3. Christ always spoke of the Father as holding out all the promises possible even to Him to draw the sinner back to the realization of the Divine life. Never did He represent God as cherishing satisfaction in the perdition of the sinner, or taking pleasure in dooming men to destruction.

4. Conceiving of God as only an absolute Sovereign, and representing Him as a relentless Despot, has introduced an element into theology which has wrought banefully in the Church and marred the power of the Gospel. A well-meant but injudicious zeal for the Divine justice at the expense of the Divine benevolence retards, rather than promotes, the conversion of souls.

5. The justice of God can never be impaired by the action of man. The principles and laws of Nature never allow the action of Divine justice to be neutralized. A violation of the Divine laws does not weaken those laws, but simply entails a penalty on the violater. Such is the perfection of all God's laws that not one of them can be violated with impunity. And the glory of God is shown, not in His jealousy for the maintenance of His Sovereignty, but in the manifestation of His grace in the salvation of sinners. It is in drawing the sinner out of his

sin into holiness that God's jealousy for the honour of His law is most gloriously displayed. 6. Awful denunciations of Divine wrath, harrowing descriptions of God as an infinite Avenger, pictures of hell as a place of eternal and infinite anguish, will not melt impenitent sinners, draw hesitating souls Godward, or direct anxious minds inquiring after the way of life. The dread of consequences, the fear of future punishment, has no elevating influence on the soul.

It possesses no spiritual vitality, and its moral influence is of the very lowest kind. The enforcement of this motive degrades the Christian life. To the extent that it is made a motive of action, to the same extent is the life unchristianized. It is selfish and wholly unworthy of the lofty character of the true Christian. To teach that the High and Holy One, who acts only upon the purest and loftiest principles, draws men to the noblest ends of their being by any other attraction than the cords of love, is to wrest from God His sceptre and rob Him of His crown.

CHAPTER II.

PROPER BASIS OF AN EVANGELICAL

CREED.

I.

THE

HE point from which an object is viewed has much to do with the view taken. This holds good both in physical and spiritual vision. The non-perception of this fact was the cardinal error of the compilers of the Reformation Creeds. They ought to have started from Christ, instead of from abstract truths. They exhibited the Father in abstract conceptions, instead of through the Son. Christ is the stand-point from which the framers of a Creed should view the whole circle of Divine truth. This is the principle which Christ Himself lays down. "He that hath seen ME hath seen the Father." Christ is the centre of all renewed life, of all truth, of all existence, of all Divine revelation. The non-perception of this fundamental truth was the great error of the compilers of the Protestant formularies of Belief.

2. Christ came to reveal the Father by manifesting God in Himself. He came in love to

reveal the loving Heart of God. He showed the extent to which the Godhead would exert Its infinite power to rescue sinners. And this required a manifestation of the Father which only an equal with God could make. We must never allow our reverent admiration of Christ's human life to overlay our faith in His essential Divinity.

3. In the accomplishment of His work He exhibited the full power of the self-sacrificing love of the Godhead. He taught the ignorant, guided the erring, fed the hungry, healed the sick, the lame, the deaf, the blind, cast demons out of men, raised the dead. He never turned a deaf ear to a suppliant. Even in the agonies of dying He comforted the penitent thief and prayed for His murderers. In acts such as

these He made visible the beneficent will of the Godhead regarding man.

4. Thus to "see the Son" is to "see the Father" -in all the perfections of Godhead bending in mercy and compassion over the rebellious race. The Father is seen as He is not seen in Nature, nor in Providence. Christ, "manifested in the flesh," exhibits the Father as the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in mercy, not willing that any should perish, but desirous that all should turn to Him and

live; declaring by the most solemn oath that even He could utter that He hath no pleasure in the death of the sinner; that His supreme pleasure is in the sinner's turning to Him that he may live. In giving Christ to the world, God gave His highest and most precious gift. The gift was God's emphatic declaration that He desires the salvation of all men.

5. But the visible presentation which the Father makes of Himself in the Son hardly corresponds with the abstract definition of God given in the Modern Creeds. That definition, true in itself, even sublime in its presentation of the unseen God, is yet one that might have been written by Plato. It may awaken reverence in the hearts of Christian men, but it is powerless to awaken love in a rebellious spirit. It puts out of sight the primary truth of Christianity, namely, that God Himself came to the world, in the person of His son, to save the lost. "He that hath seen ME hath seen the Father." He hath seen the Father devoting His own Son for the salvation of sinners. This definition of God is fitted to speak to the inmost thoughts, and to touch the deepest emotions of the soul.

6. Christ did not represent the Father as a Despot, who for the vindication of His Sovereignty raises some to glory, and dooms others