* * * * *
"O blissful self-surrender!" The idea of it, sometimes cloudy, sometimes radiant, has floated before the human soul in every age of history. The spiritual fact that the creature, as such, can never find its true centre in itself, but only in the Creator, has expressed itself in many various forms of aspiration and endeavour, now nearly touching the glorious truth of the matter, now wandering into cravings after a blank loss of personality, or however an eternal _coma_ of absorption into an Infinite practically impersonal; or again, affecting a submission which terminates in itself, an _islam_, a self-surrender into whose void no blessing falls from the God who receives it. Far different is the "self-presentation" of the Gospel. It is done in the fulness of personal consciousness and choice. It is done with revealed reasons of infinite truth and beauty to warrant its rightness. And it is a placing of the surrendered self into Hands which will both foster its true development as only its Maker can, as He fills it with His presence, and will use it, in the bliss of an eternal serviceableness, for His beloved will.
[84] Not that the imagery of the limb appears here, explicitly. But it does appear below, xii. 5, and in the contemporary passage 1 Cor. vi. 15; and more fully in the Epistles of the First Captivity.
[85] Οἵτινες: the paraphrase is perhaps a slight exaggeration of the force of the pronoun.
[86] Ὅσοι ἐβαπτίσθημεν: we give a paraphrase, not a translation, to shew the meaning practically.
[87] We thus paraphrase a difficult sentence. It seems to us that the ὁμοίωμα τοῦ θανάτου Αὐτοῦ must refer to the baptismal rite. If so, our paraphrase as a whole will be justified.--As to the "_plunge_" and "_emergence_," we would only say, without entering further on an agitated question, that it seems to us clear that baptism was at first, _theoretically_, an entire immersion, but that, also primevally, the theory was allowed to be modified in practice; _the pouring_ of water in such cases _representing_ the ideal immersion. As early as "_the Teaching of the Twelve Apostles_," cent. i. (ch. vii.), there are signs of this.
[88] More literally, perhaps, "_shall also come to life with Him_." If we read this aright, it points to the prospect _future at the moment of the atoning Death_, when, ideally, we died. It does not therefore mean, practically, _that we do not live with Him now_, as we certainly do (see just below, ver. 11). But it is as if to say, "we believe that our share in His risen Life _surely follows_, now and always, our share in His atoning Death."
[89] The words τῷ Κυρίῳ ἡμῶν are to be omitted from the text.
[90] Μὲ βασιλευέτω: possibly the present imperative may imply, "do not _go on letting_ it reign."
[91] Omit αὐτῃ ἐν from the text.
[92] Παριστάνετε: we may perhaps explain this present imperative also to mean "do not _go on so doing_."
[93] Παραστήσατε: the aorist certainly implies a critical resolve, a _decision_ of surrender.