Mat. 20:12-15—“These last have spent but one hour, and thou hast made them equal unto us.... Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” Rom. 9:20, 21—“Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why didst thou make me thus? Or hath not the potter a right over the clay, from the same lump to make one part a vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor?”

Ps. 147:20—“He hath not dealt so with any nation; And as for his ordinances, they have not known them”. Rom. 3:1, 2—“What advantage then hath the Jew? or what is the profit of circumcision? Much every way: first of all, that they were intrusted with the oracles of God”; John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you, and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit”; Acts 9:15—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel.”

Mat. 11:21—Tyre and Sidon “would have repented,” if they had had the grace bestowed upon Chorazin and Bethsaida; Rom. 9:22-25—“What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory?”

Jesus speaks of God's elect, as for example in Mark 13:27—“then shall he send forth the angels, and shall gather together his elect”; Luke 18:7—“shall not God avenge his elect, that cry to him day and night?”

Acts 13:48—“as many as were ordained (τεταγμένοι) to eternal life believed”—here Whedon translates: “disposed unto eternal life,” referring to κατηρτισμένα in verse 23, where “fitted” = “fitted themselves.” The only instance, however, where τάσσω is used in a middle sense is in 1 Cor. 16:15—“set themselves”; but there the object, ἑαυτούς, is expressed. Here we must compare Rom. 13:1—“the powers that be are ordained (τεταγμέναι) of God”; see also Acts 10:42—“this is he who is ordained (ὡρισμένος) of God to be the Judge of the living and the dead.”

Rom. 9:11-16—“for the children being not yet born, neither having done anything good or bad, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth.... I will have mercy upon whom I have mercy.... So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that hath mercy”; Eph. 1:4, 5, 9, 11—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world, [not because we were, or were to be, holy, but] that we should be holy and without blemish before him in love: having foreordained us unto adoption as sons through Jesus Christ unto himself, according to the good pleasure of his will ... the mystery of his will, according to his good pleasure ... in whom also we were made a heritage, having been foreordained according to the purpose of him who worketh all things after the counsel of his will”; Col. 3:12—“God's elect”; 2 Thess. 2:13—“God chose you from the beginning unto salvation in sanctification of the Spirit and belief of the truth.”

Rom. 8:27-30—“called according to his purpose. For whom he foreknew, he also foreordained to be conformed to the image of his Son”; 1 Pet. 1:1, 2—“elect ... according to the foreknowledge of God the Father, in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.” On the passage in Romans, Shedd, in his Commentary, remarks that “foreknew,” in the Hebraistic use, “is more than simple prescience, and something more also than simply ‘to fix the eye upon,’ or to ‘select.’It is this latter, but with the additional notion of a benignant and kindly feeling toward the object.” In Rom. 8:27-30, Paul is emphasizing the divine sovereignty. The Christian life is considered from the side of the divine care and ordering, and not from the side of human choice and volition. Alexander, Theories of the Will, 87, 88—“If Paul is here advocating indeterminism, it is strange that in chapter 9 he should be at pains to answer objections to determinism. The apostle's protest in chapter 9 is not against predestination and determination, but against the man who regards such a theory as impugning the righteousness of God.”

That the word “know,” in Scripture, frequently means not merely to “apprehend intellectually,”but to “regard with favor,” to “make an object of care,” is evident from Gen. 18:19—“I have known him, to the end that he may command his children and his household after him, that they may keep the way of Jehovah, to do righteousness and justice”; Ex. 2:25—“And God saw the children of Israel, and God took knowledge of them”; cf. verse 24—“God heard their groaning, and God remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac, and with Jacob”; Ps. 1:6—“For Jehovah knoweth the way of the righteous; But the way of the wicked shall perish”; 101:4, marg.—“I will know no evil person”; Hosea 13:5—“I did know thee in the wilderness, in the land of great drought. According to their pasture, so were they filled”; Nahum 1:7—“he knoweth them that take refuge in him”; Amos 3:2—“You only have I known of all the families of the earth”; Mat. 7:23—“then will I profess unto them, I never knew you”; Rom. 7:15—“For that which I do I know not”; 1 Cor. 8:3—“if any man loveth God, the same is known by him”; Gal. 4:9—“now that ye have come to know God, or rather, to be known by God”; 1 Thess. 5:12, 13—“we beseech you, brethren, to know them that labor among you, and are over you in the Lord, and admonish you; and to esteem them exceeding highly in love for their work's sake.” So the word “foreknow”: Rom. 11:2—“God did not cast off his people whom he foreknew”; 1 Pet. 1:20—Christ, “who was foreknown indeed before the foundation of the world.”

Broadus on Mat. 7:23—“I never knew you”—says; “Not in all the passages quoted above, nor elsewhere, is there occasion for the oft-repeated arbitrary notion, derived from the Fathers, that ‘know’ conveys the additional idea of approve or regard. It denotes acquaintance, with all its pleasures and advantages; ‘knew,’ i. e., as mine, as my people.”

But this last admission seems to grant what Broadus had before denied. See Thayer, Lex. N. T., on γινώσκω: “With acc. of person, to recognize as worthy of intimacy and love; so those whom God has judged worthy of the blessings of the gospel are said ὑπὸ τοῦ θεοῦ γινώσκεσθαι (1 Cor. 8:3; Gal. 4:9); negatively in the sentence of Christ: οὐδἐποτε ἔγνων ὑμᾶς, ‘I never knew you,’ never had any acquaintance with you.” On προγινώσκω, Rom. 8:29—οὒς προέγνω, “whom he foreknew,” see Denney, in Expositor's Greek Testament, in loco: “Those whom he foreknew—in what sense? as persons who would answer his love with love? This is at least irrelevant, and alien to Paul's general method of thought. That salvation begins with God, and begins in eternity, are fundamental ideas with him, which he here applies to Christians, without raising any of the problems involved in the relation of the human will to the divine. Yet we may be sure that προέγνω has the pregnant sense that γινώσκω often has in Scripture, e. g., in Ps. 1:6; Amos 3:2; hence we may render: ‘those of whom God took knowledge from eternity’ (Eph. 1:4).”

In Rom. 8:28-30, quoted above, “foreknew” = elected—that is, made certain individuals, in the future, the objects of his love and care; “foreordained” describes God's designation of these same individuals to receive the special gift of salvation. In other words, “foreknowledge”is of persons: “foreordination” is of blessings to be bestowed upon them. Hooker, Eccl. Pol., appendix to book v. (vol. 2:751)—“ ‘whom he did foreknow’ (know before as his own, with determination to be forever merciful to them) ‘he also predestinated to be conformed to the image of his Son’—predestinated, not to opportunity of conformation, but to conformation itself.” So, for substance, Calvin, Rückert, DeWette, Stuart, Jowett, Vaughan. On 1 Pet. 1:1, 2, see Com. of Plumptre. The Arminian interpretation of “whom he foreknew” (Rom. 8:29) would require the phrase “as conformed to the image of his Son” to be conjoined with it. Paul, however, makes conformity to Christ to be the result, not the foreseen condition, of God's foreordination; see Commentaries of Hodge and Lange.

Eph. 1:5-8—“foreordained ... according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved ... according to the riches of his grace”; 2:8—“by grace have ye been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God”—here “and that” (neuter τοῦτο, verse 8) refers, not to “faith” but to “salvation.” But faith is elsewhere represented as having its source in God,—see page 782, (k). 2 Tim. 1:9—“his own purpose and grace, which was given us in Christ Jesus before times eternal.” Election is not because of our merit. McLaren: “God's own mercy, spontaneous, undeserved, condescending, moved him. God is his own motive. His love is not drawn out by our loveableness, but wells up, like an artesian spring, from the depths of his nature.”

John 6:37—“All that which the Father giveth me shall come unto me”; 17:2—“that whatsoever thou hast given him, to them he should give eternal life”; 6—“I manifested thy name unto the men whom thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them to me”; 9—“I pray not for the world, but for those whom thou hast given me”; Eph. 1:14—“unto the redemption of God's own possession”; 1 Pet. 2:9—“a people for God's own possession.”

John 6:44—“No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him”; 10:26—“ye believe not, because ye are not of my sheep”; 1 Cor. 1:30—“of him [God] are ye in Christ Jesus” = your being, as Christians, in union with Christ, is due wholly to God.

Phil. 4:3—“the rest of my fellow-workers, whose names are in the book of life”; Rev. 20:15—“And if any was not found written in the book of life, he was cast into the lake of fire”; 21:27—“there shall in no wise enter into it anything unclean ... but only they that are written in the Lamb's book of life” = God's decrees of electing grace in Christ.

Acts 17:4—(literally)—“some of them were persuaded, and were allotted [by God] to Paul and Silas”—as disciples (so Meyer and Grimm); 18:9, 10—“Be not afraid, but speak and hold not thy peace: for I am with thee, and no man shall set on thee to harm thee: for I have much people in this city.”

Rom. 8:28, 30—“called according to his purpose ... whom he foreordained, them he also called”; 9:23, 24—“vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom he also called, not from the Jews only, but also from the Gentiles”; 11:29—“for the gifts and the calling of God are not repented of”; 1 Cor. 1:24-29—“unto them that are called ... Christ the power of God, and the wisdom of God.... For behold your calling, brethren, ... the things that are despised, did God choose, yea and the things that are not, that he might bring to naught the things that are: that no flesh should glory before God”; Gal. 1:15, 16—“when it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me, even from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me”; cf. James 2:23—“and he [Abraham] was called [to be] the friend of God.”

John 1:13—“born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”; James 1:18—“Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth”; 1 John 4:10—“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us.” S. S. Times, Oct. 14, 1899—“The law of love is the expression of God's loving nature, and it is only by our participation of the divine nature that we are enabled to render it obedience. ‘Loving God,’ says Bushnell, ‘is but letting God love us.’ So John's great saying may be rendered in the present tense: ‘not that we love God, but that he loves us.’ Or, as Madame Guyon sings: ‘I love my God, but with no love of mine, For I have none to give; I love thee, Lord, but all the love is thine, For by thy life I live’.”

Acts 5:31—“Him did God exalt with his right hand to be a Prince and a Savior, to give repentance to Israel, and remission of sins”; 11:18—“Then to the Gentiles also hath God granted repentance unto life”; 2 Tim. 2:25—“correcting them that oppose themselves; if peradventure God may give them repentance unto the knowledge of the truth.”Of course it is true that God might give repentance simply by inducing man to repent by the agency of his word, his providence and his Spirit. But more than this seems to be meant when the Psalmist prays: “Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit within me” (Ps. 51:10).

John 6:65—“no man can come unto me, except it be given unto him of the Father”; Acts 15:8, 9—“God ... giving them the Holy Spirit ... cleansing their hearts by faith”; Rom. 12:3—“according as God hath dealt to each man a measure of faith”; 1 Cor. 12:9—“to another faith, in the same Spirit”; Gal. 5:22—“the fruit of the Spirit is ... faith” (A. V.); Phil. 2:13—In all faith, “it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure”; Eph. 6:23—“Peace be to the brethren, and love with faith, from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”; John 3:8—“The Spirit breatheth where he wills, and thou [as a consequence] hearest his voice” (so Bengel); see A. J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 166; 1 Cor. 12:3—“No man can say, Jesus is Lord, but in the Holy Spirit”—but calling Jesus “Lord” is an essential part of faith,—faith therefore is the work of the Holy Spirit; Tit. 1:1—“the faith of God's elect”—election is not in consequence of faith, but faith is in consequence of election (Ellicott). If they get their faith of themselves, then salvation is not due to grace. If God gave the faith, then it was in his purpose, and this is election.

Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy”; 2:9, 10—“not of works, that no man should glory. For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”; 1 Pet. 1:2—elect “unto obedience.” On Scripture testimony, see Hovey, Manual of Theol. and Ethics, 258-261; also art. on Predestination, by Warfield, in Hastings' Dictionary of the Bible.

Roughly stated, we may say that Schleiermacher elects all men subjectively; Lutherans all men objectively; Arminians all believers; Augustinians all foreknown as God's own. Schleiermacher held that decree logically precedes foreknowledge, and that election is individual, not national. But he made election to include all men, the only difference between them being that of earlier or of later conversion. Thus in his system Calvinism and Restorationism go hand in hand. Murray, in Hastings' Bible Dictionary, seems to take this view.

Lutheranism is the assertion that original grace preceded original sin, and that the Quia Voluit of Tertullian and of Calvin was based on wisdom, in Christ. The Lutheran holds that the believer is simply the non-resistant subject of common grace; while the Arminian holds that the believer is the coöperant subject of common grace. Lutheranism enters more fully than Calvinism into the nature of faith. It thinks more of the human agency, while Calvinism thinks more of the divine purpose. It thinks more of the church, while Calvinism thinks more of Scripture. The Arminian conception is that God has appointed men to salvation, just as he has appointed them to condemnation, in view of their dispositions and acts. As Justification is in view of presentfaith, so the Arminian regards Election as taking place in view of future faith. Arminianism must reject the doctrine of regeneration as well as that of election, and must in both cases make the act of man precede the act of God.

All varieties of view may be found upon this subject among theologians. John Milton, in his Christian Doctrine, holds that “there is no particular predestination or election, but only general.... There can be no reprobation of individuals from all eternity.”Archbishop Sumner: “Election is predestination of communities and nations to external knowledge and to the privileges of the gospel.” Archbishop Whately: “Election is the choice of individual men to membership in the external church and the means of grace.” Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320—“The elect represent not the special purpose of God for a few, but the universal purpose which under the circumstances can only be realized through a few.” R. V. Foster, a Cumberland Presbyterian, opposed to absolute predestination, says in his Systematic Theology that the divine decree “is unconditional in its origin and conditional in its application.”

The New Haven views are essentially Arminian. See Fitch, on Predestination and Election, in Christian Spectator, 3:622—“God's foreknowledge of what would be the results of his present works of grace preceded in the order of nature the purpose to pursue those works, and presented the grounds of that purpose. Whom he foreknew—as the people who would be guided to his kingdom by his present works of grace, in which result lay the whole objective motive for undertaking those works—he did also, by resolving on those works, predestinate.” Here God is very erroneously said to foreknow what is as yet included in a merely possible plan. As we have seen in our discussion of Decrees, there can be no foreknowledge, unless there is something fixed, in the future, to be foreknown; and this fixity can be due only to God's predetermination. So, in the present case, election must precede prescience.

The New Haven views are also given in N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 373-444; for criticism upon them, see Tyler, Letters on New Haven Theology, 172-180. If God desired the salvation of Judas as much as of Peter, how was Peter elected in distinction from Judas? To the question, “Who made thee to differ?” the answer must be, “Not God, but my own will.” See Finney, in Bib. Sac., 1877:711—“God must have foreknown whom he could wisely save, prior in the order of nature to his determining to save them. But his knowing who would be saved, must have been, in the order of nature, subsequent to his election or determination to save them, and dependent upon [pg 784]that determination.” Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 70—“The doctrine of election is the consistent formulation, sub specie eternitatis, of prevenient grace.... 86—With the doctrine of prevenient grace, the evangelical doctrine stands or falls.”

There is an analogy between prayer and its answer, on the one hand, and faith and salvation on the other. God has decreed answer in connection with prayer, and salvation in connection with faith. But he does not change his mind when men pray, or when they believe. As he fulfils his purpose by inspiring true prayer, so he fulfils his purpose by giving faith. Augustine: “He chooses us, not because we believe, but that we may believe: lest we should say that we first chose him.” (John 15:16—“Ye did not choose me, but I chose you”; Rom. 9:21—“from the same lump”; 16—“not of him that willeth”.)

Here see the valuable discussion of Wardlaw, Systematic Theol., 2:485-549—“Election and salvation on the ground of works foreseen are not different in principle from election and salvation on the ground of works performed.” Cf. Prov. 21:1—“The king's heart is in the hand of Jehovah as the watercourses; He turneth it whithersoever he will”—as easily as the rivulets of the eastern fields are turned by the slightest motion of the hand or the foot of the husbandman; Ps. 110:3—“Thy people offer themselves willingly In the day of thy power.”

Before the prodigal son seeks the father, the father must first seek him,—a truth brought out in the preceding parables of the lost money and the lost sheep (Luke 15). Without election, all are lost. Newman Smyth, Orthodox Theology of To-day, 56—“The worst doctrine of election, to-day, is taught by our natural science. The scientific doctrine of natural selection is the doctrine of election, robbed of all hope, and without a single touch of human pity in it.”

Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:335—“Suppose the deistic view be true: God created men and left them; surely no man could complain of the results. But now suppose God, foreseeing these very results of creation, should create. Would it make any difference, if God's purpose, as to the futurition of such a world, should precede it? Augustine supposes that God did purpose such a world as the deist supposes, with two exceptions: (1) he interposes to restrain evil; (2) he intervenes, by providence, by Christ, and by the Holy Spirit, to save some from destruction.” Election is simply God's determination that the sufferings of Christ shall not be in vain; that all men shall not be lost; that some shall be led to accept Christ; that to this end special influences of his Spirit shall be given.

At first sight it might appear that God's appointing men to salvation was simply permissive, as was his appointment to condemnation (1 Pet. 2:8), and that this appointment was merely indirect by creating them with foresight of their faith or their disobedience. But the decree of salvation is not simply permissive,—it is efficient also. It is a decree to use special means for the salvation of some. A. A. Hodge, Popular Lectures, 143—“The dead man cannot spontaneously originate his own quickening, nor the creature his own creating, nor the infant his own begetting. Whatever man may do after regeneration, the first quickening of the dead must originate with God.”

Hovey, Manual of Theology, 287—“Calvinism, reduced to its lowest terms, is election of believers, not on account of any foreseen conduct of theirs, either before or in the act of conversion, which would be spiritually better than that of others influenced by the same grace, but on account of their foreseen greater usefulness in manifesting the glory of God to moral beings and of their foreseen non-commission of the sin [pg 785]against the Holy Spirit.” But even here we must attribute the greater usefulness and the abstention from fatal sin, not to man's unaided powers but to the divine decree: see Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them.”

The timeless existence of God may be the source of many of our difficulties with regard to election, and with a proper view of God's eternity these difficulties might be removed. Mason, Faith of the Gospel, 349-351—“Eternity is commonly thought of as if it were a state or series anterior to time and to be resumed again when time comes to an end. This, however, only reduces eternity to time again, and puts the life of God in the same line with our own, only coming from further back.... At present we do not see how time and eternity meet.”

Royce, World and Individual, 2:374—“God does not temporally foreknow anything, except so far as he is expressed in us finite beings. The knowledge that exists in time is the knowledge that finite beings possess, in so far as they are finite. And no such foreknowledge can predict the special features of individual deeds precisely so far as they are unique. Foreknowledge in time is possible only of the general, and of the causally predetermined, and not of the unique and free. Hence neither God nor man can foreknow perfectly, at any temporal moment, what a free will agent is yet to do. On the other hand, the Absolute possesses a perfect knowledge at one glance of the whole of the temporal order, past, present and future. This knowledge is ill called foreknowledge. It is eternal knowledge. And as there is an eternal knowledge of all individuality and of all freedom, free acts are known as occurring, like the chords in the musical succession, precisely when and how they actually occur.” While we see much truth in the preceding statement, we find in it no bar to our faith that God can translate his eternal knowledge into finite knowledge and can thus put it for special purposes in possession of his creatures.

