far-reaching that the Christian Church has thus far failed in apprehending it. The doctrine of redemption unfolds from simple germs into magnificent fruitage. The central nucleus of this redemption is the Messianic idea. This comprehends not only the person of the Messiah, but also a kingdom of redemption and the redemption itself. Man is to pursue the course of divine discipline until he attains the holiness of God. Israel is to be a kingdom of priests, a holy nation. All the world is to be incorporated as citizens of Zion. Zion is the light and joy of the entire earth. A Messianic king is to reign over all nations. A Messianic prophet is to be the redeemer of all. A priestly king is to rule in peace and righteousness a kingdom of priests. All evil is to be banished from nature and from man. The animal kingdom is to share in the universal peace. The vegetable world is to respond in glad song to the call of man. There are to be new heavens and a new earth as well as a new Jerusalem from which all the evil will be excluded. Such ideals of redemption are divine ideals which the human race has not yet attained. But in the course of training for these ideals, the provisional redemption enjoyed in the experience of God's people is rich and full. Study the psalms of penitence, the psalms of faith and confidence in God, the thanksgivings and the Hallels, and where else will you find religious poetry which so aptly expresses the redemptive experience of all the children of God?

It is quite true that forgiveness of sins was appropriated without any explanation of its grounds. The sacrifice of Calvary was unknown to the Old Testament as a ground of salvation. The mercy of God was the ultimate source of forgiveness. There is a lack of apprehension in the Old Testament of the righteousness of faith. It was Jesus Christ who first gave faith its unique place in the order of salvation. The doctrine of holy love, which is urged in Deuteronomy, Jeremiah, and the great prophet of the exile, is only a faint aspiration when compared with the breathings of the love of God to man, and man to God, as taught by Jesus and Saint Paul.

The doctrine of the future life in the Old Testament is often obscured by questioning and doubts. It is only in the later

stages that there is a joyous confidence in the enjoyment of the favour of God after death, and not till Daniel do we have a faith in a resurrection of some of the dead. "Jesus Christ abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the Gospel."1

Thus in every department of doctrine the Old Testament is seen advancing through the centuries in the several periods of Biblical Literature, in the unfolding of all the doctrines, preparing the way for the full revelation in the New Testament. The imperfections, incompleteness, inadequacy of some of the statements of the Old Testament as to religion, morals, and doctrine necessarily inhere in the gradualness of the divine revelation. That revelation which looked only at the end, at the highest ideals, at what could be accomplished in the last century of human time, would not be a revelation for all men. It would be of no use to any other century but the last. A divine word for man must be appropriate for the present as well as the future; must have something to guide men in every stage of religious advancement; must have something for every century of history,- for the barbarian as well as the Greek, the Gentile as well as the Jew, the dark-minded African as well as the open-minded European, the dull Islander as well as the subtile Asiatic, the child and the peasant as well as the man and the sage. It is just in this respect that the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments are so preeminent. They have in them religious instruction for all the world. They trained Israel in every stage of his advancement, and so they will train all men in every step of their advancement.

It does not harm the advanced student to look back upon the inadequate knowledge of his youthful days. It does not harm the Christian to see the many imperfections, crudities, and errors of the more elementary instruction of the Old Testament. Nor does it destroy his faith in the truthfulness of the. Divine Word in these elementary stages. He sees its appropriateness, its truthfulness, its adaptation, its propriety; and he learns that an unerring eye and inerrant mind and infallible will has all the time been at work using the imperfect media,

1 2 Tim. 110.

and straining them to their utmost capacity to guide men, to raise them, and advance them in the true religion. The sacred books are always pointing forward and upward; they are always expanding in all directions; they are now, as they always have been, true and faithful guides to God and a holy life. They are now, as they always have been, trustworthy and reliable in their religious instruction. They are now, as they always have been, altogether truthful in their testimony to the heart and experience of mankind. And this we may say with confidence, while at the same time with the apostle we exclaim standing on the heights of the New Testament Revelation in Jesus Christ: "Now we see in a mirror darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know fully even as also I have been fully known."1

11 Cor. 1312.

CHAPTER XXVI

THE HOLY SCRIPTURE AS MEANS OF GRACE

THE essential principle of the Reformed system of theology is redemption by the divine grace alone. The Reformed churches have ever been distinguished for their intense interest in the covenant of grace. Sometimes the divine grace has been hardened by an undue stress upon the sovereignty of it, so that sovereignty has taken the place of the divine grace as the central principle of theology in some of the scholastic systems; and sometimes the divine grace has been softened by an undue emphasis upon the Fatherhood of God. But even in these more extreme tendencies of Calvinism the essential principle of the divine grace alone has not been abandoned, however little any of the systems have comprehended the richness and the fulness of the "grace of God that bringeth salvation."1

Redemption by the divine grace alone is the banner principle of the Reformed churches, designed to exclude the uncertainty and arbitrariness attached to all human instrumentalities and external agencies. As the banner principle of the Lutheran Reformation was justification by faith alone excluding any merit or agency of human works, so the Calvinistic principle excluded any inherent efficacy, in human nature or in external remedies, for overcoming the guilt of sin and working redemption. In these two principles lie the chief merits and the chief defects of the two great churches of the Reformation. Intermediate between these principles of faith alone and grace alone, lies a third principle, which is the Divine Word alone. This principle has been emphasized in the Reformation of Great Britain and especially in the Puritan churches. The Word of

1 Titus 211.

God has been called the formal principle of Protestantism over against faith alone, the material principle, and it has been said that the Reformed churches have laid more stress upon the formal principle, while the Lutheran churches have laid more stress upon the material principle. This does not, in our judgment, correspond with the facts of the case. Rather is it true that in the three great churches of the Reformation, the three principles, faith, grace, and the Divine Word, were emphasized; but these churches differed in the relative importance they ascribed to one of these three principles of the Reformation in its relation to the other two. The Word of God is the intermediate principle where faith and grace meet. The Word of God gives faith its appropriate object. The Word of God is the appointed instrument or means of grace.

I. THE GOSPEL IN HOLY SCRIPTURE

The Word of God as a means of grace, as a principle of the Reformation, has, however, its technical meaning. It is not the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments in their entirety, but rather the Gospel contained in the Scriptures:

"The Holy Gospel which God Himself first revealed in Paradise, afterwards proclaimed by the Holy Patriarchs and Prophets, and foreshadowed by the sacrifices and other ceremonies of the law and finally fulfilled by His well-beloved Son.""

1

The merit of the Lutheran Reformation was that it so distinctly set forth the means by which man appropriates the grace of the Gospel- by faith alone. Faith is the sole appropriating instrument, and it becomes a test of the Word of God itself; for faith having appropriated the gospel of the grace of God is enabled to determine therefrom what is the Word of God and what is not the Word of God. As Luther said:

"All right holy books agree in this that they altogether preach and urge Christ. This also is the true touchstone to test all books, when one sees whether they so urge Christ or not, since every scripture shews Christ (Rom. 321), and Saint Paul will know nothing but Christ (1 Cor. 22); what does not teach Christ that is not

1 Heidelb. Cat., Quest. 19.