of Christ as the sole head of the Church. Councils, provincial and ecumenical, have not only prescribed creeds contrary to the Scriptures, but also have made laws to bind the conscience, and ordained observances which Christ never enjoined.

As Christ is the head of his earthly kingdom, so is He its only lawgiver. He prescribes,

1. The terms of admission into his kingdom. These cannot be rightfully altered by any human authority. Men can neither add to them, nor detract from them. The rule which He has laid down on this subject is, that what He requires as a condition for admission into his kingdom in heaven, is to be required as a condition of admission to his kingdom on earth. Nothing more and nothing less is to be demanded. We are to receive all those whom Christ receives. No degree of knowledge, no confession, beyond that which is necessary to salvation, can be demanded as a condition of our recognizing any one as a Christian brother and treating him as such. Philip baptized the Eunuch on the confession "I believe that Jesus Christ is the Son of God." (Acts viii. 37.) "Him that is weak in the faith receive ye, but not to doubtful disputations." (Rom. xiv. 1.) "Who art thou that judgest another man's servant? to his own master he standeth or falleth." (Verse 4.) "Whosoever believeth that Jesus is the Christ, is born of God." (1 John v. 1.) For men to reject from their fellowship those whom God has received into his, is an intolerable assumption. All those terms of Church communion which have been set up beyond the credible profession of faith in Christ are usurpations of an authority which belongs to Him alone.

2. A second law of this visible kingdom of our Lord is that heretics and those guilty of scandalous offences should be excommunicated. "A man that is an heretic, after the first and second admonition reject." (Titus iii. 10.) "I have written unto you not to keep company, if any man that is called a brother be a fornicator, or covetous, or an idolater, or a railer, or a drunkard, or an extortioner; with such an one no not to eat." (1 Cor. v. 11.) Our Lord teaches that such an offender when he refuses to hear "the Church" is to be regarded as a "heathen man and a publican." (Matt. xviii. 17.)

3. Christ has ordained that the power of exercising discipline and the other prerogatives of the Church should be in the hands. of officers, having certain gifts and qualifications and duly appointed.

4. That the right to judge of the qualifications of such officers

is vested in, or rather belongs to those who by the Holy Ghost have themselves been called to be office bearers.

5. That such officers are not lords over God's heritage, but servants. Their authority is restricted to prescribed limits, and the people have a right to a substantive part in the government of the Church through their representatives.

6. Every member of Christ's kingdom is bound to obey his brethren in the Lord. This obligation does not rest on consent or mutual covenant, but on the fact that they are brethren, the temples and organs of the Holy Spirit. It is, therefore, not limited to those brethren with whom the individual chooses to associate himself. It hence follows that in the normal condition of Christ's kingdom, each part would be subject to the whole, and the whole would be one body in the Lord.

The development of these several points belongs to the department of Ecclesiology.

§ 4. The Kingdom of Glory.

The Scriptures teach that when Christ shall come again, He will gather his people into the kingdom prepared for them from the foundation of the world. Concerning that kingdom it is taught,

1. That it shall consist only of the redeemed. None but the regenerate or converted can enter that kingdom. The tares are to be separated from the wheat. The evil, we are told (Gal. v. 21), "shall not inherit the kingdom of God." Nothing that defiles or is untrue can enter there.

2. Those counted worthy of that kingdom shall not only be elevated to the perfection of their nature, but shall also be exalted to great dignity, power, and glory. They shall be kings and priests unto God. They are to sit on thrones. They are to judge angels. They are to reign with Christ, sharing his dominion and glory. 3. This kingdom is to be everlasting.

4. The bodies of the saints, now natural, must be rendered spiritual. This mortal must put on immortality, and this corruptible must put on incorruption; for "flesh and blood (the body as now organized) cannot inherit the kingdom of God." (1 Cor. xv. 50.)

5. The seat of this kingdom is not clearly revealed. Some suppose that it is to be on this earth regenerated and fitted for this new order of things. Others understand the Scriptures to teach that heaven as indicating an entirely different locality, is to be the final home of the redeemed.

6. Diversity of opinion exists as to the time when this kingdom shall be inaugurated. Chiliasts have commonly held that Christ is to come a thousand years (or a protracted period) before the general resurrection and final judgment, and reign visibly on earth, and that this is the kingdom to which the prophecies and promises of Scripture especially refer. This doctrine of necessity greatly modifies the view taken of the nature of this kingdom. It must be an earthly kingdom, as distinguished from that which is spiritual and heavenly. It must be a kingdom which flesh and blood can inherit. The common doctrine of the Church on the subject is that the general resurrection, the final judgment, the end of the world, and the inauguration of Christ's kingdom of glory are synchronous events.

These are topics which belong to the head of Eschatology.

F

CHAPTER XII.

HUMILIATION OF CHRIST.

§ 1. Includes his Incarnation.

THE Apostle tells us that Christ humbled Himself. In answer to the question, Wherein his humiliation consisted? our standards wisely content themselves with the simple statements of the Scriptures: "Christ's humiliation consisted in his being born and that in a low condition, made under the law, undergoing the miseries of this life, the wrath of God, and the cursed death of the cross; in being buried, and continuing under the power of death for a time."

On all these points the schoolmen and modern philosophical theologians have indulged in unprofitable speculations. All that is known, or can be known respecting them is the facts themselves.

The person of whom all the particulars above enumerated are predicated, is the Eternal Son of God. It was He who was born, who suffered, and who died. It was a person equal with God, who, the Apostle says, in Philippians ii. 7, 8, was made in the likeness of men, and found in fashion as a man. It was the Son of God who was born of a woman, and made under the law. (Gal. iv. 4.) In the Old Testament it was predicted that a virgin should conceive, and bring forth a son, who should be called Immanuel, the mighty God. In revealing these facts the Scriptures reveal all we can know concerning the birth of Christ. He was born of a woman. In the birth of an ordinary human being there are mysteries which neither speculation nor science can solve. All we know is that in conception an immaterial principle, a human soul, is joined in unity of life with the germ of a human body, and, after a given process of development, is born a perfect child. In the case of our Lord, by the immediate or supernatural power of the Holy Ghost, these elements of humanity, material and immaterial (body and soul), from the beginning of their existence were in personal union with the Logos, so that the child born of the Virgin was in a true and exclusive sense the Son of God.

In opposition to the early heretics, some of whom said that

Christ had no real human body, and others, that his body was not fashioned out of matter, but formed of a celestial substance, the fathers inserted in their creeds, that he was "born of the substance of the Virgin Mary." This is involved in the Scriptural statement that He was born of a woman, which can only mean that He was born in the sense in which other children of men are born of women. This is essential to his true humanity, and to that likeness to men which makes them his brethren, and which was secured by his taking part in flesh and blood. (Heb. ii. 14.)

The incarnation of the Son of God, his stooping to take into personal and perpetual union with Himself a nature infinitely lower than his own, was an act of unspeakable condescension, and therefore is properly included in the particulars in which He humbled Himself. It is so represented in the Scriptures, and that it is such is involved in the very nature of the act, on any other hypothesis than that which assumes the equality of God and man; or that man is a modus existendi of the Deity, and that the highest.

The Lutheran theologians exclude the incarnation as an element of Christ's humiliation, on the ground that his humiliation was confined to his earthly existence, whereas his union with our nature continues in heaven. This, however, is contrary to Scripture, because the Apostle says that He made himself of no reputation in becoming man. (Phil. ii. 7.) It is constantly represented as a wonderful exhibition of his love for his people. It was for their sake that He stooped to become a partaker of flesh and blood. The objection that his humiliation can include only what is limited to the earthly stage of his existence, is purely verbal or technical. That He bears his glorified humanity in heaven, having transmuted that humble mantle into a robe of glory, does not detract from the condescension involved in its assumption, and in his bearing it with all its imperfections during his earthly pilgrimage.

There are some forms of the modern speculations on this subject which effectually preclude our regarding the incarnation as an act of humiliation. It is assumed, as stated on a previous page, that this union of the divine and human is the culminating point in the regular development of humanity. Its relation to the sinfulness of man and the redemption of the race is merely incidental. It would have been reached had sin never entered into the world. It is obvious that this is a mere philosophical theory, entirely outside of the Scriptures, and can legitimately have no influence on Christian doctrine. The Bible everywhere teaches that God sent his Son into the world to save sinners; that He was born of a