The following excerpts from the writings of James Mann Campbell are available on this page:

The Abiding Presence
Christ Must be Born in Us
The Divine Indwelling
The Mystery of the Divine Indwelling
The Present Christ
Christ Formed Within
Inward Substitution
Christ Realized Through the Holy Spirit
Oneness with the Indwelling Christ
The Inward Experience of Christ
Christ Within ­ Heaven Within
Death and Resurrection
The Inward Revelation
The Incarnation of Christ in Christians
Christ: A Fountain of Strength
The Root of Righteousness
Faith and Feeling
The Mystical Union
The Living Christ
The Christ of Experience
Not Form But Life
The Power of God
Justification ­ Adjustment
Christ is the Gospel
The Objective and Subjective Work of Christ

"I will not leave you orphans, I will come unto you." Why should the church keep mourning the absence of her Lord when she has the assurance of His abiding presence? Why should the spouse of the Ever-Living Christ sit down in the dust, clad in the weeds of widowhood, bewailing the loss of her Lord when He is really present with her? Why should believers in a risen Christ dolefully sing "Down life's dark vale we wander till Jesus comes," when they ought rapturously to sing, "Joy to the world the Lord is come?"

Brief was the interval between His departure and His return. He came again speedily, just as He had promised. After His resurrection His disciples saw Him and their hearts were flooded with a newfound joy that no one could take away from them. After His ascension He was restored to them fully, dwelling in their hearts by the power of His Spirit. And thus in their experience were the words fulfilled, 'Verily I say unto you, there be some of them that stand here who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the Son of man coming in His kingdom."

The promise given to the early Christians was "the promise of His presence." (11 Peter 3:4) In the midst of the fiery trials by which they were beset they wore enjoined "to be patient until the presence of the Lord." (Jas. 5:7) They were to abound in self-denying service knowing that the presence of the Lord was at hand. (Jas. 5:8). Their hearts were to be strengthened and comforted by the assurance of "the power and presence of the Lord Jesus Christ." (11 Peter 1:16) They were constantly to strive that "spirit and soul and body" might be "preserved entire, without blame at the presence of our Lord Jesus Christ." (I Thess. 5:23) They were to abide in Christ that when He was made manifest they might "have boldness and not be ashamed before Him at His presence." (I Jn. 2:28) The object upon which their interest centered was the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ, and their gathering together unto Him. (11 Thess. 2:1)

The presence of Christ, once a hope, is now a blessed reality. "The Coming One," has come.

The presence is an experience, the manifestation of the presence is a hope; in the presence we are to rejoice, for the manifestation of the presence we are to wait; the presence is something which is now being realized inwardly to the believer, the manifestation of the presence is something which is to take place outwardly at the end of this world-age.

From: The Presence. New York: Eaton & Mains. 1911.

Christ must be born in us. It is in this way that He comes to live in us. The divine life, like the natural life, begins with birth. "You must be born again" into the spiritual life, as you have already been born into the natural life. Of this spiritual life which begins with the new birth, Christ is the originating and sustaining principle. We are born into His life; He is born into our lives. His birth in the flesh has its counterpart in His birth in our hearts. Not until He has been born in us does He become to us a living, saving Christ; not until we are informed with His spirit do we become transformed into His likeness.

Christ must grow in us. He must grow in the womb of our minds, grow in the heart of our faith, grow in the very center of our being as the seminal principle of our lives. Those in whom He is alive are living Christians; those in whom He grows are growing Christians.

Christ must be formed outwardly in our lives. Reborn in our hearts He will be reproduced in our lives. His spirit will shape the outward character as the brain shapes the skull. The Christ within can not be hid. The secret of His presence will leak out. Of his invisible presence some visible outshowing will be given. Those who desire to see Him will be able to discover something of His outward form in the lives of those in whom His spirit has been born. In the disciple they will see the Master.

The Christian life consists of birth and outbirth. It is at once receptive and productive. What it takes in it gives out. If it takes in Christ, it gives out Christ; if it receives His spirit, it repeats His life. Every new birth is a new incarnation. As Christ is formed in the hearts of men the Word continues to be made flesh. Christ was God incarnate, Christians are Christ incarnated. Because Christ liveth in them, for them to live is for Christ to live Himself out in them as the parent lives himself out in the child. When Christ has been formed within He will be formed without.

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

The divine indwelling is not for a few elect souls only, but for all who hear and believe the gospel.

The mystery made manifest in the gospel as "Christ in you the hope of glory" is said to be revealed by God "in His saints." It is revealed in their hearts ­ in their inner consciousness, through the new light which has dawned upon them. The knowledge of the historical Christ is the soil out of which the revelation of the mystery of the divine indwelling grows.

In this individual consciousness of Christ in the heart, the apostle finds "the hope of glory." The ground of Christian hope is Christ on the cross; the evidence of it to others is Christ in the life; the personal conviction of it is Christ in the heart. He that believeth hath the witness in Himself. Christ in him is to him the hope of glory. What better evidence can any one have that he is an heir of glory than that Christ is in him, and that in him the process of salvation, which ends in eternal glory, is now going on? What better ground to hope that he will enter the land of glory than that he has begun to live the life of glory? What better reason to expect that he shall share the glory of Christ forever, than that Christ is now his light in darkness, his strength in weakness, his comfort in trouble, his hope in despair, and his triumph in defeat? Any one who is experiencing the power of the living Christ, can no more doubt his rightful heirship to ale the glory yet to be revealed, than he can doubt the coming of the sun, when already bathed in its bright foreglow. The experience of Christ dwelling within is anticipatory of all that is to come.

Christ in the heart is the hope of glory, because He is the earnest of it, the pledge of it, the beginning of it. Those who have Christ within find heaven begun below. They sit in heavenly places because they have been made partakers of a heavenly life. The transforming power in their lives operates from within, working from within outward. He works "in them to will and to do of his good pleasure." Their acts are all their own, but the power by which they are performed is His; their wills are all their own, but they are lost in His, or rather they are found in His; in their lives His life is expressed; their activity is His activity; their patience is His patience; their love is His love; their sacrifice is His sacrifice. Receiving His very nature it is natural to them to speak His words, to perform His works, to perpetuate His influence, and to reproduce His life.

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

There is no essential difference between the relation which Christ sustained to men in past ages, and the relation which He sustains to them in the present gospel age. Through all the ages runs one eternal purpose of grace, binding them together in continuous historical development, and bringing them at length to their consummation in the incarnation of Christ. The connection of Christ with human souls, time and place do not affect. The sphere of His redemptive activity is not a matter of latitude and longitude. With Him all men have to do, with all men He has to do. To every man He comes, before every man He stands, to every man He holds out a hand of help. From the earliest hour of time down to the present He has never failed to bring to every sinful soul influences sufficient unto salvation. He is "the true Light which lighteneth every man coming into the world;" the one central fountain whose waters, openly or secretly, nourish the life of every holy heart.

To unfold to men the glorious mystery of the divine indwelling; to show that from the beginning unity and universality of saving influence have come from the Immanent Christ, is affirmed by Paul to have been the object of his apostolic ministry. He says that to him "a divine dispensation was given to fulfill the word of God, even the mystery which hath been hid from all ages and generations, but now hath it been manifested in His Saints, to whom God was pleased to make known what is the riches of the glory of this mystery among the Gentiles, which is Christ in you the hope of glory." (Col. 1:25-27) The end of his preaching was to declare unto the Gentiles the Unseen Presence, of Christ. The great mystery of religion, the indwelling of God in humanity - the mystery which it was the end of the incarnation to unfold, is now revealed in God's saints, that through them it might be made known to the world. For spiritual enlightenment and enrichment "those who sit in darkness and in the region of the shadow of death," require to know as the Christ of God their friend and Saviour, the Mysterious One before whom they have often shrunk in terror, whose help they have often vainly implored, whose favor they have agonizingly sought, and whose loving care they have sometimes feebly trusted. What joy the knowledge of this mystery is fitted to convey! What joy to know that the Life, the Power, the Love in which all lives are rooted, is the Soul's Redeemer! What joy to know the Christ of gospel story!

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

The doctrine of the indwelling of Christ in the heart is revolutionary.

If Christ be within, there He must be sought; there is He to be found. Alas, that His presence, while not denied should so often be unrealized. Many Christians seem hardly to be aware that a Royal Guest has taken up His abode within their hearts. Their consciousness of His indwelling is at best fitful and dim. Their assurance of salvation is overcast with clouds because it lacks the important element of full assurance or faith in the Divine Indwelling Presence. They resemble a beleaguered castle from which the regular water supply has been cut off. The soldiers are suffering and dying of thirst, not aware that deep in the recesses of the fortress, cut out of the solid rock, there is a hidden well whose waters fail not. What a thrill of joy the discovery of that well would bring to the remnant of that forlorn garrison! The knowledge of that secret spring would be to them life from the dead; and its water would be in very truth the water of life. A like change would come over many a drooping heart were the discovery to be made that spiritual supplies are not to be fetched from afar; that infinite resources have been placed within easy reach; that deep within the living sanctuary of the soul there is an unfailing fountain which renders every one who avails himself of it perfectly independent of outward circumstances and surroundings. No haunting fear of future thirst-pangs can ever come to him who know that the water which Christ has given him has "become in him a well of water springing up unto eternal life."

No distant Christ can wipe away our tears, bear our heavy burdens, crush the heads of the serpent's brood that nestle in the breast, purify our hearts from sin, and impart unto us sufficiency of strength for daily toil and sacrifice. Until the personal presence of Christ becomes the profoundest fact of consciousness no real test has been made of His power to comfort, to quicken and to save.

Only from a present Christ can present salvation come. To those in whom He consciously indwells the fullness of His redeeming energy is made immediately available. They do not need to go up to heaven to bring their Saviour down, they do not need to go down to the abyss to bring Him up.

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

By loving and persistent effort the Apostle Paul sought to bring those Christians whose faith was as yet imperfect, into the complete consciousness of the Indwelling Christ. The divine image, already dimly visible within them he labored to develop into sharp and strong outline. Hear him exclaim with motherly tenderness and solicitude, "My little children of whom I am again in travail until Christ be formed in you" (Gal. 4: 19.) The Galatian Christians, like too many in the present day, were in an embryonic state; their inner life had not come to complete development. Christ had not been fully formed in them, and therefore they had not been fully fashioned in his likeness. Paul was in continual anxiety and pain on their account, travailing in spirit to see them born into this higher life. He even intimates that His birthpangs could not come to an end until the Christ begotten within them should become the clear ideal and vital inspiration of their lives. Well did he know that only by Christ being formed within them could spiritual life be brought to maturity.

This agonizing earnestness, which characterizes every one who is instrumental in bringing souls to the birth, and which St. Paul compares to the pain of a travailing mother, is a faint reflection of the divine yearning and longing for the development in man of the divine image. "He shall see of the travail of his Soul and shall be satisfied." When? When men are perfected in His image. "O that men would only believe!" exclaims Tauler, "how passionately God longs to save, and bring forth His Son in them." "Arise, O man," he pleads, "realize the end of thy being and make room for God within thy soul, that He may bring forth His Son within thee!"

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

Christian thought has concerned itself almost exclusively with the idea of outward substitution; that is, the substitution of the sufferings of death of Christ for man's offenses. It has looked upon Christ as taking the sinner's place; being wounded for his transgressions, and bruised for his iniquities; but has in too large a measure overlooked the equally important doctrine of inward substitution; that is, the substitution of Christ for self, the substitution of the new man for the old man, the substitution of Christ's will for man's will, of Christ's power for man's impotence, of Christ's righteousness for man's sinfulness. With the idea of Christ taking the sinner's place ought to be connected the idea of Christ taking His place in the sinner.

Laying bare the hidden spring of action within his own breast, Paul says, "I have been crucified with Christ, yet I live; and yet no longer I, but Christ liveth in me." (Gal. 2:20)

In this inward substitution a change of spiritual center is involved. When the old life-center of selfishness is destroyed, a new life-center of heaven-born love is formed. Henceforth there is within the soul a new principle of action; a new source of authority is acknowledged; a new King sits upon a throne. Self sinks out of sight, and no man is seen "save Jesus only." Said the great German reformer, "Should any one knock at my breast and say, Who lives here?' I should reply, 'Not Martin Luther, but the Lord Jesus."' Is not every Christian heart a house in which Christ lives, a house in which He is Master? Every one in whose heart Christ is Master of the house, can say, "It is no longer I that live, but Christ liveth in me." His old life has become a thing of the past; no longer does he call himself his own; no longer does he seek his own ends in life; no longer does he workout from self as a center, or work in to self as a center. Christ is now the Lord of his life; every thing within him is under His control; he has no interests separate from His; he holds himself in constant readiness to carry out His slightest wish; whereas once he proudly said, "Not His will but mine be done;" now he meekly says, "Not my will but His be done." The indwelling Christ is the center from which he allows Christ's character to be worked out; the center to which he allows Christ's character to be worked into his behavior; he lives from Christ; he lives for Christ.

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

"I have many things to say unto you, but ye can not bear them now; howbeit, when He, the Spirit of truth is come, He shall guide you into all the truth; for He shall not speak from Himself; but what things soever He shall hear, these shall He speak, and He shall declare unto you all the things that are to come. He shall glorify me, for He shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you. (John 16:12-14.)

The Christ who had been known after the flesh was now to be known after the spirit; the Christ who had been manifested outwardly in a human life was now to be manifested inwardly as the indwelling life of the soul.

