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
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been acceptable to all who have given thought to
them. The consciousness that there is something
wrong has created a spirit of unrest among Chris-
tian men and led many to doubt, and some,
in the exercise of their imagination, to deny
fundamental facts of the Christian religion, the
divinity of our Lord, his miraculous birth, and
his glorious resurrection ! But, if there be any-
thing wrong, it is not with matters of fact, but
with matters of opinion. In the few chapters of
this book an attempt has been made to set down,
as nearly as possible in the language in which it has
come down to us, the purpose of the coming of
the Lord as it seems to have been revealed by
himself, the greatest of them, and those other
Holy Prophets, who, from Isaiah to John the Bap-
tist were preparing, in the wilderness of the world
a Highway for him to pass over. A Highway
that is still not without obstruction. The book is
not a contribution to controversial theology ; but a
summary of facts suggestively but not exhaustively
presented, from which the reader who is free to
consider them with a mind unbiassed may draw his
own conclusions. If these differ from those sug-
gested in the book no harm will have been done ;
while if they are in agreement with them a window
will have been opened in his mind through which
he may behold a vision of Christian Unity based
upon a foundation of Christian Truth.
"Our little systems have their day;
They have their day, and cease to be :
They are but broken lights of Thee,
And thou, O Lord, art more than they."
4
THE TEXT.
Then began Jesus to speak to the people this parable :
A certain man planted a vineyard and let it forth to
husbandmen and went into a far country for a long time.
And at the season he sent a servant to the husbandmen,
that they should give him of the fruit of the vineyard;
but the husbandmen beat him and sent him away empty.
And again he sent another servant ; and they beat him also,
and treated him shamefully and sent him away empty.
And again he sent a third ; and they wounded him also
and cast him out. Then said the Lord of the vineyard,
What shall I do ? I will send my beloved Son ; it may be
they will reverence him when they see him. But when the
husbandmen saw him, they reasoned among themselves,
saying, This is the heir ; come, let us kill him, that the
inheritance may be ours. So they cast him out of the
vineyard and killed him.
What, therefore, shall the Lord of the vineyard do
unto them?
He shall come and destroy these husbandmen and shall
give the vineyard to others.
And when they heard it, they said, God forbid.
Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the
scriptures,
The stone which the builders rejected,
The same is become the head of the corner :
This is the Lord's doing
And it is marvellous in our eyes?
Therefore I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be
taken from you and given to a nation bringing forth the
fruits thereof.
Luke xx, 9. Matt, xxi, 42.
CHAPTER I.
"THEN SAID i : *LO i COME
TO DO THY WILL!'
Ps. xl, 7.
HPHE greatest event in the history of the human
race since the creation of man, was the birth
of Jesus Christ, the appearance of God on earth in
human flesh, commonly called the INCARNA-
TION.
This proposition is not stated for the purpose of
argument or of proof. The incarnation is, beyond
all doubt, the central FACT in a system upon which
the eternal happiness of all humanity depends, and
is here so regarded.
Before the coming to pass of the event, the in-
carnation was the great theme of DIVINE REV-
ELATION ; afterwards, it became a theme of end-
less HUMAN SPECULATION. From this human
speculation has been evolved and formulated what
is called CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY, theology
meaning literally the Science of God.
If this is not always entirely satisfactory to those
who teach it or those who are taught, the probable
reason is, that the Christian religion is unadapted
to scientific treatment. But, if it were otherwise, it
must be remembered that Christian theology had its
6
beginning in an age long before men had learned
that the only real foundation of science is the ex-
amination of facts and reached its final development
at a time when men gave greater credence to their
theories than to the evidence of their senses.
What follows is a brief examination, without
regard to the speculations of human interpreters,
into what seems to have been the FACTS di-
vinely taught concerning the purpose contemplated
by the birth, in an obscure corner of the Roman
empire, in the reign of Augustus, of the infant
Jesus.
Into a discussion of that subtle network of doc-
trine which has been woven around the incarnation
it does not enter; but as we are, in the course of
the examination proposed, certain to come in con-
tact with it we must take into account that modicum
of theology which is now generally held by all
Christian people, without distinction, concerning
the MISSION of our Lord. This may be briefly
and moderately summarized somewhat to this effect :
That it was a LOST WORLD that the Son of
Man came to seek and to save. That this world was
lost through the failure of the first created man to
obey a certain commandment given him, by which
failure, sin and death were brought into the world
and human nature was permanently corrupted ; sin
being thenceforward a hereditary or congenital dis-
ease from which no one has since been able to
escape.
That the rejection and sufferings of the Lord
Jesus Christ were PREDESTINED and unavoid-
7
able; the crucifixion being a necessary SACRIFICE
absolutely demanded by existing conditions.
That it was to suffer death upon the cross that
our Lord humbled himself to take man's nature
upon him, and that from the beginning of his
ministry he knew what its end would be.
Happily, there is such a life-giving force in
simple faith in Jesus Christ, as God and Saviour,
that mere inability to comprehend the whole truth
concerning him cannot deprive his followers of the
blessings which the incarnation was intended to
bring, and no amount of diverse and contradictory
teaching has been able to make this faith altogether
ineffective. Still, any teaching which conveys an
erroneous notion of God's dealings with his chil-
dren must, in some measure at least, be detrimental
to the spiritual development of those who entertain
it; Error being now, as always, the greatest foe of
Holiness. Probably all the wrong doing of which
the world has any record, not excepting the great-
est of all wrong doings, might be traced back to
the NOT KNOWING of those who thought they
knew. "I wot that through ignorance ye did it"
said Peter, with a sublime charity learned from
Him who prayed, ''Father forgive them for they
KNOW NOT what they do". "Error and dark-
ness" declares the writer of Ecclesiasticus "had
their beginning together".
While abstract theology never won a soul to
God, doctrines obnoxious to reason we know have
lost many a one. A little root of reasonable doubt
unsatisfied weakens the foundation of faith and
8
often causes the total destruction of the superstruc-
ture which has been built upon it.
Our Father does not require of his children that
they should sacrifice their reason ; but, rather, de-
mands the exercise of it :
"He that made us * *
* gave us not
That capability and Godlike reason
To rust in us unused"
in things eternal, any more than in things temporal :
"Come now and let us reason together" he saith.
By the exercise of his reason man has raised him-
self to his present high position in the animal king-
dom. By this Godlike and God-given faculty he
maintains his position above the level of the brute.
Bereft of reason he falls below it. Reason must
always, with reasoning and reasonable creatures,
be the final arbiter of every proposition, whether
profane or sacred. By the exercise of reason alone,
however, man cannot hope to attain to a perfect
knowledge of God ; he tried to and failed ; but
reason, illuminated by the light of divine revela-
tion, may reasonably aspire to that knowledge and
love of God which constitute TRUE RELIGION.
Without reason, religion is superstition ; without
revelation, it is idolatry. Of true religion, all we
know is what God in his goodness has been pleased
to reveal to us ; that which he is not pleased to re-
veal to us must remain unknown. No human hy-
pothesis, however scientific or ingenious, can sup-
ply the deficiencies of divine revelation. As a mis-
sionary of the second century aptly said :
"Where God is silent, it is not wise to speak."
9
These observations may seem trite and common-
place, but they are made here mainly by way of
answer to those who hold the opinion that the
Christian religion is not a reasonable thing, or who
think that there is something improper in applying
their everyday reason to its comprehension. Truly,
there is nothing unreasonable in the Christian re-
ligion, and reason can have no higher employment
than in investigating its foundations.
False religion has always discouraged investi-
gation. When that which taxed the credulity of
its votaries was inquired into, it was proclaimed a
mystery too sacred for any but the initiated. It
is not necessary so to bound Christ's religion, every
follower of which is initiated on equal terms and
by the same formalities, whether peasant, priest
or king. Rightly considered there is no mystery in
the Christian religion. It consists in part of things
revealed and of things unrevealed. Whether our
contemplation of things unrevealed ends simply in
amazement or in insanity, there is but one cause for
the condition, which is that it is impossible for the
unassisted human mind to comprehend the things
of God, which he, for his purpose has covered with
a veil. "Secret things", said Moses, "belong unto
the Lord God, revealed things to us and our chil-
dren forever."
Thanks be to God for the revelation of himself
and of his purposes for mankind through the in-
carnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, whereby crea-
tures of dust otherwise doomed to dwell in dark-
ness are led into the brightness of a perpetual light.
CHAPTER II.
"THIS IS MY BELOVED SON : HEAR HIM."
Mark xiv, 7.
TO THIS END AM I COME INTO THE WORLD,
THAT I SHOULD BEAR WITNESS UNTO THE
TRUTH/'' John xvm,
"
A N account of the direct revelations of God to
^^ man concerning their mutual relationship is
to be found in a certain book. This book is by
universal consent called by a name which means
The Book, or Book of all books. Really, it is
a collection of books written by many hands in
many tongues and in different centuries, brought
together under a general title. Its authors are in
some cases known to us, in others they are anony-
mous. It comprises prose and poetry, biography,
history and fiction, a compendium of law, moral
precepts and philosophical maxims, books of public
and private devotion and the recorded words of
those holy prophets who in different ages, have
been sent into the world to declare the will of God.
Each individual book must be considered by itself,
and much evil has been done by considering the
Bible as an entirety.
ii
The book has two principal divisions respectively
entitled the OLD TESTAMENT and the NEW
TESTAMENT. Concerning the first something
may be said later: we are now more deeply con-
cerned with the latter ; but it may properly be noted
here, that if these two principal divisions of the
book had been called in our language the OLD
COVENANT and the NEW COVENANT, titles
equally agreeable to the meaning of the word from
which Testament is derived, we should have the
advantage of being reminded, whenever we think
of these divisions, of the essential truths the Chris-
tian religion teaches ; one, that the Mosaic Law is
OLD and obsolete, and the other that that which
has superseded it is the NEW Covenant, of which
the Lord Jesus Christ was the messenger and
preacher.
Concerning the use of this book, there are sev-
eral schools. One school regards its authority as
supreme, another claims that there is authority
equal, if not superior, to it. The latter school
speaks slightingly of the religion of the first as
a religion founded on a book. This slight might
be passed over, but it is better to examine the state-
ment. The Christian religion is not founded on a
book : it is founded on the word of God. We may
write this expression with capital letters, if we will,
but however its significance may be limited, it is
obvious that no other authoritative foundation for a
religion is possible.
