EflM S3S The Highway A Matter of Fact Examination of the Greatest Event in History GIFT F The Highway A Matter of Fact Examination of the Greatest Event in History "A Highway shall be there and a WAY" Isaiah, xxxv, 8 jfulfilment "Jesus said, I am the WAY" John, xiv, 6 New York THOMAS WHITTAKER, Inc. Copyright 1913 BY THOMAS WHITTAKER, Inc. All Rights Reserved PREFACE. "What will this babbler say?" was asked when Paul the Apostle came to the Athenians bringing them the "good news" of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus Christ ! Perhaps the same question will be asked when one presumes, at this late day, to add another word on a subject, nearly 2000 years old, which men generally consider as having been settled long centuries ago. Should it be asked, a few words will answer it. "That Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners" is not only "a faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation" but one that has been very gen- erally accepted ; nevertheless, from what men were to be saved and by what means have in the course of centuries become enveloped in a shroud of mys- tery which few have been able to penetrate satis- factorily. When our Lord ascended into the heavens, we are told, a cloud received him, and a cloud, the cloud of theology, has ever since partially obscured him from men's sight. For a thousand years after our Lord's ascension a terrible and wicked falsehood concerning the purpose of his coming into this world of ours was not only imagined, but openly taught throughout Christen- dom ; and for the best part of another thousand years there have been taught concerning this same event, doctrines, which to say the least, have not 3 4SC282 * 1 < inlci <",! iiii; to rein In il In show how little difference Iheie is helween linn vvlm died ycsler day -Hid llu- reputed In si < icalcd in. in Adam was nnl lel'l loii); without hope, and a way was provided loi escaphi!; the exlicme penally. ( iod, who willelh iml Ihal any man should die, s< willed with the ln\ I man, who aeeoidiiu; lo the story was made awaie <>l the Saviour who later was to enme mln NIC world, and Adam, who we must conceive to have known hy this him whom l<> helieve, helieved and SO, l>\ lailh, pre,ei\cd his spiritual existence Iroin desl i IK I ion. The lust sinner thus hecame the- hr, I saved, and the ;-,ia\c was thus early rohhed o| victory, thioiiidi lailh in the Saviour. The punishment wilh which Adam was threat cued and from which he was saved was death of ihe soul, the same punishment wilh which the sinner of today is threatened and from which the same Saviour saves him. 'The soul thai sinnelh it shall die" said K/ekicl. "I'Var not them which kill Ihe hody" said our Saviour "hut are not ahle to kill the soul.' CHAPTER VIII. "i WILL GIVE TIJKK FOR A COVKNANT OF THE 1'KOl'l.K, FOR A LIGHT "I-' THE < iKNTlLK.s". is. .via, 6. TT was not for any "constructive" sin that a whole generation was destroyed in the days ECOGNIZED relationship between man and God, we have seen, has always been one of covenant. To a covenant there must be two parties, and there must also be a conditional promise on the part of one and an acceptance of it on the part of the other. The substance of God's promises has al- ways been the same long life even for ever and ever. Acceptance of the condition seems at first to have been understood or to have been signified by one in the name of many; but afterwards ac- ceptance was required to be acknowledged by each individual. The first covenant, according to the Mosaic account, was made with the first man. The condition was obedience. This condition was dis- regarded and the covenant was broken, but God's promise was renewed afterwards in a different form. No further change took place in the mutual relation, apparently, until the time of Noah. After the deluge, another covenant was made, but man showed so great a contempt for this that God with- drew the light of his countenance from the nations 79 generally and made a covenant with Abraham, from participation in which all but Abraham and his family were excluded. To this covenant a sign or seal was prescribed. This covenant was never in- tended to be permanent, and a new one was prom- ised to the seed of Abraham, but when the Mes- senger of it came, he was rejected and the fulfilment of the promise was lost to them. It was to this promise, then, that the Gentile world succeeded, and they became his people which were not his people and she beloved which was not beloved. The mes- senger of the covenant was found of them that sought him not. He was made manifest to them that asked not after him, 'The people walking in darkness and sitting in the shadow of death beheld a GREAT LIGHT." In a word, the Gentiles, who were excluded from the covenant with Abraham, inherited the promise of the new covenant, from which the descendents of Abraham, as such, were now excluded. The sign or seal of the new cove- nant is baptism. The personal promises of our Lord to those who come to him have been referred to; but it necessarily follows that those who come to him must make their approach in the manner he has ordained. This approach is by baptism alone, and nothing can be more explicit than the words in which our Lord states this. u He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved. He that believeth not shall be condemned." "Shall be saved"! From what? and by what means? From death of the soul ; from eternal condemnation ; and by entering into a solemn personal covenant