The Messiah of the Gospels

glimpses of the Christ of the throne and of the Second Advent, which he did not learn from his theological teachers or from the writings of his predecessors or contemporaries. He is convinced that the faith of the Church of the day is defective in its lack of apprehension of the reigning Christ and in its neglect of the Second Advent of our Lord.

The Catholic faith of Christ's Church is expressed in the earliest of the creeds, that which bears the name of the Apostles. The proportions of that faith have been destroyed in most of the modern systems of dogmatic theology, which exaggerate one third of its clauses and depreciate or neglect two-thirds of them. This creed is Christological. It gave me great pleasure, after I had completed my work, to find that every one of the clauses of the Catholic creed is included in the matters that must be discussed in the study of the Messiah of the New Testament.

The faith of the Apostolic Church was fixed upon the Messiah enthroned at the right hand of God, ruling over the Church, and soon to come in visible presence to reward the faithful and to condemn and punish the unfaithful and the wicked. This is the normal Christian attitude at all times, looking upward to the enthroned Christ and looking forward to His Parousia.

The Christian Church of Western Europe, under the influence of the Augustian theology, has been looking backward and downward instead of upward and forward. In the doctrine of God it has been grubbing in the eternal Decree. In the doctrine of man it has been dissecting the corpse of the first Adam and searching for the germs of the disease of original sin which slew him and all our race. Accordingly, religion has been sad, gloomy, and sour. In the doctrine of Christ it has been

living in Passion week, following the stations of the cross, and bowing in penitence before the crucifix. This is a very inadequate and one-sided Christianity. This is not the Christian faith of the Apostles. It is not that form of Christian theology which is to transform the world. There is an eternal Decree, yes, but its essential content for us is its final aim, that we may be conformed to the image of God's Son that "He might be the firstborn among many brethren." There is original sin in the first Adam. It is a terrible reality. But it has been annulled and destroyed once for all and forever in the Second Adam. "For as through the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, even so through the obedience of the One shall the many be made righteous."

We must be buried by baptism into the death of the crucified, but the burial for the Messiah and His people alike does not accomplish its purpose until God has quickened us together with Christ and raised us up with Him and made us to sit with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus. As Bishop Westcott well says: "The crucifix with the dead Christ obscures our faith. Our thoughts rest not upon a dead, but upon a living Christ." And so the late Prof. Milligan says: "No doubt the crucifix is to thousands upon thousands a spiritual help, and the figure of our Lord upon the cross preaches to them of the love of God with a power which the words of men can rarely, if ever, equal. Yet the empty cross is to be preferred as being a symbol, not a representation; as symbolizing, moreover, the resurrection as well as the death of the Redeemer. He has borne the cross and passed from it forever." With these eminent representatives of the modern Anglican and Presbyterian communions I must

express my entire agreement as the result of my study of the Christ of the Gospels and the Christ of the Apostles.

The cross stained with the blood drops of our Redeemer is the most sacred symbol of our holy religion. Let it crown all our churches! Let it lead all our processions! Let it be worn on the hearts of all Christian people! But it is precious not because it points downward to death and the grave, but because it ever points upward to the living Christ who was lifted on that cross in order to be lifted thereby higher to His heavenly throne, to reign there as the one Mediator between God and man, whose pierced hands and feet and side, the scars of that cross, are the eternal pledges of His victory over Law and Sin and Death, and of the justification, sanctification, and glorification which He has won for our race and which He is graciously bestowing upon His kingdom.

CONTENTS.

THE MESSIANIC IDEA IN PRE-CHRISTIAN JUDAISM, p. 1.

(1) The Palestinian Messianic idea, p. 4; (2) The Advent of the

Apocalypse of Enoch, p. 9; (3) The Seventy Shepherds, p. 12;

(4) The Ten Ages, p. 14; (5) The Earliest Sibylline Oracle,

p. 16; (6) The Son of Man of the Similitudes of Enoch,

p. 23; (7) The Messiah of the Psalter of Solomon, p. 31; (8)

The Hellenistic Messianic idea, p. 36; (9) The Messianic

ideas of the Jewish sects, p. 38.

II.

THE MESSIANIC IDEA OF THE FORERUNNERS OF JESUS, p. 41.

(10) The Songs of Annunciation, p. 43; (11) The Songs of the