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the fiery persecutor into the meek and strong Christian apostle. It is almost an insult to the intelligence of the reader to ask him what kind of being, in St. Paul's estimation, this one was of whom he is here speaking. By no fair exegesis do I think it possible to extract the humanitarian theory of Christ's personality from this verse.

94. (2 Tim. ii. 11-13.) 'Faithful is the saying: For if we die with Him we shall also live with Him; if we endure we shall also reign with Him; if we shall deny Him He also will deny us; if we are faithless He abideth faithful; for He cannot deny Himself.' The writer is looking forward to the time when the Lord will return to the earth for judgment, when those who are His at His coming will be accepted by Him, and when those who are not will be banished from His presence. With that prospect before him, and using such considerations as are here named, is it possible to think that St. Paul is here writing of a man, a brother man, a highly-endowed, divinely-appointed man, but still a man only, and not, rather, the God-Man?

95. (2 Tim. iii. 10, 11.) But thou didst follow my teaching, conduct, purpose, faith, long-suffering, love, patience, persecutions, sufferings; what things befel me at Antioch, at Iconium, at Lystra; what persecutions I endured; and out of all the Lord. delivered me.' I think it will be conceded that when the simple phrase, 'the Lord,' is used in the Pauline Epistles, Jesus Christ is invariably referred to. St. Paul here refers to interpositions on the part of Christ, after Christ had died, and when our deceased friends are not necessarily available to us. How could the apostle speak of the Lord delivering him out of all these persecutions, and what not, unless he believed utterly that the Lord, in His heavenly state, was still practically operative in that world to which he once descended, and for the redemption of which He died.

96. (2 Tim. iv. 8.) 'There is laid up for me the crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous Judge, shall give to me at that day.' Did St. Paul expect that a brother man was to be his judge at the Great Assize? and was he looking forward to

receiving 'the crown of righteousness' from a brother man? If he were, one can only pity his imbecility, and be quite sure that his hope would be frustrated.

97. (2 Tim. iv. 14.) 'Alexander the coppersmith did (or 'showed') me much evil; the Lord will render to him according to his works.' When some one in the flesh has done us a grievous wrong, do we expect that a dead brother man will ' avenge us of our adversary,' will punish the wrong-doer? That God may-that He does sometimes use the spirits of the departed to administer His own corrective or even penal providences, I do not in the least deny; but we have no right to rely upon such interpositions, nor would Paul have done so if He had believed that the Lord was simply his brother man.

98. (2 Tim. iv. 16-18.) 'At my first defence no one took my part, but all forsook me; may it not be laid to their account. But the Lord stood by me, and strengthened me (or 'gave me power') that through me the message (or 'proclamation') might be fully proclaimed, and that all the Gentiles might hear; and I was delivered out of the mouth of the lion. The Lord will deliver me from every evil work, and will save me unto His heavenly kingdom; to whom be the glory for ever and ever (or 'unto the ages of the ages'). Amen.' The Lord stood by, and strengthened His servant. This might conceivably refer not to what we should call personal presence, so much as to personal influence. But the writer is looking forward to deliverance in the future and a full salvation from the Lord; and I do not quite see upon what ground he does this, unless he knows that the Lord has not only the will but the power to help him, a confidence which St. Paul would not have been justified in cherishing, supposing that he was extending it to a mere man, and that man one who had passed away, as all men, first or last, have to do.

99. (Tit. i. 3, 4.) 'According to the commandment of God our Saviour, to Titus, my true child after a common faith, grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Saviour.' God is God, and Christ is Christ, and there is never any real con fusion of persons in the Epistles of St. Paul. But what I want to

notice now is that the term ' our Saviour' is here applied to God, who is emphatically called 'the Father,' and to 'Christ Jesus.' Now, may it not be fairly urged that the apostle, if he were an ordinarily intelligent and ordinarily honest man, would never have spoken of Jesus of Nazareth as 'our Saviour,' after he had applied that descriptive to God Himself, if at the same time he had believed that Jesus was his own brother man, who had simply lived a preeminently good life, died a tragic death, and then passed on to His eternal reward. It is to be remembered that St. Paul was a Jew as well as a Christian, and would have within him all that godly jealousy of robbing Jehovah of any of His attributes which was a sort of 'second nature' to the Jew. If, therefore, this Jew, Christian though he were, could speak of God the Father and Christ Jesus' as each of them 'our Saviour,' I conclude that he must have thought of Christ Jesus as a being who was in a very real sense 'equal with God.' The reader will please to notice, apart from the exception which I will deal with in the next paragraph, that the terms 'God our Saviour' and 'Jesus Christ our Saviour' are to be found in vers. 10 of the 2nd chapter of this Epistle, and vers. 4 and 6 of the 3rd chapter.

100. (Tit. ii. 13.) 'Looking for the blessed hope and appearing of the glory of our great God and Saviour Jesus Christ' (or, ' of the great God and our Saviour '). The renderings, and even the pointing of the original words, have been very various, while their exposition has been quite as various. Catholics and Protestants, Trinitarians and Unitarians, have not been agreed as to the translation or the explanation of St. Paul's words. But I beg to refer such of my readers as can gain access to the books, to the Speaker's Commentary on the New Testament (vol. iii. p. 814), in which they will find a 'note' on the words upon which I am writing, by the present Bishop of London. I would also refer them to Ellicott's New Testament Commentary (vol. iii. p. 258), where they will find Canon Spence's commentary on the passage. In the Expositor, First Series (vol. viii. p. 144), there are some exegetical and critical remarks on these words by Professor Reynolds, of Cheshunt College. See also Farrar's Life and

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Work of St. Paul (vol. ii. p. 536). I have no desire to enter into a controversy for the exact settlement of which I am not competent, and which for all the purposes of these chapters need not be settled. The single point to which I desire attention is this St. Paul used words fairly susceptible of different, and, in a degree, opposing renderings. Men of equal intelligence, equal learning, and equal piety, are not agreed as to the exact translation of the original. But is it not strange that St. Paul should have used words of so manifestly ambiguous a character if he had had any of our modern sensitiveness about 'confounding the persons or dividing the substance'? He uses the term 'our Saviour' sometimes with reference to God, and sometimes to Christ. But if he had imagined for one moment that Jesus Christ had been 'a man of like passions with himself,' simply a human being, he, a Jew, would never have applied to Jesus of Nazareth an epithet which he had already applied to the great Jehovah.

We now come to what is called 'the Epistle of Paul the Apostle to the Hebrews,' which was known and read in the Christian Church before the close of the first century. As to the authorship of the Epistle, the Speaker's Commentary on the New Testament (vol. iv. p. 4, says that 'the controversy respecting the authorship of this Epistle has been one of the most remarkable in the whole range of Biblical criticism.' Scholars of equal learning and honesty are not agreed as to who wrote this Epistle, and it is not in the least degree necessary for the main purpose to which these chapters are devoted that we should come to any definite conclusion. It is far more important to note what is obvious to any careful reader of the Epistle, that it was written to present, compare, and contrast Judaism and Christianity; and to bring to bear every consideration that could very well be adduced upon those Hebrew Christians who were in any danger of apostatizing. Many of the figures of speech and the allusions used by the writer would have far more force in the minds of those to whom he was writing, than they can be expected to have in ours, because they were Jews - Jews proper-and we are Gentiles,

without the special Jewish training, providential and educational, which the Hebrews received. Let us now content ourselves with tracing a few of the 'indirect evidences' which this Epistle contains to the 'personal divinity of Christ.'

101. (Heb. i. 3.) 'Who being the effulgence of His glory, and very image of His substance (or, the impress of His substance), and upholding all things by the word of His power, when He had made purification of sins, sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high.' What are here called 'Angels' are put side by side and contrasted with the Messiah, who is spoken of as ‘a Son,' reflecting the nature of God as no merely created being could possibly do, and doing work in the matter of the world's salvation to which no mere man is in the least degree competent. It should also be noticed that at ver. 10 the writer quotes, from Ps. cii. and Isa. xxxiv., words which apply in no sense, however remote, to 'a man born in honest wedlock.'

102. (Heb. ii. 9.) 'That by the grace of God He should taste death for every man.' If Jesus were a martyr only, dying a martyr's death, these words would have no special significance when applied to Him, because they would be true of any man who witnessed even unto death.

103. (Heb. ii. 14-17.) 'Since then the children are sharers in flesh and blood (or, blood and flesh), He also Himself in like manner partook of the same, that through death He might bring to nought him that had the power of death, that is, the devil; and might deliver all them who through fear of death were all their lifetime subject to bondage. For verily not of angels doth He take hold; but He taketh hold of the seed of Abraham. Wherefore it behoved Him in all things to be made like unto His brethren.' If the writer of this Epistle had thought of Jesus Christ as a man and a man only, sharing our common human nature, as all men do, there would seem to be no reason for his laying such a stress upon the Lord's humanity, for his saying that Christ partook of flesh and blood, and that He was made like unto His brethren. The expressions are pointless and unnecessary, unless they refer to a special humanity.

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