It is seen tli.Tt Christian dogmas were once in- choate ; ji.-i (i| tlirough many stages under influ- ences ,o(i.il. |ioliiieal, intellectual; and that they lia\ e a eoiisiaiil tendency so to do in adapting themselves to their environment — that, in short, they are not dead formulas, but a living organism.
(2) The emergence of so many factors merely accidental has brought into clearer perspective tlic reality imnuDii »/ in tJu; jirvrcss. Besides the soil and the inlliniK e, ,,ii -lowth, there is the seed, the Divine Tiutli on wliicli human thought and earthly event e.xeniseil themselves. It is trace- able to the teaeliing and life of Jesus and His Apostles. Only fragments of His utterances have been preserved to us, but the brief discourses and conversations that we read in the Gospels stand unique in spiritual power among the utterances of the world. They represent a large body of teach- ing, lost to us in form but jireserved in its fruits ; for out of His spiritual wealth there poured throughout His ministry an abundance of spoken truth that remained to perpetuate His influence and serve as the foundation of Christian doctrine. Togetlier with His life they formed and still form Truth, not simjily in a definite invariable quantity, but as a constant fountain and source of truth, ever open and flowing for them who believe. He gave a new light on all things to men ; and by an inevitable necessity they proceeded to apply, and still must apply, wliat He has shown, to the inter- pretation of all tlicy tliought and knew. Thus Cliristian duelrine bases itielf nltinialely on two souiees: (-^llie I'.-i.ls as to ( 'li li.M V I ,.;m'|, iiig and lit,.; .-111.1 (//) III.- f.\]H.n.-lle.' ,i| l..■ll.-^els in Him
interpreting life an. I its prol.l.'iiis in tli.' li^lit of those facts. Cliristian doctrine has grown up as a vital thing in the soil of actual life ; in the experi- ence of Christian living. Jesus appeared among men and lived and taught. He gave the Truth by what He was, by what He said, by what He did. Words, Works, Personality : all preached. This rich and various utterance fell into the liearing and the hearts of men and women who became His followers. Into their very being it entered with transforming power, making them ' new creatures.' By and by it filtered through their minds and life, and expressed itself in the form which their own experience gave to it. It is this reproduction of the truth Jesus brought that constitutes Christian doctrine. Its fundamental elements are to be kept clearly in vie«- — viz. the Christian Facts and the Experience of Believers.
(3) The origin, of variation in doctrinal belief immediately becomes manifest. Believing experi- ence cannot be expected to be invariable. Still less the expression of experience. Variety of views enters. There are difierences of mind, of education, of disposition and degrees of sympathy, of ability to apprebeml .in.l explain: difierences all of them, when gi\eii li..' s.r,|,e, likely to lead to mi.xed results. I'res.nl .lay i.-liuious thought is profoundly impressed with tli.' laet, and with the necessity of it. And if in consequence the theo- logical mind is infected with a certain sense of insecurity, there is compensation in the new breath of freedom. Obviously it is gain to be able to review the doctrinal process and results of the past, to disentangle the Divine Truth from its temporary formulation, and to elaborate it anew in such wise as will subserve the highest interests of men to-day, as well as do justice to its own ever fresh wealth of content. (Cf. the interesting ex- position in Dr, Newton Clarke's What shall we think of Chri^ti,n,il,r' I.eet, II.).
II. Basks m ('iii.istological belief. —1. Primarily a ii< :'■ . ./.. / v- i,.v .— The new methods foundearly api.li.aii.ii, lo i he doctrine of Christ's Person. That ductriue i.s central iu the Christian
DIYIXITY OF CHRIST
DIVINITY OF CHRIST
system. It is by Christ, His Person and Work, that salvation is mediated. Historically and ex- perimentally the Church learned it so. A study of the NT and of the two subsequent centuries is chieily a study of one great fact or truth, to the understanding and interpreting of which the mind and life of the period were devoted, and devoted with absorbing interest — the Person of Christ. That problem soon became at once the impulse and the starting-point of an entire science of God, of man, .and of the essential and final relation betw^een God and man. But primarily the ques- tion at issue was simply that of His Person. It was provoked by Christ's own questions and by His claims. Its urgency was enhanced by the experience of believers. Their experience was unprecedentedly novel. Unlike that of Hebrew- faith, its ground was individual and personal.
Its origin lay in the rcvohitiormry impression His presence created in the heart, an impression which came as a thing incomparable, and remained as the most precious fact of life. It grew as a new power in the soul to resist and overcome sin, assuring not the promise only but the potency of real holiness, imparting to the latent faculties of the changing lieart an increasing plenitude of spiritual force making for righteousness. Concurrently with this feature in the new experience went another, or two others. Awakened by the sense of power in the inner life imparted by Christ, men came to understand what the evil is from which God seeks to save them, and what the good is which He seeks to impart to them. In Christ moral good- ness, the righteousness of God, laid its inexorable claims upon man's life, determining feelings and shapiiii: ir^iilutinns .as does tlie real entrance of God \\\{t> our lic.ut-. The impression of Christ was thus sri'ii lij A tlir jifiwcr of God. A further step was won w licu rcllexion forced forward tlie ques- tion how it could be so, in what mode the nature of Christ's Person must be regarded in the light of the above experiences. But the root of the matter was reached when the fact was realized that the more the strength of His character overwhelmed them, the more undeniable was made the reality of God to them. That was reached, however, at tlie very outset. It was the prinuiry conviction which entitled to the name of believer, and confession of it meant salvation. It formed the fundamental basis of Cliristological belief. Jesus comes acting on human hearts with winsome gentleness, with a soul-moving sorrow for sin, and with a great en- abling power. The high demands He brings raise no fear, for He who demands approaches with the means of fulfilling, which He is ready to imi>art. Herein rests the real originality of His message, by which His gospel differentiates itself from all other religions on the one hand, and from all merely philosophical or ethical Idealisms on the other ; in virtue of which also all interpretations of His Person on humanitarian lines prove inadequate. On this point a clear understanding is indispensable. It is to be insisted that the ' Christ of History ' and the 'Christ of Experience' were not separ.a'ble to the mind of the disciples ; they were one and in<li- visible. Their Christ is not the Teaching of .Jesus alone, or His Works alone ; or both together alone, but both together along with what they revealed regarding the inner life of Jesus, and what they created in the inner life of believers. It is impossible to separate the last from the first. It is illegitimate to seek to resolve it into a creation of the religious idealizing faculty of believers in Him. The thought of tlie Apostles consciously felt itself engaged not in evolving dreams ancl speculations of its own, but in striving to receive anil appreciate a trutli wliich w.a-s before, above, independent of them. By no single fact in His