a man

original character, — for Jesus was more than a son of Adam; He was the new man, but in the divine ideal. The antithesis between the man Jesus and the man Adam teaches us what was lacking in that first man of the earthly creation. He is of the earth, earthy; the second man is of heaven. In Adam is not yet the end of God's creation. He is only at that moment the acme of a creation in development according to a certain design, capable of mental growth and fit for the communication of spiritual life, but in whom is not yet the absolute triumph of divine virtue, the invulnerability to evil. In his solitariness Adam can be neither happy nor satisfied. He is above every creature, and does not reach to God. In this respect his elevation above the creatures is his misfortune. He does not come to self-content nor to perfect communion with God. The life complement given him in Eve does not fill up his moral life. She becomes to him the occasion of a fall rather than a rise. Together they can find their way to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, but not to the tree of life. The Paradise state is of short duration, like the innocence of our childhood days. The history proves that Adam is flesh in a too significant sense than that to him can be intrusted the championship between good and evil, then already wrestling for supremacy in this creation. What that flesh means Paul teaches us, who has most fully interpreted for us the word of Jesus, "That which is born of flesh is flesh."

In that first man roots, at least in part, through the perilous bond of the flesh, the moral character of a whole race. In that race, which soon reveals the most disquieting traces of corruption, roots again, with an indissoluble connection, each personal life. This life is not only susceptible of evil, because of its original imperfection, but comes into a sinful world with the inheritance of the evil of ages, and with the hereditary capacity of multiplying sin in itself and propagating it in its generation. The problems which arise out of such a history are always too serious to be dismissed, or even to be postponed. Ministers of the gospel must not hesitate to acknowledge that they concern the character of God and the honor of his name. The feeling that God is responsible for his own creation cannot be suppressed in man by any oracular proscription. It is not the least important part of the calling of ambassadors of Christ to justify the ways of God to men, even as the Christ justified the Father.

We need not listen despairingly to the conclusions of a science which leaves Jesus Christ out of its premises, or out of the domain

of facts, when it apparently degrades our position as earthly creatures. It is not worth the while to dispute about that with its advocates. There may be much truth in the seemingly unworthy representations which arouse the indignation of many. Paul also had no high opinion of this present visible manhood when he called it "the body of our humiliation;" nor of our interior being, our nature (pois), when he says that in it we are "children of wrath;" nor of our Adamic descent and its promise, when he says that the first Adam was no more than a living soul, a being possessing only psychical life. Over against these the gospel announces a better Man, whose glorified body is the promise of an outward ennobling; by whom we become partakers of the divine nature - púos; who is to us a vivifying Spirit — Tνεûμа. He was the first man who could say: "I came forth from the Father: again I go unto the Father" (John xvi. 28). (John xvi. 28). No, not Adam, of whom we are, was the end of God's creation as a rational creation, capable of the permanent indwelling of God; but the man Christ Jesus, unto whom we are, is the final end. He exists eternally in the divine plan as the end of the creation. "The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand" (John iii. 35).

Do gospel-preachers sufficiently insist upon it that Jesus Christ will not lose the place among men which, by all the proofs which human conclusions furnish, still awaits Him? The virtual Head of humanity will be its acknowledged Head. We are ambassadors for Christ that we may secure this to Him.

The assurance of this truth is a step towards another truth which, in human speculation, lies at the other extreme. There is an indefinite feeling among men that God cannot be permanently separated from humanity. Poets, philosophers, who seek the answer to questions concerning humanity above, rather than beneath themselves, as scientists are inclined to do, often end in a relation between God and the human spirit which confounds God with man. They set men to seek God within their own limits. Let us not suspect, nor discourage, nor mock that searching. It is the distinction of ministers of the gospel to give direction to such quest and to satisfy it. As ambassadors of Christ, they must assure men that they must not only find their real manhood in Jesus, but may find God in Christ, God not separable from humanity; God become incarnate; God living the life of humanity, and so himself furnishing the proof how these two, so far apart, can become one, and live together a true, undivided,

harmonious life, not only alongside of each other, but within each other; God entering into his creature and identifying himself with it. This is the full meaning and ultimate effect of reconciliation.

Thus Jesus Christ becomes in his person the Reconciler of God and man. His life is the active reconcilement. In that life is the perfect will of the Father perfectly carried out. As Jesus witnessed: "I do always the things that are pleasing to Him" (John viii. 29). At the same time there are in that life our human temptations, our sins, our fear, our sorrows, our death terrors; but the two so dissimilar things are there for a purpose of reconciliation. In that wonderful life, the love of the Father always subdues the self-love which is the strength of temptation. There the sins of men disappear as mists in the glow of that love-light which is always reflected from that spotless Spirit who never forgets to love supremely God and men. There fear and anguish and death-perils are overcome by a confidence which no experiences of dying can shock or diminish. "Father, into thy hands I commit my spirit," completes the atonement, whose real substance is indicated in the self-surrender in Gethsemane: "Not my will, but Thine be done." The complete yielding of himself; the glorifying of the Father as his Father, under all the trying experiences of the last suffering; the perfect love to men, whose cruel maltreatment could stir in Him only a deeper pity, but no impatience or revenge, — there is the atonement. And it can never be rightly considered so much the price of the divine reconciliation as the evidence of the reconcilement wherein God in Christ was reconciling the world unto himself.

Men are ambassadors of Christ to say this out plainly. The atonement does not take place outside of God and outside of man. The Saviour, who had formerly said, "I and the Father are one,' does not unjustly nor vainly appeal to the Father thus: "Glorify thy Son, that thy Son may also glorify Thee." That is the prayer fit where the great drama of the atonement reaches its climax in the garden and on the cross. The Father is in that transcendent day of mortal suffering as truly as is the Son of Man. Therefore He is, according to the Scriptures, the gift of God,1 the Lamb of God; 2 not a sacrifice to God, but God's sacrifice.3 He died that day unto sin, not unto God. He lived unto God and

1 John iii. 16; Rom. v. 8, viii. 32; 1 John iv. 9. 2 John i. 29, 36.

4 Rom. vi. 10. Cf. vi. 2, 11; Gal. ii. 9, vi. 14.

8 2 Cor. v. 21; Isa. liii. 7.

the Father saved Him from death.1 Neither does the atonement take place outside of us. However unique may be Christ's humanity, his is the humanity which is truly ours by the divine purpose, by which he that is in Christ is a new man, which He, as a new creation in the Virgin Mary, unites to our human life. For in our human sphere men were its witnesses from the beginning to the end Jesus Christ fights again our battle and conquers, passes through our suffering, endures our death, and rises again by the power of his endless life.

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This is, indeed, the sum of the gospel which men are set to preach. If one have an eye for the gospel, he will find the Book full of it, the exaltation of the cross, and of the Lamb slain thereon, until he finds them in the very midst of the eternal throne, towards which all things are finding their way as to the true centre of the universe; the atonement, not as an afterthought of God to affect merely a small portion of his vast world, the part which has gotten out of the harmony of the whole, but as a forethought, an eternal purpose; the central idea of the eternal plan of God, out of which all things visible and invisible have proceeded; the real thread which binds together all parts of this great creation, in which God is supreme; the unity which makes men and angels members of the same family; the great aim and final end toward which all things tended from the beginning; the marvelous work of God which was the completion of the creation idea, and brought the fullness of time; the culmination of the self-revelation of God, in which the Eternal shows his innermost nature.

The

It is upon the largest possible conception of the reconciliation which is in God that the preaching of the gospel as the demand of faith is to be based. As an invitation, it must include the greatest sinner; as a demand, it must fit the promise. The promise comes to the race,2 the demand to the individual. demand is not based on law, but on the gospel. It is addresed to the faith of the heart rather than to the faith of the intellect, to trust rather than to belief. It is the voice of a father to his children: Be ye reconciled. In this demand the original ideal relation between God and men is as truly of account as the redemption wrought on the tree. The gospel assumes this original relation, which was never disowned on God's part, and this first 1 Heb. v. 7; Luke xxiii. 43.

2 Gen. iii. 15; Acts ii. 39; John iii. 16, et al. 4 Rom. x. 3-15.

3 Acts ii. 21, 38, et al.

bond, which was never severed. Therefore the love of God has always been manifested, and his tender mercies have always been the proof of his friendship and interest. The cross was the culmination and fulfillment of a history of grace.

Yet there took place a separation, called by such evil names as enmity, when described from the human side, and wrath, when described from the divine side. Thus in Romans v. 10: "For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled through the death of his Son;" and in John iii. 36: "He that believeth not, the wrath of God abideth upon him." This enmity on the part of man is not called out in the form of retaliation against anything that God has done. It does not, for instance, develop in man upon the discovery or sense that he has been wronged by his Maker, so that one can definitely locate its rise or specific occasion in any one's life. It appears as an innate attitude, in the form of indifference, or impatience, or distrust, or resistance, or antagonism, as called out by perceived demands which oppose the desire or will. It exists where men do not know God no less than where they are acquainted with Him; where men do not suspect that God has harmed them as where they attribute to Him all manner of evil treatment. It is universal. Without faith in God in Christ there is no real love of Him among men. Now, in • what relation does the revealed wrath stand to this enmity? Men sometimes seem to think that wrath in God is his response to this estrangement of men. But not so. According to the Scriptures the response of God to human enmity is love, pity, mercy, grace. Therefore Christ could say, "Love your enemies, that ye may be the children of your Father who is in heaven." That is the perfection of the Father. The world hates God; God loves the world. The answer to the enmity of the human race is the Son of God on the cross for the human race. What, then, is wrath? Whatever it be, it is not retaliation, it is not revenge, it is not bitterness, it is not spite, it is not hatred. If it were any of these, God would be like men. We know of no response to hatred but hate; we need love to start love. God is essentially different, and can save his love in the presence of hatred. What, then, is wrath? Wrath is the indignation of love wounded, despised, spurned. Wrath is the justification of love denied, as peace is the evidence of love believed, responded to. Wrath is, therefore, not an original revelation. The first sin was met by the first promise, not by rejection. It is a subsequent revelation. It is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness