Christ, Christianity and the Bible BY I. M. HALDEMAN, D. D. Pastor First Baptist Church, New York City _Author of_ How to Study the Bible, The Coming of Christ, The Signs of theTimes, Christian Science in the Light of Holy Scripture, etc. , etc. NEW YORK CHARLES C. COOK 150 Nassau Street Copyright, 1912, By Charles C. Cook CONTENTS Christ Christianity The Bible Christ IF NOT GOD--NOT GOOD BY I. M. HALDEMAN, D. D. "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is God"(Matthew 9:17). THE world has accepted Jesus Christ as a good man. The evidences of his goodness are manifold. He was full of compassion. He never looked upon the people as a crowd. He never thought of themas a mass. He saw them always as individuals. His heart went out tothem. All his impulses were to pity them, sympathize with, and helpthem. He went among them. He entered into all conditions, accepted allsituations. He was present at a wedding, he ate with publicans andsinners and, anon, was guest at a rich man's table. He saw the ravages of disease, the shame of sin, the tragedies inlife. He knew there was torture in body and anguish in spirit. He took the mystery of pain and laid it upon his heart, until tearswere his meat and his drink, by day and by night. He became a man ofsorrows and an expert in grief. He took upon him the woes of theworld till he was bowed and bent, as with the weight of years. Thetears of sympathy grooved his cheeks, as when streams carve theirway down mountain sides. Because of this men looked at him and sawneither form nor comeliness; neither was there any beauty in himthat they should desire him. He was a beneficent man. Multitudes of men are benevolent, but not beneficent. Benevolence is well wishing. Beneficence is well doing. He wasalways well doing, giving sight to the blind, healing the sick, cleansing the leper, feeding the hungry, raising the dead, unloosingthe bonds of Satan--unwinding the serpent's coil. He was absolutely unselfish. He emptied himself and made room in his soul for other lives. He hadno office hours and never interposed secretaries or major-domosbetween himself and the people. He received all who came unto him--ministering without money and without price. There is one scene that might well be painted by a master hand. It is evening. The western sky is all aglow with the glory of thesetting sun. Far up in the dome of the infinite blue, the eveningstar swings golden, like a slow descending lamp let down byinvisible hands. The street is in half-tone. It is packed by thestrangest of throngs, by the blind, the lame, the halt, theparalyzed and the leper-derelicts of humanity--borne thither on asurging tide of life in which every wave is an accent of pain; theyare driven and piled up in great, quivering heaps against a doorwhich is partly shut, as in self-defence, by the sweltering crowdwithin. Jesus of Nazareth is in that house. He is healing the sick. He is giving health, and strength, and peaceto all who seek him. He turns no one away. Compassion, sympathy, beneficence, the tenderness of a mother for her helpless babe--theseare the characteristics which his daily ministry revealed. No one ever brought a charge of evil doing or evil speaking againsthim. The people who followed him said, "He hath done all things well. " Police officers sent to arrest him as a disturber of the peace foundhim in the midst of the people, speaking words that hushed theirtumult, quieted their murmurings and gave them rest; and theofficers returning to them who sent them, said, "Never man spakelike this man. " Pilate's wife dreamed a troubled dream of him, and sent word to herhusband not to lay hands on him--seeing that he was a just man. Thrice before heaven and earth--in a testimony that still echoesthrough infinite spaces, and is heard by listening worlds--Pilatehimself proclaimed, "I find no fault in this man. " He lifted up his voice against sin and unrighteousness. Against nothing did he so much speak as against religious hypocrisy. Nowhere, in any record, is language so terrible, so penetrating, sohot, so full of the flame of fire and scorching analysis, scorchingand burning in its denunciation of those who on the outside (intheir religious profession) were like whitened sepulchres, but onthe inside (in their actual lives) were full of dead men's bones andcorruption--nowhere, outside the twenty-third chapter of Matthew, does language fall with such tremendous vibration of thunderousindignation, and the accent of aroused and fully angered justice. "Ye serpents, " "ye generation of vipers, " are some of the phrases;and the words, "fools, " "blind hypocrites, " mingle again and againwith the far-sounding, judicial menace, "Woe, woe unto you. " He seemed to be dominated and controlled by one idea--the idea ofGod. The God thought held and moved him. He could not go anywhere, or see anything, or utter the shortest discourse, that he did not, in some fashion, connect it with the infinite Father. Was a sowersowing seed, he saw in that incident an illustration of the factthat the true seed is the Word of God, and the true sower he whocasts it into the mightier ground of the human heart. Did a flock ofsheep lie at rest upon the hillside, guarded by a shepherd's care, at once he would unfold the shepherding of a Father's love. A tinysparrow, flying an unnoticed speck in the distant sky, or fallingground-ward with its weary flight, was a winged witness that theFather knew and saw even the smallest details of human life. A lilyin its lowliness, and yet a lily in its beauty shaming a king'sarray, a lily, toiling not, but upward growing, furnished him a textfrom which to preach the providence of God; and a wandering beggarboy far away from home and kindred, stained with sin and dark withsorrow, gave occasion for the wondrous story of the Prodigal Son anda father's changeless and tender love. God! God! God! this was the supreme note of his life. On the cross he gave utterance to words which reveal the innercharacter of his soul. When a man has been lied about, falsified, his good evil spoken ofand his reputation assailed (as was his before the Sanhedrin--in themock trial given him there), when such a man has been hounded fromone end of the town to the other, spit upon and jibed at and, finally, nailed through hands and feet to a torturing cross; whensuch a man with his heart bursting (because of the impededcirculation, driving the surging, tumultuous blood back upon it), with the sun scorching his bare temples, a crown of thorns stabbinghim at every helpless turn of his restless head; when such a man, under such circumstances, can rise above the wickedness, cowardiceand cheap treason that have nailed him to the cross, and pray (andpray sincerely) that his guilty murderers, villainous detractors andunscrupulous slanderers may be forgiven, that man bears witness thathe has, at least, a heart of good. And it was just such a prayer which came from the parched, dry, cracked lips of this man of Nazareth as he hung upon the cross andcried out, "Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. " Again he spoke from the cross. There was standing near, a woman who had been chosen of God to givehim birth. She was sobbing convulsively. She was realizing what hadbeen foretold of her more than thirty years before--"a sword shallpierce through thy own soul, also. " Mary, the mother of Jesus, stoodthere, brokenhearted. Jesus turned his head and looked at John, hiscousin, bidding him take that weeping mother to his home, his heartand care, and be unto her henceforth a loving son. O the man who, in the hour of his own agony, shall remember hismother, and crown her, make her the queen of his life, and ordainthat others shall love and reverence her, proclaims for himself thelustre of a manhood without spot. Once more he spoke from the place of anguish--that moment on theedge of death. There his soul, rising from the depths of theoverwhelming waves of agony, cries: "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit. " He who in the hour and article of death can face God and eternity, and commit himself to the hand of supreme justice as a confidentchild to the arms of a loving father, bears witness that in his soulthere is no ghastly memory of sin, no sharp, remembered pang, nofear of offended law. Such a confidence and such a committal oftriumphant calm bear witness that the heart is at rest with God, andis conscious of its own good. For two thousand years the world, without a dissenting voice, hasborne witness that he is the one man who came into the earth andwalked through it superlatively good. Among the voices in the common consent of the world that JesusChrist was a good man, there are those who with equal insistencedeny that he was Almighty God. They agree that he had the spirit of God; that he had it in measuresuch as no other man before or since. They announce their beliefthat he is the mightiest advance on humanity ever known; that allother religious teachers pale before him as the stars before thesun. They speak of his spotless life with fervent admiration, anddraw special attention to his discourses as models of exhortation torighteousness and truth. To them the sermon on the mount is a _chefd'oeuvre_. Out of that sermon they take the maxim about doing untoothers as you would they should do unto you. They take that maximand frame it about and make it the "Golden Rule" of human life. Theyexalt Jesus as the perfect example, telling us that if we shallgovern our life by him, make him our constant copy, imitate him, weshall fill our daily existence with righteousness and truth. Infact, if we seek a panegyric on the humanity of Christ; if we desireto see his goodness exalted to the heavens, and his humanity putbeyond compare with the sons of men--we must needs go to theSocinian, the Arian and the Unitarian--those who deny the deity ofChrist. But this exaltation of the human Christ is simply setting upa man of straw that with one blow of deific discount he may beknocked down again. He is set up as man that he may be cast down asGod. They will not accept him as God. God Almighty (we are told) cannot be confined or shut up in any oneman. Man as man and, therefore, every individual man in his part, isthe avatar of God. Each man is in some sense the incarnation of God. God is more or less enthroned in all men. God is to be found in allmen as he is to be found in all nature. A good man--call Jesus a good man--set him up as high as you please, build as lofty a pedestal for him as you will, but Almighty God--_Never!_ Over against this exaltation of Christ as a merely good man, and thepersistent denial that he was God, stands the unmistakable claimwhich Jesus Christ himself made--that he was God. He made that claim in many ways. He claimed it by declaring his power and authority to forgive sin. That was a striking moment when he proclaimed it for the first time. Four men had brought a paralytic to the house where he waspreaching. When they could not get in because of the crowd, theyclimbed up on the roof, took off some of the tiling, and by means ofropes or corners of the mattress let the man down to the very feetof Jesus. When he saw _their_ faith, he turned to the sick man andsaid, "Son (son of Abraham), thy sins are forgiven thee. " At once there was an uproar. The leading men, sitting round andwatching him, burst out with a protest, charging him with blasphemy, saying that God only could forgive sin. And they were right. No mere man can forgive sin. Again and again the Scriptures teach usthat forgiveness is with God that he may be feared. In announcing the man's sins forgiven, Jesus clearly claimed theprerogative, power and authority, which belong to God. He claimed this equality by declaring himself to be the Son of God. To the Jews, "Son of God" was equivalent to "God the Son. " It meantto them, the moment he styled himself by that name, an unqualifiedclaim to essential equality with the Father. Because of this theyraged against him and would have killed him, crying out that he hadmade himself equal with God. He made this claim in terms which admit of no misunderstanding. Hesaid: "I and my Father are one. " When Philip said, "Shew us the Father, and it sufficeth us, " heanswered and said: "Hast thou been with me so long time and hast thou not known me, Philip? From henceforth ye know him and have seen him. " To Philip he had also said: "I am the way and the truth and the life--no man cometh unto theFather but by me. " By this statement he deliberately shut out all other men as theground and means of approach to God. He declares that God, theFather, can be found in and through him alone; that he is thesupreme way, the very truth and the very life; not that he knowssome truth and has a measure of life in common with men, but that heis _the_ truth--the _absolute_ life. Such attitude, such claimedrights, privileges and powers, belong alone to God. But he goes beyond this. He testifies that he has been from all eternity the manifestation ofthe very selfhood of the Father. Hear what he says: "And now, O Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with theglory which I had with thee before the world was. " He traces his personality backward beyond the hour when the worldwas launched into space, before the stellar systems were created. Hegoes beyond time, he takes us into eternity, and in that unbegun andmeasureless distance declares with all the calm assurance ofaccustomed truthfulness that he had the glory, the visibility, theoutward manifestation and splendor of the Father's own essentialselfhood; that his relation to him was that of one who was from alleternity his determination, definition and utterance. Such claims as these are the claims of one who declares himself tobe, and without restraint, nothing less than Almighty God. On one occasion when talking to the Jews he said that Abraham hadrejoiced to see his day, had seen it and was glad. They turned uponhim and reminded him that he was not yet fifty years old, how thencould he have seen Abraham, or Abraham him--that Abraham who hadbeen dead nearly two thousand years? He faced them and said: "Verily, verily I say unto you, before Abraham was, I am. " The striking thing in the statement is not the claim of pre-existence--great as that is--not that he claimed to have been inexistence already--not fifty years merely, but two thousand--no! allthese utterances are remarkable enough, but these are not theastounding thing he said. The astounding, the unspeakablyextraordinary thing he said is found in just two words: "I am. " There is one place in Holy Scripture where this phrase is supremelyused. In the third chapter of the book of Exodus it is recorded thatGod manifested himself to Moses at the burning bush, and theredeclared himself to be the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and theGod of Jacob. He commanded Moses to return to Egypt, appear beforePharaoh and demand the release of the Children of Israel from theircruel bondage; and when Moses inquired by what name he should speakto the people, he answered: "Say unto them, I AM hath sent me unto you. " "I AM. " To the Jew these two words set forth the supreme name and title ofthe eternal God. In saying, therefore, "Before Abraham was--I AM, " Jesus announcedhimself to be the eternal, self-centred, supreme being, AlmightyGod. When he said this, and because they understood him, becausethey knew exactly what he meant by these words, the Jews took upstones to stone him. If I were seeking to demonstrate by object lesson, and in a fashionthat would admit of no reply, that Jesus claimed to be Almighty God, I would summon the mightiest and most masterful artist the worldknows to come and paint for me the scene which takes place a littlelater as a consequence of that moment when he emphasizes his claimby saying: "I and my Father are ONE. " The picture would represent a great crowd of scowling, fierce, angryJews, their hands filled with stones--some of them drawn back, thewhole figure intense with readiness to cast the fatal stone--andJesus, standing a little distance apart, looking calmly on. Underneath the picture I would have written in great golden letters(letters so artistic, so startling, so wonderful in form, that atthe risk of art itself--almost at the risk of minimizing the pictureat the first glance, subordinating it to interest in the letters anddividing the mind of the onlooker between the actual scene and theletters themselves)--I would have written in letters that shouldsmite the eye and the innermost thinking of the beholder, the wordsrecorded in the tenth chapter of John's Gospel, given by the Jews inreply to the demand of Jesus when, speaking with amazement, he asks, "For what good work do ye stone me?" I would have every gazer at thepicture read these words till they rose up in vastness against him, smiting his attention as the very stones in the hands of the Jews--these words: "For a good work we stone thee not but for blasphemy; and becausethat thou BEING A MAN MAKEST THYSELF GOD. " The Jews were not deceived. They knew what he had done. They knew that he claimed to be no less than very God himself. There can be no doubt that he claimed to be God. There need be, really, no discussion about it. The New Testament records the claim. I am not making any issue as to whether the New Testament is true, or reliable. I am saying thus far, only, that the New Testament (theGospels of the New Testament), in language concerning which therecan be no possible mistake or even ground for misinterpretation, records the fact that Jesus Christ did claim to be Almighty God. If Jesus Christ were not Almighty God (as he claimed to be) he wasnot a good man (as it is said he was). The proposition ought to be self-evident. No mere man can claim to be God and be good. He who, as mere man, claims to be God, robs God of the glory that isexclusively his. He who thus claims to be God, and bids men go into eternity trustinghim as God, is a deceiver. No man who robs God of equality, and who deceives men into believingthat he is God, can be good--he is a wicked and blasphemousdeceiver. There is only one way in which the character of Jesus Christ can besaved on this claim of his to be God--if that claim were not true. It can be saved only by assuming that he was self-deceived; that hesincerely believed himself to be God, but was blinded and held fastby his own mistaken concept. But the man who claims to be Almighty God, and claims it as he did, can be self-deceived only when he is a mental weakling, unbalancedin mind, or absolutely insane. None of these things can be predicated of Jesus Christ. On the contrary, he was the most intellectual man the world has everknown. Mark how he met the wisdom and the genius of the men who surroundedhim. Again and again they came to him with crafty and perplexingquestions. With a word he solved their problems, flashed truth intotheir shame-smitten faces, and silenced them. In all the universethere is no soul meaner, more contemptible, more cowardly, andutterly lost to every sense of decent manhood than the man who, forthe sake of entangling a good man in his speech, asks him questionsin public, before an audience ready at every turn to misquote andmisinterpret his slightest utterance; and that is what they did. They came to him, not with the desire to know the truth, but toconfound him, cast him down and destroy his prestige with thepeople. To every question he gave an answer having in it spiritualtruth, but bearing the unmistakable stamp of rare wisdom andintellectual superiority. His words, the simple speech he used in the midst of them, or alonewith his disciples, have been the impulse of the mightiestintellectual activity the world has ever known. Out of his wordshave grown systems of theology that may well call for all there isof brain power and capacity in those who study them. Here are to befound the keenest speculations and the farthest outreach ofmetaphysical suggestion and the most detailed analysis of which thehuman mind is capable. Book after book, treatise after treatise, discourse after discourse, have been produced out of the simplestand most detached things he said. No man can read his speeches andnot find the mind stimulated, shocked, quickened and impelledforward even upon the most daring lines of thought. It would be easy to call the roll of the princes and kings in therealm of intellect, men whose thoughts burn and flame like greatquenchless lights; men whose minds are the storehouses of knowledge, and whose utterances by word and pen have moved the quickest andmost forceful lives in the world. It would be easy to call the longroll of these names shining like stars and constellations in thefirmament of thought--princes and kings of intellect who acknowledgethat Jesus Christ is not only superior to them morally andspiritually, but intellectually. What man is there to-day with any degree of mental self-respect whowould dare to stand up and assert himself the equal of Jesus Christintellectually? Without necessity of demonstration, it ought to be a truth beyondquestion that Jesus Christ was the most intellectual man the worldhas ever known. Such a man as that could not be self-deceived. If he were not Almighty God he knew it. He knew it as well as these good Unitarians, and these wondrouslyadvanced scholars who cannot get beyond the glamour of his humanity. He knew it at first hands. If he were not Almighty God--if he were only a man--he knew it, knewit through and through, in every fibre of his being. There is no possibility then whatever for him to have been deceived. If he were not deceived, if he knew he was not God, then-- HE WAS NOT A GOOD MAN. This is his own argument: A young man came to him and said, "Good Master, what good thingshall I do, that I may inherit eternal life? and he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good _but one, that isGod_. " The argument is simple enough. "You call me good. God alone is good. If I am not God, I am notgood. " Not good! Nay! If he were not God, he was the most wantonly wicked man of whomI ever heard. If he were not God, not only does disaster fall upon himself in thetotal destruction of his character, and in the consequent and finaldriving of him from the suffrage and consideration of men, but thedisaster falls upon all who have put their faith in him. If Jesus Christ were not God, then he never forgave the sins of asingle soul, and all those throughout the two thousand years whohave gone into eternity trusting in his name have gone into thateternity unforgiven and unshrived of God. If Jesus Christ were not God, then he has not forgiven the sin of asingle human being alive to-day. You had sinned! There were memories of the sins you had committed. They allowed you no rest. They gave you anguish of mind. Otherscould not forgive you. You could not forgive yourself. Theconsciousness that you stood naked before the all-seeing eye of aholy God; that he knew the circumstances and every detail thereof, down to the very intents and purposes lying behind your deeds, andeven your thoughts; that he looked into and saw all that was in yourheart; in the consciousness growing clearer and stronger and moreterrible each day that you had no excuse, no place that you couldhold for a moment; that if he summoned you to his presence, youwould stand in the white light of his unmixed holiness, and theinexorable and unrelenting wrath of his essential antagonism andjust hatred against sin; all this consciousness taking voice in youand through you, cried out in your soul, "I am guilty and undone. "And this filled you with a horror of great darkness and the utterblackness of a hopeless despair. Then you heard the voice of JesusChrist saying, "Come unto me. " "Him that cometh unto me I will in nowise cast out. " You came. You fell at his feet. You owned his deathas your atoning sacrifice. You claimed him as your substitute. Youclaimed forgiveness through his blood. He said to you, as he said tothe paralytic, "Thy sins are forgiven thee. " You rose and went awayas when one is released from a galling chain; as when a burden thatwas crushing to earth has been lifted from the sore, bleedingshoulder; as when one who has been tossed on a midnight sea entersthe haven while the dawn is breaking, casts anchor and touchesshore. For years you have had peace. The memory of your sins arethere (for though God when he forgives forgets them, you cannot). Like David, perhaps, you cry, "My sin is ever before me!" The sinmarks are there as the nail holes in the wall, but you have beenable to look at them and have peace because you have said toyourself, "I am not an unwhipped of justice, my sins have beenpunished in my substitute; they have been fully answered for in hisblood. He has forgiven me and justified me and made me clean. In himI stand clothed in the very 'righteousness of God. ' I hate my sinand despise it for what it is in itself, for what it made him, myredeemer, to endure, but I have peace because he has fully satisfiedin my behalf. I have actually satisfied in him and am deliveredbefore God's court of holiness both from the guilt and the demeritof sin. I have, in short, _gone through the judgment with Christ onthe cross_. He has pronounced forgiveness--absolution--upon me, andhe has done so by virtue of his power and authority as the livingone in whom dwelleth all the fulness of the godhead bodily--as mysaviour and my God he has forgiven me and I am at peace. " All this you have said within yourself and testified. But I