The principal writers of the New Testament
were the men chosen by the Lord Jesus himself to
disseminate his religion throughout the world, and
12
these men took pains, at a very early date, to pre-
serve in the Gospels and in the Acts of the Apostles,
a history of those remarkable events of which they
directly or indirectly had had "a perfect under-
standing". This is the expression of the evangel-
ist Luke. John, the evangelist who was nearer
to our Lord, says : 'That which we have seen and
heard declare we unto you".
The fact is, and this fact gives the Christian
religion an advantage as to authority over every
other, that there is and has been since the time of
Moses at least, which to the present day embraces
a period of nearly four thousand years, a litera-
ture which has concerned itself exclusively with
God's dealings with man and has recorded these as
matters of history, step by step, through every age.
'Thou shalt read this" said Moses "that they may
hear and learn and that their children which have
not known may hear and learn." "Have ye not
read" said our Saviour many times, and "It is
written", repeatedly. 'They have Moses and the
prophets" said he "let them hear them", "Search
the scriptures". The Holy Gospels and the Acts
of the Apostles are not isolated records, but an in-
tegral part of this literature, which is the Church's
cherished and very choice possession. He who
said "I am the WAY, the TRUTH and the LIFE"
would hardly have left the ages to come without
directions unmistakable for finding that WAY, that
TRUTH and that LIFE. There is an assuring
note of personality in this statement of our Lord's
akin to that in many other gracious sayings of his :
"He that cometh to ME, I will in no wise cast
13
out ;" "I am the good shepherd ;" "I am the door ;"
"Learn of ME;" "If any man thirst, let him come
unto ME"; "My sheep hear my voice, and I know
them, I give unto them eternal life; and no one
shall snatch them out of MY hand;" which makes
the Christian feel impatient of any interposed au-
thority between himself and what he may reason-
ably believe to be our Saviour's own language. Men
would not speak of a "traditional Christ" if they
realized that in this gospel is a portrait of the actual
Christ, under which may truly be written, as the
old masters used to write under their portraits,
pin.vit ad vivum; a portrait painted in fadeless
colors very unlike the lifeless figures since painted
by human hands. It is this living figure of the
Christ of the Gospel, of the LIGHT which lighteth
every man which cometh into the world, which pre-
serves the unity of the Christian religion. The per-
sonality of our Lord stands out in the Gospels as
the peak of a mountain sometimes stands out,
clear and distinct in the sunshine, while all below
is enveloped in fog or cloud.
Nor is it necessary to look further than the
Gospel for the whole of the message to humanity
with which the Lord Jesus was charged. The word
Gospel in our tongue means literally "good news",
and it is not without reason that we believe that
the actual words in which the good news was first
told have been preserved to us by our Lord's own
appointment.
The beloved disciple tells us that "when Jesus
knew that his hour was come when he should de-
part out of this world unto the Father", that is,
14
when his personal ministrations and his public dis-
courses had been brought to an end, the cross being
but a few hours away, and he could look forward
to the work he had undertaken being hencefor-
ward carried on without his visible presence, there
being at that time no written record of any word
which he had spoken the only writing of his of
which there is any authentic record having been
written in sand our Lord promised that ONE
should bring to the remembrance of the apostles
WHATSOEVER THINGS HE HAD SAID TO
THEM. For what purpose may we suppose was
this, if not that a knowledge of these things might
be preserved for the instruction of future genera-
tions as an authorized record of the doctrines he
himself had taught? And in what manner were
these things, which he had said to them, to be pre-
served, if not in writing?
If, then, as this evangelist's words imply, we
have the authority of our Lord himself for the in-
spiration of the written gospel, or at least so much
of it as records his utterances, an authority which
does not extend to the other books of the New
Testament it would seem that in any conflict of
opinion as to the doctrines of the Christian religion
the words of the Lord Jesus contained in the gospel
should be decisive. "The words that / speak unto
you" said he "they are SPIRIT and they are
LIFE"; "Heaven and earth shall pass away, but
my words shall not pass away." "Verily, verily,
1 say unto you, He that heareth my words and be-
lieveth on him that sent me, is passed from death
unto life" . Surely it is not unreasonable to believe
15
that special means should have been used to so
preserve words of such immense importance that
they might be handed down, without corruption,
from generation to generation forever. i4 Whoso-
ever heareth these sayings of mine and doeth them"
said our Saviour "I will liken him unto a wise
man which built his house upon a rock."
The manner in which these sayings have come
down to us is not important. Had the Lord Jesus
ordained that his bare words should be transmitted,
from one age to another, without context, we should
still have had the essentials of his teaching; but as a
matter of fact they have come down to us en-
shrined, like precious jewels in a golden casket,
within the narratives of the Holy Evangelists, and
we believe that we hear to-day, as in the day of
Pentecost, "every man in our own tongue" "the
gracious words which proceeded out of his mouth."
There was a time when it was thought sinful
to question anything in the Bible, but to-day we
think differently. It is a self-evident proposition
that no questioning can injure TRUTH, and there
is no reverent criticism that the WORD of GOD
may fear. Irreverent criticism is necessarily out-
side of the pale of consideration by Christian peo-
ple. Fault finding and the detection of flaws are
not criticism. Criticism is judgment, and any just
criticism of the Bible must be beneficial. The Bible
criticised is like a diamond recut; if its substance
is reduced, that which remains shines with greater
brilliancy. Errors of copyists, mistranslations from
one language to another, and other accidents we
may, without treason, readily acknowledge to have
16
occurred during the thousands of years, preceding
the introduction of the art of printing, during which
the books of the Bible were copied and recopied by
human hands ; and the wonder is, humanly speak-
ing, not that these accidents did occur, but that in
spite of them, the truths enshrined in the original
pages are still so clear that he who runs may read
them. "By every word that proceedeth out of the
mouth of God shall man live" said Moses, and the
apostle Peter added 'The word of the Lord en-
dureth forever".
We have not to consider the nature of IN-
SPIRATION, but we must remember that the
supreme and only full revelation of God to man
was through the incarnation of the Lord Jesus
Christ. No man hath otherwise seen God nor so
unmistakably heard words from his mouth. God,
we believe, is a being having neither hands, nor
feet, nor tongue, and when he requires the offices
performed for which these members are designed he
has to enlist human agency. The Spirit of God
inspired the prophets of old, but the prophets were
human beings and they expressed, with the limita-
tions of human understanding and human expres-
sion, the ideas which God revealed to them ; but
when Incarnate God came to visit the children of
men, we may justly reason that his revelation was
without such limitations.
As at dawn of day the stars which have bright-
ened and made beautiful the night become fainter
and fainter, and, as the sun gains power, disap-
pear, one by one, until at last there is in the heavens
but one great light to be seen ; so the light shed by
the prophets and teachers who went before the
Lord, pales into insignificance before that great
Light, which, having once attained its meridian,
knew no going down. "God", says the writer of
the Epistle to the Hebrews, "who at sundry times
and in divers manners spake in times past unto the
fathers by the prophets hath in these last days
spoken unto us by his Son * * the effulgence
of his glory and the exact expression of his sub-
stance." Can we wonder that it was said of him
"Never man spake like this man"? And are we
not justified in considering that the words from
his mouth are entitled to a position of pre-eminence
over any other words ever written or spoken since
the beginning of time? In these pages it is assumed
that we are. If there is no other name under heaven
whereby men may be saved, surely what He who
bore that name said on the subject or manner of
that salvation should be man's first, if not his only,
study in it.
CHAPTER III.
"THE WORDS THAT i SAY UNTO YOU i SPEAK
NOT FROM MYSELF/' John XIV, 10.
"i WILL OPEN MY MOUTH IN A PARABLE/'
Ps. Ixxvm, 2.
T7S7ITH so much premised by way of introduc-
tion we are now prepared to take up our
text. Let us glance at it again ; Jesus is speaking :
"A certain man planted a vineyard and let it forth to
husbandmen, and went into a far country for a long time.
And at the season he sent a servant to the husbandmen,
that they should give him of the fruit of the vineyard :
but the husbandmen beat him and sent him away empty.
And again he sent another servant; and they beat him
also, and entreated him shamefully, and sent him away
empty. And again he sent a third ; and they wounded him
also and cast him out. Then said the lord of the vineyard,
What shall I do ? I will send my beloved son ; it may be
they will reverence him when they see him. But when the
husbandmen saw him, they reasoned among themselves,
saying, This is the heir; come let us kill him, that the
inheritance may be ours. So they cast him out of the
vineyard and killed him.
"What therefore shall the lord of the vineyard do
unto them?
"He shall come and destroy these husbandmen, and
shall give the vineyard to others."
In this parable the Lord Jesus Christ has re-
19
vealed, under the similitude of an earthly story, a
circumstantial account of the purpose of his in-
carnation, revealing it thus, according to the evan-
gelist Matthew, "that it might be fulfilled which
was spoken by the prophet ; I will open my mouth
in parables; I WILL UTTER THINGS WHICH
HAVE BEEN KEPT SECRET FROM THE
FOUNDATION OF THE WORLD." "He
taught them many things by parables" says one
evangelist, and "without a parable", says another,
"spake he not unto them".
This manner of teaching was a favorite one with
our Lord, whereby he availed himself of that dra-
matic instinct which is common to humanity, (more
common, perhaps, to the unlearned than to the
learned), to make his teaching effective and easy
of remembrance. The parables of our Lord are all
strikingly dramatic. They are full of action. In
a few brief sentences are sketched a whole history,
as in the one we are now considering.
In this parable the characters are the Lord of
the Vineyard, his servants, his son and the husband-
men to whom the vineyard was let out. The scene
is the vineyard. The period embraces several sea-
sons. In the interpretation the Lord of the Vine-
yard is our heavenly Father, whose exhaustless pa-
tience, enduring love and long suffering nature are
vividly set forth. The servants are his Holy
Prophets, the Son is none other than the Lord
Jesus himself. The husbandmen are the men of
Judah, the Jewish nation, and the vineyard is Judea.
The period covers twenty centuries. In the story
there is a veritable history, a prophecy and a brief
20
application or moral indicating the consequences to
ensue, should those to whom the Son was sent re-
ject him.
In this parable, our Lord represents the Father
as saying-, when all other means have failed to touch
the consciences of his people, "I will send my be-
loved Son ; IT MAY BE they will reverence him,
when they see him." "It may be", said Ezekiel, of
these same men of Judah, "It may be, they will con-
sider though they be a rebellious house". But hav-
ing less discernment than the ox and the ass, they
did not consider, neither in the days of Ezekiel, nor
later, when the last opportunity for consideration
was offered them.