We are not to infer from the words of Christ, "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away the Comforter will not come unto you," that there was gain in His departure in the sense that a better exchange was made. He departed in one form that He might return in another. He left in bodily presence that He might return in spiritual power. He is present now as of old, but in a more comprehensive way. No longer hampered by a mortal body, no longer limited by the narrow conditions of this earth-life, He is capable of being universally present. And being universally present, His presence is not something to be invoked, but something to be realized.

Elaborate reasons have been adduced to show that it is to the advantage of the church to have the presence of the Holy Spirit rather than to have the Saviour personally present. But even upon a priori grounds it is difficult to see how the coming of the Comforter could ever compensate for the absence of the Saviour; it is difficult to see how the loss of the old friend could be made up by the gain of the new friend; it is difficult to see how the Holy Spirit could be a better helper than Christ. The argument is needless, as it is vain; for in gaining the Holy Spirit we have not lost Christ. The Spirit has not come to indemnify us for the absence of our Lord; He has not been deputed to fill a place made empty. He has come to bring to us the best of all evidence that our unseen Lord has not left us orphans in a forlorn world, for He has come to make the Christ whom the heavens received present in our hearts. Of the Comforter, Jesus said, "He abideth with you and shall be in you." Of Himself He said, "In that day ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in Me and I you." It is clear that through the indwelling of the Comforter we have the indwelling of Christ.

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

In the Christological teaching of St. Paul the conscious indwelling of Christ carries with it something more than spiritual identification. It carries with it spiritual oneness ­ community of nature. "He that is joined unto the Lord is one spirit" (I Cor. 6:17); he is spiritually one with Him whose life he shares; not one with Him in essential essence, but one with Him in spiritual nature. As Christ took his nature, he takes Christ's nature; as Christ became a partaker of flesh and blood, he becomes a partaker of the divine nature.

Those who through union with the indwelling Christ are brought into participation of His life are represented in Scripture as having the mind, the heart, and the spirit of Christ.

1. "We" says the apostle, "have the mind (nous) of Christ." (I Cor. 2:16.) Again he says, "Let this mind be in you which was also in Christ Jesus." (Phil. 2:5.) To have the mind of Christ is to have Christ living in our minds, the base and ground of our thinking power; the sustainer and quickener of our reason; "the master light of all our seeing;" the source of all our inward illumination.

2. We have the heart of Christ. We have the heart (kardia) of Christ as Christians. What was it but the Christ-heart, the Christ-love within, going out in yearning desire to help halting souls to walk in the heavenward way, that led St. Paul to exclaim, "God is my witness, how I long after you all in the tender mercies of Jesus Christ? (Phil. 1:8.) And what is it but the Christ-heart in any one that awakens in him the spirit of unselfish ministry, so that instead of always thinking of his individual wants and interests, he thinks of others, plans for others, prays for others, works and sacrifices for others?

No more searching test can be applied by any man to himself than this: Have I Christ's heart? Does His love burn within my breast? Am I stirred with His compassion when I look upon the sinning, sorrowing suffering multitudes? Do I, like Him, go about continually doing good?

3. Another mark of the indwelling of Christ consists in the possession of His Spirit. "If any man have not the Spirit (pneuma) of Christ he is none of His." (Rom. 8:9.) And by parity of reasoning, if any man has the Spirit of Christ he is one of His. The absence of the Spirit of Christ from a man is evidence of his separation from Christ; the presence of the Spirit of Christ in a man marks him off as belonging to Christ.

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

The Christ who lived In Palestine upward of eighteen hundred years ago lives in the world today. He has direct and constant access to the spirit of man, touching sin-stricken souls with His healing power; quickening dead souls by the inbreathing of His life-giving Spirit; "combating, defeating, expelling the slow death which has crept over the body of humanity." In all His activities within the soul His seeking and saving love is manifest. The eternal love outwardly expressed in the cross is inwardly expressed In His tireless effort to make His great salvation an actuality in human experience. The four Evangelists have given the record of His outward life; those alone, who know Him, not after the flesh but after the spirit, can give the record of His never-ending activity within the inner sphere of the spiritual nature of man.

Of the two hemispheres of truth which constitute the whole gospel - the work of Christ for us, and the work of Christ in us, the latter often suffers a well-nigh total eclipse. Many think almost exclusively of what Christ has done for them, and overlook what He is doing in them; they look at redemption upon the divine side as a finished work, and fail to look at It upon the human side as a continuous work; they are so much taken up with the ideal of Christ dying upon the cross for their offenses as almost to forget that He is living in their hearts to guide, to inspire, to bless, to save.

Before Christian experience can be rounded out to completeness the Godward and manward sides of Christ's work must be embraced in a comprehensive faith; the work of Christ in its entireness must be brought within the inner sphere of personal consciousness; the outward Christ of history must become the Christ of inward experience; the dead Christ of Calvary must become the living Christ of the present; the Christ embalmed in a book must dwell and reign within the heart. It is not Christ upon the cross, nor Christ within the Bible, nor Christ in heaven that saves; but Christ deeply hidden in the inmost spirit; Christ constantly present in the life; Christ the inspiration of every thought and word and deed. Christ in the soul and not Christ buried in a tomb, enshrined in a temple, or seated upon a throne is the life's true Life.

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

Heaven is where Christ is. His presence in the heart makes heaven in the heart. A Christian was asked if he was on the way to heaven. "I live there," was the reply. Heaven is not so far away as many suppose. The door that leads to it opens inward. "The Kingdom of Heaven is among you. "Wherever the King sets up his court, wherever His Spirit is regnant, wherever the richness and fullness of His indwelling is experienced, there the kingdom of heaven has come.

The heart in which Christ dwells becomes the house beautiful. It is a well-ordered abode. All its plans and arrangements are under His supervision and control. Peace and Joy sit around its hearth. Love is the spirit that reigns within it. By filling the heart with Himself He fills it with love; for as Sir James MacIntosh exclaimed when dying, "Jesus and love are the same thing." And this love with which Christ fills the heart has a reflexive influence in making the vision of His presence clearer. The Christ of love manifests Himself to loving hearts, as He can not manifest himself to worldly selfish hearts. Love makes His presence real.

This heavenly love which enters the soul when Christ enters it brings heaven with it. It begets harmony and harmony begets heaven. As Christ and love are one, love and heaven are one.

Christian peace and joy do not spring up of themselves; they do not come from outward things, they come directly from the presence of Christ in the heart. They are found in Him, never apart from Him.

"Love divine, all love excelling,
Joy of heaven to-earth come down!
Fix in us thy humble dwelling,
All thy faithful mercies crown;
Jesus, thou art all compassion,
Pure, unbounded love thou art,
Visit us with thy salvation,
Enter every trembling heart."