ask you now to face the terrible fact--if Jesus Christ werenot God--this terrible fact--that you have been deceived. You have had a false peace. You have been living in a fool's paradise. You are before God an unpardoned and as yet unpunished criminalawaiting your doom. All this is absolutely your state-- IF-- If Jesus Christ were not Almighty God. If Jesus Christ were not Almighty God, he had no authority nor powerto forgive your sins. NO! And if Jesus Christ were not God I knownot where to bid you turn. You must carry the load of your sins allyour days; and when you die, go into eternity and face a holy Godwho tells you by every law and fact of nature that he never forgivesin a single case till he has first punished the sin and with it thesinner. If Jesus Christ were not God, his death was not an atonement. And this surely should be plain enough. Only God can atone to God. Only an infinite being can satisfy an infinite being. If Jesus Christ were not God he could not make an atonement. If he did not make an atonement, then the world has never beenreconciled to God nor brought up on mercy ground. Instead of beinglifted up to the plane of grace and mercy, the world is still underthe condemnation and judgment of God, no longer under a suspendedsentence, but sheer and defenceless, with nothing to hinder thecrash of doom at any moment. There is no hope. There is no daysman. There is no one to offer untoGod what he demands, and unto man what he needs. There is nomediator between a holy God and a sinful man. If Jesus Christ were not God, then he did not rise from the dead. Hedid not bring life and immortality to light, and, as for me, thepreacher, I have no light to hold out to you in the all-embracinggloom and night of death. There is no hope. If a man shall tell me there is no hereafter, that death ends all, Ishall take up the law of induction and argue him to a standstillalong the line of unfathomable mysteries and inexplicablepsychological phenomena in the constitution of man, and theinexplicable absence of the phenomena in the state of death, inexplicable upon any known materialistic ground, and I shall laughat his inability to maintain his thesis beyond the poor shred of ahypothesis. If a man shall tell me as the result of pure reasoningthat he concludes for the endless existence of the soul after death, and shall do this even upon the plane of induction, I shall turn andtell him that all his argument is based upon inference and not fact, finding its largest emphasis in the region of the unknowable andguessable--in the things he cannot explain, where certainconclusions can neither be successfully affirmed, nor successfullydenied, and where, by consequence, he may console himself, if hewish, with his side of the guess; and I shall feel a keen sense ofsorrow at his inability to hold his premise in the final region ofthe sure. And what does all this mean? Is it playing fast and loose with the mind? Am I turning in uponmyself and playing the mere harlequin in the arena of mentalgymnastics? No! there is sane meaning to this double method--it is this: _asmuch may be said along one line of reasoning as the other_. Each isa _non-sequitur_ to the other. Each negatives the other and leavesus with reason's torch inverted--the light out, the darkness deeperthan ever; and standing on the threshold of the grave we are forcedto cry out in the sharp agony of a continual self-smitingperplexity: "To be or not to be--_that is the question_. " Question it is--always a question--always coming back from the sideof every dead body--always coming back from the clod-filled grave--coming down from age to age, coming back a question no man, not thewisest mere man who ever lived, could answer, or any living wise mancan answer to-day. If Jesus Christ were not God it cannot be answered; for if JesusChrist were not God, he did not rise from the dead and by divinepower carry himself out of the region of death forever. If Jesus Christ were not God, you may go and sit by the tomb of yourdead and weep bitter (because hopeless) tears. If Jesus Christ were not God, then he was not a redeemer andsaviour. All the beautiful things that have been taught about him assuch are false. All the hopes of heaven, the beauty of the celestialcity, the tree of life, the river of crystal, the company of thesaints, the arch-angelic song, the meeting and the knowing of thosewho long ago have left us--none of these things are so. If he were not God, then it is not true that he sits upon thethrone, high and lifted up, listening to the plaints of the weakestheart that shall trust him, and hearing the sound of every fallingtear. If Jesus Christ be not God, then the whole system of Christianitybuilt upon his person and work falls to the ground, is broken intofragments, and like wind-swept dust can never be gathered. If Jesus Christ be not God, the New Testament record of him isuntrue. The New Testament impeached in its prime particular becomesa worthless book--a book full of exhortations to holiness and truth, in the name of him who is proven to be (if he ever lived at all) ablasphemer, a deceiver of men and the concrete of human wickedness. If the New Testament is not true, neither is the Old; for the OldTestament finds its meaning and value only in the Christ of the NewTestament. Take Jesus Christ out of the Old Testament (which youmust do if you set aside the New; for he alone fulfils the types, the symbols and the prophecies of the Old Testament; he alone makesits testimony and history intelligible; he alone gives unity, harmony and authoritative meaning to its exhortations)--take Christout of the Old Testament and you take away its one and only key. And mark you--when _Christ goes out of the Bible as God--God goesout of the Bible_. The deity which has preserved it, the power whichhas made it living and unchangeable in the midst of change anddeath, will have been dethroned. Without Christ as God you are without any sane and satisfyingknowledge of God. Where will you turn to find God and know him to your comfort? Youmight as well look into the bottomless pit as into your own heart. No more satisfactory will it be to look into the heart of others. Weare all built on the same plan. The difference is only in degree or extension. The basilar fact is, God cannot be found in any natural man. You cannot find or know him to your heart's content in nature. What kind of a God does nature reveal to you? I will answer for you--a God who puts you in this world and does nottell you whence you come, whether from the all mud or the Almighty, from an angel or a devil, from jelly or genius, from the heights ofheaven or the depths of hell. A God who puts you here and fills youwith questions he alone can answer and--refuses so to do. A God whocalls you into the world and gives you eyes to see everything butyourself. A God who hides you from yourself, so that you do not knowwhether you are a function or a soul; whether you are matter orspirit; whether you are a personality or a cellular part of ageneral whole--called man. A God who gave you mind with seeminglyinfinite possibilities in thought, and gave you a body that isfinite and temporary in construction. A God who gives you anintellect which grasps after eternity, and is always saying on thesummit of any endeavor achieved, "What next?" and yet is limited toa few inconsequent years. A God who sets you face to face with theimminency of death, and never allows you to know at what moment youmust go, and gives you no hint of the beyond--or whether there is abeyond. In France they do not tell the man who is to be guillotined till afew moments before the fatal hour. He is sleeping on his couch. Heis dreaming of pleasant fields, of running streams, of boyhood'sdays, of to-morrows that shall be better--a heavy hand is laid onhis shoulder--he starts up in bed--the gray light of early morningis filtering in through the barred window of his cell--stern-facedmen are standing before him--they say, "Your hour is come; followus. " It is terrific. But this is the case of every human being. No one can tell when the summons may come--or where. A man was sitting in his room at close of day. It had been (so hesaid) the best day of his life. He had said to his wife that henever loved her more than he did then (and they had been marriedmany years), never did he feel more content that they had chosen towalk together through life than then. He was full of plans forhimself and for her (saying with great earnestness that their lastdays should be their best days). She answered back that she was gladwith a great gladness that it was so. She turned away for a momentto glance in another direction, still speaking to him. When shelooked back he was gone--gone while the love words and the hopewords were still on his lips--the finger of death had touched hisheart--a voice had whispered in his ear, "Come. " There was only alifeless bit of clay where a moment before had been a body pulsingwith life, with love, with hope. It is terrific--doomed--and not knowing how soon the bolt willstrike. What sort of a God is this who laces your body with anetwork of laws, the breaking of the slightest of which--all unknownto you--may send you forth upon a path of diseased and torturedexistence--in which the body from whence you cannot escape shall beto you as a chamber of horrors--a place of the thumbscrew, the rackand the fagot. What kind of a God is that who allows the aged tolinger out in a miserable prolongation of wretched days, a burden tothemselves, a burden to others, and takes away the widow's only son--her only support? Who is the God who creates one man with all theequipment for life, and another man with all the lack of it? Whatkind of a God is this who looks down out of the heaven of day andthe heavens of night, and sees all the sorrow, the anguish, thepain, the unspeakable tragedies, and sends no wing of angel tocleave the pitiless sky, no voice out of the silence to console, nohand to help? What man is there of you, if he had the power, would not banishsickness, sorrow, pain and death? What man is there of you who, if he could, would not make everyhuman being well and happy? What then? What is the conclusion of the matter concerning you?Simple enough--you have _the heart to do it, but not the power_. What is the conclusion concerning this God of nature? _He has thepower--but does not manifest the heart_. What will you say of this God of nature in such a scheme? What can you say but that your heart is better than the heart of theGod which nature reveals? Can you hear, understand and love a God like that? Can you climb through nature up to nature's God and say, "I havefound him, I know him?" You can climb up, but where will you find him? You will find him wrapped in the black thundercloud or girded withthe robe of the lightnings: You will find him the God who splits theearth in twain with the earthquake's riving blow, loosens the bandsof the sea, sends tidal waves in surges of destruction, pours outthe lava streams from the volcano's cone, as kings pour wine from anearthen cup, spilling the wine and breaking the cup; the God whoturns an earthly paradise (like Messina) into a fire-smitten desert, and a city of the living into a cemetery of the unburied dead. When your heart aches, will such a God care for you? Will histhunders console you? When your soul is dark, will his lightningsillumine it? When you yearn for love, will his inexorable law supplyit? Ah, sirs, without Christ you are without a God whom you can love, whom you can trust, to whom you can go, and in whose strength youcan lie down and--at last--be folded in peace. If Jesus Christ is not God, if the only God to whom you can go isthe God of nature, then you might as well fall down in the sand atthe base of the far Egyptian sphinx, open your eyes for a moment tothe blue sky that spreads away to the horizon before its staringface, its cold, chiselled, inscrutable smile, and the next momentshut your eyes against the pelting dust the idle winds blow thither. Ah! Nature is a sand-dune--and the God of nature is a Sphynx. Do you care to kneel and worship there? If Jesus Christ be not God the disaster is not alone to him, but toyou--to me. If he were not God, then we are in a world where the very day is nobetter or brighter than a starless midnight. If Jesus Christ were a good man, a supremely good man and asupremely intellectual man, then he was and is (as he claimed)Almighty God. The New Testament says he was a supremely good, and a supremelyintellectual man. For two thousand years the most brilliant men in the world havecorroborated this record by freely testifying that Jesus Christ wasa supremely good and a supremely intellectual man; all this beingso, I change the conditional form of the proposition to theindicative and declarative and now say: Since Jesus Christ was a supremely good and a supremely intellectualman, he was, therefore (as he claimed), Almighty God. He could not be a supremely good and a supremely intellectual manand claim to be God unless he were God. Since he claimed to be God, therefore, he was God. Yes; he was God. The evidences are manifold. He was _sinless_. He said: "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" For two thousand years he has been in the concentrated light of ahostile world's merciless investigation. The light has been turnedon the land in which he lived. Every rod of ground over which hetravelled has been dug up, or surveyed, or trodden. His words havebeen weighed, balanced to a nicety against any probability of error, mistake, imagination, fancy or misquotation. His words have beensplit open as men break open rocks. All the contents of his wordshave been put in the crucible of criticism. Every thought has beeninsistently and unsentimentally assayed for, even, the suspicion orthe slightest hint of an alloy. His teachings have been chemicallydissolved and turned into their component parts. The saline base oftruth has been sought for at any risk to the compounded speech hemade. And after all! not one self-respecting, authoritative lip hasuttered a charge against him. In the hush of a world that cannot even murmur, he steps forward andonce more rings down his challenge: "Which of you convinceth me of sin?" He stands out among his fellows as a white shaft under a starlessmidnight. He rises above the passions of men as an unshaken rock inthe midst of a wild, lashed sea. He is to man's best character asharmony is to discord, as a smile is to a frown, as love is to hate, as blessing is to cursing, as a garden of lilies to a desert ofsand, as heaven is to earth, as holiness is to sin and as life todeath. If he were sinless, he was _absolutely holy_; he was so holy thathis very presence brought out the sin in others. Sinful men andwomen fell at his feet and confessed their sins. At sight of himdemons tore their way out of the bodies they possessed and fled asclouds of darkness before the sun, crying as they fled, "Thou artthe holy one of God--hast thou come to torment us before the time?"Tormented as they were even then, as sin always is when confrontedby holiness; as vice is before virtue; as a lie is before the truth. He was sinless. He was holy. His sinlessness and holiness cannot be accounted for on naturalgrounds. All his natural ancestry were sinful. His sinlessness cannot be accounted for unless he were God; for, sinlessness and holiness come alone from God and, as essentialqualities, take their rise alone in God. His power over nature proved him God. His look changed water into wine, his word gave sight to the blind, healing to the deaf, speech to the dumb. At his word the lame manleaped as a hart, the leper was cleansed. He said, "Peace, bestill, " and the wild tempest of the sea was hushed, and there was agreat calm, a calm like unto the stillness of the unruffled rest ofGod. For two thousand years his regenerative power in a world of sin hasbeen the proof that he was God. For two thousand years, in every age, in every clime, among allclasses of men, from the refined infidel to the vilest sinner, fromthe cold atheist to the brutal idolater, men have been changed--transformed. Men who have been the bond slaves of passion, whosedaily lives have been the output of iniquity, whose deeds have beenfor destruction, whose words have been poison, and whose inmostthoughts have been as the vapors of miasma--these all--have beentransformed into fountains of purity, into angels of mercy, or asilluminated missals have been written full of the name and the gloryof God; men whose every fibre was as the coarse and tangled threadsof a brutal unrefinement have become men whose every line ofcharacter was as the woven gold of Ophir--and the speech that oncesmote with discord the ears that heard it has become as the sound ofsinging across silent waters and under listening stars. And you askthese transfigured human beings, as you find them travelling alongthe highway of twenty noteful centuries, what it was that so changedthem, put such new force and impetus in them, making them to be asmen new created, and they will tell you that Jesus Christ came alongthat way, they saw in his face the stain of blood, the marks ofnails were in his hands and feet, he had the appearance of one whohad been cruelly slain. He stopped, looked at them and said: "Comeunto me. " They obeyed, they fell at his feet. He touched them, astrange, keen sense thrilled through them. He said to them, "Arise. "They arose and found themselves new men--men _twice begotten_. Ask the drunkard who tried to be sober, broke every pledge and drankin his cup the very life blood of those he loved and who loved him--how at last he found strength to say a final "no, " turn from theaccursed thing, and enter a world all new in which to live, afreeman and no more a slave--he will tell you, "Jesus Christ did itall. " Ask any of the bond slaves of passion, men who have been gripped byevery form of human desire, and whiplashed, and stung, and torturedby their gratification, and driven to fresh and maddening excess bythe never satisfied and always burning lust within (ever crying likethe horseleach's daughter, "Give, give"); ask them how it is thatto-day they are freemen and walk as kings, and they will tell youthat Jesus Christ laid hold of them, and by the might of his power, the tenderness of his love, and the wealth of his grace, made themfree. And this has been going on for two thousand years. The story has recently been told of a great thinker lecturing oneday before a large audience of medical students--some eighteenhundred men who pressed in to hear him. He took from his desk aletter, and holding it up before him, said something to this effect: "Gentlemen! I have here a letter from one of your number, in whichhe tells the story of his life--a record of shame, of sinfulindulgence, that makes me shudder even to look at the letter. At theclose of this fearful confession he asks, 'Can your God save such anone as I am?'" Stopping for a moment and surveying his audience, the speaker said:"When I came to the city this afternoon (it was the city ofEdinburgh) there was a beautiful, fleecy cloud spreading itself likea thing of glory in the upper sky, and I said, 'O cloud, where doyou come from?' and the cloud answered me and said, 'come from theslums and the low, vile places of the city. The sun of heavenreached down and lifted me up and transfigured me with hisshining. '" Looking about upon the now deeply impressed throng, the speaker, after a solemn pause, said: "I do not know whether this young man is here or not, but if he is, I can say to him that my Saviour and my Master, Jesus Christ, he whois our great God and Saviour, he can reach down from the highestheaven to the lowest depths into which a human soul can sink, andcan lift you, and lift you up and up, till he shines in you andthrough you, and transfigures you with the light of his love andglory. " He can. He does. He is doing it now. And who is he who can do this but the living God alone? That Jesus Christ was God is the testimony of the men who lived inintimate communion with him and knew him best. John leaned on his breast at supper. John heard and knew the beatingof the Master's heart, and John says: "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and theWord was God (God was the Word). The same was in the beginning withGod. All things were made by him; and without him was not anythingmade that was made. . . . And the Word was made flesh, and dweltamong us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begottenof the Father) full of grace and truth. " Again this same John writes: "Jesus Christ . . . THIS IS THE TRUE GOD. " Writing to the Philippians, Paul declares, that Jesus Christ was inthe "form of God, " laid aside his glory as such, took upon him the"form" of sinful man, became obedient unto death, even the death ofthe cross, carried his humanity through hades and the grave, roseout from among the dead, and took that humanity to the throne of thehighest. There God the Father reclothed him with the unbegun anduncreated glory which he had laid aside, gave him a name which isabove every name, even the name of Jesus, and has highly andeternally ordained that every knee in the wide extended universeshall bow, and every tongue confess, that he is Lord to the glory ofGod the Father. In his epistle to the Colossians, the Apostle Paul announces thatthis "same Jesus" is the "image of the invisible God; by him wereall things created that are in heaven, and that are in earth, visible and invisible, whether they be thrones or dominions, orprincipalities or powers; _all things were created by him_, and forhim. " To the same Colossians he further writes: "In him dwelleth all the fulness of the _Godhead bodily_. " To the Hebrews he says: "He is the brightness of the Father's glory, and the _express image of his person_" (the word "image" ischarakter and signifies an "engraving, " the very engraving of God inthe flesh, _the engraving of God in humanity_) and upholding allthings by the word of his power. "Upholding all things!" this earthin its orbit about the sun; the sun in its orbit about some othersun; all suns and systems in their orbits of splendor, whirlingonward in ever-widening distances over highways of infinite spaces, through extensions that are measureless, and where time does notcount. In that unmeasured expansion where the points of the compassare lost and "dimension" is a meaningless term; in thatincomprehensible and indefinable vastness, filled with the might andthe majesty of form, of weight, of motion and limitless power--allthings--are hanging on his word and obeying his will. Not only does the New Testament proclaim him God--the Old Testamentdoes likewise, and with unmistakable speech. The prophet Isaiah says: "Unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given, and the governmentshall be upon his shoulder; and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, _the mighty God, the everlasting Father_. " Micah, the prophet, glorifies the little town of Bethlehem, least asit is among the thousands of Judah, and foretells that he who shallbe born there, and is to be ruler in Israel, is he "_whose goingsforth have been from old, from everlasting_. " He who has been theoutgoing and the forth-putting of the invisible God; and who is, andwho alone can be, the _visibility of God_. When we turn to the New Testament once more, we are given a visionof him, in Patmos, where he appears to that beloved John who hadleaned so heavily on his heart in the days of the earthlypilgrimage. It is a vision of wonder, of glory, and divine splendor. He is seen as a man--as one who had _become_ dead, who was nowalive, who had conquered both death and the grave. His face shonewith the light of the noonday sun, his eye glances were as a flameof fire, and when he spoke, his voice was as the sound of manywaters; and this is what he said for himself: "I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord, which is, and which was, and which is to come, _the Almighty_. " This is the climax. He claimed to be Almighty God while on earth. He claims it from heaven. He says I am God--he says that because he declares himself asembracing the whole extent of being. Listen: "I am he that _is_"--that is to say, the self-existing one; for thestatement is the cognate of that, "I am that I am, " which is thepre-eminent appelative of deity. "I am he which _was_"--and this extends being into the past; thatpast he himself defines. He does not say I am in the beginning, butI am _the_ beginning--_beginning itself_--the _origin_ of thingsand, therefore, himself unbegun, eternal, from _everlasting_. It isthe echo of that far-flung phrase of old: Even "_from everlasting toeverlasting thou art God_. " "I am he which is _to come_"--this includes eternity future--theunendingness which stretches without a horizon beyond the present. Here is fulness--and the fulness of the Godhead _bodily_. In saying these words upon Patmos, then, our Lord Jesus Christ says: "I am God--I am Almighty God. " Nor is this a mere conclusion from the premise here! He says it directly, plainly and squarely himself. He says not only that he _is_, and _was_, and _is to come_--but hesays-- "I AM THE ALMIGHTY. " And Paul, the special apostle of the Church, unites with Thomas (thebelieving, but material evidence demanding representative of theelect remnant in Israel) in proclaiming the deity of God's Christ. Thomas falls at his feet and cries: "My Lord and _My God_. " Paul bows his head in adoration before him and writes: "_Our great God_ and Saviour--_Jesus Christ_. " Upon the august throne of the universe he is seated. He who lay a babe upon a woman's breast; who, although he wasinfinite, became an infant; who being in the form of God, did nothesitate to put off the divine glory and put on mortal humanity that(as an infinite person) he might, through the "prepared" body of hismortality, offer an infinite sacrifice for men; who died under amalefactor's doom, but with his nailed hands, in the hour of hisagony, saved a thief from hell--opening to him the gates ofParadise; he who refused the deliverance of angels when they bentabove his cross, that by his cross he might give to men thedeliverance angels could not give; lie who was buried in a borrowedgrave; who rose as an immortal man, ascended as the _Second Adam_--the _New Head of Humanity_--the _Life Giver_ to a world, and tookhis seat on the _Father's_ throne, as witness of redemption achievedand salvation secured--he sits there now, and having taken tohimself the glory which he had with the Father before all worldswere, having clothed his _immortal_ humanity with that "_form ofGod_" which ever was his, now sits the centre of a world's adorationand heaven's amaze, as the GOD MAN--the highest form of God and theultimate form of man; the proclamation that man in Christ is thearchetype of God and God in Christ the archetype of man. As we thus gaze upon him in whom dwelleth all the fulness of theGodhead bodily; as we meditate upon him, seek to reason about him, are touched by his love, held by his power, and filled with hislife, we say with the inspired apostle: "Without controversy, greatis the mystery of godliness: _God was manifest in the flesh_. " "_Our great God_, " repeats Paul, and he adds, to balance the wonderof it, "and _our Saviour Jesus Christ_;" he who, in some glad daynearer than we think, is coming back to this old, sin-stained, grave-digged world--to be owned and saluted by all nations, peoples, kindred and tongues as-- "THE GOD OF THE WHOLE EARTH. " With all this glory and this wonder he is, as the angels said, (whospoke of his ascension, session and Second Coming), "THIS SAMEJESUS, " full of tender mercy, and loving compassion; by virtue ofhis perfect sacrifice able to save unto the uttermost all who comeunto God the Father by him; saying from heaven as he once said onearth: "Him that cometh unto me, I will in no wise cast out"; butsaying at the same time, and with unfailing faithfulness: "No mancometh into the Father _but by me_"; saying it faithfully because, of a truth, only in the _Son_ can the _Father_ be found. Let me exhort all who may read these lines, if you have not alreadydone so, to fall down at his pierced feet, and with deep contritionfor all your transgressions and for your very _nature_ of sin whichhelped to nail him to the accursed tree, say with voice of unfailinglove and unfaltering faith: "My _Saviour_ and my _God_. " If you have already owned him as your Saviour, then, as Thomas ofold, with the voice of deep devotion say: "My _Lord_ and my _God_. " To those of you (if there be such) who still deny his deity andpersist in calling him good, he, himself, is asking you from heavenas he asked it aforetime upon earth: "_Why_ callest thou me _good?