's triumphs is still applicable. He is reign- 
 ing and judging and punishing and rewarding: 
 
 "As yet, however, we do not see everything 
 placed under man. What our eyes do see is 
 Jesus, who was made for a while lower than 
 angels, now because of his sufferings and death, 
 crowned; with glory and honor ; so that his tasting 
 the bitterness of death should, in God's loving 
 kindness, be on behalf of all mankind. It was in- 
 deed, fitting that God for whom and through 
 whom all things exist, should when leading many 
 sons to glory, make the author of their salvation 
 perfect through suffering. For he who purifies, 
 and those whom he purifies all spring from One; 
 and therefore he is not ashamed to call them 
 'Brothers.' " He says 
 
 "I will tell of thy name to my Brothers, 
 
 "In the midst of the congregation I will sing 
 thy praise," and again: 
 
 "As for me I will put my trust in God." 
 And yet again : 
 
 "See here am I and the children whom God 
 gave me." 
 
 "Therefore, since human nature is the common 
 heritage of 'the Children' Jesus also shared it in 
 order that by his death he might render power- 
 less him whose power lies in death that is, the 
 Devil and so might deliver all those who, from 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 337 
 
 fear of death, had all their lives been living in 
 slavery." (Heb. 2:8-15.) 
 
 Such was the apostolic church's faith in Christ. 
 They believed that he had become a man in order 
 that by dying himself he might abolish death and 
 render the Devil, as author of death, powerless 
 upon this planet. But they saw what we still 
 see to-day, namely, that up to the present this 
 mighty undertaking of his has been only partially 
 accomplished. How far has the work gone? 
 Anything like a definite twentieth century answer 
 is perhaps impossible, just as it is impossible for 
 us to fix the date at which death will be finally 
 chased from our planet, along with him whose 
 power lies in it. But if we believe on the testi- 
 mony of these scriptures, that this latter time will 
 certainly arrive, we must also accept their mes- 
 sage regarding the steps which they reveal as 
 preparatory to it. They are our sole source of 
 information. 
 
 We may prepare the way for what still remains 
 to be stated by a word, which will perhaps prove 
 as startling as it is self-evident. If the resurrec- 
 tion still remained to take place and were to 
 occur to-day, we would not necessarily know any- 
 thing about it. Our bodily ears were not con- 
 structed to catch the notes of spiritual trumpets, 
 the voices of archangels, or the shout of spiritual 
 hosts ; nor our bodily eyes to see that which is 
 not matter. We can hear physical sounds them- 
 selves only within a certain range and volume. 
 
338 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 All the rest are lost upon us. We cannot see 
 the ether though it is all pervasive, nor even the 
 particles of water which moisten the air about 
 us. The military guard never reported that they 
 saw our Lord leave Joseph's tomb. His body was 
 visible to his disciples only when he made it so. 
 That history has no record of the resurrection 
 foretold and described by Paul is, therefore, no 
 proof that it did not occur when he said it would, 
 that is to say, within the life-time of the majority 
 of those toi whom he wrote, and in connection with 
 that coming in judgment of our Lord, which he 
 himself continually affirmed would take place be- 
 fore the generation which He addressed had 
 wholly passed! 1 away. The alternative to believing 
 that it occurred then, is that we shall assert that 
 Paul made a mistake in the matter, which he 
 never really saw or confessed; and this is to im- 
 pugn the accuracy, on a very important point, 
 of the one inspired writer to whom we owe al- 
 most all the particular information which we 
 have received upon the subject. His word in 
 second Thessalonians, second chapter, was writ- 
 ten to correct a possible, if not actual, mistake 
 on their part and not on his. He hints that they 
 were in danger of being deceived by men who 
 might not stop even at forgery in their attempts 
 to figure as teachers. But he nowhere says that 
 he himself was mistaken when he gave them to 
 understand that the day was comparatively near. 
 On the contrary he supplied them with two land- 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 
 
 marks by which they might judge of its distance 
 in time, one of which at least could not have done 
 otherwise than convince them further of its 
 nearness. 
 
 Whether Farrar and others have been correct 
 or not in teaching that "the Man of Sin" or "In- 
 carnation of Wickedness" was Nero, or the deified 
 Julii, with Nero as their crown of blasphemy, 
 there seems to be no real room for doubt that "the 
 Great Apostasy," cited here and elsewhere in the 
 New Testament, was the one prophesied by our 
 Lord himself. Among various other signs of his 
 coming and of the close of the age Jesus had given 
 this one: 
 
 "And then many will fall away, and will betray 
 one another, and hate one another. Many false 
 prophets also will appear and lead many astray, 
 and owing to the increase of wickedness the love 
 of most will grow cold. ... I tell you even 
 the present generation will not pass away, till 
 all these things have taken place. The heavens 
 and the earth will pass away, but my words shall 
 never pass away." (Matt. 24:10-12, 34, 35.) 
 
 The thing Paul was teaching these Thessalon- 
 ians was that the resurrection which was to take 
 place at the coming of the Lord, would not occur 
 before "the Great Apostasy" which the Lord had 
 declared would precede it; though Jesus himself 
 had also foretold that the Apostasy, as well as 
 the Coming, would happen within the life-time 
 of the generation to which he was uttering his 
 
340 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 prophecies. They would have to wait for all the 
 events in the order in which the Lord had placed 
 them in his predictions. 
 
 Now unless we can afford to set ourselves up 
 as wiser than Paul himself, to whom we owe about 
 all we possess regarding the nature and time of 
 the resurrection, we must believe that it occurred 
 in connection with that coming of our Lord. But 
 if it did take place then, the statement that "the 
 resurrection is past already," ceased to be a heresy 
 only a short time after that statement was first 
 written. And this ought to seem to us perfectly 
 natural, for as we have already observed, it was 
 the very nearness of the event which led some to 
 believe and teach that it had already happened. 
 Ever since that time the real heresy has been the 
 denial that the resurrection of God's children took 
 place as predicted by the New Testament writers. 
 
 But if the resurrection took place so long ago 
 as the year 68 or 70 of our era, what of those who 
 have died in the Lord since? it will be asked. 
 Paul has furnished us with a full answer. When 
 their "tents" of flesh and blood were taken down 
 they were not found without bodies, for they had 
 already put on their imperishable spiritual bodies, 
 while they were still using the others. And this 
 work or "change" is wrought in each possessor of 
 the new life in Christ. As to the precise sub- 
 stance out of which these "celestial" bodies are 
 built up, the scripture gives us no information. 
 But the author of "The Evolution of Immortal- 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 341 
 
 ity" has indulged in some very suggestive con- 
 jectures touching the subject, which it may be 
 well for me to quote : 
 
 "The most remarkable feat which modern 
 science has accomplished has been to establish the 
 existence of that strange substance known as the 
 luminiferous or instellar ether, the medium 
 through which the 'X Ray' and wireless teleg- 
 raphy perform their work. Its existence has 
 long been suspected now it is known. Sir Isaac 
 Newton closes his 'Principia' with this prophetic 
 paragraph : 
 
 " 'And now we might add something concerning 
 a most subtle spirit which pervades and lies hid in all 
 gross bodies; by the force and action of which, spirit 
 the particles of bodies mutually attract one another 
 at near distances and cohere if contiguous; and elec- 
 tric bodies separate, and light is emitted, reflected 
 and heats bodies ; and all sensation is excited, and the 
 members of animal bodies move at the command of 
 the will, namely by vibrations of this spirit mutually 
 propagative along the solid filaments of the nerves 
 from the outward organs of sense to the brain, and 
 from the brain to the muscles. But these things can- 
 not be explained in a few words, nor are we furnished 
 with that sufficiency of experiments which is neces- 
 sary to an accurate determination and demonstration 
 of the laws by which this elastic spirit operates.* 
 
 "Now this 'subtle spirit' of Sir Isaac has been 
 shown to be not spirit at all but a material medium 
 which fills all space and interpenetrates all that 
 
342 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 we call matter. The 'sufficiency of experiments' 
 which Newton lacked have been made by Struve, 
 Helmholtz, Lord Kelvin, Dolbear, Teslar, Ront- 
 gen' and a hundred other mathematicians and phy- 
 sicists. The result has been to compel a new 
 definition of matter. Extension, ponderability, 
 form, dimensions, and such qualities can no longer 
 be thought sufficient to define matter. 'Empty' 
 space can no longer be spoken of, for no portion 
 of space is empty. It can no longer be said that 
 'no two portions of matter can occupy the same 
 space at the same time,' for they do so constantly. 
 Indeed, it seems to be a very condition of the ex- 
 istence of matter which we see that it should lie 
 bathed in a matter which we do not see. For the 
 universal ether is matter. As Lord Kjelvin has 
 demonstrated it shows in some ways the phe- 
 nomena of a highly tenuous fluid, in others that 
 of an infinitely dense solid, and in still others the 
 properties of a jelly. It is the medium through 
 which light moves by waves of an ascertained 
 length, electric energy by waves of a different 
 length, heat by still a third, and the energy which 
 we call gravitation by some means not yet ascer- 
 tained. It has been weighed and measured. A 
 sphere of it the size of the earth would, if com- 
 pressed to the density of the earth, be in size 
 somewhere between a marble and an orange. It 
 is the medium in the opaque flesh through which 
 the invisible rays of light pass to form an X ray 
 photograph. Its waves flow through so dense 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 343 
 
 a mass of matter as a block of glass, as water 
 flows through a sieve. It is the medium in which 
 the elemental energies of heat, light, electricity 
 and possibly chemical energy do their work. 
 May not vital energy be concerned with it as 
 well? 
 
 "I venture to say in parenthesis that it is not 
 easy to understand why the physicists are so re- 
 luctant to admit the existence of such an objec- 
 tive fact as 'Vital energy.' Surely there are 
 abundant phenomena which cannot be forced to 
 come under any other form of energy known. 
 Suppose the phrase is but a name for a set of 
 phenomena whose essential nature is not under- 
 stood, that much may be said of all the other 
 categories of energy. 
 
 "It is now more than twenty years since two 
 distinguished English men of science, Professors 
 Balfour Stewart and P. G. Tait, put forth 
 hesitatingly a theory of a physical basis of a 
 future life. Starting from the evident double 
 truth that all physical activity is associated 
 with molecular activity in the matter of 
 the brain and nerves, while at the same time 
 physical and psychical phenomena are evidently 
 different things, they suggest that there may well 
 be a tertium quid, a third something, which serves 
 as a nexus between them, and that ethereal mat- 
 ter may be such a thing. 
 
 "Each thought we think, each emotion we feel, 
 is accompanied by certain molecular movements 
 
344 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 and rearrangements in the brain. The psychical 
 activity actually builds up a physical fabric for 
 itself. But the material fabric is every moment 
 disintegrating, and at death falls into ruin. 
 Now suppose that before that ruin befals, the 
 soul shall have been able to build up, as it were, 
 a brain within a brain, a body within a body, 
 something like that which the Orientals have for 
 ages spoken of as the 'Astral Body.' Then 
 when the body of flesh shall crumble away, there 
 would be left a body, material to be sure, but com- 
 pacted of a kind of matter which behaves quite 
 differently from that which our sense perceptions 
 deal with. It is a material which, so far as 
 science has anything to say, is essentially inde- 
 structible. It moves freely amongst and through 
 ordinary matter without let or hindrance. It is 
 not difficult at any rate to form a picture of a 
 life based upon its organization. From the in- 
 dividual spirits of just men made perfect, this 
 present 'muddy vesture of decay' has dropped 
 away, leaving them 'not unclothed but clothed 
 upon.' They are still men. They have rational 
 souls with material bodies fit to sustain and to ex- 
 press their psychical life. The matter of their 
 bodies is obedient to the laws of matter and life, 
 but to the laws of that kind of life and matter. 
 'There are celestial bodies and bodies terres- 
 trial,' and each has its own mode of action. 
 Such ethereal bodies compacted with living 
 souls would of necessity inhabit a universe of their 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 345 
 
 own, even though that universe should occupy the 
 same space that this one does. Neither earth, 
 nor fire, nor water could in the least impede their 
 movement. In frost and flame they would be 
 equally at home. With the swiftness of light or 
 gravitation they could speed from where old 
 Bootes leads his leash to where Sagittarius draws 
 his bow in the South. With bodies of such firm 
 stuff compounded, and so plastic to the uses of the 
 Spirit, their knowledge would expand until na- 
 ture's secrets should lie open to their eyes." 
 
 As already indicated, all this is extremely sug- 
 gestive as well as instructive. But it is doubtful 
 if this idea of an "Ethereal" body quite coincides 
 with Paul's idea of an imperishable spiritual one. 
 However, in this region one cannot speak with 
 certainty. And happily we do not need to know 
 either the how or the why of some of the divine 
 operations. 
 
 But Paul's vision of the wonders of this 
 "change" reveals a crowning glory. All along 
 the Christian ages the body of flesh and blood has 
 been the cause of much groaning because it has 
 been the victim of disease and death. The 
 apostle, however, discloses a larger hope. The 
 body, too, is to be redeemed in the case of God's 
 sons, and nature is to have its share in that 
 felicity. Then there will no longer be any "en- 
 slavement to decay" but "all that is mortal will be 
 absorbed in life" ; and health, energy, activity and 
 enjoyment will be the lot of the body of flesh and 
 
346 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 blood, until it is "absorbed" by the spiritual body, 
 which will be "over'* it, covering and interpene- 
 trating it; and nature also will at last have come 
 fully under the reign of life. 
 
 To what age will God's children in that coming 
 time attain before this absorption of their mortal 
 bodies will free them for full entrance upon the 
 larger possibilities which naturally belong to 
 bodies celestial? Who shall say? All we can do 
 now is to wonder and adore in the presence of our 
 God who has made his Son such an uttermost de- 
 liverer from death. 
 
 The resurrection of the wicked does not come 
 within the scope of our theme and has, therefore, 
 not been touched upon. That there is to be such 
 a resurrection is more than once affirmed in the 
 Scriptures, and among others by our Lord Him- 
 self. The distinction between it and that of 
 God's children is probably the one which is so 
 definitely drawn in Revelation 20:4-6. But it 
 is not for us to deal with it now. 
 
 There is, however, one more word of Paul's 
 which claims our notice. It is that confession 
 from the heart which we find in his letter to the 
 Philippians 
 
 "Then indeed I shall know Christ, and the 
 power of his resurrection, and all that it means 
 to share his sufferings, in the hope that if I be- 
 come like him in his death, I may possibly attain 
 to the resurrection from the dead." (Phil. 3: 
 10, 11.) 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 347 
 
 Those commentators! have been on the true path 
 of interpretation who have claimed that the 
 resurrection which the apostle coveted was one of 
 an unusual sort. If anyone could have considered 
 himself assured of the resurrection which was 
 to be the common experience of the vast body of 
 believers, surely he could have done so. But he 
 was not content simply to look forward to that. 
 That he expected to die before the Coming of the 
 Lord at the time he wrote this letter, is probably 
 clear, though he anticipated release from prison 
 and an opportunity of paying the Philippian 
 church another visit. And his ambition was so to 
 increase in the knowledge of Christ, during the 
 intervening months or years, so to drink in the 
 power of his resurrection, and so to share his 
 sufferings, and then at the last, so to resemble 
 him in his death, that he might be lifted com- 
 pletely above the great body of imperfect be- 
 lievers and be granted a resurrection, not like 
 theirs, but like his Lord's. It was not a selfish 
 wish, it was rather the opposite of that, for it 
 meant unusual self-denial, cross-bearing and serv- 
 ice; and his straining of every nerve would not 
 hinder any other believer, but would, on the con- 
 trary, make him an example and inspiration for 
 them all. 
 