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

The Christian is crucified with Christ to sin; through crucifixion he dies unto sin. "The body of sin," being dead is buried and the new holy nature, the body of righteousness, which takes its place, is raised from the dead to walk in newness of life. From being dead in sin the Christian becomes "dead unto sin;" from being buried in the world he becomes buried to the world; from being dead to the things of the spirit-life he becomes "alive unto God through Jesus Christ," He does not merely believe in the crucifixion of Christ, he shares in it; he does not merely believe in the death of Christ for human sin, he is "made conformable unto His death;" he does not merely believe in the burial of Christ, he is, by the Spirit's baptism "buried with Him unto death;" he does not merely believe in His resurrection from the dead, he "knows Him and the power of His resurrection.. His faith is something more than the acceptance of certain historical facts concerning Christ; it is a living experience of His power in his life. This distinction between the truth believed and the truth lived is made by John Arndt the basis of the tender appeal, "If thou believest that Christ was crucified for the sins of the world, thou must with Him be crucified to the same. If thou refusest to comply with this, thou canst not be a living member of Christ, nor be united to Him by faith. If thou believest that Christ is risen from the dead, it is thy duty to rise spiritually with Him. In a word; the birth, cross, passion, death and resurrection of Christ must, after a spiritual manner, be transacted in thee. The German mystic, Scheffler, has said, "The cross of Golgotha thou lookest in vain, unless within thyself it be set up again."

And what is true of the cross of Golgotha is true of every other part of the drama of the life of Christ. It must all be reenacted in the soul.

In all that pertains to forgiveness and reconciliation to God, the emphasis is put upon the death of Christ; in all that pertains to sanctification the emphasis is put upon His life. "If we have been saved by His death, how much more by His life?" If the dead Christ upon the cross has brought us deliverance from the guilt and condemnation of sin, the living Christ who dwells and reigns within the heart will bring us deliverance from the power of sin.

A dead Christ has no life-power. Only the Living Christ can bring us life. Christ the risen, Christ the vanquisher of death, Christ the Lord of life, is to us "the resurrection and the life." To us and in us He is "alive forevermore."

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

The essential thing in religious experience is the inward revelation of Christ. More important than the revelation of Christ to man is the revelation of Christ in man; more important than the revelation of Christ in the Word is the revelation of Christ in the heart. For not until the outward revelation in the Word has become a subjective experience; not until the Christ of Scripture has become inwardly and personally known; not until the inner eye beholds His beauty, and the inner ear hears His voice; not until the light and glory of His spirit fills the temple of the soul, is religion anything more than an empty form. What does it profit that we see the manifestation of the divine presence in the world if we do not enjoy the manifestation of the divine presence in our hearts? What does it profit that we profess belief in the Christ of the Scriptures, if we do not recognize our dependence upon Him as the Original Root of our being, and through personal union with Him enjoy continuous and progressive development? No outward vision of Christ, no amount of second-hand knowledge concerning Him will avail anything unless the revelation of His presence and power has taken place in ourselves.

Paul puts special emphasis upon the point that the essential glory of his risen Lord which broke out before his sight, also broke in upon his heart. "When it was the good pleasure of God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me through his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the Gentiles, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood." (Gal. 1: 15,16.) More to him than the outward vision of blinding brightness was the revelation of God's Son in him.

When to Simon Peter came this inward revelation of his Lord, it was said; "Blessed art thou, Simon Bar-Jonah, for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but my Father who is in heaven."

This inward revelation of Christ is, like all the deep experiences of life, for every man by himself. It is something which is realized in individual experience; something with which no stranger is to intermeddle. The one who receives it does not "confer with flesh and blood," he does not take counsel with his own heart; he does not allow himself to be governed by the opinions of others. With his living Lord he holds private communication.

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

The incarnation of Christ in Christian lives makes His manifestation in the flesh something other than a transient event. From the humanity into which He comes He does not withdraw. The footing He has gained He continues to hold. In human lives He continues to be revealed, through human lives He continues to speak. The tabernacle of God is not only with man; it is man. "The true Shekinah," says Chrysostom, "is man! The Most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands, but in the living temple of the humble, holy heart. Thus saith the High and Lofty One that inhabiteth eternity, whose name is Holy, "I dwell in the high and holy place, with Him also that is of a contrite and humble spirit." Appealing to the inner consciousness of Christians the Apostle of the Gentiles asks, "Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?"

To know that Christ is in us; to know that we were made by Him and for Him; to know that we were designed to be the living temple of His presence, is to attain to an excellent knowledge for which all things else might be counted loss. Let each one ask, "Have I attained this knowledge? Do I see that the very end for which the Lord of Glory assured my nature was that He might dwell in my poor heart? Has His incarnation become to me real and personal? Has He come into my life? Has He taken up His abode within me? Do I live in the happy consciousness of His abiding presence? Do I take Him with me wherever I go? In a word, is the Christ who lives in me, accepted, confessed, lived and glorified?"

The continued incarnation of Christ realized in Christians individually, is realized still more fully in the church collectively. The whole is greater than a part. Christians are members of Christ; the church is the "body of Christ." It is His chosen dwelling place, the organism in which His fullness abides, the agency by which His truth and grace are made known, the visible witness of His continuous presence in the world. The mission of the church is the mission of Christ.

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

From the presence of Christ in the heart comes plenitude of power to meet every moral demand. Strong in His strength we rise into Joyous and victorious life; made vigorous by the impartation of His Holy energy we are able to resist temptation as the strong and healthy resist the winter's cold. Supplied by Him with overcoming grace our moral nature is braced and stiffened to withstand and master evil in every form. Experiencing the all-sufficiency of His power we can say with McCheyne: "As Christ for us is all our righteousness before a Holy God, Christ in us is all our strength before an ungodiy world." Knowing that He is ever in us struggling with us against our sin, and knowing that greater is the Saviour that is in us than the sin that is in us, we know that "sin hath no more dominion over us." Its master is broken. With clear discernment of the source of the power in which the Christian overcometh, Luther aptly remarks, "How often do Christians stumble; and to look at them outwardly they seem to be all weakness and reproach. But this matters not, for beneath their weakness and foolishness dwells in secret a power that the world can not know, and which yet overcometh the world ­ for Christ dwelleth in them."

"The possibilities of the Christian life are, therefore, measured," as Dr. R. W. Dale points out, "not by our own natural resources but by the infinite perfection of Christ himself." No limit is put to the measure of our power save the limit which we put to the working of His power in us. When He is allowed to have free course in us, we can adopt the words of the prophet Micah, "Truly, I am full of power by the Spirit of the Lord." What a delightful experience!

Full of cheer and hope is the Gospel of strength for the strengthless. An open door of deliverance from weakness and of entrance into strength stands before every man. "The Strong Son of God" proffers power to all. And where power is possible it is sinful to be weak. The feeblest saint, realizing where his strength lies, should ever be ready to join in the triumphant song; "Now unto Him that is able to do exceeding abundantly above all that we ask or think, according to the power that worketh in us, (that is, the power that is now at work in us), unto Him be the glory in the church, and in Christ Jesus unto all generations forever and ever; Amen." (Eph. 3:20,21.)