_" In asking you that he is putting upon you the responsibility of theterrible conclusion of your own premise: IF NOT GOD--NOT GOOD! Are you willing to face him in eternity with that inexorablealternative: "IF NOT GOD--NOT GOOD?" Christianity WHAT IS CHRISTIANITY? WHAT is Christianity? The question seems a belated one. It never was more pertinent than now. Its pertinency rests upon twofacts. First: the modern drift in Christianity and its absolute failure. Second: the phenomenal triumph of primitive Christianity. The modern drift is antagonistic to doctrine and repudiates themiraculous. It sets aside the virgin birth, has no toleration for atonement bysacrificial death, and positively refuses to accept the bodilyresurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. It holds that God is the Father of all men. Each man is inherently ason of God. He has in him all the elements of the divine lineage. Exercise and culture are alone needed to reveal these elements anddemonstrate this lineage. Salvation is not the redemption of a childof the Devil, but recovery of a child of God from the hands of theDevil. Salvation is the restoration of the individual to theconsciousness of this relationship; but salvation is effectivelyindividual only as it is primarily social. The time has passed (sowe are told) when the individual may be discussed and his socialcondition ignored. To seek out an individual here and there andendeavor to redeem or recover him while the environment remainsunchanged, is a waste of force: as foolish as it would be to spendmillions on remedies for people sick with malaria in a pestilentialand malarial district, and ignore the condition of the district. True wisdom would demand first of all that the district be purged, the environment made healthy, the cause of malaria destroyed. Human beings are neither sinning nor suffering because a possiblefirst man away back somewhere ate forbidden fruit at the insistentappeal of his too persistent wife. Men are sinning and sufferingbecause social conditions are all wrong. These wrong conditions fillthe multitude with discouragement and depression. They are unable tobreathe an inspiring life force. They cannot obtain sufficientimpulse to live above low levels. The laws, the customs, theinequalities of life, hedge them like brutes in a corral. Thiscorralling and hedging of humanity _en masse_, while the few pullaway from the crowd and create an environment satisfactory tothemselves at the expense of the crowd, is the _raison d'etre_ forall evil conditions. Let us have right legislation. Let us makeright laws. The moment the social condition enables a man todiscover the divine things in him, he will live right by preference. We are no longer to spend eloquence, prayer and time on revivals, and now and then, here and there, get an individual to live fairlyright in spite of hindering conditions. The sermon of the preachershould appeal to the law-maker rather than to the law-breaker; itshould arouse men, not to the danger of a hell far off, but to ahell near at hand, the hell of unjust laws, of sanitary neglect, ofoppression of man by man. Social redemption! that is the watchword. Social salvation! that is the crying need. All this (we are told) is to be accomplished by appealing to thedivine in man, to his hitherto ignored resources. This appeal can bemade of avail only by setting up some human figure in which thisdivine life has been fully proved and clearly portrayed. In thenature of the case, for a modernist Christian, such a person is tobe found alone in our Lord Jesus Christ. By such he is now hailed, and continually announced, as the advanced man, the quintessentdemonstration of evolution as applied to humanity, the way-shower, the exemplar and true copy. He is incarnate altruism. His whole lifewas self-denial. His daily interest was in social conditions. To himsociety was the objective, the individual an incident. Histeachings, when fairly construed, involve the overthrow of the old, and the bringing in of a radically new society, in which the divinelife in man may have an opportunity to unfold. His doctrines, whenanalyzed, are explosive; if practically carried out would berevolutionary. He is, in short, the true socialist. If we follow himas such, if we work out his intent, we shall have individualsalvation, but we shall have it as a consequent of socialredemption. There may be shining worlds beyond this. There may be holy citieswith golden streets. There may be robes of righteousness and treesof life. What we need to do, as Christians, is to take care of theworld in which we now live, build first-class holy cities here, seethat the streets are well paved, and the sewers in order, put fitclothing on the backs of the poor, fill the mouths of the hungrywith actual bread, make the hours of labor minimum, and the hours ofpersonal culture maximum, and thus weave a garment of civic, socialand individual righteousness that shall stand the test of this worldor any other. In other words, we are to live the life that now is--and let that which is to come take care of itself. This is the trend of the modern drift. It is an endeavor to bring the church down out of the clouds, placeit on the level of human experience, meet present human needs inpractical ways, and establish a system of natural, rational anduniversal ethics. And yet--in spite of this widely heralded liberalism; in spite ofthe effort to accommodate itself to the rationalism, the unbeliefand downright infidelity of the hour; in spite of the determinationto cut loose from the primaries of the first century and ally itselfwith the fast-going advance of the twentieth, this movement in thename of Christianity has not succeeded in winning and holding themultitude either to a personal and modified Christ, or to areorganized and elastic church. The churches in which it flourishes; the churches which haverenounced faith in the supernatural and miraculous; the churcheswhich have swung the doors wide open on the hinges of worldly wisdomand easy tolerance; the churches which have substituted naturalgeneration for supernatural regeneration, evolution instead ofrevolution, the working out of human life, instead of the coming inof divine life; the churches which teach that man is to go up andtake hold of God, instead of God coming down to take hold on man;the churches which are broad enough to allow men of all faiths, andmen of no faith at all, to occupy their pulpits, are notovercrowded, nor have righteousness and holiness extraordinarilyincreased in their neighborhood. On the contrary, in face of every effort to conciliate thenaturalism in man, men look upon these churches, and theChristianity they advocate, with suspicion. They see these churcheshave their goods still marked with the words, "supernatural, ""miraculous. " It is true, these churches may practically put suchgoods out of sight; even then, men will not be attracted beyond theexpression of a condescending tolerance; and while admitting, asthey will, that the church is earnestly endeavoring to get rid ofits ancient incubus of theology, free its hands and take hold of theplow handle of progress, ready, if needs be, to drive a furrow deepenough to bury all memories of primitive faith, yet will they turnaway from that kind of a church and that sort of Christianity, withthe feeling that all this action on the part of the church is butanother feeble effort at competitive morality. They will turn fromit and seek their own organizations wherein no issue of thesupernatural has ever been raised; where the quasi personality andquestionable existence of an unseen God are not at all discussed;and where man and his present life are the only subjects deemedworthy of consideration. If this drift as thus indicated shall continue another ten years, and enlist the support and open advocacy of leading andrepresentative thinkers in the church; if the theological seminariesshall continue to turn out on graduation day, with their all toomechanical regularity, men who do not believe in the virgin birth, who find no real reason why our Lord Jesus Christ should have diedat all, except the fatality of his genius that he was too far aheadof his time and was "caught by the whirling wheel of the world'sevil and torn in pieces"; if the repudiation of the Bible as thefinal and inerrant revelation of God for this age shall continue soshort a space as a decade, by that time, at the present rate ofdevelopment, we shall have not only a very modern Christianity, aChristianity without miracles, without even a hint of thesupernatural, but a Christianity without spiritual power or moralauthority, standing as a delinquent on the street corners, and amidthe hurry and rush of more vital things, begging permission simplyto exist. Over against this modern drift and its amplitude of failure standsthe phenomenal success of original and primitive Christianity. And yet, the conditions which confronted this nascent faith wereappalling. It was the era of materialism. Force was the prime minister, self-gratification the supreme legislator. Exaggerated superstition wasbalanced by decaying faith. It was a time of coordinately highmental activity, an intellectuality that cynically rejoiced at itsown failure to solve the riddle of the universe, maliciouslysuggested new difficulties, raised barriers against its ownresearch, and prostrating itself in the name of mere brutism, worshipped nature as the ready panderer to its worst passions, whileowning it as a cruelly smiling and pitiless sphinx. The one hundred and twenty men and women who faced the Roman worldwith the determination to impinge their faith upon it, seemed themost audaciously unwise of all forlorn and hopeless fanatics. Theyhad neither wealth nor social standing. Their culture was at zero, their knowledge indifferent. Localism and tradition environed them, and the story they had to tell was not only an affront to the courseof nature, but a direct repudiation of old faiths and cherishedreligions. Itself a _religio illicita_, Christianity challengedgovernmental law and invoked, logically, the keenest persecution. The mountains which surrounded Jerusalem were not so high, nor sodifficult of ascent, as the prejudice far and near over which theyneeds must climb, even if they would gain but a tolerated hearing. Yet they went forth! and so preached, that they not only saved andtransfigured individuals, but so molded and transformed society, that in its every-day achievements, Christianity itself seemed likea miracle to astonished and silenced onlookers. Startlingly enough this moulding of society, this overturning of oldconditions--this bringing in of the radically new, so that theirenemies said of them they had "turned the world upside down"; thisrepudiation of brutality and the exaltation of unselfishness; thisbuilding up of a condition in which a community now judged itself bythe standards of chastity, righteousness and neighborly kindness;this renovation of whole centres of life till the erstwhile desertswherein not a flower of gentleness had bloomed, now blossomed asgardens of delight, watered with never-ceasing streams of brotherlylove--were produced, not by an appeal to society itself, not bydenunciation of laws and customs, however bad, but by laying hold ofa human soul, estimating it in value by the weight of a whole world, and changing the individual life. This was the triumph of original and primitive Christianity. In view of such a triumph and the unqualified failure of the moderndrift which claims the name of Christianity, it should seem aperfectly legitimate and altogether pertinent question to ask, "What is Christianity?" The answer is given by the apostle Paul in his second letter toTimothy, his son in the faith, the preacher of his own ordination. He says: "Our Saviour Jesus Christ . . . Has abolished death and brought lifeand immortality to light through the Gospel. " (2 Timothy 1:10. ) According to this declaration, the Gospel is the good news that ourLord Jesus Christ came into the world to accomplish three things--abolish death, bring in a new life and reveal immortality. As theGospel is the heart beat of Christianity, then the three thingswhich proclaim its constituent and objective characteristic are: The abolition of death. The gift of a new life. Immortality. First--The abolition of death. Death is a black fact. It is the shadow the sun never penetrates, the robber who steals the treasure more precious than gold, theguest who never waits to be invited, the intruder who feels at homewhether in palace or in cot, has no respect of persons, and lays hishand with equal familiarity on the king upon his throne, or thetramp by the wayside, saying "come" to the sick, "tarry not" to thewell, is sure of the old, and revels like a reaper in the harvest ofthe young. It breaks the plans and disorganizes the relations oflife; and then, like a coarse comedian or a heartless satirist, compels those who survive to turn away from the memory of theirdead, reorganize their lives and live on as though those who oncelived with them and formed an intimate part of their dailyexperience had never existed. Unless God himself shall intervene, death is the certain end of thelongest life. Side by side with the certainty of death are two things which giveit emphasis: the brevity of life and its uncertainty. How brief it is! what are sixty or seventy years as measured byhopes and fears, by splendor of genius, by forecasts that outreachthe ages, by thoughts that climb and climb with ease to theinfinite, by energy of mind, which, rising superior to the combinedhindrances of every day, is always peering beyond the last endeavor, and stretching itself towards unbroken continuance, cries, "Whatnext?" Extract from the allotted time of three score years and ten, the puling days of infancy, the immature years of youth, the hoursof indecision as to the route to take, the right profession tofollow; take the hours given to eating and drinking (that eating anddrinking which in spite of the glamor we throw about it is simplyrepairing the mechanical waste and renewing the chemical energy thatwill enable us to go on a little while and a little way farther);take out the time spent in sleep--in practical nonentity--and theremainder is a pitiful handful of years, so few, that to number themseems like a mathematical mockery, like numerical trifling. And the uncertainty of life! What man is he who can assure himselfof ten days? In that time he may die, be buried and be forgotten bythe world that scarcely heard the tolling of his funeral bell, andhad no time to stay and hear the falling of the grave clods upon thecoffin lid. This emphasis of brevity and uncertainty has affected men more orless from the beginning. In the hour when Christianity was born itaffected them well nigh unto delirium. So brief was the vision oflife, so tumultuous its incidents, so conscious were men of itsuncertainty, that they played with it as gamblers throw dice. Itbecame cheap, cheaper than the ground in which their bodies were sosoon to be laid; and in derision of its cheapness they built greatmonuments to hold their scattered dust, monuments that shouldoutlast by centuries their latest breath; with light laughter theyrode past these chiselled tombs and scorned themselves as thebuilders of a longevity their own being could never know. This fact of death is impressing men now. In proportion as life increases in knowledge; in proportion as menbecome masters of nature's forces; in proportion as they measure theuniverse, make daily incursions therein, and bring back always someconquered thing, some new discovery as a tribute to thelimitlessness of mind, in this proportion the unequal brevity andthe disintegrating uncertainty of life, lead men to ask with moreand more insistence, whether, after all, it is worth while. Is itworth while to carry burdens which force us to look down into thedust of the highway, and not up and out to the wider landscape? Isit worth while to put so much force of soul and spirit, brain andheart into things from which we may be summoned without a moment'snotice? Is it worth while to live, and then go to pieces through theeffort at living, live on day after day like a machine out of gear(held together oftentimes only by the surgeon's skill), then breakdown completely, give a final sigh and be hurried away to add a lotof useless fragments to the already accumulated scrap heap of thestill more useless graveyard? Into this emphasis of brevity and uncertainty, there enters anotherelement which increasingly raises the question--"Is it worth while?" That added element is the silence of the grave. The grave is terribly silent. You can hear the gravel rattling out of the grave digger's shovelwith a thud upon the coffin lid; or, you can hear the crunching, jarring sound as the casket is slid into its place in the receivingvault, and you can hear the turn of the key and the snap of the boltas the gate or door of the sepulchre is shut and locked. You may stand above the simple mound of the churchyard, in front ofsome monumental shaft, or before the sculptured urn; it may be thedust of a king, a scholar, or some nameless beggar which is heapedwithin--the silence will be unbroken--except by the sound of yourown voice as you ask: "Where are they? What are they? ARE they?" Although the sun may be shining in full splendor over row after rowof graves, no light will be there in which to read the answer toyour questions. Instead of light there will be thick darkness upon the graves, andgross darkness within. Men peer into this darkness. There is no vision--no speech--and theyask: "Is it worth while to toil, to labor, to accumulate, to makegreat advance in knowledge, to build higher every day the conningtowers of science, and then leaving these high points ofachievement, enter into that realm where no surveyor's chain hasever measured the extent, where no geographer has ever named aheadland, and where the one supreme fact that meets us on thethreshold is ignorance--a black, blinding, all-pervading ignoranceas to the next moment after death; so that at the end of ourreasoning, deduction and amplification, the one thing remaining tothe scholar and the fool alike concerning death is a guess, a guessin which the wish of existence is father to the thought, but wherethe hope of to-morrow is, easily, the despair of to-day. " With life so brief, so uncertain, and ending in the starless nightof silence, men in one form of utterance or another are, insubstance, calling to each other and saying, "Let us eat and drink--for to-morrow we die. " Thus the contemplation of death and its impartial and unprejudicedanalysis leads to a belief in materialism and a greater or lesssurrender to mere sensualism; for, if men cannot go up they will godown; if they cannot live in the spirit, they will grovel in theflesh. What then shall we say concerning this fact of death? Shall we say it is a part of nature's economy--as legitimate asbirth? Because we know nothing of any pre-existent state and arecontent to go forward in life, shall we now balk and hesitate todischarge our functions or meet our opportunities, because we haveno evidence of an after existence? Is death really natural? Absolutely it is not! The whole being of man revolts against it, morally, intellectuallyand organically. Every law of nature in man is against it. Pain andsuffering are its protest. To say that it is as natural as birth isto be guilty of pure bathos; even the worm crushed and quiveringdenies the sentiment. Schwann, the author of the cellular theory, says: "I really do not know why we die. " There is no reason in nature. The process which renews the body every seven years--so far as anylaw in nature shows--might go on indefinitely; there is no reason initself why it should cease, and the soul within is never consciousof the added years. No one ever thinks of asking, "Why do we live?"Always, and involuntarily, we ask, "Why do we die?" Always we areseeking to continue life, inventing something to make it immune fromdeath. To live, therefore, is natural. Not to live is unnatural. Being unnatural, it is an interference with nature. An interferencewith nature is superior to nature. That which is an interference ofand superior to nature is a direct imposition upon nature. Animposition upon nature could not be possible without the permissionand will of God. If God allows and wills it, then the imposition isfor cause; being such, it is a judicial act, a judgment, andbecomes, necessarily, a penalty. Penalty stands for violated law. Violated law is transgression. Transgression is sin. Sin, in finalanalysis, is lawlessness, and lawlessness is treason againstJehovah. Death is, therefore, an imposition of God, and is hispenalty against the treason of sin. This, then, is the explanation of death--it is the penalty of sin. This is the definition which Christianity gives--as it is written:"By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and sodeath passed upon all men. " (Romans 5:12. ) Again it is written: "It is _appointed_ unto men once to die. " (Hebrews 9:27. ) In thus determining and defining death, Christianity reveals bothits essence and its mission; for, through its Gospel, Christianitybrings the good news that the issue of sin and death as between Godand man has been settled by our Lord Jesus Christ; that he hassettled it perfectly and forever according to the terms of divinerighteousness by dying as a sacrifice for sin and as a substitutefor sinners. In order to be a substitute it was necessary that our Lord JesusChrist should be a sinless man; otherwise, his death would be onlyhis own execution under the penalty of sin, and could not availeither for himself or others. None of Adam's race is sinless; asinless person must be of another race. To be of another race and behuman would require a new creation and would be a new and distincthumanity. Our Lord Jesus Christ was sinless. He was, therefore, of a new anddistinct humanity. In incarnation, God did not take the humanity ofAdam into union with himself, the humanity of our Lord Jesus Christwas the repudiation of the humanity of Adam. By that incarnation Godwas saying: "I have tried the old humanity. I find nothing in itthat responds