 But what was the difference between the two 
 resurrections? The bodies of believers generally 
 would undergo corruption. The Lord's did not, 
 and Paul wished the same exemption from decay. 
 
348 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 At least one seems shut up to this very natural 
 interpretation of his words, for no other appears 
 possible. He had visions of the glorious pos- 
 sibilities, or rather of the growing wealth of bless- 
 ing which was wrapped up in Christ's resurrec- 
 tion for the generations of men that were to suc- 
 ceed each other after the Coming, and especially 
 in the far future of the Church's maturity, and 
 he longed to attain to all that was possible in his 
 own early day. He seems to have concluded that 
 he could not hope to escape death itself. It was 
 too soon in the history of the Redeemer's work 
 for that. But he did venture to indulge in the 
 yearning desire that it might be with him as it 
 had been with the Lord himself, who, though he 
 could not avoid death, did wholly escape corrup- 
 tion. To get the full sense of this declaration, 
 therefore, we have but to add to it three words, 
 thus: "Then indeed I shall know Christ, and 
 the power of his resurrection, and all that it 
 means to share his sufferings, in the hope that 
 if I become like him in his death, I may possibly 
 attain to the resurrection from the dead," which 
 was His. 
 
 How strikingly this yearning ambition of 
 Paul's harmonizes with all that teaching of his 
 which we have been reviewing! And this chapter 
 cannot close better than with these words of his 
 to those same Philippians: 
 
 "The State of which we are citizens is in 
 Heaven; and it is from Heaven we are eagerly 
 
JESUS THE DELIVERER 349 
 
 looking for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ, who 
 by the exercise of his power to bring everything 
 into subjection to himself, will change this body 
 that we have in our humiliation, until it is of the 
 same nature as the body which he has in his 
 glory." 1 (Phil. 3:20-21.) 
 
 To Paul in his Roman prison, the coming or 
 revelation of the Savior from Heaven as Judge 
 was an eager expectation. To us in this twen- 
 tieth century, it is an event long past, the blessed 
 fruits of which are ours in part. And we know 
 that nothing of all that was pledged in connec- 
 tion with it will fail to arrive in its time. 
 
 i This final clause and the one preceding it are from the 
 tentative version of the T. C. N. T. 
 
XXI 
 
 JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 
 
 The apostles of Christ believed in rewards and 
 punishments for the individual man under the 
 reign of their Lord. They held also, and with 
 equal tenacity, to the doctrine of a judgment for 
 their own people as a nation, and for all the other 
 peoples of the earth, under that same rule. 
 They knew that it was to a people their Lord 
 came at the time of his incarnation. 
 
 "He came to his own 
 
 Yet his own did not receive him." 
 This failure to receive him was fatal. Our Lord 
 taught the Jews this, when he told them the story 
 of the tenants of a certain vineyard, who refused 
 the owner his rightful share of the produce, beat 
 or killed or stoned each servant he sent to demand 
 it, and finally, when he sent his Son and heir, killed 
 him also, in the hope that they would thus secure 
 the vineyard for themselves ; adding 
 
 "And that, I tell you, is why the kingdom of 
 God will be taken from you, and given to a nation 
 that does produce the fruit of the Kingdom." 
 He had already asked: "Have you never read in 
 the scriptures 
 
 " 'The very; stone which the builders despised 
 350 
 
JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 351 
 
 " 'Has now itself become the corner stone ; 
 
 " 'This corner stone has come from the Lord, 
 
 " 'And is marvelous in our eyes ?' 
 
 "Yes, and he who falls on this stone will be 
 dashed to pieces, while any one on whom it falls 
 it will scatter him as dust." 
 
 Our Lord's teaching regarding his disposal 
 as judge, of all other peoples right down to the 
 end of human history, was very explicit. That 
 teaching we find in Matthew 25 :31 
 
 "When the Son of Man has come in his glory 
 and all the angels with him, then he 'will take his 
 seat on his glory;' and all the nations will be 
 gathered before him, and he will separate the 
 people just as a shepherd separates sheep from 
 goats placing the sheep on his right hand and 
 the goats on his left. Then the king will say to 
 those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by 
 my Father, enter upon possession of the kingdom 
 prepared for you ever since the beginning of the 
 world. For when I was hungry, you gave me 
 food; when I was thirsty, you gave me drink; 
 when I w r as a stranger, you took me to your 
 homes ; when I was naked, you clothed me ; when 
 I fell ill, you visited me ; and when I was in prison, 
 you came to me. ... I tell you, as often 
 as you did it to one of these my brothers, however 
 lowly, you did it to me/ " 
 
 It is unnecessary to quote further from this 
 illustrative story of our Lord, its language is 
 so familiar. He was here teaching that the 
 
352 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 peoples that would receive him in the persons of 
 his humblest followers, were the peoples that would 
 rise, and flourish and continue; while those 
 peoples that rejected him in the persons of these 
 followers of his, would simply perish from the 
 earth. 
 
 This interpretation is likely to be opposed as 
 depriving us of what has so long been considered 
 as our most vivid description of a final literal day 
 of judgment. There is no need for arguing the 
 matter here at any length. It will be sufficient 
 merely to indicate two considerations which 
 would seem to be decisive. 
 
 In the first place, then, when men come before 
 the bar of God as individuals, each must appear 
 as belonging to one of two classes, whereas there 
 are here three classes those on the right hand, 
 those on the left hand, and "these my brothers" ; 
 and the first and second classes are each appointed 
 to a destiny in view of its treatment of the third. 
 In the second place, the standard applied is not 
 one by means of which it can be judged whether 
 or not a man or woman has received Christ spirit- 
 ually. It was, however, the very test which was 
 brought to bear upon the peoples of the earth, the 
 moment the gospel began to be preached to them, 
 "with the help of the Holy Spirit sent from 
 heaven." The Jewish people went down under its 
 application almost at once, and that in spite of 
 the fact that they were the very people whom it 
 was intended most to exalt. And one of the great 
 
JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 353 
 
 outstanding facts of the Christian ages is that 
 power and prosperity of every sort have come most 
 largely to those peoples who have assisted the lowly 
 brethren of Jesus to the greatest extent; while 
 those which have lacked in hospitality and generos- 
 ity towards them have been forced to listen to the 
 awful words of condemnation uttered against them 
 by "the King." Look at Great Britain and the 
 United States, and afterwards at Spain, for in- 
 stance. Surely the King has set those peoples in 
 two classes. Two he has placed on the right hand 
 of his power, the other he has sent to his left. 
 Two have heard, "Come, you who are blessed by 
 my Father, enter upon possession of the Kingdom 
 prepared for you ever since the beginning of the 
 world." The other has as surely heard the words, 
 "Go from my presence, accursed, into the aeon- 
 ian fire (the consuming fire of my disapproval) 
 which has been prepared for the Devil and his 
 angels." There can be no reasonable doubt, 
 either, that their opposite treatment of Christ's 
 brothers is the thing in view of which they have 
 been rewarded and punished. 
 
 In studying this whole subject from the apos- 
 tolic standpoint, it may be said, first of all, that 
 at the time of our Lord's ascension, two things 
 remained to be accomplished. First, his king- 
 dom had to be definitely inaugurated. That king- 
 dom was to be primarily spiritual, and, as such, 
 it was not yet properly established in the hearts 
 of even his leading disciples, to say nothing of 
 
354 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 Judaism or the world as a whole ; but it was meant 
 for all alike. In the second place, the deadly 
 hostility to that kingdom which had crucified him, 
 and was even then attempting to cover up the fact 
 of his resurrection with a lie, had to be removed, 
 through the conversion of these Jewish enemies 
 to loyal subjects of his, or failing that, through 
 their utter overthrow as an organized power. 
 Pentecost witnessed the establishment of his king- 
 dom in the hearts of the one hundred and twenty 
 who were in the upper room waiting for the ful- 
 fillment of his promise of the coming of the Holy 
 Spirit, and that Kingdom's introduction through 
 their testimony to thousands of other hearts. 
 Then there followed the steady persistent effort 
 to convert all opposers into supporters an ef- 
 fort which at one time seemed to those engaged 
 in it far from hopeless ; for "God's message 
 spread, and the number of the disciples continued 
 to increase rapidly in Jerusalem, and a large body 
 of the priests accepted the faith." 
 
 In connection with this effort we have two very 
 illuminating words. These were both spoken by 
 Peter on the occasion of the healing* of the cripple 
 "at the gate of the temple called 'the Beautiful 
 Gate.' ' For their proper understanding in our 
 times the second should be read first. It is this 
 
 "You yourselves are the heirs of the prophets, 
 and heirs, too, of the Covenant which God made 
 with your ancestors, when he said to Abraham, 
 'In your descendants will all the nations of the 
 
JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 355 
 
 earth be blessed.' For you, first, God raised up 
 his Servant, and sent him to bless you, by turning 
 each one of you from his wicked ways." 
 
 The words "raised up" here, mean caused to 
 stand or established, and must almost of neces- 
 sity be understood as describing that act of God, 
 by means of which he brought back his Son from 
 the dead "and exalted him to his right hand to be 
 a Guide and a Savior, to give Israel repentance 
 and forgiveness of sins." By his resurrection 
 and by it alone was our Lord caused to stand im- 
 movably as the chosen Servant of God. But for 
 that his incarnation and whole earthly career 
 would have proved fruitless. Upon this point 
 Paul in particular insists most strongly. And 
 it was this resurrection-vindicated Servant of God 
 that Peter told the people had been sent with 
 blessings for them. 
 
 Here then is a second coming of our Lord. It 
 was a coming in the Spirit for a specific object, 
 namely, the Salvation, first of all, of the Jewish 
 people. Does this sound strange? But how 
 could he have fulfilled the promise made to his 
 disciples, "I shall myself be always with you," 
 without coming again and in a spiritual manner? 
 
 Pentecost witnessed our Lord's second coming 
 as a Spiritual Savior, according- to Peter. 
 
 But Peter has another word 
 
 "Therefore, repent and turn, that your sins 
 may be wiped away; so that happier times may 
 come from the Lord himself, and that he may 
 
356 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 send you, in Jesus, your long-appointed Christ. 
 But heaven must be his home, until the days of 
 the Universal Restoration, of which God has 
 spoken by the lips of his holy prophets from the 
 very first." Did Peter, then, think of Jesus as 
 here, and, at the same time, as not here, but still 
 to come ? Yes ; he regarded him as having been 
 definitely revealed in his office of Savior from sin, 
 and as still to be shown forth as restorer of the 
 outward fortunes of his people. This is the order 
 which has always been observed. Spiritual sal- 
 vation first, then, as a sure result of the stead- 
 fast, unalterable choice of Christ, material, so- 
 cial, political salvation sins wiped away and 
 afterwards "happier times" for those who have 
 experienced the cleansing and for all with whom 
 they are vitally associated. We may, therefore, 
 put Peter's word to his people thus "You must 
 first accept Jesus as your Savior from sin. He 
 has already come again to you in that office ; and 
 until he has been received by you as such, he can- 
 not come again as the restorer of your outward 
 fortunes as a people." 
 
 But Israel rejected this gospel of her deliver- 
 ance, and when Jesus did come in his office of 
 Universal Restorer at the very end of the Mosaic 
 age, he was compelled in strictest accord with his 
 own predictions, to send his angels to gather 
 them from his kingdom because they were a hin- 
 drance to men, and a people that could not be 
 drawn from its life of sin. (Matt. 13:41.) And 
 
JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 357 
 
 to-day it is only permitted us to ask with grieved 
 hearts, what Israel's happier days, coming di- 
 rect from the Lord, would have been for that 
 people itself and the world at large, had she re- 
 ceived Christ as her Savior from sin instead of 
 rejecting him in all his offices. In the meantime 
 our examination of Peter's gospel to the Jew has 
 served to show us more clearly the nature of our 
 Lord's second coming. It was Ms revelation in 
 his different offices, and not some instantaneous 
 spectacular display in the region of the bodily 
 senses. 
 
 There is one more word in "The Acts" to which 
 attention may well be called here. It is the mes- 
 sage whicfy was delivered by the angels at the time 
 of our Lord's ascension 
 
 "Men of Galilee, why are you standing here 
 looking up into the heavens? This very Jesus, 
 who has been taken from you into the heavens, 
 will come in the very way in which you have seen 
 him go into the heavens." (Acts 1:11.) In 
 what manner, then, did he go into the heavens? 
 Invisibly. "He was caught up before their eyes, 
 and a cloud received him from their sight." 
 (Acts 1:9.) This is the apostolic record. They 
 could not, with their bodily eyes, see him go into 
 the heavens. Neither were they, with their bodily 
 eyes, to see him return to the earth. Yet he was 
 to come in power and great glory. There is a 
 power and a glory concerning which our bodily 
 eyes have brought us no information, but we are 
 
358 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 such confirmed materialists that we can scarcely 
 believe it. Coming in clouds, or invisibly and 
 spiritually, is ever the word that greets us. The 
 exceptions are only seeming. And so, according 
 to apostolic teaching, our Lord came again, and 
 is here both as Savior and Judge. 
 
 If it were worth while, we could bring forward 
 here testimony from the Latin and Greek authors 
 of the first century, including those of the New 
 Testament, to show that all the events mentioned 
 by our Lord as signs of his coming or revelation 
 in his office of Judge, and of the end of the age 
 in which he lived and labored and died and rose 
 again, not excepting the preaching of his gospel 
 "in all creation under heaven," came to pass as 
 predicted by him. (Col. 1 :23, R. V.) It is suffi- 
 cient for us to say that the world of Mosaism 
 came to a very definite end with the destruction 
 of its great city and temple, and the wholesale 
 slaughter and carrying away into captivity of 
 the Jewish people. Then the priesthood and the 
 daily sacrifice went out no more to return. And 
 why did they disappear? That he might come 
 into full view who, "after he had offered one 
 sacrifice for sins, which should serve for all time, 
 'took his seat at the right hand of God.' " (Heb. 
 10:12.) They disappeared because our Lord 
 came then as Judge and removed them, as the 
 writer of "Hebrews" said he would, on account 
 of their unfitness to bear the test to which he was 
 subjecting them. (Heb. 12:26, 27.) 
 
JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 359 
 
 To define our Lord's second coming in agree- 
 ment with apostolic teaching, we may say that 
 it was his revelation to men, first as spiritual Sav- 
 ior and then as Judge, within the life time of the 
 generation that had seen him in the flesh. 
 
