still, the Old Testament displays "the Name" as holding, from a very early date, a distinctly personal relation to the self of God; for all down through their Scriptures "the Name" is continually addressed as if it were a person; and stands in far more places than the few that we have quoted as clearly an expression for God's real self, or for some Divine existence, Who truly manifested God, or was a mode of the Divine activity and power. This character of the Name seems to indicate very strongly that the representation of God through a personality which was God, yet in a certain sense discriminated from the inner hidden self of God, was involved in the Old Testament conception of "the Name;" and that the later idea of the Divine "Word "as God's medium of selfrevelation was only the clearer expression of the deep truth implied in God's Revelation of Himself to Moses in "the Word." The mystery surrounding the Divine Name had doubtless given rise to many marvellous legends, and developed into much that was superstitious; but it was the very power of the truth, thus vaguely shadowed, yet deeply felt, which gave room and occasion for the superstitions, while in the fundamental conception of the Name, the Word, found in these later writers, we have the principles on which alone even the theologians of the Christian Church can explain the language of the Bible, and establish a connection between the revealing God of the Old Testament and the revealed God of the New. They, with the Jew, find in the one "The Word," "The Name" as speaking; God's revelation of Himself through a Divine medium in whom He spake and acted, Who yet was in Him. In the other, they find the revelation made in outer form, and they recognize that Jesus is the Word, the Name now spoken. God's manifested self in person, come as "the living word." So that, as Delitzsch says, "the Name of Jesus" (or more correctly Jesus Himself) "is the manifested Name of Jehovah." The Jews did not and do not accept this application of their theology to our conclusion; not because they do not regard "the Name" as God's own expression of the medium through Whom He manifests Himself; but because they would not admit that the Divine could thus become incarnate. It was the incarnation, God's "manifestation in the flesh," at which they recoiled; not at the fact of God's self-revelation through "a spiritual medium;" nor at the conception that this medium had a kind of personality which at the same time was one

'On Isaiah, Vol. I. 190.

with God and, in another aspect, had a certain mode of separateness from the inner hidden self of God. Upon the contrary, the tendency to think of God, or speak of Him as always acting through this medium, which we have seen they called "the Name" or "Word," had become so deeply interwoven with their whole theology, that the authorized1 and ordinary manner of expressing the Divine, in any of His self-manifestations, in everything He did or said, was to say "the Word of the LORD," or "the Name," or "the Word of the Name" so acted or so will do. And hence when any of these terms were heard, the nature of their reference to God would at once and always be understood, and in the significance that we have seen they always were accustomed to attach to them; and they were so constantly in use with this significance that any one would easily employ them in any reference to God, in His self-revelation or to the various forms of His personal activity. Now such were the intellectual and theological conditions of the Jewish mind under which Christ's teaching of Himself, and of His mission, was presented to the world. And such, too, was the atmosphere of thought, in which the language used both by Himself and His Apostles had been moulded; and through which all their preaching must have come to those for whom the first announcement of the Gospel was intended. Not only was Jesus Himself a Jew, but all those to whom the understanding of the Gospel and its promulgation were intrusted were thoroughly and intensely Jews; hence it comes to us clothed of necessity in the forms of Jewish thought, and can be apprehended rightly only by continual reference to the modes of thinking and expression then current with the Jews. This · will give us, at once, the source of all those numerous passages in the New Testament which speak of "the Name," or make reference to "the Word;" and will not only establish a direct and vital connection with the corresponding forms in the Hebrew Scriptures, but will also fix the sense in which they were applied by the original teachers of the Gospel, and the signification we should now attach to them. What these are, in general, will not be difficult to apprehend, from the conclusions of our previous inquiries. And our space forbids us to do more than simply indicate some of their relations to a few of the more important points in which they are connected with the interpretation of the writings of the Christian Canon.

I say authorized, because used in the Targums, which were the translations or paraphrases of the Hebrew Scriptures, set forth to be repeated in the synagogues, and were the only versions of the Bible by which many of the people could know anything of the meaning of its contents.

I. The manner in which Jesus applies to Himself "the Name," shows in the most conclusive way that He assumed for His own person the place and prerogatives of the manifested God; and hence, that this was inherent in Christ's own conception of Himself, and His relation to the Jehovah of the Old Testament, and was not an inference of the Apostolic writers, or a development at a later period by the early Church. "The Name," at His time, was universally accepted as both the popular and scientific synonym for God in all His self-revealing and world-governing activities." To do anything by "My Name" was understood as God Himself there present, and there acting. For "the Name of the LORD" to do, was the same as saying, God was Himself the doer. To bless, or obey, or perform any service to "the Name," was meant as doing it to God Himself. "He was His Name and His Name was He," as Cudworth has already shown. Now all these attributes of "the Name" our Lord adopts as His own prerogative; uses it in all these applications as His own of right; assumes it, with all that it implies, repeatedly, and without limit or qualification. "In His Name men should cast out devils." They shall " do miracles in His Name." "Whatsoever they should ask in His Name He would give it them." "The Devils were subject to His Name." Wheresoever two or three were gathered in His Name He would be in the midst of them." He had manifested (epavéρwoa I have made visible) the Name of God to the world, showing it in living, acting reality. And the sin of the world was that it "did not believe in the Name of the only begotten Son of God." The assertion or acceptance of such applications of "the Name" to Himself, under the conditions in which He lived and spoke, must have been intended to identify Himself with "the Name" of the Old Testament, as understood in the current language of His time, and must have been so received by all who heard Him.

II. Besides this explicit adoption of "the Name" by His own words, we have other references to it which imply the same idea, and which can be fully comprehended only by this means. Such is the meaning of His own name, Jesus-that given Him of the angel before His birth. The word which Israel had always received as the Name by which it signified its manifesting God, was here interwoven for ever with God's purpose of salvation, and in Jesus (Jehovah, salvation) more of its meaning is revealed; and as the Incarnate Word it is again set forth as His memorial unto all generations. So, too, in the Lord's Prayer, what is the "Hallowed be Thy Name" but

may the manifested Word-the Name in which the Father is revealed, the only begotten Son by Whom He was declared, Jesus Himself"-may HE be everywhere known and received as the Divine Word made flesh! May He be blest and worshipped as the Salvation of Jehovah! Thus also the Lord's Prayer will be seen to have such a reference to our Lord Himself as would flow very naturally from the opinions of the Name then common; and in perfect harmony with the constant usage of the Saviour, in identifying Himself with the Name of God. This too will remove a difficulty in the minds of many, why our Lord made no allusion to Himself in the typical prayer intended by Him for His Church in all the after ages. He not only did refer to Himself, but so does it as to gather up in the form He uses all the Old Testament conceptions of the medium through which God would reveal Himself to the world, and by which He would form and govern His Messianic Kingdom among men. There is one other point to which we must here allude, and that is His formula of Baptism "into the Name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Ghost," and its reconciliation with the form given elsewhere, "To or into the Name of Jesus Christ." It is evident from all that has been said, that the Name in both formulas is the same, and the Baptism in either case is into the Name which is the Bible expression for the selfmanifested God; that is into Him Who is that Name, into the Living Word Who is God's revelation of Himself, and hence is "the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Thus primarily,. Baptism is an engrafting into Him who is the medium through Whom alone God is manifest in the flesh to us, and through Whom only can we come into union with the Trinity of God. And He is here represented as we have so often seen elsewhere as the Name." Hence our Baptism into "the Name," is into Jesus; as the Apostle says, “we have put on Christ," and when we are one with Him, we are sons of God by adoption. The mention of the three persons of the Trinity in connection with "the Name," displays to us the inner relations of the Godhead, teaches us all we need to know in germ of this,2 and at the same time implies that our being baptized "into the Name," is really being baptized into Him through Whom and in Whom we are placed in living union with the whole Trinity. So strong was the conviction in the early Church that the essential element and effective

2

1è in Acts ii. 38.

és in Acts xix. 5.

Moberley on the Great Forty Days, ch. on "the Name."

I

power in baptism was "the Name," that there is quite a discussion in some of the letters of Cyprian and Firmillianus to Stephen of Rome, whether the grace of baptism was inherent in "the Name," by whomsoever used, or was of no avail except in the church alone to which alone Christ had conceded the power of Heavenly Grace.

III. It will hardly be necessary here to dwell at any length on the Proem to the Gospel of St. John, or other references in the New Testament to "the Word" when thus independently used. However strangely these expressions may sound to those who know them only as standing thus by themselves in the Christian Scriptures, they could have occasioned no surprise to any one acquainted with the Jewish theology of that day. They are only the expressions of thoughts then everywhere current among the Jews. To say the "Word was with God," or "was God," or "all things were made by Him,” was simply to repeat language which we have shown to be almost universal in that age and which must have been familiar to them all. The point of fatal separation was "the Word made flesh." Hence the aim of St. John, and much of the reasoning of St. Paul and of the Epistle to the Hebrews, was to prove that this "Jesus is the Christ;" to give Scriptural grounds for "identifying Him with the Word of the Old Testament and Targums," to show that He was "the Name' which was above every Name. To this class of references belong

IV. The constant use of "the Name" in every part of the New Testament as the rightful attribute of Jesus; applying it to Him in precisely the same way as the Old Testament, and their current exposition of its meaning habitually connected it with "the LORD" or "God." Such are these: "By His Name is this man healed.” "None other Name whereby we must be saved." "A Name above every Name." "At the Name of Jesus every knee shall bow of things in heaven and in earth, and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord." Men might have life through His Name and are made Sons of God by believing on His Name, with many others of like import. All these to a Jewish mind of the time of Christ must have meant that He to whose Name all these Divine qualities could of right be attributed was that Divine Word Who, having by inheritance the Name more excellent than all others, was here and in this Jesus manifested to the world, was the Word that was "with God and