There is much significance in the expression "It
may be" or "perhaps". If it has not the meaning
it seems to have, it is not needed. It is an unusual
redundancy on our Lord's part, or it must be taken
literally. So construed, it contradicts very em-
phatically the generally received view that the
Father's purpose in sending his well beloved Son
to visit his people was that he might undergo
humiliation and suffer a cruel death at the hands
of those who had so shamefully treated his other
messengers, the prophets. Rather than this, it indi-
cates a confidence in his people so great, that in
spite of their centuries of obstinacy and rebellion,
he was unwilling to believe them capable of such
extremity of wickedness as they afterwards actually
manifested : "when they see him they will reverence
him" was a more natural anticipation for the Father
of such a Son than "when they see him they will
put him to death".
21
That the incarnation of the Son of God was pre-
destined from the beginning of the world for the ex-
altation and everlasting benefit of the human race is
a most comforting fact to be assured of ; but if it be
true that the crucifixion was also predestined for
man's benefit, then there would seem to be plausi-
bility in the idea that that event which we are told
is responsible for the crucifixion, the so-called
FALL OF MAN, must also have been predestined.
Such a conclusion, be it reverently said, partakes
somewhat of the nature of a reductio ad absurdam.
The purposes of God are ends, not means, and
we may be assured that the purposes of God will
never fail, however the means for consummating
them may be changed or thwarted. Of this, the
instances are innumerable.
CHAPTER IV.
SACRIFICE AND OFFERING THOU DIDST NOT
REQUIRE/' Ps. Xl, 6.
there are in the Old Testament prophecies
which point to the crucifixion, death and
resurrection of our Lord, is not to be disputed ; but
the purpose a prophecy is intended to serve must
be understood before it can be interpreted with
certainty. The purposes of prophecy are several
but we have only to deal with two of them. One
purpose is to predict an event as a threat or warn-
ing; that of Jonah predicting the destruction of
Nineveh is a well known instance, and in this case
we know that, the warning being heeded, the
prophecy was not fulfilled and Nineveh was spared.
Another purpose of prophecy is to identify the sub-
ject with the prediction after fulfilment. The
prophecy is then as "a light that shineth in a dark
place until the day dawn" the day of fulfilment.
The prophecy concerning our Lord's entry into
Jerusalem, sitting on an ass's colt, we are told
"understood not his disciples at first; but when
Jesus was glorified then remembered they that
these things were written of him." Written of him
500 years before. Prophecies of this character are
dark sayings, indeed, at the time of their first utter-
23
ance, and remain so till the light of fulfilment
makes their meaning clear. This light it is which
has made the prophecies referring to our Lord's
sufferings stand out in such relief. The dark saying
or riddle and its interpretation, the prophecy and
the historical fact, come to us together, and we
have no need to call for Chaldean or soothsayer
to decipher the otherwise unintelligible writing. But
it does not follow of necessity that our Lord's
death had to accord with these prophecies. These
might, under different circumstances, have been
left in company with other still dark sayings, had
a happier ending attended his life on earth. The
predictions of our Lord's sufferings evidently were
not intended to point him out to his contemporaries
as the Messiah, nor to indicate a course of action
for his enemies to follow but they were intended
to identify him as the subject of the predictions in
the event of their subsequent fulfilment. The
prophecies by which the Messiah was to be recog-
nized, were unmistakable and admit of but one in-
terpretation. "Go and show John again those
things which ye do hear and see" said Jesus "the
blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the
lepers are cleansed and the deaf hear, the dead
are raised up and the poor have the Gospel preached
unto them". These were the characteristics by
which the finger of prophecy pointed to the Mes-
siah 700 years before the time of his coming, and
we can readily understand how their citation by
our Lord convinced the Baptist that Jesus was in-
deed the Christ, the long expected one, and that
there was no need to look for another.
24
May we not believe that different circumstances
might have made it possible for the prophecy of
Isaiah, unhappily fulfilled, "He is despised and re-
jected", to have remained a dark saying forever?
and in place of it we might now read, understand-
ingly, the unfulfilled prophecy,
"And it shall be said in that day,
Lo, this is our God !
We have waited for him and he will save us :
This is the Lord !
We have waited for him, we will be glad and re-
joice in his SALVATION."
Isaiah had a vision of the Lord in the temple
very unlike anything that ever took place in reality,
and Haggai prophesied that the glory of the temple
to which the Messiah should come should exceed
the glory of that former house which, we know was
glorified by a visible manifestation of the divine
presence. "I will fill this house with glory saith
the Lord of Hosts * * * * and in this place
will I give peace". No temple made with hands
was ever so glorified as the temple of Herod, trod-
den by the blessed feet of the Lord Jesus, but his
visitation without recognition and honored only by
the Hosannas of a street crowd who a few days
after were to clamor for his death, scarcely fulfils
the prophecy, while the later total destruction of
the temple makes its future fulfilment impossible.
The call :
"Lift up your heads O ye gates !"
that the King of Glory may come in was never
answered.
25
"In that day" does not mean in any other day,
but that day of visitation when the MESSENGER
of the COVENANT should come to his holy tem-
ple, to "my house", as our Lord called it. Like-
wise, when Jeremiah foretold the terms of the new
covenant, it was to be with the house of Israel and
the house of Judah and by no license can it be
assumed that the prophet referred to the Gentile
world.
As quoted by the writer of the Epistle to the
Hebrews, the words of the prophecy are these:
"Behold the days come saith the Lord that I
will make a NEW COVENANT with the house of
Israel and with the house of Judah, not according
to the covenant that I made with their fathers in
the day that I took them by the hand to bring them
out of the land of Egypt; * * * but this shall
be the covenant that I will make with the house of
Israel; After those days * * I will put my law
in their inward parts and write it in their hearts
and will be their God, and they shall be my people :
* * * for I will forgive their iniquity and I will
remember their sins no more."
With no house of Israel, no house of Judah,
with a people who once were the people of God,
but now are not his people, how can this prophecy
be explained otherwise than as referring to a con-
dition which might have been, had those for whose
benefit it was written known the time of their
visitation? The new covenant was to be made with
the house of Israel, and the promise was not by
its terms transferable. If a people other than
the house of Israel or the men of Judah ultimately
26
enjoyed the fulfilment of the promise, it must
have been in the character of those "other husband-
men" of the parable, to whom the vineyard was to
be transferred if the original tenants by putting to
death the WELL BELOVED SON of the owner
showed their unworthiness to be continued longer
in possession.
If the promise had been fulfilled in accordance
with the prophecy of Jeremiah, and not in accord-
ance with the parable of our Lord, Jerusalem might
not have become a heap of stones, and the Jews
might have been spared the reproof of being "a
proverb and a by-word among all people", and, in-
stead of its present deserts, the land of Israel
might "be a delightsome land" blossoming and
flourishing as the rose, with its fields bringing forth
fruit abundantly, sometimes thirty and sometimes
sixty and sometimes a hundred fold ; but with the
terrible punishment inflicted upon them by Titus,
when their holy city was blotted out and their exist-
ence as a nation was finally destroyed some thirty-
seven years after their crucifixion of the Son of
God, it cannot be said that the Lord forgave the
iniquity of his people and remembered their sins
no more. We can only interpret the prophecy of
Jeremiah by the light of the prophecy contained in
the parable that the Lord of the vineyard would
come in vengeance and terribly punish the house
of Israel and the men of Judah, taking away the
Kingdom of God from them and giving it to an-
other people.
It would not have been Godlike to make a
promise with no intention of fulfilling it, or to ac-
27
company it with conditions which it was impossible
for those to whom it was made to fulfil. The con-
ditions of the promise we must understand were
capable of fulfilment; they were not fulfilled and
the terrible consequences predicted ensued. For
what purpose, may we ask, did the Lord rise up
early and send his servants, the prophets, to warn
his people, if attention to the warnings could not
change a predetermined purpose? If his people
had heeded these warnings, would they still have
been punished? There is only one reasonable
answer.
Malachi prophesied that when the Messenger
should come to his temple, he should purify the
sons of Levi, that is the Jewish priesthood, that
they might offer an offering in righteousness, an
offering that should be pleasant unto the Lord. Is
it reasonable to believe that the body of his be-
loved SON, subjected to gross indignity and nailed
to the cross, was such an offering? If we judge
by our Lord's denunciations of them, the Sons of
Levi refused to be purified.
Isaiah's prophecy of the coming of our Lord
commences with a message of comfort to Jerusa-
lem that her iniquity is pardoned. But her iniquity
was not pardoned, for the reason that when he who
had the pardon in his hand "came unto his own,
his own received him not". The wicked husband-
men said "This is the heir, Come let us kill him".
"The base Judean threw a pearl away richer than
all his tribe".
CHAPTER V.
"BEHOLD THY KING COMETH".
Zechariah ix, 9.
HP HE idea of the Messiah prevailing among the
Jews immediately before, and during, our
Lord's visitation, and indeed among his own dis-
ciples, was that he should not only be a Saviour
who should save them from their sins, but their
temporal deliverer; a deliverer from the rule of
the hated usurper then sitting upon the throne of
David, and from the yoke of their heathen masters,
a king
"Higher than the kings of the earth",
who should personally reign over them and raise
their nation to an eminence of glory and power
beyond anything that had ever preceded it. When
the wise men, led by a star, reached Bethlehem,
their inquiry was ; 'Where is he that is born King
of the Jews ?" The promise of the angel Gabriel
to the mother of our Lord was that God would
give unto him the throne of his father David;
"Rabbi" said Nathanael "thou art the Son of God;
thou art the King of Israel" and when Zacharias,
moved by the Holy Spirit, prophesied concerning
the mission of John, the tenor of his prophecy
was that he, John, should go before and prepare the
way of One of the house of David, who should
29
save the people from their enemies and those that
hated them, that they might serve God without
fear, in holiness and righteousness all the days of
their life. Although a spiritual meaning for these
words is possible, their literal meaning was the
more obvious. It was the earthly enemies of Israel
of whom Zacharias was thinking and who must
have been uppermost in the minds of those who
heard him.
The prophets had declared that Jerusalem was
to be a dwelling place for the great king. Zechariah
had the word of the Lord for it and the city was
to be called the City of TRUTH : Lo, I come and
I will dwell in the midst of thee saith the Lord
and he who toucheth you toucheth the apple of
mine eye. Jerusalem was to be as a city not needing
walls for its defence, for the Lord was to be unto
her a wall of fire round about and the glory in the
midst of her. Swear not by Jerusalem, said Jesus,
for it is the city of the great KING. What King?
Surely not Herod ! Not David, for in his days
the city did not even boast of a house of God ; not
Solomon, for a greater than Solomon was speak-
ing. No words could be more explicit than those
of Jeremiah wherein he says :
"Behold the days come, saith the Lord
That I will raise unto David a righteous Branch,
And a KING shall reign and prosper,
And shall execute judgment and justice in the
earth.