with his Maker, when the erstwhile child of the world becomes at 80 once the child of God, inheritor of the promised blessings and also of the responsibilities of his new condition. It follows of necessity that one who enters into covenant relationship with another must observe the terms of the covenant, or it becomes void, and so it is with the covenanted right of immortality. To enable the Christian to do his part, strength is given him in that other ordinance of our Lord called the Lord's Supper, except ye partake of which, said he, "ye have no life in you", "for this," speak- ing of one of the elements, "is the BLOOD OF THE NEW COVENANT." God forbid, if there cling to any new-born child the smallest particle of the sin of Adam, that it should not be washed away in Baptism; and God forbid that anyone who thinks his soul was ever clogged with such a weight should not be satisfied that Baptism removed it; but to dwell upon this as the end of the ordinance is to obscure its real significance, it being nothing short of a new birth, that new birth of which the Lord Jesus told Nico- demus, without which none can enter into the kingdom of God. Every Christian must have two births: a birth into the household of his earthly parents and a birth into the household of his heavenly Father. It is commonly thought that he receives his family name at his first birth, and at his second birth a name only that will distinguish him from other members of the same family; but, as a matter of fact, it is only at his second birth that he becomes entitled to bear a family name, a name which is borne by the largest family on 81 earth, which is the same everywhere and in all languages. Such is a bald statement of the Christian cove- nant which our Lord came down from heaven to inaugurate. The benefits which belong to it are revealed partly in the word of God and, partly, and perhaps more fully, although in a manner not easily to be described, direct to the heart of the believer through the operation of the Holy Spirit, whereby those who desire to do his will are permitted to KNOW of a doctrine, whether it be of God or not. That one of the parties to the covenant sealed it with his blood is a matter of fact, but whether it was ordained so to be sealed and whether it was absolutely necessary that it should be so sealed, may be left to the decision of those who consider the matter from the testimony available. There is an allegory, says Paul, concerning the old and the new covenants, contained in a piece of Old Testament history relating to Abraham and his two sons. One of these was his by Hagar the Egyptian, and the other by Sarah : one was the child of a bondwoman and the other of a free, and these two women, the apostle goes on to explain, are, allegorically, the two covenants, one the cove- nant of the law, which tendeth to bondage, and the other the covenant of that freedom with which Christ did set us free. The old fable of the hare and the tortoise has been re-enacted. While the Jewish hare slept in confidence of the LAW, the heathen tortoise outstripped him with the certainty of the PROMISE. 82 CHAPTER XV. "YOUR ADVERSARY THE DEVIL, AS A LION ROAR- ING, GOES ABOUT SEEKING WHOM HE MAY SWALLOW UP." / Peter v, 8.- \ LTHOUGH all Christian doctrines necessarily ^^ radiate from the central fact of the incarna- tion, there are four things which stand out from it as the four cardinal points of the mariner's compass stand out from all the rest. These four things are : Faith, Sin, Repentance, Forgiveness. The first of these is a subject too large to be treated here with any detail, but we may say with the irresistible logic of the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews : "He who cometh to God must believe that he is." This amount of faith, at least, must be insisted upon as a prerequisite to any benefit to be derived from the incarnation. Without a belief in the God of revelation, we can neither ask, nor expect to receive, anything at his hands. By faith alone we become acquainted with God ; by faith alone is our relationship to him continued. It has been noticed that the four dispensations at their beginning had one characteristic in com- mon, and we have seen that the three dispensations which passed away had also one thing in common 83 which brought them to an end. This one thing was SIN wickedness. The same thing threatens the disruption of the dispensation under which we now live. Let us try, therefore, to understand it. We have already said much about that form of sin which is said to be hereditary, and so may omit further reference to it now. But, besides this, there is another theory of sin recognized by some who question the hereditary theory. These still consider sin a congenital disease, but not an inherited one, considering it instead as something belonging to the individual in his own right, a natural and congenital endowment belonging to every child of man. This is a very nice distinction, but unsatis- factory, as it leaves the individual in the same pre- dicament, whichever theory he selects. The second theory also dishonors God by the implication that he either cannot make a perfect human being or that he chooses to make an imperfect one ; sending the highest type of his creatures into the world with a blot upon it from which the lower types are free ! Is it reasonable to suppose that God would so mar his own masterpiece? John's definition of sin, which is essentially Jewish, is that it is "the transgression of the law", a definition good enough as long as there was a law to transgress ; but under the Christian dispen- sation there is none. The law, which Paul says "was but a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ" and "a shadow of good things to come" served its pur- pose and came to an end at that moment when the Saviour of Mankind cried out from the cross "It is finished". From that moment and forever ended every jot and tittle of the law. That generation did not pass away till all things were fulfilled that were to be fulfilled.