give I unto you, that ye love one another." It is because he is the head of the Church,-of redeemed humanity, that he is the head of humanity as a whole; of humanity, that is to say, as it is implicitly, as it is meant to become explicitly; and because he is the head of humanity, he is the head of the universe; the "first-born of all creation"; all things are to be summed up in him. To say this is not to eliminate metaphysics from theology. The attempt to do without metaphysics simply results, as has often been pointed out, in bad metaphysics. The apostles were in fact metaphysicians for the reason that makes us all metaphysicians; there are certain questions, "why cannot I always do as I would?" "why am I influenced by something outside me?" "what is it that influences me?" "what am I, and what am I meant to become?" which sooner or later demand an answer from us all. The answers to these questions cannot be obtained from the realm of physics; they are metaphysical; but they may none the less be matters of immediate certainty and experience. They may lead on to subtleties; but in themselves, they are not subtle. Attacks on the metaphysical theology of Christian dogma have in these latter years been frequent; and these attacks have been believed, both by those who delivered them and by those who resisted, to be attacks on Christianity itself. There could be no greater mistake. Metaphysical discussion cannot affect the foundations of Christianity. Theology must come second to religion; she is "the younger child." Every familiar path of the mind leads to the road which passes out of our sight into the unknown. The simplest statement of religious belief, or any other belief, may suggest ineffable mysteries. But let us not find fault with theology for making mistakes about what lies along the unknown stretches of the road, until we have become acquainted with the path that traverses our common world. It is as difficult for theologians as for common men to tell what is hidden beyond the bend of the road. We must start, when we consider the meaning of the first teachers of Christianity about him whom we have come to call the "God-man," from the thought of the stainless life and mysterious power and knowledge which made men say of their possessor, "in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." It was the unquenchable and infectious zeal for service and sacrifice which lived for men and worked in them till they knew him to be "the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world," " of whose fulness we have all received." Christ became all that we are, apart from sin: we become all that Christ is, purged from the sin which never could enter into him. CHAPTER IX I. 1. TH PERSONALITY HE previous chapter has not led us to a complete answer to the question which it propounded. It asked, What reason has theology for speaking of Christ as one with God and with man? It then proceeded to examine the basis of the unity which theology has tried to formulate. That unity, we found, is not metaphysical, but spiritual; it is not speculative, but experimental. Christ was one with God, because, from his first appearance among men, he was felt by those who came most nearly into contact with him, to be speaking and thinking and acting as God; he represented God; he did what God would do; but more than this, he did what God was doing; and he did this, not instead of God, or apart from God; but if the resources of language are equal to these demands-with God, and in God, and as God. However few the direct assertions of that unity, our investigation will allow us to stop at nothing short of this. The phrase used most commonly to express this unity is, as we have observed, "the Son of God." But this phrase must not mislead us into supposing that the unity of Christ with God was no more than is implied by a term denoting the ordinary relationship, both physical and spiritual, between earthly sons and fathers. We have already pointed out that the words Son and Father are the best that language can use in hinting at a relation which it is beyond the power of language to express. They may shadow forth the conception that all which Christ, as the Son, possesses, he derives from the Father; and even that in all that he does, he is "about his Father's business," that is, he is representing his Father; but they do not suggest that independent unity of purpose and activity which Christ expressed by the phrase 'abiding in the Father," and made still clearer when he said "the Father worketh hitherto, and I work"; nor do they suggest that the ultimate truth about the relation of Christ to the Father is the truth of two personalities in one, of distinction in unity. Yet this is the conclusion to which we are driven. This is also true of Christ's unity with Man. It was not a new thing, an event in time, that Christ should descend from heaven to become the head of the human race. As Son of God, he was necessarily, and from the beginning, united with mankind. He spoke of himself as the Son of Man; this does not mean that the bond which united him to man was the same as the bond which united him to God; he did not derive anything from mankind; but he showed himself as the type of all that is best in man,-of what man really is, when he is in dependence on God and in communion with God. If he was God made visible to man, he was man set before the face of God. Nor was he the type, simply, of what man was meant to be; he exerted in himself the renewing energy which actually approximated man to that type; as men drew near to him, they became like him; he was "formed in them. He thus represented man before God; he was, in attitude, purpose and will, what man was to become when reconciled to God, and what man would actually become through him. And this has always been verified in the experience of believers. It is by no paradox, and by no false humility, that the best men have felt themselves the "chief of sinners," and have had no ground of hope save in the "merits of Christ." It is the best men, and not the worst, whose hearts will most readily echo the cry of such words as these "And can it be, that I should gain An interest in the Saviour's blood? Far more than the newly repenting sinner, will the mature saint regard his old self as an impure thing, and rejoice that there is a new self within him, which he knows to be Christ; he has found himself in Christ. Granted that the But now a further step is needed. above is the teaching of the New Testament, is it philosophically justifiable? What reason has theology, in the nature of things, for asserting this unity of Christ with man and with God? If this unity is justified in the experience of the men and women whom we call believers, must it not also be capable of justification in the thought of men in general? Otherwise, we are left with the old division between reason and revelation. Either reason cannot lead us to the highest truth, but can only mislead us by leaving us at a point where we are not meant to stop; or else revelation leaves us with a conception which, as being inconceivable by reason, appears a delusion. In the latter case, the hopes and beliefs of the best men the world has seen are no better than a will-o'-the-wisp; in the former, if we must part company with reason sooner or later, we need hardly trouble with it at all; and we are brought to that very perilous form of agnosticism which says "we cannot |