of oaths in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ speaks of heaven as ' God's throne ' and the earth as His 'footstool' (Mt 5**). In the Fourth Gospel Jesus says that He ' came down from heaven ' (Jn 3'^ 6^), and also that He ' came forth from God ' (1627. 32 j ^jjd in looking forward to His death. He says : ' I came forth from the Father, and am in the world : again I leave the world and go unto the Father' (16^8). So also in W^ ' I go to the Father, and ye behold me no more ' ; and in 20" ' I ascend unto my Father and your Father. ' How in the light of the present article are we to con- ceive of God's being thus connected with heaven so much more than with earth ? and of other passages which assure us that ' in heaven the angels do always behold the face of our Father who is in heaven ' 1 How are we to reconcile the statement
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that God's throne, or God's face, is in heaven, with the doctrine of Divine omnipresence ? The follow- ing seems to be the line along which we must seek for light : — While it is true that God's presence is everywhere, it does not follow that His presence is mnnifcstcd everywhere alike. He is most fully manifested to those who are most like Him ; and if we may believe in a home where there are assembled the spirits of just men made perfect, and also the varj-ing gradations of angels — the holiest intelli- gences whom God has created, vastly superior to man in puritj' and capacity for knowledge — that will be the home where God is most fully mani- fested, because those who can best undei stand Him are there. There are ' the pure in heart ' who ' see God.' But it AvUl be said: 'Is heaven, then, a place ? ' Peri laps not ; but so long as we are here, and endowed with our present faculties, we are compelled to think of it as a plavc ; and it must ever seem to us probable that created spirits are possessed of some enswathement which enables us, more or less accurately, to assign locality to them. This is our justification for believing that heaven is a region in which, in a manner more glorious than we can conceive, God manifests His natural and moral attributes, and reveals tokens of His loving favour to pure and holy intelligences. ' In thy presence is fulness of joy ; at thy right hand there are pleasures for evermore ' (Ps 16^^).
Considerable controversy has been wagged around the passage we have quoted from Mt 5*", which affirms that heaven is ' God's throne' and the earth is 'his footstool.' The early Socinians interpreted it to mean that God's essential or substantial pres- ence is in heaven, and that elsewhere He is present by His efficacy only. To this it has been objected that ' it includes God in the heavenly space and excludes Him from the earthly space, and thus tends to Deism' (ilacpherson, Chr. Dogmatics, 131) ; and that 'such limitation in the Divine essence manifestly abrogates the Divine absoluteness ' (Dorner, System, i. 241). The Socinian interpretation is a fair illustration of the way in which we become entangled when we introduce terms of space into our descriptions of God's attributes. God's spiritual nature refuses to be compared with terms of space, and hence it is incongruous to say that God is existent in one part of space and not in another. He does not, being purely spiritual, occupy space at all ; but for fuller knowledge of Him we must be content to wait till we have emerged from this state of ex- istence, where all our perceptions are conditioned by space and time, and have entered into that state where we shall see our Lord 'as he is,' and 'shall know' in the same manner as now ' we are known' (1 Co 1312).
6. We have now to speak of those passages in which the Lord Jesus speaks of Himself as ubiquit- ous. — In Jn 3^* our Lord says : ' No man hath ascended into heaven but he that descended out of heaven, even the Son of Man tvho is in heaven.' It must be noted that the A\'ords 6 ibv iv ti^ oi'pavi^ are omitted in A B L Tb 33, Cyril, Origen, and several Fathers. WH consider them ' a Western gloss, suggested perhaps by V^ ' ; but our Re- visers retain the words in the text, remarking in the margin that ' many ancient authorities omit them.' If genuine, as is very probable, they are important, but not unique. They do but cause Jesus to say of Himself wliat the Evangelist says of Him in 1"^ ' The only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him.' They teach us that Jesus was conscious of a state of glory which from eternity He had with the Father — was conscious of it not as a past memorj' , but as a continued reality. His earthly life had not severed the intimacj- of His fellowship with His Father ; and ontologically His presence as Son of Man on earth did not remove the presence of the Son of Man from heaven.