- If there be no law then, it may be asked, is it permissible "to steal, murder, and commit adultery and swear falsely and burn incense unto Baal?" There can be, of course, but one answer. It was not righteousness that was abolished, but statute law, and this was not long abolished before God's promise to write his laws on men's hearts in place thereof was fulfilled. This was no fable, no figure of speech, but an actual reality which came to pass as promised. Under the new covenant, each sub- scriber to it is furnished with a personal counsellor whose office it is to admonish and convince con- cerning this particular thing sin who says to him at every turning "This is the way, walk ye in it". Whenever, therefore, a Christian does that which his Christian conscience, which is none other than the voice of the Holy Spirit, warns him it is wrong to do, he transgresses the common law of God as surely as one who contravenes a statute transgresses. With this understanding, we may allow the beloved disciple's definition to go un- challenged. But before any law is transgressed there must come temptation. No rational, normal being ever commits sin without an object. And this object which, at the time, seems to be a thing to be de- sired, is the temptation to sin. When this comes, a contest takes place in the Christian's bosom. The Holy Spirit pleads, the Tempter allures and the will of the individual decides. The issue is no small 85 matter. It is a soul won for heaven or for hell. To gain the victory, the enemy of mankind arrays all the powers at his command, whether the soul fought for be that of a little child or of a full-grown man or woman. For every state and age there are temp- tations which he knows how to set before his de- sired victims in their most seductive form. But to suffer temptation is not to sin. Count it all joy, says the apostle James, when ye fall into it. Never to have been tempted is to be in- human. Without temptation, it has been said, there could be no virtue. "When thou hast tried me" said Job "I shall be as gold." Man can neither hide himself from temptation nor flee from it, for it follows him whithersoever he goes. It is in the fibre of his constitution; in the fibre of his body and in the fibre of his brain ; every pulsation of his heart records a temptation and temptation ends only with the last pulsation. To this extent the man of to-day inherits the fault of the first man, whether that man was named Adam or was name- less, and so long as man inhabits this planet, under the present conditions, so long may he expect temp- tation to assail him. Well, indeed, is the petition "Lead us not into temptation", placed before that for deliverance from the Evil One. This brings us to what appears to be the very essence of sin. The very essence of sin is NON- RESISTANCE TO TEMPTATION. "Resist the devil and he will flee from you". Entertain him and you exclude the Holy Spirit. The two cannot dwell at one time in the same tabernacle. The first man mentioned in scripture sinned when he suc- 86 cumbed to temptation. Our Lord's victory over sin was in resisting temptation and it is this that makes him our GREAT EXEMPLAR. Had the Lord Jesus Christ yielded to the Tempter when he said "If thou be the Son of God command these stones to be made bread", he would not have been the Saviour of Mankind. It was not "the passers by" who said in his ear "If thou be the Son of God come down from the cross" ; they were but the mouthpiece of the lurking Tempter whose last op- portunity was fast disappearing. What more subtle temptation can we imagine than this : to come down from the cross, confound his enemies and establish his divinity? But not at the instigation of the Devil. The Saviour of Mankind was tempted, as we are, from the time of his baptism till his last moment on the cross, and he resisted to the end ! In earlier days one who was intended to be a deliv- erer of the children of Israel, when betrayed and bound, in his last moments brought down the pillars of the house where he was held captive, working the same ruin to himself that he wrought upon his enemies. Had the man Jesus Christ not endured unto the end, we may conceive that the pillars of the world would have been shaken. Physical strength, we know, is the product of resistance. Resistance to the rigors of climate, to the perils of sea and land makes men physically strong and spiritual strength is gained by resistance to temp- tation in direct proportion to the strength and length of it. All sin is primarily against God and secondarily against the soul of the sinner. No one does an 87 injury to another without doing one to himself. David, King of Israel, after committing a most atrocious crime, confessed to God "Against Thee only have I sinned and done this evil", and every- day law recognizes the same subordination of the interests of an individual wronged to the majesty of the Law which has been outraged, and the trans- gressor is charged, in the indictment, not with an offence against an individual, but with one against the peace and dignity of the King or Common- wealth. As typical of the injury the sinner does to himself, one may take the case of Cain and Abel. Abel was slain, but his soul was preserved; Cain lived on, but a murderer with a blot upon his soul which nothing could wipe out. There is a question often asked, but seldom answered. Perhaps it hardly deserves an answer. It is the question of the unthinking ones : Why does God permit sin to exist? If it did not exist, man would not be man; being incapable of sin- ning, he might approximate more nearly to the angels, but man was made, for a purpose, a little lower than they, and his ability to sin, or in other words to do as seems to him good, is one of his characteristics. Deprived of this characteristic, he would not be the wonderful piece of work he is, the masterpiece among God's productions, "the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals". Of the planets it is said "He hath given them a law which shall not be broken", and although they in their daily motions "declare the glory of God", man with his power to break God's laws has the opportunity, whether he exercises it or not, to glorify him more. Without sin in the world, the world would not be what it is nor what it was intended for. It would not be a breeding ground for saints, a place in which to train for eternity and wherein to show the stuff that is in us. God may look down from heaven upon the children of men and, seeing their waywardness and wickedness, their mad race for wealth and fame and power or the sensual pleasures of life, their desire for the things which are seen, to the neglect of the things which are eternal, and be sorry that he hath made man ; but, having made him for a purpose, God will abide the result. Per- adventure there had been ten righteous in a city once, it would have been saved from destruction, and who shall say that God may not be satisfied if a generation produces but ten subjects for his king- dom? Is it worth while trying to be one of the number ? "If any man sin", "and there is no one who sinneth not", "we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the Righteous", who, knowing his own and knowing also their temptations, says of the repentant ones 'These are mine. Father, forgive them; I will be SPONSOR for their future conduct". And He, who knoweth whereof we are made, who remembereth that we are but dust, for- gives, as only he forgives, blotting out the misdeed and remembering the sin no more. But our Advocate has only to ask ! "The Father himself loveth us" and is more than willing to for- give ; but there is no approach to him but by the Son. God delights not in punishment, although there are those who delight to hold him up as glorying in it, as One indeed who would trip his children up on legal technicalities. But there is no evidence to bear this out or that he ever directly punishes. Punishment is generally a consequence of sin which the sinner brings upon himself and which forgiveness, even, cannot always avert or take away. When a parent warns a child against playing with fire, or it will be burned, and the child, not heeding the warning, plays with fire and is possibly burned to death, we do not say that the parent punished the child. He or she would pos- sibly have given its life to save the child's life. So when God said "Eat not; for in that day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt die," he was not neces- sarily imposing a punishment, but only warning against a fatal consequence, and the Unpardonable Sin was not made so by decree, but became so from the v^ry nature of the sin itself. CHAPTER XVI. "LET us HEAR THE CONCLUSION OF THE WHOLE MATTER". Reel, xii, 13. have said that the incarnation of the Lord Jesus Christ was the greatest event in the history of the human race. It may now be said that there is no other event in history that is better authenticated. The wisest and best of every Chris- tian age have firmly believed it ; and no man of judicial mind can examine the evidence bearing upon it, at the present day, and remain uncon- vinced of its truth. If its product, Christianity, were abolished from the world, its influence would not be at an end, for the reason that it has made a permanent impress on the character of mankind. There are two other remarkable facts concern- ing the truth of the Christian religion that are worthy of notice here. One is that, in spite of its many enemies, the testimony of the Holy Gospel has not been tampered with, and the other is that a better appreciation of our Lord's work is possible to-day, nineteen centuries after he accomplished it, than it was in his own time or in any other since. It is not purposed to enlarge on the evidences of Christianity, for this subject has been exhaustively 91 treated by the greatest minds of different Christian ages; but it may be excusable, before leaving the subject of our Lord's Mission, to say a few words concerning the creature for whose benefit this won- derful work was undertaken, and of his present-day relation to the event of nineteen hundred years ago. God has written two books : one we call, pre- eminently, The BOOK, the other NATURE. Both alike are open to man's questioning and under- standing, but neither can be fully understood ex- cept by those who love them. Both alike reveal a MASTER HAND conducting a series of experi- ments with the subjects of his own creation, both declare the wisdom, power and love of that Master