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

A sinful soul possesses no inherent power to live righteously. There are no natural virtues. All graciousness of character, wherever found, is the outgrowth of life which He imparts.

Claiming to be the Power from which all righteousness proceeds, Christ declares to sinful men, "Apart from me," that is separated from me, "ye can do nothing." His words are to be taken in the most absolute sense. Apart from Him, the living Vine, no one possesses a particle of fruit-bearing power. Apart from Him no one can produce, in any measure, the fruits of righteousness. Every holy life is a branch in the True Vine, and is fed from His out-flowing sap. He is the power in man that incites to righteousness, the power that makes for righteousness, the power that makes righteousness. Humanity is as dependent upon Him for spiritual life, as the branch is dependent upon the tree, the tree upon the soil, the river upon the fountain, the animal upon the air, the planet upon the sun.

The best that man can possibly produce by himself is an outward, mechanical righteousness ­ a righteousness worthless as "filthy rags;" but a vital, spiritual righteousness ­ a righteousness acceptable to God, is possible to him only as his spirit is penetrated and pervaded by the Spirit of Christ.

Those who become partakers of His Spirit become "partakers of His holiness." They are inspired to seek after, and empowered to attain, that ideal righteousness embodied in His life. From the inflow of His love into their hearts results the outflow of His righteousness in their lives. Yielding themselves up to the holy impulses which come from Him, "moving them on to noble ends, "they are "made the righteousness of God in Him."

The blissful effect of the realization by the believer of the indwelling Christ as the inward law and power of righteousness is thus stated by St. Paul, "If Christ is in you, the body is dead, because of sin; but the spirit is life, because of righteousness." (Rom. 8:10)

Of His presence as of His righteousness there shall be no end. The righteousness which He has brought in for us, and which He is working out in us, is an "everlasting righteousness,"

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

Receiving Christ by faith we are brought into vital union with Him, and enter into possession of His righteousness and strength.

There is need to distinguish between faith in the fact of Christ's indwelling, and the feeling which the consciousness of that fact is supposed to awaken. We walk by faith, not by feeling. We are to believe that Christ is with us when we do not feel His presence, just as we believe that the sun is shining in the sky when not a ray of light pierces the encircling gloom.

When Christ seems far away then is the time to believe that He is really near; when we do not feel Him in us then is the time to keep declaring to ourselves that He is in us, and to keep acting upon that faith. If Christ is in us He is in us whether we feel His presence or not. The mind, however, can not always be dwelling upon the fact of His presence; the heart can not always be in a thrill of ecstasy because of it. When we are immersed in thought we are not actively conscious of our friend's presence in the room; yet we are well aware that He is at our side; we have a sort of subconsciousness his presence, and we know that at any moment we can turn around and hold intercourse with Him. So we ought to believe that Christ is just as near us when the thermometer of feeling is at zero as when it is at summer heat; that He is just as near when in the press of business we keep Him in the background of our thoughts, as when upon our knees in prayer we are speaking with Him face to face. To carry with us the conviction that the presence of Christ does not depend upon our feeling, and to make the fact of His presence a matter of abiding faith, in every weather, is the only way to obtain deliverance from the darkness that comes from a mistaken sense of divine desertion.

From: The Indwelling Christ. New York: Fleming H. Revell Company. 1895.

The union of the soul with God is the goal of mysticism. The union of the soul with God through Christ is the basic principle of Christian-mysticism. A further step is taken by the Christian mystic when for union with God through Christ he substitutes union with Christ as God. In the experience of Paul the divine union generally took the latter form. His mystical union with Christ as God was the central fact in his experience as a Christian man. The Christ whose vision filled his soul was the Christ with whom he was " inextricably united"; the Christ in whom his personality was embraced, as the personality of a child is embraced in that of his mother, was the manifested God. Personal union with a divine Redeemer was the secret of his life.

The doctrine of the mystical union reaches to the borderland between truth and error, and the step across the unseen boundary-line is easily taken. The error into which many have fallen is that of deducing from the union of man with God the doctrine of "deification." The man in union with God has been regarded as part of God, a spark of His essential life, a particle of His divine essence. "The unity of our spirit in God," says Ruysbrock, "exists in two ways, essentially and actively " and Eckhart gives this illustration, "As the fire turns all that it touches into itself, so the birth of the Son of God in the soul turns us into God, so that God no longer knows anything in us but His Son." Now, whatever the mystical union may mean, it certainly cannot mean that our nature is in every sense identical with Christ's, or that His is substituted for ours. The divine union is not to be explained in a pantheistic sense as annihilating the will, by absorbing one life into another so as to obliterate moral personality and responsibility and put man on "the further side of good and evil." This swallowing up of individual life would make man a mere automaton, moving as he is moved. Clement and Origen in their day lifted up their protest against this doctrine, which, according to their phrasing of it, made man "consubstantial with God." They saw whereunto such a doctrine would inevitably lead. They saw that whoever accepted it would, like the initiate of the Greek Mysteries who was told, " Thou shalt be a god instead of a mortal," walk with prideful feet, and fall into the pit of humiliation, which the humble alone escape. The best of the mystics have been careful to avoid this danger. When Esaias Steifel advanced the proposition, " I am Christ," he was censured by Jacob Boehme, who said, "The believer is, on the contrary, Christ's instrument ­ a small, humble, and fruitful sprout.''

Fully to define or explain the mystical union impossible. It can be known only in part. "The fact, the experience transcends our analysis," says Bishop Moule, " but it is not beyond our faith, nor beyond our reception and inward verification." It is as mysterious as life, and as much in evidence ­ "the fruits of righteousness" which it produces being patent to all.

When Christians are said to be "partakers of the divine nature" (2 Pet. 2:4), this must not therefore be understood to mean that they partake of the essential nature of the Godhead, but of the divine moral nature. They are not clothed with divine attributes, but are filled with divine impulses, governed by divine principles, and inspired by divine aims.

From: Paul the Mystic: A Study in Apostolic Experience. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1908.

In that supreme moment when Christ was revealed to Paul, and entered with saving power into his life, the mystical message of Paul was born. The mystical, transcendental Christ was henceforth the only Christ he knew; the only Christ he sought to make known to others. The human Christ he had not known, except by hearsay; nevertheless, as Wernle says, "it was he who best understood him." He did not belong to the favoured circle of disciples among whom the Lord went in and out. Upon the blessed face of the Master he had never looked, the gracious words which proceeded out of His mouth he had not heard. He knew Him as we must know Him if we know Him at all, in the reality and power of His spiritual presence.