In his days Judah shall be saved,
And Israel shall dwell safely."
30
Have these words any meaning?
Micah, who prophesied concerning the birth-
place of our Lord, said :
"Out of thee will come forth for me
One who is to become ruler in Israel."
"In that day" many nations were to be joined
to the Lord : "It shall come to pass" said Jere-
miah "when ye be multiplied * * * that
they shall call Jerusalem the throne of the Lord
and all the nations shall be gathered unto it" ; es-
pecially, Egypt and Assyria were to be as one
people with Israel. "My house shall be called an
house of prayer for all nations" quoted our Lord
from Isaiah. The Psalms are filled with predic-
tions of like import. The Lord had sworn unto
David that of the fruit of his body, no interloper
or usurper, but one of the household and lineage
of David, should sit upon his throne, for the Lord
had desired Jerusalem for his habitation : her poor
were to be satisfied with, bread and her priests
"clothed with SALVATION". But this promise,
like all the others, was conditional. There was a
terrible "if". "If thy children will keep my cove-
nant" were the terms upon which the promises
were conditioned.
"Oh that thou hadst hearkened to my command-
ments !
Then had thy peace been as a river,
And thy righteousness as the waves of the sea : * *
HIS NAME SHOULD NOT HAVE BEEN
CUT OFF NOR DESTROYED FROM BE-
FORE ME."
3 1
These few citations show that there were, run-
ning through the Old Testament, two parallel
streams of prophecy, one indicating the establish-
ment by the Messiah of a kingdom of great glory
of which Jerusalem was to be the centre and him-
self the head, and the other indicating an igno-
minious and shameful termination of his work.
To fulfil these predictions, the Jew argues that
two Messiahs are needed, one to suffer and one to
reign, and the Christian tries to explain a seeming
paradox by postponing the fulfilment of the first
mentioned class of prophecies to a later day ; to
the second coming of the same Messiah. Both ex-
planations overlook the important fact that those
prophecies which refer to the Jewish city of Jerusa-
lem, to a Jewish kingdom and nation, to the Jewish
priesthood and to the temple at Jerusalem, can
never be fulfilled, for the reason that the subjects
of them have disappeared forever. The pious He-
brew, year after year, as often as the sacred Day
of Atonement comes round, laments this fact and
says "But now O Lord our God ! the sanctuary is
destroyed, the service has ceased ; we have no
more a leader as in former days, no high priest to
bring offerings, no altar for sacrifices." This but
paraphrases a part of the 74th Psalm : "O God
wherefore art thou absent from us so long? Why
is thy wrath so hot against the sheep of thy pas-
ture? We see not our tokens; there is not one
prophet more ; no, not one is there among us that
understandcth any more."
We may call Jesus of Nazareth our King, if we
will, as long as we are his loyal subjects and fight
32
under his banner, but that does not constitute him
the enthroned successor of David who never was
king of ours. The heathen Roman, who sat in
judgment upon him, whether by inspiration or
otherwise, we know not, recognized the legitimacy
of Jesus when he caused the title of accusation
placed upon his cross to read: 'THIS IS JESUS
THE KING of the JEWS". "Write not," said
the chief priests, 'The King of the Jews, but that he
said, I am King of the Jews," and Pilate answered
"What I have written I have written". And this
title was inscribed in Hebrew, in Greek and in
Latin. All of these languages are now called dead
languages, languages spoken by no nation on earth,
but the words of Pilate will nevertheless live to the
end of the ages, a perpetual reminder of the king-
ship of Jesus.
A reasonable solution of the difficulty which
the two streams of prophecy appear to raise is, that
one was adapted to the acceptance of Jesus by the
Jewish nation as their King and Saviour and the
other to their rejection of him, one of which
courses of action being adopted, the prophecies
referring to the opposite course necessarily became
void and of no effect.
If this view is not immediately admitted from
prima facie evidence, then to strengthen the case,
we must fall back upon the fact of the conditional
nature of all the Old Testament promises. Among
these, those threatening direful consequences
against a nation were to be withdrawn in case they
were undeserved, and blessings promised were to
be withheld if those to whom the promise was
33
given proved unworthy to receive them. By the
mouth of Jeremiah God said:
"At what instant I shall speak concerning a king-
dom,
To pluck, and to pull down, and to destroy it :
If that nation against whom I have pronounced
turn from their evil,
I will repent of the evil that I thought to do unto
them.
And at what instant I shall speak concerning a
nation
And concerning a kingdom, to build and plant it:
If it do evil in my sight that it obey not my voice,
Then I will repent of the good wherewith I said
I would benefit them".
Elsewhere he says "Behold I will bring upon Judah
and all the inhabitants of Jerusalem all the evil
that I have pronounced against them." For what
reason? Because it was so ordained? That is not
the answer of the prophet to the question; he says
"Because I have spoken unto them ; but they have
not heard; and I have called unto them but they
have not answered." But for the pleading of Moses
it should be remembered the Lord, when he saw the
idolatry in the wilderness, would have nullified even
the promises to Abraham.
Somewhat analogous to the conditional inter-
pretation of the written prophecies, is the acted
prophecy of Abraham offering up on the altar on
Mount Moriah, possibly the very place where Jesus
suffered later, his only son. In that case, we know,
that at the moment when the knife was raised to
34
slay, a way was found for the deliverance of the
intended victim. Now it must be evident that any-
one knowing the circumstances of Isaac's case and
knowing moreover that they prefigured in a very
remarkable manner an event to come, would at any
time, before the coming to pass of the event pre-
figured, have drawn a conclusion as to the manner
in which the earthly career of the chief actor in
the drama would end, very different from that
which actually took place. In this instance, the
acted prophecy or parable would have been equally
available as a prophecy, if our Lord had been spared
the cup of extreme sorrow, instead of being com-
pelled to drink it. As it stands, it shows that God
did not desire human sacrifice. "I will have mercy
and not sacrifice" he said. But as the Lord Jesus
pointed out, more than once, the Jews did not
understand the meaning of these words. Had they
done so, there might not have been such a manifest
difference between God's treatment of the Son of
Abraham and the treatment which the descendents
of Abraham meted out to the Son of God. "If ye
had known what this means 'I will have mercy and
not sacrifice'" said Jesus "YE WOULD NOT
HAVE CONDEMNED THE GUILTLESS."
The averted sacrifice of Isaac proved Abraham's
faith. The sacrifice of Jesus proved God's love.
Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay
down his life for his friend, if necessary. The
words "if necessary" are not in the text; but they
must be understood. The sacrifice of Jesus, the
Christ, the Son of God, was necessary, not because
it had been predestined or foreordained for ages,
35
but because of the hatred of the Jews, a hatred
born of the intolerance which orthodox error ever
has for heterodox truth. They would have it so.
Away with him ! Away with him ! Crucify him !
they cried, and when remonstrated with by a Gen-
tile, "they cried out the more Let him be crucified."
It may not have much significance, but it is
worthy of note, that the scapegoat, which figured
so prominently in the ceremonies of the Day of
Atonement, that greatest of all days in the Jewish
Church, which bore, symbolically, the sins of the
whole nation upon his head, was not slain, although
both priest and altar were at hand.
If there was no alternative to the crucifixion,
with what sort of understanding can we contem-
plate our Lord's tears for Jerusalem and his lamen-
tations for the fate of the city he loved. "O
Jerusalem, Jerusalem, thou that killest the prophets
and stonest them that are sent unto thee, how often
would I have gathered thy children together even
as a hen gathereth her chickens under her wings
and ye would not". "O that thou hadst but known
in this thy day the things which are for thy peace !
but now they are hid from thine eyes *
because thou knewest not the time of thy visitation."
If it was decreed by the Father that they should
crucify the Son when he came to claim the tribute
so long withheld; if they had no will of their own,
no option or choice but to do the shameful deed,
then it would seem that the actors in it should be
relieved from the odium attaching to the dreadful
and unparalleled crime which they were foreor-
dained to commit. If the tragedy of the cross
36
was a performance the plot of which had been
constructed ages before, then must the actors in
it have had their several parts prepared for them.
Should we not, then, if such were the case, instead
of calling them murderers, call them executioners?
This is an awful question to answer, but the affirma-
tive position taken seems to justify it. Further-
more, if the position taken be correct, how is it
possible to understand the tone of disappointment
in Isaiah's lamentation :
"What could have been done more to my vineyard
That I have not done in it?
Wherefore when I looked that it should bring
forth grapes,
Brought it forth wild grapes?"
"The Lord of Hosts looked for righteousness, but
behold a cry !" Does this suggest an unalterable
decree? "Knowest thou not" said Pilate "that I
have power to crucify thee and have power to re-
lease thee." Jesus, in replying, denied not but said
"Thou couldest have no power at all against me
except it were given thee from above." Would our
Saviour have prayed "Father, forgive them", if
those for whom he prayed had been the selected
instruments of the Father and dependent upon him
for praise or blame? Would he have prayed on
the eve of the crucifixion "If it be possible let this
cup pass from me", if he had known that it was
not possible, and would the prophet have put into
his mouth the words "Behold and see if there be
any sorrow like unto my sorrow", if he was obedi-
ently performing an agreed-upon act and all that
37
was happening was part of a long predestined and
unalterable scheme?
To foreknow is one thing; to foreordain is an-
other, and to foretell or predict an event is not
necessarily to foreordain it, or cause it to come to
pass. When a seed is planted in the ground it is
beyond human ability to foretell positively what
the immediate result will be ; but it can only be one
of two things, the seed will either germinate or it
will not, but with either result assumed or deter-
mined it is then an easy matter to predict the further
consequences. It is not for finite man to say what
is or is not possible to the Infinite, but may we
not reasonably ask, Would God, after giving man
unlimited power to do or to refrain from doing, be
likely to predict with definiteness the acts of those
to whom he had given this power? If our answer
is in the negative, we do not by any means throw
doubt upon the reasonableness of God's act in dic-
tating, for a purpose, to his servants the prophets,
the consequences of the assumed acts of such
free agent.
CHAPTER VI.
HOW SHALL I CURSE, WHOM GOD HATH NOT
CURSED." Numbers xxm, 8.
may find an answer to the questions raised
in the last chapter in our Lord's own teach-
ing; but before we can make further appeal to this,
we must give some little attention to that event
which it is said made the crucifixion inevitable and
brought death into the world for us all ; the diso-
bedience of the reputed first created man and
woman. Our spiritual horizon will not be clear, so
long as there is a haze in our minds concerning
this.
If the earlier event in any way made the later
one necessary, or corrupted the race of mankind
as reported there is not the slightest recognition of
the fact in the Gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ,
who never in any speech recorded of him men-
tioned Adam or Eve, or said one word direct or
by implication even mildly derogatory of that na-
ture which he came down from heaven expressly to
take upon himself.
It may make no difference to our eternal well
being, the great end of God's goodness and love,
whether the Lord Jesus came into this world of ours
predestined to suffer death upon the cross, or
39
whether coming for a different purpose, cruel men,
the husbandmen of the parable, condemned him
to death of their own determination and out of
their own evil hearts ; and seeing that physical death
is the common end of every created thing endowed
at any time with life, we may rest content to bear
our part in the general fate, regardless of the cause,
except so far as the pursuit of truth interests us;
but that doctrine which declares that every new
minted Image of God is representative of a debased
coinage and bears upon its obverse the superscrip-
tion of Satan, strikes at the moral constitution and
dignity of the human race and it must be accepted
or denied before the incarnation can have a mean-
ing for us.
It is difficult for the ordinary mind to conceive
of our heavenly Father sending his children into
the world so handicapped in running the race which
is set before them, and it is gratifying to reflect that
there is no warrant whatever in the holy Gospel of
our Lord Jesus Christ to justify it. Actual ex-
perience teaches us that it is those only who have
recently come into the world who are really capa-
ble of knowing the full joy of living,
Ere doubt, or fear, or love, or act of sin,
Hath marred God's light within."
"Of such" said not our Lord is the kingdom of
Satan, but "the kingdom of heaven". "Woe unto
him who deceiveth one of these". "It is not the
will of your Father which is in heaven that one of
these little ones should perish".
The barrier between man and his Maker, is
40
raised by contact with the world and temptation,
and to contemplate our Lord as one whose office
it is to save us from the sin of an ancestor as re-
mote and visionary as Adam, is to divert our at-
tention from the relation between our personal
sins and our personal Saviour. One of the meanest
traits of our human nature, perhaps, is that which
seeks excuse for our own wrongdoing by putting
the blame upon someone else, and in this respect
at least man to-day is very like the Adam of the
Old Testament, and this doctrine, the doctrine of
original sin, gives him an ever present opportunity
for the exercise of this trait in his nature.
Of the titles bestowed upon our Lord, the most
appropriate is JESUS HOMINUM SALVATOR;
Jesus the Saviour of Men, not Salvator Mundi or
Saviour of the World, for the world is yet a long
way from being saved, but every individual in it
may own the Lord Jesus as his own personal Sa-
viour, if he so desires. A Saviour who not only
saves from the consequences of sins committed,
but saves from the commission of them.
Sin generally is a subject which must be treated
by itself : we are now considering one particular
phase of it, the so-called hereditary or birth sin, and
for the foundation of the doctrine we are referred
to the story told in the Book of Genesis, that Book
of Beginnings full of allegory and metaphor, sym-
bolism and poetry. Let us read the story.
The story in brief is, that God, in the beginning,
made man out of the dust of the earth, but in his
own image, that he gave him a commandment to
observe, that man under temptation disobeyed the
divine commandment and for his disobedience he
was summarily judged and sentenced. The man
and his companion were sent forth from the gar-
den in which God had placed them, a curse was
put, not on the man or his wife or their descendents,
but only upon the ground given him to till, which
henceforward was condemned to bring forth thorns
and thistles and, because of their sin, sorrow was
to be theirs all the days of their mortal life.
From this relation the conclusion has been drawn
that the first man, having been created sinless,
whatever that may mean, would but for his diso-
bedience have transmitted to his remotest posterity
a nature incapable of sin and the world would have
remained indefinitely in a state of innocence and
virtue; but forasmuch as he transgressed the com-
mandment and became a law-breaker instead of a
law-observer, he had only a law-breaker's nature to
transmit, and that he actually has transmitted
through uncounted generations a law-breaking or
sinful nature which is borne by everyone that comes
into the world.
Now, this is a most inexact conclusion to draw
from the story, as we shall see if we examine it.
Adam sinned, wilfully or not at all. He must
have had the power to resist the temptation set
before him, or to succumb to it. If he had no such
power, then neither blame nor punishment should
have been his ; but the fact of a punishment being
inflicted indicates that he had such power, or that
reason and justice, which we expect in divine judg-
ments, would have been wanting.
This power then to resist temptation or to suc-
42
cumb to it, to keep God's law or to break it, being
a characteristic of the nature given to Adam at first,
that same characteristic would necessarily have
been transmitted to his descendents, and we have
now to ask, by what means were the next and suc-
ceeding generations to be protected from the snares
of that "old serpent called the Devil and Satan"
which the first man was unable to resist, and we
shall get no answer. Innocency was no safeguard, we
have learned from the story of Adam himself, and
as with the growth of the world in age and popu-
lation temptations would be more likely to increase
than to diminish, we may reasonably expect that
sin, if not in the very next generation, in some
time to come, would certainly have entered into
the world. If the disease of Adam was to cling
so closely to his descendents, it is somewhat re-
markable that in the next generation, of two
brothers, one was righteous (our Lord called him
so) and the other a murderer.
But whatever effect Adam's transgression may
have had on his immediate posterity, an event oc-
curred among a later generation of his descendents
which seems to have been intended to put an end
to the wickedness of the race. This event was the
deluge or flood in the days of Noah, the cause of
which was, we are told, in this same story that
man had become so bad and the earth was so filled
with his violence that it repented the Lord that he
had made him and the Lord said "I will destroy
man whom I have created from the face of the
earth." And man was destroyed, every man "in
whose nostrils was the breath of life
43
died" and Noah only remained alive "with his wife
and his sons and his sons' wives" and of them,
continues the account, "was the whole earth over-
spread."
Thus, according to this account, the human
race, as at present constituted, derives its origin
not from Adam, but from Noah. It may be said
that this is begging the question and that Noah,
coming of the line of Adam, necessarily perpetuated
the sinful strain ; but there was a difference : "Noah
was a just man and perfect" and he "walked with
God." He was a preacher of righteousness and
presumably had a righteous family. Now, without
relying too much upon this "righteousness", we
cannot read the story of the deluge otherwise than
as the story of an attempt on God's part to es-
tablish the human race on a new foundation with
a new head and with the earth freed from the
curse imposed upon it in the time of Adam. Jo-
sephus, who wrote not very long after our Saviour's
time and who was well qualified to speak on any
matter of Jewish history or belief, speaking of this
event says "God determined to destroy the whole
race of mankind and to make another race that
should be pure from wickedness."
Now, according to the book of Genesis, the
first part of God's declared purpose was carried
out. The wicked were all destroyed. After their
total annihilation, God blessed Noah and took the
curse from off the earth, Noah becoming, since
Adam, the first husbandman tilling a God-blessed
soil. God then made a solemn covenant with man
represented by Noah and gave him commandments
44
to observe; and as he is said to have given him at
first, so he gave him now, dominion over every other
living creature.
Thus began the age of the post-diluvian patri-
archs. If this was not a new beginning of the
race, if only the ground was freed from the curse
and man's supposed burden, inherited from Adam,
still remained, it does not appear from the record
in the case that there was adequate reason for, or
result from, the Noahchian deluge.
CHAPTER VII.
"THE SON SHALL NOT BEAR THE INIQUITY OF
THE FATHER/' Ezek. XVlU, 20.
"EVERY ONE SHALL DIE FOR HIS OWN
INIQUITY/' Jer. xxxi, jo.
OW, whether this account we have been review-
ing of God's dealings with the human race in
the infancy of the world be authentic history, and
it must always be remembered that it professes to
relate events, the scene of which and the actors
in which and all records of them, if there were
any, had disappeared long ages before it was writ-
ten ; or whether it be an inspired or human allegory,
Christian doctrines have been built upon it and it
cannot be disregarded.
The account we are speaking of ended with the
deluge. With the clearing away of the waters, a
second period commenced, an era of new oppor-
tunity for man and of hopeful expectation for his
Maker. But man failed to profit by the opportunity
afforded him and the second period came to an
end under the saddest of circumstances. No im-
provement apparently took place in the race, and
post-diluvian man proved no better than his ante-
diluvian predecessor ; he was, if anything, worse.
The trait of bad behavior which man thus dis-
played may have been inherited from his fore-
fathers ; but not necessarily because a remote an-
cestor had disobeyed a commandment, but rather
because he inherited from them, as a glorious birth-
right the same liberty of will ! the same power to
choose the good and reject the evil; the same
power to choose the evil and reject the good: as
was said later "I have set before thee life and
death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose!'
Without this gift man would not be the wonderful
creature that he is ; he would not be the image of
God ; he would not be the responsible being his
Maker intended him to be. But, having it, and
evil ways being oftener than not the readier means
to his ends, in the absence of some restraining in-
fluence it is not remarkable that evil means were
more often chosen than good ones. The formation
of character is largely a matter of environment,
and the most potent factor is no doubt heredity.
The babe is physically the image of his sire and in
character, as it develops, he resembles those who
have gone before him but with the modifying in-
fluence of other environment. The Mosaic Law
which limited the consequences of sin to four gen-
erations is sometimes thought harsh and unreason-
able, but what is to be said of a law which would
fasten upon a present generation the sin of an an-
cestor hundreds of generations removed? and how
shall we reconcile with it the word of the Lord,
which came to Ezekiel, concerning the son of the
wicked who seeth all his father's sins and con-
sidereth and doeth not such like? Of such it was
47
said "He shall not die for the iniquity of his
father, he shall surely live." It may be affirmed
with confidence that no heart, or head or knee, was
ever yet bowed sincerely from a consciousness of
bearing the weight of Adam's sin and the inflic-
tion of it upon the whole human race is repugnant
to reason and to sense.
The Lord Jesus Christ was a born of a pure
virgin" not that he might escape the taint of this
sin; but because he was the Son of the Most High
and a human father was not possible for him. The
virgin birth of our Lord would not have saved
him from it, if it had been the real thing we are
told it is, for it could have come to him as well
through a human mother as through a human
father. This is so obvious that to avoid a dilemma
it became necessary to invent another doctrine : the
doctrine that the Blessed Virgin, the mother of our
Lord, was herself born with a nature different
from that of other women.
A word must now be said concerning that ad-
junct to the doctrine of inherited sin which de-
clares that physical death is also a consequence of
Adam's transgression. If this interpretation of
the sentence passed upon Adam be insisted upon,
it must then be declared that our Lord did not in
his own person overcome what we call death, for
he suffered it; neither did he abolish death for the
rest of us, for man is as subject to it to-day as he
was thousands of years ago.
