"God quickened you with Him, having forgiven us all our transgressions, having cancelled the hostile bond that was recorded against us in the decrees of the Law; and He (Christ) hath abrogated it by nailing it to the Cross; divesting Himself1 (or ridding Himself) of those Principalities and powers (in divesting Himself of His mortal body), He exhibited them fearlessly in the triumphal procession of His Cross" (ii. 13-15).

Thus in the Epistle to the Colossians we seem to have that aspect of Christ's death (as it regarded the power of the Evil One) which St. Paul's doctrine needed for its completion. Its effect on us directly, and on our relation to God, was what concerned the Apostle most in the great argument of his Epistle to the Romans; but surely (as we shall better understand perhaps within the Veil) its effect on the powers of evil was no less important to And if there was really in that dark hour a personal our Lord's Passion and Resurrection, actually to each individual man when he accepts Christ, is baptized into Christ." ... "It is the definiteness, the absoluteness of this change, considered as a historical crisis, which forms the central idea of St. Paul's teaching, and which the aorist marks."-On Revision of New Testament, p. 85.

us.

1 Our English translation ("having spoiled") makes better sense; but the middle voice (åteкdvσáμevos) can hardly so be rendered. The translation given in the text seems justified by the άeкdúσeɩ of the IIth verse, and the åπeкdvσáμevol of iii. 9, where St. Paul speaks of our divesting ourselves of our corrupt nature. So here Christ may be said to have shaken off the hold which the powers of darkness had upon His mortal Body when His Spirit laid aside that mortal Body. The Peschito (always well worth consulting) seems so to render it :-"Et, per expoliationem corporis sui, diffamavit principatus et potestates et confudit eos palam in semet ipso," is the Latin rendering of the Syriac.

conflict and victory over the Tempter, maiming and lessening his power over mankind for all after time, is not a most helpful contribution made to the solution of the question, how the sufferings of the One could benefit the many? When David slew Goliath, were not all Israel the gainers? And if it had cost him life or limb, would not that suffering have been the price of their redemption ?

We may now sum up St. Paul's teaching.

In the Epistle to the Romans we have the great lines of the doctrine.

We have two selves -a bad self (rúgğ) and a good self (a): one needs to be killed, the other needs to be quickened.

Christ's Death effected the former, His Resurrection the latter.

How? By virtue of our mystical union with Him (we are σύμφυτοι τῷ Χριστῷ since His incarnation).

God therefore accepted His death as atonement for our sin and as a security that our bad self would die (the idea of λύτρον in ἀπολύτρωσις); and on this security admitted us freely into a covenant of reconciliation (xarañλayń). And "If when we were enemies we were thus reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by His life" (v. 10). The same mystical union that made His death our death, will make His life our life (vi. 5).

Thus freely, for our Sponsor's sake, we were pardoned or (in St. Paul's language) justified.

Being justified, we may be (if we will)-by the grace to which that justification admits us-sanctified.

And being sanctified we fulfil the pledge on the security of which we were justified.

In this train of thought there is one point, and that the point on which the whole rests, clearly needing further elucidation. How could the death of Christ effect the death of our bad self? The doctrine of the mystical union seems at first sight to fail here; for what died in Christ was a sinless self, what has to die in us is a sinful self.

The passages above considered in 2 Corinthians v. and Galatians iii., seem to supply one anwer, and that in Colossians another.

The first answer is: The body that Christ crucified was sinless it is true, but He made Himself a sin-offering (ἁμαρτία or κατάρα) by identifying His sinless self with our sinful self.

The second answer is: Christ's death weakened for ever the power of the Evil One, and so made it less difficult for us to crush him within us.

Or, to put St. Paul's doctrine yet more shortly, we may formulate it under three heads :

I. A weakening of the Power of the Evil One. 2. Justification (or pardon) of man rendered possible by Christ's perfect obedience in "dying unto sin.” 3. Sanctification, by communion with Christ's life. It will be seen how closely these three heads corre spond with the three heads to which we reduced our Saviour's teaching in the Gospels.

Most beautifully and most completely is St. Paul's doctrine summed up in those three petitions of our Baptismal Service, in which we pray that what Christ accomplished once for all, as in a great sacrament for mankind, be realised in the case of the child before us :Grant that the old Adam in this child may be so buried, that the new man may be raised up in him!

may

Grant that all carnal affections may die in him, and that all things belonging to the Spirit may live and grow in him!

Grant that he may have power and strength to have victory, and to triumph against the devil, the world, and the flesh !

CHAPTER IV.

The Soteriology of the New Testament—Continued.

V. THE TEACHING OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS.

WE come now to the great anonymous Epistle of the New Testament, so unlike St. Paul's style in its diction that it can hardly have been penned by him; but so thoroughly in harmony with St. Paul's habit of thought that it must have been written by one who was under his immediate influence.1

This Epistle seems to have been written when the signs of the time were unmistakably pointing to a speedy destruction of Jerusalem, and therefore of the templeritual. It was addressed, apparently, to the Jewish Christians who still clung to that ritual, and was intended to open their eyes to the great truth that Christ's incarnation and death and ascension had entirely fulfilled the symbolic meaning of that ritual, and therefore, that which was symbolised having come, the symbol might safely

cease.

1 It need hardly be observed that our Translators are responsible for the heading which it has in our English Bible; the Church Catholic affirms its inspiration and canonicity, but has never determined the question of its authorship.