Hand and both, if intelligently questioned will re- turn an intelligible reply. No other books have been more carefully read and studied than these, but the riches contained in them are still only par- tially developed. Of the two, the book of Nature may be said more truly to be written by the hand of God than the other. The other is the mind of God, but is written by the hand of man. The book of Nature agrees with the Gospel of the Lord Jesus in saying nothing of any Fall of Man. On the contrary, it indicates his steady and continuous progress throughout the ages of which it testifies. This book is read with eyes unprejudiced and with understandings upon which no restrictions are placed. Unfortunately, for reasons which need not be mentioned, the other book is not so read. To read it with the eyes of others and to understand it with the understanding of others only, is to make of an open book a sealed book and to nullify the 92 highest faculties which God has given us. For a proper understanding, however, of the better part of man his spiritual nature this book is the only text-book and authority. That it is not always in agreement with the revelations of science, is unimportant. The revela- tions of science themselves are none other than indirect revelations from God. So we find the poetical idea that man "At once upstood intelligent, all creatures understood" although agreeable to the Mosaic account, is not in consonance with what we know of natural history. Moses "was learned in all the learning of the Egyptians" and the account of creation given in the Book of Genesis was no doubt that generally accepted by the learned at the time the author of the book wrote. If we were to compare a standard work on science of a hundred years ago with one written to-day, and note the errors in the former, we might look with lenience on the errors in a book written 4,000 years ago. The writings of Bacon and Newton, two master minds of the world, are, when examined by the light of the knowledge of to-day, found to con- tain much error. Man, at the first, must have been of the earth, earthy. Generations possibly passed before he learned to observe intelligently, to express his thoughts with clearness, certainly before he could put them in a form which should give them perma- nence. Yet all his later-day capabilities and many more were within the possibility of possession by him when man first appeared on earth, or they could never have been developed in him. Human beings 93 may be compared to some objects of great beauty, but humble origin, existing in the lower kingdom. Unless that beauty, afterwards developed in the field flower, was latent in it, cultivation could not have brought it out. So the standard set for man when he was first formed of the dust of the earth was, we may reasonably conceive, no less than "the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ". With what pleasure and tender care may we not imagine the Great Husbandman to have watched the development of the powers of his most wonderful creation; and how often must he, like an earthly parent, have held out his hands to encourage and steady the weak footsteps of his children. But they knew not who their Father was. Then he revealed himself to them out of the desert land and the waste howling wilderness, he led them, he in- structed them. The earliest revelation that con- cerns us of to-day, is that to Abram. The earlier revelations, such as those to Adam and Noah, were not recorded, as far as we know, till 500 years after Abram's call. After the call of Abram, God hid himself from the larger part of mankind, but even then "he left not himself without witness in that he did good", remembering his promise that day and night, seed-time and harvest should never depart from the earth. These two thousand sad years were to him but a moment ; "In a little wrath" he said "I hid my face from thee for a moment, but with everlasting kindness will I have mercy on thee". Then came that last revelation of his glory to all flesh, in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ treading the highways and byways of Judea and 94 preaching, throughout its cities and villages, the good news of the Kingdom of his Father, who then for the first time was revealed to the world as "Our Father." "What is man that thou art mindful of him" questioned the psalmist thousands of years ago, and the question is as pertinent to-day. No an- swer can be satisfactory which fails to recognize the fact that two men are involved in the problem; the man of nature and the man of God ; the animal man and the man as God intended him to be. One who reasons as if man had a place in nature apart from God can never answer the question. Man cannot separate himself, whatever he may do, from his relation to God. "If I go up into heaven" says the psalmist "thou art there and if I go down into hell thou art there also". This writer, answering his own question, in one place, evidently with the animal man before his mind, says that "he may be compared to the beasts that perish" ; but elsewhere, with another man in his thoughts, he answers the question differently : "Thou madest him a little lower than God, that thou mightest crown him with glory." Man, made of the dust of the earth, but destined to contain within him the Spirit of God, was with- out doubt created for a purpose, and that not a temporary one, and for every particle of his present excellence there is required of him both "thanks and use". The parable of the talents