the person of jesus christ - loyola university chicago

The Person of Jesus Christ

Hugh Ross Mackintosh

1912

About this version

This book was originally published as:

Hugh Ross Mackintosh, The Person ofJesus Christ (London: Student ChristianMovement, 1912).

This version has been typeset using LATEX. Thescanned original is available on the InternetArchive. Original page numbers are indicated in themargins and linked to the original scanned pages.

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Contents

I. The Jesus of History . . . . . . . . . . . 8

II. The Christ of Experience . . . . . . . . . 28

III. Jesus Christ and God . . . . . . . . . . 52

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4 Hugh Ross Mackintosh

Publisher’s Notice

8THE addresses here published in book form

were delivered originally at a summer conferenceof the Student Christian Movement at Swanwick,Derbyshire, in July, 1911. They were reproducedverbatim in THE STUDENT MOVEMENT for October,November, and December of the same year, andwere felt by many people to be so valuable asto make it advisable to print them in some morepermanent and accessible form. They have beenentirely re-written by the author for this purpose.

https://archive.org/stream/MackintoshPersonofJesusChrist#page/n11

The Person of Jesus Christ 5

The Person of Jesus Christ9

THE following pages are an attempt to consider whatis perhaps the most urgent religious question of ourtime—Who was Jesus Christ, and what can be defi-nitely ascertained as to the purpose of His life? Nosubject could be more arresting; indeed, for earnestobservers of society, none could be more vividly en-grossing at the present hour. The world can hardlycontain the books which are being written about Je-sus. Not long since the present writer had occasionto read an article on Jesus, in a scholarly new En-cyclopædia of Religion, the author of which, com-ing finally to mention the best literature, protestedthat out of the vast multitude of books he could 10name only an insignificant and fragmentary selec-tion. Then two closely-printed columns were filledwith books of all sorts and sizes—biographies of Je-sus, controversial treatises, special studies, books onthe words of Jesus, on the character of Jesus, on Hislife, on His birth, on His death and resurrection—most of them published within the last eight years.Thousands of teachers teach about Jesus every day.Hundreds of preachers proclaim His Gospel. If amodern theme could be named, that theme is JesusChrist.

The subject-matter of this inquiry may be di-vided into three parts. First, we shall endeavour toascertain the most important facts known to be trueregarding Jesus as He lived in Palestine. Next, weshall inquire as to the place and function filled by



6 Hugh Ross Mackintosh

Him in Christian experience. Finally, there remainsthe question—so vast and overwhelming—of Hisrelation to Almighty God. No problems moresublime could visit the human mind; yet none areso intensely practical. For none could spring more11directly out of our personal attitude to the Gospel.We all of us know much regarding Jesus, and whatwe know is our best possession; for no man whohas once absorbed a ray of Christ’s light can everagain become as though he had not heard His name.At the same time, we may not as yet have focalizedour impressions; we may have delayed, so far, togather what we believe in one supreme, measured,and coherent conviction, for which we can make astand, and which will satisfy the just demands ofintellectual consistency. It is to such an inquiry, andto such an at least partial formulation of conclusions,that we are invited in the present study.

At the very outset, however, it is necessary torepeat a familiar caution, or rather perhaps to real-ize freshly the glory of a great promise. Our insightinto the fact of Jesus will depend essentially on ourspiritual attitude and temper. This is one chief mat-ter, indeed, which is covered by the word of Jesus,“If any man willeth to do His will, he shall knowof the teaching, whether it be of God” (St. John12

vii. 17). Instinctively we recognize that the signifi-cance of Christ is not equally clear to every one, isnot in fact at all times equally clear to ourselves. Norought we to suppose that our appreciation of Himis at all singular in this respect. The principle holds



The Person of Jesus Christ 7

everywhere. Obedience is always the organ of spir-itual knowledge. Is it not a familiar fact that ourassurance of immortality wavers and flickers in se-cret concord with our habits? Does not our sense ofGod wax and wane with our loyalty to duty and ourpractice of secret prayer? So is it with the apprehen-sion of Jesus Christ; we may make it feebly dim orgrandly and inspiringly and self-evidently clear bythe attitude we take to His claim upon our lives. Itis right that this should be emphasized at the begin-ning. For it is useless to ignore the truth that the manwho has no wish to be good will tell you, if he is can-did, that for him Jesus Christ has no value or attrac-tiveness of any kind. Christ means something great,something overwhelming, something divine and all-sufficient only for the man who is dissatisfied with 13himself; who has aimed at righteousness, and now,to his shame and grief, stands self-convicted of fail-ure. You cannot see the beauty or the sense of theglowing cathedral window from without; to beholdthe splendour and the miracle you must stoop andenter: and in like manner Christ remains unintel-ligible and valueless to all save those who, underthe constraint of righteousness, have dared to passwith Him into the sanctuary of conscience. To knowfor certain who Christ is, we must first have gath-ered ourselves up in a genuine moral effort and beenbrave enough to look straight and clear at the facts ofour own character and of the moral universe.


I. The Jesus of History

14THE self-consciousness of Jesus—His thought ofHimself, that is, and of His redeeming mission tothe world—is not merely the greatest fact whichconcerns Him; it is the greatest fact in all history.It is from this point, therefore, that we ought tostart. It is the obviously right point of departure,since it furnishes at the very outset the foot-hold werequire in the known actualities of the past. Not tobuild up an edifice of speculation is our aim, for thatcould only have the value and credibility of falliblehuman logic; but rather to account, reasonablyand worthily, for the astounding circumstance thatthis Man holds, and has always held, the centralplace in the supreme religion of the world. To thisstarting-point there is just one possible objection,based on the hypothesis that Jesus lived under asheer delusion about Himself because He had taken15up certain grandiose but pathetically absurd notionscurrent in His own day and thus came to regardHis own Person as the fulfilment of fantastic Jewish

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The Jesus of History 9

anticipations of a Saviour from heaven, while thedisciples fell so completely under His influencethat, like the followers of the Mahdi, they came toshare the hallucination. But this theory need notbe considered seriously. In itself it is manifestly nomore than a wild guess, utterly out of keeping withJesus’ acknowledged sanity and insight. Not onlyso; to admit that it raises a real problem is equivalentto renouncing the attitude even of moral reverencefor Jesus. We could no longer venerate One Whoselife was built round a pure mistake.

It is right to emphasize at the outset the immensesignificance of the fact that Jesus Christ should havehad an absorbing consciousness of Himself, or ratherof God and Himself as bound up together. No manin his senses would dream of employing the phrase“God and I,” yet just this is Jesus’ tone. He can-not think of Himself without thinking also of God 16Who sent Him and Who is perpetually with Him.Still more amazing, He cannot think of God but thatHis mind instantly settles on Himself as God’s in-dispensable organ and representative. “My Fatherworketh hitherto, and I work” (St. John v. 17). Herecomes the strange note of “God and I,” which weshould feel it impossible to adopt, or even to imi-tate. And it is not merely that His tone and attitudeis in these ways so different from ours; it is whollyunlike anything to be found else where in religioushistory. Take Buddha. When Buddha dies, he givesinstructions that his disciples may forget him if onlythey remember his teaching and the way that he has


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shown them. Or, again, take Socrates. What he isconcerned about at the end is the truth he has givenhis life to elucidate. These two, it has been rightly ob-served, are nearer to Jesus in moral power and orig-inality than is any other; Plato speaks of Socrates,in the closing lines of the Phaedo, as the wisest andjustest and best of all men he has known; yet it isclear that it had not occurred to them to take a cen-17tral position in the affections and thoughts of mankind. How different is it with Jesus! He came to leadmen to God; and yet, as Herrmann has expressed it,“He knows no more sacred task than to point themto His own Person.” Such was His confidence in Hispower to redeem, whether from sin or death, that Hefelt at liberty to thrust Himself thus deliberately onthe world’s attention. The Gospel could be utteredonly in this way. The good news for a world of im-potence and misery could not be proclaimed save byfixing men’s eyes upon Himself. When therefore werepair first of all to the self-revelation of Jesus, we arestanding beside the very fountain-head of all Chris-tian religion.

The content of Jesus’ self-consciousness is ofcourse infinitely profound and comprehensive,but for our present purpose it may be most easilyconsidered under two main aspects or divisions. Inthe first place, He definitely took the role of Messiah;in the second place, He claimed to be the Son ofGod.18

In regard to the first point—the Messiahship ofJesus—one can almost hear the instinctive expostu-




lation of the modern man who is conscious of livingin the twentieth century. “To me,” he will say, “theword ‘Messiah’ means nothing. It is an old Jewishword. Once, no doubt, it was filled with the life-blood of a great patriotism, but it is bleached whitenow.” Most of us probably will understand thisobjection to the word, and may indeed sympathizewith it. Yet after all we are here dealing not withwords but with things; and what must therefore bepointed out is that whereas the mere word is oldand empty, the thing is eternal. For Jesus and Hiscountrymen, no single word had such a burningintensity of meaning as “Messiah.” In claiming tobe Messiah, indeed, He simply used a Jewish termexpressive of His place as Saviour of the world. Forwhat did Messiahship imply? One thing is quitecertain: it did not imply anything easy, obvious,or commonplace. So far from that, its significanceis final, awful, revolutionary. To put it briefly: inJesus’ mind, as in the mind of every pious Jew, the 19Messiah was the Person in Whom all the purposes ofGod were gathered up and consummated. The lastfoundations of being were in Him. All creation inheaven and on earth, all the Divine ways of history,all time and all eternity—they meet and convergein this one transcendent Figure. Whoever turnedout to be Messiah would thereby be constitutedthe hinge and pivot of the universe, the Person onWhom everything turned in the relation of God toman. Do you imagine these are claims to be lightlyraised? Are they claims, more over, which one like



Jesus would make at random? And yet, knowingthis to be the meaning of the name, Jesus stood upand applied it directly to Himself. I am He, He said;I am the Sent of God, in Whom every promise isanswered and every human prayer fulfilled.

At once we can see how tremendously it mat-ters whether this transcendent belief about Himselfwas or was not true. Suppose it true; then we mustcome to a personal understanding with Jesus regard-ing His significance for our own lives. It sets us rightin view of the last and highest moral responsibil-20ity. It compels us to choose, to be for or against, toface toward God in Christ or away from Him. Sup-pose it false and mistaken, what then? Can we con-tinue to reverence the man who was deceived? Re-member, this claim of Jesus has gone through his-tory like a sword, dividing households cruelly, pro-ducing martyrdom and self-sacrifice on a scale neverbefore seen, drawing passionate faith and love andhope from a million hearts in every generation; well,then, if it is all a mistake—if some one has blun-dered, and that some one Jesus—can this leave usadmiring Him any longer? I will go further: mustit not even shake our trust in God? For consider thequestion yet once more in its sharpest form. Here isthe most influential Figure in history, whose influ-ence bids fair to endure as long as the world itself;and we can see that for His own mind the Messianicthought, with its boundless implications, is vital anddecisive. Now confront this with the supposed factthat the belief is only a rather discreditable piece of



fanaticism. What light is flung thereby on the Di- 21vine government of the world? What sort of uni-verse is it in which such things can be, in which thebest and bravest and highest flows thus from a merehallucination? Surely in view of such issues it is nottoo much to say that everything in Christian religionhangs on the spiritual veracity of Jesus’ professionof Messiahship. The question is not peripheral; it iscentral and supreme.

