{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_30160/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_30160","id":"gutenberg_30160","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/30160","summary":null,"tags":["Category: Religion/Spirituality","Christianity -- 20th century","Jesus Christ -- Divinity"],"text":"Christ, Christianity and the Bible\n\n\nBY\n\nI. M. HALDEMAN, D.D.\n\nPastor First Baptist Church, New York City\n\n\n_Author of_\n\nHow to Study the Bible, The Coming of Christ, The Signs of the\nTimes, Christian Science in the Light of Holy Scripture, etc., etc.\n\n\nNEW YORK\n\nCHARLES C. COOK\n\n150 Nassau Street\n\n\nCopyright, 1912,\n\nBy Charles C. Cook\n\n\nCONTENTS\n\n\nChrist\n\nChristianity\n\nThe Bible\n\n\n\nChrist\n\n\nIF NOT GOD--NOT GOOD\n\n\nBY I. M. HALDEMAN, D.D.\n\n\n\"Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is God\"\n(Matthew 9:17).\n\n\nTHE world has accepted Jesus Christ as a good man.\n\nThe evidences of his goodness are manifold.\n\nHe was full of compassion.\n\nHe never looked upon the people as a crowd. He never thought of them\nas a mass. He saw them always as individuals. His heart went out to\nthem. All his impulses were to pity them, sympathize with, and help\nthem.\n\nHe went among them. He entered into all conditions, accepted all\nsituations. He was present at a wedding, he ate with publicans and\nsinners and, anon, was guest at a rich man's table.\n\nHe saw the ravages of disease, the shame of sin, the tragedies in\nlife.\n\nHe knew there was torture in body and anguish in spirit.\n\nHe took the mystery of pain and laid it upon his heart, until tears\nwere his meat and his drink, by day and by night. He became a man of\nsorrows and an expert in grief. He took upon him the woes of the\nworld till he was bowed and bent, as with the weight of years. The\ntears of sympathy grooved his cheeks, as when streams carve their\nway down mountain sides. Because of this men looked at him and saw\nneither form nor comeliness; neither was there any beauty in him\nthat they should desire him.\n\nHe was a beneficent man.\n\nMultitudes of men are benevolent, but not beneficent.\n\nBenevolence is well wishing. Beneficence is well doing. He was\nalways well doing, giving sight to the blind, healing the sick,\ncleansing the leper, feeding the hungry, raising the dead, unloosing\nthe bonds of Satan--unwinding the serpent's coil.\n\nHe was absolutely unselfish.\n\nHe emptied himself and made room in his soul for other lives. He had\nno office hours and never interposed secretaries or major-domos\nbetween himself and the people. He received all who came unto him--\nministering without money and without price.\n\nThere is one scene that might well be painted by a master hand.\n\nIt is evening. The western sky is all aglow with the glory of the\nsetting sun. Far up in the dome of the infinite blue, the evening\nstar swings golden, like a slow descending lamp let down by\ninvisible hands. The street is in half-tone. It is packed by the\nstrangest of throngs, by the blind, the lame, the halt, the\nparalyzed and the leper-derelicts of humanity--borne thither on a\nsurging tide of life in which every wave is an accent of pain; they\nare driven and piled up in great, quivering heaps against a door\nwhich is partly shut, as in self-defence, by the sweltering crowd\nwithin.\n\nJesus of Nazareth is in that house.\n\nHe is healing the sick. He is giving health, and strength, and peace\nto all who seek him. He turns no one away. Compassion, sympathy,\nbeneficence, the tenderness of a mother for her helpless babe--these\nare the characteristics which his daily ministry revealed.\n\nNo one ever brought a charge of evil doing or evil speaking against\nhim.\n\nThe people who followed him said, \"He hath done all things well.\"\n\nPolice officers sent to arrest him as a disturber of the peace found\nhim in the midst of the people, speaking words that hushed their\ntumult, quieted their murmurings and gave them rest; and the\nofficers returning to them who sent them, said, \"Never man spake\nlike this man.\"\n\nPilate's wife dreamed a troubled dream of him, and sent word to her\nhusband not to lay hands on him--seeing that he was a just man.\nThrice before heaven and earth--in a testimony that still echoes\nthrough infinite spaces, and is heard by listening worlds--Pilate\nhimself proclaimed, \"I find no fault in this man.\"\n\nHe lifted up his voice against sin and unrighteousness.\n\nAgainst nothing did he so much speak as against religious hypocrisy.\nNowhere, in any record, is language so terrible, so penetrating, so\nhot, so full of the flame of fire and scorching analysis, scorching\nand burning in its denunciation of those who on the outside (in\ntheir religious profession) were like whitened sepulchres, but on\nthe inside (in their actual lives) were full of dead men's bones and\ncorruption--nowhere, outside the twenty-third chapter of Matthew,\ndoes language fall with such tremendous vibration of thunderous\nindignation, and the accent of aroused and fully angered justice.\n\"Ye serpents,\" \"ye generation of vipers,\" are some of the phrases;\nand the words, \"fools,\" \"blind hypocrites,\" mingle again and again\nwith the far-sounding, judicial menace, \"Woe, woe unto you.\"\n\nHe seemed to be dominated and controlled by one idea--the idea of\nGod. The God thought held and moved him. He could not go anywhere,\nor see anything, or utter the shortest discourse, that he did not,\nin some fashion, connect it with the infinite Father. Was a sower\nsowing seed, he saw in that incident an illustration of the fact\nthat the true seed is the Word of God, and the true sower he who\ncasts it into the mightier ground of the human heart. Did a flock of\nsheep lie at rest upon the hillside, guarded by a shepherd's care,\nat once he would unfold the shepherding of a Father's love. A tiny\nsparrow, flying an unnoticed speck in the distant sky, or falling\nground-ward with its weary flight, was a winged witness that the\nFather knew and saw even the smallest details of human life. A lily\nin its lowliness, and yet a lily in its beauty shaming a king's\narray, a lily, toiling not, but upward growing, furnished him a text\nfrom which to preach the providence of God; and a wandering beggar\nboy far away from home and kindred, stained with sin and dark with\nsorrow, gave occasion for the wondrous story of the Prodigal Son and\na father's changeless and tender love.\n\nGod! God! God! this was the supreme note of his life.\n\nOn the cross he gave utterance to words which reveal the inner\ncharacter of his soul.\n\nWhen a man has been lied about, falsified, his good evil spoken of\nand his reputation assailed (as was his before the Sanhedrin--in the\nmock trial given him there), when such a man has been hounded from\none end of the town to the other, spit upon and jibed at and,\nfinally, nailed through hands and feet to a torturing cross; when\nsuch a man with his heart bursting (because of the impeded\ncirculation, driving the surging, tumultuous blood back upon it),\nwith the sun scorching his bare temples, a crown of thorns stabbing\nhim at every helpless turn of his restless head; when such a man,\nunder such circumstances, can rise above the wickedness, cowardice\nand cheap treason that have nailed him to the cross, and pray (and\npray sincerely) that his guilty murderers, villainous detractors and\nunscrupulous slanderers may be forgiven, that man bears witness that\nhe has, at least, a heart of good.\n\nAnd it was just such a prayer which came from the parched, dry,\ncracked lips of this man of Nazareth as he hung upon the cross and\ncried out,\n\n\"Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.\"\n\nAgain he spoke from the cross.\n\nThere was standing near, a woman who had been chosen of God to give\nhim birth. She was sobbing convulsively. She was realizing what had\nbeen foretold of her more than thirty years before--\"a sword shall\npierce through thy own soul, also.\" Mary, the mother of Jesus, stood\nthere, brokenhearted. Jesus turned his head and looked at John, his\ncousin, bidding him take that weeping mother to his home, his heart\nand care, and be unto her henceforth a loving son.\n\nO the man who, in the hour of his own agony, shall remember his\nmother, and crown her, make her the queen of his life, and ordain\nthat others shall love and reverence her, proclaims for himself the\nlustre of a manhood without spot.\n\nOnce more he spoke from the place of anguish--that moment on the\nedge of death. There his soul, rising from the depths of the\noverwhelming waves of agony, cries:\n\n\"Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit.\"\n\nHe who in the hour and article of death can face God and eternity,\nand commit himself to the hand of supreme justice as a confident\nchild to the arms of a loving father, bears witness that in his soul\nthere is no ghastly memory of sin, no sharp, remembered pang, no\nfear of offended law. Such a confidence and such a committal of\ntriumphant calm bear witness that the heart is at rest with God, and\nis conscious of its own good.\n\nFor two thousand years the world, without a dissenting voice, has\nborne witness that he is the one man who came into the earth and\nwalked through it superlatively good.\n\nAmong the voices in the common consent of the world that Jesus\nChrist was a good man, there are those who with equal insistence\ndeny that he was Almighty God.\n\nThey agree that he had the spirit of God; that he had it in measure\nsuch as no other man before or since. They announce their belief\nthat he is the mightiest advance on humanity ever known; that all\nother religious teachers pale before him as the stars before the\nsun. They speak of his spotless life with fervent admiration, and\ndraw special attention to his discourses as models of exhortation to\nrighteousness and truth. To them the sermon on the mount is a _chef\nd'oeuvre_. Out of that sermon they take the maxim about doing unto\nothers as you would they should do unto you. They take that maxim\nand frame it about and make it the \"Golden Rule\" of human life. They\nexalt Jesus as the perfect example, telling us that if we shall\ngovern our life by him, make him our constant copy, imitate him, we\nshall fill our daily existence with righteousness and truth. In\nfact, if we seek a panegyric on the humanity of Christ; if we desire\nto see his goodness exalted to the heavens, and his humanity put\nbeyond compare with the sons of men--we must needs go to the\nSocinian, the Arian and the Unitarian--those who deny the deity of\nChrist. But this exaltation of the human Christ is simply setting up\na man of straw that with one blow of deific discount he may be\nknocked down again. He is set up as man that he may be cast down as\nGod.\n\nThey will not accept him as God.\n\nGod Almighty (we are told) cannot be confined or shut up in any one\nman. Man as man and, therefore, every individual man in his part, is\nthe avatar of God. Each man is in some sense the incarnation of God.\nGod is more or less enthroned in all men. God is to be found in all\nmen as he is to be found in all nature.\n\nA good man--call Jesus a good man--set him up as high as you please,\nbuild as lofty a pedestal for him as you will, but Almighty God--\n_Never!_\n\nOver against this exaltation of Christ as a merely good man, and the\npersistent denial that he was God, stands the unmistakable claim\nwhich Jesus Christ himself made--that he was God.\n\nHe made that claim in many ways.\n\nHe claimed it by declaring his power and authority to forgive sin.\n\nThat was a striking moment when he proclaimed it for the first time.\nFour men had brought a paralytic to the house where he was\npreaching. When they could not get in because of the crowd, they\nclimbed up on the roof, took off some of the tiling, and by means of\nropes or corners of the mattress let the man down to the very feet\nof Jesus. When he saw _their_ faith, he turned to the sick man and\nsaid, \"Son (son of Abraham), thy sins are forgiven thee.\"\n\nAt once there was an uproar. The leading men, sitting round and\nwatching him, burst out with a protest, charging him with blasphemy,\nsaying that God only could forgive sin.\n\nAnd they were right.\n\nNo mere man can forgive sin. Again and again the Scriptures teach us\nthat forgiveness is with God that he may be feared.\n\nIn announcing the man's sins forgiven, Jesus clearly claimed the\nprerogative, power and authority, which belong to God.\n\nHe claimed this equality by declaring himself to be the Son of God.\nTo the Jews, \"Son of God\" was equivalent to \"God the Son.\" It meant\nto them, the moment he styled himself by that name, an unqualified\nclaim to essential equality with the Father. Because of this they\nraged against him and would have killed him, crying out that he had\nmade himself equal with God.\n\nHe made this claim in terms which admit of no misunderstanding. He\nsaid:\n\n\"I and my Father are one.\"\n\nWhen Philip said, \"Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us,\" he\nanswered and said:\n\n\"Hast thou been with me so long time and hast thou not known me,\nPhilip? From henceforth ye know him and have seen him.\"\n\nTo Philip he had also said:\n\n\"I am the way and the truth and the life--no man cometh unto the\nFather but by me.\"\n\nBy this statement he deliberately shut out all other men as the\nground and means of approach to God. He declares that God, the\nFather, can be found in and through him alone; that he is the\nsupreme way, the very truth and the very life; not that he knows\nsome truth and has a measure of life in common with men, but that he\nis _the_ truth--the _absolute_ life. Such attitude, such claimed\nrights, privileges and powers, belong alone to God.\n\nBut he goes beyond this.\n\nHe testifies that he has been from all eternity the manifestation of\nthe very selfhood of the Father. Hear what he says:\n\n\"And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the\nglory which I had with thee before the world was.\"\n\nHe traces his personality backward beyond the hour when the world\nwas launched into space, before the stellar systems were created. He\ngoes beyond time, he takes us into eternity, and in that unbegun and\nmeasureless distance declares with all the calm assurance of\naccustomed truthfulness that he had the glory, the visibility, the\noutward manifestation and splendor of the Father's own essential\nselfhood; that his relation to him was that of one who was from all\neternity his determination, definition and utterance.\n\nSuch claims as these are the claims of one who declares himself to\nbe, and without restraint, nothing less than Almighty God.\n\nOn one occasion when talking to the Jews he said that Abraham had\nrejoiced to see his day, had seen it and was glad. They turned upon\nhim and reminded him that he was not yet fifty years old, how then\ncould he have seen Abraham, or Abraham him--that Abraham who had\nbeen dead nearly two thousand years?\n\nHe faced them and said:\n\n\"Verily, verily I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am.\"\n\nThe striking thing in the statement is not the claim of pre\n-existence--great as that is--not that he claimed to have been in\nexistence already--not fifty years merely, but two thousand--no! all\nthese utterances are remarkable enough, but these are not the\nastounding thing he said. The astounding, the unspeakably\nextraordinary thing he said is found in just two words:\n\n\"I am.\"\n\nThere is one place in Holy Scripture where this phrase is supremely\nused. In the third chapter of the book of Exodus it is recorded that\nGod manifested himself to Moses at the burning bush, and there\ndeclared himself to be the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the\nGod of Jacob. He commanded Moses to return to Egypt, appear before\nPharaoh and demand the release of the Children of Israel from their\ncruel bondage; and when Moses inquired by what name he should speak\nto the people, he answered:\n\n\"Say unto them, I AM hath sent me unto you.\"\n\n\"I AM.\"\n\nTo the Jew these two words set forth the supreme name and title of\nthe eternal God.\n\nIn saying, therefore, \"Before Abraham was--I AM,\" Jesus announced\nhimself to be the eternal, self-centred, supreme being, Almighty\nGod. When he said this, and because they understood him, because\nthey knew exactly what he meant by these words, the Jews took up\nstones to stone him.\n\nIf I were seeking to demonstrate by object lesson, and in a fashion\nthat would admit of no reply, that Jesus claimed to be Almighty God,\nI would summon the mightiest and most masterful artist the world\nknows to come and paint for me the scene which takes place a little\nlater as a consequence of that moment when he emphasizes his claim\nby saying:\n\n\"I and my Father are ONE.\"\n\nThe picture would represent a great crowd of scowling, fierce, angry\nJews, their hands filled with stones--some of them drawn back, the\nwhole figure intense with readiness to cast the fatal stone--and\nJesus, standing a little distance apart, looking calmly on.\n\nUnderneath the picture I would have written in great golden letters\n(letters so artistic, so startling, so wonderful in form, that at\nthe risk of art itself--almost at the risk of minimizing the picture\nat the first glance, subordinating it to interest in the letters and\ndividing the mind of the onlooker between the actual scene and the\nletters themselves)--I would have written in letters that should\nsmite the eye and the innermost thinking of the beholder, the words\nrecorded in the tenth chapter of John's Gospel, given by the Jews in\nreply to the demand of Jesus when, speaking with amazement, he asks,\n\"For what good work do ye stone me?\" I would have every gazer at the\npicture read these words till they rose up in vastness against him,\nsmiting his attention as the very stones in the hands of the Jews--\nthese words:\n\n\"For a good work we stone thee not but for blasphemy; and because\nthat thou BEING A MAN MAKEST THYSELF GOD.\"\n\nThe Jews were not deceived.\n\nThey knew what he had done.\n\nThey knew that he claimed to be no less than very God himself.\n\nThere can be no doubt that he claimed to be God.\n\nThere need be, really, no discussion about it.\n\nThe New Testament records the claim.\n\nI am not making any issue as to whether the New Testament is true,\nor reliable. I am saying thus far, only, that the New Testament (the\nGospels of the New Testament), in language concerning which there\ncan be no possible mistake or even ground for misinterpretation,\nrecords the fact that Jesus Christ did claim to be Almighty God.\n\nIf Jesus Christ were not Almighty God (as he claimed to be) he was\nnot a good man (as it is said he was).\n\nThe proposition ought to be self-evident.\n\nNo mere man can claim to be God and be good.\n\nHe who, as mere man, claims to be God, robs God of the glory that is\nexclusively his.\n\nHe who thus claims to be God, and bids men go into eternity trusting\nhim as God, is a deceiver.\n\nNo man who robs God of equality, and who deceives men into believing\nthat he is God, can be good--he is a wicked and blasphemous\ndeceiver.\n\nThere is only one way in which the character of Jesus Christ can be\nsaved on this claim of his to be God--if that claim were not true.\n\nIt can be saved only by assuming that he was self-deceived; that he\nsincerely believed himself to be God, but was blinded and held fast\nby his own mistaken concept.\n\nBut the man who claims to be Almighty God, and claims it as he did,\ncan be self-deceived only when he is a mental weakling, unbalanced\nin mind, or absolutely insane.\n\nNone of these things can be predicated of Jesus Christ.\n\nOn the contrary, he was the most intellectual man the world has ever\nknown.\n\nMark how he met the wisdom and the genius of the men who surrounded\nhim. Again and again they came to him with crafty and perplexing\nquestions. With a word he solved their problems, flashed truth into\ntheir shame-smitten faces, and silenced them. In all the universe\nthere is no soul meaner, more contemptible, more cowardly, and\nutterly lost to every sense of decent manhood than the man who, for\nthe sake of entangling a good man in his speech, asks him questions\nin public, before an audience ready at every turn to misquote and\nmisinterpret his slightest utterance; and that is what they did.\nThey came to him, not with the desire to know the truth, but to\nconfound him, cast him down and destroy his prestige with the\npeople. To every question he gave an answer having in it spiritual\ntruth, but bearing the unmistakable stamp of rare wisdom and\nintellectual superiority.\n\nHis words, the simple speech he used in the midst of them, or alone\nwith his disciples, have been the impulse of the mightiest\nintellectual activity the world has ever known. Out of his words\nhave grown systems of theology that may well call for all there is\nof brain power and capacity in those who study them. Here are to be\nfound the keenest speculations and the farthest outreach of\nmetaphysical suggestion and the most detailed analysis of which the\nhuman mind is capable. Book after book, treatise after treatise,\ndiscourse after discourse, have been produced out of the simplest\nand most detached things he said. No man can read his speeches and\nnot find the mind stimulated, shocked, quickened and impelled\nforward even upon the most daring lines of thought.\n\nIt would be easy to call the roll of the princes and kings in the\nrealm of intellect, men whose thoughts burn and flame like great\nquenchless lights; men whose minds are the storehouses of knowledge,\nand whose utterances by word and pen have moved the quickest and\nmost forceful lives in the world. It would be easy to call the long\nroll of these names shining like stars and constellations in the\nfirmament of thought--princes and kings of intellect who acknowledge\nthat Jesus Christ is not only superior to them morally and\nspiritually, but intellectually.\n\nWhat man is there to-day with any degree of mental self-respect who\nwould dare to stand up and assert himself the equal of Jesus Christ\nintellectually?\n\nWithout necessity of demonstration, it ought to be a truth beyond\nquestion that Jesus Christ was the most intellectual man the world\nhas ever known.\n\nSuch a man as that could not be self-deceived.\n\nIf he were not Almighty God he knew it.\n\nHe knew it as well as these good Unitarians, and these wondrously\nadvanced scholars who cannot get beyond the glamour of his humanity.\n\nHe knew it at first hands.\n\nIf he were not Almighty God--if he were only a man--he knew it, knew\nit through and through, in every fibre of his being.\n\nThere is no possibility then whatever for him to have been deceived.\n\nIf he were not deceived, if he knew he was not God, then--\n\nHE WAS NOT A GOOD MAN.\n\nThis is his own argument:\n\nA young man came to him and said, \"Good Master, what good thing\nshall I do, that I may inherit eternal life? and he said unto him,\nWhy callest thou me good? there is none good _but one, that is\nGod_.\"\n\nThe argument is simple enough.\n\n\"You call me good. God alone is good. If I am not God, I am not\ngood.\"\n\nNot good!\n\nNay! If he were not God, he was the most wantonly wicked man of whom\nI ever heard.\n\nIf he were not God, not only does disaster fall upon himself in the\ntotal destruction of his character, and in the consequent and final\ndriving of him from the suffrage and consideration of men, but the\ndisaster falls upon all who have put their faith in him.\n\nIf Jesus Christ were not God, then he never forgave the sins of a\nsingle soul, and all those throughout the two thousand years who\nhave gone into eternity trusting in his name have gone into that\neternity unforgiven and unshrived of God.\n\nIf Jesus Christ were not God, then he has not forgiven the sin of a\nsingle human being alive to-day.\n\nYou had sinned! There were memories of the sins you had committed.\nThey allowed you no rest. They gave you anguish of mind. Others\ncould not forgive you. You could not forgive yourself. The\nconsciousness that you stood naked before the all-seeing eye of a\nholy God; that he knew the circumstances and every detail thereof,\ndown to the very intents and purposes lying behind your deeds, and\neven your thoughts; that he looked into and saw all that was in your\nheart; in the consciousness growing clearer and stronger and more\nterrible each day that you had no excuse, no place that you could\nhold for a moment; that if he summoned you to his presence, you\nwould stand in the white light of his unmixed holiness, and the\ninexorable and unrelenting wrath of his essential antagonism and\njust hatred against sin; all this consciousness taking voice in you\nand through you, cried out in your soul, \"I am guilty and undone.\"\nAnd this filled you with a horror of great darkness and the utter\nblackness of a hopeless despair. Then you heard the voice of Jesus\nChrist saying, \"Come unto me.\" \"Him that cometh unto me I will in no\nwise cast out.\" You came. You fell at his feet. You owned his death\nas your atoning sacrifice. You claimed him as your substitute. You\nclaimed forgiveness through his blood. He said to you, as he said to\nthe paralytic, \"Thy sins are forgiven thee.\" You rose and went away\nas when one is released from a galling chain; as when a burden that\nwas crushing to earth has been lifted from the sore, bleeding\nshoulder; as when one who has been tossed on a midnight sea enters\nthe haven while the dawn is breaking, casts anchor and touches\nshore. For years you have had peace. The memory of your sins are\nthere (for though God when he forgives forgets them, you cannot).\nLike David, perhaps, you cry, \"My sin is ever before me!\" The sin\nmarks are there as the nail holes in the wall, but you have been\nable to look at them and have peace because you have said to\nyourself, \"I am not an unwhipped of justice, my sins have been\npunished in my substitute; they have been fully answered for in his\nblood. He has forgiven me and justified me and made me clean. In him\nI stand clothed in the very 'righteousness of God.' I hate my sin\nand despise it for what it is in itself, for what it made him, my\nredeemer, to endure, but I have peace because he has fully satisfied\nin my behalf. I have actually satisfied in him and am delivered\nbefore God's court of holiness both from the guilt and the demerit\nof sin. I have, in short, _gone through the judgment with Christ on\nthe cross_. He has pronounced forgiveness--absolution--upon me, and\nhe has done so by virtue of his power and authority as the living\none in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily--as my\nsaviour and my God he has forgiven me and I am at peace.