to my claims. At its best it is sinful, only sinfuland fit for judgment--the end of all flesh is come before me--andthat end is death. " The humanity of Christ is, therefore, not an evolution, but a newcreation; it is not an invitation to the natural man, but acondemnation of him. It does not say to him, "Follow me, imitate meand you will be like me"; it says: "I am from above, ye are frombelow. I am from heaven and God--ye are from the earth. My humanityis as distinct from yours as the heavens are from the earth. " Such a man is not an example, a copy to be set before men. And never, not once, do the apostles so set him before the naturalman. Always they set him before the natural man as the man who cameinto the world--not to live as an example--but to die as a sacrificefor men; as one who was fit to die because he was free from thestain and penalty of sin. But in order that the death of Christ should be of infinite value, he must himself be an infinite person. The value of a deed dependsupon the person who does it. The quality resides not alone in theact, but in the actor. The value of the death of our Lord JesusChrist is not to be measured by its duration, but by himself--bywhat he was in himself; it does not depend upon the length of timein which as a substitute he suffered the punishment of those whoseplace he was taking, but the essential quality of his person. Didour Lord suffer but a moment of time on the cross, the value of hissuffering as a satisfaction to the law, government and being of Godwould be infinite. An infinite person is God. Always as such do the apostles present our Lord Jesus Christ. Theirtestimony to his deity rings out like the blast of far-soundingtrumpets. In terms that are precise, and so strong and clear that hewho runs may read, they proclaim that he is God of God, very God ofvery God. As God the Son, in co-operation with God the Father and God theSpirit, he who is presented to us as the Lord Jesus Christ, took acell from the substance of the virgin Mary, made it a mould and withgenerating power wrought from it a real humanity--a new and distincthumanity--and united it to his eternal personality; so that hestands forth as the eternal God endowed with a human nature--withtwo natures, human and divine, in one body and one person forever--the infinite God-man. Never do the apostles present him as a mere man. They present hishumanity as the background for his deity. His humanity in its mostliteral revelation is always declared by them to be the revelationand the manifestation of God. Never do the apostles attempt toreason about the incarnation, with superb affirmation and sublimedignity they declare, "Without controversy, great is the mystery ofgodliness; God was manifest in the flesh. " And it is this God whom Christianity presents as coming down fromthe heaven of glory, and clothing himself with a new, a distinct, but a mortal humanity in which to die as an infinite substitute forguilty men, that through death, he might abolish death for men. Having died as a sacrificial substitute, death considered as apenalty, and the guilt and demerit of sin which induced the penalty, have been set aside for all for whom his substitution avails. Nor does Christianity leave us long in doubt as to those for whomthe substitution obtains. In full and precise statement of doctrineit tells us that this substitution is on the behalf of, and for, allwho individually claim our Lord Jesus Christ on the cross as apersonal sacrifice for sin, and who by faith offer him to God as thesacrifice and sin offering which God himself has provided. Thus it follows, that for every believer--death as a penalty hasbeen abolished, brought to nought. This is the first great and joyous proclamation of Christianity, _Death has been abolished as a penalty for every believer_. It has been abolished _de jure_, not yet _de facto_. The Christian still dies, but his death is no longer penal, it isprovidential and provisional. In the hour of death the Christian is not seized as a culprit andhurried away to execution. On the contrary, when the hour of deathsounds for him, a voice inspired from heaven assures him that he hasreached the threshold of the "far better"; he arises and "departs, "that he may be "absent from his home in this body and present at hishome with the Lord. " His death is not a defeat, but a begun victory, and, inasmuch as both soul and spirit are delivered from theunderworld and the shades of death, he has the assurance that thepenalty will yet be completely abolished concerning his body: it isboth the assurance and the prophecy of it. Christianity is, then, primarily, the good news, and the doctrinaldemonstration, that death as a judicial sentence has been abolishedfor the Christian. But Christianity is something more than the abolition of death--itis-- Second--The bringing in and revelation of life. Through the Gospel, we are told, life has been brought to light. In the nature of the case this cannot mean natural life. There was no necessity that it should be brought into light. It has never been in darkness. It is manifest everywhere. Light and life are synonymous. There is not a condition in which in some form or other it does notexist. While one class of life may not live in a certainenvironment, there are other forms to which this environment wouldbe as a hotbed for their production. Life is, indeed, universal, andmay be said to be omnipresent. You will find it in the deepestdepths of earth, and in the highest reaches of air. It expands onthe mountain top, it dwells in the sea; it is organized in theinfusoria, it exists in the infinitesimal, and reveals itself atlast, in the beauty of woman and the strength of man. As natural life has always thus been in evidence; as it has neverbeen in the dark at all, then the life which our Lord Jesus Christhas brought to light is not natural life--it is new life--a lifeunknown to the world before. It does not come from the natural man. It is not produced by naturalgeneration. It comes from our Lord Jesus Christ and by supernaturalgeneration. It did not come from him while he walked the earth. Atno time during his earthly career did a human being receive it. Thedisciples who followed him--he who leaned upon his breast at supperand was the disciple whom Jesus loved--knew nothing of it. This newand unique life was brought into the light only when that lightshone from his empty grave. He gave it forth and communicated it tomen only when, as the risen man, he ascended up on high. It comesfrom him as the second man, as the last Adam, that Adam to whom thefirst was only as the clay model to the completed statue, as conceptis to consummation. It comes from him who is both God and man, inone body and one person forever; and who, as such, is the head andbeginning of the new creation of God. By him it is communicated to those who own him as their atoningsacrifice. The instrument is the word of the Gospel. The agent is the Holy Spirit. The Word is preached--it falls into the heart of the believer asseed into the ground. The Spirit quickens it--the new life is germinated. That new life is the life and nature of the risen one, our great Godand Saviour Jesus Christ, the man in the glory; it is the mind ofhim who is called Christ, and it is, therefore, in final term--"themind of Christ. " It is wrought, not in the soul, but in the spirit of the believer. By no slow process does it enter--this life of the risen Lord--butby absolute fiat--the fiat of him who said--"Lazarus, come forth. " It is fiat life. Its entrance into a human being is as light flashes into darkness. It is as instantaneous as when God of old said, "Let there belight, " and light burst over a world cataclysmically fallen intochaos. It is as transforming as when morning awakens the sleeping earth andhill and dale, river and sea, shine forth in their beauty. It is as startling as when Lazarus himself, obeying the voice of hisLord, rose from the dead and came forth. Behold the illustration of it. Here is a man who grovelled in the lowest animalism. He was a husband and father. What a husband! and what a father! She who was his wife fled oftentimes at the very sound of hisfootsteps, shivering with the same fear, as though he who hadsolemnly sworn to love and protect her, were a mad brute intent ongratifying his own fierce lust, and ready with unchecked sensualismto trample her in the mire of his bestiality. A father, whose veryname made the cheeks of the children grow white and their pulsesalmost to cease with terror. A drunkard, who drowned in his cup, notonly wife and children and home and all outward decency, but everycharacteristic of truth and honesty and manhood of his own soul. Aman, who through self-indulgence and the incessant yielding tounspeakable desires, had become little better than a human sewer, through whom the slime and indescribable filth of fallen anddegraded humanity found its unhindered course. A human being, whohad become a lazar spot, a walking pest, whose inmost thought rottedand putrified his own mind; and whose words without license were apoison and contagion to every one whose ears caught their unwelcomesound. Mark the change in that man! The wife now watches at the door with a gladsome smile to greet hisreturn. The children, who once in their rags trembled with fear, nowclean and wholesomely clad, and gay with laughter, gather at hisknee, the moment he enters his home. He is himself well dressed. Heholds his head erect, his eyes, no longer bloodshot, meet your gazewith frank and open glance. His tones are soft and modulated, hisspeech gentle. The Bible, the one book he always hated, is hisconstant study. His mouth once filled with cursings that might wellhave chilled the blood to hear, now give utterance to the voice ofprayer and earnest thanksgiving. The church he never entered andalways avoided has become the centre around which the bestactivities of his life are continuously moving. He who was onceshunned, despised and feared, is now honored and respected of all. The man has been transformed. Those who saw him in former days and see him now might in all reasonask, "Is this he, or some other man?" It is both he and yet another man. The same person, but possessinganother character. What is the secret of it all? Let the answer be graven on every heart. He has received a new life, a new, a pure, a holy and spiritual life. He has received that lifefrom above, from the second Adam, the Lord in heaven. He is now atwice-begotten man. And herein is the glorious, distinctive feature of Christianity inso far as it touches a human soul. To that soul it brings the good news that a new generation ispossible; the good news that any human being may start over. Thegood news that, no matter how much you may be handicapped by youroriginal genesis; no matter what the terrific law of heredity mayhave transmitted to you, you may be generated again. In a moment, inthe twinkling of an eye, you may have a genealogy that shall carryyour name above the proudest of earth; a genealogy by the side ofwhich the bluest blood of most ancient kings shall be as the palestand poorest of plebeian stuff. This Gospel of Christianity bringsthe good news that you may receive from the throne of God life fromGod, as directly as did Adam when God breathed into his nostrils thebreath of life and man became a living soul. In an instant you maybe recreated morally and spiritually, and have in you all the assetswhich, when fully capitalized by the grace of God, shall insure yoursonship with God here, making you master over every disturbing anddisquieting passion, and guaranteeing to you an eternal entranceinto the endless inheritance of God, wherein you shall be, indeed, the heir of God and joint heir with our Lord Jesus Christ. In short, you may have the bequeathed ability to glorify God and enjoy himforever. This is the life which our Lord Jesus Christ has brought to light. The Gospel is the good news of this life of which the life giverhimself has said, "I came that ye might have life, and that ye mighthave it more abundantly. " That is to say: "I came that ye might havethis spiritual life and have it without limit here. " And this Gospel of the new life brought to light by and through thedeath and resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ is one of theelemental facts and forces which definitely answers the question--"What is Christianity?" But Christianity is something more than the abolition of death as apenalty and the bringing in of a new and spiritual life. Christianity is through its Gospel--the good news that-- Third--Immortality has been brought to light. The word here translated "immortality" is "incorruption"; but itsignifies in final terms the fact of immortality; for, as mortalityis identified with corruption and is its consequent, so immortality, which is the opposite of mortality, is the consequence ofincorruption and is inseparable from it. This word "immortality" is greatly misunderstood, and almost alwaysmisapplied. It is continually applied to the soul. It is a common thing to hearor read the expression, "immortal soul. " The truth is, that phrase cannot be found in Holy Scripture. Theterms are misleading--their conjunction is false. Applied to thesoul, the word "immortal" is a misnomer. Throughout Scripture theoriginal word and idea relate to the body--never otherwise. The word"mortal" is never used of the soul; you never read in Scripture theexpression, "mortal soul. " You will find the words "mortal body. " Amortal body has for its opposite an "immortal body. " A mortal bodyis subject to corruption and death. An immortal body isincorruptible and not subject to death--an immortal body can neverdie. The mortal body is the scandal of the race and the open label ofsin. A mortal body puts us in the category of condemned criminalsawaiting execution. The scandal is not only moral, but organic. Tobe filled with disease, with pestilence, with fever, and then dieand the body turned back to its component parts--this is a scandalin construction; as much a scandal as when a house not properlybuilt falls down; a dead body, whether of man or dog, is the mostshameful blot on the face of the earth, and with the gaping mouth ofthe graveyard, justifies the estimate and the declaration of theliving God, that death is an "_enemy_, " not a welcome thing likebirth and life--_but an enemy_. Such a scandal is it, indeed, thatwhen our Lord Jesus Christ came to the grave of Lazarus, he washimself moved with indignation; for the words, "groaning withinhimself, " miss the true force. The Greek verb used signifies that hewas inwardly filled with indignation and a sense of outrage at thesight of the grave and the announcement that the body of Lazarus wasalready corrupt. Whatever groaning came from his lips and whatevertears fell from his eyes as he wept--these were his protests againstdeath and the grave; for he recognized this dead body not only asdue to the penalty of sin, but as the work of him "who had the powerof death, that is, the devil. " (Hebrews 2:14. ) Even though the Christian as to soul and spirit be delivered fromdeath; even though he does not go down to Hades, but at death issafely housed and at home with God in heaven--yet the fact that thisbody, which was not only the dwelling place of his soul, but thetemple and shrine of the Holy Spirit, should become a banquet forworms, a thing of repulsive decay, a residuum of forgotten dust, isa scandal, even to the Christian, and gives emphasis to the shame ofdeath. The Son of God came into the world to remove this scandal. He died and rose again, not only that he might have power andauthority to give a new and spiritual life to men, a characterbefitting them for the high things of God, he died and rose againthat he might have power and authority to give an immortal body toall who would receive from him this new and spiritual life. He brought this immortality to light when he rose from the dead. He brought it to light by rising from the dead in the body in whichhe had died. If our Lord Jesus Christ did not rise from the dead in the body inwhich he died, then immortality in the New Testament sense of theword has never been brought to light. But he did so rise. He made that clear on the first Sunday night after his resurrection. The disciples were gathered together in the room. The supper table was spread. No one cared to eat. The story had been going all day that Jesus had risen. The women said so. They persisted that they had seen and talked withhim. Two men claimed, also, to have seen him, walked, talked and brokenbread with him, that very afternoon. The disciples did not believe it. They were afraid to believe it lest it should prove to be untrue. Then, suddenly, he stood in the midst. They thought it was his ghost. This was a proof to them that he had not risen; for a ghost is adisembodied thing. He was a ghost--he was disembodied--therefore he had not risen. So they felt--each one of them. They did not say it--but they thought it. He knew their thoughts. He asks them why these thoughts arise in their hearts. He upbraidsthem for their unbelief. He tells them plainly, a ghost does not have flesh and bones. He says, "I have flesh and bones. " They are still silent. Then he stretches out his hands towards them. He shows them hisfeet. There are great marks in them--there is around these marks as thestain of blood, or of wounds whence blood had flowed. Still they do not speak. They are afraid to believe; it is too goodto be true. He says to them, "Handle me and see--take hold of my feet--feel me--examine me for yourselves. " They are as immovable and speechless as men changed into stone. He turns upon them quickly and says, "Have you anything to eat?" They point to the untasted supper. Then comes the climax. He goes to the table. He sits down. He eats before them. It is of record that he did eat _broiled fish_ and an _honeycomb_. Either this is the worst fable ever palmed off on the church ofChrist--on the credulity of aching human hearts--or it is the truthof God. Call it the truth of God--then the body in which our Lord JesusChrist rose was the body in which he died. That body, stamped and sealed with the stigmata of the cross, is theliving, quivering definition, and indisputable demonstration ofimmortality. Immortality is the living again in a body which wasdead and dieth no more; or, it is the change of the body in which wenow live into an incorruptible, glorious body which shall never die. In that body which he raised from the dead, and which never sawcorruption, our Lord Jesus Christ now sitteth at the right hand ofGod. He is there as the vision and standard of immortality. He is there as the forerunner, the prototype, the sample andprophecy of immortality for the Christian. Until the Christian is made immortal his redemption is not complete. The Christian who dies is transported to heaven. His estate there as compared to this is "far better. " But "far better" is not the "best. " It is only a comparative. The superlative requires that the Christian shall have a body. Without a body the Christian is neither a complete human being nor aperfect son of God. The divine ordination is "_spirit, soul, and body_. " Unless the Christian receives an immortal body the victory of ourLord Jesus Christ over death and over him who has the power of death(that is the Devil) is not complete. Satan as the strong man armed holds the goods and keeps them securewithin his house. The instrument with which he is armed is the law. That law whichrequires that it shall be "appointed unto men once to die. " Thegoods are the bodies of the saints, and the house is the dark anddismal grave. O the pitifulness of it! that our Lord Jesus Christ should possessthe Christian as a ghost in heaven, and the Devil hold his blood-bought and spirit-sealed body in the grave. A risen Christ in an immortal body, surrounded by disembodiedChristian ghosts in heaven forever--that is a concept too hideouslygrotesque to consider. An immortal Christ who redeemed his own body from the power of thegrave, but is unable to deliver the bodies of those for whom hedied--to think it is blasphemy! to believe it--impossible! If the Devil be the strong man armed, the risen Lord is the one"stronger than he, " who has met and equalled all the demands of thelaw, and by his death nullified its ultimate power over the bodiesof those for whom he died. In the very nature of the case, then, full redemption requires thatthe body of every Christian shall be delivered from the grave, andthat every Christian, whether living or dead, shall be clothedfinally with an immortal body. This is the great objective of salvation--not just to save men fromvice and immorality here; not just to fit them with an antidoteagainst the poison of sin; or give them an impetus to holiness andtruth for a few brief years in this mortal body, then let them dieunder various circumstances of suffering and pain and be carriedaway to heaven to live there as attenuated, invisible ghostsforever! O no! it is not that! It is true men are to be saved here and now in such moral andspiritual fashion as that each saved person should make the worldsweeter and better and nearer to God for living in it. All that istrue, but it is only a part of the glorious truth. The supremeobjective--the _ultima thule_ of redemption--is-- _Immortality_--the Christian eternally and incorruptibly embodied. And this immortality, this eternal embodiment, is to be accomplishedfor every Christian. The fact that death has been abolishedofficially as a penalty for the Christian is a demonstration thatabolition of death means abolition for the whole Christian; as awhole or complete Christian must have a body, then the abolition ofdeath for the Christian means abolition of death from the body. Theabolition of death from the body is immortality; by virtue, then, ofthe abolition of death, immortality is assured to every Christian. Not one will be forgotten even though centuries may have broken intodust above his grave. This immortality will be brought to pass by him who is theResurrection and the Life. It will be brought to pass at the Coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He is coming to this world again. By every law of necessity he_must_ come. He is coming to complete redemption, to bring on thecapstone amid shoutings of "grace, grace unto it. " He will raise the dead who have fallen asleep in his name. He willchange the living ones who are his at his coming. He will make thebody of each incorruptible, deathless, immortal, like unto his ownglorious body, as it is written: "We shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. " (1 John 3:2. ) And again it is written: "We are citizens of a country which is in heaven; from whence alsowe look for the Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ; who shall change thebody of our humiliation, that it may be fashioned like unto the bodyof his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even tosubdue all things unto himself. " (Philippians 3:20, 21. ) At the last he will regenerate the earth. He will make it over. Hewill make all things new. He will set this race of redeemedimmortals within it. Perfectly recovered from the spoliation of sinand death, they shall inhabit it forever. God shall get his ownworld again. Paradise lost shall become paradise regained, and God's purpose tomake man his constitutional, governmental, moral and spiritual imageshall be fulfilled. Man shall be God incarnate, and incarnationshall be seen to be the beginning and the ending of the purpose ofGod. This is the consummation to which Christianity leads us--a perfectrace of immortal beings in a perfect world, a perfect world in whichno man shall say, "I am sick"; where sin is unknown; where thefuneral bell does not toll, and a grave is never dug. Where God isall in all. This is the hope and the ultimate Christianity sets before us. Notonce in all its record does it offer us heaven or bid us prepare forit as the ultimate, but always it exhorts us to look for and waitpatiently for immortality and glory at the Coming of our Lord JesusChrist. This is the Christianity of the primitive centuries. This is the Christianity of the New Testament. It is the Christianity that fully met the needs of men. It met the needs of men who gave themselves up to unrestrainedpassion, to the gluttony of every appetite; who lounged away theirday in cool marble halls, or leaned half drunken from the cushionedseats of the amphitheatre, while the sands of the arena werereddened with human blood to give them a holiday. Look at themthere. They passed their unsatisfying hours in idle jest, wreathedthemselves with freshly plucked, but swiftly fading flowers, drownedtheir senses from moment to moment, still deeper in the spiced andmaddening wines, gave unbridled freedom to their lust; and then, atclose of day, in the splendor of the sinking sun, went forth to cooltheir fevered brows in the Campagna's freshening but deadly air, anddrove with furious pace and brutal laughter along the Appian waybetween rows of monumental tombs whose chiselled epitaphs told thehopeless end of human life; then back again they drove with stillmore reckless haste to spend the night in wild debauch and meet thegray dawning of another day with its mocking routine and disgust. Loathing their very joys, revolting at their own gratification, these men asked: "Is there nothing better than this, that we drainthe cup of pleasure to the dregs, open our veins, watch the