To proceed then: it was this controlling con-sciousness of being sent, sent by God as absoluteDeliverer, which interprets all the greatest facts inour Lord’s career. That career was no irresponsibleadventure; behind each word, act, or movement laythe vast background of a Messianic commission tomankind. In the first place, this explains His amazingtone of moral authority. If familiarity had not dulledour feelings as we peruse the Gospels, we shouldbe unable to restrain our astonishment at the senseof unprecedented and inimitable authority which ismanifest in Jesus. Obviously He had no scruple inasking men for unreserved loyalty to Himself. Hetells them that they are to give up everything, to 22give it up at once, to rise without a word and followHim. Nothing must be allowed to interfere withthis, not even the dearest ties of natural affection. “Ifany man cometh unto Me and hateth not his ownfather and mother, yea, and his own life also, hecannot be My disciple” (Luke xiv. 26). Not that itwas a self-regarding claim. Jesus calls no man thatHe may use him as a tool. He has evidently no will




of His own except to do what is requisite for Hisappointed mission; but the arresting fact is this, thatHe, the Meek and Lowly of heart, should conceivethat mission as so bound up with His own Personas to be unrealizable apart from Him. To refuse Himis to forfeit eternal life; He has therefore no optionbut to insist on submission and obedience. We musttake up our cross behind Him: there is no other way.How vivid, solemn, and transfixing are the words!How they force us, if we have any seriousness ofpurpose, to scrutinize anew this Person Who tells usthat to live rightly is to accept His yoke; tells us so,indeed, as if nothing else were conceivable. Could23He dare to press our conscience so hard, if He weremerely one of ourselves, a pious, good man like athousand others? There are those who skate acrossthis problem easily, one had almost said with levity.Yet it insists on being met and solved. If Jesus wasbut one more human unit, however noteworthy,is this tone of ethical supremacy justified? Is iteven tolerable? Is it not, rather, an outrage alikeon conscience and on truth? Here, then, we realizeonce more, at a crucial point, how vast are the moralinterests bound up with the self-consciousnessof Christ. No man can read the Gospels withoutbecoming sensible that according to our Lord’s ownconviction He was bringing those to whom Hespoke into the presence of the final moral obligation;with the consequence that their attitude to Himcould be no question of taste, or accident, or degree;it was a question, rather, of life and death. We have



only to face frankly the moral authority of Christ,alone with conscience and in a still hour, to have thestaggering conviction thrust upon us that in truth 24this Man has a right to the Name which is aboveevery name.

The next fact made luminous by Jesus’ con-sciousness of Himself is His forgiveness of sin. Whenwe read that marvellous episode in Mark ii., thehealing of the paralytic—one of the most significantpassages in all the Gospels—we are at once struckby the fact that Jesus does not proclaim forgive-ness merely (which any Christians may do, andall Christians ought to); He professes to impart it.He puts forgiveness, you may say, right into thesufferer’s heart; and when challenged as to Hisprerogative, He replies by a miracle of healing.Doubtless it may be said that in a real sense wealso forgive sin. In St. John’s Gospel we have therisen Lord’s promise or declaration: “Whose soeversins ye forgive, they are forgiven unto them; whosesoever sins ye retain, they are retained” (xx. 23). Butobserve the difference. When we proclaim pardon tosinful men—whether from the pulpit or in firesidetalk—we do it in view of Jesus, the guarantee ofDivine grace to all the guilty; when Jesus offers 25pardon in the Gospels, it is in virtue of Himself. Notas though He expected men to believe it apart fromwhat they knew of Him. As it has been put: “Jesusdid not write the story of the Prodigal Son on a sheetof paper for those who knew nothing of Himself. Hetold it to men who saw Him, and who, through all




that He was, were assured of the Father in heaven,of Whom He was speaking.” These guilty menfound pardon realized in Jesus; as He stood beforethem, He was surety to their souls of the forgivinglove of God. The woman that was a sinner (Lukevii.) became conscious in His presence that He wasthe door of entrance to a purer and better life; inHim, she felt, the Father said to her aching heart,“I am thy salvation.” If till then God had been aname of fear, and past and present were disquieting,there now came to her, mediated by Jesus’ tone andlook, the blest sense of a Divine love mightier thanher sin—that initial assurance of forgiveness whichmakes all things new. A voice said, “Rise up and beGod’s child”; and in that swift realization of patient26love which yet would make no terms with sin, thepeace of reconciliation flowed down into her soul.Thus Jesus pardoned sin.

Now it is only long familiarity which hides fromus the astounding character of forgiveness. Nothingin the world is so purely supernatural; in compar-ison the raising of the dead may be called a trifle.Do we not feel how impossible it is to forgive our-selves if anything real has to be forgiven? Doubt-less we can make an apology to our own better na-ture, thus wiping the offence, whatever it is, off theslate; but mere honesty will confess that really this isnot forgiveness in the least. Strictly speaking, we canno more forgive ourselves than we can shake handswith ourselves or look into our own eyes. Further,we are quite well aware that although we may for-



give a man the injury he has done us, we can neverforgive his sin. That he must settle with AlmightyGod, and he knows it. But the amazing fact is thatJesus said to men: You can settle it with Me. You cantell Me of your penitence, and I am able to grant the 27Divine forgiveness. Not only did He say this; overand over again He made good His words. In un-numbered cases He lifted the burden from the badconscience, took off the paralyzing touch of guilt,and once for all flung wide the gate of righteousnessto those who had bolted and barred it in their ownface. He claimed to open the prison-door to the cap-tives of despair; and by a word, a look, a touch ofholy love, He opened it, so that in the power of Hispresence men stood up, shook off their chains, andpassed out free. We need not now pause to analyzethe various implications of such an act. But anyonecan see that Jesus could not have offered pardon tomen in His own Person—on His own account andguarantee, as it were—if He had Himself been con-scious of sin; while on the other hand it is sheerlyunthinkable that one such as He could have been sin-ful without knowing it. In the Roman service of theMass there comes a point at which the celebratingpriest, even in that awful hour, makes confession ofsin to the congregation, begging them to pray Godfor him; but there is no such consciousness in Je- 28sus. He is aware that He needs no cleansing. Evenin the article of death He knows it. There is no con-sciousness of sin; there is no memory of sin; there isno fear of sin as a future contingency flowing from




the weakness or short coming of even the most dis-tant past. Sinlessly one with God, all His life Hemoved among men, uttering the word of pardon tothe guilty, and uttering it with Divine effect.

The third point which in a real sense is madeintelligible by the Messianic consciousness of Jesusis His working of miracles. Every now and then, aswe learn from history, the Church passes througha certain period when she is more or less ashamedof the miracles of Jesus; and beyond all questionthis is due in part to inherited misconceptions ofmiracle as such. It is thought to be a violationof law, a breach of causation, or the like, and notunnaturally definitions of this kind create a violentand unfavourable prejudice. But it is coming to bequite clearly understood that miracle need not implyany violation of law, and that belief in miracle is29simply another name for belief in the Living God. Toquote one of the most acute of British philosophers,Professor A. E. Taylor, “There is no philosophicaljustification for relegating the providential action ofGod to the infinitely remote past, and refusing toadmit the possibility of incessant new departures.Nor have we any ground to declare that the actualcourse of events is conformable to ‘immutable laws.’This has an important bearing on the reality of thoseunusual sequences commonly called ‘miracles.’There is really no reason why the most unusualthings should not be happening somewhere or otherevery day. In fact, the wonder would be, not thatthere should be ‘miracles,’ but that there should be



so few of them.” If we have rejected the impossibleconception of the universe as a mechanical system inwhich everything—including history and all humanaction—is absolutely and fatally determined, and ifin addition to this we believe in the Living God ofJesus, we are quite at liberty to hold that miraclesare both possible and real. 30

To return, however: my point is that whetherthe Church is or is not ashamed of miracles, it is atleast obvious that Christ was not. On the contrary,we may affirm with all reverence that, comingforward as He did in the character of Messiah, Hewould have been ashamed not to do wondrousworks. Remember once again what Messiahshipimplies and must imply. The Messiah came toestablish the Divine rule, the Kingdom of God; toestablish it in a world not of sin merely, but of need,of pain, of death, of despair. If there is one pointupon which scholars are agreed to-day, it is that theKingdom as Jesus conceived it was a new, heavenly,supernatural order of redemption, differing toto cœlofrom the old disappointing order—an order of sotranscendent a character that sin and grief shouldbe abolished within its range, and the omnipotentlove of God have free play. Jesus knew that all thishad been eagerly expected by the best souls in eachgeneration, and, when He stood up to preach atNazareth, His first word was the announcement thatthe expectation was now fulfilled. The saying of the 31French monarch is familiar: L’etat, c’est moi—Myselfam the State. Take away the arrogance and false-




hood, and we have precisely the message of Jesusto those who heard Him: I Myself am the Kingdom.God’s reign is begun in My presence among you.What the miracles of Jesus meant therefore to Hisown mind was simply that the first dawning gleamsof the new day had begun to shine. The vast novelpowers of the new order, and its revolutionizingenergies, were now firmly planted in the worldin His Person; and as His ministry broadened outfrom more to more, He was conscious of His powerto work what has been called “the comprehensivemiracle of redemption,” not only forgiving all ouriniquities but healing all our diseases.

And now we come to an idea of incalculable im-portance for religion, although we cannot here treatof it with the proper fulness and minuteness. It is theidea of a suffering Messiah. The thought of a Messiahhad of course been familiar for centuries, but noth-ing could be more misleading than to suppose thatJesus Christ simply took over the prevailing view32of His day and country. He struck into a completelynew line. Till then it had been believed —and thebelief is still a synonym for worldliness— that theway to true sovereignty is brute force. One has onlyto glance at Babylonian sculpture to realize the bru-tal notion of lordship or supremacy which prevailedin the ancient world. Force, it appeared, was thesecret of majesty and power. Did Christ thereforeutterly reject the wish for power? Far from it. In-stead, as the author of Ecce Homo has expressed it,He laid claim “persistently, with the calmness of en-



tire conviction, in opposition to the whole religiousworld, in spite of the offence which His own fol-lowers conceived, to a dominion more transcendent,more universal, more complete, than the most deliri-ous votary of glory ever aspired to in his dreams.”He claimed to be King, Master, and Judge of men.He claimed this; but also He adopted the unheard-ofplan of maintaining, not in theory only but in prac-tice, that true power comes by sacrifice and pain, andfor His kingly portion He chose the Cross. This, as I 33have said, was a gloriously new conception. No onehad imagined it before; but obviously when once it isunderstood, it puts us right up against an insistent,stupendous problem. Where does the problem lie?

Some pages back we saw reason to believe thatthe person of the Messiah was the central fact inhistory, at once the pivot and the climax of theDivine world-plan; and now we are faced by thestartling circumstance that—according to Jesus’self-description—this Messiah is to perish in adeath of shame. He is to die thus mysteriouslynotwithstanding His incomparable greatness andinnocence of life. How can this be? It need scarcelybe pointed out that ordinary analogies betweenJesus and ourselves are here of no avail. No generalprinciples will suffice, and of this we are consciousin our best moments. We men and women havecontributed to the world’s sin; therefore, as weshall all concede, justice prescribes for us a personalshare in the world’s pain. Yet in the case beforeus, so exceptional, so unique in moral majesty 34




and self-abnegation, in a life where sin has no partor lot, there is appointed a death of unexampledcontumely and suffering. How can it be explained?The answer to this tremendous problem surelylies in a direction to which the Sufferer Himselfhas pointed. There are two great passages in theGospels in which our Lord’s teaching on His deathis recorded with entire clearness. The first is St.Mark x. 45: “Even the Son of Man came not to beministered unto but to minister, and to give Hislife a ransom for many.” The other is St. Mark xiv.24, where, as He gave the cup in the Last Supperto the disciples, He said: “This is My blood of thecovenant, which is shed for many.” In both casesour Lord is referring to the forgiveness of sins, andwhat He declares plainly is that this unspeakableblessing will be gained for men at the cost of Hislife. If we are pardoned, we owe it to the death ofChrist. His death, in other words, had reference tosin. Just because He was Messiah, the Deliverersent of God, He must take upon Him to deliver manfrom the sorest of all troubles. He could not bearto pass by on the other side. How or when God35revealed to Him that this self-identification withsinful men would lead Him to the cross, is far fromeasy to determine, nor indeed is it essential. But weknow that His soul fed upon the Old Testament; andthis being so, it is natural to think of the wonderful53rd chapter of Isaiah as having been to Jesus theword of God calling Him to His vicarious Passion.However that may be, and whatever the avenue



by which He travelled, at all events He spoke thewords just cited in the full, clear certitude that Hemust stoop to conquer; that only as “lifted up” bycrucifixion could He draw all men to Him. So thatwhat Christ leaves on our mind, as we ought to noteemphatically, what He leaves there as the centralfact of the world, is the Messiah dying for sin. It is apicture and a fact which every serious man mustgaze upon with all his soul and mind and strength.It is the supreme reality of human life. And it meansat least this, that whereas self-consciousness in usis one of the gravest moral faults which separatesus from others as by a yawning chasm, the great 36self-consciousness of Christ drew Him so close to usthat at the last His love bore our sins in death.

Of the two parts into which our present inquiry isdivided, Jesus’ Messiahship and His Divine Sonship,the first is now completed. We have learnt the opin-ion held by Jesus regarding His own mission, andwe have inquired as to the bearing of His Messianicposition on such things as forgiveness and the work-ing of miracles. Let us now ask what light is cast byJesus on His personal relationship to God.

As a preliminary we may remark that, if it shouldappear that Christ claimed to stand in a unique andincomparable relationship to God, this, in view ofour former results, will be felt by reasonable men asaffording relief from the gravest moral and intellec-tual difficulties. No doubt it seems at first only tocreate a fresh difficulty, since everything unique hasa strong presumption against it and requires more



than usually convincing proof. From a still higherpoint of view, however, it is obvious that Jesus’ spe-cial Sonship mitigates the difficulties we have al-37ready felt in other portions of His teaching. If Hestands on God’s side, addressing us in God’s name,it is not wonderful that He should speak in tones ofmoral authority, or exercise the prerogative of par-don, or present Himself as bearing the world’s sin indeath. We can see a meaning stealing into these facts,which fall into a transparent order and fitness if weview them in the light of His higher consciousness ofan unshared connexion with the Father.

Now that is precisely the word we want, theword “presuppose”; it describes more accuratelythan any other the real attitude of our Lord. Hedid not dwell upon His Sonship—I mean generally,in the Synoptic narrative; He did not make it theexplicit subject of debate or argument. He assumedit rather, in word and look. But what people assumeis just what they are surest of. It leaves the deepestmark on the mind of the observer, for what is donewith a quiet deliberation and composure alwaysis done with emphasis. It is thus that Jesus acts.Gradually the disciples became aware that Hewas taking a place beside God, a place in which38

He could have neither substitute nor partner. Hisattitude meant that He was the Person on Whomeverything in religion turned, completely coveringand determining our relation to God. He is theSon distinctively; and to men He offers power tobecome sons of God through His mediation. In the




Son the Father is revealed; and as there is but oneFather, and cannot be more, so there cannot be morethan one Son, supreme and absolute. “Sympathy,”it has been said, “is not more a characteristic ofJesus than aloofness or reserve. How ever fraternalHis relations with others, they were penetratedwith this quality of separateness and authority.”Both aspects of the total fact must be recognized.Never was there a more loving heart than Jesus,Who is the Elder Brother of us all; yet nowhere,not once in all His life, do we find Him steppingdown and standing simply at our side. He speaksfreely of “your Father,” “the Father,” “My Father,”and in a memorable scene recorded by the fourthEvangelist, combining both modes of designation, 39He employs the double phrase, “My Father andyour Father,” in which the distinction is sustainedfirmly. And yet—while it is from His blessed lipswe have learnt that Father is God’s name— Heavoids the phrase “our Father” with a care and (as itseems) a solemnity of omission which can scarcelyhave been accidental. Not only so, but in one of thebest accredited parts of the tradition He is recordedto have said, “No one knoweth the Son, save theFather; neither doth any know the Father, savethe Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth toreveal Him” (St. Matt. xi. 27). I have never heardthese words read aloud in public assembly, but theybrought a hush upon the audience, so lofty are they,so ultimate, so inimitable and august.

This unique Sonship, it is clear from the Synoptic



Gospels, formed the basis and inspiration of Jesus’life-work. It was in the strength of it, and as commis-sioned and authorized by it, that He accomplishedHis redeeming service for mankind. He came, as wehave already seen, to set up the Kingdom of God’s40almighty and righteous love. Its establishment wasthe appointed task of the Messiah. But—and thisa point of first-rate significance—Christ knew Him-self to be Messiah because deeper even than Mes-siah He was the Son of God. In that unshared filiallife He knows God, and is known of Him, in a modewhich admits of no kind of comparison with othermen. They are the lost children, who need the King-dom; He is the Son Who brings it in. In the secretplace of the inmost self-consciousness, in the sanc-tuary of personal feeling, He experiences His filialunity with the Father. And therefore—to repeat ityet once more—He is sure of His equipment for thegreat mission. To know Himself as Son is also, andsimply by itself, to know Himself called to make theKingdom a reality within the world of men, to layits eternal foundations by bringing home to men atonce the Father’s holy condemnation of sin and Hiscompassionate mercy for the sinful. As the only be-gotten Son of God, He and He alone was able to leadlost sons back to the Father.41

That all these singular professions regarding Hisown Person must have left a deep mark, cannotreasonably be doubted. Especially is it clear thatthey could not but affect, and affect profoundly, theminds and thoughts of His disciples. And when we




open the New Testament, we find that it was so.No one can say “He that findeth His life shall loseit, but He that loseth his life for My sake shall findit”—no one can say such words, I repeat, withouthaving to take the consequences; and in the case ofJesus Christ this meant that men began to trust Himwith the trust they gave to God. Jesus saw this; Hewrought for it; He expected it; and when at last itcame, He joyfully gave God thanks. The problemnow remaining on our minds, therefore, is whetherHe was equal to the place which He had thus takenby accepting the religious faith and loyalty tenderedby His followers. He had presented Himself as ableto save to the uttermost. And now that men turnedto Him with an honest and pathetic readiness tobe saved, had He the power to fulfil His chosentask? He had spoken words of eternal life, and had 42

connected them vitally with His own Person. WasHe able to make these words good in the experienceof believing hearts? Was He able to do for themexceeding abundantly above all that they could askor think? To this question we now turn.


II. The Christ of Experience

43IN our study of the historic Jesus it has been madeclear that He entertained a certain view of His ownPerson, and put Himself forward in a quite definitereligious character. He put Himself forward in thespecific character of Messiah—as the Deliverer, thatis, sent of God to rescue man from all his sorest trou-bles and to bring in the new order which should fullyexpress Almighty Love. Furthermore, He claimed tobe equal to this task because in some lonely sense,and by the constitution of His being, He was theSon of God. Or, to put it otherwise, He came forthprofessing to be a Saviour, on the largest scale. Wehave now to inquire more closely whether, and how,this tremendous claim has been vindicated in humanlives. Is it or is it not the fact that Jesus Christ has44exerted what we must call a redeeming influence onmen like ourselves? If He has, what light is therebycast upon His Person?

It would of course be no better than affectationwere we, even for the temporary purposes of ar-

28



The Christ of Experience 29

gument, to regard it as an open question whetherChrist does or does not save men. That He hasenabled sinners to live in fellowship with God,assured them of Divine pardon, and inspired themwith triumphant moral power, will probably notbe denied except by those who consider spiritualexperience as a whole to be illusory. For Christians,however, who cannot take this line, the redeemingmight of Jesus Christ is an assured and fundamentalfact; the point, indeed, is one on which they arenot at liberty to pretend ignorance. They wouldnot venture to call themselves Christians unlessthey felt free, or rather felt bound, to utter beforeHim the great testimony of St. Peter: “Thou hastthe words of eternal life.” All this, I need hardlysay, is compatible with widely-ranging differencesof opinion as to the mode in which the salvation 45due to Christ has been effected. We must notconfuse redemption as an experience with theoriesof its possibility. At the same time, this underlyingconviction that Christ does redeem men, if heldnow in the foreground of our minds, will help tosafeguard us from treating the present subject—ourLord’s place in experience—as only an imaginaryhypothesis, a curious or piquant problem on whichto sharpen our wits. It is a subduing thought that allround us, at this very hour, men are being saved byChrist.

Let us realize, then, that redemption by Jesus is afact, which we assume but do not prove. It is there,confronting us with inexpugnable reality before ever



we proceed to analyze or explain it; our only task, ac-cordingly, is to ascertain precisely what it consists in,and to what high issues it moves. Its actuality in thisexperimental sense, however, proves at the very out-set that Jesus’s witness to Himself, as already consid-ered, was neither rash nor baseless. His promise isseen to be well-grounded in reality. The professionof Redeemership made by Him, and on the other46

hand the human experience that He redeems, ap-pear like the curves of a noble arch rising up in loftysweep to meet and join.

Time would fail were we to expatiate at lengthon what Jesus Christ is known to have accomplishedin those lives which have received Him by obe-dient trust. That is an unending story. We are allaware that if any truth resides in the higher humantestimony; unless people have conspired strangelyto talk cant, without any concrete or intelligiblemotive but in many instances with the sole result ofincurring loss, persecution, and even death itself,Christ has transformed their lives. Men and womenlike ourselves have been re-created by His influence,changed in the depths and inmost secrets of being.In every man that change takes a different, becausea personal, shape. His redemption is as original andindividual a fact as the colour of his eyes. Each ris-ing sun, touching the wing of sleeping birds, wakesover the woods a fresh burst of melody, as if the sunhad never risen before; and just so, wherever a man47finds and grasps redemption, faith in the heart is anew creation, as if he were the first to discover Jesus.




Nevertheless, since human nature is after all a unity,through all this wonderful and incalculable varietythere run certain well-marked lines of resemblance,certain uniformities of response to Christ and ofbenefit received from Him. Let us select one or twoof these for closer scrutiny. We shall not exhaust thesubject, but we may hope to see how inexhaustibleit is.

First, then, as a cardinal certainty, we take thefelt presence of Jesus Christ with men. Since our Lordlived in Palestine, there has been an innumerablecompany of believers, who are sensible that He istheirs with so intimate a nearness that they can holdfellowship with Him, can really possess Him as anindwelling and controlling life. The late Dr. Jowett,of Balliol, who held no brief for orthodoxy, speaksin language of haunting beauty on this subject. Hepoints to “the knowledge and love of Christ, bywhich men pass out of themselves to make theirwill His and His theirs, the consciousness of Him in 48their thoughts and actions, communion with Him,and trust in Him. Of every act of kindness or goodwhich they do to others His life is the type; of everyact of devotion or self-denial His death is the type;of every act of faith His resurrection is the type. Andoften they walk with Him on earth, not in a figure only,and find Him near them, not in a figure only, in the valleyof death. They experience from Him the same kindof support as from the sympathy and communionof an earthly friend. That friend is also a Divinepower.”



It may be there is something in this languagewhich goes beyond the experience of many Chris-tians. Yet, on the other hand, when men speak offellowship with Christ, be it in living or in dying,they are not using highly-coloured metaphors; theyare not indulging in the impatient hyperbole weemploy so often when excited or hard pressed inargument; they are merely and simply reporting oneof the most real elements of their personal existence.They mean a Presence, unseen yet unknown, whichimpinges on their lives day after day and hour by49

hour; a Presence which, if they wished to be rid ofit, they would have to exert force to thrust away. Tothis there is no proper analogy elsewhere. Doubtlessit is often said that the spirit of Lord Salisbury orMr. Gladstone still abides with the great politicalparty of which each was acknowledged leader; butwhatever be the truth in this form of expression, itis used, quite certainly, with a clear consciousnessof its fundamentally figurative character. Thusinstinctively we speak of these great statesmen asdeparted; but Christians of the type I have referredto could not consent to speak of a departed Lord.Again, when we remember dear familiar friendsnow with God, we remember them as they were,in their form and habit as they once lived; but theChrist with Whom believing men hold commu-nion now is not merely the Jesus who walked inPalestine; He is the exalted Lord, present with Hispeople in the sovereign power of His resurrectionand as inhabiting a higher order than that of time



and space. And once more, we do not feel that 50anything in the present influence of our departedfriends, and our response to it, is determining ourrelation to God. Yet this precisely is what we feelin regard to Christ. Our attitude to Him, and Hisunimaginable love to us, affects our relation to theFather in a profound and decisive manner. He givesto us the life of God; He constantly renews, sustains,and augments it.

From the beginning until now, there have beenthose who denied this unseen but real presence ofChrist. A man may quite sincerely say, “I am at a lossto understand, when you speak of Christ’s continualnearness to us; for myself, I am unconscious of any-thing of that sort.” Plainly, however, this objectionmay be taken from various points of view. Thus theobjector may not himself claim to be a Christian. Inthat case, it will probably be agreed his position needcause no surprise, since only Christians can have theauthentic Christian experience. It would, indeed, besurprising were it otherwise; the really disconcertingand unintelligible thing would be to find that a man 51could actually have the Christian experience with-out wishing for it, or even knowing it—like measles.Not only so; but though he may be a true Chris-tian, it does not follow that he will have realized atthe very outset the deepest and richest elements inChristianity. Elsewhere in human life, certainly, weallow for wide margins of nobler attainment. Whena boy wakens to the beauty and the charm of Nature,do we suppose that at once her sublimer secrets will




unfold, that at once he will understand the lines—

“Two voices are there; one is of the sea.One of the mountains; each a mighty voice”?

Could one whose sense of poetic power had beenfaintly stirred by Scott’s Marmion claim to appreciatefrom the very outset all that Shakespeare, Milton,Wordsworth, have done for men? In such caseswe refuse, and rightly refuse, to pare down thesignificance of the greatest things to some poorminimum or insipid average; for we are consciousthat within the infinite experience of poetic feelingabundant room is given for growth, enrichment,52

expansion. There is a progress from more to more,as men “follow on to know.” Similarly in thereligious field there are degrees in our appreciationof redemption; and every one who clearly recallshis own past is aware that, if he has honestly giventhe Gospel a chance, there has been recognizablethough intermittent progress in his certainty as tothe greatness and the love of Jesus Christ. We mustnot then too hastily conclude that a conception likepersonal fellowship with Christ is an imaginativebut unreal addition to the original simplicities ofmere obedience to His commands. Not only doesit remain a problem whether we can keep Hiscommandments save as united to Him spiritually;but it is an obviously just principle that the questionhow much the Gospel offers us is to be answered,not by a scrutiny of the partial attainments or dis-coveries we have so far made, but by consideration



of the promises held forth by Christ, as well as thebelieving experience of past ages. In any case, let usdecline to measure the potencies of the Christian 53life by the meagrest and least daring standard. Letus hope for nothing lower than the Best from theGod and Father of Jesus.

No one can read modern literature on the originsof Christianity without recognizing that in a certaintype of book this thought of Christ’s unseen pres-ence is wholly lacking. What we find, rather, is an at-tempt to put Jesus back firmly into the first century,hold Him a prisoner there, and draw a line roundHim (as it were) beyond which His personal activ-ities must not be permitted to extend. Is He morethan a dead Jew, who perished about 30 A.D.? Now,when we look away from books to actual life, we dis-cover that Christ remains past only as long as He is notfaced in the light of conscience. So long as we bring intoplay our intellect merely, or the reconstructive fancyof the historian, He is still far off; we need not evenhold Him at arm’s length; He is not close to us atall. The change comes when we take up the moralissue. If we turn to Him as men keen to gain therighteous, overcoming life, but conscious so far of 54failure, instantly He steps forward out of the page ofhistory, a tremendous and exacting reality. We can-not read His greatest words, whether of command orpromise, without feeling, as it has been put, that “Henot only said these things to men in Palestine, butis saying them to ourselves now.” He gets home toour conscience in so direct a fashion—even when we




do not wish to have anything to do with Him—thatwe feel and touch Him as a present fact. Like anyother fact, He can of course be kept out of our mindby the withdrawal of attention. But once He has ob-tained entrance, and, having entered, has shown usall things that ever we did, He moves imperiouslyout of the distant years into the commanding placein consciousness now and here. We cross the water-shed, in fact, between a merely past and a presentChrist, when we have courage to ask, not only whatwe think of Him, but what He thinks of us. For thatis to bring the question under the light of conscience,with the result that His actual moral supremacy, His55piercing judgment of our lives, now becomes the oneabsorbing fact. His eyes seem to follow us, like thoseof a great portrait. When men accept or reject Him,they do so to His face.

But more. Do we sufficiently realize the mas-ter force which has sustained the saints of God intheir darkest hours? Take the Christian workers inour slums, in the rookeries of our large towns; takethe missionaries in Uganda or Manchuria or the farSouth Seas. What power enables them to endure notwith persistence merely, but with cheerfulness? Canwe doubt the answer? Think of those Uganda boys,told of in the Life of Hannington, who, when burnedin martyrdom, praised Jesus in the fire, “singing,” asthe biographer has said, “till their shrivelled tonguesrefused to form the sound”—

“Daily, daily, sing to Jesus,



Sing, my soul, His praises due,All He does deserves our praises,

And our deep devotion too.”56

Or take an incident like the following:— The Univer-sity of Glasgow conferred upon David Livingstonethe degree of Doctor of Laws on his return afterbeing in Africa sixteen years. The students, benton fun, were in the gallery, armed with sticks, pea-shooters, and other instruments for assisting theirnatural powers of making themselves disagreeable.Livingstone appeared gaunt and wrinkled aftertwenty-seven fevers, darkened by the sun, and withan arm hanging useless, from a lion’s bite. The pea-shooters ceased firing, and all felt instinctively thatfun should not be poked at such a man. Livingstonewas allowed to speak without interruption. He saidthat he would go back to Africa to open fresh fieldsfor British commerce, to suppress the slave trade,and to propagate the Gospel of Christ. He referredproudly to the honourable careers of many who hadbeen with him in college, and with sadness to thefate of some who had gone wrong. “Shall I tell you,”he asked, “what sustained me amidst the toil, andhardship, and loneliness of my exiled life? It wasthe promise, ‘Lo, I am with you always, even unto 57

the end.’ The effect which the words had, comingunexpectedly from one who was both the witnessand example of the promise, could not have beensurpassed since they were first uttered in Galilee.”1

1Hardy, Doubt and Faith, pp. 174–5.




The incident is suggestive on another ground. Itindicates that the certainty of Christ’s sustainingpower rests not on individual conviction merely, buton the Lord’s own promise. He undertook to givethose who trusted Him this enduring spiritual pres-ence and power. As it has been put in a well-knownand exceptionally clear sighted book: “Jesus exerteda marvellous spiritual influence by His personalityduring His life, but, as that earthly life was drawingto its close, we do not find Him contemplating thewithdrawal or diminution of that influence. Thevery contrary. He promised its persistence and evenits augmentation. That very spirit with which Hehad baptized men, and which it only too inevitablyseemed must pass with His earthly presence, is thevery thing which most impressively, He declared58would be given more than ever. By this spirit, Heclearly meant certainly nothing less than all thatHis present personality had been; and indeed, Hismeaning He often simply expressed by saying thatHe—all that the personal contact with Himself hadmeant—would not pass. It is this note which is themost remarkable characteristic of the latter phasesof the utterances of Jesus. There is nothing like it inthe later teaching of any other man.”2 The wordsof Christ, then, echoed by our experience of theirfulfilment, prove that belief in His constant presenceis no fiction.

It is of course an easy thing to ask difficult philo-

2Simpson, The Fact of Christ, pp. 73–4.



sophic questions regarding the abiding nearness ofthe Lord. A child of three will often ask questionsabout God and man, heaven and earth, which noliving man can solve; when the mind is dealing withan infinite object, it will always be so. But thesesubtler problems lie beyond our present aim. Weare merely registering the experience of Christianmen; and it is a mere fact that at this hour there are 59

thousands to whom the felt presence of Christ is asreal as the consciousness of right and wrong. Surelywe cannot refrain from seeking an explanation ofthis extra ordinary Person who is still close to Hisdisciples. Who is He? Whence has He come? Howis it that death did not silence and remove Him asit has silenced all the rest? We have no choice butto try and clear up our minds. When the Churchdid that, she made the Creeds; and we well knowwhere she set Him in the great confessions of herfaith. If any one objects to Creeds, there is noreason at all why they should not be put aside forthe time being, provided we replace them by twobooks which make a tolerably good substitute—theNew Testament and the hymn-book. The simplefact that New Testament believers prayed to Christsufficiently demonstrates what they held true re-garding His personal spiritual presence. And whenwe scan a great Christian hymn like “Jesu, Loverof my soul,” the witness borne by what has beencalled “the layman’s manual of theology”—the 60hymn-book—stands out with the same decisiveevidence.




Let us now turn to the conquest of sin attainedthrough Christ. As an element in experience this is asindubitable as the other, and it lights up His Personno less strikingly.

Sin is conquered in two ways. It is conqueredfirst and foremost when God destroys its power toexclude us from His fellowship; or, in plain English,its back is broken when we know ourselves forgivenand thus gain a great initial assurance of the Divinelove which enables us to make a start in the Christianlife and to do something like justice to the Gospel.Once we know that God is ours, and that He pledgesHimself to keep us His, we can put up a good fight;for now sin is under our feet, and what remains isonly that by God’s help we should steadily crush itslife out. This is essential to all true and triumphantconflict. Where do we receive this impression of for-giveness, on which everything depends? Men do notgather it out of the air. It is as far as possible frombeing a commonplace. On the contrary, it has come61to all who now possess it in a quite specific way; ithas come to them in the presence of Jesus Christ andvery specially in the presence of His Cross. For therewe confront the full expression of God’s mind bothto sinners and to sin.

Consider the man who is standing before theCross, with soul laid open in humility to its impres-sion. What does he feel? Two things certainly. First,he feels that sin is condemned there—condemnedabsolutely, for good and all. Place yourself beforethe dying Christ, and at once you become aware that



through Jesus’ eyes, as we behold His death, therelooks out upon us, with humbling and convictingpower, the very holiness of God with which evilcannot dwell. Never was sin so exposed, and, byexposure, so doomed, reprobated, sentenced, as byHis treatment of it from the beginning to the end.When Christ had done with sin, it stood there abeaten, powerless thing; paralyzed, vanquished,dethroned, stripped of every covering, every mask,flung out in utter degradation. Now as we feelHis look upon us, under the shadow of the Cross, 62He is doing this still, doing it to us. The voice ofHis Passion condemns our evil; but in its unheardtones there is audible the voice of God. In virtueof His oneness with the Father, Christ declares andbrings home to conscience the final truth regardingthe sinfulness of sin. He forgives our trespass onlybecause in God’s name and with God’s authority Hehas first passed judgment on it from which there isno appeal.

This is the first strain we may distinguish in feel-ing, but it is not alone. Beside it, or rather interwo-ven and suffused with it, is the feeling also that thereis love in the Cross; love beyond all we could ask orthink. It was for love that Jesus died. And let us notmiss the wonder of the circumstance that this dyinglove is felt as the love of God Himself. Actually, liter-ally, and just as we experience it, it is the love of theEternal. It is God Who in Jesus meets us, evokingfaith, calming fear, cleansing conscience; giving us,as Bunyan puts it, “rest by His sorrow and life by



His death.” If the Cross means redemption, then itis by God Himself and none other that the price of63redemption has been paid. In what He undergoes onCalvary Jesus is not merely pointing upward to a Di-vine love beyond and above His own person, a lovewhich He does no more than announce; He is bring-ing it in upon our soul. He puts it in our hand as wesurvey the despised shame, and as we gaze on Himthere comes home to us the inexpressible pathos andsacrifice of the words: “He that spared not His ownSon, but delivered Him up for us all.” The passionof God is there. When we drop the sounding line inthat sea, we hear the lead plunge down into unfath-omable waters.

Is it too much to say that Jesus’ dying love is it-self the love of God? Surely not. Let us ask why theCross of Christ does not revolt us. Why, in view ofthat ineffable Passion, do we not cry shame againstthe government of the world? Why is it not felt as themost insuperable of difficulties by all who attempt tojustify the ways of God to men? For here is the bestand holiest Soul of history, whom we dare not praisebecause He is above all praise; yet His career and64His end are such that we still name Him “the Manof Sorrows.” Why do our hearts not flame with in-dignation against God Himself that this should havebeen Christ’s appointed lot? Because we feel, evenif it be dimly, that the love which meets us there andendures all for our sake is veritably the personal loveof God. Christ is not a good man merely, WhomGod seized and made an example of for all time; in




His life, rather, the Love that is supreme has stoopeddown to suffer in behalf of men. This and nothingelse has broken the world’s hard heart. What mightand must have been the worst of perplexities is alltranscended, if we but catch the pure shining in it ofthe Divine mercy in such an intensity of revelationas solves all difficulties and calms all fears. Now, asLuther said, “we have a gracious God.” The Cross isa casement opening on a new world.

“The very God! think, Abib; dost thou think?So, the All-Great, were the All-Loving too—So, through the thunder comes a human

voiceSaying, ‘O heart I made, a heart beats here I 65

Face, my hands fashioned, see it in myself!Thou hast no power nor mayst conceive of

mine,But love I gave thee, with myself to love,And thou must love me who have died for

thee.”’

So much, then, for forgiveness. The second modein which sin is overcome is by the breaking of itstyranny in character. Not only is pardon mediatedto us by a Christ Who loves while He condemns—expiating sin that He may be able to forgive it—butalso it is Jesus Christ Who gives power over evilhabit. In the field of religious experience there isno point as to which so wide and joyous unanimityprevails as in regard to the moral inspiration andtriumphant energy that flow from Christ to tempted



men. People like us have been saved by Him; savednot in a vague or unverifiable sense, but saved fromcontempt, saved from despair, saved into freedomto stop sinning, saved into the successful pursuit ofgoodness and likeness to the Father. The gloriousfact, thanks be to God, is being repeated every day.Men who have lost faith in aspiration, whose friendshave given them up in sheer disgust or in sad66weariness, encounter something or some one thatpersuades them to commit their lives to Jesus Christ;with what effect? With this effect, that instantly orby degrees new life is imparted to them, new tastes,hopes, preferences, inclinations, motives, delights;until not in boasting but for sheer thankfulness theydare to say: “I can do all things through Christ thatstrengtheneth me.” Christ keeps what we entrust toHim. I can still hear the tones of Professor HenryDrummond’s voice, twenty years ago, in thosewonderful Edinburgh University meetings, as heexplained what Christ would do for us. “I cannotguarantee,” he would say, “that the stars will shinebrighter when you leave this hall to-night, or thatwhen you wake to-morrow a new world will openbefore you. But I do guarantee that Christ will keepthat which you have committed to Him. He willkeep His promise, and you will find something realand dependable to rely on and to lead you awayfrom documental evidence to Him Who speaks toyour heart at this moment.” And it has come true,67every word. In our time it has come true as in thetimes before us, exactly as Christ said. “He that




followeth Me shall not walk in darkness, but shallhave the light of life.” Always, everywhere, it isfound that those who answer His demand receiveHis promise. The power of Jesus Christ to produceand sustain character, then, is an experimental factas well-grounded as the law of gravitation. Forthose who cast themselves on Him, in faith’s greatventure, accepting honourably the conditions underwhich alone spiritual truth can be verified, the truthbecomes luminous and certain. They discover thatto be Christians is not to repeat a creed, or to narrowlife into a groove; but to have a strong, patient,divine Leader, whom they can trust perfectly andlove supremely, Who is always drawing out in themtheir true nature and making them resolve to be trueto it through the future; Who looks into their eyeswhen they betray Him, making them ashamed; Whoimparts the forgiveness of sins and gives powerto live in fellowship with God. Apart from this, 68His call would only mean a new despair. But Hisstrength is made perfect in weakness.

Is not all this the token of something unique andsuperhuman in His Person? Could a man who hadperished in the first century inspire us thus? Couldhe support us in the conflict with self and evil by hissympathy and communion? Could he dwell withinus, possessing will and heart? Surely to think so isto play with words. For we know what man cando, and also what he cannot. If we search for wordsto express the absolute unity of God with man, welight inevitably on some such words as we have em-



ployed regarding Jesus Christ. If God were to comein person by incarnation, by personal presence, arenot these the very signs, the authentic powers, bywhich His glorious advent might be known?

Finally, in Christ we have a perfect revelation of Godthe Father. This comes appropriately at the point wehave now reached, since it is always through re-69demption as an experience that revelation is vouch-safed. Through Christ the Saviour we see back intothe Father’s heart from which He came.

Now we may lay hold of this principle by eitherof two handles; it scarcely matters which. Of courseit is unquestionable that men may find some thoughtof God elsewhere than in Christ. To deny that wouldbe monstrous. For example, it was not reserved forJesus to reveal God as Creator or Sustainer of theworld; ages ere He came, these stupendous truthshad become the possession of many a heart, bring-ing light and calm. It was not reserved for Jesus tomake God known as supreme Moral Authority; thisconviction also had been attained. It was reservedfor Him to manifest God in the character of lovingand holy Fatherhood, a Fatherhood which embraces allthe world. History teaches that men cannot come,and never have come, to a distinct impression ofthe Fatherhood of God, in the loftiest and mostsubduing sense, save through Jesus Christ. “Neitherdoth any know the Father, save the Son”; “No man70cometh unto the Father but by Me”—these augustwords are confirmed by the facts of life. But not inwords merely was the great revelation given. The




life of Jesus, as it moved onward, was a ceaselessproclamation of the novel thought of God. For thefirst time it was shown how God loves each indi-vidual life, seeking the lost untiringly and countingno price too great for their recovery. Nowheredoes Jesus take this message into the atmosphere oftheory; He is content that it should rest in its ownunity, as if any analysis must disturb its beauty andits power. But He wrote the fact in actions whichcould never be forgotten. When His life was over,there were men and women who knew that Godwas just like Jesus—as loving, as holy, as full ofsaving and transforming power; knew, too, thatat once, and before we become any better, He iswilling to be our Father. In the exquisite words ofR. W. Barbour, “At every step of Christ’s life He letloose another secret of God’s love. All God’s loveis in Christ. Think of every act, every event, every 71incident from His cradle to His grave, and you willfind the Father’s love stealing out somewhere.” But,he goes on, “God’s love must be measured by thewhole work of Christ.” In other words—remove theCross, and at once the revelation is lowered andimpaired. For the last and highest truth about Godwas uttered silently at Calvary. That was the finalchapter in the Son’s exposition of the Father. Bythis death for sinners Jesus unveiled a Fatherhoodof such dimensions—such breadth and length anddepth and height—that sacrifice comes into it at last.The past of Old Testament religion was indeed richin pictures and promises; yet never had grace been



dreamt of so infinite as to die for man. Prophets hadspoken of redemption, but the cost of redemptionto God lay hid until He came upon whom it wasto fall. Till Christ had been here, had come andlived and suffered, it was not known to any singlesoul that God loves all men—whoever they are andwhatever they have done—nay more, that God has72vindicated the reality and passion of His love by theendurance of vicarious pain. Nor is it until Jesus hasentered our experience, revealing the blessed love ofGod and His communion with the sinful, that youand I can have hold of the Divine Fatherhood in away that makes it real, near, and sure to our minds.

Some years ago the question was asked me byan earnest and able man: “What need have we ofChrist? The religion of the Psalms,” he added, “isenough for me.” It was curiously difficult to answerhim. If a man honestly feels that the faith expressedin the twenty-third Psalm, or the fifty-first, or thehundred-and-third, quite satisfies his conscienceand mind and heart—how shall we then presentJesus Christ as the medium of a new and essentialgift? Part of the answer, doubtless, is that, althoughwe may be unable to anticipate Christ as sheerlyindispensable, yet we are so made that at once, whenwe have beheld Him, we know without reasoningthat He is necessary. Besides that, it may be pointed73out that the Psalmists themselves are aware of deeplongings and desires which their own religion couldnot wholly quench. With all their priceless treasures,they yet lack something. And we may go further.




More and more men are conscious that we need agreat fact, a reality external to self and unchangingwith the centuries, on which we may ground ourconfidence and trust in approaching the Holy Onewith Whom we have to do. We need, absolutelyand always, a fact to which we may simply respond,which is neither the hypothesis of our reasoning northe creation of our wishes nor the postulate of ourreverent hope, but, on the contrary, a substantialand significant existence which confronts us asan irrefragable element in history, and to whichour noblest aspirations and hopes can be fastened.This reality, it is plain, must needs be a Person; foronly a Person can show us the personal God. Weturn then to history, and there we encounter Jesusof Nazareth as the Divine answer to our human 74longing. Thus our question is fairly met. Do menneed Christ? How is the Father known? He isknown only in the Son. Only so are we sure of a lovethat saves to the uttermost, a God Who is faithfullyand unchangeably Redeemer.

But we may view the revelation of the Fatherotherwise. Try to think out carefully what you meanby God. Your mind turns immediately (does it not?)to the Divine character—the holiness, the love, thepower, the eternal grace to sinners. Now whenyou put this down—combining it in a spiritualunity—and turn next to the picture of Christ, youdiscover that almost without your being aware astrange thing has occurred. Instinctively you havetransferred to God those personal features, qualities,



and characteristics which appear in Christ. Theattributes of the Christian God, in short, are but thetraits of Jesus’ character exalted to infinity. Withoutknowing it, certainly without intending it, you haveverified the Lord’s own saying: “He that hath seen75Me hath seen the Father.”

But obviously this at once creates a vast problemfor the mind. Can one reveal God perfectly saveHe who is what He reveals? Apart from such realidentity or unity between Revealer and Revealed,must there not be discrepancy somewhere in therevelation—an aberration or refraction of truthfor which in the end we must still sadly makeallowance? Prophets speak but a fragment of God’smind, for they are messengers only. But He whoperfectly declares the Father—what is His place andposition? No better name surely is imaginable thanthat which He bears throughout the writings ofthe New Testament—the Son of God. In will, incharacter, in redeeming power, He is one in personwith the Eternal whose being He unfolded to theworld.

Christ saves, yet only God can save. There, ina simple and elementary reflection, lies the originalbut also the permanent foundation of a great thoughtwhich men naturally have felt so hard—the Divinityof Christ. It looks the merest mythology; in fact,76it is but a transcript of experience. A man tries thegreat venture of faith. He has studied Christ in all thebooks. He has sat still and thought and tried to seethrough his thought the very face of Christ whom




he longs to understand; and he has not succeeded.Then he rises up for action and resolves to seek theillumination of obedience. And more and more as hegoes his way, doing the duty, bearing the burden, al-ways with his eye upon the Leader, it dawns on himthat in the new life God and Christ are morally indis-tinguishable. To believe in Christ, always, is to be-lieve in God. To do Christ’s will is to do God’s will.And secretly, in the hour of meditation, when we tryto look into God’s face, still it is the face of Christ thatcomes up before us. Now the man to whom this hap-pens, if he puts intelligence into his faith, must needsraise the last and final question—Who is this marvel-lous Personality? Is He but an incident of history, awave rising on the sea of human life, as the billowsinnumerable surge and melt in mid-ocean? Is He the 77passing creature of time, or has He not rather comeforth out of the uncreated life of the Eternal? Eternityor time—do we have to choose between them? Whatif Christ belongs to both at once! What if He is as oldas the saving love of God, yet emerging into historyat a definite spot in the long past! It is a paradox, ofcourse; yet truth, we all know, may be stranger farthan fiction.


III. Jesus Christ and God

78WE have endeavoured in the preceding chaptersto determine the position occupied by Jesus alikein His own message and in the experience of HisChurch. Our conclusions, so far as they went, wereclear enough. His self-consciousness was unique,and He assumed a place in the relationship of Godto man which no other can ever fill. He presentedHimself explicitly as the Way to the Father. As theone essential Way, to miss which is to miss everything worth calling life, He confronted those whoheard Him with the supreme moral problem andexerted the supreme moral authority. Advancingnext to His reality in experience, we sought toanalyze and (as it were) tabulate what He has been79to men and women who by universal consent havemade Christian history. It is an infinite theme; butwe selected as fairly typical and characteristic thesethree points—first, that Christ is still present in fullpersonal influence, so that those who accept or rejectHim do so to His face; second, that in Him we attain

52



Jesus Christ and God 53

the conquest of sin; and finally, that He imparts tous a satisfying sense of God. In Him we see the lastreality of the universe as Holy and Almighty Love.

It remains now that so far as may be we shouldgather up our results and give them what maybe called their final meaning and direction. Weproceed to ask who this extraordinary Person is,whence He came, and where in the hierarchy ofspiritual being He must be placed. It is of course along-debated point of theory; but to me at least it isquestionable whether thoughtful disciples will everconsent to stand before Jesus Christ in completesilence, vetoing their own eager thought, asking noquestions, working out no answers, even while allthe time they are sensible of His stupendous and 80incomparable significance for religion. We havereally no option but to think about Him with allour might and with the best intellectual instrumentsat our command. Reason—which is more thanlogic—insists on coming into our faith. Nothing iseasier, nothing is cheaper, and, I believe, nothingin the long result is more fatal, than to give menthe impression that our religion will not bear beingthought out to the end, that it dies if we bring itinto the sun. The absolute and final issues createdby Jesus must be faced. Now, if we regard Him asSaviour, we must see Him at the centre of all things.We must behold Him as the pivotal and cardinalreality, round which all life and history have moved.That is a place out of which His Person simplycannot be kept. We dare not permanently live in



two mental worlds, dividing the mind hopelesslyagainst itself. We cannot indulge one day the be-lieving view of things, for which Christ is all and inall, and the next a view of philosophy or science forwhich He is little or nothing or in any case ranks as81quite subordinate and negligible. After all we havebut one mind, which is at work both in our religionand our science; and if Christ is veritably supremefor faith, He is of necessity supreme altogether andeverywhere. Growingly it becomes impossible torevert to a scientific or philosophic attitude in whichthe insight into His central greatness which weattain in moments of religious vision is resolutelyand relentlessly suppressed. At every point we mustbe true to experience, and the deepest experiencewe have is our experience as believing men. Hence,if the thought of Christ we have reached is valid,it must be carried consistently up to the top andsummit of being, as something which is true witha truth that will stand the closest scrutiny andverification of sympathetic minds. In this spirit letus inquire into the relation of Christ to God. If Hisself-consciousness is thus absolute, if He exerts thisregenerating power in experience, how shall wename Him best? Who must He be in His properself?

Now it is worth while to accentuate the factdistinctly that at this point we are faced by a very82

real alternative. For we Christians are bound toplace Christ either within the sphere of the Divineor without. Either He is one with the Father, or He




somehow is different and unlike. Take a concrete in-stance, probably not uncommon, among the noblestand most magnanimous minds of our day. Here isone whose experience of Christ may be describedby saying that he has turned to Him for strength todo the will of God, and the required strength hasbeen given. He has sought in Him the forgiveness ofsins, and in consequence the oppressive load of guilthas been lifted off, and he has obtained peace withGod. Not only so; but day after day he finds that theintenser his affection for Christ and the more whole-hearted his devotion, the more swift his progress inthe pursuit of righteousness. Gradually he becomesassured that Christ is superior even to conscience.While conscience may err, and has often done so, hehas now learned that the will of Christ, when weare certain that we know it, is entitled to control life 83from end to end. If then a man has undergone theseexperiences, so thrilling and so revolutionary, if herecognizes them intuitively as forming part of lifein its most sublime and commanding aspect, whatmust be his measured conviction regarding the Per-son through whom they have been mediated? Hemay say that he is prohibited by intellectual reasonsfrom accepting the Divinity of Christ. He finds thedoctrine logically or speculatively incredible. Maywe not suggest to him, however, that his experiencebeing what it is such rejection can only mean that heis illegitimately isolating his intellect from the restof life? He is declining to let his ultimate decisionbe controlled by the best of his knowledge and



his feeling. In moments of religious vision we seedeepest into the life of things and grasp most firmlythe solid pillars and bases of reality; what in suchhigh hours we know to be true regarding JesusChrist ought therefore to determine our permanentjudgment on His Person. And may we not furtherurge on him that already—if our description of his84experience be correct—he has accepted the divinityof our Lord morally, inasmuch as he has accepted itby conscience, by personal loyalty, by spiritual trustand self-committal. In words of the late Dr. Dalewhich once read can never be forgotten: “When thereality and greatness of His redemptive powers areknown by experience, a man will have no great dif-ficulty in believing, on the authority of the words ofour Lord in the Four Gospels, that He will raise thedead and judge the world. These spiritual relationsto Christ receive their intellectual interpretationsin the doctrine of His divinity. The doctrine is anempty form where they are not present; and wherethey are present the substance of the doctrine isbelieved, though every theological statement ofit appears to be surrounded by difficulties whichmake it incredible. It is an immense gain for theintellect to receive and grasp the doctrine; but thesupreme thing is for Christ to be really God to theaffections, the conscience, and the will. He whomI obey as the supreme authority over my life, Hewhom I trust for the pardon of my sins, He to whom85I look for the power to live righteously, He to whosefinal judgment I am looking for eternal blessedness




or eternal destruction, He, by whatever name Imay call Him, is my God. If I attribute the name toanother, I attribute to Christ the reality for whichthe name stands: and unless, for me, Christ is onewith the eternal, He is really above the eternal—hasdiviner prerogatives and achieves diviner works.”

The last sentences of this extract remind us that itis possible for a man to refuse to Christ the supremepredicate of divinity, because he is unconsciouslyoperating with a one-sided or imperfectly ethicalconception of the Divine. God—what meaning,after all, belongs to that great word? What must itsimport be for Christians? It means, I think, Love, Ho-liness, and Power in living combination and exaltedto infinity. But is it not just this unity of qualitieswhich we behold in Christ? Are not these preciselythe attributes in virtue of which He subdues us toHimself, forgiving all our iniquities, evoking ourobedience, and elevating the soul triumphantly 86above the coward fear of things? If then we definethe term “God” in such a way as to exclude Christ,this means—it can only mean—that we make Himsuperior to our usual thoughts of Godhead. But ifJesus is highest in the highest realm of which wehave any knowledge, then to speak of His Divinityis not merely natural; it is forced upon us if we wishto express our indebtedness to Him for everythingwhich can be called salvation. So that to call JesusGod is, in Herrmann’s words, only to give Him Hisright name.

Let us try now to contemplate the matter from



a different point. Take the wonderful conception—be it true or false, it at least is wonderful—that inthe Person of Christ the Almighty God has Himselfcome amongst us, has appeared in history “for usmen and for our salvation.” And regarding this con-ception, let us ask the extremely practical and inci-sive question: Do the people who have to live in aworld like this require such a faith? Is it a faith roundwhich they can build up a joyous and triumphant re-ligious life? Do they need it to solace grief, to repel87temptation, to sustain endurance, to banish fear? Inour time nothing nobler has emerged, nothing moreChristlike and fraternal, than the steady fight againstuseless pain. The sense of pity is diffused widely,so that multitudes of people steadily make a con-science of the curable suffering of the world. Theyare mostly agreed that the direst sorrows to be metwith are of a mental character. They concern thespirit, not the body. When we examine our selves,therefore, regarding our real ability to offer deliver-ance from the worst grief and pain, we find that themost poignant and paralyzing dread of which ourminds are capable is uncertainty or darkness as tothe love of God. A generation since one of the mostillustrious English men of science wrote as followsregarding the all but unbearable suffering involvedfor him in the surrender of faith in God: “I am notashamed to confess that with this virtual negation ofGod the universe to me has lost its soul of loveliness;and although from hence forth the precept to ‘workwhile it is day’ will doubtless but gain an intensi-88




fied force from the terribly intensified meaning ofthe words that ‘the night cometh when no man canwork,’ yet when at times I think, as think at timesI must, of the appalling contrast between the hal-lowed glory of that creed which once was mine, andthe lonely mystery of existence as now I find it,—at such times I shall ever feel it impossible to avoidthe sharpest pang of which my nature is suscepti-ble.” Total eclipse of faith in God the Father—thereis nothing which cuts so deep as that, nothing whichso whelms the soul in impenetrable gloom, nothingwhich can be compared, for hopelessness, for weak-ness, for power secretly to instil the dire convictionthat all is vanity. Many symptoms indicate that it isvery wide spread at the present hour. Certain of themost sombre and powerful novels which have beenwritten and circulated by tens of thousands in thelast few years have precisely this for motive—thatthe universe is a death-trap, and that we men andwomen have been caught helplessly in the trap bya Power too great for us to control, too callous for 89us to soften, too far for us to reach, deaf to supplica-tion, blind to pain. Not long since I read the follow-ing sentence in a novel of this sort at the close of aprotracted scene of fatalistic tragedy. “In every hourof every day and every night,” said the writer, “un-counted human creatures writhe like severed wormsunder the spade of chance.” The author believedthat. His book was written to set it forth. What shallwe say to men who are in the grip of a pessimismso dark, so unrelieved? When we speak of the love



of God, do they not answer, “He loves us, does He?What then has He done to prove it? It were possibleto believe in a God who did something, but He doesnothing. The ages pass and He gives no sign.” Whathave we Christians to reply? Unless we can reply, beit remembered, we have really no Gospel. The linewe employ is too short for human need.

Nor need we imagine that the sharp edge ofthe problem touches other people merely. Verypiercingly it comes home also to ourselves. Canwe forget those evil ways of which so often we are90weary, while yet we have no power to forsake them?Can we forget those persistently and horribly cruelallurements which so often return upon us, torturingand confounding our best desires, depriving us ofvictories we had hoped to gain for good and all, tillin our frailty and anguish we are fain to cry aloudthat God cares nothing for our rise or fall? Surelyin our own lives, though we may have escaped thefiercer outward suffering, each of us who knows theconflict of temptation is aware that we too requirethe assurance that the Power that made us andplaced us here indeed cares for us and is acting inour checkered lot. How close in such dark hourscomes the fear lest God is far away, too distant forsuccour, too great to observe our bitter need. “Manythere be that say of my soul, There is no help for himin God.”

Let us take this vast and complex fact—the fact ofsuffering, whether in body or in soul—and let us in-sist on knowing how it may be adequately met. How



shall we assure men in their agony that God verita- 91bly is love? For my part, I find the one completelysatisfying solution in the certainty that Christ, theSon of God, has indeed suffered in our behalf. Asit has been put, “The greatest fact in the history ofour world is that the Son of God became one of our-selves, and lived and died as God manifest in theflesh. Thus He translated into our human speech thelanguage of the Eternal. He revealed in our humanconditions the inmost character of God. And He didmore than this, for He assured us, by the surrenderof Himself to humiliation and death, that God didnot regard His world with callous indifference, butwith deep compassion and love. The message of theIncarnation is that God loves us better than He lovesHimself.”

Here, then, is the watchword for a conqueringfaith—God was in Christ. If—I confess the “if” isa tremendous one—if a Divine Person has beenwith us, living a human life, working with humanhands, weeping human tears, bearing our load andcarrying all our sorrows—then at once all things 92are changed. For then we face life, whatever it maybring of light or shadow, with hearts at rest. HowSt. Paul leans on this truth in the closing words ofRomans viii.! All the dark things have been comingback on him—tribulation, famine, nakedness, peril,sword—the whole squadron of evils striving (as itwere) in unison to break down his central confidenceand shroud his soul in darkness. How does he meetthem? By casting himself down into the depths




of the self-abnegating Divine love and staying hisheart on a revealed fact: “He that spared not Hisown Son but delivered Him up for us all.” Here iswhat God has done. He did, for love’s sake, all thatis represented by a career in our world ending upona cross. In this is seen the measure of a Father’s lovefor His blinded and dying children.

It is impossible to over-estimate the practical sig-nificance and appeal of this great faith. We cannotever exhaust the power of an eternal Love pledgedto us in Christ’s self-sacrifice. With this certainty inour heart, we can enter the room of the tortured in-93valid, or the mother mourning her dead child; wecan sit by their side and say: There is love for all,for you, in God above, and what proves it is Jesus’life and Jesus’ death. Do not cease to grieve; in griefthere is no sin; but also do not believe that even griefis unknown to God your Father. This cup of painyou are drinking now, He also drank; in all our afflic-tions He was afflicted. Unless to those whom pain isbreaking we can offer this Gospel, this proclamationof the love of Him who came in person and sharedour low condition, then we may well believe that inthe last resort the problem of humanity is too muchfor our resources. There are fears we cannot assuage,there are griefs we cannot solace, there is darknesswe cannot lighten, save by telling men in the warmaccents of personal sympathy of that Divine mercywhich did not refuse love’s last office, but stoopedto suffer for the needy. Words to express this tri-umphant creed you may take from the New Testa-



ment or from Browning. With St. John you may say,“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that Heloved us and sent His Son.” Or you may choose the 94

modern poet’s lines:

“What lacks, then, of perfection fit for GodBut just the instance which this tale suppliesOf love without a limit? So is strength,So is intelligence; let love be so,Unlimited in its self-sacrifice;Then is the tale true and God shows com-

plete.”

God is no remote Deity, watching from afar astricken world; He is a Presence and a Redeemer inour midst.

Such a train of reflection obviously dissipatesone charge which has not infrequently been madeagainst the doctrine of Christ’s divinity. It is gravelyreproached with being a scholastic notion, interest-ing to metaphysically minded persons, but in nospecial connexion with practical and effective life.In all seriousness, however, can there be anythingmore important for life and practice than to haveborne in upon us an overwhelming and sublimeimpression of God’s love? I fancy that as we growolder, as we think longer and work harder andlearn to sympathize more intelligently, the one 95thing we long to be able to pass on to men is avast commanding sense of the grace of the Eternal.Compared with that, all else is but the small dustof the balance. Look at the noblest workers, in the




home Church, look at our missionaries over all theworld; what is the inward conviction which enablesthem thus to

“Set up a mark of everlasting light,Above the howling senses’ ebb and flow”?

It is faith in the redeeming love of God. And thatconviction, as they will tell you, they have andhold fast because they are sure that Jesus Christis Immanuel, that He came out of the very beingand bosom of God Himself, and came at great cost.In Him they have found the touch and breathingof the Father. It is not manuals of theology whichprove this. Turn the pages of the hymn-book, andevidence of where the Church feels the centre ofgravity in her creed to lie is discoverable on everyside. One instance must suffice. Matthew Arnold,you remember, pronounced “When I survey thewondrous Cross” the greatest hymn in the English96language. It is at least one of the greatest. Read thefirst lines of the second verse—

“Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast,Save in the death of Christ, my God.”

Here is the ever-recurring note. From the very out-set, faith has lived on the personal presence of Godin Christ.

If we have moved thus far, however, it seemsbut reasonable to take a further step. I mean thatif we are trying for a view of God’s love which is



really transcendent—something than which we canimagine nothing greater, because in subduing mag-nitude it goes beyond all we could ask or think—weseem to gain a standpoint where the idea of thepreexistence of Christ begins to count. It is an ideawhich of course comes up repeatedly in the NewTestament—mostly by allusion, as if too familiar toevery Christian to need comment or enforcing. Forexample, there is St. Paul’s glorious verse—all themore amazing that in his argument it forms a mere 97aside, the careless riches (as it were) of the apostolicmind: “Ye know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ,that, though He was rich, yet for your sakes Hebecame poor, that ye through His poverty might berich.” Or again: “Have this mind in you, which wasalso in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God,counted it not a prize to be on an equality with God,but emptied Himself, taking the form of a servant,being made in the likeness of men; and being foundin fashion as a man, He humbled Himself, becomingobedient unto death, yea, the death of the cross.”The Apostle is speaking of the coming of Christto earth. He is not dealing in metaphysics; he isdealing in the deepest and purest religion; and, asBishop Gore has pointed out, what occupies hismind is not the method of the Incarnation, but itsmotive. He is totally absorbed and over masteredby the vision of the grace through which Christ hadstooped down, so that in consequence of this unex-ampled self-impoverishment we became rich, “heirsof God,” as he has elsewhere said, “and joint heirs 98




with Christ.” Now this means, if it means anything,that the love embodied and conveyed in Christ wereso great for his heart and imagination only becausehe thus caught sight of that vast background ofeternal being whose glory must be sacrificed or laidaside ere Christ’s earthly career had its beginning.“Any gift Christ has for me,” says a modern writer,“depends on this, that He became poor. I need aGod to heal the trouble of my life, but a God remote,inapprehensible, is no God for the heart. He mayhave all fulness of strength and wisdom and love,but if these cannot display themselves they might aswell have no existence. Wisdom does not sit apartfrom life, but proves itself to be wisdom by enteringinto affairs and guiding them to worthy issues.And love, also, is no abstraction; it shows itself inloving, entering into conditions which are foreignto it in order to prove its quality. It takes upon itselfburdens which are not its own, it throws aside everyprivilege and restriction, and plunges into the thickof common life. All that is in God could not be99known without an Incarnation.”

Faith, one feels, will always find it natural toecho this conviction. Doubtless the conception ofChrist’s pre-existence—His eternity were a bettername—is one of immense difficulty. For here welight upon the enigma which in religion confrontsus at every turn—the relation of eternity and time.It would scarcely be going too far to say that everystatement of the doctrine of pre-existence whichhas ever yet been made always contains those self-



contradictions, those manifest breaches of the rulesof logic, which indicate that the human intellectis baffled. At the same time all will confess thatvarious points emerge in life where, although wemay not succeed in (as it were) getting our handround a truth, yet the truth is there. We can feel thatthe dimly-perceived thought is essential for theinterpretation of experience; it is apprehended, evenif not comprehended. No one has explained moralfreedom convincingly, yet its reality is plain. No onecan tell how or why my will contracts the muscle of 100my arm, when I choose; yet the contraction happens.In like manner one need not feel debarred by theunquestionable difficulties of the idea from takingthe pre-existence of Christ as a supremely worthysymbol and indication of an infinite, unnameablefact. Whatever its defects, it is at least incalculablytruer than its negation. It wonderfully assists theimagination when we are trying to form a transcen-dent view of the Divine love which gave Christ, thatwe should realize how His being here at all meantsacrifice, sacrifice of a kind and magnitude which“pass understanding.”

Of course it may be said with truth and point:God’s love is visible elsewhere than in Christ. Yes:it is visible elsewhere because it exists elsewhere. Itis there in the

Relations dear, and all the charitiesOf father, son, and brother.

It is there in all high and saintly lives. Yet in



contemplating such lives we scarcely feel ourselvesin the presence of Divine self abnegation. We do101not feel that they convey Divine benefits purchasedat a great price. Such human exhibitions of love,purity, and goodness are not such as manifestlyto cost God much. But precisely this is what wefeel in Jesus. Standing in His presence, we areconscious of “a love in God which we do not earn,which we can never repay, but which in our sinscomes to meet us with mercy; a love which becomesincarnate in the Lamb of God bearing the sin ofthe world, and putting it away by the sacrifice ofHimself.” That means stupendous renunciation onGod’s part, for our sake. And this Divine acceptanceof pain, dependence, shame, and death, I repeat,has gone to the world’s heart. Ten thousand timesit has melted down in contrition and gratitudethose who must otherwise have remained stony,friendless, and despairing. In common life we wellknow—ofttimes we know it later with shame andunavailing sorrow—the difference between sendinga sympathetic message to the suffering and goingto their relief in person. Of course the analogyis incomplete and must be drawn with care; yet102it does help us to form a worthy conception ofsomething great that was in God’s mind towardsthe world when Christ came into our midst. Itmarks the significant distinction between the ideaof Jesus Christ on the one hand as a prophet ormessenger only, and on the other hand as the Sonwho stooped down to identify Himself with us in




“an act of loving communion with our misery,”that the redeeming Life might be achieved underhuman conditions. This is a difference which menunderstand perfectly; and the tone of our noblestreligious conception—the conception of God asFather—is altered, subtly but unmistakably andpervasively, I believe, according as we choose theone reading of Jesus or the other.

It is not—let this be reiterated once again— itis not that God cannot be known as Love apartfrom His Incarnation in Christ. It is rather that;apart from Incarnation His love is not exhibitedso amazingly. It does not so inspire and awe andoverwhelm us. Great as the humanitarian Gospel is, 103we can imagine one yet greater. When I read certainmodern books about Jesus—books of a noble spirit,the authors of which one hails as brethren in faith—thought seems to travel out far and beyond all theyhave to offer, out to something vaster, somethingstill more subduing. They do not make us feel thatin Christ, His whole being and doing, but especiallyin His cross, God Himself is touching our livesand laying hold of us. But faith asks for the veryprofoundest meaning capable of being conveyed bythe words, “God loves the world”; the interpretationwith most grace in it, most of the appeal that willreach and win the guilty. And once again I suggestthat when this thought of Divine Incarnation goesout of Christianity it makes a blank nothing else canfill. The scale on which God’s love is manifested ischanged, and can never again be quite the same.



This is no mere theological refinement but a purelyreligious matter. A Christ who is eternal, and aChrist of whom we do not know whether He iseternal or not, are profoundly different objects,104and the types of faith they respectively evoke mustdiffer widely in horizon and in moral inspiration. IfChrist grows on the soil of human nature, as simplyhuman, we shall have to curtail our once gloriousvision of the self-sacrificing love of the Eternal.

It is the standpoint furnished by Incarnation,then; which enables us to realize the quite inex-pressible stake of religion in Christ’s Person as anembodiment, absolute and unsurpassable, of thelove of God. Let us recollect, as we now conclude,that precisely this supreme interest or motive wentto shape the formulation of what we call the doctrineof the Divine Trinity. There operated the same desireto see the love of God as constitutive of His verylife. When men began to clear up their minds asto the implications of Jesus’ self-chosen name of“Son”; when they inquired what it meant for Godto be Father in His inmost being, it appeared tothem that if God were Father essentially, He mustbe so eternally and by intrinsic nature. He did notbegin to be Father perfectly when the perfect Sonwas born into the world. He had been Father from105everlasting to everlasting, “ere the worlds began tobe.” But if God is Father eternally, then Christ iseternally the Son of His love, and the Father andthe Son are ineffably one in the eternal perfectnessof the absolute personal life. The inner life of God,




before all worlds, we cannot think of save as thescene of moral and spiritual relationships—of loveactive, actual, and unimpeded; therefore, since weregard Christ, and also the Spirit given to testify ofHim, as participant in the supreme Godhead, wespeak in faith of the Divine Trinity. Thus we find ahome for Love in the depths of the Divine nature,“not,” it has been said, “from any wanton intrusioninto mysteries, but under the necessity of breakingsilence.” We see through a glass darkly, but therealities we discern even thus faintly are significantof the infinite richness and fulness of the life of God,Who from the beginning has been sufficient untoHimself.

Whatever may be said regarding this doctrine,whatever the uses to which it has been put—and 106

not seldom they have been evil—the conception towhich it points is at least a great and impressive one.Nay more, at bottom it is profoundly religious. Weread again the words, “Father, glorify Thou Me withThine own self, with the glory which I had withThee before the world was”; and as their solemnand elusive wonder lingers on the soul we feel againhow noble and subduing is that vision of the OneGod which beholds Him as never alone, but alwaysthe Father towards Whom the Son has been everlooking in the Spirit of eternal Love.

We have sought to contemplate the Lord JesusChrist reverently in the distinct aspects of His be-ing. We have dwelt on His attitude to men in Pales-



tine; we have beheld Him as He still speaks and liveswithin human souls; finally, and with a deep senseof intellectual limitation, we have sought to indicateHis connexion with the inner life of God. What is the107conclusion to which we have been led? Was JesusChrist a Teacher of spiritual truth, who sealed Histeaching with a noble death? That certainly, but alsomore. Was He the chief among the saints, who stilllives on in lives made better by His timeless moralbeauty? That certainly, but also more. Was He theWord of God, the transcendent message of the Cre-ator to His creatures, breaking the æonian silence ofNature and revealing a Divine Heart in which wemortals have an inalienable place? That certainly;that beyond all doubt and question. Yet when welook onward still, we find no barrier to the venera-tion, the trust, the worship with which He is to beregarded. “He that hath seen Me hath seen the Fa-ther.”

But let us not grow confused with many words.It is in the light of a sinner’s conscience, and onlythere, that the fact of Christ becomes quite luminous.Within us all are two great elemental impulses, twovital and supreme desires. We crave an infinite giftwhich will satisfy even these insatiable hearts; a gift108absolute, unending, eternal. We crave an infinite ob-ject also in which we may lose ourselves for ever andfor ever. At once to take and to give in boundlessmeasure; nothing less will satisfy the heart. Thesetwo desires are met in the Christ whom we havestudied. He is the Saviour, and He is the Leader.




His gifts to us are wonderful—sin pardoned, sorrowlightened, death abolished, heaven opened, and apresent God in every trouble. Through Him we aremade personalities: no longer things, or links in achain, but free men. But also He is the Leader, im-posing on us an infinite demand. He leads us outinto ever wider pastures of truth and duty, of serviceand self-denial from which there is no discharge, ina bond of union with Himself to which even deathwill make no difference. All this Jesus Christ will beto you and me. Rise up and claim this Jesus for yourown. Claim Him, not for self merely, but for all whoare dependent on your influence for their thought oflife. So abide in Him, the Life and Light of men, thatit shall be natural for you to turn to your neighbour 109and your friend and say: “I have found the secret. Ihave found the Father. I have found the Son of Manwho is also the Son of God.”


the person of jesus christ - loyola university chicago

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