 And here we may use the word inauguration in 
 addition to the word revelation, and say that 
 Jesus was publicly inaugurated as Savior, when 
 on the day of Pentecost he was so gloriously 
 heralded as such, that three thousand persons 
 acknowledged him at once; and that his inau- 
 guration as Judge, in connection with the over- 
 throw of worn-out and corrupted Mosaism, is 
 perhaps the most awe-inspiring event of history. 
 The Savior was saving and the King was reign- 
 ing and judging before Pentecost came, or the 
 destruction of Jerusalem took place, but the fact 
 was not made strikingly apparent before these 
 events or inaugurations. Then, however, the 
 greatness of the glorified Man of Nazareth, both 
 as Savior and Royal Judge, was marvelously dis- 
 closed. 
 
 He is still carrying on the work of both his 
 offices. It is constantly the day of Salvation, 
 and constantly, also, the day of judgment. 
 Those peoples which receive him as Savior and 
 King are by him appointed to careers of progress 
 and growing power and prosperity; while those 
 who do not so receive him, find themselves in the 
 slippery places of disaster and ruin. And all 
 this is just as he himself foretold it. Moreover, 
 
360 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 temporal salvation and temporal disaster or ruin 
 are often to be seen in the same event. Every- 
 thing depends upon the standpoint from which 
 the event is viewed. The destruction of the Span- 
 ish Armada was a disaster for Spain, but to the 
 English it meant salvation. The destruction of 
 Napoleon I, as Emperor of the French, was 
 the deliverance of Europe; just as the defeat of 
 the Saracens by Charles Martel; in 732, and again 
 in 738; and the overthrow of the Turks under 
 the walls of Vienna, by John Sobieski in 1683, 
 had been its salvation before. And each work of 
 destruction and deliverance which abases the 
 worse and exalts the better, is done in the further- 
 ance of his will. 
 
 In the overthrow of his foes and the deliverance 
 of his own our Lord uses a variety of instruments, 
 including armed men and the forces of nature. 
 But the apostolic church saw that his greatest 
 engine of destruction as well as of salvation, is 
 his truth. Accordingly Paul wrote to the Thes- 
 salonians 
 
 "Wickedness indeed is already at work in se- 
 cret; but only until he who at present restrains 
 it is removed out of the way. Then will 'Wick- 
 edness Incarnate' appear, but the Lord Jesus will 
 destroy him with the breath of his lips, and an- 
 nihilate him with the splendor of his coming." 
 (2nd Thess. 2:7, 8.) Probably Paul had the 
 deification of the Roman emperors, and their 
 growingly blasphemous claims to divine honors 
 
JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 361 
 
 in mind when he wrote these words. But what- 
 ever the thing or person may have been which 
 he described as "Wickedness Incarnate," there 
 can be no doubt that, by the breath of our Lord's 
 lips and the splendor of his coming, which were 
 to destroy him, he meant his word, or the truth 
 spoken by him, on the one hand, and standing 
 inherent and resplendent in his character, on the 
 other. 
 
 This destroying might of the word of Christ 
 was constantly present in the mind of John when 
 he penned the book of "The Revelation." In 
 describing his glorified Lord as he appeared to 
 him on Patmos, he writes 
 
 "From his mouth came a sharp two-edged 
 sword." (Rev. 1 :16.) The opening words to 
 the angel of the church at Pergamus are 
 "These are the words of him who holds the sharp 
 ^two-edged sword." (Rev. 2:12.) And the 
 warning to the Nicolaitans of that Church was 
 "Repent, therefore, or else I will come quickly 
 and contend with such men with words that will 
 cut like a sword." (Rev. 2:16.) Exceedingly 
 striking, too, from this standpoint, are some later 
 words of this same book 
 
 "Then I saw that heaven lay open. There ap- 
 pears a white horse; its rider is called 'Faithful' 
 and 'True'; righteously does he judge and make 
 war. His eyes are flaming fires; on his head 
 are many diadems, and he bears a name, written, 
 which no one knows but himself; he has been 
 
362 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 clothed in a garment sprinkled with blood; and 
 the name by which he is called is 'The Word of 
 God.' The armies of heaven followed him, 
 mounted on white horses and clothed in fine linen, 
 white and pure. From his mouth comes a sharp 
 sword with which 'to smite the nations; and he 
 will rule them with an iron rod.' He 'treads the 
 grapes in the press' of the maddening wine of the 
 wrath of Almighty God; and on his robe and on 
 his thigh he has the name written 'KING OF 
 KINGS AND LORD OF LORDS/ Then I saw an angel 
 standing on the sun. He cried in a loud voice 
 to all the birds that fly in mid-heaven 'Gather 
 and come to the great feast of God, to eat the 
 flesh of Kings, and the flesh of commanders, and 
 the flesh of mighty men, and the fiesh of horses 
 and their riders, and the flesh of all freemen and 
 slaves, and of high and low.' 
 
 "Then I saw the Beast and the Kings of the 
 earth and their armies, gathered together to fight 
 with him who sat on the horse and with his army. 
 The Beast was captured, and with him was taken 
 the false Prophet, who performed the marvels 
 before the eyes of the Beast, with which he de- 
 ceived those who had received the brand of the 
 beast and those who worshiped his image. Alive, 
 they were thrown, both of them, into the fiery 
 lake 'of burning sulphur.' The rest were killed 
 by the sword which came out of the mouth of him 
 who rode upon the horse; and all the birds fed 
 upon their flesh." (Rev. 19:11-21.) 
 
JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 363 
 
 This is how John saw the events of the year 
 of our Lord 68, or a few months later. The 
 Great King was dealing with the nations. Jeru- 
 salem was not yet destroyed, but the wrath 
 which was to the uttermost was already being 
 visited upon the Jewish people. And as John 
 gazed upon the scene, the element of time was 
 eliminated from his thoughts, and all the Christ 
 rejecting nations of the coming years, with all 
 their hideous tyrannies, their falsehoods and their 
 blasphemies, as already so definitely represented 
 by Rome herself, became one vast host, that had 
 to be met and overcome by the armies of heaven, 
 and their Commander-in-chief, the King of Kings 
 and Lord of Lords. The battle was joined, and 
 there was red carnage enough, no doubt. But 
 it was not the slaughter of any physical battle- 
 field that impressed John. He saw greater tri- 
 umphs than have ever been won thus. He saw 
 the very spirit of tyranny and the very spirit of 
 lying error, borne down, taken as prisoners and 
 "thrown alive, both of them, into the fiery lake 
 of burning sulphur." And the only slaughter 
 that he describes was done "by the sword which 
 came out of the mouth of him who rode upon 
 the horse"; that is, by our Lord Jesus Christ as 
 "The Truth." 
 
 And all this is quite in agreement with things 
 as we know them. War serves a purpose. It 
 often tests the quality of the men whom it brings 
 face to face in deadly conflict, in such a way as 
 
364 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 to make it clear which sort of spiritual nurture 
 produces the sturdiest manhood. It turned 
 Cromwell and his Ironsides into standing proofs 
 for all time, of the fact that conscious personal 
 intercourse with God, without the intervention 
 of any priest, makes men invincible against sol- 
 diers of every other type. And the recent Span- 
 ish-American war served to show that liberty, 
 learning and an open Bible are apt to produce 
 better navies, than are priesthoods that frown upon 
 all three. Above all, war emphasizes the fact that 
 men are essentially noble, because they are 
 capable of such devotion to a cause as to look 
 upon their property and their bodily lives, only 
 as things that can be staked and, if need be, lost 
 in its interests. There can be no doubt, either, 
 that some good things have been reached and 
 some evils abated by means of the bloody strug- 
 gles of the past. Yet no one would think for one 
 moment of righting every human wrong, much 
 less of attaining to every human excellence and 
 good, by means of the sword. 
 
 War inflicts many wrongs always, and that 
 often without actually removing one. And where 
 it comes as a real cure for some great ill, it is 
 only a little less frightful than the malady it- 
 self. The sword of truth alone, as it comes from 
 Christ's mouth to smite iniquity and falsehood, 
 wages war without doing real harm to any. 
 What John saw was that the King of Kings and 
 Lord of Lords can inflict wrong upon none. He 
 
JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 365 
 
 knew that when he was here in the flesh, he re- 
 jected the physical conquest of the nations as a 
 temptation of the Devil. And probably the true 
 doctrine is that he has employed human wars in 
 the interests of his truth at any time, only as he 
 used for the furtherance of his aims, the malice 
 of the Jewish rulers, the treachery of Judas and 
 the sinful weakness of Pilate, which brought 
 about his crucifixion on Calvary. He is far be- 
 yond our power of comprehending his greatness, 
 and he can triumph even by means of his cruci- 
 fixion. We may take it for granted that phy- 
 sical wars will wholly cease, and come to be re- 
 garded as one of the frightful features of a past 
 barbarism, long before all the wrongs of our 
 earth are righted. Might can never make right 
 and, as James has assured us, "Anger in man does 
 not produce the righteousness required by God." 
 
 It was because John had a vision of the things 
 our Lord was really to bring about, that he gave 
 to the church these pictures. Even now the Par- 
 liament, the court, the school, and perhaps, above 
 all, the pulpit which proclaims truth and right- 
 eousness as the richest gifts God has to bestow 
 upon men, are doing nearly all that is being ac- 
 complished, outside the family, towards human 
 deliverance, uplifting and enjoyment. And John 
 tells us in the twentieth chapter of his Revelation 
 the story of his king's victories up to the very 
 last of them. 
 
 Everything he saw here was in the region of 
 
366 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 spiritual forces and facts. "Then I saw an angel 
 coming down from heaven, with the key of the 
 bottomless pit and a great chain in his hand. He 
 seized the dragon, the primeval serpent (who is 
 the 'Devil' or 'Satan') and bound him in chains 
 for a thousand years. He flung him into the 
 bottomless pit and locked it, and set his seal upon 
 it ; that he should not deceive the nations any more 
 until the thousand years are ended. After that 
 he must be let loose for a while. 
 
 "Then I saw thrones, and to those who took 
 their seats upon them authority was given to act 
 as judges. And I saw the souls of those who 
 had been beheaded because of the testimony to 
 Jesus and because of the message of God, for 
 they had refused to worship the beast or its image 
 and had not received the brand on their foreheads 
 and on their hands. They were restored to life, 
 and they reigned with the Christ a thousand 
 years." 
 
 For our present purpose we need not pretend 
 to know precisely what this restoration to life 
 stood for in the mind of John, nor need we ven- 
 ture a guess as to the exact time of the begin- 
 ning or end of the period here set forth as a 
 thousand years; but the vision conveys to us at 
 least the message that our Lord's conquest was 
 to be signal, and that those who had been serv- 
 ing him best in the struggle, would live again in 
 the triumph of the truth for which they had laid 
 down their lives. 
 
JESUS AND NATIONAL DESTINY 367 
 
 But the kinetoscope continues to throw its mov- 
 ing pictures upon the screen before John's eyes. 
 He sees the thousand years ended, and Satan at 
 liberty once more, and deceiving "the nations that 
 live in 'the four corners of the earth Gog and 
 Magog.' He will come to gather them together 
 for battle ; and their number will be as great as 
 the sand upon the sea-shore. They went up over 
 the breadth of the whole earth, and surrounded 
 the camp of Christ's people and the beloved city. 
 Then fire fell from the heavem and consumed 
 them; and the devil, their deceiver, was hurled into 
 the lake of fire and sulphur, where the Beast and 
 the false prophet already were, and they will be 
 tortured day and night forever." (Rev. 20.) 
 
 This whole vision belongs to the world of 
 thought and spiritual reality. The fire from 
 heaven is the truth of God all aflame and con- 
 suming every false thing that it touches, till the 
 Father of Lies finds himself in his retreat before 
 it, hurled forever from the world of men that he 
 has no longer any power to deceive. The con- 
 quests of Christ are those of truth and holiness, 
 and they are in the New Testament represented as 
 continuing till the last vestiges of error and moral 
 pollution have been chased from our earth. 
 
 We must remember, however, that all this is 
 but the negative side of the saving work of our 
 Lord. He is the great expeller and demolisher 
 of evil, but he is much more besides. He is the 
 great builder and restorer. He roots out and 
 
368 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 burns up the thorns and briers of the wilderness, 
 that he may plant the cedar, the pine, the box, 
 and the myrtle. He sends his streams of refresh- 
 ing into the desert places where nothing would 
 grow, that they may rejoice and blossom as the 
 rose. He pulls down the strongholds of evil that 
 he may build in their places the impregnable 
 fortresses of righteousness. He shakes the old 
 earth and heaven to pieces, that a heaven and 
 earth that cannot be shaken may appear in their 
 stead, and abide to his eternal glory and praise. 
 
XXII 
 JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 
 
 The wish of those Greek visitors to Jerusalem 
 to see Jesus is still what it was at the time of 
 Philip and Andrew, an event of striking signifi- 
 cance. But more striking and significant yet are 
 the things which Jesus said on that occasion, and 
 particularly the word he spoke last. 
 
 "Now this world is on its trial. Now the 
 spirit that is ruling 1 this world shall be driven out ; 
 and I, when I am lifted up from the earth shall 
 draw all men to myself. By these words he indi- 
 cated what death he was to die." (Jno. 12: 
 31, 32.) 
 
 Could language be more arresting or more ex- 
 plicit than this ? Undoubtedly our Lord was here 
 anticipating and foretelling the character and ex- 
 tent of his conquests upon this earth. And so 
 far was his cross from appearing to him an ob- 
 stacle to be surmounted, which to some extent 
 it really was at the start, that he boldly put it 
 forward as his throne of universal judgment, on 
 the one hand, and the instrument, by means of 
 which, on the other hand, he would win the homage 
 and fealty of the whole human family. The con- 
 demnation and final expulsion from this world, 
 369 
 
370 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 not only of sin, but also of the very principle 
 or being who introduced it and has fostered it 
 here, is one part of our Lord's work which these 
 words describe. This work is destructive in its 
 nature. But it is the pulling down of old plague- 
 infested structures that a palace may be erected 
 in their place, or the clearing and draining of the 
 fever-breeding fen, that in its stead there may 
 appear one after another smiling fields and pas- 
 tures for flocks. The work of destruction is put 
 first, because in the very nature of the case it must 
 go first. But it is only a preparatory work after 
 all. Our Lord's greatest work is constructive. 
 The thing he is producing greatly surpasses the 
 things he is destroying, and he will be magnified 
 at last as the maker of new heavens and a new 
 earth, and adored not so much for what he has 
 saved our race from, as for what he has saved 
 it to. It is on this account that we read in the 
 fifth chapter of Revelation 
 
 "And when he had taken the book, the four 
 Creatures and the twenty-four Councilors 
 prostrated themselves before the Lamb, 
 each of them holding a harp and golden 
 bowls full of incense. (These are the prayers of 
 Christ's People.) And they are singing a new 
 song 
 
 " 'Thou art worthy to take the book and break 
 its seals, for thou wast sacrificed, and with thy 
 blood thou didst buy for God men of every tribe 
 and language and people and nation, and didst 
 
JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 371 
 
 make them a kingdom of Priests for our God and 
 they are reigning* on the earth.' ' 
 
 The Old Testament prophets were granted 
 visions of this far off yet coming glory. Micah 
 wrote 
 
 "But in the latter days it shall come to pass 
 that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be 
 established in the tops of the mountains, and it 
 shall be exalted above the hills ; and peoples shall 
 flow unto it. And many nations shall go and 
 say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain 
 of the Lord, and to the house of the God of 
 Jacob ; and he will teach us of his ways, and we 
 will walk in his paths ; for out of Zion shall go 
 forth the law and the word of the Lord from Jeru- 
 salem. And he shall judge between great 
 peoples, and shall decide concerning strong na- 
 tions afar off: and they shall beat their swords 
 into plow-shares, and their spears into pruning 
 hooks ; nation shall not lift up sword against na- 
 tion, neither shall they learn war any more. But 
 they shall sit every man under his vine and his 
 fig-tree; and none shall make them afraid; for 
 the mouth of the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it." 
 (Micah 4:1-4.) 
 