lifeblood ebb away, and laugh, and mingle our laughter with curses thatso cheap and easy an ending should have cost so much to reach?" O the woe, the horror, the emptiness, and the crying, agonizing needof lives like these. And Christianity fully and richly met the need of lives like these. It met the needs of men who in the midst of an environment of theflesh, with the wild beast of appetite struggling within, now andthen had longings for a power that should enable them to put theirfeet upon the neck of passion. It met the needs of men who, standing above their dead, asked againthe old and oft-repeated question of Job, "If a man die, shall helive again?" Christianity met all these needs. Through crowded streets of populous towns and lonely lanes of silentvillages, in lordly palace and before straw-thatched hovels, tolistening throngs and wayside hearers, it rang forth its wondrousproclamation. It told men that a man had been here who had proven himself strongerthan death and mightier than the grave; a man who had burst the barsof death asunder, spurned the sepulchre wherein human hands had laidhis body, had ascended up on high, and now, from heaven's throne, had power to impart to men a life that hated sin, rejoiced invirtue, could make each moment of earth's existence worth while, andcarried within it the assurance and prophecy of eternal felicity. Far and wide, over land and sea, it rang the tidings that thisperfect life might be had by king or cotter, by freeman or slave, without money and without price, for so simple a thing as genuinefaith in, and open confession of, him who had died and risen again. With rich, exultant note it announced that he who as very God hadclothed himself with a new and distinct humanity, who had loved menunto death and died for them, had not forgotten the earth wherein hehad suffered, his own grave from whence he had so triumphantlyrisen, nor yet the graves of those who had confessed his name; but, on the contrary, was coming back in personal glory and withlimitless power to raise the dead, transfigure the living, make themimmortal, and so change this earth that it should no longer be aswinging cemetery of the hopeless dead, but the abiding home of theeternally living sons of God. Men held like Laocoon in the winding coils of sinuous and persistentsin, and who vainly sought to escape from its slowly crushingembrace, heard the good news and turned their faces towards therising hope of present deliverance. Men standing in the shadow of the tombs and waiting their turnsmiled until their smiles turned into joyous laughter as they said:"If we die, we shall live again--the grave shall not always win itsvictory over us. " Do you wonder the world stopped, listened, and that multitudesturned and followed after? Do you wonder that this Christianity of the primitive centuriestriumphed so phenomenally? This is the Christianity we need to preach today. It is full of a great body of doctrine. It is full of the supernatural. Miracle and miraculous are woven into its texture from beginning toend. You cannot touch it, or handle it, or look at it from any angleof vision that it does not suggest the miraculous. The moment themiracle is out of it it is no longer the Christianity of the firstcentury, it is not the Christianity of the New Testament--theChristianity that has a miraculous Christ for its centre and themiracle of an infinite God for its environment. A Christianity of doctrine! A Christianity of miracle! And why not? It is as superior to the Christianity, so called, that sets asidemiracle and doctrine, turns its back on the hereafter, makes itsappeal in behalf of the present alone, and grounds its claim toauthority, not on a "thus saith the Lord, " but on a "thus saithscience and reason"; a Christianity that owns the law of evolutionas its present force and defining motive; it is as superior to thatsort of Christianity and as high above it as the heavens are abovethe earth. One night this summer I stood upon a mountain ridge and watched therevelation of the starry sky. The great constellations, like silversquadrons, were sailing slowly and majestically to their appointedhavens; from north to south and from south to north again, the MilkyWay swept upward from its double horizon to the zenith like ahighway paved and set with diamonds--a highway over which the wheelsof the king's chariot had sped, leaving behind that cloud of dust inwhich every gleaming particle was a burnished sun. I gazedspellbound until it was as the vision of an unfathomed sea, an oceantide of light, where the shimmering foam was the rise and fall ofsingle and multiple systems, the surf beat breaking on the shores ofconverging universes. I gazed on this wealth and congeries of far-flung worlds, in which some that appeared the most insignificant andtwinkled and trembled as though each glimmer would be the last, wereactually so great that beside them our own poor little world was butas a mole hill to earth's Himalayas; as I gazed I thought of thedistance from world to world--measured as light travels--till thecount of years fell away, and there were no more numbers with whichto count, and I knew that at the end of this calculation I had butentered the suburbs of that realm for which we have but one word, whose inadequacy we all confess--the Infinite. I listened, thesilence seemed to utter forth majesty and might and honor andomnipotence, the air had in it the breath of sacred and adoringthings, and unwittingly I cried out, alone in the night there, "Theheavens, O God, declare thy glory and the firmament showeth thyhandiwork. " And when I look at this Christianity set forth in the New Testament, and anticipated in the Old, the constellations of doctrine, this ViaLactea of truth in which every statement is a sun of splendor; whenI begin to get the sweep of the divine purpose coming up from theopening pages of Genesis and culminating in the book of theRevelation; when I see that Christianity is the presentation to usof the ways and means whereby the original thought of incarnation(and this was the very first thought stamped upon the first pages ofthe Genesis record of the creation of man; for incarnation isconceived in Eden before it is brought to the birth in Bethlehem)--when I see this original thought of incarnation, in spite of sin andfailure, and the world's captivity to the Devil and his angels; whenI see this high purpose of God at last realized, and realized socompletely that each redeemed soul is in final terms the gloriousenthronement of God in humanity, and that God in Christ and in theChristian, gets his own world again, I cry out with full tribute ofheart and intellect: "O Lord, this is the Christianity which thouhast wrought, thy name is written in every doctrine, every linejustifies, as it proclaims thee, the infinite and gracious author. " This is the Christianity to preach. Let the preacher preach a Christianity of doctrine. There are three important things every preacher should preach. Thefirst thing is doctrine. The second thing is doctrine. The third andpre-eminent thing is doctrine. The church is starving to death forthe want of it, the preachers are becoming emasculated apologistsfor lack of it, and the world, looking on, is laughing at a limp, genuflecting thing calling itself modern Christianity and for wantof vertebrate strength, unable to stand alone. It was doctrine believed in and preached which sustained the martyrsand gave courage to missionaries. He who believed in the sovereigntyof a redeeming God, the certainty that God would get his elect, theComing of Christ, the millennial triumph, and a rebel worldsurrendered at the feet of God, could endure the agony of the stake, the privation of the wilderness, and all the discomforts and all thediscouragements of fields of endeavor well sowed but scantilyreaped. Let the preacher preach the supernatural--the things that aremiraculous, and be unafraid. He need not be afraid. The world wants that sort of preaching. It isgrowing tired at heart of mere machinery and this eternally runningup against a formula of the laboratory or a mathematical calculationand analyzed force, as explanatory of everything in heaven and inearth. It would like, if it were possible, to believe in something alittle beyond the length of its eyelashes and the touch of itsfinger tips; something that cannot be summed up always inavoirdupois; something, indeed, beyond the ability of man. Let the church get back to the old-fashioned doctrinal, supernatural, miraculous Christianity that underwrites itself withthe name of God. Let it be boldly proclaimed that Christianity ismiraculous, because it is, first and last, the Christianity of thatGod who is himself--the eternal miracle. The very salvation of the church as a church depends upon thisretrograde. If the church hesitates, compromises, seeks to accommodate itsformulas to modern nomenclature. If it is willing to carry itsbaggage at half weight; if it is willing to make its proclamation acontinual denial of all that it has heretofore professed asfundamental; if it believes the twentieth century has the call onthe first, and that modernism outranks primitivism; if, in short, itlooks upon primitive and apostolic Christianity as the feeble hintwhich the modern thinker has known how to modify and improve, then, as already suggested, the days of its spiritual and moral bankruptcyare in sight, and the sooner good business arrangements are made tohire out its meeting houses for ethical and social culture thebetter. Let the church persevere in turning its back upon the hereafter; letit continue the folly of ignoring the eschatological emphasis ofChristianity; let it keep on giving to men the anodynes of meremoral maxims; let it direct all its energies to improving andperfecting a society which God has already judged and condemned atits best, and presently these drugged and befooled people willawake, the drugs will no longer be effective, and they will turn inindignation upon a Christianity which began by professing to be arevelation from God and ends by confessing to be nothing more thanan evolution from man. It is time for preachers to arouse if they would have the hearing, and not the indifferent ears. Let them refuse to apologize or defend. Let them have the courage of divine conviction. Let them refuse to admit into their fellowship men who are willingthat a bar-sinister shall be stained across the birth hour of theChrist; who are ready to smile away such a title as "the BlessedVirgin"; who can read no deeper meaning in the cross than a brutalmurder, and who do not yet know that in the garden of Arimatheathere is still an empty tomb. Let them refuse ministerial ordinationand partnership with men who, bearing the university brand, claimthe authority of a self-elected scholarship to make the Word of Godsecondary to the word of man. Let them go forth and proclaim to theworld with the voice of assurance which permits of no debate andwill accept no recall, the Christianity that is summed up, isperfectly defined and holds inclusively all its splendor of doctrinein the three immense facts which its Gospel proclaims: The abolition of death, the gift of a new and spiritual life, andthe guaranty to every believer of a resplendent immortality likeunto his who sits on yonder throne--both eternal God and immortalman--Coming Bridegroom and Triumphant King. Let them preach this. Let them tell the guilty sinner that the bloodof Our Lord Jesus Christ meets his case and can make the foulestclean; let them tell the slave-bound sinner that in a moment, in theflash of an eye glance, a risen Saviour can deliver him and set himfree; let them tell the dying that death has lost its sting, and atdeath a convoy of heaven's host shall bear him away from his home inthis mortal body to be at home in heaven with his ascended Lord; letthem cry above every Christian grave, louder than the sound of anyfalling tear: "Jesus is coming to raise your dead and change theliving and clothe each saint with immortal beauty"; let them lookabroad upon a world full of the storm of sin, the tumult of highpassion and long rebellion against our God, and shout aloud thatvictory cometh in the end; that Christ is God as well as man; thatthe days of his glory are at hand, when the "God of the whole earth"shall he be called; and when all beneath a perfect heaven in aperfect world shall know him as Lord and God from the least to thegreatest. Let them preach this, and with unbroken confidence repeatthe exultant words of Holy Writ, the words which shall warrant alltheir speech, that "our Saviour Jesus Christ hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the Gospel";and it will be this Gospel echoing forth with all the music of itsjoyful tidings that shall answer infallibly and beyond all disputethe question of the hour--"_What is Christianity?_" The Bible THE WORD OF GOD "When ye received the word of God which ye heard of us, ye receivedit not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, the word of God. "(1 Thessalonians 2:13. ) THE Apostle here testifies that he believes himself to be the bearerof a revelation direct from God; that the words he speaks and thewords he writes are not the words of man, but the Word of God, warmwith his breath, filled with his thoughts, and stamped with hiswill. In this same epistle he writes: "For this we say unto you by the word of the Lord. " (1 Thessalonians4:15. ) The preposition "by" is the dative of investiture as well as means, and is Paul's declaration that what he is writing to theThessalonians are not his ideas, clothed in his own language, butideas and thoughts whose investiture, whose very clothing, is noless than the word of the ascended Lord--he who is none other thanthe "Word of God. " Writing to the Corinthians he says: "Which things we speak, _not in the words_ which man's wisdomteacheth, _but_ (and grammar requires us to understand) _in thewords_ which the Holy Ghost teacheth. " (1 Corinthians 2:13. ) According to Paul's testimony, therefore, the fourteen epistleswhich he wrote to the churches are not letters written by a mortalman, giving expression to the ideas and thoughts of man, but are thevery words of the infinite God, giving utterance by the Holy Ghostto the thoughts of God. An examination of the other epistles of the New Testament will showthe same high and unqualified pretension. The apostles write (all ofthem) not as men who are giving an opinion of their own, but as menwho know themselves under the domination of the Spirit, and asgiving authoritative expression to the mind and will of God. Nor is this peculiar to the writers of the New Testament. Constantly, the writers of the Old Testament introduce their messagewith the tremendous sentence: "Thus saith the Lord. " Again and againthey declare the Lord has spoken "by" them. David says: "The wordsof the Lord were in my tongue. " Jeremiah says the Word of the Lordcame to him and the Lord said: "Take a roll of a book and writetherein all the words that I have spoken to thee. " Then we are toldthat "Jeremiah called Baruch, the son of Neriah; and Baruch wrotefrom the mouth of Jeremiah all the words of the Lord, which he hadspoken unto him, upon a roll of a book. " After these words had been read to the princes of Israel, they askedBaruch, saying, "Tell us now, how didst thou write all these wordsat his mouth?" Then Baruch answered them, "He pronounced all thesewords unto me with his mouth, and I wrote them with ink in thebook. " The process is clear enough. The Lord spake his words in Jeremiah. Jeremiah received the words direct from the Lord, dictated them wordfor word to Baruch, Baruch wrote them as they were pronounced in abook; and when written, the words were the written words of God. Ezekiel declares when the Lord commanded him to speak to thechildren of Israel, he said to him: "Speak with _my words_ untothem. " Ezekiel not only speaks them, he writes them in the book ofhis prophecy. Ezekiel gives an account of how the Lord spake to himand inspired the book which bears his name. He says: "The Spiritentered into me when he spoke to me; . . . The spirit entered intome and spake with me. " The Spirit said unto him: "When I speak withthee, I will open thy mouth, and thou shalt say unto them, thussaith the Lord. " The Apostle Paul, speaking in commendation of Timothy because from achild he had known the Holy Scriptures (and by Holy Scriptures theApostle meant the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi--these werethe Scriptures Timothy as well as every Jew knew as such), tells himthat all Scripture (and of course any decent exegesis of the passagewith its weight of context would recognize that the Apostle wasreferring to the Scriptures Timothy had known from childhood, theScriptures as we have them to-day from Genesis to Malachi)--Paultells Timothy in the most precise terms that all these writings areinspired of God. The Apostle Peter, corroboratively speaking of these very Scripturesof the Old Testament, says they came not "by the will of man, butholy men of old spake as they were moved (literally, carried along)by the Holy Ghost. " Thus, this book we call the Bible comes to us with the enormous anduncompromising claim that it is not a man-made book, but a bookwhose real and sole author is the living and eternal God. This claim stands face to face with human need. Here we are from birth to death, pilgrims on the highway of time, not knowing whence we come, nor whither we go. We need a guide tolead us, a light to shine when we stand at that parting of the ways--where eternity becomes the end of time. This book meets us and claims to be all that--a guide through time, a light to shine upon the road that leads to God and to be, in everyline and accent, the inspired, incorruptible, infallible Word ofGod. How may we know it is all it claims to be? Never more than now did we need to know it. Voices in the air are crying that we have been deceived; that thisbook upon which our fathers pillowed their heads when at the end oflife's journey, they laid them down to die; this book we have heldas a lamp to our feet and a light to our path is, after all, at itsbest, only the word of man and not the Word of God at all. Every now and then resounding blows are heard as they strike againstthe old foundation. Those who pretend to be working in the interestof the truth bid us stand aside, lest we and our hopes be buried inthe impending ruin. We need to know at any cost whether this splendid and sustainingfaith has deceived us; whether this book we have looked upon as holyand divine is nothing more than the word of man, spoken with hisstammering tongue and written with his stumbling pen. We must know, and know for a certainty that will leave noperadventure to arise as a troubling after-ghost, whether this Bibleis, as Paul says it is, in truth, the Word of God; and the questionwill insistently repeat itself: "How may we know the Bible _is_ the Word of God?" The question need not make us tremble. The answers are at hand. The evidence is so great, its very wealth is an embarrassment. That evidence stated, detailed, analyzed and elaborated, wouldrequire--not a few pages--but whole libraries. One broad and general proposition may be laid down. It is this: The Bible is proved to BE the Word of God when it is shown to be NOTthe word of man; and it is proved to be not the word of man when itis shown to be--not such a book as a man WOULD write if he COULD;nor such a book as a man COULD write if he WOULD. That it is not the word of man--not such a book as a man _would_write if he could, is made clear enough by the picture it paints ofthe natural man. This picture is so sharply drawn, the figures stand out in suchliving and apt delineation, that no one can mistake the import. According to the Bible, man came direct from the hand of God. Godcreated him body, soul and spirit--a tripartite being. The soul wasthe person, the seat of appetite and passions. The spirit was theseat of the mind, the centre of reflection. Spirit and body were thedistinct agents of the soul. The spirit, the agent to connect thesoul with God--the body, the medium of the soul's manifestation ormaterialization in this world, and the instrument for its use andenjoyment. The mind, seated in the spirit, was intended, under theinfluence of the spirit, to be the governor and regulator of thesoul--enabling the soul rightly to use its appetite and legitimatelyto satisfy its passions. Thus organized, God set man up in the world to be hisconstitutional, moral, spiritual and governmental image--hislikeness morally--his image (his representative) administratively. Man turned his back on God, listened to the appetite of his soul, and surrendered to the demands of sensual hunger. The soul, at once, sank down into the environment of the body. Themind sank down into the environment of the soul and became, henceforth, not a spiritual mind, but a mind "sensual, " "devilish, "a mind continually suggesting to the soul fresh and unlimitedgratification of its desires. With the breakdown of soul and mind, the spirit lost its vital relationship to God, lost its function asa connecting link with, and a transmitter of, the mind and will ofGod; so that it could no longer enable man to know and understandGod; and feeling the influence of the mind, instead of influencingit, followed it in its downward course into the environment of thesoul. Out of this dislocation the soul came forth dominant over mind andspirit. Soul appetite and soul desires became supreme; the body, thewilling and active agent thereof. From this period on, man was nolonger a possible spiritual being, but a "natural" man. The word"natural" is "soulical. " In Scripture it is twice translated"sensual. " The much-used word "psychological" is a derivation of it. In the Bible sense of the word, a psychological person is just theopposite of a pneumatical or spiritual person. Man was now psychological, soulical, sensual. He had beentransformed into a being no better than an _intellectual_ animal, and the slave of his physical functions. Instead of being the masterof his appetites, he was mastered by them. His passions intended, under right use, to be blessings, became curses; instead of angels, they became as demons. Instead of dwelling in the midst of hisendowment in harmony with it and able to direct it, he found himselfat its mercy, incessantly smitten by it and suffering his ownequipment. Repudiating faith, walking by sight, talking of reasonand governed by his senses, he threw himself open to invasion by theworld, the flesh and the Devil. As a result of his fall, man has become a degenerate, full of thegerms of evil, "every imagination of the thoughts of the heart onlyevil continually"--an incurable self-corrupter. In him there is not one thing that commends him to a holy God; andeven should he succeed in living a life of perfect morality, hisbest righteousness in the sight of God would be no better than abundle of filthy and contagious rags. There is no power within him by which he can change the essentialcharacter and determined trend of his life. Men do not gather grapesof thorns, nor figs of thistles. All the effort that the mostdevoted and laborious of men might give to the culture of a hedgerowof thorns would not succeed in producing one grape. Though men spentlife and fortune in cultivating a field of thistles, they would notgather a single fig. No sooner (says the Bible) can the natural manbring forth the fruit of righteousness unto God. The Ethiopian maychange his skin, the leopard his spots, before a natural man canchange himself into a spiritual man. "The carnal mind is enmity withGod; for it is not subject to the law of God, _neither indeed canbe_. " "The natural man (the word 'natural' is psuchikos, soulical)receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they arefoolishness unto him: _neither can he know them_, because they arespiritually (pneumatikos, _pneumatically_) discerned. " "The heart isdeceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can knowit?" meaning thereby that God alone can sound the depths of itsmeasureless capacity for sin and iniquity; therefore, he says: "Ithe Lord search the heart, I try the reins. " The end of man is to die. Such an end is not natural. It is unnatural. It is violent. It is penal. It is an appointed punishment: as it is written: "It is _appointed_unto men once to die. " "By _one_ man sin entered into the world, anddeath _by sin_; and _so_ death _passed_ (literally, passed _through, pierced_ man;" the seeds of death entered him for himself and allhis posterity). When he dies, therefore, be he never so moral andupright, his death is judicial, his taking off is the execution of acriminal. He is to be raised from the dead as to his body (in the meantime, his soul is "dragged" downward to the prison of the underworld, where in conscious suffering he awaits the second resurrection andthe judgment hour), he will be raised, judged, found guilty and castforth into the lake of fire (which is the second death), from whencethere will be no resurrection of the body (the body will perish inthe fire--for an immortal body belongs only to the sons of God--theparticipants in the First Resurrection); then, as a disembodiedspirit--a ghost--he will go forth with an inward, deathless worm, and an inward, quenchless fire, to be like "a wandering star untowhom is reserved the blackness of darkness forever, " an exile fromGod, outside the orbit of divine grace, love and life--a hopeless, an eternally