ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead" (Acts 10. 42). There is no discrepancy in the statements of Scripture when judgment is ascribed to the Father and also to the Son. God is "the Judge of all the earth." "Verily he is a God that judgeth in the earth" (Psa. 58. 11). The judgment is called "the day of God" (2 Pet. 3. 12); "that great day of God Almighty" (Rev. 16. 14). When God is thus generally spoken of we must understand God the Father or the Trinity. A future judgment was foretold: "For God shall bring every work into judgment, with every secret thing, whether it be good, or whether it be evil" (Eccl. 12. 14). It is described in language that indicates the greatest catastrophe the world can undergo: "But the day of the Lord will come as a thief in the night; in the which the heavens shall pass away with a great noise, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat, the earth also and the works that are therein shall be burned up. .. Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat" (2 Pet. 3. 10, 12).

Nothing more terrible than is here foreshadowed can come to the earth. Its elements will melt with fervent heat; the works of man will be burned up; his greatest monuments of stone, bronze, or iron, his greatest achievements in engineering, will be as tow in the great conflagration.

Of the Judge who will preside at that great assize we cannot be in doubt when the Person of the Son is spoken of in distinction from the Person of the Father: He who came to save us will also be our Judge. "For the Father judgeth no man, but hath committed all judgment unto the Son" (John 5. 22). "Because he hath appointed a day, in the which he will judge the world in

righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained; whereof he hath given assurance unto all men, in that he hath raised him from the dead" (Acts 17. 31).

The place of the judgment is indicated by Saint Paul: "Then we which are alive and remain shall be caught up together with them in the clouds, to meet the Lord in the air: and so shall we ever be with the Lord” (1 Thess. 4. 17). Aerial space is the place designated for the occurrence of the judgment, and this is favored by our Lord's account of his coming in the clouds of heaven. So it seems most probable the great white throne will be exalted above the earth. "The grand congregation of the judgment may be in pure space; for these resurrection bodies, absolved from the power of gravitation, and of power by pure volition, can tread upon a plane of pure space as easily as Jesus trod upon the sea, or as we tread upon a pavement."1

The time of the coming of Christ and the judgment day God has wisely concealed: "Of that day and that hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels which are in heaven, neither the Son, but the Father" (Mark 13. 32).

The certainty and solemnity of the judgment should deeply impress us, and we would do well to make the just inference of Saint Peter our own: "Seeing then that all these things shall be dissolved, what manner of persons ought ye to be in all holy conversation and godliness?" (2 Pet. 3. 11.)

1 Whedon, in loco.

'ARTICLE IV

OF THE HOLY GHOST

The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son, is of one substance, majesty, and glory with the Father and the Son, very and eternal God.

I. THE ORIGIN

The personality and divinity of the Holy Ghost are asserted in the Augsburg Confession, but no statement is made of the "procession." The divines who prepared the Würtemberg Confession formulated this Article. It does not appear in the English Articles of Edward VI, but was taken from the Confession of Würtemberg by Archbishop Parker, and put into the Elizabethan Articles in 1563, and without change passed into the Thirty-nine Articles of 1571, and into Wesley's abridgment in 1784.

II. THE AIM

In early Christian times, especially in the third and fourth centuries, so prolific of heresy and controversy, errors were taught in regard to the Holy Ghost. These in various forms have been perpetuated to the present time. The controversies occasioned by Arius in relation to the divinity of Christ were so bitter and extended that comparatively little was written concerning the third person of the Trinity. It can be readily seen that arguments disproving the divinity of the Son would also disprove the divinity of the Holy Ghost.

Arius, in the fourth century, is said to have taught that as the Son is the first and greatest creature of the Father, so the Holy Ghost is the first and greatest creature of

the Son; thus making him the creature of a creature.1 Athanasius vehemently opposed this. "He appealed," says Hagenbach, "both to the declarations of Holy Writ and to the testimony of Christian consciousness. How can that which is not sanctified by anything else, which is itself the source of sanctification to all creatures, possess the same nature as those who are sanctified by it? We have fellowship with and participate in the divine life, by means of the divine Spirit, but this could not be if the Spirit were created by God. As certain as it is that through him we become partakers of the divine nature, so certain is it that he must himself be one with the divine being."2 Photinus, a contemporary of them both, taught that the Holy Ghost was a celestial virtue proceeding from the Deity; Macedonius taught that it was a divine energy diffused throughout the universe. Both denied that it was a person distinct from the Father and the Son. These errors called for an authoritative statement of doctrine by the Church, and were condemned by the second General Council at Constantinople in the year 381. This Council guarded the orthodox view by amending the Creed, which the Council of Nice (325) had left imperfect, and added definite clauses to its statement of faith in the Holy Ghost. The older Creed read, "We believe . . . in the Holy Spirit." As amended it read, "I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Lord and giver of life, who proceedeth from the Father, who with the Father and the Son together is worshiped and glorified, who spake by the prophets."

The period of the Reformation was full of controversy. The heresies of the fourth century were revived, and a deep anxiety was felt by those in authority to settle funda

1 Neander, Church History, vol. i, pp. 416-420 2 History of Doctrines, vol. i, p. 260.

mentals. The Arians and the Anabaptists denied the personality and divinity of the Holy Ghost. Several minor sects, too, held that God was but one person as well as one essence. These various heresies had obtained such a following that the Reformers seem to have felt it advisable, even though it implied some repetition, to enunciate a particular Article to add to, and supplement beyond all question, the reference to the third person in the Godhead in the first Article. This opinion crystallized in this Article. The necessity for it is indicated by the persistence of the sects against which it was aimed, and the pertinacity with which these errors continued to reappear from time to time, under new forms.

In the latter part of the sixteenth century the Socinians made their appearance-a sect which exerted a wide influence in some portions of Europe. They taught that Jesus Christ was a mere man, that the term Holy Ghost as used in the Scriptures was a designation of God's energy when exercised in a particular way. This is now the opinion of nearly or quite all modern Unitarians and Rationalists.

The Article condemned ancient heresies, and antagonized those existing when it was adopted. It has guarded the Church against those that arose later, and has a proper place among the symbols of our faith to-day.

III. THE EXPOSITION

The Procession

The Holy Ghost, proceeding from the Father and the Son.

The casual reader would not imagine what a long and bitter contention this clause occasioned between the two great divisions of the Christian Church. Its place in the