or that of some early genealogist setting down the tradition of the race? It took up, in the day of completed unveiling of the love which had long been darkened-but only darkened to man's power of believing, because of sin's disablement what was the essential fact of man's first nature, that he was made in the image of God. That revealing was part of the work of love of the second Adam, who took not the nature, already His own, but the condition of the first. He did not originate at that time the divine nature in man, but He unveiled its existence and provided for its quickening. "No man hath seen God at any time; the only-begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father" (v who was evermore in the bosom of the Father when man went out, Cain-like, from His presence), "He hath declared Him" (John i. 18). "No man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son will reveal Him" (Matt. xi. 27). He is the "way" in which God is manifest to His children desiring their return; He is the "truth" of our assured condition, the reality, the actual manifestation of our blessedness, our status as children; He is the "life" assured to us as His own is sure. "His life is the light of men." "Because He lives they shall live also" who believe in Him.

attached to

Christ."

32. The overwhelming importance attached in apostolic Importance teaching to "faith in Christ, the Son of the living God," be- faith "in comes appreciable by us when we carry with us how in every subject of faith's thinking of God's love, both historical records and doctrinal revelations of it, He who was Jesus of Nazareth is always the central object of every sight presented to our contemplation, and that He is presented in the completed revelation of God's love with the essential condition of Sonship, personal, and including all believers in Him. Having that "same Jesus" continually set before us-the manifestation of God's love from the beginning-the "eternal life" given to us (1 John v. 20), it is surely but truly represented as the greatest sin and the greatest folly in any one of mankind not to be possessed by that habitual emotional thinking of Him, which is the natural state of man's heart towards any constraining object of his trusting love. Justly is he " condemned already"

who believeth not in (is not built up in all peace and childlike sense of blessed safeness, the meaning of "believing in" when first used in Gen. xv. 6)" the only-begotten Son of God" (John iii. 18); who appreciates not, has no "witness in himself" to the value of, the eternal life given in that living form and assuring name. "He maketh God a liar who does not believe," is not impressed to perpetual thought by, "the record God hath given of His Son " (1. John v. 10). Necessarily the sin of the world is branded as this one thing comprehending all, "They believed not on me" (John xvi. 9). On the other hand, the study appropriate to saving faith is most logically marked as "to comprehend what is the breadth and length, and depth and height, to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge;" and so is the appropriate help of the Spirit, which is "to take of the things of Christ and show them unto us." Fitly the moving feeling in our life is to be "the love of Christ; " thinking on which is to "constrain us" to the perpetual judgment of ourselves and choice of life which turns to Him, to live not to ourselves, but "unto Him who died and rose again for us" (2 Cor. v. 14). If it was He always from the beginning who by His acts of love saved all good men from the world, the temptation or tyrant of our fallen state, it is but the human side of the same truth, the necessary practice of faith, that is expressed in the question, “Who is he that overcometh the world but he that believeth that Jesus Christ is the Son of God?" (1 John v. 5)-who, by having the precious contemplation habitually in his heart of the love and assured sonship to God declared in him, conquers worldly lusts. He who has been the "all" of love and help and watchful salvation "in all" diversities of man's needs, could not be thought of by us as historical truth requires if our "speaking to ourselves" of religious things took not the accent of Paul's words, "I know nothing among you but Jesus Christ and Him crucified." One thought, centralising in itself all the perfected glad tidings—the collective thought produced by all the facts of God's love must possess us-" Christ formed in our hearts by faith." For faith's thoughts, whether they be of gratefulness or trust, motive or desire or gladness-whatever makes or

moves life, if they be historically intelligent thoughts will be thoughts containing Him; and their progressive result will be that “Christ will be formed in us" (Gal. iv. 19)—a sight which gives us "the hope of glory" (Col. i. 27). And, preciously conformed to the contemplation of the personal Saviour by our faith, the promised teaching of the Holy Spirit is partly to be Jesus' own "words "-no words of a messenger inviting faith in another, but His own words of love offering Himself, "the love of God," to be confided in by man-those own words of Jesus which human nature has found itself more under the power of than of any other words.

