truth.

they must be presented "in the language of the altar." That historical necessity is explained by what all profane history shows; that human nature has a feeling that expiation by sacrifice must follow sin. The religion which is to command man's faith must contain that element; even such thoughts as mankind gathered from all pre-Christian revelation and history of God's love to man. And a faith that is to be possible to all men—the test of the true faith which the wayfaring man, though a simple one, could not err in-must have its thoughts of this historical character. Is it from the historical love of God, or from a philosophical conception of His love, that attractive theories of ultimate good are educed which seek to look upon God as enduring and employing suffering always to purify, as by a consuming fire, sin from the souls of men, and not at any time as a punishment of guilt? They have their attractiveness from their indefiniteness, which, unchecked, untested by historical or declaratory illustrations of God's ways, loves to see through a mysterious future of infinite love the likelihood of a process of long-continued elimination of moral evil, ending in entire purification of every soul from all that is not of God's nature, and, of course, the coming of universal blessedness. Out of such a constitution of divine love the necessity naturally drops of Christ's sufferings being substitutionary punishment of human guilt, and along therewith the "abhorrent idea" of God's being angry with His well-beloved Son-an idea abhorrent" because of an erroneous contemplation of the divine relation of sonship, and the divine anger, as if they were like the human things of the same names. There lie, however, in the way of the indefinite imagination of universal welfare coming through God's infinitely suffering love, two definite difficulties belonging to the revealed historical character of His love as a holy love. One is, that all sanctification and holy union to God of the soul of man, by which alone the blessedness of human nature-essentially God's nature is to be attained, has man's conscious faith indispensable to it. The other is, that the theory of ultimate universal blessedness contemplates the extinction of moral evil, from which suffering is inseparable. But neither the universality of faith nor the

faith's

extinction of moral evil is a thought which history suggests. The termination of moral evil is not necessarily included in the deliverance, healing, and restitution of all things in heaven and earth associated in promise with the gathering of mankind to Himself by Christ. For the history of man and his "habitable earth" is exceptional, and the existence of evil is not mundane merely, but of wider extent. The language of the Bible, historically describing sin's future punishment, certainly does not contain any element suggesting a termination of it; and the punishment, not the mere cure, of moral evil, is the historical lesson taught by the destruction of the nations whose cup was full, the spared "destruction" of Ephraim (Hosea xi. 9), and the subjective expectation betrayed by the superstitions alike of heathens and modern sceptics,

Progress of 36. Let us here notice once more the progress of habits of thoughts thought-acquired faith-as it appears over the period of the writing of the four gospels, written with thirty and sixty years' after-thoughts of Jesus' manifestation.

in the four gospels.

Matthew's sight of the Lord, though not closely confined within Hebrew associations, is still a sight of Hebrew eyes characteristically. The things of Christ which he narrates remind him, far more frequently than any of the other evangelists, of "that which was spoken unto the fathers by the prophets." To him the Messiah is "the son of David, the son of Abraham" (i. 1); and though much of Jewish habit of thought must have been departed from by "Matthew the publican," his narrative of Him is marked with the exclusiveness of Jewish feeling regarding both the heathen and the Samaritans (xv. 24, and x. 5) in particulars noticeably omitted in the next gospel, though it was written in all likelihood under the eye of the apostle of the circumcision.

Mark's eyes turn most strongly to look upon the Saviour, not under any condition of national association, but as He was manifested mighty to save. His heart is set upon living pictures of Him travailing in the greatness of His strength, vivid details of His manifestations of power and wisdom, narratives of His healings of remarkable kinds or extent. If Mark wrote under the eye of Peter, the piλozgiros, whose

writings characteristically contemplate the Saviour's office of salvation, we have to remember that before the writing of this gospel Peter had much ceased to be a Jew of Jerusalem. The apostle of the circumcision had received the vision of Joppa, and had been much in interchange of thought with Gentile Christians, and, though still loyal to the institutions of Moses, was not a Jew only in his sympathies.

Luke, whose genealogy derives the human life of Christ not from Abraham, the fountain of Hebrew history, but from Adam, "the son of God," the beginning of human life, has his eyes characteristically drawn to contemplate the humanity of man's Saviour, His fellow-feeling with those around Him, and His power of sympathy over them. It is he that tells the stories of the widow of Nain, and the penitent in Simon's house (vii.), and of the thief on the cross. It is he alone who tells that it was the look of Jesus turned upon His unfaithful friend that made Peter go out and weep bitterly. Luke gives not so much his Master's authority-bearing discourses, as His discourses with His nearest friends. The stories of Emmaus and of the "standing in the midst" (xxviii.) are especially Luke's. Before he wrote, the revealed religion of Judaism had parted its hold on earthly nationality. Jerusalem was no more, and faith had to seek wider sympathy than was bounded by places; as upon the earlier destruction of the city of its solemnities, Judaism itself had been made to feel that it had a spirit which could and must live above and without the forms and ritual which had been deemed essential to it in Palestine.

In the latest gospel, John, looking back upon the utter ending of the grand dispensation of Moses thirty long years before by the destruction of the holy city-a change which to a Jew must have destroyed the importance of all other possible worldly changes-sees on both sides, beyond all Hebrew and all human time, Jesus the Creator, the Friend, the Saviour of man embracing all human duration in the history of His love. The porous sees the person of " the Son" filling the glad tale of Fatherly love; from the joy of the past eternity; through the coming to His own unrecognised, to persuade them that "God so loved the world;" on to the gathering together into the Father's

house of many mansions into one with Himself, and His Father and their Father, of the beloved, redeemed, human sons and daughters of God, whosoever believed in His name.

God ONE

that

believe.

"THE COMFORTER."

37. After the work of incarnate love was finished, which with them showed visibly to human sight, and prepared for record in history -the world's memory-God's making Himself one with fallen man to save him; the further progress of revelation chiefly unveiled that saving union, so as to make familiar to the thoughts of faith the practical results of that union on the moral and spiritual state of man; its working, so to speak, now from the opposite direction—that is, in raising man from his fallen and guilty state to the holiness of God's likeness again, and into union of affection and unison of spiritual sympathies with God.

All the phraseology employed in the New Testament to instruct our thoughts respecting the Holy Ghost the Comforter is set round about this truth, to make it familiar to our thoughts, that God is practically ONE with them that believe in Him; and to make us understand the inseparableness of the holy love we are to trust in, because of that union. "He dwelleth with you, and shall be in you” (John xiv. 17), is the new description of His connection with us. The necessary moral human state of that connection is described,-" Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. If any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy; for the temple of God is holy, which temple ye are (1 Cor. iii. 16, 17).

This connection of saving union is described in the terms needed and sought by penitent sinners-a new appropriate name under which God, after the manner of His revelation of Himself from the beginning, invites men's faith in His design and work by this indwelling union. He who was known by so many names to the first races and the chosen people,-who advanced, in the appropriated titles which He made His representatives, from Deity to Almighty, Eternal, Possessor of

Heaven and Earth, Most High-who, with selecting love, became Jehovah, Israel's Holy One, the Lord of their Hosts—who came near to be a King to His people, their Shepherd and Captain of Salvation-who came nearer to their homes, their Father, Husband, Friend closer than a brother-who became Jesus, partaker of their flesh, tempted in all points like as they are, tasting death for every man to save His people from their sins, now dwells within them with a grace the nearness and meet-help of which is named congruously to the nearness of His presence. He is their Comforter. The dwelling-place of His holiness, where they may worship Him, is no more the faroff heavens; nor even any nearer house of God built by adoring hands; but their own hearts: "Ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them" (2 Cor. vi. 16).

The Com

man's

to God

38. The peculiar title by which the dispensation of the Holy Progress of revealing Ghost was promised by "God manifest in the flesh" is another names. development, or, accurately speaking, unveiling (revelation) of forter the relationship of man to God designed in the salvation by "helping" Christ Jesus. A union that is comforted and comforting; union effected by a "Comforter" helping the infirmities of man to come unto union with God—that is, with the Comforter Himself-in prayer, in desire, in realising of His love, in feeling remembrance of His "things of Christ;" is more than a formal union, like the restoration given by forensic justification, or the adoption known to human laws. It exhibits the union approaching from the other side also; and makes it a union of two lives mutually drawing each other close into one, each desired by and desiring the other; a union, so to speak, of reciprocal complement of life. Jesus had in His personal teaching discovered to whoever could "bear" His words this design of man's union to God by the way in which He used the language of human relationship, which had all along the progress of revelation been made the explanation to them of the nature of the love of God. His expression, "My Father and your Father," making one healed, comforted relationship, man's sonship and His own, sent its flash of unifying meaning through all the assuring metaphors of preceding revelation;