E. H. Johnson, Theology, 2d ed., 250—“Foreknowing what his creatures would do, God decreed their destiny when he decreed their creation; and this would still be the case, although every man had the partial control over his destiny that Arminians aver, or even the complete control that Pelagians claim. The decree is as absolute as if there were no freedom, but it leaves them as free as if there were no decree.” A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 40, 42—“As the Logos or divine Reason, Christ dwells in humanity everywhere and constitutes the principle of its being. Humanity shares with Christ in the image of God. That image is never wholly lost. It is completely restored in sinners when the Spirit of Christ secures control of their wills and leads them to merge their life in his.... If Christ be the principle and life of all things, then divine sovereignty and human freedom, if they are not absolutely reconciled, at least lose their ancient antagonism, and we can rationally ‘work out our own salvation,’ for the very reason that ‘it is God that worketh in us, both to will and to work, for his good pleasure’ (Phil. 2:12, 13).”

God can say to all men, saved or unsaved, “Friend, I do thee no wrong.... Is it not lawful for me to do what I will with mine own?” (Mat. 20:13, 15). The question is not whether a father will treat his children alike, but whether a sovereign must treat condemned rebels alike. It is not true that, because the Governor pardons one convict from the penitentiary, he must therefore pardon all. When he pardons one, no injury is done to those who are left. But, in God's government, there is still less reason for objection; for God offers pardon to all. Nothing prevents men from being pardoned but their unwillingness to accept his pardon. Election is simply God's determination to make certain persons willing to accept it. Because justice cannot save all, shall it therefore save none?

Augustine, De Predest. Sanct., 8—“Why does not God teach all? Because it is in mercy that he teaches all whom he does teach, while it is in judgment that he does not teach those whom he does not teach.” In his Manual of Theology and Ethics, 260, Hovey remarks that Rom. 9:20—“who art thou that repliest against God?”—teaches, not that might makes right, but that God is morally entitled to glorify either his righteousness or his mercy in disposing of a guilty race. It is not that he chooses to save only a few ship-wrecked and drowning creatures, but that he chooses to save only a part of a great company who are bent on committing suicide. Prov. 8:36—“he that sinneth against me wrongeth his own soul: All they that hate me love death.” It is best for the universe at large that some should be permitted to have their own way and show how dreadful a thing is opposition to God. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 1:455.

Ps. 44:3—“For they gat not the land in possession by their own sword, Neither did their own arm save them; But thy right hand, and thine arm, and the light of thy countenance, Because thou wast favorable unto them”; Is. 45:1, 4, 5—“Thus saith Jehovah to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him.... For Jacob my servant's sake, and Israel my chosen, I have called thee by thy name: I have surnamed thee, though thou hast not known me”; Luke 4:25-27—“There were many widows in Israel ... and unto none of them was Elijah sent, but only to Zarephath, in the land of Sidon, unto a woman that was a widow. And there were many lepers in Israel ... and none of them was cleansed, but only Naaman the Syrian”; 1 Cor. 4:7—“For who maketh thee to differ? and what hast thou that thou didst not receive? but if thou didst receive it, why dost thou glory, as if thou hadst not received it?” 2 Pet. 2:4—“God spared not angels when they sinned, but cast them down to hell”; Heb. 2:16—“For verily not to angels doth he give help, but he giveth help to the seed of Abraham.”

Is God partial, in choosing Israel, Cyrus, Naaman? Is God partial, in bestowing upon some of his servants special ministerial gifts? Is God partial, in not providing a salvation for fallen angels? In God's providence, one man is born in a Christian land, the son of a noble family, is endowed with beauty of person, splendid talents, exalted opportunities, immense wealth. Another is born at the Five Points, or among the Hottentots, amid the degradation and depravity of actual, or practical, heathenism. We feel that it is irreverent to complain of God's dealings in providence. What right have sinners to complain of God's dealings in the distribution of his grace? Hovey: “We have no reason to think that God treats all moral beings alike. We should be glad to hear that other races are treated better than we.”

Divine election is only the ethical side and interpretation of natural selection. In the latter God chooses certain forms of the vegetable and animal kingdom without merit of theirs. They are preserved while others die. In the matter of individual health, talent, property, one is taken and the other left. If we call all this the result of system, the reply is that God chose the system, knowing precisely what would come of it. Bruce, Apologetics, 201—“Election to distinction in philosophy or art is not incomprehensible, for these are not matters of vital concern; but election to holiness on the part of some, and to unholiness on the part of others, would be inconsistent with God's own holiness.” But there is no such election to unholiness except on the part of man himself. God's election secures only the good. See (c) below.

J. J. Murphy, Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 73—“The world is ordered on a basis of inequality; in the organic world, as Darwin has shown, it is of inequality—of [pg 787]favored races—that all progress comes; history shows the same to be true of the human and spiritual world. All human progress is due to elect human individuals, elect not only to be a blessing to themselves, but still more to be a blessing to multitudes of others. Any superiority, whether in the natural or in the mental and spiritual world, becomes a vantage-ground for gaining a greater superiority.... It is the method of the divine government, acting in the provinces both of nature and of grace, that all benefit should come to the many through the elect few.”

When a regiment is decimated for insubordination, the fact that every tenth man is chosen for death is for reasons; but the reasons are not in the men. In one case, the reason for God's choice seems revealed: 1 Tim. 1:16—“howbeit for this cause I obtained mercy, that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering, for an ensample of them that should thereafter believe on him unto eternal life”—here Paul indicates that the reason why God chose him was that he was so great a sinner: verse 15—“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief.”Hovey remarks that “the uses to which God can put men, as vessels of grace, may determine his selection of them.” But since the naturally weak are saved, as well as the naturally strong, we cannot draw any general conclusion, or discern any general rule, in God's dealings, unless it be this, that in election God seeks to illustrate the greatness and the variety of his grace,—the reasons lying, therefore, not in men, but in God. We must remember that God's sovereignty is the sovereignty of God—the infinitely wise, holy and loving God, in whose hands the destinies of men can be left more safely than in the hands of the wisest, most just, and most kind of his creatures.

We must believe in the grace of sovereignty as well as in the sovereignty of grace. Election and reprobation are not matters of arbitrary will. God saves all whom he can wisely save. He will show benevolence in the salvation of mankind just so far as he can without prejudice to holiness. No man can be saved without God, but it is also true that there is no man whom God is not willing to save. H. B. Smith, System, 511—“It may be that many of the finally impenitent resist more light than many of the saved.” Harris, Moral Evolution, 401 (for substance)—“Sovereignty is not lost in Fatherhood, but is recovered as the divine law of righteous love. Doubtless thou art our Father, though Augustine be ignorant of us, and Calvin acknowledge us not.”Hooker, Eccl. Polity, 1:2—“They err who think that of God's will there is no reason except his will.” T. Erskine, The Brazen Serpent, 259—Sovereignty is “just a name for what is unrevealed of God.”

We do not know all of God's reasons for saving particular men, but we do know someof the reasons, for he has revealed them to us. These reasons are not men's merits or works. We have mentioned the first of these reasons: (1) Men's greater sin and need; 1 Tim. 1:16—“that in me as chief might Jesus Christ show forth all his longsuffering.” We may add to this: (2) The fact that men have not sinned against the Holy Spirit and made themselves unreceptive to Christ's salvation; 1 Tim. 1:13—“I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief”—the fact that Paul had not sinned with full knowledge of what he did was a reason why God could choose him. (3) Men's ability by the help of Christ to be witnesses and martyrs for their Lord; Acts 9:15, 16—“he is a chosen vessel unto me, to bear my name before the Gentiles and kings, and the children of Israel: for I will show him how many things he must suffer for my name's sake.” As Paul's mission to the Gentiles may have determined God's choice, so Augustine's mission to the sensual and abandoned may have had the same influence. But if Paul's sins, as foreseen, constituted one reason why God chose to save him, why might not his ability to serve the kingdom have constituted another reason? We add therefore: (4) Men's foreseen ability to serve Christ's kingdom in bringing others to the knowledge of the truth; John 15:16—“I chose you and appointed you, that ye should go and bear fruit.” Notice however that this is choice to service, and not simply choice on account of service. In all these cases the reasons do not lie in the men themselves, for what these men are and what they possess is due to God's providence and grace.

Plutarch: “God is the brave man's hope, and not the coward's excuse.” The purposes of God are an anchor to the storm-tossed spirit. But a ship needs engine, as well as anchor. God does not elect to save any without repentance and faith. Some hold the doctrine of election, but the doctrine of election does not hold them. Such should ponder 1 Pet. 1:2, in which Christians are said to be elect, “in sanctification of the Spirit, unto obedience and sprinkling of the blood of Jesus Christ.”

Augustine: “He loved her [the church] foul, that he might make her fair.” Dr. John Watson (Ian McLaren): “The greatest reinforcement religion could have in our time would be a return to the ancient belief in the sovereignty of God.” This is because there is lack of a strong conviction of sin, guilt, and helplessness, still remaining pride and unwillingness to submit to God, imperfect faith in God's trustworthiness and goodness. We must not exclude Arminians from our fellowship—there are too many good Methodists for that. But we may maintain that they hold but half the truth, and that absence of the doctrine of election from their creed makes preaching less serious and character less secure.

In the novel, there was great effectiveness in the lover's plea to the object of his affection, that he had loved since he had first set his eyes upon her in her childhood. But God's love for us is of longer standing than that. It dates back to a time before we were born,—aye, even to eternity past. It is a love which was fastened upon us, although God knew the worst of us. It is unchanging, because founded upon his infinite and eternal love to Christ. Jer. 31:3—“Jehovah appeared of old unto me, saying, Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love: therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee”; Rom. 8:31-39—“If God is for us, who is against us?... Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?” And the answer is, that nothing “shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord.” This eternal love subdues and humbles: Ps. 115:1—“Not unto us, O Jehovah, not unto us, But unto thy name give glory For thy lovingkindness, and for thy truth's sake.”

Of the effect of the doctrine of election, Calvin, in his Institutes, 3:22:1, remarks that “when the human mind hears of it, its irritation breaks all restraint, and it discovers as serious and violent agitation as if alarmed by the sound of a martial trumpet.” The cause of this agitation is the apprehension of the fact that one is an enemy of God and yet absolutely dependent upon his mercy. This apprehension leads normally to submission. But the conquered rebel can give no thanks to himself,—all thanks are due to God who has chosen and renewed him. The affections elicited are not those of pride and self-complacency, but of gratitude and love.

Christian hymnology witnesses to these effects. Isaac Watts († 1748): “Why was I made to hear thy voice And enter while there's room, When thousands make a wretched choice, And rather starve than come. 'T was the same love that spread the feast That sweetly forced me in; Else I had still refused to taste, And perished in my sin. Pity the nations, O our God! Constrain the earth to come; Send thy victorious word abroad, And bring the wanderers home.” Josiah Conder († 1855): “'Tis not that I did choose thee, For, Lord, that could not be; This heart would still refuse thee; But thou hast chosen me;—Hast, from the sin that stained me, Washed me and set me free, And to this end ordained me That I should live to thee. 'T was sovereign mercy called me, And taught my opening mind; The world had else enthralled me, To heavenly glories blind. My heart owns none above thee: For thy rich grace I thirst; This knowing,—if I love thee, Thou must have loved me first.”

God's decree that Paul's ship's company should be saved (Acts 27:24) did not obviate the necessity of their abiding in the ship (verse 31). In marriage, man's election does not exclude woman's; so God's election does not exclude man's. There is just as much need of effort as if there were no election. Hence the question for the sinner is not, “Am I one of the elect?” but rather, “What shall I do to be saved?” Milton represents the spirits of hell as debating foreknowledge and free will, in wandering mazes lost.

No man is saved until he ceases to debate, and begins to act. And yet no man will thus begin to act, unless God's Spirit moves him. The Lord encouraged Paul by saying to him: “I have much people in this city” (Acts 18:10)—people whom I will bring in through thy word. “Old Adam is too strong for young Melanchthon.” If God does not regenerate, there is no hope of success in preaching: “God stands powerless before the majesty of man's lordly will. Sinners have the glory of their own salvation. To pray God to convert a man is absurd. God elects the man, because he foresees that the man will elect himself” (see S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 298-307). The doctrine of election does indeed cut off the hopes of those who place confidence in themselves; but it is best that such hopes should be destroyed, and that in place of them should be put a hope in the sovereign grace of God. The doctrine of election does teach man's absolute dependence upon God, and the impossibility of any disappointment or disarrangement of the divine plans arising from the disobedience of the sinner, and it humbles human pride until it is willing to take the place of a suppliant for mercy.

Rowland Hill was criticized for preaching election and yet exhorting sinners to repent, and was told that he should preach only to the elect. He replied that, if his critic would put a chalk-mark on all the elect, he would preach only to them. But this is not the whole truth. We are not only ignorant who God's elect are, but we are set to preach to both elect and non-elect (Ez. 2:7—“thou shalt speak my words unto them, whether they will hear, or whether they will forbear”), with the certainty that to the former our preaching will make a higher heaven, to the latter a deeper hell (2 Cor. 2:15, 16—“For we are a sweet savor of Christ unto God, in them that are saved, and in them that perish; to the one a savor from death unto death; to the other a savor from life unto life”; cf. Luke 2:34—“this child is set for the falling and the rising of many in Israel”—for the falling of some, and for the rising up of others).

Jesus' own thanksgiving in Mat. 11:25, 26—“I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, that thou didst hide these things from the wise and understanding, and didst reveal them unto babes: yea, Father, for so it was well-pleasing in thy sight”—is immediately followed by his invitation in verse 28—“Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.” There is no contradiction in his mind between sovereign grace and the free invitations of the gospel.

G. W. Northrup, in The Standard, Sept. 19, 1889—“1. God will save every one of the human race whom he can save and remain God; 2. Every member of the race has a full and fair probation, so that all might be saved and would be saved were they to use aright the light which they already have.”... (Private letter): “Limitations of God in the bestowment of salvation: 1. In the power of God in relation to free will; 2. In the benevolence of God which requires the greatest good of creation, or the greatest aggregate good of the greatest number; 3. In the purpose of God to make the most perfect self-limitation; 4. In the sovereignty of God, as a prerogative absolutely optional in its exercise; 5. In the holiness of God, which involves immutable limitations on his part in dealing with moral agents. Nothing but some absolute impossibility, metaphysical or moral, could have prevented him 'whose nature and whose name is love' from decreeing and securing the confirmation of all moral agents in holiness and blessedness forever.”

Election and sovereignty are only sources of good. Election is not a decree to destroy,—it is a decree only to save. When we elect a President, we do not need to hold a second election to determine that the remaining millions shall be non-Presidents. It is needless to apply contrivance or force. Sinners, like water, if simply let alone, will run down hill to ruin. The decree of reprobation is simply a decree to do nothing—a decree to leave the sinner to himself. The natural result of this judicial forsaking, on the part of God, is the hardening and destruction of the sinner. But it must not be forgotten that this hardening and destruction are not due to any positive efficiency of God,—they are a self-hardening and a self-destruction,—and God's judicial forsaking is only the just penalty of the sinner's guilty rejection of offered mercy.

See Hosea 11:8—“How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?... my heart is turned within me, my compassions are kindled together”; 4:17—“Ephraim is joined to idols; let him alone”; Rom. 9:22, 23—“What if God, willing to show his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering vessels of wrath fitted unto destruction: and that he might make known the riches of his glory upon vessels of mercy, which he afore prepared unto glory”—here notice that “which he afore prepared” declares a positive divine efficiency, in the case of the vessels of mercy, while “fitted unto destruction” intimates no such positive agency of God,—the vessels of wrath fitted themselves for destruction; 2 Tim. 2:20—“vessels ... some unto honor, and some unto dishonor”; 1 Pet. 2:8—“they stumble at the word, being disobedient: whereunto also they were appointed”; Jude 4—“who were of old set forth [‘written of beforehand’—Am. Rev.] unto this condemnation”; Mat. 25:34, 41—“the kingdom prepared for you ... the eternal fire which is prepared [not for you, nor for men, but] for the devil and his angels” = there is an election to life, but no reprobation to death; a “book of life” (Rev. 21:27), but no book of death.

E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 313—“Reprobation, in the sense of absolute predestination to sin and eternal damnation, is neither a sequence of the doctrine of election, nor the teaching of the Scriptures.” Men are not “appointed” to disobedience and stumbling in the same way that they are “appointed” to salvation. God uses positive means to save, but not to destroy. Henry Ward Beecher: “The elect are whosoever will; the non-elect are whosoever won't.” George A. Gordon, New Epoch for Faith, 44—“Election understood would have been the saving strength of Israel; election misunderstood was its ruin. The nation felt that the election of it meant the rejection of other nations.... The Christian church has repeated Israel's mistake.”

The Westminster Confession reads: “By the decree of God, for the manifestation of his glory, some men and angels are predestinated unto everlasting life, and others to everlasting death. These angels and men, thus predestinated and foreordained, are particularly and unchangeably designed; and their number is so certain and definite that it cannot be either increased or diminished. The rest of mankind God was pleased, according to the unsearchable counsel of his own will, whereby he extendeth or withholdeth mercy as he pleaseth, for the glory of his sovereign power over his creatures, to pass by and to ordain them to dishonor and wrath for their sin, to the praise of his glorious justice.” This reads as if both the saved and the lost were made originally for their respective final estates without respect to character. It is supralapsarianism. It is certain that the supralapsarians were in the majority in the Westminster Assembly, and that they determined the form of the statement, although there were many sublapsarians who objected that it was only on account of their foreseen wickedness that any were reprobated. In its later short statement of doctrine the Presbyterian body in America has made it plain that God's decree of reprobation is a permissive decree, and that it places no barrier in the way of any man's salvation.

On the general subject of Election, see Mozley, Predestination; Payne, Divine Sovereignty; Ridgeley, Works, 1:261-324, esp. 322; Edwards, Works, 2:527 sq.; Van Oosterzee, Dogmatics, 446-458; Martensen, Dogmatics, 362-382; and especially Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 485-549; H. B. Smith, Syst. of Christian Theology, 502-514; Maule, Outlines of Christian Doctrine, 36-56; Peck, in Bapt. Quar. Rev., Oct. 1891:689-706. On objections to election, and Spurgeon's answers to them, see Williams, Reminiscences of Spurgeon, 189. On the homiletical uses of the doctrine of election, see Bib. Sac., Jan. 1893:79-92.

God's call to all men to repent and to believe the gospel is no more insincere than his command to all men to love him with all the heart. There is no obstacle in the way of men's obedience to the gospel, that does not exist to prevent their obedience to the law. If it is proper to publish the commands of the law, it is proper to publish the invitations of the gospel. A human being may be perfectly sincere in giving an invitation which he knows will be refused. He may desire to have the invitation accepted, while yet he may, for certain reasons of justice or personal dignity, be unwilling to put forth special efforts, aside from the invitation itself, to secure the acceptance of it on the part of those to whom it is offered. So God's desires that certain men should be saved may not be accompanied by his will to exert special influences to save them.

