human nature is now interceding for us, hang all our hope and all our comfort.

We have endeavoured to set forth briefly the doctrines of our Lord's Divinity and of His Incarnation.

To some the mystery of the Father and the Son being one God may seem greater than the mystery of the Son's Incarnation, and yet surely it is not so when we come to consider it. The difficulty of conceiving how two persons should be one in substance without loss of individuality, is not really greater than the difficulty of conceiving the converse, how two substances (the Divine and human natures of our Lord) should be combined in one person, each substance retaining its distinctness. Only this last appears to us easier of apprehension, because (as the Athanasian Creed reminds us) we are familiar with something of the same kind in ourselves, our body and soul forming one person, yet remaining distinct, as all true physiology teaches.

Indeed the facts which the Church asks us to believe about God's nature are not more mysterious than the facts which the philosopher is compelled to admit respecting his own nature. Science is obliged to acknowledge mystery. What is matter? A mystery. What is life or soul? A mystery.

What is God's nature? We can only answer, “A mystery," albeit theological science, having the inestimable aid of revelation, has been able to define this last mystery with far greater precision than natural science has yet attained in defining those other mysteries.

Now let us gather up the four grand truths, which

the first four Councils of the Church established, and which the Nicene and Athanasian Creeds embody. We are, from childhood, so familiar with the words which convey them, that they enter into all our thoughts about our Lord; and sometimes, perhaps, we forget that we owe them not to the Apostles' Creed, but to the Nicene, and still more to the Athanasian Creed.

I. The first truth is this: that Christ is God essentially, and may therefore be worshipped without any compromise of our belief that there is but one God; though personally, as Son, He is distinct from the Father.

II. The second truth is this: that the Son, in His incarnation, assumed not a human body only, but also a human mind or "reasonable soul,”—a perfect human nature therefore.

III. The third truth is this: that we are not to conceive of Him as dwelling in the Son of Mary, but as becoming Himself personally the Son of Mary; thus becoming a second Adam, in whom mankind is created anew.

IV. The fourth truth is this: that this human nature thus exalted to the right hand of God in the person of Christ remains a perfect human nature, not merged and lost in the Divine, but retaining all its human sympathies and all its human associations.'

σε ἀληθῶς,

1 Hooker sums up the four dogmas in four words :— Teλéws, ádiαipétws, dovyxúτws, truly, perfectly, indivisibly, distinctly; the first applied to His being God, and the second to His being Man, the third to His being of both One, and the fourth to His still continuing in that one Both."-Ecc. Pol. v. liv. 10. The Council of Chalcedon defined the two Natures of Christ to be unconfused, unchanged (no conversion of substance), undivided (combined in one Person), inseparable;—ἀσυγχύτως, ἀτρέπτως, ἀδιαι ρέτως, ἀχωρίστως.

CHAPTER III.

The Doctrine of the Atonement.

FROM the doctrine of Christ's Person we pass on to

the doctrine of Christ's work. And by the work of Christ we mean that portion of His work on which the Creeds insist most, namely, His work of suffering and death. It is most noticeable that both the Apostles' and the Nicene Creeds pass at once from the mention of the Nativity to the mention of the Sufferings and Death. All between,-Christ's Baptism, Ministry, Teaching, Miracles,-drop out, and find no mention in our Creeds. The essential work, on which our faith is centred, is His Death. On this let us now fix our thoughts.

The death of Christ! When we wish to speak of this -we poor sinful men speaking of an act of God on which depends our eternal weal or our eternal woe-it may well seem to many that any mere doctrinal statement of it must be cold and hard even to profaneness! All our words should shape themselves into prayers or hymns of adoration; our only attitude should be that of worship; and indeed we cannot be too mindful that "to speak of these things merely in the way of explanation, without stopping to dwell more fully on the thoughts and feel

ings which they ought to awaken, may seem almost to encourage that dangerous habit of listening unconcernedly with unmoved consciences to truths which should be most humbling and most awakening." Still it is not less true, that the more we try to understand God's deeper dealings with mankind, the more we shall know of His goodness and wisdom, and the more reasonable will be the service that we render Him. So, certainly, seems St. Paul to have thought when he wrote, "I will pray with the Spirit, and I will pray with the understanding also: I will sing with the Spirit, and I will sing with the understanding also."2

With all reverence then let us seek to enter into the deeper revelations of God's Word respecting that Death of Christ in which the Creeds intend us to find His chief work for man.

And this is first to be observed, that any view of Christ's redeeming work which finds it in His life, rather than in His Death, is out of harmony with the Creeds and with Scripture. For our Creeds are here in accord with the four Gospels. Of the space occupied by the Gospel narrative about one-third is given to the

1 Arnold's Sermons on the Epistle to the Romans.

2 1 Cor. xiv. 15. How nobly does Bishop Butler express his conviction that Scripture is rational, though not rationalistic: "Let reason be kept to and if any part of the Scripture account of the Redemption of the world by Christ can be shown to be really contrary to it, let the Scripture, in the name of God, be given up; but let not such poor creatures as we go on objecting against an infinite scheme, that we do not see the necessity or usefulness of all its parts, and call this reasoning."—Analogy, ii. 5.

events of that single week of our Lord's passion. A supreme importance is clearly attributed to our Lord's sufferings and death, overshadowing all else recorded of Him.

This marks our Lord's work for man as a work that stands alone in all history. His work was not merely one of the onward steps in the moral progress of the world; it was an act of Divine power, mysteriously accomplished in dying, and belonging to all time. And in truth this impression left on our minds by the prominence given to His Death in the four narratives is confirmed by a more careful study of our Lord's own language about the purpose for which He had come into the world.

For what was our Lord's view of that purpose? Was it to enlighten mankind? Yes, but not chiefly; “I have many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now." Christ seemed content to postpone the further unfolding of doctrine, and to devolve it on the Spirit of Truth, who after He was gone would "guide them into all the truth." What was His purpose then? Was it to found a new society, a spiritual kingdom, a Church? Yes; and yet He was content to leave behind Him in Jerusalem only eleven Apostles, only one hundred and twenty believers. If that were His chief

purpose, then it had failed.

What then was His purpose which through all His ministry He kept steadily in view, and did accomplish perfectly and entirely? For there was such a paramount purpose:"I have a baptism to be baptized with, and