 The thing pictured here is no less than the 
 universal reign, first in righteousness and after- 
 wards in settled peace, of the God of Israel over 
 the nations of mankind, both small and great. 
 
 The splendors of this world-wide glory are con- 
 tinually bursting upon us from the pages of the 
 
372 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 later Isaiah, in connection with his story of strug- 
 gle and suffering and disappointed hopes and 
 apparently unrequited toils 
 
 "But I said, I have labored in vain, I have spent 
 my strength for nought, and in vain; yet surely 
 my judgment is with the Lord, and my recom- 
 pense with my God. And now saith the Lord that 
 formed thee from the womb to be his servant, 
 It is too light a thing that thou shouldest 
 be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, 
 and to restore the preserved of Israel : I will also 
 give thee for a light to the Gentiles, that thou 
 mayest be my salvation to the end of the earth." 
 (Isa. 49:4-6.) 
 
 The suffering servant of the fifty-third chapter 
 is bruised and grieved and slain and buried, but 
 he is at the same time the victorious and prosper- 
 ous one who sees his seed, prolongs his days, makes 
 many righteous and is exalted to the heights of 
 power. In connection with his administration a 
 new day dawns for the people, God's promise of 
 which is couched in such terms as these: 
 
 "For brass I will bring gold, and for iron I 
 will bring silver, and for wood brass, and for 
 stones iron: and I will also make thy officers 
 peace, and thy task-masters righteousness. 
 Violence shall no more be heard in thy land, des- 
 olation nor destruction within thy borders; but 
 thou shalt call thy walls salvation and thy gates 
 praise. The sun shall be no more thy light by 
 day; neither for brightness shall the moon give 
 
JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 373 
 
 light unto thee; but the Lord shall be unto thee 
 an everlasting light and thy God thy glory. 
 Thy sun shall no more go down, neither shall thy 
 moon withdraw itself: for the Lord shall be thine 
 everlasting light and the days of thy mourning 
 shall be ended. Thy people also shall be all right- 
 eous, they shall inherit the land forever." (Isa. 
 60:17-21.) 
 
 To think of all this as just so much poetic 
 hyperbole from the ancient East will scarcely do. 
 Poetic it is and boldly figurative, and we can all 
 agree with Peter that the prophets who wrote it 
 could only keep "searching to find out what they 
 could about the time to which the Spirit of Christ 
 within them was pointing, when foretelling the 
 sufferings which would befall Christ and the 
 glories which would follow; but the things which 
 it brings into view are things such as we see 
 about and above us now in their earlier unfold- 
 ings, and things which the coming generations 
 of men will know in their fuller and fullest de- 
 velopments. "For the new heavens and the new 
 earth which I will make shall remain before me, 
 saith the Lord." (Isa. 66:22.) 
 
 Passing by the words of Amos, which were 
 quoted before the Jerusalem Council, to show that 
 the purpose of God was to build up a Christian 
 Church which would be all-embracing; and Dan- 
 iel's vision of the stone cut out of the mountain 
 without hands, which continued rolling till it filled 
 the whole earth, and thus represented or sym- 
 
374 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 bolized the kingdom which the Lord God was to 
 set up and maintain forever; we may glance at a 
 passage in second Peter which is suggested by the 
 words quoted from the closing sentences in 
 Isaiah 
 
 "The day of the Lord will come like a thief. 
 And on that day the heavens will pass away with 
 a crash, the elements will be burned up and dis- 
 solved, and the earth and all that is in it will 
 be disclosed. Now since all these things are in 
 the process of dissolution, think what you your- 
 selves ought to be, what holy and pious lives 
 you ought to lead, while you await and hasten the 
 coming of the Day of God. At its coming the 
 heavens will be dissolved in fire and the elements 
 melted by heat, but we look for 'new heavens and 
 a new earth,' where righteousness shall have its 
 home, in fulfillment of the promise of God." 
 (2nd Peter 3:10-13.) 
 
 By "heavens" in this passage we understand 
 the religious conditions, and by "earth" the social 
 and political conditions of the time, near the year 
 of our Lord 70, when it was written, particularly 
 as these existed in connection with Judaism. Al- 
 ready they were "in the process of dissolution" 
 and the Christians scattered everywhere were 
 "helping forward the coming of the Day of God" 
 by preaching Christ to all nations as their com- 
 ing King, the Day of God which would end this 
 "process" and bring these "heavens" and this 
 "earth" to an end "with a crash," and with such 
 
JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 375 
 
 a fire as would reduce the whole political and 
 religious situation to its original elements. 
 Peter's interest in this destructive process was in- 
 tense, for he had the promise of his God in the 
 last chapter of Isaiah that he would make out 
 of the elements of the old heavens and old earth 
 "new heavens and a new earth, where righteous- 
 ness shall have its home." The "fire" of the 
 passage is, of course, figurative fire. The thing 
 which the passage describes is the breaking up 
 and melting of the peoples of the earth, beginning 
 with the Jews, preparatory to their being taken 
 up, all of them, into the wo rid- wide religious, 
 social and political institutions of Christianity. 
 The burning of Rome, which Peter perhaps wit- 
 nessed, may have suggested the figure, or it may 
 have come to him through his reading of the 
 Old Testament prophets. It is interesting to 
 note, as Farrar does, that a little later, both the 
 temple of Capitoline Jupiter, in Rome, represent- 
 ing the heathen heavens, and the temple at Jeru- 
 salem, representing the heavens of the Jew, were 
 burned to ashes to make room for the new. 
 
 The Twenty-first chapter of Revelation pre- 
 sents the case from the same standpoint. Going 
 on through it and into the next, we find ourselves 
 in the midst of imagery supplied by Isaiah and 
 Ezekiel and used by them to describe a state of 
 earthly blessedness which they foresaw. And 
 when we look closely into John's words for his 
 meaning, the only possible conclusion we can ar- 
 
376 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 rive at, consistent at once with literary principles 
 and common sense, is that he is setting forth, not 
 the glories of heaven itself, but the glories of 
 those heavenly conditions which are to be estab- 
 lished here through the descent of the divine into 
 our human affairs. The things John saw were 
 new heavens and a new earth a new earth as 
 well as new heavens. In other words he had a 
 vision of new religious and social (including po- 
 litical) conditions. And to keep us from mak- 
 ing any mistake at this point, he goes on to say 
 that he saw the Holy City, New Jerusalem, com- 
 ing down from God out of heaven, to be itself 
 both the new heavens and the new earth ; and he 
 heard a great voice, not out of the New Jerusalem, 
 but out of the same heaven from which the New 
 Jerusalem itself was descending, saying with un- 
 doubted reference to that city 
 
 "The tabernacle of God is set up among men." 
 
 Arid when we have reached the close of John's 
 
 description of the great four-square city, with 
 
 its twelve gates of pearl that are never shut, we 
 
 read "The nations walk by the light of it; and 
 
 the kings of the earth bring their glory into it. 
 
 And men will bring the glory and honor 
 
 of the nations into it." 
 
 The story is that of the coming of God 
 through Christ into touch with us men and our 
 affairs, and the glorious results which are even- 
 tually to be brought about by means of that com- 
 ing. The work being accomplished is heavenly 
 
JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 377 
 
 and divine, but the scene is earthly and lies in 
 the midst of our religious and social conditions. 
 
 And so, losing sight now of Judaism, the frac- 
 tion, and finding under our eyes, instead, the 
 whole vast world of our humanity, the one true 
 thing for us to say is this: "The former heav- 
 ens and the former earth" are gradually passing 
 away, and "the new heavens" and "the new earth" 
 are gradually taking their places, and by and 
 by the old heavens and earth will all be gone, and 
 everything here will be new. Or, viewing the 
 great transformation from the standpoint of 
 John's figure of the New Jerusalem, the day is 
 coming when all earth's peoples shall at length 
 find themselves within its gates and living its life 
 of full and glad obedience to the one great King 
 of all. It is here upon the earth that such con- 
 ditions are to be established as will forbid the en- 
 trance of "any unhallowed thing," and of "those 
 whose lives are shameful and false," and will bring 
 it about that this planet will be peopled "only 
 by those whose names have been written in the 
 Lamb's Book of Life." 
 
 It is in this very home of disease and death 
 and weeping and mourning that God shall wipe 
 away all tears. It is here that "there shall be 
 no more death, nor will there be any more grief 
 or crying or pain." 
 
 And John's further description of this glori- 
 ous city of his vision is in full harmony with 
 this view 
 
378 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 "And the angel showed me 'a river of the water 
 of Life,' as clear as crystal issuing from the 
 throne of God and of the Lamb, in the middle of 
 the street of the city. On each side of the river 
 was a tree of life which bore twelve kinds of 
 fruit, yielding its fruit each month; and the 
 leaves of the tree were for the healing of the 
 nations. 'Everything that is accursed will cease 
 to be.' The throne of God and of the Lamb will 
 be within it, and his servants will worship him; 
 they will see his face, and his name will be on 
 their foreheads. Night will cease to be. They 
 will have no heed of the light of a lamp, nor 
 have they the light of the sun, for the 'Lord 
 God will be their light, and they will reign for 
 ever and ever.'" (Rev. 22:1-5.) 
 
 Perfect obedience, unhindered vision of God, 
 the full assurance of faith, complete spiritual il- 
 lumination, and the abiding possession of all the 
 fruits of the finished triumphs of all the redeem- 
 ing years, this is the final picture of John's 
 painting. No wonder that after the vision of 
 coming facts, which enabled him to do the paint- 
 ing, had passed, the angel said to him: "Blessed 
 will he be who lays to heart the words of the 
 prophecy contained in this book," which you are 
 writing, for it is at once the most glorious and 
 most blessed prophecy that human lips can utter, 
 or pen of man set down. 
 
 This constructive work of our Lord, like the 
 destructive, is the task and toil of the redeeming 
 
JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 379 
 
 ages. Only as the wrong disappears can the 
 right take its place. On the other hand, the 
 right is always waiting for the wrong to make 
 way for it. It is true, too, that as there is a 
 gradual cleansing, enlightenment and upbuilding 
 of the individual believer, so also is there of 
 the church as a whole; for her progress to- 
 wards maturity of creed and life is one of slow 
 stages. 
 
 This gradual development of the kingdom of 
 God was set forth by our Lord himself on more 
 than one occasion. "First the blade, then the ear 
 and then the full grain in the ear," are words 
 of his. So also are the parables of the mustard 
 seed, and of the "yeast which a woman took and 
 covered up in three pecks of flour, until the whole 
 had risen." (Matt. 13:33.) Paul, too, had it 
 definitely in mind when, writing to the Ephesians, 
 he said 
 
 "He who went down is the same as he who went 
 up up beyond the highest heaven, that he might 
 fill all things with his presence. And he it is 
 who gave to the Church apostles, prophets, mis- 
 sionaries, pastors and teachers to fit his people 
 for the work of the ministry, for the building up 
 of the body of the Christ. And this shall con- 
 tinue, until we all attain to that unity which is 
 given by faith and by a fuller knowledge of the 
 Son of God; until we reach the ideal man the 
 full standard of the perfection of the Christ. 
 Then we shall no longer be like infants, tossed 
 
380 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 backwards and forwards, blown about by every 
 breath of human teaching, through the trickery 
 and craftiness of men, towards the snares of 
 error; but holding the truth in a spirit of love, 
 we shall grow into complete union with him who 
 is our head Christ Himself." (Eph. 4:10-15.) 
 
 How definite this prophecy is, and how long 
 the vista down which it looks so bravely ! How 
 very much, too, still remains to be effected before 
 its finished fulfillment can be announced! But is 
 not one> of the blessed movements of our own times 
 directed towards the healing of the divisions 
 which have all along existed among Christians, 
 and the attainment of "that unity which is given 
 by faith and a fuller knowledge of the Son of 
 God." And have we not in this the pledge that 
 the whole church will eventually be built into one 
 grand body, "and reach the ideal man the full 
 standard of the perfection of the Christ." 
 
 If we really need any further assurances of 
 prophecy, Paul himself gives them to us in this 
 same letter 
 
 "The Christ loved the Church, and gave him- 
 self for her, to makef her holy, after purifying her 
 by the Washing with the Water, according to 
 his promise; so that he might himself bring the 
 Church, in all her beauty, into his own presence, 
 with no spot or wrinkle or blemish of any kind, 
 but that she might be holy and faultless." (Eph. 
 5:26, 27.) 
 
 Paul was like John. He had the vision of a 
 
JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 381 
 
 Church perfected and rendered faultless by her 
 Savior here upon the earth. 
 
 Associated most closely with this idea of the 
 Church's perfection is that of her universality. 
 And our study of the New Testament regarding 
 the utter extinction of evil-doers, and the final 
 banishment of Satan himself from the earth, has 
 already made this universality a necessity of 
 thought for us. When all the enemies of "the 
 camp of Christ's people and the beloved city" 
 have been either consumed or 1 banished, the Church 
 must in the very nature of things find herself in 
 full possession. Consequently Paul has furnished 
 us with a picture of things as they will appear 
 when the redemption of our race is at length an 
 accomplished fact. The picture is not complete, 
 but it portrays a scene which is to characterize 
 our Lord's final, as distinguished from his second 
 coming his coming at the close of the Chris- 
 tian age as distinguished from that coming of 
 his at the close of the Mosaic era, to which we 
 have already given attention. 
 
 The resurrection of those who were his has 
 taken place. God has at long last, as we would 
 say, put all his enemies under his feet, including 
 the last enemy, death. "And, when everything 
 has been, placed under him, the Son will place him- 
 self under God who placed everything under him, 
 that God may be all in all." 
 
 The scene which this picture represents is one 
 of such infinite dimensions that we cannot hope to 
 
382 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 take it all in, but this much at least may be 
 clearly made out. Christ became man for the 
 special work of bringing our race back to God, 
 and when that work is fully done, he will in his 
 humanity retire from view and leave the race 
 to enjoy God as pure spirit, apart from every 
 thought of his human mediation, excepting as 
 that mediation must be forever held in the ador- 
 ing memory of all those who shall have called 
 him Savior. 
 
 Let us again ask what the two pictures were 
 which the Holy Spirit hung in the gallery of 
 Paul's sanctified intellect and imagination, to 
 represent the earthly condition of our race as 
 redeemed, and which he in turn hung in the gal- 
 lery of New Testament literature for the grate- 
 ful believing study of all the generations that were 
 to succeed him. We may first look at them sep- 
 arately, and afterwards in combination. 
 
