Table of Contents

The Redemption from "Vanity."

Some Themes of the Second Part of Romans

Re-tracings of Truth

Reasons for My Faith as to Baptism

Household Baptism - A Review of Objections

The Church's Path

F. W. Grant - Miscellaneous Writings Volume 1

Frederick W Grant

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The Redemption from "Vanity."

The Redemption from "Vanity."

The great wheel of the world goes round,

And nothing is at a stay;

The generations come and pass,

As shadows move upon the grass,

More permanent than they.

A transient ill, a fleeting good,

A hope that is attained, and gone —

On all, the penalty alike,

Of passing with the hours that strike,

As the great world moveth on.

And the flowers that cluster over it

Are crushed and buried beneath;

For life sports with its strength above,

And we dare to smile, and we dare to love,

But ever below is death.

And we cry, O God, but our joys are sweet:

And why doth the wheel go round?

And why must that which is high be low?

And how canst Thou have ordained it so?

And where — this throbbing movement through —

Oh, where can rest be found?

But yet, though the wheel be high, look up:

For a Form, and a Human Form

Sitteth in peace above it still,

And guideth it with a perfect will,

Through brightness and through storm.

A Form, and a Human Form is there,

Whom the wheel, with spirit instinct, obeys —

The chariot-wheel of destiny —

For a purpose fixed and firm has He,

And the end shall be only praise.

For it bringeth low all human pride,

And humbleth into dust the Dust,

And thou seest not the other side —

For there we see not, but we trust —

Where the wheel revolveth into day,

And the cycle of life comes to its stay.

The Dead and Risen, He knoweth it all,

And therefore His face is bright and still

With the joy to which He alone can guide

The souls for whom He has stooped and died

In the might of His perfect will.

And the wheel of the world is His chariot-wheel

For His triumph it moveth on:

And we catch from His glorious face today

The peace of its promise all the way,

Till the goal of His rest be won.

F. W. Grant.

Some Themes of the Second Part of Romans

Some Themes of the Second Part of Romans.

1. "In Adam" and "In Christ" Romans 5: 12-21.

My desire is to take up and discuss as simply as possible, and yet as fully as may be necessary, some of the leading truths of the epistle to the Romans. My aim is not controversy, as I trust, but edification yet on this very account I shall seek to remember all through the need of those who have been exercised by questions which have of late arisen. Exercise is not to be deprecated. It is well to be made thus to realize how far we have really learned from God, and our need of being taught in His presence that which cannot be shaken. There is an uneasy dishonoring fear in the hearts of many as to submitting all that they have apparently learned, through whomsoever or in what way soever learned, to be afresh tested by what seems "novel" and in some measure in conflict with it. But it will only be found, by those who in patience and confidence in God allow every question to be raised that can be raised, and seek answer to it from Him through the Word, how firm His foundation stands, and how that which seems at first to threaten more or less the integrity of our faith only in result confirms it. Difficulties are cleared away, things obscure made to take shape and meaning, the divine power of the Word to manifest itself, Christ and His grace to be better known. Much too that we looked at or were prepared to look at as fundamental difference in another's view turns out to be only the emphasizing (though perhaps the over-emphasizing) of what was really defective in our own. And so "by that which every joint supplieth, according to the effectual working in the measure of every part," there is made "increase of the body to the edifying of itself in love."

Let us now look at what is surely the key-note to the interpretation of what is known to many as the second part of Romans (Rom. 5: 12 – Rom. 8), the two contrasted thoughts, "in Adam" and "in Christ." This is what we start with in chap. 5: 12-21, though as yet we have neither term made use of. Indeed the first term occurs but once in Scripture, and that not in Romans, but in 1 Cor. 15, where the first Adam and the last are put in emphatic contrast.

The statements of chap. 5: 12-21 are the exposition of the doctrine: —

"By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."

"If through the offense of one the many be dead."

"The judgment was by one to condemnation."

"By one man's offense death reigned by one."

"By the one offense toward all men to condemnation." (Greek.)

"By the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners."

"Sin hath reigned in death." (Greek.)

These are the statements as to the first man and the consequences of his sin. They show that his sin has affected not himself alone, but many with him; that it brought in death as a present judgment upon a fallen race, and tending to merge in final condemnation.

Two things as to present fact: a race of sinners; death as God's judgment-stamp upon this race. The final outlook or tendency for all, utter condemnation.

The first man was thus in a very real way the representative of his race; not indeed by any formal covenant for his posterity, of which Scripture has no trace; but by his being the divinely constituted head of it. As the father of men, he necessarily stood as charged with the interests of his posterity; from his fall, a corrupt nature became the heritage of the race, and thus death and judgment their appointed lot, the final issue no uncertain one. Thus in a real way he represented them before God; but, as I have said, not by any formal covenant on their behalf. His representative-character was grounded in what men call natural law, which is nothing but divine law, and which is both evident in nature and asserted in the plainest possible way in Scripture. "Who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean? not one," expresses the law. "What is man, that he should be clean? and he that is born of a woman, that he should be righteous?" "Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me." The Lord's words in the gospel fully and emphatically confirm these sayings of saints of old: "That which is born of the flesh is flesh." What men now call, The principle of "heredity," is thus affirmed, and it is the whole scriptural account of the matter. The theories of a covenant with Adam for his posterity, and the imputation of his sin to them, are simply additions to Scripture, and as such, not only needless, but an obscuring of the truth, as all mere human thoughts of necessity are.

"By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned."* Such is the apostle's statement here. It speaks of death as with every individual the result of his own sins, although his being made (or "constituted") a sinner was the result of Adam's disobedience (v. 19). I know it has been argued that this could not apply to infants, who if they sinned could only have done so in Adam. But the apostle is not speaking of infants, nor did their case need to be considered here. Sinning in Adam is not a doctrine of Scripture, and it is not allowable to insert words of such a character and importance in this place. The apostle is addressing himself to believers, to show the application of the work of Christ to such, as delivering them from all that attached to them by nature or practice. From this the case of infants may be easily inferred, but it is not his object to speak of it, and it cannot be shown that he does so at all.**

{*The marginal reading, "in whom all have sinned," will hardly be now justified by any scholar.

**For those "that had not sinned after the similitude of Adam's transgression" (v.14) are not infants, as many have supposed, but those who had not sinned against positive law as Adam had. For Adam's law in its nature could not be that of his posterity, who, until Moses, had none. The words "from Adam to Moses" show what is meant.}

Sin, then, came in through Adam. The nature of man was corrupted; by his disobedience the many were made sinners: and thus death introducing to judgment was the stamp of God upon the fallen condition. Adam was the representative of his race by the fact that he was the head of it, and thus, as it is put in 1 Corinthians 15: 22, "in Adam all die."

This expression, though found but once, is of great significance, because it is contrasted with and throws light upon another expression which is of the highest importance to us, and which the following chapters of Romans use repeatedly. "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive." We are now prepared to understand how "in Adam all die." In his death was involved and insured the death of all men. As head of the race, his ruin and death was theirs, and so "in him," their representative, they die. "In Adam" speaks of place, — of representation; as the apostle argues as to Levi and Abraham (Heb. 7: 9, 10): "And as I may so say, Levi also, who receiveth tithes, paid tithes in Abraham; for he was yet in the loins of his father when Melchisedek met him." We too were in the loins of Adam when he fell and sentence of death was passed upon him; and in him we die. Thank God, we have heard the voice of Another, Head and Representative too of His race, which says, "Because I live, ye shall live also." (John 14: 19.) In Adam we die: in Christ we live.

As in Adam, then, we are completely ruined. We are "constituted sinners" — sinners by constitution. Death and judgment are our appointed lot. This is what has to be met in our behalf, if Christ comes in for us. It is not enough for Him to be a new head and fountain of life for us from God. He must not only be our new Representative in life, but our Representative in death, and under curse also, taking the doom of those whose new Head He becomes. Hence comes a distinction which we must bear in mind. In life, He is our Representative that with Him we may live and inherit the portion He has acquired for us: in death, He is our Representative that we may not die, because already dead with Him. This last is substitution. He dies for us, and He alone: in life He lives for us, and (blessed be God!) lives not alone.

Now let us look at the apostle's statements. And first, —

Adam "is the figure of Him that was to come." (v. 14.)

Thus it is that in 1 Cor. 15: 22 "in Christ" is set over against "in Adam," and that in ver. 45 again "the last Adam" is seen in essential contrast to the "first:" "The first Adam was made a living soul; the last Adam was made a quickening Spirit."

But what, then, does a "last Adam" mean? The head of a new race. And thus "if any man be in Christ" — set over against "in Adam" in the verse already looked at, — "it is a new creation." (2 Cor. 5: 17, Gr., comp. marg. Rev. Vers.) The first Adam was the head of the old creation; the last Adam is the Head of the new. "In Christ" means to belong to the new creation and the new Head.

I merely link these terms together now. I do not propose to examine here what exactly the new creation is. The term is not used in Romans, though in Galatians (its kindred epistle, though wider in scope,) it is. But it should be obvious that the first Adam, as "the figure of Him that was to come," figures Christ as "the last Adam," the representative Head of a new race. As such, the apostle compares the results of the obedience of the One to "the many" who stand in Him, with the results of the first man's disobedience to "the many" who fell with him.

But we must pause before proceeding with this, to make it perfectly clear to any who have a doubt that Scripture speaks of the last Adam as really the Head of a race. Spite of the term "last Adam," some have doubt of this. They say, "We are never called children of Christ, but of God" which is true, because it is divine life that is communicated, and "children of Christ" would imply only human life. "The last Adam is made a quickening Spirit" surely proves, however, that in this character He quickens (or gives life), while at the same time it shows the character of the life communicated; for "that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." And this action of the last Adam we find imaged by the Lord in resurrection breathing upon His disciples when He says, "Receive ye the Holy Ghost." The first Adam was but a "living soul" into whose nostrils God breathed the breath of life, that he might become so. The last Adam breathes upon others; He is a quickening Spirit, not merely a living soul.

Isaiah also, foreseeing the glory of the Lord, declares, "When Thou shalt make His soul an offering for sin, He shall see His seed" (Isa. 53: 10). And again, in words which are quoted and applied to Christ by the apostle, "Behold, I and the children which God hath given Me" (ch. 8: 18; Heb. 2: 13).

There is surely no more need to prove that Christ as last Adam, like him whose antitype He is, is the Head of a race. It is the key to all that follows in Romans 5 and the two next chapters, where "in Christ" as Corinthians gives it, is in contrast, yet anti-typical correspondence, with "in Adam."

Now, as in Adam's case we have traced the results of the disobedience of the one to the many, let us trace the results of the obedience of the new Representative-Head to the many connected with Him.

"Much more the grace of God, and the gift by grace, which is by one man, Jesus Christ, hath abounded unto many."

"The free gift is of many offenses unto justification."

"They which receive abundance of grace and of the gift of righteousness shall reign in life by one, Jesus Christ."

"By the one righteousness toward all men to justification of life." (Gr.)

"By the obedience of the one shall the many be made righteous."

These are the statements corresponding to, yet contrasted with, the former ones which we considered. One thing we must remember in considering them, that these two accounts do not exhibit a mere balance of results. "Not as the offense so also is the free gift (v. 5). If righteousness be shown in dealing with sin, the "free gift," while of course it must be righteous, absolutely so, is yet measured only by the grace that has given Christ for us. Hence His work by no means merely cancels the results of sin, but lifts us into a place altogether beyond what was originally ours. Let us see what we have here, although even here the tale is not fully told.

First, we have "life;" and this in the next chapter (v. 23) is expanded into "eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord." It is not merely life from another source, but life of an entirely new character and quality; not a restoration of the failed and forfeited life, but a life infinitely higher — a divine life. There is but one life which is eternal, and "in Christ Jesus our Lord" declares its source to be in a divine Person, and now become man. Nor only so, for the force of the expression is precise. It is not correctly given in our common version, but in the revised it is, as I have quoted it. It is "in," not, as the common version, "through;" and "Christ Jesus," not "Jesus Christ." Such differences, minute as they may seem, are in Scripture never without significance. "Jesus Christ" is the Lord's personal name emphasized; "Christ Jesus" emphasizes His official title. It speaks of a place now taken through His work accomplished. In the eleventh verse it should read similarly, "alive to God in Christ Jesus." Again we have it in the eighth chapter, "no condemnation to them which are in Christ Jesus;" and in the second verse, "life in Christ Jesus." Elsewhere we have "sanctified" and "saints in Christ Jesus," "created in Christ Jesus," "of Him are ye in Christ Jesus," and so repeatedly. Except once — Peter (1 Peter 5: 10), no inspired writer uses this order of words, but only Paul. "In Jesus," or "in Jesus the Christ," we are never said to be, but only "in Christ," or "in Christ Jesus." The special force ought to be therefore clear.

Our life, then, is not only in Him, but in Him as now having accomplished His work and gone up to God. There, as Peter on the day of Pentecost bears witness, He is made Lord and Christ (Acts 2: 36), actually reaching the place which was His already by appointment, but to be reached only in one way. The last Adam becomes Head of the race after His work of obedience is accomplished, as the first Adam became head when his work of disobedience was accomplished. And as in the one case, so in the other, the results of the work become the heritage of the race. The head of the race represents the race before God. The ruin of the head becomes the ruin of the race. If the head stands, so does the race.

In either case, the connection of the head and the race is by life and nature, a corrupt nature being transmitted from the fallen head, a divine life and nature, free from and incapable of taint, from the new head, Christ Jesus. Death and judgment lay hold upon the fallen creature; righteousness characterizes the possessor of eternal life.

But here there is another need to be met; for these possessors of righteousness in a new life are by the old one children of Adam, and under wrath and condemnation because of manifold sins. Christ, the Son of the Father, is not stooping to take up unfallen beings, and bring them into a new place of nearness to God, but He is taking up sinners. For these, then, He must provide, along with a new life, a righteousness which shall justify them from all charge of sin. They must not only be delivered from inward corruption by a principle of righteousness imparted; they must be delivered from guilt also by a righteousness imputed. There must be a "justification of life," — that is, a justification belonging to the life communicated "by one righteousness toward all men," — God's grace offering itself for acceptance by all, — "unto justification of life."

Here, then, comes in, not representation simply, but substitution, representation under penalty for those who had incurred the penalty. He who is our Representative-Head in life must be our Substitute in death also. He must be "obedient unto death," standing in our place, that we may stand in His, — in the place He has won and taken for us with God.

His obedience avails for much more than negatively to justify from all charge of sin: it has its own infinite preciousness before God, in virtue of which we have a positive righteousness measured by this. He "of God is made unto us righteousness" (1 Cor. 1: 30). We "receive abundance of the gift of righteousness," as the passage before us says, and "shall reign in life by One, Jesus Christ."

Thus are the effects of the fall for us removed, and we stand in a new place under a new Head. We are in Christ, not Adam; and this, as we have seen, speaks of place in a representative, — that by virtue of headship of a race. Our connection with Christ is now, as formerly it was with Adam, by the life which we receive from Him, and of which we partake in Him, that is, by belonging to the race of which He is head. This and its consequences are unfolded further in the following chapters, to which this doctrine of the two Adams is the key.

2. — Justification and Dead to Sin.

The doctrine of justification is developed mainly in the first part of Romans, but extends, in a certain very important application of it, into the sixth chapter, while the latter part of the fifth, which we were last considering, connects it with the doctrine of the two Adams therein given. It is as in Christ we find it, accompanying the new life by which we are made of His race as last Adam: — "justification of life." For this reason a glance back will be here in place.

The truth is developed in this epistle in the order of application to the soul's need. And the first part accordingly begins with that which is its first conscious need, the guilt of sins committed; the second part takes up what is a later discovery and distress, the sin inherent in a fallen nature. The first of these is met by the application of the blood of Christ, justification by His blood. The second is met by the application of the death of Christ: "our old man is crucified with Christ," "he that is dead is justified from sin" (6: 6, 7, marg.).

These are two different applications of the same work of Christ, which avails in all its fullness for every believer. No one can be justified by the blood of Christ who is not at the same time justified by the death of Christ. The blood is already the sign of death having taken place, and only as that could it avail for us. It is only as that that it could put away our sins, so as to give us effectual peace with God at all.

Justification is the act of divine righteousness. It is for this reason that the righteousness of God is so prominent in the first part of Romans, while it is not found at all in the second part. Righteousness is that quality in God which has of necessity to say to sin, and on account of which the soul conscious of its guilt trembles to meet Him. No one, whatever be his guilt, is afraid of God's love; but how great soever that love may be, the awakened conscience at once begins to realize that it is righteousness must have to say to sin. The glory of the gospel is this, that it takes up just this character of God to put it on the side of the believer in Jesus, so as to make it his very boast and confidence. "I am not ashamed of the gospel [the glad tidings]," says the apostle "for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth." And how this power? "For therein" — in these glad tidings to guilty men, — "the righteousness of God is revealed, by faith, to faith" (Rom. 1: 16, 17, Rev. Vers.). It is the revelation of divine righteousness in a gospel to the guilty, faith alone being required to receive the gospel, it is this which is the power of God for the deliverance of souls.

In the third chapter it is more fully made known as divine righteousness declared by the cross "in the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God" (Rom. 3: 25, R.V.), and at this time, "that He might be just and the justifier of him that believeth in Jesus" (Rom. 3: 26). The righteousness of God is that, then, which makes Him righteous in pronouncing righteous the believer in Jesus. This righteousness of God becomes as it were a house of refuge with its door open "unto all," and its protecting roof, impervious to the storm, "over* all them that believe," — over all that have fled to the cross for refuge (v. 22).

{* epi, "over," or "on." There is indeed a question of reading here, and some would leave out "and over all;" but we need not consider this now.}

It is the righteousness of God which repels every charge against the believer in Jesus. His justification is an act of righteousness, for the blood that is before God is the token of the death of his Substitute in his behalf. The penalty of his sins has been endured by Another, who, if "delivered for our offenses," "was raised again for our justification." This is the public sentence of it which declares on God's part His acceptance of the work. The ground is the blood; the sentence is the resurrection of our Surety. This sentence is God coming in to manifest Himself for us on account of the work of Christ accomplished. Faith rests in Him who raised up Jesus our Lord from the dead.

This might seem all that is needed. Assuredly the work of Christ meets every need, and His resurrection is the token of complete acceptance. What is needed is not in fact something more than this, but the fuller bringing out of what is involved in it; that in our Substitute we have therefore passed away as on the footing of the first man, identified with Adam, and are in Christ on the footing of the Second Man, alive in Him to God. For faith, therefore, I am dead to sin; because He died to it, and cannot live in what I am, — though for faith only, — dead to. This approves the holiness of the doctrine, as the seventh and eighth chapters show its tower. It answers the moral question with which the sixth chapter opens.

Let us notice the way the doctrine is unfolded. The objection is started, "If then grace abounds over sin, then the more our sin the more His grace. Shall we then continue in sin, that grace may abound?" To which he answers, "We are dead to sin, how can we live in it?" This is conclusive against the abuse of the doctrine, although it is only for faith that we are dead: for then faith in it must tend to holiness, and not unholiness. The truth is ever according to godliness.

But how then are we dead to sin? He bids them think of what was involved in their baptism. Baptized to Christ Jesus, — again the order of words whose significance we have seen before, — we were baptized to His death.. to have our part in this, according to the ordained testimony of it upon earth. Burial is just putting a dead man into the place of death: "we are therefore buried with Him by baptism into death." Our place in natural life is ended: upon earth we have but our part in the death of Jesus. But He is risen; the glory of the Father necessitated His resurrection from among the dead, and this is to give its character to the new life in which henceforth we are to walk; "for if we have come to be identified * [with Him] in the likeness of His death, we shall be also on the other hand in the likeness of His resurrection." That is, if our baptism — the "likeness of His death" — have real meaning with us, we shall be, in the character of our walk, in the likeness of His resurrection.** One thing will be the result of the other "knowing this, that our old man" — all that we were in that old fleshly life — "is crucified with Him, that the body of sin might be destroyed," — "nullified," rather, "brought practically to nothing," — "that henceforth we should not serve sin."

{*I follow the London New Translation. "United," which the Revised Version gives, does not give the full force. It is literally "grown together" (not "planted") so as to be one. "With Him" is evidently to be understood.

{** Observe the gegonamen, "we have become," in contrast with the edometha, "we shall be," — not "become." But this is only moral "likeness." not the full being "risen with Him" of Ephesians and Colossians.}

The "knowing this" connects with the sentence before, and confirms the meaning of "the likeness of His resurrection" as a present moral result. Our old man received its sentence of shame and condemnation from God, (for this is what the cross means,) where Christ died for us. We know and have accepted its setting aside thus.

But here we must inquire the exact force and meaning of "our old man." Many take it as the expression of the "natural corruption or unholy affections of men," or "the old nature." But Scripture has a different term for the old nature, and for the principle of evil in it. It speaks of the "flesh," and of "sin in the flesh." Between person and nature there is an essential and important difference; and if we are to take the inspired words as a perfect guide, (which we surely are,) "the old man" is person, and not nature. The importance lies in this, that responsibility (because the real activity) belongs to the person, not the nature. It is not nature that acts, although it may give character to the actions; and we as Christians are exhorted not to "walk after the flesh, but after the Spirit:" practically though with an important difference too, which we may by and by consider, — not after the old nature, but after the new. The responsible person is distinguished as such from both natures,* which are together in him.

{*"Nature" (from flatus, "born,") means the character derived from birth; and we are born, and born again. The man of Romans 7: 17, 18, although new born, and able to distinguish himself from "the sin that dwelleth in" him, still must say, in his "flesh dwelleth no good thing."}

So, in full accordance with this, we read of "the flesh with its affections and lusts," and even of "the works of the flesh" (Gal. 5: 24, 19), — i.e., fleshly works; but "doings" (praxeis) are attributed to the "old man" only (Col. 3: 9).

Moreover, the old man is never said to be in the Christian, but always to have been "put off," as in Ephesians 4: 22, Gr., Colossians 3: 9, or as here, "crucified with Christ" (6: 6); while the flesh, on the contrary, (though he is not in it,) is always recognized as in him.*

{*Galatians 5: 24 may be objected to this, where it is said that "they that are Christ's have crucified the flesh with its affections and lusts." But this is not the same thing with Romans 6: 6. There, it is "with Christ," — the effect of His cross: here, it is they that are Christ's have done it, as accepting in heart and mind their place as His.}

The "old man" is not, therefore, "the flesh" — the old nature, but the person identified with the nature. It is myself as I was under the old head, — as a living responsible child of Adam. It is as such the Lord stood for me upon the cross, and dying, ended for me the whole standing and its responsibilities together. He died for me, not for the old man, to restore it, but for me, that as the sinner that I was, I might find, in nature and activities together, my rightful condemnation in the cross, and have my place in Himself before God, and not in Adam. Responsibility as a Christian of course only here begins, but as a child of Adam it is over. My Substitute has died, and death ends the whole condition to which responsibility attaches. Eternal judgment is only for the deeds done in the body; and, my Substitute having died, I have died with Him — have passed out of the whole sphere of accountability in this respect.

We see how well it may be said, "Much more, then, being now justified by His blood, we shall be saved from wrath through Him." Every thought that might raise a question is indeed for the once-justified one completely gone; and, in Christ, we live because He lives.

And what is the consequence of this crucifixion of the old man? It is that "he that is dead is justified from sin." So the Greek, and the Revised Version rightly now. We see how truly it is a question of person and personal standing all through here. Justification is of course that, but it is a justification more complete than in the first part of the epistle. No lust, no sin of thought, no evil passions, belong to a dead man — to a corpse. And this shows in how far we are dead to sin. Nothing of all this can be imputed to one dead with Christ. "Now if we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him." The life now begun is as much involved in and dependent upon His life as the death we have been considering is involved in His death. Changeless, eternal, past the power of death it therefore is: "knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more: death hath no more dominion over Him; for in that He died, He died unto sin once; but in that He liveth, He liveth unto God."

He has died to sin, but what sin? In Him there was none, but on the cross — standing there for us — He had to say to it, and as "made sin for us" died. But thus He has passed away from it forever, to live ever to Him now from whose blessed face, when bearing the burden of it, it had necessarily separated Him. For us He died, and died to sin: this death and this deliverance by death belong to us. But in Him also we live, in the life He lives, a life wholly to God. "Even so reckon yourselves dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus" (v. 11, R.V.).

We are to "reckon" this so, not feel, find, or experience. It is not a matter of feeling. or experience that Christ has died to sin. By faith we know it, and by faith also that He lives to God beyond the power of death. It is a most certain fact; but faith alone can apprehend it; and faith alone can apprehend our death with or our life in Him.

But here let us pause a little to consider some things that have been in dispute of late, and their application to what is before us. Is it condition, or standing, to be in Christ before God? or is it perhaps both together? The doctrine already considered, if it be clearly according to the Word, will enable us, surely, conclusively to settle this.

What is meant by "standing"? Clearly it is the same as position or place,* but in a certain aspect which makes it practically somewhat narrower. The last words are not found in Scripture in the present application, and in the New Testament in any real application to what we call Christian standing, the former possibly three times* Two passages say it is in grace we stand; one speaks of standing "faultless in the presence of His glory." In Romans 5: 1 it is "this grace," referring, not necessarily to what has gone before, but to present known grace — the free and absolute favor of God. Further than this, if we insist on the direct use of the word, Scripture does not carry us.

{*The same verb, histemi, in certain tenses means "to stand," and in certain others, transitively, "to make to stand: to set, or set up, establish, etc."

** Rom 5: 1; 1 Peter 5: 12; Jude 24. In the last case it is in the transitive form, "present," or "make you stand." We must not confound with these such passages as Rom. 11: 20; 1 Cor. 15: 1; 2 Cor. 1: 24; Col. 4: 12, etc., the force of which is really different. The text in Peter is doubtful: many read "stand," not "ye stand."}

But the force of the word is simple, and its legitimate application does not seem hard to reach. As I have said, "standing is position in a certain aspect, namely, in view of its capability of being maintained. Thus it is used often for continuance, as in opposition to falling: "If a kingdom is divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand." — "I continue [or 'stand '] unto this day." "Standing" is used, therefore, of position where there might be question of such continuance; and the question before God being as to the claim of His righteousness being met, and the claim of His righteousness being the demand of His throne, I believe "position before the throne" would fitly express what would be meant by "standing."

It does not follow that this will be negative merely, however, — a mere question of guilt. For the throne of God is surely as much that which appraises righteousness as guilt; nay, it is this which involves the other. Our standing before God is much — how much! — more than as justified from sins or sin; it is "the abundance of the gift of righteousness," — the best robe for the Father's house.

But we do not ordinarily, — and I think, rightly — speak of standing as sons, or as members of the body of Christ. The terms of the throne we do not apply to the family, or to Church-relationship. Standing is what we call a forensic term, and does not convey the whole truth of our position.

Now if we speak of condition, it is simple that this may refer to either a fixed or a variable state. If born again, that is a condition which abides unchangeable, while there are states, as of feeling, etc., which may change in the lapse of a few moments.

In the application of this to what we have before us, what does this speak of? standing, or state, or both — "dead to sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus"?

Now being "dead" is state — the state of one who has died. I have died with Christ to sin, as real a fact as can be; and though He lives, and death has no more dominion over Him, yet as to sin He remains still separated from it by death, to it still and ever dead: and this is my condition too as dead with Him. Though faith alone can realize it, it is a state in which I am unchangeably. So also, and of course, as to being "alive unto God:" that is unmistakably a condition contrasted with the other.

But what is implied in being "dead to sin"? The apostle answers, "Being justified from it." "Our old man is crucified with Christ." It is I myself as one standing on the old ground, — myself as identified with the old nature and its fruits alike — who have come to an end, and come to an end in deserved judgment: crucified; yes, and crucified with Christ. It is Christ who has stood for me, died for me: the old standing is gone. In this "dead to sin," condition and standing are inseparably united.

What then about the other side? If the old condition and standing are removed together, what replaces these? A new condition — "alive unto God; inseparably connected with a new standing — "in Christ Jesus." This, and this alone, is the complete answer. I have before remarked upon the order of the words. "In Christ," in contrast with "in Adam," speak of a new Head of a new race, who is at the same time the Representative of it, as Adam of his. "In Adam" we die: "in Christ we live," — our life bound up with His life: "Because I live, ye shall live also." — "If we be dead with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him." This life is already begun: by faith we know, and reckon it so. We are "dead indeed unto sin, and alive unto God in Christ Jesus."

This gives us the new standing, and the positive righteousness which is ours before God. As Head. of His race, He stands before God in the perfection of the work He has accomplished, in the value of that matchless obedience, raised from the dead by the glory of the Father. "Of Him are ye in Christ Jesus, who is made unto us wisdom from God, — even righteousness." This is not merely guilt removed; it is the best robe in the Father's house.

3. — "In the flesh and "in the Spirit."

The doctrine of Rom. 7: 1-6, which is the key to all that follows, is that of the fourth verse — that "ye are become dead to the law by the body of Christ, that ye should belong to another, even to Him who is raised from the dead, that we should bring forth fruit to God." It is the same doctrine of our being dead with Christ, dead in His death, but differently applied.

First of all, as a fundamental necessity for holiness, the spirit of lawlessness is met by the doctrine that we are dead to sin. Here, as a step further in the same direction, the spirit of legality is met by the doctrine that we are dead to the law. In either case it is holiness — fruit-bearing — that is in question; not justification from sins, and peace with God, which the former part of the epistle has already answered. Here, it is "that we may bring forth fruit," "that we may serve in newness of spirit."

The sixth chapter deals with the objections of unbelief, whether outside or inside the profession of Christianity. The seventh chapter deals with the objections of earnest but self-occupied hearts, ignorant of God's way of liberty and power. The objections in the one case are of those who have no experience, as we may say; the objections in the other are drawn from experience, but yet unenlightened by the Word. In the one case, the apostle can appeal to the experience of men who had found no fruit in things of which now they were ashamed (Rom. 6: 21); in the other, he appeals from experience to the truth of the place which God had given them, and which faith, and only faith, could receive.

We are not now to look at the whole argument, (for argument it is,) but at two pregnant expressions, which must be understood, rightly to apprehend it. "For, when we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death." "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of Christ dwell in you; now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His."

What is it, then, to be in the flesh, and what to be in the Spirit, — these two evidently contrasted and mutually exclusive conditions? In the one, (if Christ's,) we are not; in the other we are. In the one, we "cannot please God;" in the other, if we live, we have yet to walk in order to please Him (Gal. 5: 25).

Turning to the doctrine of the seventh chapter, it would seem the simplest thing possible to define what is meant by being "in the flesh." To be in the flesh is to be just a living man. We have it twice applied in the natural sense — Gal. 2: 20, Phil. 1: 22. Here in Romans it is the condition of one who has not died with Christ. It is as "dead . . . . . . by the body of Christ" that the apostle can say with all Christians, "When we were in the flesh" (Rom. 7: 4, 5).

Condition and standing, as we have seen, are here inseparable. Condition is, in the context of the passages before us, the thing most dwelt upon; but it is the condition of one in the standing, and of no other. "When we were in the flesh, the motions of sins, which were by the law, did work in our members to bring forth fruit unto death." This is what we find in the sixth chapter: "What fruit had ye then in those things whereof ye are now ashamed? for the end of those things is death. But now, being freed from sin, and made servants to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end everlasting life." The man in the flesh is one on the road to death.

Again in the eighth chapter: "For they that are after the flesh do mind the things of the flesh, and they that are after the Spirit the things of the Spirit; for the mind of the flesh is death, but the mind of the Spirit is life and peace. For the mind of the flesh is enmity against God, for it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be: so then they that are in the flesh cannot please God." (Rom. 8: 5-8.)

They that are in the flesh are thus in a state of spiritual death, going on to eternal death. They are "after the flesh" — characterized by and identified with it. They are mere natural men: flesh, as born of flesh.

Here, then, was no fruit, while we were in this condition. The law is what applies to it, but is no remedy for it. "The law was not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and unruly, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane" (1 Tim. 1: 9, R.V.). Moreover, "the law is not of faith faith is not its principle (Gal. 3: 12); and "as many as are of the works of the law are under the curse" (Gal. 5: 10). To be "under the law" and "under grace" are things exclusive of one another (Rom. 6: 14).

It is true that God had once a people under law, for His own purposes of unfailing wisdom. As the "ministration of death" and "of condemnation" (2 Cor. 3: 7, 9), it was a "schoolmaster" under which in Israel even saints were "kept, shut up unto the faith which should afterward be revealed" (Gal. 3: 23, 24). The wholesome lessons of man's natural helplessness and hopelessness were taught by it, God saving of course all the time by a grace which He could not yet declare openly. But to believers it was necessarily bondage, "added" only "till the Seed should come to whom the promise was made," and when "faith came," as God's openly acknowledged principle, they were "no longer under the schoolmaster" (Gal. 5: 19, 25). We are henceforth disciples of Christ and not of the law, although we have the good of the tutorship under which others were of old.

For the child of God, from the first moment of his being that, "faith" and "grace," — the opposites of law, — are God's linked principles of unfailing blessing. The ministry of the new covenant is the "ministration of life" and "of righteousness" (2 Cor. 3: 6, 9). "The gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord," — a new standing and a new condition. The power of His death attaches to the gift of His life, and he who lives in Him has died with Him. This is death to sin and to law* alike.

{*It may be urged that God never put the Gentile under law at all . and this is true. The apostle addresses himself especially to Jewish converts. Yet the practical freedom is the same for all. And the Gentile needs the apprehension as well as the Jew, as we are witness to ourselves.}

The law was in Israel, then, that to which man was linked, a link from which fruit was looked for, nay, demanded. In fact, only "passions of sins" were "by the law" (v. 5), the full account of which the apostle gives afterward (vv. 7-13). The law is not merely the ministration of condemnation; it is also "the strength of sin" (1 Cor. 15: 56). "Sin shall not not have dominion over you, because ye are not under the law, but under grace" (Rom. 6: 14).

Death to the law is therefore absolutely necessary for fruitfulness. The death of Christ is the believer's effectual divorce, that he may be free to be linked with Christ raised up from the dead, that thus there may be fruit.

But here, the doctrine goes beyond that of the sixth chapter. For the figure is that of marriage, — of union; and a, divorce from the law must have come first in order that we may be united to Christ. We cannot be disunited by what unites us to another. It is not, therefore, by life in Christ that we are united to Christ, nor is this what could be figured by marriage. For this, we must go on to what really unites Christians to their Lord, — the gift of the Spirit. It is the contrast of Rom. 8: 9 to which this brings us. "In the flesh," the link is with law; the fruit, the passions of sins; the end, death. "In the Spirit," we are linked with Christ, the fruit is holiness, the end everlasting life. "If ye through the Spirit mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall live."

I pass over the experience of the seventh chapter entirely now to consider the statement of chap. 8: 9, "But ye are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you;" to which is emphatically added, "Now if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His."

It seems unaccountable how any one, except by some preoccupation of the mind, should see in this the statement that we only cease to be in the flesh by the indwelling of the Spirit. To take the figure already used by the apostle: one alive in the flesh is married to the law; if by the Spirit he is now married to Christ, — does he die to the law by the new marriage? must he not be dead to the law to be free for the new marriage? Surely it is as clear as noonday that a new marriage cannot dissolve an old one, but that the old, as long as it existed, would forbid the new!

On the other hand, what more simple than to argue that if you are in the new bond (the Spirit), you are not in the old one (the flesh), without at all implying that the new bond had destroyed the old? It only shows, and that conclusively, that the old does not exist.

The "old man" — what for a Christian is now such — is a man in the flesh, as the sixth chapter has already shown us. He is the man "corrupt according to the deceitful lusts," and "they that are in the flesh cannot please God." Is it in such the Spirit comes to d well? They may think so who suppose the indwelling of the Spirit to be only tantamount to being born again; but Scripture is of course clear that it is "having believed, ye were sealed with that Holy Spirit of promise" (Eph. 1: 13, R. V .), the very form of expression showing that it is that which began at Pentecost (Acts 1: 4, 5) that is referred to, and not the common possession of believers of all time.

