His dwelling-place, ere, in infinite condescension to us, He was pleased to live on this lower earth, 'for us men and for our

salvation.'

39. (Acts x. 42, 43.) And He charged us to preach unto the people, and to testify that this is He who is ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead. To whom bear all the prophets witness, that through His name every one that believeth on Him shall receive remission of sins.' It will be seen that these words occur in an address which Simon Peter delivered to Cornelius the centurion, and his household, at Cæsarea. There is no doubt in my mind, and certainly there was none in the minds of Peter and the rest of the apostles, that Jesus Christ was in some very real sense a man. His humanity is not now the question in dispute. But that must be a special humanity indeed to which the judging of the living and the dead is given, and in connection with which 'remission of sins' comes to a guilty soul !

:

40. (Acts xiii. 38, 39.) 'Be it known unto you therefore, brethren, that through this man is proclaimed unto you remission of sins and by Him every one that believeth is justified from all things, from which he could not be justified by the law of Moses.' Paul and Barnabas are at Antioch, in Pisidia, and Paul, in his address in the synagogue on the Sabbath day, makes use of the words I have now quoted, in reference to the Lord Jesus. It is the same idea to which Peter gave expression at Cæsarea, showing that, in this matter at least, Paul and Peter were agreed as to the sacrificial work of Christ. We are not now concerned with a philosophical statement of the doctrine of Christian atonement, but one thing is abundantly evident from the words of these two apostles, that 'remission of sins,' and what is here called 'justification,' are blessings that come to us through Jesus of Nazareth, and that no such statements are made in the New Testament respecting any other man, a proof,

as I think, that Jesus was not merely a man, but the man, the Divine Man.

41. According to Ellicott's New Testament Commentary for English Readers, the conversion of Saul of Tarsus took place A.D. 37, and it would seem to be sixteen years afterwards when Paul, the now Christian apostle, wrote his First and Second Epistles to the Thessalonians, and while he was at Corinth. The salutations in these Epistles join 'God the Father' and the 'Lord Jesus Christ' in the same sentence, expressing the desire that 'grace and peace' might come to them from the one and the other. You get the same idea in St. Paul's Epistles to the Romans, the Corinthians, the Galatians, the Ephesians, and the Philippians; the exception being in the Epistle to the Colossians, where the words are simply, 'Grace to you and peace from God our Father.' In the First Epistle to Timothy it is, 'Grace, mercy, and peace, from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Lord.' In the Epistle to Titus it is, 'Grace and peace from God the Father and Christ Jesus our Saviour.' In the Epistle to Philemon it is, 'Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.' Now I have one simple remark to make on these salutations, and it is this. would be likely to be the belief in the mind of this writer touching the personality of Jesus, when it is his uniform practice, in saluting either communities or individuals, to join the names of God and Christ in this way? Remember that the writer was a Jew-a Jew converted to Christianity, but still a Jew-in whose eye 'God the Father' would be the Jehovah of the Old Testament, a Being who could not without infinite profanity be named side by side with a mere creature, and yet blessings are invoked by this man from the one Being equally as from the other! If St. Paul believed that Christ Jesus our Lord was only a great inspired man, an inspired prophet, and wonderful martyr, I do not think he would have brought these two names into such conjunction, and put them upon what would appear to be a common level. In the Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, ii. 16, the writer names Christ first and God second, saying: 'Now our

What

Christ was only a human Indeed, throughout these references to Christ are of raise the supposition that

Lord Jesus Christ Himself, and God our Father,' which it is not reasonable to believe he could have done if he had thought for one moment that our Lord Jesus being, of like nature with himself. two Epistles to the Thessalonians the such a nature as all but irresistibly to Paul is thinking of a divine person, a divine agent, occupying a position and doing a work which are appropriate to divinity, but not appropriate to humanity, however exalted.

42. (Acts xvii. 31.) 'He hath appointed a day, in the which He will judge the world in righteousness by the man whom He hath ordained; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.' The words occur in St. Paul's address at Athens. Clearly the appointment spoken of is made by God; He is the source of the authority, and it is His power which has 'given assurance unto all men.' But a man, a human being like ourselves, is not quite the person fitted to 'judge the world in righteousness.' He himself needs a Judge ; he himself would have sins to acknowledge, and forgiveness to implore. If Jesus Christ is, in any intelligible sense, the world's Judge, the Judge of the whole human race, He must be divine, and not merely human.

43. The early Christians would appear to have been 'baptized into the name of the Lord Jesus.' And yet, as a matter of fact, our Lord, before His ascension, commanded His disciples to baptize into the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.' Why was this shorter formula used apparently as a practical equivalent for the longer one? Does it seem reasonable to believe, if the Lord Jesus were only an inspired man, an inspired prophet, a faithful martyr, that His single name would be a fair equivalent for the threefold name of 'Father, Son, and Holy Ghost ?' Dr. Horace Bushnell, in his God in Christ, new edition, just out, page 127, says: 'As a last evidence on this subject (the divinity of Christ), and one that, in my view, winds up all debate, I add the holy formula of baptism "into the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost."

That the Father is God is conceded, so, also, that the Spirit is God, and then, between these terms on either hand, we have, dropped in, 'the Son,' a man, we are told, a mere human creature, who is one of ourselves! This, too, in a solemn formula that is appointed for the consecration of a believing soul to God. It appears evident to me that our Unitarian brethren impose upon themselves in the construction they give to this formula, by collecting about the person of Christ associations that do not belong to His proper humanity, associations which really belong to our view of His person, not to theirs. Were they to read " In the name of the Father, A. B. the carpenter, and the Holy Ghost," they would be sensible, I think, of some very great violence done to the words by any construction which holds the strict humanity of Christ.'

44. (1 Cor. i. 7.) Waiting for the revelation of our Lord Jesus Christ; who shall also confirm you unto the end, that ye be unreprovable in the day of our Lord Jesus Christ.' I believe it to be abundantly evident that St. Paul, and, indeed, all the Christians of his day, were penetrated by the conviction that the Lord would return to the earth in their own generation, that when He did so the living and the dead would be summoned before His tribunal, that He would be their Judge, and that by His awards their respective destinies would be decided. I cannot now stop to state the grounds upon which I hold this opinion, or, rather, what is to me a positive conviction; nor is it necessary for me to do so to make clear the point I desire to present. Did the Apostle Paul believe that it was a man, simply a man, sharing his own nature, and with all the limitations of that nature, who was to be the future Judge of the universe of human beings? Considering the qualifications that are absolutely necessary in one who should have to fill such an office as Universal Judge, is it credible that the apostle could have supposed a man to be equal to the task? It will be said that St. Paul himself supplies an answer to my question in his own words spoken at Athens (Acts xvii. 31), when he said, 'He hath appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteous

ness by the man whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given assurance unto all men in that He hath raised Him from the dead.' Undoubtedly these are the words of the apostle ; undoubtedly, too, Paul himself believed in what we should call the humanity of the Lord; but what I contend for is that the apostle taught the doctrine of an assumed humanity, that Christ was not in Himself a man, strictly a man, and a man only, but that He was 'made in the likeness of sinful flesh,' that 'He was found in fashion as a man,' that 'He humbled Himself' to our condition, that the divine was revealed through this very humanity which He assumed, and, therefore, that Christ might be spoken of as a man without the implication that the person so speaking believed in the Lord's humanity as only like our own. Will my readers look carefully at those passages in St. Paul's Epistles in which he speaks of what we now call the 'second coming of Christ'? and I think they will arrive at the conclusion that the apostle is expecting the advent, not of a man like himself, but of 'the second Man who is of heaven' (xv. 47).

45. (1 Cor. i. 24.) 'Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God.' Would it not be something bordering very nearly upon the profane if any Christian, past or present, however eminent for saintliness, were spoken of in these terms? And yet why not, if Christ were a man and a man only, as to His nature?

46. (1 Cor. vi. 11.) 'And such were some of you: but ye were washed (or washed yourselves), but ye were sanctified, but ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God.' It seems very like an insult to ask whether such tremendous blessings as these are to be considered as coming to men 'dead in trespasses and in sins,' and making them alive again, from a man of like passions with ourselves.

47. (1 Cor. viii. 11, 12.) 'For through thy knowledge he hat is weak perisheth, the brother for whose sake Christ died. And thus, sinning against the brethren, and wounding their conscience when it is weak, ye sin against Christ.' If the death of Christ were the death of a martyr only, one who had merely