These desires were meant by the phrase “revealed will” in the old theologians; his purpose to bestow special grace, by the phrase “secret will.” It is of the former that Paul speaks, in 1 Tim, 2:4—“who would have all men to be saved.” Here we have, not the active σῶσαι, but the passive σωθῆναι. The meaning is, not that God purposes to save all men, but that he desires all men to be saved through repenting and believing the gospel. Hence God's revealed will, or desire, that all men should be saved, is perfectly consistent with his secret will, or purpose, to bestow special grace only upon a certain number (see, on 1 Tim. 2:4, Fairbairn's Commentary on the Pastoral Epistles).

The sincerity of God's call is shown, not only in the fact that the only obstacle to compliance, on the sinner's part, is the sinner's own evil will, but also in the fact that [pg 792]God has, at infinite cost, made a complete external provision, upon the ground of which “he that will” may “come” and “take the water of life freely” (Rev. 22:17); so that God can truly say: “What could have been done more to my vineyard, that I have not done in it?” (Is. 5:4). Broadus, Com. on Mat. 6:10—“Thy will be done”—distinguishes between God's will of purpose, of desire, and of command. H. B. Smith, Syst. Theol., 521—“Common grace passes over into effectual grace in proportion as the sinner yields to the divine influence. Effectual grace is that which effects what common grace tends to effect.” See also Studien und Kritiken, 1887:7 sq.

Hodge, Syst. Theol., 2:643—“Predestination concerns only the purpose of God to render effectual, in particular cases, a call addressed to all. A general amnesty, on certain conditions, may be offered by a sovereign to rebellious subjects, although he knows that through pride or malice many will refuse to accept it; and even though, for wise reasons, he should determine not to constrain their assent, supposing that such influence over their minds were within his power. It is evident, from the nature of the call, that it has nothing to do with the secret purpose of God to grant his effectual grace to some, and not to others.... According to the Augustinian scheme, the non-elect have all the advantages and opportunities of securing their salvation, which, according to any other scheme, are granted to mankind indiscriminately.... God designed, in its adoption, to save his own people, but he consistently offers its benefits to all who are willing to receive them.” See also H. B. Smith, System of Christian Theology, 515-521.

Ps. 110:3—“Thy people are freewill-offerings in the day of thy power: in holy array, Out of the womb of the morning Thou hast the dew of thy youth”—i. e., youthful recruits to thy standard, as numberless and as bright as the drops of morning dew; Phil. 2:12, 13—“Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure”—i. e., the result of God's working is our own working. The Lutheran Formula of Concord properly condemns the view that, before, in, and after conversion, the will only resists the Holy Spirit: for this, it declares, is the very nature of conversion, that out of non-willing, God makes willing, persons (F. C. 60, 581, 582, 673).

Hos. 4:16—“Israel hath behaved himself stubbornly, like a stubborn heifer,” or “or as a heifer that slideth back”= when the sacrificial offering is brought forward to be slain, it holds back, settling on its haunches so that it has to be pushed and forced before it can be brought to the altar. These are not “the sacrifices of God” which are “a broken spirit, a broken and a contrite heart”(Ps. 51:17). E. H. Johnson, Theology, 2d ed., 250—“The N. T. nowhere declares, or even intimates, ... that the general call of the Holy Spirit is insufficient. And furthermore, it never states that the efficient call is irresistible. Psychologically, to speak of irresistible influence upon the faculty of self-determination in man is express contradiction in terms. No harm can come from acknowledging that we do not know God's unrevealed reasons for electing one individual rather than another to eternal life.”Dr. Johnson goes on to argue that if, without disparagement to grace, faith can be a condition of justification, faith might also be a condition of election, and that inasmuch as salvation is received as a gift only on condition of faith exercised, it is in purpose a gift, even if only on condition of faith foreseen. This seems to us to ignore the abundant Scripture testimony that faith itself is God's gift, and therefore the initiative must be wholly with God.

John 1:12, 13—“But as many as received him, to them gave he the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”God's saving grace and effectual calling are irresistible, not in the sense that they are never resisted, but in the sense that they are never successfully resisted. See Andrew Fuller, Works, 2:373, 513, and 3:807; Gill, Body of Divinity, 2:121-130; Robert Hall, Works, 3:75.

Matheson, Moments on the Mount, 128, 129—“Thy love to Him is to his love to thee what the sunlight on the sea is to the sunshine in the sky—a reflex, a mirror, a diffusion; thou art giving back the glory that has been cast upon the waters. In the attraction of thy life to him, in the cleaving of thy heart to him, in the soaring of thy spirit to him, thou art told that he is near thee, thou hearest the beating of his pulse for thee.”

Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 302—“In regard to our reason and to the essence of our ideals, there is no real dualism between man and God; but in the case of the will which constitutes the essence of each man's individuality, there is a real dualism, and therefore a possible antagonism between the will of the dependent spirit, man, and the will of the absolute and universal spirit, God. Such real duality of will, and not the appearanceof duality, as F. H. Bradley put it, is the essential condition of ethics and religion.”

Eph. 2:20-22—“being built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the chief corner stone; in whom each several building, fitly framed together, groweth into a holy temple in the Lord; in whom ye also are builded together for a habitation of God in the Spirit”; Col. 2:7—“builded up in him”—grounded in Christ as our foundation; 1 Pet. 2:4, 5—“unto whom coming, a living stone, rejected indeed of men, but with God elect, precious, ye also, as living stones, are built up a spiritual house”—each living stone in the Christian temple is kept in proper relation to every other, and is made to do its part in furnishing a habitation for God, only by being built upon and permanently connected with Christ, the chief corner-stone. Cf. Ps. 118:22—“The stone which the builders rejected Is become the head of the corner”; Is. 28:16—“Behold, I lay in Zion for a foundation a stone, a tried stone, a precious corner-stone of sure foundation: he that believeth shall not be in haste.”

Rom. 7:4—“ye also were made dead to the law through the body of Christ; that ye should be joined to another, even to him who was raised from the dead, that we might bring forth fruit unto God”—here union with Christ [pg 796]is illustrated by the indissoluble bond that connects husband and wife, and makes them legally and organically one; 2 Cor. 11:2—“I am jealous over you with a godly jealousy: for I espoused you to one husband, that I might present you as a pure virgin to Christ”; Eph. 5:31, 32—“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and shall cleave to his wife; and the two shall become one flesh. This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church”—Meyer refers verse 31 wholly to Christ, and says that Christ leaves father and mother (the right hand of God) and is joined to the church as his wife, the two constituting thenceforth one moral person. He makes the union future, however,—“For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother”—the consummation is at Christ's second coming. But the Fathers, as Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Jerome, referred it more properly to the incarnation.

Rev. 19:7—“the marriage of the Lamb is come, and his wife hath made herself ready”; 22:17—“And the Spirit and the bride say, Come”; cf. Is. 54:5—“For thy Maker is thine husband”; Jer. 3:20—“Surely as a wife treacherously departeth from her husband, so have ye dealt treacherously with me, O house of Israel, saith Jehovah”; Hos. 2:2-5—“for their mother hath played the harlot”—departure from God is adultery; the Song of Solomon, as Jewish interpreters have always maintained, is an allegorical poem describing, under the figure of marriage, the union between Jehovah and his people: Paul only adopts the Old Testament figure, and applies it more precisely to the union of God with the church in Jesus Christ.

John 15:1-10—“I am the vine, ye are the branches: He that abideth in me, and I in him, the same beareth much fruit: for apart from me ye can do nothing”—as God's natural life is in the vine, that it may give life to its natural branches, so God's spiritual life is in the vine, Christ, that he may give life to his spiritual branches. The roots of this new vine are planted in heaven, not on earth; and into it the half-withered branches of the old humanity are to be grafted, that they may have life divine. Yet our Lord does not say “I am the root.”The branch is not something outside, which has to get nourishment out of the root,—it is rather a part of the vine. Rom. 6:5—“if we have become united with him [σύμφυτοι—‘grown together’—used of the man and horse in the Centaur, Xen., Cyrop., 4:3:18], in the likeness of his death, we shall be also in the likeness of his resurrection”; 11:24—“thou wast cut out of that which is by nature a wild olive tree, and wast grafted contrary to nature into a good olive tree”; Col. 2:6, 7—“As therefore ye received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk in him, rooted and builded up in him”—not only grounded in Christ as our foundation, but thrusting down roots into him as the deep, rich, all-sustaining soil. This union with Christ is consistent with individuality: for the graft brings forth fruit after its kind, though modified by the tree into which it is grafted.

Bishop H. W. Warren, in S. S. Times, Oct. 17, 1891—“The lessons of the vine are intimacy, likeness of nature, continuous impartation of life, fruit. Between friends there is intimacy by means of media, such as food, presents, care, words, soul looking from the eyes. The mother gives her liquid flesh to the babe, but such intimacy soon ceases. The mother is not rich enough in life continuously to feed the ever-enlarging nature of the growing man. Not so with the vine. It continuously feeds. Its rivers crowd all the banks. They burst out in leaf, blossom, clinging tendrils, and fruit, everywhere. In nature a thorn grafted on a pear tree bears only thorn. There is not pear-life enough to compel change of its nature. But a wild olive, typical of depraved nature, grafted on a good olive tree finds, contrary to nature, that there is force enough in the growing stock to change the nature of the wild scion.”

1 Cor. 6:15, 19—“Know ye not that your bodies are members of Christ?... know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God?” 12:12—“For as the body is one, and hath many members, and all the members of the body, being many, are one body; so also is Christ”—here Christ is identified with the church of which he is the head; Eph. 1:22, 23—“he put all things in subjection under his feet, and gave him to be head over all things to the church, which is his body, the fulness of him that filleth all in all”—as the members of the human body are united to the head, the source of their activity and the power that controls their movements, so all believers are members of an invisible body whose head is Christ. Shall we tie a string round the finger to keep for it its own blood? No, for all the blood of the body is needed to nourish one finger. So Christ is “head over all things to [for the benefit of] the church” (Tyler, Theol. Greek Poets, preface, ii). “The church is the fulness (πλήρωμα) of Christ; as it was not good for the first man, Adam, to be alone, no more was it good for the second man, Christ” (C. H. M.). Eph. 4:15, 16—“grow up in all things into him, who is the head, even Christ; from whom all the body ... maketh the increase of the body unto the building up of itself in love”; 5:29, 30—“for no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, even as Christ also the church; because we are members of his body.”

Rom. 5:12, 21—“as through one man sin entered into the world, and death through sin.... that, as sin reigned in death, even so might grace reign through righteousness unto eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord”; 1 Cor. 15:22, 45, 49—“as in Adam all die, so also in Christ shall all be made alive.... The first man Adam became a living soul. The last Adam became a life-giving Spirit.... as we have borne the image of the earthy, we shall also bear the image of the heavenly”—as the whole race is one with the first man Adam, in whom it fell and from whom it has derived a corrupted and guilty nature, so the whole race of believers constitutes a new and restored humanity, whose justified and purified nature is derived from Christ, the second Adam. Cf. Gen. 2:23—“This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man”—here C. H. M. remarks that, as man is first created and then woman is viewed in and formed out of him, so it is with Christ and the church. “We are members of Christ's body, because in Christ we have the principle of our origin; from him our life arose, just as the life of Eve was derived from Adam.... The church is Christ's helpmeet, formed out of Christ in his deep sleep of death, as Eve out of Adam.... The church will be nearest to Christ, as Eve was to Adam.” Because Christ is the source of all spiritual life for his people, he is called, in Is. 9:6, “Everlasting Father,” and it is said, in Is. 53:10, that “he shall see his seed” (see page 680).

Lest we should regard the figures mentioned above as merely Oriental metaphors, the fact of the believer's union with Christ is asserted in the most direct and prosaic manner. John 14:20—“ye in me”; Rom. 6:11—“alive unto God in Christ Jesus”; 8:1—“no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus”; 2 Cor. 5:17—“if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature”; Eph. 1:4—“chose us in him before the foundation of the world”; 2:13—“now in Christ Jesus ye that once were far off are made nigh in the blood of Christ.” Thus the believer is said to be “in Christ,” as the element or atmosphere which surrounds him with its perpetual presence and which constitutes his vital breath; in fact, this phrase “in Christ,” always meaning “in union with Christ,” is the very key to Paul's epistles, and to the whole New Testament. The fact that the believer is in Christ is symbolized in baptism: we are “baptized into Christ” (Gal. 3:27).

John 14:20—“I in you”; Rom. 8:9—“ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his”—that this Spirit of Christ is Christ himself, is shown from verse 10—“And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness”; Gal. 2:20—“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me”—here Christ is said to be in the believer, and so to live his life within the believer, that the latter can point to this as the dominating fact of his experience,—it is not so much he that lives, as it is Christ that lives in him. The fact that Christ is in the believer is symbolized in the Lord's supper: “The bread which we break, is it not a participation in the body of Christ?” (1 Cor. 10:16).

John 14:23—“If a man love me, he will keep my word: and my Father will love him, and we will come unto him, and make our abode with him”; cf. 10—“Believest thou not that I am in the Father, and the Father in me? the words that I say unto you I speak not from myself: but the Father abiding in me doeth his works”—the Father and the Son dwell in the believer; for where the Son is, there always the Father must be also. If the union between the believer and Christ in John 14:23 is to be interpreted as one of mere moral influence, then the union of Christ and the Father in John 14:10must also be interpreted as a union of mere moral influence. Eph. 3:17—“that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”; 1 John 4:16—“he that abideth in love abideth in God, and God abideth in him.”

John 6:53, 56, 57—“Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, ye have not life in yourselves .... He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood abideth in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so he that eateth me, he also shall live because of me”—the believer has life by partaking of Christ in a way that may not inappropriately be compared with Christ's having life by partaking of the Father. 1 Cor. 10:16, 17—“the cup of blessing which we bless, is it not a communion of the blood of Christ? The bread which we break, is it not a communion of the body of Christ?”—here it is intimated that the Lord's Supper sets forth, in the language of symbol, [pg 798]the soul's actual participation in the life of Christ; and the margin properly translates the word κοινωνία, not “communion,” but “participation.” Cf. 1 John 1:3—“our fellowship (κοινωνία) is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ.” Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 216—“In John 6, the phrases call to mind the ancient form of sacrifice, and the participation therein by the offerer at the sacrificial meal,—as at the Passover.”

John 17:21-23—“that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us: that the world may believe that thou didst send me. And the glory which thou hast given me I have given unto them; that they may be one, even as we are one; I in them, and thou in me, that they may be perfected into one”—all believers are one in Christ, to whom they are severally and collectively united, as Christ himself is one with God.

2 Pet. 1:4—“that through these [promises] ye may become partakers of the divine nature”—not by having the essence of your humanity changed into the essence of divinity, but by having Christ the divine Savior continually dwelling within, and indissolubly joined to, your human souls.

1 Cor. 6:17—“he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit”—human nature is so interpenetrated and energized by the divine, that the two move and act as one; cf. 19—“know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you, which ye have from God?” Rom. 8:26—“the Spirit also helpeth our infirmity: for we know not how to pray as we ought; but the Spirit himself maketh intercession for us with groanings which cannot be uttered”—the Spirit is so near to us, and so one with us, that our prayer is called his, or rather, his prayer becomes ours. Weiss, in his Life of Jesus, says that, in the view of Scripture, human greatness does not consist in a man's producing everything in a natural way out of himself, but in possessing perfect receptivity for God's greatest gift. Therefore God's Son receives the Spirit without measure; and we may add that the believer in like manner receives Christ.

It should not surprise us if we find it far more difficult to give a scientific definition of this union, than to determine the fact of its existence. It is a fact of life with which we have to deal; and the secret of life, even in its lowest forms, no philosopher has ever yet discovered. The tiniest flower witnesses to two facts: first, that of its own relative independence, as an individual organism; and secondly, that of its ultimate dependence upon a life and power not its own. So every human soul has its proper powers of intellect, affection, and will; yet it lives, moves, and has its being in God (Acts 17:28).

Starting out from the truth of God's omnipresence, it might seem as if God's indwelling in the granite boulder was the last limit of his union with the finite. But we see the divine intelligence and goodness drawing nearer to us, by successive stages, in vegetable life, in the animal creation, and in the moral nature of man. And yet there are two stages beyond all these: first, in Christ's union with the believer; and secondly, in God's union with Christ. If this union of God with the believer be only one of several approximations of God to his finite creation, the fact that it is, equally with the others, not wholly comprehensible to reason, should not blind us either to its truth or to its importance.

It is easier to-day than at any other previous period of history to believe in the union of the believer with Christ. That God is immanent in the universe, and that there is a divine element in man, is familiar to our generation. All men are naturally one with Christ, the immanent God, and this natural union prepares the way for that spiritual union in which Christ joins himself to our faith. Campbell, The Indwelling Christ, 131—“In the immanence of Christ in nature we find the ground of his immanence in human nature.... A man may be out of Christ, but Christ is never out of him. Those who banish him he does not abandon.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas of Christianity, 2:233-256—“God [pg 799]is united with nature, in the atoms, in the trees, in the planets. Science is seeing nature full of the life of God. God is united to man in body and soul. The beating of his heart and the voice of conscience witness to God within. God sleeps in the stone, dreams in the animal, wakes in man.”

In our physical life we are conscious of another life within us which is not subject to our wills: the heart beats involuntarily, whether we sleep or wake. But in our spiritual life we are still more conscious of a life within our life. Even the heathen said: “Est Deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo,” and the Egyptians held to the identification of the departed with Osiris (Renouf, Hibbert Lectures, 185). But Paul urges us to work out our salvation, upon the very ground that “it is God that worketh” in us, “both to will and to work, for his good pleasure” (Phil. 2:12, 13). This life of God in the soul is the life of Christ.

The movement of the electric car cannot be explained simply from the working of its own motor apparatus. The electric current throbbing through the wire, and the dynamo from which that energy proceeds, are needed to explain the result. In like manner we need a spiritual Christ to explain the spiritual activity of the Christian. A. H. Strong, Sermon before the Baptist World Congress in London, 1905—“We had in America some years ago a steam engine all whose working parts were made of glass. The steam came from without, but, being hot enough to move machinery, this steam was itself invisible, and there was presented the curious spectacle of an engine, transparent, moving, and doing important work, while yet no cause for this activity was perceptible. So the church, humanity, the universe, are all in constant and progressive movement, but the Christ who moves them is invisible. Faith comes to believe where it cannot see. It joins itself to this invisible Christ, and knows him as its very life.”

There is a moral union between different souls: 1 Sam. 18:1—“the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David, and Jonathan loved him as his own soul”—here the Vulgate has: “Anima Jonathæ agglutinata Davidi.” Aristotle calls friends “one soul.” So in a higher sense, in Acts 4:32, the early believers are said to have been “of one heart and soul.” But in John 17:21, 26, Christ's union with his people is distinguished from any mere union of love and sympathy: “that they may all be one; even as thou, Father, art in me, and I in thee, that they also may be in us;... that the love wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them, and I in them.” Jesus' aim, in the whole of his last discourse, is to show that no mere union of love and sympathy will be sufficient: “apart from me,” he says, “ye can do nothing” (John 15:5). That his disciples may be vitally joined to himself, is therefore the subject of his last prayer.