hopeless--human derelict, upon the measureless sea ofnight and space. That is the Bible picture of the natural man. Is that the picture the natural man paints of himself? I trow not! Man looks upon himself as a son of God by nature, having in himselfall the elements of divinity, and all the forces necessary to shapehis life aright. He is proud of himself, and talks of the dignity ofhuman nature. He describes himself in panegyric, magnifies hisvirtue and minimizes his vice. He flatters himself in his own eyes. The two concepts--that of the Bible and that of the natural man--areas far apart from each other as the heavens are from the earth. To man, the Bible concept is false, belittling, wholly disastrousand degrading, the death knell to any possible inspiration for humaneffort and attainment. It is a concept against which he revolts withall the nature in him, and hates with an exceeding great hatred. In the very nature of the case, then, the Bible concept of man isnot due to man; it is not such a concept that he _would_ write if he_could_. The picture which the Bible paints of sin is not such a picture asthe natural man has ever painted. The Bible declares that sin is something more than fever or diseaseor weakness, it is high treason against Jehovah, it is a blow at hisintegrity, a rebellion against his government, a discord to hisbeing and a movement whose final tendency would be to dislodge himfrom his throne. The Bible hates sin and has no mercy for it. The very leaves of the book seem to curl and grow crisp under thefire of its hatred. So fearful is its denunciation that the sinnershivers and hastens to turn away from a book whose lightestdenunciation of sin has in it the menace of eternal judgment. Like agreat fiery eye it looks into the very recesses of the heart andreveals its intents and purposes. It sees lust hiding there in allits lecherous deformity and says, he who exercises it solely in hismind is as guilty in God's sight as though he had committed the act. It looks into the heart and sees hate crouching there with itstiger-like fangs and readiness to spring, and says that he who hateshis brother is already a murderer. The Bible has no forgiveness for sin until it has been fully andfearfully punished. In this it simply echoes the law stamped andsteeped in nature. Nature never forgives its violated law until ithas punished it. The Bible demands satisfaction, complete andabsolute, before it offers even the hint of forgiveness. It takesthe guilty sinner to the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ and showshim God's hatred of sin to be so great, that the moment his holy andspotless Son representatively takes the sinner's place, he smiteshim and pours out upon him a tidal sweep of wrath in a terror ofrelentless judgment and indignation so immense, that the earthquivers like an aspen, rocks to and fro, reels in its orbit till thesun of day refuses to shine, and the moon of night hangs in thestartled heavens like a great clot of human blood. The Bible declares that forgiveness of sin can come to the sinneronly by way of the anguish and punishment of the cross; and that nosinner can be forgiven till he has accepted the downpour of thewrath of God on the cross and the substitutional agony of the Son ofGod as the punishment he himself so justly deserves. The Bible teaches that in the awful cry, "My God, my God, why hastthou forsaken me?" the sinner should hear the echo of his own agony, as of one forsaken of God and swept out of his presence forever; andthat the only ground of approach to this righteous God is theatoning blood of his crucified Son; that he who would approach God, find forgiveness and justification, must claim that crucified Son ofGod as his sin-offering, his vicarious sacrifice, his personalsubstitute. By the hell of the cross alone can he find the heaven offorgiveness and peace. Is this man's attitude to, and definition of, forgiveness and peace? It is not. Man does not hate sin. He loves it. He rolls it as a sweet morselunder his tongue. He condones it in its worst form. To him it isgenital weakness or an overplus of animal life--an exuberance of thespirit. It is a racial inheritance and not an individual fault. Itis temperamental and not criminal. The Bible concept and the natural concept of sin contradict eachother; both, therefore, cannot have the same author. The Bible concept of holiness is not the concept of the natural man. In the Bible, holiness is not goodness and kindness, nor evenmorality. Holiness as the Bible sets it before us is thecorrespondence of the soul with God, the soul reflecting the intent, desire and innermost character of God; so that, were God to enterinto the soul, he should find himself as much at home as upon hisown exalted throne. Such a definition as that makes human perfection and all its claimsto holiness seem no better than a painted wanton dressed in the garbof purity and mouthing the words of virtue and chastity. Whence comes this wisdom of holiness which makes the loftiest idealof man no higher than the dust of the roadway, his bestrighteousness criticizable goodness and altogether a negligiblequantity? If it is from man, it must arise from two sources--human experienceor human imagination. It cannot come from human experience! no natural man in the past hasexperienced it--none today experience it. It cannot come from imagination; for a man cannot imagine what hehas not seen, known or experienced. As he has not experiencedholiness he cannot imagine it. In the nature of the case--the Bible concept of holiness did notoriginate with man, and that much of the Bible, evidently, is not ofman. That the Bible is not the word of man is shown by its statements ofaccurate science, written before men became scientific, and while asyet natural science did not exist. The record of creation is given in the opening verses of Genesis. Whence came the wisdom which enabled the writer in a pre-scientificage to set forth a cosmogony in such a fashion that it does notcontradict the latest findings of the geologist? The Bible says the earth was without form and void. Science says the same thing. Over a hot granite crust, an ocean offire, and beyond that an impenetrable atmosphere loaded withcarbonic acid gas. Cuvier, the founder of paleontology, says in his discourse on therevolutions of the globe, "Moses has left us a cosmogony, theexactitude of which is most wonderfully confirmed every day. " Quensted says, "Moses was a great geologist, wherever he may haveobtained his knowledge. " Again he says, "The venerable Moses, whomakes the plants appear first, has not yet been proven at fault; forthere are marine plants in the very lowest deposit. " Dana, of Yale College, has said that the record of creation given byMoses and that written in the rocks are the same in all generalfeatures. Whence came the wisdom which kept Moses from hopelessly blundering? Moses places the account of the original creation in the firstverse. In the second, he states the earth fell into chaos. "It_became_ (not _was_) without form, and void. " Isaiah, the prophet, declares definitely that God did not create theearth without form and void--God never was the author of chaos--hemade the earth habitable from the beginning. The first verse of Genesis records the creation of this original andhabitable earth. The second verse shows, as the result of somemighty cataclysm, that the original earth fell into a state ofchaos. The second verse, and the verses following, are the record ofthe making over of the earth after it had fallen into a state ofchaos. Whence the wisdom which taught Moses what science in our day is onlybeginning to spell out, that the present earth is not an originalcreation, but a remaking; that the original creation goes backbeyond the time of shifted crust, of tilted rock, of ice and fireand mist and formless chaos? Whence came the wisdom and knowledge which led Job to say that it isimpossible to count the stars for number, when it _was_ possible inhis day, and is equally possible in our day, to count them with thenaked eye? How did he know, what the telescope alone reveals, that the numberof the stars as flashed forth in the field of these telescopes isutterly beyond our computation; and that in the attempt to numberthem, figures break, fall into dust, and are swept away as the chaffof the summer's threshing floor. How did he, looking up with that naked eye of his, how did he knowthat in the Milky Way there are countless thousands of suns--andthese the centres of other systems? How did he know that world-on-world ranges in the upper spaces of the silent sky, somultitudinously that each increase of the power of the telescopeonly adds unaccountable myriads until, looking from the rim of thosenightly searchers, the eye beholds reach on reach of luminousclouds, and learns with awe profound, that these clouds are stars, are suns and systems--but so far away from us and from one anotherthat they cannot be separated and distinguished by the most powerfulglasses; and that these clouds, if we really could separate them andbring them within the field of our particular vision, would revealthemselves as suns and systems so numerous, that only, the Creatorhimself could number them? How did Job know all this in that far day when he sat at his tentdoor in the beauty of the cloudless sky and without a telescope? Howdid he know all this so that he could tell us with absolutecertainty what we now know only by the aid of modern science--thatthe stars _cannot_ be counted for number? How did he know what only the modern telescope reveals, that theNorth is stretched out over the empty place? How did he know thatthere in the Northern sky there is a space where no star does shine--a dark abyss of fathomless night--as if, suddenly, the universe ofworlds had come to an end? How did he know, at the moment when the wise men of his day weresaying that the earth was supported on the shoulders of a giant, that the giant stood on a platform made of the backs of elephants;that the elephants stood on the back of a mighty tortoise, but wherethe tortoise stood none of them said; how did he dare at that timeto write that God hangeth the earth on nothing? How did Isaiah know that the world is round? How did he learn tospeak of "the circle of the earth, " at the time when the scientificmen of his day said that it was four square and flat? How did he know of that imponderable ether in which the stellaruniverse is said to float? Who taught him to say that God spread outthe heavens as "thinness, " when the wise men of that hour wereteaching they were a solid vault? How is it that he made use of themost scientific term when he speaks of the heavens as "thinness"? Itis true in our English version he is made to say that God spread outthe heavens as a "tent"; but the word "tent" in the Hebrew is (doq)and its root meaning signifies a thing that has been beaten out orstretched into thinness--an elastic thinness; it is a wordaccurately describing the ether which scientific men tell us is sothin that a teacup full of it may be blown out into a transparentbubble as large as the earth, and, even then, its attenuation wouldseem no greater than at the beginning. How did Isaiah know all this? Evidently his knowledge and wisdom did not come from the knowledgeand wisdom of his day. That the Bible did not come from man is seen in the fact offulfilled prohpecy. Page after page of this book is filled with prophetic announcements. History and human experience record their amazing fulfilment. The prophet Daniel gives the history of four great world empires, Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece and Rome. The rise and fall of these empires are foretold centuries ahead. The total ruin and perpetual desolation of Babylon were announcedwhen the city shone forth in the zenith of its splendor. Daniel writes an account of Alexander the Great two hundred andfifty years before he is born, calls him the first king of Greece, describes his march for the conquest of the East, the battle of theGrannicus, his sudden death at Babylon, and the division of theempire among his four generals. At the hour when Rome was practically passing through her travailpains of national birth, Daniel foretold its ascension to power, anddescribed it as a wild beast, trampling down the nations, absorbinginto itself the three kingdoms which preceded it, occupying theterritory once possessed by them, and becoming the supremegovernmental power of the earth. Centuries before it took place heforetold the division of the Roman Empire into two equal parts. Heannounced, also, that it should be the last universal politicalpower till Christ the Lord should come to set up his worldwidekingdom. Centuries have passed since Rome ruled the world. From thatday to this it has remained the last supreme world-power. Theterritory once ruled by it is filled with mighty nations--not one ofthem, great as it may be, is a universal world-power. Where did Daniel get the foresight which enabled him to look on downthrough two thousand years of human history and, in the face ofbattle, intrigue and change, declare, what so far has come to pass, that Rome should be the last universal empire till Christ came? Ezekiel, the prophet, said that the great and populous city of Tyreshould be taken, cast down, and never rebuilt; and that the Lordwould make it to be like the top of a scraped rock to spread netsupon. The city was taken and destroyed. The people moved to an island justoff the mainland and there built a new city. Two hundred and fiftyyears after Ezekiel made his prophecy, Alexander came, besieged thenew city; and, in order to take it, built a causeway from themainland. In doing this he tore down and utterly demolished theruins of the old city; took its stones and timber and cast them intothe sea; and then, actually, set his soldiers to work to scrape thevery dust that he might empty it into the waters. From the hour whenit was overthrown to this, the city has never been rebuilt; and forcenturies it has been, and is to-day, like _the top of a scrapedrock_--a place where _fishermen spread their nets_. Where did Ezekiel get this knowledge? Certainly not from man. It will not do to say he guessed it! Egypt was a land of cities and temples. The cities were populous, the temples and monuments colossal. Avenues of gigantic sphynx ledto gateways whose immense thresholds opened into pillared halls, where the carved columns seemed like a forest of stone. Pyramidsrose as mountains, and their alabaster-covered sides flashed backthe splendor of the cloudless skies. The land bloomed as a garden. The papyrus grew by the banks of the Nile. The fisheries of themighty river filled the treasury of kings with a ceaseless income. Art, literature, knowledge and culture were enthroned supreme--yetwas it a land of false gods and a people given over to theirworship. Speaking in the name of God the prophet announced the comingdesolation of Egypt. It should be cast down. Its fisheries should bedestroyed, its papyrus withered, its cities and temples overthrownand the ruins scattered over the plain, no native prince should everagain sit upon its throne, it should become the basest of kingdoms. It has become such. Its cities are destroyed. Its temples are roofless, its columnsfallen, the statues of its kings lie face downward in the dust, thepyramids, stripped and bare, stand scarred and silent in the sun. The singing Memnon are as songless from their chiselled lips as thetongueless Sphynx half buried in the yellow sand. The fisheries aregone, the papyrus has withered; for centuries no native prince hasbeen seated on the throne. It is a land of the dead. The dead areeverywhere. At every step you stumble over a mummy, the mummy of adead cat, a dead dog, or a dead and shrivelled Pharaoh. Its greatestasset is its departed glory, and every grain of sand blown from themighty desert, and every wave of reflected light flung back from theLybian hills, proclaims the terrific fulfilment of the prophet'swords. The prophets foretold the final siege and destruction of Jerusalem. It should be trodden down of the Gentiles. The people should becarried away captive and sold into all lands. They should bescattered from one end of the earth to the other. All nations shoulddespise them. They should become a by-word, a hissing and a scorn. They should be hunted, hounded and persecuted. Their sufferingsshould be unparalleled, horrible, unspeakable. The sound of a shakenleaf should startle them. They were to become the people of thetrembling heart and the wandering foot. The prophecies have been singularly fulfilled. Jerusalem was besieged by the Romans. The city was taken. The cityand temple were destroyed. Hundreds of thousands perished by famine, by fever, by fire and by sword. Titus, the Roman conqueror, drove aploughshare over its smoking ruins. The people who remained aliveafter the general slaughter were carried away captive. They werescattered from one end of the earth to the other. They have foundtheir dwelling place among all nations. They dwell everywhere andare at home nowhere. They have been a by-word, a hissing and ascorn. Every hand has been turned against them. They have beenhunted on the mountains. They have been chased through the valleys. They have been walled up in the narrow and filthy ghettos of cities. Their goods have been stolen. Their wives and daughters have beenravished. They have been whipped and racked and tortured. They havebeen broken on the wheel, burned at the stake, buried alive, andsent to sea, thousands of them, in sinking ships. Every cruelty thatthe ingenuity of man and the inspiration of fiends could suggest hasbeen practised upon them, until the heart revolts and the soulsickens at the mere recital of their blood and woe; and to thishour, through twenty long centuries, Jerusalem, as announced, hasbeen trodden down of the Gentiles; all nations have tramped throughher streets, overridden her people and torn down her walls. The prophets said God would make a full end of the nation whichpersecuted them; but he would not make a full end of them, he wouldpreserve and multiply them. The promises have been kept. Rome has become a past tense. With thoughtful steps we pause amidher ruins, painfully locate the palace of her kings, the arenas ofher pleasure, the abodes of her vice; on fallen column or brokentablet, we read the story of her past victories, her mightyconquests, and standing beneath a crumbling triumphal arch, gaze onthe sculptured figures of Jewish captives who once followed in anemperor's triumphal train, more enduring to-day with their stonyfaces than the ruined city which lies prostrate at their feet; forwhile Rome has passed away, the Jew still lives, he has beenpreserved and has multiplied. The Jews to-day number twelve millionsof people; and these represent but two tribes out of the twelve; sothat the two are four times as numerous as the whole nation when itcame out of Egypt under Moses. Their vitality is phenomenal--it ismiraculous--their multiplication is against all the laws andprecedents of history. Persecution and trial have but increasedtheir fecundity. Like the burning bush ever burning but neverconsumed, they continue to exist; and when you draw nigh andconsider their strange story, out of the midst, as of old out of thebush, the voice of him who is the "I am, that I am" is heard saying--"These are my disobedient but covenant people, whom I have swornshall be to me as the 'apple of mine eye'"; saying, "Whosoevertoucheth them toucheth me. " It was foretold that in the closing hours of this age and as aprelude to their final restoration, they should bud and blossom andfill the face of the whole world with fruit. If to-day you seek a representative person in every department ofhuman genius and achievement, you will find that representative in aJew. The Bible testifies, and testified it centuries ago, that in theclosing hours of this age, the Jews should turn their faces towardsPalestine and ask (or plead) their way to Zion. The prophecy has been, and is being, fulfilled to the letter. Thefaces of thousands of Jews are being turned towards Palestine;thousands of Jews are asking how is it possible to return to Zion. Zionism has passed from the realm of dreams to the solid ground offact. Everywhere over the earth societies are formed among the Jewsto emphasize the return to Zion and the setting up of the JewishState. It was further foretold that many should return thither in radicalunbelief and open materialism; that at the entering in of the gatesof Jerusalem land should be bought and sold and speculation becomerife. To-day there are more Jews in Palestine than at any time since thereturn from Babylon. Land is bought and sold at the gates of thecity, and speculation in real estate values is running high. Thereis the hum of expectation in the sacred city. Palestine is beingcolonized by Jews. The Turkish government has taken off the ban, theJew is owned as a citizen and may become a representative in itsadministration. The deserted cities are being occupied. Millions ofMulberry trees are being planted, the desert and the waste placescultivated. The lowing of cattle and the bleating of sheep are heardonce more. In Jerusalem, the wailing place of the Jews is morecrowded than ever. The penitential psalms are recited, tears areshed and the cry goes up with keener lamentation that the city, beautiful for situation, the joy of the whole earth, has become theprey of the Gentiles; that the walls are broken down, the holyplaces laid waste, "our holy and beautiful house, " they cry, "whereour fathers praised thee, is burned up with fire: and all ourpleasant things are laid waste. Wilt thou refrain thyself for thesethings, O Lord? Wilt thou hold thy peace, and afflict us very sore?"And the prayer ascends with ever-increasing supplication thatJehovah will again make bare his arm in the sight of the Gentiles, build up the place of the holy assemblies, beautify Jerusalem andestablish his people. Synagogues are built within the shadow of thesacred rock, the one-time threshing floor of Ornan, which Davidbought and whereon the holy temple stood. The latter as well as theformer rains are falling. Everywhere it is evident that the land isreviving, and the thought of Judah as a kingdom and power amongnations, finding utterance on the lips--both of Gentile and Jew. And all this activity and Zionward movement taking place with theJew in a condition of spiritual blindness, unbelief and godlessmaterialism--as foretold. The very leaders of Zionism (some of them)the most outspoken in their repudiation of our Lord Jesus Christ asMessiah of Israel. The Bible foretold that the Jews as a people would never receive theGospel: "As concerning the gospel they are enemies for your sakes"(the Gentiles). On the other hand, it was announced that theGentiles, who despise the Jews, should receive the Gospel, accept arejected and crucified Jew as Israel's king, and own and acknowledgehim as the redeemer and saviour provided for themselves. This prophecy has been fulfilled. For nineteen hundred years the Jew--as a Jew--has steadily rejecteda crucified Christ. Here and there an individual, paying the penaltyof scorn and contumely from his own people, has believed the Gospeland owned the crucified and despised man of Nazareth as his veryLord and God. He has done so according to that election of gracewhich the Bible foretells (an elect remnant is seen through all theages, under one dispensation or another, responding to the call ofGod--like the seven thousand who would not bow the knee to Baal; andbelonging to that election of grace the believing Jew stands outmarked and sealed of God) but the Jew as a nation with unbrokensolidarity refuses to-day the only Jew who can establish him in theland of his fathers and fulfil the covenant promises. Equally fulfilled is the other side of the prophecy. The Gentiles, who, racially considered, despise the Jew andeverything of the Jew, to-day own and accept this rejected andcrucified Jew of Calvary, not only as Israel's Messiah and king, butas the redeemer and saviour provided of God for Gentiles; so thatthe Gentile world now worships and adores him as very God, holdingup the cross of his shame and death as the symbol of highest honorand most radiant glory. The Bible has predicted the final characteristics of the present agein terms precise and clear. By type, figure and direct prophecy it announces that the last_form_ of government among the nations just previous to the Comingof our Lord Jesus Christ will be _democracy_--the rule of thepeople: "The government of the people, by the people, and for thepeople. " That prophecy practically has been fulfilled. Democracy is, nearly, the universal mode of government. England insome respects is more democratic than the United States. France, Portugal and Switzerland are republics. Spain, Italy and Greece areconstitutional monarchies; that is to say, the people are recognizedas the ultimate authority. The Northern nations, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland and Belgium, are liberal kingdoms. The monarchy issimply a fashion--the people are the rulers. Germany is a militarynation. The Kaiser, speaking at times as the war lord, gives theimpression that he is absolute emperor. He is far from it. Thesocialists count their votes by millions, and while the Germanpeople accept the empire, they do so because it is the mostsatisfactory agent for their business and prosperity. The Germanpeople behind the throne are the absolute power; and the voice ofdemocracy makes no more radical utterance and demand than in theGerman _kaiserreich_. Recently, in a public interview, the Kaiser isreported to have said, he expected his son to be the last emperor ofGermany, as within fifty years the whole world would becomedemocratic. Austria is still more or less under the influence ofCaesarism, but beneath the surface, the various peoples andnationalities constituting that empire are restless, feverish, andfull of democratic ideas. Turkey has been shaken by a revolt of "TheYoung Turks, " and the demand for more popular government. Japan hasbroken loose from the customs and traditions of centuries--her flagis the symbol of the rising sun, and indicates that she is seekingto take her place in the new dawn of popular sovereignty. China, theoldest civilization and the mightiest population, has become arepublic, her young men returning from the universities of Europeand America having sown broadcast the seed of democracy and theclaim of the people. Russia, alone, remains absolute in name, butthe absolute has been shattered even there--it is supported only bybayonets and drawn swords. Every now and then a sullen sound isheard, dying away to be renewed in deeper tones; it is the voice ofthe people, in spite of the knout, the prison and Siberian exile, calling for what they claim to be their "rights. " Everywhere the evidence is manifest that the prophecy of Danielannouncing the rise of the "_clay_" (Daniel's symbol of the people)and the warning of Isaiah that "the nations should rush like therushing of many waters, " and "make a noise like the noise of theseas, " are being fulfilled. After "Clay, " or Democracy, there remains only anarchy, or power inthe hands of an absolute ruler. That absolute, world-wide ruler isdeclared by all the prophets to be the Son of God, and his kingdomis symbolized by a _stone_--a stone is the very opposite of clay. THE CLAY IS HERE! Centuries ago the Bible declared that in the closing hours of thisage the whole world would be under arms, preparing for a giganticand final war; that each nation would turn itself into a vast army, and that the whole earth would become a military camp and field ofmanoeuvre. This prophecy is being fulfilled. A universal preparation for war is going on with maddening haste. Nations are seeking to outdo each other in their colossalpreparation for the approaching strife. Armies are no longer merelevies or hired cohorts, every man in the nation capable of bearingarms or in any wise doing military duty is enrolled, and must takehis place as a soldier. During the summer immense armies move out oftheir barracks and play seriously the game of war. Each nation hasits field manoeuvres and theme of attack and defence. On every sideis heard the tramp of marching feet, the sound of bugle call, therumble of artillery, the sharp word of command. Nations are vying with each other in the endeavor to cover the seawith the swiftest and most powerful battleships. Millions are beingput into guns and ammunition. The money of the people is beingpoured out like water to obtain war material. Forges and foundriesare working to turn out the most destructive implements. Thearsenals are being gorged with cannon, with shot and shell. Enormoussums of money in gold are stored away in impregnable fortressesthat, as the sinew of war, it may be ready to respond at a moment'snotice. Never before in the history of the world has there been sucha spectacle. On land and sea men are silently, ceaselessly preparing for theirrepressible and impending conflict. Each nation feels itsexistence is at stake; not a thinking statesman who does not feelassured that, sooner or later, the clash will come. All feel it willbe fierce, titanic, fateful and final. The Bible foretold the great apostasy as manifested in the RomanCatholic Church, the rise of Protestantism, its ultimate breakdownin rationalism and open infidelity (that condition of which itshould be said, "they will not endure sound doctrine"). It foretoldthe rising again of Romanism into the place of power and authority(as we see it to-day in the United States, where it holds thebalance of political power and is fast becoming a social triumph). Who would have had the hardihood to prophesy in the hour whenProtestantism was delivering its terrible blows against Romanism, overturning the tables of the priests, who sold their infamous waresof papal indulgences, breaking idols and images in the churches, anddriving the church of the priesthood, the mass and auricularconfession swiftly downwards to the waters of the Mediterranean and, while it was repudiating this apostate church (which set up saintsand images in the place of the Son of God, exalted works of meritinstead of the cleansing power of the blood) continually cried aloudthe glorious doctrine of justification by faith, and whose supremewatchword was--"The Bible and nothing but the Bible"; who, undersuch conditions as these, would have had the courage to proclaimthat in the closing hours of this age, this aggressive and biblicalProtestantism should break up by self-division, become fragmentary, its leading thinkers and teachers repudiating the Bible as theinfallible Word of God? Who would have dared to say that Rome wouldcome back, ascend into the place of authority, sit upon the throneof the world's respect and receive its honors? Who would have saidthat this church which has set itself up above the Bible, claimedthe right to change times and seasons in defiance of a "thus saiththe Lord, " and has burned men at the stake for their love anddevotion to this very Bible, should, at the last, by reason of theinfidelity of Protestantism, its recognition of divorce and itsindifference to a "thus saith the Lord, " come forth as the defenderof the Bible, the champion of the home and the guardian of thesacredness of marriage, concentrating all its thunders against theshame and indecency of divorce? Yet these prophecies are written on page after page of this book, and their complete and amazing fulfilment looks us in the face. What a picture is painted for us in the words that follow: "This know, also, that in the last days perilous times shall come. For men shall be lovers of their own selves, covetous, boasters, proud, blasphemers, disobedient to parents, unthankful, unholy, without natural affection, truce breakers, false accusers, incontinent, fierce, despisers of those that are good, traitors, heady, high minded, lovers of pleasures more than lovers of God, having a form of godliness, but denying the power thereof. " "The time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine: butafter their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, havingitching ears; and they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned to fables. " It is a picture which finds its counterpart in the Protestantism ofto-day--a Protestantism full of worldliness, having a form ofgodliness, a great religious profession, but denying its only power(the Holy Ghost), repudiating doctrine and listening to every fableof rationalistic philosophy sooner than to the truth of God. In the letter to the church at Thyatira it is written: "That woman Jezebel which calleth herself a prophetess (a teacher)to teach and seduce my servants to commit fornication (fornicationin the book of Revelation signifies idolatry--image worship and, also, union with the principles and ways of the world) and to eatthings sacrificed unto idols. " Jezebel was the Pagan wife of Ahab, king of Israel. Jezebel standsfor the union of Paganism and Judaism. But Jezebel here represents aprofessed church of Christ. In Jezebel, therefore, you have aprofessed church of Christ in which there is a combination ofPaganism and Judaism. This symbolic Jezebel teaches the servants ofChrist to commit fornication--that is, not only identification withthe world, but idolatry (image worship). In its full detail, then, we have a professed church of Christ inwhich may be found a mixture of Paganism and Judaism. A church wherethe professed followers of Christ are taught to worship by means ofimages. Could you find a better, more accurate delineation of the apostateChurch of Rome--a Church which borrows the priesthood of Judaism andthe idolatry and image worship of Paganism? In this book of the Revelation there is still another picture. In the seventeenth chapter a woman is seen seated upon a scarletcolored beast. She is arrayed in purple and scarlet. She is deckedwith precious stones and pearls, and in her hand holds a golden cupfull of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication(idolatry). She is seen to be drunken with the blood of the martyrsof Jesus. The woman is, also, said to be seated on seven mountainsand is, finally, spoken of as that great city which rules over thekings (nations) of the earth. The woman is called "MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OFHARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH. " In the twenty-fifth chapter of the book, the BRIDE OF THE LAMB, thetrue church of Christ, is symbolized by a city--THE NEW JERUSALEM. Babylon and Jerusalem stand always opposed to each other. Babylon isthe centre of Satanic power and testimony--its name signifiesmixture, confusion. Jerusalem is the centre of God's dealings andtestimony--it signifies peace and righteousness. If, therefore, thecity of New Jerusalem is a symbol of the true church of Christ andthe church of Christ is called a "mystery, " then this woman calledBabylon, said to be a City and also called a "mystery, " is a symbolof the _false_ church of Christ; and, being a harlot, and the motherof harlots, or churches like herself (and thus the _Mother Church_), and harlot signifying fornication, and fornication, idolatry--imageworship--then a professed Church of Christ, which teaches andpractises image worship. The great city ruling over the kings of the earth in John's day andsituated on seven mountains, or "mounts, " is ROME; as the cityrepresents the woman Babylon who is the symbol of the false Churchof Christ, then you have a false church of Christ seated (andremember, the word is "_seated_") in Rome. A Church seated in Romeis a _Roman Church_; and as the city rules over the earth, over theworld; and a world-wide rule is a universal rule; and the word foruniversal, worldwide, is, also, "catholic, " you have a catholicchurch; and, _seated_ in Rome (Rome its capital centre), THE ROMANCATHOLIC CHURCH. This Church is said to be drunken with the blood of the martyrs ofJesus; and the pages of history glued together with the blood ofthese same martyrs, and the burning, blistering record of the "HolyInquisition, " affirm that the astounding picture is true in all itscrimson and scarlet details. But the striking feature in the picture, and the one that is firstpresented to us, is that the woman (the Church) is carried by abeast. This beast is a symbol of government and teaches that theChurch "rules" over the governments of the world, is sustained bythe State, has attained to "temporal power. " As the picture occursin the _third division_ of the book, and that division relates tothings still future, we have here a distinct prophecy that thisApostate Roman Church shall again attain to temporal power, become aState Church, supported and carried officially by the nations of theearth. The exactitude with which the picture has been painted, and that, too, at a time when Rome had not yet come into the place of full-blown apostasy and power; the startling way in which, step by step, the prophetic outlines have been fulfilled even in our day, aretremendously suggestive concerning the possibility of its completeand final fulfilment; and bid us ask most earnestly--whence came themental eyesight which enabled the writer of the book to sketch outfor us centuries ahead of time, that which the page of after historyreveals to us as facts? The social, financial, governmental, religious and moral conditionof the present time have been portrayed in the book we call theBible. The coming of a special class called "rich" men as aparticular characteristic of this age, the revolt of labor, and itscry against the wrongs of capital, were all set forth in the epistleof James, nigh two thousand years ago, with an accuracy that is notto be explained on natural grounds. So absolutely unnatural is it, that it is perfectly safe to say--these things are not such as a man_could_ write if he _would_. That the book is not to be explained on natural grounds is evidentfrom the fact that it is not a CONSTRUCTION, but a GROWTH; not anORGANIZATION, but an ORGANISM, growing up from Genesis to Revelationlike a tree from root through trunk and branch to leaf and fruit. Each book of the Bible will be found on examination to stand relatedorganically to one another; and that each occupies its necessary andsequential order. In _Genesis_, you have the beginning of things, the germ and outlineof everything afterwards revealed. _Exodus_ gives the redemption by blood of a people foreseen andcovenanted in Genesis, their deliverance by the hand of God from thepower of the king and the dangers of the land. In _Leviticus_, the redeemed people draw nigh to God by virtue ofthe blood of sacrifice and find access to the presence of Godthrough the intercession of a priest. In _Numbers_, this blood-redeemed people are seen on their journeyto the better land; we read of their trials, their temptations, their unbelief, their backslidings and continual moral failure bythe way, and the never-failing grace and love of a covenant-keepingGod who leads them in a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night. In _Deuteronomy_, the people have the way over which they have come, and the dealings of God, rehearsed to them, and are instructed andprepared for the land whither they go. In _Joshua_, the _second_ generation (which stands always forregeneration) gets into the promised land. _Judges_ tells how, after being blessed with all covenant blessingsin the covenant land, the people fell into a state where every mandid that which was right "in his own eyes. " _Ruth_, the Gentile woman, becomes the bride of a Hebrew Lord; andthe covenant promise of God concerning Israel goes straightway downfrom a Gentile mother and a Hebrew father towards the throne whichis set up in David and owned of God as the throne of Christ. The books of _Samuel, Kings_ and _Chronicles_, take up the story ofthe kingdom, and the Old Testament leads us on through symbol, figure and open prophecy, to a Coming Messiah and a glorious kingdomtill, when we reach the last verse in Malachi, we lean across fourcenturies of prophetic silence, waiting to greet that promisedChrist who shall be born in Bethlehem; and who is to be called theSon of the Highest; who is to sit on the throne of his father David, "to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth even forever. " We listen for the angelic song and the salutation to men of goodwill; and we are expecting, later on, to see Zion's king riding upthe slopes to the Holy City and all the people coming forth to cry, "Hosanna to the Son of David, " and "Blessed be he that cometh in thename of the Lord. " When you open the New Testament you find four books--Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. The order of these books is fixed--it cannot be changed. If _Mark_ be substituted for _Matthew_, then the New Testamentbegins without an account of the birth or genealogy of our LordJesus Christ; no intimation is given that he is born king of theJews, and is the expected Messiah. If _Luke_ be given the place of _Matthew_, little mention will befound of the Jewish kingdom of heaven; and our Lord will be seenwith a leaning towards the Gentiles. If the Gospel of _John_ begin the New Testament instead of_Matthew_, then we shall read of him who is Son of God rather thanKing of the Jews, and the expectation raised by Malachi will seemunfulfilled. But the moment the order named is followed all is perfect, all isharmony. _Matthew_ presents our Lord Jesus Christ as the Son of _Abraham_ andSon of _David_; heir of the covenant _land_, and the covenant_throne_, and at once links the New Testament with the Old. _Mark_ announces that this King of the Jews came into the world tobe the _Servant_ of God and a blessing in his service to men. _Luke_, although he announces our Lord Jesus Christ as King, setshim forth pre-eminently as _The Man_, going among men, eating anddrinking with them, and speaking in such plain and simple terms thatthe "common people heard him gladly. " In _John_, this Jewish King, this Servant of God and men, this Manamong men, who received sinners and ate with them, is revealed asthe Mighty God, the eternal _Word_, the Holy One of Israel, who camedown to visit his people, was made flesh and "tabernacled" amongthem, as of old he dwelt in the tabernacle of the wilderness in theShekinal glory above the Mercy Seat and between the outstretchedwings of the golden Cherubim. Take away the book of _Acts_, and nothing can be known of the originof the church and its apostolic history. Without the book of Actsthe epistles are wholly unintelligible when they refer to theChurch. Do without the _Second_ epistle to the _Corinthians_, and you haveno revelation of the state of the Christian dead either as to theirlocation or condition. Without the _Second_ epistle to the _Thessalonians_ you cannot fixthe identity of the Antichrist. Leave out the epistle to the _Hebrews_ and there is no key to_Leviticus_. Without the book of _Daniel_ it is impossible fully to understandthe book of _Revelation_. No matter at what period the book of _Revelation_ may have beenwritten, it can have but one place in the Bible, and that the last. It must have this place because it shows us the foreview of Genesisfulfilled: the seed of the woman has bruised the serpent's head, Satan has been bound and Paradise is regained. The Old and New Testaments stand related to each other as the twohalves of a perfect whole. In the Old Testament the New is_concealed_; in the New Testament the Old is _revealed_. _Genesis_ finds its key in the first chapter of _John's_ Gospel, andidentifies the creator of heaven and earth with him who was madeflesh and dwelt among us as the Son of God. _Exodus_ is explained by the _First_ epistle to the _Corinthians_, in which we learn that "Christ" is the "Passover sacrificed for us. " _Leviticus_ is expounded by the epistle to the _Hebrews_. _Numbers_ has its correspondence in the book of _Acts_. In Numbers you have the experience of the Children of Israel intheir journey through the wilderness. In Acts we get the story ofthe Church in its pilgrimage through the world. _Deuteronomy_ is to be read with _Colossians_. In Deuteronomy the people of Israel are being prepared for anearthly inheritance. In Colossians the Church is being prepared fora heavenly inheritance. _Joshua_ stands over against _Ephesians_. In Joshua the redeemed people have to fight with flesh and blood inorder to possess the covenant land. In Ephesians "we wrestle notagainst flesh and blood, but against wicked spirits in the heavenlyplaces. " _Judges_ may be understood by reading the _first_ chapter of the_first_ epistle, and the _twelfth_ chapter of the _second_ epistleto the _Corinthians_. The book of _Ruth_ is illuminated by the _third_ and _fifth_chapters of the _Ephesians_. In Ruth you have the Gentile bride of a Hebrew Lord, the kinsman, redeemer and advocate; who presents his bride to himself in the gatebefore all the assembled judges. In Ephesians, the Gentile Bride is seen to be the Church, thekinsman, redeemer and advocate, our Lord Jesus Christ, who, havingloved the Church and given himself for it, will "present it tohimself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any suchthing. " The books of _Samuel_, _Kings_ and _Chronicles_, may be read withthe four _Gospels_ and the book of _Revelation_. In Samuel, Kings and Chronicles, you have the story of David, theanointed king, man of sorrows and acquainted with grief, triumphantwarrior, exalted king--Solomon, prince of peace, ruling over theestablished kingdom and the queen of Sheba coming from the uttermostparts of the earth to own and celebrate his glory. In the Gospels we get the story of our Lord Jesus Christ as anointedking and man of sorrows. In Revelation he is seen coming forth atthe head of the armies of heaven, a mighty warrior, a triumphantking and, at the last, as Prince of Peace ruling in splendor overhis established kingdom; while the Gentiles, coming from theuttermost parts of the earth to Jerusalem, bow the knee before himand acknowledge his glory. _Ezra_ may be read with the latter half of the _second_ chapter ofthe _Ephesians_. In Ezra you have the building of the material temple. In Ephesus thebuilding of the spiritual temple. _Nehemiah_ can be read with the twenty-first chapter of the_Revelation_. Nehemiah gives us Jerusalem below. Revelation, Jerusalem above. In the book of _Esther_ the name of God is not once mentioned; butit shows us the unseen God acting in his secret providence todeliver his covenant people, the Jews, from the hand of the Gentileoppressor, and setting them in the place of authority and power overthe Gentiles. The _eleventh_ chapter of the _Romans_ explains the book of Esther. In the eleventh chapter Paul shows that God has not forgotten thepeople whom he foreknew. The nation as such has been set aside. Itis now, as Hosea says, _Lo Ammi_, _"not my people, "_ not the peopleof God. An election according to grace is going on among the Jews. These arebeing called into the Church and will form a part of the Body andBride. The Gentiles have come dispensationally into the place ofIsrael, and God is sending his Gospel among them--calling out thosewhom he has foreseen and known among the Gentiles. The nation assuch would seem to be cast aside. The people are walking in darknessand the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, their true God and onlySaviour, is not owned among them; but while the Lord is thus deniedby them, he has not forgotten them. His providences are round aboutthem in their preservation and multiplication, and in his judgmentof the nations which persecute them. Their present conditionnationally is temporary. Paul warns the Gentiles that the Jews havebeen cut off and set aside because of unbelief. The Gentiles havebeen brought in, and stand alone by faith. It is well for them notto be "high-minded, " but "to fear"; for so surely as God spared notthe nation and set it aside because of unbelief, just so surely willhe deal with the Gentiles if the Gentiles fall into unbelief. The Gentiles must not be wise in their own conceits. The blindnessand the setting aside of Israel will last only till the "fulness ofthe Gentiles be come in, " that is, till the election among them iscomplete; then the Lord will take up Israel as a nation again, andprecisely as he delivered Mordecai and the Jews of Esther's andAhasuerus' time and made them to be accepted and feared, so, it iswritten, the Lord himself will come forth in behalf of his ancientpeople. "There shall come out of (unto) Sion the Deliverer, " and, "so all Israel shall be saved. " The book of Esther read in the light of the eleventh chapter of theRomans is illuminating as to the unchanging faithfulness of God andhis unceasing love for the nation and people of his choice. Thus book after book of the Bible may be studied; and the more theyare examined and studied, the more manifest will be the intimaterelation and marvellous correspondence between the Old and the NewTestaments. When you realize the fact that these Old and New Testament books, soremarkably related and inter-explanatory of each other, have beenwritten by different authors, without possibility of collusion oragreed plan; that each part fits into the other; that it cannot haveone book less or one book more; that to take from it would destroythe completeness, to add would mar the harmony; that it is perfectin itself, having the key of each book hung up at the entrance; thatit gives but never borrows light; that it cannot be explained orinterpreted outside of itself; that to him who diligently searchesit, it will reveal itself and make him wise both for this world andfor that which is to come; when all these facts are faced, it oughtto be evident that in the Bible we have a living thing and not amere handiwork wrought by man; that man can no more claim to be theactual author of it than of the mountains that are round aboutJerusalem or the heavens that are high above them. The unity of a book demands unity of objective. This book has a great objective--a supreme theme. That theme is not Israel--although two-thirds of the book consideredas a whole are taken up with the history of that people. The greattheme is not the Church of Christ--although the Church in this ageis the supreme thing in the sight of God. The one great theme, theone immense objective of this book towards which it moves throughhistory and prophecy, through figure and symbol, through self-sustained prose and musical song--the one great objective is-- OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. It seeks to present him in his person, his work, his present officeand coming glories. It sets him before us as, The Child born. The Son given. The Counsellor. The Mighty God. The Prince of Peace. The Everlasting Father. The Lily of the valleys. The Rose of Sharon. The Branch. The Lord our Righteousness. The Lord's Fellow. The