It is noteworthy that Paul makes hardly a reference to the earthly life of our Lord. The only exceptions are when he refers to His birth, death, and resurrection, and those he makes for purely doctrinal purposes; yet he must have been familiar with the events of that life, especially if the Gospel of his pupil Luke was written, as is generally believed, under his influence and direction. But so absorbed was he in the glory of the risen Christ, whom he had seen and heard, that he declared, " Though we have known Christ after the flesh, yet we know Him so no more" (2 Cor. 5:16). With something of impatience he answers the boast of those who gloried in the fact that they had been acquainted with Christ in the flesh, saying in effect, "That is now behind you; it belongs to a past condition of things: you can no more live upon it than your forefathers in the desert could live upon the manna of the day before; you can know Christ in that way no longer; you can know Him now not as the Man of Galilee, but as the living Christ who holds personal contact with your souls." It is in that way that the world must know Christ today.

Since the time of Paul down to the present, the testimony of the Church to the presence of the living Christ has been continuous and cumulative. It has been the bridge which has connected the past with the present. The Church has lived because He has lived within her. Throughout the centuries she has toiled, and suffered, and triumphed, because of the unshaken assurance that her heavenly Bridegroom has not forsaken her. She has looked upon her indwelling Lord as her actual ruler and leader, the source of her illumination and strength. Her power has waxed or waned in proportion as this assurance has been bright or dim. Every revival in the Church has been a revival of the sense of the Master's presence.

During recent years the historical method of New Testament study has been somewhat closely followed, with the result that the evidential value of the experience of the living Christ has been in a measure obscured. The historical method sends us back to the first century to find our Christ. It puts Him more than nineteen hundred years away. It does not give us a Christ who is alive today. It sends us to seek the living among the dead. All that the Gospel story can give us is the evidence of the Christ who was. To find evidence of the Christ who is, we must look elsewhere. That evidence is found in the working of His Spirit in our hearts. That Christ is here, that He has not left His people in a state of orphanage, that He has fulfilled His promise made at the time of His departure, "I will not leave you desolate, I will come unto you," is a matter of present experience. "Serious, sober-minded men may still be found the whole world over, who say that they are conscious of this presence as a fact; while as the result of this power and presence the same things are being done and suffered in the Apostolic and every after age."

The supreme proof that Christ is alive is that He is living with us and in us. Ever since He left this earth His people have been able to give confirmation to the words, "Whom not having seen ye love; on whom, though now ye see Him not, yet believing, ye rejoice greatly with joy unspeakable and full of glory " (I Pet. 1:8).

From: Paul the Mystic: A Study in Apostolic Experience. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1908.

When Phillips Brooks first spoke to Helen Keller of Christ, she at once exclaimed, " Oh, I never knew His name before, but I always knew Him." She was acquainted with Him as the Christ of experience, the Universal Christ who lighteneth every man coming into the world; but she did not know Him as the Christ of history, the Christ who lived a human life in Palestine long years ago. Alas! There are many who know Him as the Christ of history who do not know Him as the Christ of experience. They know His name, but they do not know Him. They are familiar with the facts of His earthly life, they accept His system of teaching, they follow Him as an impersonal and abstract ideal, but they have not experienced the dynamic power of His living personality. They know Him as the Christ who came, but they do not know Him as the Christ who is here. The complete knowledge of Christ is possessed by those alone to whom the Christ of history has become the Christ of experience.

We are indebted to Paul for making known to us the spiritual Christ, the Christ of experience, the Christ of today; yet it must be acknowledged that his failure to turn back to the Christ of history and linger lovingly over the details of His life, so as to understand Him as the Christ of experience, has made His testimony one-sided (so) that some of those who came after him went to the extreme of denying the humanity of Christ altogether. The Apostle John had to set himself against their error by declaring that whosoever denied that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God. In the present day the tendency in the opposite direction has often been so strong, that there may be need to declare that whosoever denieth that Jesus Christ is come in the spirit, is not of the household of faith.

The Church of today needs Paul's mystical message that she gain a revived consciousness of the presence of her Lord. She needs to realize that the same Jesus of whom we read in the Gospels, the same Jesus whom the disciples saw going up into heaven, has returned in another form, and is now in her midst. This truth is the life-blood of her faith. This truth, and not the doctrine of justification by faith, is the article of a standing or a falling Church. Take away from the Church the conviction of the presence of a living, working, and abiding Christ, and you tear the very heart out of her religious life.

The world, too, needs Paul's mystical message to give it a new sense of the reality of Christ, a vivid realization of His actual presence. It is not enough to know that He once lived on earth, what men want to know is that He now lives, and that His saving help is now available. Important as it is to know what He has done for them, it is still more important to know what He can now do for them.

From: Paul the Mystic: A Study in Apostolic Experience. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1908.

From beginning to end the teaching of Paul was opposed to the religion of form. It was decidedly anti-ritualistic. Paul never ceased to thunder against the religionists of his day, who put stress upon the puerilities of piety. So little value did he put upon rules and ceremonies, that he seems at times to disparage the externals of religion. "Weak and beggarly elements" he calls them (see Gal. 4:9-11). At best they were crutches for the lame, to be thrown away when the vivifying power of Christ had been experienced. Dependence upon them, on the part of a Christian, was a return to legalism. To assign saving efficacy to them was to fall from grace.

On the other hand, Paul put emphasis upon the religion of the spirit. In his contention with his Judaizing opponents his battleground was that of the spirit versus the letter. He stood for the spiritual interpretation of Christianity. The keynote of his ministry is contained in the words, "Neither is circumcision anything, nor uncircumcision, but a new creation" (Gal. 6:15). All his interest centered in the vital things of religion; and he never wearied of warning against the danger of making the performance of prescribed ceremonials the test of discipleship, instead of the transformation of the heart and life through faith in Jesus Christ. Rites and ceremonies were to him the mere costume of religion. Their value lay in their spiritual significance. The material emblems of the Lord's Supper spoke to him of a mystic bread and wine with which the soul was fed. He saw beneath the circumcision which was " outward in the flesh," a "circumcision made without hands" (Col. 2:11); a circumcision" of the heart in the spirit, not in the letter, whose praise is not of man but of God " (Rom. 2:29). There was nothing he dreaded more than seeing his converts "subject themselves to ordinances" (Col. 2:20); thus bringing themselves under the heavy yoke of ceremonialism from which they had been delivered. He repudiated the idea that Christianity is an ironclad system of rules; and declared, " Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty " (2 Cor. 3:17). Forms he used just so far as they were of use; but he did not tie himself down to them. He was freed from their slavery. He exercised his common sense in adapting them to existing conditions, breaking, if need be, "the law of commandments contained in ordinances" in the letter, that he might keep it in the spirit.

Mysticism has always come in as a rebound from formalism in religion. The use of set forms tends to formality; ritualism has a way of becoming mechanical; the strict observance of the letter is apt to strangle the life of the spirit. This tendency to externality, which is especially strong in the Western mind, will, if allowed free course, develop into a religion which consists in something lying outside of experience, something to be studied as you might study botany or astronomy. To this tendency mysticism furnishes an antidote, by appealing from form to life. In times of barrenness it exerts a freshening force, by bringing the Church back to what is vital in religion. Professor Stearns says, "In every age when the life of the Church grows weak, and its inner fires die down, mysticism is needed. Christians must be made to realize that the hidden life of faith and communion with God is their true life."

From: Paul the Mystic: A Study in Apostolic Experience. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1908.

In some mysterious way a heavenly influence touches the spirit of men, arousing it out of its torpor, and making it alive to the things of the kingdom of God. This life-giving power Paul ascribes to Christ, as in the words, "You hath He quickened who were dead through your trespasses and sins " (Eph. 2:1). Whether he conceives of this power as vital or dynamical, he always speaks of it as divine. He represents it as "the power of God" acting upon the soul, uniting itself with it, and so reinforcing it that there is victory over sin, and the attainment of righteousness. For the possession of this power he urges all men to strive; inasmuch as without it they must remain morally impotent. He shows that the way to possess it is through faith-faith being the means of connection between Christ and man, the opening of the heart to the experience of the saving power of his instreaming life. It is through faith that the uncounted riches of Christ are transferred to us, and that unto us He is "made wisdom from God, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption" (I Cor. 1:30).

Paul shows still further that the regenerating power which is in Christ for sinful men is mediated by the Holy Spirit; that the Holy Spirit not only takes the things of Christ and shows them unto men, but that He also takes the things of Christ and ministers them unto men. He is the unseen agent by whom Christ, who is no longer visible in the flesh, is made real to human consciousness and effective to human salvation. It is His work at once to reveal Christ to the spirit of man as the source of spiritual life, and to effect a connection between the Christ and the spirit of man that his life may be communicated. To His co-operation Paul attributed all his success in the work of preaching the gospel. He reminds the Thessalonians that behind his spoken message was the unseen power that brought it home. "Our gospel," he said, "came unto you not in word only, but in power, and in the Holy Spirit, and in much assurance" (Eph. 1:5). So necessary did he esteem the inward tuition of the Holy Spirit to a true understanding of Christ, that he declares that "no man can say that Jesus is Lord, but by the Holy Spirit" (Rom. 9:1). Before the Jerusalem council he testified that when the Gentiles received the word of the gospel from his mouth, God gave unto them the Holy Spirit (Acts 15:7, 8). For the coming of the Holy Spirit Paul never prayed; he believed in His continual presence, and counted upon His constant co-operation.

We must remember that Paul's ministry was begun shortly after the descent of the Holy Spirit at Pentecost. The mighty movement of spiritual power into which he had come was still at flood-tide. Nor did it quickly exhaust itself. Paul enjoyed a perpetual Pentecost. Wherever he went " the Holy Spirit fell upon those who heard the word," and souls were saved and churches planted. He did not live long enough to witness any serious declension of the life of the Church, or any diminution of its converting power; hence he had never to go through the agony of praying for a revival. Long after his day the atmosphere of the Church remained surcharged with spiritual power; missionary zeal continued to grow; and an era of unparalleled conquest and enlargement was enjoyed. But that condition of things did not last. In later times there was a frequent recurrence of dark days, days of weakness and depression, days when the Lord seemed to be absent, and the connection of the Church with the Holy Spirit seemed to be broken. When these evil days have come, the Church has been under the necessity of going back to the beginning, putting herself in a waiting, praying attitude, and seeking a new influx of power. And whenever she has done this,-whenever, in other words, she has brought herself into direct touch with the Holy Spirit, and opened her heart to the inflowing and infilling of His power,-Pentecost has been repeated. A warm breath of life has blown from the land of spices, and the spiritual atmosphere has been suddenly changed; the bands of frost in which her life has been bound have been unloosed; the naked trees in the Lord's garden have burst into leaf; the desert has begun to blossom as the rose. How this change came about, let those who deny the direct agency of the Spirit of God rise and tell. But mysterious as this operation of divine power is, it is not magical. Its effects are moral. Lives are transformed by it; bosom sins are slain; the onflowing tide of social iniquity is turned; a wave of faith succeeds a wave of unbelief; an unseen hand touches the strings of the heart, and celestial music is heard where before were only the harsh discords of a life out of tune with the Infinite.

In every revival movement there is a mystical quality. The touch of the Spirit of God upon the spirit of man is immediate. The human, conditional element, which is never altogether absent from any moral state, is in the background. Hearts are moved by a power which they cannot explain. The wind of the Spirit bloweth where it listeth. A sound is heard of a going upon the tops of the mulberry trees-the mysterious movement of a higher power. The tide of the Spirit sweeps in, lifting up souls that have been stranded on the muddy banks of the world, upbearing them upon its bosom, and bearing them forward into the open sea, and starting them upon their heavenward voyage. The whence and the whither of the Spirit's movements are beyond our ken. He works by a higher law than we can understand. He is therefore more likely to take us by surprise, than He is to do things in the way in which we expected to see them done. We look for Him to come in one form and He comes in another; we expect a downpouring rain, and His influence distils as the dew; we look for a rushing mighty wind, and He comes as a gentle zephyr; we expect a thunderbolt to fall from heaven, shattering the rocks in pieces, and He comes as a voice of gentle stillness. Happy are those who stand ready to welcome Him in whatever guise He comes.

In no other way can the waning influence of the Church be recovered than by a new infusion of life, a new baptism of power. Before she can win back the alienated masses she must feel the quickening breath of the Spirit of God. She is weak for conquest, because the deeper sources of life have been left untapped. The surface wells from which she has been drawing her supplies have been drained dry. She needs to go deeper, to live deeper; she needs to have her life "fed from the upper springs."

From: Paul the Mystic: A Study in Apostolic Experience. New York: G. P. Putnam's Sons. 1908.

The work of Christ is to bring men into adjustment with God, and the method by which this is done is designated justification. To justify is to put right, to bring into adjustment. It is to establish in man a new centre of moral equilibrium. "Being justified" ­ adjusted ­ "by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ." The adjustment is something which is inwardly received. "We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have received the at-one-ment," or ad adjustment. By Christ inward harmony is restored, by Him sin is forgiven, and man is reconciled to God. This personal adjustment is thus something which comes within the range of experience. It includes not only the bringing of man into right relation with God, but also the bringing of him into right relation with himself.

At the heart of Paul's doctrine of judicial justification there is an ethical centre. "His language is legal, but his thought is ethical." There is a point in his teaching at which justification, or "the making out to be righteous," and justifaction, or "the making righteous," blend into one. The man who is made out to be righteous is a man who is being made righteous.