The idea that bodily death, as something not
contemplated by God at creation, came into the
world because of Adam's sin is contrary to every
analogy in nature and little thought is required to
convince anyone, who cares to think, that a con-
dition of eternal life on this planet would be
utterly impracticable as man is constituted. Our
Lord declared that man's final habitation was pre-
pared for him before the foundations of the earth
were laid and therefore not on the earth, but else-
where. Wherever that habitation may be, by what
means can we conceive of man entering into it if
not through the grave and gate of death?
But to be more particular, we must go again to
the account given in the Book of Genesis. The
commandment given to Adam was plain and ex-
plicit: Thou shalt not do such and such a thing for
"in the day thou doest it thou shalt surely die."
Now Adam did that which he was expressly com-
manded not to do, yet he did not die in the day of
his transgression, but lived to see many generations
of his descendents. Evidently, therefore, it was
not Adam's bodily existence that was threatened
with immediate extinction, but something else. The
sentence was, and there is nothing to show that it
was unlimited, "Unto dust thou shalt return," and it
meant that that part of him which was spiritual
had ceased to exist. Adam had made his choice
between obeying God and ministering to his own
desires, with the result that at his dissolution his
body was in the order of nature doomed to return
to the dust as dust, without the hope of a joyful
resurrection.
This is a plain statement of the first prediction
of death; but did the matter end there? was there
no second opportunity given to Adam? It is gen-
49
eially consideied thai (here was, and, allhouidi it
ha 1 , nothing l< do with our pie:, ml purpose, il
will !>< 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 <f
Noah ; hut for its actual wickedness. This we are
plainly told. And it was no "constructive" sin of
which the descendents of Noah, when grown to he
many nations, were guilty ; but sin of a very per-
sonal and pronounced type. ( lod, at this time,
was confronted with a new condition. II y the
terms of his covenant with Noah, he was debarred
from again destroying all flesh from off the earth,
and so another method of dealing with sinful man
was devised.
With the terrible power of choosing good or
choosing evil, man was left to his own devices, and
God suffered him to walk in his own ways. //
rvas at this time then, and not in the days of Adam,
that the world became a LOST world, being for
the first time utterly without God and without hope.
Thenceforward spiritual darkness covered the
earth and gross darkness the people. 'This was
as the waters of Noah unto me" said the Lord, by
51
the mouth of Isaiah. Severe as a punishment it
certainly was and as overwhelming as the flood.
God in this was not unmindful of his covenant ;
but man's contempt for it brought about the es-
trangement. The covenant, however, was definitely
broken, and before it could be reinstated a recon-
ciliation would have to be made between man and
his Maker.
When and in what manner this reconciliation
was to be effected was known at this time to God
alone ; but the period for which this estrangement
was to continue during which the nations of the
earth were to be left without direct divine guidance
or companionship was not, we may reasonably sup-
pose, a certain number of years, but a period to
be determined by the fulfilment of certain condi-
tions. God purposed, however, that when these
conditions were fulfilled, when the fulness of time
should come, a year that should be ACCEPTABLE
to him, a WAY would be provided for the restora-
tion of the whole human race to its place in his
household again.
As a first step to the attainment of this end he
chose, as he had in the days of Noah, one man, to
be the founder and head of a new race, a peculiar
people, a people whose high duty and great privi-
lege it was to be to preserve in the midst of the
darkness, corruption and idolatry of surrounding
nations, the knowledge of the ONE TRUE GOD.
With this man God made, as he had with Noah, a
solemn covenant concerning, not one people only,
but the whole human race. Among many gracious
promises in which the whole world to-day is in-
52
terested, was one that in this man's seed all the na-
tions of the earth were to be blessed, a promise
which we now know referred specifically to the in-
carnation of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Messenger
of the NEW COVENANT.
It is not out of place here to draw attention to
the fact that all of God's dispensations or methods
of dealing with his children at different periods have
had one characteristic in common, namely the se-
lection of one certain man to be the head of a new
race. Their names are: Adam, Noah, Abraham,
Jesus. We have dealt with the first two and are
now dealing with Abraham. This man, so greatly
honored, was, we may believe, a veritable person-
age, whose descendents, intermixed to a very small
degree perhaps with alien blood, are at this day to
be found in every great city of the world; living
witnesses of the truth of that Gospel they deny.
With this man began the history of that race which
was destined to have for two thousand years a
career as wonderful and unexampled as it was ro-
mantic a career which is not yet ended..
It is not necessary to recall the wanderings of
this Hebrew prince and his family, what time they
"went to and fro from nation to nation, from one
kingdom to another people"; to review the long
sojourn in the chrysalis Egypt, from which his de-
scendents, 400 years afterwards, emerged under the
leadership of Moses a nation of 600,000 grown
men with a code of laws derived from God himself,
nor the manner in which their final settlement was
effected in the promised land; but we must note
that with the setting apart of Abraham, the founda-
53
tion was laid of a wall of partition intended to di-
vide the people of the earth into two distinct
bodies, the Hebrews constituting one and the rest
of the world, afterwards indifferently called Gen-
tile or heathen, the other.
It was into a world so divided, one part living
in intimate and covenant relationship with Al-
mighty God, and the other part ignorant both of
him and of the gracious promise of which it was
the subject that, some twenty centuries after the
promise was made, the Saviour, the promised one,
came "to be a light to lighten the Gentiles and the
Glory of Israel".
CHAPTER IX.
"l AM THE LIGHT OF THE WORLD."
John viii, 12.
nPO be a light to lighten the Gentiles and the
glory of Israel." In these words the just
and devout Israelite who uttered them makes a dis-
tinction between our Lord's relation to his own
people and his relation to the Gentiles. The order
in which these are mentioned, too, is significant,
and it can only with difficulty be conceived of an
Israelite observing such an order, unless acting
under the direction of a higher power, but it was
an eminently proper one, although neither the aged
Simeon himself, nor those who heard him, may
have realized it. In order of time, our Lord's
Mission was first to Israel ; but in order of impor-
tance, it was undeniably first to the Gentiles. "His
great work" was to be the salvation of
mankind, the greater part of which was Gentile.
It was the Gentile world walking in darkness and
sitting in the land of the shadow of death upon
whom the great light was to shine, and Israel was
designed to be but little more than a candlestick or
bearer of this light.
The work our Lord had to do for the Jewish
55
nation was essentially different from that which
the Gentile world needed. The Jewish law, which
had never been imposed upon the rest of the world,
had to be fulfilled before the Kingdom of Heaven
could be opened to the Gentiles who were both
innocent and ignorant of the particular sins of
which the Jews were guilty. In the language of
the market place, it may be said, that before a new
organization could be formed on a solvent founda-
tion, the obligations of the old one had to be dis-
charged. There was no Spiritual Bankruptcy Court
to appeal to ; but ONE there was, able to give a full
release for the debts of the nation, as, indeed, at
last, he did, but at the expense of the debtors' ever-
lasting shame.
Moreover, at the time of our Lord's birth the
"expectation" of the Jews and the "desire of the na-
tions" were not the same. The Jews were in ex-
pectation of the advent of a divine personage with
whose characteristics and purposes they had been
made acquainted by a line of prophets through
a long series of years. The desire of "the nations"
ignorant of the existence of the ONLY God and of
the gracious promise to which they were heirs
showed a reaching out for immortality, but, with
no revelation to guide them, a blind and unin-
structed one. The expectation of the Jews was true
HOPE ; expectancy and desire united ; the desire of
the nations if we except the faith of that grand old
Gentile Job, was characterized by a blank despair.
ISRAEL, always in covenant relationship with
God, had to be redeemed from all his sins ; the
GENTILE WORLD to be reinstated in a covenant
56
relationship from which it had been cut off for
two thousand years. "Blessed be the Lord God of
Israel" sang Zacharias "for he hath visited and
redeemed his people". His- people were, of course,
the Jewish nation and none else. To them knowl-
edge of salvation was to be given "by the remission
of their sins' . Nothing is said of the sins of the
Gentiles ; but to them the "dayspring from on high"
is promised for their ENLIGHTENMENT. Said
the angel who appeared to Joseph, "It is he that
shall save his people from their sins".
But however it came to the Gentiles, salvation
"was to be by way of the Jews". There were two
ways by which it could come to them. One way
was by their reception into an organization, pri-
marily Jewish, but designed to embrace both Jew
and Gentile, ("Rejoice ye Gentiles with his people"
sang Moses) and the other was, as actually hap-
pened, by their succeeding to the inheritance of the
Jews, becoming sole instead of joint heirs to the
promise of a new covenant; realizing directly, in-
stead of through a secondary channel, those
promises which had been made for their benefit to
the Gentile Abram and of which his descendents
may be considered to have been the trustees. Now
whether it came to them directly or indirectly,
there was but ONE messenger of the covenant and
his commission was undoubtedly to the Jews, and
in his ministrations he never lost sight of this fact!
Had our Lord's mission been to the Gentiles, his
proper birthplace would have been in Greece or
Rome. If his fate was to be crucified, the Greeks
or Romans would have been equal to the necessity.
57
Socrates, 400 years before the birth of our Lord,
said if such a JUST person as he described were
to appear on earth, the people would certainly
crucify him. Had our Lord treated Jew and Gen-
tile alike, confusion as to the purpose of his visita-
tion must of necessity have ensued; but he did
not. "Other sheep I have" said he "which are not
of this fold * * they shall hear my voice". But
they were not to hear it then. To these other sheep
he never went himself. When approached for help
by a Gentile woman, he said "I WAS NOT SENT
BUT UNTO THE LOST SHEEP OF THE
HOUSE OF ISRAEL." And, although this was
said primarily to test the woman's faith, it was
none the less an important truth. When our Lord
sent forth the twelve disciples, their general in-
structions were prefaced by the command "Go not
into the way of the Gentiles and into any city of
the Samaritans enter ye not", and later, when the
seventy were sent forth they were likewise com-
manded.
The sermon on the mount, like all the other dis-
courses of our Lord, was addressed to Jews and
was for their instruction. It was an exposition of
the Jewish LAW as it was to be construed under
the personal government of the Messiah, an ex-
position of the spirit of that law which a strict
observance of its letter had caused to be obscured
for so long. This exposition was not intended
primarily for the instruction of the members of a
new organization, but was for those belonging to
an already existing one which our Lord's teaching
was to reform and purify. That prayer, which was
58
part of the sermon on the mount, and which Chris-
tians call the Lord's Prayer, is also essentially
Jewish and lacks the prime essential of a Christian
prayer.
The full meaning of the teaching from the
Mount of the BEATITUDES could not have been
understood by those to whom the teaching from
the Mount of the LAW was unknown ; nor was it
necessary that it should be. The gospel or "good
news" the Gentiles were to hear by the mouth of
the first apostles was the same nineteen hundred
years ago as that with which the Christian mission-
ary of to-day is charged : the proclamation "By
Authority" of the IMMORTALIZATION of the
HUMAN RACE. Charged with a message like
this, it was not necessary then, nor is it necessary
now, to mention the Law, which had been abolished,
nor the prophets, of whom the Gentiles knew little,
nor redemption and ransom, of which they knew
less.
But before we can understand Christianity it is
essential that we realize the difference between our
Lord's work for his people that were and for his
people that were to be. "When thou hadst over-
come the sharpness of death" sang Ambrose "thou
didst open the kingdom of heaven to all believers".
It must be evident to anyone who reflects, that
the only immediate beneficiaries of the sacrifice
offered up on the Altar of the Cross were those
pious Hebrews who lived and died between the
time of Abraham and the moment of the offering
up of the sacrifice on Mount Calvary, in the certain
faith of the fulfilment of the promise made to
59
Abraham, that is, through faith in a Saviour known
to them as the Messiah, who is known to us as
Jesus the Christ. Certainly those Gentiles who had
lived and died during the same period, dur-
ing those, to them, dark ages, illuminated by no
light divine, who were as unaware of the need of
a Saviour, as they were of the promise of one,
could hardly be considered as participants ; or there
would have been no difference between Jew and
Gentile. If the heathen world as then constituted
was amenable to any law of God, it was not cut
off from all communion with him. If it was
not amenable to any law of God, it never trans-
gressed any, and so was in an entirely different
position from that of the chosen people; indeed, it
is not possible to discern any means whereby the
heathen of this period or of those periods which
had gone before could have availed themselves of
the benefits of the sacrifice of the cross. Certainly
again, those who failing to see the great difference
between the positions of the Jew and the Gentile,
take upon themselves the sins of which, the Jewish
nation alone was guilty do so gratuitously and un-
asked.
Among these Gentiles there were doubtless many
uncovenanted servants of God, and even inspired
ones ; Balaam and the author of the Book of Job
were undoubtedly inspired, and God did not disdain
to call the founder of the Persian empire "my
servant", but what his manner of dealing with the
vast majority was, we know not, any more than we
know the fate of those unconverted Gentiles who
have lived and died since the day of Calvary or
60
those still living. To put the matter in a brief sen-
tence; The benefit of the sacrifice of Jesus was,
for the Gentiles, altogether PROSPECTIVE; for
the Jews it was altogether RETROSPECTIVE.
For them Jesus was a Ransom, a Sacrifice, a Re-
deemer, the Son of Abraham, the Son of David,
their Messiah, their King, the Corner Stone of a
mighty fabric by them rejected. For us he is a
Saviour, a Mediator, our Prophet, our great High
Priest, our living reigning King, the Good Shep-
herd, the Teacher, our Advocate, the Head of the
Church, the Light of the World, the Prince of
Peace.
CHAPTER X.
"THEN SAID i : 'LO, i COME WITH THE ROLL OF
THE BOOK WHICH IS WRITTEN CONCERN-
ING ME/ PS. X\, 7.
"NOW SPEAKEST THOU PLAINLY".
John xm, 29.
I have considered the story of our Lord's
mission as told by himself, in the form of
a parable ; but the Lord Jesus did not always speak
in parables, and we may now direct our attention
to another explanation of his mission told by him-
self, at an earlier date in plain, undisguised speech.
The first account was intended for the benefit of
"the Chief Priests and the Scribes and Pharisees",
while that which we are now coming to was for the
people at large.
These are the words in which the Lord Jesus
declared the work he came to do :
"The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because
he hath anointed me to preach good tidings to the
poor.
"He hath sent me to heal the broken-hearted;
"To preach deliverance to the captive and re-
covering of sight to the blind ;
"To set at liberty them that are bruised ;
"To preach the ACCEPTABLE YEAR of the
Lord."
62
The occasion of this declaration is related by
the evangelist Luke. The Lord Jesus had come
one Sabbath Day to the city among the hills, where
he had been brought up, and, as his custom was, he
went into the synagogue and taking part in the
public worship stood up to read ; and when the roll
of the book was handed to him he found the place
where the words quoted were written. They are
easily recognizable as the opening verses of the
sixty-first chapter of Isaiah. When he had read
them, he sat down according to the custom of
Jewish teachers when giving instruction and the
eyes of all that were in the synagogue were fastened
upon him. Never before had congregation listened
to such a remarkable exposition of any passage of
scripture as followed, nor ever has it since. "THIS
DAY" said Jesus "is this scripture fulfilled in your
ears", signifying that it was he, Jesus the carpenter,
his auditors' fellow-townsman, whom they all knew
and to whom they were listening, of whom the
prophet Isaiah had spoken 700 years before as the
one anointed to preach the good news of the King-
dom of Heaven and to proclaim the arrival of the
year acceptable to the Lord for the admission of
the Gentiles into fellowship in the Church and the
re-establishment of the covenant relationship be-
tween God and all the peoples of the earth severed
in the time of Abraham, when "all flesh" and
not one nation alone was to see the salvation of
God. Well may our Lord have said : "Your father
Abraham rejoiced to see my day and he saw it and
was glad".
But the prophet was in his own country and his
63
gracious words were not believed. Both he and
his message were there and then rejected and there
was none to do him honor. He may have expected
this or, at least, have been in doubt as to the man-
ner in which his announcement would be received,
for there is much significance in our Lord's leaving
what he did wnread. Had he not closed the book
when he did, he would have read words prophetical,
not of his rejection, but of his acceptance as the
expected Messiah. That congregation would have
learned that the time had arrived when it was within
the power of their nation to cease from being a
nation of vine-dressers and feeders of flocks and
to become a nation of priests, blessed by the Lord,
chosen of him to carry the good news of the King-
dom of Heaven to all people and into all lands.
But he stopped short of this. It may not have
been clear to him that all the prophecy was to be
fulfilled, that the nation would have the wisdom to
seize upon the opportunity offered it ; that the
prophet "clothed with the garments of SALVA-
TION and covered with the robe of RIGHTEOUS-
NESS" would be received in a manner that would
make fulfilment possible, but he read enough to
make clear the announcement that the time at
least had arrived for setting up on earth the King-
dom of Heaven. And this, it had been foretold,
was to be set up, not by means of a tragedy, a revo-
lution, or even by an army composed of legions of
angels, but in a natural order "as the earth bringeth
forth her bud and the garden causeth the things
that are sown in it to spring forth". This kingdom
was to be set up in Jerusalem and the Messiah was
to be its ruler. From Jerusalem was to go forth
to the ends of the earth an army of preachers. One
hundred and twenty thousand priests it has been
computed were available in Judea at this time to
carry the "gospel of peace" to all nations. Did the
Psalmist have in his mind this time, one wonders,
or some other, when he prophesied "The Lord gave
the word : great was the company of those that
published it" ? or Isaiah when he said :
"How beautiful upon the mountains
Are the feet of him that bringeth good tidings,
that publisheth peace;
That bringeth good tidings of good, that publish-
eth salvation ;
That saith unto Zion Thy God reigneth" !
But some 500 years before David and 750 before
Isaiah prophesied, the setting up of this kingdom
had taken a very concrete shape and become the
subject of a solemn compact between God and his
people, attested on behalf of both parties and put
into writing by Moses, the terms of God's part in
it reading :
"If ye will attentively hearken to my voice and keep
my covenant,
You will become to me a choice possession beyond
all people
Though the whole earth is mine;
Yea you will become unto me a KINGDOM of
PRIESTS."
Over this kingdom of priests, a PRIEST KING
was needed to reign, of whom Melchizedek, king
65
and priest of the Most High God, who, bearing
bread and wine, met Abraham returning from the
slaughter of the kings and blessed him, was the
type, "without father, without mother, without
descent, having neither beginning of days, nor end
of life, but made", says the writer of the Epistle
to the Hebrews, "like unto the Son of God". But
unlike his mysterious type, who came we know not
whence and disappeared, as mysteriously as he
came, we know not whither, we know of the Lord
Jesus Christ, both whence he was and whither he
went.
Of the approach of this kingdom, John, the
last of the Hebrew prophets, after a silence of 400
years, was the herald ; when 'John was delivered
up" Jesus himself took up the cry of the Baptist
and the twelve and the seventy were then both very
emphatically charged to proclaim it, and even to
those who would not receive them and the dust of
whose cities they were bade to shake off from their
feet, these were commanded to say "Notwithstand-
ing be ye sure of this, the Kingdom of Heaven is
come nigh unto you".
But the proclamation was unheeded. The golden
opportunity, never to be offered to them again,
was neglected: in rejecting the preacher of right-
eousness, they rejected the kingdom of righteous-
ness. Spiritual pride became the ruin of the na-
tion and prevented the leaders of Jewish society
from recognizing and acknowledging their Messiah
when he was among them. "Have any of the rulers
believed on him?" they asked with scorn. ;< When
the Messiah comes", they no doubt thought, "when
66
the Messiah comes to set up a kingdom", in which
they expected to be the prominent figures, "when
he comes he will not go to the common people first ;
he will present his credentials to the properly con-
stituted guardians of the knowledge of God, the
conservators of the truth, the monopolists of re-
ligion. This 'fellow', who evidently doesn't know
the distinctions of society, who consorts with sin-
ners and calls the spiritual rulers of the people
hypocrites, can never be the man ordained from of
old to drive out our hateful oppressors and set up
a kingdom of his own." And so the kingdom of
which prophets had foretold and poets had sung
was not set up. The "acceptable year" for the pur-
pose was preached throughout the length and
breadth of Judea, but it passed unheeded, by. The
MESSENGER of the COVENANT talked to ears
that would not hear; the bearer of the nation's
pardon was despised and rejected; the long ex-
pected heir was denied his inheritance ; the Son did
not receive from the husbandmen the overdue trib-
ute. Hailed he was "King of the Jews", but in
mockery and derision ; the emblems of royalty were
accorded him in a like spirit ; the royal robe, the
crown, the sceptre and the throne the throne of
the cross. But this was the hour of his enemies
"the power of darkness" ruled and so the Lord
of Life was put to death ; the Light of the Gentiles
was by Gentiles crucified, the Glory of Israel was
by Israelites put to shame. It was not the degrada-
tion of the cross, which he, for the joy that was
set before him, despised, not the nails, not the
thorns, not the derisive jeers of his enemies, nor
the desertion of his friends and kinsmen, which
made applicable the words of the prophet, "Behold
and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sor-
row" ; but the ignominious ending of the most
glorious mission ever undertaken, in preparation
for which two thousand years had been spent in
vain.
