development. As we are fallen men by partaking of the nature or generic life of Adam, we are God-men, and therefore redeemed by partaking of the divine human nature or generic life of Christ.
That the oneness of God and man is the ultimate principle on which fhis hepov evayyiXtov rests, is obvious not only from the gen- eral character of the philosophy from which it is derived, but also from the fact that everything is made to depend upon the life of Christ becoming the life of his people, not by his controlling their life by his Spirit dwelling in them, but by a substantial union and identification of their life with his, of them with Him. We can measurably understand what is meant by life, by organic life, by a life principle or force which develops itself, and communi- cates and transmits itself in a given form. We know what is meant when it is said that the life of the acorn is developed into an oak, and communicated to other acorns, and thus to other oaks in endless succession and boundless multiplication. But here the essential idea is the unity and sameness of the life transmitted. You cannot combine the " organic law," or life, of the apple with that of the acorn, so that the life transmitted should be " an acorn-apple-life." Much less can you combine the organic life principle of an animal with that of the acorn, so as to produce an " acorn-bovine," or, " an acorn-equine life." Least of all can you combine the intellectual life of man with that of the oak, so as to have a " human-oak-life." Therefore if the life of God and the life of man be so combined as to constitute one life and that a divine- human life, then God and man must be one ; i. e., one substance, one life differently manifested. Those who press the modern doc- trine of the correlation of forces to the extreme of making thought and gravity identical, may accept these conclusions. With them the universe and all it contains, all its physical, mental, aesthetic, moral, and religious phenomena are to be referred to one and the same force variously modified. The same force modified by the brain produces all the phenomena of mind ; as modified by animal tissues, all the phenomena of animal life ; and as modified by veg- etable organisms all the phenomena of vegetable life, — a theory which has been annihilated as by a bolt from heaven by the sin- gle question : Where is the brain which elaborated the mind, which framed the universe?
It may indeed be said, and is said by modern theologians, that God became man, and therefore man may become God. God and man, they say, were so united as to become one nature or life in the person of Christ. But this is contrary to Scripture
208 PART m. Ch. xvn.— justification.
and to the faith of the Church universal. There is not a histor- ical Church on earth, and never has been, whose creed does not teach that in the person of Christ two distinct natures or sub- stances are united ; that He was born, not merely " per," but " ex matre sua Maria,' ' of her substance ; that He is as man consub- stantial with men, as God consubstantial with the Father ; or as the Apostle expresses it, Kara a-apKa He is the son of David, Kara ■jrvevfjLd the Son of God. Humanity and divinity in Him are no more identified or reduced to one life, than soul and body in man are identified or reduced to one life.
This whole modern theory of the Gospel rests, therefore, ulti- mately on the idea of the identity of God and man ; that man is a " modus existendi " of God.
The grand objection to this scheme is that it is a philosophy. It is a product of the human mind. It is the wisdom of the world. It is the recent philosophy of the speculative school of Germany, clothed in Biblical forms and phrases. The reason why the Reformers did not present the plan of salvation in this form, is declared to be that they were ignorant of modern philos- ophy. It is because Hegel thought that the Gospel admitted of being cast into the mould of his philosophy that he pronounced Christianity to be the absolute religion. All, therefore, that the Bible says of the " wisdom of the wise," " of the wisdom of men," of " the wisdom of the world," of " philosophy as a vain deceit," applies, and was intended to apply to this scheme and to all of like nature. " To the poor the gospel is preached." The Gos- pel is designed for babes and sucklings. He that runs may read and understand it. This system not one man in ten thousand can understand.
These Theories Unseriptural. 2. The second great objection to this scheme is that it is un- seriptural. The Bible tells us that Christ saves us as a priest. This a child can understand. He knows that a priest takes the place of those for whom he acts ; that he approaches God in their behalf ; that he makes expiation for sin ; that he does what satisfies the demands of God's justice against the sinner, so that He can be just and yet justify the ungodly. He knows that a priest saves, not by what he does in us, not by imparting his life to us, but by what he does for us ; by an objective, and not by a subjective work. What there is of an inward work, and that is much and absolutely necessary, is not the work of a priest, under