1 J. A. Kerr Bain.
328 THE EXCELLENT EXCHANGE
^ A strong thinker of the past generation, Isaac Taylor, ol Ongar, somewhere says that to the end of time a Vicarious Atone- ment (in the old evangelical sense of those words) will be assailed with objections ; and that to the end of time the awakened, the thoroughly awakened, conscience will gravitate to the Vicarious Atonement as to its one possible rest. True witness ; let me put my seal humbly to it in both its parts.
Another great Christian of a remoter past, Count Zinzendorf, has left on record a notice of a personal experience of his own which powerfully impressed rae when I came on it a few years ago in a French memoir of his life. " About this time I met with the work of Dippel, in which the doctrine of Imputed Eighteousness is attacked. Its system seemed to aim at eliminating from the idea of G-od the notion of His wrath ; and just so far as I sympathized with that view I liked the system. I was then in the attitude of the natural theologian ; and the ' good God ' distressed me when His acts seemed to lack a sequence of mathe- matical precision. I sought to justify Him, at all costs, to men of reason. But vjJien I came to think over my own conversion, I saw that in the death of Jesus, and in the word Eansom, there lay a profound mystery — a mystery before which Philosophy stops short, but as regards which Kevelation is immovably firm. This gave me a new intuition into the doctrine of Salvation. I found its blessing and benefit first in the instance of my own heart, then in that of my brethren and fellow-workers (in the Moravian Church). Since the year 1734 the doctrine of the expiatory Sacrifice of Jesus has been, and will for ever be, our treasure, our watchword, our all, our panacea against all evil, alike in doctrine and in practice." True witness, I say again, and again would humbly put my seal to its terms, in regard both of ex- perience and of principle. And the principle of Taylor's dictum and Zinzendorf's inner history is just as true for the progress as it is for the beginning of the believer's life. It is in point, not only in connexion with conversion, but in connexion with the lifelong needs of the Christian, and his lifelong peace and standing before God.^
III.
Experience Appkoves the Exchange.
1. When the Apostle writes this Epistle, he has had ample opportunity to review his life, to test his choice, to reckon up 1 Bishop H. C. G. Moule, All in Christ, 163.
PHILIPPIANS III. 7-9 329
again the balance of life he once struck. He has seen life under many aspects, — amid the rude tribes of the Galatian and Phrygian highlands, in philosophic Athens, in wealthy and luxurious Corinth, in Oriental and superstitious Ephesus, and now, at last, in imperial Eome, mistress of the world. He has learnt that over against the gains which life once possessed he must now place the hatred of his countrymen, the persecutions of the heathen, the perils of travel, the pangs of hunger and cold and nakedness, the exhaustion of manual labour ; but with them " the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord." Yet now, when he may well have tested every item in the account of life, and revalued each; when, though prematurely aged and spent, he might well have desired the fulfilment of the dream of early life, and lamented that he was turned aside from the career at first marked out, he, on the contrary, reiterates his choice : I again renounce to-day, as of old : " Yea, doubtless, and I count all things but loss." So, under the palace of the Caisars, and within what seemed the shadow of death, the Apostle ratified the great renunciation he had made.
^ One might say that the whole life of Dives is wholly contrary to the cross of Christ. " God predestinated us," St. Paul says. To what ? To eternal life ? This is the end of all. But to what first? God predestinated us to be conformed to the image of His Son. What image ? Well ! Ee it the image of His holiness, the image of His glory. Are there then no scars on that glorious Form, brighter than the sun, or than all created light, irradiant with His Godhead ? If we would reign with Him, St. Paul tells us, we must first suffer with Him. If we would be conformed to the likeness of His glory, we must first be con- formed to the likeness of His suffering. " Too delicate art thou, my brother, if thou wiliest both here to rejoice with the world, and hereafter to reign with Christ." Was our Eedeemer crowned with thorns that we might be refined sensualists ? Did He come down from heaven that we might forget heaven and Him, steeped in all which we can get of this life's fleeting pleasures of sense ? ^
^ " Depend upon it," said Carlyle, " the brave man has some- how or other to give his life away." We are called upon to make an unconditional surrender. Unconditional, I say, because it cannot be on our own terms. We cannot reserve what we like,