or absolute? The consciousness of the one person is a single consciousness. Christ could not at the same time have been conscious of knowing all things and of not knowing all things, of having all power and of not having it, of depending on God for all things and of not depending for anything. One of two things alone is possible. Either Christ was God united with a human soul, or he was a human soul united with God. When Christ uses the personal pronoun "I," he must mean by that "I" either the finite man or the infinite God. I believe the Unitarian is right in saying that this personal pronoun “I” always refers to the finite being and consciousness, and not to the infinite Being. For example: "I am not alone, but I and the Father that sent me." "I proceeded forth and came from God; neither came I of myself, but he sent me." God cannot proceed from God; God cannot send God. Again: "If I honor myself, my honor is nothing; it is my Father that honoreth me." This cannot mean, "If God honors God, his honor is nothing; but it is God that honors him." It must mean that the human being, Christ, receives his honor from the divine Being. This view -that the person of Christ is human, but is intimately united and in perfect union with the indwelling Godmakes all Scripture intelligible. Any other view is either unintelligible or contradictory. This view of the divine. nature of Christ united with the human person, of God dwelling in the flesh, does not confound the mind like the common Trinitarian view, and yet has a value for the heart of paramount importance. If Christ is really a man like ourselves, made in all respects like his brethren, and yet is thus at one with God, thus full of God, it shows us that sin and separation from God are accidental things, and not anything necessary. If Jesus is truly a man, he redeems and exalts humanity. What he has been is a type of what all men may be. Thus the apostle Paul speaks when he says that all things were created in Christ, who is the be

ginning, the first-born from the dead, that he might go before us, or be our leader in all things; which is a much higher view than the common understanding of the passage, which merely supposes him to have been God's instrument in creating the physical universe. He is the image of the invisible God—the first-born of the whole creation. This creation is the new creation that which is intended in Revelation (3:14), where Christ is spoken of as the Amen, the faithful and true Witness, the Beginning of the creation of God, and that which Paul means when he says that in Christ Jesus neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is worth anything, "but the new creation."

All such passages refer, as it seems to us, not to a past natural creation, but to a supernatural creation—a creation of life eternal, which, beginning in Christ, is to embrace the whole of humanity.

§ 6. Errors of Arianism and Naturalism. — And we cannot but think this doctrine far truer, as well as more Orthodox, than the Arianism which so long struggled in the Church for supremacy. That view which supposed that Christ was neither truly man nor truly God, but some high, preexisting being between the two, appears to us to be the falsest and most unsatisfactory of all the doctrines concerning Christ's person. It separates him more entirely from our sympathies than either of the others. It destroys both his divinity and his humanity, and, by giving us something intermediate, gives us really nothing. It makes his apparent human life a delusion, his temptation unreal, his human sympathies and sorrows deceptive. We think, therefore, that the Church was right in rejecting the Arian doctrine.

We think it was also right in rejecting the Humanitarian doctrine, or that of mere Naturalism. Christ was something more than mere man, something more than Moses and Elijah, — something more than a man of great religious genius. The peculiarity of Christ was, that he was chosen

by God's wisdom, and prepared by God's providence, to be the typical man of the race, the God-man, in whom the divine Spirit and human soul become one in a perfect union. He was, perhaps, placed, by an exceptional birth, where the first Adam stood, rescued from inherited depravity, made in the image of God. Then the Spirit was given him without measure. The word of God dwelt in him, and did not merely come to him as a transient influence for a special purpose. Add to this a freely chosen aim of life, and a fidelity which was always about his Father's business, and aiming to finish the work which was given him to do, and we have a being in whom we can see either a manifestation of God or a manifestation of man. The Spirit in Christ was one with God; the soul and body were human.

18*

CHAPTER IX.

JUSTIFICATION BY FAITH.

§ 1. This Doctrine of Paul not obsolete. That portion of the New Testament which speaks so earnestly of justification by faith is by many supposed to have become obsolete for all useful purposes at the present time. The doctrine that 66 we are justified by faith, and not by works," it is supposed, was intended for the benefit of the Jews alone, and to amount to this that admittance to the privileges of the gospel is to be obtained, not by practising the ceremonies and external ritual of the Jewish law, but by a simple belief in Jesus Christ. Accordingly, as no one nowadays endeavors to become a Christian by practising the Jewish ceremonies, we suppose that there is no present need of this doctrine; and when we come upon it in the Scripture, we turn over the pages in search of something more practical and profitable. As, in the book of Acts, we read, that, "when Paul was about to open his mouth, Gallio said unto the Jews, If it were a matter of wrong or wicked lewdness, O Jews, reason would that I should bear with you; but if it be a ques tion of words and names, and of your law, look ye to it; for I will be no judge of such matters," so we, when Paul is about to open his mouth to speak to us of this doctrine, think it a mere question of words and names, and of the Jewish law, and interrupt him to ask him for something practical. If he has anything to say to us of wrong-doing or wicked conduct, it would be reasonable to hear him; but we will be no judge of such matters as this.

There are also many persons, who, while they can under

stand the Gospels and enjoy them, find it difficult to understand and enjoy the writings of the apostle Paul. Among these writings, the most difficult is the Epistle to the Romans, and especially that part of it which treats of this doctrine of justification by faith. Anything which can be done to remove this difficulty will do good; for the writings of Paul are so intimately connected with the rest of the New Testament, that it is not easy to reject them, and yet to believe the rest. It can be done, no doubt; but it is done with dif ficulty. It is as if one part of the foundation of the house had given way: perhaps the house will not fall; but it has become unsafe. It is as if a part of the wall of a city had been battered down: the breach may be defensible from within; but it is also practicable from without. At all events, we miss the satisfaction of a complete faith, perfect and entire, round and full.

Besides, may there not be something important for us to know in this part of the New Testament? Are we quite sure we do not need these very doctrines, and that they will do us good?

We have said that it is sometimes thought that the questions discussed by Paul were only Jewish questions, — not human questions; that they belonged only to that time, not to all time. But, though the form which they assumed was temporary and local, there is reason to believe that the substance of the question is one belonging to human nature in every age; that it is the question of the spirit and the letter, the substance and the form, the root and the branches, the inside of religion and the outside. While contending against a particular Jewish error, the apostle unfolded principles by which similar errors may be opposed and refuted in every age.

At all events, it is a matter of fact, that there seldom has been in the Church any great religious movement which has not immediately gone back to the apostle Paul, and planted