the work of God.' The object toward which the entire work of God in the pre-Christian economy had been looking was the Son of Man; and so long as the Jew did not believe Jesus to be the Christ he had not done 'the work of God.' The turning point of our Lord's teaching is neither the obligation of believing in contradistinction from knowing, nor yet the obligation of believing on Jehovah in contradistinction from Moses or the prophets, but the necessity of accepting Jesus of Nazareth as the Christ. "Every disbelieving or extraneous thought is put aside," says Dr. Milligan, "and with unusual directness, force and simplicity Jesus shows that the one cardinal requirement of the Father is the reception of the Son by faith."

This teaching was addressed to the Jews who had not honored the claims of Jesus. We have similar teaching. at the close of His ministry. To His disciples He said: "Let not your heart be troubled; ye believe in God, believe also in me." Their faith in Jehovah was becoming and necessary; but it was not sufficient. Jehovah, as the disciples had learned to confide in Him through Moses and the prophets, was not the final object of belief nor the principle of victory. Peace, consolation, triumph over sin and death, were not to be attained by taking refuge in God after the manner of the ceremonial law. What the disciples needed as the complement of confidence in the God of their fathers was belief in Him whom the God of their fathers had sent. He was the object in whom they were to take refuge, in whom they as His followers, in order to be faithful to Jehovah, were bound to confide.

2. When the New Testament sets before us Jesus Christ

1John xiv. I.

as the object of faith it is His person that is prominent, not His miracles, not His words, not even any cardinal epoch of His mediatorship. It is not His birth nor His death, not His resurrection nor His glorification that is the pivotal truth, but it is the central reality which im parts saving worth to these essential and momentous mysteries. That pivotal truth is Himself; yet not His personality divorced from the cardinal facts of His personal history.

The faith of which Jesus Christ is the object presupposes Jehovah and the revelation of Jehovah by Moses and the prophets, and embraces His birth of the Virgin, His wonderful deeds, His mighty words, His inspiring promises, His atoning sacrifice, with the resurrection and session at the right hand of the Father. Apart from these mysteries His person would not be the divine-human reality whence proceed eternal life and salvation. Only when we grasp the central force of His personality may we have clear insight into the virtue of the mysteries that enter into His mediatorship.

But no part of the Christian economy is a legitimate object of Christian faith independently of its organic connection in the Spirit with the glorified Christ. From Him alone, the principle of regenerate human life, each article of the Creed derives the authority of a faith-object. If thus related to Himself, then, for example, 'the holy catholic Church,' as affirmed by the Creed, becomes a legitimate object of faith. Such an object the Church is because she stands as the mystical 'body' of Christ, apart from whom there is no Christian Church. He, the Head, and His members are the Church; neither He disconnected from His membership, nor His members disconnected

from Himself. The man who ex corde can say: "I believe in Jesus Christ His only begotten Son our Lord," and can affirm the cardinal mysteries of His mediatorship, he also may say: "I believe in the Holy Ghost." And the man who believes in the Holy Ghost sent from the Father by the incarnate Son on the day of Pentecost, may say also: I believe "the holy catholic Church, the communion of saints." Whenever ecclesiology requires faith in the Church, but fails to emphasize her vital connection, not with the Pope as the supposed vicar of Christ, but directly with the Lord Jesus Christ Himself, enthroned at the right hand of God, it breaks away from the inviolable law of the Christian Creed.

3. Of all natural faith, whatever be its object, whether divine or human, one distinguishing characteristic is, that it effects and maintains a union of the object with the subject. The union is internal, being a moral force in the personal life of the subject. The object comes to be a power in the sphere of will and of consciousness; and the power is strong or weak, and works for good or for evil, according to the nature of the object. The implicit confidence in Jehovah of 'a Jew which is one inwardly,' gave to the authority of Jehovah a place in personality that developed approximately the ideal Jewish character. The confidence of a son in his mother transforms her judgment and will into a principle of his personal life, exerting from within a controlling influence on his conduct. fidence of a boy in a bad man governed by false notions of morality and religion, makes the man a debasing force in the heart and character of the boy.

The con

This characteristic of confidence is the predicate of Christian faith, and distinguishes it preeminently. Lay

ing hold of Jesus Christ, faith makes Christ one with the believer; not that Christ and the believer become the same person; but Christ becomes the central principle in the heart of the believer, in his spiritual and ethical life. Through faith Christ obtains an 'abode' in the believer; or as Dr. Stearns says: "Faith opens the closed temple of the human heart to its rightful owner." Then He asserts Himself in the believer's personal activities, transforming feelings, thoughts, volitions and conduct into His likeness. Faith may be described to be the bond of living fellowship between those who have been baptized into Christ and Jesus Christ Himself.

4. Faith as the bond of fellowship is complemental to the work of the Holy Spirit.

Primarily and fundamentally the union is of the Spirit. The Spirit in the baptismal transaction translates the subject from the natural economy into the spiritual economy, from the kingdom of the first man into the kingdom of the Second Man. This transition is of the nature of birth. It is not effected by natural will or by natural reflection. The subject is passive and receptive. He does not by an act of his own make himself a member of another race, but he is made a member by the inscrutable agency of the Holy Spirit.

By the work of the Spirit there is thus established an objective connection, a fellowship between Christ glori fied and the members of His kingdom. In this fellowship Christ, apprehending the susceptible personality of men by nature sinful and helpless, communicates to them of the fulness of His divine-human life in the degree that 1John xiv. 23.

2 Present Day Theology, p. 410.

they through the obedience of faith become capable of receiving His gifts.

The obedience of faith completes the scriptural idea of union to Christ. Acted upon by the Spirit, translated into the kingdom of God, the subject of divine love will, if a living member, himself also be active. When a branch is set in the vine there is vital interaction between the vine and the branch; if the branch do not reciprocate the vitality of the vine, it can bear no fruit. A member of the Second Man inust be active according to the law of the new life of the spiritual economy into which he has been translated. The free gift of God bestowed on the sinner received into the kingdom becomes his possession only by his voluntary act. Faith establishes the connection, the fellowship of believers with Christ. In this fellowship they apprehend Him by whom they have been apprehended.' They lay hold of and make their own that life and salvation which in consequence of deliverance 'out of the power of darkness' and translation into the kingdom of the Son have become their inheritance. Otherwise they do not experience the infinite blessing sealed to them. It is by the voluntary appropriation of the blessing that the members of Christ fulfil the Christian salvation in their personal history, that is, in their spontaneous impulses, in their conscious purposes, and by their Christlike conduct in all social relations. The organic union effected by the Spirit becomes an ethical union effected by faith.

2

The same truth may be thus expressed: the communion. of Christ with His members becomes a communion of His members with Christ. He first loves us and freely bestows 2 Col. i. 13.

1

1 Phil. iii. 12.