\"\n\nAll this you have said within yourself and testified.\n\nBut I ask you now to face the terrible fact--if Jesus Christ were\nnot God--this terrible fact--that you have been deceived.\n\nYou have had a false peace.\n\nYou have been living in a fool's paradise.\n\nYou are before God an unpardoned and as yet unpunished criminal\nawaiting your doom. All this is absolutely your state--\n\nIF--\n\nIf Jesus Christ were not Almighty God.\n\nIf Jesus Christ were not Almighty God, he had no authority nor power\nto forgive your sins. NO! And if Jesus Christ were not God I know\nnot where to bid you turn. You must carry the load of your sins all\nyour days; and when you die, go into eternity and face a holy God\nwho tells you by every law and fact of nature that he never forgives\nin a single case till he has first punished the sin and with it the\nsinner.\n\nIf Jesus Christ were not God, his death was not an atonement.\n\nAnd this surely should be plain enough.\n\nOnly God can atone to God.\n\nOnly an infinite being can satisfy an infinite being.\n\nIf Jesus Christ were not God he could not make an atonement.\n\nIf he did not make an atonement, then the world has never been\nreconciled to God nor brought up on mercy ground. Instead of being\nlifted up to the plane of grace and mercy, the world is still under\nthe condemnation and judgment of God, no longer under a suspended\nsentence, but sheer and defenceless, with nothing to hinder the\ncrash of doom at any moment.\n\nThere is no hope. There is no daysman. There is no one to offer unto\nGod what he demands, and unto man what he needs. There is no\nmediator between a holy God and a sinful man.\n\nIf Jesus Christ were not God, then he did not rise from the dead. He\ndid not bring life and immortality to light, and, as for me, the\npreacher, I have no light to hold out to you in the all-embracing\ngloom and night of death.\n\nThere is no hope.\n\nIf a man shall tell me there is no hereafter, that death ends all, I\nshall take up the law of induction and argue him to a standstill\nalong the line of unfathomable mysteries and inexplicable\npsychological phenomena in the constitution of man, and the\ninexplicable absence of the phenomena in the state of death,\ninexplicable upon any known materialistic ground, and I shall laugh\nat his inability to maintain his thesis beyond the poor shred of a\nhypothesis. If a man shall tell me as the result of pure reasoning\nthat he concludes for the endless existence of the soul after death,\nand shall do this even upon the plane of induction, I shall turn and\ntell him that all his argument is based upon inference and not fact,\nfinding its largest emphasis in the region of the unknowable and\nguessable--in the things he cannot explain, where certain\nconclusions can neither be successfully affirmed, nor successfully\ndenied, and where, by consequence, he may console himself, if he\nwish, with his side of the guess; and I shall feel a keen sense of\nsorrow at his inability to hold his premise in the final region of\nthe sure.\n\nAnd what does all this mean?\n\nIs it playing fast and loose with the mind? Am I turning in upon\nmyself and playing the mere harlequin in the arena of mental\ngymnastics?\n\nNo! there is sane meaning to this double method--it is this: _as\nmuch may be said along one line of reasoning as the other_. Each is\na _non-sequitur_ to the other. Each negatives the other and leaves\nus with reason's torch inverted--the light out, the darkness deeper\nthan ever; and standing on the threshold of the grave we are forced\nto cry out in the sharp agony of a continual self-smiting\nperplexity:\n\n\"To be or not to be--_that is the question_.\"\n\nQuestion it is--always a question--always coming back from the side\nof every dead body--always coming back from the clod-filled grave--\ncoming down from age to age, coming back a question no man, not the\nwisest mere man who ever lived, could answer, or any living wise man\ncan answer to-day.\n\nIf Jesus Christ were not God it cannot be answered; for if Jesus\nChrist were not God, he did not rise from the dead and by divine\npower carry himself out of the region of death forever.\n\nIf Jesus Christ were not God, you may go and sit by the tomb of your\ndead and weep bitter (because hopeless) tears.\n\nIf Jesus Christ were not God, then he was not a redeemer and\nsaviour. All the beautiful things that have been taught about him as\nsuch are false. All the hopes of heaven, the beauty of the celestial\ncity, the tree of life, the river of crystal, the company of the\nsaints, the arch-angelic song, the meeting and the knowing of those\nwho long ago have left us--none of these things are so.\n\nIf he were not God, then it is not true that he sits upon the\nthrone, high and lifted up, listening to the plaints of the weakest\nheart that shall trust him, and hearing the sound of every falling\ntear.\n\nIf Jesus Christ be not God, then the whole system of Christianity\nbuilt upon his person and work falls to the ground, is broken into\nfragments, and like wind-swept dust can never be gathered.\n\nIf Jesus Christ be not God, the New Testament record of him is\nuntrue. The New Testament impeached in its prime particular becomes\na worthless book--a book full of exhortations to holiness and truth,\nin the name of him who is proven to be (if he ever lived at all) a\nblasphemer, a deceiver of men and the concrete of human wickedness.\nIf the New Testament is not true, neither is the Old; for the Old\nTestament finds its meaning and value only in the Christ of the New\nTestament. Take Jesus Christ out of the Old Testament (which you\nmust do if you set aside the New; for he alone fulfils the types,\nthe symbols and the prophecies of the Old Testament; he alone makes\nits testimony and history intelligible; he alone gives unity,\nharmony and authoritative meaning to its exhortations)--take Christ\nout of the Old Testament and you take away its one and only key.\n\nAnd mark you--when _Christ goes out of the Bible as God--God goes\nout of the Bible_. The deity which has preserved it, the power which\nhas made it living and unchangeable in the midst of change and\ndeath, will have been dethroned.\n\nWithout Christ as God you are without any sane and satisfying\nknowledge of God.\n\nWhere will you turn to find God and know him to your comfort? You\nmight as well look into the bottomless pit as into your own heart.\n\nNo more satisfactory will it be to look into the heart of others. We\nare all built on the same plan.\n\nThe difference is only in degree or extension.\n\nThe basilar fact is, God cannot be found in any natural man.\n\nYou cannot find or know him to your heart's content in nature.\n\nWhat kind of a God does nature reveal to you?\n\nI will answer for you--a God who puts you in this world and does not\ntell you whence you come, whether from the all mud or the Almighty,\nfrom an angel or a devil, from jelly or genius, from the heights of\nheaven or the depths of hell. A God who puts you here and fills you\nwith questions he alone can answer and--refuses so to do. A God who\ncalls you into the world and gives you eyes to see everything but\nyourself. A God who hides you from yourself, so that you do not know\nwhether you are a function or a soul; whether you are matter or\nspirit; whether you are a personality or a cellular part of a\ngeneral whole--called man. A God who gave you mind with seemingly\ninfinite possibilities in thought, and gave you a body that is\nfinite and temporary in construction. A God who gives you an\nintellect which grasps after eternity, and is always saying on the\nsummit of any endeavor achieved, \"What next?\" and yet is limited to\na few inconsequent years. A God who sets you face to face with the\nimminency of death, and never allows you to know at what moment you\nmust go, and gives you no hint of the beyond--or whether there is a\nbeyond.\n\nIn France they do not tell the man who is to be guillotined till a\nfew moments before the fatal hour. He is sleeping on his couch. He\nis dreaming of pleasant fields, of running streams, of boyhood's\ndays, of to-morrows that shall be better--a heavy hand is laid on\nhis shoulder--he starts up in bed--the gray light of early morning\nis filtering in through the barred window of his cell--stern-faced\nmen are standing before him--they say, \"Your hour is come; follow\nus.\"\n\nIt is terrific.\n\nBut this is the case of every human being.\n\nNo one can tell when the summons may come--or where.\n\nA man was sitting in his room at close of day. It had been (so he\nsaid) the best day of his life. He had said to his wife that he\nnever loved her more than he did then (and they had been married\nmany years), never did he feel more content that they had chosen to\nwalk together through life than then. He was full of plans for\nhimself and for her (saying with great earnestness that their last\ndays should be their best days). She answered back that she was glad\nwith a great gladness that it was so. She turned away for a moment\nto glance in another direction, still speaking to him. When she\nlooked back he was gone--gone while the love words and the hope\nwords were still on his lips--the finger of death had touched his\nheart--a voice had whispered in his ear, \"Come.\" There was only a\nlifeless bit of clay where a moment before had been a body pulsing\nwith life, with love, with hope.\n\nIt is terrific--doomed--and not knowing how soon the bolt will\nstrike. What sort of a God is this who laces your body with a\nnetwork of laws, the breaking of the slightest of which--all unknown\nto you--may send you forth upon a path of diseased and tortured\nexistence--in which the body from whence you cannot escape shall be\nto you as a chamber of horrors--a place of the thumbscrew, the rack\nand the fagot. What kind of a God is that who allows the aged to\nlinger out in a miserable prolongation of wretched days, a burden to\nthemselves, a burden to others, and takes away the widow's only son\n--her only support? Who is the God who creates one man with all the\nequipment for life, and another man with all the lack of it? What\nkind of a God is this who looks down out of the heaven of day and\nthe heavens of night, and sees all the sorrow, the anguish, the\npain, the unspeakable tragedies, and sends no wing of angel to\ncleave the pitiless sky, no voice out of the silence to console, no\nhand to help?\n\nWhat man is there of you, if he had the power, would not banish\nsickness, sorrow, pain and death?\n\nWhat man is there of you who, if he could, would not make every\nhuman being well and happy?\n\nWhat then? What is the conclusion of the matter concerning you?\nSimple enough--you have _the heart to do it, but not the power_.\n\nWhat is the conclusion concerning this God of nature? _He has the\npower--but does not manifest the heart_.\n\nWhat will you say of this God of nature in such a scheme?\n\nWhat can you say but that your heart is better than the heart of the\nGod which nature reveals?\n\nCan you hear, understand and love a God like that?\n\nCan you climb through nature up to nature's God and say, \"I have\nfound him, I know him?\"\n\nYou can climb up, but where will you find him?\n\nYou will find him wrapped in the black thundercloud or girded with\nthe robe of the lightnings: You will find him the God who splits the\nearth in twain with the earthquake's riving blow, loosens the bands\nof the sea, sends tidal waves in surges of destruction, pours out\nthe lava streams from the volcano's cone, as kings pour wine from an\nearthen cup, spilling the wine and breaking the cup; the God who\nturns an earthly paradise (like Messina) into a fire-smitten desert,\nand a city of the living into a cemetery of the unburied dead.\n\nWhen your heart aches, will such a God care for you? Will his\nthunders console you? When your soul is dark, will his lightnings\nillumine it? When you yearn for love, will his inexorable law supply\nit?\n\nAh, sirs, without Christ you are without a God whom you can love,\nwhom you can trust, to whom you can go, and in whose strength you\ncan lie down and--at last--be folded in peace.\n\nIf Jesus Christ is not God, if the only God to whom you can go is\nthe God of nature, then you might as well fall down in the sand at\nthe base of the far Egyptian sphinx, open your eyes for a moment to\nthe blue sky that spreads away to the horizon before its staring\nface, its cold, chiselled, inscrutable smile, and the next moment\nshut your eyes against the pelting dust the idle winds blow thither.\n\nAh! Nature is a sand-dune--and the God of nature is a Sphynx.\n\nDo you care to kneel and worship there?\n\nIf Jesus Christ be not God the disaster is not alone to him, but to\nyou--to me.\n\nIf he were not God, then we are in a world where the very day is no\nbetter or brighter than a starless midnight.\n\nIf Jesus Christ were a good man, a supremely good man and a\nsupremely intellectual man, then he was and is (as he claimed)\nAlmighty God.\n\nThe New Testament says he was a supremely good, and a supremely\nintellectual man.\n\nFor two thousand years the most brilliant men in the world have\ncorroborated this record by freely testifying that Jesus Christ was\na supremely good and a supremely intellectual man; all this being\nso, I change the conditional form of the proposition to the\nindicative and declarative and now say:\n\nSince Jesus Christ was a supremely good and a supremely intellectual\nman, he was, therefore (as he claimed), Almighty God.\n\nHe could not be a supremely good and a supremely intellectual man\nand claim to be God unless he were God.\n\nSince he claimed to be God, therefore, he was God.\n\nYes; he was God.\n\nThe evidences are manifold.\n\nHe was _sinless_.\n\nHe said:\n\n\"Which of you convinceth me of sin?\"\n\nFor two thousand years he has been in the concentrated light of a\nhostile world's merciless investigation. The light has been turned\non the land in which he lived. Every rod of ground over which he\ntravelled has been dug up, or surveyed, or trodden. His words have\nbeen weighed, balanced to a nicety against any probability of error,\nmistake, imagination, fancy or misquotation. His words have been\nsplit open as men break open rocks. All the contents of his words\nhave been put in the crucible of criticism. Every thought has been\ninsistently and unsentimentally assayed for, even, the suspicion or\nthe slightest hint of an alloy. His teachings have been chemically\ndissolved and turned into their component parts. The saline base of\ntruth has been sought for at any risk to the compounded speech he\nmade.\n\nAnd after all! not one self-respecting, authoritative lip has\nuttered a charge against him.\n\nIn the hush of a world that cannot even murmur, he steps forward and\nonce more rings down his challenge:\n\n\"Which of you convinceth me of sin?\"\n\nHe stands out among his fellows as a white shaft under a starless\nmidnight. He rises above the passions of men as an unshaken rock in\nthe midst of a wild, lashed sea. He is to man's best character as\nharmony is to discord, as a smile is to a frown, as love is to hate,\nas blessing is to cursing, as a garden of lilies to a desert of\nsand, as heaven is to earth, as holiness is to sin and as life to\ndeath.\n\nIf he were sinless, he was _absolutely holy_; he was so holy that\nhis very presence brought out the sin in others. Sinful men and\nwomen fell at his feet and confessed their sins. At sight of him\ndemons tore their way out of the bodies they possessed and fled as\nclouds of darkness before the sun, crying as they fled, \"Thou art\nthe holy one of God--hast thou come to torment us before the time?\"\nTormented as they were even then, as sin always is when confronted\nby holiness; as vice is before virtue; as a lie is before the truth.\n\nHe was sinless.\n\nHe was holy.\n\nHis sinlessness and holiness cannot be accounted for on natural\ngrounds.\n\nAll his natural ancestry were sinful.\n\nHis sinlessness cannot be accounted for unless he were God; for,\nsinlessness and holiness come alone from God and, as essential\nqualities, take their rise alone in God.\n\nHis power over nature proved him God.\n\nHis look changed water into wine, his word gave sight to the blind,\nhealing to the deaf, speech to the dumb. At his word the lame man\nleaped as a hart, the leper was cleansed. He said, \"Peace, be\nstill,\" and the wild tempest of the sea was hushed, and there was a\ngreat calm, a calm like unto the stillness of the unruffled rest of\nGod.\n\nFor two thousand years his regenerative power in a world of sin has\nbeen the proof that he was God.\n\nFor two thousand years, in every age, in every clime, among all\nclasses of men, from the refined infidel to the vilest sinner, from\nthe cold atheist to the brutal idolater, men have been changed--\ntransformed. Men who have been the bond slaves of passion, whose\ndaily lives have been the output of iniquity, whose deeds have been\nfor destruction, whose words have been poison, and whose inmost\nthoughts have been as the vapors of miasma--these all--have been\ntransformed into fountains of purity, into angels of mercy, or as\nilluminated missals have been written full of the name and the glory\nof God; men whose every fibre was as the coarse and tangled threads\nof a brutal unrefinement have become men whose every line of\ncharacter was as the woven gold of Ophir--and the speech that once\nsmote with discord the ears that heard it has become as the sound of\nsinging across silent waters and under listening stars. And you ask\nthese transfigured human beings, as you find them travelling along\nthe highway of twenty noteful centuries, what it was that so changed\nthem, put such new force and impetus in them, making them to be as\nmen new created, and they will tell you that Jesus Christ came along\nthat way, they saw in his face the stain of blood, the marks of\nnails were in his hands and feet, he had the appearance of one who\nhad been cruelly slain. He stopped, looked at them and said: \"Come\nunto me.\" They obeyed, they fell at his feet. He touched them, a\nstrange, keen sense thrilled through them. He said to them, \"Arise.\"\nThey arose and found themselves new men--men _twice begotten_.\n\nAsk the drunkard who tried to be sober, broke every pledge and drank\nin his cup the very life blood of those he loved and who loved him--\nhow at last he found strength to say a final \"no,\" turn from the\naccursed thing, and enter a world all new in which to live, a\nfreeman and no more a slave--he will tell you, \"Jesus Christ did it\nall.\"\n\nAsk any of the bond slaves of passion, men who have been gripped by\nevery form of human desire, and whiplashed, and stung, and tortured\nby their gratification, and driven to fresh and maddening excess by\nthe never satisfied and always burning lust within (ever crying like\nthe horseleach's daughter, \"Give, give\"); ask them how it is that\nto-day they are freemen and walk as kings, and they will tell you\nthat Jesus Christ laid hold of them, and by the might of his power,\nthe tenderness of his love, and the wealth of his grace, made them\nfree.\n\nAnd this has been going on for two thousand years.\n\nThe story has recently been told of a great thinker lecturing one\nday before a large audience of medical students--some eighteen\nhundred men who pressed in to hear him. He took from his desk a\nletter, and holding it up before him, said something to this effect:\n\n\"Gentlemen! I have here a letter from one of your number, in which\nhe tells the story of his life--a record of shame, of sinful\nindulgence, that makes me shudder even to look at the letter. At the\nclose of this fearful confession he asks, 'Can your God save such an\none as I am?'\"\n\nStopping for a moment and surveying his audience, the speaker said:\n\"When I came to the city this afternoon (it was the city of\nEdinburgh) there was a beautiful, fleecy cloud spreading itself like\na thing of glory in the upper sky, and I said, 'O cloud, where do\nyou come from?' and the cloud answered me and said, 'come from the\nslums and the low, vile places of the city. The sun of heaven\nreached down and lifted me up and transfigured me with his\nshining.'\"\n\nLooking about upon the now deeply impressed throng, the speaker,\nafter a solemn pause, said:\n\n\"I do not know whether this young man is here or not, but if he is,\nI can say to him that my Saviour and my Master, Jesus Christ, he who\nis our great God and Saviour, he can reach down from the highest\nheaven to the lowest depths into which a human soul can sink, and\ncan lift you, and lift you up and up, till he shines in you and\nthrough you, and transfigures you with the light of his love and\nglory.\"\n\nHe can.\n\nHe does.\n\nHe is doing it now.\n\nAnd who is he who can do this but the living God alone?\n\nThat Jesus Christ was God is the testimony of the men who lived in\nintimate communion with him and knew him best.\n\nJohn leaned on his breast at supper. John heard and knew the beating\nof the Master's heart, and John says:\n\n\"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the\nWord was God (God was the Word). The same was in the beginning with\nGod. All things were made by him; and without him was not anything\nmade that was made. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt\namong us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten\nof the Father) full of grace and truth.\"\n\nAgain this same John writes:\n\n\"Jesus Christ . . . THIS IS THE TRUE GOD.\"\n\nWriting to the Philippians, Paul declares, that Jesus Christ was in\nthe \"form of God,\" laid aside his glory as such, took upon him the\n\"form\" of sinful man, became obedient unto death, even the death of\nthe cross, carried his humanity through hades and the grave, rose\nout from among the dead, and took that humanity to the throne of the\nhighest. There God the Father reclothed him with the unbegun and\nuncreated glory which he had laid aside, gave him a name which is\nabove every name, even the name of Jesus, and has highly and\neternally ordained that every knee in the wide extended universe\nshall bow, and every tongue confess, that he is Lord to the glory of\nGod the Father.\n\nIn his epistle to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul announces that\nthis \"same Jesus\" is the \"image of the invisible God; by him were\nall things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth,\nvisible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, or\nprincipalities or powers; _all things were created by him_, and for\nhim.\"\n\nTo the same Colossians he further writes:\n\n\"In him dwelleth all the fulness of the _Godhead bodily_.\"\n\nTo the Hebrews he says: \"He is the brightness of the Father's glory,\nand the _express image of his person_\" (the word \"image\" is\ncharakter and signifies an \"engraving,\" the very engraving of God in\nthe flesh, _the engraving of God in humanity_) and upholding all\nthings by the word of his power. \"Upholding all things!\" this earth\nin its orbit about the sun; the sun in its orbit about some other\nsun; all suns and systems in their orbits of splendor, whirling\nonward in ever-widening distances over highways of infinite spaces,\nthrough extensions that are measureless, and where time does not\ncount. In that unmeasured expansion where the points of the compass\nare lost and \"dimension\" is a meaningless term; in that\nincomprehensible and indefinable vastness, filled with the might and\nthe majesty of form, of weight, of motion and limitless power--all\nthings--are hanging on his word and obeying his will.\n\nNot only does the New Testament proclaim him God--the Old Testament\ndoes likewise, and with unmistakable speech.\n\nThe prophet Isaiah says:\n\n\"Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the government\nshall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful,\nCounsellor, _the mighty God, the everlasting Father_.\"\n\nMicah, the prophet, glorifies the little town of Bethlehem, least as\nit is among the thousands of Judah, and foretells that he who shall\nbe born there, and is to be ruler in Israel, is he \"_whose goings\nforth have been from old, from everlasting_.\" He who has been the\noutgoing and the forth-putting of the invisible God; and who is, and\nwho alone can be, the _visibility of God_.\n\nWhen we turn to the New Testament once more, we are given a vision\nof him, in Patmos, where he appears to that beloved John who had\nleaned so heavily on his heart in the days of the earthly\npilgrimage. It is a vision of wonder, of glory, and divine splendor.\nHe is seen as a man--as one who had _become_ dead, who was now\nalive, who had conquered both death and the grave. His face shone\nwith the light of the noonday sun, his eye glances were as a flame\nof fire, and when he spoke, his voice was as the sound of many\nwaters; and this is what he said for himself:\n\n\"I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord,\nwhich is, and which was, and which is to come, _the Almighty_.\"\n\nThis is the climax.\n\nHe claimed to be Almighty God while on earth.\n\nHe claims it from heaven.\n\nHe says I am God--he says that because he declares himself as\nembracing the whole extent of being.\n\nListen:\n\n\"I am he that _is_\"--that is to say, the self-existing one; for the\nstatement is the cognate of that, \"I am that I am,\" which is the\npre-eminent appelative of deity.\n\n\"I am he which _was_\"--and this extends being into the past; that\npast he himself defines. He does not say I am in the beginning, but\nI am _the_ beginning--_beginning itself_--the _origin_ of things\nand, therefore, himself unbegun, eternal, from _everlasting_. It is\nthe echo of that far-flung phrase of old: Even \"_from everlasting to\neverlasting thou art God_.\"\n\n\"I am he which is _to come_\"--this includes eternity future--the\nunendingness which stretches without a horizon beyond the present.\n\nHere is fulness--and the fulness of the Godhead _bodily_.\n\nIn saying these words upon Patmos, then, our Lord Jesus Christ says:\n\n\"I am God--I am Almighty God.\"\n\nNor is this a mere conclusion from the premise here!\n\nHe says it directly, plainly and squarely himself.\n\nHe says not only that he _is_, and _was_, and _is to come_--but he\nsays--\n\n\"I AM THE ALMIGHTY.