 Here is the first. Christ having done his whole 
 work hands over the kingdom of mankind to God, 
 who becomes "all in all," Lawgiver, Teacher, 
 Satisfier of every need of his children. I 
 
 And here is the second. Let us examine it 
 carefully. It is not a picture of man freed from 
 his association with nature, or nature freed from 
 its association with man, because that associa- 
 tion could never be made mutually helpful to them 
 in the highest way. On the contrary, this picture 
 is that of nature rejoicing in the presence of man, 
 and man rejoicing in the presence of nature, be- 
 
JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 383 
 
 cause they have together been delivered from the 
 very last consequences of sin, including their long 
 "enslavement to decay," and been placed, each of 
 them, upon the highway leading to its own true 
 goal. 
 
 And what do these two pictures, placed side by 
 side, show us ? Man at home in the bosom of God, 
 and, at the same time, at home in a blissful and 
 blissgiving headship of nature, is their splendid 
 revelation. Man was made for God, and nature 
 was made for man, and when Christ's redeeming 
 work is done, both God and man will be found 
 gloriously possessed of their full rights. 
 
 In fine, the divinely inspired apostles who dealt 
 with this theme, regarded the full development 
 and manifestation of God's children as the 
 
 " . . one far off divine event, 
 To which the whole creation moves." 
 
 To their minds the race when fully redeemed, 
 was not to be represented so much by those who 
 were soon to be raised from the dead and in- 
 troduced to the full glories of heaven, as by those 
 who were to have their home here, and were even- 
 tually to be lifted above the power of sin, and 
 disease and death ; every man, woman and child 
 of them thereafter walking with God perfectly, 
 and each in turn passing through that experience, 
 corresponding to the resurrection which Paul de- 
 scribed by the word "change." 
 
 This final age of human history will be that 
 
384 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 of the divine Father and his children, and will 
 endure, like those which preceded it, throughout 
 the whole period assigned from the beginning by 
 the wisdom and will of the loving Father Himself. 
 
 In bringing this chapter to a close we may re- 
 mark that we are still living in the presence of 
 the Judge of all the nations and the Savior of 
 all men, who with his human lips proclaimed 
 
 "Now this world is on its trial. Now the spirit 
 that is ruling this world shall be driven out; and 
 I, when I am lifted up from the earth, shall draw 
 all men to myself." 
 
 We are in his presence who taught his followers 
 that the destruction of Jerusalem and its temple 
 would be the token that he had entered into human 
 affairs, to remove every hindrance to the right 
 worship of God, and the highest service men owe 
 to each other. 
 
 We find ourselves here again after such an ex- 
 amination of the scriptures as makes it easier for 
 us to understand the holy joy with which this awful 
 catastrophe was hailed by the very choicest saints 
 of! human history, up to that time at least. They 
 rejoiced because it was given them to see that the 
 casting away of impenitent Israel was the recon- 
 ciling of the world ; that the shaking to pieces of 
 the old faulty heavens and earth was to make 
 room for a new heaven and a new earth! that noth- 
 ing could shatter; or that the breaking up and 
 melting of the old heavens and earth was for 
 the purpose of having the resultant liquid mass 
 
JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 385 
 
 crystalized into "new heavens and a new earth, 
 where righteouness shall have its home."" They 
 rejoiced, in short, because they were divinely as- 
 sured that the utter breaking up of the Jewish 
 people as opposers of Christ, would be a very dis- 
 tinct clearing of the ground for our Lord's great 
 work of redeeming the race. And they rejoiced 
 greatly because they saw that this redemption 
 would be complete, that the race would in reality, 
 as well as in the divine purpose, be bought back 
 from all its sins and sufferings, and raised to 
 all the heights of holiness and happiness possible 
 here upon the earth. 
 
 They saw that before the work was accom- 
 plished, every foe of goodness, including the 
 "primeval Serpent" himself, would be finally ban- 
 ished from our earth, thus leaving "Christ's Peo- 
 ple" in sole possession. They saw Christ's people 
 themselves led up to "that unity which is given 
 by faith and by a fuller knowledge of the Son 
 of God, and the perfection of manhood and that 
 degree of development of which the ideal to be 
 found in Christ is the standard." In other words, 
 they saw Christ "bring the Church, in all her 
 beauty, into his own presence with no spot or 
 wrinkle or blemish of any kind, but that she 
 might be holy and faultless." 
 
 When they viewed mankind in the fullness of 
 the new Life, they saw the "holy city" and the 
 Lord God, the Almighty, and the Lamb, as its 
 temple and its illuminators. And as they gazed 
 
386 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 they saw the nations walk by the light of it, and the 
 kings of the earth bring their glory into it, accom- 
 panied by the glory and honor of the nations 
 themselves. And as they looked forward with 
 the individual and social life of the race in mind, 
 they exclaimed 
 
 "There will be no more death, neither will there 
 be any more grief or crying or pain. The old 
 order has passed away." 
 
 And they knew that this very planet, on which 
 the first Adam fell and the second Adam tri- 
 umphed, was to be the scene of all this glorious 
 transformation. 
 
 Did they believe that all they described would 
 be literally brought about? We may at least 
 be sure that they believed in Eden, and its sinless 
 unsuffering condition, and in Christ as the tri- 
 umphant Savior, who would make all as well with 
 the race here, as it would have been if Adam had 
 not fallen at the first. What that is painful 
 would the race unf alien have escaped? From all 
 that they believed it would be completely rescued. 
 What that is holy and high would it have at- 
 tained here? Into all that they believed their 
 Lord would fully save it. 
 
 Does this seem impossible? The true answer 
 is that God's long processes have never yet mis- 
 carried in their execution. Peter declared that 
 to the Lord a thousand years are like one day. 
 This being so we may consider ourselves, from 
 the apostolic point of view, as only near the close 
 
JESUS THE COMPLETE SAVIOR 387 
 
 of the second day of his year of grace. And he 
 has accomplished much already. What then may 
 he not effect in the remaining three hundred and 
 sixty-three days of that year? 
 
XXIII 
 CONCLUSION 
 
 We have now reviewed the Christian scheme of 
 redemption as it unfolded itself before the apos- 
 tolic mind. From beginning to end it is an 
 eschatology a science of the last things. These 
 apostolic Christians had witnessed and were wit- 
 nessing the inauguration of the final instrumen- 
 talities and processes connected with the divine 
 redemption of our race. The patriarchal dis- 
 pensation had given way to the ethnic religions, 
 and these were now to be gloriously fulfilled in a 
 religion as wide as mankind and great and per- 
 fect like the heart of God himself. 
 
 The instrumentalities were equal to the task pro- 
 posed. First among them was the Second Per- 
 son in the Trinity, who had become a perfect man, 
 and, as such, had gone to the cross in proof of 
 that infinite love which had sent and brought him 
 to earth, and for the purpose of drawing all men 
 to himself. To Him, on this account, had been 
 given "the name which stands above all other 
 names, so that in adoration of the name of Jesus 
 every knee should bend in heaven, on earth, and 
 under the earth, and that every tongue should 
 acknowledge Jesus Christ as Lord to the glory 
 
CONCLUSION 389 
 
 of God the Father." (Phil. 2:10, 11.) He had 
 been clothed with all authority as King and Judge, 
 that he might condemn, overthrow and drive out 
 all his opposers. He had also been made the 
 perfect High Priest of the race, that he might 
 be "able to save perfectly those who come to God 
 through him, living forever, as he does, to in- 
 tercede on their behalf." (Heb. 7:25.) He was 
 perfect as a lawgiver, perfect as an example, per- 
 fect as an inspiration, perfect as a deliverer, and 
 perfect as a restorer and upbuilder; and they be- 
 lieved he would, therefore, certainly "make all 
 things new." (Rev. 21 :5.) 
 
 Associated with him were angels, and "are not 
 all the angels spirits in the service of God, sent 
 out to minister for the sake of those who are to 
 obtain Salvation?" (Heb. 1:14.) Joined with 
 him, also, as his servants in his work, were his 
 people, to whom he had entrusted various powers 
 and duties, making them, like himself, "God's fel- 
 low-workers." (2 Cor. 6:1.) Associated with 
 him, too, was the Third Person in the Trinity, 
 the Holy Spirit, now to be known as the "Spirit 
 of Christ" as well as the Spirit of God. (1 Pet. 
 1:11.) The bringer of "conviction to the world 
 as to Sin and as to Righteousness, and as to 
 Judgment" (Jno. 16:8, 13; 14:25, 26), he was 
 also "the Spirit of Truth" who was to "guide into 
 all truth," and be "the Helper" of Christ's people 
 in all things. 
 
 Finally, the apostles knew "the God and Father 
 
390 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 of all the God who is over all, pervades all and 
 is in all." (Eph. 4:6.) They knew the great 
 redemptive purpose, plan and undertaking to be 
 pre-eminently His, and that He had determined 
 to bring our Race to its highest possible per- 
 fection under the rule of His Son, as "The First- 
 born from the dead" (Col. 1 :18) and his own "ap- 
 pointed heir of all things." (Heb. 1 :2.) 
 
 They were satisfied that the great work in which 
 they were privileged to engage was moral and 
 spiritual in its nature, and that its aims were 
 wide enough to take in every proper human 
 activity. They did not look for the spectacular or 
 the material excepting as these were supplied in 
 connection with wars and political overthrows that 
 would necessarily be looked upon as represent- 
 ing their Lord's coming "from heaven with his 
 mighty angels 'in flaming fire' to inflict punish- 
 ment upon those who refuse to know God and 
 upon those who turn a deaf ear to the Good News 
 of Jesus, our Lord" (2 Thess. 1 :7-8) ; and they 
 confidently expected that the displays of this 
 sort, which they themselves were looking for, 
 would take place, as their Lord had taught, be- 
 fore some of their number would be called to their 
 rest. 
 
 They had not forgotten the words of their 
 instructor "The kingdom of God does not come 
 in a way that admits of observation, nor will 
 people say, 'Look, here it is' ! or 'There it is !' 
 for, mark me, the kingdom of God is already 
 
CONCLUSION 391 
 
 among you" (Luke 17:20, 21) ; and wherever the 
 king is with his loyal subjects there is the king- 
 dom. You might therefore turn about at this 
 moment and look upon it if you would. So said 
 Jesus to the Pharisees. And he told them very 
 plainly what they would find the kingdom like, 
 as the time passed and the King went on with his 
 work of judging men and particularly his work 
 of judging them. The events would be spectacu- 
 lar enough, and as full of deliverance and holy 
 triumph for all faithful subjects and servants 
 of his, as of disaster and woe for those of them 
 who proved rebellious. It would be soon seen 
 that all peoples were under his scepter, and that 
 as he had dealt with the one to which he first 
 came, so he would deal with all the rest, till his 
 laws were everywhere welcomed and obeyed, and 
 his person regarded with the deepest reverence 
 and love wherever men were found. An era 
 would pass before all was done, but that genera- 
 tion would not pass before it would become most 
 strikingly evident that he was the very Judge 
 of men he had declared himself to be. This 
 revelation of himself he called "the coming of the 
 Son of Man" (Matt. 24:27, 37, 39), and re- 
 marked to Peter about John with reference to it 
 at the time of that very memorable meeting by 
 the Galilean Sea after his resurrection "If it 
 is my will that he should wait till I come, what 
 has that to do with you?" (Jno. 21:22, 23.) 
 As usual the disciples, not yet spiritually enlight- 
 
392 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 ened, began to talk of John as having been prom- 
 ised exemption from death ; in view of which John 
 himself very naively wrote "Jesus did not say 
 that that disciple was not to die, but said, if it 
 is my will that he should wait till I come, what 
 has that to do with you?" In point of fact, all 
 took place as Jesus had indicated. Peter's "tent" 
 was put away as his Master Himself had assured 
 him it would be, and John waited till the "com- 
 ing" and long afterwards, loving and serving. 
 ( Jno. 21 :18; 2 Pet. 1 :13, 14.) How touching in 
 the light of this is his "Amen, come Lord Jesus," 
 which we have already pointed out as almost the 
 last word of Revelation the book he wrote when 
 his Lord was in the very act of manifesting him- 
 self as the Judge of men. 
 
 It will not be contended by; many that the apos- 
 tles of our Lord and the spiritually minded mem- 
 bers of the churches in their day, did not enter- 
 tain these great hopes and expectations. What 
 has been claimed is that those men were mis- 
 taken, and that Paul, in particular, perceived his 
 early blunder and corrected it. We have seen, 
 however, that so far was this from having been 
 really the case, that Paul actually fortified his 
 first position, and proceeded to the development 
 and elaboration of his doctrine of the resurrec- 
 tion, until he viewed that initial event as the open- 
 ing of such a door to life as must in the end 
 make it the complete annihilator of disease and 
 death on this planet, not on the behalf of man 
 
CONCLUSION 393 
 
 alone, but also of all "nature" besides. And if 
 we take the ground that these inspired writers of 
 the New Testament were mistaken in regard to 
 these matters, whether they ever came to know 
 it or not, we must be prepared to go even further 
 and claim that Jesus himself taught in such a 
 manner as made it impossible for them to reach 
 any other conclusions than those which they ad- 
 vanced with such perfect confidence. We must 
 remember, too, that it was not the men of leaden 
 intellect and low and groveling desires, nor the 
 dreamy, impracticable visionaries of the period, 
 whose most cherished anticipations we have been 
 dealing with. Paul and John and James and 
 Peter were men of great acumen. They were 
 also men of action, who touched life at almost 
 every point in the most practical fashion. Next 
 to Christ Himself they were the very creators 
 of the church, and thus, in the long run, the 
 molders of the thought and life of our whole 
 race. 
 
 It is certainly time we parted forever with 
 the ambition to pose as the wise correctors 
 of Christ and his apostles. Our inspiration is 
 too poor for a task of such dimensions. Our 
 highest place here is that of humble interpreters 
 who tremblingly desire sufficient insight to per- 
 ceive clearly the precise contents of the revela- 
 tion which God gave to the world by means of 
 these men, and powers of expression sufficiently 
 ample to enable us to set forth what we are thus 
 
394 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 given to see, in such a way that we shall not 
 darken the divine counsel with our poor human 
 speech. 
 
 There are, however, several quite legitimate 
 questions which are likely to be asked in view of 
 all that has been put forth in the preceding 
 pages. The first of them is this. If Paul really 
 believed in all these things, if he really believed 
 that our Lord was coming as Judge in connection 
 with the destruction of Jerusalem, that the resur- 
 rection of the righteous dead, at least, would take 
 place then, and that all the righteous then living, 
 and their successors through generation after 
 generation, would put on spiritual bodies while 
 they were still living in the flesh, till at length 
 a painless and blissful absorption of the "animal" 
 by the "spiritual" would, in a world that will 
 have become wholly righteous at last, bring to an 
 end the long and horrible reign of disease and 
 death; how did it come to pass that practically 
 no trace of this creed of his is to be found in 
 Christian literature outside of the New Testa- 
 ment itself? 
 
 To ask still another question, why is it that in 
 the first letter of John we find what looks like 
 a virtual denial of the doctrine that Christ came 
 as Judge at the destruction of Jerusalem? For 
 was not this letter written after that event? 
 And does not John state that many anti-Christs 
 had risen already, and that the days in which he 
 was writing were "the last days," or the days im- 
 
CONCLUSION 395 
 
 mediately preceding the revelation of the Judge? 
 (1 Jno. 2:18.) 
 
