CHAPTER X: Death of the Eternal Son---Scriptural Passages proving@ it---His

Death of the Eternal Son---Scriptural Passages proving@ it---His Exaltation---What was meant by his Death---Not mrnere Physical Death---Why his Sufferings called Death---Visible Expiration on Cross, but Representative of his viewless Death--Physical Death and Spiritual Death.

THE great apostle to the Gentiles declared, "When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son."---Romans, 5v. 10. The two following passages are found in one of the epistles of the beloved disciple: " Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us."---l John, 3iii. 16. " In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."---l John, 4iv. 9, 10. We have presented these two passages from 1 John in the order in which they stand in the epistle, but shall, nevertheless, consider the last first.

Who was the "propitiation for our sins?" He, was the "only begotten Son" of the Father ; he was the Son, whom the Father " sent" " into the world." It was not the human son of the Virgin. That, terrestrial son---that son by adoption---was not the "only begotten Son" of the Father. Nor was he begotten of the Father at all; the conception of the Virgin was by the power of the Holy Ghost.---Luke, 1i. 35. The human son of Mary was not " sent" " into the world ;" it was in the world that he was created "and born. " "The propitiation for our sins," then, was no less a being than the second person of the Trinity.

How did the second person of the Trinity become "the propitiation for our sins ?" The beloved disciple himself informs us, in the first of the passages transcribed from his epistle. The second person of the Trinity became "the propitiation for our sins" when, clothed in flesh, "he laid down his life for us." The term "death," in the passage from Romans, means the same as the terms ",he laid down his" life for us," in the passage from I John. In both passages the Sufferer is the same, though he is called "God" in one of the passages, and "his Son" in the other. Each passage plainly points to the second person of the Trinity, and each passage virtually declares that, made incarnate, he died for our redemption. Of the same import is the following passage: ",And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faithli of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me."--- Galatians, 2ii. 20. The terms "and gave himself for me" are synonymous with the term "death" and the terms "he laid down his life for us," found in the preceding passages. Nor is the following passage of less decisive bearing: " Who, being the brightness of his" (God's"s) " glory, and the express image of his person, and upholding all things by the word of his power, when he had himself purged our sins, sat down on the right hand of the majesty on high."---Hebrews, 1i. 3. We learn elsewhere in Scripture that the purging of our sins was effected by the blood of God.---Acts, 20xx. 28.

A passage that we have already partly transcribed in another connexion is too important in its influence on the present point to be omitted here. " Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus; who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God; but emptied himself, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men; and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name; that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, of things in heaven, and things in earth, and things under the earth; and that every tongue should confess that Jesus Christ is Lord, to the glory of God the Father."---Philippians, 2ii. 5-12. The reader will perceive that we have restored to this passage the terms " emptied himself," unjustly subtracted by the translators. Who was it that, " being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God?" It was certainly the second person of the Trinity. Who was it that " emptied himself" of the glory and beatitude of his Godhead? Beyond peradventure, the second person of the Trinity. Who was it that "took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men?" Verily, the second person of the Trinity. Who was it that ",humbled himself?" Not the lowly son of the lowly Virgin. No earth-born creature would have ",humbled himself" by an everlasting alliance with his own kindred, in-dwelling God, to be consummated with a seat at the right hand of the Highest. Who was it that "became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross?" With no less certainty, it was still the second person of the Trinity. In each stage of the mighty action the second person of the Sacred Three was, in his own ethereal essence, the paramount Actor. He was as much the paramount Actor in the article of death as he was the paramount Actor in the article of incarnation. That theory which, down to the dying scene, would leave the God the Actor, and, at that trying moment, suddenly withdraw the God, and substitute the man alone, is surely "of the earth, earthy."

The great mediatorial death is called in Scripture "the death of the cross,"---not that the divine essence, or even Christ's"s human soul, absorbed as it was in its overpowering reflections, felt the wood or the irons of the flesh-torturing tree. Material wood and iron have not power over the rapt spirit. If the expiatory death was but the "death of the cross" in the literal import of the words, then bodily pain was the sole price of redemption. Such literal construction would exclude Christ's spiritual agonies, divine and human, not caused byi-iot caused by wood or irons, and yet constituting the infinite element in the atoning sacrifice. The terms " the death of the cross," when applied by the Holy Ghost to the passion of the incarnate Deity, swell beyond their lexicographic meaning as far as the "distance from the manger cradle to the eternal throne. The lowly terms, when thus infinitely expanded, represent not only the pains, corporeal and mental, of Mary's"s human son, but the descent, and incarnation, and self-immolation of Him who said "Let there be light, and there was light."

To evade the seemingly resistless force of the passage from Philippians, it has been contended that the exaltation of Christ, announced towards the end of the passage, was but the exaltation of his manhood alone; and that, as his divinity shared not in the exaltation, so his divinity participated not in the antecedent suffering. The celebrated commentator Whitby affirms that this was the doctrine of the fathers.* The school of Athanasius were wise in thus attempting to maintain their consistency. The component parts of their system would have been in chaotic hostility with each other, if, while they maintained that the humanity of Christ alone suffered, they had allowed that both his natures were the recipients of his exaltation. The exaltation was the reward of the suffering. The suffering and its reward were inseparable. The affirmation that the divinity of Christ shared in the exaltation would have drawn after it the affirmation that the divinity of Christ must have participated in the suffering. The doctrine that it was the man, and not the God, who was exalted, would appear, therefore, to be a necessary element of the prevalent theory.

* Whitby'ls Notes on Philippians, 2ii. 9.
136 EXALTATION OF CTIRIST.

wood or irons, and yet constituting the infinite element in the atoning sacrifice. The terms " the death of the cross," when applied by the Holy Ghost to the passion of the incarnate Deity, swell beyond their lexicographic meaning as far as the "distance from the manger cradle to the eternal throne. The lowly terms, when thus infinitely expanded, represent not only the pains, corporeal and mental, of Mary"s human son, but the descent, and incarnation, and self-immolation of Him who said Let there be light, and there was light."