Man of God's Right hand. He whose Goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. The Burnt Offering. The Meat Offering. The Peace Offering. The Sin Offering. The Trespass Offering. The Sum of God's Thoughts. The Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief. Son of Abraham. Son of David. Son of Mary. Son of Man. God the Son. King of the Jews. King of Israel. King of Kings. Lord of Lords. God the Creator. God manifest in the flesh. The Second Man. The Last Adam. The First and the Last. The Beginning and the Ending. The Way, the Truth, the Life. The Light of the world. The Bread of life. The Good Shepherd, who lays down his life for the sheep. The Great Shepherd who came again from the dead. The Chief Shepherd, who shall appear with his flock in glory. The Sin-bearer. The Rock. Our Great God and Saviour Jesus Christ. He who is. He who was. He who is to come. He who before Abraham was, is, by his own announcement, the "I am. " The Almighty. THIS SAME JESUS. And to these might be added more than five hundred other names andtitles, together with their cognates, to say nothing of the variouscharacteristics assigned him, the things predicated of him, until itis found that he is the very warp and woof of the book. To proclaim him, exalt him, make him known, set him forth in hismany roles, his functions, his offices and his covenant glories, prophets recite their visions, a Psalmist sings his rarest songs, and apostles unfold their matchless doctrines. When you contemplate the fact of this one objective; this tremendousunity of intention in the book, you have an overwhelmingdemonstration of the unity of its inspiration. Whether theinspiration be a true or a false one, it is beyond all question oneinspiration. A book whose construction extends over centuries, written by men separated by time and distance from each other, withno possibility of personal or mental relation to each other--allwriting to one objective--and that to set forth the Christ of God inhis varied relations--a book with such a unity of purposedemonstrates in the most self-evident fashion that the writers weremoved by a common impulse and, therefore, a common inspiration. And this unity of objective and inspiration coordinates with thewonderful fact that the book has but ONE KEY. The key which can alone open this book and make every lineintelligible from Genesis to Revelation is Our Lord Jesus Christ. Take Christ out of the Bible and it is a harp without a player, asong without a singer, a palace with all the doors locked, alabyrinth with no Ariadne thread to guide. Put Christ into the Bible, and the harp strings will be smitten aswith a master's hand. Put Christ into the Bible, and the voice of song is heard as when alark from the midst of dew-wet grasses sings, as it soars aloft togreet the coming dawn. Put Christ into the Bible, and all the doors of the palace are swungopen and you may pass from room to room, down all the ivorygalleries of the King, beholding portrait and landscape, vista ofbeauty and heaped-up treasures of truth, of infinite love and royalgrace. Put Christ into the Bible, and you will have a scarlet thread--thecrimson of the blood--that will lead you through all the windingways of redemption and glory. Put Christ into Genesis, into the verses of the first chapter, andit will chime like silver bells in harmony with the wondrous notesin the first chapter of the Gospel of John, and tell you that he whocreated the heavens and the earth is he who in the beginning was theeternal Word, the voice of the infinite silence, and who, creatingfor himself a human nature, and clad in mortal flesh, walked onearth among the sons of men as Jesus of Nazareth. Put Christ into the twenty-second, the twenty-third and the twenty-fourth chapters of Genesis, and you will have placed before you inperfect type the birth of Christ, the sacrifice, the resurrection onthe morning of the third day, the setting aside of the Jewish nationas the first wife, the coming of the Holy Spirit in the name of theFather and the Son to find a Bride for the Son, the calling out ofthe church, the endowment of the church with the gifts sent from theFather in the name of the Son, the pilgrimage of the church underthe guidance of the Holy Spirit, the Second Coming of Christ, theRapture and meeting of Christ and the church in the "field" of theair, and the marriage of the Son. Put Christ into the dryest and dullest page of the book of Kings andChronicles, and it will bloom with light and glory; and if you watchin faith, you will see the King's chariot go by, and catch a visionof the King himself in his beauty. Put Christ into the Tabernacle, and it will cast its treasures likea king's largess at your feet. You will see the brazen altar to be the cross, the brazen laver, thebath of regeneration, even the Word of God. In the Holy Place thetable of shew bread will speak of him who once said, "I am the breadof life. " The golden candlestick will remind you that he said: "I amthe light of the world. " The golden altar and the priest with hisswinging censer of burning incense standing thereat will proclaimhim as the great high priest. The beautiful veil of fine linenembroidered with figures of the cherubim in blue, purple and scarletcolor is (according to a direct Scripture) the symbol of his flesh, his mortal humanity while on earth. Every board and bar, every cordand pin, the coverings, the curtains, the blue, the purple and thescarlet color, the golden vessels as well as the furniture, each andall, proclaim him, illustrate and illuminate him in his person, hiswork, his present office and coming glories. All these are analogies, types, pictures, are so related to Christthat he alone explains them; the explanation is filled with suchperfection of harmony in every detail, the relation between them andour Lord Jesus Christ as the Antitype is so strikingly self-evident, that any discussion of it would be useless. When you find a key and lock which fit each other, you conclude theywere intended for each other. In the light of facts already cited, what other conclusion can bedrawn than that Christ and the Bible were intended for each other? And when you see this Bible coming together part by part, foretelling the Christ and explained alone by him, what saneconclusion is possible other than the book which is opened andexplained by him who is not only the Christ but the Personal Word ofGod, _must be_, and _is_, THE WRITTEN WORD OF GOD! Let your mind dwell for a moment on the style of the book. It is so simple that a child may understand it; so profound, thatthe mightiest intellect cannot go beyond its depths. It is soessentially rich that it turns every language into which it istranslated into a classic. At one moment it is plain narration; atanother, it is all drama and tragedy, in which cataclysmic climaxcrashes against climax. It records the birth of a babe, the flight of an angel, the death ofa king, the overthrow of an empire or the fall of a sparrow. Itnotes the hyssop that groweth out of the wall and speaks of thecedars of Lebanon. It shows us so pastoral a thing as a man sittingat his tent door in the cool of the day, and then paints for us acity in heaven with jasper walls, with golden streets, and whereeach several gate that leadeth into the city is one vast and shiningpearl. It is full of outlines--outlines as large and bare as mountainpeaks, and then it is crowded with details as minute as the sands ofthe sea. There are times when clouds and darkness float across itspages and we hear from within like unto the voice of him whoinhabiteth eternity; in another moment the lines blaze with light, the revelation they give is high noon--and all the shadows are underthe feet. It is terrible in its analysis and cold and emotionless in the hardimpact of its synthesis. It describes moments of passion inpassionless words, and states infinite conclusions without the hintof an emphasis. It shows us a man in hell (hades) and, although itdescribes sufferings more awful than mortal flesh can know, causingthe soul to shudder at the simple reading of it, it takes on noquickened pulse, no feverish rush of added speech. In a few colorless lines it recounts the creation of the heavens andthe earth. In language utterly barren of excitement it describes themost exciting and soul-moving event that can occupy the imagination--that moment when the heavens shall be on fire, the elements meltedwith fervent heat, the earth and the works therein burned up, and anew heaven and a new earth brought into view. It is a book of prose and yet a book of sublimest poetry. The book of Job is a poem by the side of which the hexameters ofHorace, the drama of Shakespeare, the imagination of Milton, are notto be compared. In all literature the book of Job alone introduces a spirit into thescene and reports its speech without utterly breaking down into thedisaster of the commonplace. Listen to the account which Eliphaz the Temanite gives. He says: "In thoughts from the visions of the night, when deep sleep fallethon men, Fear came upon me, and trembling which made all my bones toshake. " Then a spirit passed before my face; the hair of my flesh stood up;It stood still, but I could not discern the form thereof; an imagewas before mine eyes; there was silence, and I heard a voice, saying, "Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall man be morepure than his Maker?" Here is the threshold of the unseen. Before he sees or hearsanything, the Temanite has the sense of fear--the fear of somethingmore than human. The unknown weighs upon him and presses him down, all the life and energy in him are at low ebb--he feels as thoughthe tides of life were running out. A spirit passes before his face. It is like a breath of scarcely moving air out of the night. Thehair of his flesh (mark the psychological and physiological fact), the hair of his flesh stood up. It was as if a current ofelectricity had passed through him. Then the spirit stands still. Itis as though this breath of air out of the night were no longermoving. He cannot discern any form. There is nothing fixed or stableenough for him to perceive. An image is before his eyes. He makes novulgar attempt to describe it--it is indescribable. There is a greatsilence; then, as the margin has it, he heard a still small voice--not a loud and jarring voice--but a voice low, soft, still; and yet!the utterance of that voice! what immensity of self-conscious powerwhat authority and dignity--the dignity of infinite integrity:"Shall mortal man be more just than God? Shall man be more pure thanhis Maker?" How the night is full of a sudden law of proportion. Mortal man andeternal God. You feel the distance widening and widening betweenthem there in the stillness of the night. The justice of man! man!the unjust--the law breaker; man, who is of yesterday and is goneto-morrow--mortal man, more just than he of whom it is said, "Justice and judgment are the habitation of his throne. " Fallen man, man full of iniquity, shall he be more pure than he who made him; hewho breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and made him aliving soul; he whose name is holiness and righteousness and verytruth? As the question lingers man shrivels and sinks into the dust, and the whole night is filled with stillness--with the stillness andimmensity of the all-pervading and holy God. Read the thirty-eighth and thirty-ninth chapters. They record the highest reaches of human language, so great that ourown version cannot dim their splendor. Nothing ever writtensurpasses them, not only in the felicity of expression, but in thesense of deity pervading them. Each succeeding verse sustains theother and, at the last, you feel that God, very God, indeed, hasspoken. The Almighty answers the complaining Job. He answers him, not out of the midst of a deep, unbroken calm, butout of the whirlwind; and yet, from the centre of that mighty vortexof unlimited force and energy and power, the voice comes forth withthe calmness of one who knows himself superior to the whirlwind andthe storm. "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowledge?" This is the abrupt and sudden question. It is the fitting questionof him who knoweth the end from the beginning. In the very asking ofit all the boasted knowledge, the attainment, the self-consciousnessand vanity of man fade away, and man himself is as nothing--Godalone remains upon the vision--all knowing--all wise--supreme. This Bible is a book of history. It will spend page after page in describing the doings of arebellious king, and then compress the story of twenty-five hundredyears into a few dozen lines, but will do this in such a way, bymeans of exact symbols, that the twenty-five centuries thuscompressed will reveal a clearer outline and fuller vista thanthousands of ordinary volumes could set forth in detail. Mark the providence that has guarded the book. Kings and potentates have sought to destroy it. It has been throwninto the flames. Volume after volume has been burned. But always, and at the critical moment, some copy has been preserved--here inthe cottage of a devoted peasant at the risk of his life, hidden inthe crevice of a rock from the inquisitor's search, or cast aside bya careless hand and forgotten amid a pile of swept up dust in aneglected corner of some impregnable castle; from whence it has comeforth to be copied by slow and painful, yet loving, toil, passedfrom house to house secretly as a priceless treasure, then printedon concealed presses and at last cast forth as living and fruitfulseed. Men have denounced it and demonstrated that it is false both inhistory and science; then, unexpectedly, the stroke of a pick or theturn of a shovel uncovers some startling witness of its exact truthand the excuseless folly of those who deny it. The fourteenth chapter of Genesis has been set aside by the criticsas historically worthless. The excavations in Babylon have broughtto light a tablet with the name of Arioch, the fourth king mentionedin that chapter, stamped upon it. The statement in Exodus that Pharaoh forced the Children of Israelwhile building his treasure cities to make bricks without straw, hasbeen treated as a fable. The treasure chambers themselves have beenfound, the rooms divided by brick partitions eight to ten feetthick--and great quantities of these bricks _made without straw_. Luke says that Sergius Paulus was pro-consul of Cyprus. The criticsdenied it and proved thereby the fallibility of the New Testament. The homely but truth-telling spade, and without consulting thecritic, dug up some coins in the island of Cyprus itself, and on thecoins were stamped both the image and the name of Sergius Paulus. Luke declares that Lysannius was tetrarch of Abilene; and again thecritics denied it and more than ever discounted Luke as anhistorian. Renan, the plausible and analytical infidel, read the record carvedon the stones of Baalbeck, and announced, openly, that Luke iscorrect. From the ruins of Nineveh and Babylon, Tyre and Sidon; from thetrenches of Tel el Armana; by the key words of the Rosetta stone andthe black but speaking face of the Moabite stone; from newlydiscovered papyri and parchment, and the mystic page of cracked andcrumpled palimpsest; from the rocks of earth, the depths of the seaand the heights of heaven--and from the latest discoveries ofscience, there arise amazing witnesses, which speak in tones thatcannot be hushed, with facts that cannot be denied, and beartestimony beyond all possibility of dispute to the truth andaccuracy of the book; so much so, indeed, that such an one as SirJohn Herschell, the great astronomer, has said: "All humandiscoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of confirming moreand more strongly the truths contained in the Sacred Scriptures. " Consider the vitality of the book. In less than ten years a text-book is out of date, a cyclopediaworthless, and a library a cemetery of dead books and dead ideas;but this book keeps living right on--keeps abreast of the times, hasa testimony for every day, and every day borrows its youth afresh asfrom the womb of the morning. Science has laughed it out of court. Two hundred and fifty years agoVoltaire said: "Fifty years from now the world will hear no more ofthe Bible. " Self-elected scholarship has pronounced it out of dateand dead. Again and again its funeral services are held. Kind andcondescending eulogiums are uttered over its past history and itsgood intent. With considerate hands it is lowered into its grave. The _resquiescat in pace_ is solemnly pronounced and lo! before thecritical mourners have returned to their homes it has risen from thedead, passed with surprising speed the funeral coaches, and isfound--as of yore--in the busy centres of life, thundering againstevil, revealing the secrets of the heart, offering consolation tothe sorrowing, hope to the dying, and flashing forth from itsquivering, vital pages the wonders of coming glory. While copies of the classics--Virgil, Zenophon, Caesar, Sophocles, Pindar and Martial--are to be counted by a few thousands, and arecast aside by students as soon as they have graduated, and areforgotten in a twelvemonth, this Bible goes on printing every yearmillions of copies in all languages and dialects of earth; so farfrom casting it aside, when once read, men take it up and read itagain and again, study it through life, dig into it as for hidtreasure, and make it the pillow on which to lay their dying head. With each succeeding year the demand for it increases and voices arecontinually crying--give us _The Book_. It is the supreme book. It is the book we need when the fire of sin gleams in our eye andits poison burns in our veins. It is the book we need when the heartis sore, when our soul is troubled, and when peace is no longer aguest in our home. It is the book we need; for from its pages alone do we behold thelight which shines from a Saviour's empty grave; from its pagesalone do we receive assurance of the resurrection of the dead, ofimmortality and the life to come; and from its pages alone do wehear the tender and welcoming words which seek to greet us and tocomfort us while we struggle here ofttimes beneath the burden'sgrowing weight, those words of heavenly music: "Come unto me all yethat labor and are heavy laden and I will give you rest. " What author on earth would think his book dead and out of date ifyear after year the publication of it taxed the printing presses ofthe world? What author would deem his book out of date when thevoices of everywhere proclaimed it the book of books, and multitudesunnumbered confessed that from its pages alone they found the way oflife and peace? Such a book is neither out of date nor dead; and its throbbingvitality tells of a life impulse and inspiration that are not ofman. And, finally, This book inspires men for God. Every year books on morality and essays on conduct are written andpublished. They get as far as a first edition and are never heard ofagain; but this book, which binds all its parts about the person, the work, the office and the glories of Christ, changes the life, the character, the time and the eternity of men. Place this book in the midst of the vilest and most abandonedcommunity of desperate and devilish men and, sooner or later, youwill hear a cry coming from the depths of sin and shame, bittercries of repentance and yearnings after God; and by and by thatcommunity will be transformed, men will no longer be demon filled, but possessed with a spirit of truth and love; and God will be foundto reign and rule in the midst. Whatever there is of sweetness and truth and righteousness in theworld to-day; whatever there is that gives hope and comfort on earthand holds men back from very madness and despair, is due directlyand indirectly to this book. Take up a map and find the lands where sin and vice skulk in thedarkness; where virtue is honored and purity enthroned; go mark onthe map the lands where the men are the most manly and the women themost womanly, and you will find it in those lands where the Bible isexalted, not as the word of man, but, in deed and truth, as the Wordof God. Find the men and women who know most of God, who have the deepestconsciousness of him in the soul, and who walk every day with theassurance of his _real presence_--to whom the unseen becomes fromhour to hour the thing that is alone real--and who live as kingsabove their prostrate passions--and they will be those who make thisbook the supreme authority in their daily lives; who hear it when itspeaks to them as the very voice of God. A book which thus inspires men _for_ God is, indeed, a book which, by every law of logic, must have been inspired _by_ God. From the evidence cited two things are apparent: 1. The Bible is not such a book as a man _would_ write if he_could_. 2. The Bible is not such a book as a man _could_ write if he_would_. By these conclusions, therefore, the Bible is shown to be _not ofman_. As the book is thus shown to be not of man--either by inclination orability; and as from the beginning to the end its object is toglorify the unseen God in the revelation of his incarnate Son, thenthis book _is of God_; and being the utterance of his mind and will, is his Word; so that the statement of the apostle concerning it isjustified. It is to be received as he says: "Not as the word of man, but as it is in truth, THE WORD OF GOD. " To him who so approaches it--who puts his shoes from off his feet ason holy ground, and with the silence of expectant faith listens andlooks, it will disclose itself, speak to him, and so lay hold of theinner recesses of the heart that he shall know he has been face toface with God, has had glimpses of the delectable mountains and thecity foursquare that lies beyond; from henceforth he shall walk, notas one in a vain show or in the mixing of darkness and light, butwhere the night shineth as the day; where the road is no longerpaved with the stumbling stones of doubt, nor the signboards filledwith a guess, but where the way leadeth on and up--shining more andmore bright unto the perfect day. Take up this book, O friend. Do not read it with a hurried glance. Let thine eyes rest a while upon some single word, and if thou artpatient, it will bud and blossom and bloom and grow unto thee as atree of life; and the leaves shall be as medicine for the healing ofthy hurt. Take it into thy mouth and learn a lesson from the meadowkine who chew the tender grasses, and turn them over, and chew themagain, till they have extracted sweetness and life therefrom. Chewthe words of this book over and over again (it is impossible to doso with any other book), meditate upon the words (to meditate, toreflect, are highest functions), mediate upon their meaning--upontheir direct and cognate meanings; let the thoughts they suggestfind full and free reaction in thy soul, and from some simple wordor phrase thou shalt draw the sweetness of divine love, and more andmore the consciousness that thou hast received into thine innermostbeing very spirit and very life. Read it on bended knee. Take up the words and breathe on them withthe warm breath of sincere desire to know their intent, and musicwill come forth as from the fabled horn of old--music that shallhave in it all the hallelujahs and hosannas of the heavenly host. If you will take this book to your heart, you will find it breadsuch as kings' ovens never baked, water more crystal than that whichbursts from mountain springs, wine the like of which was neverpressed from purple grapes, meat which cattle on a thousand hillsnever furnished, and fruit no man ever gathered in royal gardens--the fruit of the Spirit. You will find it a lamp unto your feet anda light unto your path, a hammer for breaking the flinty rocks bythe way, a fire that will burn out the stain of sin, and warmbenumbed fingers for quickened service in His Name. Give it the first place in your life. You will want to hear from itas the last thing when you go hence. The words of loved ones will besweet in your ear as you leave these mortal shores (if our LordJesus Christ should not hasten his coming, you must go), but youwill want to hear its utterance above all the tones, even of thoseyou love, speaking the final word of hope and cheer to you. Be very patient with it. It has great things to say to you--and youwill not always be fit to hear them. You will not always--at thefirst--be able to understand them; but if you do not understand to-day, to-morrow, or other morrows after that, it will speak to youand you shall fully know. Perhaps it will wait till the unshed tearsare in your heart, and the moan the common ear has never heard--thenit will speak--and the words will fall into the sore place of thesoul, as though angel lips had touched it; it will wait, perhaps, till the storm is high, and your frail craft (life's poor, frailcraft) is tossed as though it would go down in the whelming waters(and the shore so far away), and then it will speak and say, "Peace--be still, " and in that driven life of yours shall be a great andholy calm. Do not attempt to cross-question it as though you hesitated tobelieve all it said. To accept some parts and reject others will befatal to you. God does not reveal himself to those who doubt him. Hethat cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is therewarder of all them that diligently seek him. So must you approachthis book--with reverence and submissive faith; for this book, Ofriend! is not the word of man, but in very truth--THE WORD OF GOD.