and the resuscitated stage-the same personal pronoun, "I am he that liveth and was dead; and, behold, I am alive forever more." If the speaker was God, it follows that he who had been dead and was alive again was also God. That he who spoke was God, is self-evident from the fact that he appropriated to himself, perhaps, the loftiest attribute of the Godhead. He styled himself " the First," the Alpha." The Alpha, then, was he who spoke, and had been dead, and was alive again. The Alpha was the speaking God, the dying God, the living God of this ever-living passage. To predicate all this of the human son of the Virgin would be impiety, were it not for innocency of intention. The human son of the Virgin was created out of nothing in the reign of Herod; he was not coeval with the uncreated Ancient of Days. Instead of being the principal personage of the passage, the human son of the Virgin was not named in it, or even made the subject of allusion. He was not thus named, or even made the subject of allusion, because he was only the guise, the vestment, the human veil covering the ineffable and shrouded glories of the speaking God, the dying God, the resuscitated God of the first chapter of Revelation.

But reason here interposes her speculations and her objections. She deems that the declarations

of the God at Patmos, if literally understood, would come into collision with his attributes; that he had not capacity to suffer in his united natures; that if he had the capacity, it was not "fitting to God" thus to suffer; that the declarations of the God at Patmos are too high, too vast, too incomprehensible and stupendous to be entitled to full credence, according to the plain import of the terms. We would respectfully invite the authors of these suggestions to turn their eyes to the eighth and ninth verses of the fifty-fifth chapter of Isaiah. "For my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, saith the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts."

The revealed "ways" and "thoughts" of God are not only beyond, but sometimes seemingly opposed to reason. To yield them implicit credence often requires a flight of sublime faith not of easy attainment. Yet Abraham, the father of the faithful," staggered not at the promise of God through unbelief." Proud philosophy might have urged that the fulfilment of the promise involved a physical impossibility. Yet the faithful Abraham “believed God, and it was counted to him for righteousness."-Romans, iv., 3, 20. Our argument asks nothing but belief in the declarations of the living

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God. It seeks not to sustain the doctrine that the Godhead of Christ participated in his expiatory sufferings by the frail props of human reasoning. It fixes its great doctrine on the adamantine foundation, that "the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."-Isaiah, i., 20. The doctrine developed may, indeed, be too lofty for mortal comprehension. It may be opposed to what reason deems "fitting to God." It may come into imagined collision with the attributes of the Deity. It should, nevertheless, be enough to convince, at least to silence unbelief, that "the mouth of the Lord hath spoken it."

The meaning of the term death and its synonymes, when applied by inspiration to the ethereal essence of the incarnate God, will be made a theme of reverential inquiry in some part of the ensuing chapter.

CHAPTER X.

Death of the Eternal Son-Scriptural Passages proving it-His Exaltation-What was meant by his Death-Not mere Physical Death-Why his Sufferings called Death-Visible Expiration on Cross, but Representative of his viewless Death.

THE great apostle to the Gentiles declared, "When we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son."-Romans, v., 10. The two following passages are found in one of the epistles of the beloved disciple: "Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us."-1 John, iii., 16. "In this was manifested the love of God towards us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him. Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins."-1 John, iv., 9, 10. We have presented these two passages from 1 John in the order in which they stand in the epistle, but shall, nevertheless, consider the last first.

Who was the "propitiation for our sins?" He was the "only begotten Son" of the Father; he was the Son, whom the Father "sent" "into the world." It was not the human son of the Virgin.

That terrestrial son-that son by adoption-was not the "only begotten Son" of the Father. Nor was he begotten of the Father at all; the conception of the Virgin was by the power of the Holy Ghost.-Luke, i., 35. The human son of Mary was not "sent" "into the world;" it was in the world that he was born and created. "The propitiation for our sins," then, was no less a being than the second person of the Trinity.

How did the second person of the Trinity become "the propitiation for our sins?" The beloved disciple himself informs us, in the first of the passages transcribed from his epistle. The second person of the Trinity became "the propitiation for our sins" when" he laid down his life for us." The term "death," in the passage from Romans, means the same as the terms "he laid down his life for us," in the passage from 1 John. In both passages the Sufferer is the same, though he is called "God" in one of the passages, and "his Son" in the other. Each passage plainly points to the second person of the Trinity, and each passage virtually declares that he died for our redemption. Of the same import is the following passage: "And the life which I now live in the flesh I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me.”—Galatians, ii., 20. The terms "and gave himself for me"