\"\n\nAnd Paul, the special apostle of the Church, unites with Thomas (the\nbelieving, but material evidence demanding representative of the\nelect remnant in Israel) in proclaiming the deity of God's Christ.\n\nThomas falls at his feet and cries:\n\n\"My Lord and _My God_.\"\n\nPaul bows his head in adoration before him and writes:\n\n\"_Our great God_ and Saviour--_Jesus Christ_.\"\n\nUpon the august throne of the universe he is seated.\n\nHe who lay a babe upon a woman's breast; who, although he was\ninfinite, became an infant; who being in the form of God, did not\nhesitate to put off the divine glory and put on mortal humanity that\n(as an infinite person) he might, through the \"prepared\" body of his\nmortality, offer an infinite sacrifice for men; who died under a\nmalefactor's doom, but with his nailed hands, in the hour of his\nagony, saved a thief from hell--opening to him the gates of\nParadise; he who refused the deliverance of angels when they bent\nabove his cross, that by his cross he might give to men the\ndeliverance angels could not give; lie who was buried in a borrowed\ngrave; who rose as an immortal man, ascended as the _Second Adam_--\nthe _New Head of Humanity_--the _Life Giver_ to a world, and took\nhis seat on the _Father's_ throne, as witness of redemption achieved\nand salvation secured--he sits there now, and having taken to\nhimself the glory which he had with the Father before all worlds\nwere, having clothed his _immortal_ humanity with that \"_form of\nGod_\" which ever was his, now sits the centre of a world's adoration\nand heaven's amaze, as the GOD MAN--the highest form of God and the\nultimate form of man; the proclamation that man in Christ is the\narchetype of God and God in Christ the archetype of man.\n\nAs we thus gaze upon him in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the\nGodhead bodily; as we meditate upon him, seek to reason about him,\nare touched by his love, held by his power, and filled with his\nlife, we say with the inspired apostle: \"Without controversy, great\nis the mystery of godliness: _God was manifest in the flesh_.\"\n\n\"_Our great God_,\" repeats Paul, and he adds, to balance the wonder\nof it, \"and _our Saviour Jesus Christ_;\" he who, in some glad day\nnearer than we think, is coming back to this old, sin-stained,\ngrave-digged world--to be owned and saluted by all nations, peoples,\nkindred and tongues as--\n\n\"THE GOD OF THE WHOLE EARTH.\"\n\nWith all this glory and this wonder he is, as the angels said, (who\nspoke of his ascension, session and Second Coming), \"THIS SAME\nJESUS,\" full of tender mercy, and loving compassion; by virtue of\nhis perfect sacrifice able to save unto the uttermost all who come\nunto God the Father by him; saying from heaven as he once said on\nearth: \"Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out\"; but\nsaying at the same time, and with unfailing faithfulness: \"No man\ncometh into the Father _but by me_\"; saying it faithfully because,\nof a truth, only in the _Son_ can the _Father_ be found.\n\nLet me exhort all who may read these lines, if you have not already\ndone so, to fall down at his pierced feet, and with deep contrition\nfor all your transgressions and for your very _nature_ of sin which\nhelped to nail him to the accursed tree, say with voice of unfailing\nlove and unfaltering faith:\n\n\"My _Saviour_ and my _God_.\"\n\nIf you have already owned him as your Saviour, then, as Thomas of\nold, with the voice of deep devotion say:\n\n\"My _Lord_ and my _God_.\"\n\nTo those of you (if there be such) who still deny his deity and\npersist in calling him good, he, himself, is asking you from heaven\nas he asked it aforetime upon earth:\n\n\"_Why_ callest thou me _good?_\"\n\nIn asking you that he is putting upon you the responsibility of the\nterrible conclusion of your own premise:\n\nIF NOT GOD--NOT GOOD!\n\nAre you willing to face him in eternity with that inexorable\nalternative:\n\n\"IF NOT GOD--NOT GOOD?\"\n\n\n\nChristianity\n\n\nWHAT IS CHRISTIANITY?\n\n\nWHAT is Christianity?\n\nThe question seems a belated one.\n\nIt never was more pertinent than now. Its pertinency rests upon two\nfacts.\n\nFirst: the modern drift in Christianity and its absolute failure.\n\nSecond: the phenomenal triumph of primitive Christianity.\n\nThe modern drift is antagonistic to doctrine and repudiates the\nmiraculous.\n\nIt sets aside the virgin birth, has no toleration for atonement by\nsacrificial death, and positively refuses to accept the bodily\nresurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ.\n\nIt holds that God is the Father of all men. Each man is inherently a\nson of God. He has in him all the elements of the divine lineage.\nExercise and culture are alone needed to reveal these elements and\ndemonstrate this lineage. Salvation is not the redemption of a child\nof the Devil, but recovery of a child of God from the hands of the\nDevil. Salvation is the restoration of the individual to the\nconsciousness of this relationship; but salvation is effectively\nindividual only as it is primarily social. The time has passed (so\nwe are told) when the individual may be discussed and his social\ncondition ignored. To seek out an individual here and there and\nendeavor to redeem or recover him while the environment remains\nunchanged, is a waste of force: as foolish as it would be to spend\nmillions on remedies for people sick with malaria in a pestilential\nand malarial district, and ignore the condition of the district.\nTrue wisdom would demand first of all that the district be purged,\nthe environment made healthy, the cause of malaria destroyed.\n\nHuman beings are neither sinning nor suffering because a possible\nfirst man away back somewhere ate forbidden fruit at the insistent\nappeal of his too persistent wife. Men are sinning and suffering\nbecause social conditions are all wrong. These wrong conditions fill\nthe multitude with discouragement and depression. They are unable to\nbreathe an inspiring life force. They cannot obtain sufficient\nimpulse to live above low levels. The laws, the customs, the\ninequalities of life, hedge them like brutes in a corral. This\ncorralling and hedging of humanity _en masse_, while the few pull\naway from the crowd and create an environment satisfactory to\nthemselves at the expense of the crowd, is the _raison d'etre_ for\nall evil conditions. Let us have right legislation. Let us make\nright laws. The moment the social condition enables a man to\ndiscover the divine things in him, he will live right by preference.\nWe are no longer to spend eloquence, prayer and time on revivals,\nand now and then, here and there, get an individual to live fairly\nright in spite of hindering conditions. The sermon of the preacher\nshould appeal to the law-maker rather than to the law-breaker; it\nshould arouse men, not to the danger of a hell far off, but to a\nhell near at hand, the hell of unjust laws, of sanitary neglect, of\noppression of man by man.\n\nSocial redemption! that is the watchword.\n\nSocial salvation! that is the crying need.\n\nAll this (we are told) is to be accomplished by appealing to the\ndivine in man, to his hitherto ignored resources. This appeal can be\nmade of avail only by setting up some human figure in which this\ndivine life has been fully proved and clearly portrayed. In the\nnature of the case, for a modernist Christian, such a person is to\nbe found alone in our Lord Jesus Christ. By such he is now hailed,\nand continually announced, as the advanced man, the quintessent\ndemonstration of evolution as applied to humanity, the way-shower,\nthe exemplar and true copy. He is incarnate altruism. His whole life\nwas self-denial. His daily interest was in social conditions. To him\nsociety was the objective, the individual an incident. His\nteachings, when fairly construed, involve the overthrow of the old,\nand the bringing in of a radically new society, in which the divine\nlife in man may have an opportunity to unfold. His doctrines, when\nanalyzed, are explosive; if practically carried out would be\nrevolutionary. He is, in short, the true socialist. If we follow him\nas such, if we work out his intent, we shall have individual\nsalvation, but we shall have it as a consequent of social\nredemption.\n\nThere may be shining worlds beyond this. There may be holy cities\nwith golden streets. There may be robes of righteousness and trees\nof life. What we need to do, as Christians, is to take care of the\nworld in which we now live, build first-class holy cities here, see\nthat the streets are well paved, and the sewers in order, put fit\nclothing on the backs of the poor, fill the mouths of the hungry\nwith actual bread, make the hours of labor minimum, and the hours of\npersonal culture maximum, and thus weave a garment of civic, social\nand individual righteousness that shall stand the test of this world\nor any other. In other words, we are to live the life that now is--\nand let that which is to come take care of itself.\n\nThis is the trend of the modern drift.\n\nIt is an endeavor to bring the church down out of the clouds, place\nit on the level of human experience, meet present human needs in\npractical ways, and establish a system of natural, rational and\nuniversal ethics.\n\nAnd yet--in spite of this widely heralded liberalism; in spite of\nthe effort to accommodate itself to the rationalism, the unbelief\nand downright infidelity of the hour; in spite of the determination\nto cut loose from the primaries of the first century and ally itself\nwith the fast-going advance of the twentieth, this movement in the\nname of Christianity has not succeeded in winning and holding the\nmultitude either to a personal and modified Christ, or to a\nreorganized and elastic church.\n\nThe churches in which it flourishes; the churches which have\nrenounced faith in the supernatural and miraculous; the churches\nwhich have swung the doors wide open on the hinges of worldly wisdom\nand easy tolerance; the churches which have substituted natural\ngeneration for supernatural regeneration, evolution instead of\nrevolution, the working out of human life, instead of the coming in\nof divine life; the churches which teach that man is to go up and\ntake hold of God, instead of God coming down to take hold on man;\nthe churches which are broad enough to allow men of all faiths, and\nmen of no faith at all, to occupy their pulpits, are not\novercrowded, nor have righteousness and holiness extraordinarily\nincreased in their neighborhood.\n\nOn the contrary, in face of every effort to conciliate the\nnaturalism in man, men look upon these churches, and the\nChristianity they advocate, with suspicion. They see these churches\nhave their goods still marked with the words, \"supernatural,\"\n\"miraculous.\" It is true, these churches may practically put such\ngoods out of sight; even then, men will not be attracted beyond the\nexpression of a condescending tolerance; and while admitting, as\nthey will, that the church is earnestly endeavoring to get rid of\nits ancient incubus of theology, free its hands and take hold of the\nplow handle of progress, ready, if needs be, to drive a furrow deep\nenough to bury all memories of primitive faith, yet will they turn\naway from that kind of a church and that sort of Christianity, with\nthe feeling that all this action on the part of the church is but\nanother feeble effort at competitive morality. They will turn from\nit and seek their own organizations wherein no issue of the\nsupernatural has ever been raised; where the quasi personality and\nquestionable existence of an unseen God are not at all discussed;\nand where man and his present life are the only subjects deemed\nworthy of consideration.\n\nIf this drift as thus indicated shall continue another ten years,\nand enlist the support and open advocacy of leading and\nrepresentative thinkers in the church; if the theological seminaries\nshall continue to turn out on graduation day, with their all too\nmechanical regularity, men who do not believe in the virgin birth,\nwho find no real reason why our Lord Jesus Christ should have died\nat all, except the fatality of his genius that he was too far ahead\nof his time and was \"caught by the whirling wheel of the world's\nevil and torn in pieces\"; if the repudiation of the Bible as the\nfinal and inerrant revelation of God for this age shall continue so\nshort a space as a decade, by that time, at the present rate of\ndevelopment, we shall have not only a very modern Christianity, a\nChristianity without miracles, without even a hint of the\nsupernatural, but a Christianity without spiritual power or moral\nauthority, standing as a delinquent on the street corners, and amid\nthe hurry and rush of more vital things, begging permission simply\nto exist.\n\nOver against this modern drift and its amplitude of failure stands\nthe phenomenal success of original and primitive Christianity.\n\nAnd yet, the conditions which confronted this nascent faith were\nappalling.\n\nIt was the era of materialism. Force was the prime minister, self\n-gratification the supreme legislator. Exaggerated superstition was\nbalanced by decaying faith. It was a time of coordinately high\nmental activity, an intellectuality that cynically rejoiced at its\nown failure to solve the riddle of the universe, maliciously\nsuggested new difficulties, raised barriers against its own\nresearch, and prostrating itself in the name of mere brutism,\nworshipped nature as the ready panderer to its worst passions, while\nowning it as a cruelly smiling and pitiless sphinx.\n\nThe one hundred and twenty men and women who faced the Roman world\nwith the determination to impinge their faith upon it, seemed the\nmost audaciously unwise of all forlorn and hopeless fanatics. They\nhad neither wealth nor social standing. Their culture was at zero,\ntheir knowledge indifferent. Localism and tradition environed them,\nand the story they had to tell was not only an affront to the course\nof nature, but a direct repudiation of old faiths and cherished\nreligions. Itself a _religio illicita_, Christianity challenged\ngovernmental law and invoked, logically, the keenest persecution.\nThe mountains which surrounded Jerusalem were not so high, nor so\ndifficult of ascent, as the prejudice far and near over which they\nneeds must climb, even if they would gain but a tolerated hearing.\n\nYet they went forth! and so preached, that they not only saved and\ntransfigured individuals, but so molded and transformed society,\nthat in its every-day achievements, Christianity itself seemed like\na miracle to astonished and silenced onlookers.\n\nStartlingly enough this moulding of society, this overturning of old\nconditions--this bringing in of the radically new, so that their\nenemies said of them they had \"turned the world upside down\"; this\nrepudiation of brutality and the exaltation of unselfishness; this\nbuilding up of a condition in which a community now judged itself by\nthe standards of chastity, righteousness and neighborly kindness;\nthis renovation of whole centres of life till the erstwhile deserts\nwherein not a flower of gentleness had bloomed, now blossomed as\ngardens of delight, watered with never-ceasing streams of brotherly\nlove--were produced, not by an appeal to society itself, not by\ndenunciation of laws and customs, however bad, but by laying hold of\na human soul, estimating it in value by the weight of a whole world,\nand changing the individual life.\n\nThis was the triumph of original and primitive Christianity.\n\nIn view of such a triumph and the unqualified failure of the modern\ndrift which claims the name of Christianity, it should seem a\nperfectly legitimate and altogether pertinent question to ask,\n\n\"What is Christianity?\"\n\nThe answer is given by the apostle Paul in his second letter to\nTimothy, his son in the faith, the preacher of his own ordination.\nHe says:\n\n\"Our Saviour Jesus Christ . . . has abolished death and brought life\nand immortality to light through the Gospel.\" (2 Timothy 1:10.)\n\nAccording to this declaration, the Gospel is the good news that our\nLord Jesus Christ came into the world to accomplish three things--\nabolish death, bring in a new life and reveal immortality. As the\nGospel is the heart beat of Christianity, then the three things\nwhich proclaim its constituent and objective characteristic are:\n\nThe abolition of death.\n\nThe gift of a new life.\n\nImmortality.\n\nFirst--The abolition of death.\n\nDeath is a black fact. It is the shadow the sun never penetrates,\nthe robber who steals the treasure more precious than gold, the\nguest who never waits to be invited, the intruder who feels at home\nwhether in palace or in cot, has no respect of persons, and lays his\nhand with equal familiarity on the king upon his throne, or the\ntramp by the wayside, saying \"come\" to the sick, \"tarry not\" to the\nwell, is sure of the old, and revels like a reaper in the harvest of\nthe young. It breaks the plans and disorganizes the relations of\nlife; and then, like a coarse comedian or a heartless satirist,\ncompels those who survive to turn away from the memory of their\ndead, reorganize their lives and live on as though those who once\nlived with them and formed an intimate part of their daily\nexperience had never existed.\n\nUnless God himself shall intervene, death is the certain end of the\nlongest life.\n\nSide by side with the certainty of death are two things which give\nit emphasis: the brevity of life and its uncertainty.\n\nHow brief it is! what are sixty or seventy years as measured by\nhopes and fears, by splendor of genius, by forecasts that outreach\nthe ages, by thoughts that climb and climb with ease to the\ninfinite, by energy of mind, which, rising superior to the combined\nhindrances of every day, is always peering beyond the last endeavor,\nand stretching itself towards unbroken continuance, cries, \"What\nnext?\" Extract from the allotted time of three score years and ten,\nthe puling days of infancy, the immature years of youth, the hours\nof indecision as to the route to take, the right profession to\nfollow; take the hours given to eating and drinking (that eating and\ndrinking which in spite of the glamor we throw about it is simply\nrepairing the mechanical waste and renewing the chemical energy that\nwill enable us to go on a little while and a little way farther);\ntake out the time spent in sleep--in practical nonentity--and the\nremainder is a pitiful handful of years, so few, that to number them\nseems like a mathematical mockery, like numerical trifling.\n\nAnd the uncertainty of life! What man is he who can assure himself\nof ten days? In that time he may die, be buried and be forgotten by\nthe world that scarcely heard the tolling of his funeral bell, and\nhad no time to stay and hear the falling of the grave clods upon the\ncoffin lid.\n\nThis emphasis of brevity and uncertainty has affected men more or\nless from the beginning. In the hour when Christianity was born it\naffected them well nigh unto delirium. So brief was the vision of\nlife, so tumultuous its incidents, so conscious were men of its\nuncertainty, that they played with it as gamblers throw dice. It\nbecame cheap, cheaper than the ground in which their bodies were so\nsoon to be laid; and in derision of its cheapness they built great\nmonuments to hold their scattered dust, monuments that should\noutlast by centuries their latest breath; with light laughter they\nrode past these chiselled tombs and scorned themselves as the\nbuilders of a longevity their own being could never know.\n\nThis fact of death is impressing men now.\n\nIn proportion as life increases in knowledge; in proportion as men\nbecome masters of nature's forces; in proportion as they measure the\nuniverse, make daily incursions therein, and bring back always some\nconquered thing, some new discovery as a tribute to the\nlimitlessness of mind, in this proportion the unequal brevity and\nthe disintegrating uncertainty of life, lead men to ask with more\nand more insistence, whether, after all, it is worth while. Is it\nworth while to carry burdens which force us to look down into the\ndust of the highway, and not up and out to the wider landscape? Is\nit worth while to put so much force of soul and spirit, brain and\nheart into things from which we may be summoned without a moment's\nnotice? Is it worth while to live, and then go to pieces through the\neffort at living, live on day after day like a machine out of gear\n(held together oftentimes only by the surgeon's skill), then break\ndown completely, give a final sigh and be hurried away to add a lot\nof useless fragments to the already accumulated scrap heap of the\nstill more useless graveyard?\n\nInto this emphasis of brevity and uncertainty, there enters another\nelement which increasingly raises the question--\"Is it worth while?\"\n\nThat added element is the silence of the grave.\n\nThe grave is terribly silent.\n\nYou can hear the gravel rattling out of the grave digger's shovel\nwith a thud upon the coffin lid; or, you can hear the crunching,\njarring sound as the casket is slid into its place in the receiving\nvault, and you can hear the turn of the key and the snap of the bolt\nas the gate or door of the sepulchre is shut and locked.\n\nYou may stand above the simple mound of the churchyard, in front of\nsome monumental shaft, or before the sculptured urn; it may be the\ndust of a king, a scholar, or some nameless beggar which is heaped\nwithin--the silence will be unbroken--except by the sound of your\nown voice as you ask:\n\n\"Where are they? What are they? ARE they?\"\n\nAlthough the sun may be shining in full splendor over row after row\nof graves, no light will be there in which to read the answer to\nyour questions.\n\nInstead of light there will be thick darkness upon the graves, and\ngross darkness within.\n\nMen peer into this darkness. There is no vision--no speech--and they\nask: \"Is it worth while to toil, to labor, to accumulate, to make\ngreat advance in knowledge, to build higher every day the conning\ntowers of science, and then leaving these high points of\nachievement, enter into that realm where no surveyor's chain has\never measured the extent, where no geographer has ever named a\nheadland, and where the one supreme fact that meets us on the\nthreshold is ignorance--a black, blinding, all-pervading ignorance\nas to the next moment after death; so that at the end of our\nreasoning, deduction and amplification, the one thing remaining to\nthe scholar and the fool alike concerning death is a guess, a guess\nin which the wish of existence is father to the thought, but where\nthe hope of to-morrow is, easily, the despair of to-day.\"\n\nWith life so brief, so uncertain, and ending in the starless night\nof silence, men in one form of utterance or another are, in\nsubstance, calling to each other and saying, \"Let us eat and drink--\nfor to-morrow we die.\"\n\nThus the contemplation of death and its impartial and unprejudiced\nanalysis leads to a belief in materialism and a greater or less\nsurrender to mere sensualism; for, if men cannot go up they will go\ndown; if they cannot live in the spirit, they will grovel in the\nflesh.\n\nWhat then shall we say concerning this fact of death?\n\nShall we say it is a part of nature's economy--as legitimate as\nbirth? Because we know nothing of any pre-existent state and are\ncontent to go forward in life, shall we now balk and hesitate to\ndischarge our functions or meet our opportunities, because we have\nno evidence of an after existence?\n\nIs death really natural?\n\nAbsolutely it is not!\n\nThe whole being of man revolts against it, morally, intellectually\nand organically. Every law of nature in man is against it. Pain and\nsuffering are its protest. To say that it is as natural as birth is\nto be guilty of pure bathos; even the worm crushed and quivering\ndenies the sentiment. Schwann, the author of the cellular theory,\nsays: \"I really do not know why we die.\"\n\nThere is no reason in nature.\n\nThe process which renews the body every seven years--so far as any\nlaw in nature shows--might go on indefinitely; there is no reason in\nitself why it should cease, and the soul within is never conscious\nof the added years. No one ever thinks of asking, \"Why do we live?\"\nAlways, and involuntarily, we ask, \"Why do we die?\" Always we are\nseeking to continue life, inventing something to make it immune from\ndeath. To live, therefore, is natural. Not to live is unnatural.\nBeing unnatural, it is an interference with nature. An interference\nwith nature is superior to nature. That which is an interference of\nand superior to nature is a direct imposition upon nature. An\nimposition upon nature could not be possible without the permission\nand will of God. If God allows and wills it, then the imposition is\nfor cause; being such, it is a judicial act, a judgment, and\nbecomes, necessarily, a penalty. Penalty stands for violated law.\nViolated law is transgression. Transgression is sin. Sin, in final\nanalysis, is lawlessness, and lawlessness is treason against\nJehovah. Death is, therefore, an imposition of God, and is his\npenalty against the treason of sin.\n\nThis, then, is the explanation of death--it is the penalty of sin.\n\nThis is the definition which Christianity gives--as it is written:\n\"By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so\ndeath passed upon all men.\" (Romans 5:12.)\n\nAgain it is written:\n\n\"It is _appointed_ unto men once to die.\" (Hebrews 9:27.)\n\nIn thus determining and defining death, Christianity reveals both\nits essence and its mission; for, through its Gospel, Christianity\nbrings the good news that the issue of sin and death as between God\nand man has been settled by our Lord Jesus Christ; that he has\nsettled it perfectly and forever according to the terms of divine\nrighteousness by dying as a sacrifice for sin and as a substitute\nfor sinners.\n\nIn order to be a substitute it was necessary that our Lord Jesus\nChrist should be a sinless man; otherwise, his death would be only\nhis own execution under the penalty of sin, and could not avail\neither for himself or others. None of Adam's race is sinless; a\nsinless person must be of another race. To be of another race and be\nhuman would require a new creation and would be a new and distinct\nhumanity.