is no mere story. The man who plants a seed in the ground, however sordid his motive for doing so may be, is carrying out God's purpose that his people shall be 95 fed, and everyone engaged in any useful and honest occupation is similarly employed, whether he knows it or not. More than this, God has made man his fellow-worker in the salvation of man. Passing at one step, then, from this world to the next, does it not follow, that if God uses the services of the man of Clay to carry on his work here, he will make use of the services of the man of Spirit to carry on the work of his eternal King- dom? Christianity has taught us but little, if we have not learned that it is more blessed to give than to receive, to serve than to be served, to minister than to be ministered to. What worlds, unknown to us now, may there not be to conquer or to govern hereafter? What occupations to satisfy the most noble ambition? "Know ye not that ye shall judge angels ?" says the apostle. "Have thou authority over ten cities" says the returned Lord, and is it likely that He, the Ceaseless Worker, who has or- dained us to be kings and priests for ever, will per- mit such high offices to be mere sinecures? These reflections may not be agreeable to those who think of eternity as a period of perpetual rest and of heaven as a place where there is nothing to do ; but those used to active and useful lives here could only regard such conditions with dismay. Mr. Lecky, in one of his books, quotes an epitaph on a tombstone in a German churchyard : "I will arise O Christ when Thou callest me ; but oh ! let me rest awhile for I am very weary." This desire for rest is no doubt felt by many ; but when we wake up in HIS likeness the weari- ness, which belongs only to the flesh, will have disappeared. When the spirit is relieved of its load of clay and inhabits that body which God shall then have been pleased to give it, the clog which wearies will have been removed forever, we shall, with strength renewed, ''Mount up with wings as eagles, We shall run and not be weary, We shall walk and not faint." It does not require much philosophy, for those who have led long or trying lives, to lay the bur- den of their flesh aside saying "Let the end come." But there is no end. There is an eternity which the just and the unjust alike must face. Who plunges into this abyss with his eyes shut, does so at his peril, but not without warning. The first truth that a human being should be taught is that he is not a mortal, but an immortal being with a body designed for the habitation of God, and his conduct through life should be gov- erned at all points by this knowledge. "Our citi- zenship" says the Apostle "is in heaven" and until we realize this fact we are certainly a long way from being "fellow-citizens with the saints and of the household of God". Christians, says the writer of the Epistle to the Hebrews, must declare plainly by their actions that they seek a better country than their own, that is, an heavenly. And this country is not to be sought as some countries have been, without chart or competent pilot, for both have been provided. It is the failure to realize the possibilities of the future which makes the religion of to-day the 97 superficial thing it is, and "When the Son of Man cometh" he may indeed "find faith wanting on the earth!" In place of it, he may find an organization with the name, but without the spirit, of Christianity. He may find people singing hymns expressive of sentiments they feel in no degree and repeating "Amens" without any desire that the petitions to which they assent be fulfilled. The incarnation will be celebrated with feasting and the resurrection by a display of fine raiment, philan- thropy, so-called, will abound, and there will be plenty of rich churches and eloquent preachers of ethics and abstract problems, but those who "hun- ger and thirst after righteousness" will be those who go empty away. There is a dry rot already sapping the Christian religion. The tenets of Chris- tianity are accepted much as the doctrine of the Solar System is accepted or assent is given to the Law of Gravitation, and they affect people spirit- ually in about the same degree. Men live prefer- ably in the reflected light of Christianity, when they might enjoy its full blaze. Among the clergy there is a tendency, like that which existed among the heathen priesthood, to profess and follow two religions, an esoteric and an exoteric one : they have one belief for themselves and another which they teach. Their tongues are tied with theological bands which will not allow them to speak freely. Those outside of Christian organizations take refuge in an ignorance which they would be ashamed to own on any other subject, which they call Agnosticism, or they make "lies their refuge". Occidental religion is a long way from where it 98 should be, after nearly two thousand years of the teaching of Christ, and the hope of progressive Christianity must it would seem, be henceforth in the Orient. When the East and the West shall have met and Christ's religion shall have made the cir- cuit of the earth and returned to that quarter where it had its first beginning and is there established, we may then salute our Lord as Salvator Mundi! indeed and realize what that title means. If men could purchase admission into heaven by the payment of money or by deeds of service, there would possibly be no lack of candidates ; but simple faith and love are things too small to enlist devotees. If heaven could