God's order is, first, new birth, then sealing; first, the preparing of the house, and then dwelling in the house prepared; not simply a new life for us, but a divine Person dwelling in us: and this is the testimony to the perfection of the work now accomplished for us, for God's seal can only be set on perfection. Having believed, we have already seen that we are in the value of Christ's work before God, sin and flesh completely gone from before Him, ourselves dead to sin, alive to God in Christ. It is here the Spirit of God can seal us, and unite us to Christ as His. And where one is found upon whom the value of that work is, there is but one thing for which He waits, and that is the acknowledgment of Christ as Lord and Saviour, before He takes possession of His dwelling-place, and unites that soul to Christ on high.

Hence, among those owning Christ it can be said, "If any one have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of His." The seal of the Spirit is Christ's mark upon His own; therefore among those professing to be His, if the mark is not, it is a false profession.

Thus there is no thought in the New Testament of a class of believers in Christ who have not, — or may not have, — the Holy Ghost. It is in vain to seek elsewhere for a class of persons the existence of which the apostle here denies. To the Corinthians he writes in the most general way, so as to include all bowing really to the name of Jesus," To the Church of God which is at Corinth, to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called saints, with all that in every place call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord, both theirs and ours." And what does he ask of all these? "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" (1 Cor. 1: 2; 1 Cor. 6: 19.) Surely, this is the prescience of the divine Word, to settle all controversy. Who will say, in face of this, that one who in heart calls on the name of Jesus Christ his Lord has not the Holy Ghost?

But then Romans 8: 9 becomes simplicity itself, and the many questions raised receive their absolute settlement. Our eyes have not to roam over Christendom, lamenting that in so few of Christ's people the work of God is no more than half accomplished. That there is so little manifestation we may still lament, as even at Corinth the apostle could, and we may urge upon men still, with the apostle to the Galatians, "If we live in the Spirit, let us also walk in the Spirit" (v. 25), for these still are different things.

Does it make less of the gift that it is so little realized? or would it be more honoring to God to suppose that He has not bestowed it, where there is so little manifestation of it? Surely, surely, it is no such thing. Let the grace, and the responsibility of the grace, be pressed upon Christians; for it is faith that works for God, not doubt. Oh for a voice of power to cry in the ears of slumberers, "Know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?" Ye belong to Christ — ye are Christ's, and the seal of God is upon you. Lord, wake up Thy beloved people to the apprehension of Thy marvelous gift!

Re-tracings of Truth

Re-tracings of Truth: in view of questions which have been lately raised.

(Note: This article would seem to have been written after 'American Bible Readings' in 1898.)

1. The Present Outlook According to Scripture.

In looking out upon the features of our own times, and even in proportion to our personal interest in them, we are apt to project our own personalities upon them. That a sanguine person will take a hopeful view, where a desponding one will only see gloom and shadow, no one needs to be informed. But every idiosyncrasy, whatever it may be, is quite apt to make its mark upon the canvas of the picture. Hence the taking of one in a manner perfectly trustworthy is a thing as rare as it is desirable. How thankful should we be, therefore, for the briefest testimony of Scripture as to the character of the times through which we are passing, when it is the pathway for our feet that is in question, and our responsibility to God presses upon us at each step we take!

Such guidance we have, through the tender mercy of our Great Shepherd, in the seven epistles of the book of Revelation; every one traced by His own hand, and our attention called to every address, as in no other part of the word of God: he that hath an ear being bidden to hear what the Spirit saith unto the churches! We are not going to dwell upon this now: the application has been long familiar to those for whom I am specially writing; but I would nevertheless press upon my readers the main points of that to Philadelphia, which (to myself at least) seems ever of more commanding interest as the time goes on, and the features of the last days develop themselves before our eyes.

There can scarcely be much difficulty in discerning what Philadelphia stands for. If the "woman Jezebel" makes popery absolutely plain in Thyatira, Sardis, having a name to live, though dead, yet with a remnant undefiled, marks out as clearly the state-churches of the Reformation. Philadelphia, following this, with its "brotherly love," as simply speaks of the movement to find and to separate the true Church out of this world-mass. Such has been more or less the character of many "revivals" since the Reformation, when there was sought a true "communion of saints" and subjection to the word of Christ, rather than the state-upheld creed. Laodicea nevertheless closes the series here; a picture, alas, less and less hard to be read at present, of a church made more and more popular to please the masses, and lukewarm as to the Christ outside. But we have to do now with Philadelphia.

Here, if "brotherly love" characterizes the assembly, that which the Lord specially commends is classed under three heads: first, that they keep Christ's word; secondly, they have not denied His name; thirdly, they have kept the word of His patience. Their danger is that, having but "a little strength," they may not hold fast that which they have; the overcoming will, therefore, be in holding fast.

Of necessity the stream will be against them: that is no more than is implied in every phase in which men are found cleaving to God. The world is against God; and, the world having come into the church, the stream here is against God also. Where shall we find a haven of rest outside of it all? Not in any earthly refuge anywhere. Philadelphia is no place of rest, but the centre of a battle-field; and the cry of "overcome" is found here as elsewhere. Our rest is only in the glorious Leader, who covers our head in the day of battle, and in the power of the Holy Spirit who can make something out of things that are not, and out of weakness make us strong. Our trust cannot be in the attainment of an ecclesiastical position, though a right one, — in principles of truth, although divine; through all this the enemy made his way at the beginning, when things were almost in their first freshness; no! we need tireless energy to resist fresh inroads; never more likely to be successful than when we are beginning to believe that the battle is over, and that our victories are to be now only in the quiet harvest-field, — in the ingathering of souls from the seed sown by the evangelist, or the recovery of the people of God themselves out of the superstition and error that have inwrapped them. Then indeed it may be that, while we are congratulating ourselves that we are leaders of the blind, lights of those who sit in darkness, instructors of the foolish, teachers of babes, the pit of darkness may be opening at our feet, to ingulf us all.

A terrible thing it is, in fact, to think of that actual chasm which swallowed up the church of the apostles' days — the church of Peter and John and Paul and left only as the successor of this the legal, hierarchical, ritualistic church of the so-called "fathers," of which one well-known to us has said, "It is quite certain that neither a full redemption, nor, though the words be used once or twice, a complete possessed justification by faith, as Paul teaches it, a perfecting for ever by its one offering, a known personal acceptance in Christ, is ever found in any ecclesiastical writings after the canonical scriptures, for long centuries." In what, then, were they inferior to us, those men to whom apostles and prophets preached, — what have we that they had not, which is to assure us that we are not in danger of making such shipwreck of the faith as it is certain they did? What but the most foolish self-confidence could say, with such a warning before our eyes, that we were in none?

Nor can we seriously consider the epistle to Philadelphia in connection with the character of the present times, without realizing that Satan's batteries today are turned upon the very central points of Philadelphian position; and that we are contemplating the beginning of an apostasy from the Christian faith which will be more complete than any which have preceded it? What is the so-called "higher criticism," spite of its lamb-like speech where the flock of Christ perchance may be alarmed, but the most thorough attack that can be imagined upon the Word of Christ? He Himself was hardly beyond His times in matters of criticism; and grounded His triumphant argument against the scribes as to David's Son being David's Lord upon a mere mistake as to the authorship of the hundred and tenth psalm! But, in fact, who knows if the evangelists have rightly reported Him? or who knows anything that the critics may please to question? Judgment is removed from the power of the common man: we have no more our Bibles with the appeal to every man's heart and conscience; you must have trained specialists to settle the facts! and what they will leave you after they have completed their dissections is but the fragments of a corpse without voice or life!

Look again at the denial of Christ's Name! Was there ever a day in which heresies affecting His Person or work more abounded? or the tendency to leave out any particular demand for orthodoxy as to either, so long as people accept Him as their Leader in some way not to be too severely criticized. If you should have mistaken the Son of the Father for a mere servant of the Father's house, eternity will make that right, of course, and it is hoped that the mistake will not prove very serious! After all, the Fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man are the broad lines upon which religions are to be reconstructed today; and we need not fear but that they will be found to run on into eternity.

This, it will be said, is outside the sphere of Philadelphia; but it is what infects the air which day by day we breathe, and Satan is the "prince of the power of it." There are plenty of modifications of such principles to ensnare those for whom the full poisonous dose would be too large; and what is even more to be noted is that there are apt to be contradictories and opposites of them, born, indeed, of reaction, which by this opposition may deceive the earnest-hearted. For the serpent's lie is scarcely ever the mere negative of truth; and he is apt himself to have an alternative to it, planned directly to catch the opposers. And he who goes by the safe-seeming rule of steering as far as possible from Scylla may find the enemy's Charybdis lying before him on the other side. With God is perfect guidance; but even with the word of God before our eyes, how far from it may we swerve through the self-will to which we are so prone!

I have no desire to conceal the thought that prompts me in writing the present series of papers, which is to examine in the light of Scripture principles and doctrines which are being put forth at the present time among those who, I believe, have truly filled a position answering to what the Spirit of God has characterized as Philadelphian, and which are but the enemy's wile to seduce them from it. Nay, I fear, in the wide-spread acceptance which they are certainly gaining, the loss of that precious deposit of truth which the grace of God had committed to their trust. This is, to me, much more than any ecclesiastical position, however true, which owes its value so largely to the truth to which it witnesses. I therefore desire to take up, with whatever ability the Lord may give, the main points that are in question; in which I shall be in large measure but retracing the outline of truths once familiar, once how precious! — only necessarily to put them in connection and comparison with what is now presented for truth, and not without the hope of some fresh light being elicited by the discussion; which is what God would surely overrule all our differences for. We shall try to look at the moral bearing of things; as indeed the one who is very much the cause of the present inquiry rightly presses: without this they cannot get their just value for our souls; and this is what, speaking for myself once more, I can say I desire. Oh that the value of God's truth may be more realized by us all! It is inestimable, as that which alone can form in us the mind of Christ; and as this, one cannot help contending for it, though it is no wonder if one's motives should be challenged, and one should be treated as a mere "accuser of the brethren." Protestations are of no avail in such a case; specially as those who charge this are not those most likely to seek to satisfy themselves if there may be a cause. One may be well content if there be some who go far enough with me to discern its gravity.

I do not propose, however, to try and establish any specific charges, or make any quotations from any one with regard to what we shall consider. I prefer to leave every one to make for himself the personal application, and thus to eliminate as far as possible the distressing personal element. Let the inquiry be strictly a scriptural one; though it must be along lines which are marked out by what has called forth these papers. Then, if after all one is only fighting a nightmare of the imagination, we shall still not have made, I trust, a wholly useless survey of some important truths. If, on the other hand, it should be found that there is some serious question raised with regard to views that are really current and finding acceptance with many at the present time, then let my readers, without regard to persons, take it into the court of their own conscience, with God alone as the Judge of all, and argue it out there, with all that could distract them put aside. Truth carries its own authority with it for the true; although that in no wise means the setting aside of needed exercise, and the absolute subjection of one's mind to Scripture where Scripture has plainly spoken. And indeed we have little truth, of any spiritual importance, outside of that which Scripture has given to us. We shall by the course pursued be as far as possible delivered from the collision of opinion as to what Mr — has said, or what he means by what he has said, and fasten our minds upon the one question of any prime importance, "What saith the Lord?"

There is, however, one question with which I shall now conclude. Looking again at the epistle to Philadelphia, and referring to the first two points in the commendation there, they are plainly these: "Thou hast kept My word, and not denied My Name." Serious, then indeed, would be the issue which raised question as to both of these! If there were admittedly a question as to the Person of the Lord plainly raised, and permitted to go at least without any public settlement of it; the thing dropped, perhaps, yet the offending expressions never withdrawn! not justified; not condemned; not retracted! And again, if Scripture, while formally admitted to be the written and authoritative word of God, yet were always in practice distinguished from the "word of God, living and powerful," as that which does not exactly teach, and which, but for the failure of the Church, would never have been needed!

If these two things should demonstrably come together, what more would be needed to show the extreme gravity of the questions to be raised?

2. What is the Value of the Written Word.

Things must have come to a pass indeed, when with Christians such as those for whom I am writing, one has to dwell upon still more, defend — the value of the written Word. That which has been to us all the revelation of all the truth which we possess (and it is by the truth we are sanctified); that which alone brings into communion with the mind of God; that which, as inspired of God — "God-breathed" — furnishes the man of God to all good works; — how needless, how unutterably foolish it must appear, to tell any one who owes his all to it, the value of the written word of God!

Is this what those are thinking who, to one's utter astonishment today are letting pass without word of audible comment (that has had power, at least, to come across the breadth of the Atlantic) statements that would seem as if they should rouse to indignation impossible to be repressed every soul divinely taught as to what Scripture is? There is only one way besides in which this silence is comprehensible to me. Perhaps by some strange obliquity of mind words have lost for me their proper meaning, and I have failed to understand what I have had before me. If it be so, still let me state this figment of my imagination, and meet it as if it were a reality. How good it would be to get a strong knock-down reply from some one somewhere, to dispel for ever this delusion of mine, and assure me that I was dreaming! Why does not some one in pity to me, who, I think, have no evil intent, but a real longing over souls who seem drifting away from truth whither they know not, prick this bubble for me, and give relief to more than myself from as uncomfortable a nightmare of the imagination (if it be that) as for long has visited them?

The delusion which I am combating (whether mine or that of others) begins with fair speeches about Scripture (always written characteristically with a small "s") as being authoritative and the written word of God. It blurs this, however, immediately by saying, it is more the record of it than the thing itself. I suppose every higher critic of the decent kind would say as much. It warns us, for all that (as I have never known the decent critic do), enforcing this too by personal example, that one can study it too much, and that a Bible student is not much after all; which means, of course, that the study of the Bible does not count for much. In fact, we are told, the method of learning truth by Scripture was not God's original plan at all: if the Church of God had remained in its first estate, we would not have wanted the Scriptures. The mind of God which is in the Scriptures would have been livingly expressed in the Church without them; and that was the divine idea! A very important thought, as some one remarks, if true; and very important, of course, to know if it be true: for by it the whole Old Testament is practically discounted and set aside for us.

But how, then, without the Word, was the Church to become the "living expression" of the mind of God? Here a leaf is taken from an old book which is not Scripture, but which many will recognize. The truth is in the Church. The apostles had it and communicated it; Paul to Timothy; Timothy to faithful men, who were to teach others. Here are four generations: Paul; Timothy; faithful men; others: that is the way the truth was to be transmitted. It is the way which the church of Rome hold today; and the technical name for it is "Tradition."

But it failed! Yes; somehow it failed. Rome may be excusable here in believing that God's plan could not fail; but it could and did. Have you not observed that it is in the second epistle to Timothy, not the first, that Paul speaks of the Scriptures in that well-known eulogy? That was when failure had fully set in; and then it was that the Scriptures came to be so important!

But at any rate, one would say, the method of teaching by Scripture is that by which we come into the truth today; and all that one can say of it in this respect today is fully justified! Ah, but we must not seize that comfort yet, or all that has been said just now must go for little. No, the old method has not been given up like that. The Church is still the method as before; only supplemented by Scripture because of the failure that has come in. It is a kind of humiliation to have to send the Bible to the heathen, and it is no good sending Bibles, if there are not preachers. People do not learn exactly from Scripture, but from the Spirit of truth; and if you say, "Granted that it is always by the Spirit of truth that any true work is done in the soul at all, but do you say that God will not use the Bible to a man's soul without a preacher?" well, it is difficult to put it that way, because God is sovereign; in a day of decay and ruin, He may speak through an ass's mouth; but how shall they hear without a preacher? The divine way, undoubtedly, is preaching.

All as glibly said, as unquestioningly taken, even to the gross irreverence of putting the words of God alongside of the miracle of a speaking ass! Is it then a mistake of the apostle that they are "able to make wise unto salvation?" Well, that is asked and answered, if any one is wise enough to interpret the answer: that "the man of God wants to be furnished with the Scriptures because of their disciplinary value"! — the relevancy of which I confess I do not understand; nor do I think that the apostle's words need any explanation. Why should we not inscribe them in every Bible sent to the heathen as an all-sufficient justification?

But how then with regard to the truth as ministered to the believer? Well, in general, in the early days, we are told that they had to take things on trust. The Old Testament did not give the truth of Christianity; and the New Testament was not written till the Church's decline, of course; otherwise, the whole system taught here would be subverted. The safeguard people had is said to be (what again is somewhat difficult to understand) that "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets; words which are certainly found in Scripture, though scarcely in that connection. However, now that failure is come in, and Scripture as the resource in view of it, it is of the utmost importance to prove all things. Here the Bereans are commended to us as a model for imitation; somewhat in forgetfulness that this example comes to us from before the failure of the Church, and when it is supposed that another method was in order; yet it seems that they had Scriptures in their hands which they searched to some purpose. Only it is assured us that what they heard they first received; and only searched the Scriptures to get confirmation! A severe critic might say, perhaps, to see what mistakes they might have made in receiving it! Our day is an evil day; and God has given us the Scripture that we may have a standard of truth. Scripture is the limit; and though you don't exactly learn from Scripture (and indeed it is legality to want chapter and verse for doctrine) yet the more familiar people are with it the better: because a man's mind is thus continually pulled up in its tendency to go beyond the limit!

Thus for the outside world Scripture is not to be reckoned on for the conversion of souls. God may use it for that, because He is sovereign, and might be pleased to use the speech of an ass; while for the flock of Christ it is as it were a tether, to prevent their natural tendency to stray! You are right to search it for confirmation of what you hear; only you are to receive this first, and search afterwards. Even then remembering that it is legal to want chapter and verse for doctrines, and that it is possible to study the authority too much!

It would be perfectly natural to say that that must be a caricature of anybody's teaching. My comfort is that, at least, those who think so cannot have received it themselves. If they can find no one who has, or who knows of its existence, that would only show to me how few take in what they read; perhaps even while they applaud it. However, let us make it an occasion for examining what is the use and value of the written Word.

Only think of it as that written word of God! a word prepared for us as the outcome of past ages which have contributed, age after age, their quota to the full result; the whole, in every line and word of it, "God-breathed," — the quickening breath of the Spirit in it! — from the heart of God to the heart of man! The more we look into it, the more in faith we credit it with a divine message and meaning, the more it responds and opens, the more it draws and wins us to itself. Had I my life to live over again, I would study it more, not less, drink it in, live in it, have it my meditation all the day long. Where else shall I find the Voice of Him who seeks me for Himself? Can any one tell me where? Fancy one telling me that the use of Scripture is in its being a "limit" to my poor human thoughts; when it is that which, as far as may be, leads me out into the limitless, into the "deep things of God"! Here are the things that the Spirit searches — the Spirit, wonderful to say, in me! — and which, having set before me the infinite, leads me into the measureless delight of exploring my inheritance! How many people, handing down to me with flawless accuracy, the traditional truth, could replace for me the scriptures of prophets and apostles which God has put into my hands, with their tale which they are never weary of telling, — which I can read and re-read, carry into my room, set down before me, pray over and look again, — listen to in the quiet of His Presence who is in them and with them, till the music of their chime begins in my soul, soothing, quickening, harmonizing, subduing all my nature to them! If I owe my possession of them to the failure of the Church, then blessed is that failure which, under God, has secured me so priceless a result. I speak soberly and deliberately while I say, that not the presence of the whole of the apostles with the Church today could replace for us the loss of Scripture. Could they all together give us one truth more than God has seen good to give us in it? Did they communicate, in fact, one truth besides, which we have lost? More than that, is it certain that they even knew all that was in their own communications? still more, can we believe that they knew all that all other inspired writers had communicated from the beginning? Have we one shred of truth, or of interpretation of Scripture even, which has come down to us by this so much lauded tradition, that any one can show us, much less show us value in today? What can we glean from apostolic "fathers"? Has not God been pleased to make a clean, broad mark of absolute limitation between Scripture and all else that went before or followed it, so that it should shine out to us in its own peerless character today? What has God given us through all the centuries since, which is more than a development from it, — a bit of the treasure from this exhaustless treasure-house?

I do not expect, then, with whatever amount of prayer or meditation, to obtain from my poor thoughts, which have indeed to be kept in order so, one thing which directly or indirectly has not come to me from the Word. Nor can I think of anything higher for myself or any other, than to be an expositor of this glorious Word. Tell me, then how I can study it too much? You need not tell me that I can pray too little: Alas, I know that well.

I suppose, we have nothing to assure us how early in Christian times the Gospel of Matthew may have been written. It is pre-eminently, as all are aware, the Jewish Gospel; as the church in Jerusalem was for some time a Jewish remnant, and little more. Luke shows us at the end of his Gospel what special pains the Risen Saviour took to ground His disciples from the beginning in the Old Testament, and its relation to the New. Here their feet always stood firm; and the example of the Bereans a good while afterwards makes plain to what good use it could be put by those who had not had the advantage of such instruction. When they had thus assured conviction as to the trustworthiness of those through whom they had received the knowledge of the Saviour, and the pledge and witness of the Holy Spirit, there was of course abundant warrant for their reception through a channel so certified, of those additional communications which God was pleased to give. But notice here that the very slowness with which we know such communications came, gave the fullest opportunity to incorporate them one by one with all that they had known before; the scattering of the truth abroad being itself gradual, so as to carry better together the whole body of disciples. The more we reflect upon all this, the more we shall realize how fully from the beginning of Christianity the Lord grounded His people upon the written Word; and that this was no after-plan when the Church had fallen. Such thoughts may catch those who do not study Scripture too much; and alas, there are plenty of them. They are the mere vagaries of a dreaming mind, to which the word of God is not even a "limit."

We have no need to undervalue the preacher, because of the efficacy of the Word. I would emphasize it more, indeed, than all this system does. Instead of saying for instance, that God does not use us instrumentally as effecting anything, Scripture assures us that men can "so speak" that others shall believe (Acts 14: 1). It makes the character of the speaking effective in the production of the result. But there is another reason for "how shall they hear without a preacher?" without dishonoring Scripture to furnish one; and that is serious and sad enough. It is that men, alas, have to be pursued by the grace that seeks them and the living voice of the preacher is the most effectual means in this way. Wisdom has to cry aloud, and utter her voice in the corners of the streets. "Go out into the highways and the hedges, and compel them to come in!" Scripture had always been, while necessarily safeguarded by the barrier-wall thrown around Israel, yet placed in the very centre of the chief civilizations of the old world, and on the highways of commerce. Had men desired the treasures of it, they were readily accessible, and there was no prohibition of their acquirement; but they manifested no desire. And in the midst of Christendom today, with the completed Word in our hands, what would we do without that publication of it in various ways, by which it is forced upon the notice of the unwilling-hearted? That does not in the least affect the power existing in the Scriptures to make men wise unto salvation which they assuredly have — a power which is being proved continually.

We have spoken, perhaps, enough of the Bereans, and their readiness to receive the word preached to them. No doubt that there is in the truth always an inherent acceptability to an earnest mind. But the belief of it is distinctly put here after that searching of the Scriptures which they are praised for, not before it. Think of the consequences of a principle such as is advocated, of receiving first, before proving! when the proving will surely follow with a laggard and indifferent step; and during the delay how many falsehoods may spring out of one error received, which may not be destroyed, even when they have lost their attachment to the root from which they sprang! How would such a principle account for the rapid and wide spread of a movement like that which we are now contemplating, in which the captivating brilliancy of many new ideas may with the ready aid of the emotions sweep the traveller off his feet too far away for any present recovery. A voyage of exploration always has its charm; and to be told that you need not know whither you are going, but may give yourself up to the guidance of one who seems so impressively confident of his ability to carry you safely, is a luxury in itself. Certainly you make progress: everything moves. By and by you can take your bearings and see where you have arrived. You can return by the way you have come, if in the end you are not satisfied. But have you gauged then the strength of the stream that is bearing you on it?

3. Letter and Spirit.

We have not yet done, however, with doctrines which affect Scripture; and I place these first, because the character of all the teaching may be rightly judged by them. If that which is the standard of truth be taken from us, — if it be obscured even, or made less available to the common mass of Christians, it is plain that this will have disastrous effect upon every truth drawn from it, or to be compared with it. Rome herself makes great parade of late of her reverence for the word of God. She will exalt it as much as you please, — and the more she does the more gain will it be to her, — if only you will let her interpret it for you. It is the interpretation that is the great point and if a system of interpretation is adopted which takes this out of the reach of the simple man, then you have set up an esoteric teaching which is not subject to Scripture, however much you may accredit those who receive it (as it is quite easy to do) with a higher spirituality which enables them to do so. No doubt spirituality is of all importance in the things of God; but it is not this which will refuse to submit to the plain word of Scripture: "If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them" (Isa. 8: 20).

Now the system before us, as represented in its chief exponent, avowedly sets aside the letter of Scripture, in the interests of what it is pleased to consider the "spirit" of it. Scripture, has been put alongside of a supposed faulty hymn, to say — "I do not read those hymns in the letter; I do not read Scripture in the letter: I try to get the spirit of the hymn, and I do." The self-complacence of the last two words is characteristic. Are we not left to infer that as with the hymns, so with Scripture, he not only seeks to get the spirit of Scripture, but he does? Most people would have left others to say that of them. Whatever conviction they might have as to their success in such a matter, they would not expect to move others by their own conviction — at least those of the class that it would be worth while to convince: "let another man praise thee, and not thine own mouth" (Prov. 27: 2) is a rule which has long been commended to us as a maxim of wisdom.

But the important point is, that we are not, as it seems, to read Scripture in the letter. It would be gratifying to know whether this is what the Book itself teaches, and how it teaches it. The thought is not altogether a new one; others have equally proclaimed their belief in Scripture as "read by the illumination of that Spirit of Christ which dwelleth in us," as contrasted with "the letter that killeth."* But one can hardly think of the one from whom I before quoted as meaning to refer us to a text which gives the contrast between the old covenant and the new, and this last even as ministered by grace to us in the present gospel. It could not be said indeed rightly of the new covenant in any wise that the letter killed, although as Gentiles we should not come under it. Those who do come under it will certainly not be killed, even by the letter of it. The spirit is the spirit of the letter and that is the sweetest grace.

{* Canon Farrar.}

In Romans again (Rom. 7: 6), "the oldness of the letter," in which as Christians we are not to serve, is that legal bondage which the old covenant implies, and has nothing to do with Scripture as such. For the Christian in the liberty to which God has called him, the very letter of the law as such remains, not only without injury, but with plenty of profit in it. There is absolutely no scripture which so much as suggests that the letter of God's blessed word is something to be put aside, even in favor of the spirit which resides in it. If I want to be in communion with the spirit of a man, I do not kill his body for that purpose; and grotesque as such a comparison may seem to be, it is a joy to me to believe that God's word is as it were a living organism, in which even far beyond what we find in man (as man is now) the spirit residing is expressed in every part; so that every jot and tittle has importance from it, and must be preserved, for the spirit to be in any proper manner realized.

I own, therefore, with gladness and thankfulness of heart, that I do read Scripture in the letter — that is, in the very form and expression which God has been pleased to give it — and that more and more. Can I give it a form more suited? To convey to another what I find in it I may use other terms, and find them useful, to break through that crust with which a mere external familiarity often encrusts them: — all well; yet shall I find that not only will the same crust form over these new inventions, so that to those familiar with them in the same external way they shall become still a lifeless verbiage, but also that, after all, the words by which I have expressed what I have found will in the end be proved too narrow to contain the fulness of the divine meaning, if happily they may not be proved in some way inaccurate and really misleading. I do not deny at all the very great usefulness, therefore, of other phraseology than that of Scripture, for the explanation of Scripture; while yet I am sure that for the rectification of all our phrases, and also that Scripture may not be narrowed into the littleness of human conceptions, we must go back, and ever back, to refresh and purify and enlarge our thoughts by the very words — the only adequate, the divine words of the peerless Book which infinite grace has given us.

Distill the blessed words in your alembic and give me the result: to justify it, you must show both the material and the method. But to show me that what you have got is the full equivalent of all the material is still another matter; when your material is scripture, a very difficult thing indeed. But at least you must justify all that you speak of as the spirit by the letter, which is the only thing to begin with which we have. The Spirit within us does not give any new revelation, but "searches the deep things of God" which are contained in what has been already given. The spirit of Scripture is that contained in the letter: it is the spirit of the letter; I read it in the letter to get the spirit of it. The letter has the spirit in it, and more than all that we may please to call the spirit. How important to remember, when you contrast, as in this case, the letter and the spirit, that the letter is of God, the spirit is that in which you have to fear the intrusion of an element which is not of Him!

The principle which we have had asserted is, undoubtedly, one of contrast: "I do not read Scripture in the letter;" but, if that which has been stated is the truth, then there is as to practical apprehension, in this case, no such contrast. The letter is but the wisest possible expression of that which you may express otherwise sometimes with benefit, no doubt, but yet in a way which is still in reality something less wise than the old one. How unsafe then would it be to say, "I do not read Scripture in the way it is written, but according to what I take to be the meaning of it"! Would it not assume, in fact, that wisdom was in my poor words, beyond that of those who wrote, "not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Spirit teacheth?" (1 Cor. 2: 13). Where can you show me the spirit of Scripture in words which have the sanction that such words have? After all, will it not be your letter in contrast with the actual letter, neither more nor less?

The whole statement is such arrogant assumption that it is hard to believe that a spiritually sane man could make it. The effect of it, if carried out, would be to give us a Bible, or rather, Bibles many, which would be anything rather than the endeared, familiar, well-proved friend of all our hearts. The adoption of such a principle would be at once to blur all lines and bring in everywhere confusion and uncertainty. This is not the Voice of the Spirit that would enfeeble and degrade what the Spirit Himself has given, as this system does; putting it at one time in company with a faulty hymn, at another time with the speech (miraculous though it were) of Balaam's ass! I do not envy the quietness of those who can take all this (go with it or not, as they may) without a protest.

"I do not read Scripture in the letter"! Why, it is just the most literal part of it that of necessity must be used to interpret all the rest. That there are figures, types, parables in it, who is not aware? But who would like to build his soul upon things such as these, without the plain letter of doctrine which alone can interpret them definitely and surely? Is it not "letter" that "God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life"? Am I to read that in the spirit, and not in the letter? Who will stand forth then and tell me, in contrast with the letter, what the spirit of it is?

See now how it all works together: I am justified in accepting this guidance that is offered me, of one so spiritually wise and competent that he can give me the spirit of that which I, poor dullard, have been reading in the letter. What can I do but submit myself to this, and let the proof abide a more convenient season? I may be bewildered at first to find how things immediately begin to change, and how little remains absolutely what it was before. But then, if I am humble, this is all proof of how I needed a teacher, — how without a teacher (and indeed, with all the teachers I have had hitherto) I have been going astray. I learn to distrust myself the more, and cling to my guide. By and by indeed, I must come to a halt, and begin to see where I am, — to see if perchance anything may have gone wrong with me. I have heard that "in a day of evil it is of the utmost importance to prove all things, and not accept the dictum of anybody." That is all right, I suppose: it is the same guide says it; I am yet to prove all by Scripture! But Scripture, what Scripture? He does not read it in the letter; no more must I then, if I am to reach the same results! God has somehow provided me with a Bible in the letter; and this Bible in the spirit I have got to form for myself out of it, and by its help; or, at least, I have got to prove the new Bible in the spirit which has been put into my hand by that old Bible which is so different, and which it will be my wisdom in due time to give up! Think of the perplexity to a simple soul, of using in this way a standard which has to be renounced, and for the very purpose of being able to renounce it; while at the same time, it is capable in some way of putting me on a platform higher than itself! Must not all this end in inextricable confusion? Is it not, in fact, confusion all the way through?

4. New Birth: What is it?

There has doubtless been so much said of late with regard to new birth and eternal life that many will wish that controversy as to these could stop; and many will think that all has been said that can be said about them. One can surely sympathize with those who think so, and what is said may be the briefer on that account: still these subjects are so central in their importance in relation to Christian truth, and the novel doctrines concerning them have so central a place also in connection with the system which we are reviewing, that it would be impossible to treat this in any satisfactory way without looking at what is in question here. So far also as we are individually concerned, whatever might be the purpose of God with regard to us, and whatever the blessed work upon the basis of which that purpose can alone be justified and take effect, yet where it begins to take effect is in new birth. Thus our review may well begin here, although as to the system before us it is rather in this case a blank than a doctrine — a denial than an affirmation. Yet a denial may have all the importance of an affirmation, and the meeting it be absolutely necessary in order to laying securely the foundations of truth. If we do not know what new birth is, we cannot rightly know what eternal life is either, and much else will become uncertain as the result of this. Amid this uncertainty many suppositions may assume the character of truth and be accepted for it which will for ever prevent the truth being received. If Scripture can clear up this cloud-land for us, it will not only be in itself a gain, but it may prove a way made clear to further progress. Let us inquire at least.

Not merely has the confession been made, "I cannot tell you what new birth is," but it has been openly challenged that no one has any better ability. This is the ignorance of the agnostic, which requires more knowledge than anything that knowledge would pretend to. For in this case one has to be sure that the level of one's own capacity is at least as high as any other whatever can possibly be; and with such knowledge as this, every humble mind would readily concede the palm of superiority to its happy possessor.

Such an one will naturally teach, or at least tell his thoughts; and safely, where no one has better knowledge. Thus it is not thought that there is in new birth a communication of anything, but simply an effect produced. It is the man that is born again: whatever may be the extent of it; it is I myself, the individuality. That is how Scripture speaks of new birth. It is a human idea that something is imparted, but Scripture says, I am born again. Then the Lord puts it more abstractly — "That which is born of the flesh is flesh," for it would go too far to say, "he who is born of the Spirit is spirit": it would make me spirit and nothing else. Yet if the wick of a lamp may represent the individual, it is as though a thread of another description were introduced into the texture of the wick! The result is a collapse of the man, of all that makes him a man of the world, of all his self-importance. Then there is a cry, a very feeble cry! the first sign of life in a babe is a cry of want or pain; yet Scripture does not apply the term "life" to such a state!

One feels so often as if one needed to make apology for such statements, and as if it must certainly be thought that there is some misrepresentation here; but while the putting together is indeed my own, every statement made is an actual quotation. New birth makes a man appear alive, but he is not alive. In it there is no communication of anything at all, but only an introduction of something; with very important consequences, no doubt; but still there is as yet no link in the soul with God.

I am not responsible for the contradiction that appears in these things, either among themselves or with scripture. Scripture says, — yea, the Lord Jesus Himself, that that which is born of the Spirit is spirit; and to say that here nevertheless there is no link with God, seems as near a direct denial of the divine word as could be uttered, if we are not to assert that it is that. And again there is a similar thing when the Lord speaks of the man as being born again, and we are assured notwithstanding that he is not alive! What kind of birth are we to call it, when although the "renewing of the mind is the outcome" of it, yet there is no life! one is born of God and yet not His; yea, has no link with Him as yet at all!

Is it necessary to go further in the examination of these statements! There should be no need. But let us look at the Lord's words themselves, and see if they leave us so much in the dark as is supposed, as to what new birth is. There is nothing imparted, says this teaching; because it is I who am born again. Scripture says, we are born again, not of "corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, by the word of God which liveth and abideth" (1 Peter 1: 23); and it adds, "and this is the word which in the gospel is preached unto you." The word of the gospel then, brought home by the power of the Spirit of God, is that by which the man is born again.