\n\nOur Lord Jesus Christ was sinless. He was, therefore, of a new and\ndistinct humanity. In incarnation, God did not take the humanity of\nAdam into union with himself, the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christ\nwas the repudiation of the humanity of Adam. By that incarnation God\nwas saying: \"I have tried the old humanity. I find nothing in it\nthat responds to my claims. At its best it is sinful, only sinful\nand fit for judgment--the end of all flesh is come before me--and\nthat end is death.\"\n\nThe humanity of Christ is, therefore, not an evolution, but a new\ncreation; it is not an invitation to the natural man, but a\ncondemnation of him. It does not say to him, \"Follow me, imitate me\nand you will be like me\"; it says: \"I am from above, ye are from\nbelow. I am from heaven and God--ye are from the earth. My humanity\nis as distinct from yours as the heavens are from the earth.\"\n\nSuch a man is not an example, a copy to be set before men.\n\nAnd never, not once, do the apostles so set him before the natural\nman. Always they set him before the natural man as the man who came\ninto the world--not to live as an example--but to die as a sacrifice\nfor men; as one who was fit to die because he was free from the\nstain and penalty of sin.\n\nBut in order that the death of Christ should be of infinite value,\nhe must himself be an infinite person. The value of a deed depends\nupon the person who does it. The quality resides not alone in the\nact, but in the actor. The value of the death of our Lord Jesus\nChrist is not to be measured by its duration, but by himself--by\nwhat he was in himself; it does not depend upon the length of time\nin which as a substitute he suffered the punishment of those whose\nplace he was taking, but the essential quality of his person. Did\nour Lord suffer but a moment of time on the cross, the value of his\nsuffering as a satisfaction to the law, government and being of God\nwould be infinite.\n\nAn infinite person is God.\n\nAlways as such do the apostles present our Lord Jesus Christ. Their\ntestimony to his deity rings out like the blast of far-sounding\ntrumpets. In terms that are precise, and so strong and clear that he\nwho runs may read, they proclaim that he is God of God, very God of\nvery God.\n\nAs God the Son, in co-operation with God the Father and God the\nSpirit, he who is presented to us as the Lord Jesus Christ, took a\ncell from the substance of the virgin Mary, made it a mould and with\ngenerating power wrought from it a real humanity--a new and distinct\nhumanity--and united it to his eternal personality; so that he\nstands forth as the eternal God endowed with a human nature--with\ntwo natures, human and divine, in one body and one person forever--\nthe infinite God-man.\n\nNever do the apostles present him as a mere man. They present his\nhumanity as the background for his deity. His humanity in its most\nliteral revelation is always declared by them to be the revelation\nand the manifestation of God. Never do the apostles attempt to\nreason about the incarnation, with superb affirmation and sublime\ndignity they declare, \"Without controversy, great is the mystery of\ngodliness; God was manifest in the flesh.\"\n\nAnd it is this God whom Christianity presents as coming down from\nthe heaven of glory, and clothing himself with a new, a distinct,\nbut a mortal humanity in which to die as an infinite substitute for\nguilty men, that through death, he might abolish death for men.\n\nHaving died as a sacrificial substitute, death considered as a\npenalty, and the guilt and demerit of sin which induced the penalty,\nhave been set aside for all for whom his substitution avails.\n\nNor does Christianity leave us long in doubt as to those for whom\nthe substitution obtains. In full and precise statement of doctrine\nit tells us that this substitution is on the behalf of, and for, all\nwho individually claim our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross as a\npersonal sacrifice for sin, and who by faith offer him to God as the\nsacrifice and sin offering which God himself has provided.\n\nThus it follows, that for every believer--death as a penalty has\nbeen abolished, brought to nought.\n\nThis is the first great and joyous proclamation of Christianity,\n_Death has been abolished as a penalty for every believer_.\n\nIt has been abolished _de jure_, not yet _de facto_.\n\nThe Christian still dies, but his death is no longer penal, it is\nprovidential and provisional.\n\nIn the hour of death the Christian is not seized as a culprit and\nhurried away to execution. On the contrary, when the hour of death\nsounds for him, a voice inspired from heaven assures him that he has\nreached the threshold of the \"far better\"; he arises and \"departs,\"\nthat he may be \"absent from his home in this body and present at his\nhome with the Lord.\" His death is not a defeat, but a begun victory,\nand, inasmuch as both soul and spirit are delivered from the\nunderworld and the shades of death, he has the assurance that the\npenalty will yet be completely abolished concerning his body: it is\nboth the assurance and the prophecy of it.\n\nChristianity is, then, primarily, the good news, and the doctrinal\ndemonstration, that death as a judicial sentence has been abolished\nfor the Christian.\n\nBut Christianity is something more than the abolition of death--it\nis--\n\nSecond--The bringing in and revelation of life.\n\nThrough the Gospel, we are told, life has been brought to light.\n\nIn the nature of the case this cannot mean natural life.\n\nThere was no necessity that it should be brought into light.\n\nIt has never been in darkness.\n\nIt is manifest everywhere. Light and life are synonymous.\n\nThere is not a condition in which in some form or other it does not\nexist. While one class of life may not live in a certain\nenvironment, there are other forms to which this environment would\nbe as a hotbed for their production. Life is, indeed, universal, and\nmay be said to be omnipresent. You will find it in the deepest\ndepths of earth, and in the highest reaches of air. It expands on\nthe mountain top, it dwells in the sea; it is organized in the\ninfusoria, it exists in the infinitesimal, and reveals itself at\nlast, in the beauty of woman and the strength of man.\n\nAs natural life has always thus been in evidence; as it has never\nbeen in the dark at all, then the life which our Lord Jesus Christ\nhas brought to light is not natural life--it is new life--a life\nunknown to the world before.\n\nIt does not come from the natural man. It is not produced by natural\ngeneration. It comes from our Lord Jesus Christ and by supernatural\ngeneration. It did not come from him while he walked the earth. At\nno time during his earthly career did a human being receive it. The\ndisciples who followed him--he who leaned upon his breast at supper\nand was the disciple whom Jesus loved--knew nothing of it. This new\nand unique life was brought into the light only when that light\nshone from his empty grave. He gave it forth and communicated it to\nmen only when, as the risen man, he ascended up on high. It comes\nfrom him as the second man, as the last Adam, that Adam to whom the\nfirst was only as the clay model to the completed statue, as concept\nis to consummation. It comes from him who is both God and man, in\none body and one person forever; and who, as such, is the head and\nbeginning of the new creation of God.\n\nBy him it is communicated to those who own him as their atoning\nsacrifice.\n\nThe instrument is the word of the Gospel.\n\nThe agent is the Holy Spirit.\n\nThe Word is preached--it falls into the heart of the believer as\nseed into the ground.\n\nThe Spirit quickens it--the new life is germinated.\n\nThat new life is the life and nature of the risen one, our great God\nand Saviour Jesus Christ, the man in the glory; it is the mind of\nhim who is called Christ, and it is, therefore, in final term--\"the\nmind of Christ.\"\n\nIt is wrought, not in the soul, but in the spirit of the believer.\n\nBy no slow process does it enter--this life of the risen Lord--but\nby absolute fiat--the fiat of him who said--\"Lazarus, come forth.\"\n\nIt is fiat life.\n\nIts entrance into a human being is as light flashes into darkness.\n\nIt is as instantaneous as when God of old said, \"Let there be\nlight,\" and light burst over a world cataclysmically fallen into\nchaos.\n\nIt is as transforming as when morning awakens the sleeping earth and\nhill and dale, river and sea, shine forth in their beauty.\n\nIt is as startling as when Lazarus himself, obeying the voice of his\nLord, rose from the dead and came forth.\n\nBehold the illustration of it.\n\nHere is a man who grovelled in the lowest animalism.\n\nHe was a husband and father. What a husband! and what a father!\n\nShe who was his wife fled oftentimes at the very sound of his\nfootsteps, shivering with the same fear, as though he who had\nsolemnly sworn to love and protect her, were a mad brute intent on\ngratifying his own fierce lust, and ready with unchecked sensualism\nto trample her in the mire of his bestiality. A father, whose very\nname made the cheeks of the children grow white and their pulses\nalmost to cease with terror. A drunkard, who drowned in his cup, not\nonly wife and children and home and all outward decency, but every\ncharacteristic of truth and honesty and manhood of his own soul. A\nman, who through self-indulgence and the incessant yielding to\nunspeakable desires, had become little better than a human sewer,\nthrough whom the slime and indescribable filth of fallen and\ndegraded humanity found its unhindered course. A human being, who\nhad become a lazar spot, a walking pest, whose inmost thought rotted\nand putrified his own mind; and whose words without license were a\npoison and contagion to every one whose ears caught their unwelcome\nsound.\n\nMark the change in that man!\n\nThe wife now watches at the door with a gladsome smile to greet his\nreturn. The children, who once in their rags trembled with fear, now\nclean and wholesomely clad, and gay with laughter, gather at his\nknee, the moment he enters his home. He is himself well dressed. He\nholds his head erect, his eyes, no longer bloodshot, meet your gaze\nwith frank and open glance. His tones are soft and modulated, his\nspeech gentle. The Bible, the one book he always hated, is his\nconstant study. His mouth once filled with cursings that might well\nhave chilled the blood to hear, now give utterance to the voice of\nprayer and earnest thanksgiving. The church he never entered and\nalways avoided has become the centre around which the best\nactivities of his life are continuously moving. He who was once\nshunned, despised and feared, is now honored and respected of all.\n\nThe man has been transformed.\n\nThose who saw him in former days and see him now might in all reason\nask, \"Is this he, or some other man?\"\n\nIt is both he and yet another man. The same person, but possessing\nanother character.\n\nWhat is the secret of it all?\n\nLet the answer be graven on every heart. He has received a new life,\na new, a pure, a holy and spiritual life. He has received that life\nfrom above, from the second Adam, the Lord in heaven. He is now a\ntwice-begotten man.\n\nAnd herein is the glorious, distinctive feature of Christianity in\nso far as it touches a human soul.\n\nTo that soul it brings the good news that a new generation is\npossible; the good news that any human being may start over. The\ngood news that, no matter how much you may be handicapped by your\noriginal genesis; no matter what the terrific law of heredity may\nhave transmitted to you, you may be generated again. In a moment, in\nthe twinkling of an eye, you may have a genealogy that shall carry\nyour name above the proudest of earth; a genealogy by the side of\nwhich the bluest blood of most ancient kings shall be as the palest\nand poorest of plebeian stuff. This Gospel of Christianity brings\nthe good news that you may receive from the throne of God life from\nGod, as directly as did Adam when God breathed into his nostrils the\nbreath of life and man became a living soul. In an instant you may\nbe recreated morally and spiritually, and have in you all the assets\nwhich, when fully capitalized by the grace of God, shall insure your\nsonship with God here, making you master over every disturbing and\ndisquieting passion, and guaranteeing to you an eternal entrance\ninto the endless inheritance of God, wherein you shall be, indeed,\nthe heir of God and joint heir with our Lord Jesus Christ. In short,\nyou may have the bequeathed ability to glorify God and enjoy him\nforever.\n\nThis is the life which our Lord Jesus Christ has brought to light.\n\nThe Gospel is the good news of this life of which the life giver\nhimself has said, \"I came that ye might have life, and that ye might\nhave it more abundantly.\" That is to say: \"I came that ye might have\nthis spiritual life and have it without limit here.\"\n\nAnd this Gospel of the new life brought to light by and through the\ndeath and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is one of the\nelemental facts and forces which definitely answers the question--\n\"What is Christianity?\"\n\nBut Christianity is something more than the abolition of death as a\npenalty and the bringing in of a new and spiritual life.\nChristianity is through its Gospel--the good news that--\n\nThird--Immortality has been brought to light.\n\nThe word here translated \"immortality\" is \"incorruption\"; but it\nsignifies in final terms the fact of immortality; for, as mortality\nis identified with corruption and is its consequent, so immortality,\nwhich is the opposite of mortality, is the consequence of\nincorruption and is inseparable from it.\n\nThis word \"immortality\" is greatly misunderstood, and almost always\nmisapplied.\n\nIt is continually applied to the soul. It is a common thing to hear\nor read the expression, \"immortal soul.\"\n\nThe truth is, that phrase cannot be found in Holy Scripture. The\nterms are misleading--their conjunction is false. Applied to the\nsoul, the word \"immortal\" is a misnomer. Throughout Scripture the\noriginal word and idea relate to the body--never otherwise. The word\n\"mortal\" is never used of the soul; you never read in Scripture the\nexpression, \"mortal soul.\" You will find the words \"mortal body.\" A\nmortal body has for its opposite an \"immortal body.\" A mortal body\nis subject to corruption and death. An immortal body is\nincorruptible and not subject to death--an immortal body can never\ndie.\n\nThe mortal body is the scandal of the race and the open label of\nsin. A mortal body puts us in the category of condemned criminals\nawaiting execution. The scandal is not only moral, but organic. To\nbe filled with disease, with pestilence, with fever, and then die\nand the body turned back to its component parts--this is a scandal\nin construction; as much a scandal as when a house not properly\nbuilt falls down; a dead body, whether of man or dog, is the most\nshameful blot on the face of the earth, and with the gaping mouth of\nthe graveyard, justifies the estimate and the declaration of the\nliving God, that death is an \"_enemy_,\" not a welcome thing like\nbirth and life--_but an enemy_. Such a scandal is it, indeed, that\nwhen our Lord Jesus Christ came to the grave of Lazarus, he was\nhimself moved with indignation; for the words, \"groaning within\nhimself,\" miss the true force. The Greek verb used signifies that he\nwas inwardly filled with indignation and a sense of outrage at the\nsight of the grave and the announcement that the body of Lazarus was\nalready corrupt. Whatever groaning came from his lips and whatever\ntears fell from his eyes as he wept--these were his protests against\ndeath and the grave; for he recognized this dead body not only as\ndue to the penalty of sin, but as the work of him \"who had the power\nof death, that is, the devil.\" (Hebrews 2:14.)\n\nEven though the Christian as to soul and spirit be delivered from\ndeath; even though he does not go down to Hades, but at death is\nsafely housed and at home with God in heaven--yet the fact that this\nbody, which was not only the dwelling place of his soul, but the\ntemple and shrine of the Holy Spirit, should become a banquet for\nworms, a thing of repulsive decay, a residuum of forgotten dust, is\na scandal, even to the Christian, and gives emphasis to the shame of\ndeath.\n\nThe Son of God came into the world to remove this scandal.\n\nHe died and rose again, not only that he might have power and\nauthority to give a new and spiritual life to men, a character\nbefitting them for the high things of God, he died and rose again\nthat he might have power and authority to give an immortal body to\nall who would receive from him this new and spiritual life.\n\nHe brought this immortality to light when he rose from the dead.\n\nHe brought it to light by rising from the dead in the body in which\nhe had died.\n\nIf our Lord Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead in the body in\nwhich he died, then immortality in the New Testament sense of the\nword has never been brought to light.\n\nBut he did so rise.\n\nHe made that clear on the first Sunday night after his resurrection.\n\nThe disciples were gathered together in the room.\n\nThe supper table was spread.\n\nNo one cared to eat.\n\nThe story had been going all day that Jesus had risen.\n\nThe women said so. They persisted that they had seen and talked with\nhim.\n\nTwo men claimed, also, to have seen him, walked, talked and broken\nbread with him, that very afternoon.\n\nThe disciples did not believe it.\n\nThey were afraid to believe it lest it should prove to be untrue.\n\nThen, suddenly, he stood in the midst.\n\nThey thought it was his ghost.\n\nThis was a proof to them that he had not risen; for a ghost is a\ndisembodied thing.\n\nHe was a ghost--he was disembodied--therefore he had not risen.\n\nSo they felt--each one of them.\n\nThey did not say it--but they thought it.\n\nHe knew their thoughts.\n\nHe asks them why these thoughts arise in their hearts. He upbraids\nthem for their unbelief.\n\nHe tells them plainly, a ghost does not have flesh and bones.\n\nHe says, \"I have flesh and bones.\"\n\nThey are still silent.\n\nThen he stretches out his hands towards them. He shows them his\nfeet.\n\nThere are great marks in them--there is around these marks as the\nstain of blood, or of wounds whence blood had flowed.\n\nStill they do not speak. They are afraid to believe; it is too good\nto be true.\n\nHe says to them, \"Handle me and see--take hold of my feet--feel me--\nexamine me for yourselves.\"\n\nThey are as immovable and speechless as men changed into stone.\n\nHe turns upon them quickly and says, \"Have you anything to eat?\"\n\nThey point to the untasted supper.\n\nThen comes the climax.\n\nHe goes to the table.\n\nHe sits down.\n\nHe eats before them.\n\nIt is of record that he did eat _broiled fish_ and an _honeycomb_.\n\nEither this is the worst fable ever palmed off on the church of\nChrist--on the credulity of aching human hearts--or it is the truth\nof God.\n\nCall it the truth of God--then the body in which our Lord Jesus\nChrist rose was the body in which he died.\n\nThat body, stamped and sealed with the stigmata of the cross, is the\nliving, quivering definition, and indisputable demonstration of\nimmortality. Immortality is the living again in a body which was\ndead and dieth no more; or, it is the change of the body in which we\nnow live into an incorruptible, glorious body which shall never die.\n\nIn that body which he raised from the dead, and which never saw\ncorruption, our Lord Jesus Christ now sitteth at the right hand of\nGod.\n\nHe is there as the vision and standard of immortality.\n\nHe is there as the forerunner, the prototype, the sample and\nprophecy of immortality for the Christian.\n\nUntil the Christian is made immortal his redemption is not complete.\n\nThe Christian who dies is transported to heaven.\n\nHis estate there as compared to this is \"far better.\"\n\nBut \"far better\" is not the \"best.\" It is only a comparative.\n\nThe superlative requires that the Christian shall have a body.\nWithout a body the Christian is neither a complete human being nor a\nperfect son of God.\n\nThe divine ordination is \"_spirit, soul, and body_.\"\n\nUnless the Christian receives an immortal body the victory of our\nLord Jesus Christ over death and over him who has the power of death\n(that is the Devil) is not complete.\n\nSatan as the strong man armed holds the goods and keeps them secure\nwithin his house.\n\nThe instrument with which he is armed is the law. That law which\nrequires that it shall be \"appointed unto men once to die.\" The\ngoods are the bodies of the saints, and the house is the dark and\ndismal grave.\n\nO the pitifulness of it! that our Lord Jesus Christ should possess\nthe Christian as a ghost in heaven, and the Devil hold his blood\n-bought and spirit-sealed body in the grave.\n\nA risen Christ in an immortal body, surrounded by disembodied\nChristian ghosts in heaven forever--that is a concept too hideously\ngrotesque to consider.\n\nAn immortal Christ who redeemed his own body from the power of the\ngrave, but is unable to deliver the bodies of those for whom he\ndied--to think it is blasphemy! to believe it--impossible!\n\nIf the Devil be the strong man armed, the risen Lord is the one\n\"stronger than he,\" who has met and equalled all the demands of the\nlaw, and by his death nullified its ultimate power over the bodies\nof those for whom he died.\n\nIn the very nature of the case, then, full redemption requires that\nthe body of every Christian shall be delivered from the grave, and\nthat every Christian, whether living or dead, shall be clothed\nfinally with an immortal body.\n\nThis is the great objective of salvation--not just to save men from\nvice and immorality here; not just to fit them with an antidote\nagainst the poison of sin; or give them an impetus to holiness and\ntruth for a few brief years in this mortal body, then let them die\nunder various circumstances of suffering and pain and be carried\naway to heaven to live there as attenuated, invisible ghosts\nforever!\n\nO no! it is not that!\n\nIt is true men are to be saved here and now in such moral and\nspiritual fashion as that each saved person should make the world\nsweeter and better and nearer to God for living in it. All that is\ntrue, but it is only a part of the glorious truth. The supreme\nobjective--the _ultima thule_ of redemption--is--\n\n_Immortality_--the Christian eternally and incorruptibly embodied.\n\nAnd this immortality, this eternal embodiment, is to be accomplished\nfor every Christian. The fact that death has been abolished\nofficially as a penalty for the Christian is a demonstration that\nabolition of death means abolition for the whole Christian; as a\nwhole or complete Christian must have a body, then the abolition of\ndeath for the Christian means abolition of death from the body. The\nabolition of death from the body is immortality; by virtue, then, of\nthe abolition of death, immortality is assured to every Christian.\n\nNot one will be forgotten even though centuries may have broken into\ndust above his grave.\n\nThis immortality will be brought to pass by him who is the\nResurrection and the Life.\n\nIt will be brought to pass at the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ.\n\nHe is coming to this world again. By every law of necessity he\n_must_ come. He is coming to complete redemption, to bring on the\ncapstone amid shoutings of \"grace, grace unto it.\"\n\nHe will raise the dead who have fallen asleep in his name. He will\nchange the living ones who are his at his coming. He will make the\nbody of each incorruptible, deathless, immortal, like unto his own\nglorious body, as it is written:\n\n\"We shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is.\" (1 John 3:2.)\n\nAnd again it is written:\n\n\"We are citizens of a country which is in heaven; from whence also\nwe look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change the\nbody of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto the body\nof his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to\nsubdue all things unto himself.\" (Philippians 3:20, 21.)\n\nAt the last he will regenerate the earth. He will make it over. He\nwill make all things new. He will set this race of redeemed\nimmortals within it. Perfectly recovered from the spoliation of sin\nand death, they shall inhabit it forever. God shall get his own\nworld again.\n\nParadise lost shall become paradise regained, and God's purpose to\nmake man his constitutional, governmental, moral and spiritual image\nshall be fulfilled. Man shall be God incarnate, and incarnation\nshall be seen to be the beginning and the ending of the purpose of\nGod.\n\nThis is the consummation to which Christianity leads us--a perfect\nrace of immortal beings in a perfect world, a perfect world in which\nno man shall say, \"I am sick\"; where sin is unknown; where the\nfuneral bell does not toll, and a grave is never dug. Where God is\nall in all.\n\nThis is the hope and the ultimate Christianity sets before us. Not\nonce in all its record does it offer us heaven or bid us prepare for\nit as the ultimate, but always it exhorts us to look for and wait\npatiently for immortality and glory at the Coming of our Lord Jesus\nChrist.\n\nThis is the Christianity of the primitive centuries.\n\nThis is the Christianity of the New Testament.\n\nIt is the Christianity that fully met the needs of men.\n\nIt met the needs of men who gave themselves up to unrestrained\npassion, to the gluttony of every appetite; who lounged away their\nday in cool marble halls, or leaned half drunken from the cushioned\nseats of the amphitheatre, while the sands of the arena were\nreddened with human blood to give them a holiday. Look at them\nthere. They passed their unsatisfying hours in idle jest, wreathed\nthemselves with freshly plucked, but swiftly fading flowers, drowned\ntheir senses from moment to moment, still deeper in the spiced and\nmaddening wines, gave unbridled freedom to their lust; and then, at\nclose of day, in the splendor of the sinking sun, went forth to cool\ntheir fevered brows in the Campagna's freshening but deadly air, and\ndrove with furious pace and brutal laughter along the Appian way\nbetween rows of monumental tombs whose chiselled epitaphs told the\nhopeless end of human life; then back again they drove with still\nmore reckless haste to spend the night in wild debauch and meet the\ngray dawning of another day with its mocking routine and disgust.