Dorner says well, that Arminianism (and with this doctrine Roman Catholics and the advocates of New School views substantially agree) makes man a mere tangent to the circle of the divine nature. It has no idea of the interpenetration of the one by the other. But the Lutheran Formula of Concord says much more correctly: “Damnamus sententiam quod non Deus ipse, sed dona Dei duntaxat, in credentibus habitent.”

Ritschl presents to us a historical Christ, and Pfleiderer presents to us an ideal Christ, but neither one gives us the living Christ who is the present spiritual life of the believer. Wendt, in his Teaching of Jesus, 2:310, comes equally far short of a serious interpretation of our Lord's promise, when he says: “This union to his person, as to its contents, is nothing else than adherence to the message of the kingdom of God brought by him.” It is not enough for me to be merely in touch with Christ. He must come to be “not so far as even to be near.” Tennyson, The Higher Pantheism: “Closer is he than breathing, and nearer than hands or feet.” William Watson, The Unknown God: “Yea, in my flesh his Spirit doth flow, Too near, too far, for me to know.”

Many of the mystics, as Schwenkfeld, Weigel, Sebastian Frank, held to an essentialunion between Christ and the believer. One of Weigel's followers, therefore, could say to another: “I am Christ Jesus, the living Word of God; I have redeemed thee by my sinless sufferings.” We are ever to remember that the indwelling of Christ only puts the believer more completely in possession of himself, and makes him more conscious of his own personality and power. Union with Christ must be taken in connection with the other truth of the personality and activity of the Christian; otherwise it tends to pantheism. Martineau, Study, 2:190—“In nature it is God's immanent life, in morals it is God's transcendent life, with which we commune.”

Angelus Silesius, a German philosophical poet (1624-1677), audaciously wrote: “I know God cannot live an instant without me; He must give up the ghost, if I should cease to be.” Lowde, a disciple of Malebranche, used the phrase “Godded with God, and Christed with Christ,” and Jonathan Edwards, in his Religious Affections, quotes it with disapprobation, saying that “the saints do not become actually partakers of the divine essence, as would be inferred from this abominable and blasphemous language of heretics” (Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 224). “Self is not a mode of the divine: it is a principle of isolation. In order to religion, I must have a will to surrender.... ‘Our wills are ours, to make them thine.’... Though the self is, in knowledge, a principle of unification; in existence, or metaphysically, it is a principle of isolation” (Seth).

Inge, Christian Mysticism, 30—“Some of the mystics went astray by teaching a real substitution of the divine for human nature, thus depersonalizing man—a fatal mistake, for without human personality we cannot conceive of divine personality.” Lyman Abbott: “In Christ, God and man are united, not as the river is united with the sea, losing its personality therein, but as the child is united with the father, or the wife with the husband, whose personality and individuality are strengthened and increased by the union.” Here Dr. Abbott's view comes as far short of the truth as that of the mystics goes beyond the truth. As we shall see, the union of the believer with Christ is a vital union, surpassing in its intimacy any union of souls that we know. The union of child with father, or of wife with husband, is only a pointer which hints very imperfectly at the interpenetrating and energizing of the human spirit by the divine.

Perhaps the most pernicious misinterpretation of the nature of this union is that which conceives of it as a physical and material one, and which rears upon this basis the fabric of a sacramental and external Christianity. It is sufficient here to say that this union cannot be mediated by sacraments, since sacraments presuppose it as already existing; both Baptism and the Lord's Supper are designed only for believers. Only faith receives and retains Christ; and faith is the act of the soul grasping what is purely invisible and supersensible: not the act of the body, submitting to Baptism or partaking of the Supper.

William Lincoln: “The only way for the believer, if he wants to go rightly, is to remember that truth is always two-sided. If there is any truth that the Holy Spirit has specially pressed upon your heart, if you do not want to push it to the extreme, ask what is the counter-truth, and lean a little of your weight upon that; otherwise, if you bear so very much on one side of the truth, there is a danger of pushing it into a heresy. Heresy means selected truth; it does not mean error; heresy and error are very different things. Heresy is truth, but truth pushed into undue importance, to the disparagement of the truth upon the other side.” Heresy (αἵρεσις) = an act of choice, the picking and choosing of a part, instead of comprehensively embracing the whole of truth. Sacramentarians substitute the symbol for the thing symbolized.

Kant defines an organism, as that whose parts are reciprocally means and end. The body is an organism; since the limbs exist for the heart, and the heart for the limbs. So each member of Christ's body lives for him who is the head; and Christ the head equally lives for his members: Eph. 5:29, 30—“no man ever hated his own flesh; but nourisheth and cherisheth it, [pg 801]even as Christ also the church; because we are members of his body.” The train-despatcher is a symbol of the concentration of energy; the switchmen and conductors who receive his orders are symbols of the localization of force; but it is all one organic system.

This union is a vital one, in distinction from any union of mere juxtaposition or external influence. Christ does not work upon us from without, as one separated from us, but from within, as the very heart from which the life-blood of our spirits flows. See Gal. 2:20—“it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me: and that life which I now live in the flesh I live in faith, the faith which is in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself up for me;” Col 3:3, 4—“For ye died, and your life is hid with Christ in God. When Christ, who is our life, shall be manifested, then shall ye also with him be manifested in glory.” Christ's life is not corrupted by the corruption of his members, any more than the ray of light is defiled by the filth with which it comes in contact. We may be unconscious of this union with Christ, as we often are of the circulation of the blood, yet it may be the very source and condition of our life.

By a spiritual union we mean a union not of body but of spirit,—a union, therefore, which only the Holy Spirit originates and maintains. Rom. 8:9, 10—“ye are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if so be that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you. But if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his. And if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness.” The indwelling of Christ involves a continual exercise of efficient power. In Eph. 3:16, 17, “strengthened with power through his Spirit in the inward man” is immediately followed by “that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith.”

Mat. 28:20—“lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world”; John 10:28—“they shall never perish, and no one shall snatch them out of my hand”; Rom. 8:35, 39—“Who shall separate us from the love of Christ?... nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord”; 1 Thess. 4:14, 17—“them also that are fallen asleep in Jesus will God bring with him ... then we that are alive, that are left, shall together with them be caught up in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord.”

Christ's omnipresence makes it possible for him to be united to, and to be present in, each believer, as perfectly and fully as if that believer were the only one to receive Christ's fulness. As Christ's omnipresence makes the whole Christ present in every place, each believer has the whole Christ with him, as his source of strength, purity, life; so that each may say: Christ gives all his time and wisdom and care to me. Such a union as this lacks every element of instability. Once formed, the union is indissoluble. Many of the ties of earth are rudely broken,—not so with our union with Christ,—that endures forever.

Since there is now an unchangeable and divine element in us, our salvation depends no longer upon our unstable wills, but upon Christ's purpose and power. By temporary declension from duty, or by our causeless unbelief, we may banish Christ to the barest and most remote room of the soul's house; but he does not suffer us wholly to exclude him; and when we are willing to unbar the doors, he is still there, ready to fill the whole mansion with his light and love.

This union is inscrutable, indeed; but it is not mystical, in the sense of being unintelligible to the Christian or beyond the reach of his experience. If we call it mystical at all, it should be only because, in the intimacy of its communion and in the transforming power of its influence, it surpasses any other union of souls that we know, and so cannot be fully described or understood by earthly analogies. Eph. 5:32—“This mystery is great: but I speak in regard of Christ and of the church”; Col. 1:27—“the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.”

See Diman, Theistic Argument, 380—“As physical science has brought us to the conclusion that back of all the phenomena of the material universe there lies an invisible universe of forces, and that these forces may ultimately be reduced to one all-pervading [pg 802]force in which the unity of the physical universe consists; and as philosophy has advanced the rational conjecture that this ultimate all-pervading force is simply will-force; so the great Teacher holds up to us the spiritual universe as pervaded by one omnipotent life—a life which was revealed in him as its highest manifestation, but which is shared by all who by faith become partakers of his nature. He was Son of God: they too had power to become sons of God. The incarnation is wholly within the natural course and tendency of things. It was prepared for, it came, in the fulness of times. Christ's life is not something sporadic and individual, having its source in the personal conviction of each disciple; it implies a real connection with Christ, the head. Behind all nature there is one force; behind all varieties of Christian life and character there is one spiritual power. All nature is not inert matter,—it is pervaded by a living presence. So all the body of believers live by virtue of the all-working Spirit of Christ, the Holy Ghost.” An epitaph at Silton, in Dorsetshire, reads: “Here lies a piece of Christ—a star in dust, A vein of gold, a china dish, that must Be used in heaven when God shall feed the just.”

A. H. Strong, in Examiner, 1880: “Such is the nature of union with Christ,—such I mean, is the nature of every believer's union with Christ. For, whether he knows it or not, every Christian has entered into just such a partnership as this. It is this and this only which constitutes him a Christian, and which makes possible a Christian church. We may, indeed, be thus united to Christ, without being fully conscious of the real nature of our relation to him. We may actually possess the kernel, while as yet we have regard only to the shell; we may seem to ourselves to be united to Christ only by an external bond, while after all it is an inward and spiritual bond that makes us his. God often reveals to the Christian the mystery of the gospel, which is Christ in him the hope of glory, at the very time that he is seeking only some nearer access to a Redeemer outside of him. Trying to find a union of coöperation or of sympathy, he is amazed to learn that there is already established a union with Christ more glorious and blessed, namely, a union of life; and so, like the miners in the Rocky Mountains, while he is looking only for silver, he finds gold. Christ and the believer have the same life. They are not separate persons linked together by some temporary bond of friendship,—they are united by a tie as close and indissoluble as if the same blood ran in their veins. Yet the Christian may never have suspected how intimate a union he has with his Savior; and the first understanding of this truth may be the gateway through which he passes into a holier and happier stage of the Christian life.”

So the Way leads, through the Truth, to the Life (John 14:6). Apprehension of an external Savior prepares for the reception and experience of the internal Savior. Christ is first the Door of the sheep, but in him, after they have once entered in, they find pasture (John 10:7-9). On the nature of this union, see H. B. Smith, System of Christian Theology, 531-539; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 601; Wilberforce, Incarnation, 208-272, and New Birth of Man's Nature, 1-30. Per contra, see Park, Discourses, 117-136.

In Baird, Elohim Revealed, 607-610, in Owen, on Justification, chap. 8, in Boston, Covenant of Grace, chap. 2, and in Dale, Atonement, 265-440, the union of the believer with Christ is made to explain the bearing of our sins by Christ. As we have seen in our discussion of the Atonement, however (page 759), this explains the cause by the effect, and implies that Christ died only for the elect (see review of Dale, in Brit. Quar. [pg 803]Rev., Apr. 1876:221-225). It is not the union of Christ with the believer, but the union of Christ with humanity at large, that explains his taking upon him human guilt and penalty.

Amnesty offered to a rebellious city may be complete, yet it may avail only for those who surrender. Pardon secured from a Governor, upon the ground of the services of an Advocate, may be effectual only when the convict accepts it,—there is no hope for him when he tears up the pardon. Dr. H. E. Robins: “The judicial declaration of acquittal on the ground of the death of Christ, which comes to all men (Rom. 5:18), and into the benefits of which they are introduced by natural birth, is inchoate justification, and will become perfected justification through the new birth of the Holy Spirit, unless the working of this divine agent is resisted by the personal moral action of those who are lost.” What Dr. Robins calls “inchoate justification” we prefer to call “ideal justification” or “attainable justification.” Humanity in Christ is justified, and every member of the race who joins himself to Christ by faith participates in Christ's justification. H. E. Dudley: “Adam's sin holds us all down just as gravity holds all, while Christ's righteousness, though secured for all and accessible to all, involves an effort of will in climbing and grasping which not all will make.” Justification in Christ is the birthright of humanity; but, in order to possess and enjoy it, each of us must claim and appropriate it by faith.

R. W. Dale, Fellowship with Christ, 7—“When we were created in Christ, the fortunes of the human race for good or evil became his. The Incarnation revealed and fulfilled the relations which already existed between the Son of God and mankind. From the beginning Christ had entered into fellowship with us. When we sinned, he remained in fellowship with us still. Our miseries” [we would add: our guilt] “were his, by his own choice.... His fellowship with us is the foundation of our fellowship with him.... When I have discovered that by the very constitution of my nature I am to achieve perfection in the power of the life of Another—who is yet not Another, but the very ground of my being—it ceases to be incredible to me that Another—who is yet not Another—should be the Atonement for my sin, and that his relation to God should determine mine.”

A tract entitled “The Seven Togethers” sums up the Scripture testimony with regard to the Consequences of the believer's Union with Christ: 1. Crucified together with Christ—Gal. 2:20—συνεσταύρωμαι. 2. Died together with Christ—Col. 2:20—ἀπεθάνετε. 3. Buried together with Christ—Rom. 6:4—συνετάφημεν. 4. Quickened together with Christ—Eph. 2:5—συνεζωοποίησεν. 5. Raised together with Christ—Col. 3:1—συνηγέρθητε. 6. Sufferers together with Christ—Rom. 8:17—συμπάσχομεν. 7. Glorified together with Christ—Rom. 8:17—συνδοξασθῶμεν. Union with Christ results in common sonship, relation to God, character, influence, and destiny.

Imperfect apprehension of the believer's union with Christ works to the great injury of Christian doctrine. An experience of union with Christ first enables us to understand the death of sin and separation from God which has befallen the race sprung from the first Adam. The life and liberty of the children of God in Christ Jesus shows us by contrast how far astray we had gone. The vital and organic unity of the new race sprung from the second Adam reveals the depravity and disintegration which we had inherited from our first father. We see that as there is one source of spiritual life in Christ, so there was one source of corrupt life in Adam; and that as we are justified by reason of our oneness with the justified Christ, so we are condemned by reason of our oneness with the condemned Adam.

A. H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 175—“If it is consistent with evolution that the physical and natural life of the race should be derived from a single source, then it is equally consistent with evolution that the moral and spiritual life of the race should be derived from a single source. Scripture is stating only scientific fact when it sets the second Adam, the head of redeemed humanity, over against the first Adam, the head of fallen humanity. We are told that evolution should give us many Christs. We reply that evolution has not given us many Adams. Evolution, as it assigns to the natural head of the race a supreme and unique position, must be consistent with itself, and must assign a supreme and unique position to Jesus Christ, the spiritual head of the race. As there was but one Adam from whom all the natural life of the race was derived, so that there can be but one Christ from whom all the spiritual life of the race is derived.”

Rom. 8:2—“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and of death”; 2 Cor. 5:17—“if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature” (marg.—“there is a new creation”); Gal. 1:15, 16—“it was the good pleasure of God ... to reveal his Son in me”; Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” As we derive our old nature from the first man Adam, by birth, so we derive a new nature from the second man Christ, by the new birth. Union with Christ is the true “transfusion of blood.” “The death-struck sinner, like the wan, anæmic, dying invalid, is saved by having poured into his veins the healthier blood of Christ” (Drummond, Nat. Law in the Spir. World). God regenerates the soul by uniting it to Jesus Christ.

In the Johnston Harvester Works at Batavia, when they paint their machinery, they do it by immersing part after part in a great tank of paint,—so the painting is instantaneous and complete. Our baptism into Christ is the outward picture of an inward immersion of the soul not only into his love and fellowship, but into his very life, so that in him we become new creatures (2 Cor. 5:17). As Miss Sullivan surrounded Helen Keller with the influence of her strong personality, by intelligence and sympathy and determination striving to awaken the blind and dumb soul and give it light and love, so Jesus envelops us. But his Spirit is more encompassing and more penetrating than any human influence however powerful, because his life is the very ground and principle of our being.

Tennyson: “O for a man to arise in me, That the man that I am may cease to be!”Emerson: “Himself from God he could not free; He builded better than he knew.”Religion is not the adding of a new department of activity as an adjunct to our own life or the grafting of a new method of manifestation upon the old. It is rather the grafting of our souls into Christ, so that his life dominates and manifests itself in all our activities. The magnet which left to itself can lift only a three pound weight, will lift three hundred when it is attached to the electric dynamo. Expositor's Greek Testament on 1 Cor. 15:45, 46—“The action of Jesus in ‘breathing’ upon his disciples while he said, ‘Receive the Holy Spirit’ (John 20:22 sq.) symbolized the vitalizing relationship which at this epoch he assumed towards mankind; this act raised to a higher potency the original ‘breathing’ of God by which ‘man became a living soul’ (Gen. 2:7).”

Eph. 3:17—“that Christ may dwell in your hearts through faith”; 2 Tim. 3:15—“the sacred writings which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus.” Faith is the soul's laying hold of Christ as its only source of life, pardon, and salvation. And so we see what true religion is. It is not a moral life; it is not a determination to be religious; it is not faith, if by faith we mean an external trust that somehow Christ will save us; it is nothing less than the life of the soul in God, through Christ his Son. To Christ then we are to look for the origin, continuance and increase of our faith (Luke 17:5—“said unto the Lord, Increase our faith”). Our faith is but a part of “his fulness” of which “we all received, and grace for grace” (John 1:16).

A. H. Strong, Sermon before the Baptist World Congress, London, 1905—“Christianity is summed up in the two facts: Christ for us, and Christ in us—Christ for us upon the Cross, revealing the eternal opposition of holiness to sin, and yet, through God's eternal suffering for sin making objective atonement for us; and Christ in us by his Spirit, renewing in us the lost image of God, and abiding in us as the all-sufficient source of purity and power. Here are the two foci of the Christian ellipse: Christ for us, who redeemed us from the curse of the law by being made a curse for us, and Christ in us, the hope of glory, whom the apostle calls the mystery of the gospel.

“We need Christ in us as well as Christ for us. How shall I, how shall society, find healing and purification within? Let me answer by reminding you of what they did at Chicago. In all the world there was no river more stagnant and fetid than was Chicago River. [pg 805]Its sluggish stream received the sweepings of the watercraft and the offal of the city, and there was no current to carry the detritus away. There it settled, and bred miasma and fever. At last it was suggested that, by cutting through the low ridge between the city and the Desplaines River, the current could be set running in the opposite direction, and drainage could be secured into the Illinois River and the great Mississippi. At a cost of fifteen millions of dollars the cut was made, and now all the water of Lake Michigan can be relied upon to cleanse that turbid stream. What Chicago River could never do for itself, the great lake now does for it. So no human soul can purge itself of its sin; and what the individual cannot do, humanity at large is powerless to accomplish. Sin has dominion over us, and we are foul to the very depths of our being, until with the help of God we break through the barrier of our self-will, and let the floods of Christ's purifying life flow into us. Then, in an hour, more is done to renew, than all our efforts for years had effected. Thus humanity is saved, individual by individual, not by philosophy, or philanthropy, or self-development, or self-reformation, but simply by joining itself to Jesus Christ, and by being filled in Him with all the fulness of God.”

Acts 13:39—“by him [lit.: ‘in him’ = in union with him] every one that believeth is justified”; Rom. 6:7, 8—“he that hath died is justified from sin ... we died with Christ”; 7:4—“dead to the law through the body of Christ”; 8:1—“no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus”; 17—“heirs of God, and joint-heirs with Christ”; 1 Cor. 1:30—“But of him ye are in Christ Jesus, who was made unto us wisdom from God, and righteousness[justification]”; 3:21, 23—“all things are yours ... and ye are Christ's”; 6:11—“ye were justified in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and in the Spirit of our God”; 2 Cor. 5:14—“we thus judge, that one died for all, therefore all died”; 21—“Him who knew no sin he made to be sin on our behalf; that we might become the righteousness [justification] of God in him” = God's justified persons, in union with Christ (see pages 760, 761).