To evade the seemingly resistless force of the passage from Philippians, it has been contended that the exaltation of Christ, announced towards the end of the passage, was but the exaltation of his manhood alone; and that, as his divinity shared not in the exaltation, so his divinity participated not in the antecedent suffering. The celebrated commentator Whitby affirms that this was the doctrine of the fathers.* The school of Athanasius were wise in thus attempting to maintain their consistency. The component parts of their system would have been in chaotic hostility with each other, if, while they maintained that the humanity of Christ alone suffered, they had allowed that both his natures were the recipients of his exaltation. The exaltation was the reward of the suffering. The suffering and its reward were inseparable. The affirmation that the divinity of Christ shared in the exaltation would have drawn after it the at- firmatioii that the divinity of Christ must have

* Whitbyls Notes on Philippians, ii. 9. EXALTATION OF CIIRIST. 137

participated in the suffering. The doctrine that it was the man, and @ not the God, who was exalted, would appear, therefore, to be a necessary element of the prevalent theory.

Yet this doctrine is not taught by the Bible. The very passage from Philippians announced that the subject of the exaltation was Christ Jesus; that the name at which every knee was to bow was the name of Jesus. Christ Jesus and Jesus are here synonymes, designating the same august Being. That august Being united the God and the man. The exaltation of Christ Jesus was the exaltation of both his natures. The exaltation of his manhood alone would have implied a severance of natures, made one and indivisible for eternity. The name at which every knee should bow comprehended the God. To the in-dwelling God belonged the infinite share of the homage of the universe. If the man could have been severed from the God, the man could not have been the object of heaven's"s worship. The cherubim and the seraphim would not have been taught to bow the knee to him. " Worshi@p God" is engraved on the pillars, and the walls, and the very pavements of heaven. It was the in-dwelling God that was to gather the bending knees around the name of Jesus.

Let it not be said that the Creator of the worlds already stood at the very pinnacle of exaltation, and therefore lacked capacity to be exalted farther. This imputed incapacity of God the Son to be exalted is german to his alleged incapacity to suffer. Both incapacities are the creations of theoretic 12*138 r.XALrATION OF TRINITY.

man. They pertain not to his divinity. That earnest prayer by the second person of the Trinity while incarnate on earth, "And now, Father, glorify thou me with thine own self, with the glory which I had with thee before the world was," breathed forth its aspirations after that very exaltation with which he was greeted on his return to his native heavens.---John, 17xvii. 5.

The imagination that the persons of the Godhead could not have been exalted by the consummation of the work of redemption, is but the microscopic view of human reason. The whole Godhead were ineffably exalted. The Son was exalted. The Holy Ghost was exalted. The ]Father was exalted. The very passage from Philippians announced that the confession of every tongue to the supremacy of Jesus Christ should be " to the glory of God the Father." " Glory to God in the highest," was the opening of the anthem of praise by the choir of angels who had descended on the plains of Bethlehem to celebrate the birth of the infant Messiah.---Luke, 2ii. 14. ",Blessing, and honour, and glory, and power be unto him that sitteth upon the throne, and unto the Lamb forever," was the "new song" of heaven to magnify the riches of redeeming love.---Revelation, 5v. 9, 13.

On the triumphal return of the second person of. the Trinity from his terrestrial pilgrimage, a new name was given him. He had borne in heaven the name of the Son. He had received on earth the appellation of the Christ. On his ascension, he was greeted at the gates of paradise as THE SAVIOURlt OF THE WORLD. This was doubtless the " name which is above every name." The appellation of Creator he had acquired by the word of his power. This new name was consecrated in the baptism of his blood. At this name, every knee in heaven delights to bow. At this name, every knee in hell shall be constrained to bow. At this name, it is passing strange that every knee on the redeemed earth does not joyously bow!

But it is time that we should return from this unavoidable digression to the scriptural representation of the death of the uncreated Son. In this connexion, the following passage must not be omitted: " Even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to give his life a ransom for many."---Matthew, 20xx. 28. Who was the Son of man? He himself tells us in another of his evangelists, ",And no man hath ascended up to heaven, but he that came down from heaven, even the Son of man which is in heaven." ---John, 3iii. 13. This was the Son of man, who gave " his life a ransom for many." What life did he give as the priceless ",ransom ?" He gave that life " "which came down from heaven." He gave that life which fills immensity. He gave that life which lived at once in heaven and on the earth. If farther scriptural proof is needed that the second perilson of the Trinity made incarnate, died " to be the propitiation for our siniis," we invoke once more his own sublime proclamation to his beloved disciple 140at Patmos, " I am he that liveth, and was dead;-. and behold, I am alive for evermore, Amen."---Revelation, 1i. 18.

It is, then, a recorded Bible representation, that the second person of the Trinity, clothed in flesh, died for our redemption. This representation, in every jot and tittle of its solemn import, must forever stand, though " heaven and earth pass away." That it is mysterious, and beyond the comprehension of human reason, is no ground for its rejection. If human reason can, at its discretion, discard every truth it does not understand, it might, by the word of its power, convert the universe into an infinite blank; for reasoning pride cannot comprehend even itself. It is enough that the death of the second person of the Trinity, to save our sinking world, is registered in the Word of God. From its sacred repository it must not be plucked by ruthless force ; nor must it be extracted by the chemical process of artificial interpretation.

How are we to understand the declarations of Scripture, that the second, the incarnate person of the Trinity died for our redemption ? Human reason has its ready response. The prevalent theory would boldly affirm that he died in no other sense than by the severance of the material and immaterial parts of his manhood; that it was the redeeming man who was " wounded for our transgressions," and with whose " stripes we are healed;" that the redeeming God remained wrapped ,in the mantle of his impassibility ; that he continued as blessed on earth as he had ever been in heaven; that his infinite beatitude was as perfect in the most trying scene of the work of redemption as it had been in the crowning scene of the work of creation.

With profound respect, yet with propounder solemnity, must we enter our humble protest against a theory which would impute to the reiterated declarations of the Word of God an illusory meaning. The Bible could no more equivocate than its divine Author could swerve from the truth. It is the very soul of ingenuous frankness. It has no covert meanings; no deceptive reservations. When it declared that the incarnate person of the Trinity had died, it intended what was fully equivalent to all that its words import; it meant not that he died by fiA Action of law; -it meant not that he died at e le in th e covering of his manhood alone; it meant not that he died merely in the death of that terrestrial worm which he had condescendingly taken into holy alliance with himself. The scriptural declarations of the death of the second person of the Trinity had a meaning real as the truth of God, high as heaven, deep as the foundations of the everlasting throne. They intended that hiMs eternal essence, clothed in flesh, participated in the dying agonies which wrought salvation.

In this vital point, it is important that we should not be misunderstood. We will endeavour to define the position assumed by our argument so far as our finite and very limited capacity can grasp the mysteriousness and infinitude of the awful subject. It would be equally opposed to our head and to our heart to affirm that the Bible, in predi142 ETERNAL SON NEVER CEASED TO BE.

ceating death of the uncreated Son of God, intended to intimate that there has ever been a moment, in the flight of eternal ages, when the seconi-id person of the Trinity ceased to be. According to Scripture, the death of a spirit causes no cessation of its vitality. The ethereal vigour even of the human soul is not palsied by the cold touch of physical, nor is it to be coniasumed by the fervent heat of spiritual death. When the second person of ,the

Trinity " laid down his life for us" as "the propitiaration for our sins," he was as much the@ ever-livIting God as when he breathed the breath of life into the nostrils of our primeval ancestor.

The second person of the Trinity atoned, by suffering in his ethereal essence, for the sins of the world. He suffered, perhaps, as much as the redeemed would, but for him, have aggregately suffered through an endless eternity. His expiatory agonies were, doubtless, beyond the conception of mortal man; probably beyond the comprehension of the highest archangel. T"rhey could not be bodied forth, with distinctness, in words to be found in any human vocabulary, nor, probably, in the vocabulary of heaven; yet spiritual things, inexpressible and incomprehensible, are often obscurely unveiled to the imagination of man by the revelation of God. So it is with the secrets of "that undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns." So it is with the propounder secrets of that pavilion of wo, where He who inspired Isaiah's"s harp " was wounded for our transgressions" and " bruised for our iniquities." Mindful of the imperfections of human speech, and the dimness of human conception, the Bible, to impar;?,rt to redeemed creatures some twilight glimpses of" the redeeming agonies of their Creator, has selected the most potent term known to the dwellers upon the earth; a term appalling to the imagination and affecting to the heart; a term rendered more expressive and impressive by its very obscurity and incomprehensiveness. That term is death ! the vague, shadowy, and awful name of the king of terrors.

The Holy Ghost, who knows all things, well knew that this mighty term, and its no less mighty synonymes, were more calculated to intimate to mortal apprehension the viewless, nameless, inconceivable sufferings of the Redeemer of the world, than any other terms which humanman ears could hear and live. The name of the king of terrors must have been selected, not only for its transcendent potency, but for the affinity between the spiritual or second death which awaited the redeemed and the vicarious agonies borne for them by their ,great Redeemer. -Eternal, death awaited them. tl- -Death was the name of the penalty of their transgressrAnse4ions. Their Redeemer took on himself the penalty. The name wen@t along with it, as the shadow follows the substance. The term, death or either of its synonymes, then, when applied4-, iin Scripture to the second person of the Trintity, "meant not to intimate the cessation of his existence, even for a moment.

It meant to shadow forth to the imagination, and impress on the heart, the image of those vicarious 144 ATONING DEATH BFGUN NOT ON CROSS.

sufferings, equivalent, in the estimate of sovereign grace, to the eternal death of the redeemed, which the uncreated Son endured for their redemption.

The Bible has given a mysterious prominence to the death of Christ, representing it as the vital element of the mediatorial sacrifice. We have seen that the blood of Christ, according to its scriptural import, means the totality of the merits of his expiatory sufferings. The body of @Christ has the same comprehensiveness of signi4@fication. When, at his sacramental -supper, our Lord distributed among his disciples the symbolical bread and wine, and called them his body and his blood, they typified and represented, not merely his physical body and blood, but the whole infinitude of his mediatorial merits. The death of Christ, in its scriptural import, has the same vast amplitude of signification. It was not confined to his - expiration on the cross. The media-heine4@torial death, which wrought the salvation @of t,ihe@ world4, began when; the second person of the Trinity "emptied himself" of the glory and beatitude of his Godhead. It descended with him to the manger of Bethlehem. - It followed him to the workshop of Joseph. It clung with a vulture's"s grasp to the bosom of the houseless God, through his terrestrial pilgrimage. It included the totality of his expiatory humiliation and sufferings. Calvary witnessed its consummation, not its inception.

To limit the redeeming death of the Bible to the visible expiration between the two thieves I would, by narrowing the extent and depreciating the value ATONING DEATH: WHAT. 145

of the atoning offering, lower the awful standard of divine justice, and thus dim one of the brightest gems of the celestial diadem. Terrible indeed was the consummation of the atoning death. It was the outpouring of the full cup of God's"s wrath. Awful beyond what creatures on earth, or, probably, creatures in heaven, can express or conceive, was the concluding scene of the expiatory tragedy. We would not underrate its transcendent value. Without it, not a soul could have been saved. Without it, the smoke of the torment of the redeemed must have ascended up forever and ever. The tremendous consummation on Calvary, however, consisted not chiefly in the physical death of Christ.L "That was but its finite element. His physical deathl7. was" but the demolition of "the temple "of his body," "" that- it might be reared again more gloriously on the third day. The astonished centurion apprehended not that secret, yet almighty cause which darkened the sun, rent the rocks, and convulsed the earth.

But the viewless recess, in which were -consummated, the sufferings of the Prince of life in his ethereal essence, witnessed throes and spasms sufficient to have dissolved the material universe, had it not been upheld by the power-.bev

@,@4@@by the power of its agonized

Creator". The rre6, where,@e the sword of the ,.Lord of

I-. Hlosts inflicted on Godaod the Son " the chastisementchastisement of our peace," was the scene of that concentration and sublimation of unearthly agonies which Inspiration could but faintly intimate to our mental 146 ATONING DEATH: WHAT.

vision even byv the vague, and shadowy, and appalling figure of the king of terrors.

That the term death, when applied to represent the expiatory sufferings, was satisfied by the physical expiration on Calvary, is a theory opposed to the letter and spirit of Scripture. There were sufferings behind the veil which shut out mortal vision, unseen and nameless. Those sufferings formed the true consummation of the mediatorial death of the Bible. Of that death of deaths; the visible extinction of l,,Iife on Calvary was but the shadow. The physical expiration on Calvary was the death of the redeeming man. The expiatory sufferings of the redeeming God, included, too, under the awful name of the king of terrors, and constituting the infinite portion of the redeeming sacrifice, were viewless---unseen by mortals, perhaps seen only by the Sacred Three. , . The "strong, yet seemingly unsatisfied desire of angels to look@A into them intimates that they were not open, palpa ble, and familiarx to the angelic vision.a;

There is a physical death, and there is a spiritual death, sometimes called, in Scripture-, the second death. There is a death for mortals to die, and a death of which immortals are capable of dying. When Christ said, " If a man keep my saying, he shall never see death;" and again, when he sabid, "And whosoever liveth, and believeth in me, shall never die;" he did not -mean to exempt from physical death him who beliem e-ved in - iri him and kept his saying,-- John, 8viii, 51xi; 11.. 26. @"He left physical death as he found it, the common inheritance of humanity. It was from spiritual death only that our Lord promised to protect those who yielded him their belief and their obedience. When Paul declared that Christ had "abolished death," he spoke only of the death of the redeemed soul.---2 Timothy, 1i. 10.

It was, then, to save us, not from physical, but from spiritual death; not from the death of time, but from the death of eternity, that the second person of the Trinity, clothed in flesh, " laid down his life." All the redeemed of every nation, and clime, and age, were destined to the relentless grasp of this undying death. They owed it an amount which human arithmetic has not powers to compute. Payment to the uttermost farthing in the sufferings of the transgressors---sufferings as ceaseless as the flow of eternity---was to be exacted. Then appeared, as their Redeemer, the second person of the glorious Trinity, clothed in the weeds of humanity. He came not to cancel or to mi-nitigate their debts without rendering what the eternal Father might deem a full equivalent; for that would have been to make infinite justice weakly break its sword. His mediatorial mission had for its object the substitution of his sufferings for theirs. For their spiritual death was interposed what the Bible calls his own death. His sufferings had the same awful name which would have attached to their sufferings. Nothing short of this infinite sacrifice could have satisfied the high, and inflexible requisitions of infinite justice. The redeeming equivalent was death for death; the death of the God for the undying death of his redeemed.

This was what was meant by the Holy Ghost, speaking by the tongue of his rapt apostle, when he said " that he" (Jesus), " by the grace of God, should taste of death for every man."---Hebrews, 2ii. 9. It was not the taste of physical death that was intended. Every man had drunk, or was to drink, of that bitter draught for himself. From the general doom pronounced on our first parents and their descendants, " Dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return," the flight of six thousand years has afforded but two exceptions.OD.S. Of physical death, the terrestrial son of Mary, from the laws of his human nature, must have tasted for himself in his own person, unless he had, like Enoch and Elijah, been miraculously translated. The redeeming death, then, to be tasted, was not physical death, but an equivalent for the undying deat@h to which the redeemed themselves stood exposed.

What composed the cup of suffering, in Scripture denominated death, of which the eternal Son, clothed in flesh, tasted for every man, we know not distinctly, except that it was filled to its very brim with the wrath of almighty God against sin. The human son of the Virgin could no more, at least within the brief space of mortal life, have drank this cup than he could have quaffed an ocean of liquid fire. But the second person of the Trinity, in the omnipotence of hiMs might and the infinitude of his pitying grace, drained it, as the substitute of sinners, to its very dregs. It was a real, not a fictitious or seeming draining of the cup of divine wrath by the redeeming Son. No wonder that, at the unimaginable agonies of its Creator, the sun hid its face in darkness; that the rocks were rent asunder; that the earth shook to its foundations; that the repose of the dead was disturbed. This, doubtless, was the mystery of mysteries---new and "strange" in the history of the universe---which riveted the holy curiosity of heaven--.-into which "the angels desired to look." ---1 Peter, 1. 12. __________________________________________________________________

Second Chapter of Hebrews---Taster of Death---Captain of our Salvation-u---Taker on him the Seed of Abraham---Term Death when affirmed of the Eternal Son more fully explained---Both Natures of Christ Tempted.

As the prevalent theory claims for one of its strong-holds the second

leading truths of that important chapter, so far as they bear on the question at issue. Whether their bearing favours or impugns the prevalent theory, our impartial readers will judge for themselves.

The second chapter of Hebrews contains the declaration, that the incarnate God tasted death for every man. Was the tasting of death the act of his mere humanity, or the concurrent act of both his united natures ? The question is vital to our discussion. We suppose that this inspired chapter, while it shows that the manhood of Christ suffered aiand died, evinces also that his divinity participated in his suffering and death. It seems utterly to exclude the hypothesis that his divinity was shrouded in impassibility. The ninth verse reads thus; " But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honour; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man." The tenth verse reads thus; ",For it became Him for whom are all things and by whom are all things, in bringing many sons unto glory, to make the Captain of their salvation perfect through sufferings." The mighty Being represented as "Him for whom are all things, and by whom are all thiffings," is unquestionably the infinite Father.

The Taster of death for every man, in the ninth verse, is, in the tenth verse, styled the Captain of our salvation. The Taster of death and the Captain of our salvation are, therefore, identically one and the same. Who, then, was the Captain of our salvation ? Certainly the second person of the Trinity clothed in flesh. The human son of the Virgin was not the Captain; he was but the subalterm in the work of redemption.. To suppose that the august personage of these passages tasted death in his human nature merely, and was the Captain of our salvation, not only in his human nature, but also in his divine, is a gratuitous assumption. The concurrence of both his natures was equally necessary in each of the departments. The assumption is worse than gratuitous; it is a fatal blow to the simplicity, the directness, the ingenuousness, the harmony of these two sister verses of Sacred Writ.

The Captain of ourt salvation was made "perfect through sufferings." "The expressions last quoted were doubtless applied to the humanity of Christ. They were also applied to his divinity. As God, he was, indeed, infinitely perfect ere the worlds were formed. To pe"rfect him, however, for his new office of Mediator between God and man, it was, in the conclave of eternal wisdom, deemed fitting that the farther qualifications of incarnation and suffering should be superadded to the original infinitude of his perfections. Does any one cavil at the thought of making perfection more perfect! Let the skeptic, then, look at the incarnation, that schoolmaster from heaven, of whom reasoning pride should silently learn to wonder and adore. Even finite intelligence can perceive the aptitude of suffering, as well as of incarnation, to make perfect the divine Captain of our salvation. It was the suffering of the God which gave infinite value to his expiatory offering. It was by his own suffering that he best learned how to sympathize with suffering humanity. It was by his divine suffering that he taught the wondering hierarchies of heaven and the despairing princedoms of hell that he had become the Captain of our salvation, not in name only, but also in endurance; that his suffering and tasting of death were not figures of speech, but solemn realities.

In the sixteenth verse, it is said of the Taster of death for every man, called, too, the Captain of our salvation, that "he took not on him the nature of angels, but he took on him the seed of Abraham." That the Taker on him of the seed of Abraham was the God, about to be made man, is beyond peradventuiare. HIle had been pre-existent,; hbe took on him the seed of Abraham of his own free choice. He might, had he so elected, have taken on him the nature of angels. While our opponents will doubtless admit that it was the God who took on him the seed of Abraham, and that it was the God-man who became the Captain of our salvation, except in the article of suffering, they will steadfastly affirm that, in the article of suffering and the tasting of death, the actor was not the Creator, but the creature. The intelligent reader cannot but perceive how subversive this theory is of the symmetry of the whole chapter. Nor must he undervalue this startling fact. Not only every chapter, but the entire volume of the Word of God, must needs be symmetrical. From its common and divine origin, each of its diversified parts must, of necessity, harmonize with the whole. Such are the laws of the material creations of God. Such, especially, must be the law of the moral creation, revealed in his own Holy Word, indited by ,his own Holy Spirit. No lawless comet wanders in that system of grace. The theory, then, which, to be sustained, must bring sacred texts into collision with each other, or with other sacred texts, cannot have come down from above.

To evince more clearly the discrepancy infused by the prevalent theory into the second chapter of Hebrews, let us, for a moment, review its three prominent truths, in the reverse order to that in which theyv are recorded. Its three prominent truths arie the assumption of the seed of Abraham, the captainship of our salvation, and the suffering and tasting of death. In the assumption of the seed of Abraham, the God was the Actor. The man was passive; he was only the recipient. It was the incarnation of the God. The God "manifest in the flesh" became the Captain of our salvation; and here manhood began to act its humble part---the part of a secondary planet to the central sun, round which it is revolved. To the captainship of our salvation, suffering and death, of necessity, pertained. They were the chief purposes of the creation of the official character. It " behooved" the Captain of our salvation to suffer. Luke, 24xxiv. 46. To suffer and to die was the object for which the living God became the incarnate Captain of our salvation. The Captain of our salvation was to suffer and die in all the elements which constitute his being. He was to suffer in both his natures. He was to die the death of a mortal ; he was to die the death of an immortal. If he did not suffer and die in all the elements which formed his united being and constituted his identity, then the Captain of our salvation was never made "perfect through sufferings." The central sun would not be extinguished, or moved from its sphere by the mere dissolution or derangement of its attendant planet.

On the prevalent theory, the Bible was mistaken in its asseveration that the Captain of our salvation suffered. The Bible supposed that the lightning of infinite wrath had pierced him through and through. The Bible was deceived; it was but the rent of his outer garmrment. The Captain of our salvation, in the paramount -and infiniteinfinfte element of his united being, passed scathless through the fiery deluge. It was only his subaltern, niaot himself, who suffered and tasted of death. The divine Captain remained cased in impassibility. If this be true, then He, who is the most disinterested of beings, would not have arrogated, or permitted his inspired disciples to arrogate for hiMmself, the honours hard earned by the suffering and death of his devoted subaltern. In the scriptural proclamations of the struggles and triumphs of redeeming love, it would somewhere have been announced, or, at least, intimated, that it was the self-sacrificed subaltern alone who, by his suffering and death, paid the price of the world's"s redemption.

The second chapter of Hebrews came from the pen of its inspired writer a blessed family of harmonious truths. By the touch of the prevalent theory, its beautiful symmetry is marred. Its sacred sisters are made to use sacred words with double import, having a seeming and covert signification. This is not the ingenuous manner in which Divine Truth has been wont to deal with the children of men. In its application of the same, or the like terms, to the same identical subject, in the same holy chapter, it is a stranger to misleading duplicity of meaning.

The fourteenth verse is, as follows: " Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same; -that through death he might destroy him that had the power of death, that is, the devil." He who, with " the children," "himself likewise took part of flesh and blood", was the second person of the glorious Trinity. The human" son of the Virgin took not part of flesh and blood by voluntary agency. He was the passive recipient. That the second person of the Trinity assumed not incarnation from any lack of capacity to suffer in his ethereal essence, if such had been hiMs holy will, has already appeared. But it was deemed fitting in the conclave of the Godhead that its second glorious person should accomplish his expiatory sacrifice, clothed in the fallen nature whose redemption he had assumed. Though he might have suffered of his own free volition without incarnation, yet he needed incarnation for suffering in the peculiar mode devised by infinite wisdom. The early prediction that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's"s head must have passed away unaccomplished, unless the redeeming God had assumed the woman's"s nature. " Forasmuch, then, as the children are partakers of flesh and blood, he also himself likewise took part of the same." And " a body" was prepared for the descending Deity. Hebrews, 10x. 5. To the reasons which might have induced him to select the garb of humanity as hiMs suffering costume, we shall most reverentially return in a subsequent chapter.

It was "through death" that the Son of God destroyed "him that - had the power of death." What then was this@ conquering death, through which the " power of darkness" was subdued, and a world redeemed? The inquiry touches the very core of our argument. It has mo@re than once been the subject of allusion in the progress of this, and the preceding chapters; its paramont importance seems to justify its expansion in the present connection. What then constituted the conquering death thus announced by the great apostle as the very pivot of salvation? Whitby, the distinguished commentator, limits it to the corporeal sufferings of our Lord. That we may not be thought to libel this learned adherent of the prevalent theory, we give his own words, recorded in his note to the thirty-eighth verse of the twenty-sixth chapter of St. Matthew. His concluding remarks on that passage are as follows:--

"So that if we would speak according to the constant language of the Holy Ghost in Scripture, we must ascribe the work of our redemption to our Lord's suffering in the body for us; in which it is certain that he could suffer nothing answerable unto the punishment of damned spirits, but only, gave his life a ransom for many."

Against such degoradation of that atoning sacrifice for which the Creator of the worlds left his celestial throne, we enter our respectful, yet solemn remonstrance. And in this remonstrance we are conscious that the general heart of Christendom, if left free from theq shackles of theory, would join, as it were by acclamation. Nor was it mere physical decease which constituted the conquering death announced by the apostle. Sufferings from physical decease consist in the pangs attending. the rupture between the dying body and its sis@ter spirit. Neither the agonies of his ethereal essence, nor the preternatural pains of his human soul, flowing directly from the hand of its heavenly Father, formed an integral part of Christ's physical death. Of that death the cross was the all-sufficient cause; in their sure work, its wood and its irons needed no unearthly aid. Had Christ died a mere physical death, his expiatory suffering would not have surpassed that of the penitent thief at his side. It was not the laying down of physical life, and that for three days only, which procured the salvation of the world.

Of the great conquering death, the anguish of physical decease was only the covering pall. The life-giving death reigned within. Into its composition went, no doubt, the preternatural suffering of Christ's"s human soul : its efficacious, its absorbing, its infinite element was, however, the world redeeming agony of his ethereal substance. It derived the name of death from no uninspired vocabulary. Human lore would have deemed incongruous the application of the name to those supernatural throes and spasms which filled to overflowing the undying spirituality, ino, the undying spirituality, divine and human, of the incarnate God, but which formed not constituents in the process of his mere phyvsical decease. And in the dictionaries of secular learning the name would have been held just as inapplicable to the unearthly pangs of his mortal soul, as to the ineffable agonies of his ethereal essence..

But the Bible has imparted to the term death, a meaning unknown to the dictioina4ries of secular lore. In scriptural phraseology it of)ten, indeed, denotes physical decease; perhaps oftener the undying misery of the undestructible spirit. Physical death entered not Eden ; no inanimate and cold and decaying cCorse was seen in its bowers. Yet the denunciation, "In the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die," came to the ecars of our primeval ancestor from the lips of immutable Truth.---Genesis, 2ii. 17. Nevertheless of

"The fruit
Of that forbidden tree,"
He "plucked," he " eat:
Earth felt the wound and nature from her seat,
Sighing through all her works, gave signs of woe,
That all was lost."
2@

Still physical death appeared not in the garden of the Lord. The culprit, though driven from paradise, was allowed centuries of corporeal health after the " mortal taste." Yet the prediction was surely accomplished on the ve-ry day of the transgression. The denunciation, then, must have contemplated, not physical death, but cessation of moral vitality. Simultaneously with the transgression, the offender became "14 dead in trespasses and sins."---Ephesians, 2ii. 1.

This was the first announcement of death in the Sacred Oracles; the last scriptural appearance of the name is in the eighth verse of the twenty-first chapter of Revelation. There it imports the " second death," of which the ruined and deathless soul is doubtless to be the chief recipient. It denotes the fearful consummation of that moral catastrophe which had its -inception when the sin-poisoned souls of the primeval pair died in the terrestrial paradise. So that, upon its first and last occurrence in Holy Writ, the name, instead of being used in its secular import, had but a secondary reference to physical decease. And in the intermediate pages of the Sacred Volume, the death of the deathless spirit, as well as physical death, is habitually included under the name of the king of terrors.

In the vocabulary of the Bible death means penal su offering, corporeal and incorporeal, temporal and eternal. It is the appropriate scriptural name of penal suffering in all its infinite variety of modification. It shadows forth the penal suffering of lost souls, and, as we believe, of fallen angels. Once, in the history of the universe, has penal suffering devolved on spotless purity. To express the penal suffering borne by the Son of God, no new name was introduced into scriptural diction; none could have been formi-ned from the elements of human speech; none would have been intelligible to " ears .of flesh and blood." The ancient appellation of the king of terrors mysteriously expanded in its latent import for the tremendous exigency, was employed by Inspiration, dimly to intimate the whole penal suffering of the sinless Victim, corporeal and incorporeal, human and divine, vicariously endured for the sins of the redeemed.

It was in this majestic sense of the mighty term, that the apostle, overflowing with the Holy Ghost, declared that the great Captain of our salvation " through death destroyed him that had the power of death." This was indeed the conquering death of the" Bible. This was the death of deaths, of which none but an incarnate God could die, compounded of the natural dissolution wrought by the wood and nails of the cross, and especially of those spiritual sufferings unknown to physical decease, which the holy Substitute for sin sustained in his divine as well as human nature, from the outpouring of the terrible cup of almighty wrath.

This development illustrates more forcibly the truth stated in our last chapter, that the conquering death of the Bible was not limited to the brief space of expiration between the two thieves. Consisting, as it did, of penal sufferings vicariously borne, it commenced with their commencement, and ended not until their termination. The redeeming God began to die, in the scriptural sense of the term, when he left the right hand of his Father; for then began his penal sufferings. He continued dying until the close of the tragedy of redemption; for then, and not till then, were " finished" his penal sufferings. The brief death-struggle of mortals may occupy an hour or a day: the protracted death-agonies of the redeeming God filled almost one-third of what earth calls a century; progressing in intenseness from the hour of his humiliation until their tremendous consummation on Calvary.

That the length and breadth and height and depth of the conquering death were but dimly perceptible to carnal vision, was in strict accordance with the scriptural manifestations of the God revealed in flesh. Almost from the first to the last of his terrestrial humiliation, the self "emptied" Deity was closely veiled under the weeds of humanity. The manger of Bethlehem disclosed but the birth of an humble babe; the cross of Calvary displayed but the expiration of an obscure and forsaken mortal. Yet nature could not always withhold her significant indications of a present God. The moving star pointed to Divinity just born into the flesh; the darkened sun, the rent rocks, the shuddering earth, fearfully betokened their suffering, writhing, dying Creator.

It was a merciful provision in the economy of redeeming grace that the great Deliverer, when descending to our world on his benign errand, should have concealed his ineffable glory under the mantle of manhood. Had he appeared as he appeared at Sinai, who on earth could have endured his presence! Even Moses could not behold him face to face and live. Well was it for the oriental sages who came, heaven directed, to the manger--well was it for the apostolic band-well was it for the little children folded in the arms of the benignant Jesus-well was it for the beloved disciple leaning on the bosom of his Master-well was it for the mother of Bethlehem's"s babe when nursing the young Incarnate, or hoverini-ig around his cross for one last lingering look-that humanity had kindly interposed its protecting veil betwixt them and the consuming effulgence of -their redeeming God.

The last verse of the second chapter of Hebrews reads thus: "For in that he himself hath suffered, being tempted, he is able to -succour them that are tempted." This was do4oubtless applied to the man Christ Jesus. It was also applied to the God Christ Jesus. That the whole incarnate God was for a moment " tempted" " to pause in his mediatorial career by the near approach of his viewless, inexpressible, unimaginable sufferings, let the amazement, and agony, and bloody sweat, and piercing cries, and vehement supplications of Gethsemane bear witness. His peculiar aptitude, acquired from his own personal experience, to be. come the efficient and divine succourer of tempted suffering, in every place and in every age, has been tested by the lapse of eighteen centuries. Does any unbelieving Thomas doubt the infinitude of this consoling truth? Let him look back to the " tempted," yet triumphant martyrdoms of the early Church. Let him trace the modern footsteps of the "tempted," yet patient and enduring missionary of the cross, on the pestilential and burninzig sands of Africa's"s physical and moral desert. Let him strengthen his morbid faith by com.. muning with the voices that come up from the islands of the farthest seas.

It is objected that the Deity cannot be tempted; and that, therefore, the temptations of Christ mustrnust be referred exclusively to his manhood. Proof that his divinity was tempted, is not necessary to the maintenance of our system. Temptation and suffering were subject to his own volition; and the God might have elected to endure suffering, and yet not have submitted himself to temptation. We believe, nevertheless, that Inspiration has applied temptation, as well as suffering, to both natures of Christ.

Temptation was predicated of Jehovah ages before the holy incarnation. Take the following samples from the Old Testament. ", And Moses said unto them, why chide ye with me? Wherefore cdlo ye tempt the Lord?"---Exodus, 17xvii. 2. ",And he called the name of the place Massah, and Meribah, because of the chiding of the children of Israel, and because they tempted the Lord."---Exodus, 17.xvii. 7. " Because all those men which have seen my glory and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, have tempted me now these ten times."---Numbers, 14xiv. 22. "Y Ye shall not tempt the Lord your God, as ye tempted him in Massah." ---Deuteronomy, 6vi. 16. " And they tempted God in their heart."---Psalms, 78lxxviii. 18. " Yet they tempted and provoked the Most High God."--" Psalms, 78lxxviii. 56. " When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work."---Psalms, 95xcv. 9. " And tempted God in the desert."---Psalms, 106cvi. 14. " Yea, they that tempt God are even , delivered."---Malachi, 3iii. 15.

The New Testament also distinctly predicates temptation of a person of the Godhead in passages where the name of Christ is not found. " How is it that ye have agreed together to tempt the Spirit of the Lord."---Acts, 5v. 9. " Now therefore, why tempt ye God?"---Acts, 15xv.
10. " When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my works forty years."---HebrKews, 3iii. 9. So God is said to have tempted one of his -mcoist faithful servants. " And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham."---Genesis, 22xxii. 1.

St. James did not intend to place himself in collision with his inspired brethren of the Old and New Testaments, when he declared, " Let no man say when he is tempted, I am tempted of God; for God cannot be tempted of evil, neither tempteth he any man."---James, 1i. 13. The apostle, in the text and context has so qualified the terms here used to indicate temptation, as to impart to them a meaning different from that attached to terms nearly similar in the other scriptural passages to which we have just referred. In those other scriptural passages, temptation, in its application to the Deity, is synonymous with trial; to tempt signifies to try; to be tempted signifies to be tried. In the passage from St. James, the words indicative of temptation, qualified as they are by the inspired writer himself, imply, not abortive, but overcoming trials; the terms "tempted" and " tempteth" in the passage, mean successful enticements into sin. It is a self-evident truism that neither temptation, nor any of its derivatives, can, in this sense, be predicated of the omnipotent and holy God. He" may be tried, as he was tried by the wayward Israelites; he may try hiMs children as he did the father of the faithful. But he cannot -be beguiled into evil, neither beguileth he into evil any of his creatures. This solution, and this alone, brings the brioother of our Lord into harmony with his inspired predecessors and contemporariescotemporaries.

That we have explained the passage from St. James, as its inspired author intended it should be 166 understood, is manifest from the controlling influence of the fourteenth and fifteenth verses of the same chapter. Nor do we stand alone in our exposition. McKnight, the stedfast adherent of the prevalent theory, and one of the ablest of scriptural critics, thus paraphrased the passage:

"Let no man who is drawn into sin by the things which befall him, say, with the false teachers, Truly I am seduced byv God. For God is incapable of being seduced by evil; and he does not seduce anaiy one, either byv an outward or inward influence."

?,

The temptations of Christ, unlike those indicated by St. James, were but abortive trials. Though he was " tempted," it was "44 yet without sin."--"Hebrews, 4iv. 15. The trials of the man Christ Jesuo.s were just as vain as the trials of the indwelling God. No element of his united being was ever touched by any incipient movement of forbidden desire. In the path of holiness, his human nature faltered no more than did his divine. His .temptations are applied by Inspiration to the whole undivided Messiah. Why should we seek to subtract his divinity ? If temptation was predicated of the infinite Spirit not revealed in flesh, why should it. be withdrawn from the eternal Word made man and dwelling among us ? There seems a peculiar fitness in the inspired ascription ocOf temptation to the incarnate, Deity. The meek endurance of trials formed-1 -.tfkls a prominent constituent in his humiliation." @ His Bet ,wvhol-e mournful sojourn on earth, from Bethlehem to Calvary, was distinguished by "himself as it he time of his " temptations."---Luke, 22xxii. 28. Human reason has no right to restrict to the manhood of Christ the unlimited declarations of Scripture, predicating temptation of his whole united being. His terrestrial pilgrimage was the hour of " the power of darkness."---Luke, 22xxii.
53. Who on earth canll fathom that tremendous pPower, second onl y to the Omnipotent? When its profane but abortive temptations are ascribed by Inspiration to the whole incarnate Deity, will reason boldly seek to confine them to his human nature, because she deems temptation not " fittinilg to God?"

Take, for example, the memn-iorable temptation of the desert. The arch-tempter had once unfurled the flag of defiance in the very capital of God's"s empire, challenging to combat Almightiness armed in the terrors of its wrath, surrounded by the faithful hierarchies of heaven. He faiiled; hfie fell. It seems not " passing strange," that, made reckless by despair, exasperated to phrenzy by the near consummation of long-promised salvation to the hated ",seed of the woman," he should have ventured to assail his great Conqueror, when he found him a solitary wanderer in the wilderness of Judea, arrayed ?in the vestments of frail mortality he was conscioH@us that he stood in the presence of the Son of God. He virtually named him the Son of God. The Holy One admitted, at least by implication, the truth of the appellation. It was,@, then, the second that bears "record in heaven," seen and recognized beneath the weeds of "the lonely pilgrim, on whom, as well as on the redeeming man, the prince of darkness made his aui-idacious assault.

If the effort to tempt the in-dwelling GodJ. appears too bold and desperate even for the maddened fiend, no less so would seem his effort to tempt the chosen and guarded man in whom dwelt the never-sleeping Jehovah. Satan was a learned scholar; in prophetic lore he was deeply skilled; he had heard the song of the descended angels; he had seen the moving star; the voice so audible at Jordan' s waves, recognizing the beloved and just baptized Son, was still ringing in the ears of the fallen archangel; he could no more hope to sever the holy union developed in the manger cradle, than to rend asunder the Triple Throne. But the father of the wicked, like his children, was restless and reckless as " the troubled sea."

If we pass onward in the mrnediatorial biography, we shall find that all the temptations of the High -Priests, and of the Scribes, and of the Pharisees, and of the Sadducees, and of the Herodians, and of the lawyers, and of the throng without a name, had for their subject the whole united being of Him, who cast out trembling devils, cured by his touch all manner of diseases, restored vitality to the dead by the word of his power, and commanded the obedience of the conscious elements. It was the whole undivided and undivisible Christ of the Bible---it was he who thought it not robbery to c@laimrn oneness with the infinite Father---it was he who assumed the august appellation of the Old Testament, I AM,---who meekly stooped, in the days of his humiliation, to the mocking trials of faithless men, urged onward by " the power of darkness."---Matthew, 16xvi. 1 ; 19xix. 3; 22xxii. 18, 35. Mark, 8viii. 11" ; 10x. 2; 12xii. 15. Luke, 10x. 25; 11xi. 16; 20xx. 23. John, 8viii. 6.

Christ, in his humanity, "was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin."@Hebrews, 4iv. 15. How he was tempted in his divinity, if communicable to mortal apprehension, Scripture has not deemed fit to communicate. Nor would the communication have been of seeming use. The fortitude of the tempted man was revealed, in its outlines, as a model for our imitation; we @-could not have aspired to imitate the ineffable enduraiance of the deeply tried God. That his divine and human, temptations were dissimilar, in kind as well as in degree, may be inferred from a kindred dissimilarity in his divine and human sufferings. The body of the redeeming man was distorted and lacerated by the visible wood and irons of the cross; the essence of the redeeming Deity was pierced by the viewless sword of the Lord of Hosts.

The supposition that the Word made flesh passed untried through, the ordeal of his humiliation, is opposed alikeq to "the letter and whole spirit of the Bible. If the Jehovah oDf the fO)ld Testament, "high and lifted up," was tempted by the wayward Israelites, how much more abounding and intense must have been the trials of the New Testament Jehovah, "emptied" and incarnate; rejected and traduced by those he came to save; betrayed by one of his chosen twelve, denied by another, and deserted by all; mocked, scourged, spitted upon, crucified,--crucified between two thieves! Nothing but the patience of a God could have withheld the thunderbolts of the tempted God.

That the footsteps of the mediatorial God are often apparent in the second chapter of Hebrews will not be denied by our opponents. But they will affirm that the footsteps of the mediatorial man appear still oftener; and that, in the suffering and dying scenes, the man is the sole actor. This is a just specimen of the cardinal fault of the prevalent theory in its whole representation of the character of the Messiah. Ever and anon it presents the God apart; still oftener it presents the man apart. Its scenes are perpetually changing, sometimes in the twinkling of an eye, from the divinity to the manhood, and thence back again, as, P.@a suddenly, from the manhood to the divinityI.v NoIt so the scriptural representation. In the grand drama of the New Testament, whose author is God, and whose theme is salvation, the divinity and thelw manhood of the Mediator act throughout in concert. They are one and indivisible; separated, or capable of separation, in nothing. They / are born into the" world together; together are they wrapped in the stra-w of the manger. They suffer tog@ether: together they .die the scriptural death of expiation. __________________________________________________________________