\nLoathing their very joys, revolting at their own gratification,\nthese men asked: \"Is there nothing better than this, that we drain\nthe cup of pleasure to the dregs, open our veins, watch the life\nblood ebb away, and laugh, and mingle our laughter with curses that\nso cheap and easy an ending should have cost so much to reach?\"\n\nO the woe, the horror, the emptiness, and the crying, agonizing need\nof lives like these.\n\nAnd Christianity fully and richly met the need of lives like these.\n\nIt met the needs of men who in the midst of an environment of the\nflesh, with the wild beast of appetite struggling within, now and\nthen had longings for a power that should enable them to put their\nfeet upon the neck of passion.\n\nIt met the needs of men who, standing above their dead, asked again\nthe old and oft-repeated question of Job, \"If a man die, shall he\nlive again?\"\n\nChristianity met all these needs.\n\nThrough crowded streets of populous towns and lonely lanes of silent\nvillages, in lordly palace and before straw-thatched hovels, to\nlistening throngs and wayside hearers, it rang forth its wondrous\nproclamation.\n\nIt told men that a man had been here who had proven himself stronger\nthan death and mightier than the grave; a man who had burst the bars\nof death asunder, spurned the sepulchre wherein human hands had laid\nhis body, had ascended up on high, and now, from heaven's throne,\nhad power to impart to men a life that hated sin, rejoiced in\nvirtue, could make each moment of earth's existence worth while, and\ncarried within it the assurance and prophecy of eternal felicity.\n\nFar and wide, over land and sea, it rang the tidings that this\nperfect life might be had by king or cotter, by freeman or slave,\nwithout money and without price, for so simple a thing as genuine\nfaith in, and open confession of, him who had died and risen again.\n\nWith rich, exultant note it announced that he who as very God had\nclothed himself with a new and distinct humanity, who had loved men\nunto death and died for them, had not forgotten the earth wherein he\nhad suffered, his own grave from whence he had so triumphantly\nrisen, nor yet the graves of those who had confessed his name; but,\non the contrary, was coming back in personal glory and with\nlimitless power to raise the dead, transfigure the living, make them\nimmortal, and so change this earth that it should no longer be a\nswinging cemetery of the hopeless dead, but the abiding home of the\neternally living sons of God.\n\nMen held like Laocoon in the winding coils of sinuous and persistent\nsin, and who vainly sought to escape from its slowly crushing\nembrace, heard the good news and turned their faces towards the\nrising hope of present deliverance.\n\nMen standing in the shadow of the tombs and waiting their turn\nsmiled until their smiles turned into joyous laughter as they said:\n\"If we die, we shall live again--the grave shall not always win its\nvictory over us.\"\n\nDo you wonder the world stopped, listened, and that multitudes\nturned and followed after?\n\nDo you wonder that this Christianity of the primitive centuries\ntriumphed so phenomenally?\n\nThis is the Christianity we need to preach today.\n\nIt is full of a great body of doctrine.\n\nIt is full of the supernatural.\n\nMiracle and miraculous are woven into its texture from beginning to\nend. You cannot touch it, or handle it, or look at it from any angle\nof vision that it does not suggest the miraculous. The moment the\nmiracle is out of it it is no longer the Christianity of the first\ncentury, it is not the Christianity of the New Testament--the\nChristianity that has a miraculous Christ for its centre and the\nmiracle of an infinite God for its environment.\n\nA Christianity of doctrine!\n\nA Christianity of miracle!\n\nAnd why not?\n\nIt is as superior to the Christianity, so called, that sets aside\nmiracle and doctrine, turns its back on the hereafter, makes its\nappeal in behalf of the present alone, and grounds its claim to\nauthority, not on a \"thus saith the Lord,\" but on a \"thus saith\nscience and reason\"; a Christianity that owns the law of evolution\nas its present force and defining motive; it is as superior to that\nsort of Christianity and as high above it as the heavens are above\nthe earth.\n\nOne night this summer I stood upon a mountain ridge and watched the\nrevelation of the starry sky. The great constellations, like silver\nsquadrons, were sailing slowly and majestically to their appointed\nhavens; from north to south and from south to north again, the Milky\nWay swept upward from its double horizon to the zenith like a\nhighway paved and set with diamonds--a highway over which the wheels\nof the king's chariot had sped, leaving behind that cloud of dust in\nwhich every gleaming particle was a burnished sun. I gazed\nspellbound until it was as the vision of an unfathomed sea, an ocean\ntide of light, where the shimmering foam was the rise and fall of\nsingle and multiple systems, the surf beat breaking on the shores of\nconverging universes. I gazed on this wealth and congeries of far\n-flung worlds, in which some that appeared the most insignificant and\ntwinkled and trembled as though each glimmer would be the last, were\nactually so great that beside them our own poor little world was but\nas a mole hill to earth's Himalayas; as I gazed I thought of the\ndistance from world to world--measured as light travels--till the\ncount of years fell away, and there were no more numbers with which\nto count, and I knew that at the end of this calculation I had but\nentered the suburbs of that realm for which we have but one word,\nwhose inadequacy we all confess--the Infinite. I listened, the\nsilence seemed to utter forth majesty and might and honor and\nomnipotence, the air had in it the breath of sacred and adoring\nthings, and unwittingly I cried out, alone in the night there, \"The\nheavens, O God, declare thy glory and the firmament showeth thy\nhandiwork.\"\n\nAnd when I look at this Christianity set forth in the New Testament,\nand anticipated in the Old, the constellations of doctrine, this Via\nLactea of truth in which every statement is a sun of splendor; when\nI begin to get the sweep of the divine purpose coming up from the\nopening pages of Genesis and culminating in the book of the\nRevelation; when I see that Christianity is the presentation to us\nof the ways and means whereby the original thought of incarnation\n(and this was the very first thought stamped upon the first pages of\nthe Genesis record of the creation of man; for incarnation is\nconceived in Eden before it is brought to the birth in Bethlehem)--\nwhen I see this original thought of incarnation, in spite of sin and\nfailure, and the world's captivity to the Devil and his angels; when\nI see this high purpose of God at last realized, and realized so\ncompletely that each redeemed soul is in final terms the glorious\nenthronement of God in humanity, and that God in Christ and in the\nChristian, gets his own world again, I cry out with full tribute of\nheart and intellect: \"O Lord, this is the Christianity which thou\nhast wrought, thy name is written in every doctrine, every line\njustifies, as it proclaims thee, the infinite and gracious author.\"\n\nThis is the Christianity to preach.\n\nLet the preacher preach a Christianity of doctrine.\n\nThere are three important things every preacher should preach. The\nfirst thing is doctrine. The second thing is doctrine. The third and\npre-eminent thing is doctrine. The church is starving to death for\nthe want of it, the preachers are becoming emasculated apologists\nfor lack of it, and the world, looking on, is laughing at a limp,\ngenuflecting thing calling itself modern Christianity and for want\nof vertebrate strength, unable to stand alone.\n\nIt was doctrine believed in and preached which sustained the martyrs\nand gave courage to missionaries. He who believed in the sovereignty\nof a redeeming God, the certainty that God would get his elect, the\nComing of Christ, the millennial triumph, and a rebel world\nsurrendered at the feet of God, could endure the agony of the stake,\nthe privation of the wilderness, and all the discomforts and all the\ndiscouragements of fields of endeavor well sowed but scantily\nreaped.\n\nLet the preacher preach the supernatural--the things that are\nmiraculous, and be unafraid.\n\nHe need not be afraid. The world wants that sort of preaching. It is\ngrowing tired at heart of mere machinery and this eternally running\nup against a formula of the laboratory or a mathematical calculation\nand analyzed force, as explanatory of everything in heaven and in\nearth. It would like, if it were possible, to believe in something a\nlittle beyond the length of its eyelashes and the touch of its\nfinger tips; something that cannot be summed up always in\navoirdupois; something, indeed, beyond the ability of man.\n\nLet the church get back to the old-fashioned doctrinal,\nsupernatural, miraculous Christianity that underwrites itself with\nthe name of God. Let it be boldly proclaimed that Christianity is\nmiraculous, because it is, first and last, the Christianity of that\nGod who is himself--the eternal miracle.\n\nThe very salvation of the church as a church depends upon this\nretrograde.\n\nIf the church hesitates, compromises, seeks to accommodate its\nformulas to modern nomenclature. If it is willing to carry its\nbaggage at half weight; if it is willing to make its proclamation a\ncontinual denial of all that it has heretofore professed as\nfundamental; if it believes the twentieth century has the call on\nthe first, and that modernism outranks primitivism; if, in short, it\nlooks upon primitive and apostolic Christianity as the feeble hint\nwhich the modern thinker has known how to modify and improve, then,\nas already suggested, the days of its spiritual and moral bankruptcy\nare in sight, and the sooner good business arrangements are made to\nhire out its meeting houses for ethical and social culture the\nbetter.\n\nLet the church persevere in turning its back upon the hereafter; let\nit continue the folly of ignoring the eschatological emphasis of\nChristianity; let it keep on giving to men the anodynes of mere\nmoral maxims; let it direct all its energies to improving and\nperfecting a society which God has already judged and condemned at\nits best, and presently these drugged and befooled people will\nawake, the drugs will no longer be effective, and they will turn in\nindignation upon a Christianity which began by professing to be a\nrevelation from God and ends by confessing to be nothing more than\nan evolution from man.\n\nIt is time for preachers to arouse if they would have the hearing,\nand not the indifferent ears.\n\nLet them refuse to apologize or defend.\n\nLet them have the courage of divine conviction.\n\nLet them refuse to admit into their fellowship men who are willing\nthat a bar-sinister shall be stained across the birth hour of the\nChrist; who are ready to smile away such a title as \"the Blessed\nVirgin\"; who can read no deeper meaning in the cross than a brutal\nmurder, and who do not yet know that in the garden of Arimathea\nthere is still an empty tomb. Let them refuse ministerial ordination\nand partnership with men who, bearing the university brand, claim\nthe authority of a self-elected scholarship to make the Word of God\nsecondary to the word of man. Let them go forth and proclaim to the\nworld with the voice of assurance which permits of no debate and\nwill accept no recall, the Christianity that is summed up, is\nperfectly defined and holds inclusively all its splendor of doctrine\nin the three immense facts which its Gospel proclaims:\n\nThe abolition of death, the gift of a new and spiritual life, and\nthe guaranty to every believer of a resplendent immortality like\nunto his who sits on yonder throne--both eternal God and immortal\nman--Coming Bridegroom and Triumphant King.\n\nLet them preach this. Let them tell the guilty sinner that the blood\nof Our Lord Jesus Christ meets his case and can make the foulest\nclean; let them tell the slave-bound sinner that in a moment, in the\nflash of an eye glance, a risen Saviour can deliver him and set him\nfree; let them tell the dying that death has lost its sting, and at\ndeath a convoy of heaven's host shall bear him away from his home in\nthis mortal body to be at home in heaven with his ascended Lord; let\nthem cry above every Christian grave, louder than the sound of any\nfalling tear: \"Jesus is coming to raise your dead and change the\nliving and clothe each saint with immortal beauty\"; let them look\nabroad upon a world full of the storm of sin, the tumult of high\npassion and long rebellion against our God, and shout aloud that\nvictory cometh in the end; that Christ is God as well as man; that\nthe days of his glory are at hand, when the \"God of the whole earth\"\nshall he be called; and when all beneath a perfect heaven in a\nperfect world shall know him as Lord and God from the least to the\ngreatest. Let them preach this, and with unbroken confidence repeat\nthe exultant words of Holy Writ, the words which shall warrant all\ntheir speech, that \"our Saviour Jesus Christ hath abolished death,\nand hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel\";\nand it will be this Gospel echoing forth with all the music of its\njoyful tidings that shall answer infallibly and beyond all dispute\nthe question of the hour--\"_What is Christianity?_\"\n\n\n\nThe Bible\n\n\nTHE WORD OF GOD\n\n\n\"When ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye received\nit not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God.\"\n(1 Thessalonians 2:13.)\n\n\nTHE Apostle here testifies that he believes himself to be the bearer\nof a revelation direct from God; that the words he speaks and the\nwords he writes are not the words of man, but the Word of God, warm\nwith his breath, filled with his thoughts, and stamped with his\nwill.\n\nIn this same epistle he writes:\n\n\"For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord.\" (1 Thessalonians\n4:15.)\n\nThe preposition \"by\" is the dative of investiture as well as means,\nand is Paul's declaration that what he is writing to the\nThessalonians are not his ideas, clothed in his own language, but\nideas and thoughts whose investiture, whose very clothing, is no\nless than the word of the ascended Lord--he who is none other than\nthe \"Word of God.\"\n\nWriting to the Corinthians he says:\n\n\"Which things we speak, _not in the words_ which man's wisdom\nteacheth, _but_ (and grammar requires us to understand) _in the\nwords_ which the Holy Ghost teacheth.\" (1 Corinthians 2:13.)\n\nAccording to Paul's testimony, therefore, the fourteen epistles\nwhich he wrote to the churches are not letters written by a mortal\nman, giving expression to the ideas and thoughts of man, but are the\nvery words of the infinite God, giving utterance by the Holy Ghost\nto the thoughts of God.\n\nAn examination of the other epistles of the New Testament will show\nthe same high and unqualified pretension. The apostles write (all of\nthem) not as men who are giving an opinion of their own, but as men\nwho know themselves under the domination of the Spirit, and as\ngiving authoritative expression to the mind and will of God.\n\nNor is this peculiar to the writers of the New Testament.\n\nConstantly, the writers of the Old Testament introduce their message\nwith the tremendous sentence: \"Thus saith the Lord.\" Again and again\nthey declare the Lord has spoken \"by\" them. David says: \"The words\nof the Lord were in my tongue.\" Jeremiah says the Word of the Lord\ncame to him and the Lord said: \"Take a roll of a book and write\ntherein all the words that I have spoken to thee.\" Then we are told\nthat \"Jeremiah called Baruch, the son of Neriah; and Baruch wrote\nfrom the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord, which he had\nspoken unto him, upon a roll of a book.\"\n\nAfter these words had been read to the princes of Israel, they asked\nBaruch, saying, \"Tell us now, how didst thou write all these words\nat his mouth?\" Then Baruch answered them, \"He pronounced all these\nwords unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in the\nbook.\"\n\nThe process is clear enough. The Lord spake his words in Jeremiah.\nJeremiah received the words direct from the Lord, dictated them word\nfor word to Baruch, Baruch wrote them as they were pronounced in a\nbook; and when written, the words were the written words of God.\n\nEzekiel declares when the Lord commanded him to speak to the\nchildren of Israel, he said to him: \"Speak with _my words_ unto\nthem.\" Ezekiel not only speaks them, he writes them in the book of\nhis prophecy. Ezekiel gives an account of how the Lord spake to him\nand inspired the book which bears his name. He says: \"The Spirit\nentered into me when he spoke to me; . . . the spirit entered into\nme and spake with me.\" The Spirit said unto him: \"When I speak with\nthee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say unto them, thus\nsaith the Lord.\"\n\nThe Apostle Paul, speaking in commendation of Timothy because from a\nchild he had known the Holy Scriptures (and by Holy Scriptures the\nApostle meant the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi--these were\nthe Scriptures Timothy as well as every Jew knew as such), tells him\nthat all Scripture (and of course any decent exegesis of the passage\nwith its weight of context would recognize that the Apostle was\nreferring to the Scriptures Timothy had known from childhood, the\nScriptures as we have them to-day from Genesis to Malachi)--Paul\ntells Timothy in the most precise terms that all these writings are\ninspired of God.\n\nThe Apostle Peter, corroboratively speaking of these very Scriptures\nof the Old Testament, says they came not \"by the will of man, but\nholy men of old spake as they were moved (literally, carried along)\nby the Holy Ghost.\"\n\nThus, this book we call the Bible comes to us with the enormous and\nuncompromising claim that it is not a man-made book, but a book\nwhose real and sole author is the living and eternal God.\n\nThis claim stands face to face with human need.\n\nHere we are from birth to death, pilgrims on the highway of time,\nnot knowing whence we come, nor whither we go. We need a guide to\nlead us, a light to shine when we stand at that parting of the ways\n--where eternity becomes the end of time.\n\nThis book meets us and claims to be all that--a guide through time,\na light to shine upon the road that leads to God and to be, in every\nline and accent, the inspired, incorruptible, infallible Word of\nGod.\n\nHow may we know it is all it claims to be?\n\nNever more than now did we need to know it.\n\nVoices in the air are crying that we have been deceived; that this\nbook upon which our fathers pillowed their heads when at the end of\nlife's journey, they laid them down to die; this book we have held\nas a lamp to our feet and a light to our path is, after all, at its\nbest, only the word of man and not the Word of God at all.\n\nEvery now and then resounding blows are heard as they strike against\nthe old foundation. Those who pretend to be working in the interest\nof the truth bid us stand aside, lest we and our hopes be buried in\nthe impending ruin.\n\nWe need to know at any cost whether this splendid and sustaining\nfaith has deceived us; whether this book we have looked upon as holy\nand divine is nothing more than the word of man, spoken with his\nstammering tongue and written with his stumbling pen.\n\nWe must know, and know for a certainty that will leave no\nperadventure to arise as a troubling after-ghost, whether this Bible\nis, as Paul says it is, in truth, the Word of God; and the question\nwill insistently repeat itself:\n\n\"How may we know the Bible _is_ the Word of God?\"\n\nThe question need not make us tremble.\n\nThe answers are at hand.\n\nThe evidence is so great, its very wealth is an embarrassment.\n\nThat evidence stated, detailed, analyzed and elaborated, would\nrequire--not a few pages--but whole libraries.\n\nOne broad and general proposition may be laid down.\n\nIt is this:\n\nThe Bible is proved to BE the Word of God when it is shown to be NOT\nthe word of man; and it is proved to be not the word of man when it\nis shown to be--not such a book as a man WOULD write if he COULD;\nnor such a book as a man COULD write if he WOULD.\n\nThat it is not the word of man--not such a book as a man _would_\nwrite if he could, is made clear enough by the picture it paints of\nthe natural man.\n\nThis picture is so sharply drawn, the figures stand out in such\nliving and apt delineation, that no one can mistake the import.\n\nAccording to the Bible, man came direct from the hand of God. God\ncreated him body, soul and spirit--a tripartite being. The soul was\nthe person, the seat of appetite and passions. The spirit was the\nseat of the mind, the centre of reflection. Spirit and body were the\ndistinct agents of the soul. The spirit, the agent to connect the\nsoul with God--the body, the medium of the soul's manifestation or\nmaterialization in this world, and the instrument for its use and\nenjoyment. The mind, seated in the spirit, was intended, under the\ninfluence of the spirit, to be the governor and regulator of the\nsoul--enabling the soul rightly to use its appetite and legitimately\nto satisfy its passions.\n\nThus organized, God set man up in the world to be his\nconstitutional, moral, spiritual and governmental image--his\nlikeness morally--his image (his representative) administratively.\n\nMan turned his back on God, listened to the appetite of his soul,\nand surrendered to the demands of sensual hunger.\n\nThe soul, at once, sank down into the environment of the body. The\nmind sank down into the environment of the soul and became,\nhenceforth, not a spiritual mind, but a mind \"sensual,\" \"devilish,\"\na mind continually suggesting to the soul fresh and unlimited\ngratification of its desires. With the breakdown of soul and mind,\nthe spirit lost its vital relationship to God, lost its function as\na connecting link with, and a transmitter of, the mind and will of\nGod; so that it could no longer enable man to know and understand\nGod; and feeling the influence of the mind, instead of influencing\nit, followed it in its downward course into the environment of the\nsoul.\n\nOut of this dislocation the soul came forth dominant over mind and\nspirit. Soul appetite and soul desires became supreme; the body, the\nwilling and active agent thereof. From this period on, man was no\nlonger a possible spiritual being, but a \"natural\" man. The word\n\"natural\" is \"soulical.\" In Scripture it is twice translated\n\"sensual.\" The much-used word \"psychological\" is a derivation of it.\nIn the Bible sense of the word, a psychological person is just the\nopposite of a pneumatical or spiritual person.\n\nMan was now psychological, soulical, sensual. He had been\ntransformed into a being no better than an _intellectual_ animal,\nand the slave of his physical functions. Instead of being the master\nof his appetites, he was mastered by them. His passions intended,\nunder right use, to be blessings, became curses; instead of angels,\nthey became as demons. Instead of dwelling in the midst of his\nendowment in harmony with it and able to direct it, he found himself\nat its mercy, incessantly smitten by it and suffering his own\nequipment. Repudiating faith, walking by sight, talking of reason\nand governed by his senses, he threw himself open to invasion by the\nworld, the flesh and the Devil.\n\nAs a result of his fall, man has become a degenerate, full of the\ngerms of evil, \"every imagination of the thoughts of the heart only\nevil continually\"--an incurable self-corrupter.\n\nIn him there is not one thing that commends him to a holy God; and\neven should he succeed in living a life of perfect morality, his\nbest righteousness in the sight of God would be no better than a\nbundle of filthy and contagious rags.\n\nThere is no power within him by which he can change the essential\ncharacter and determined trend of his life. Men do not gather grapes\nof thorns, nor figs of thistles. All the effort that the most\ndevoted and laborious of men might give to the culture of a hedgerow\nof thorns would not succeed in producing one grape. Though men spent\nlife and fortune in cultivating a field of thistles, they would not\ngather a single fig. No sooner (says the Bible) can the natural man\nbring forth the fruit of righteousness unto God. The Ethiopian may\nchange his skin, the leopard his spots, before a natural man can\nchange himself into a spiritual man. \"The carnal mind is enmity with\nGod; for it is not subject to the law of God, _neither indeed can\nbe_.\" \"The natural man (the word 'natural' is psuchikos, soulical)\nreceiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are\nfoolishness unto him: _neither can he know them_, because they are\nspiritually (pneumatikos, _pneumatically_) discerned.\" \"The heart is\ndeceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know\nit?\" meaning thereby that God alone can sound the depths of its\nmeasureless capacity for sin and iniquity; therefore, he says: \"I\nthe Lord search the heart, I try the reins.\"\n\nThe end of man is to die.\n\nSuch an end is not natural.\n\nIt is unnatural.\n\nIt is violent.\n\nIt is penal.\n\nIt is an appointed punishment: as it is written: \"It is _appointed_\nunto men once to die.\" \"By _one_ man sin entered into the world, and\ndeath _by sin_; and _so_ death _passed_ (literally, passed _through,\npierced_ man;\" the seeds of death entered him for himself and all\nhis posterity). When he dies, therefore, be he never so moral and\nupright, his death is judicial, his taking off is the execution of a\ncriminal.\n\nHe is to be raised from the dead as to his body (in the meantime,\nhis soul is \"dragged\" downward to the prison of the underworld,\nwhere in conscious suffering he awaits the second resurrection and\nthe judgment hour), he will be raised, judged, found guilty and cast\nforth into the lake of fire (which is the second death), from whence\nthere will be no resurrection of the body (the body will perish in\nthe fire--for an immortal body belongs only to the sons of God--the\nparticipants in the First Resurrection); then, as a disembodied\nspirit--a ghost--he will go forth with an inward, deathless worm,\nand an inward, quenchless fire, to be like \"a wandering star unto\nwhom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever,\" an exile from\nGod, outside the orbit of divine grace, love and life--a hopeless,\nan eternally hopeless--human derelict, upon the measureless sea of\nnight and space.