Adam of consciousness is expelled, and the Christ of consciousness is formed out of the old chaos; a new creation beneath the eye of God, "how good, how fair, answering his great idea." This, in a most important sense, is being clothed in the righteousness of Christ, not by a factitious transfer of his righteousness to our account, but by his life imported into our natures, and thence going out into conduct. It is a righteousness not imputed, but imparted. This is the essential work of the atonement, and in this wise it lies in the inmost consciousness of all true and humble believers. They know that God in Christ is brought near to them, and folds them in his renewing light and love. That God in imparting himself through such a Mediator fulfils his own eternal law, they doubt not; their part is to be brought into such relation to Christ, that his imparted life shall be the prompting of all their affections and powers. This is the atonement, we say, as it lies at the centre of the Christian consciousness, and as such it appears conspicuously in the first conversions to Christianity. It was God in Christ, coming anew into the heart of humanity and making conquest of all its powers, striking down the persecutor with shafts of light, and swaying vast multitudes, because on them "the Holy Ghost fell." This relation to a Divine Mediator is cognizable in the intuitions of all pious men; it has inspired every thing in Christian literature that speaks to our inmost needs, and all that truly lives in its sacred songs. Sinful man, by a lowly surren der of himself to Christ, brought into dear and harmonic relations with the Divine nature, this is the fact of the atonement, whatever be its philosophy. The fact cannot be reasoned out of the true believer, for it belongs to his intuitive consciousness. To account for it, to draw it out in schemes of theology, and give the reasons of the Divine plan, is a process of logic alone. This last process may lead into mazes and errors, for logic does not create truth, nor see it in its source, but seeks rather to hammer its broken ore into shapes for convenient handling. With our intuitive consciousness it is otherwise; for with it we are brought face to face with truth in its living source, and gaze with open eye on its supreme excellences and glories. It will hence appear what is the peculiar efficacy of faith in the salvation of man, which the New Testament writers make so much account of, and on which Paul, especially, insists so largely. It is not merely a belief in any amount of dogmas and postulates, however true. It is not merely a belief in Christ as an authorized teacher of religion and morals. It is such belief as shall lead to an all-confiding trust. Trust is the more appropriate word; for the faith in Christ that saves, is not so much the result of intellection as a perception of his moral grandeur and Divinity, adequate to our necessities, and adapted to fill the chasm in our natures. Then we fly to him with the swift alacrity of a child that seeks a lost parent, and our natures are tender and pliable beneath his hand. Faith in Christ is not a mere belief in the historical advent, but in the living Christ that ever comes from the heavens as the Comforter and Redeemer of souls. Such was the faith for which Paul reasoned so earnestly; not a faith which should entitle the believer to a share in some reserved fund of foreign merit, but bring him into living relations to a Divine Mediator, so that his heart should be swept all the while with renewing gales, and have a righteousness imparted to him every hour. Precisely here is the point where he contrasts the dead works of the ceremonial law with the works of faith under Christianity. They were the righteousness of the outward man. These were the outgoings, the outburstings, shall we not say, of the life whose unfailing tides came in upon them in consequence of their relation to a living Intercessor in the heavens. Paul himself had had a signal experience of this influence, melting the adamant of Jewish bigotry, and making the Pharisee as humble as a child, while the source of this influence was unveiled to him in its insufferable splendors. Hence his great topic is faith in Christ, as the essential of inward life and power; the essential of that regenerating influence which should draw man to God, and so restore human nature and the Divine nature to their primal harmonies. "One Mediator, Christ," says old Tyndal, "and by that word vnderstand an attonemaker, a peace-maker, and brynger into grace and fauour, hauyng full power to do so." CHAPTER XI. NEW HEAVENS AND A NEW EARTH. "What this repentance was which the new covenant required as one of the conditions to be performed by all those who should receive the benefits of that covenant, is plain in the Scripture to be not only sorrow for sins past, but (what is a natural consequence of such sorrow if it be real) a turning from them into a new and contrary life." - LOCKE'S REASONABLENESS OF CHRISTIANITY. "Work! and thou shalt bless the day Ere thy task be done; They that work not, cannot pray, Cannot feel the sun. "Worlds thou mayst possess with health Industry alone is wealth, What we do is ours." THERE is a state of mind which we call repentance, the antecedent of regeneration and permanent peace, whose nature it behooves us well to understand. Whenever the book of life within us is unfolded, and the Divine light falls upon its open pages, we see and feel the afflicting contrast between that life and the all-perfect law. The immanence of God in unregenerate man brings to view at length the all-holy and pure in contrast with human corruption. Then sin and the corrupt fountains of sin appear to us more hideous than death, not merely for the inconveniences that will follow after them, but on account of their own intrinsic nature. Nothing, then, appears to us so dreadful to be borne, as the present burden of moral disease; and we shall pray for its removal more earnestly than we would pray for the extraction of a cancer from our vitals. The affliction which we experience from the unveiling of inherent corruption, is what the Scriptures describe under the phrase "godly sorrow." It is not regret on account of the consequences of sin, but an afflicting consciousness of its nature. The change of life prompted by this state of mind the Scriptures call REPENTANCE. * Hence an all-important distinction. Neither sorrow nor emotion of any kind is true repentance. Godly sorrow precedes and prompts it, but there may be godly sorrow even without it. Our translators have unfortunately rendered by the same word two others, which stand for very different ideas. One word implies simply sorrow for the past; the other implies sorrow for the past consummated in a new life. One is mental emotion. The other is mental emotion invested with new moralities. One (μeráμexos) is sorrow of mind, and is used to describe the emotions of Judas before he hanged himself. The other (μeTávola) is change of purpose and conduct, and describes that repentance over which the angels rejoice as they bend around the * 2 Cor. vii. 9, 10. + Matt. xxvii. 3. |