Gal. 2:20—“I have been crucified with Christ; and it is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me”; Eph. 1:4, 6—“chose us in him ... to the praise of the glory of his grace, which he freely bestowed on us in the Beloved”; 2:5, 6—“even when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ ... made us to sit with him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus”; Phil. 3:8, 9—“that I may gain Christ, and be found in him, not having a righteousness of mine own, even that which is of the law, but that which is through faith in Christ, the righteousness which is from God by faith”; 2 Tim. 2:11—“Faithful is the saying: For if we died with him, we shall also live with him.” Prophet: Luke 12:12—“the Holy Spirit shall teach you in that very hour what ye ought to say”; 1 John 2:20—“ye have an anointing from the Holy One, and ye know all things.” Priest: 1 Pet. 2:5—“a holy priesthood, to offer up spiritual sacrifices, acceptable to God through Jesus Christ”; Rev. 20:6—“they shall be priests of God and of Christ”; 1 Pet. 2:9—“a royal priesthood.” King: Rev. 3:21—“He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne”; 5:10—“madest them to be unto our God a kingdom and priests.”The connection of justification and union with Christ delivers the former from the charge of being a mechanical and arbitrary procedure. As Jonathan Edwards has said: “The justification of the believer is no other than his being admitted to communion in, or participation of, this head and surety of all believers.”

For the soul: John 1:16—“of his fulness we all received, and grace for grace”—successive and increasing measures of grace, corresponding to the soul's successive and increasing needs; Rom. 8:10—“if Christ is in you, the body is dead because of sin; but the spirit is life because of righteousness”; [pg 806] 1 Cor. 15:45—“The last Adam became a life-giving spirit”; Phil. 2:5—“Have this mind in you, which was also in Christ Jesus”; 1 John 3:2—“if he shall be manifested, we shall be like him.” “Can Christ let the believer fall out of his hands? No, for the believer is his hands.”

For the body: 1 Cor. 6:17-20—“he that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit ... know ye not that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit which is in you ... glorify God therefore in your body”; Thess. 5:23—“And the God of peace himself sanctify you wholly; and may your spirit and soul and body be preserved entire, without blame at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ”; Rom. 8:11—“shall give life also to your mortal bodies through his Spirit that dwelleth in you”; 1 Cor. 15:49—“as we have borne the image of the earthy [man], we shall also bear the image of the heavenly [man]”; Phil. 3:20, 21—“For our citizenship is in heaven; from whence also we wait for a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ: who shall fashion anew the body of our humiliation, that it may be conformed to the body of his glory, according to the working whereby he is able even to subject all things unto himself.”

Is there a physical miracle wrought for the drunkard in his regeneration? Mr. Moody says, Yes; Mr. Gough says, No. We prefer to say that the change is a spiritual one; but that the “expulsive power of a new affection” indirectly affects the body, so that old appetites sometimes disappear in a moment; and that often, in the course of years, great changes take place even in the believer's body. Tennyson, Idylls: “Have ye looked at Edyrn? Have ye seen how nobly changed? This work of his is great and wonderful; His very face with change of heart is changed.” “Christ in the soul fashions the germinal man into his own likeness,—this is the embryology of the new life. The cardinal error in religious life is the attempt to live without proper environment”(see Drummond, Natural Law in Spiritual World, 253-284). Human life from Adam does not stand the test,—only divine-human life in Christ can secure us from falling. This is the work of Christ, now that he has ascended and taken to himself his power, namely, to give his life more and more fully to the church, until it shall grow up in all things into him, the Head, and shall fitly express his glory to the world.

As the accomplished organist discloses unsuspected capabilities of his instrument, so Christ brings into activity all the latent powers of the human soul. “I was five years in the ministry,” said an American preacher, “before I realized that my Savior is alive.” Dr. R. W. Dale has left on record the almost unutterable feelings that stirred his soul when he first realized this truth; see Walker, The Spirit and the Incarnation, preface, v. Many have struggled in vain against sin until they have admitted Christ to their hearts,—then they could say: “this is the victory that hath overcome the world, even our faith”(1 John 5:4). “Go out, God will go in; Die thou, and let him live; Be not, and he will be; Wait, and he'll all things give.” The best way to get air out of a vessel is to pour water in. Only in Christ can we find our pardon, peace, purity, and power. He is “made unto us wisdom from God, and justification and sanctification, and redemption” (1 Cor. 1:30). A medical man says: “The only radical remedy for dipsomania is religiomania” (quoted in William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 268). It is easy to break into an empty house; the spirit cast out returns, finds the house empty, brings seven others, and “the last state of that man becometh worse than the first” (Mat. 12:45). There is no safety in simply expelling sin; we need also to bring in Christ; in fact only he can enable us to expel not only actual sin but the love of it.

Alexander McLaren: “If we are ‘in Christ,’ we are like a diver in his crystal bell, and have a solid though invisible wall around us, which keeps all sea-monsters off us, and communicates with the upper air, whence we draw the breath of calm life and can work in security though in the ocean depths.” John Caird, Fund. Ideas, 2:98—“How do we know that the life of God has not departed from nature? Because every spring we witness the annual miracle of nature's revival, every summer and autumn the waving corn. How do we know that Christ has not departed from the world? Because he imparts to the soul that trusts him a power, a purity, a peace, which are beyond all that nature can give.”

Fellowship of Christ with the believer: Phil. 4:13—“I can do all things in him that strengtheneth me”; Heb. 4:15—“For we have not a high priest that cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities”; cf. Is. 63:9—“In all their affliction he was afflicted.” Heb. 2:18—“in that he himself hath suffered being tempted, he is able to succor them that are tempted” = are being tempted, are under temptation. Bp. Wordsworth: “By his passion he acquired compassion.” 2 Cor. 2:14—“thanks be unto God, who always leadeth us in triumph in Christ” = Christ leads us in triumph, but his triumph is ours, even if it be a triumph over us. One with him, we participate in his joy and in his sovereignty. Rev. 3:21—“He that overcometh, I will give to him to sit down with me in my throne.” W. F. Taylor on Rom. 8:9—“The Spirit of God dwelleth in you.... if any man hath not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his”—“Christ dwells in us, says the apostle. But do we accept him as a resident, or as a ruler? England was first represented at King Thebau's court by her resident. This official could rebuke, and even threaten, but no more,—Thebau was sovereign. Burma knew no peace, till England ruled. So Christ does not consent to be represented by a mere resident. He must himself dwell within the soul, and he must reign.” Christina Rossetti, Thee Only: “Lord, we are rivers running to thy sea, Our waves and ripples all derived from thee; A nothing we should have, a nothing be, Except for thee. Sweet are the waters of thy shoreless sea; Make sweet our waters that make haste to thee; Pour in thy sweetness, that ourselves may be Sweetness to thee!”

Of the believer with Christ: Phil. 3:10—“that I may know him, and the power of his resurrection, and the fellowship of his sufferings, becoming conformed unto his death”; Col. 1:24—“fill up on my part that which is lacking of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh for his body's sake, which is the church”; 1 Pet. 4:13—“partakers of Christ's sufferings.” The Christian reproduces Christ's life in miniature, and, in a true sense, lives it over again. Only upon the principle of union with Christ can we explain how the Christian instinctively applies to himself the prophecies and promises which originally and primarily were uttered with reference to Christ: “thou wilt not leave my soul to Sheol; Neither wilt thou suffer thy holy one to see corruption” (Ps. 16:10, 11). This fellowship is the ground of the promises made to believing prayer: John 14:13—“whatsoever ye shall ask is my name, that will I do”; Westcott, Bib. Com., in loco: “The meaning of the phrase [‘in my name’] is ‘as being one with me even as I am revealed to you.’ Its two correlatives are ‘in me’ and the Pauline ‘in Christ’.” “All things are yours” (1 Cor. 3:21), because Christ is universal King, and all believers are exalted to fellowship with him. After the battle of Sedan, King William asked a wounded Prussian officer whether it were well with him. “All is well where your majesty leads!” was the reply. Phil. 1:21—“For to me to live is Christ, and to die is gain.” Paul indeed uses the words “Christ” and “church” as interchangeable terms: 1 Cor. 12:12—“as the body is one, and hath many members, ... so also is Christ.” Denney, Studies in Theology, 171—“There is not in the N. T. from beginning to end, in the record of the original and genuine Christian life, a single word of despondency or gloom. It is the most buoyant, exhilarating and joyful book in the world.” This is due to the fact that the writers believe in a living and exalted Christ, and know themselves to be one with him. They descend crowned into the arena. In the Soudan, every morning for half an hour before General Gordon's tent there lay a white handkerchief. The most pressing message, even on matters of life and death, waited till that handkerchief was withdrawn. It was the signal that Christ and Gordon were in communion with each other.

Of all believers with one another: John 17:21—“that they may all be one”; 1 Cor. 10:17—“we, who are many, are one bread, one body: for we all partake of the one bread”; Eph. 2:15—“create in himself of the two one new man, so making peace”; 1 John 1:3—“that ye also may have fellowship with us: yea, and our fellowship is with the Father, and with his Son Jesus Christ”—here the word κοινωνία is used. Fellowship with each other is the effect and result of the fellowship of each with God in Christ. Compare John 10:16—“they shall become one flock, one shepherd”; Westcott, Bib. Com., in loco: “The bond of fellowship is shown to lie in the common relation to one Lord.... Nothing is said of one ‘fold’ under the new dispensation.” Here is a unity, not of external organization, but of common life. Of this the visible church is the consequence and expression. But this communion is not limited to earth,—it is perpetuated beyond death: 1 Thess. 4:17—“so shall we ever be with the Lord”; Heb. 12:23—“to the general assembly and church of the firstborn who are enrolled in heaven, and to God the Judge of all, and to the spirits of just men made perfect”; Rev. 21and 22—the city of God, the new Jerusalem, is the image of perfect society, as well as of intensity and fulness of life in Christ. The ordinances express the essence of Ecclesiology—union with Christ—for Baptism symbolizes the incorporation of the believer in Christ, while the Lord's Supper symbolizes the incorporation of Christ in the believer. Christianity is a social matter, and the true Christian feels the need of being with and among his brethren. The Romans could not understand why “this new sect”must be holding meetings all the time—even daily meetings. Why could they not go singly, or in families, to the temples, and make offerings to their God, and then come [pg 808]away, as the pagans did? It was this meeting together which exposed them to persecution and martyrdom. It was the natural and inevitable expression of their union with Christ and so of their union with one another.

The consciousness of union with Christ gives assurance of salvation. It is a great stimulus to believing prayer and to patient labor. It is a duty to “know what is the hope of his calling, what the riches of the glory of his inheritance in the saints, and what the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe” (Eph. 1:18, 19). Christ's command, “Abide in me, and I in you” (John 15:4), implies that we are both to realize and to confirm this union, by active exertion of our own wills. We are to abide in him by an entire consecration, and to let him abide in us by an appropriating faith. We are to give ourselves to Christ, and to take in return the Christ who gives himself to us,—in other words, we are to believe Christ's promises and to act upon them. All sin consists in the sundering of man's life from God, and most systems of falsehood in religion are attempts to save man without merging his life in God's once more. The only religion that can save mankind is the religion that fills the whole heart and the whole life with God, and that aims to interpenetrate universal humanity with that same living Christ who has already made himself one with the believer. This consciousness of union with Christ gives “boldness” (παρρησία—Acts 4:13; 1 John 5:14) toward men and toward God. The word belongs to the Greek democracies. Freemen are bold. Demosthenes boasts of his frankness. Christ frees us from the hidebound, introspective, self-conscious spirit. In him we become free, demonstrative, outspoken. So we find, in John's epistles, that boldness in prayer is spoken of as a virtue, and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews urges us to “draw near with boldness unto the throne of grace” (Heb. 4:16). An engagement of marriage is not the same as marriage. The parties may be still distant from each other. Many Christians get just near enough to Christ to be engaged to him. This seems to be the experience of Christian in the Pilgrim's Progress. But our privilege is to have a present Christ, and to do our work not only for him, but in him. “Since Christ and we are one, Why should we doubt or fear?” “We two are so joined, He'll not be in heaven, And leave me behind.”

We append a few statements with regard to this union and its consequences, from noted names in theology and the church. Luther: “By faith thou art so glued to Christ that of thee and him there becomes as it were one person, so that with confidence thou canst say: ‘I am Christ,—that is, Christ's righteousness, victory, etc., are mine’; and Christ in turn can say: ‘I am that sinner,—that is, his sins, his death, etc., are mine, because he clings to me and I to him, for we have been joined through faith into one flesh and bone.’ ” Calvin: “I attribute the highest importance to the connection between the head and the members; to the inhabitation of Christ in our hearts; in a word, to the mystical union by which we enjoy him, so that, being made ours, he makes us partakers of the blessings with which he is furnished.” John Bunyan: “The Lord led me into the knowledge of the mystery of union with Christ, that I was joined to him, that I was bone of his bone and flesh of his flesh. By this also my faith in him as my righteousness was the more confirmed; for if he and I were one, then his righteousness was mine, his merits mine, his victory also mine. Now could I see myself in heaven and on earth at once—in heaven by my Christ, my risen head, my righteousness and life, though on earth by my body or person.” Edwards: “Faith is the soul's active uniting with Christ. God sees fit that, in order to a union's being established between two intelligent active beings, there should be the mutual act of both, that each should receive the other, as entirely joining themselves to one another.” Andrew Fuller: “I have no doubt that the imputation of Christ's righteousness presupposes a union with him; since there is no perceivable fitness in bestowing benefits on one for another's sake, where there is no union or relation between.”

See Luther, quoted, with other references, in Thomasius, Christi Person und Werk, 3:325. See also Calvin, Institutes, 1:660; Edwards, Works, 4:66, 69, 70; Andrew Fuller, Works, 2:685; Pascal, Thoughts, Eng. trans., 429; Hooker, Eccl. Polity, book 5, ch. 56; Tillotson, Sermons, 3:307; Trench, Studies in Gospels, 284, and Christ the True Vine, in Hulsean Lectures; Schöberlein, in Studien und Kritiken, 1847:7-69; Caird, on Union with God, in Scotch Sermons, sermon 2; Godet, on the Ultimate Design of Man, in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880—the design is “God in man, and man in God”; Baird, Elohim Revealed, 590-617; Upham, Divine Union, Interior Life, Life of Madame Guyon and Fénelon; A. J. Gordon, In Christ; McDuff, In Christo; J. Denham Smith, Life-truths, 25-98; A. H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 220-225; Bishop Hall's Treatise on The Church Mystical; Andrew Murray, Abide in Christ; Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 145, 174, 179; F. B. Meyer, Christian Living—essay on Appropriation of [pg 809]Christ, vs. mere imitation of Christ; Sanday, Epistle to the Romans, supplementary essay on the Mystic Union; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 531; J. M. Campbell, The Indwelling Christ.

John 3:7—“Ye must be born anew”; Gal. 6:15—“neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creature” (marg.—“creation”); cf. Heb. 12:14—“the sanctification without which no man shall see the Lord”—regeneration, therefore, is yet more necessary to salvation; Eph. 2:3—“by nature children of wrath, even as the rest”; Rom. 3:11—“There is none that understandeth, There is none that seeketh after God”; John 6:44, 65—“No man can come to me, except the Father that sent me draw him ... no man can come unto me, except it be given unto him of the Father”; Jer. 13:23—“Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard his spots? then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.”

John 3:3—“Except one be born anew, he cannot see the kingdom of God”; 5:21—“as the Father raiseth the dead and giveth them life, even so the Son also giveth life to whom he will”; Rom. 6:13—“present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead”; Eph. 2:1—“And you did he make alive, when ye were dead through your trespasses and sins”; 5:14—“Awake, thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee.” In John 3:3—“born anew” = not, “altered,” “influenced,” “reinvigorated,” “reformed”; but a new beginning, a new stamp or character, a new family likeness to God and to his children. “So is every one that is born of the Spirit” (John 3:8) = 1. secrecy of process; 2. independence of the will of man; 3. evidence given in results of conduct and life. It is a good thing to remove the means of gratifying an evil appetite; but how much better it is to remove the appetite itself! It is a good thing to save men from frequenting dangerous resorts by furnishing safe places of recreation and entertainment; but far better is it to implant within the man such a love for all that is pure and good, that he will instinctively shun the impure and evil. Christianity aims to purify the springs of action.

Mat. 12:33, 35—“Either make the tree good, and its fruit good; or make the tree corrupt, and its fruit corrupt: for the tree is known by its fruit.... The good man out of his good treasure bringeth forth good things: and the evil man out of his evil treasure bringeth forth evil things”; 15:19—“For out of the heart come forth evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications, thefts, false witness, railings”; Acts 16:14—“And a certain woman named Lydia ... heard us: whose heart the Lord opened to give heed unto the things which were spoken by Paul”; Rom. 6:17—“But thanks be to God, that, whereas ye were servants of sin, ye became obedient from the heart to that form of teaching whereunto ye were delivered”; 10:10—“with the heart man believeth unto righteousness”; cf. Ps. 51:10—“Create in me a clean heart, O God; And renew a right spirit within me”; Jer. 31:33—“I will put my law in their inward parts, and in their hearts will I write it”; Ez. 11:19—“And I will give them one heart, and I will put a new spirit within you; and I will take the stony heart out of their flesh, and will give them a heart of flesh.”

Horace Mann: “One former is worth a hundred reformers.” It is often said that the redemption of society is as important as the regeneration of the individual. Yes, we reply; but the regeneration of society can never be accomplished except through the regeneration of the individual. Reformers try in vain to construct a stable and happy community from persons who are selfish, weak, and miserable. The first cry of such reformers is: “Get your circumstances changed!” Christ's first call is: “Get yourselves changed, and then the things around you will be changed.” Many college settlements, and temperance societies, and self-reformations begin at the wrong end. They are like kindling a coal-fire by lighting kindlings at the top. The fire soon goes out. We need God's work at the very basis of character and not on the outer edge, at the very beginning, and not simply at the end. Mat. 6:33—“seek ye first his kingdom, and his righteousness; and all these things shall be added unto you.”

Eph. 2:5—“when we were dead through our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ”; 4:23, 24—“that ye be renewed in the spirit of your mind, and put on the new man, that after God hath been created in righteousness and holiness of truth”; Col. 1:13—“who delivered us out of the power of darkness, and translated us into the kingdom of the Son of his love.” William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 508, finds the features belonging to all religions: 1. an uneasiness; and 2. its solution. 1. The uneasiness, reduced to its simplest terms, is a sense that there is something wrong about us, as we naturally stand. 2. The solution is a sense that we are saved from the wrongness by making proper connection with the higher powers.