CHAPTER XI.
"THESE BE THE DAYS OF VENGEANCE".
Luke xxi, 22.
TTERE the story ends. The sequel is only, in
degree, less tragic. Profane history, silent
about the great things of which the gospel tells,
now has all to say, and sacred history keeps silence.
It may be read with much detail in the pages of the
eye-witness Josephus, the historian Tacitus, and
seen pictured to-day at Rome in the stone of Domi-
tian. The Lord of the Vineyard came, as threat-
ened, and destroyed those wicked husbandmen with
a terrible destruction. The vineyard was taken
from them and given to others. The Kingdom of
God became the inheritance of the Gentiles. The
fif teen-hundred-year-old threat "If ye will not be
reformed by me I will bring a sword upon
you that shall avenge the quarrel of my covenant"
was executed. The sword was the sword of Rome
and its execution was done in the year of our Lord
70. Rome not yet founded, and the walls of
Jerusalem yet to be built, were both within the
vision of that prophet of whom it is said the Lord
spake not in "dark sayings", but mouth to mouth.
His prophetic foresight enabled him to see and
69
describe with a vividness not more than equalled
by those who, 1500 years later, were actual specta-
tors of the desolation wrought, the awful events
which were to take place and the agency by which
they were to be accomplished. 'The Lord" said
Moses "shall bring a nation against thee from far,
from the end of the earth, as swift as the eagle
flieth, whose tongue thou shalt not understand; a
nation of fierce countenance, which shall not regard
the person of the old nor show favor to the young;
* * and he shall besiege thee in all thy gates,
until thy high and fenced walls come down."
At this time the abomination spoken of by
Daniel the prophet stood in the holy place and all
the prophecies concerning the fate of Jerusalem
came to a focus and that great tribulation, prophe-
sied by our Lord, such as was not since the begin-
ning of the world, came upon it. Of the holy
temple, the noblest building of all time, which even
its captors, for the sake of its beauty, desired to
spare, not one stone, as our Lord also foretold, was
left upon another, and the holy city became an un-
inhabitable ruin, bearing witness to the world for-
ever that all things prophesied, concerning her,
were either accomplished or never were to be.
Caught like rats in a trap, the Christians, remem-
bering the words of the Lord, being absent from
the city, the Jews were slain with the sword, and
those, unfit for slavery, who escaped the sword
met the same death they had meted out to their
King. As they had said, so was it done unto them,
"His blood be upon our heads and upon our chil-
dren's." On the road to Calvary Jesus was fol-
70
lowed by many weeping women to whom he turned
and said "Daughters of Jerusalem, weep not for
me, but weep for yourselves and for your chil-
dren", knowing that many yet unborn would pay
a heavy price for that day's wretched work.
Does this terrible vengeance unparalleled in all
history suggest that those things which had been
done in Jerusalem had been foreordained of God?
Is it possible to conceive of a JUST BEING com-
pelling men to commit an act of great atrocity and
then punishing them for committing it?
CHAPTER XII.
"BECAUSE i LIVE YE SHALL LIVE ALSO."
John xiv, ip.
TN giving up their king to the Gentiles to be
crucified, the Jews had done their worst. They
had caused the MESSENGER of THE NEW
COVENANT to be put to death; but they were
powerless to avert the establishment of the cove-
nant he came to inaugurate. Although, as a nation,
the Jews had failed to take advantage of the oc-
casion for which they had been prepared God's
patience was not exhausted but his hand was
stretched out still and the individuals of the nation
were admitted to participation on equal terms with
the Gentiles in the privileges which the nation had
so determinedly rejected, and a respite of nearly 40
years was granted before the great day of his wrath
came upon their city and nation.
In the intervening period between the crucifixion
and the destruction of Jerusalem, the city became
the centre from which Christianity has radiated to
the circumference of the earth. The chosen wit-
nesses of the resurrection had been commanded to
declare that event first in Jerusalem, afterwards
in Judea generally, and then in that strange semi-
Judean country, Samaria.
Thus the Christian Church had its beginning.
72
Not at first were Christians so called, nor at Jerusa-
lem. The first disciples were Jews, but they neces-
sarily worshipped apart from their orthodox
brethren, and so were called a sect a sect, as the
Jews in Rome said, that was "everywhere spoken
against", of course by the orthodox. It was not
till after the destruction of Jerusalem that converts
gave up all Jewish ceremonial.
The message which the chosen witnesses were
charged to proclaim "in Jerusalem and in all Judea
and in Samaria and unto the uttermost part of the
earth" as a fundamental doctrine of a universal
religion, was the Resurrection of Jesus, as an
earnest of the resurrection of all believers to a new
and endless life, to an IMMORTALITY resting
not on the deductions of philosophers, nor on the
inborn instinct or desire of the creature ; but on
the authority of one no less than the Son of God ;
himself to be "the first fruits of them that slept."
Other men at various times have appeared on
earth with Missions to fulfil and charged with
Messages of great importance to the race.
Prophets had brought messages from God to man
"since the world began", but these spake darkly,
because they understood darkly, not knowing,
themselves, the full meaning of their messages ;
but when the greatest revelation of all was to be
made, no mere man was fitted for its declaration,
and God's own Son, furnished with proofs of his
authority and evidence of his power, was charged
with it.
This resurrection truth was the gospel or "good
news" first preached by the apostles, "the resur-
73
rection of the body" made true and good by the
resurrection of Christ's body. The immortality of
the soul, as an abstract question, was not new. It
had been discussed for centuries by both Jew and
Gentile. The story of the coming down of God
from heaven would hardly have seemed marvellous
to either Greek or Roman, for it was a part of their
everyday belief that their gods often visited the
earth and assumed human forms ; at one time, in-
deed, Paul and Barnabas with difficulty restrained
the people of Lystra from offering sacrifice to
them as gods; but that One, crucified, dead and
buried, after lying three days in the grave, had
risen from that grave in verification of a promise of
a similar resurrection to all who should believe in
him, was something, indeed, to enlist the admira-
tion of a world. The long silence of the tomb was
broken, and the voice which came from it said "I
AM the RESURRECTION and the LIFE; he that
believeth on me shall never die."
CHAPTER XIII.
"l WILL POUR OUT MY SPIRIT UPON ALL
FLESH." Joel ii, 28.
CHRISTIANITY is not a theory nor a science,
^ not a system of ethics or of morality; it is
a series of facts. The incarnation is one, the resur-
rection is another; then followed a third event in
the chain of God's goodness, without which the
other two might have remained void of significance
forever, and that was the coming of God in the
person of the HOLY GHOST to dwell with man,
not for a time, but to the end of time. Without
the occurrence of this event, we should not certainly
know the truth of the other two, or, indeed, be
positively assured of anything more than our
senses could teach us of God the Father, God the
Son, or God the Holy Ghost.
The birth of the Lord Jesus established a new
era; the advent of the Holy Ghost created a new
race, a glorified humanity. The progressive animal,
man, had at this time, with God's gracious assist-
ance, raised himself up to an intellectual level be-
yond which further progress in that direction was
not possible, and the time had arrived for him to
be entrusted with greater privileges and a more
75
extended power. The divine or spiritual side of his
nature was now to be taken in hand and developed
as it never had been. Like the resurrection wit-
nessed by Ezekiel in the valley of desolation, a new
life was to be breathed into the dry bones of
humanity. Created in the image of God, man was
now to receive the Spirit of God ; not as the
prophets of old had received it, by a special grant,
but by virtue of a general covenanted right, prom-
ised by the mouth of the holy prophets and con-
firmed by the divine Messenger himself. Since the
time of our Lord, man has shown no intellectual
progress whatever. The intelligence, the genius,
the wisdom and the wit of the men of Greece and
Rome have not since been surpassed ; but since the
appearance of that divine light which Christianity
has shed upon mankind, there has been a progress
of another sort a spiritual advance which has
been felt throughout the world.
The presence of the Holy Spirit distinguishes
Christianity from every other religious system
which has ever existed. The founders of other
religions came and went, and whatever good they
were capable of doing by personal direction ended
with their lives. But the departure of the Lord
Jesus left not his children orphans, nor his Church
without a guide. By the advent of the Holy Spirit
the Christian Church obtained power to become
the religion of humanity and to make of one kin
all the nations of the earth, for the Holy Spirit
is able to occupy the whole world and has, from the
time of the apostles, inspired men to explore its
utmost limits to spread the good news of God.
All other religions have had geographical or politi-
cal limitations, but the religion of Christ is bounded
by neither sea nor land.
"My Kingdom", said Jesus, "is not of this
world," and, truly, it is not : it is in the world, but
not of it. Its members matriculate here, but are
graduated in another world ; they are scattered
throughout the earth and form an organization
within, but independent of, every earthly govern-
ment. The Kingdom of God has neither army nor
navy, and sends no ambassador to represent it at
any earthly court, yet it is the most powerful of all
kingdoms, and against it even hell is powerless.
With the advent of the Holy Spirit, our Lord's
direct work on earth came to an end. Recalling
his work as recorded in the Holy Gospel, we are
reminded that, from the time of his boyhood-days,
when with boyish eagerness he was impatient to be
about his Father's business, to that moment, when
with his expiring breath he said "It is finished",
his work had been altogether for the Jews. But
now "all things concerning him" foretold by Moses
and the prophets and in the Psalms were fulfilled.
The Messenger of the Covenant had delivered his
message. The Messiah had come to be the Jews'
anointed king, to save them from their enemies and
to deliver them from the hands of them that hated
them. But they cared not for his message and
they refused him for their king. Instead, they of-
fered him up, unknowingly, but not less truly, as
an expiatory SACRIFICE for the sins of their
nation.
The door was now open for the admission of
77
the Gentiles into covenant relationship with God,
and they who had never known him were to know
him now through the HOLY SPIRIT, by whom
they were to be taught concerning sin and righteous-
ness and judgment nothing, apparently about ran-
som, redemption or atonement, at least atonement
as theologically explained. Atonement and recon-
ciliation are almost interchangeable terms and the
meaning of both, to the Gentiles, was that they and
their Maker were again in a state of being at-one
at-one-ment.
CHAPTER XIV.
"THE LORD WHOM YE SEEK SHALL SUDDENLY
COME TO HIS TEMPLE, EVEN THE MESSENGER
OF THE COVENANT." Md. Hi, I.
T> 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."
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