\n\nThat is the Bible picture of the natural man.\n\nIs that the picture the natural man paints of himself?\n\nI trow not!\n\nMan looks upon himself as a son of God by nature, having in himself\nall the elements of divinity, and all the forces necessary to shape\nhis life aright. He is proud of himself, and talks of the dignity of\nhuman nature. He describes himself in panegyric, magnifies his\nvirtue and minimizes his vice.\n\nHe flatters himself in his own eyes.\n\nThe two concepts--that of the Bible and that of the natural man--are\nas far apart from each other as the heavens are from the earth.\n\nTo man, the Bible concept is false, belittling, wholly disastrous\nand degrading, the death knell to any possible inspiration for human\neffort and attainment. It is a concept against which he revolts with\nall the nature in him, and hates with an exceeding great hatred.\n\nIn the very nature of the case, then, the Bible concept of man is\nnot due to man; it is not such a concept that he _would_ write if he\n_could_.\n\nThe picture which the Bible paints of sin is not such a picture as\nthe natural man has ever painted.\n\nThe Bible declares that sin is something more than fever or disease\nor weakness, it is high treason against Jehovah, it is a blow at his\nintegrity, a rebellion against his government, a discord to his\nbeing and a movement whose final tendency would be to dislodge him\nfrom his throne.\n\nThe Bible hates sin and has no mercy for it.\n\nThe very leaves of the book seem to curl and grow crisp under the\nfire of its hatred. So fearful is its denunciation that the sinner\nshivers and hastens to turn away from a book whose lightest\ndenunciation of sin has in it the menace of eternal judgment. Like a\ngreat fiery eye it looks into the very recesses of the heart and\nreveals its intents and purposes. It sees lust hiding there in all\nits lecherous deformity and says, he who exercises it solely in his\nmind is as guilty in God's sight as though he had committed the act.\nIt looks into the heart and sees hate crouching there with its\ntiger-like fangs and readiness to spring, and says that he who hates\nhis brother is already a murderer.\n\nThe Bible has no forgiveness for sin until it has been fully and\nfearfully punished. In this it simply echoes the law stamped and\nsteeped in nature. Nature never forgives its violated law until it\nhas punished it. The Bible demands satisfaction, complete and\nabsolute, before it offers even the hint of forgiveness. It takes\nthe guilty sinner to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and shows\nhim God's hatred of sin to be so great, that the moment his holy and\nspotless Son representatively takes the sinner's place, he smites\nhim and pours out upon him a tidal sweep of wrath in a terror of\nrelentless judgment and indignation so immense, that the earth\nquivers like an aspen, rocks to and fro, reels in its orbit till the\nsun of day refuses to shine, and the moon of night hangs in the\nstartled heavens like a great clot of human blood.\n\nThe Bible declares that forgiveness of sin can come to the sinner\nonly by way of the anguish and punishment of the cross; and that no\nsinner can be forgiven till he has accepted the downpour of the\nwrath of God on the cross and the substitutional agony of the Son of\nGod as the punishment he himself so justly deserves.\n\nThe Bible teaches that in the awful cry, \"My God, my God, why hast\nthou forsaken me?\" the sinner should hear the echo of his own agony,\nas of one forsaken of God and swept out of his presence forever; and\nthat the only ground of approach to this righteous God is the\natoning blood of his crucified Son; that he who would approach God,\nfind forgiveness and justification, must claim that crucified Son of\nGod as his sin-offering, his vicarious sacrifice, his personal\nsubstitute. By the hell of the cross alone can he find the heaven of\nforgiveness and peace.\n\nIs this man's attitude to, and definition of, forgiveness and peace?\n\nIt is not.\n\nMan does not hate sin. He loves it. He rolls it as a sweet morsel\nunder his tongue. He condones it in its worst form. To him it is\ngenital weakness or an overplus of animal life--an exuberance of the\nspirit. It is a racial inheritance and not an individual fault. It\nis temperamental and not criminal.\n\nThe Bible concept and the natural concept of sin contradict each\nother; both, therefore, cannot have the same author.\n\nThe Bible concept of holiness is not the concept of the natural man.\n\nIn the Bible, holiness is not goodness and kindness, nor even\nmorality. Holiness as the Bible sets it before us is the\ncorrespondence of the soul with God, the soul reflecting the intent,\ndesire and innermost character of God; so that, were God to enter\ninto the soul, he should find himself as much at home as upon his\nown exalted throne.\n\nSuch a definition as that makes human perfection and all its claims\nto holiness seem no better than a painted wanton dressed in the garb\nof purity and mouthing the words of virtue and chastity.\n\nWhence comes this wisdom of holiness which makes the loftiest ideal\nof man no higher than the dust of the roadway, his best\nrighteousness criticizable goodness and altogether a negligible\nquantity?\n\nIf it is from man, it must arise from two sources--human experience\nor human imagination.\n\nIt cannot come from human experience! no natural man in the past has\nexperienced it--none today experience it.\n\nIt cannot come from imagination; for a man cannot imagine what he\nhas not seen, known or experienced. As he has not experienced\nholiness he cannot imagine it.\n\nIn the nature of the case--the Bible concept of holiness did not\noriginate with man, and that much of the Bible, evidently, is not of\nman.\n\nThat the Bible is not the word of man is shown by its statements of\naccurate science, written before men became scientific, and while as\nyet natural science did not exist.\n\nThe record of creation is given in the opening verses of Genesis.\n\nWhence came the wisdom which enabled the writer in a pre-scientific\nage to set forth a cosmogony in such a fashion that it does not\ncontradict the latest findings of the geologist?\n\nThe Bible says the earth was without form and void.\n\nScience says the same thing. Over a hot granite crust, an ocean of\nfire, and beyond that an impenetrable atmosphere loaded with\ncarbonic acid gas.\n\nCuvier, the founder of paleontology, says in his discourse on the\nrevolutions of the globe, \"Moses has left us a cosmogony, the\nexactitude of which is most wonderfully confirmed every day.\"\n\nQuensted says, \"Moses was a great geologist, wherever he may have\nobtained his knowledge.\" Again he says, \"The venerable Moses, who\nmakes the plants appear first, has not yet been proven at fault; for\nthere are marine plants in the very lowest deposit.\"\n\nDana, of Yale College, has said that the record of creation given by\nMoses and that written in the rocks are the same in all general\nfeatures.\n\nWhence came the wisdom which kept Moses from hopelessly blundering?\n\nMoses places the account of the original creation in the first\nverse. In the second, he states the earth fell into chaos. \"It\n_became_ (not _was_) without form, and void.\"\n\nIsaiah, the prophet, declares definitely that God did not create the\nearth without form and void--God never was the author of chaos--he\nmade the earth habitable from the beginning.\n\nThe first verse of Genesis records the creation of this original and\nhabitable earth. The second verse shows, as the result of some\nmighty cataclysm, that the original earth fell into a state of\nchaos. The second verse, and the verses following, are the record of\nthe making over of the earth after it had fallen into a state of\nchaos.\n\nWhence the wisdom which taught Moses what science in our day is only\nbeginning to spell out, that the present earth is not an original\ncreation, but a remaking; that the original creation goes back\nbeyond the time of shifted crust, of tilted rock, of ice and fire\nand mist and formless chaos?\n\nWhence came the wisdom and knowledge which led Job to say that it is\nimpossible to count the stars for number, when it _was_ possible in\nhis day, and is equally possible in our day, to count them with the\nnaked eye?\n\nHow did he know, what the telescope alone reveals, that the number\nof the stars as flashed forth in the field of these telescopes is\nutterly beyond our computation; and that in the attempt to number\nthem, figures break, fall into dust, and are swept away as the chaff\nof the summer's threshing floor.\n\nHow did he, looking up with that naked eye of his, how did he know\nthat in the Milky Way there are countless thousands of suns--and\nthese the centres of other systems? How did he know that world\n-on-world ranges in the upper spaces of the silent sky, so\nmultitudinously that each increase of the power of the telescope\nonly adds unaccountable myriads until, looking from the rim of those\nnightly searchers, the eye beholds reach on reach of luminous\nclouds, and learns with awe profound, that these clouds are stars,\nare suns and systems--but so far away from us and from one another\nthat they cannot be separated and distinguished by the most powerful\nglasses; and that these clouds, if we really could separate them and\nbring them within the field of our particular vision, would reveal\nthemselves as suns and systems so numerous, that only, the Creator\nhimself could number them?\n\nHow did Job know all this in that far day when he sat at his tent\ndoor in the beauty of the cloudless sky and without a telescope? How\ndid he know all this so that he could tell us with absolute\ncertainty what we now know only by the aid of modern science--that\nthe stars _cannot_ be counted for number?\n\nHow did he know what only the modern telescope reveals, that the\nNorth is stretched out over the empty place? How did he know that\nthere in the Northern sky there is a space where no star does shine\n--a dark abyss of fathomless night--as if, suddenly, the universe of\nworlds had come to an end?\n\nHow did he know, at the moment when the wise men of his day were\nsaying that the earth was supported on the shoulders of a giant,\nthat the giant stood on a platform made of the backs of elephants;\nthat the elephants stood on the back of a mighty tortoise, but where\nthe tortoise stood none of them said; how did he dare at that time\nto write that God hangeth the earth on nothing?\n\nHow did Isaiah know that the world is round? How did he learn to\nspeak of \"the circle of the earth,\" at the time when the scientific\nmen of his day said that it was four square and flat?\n\nHow did he know of that imponderable ether in which the stellar\nuniverse is said to float? Who taught him to say that God spread out\nthe heavens as \"thinness,\" when the wise men of that hour were\nteaching they were a solid vault? How is it that he made use of the\nmost scientific term when he speaks of the heavens as \"thinness\"? It\nis true in our English version he is made to say that God spread out\nthe heavens as a \"tent\"; but the word \"tent\" in the Hebrew is (doq)\nand its root meaning signifies a thing that has been beaten out or\nstretched into thinness--an elastic thinness; it is a word\naccurately describing the ether which scientific men tell us is so\nthin that a teacup full of it may be blown out into a transparent\nbubble as large as the earth, and, even then, its attenuation would\nseem no greater than at the beginning.\n\nHow did Isaiah know all this?\n\nEvidently his knowledge and wisdom did not come from the knowledge\nand wisdom of his day.\n\nThat the Bible did not come from man is seen in the fact of\nfulfilled prohpecy.\n\nPage after page of this book is filled with prophetic announcements.\n\nHistory and human experience record their amazing fulfilment.\n\nThe prophet Daniel gives the history of four great world empires,\nBabylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome.\n\nThe rise and fall of these empires are foretold centuries ahead.\n\nThe total ruin and perpetual desolation of Babylon were announced\nwhen the city shone forth in the zenith of its splendor.\n\nDaniel writes an account of Alexander the Great two hundred and\nfifty years before he is born, calls him the first king of Greece,\ndescribes his march for the conquest of the East, the battle of the\nGrannicus, his sudden death at Babylon, and the division of the\nempire among his four generals.\n\nAt the hour when Rome was practically passing through her travail\npains of national birth, Daniel foretold its ascension to power, and\ndescribed it as a wild beast, trampling down the nations, absorbing\ninto itself the three kingdoms which preceded it, occupying the\nterritory once possessed by them, and becoming the supreme\ngovernmental power of the earth. Centuries before it took place he\nforetold the division of the Roman Empire into two equal parts. He\nannounced, also, that it should be the last universal political\npower till Christ the Lord should come to set up his worldwide\nkingdom. Centuries have passed since Rome ruled the world. From that\nday to this it has remained the last supreme world-power. The\nterritory once ruled by it is filled with mighty nations--not one of\nthem, great as it may be, is a universal world-power.\n\nWhere did Daniel get the foresight which enabled him to look on down\nthrough two thousand years of human history and, in the face of\nbattle, intrigue and change, declare, what so far has come to pass,\nthat Rome should be the last universal empire till Christ came?\n\nEzekiel, the prophet, said that the great and populous city of Tyre\nshould be taken, cast down, and never rebuilt; and that the Lord\nwould make it to be like the top of a scraped rock to spread nets\nupon.\n\nThe city was taken and destroyed. The people moved to an island just\noff the mainland and there built a new city. Two hundred and fifty\nyears after Ezekiel made his prophecy, Alexander came, besieged the\nnew city; and, in order to take it, built a causeway from the\nmainland. In doing this he tore down and utterly demolished the\nruins of the old city; took its stones and timber and cast them into\nthe sea; and then, actually, set his soldiers to work to scrape the\nvery dust that he might empty it into the waters. From the hour when\nit was overthrown to this, the city has never been rebuilt; and for\ncenturies it has been, and is to-day, like _the top of a scraped\nrock_--a place where _fishermen spread their nets_.\n\nWhere did Ezekiel get this knowledge?\n\nCertainly not from man.\n\nIt will not do to say he guessed it!\n\nEgypt was a land of cities and temples. The cities were populous,\nthe temples and monuments colossal. Avenues of gigantic sphynx led\nto gateways whose immense thresholds opened into pillared halls,\nwhere the carved columns seemed like a forest of stone. Pyramids\nrose as mountains, and their alabaster-covered sides flashed back\nthe splendor of the cloudless skies. The land bloomed as a garden.\nThe papyrus grew by the banks of the Nile. The fisheries of the\nmighty river filled the treasury of kings with a ceaseless income.\nArt, literature, knowledge and culture were enthroned supreme--yet\nwas it a land of false gods and a people given over to their\nworship.\n\nSpeaking in the name of God the prophet announced the coming\ndesolation of Egypt. It should be cast down. Its fisheries should be\ndestroyed, its papyrus withered, its cities and temples overthrown\nand the ruins scattered over the plain, no native prince should ever\nagain sit upon its throne, it should become the basest of kingdoms.\n\nIt has become such.\n\nIts cities are destroyed. Its temples are roofless, its columns\nfallen, the statues of its kings lie face downward in the dust, the\npyramids, stripped and bare, stand scarred and silent in the sun.\nThe singing Memnon are as songless from their chiselled lips as the\ntongueless Sphynx half buried in the yellow sand. The fisheries are\ngone, the papyrus has withered; for centuries no native prince has\nbeen seated on the throne. It is a land of the dead. The dead are\neverywhere. At every step you stumble over a mummy, the mummy of a\ndead cat, a dead dog, or a dead and shrivelled Pharaoh. Its greatest\nasset is its departed glory, and every grain of sand blown from the\nmighty desert, and every wave of reflected light flung back from the\nLybian hills, proclaims the terrific fulfilment of the prophet's\nwords.\n\nThe prophets foretold the final siege and destruction of Jerusalem.\nIt should be trodden down of the Gentiles. The people should be\ncarried away captive and sold into all lands. They should be\nscattered from one end of the earth to the other. All nations should\ndespise them. They should become a by-word, a hissing and a scorn.\nThey should be hunted, hounded and persecuted. Their sufferings\nshould be unparalleled, horrible, unspeakable. The sound of a shaken\nleaf should startle them. They were to become the people of the\ntrembling heart and the wandering foot.\n\nThe prophecies have been singularly fulfilled.\n\nJerusalem was besieged by the Romans. The city was taken. The city\nand temple were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands perished by famine,\nby fever, by fire and by sword. Titus, the Roman conqueror, drove a\nploughshare over its smoking ruins. The people who remained alive\nafter the general slaughter were carried away captive. They were\nscattered from one end of the earth to the other. They have found\ntheir dwelling place among all nations. They dwell everywhere and\nare at home nowhere. They have been a by-word, a hissing and a\nscorn. Every hand has been turned against them. They have been\nhunted on the mountains. They have been chased through the valleys.\nThey have been walled up in the narrow and filthy ghettos of cities.\nTheir goods have been stolen. Their wives and daughters have been\nravished. They have been whipped and racked and tortured. They have\nbeen broken on the wheel, burned at the stake, buried alive, and\nsent to sea, thousands of them, in sinking ships. Every cruelty that\nthe ingenuity of man and the inspiration of fiends could suggest has\nbeen practised upon them, until the heart revolts and the soul\nsickens at the mere recital of their blood and woe; and to this\nhour, through twenty long centuries, Jerusalem, as announced, has\nbeen trodden down of the Gentiles; all nations have tramped through\nher streets, overridden her people and torn down her walls.\n\nThe prophets said God would make a full end of the nation which\npersecuted them; but he would not make a full end of them, he would\npreserve and multiply them.\n\nThe promises have been kept.\n\nRome has become a past tense. With thoughtful steps we pause amid\nher ruins, painfully locate the palace of her kings, the arenas of\nher pleasure, the abodes of her vice; on fallen column or broken\ntablet, we read the story of her past victories, her mighty\nconquests, and standing beneath a crumbling triumphal arch, gaze on\nthe sculptured figures of Jewish captives who once followed in an\nemperor's triumphal train, more enduring to-day with their stony\nfaces than the ruined city which lies prostrate at their feet; for\nwhile Rome has passed away, the Jew still lives, he has been\npreserved and has multiplied. The Jews to-day number twelve millions\nof people; and these represent but two tribes out of the twelve; so\nthat the two are four times as numerous as the whole nation when it\ncame out of Egypt under Moses. Their vitality is phenomenal--it is\nmiraculous--their multiplication is against all the laws and\nprecedents of history. Persecution and trial have but increased\ntheir fecundity. Like the burning bush ever burning but never\nconsumed, they continue to exist; and when you draw nigh and\nconsider their strange story, out of the midst, as of old out of the\nbush, the voice of him who is the \"I am, that I am\" is heard saying\n--\"These are my disobedient but covenant people, whom I have sworn\nshall be to me as the 'apple of mine eye'\"; saying, \"Whosoever\ntoucheth them toucheth me.\"\n\nIt was foretold that in the closing hours of this age and as a\nprelude to their final restoration, they should bud and blossom and\nfill the face of the whole world with fruit.\n\nIf to-day you seek a representative person in every department of\nhuman genius and achievement, you will find that representative in a\nJew.\n\nThe Bible testifies, and testified it centuries ago, that in the\nclosing hours of this age, the Jews should turn their faces towards\nPalestine and ask (or plead) their way to Zion.\n\nThe prophecy has been, and is being, fulfilled to the letter. The\nfaces of thousands of Jews are being turned towards Palestine;\nthousands of Jews are asking how is it possible to return to Zion.\nZionism has passed from the realm of dreams to the solid ground of\nfact. Everywhere over the earth societies are formed among the Jews\nto emphasize the return to Zion and the setting up of the Jewish\nState.\n\nIt was further foretold that many should return thither in radical\nunbelief and open materialism; that at the entering in of the gates\nof Jerusalem land should be bought and sold and speculation become\nrife.\n\nTo-day there are more Jews in Palestine than at any time since the\nreturn from Babylon. Land is bought and sold at the gates of the\ncity, and speculation in real estate values is running high. There\nis the hum of expectation in the sacred city. Palestine is being\ncolonized by Jews. The Turkish government has taken off the ban, the\nJew is owned as a citizen and may become a representative in its\nadministration. The deserted cities are being occupied. Millions of\nMulberry trees are being planted, the desert and the waste places\ncultivated. The lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep are heard\nonce more. In Jerusalem, the wailing place of the Jews is more\ncrowded than ever. The penitential psalms are recited, tears are\nshed and the cry goes up with keener lamentation that the city,\nbeautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, has become the\nprey of the Gentiles; that the walls are broken down, the holy\nplaces laid waste, \"our holy and beautiful house,\" they cry, \"where\nour fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all our\npleasant things are laid waste. Wilt thou refrain thyself for these\nthings, O Lord? Wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore?\"\nAnd the prayer ascends with ever-increasing supplication that\nJehovah will again make bare his arm in the sight of the Gentiles,\nbuild up the place of the holy assemblies, beautify Jerusalem and\nestablish his people. Synagogues are built within the shadow of the\nsacred rock, the one-time threshing floor of Ornan, which David\nbought and whereon the holy temple stood. The latter as well as the\nformer rains are falling. Everywhere it is evident that the land is\nreviving, and the thought of Judah as a kingdom and power among\nnations, finding utterance on the lips--both of Gentile and Jew.\n\nAnd all this activity and Zionward movement taking place with the\nJew in a condition of spiritual blindness, unbelief and godless\nmaterialism--as foretold. The very leaders of Zionism (some of them)\nthe most outspoken in their repudiation of our Lord Jesus Christ as\nMessiah of Israel.\n\nThe Bible foretold that the Jews as a people would never receive the\nGospel: \"As concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sakes\"\n(the Gentiles). On the other hand, it was announced that the\nGentiles, who despise the Jews, should receive the Gospel, accept a\nrejected and crucified Jew as Israel's king, and own and acknowledge\nhim as the redeemer and saviour provided for themselves.\n\nThis prophecy has been fulfilled.\n\nFor nineteen hundred years the Jew--as a Jew--has steadily rejected\na crucified Christ. Here and there an individual, paying the penalty\nof scorn and contumely from his own people, has believed the Gospel\nand owned the crucified and despised man of Nazareth as his very\nLord and God. He has done so according to that election of grace\nwhich the Bible foretells (an elect remnant is seen through all the\nages, under one dispensation or another, responding to the call of\nGod--like the seven thousand who would not bow the knee to Baal; and\nbelonging to that election of grace the believing Jew stands out\nmarked and sealed of God) but the Jew as a nation with unbroken\nsolidarity refuses to-day the only Jew who can establish him in the\nland of his fathers and fulfil the covenant promises.\n\nEqually fulfilled is the other side of the prophecy.\n\nThe Gentiles, who, racially considered, despise the Jew and\neverything of the Jew, to-day own and accept this rejected and\ncrucified Jew of Calvary, not only as Israel's Messiah and king, but\nas the redeemer and saviour provided of God for Gentiles; so that\nthe Gentile world now worships and adores him as very God, holding\nup the cross of his shame and death as the symbol of highest honor\nand most radiant glory.\n\nThe Bible has predicted the final characteristics of the present age\nin terms precise and clear.\n\nBy type, figure and direct prophecy it announces that the last\n_form_ of government among the nations just previous to the Coming\nof our Lord Jesus Christ will be _democracy_--the rule of the\npeople: \"The government of the people, by the people, and for the\npeople.\"\n\nThat prophecy practically has been fulfilled.\n\nDemocracy is, nearly, the universal mode of government. England in\nsome respects is more democratic than the United States. France,\nPortugal and Switzerland are republics. Spain, Italy and Greece are\nconstitutional monarchies; that is to say, the people are recognized\nas the ultimate authority. The Northern nations, Norway, Sweden,\nDenmark, Holland and Belgium, are liberal kingdoms. The monarchy is\nsimply a fashion--the people are the rulers. Germany is a military\nnation. The Kaiser, speaking at times as the war lord, gives the\nimpression that he is absolute emperor. He is far from it. The\nsocialists count their votes by millions, and while the German\npeople accept the empire, they do so because it is the most\nsatisfactory agent for their business and prosperity. The German\npeople behind the throne are the absolute power; and the voice of\ndemocracy makes no more radical utterance and demand than in the\nGerman _kaiserreich_. Recently, in a public interview, the Kaiser is\nreported to have said, he expected his son to be the last emperor of\nGermany, as within fifty years the whole world would become\ndemocratic. Austria is still more or less under the influence of\nCaesarism, but beneath the surface, the various peoples and\nnationalities constituting that empire are restless, feverish, and\nfull of democratic ideas. Turkey has been shaken by a revolt of \"The\nYoung Turks,\" and the demand for more popular government. Japan has\nbroken loose from the customs and traditions of centuries--her flag\nis the symbol of the rising sun, and indicates that she is seeking\nto take her place in the new dawn of popular sovereignty. China, the\noldest civilization and the mightiest population, has become a\nrepublic, her young men returning from the universities of Europe\nand America having sown broadcast the seed of democracy and the\nclaim of the people. Russia, alone, remains absolute in name, but\nthe absolute has been shattered even there--it is supported only by\nbayonets and drawn swords. Every now and then a sullen sound is\nheard, dying away to be renewed in deeper tones; it is the voice of\nthe people, in spite of the knout, the prison and Siberian exile,\ncalling for what they claim to be their \"rights.\"\n\nEverywhere the evidence is manifest that the prophecy of Daniel\nannouncing the rise of the \"_clay_\" (Daniel's symbol of the people)\nand the warning of Isaiah that \"the nations should rush like the\nrushing of many waters,\" and \"make a noise like the noise of the\nseas,\" are being fulfilled.\n\nAfter \"Clay,\" or Democracy, there remains only anarchy, or power in\nthe hands of an absolute ruler. That absolute, world-wide ruler is\ndeclared by all the prophets to be the Son of God, and his kingdom\nis symbolized by a _stone_--a stone is the very opposite of clay.\n\nTHE CLAY IS HERE!\n\nCenturies ago the Bible declared that in the closing hours of this\nage the whole world would be under arms, preparing for a gigantic\nand final war; that each nation would turn itself into a vast army,\nand that the whole earth would become a military camp and field of\nmanoeuvre.\n\nThis prophecy is being fulfilled.\n\nA universal preparation for war is going on with maddening haste.\nNations are seeking to outdo each other in their colossal\npreparation for the approaching strife. Armies are no longer mere\nlevies or hired cohorts, every man in the nation capable of bearing\narms or in any wise doing military duty is enrolled, and must take\nhis place as a soldier. During the summer immense armies move out of\ntheir barracks and play seriously the game of war. Each nation has\nits field manoeuvres and theme of attack and defence. On every side\nis heard the tramp of marching feet, the sound of bugle call, the\nrumble of artillery, the sharp word of command.\n\nNations are vying with each other in the endeavor to cover the sea\nwith the swiftest and most powerful battleships. Millions are being\nput into guns and ammunition. The money of the people is being\npoured out like water to obtain war material. Forges and foundries\nare working to turn out the most destructive implements. The\narsenals are being gorged with cannon, with shot and shell. Enormous\nsums of money in gold are stored away in impregnable fortresses\nthat, as the sinew of war, it may be ready to respond at a moment's\nnotice. Never before in the history of the world has there been such\na spectacle.\n\nOn land and sea men are silently, ceaselessly preparing for the\nirrepressible and impending conflict. Each nation feels its\nexistence is at stake; not a thinking statesman who does not feel\nassured that, sooner or later, the clash will come. All feel it will\nbe fierce, titanic, fateful and final.\n\nThe Bible foretold the great apostasy as manifested in the Roman\nCatholic Church, the rise of Protestantism, its ultimate breakdown\nin rationalism and open infidelity (that condition of which it\nshould be said, \"they will not endure sound doctrine\"). It foretold\nthe rising again of Romanism into the place of power and authority\n(as we see it to-day in the United States, where it holds the\nbalance of political power and is fast becoming a social triumph).\n\nWho would have had the hardihood to prophesy in the hour when\nProtestantism was delivering its terrible blows against Romanism,\noverturning the tables of the priests, who sold their infamous wares\nof papal indulgences, breaking idols and images in the churches, and\ndriving the church of the priesthood, the mass and auricular\nconfession swiftly downwards to the waters of the Mediterranean and,\nwhile it was repudiating this apostate church (which set up saints\nand images in the place of the Son of God, exalted works of merit\ninstead of the cleansing power of the blood) continually cried aloud\nthe glorious doctrine of justification by faith, and whose supreme\nwatchword was--\"The Bible and nothing but the Bible\"; who, under\nsuch conditions as these, would have had the courage to proclaim\nthat in the closing hours of this age, this aggressive and biblical\nProtestantism should break up by self-division, become fragmentary,\nits leading thinkers and teachers repudiating the Bible as the\ninfallible Word of God? Who would have dared to say that Rome would\ncome back, ascend into the place of authority, sit upon the throne\nof the world's respect and receive its honors? Who would have said\nthat this church which has set itself up above the Bible, claimed\nthe right to change times and seasons in defiance of a \"thus saith\nthe Lord,\" and has burned men at the stake for their love and\ndevotion to this very Bible, should, at the last, by reason of the\ninfidelity of Protestantism, its recognition of divorce and its\nindifference to a \"thus saith the Lord,\" come forth as the defender\nof the Bible, the champion of the home and the guardian of the\nsacredness of marriage, concentrating all its thunders against the\nshame and indecency of divorce?\n\nYet these prophecies are written on page after page of this book,\nand their complete and amazing fulfilment looks us in the face.\n\nWhat a picture is painted for us in the words that follow:\n\n\"This know, also, that in the last days perilous times shall come.\nFor men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters,\nproud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy,\nwithout natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers,\nincontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors,\nheady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God,\nhaving a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof.\"\n\n\"The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine: but\nafter their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having\nitching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth,\nand shall be turned to fables.\"\n\nIt is a picture which finds its counterpart in the Protestantism of\nto-day--a Protestantism full of worldliness, having a form of\ngodliness, a great religious profession, but denying its only power\n(the Holy Ghost), repudiating doctrine and listening to every fable\nof rationalistic philosophy sooner than to the truth of God.\n\nIn the letter to the church at Thyatira it is written:\n\n\"That woman Jezebel which calleth herself a prophetess (a teacher)\nto teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication (fornication\nin the book of Revelation signifies idolatry--image worship and,\nalso, union with the principles and ways of the world) and to eat\nthings sacrificed unto idols.\"\n\nJezebel was the Pagan wife of Ahab, king of Israel. Jezebel stands\nfor the union of Paganism and Judaism. But Jezebel here represents a\nprofessed church of Christ. In Jezebel, therefore, you have a\nprofessed church of Christ in which there is a combination of\nPaganism and Judaism. This symbolic Jezebel teaches the servants of\nChrist to commit fornication--that is, not only identification with\nthe world, but idolatry (image worship).\n\nIn its full detail, then, we have a professed church of Christ in\nwhich may be found a mixture of Paganism and Judaism. A church where\nthe professed followers of Christ are taught to worship by means of\nimages.\n\nCould you find a better, more accurate delineation of the apostate\nChurch of Rome--a Church which borrows the priesthood of Judaism and\nthe idolatry and image worship of Paganism?\n\nIn this book of the Revelation there is still another picture.\n\nIn the seventeenth chapter a woman is seen seated upon a scarlet\ncolored beast. She is arrayed in purple and scarlet. She is decked\nwith precious stones and pearls, and in her hand holds a golden cup\nfull of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication\n(idolatry). She is seen to be drunken with the blood of the martyrs\nof Jesus. The woman is, also, said to be seated on seven mountains\nand is, finally, spoken of as that great city which rules over the\nkings (nations) of the earth.\n\nThe woman is called \"MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF\nHARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH.\"\n\nIn the twenty-fifth chapter of the book, the BRIDE OF THE LAMB, the\ntrue church of Christ, is symbolized by a city--THE NEW JERUSALEM.\nBabylon and Jerusalem stand always opposed to each other. Babylon is\nthe centre of Satanic power and testimony--its name signifies\nmixture, confusion. Jerusalem is the centre of God's dealings and\ntestimony--it signifies peace and righteousness. If, therefore, the\ncity of New Jerusalem is a symbol of the true church of Christ and\nthe church of Christ is called a \"mystery,\" then this woman called\nBabylon, said to be a City and also called a \"mystery,\" is a symbol\nof the _false_ church of Christ; and, being a harlot, and the mother\nof harlots, or churches like herself (and thus the _Mother Church_),\nand harlot signifying fornication, and fornication, idolatry--image\nworship--then a professed Church of Christ, which teaches and\npractises image worship.\n\nThe great city ruling over the kings of the earth in John's day and\nsituated on seven mountains, or \"mounts,\" is ROME; as the city\nrepresents the woman Babylon who is the symbol of the false Church\nof Christ, then you have a false church of Christ seated (and\nremember, the word is \"_seated_\") in Rome. A Church seated in Rome\nis a _Roman Church_; and as the city rules over the earth, over the\nworld; and a world-wide rule is a universal rule; and the word for\nuniversal, worldwide, is, also, \"catholic,\" you have a catholic\nchurch; and, _seated_ in Rome (Rome its capital centre), THE ROMAN\nCATHOLIC CHURCH.\n\nThis Church is said to be drunken with the blood of the martyrs of\nJesus; and the pages of history glued together with the blood of\nthese same martyrs, and the burning, blistering record of the \"Holy\nInquisition,\" affirm that the astounding picture is true in all its\ncrimson and scarlet details.\n\nBut the striking feature in the picture, and the one that is first\npresented to us, is that the woman (the Church) is carried by a\nbeast. This beast is a symbol of government and teaches that the\nChurch \"rules\" over the governments of the world, is sustained by\nthe State, has attained to \"temporal power.\" As the picture occurs\nin the _third division_ of the book, and that division relates to\nthings still future, we have here a distinct prophecy that this\nApostate Roman Church shall again attain to temporal power, become a\nState Church, supported and carried officially by the nations of the\nearth.\n\nThe exactitude with which the picture has been painted, and that,\ntoo, at a time when Rome had not yet come into the place of full\n-blown apostasy and power; the startling way in which, step by step,\nthe prophetic outlines have been fulfilled even in our day, are\ntremendously suggestive concerning the possibility of its complete\nand final fulfilment; and bid us ask most earnestly--whence came the\nmental eyesight which enabled the writer of the book to sketch out\nfor us centuries ahead of time, that which the page of after history\nreveals to us as facts?\n\nThe social, financial, governmental, religious and moral condition\nof the present time have been portrayed in the book we call the\nBible. The coming of a special class called \"rich\" men as a\nparticular characteristic of this age, the revolt of labor, and its\ncry against the wrongs of capital, were all set forth in the epistle\nof James, nigh two thousand years ago, with an accuracy that is not\nto be explained on natural grounds. So absolutely unnatural is it,\nthat it is perfectly safe to say--these things are not such as a man\n_could_ write if he _would_.\n\nThat the book is not to be explained on natural grounds is evident\nfrom the fact that it is not a CONSTRUCTION, but a GROWTH; not an\nORGANIZATION, but an ORGANISM, growing up from Genesis to Revelation\nlike a tree from root through trunk and branch to leaf and fruit.\n\nEach book of the Bible will be found on examination to stand related\norganically to one another; and that each occupies its necessary and\nsequential order.\n\nIn _Genesis_, you have the beginning of things, the germ and outline\nof everything afterwards revealed.\n\n_Exodus_ gives the redemption by blood of a people foreseen and\ncovenanted in Genesis, their deliverance by the hand of God from the\npower of the king and the dangers of the land.\n\nIn _Leviticus_, the redeemed people draw nigh to God by virtue of\nthe blood of sacrifice and find access to the presence of God\nthrough the intercession of a priest.\n\nIn _Numbers_, this blood-redeemed people are seen on their journey\nto the better land; we read of their trials, their temptations,\ntheir unbelief, their backslidings and continual moral failure by\nthe way, and the never-failing grace and love of a covenant-keeping\nGod who leads them in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night.\n\nIn _Deuteronomy_, the people have the way over which they have come,\nand the dealings of God, rehearsed to them, and are instructed and\nprepared for the land whither they go.\n\nIn _Joshua_, the _second_ generation (which stands always for\nregeneration) gets into the promised land.\n\n_Judges_ tells how, after being blessed with all covenant blessings\nin the covenant land, the people fell into a state where every man\ndid that which was right \"in his own eyes.\"\n\n_Ruth_, the Gentile woman, becomes the bride of a Hebrew Lord; and\nthe covenant promise of God concerning Israel goes straightway down\nfrom a Gentile mother and a Hebrew father towards the throne which\nis set up in David and owned of God as the throne of Christ.\n\nThe books of _Samuel, Kings_ and _Chronicles_, take up the story of\nthe kingdom, and the Old Testament leads us on through symbol,\nfigure and open prophecy, to a Coming Messiah and a glorious kingdom\ntill, when we reach the last verse in Malachi, we lean across four\ncenturies of prophetic silence, waiting to greet that promised\nChrist who shall be born in Bethlehem; and who is to be called the\nSon of the Highest; who is to sit on the throne of his father David,\n\"to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice,\nfrom henceforth even forever.\"\n\nWe listen for the angelic song and the salutation to men of good\nwill; and we are expecting, later on, to see Zion's king riding up\nthe slopes to the Holy City and all the people coming forth to cry,\n\"Hosanna to the Son of David,\" and \"Blessed be he that cometh in the\nname of the Lord.\"\n\nWhen you open the New Testament you find four books--Matthew, Mark,\nLuke and John.\n\nThe order of these books is fixed--it cannot be changed.\n\nIf _Mark_ be substituted for _Matthew_, then the New Testament\nbegins without an account of the birth or genealogy of our Lord\nJesus Christ; no intimation is given that he is born king of the\nJews, and is the expected Messiah.\n\nIf _Luke_ be given the place of _Matthew_, little mention will be\nfound of the Jewish kingdom of heaven; and our Lord will be seen\nwith a leaning towards the Gentiles.\n\nIf the Gospel of _John_ begin the New Testament instead of\n_Matthew_, then we shall read of him who is Son of God rather than\nKing of the Jews, and the expectation raised by Malachi will seem\nunfulfilled.\n\nBut the moment the order named is followed all is perfect, all is\nharmony.\n\n_Matthew_ presents our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of _Abraham_ and\nSon of _David_; heir of the covenant _land_, and the covenant\n_throne_, and at once links the New Testament with the Old.\n\n_Mark_ announces that this King of the Jews came into the world to\nbe the _Servant_ of God and a blessing in his service to men.\n\n_Luke_, although he announces our Lord Jesus Christ as King, sets\nhim forth pre-eminently as _The Man_, going among men, eating and\ndrinking with them, and speaking in such plain and simple terms that\nthe \"common people heard him gladly.\"\n\nIn _John_, this Jewish King, this Servant of God and men, this Man\namong men, who received sinners and ate with them, is revealed as\nthe Mighty God, the eternal _Word_, the Holy One of Israel, who came\ndown to visit his people, was made flesh and \"tabernacled\" among\nthem, as of old he dwelt in the tabernacle of the wilderness in the\nShekinal glory above the Mercy Seat and between the outstretched\nwings of the golden Cherubim.\n\nTake away the book of _Acts_, and nothing can be known of the origin\nof the church and its apostolic history. Without the book of Acts\nthe epistles are wholly unintelligible when they refer to the\nChurch.\n\nDo without the _Second_ epistle to the _Corinthians_, and you have\nno revelation of the state of the Christian dead either as to their\nlocation or condition.\n\nWithout the _Second_ epistle to the _Thessalonians_ you cannot fix\nthe identity of the Antichrist.\n\nLeave out the epistle to the _Hebrews_ and there is no key to\n_Leviticus_.\n\nWithout the book of _Daniel_ it is impossible fully to understand\nthe book of _Revelation_.\n\nNo matter at what period the book of _Revelation_ may have been\nwritten, it can have but one place in the Bible, and that the last.\nIt must have this place because it shows us the foreview of Genesis\nfulfilled: the seed of the woman has bruised the serpent's head,\nSatan has been bound and Paradise is regained.\n\nThe Old and New Testaments stand related to each other as the two\nhalves of a perfect whole. In the Old Testament the New is\n_concealed_; in the New Testament the Old is _revealed_.\n\n_Genesis_ finds its key in the first chapter of _John's_ Gospel, and\nidentifies the creator of heaven and earth with him who was made\nflesh and dwelt among us as the Son of God.\n\n_Exodus_ is explained by the _First_ epistle to the _Corinthians_,\nin which we learn that \"Christ\" is the \"Passover sacrificed for us.\"\n\n_Leviticus_ is expounded by the epistle to the _Hebrews_.\n\n_Numbers_ has its correspondence in the book of _Acts_.\n\nIn Numbers you have the experience of the Children of Israel in\ntheir journey through the wilderness. In Acts we get the story of\nthe Church in its pilgrimage through the world.\n\n_Deuteronomy_ is to be read with _Colossians_.\n\nIn Deuteronomy the people of Israel are being prepared for an\nearthly inheritance. In Colossians the Church is being prepared for\na heavenly inheritance.\n\n_Joshua_ stands over against _Ephesians_.\n\nIn Joshua the redeemed people have to fight with flesh and blood in\norder to possess the covenant land. In Ephesians \"we wrestle not\nagainst flesh and blood, but against wicked spirits in the heavenly\nplaces.\"\n\n_Judges_ may be understood by reading the _first_ chapter of the\n_first_ epistle, and the _twelfth_ chapter of the _second_ epistle\nto the _Corinthians_.\n\nThe book of _Ruth_ is illuminated by the _third_ and _fifth_\nchapters of the _Ephesians_.\n\nIn Ruth you have the Gentile bride of a Hebrew Lord, the kinsman,\nredeemer and advocate; who presents his bride to himself in the gate\nbefore all the assembled judges.\n\nIn Ephesians, the Gentile Bride is seen to be the Church, the\nkinsman, redeemer and advocate, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, having\nloved the Church and given himself for it, will \"present it to\nhimself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such\nthing.\"\n\nThe books of _Samuel_, _Kings_ and _Chronicles_, may be read with\nthe four _Gospels_ and the book of _Revelation_.\n\nIn Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, you have the story of David, the\nanointed king, man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, triumphant\nwarrior, exalted king--Solomon, prince of peace, ruling over the\nestablished kingdom and the queen of Sheba coming from the uttermost\nparts of the earth to own and celebrate his glory.\n\nIn the Gospels we get the story of our Lord Jesus Christ as anointed\nking and man of sorrows. In Revelation he is seen coming forth at\nthe head of the armies of heaven, a mighty warrior, a triumphant\nking and, at the last, as Prince of Peace ruling in splendor over\nhis established kingdom; while the Gentiles, coming from the\nuttermost parts of the earth to Jerusalem, bow the knee before him\nand acknowledge his glory.\n\n_Ezra_ may be read with the latter half of the _second_ chapter of\nthe _Ephesians_.\n\nIn Ezra you have the building of the material temple. In Ephesus the\nbuilding of the spiritual temple.\n\n_Nehemiah_ can be read with the twenty-first chapter of the\n_Revelation_.\n\nNehemiah gives us Jerusalem below. Revelation, Jerusalem above.\n\nIn the book of _Esther_ the name of God is not once mentioned; but\nit shows us the unseen God acting in his secret providence to\ndeliver his covenant people, the Jews, from the hand of the Gentile\noppressor, and setting them in the place of authority and power over\nthe Gentiles.\n\nThe _eleventh_ chapter of the _Romans_ explains the book of Esther.\n\nIn the eleventh chapter Paul shows that God has not forgotten the\npeople whom he foreknew. The nation as such has been set aside. It\nis now, as Hosea says, _Lo Ammi_, _\"not my people,\"_ not the people\nof God.\n\nAn election according to grace is going on among the Jews. These are\nbeing called into the Church and will form a part of the Body and\nBride. The Gentiles have come dispensationally into the place of\nIsrael, and God is sending his Gospel among them--calling out those\nwhom he has foreseen and known among the Gentiles. The nation as\nsuch would seem to be cast aside. The people are walking in darkness\nand the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their true God and only\nSaviour, is not owned among them; but while the Lord is thus denied\nby them, he has not forgotten them. His providences are round about\nthem in their preservation and multiplication, and in his judgment\nof the nations which persecute them. Their present condition\nnationally is temporary. Paul warns the Gentiles that the Jews have\nbeen cut off and set aside because of unbelief. The Gentiles have\nbeen brought in, and stand alone by faith. It is well for them not\nto be \"high-minded,\" but \"to fear\"; for so surely as God spared not\nthe nation and set it aside because of unbelief, just so surely will\nhe deal with the Gentiles if the Gentiles fall into unbelief.\n\nThe Gentiles must not be wise in their own conceits. The blindness\nand the setting aside of Israel will last only till the \"fulness of\nthe Gentiles be come in,\" that is, till the election among them is\ncomplete; then the Lord will take up Israel as a nation again, and\nprecisely as he delivered Mordecai and the Jews of Esther's and\nAhasuerus' time and made them to be accepted and feared, so, it is\nwritten, the Lord himself will come forth in behalf of his ancient\npeople. \"There shall come out of (unto) Sion the Deliverer,\" and,\n\"so all Israel shall be saved.\"\n\nThe book of Esther read in the light of the eleventh chapter of the\nRomans is illuminating as to the unchanging faithfulness of God and\nhis unceasing love for the nation and people of his choice.\n\nThus book after book of the Bible may be studied; and the more they\nare examined and studied, the more manifest will be the intimate\nrelation and marvellous correspondence between the Old and the New\nTestaments.\n\nWhen you realize the fact that these Old and New Testament books, so\nremarkably related and inter-explanatory of each other, have been\nwritten by different authors, without possibility of collusion or\nagreed plan; that each part fits into the other; that it cannot have\none book less or one book more; that to take from it would destroy\nthe completeness, to add would mar the harmony; that it is perfect\nin itself, having the key of each book hung up at the entrance; that\nit gives but never borrows light; that it cannot be explained or\ninterpreted outside of itself; that to him who diligently searches\nit, it will reveal itself and make him wise both for this world and\nfor that which is to come; when all these facts are faced, it ought\nto be evident that in the Bible we have a living thing and not a\nmere handiwork wrought by man; that man can no more claim to be the\nactual author of it than of the mountains that are round about\nJerusalem or the heavens that are high above them.\n\nThe unity of a book demands unity of objective.\n\nThis book has a great objective--a supreme theme.\n\nThat theme is not Israel--although two-thirds of the book considered\nas a whole are taken up with the history of that people. The great\ntheme is not the Church of Christ--although the Church in this age\nis the supreme thing in the sight of God. The one great theme, the\none immense objective of this book towards which it moves through\nhistory and prophecy, through figure and symbol, through self\n-sustained prose and musical song--the one great objective is--\n\nOUR LORD JESUS CHRIST.\n\nIt seeks to present him in his person, his work, his present office\nand coming glories.\n\nIt sets him before us as,\n\nThe Child born.\n\nThe Son given.\n\nThe Counsellor.\n\nThe Mighty God.\n\nThe Prince of Peace.\n\nThe Everlasting Father.\n\nThe Lily of the valleys.\n\nThe Rose of Sharon.\n\nThe Branch.\n\nThe Lord our Righteousness.\n\nThe Lord's Fellow.\n\nThe Man of God's Right hand.\n\nHe whose Goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting.\n\nThe Burnt Offering.\n\nThe Meat Offering.\n\nThe Peace Offering.\n\nThe Sin Offering.\n\nThe Trespass Offering.\n\nThe Sum of God's Thoughts.\n\nThe Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief.\n\nSon of Abraham.\n\nSon of David.\n\nSon of Mary.\n\nSon of Man.\n\nGod the Son.\n\nKing of the Jews.\n\nKing of Israel.\n\nKing of Kings.\n\nLord of Lords.\n\nGod the Creator.\n\nGod manifest in the flesh.\n\nThe Second Man.\n\nThe Last Adam.\n\nThe First and the Last.\n\nThe Beginning and the Ending.\n\nThe Way, the Truth, the Life.\n\nThe Light of the world.\n\nThe Bread of life.\n\nThe Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep.\n\nThe Great Shepherd who came again from the dead.\n\nThe Chief Shepherd, who shall appear with his flock in glory.\n\nThe Sin-bearer.\n\nThe Rock.\n\nOur Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ.\n\nHe who is.\n\nHe who was.\n\nHe who is to come.\n\nHe who before Abraham was, is, by his own announcement, the \"I am.\"\n\nThe Almighty.\n\nTHIS SAME JESUS.\n\nAnd to these might be added more than five hundred other names and\ntitles, together with their cognates, to say nothing of the various\ncharacteristics assigned him, the things predicated of him, until it\nis found that he is the very warp and woof of the book.\n\nTo proclaim him, exalt him, make him known, set him forth in his\nmany roles, his functions, his offices and his covenant glories,\nprophets recite their visions, a Psalmist sings his rarest songs,\nand apostles unfold their matchless doctrines.\n\nWhen you contemplate the fact of this one objective; this tremendous\nunity of intention in the book, you have an overwhelming\ndemonstration of the unity of its inspiration. Whether the\ninspiration be a true or a false one, it is beyond all question one\ninspiration. A book whose construction extends over centuries,\nwritten by men separated by time and distance from each other, with\nno possibility of personal or mental relation to each other--all\nwriting to one objective--and that to set forth the Christ of God in\nhis varied relations--a book with such a unity of purpose\ndemonstrates in the most self-evident fashion that the writers were\nmoved by a common impulse and, therefore, a common inspiration.\n\nAnd this unity of objective and inspiration coordinates with the\nwonderful fact that the book has but ONE KEY.\n\nThe key which can alone open this book and make every line\nintelligible from Genesis to Revelation is Our Lord Jesus Christ.\n\nTake Christ out of the Bible and it is a harp without a player, a\nsong without a singer, a palace with all the doors locked, a\nlabyrinth with no Ariadne thread to guide.\n\nPut Christ into the Bible, and the harp strings will be smitten as\nwith a master's hand.\n\nPut Christ into the Bible, and the voice of song is heard as when a\nlark from the midst of dew-wet grasses sings, as it soars aloft to\ngreet the coming dawn.\n\nPut Christ into the Bible, and all the doors of the palace are swung\nopen and you may pass from room to room, down all the ivory\ngalleries of the King, beholding portrait and landscape, vista of\nbeauty and heaped-up treasures of truth, of infinite love and royal\ngrace.\n\nPut Christ into the Bible, and you will have a scarlet thread--the\ncrimson of the blood--that will lead you through all the winding\nways of redemption and glory.\n\nPut Christ into Genesis, into the verses of the first chapter, and\nit will chime like silver bells in harmony with the wondrous notes\nin the first chapter of the Gospel of John, and tell you that he who\ncreated the heavens and the earth is he who in the beginning was the\neternal Word, the voice of the infinite silence, and who, creating\nfor himself a human nature, and clad in mortal flesh, walked on\nearth among the sons of men as Jesus of Nazareth.\n\nPut Christ into the twenty-second, the twenty-third and the twenty\n-fourth chapters of Genesis, and you will have placed before you in\nperfect type the birth of Christ, the sacrifice, the resurrection on\nthe morning of the third day, the setting aside of the Jewish nation\nas the first wife, the coming of the Holy Spirit in the name of the\nFather and the Son to find a Bride for the Son, the calling out of\nthe church, the endowment of the church with the gifts sent from the\nFather in the name of the Son, the pilgrimage of the church under\nthe guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Second Coming of Christ, the\nRapture and meeting of Christ and the church in the \"field\" of the\nair, and the marriage of the Son.\n\nPut Christ into the dryest and dullest page of the book of Kings and\nChronicles, and it will bloom with light and glory; and if you watch\nin faith, you will see the King's chariot go by, and catch a vision\nof the King himself in his beauty.\n\nPut Christ into the Tabernacle, and it will cast its treasures like\na king's largess at your feet.\n\nYou will see the brazen altar to be the cross, the brazen laver, the\nbath of regeneration, even the Word of God. In the Holy Place the\ntable of shew bread will speak of him who once said, \"I am the bread\nof life.\" The golden candlestick will remind you that he said: \"I am\nthe light of the world.\" The golden altar and the priest with his\nswinging censer of burning incense standing thereat will proclaim\nhim as the great high priest. The beautiful veil of fine linen\nembroidered with figures of the cherubim in blue, purple and scarlet\ncolor is (according to a direct Scripture) the symbol of his flesh,\nhis mortal humanity while on earth. Every board and bar, every cord\nand pin, the coverings, the curtains, the blue, the purple and the\nscarlet color, the golden vessels as well as the furniture, each and\nall, proclaim him, illustrate and illuminate him in his person, his\nwork, his present office and coming glories.\n\nAll these are analogies, types, pictures, are so related to Christ\nthat he alone explains them; the explanation is filled with such\nperfection of harmony in every detail, the relation between them and\nour Lord Jesus Christ as the Antitype is so strikingly self-evident,\nthat any discussion of it would be useless.\n\nWhen you find a key and lock which fit each other, you conclude they\nwere intended for each other.\n\nIn the light of facts already cited, what other conclusion can be\ndrawn than that Christ and the Bible were intended for each other?\n\nAnd when you see this Bible coming together part by part,\nforetelling the Christ and explained alone by him, what sane\nconclusion is possible other than the book which is opened and\nexplained by him who is not only the Christ but the Personal Word of\nGod, _must be_, and _is_, THE WRITTEN WORD OF GOD!\n\nLet your mind dwell for a moment on the style of the book.\n\nIt is so simple that a child may understand it; so profound, that\nthe mightiest intellect cannot go beyond its depths. It is so\nessentially rich that it turns every language into which it is\ntranslated into a classic. At one moment it is plain narration; at\nanother, it is all drama and tragedy, in which cataclysmic climax\ncrashes against climax.\n\nIt records the birth of a babe, the flight of an angel, the death of\na king, the overthrow of an empire or the fall of a sparrow. It\nnotes the hyssop that groweth out of the wall and speaks of the\ncedars of Lebanon. It shows us so pastoral a thing as a man sitting\nat his tent door in the cool of the day, and then paints for us a\ncity in heaven with jasper walls, with golden streets, and where\neach several gate that leadeth into the city is one vast and shining\npearl.\n\nIt is full of outlines--outlines as large and bare as mountain\npeaks, and then it is crowded with details as minute as the sands of\nthe sea. There are times when clouds and darkness float across its\npages and we hear from within like unto the voice of him who\ninhabiteth eternity; in another moment the lines blaze with light,\nthe revelation they give is high noon--and all the shadows are under\nthe feet.\n\nIt is terrible in its analysis and cold and emotionless in the hard\nimpact of its synthesis. It describes moments of passion in\npassionless words, and states infinite conclusions without the hint\nof an emphasis. It shows us a man in hell (hades) and, although it\ndescribes sufferings more awful than mortal flesh can know, causing\nthe soul to shudder at the simple reading of it, it takes on no\nquickened pulse, no feverish rush of added speech.\n\nIn a few colorless lines it recounts the creation of the heavens and\nthe earth. In language utterly barren of excitement it describes the\nmost exciting and soul-moving event that can occupy the imagination\n--that moment when the heavens shall be on fire, the elements melted\nwith fervent heat, the earth and the works therein burned up, and a\nnew heaven and a new earth brought into view.\n\nIt is a book of prose and yet a book of sublimest poetry.\n\nThe book of Job is a poem by the side of which the hexameters of\nHorace, the drama of Shakespeare, the imagination of Milton, are not\nto be compared.\n\nIn all literature the book of Job alone introduces a spirit into the\nscene and reports its speech without utterly breaking down into the\ndisaster of the commonplace.\n\nListen to the account which Eliphaz the Temanite gives. He says:\n\n\"In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep falleth\non men, Fear came upon me, and trembling which made all my bones to\nshake.\"\n\nThen a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up;\nIt stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof; an image\nwas before mine eyes; there was silence, and I heard a voice,\nsaying, \"Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall man be more\npure than his Maker?\"\n\nHere is the threshold of the unseen. Before he sees or hears\nanything, the Temanite has the sense of fear--the fear of something\nmore than human. The unknown weighs upon him and presses him down,\nall the life and energy in him are at low ebb--he feels as though\nthe tides of life were running out. A spirit passes before his face.\nIt is like a breath of scarcely moving air out of the night. The\nhair of his flesh (mark the psychological and physiological fact),\nthe hair of his flesh stood up. It was as if a current of\nelectricity had passed through him. Then the spirit stands still. It\nis as though this breath of air out of the night were no longer\nmoving. He cannot discern any form. There is nothing fixed or stable\nenough for him to perceive. An image is before his eyes. He makes no\nvulgar attempt to describe it--it is indescribable. There is a great\nsilence; then, as the margin has it, he heard a still small voice--\nnot a loud and jarring voice--but a voice low, soft, still; and yet!\nthe utterance of that voice! what immensity of self-conscious power\nwhat authority and dignity--the dignity of infinite integrity:\n\"Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall man be more pure than\nhis Maker?\"\n\nHow the night is full of a sudden law of proportion. Mortal man and\neternal God. You feel the distance widening and widening between\nthem there in the stillness of the night. The justice of man! man!\nthe unjust--the law breaker; man, who is of yesterday and is gone\nto-morrow--mortal man, more just than he of whom it is said,\n\"Justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne.\" Fallen man,\nman full of iniquity, shall he be more pure than he who made him; he\nwho breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and made him a\nliving soul; he whose name is holiness and righteousness and very\ntruth? As the question lingers man shrivels and sinks into the dust,\nand the whole night is filled with stillness--with the stillness and\nimmensity of the all-pervading and holy God.\n\nRead the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth chapters.\n\nThey record the highest reaches of human language, so great that our\nown version cannot dim their splendor. Nothing ever written\nsurpasses them, not only in the felicity of expression, but in the\nsense of deity pervading them. Each succeeding verse sustains the\nother and, at the last, you feel that God, very God, indeed, has\nspoken.\n\nThe Almighty answers the complaining Job.\n\nHe answers him, not out of the midst of a deep, unbroken calm, but\nout of the whirlwind; and yet, from the centre of that mighty vortex\nof unlimited force and energy and power, the voice comes forth with\nthe calmness of one who knows himself superior to the whirlwind and\nthe storm.\n\n\"Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?\"\n\nThis is the abrupt and sudden question. It is the fitting question\nof him who knoweth the end from the beginning. In the very asking of\nit all the boasted knowledge, the attainment, the self-consciousness\nand vanity of man fade away, and man himself is as nothing--God\nalone remains upon the vision--all knowing--all wise--supreme.\n\nThis Bible is a book of history.\n\nIt will spend page after page in describing the doings of a\nrebellious king, and then compress the story of twenty-five hundred\nyears into a few dozen lines, but will do this in such a way, by\nmeans of exact symbols, that the twenty-five centuries thus\ncompressed will reveal a clearer outline and fuller vista than\nthousands of ordinary volumes could set forth in detail.\n\nMark the providence that has guarded the book.\n\nKings and potentates have sought to destroy it. It has been thrown\ninto the flames. Volume after volume has been burned. But always,\nand at the critical moment, some copy has been preserved--here in\nthe cottage of a devoted peasant at the risk of his life, hidden in\nthe crevice of a rock from the inquisitor's search, or cast aside by\na careless hand and forgotten amid a pile of swept up dust in a\nneglected corner of some impregnable castle; from whence it has come\nforth to be copied by slow and painful, yet loving, toil, passed\nfrom house to house secretly as a priceless treasure, then printed\non concealed presses and at last cast forth as living and fruitful\nseed.\n\nMen have denounced it and demonstrated that it is false both in\nhistory and science; then, unexpectedly, the stroke of a pick or the\nturn of a shovel uncovers some startling witness of its exact truth\nand the excuseless folly of those who deny it.\n\nThe fourteenth chapter of Genesis has been set aside by the critics\nas historically worthless. The excavations in Babylon have brought\nto light a tablet with the name of Arioch, the fourth king mentioned\nin that chapter, stamped upon it.\n\nThe statement in Exodus that Pharaoh forced the Children of Israel\nwhile building his treasure cities to make bricks without straw, has\nbeen treated as a fable. The treasure chambers themselves have been\nfound, the rooms divided by brick partitions eight to ten feet\nthick--and great quantities of these bricks _made without straw_.\n\nLuke says that Sergius Paulus was pro-consul of Cyprus. The critics\ndenied it and proved thereby the fallibility of the New Testament.\n\nThe homely but truth-telling spade, and without consulting the\ncritic, dug up some coins in the island of Cyprus itself, and on the\ncoins were stamped both the image and the name of Sergius Paulus.\n\nLuke declares that Lysannius was tetrarch of Abilene; and again the\ncritics denied it and more than ever discounted Luke as an\nhistorian.\n\nRenan, the plausible and analytical infidel, read the record carved\non the stones of Baalbeck, and announced, openly, that Luke is\ncorrect.\n\nFrom the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, Tyre and Sidon; from the\ntrenches of Tel el Armana; by the key words of the Rosetta stone and\nthe black but speaking face of the Moabite stone; from newly\ndiscovered papyri and parchment, and the mystic page of cracked and\ncrumpled palimpsest; from the rocks of earth, the depths of the sea\nand the heights of heaven--and from the latest discoveries of\nscience, there arise amazing witnesses, which speak in tones that\ncannot be hushed, with facts that cannot be denied, and bear\ntestimony beyond all possibility of dispute to the truth and\naccuracy of the book; so much so, indeed, that such an one as Sir\nJohn Herschell, the great astronomer, has said: \"All human\ndiscoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming more\nand more strongly the truths contained in the Sacred Scriptures.\"\n\nConsider the vitality of the book.\n\nIn less than ten years a text-book is out of date, a cyclopedia\nworthless, and a library a cemetery of dead books and dead ideas;\nbut this book keeps living right on--keeps abreast of the times, has\na testimony for every day, and every day borrows its youth afresh as\nfrom the womb of the morning.\n\nScience has laughed it out of court. Two hundred and fifty years ago\nVoltaire said: \"Fifty years from now the world will hear no more of\nthe Bible.\" Self-elected scholarship has pronounced it out of date\nand dead. Again and again its funeral services are held. Kind and\ncondescending eulogiums are uttered over its past history and its\ngood intent. With considerate hands it is lowered into its grave.\nThe _resquiescat in pace_ is solemnly pronounced and lo! before the\ncritical mourners have returned to their homes it has risen from the\ndead, passed with surprising speed the funeral coaches, and is\nfound--as of yore--in the busy centres of life, thundering against\nevil, revealing the secrets of the heart, offering consolation to\nthe sorrowing, hope to the dying, and flashing forth from its\nquivering, vital pages the wonders of coming glory.\n\nWhile copies of the classics--Virgil, Zenophon, Caesar, Sophocles,\nPindar and Martial--are to be counted by a few thousands, and are\ncast aside by students as soon as they have graduated, and are\nforgotten in a twelvemonth, this Bible goes on printing every year\nmillions of copies in all languages and dialects of earth; so far\nfrom casting it aside, when once read, men take it up and read it\nagain and again, study it through life, dig into it as for hid\ntreasure, and make it the pillow on which to lay their dying head.\n\nWith each succeeding year the demand for it increases and voices are\ncontinually crying--give us _The Book_.\n\nIt is the supreme book.\n\nIt is the book we need when the fire of sin gleams in our eye and\nits poison burns in our veins. It is the book we need when the heart\nis sore, when our soul is troubled, and when peace is no longer a\nguest in our home.\n\nIt is the book we need; for from its pages alone do we behold the\nlight which shines from a Saviour's empty grave; from its pages\nalone do we receive assurance of the resurrection of the dead, of\nimmortality and the life to come; and from its pages alone do we\nhear the tender and welcoming words which seek to greet us and to\ncomfort us while we struggle here ofttimes beneath the burden's\ngrowing weight, those words of heavenly music: \"Come unto me all ye\nthat labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest.\"\n\nWhat author on earth would think his book dead and out of date if\nyear after year the publication of it taxed the printing presses of\nthe world? What author would deem his book out of date when the\nvoices of everywhere proclaimed it the book of books, and multitudes\nunnumbered confessed that from its pages alone they found the way of\nlife and peace?\n\nSuch a book is neither out of date nor dead; and its throbbing\nvitality tells of a life impulse and inspiration that are not of\nman.\n\nAnd, finally,\n\nThis book inspires men for God.\n\nEvery year books on morality and essays on conduct are written and\npublished. They get as far as a first edition and are never heard of\nagain; but this book, which binds all its parts about the person,\nthe work, the office and the glories of Christ, changes the life,\nthe character, the time and the eternity of men.\n\nPlace this book in the midst of the vilest and most abandoned\ncommunity of desperate and devilish men and, sooner or later, you\nwill hear a cry coming from the depths of sin and shame, bitter\ncries of repentance and yearnings after God; and by and by that\ncommunity will be transformed, men will no longer be demon filled,\nbut possessed with a spirit of truth and love; and God will be found\nto reign and rule in the midst.\n\nWhatever there is of sweetness and truth and righteousness in the\nworld to-day; whatever there is that gives hope and comfort on earth\nand holds men back from very madness and despair, is due directly\nand indirectly to this book.\n\nTake up a map and find the lands where sin and vice skulk in the\ndarkness; where virtue is honored and purity enthroned; go mark on\nthe map the lands where the men are the most manly and the women the\nmost womanly, and you will find it in those lands where the Bible is\nexalted, not as the word of man, but, in deed and truth, as the Word\nof God.\n\nFind the men and women who know most of God, who have the deepest\nconsciousness of him in the soul, and who walk every day with the\nassurance of his _real presence_--to whom the unseen becomes from\nhour to hour the thing that is alone real--and who live as kings\nabove their prostrate passions--and they will be those who make this\nbook the supreme authority in their daily lives; who hear it when it\nspeaks to them as the very voice of God.\n\nA book which thus inspires men _for_ God is, indeed, a book which,\nby every law of logic, must have been inspired _by_ God.\n\nFrom the evidence cited two things are apparent:\n\n1. The Bible is not such a book as a man _would_ write if he\n_could_.\n\n2. The Bible is not such a book as a man _could_ write if he\n_would_.\n\nBy these conclusions, therefore, the Bible is shown to be _not of\nman_.\n\nAs the book is thus shown to be not of man--either by inclination or\nability; and as from the beginning to the end its object is to\nglorify the unseen God in the revelation of his incarnate Son, then\nthis book _is of God_; and being the utterance of his mind and will,\nis his Word; so that the statement of the apostle concerning it is\njustified. It is to be received as he says: \"Not as the word of man,\nbut as it is in truth, THE WORD OF GOD.\"\n\nTo him who so approaches it--who puts his shoes from off his feet as\non holy ground, and with the silence of expectant faith listens and\nlooks, it will disclose itself, speak to him, and so lay hold of the\ninner recesses of the heart that he shall know he has been face to\nface with God, has had glimpses of the delectable mountains and the\ncity foursquare that lies beyond; from henceforth he shall walk, not\nas one in a vain show or in the mixing of darkness and light, but\nwhere the night shineth as the day; where the road is no longer\npaved with the stumbling stones of doubt, nor the signboards filled\nwith a guess, but where the way leadeth on and up--shining more and\nmore bright unto the perfect day.\n\nTake up this book, O friend. Do not read it with a hurried glance.\nLet thine eyes rest a while upon some single word, and if thou art\npatient, it will bud and blossom and bloom and grow unto thee as a\ntree of life; and the leaves shall be as medicine for the healing of\nthy hurt. Take it into thy mouth and learn a lesson from the meadow\nkine who chew the tender grasses, and turn them over, and chew them\nagain, till they have extracted sweetness and life therefrom. Chew\nthe words of this book over and over again (it is impossible to do\nso with any other book), meditate upon the words (to meditate, to\nreflect, are highest functions), mediate upon their meaning--upon\ntheir direct and cognate meanings; let the thoughts they suggest\nfind full and free reaction in thy soul, and from some simple word\nor phrase thou shalt draw the sweetness of divine love, and more and\nmore the consciousness that thou hast received into thine innermost\nbeing very spirit and very life.\n\nRead it on bended knee. Take up the words and breathe on them with\nthe warm breath of sincere desire to know their intent, and music\nwill come forth as from the fabled horn of old--music that shall\nhave in it all the hallelujahs and hosannas of the heavenly host.\n\nIf you will take this book to your heart, you will find it bread\nsuch as kings' ovens never baked, water more crystal than that which\nbursts from mountain springs, wine the like of which was never\npressed from purple grapes, meat which cattle on a thousand hills\nnever furnished, and fruit no man ever gathered in royal gardens--\nthe fruit of the Spirit. You will find it a lamp unto your feet and\na light unto your path, a hammer for breaking the flinty rocks by\nthe way, a fire that will burn out the stain of sin, and warm\nbenumbed fingers for quickened service in His Name.\n\nGive it the first place in your life. You will want to hear from it\nas the last thing when you go hence. The words of loved ones will be\nsweet in your ear as you leave these mortal shores (if our Lord\nJesus Christ should not hasten his coming, you must go), but you\nwill want to hear its utterance above all the tones, even of those\nyou love, speaking the final word of hope and cheer to you.\n\nBe very patient with it. It has great things to say to you--and you\nwill not always be fit to hear them. You will not always--at the\nfirst--be able to understand them; but if you do not understand to\n-day, to-morrow, or other morrows after that, it will speak to you\nand you shall fully know. Perhaps it will wait till the unshed tears\nare in your heart, and the moan the common ear has never heard--then\nit will speak--and the words will fall into the sore place of the\nsoul, as though angel lips had touched it; it will wait, perhaps,\ntill the storm is high, and your frail craft (life's poor, frail\ncraft) is tossed as though it would go down in the whelming waters\n(and the shore so far away), and then it will speak and say, \"Peace\n--be still,\" and in that driven life of yours shall be a great and\nholy calm.\n\nDo not attempt to cross-question it as though you hesitated to\nbelieve all it said. To accept some parts and reject others will be\nfatal to you. God does not reveal himself to those who doubt him. He\nthat cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is the\nrewarder of all them that diligently seek him. So must you approach\nthis book--with reverence and submissive faith; for this book, O\nfriend! is not the word of man, but in very truth--THE WORD OF GOD.","title":"Christ, Christianity and the Bible","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":37251}