James 1:18—“Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth”—here in connection with the special agency of God (not of mere natural law) the truth is spoken of as a means; 1 Pet. 1:23—“having been begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible, through the word of God, which liveth and abideth”; 2 Pet. 1:4—“his precious and exceeding great promises; that through these ye may become partakers of the divine nature”; cf. Jer. 23:29—“Is not my word like fire? saith Jehovah; and like a hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces?” John 15:3—“Already ye are clean because of the word which I have spoken unto you”; Eph. 6:17—“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God”; Heb. 4:12—“For the word of God is living, and active, and sharper than any two-edged sword, and piercing even to the dividing of soul and spirit, of both joints and marrow, and quick to discern the thoughts and intents of the heart”; 1 Pet. 2:9—“called you out of darkness into his marvellous light.” An advertising sign reads: “For spaces and ideas, apply to Johnson and Smith.” In regeneration, we need both the open mind and the truth to instruct it, and we may apply to God for both.

John 5:24—“He that heareth my word, and believeth him that sent me, hath eternal life, and cometh not into judgment, but hath passed out of death into life”; cf. Mat. 6:24—“No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to one, and despise the other.” John 3:8—“The wind bloweth where it will, and thou hearest the voice thereof, but knowest not whence it cometh, and whither it goeth: so is every one that is born of the Spirit”; cf. Phil. 2:12, 13—“work out your own salvation with fear and trembling; for it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure”; 2 Pet. 1:10—“Wherefore, brethren, give the more diligence to make your calling and election sure.”

John 1:13—“who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”; 3:5—“Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God”; 3:8, marg.—“The Spirit breatheth where it will”; Eph. 1:19, 20—“the exceeding greatness of his power to us-ward who believe, according to that working of the strength of his might which he wrought in Christ, when he raised him from the dead, and made him to sit at his right hand in the heavenly places”; 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works, which God afore prepared that we should walk in them”; 1 Pet. 1:3—“Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his great mercy begat us again unto a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead”; cf. 1 Cor. 3:6, 7—“I planted, Apollos watered; but God gave the increase. So then neither is he that planteth anything, neither he that watereth; but God that giveth the increase.”

We have seen that we are “begotten again ... through the word” (1 Pet. 1:23). In the revealed truth with regard to the person and work of Christ there is a divine adaptation to the work of renewing our hearts. But truth in itself is powerless to regenerate and sanctify, unless the Holy Spirit uses it—“the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17). Hence regeneration is ascribed preëminently to the Holy Spirit, and men are said to be “born of the Spirit” (John 3:8). When Robert Morrison started for China, an incredulous American said to him: “Mr. Morrison, do you think you can make any impression on the Chinese?” “No,” was the reply; “but I think the Lord can.”

Rom. 8:2—“For the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus made me free from the law of sin and death”; 2 Cor. 5:17—“if any man is in Christ, he is a new creature” (marg.—“there is a new creation”); Gal. 1:15, 16—“it was the good pleasure of God ... to reveal his Son in me”; Eph. 2:10—“For we are his workmanship, created in Christ Jesus for good works.” On the Scriptural representations, see E. D. Griffin, Divine Efficiency, 117-164; H. B. Smith, System of Theology, 553-569—“Regeneration involves union with Christ, and not a change of heart without relation to him.”

Eph. 3:14, 15—“the Father, from whom every fatherhood in heaven and on earth is named.” But even here God works through Christ, and Christ himself is called “Everlasting Father” (Is. 9:6). The real [pg 812]basis of our sonship and unity is in Christ, our Creator, and Upholder. Sin is repudiation of this filial relationship. Regeneration by the Spirit restores our sonship by joining us once more, ethically and spiritually, to Christ the Son, and so adopting us again into God's family. Hence the Holy Spirit does not reveal himself, but Christ. The Spirit is light, and light does not reveal itself, but all other things. I may know that the Holy Spirit is working within me whenever I more clearly perceive Christ. Sonship in Christ makes us not only individually children of God, but also members of a commonwealth. Ps. 87:4—“Yea, of Zion it shall be said, This one and that one was born in her” = “the most glorious thing to be said about them is not something pertaining to their separate history, but that they have become members, by adoption, of the city of God” (Perowne). The Psalm speaks of the adoption of nations, but it is equally true of individuals.

Phillips Brooks seems to have taught that regeneration is merely a natural forward step in man's development. See his Life, 2:353—“The entrance into this deeper consciousness of sonship to God and into the motive power which it exercises is Regeneration, the new birth, not merely with reference to time, but with reference also to profoundness. Because man has something sinful to cast away in order to enter this higher life, therefore regeneration must begin with repentance. But that is an incident. It is not essential to the idea. A man simply imperfect and not sinful would still have to be born again. The presentation of sin as guilt, of release as forgiveness, of consequence as punishment, have their true meaning as the most personal expressions of man's moral condition as always measured by, and man's moral changes as always dependent upon, God.” Here imperfection seems to mean depraved condition as distinguished from conscious transgression; it is not regarded as sinful; it needs not to be repented of. Yet it does require regeneration. In Phillips Brooks's creed there is no article devoted to sin. Baptism he calls “the declaration of the universal fact of the sonship of man to God. The Lord's Supper is the declaration of the universal fact of man's dependence upon God for supply of life. It is associated with the death of Jesus, because in that the truth of God giving himself to man found its completest manifestation.”

Others seem to teach regeneration by education. Here too there is no recognition of inborn sin or guilt. Man's imperfection of nature is innocent. He needs training in order to fit him for association with higher intelligences and with God. In the evolution of his powers there comes a natural crisis, like that of graduation of the scholar, and this crisis may be called conversion. This educational theory of regeneration is represented by Starbuck, Psychology of Religion, and by Coe, The Spiritual Life. What human nature needs however is not evolution, but involution and revolution—involution, the communication of a new life, and revolution, change of direction resulting from that life. Human nature, as we have seen in our treatment of sin, is not a green apple to be perfected by mere growth, but an apple with a worm at the core, which left to itself will surely rot and perish.

President G. Stanley Hall, in his essay on The Religious Affirmations of Psychology, says that the total depravity of man is an ascertained fact apart from the teachings of the Bible. There had come into his hands for inspection several thousands of letters written to a medical man who advertised that he would give confidential advice and treatment to all, secretly. On the strength of these letters Dr. Hall was prepared to say that John Calvin had not told the half of what is true. He declared that the necessity of regeneration in order to the development of character was clearly established from psychological investigation.

A. H. Strong, Cleveland Sermon, 1904—“Here is the danger of some modern theories of Christian education. They give us statistics, to show that the age of puberty is the [pg 813]age of strongest religious impressions; and the inference is drawn that conversion is nothing but a natural phenomenon, a regular stage of development. The free will, and the evil bent of that will, are forgotten, and the absolute dependence of perverse human nature upon the regenerating spirit of God. The age of puberty is the age of the strongest religious impressions? Yes, but it is also the age of the strongest artistic and social and sensuous impressions, and only a new birth from above can lead the soul to seek first the kingdom of God.”

Plutarch has a parable of a man who tried to make a dead body stand upright, but who finished his labors saying: “Deest aliquid intus”—“There's something lacking inside.” Ribot, Diseases of the Will, 53—“In the vicious man the moral elements are lacking. If the idea of amendment arises, it is involuntary.... But if a first element is not given by nature, and with it a potential energy, nothing results. The theological dogma of grace as a free gift appears to us therefore founded upon a much more exact psychology than the contrary opinion.” “Thou art chained to the wheel of the foe By links which a world cannot sever: With thy tyrant through storm and through calm thou shall go, And thy sentence is bondage forever.”

Martensen, Christian Ethics: “When Kant treats of the radical evil of human nature, he makes the remarkable statement that, if a good will is to appear in us, this cannot happen through a partial improvement, nor through any reform, but only through a revolution, a total overturn within us, that is to be compared to a new creation.”Those who hold that man may attain perfection by mere natural growth deny this radical evil of human nature, and assume that our nature is a good seed which needs only favorable external influences of moisture and sunshine to bring forth good fruit. But human nature is a damaged seed, and what comes of it will be aborted and stunted like itself. The doctrine of mere development denies God's holiness, man's sin, the need of Christ, the necessity of atonement, the work of the Holy Spirit, the justice of penalty. Kant's doctrine of the radical evil of human nature, like Aristotle's doctrine that man is born on an inclined plane and subject to a downward gravitation, is not matched by a corresponding doctrine of regeneration. Only the apostle Paul can tell us how we came to be in this dreadful predicament, and where is the power that can deliver us; see Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 274.

Dean Swift's worthy sought many years for a method of extracting sunbeams from cucumbers. We cannot cure the barren tree by giving it new bark or new branches,—it must have new sap. Healing snakebites is not killing the snake. Poetry and music, the uplifting power of culture, the inherent nobility of man, the general mercy of God—no one of these will save the soul. Horace Bushnell: “The soul of all improvement is the improvement of the soul.” Frost cannot be removed from a window pane simply by scratching it away,—you must raise the temperature of the room. It is as impossible to get regeneration out of reformation as to get a harvest out of a field by mere plowing. Reformation is plucking bitter apples from a tree, and in their place tying good apples on with a string (Dr. Pentecost). It is regeneration or degradation—the beginning of an upward movement by a power not man's own, or the continuance and increase of a downward movement that can end only in ruin.

Kidd, Social Evolution, shows that in humanity itself there resides no power of progress. The ocean steamship that has burned its last pound of coal may proceed on its course by virtue of its momentum, but it is only a question of the clock how soon it will cease to move, except as tossed about by the wind and the waves. Not only is there power lacking for the good, but apart from God's grace the evil tendencies constantly became more aggravated. The settled states of the affections and will practically dominate the life. Charles H. Spurgeon: “If a thief should get into heaven unchanged, he would begin by picking the angels' pockets.” The land is full of examples of the descent of man, not from the brute, but to the brute. The tares are not degenerate wheat, which by cultivation will become good wheat,—they are not only useless but noxious, and they must be rooted out and burned. “Society never will be better than the individuals who compose it. A sound ship can never be made of rotten timber. Individual reformation must precede social reconstruction.” Socialism will [pg 814]always be a failure until it becomes Christian. We must be born from above, as truly as we have been begotten by our fathers upon earth, or we cannot see the kingdom of God.

Men's good deeds and reformation may be illustrated by eddies in a stream whose general current is downward; by walking westward in a railway-car while the train is going east; by Capt. Parry's traveling north, while the ice-floe on which he walked was moving southward at a rate much more rapid than his walking. It is possible to be “ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth” (2 Tim. 3:7). Better never have been born, than not be born again. But the necessity of regeneration implies its possibility: John 3:7—“Ye must be born anew” = ye may be born anew,—the text is not merely a warning and a command,—it is also a promise. Every sinner has the chance of making a new start and of beginning a new life.

J. D. Robertson, The Holy Spirit and Christian Service, 57—“Emerson says that the gate of gifts closes at birth. After a man emerges from his mother's womb he can have no new endowments, no fresh increments of strength and wisdom, joy and grace within. The only grace is the grace of creation. But this view is deistic and not Christian.” Emerson's saying is true of natural gifts, but not of spiritual gifts. He forgot Pentecost. He forgot the all-encompassing atmosphere of the divine personality and love, and its readiness to enter in at every chink and crevice of our voluntary being. The longing men have to turn over a new leaf in life's book, to break with the past, to assert their better selves, is a preliminary impulse of God's Spirit and an evidence of prevenient grace preparing the way for regeneration. Thus interpreted and yielded to, these impulses warrant unbounded hope for the future. “No star is ever lost we once have seen; We always may be what we might have been; The hopes that lost in some far distance seem May be the truer life, and this the dream.”

The greatest minds feel, at least at times, their need of help from above. Although Cicero uses the term “regeneration” to signify what we should call naturalization, yet he recognizes man's dependence upon God: “Nemo vir magnus, sine aliquo divino afflatu, unquam fuit.” Seneca: “Bonus vir sine illo nemo est.” Aristotle: “Wickedness perverts the judgment and makes men err with respect to practical principles, so that no man can be wise and judicious who is not good.” Goethe: “Who ne'er his bread in sorrow ate, Who ne'er the mournful midnight hours Weeping upon his bed has sate, He knows you not, ye heavenly Powers.” Shakespeare, King Lear: “Is there a reason in nature for these hard hearts?” Robert Browning, in Halbert and Hob, replies: “O Lear, That a reason out of nature must turn them soft, seems clear.”

John Stuart Mill (see Autobiography, 132-142) knew that the feeling of interest in others' welfare would make him happy,—but the knowledge of this fact did not give him the feeling. The “enthusiasm of humanity”—unselfish love, of which we read in “Ecce Homo”—is easy to talk about; but how to produce it,—that is the question. Drummond, Natural Law in the Spiritual World, 61-94—“There is no abiogenesis in the spiritual, more than in the natural, world. Can the stone grow more and more living until it enters the organic world? No, Christianity is a new life,—it is Christ in you.”As natural life comes to us mediately, through Adam, so spiritual life comes to us mediately, through Christ. See Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 220-249; Anderson, Regeneration, 51-88; Bennet Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 340-354.

John Stuart Mill regarded cause as embracing all the antecedents to an event. Hazard, Man a Creative First Cause, 12-15, shows that, as at any given instant the [pg 815]whole past is everywhere the same, the effects must, upon this view, at each instant be everywhere one and the same. “The theory that, of every successive event, the real cause is the whole of the antecedents, does not distinguish between the passive conditions acted upon and changed, and the active agencies which act upon and change them; does not distinguish what produces, from what merely precedes, change.”

We prefer the definition given by Porter, Human Intellect, 592—Cause is “the most conspicuous and prominent of the agencies, or conditions, that produce a result”; or that of Dr. Mark Hopkins: “Any exertion or manifestation of energy that produces a change is a cause, and nothing else is. We must distinguish cause from occasion, or material. Cause is not to be defined as ‘everything without which the effect could not be realized.’ ” Better still, perhaps, may we say, that efficient cause is the competent producing power by which the effect is secured. James Martineau, Types, 1: preface, xiii—“A cause is that which determines the indeterminate.” Not the light, but the photographer, is the cause of the picture; light is but the photographer's servant. So the “word of God” is the “sword of the Spirit” (Eph. 6:17); the Spirit uses the word as his instrument; but the Spirit himself is the cause of regeneration.

Man's volitions are practically the shadow of his affections. It is as useless to think of a man's volitions separating themselves from his affections, and drawing him towards God, as it is to think of a man's shadow separating itself from him, and leading him in the opposite direction to that in which he is going. Man's affections, to use Calvin's words, are like horses that have thrown off the charioteer and are running wildly,—they need a new hand to direct them. In disease, we must be helped by a physician. We do not stop a locomotive engine by applying force to the wheels, but by reversing the lever. So the change in man must be, not in the transient volitions, but in the deeper springs of action—the fundamental bent of the affections and will. See Henslow, Evolution, 134. Shakespeare, All's Well that Ends Well, 2:1:149—“It is not so with Him that all things knows, As 'tis with us that square our guess with shows; But most it is presumption in us when The help of heaven we count the act of men.”

Henry Clay said that he did not know for himself personally what the change of heart spoken of by Christians meant; but he had seen Kentucky family feuds of long standing healed by religious revivals, and that whatever could heal a Kentucky family feud was more than human.—Mr. Peter Harvey was a lifelong friend of Daniel Webster. He wrote a most interesting volume of reminiscenses of the great man. He tells how one John Colby married the oldest sister of Mr. Webster. Said Mr. Webster of John Colby: “Finally he went up to Andover, New Hampshire, and bought a farm, and the only recollection I have about him is that he was called the wickedest man in the neighborhood, so far as swearing and impiety went. I used to wonder how my sister could marry so profane a man as John Colby.” Years afterwards news comes to Mr. Webster that a wonderful change has passed upon John Colby. Mr. Harvey and Mr. Webster take a journey together to visit John Colby. As Mr. Webster enters John Colby's house, he sees open before him a large-print Bible, which he has just been reading. When greetings have been interchanged, the first question John Colby asks of Mr. Webster is, “Are you a Christian?” And then, at John Colby's suggestion, the two men kneel and pray together. When the visit is done, this is what Mr. Webster says to Mr. Harvey as they ride away: “I should like to know what the enemies of religion would say to John Colby's conversion. There was a man as unlikely, humanly speaking, to become a Christian as any man I ever saw. He was reckless, heedless, impious, never attended church, never experienced the good influence of associating with religious people. And here he has been living on in that reckless way until he [pg 816]has got to be an old man, until a period of life when you naturally would not expect his habits to change. And yet he has been brought into the condition in which we have seen him to-day,—a penitent, trusting, humble believer.” “Whatever people may say,” added Mr. Webster, “nothing can convince me that anything short of the grace of Almighty God could make such a change as I, with my own eyes, have witnessed in the life of John Colby.” When they got back to Franklin, New Hampshire, in the evening, they met another lifelong friend of Mr. Webster's, John Taylor, standing at his door. Mr. Webster called out: “Well, John Taylor, miracles happen in these latter days as well as in the days of old.” “What now, Squire?” asked John Taylor. “Why,” replied Mr. Webster, “John Colby has become a Christian. If that is not a miracle, what is?”

Although Melanchthon (1497-1560) preceded Arminius (1560-1609), his view was substantially the same with that of the Dutch theologian. Melanchthon never experienced the throes and travails of a new spiritual life, as Luther did. His external and internal development was peculiarly placid and serene. This Præceptor Germaniæ had the modesty of the genuine scholar. He was not a dogmatist, and he never entered the ranks of the ministry. He never could be persuaded to accept the degree of Doctor of Theology, though he lectured on theological subjects to audiences of thousands. Dorner says of Melanchthon: “He held at first that the Spirit of God is the primary, and the word of God the secondary, or instrumental, agency in conversion, while the human will allows their action and freely yields to it.” Later, he held that “conversion is the result of the combined action (copulatio) of three causes, the truth of God, the Holy Spirit, and the will of man.” This synergistic view in his last years involved the theologian of the German Reformation in serious trouble. Luthardt: “He made a facultasout of a mere capacitas.” Dorner says again: “Man's causality is not to be coördinated with that of God, however small the influence ascribed to it. It is a purely receptive, not a productive, agency. The opposite is the fundamental Romanist error.”Self-love will never induce a man to give up self-love. Selfishness will not throttle and cast out selfishness. “Such a choice from a selfish motive would be unholy, when judged by God's standard. It is absurd to make salvation depend upon the exercises of a wholly unspiritual power”; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 2:716-720 (Syst. Doct., 4:179-183). Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:505—“Sin does not first stop, and then holiness come in place of sin; but holiness positively expels sin. Darkness does not first cease, and then light enter; but light drives out darkness.” On the Arminian view, see Bib. Sac., 19:265, 266.

John Wesley's theology was a modified Arminianism, yet it was John Wesley who did most to establish the doctrine of regeneration. He asserted that the Holy Spirit acts through the truth, in distinction from the doctrine that the Holy Spirit works solely through the ministers and sacraments of the church. But in asserting the work of the Holy Spirit in the individual soul, he went too far to the opposite extreme of emphasizing the ability of man to choose God's service, when without love to God there was nothing in God's service to attract. A. H. Bradford, Age of Faith: “It is as if Jesus had said: If a sailor will properly set his rudder the wind will fill his sails. The will is the rudder of the character; if it is turned in the right direction, all the winds of heaven will favor; if it is turned in the wrong direction, they will oppose.”The question returns: What shall move the man to set his rudder aright, if he has no desire to reach the proper haven? Here is the need of divine power, not merely to coöperate with man, after man's will is set in the right direction, but to set it in the right direction in the first place. Phil. 2:13—“it is God who worketh in you both to will and to work, for his good pleasure.”

