7. The Spiritual Constitution of the World

CHAPTER VII THE SPIRITUAL CONSTITUTION OF THE WORLD IN the last chapter we have considered what is involved in the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God as it is revealed in the New Testament; how far it can be considered as a guide, in a strict sense, to the truth of the relationship of God to men; what is contained in it in regard both to the inner life of the Godhead and to its outward manifestations; what light it sheds upon human nature and upon the practical ideals of religion. We have been considering the doctrine as a doctrine.

We now pass to the study of God’s actual dealings with the world as they have been wrought out in giving effect to His Fatherhood. It is impossible, within our limits, to consider this subject with the fulness which might be expected in a compendium of theology. It is sufficient for our purpose to treat of the three great stages of God’s dealings as they are made known to us; remembering, as we do so, that, while we may thus separate them for examination, they are parts of an indissoluble whole. In the course of this examination an indication will be given of the point of view from which those elements and aspects which are passed over lightly are regarded. In the first place, God has constituted the world has created, preserves, and orders it in relationship to Himself and to His purposes. In the second place, He has redeemed mankind from sin, through the incarnation, sacrifice, and exaltation of our Lord Jesus Christ. And, in the next place, upon the basis of that original constitution and of the redemption in Christ Jesus, He is preparing, by the dispensation of the Spirit, that final consummation of all things in which the goal of His purposes in creation and redemption shall be reached.

We have, then, to consider these three stages in their relationship to the Fatherhood of God as revealed in Christ, and incidentally their relations to one another as governed by that relationship. In this chapter we shall confine our inquiry to the first, namely, the spiritual constitution of the world. The facts which make our starting-point are as follows. In the fulness of the times our Lord Jesus Christ appeared, uniting God and man in His own Person, revealing and accomplishing a ministry of reconciliation between God and man. The relationship to God in which He appeared, and by giving effect to which His whole life was lived out, alike in its individual perfection and in its world-renewing power was the relationship of Sonship, manifesting and responding to the Fatherhood of God. It was in human nature normally constituted that He manifested that Fatherhood and Sonship. In thus manifesting it, He stood in such relationship of solidarity to the whole human race that He called Himself the “ Son of Man.” The peculiar gift which He bestowed upon all who received Him was “ the right to become the sons of God” (John 1:12). In coming to that sonship, they approached, by His own Spirit and in Him, to the glory of perfect and typical human nature which was manifest in Him; they came thereby to the full realisation of their own nature, and without thus entering into the spirit of sonship they were incomplete. The positive side, nay more, the active means, of their redemption from sin and from all evil was simply the bringing them into the light and life of sonship. And with sonship came the sense of heirship over the world and all experiences in it, which, while it receives such marked expression in St. Paul’s Epistles, is common in principle to all the apostolic writers.

These are the outstanding facts made manifest in the gospel. What do they involve and set forth in regard to the nature and motives of God’s action in creating and constituting the world? What do they reveal as necessarily involved in a world thus created and constituted? The redemption and consummation of the world being brought about by the manifestation of the Son of God in a typical human life, what is thereby revealed as to the antecedent and essential constitution of a world which can be perfected in this and in no other way? It is obvious, to begin with, that thus to conceive the universe in the light of what is manifested in the gospel, necessitates our attaching new importance to the facts of the holy Trinity and the Incarnation, not merely as being important for redemption, but as being equally important for understanding the original nature and constitution of the world thus redeemed; indeed, as being thus potent in redemption because of their relation to creation. In this respect Christian theology has suffered grievously since early times, and in two ways. In the first place, while the truth of the holy Trinity and of the Incarnation has been revealed in the New Testament prominently in relation to the redemption of man from sin, yet the redemption of man is not kept separate from his creation. In the New Testament, as we shall shortly see, the nature and conditions of creation lay down the nature and conditions of redemption. Owing, however, to the sharp separation which dogmatic theology in its more abstract phases has set up, there has been a very full doctrine of the relation of the holy Trinity to redemption, but there has been no similarly full doctrine of the relation of the holy Trinity to creation. And the doctrine of redemption itself has been impoverished by the failure to perceive how the action of the Godhead in redemption was based upon and determined by His characteristic activity in creation. Of course this could not be altogether left out of account; and hence reasons have always been given, even in forms of theological teaching least satisfactory in connecting creation with redemption, why the Son, rather than any other Person in the holy Trinity, should undertake the work of redemption; and these reasons have generally included not only His relations within the Godhead, making it especially fitting that the Son should be sent, but also His relations to mankind, making it especially possible for Him so to become their representative as to accomplish their salvation. But all this has not been so thoroughly worked out as to do justice to the teaching of the New Testament on the subject. In addition to, and largely because of, this neglect of the deeper teachings of the New Testament as to the relations of the holy Trinity to creation, certain philosophical modes of thought have been introduced into Christian theology which have still further hindered men from perceiving the full truth on this subject.

We have seen what an important change passed over the theology of the Church when the influence of Plato was super seded by that of Aristotle. With Athanasius, for example, the doctrine of the holy Trinity was all-important for the explanation of the world as originally created. The intensity of his opposition to Arms was in the interests of a true doctrine of the spiritual constitution of mankind, however imperfectly Athanasius may have carried such a doctrine out, as much as in those of a true doctrine of the Godhead, and a true interpretation of the New Testament witness to our Lord. But the theology of the Middle Ages, which separated natural from revealed theology, practically apportioned creation to the former and redemption to the latter. Then creation was explained by the conceptions of Aristotle, not by those of St. Paul and St. John.

Hence, gradually, the conception of creation became prevailingly mechanical. God became the great Artificer, producing out of nothing the material upon which He wrought, arranging within it, according to later thought, a system of comparatively self-sufficing “ second causes,” so as to enable the great cosmic system to run on, like clock work, without any interference from Himself. Exception was generally made of occasional miracles, wrought to attest a revelation introduced from without, and needing such attestation in part because the revelation and the system of the world were apparently contrasted both in principle and in purpose. Having set up such a self-contained and mechanical world by means of such conceptions, where is there room to give effect to that revelation of the vital relations of the holy Trinity to the universe which are the characteristic message of the Epistle to the Colossians and of the Prologue to the Gospel of St. John? The roots having been thus destroyed in thought, when the doctrine of the holy Trinity appears in its full importance for redemption it wears a somewhat unnatural look, because it stands out of all apparent relation to the inmost constitution of all things.

Once grasp, however, the full doctrine of the Fatherhood of God as it is contained in the New Testament andmanifested in the Incarnation, and, with the remembrance that human nature can only be consummated by the manifestation of the Son of God and redeemed by entering into His sonship, it becomes necessary once more to return to the profounder Christian theology, and, above all, to the New Testament itself, in order to rediscover that the fact of the holy Trinity, which is so fully manifest in the redemption of the world, is also the only satisfactory explanation of its creation and constitution. The New Testament especially the two great writings to which reference has been made treats the universe as a totality an interrelated order of things made through, in, and to the Son, in such wise that nature culminates in and is the heritage of man, who is in essence and capability filial, and is therefore capable of receiving, manifesting, and being consummated by the Son of God. That man’s nature should only be perfected in sonship, and should give through out and all along the promise of sonship, this is to say that the eternal relationship subsisting between the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit in the interior life of the Godhead, has, so to speak, overflowed, so that it might permeate the life of the universe which the Triune God has called into existence. In short, the relationship of Fatherhood and Sonship, which is eternal in the Godhead, constitutes the motives of creation, lays down the Divine relationships in which its life must be unfolded, fixes its nature, potentialities, and end, and must necessarily do so, because the Eternal Son is to be made manifest in it and to it.

Thus the Epistle to the Colossians more fully than even the Prologue to St. John’s Gospel, though the principle contained in both is the same becomes the new Genesis, and our explanation of the world must begin now, not merely with “ In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth,” but with that great proposition as every term of it is filled in with the full meaning which is contained in the revelation of the Son of God “ made flesh.” St. Paul knew that this was the case, and it is the bearing of this truth upon Christian doctrine and philosophy that it is so necessary for us once more to realise.

St. Paul’s great declaration is that “in Him were all things created, in the heavens and upon the earth, things visible and things invisible, whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers; all things have been created through Him, and unto Him; and He is before all things, and in Him all things consist” (Colossians 1:16, Colossians 1:17). The following propositions are involved herein:

1. That Christ, as the Son, is the culmination of the world, gathering together all things unto Himself.

2. That because Christ, the Son, thus consummates and possesses the world, therefore He interprets its meaning and manifests its inmost life.

3. That, in order to all this, the world is a continuous and interrelated whole; spiritual in its ground and purpose, vitally connected in all its parts, the lower being preparatory and subservient to the higher, each stage lying rot merely outside what is above it and in contrast to it, but being assumed by it; and all, from lowest to highest, subsisting for ever in the Son, who gives them the law of their being and coherence.

4. Finally, that the Son, who thus consummates, unifies, and interprets the whole universe, which subsists in Him, is, in the unity of the Godhead, the means as well as the law and end of its creation.

We must investigate these propositions in order.

I. Christ, the Son, is the culmination, the end, of all things “ All things have been created unto Him.” It is nothing short of the universe of which Christ is the culmination. Just as each lower stage of existence is assimilated by and serves the ends of that which is above it, so “ all things “are subordinate to Christ, and serve the purposes of His life.

They are “ unto “ Him, exist in reference to Him, and cul minate in Him, not as the last milestone of a journey, but in complete subservience to His ends.

It is particularly necessary for us to examine this foundation, because we have, in accordance with the teaching of the New Testament, rested the whole weight of the doctrine of the Fatherhood of God on the teaching, and ultimately on the consciousness, of Christ. If Christ is central, the Consummator of the life of the world, then the great affirmation of His life is also central. It can only be displaced by dethroning Him. If He be not central, then it is safe to add that neither is the “our Father” which He proclaims.

Here let it be premissed that it is impossible to explain the universe philosophically without including Christ and all that for which Christ stands in that which is to be explained. To explain things is to read their immanent secret, and therefore it is of the greatest importance to start with the complete whole, which has to be explained. The created universe, as we immediately know it, is composed of physical, sentient, and human existences. To say the least, the most distinctive and influential of these human existences is Christ. He represents three things the transcendent religious personality of history, the worth of the religious principle itself in human nature, and the “ quickening Spirit “ by which the continuous satisfaction and expression of the religious principle in men is brought about and made powerfully operative in the progress of mankind. The world, therefore, which has to be explained is the world which in cludes Christ, and which is satisfied and inspired by Him. In the manifestation of personality the highest result of the world’s development Christ stands supreme. And, correspondingly, the subjective faith in Christ has been the highest, the most deeply and universally influential, act of men, by whatever generally accepted standard of values it is judged.

It is therefore futile for any purpose of final explanation, to deal with the world or any part of it without regard to this its crowning fact. There can be no complete philosophy, Christian or otherwise, which professes to explain the whole world, without including Christ and all that is involved in Him; allowing Him simply to come in as an afterthought, after the serious part of the work has been carried out. But it needs an act of faith thus to treat Christ as of final and central significance for the world; an act of faith in Him and for the two are inseparable in the importance and validity of the religious principle which finds its expression and satisfaction in Him.

Before, therefore, we begin to explain the world, we have to decide whether we are prepared to take our stand as recognising and acting on this central significance of Christ, whether, that is to say, we will so practically affirm the validity of the testimony of religious faith, that He who fully manifests it and satisfies it, must, because of this, have central and decisive meaning for the universe in which He appears.

It may at first sight be supposed that such an initial act of faith is in itself unphilosophical. As a matter of fact, all our philosophical starting-points are acts of faith; and the deter mining factor is the choice as to which of the manifold elements of experience shall be selected by and receive the weight of faith.

Just as there are those who will not affirm the central significance of Christ, so there are those who will not affirm the determining value of the deliverances of human selfconsciousness. Because they refuse this affirmation of faith, they are driven into a philosophy of materialism or agnos ticism, which itself, when we search deeply enough, rests upon acts of faith; that is to say, on primary assumptions made by the selection of certain elements in experience as being those to which decisive weight is to be attached.

Every affirmation is indeed an act of faith, and he is the most comprehensive philosopher whose acts of faith, that is, whose primary assumptions, bring him into completest and most harmonious relationship to all parts of human experience physical, intellectual, moral, and spiritual; who, because he assimilates and responds to every part, is able to do justice to the whole in his final explanation. The question of the central significance of Christ is in deed vital to all decisions concerning the central significance of man, and of the deliverances of his spiritual consciousness. The man who denies the first, hesitates about the second. Such hesitation about the primary worth of human personality, and the trustworthiness of its deliverances, is an artificial and paralysing afterthought a refusal theoretically to justify what practically we are compelled every day, and for all purposes of life, to assume. Such a hesitation may be accounted for, because the imagination is overwhelmed by the vastness of infra- human life and of cosmic forces, and therefore doubts the competence of the human mind to draw any conclusions beyond the narrowest range. But, in truth, whether this attitude is brought about by a shock from with out or by paralysis within, and the two are often conjoined, it represents the diseased loss of the primary intuitions of mankind, and of the power to trust to them. It presents in strict truth the highest and most appropriate case for a true faith-healing; that is to say, for the supply of the inspiration which causes men to trust and to act upon those fundamental instincts and intuitions of human nature which passunquestioned in normal times and among normal men, and must ever, when shaken, tend to regain their ascendency, because, though an assumption, they are the only assumption upon which human life, in its full range, can be permanently based, and can be seen to be consistently rational. For those who will make this general affirmation, the evolution of the religious life is the supreme fact of human history the one fact which has the deepest and most lasting significance. And Christ, who completes that evolution in Himself and by His Spirit, cannot be dismissed from consideration or condescendingly granted a secondary place in the world to be explained. He becomes the starting-point for all true understanding of the world and of human life.

It is this primary act of faith as to what Christ stands for in the spiritual life of men which is the preparation for faith in any particular statement as to what He was and did.

It is quite impossible, for example, to start with thepremisses and temper of materialism, and to be coerced by external evidence into faith in, say, His resurrection. A materialist universe cannot be the scene of an event like the resurrection; and it is therefore useless to attempt to argue from the generally godless and unspiritual to the particularly miraculous. If such a process ever seems to lead to conviction, it will be because, in its course, intuitions and convictions are awakened which contain implicitly within themselves the downfall of all the principles with which the inquiry began. To believe in Christ, Divine and Eisen, we must begin with faith in Christ as the culmination of human history, as the Supreme Personality, who satisfies that which is deepest, noblest, most distinctive and influential in human nature the religious principle. Once enthrone these assumptions of faith the only assumptions by which human life and history become, in any sense, reasonable and they still express them selves naturally in St. Paul’s great saying, “ Unto Him are all things.” The process may be summed up thus: The end of all things is spiritual life; the manifestation of spiritual life is in man; man is what he is, as spiritual, in virtue of religion; religion is what it is made by Christ.

Thus we get our starting-point that Christ is central, not as a poetic dream, but as a substantial fact; and this because He embodies and reveals that which alone makes the existence of the world worth while, according to any standard of worth which spiritual beings, as spiritual, can entertain. But if this be so, Christ is unique, not merely intrinsically, but in virtue of those relations in which He consciously stood to God and to mankind. And these, as we have seen, are expressed by Fatherhood, Sonship, Brotherhood. With the establishment, therefore, of the general trustworthiness and centrality of Christ, the trustworthiness and centrality are established of those spiritual relationships in which Christ subsisted, and by which His life became what it was.

All this suffices to take Christ out of the realm of the accidental into that of the eternal, and to make His appearance not a merely remedial entrance from without, but a completing and consummating presence within, the system of the world. It is not necessary for us here to discuss the abstract question whether the Incarnation would have taken place if man had not sinned. Whatever may be the truth as to this, at least the method by which Christ undoes evil is by the completion of good, not merely by means of His effect upon others, but by His own perfect embodiment of the good. It is for us impossible to conceive of a perfect world without Christ in it, filling the place which He did, and does still occupy. And this wholly apart from the sal vation from sin which He brings. Would John have reclined on His breast, or Mary have sat at His feet, with less ecstatic devotion had they drawn near to Him to receive the full secret of eternity and of God, apart from the presence in them of any disease needing to be healed? The more we search into it, the more evident it becomes that Christ is vitally necessary, not merely as a Deliverer but as a Fulfiller; that the basis of His deliverance is to be found in the fact that He fulfils; and that He fulfils only because He is in place just where He is. It is of course possible to conceive totally different conditions of life in man. But the conception is so entirely apart from all experience as to possess absolutely no value as a guide to truth. Christ is not a stranger from afar, seeking to accommodate Himself to an alien life, but the necessary and natural consummation of human life, because it has belonged to Him, and He to it, from the beginning.

He can therefore naturally manifest Himself in it, and can build up His redemptive work upon a normally and eternally representative position. At every point of Christ’s redemptive activity we find something positive thus underlying it, and giving to it its full significance something which is in place, and which reveals Him as the Consummator “ unto whom “ all things exist.

II. But Christ is the culmination of a world which is a continuous whole, and therefore He interprets the whole, which He completes. The consciousness of Christ, as set forth in the Gospels, is unique. He possesses an original and pre-existent Sonship, and others partake of sonship only so far as theypartake of Him. What has been called the “ value-judgment “of Christian experience, gives to Christ a unique and Divine place in the spiritual consciousness of men. For this very reason, therefore, Christ has a unique place in the world as its consummation and interpretation. Let us consider this contention in detail. The world is a continuous whole. It is possible for us to set up in thought three apparent wholes, of which only one is real. In the first place, we may conceive of the universe apart from man, as we imagine it was before man made his appearance, and would be without spiritual spectator or subject, human or Divine. We perform such an act of abstraction when we speak of nature. In the second place, we may consider the world as completed by man, but apart from Christ and all that is involved in Christ. We may then use the intellectual faculties of man as the guide to an intellectual explanation of the universe as it appears without reference to the religious faculty and all that is involved in it. This is done in the case of the ordinary philosophy of perception. This, though a higher and wider whole, is still an abstraction. And, thirdly, we may take the world with man in it as he is consummated and revealed by Christ, and by the testimony of that spiritual consciousness which has reference to Christ. The abstraction involved in the first and second cases is, of course^ perfectly legitimate and even necessary for the purposes, in the first case, of natural science, in the second, of philosophy; but the whole with which each deals is not the whole of the world as it really exists.

If now we look at the whole which contains within itself these narrower circles, we shall see that its process is a gradual ascent, which manifests throughout the union of affinity and contrast, blending continuity with new departures.

There are many instances of what may be called a breach with the past, as, for example, when life makes its appear ance; in a lesser degree, when new orders of life come upon the scene; finally, when man appears, and when, in the highest sphere, man is consummated by Christ. But each of these is not an inconsistency or the introduction of irrational confusion. The breach with the past is in order to atranscendent new beginning, which belongs to a higher realm, and has a larger range than anything to be found in the universe at its previous stage of development. Yet the new beginning, at each stage, gathers up into itself the past from which it breaks free, and uses the past with its content as the instrument of its higher, broader, and fuller existence. This, roughly speaking, is what we perceive happening throughout from the original fire-mist to Christ.

Taking, then, first the lowest part of this whole, that which is purely physical, it becomes apparent, as soon as we reflect, that it is throughout relative to spirit; that it is impossible even to conceive what it is apart from the consciousness to which it is an object.

Further, this physical whole, which is an object to the spirit, and is thereby included in the whole of spiritual life, is subservient to the spirit. There is nothing in the realm of nature as we know it which does not minister to the life of spirit, and may not be, either now or in the future, utilised in pursuit of the deliberate purposes of the spirit. In the next place, the universe, in all its parts, is a coherent whole. Without this fundamental assumption, the impulse of scientific inquiry would be destroyed. To prove and set forth this coherence is the motive of every scientific man. He feels unrest so long as any part of the universe remains unexplained as a consistent portion of the universal world-order. He has the sure confidence that only sufficient investigation is required, to show that what may now appear chaotic is in reality part of a rationally coherent system.

Finally, this coherent whole of nature is completed in the filial life of man, and man is potentially the heir of all things. The world finds its unity in man. He is at once part of it and above it. He must be both the one and the other, in order to make any use of it. In this natural combination of unity with the world and distinction from it lies the condition of man’s mastery over it.

Thus the law of evolution is as laid down by St. Paul, “ Howbeit that is not first which is spiritual, but that which is natural; then that which is spiritual “ (1 Corinthians 15:46). But the two do not exist in separation. The spiritual spiritualises the natural, the natural naturalises the spiritual. The natural, when the spiritual first appears, starts out as being in contrast with it, a counterto it, a platform for it. Yet this natural, which thus stands out on the appearance of the spirit as being in contrast to it, is utilised by the spirit, and is therefore shown to be at bottom akin to the spirit.

Even the contrast which is involved in it is overcome by the continuity. And not the least part of the service which nature renders to spirit is that its presence and reaction stirs the spirit to distinguish itself from nature in an ever-increasing degree, from the first dawn of intelligence up to the heights of saintliness. By exercising this influence, nature is revealed as being the necessary groundwork of spiritual life.

Further, the higher in the world, as it makes its appearance there, brings with it the interpretation of the lower. The world is not explained by isolated and external oracles about it, but by the revelation within it, and in organic union with it, of something which belongs to it and yet transcends it.

Nature becomes explicable by man, with his spiritual consciousness; man becomes explicable by Christ. The whole, therefore, is explained by the presence within it of One who transcends it and yet is one with it. Indeed the measure of His transcendence is to be found as is the case with all true natural transcendence in the measure of His unity with it.

Transcendent, yet in solidarity with the whole, Christmanifests in it a supremely interpretative Divine relationship that of Fatherhood and Sonship. Christ’s relationship to God must be taken in union with His universal relationship to the world and man. Man completes nature, Christ completes man. Christ stands in unique filial relationship to God, but, at the same time, in such a relationship to the world that His Divine Sonship cannot but have universal significance for the world. Our Lord’s consciousness cannot be self-enclosed. It is the consummation of a continuous whole. That whole has prepared the way for Him, and is taken up into Him, that it may serve the purposes of His higher and larger life. Just because it prepared the way for Him and is taken up into Him, He necessarily throws light upon the constitution and nature, the ends and relationships, of the continuous whole of the world. As in the case of nature and man, it may all be seen in contrast to Him, and the contrast is real; but yet it is subordinate. He, too, is Lord of the world, because He is both above it and within it, distinct from it and yet of it; and therefore, in the last resort, the contrasts are taken up into and dominated by the affinity.

Hence the explanation of the world is simply to be found in Christ. His Sonship is unique; but it is a Sonship which perfects the human race both objectively in His Incarnation, and subjectively as men receive sonship from Him and share it with Him. And, in coming into the world, Christ finds and takes to Himself a nature which has been carefully prepared to express in its consciousness the filial; and the preparation of that nature, received through His mother, is the result of the entire evolution of the world from the beginning. The human nature of Jesus Christ would not have been what it was had one single line of the foregoing evolution been different. The “ flesh “ in which He appeared is prepared to manifest Sonship, and therefore the Sonship which is manifested in the prepared “ flesh “ of Jesus Christ explains the evolution and the nature of the world.

It is therefore impossible to confine Jesus Christ within Himself and say that His Sonship is a secret belonging to Him and to His followers, but that it cannot be used to shed light upon the constitution and meaning of the world in all its parts from the beginning. On the contrary, assuming the unique and yet patent facts of Christ’s relationships to God and to mankind, there is found therein the natural and necessary explanation of the inmost meaning of the world as a continuous whole, completed by the Incarnation. For the Incarnation brought the Son into the midst of the world by means of a nature in organic union with the world, and so prepared within it from the beginning, that it could not have been what it was had the previous evolution been different.

Thus Christ is the World-Illuminator and Interpreter, by the very fact that He is the World-Consummator.

III. We are now prepared to advance to the next position, namely, that “ in Him all things consist.” We may amplify this as stating that all things are grounded in the Son, are related to Him, inhere and cohere in Him. This great fact and truth cannot be learned by human speculation, although, as we have seen, 1 the ruling philosophy 1 Chapter V. of the time of St. Paul did construct a doctrine of the rela tionship of God to the world which was a remarkable approximation to the doctrine of St. Paul and St. John, and supplied the forms in which the apostolic doctrine waspresented in the Greek theology of the Christian Church.

Christian theology has advanced from the opposite extreme to the starting-point of Greek philosophy; not from an abstract doctrine of the means by which God can be brought into relationship to the world, but from thetranscendent personality of Christ and His unique influence upon the spiritual life of men, with what is involved in both. It was the realisation of these facts by the Spirit which enabled nay necessitated St. Paul to arrive at the great proposition of the text. And a closer consideration of it in the light of the revelation contained in our Lord’s consciousness shows how complete an explanation is contained in it of all that we know of the constitution of the world. The truth is here assumed of those eternal relations in the Godhead which we have seen, in the last chapter, to be essential to the truth of the Fatherhood of God seriously conceived. These relationships being assumed, we are taught that all things are grounded in the Son, owe their life and coherence to their inherence in Him. The doctrine taught herein reveals that the eternally Filial in the Godhead is the Divine ground on which creation rests, causing it to proceed from God, to indwell in God, and to return in filial response to God; thus giving to the whole creation a measure of filial life in proportion to its worth, so that the place of each being in the sphere of existence is determined by its capacity for and its realisation of all that is contained in the filial.

Let us review the facts of the world, in order to see how complete an explanation of them is thus furnished.

1. In the first place, as we have seen, the universe is relative to spirit. In perception, mind orders nature. We know the world only as we perceive it. For it to be different we must become different. It is impossible to set aside the importance of those spiritual faculties by which alone we receive and order, are affected by and construct into a system, what we experience as the external world. As the world of things is relative to spirit inperception, so it is a natural and true inference to believe that it is relative to spirit in its original constitution. The fact that it is received by the human mind, ordered and interpreted according to fixed laws which are spiritual and rational in their nature, is only explained by the fact that both the conditions of the world perceived and those of the mind perceiving it are eternally laid down by an original and Divine constitutive Spirit, ordering all things and presenting them to human faculties, which are a finite manifestation of the infinite and eternal Spirit who is their source.

2. All spirits which thus exist in a constitutive relation ship so far as perception is concerned- to the material world so-called, are related to one another as a community.

All spiritual existences are kindred.

3. Yet these spiritual existences subsisting in community are finite. They are neither self-contained, self-explained, nor self-sufficient. They bear the consciousness of their own limitation and dependence within them. They bear within them, also, the need, and the power which always accompanies need, to break forth from their limitations into relationships carrying them beyond themselves and above that which is accidental and dependent into union with the Infinite and Absolute. Thus the ground, the home, the end of their limited existence is found by them in the perfect existence of God. Hence the life of the whole community of finite spirits is rooted and grounded in God.

Yet, while the life of creaturely spirits is in God, it proceeds from Him and returns to Him. As individuals they are in God, and yet they are relative to God and, in a sense, objective to Him. And the explanation of their indwelling thus in God, and yet possessing a life which is relative and objective to Him, proceeding from Him into quasi-independence and yet constrained to return to fellowship with Him as their source and end, is that, by nature, they consist in and are constituted by the Divinely Filial, the Son of God. It is by their relationship to the Son that they at once subsist in God, and yet that their subsistence in Him is a proceeding from Him and a return to Him, which is the essential form of the perfectly filial life.

Once escape from the miserable inadequacy of deistic philosophy, with its mechanical externalism, to the realisation of the inherence of all things in God and the ceaseless out going of the Divine life throughout the whole creation, and then St. Paul’s statement that the Divine in whom all things inhere is the Son, going forth from the Father and returning to Him, supplies the only complete explanation of the facts of the world as we behold them from a truly spiritual and rational standpoint. And this is an explanation which relates to the universe as a coherent and systematic whole, running up into man. When we return from man to the lower parts of this system, we find that they are either preparatory or instrumental to the life of sonship in which man is perfected. Looked at in some aspects they foreshadow that life, while in others they serve it. But in either aspect they are relative to sonship, and find their explanation in it. Hence nothing in the whole system, which either prepares the way for or serves the ends of sonship, can be excluded from the eternal life of the Son. In this fact lies the explanation of the phenomena which present themselves to us in the world. Speaking broadly, the whole creation prepares the way for, foreshadows the meaning, and serves the ends of sonship. Yet, when looked at in its individual aspects, it is seen to be composed of finite, acci dental, multiform, incomplete, and even disordered existences.

But, notwithstanding this, as a whole it maintains law and order, subsists in unity, has abiding stability and spiritual significance, and steadily serves the purposes of that unfolding spiritual life which is the goal of its evolution. How is it that it does all this? that it combines unity and stability with an increasing progress, which shows how spiritual is the source and nature of the law and order binding all the parts together? The explanation is, that the Son, as the eternal realisation of filial perfection, so constitutes the universe that His law is imposed upon it as the inward principle of its own free life; and that, in consequence, it cannot be other than relative to that filial life which consummates its gradual development. The immanence of all things in the Son explains how they live under and by a law of evolution, which causes them to prepare the way and with “ earnest expectation “ to wait for “the revealing of the sons of God” (Eom. 8:19).

IV. We reach, then, the final proposition, namely, that “ all things have been created through Him.” The fact that the Son is the Consummator, the Revealer, the Restorer, and the constitutive principle of all things, forces the apostle to advance to an additional position. To use Aristotle’s enumeration of causes, the Son is the final cause of the world, fixing its end; He is its formal, and in a sense its material cause, determining its constitution and nature. Therefore He is also its efficient cause: “ all things have been created through Him.” But He is the efficient cause of the world, with a distinction which is marked by the preposition “ through.” The Son’s creative office is defined by His relationship to the creative Godhead. As His life in the Godhead is filial, so His function in creation is filial. He is not set forth as the ultimate source in the Godhead of creation, but as the mediating cause; and it is by understanding this force of the apostle’s statement that the unity of the Godhead can be preserved in thought. With this limitation, St. Paul’s declaration is that the end and law of the world is also its source; that the eter nally filial is the cause of the filial in time.

Herein lies the explanation of the possibility and reality of the Incarnation. The Son can become man in the fulness of the times, because He is the originator and fashioner of the nature which receives and manifests Him. That nature is not outside Him, apart from Him, still less in contrast to Him.

It comes into existence “ through “ Him, and consists “ in “Him, and therefore is, from the first, in idea and nature fitted to reveal its source. This is the irresistible logic which proceeds from the testi mony of Christ to Himself, and from the experience of what He is in the spiritual life. The Son, manifest as a Divine Person in human nature, carries out in His ministry ofredemption a Divine office for mankind. He inaugurates a new beginning in the spiritual life of humanity, as the One who is able, and who alone is able, to communicate to others, in a personal relationship to Himself, that which intrinsically and eternally belongs to Him alone. Yet that which is His own peculiar secret, and which is shared by other men only in so far as they enter into a peculiar relationship to Himself by His Spirit, is yet the fulfilment of all that which in His light is seen to be the innate potentiality of human nature; so that, while this new beginning in Him is unique, it is at the same time the realisation of indwelling possibilities which are universal, and the fulfilment of the whole spiritualpreparation of the world. Into that spiritual preparation all things enter according to the measure of their w r orth. The natural history of the world is inseparably bound up with its spiritual history as means to end. Nature is in every part and always subordinate to the Spirit, and the Spirit is the Spirit of the Son.

Therefore St. Paul is inevitably led on, understanding Christ’s relationship to spiritual experience, and the relation ship of spiritual experience to the constitution of the world, finding the Son to be the constitutive principle of all things, to see in Him the eternal creative means through whom all things have been called into being, endowed with such a nature that He can fill them, can be manifested in them, and can finally consummate them by His incarnate presence. The Son, that is to say, cannot be what He is as the Consummator and Redeemer of the world, if He does not hold that relationship to it as Creator, neither more nor less, which is described in the text. Once grant the spiritual significance and continuity of all things, and St. Paul’s declaration will appear to be, not merely a natural, but the necessary, deduction from the facts. Of course the relationship of the eternal life of the Godhead to the world of the finite and temporal must always be the most difficult subject of speculation, owing to the limitations of human faculties. All our thought concerning the origin of the universe must of necessity be a regress from what we find actually contained in it. Our best guide to its origin will be found in its nature. There can be no surer argument that God created, than is to be found in the fact that man reigns/ when all that is contained in the latter proposition is understood. The testimony of the spiritual consciousness in man, alike to his supremacy in nature and to his dependence on an infinite source which must needs be of like nature with his own (for dependence in any real sense involves kinship), contains all the premisses of the theistic argument.

Further, once realise the two great facts of spirituality and continuity, the relation of all things to the Son, and from this starting-point we are able in a similar way to reach back to the creative start of the world, and to behold there the Son mediating the whole. The facts which become manifest in spiritual history are only explained when the Son is realised as being eternally in the Godhead, and going forth from Him as the creative means through whom all things exist, and from whom they receive alike the form of their being and the unceasing impulse to fulfil a life which is consummated in the perfect manifestation of Sonship.

Hence this inference of St. Paul, made the starting-point of our thought, clothes what would be otherwise the comparatively bare conception of creation with spiritual significance, and gives to it the lifelikeness of a completed explanation. Not that the questions which have always vexed human speculation as to the relations between creative and created life can be set at rest. Man can never thus be the measure of God. But St. Paul’s teaching redeems the conception of creation from the external and mechanical from the deistic notion of the world as a practically independent effect. Once bear in mind that the world is created through, in, and unto the Son, and immediately creation becomes a spiritual and vital function of the Godhead, and the finite is seen to be not an artificial product, but a vital procession from the Infinite. The world, thus created, is seen to be necessarily spiritual in its nature and ends, because it subsists in God; to be governed not by external ordination, but by the Divine indwelling, so that it fulfils throughout the whole course of its evolution the spiritual relationship of its start. Thus, while difficulties remain for thought, and must ever remain, the meaning and tendencies of the world are more adequately explained by this new Genesis of St. Paul than by any other theology or philosophy ever taught by men. The Son is, then, the End, the Law, the Source of the world. He has completed it by appearing within it as the incarnate Son, and by bringing men, in Himself, to the reali sation and enjoyment of sonship.

What, we must now ask, is involved in all this?

1. In the first place, the supremacy of the fatherly motive and relationship in creation. The relationship of the world to the Son cannot be what it is, without carrying with it that the controlling relationship in which God stands to the world is that of Fatherhood; that the motive by which He has created, governs, and guides the world to its appointed end is fatherly. The fact which consummates history the Incarnationreveals perfectly Fatherhood and Sonship; reveals, moreover, the continuity of the process by which preparation has been made for it in the world. The motive which has been at work from first to last is therefore made clear. Creation, constituted through, in, and unto the Son, can only be creation as the work of the Father, and as intended to satisfy His fatherly heart of love. This reasoning is conclusive, if our starting-point be made good, that Fatherhood and Sonship set forth the eternal relationship between the First Person of the holy Trinity and the Second. When we speak of the Son of God, we are not referring merely to the incarnate Son, but to the Son existing as such eternally “ in the bosom of the Father.”

It seems clear that the Second Person in the Godhead could only live in time and history in precisely the same rela tionships to the First as those in which He eternally subsists. To suppose a change in relationship would involve some measure of dislocation, or at least, if the human relationship be not the same as the Divine, some imperfection of expression of the Divine through the human. Only in so far as His human life gives expression to His eternal life in the Godhead can it be said to be a natural and complete manifestation of God. In particular, it is a mistake to take St. John’s name, “ the Logos,” which, however valuable, is a one-sided title, having only a limited content, as though that, and that only, sets forth the eternal relationship between the First and Second Persons of the holy Trinity. This course is sometimes taken, in the hope of avoiding some of the speculative difficulties involved in the relationship of eternal Fatherhood and Sonship. And attempts are then made to show that, wherever the rela tionship of Sonship is spoken of in the New Testament, it refers to the Second Person of the holy Trinity as incarnate.

So, for example, in the very valuable and suggestive work by Dr. D. W. Simon, entitled Reconciliation ly Incarnation, it is laid down: “ The Logos was designated Son of God as incarnate. Prior to Incarnation He was simply the Logos, this is the only designation applied to Him in His intraDivine relationship in the Scripture. The references in the Epistle to the Hebrews are to His relation to the Father as incarnate, not prior to Incarnation. The Trinity was constituted, let it be here again said in passing, by three personal or personific factors, each eternally coexistent, and as such, to use the technical term, not merely modal but ontological. The name Son and Father, on the other hand, are modal or oeconomic, i.e. they refer to the relation which arose in consequence of the Incarnation of the Logos. Jesus the Christ was the Son of God; there is no warrant, however, for designating the Logos the Son of God, and for thus repre senting the relationship of the Father and Son as an eternal and immanent Divine relationship.” l Such a position is open to the following criticisms:

(1) When it is said that the designation applied to our Lord in His intra-Divme relationship in the Scripture is that of the Logos, it must be borne in mind that the only New Testament writer who uses this name is St. John, and that, in the case of his Gospel, the name is only found in the Prologue. Therefore the name has by no means the weight, as an exclusive designation, which it would have had if it had been adopted by all the New Testament writers; still more if it had been used by our Lord Himself.

1 Reconciliation ly Incarnation, pp. 327, 328.

(2) As we have already seen, 1 the designation Son is a higher, deeper, and fuller name than that of Logos. It is impossible to deduce the fact of our Lord’s Sonship from His being the Logos; but, on the other hand, it is easy to arrive at the conclusion that He is the Logos from the fact of His being the Son.

(3) If, further, it is intended by the use of the designation “ the Logos “ to get over the supposed difficulty of applying the idea of Sonship in the form of “ eternal generation “ to our Lord’s eternal relationship, exactly the same difficulty belongs to the conception of the Logos, understood in its Christian sense, not as a poetic personification of philosophy, but as a name which is strictly “ personal or personific.” The designation “ the Logos,” as St. John uses it, conveys the sense of intellectual filiation, the filiation of the Word, which expresses the Divine mind and makes known the Divine will. Directly the Word is understood as being “ personal or personific,” its relation to the mind eternally uttering it is substantially filial.

Here, then, is all the difficulty of the conception of eternal filiation; but it is restricted to an intellectual view of God, unless we further amplify the designation, as St. John himself did in his First Epistle, and speak of “ the Word of Life” (1 John 1:1); a proceeding which shows how little warrant we really have for supposing that the name “ the Logos “ is the only designation for our Lord’s preincarnate relationship, even in St. John’s writings. History, moreover, shows us that, wherever exclusive stress is laid upon the name “ the Logos,” there is the certain danger of losing sight of the personality, since it is difficult to apprehend a relationship essentially filial on purely intellectual grounds. And, side by side with this tendency, it becomes impossible to avoid giving a prevailingly intellectual aspect to religion, and to the relationship of God to the world.

Thus damage is done to the conception of religion, without escaping any of those difficulties as to eternal filiation which have led to the abandonment of the name “ the Son.”

(4) Again, the designation “ the Logos “ is at least equally 1 See Chapter VI, p. 307. figurative as the name “ the Son.” We are certainly as much guided by human analogies in attributing an eternal Word to the Godhead as an eternal Son. In both cases, that which is manifest in human life is treated as an indication of what is eternal in the Divine life. We have already discussed the validity of this proceeding. Let it now be understood that whatever imperfection necessarily attaches to it must equally apply to the one name as to the other.

(5) Finally, it must be borne in mind, that to take the title “ the Logos “ as the one indication of the nature of the eternal relationship of the Second Person to the First in the Godhead, is to leave the incarnate relationship unexplained. Our Lord was manifested as “ the Son “; but if Sonship be not the form of His eternal Divine relationship, then Hismanifestation in Sonship is not explained by the eternal nature of the Godhead and by the relationships therein subsisting. By the Fatherhood of God towards the incarnate Son it must at least be understood that God is the loving source of the human nature of Christ, imprinting His love upon that nature and bringing Christ thereby into perfect fellowship of love with Himself.

What is there in all this that may not be, nay, which must not necessarily be, eternal? The name by which our Lord, manifest in human nature, is designated, is intended to signify that the original relationship between Him and God is that of perfect love. Yet, while this is emphasised in regard to the incarnate relationship, the dismissal of the relationship of Fatherhood and Sonship from the eternal life of the Godhead has weakened therein the primacy of love. A name has been substituted which represents a reality of great importance, without doubt, to the intellectual life of God and to the intellectual apprehension of His relationship to the world, but which cannot possibly cover the whole truth about Him; and which, especially, while well fitted to set forth the relation of the Second Person to the thoughts and purposes of the First, is essentially unfitted to set forth the relationship of love subsisting between both. How is it possible, by any process which does not introduce the thought from without, to reach the doctrine of the gospel that “ God is love “ from the statement that within the Godhead is an eternal and personal Word?

If, then, this view were true, we should have in our Lord’s incarnate relationship a deeper, fuller, richer relation ship to God than that in which He eternally subsists. And this is impossible, not merely because it is inconceivable that our Lord passed from a poorer into a richer relationship to God, but also because the poorer relationship is made the basis of the richer one. The whole creation inheres and coheres in the Logos; but, as it manifests what is contained in that inherence, it turns out to be the richer and fuller relationship of sonship. It is impossible that the narrower, less spiritual and religious relationship should be the eternal foundation of the fuller, more spiritual, and more religious. For every reason, therefore, of consistency and harmony of thought, it seems necessary to regard the relationship in which the Second Person of the Godhead was made manifest as being the revelation of that in which He eternally subsists, and to regard the relationship in which He appeared by virtue of the fundamental characteristics of His human nature, as explained on the ground that what the Second Person is eternally to the First, lays down the law and the constitution of human nature, simply because by its creation it inheres in the Son.

Therefore the Son’s eternal relationship to the Father is manifest in the Incarnation, because the human nature in which He became incarnate is originally grounded in Himself, and is under the necessity of displaying and serving just that relationship to God in which the Son its source, ground, and end eternally subsists.

Thus the inner relationships of the Godhead govern the outer. The original and vital relationship in which all things stand to the Son, carries with it the original and universal Fatherhood of Him who is manifested in and through the Son. For there is no manifestation of the Father save in and through the Son. He is thereby shown to be the Father; for the whole life of the Son, who as the Son is the ground of creation, is governed by the relation in which He receives, returns, and manifests the love of the Father, All life, all relationships to God, are contained in the Son, but insubordination to His Sonship, and therefore in subordination to the Fatherhood, which is the correlative of His Sonship.

Thus the grounding of the universe in the Son carries with it its creation by the Father for purposes which can be realised in and through the life of One who can never, and in no part of His activity, be other than Son.

Hence grace is the foundation of nature. The Incarnation, as the end, explains the beginning; for the end cannot be thus wrought out unless it has determined the beginning. And it governs the beginning, because “ God is love “; because the Son stands eternally to the Father in a relation ship of love, which necessitates that all that He receives and returns, effectuates and reveals, should be the Love which is Life.

2. In the second place, the creation of all things in and through the Son involves the filial constitution of human nature, This has been substantially made good already, but it requires a somewhat more detailed consideration.

We have seen that our Lord’s Sonship represents alike His eternal and His incarnate relationship to the Father. His coming into the world is, further, a manifestation of God in a human nature which makes Him akin to mankind, and is the consummation of a previous continuous development of human life and character in relation to God. From these facts we gain the result that human nature, in its idea and principle, is capable of sonship; and that failure to reach it means either unfulfilled or perverted development.

(1) In the first place, as we have seen, the Son of God would have no adequate revelation in human life, if theperfection of that life were not in accordance with His own eternal relationship to the Father. The truth of His own human nature is its realisation of Divine Sonship. But that Sonship cannot be confined in idea to the incarnate Son.

Distinctive and supernatural as was His entrance into human life, He yet enters it as organically one with the race, not only in His eternal relationship to it, but as the Son of Man.

Therefore what is necessary to the truth of His own human nature is equally true not in actuality, but in idea and principle and potentiality of mankind, which is akin to Him.

(2) And this is verified by the fact that we recognise in our Lord’s human perfection the ideal of what all men ought to be, and the promise of what God wills to make them.

Such a revelation and promise involve that the realisation of sonship through the Spirit is the calling into perfect actuality of possibilities, present from the first, although they have been unfulfilled and even perverted.

It may be hastily supposed, indeed, that human nature is human nature, quite irrespective of the precise form of its relationship to God. This is all that is sometimes meant by saying that our Lord appeared in human nature and gave us an example of what perfect human nature is. And then an account is given of the particular virtues which His character and conduct displayed. And such an abstract consideration may leave it to be supposed that human nature might exist in intrinsic perfection in varying relations to God. But on closer examination this will be seen to be impossible, for any being is what it is only in and through the relationships which dominate its life. We can only describe a human being by means of the network of relations into which he enters, and by understanding their nature. And any variation of the relationships entered into and fulfilled, varies the development of the being who undergoes the change. There is therefore no abstract human nature as such. It appears as a concrete fact in certain relationships. The only relationship in which Christ was able to appear as perfect man was in that of Divine Sonship. By this very fact it is shown that human nature can only be fulfilled in the same filial relationship, and that it is the innate possibility of entering into it by the Spirit which makes human nature what it is.

(3) It is because of this, that while the manifestation of the Son of God in the flesh makes a new beginning, it is yet a completion of the development which has gone before. As we follow this course of thought we shall find reason to believe that only one world could possibly be created by God, being what He is, and that this world. The view which imagines that out of an infinite number of possible worlds God chose to create this particular one, does homage to an abstract freedom of God which is no reality. It may conceivably be true as to details, for we do not yet know how far the details of the constitution of nature and man are inextricably bound up with the main principles which under lie creation.

But, at least, those main principles are the only ones which could be selected by God, existing in the eternal fellowship of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. The creation of a universe in and through the Son could only be a universe in which the Son’s relationship to the Father should be the constitutive factor of all life and being. A world thus created must be a world in which the measure of the filial is the measure of being, life, and worth a world in which the measure of turning away from the filial is the measure of sin. Indeed, creation in the Son seems to involve that there is a necessary form of relationship to God for every creature, which, according to the measure of its capacity for receiving the Holy Spirit, becomes perfectly filial. Such a common form of relationship to God unites the humblest atom to the loftiest Son of God. This form of relationship combines dependence upon the immanent presence and power of God with a relative independence which involves a being-for-self, or for that rudimentary centre of life or of physical force which is the dim foreshadowing of self. It involves, further, that all such beings exist in organic relations to all that is, so that the life of each is interrelated with the life of all things, and is maintained by ceaseless interaction with all things. Thus there is an impartation of God to every existence according to the measure and worth of its being, and each, however narrow may be its limitations, is both self-contained and related in God to the sum-total of creation. Thus, probably, even a thing is in reality something more than a thing, if we fully understood it. And as the fuller impartation of the Spirit of God, in and through the Son, calls into being the loftier forms of existence, the measure of their greatness is their power to fulfil this common form of relationship to God with the filial spirit of which it is prophetic, so that they exhibit, in completeness, the perfection of dependence with independence, of being -for -self with Divine and universal fellowship and service. This general view of creation, of its universal principles, and of its necessary standard of life and worth, seems necessitated by any sufficiently serious doctrine of the creation of all things in and through and unto the Son, and of the Son’s final appearance revealing God to men in and through the manifestation of perfect Sonship. It seems also to be verified by the facts of the world as we find them.

Everything, therefore, in the world which conies short of or which departs from this ideal of perfect sonship is, so far as it comes short or transgresses, not a promise but a limitation. It represents, at the best, the imperfection of apreliminary stage; at the worst, a spiritual fall, and can be no guide to the underlying principles or the finally operative forces in the world’s history. From the lowest to the highest phenomena of the world many things are apparent which are obviously inadequate to, and, when we reach the plane of human life, contradict the truly filial life. Such, for example, are the predatory instincts of the lower animals; above all, the selfishness and sin of man. But, directly we take these as evidence of principles supreme in human life, we are deceived by the false and passing show of an incomplete or perverted development, which ever tends to be superseded by a completer life, realising more fully the possibilities implanted in the whole by reason of its relationship to the Son of God. The more we examine into phenomena, which appear to contradict the principle that the filial is the measure of all true life, the more we shall find that underneath them that principle is at work, and that everything which cannot be finally harmonised with it is but a limitation, and not the manifestation, of a final principle of life. 1

1 We are not concerned here with the ordinary questions of Christian evidences, but, in illustration of what has been said, and in order to turn aside possible objections, it may be well to say a word as to those aspects of nature which shock sentimentalists, and which seem to them incompatible, not merely

3. Because of the fatherly motive of creation and of the filial constitution of the world, the whole serves the manifes tation of the sons of God. The filial is so based upon the universal promise and nature of things as to be safe throughout the evolution of that nature. The Incarnation is not a bright gleam to be soon overcast, a poem contradicted by the realities of life and the conflicts of existence. It inaugurates a new departure on a higher and larger scale, but one as surely based as the preceding epochs of development. Once introduced, this new departure is safely and permanently established in the life of the world. History becomes the record of its unfolding, not, of course, without vicissitudes and limitations. But the filial life becomes, by the Spirit, ingrained in the human nature, which has once received it and been put upon its with the filial constitution of the world, but with the Fatherhood of God.

Such are, above all, the predatory habits of the lower animals. The following considerations should be borne in mind in regard to this matter.

1. We are occupied with phenomena which are non-moral, and it is by importing inapplicable moral standards of judgment that the difficulty is, for the most part, created.

2. In the second place, as has often been shown, these habits serve useful ends in the general economy of nature as it has been constituted.

3. These phenomena cast no shadow upon the happiness of creation.

Moments of danger are little foreseen or remembered in any sense that involves pain. The animal “ takes no thought for the morrow.”

4. Further, the presence of danger has developed protective instincts and faculties in all orders of animals, the exercise of which, save in comparatively rare moments of extreme danger, contributes to the enjoyment of life.

5. Finally, even those animals which are most predatory are social within their kinds, though not outside their kinds.

Therefore these phenomena are not a contradiction to the principle which governs the world, but a limitation in its manifestation a limitation that, on the whole, is turned to the service and betterment of forms of life, which fill a useful part in the economy of the whole. The moral insensibility of the forces of nature which now and again destroy vast numbers of men, can in large measure be explained by the same reasons; and the problem which remains is solved if we accept the Christian revelation that this life is but the dawn of human existence. With the wilful wrong-doing of sinners other considerations enter, which cannot be discussed here. The only way in which they affect belief in the Fatherhood of God is by raising the question, Why did God permit sin? And this is answered when we remember that freedom is essential to sonship, and the bestowment of it, therefore, with all its responsibilities, is essential to Fatherhood. level. 1 That which all along was implicit has now become explicit with the manifestation of the Son of God, and with the outpouring through Him of the “ Spirit of adoption.”

Hence the preparation for the ever fuller manifestation of the eternal purpose of God. There is no contradiction of the essential meaning of the past, but a further development, and that development is as sure of ultimate predominance as were the previous stages of development; and, for the same reason, in every case, namely, that each stage gives expression, according to its place in the series of unfolding being, to the fundamental life which is in and unto the Son.

Such is the spiritual constitution of the world as it is finally revealed by the manifestation in it of the Son of God, who is both its beginning and its end. But before we pass from this chapter two subjects must be interpreted in its light; and the consideration of them will serve as a transition to the next.

1. The first is, the nature of sin.

We cannot, of course, deal here with the subject histori cally; that is, with the way in which sin entered into the world and affected mankind. But what has been found as to the constitution of the world, and therefore as to the relationships and nature of mankind, will enable us to see from various points of view what is the essential meaning of sin.

We may treat it as a violation of relationships, as the perversion thereby of nature, as a missing the mark of true life, and therefore as the falling into disharmony with the whole, as the loss of man’s place in it, this being determined by the ends which it and he were created to serve. In every one of these aspects sin may be considered as a temper, as manifested in conduct, as coming into actuality through volition, and as becoming a permanent condition sinfulness. It may be considered in relation to the individual and also to the race. As an act of a responsible being, sin carries with it guilt. Man is answerable for the evil he works, he becomes liable to the punishment which, in a

1 This, of course, does not imply that sonship becomes “natural,” but that the “dispensation of the Spirit” once inaugurated is unfailingly carried out. world created in and by the holiness of God, must visit those who contradict and persist in contradicting the holiness which gives the law to all life.

It is unnecessary here to enlarge upon all these aspects; but the results reached in this chapter bring into strong relief the essential elements of sin, whether looked at in inward principle or in outward manifestation, whether in act or in condition, whether as individual or as universal and collective.

(1) In the first place, it represents the violation, in inward principle and in outward conduct, of the relationships in which and for which man was made. The Fatherhood of God, in and through the Son, is the relationship which gives the motive and constitutes the nature of creation. Sin, with its distrust of the goodness of the Divine authority, with its indifference to, or even its energetic resistance of, the Divine love, with its transgression of commandments, the whole purpose of which is to indicate the only lines upon which life can be maintained by being true to the relationships in and for which it was made, sin is, above all, the unfilial, and therefore unnatural, response to fatherly love.

All the elements of sin may undoubtedly be described as distrust of, rebellion against, disobedience to, the Divine Euler; but we miss much of the real depth of its meaning when we substitute the sovereignty of God for His Father hood. The Fatherhood of God guarantees that the source of His law is His love, that its end is life, that its appeal is to our very heart and nature. None of these things is necessarily true of sovereignty, considered as such, and therefore sin, that it may appear in all its heinousness and unnaturalness, must, above all, be denned in the light of the Fatherhood of God.

(2) It follows, further, from this that sin is the violation of the relationship in which men stand by nature to the Son as the ground and law of their being. It is the contradiction of the filial spirit of dependence, the refusal reverently to listen to the voice of the Holy Spirit, whose presence and influence within normally - constituted human nature is the witness that human life abides in the Son of God. It is our life in the Son of God which makes the law of our spiritual and moral being at once part of ourselves and above ourselves, commanding our obedience, setting before us our ideal, and giving us light, from moment to moment, on the acts of spiritual and moral choice which we ought to make.

Sin is the rejection of this inner light, the brushing away of this proffered help. In the light of the New Testament, it is a rejection not only of the Father, but of the Son, and therefore of the Spirit.

(3) Hence sin assumes the aspect upon which both the Old and the New Testament lay such stress, that it is a “ missing the mark.” The violation of the spiritual relation ships, in and for which man was made, throws him out of the course of that divinely - ordered development by which he was progressively to realise the nature of his own life, and thereby to manifest the ends for which the world has been grounded in and directed by the Son of God. In this light all cases of stunted or perverted spiritual development, all cases of reversion to lower types by giving prominence and permanence to lower tendencies, and so dethroning the higher all fallings into the realm and under the sway of what is, in the narrower sense, natural, as against the spiritual are to be understood.

(4) But a nature which violates the relationships in and for which it is made, and fails therefore to pursue the end for which it is intended, becomes thereby disordered and corrupt. Sin, in the light of the Fatherhood of God, is the transgression of the laws of life, which spring from love, and therefore there sets in the reign of inner lawlessness and corruption, under the sway of the principle of selfishness, which is the negation of love, and therefore the enemy of life.

(5) Further, as the result of this fall from the true relationships of life, this consequent loss of power to pursue its true ends, and this corruption of human nature in itself, comes dethronement from that spiritual lordship of the world which is exercised only in proportion to the spirit of sonship. The connexion, as everywhere stated by St. Paul, is “ if sons, then heirs.” With the loss of sonship goes the possibility of heirship. Man becomes the tool and victim, instead of the possessor, of his earthly life, and this in varying degrees according to the extent of the reign of sin in his heart.

(6) Lastly, it follows from all this that sin brings man into disharmony with the whole of life. The universe is constituted in the Son of God. He gives to all things their nature and their end. To fall out from true relationships in Him is therefore to fall out with the life and spirit of all things. The world therefore becomes the minister of the wrath of God the energy of which is His holy love upon those who violate the essential spirit of all things. The universe is grounded in the Son of God; it exists in vital and organic relationship to man. The fall of man from his proper place in it by sin introduces chaos into his life, and turns what should be the co-operating forces of the universe into avenging spirits, which, so long and so far as he stands out in discord from the whole, cannot but inflict upon him the penalties with which the true life regnant must visit the false. Therefore the Fatherhood of God, thus understood as giving the law to and fixing the ends of the universe in the Son, establishes the vital character of a retribution propor tionate to the offence of sin a retribution operative through the spiritual and immanent forces of the whole upon him who stands out from the spiritual relationships in and for which he was made. These can never be set aside, nor can their inexorable energy be abated, so long as the universe remains constituted in and for the Son of God. Hence, once more, we are brought to see that there is no other way of insisting on the sovereignty of God so effective as that which ispresented by a true apprehension of His Fatherhood; the Father hood, however, being manifested in such conditions, by the enforcement of a claim, without the making good of which neither Fatherhood nor Sonship, neither love nor life, can be maintained.

2. A second consequence of the spiritual constitution of the world becomes apparent, namely, the way in which the Incarnation is the appointed and necessary means of the Redemption of mankind.

We have seen that the manifestation of the Son of God in the flesh is the culmination of human history, and that, while it marks a new departure, it also exhibits the continuity of a Divine unfolding of the meaning of the world in the attainment of its end. There is in the Incarnation the perfect manifestation of the Divine in the human, the final realisation of those relationships between God and man without which neither the universe nor man can be explained. The Incarnation is not a veiling, but an unveiling, of God.

It is the coming out of the Son of God into historicmanifestation in His own world, and in a nature which by all the conditions of its creation and constitution is from the very first His own. We are enabled, therefore, to perceive how the Son incarnate stands related not merely to the fulfilment of the original end of creation, but also to the reparation of its downfall through sin.

(1) In the first place, it is evident that our Lord is no outsider coming to the rescue of downfallen human nature.

However sublime may be the picture of the compassion of the Divine Son of the Eternal Sovereign which brought Him from heaven to earth to the help of mankind, it fails to do full justice to the facts. There is an original relationship between the Son and mankind which binds up His life not by the bonds of external necessity, but by the perfection of His own spiritual nature with the life of mankind, making Him the eternal Self of ourselves, and therefore the eternal Head and Representative of our race. His Incarnation is indeed an immeasurable condescension, all the greater because of the guilt and ruin of sin; but yet it is not the passing into a separate or an alien world. It is the filling with His own Presence of a nature which has ever been His own.

(2) Because of this original relationship, the Son eternally lays down for mankind the laws and ideals of human life, as fulfilled only in those true relationships to God which have their source and ground in His own relationship within the Godhead. Therefore, when He becomes incarnate, Hemanifests in ideal perfection a human life thus fulfilled in its true relationships to God. His life on earth is the faithful reflexion of His eternal life in heaven, and therefore it is the perfect expression of that filial life for which we were made in Him. Thus in His incarnate life He fulfils all righteous ness; righteousness being the law of the Divine character impressed upon the nature of man, and so binding upon him.

(3) Hence our Lord secures at last the full realisation in human history of the true life which sin destroys. He is the truly Divine, yet perfectly human, reaffirmation of that which sin denies. It is in that reaffirmation on the part both of God and man that His redemptive work begins, and by the completion of it that His redemptive work is consummated. All His atoning work is simply founded in and carried to its completion by His persistent reaffirmation, first in spirit and then in doing and suffering, of that true life which sin has contradicted and destroyed. He makes this reaffirmation in those relations of solidarity with the whole race which His relationship to it as its original ground and end involves. He makes it under those conditions of physical nature and of human society which the entrance of sin into the world has brought about those general conditions by which the righteousness of God has marked the unrighteousness of mankind. He makes it in union with, and through making it is, so to speak, in command of that Divine Spirit by whom all that He is and does can be repro duced in the race which through that one Spirit is akin to Him. Once let the Son of God, incarnate, completely reaffirm in spirit, character, and conduct the perfection of human life in its Divine relationships, under the penal conditions of man kind, and atonement first and regeneration next are the divinely natural results.

(4) For, lastly, it is involved in what He is to God and what He is to man that nothing which the Son is, or does, or suffers, is His alone, but that all is for our saJces. It is, in the first place, representative, fulfilled on our behalf and instead of us; and, in the second, spiritual, containing the possibility of being spiritually reproduced within us, because, as St. Paul says, “ The Lord is the Spirit.” This reproduction within us is by means of the combined effect upon us of His historic ministry of atonement and salvation, and of the inner influence which He exercises upon us by the Holy Spirit, who, while He is the gift to us sinners obtained through our Lord’s Passion, is yet, because of our creation in the Son, the Spirit of our original life, by whose indwelling alone it is that man, not only as redeemed, but as created, can be explained.

Such is the provision, in the eternal Divine relationships and in the spiritual constitution of the world, by which the redemption of mankind can be effected. With this we pass to the consideration of Redemption as seen in the light of the Fatherhood of God.