be gained by the num- ber of prayers said, no string of beads would be long enough to tell the number men would say ; if fastings or flagellations would avail, men would starve or flog themselves to death. Men in all ages, like Naaman, have despised the simple waters at their door and desired to do "some great thing", but no great thing is given them to do. "Where- withal shall I come before the Lord"? they ask. "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?" And the prophet answers : "He hath shewed thee, O 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." When men came to the Baptist and asked him what 99 they should do, he answered, Your duty always ; if you are a tax-collector exact no more than that which is appointed you, if you are a soldier be con- tent with your wages, and to the unofficial people he said, If you have two coats impart to him that hath none ; if you have meat to spare do likewise. But if we think seriously, there is ONE GREAT THING which God does give us to do: He asks us to believe, on no evidence whatever, direct, or by analogy that our senses may perceive, that eter- nal life is a possession for which it is worth while to suffer ANYTHING and to sacrifice EVERY- THING, and to live accordingly. The gist of true religion is contained in our Lord's speech to the woman of Samaria at Jacob's well : "God is a Spirit and they who worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth." No number of prayers, no fastings, philanthropy or works of mercy will weigh in the balance against a real and sincere love of God in the heart. One heart/dJ prayer will pre- vail when a million merely said will have no effect. Eye service and lip service count for nothing. "Thou shalt have none other Gods but me" were the words heard on Mount Sinai ; "For I the Lord your God am a jealous God". For jealous, let us read zealous. God could not have been jealous, as we understand the word, of the gods of Egypt, for they were no Gods ; nor of a thing made in the similitude of a calf which eateth hay, nor of the gods of Greece and Rome, who were often a jest to their own devotees. But he was zealous for the honor due him and that it should not be given to others, and the reason of this is simple. 100 All spiritual benefits are derived from God alone, and for man to recognize anyone but the True God as the giver of such is to cut himself off from the very spiritual benefits he is seeking which only God can bestow, by reliance on so-called gods who hear not, nor see, nor know. We offer up our prayers and supplications to God in the name of or "through Jesus Christ our Lord". If we were to be asked why we do this we should most probably say that it is because it is only through the Son that we can have access to the Father ; but this is not the full reason : God is not an abstraction, but a Real personality and he desires to be known to his children as he knows them. In the days of Judea there were many gods, as there are to-day, and, so that there might be no misunderstanding as to whom they were ad- dressing, the ONE True God was addressed as the God of Abraham, of Isaac and of Jacob. The prophets of Baal called upon their god, "O Baal, hear us"; and when Elijah's turn came he cried, not to any abstract Being, but to the "Lord God of Abraham, Isaac and of Israel". Likewise the Christian, that there may be no misunderstanding, addresses his prayers to the Father of the Lord Jesus Christ. "Be ye holy" saith the Lord. Why? Will our personal holiness save us ? No ! God gives no such answer. Be ye holy saith the Lord "for I the Lord your God am holy". If we desire to spend an Eternity in his presence, is it unreasonable for him to expect from us a bearing fit for such so- ciety? 101 1 , The mission of the Lord Jesus Christ to the Jews was a failure. His mission to the Gentiles is a failure as far as concerns the individual who fails to realize that Jesus Christ is God and a living, reigning King with whom he may be in personal and constant touch. He offered himself to the Jews and the Jews rejected him, to their condemna- tion. He offers himself to whosoever will accept him, and whosoever rejects him stands in like peril. In the days before the crucifix had usurped the place of the simple cross as the symbol of Christianity, the Saviour's words "Behold I am alive forevermore" had a meaning which is hardly realized in these days. Jesus was not then regarded as a dead man with his poor human arms nailed to a dead tree; but a living personality whose loving outstretched arms were both able and willing to embrace all mankind. Such is the Lord Jesus Christ to-day. And man, what of him? Every man born into the world is another Adam, of the earth, earthly. Every man born into the family of God is a Christ in miniature, with a nature like his, both human and divine. We have covered much ground in our exami- nation. We have gone over many well beaten paths and pointed out many already very familiar objects but this could not be avoided. We have diverged many times from a direct path, and have some- times retraced our steps, but we have never lost sight of the main thoroughfare the Road to Sal- vation. If anything has been said which challenges IO2 seemingly settled beliefs, at least no FACT of Christianity has been impugned. If stress has been laid on the circumstance that the Mission of the Lord Jesus was primarily to the Jewish nation and that his teaching was altogether addressed to Jewish hearers, and that the work of converting the Gen- tiles to a knowledge of the True God was delegated to other hands than his own, the Message to hu- manity at large with which the Lord of Life was charged has not been concealed, nor the superiority of the new covenant to the old lost sight of. The differences our Saviour unmistakably defined, and it would have been strange, indeed, if the founder of a religion had failed to declare its principles and to designate the conditions of membership in it. These were made so plain by the Lord Jesus that it is quite unnecessary to go beyond his own words for a clear exposition of all the absolute essentials of the Christian religion which may now be sum- marized. In our Lord's time and nation, men lived under the LAW. With this the Gentile world then had no concern whatever. It has never rightly had any concern with it since. The Gentile, after the Jew, was heir to the PROMISE not to the Law. This promise was to Abraham and his seed, Christ. The law, at the best, was but a temporary expedient, added because of transgressions, and its institution, 430 years after the promise, did not make the latter of no effect. The Promise of Christ to the Gentiles was never annulled, and when the time came for them to realize it they succeeded to the Promise with as clear a title as if there had never been the 103 blot of the Law upon it. The Law is to the Chris- tian as if it had never existed. It has no more saving power for him than the precepts of Solomon or the maxims of Confucius. The last dispensa- tion was the gift to man of the Holy Spirit, the same Spirit that was in Christ. The two things, heir- ship to the LAW and heirship to the PROMISE, are utterly irreconcilable. "Moses gave us the Law", says the beloved disciple, "Jesus Christ grace and truth". It was not a LAW that he gave us, but an INSPIRATION. The first missionary to the Gentiles could not understand how his con- verts in a certain place could think differently, un- less they were "bewitched". It should be quite unnecessary, nearly two thousand years afterwards, to lay down this proposition again, but it cannot be disguised that in this day and generation a great many Christians act and think as if the observance of the Decalogue were a determining factor in the Salvation of man. The mission of the Lord Jesus Christ was to establish an organization which should embrace all mankind, Jew and Gentile alike, Barbarian, Scyth- ian, bond and free ; circumstances have caused this organization to be called the Christian Church. The entire absence of the Law and the gift of the Holy Spirit in its place are its essential features. The essentials of membership in the organiza- tion are: I. Faith in Jesus Christ as a Divine Person- age. Concerning this, the Church's Head has said : "I and my Father are one." "He that hath seen me hath seen the Father." 104 "Ye call me Master and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am." "Ye believe in God, believe also in me" "Verily, verily, I say unto you, before Abra- ham was, I am." "I came down from heaven to do the will of him that sent me." "He that honoreth not the Son, honoreth not the Father." "God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son that whosoever believeth on him should not perish." "I am come a light into the world, that whoso- ever believeth on me may not abide in darkness." "Everyone therefore who shall confess me be- fore men, him will I also confess before my Father which is in heaven." "He that heareth my word and believeth Him that sent me hath eternal life." "He that believeth NOT hath been judged al- ready, because he hath not believed on the name of the only begotten Son of God. 33 "Whosoever shall DENY me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven." "If ye believe NOT that I am he ye shall die in your sins" II. Baptism in water in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, constituting a REGENERATION or NEW BIRTH by which 105 a covenant relationship is established between God and the individual baptized. The testimony of our Lord as to this is very clear. "Go ye," said he to the apostles, "and make disciples of all nations baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost." "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." "Verily, verily, I say unto thee Except a man be born of water and the Spirit he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God!' III. The reception under the form of bread and wine of the Body and Blood of Christ, by which the covenant relation established by Baptism is kept alive and the disciple is brought into direct Communion with God. Our Lord's words hereon are likewise unmis- takable. "I am the living bread which came out of heaven : if any man eat of this bread he shall live forever." "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day." * "Verily, verily, I say unto you Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood ye have no life in you!' 1 06 There are two questions which the candidate for heaven must answer. The first is : Are you in covenant relationship to Almighty God? And the second is : Are you in direct communion with him? With these answered affirmatively he may have three companions on his journey through life : "The GRACE of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the LOVE of God and the FELLOWSHIP of the Holy Ghost. Amen." UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. rdue. OCT 16 1947 LD 21-100m-12,'46(A2012sl6)4120 YB 21956) 26282 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY