for if it were so, then Christ, having the two natures, had two personalities, was, in fact, in Himself two persons essentially different! How essentially false a position, for if it were thus, how could anything Divine appeal to the mere human? That it does so appeal is a proof that the two are not different in essence. It is chiefly want of proper definitions that has led catholic theology into this inconsequential dogma of the two natures, and the Protestant Churches that call themselves free have been too much enslaved in the legacy of Calvin's Institutes to go back to the simplicity of apostolic thought. No such dogmatic stumbling-block vexed the first age of the primitive Church. The creeds, as the Churches have them to-day, had not been invented. For some thirty years from its foundation, membership in the Church, and even admission to her ministry, involved no more formal statement of faith than the simple confession: "I believe Jesus Christ to be the Son of God." Is this credo bare and unelaborate? Does it omit all the clauses that divide, all the assertions that perplex, all the damnations that revolt? Is it incomplete beside the Symbol of Nicæa or the Quicunque Vult? Let it be so. But when it was uttered in a moment of exaltation, in the first flush of the new dawn at Cæsarea Philippi by Simon Peter, the Master did not reject it as unsatisfactory. His instant reply "Blessed art thou, Simon Peter .. and on this rock will I build My Church." The very foundation of the Christian Church then is the intuition-not laid down by dogma, but borne in upon the soul as the result of comradeship with Jesus, as the inevitable conclusion from the witness

was:

of His human life-" Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Does the question ever arise: What think ye of the Christ, whose son is He? The only answer, through all the ages, of those who have really comprehended the humanity of Jesus must be the same. But the self-same answer, if repeated parrot-wise as a mere credo, without personal convincement of soul, without the antecedent comprehension of the human Jesus, without the internal, unforced, irresistible conviction formed during moments of comradeship, of spiritual communion, what was it ever worth? No affirmation of dogma, no dialectic proposition, ever was, ever could be, a firm foundation. Nothing but the Divine intuition borne in upon the living soul could be as a rock, a rock against which the portals of Hades should be powerless to prevail. Portals of Hades? Yes, the gates of death which should close upon every soul of man, until and unless some deliverance were wrought on his behalf.

And here we begin to discern, across the mist of the ages, a glimpse of another rock, not the rock on which the Church was founded, but the rock against which the ship of Christian faith struck in her early courses, the rock of Jewish legalism. Deliverance of the soul from Hades, that underworld of night into which all souls went down at death; that was a problem present to the mind not only of the Jew, and of the Oriental everywhere, but also of the Greek. Who, or what power, could deliver man from the kingdom of darkness, or translate him into the living household and family of God? What new revelation could Jesus the Christ open to His disciples as they walked with Him? What

new hope could He give them to console them in. view of approaching dissolution? Christ had become the beginning, how could He become the end of their faith? They found Him bringing new life and hope into the hearts of men; they saw how His touch, His very presence, could heal the sick and cast out demons; they heard Him pronounce with authority, as the Son of man, the forgiveness of sins. But still at the close of life for all of them there stood the dread gates of Hades, and the inevitable end: death! To them His words of victorious defiance to the portals of Hades must have seemed indeed an enigma.

Yet hints of the solution of that enigma came quickly. In the narrative of St. Matthew, as it follows on the episode of Cæsarea Philippi, we find that Jesus began at once to intimate to them His perception of His own coming doom of suffering and death, as also of His own rising again. Did any man desire to come after Him, then he must deny himself and take up the cross' and follow Him, for-and here came as it were the revelation of a secret-for whosoever will save his life shall lose it, and whosoever will lose his life for My sake shall find it. And then the Son of man would come in His kingship, in the glory of His Father, with His angels, and would reward every man according to his works. And again He foretold His own sufferings and death, and asked His disciples whether they were able to drink of the cup of which He Himself would be called to drink. Whoever among them would be chief must become

1 What the disciples at that day would understand by "taking up the cross was never explained. See p. 106.

"

1

their servant, even as the Son of man came not to be ministered unto, but to minister, and to devote His life for the deliverance of the many. The word λúrpos, deliverance, is translated "ransom " in the Authorized Version. How, then, was Jesus to give His life for the deliverance of the many from the portals of Hades? However these things be, there can be no doubt that the real answer, accepted by the primitive Church, is that by His resurrection (then dimly foretold, though entirely unrealised by the disciples) He was to burst the portals of Hades, thus abolishing death, and bringing life and immortality to light. Throughout the years of His ministry He was preparing men for this deliverance by restoring their souls, leading them into the paths of righteousness, saving them from their sins, transforming their being, teaching them to save their lives by losing them, showing them in the end how to put away sinning by self-sacrifice. God, as the apostle said, was "in" Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself. Having loved the world He loved it to the end. This was His gospel of life; this His own example-the Good Shepherd who laid down His life for that of His sheep and the gates of Hades should no longer prevail.

How Jewish legalism distorted the gospel of Christ into a bargain between God and the devil, to let the souls of men go free at the price of the blood of Jesus need not here be retold. Nor is it

1 Aúrpos occurs only in Matt. xx. 28 and Mark x. 45. Its true significance is seen by reference to Acts vii. 35, where Moses is described as AvTpwrns, a deliverer. He delivered, but certainly did not ransom, the Israelites.

necessary to recount how subsequently the Church modified this horrible doctrine of atonement into its modern form, wherein the blood of Jesus is offered to appease the wounded pride or anger of an offended Jehovah; or, toned down as in Article II. of the English Church, to reconcile God to man. Both doctrines are equally false; equally unworthy in the conceptions they imply of the nature of God; equally incompatible with the narratives of the gospels, and in contradiction to the teachings of the apostles as recorded in the Acts.

No; faith must find its ultimate return from the manufactured creeds of men to Christ the beginning. The Anselmian doctrine of atonement and the Calvinistic plan of salvation must both go down before the confession of Cæsarea Philippi. The simple, heart-born, spontaneous human conviction which found its expression in the words "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the ever-living God," remains a perpetual witness to the initiation of the soul. Christ, the beginning, the incarnation of divinity in man, is the soul's supreme possession. And translation from the darkness of death into the kingdom of God, through the deliverance wrought by Christ, persists as the soul's immeasurable hope and final destiny.

In the fourth chapter of Matthew's Gospel is found the narrative of the temptations of Jesus. If the language is figurative the meaning is not hard to discern. He had just passed through the