But here again the truth as Scripture gives it to us comes right up against the theories; which as usual also clash with each other. For we have already seen that it is denied the Scripture is of any use to souls away from God, without the voice of the living preacher. It is conceded indeed that God is sovereign, and may be pleased to use it, in the same way that He could by an exceptional miracle make use of the speech of Balaam's ass. It is useless to send Bibles to the heathen, because this is so very exceptional. God's way is undoubtedly by preaching! And yet, strangely enough (if anything is strange here) in connection with this theme of new birth we are informed that the work of the evangelist is to enlighten the new born soul. When by the power of God's Spirit a man has been born again, the next thing is that the soul has to be enlightened.

Thus here again we seem to be in a dilemma. It is of no use to send Bibles to the heathen: God's way is undoubtedly by preaching. And yet the preachers' work is only to enlighten those already new born! Scripture however declares that men are born again by the incorruptible seed of the word of God in the gospel, and that the Scriptures are able to make one wise unto salvation; while the preacher is God's great instrumentality for getting the saving truth before unwilling men. There is here no semblance of contradiction, the word of God being in all cases that by which new birth is effected in the soul, whether it be in the page of the inspired Word or by the mouth of the evangelist. In either case the Spirit of God must act: as the Lord puts it in His pregnant figure, "water" and "Spirit" must go together.

The incorruptible seed is thus imparted. The seed is not the mere word, but as nature itself teaches, the word with the life in it. Every fruitful seed carries in it that mystery of life, which we may be little able to analyze, but which we cannot reason away: it is there, reason as we will; and without it there would be no growth or good whatever.

Thus there is that which is born of the Spirit, and what is born is "spirit." Will any one say that that does not convey the thought of a new nature, akin to that from which it has originated? And "the Spirit is life" (Rom. 8: 10); everything here speaks of the communication of life; look through Scripture as you will, there is no dead spirit anywhere. "The Spirit quickeneth" (2 Cor. 3: 6): "the spirit is life;" dead spirit, dead spiritual birth, dead child of God, or new born child with yet no link with Him, these are all thoughts so foreign to Scripture, so contrary to it, that nothing but the exigency of an untenable theory could ever suggest them to one even tolerably acquainted with it.

As for the argument that the man being born again is in contradiction to the idea of something being imparted in this, the answer has been given by the one who uses it. "The Scripture teaches that I am born again, whatever may be the extent of it." There is the whole difficulty, such as it is; and it is no very great one. The man is born again, and yet he is not new in all that he is. His body does not partake in this transformation; and he has yet the old nature — the flesh in that sense. The moment you say, The man is born again, whatever may be the extent of it, you state the difficulty, and admit it to be one that you must recognize, as well as the person you are arguing with. But it is no more a difficulty than abundance of fully admitted things. The man is born again; and yet, when you come to define more closely, you speak of "that which is born again," and could not say of the man what you say of this. You can say, "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit," while you cannot say, "The man who is born of the Spirit is spirit." It argues nothing whatever in the way desired. Let us only change the figure, as Scripture itself enables us, so as now to take into consideration what was before omitted, that this is a yet incomplete change in a moral being, the figure of grafting furnishes you with the needed means of taking in, as before you could not, all the facts. The tree which is grafted yet retains enough of its old nature to need care lest, by allowing shoots from below the graft, it should become practically wild again. Yet we speak of it rightly enough as a grafted tree. In a figure taken from the human sphere, which alone fits with the Lord's application for Nicodemus, one cannot find what will fit all round; no unusual thing in figures constantly made use of. The Lord's purpose does not contemplate the old nature, that is all; and therefore the figure of birth, in other respects so perfect, is thoroughly suited.

But the man is born again; and the thought of a new life imparted is inherent in this. This life, moreover, is all that counts for life before God. The man was dead previously; now he lives; there is but one death in this sense, and but one coming to life; and if a man is no longer dead, he is alive: there is no intermediate state between the two, and therefore no interval. The one born of God is a child of God, and He has no dead children. Spirit from the Spirit is the nature of that which is born; the child partakes of the father's nature. If life is communicated, as despite all protests it most surely is, then the life so derived is necessarily eternal life. Whether or not you allow that it is what Scripture designates under that term, (and as to this we shall have to inquire directly,) yet it is impossible to deny that life attaching to a spiritual nature originating in a new birth of the Spirit must be in the fullest sense eternal life.

How important then, in connection with questions that lie before us, is this doctrine of new birth! and how significant that the system which is sought to be imposed upon us as the truth of God has to begin with a confession of blank ignorance, which is really a denial of Scripture testimony upon so important a matter! According to the system, to be born of God is somewhat that involves neither life, nature, or relationship, — no link in the soul with God at all! It is no wonder, but a necessity of this, that those born of Him should be denied to be His children. Thus it is asked, "Is it so that 'children' speaks of descent?" And the answer is, — "I do not think that is quite just. "It is not the scriptural thought of children. The Spirit bears witness with our spirit: it is by the Spirit we understand that we are children. . .. You ought not to take that place, except as born of God; but the place is given you of the Father"! — an argument quite as inconsequent as anything we have listened to on the same side. Naturally, eternal life is something far beyond, and although you are born of God, if that is all, you have yet to pass from death unto life!

Thus I repeat it, the doctrine is that one that is simply born of God is not a child of God, has not life, nature, nor relationship. To put it in the dreariest form of the negation made, he has no link in his soul with God at all!

5. Life and Eternal Life.

In considering the subject which is now before us, there are two questions which lie at the foundation: first, is there any spiritual life which is not eternal life? And then what is eternal life? I shall as usual state the view from which I dissent, and then give as clearly as possible the reason for my dissent.

1. Is there any life for the Christian which is not eternal life?

As to this we are told: In Romans you see life, but not eternal life. The two and a half tribes typically had life; they stopped this side of Jordan, but they had life. Everybody who has the Spirit has life, because the Spirit is life. In Rom. 8 life is the consequence of the presence of the Spirit in a believer; that is, "The body is dead on account of sin, but the Spirit is life on account of righteousness." But that is connected with the wilderness and practice, and is connected with your pathway, which will come to an end. You can very well understand that the experience of Romans 8 comes to an end. It is not eternal life, and yet life is there; life comes out morally, in view of righteousness; the evidence of life in the Christian is that he does righteousness; he proves that he is born of God. The Spirit takes that place in the Christian till he is quickened. You are not said to be quickened in Romans; but in our state down here the Spirit displaces the flesh, and takes the place of life in the Christian, in order that practical righteousness should be accomplished. In Colossians and Ephesians we get a step further, and that is, "you hath He quickened," but you must understand that in a limited, not in an absolute way. It is at the coming of Christ we are quickened; only it is anticipated in Colossians and Ephesians in a limited way as the work of God fitting us for the assembly. At the coming of the Lord we shall be quickened and raised up together, and made to sit together in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. {?!] In that chapter it is viewed as anticipated.

2. What then is eternal life?

The answer given is: —

It involves a state of blessing consequent on the setting aside of death. "Life for evermore" (Ps. 133.) We come to that on resurrection ground, that makes the difference between us and Israel: they don't come into resurrection, we do. A person cannot say that he has actually eternal life, unless he is clear of death. If he is going to die, how can he say he has actually got eternal life? For us, eternal life is the heavenly condition and blessedness in which in the Son man is now placed, and lives before the Father. It is a sphere and order of blessing. It is to live in the blessed consciousness of the love of God, in the out-of-the-world, heavenly condition in which Christ lives.

I believe persons have made great mistakes with regard to eternal life in viewing it as a something substantive which is communicated to us. I can understand life in God, because God is eternal; He lives, He is. But I live, and so does every saint, simply by the quickening power of God. I am made alive now in my soul together with Christ, after His order, and eventually I shall be made alive in body after His order. People have looked at it as if it were a kind of material thing given to a person. People think they have life in themselves instead of in Christ. It is life in Christ Jesus, yet the Spirit being in me, it is practically my life.

It used to be commonly said, I know that I have got eternal life. Why? Because the scripture says, "he that believeth hath everlasting life." I say that you have thus the faith of eternal life, but that does not prove that you have the thing itself. Many a person has had a promise, but not the thing promised; that was the case largely with the Old Testament saints. It is the mind of God for every Christian, and God has put it there in His Son, and the whole question is as to reaching the Son. In the last chapter of John's epistle it says, "that ye may know that ye have eternal life"; because you are come to it; you are conscious of it, but not as a possession. If I talk about having the Son, the Son is not a possession, and yet I am said to have the Son, I have appropriated Him affection has really reached Him: you cannot make the word "have" always mean possession. In scripture eternal life is not a subjective thought as a possession, but it is placed in the Son, and the whole point is reaching the Son.

This will probably be sufficient for quotation, at least for the present; we can see that there is an apparently careful grading and measurement of the spiritual life, supported by a few texts which, if we can overlook others, and accept the positiveness of an assertion as proof of its reliability, may be held for a success. Let us examine it, however, and see what may be the effect of introducing some omitted texts.

Is there a spiritual life which is not eternal life? Scripture emphatically denies this. The passages have been so often quoted, that one may fairly ask why they are not considered; especially as they used to be quite familiar texts, and face us in very familiar parts of Scripture. Here is one that will bear every effort that can be made to induce it to speak the doctrine that is being commended to us as truth, and will not do it, one that is sufficient in itself to destroy the whole system down to the roots: — "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you; whoso eateth My flesh and drinketh My blood hath eternal life" (John 6: 53, 54)

Notice how many things fundamental to the views we have been listening to are swept away for ever by words so plain as these. First, we have either no life or eternal life; if you eat not you have no life; if you eat, you have eternal life. Is there any possible middle ground between these alternatives? If there be, why not let us know it; if there be not, why not be candid enough to own that there is not.

But again, look at the alternatives: "ye have no life in you"; "hath eternal life." If eternal life is not really in you, then you may eat His flesh and drink His blood, and have no life in you still! Otherwise there is no antithesis, as is most plainly intended: whether you eat or do not eat, it is one and the same thing! Who can accredit the words with such absolute want of meaning?

Still again, it is the flesh and blood of the Son of man, of which the Lord speaks: if you eat the flesh of the Son of man, you have eternal life; but in what we have been looking at a distinction is made between apprehension of the Son of man, and reaching the Son (of God); and it is only this last that gives eternal life. The Lord speaks quite differently here.

What remains of these subtle theories, if the words of the Lord are allowed any real force?

John supplements them with the remark, simple as it is, that "ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him" (1 John 3: 15); a strange sentence, according to this system, with all its self-evidence! For why speak of eternal life in this connection, when "many a good Christian" even has not eternal life? Would you not expect the apostle rather to say simply that he has not life? or, still better, that he is not born again? How strange a thing to associate a murderer, even by a negative, with the thought of eternal life, if this be an advanced condition, even for a Christian! What would you think if I asserted of a murderer, that he was not completely sanctified?

But again, he "hath not eternal life abiding in him!" Did not John know that there is not so much as a single Christian who has eternal life abiding in him? Did he not know that eternal life is a "sphere," of which you could not speak in such a way? If he did, how could he pen such an unmeaning sentence?

Once more: — it is the Lord who says, and in His strongest style of affirmation, "Verily, verily, I say unto you, he that heareth My words, and believeth on Him that sent Me, hath everlasting life, and shall not come into judgment, but is passed from death unto life" (John 5: 24). These words are actually used in the interests of the system we are reviewing, to show that it is the Christian that has to pass from death unto life, which here as elsewhere is not distinguished from eternal life! The Lord, we are told, is here speaking as the Son of God, and it is an advanced attainment to hear the words of the Son of God, and to believe on the Father as having sent His Son! Consequently a large number of Christians are dead and not alive. They may be born again, have the Spirit, have learned deliverance, and yet not have passed from death unto life. And this too although in having the Spirit, you have life "practically," because the Spirit is life! Yet this life is in Christ, and not in you, things which even seem to be considered in opposition to one another. But this we must look at elsewhere.

Now Scripture does indeed say that, "if Christ be in you, the body is dead because of sin;" and it never speaks of the body being quickened before the Lord comes. It speaks also of the believer being dead with Christ to sin: a very different thing, of course, from that of which we are now speaking; but I am not aware that it ever speaks of the Christian being "dead" in any other sense. Most certainly, it never puts forward such a contradiction as that a man can be "practically" alive without being really so, nor makes in this way the blessed influence of the Spirit of God in such to be an effect produced upon a dead man — a life which does not make alive! Here it is no wonder if the things said should be in apparent conflict with one another, when practical life is yet taught not to be life, and he who is working righteousness in the power of the Spirit of God may yet, as we are assured, be waiting to be quickened!

Here is an argument we must not pass over: "It used to be commonly said, I know that I have got eternal life. Why? Because the scripture says, He that believeth hath everlasting life." Well; is not that a straightforward conclusion, for one who knows himself to be a true believer? It seems not: we are to be taught a new logic, as all else. "I say that you have thus the faith of eternal life; but that does not prove that you have the thing itself. Many a person has had a promise, but not the thing promised." Truly! I suppose we shall all at once acquiesce in that; the misfortune is that it does not apply. The Lord's statement here is not a promise, but a direct assurance of the simplest kind. The believer has eternal life; I am a believer; I therefore have eternal life. If the premises are sure, how can the conclusion fail? If that may be doubted, how can any assurance be given, which cannot?

The argument fails so badly, that it is no wonder if another has to reinforce it. So we are told "have" does not always mean possession; "if I talk about having the Son, the Son is not a possession"(!) That is not argued, it is supposed not to need it; but is it the truth? Is not the Son ours in any sense now? Who will say so? Is having the Son a promise that we shall have Him? Clearly not. But it says, "He that hath the Son hath life," does that mean, "He that hath the Son is going to have life?" True, the Son is not ours now in all the fulness of what eternity will give to this; and life too is not ours in such fulness either; for the body is still a mortal body, and will be quickened then. But there is a present "having" in both cases.

A false definition of eternal life is at the bottom of much of the confusion. Rightly enough connected with the Old Testament "life for evermore," it is forgotten that life and incorruption are brought to light through the gospel (2 Tim. 1: 10), and that therefore we must not expect their definition to be gained from the Old Testament scriptures. New birth is not found in doctrinal statement in the Old Testament; and it is in new birth that we shall find what underlies the New Testament doctrine. One born of God is a child of God; the child derives its life from its father, and partakes of its father's nature. "That which is born of the Spirit is spirit;" and the life given is eternal life. Here is the fulness found of this expression: it is a life which not only has no end, but had no beginning either, being divine life. It is eternal in the full meaning of eternal, though in us, of course, beginning. This has been dismissed with the strange, curt remark, that "the life of divine Persons is themselves;" they cannot, therefore, it is meant, communicate themselves! But the statement and the reasoning are as crude as elsewhere, and are confuted at once by those facts of nature which God has given us as parables of spiritual things. The parents' life and nature in the child are not the parents; they have a power of communicating life which, mystery as it is, is undeniable; and God has adopted our human language, based upon the facts of creation which He Himself has created, to give us at least such thoughts as we are capable of in regard to all these things, which the strange system before us rudely cuts across. It gives us birth without life, children who are not such by descent, a practical life in those that are still dead, and similar absurdities, against which nature protests absolutely, and Scripture no less.

In life, we are assured, nothing substantive is communicated; that there is nothing material, will not be disputed; nor that when we speak of life, we may be unable to define it. Infidel scientists have mocked at a vital principle on this account, and told us that we might as well talk of "aquosity" as the principle of water. Yet we believe in a vital force, as well as in vital phenomena. Spiritual life will be naturally still more difficult to define, but that is no reason for denying it to be more than phenomenal, and certainly not for defining it as a sphere, etc. Personality it is not; it is not a "self"; yet there is that which is born of the Spirit, which is spirit, and which gives character to the new-born soul. There is that which is communicated to us, and abides in us, an incorruptible seed that abides in us, and because of this, "whosoever is born of God doth not commit," or better, "practise," "sin" (1 John 3: 9). The phenomenal life is just the display of this in its activities; in other words, there is a life by which we live, as well as a life we live: without the former there cannot be the latter. So Scripture, in harmony with nature, speaks; and in both ways of eternal life.

That in eternal life, according to its very nature, there is the setting aside of death, is too plain to be denied: yet here also, strange mistakes are possible; though to any one who has grasp of the doctrine they should not be possible. First, we are told, and rightly, — "I am made alive now in my soul together with Christ, after His order, and eventually I shall be made alive in body after His order." And yet with the most entire forgetfulness of this limitation, we are told elsewhere "A person cannot say that he has actually eternal life, unless he is clear of death. If he is going to die, how can he say that he has actually got eternal life?" And this is made the ground for saying that while in Rom. 8 life is the consequence of the Spirit in the believer, yet the experience of Rom. 8 comes to an end. "It is not eternal life, and yet life is there!" and much doctrine is built upon this; — a mere and extraordinary piece of forgetfulness: for the experience is not the life, but the result of the life in the present circumstances. The death of the body brings this to an end, and the life is transferred to another sphere; but how does this prove that the life so transferred is not eternal life? Yet he must not say, it seems, that he has actually got eternal life (in his soul), because he has not yet got it in his body! A pebble indeed, to turn one from the path of truth!

Let us remember the words of Him who said, in the consciousness of what He is for men as the Resurrection and the Life, "He that believeth in Me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and he that liveth and believeth in Me, shall never die" (John 11: 25, 26). Against the life, then, that He gives, which is eternal life, death has no claim, over it no sovereignty. The body still awaits its change and its redemption; none the less is it true for the present partaker of His resurrection life, that death is behind, and not before him. For him, Christ has abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel.

6. Standing and Acceptance in Christ.

We have been occupied so far with the work in us — with new birth and eternal life: things which are in nearer relation to one another than the views we are examining would at all allow. Yet it is surely true, as has been stated, and as Scripture fully recognizes, that there is a life we live, as well as a life by which we live. The life we live is pressed in the new system, not merely to forgetfulness of the life by which we live, but actually to the denial of it. The consequence is that the whole thought of eternal life is lowered. It becomes merely a kind of triumph over death, which when we enter heaven ceases to be even of much significance! Here is a conversation which will enlighten us in this respect: —

"Is the expression 'heavenly' included in the idea of eternal life?

"No, I don't think so. I think eternal life refers to earth. I don't think we should talk about eternal life in heaven.

"Only we have it there.

"I don't think the term will have much force there." The thing will surely be there.

"WE shall be there.

"I will have to get this clear, for I don't understand it. How do you explain as to eternal life? I have understood that a sphere is included.

"I think it implies a sphere of relationship and blessing, but that is not necessarily heaven. I don't see much sense in connecting the idea of eternal life with heaven.

"Well, I don't, but still I have understood that it is connected with heaven also.

"I don't know the connection. The point of eternal life is that it comes in where death was. I think it stands in Scripture in contrast to death."

In another place an objector questions, and is answered thus: —

"I don't understand; do you mean that when we go from this earth eternal life will cease?

"I don't think the term has any longer force." Is it only the term then?

"What the term expresses has not any more force." (!!)

So man's "thoughts" (of which there are plenty here) belittle and degrade everything they intrude into. In new birth we are taught that no life is communicated. Life itself is not to be understood as anything "substantive" that can be communicated. "Nature" disappears in this way along with life, as we find in the following: —

"Have we not had a wrong idea as to what 'nature' means?

"It is the looking upon nature or life as something substantive: any substance is characterized by its nature; but you cannot talk of the nature of a thing till the thing is there." (!).

So as we (like the "murderer") have no "eternal life abiding in" us, we cannot, of course, talk of a nature as attaching to what does not exist. The argument is demonstrative if the basis is sound; but it shows how far a false step may carry one. Let us listen again: —

"I have sometimes said that Scripture does not recognize two natures in the Christian: the flesh is the nature in an undelivered man; when he receives the Spirit he is not in the flesh but in the Spirit, and the Spirit is not a nature but a Person." (!)

Poor Christian! when undelivered he has nothing but the flesh; when he receives the Spirit, it would seem he must have no nature at all for the flesh is no longer that to him, and the Spirit is not a nature, but a Person! No doubt there is some way of filling up the void eventually; but with that we are not here concerned.

But this leads us on to what is before us now, the question of our standing in Christ, which according to Scripture is connected with the life we have in Him. Our natural life in Adam has involved us in the fall of the old creation; our spiritual new life in Christ has given us what we have been accustomed to call our standing in Him. The very term (although they use it) seems offensive to those who accept the views we are considering: "ecclesiasticism, standing, ground, and such ideas," we are told, "have almost ruined us." Yet, as I have said, the term is retained; perhaps it is only in accommodation to the weakness that has been induced by it: "If you talk about standing, I am a justified man, who have received the Holy Ghost." When it is asked, however, "But what about being in Christ?" the answer is, "The moment you bring in 'in Christ' it is new creation." And again: — "The moment you come to 'in Christ,' you get the revelation of God's purpose in Christ, and the work of the Spirit in the believer according to that purpose; that is new creation, it is not a question of standing."

Yet it is allowed that "the presentation of my justification is in Christ: He is my righteousness." One would think that to be in contradiction to what has just been stated; however that may be, it is only what is needed for the earth: "in heaven he will not be a forgiven or a justified man. He will not need that in heaven: nothing enters heaven but new creation."

Of necessity then the being in Christ has nothing to do with any thought of His being our Representative. Our Substitute in death, it is allowed, He was, and His resurrection therefore for our justification; but this does not involve any thought of representation in glory. "In Christ" is my state, as we have been told, a state which God has wrought by His Spirit, true, but still my state, and nothing else. So thoroughly is this maintained, that a Christian is said to be "in Christ as he is formed in Christ;" and "in Christ is the measure of our spiritual state."

The complete denial of all the positive side of representation in glory is made plainer perhaps by a quotation I have elsewhere given, which for its importance I shall give again here. It relates to the meaning and value of the burnt-offering, and I quote it fully that there may be no possibility of mistake: —

"The blood of the burnt-offering never went inside; but that of the sin-offering did. I have thought this remarkable. The blood of the burnt-offering is connected with acceptance down here, but the blood of the sin-offering goes in to meet and vindicate God's glory — all His claims met and vindicated, and on the ground of this we can enter. We go in in the life of Christ. It was on the day of atonement that the blood of the sin-offering was carried in: we go in in a life which needs no acceptance, but the burnt-offering being all burnt on the altar is the ground of acceptance for man here on earth, and that will be equally true in the millennium. We get it set forth in figure in Noah's offering. There is no ground of acceptance for man down here save the death of Christ."

Let us look now at what is here presented to us as the scriptural and beneficial truth, in opposition to the well-nigh ruinous idea of "standing." Since it is allowed, however, that we may use the term as applying to our justification, and that Christ is our righteousness, the idea so far cannot be ruinous. Acceptance as symbolized in the burnt-offering is allowed also, and that "Christ has gone into heaven itself to appear in the presence of God for us representatively, that we may reach there." How far acceptance differs from justification is not apparent in this scheme, and the representation which brings us to heaven must have to do with the sin-offering aspect of Christ's work simply, as is plain: for the blood of the burnt-offering, we are told, never went inside the sanctuary, and avails only for man down here.

Now at the outset, whatever may be conveyed to us by the burnt-offering becomes, in this way, of comparatively small account. The sin-offering is competent for the removal of sin, and to bring us to heaven. When we are once there, we need it no more. If a man were taken to heaven immediately upon believing, he would not, so far as appears, need it at all. Israel as an earthly people will somehow need it till the close of the millennium; the heavenly people (as that) never need it, though as in the meantime upon earth, they do.

What does it symbolize? It seems to be answered in the quotation given, "the death of Christ." But the death of Christ is shown forth in all the sacrifices, and the sin-offering is as competent to express that as the burnt-offering. The evident point of contrast between the two is not found in this, but that in the one the necessary judgment of sin is set before us, in the other the peerless obedience of the Sufferer. For this reason it is that, in complete contradiction to the place assigned it in what we are examining, while the sin-offering is offered in the outside place, and upon the ground without an altar, the burnt-offering gives its very name to the altar upon which it is offered, and upon which it all goes up as a sweet savor to God! The one is for the removal of sin; the other is for positive acceptance of the offerer. Thus while the one had indeed its absolute necessity with a holy God, the other was His delight, and was continually to be burning upon the altar, never to go out. The work which Christ had to do to put away sin was seen in the one case; in the other the glory of Him who knowing all that was to come upon Him, could say, "Lo, I come; in the volume of the book it is written of Me, I delight to do Thy will, O my God."

Did this avail merely for the putting away of sin or sinner from before God? and was there no overplus of value to give corresponding blessedness to our acceptance in the Beloved? Is this to be lost when we enter heaven? left as an old garment no longer needed, to be inherited by the millennial saints? "We go in in a life which needs no acceptance," is to be our comforting assurance; and in consistency with this we are in that the "best robe" which is put upon returning prodigals is "really new creation, Christ formed in the Christian!"

After the millennium, therefore, it is to be supposed that the sweet savor of an infinite sacrifice will go up no more. With the saints' state perfected, they need no more that which covered them for a time until they could shine out in their own beauty! Is this your thought also, reader? and does this song please you better than that we used so lately to sing: —

"Jesus the Lord, our righteousness!

Our beauty Thou, our glorious dress!

Before the throne, in this arrayed,

With joy shall we lift up the head.

This spotless robe the same appears

In new creation's endless years

No age can change its glorious hue,

The robe of Christ is ever new."

There are some, we trust, who if they are offered this so called advanced and heavenly truth as the new wine, will say with their whole hearts' approval still, "The old is better."

"If any man be in Christ, it is new creation:" for that we have the full authority of Scripture for it is by a new creation alone that we come into relationship with Him who is its Head. Adam, says the apostle,. "is the figure of Him who was to come" (Rom. 5: 14). Our connection with the fallen head is by our part in the old creation, and so by the life communicated to us. According to the type the communication of spiritual life from the Last Adam who is a quickening Spirit (1 Cor. 15: 45) brings with it consequences in blessing more than commensurate with the inheritance of sorrow entailed by our relation to the first. "As in Adam all die, so in Christ shall all be made alive (ver. 22). In Rom. 5 the apostle carefully develops the heritage on each side of the many from the one, before he goes on to enlarge upon the results to us of that death with Christ which frees us judicially from our place in Adam. The sixth and seventh chapters cannot be understood aright until we have made our own the teaching of the latter half of the fifth. The study of it ought to assure any one of what is a riddle yet to the leader in this new departure, "where the idea of standing comes from." As in our former head we fell, so in our present One we "stand;" and "in Christ" means identification with our new creation Head. Thus the apostle can say, "If any man be in Christ, old things have passed away," as he could not if merely the inward change were contemplated: for the new life does not accomplish in itself this passing of the old things; but looking at the new place which accompanies the new life, it is absolutely simple. Identified with Christ before God, the flesh is gone: we have our part in His perfection. "In Christ," in its natural force, neither speaks of Christ in us, nor of association with Him, with both of which these teachings confound it; and this is seen in the very text which is claimed by those who hold them as conclusive in their behalf.

The simple fact that there are two opposite modes of expression for these two opposite ideas, we in Him and He in us, ought to be convincing: they surely do not mean, as they are made to mean, only the same thing! The Lord puts them together for us in His parable of the Vine and the branches. We have only to remember in the application of it, that no one is naturally in Christ, and that the scriptural figure which takes in this fact is that of grafting. This prepares us for what has stumbled some, that in a parable of vital relationships there should be branches that are taken away because they bear no fruit. It is simple enough if we only realize that they are grafts which have not struck. The Lord does not speak of grafting, because He is not showing how the connection of His branches with Himself is begun, but only the necessity of fruitfulness, and how it is realized: but the difficulty suggested is accounted for by what we know to be the truth. That the branch should abide in the vine is needed for fruit, and the graft that does not abide has formed no vital connection. That vital connection is that by which alone, the branch being in the vine, the vine (in its sap) comes to be in the branch, needs no demonstration.

Living connection is that which, as we have seen, subsists between the Last Adam and those to whom He has become a quickening Spirit. The nature of the parable forbids more than a certain idea of the results in blessing of the identification of the living soul with its Head of supply; but there is the same limitation in all parables. The parable of the Vine is found in the midst of such expressions as those we are considering, and shows, if there were otherwise cause to doubt, the essential difference of the two things which are vainly sought to be made identical.

It is simple enough that the new creation "stands" in the sufficiency of its glorious Head, and that our standing individually results as part of this; while our acceptance in Christ is much more than the putting away of sins or of the "old man;" it implies the positive value of the wondrous person of the Man Christ Jesus, of which our place before God is the due recompense. And this is expressly declared in the apostle's statement, that "He was made sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him" (2 Cor. 5: 21).

So far then as we have gone, the system we have been examining is negative and destructive wholly. New birth is robbed of life; life is nothing substantive, and can have therefore no "nature" attaching to it, for there is nothing for it to attach to; eternal life will have no particular force just when you have fully reached it; standing (if you talk of standing) is merely that you are a justified man who has the Holy Ghost; the best robe in heaven is just the change wrought in yourself; you may need to be accepted in Christ until you get to heaven, then you will be so perfected as not to need it; your being in Christ, and Christ being in you are only equivalent expressions: and so, like the blast of a simoom the work of desolation moves along.

7. Reconciliation, and the Removal of the Old Man.

The presentation of what is claimed to be the truth as to reconciliation is a very good example of the style of argument which largely prevails among teachers of the school we are reviewing; with whom boldness of assertion seems to make up for lack of demonstrative force. It is amazing in these reports of conferences from which our knowledge of their utterances have mostly to be gained, how little serious attention is given to the Scriptures which are professedly before them, and how little serious attempt there is to hold them to Scripture. Texts are cited, of course; and sometimes a feeble demurrer is made, sure to be silenced immediately, though it were only by an emphatic repetition of the statement questioned. It is easily seen, as the present leader, though with a certain wise caution, says himself, that they are not "simply!" — who are "simply?" — expositors of Scripture, but only of what Scripture has taught them; but we are right in expecting that what Scripture has taught them shall be able to stand an appeal to both text and context; and this one finds here indeed little asked or proffered. There are remarks, to be sure, upon texts many, the effort to connect which with the context, and so with serious exposition is sometimes remarkable enough.

For instance, in a question raised with regard to the assertion that "fellowship with the Father and the Son," as spoken of in John's first epistle, was limited to the apostles, reference is made to the sixth verse of the first chapter, "If we say that we have fellowship with Him." The answer is ready: "That is saying, if we say we have it. It does not say we have it." And here is the exposition: "The pretension is, that you have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness. The truth is that we walk in the light, and have fellowship with one another"!) But the pretension then is, in fact, to be apostles; and the walking in darkness (which cannot be part of the pretension, but is the mournful reality which exposes the pretension) is a strange and round-about proof in denial of so exceptional a claim. The "we," as spoken by an apostle, would in that case be as strange as all the rest. For manifestly he would not exclude himself or any one else from the searching test of such a principle; and in this is putting himself in the common rank of Christians, and not separating himself from them as one of a peculiar class. The "we," all through his various use of it, is that of Christian profession, and the light or darkness characterizes the true or the false profession — nothing else. Notice also whence the light shines: it is that of the sanctuary, where God Himself is revealed. He is in the light; and that light is just what creates Christian fellowship: "we walk in the light, as He is in the light;" and that establishes the true fellowship for us all, into which every true Christian enters. The apostle is bringing to bear upon this the great central truth of Christianity — the open holiest, and thus has already shown the fellowship to be divine, as to which he is now concerned to maintain the fact that no Christian can be found outside of it. "Our fellowship" is thus not a different one from this, but that into which (by the ministry of the apostles indeed) all believers are introduced; and in the "we" so constantly repeated here, we have the apostle putting himself thus with all the rest, instead of claiming for himself or others a peculiar and exceptional fellowship.

Fellowship is rightly said to be participation in common; but community of thought is strongly objected to: "they that eat of the sacrifices have fellowship with the altar; it is evidently not community of thought there." But if we look at this more closely, we shall surely realize that it is after all the principles which are identified with it that the altar embodies. The altar itself literally is only an inanimate structure, with regard to which the term can only be used as it is idealized. But as to all mental objects, ideas, fellowship in these may be rightly spoken of. One might quote, I suppose, every dictionary that exists, only that, as we shall see directly, the dictionary goes for nothing with those whose views we are examining. Let us take Scripture then, and the very Scripture which they cite against it, and it may be maintained without possibility of successful denial that the altar in this case, apart from the principles which it represents, would mean nothing — be utterly senseless in the connection in which it stands. And just so with the idol of which the apostle speaks in the same relation: the idol in itself is "nothing in the world." Take it in connection with all for which it stands, and for idol you may write "devil."

But there is another interest in maintaining things like these: "Is it not helpful to see that on account of the difficulties and opposition around, there must be a fellowship?" "The word (fellowship) implies to me a special bond in a scene of contrariety; that is, I believe, the force of it in Scripture. And there will be nothing in heaven to call for fellowship." Thus we see how to preserve consistency, and rule fellowship out of heaven, it must be denied that any element of it exists that would entitle it to be there. Thus it is another of those terms, whose number seems continually increasing, which in the hands of these teachers lose their significance for eternity, and are lowered from heaven to earth; and thus error to be maintained requires continually fresh concessions to be made to it. Alas for him who has committed himself in anywise to it, and has not lowliness to judge his departure and draw back his foot from the ever more devious and downward way!

But to come to what is our theme at present — reconciliation; we shall, as usual, put together the statements made regarding it, and without comment, that they may speak thus for themselves, and make their own impression. Afterwards I shall examine them. It is a pity that the doctrine is only to be found in these conversational remarks which, as already said, can hardly, save by courtesy, be called "readings." Yet the sense is after all sufficiently clear, and the extracts are, save where noted, from one speaker who is entitled to be considered the foremost leader in a movement which is rapidly changing the aspect of many of the central doctrines of Scripture for those who are being carried by it.

Reconciliation, then, we are told,

"is one of the terms the force of which you must find from its use in Scripture. The dictionary would not give you the scriptural use of it. In the ordinary use of the word the sense is that two persons estranged have been brought together. That is not the scripture-idea. It is not minds that are reconciled. There was no enmity on the part of God towards the world; and certainly the mission of Christ was not to make people more pleasant. Yet in Christ God was reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. If you say that 'it came out in the Lord's ministry of grace here on earth,' then you will be bound to admit this, that His ministry was ineffective." "The truth of reconciliation is plainly stated in 2 Cor. 5: God was in Christ; He ignored every other man in a sense, for the moment; there was one Man before Him, and that was Christ." "The ministry of reconciliation began with Christ Himself, and meant that in the presence of Christ here everything was under the eye of God on a wholly new footing in connection with Him. That was the effect of the presence of Christ. The new footing was grace and favor. God was in a new light towards man. He saw what was perfectly suitable to Himself in Christ.

"The ministry of reconciliation was effected in Christ in His life. God approached the world outside of it. He was favorable to the world in Christ, not hostile; but when you come to the word of reconciliation it is the testimony that reconciliation has been effected in death. It is not now simply that God has approached the world in another Man, in Christ being here, but the man hostile to God has been removed. So you have both things now, God's approach to man, and the man antagonistic to God removed in death. That is what I understand by the word of reconciliation, and we have to accept it."

"The difficulty," says another, "with many of us as to reconciliation is, that we have looked at it as reconciling us to God, instead of seeing it as the abolition of us, that all might be in a new Man."

"That is the idea."

And now in opposition to the dictionary meaning: —

"We have stopped at this, Alienated and enemies in your minds by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled."

"How could that man be reconciled? you could not reconcile a man who is an enemy in mind by wicked works. He can only be so as being in another individuality."

Again: —

"You cannot reconcile what is alienated; it is impossible to reconcile that which is at enmity. If enmity is there, it is there; it is enmity of will; that is not to be reconciled. They that are in the flesh cannot please God."

"It is you that were alienated."

"But the point is that you are reconciled by being removed, and where the distance was complacency is, because Christ has come in. Hence it is that reconciliation involves new creation."

"That which you are morally has to go; personally you are reconciled. Is that the thought?"

"I don't object to that, but you may depend upon it, if you press that on people you will give them the idea that reconciliation is some kind of change of sentiment in them. I have no doubt that this is in the mind of the vast proportion of Christians." . . .

"That is, in new creation the saints are presented 'holy, unblameable, and unreproveable.'"

"It must be that; you could not conceive of any process which would change the man who was an enemy in mind by wicked works into holy, unblameable, and unreproveable; no such process is possible, even to God."

Elsewhere we find: —

"The reconciliation of things is remarkably simple. Everything is taken up in Christ. The reconciliation of persons refers to individuals, and has to be individually accepted. 'Through whom we have now received the reconciliation.' In Corinthians it is, 'We pray you in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God.' Reconciliation has to be accepted when it is a question of persons, therefore there was the ministry of reconciliation."

"Is there any thought of the enmity being brought to an end in reconciliation?"

"The enmity is only brought in to show that the one marked by it must go. You cannot improve with reference to enmity. You cannot reconcile what is at enmity. It is the purest folly to think of reconciling what is hostile."

"It says, 'When we were enemies we were reconciled.'"

"Yes; but it was by learning that what was at enmity had been removed by the death of Christ. That is the way of it. I do not think that the apostle refers to a change of feeling on the part of people, but to acceptance of the truth that what was at enmity has been removed. They had received the word of reconciliation — 'When we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.' They had accepted that as their death. This is the truth on God's side — on the experimental side it is somewhat different."

Once more, even though it may be ad nauseam: —

"Do you think a man, an enemy to God by wicked works, could ever be changed into unblameable and unreproveable in His sight? It could not be. That person could be, but not that man." . . .

"How would you explain our identity remaining?"

"That is the point; the complacency is where the distance was; that is in you. It is not that God sweeps all away and brings in an absolutely new race. He does so morally, but not actually. The old man has gone, and where he was Christ is; this has come to pass in the Church."

What then is reconciliation? —

"I think the idea of the text is a bringing into conscious complacency with the divine mind and pleasure." "What I understand by it is, that where distance was there is complacency. . . . The distance has been removed in the removal of the man. I don't see in what other way God could remove distance. The distance came in by man, and the removal of the distance means the removal of the man. But the point is that where the distance was now there is complacency."

"Would you preach the ministry of reconciliation to sinners?"

"It would not be much good to them."

"Where is the ministry of reconciliation to be exercised?"

"I think very much amongst those who believe." "But do they need to be reconciled?"

"I think so, if they are to be for the satisfaction of God."

"When the apostle says, 'Be ye reconciled to God,' had they touched it?"

"I do not think the Corinthians had touched it. . . . I think it is practical; the Corinthians had not left Adam for Christ. They were practically very much in Adam. They had believed in Christ; I don't doubt for a moment they were Christ's, and had received the gift of the Holy Ghost. But certainly, judging by the epistle, they had very little readiness to leave Adam for Christ."

"The truth for the Christian is this, that in the acceptance of reconciliation he has put off the individuality connected with sin, but at the same time he has put on the new man which after God is new created."

We have now before us — produced, some will think perhaps, at unnecessary length — what ought to enable us to arrive at a sober and sufficient judgment of what is presented for truth with regard to the doctrine. Truth there is in it also, along with much that is new, as generally in these teachings. The misfortune is that here, as in so many cases, the true is not new, and the new is not true. Not merely so, but some of the statements seem absolutely wild and reckless, easily as they were accepted by those who heard them when first made. Only the knowledge that they have been and are being so by so many could make it worth while to repeat or challenge them now. Their currency and the gravity of much with which they connect themselves, give them an importance which in themselves they are far from having.

At the outset we are warned against the dictionary meaning of the word; though it is not and cannot be denied that it is the correct translation of that which has been chosen by the Spirit of God as fittest to convey His meaning, and it would not seem to be one of those words for which, as is well known, when Christianity came in, it had to coin a meaning of its own. Scripture also, at first sight, would certainly appear to confirm the dictionary use. Any simple person would suppose so upon reading that "when we were enemies, we were reconciled," "you that were alienated and enemies in your minds by wicked works, yet now hath He reconciled," and "to reconcile both to Himself, having slain the enmity." The general consent, one may say, of Christians for many centuries has without suspicion accepted Scripture and the dictionary as speaking in the same way.

It is startling to find, in what might seem to be the same line of things, that is, in arguing against some kind of change of sentiment, as from enmity to friendship (which the dictionary use favors, if not involves) the strong assertion that no process of changing a man who is an enemy to God by wicked works, is possible to God! To save the speaker's character for sanity, we have to assure ourselves that he is only using the word "change," so confusing in this connection, for "whitewashing," perhaps. God cannot whitewash a man, of course, and take him for what he is not. And we are encouraged to believe that that is his meaning by what he says elsewhere, that "it is impossible to reconcile that which is at enmity; if enmity is there, it is there." Truly; we shall not dispute about this; but why so earnestly and with such extraordinary emphasis, insist upon this? was it ever in dispute? while another passage still, very similar to the one we have been trying to mend, seems to assert for it that "change" is really meant: "Do you think a man, an enemy to God by wicked works, could ever be changed into unblameable and unreproveable in His sight? It could not be. That Person could be, but not that man."

So it is evident that we must walk very carefully, and define very closely, to suit these leaders of the poor perplexed sheep of Christ! How good to have a Bible that always remembers that God has chosen the poor! But we may say then that a "person," an enemy to God, may be changed in this manner; but a "man," an enemy to God, may not! Is that intelligible? Let us go on and see what is to come of this.

Some one asks, seemingly in the same perplexity with ourselves, "How would you explain our identity remaining?" Perhaps he wants to know whether he is after all still a "man," or only a "person." But happily he is assured that his identity remains: — "That is the point; the complacency is where the distance was; that is, in you. It is not that God sweeps all away, and brings in an absolutely new race. He does so morally, but not actually. The old man has gone, and where he was Christ is."

"The old man has gone!" Ah! does not a ray of light break in there? Is perhaps the old man the "man" about whom our guide was thinking, when he spoke of the impossibility of the man being changed? But then why distinguish so carefully between the man and the person? The old man is in fact the person that was, before grace had brought him under its dominion, the child of Adam in all the sad inheritance of his fallen father; and because we were all naturally alike in this pre-Christian state, Scripture speaks of "our" old man. But it is not the nature — the flesh — which still remains in us, and with which so many confound it; "our old man was crucified with Christ," and for every Christian is put off, and non-existent. Thus the question is never raised of "changing" the old man, nor could be raised by one properly acquainted with its force in Scripture. This new man does not dwell in us alongside of the old, but displaces it; yet it is the same man who was once "old" who now is "new." He has put off his former self, which the cross of Christ has ended before God in judgment, but from which it has thus liberated him, that the body of sin might be annulled, that henceforth he may no longer serve sin (Rom. 6: 6).

The old man cannot then be distinguished as man or person distinct from the one individual alone existing throughout. The assertions made are false and preposterous; and, of course, you do not find a trace of them in Scripture. They are simply the inventions of a fertile but unbalanced mind. It is the man who was once alienated and an enemy to God by wicked works, who in every case of conversion becomes the holy, unblameable and unreprovable child of God. There is no impossibility with God of changing the one into the other; and there is no unchangeable "man" to pronounce or speculate about. And reconciliation, instead of being so far on in Christianity that persons who are indwelt of the Spirit (as the Corinthians) may yet be strangers to it, is at the threshold of Christian life. "When we were enemies, we were reconciled;" not as Christians, but as "alienated and enemies to God by wicked works, He hath reconciled us;" "God was in Christ, reconciling the world" — and not believers — "to Himself." No subtle distinctions can take away from us what God has thus written with a pencil of light in His immutable Book. "If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."

How plain, therefore, that the reconciliation does involve a change in the man from this alienation and enmity, wherever it takes effect! How plain that the answer given to the invitation, "Be reconciled to God," involves the dropping of resistance and estrangement, upon the assurance of gracious provision made by which His banished may be restored to Him. The weakness of God is stronger than man, and the foolishness of God is wiser than man; and the amazing spectacle of the Son of God dying for His enemies has power still, through the might of the Spirit to subdue enemies to the love that seeks them.

Consequently the testimony of reconciliation is not that of the removal of the old man; nor can this be found in connection with it: it is merely forced in in this way where it does not belong. One wonders at the feebleness that can either put forth or accept such triviality as the following. In answer to the objection that Scripture "says, When we were enemies we were reconciled;" it is replied —

"Yes: but it was by learning that what was at enmity was removed by the death of Christ. That is the way of it. I do not think that the apostle refers to a change of feeling on the part of people, but to acceptance of the truth that what was at enmity had been removed. They had received the word of reconciliation — 'When we were enemies we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son.' They had accepted that as their death."

Now the whole of this is necessarily and at once overthrown by the very sentence which it is supposed to explain. We have the testimony of the very man who says this, that [such a] ministry of reconciliation preached to sinners "would not be much good to them;" and the very words he is explaining assert that it is enemies who are reconciled! Where are we told that it was "by learning that what was at enmity had been removed"? One can only answer, "Nowhere." Instead, we have confessedly the speaker's thoughts: "I do not think!" And where does it say or suggest that "they had accepted that death as their death." in any such sense as the removal of the old man? Not a hint is given of this in that part of Romans from which the text is quoted. It comes afterwards in the sixth chapter, and in quite another connection from what is given to it here. Would it not be well if there were indeed an expositor to help us, instead of men whose knowledge is of fragmentary texts, threaded together with their own thoughts, and in supreme disregard of context?

Before we close we must look at what is said concerning the ministry of reconciliation on our Lord's part, as it is stated in the second of Corinthians: "God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." Here, as it was in the ministry of Christ on earth that this was accomplished, there could, of course, be no word of the removal of the old man; but here is the comment: —

"God was in Christ: He ignored every other man in a sense, for the moment; there was one Man before Him, and that was Christ. The ministry of reconciliation began with Christ Himself, and meant that in the presence of Christ here everything was under the eye of God on a wholly new footing in connection with Him. That was the effect of the presence of Christ. The new footing was grace and favor. God was in a new light towards man. He saw what was perfectly suitable to Himself in Christ."

Now that it is the truth that in every intervention of God for man Christ was before Him, the justification of the love manifested, is fundamental truth, surely; and that when Christ was born into the world, His good pleasure in men had not only decisive expression, but its justification in the Son of man. But that does not make the interpretation of the apostle's words which has been given us the more exact. True as what is said in itself may be, it is yet assuredly not the truth which is stated in them. God in Christ reconciling the world to Himself is not at all the same as God having Christ before Him; and one may say, manifestly not. God in Christ as seen in His gracious ministry to men, is that identification of God with Him who represented Him on earth which showed Him in a grace which did not deal with men according to their trespasses. It does not speak of Christ as the ground of such favorable regard, but as the One who expressed this regard on God's part. The effect or otherwise of the Lord's revelation of God in this way is not in question; and His sorrowful complaint through the prophet, of laboring in vain and spending His strength for nought, should have hindered this being pleaded as an objection. Yet was His work with His God, as He declares. It could not be in vain, whatever the effect among men, to reveal God thus; and where must one be to say it? God's attitude is what is declared: "He was favorable to the world, not hostile," is the truth of it. But the whole object of the proposed interpretation of this passage is evidently to make reconciliation in it as far as possible in accord with what I can only call the theory that reconciliation means the removal of the old man. The reconciliation here, therefore, cannot be permitted to involve the invitation to a change of attitude on man's part, however much this is favored by the direct appeal of those to whom the word of reconciliation is now committed, "Be ye reconciled to God." This too is enfeebled as much as possible by being turned into "accepting the reconciliation." You must guard this from any suggestion of minds being reconciled, which we have been told is not in it! You are only to think of enmity being removed as this may be contained in the old man being removed.

"Minds are not reconciled"; and yet to be reconciled is, according to another definition, to be "brought into conscious complacency with the divine mind and pleasure!" How is this to be done without the mind? But indeed there is no putting together the various and conflicting statements. Reconciliation is, of course, on God's part towards man — He reconciles; man is reconciled — not reconciles: reconciliation is that "where distance was, there is complacency;" and this means divine complacency. God has removed the distance by removing the man; that is the reconciling to Himself, and no work in us comes into this.

Well, then, is the whole world reconciled? Why no! we must accept the reconciliation. After all, then, if divine complacency is to be where the distance was, and that is in us, reconciliation there is not until we are reconciled: the "be ye reconciled" must take effect. Reconciliation awaits, then, the response on our part before it is accomplished; that is, before it is reconciliation. This is the opposite of what has been so strenuously contended for, and is proved by the very statements which are meant to be the denial of it! Scripture does not negative the dictionary after all.

But more than this; if this is true, and it is as asserted, Christians who have to be reconciled — people, it may be, as in the case of the Corinthians, who have already received the Spirit of adoption, and cry, "Abba, Father," — then they must be doing so, and rightly doing so, while yet in them the distance is not removed, and divine complacency has yet no existence! There is no divine complacency, but distance unremoved, for those whose souls refuse the distance and draw near to God in the place of children! This is the contradiction into which men fall who "do not read Scripture in the letter," in which God has been pleased to give it, but in that which their own minds have distilled out of it, and which they call, the spirit. How plain it is, that if reconciliation means divine complacency now where distance was before, then, unless there are believers who are not in the value of Christ's work before God, reconciliation must be coincident with the very beginning of true faith in the soul, and not in the place in which these teachings put it; and then, as a further consequence, that the word of reconciliation is not the announcement of the removal of the old man, but the simple story, than which nothing deeper or more wonderful exists, that "while we were yet without strength Christ died for the ungodly," and that "God so loved the world, that He gave His only-begotten Son" for the salvation of the lost! By and by those who have received the message of reconciliation will still need to know about the crucifixion of the old man but God's reconciling kiss waits not for this, but meets us in our very rags and wretchedness. When we are enemies, we are reconciled to God by the death of His Son.

8. Deliverance and Death to Sin.

In taking up what is now before us, we shall be treading ground already plentifully trodden by the feet of combatants, and where we shall find ourselves under the necessity of recalling what has been elsewhere said, and in connection with the doctrines also which we are now reviewing. But the topic is one of such great importance for doctrine and for practice, and is still so little clearly understood by many who might be expected to be most clear, that it cannot be in vain to take it up once more, and in view of statements and arguments which it cannot but be for profit to appraise at their full worth, both scripturally and experimentally. The experimental test is necessarily of great value in a matter so eminently practical as this.

According to the writer whom, as in general, I shall quote here,

"If I were to put the question, How is deliverance effected for the Christian from sin and from the world?' the natural answer would be, 'By death.' I admit it; it is effectuated in that way. But then the Christian has to die to it, and how is he to be brought to that? I dare say some would answer, 'We have died to it in the death of Christ.' That will not do. I say the death of Christ is your title to die to it, to die to one as to the other. 'Our old man has been crucified with Him' — that is your title to die to sin; and the world is crucified to the believer in the cross of Christ — that is your title to die to the world. I quite admit the title of the Christian to die by the death of Christ both to sin and to the world, but my present point is what it is that gives power in the soul to die to sin and to the world. I believe Scripture makes it very plain; if a Christian is going to travel that path, and to enter into the thought of God about him, he must be attracted by the grace of God and by what God presents There are two things in Scripture to which the Christian is said to die, sin and the world. In regard to law you are become dead to it; God has released you from one bond, and formed another. Then in regard to the flesh 'You are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwell in you;' that is the change that takes place in the Christian, he is no longer in the flesh, but in the Spirit. You are never said to die to the flesh, that I know, but by the Spirit you mortify the deeds of the body. But you can very well understand that in that case deliverance stands on a different basis. The law is compared to a husband; and you could not be free from law if God had not dissolved the bond. On the other hand you could not be in the Spirit, if you had not received the Spirit of God. But in regard to sin and the world we have to die. . . . I could not think of dying to sin if our old man had not been crucified with Christ. That is my title to die to sin. What I understand by it is that all that comes under the idea of our old man, what a man is as in the flesh, God has dealt with judicially in the death of Christ for Himself and for me too. If it were not so you could not die; if our old man had not been crucified in the cross of Christ, you would be on the footing of responsibility as to the old man; but our old man has been dealt with in the cross of Christ, that we might not be on that footing, but might be privileged to die with Christ."

Let us pause here, and try to get clearly hold of what is being taught us. The language is plainer than it often is, and there ought not to be much difficulty in arriving at the meaning, whatever we may think of the conclusion that we reach. The scripturalness of it will not be hard to settle either, when this is done.

Deliverance from sin, it is stated, is effected for the Christian by death — true; but not simply by Christ's death for him: this gives him title only to die to sin, the death which in fact delivers him. And in the same way exactly as to deliverance from the world. It is not the same as to deliverance from the law: here a bond existed which only God could dissolve; and therefore here he becomes dead by the body of Christ. Then as to the flesh, while you are not said to die to it, you must have received the Spirit to be in the Spirit; and that is (or shows?) your deliverance.

How far does this asserted difference exist? It is allowed that "our old man was crucified with Christ," — "was dealt with in the cross," — and that that is equivalent to what we were as men in the flesh. This was "crucified," put to death, so that "we died with Christ," says the apostle; and He thus having died to sin (our sin) we are with Him dead to sin; our old man — we, such as we were in nature and in practice, were crucified, died, are dead, with Christ: our reckoning ourselves dead to sin is only simple acceptance in faith of a most blessed fact, which must be true before we reckon it, or we should have no right to do so.

But thus we have no need of dying. We start with being dead, through the death of Another for us, but which is in this way our death. The reasoning of the apostle with regard to it (Rom. 6: 7, 8) makes it perfectly plain in what way we are to understand this; for he argues that "he that has died is justified from sin" — so the Greek — and that "if we have died with Christ, we believe that we shall also live with Him." He is speaking, therefore, of atonement and its results for us, not of any work in us. It is evident that our having died and being dead with Christ have, all through, the same meaning and application: there are not two deaths or two modes of dying. Our dying with Christ is not something accomplished by the energy of our own wills, — even of our renewed wills; and so the full significance of the change proposed for us becomes apparent. Change it is indeed; for no one can pretend that Scripture anywhere exhorts us to die with Christ; and it may be safely trusted to give us its own meaning, and not to leave us to the tender mercies of interpreters to supply us with more competent phraseology. We die to sin (we are told elsewhere) in reckoning ourselves dead! On the contrary, as surely as we do reckon ourselves dead, we cannot think of dying. Dead men do not die, but only living men. Scripture, perfect here as always, has given us the very contrary of the thought suggested to us, and in complete consistency with what we have seen of its argument all through. It could not bid us to die with Christ, because the dying with Christ of which it speaks is on the cross and the cross is, blessed be God, not a thing in any sense in the future, but an accomplished fact. We have to accomplish nothing, but to accept thankfully what is done. We can reckon it done, just because it is done: the death which is ours is that which Christ died; and therefore not a title for us to die, which would mean of course, some other death. The apostle in bidding us reckon ourselves dead is not exhorting us to aught else than to set to our seal in faith to that which he has been proclaiming to us. It is a living faith he wants; not a cold assent to an orthodox creed. This surely we need to press, and shall always need; but not to exhort Christians to do what they cannot, and what needs not to be done, because it is done.

After all, it may be urged, are we not contending about a mere clumsy expression, when the same thing is meant at bottom? One would certainly be wrong in making a man an offender for a word, and are bound to give all the credit that one can to those who may in their very zeal for a godly walk have used strained arguments, and misinterpreted, perhaps, some texts of Scripture. But with the motives or influences which incline people to the views they hold we have nothing really to do; and we may easily make great mistakes about them. Besides, the misinterpretation of Scripture may have the most serious consequences, whatever the rightness of intention on the part of those who make it. The heart may indeed be better than the head; but that affects only the question of one's own responsibility. Error is that with which the enemy continually works, and which he is constantly recommending by the respectability of its advocates.

In this case there is a recklessness about the statements which involves a treatment of the word of God most dangerous in its character. We are not to say we have died to sin in the death of Christ: "that will not do;" although Christ died to sin, our old man was crucified with Him, and we died with Him! But again, we are to say that we have to die to sin (which Scripture never says), and that His death gives us title to die to sin, which it never says. Then comes up the very important question, how we are to find power to do what Scripture has never told us to do; and to do which is indeed, as is elsewhere said with regard to parting company with the first man, "not quite so easy as it may seem!" So this gap has to be filled. And exactly the same thing with regard to dying to the world; there is "leverage" needed to enable one to accomplish it. Here it is: "I believe that the apprehension that such a circle (the heavenly circle of the church) is revealed in Scripture, and the anxiety to reach it, encourages and strengthens a person to accept the place of death to the world, for if I am going to have part in that circle, all that binds me to the world must go." Paul was content to say in such a reference, "God forbid that I should glory, save in the CROSS OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST, by whom the world is crucified to me, and I unto the world;" but the modern commentator has found that the cross is only title to die to the world, and not attractive power, and "believes" that he has found something more effective in the New Testament representation of the Church!

All this, alas, goes but too well with what we have heard from the same person, that if he had his life to live over again, he would study Scripture less! Evidently his study of it hardly yields satisfaction to himself. May one suggest to him that, if he did read it more (as he says he does not) "in the letter," — if he attended more to its every jot or tittle, and thus showed it more the respect that the word of God should inspire, while there might be less of meteoric brilliancy in his expositions, there would yet be much more of what would command the confidence of those who require to know whence as well as what the teaching to which they bow may be.

But to return to what is (thank God) the unscriptural injunction that we die to sin; if that is to be the definition of our separation from it, who that knows the treachery of his own heart could ever satisfy himself as to his accomplishment of such a complete and absolute separation as is implied in death? How many of us would venture to claim being in such a condition? There is power for it, we are told, in the attraction of Christ as the Second Man! The plain answer is, that attraction is one thing, and power to fulfil what we desire is quite another. It is a strange thing to be told that what a Christian needs is to be "strengthened and encouraged to part company with sin." One can understand, alas, the conscience of a Christian being too little exercised with regard to the less manifest forms of it, and the hindrance to going on with God that is the necessary result of this; but in the man in the 7th of Romans, the specific case by which the apostle illustrates the need of deliverance, the lack of either will or exercised conscience is not what is supposed,but that when he would do good, evil was present with him: the thing which he hated still he did.

It may be said that it is deliverance from the law that is in question here. Of this we hope to speak at another time; yet it is evident that the "law of sin in the members," which the experience here reveals, is not produced by law, and has no essential relation to it. The inefficacy of the law to deal with it, (nay, the aggravation of the case by the would-be remedy,) is indeed insisted on, and the need of deliverance from law for any deliverance from the bondage of sin revealed by the experience is emphasized in a way which clearly the teacher before us does not understand. But the point before us is at present, that here is a man who, as is represented, needs no "encouragement to part company with sin," and yet cannot do it. Indeed the man who, without compulsion, yields himself to sin is dealt with by the apostle in another and much severer manner (Rom. 6: 16): "Know ye not that to whom ye yield yourselves servants to obey, his servants ye are to whom ye obey? whether of sin unto death, or of obedience unto righteousness?" So that the apostle evidently does not consider the Christian as needing to be encouraged to part company with sin, but supposes the readiness to this to be implied in his conversion.

Spite of this, a death to sin is "not so easy as it may seem;" and the effort to accomplish this is, in fact, the lure that, in some form of it or other, leads so many astray from God's true remedy. God must help us, of course; that is easily conceded; but God does not help us to produce in ourselves the state we are seeking to find satisfaction in; and, on the other hand, He has already done for us what, when in faith we lay hold of it, is effectual deliverance. "Our old man has been crucified with Christ, that the body of sin may be annulled, that henceforth we should not serve sin; for he that has died is freed (or justified) from sin." We are in Christ before God; and while we identify ourselves in faith with Him, the whole difficulty that we had drops away and is gone. His death is not our title to die in some other way, but is that in which we died, and died to sin, because He, our Substitute, died to sin once for all. "In Him is no sin;" and "he that abideth in Him sinneth not." He is the storehouse of every blessing for us, upon whom as in Him the favor of God continually rests; and as we are in Him, identified with Him, before God, so is He in us, identified with us, in the world. He is in heaven for our interests, which are thus amply, and beyond all need of anxiety, secured in Him; while we have the privilege of being here for Him. In proportion to the simplicity of our faith in receiving this will be our realization of peace, and joy, and power over circumstances, as well as over the sin in us that still remains, and remains to make self-confidence impossible to us, and Christ our continual necessity and dependence.

9. Deliverance From the Law.

For deliverance from the practical dominion of sin, we must of necessity be delivered from the law; and therefore the order of truth in the sixth and seventh chapters of the epistle to the Romans. Deliverance from the law and the necessity of this are dwelt upon in the seventh chapter; where the great point is that being under law means self-occupation in a religious way, the attempt to make something of that from which God would turn us away; and in which we find ourselves confronted with an unmanageable evil rooted in our very nature as born of Adam, and from which God Himself does not, in the way we look for it, come in to deliver us. Alas! pride tends ever to come in by the natural and conscientious endeavor to be right with God carried out by legal ordinances and self-culture, with all forms of asceticism super-added. God's remedy for all is the eye off self and upon Christ, with the apprehension, as given by the Spirit, of our identification with Him, so as to make God's delight in Him the joy in which we dwell, and thus the power by which in self-forgetfulness we live and serve Him.

We have therefore only to express our cordial and entire agreement with the teaching we are now examining that the true lesson of the law is that of one's own powerlessness. It is curiously put as a supposition, though it is to be hoped that the writer does not mean that it is no more than that with him: "I suppose it works in this way, that law brings home to a man the truth of his own utter powerlessness. That is the lesson to be learnt I do not care how it is learnt, in all probability by law, but it has to be learnt." It is evident, one would say, that the apostle expected it to be learnt in that way and that law is so entirely the human method of religious accomplishment that, apart from the revelation of God in the matter, we have no reason to imagine any ex-cogitation of another. But we need not dwell upon this: so far we are glad to agree with him that the entire "end of the law" is Christ.

When we come, however, to the necessary question as to what is the practical outcome of this for us, we find our agreement soon reaching its end, and a doctrine laid down which we have already sketched, but which is being pressed with continual earnestness, and (one must say) audacity. It is undoubtedly the root of the whole system presented to us. We have, of course, things inconsistent with it presented to us too if it were given clean cut and with entire consistency, it is hardly to be thought that Christians could go on with it as they manage to do now but this evasive character belongs naturally to the devious ways of error wherever found, a kind of Jesuitism which may be perhaps unconscious, but which all the more does its work. One may boldly assert that it passes the power of man to reconcile the different statements made. When for instance we have the question directly asked, — a question apt enough if we consider the many depreciatory remarks about it, — "What is the use of Scripture to us?" we are comforted and quieted by the assurance: "It is for doctrine, and is a guard to us, and it is a very important point in regard to it that our minds are thus kept from getting out of bounds." Yet none the less confidently is it declared that if you go to it for doctrine, it only shows you are not yet delivered from the law! Here are the words: —

"This question of law is a very great hindrance to many of us, and I think it takes us a long time to get free of law. I will tell you how it works — people go to the Scriptures to find exhortations and rules they want chapter and verse, as they say commonly, for their doctrine, and they want precepts for their conduct. That is all legality, it is the letter, and I think people are uncommonly fond of the letter; they go to Scripture in that sense to a large extent."

So, though Scripture is "for doctrine," to go to it for doctrine is legality! and although it is a very important point that by it our minds are kept from getting out of bounds, yet where the bounds are in this case is a mystery which must remain a mystery. When it is suggested that "the unsearchable riches of Christ are accorded to us by the Scriptures," that supposition is promptly repelled with a "No; you cannot get them except by the Spirit"! Who ever thought you could? But are they communicated to us apart from those inspired Scriptures the possession of which has been thought of as furnishing us with all the mind of God for His people here? But let us go on

"The idea of the word of God is, that God puts Himself into direct communication with man. . . . A man preaches effectually only what he has learned from God, not from what he has found in Scripture."

These things are put in fullest opposition; and yet what a man supposes he has learned from God is to be kept from getting out of bounds by what he has learned, not from God, but from Scripture! "I do not think people learn exactly from Scripture, but from the Spirit of truth, but the more familiar people are with the Scripture the better; because a man's mind is thus continually pulled up in its tendency to go beyond the limit"! To make the contradiction more complete and absolute, it is the same person who says, "I claim only the light of Scripture." Thus, though of course, he did not find it in Scripture, the light of Scripture is all he has! He was taught it, perhaps, independently; and then taught that it was all the while in Scripture, although he himself did not find it there, and "effectually" no one could. There is thus a continually fresh revelation being made to souls, not derived from Scripture, and which yet Scripture gives them authority to press on others, although it cannot, of course, teach others what it did not teach them, and people are legal and wrong if they go to Scripture for doctrine at all! Surely, as the wise man says, "The legs of the lame are not equal."

And after all it may be doubted whether any of us know what deliverance from law is, even the one who is teaching it to others. He has been himself studying Scripture, (only too much, he thinks,) and all his teaching he finds in Scripture, and only thus can press it with authority on others. How can he himself know for how much he is really indebted to this, which has thus been floating in his mind, and which he recommends us all to be familiar with? Really it seems as if the only thing that we could be quite sure he did not learn from Scripture is just this doctrine of his not learning from it. A good deal more, however, will be found to be involved in this.

It is legality also, we are told, to go to Scripture for precepts as much as doctrine. Precepts there surely are, in the New just as well as in the Old Testament: is it meant that we are not to listen to them? Well, at any rate, we are not to go to it for them. Are we to be taught them outside of Scripture? But then we must go to Scripture, to find out if our minds are betraying their natural tendency to get out of bounds! Nay, it would seem that we must be taught even more decisively by Scripture thus, than we have been already taught without it. Yet this primary teaching is supposedly by the Spirit of God, which after all we cannot rightly accept save under the "guard" of Scripture! What a wilderness of perplexity and unreality it is, which nevertheless cannot escape from the control of what the Spirit of God has provided for us all, except as, alas, this loose and careless slighting of the Spirit's instrumentality may enable us to leap the "bound," and follow our own thoughts with little check from aught beyond them.

And this is sure to be the result where (although it is confessedly good to be familiar with it) the study of Scripture is treated lightly: "a Bible student is not much after all." Aye, but "if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding, if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God" (Prov. 2: 3-5). Where but in Scripture shall we search, where find, after this fashion? Let us set then these human thoughts within the so necessary bounds which befit them.

Notice once more, that the precepts of the epistles were never anything else than part of Scripture. They address themselves directly to the heart and conscience of those to whom they were addressed. Precepts as they were, they were not legal; or else the great apostle who gave us the lesson of deliverance from the law made a terrible mistake. We at least will not charge him with it. He knew surely also, that the Spirit must act through the written Word in order that it may be effectual, whether for sinner or saint; yet that did not hinder him from claiming the most absolute obedience to what he wrote; and that obedience is no less due from us than from them. It is not merely that we are in a loose way to have it before us, but to learn from it, and to give heed as to the voice of the Lord Himself: "If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord" (1 Cor. 14: 37). The Spirit of God does not come in between, to make this a degree less direct or decisive, but to give it all its power for the subject soul.

10. The Supper, the Assembly, and the Sanctuary.

It is not my purpose to pursue the doctrines which we have been considering much further. The fundamental point as to the Person of the Lord has been already and by others sufficiently gone into. We are told that the Lord was not personally man, but man only in condition. His Spirit seems to be spoken of always as His deity which tabernacled in a human body. Thus He was not Man in the truth of His nature, as we understand man, or as He, in the way in which Scripture constantly speaks, is represented as able to enter into the full realization of manhood apart from sin. The Christ presented to us, if a man at all, is truly another man, far other than the One "touched with the feeling of our infirmities," the One "crucified through weakness," now "living by the power of God." But I do not intend to enter upon this further now.

There is yet one thing which should be considered before we close, — a doctrine which is indeed, as it would seem, rather shaping itself than already having received its final shape, but which, nevertheless, presents certain features that can be distinctly enough set forth. It is, in fact, a new ritualism, a sacramental doctrine which, however, in contrast with most doctrines of this character, lowers instead of exalting this so necessary sacrament itself. The doctrine is, in other words, that the sanctuary in which we approach God is the assembly, come together, with the Lord in His place; and the Lord's supper is the way into it, it is the introductory act into the assembly. Once in the assembly your worship becomes of another and distinctly higher character. It is a distress to have hymns and praises expressing the worship of the sanctuary in connection with the remembrance of the Lord in the supper or before this. The supper is the way in which He makes His presence good to and felt by us. When He instituted it, He was about to leave His own after the flesh, and shows them how He would make good His presence to them after He left them. It is a question whether the remembrance of Him connects itself with the sufferings at all. It is calling Him to mind. The instant you call Hm to mind, you call Him to mind as the living One. It is the Person. The bread and the wine set before us death accomplished, not accomplishing. One would be slow to make limitations, to prevent the heart traveling over all His sorrows, but we must have it set in the right direction.

In some expressions of this doctrine there is, in fact, a perfect confusion between the remembrance of Him and His presence in the assembly but it is agreed that as soon as the supper is ended you are in the assembly proper. The praises assume a new character, a character of worship in a higher sense than you were capable of before. In fact, now the sanctuary is open to you, although this must be a practical realization for each one; as to the mass of those gathered, a realization little found, but it is what we are now invited to. Outside of the gathering of the assembly you may have a sense of boldness, but you cannot really enter into the sanctuary except when gathered together, because all is dependent upon Christ, upon the place which He has taken, and it is in the midst of the church that He gives praise unto God; that is, He does not sing with you individually. You sink your individuality in the assembly. His presence makes it the holiest.

This will suffice at present for the doctrine. In taking it up, let us first of all consider how Scripture puts these various subjects before us, the manner of its doing this having great importance, as we shall see. The doctrine we are considering is evidently based largely indeed upon a supposed order of Scripture, — the order in the first of Corinthians. You find there the supper first, then you go on to the assembly and the various gifts exercised according to God. It is admitted, however, that Corinthians omits this very important view of the "sanctuary." The sanctuary constituted by the gathering of the saints is, in fact, nowhere in it, nor the worship of this highest sort, of which we are told. This is noted, indeed, by the advocates of this view. It is explained very simply by the fact that the Corinthians were too unspiritual for the apostle to enter into it with them, so that the omission of what is essential to the doctrine is quite easy to be understood!

To find the doctrine you must go on to Hebrews; only in Hebrews, in fact, you don't find it either. In Hebrews you have, as is evident, no gathering of the assembly as such at all, no constitution of the gathered saints into the sanctuary, no supper of the Lord as introducing you in. All these things, Scripture in the most distinct way, and surely with divine wisdom, has separated widely from one another, in order that there may be no possibility of founding a ritualistic doctrine upon anything for which it can be really quoted. The simplicity of Scripture as to all this is indeed of the most striking sort. No doubt you have in Corinthians the assembly as the temple of God, but it is not connected with worship in any way whatever. Both in the first and second epistles, the doctrine is given to show you the holiness that attaches to the assembly and to warn against any thing that would be a profanation of this. When we come to the supper, you have what is simplicity itself. It is the remembrance, not of a living, but of a dead Lord. We show the Lord's death. Living He is, surely if He were not, all this would be in vain, but it is not as living we remember Him. This is the confusion which, as we know, Romanism has made, but which it is strange to find continued by those who are almost at the other extreme from it. Nothing is plainer than that the bread and the wine signify for us the body and blood of Christ, the body and blood separate, a dead Christ and not a living One. You remember Him, you don't realize His presence with you; that is not the way it is put, but the very opposite.

You remember the past in the present. It is a past indeed, which presents the One who is a living Person in the most blessed way to the soul. His death is that which surely expresses His love in its fullest, in His gift of Himself for us. Nevertheless, we are looking back, not forward. We are looking down, if you please, not up. Our fellowship is the fellowship of His body and of His blood. The blood presented to us in memorial is, nevertheless, that which was most distinctly shed in the past. He is not entered as flesh and blood into heaven. He is not with us now in that character upon the earth. Yet we know Him by what He was upon the earth, and in no way more deeply than in all this story of His love-death for us to which the supper recalls us. Think of being told that the highest character of worship cannot be rightly found in connection with that in which the Lord's heart is told out as in nothing else! Yet this is only the threshold. It is only the way in. We must leave it behind and get beyond it, although in the Acts the disciples were gathered together to break bread, not by means of the breaking of bread to do something else. The breaking of bread was the object of the gathering, and how simple is the language used ever! — "the breaking of bread." With all the wonderful implications there are in it for us, yet how sedulously does Scripture keep us to the most perfect simplicity about it! We are not even told that we gather together to worship God. It is sufficient, it expresses all that need be said, to say that we are gathered together to remember Christ, on the resurrection day indeed, but to look back upon His death. Resurrection is surely needed in order to put the remembrance in its right place, but to say that we must get past the remembrance in order to enter into the worship aright, is the most presumptuous violation of Scripture and of all propriety for the Christian soul that one could think of, as committed by those who own, nevertheless, what Christ's death is for them.

When we come to the assembly afterwards in the fourteenth chapter of 1 Corinthians, we have the regulation of gift in its exercise for the edification of the assembly. We have no doctrine of the assembly as the sanctuary at all. It is not even worship that is spoken of. It is ministry; and that so clearly that there cannot be a possibility of question as to it. If, therefore, the way in which these truths are put together has any meaning for us, the ritualism which is now intruding amongst those who might be thought the freest from it, can have no place.

When we go on to Hebrews, as already said, there is no gathering of the assembly as such, that is contemplated at all. The approach to God in the holiest is entirely separated from every question of circumstances. It is as open, so far as Hebrews leads us, to the individual saint anywhere, as it is to the assembly; and how important it is to realize this; for the rent veil, (which indeed is denied to be in Hebrews at all,) is that which is the very characteristic of Christianity itself. It is that in which the true light already shines for us and which is the sign of the full liberty of worship that belongs to us now, as those no more at a distance, but brought near to God. Our drawing near does not depend upon a meeting, but it depends upon power in the Spirit alone. We have access through Christ, by one Spirit, unto the Father.

It is surely true that Christ, in the midst of the Church, gives praise unto God. No doubt it is true that we are able by grace to be in fellowship with Him in these praises of His, — nay, in our measure to express them as gathered together. Nevertheless, that is an inference, and not a direct scripture doctrine. The doctrine is that it is He who in the midst of the assembly, not by means of the assembly, — gives praise to God. As we find it in the twenty-second psalm it refers indeed to the gathering of the disciples after His resurrection when they are put into the place in which His work has set them. The praises at that time were surely His alone. Let us make whatever inferences are legitimate from it. No Christian will make any objection to that, but every right-minded Christian will make an objection to having an inference forced upon him as a doctrine of such weighty import as is supposed, and which is used, in fact, to divert him from the very object for which the assembly comes together, which is to remember Him.

In Hebrews there is no supper and no assembly. We have a blessed way of access to God. There is a new and living way which He has opened for us through the veil, that is to say, His flesh, and we have boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus. It is remarkable that where, in the doctrine before us, we have the gathering of the saints, as in Corinthians, there is no sanctuary worship, and that where we have the sanctuary worship, as in Hebrews, it is denied that there is a rent veil, and therefore a way of access in that way at all. The fact is we are told that the object of Hebrews is to give us boldness to enter, but there we stop. There is no entrance actually spoken of; yet we are of course to enter, but the very idea of entering through the veil, it seems, shows that the veil is not rent. How it shows it will be a mystery to most, probably, to understand. It is quite true the veil is not looked at as put away, but that we do enter through it. The veil is the flesh of Jesus, and the entrance is made for us by His death. We enter by the veil, but by a way of access opened for us through it. Where is the contradiction between the rent veil being there, and our entering through?

But this unrent veil in Hebrews has another purpose in the view that is held. It cuts off still the holy place from the holiest, only with this effect, that the holy place, the place of the table, the candlestick and the show-bread, has dropped out now. It is Jewish and we have nothing to do with it. All that you have in the present time is the holiest. You have no holy place. That has no present standing; and if it is still said that Christ is the the Minister of the sanctuary, — or, as we are reminded we ought to take it, as the Minister of the holy places, that has a sort of general reference, wider of course than Christianity, in order expressly to guard against the thought of the holy place having any reference to the Christian. It has been asked, why does it say, then, that Christ entered into the holy place with His own blood? but that is very simply settled. It is supposed that that means the holiest. There is no other word for holiest and you must take it in its connection; and if it be asked, did not the rending of the veil bring the holy place and the holiest together? it is answered, the ground taken is that the first tabernacle has no standing. Therefore you have nothing left except the holiest.

Now the doctrine of Hebrews is, in fact, quite otherwise. "The first tabernacle," as the apostle says, was practically the holy place for Israel. They could not (except the high-priest, on one day in the year) enter into the holiest at all. There was a first tabernacle that they could enter, and a second tabernacle that they could not enter. This first tabernacle, as such, has necessarily come to an end by the rending of the veil. The moment the veil is rent you have a holy place which is formed of the two holy places contemplated before. The first, as first, has come to an end. There is for us no first tabernacle; that is true; but as the word really is, we have "boldness to enter into the holy places by the blood of Jesus." That is the express doctrine as taught in Hebrews itself, that the holy place exists still, — nay, the holy places; while indeed they are one for us. Thus it is that Christ entered by His own blood into the holy place. It is sufficient to say that, while this holy place is by that very fact holy and holiest all in one, thus we have liberty to draw nigh indeed, and we enter not by some new experience of our own about it, but simply "by the blood of Jesus." This in its essence abides for us as Christians wherever we may be, — alone, together, in the assembly, or in our daily walk. It is the character of Christianity; and we are not Christians at certain times or occasions, but we are Christians all the time. A "better hope" has come in for us than the law could give men, for the law made nothing perfect, but we now, by Him who has entered into God's presence for us, draw nigh to God.

In a word, all this ritualism is a plain invention. Neither Corinthians nor Hebrews knows anything of it. Let anyone take simply the passages in which the Lord's supper is spoken of, and let them realize the impression that is made upon them by the deepest consideration that they can give such things. The simplicity of Scripture appeals to us all and would put the simplest believer into his place with God, privileged to be a worshiper, not through any attainment of his own, but through the work of Another. The constant aim of all that view of things that we have been considering is aristocratic. It is to make a distinct class amongst Christians, to comfort some perhaps with the thought of how much they have attained, to occupy others with themselves after another fashion, and put them practically at a distance.

It is not Christ Himself that in all this is rightly set before the soul, but our experiences with regard to Him which indeed the Spirit of God works in us as our eyes are upon Christ and our hearts realize His love, but which are put in the wrong place, so that, in fact, we lose very much that which it is the apparent effort to make us gain. Let us keep Scripture as God has given it to us, surely best so, and let us not supplement it with thoughts to which Scripture may perhaps be supposed to give the limit, lest we should go astray, but which Scripture itself has not inspired.

F. W. Grant.

Reasons for My Faith as to Baptism

Reasons for My Faith as to Baptism.

The scripture that bids me be ready to give an answer to every man that asks a reason of the hope that is in me (1 Peter 3: 15), may, in the spirit of it, if not the letter, be the justification of the present paper. Among many of those with whom I have the fullest sympathy and fellowship in spiritual things it is plain that there is more and more question of such views as I must acknowledge mine, — branded even as heresy by some; by others, considered at least to be the result of laborious reasonings — the fruit of intellectualism intruding upon what is the province of faith ( — of "leprosy in the head," as some claim). On the other hand, of all that to my knowledge has been written upon the subject, — and this will be thought, perhaps, a sufficiently damaging admission, — I am aware of nothing that exactly expresses the doctrine for which I am willing to be held responsible, and which I believe to be the doctrine of Scripture upon the subject. If, then, all Scripture be profitable," it would not be of faith to hold back what in my apprehension it teaches upon such a matter as baptism. Even for those who after all may never agree with me, it may do what is of more importance even than this, — it may show how little the faith as a whole is affected by different views about it, and how those who so differ may preserve unhindered the unity of the Spirit, and walk in love and peace together.

It is our common shame, indeed, that, with regard to a simple external rite such as this is, Christians orthodox and evangelical, and professing adherence to the Bible only, should yet be unable to agree upon almost any point in connection with it, — form, subjects, meaning. Amid this wide spread confusion, there is little ground indeed for self-satisfaction, much that should keep us humble and distrustful of ourselves. What a reproach, if after all the long patience of God with all of us, we are unable still to have patience with one another, even perhaps enough to understand one another's speech!

On the other hand, it must be confessed that in the traditional creed upon the subject errors so gross and corrupting have been maintained — preserved in measure even in the creeds of the Reformation, that it is scarcely to be wondered at if that should seem the only true view which was in every way farthest from the "Babylonian" one, and which, in its adoption, would remove at once all danger of contamination with it. Nevertheless it has to be asked whether the truth does not most naturally lie between the extremes, — whether it is not rather, in general, by the perversion of some truth that Satan prevails among Christians, rather than by the introduction of a whole lie in absolute contradiction to it. If it be so in this case, the extreme recoil from traditionalism will not be found the point of rest, but, in fact, will favor oscillation toward the traditional.

Our business is with Scripture, which the writer desires to have brought in the fullest way to bear upon all that is here put forth. He dreads not the keenest criticism, but invites it. Every untruth exposed is an advancement of the truth itself; where the truth is known, it is yet a buttress for it.

1. The Church of God.

We need, first of all, to see with what we must not connect — or entangle — the doctrine of Baptism: the idea of baptism into the Church, — that is, of water-baptism introducing into it, — must be named in order to be refused, in whatever form it may be presented.

What is the Church as we find it in the New Testament? On the one hand, it is a body — the body of Christ. Its members are of Christ — living members of Christ, for there are no others.

What forms this body? No human power, clearly; none is competent: it is the baptism of the Spirit only. (1 Cor. 12: 13.) Nor do I take up now the confusion of this with water-baptism, which is habitual in traditional teaching, except to say that when the apostles were baptized of the Spirit on the day of Pentecost, (comp. Acts 1: 5,) there was plainly no water-baptism at all. As plainly, it was not new birth that the apostles then experienced, but the gift of the Holy Ghost that they received. (Acts 2: 33, 38.) This gift, as something additional to new birth, is that which distinguishes the Church as united to Christ on high: "He that is joined to the Lord is one Spirit." (1 Cor. 6: 17.)

But the Church, as indwelt of the Spirit, is also spoken of as the "house of God," — a building which Christ builds, and which is composed of "living stones," just as the body is of living members. (Matt. 16: 18; 1 Peter 2: 5.) In this way, the body and the house are plainly but different aspects of the same thing: in extent, they are exactly the same.

But there is another aspect of the house also, which we find both in Ephesians and Corinthians. In Ephesians (Eph. 2: 20-22), there is the double thought of the Church — as being built on the foundation of apostles and prophets, growing to a holy temple in the Lord, and of a present "habitation of God in spirit." Here, human instrumentality is seen; and in Corinthians (1 Cor. 3: 10), the apostle Paul claims himself to to be a "master-builder," and to have laid the foundation, warning those who follow him how they build upon it. The foundation, as he says, is Christ, — the truth as to Him which the first inspired teacher communicated. All after-building is by teaching, — teaching by which are influenced and fashioned those who accept it. Building and edifying are thus the same thing — in the original, the same word. The care was to be as to the material used: "gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble" (v. 12); and these materials therefore refer primarily to doctrines. The day is coming, says the apostle, which will try all, — a day in which the fire will try (and "our God is a consuming fire") every man's work of what sort it is. "If any man's work abide which he hath built thereupon, he shall receive a reward. If any man's work shall be burned, he shall suffer loss; yet he himself shall be saved, yet so as through the fire."

So, in responsibility for the present time, the house of God is being built. But, alas! what responsibility did man ever come under in which he did not fail? So have the builders failed in this case; and thus while in the first epistle to Timothy the apostle writes that he may know how to behave himself in the house of God, which is the Church of the living God, in the second he makes only mention of a "great house," in which are vessels of gold and silver, of wood and earth, and some to honor, some to dishonor. And now the word is, that "if a man purge himself from these, he shall be a vessel unto honor, sanctified, and meet for the Master's use."

I do not here go further into the doctrine of the house, because it is clear that whatever builders might in fact build, and with whatever far-reaching results, nothing can affect the fact that Christ's building is only of living stones, and that the Church, in either aspect, is thus one thing essentially: none but the living form any part of it. Also as to introduction into it, the two things by which alone any are introduced into it — new birth and the gift of the Holy Ghost — neither is in man's hand to bestow.* Man cannot form or introduce into the Church; he can but recognize what God has done.

{*The laying on of apostles' hands in certain cases, as at Samaria and at Ephesus, will he considered in another place.}

But here we are brought at once face to face with the view that many have with regard to baptism. They would say at once, That is just what we believe baptism to be — the recognition of the work which God has done, and which He alone could do, in souls. Just as Peter, when the descent of the Spirit upon Cornelius and his house had taken place, asks, "Who shall forbid water, that these should not be baptized who have received the Holy Ghost as well as we?"

But this is too partial an induction; for if we infer from this that baptism is therefore that in which we recognize that the gift of the Spirit has been received, how entirely out of its place must the same apostle have used it on the day of Pentecost, when he bids the listening Jews "repent, and be baptized, every one of you, for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost" (Acts 2: 38)! How wrongly must it have been administered in Samaria, where it is stated that "as yet He was fallen upon none of them, only they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus." (Acts 8: 16.) And again at Ephesus, where we read of certain disciples of John, that "they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus; and when Paul had laid his hands on them, the Holy Ghost came upon them." (Acts 19: 5, 6.) Here it is plain that if baptism with water be the recognition of the reception of the Spirit having taken place, Paul, Philip, and Peter himself must have been mistaken. It is simpler to believe that the inference from the case of Cornelius is the real mistake.

And the more we think of it, the more we may thank God that He has not appointed any ordinance as introduction into His Church on earth. The contention about baptism today perfectly illustrates the confusion which would have arisen. Have you been sprinkled or immersed? as a child, or an adult believer? What was the formula used? Into what faith? By whose hands? How many questions with which to torture my own soul or the souls of others! How beautifully the very case of Cornelius rebukes it all, where the Holy Ghost falls upon those uncircumcised and unbaptized; and to Peter, hesitating with his Jewish scruples about ordinances, the voice from heaven replies, "What God hath cleansed, that call not thou common"!

If, then, the Church is formed by the baptism of the Holy Ghost, and we find in the inspired history of Christianity at the beginning that the Holy Ghost is bestowed both after and before the baptism of water, we may see clearly that God has guarded His Church from any such usurpation of ordinances over it. Christ has "blotted out the obligation to ordinances, which was against us, which was contrary to us, and taken it out of the way, nailing it to His cross" (Col. 2: 14, Gk.), not to replace them with Christian forms for Jewish: baptism and the supper of the Lord stand upon other ground than this.

2. The Positiveness of the Grace which the Church Expresses.

Now, if we will consider but a moment what is implied in being a member of Christ, we shall see that there is in it a positiveness of grace such as was never expressed before, such as we can find nowhere else. In Judaism, the house of God was the temple or the tabernacle, not the people of Israel. The body of Christ was a thing unknown. A Jew might look forward to being under Christ, a happy subject of His righteous rule; but of being a member of Christ he could know nothing. Christ had not come, still less taken His place as the human Head of the Church in heaven. The Spirit of God had not come: there was yet no baptism into a body of which there was no head.

The Christian is a child of God, and there were children of God from the earliest ages of the world; but he has, as none had before, the Spirit of adoption, by which he is able to cry, Abba, Father, and to take his place thus as a child of God. He has received an everlasting salvation. He is in known, near, and eternal relationship, possessor of eternal life, though in the world, no more of it, but dead with Christ, quickened and risen with Him, seated in heavenly places in Christ Jesus.

This is not the place to enter into or discuss the nature of these blessings: for my present purpose, I must assume them to be known, as they are indeed the common blessings of Christianity, though unbelief and bad teaching may obscure them more or less for even the mass of Christians. But all these things imply a security of blessing which Scripture proclaims to us as to be held in full assurance of faith, never would cast a doubt upon, even for a moment.

The conditional texts, (and there are many in the Word of God,) are all, as it is easy to see if one will examine them with this in view, tests of profession: they never imply doubt as to the real child of God. They may say, Lest, having preached to others, I myself should be a cast-away;" never "Lest, after being born again," or "justified," or "having eternal life, I should be a cast-away." That could not be supposed without upsetting the gospel. On the contrary, "he that saith he is in the light, and hateth his brother, is in darkness" — now! But may be not once have been in the light? no: he is "in darkness even until now." (1 John 2: 9.) And if some have gone out from the Christian body, the apostle is assured by that fact that they were not of it: "They went out," he says, "that it might be made manifest that they all are not of us." (v. 19, R.V.) So, if justified by the blood of Christ, "much more shall we be saved from wrath through Him." (Rom. 5: 9.)

All this is peculiar to Christianity. In Israel under the law such blessed assurance was not attainable, however God might and did minister strength by the way. There was no "Abba, Father," from the Spirit of adoption. God was a Father to Israel, a family of the earth brought nigh to Himself, but such relationship involved no necessary salvation, as it implied no new birth. The best saints had to cry, "Cast me not away from Thy presence, and take not Thy Holy Spirit from me." (Ps. 51: 11.)

Together under the law, and in the final uncertainty which sprang from that, servants but not sons, the congregation of Israel was a mixed gathering of saints and sinners, — what indeed men have made of the Christian "assembly," but as far as possible from what it was designed to be; the result, too, largely of that Judaizing process going on, which we see at work from the beginning of Christianity, and so steadily resisted everywhere by the apostle of the Gentiles.

3. The Kingdom of God.

The relationship of God to His people Israel was that of King. The temple was His palace, the ark His throne, the human king but His representative, as it is said of Solomon, they "sat upon the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel." (1 Chron. 28: 5.) The law of Moses was the rule of this kingdom, the terms of the covenant between God and the people. (Ex. 34: 28.) Of the covenant itself circumcision was the sign, although, as we know, dating from Abraham: the circumcised man was a debtor to do the whole law. (Gal. 5: 3.) Every male in the household had to be circumcised, whether Israelite-born or slaves, and only in houses where this was observed could they keep the Passover. (Ex. 12: 48.)

Israel's condition under the law was that of bond-servants (Gal. 4: 21-26) they had no permanent standing before God (John 8: 35): so that even the children of God among them in spirit differed nothing from bond-servants. (Gal. 4: 1.) God has always been gracious, and the just have always lived by faith; but "the law is not of faith," and the questions arising out of this contradiction between the two could not yet be settled. Under Moses the nation went on with the accuser to the judge, and the Babylonian captivity saw the glory removed out of the temple, the temple itself destroyed, and Israel branded with the mark, Lo-Ammi, "not My people." (Hosea 1: 9.)

The kingdom was now committed to the Gentiles by Him who from heaven governs all things necessarily, as He always did; but with no longer any recognized throne on earth. The Gentile empires that succeed are bestial and without God; and though a remnant of Judah return to their land and rebuild once more the temple, they are still subjected to them, and the decree that has gone out is unrepealed: they are Lo-Ammi still.

So the Lord finds them; but from the Baptist-messenger who has preceded Him a cry has gone forth of recall, "The kingdom of heaven is at hand."

Matthew alone uses this term, for which the other gospels substitute "the kingdom of God." The kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God are one substantially, whatever difference may be implied in the expression. The parables of the one are able to take their place unchanged as parables of the other. The difference seems to be that while "heaven" is the place of the throne (Matt. 5: 34) it is God who sits upon it. The kingdom of heaven seems thus clearly distinct from that which had been in Israel. Then it was "the ark of Jehovah, the Lord of all the earth," that passed through Jordan. (Joshua 3: 13.) At the end of Chronicles, in Ezra, Nehemiah, and Daniel, it is of the God of heaven that we hear continually. And if this implies withdrawal, in a sense, from earth, where the throne is given to the Gentile, yet God's steps are never really retrograde, but in advance. Heaven is now to be opened to us, as Daniel shows us One who is the Son of Man coming in the clouds of heaven to receive the kingdom. In Matthew, in the sermon on the mount, which is in fact the announcement of the kingdom as it will yet be when Israel shall receive their Messiah, heaven is God's throne, the earth His footstool, Jerusalem the city of the great King; and if on the one hand, there are meek ones (comp. Ps. 37) whose blessedness will be in an inheritance on earth, there are those whom the world has persecuted for Christ's sake, and whose reward will be great in heaven. Heaven and earth are indeed to be linked together now, as the book of Revelation very distinctly shows us, the new Jerusalem, the heavenly city, coming down from God out of heaven, not exactly to earth, which is not said: there is no confusion between earth and heaven, as now so often made; and yet into such close connection that it can be said, "The tabernacle of God is with men, and He will dwell with them."

This is in the "kingdom and glory" yet to come; but there is a phase of the kingdom now, in which it is joined with another characteristic expression, "the kingdom and patience of Jesus" (Rev. 1: 9), truly the kingdom of heaven, for He sits upon the Father's throne (Rev. 3: 21), waiting to take that throne of His as Son of Man, upon which He will be able to grant His saints to sit with Him. The distinction between these two phases of the kingdom is therefore abundantly plain.

When the Lord came to His own, the kingdom was in His person offered to them; and of that therefore the early announcements, whether of the Baptist or the Lord, speak. But when it becomes plain that He is rejected by Israel, and in the eleventh and twelfth of Matthew He has declared their rejection and judgment in consequence, He disowns His merely natural ties, proclaims that His real kindred were those who did the will of His Father in heaven, and then, leaving the house, and sitting by the sea-side, He gives utterance to those parables in which the new phase of the kingdom is presented. (Matt. 13)

The ministers of Christ are "stewards of the mysteries of God." (1 Cor. 4: 1.) And these mysteries are "things hidden from ages and generations, and now made manifest to the saints." (Col. 1: 26.) All that we have seen of the Church as the body of Christ is such a mystery (Eph. 3: 9); but there are "mysteries of the kingdom of heaven" also, which the Lord opens in these parables (Matt. 13: 11): the parabolic form being evidence that we have in them what was hidden from Israel, according to the prophecy which Matthew quotes: "I will open my mouth in parables: I will utter things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world" (vv. 34, 35).

Accordingly, we find in them such a state of things as in the coming kingdom cannot be. It is a kingdom which is brought about, not by the coming of the Son of Man from heaven, but by the sowing of seed — "the word of the kingdom" — upon earth. But here in many, in whom it seems to have taken root, there is yet no fruit. Contrary influences, the world, the flesh, and the devil, destroy much. Worse still, the enemy, not shut up as he will be when the kingdom comes in power (Rev. 20: 1-3), sows his own seed, what is not the word of God, but its semblance only, and tares are found among the wheat, not to be removed till the day of harvest. Then indeed the kingdom seems to root itself in the earth, but to become itself earthly, and shelter the birds of the air, the powers of evil. And into the good bread of life itself the "woman," the professing church, puts the evil leaven which diffuses itself until the whole is leavened.

These are the pictures of the kingdom which the first four parables present to us. Every where we see strife of good and evil in it, and even that the victory does not seem with the good, but with the evil; until indeed the day of manifestation come, and angel-hands apply the remedy when the Son of Man again appears. The first parable gives, as we might expect, the secret of the whole condition. It is a kingdom of truth (John 18: 37), into which men are discipled (Matt. 13: 52, R.V.); and where discipling may mean very different things, — mere head-knowledge, barren profession, or continuance in the Word so as to be disciples indeed. (John 8: 31.) Subjection to Christ may be nominal or real; they may say, "Lord, Lord," and not do the things that He says. But this lasts only till the day of manifestation; and when the kingdom comes in power, then it is written, "Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God," and "Except ye be converted, and become as little children, ye shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of heaven."

4. The Three Circles in Ephesians 4.

In connection with the sevenfold unity of which the apostle speaks in Eph. 4, a threefold sphere of blessing is plainly to be seen, based upon the relationships of the Godhead to us. "There is one body and one Spirit, even as ye are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, one faith, one baptism; one God and Father of all who is over all and through all, and in all." There are here three concentric circles: that of the Church, that of the kingdom, and that of creation. Let us look at them distinctly a little.

That of the Church is plain: "one body" is, of course, the body of Christ. It would be impossible to multiply this into many bodies, impossible to have more than one Church. The "one Spirit" unites together the members of the body, and animates them, uniting them also to the head. Then, as the "calling" of the Church is distinct, so must be the special "hope."

The second circle is not less distinct, one would think, yet it is much more disputed. "One Lord" should prepare us, however, to read aright what follows. It has been seen by many that Christ does not take ever in relation to His saints now the title of King. He does not the less reign, surely; and it is His grace only that avoids the distance which might seem implied. Christians are known as those that "call upon the name of Jesus Christ our Lord." This is for us the title He is pleased to assume.

"One faith" evidently means what some would call one creed, not faith as the principle of dependence upon God, in which sense "one" faith would hardly be intelligible.

In connection, then, with "one Lord, one faith," we have "one baptism." This has been thought by some to be the baptism of the Spirit; but this, as what forms the body, would certainly have place in the first circle, and there would be needless, as one Spirit coupled with one body expresses already all. Moreover, "baptism" by itself naturally means the rite; when used with other applications, other words are added in explanation. Water-baptism also, as we shall find fully as we go on, is that which is connected with the sphere of discipleship, that is, of the kingdom, as that of the Spirit is with the Church.

We have now a third sphere, one closing unity, one God and Father of all, who is above (or over) all, and through all, and in all." This last is undeniably the reading of all the oldest manuscripts though the early versions have "in us all." I apprehend that the manuscripts are right, and that the "Father in us" is not a scriptural thought. It is said of Christ, and of Him alone, who was the Father's representative in the world. But if so, that would forbid the "over all and through all" being said of persons, though "Father of all" must of course be of persons. But how widely, then, does this apply? Is it of all men, or of all believers? It seems to me designedly left vague. Creation is that which gives the first ground of the title; but here the fall has brought in breach and disorder, and the Lord says to the Jews, "If God were your Father, ye would love Me." New creation must, therefore, come, and by new birth we are children of God in a nearer and more wonderful way than before. But new creation does not take us out of creation as such, in which man alone upon the earth has been the transgressor. "Over all, through all, in all," seems to take in the whole sphere of things wherein, blessed be God, we still find Him.

There are certainly here three circles. The Church is not the kingdom, whatever the comparative extent of these two may be. And the sphere of creation is different from either. But all this will become clearer as we go on: it is by the comparison of scripture with scripture that, as in the mouth of two or three witnesses, every word must be established.

5. The Parables of the Kingdom: are they Jewish, or Christian?*

{* By those who have no question as to the Christian application, this section may be omitted without loss to the general argument. It necessarily refers to views and details of prophecy which cannot be here fully entered into, and may thus present difficulty to those not familiar with the subject.}

A question must now be looked at which is of the utmost importance to the whole inquiry. It has of late been taught by some that the parables of the kingdom in the gospels are Jewish, and not Christian, — that they refer to a future time, when the Church of God shall have been removed from the scene, and Israel be in the troubles of the last days, through which they shall be awakened and brought to God. Thus we must not take the kingdom of heaven as applying to the present time, with which it is in entire contrast; the kingdom now is only by the personal presence of the Spirit of God in the individual, and in no other way. Church and Kingdom now are therefore in the strictest sense conterminous: the rule of Christ is only by the Spirit indwelling, and this is what forms the Church, as we have seen.

The arguments as to the parables are these: —

(1) First, and really, as it would appear, the foundation one, the word "then" in Matt. 25: 1, whereby the parable of the ten virgins is shown clearly to refer to the period and events of Matt. 24. "It is then, when the wide world owns the sovereignty of the beast, (Rev. 13) that the kingdom of the heavens, comprising those who are undefiled by the universal worship (Rev. 14), shall be like unto ten virgins who . . . . go forth to meet Him whom their soul loveth (Cant. 1 and 3); but in the lull which precedes the storm of the great tribulation (Ezek. 38: 8, last clause), they all slumber and sleep till awakened by the cry, 'Behold the Bridegroom ' . . . Then all arise to testify again in the teeth of the beast, the false prophet, and the whole world."

Now, that the "then" which begins the parable refers in some sense to the "period and events" of the chapter before will surely not be denied. If we turn to the questions of the disciples, to which the whole prophecy is in answer, we shall find that they are three: "When shall these things be? and what shall be the sign of Thy coming, and of the end of the age (not world)?" For the Jews, the "present age" was the age of law, the "age to come" the age of Messiah. The coming of the Son of Man would, according to Daniel, introduce the latter, and thus end the former. Passing briefly over the answer to the first question, (which Luke 21, gives in full,) Matthew dwells upon the last two. The prophecy shows us, first, Israel, then the Church, and then the Gentile nations in connection with the end, giving, naturally, along with this, sufficient of their previous history to make all intelligible. Thus, in the parable of the talents (Matt. 25: 14), He goes back to the time of His going away to heaven, before which He delivers them to His servants. Are these also (as they should be, to make all consistent with the new interpretation,) a Jewish remnant in days yet to come? That is impossible: the Lord is speaking of Christian times; and this parable of the talents is so connected with the previous one as to make it certain that this must be also Christian.

This by itself is enough; for the "then," while it does refer to the coming of the Lord, does not preclude the history of what precedes. But there are other things, as the going out to meet the Bridegroom, which is not an idea suited to Israel, who abide on earth, and are not caught away to meet Him. Then whose is the Bridegroom? I should agree in this with those who hold the new views, that it is Israel's; but then the virgins and the bride must be distinct, as in this case they are not, but confounded. Others have, I know, made similar confusion from the other point of view; but there is no justification of it on this account.

(2) In the second place, it is urged that "in the parable, the wicked are gathered first; in what is now, the saints are gathered first, and afterward come with the Lord. In what is now, the saints are taken out and the wicked left for wrath to come. In the parable, the scene is cleared of the wicked; in this dispensation, it is cleared of the Church; and whereas the former does not occur until the consummation of the age, the last may occur at any moment."

The fundamental facts here are in no wise a new discovery of the writer's,* although he states them in a way which is careless enough when one considers his knowledge of much that has been written. In the parable of the tares, they are gathered and bound in bundles to be burned, and then the wheat is gathered into the barn. The interpretation carries the action of the parable further, — the wicked are cast into the fire, and the righteous shine forth as the sun in the kingdom of their Father. Here, the righteous are seen to be heavenly saints, as the figure shows; and also where they shine, for the kingdom of the Father is not the millennial kingdom of the Son of Man. But these must be the wheat of the parable, if the interpretation is interpretation at all. It must surely be, therefore, that the gathering into bundles, though an angelic act, speaks of something different from removal from the earth, as indeed the "bundles" would seem also to imply.

{*He owes them, with many others, to the labors of one whom nevertheless he does not cease to attack and vilify in the most open and shameless way, but to whom multitudes, with himself, owe the recovery of truths lost to the Church from the earliest ages. I do not defend him: his memory has no need.}

In the net cast into the sea, however, it is different. There, the wicked are taken out of the midst of the just; and there, by the same rule, if the interpretation is really that, then the parable must refer to something outside the present dispensation. The truth seems to be that the parables as a whole take in the whole time from the sowing of the seed of the kingdom by the Lord Himself on earth till the time He comes in glory; and thus take in the present Church-period, and that which follows it, the time of the going forth of the everlasting gospel as in Rev. 14. In this way all is harmony.

(3) The objection that "these parables summarize all prophecy in relation to God's earthly people," and that "prophecy is not connected with the Pauline dispensation," for proof of which, we are referred to Eph. 3: 5-9, is in many ways strange enough. Of course, if they do summarize all prophecy as to Israel, they cannot — primarily, at least, — apply to the Church, the heavenly people: that is clear. But it has to be proved that this is what they do. And if they do, it seems strange that they should be said by Matthew himself to be of "things which have been kept secret from the foundation of the world." Surely that which was uttered by all the prophets could not at the same time have been "kept secret"! And the reference to Ephesians is on this account still more strange. That Old Testament prophecy does not speak of the "Pauline" dispensation is of course true, though the New Testament is not similarly silent.

Thus if the disciples professed their understanding of the parables, it could not be, as the writer states, from their knowledge of prophecy! That was only a knowledge of old things, to which the parables added now the new. (Matt. 13: 52.) Moreover, they could understand, in general, the drift of these parables without the knowledge of the special Church-truth committed to Paul afterward, which is not revealed in them, however much it may enable us to understand better certain details of them.

(4) But it is inferred that the kingdom of heaven involves "the rule of the heavens, therefore of God, over the entire scene," and in such sort that "the bare fact of the existence and triumphant wickedness of the murderers of the upright" — Rome — "should have convinced us that the sphere called 'Christendom' cannot possibly be the sphere of the rule of the heavens and of God."

To this it is sufficient to answer that the parables themselves speak quite differently. The first four parables, which, as spoken to the multitude, and not as the last three — in the house, speak of the open, external aspect of things, present to us a constantly increasing power of evil till the end of that form of the kingdom which they picture. The devil, the flesh, and the world destroy three parts of the good seed in the first parable. In the second, there are tares, the direct growth of Satan's sowing, — not truth, but a lie, therefore, — right among the wheat. In the third, there is but one seed, and the general result is pictured, — the wonder being that a little seed springs into a tree, such as, in Dan. 4, the king of Babylon is compared to, and which shelters the fowls of the air, which in the first parable represent the instruments of Satan; while in the last, the woman (the professing church) hides the leaven in the meal, or corrupts the bread of life with the leaven of falsehood. Here the state of things continually gets worse, and, general as the picture is, it certainly does more than leave room for, rather it implies (if not in all her features,) the woman Jezebel of Revelation.

How, then, can her actual existence in Christendom convince us that the parables do not apply to Christendom? It is the exactness of the picture which should convince us of what it is the picture. And these four parables are exact, even as to their minutest features, in the delineation of Christendom, of those in professed subjection to Christ, which is just the sphere of the kingdom and of discipleship.

6. The Kingdom of God's Dear Son.

Mark and Luke repeat some of these parables of the kingdom of heaven, just substituting for this phrase "the kingdom of God." And among these, Mark introduces another which gives plainly the present form of it (Mark 4: 26-29): "So is the kingdom of God, as if a man should cast seed into the ground, and should sleep and rise, night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up he knoweth not how . . . but when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come." This agrees exactly with the present state of the kingdom, as the fruit of the Lord's personal presence and labor in the world, now left apparently to itself, but the field to be reaped when He comes again. Nothing but Christendom can possibly answer to such a picture as this. Israel will not have the Lord personally to cast seed into the ground after the Church is removed, nor will they be brought in as a continuation of present gospel-work. "As concerning the gospel," says the apostle, "they are enemies for your sakes." (Rom. 11: 28.)

But if this be so, it is monstrous to contend that the kingdom of God now is "by the personal presence of the Spirit of God, and in no other way." That "the kingdom of God is not in word, but in power" (1 Cor. 4: 20) does not prove it nor that it is "righteousness and peace and joy in the Holy Ghost." (Rom. 14: 17.) These things indeed characterize it where real in the heart, but there are, none the less, subjects that are not really subject, and disciples that are not "disciples indeed." No doubt, where what is thus truly characteristic is spoken of, it is the "kingdom of God" that is the term employed yet in the parables of the kingdom of heaven also, it is the "good seed" that is "the children of the kingdom." Nor can it be well maintained, with the parables before us, that there are two kingdoms, contemporaneous with one another, unequal in extent, and both of God.

The kingdom of God's dear Son, once mentioned (Col. 1: 13), is evidently again simply the kingdom of God as it now exists, with the Son sitting on the Father's throne. (Rev. 3: 21.) The apostle speaks of the saints as "giving thanks unto the Father . . . who hath delivered us from the authority of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of His dear Son," a thing in which every true child of the kingdom may unfeignedly rejoice, spite of the sorrowful fact that others, outwardly in the kingdom, have not in heart bowed to the Son, nor found therefore the deliverance. It will not do to argue from such a scripture, as the writer referred to does, that "saints only are within it." This is not said, and one has no title no say it. Condition is implied, in the kingdom in its present form, as we may now go on to see.

7. The Kingdom Running Through the Dispensations.

The Church which is Christ's body we have seen to be peculiar to the present dispensation and the House of God to be, in God's thought, but the same Church in another aspect. The Kingdom, on the contrary, in what is essential to it, runs through the Jewish and the Christian dispensations both, though not without a break, when Israel became Lo-Ammi, and the throne on earth was transferred to the Gentiles.

The members of Christ's body have a place in positive relationship to Him, and as children of God, with the Spirit of adoption theirs, able to cry, Abba, Father.

With the subjects of the kingdom as such, on the contrary, all is conditional. In Israel there was no formal separation even between believers and unbelievers. They were one of the "families of the earth" adopted by God as His, but on that very account the true children of God not distinguished from the rest. In the parables of the kingdom of heaven we find a mixture to a large extent similar, tares not for some time distinguishable from the wheat, and never allowed to be separated by servants' hands. Under Israel's legal covenant every thing was of necessity conditional, blessing suspended on obedience simply. In the epistles we are all aware of much conditional teaching also, nowhere connected with the children of God or members of Christ as such, but in view of discipleship and a mixed profession — that is, the kingdom.

In Christianity, however, there is a notable difference from Judaism, because of the grace that has replaced law. The question is now whether this grace has been accepted, not of obedience to any legal code: but the acceptance implies that in case of such acceptance, a real change in heart and life will have resulted from it. Take one of the parables of the kingdom, Matt. 18: 23-35: here the confessedly bankrupt debtor is forgiven freely an immense debt; but, untouched by this forgiveness, he exacts from a fellow-servant a paltry debt to himself, and is cast into prison without hope of redemption. Here, forgiveness itself is in the kingdom-view of it conditional.

In Israel a man was a Jew by nature (Gal. 2: 15), the necessary consequence of God's adoption of one of the families of the earth. Yet he must be circumcised, must receive in his flesh the token of it, or he would be cut off. The Israelite was circumcised at eight days old; infant circumcision was the rule and imperative; but if a stranger desired to partake of the passover, he could by circumcision enter the assembly, all the males of his household being circumcised with him. This was, if one may say so, the grace of the law.

But Israel have ceased in the meanwhile to be the people of God; the national birthright entrance into the kingdom has failed therefore with this. There remains but the other form, that of proselyte entrance; the bringing into a kingdom which is the fruit of the word of the kingdom sown as seed in the world, is "discipling." Men are "discipled into the kingdom of heaven." (Matt. 13: 52, Gk.) The grace of the law is that which abides, now that the legal form is passed away. Grace reigns. Circumcision which makes a "debtor to do the whole law" (Gal. 5: 3) is passed away with the law. Has anything taken its place, as an outward introduction to the kingdom of God? And in this new "discipling to the kingdom," is there a place provided for the children of proselytes, as under the law when the males were circumcised? These questions lead us on directly to the doctrine of baptism.

8. The Baptisms of the Law.

Baptism as we find it in Christianity is not an entirely new thing, but has its roots in the previous dispensation. There were Jewish baptisms more than one, which had an important place under the law; and the consideration of these will naturally prepare us for the better understanding of the New Testament form. It is well known that "there is an universal agreement among later Jewish writers that all the Israelites were brought into covenant with God by circumcision, baptism, and sacrifice, and that the same ceremonies were necessary in admitting proselytes" (Smith's Dictionary). But of this, Scripture says nothing, and we can build only on what is found in it. Apart from this altogether there were legal baptisms, although we must go to the New Testament for the word. This is applied in Mark 7: 4, 8 and Luke 11: 38 to mere ceremonial and traditional "washings," as to which we have only to note that they were clearly symbols of purification with a supposed sacramental efficacy. Similarly, it is when a dispute had arisen about purifying that John's disciples come and tell him that Jesus was baptizing. (John 3: 26.)

It is only in Hebrews beside, and in two passages that we have reference to Jewish baptisms. As clearest we may take the latter first, which the Revised Version gives as follows: "According to which are offered both gifts and sacrifices that cannot, as touching the conscience, make the worshiper perfect, being only (with meats and drinks and divers washings) carnal ordinances, imposed until a time of reformation." (Heb. 9: 10.) But this is not, as to the parenthesis thus introduced, an improvement on the common version. The word (epi) translated "with" has indeed very commonly the meaning of "with, in addition to," but it also means "dependent on," and this removes the parenthesis and brings what is contained in it into the main argument where it surely belongs. For why are they carnal ordinances, these gifts and sacrifices? Plainly, because they depend upon "meats and drinks and divers baptisms" — the real word. How could offerings consisting of such things set at rest the conscience?

The "divers baptisms" belonged, then, to this service of gifts and offerings. They were, according to what we have seen already, the directly purificatory part. In a sacrificial service they can only mean one thing, and that the apostle explains to us in the verses that almost immediately follow here: "For if the blood of goats and bulls and the ashes of a heifer sprinkling them that have been defiled sanctify unto the cleanness of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ . . . cleanse your conscience?" Here are purifications, sacrificial, of diverse character, (blood and ashes,) and those which the apostle is comparing and contrasting with what does now perfect the conscience in the time of reformation which is now come.

One thing only here can be objected in the face of this decisive argument, that these "baptisms" must be in this case sprinklings and not immersions, which, it is granted on all hands, is the primary meaning of the word. The answer is that Scripture has changed many words from their primary meaning, and that this is one of them. The force of "baptism" in the New Testament does not depend upon the mode at all. When Israel were "baptised unto Moses in the cloud and in the sea," they were not immersed in either, and to introduce the thought into the passage would turn its solemn significance into absolute folly. In that wonderful way they were broken off from their past in Egypt and taken into Moses' school: that entrance accompanied by a wonderful lesson of the power and majesty of a Saviour-God. After all this, to turn their Deliverer into a destroyer!

Then take the baptism into one body, baptism into Christ, baptism into His death, nothing surely but very strange prepossession with an idea could make the thought of immersion in one of these cases seem reasonable or right. But we are anticipating what will be more fittingly our subject at another time.

The other passage which speaks of these Jewish baptisms is in Heb. 6: 2: "Not laying again the foundation of repentance from dead works, and of faith toward God, of the teaching of baptisms and of laying on of hands, and of resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment." These things, from the words immediately preceding them, and from the presence among them of baptism and laying on of hands, have been ,by almost general consent taken to be the Christian foundation, despite the evident fact that Christ is not so much as named in it! The common version of the previous words, not bettered in the revised, reads, "Therefore leaving the principles of the doctrine of Christ, let us go on unto perfection;" but which the margin gives literally as "leaving the word of the beginning of Christ." This is Judaism, which could not be more accurately characterized in connection with the full "perfection" of Christianity itself. Writing to Jewish converts, the apostle exhorts them not to go back to what they had left, and lay again a foundation which ignored Christ as come, though it might have many truths beside. Notice, that while repentance, faith in God, resurrection and judgment are spoken of in plain terms, the truth indeed to perfect the conscience, of which Paul speaks in the ninth chapter, is entirely wanting, while in its place we find that very "teaching of baptisms," which he shows there to be but the Jewish shadow of it! That should surely make clear of what he is speaking, while the laying on of hands" connected with this is easily understood as in Judaism that identification of the offerer with his sacrifice which was of such importance to acceptance through it.

But these things so necessary for the soul, were but taught in type and shadow. How needful to exhort them to leave the word of the beginning of Christ and to go on to perfection! How this strengthens the interpretation of the ninth chapter is easy to be seen.

9. The Baptism of John and of the Lord by Him.

A slight difference in the form of the word distinguishes the Jewish baptisms from those of the New Testament. The Jewish baptism is baptismos, that of the New Testament, baptisma. The difference in meaning is, that, while baptismos speaks of the transient act only, baptisma speaks of the result of the act, a state induced. The Jewish ones were transient and might be repeated; the Christian introduces into a permanent condition.

And this was true in measure of John's baptism, the forerunner of our Lord. To his baptism we next come, to learn from it what we may as to the Christian rite.

John's baptism was a baptism of repentance to prepare people for the coming Lord. Hence it was a purification — a "baptism of repentance," — and marked out and separated a remnant from the mass of the people to escape the coming judgment. He stands himself aloof from the nation, not going up to Jerusalem, though the son of a priest, but in the deserts until the time of his showing unto Israel. In his dress and food he shows the same separateness. He preaches in the wilderness, telling the people that they must not think to say within themselves that they have Abraham for their father, because God was able of the very stones to raise up children to Abraham. The multitudes came therefore to his baptism, confessing their sins, and were baptized of him in Jordan, the river of death, as owning that all was over with them as to natural claim, and divine mercy in a Saviour alone could meet their need. They are therefore baptized for, or rather unto* remission of sins, awaiting this in hope, though not yet having received it.

{* Eis, "unto," with a verb of motion, signifies a direction toward, generally, but not necessarily, reaching its end: "The other disciple came first to the sepulchre, . . yet went he not in. Simon Peter, following him, went into the sepulchre." (John 20: 4, 6.) Here it is both "unto" and "into." "When transferred to metaphysical relations," says Winer, "eis is used to express a mark or aim of any kind." (Grammar of New Testament Greek.)}

John's baptism is thus a baptisma in bringing into a state of discipleship to John, which was necessarily however to merge into another and higher condition when He whom John heralded should appear. John's disciples at Ephesus, when they have heard from Paul the complete gospel, are thus baptised with Christian baptism. (Acts 19: 5.)

Nevertheless the Lord Himself comes expressly from Galilee to Jordan unto John, to be baptized of him. What was the meaning of this in the case of One who could indeed have no need of repentance, nor sins to confess? That the Lord could be in this a pattern of "believer's baptism" is a strange thing for any one with the least intelligence of Scripture to maintain. Was He baptized as a penitent believer, who was Himself faith's object, — not a Christian, but the Christian's Christ? And was it for Him to "fulfill all righteousness," to take His place as that He was not? Surely the Father's witness to His own beloved Son should check this strange and unworthy thought.

And yet there is a certain resemblance which we should not overlook. There is a fulfillment of righteousness in it which He plainly declares, and in which He joins others with Himself: "thus it becometh us." Who are intended by this "us"? It has been said that it means John and the Lord; but it does not seem as John in his baptizing others could be said to fulfill righteousness; and it does seem as if rather those who were being baptized would be associated with Him who was submitting now to baptism. It is, in fact, the first step in righteousness for the sinner to confess his sins. But how could there be any parallel to this in the Lord's case? Just in this, that He could confess for them the sins whose burden He was to take upon Himself! Righteous indeed was He who could diminish nothing of what was in its awful penalty to be alone His own!

The moment we realize this meaning in His act every thing comes into solemn harmony. Jordan, in which He is baptized, is indeed the river of death, and in the death He took was His confession of sin and its desert. At an after-time, He spoke of it under the same figure as here, a baptism with which He was to be baptized. (Mark 10: 38.) Then the place in which this baptism takes place is just as He emerges out of His private into His public life, ending His own individual life where He enters upon His ministry for others, receiving from His Father the attestation of His own perfection, and that anointing of the Spirit by which He becomes, in actual fact, the Christ,that is, the Anointed! "Therefore doth My Father love Me," He says, "because I lay down My life that I might take it again;" and when in this symbol He pledges Himself to lay down His life, the attestation of delight is heard.

Thus it should be plain that the Lord's baptism by John signified what was absolutely unique and peculiar to Himself. It was not an example for us, but a precious witness for us of the work for us which He now took up, only to lay it down with full accomplishment.

10. The Keys of the Kingdom.

Christian baptism was not instituted till the Lord rose from the dead. He did indeed baptize, though not personally, but by the hands of His disciples, while He lived upon earth; but this seems only to have been akin to John's baptism. We have only the briefest notice of it (John 3: 22; John 4: 1, 2.) And it is plainly after His resurrection that we find the only commission of which we have any account, and which contemplates all the nations of the earth, and continuance till the end of the age. (Matt. 28: 18-20.)

There are various reasons for this, as we may shortly see; but one is apparent, that if the "one baptism" of Christianity is connected with its "one Lord," or the kingdom in its present form, it is only as risen that He says, "All authority is given unto Me in heaven and in earth," and upon this He bases the commission, "Go ye therefore, and disciple all nations."

Let us turn back from this, then, to examine what the Lord had said before this, as to entrance into the kingdom then not come. It is in immediate connection with His announcement of the Church, and to the same person: "And I will give unto thee the keys (not of the Church, but) of the kingdom of heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven, and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven." (Matt. 16: 19.)

The fact that this is said to Peter only has been misinterpreted by many so as to reduce it to comparative insignificance. It has been supposed to limit the possession of the keys to him alone, and has been applied to his double opening of the kingdom, first, on the day of Pentecost, to the Jews, and then, in Cornelius and his friends, to the Gentiles. Thus the import of the announcement is wholly in the past, and we of today have but little interest in it.

But can it be possible that this is all? Are the keys of the kingdom of heaven something for which there is no need today? Has the kingdom been just opened and then left open? Is there no need of reception into it, and no power to receive? Are people born naturally into it now? or what else?

That the keys are for admission can scarcely be disputed. It is the proper use of a key to open; and where the Lord in Matt. 23: 13 charges the scribes with shutting up the kingdom of heaven against men, He shows in Luke 11: 52 how they have done it: "Ye have taken away the key of knowledge." Knowledge must needs be one key to a kingdom springing out of the sowing of the seed of the Word. The taking it away must prevent discipleship. Here is one key, then, certainly, and the apostle at Pentecost and in Cornelius' house was plainly using this key to open the kingdom to them.

But were these the only occasions? And when Paul preached everywhere the kingdom of God, was he using the key any less than Peter? Or when he says, in Gal. 2, that the gospel of the uncircumcision was committed unto him as the gospel of the circumcision had been to Peter, did he mean in either case that no one else had commission from God to preach it?

Peter had in an eminent way the keys, no doubt, but no exclusive right: and this is plain; for if these words "to thee" excluded others, then the next clause gives him as exclusive right to bind and to loose; but that he had not this is proved absolutely by the Lord's extension of this elsewhere: "Whatsoever ye shall bind," etc.

Moreover, if Peter opened the door at one time to Jews, at another to Gentiles, this is opening the door twice, but it is not using two keys; nor could two keys be needed, if this were all. We have seen what one key is, but we must still find another: where shall we find it?

2. The Commission to Disciple.

It is after our Lord is risen from the dead that He proclaims Himself now in actual fact the King of the kingdom. All authority is His; and his kingdom being a kingdom of the truth, He sends His disciples out with a commission to disciple all the nations. Here the power of the keys, then, is committted to them all, and certainly not to Peter only. Besides, it is not even as apostles He commissions them. They are not called such in the passage, and had it been intended that theirs should be an exclusive right, it would surely have been intimated. But it is not so; and the words of the commission are, —

"Go ye, therefore, and disciple all the nations, baptizing them unto the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all things whatever I have commanded you; and, lo, I am with you always,even unto the consummation of the age."

It has been thought by some, because "all the nations" is the general expression for the Gentiles, that Israel is not in the commission; but if not, to whom did Peter apply it on the day of Pentecost? was it not to Israel? It is clear that he does so apply it, and that if Israel were, as we know they were, Lo-ammi, then they were simply part of the "all nations" to whom the gospel of the kingdom now was being sent. Thus alone can we escape from many serious difficulties, which at once disappear, if this be in fact the truth.

The common version translates "teach all nations," but puts "make disciples" in the margin. The revised more correctly puts the latter into the text. Strictly it is, not a verb with a noun following, but a simple verb, "disciple," and this has its importance: for in the former case, it would be disciples that would be to be baptized, while, as it really is, it is the nations who are to be discipled, by baptizing them.

Now, if "discipling" be introducing into the kingdom of heaven, we have here the other key that we were just now seeking. Nay, we have the two, "baptizing and teaching," and in the last recognize the one which has already been named as such by our Lord Himself, "The key of knowledge." This confirms, if it were needed, that baptism is indeed a "key," which if we look on to Pentecost, we shall find the apostle using. For when the Jews are pricked to the heart by the proclamation of the King of the new kingdom, and cry out, "Brethren, what shall we do?" he replies, "Repent, and be baptized every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ for the remission of sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost."

To this we must return. Let us notice first more fully the words of the commission: Disciple, baptising and teaching," show in their order that the teaching is that which perfects the disciple, — necessarily, because a "disciple" is a scholar: the baptism only gives him his place as that; it is authoritative reception into the school. It is the marking off, in a world which has rejected Christ and His words, of those who receive them and thus acknowledge Him. It shows that the kingdom is not territorial, that people are not born naturally into it, that it is individual now, not national, as in the case of Israel. The meaning of it as a symbol shows much more than this. Whether this subjection to Christ is real or not remains to be determined, and is not to be settled beforehand by the baptizer; although, of course, that in which it is professed must not be suffered to lapse from its meaning and be trifled with by frivolous use. But the King welcomes freely, and the place in the kingdom is after all a conditional one.

This baptizing is "unto the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost." The name, not the names, of the Triune. This is the Christian revelation of God; and what is not done in this way is not Christian. The "name" in Scripture gives the real character of what it stands for; and the name here is the truth of the Godhead as now made known to us: thus "baptism" and the "faith" are once more, as in Eph. 4 ("one faith, one baptism,"), connected together.

"Unto" is here manifestly more correct than the "into" of the Revised Version; for baptism cannot bring into this or any other faith, but attaches one to it.

Thus we have also the plain confirmation of baptizing being discipling; for what else does being baptized to a faith mean but that?

We are told, however, that "Jesus made and baptized disciples" (John 4: 1), and that this gives a contrary thought. But, in fact, it only emphasizes what is true, — that it is the Word, the teaching, that really makes disciples, which is of course true. If we think of what is implied in discipleship, the Word is necessarily the fundamental thing, the water but the formal, although that too may have importance. Who would say that the dying thief was not a disciple, although he had no opportunity of being baptized? On the other hand, to say that Jesus "made and baptized disciples" does not necessarily mean that they were disciples first, as the second part of the statement may be explanatory of the former, and needed to complete the idea to be conveyed: as when it is said (Ex. 29: 7), "Thou shalt pour it upon his head and anoint him," these two things are really one, and not different acts; and the last expression but explains the former.

12. The Execution of the Commission.

On the day of Pentecost, Peter uses the keys, as we have seen. First, he preaches the kingdom: "Therefore, let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God hath made that same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ." Then, in answer to their question, "What shall we do?" he replies, "Repent, and be baptized, every one of you, in the name of Jesus Christ, unto the remission of your sins, and ye shall receive the gift of the Holy Ghost." "In" the name here might perhaps be better rendered "at." It is that same epi with a dative following, which often signifies "dependent on." Hearing of Jesus as Lord and Christ, and thus witnessed to by the gifts of the Spirit, at that name they were to repent and be baptized, baptism being the confession of His authority. They would then receive themselves the wondrous gift.

Israel had formally rejected Christ, and were outside His kingdom now begun. Repentance and the open acknowledgment of His authority were now necessary that their sins might be remitted, and themselves be sealed with His distinctive seal.

It cannot be doubted that the apostle puts baptism here as something to precede the gift of the Holy Ghost. It has been doubted, — and denied, — that he so intends to make it precede the remission of sins. And it has been contended that, instead of this, baptism unto the remission of sins means (like baptism unto the name of the Godhead) unto the faith of the remission of sins.

But there is this difference, that "the name" at once indicates doctrine, — the faith; and there is nothing similar to that here. We have also the kindred expression used by Ananias, "Arise and be baptized, and wash away thy sins, calling on His name." (Acts 22: 16, R.V.) Here one would think it would be too plain for doubt that baptism was represented as (in some sense,) the washing away of sins. It has, however, been objected that the person is active in washing away his sins, passive when they are remitted; but this is a distinction that vanishes when we take the original. Both verbs are in what is called in Greek the middle voice: hence we might as well translate "baptize thyself" as "wash thyself from thy sins" — this is the form. Yet we know, as to the first, he could only put himself into the hands of others.

But this view of "remission" is thought to be contrary to all Scripture. On the contrary, it helps much to the understanding of one passage which is Scripture as much as any other. For it was to Peter as well as other disciples that the Lord said, after His resurrection, "Whose sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them, and whose sins ye retain, they are retained." Now, if the baptism of these three thousand at Pentecost was in fact the remission of their sins, then there is a clear illustration and example of what our Lord meant. In fact, if it be not found here, I know not where in Scripture we may find it. If baptism be in any sense for the remission of sins, then it is a remission committed to disciples, and whomsoever they baptize, they in that sense remit his sins.

Perilously near to Rome, some may think; but how can we get nearer to Rome than by blinking or denying Scripture? The words are there: we have only to look them in the face as friends, to find that they are in perfect harmony with the fullest and freest gospel, — that they set it forth, not cloud it, — that sins washed away by the blood of Christ alone, and sins washed away in baptismal water are in no wise contradictory to one another, just because they are not on the same plane at all; as different from Romanist or ritualistic teachings as the Romanist keys of heaven from the scriptural keys of heaven's kingdom upon earth.

The Protestant thought of the keys is right, and it is not right: it is true in measure, yet is but a partial truth taken for the whole. The Romish view is bastard Judaism, wholly untrue and thoroughly mischievous: it is "the blasphemy of those who say they are Jews but are not, but are the synagogue of Satan." God has not made men heaven's door-keepers, to admit or exclude; and that remission of sins, which the blood of Christ assures to every one who in faith looks to Christ for it, needs and can have no go-between to dispense. Even in Judaism it was the cry of the convicted sinner, "Thou desirest not sacrifice, else would I give it; Thou delightest not in burnt-offering." (Ps. 2: 16.) The Jewish sin-offering was of no avail to wash away sin in view of eternity; and the Jewish priest's lips could never pronounce a passport through death into eternal bliss. God reserved this ever in His own hands; and the Jews, when they heard the divine words of peace from the lips of One who could really utter them, showed, even in their unbelief, a truer knowledge than that of Rome: "Who can forgive sins," they ask, but God alone?"

Protestantism is right, therefore, in maintaining that as to this, Christ's ministers have no higher commission than to proclaim the gospel. And yet it is in this very way plain that when the Lord says to His disciples, "Whosesoever sins ye remit, they are remitted," He cannot be speaking of the preaching of the gospel. Whose sins do I remit when I preach the gospel? Whereas the words here are as definite as can be, and in the reverse order from what they would be on the other supposition: not "whose sins I remit, do you pronounce to be remitted," but "whose sins ye remit, they are remitted," — that is, "I pronounce remitted."

But this cannot be, then, eternal, absolute remission; and if baptism be one of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, we have seen by our Lord's own parable, that forgiveness in it is conditional and revocable. "I forgave thee all that debt," says his lord to the uncompassionate servant; yet he delivered him unto the tormentors till he should pay all that was due unto him." (Matt. 18: 32, 34.) This is expressly called a parable of the kingdom of heaven. It is a kingdom which is now in men's hands to administer; and such remission is the only one that man can pronounce as to the individual, a conditional, hypothetical remission. Not indeed in a legal sense; not because, if discipleship be true, there is yet danger of not fulfilling the conditions; but because "man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord '' alone "looketh on the heart." (1 Sam. 16: 7.) And this, as we have seen, harmonizes with all those conditional passages of the New Testament, which are simply for the searching of the hearts of professors as such, wholesome for all, and which those who know best God's grace have least cause to be afraid of.

The kingdom of heaven is the sphere on earth in which Christ is owned, in the midst of a world which has rejected Him. There may spring up seed where underneath is still the heart of stone, and fruit never be found. If men sleep, — and they have slept, — the enemy may sow tares right among the wheat. Nay, the whole form of the kingdom may change to the likeness of the kingdoms of the world, and the leaven spread in the lump till the whole be leavened. Thus there is need of testing, where tares and wheat grow up together to the harvest: hypothetical remission is the only possible one, save for Him who still "knoweth them that are His." (2 Tim. 2: 19.) According to the mind of the Lord, however, the door of the kingdom is that by which men pass out of the world into the sphere in which He is openly acknowledged and obeyed; and baptism, as a key of this door, is the authoritative washing away of their sins, that they may come in, — conditional, because in man's hand it could be nothing else, — yet witnessing of what is in the Lord's heart for men, and of what His hand has accomplished too: a gospel preached in symbol to the eyes of men, whose full significance we have yet to inquire into.

13. The Samaritans and the Eunuch.

Samaria receives the word of God, and "when they believed Philip preaching the things concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized, both men and women." (Acts 8: 12.) Here too it is seen how clearly the remission of sins must be hypothetical, even in the best hands. One who with the rest "believes and is baptized" is found to have "neither part nor lot" in the matter. Here too we find that, even after baptism, the Holy Ghost does not come on them until Peter and John come down from Jerusalem, and lay their hands on them. But there is nothing that seems to add much to our knowledge of what is now before us.

Leaving Samaria, Philip baptizes the eunuch on the road to Gaza; and here there is nothing to remark, except that, by the common consent of editors, with the amplest foundation in manuscripts and versions, ver. 37 is to be omitted. I do not myself attach much importance to it. If baptism is discipling, faith in the heart is what is looked for from a disciple; and "If thou believest with all thy heart, thou mayest" only puts the responsibility of this upon the eunuch. However, there is no need to discuss what is not Scripture.

14. Cornelius and the Gentiles.

The case of Cornelius is of interest to us in this respect, that baptism here comes after the gift of the Holy Ghost; and as it is impossible to suppose that those whom God thus signally owned as His could have been yet unforgiven men, there is at once made apparent the difference between the forgiveness of sins as between God and the soul, and baptismal remission at disciples' hands. The identification of these two, as with the Campbellites, is thus absolutely set aside.

There is also here no laying on of hands to communicate the Spirit, and this precious gift is seen as no supplement of baptism, no effect of an ordinance at all. It might be before or after, it might be with laying of apostles' hands or without. And it is noteworthy that this is the beginning of the work among pure Gentiles, and that we never hear in their case of the laying on of hands for this at all. The words of the apostle in Galatians (chap. 3: 2, 5) are entirely in accord with the case of Cornelius.

15. Baptism unto Christ, — to His Death.

We will now go on to look at baptism as a symbol, and to see how its teaching in this way agrees with its place as authoritative discipling or reception into the kingdom of heaven. Its symbolic teaching is most fully developed in the sixth chapter of Romans. We will take this as given in the best translation known to me, and any points that are in dispute can be considered as we come to them.

"Are you ignorant, that we, as many as have been baptized unto Christ Jesus, have been baptized unto His death? We have been buried, therefore, with Him by baptism unto death, in order that, even as Christ has been raised up from among the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life. For if we are become identified with Him in the likeness of His death, so also we shall be of His resurrection; knowing this, that our old man has been crucified with [Him], that the body of sin might be annulled, that we should no longer serve sin. For he that has died is justified from sin."

It must not be supposed that all this is the interpretation of baptism; but it is all in close connection with it; and it is necessary to see where the line is to be drawn, and what is or what is not interpretation. In this translation the change of "into," as in most translations, to "unto" has been strongly protested against, although "baptized unto Moses" (1 Cor. 10: 2), holds its place as generally perhaps as "into Christ" does here. The Revised Version indeed, even in Corinthians, puts in its margin "Greek, into Moses." But we have seen already that that is making the Greek more peremptory than it is. Eis, as we have seen, and as is confessed by all, means "into" or "unto." But "into Moses" gives no just sense; for there was no position "in Moses" answering to the believer's position now "in Christ;" and this alone it is, evidently, which has led to the difference in the translation of two plainly parallel expressions. Apart from all else, the single consideration that "into Moses" cannot be the meaning in the one case would naturally rule out "into Christ" in the other. The translation objected to simply brings them into harmony.

"Baptized unto Moses" has, as we have seen, the force of "set apart to Moses" as disciples. So those who were baptized with John's baptism were John's disciples. So have we found the Lord bidding to "disciple, baptizing." "Baptized unto the name of the Father" is discipled to the truth of what God is. "Baptized unto the name of the Lord Jesus" (Acts 19: 5) must be similar in meaning. After all this, "baptized unto Christ Jesus," as the true force of the words would surely seem to need no insisting on.

But baptism unto Christ is baptism to His death. It is a Christ who died who meets the need of the sinner; risen as He is His death remains in its virtue for the soul. If we put in connection with this John's baptism in Jordan, the river of death, we shall find the harmony and the difference between John's and Christian baptism. John too baptizes unto death, with the baptism of repentance; death being the wages of sin, and those baptized of him confessing their sins as justly entitling them to death the due of sin. But John could not yet baptize to Christ's death; for He had not died. Only in the Lord's significant action do we see the foreshadow of this, when to fulfill all righteousness He takes His place in this death which these repentant ones have owned their due. But now in Christianity we come into Jordan after Christ has been in it; the death to which we come is still our due, but it is His death. Here the gospel-note sounds, and the baptism becomes Christian: "therefore we are buried with Him by baptism unto death."

Let us take another illustration, — this time from Old Testament history: "Elisha died, and they buried him. And the bands of the Moabites invaded the land at the coming in of the year. And it came to pass as they were burying a man, that, behold, they spied a band of men; and they cast the man into the sepulchre of Elisha; and when the man was let down, and touched the bones of Elisha, he revived and stood up on his feet." (2 Kings 13: 20, 21.)

Elisha was in his life in many ways a type of the Lord Jesus, and here he is so in his death. We have in the miracle a vivid illustration of baptism, just because it is a vivid and beautiful picture of salvation by the gospel. The man is dead, and so they bury him: burial is but putting the dead into the place of death. He is let down into the grave of one that had died before: he is buried with Elisha. So buried, he touches the one who had preceded him in death, and he is quickened out of it: he stands upon his feet a living man.

Let us notice, then, as to this burial with Christ: burial implies death, not life; you bury the dead, not the living. How dead? dead with Christ, since it is burial with Christ? No: for it is only the one who is alive in Christ who can be dead with Him, and the man buried with Christ is buried to touch the dead Christ, and to live. Dead with Christ means dead to sin, as we see in this chapter; but none can be dead to sin, who is not spiritually alive. Buried with Christ does not, then, imply dead with Christ, as might be thought.

Buried because dead in sins, then? That is nearer to, but is not yet, the thought. The death we see pictured in John's baptism is the death which is the due of sin, and not the inward condition, which is but the inveteracy of the sinful state itself. The death here is that into which Christ came; but He did not come into a sinful condition, but under its penalty. Hence burial with Christ is the owning of the penalty, which faith anticipates before it comes, finding Christ as having taken that place, that we may live. Baptism is therefore but a typical or acted out gospel; with a significant protest against ritualism, also: for the baptism is, as the word itself shows and the apostle's argument as well, but immersion, burial, Christ alone must give the life; and thus it does not go on, as Colossians in our common version teaches, to resurrection. It is the confession of death, for which we are put into Christ's sepulchre, that we may live. We are buried with Him by baptism unto death, in order that, even as Christ has been raised up from the dead by the glory of the Father, so we also should walk in newness of life. What is sought is the power for a new walk; but itself cannot give this: it is a baptism to death and not to life.

But we need to look closely at what follows in the apostle's argument. "For if we are become identified with [Him] in the likeness of His death, so also we shall be [in the likeness] of His resurrection."

"Identified" seems free as a translation; the word means, as a note upon it says, "grown together," and the rendering of the Revised Version, with most commentators, "united," seems preferable. There is no "Him" in the original, but it is necessarily implied; and the passage so read argues that if the truth intended by baptism be a reality in the soul, and in it "the likeness of His death" — they were really, not merely professedly, united with him, then the result would be seen in the practical "likeness of His resurrection," — that "walk in newness of life," of which he had just before spoken. The resurrection of the buried man was the result of having touched Elisha; and perfectly sure is the result where Christ has been touched in faith. This touch becomes indeed a full identification, and the apostle goes on now to show the deliverance from the power of sin that would hinder the blessedness of a walk with God. Here he goes beyond what baptism in itself symbolizes, to show what identification with Christ involves, namely, the crucifixion of our old man in the cross of Christ, that the body of sin may be annulled. But this does not come within the scope of our present inquiry.

16. Does Baptism Symbolize Resurrection.

Thus far, then, Romans; and plainly it does not go on to resurrection. Walking in newness of life, the likeness of resurrection, is what is to follow. But in Colossians (Col. 2: 12), in perhaps every version, we have resurrection included: "Buried with Him in baptism, wherein also ye are risen with [Him], through the faith of the operation of God who hath raised Him from the dead."

There is, however, an alternative rendering. The word for "wherein" in Greek also means "in whom," and Meyer and Wordsworth in their commentaries adopt this. The second "Him" in the verse is also wanting, and we may, instead of "with Him," say "together." Thus it will stand: "Buried with Him in baptism, in whom also ye are risen together, through the faith of the operation of God, who hath raised Him from the dead." This rendering I have no doubt can be fully justified.

The primary meaning of the word baptisma is acknowledged to be "immersion," and though one cannot always insist upon this, as has been already urged, yet in the meaning of "burial" given to it both here and in Romans there seems good reason for accepting immersion as the mode which harmonizes with the thought. It may be said that in raising one from the water, the figure of resurrection is necessarily found. But though this follows, it is not really in itself part of the baptism.

But there are much more sufficing reasons. For, supposing it were fully admitted that in baptism we were symbolically raised up with Christ, yet how would this consist with the latter part of the sentence "through the faith of the operation of God"? Faith as the instrument would here be but a disturbing element as far as the figure is concerned. Baptism could not be a figure of anything "through faith" of something else!

On the other hand, if it be not figure, but reality, then we are really raised up with Christ through faith, but in an ordinance; which is Campbellism, but not Scripture. Nor need I take it up here.

The other translation makes all simple: we have only to remember that resurrection and quickening [or life-giving] are not the same thing. There is a double contrast in Colossians here which is instructive. In ver. 13 we have, "And you, being dead, hath he quickened;" in ver. 12, "buried with Him in whom ye are risen." As burial is putting the dead in the place of death, so resurrection is the living being brought into the place of the living. It is by faith in Him who has raised up Jesus that we step into the ranks of those spiritually alive.

17. The Putting on of Christ in Baptism.

For the doctrine of baptism, as Paul teaches it, we have but one more passage to consider. It is the statement in Gal. 3: 27, "For as many of you as have been baptized unto Christ have put on Christ."

This "putting on" is, of course, clothing: we have it elsewhere as an exhortation, — "put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfill the lusts thereof." (Rom. 13: 14.) Here it is evidently practical; and clothing often stands for practical righteousness, — always, I believe for something wrought out, as is a garment, thread by thread.

But when we speak of putting on Christ, this garment which covers the shame of our nakedness is, of course, nothing self-wrought. We are hiding ourselves in Another; we are arraying ourselves in a comeliness not our own. And this, we see at once, is the idea in baptism: we are immersed unto Christ. Self is owned as ruined, undone, and Christ is sought to as a refuge from self, a Substitute and Representative before God; before men also our glory and our hiding-place.

This is the meaning of baptism: it is not, of course, what as an act (sacramentally, as people say,) it accomplishes. It in no way supposes this, that the apostle goes on to argue that in Christ there is no distinction of class or sex, and that if Christ's, we are Abraham's seed. He gives the ideal, the profession: we are that, or else untrue to it, for Christ on His side refuses none that come to Him.

Moreover, in the words used, we have not, as so many suppose, any implication of necessary activity in the person who "puts on" Christ. The same word, only compounded with the preposition "upon," and in the first aorist middle, exactly as here, is used in 2 Cor. 5: 2 for our "being clothed upon with our house that is from heaven," and we might there speak of "putting on" the resurrection body, or here of our being "clothed with" Christ. The responsibility of the baptismal place belongs to the one in it, however the grace of God may have wrought in putting him in. To a child who has been baptized in infancy — allowing for a moment that God has given them the privilege of this, — one could say, "You were clothed with Christ."

The exhortation in Rom. 13: 14 is not inconsistent with this. It is, what we have not in English, an in imperative in the past (the aorist), and means, "be as one that has been clothed with Christ."

18. The Baptismal Salvation of Peter.

One passage outside of Paul's writings remains to be considered. Connected with the verse before, it literally reads: "Wherein few, that is, eight souls, were saved by water; which also, a like figure, now saves you, [even] baptism (not a putting away of filth of flesh, but a request of a good conscience unto God) by the resurrection of Jesus Christ."

There is a general agreement that "the answer of a good conscience," upon which so much has been built, is not correct; though the word is a difficult one.* "Question," "inquiry," "request," as variously given by commentators, will any of them give the sense, only we must get the right connection. Alford has, for instance, "the inquiry of a good conscience after God;" whereas the meaning must be rather, from what we have already seen, "the inquiry for a good conscience." The conscience cannot be good, that is only inquiring after God. It is, as we have seen, what baptism means, the confession of a need which God alone can satisfy, and which it requires the death of Christ to meet.

{*"The word has puzzled all critics and commentators. It means "a question." All the commentators speak of its use as a legal term, with the sense of contract, or rather, stipulations and obligations of a contract. Schleusner says it is never so used, but eperotesis, (Bloomfield, after Dindorf, denies this;) and in Latin it is interrogatio. Tertullian, describing the sponsio of a catechumen at baptism, refers evidently to this passage of Peter. But this was a much later form . . . The legal use arises from a questioning which settled the terms of the contract, hence called 'the questioning.'" (J. N. Darby.)}

Alford reads also, "which, the antitype [of that] doth now save you also, even baptism." This makes the water of baptism the antitype of the flood, which is out of all scriptural proportion. The word used (though the original of our word "antitype") is applied in the only other place in which it occurs in Scripture to the "holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true" (Heb. 9: 24) — types in contrast with antitypes. If any thing more than figure, then, be needed to explain the word, the rendering of the common version, a "like figure," is certainly right. Water in each case, with a like significance; the water of death, in the flood, yet salvation to those whom it upbore in the ark; the baptismal water similarly death, and saving because His death.

For this, however, you must bring in resurrection. Death, if there were no resurrection, would be awful defeat and ruin. "He was raised again for our justification." And thus in a figure baptism saves by the resurrection of Christ from the dead.

This, as is evident, is the same doctrine as Paul's. Scripture is, as it must be, of a piece throughout.

19. "Born of water."

The doctrine of baptism is now complete. But there is one passage so commonly taken and by many more than ritualists, to refer to baptism, that one can hardly be excused from saying a few words about it, in proof that it does not apply to baptism at all. It is that in which the Lord says to Nicodemus that "Except a man be born of water and of the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God." The proof may be given thus: —

1. If this spoke of baptism, it would prove that without baptism no one could be saved.

2. It would also make it a magical ceremony by which to the degradation of the Holy Spirit of God, He would be made to unite with water to beget a soul to God!

3. The being born of God is a spiritual process, and the one so born doth not commit sin, and his seed abideth in him. He has eternal life, not one that can perish or allow him to be the sinner that he was before (1 John 3: 9), which is not true of the baptized as such.

4. Cornelius had the Spirit, and was certainly born again before he was baptized at all.

5. To be born of water and the Spirit, two elements must come together, and thus it could not be that any would be born again except in the moment of baptism.

6. The apostle Peter assures us, we are born again by the word of God preached in the gospel. (1 Peter 1: 23, 25.)

7. Which Paul tells us the washing of water represents: "washing of water by the Word" (Eph. 5: 26) is how Christ sanctifies and cleanses His Church.

8. The Lord's words to Nicodemus refer to Ezek. 36 where Israel is prophetically seen to undergo the needed change in order to enter the kingdom at a future day.

9. And the Lord uses these terms not with an ignorant man, or mere convicted sinner, but with a teacher of Israel.

10. So that He might well marvel at his want of knowledge, which He could not have done, if He were speaking of the unknown effect of a rite not yet instituted in its Christian form.

This evidence is abundant and conclusive that the "water" of which men are born again is not baptismal water, but the word of God. Another expression, "the washing of regeneration" (Titus 3: 5), often used in the same interest as the former, says nothing of baptism or of water at all.

20. Conversion to Enter the Kingdom.

To all the preceding argument as to admission into the kingdom, Matt. 18: 3 has been objected as decisive against it. The words are indeed as positive as to the kingdom of heaven as those to Nicodemus about new birth are to the kingdom of God. Attentive consideration will show that they both apply in the same way, that is, to the kingdom set up in power when the Lord appears. It is of this the disciples must have been thinking when they asked, "Who then is greatest in the kingdom of heaven?" A small thing comparatively to be greatest here: a very different thing to be greatest there.*

{*In a tract on the "Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven," the objection is answered differently; but I am persuaded that the above is the true as it is the most conclusive answer.}

21. Household Baptism.

We enter now upon another inquiry, namely, as to the subjects of baptism. There is question really only as to one point. We have seen that in the Christian form of the kingdom, as distinct from the Jewish, the national birthright title has failed with Israel's being (for the time) Lo-Ammi. The scanty proselyte entrance of those days is become now the rule, — discipling to the kingdom. But this raises immediate question: if in the old form, the children of proselytes were circumcised with their parents, and what we have called the grace of the law has become the rule in the kingdom of grace, must not the families of proselytes be received still with them, as of old they were, and the baptism of households be in this way the rule in Christianity?

Here reasonings perhaps do not count for much; nor do we desire them to count for more than they are worth; but it is well, surely, to compare the past with the present, and trace, if we may, the substantial unity of the divine plan all through. In the new form of the kingdom circumcision drops out and baptism takes its place. In accordance with the larger grace of the kingdom, male and female being but one in Christ, women are baptized as well as men. What as to households?

In the meaning of baptism is there any indication that families are to be shut out now, as they were formerly admitted? Circumcision had been, in the person of the one who first received it, a "seal of the righteousness of faith" (Rom. 4: 11); yet that did not hinder its application to the thirteen-year-old Ishmael, nor to the eight-day-old Isaac. Yet if baptism were a seal of life, a life now proclaimed spiritual and eternal, there might be still difficulty. But it is burial, the confession of death, and not of life, and so understood all is easy. Then notice that circumcision is the "putting off of the body of the flesh" (Col. 2: 11); the true circumcision "have no confidence in the flesh." (Phil. 3: 3.) How near this is to the "burial" of baptism! In both dispensations the entrance into the kingdom of God is marked by the renunciation of self as worthless, that He may have real supremacy.

That baptism is discipling is no difficulty; for in a school in which Christ is Master, who can tell how soon His grace may begin to teach? Of John the Baptist it was said, "He shall be filled with the Holy Ghost, even from his mother's womb." (Luke 1: 15.)

Finally, if baptism is the putting on of Christ, even this does not necessarily imply any voluntary activity; for so it is said that "this corruptible puts on incorruption, and this mortal immortality;" and man in dying puts off his tabernacle.

Yet this is all only preparatory: we must have positive Scripture if we are to go further. Here, then, the baptism of households comes in to reassure us. In Acts 16 we have Lydia and her household, the jailer and all his, baptized. Of Lydia's household we have no certain knowledge; but the baptism of her house is put as if it were part of her own faithfulness, which she pleads: "A certain woman named Lydia heard us, whose heart the Lord opened; and when she was baptized, and her household, she besought us saying, If ye have judged me to be faithful to the Lord, come into my house.'" From the point of view already indicated, one would certainly conclude that her household was baptized upon her faith.

In the case of the jailer, who asks, "What must I do to be saved?" Paul and Silas answer with the assurance, "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." Here the salvation of his house is clearly put as the normal result of his own believing. Nor have we any thing of their faith in what follows, but only of his; though we are told that "they spake unto him the word of the Lord, and to all that were in his house." He was baptized, he and all his, straightway; and he rejoiced greatly, with all his house, — but this is an adverb, panoiki, domestically," — having believed in God. It is "he" rejoiced, "he" believed.

In Acts 18 Crispus of Corinth believes with all his house; and the expression is quite different.

To the Corinthians Paul writes his first epistle, learning of divisions beginning among them, and thankful he had not baptized enough of them to form a party for himself. "Were ye baptized unto the name of Paul? I thank God I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius, lest any should say I had baptized unto my own name. And I baptized also the household of Stephanas: for the rest, I know not that I baptized any other." (1 Cor. 1: 14-16.)

Now the common thought is, that in the last statement Paul is correcting his first one. It was not just the truth that he had baptized only two of the assembly. He had baptized a family beside; perhaps more: he is not clear. But this would go some way toward upsetting the very thing he was thankful for.

If we look closer we may find that there is no mistake at all. "None of you" is absolute, save Crispus and Gaius. Too small a number to make a party in the assembly. But what about the perhaps half-a-dozen more? They were not in the assembly; they were a baptized household, in the kingdom only, And so if he had baptized even others here, it was no matter at all. The distinction between household and individual, kingdom and assembly, clears up the difficulty and gives absolute consistency throughout.

However, we learn at the end of the same epistle that the house of Stephanas had addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints (1 Cor. 16: 15). Were these not in the assembly? Surely they were. But is not here, then, a contradiction to the former statement, and a certain proof that Stephanas' house were grown men? Again, one must look more narrowly; and then it will be found that the Spirit of God uses for this word "house" or "household," two different words, although very near akin. Is it without a purpose? I, for one, cannot think so. In the first chapter of the epistle the word is oikos; in the last, oikia: differing only in the last two letters, but still differing.

A difference in meaning has been suggested by some, but which is not generally admitted, and must, therefore, be scrutinized with the more care. Greek has many dialects, and New Testament or Hellenistic Greek is not the classic. The Septuagint translation is well known to be for the most part the storehouse of New Testament words. In it oikos seems the word invariably used for a man's own family, the general thought indeed where "house" is used for the inmates. But there are exceptions: "house" seems also used in a wider sense, so as to include servants, and here we have the use of oikia. Thus in "the eldest servant of {Abraham's] house," "house" is oikia. And while at the Passover they took every one a lamb according to the oikos of their fathers, yet (because the servants ate it with their masters) it is said, "a lamb for an" oikia," and "if the oikia be too little for the lamb." When Joshua says, "As for me and my house, we will serve the Lord," it is again oikia: for those who serve him are to serve with him.

The passages, no doubt, are very few in which the word is used; but the use is none the less distinct, and in the New Testament it is exactly similar. Oikos is used for the "house of Jacob," "of Israel," "of David," "of Judah," and in the baptismal passages. Oikia is never used in this way. The lost rich man in hades would send Lazarus to his father's house: it is oikos; for he has five brethren. The bishop is to rule his own house (oikos) well, having his children in subjection with all gravity. Noah prepared an ark to the saving of his house. And if five in one house are divided (Luke 12: 52, 53), they are father and mother and son and daughter and daughter-in-law.

Notice that Matthew and Mark speak of a house divided against itself, and here it is oikia; but there is nothing about the inmates in this way. Passages are much less numerous — again as in the Septuagint, — but we are told that "the servant abideth not in the house forever; and of him who left his house, and gave authority to his servants to watch; and of the saints that are of Caesar's household — clearly not his children; and under this word comes that household of Stephanas who have addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints.

Certainly in Scripture the distinction is maintained, which being confirmed, makes all clear as to the baptism of households. It is the family of the disciple that is baptized with the head, — not the servants: a distinction which in itself suggests that the relationship rules in this matter of reception into the kingdom in the Christian as in the legal dispensation.

22. "Of such is the kingdom."

This might be by itself conclusive. It proves that there was a class of the baptized, at least, outside the Church altogether, — that baptism was not into the visible Church, and that the class consisted, in part at least, of the families of believers. We can go further, however, and show by the authority of the Lord Himself, that children belong to His kingdom. The words we are all familiar with, but their significance has been greatly disputed. It is, let us remind ourselves, when "there were brought unto Him little children, that He might put His hands on them and pray; and the disciples rebuked them. But Jesus said, 'Suffer little children to come unto Me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven.'"

Mark adds that He was "much displeased;" that He took them up in His arms, showing how little they were, and that He added the solemn words, "Verily I say unto you that whosoever shall not receive the kingdom of God as a little child, he shall in no wise enter therein." (Matt. 19: 13, 14; Mark 10: 13-16.)

This last expression (which Matthew omits) is nevertheless believed by many to be the gist of the whole matter. It is "of such" as children that the kingdom is, but not of children themselves! We may well ask in wonder, Are not little children "such as" little children? Or when the apostle, after naming certain sins, declares that "they that do 'such' things shall not inherit the kingdom of God," does he mean that people might commit those things, but not others like them?

Why, too, should He give this as His reason for blessing those children, that people who resembled them were fit for the kingdom?

But one need not add arguments. We see at once now how this underlies the baptism of households, which is really Christ's blessing perpetuated for those who would still bring their children to Him and beseech His blessing. Here He sanctions fully what they do, and gives the little ones a special place under His own rule and teaching. We are thus bound, in Christianity, to bring them up in the nurture (or discipline) and admonition of the Lord" (Eph. 6: 4), — that is, as disciples. For the word still holds, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." This is the practical faith, which, acting on the promises of God, secures the blessing.

And here we see why the Lord says "of such" simply. Not all children can be discipled: not because He has not love and desire, but because, if baptism imply such training, for the children of unbelievers it could mean nothing. Faith alone could realize the blessing.

23. "Now are they holy."

Thus we may see also why, going beyond the law, the children even of a marriage where one remains an unbeliever can be called by the apostle "holy." The words run thus (1 Cor. 7: 13, 15): —

"And the woman that hath an unbelieving husband, and if he be pleased to dwell with her, let her not leave him. For the unbelieving husband is sanctified by ("in") the wife; and the unbelieving wife is sanctified in the husband. Else were your children unclean, but now are they holy."

The use of the word "unclean" explains the corresponding word "holy." It is not vital holiness that he is thinking of, but external position. According to the law the children of such a marriage could claim none; but grace goes altogether beyond law. It is not said of the unbeliever that he or she is "holy," as the child is; merely sanctified in the believer. The child has an acknowledged place as "holy" or "clean;" and this he takes to show that the marriage stands; for if the children were unclean, the marriage itself would be. Baptism gives this acknowledged place, a place in the kingdom of God, which under different forms runs through the dispensations.

24. Conclusions.

It remains only to add a few brief remarks upon some points not formally taken up as yet, but which it is hoped will not now present much difficulty.

As to the mode of baptism, that it should be by immersion results from the primary meaning of the word, connected with the thought of "burial" which we have plainly given to it. Yet that even sprinklings are called "baptisms" in Hebrews destroys that argument often made that only immersion can be called that. It is plain also that the word is used in other places where there was none, as at the Red Sea, and that the stress is laid not upon mode, but upon what it effects. It would be impossible, I believe, to prove in any single instance that immersion was the scriptural mode, much more to show that all depends upon this.

There is no command to all to be baptized, such as would render it imperative that every believer should for himself fulfill it. The universal command is only to the baptizer, leaving room for it to be differently applied in different cases. "Whosoever believeth and is baptized shall be saved" is added to the injunction to preach the gospel, which accounts for the form; but one baptized in infancy and believing afterwards, has both these requisites. That the force is on believing the gospel is plain by the close, that "he that believeth not shall be damned." No one would apply this to children.

That baptism is not into the church shows that it is not into the house of God, which is the church. It shows also why a difference of judgment as to it cannot exclude from the Lord's table, which is the sign of membership in the "one body" of Christ. (1 Cor. 10: 17.) Baptism is individual: the Lord's Supper, a fellowship. May He give His people grace "to keep the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace." F. W. Grant.

Household Baptism - A Review of Objections

Household Baptism.

A Review of Objections.

"Let the prophets speak, two or three, and let the rest judge," contains a principle of great value for us all. Judgment must be exercised as to whatever is put forth for truth; and for this the means of judgment must be in our hands. Scripture, of course, is the one only standard of appeal, the measure of all truth such as we have now before us; but we cannot afford to be independent of one another's help in searching it, and especially to enable us to get rid of those merely personal influences which operate so powerfully often against the truth, even when they are engaged upon the side of truth. Error that we have received upon the authority of those who have rightful claim to our affection and respect finds thus, as we all know, its strongest support; but truth also needs often to be shaken free of just such human support, that it may stand in its own divine power. For this God would use the differences that arise among us, and which in themselves are evidence of insubjection to His word and Spirit, to teach us more subjection. Controversy is only to be dreaded just so far as the personal element in the same sense enters into it, and perverts in the interests of a party quarrel the witnesses in the cause of God and truth.

Seeking, then, to avoid all mere personalities, and to bring everything to the test of the word of God alone, I shall take up briefly the arguments which have been brought forward against a former tract of mine on the doctrine of baptism, not unwilling to be given opportunity to explain further some things which may be left obscure in the former one, and to show more fully what I conceive to be the error of the views advocated on the other side. For my own, I trust I may be permitted to refer to what I have already written, and thus to avoid what for those who have read this would be mere tedious repetition.

We must still consider, in the first place, however, what is alleged as to

The Kingdom of Heaven

before we shall be prepared to take up the questions as to baptism and the relation to it of the households of believers. Here, in fact, is the main difficulty, as I believe, in regard to the reception of this, that the confusion which exists between the church and the kingdom, and the general ignorance as to the latter, obscure what would otherwise be simple. "Of such is the kingdom of heaven" would be a text at least very easily made plain were it seen that the kingdom is the sphere of discipleship, and that baptism is "discipling." It is not the fact that this discussion is irrelevant therefore, least of all where not household baptism only, but baptism as a whole is the subject of inquiry. On the contrary, it may be affirmed that the only hope of contention for our brethren lies just here. These points must therefore be looked at in the first place, if we would be clear.

"But I shall be told," says one of our brethren (J.J.), "that I do not 'see' the kingdom. I quite grant that to 'see' it, one must be born again; nay, I maintain that is the only way to see it, or to enter into it. And I further maintain, on the authority of Scripture, that baptism is no more introduction into the kingdom than the Lord's Supper is introduction into the Church. Introduction into the kingdom is by new birth; into the Church by the sealing of the Holy Spirit."

The last sentence is the strangest, perhaps, here, where much is strange. Had our brother been asked, in time past, "How are we introduced into the Church?" I think there is little doubt he would have replied, in the very words of Scripture, that "by one Spirit are we all baptized into one body." (1 Cor. 12: 13.) Somehow this seems now to have slipped out of his mind: he speaks now as if we were "sealed" into it! I suppose he would admit the incongruity in the term, at least; but how could he forget that the Scripture mode of expressing introduction into the body of Christ is by this term "baptism"? Is it not plain, at least, that here Scripture uses "baptism" as implying introduction into that which is of Christ? — and that if the kingdom were a circle of profession larger than and external to the body of Christ, then one could easily understand the analogy between the outward material and the spiritual baptism? How else can we, in fact, understand it?

Perhaps our brother would be ready to agree to this: that baptism is the introduction into the profession of Christianity? But this is, in fact, the kingdom, the sphere of discipleship, where Christ is Master and Lord.

But he answers "No! introduction here is by new birth: to see this, or to enter into it, one must be born again."

By "seeing" it, he evidently understands such spiritual insight as could only come from spiritual life; but this is not what the passage means. The undoubted reference to Ezek. 36 shows that it is not to a spiritual kingdom, invisible except to faith, that the Lord points, but to a kingdom which, when established, every eye will see. A Jewish teacher certainly could not be expected to know of any other. Nor does the Lord at all say that men are born again into it but that they must be born again to have title to enter in, — a very different thing. Israel, in fact, must be converted, in order to escape the judgments which introduce the kingdom. (See, for example, Isa. 4: 2-4.) Thus there is NO Scripture for new birth being introduction to the kingdom, but the two things are quite distinct nor is the kingdom one only to be seen by faith, but the opposite. Our brother evidently confounds the two things, stating sometimes that introduction is by new birth, sometimes that only the latter is necessary as a condition for the former, as if these things were the same.

Matt. 18: 3, speaks quite similarly, not of conversion as entering the kingdom, but "except ye be converted, ye shall not enter" it. Here, however, it will be contended, all is admitted that is necessary to the argument: new birth is necessary to enter the kingdom and if this be true when the kingdom is set up in power, it is "a strong reason in itself, one would have thought, for its present application. . . . The Lord Himself, however, in the immediate context, makes it of the most important present application for our conduct in the kingdom now; and it is only by applying the passage to the present that the prevailing confusion is removed, and the whole subject of the Kingdom of Heaven becomes simple."

Now no one, surely, doubts that there is to be a present application of such truths. The question is, how are they to be applied? If the long-suffering goodness of God ordain a door to be kept open now, which it is plainly warned will, bye and bye, be shut, are we to apply the future to the present by shutting the door beforehand?

However, the statement is definitely made that —

"The kingdom of God covers all dispensations. In all ages God has reigned; and the Lord, in John 3, gives the moral truth concerning the kingdom: "Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God." New birth into the kingdom, in all ages, is the plain teaching of the Lord. Before the cross God was dealing with man as under trial, and therefore a nation was taken up, but in the midst of this nation only those born again were really in the kingdom of God."

These words are by another writer (J. J. S.), but they only express more boldly the same thought — God had a kingdom in all ages. "Dealing with man as under trial," He takes up a nation. How? As His people, or not? — as belonging to His kingdom, or not? "Only those born again were really in the kingdom of God." In what way "really"? When Solomon "sat on the throne of the Lord," on the throne of the kingdom of the Lord over Israel" (1 Chr. 28: 5; 1 Chr. 29: 23), did he "really" reign only over the "born-again souls" there? And did he "really" reign over all truly converted persons elsewhere? And when the Lord pronounced the sentence Lo-ammi, "not my people," upon Israel, did this mean that He was casting off the "born-again ones," who were those over whom alone He had ever reigned? — or what else?

"Really"! Why, who doubts that it is, and also was, only the converted people in whose hearts God reigned? But was that what He meant when He took up a nation? Was it not of necessity a very different thing? Was this only the kingdom as men saw it," or the kingdom also as God, who knoweth the hearts, proclaimed it? How could men see "what we are told cannot be seen by any but those born again?

God did not, then, make the truths of eternity — or of the kingdom set up in power — truths for His people to act upon, then, — that is clear. And our brother's "really" is something foreign to the matter in hand, or else something absolutely untrue, and plainly so. We cannot so ignore the dispensations. Thus the kingdom of God in Israel is against this view decisively. Of course it must be different now; and the same writer, speaking of the mysteries of the kingdom, bids us —

"Note in this parable, the seed are the people, and the Lord only sowed good seed; that is, 'born-again' souls. But now, as men see it, there are tares; that is, unconverted professors. Who sowed them? The devil. And so we must never forget the two standpoints from which the kingdom is seen. From God's standpoint, as He sees it in His counsels, the kingdom is composed of born-again ones only. But from man's standpoint, and as we see it, there is a mixture."

So when the angels "gather out of His kingdom all things that offend, and them that do iniquity," they simply gather out those whom men take to be in His kingdom, but who are not there. Is that just fair interpretation, — commending itself as honest and true? For this is the Lord's own account of the matter, at the end, to His disciples; and why should He say "out of" His kingdom, when we are bidden to believe that none but those born again are, or ever were, or could be, in the kingdom? Was it not easily possible to avoid words so ambiguous?

But the good seed are the "children of the kingdom"; and the tares are unconverted professors: is not that true?

It is the truth, but, as to the last, not the whole truth. We must go more slowly, and look more carefully, to find that. For, while the good seed in the second parable is indeed said to be "children of the kingdom," in the first parable it is as plainly said to be the "word of the kingdom." Of course there is not the least inconsistency between these two views: the children of the kingdom are only those in whom the word of the kingdom has grown up — the wheat. Are the tares, then, produced in any sense by the word of the kingdom? — and does Satan sow such seed as this? Clearly not. He sows false doctrine, not true, and the fruit are heretics, not mere unreal professors. All this has been often told, and cannot be a thing unknown to J. J. S. Its consistency with the whole meaning of the second parable I have elsewhere pointed out.*

{*"The Mysteries of the Kingdom of Heaven," pp. 42-53.}

Still, the good seed are the children of the kingdom and the wheat, — are they not? — gathered into the barn? Yes, the crop. But it does not follow that all the good seed goes into the crop, as every farmer too well knows. How much he would like to have all the seed he sows fulfill the likeness to these "born-again souls" which J. J. S., in complete disregard of all the congruities, would import from John into Matthew. He is the more inexcusable because the first parable is plainly given to guard against the very thing that he is doing. Not all the good seed furnishes the crop, is its declaration; but here, as part of that good seed which gives the children of the kingdom, we are taught that the mere unconverted professors are really to be placed. In entire opposition to what our brethren teach, the "children of the kingdom" is not a term convertible with those born again. And our Lord expressly teaches (Matt. 8: 12) that "the children of the kingdom" may, as none of the converted ever can, be "cast into outer darkness," where "there is wailing and gnashing of teeth." How plain, then, that the kingdom is not what they teach, when such as these are expressly called "the children of the kingdom"!

It is one thing certain, then, the infants cannot have place "AMONG THE TARES," as our brother puts it in small capitals, and this as "bringing them into A PLACE OF BLESSING." If these were his own views when he practised household baptism, it is not to be wondered at that he has given it up.

This is a full answer also to J. J., who allows that there are foolish virgins in the kingdom "in its outward aspect," — words that, as we have seen, Scripture never authorizes. He adds, "what makes them to be 'foolish' is their taking the place, probably by being baptized." Of course, not as infants: even our brother will acquit household baptism in this case. As for the rest, what shows their folly is their taking "no oil with them." They would not have become "wise" by throwing aside their lamps: no, nor by never having carried them.

Kingdom and Church.

We turn now to look at the question of the distinction between the Kingdom and the Church; and here our brother C. deserves a first answer, as he has said all perhaps that can be said. As to the three circles of Eph. 4 he maintains that "even if verses 5 and 6 here could apply to something else than the Church or Assembly, we could have no right so to apply them." Why? "Because Paul's known and acknowledged subject is the Assembly, and verses 5 and 6 will apply to the Assembly." Now the Church is in the Kingdom, and therefore what applies to the subjects of the Kingdom will apply to the members of Christ's body — the Church. It is freely granted, also, that the passage in Ephesians would not decide that the Church is not co-extensive with the Kingdom.*

{*The argument as to verse 6 we need not enter into. It does not really affect our subject.}

The relationships implied are different. All Christ's members are also children of God, but the family of God is nevertheless not identical with the body of Christ. Much that our brother says here misses the point, therefore. Moreover, the circle of the Kingdom is not "intermediate," as he puts it, between the Church and the world. This would imply that the Church was not in it, which it is. Nor do I need to discuss the question of the Church, for which the better word, as we all know, would be "assembly," — a word, too, of various application, even to a heathen gathering. By the Church here I mean always "the Church which is His body."

Moreover, our brother is right in refusing to find room under "One Lord, one creed, one baptism," for those who "deny that Jesus is God." This is the Kingdom as constituted of God, not designed surely to include the Satanic work of the second parable. The enemy, "while men slept," may have introduced his followers into the Kingdom, and Christians be powerless to undo what has thus been done; but this, nevertheless, is only an intrusion. Satan's work is not Christianity, even in its lowest form. On the other hand, with those who are simply "unreal" (C. 11) the case is different. They come under the first parable, not the second, — while, of course, that does not mean any sanction of their unreality.

On this subject it is more to my purpose to quote what I have formerly said than to restate it: "The kingdom of heaven, with its message of peace and reconciliation, remains the testimony of a love which goes out to all, and would gather in to God wherever the will of man is not hardening itself in opposition. We do not, in fact, in Scripture meet with the long delay of baptism and the preparation of catechumens, which came in as baptism itself came to be looked at as reception into the Church, and the symbol of the full Christian state. In the New Testament the catecumens were inside, not outside, the sphere of discipleship. Instead of being kept waiting at the threshold, the applicants were met with a generous and unsuspecting welcome. Three thousand were baptized on the day of Pentecost: how much preliminary instruction had they? And if, as at Samaria, a Simon Magus were received, with his heart not right in the sight of God, his reception had not defiled those tender arms of mercy which had been flung around him, and from which he had, as it were, to burst, to pursue the headlong path to everlasting ruin. It is evident, upon the face of Scripture, that baptism was not then fenced round, as many now would fence it round. It was a door, not carelessly, but readily and with a full heart, opened to the applicant for it. No question of Christ's heart, no "if Thou wilt," was to be permitted."*

{*"Mysteries of the Kingdom," page 26.}

To this the meaning of baptism, and the Lord's words as to little children, unite their testimony. The doctrine of the Church as Paul declared it, and as to which our brother writes, "To profess to be a Christian is to profess to be a member of the body of Christ," was unknown for years after Pentecost; and therefore, whatever may be the profession now, NONE certainly made it then. The power of the Spirit was abroad; and, of course, in the same proportion there was earnestness and reality, yet with proof soon afforded that the first parable of the kingdom was fulfilling too. The more reality there was the more the Church and the Kingdom would be co-extensive. The fervor of divine love in souls refused to allow any neutrality. Men were drawn along with the current that was then in full tide, or flung out as drift by the eddies along the shore. And granting, for a moment, that there were growing up with the years that went by the families that were baptized, — these, too, would be no exception to the rule. Thus the inability to find more than the "within and without" of which our brother rightly speaks. When he uses it as an argument upon his side, he simply is unable to realize the true character of that which he opposes, — that the grace of the Kingdom was not meant to promote, and did not promote, the growth of a neutral class, impossible until love slackened and zeal cooled, and that confusion which the after-parables of the kingdom indicate as so soon to set in began to appear and grow.

The idea of the open sinners in the Church being left in any "intermediate circle," such as he imagines for us (C. 19), only shows how little our brother understands the position which he attacks. When men manifest themselves as "wicked persons," they cannot be treated as neutral.

"Of such is the kingdom."

But the case of children shows more definitely the character of the Kingdom. Our brother C. finds abundant fault with the obscurity of my utterances on this point. This may be true, that they are obscure; but I believe it proceeds a good deal from believing that the Lord's words are not obscure, and may be trusted to speak for themselves. But our brother uses certainly many more words than are needed to explain the matter. "Of such," of course, means "likeness." In this I agree with him with all my heart: "'Of [persons] like these is the kingdom.' And since it cannot be physical likeness that is meant (for this would plainly imply that none but infants were in the kingdom), it must be moral likeness." Very well. Can our brother, then, conceive any nearer likeness — moral or any other to little children than little children? He answers scarcely in a very direct manner; "But how can the words of such is the kingdom denote that children form a class in the kingdom? If they are a sample of the persons in the kingdom, all the persons that are in the kingdom must be like the sample, or it is no sample." We do not disagree. Little children, then, "like" those little ones, and other persons like them, belong to the kingdom.

But it will be said against this, perhaps, that I "persist in treating the word 'such' as if it necessarily implied sameness, whereas it only implies likeness. . . . These little babes are a sample, not of the persons in the kingdom, but of the kind of persons in the kingdom. . . . This is a most important distinction. It demonstrates that our Lord's words do not of themselves necessarily imply that those dear little babes were in the kingdom; and this, we humbly submit, completely demolishes our opponents' stronghold."

But we do not believe that the children the Lord took into His arms were in the kingdom! The kingdom of which our Lord spoke was not yet begun; and the last verses of the gospel show definitely its beginning. (Matt. 28: 18). No; the Lord was here looking on to the future when He spoke; and He does not say "of these," but "of such." Sameness in some respect there must be in every likeness; but there is not the sameness that is individual identity. He shows the kind of persons that were to be in His kingdom: babes and those like babes.

Consider that of old in His kingdom He had always had babes, — that cannot be disputed. Was He going now to reject them, and forbid what He had before enjoined? Do His words look like forbidding, or the reverse? He was receiving from their parents' hands those that the law enjoined to be received, and was "much displeased" that His disciples would not have suffered it. "Suffer them to come," He says, which undeniably means here "Suffer them to be brought," as they were being brought; and which (as undeniably, one would have thought) did not mean "Suffer them to believe on Me"(!) which is C's interpretation! Can he really mean that the disciples were trying to hinder the babes from believing on Jesus? Or would he, admitting the simple fact that "coming" means literally what it says, think it just as reasonable that the Lord should have received sheep or lambs, because it might be said "of such is the kingdom of heaven"?

No; it is He who was Israel's king of old proclaiming for the new kingdom that was then "at hand," the continuance of no less goodness than He had shown in the one passed away. He would not be less gracious in the present than He had been in the past, nor less answer the craving of the hearts of His people for the children intrusted to them.

J. J. has less to say than this, and J. J. S. no more than J. J. For both these, "Suffer them to come" means "Suffer them to believe"; and "of such" is read so as to exclude those that are most of all "such"! "If we do not bring our children to Him in any other way than by baptism, we shall not do it at all"! And if we do not eat the Lord's flesh in any other way than in the Lord's Supper we shall not do it at all. Are we, then, indeed, such poor, pitiful ritualists, that we need to be reminded of such things as these?

But can we make the meaning of the "of such" a little plainer yet, and show how the babes and the grown people like them are linked together? Let us try to get at the point of the comparison; and this will be got, I think, by considering what "the word of the kingdom" must imply for those receiving it. It implies, of course, submission to the King; that is, to His commandment, the yoke of discipleship. For this they must be as little children; for what is the little child the type of but of the learner, of one under the yoke? The will of man it is that resists the claims of the Lord Jesus, — the independence of man that refuses submission: "we have turned every one to his own way" is the inspired description of the world as away from God. For blessing, therefore, that way must be given up; and men must become like children, and take, in obedience, the learner's place.

But the children are, in some sense, already there. The state of childhood is what God has ordained for blessing, when the will is in its plastic state, and when submission to authority is natural, as it is necessary. Here the parent is the designed minister of God for good, standing in the place of authority, which most of all represents God among men. That "that which is born of the flesh is flesh," is, of course, true: the little child, as soon as it begins to live, begins to manifest that it is a fallen being. Still, the child's being "flesh" may be pressed in a harsh way, with which those who press it are happily quite inconsistent. Rightly, they teach their children; and we are expressly assured, "Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it." And we are expressly bidden, "Bring up your children in the discipline and admonition of the Lord." God must be with this for any good, but He will be with it: and here we are bidden to put our children in the place of disciples. "I know him," God says of Abraham, "that he will command his children and his household after him, and they shall keep the way of the Lord, to do justice and judgment, that the Lord may bring upon Abraham that which He has spoken of him." Now we know what God had spoken of Abraham's seed; and to us He has given as comforting assurance of what His mind is toward us: "Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved, and thy house." But to this we shall have to return later on.

Disciples and discipling.

C. is right as to the expression "discipled to the kingdom." He will find it given correctly a few lines further on (Reasons, p. 25), and the force is on the word "discipled." The phrase is the same as in Matt. 27: 57, where Joseph of Arimathea is said to have been "discipled to Jesus"; that is, of course, made a disciple of Jesus. It will not do, from any interpretation of Luke 17: 21, to make the kingdom and the king convertible terms. The kingdom was in the midst of Israel, I do not question, in the person of the king; and those who were discipled to the kingdom were, of course, discipled to the king, but that is no ground for changing the one into the other. The phraseology of Scripture is always the most accurate; and in Matt. 13, which treats of the "mysteries of the kingdom," — things unknown before — we see at once how the Old Testament "scribe," brought to the understanding of these mysteries, would have new treasures added to the old ones. The parables show, also, if they show anything, that the kingdom is formed by the word of the kingdom being received into men's hearts: that is, it is the sphere of discipleship.

The first parable also shows that there were disciples, and "disciples indeed," — disciples who "continued" in the word, and those who did not (Comp. John 6: 66). This merely means, and is only taken to mean, that the word is not at all equivalent to "child of God," or "member of Christ." Our brother C. complains, as "unfair," of the use of our Lord's words in John 8: 31, as if it implied the existence of a recognized class of disciples of a lower grade." It is simply used to show that continuance (as the wheat which had no proper root did not continue) distinguished true disciples from the unreal. C. says it "is in contrast with some who had just then (v. 30) become convinced that He was the Messiah." There is no contrast at all; and there was, as yet, nothing to contrast with. It is a word of encouragement, and, at the same time, of admonition; and what they might turn out to be is of no account whatever. By the fact of their professed belief in Him they were taking the place of disciples, and He spoke to them in that character. As a fact, it is well known what "disciples" meant. There were "disciples" of John, of Moses, of the Pharisees: the word is a common word for the followers of any teacher, and does not decide as to the reality of the profession even. Who can deny it?

When the Lord is risen from the dead, and the kingdom is ready to be proclaimed, He says, "All authority" — not power — "is given unto Me, in heaven and in earth: go ye, and disciple all nations." It is plain He would not say "Make children of God": this was within His own power only. "Disciple" was the suited word in reference to the kingdom; and this brings us to the commission.

The Commission and the Keys.

The words here, literally, are "Go and disciple all the nations, baptizing them . . . teaching them." J. J. S. remarks upon a quotation: "The writer admits that the grammatical construction requires that the them should be connected with 'disciples.'" Grammatical construction makes this quite impossible, for there is no word "disciples" for "them" to be connected with. "Disciple all the nations, baptizing them."

I agree with C. that "it is certain that individuals, not nations collectively, are meant." I should have thought the other view impossible. How could nations be got at "collectively"? A nation could not be "discipled" in the mass, but only by individuals. The discipling is defined, I doubt not, as to be effected in two ways, — by baptism and teaching. Our brother C. demurs, and produces passages in proof that the grammar does not necessitate this construction of it. Yet it is, at least, the most natural way of expressing mode: "Preach, saying"; "disciple, baptizing." But, moreover, if "teaching" must be allowed to enter into the very idea of discipling, as our brother would allow it must, — for it is what is taught that makes the real scholar, — then still more must the "baptizing," put side by side with this, serve to fill out and explain further the same thing. It was fit, where the Master was at the same time the Lord, — where the school was at the same time the kingdom, — that there should be this sign of submission on the part of those taking their place there. They are "baptized unto the name of the Lord Jesus"; and this is connected with the authoritative "remission of sins."

The "keys of the kingdom" are here clearly to be seen. "But where does it say there were just two keys?" asks J. J. S. If he can find a third we shall not object; but it surely requires more than one to make a plural. The Lord Himself speaks of the "key of knowledge"; but there needs another, if the expression be an accurate one. Our brethren are evidently shy of the question. The real truth is," says J. J. S. again, "that Peter had the authority given him to open the door, that being what the keys represent in Scripture; and when the door was once opened it did not need to be opened again, so we don't need any man with keys today." This settles the matter, if an assertion can settle it; but why should not the key of knowledge be enough, then, without "keys"? Why "keys" at all? Take the commission as it reads, and the whole is clear: we see that the keys are needed still, and that the door was not thrown open once for all.

But the keys were given to Peter, and to Peter alone"! It is not said "alone." Was the promise "and whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth" to Peter alone? Certainly as much as that of the keys. Did it hinder the Lord extending this to the assembly a little after? Why should the promise of the keys not have a similar extension in the commission to disciple here?

But, urges C., "if infants are in the kingdom, they are in it without the key of knowledge, why may they not also be in it without the key of baptism?" A fair question; and it can be as fairly answered. With regard to infants, they are received as the household of the parents, whom God has put in the place of authority over them. The key of knowledge is not set aside, but the parent acts as the guardian and representative of the child before God, charged with its interests, and not for the setting aside of the truth, but for its complete establishment over it. The exception is only apparent in this case, the spirit of the rule being perfectly observed.

Why could one only baptize among the heathen those who give evidence of some real conversion? It is because baptizing must be discipling; and where this is not meant to take the Lord's yoke really, it would be merely a mockery to baptize. For the child it is the parents' will that gives confidence as to this, and so one can "disciple." In either case the result may, alas, disappoint our hope.

One more objection only: it is that of J. J., who says: "As to baptism being one of the keys of the kingdom, if it be such it was an unaccountable omission not to give it to Paul, who was sent 'not to baptize.' But I question very much whether the Lord would have called an ordinance a 'key.'"

Now I should think that the keys being given to all the disciples after the resurrection of the Lord would be the very best reason why they should not be given to Paul as part of his special commission! Paul was the special minister of the Church (Col. 1: 25) in its full character, and in this the baptismal commission could have no place.

Again, the simple and external nature of baptism would in no wise hinder its being a token of the Lord's authority, in its place very needful thus; and, when intelligently practised, a witness to much essential truth. But we shall have to look at this further, presently.

It is evident that our brethren cannot show us any other keys; and thus these, spite of their protests, fit the lock in this way also.

The Meaning of Baptism.

"Scripture speaks of baptism as a 'figure,'" says J. J. "'The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us' (1 Peter 3: 20). A figure is not efficacious in itself. It is a figure of something else which is efficacious." This is simple enough, surely. It is a figure of salvation; and a figure cannot really save.

But while this is very well as a protest against ritualism, it is not the whole thing. An ordinance may accomplish something, and yet be a figure of that which it does not accomplish. Yet J. J. says: "Any system of doctrine which attaches efficacy to an ordinance is ritualistic, and is so far a departure from the truth. It is an unintentional but practical denial of the fact that ordinances are taken out of the way and nailed to the cross of Christ. It is to take them down again from the cross, and to assume to use them to effect what only a work of grace can accomplish. The two ordinances of Christianity — Baptism and the Lord's Supper are not ordinances at all in this sense: they have no power whatever to 'effect' anything."

Where does our brother find this teaching in Scripture? The passage which he quotes for it does not bear him out, and his appeal to it is of the loosest kind. The apostle is speaking of "the obligation of ordinances (or decrees) which was against and contrary to" those in Judaism. This Christ has "wiped out," and stricken through with the nails of His cross. Without any ordinance whatever, the dying thief, according to the word of the Lord, goes to Paradise with Him. Cornelius receives the Holy Ghost, with all his company, before they are baptized. This is the grace of God in Christianity, gloriously free. But this granted fully — and the meaning left wholly unimpaired — how should this hinder that for the entrance into the company of His people on earth there should be this simple but significant and authoritative admission? Must we say, with J. J., that baptism, though to Christ, effects nothing? that even though one is baptized unto remission of sins, — is baptized and washes away his sins, — still this is nothing? — and as he would not, but still we must, say that baptism is discipling, yet it accomplishes nothing?

Nor are we sacramentalists because we cannot grant this (C. 21). Our brother may find, if he please to look, whether in the Episcopal prayer-book, or the Westminster Confession of Faith, that a sacrament is understood to be an ordinance that conveys the grace it signifies. Thus if baptism is figuratively (as they hold) "the washing of regeneration," it imparts this grace — it regenerates. This, assuredly, I do not hold. And yet I do hold that there is a congruity between the figurative meaning and what is accomplished by the baptismal act.

Baptism is "discipling." It brings a person out of the outside world into the company of disciples, the Lord's followers on earth. It does not work the spiritual change which this would imply for one becoming in heart a disciple, but it does figure this. It does not save in fact, but it does in figure. (1 Peter 3: 21)

It is easy to see why the figure of the internal work should be found in what is external. The outward discipling becomes in this way a witness to the inward necessity, — a gospel pledge or assurance that if that be truth in the heart which is here outwardly declared, then the highest and fullest blessing which it witnesses to belongs to the disciple. But there is necessarily an "if," from the human side. God knoweth the heart; and hence the conditionality always connected with the kingdom.

Take the "remission of sins." In the absolute way we know that the Jews were right in their question, guilty as they were in their unbelief of Christ's glory, "Who can forgive sins but God alone?" Yet the Lord can say, and does, to His disciples, "Whose sins ye remit they are remitted to them"; and baptism at disciples' hands is to the remission of sins. Is this, then, the same kind of remission as His? No, assuredly: it is for the present kingdom, and for earth, — not for heaven and eternity. Yet it is the witness and conditional declaration of the other. And such conditional remission we have in the parable of the unforgiving debtor (Matt. 18: 23-35), a parable of the kingdom of heaven.

"The reference here is plainly" however, J. J. S. says, "to the Jewish nation"; although there is nothing that I can see in the Lord's words to Peter to suggest such a thought. The Jewish nation never sued for forgiveness at his hands, never took the place of those forgiven; and there is nothing in the context of the parable to make it likely. The connection with baptism, which our brother cannot find, is simply that it is a parable of the kingdom.

Let us look now at the figurative meaning of baptism, and we shall find that nowhere does it figure the state, but the process, of salvation. Says J. J. "Baptism is a figure of Christ's death; and . . . it supplies the answer to the demand for a good conscience, because it is the figure of the death of Christ; and as He is risen from the dead, faith finds in His death all the demands of conscience met." But it is not the action in baptism that expresses this. The death of Christ is what we are baptized to: we are baptized to Christ, to His death. The water, like Jordan after Christ had been in it, does express to us that by which salvation comes; but the baptism proper is the immersion into it. But, again, it supplies the answer to the demand for a good conscience"! Not at all: it is the "demand" itself, not the answer to the demand; and this shows that the one coming to baptism is not, in idea, one saved, but one seeking salvation. Baptism is the burial of the person himself, as judicially dead already, to meet Christ in His death. It is thus "burial with Christ," — Christ remaining in the efficacy of His death for all who need Him, even while and because Himself risen; so that baptism is, in figure, salvation, — the process, not the state.

Again he says, speaking of those baptized upon the day of Pentecost, "their baptism was 'upon' their confession." Not exactly, either: their baptism was their confession. But this, too, he states elsewhere.

Again, "This forgiveness of sins was eternal remission, for it was founded upon Christ's death, upon the confession of whose name they were baptized." If this be so, what becomes of ordinances effecting nothing, as he tells us, when they were baptized to get eternal remission! Surely extremes meet here!

As to the gift of the Holy Spirit following, Heb. 7: 4, surely shows that it did not necessarily result that a person made "partaker of the Holy Ghost" was saved. The historical account, as in Acts, is not the record of the inward state of souls. Nor, indeed, do we know how far the signs of the Spirit's presence manifested themselves in the baptized. All did not work miracles, or speak with tongues,

Again, very strangely, J. J. quotes, "The like figure whereunto even baptism doth also now save us," and adds "plainly linking it with a saved state." But in what way? As the result of the baptism, or in order to it? — absolute or conditional? — figure or fact?

J. J. S., commenting on Rom. 6, says: —

"We are buried with Him by baptism: that surely implies death with Him. We are baptized unto His death'; that is, in recognition of His death. But we are buried, — not to His, but unto death; that is, an acknowledgment of our death with Him. The way our household baptists try to reason out of this plain Scripture is a remarkable instance of the really blinding effect of following human theories. The very truth it is taken up to develop that is, in connection with sin — is enough to show it is only believers, and true believers, that could be in question here."

It is, however, "plain," if anything is, in J. J. S.'s argument, that the truth of our being "dead with Christ," which the apostle reaches only in the 6th and 7th verses, he implies in the beginning of the 4th; yet the apostle is carefully reasoning up to it. The truth of being dead with Christ has not been stated before at all. He reaches it in this way: —

We were baptized to Christ: [that needs no argument]; to His death then: nothing else would have met our need. Let us remember how John baptized in Jordan death, and that to Jordan Christ came, and was baptized. There, then, it lies before us, — Jordan with Christ in it, His death. Now, then, we have descended, this is our part, "buried with Him by baptism into death." Risen as He is, His death abides for us in all its value; but we need, in order to reach Him, to take the place in death ourselves, — to be buried, put into the place of death.

But the dead only can have title to the place of death: have we such title? Yes; but not because naturally dead in sins, for we could never find Jesus there: that could not be the death He took. Judicial death, then, the due of sin? Yes; this is ours; we can take this place, and Christ is in it. We must be buried with Him, — buried in His sepulchre, so to speak; to touch and get virtue from Him, that we may live.

Remember that we are baptized to Christ, to His death; and baptism is the soul on its quest for Christ, the demand for a good conscience, not the declaration that we have found it. The baptism is to Him, to gain Him, — ends with effecting this. The rest is His work. The life, He gives. The satisfaction of conscience is the fruit of His cross. Buried with Him by baptism unto death, it is that, as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we also should walk in newness of life. For now (mark) if we have become united to Him (R.V.) in the likeness of His death the quest of baptism attained — we shall be in the likeness of His resurrection.

Here, now, in this new state of things, we can look joyfully around. Knowing this, that our old man is crucified with Him that the body of sin might be destroyed (annulled) that henceforth we should not serve sin."

Yes, now we may begin to speak of being dead with Christ: before we could not. This is the effect of what baptism speaks of — impossible before we had the effect. And now we can go on to the deliverance from the power of sin, where, as J. J. S. says, only believers, and true believers, could be in question." But we have reached this point by a legitimate path, not implying, at the start, what was really the conclusion, as our baptist brethren do. That the conclusion is for believers, we are equally sure with them; but that does not involve the unscriptural thought of baptism being the expression of a saved state, instead of the "demand for a good conscience," and that which, as a figure, saves. These are two opposite thoughts, impossible to reconcile; and upon this rock J. J. S.'s argument is capsized and lost, without hope of recovery.

Baptism in relation to children.

We have learnt, then, four things as to baptism which are in direct opposition to our brethren's contention: —

First, that it is to Christ's death, not to show that one was dead with Christ before.

Secondly, that (as a figure) it saves, not expresses the thought of having been saved before.

Thirdly, it is the demand for a good conscience, not the answer of one already good.

Fourthly, that it is for the remission of sins, not the sign of their having been remitted.

All this is in clear consistency with the thought of it as one of the keys of the kingdom, a kingdom not yet set up in power, nor yet spiritual in such sort as to require to be born again to see it or enter into it. On the contrary, it is the kingdom of God in man's hand, so entirely that the Lord represents that —

"So is the kingdom of God as if a man should cast seed into the ground, and sleep and rise, night and day, and the seed should spring and grow up, he knoweth not how. . . . But when the fruit is brought forth, immediately he putteth in the sickle, because the harvest is come." (Mark 4: 26-29.)

How unlike this to a kingdom into which God alone introduces by new birth! Oh, it is said, that is the "outward aspect," — that is, "as men see it, — when they have just told us that it is so spiritual that not one can "see" it, except by being born again, nor one enter it except by a door safely guarded by God's own hand. On the contrary, if men sleep, the tares spring up in it in plenty.

But the Church, you say, has not that the two aspects? Yes; because the Church is not only the body of Christ, into which the Spirit baptizes, but also the house of God, which bad builders may extend unduly (1 Cor. 3: 12, sq.) But the history of the body of Christ has never been written; and it is never said, and could not be said, The body of Christ is like a field in which an enemy sows tares! Once make the kingdom of God what the body of Christ is, and such views of it become wholly and forever impossible.

But now as to baptism in relation to children.

A babe newly born has no "sins" as yet to be remitted. True; though, alas, that difficulty soon passes away. But the true answer lies a little deeper. For the Christian, remission of sins has in view the evil of the old nature and the practical frailty belonging to us all. And it applies, therefore, not as men soon began to think, to the past merely, but to the present ever, as the future comes continually into it. A Christian always has the forgiveness of sins, for it is according to the riches of a grace at all times sufficient for us. Thus the objection will be found, after all, a superficial one.

As to all else that may be objected, the answer has been already virtually given. The parent, by his God-given place, represents the child, and is distinctly accepted of the Lord in bringing his child to Him, — that being the "coming" which the disciples were bidden to "suffer." It is amazing that our baptist brethren can interpret this coming as "believing." It is really an interpretation scarcely respectable enough to deserve serious answer. Was it their believing that the disciples were hindering? — and was it that that called forth the Lord's displeasure when He said, "Suffer them to come unto Me, and forbid them not"? We have surely good right to feel that there is a veil over the eyes of those who can argue in this way. Why, if anything is clear, it is so that it is the parent's desire that the Lord is meeting, on the part of those who were young enough, at any rate, to be taken up into the Saviour's arms. Are there any who will read this who need to be told what this desire was? And it is to justify His granting it that He adds, as to the babes, "of such is the kingdom of heaven." There was, of course, no baptism; for the kingdom was not yet; nor, therefore, baptism into it. When this should come, then baptism for them would express in His own personal absence, what as present He here gives them assurance of! It is as if He said, I accept them in this relation to Me which you desire for them. They are Mine: you, as delegates for Me, bring them up for Me. That is what the baptism does: it formally admits them into the school of Christ, — disciples them.

The baptism of the household expresses this. It is the precious pledge of the absent Redeemer's love, which is to be answered by the faith that says, in the sense of the responsibility it implies, "Lord, they are Thine, and they shall be Thine." Answer is easy, therefore, to the question, why not baptize all babes?  — why only believers' households? Why, because only believers' households can be, in fact, "discipled." Only those who have come to Christ can bring to Christ, or therefore bring up for Christ. And this governs all right practice, and shows clearly how household baptism is the only consistent form of infant baptism: to those for whom baptism is to be real "discipling," clear and simple as the day!

And this, too, shows, as to those in the household, the rule that should govern us. The "atheist" son, of whom C. speaks, for instance, if old enough and developed enough to be such, has clearly passed from under his father's authority and care. If, in any case, the reins of authority have dropped out of the parents' hands, how can one treat the one of whom this is true as any longer of the household? As for servants, and in a day such as this, the thought of baptism, if any entertain it, is beyond my comprehension. Let baptism be discipling, — a thing identified with and implying the Lord's yoke for those baptized, — and the practice is simple as it is holy: only holy thus.

But the kingdom is the sphere* of profession? Yes; I believe so. But how can a little child profess? It is not meant that it does, or necessary that it should. It is under authority, according to God's order in the world; and, in this sense, in professed subjection, though it be the father's will, and not the child's. The term is, however, not applied in Scripture directly to the kingdom, and if thought unsuitable need not be pressed. Yet the household baptized is professedly Christ's, and

{*That the kingdom is not territorial, but individual; that is, over individuals, if it were in China: this I understand, and hold. Why, "therefore, it cannot be a sphere," I cannot understand.}

"Holy."

I do not believe in holiness by "birth," even "of a Christian parent." The baptism is that setting apart to God, which alone gives in Scripture the applicability of such a title. "The child," it is said, "is already set apart by the will of God to the care of its Christian parents, and is not to be put away as unclean, even if one parent be unconverted." Every child is set apart by the word of God to the care of its parents, which only confirms what Nature already teaches. But this does not make it holy; that is, set it apart to God. The unbelieving wife or husband is sanctified only in the other partner, so as to make the child clean; but that does not make it "holy." The unbelieving wife is "clean"; that is, does not defile the believing husband: she is not "holy," — set apart to God.

C. mistakes entirely the meaning here, and certainly seems to charge me with practising deception. Will he allow me to assure him that I thought everybody knew what he has explained to us — that to sanctify is to make holy? The argument is that, while the wife or husband is looked at as holy only "in" another, in such a sense as not to defile the issue of the marriage, the children are not merely clean, they are holy; and the relationship to Jewish law intimated is quite instructive. In Judaism every one knows that the children were brought into covenant relationship to God by circumcision. In the case of marriage with one of the prohibited nations, this would so defile the Jew contracting it as to deprive the child of the right to circumcision. Christianity reversed this, sanctified (so far as the marriage was concerned) the unbeliever, looked at both as (in this respect) within the covenant; and showed it did so by accepting the children of the marriage.

Thus the holy" comes with special force, — not merely clean. Clean" would not express for the Jew the thought conveyed by holy (qadosh); that is, "consecrated, dedicated, or sanctified to God"; and hagios is the word which would be used in Greek for expressing this. To have said "clean" would have been enough to have proved the lawfulness of the marriage. The "sanctified" and "holy" were both needed in order to express the thought of relationship to God. The use of the two words, therefore, here, is every way significant.

It is true that circumcision was connected with a nation after the flesh. That was, then, how the promises were entailed. But surely even here the spiritual relation was that ever insisted on; and apart from this the other was nothing, or brought only condemnation. How even for the Jew does the apostle press the meaning of circumcision; and that that was not truly such which was merely outward in the flesh! (Rom. 2: 28.) How, then, can one make the fleshly relation rule, as if it were the whole thing? That was, indeed, the form taken at the time by the kingdom of God. The form has passed, but the kingdom of God remains; and, according to the Lord's express assurance, the children brought in their parents' faith to Him have still their place in it. Strange it would have been if He had cut them off!

It is a little bold, then, to say that "no Scripture shows that the family of the believer comes in with him." In both these places the Scripture does so.

Oikos and oikia.

The baptism of households is, then, a thing of course; and our finding it only confirms what should be already clear to us. The word used for household in every case of this kind is the regular one where a man's own children are in question, oikos; and the apostle seems to put these households in a class distinct from those baptized as believers, and so naturally coming into the assembly. (1 Cor. 1: 16.) Let us note again the argument, as our brethren take no proper notice of it.

There were divisions at Corinth; and because baptism is discipling, the apostle was glad to think that he had baptized but two out of the whole number, Crispus and Gaius, — too few for a party, or to allow people to think that he had been making disciples of his own. This he thanks God for: "I baptized none of you but Crispus and Gaius." He adds (lest any, it would seem, should demur to such a statement) that he had baptized the household of Stephanas; for the rest, he did not know that he had baptized any other. The natural inference here, and especially in view of all that we have seen already, — the argument is cumulative: it gathers strength as it goes on, — is, that here are two classes of the baptized. Of those in the assembly he had only baptized two; of the households (in which the numbers would soon mount up) he had baptized one certainly, perhaps more, though he was not aware of it. We can see how consistent all this is, if he is speaking of families: it was of no consequence that he should remember the number he had baptized among these: they were not the promoters of division in the assembly.

Our brother C. suggests that the family of Stephanas was away from Corinth, because Stephanas himself had been; but his coming to the apostle as a messenger from the assembly was very recent, and it is very little likely that he carried his household with him. Journeys were journeys in those days of old. Nor would that have hindered their being essentially a part of the assembly, if away at the time he wrote. Neither does this explain the doubt of the last words.

The "household of Stephanas," mentioned in the last chapter of this epistle, who had addicted themselves to the ministry of the saints, has been always the ready argument against those before spoken of being children. An effectual one, too, it is, if the households are the same. But a different word is used here (oikia, not oikos), which, it is contended, is not the word for children of a family, nor for the household baptized. But this is in question. C. contends that they are used interchangeably. We ought to be able to see if this is true.

If we turn, then, to the Greek version of the Old Testament (the Septuagint), and look first of all at what is clear, we find that wherever we have undoubted reference to the children of the family, — to blood relationship, — oikos, not oikia, is the word used. Thus for Noah's house saved in the flood (Gen. 7: 1), the souls of the house of Jacob that came into Egypt with him, and which are enumerated as those that came out of his loins (Gen. 46), the house of Israel (the nation), the house of Joseph, etc. (the tribes), the fathers' houses into which these were divided, the house of Eli, condemned for their iniquity, the houses of Saul and of David, rivals for the throne, the house of Jeroboam, smitten for his idolatry, of Baasha, of Ahab, similarly judged, of Rechab, commended for obedience, and many more that could be named, — all these (without exception that I know) are oikos, oikia never once. How many occurrences? Speaking roughly, we may say, about four hundred. Is not this a number sufficient to establish pretty well the force of this word in doubtful cases?

Take now oikia. Here we have the eldest servant of Abraham's house; Jacob tells Laban he has been twenty years in his house, where he was treated like a servant; Potiphar's wife speaks to the men of her house about Joseph; and although the lamb of the Passover is taken according to the oikos of their fathers, the measure of eating is a lamb for an oikia, because the servants must be included here: Joshua's "as for me and my house (oikia), we will serve the Lord," naturally includes the servants.

The word is used (both words are) more for a material building house, in that sense than for the inmates. The latter sense has naturally grown out of the former; and one would expect to find, therefore, in this fundamental meaning of the words something of the difference attaching to them in the higher one. I think no one who examines with any care will fail to realize that there is a distinction, and that they are not, by any means, used indifferently. Thus, for the house of God the word is always oikos, never oikia; and the latter seems to have always a lower character. Thus, for the house of the sparrow (Ps. 84: 3) and the stork (Ps. 104: 17), the word is oikia; and this is generally used for the houses of a town, or when there is nothing noteworthy about them; while for house as implying home, or as the better class of abode, it is generally oikos. I say "generally," for there are, naturally, apparent exceptions, — which, however, seem often to carry their reason in their face. These things it would take too long to go into in detail; but there seems, plainly, a difference even in this respect, which corresponds with the difference in the higher meaning.

When we come to the New Testament, which alone is inspired and perfect, the use of these words still corresponds, even in their lower signification, —  with one apparent exception, however, which at first sight may seem absolutely unaccountable, but which we must look at directly. The house of God (the temple) is still always oikos, and there are here nineteen occurrences. For kings' houses the word is oikos (Matt. 11: 8); so with the high priest's (Luke 22: 54); and the ruler's (Mark 5: 38); so where home is emphasized (Mark 5: 19; Mark 8: 26; Luke 1: 23; Luke 5: 24; Luke 8: 39; Luke 9: 61; Luke 15: 6; John 7: 53; 1 Cor. 11: 34; 1 Cor. 14: 35; 1 Tim. 5: 4). Except "my servant lieth at home" Matt. 8: 6), where it is oikia; as it is in the servant abideth not in the house forever" (John 8: 35), and where a man "left his house, and gave authority to his servants" (Mark 13: 34). Oikia is, again, the general term for houses.

To all this there is, however, as I have said, one objection, which, at first sight, might seem insuperable. When the Lord says to His disciples, "In my Father's house are many mansions," the word used for "house" is oikia. (John 14: 2.)

Yet for temple, or tabernacle, and the Father's house, when meaning this, it is oikos that is used; and, of course, when it is said "whose house are we" (Heb. 3: 6), it is still oikos.

And is not this the explanation? If so, a precious witness of the Lord's value for His people, that the higher term is thus reserved for them! The "many mansions" are, after all, only the Father's dwelling-place in a lesser and external sense. The Church of God is what He counts and calls His house — oikos.

For the rest, it is still the latter word that is used for the house of Israel, house of David, house of Jacob, twelve occurrences; the elders are to "rule their own houses well, having their children in subjection with all gravity." (1 Tim. 3: 4.) So, too, the deacons are to rule their children and (or "even") "their own houses well" (ver. 12). The baptized households are similarly oikos. And if five in one house (oikos) are divided, they are given as father and son, and mother and daughter, and daughter-in-law. (Luke 12: 52, 53.)

But we must hear now the protests of our brethren. J. J. replies that if oikia "includes the servants," as I had put it in my former tract, it does not exclude the children: Will F. W. G. say that when the oikia ate the lamb, the children were excluded?" No; F. W. G. as may be seen, has no such thought. But yet the term, as contemplating the servants, would naturally be used where only they might be intended; and if 1 Cor. 16: 16 does not in itself exclude the children, the first chapter implies their exclusion.

J. J. S.'s argument that Joseph being governor over all the house of Pharaoh" (Acts 7: 10), where the word is oikos, "clearly refers to servants only," is, after all, not so clear. "Thou shalt be over my house," says the king, and according to thy word shall all my people be ruled; only in the throne will I be greater than thou. . . . Without thee shall no man lift tip his hand or foot in all the land of Egypt." Can J. J. S. say just how far such power extended?

But the deacons ruling their children and their own houses well!" Here, also, the word for house is oikos, and is definitely linked on to servants"! Not at all. The elders show rather the reverse, as the requisitions are otherwise so similar; and the emphasis on "their own houses" similarly shows the ground of the repetition. Their ability to care for the houses of others must be shown by the care given to their own. The "and" may just as well be "even."

C. finds great fault with my appeal to the house divided against itself; but he is wrong. "Five in one house" (oikos) is peculiar to Luke; and Matt. 10: 36, is different. Here the Lord says, "And a man's foes shall be they of his own household," — words not repeated in the other gospels. Here the word is oikiakos, derived, of course, from oikia; and which is used again, quite in accordance with the significance of oikia its the 25th verse of the same chapter in Matthew: "The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord; it is enough for the disciple to be as his master, and the servant as his lord." If they have called the master of the house Beelzebub, how much more shall they call them of his household"? (oikiakos). Now in the 35th verse there is no reason to limit this to those specified in the preceding. "Five in one oikia" would be very different. It is the parallelism of words that we are examining, and not of texts. All the rest of his remarks I have already answered.

The Households.

Few words will now suffice as to the "households," and our brother C. will give us all the arguments. In the case of the jailer he tells us that "having believed" could not be plural. Of course the form of the word shows it could not: I do not know what else. It is, certainly, "he rejoiced," and he having believed. The adverb panoiki is hard to put in English; and that is why, I suppose, translators generally accept "with all his house" as an equivalent. But I do not see how "all-householdly" would authorize this any more than "domestically." It would rather imply, I think, "over" or as to all his house."

But the remark in ver. 31 is still more strange. "It was not said 'you now, and your house by and by.'" No; there is neither the now "nor the by and by." But the salvation of his house is connected with his own faith, whether it were now or by and by; and just as much in the former case as in the latter. Why, then, call it "sentimentality," or "sacramental-ism," to accept the connection of such blessed words with the doctrine which runs through Scripture of the connection, in God's design, of blessing to a man's house because of his faith? Is it easier to believe that God should do this once in the way and of a sudden for the jailer here, than that he should imply his desire to do it for every believer? Is it good, by making this a special and exceptional thing, to take it away from any significance that one can see for any one else? Had the jailer even expressed any desire for his children? And if he had, what would save it from "sentimentality" in his case, when it seems it would be only that in ours?

As to the case of Lydia and her house, I think there is nothing that needs more reply, as far as I am concerned. Nor do I find anything of importance elsewhere. We may here, therefore, bring this discussion to an end.

In conclusion, only, it is well to observe that the divine word tests us often by what may seem to us the triviality of a positive institution. Wherever we can show what is manifestly moral in a command, the idea of the morality comes so to enforce the precept as sometimes to overshadow it as a precept. If I obey only where I know the why of the command, that is not obedience, properly. If duly obedient I can no longer question as to what I know to be of God. Thus the whole temper and spirit of my life may reveal itself in the breach of some command which to me may seem and just because it does seem to me trivial — a small matter, whether in this particular I do His will or not.

Cannot I present my child to God, apart from baptism? I can, surely; but is my way or His the best? Cannot I remember the Lord's death apart from the symbols of bread and wine? As to how much, may we not argue similarly? But, after all, the simple acceptance of Christ's word will be found the way of surest blessing. If the baptism in itself be little enough, at how much shall we value the Christ who is behind it?

F. W. Grant.

The Church's Path

The Church's Path.

"And Peter answered Him and said, 'Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come to Thee upon the waters.' And He said, 'Come.' And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the waters to go to Jesus." (Matt. 14: 28, 29.)

The individuality of the path is what I would press upon our souls just now. How strikingly it is presented! This solitary man, amid boisterous winds and waves, forsaking the protection of the boat and the company of the other disciples, and inviting the word which bids him to a path at once so difficult and so resourceless. We often speak of a walk of faith. It is well to look steadily at such a picture as this, and to ask ourselves, have we ever realized it in our own experience? does it present really what corresponds in its features (even though more deeply drawn,) to the path as we know it?

Solitary; — but he had before him as the end of his path the gracious and glorious presence of Him who had called him, and for sustaining power the word which in its call was a promise for all difficulties that could be. If in the meanwhile he had lost the company of others, every step on this road would make the Presence before him more bright and lustrous; and, at the end at least, even those now separated from would be restored. Was there not abundant compensation in the meantime? Would there not be an overpayment of joy at the end?

I would press, I again say, the individuality of it. As we look back upon the examples of faith which God has given us in His own record, how they shine separately and independently out from surrounding darkness! How seldom are they set even in clusters! Enoch, in that walk with God which death never shadowed; Noah, with his family, sole survivors of a judgment-wrecked world; Abraham, with whom even Lot is a mere contrast. They stand out from the dark background as men not formed by their circumstances, no mere natural outgrowth from that in the midst of which we find them, but plants of the Lord's planting, maintaining themselves where no power but His could avail to keep them, north wind, as well as south, making the spices of His garden to flow out. In all these the individuality of the path is manifest. Lot is a warning as to the opposite course, of unmistakable significance. A walk with God means necessarily independence of men, — even of the saints; while if it is with God, it will be marked by unfeigned lowliness, and absence of mere eccentricity and self-will.

In the scene to which I am now referring, this solitary man, in that individual path in which nothing but divine power could for a moment sustain him, is the representative, as is evident, of the Church at large. The saints of the present time are as a body called to go forth to meet the Bridegroom, leaving the "boat" of Judaism, a provision for nature, not for faith. "The law is not of faith." To faith, God alone is necessary and sufficient, and other helps would be helps to do (so far) without Him: hindrances to faith therefore, really. Practically, it was a Jewish remnant that the Lord left when He went on high, and to a Jewish remnant we know He will return again, we in the meantime being called to meet Him and return with Him. This company Peter, not only here, but elsewhere, represents.

At first sight this may seem to take from the individual aspect. The path is the Church's path, and belongs to the whole, not merely to individuals: and that is so far true. In fact, as a company it has perhaps never walked in it; most certainly not for centuries: and Scripture — prescient as the Word of God must be — announced beforehand what history has since recorded. If then the Church has failed, is the Christian to accept for himself this failure? or is not individuality forced the more upon him, — a good which divine sovereignty thus brings out of the evil? But in truth it never was intended that the walk of a Christian should be different in principle or on a lower level than that which characterized faith in former generations. We were not meant to seek Lot-like companionship with one another, but Abraham-like with God. He is "the father of all them that believe." If Peter here, then, represent a company, it can only be a company of such as walk, each for himself, with God a course which would indeed secure the most blessed companionship. Communion with one another can only be the result of communion with the Father and with the Son.

In this way how striking is the path of this lone man! — a path that terminates only in the presence of the Lord, and on which every step in advance brings nearer to Him! Various as in some true sense our paths must be, it is this that alone gives them their common Christian character; it is this that makes us pilgrims; nay, as the inspired Word presents it, racers: our goal outside the world our object — that which rules us — heavenly. If it be not thus with us, we are immeasurably below those of a dispensation darkness itself compared with ours, who nevertheless by their lives "declared plainly" that they sought a better country. And for this reason God was not ashamed to be called their God, for He hath prepared for them a city.

This path of faith is one in which we may show, with Peter, not the greatness of our faith, but the littleness of it. It will never really make much of us. Do we seek it? The glory of Christ is what lies before and beckons us for our weakness, if there be rebuke, it is only that of a perfect love. Not, Wherefore didst thou presume? but, "Wherefore didst thou doubt?" And with that, the outstretched hand of human sympathy and of divine support. Is it enough, dear fellow-Christian? Is there not for all the difficulties of the way an overabundant recompense? And the end — who shall declare its blessedness?

Yet let us remember that it is to one who invites his Lord's invitation to such a path that it really opens. The "Come" of Christ is an answer to him who says, "Lord, if it be Thou, bid me come to Thee upon the waters!" The word for the path is the answer alone to the heart for the path. And what to Him is the joy of such desire so expressed? Let ours go forth, if any have not yet, with such a cry: "Lord, if it be upon the waters I must come, and that path it is which alone leads to Thee, then bid me come to Thee, blest, gracious Master, even upon the water!"