formed in

33. If any obscurity seems to hang over the language of Christ Scripture as to the Object of Faith, when we read of a per- the besonal Christ formed in our hearts-no doctrines about Him, but liever. Himself in some sense-it will be cleared away by again turning to the illustration given by human affection's thinking. The commonest experience of pure human affection, the life it lives, is to have the object of its love in such a manner present always to its conscious or unconscious thoughts, that it would say it has him dwelling in its heart, as Paul wrote of his beloved converts, "Ye are in our hearts to live and die with you" (2 Cor. vii. 3). As more full and intensified, in a degree which we cannot make use of comparison to understand, we may think of the presence of Christ in the believer's heart, because with the believer's own emotional thinking of Him is combined the Spirit's effectual glorifying of Christ in his eyes by taking of the things of Christ and showing them to the thinker's heart. But the result of all this "fellow-working" is to form not any abstract thought of Jesus' love or faithfulness or condescension or saving grace, but a lively sight of Himself, in which the facts of the world-long history of His manifested love are habitually going to and fro before the believer's eyes -each one expounding in their "free course" its peculiar lesson of the grace he is to rejoice to think upon. Constitutionally, human love does not think of the qualities of its object, but of that object himself-his own self, as his words and deeds and looks set him before its musing eyes.

34. What, then, must human love's faith in Christ think

Christ.

Faith's upon? Conformably to human nature's own manner, and the thoughts of Spirit and the Word's chosen way of showing Christ to the soul, faith's choicest musings will be at all times of that human life of the Object of faith, which we think most easily of under the name of Jesus-that "life" which has been indeed "the light of men❞—those narratives by His disciples which, and not the doctrinal instructions, however precious, of the apostles, Christians have always called "the Gospel," the good news, the "glad tidings"-those very exhibitions of God's love of man, those historical pictures of how "God loved the world," which are not assurances, but very sights, of God's human heart, His tender mercy and loving-kindness for His needy sons and daughters—not similitudes, but portions, foretastes of the nearness of His everlasting love. That living picture will be the choice thought of faith-not the subject but the object of its studious contemplation and its habitual musing - Jesus of the evangelists' stories - Jesus of the miracles, doing those almighty works of tenderness, helpfulness, healing, and blessing-Jesus of the boundless sympathies with human affections and joys as He went about doing good-Jesus whom little children knew, and distracted parents, and desolate sufferers, and outcast sinners Jesus, who had a baptism to be baptised with, and was "how straitened " till it should be accomplished. Only a filling out of the picture are His "words," such as never man spake; His own words, inseparable from His human sympathies which gave them comprehensiveness to His brethren's hearts, or from His almighty deeds of actual or typical salvation which filled them with assurance. It is said that the world would not contain the books that might have been written of that human life, the length and breadth, the depth and height of the labours and endurances, cares and sorrows, and intercessions and joys of His love of man; and in the narrative of it single words are continually occurring that sum up crowded days of miracle-His "healing multitudes," "as many as had diseases," "all manner of diseases and infirmities and plagues"-many sources opening of trouble to keep full for ever the cup He had to drink, which made Him a man of sorrows and acquainted

with grief. But what reader of those things which are written has, in the longest life's musing on the few selected pictures, formed within his own breast all the fulness of the picture of God's love of man which is to be gathered therefrom, line upon line, into his thought of Christ Jesus, the realisation of our sonship and eternal life? And faith will deprive itself of much of its needed comfort of thought concerning Christ and the sonship He restored, if it look not back through all humankind's time upon the "same Jesus," and behold Him dwelling from the beginning in the habitable parts of the earth-again and again opening the veil of the invisible to look with human face upon man, or felt, but not seen, guiding the songs of the psalmists and the prayers of the saints, and giving the prophets to taste of the riches of their own visions, opening their spiritual eyes to see what manner of Comforter sought mankind's faith, and was waiting to take their low estate; or if it carry not its realising musings, unbroken by any historical gulf, past the period of earthly life's time unto the "days" no more-the life of heavenly promise, and look upon "this same Jesus" in the house of many mansions with them whom He "willed to be with Him to behold His glory," and look upon them likewise in the "union" which He desired, the union of all with Him.

Christ.

35. Indeed, the eyes of faith will only see with true vision, The day of and gather the designed comfort of its "looking unto Jesus," when, in its thoughts of the history of His love, it melts all religious chronology into one life-full watching desiring day, the endless day of Jesus' human-hearted love-the day of the Travail of His Soul, which may have had in one sense a noon of light, when "the mystery of godliness was manifest in the flesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of angels, preached unto the Gentiles, received up into glory," but had no morning except that in which the stars sang together and the sons of God shouted for joy, and will have no night at all:

HIS DAY of holy saving love, in which "the joy" was set before Him;-joy yet to come unmingled, but not till faith ceases to be faith, and His "work" is. "finished," and the "rest" is "entered into."