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only. It is little to say that both the writer and his language belonged to the East, and that both were affected by that fact. The language itself is intensely sober, and utterly removed from the rhapsody of ordinary Eastern writing.

77. (Phil. iii. 20, 21.) For our citizenship (or commonwealth) is in heaven, from whence also we wait for a Saviour, the Lord Jesus Christ, who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of His glory, according to the working whereof He is able even to subject all things unto Himself.' Clearly the reference here is to the expected return of the Lord to the earth. But a process is here attributed to the Lord Jesus which one cannot well associate with the limited powers of a human being. What precisely the apostle meant by our Lord 'fashioning anew' our bodies, and 'conforming them to His body,' we do not know, for he has not explained himself. But the process itself the apostle conceives of is quite within the scope of Christ's power: 'Who is able also even to subject all things unto Himself.' I do not say that St. Paul rightly conceived of Christ's personality, although, of course, I unfeignedly believe that he did; but the conception he had of it was divine, not human; or, perhaps, to speak more correctly, St. Paul's conception was of a Divine Humanity, the divine in the human, manifesting itself through the human, but the human a medium simply that the manifestation might be made. The Christ of St. Paul was not 'of the earth earthly,' but of the heavens heavenly; a Divine Christ, and not a simply human one.

The next Epistle, in the chronological order adopted by Ellicott, is that of the Ephesians. Some very ancient authorities omit the words 'at Ephesus,' in the first verse, and it is supposed by many that the Epistle was originally addressed to the Church at Laodicea. But this point need not trouble us now; we may safely leave it to the decision of the critics.

78. (Eph. i. 6, 7.) The glory of His grace, which He freely bestowed on us (or wherewith He endued us) in the Beloved: in whom we have our redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace.'

No doubt the 'forgiveness' of ritual sins under the Mosaic dispensation was included in the benefits of Christ's redeeming work, but it is still more certain that what are very properly called 'sins,' or moral transgressions, and their forgiveness, were included also; in fact, that the primary reference in this place, and similar ones, is to transgressions of the moral law rather than to ritual transgressions. If this be so, it is not easy to understand that St. Paul is here referring to a man, a man only, as the medium of conveying such immeasurable blessings.

79. Read the apostle's words, beginning at the 18th and ending at the 23rd verse, words too many for quotation here, and say whether there is any propriety in associating them with a simple human being, of exactly the same nature as the reader who is himself perusing these words.

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80. (Eph. ii. 12.) 'Having no hope, and without God in the world.' In the first part of this verse, St. Paul speaks of the Gentile converts, whom he had at the moment in his mind, as separate from Christ.' I agree with my friend and co-editor, Dr. Sexton, in his belief that to be 'separate from Christ,' and to be without hope and God,' are one and the same thing. And yet this would not be true if Christ were a man only. 81. (Eph. ii. 18.) For through Him we both have our access in one Spirit unto the Father.' Here we have the Christian Trinity,' named, not after the order of scholastic theology, but in the order of fact. The supreme want of the human spirit, fallen or unfallen, is God, God considered as our Father. Through the Lord Jesus we have access to God, and realize God's Fatherhood, as we could not do outside of Christ; and this realization becomes an accomplished fact in the Christian's experience in or through one Spirit, the Holy Spirit of the Father and the Son. I hold very cheaply the controversies which have been held for so many years, and are now being held, about what may be properly described as the Tri-personality' of God; but the doctrine of the Trinity is, nevertheless, a Christian doctrine, a truth which sums up within its own limits, and comprehends them all, all that man

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can need to know of God, and certainly all that God has revealed about Himself to man and for man.

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82. (Eph. iii. 18.) 'Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, was this grace given, to preach unto the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ.' The apostle did not preach a church, a system, a form, or still less himself, but he did preach a person, and that person was Christ, for these among other reasons, as I suppose, and as F. W. Robertson has pointed out, that reverence for persons precedes the belief in truths, that persons alone can interpret truths, or inspire to their practice, and that, as a rule, we reach truths first by trusting in some great or good one, and then through him by obtaining credible evidence of those truths.' (See F. W. Robertson's Lectures on the Corinthians, Lecture 28.) St. Paul not only preached Christ, but the 'riches of Christ.' What riches? I think it may be fairly said the 'riches' of Christ's twofold nature, of His personal revelation of a God infinitely worthy of trust, of the evil of sin, of the beauty of holiness, of those great eternal and immutable spiritual laws upon which all well-being depends, all these things meeting in the Son of God, to supply man's need of truth, love, purity, beauty, strength, meeting in one focus, as they did in Christ. why should the 'riches of Christ' be spoken of as 'unsearchable,' if He were a man, and His mind and powers simply human? With something like pardonable, but well understood exaggeration, we might speak of the 'riches' of Plato or Shakespeare; but it must be admitted that the word 'unsearchable' in the text is applied to the Lord Jesus with altogether peculiar definiteness. And very properly so, for, as the word in the original signifies, these riches may be tracked by our eager footsteps, but can never be tracked completely to their source or issue. We may see them in part, but cannot see them entirely; they are immeasurable, they are riches which we can enjoy, but can never exhaust; riches which can never be counted, never be told, here or hereafter, and are therefore capable of meeting the need of man's soul for the vast, the illimitable.

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83. (Eph. iii. 19.) 'The breadth and length and height and depth, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge.' The language is, of course, paradoxical, though not contradictory. But why should the love of Christ be spoken of as 'passing knowledge,' if it were the love of a human being? That the element of the infinite must enter into all human love that is worthy of the name, is most true; but that remark would apply to man as man, and not to Jesus Christ peculiarly, unless He were something more than man. It may also be asked, in what respect, apart from the personal divinity of our Lord, did He show that His love passed knowledge? What, as a mere human being, did He do to earn the right of having this wonderful language applied to Him?

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84. (Eph. iv. 13.) 'Till we all attain man, unto the measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ.' So then, according to St. Paul's conception, Christ is the ideal of perfected humanity, beyond which the race is not called upon to go, after which the race is called upon to aspire! But if Christ were but a human being, by what right does St. Paul suppose that perfection was reached in Him? Some one in the future may excel Him as much as He is acknowledged to have excelled others. There can be no finality in the moral and spiritual perfection of Christ, considered as a human being, nor is it right to present Him as an ideal example, which cannot possibly be excelled. The very fact that St. Paul thought of Christ, and presented Him as 'rounded perfection,' suggests to me that the apostle did not hold the humanitarian view of Him.

85. (Eph. v. 2.) 'Walk in love, even as Christ also loved you, and gave Himself up for us (or you), an offering and a sacrifice to God for an odour of a sweet smell.' The persons to whom this Epistle was written were Gentiles. In what particular respect did Christ love them, and why should so much significance be given to His life and death here represented as an offering and a sacrifice to God, if He simply lived a martyr's life and met with a martyr's doom?

86. (Col. i. 27, 28.) 'Christ in you, the hope of glory, whom

we proclaim, admonishing every man, and teaching every man in all wisdom, that we may present every man perfect in Christ.' Here is a repetition of the thought found in the Ephesians, of Christ as the perfected ideal of humanity, towards whom man is to conform himself, as he would not be called upon to do if Christ were a man only.

87. (Col. ii. 10.) 'Who is the Head of all principality and power.' On these suggestive words, I cannot do better than refer to a sermon by the late Dr. Bellows, of New York, in his Re-statements of Christian Doctrine, p. 319, in which that truly Christian and lamented divine expounds these words with singular force and loyalty to the gospel of Christ.

88. In reading this Epistle to the Colossians, one cannot but be struck with the fact that St. Paul interweaves the thought of Christ into all his thoughts about redeemed man. We are to receive Him, to walk in Him, to be rooted and built up in Him ; we are to hold Him fast as the Head, we are raised together with Him, our life is hid with Him in God; He is our life, He is all and in all; it is His peace which is to rule in our hearts, His word which is to dwell in us; whatsoever we do, in word or in deed, we are to do all in His name, giving thanks through Him; our marriage relations, our home relations, and the relations between servants and masters, are all to be regulated by a reference to Him; He is our Master in heaven, as He was our Master on the earth; we are to serve Him, and from Him we are to receive the recompense of the inheritance. In fact, Christ and man are so indissolubly bound up together, that in the apostle's idea they refused to be separated. Of what man--past, present, or future could such an idea as this be predicated? I venture to suggest that the Epistles to the Ephesians and Colossians should be read at one and the same time, and compared with each other, when it will be seen that the position the writer assigns to the Lord Jesus is not only eminent, but pre-eminent, exclusive, and all-embracing.

89. Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers puts St. Paul's Epistle to Philemon, as next in the order of composition. It

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