Paul did not use these terms in the bald legalistic sense which has been ascribed to them. He connects the judicial release of the sinner from condemnation with an act of grace in which terms of law are transcended. It was doubtless necessary for apologetic purposes to present the doctrine of salvation to the Jewish mind in its forensic aspect, but he always made haste to find in that presentation a point upon which to rest the fulcrum of moral motive by which the soul was to be lifted up into the higher life of free and joyous sonship. He is also careful to defend the doctrine of justification by faith on ethical grounds, by showing that moral rectification was necessarily involved in the outward act of justification. Justification is therefore in Paul's scheme of thought no legal fiction.

Justification has both juridical and ethical relations. It is something which takes place within the court of heaven, and it is also something which takes place within the soul. It is "God who justifies," and it is man who is justified. When Paul says to his Corinthian converts, "Ye were justified," he evidently means that they were both outwardly and inwardly rightened or adjusted. They were put right with God because they had been made right in themselves. Not only were they put right with respect to law, in the sense of being freed by forgiveness from its condemnation, but also in the sense of being brought into a state of obedience to its demands; and were also put right in the whole circle of their relationships ­ Godward and manward, heavenward and earthward. In a word, they were spiritually rectified. This is undoubtedly the core of Paul's thought. The mould in which it is cast may be forensic, but the essential thing is not the form of the figure, but the ethical idea that lies at the heart of it.

An interesting use of the word "justify" is found in connection with typesetting. A compositor is said to justify a line or column of type when he spaces it properly, so as to bring it into alignment. In this use of the word there is a suggestion of its true ethical import. To justify is to adjust; it is to bring man into proper alignment to all his inner and outer relations.

From: The Heart of the Gospel: A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of the Atonement. Fleming H. Revell Co. 1907. Pgs 88-92.

A prominent place must be given in Christian thought to the personal equation in the Atonement. That is to say, the truth about the Atonement is to be represented as embodied in Christ's person, and salvation as coming to man from Christ Himself, and not from something abstract from Him, called His work. Schemes of salvation are husks to the hungry heart. Salvation is in and from the atoning Christ who is personally living and active. Christ Himself says, "I am the way"

Brooding over this great truth, David Livingstone, the African missionary, made the following entry in his diary: "What is the Atonement of Christ? It is Himself. It is the inherent and everlasting mercy of God made apparent to human eyes and ears." These words from a practical man touch the core of the matter.

Christ is the Atoner in whom God reconciles the world to Himself; He is the Mediator by whom God and man are brought together; He is the Propitiator through whose voluntary sacrifice the sorrowing love of God finds relief, and man finds access to God; He is the Redeemer who gives Himself a ransom for all, to effect their release from the guilt and power of sin; He is the Saviour who by the sacrifice of Himself brings deliverance to the race. Salvation is in Him, and not in something which He has done and put to the credit of others. "He is the propitiation for our sins." "In whom we have redemption through His blood." We are justified freely by God's grace "through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus." In these sample texts the emphasis is plainly put upon what Christ is, rather than upon what He has done; upon Him as the doer rather than upon "His work," as something separate from Him. He sacrifice was not something extraneous to Himself. It was Himself.

The thought of sinful man is thus directed, not to a plan of salvation, but to a living person. And that is all-important; for it is to Christ Himself as living and loving and working that we are to look for salvation.

The present and eternal saving efficacy of the living Christ is to be traced to His resurrection, by which, after He had been brought under the power of death, He was given back to us. Because He lives He saves. "A dead Christ would be no Christ at all." The crucified one could become a Saviour only by conquering death. It is not the crucified Christ who saves, but the Christ who was crucified; it is not the dead Christ who saves, but the Christ who died. We are saved by a living, present Saviour. We are saved by what He did for us on the cross only so far as through that He does something in us now.

Through the historical Christ we know the living Christ; through the whole process of self-manifestation His redeeming influence is brought to bear upon us; through that which He did in the flesh comes His power to save in the present. The Christ who saves is the Christ of today, and not the Christ who once lived and who is now among "the dead, but sceptered sovereigns, who still rule our spirits from their urns."

To become operant, divine love was revealed in a human life. God was not only revealed by Christ, he was revealed in Him. Christ was more than the revealer of God, He was the revelation of God. His mission was not so much to preach the gospel as it was to be the gospel. He is Himself the sum and substance of the gospel message.

From: The Heart of the Gospel: A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of the Atonement. Fleming H. Revell Co. 1907. Pgs. 147-151.

The ground of salvation is in the historical Christ. His death for human sin is an accomplished fact, an objective reality, standing out on the canvas of history. In gospel preaching the objective side of things must be explained, for it is from the objective truth that the subjective experience comes.

If the outward revelation is discarded, inward experience withers and dies. Bushnell frankly admits that "any strictly subjective style of religion is vicious. It is moral self-culture, in fact, and not religion." Those who, like Origen, have tried to rise to a position in which they would become independent of the outward revelation, have in kicking away the ladder by which they have risen cut themselves off from connection with the solid facts upon which all experience must ultimately rest. The Christian grows in grace by growing in the knowledge of His Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. He gathers strength by transmuting objective knowledge into subjective power.

Before the Atonement can attain its end, the objective gospel must produce certain subjective effects, and its historical facts become spiritual forces. The work which Christ has done for us must have as its counterpart a work that He does in us. His death for sin must become our death to sin. The life which He gave must be received; repose in what He has done must be connected with co-operation in what He is doing; the acceptance of His deliverance must be accompanied by the possession of His spirit. All that He did must be actualised in us.

Not the least service which the Protestant mystics have rendered to Christian truth, is the emphasis which they have put upon the subjective side of religion; although they have not always been careful to maintain the balance of truth by showing the relation which exists between objective fact and subjective experience.

"That man is no Christian," says Jacob Boehme, "who doth merely comfort himself with the suffering, death and satisfaction of Christ, and doth impute it to himself as a gift or favour, remaining himself still a wild beast and unregenerate. If this said sacrifice is to avail for me, it must be wrought in me."

To the same effect are the words of William Law, "Christ given for us is neither more nor less than Christ given unto us. He is in no other sense our full, perfect, and sufficient Atonement than as His nature and spirit are born and formed in us."

The Reformers sometimes went to the opposite extreme from the mystics, and unduly emphasised the objective side of things. In their zeal for the doctrine of justification by faith they did not develop in its fulness the doctrine of sanctification. One of the tasks which they have left the Christian teachers of today is to round out the conception of salvation, by showing the necessary and intimate relation between the objective and subjective elements in the Atonement of Christ; so that to the declaration of faith "Christ died for me," shall be joined the declaration of experience, "Christ liveth in me."

From: The Heart of the Gospel: A Popular Exposition of the Doctrine of the Atonement. Fleming H. Revell Co. 1907. Pgs 165-168.