 Dealing now with the latter question first, we 
 may say at once that no one knows when the 
 first letter of John was written. Some favor 
 the year 85 or later as the probable date, but 
 there is certainly nothing very definite about such 
 a claim as that. The Twentieth Century re- 
 visers say "It is probable that it was written 
 after the fall of Jerusalem and at a time when 
 the second coming of Christ appeared to be im- 
 minent." They further say that "it was prob- 
 ably written at Ephesus after 70 A. D." And 
 they cite the passage to which I have referred in 
 proof of their view. In their version the pas- 
 sage reads thus: 
 
 "My children, these are the last days. You 
 were told that anti-Christ was coming and many 
 anti-Christs have already arisen. By that we 
 know that these are the last days." 
 
 In what way these words support the conten- 
 tion that the letter was written "after 70 A. D.," 
 rather than during 70, let us say, they do not 
 even hint. Did our Lord's prediction that there 
 would be false Christs before the destruction of 
 Jerusalem find no fulfillment? Or was it his pre- 
 diction of his own coming in connection with that 
 event that our revisers doubted the fulfillment of? 
 As to the latter we have seen how definitely our 
 Lord came both as Savior and Judge within the 
 life-time of the generation to which he himself 
 
396 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 had ministered while in the flesh, and how he came 
 to abide till his work was done. 
 
 In point of fact the New Testament presents 
 three of these "Comings" of Christ. For besides 
 his coming as spiritual Savior and his coming 
 as Royal Judge, which we have already looked 
 into with as much care as we could, there is still 
 another referred to by John in the third chapter 
 of his first letter, where he writes of being like 
 Christ through seeing "him as he really is." 
 (1 Jno. 3:2.) Each coming, must, as we have 
 seen, be considered as a revelation, and this com- 
 ing is our Lord's revelation of Himself as the 
 Exemplar and Transformer of his people. Their 
 supreme difficulty is that of comprehending him 
 in his moral and spiritual perfections, and this 
 is at the same time their supreme spiritual neces- 
 sity. They are changed into his image from 
 glory to glory, not all at once, nor all in one or 
 even a hundred generations, but only as they can 
 intelligently grasp and appreciate the things 
 of which that glory is made up. He is revealed 
 to them, or comes to them, only gradually and 
 slowly, therefore, as exemplar and transformer 
 or renewer. And this is just as true of his other 
 comings or revelations. He only began to be 
 revealed as the spiritual Savior of men at Pente- 
 cost, and as Royal Judge in connection with the 
 destruction of Jerusalem. He cannot stand out 
 with perfect clearness in any respect before men's 
 eyes till all his work is done. Their eyes will 
 
CONCLUSION 397 
 
 not be fully purged till then, nor will he himself 
 be all disclosed. This was well understood by 
 Paul, for he wrote of seeing "the glory of the 
 Lord" only "as if reflected in a mirror." He 
 had written before 
 
 "As yet we see in a mirror dimly, but then 
 face to face. As yet my knowledge is incom- 
 plete, but then I shall know in full, as I have been 
 fully known." (1 Cor. 13:12.) And years 
 afterwards, he wrote again, "My aim is to get 
 to know Christ" (Phil. 3:10, Tentative version 
 T. C. N. T.) till he stands sufficiently revealed 
 before my eyes to make it possible for me to 
 "grow like him in his death," and "attain to the 
 resurrection from the dead" which was his. 
 
 Those will do well to remember these facts, 
 who, in view of the teaching of this volume, have 
 begun to wonder if Paul would not now look upon 
 the Lord's Supper as an out-of-date institution, 
 since according to his own word it was a pro- 
 claiming of "the Lord's death till He comes." 
 
 John saw the New Jerusalem coming down 
 from God out of Heaven. It had not all come, 
 nor has it all come yet. We see it coming still. 
 Our Lord's comings or revelations continue, and 
 will do so till all his holy life has entered into 
 our humanity and made it, also, both holy and 
 deathless. 
 
 On the matter of the Antichrists, on the other 
 hand, we can do no better, perhaps, than quote 
 some exceedingly sane words from Farrar's 
 
398 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 "Early Days of Christianity" "The word an- 
 tichrist, which St. John alone uses, may mean 
 either 'Rivals of Christ i. e., pseudo-Christs 
 (Matt. 24:5, 11), or enemies of Christ'; either 
 those who try to pass themselves off as Christ 
 or those who set themselves in open array against 
 him. An Antichrist may take the semblance of 
 a Nero or of a Simon Magus, of a Priest or of 
 a Voltaire. St. John enters into no details be- 
 cause his readers had already heard that anti- 
 christ cometh. This must refer to his own oral 
 teachings, or those of other apostles, for he tells 
 us afterwards that by 'Antichrists' he means 
 those who deny the incarnation (4*:3) or who 
 deny the Father and the Son (2:22). This form 
 of Antichrist is not described either by Daniel, 
 or by St. Paul in his Man of Sin. If, in 2 Thess. 
 3 :4<, the expression of St. Paul may admit of some 
 sort of analogous interpretation, it certainly 
 could not have been assumed by St. Paul that the 
 brief letter to a Macedonian Church would have 
 already pervaded the whole of Asia. 
 
 "Nevertheless, the prevalence of these Anti- 
 christs, of whom St. John had orally spoken, was 
 the direct fulfillment of the weeping prophecy of 
 St. Paul in his farewell to the Ephesian Elders, 
 'that after his departure grievous wolves would 
 enter among them, not sparing the flock, and that 
 from among their own selves men would arise 
 speaking perverted things to drag away disciples 
 after them.' The very danger to the Churdh 
 
CONCLUSION 399 
 
 lay in the fact that this Antichristian teaching 
 arose out of her own bosom. The Antichrists 
 did not openly apostatize from the Christian 
 body; they corrupted it from within. They still 
 called themselves Christians ; had they really been 
 so, they would have continued to be so. But 
 their present apostasy was a manifestation of 
 the fact that they never had been true Christians, 
 and that not all who called themselves Christians, 
 are such in reality." 
 
 It may be noted, too, that the words, "these 
 are the last days," are by no means a literal 
 translation. They only represent what the re- 
 visers believed to be the true sense. Such de- 
 partures from literal renderings must often be 
 made if the sense is to be clearly stated for the 
 reader of English, but they represent, at the same 
 time, a kind of work in which every prepossession 
 will obtrude itself, and in which translations are 
 only too apt to degenerate into mere glosses. 
 Let us take an instance which will illustrate this 
 fact. 
 
 When these revisers changed the literal "bap- 
 tized into Christ" and "baptized into Moses" so 
 as to make them read, in one case, "baptized into 
 union with Christ," and in the other, "underwent 
 baptism as followers of Moses," it is very doubt- 
 ful whether they did not wholly miss the idea 
 which was in the apostle's mind. (Gal. 3:27; 
 Rom. 6:3 and 1 Cor. 10:2.) Indeed it seems per- 
 fectly clear that they did. For in their tenta- 
 
400 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 tive version, they rendered the one passage which 
 sets forth that idea unmistakably, so as to cover 
 it up altogether. We refer to 2 Cor. 12:13, 
 which they translated, or rather, paraphrased 
 thus: "It was through one spirit, and to form 
 one Body, that we were all baptized, whether 
 Jews or Greeks, slaves or free men." Now if 
 they had given it to us literally (they have al- 
 most done it in their final version) they would 
 have made it plain that Paul had in mind the 
 Church as the body of Christ, and was teaching 
 that by a spiritual baptism both Jews and 
 Gentiles were being made members of that body. 
 "Baptism into Christ" was his way of setting 
 forth that change which, after Jesus and John 
 and Peter and James, we call regeneration and 
 conversion. 
 
 Paul thought of the Israelites as so brought 
 under the personality of Moses, by means of their 
 night's experience in the Red Sea, that they be- 
 came, as it were, members of his body. On the 
 Eigyptian side of the sea they had been faith- 
 less, rebellious, ready to renounce his will and 
 leadership altogether ; but by means of their pas- 
 sage on dry ground through the midst of that 
 Sea, which he had been instrumental in securing 
 for them, they lost their will in his, so far forth 
 as that will had to do with the journey upon 
 which they had set out. Just so, too, the be- 
 liever in Christ, "whether Jew or Greek, slave or 
 free man," was conceived of by Paul as having 
 
CONCLUSION 401 
 
 parted with his old self-centered individuality 
 and come into the very body of Christ to know 
 his will and that alone; and he taught that this 
 change was effected by a baptism of the Holy 
 .Spirit. It was, of course, this spiritual trans- 
 formation in its ideal perfection, rather than as 
 it actually stood revealed in the individual be- 
 liever that Paul had in his mind when he produced 
 these passages, but it is scarcely open to doubt 
 that the image which was present to his thinking 
 all the while, was the one we have indicated. But 
 if so, no paraphrase of any sort can do anything 
 but mislead. "Baptized into one body, into 
 Christ, into Moses," are words which present the 
 very image of the thing as no other words can. 
 
 The unhappy looseness of these renderings of 
 the Twentieth Century revisers probably repre- 
 sents a failure on their part to perceive that the 
 Pauline doctrine of baptismal regeneration is re- 
 generation by the Holy Spirit, considered entirely 
 apart from water baptism. No New Testament 
 writer ever described water baptism as baptism 
 into a body or person. The apostles baptized 
 by water, not "into Jesus Christ," but "into the 
 Name or Faith of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 8:16, 
 19:5; Matt. 28:19), as the Master Himself had 
 told them they should. They knewi that its effect 
 was only that of entitling the person baptized to 
 bear the Christian name and share in the Chris- 
 tian privileges and responsibilities of the time; 
 that its effect was churchly as distinguished from 
 
402 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 spiritual, outward and ritual and not inward and 
 heart-transforming. It was in view of this fact 
 that Paul was inspired to represent the Holy 
 Spirit's regenerating work as a baptism "into 
 Jesus Christ," a baptism of Jews and heathens- 
 of every class "into one body." And thus, as 
 the writer of Hebrews shows us, there came to be 
 a doctrine, not of baptism but "of baptisms" 
 (Heb. 6:2), which was too high and difficult for 
 the average member of the apostolic church, and 
 which he felt compelled on that account to pass 
 by. Another doctrine, however, speedily arose in 
 its place, from which the church, as a whole, has 
 never yet been able to free herself. 
 
 Nothing, however, even in theology, has been 
 really settled, that has not been settled logically 
 and scientifically, that is to say, in view of the 
 actual facts. For after all has been said, it will 
 be found that the human mind was not built in 
 two sections, one of which was indissolubly linked 
 with the reasoning faculty, while the other was 
 not. The difference between a baptized child and 
 an unbaptized one, as shown by their later de- 
 velopment, is appreciable only to those who have 
 the dogma of regeneration through baptism by 
 water to maintain, and have, therefore, passed 
 judgment upon the matter beforehand, leaving 
 no room for any real examination into it. To 
 say this, however, is not to deny that infant 
 baptism is desirable, but only to assert that 
 baptism by water is not the heaven-appointed 
 
CONCLUSION 403 
 
 means for bringing us, either in our infancy or 
 our later years, into saving relations with the 
 atonement of Christ. Baptism by water is the 
 sign and seal of the fact that those to whom it 
 is administered, whether infants or adults, have 
 been definitely acknowledged by the Church as 
 belonging to Christendom, and as therefore en- 
 titled to the church's special care, instruction and 
 discipline. Whether such a baptized individual, 
 infant or adult, is spiritually regenerated or not, 
 is a question that must be determined by spiritual 
 and not ritual tests, as the whole church of Christ 
 will acknowledge the moment she has in her en- 
 tirety abandoned irrational dogma for sound doc- 
 trine, which, while it may transcend present 
 definite knowledge, never flatly contradicts either 
 reason or fact. The genuinely Christian posi- 
 tion is that all infants possess spiritual life 
 through Christ, as the Second Adam, at birth, 
 and that this life may be lost by them, and also 
 restored by the original giver during the years 
 of personal responsibility which come later; and 
 that all our Lord's saving work is accomplished 
 spiritually and not ritually. Baptism and the 
 Lord's Supper are teaching ordinances, and 
 they are greatly helpful in that way but in no 
 other. 
 
 The point we have been preparing to make is 
 this. If the prepossessions of the Twentieth 
 Century revisers led them away from Paul's idea 
 every time they touched his doctrine of spiritual 
 
404 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 baptism, we may be pardoned for fancying that 
 they made a like blunder when they came to deal 
 with that word of John which we have had under 
 our notice. They represent him as having twice 
 declared "these are the last days," whereas the 
 literal thing he said twice was "this is the last 
 hour." May it not have been that the letter 
 was written during the year 70 just before the 
 destruction of Jerusalem, and that the apostle 
 who so loved to dwell upon the fact of his Lord's 
 coming, and so earnestly prayed for it, saw when 
 he wrote, that it was indeed the church's "last 
 hour" of waiting for that event, and also the last 
 hour of respite for her. Jewish foes. At least his 
 manner of statement is graphic enough and 
 solemn enough for that. 
 
 If on the other hand, however, the date of this 
 letter should ever be definitely proved to have 
 been later than the year 70, it will not then be 
 forgotten that the word "hour," like the word 
 "day," can be used to represent an era or time- 
 period, and it will be understood that John was 
 teaching in this passage that the presence of so 
 many Antichrists in the world was a strong 
 proof that Christ Himself was here to be op- 
 posed, that he had come and was present among 
 men 'to carry on to its completion every under- 
 taking connected with his great work of redeem- 
 ing our race; and because he could not fail in 
 any respect as those who were before him had 
 done, there would be nothing for another to un- 
 
CONCLUSION 405 
 
 dertake when he had finished. He was the Christ, 
 the King crowned by God for the whole race, and 
 the whole race, recognizing him as supreme in 
 character, would eventually unite to crown Him 
 on its own account. 
 
 Therefore, wrote John, this is the final era 
 of human redemption, it is the very last hour 
 that will be needed. 
 
 The first question still remains to be dealt with. 
 It is this : If Paul really believed in all these 
 things, and entertained these lively expectations ; 
 if he believed that our Lord was coming as Judge 
 in connection with the destruction of Jerusalem ; 
 that the resurrection of the righteous dead at 
 least would take place then ; and that all the 
 righteous then living and their successors 
 through generation after generation would put 
 on spiritual bodies while they were still living in 
 the flesh, till at length a painless and blissful 
 absorption of the "animal" by the "spiritual," 
 would, in a world that had become wholly right- 
 eous at last, bring to a final end the long and 
 horrible reign of disease and death: if he really 
 believed and taught all these things and was 
 joined in part at least by the other New Testa- 
 ment writers, how did it come to pass that prac- 
 tically no trace of this creed of his is to be found 
 in Christian literature outside of the New Testa- 
 ment itself? This question can be answered with 
 perfect frankness, and in such a manner as to 
 satisfy every reasonable mind. 
 
