GKACE
GRACE
509
we find ? — At once a continuity of experience and an identity of essential fact.
(a) Supernatural principle of life. — To begin with, we find the life of grace to be constituted by the supernatural principle, and to be an indivisible entity. The life of the believer is by a new birth from above,* translating men into a new position before God and a new disposition to sustain it.f That is the consentient testimony of the apostles, as of the saints, of the first and of every age. J Grace is initially regeneration, the work of God's Spirit, 'whereby we are renewed in the whole man and are enabled more and more to die daily unto sin and to live unto righteousness.' § Apos- tolic and saintly biography shows that this con- dition may have different levels and values in different natures, and even in the same nature at different times. It shows also that the main- tenance of that condition means a constant and immense effort, a practically unbroken grace- getting and ever-growing purity in conflict with the insistent lower self. But the characteristic general fact of renewal remains, as something constant and inalienable — in its inferior planes as a fight against the devil ; in its higher, a struggle with lower self, stimulated and impelled by God's illumination working in and upon the soul : con- stant and inalienable so long as the soul keeps turning towards the Light. For the grace of conversion II is the concomitant of regeneration. Conversion is an act of the soul made possible by the Spirit, and should be as continuous as an act as regeneration is as a work.lT This experience, which on one side is regeneration and on the other is conversion, is one which leaves the soul different for ever from what it was before ; yet not in such wise as to prevent the soul itself living on, or as to raise the soul above its limitations and failings, so that it will not fall from grace, and will be kept from sin. But the endeavour to keep from fall and lapse is now on a larger and deeper scale, on a higher plane, on a new vantage-ground. It is always attended by the clear consciousness of the effort being 'in God,' 'in Christ,' and as wholly their work as the soul's.
This double consciousness of Divine and human action, nevertheless, does not divide the soul. On the contrary, the more deeply it proceeds, the more does the soul wake up and fuse itself into single vital volition to cast oft' what is inconsistent with its growing self and to mould what remains into better consistency. The soul as the subject of grace is not an automaton but a person, and the two actions are but two moments of one motion whose activities are not juxtaposed but inter- penetrate in an organic unity.** Spirit and spirit can be each within the other ff — a favourite idea of the apostles. :|:J In St. John the same thought is ever present under the categories of life, light, knowledge, love.§§ AH here comes from, and leads to, a life lived within the conditions of our own existence in willed touch and deliberate union with God.
(6) Blessings of Christ's work and Person. — Next
* Cf. Jn lis 3S, 2 Co 517, Gal 6", Ja 118, i p i23, i Jn 39.
t Cf. Jn 146, Ko 52, Eph 28- 10. 18 312, Ph 320, Tit 35- 6, He T"
1019. 20.
J Cf. for the tjTiical instance of medisval piety — St. Catherine of Genoa — the remarkable delineation in F. von Hiigel's Mystlcnl Element of Religion, 1908 ; also Luther, Buiiyan, etc. ; and for Reformation examples, the life story of Luther. See also ' Studies in Conversion, by J. Stalker, in Expositor, 7th ser. Vii. [1909] 118, 322, 521.
§ Shorter Catechism ; cf. Ro 122, 2 Co 4i6, Eph 423, Col 310.
II It belongs to the life of 'perseverance.'
H Cf. Jn 6«, Ac 238 319. 26 9 1121 1730 2618, 1 Th 19, Ja 48.
** Cf. 1 Co 1510, 2 Co 35 121-12, Eph 37. 20, Ph 212. 18.
tt Cf. Ro 89.
n Cf. Ro 63 81- »• 10. U 148 1 Oo 103- < 16S1, 2 Co 410- 11 135, Qal
327, Ph 121.
§§ Jn 414 621-29 635. 40. 44 IQIO 1260 I4IO Ifil. S 173. 23, 1 Jn 410- 19.
we find the life of grace to be a progressive process of moral purification and mental enlightenment in mystical union with Christ. It is a growth in grace and in the knowledge of Christ,* in the ' grace and truth ' that are come hy Jesus Christ.f St. Paul dwells on this grace as 'righteousness,'! St. John dwells on it as 'truth' (light, know- ledge) ; § never, however, in either case on the one as exclusive or separate from the other. To St. Paul Christ is wisdom as well as righteousness ; to St. John He is righteousness as well as truth, although in the former instance the point of emphasis is on righteousness, in the latter on light. For this reason, in the Pauline doctrine the description of the source, sphere, and effects of grace is mainly in juridical terms ; in the Johan- nine, in abstract terms — true to the intellectual influences to which they were subject. || The two accounts necessarily differ, and in important de- tails. The fundamental conceptions are identical. A broad statement of their unity may well precede the elucidation of their divergences. To both types of idea: (1) Christ is not 'after the flesh,' but is Spirit or Life.lT i.e. the Risen and Glorified Christ who had met St. Paul on the way to Damascus, converting him ; whom St. John saw in the Vision of Patmos for his comfort ; ' the second Adam,' ** 'the Man, the Lord ft from heaven ' ; ' the Lord of glory.' XX (2) Righteousness and truth are objective realities as well as subjective qualities, powers of God and qualities in man : the righteous- ness of God and the sanctity of man — the first creative of the second through faith. §§ (3) Christ is the Mediator of righteousness and truth, both of which He is Himself ;|||| in virtue of which it is said that ' the grace of God ' is the ' grace of Christ,' nil and the life of grace is ' life in him ' or ' life in the Spirit.'*** (4) This Spirit creates or awakes Spirit (irvfvfxa) in man through the infusion of its supernatural principle in the gift of right- eousness and knowledge ( = Spirit), so that men are partakers of these as they are in God, in the measure of men.fft The Apostle finds the possi- bility, on man's side, of this infusion, in the nature of the human irveviia^X+X which then becomes the temple of the indwelling Divine irvev/xa, and from which as basis proceeds the sanctification of the whole nature. (5) The righteousness and truth (which are Spirit, and Christ), mediated to faith, are mediated by the human life and historic work of Christ: in the Pauline statement, with special relation to His Death and Resurrection ; in the Johannine, with reference to the issues for character which His Coming reveals and makes acute. According to the former, the sacrifice of Christ is deliverance from the curse that rests on sin and the alienation from God. By His Resurrection Christ so completely takes possession of the believ- er's heart that he feels his life is not so much his own as that of Christ in him — the indwelling Spirit. According to the latter, the eternal life of the pre-existent Logos, manifested in Christ's historical Person, is in believing experience incor-