Still another modification of Arminian doctrine is found in the Revealed Theology of N. W. Taylor of New Haven, who maintained that, antecedently to regeneration, the selfish principle is suspended in the sinner's heart, and that then, prompted by self-love, he uses the means of regeneration from motives that are neither sinful nor holy. He held that all men, saints and sinners, have their own happiness for their ultimate end. Regeneration involves no change in this principle or motive, but only a change in the governing purpose to seek this happiness in God rather than in the world. Dr. Taylor said that man could turn to God, whatever the Spirit did or did not do. He could turn to God if he would; but he could also turn to God if he wouldn't. In other words, he maintained the power of contrary choice, while yet affirming the certainty that, without the Holy Spirit's influences, man would always choose wrongly. These doctrines caused a division in the Congregational body. Those who opposed Taylor withdrew their support from New Haven, and founded the East Windsor Seminary in 1834. For Taylor's view, see N. W. Taylor, Revealed Theology, 369-406, and in The Christian Spectator for 1829.

The chief opponent of Dr. Taylor was Dr. Bennet Tyler. He replied to Dr. Taylor that moral character has its seat, not in the purpose, but in the affections back of the purpose. Otherwise every Christian must be in a state of sinless perfection, for his governing purpose is to serve God. But we know that there are affections and desires not under control of this purpose—dispositions not in conformity with the predominant disposition. How, Dr. Tyler asked, can a sinner, completely selfish, from a selfish motive, resolve not to be selfish, and so suspend his selfishness? “Antecedently to regeneration, there can be no suspension of the selfish principle. It is said that, in suspending it, the sinner is actuated by self-love. But is it possible that the sinner, while destitute of love to God and every particle of genuine benevolence, should love himself at all and not love himself supremely? He loves nothing more than self. He does not regard God or the universe, except as they tend to promote his ultimate end, his own happiness. No sinner ever suspended this selfishness until subdued by divine grace. We can not become regenerate by preferring God to the world merely from regard to our own interest. There is no necessity of the Holy Spirit to renew the heart, if self-love prompts men to turn from the world to God. On the view thus combated, depravity consists simply in ignorance. All men need is enlightenment as to the best means of securing their own happiness. Regeneration by the Holy Spirit is, therefore, not necessary.” See Bennet Tyler, Memoir and Lectures, 316-381, esp. 334, 370, 371; Letters on the New Haven Theology, 21-72, 143-163; review of Taylor and Fitch, by E. D. Griffin, Divine Efficiency, 13-54; Martineau, Study, 2:9—“By making it a man's interest to be disinterested, do you cause him to forget himself and put any love into his heart? or do you only break him in and cause him to turn this way and that by the bit and lash of a driving necessity?” The sinner, apart from the grace of God, cannot see the truth. Wilberforce took Pitt to hear Cecil preach, but Pitt declared that he did not understand a word that Cecil said. Apart from the grace of God, the sinner, even when made to see the truth, resists it the more, the more clearly he sees it. Then the Holy Spirit overcomes his opposition and makes him willing in the day of God's power (Psalm 110:3).

Lyman Beecher and Charles G. Finney held this view. The influence of the Holy Spirit differs from that of the preacher only in degree,—both use only moral suasion; both do nothing more than to present the truth; both work upon the soul from without. “Were I as eloquent as the Holy Ghost, I could convert sinners as well as he,” said a popular preacher of this school (see Bennet Tyler, Letters on New Haven Theology, 164-171). On this view, it would be absurd to pray to God to regenerate, for that is more than he can do,—regeneration is simply the effect of truth.

Miley, in Meth. Quar., July, 1881:434-462, holds that “the will cannot rationally act without motive, but that it has always power to suspend action, or defer it, for the purpose of rational examination of the motive or end, and to consider the opposite motive or end. Putting the old end or motive out of view will temporarily break its power, and the new truth considered will furnish motive for right action. Thus, by using our faculty of suspending choice, and of fixing attention, we can realize the permanent eligibility of the good and choose it against the evil. This is, however, not the realization of a new spiritual life in regeneration, but the election of its attainment. Power to do this suspending is of grace [grace, however, given equally to all]. Without this power, life would be a spontaneous and irresponsible development of evil.”

The view of Miley, thus substantially given, resembles that of Dr. Taylor, upon which we have already commented; but, unlike that, it makes truth itself, apart from the affections, a determining agency in the change from sin to holiness. Our one reply is that, without a change in the affections, the truth can neither be known nor obeyed. Seeing cannot be the means of being born again, for one must first be born again in order to see the kingdom of God (John 3:3). The mind will not choose God, until God appears to be the greatest good.

Edwards, quoted by Griffin, Divine Efficiency, 64—“Let the sinner apply his rational powers to the contemplation of divine things, and let his belief be speculatively correct; still he is in such a state that those objects of contemplation will excite in him no holy affections.” The Scriptures declare (Rom. 8:7) that “the mind of the flesh is enmity”—not against some error or mistaken notion of God—but “is enmity against God.” It is God's holiness, mandatory and punitive, that is hated. A clearer view of that holiness will only increase the hatred. A woman's hatred of spiders will never be changed to love by bringing them close to her. Magnifying them with a compound oxy-hydrogen microscope will not help the matter. Tyler: “All the light of the last day will not subdue the sinner's heart.” The mere presence of God, and seeing God face to face, will be hell to him, if his hatred be not first changed to love. See E. D. Griffin, Divine Efficiency, 105-116, 203-221; and review of Griffin, by S. R. Mason, Truth Unfolded, 383-407.

Bradford, Heredity and Christian Problems, 239—“Christianity puts three motives before men: love, self-love, and fear.” True, but the last two are only preliminary motives, not essentially Christian. The soul that is moved only by self-love or by fear has not yet entered into the Christian life at all. And any attention to the truth of God which originates in these motives has no absolute moral value, and cannot be regarded as even a beginning of salvation. Nothing but holiness and love are entitled to be called Christianity, and these the truth of itself cannot summon up. The Spirit of God must go with the truth to impart right desires and to make the truth effective. E. G. Robinson: “The glory of our salvation can no more be attributed to the word of God only, than the glory of a Praxiteles or a Canova can be ascribed to the chisel or the mallet with which he wrought into beauty his immortal creations.”

The maxim, “Truth is mighty and will prevail,” is very untrue, if God be left out of the account. Truth without God is an abstraction, and not a power. It is a mere instrument, useless without an agent. “The sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God” (Eph. 6:17), must be wielded by the Holy Spirit himself. And the Holy Spirit comes in contact, not simply with the instrument, but with the soul. To all moral, and especially to all religious truth, there is an inward unsusceptibility, arising from the perversity of the affections and the will. This blindness and hardness of heart must be removed, before the soul can perceive or be moved by the truth. Hence the Spirit must deal directly with the soul. Denovan: “Our natural hearts are hearts of stone. The word of God is good seed sown on the hard, trodden, macadamized highway, which the horses of passion, the asses of self-will, the wagons of imaginary treasure, have made impenetrable. Only the Holy Spirit can soften and pulverize this soil.”

The Psalmist prays: “Incline my heart unto thy testimonies” (Ps. 119:36), while of Lydia it is said: “whose heart the Lord opened to give heed unto the things which were spoken by Paul” (Acts 16:14). We may say of the Holy Spirit: “He freezes and then melts the soil, He breaks the hard, cold stone, Kills out the rooted weeds so vile,—All this he does alone; And every virtue we possess, And every victory won, And every thought of holiness, Are his, and his alone.” Hence, in Ps. 90:16, 17, the Psalmist says, first: “Let thy work appear unto thy servants”; then “establish thou the work of our hands upon us”—God's work is first to appear,—then man's work, which is God's work carried out by human instruments. At Jericho, the force was not applied to the rams' horns, but to the walls. When Jesus healed the blind man, his power was applied, not to the spittle, but to the eyes. The impression is prepared, not by heating the seal, but by softening the wax. So God's power acts, not upon the truth, but upon the sinner.

Ps. 59:10—“My God with his lovingkindness will meet me”; A. V.—“The God of my mercy shall prevent me,” i. e., go before me. Augustine urges this text as proof that the grace of God precedes all merit of man: “What didst thou find in me but only sins? Before I do anything good, his mercy will go before me. What will unhappy Pelagius answer here?” Calvin however says this may be a pious, but it is not a fair, use of the passage. The passage does teach dependence upon God; but God's anticipation of our action, or in other words, the doctrine of prevenient grace, must be derived from other portions of Scripture, such as John 1:13, and Eph. 2:10. “The enthusiasm of humanity” to which J. R. Seeley, the author of Ecce Homo, exhorts us, is doubtless the secret of happiness and usefulness,—unfortunately he does not tell us whence it may come. John Stuart Mill felt the need of it, but he did not get it. Arthur Hugh Clough, Clergyman's First Tale: “Would I could wish my wishes all to rest, And know to wish the wish that were the best.” Bradford, Heredity, 228—“God is the environment of the soul, yet man has free will. Light fills the spaces, yet a man from ignorance may remain in a cave, or from choice may dwell in darkness.” Man needs therefore a divine influence which will beget in him a disposition to use his opportunities aright.

We may illustrate the philosophy of revivals by the canal boat which lies before the gate of a lock. No power on earth can open the lock. But soon the lock begins to fill, and when the water has reached the proper level, the gate can be opened almost at a touch. Or, a steamer runs into a sandbar. Tugs fail to pull the vessel off. Her own engines cannot accomplish it. But when the tide comes in, she swings free without effort. So what we need in religion is an influx of spiritual influence which will make easy what before is difficult if not impossible. The Superintendent of a New York State Prison tells us that the common schools furnish 83 per cent., and the colleges and academies over 4 per cent., of the inmates of Auburn and Sing Sing. Truth without the Holy Spirit to apply it is like sunshine without the actinic ray which alone can give it vitalizing energy.

Before regeneration, man's knowledge of God is the blind man's knowledge of color. The Scriptures call such knowledge “ignorance” (Eph. 4:18). The heart does not appreciate God's mercy. Regeneration gives an experimental or heart knowledge; see Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:495. Is. 50:4—God “wakeneth mine ear to hear.” It is false to say that soul can come in contact with soul only through the influence of truth. In the intercourse of dear friends, or in the discourse of the orator, there is a personal influence, distinct from the word spoken, which persuades the heart and conquers the will. We sometimes call it “magnetism,”—but we mean simply that soul reaches soul, in ways apart from the use of physical intermediaries. Compare the facts, imperfectly known as yet, of second sight, mind-reading, clairvoyance. But whether these be accepted or not, it still is true that God has not made the human soul so that it is inaccessible to himself. The omnipresent Spirit penetrates and pervades all spirits that have been made by him. See Lotze, Outlines of Psychology (Ladd), 142, 143.

In the primary change of disposition, which is the most essential feature of regeneration, the Spirit of God acts directly upon the spirit of man. In the securing of the initial exercise of this new disposition—which constitutes the secondary feature of God's work of regeneration—the truth is used as a means. Hence, perhaps, in James 1:18, we read: “Of his own will he brought us forth by the word of truth” instead of “he begat us by the word of truth,”—the reference being to the secondary, not to the primary, feature of regeneration. The advocates of the opposite view—the view that God works onlythrough the truth as a means, and that his only influence upon the soul is a moral influence—very naturally deny the mystical union of the soul with Christ. Squier, for example, in his Autobiog., 343-378, esp. 360, on the Spirit's influences, quotes John 16:8—he “will convict the world in respect of sin”—to show that God regenerates by applying truth to men's minds, so far as to convince them, by fair and sufficient arguments, that they are sinners.

Christ, opening blind eyes and unstopping deaf ears, illustrates the nature of God's operation in regeneration,—in the case of the blind, there is plenty of light,—what is wanted is sight. The negro convert said that his conversion was due to himself and God: he fought against God with all his might, and God did the rest. So our moral successes are due to ourselves and God,—we have done only the fighting against God, and God has done the rest. The sand of Sahara would not bring forth flowers and fruit, even if you turned into it a hundred rivers like the Nile. Man may hear sermons for a lifetime, and still be barren of all spiritual growths. The soil of the heart needs to be changed, and the good seed of the kingdom needs to be planted there.

For the view that truth is “energized” or “intensified” by the Holy Spirit, see Phelps, New Birth, 61, 121; Walker, Philosophy of Plan of Salvation, chap. 18. Per contra, see Wardlaw, Syst. Theol., 3:24, 25; E. D. Griffin, Divine Efficiency, 73-116; Anderson, Regeneration, 123-168; Edwards, Works, 2:547-597; Chalmers, Lectures on Romans, chap. 1; Payne, Divine Sovereignty, lect. 23:363-367; Hodge, Syst. Theol., 3:3-37, 466-485. On the whole subject of the Efficient Cause of Regeneration, see Hopkins, Works, 1:454; Dwight, Theology, 2:418-429; John Owen, Works, 3:282-297, 366-538; Robert Hall, Sermon on the Cause, Agent, and Purpose of Regeneration.

Acts 8:12—“when they believed Philip preaching good tidings concerning the kingdom of God and the name of Jesus Christ, they were baptized”; 1 Pet. 3:21—“which also after a true likeness doth now save you, even baptism, not the putting away of the filth of the flesh, but the interrogation [marg.—‘inquiry’, ‘appeal’] of a good conscience toward God” = the inquiry of the soul after God, the conscientious turning of the soul to God.

Plumptre, however, makes ἐπερώτημα a forensic term equivalent to “examination,”and including both question and answer. It means, then, the open answer of allegiance to Christ, given by the new convert to the constituted officers of the church. “That which is of the essence of the saving power of baptism is the confession and the profession which precede it. If this comes from a conscience that really renounces sin and believes on Christ, then baptism, as the channel through which the grace of the new birth is conveyed and the convert admitted into the church of Christ, ‘saves us,’but not otherwise.” We may adopt this statement from Plumptre's Commentary, with the alteration of the word “conveyed” into “symbolized” or “manifested.”Plumptre's interpretation is, as he seems to admit, in its obvious meaning inconsistent with infant baptism; to us it seems equally inconsistent with any doctrine of baptismal regeneration.

Scriptural regeneration is God's (1) changing man's disposition, and (2) securing its first exercise. Regeneration, according to the Disciples, is man's (1) repentance and faith, and (2) submission to baptism. Alexander Campbell, Christianity Restored: “We plead that all the converting power of the Holy Spirit is exhibited in the divine Record.” Address of Disciples to Ohio Baptist State Convention, 1871: “With us regeneration includes all that is comprehended in faith, repentance, and baptism, and so far as it is expressive of birth, it belongs more properly to the last of these than to either of the former.” But if baptism be the instrument of regeneration, it is difficult to see how the patriarchs, or the penitent thief, could have been regenerated. Luke 23:43—“This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise.” Bossuet: “This day”—what promptitude! “With me”—what companionship! “In Paradise”—what rest! Bersier: “ ‘This day’—what then? no flames of Purgatory? no long period of mournful expiation? ‘This day’—pardon and heaven!”

Baptism is a condition of being outwardly in the kingdom; it is not a condition of being inwardly in the kingdom. The confounding of these two led many in the early church to dread dying unbaptized, rather than dying unsaved. Even Pascal, in later times, held that participation in outward ceremonies might lead to real conversion. He probably meant that an initial act of holy will would tend to draw others in its train. Similarly we urge unconverted people to take some step that will manifest religious [pg 822]interest. We hope that in taking this step a new decision of the will, inwrought by the Spirit of God, may reveal itself. But a religion which consists only in such outward performances is justly denominated a cutaneous religion, for it is only skin-deep. On John 3:5—“Except one be born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter into the kingdom of God”; Acts 2:38—“Repent ye, and be baptized every one of you in the name of Jesus Christ unto the remission of your sins”; Col. 2:12—“buried with him in baptism, wherein ye were also raised with him through faith”; Tit. 3:5—“saved us, through the washing of regeneration and renewing of the Holy Spirit”—see further discussion and exposition in our chapter on the Ordinances. Adkins, Disciples and Baptists, a booklet published by the Am. Bap. Pub. Society, is the best statement of the Baptist position, as distinguished from that of the Disciples. It claims that Disciples overrate the externals of Christianity and underrate the work of the Holy Spirit. Per contra, see Gates, Disciples and Baptists.

Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:503—“A dead man cannot assist in his own resurrection.”This is true so far as the giving of life is concerned. But once made alive, man can, like Lazarus, obey Christ's command and “come forth” (John 11:43). In fact, if he does not obey, there is no evidence that there is spiritual life. “In us is God; we burn but as he moves”—“Est deus in nobis; agitante calescimus illo.” Wireless telegraphy requires an attuned receiver; regeneration attunes the soul so that it vibrates responsively to God and receives the communications of his truth. When a convert came to Rowland Hill and claimed that she had been converted in a dream, he replied: “We will see how you walk, now that you are awake.”

Lord Bacon said he would open every one of Argus's hundred eyes, before he opened one of Briareus's hundred hands. If God did not renew men's hearts in connection with our preaching of the truth, we might well give up our ministry. E. G. Robinson: “The conversion of a soul is just as much according to law as the raising of a crop of turnips.” Simon, Reconciliation, 377—“Though the mere preaching of the gospel is not the cause of the conversion and revivification of men, it is a necessary condition—as necessary as the action of light and heat, or other physical agencies, are on a germ, if it is to develop, grow, and bear its proper fruit.”

In Eph. 1:17, 18, there is recognized the divine illumination of the mind to behold the truth—“may give unto you a spirit of wisdom and revelation in the knowledge of him; having the eyes of your heart enlightened, that ye may know what is the hope of his calling” On truth as a means of regeneration, see Hovey, Outlines, 192, who quotes Cunningham, Historical Theology, 1:617—“Regeneration may be taken in a limited sense as including only the first impartation of spiritual life ... or it may be taken in a wider sense as comprehending the whole of that process by which he is renewed or made over again in the whole man after the image of God,—i. e., as including the production of saving faith and union to Christ. Only in the first sense did the Reformers maintain that man in the process was wholly passive and not active; for they did not dispute that, before the process in the second and more enlarged sense was completed, man was spiritually alive and active, and continued so ever after during the whole process of his sanctification.”

Dr. Hovey suggests an apt illustration of these two parts of the Holy Spirit's work and their union in regeneration: At the same time that God makes the photographic plate sensitive, he pours in the light of truth whereby the image of Christ is formed in the soul. Without the “sensitizing” of the plate, it would never fix the rays of light so as to retain the image. In the process of “sensitizing,” the plate is passive; under the influence of light, it is active. In both the “sensitizing” and the taking of the picture, the real agent is not the plate nor the light, but the photographer. The photographer cannot perform both operations at the same moment. God can. He gives the new affection, and at the same instant he secures its exercise in view of the truth.

For denial of the instrumentality of truth in regeneration, see Pierce, in Bap. Quar., Jan. 1872:52. Per contra, see Anderson, Regeneration, 89-122. H. B. Smith holds middle ground. He says: “In adults it [regeneration] is wrought most frequently by the word of God as the instrument. Believing that infants may be regenerated, we cannot assert that it is tied to the word of God absolutely.” We prefer to say that, if infants are regenerated, they also are regenerated in conjunction with some influence of truth upon the mind, dim as the recognition of it may be. Otherwise we break the Scriptural connection between regeneration and conversion, and open the way for faith in a physical, magical, sacramental salvation. Squier, Autobiog., 368, says well, of the theory of regeneration which makes man purely passive, that it has a benumbing effect upon preaching: “The lack of expectation unnerves the efforts of the preacher; an impression of the fortuitous presence neutralizes his engagedness. This antinomian dependence on the Spirit extracts all vitality from the pulpit and sense of responsibility from the hearer, and makes preaching an opus operatum, like the baptismal regeneration of the formalist.” Only of the first element in regeneration are Shedd's words true: “A dead man cannot assist in his own resurrection” (Dogm. Theol., 2:503).

Squier goes to the opposite extreme of regarding the truth alone as the cause of regeneration. His words are none the less a valuable protest against the view that regeneration is so entirely due to God that in no part of it is man active. It was with a better view that Luther cried: “O that we might multiply living books, that is, preachers!” And the preacher is successful only as he possesses and unfolds the truth. John took the little book from the Covenant-angel's hand and ate it (Rev. 10:8-11). So he who is to preach God's truth must feed upon it, until it has become his own. For the Exercise-system, see Emmons, Works, 4:339-411; Hagenbach, Hist. Doct., 2:439.

Eph. 2:10—“created in Christ Jesus for good works”—does not imply that the old soul is annihilated, and a new soul created. The “old man” which is “crucified”—(Rom. 6:6) and “put away” (Eph. 4:22) is simply the sinful bent of the affections and will. When this direction of the dispositions is changed, and becomes holy, we can call the change a new birth of the old nature, because the same faculties that acted before are acting now, the only difference being that now these faculties are set toward God and purity. Or, regarding the change from another point of view, we may speak of man as having a “new nature,” as “recreated,” as being a “new creature,” because this direction of the affection and will, which ensures a different life from what was led before, is something totally new, and due wholly to the regenerating act of God. In 1 Pet. 1:23—“begotten again, not of corruptible seed, but of incorruptible”—all materialistic inferences from the word “seed,” as if it implied the implantation of a physical germ, are prevented by the following explanatory words: “through the word of God, which liveth and abideth.”

So, too, when we describe regeneration as the communication of a new life to the soul, we should not conceive of this new life as a substance imparted or infused into us. The new life is rather a new direction and activity of our own affections and will. There is, indeed a union of the soul with Christ; Christ dwells in the renewed heart; Christ's entrance into the soul is the cause and accompaniment of its regeneration. But this entrance of Christ into the soul is not itself regeneration. We must distinguish the effect from the cause; otherwise we shall be in danger of a pantheistic confounding of our own personality and life with the personality and life of Christ. Christ is indeed our life, in the sense of being the cause and supporter of our life, but he is not our life in the sense that, after our union with him, our individuality ceases. The effect of union with Christ is rather that our individuality is enlarged and exalted (John 10:10—“I came that they may have life, and may have it abundantly.” See page 799, (c)).

We must therefore take with a grain of allowance the generally excellent words of A. J. Gordon, Twofold Life, 22—“Regeneration is the communication of the divine nature to man by the operation of the Holy Spirit through the word (2 Pet. 1:4).... As Christ was made partaker of human nature by incarnation, that so he might enter into truest fellowship with us, we are made partakers of the divine nature, by regeneration, that we may enter into truest fellowship with God. Regeneration is not a change of nature, i. e., a natural heart bettered. Eternal life is not natural life prolonged into endless duration. It is the divine life imparted to us, the very life of God communicated to the human soul, and bringing forth there its proper fruit.” Dr. Gordon's view that regeneration adds a new substance or faculty to the soul is the result of literalizing the Scripture metaphors of creation and life. This turning of symbol into fact accounts for his tendency toward annihilation doctrine in the case of the unregenerate, toward faith cure and the belief that all physical evils can be removed by prayer. E. H. Johnson, The Holy Spirit: “Regeneration is a change, not in the quantity, but in the quality, of the soul.” E. G. Robinson, Christian Theology, 320—“Regeneration consists in a divinely wrought change in the moral affections.”

So, too, we would criticize the doctrine of Drummond, Nat. Law in the Spir. World: “People forget the persistence of force. Instead of transforming energy, they try to create it. We must either depend on environment, or be self-sufficient. The ‘cannot bear fruit of itself’ (John 15:4) is the ‘cannot’ of natural law. Natural fruit flourishes with air and sunshine. The difference between the Christian and the non-Christian is the difference between the organic and the inorganic. The Christian has all the characteristics of life: assimilation, waste, reproduction, spontaneous action.” See criticism of Drummond, by Murphy, in Brit. Quar., 1884:118-125—“As in resurrection there is a physical connection with the old body, so in regeneration there is a natural connection with the old soul.” Also, Brit. Quar., July, 1880, art.: Evolution Viewed in Relation to Theology—“The regenerating agency of the Spirit of God is symbolized, not by the vitalization of dead matter, but by the agency of the organizing intelligence which guides the evolution of living beings.” Murphy's answer to Drummond is republished. Murphy's Natural Selection and Spiritual Freedom, 1-33—“The will can no more create force, either muscular or mental, than it can create matter. And it is equally true that for our spiritual nourishment and spiritual force we are altogether dependent on our spiritual environment, which is God.” In “dead matter” there is no sin.

Drummond would imply that, as matter has no promise or potency of life and is not responsible for being without life (or “dead,” to use his misleading word), and if it ever is to live must wait for the life-giving influence to come unsought, so the human soul is not responsible for being spiritually dead, cannot seek for life, must passively wait for the Spirit. Plymouth Brethren generally hold the same view with [pg 825]Drummond, that regeneration adds something—as vitality—to the substance of the soul. Christ is transsubstantiated into the soul's substance; or, the πνεῦμα is added. But we have given over talking of vitality, as if it were a substance or faculty. We regard it as merely a mode of action. Evolution, moreover, uses what already exists, so far as it will go, instead of creating new; as in the miracle of the loaves, and as in the original creation of man, so in his recreation or regeneration. Dr. Charles Hodge also makes the same mistake in calling regeneration an “origination of the principle of the spirit of life, just as literal and real a creation as the origination of the principle of natural life.” This, too, literalizes Scripture metaphor, and ignores the fact that the change accomplished in regeneration is an exclusively moral one. There is indeed a new entrance of Christ into the soul, or a new exercise of his spiritual power within the soul. But the effect of Christ's working is not to add any new faculty or substance, but only to give new direction to already existing powers.

Texts which seem to imply that a right taste, disposition, affection, logically precedes both knowledge of God and obedience to God, are the following: Ps. 34:8—“Oh taste and see that Jehovah is good”; 119:36—“Incline my heart unto thy testimonies”; Jer. 24:7—“I will give them a heart to know me”; Mat. 5:8—“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God”; John 7:17—“If any man willeth to do his will, he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God”; Acts 16:14—of Lydia it is said: “whose heart the Lord opened to give heed unto the things which were spoken by Paul”; Eph. 1:18—“having the eyes of your heart enlightened.” “Change the centre of a circle and you change the place and direction of all its radii.”

The text John 1:12, 13—“But as many as received him, to them gave him the right to become children of God, even to them that believe on his name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God”—seems at first sight to imply that faith is the condition of regeneration, and therefore prior to it. “But if ἐξουσίαν here signifies the ‘right’ or ‘privilege’ of sonship, it is a right which may presuppose faith as the work of the Spirit in regeneration—a work apart from which no genuine faith exists in the soul. But it is possible that John means to say that, in the case of all who received Christ, their power to believe was given to them by him. In the original the emphasis is on ‘gave,’ and this is shown by the order of the words”; see Hovey, Manual of Theology, 345, and Com. on John 1:12, 13—“The meaning would then be this: ‘Many did not receive him; but some did; and as to all who received him, he gave them grace by which they were enabled to do this, and so to become God's children.’ ”

Ruskin: “The first and last and closest trial question to any living creature is, ‘What do you like?’ Go out into the street and ask the first man you meet what his taste is, and, if he answers candidly, you know him, body and soul. What we like determines what we are, and is the sign of what we are; and to teach taste is inevitably to form character.” If the taste here spoken of is moral and spiritual taste, the words of Ruskin are sober truth. Regeneration is essentially a changing of the fundamental taste of the soul. But by taste we mean the direction of man's love, the bent of his affections, the trend of his will. And to alter that taste is not to impart a new faculty, or to create a new substance, but simply to set toward God the affections which hitherto have been set upon self and sin. We may illustrate by the engineer who climbs over the cab into a runaway locomotive and who changes its course, not by adding any new rod or cog to the machine, but simply by reversing the lever. The engine slows up and soon moves in an opposite direction to that in which it has been going. Man needs no new faculty of love; he needs only to have his love set in a new and holy direction; this is virtually to give him a new birth, to make him a new creature, to impart to him a new life. But being born again, created anew, made alive from the dead, are physical metaphors, to be interpreted not literally but spiritually.

Mat. 12:33—“Make the tree good, and its fruit good”; Eph. 2:10—“created in Christ Jesus for good works.”The tree is first made good—the character renewed in its fundamental principle, love to God—in the certainty that when this is done the fruit will be good also. Good works are the necessary result of regeneration by union with Christ. Regeneration introduces a new force into humanity, the force of a new love. The work of the preacher is that of coöperation with God in the impartation of a new life—a work far more radical and more noble than that of moral reform, by as much as the origination of a new force is more radical and more noble than the guidance of that force after it has been originated. Does regeneration cure disease and remove physical ills? Not primarily. Mat. 1:21—“thou shalt call his name Jesus; for it is he that shall save his people from their sins.”Salvation from sin is Christ's first and main work. He performed physical healing only to illustrate and further the healing of the soul. Hence in the case of the paralytic, when he was expected to cure the body, he said first: “thy sins are forgiven” (Mat. 9:2); but, that they who stood by might not doubt his power to forgive, he added the raising up of the palsied man. And ultimately in every redeemed man the holy heart will bring in its train the perfected body: Rom. 8:23—“we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for our adoption, to wit, the redemption of our body.”

On holy affection as the spring of holy action, see especially Edwards, Religious Affections, in Works, 3:1-21. This treatise is Jonathan Edwards's Confessions, as much as if it were directly addressed to the Deity. Allen, his biographer, calls it “a work which will not suffer by comparison with the work of great teachers in theology, whether ancient or modern.” President Timothy Dwight regarded it as most worthy of preservation next to the Bible. See also Hodge, Essays and Reviews, 1:48; Owen on the Holy Spirit, in Works, 3:297-336; Charnock on Regeneration; Andrew Fuller, Works, 2:461-471, 512-560, and 3:796; Bellamy, Works, 2:502; Dwight, Works, 2:418; Woods, Works, 3:1-21; Anderson, Regeneration, 21-50.

Conviction of sin is an ordinary, if not an invariable, antecedent of regeneration. It results from the contemplation of truth. It is often accompanied by fear, remorse, and cries for mercy. But these desires and fears are not signs of regeneration. They are selfish. They are quite consistent with manifest and dreadful enmity to God. [pg 827]They have a hopeful aspect, simply because they are evidence that the Holy Spirit is striving with the soul. But this work of the Spirit is not yet regeneration; at most, it is preparation for regeneration. So far as the sinner is concerned, he is more of a sinner than ever before; because, under more light than has ever before been given him, he is still rejecting Christ and resisting the Spirit. The word of God and the Holy Spirit appeal to lower as well as to higher motives; most men's concern about religion is determined, at the outset, by hope or fear. See Shedd, Dogm. Theol., 2:512.

All these motives, though they are not the highest, are yet proper motives to influence the soul; it is right to seek God from motives of self-interest, and because we desire heaven. But the seeking which not only begins, but ends, upon this lower plane, is never successful. Until the soul gives itself to God from motives of love, it is never saved. And so long as these preliminary motives rule, regeneration has not yet taken place. Bible-reading, and prayers, and church-attendance, and partial reformations, are certainly better than apathy or outbreaking sin. They may be signs that God is working in the soul. But without complete surrender to God, they may be accompanied with the greatest guilt and the greatest danger; simply because, under such influences, the withholding of submission implies the most active hatred to God, and opposition to his will. Instance cases of outward reformation that preceded regeneration,—like that of John Bunyan, who left off swearing before his conversion. Park: “The soul is a monad, and must turn all at once. If we are standing on the line, we are yet unregenerate. We are regenerate only when we cross it.” There is a prevenient grace as well as a regenerating grace. Wendelius indeed distinguished five kinds of grace, namely, prevenient, preparatory, operant, coöperant, and perfecting.

While in some cases God's preparatory work occupies a long time, there are many cases in which he cuts short his work in righteousness (Rom. 9:28). Some persons are regenerated in infancy or childhood, cannot remember a time when they did not love Christ, and yet take long to learn that they are regenerate. Others are convicted and converted suddenly in mature years. The best proof of regeneration is not the memory of a past experience, however vivid and startling, but rather a present inward love for Christ, his holiness, his servants, his work, and his word. Much sympathy should be given to those who have been early converted, but who, from timidity, self-distrust, or the faults of inconsistent church members, have been deterred from joining themselves with Christian people, and so have lost all hope and joy in their religious lives. Instance the man who, though converted in a revival of religion, was injured by a professed Christian, and became a recluse, but cherished the memory of his dead wife and child, kept the playthings of the one and the clothing of the other, and left directions to have them buried with him.

As there is danger of confounding regeneration with preparatory influences of God's Spirit, so there is danger of confounding regeneration with sanctification. Sanctification, as the development of the new affection, is gradual and progressive. But no beginning is progressive or gradual; and regeneration is a beginning of the new affection. We may gradually come to the knowledge that a new affection exists, but the knowledge of a beginning is one thing; the beginning itself is another thing. Luther had experienced a change of heart, long before he knew its meaning or could express his new feelings in scientific form. It is not in the sense of a gradual regeneration, but in the sense of a gradual recognition of the fact of regeneration, and a progressive enjoyment of its results, that “the path of the righteous” is said to be “as the dawning light”—the morning-dawn that begins in faintness, but—“that shineth more and more unto the perfect day”(Prov. 4:18). Cf. 2 Cor. 4:4—“the god of this world hath blinded the minds of the unbelieving, that the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should not dawn upon them.” Here the recognition of God's work is described as gradual; that the work itself is instantaneous, appears from the following verse 6—“Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.”

Illustrate by the unconscious crossing of the line which separates one State of the Federal Union from another. From this doctrine of instantaneous regeneration, we may infer the duty of reaping as well as of sowing: John 4:38—“I sent you to reap.” “It is a mistaken notion that it takes God a long time to give increase to the seed planted in a sinner's heart. This grows out of the idea that regeneration is a matter of training; that a soul must be educated from a lost state into a state of salvation. Let us remember that three thousand, whom in the morning Peter called murderers of Christ, were before night regenerated and baptized members of his church.” Drummond, in his Nat. Law in the Spir. World, remarks upon the humaneness of sudden conversion. As [pg 828]self-limitation, self-mortification, suicide of the old nature, it is well to have it at once done and over with, and not to die by degrees.

We know our own natural existence only through the phenomena of thought and sense. So we know our own spiritual existence, as new creatures in Christ, only through the new feelings and experiences of the soul. “The will does not need to act solitarily, in order to act freely.” God acts on the will, and the resulting holiness is true freedom. John 8:36—“If therefore the Son shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” We have the consciousness of freedom; but the act of God in giving us this freedom is beyond or beneath our consciousness.

Both Luther and Calvin used the word regeneration in a loose way, confounding it with sanctification. After the Federalists made a distinct doctrine of it, Calvinists in general came to treat it separately. And John Wesley rescued it from identification with sacraments, by showing its connection with the truth. E. G. Robinson: “Regeneration is in one sense instantaneous, in another sense not. There is necessity of some sort of knowledge in regeneration. The doctrine of Christ crucified is the fit instrument. The object of religion is to produce a sound rather than an emotional experience. Revivals of religion are valuable in just the proportion in which they produce rational conviction and permanently righteous action.” But none are left unaffected by them. “An arm of the magnetic needle must be attracted to the magnetic pole of the earth, or it must be repelled,—there is no such thing as indifference. Modern materialism, refusing to say that the fear of God is the beginning of wisdom, is led to declare that the hate of God is the beginning of wisdom” (Diesselhoff, Die klassische Poesie, 8).

Regeneration, though it is the birth of a perfect child, is still the birth of a child. The child is to grow, and the growth is sanctification; in other words, sanctification, as we shall see, is simply the strengthening and development of the holy affection which begins its existence in regeneration. Hence the subject of the epistle to the Romans—salvation by faith—includes not only justification by faith (chapters 1-7), but sanctification by faith (chapters 8-16). On evidences of regeneration, see Anderson, Regeneration, 169-214, 227-295; Woods, Works, 44-55. The transition from justification by faith to sanctification by faith is in chapter 8 of the epistle to the Romans. That begins by declaring that there is no condemnation in Christ, and ends by declaring that there is no separationfrom Christ. The work of the Holy Spirit follows upon the work of Christ. See Godet on the epistle.

The doctrine of Alexander Campbell was a protest against laying an unscriptural emphasis on emotional states as evidences of regeneration—a protest which certain mystical and antinomian exaggerations of evangelical teaching very justly provoked. But Campbell went to the opposite extreme of practically excluding emotion from religion, and of confining the work of the Holy Spirit to the conscious influence of the truth. Disciples need to recognize a power of the Holy Spirit exerted below consciousness, in order to explain the conscious acceptance of Christ and of his salvation.

William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 271—“If we should conceive that the human mind, with its different possibilities of equilibrium, might be like a many sided solid with different surfaces on which it could lie flat, we might liken mental revolutions to the spatial revolutions of such a body. As it is pried up, say by a lever, from a position in which it lies on surface A, for instance, it will linger for a time unstably half way up, and if the lever cease to urge it, it will tumble back or relapse, under the continued pull of gravity. But if at last it rotate far enough for its centre of gravity to pass beyond the surface A altogether, the body will fall over, on surface B, say, and will abide there permanently. The pulls of gravity towards A have vanished, and may now be disregarded. The polyhedron has become immune against further attraction from this direction.”

Ps. 51:3, 11—“For I know my transgressions; And my sin is ever before me.... Cast me not away from thy presence, And take not thy Holy Spirit from me”; Rom. 3:20—“through the law cometh the knowledge of sin”; cf. 1:32—“who, knowing the ordinance of God, that they that practise such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but also consent with them that practise them.”

It is well to remember that God requires us to cherish no views or emotions that contradict the truth. He wants of us no false humility. Humility (humus) = groundness—a coming down to the hard-pan of facts—a facing of the truth. Repentance, therefore, is not a calling ourselves by hard names. It is not cringing, or exaggerated self-contempt. It is simple recognition of what we are. The “'umble” Uriah Heep is the arrant hypocrite. If we see ourselves as God sees us, we shall say with Job 42:5, 6—“I had heard of thee by the hearing of the ear; But now mine eye seeth thee: Wherefore I abhor myself, And repent in dust and ashes.”