406 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 That a given thing has not been grasped or 
 fully understood is no proof that it has never 
 been clearly offered as a matter of definite in- 
 struction to any responsible body of men. To 
 readers of the New Testament this should seem 
 like a very ordinary statement. Jesus knew 
 how to present an idea accurately; how to state 
 a fact plainly. Yet there were two things at 
 least, which he failed to make his immediate dis- 
 ciples comprehend that he was actually to go 
 to the cross and rise again from the dead ; and 
 that his kingdom was not immediately to assume 
 a political form, with Himself as its visible king. 
 He so many times assured them that he would 
 be crucified, that Matthew introduces the subject 
 with the remark that "at this time Jesus Christ 
 began to explain to his disciples that he must 
 go to Jerusalem, and undergo much suffering at 
 the hands of the Councilors, and Chief Priests, 
 and teachers of the law, and be put to death, and 
 rise on the third day." (Matt. 16:21.) And 
 Matthew goes on to say that these words were 
 so well understood by the disciples that Peter at 
 once went so far as to deny their accuracy to the 
 Master's very face, and was by our Lord ad- 
 dressed as "Satan" for his perverse attempt to 
 shut out the truth and hinder in a wrongful way 
 the coming to pass of the stupendous event itself. 
 But Peter's perversity of intellect continued in 
 spite of the severity of Jesus' rebuke. And he 
 was no worse than the rest, for they were all 
 
CONCLUSION 407 
 
 equally deaf and blind, as the whole of the later 
 story proves. 
 
 Perhaps our Lord's word about Mary, the 
 sister of Lazarus, keeping or having kept that 
 box of spikenard which she opened at the feast 
 which was given in his honor a week before his 
 death, for the day of his burial, indicates that 
 she had become convinced that he was really to 
 die. (Jno. 12:7, 8.) But if so, she stands out 
 as the one solitary exception to the general fail- 
 ure to accept his teaching on the subject as 
 literally true. And so persistent was their in- 
 capacity for taking in the real nature of the 
 kingdom he was to set up, that "on one occasion 
 when the apostles had met together," after his 
 resurrection and just prior to his ascension, 
 "they asked Jesus this question, 'Master, is 
 this the time when you intend to reestablish the 
 kingdom for Israel?' ' And he, in pity for their 
 blindness, withheld the direct answer, which would 
 have proved a stumbling-block to them, and 
 gave them one which guided their thoughts 
 heavenward and prepared them for a more com- 
 plete entrance into his kingdom on their own 
 behalf. 
 
 This power of his to comprehend and adapt 
 Himself to their limitations stands revealed in 
 these last wonderful words of his to them just 
 before he led them to Gethsemane, "I have still 
 much to say to you, but you cannot bear it now. 
 But when he, the Spirit of Truth comes, he 
 
408 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 will guide you into all Truth; for he will not 
 speak on his own authority but will speak all 
 that he hears; and he will tell you of the things 
 that are to come. He will honor me; because he 
 will take of what is mine, and will tell it to you. 
 Everything that the Father has is mine; that is 
 why I said that he takes of what is mine, and 
 will tell it to you." (Jno. 16:12-15.) 
 
 But as Jesus had to adapt his teachings to the 
 comprehension of his followers ; and even then 
 failed to get into their minds some of the things 
 which he taught, so was it also with the apostles 
 after the promised Holy Spirit had made them 
 in their turn the divinely inspired instructors of 
 their fellowmen. 
 
 Paul writes to the Corinthians: "But I, 
 Brothers, could not speak to you as men with 
 spiritual insight but only as worldly minded 
 mere infants in the Faith of Christ. I fed you 
 with milk, not with solid food, for you were not 
 then able to take it." (1 Cor. 3:1-2.) 
 
 In writing to Titus he declared : "There are in- 
 deed, many unruly persons, great talkers who de- 
 ceive themselves. ... It was a Cretan one 
 of their own teachers who said: 'Cretans are 
 always liars, base brutes, and gluttonous idlers'; 
 and his statement is true. Therefore, rebuke 
 them sharply, so that they may be sound in the 
 faith." 
 
 And this inability to receive truth readily and 
 hold it purely was omnipresent in the church, 
 
CONCLUSION 409 
 
 just as one might have anticipated; for how could 
 these Jews and heathens have got rid all at once 
 of the whole vast mass of puerilities and super- 
 stitious absurdities, which had made up, as one 
 might say, the very warp and woof of their think- 
 ing; and have risen out of the debasing ma- 
 terialism in which for ages they had been steeped, 
 to enter immediately into the full comprehension 
 of all the spiritual facts pertaining to Christian- 
 ity? The thing was impossible. 
 
 The letter of Jude is largely a description of 
 and warning against "certain godless people" 
 who had "crept" into the church, and become a 
 peril to its very existence ; who "malign what- 
 ever they do not understand; while they use such 
 things as they know by instinct (like the animals 
 that have no reason) for their own corruption." 
 (Jude 4, 10.) The reason, these people were such 
 a peril to the church, was that the body, taken 
 as a whole, was so ignorant and unspiritual. 
 Consequently the writer of our New Testament 
 letter to the Hebrews, declared to those whom he 
 addressed 
 
 "Now on this subject I have much to say, but 
 it is difficult to explain it to you, because you have 
 shown yourselves so slow to learn. For, while 
 considering the time that has elapsed, you ought 
 to be teaching others; you still need someone to 
 teach you the very alphabet of the divine revela- 
 tion, and need again to be fed with 'milk' instead 
 of with 'solid food'. . . . For every one who 
 
410 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 still has to take 'milk' knows nothing of the 
 Teaching of Righteousness; he is a mere infant. 
 But 'solid food' is for Christians of mature faith 
 those whose faculties have been trained by prac- 
 tice to distinguish right from wrong. There- 
 fore, let us leave behind the elementary teaching 
 about the Christ and press on to perfection, not 
 always laying over again a foundation of re- 
 pentance for a lifeless formality, of faith in God 
 teaching concerning baptisms and the laying 
 on of hands, the resurrection of the dead and a 
 final judgment. Yes, and with God's help, so 
 we will." (Heb. 5:11-6:3.) 
 
 How clearly these words reveal the fact that 
 upon these very subjects with which we have been 
 dealing, the apostolic leaders of thought found 
 it most difficult to produce accurate impressions. 
 So impossible had the task become in his time 
 that this writer tells those whom he had set out to 
 instruct, that for the present at least he must 
 simply avoid "teaching concerning baptisms and 
 the laying on of hands, the resurrection of the 
 dead and a final judgment." 
 
 Peter very plainly tells us the reason. Paul, 
 he says, had undertaken the task with such poor 
 results, that it was about as well to let the sub- 
 ject drop till the church grew wiser and more 
 spiritual. If in addition to all this it should, 
 contrary to much learned expectation, turn out 
 in the end that the author of "Hebrews" was no 
 less a personage than Paul himself, his refraining 
 
CONCLUSION 411 
 
 from these subjects which were so familiar and 
 so dear to him, will appear still more significant ; 
 for it would then be seen that the church had 
 proved herself so incapable of understanding 
 them, that their very chiefest exponent had to 
 abandon them in his public teaching. 
 
 But let us see just how Peter makes his point 
 touching Paul's failure here 
 
 "The day of the Lord will come like a thief; 
 and on that day the heavens will pass away with 
 a crash the elements will be burnt up and dis- 
 solved, and the earth and all that is in it will be 
 disclosed. Now, since all these things are in the 
 process of dissolution, think what you yourselves 
 ought to be what holy and pious lives you should 
 lead, while you await and hasten the Day of 
 God. At its coming the heavens will be dis- 
 solved in fire, and the elements melted by heat, 
 but we look for 'new heavens and a new earth,' 
 where righteousness shall have its home, in ful- 
 fillment of the promise of God. 
 
 "Therefore, dear friends, in expectation of 
 these things, make every effort to be found by 
 him spotless, blameless, and at peace. Regard 
 our Lord's forbearance as your only hope of 
 Salvation. This is what our dear Brother Paul 
 wrote to you, with the wisdom that God gave 
 him. It is the same in all his letters, when he 
 speaks in them about these subjects. There are 
 some things in them difficult to understand, which 
 untaught and weak people distort, just as they 
 
A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 do all other writings, to their own Ruin." (2 
 Pet. 3:10-16.) 
 
 It would almost seem that this confession of 
 Peter that some of the things Paul advanced on 
 these themes were "difficult to understand," must 
 be taken to prove that he himself was unable to 
 spell his way completely through them. And 
 this need not disturb us. There is what we may 
 call an economy about God's way of revealing the 
 great facts of human redemption. And it may 
 well have been that in that economy Paul was the 
 only man who was inspired to see all the way 
 along the divine processes to their very end. 
 
 If a man stands alone in his inspiration, his 
 inspiration is greater, not less, because of that. 
 Failure to get one's message understood may 
 prove the same thing. It requires no inspiration 
 at all to tell the things everybody knows. And 
 the farther one goes beyond his fellows in the 
 things he is given to see, the fewer there will be 
 who will be able to follow him at all. 
 
 The question, Was he understood? is im- 
 portant historically, but not exegetically. The 
 same may be said of the question, How was he 
 understood? The one inquiry that really mat- 
 ters from the standpoint of interpretation is 
 What was it precisely that he set out to teach? 
 And this is the question which we have been ask- 
 ing in the presence of our Lord, and of the New 
 Testament writers, throughout our present un- 
 dertaking. 
 
CONCLUSION 415 
 
 We may now note afresh some of the things 
 which have come within our view during the prog- 
 ress of this discussion. We have seen our Lord 
 Jesus Christ as Royal Judge condemning and 
 overthrowing all the opposers of his kingdom, 
 until none remained to hinder, and his people 
 filled the whole earth. We have looked upon his 
 march as deliverer from death, and seen him 
 raising the dead and changing the living, till at 
 length what was mortal in men no longer fell into 
 decay but was, on the contrary, "absorbed in 
 Life" (II Cor. 5:4), and even "nature" itself 
 escaped "from its enslavement to decay and at- 
 tained to the freedom which will mark the glory 
 of the children of God." (Rom. 8:21.) He 
 has also appeared before us as a complete Savior, 
 and we have seen him leading his people up to 
 the heights of knowledge and holiness "until they 
 reached the ideal man the full standard of the 
 perfection of the Christ" ; and every activity of 
 theirs, social, political, and churchly, harmonized 
 with the divine requirements. 
 
 The story is that of an evolution an evolu- 
 tion through Christ. ,He came as the Creator 
 of a new order, or, if anyone prefers it, as the 
 restorer and upbuilder of the original order, 
 which the fall of our race arrested at its very 
 inception. He came as the Father of an age, 
 and of an order in which the spiritual was at 
 length to absorb or swallow up the animal, and 
 even the material as we commonly use the term. 
 
A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 He took upon him our animal nature, but with- 
 out fulfilling its chief function that of beget- 
 ting others to succeed him. His life belonged to 
 the realm of the spiritual, and because it was 
 lived on that plane with a perfect persistence, 
 all of him that was material and mortal was 
 lifted to the same height. Then he proceeded to 
 draw up the race of mankind after him slowly, 
 as became the author of those patient processes 
 in nature, which we have learned to call by the 
 name of evolution, but surely and triumphantly. 
 According to the New Testament, this process is 
 to move along all the lines of our nature and its 
 activities, till his words that are "spirit" and 
 "life" have by their might transmuted and trans- 
 formed all things into their own nature and like- 
 ness. 
 
 How full of significance in view of all this are 
 those words which our Lord addressed to 
 Martha, when he said 
 
 "I am the resurrection and the life. He that 
 believes in me shall live though he die; and he 
 who lives and believes in me shall never die." 
 Jesus was guilty here of no poor play on words. 
 He was not juggling with our human speech. 
 On the contrary, he was revealing by means of 
 it more than Martha or anyone who listened to 
 him then was prepared to take in. Later John, 
 at least, took in enough of their significance to 
 record them for the church's instruction and 
 benefit. 
 
CONCLUSION 415 
 
 "The life" is much more than "the resurrec- 
 tion," and to die and rise again is to enjoy a 
 poor victory compared with theirs who "will never 
 die at all" because Christ's spirit and life will 
 have made them immortal. Our Lord opened up 
 before Martha the whole long vista of the re- 
 deeming years, that she might look upon their 
 crowning triumph. 
 
 We may also read the fourteenth chapter of 
 John in the light of this revelation. "My 
 Father's Home" What is that but the place 
 where all his children are? So it must be here 
 as well as yonder. It was to men who were to 
 stay here and do and suffer, that he brought for- 
 ward the facts concerning it as a source of pres- 
 ent comfort and inspiration. His words were to 
 the eleven disciples, and to us only after them, 
 and the things he promised were to be realized 
 by them very early, there in Jerusalem largely, 
 and not elsewhere at the close of unnumbered 
 millenniums. 
 
 "In my Father's home there are many dwell- 
 ings" many dwellings. You are in one of them 
 now, but it is a very poor one comparatively. I 
 live in a much better one, and I shall introduce 
 you to it. 
 
 "I am going to prepare a place for you." I 
 am going to the Father and when I return and 
 take you to be with me, you will know that I am 
 in union with the Father, that you are with me 
 and I with you there, and, therefore, that here 
 
416 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 and yonder are not places separated from each 
 other but are really one place, one Father's home 
 with many dwellings. I am speaking to you of 
 spiritual things. You tre as yet unspiritual, 
 and cannot fully understand the things I am say- 
 ing to you. It is first of all a matter of spiritual 
 revealings which cannot be detected by the bodily 
 senses. The Holy Spirit will come. The Father 
 will send him, and he will bring it all to pass. 
 Your love for me will be so fully awakened that 
 you will do or dare anything that I wish you to 
 undertake or face. Then the Father and I my- 
 self will stand revealed in your consciousness, and 
 you will be most definitely aware of our presence 
 with you and all about you, and will rejoice as 
 never before, and that even when you are expe- 
 riencing hardships and perils. The Holy Spirit, 
 too, will reveal himself to you in his own person- 
 ality, and you will find that you have indeed been 
 taken to dwell where I am, that is, in the Father 
 Himself, as the primary source of all life and 
 
 "I shall return." When was this word ful- 
 filled ? After his resurrection visibly ; at Pente- 
 cost invisibly and spiritually, but more gloriously 
 than before; at the destruction of Jerusalem 
 triumphantly against persecuting Judaism and 
 to raise from the dead those who had fallen 
 asleep in Him before that time, to introduce all 
 true believers then living to that change which 
 corresponds to the resurrection, and thencefor- 
 
CONCLUSION 417 
 
 ward to carry on his work till all was done. 
 
 "In truth I tell you, he who believes in me will 
 himself do the work I am doing; and he will do 
 greater work still, because I am going to the 
 Father." 
 
 The ages of redemption with all their wealth 
 of achievement and blessing for the race, as these 
 were anticipated by the apostles, were before 
 Jesus when he uttered these words ; and they alone 
 could justify them. But it will be seen when all 
 has been accomplished, that Jesus had to take 
 a somewhat lowly place as a worker in the inter- 
 ests of our humanity, when he was here in the 
 flesh. He could cure disease then, but he could 
 not banish it. He could raise the dead, but he 
 could not deliver men from the necessity of dy- 
 ing, nor provide them with spiritual bodies in 
 which to quit their animal ones. He could not 
 even escape death Himself. Neither could He, 
 on the other hand, lift the veil of ignorance and 
 lead men on to perfect knowledge. Nor could he 
 transform the social and political conditions in 
 the midst of which he lived. All these greater 
 things were left to be accomplished by, or, rather, 
 through those who should believe on Him during 
 the long series of generations which was to fol- 
 low, and which has probably even now been only 
 well begun. But these greater things were all 
 to be done, and will yet all be worked out in the 
 manner which the Holy Spirit has indicated in 
 the New Testament, where he has according to 
 
418 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 the Lord's further promise, told us "of the things 
 that are to come." 
 
 Have any of these things actually arrived? 
 They certainly have. And they continue to come 
 with comparative rapidity. The old tyrannies 
 and human slavery which Jesus could not touch 
 at all, excepting from a distance, by means of 
 his great principles of the brotherhood of man 
 and the true law of service, have been directly 
 faced and fought by his followers, till they are 
 now all but exterminated. Great strides have 
 been made in the application of the divine law 
 touching the marriage relation and family life. 
 Commerce has been vastly improved. War has 
 been largely stripped of its horrors, and has it- 
 self become so abhorrent to the Christian con- 
 sciousness that it cannot survive through many 
 centuries more. The vice of drunkenness is now 
 being combated with a full knowledge of the 
 physiological, as well as the intellectual and 
 spiritual effects produced by alcohol, so that it 
 it is at last clearly doomed. Philanthropies have 
 multiplied and are multiplying, and among the 
 most striking of them are the philanthropies of 
 war. The churches are everywhere moving along 
 the lines indicated by our Lord in his prayer that 
 all his followers might be one. Christendom 
 carries what remains of the heathen world upon 
 its heart. "The white man's burden" has as- 
 sumed huge dimensions, for it is really the burden 
 of Christ poorly borne by the white man often, 
 
CONCLUSION 419 
 
 yet Christ's burden nevertheless. Disease and 
 death have more than met their match in the skill 
 of the Christian physician and surgeon, and are 
 being steadily beaten back. The average life- 
 time of a generation in Christian lands is longer 
 by years than it was a century ago. Deeds of 
 healing are done daily as a mere matter of course, 
 which in the time of Christ and his apostles would 
 have been looked upon as miracles ; and the only 
 end to it all which one can foresee is that which 
 our Lord Himself foretold and made not only 
 possible but certain. 
 
 Finally we find ourselves living to-day in the 
 presence of the invisible, the intangible and the 
 incomprehensible, and compelled to regard them 
 as at once the mightiest and the most abiding. 
 
 One may say with some confidence that the true 
 story of the material universe, and of our own 
 planet in particular, is simply that of the evolu- 
 tion of Life. The atom lives as really as the 
 glorified Christ. The difference between them 
 may be set forth in two ways and regarded as 
 either a difference in kind or a difference in de- 
 gree. Perhaps the theologian will prefer the 
 former alternative, but the scientist will choose the 
 latter. The first manifestations of Life are pos- 
 sibly still with us in the unorganized particles of 
 ether. Is there somewhere a connecting link be- 
 tween these and the whirling, dancing electrons 
 which have given their allegiance to the center of 
 control in the atom? Just what, materially con- 
 
420 A RACE'S REDEMPTION 
 
 sidered, is the center of control itself? One asks 
 also by what means such variety was attained in 
 the composition of atoms to form the elements, 
 and the union of these again to produce the multi- 
 plied chemical combinations in their varying 
 forms. Whatever the answers to these questions 
 may be when they reach us, they cannot in the 
 least alter the fact that all these steps quite 
 clearly belong to the same upward march which 
 we follow when later we find ourselves in the com- 
 pany of the plasma-cells of the whole vegetable 
 and animal series. The first processes are as in- 
 timately related to the second as they were ab- 
 solutely essential to their beginning and mainte- 
 nance. The self-conscious, too, found its stepping 
 stone and permanent foundation in the conscious, 
 and the moral sense, or individual conscience, in 
 the community sense. The moral sense is the 
 highest and most precious development of com- 
 mon sense. The unfailing conscience of Jesus, 
 too, was but the logical outcome of the whole proc- 
 ess in that direction, just as the human intelli- 
 gence fully informed for all terrestrial require- 
 ments, will be seen to be the logical, the natural 
 and the necessary outcome of the evolution of in- 
 tellect upon our planet, the moment the day of 
 even one such gloriously equipped intellect arrives 
 in connection with the ever growing division of 
 labor and care for each other among men. So 
 also a body enduringly worthy of Life at its best 
 in men and permanently desirable, because readily 
 
CONCLUSION 421 
 
 adaptable to all the uses they may have for it, 
 will be looked upon as the one and only suitable 
 crown or culmination of the whole evolutionary 
 progress along the line of sentient organisms. 
 For, given perfect housing and complete equip- 
 ment, Life, as it appears in men, can have no 
 bounds to its lofty possibilities. And Life at its 
 highest in self-conscious individual intellects and 
 consciences, duly developed and furnished, must 
 know and dwell in harmony with that which is 
 above, as well as with that which is about and 
 beneath it. But that which transcends Life, as 
 it appears in men, is that Life's Source in God 
 himself. Thus all Life is seen to be the one Life 
 in various phases and stages of manifestation. 
 Science passes into Theology and Theology back 
 again into Science, so that from whichever side of 
 things we view all, we see the God who "himself 
 gives to all life and breath and all things," and 
 know that "in him we live and move and are." 
 (Acts 17:25, 28.) 
 
INDEX 
 
INDEX 
 
 Age, Close of the, 312, 374, 
 
 381 
 
 Ahaz, 40 
 Archetypal Man, Jesus the, 
 
 86 
 Atonement, Jesus and the, 
 
 186 
 Azazel, 246 seq. 
 
 Baptism, 34, 35 
 
 Baptism Into Christ, 
 399 seq. 
 
 Blood of Christ His Obedi- 
 ence Unto Death, The, 
 198-201 
 
 Biblical Ethics, Jesus and, 
 270 
 
 Call of Jesus, The, 55, 76, 92 
 Carpenter's Shop, The, 53 
 Change, The Resurrectional, 
 
 322 seq. 
 Christ, Jesus Made The, 92, 
 
 93 
 Church, Jesus's Love for 
 
 His, 182 seq., 380 
 Church, Jesus the Redeemer 
 
 of His, 168 
 Church of Christ, Isaiah's 
 
 and Micah's Visions of 
 
 the, 168 seq. 
 
 Church of Christ Made Uni- 
 versal, The, 381 
 Church of Christ Perfected, 
 
 378 seq. 
 
 Church of Christ Not in 
 Lord's Prayer, 165-6 
 
 Church of Christ Why It 
 Exists, 162, 167 
 
 Clouds that Protect, 325, 
 328 
 
 Consciousness of Jesus, 
 The, 45 
 
 Consciousness of Jesus Hu- 
 man, The, 79 
 
 Consciousness of Jesus Not 
 Dual, The, 81 
 
 Consciousness of Jesus 
 Will It Endure? The, 83 
 
 Creator, God as, 22 seq., 
 190, 193 
 
 "Cruciality of the Cross, 
 The," 187 
 
 Death of Jesus an Awaken- 
 ing Fact, The, 255, 258 
 
 Deliverer from Death, Jesus 
 the, 321 
 
 Desert Temptation, The, 58- 
 60, 72 
 
 Destiny, Jesus and Nation- 
 al, 350 
 
 Divorce, Jesus on, 131 seq. 
 
 Disappointment, Heart of 
 Jesus Broken by, 183 
 
 Enduement of Jesus, The, 
 90 seq. 
 
 Eschatology of Jesus, The, 
 301 
 
 425 
 
426 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Eschatology, The Scheme of 
 Redemption an, 388, 413 
 
 Eschatology of New Testa- 
 ment Why Misunder- 
 stood, 410 
 
 Ethical Code Denned, 
 286 
 
 Ethics of Bible Incom- 
 plete, 279, 283, 290 
 
 Evolution, Its Limits, 98 
 
 Exegesis, Some Principles 
 of, 14 seq. 
 
 Failure, When Jesus Fore- 
 saw, 173 
 
 Fall a Racial Fact, The, 8 
 
 Fasting of Jesus, The, 59 
 
 Forbearance, God's, 26-7 
 
 Forgiveness a Deliverance 
 from Sinning, 233 
 
 Forgiveness Brings Self- 
 Approval, 236, 241 
 
 Forgiveness Establishes 
 
 Obedience to God, 233 seq. 
 
 Forgiveness Is Through Sur- 
 render and Consecration, 
 218 seq. 
 
 French Revolution, Jesus 
 and the, 119 
 
 Forsyth, Principal, 187, 224 
 
 Gethsemane, The Cup in, 
 179 aeq. \\ 
 
 God Is Love, 140, 143 
 
 Growth of Jesus, The, 67 
 seq. 
 
 Guilt, Our Sense of, 29, 32 
 
 Haeckel, Ernest, 2, 6 
 Harnack, Accepted, 8 
 
 Heredity, 31, 45-50 
 
 Home Training of Jesus, 
 
 50 seq. 
 House, The Father's, 
 
 415 
 
 Inspiration and Revelation, 
 6 
 
 Ignorance of Jesus, The, 
 69 seq., 106 
 
 Immanuel, 38 
 
 "Immortality, The Evolu- 
 tion of," 340 
 
 Intercession, The Source of, 
 271 
 
 Intercessor, The Holy Spirit 
 as, 277 
 
 Jerusalem, The Destruction 
 
 of, 358, 384 
 Jesus and the Holy Spirit, 
 
 85 
 
 Jesus Human, 103 
 Jesus Finite, 38, 417 
 Jesus His Divinity or 
 
 Deity, 103, 105 
 Jesus and the Father, 56, 60, 
 
 123, 136 seq. 
 Jesus the Social Reformer, 
 
 117 
 
 Jesus as Judge, 75, 351 
 Jesus and War, 73, 75, 127- 
 
 129, 140, 173, 364 
 Jesus Obedient to the Fath- 
 er, 68, 198 
 Joseph and Mary, 47 
 John the Baptist, 46, 56, 71, 
 
 91 
 
 Kingdom and Church of 
 Jesus, The, 152 
 
INDEX 
 
 427 
 
 Kingdom of Christ How 
 Made His, 153, 158 
 
 Kingdom of Christ How 
 Long to Continue, 159 
 
 Kingdom of Christ Fin- 
 ished, 381, 382 
 
 Kingdom of God What It 
 Is, 152-6, 263 
 
 Kingdom of God Gradually 
 Developed, 379, 390 
 
 ivingship of Christ, 301-5, 
 350, 369 
 
 Life, 5, 414, 419 
 Life, The Holy Spirit as, 86, 
 98, 99 
 
 Making of Jesus, The, 45 
 Man and Nature at the 
 
 Last, 382 
 Mediator and Intercessor, 
 
 Jesus, the, 261 
 Mediates, What Christ, 
 
 264, 274 
 Memory in Matter, 9-5 
 
 Nature Defined, 4 
 Nature's Eager Expectation, 
 
 333, 413 
 Nazareth, One Good Thing 
 
 in, 54 
 New Earth, 375 
 
 Oaths, Jesus on, 130 
 
 Obedience of Jesus Its 
 Atoning Value, 198 seq. 
 
 Origin of Species, The Vir- 
 gin Birth as Key to, 100, 
 footnote. 
 
 Outcasts of Society, Jesus' 
 Plea for the, 133, 143 
 
 Parthenogenesis and the 
 Virgin Birth, 94 seq. 
 
 Patriotism of Jesus, 176, 184 
 
 Paul on Christ as Deliverer 
 from the Law, 284-5 
 
 Perfect Ethical Code, Jesus 
 and the, 294 
 
 Personal Equation in Mor- 
 als, 282 
 
 Prenatal Influences and 
 Jesus, 48 seq. 
 
 Priest, The, 1, 119, 203 seq., 
 232, 245, 248 
 
 Prophet, The, 1, 203 seq. t 
 232, 249 
 
 Propitiation, 196 
 
 Race and Parentage of 
 Jesus, 45 
 
 Redemption Its Scope, 10 
 seq. 
 
 Responsibility, Human Its 
 Measure, 29, 32, 191-2, 
 224-5 
 
 Responsibility of the Cre- 
 ator, 20-27, 190 seq. 
 
 Resurrection and "Last 
 Day," 319, 394, 399 
 
 Resurrection Craved by 
 Paul, 346 
 
 Resurrection of the Wicked, 
 346 
 
 Resurrection Not a Visible 
 Event, The, 337 
 
 Resurrection Not Resusci- 
 tation, 329 
 
 Righteousness, God's, 20, 33, 
 198 
 
 Righteousness, N. T. Writ- 
 ers Assume God's, 24 
 
428 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Sabbath, Jesus and the, 
 125, 147 
 
 Sacrifice, The True Idea Set 
 
 Forth, 228 
 Sacrifice of Jesus Why 
 
 Final, 230 
 Sacrificial System, Jesus and 
 
 the, 203 
 Sacrificial System, Central 
 
 Teaching of the, 226 
 Salvation How Effected, 
 
 201, 216, 258 
 Salvation Not Spiritual, A, 
 
 314 
 
 Saving Faith, 221 
 Savior, Jesus the Complete, 
 
 369 
 Savior, The Jesus Who Is 
 
 Our, 259 
 Scene of Christ's Toils and 
 
 Triumphs, The, 9 seq., 386 
 
 seq. 
 Science, Our Duty Towards, 
 
 2 
 
 Second Coming of Christ, 
 The, 305, 391, 416 
 
 Second Coming of Christ, 
 The Manner of the, 357 
 
 Second Coming Progres- 
 sively Defined, The, 355- 
 359 
 
 Second Comings Gradual, 
 
 The, 359, 396 
 Sign, Jesus a, 34 
 Sin Defined, 113 
 
 Sin and Suffering a Mys- 
 tery, 198 
 
 Sin and the Murder of 
 Jesus, 251 seq. 
 
 Sin, Jesus and the Sense of, 
 232 
 
 Sin, Jesus the Bearer Away 
 of, 246 
 
 Sin, Man's Enslavement to, 
 30 
 
 Sin Against the Holy Spirit, 
 The, 265 seq. 
 
 Sin When to the Utter- 
 most, 250 
 
 Sinlessness of Jesus De- 
 scribed, The, 113 seq. 
 
 Sinlessness Not Full-grown 
 Perfection, 108 
 
 Sonship of Jesus, The Di- 
 vine, 136 
 
 Substitutionary Idea Con- 
 demned, 208, 225, 232 
 
 Supper, The Lord's, 34, 35 
 
 Suffering, The Ministry of, 
 60-63 
 
 Synagogue and Jesus, The, 
 52 
 
 Theology of Jesus Theocen- 
 
 tric, The, 150 
 Trinity, The, 83, 85, 158 
 
 War's Place in God's Plan, 
 
 365 
 "Wickedness Incarnate," 
 
 360 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OP 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 T 5 CENTS N - 
 
 N E SEVEN 
 
YC 41021'. 
 
 304123 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY