on this point. "Go ye into all the world," he says to his chosen apostles, "and preach the glad tidings to every creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved." He carried the world in his heart, and tasted death for every man."

When we look from Christ to Christianity, we find that this mighty import of the great fact of the incarnation was but slowly grasped. The apostles commenced with their own people, and, left to themselves, would probably never have gone beyond them. It required a fierce persecution to scatter the disciples from Jerusalem. When Philip ventured into Samaria, and made converts there, it called for a conference of all the apostles, and a committee of their leading men was sent to Samaria to inquire into the proceeding. When some went as far as Antioch, and broke over the prescriptions of the past so far as to make an offer of salvation to the Gentiles, it called for another committee of investigation from Jerusalem. When Peter went to the home of Cornelius, and welcomed Gentiles into the kingdom of heaven, it called for a certificate in God's own handwriting before this strange proceeding could be approved. And all through Paul's apostolic life, he was called to battle for the right of Gentiles to be accepted in the Church of God on equal terms with the Jews. Yet, however slowly, this great truth surely made a way for itself, until the unique catholicity of the letter and spirit of the Gospel was recognized, and a new spiritual brotherhood stood out before the world, in which was neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, bond nor free; for they were all "one in Christ Jesus."

Based on such ideas, we naturally look for a Chris

tian society altogether unique in its features; and such the church of God, in its full development, proves to be. Its members, coming from all classes and conditions of society, leave all worldly distinctions outside. The slave is the Lord's freeman, the freeman is the Lord's slave. The rich and the poor, the high and the low, meet on one common platform as sinners saved by grace, and as children of one Father. They are all royal priests in the house of God. The rich rejoices in that he is made low, and the poor in that he is exalted. A divine fullness of love for each other as brethren in Christ Jesus obliterates the prejudices of race and class, for Christ is all and in all. Moreover, they are all aflame with holy desire to bring their perishing brethren of mankind into the joys of the same fellowship; and along every highway, across every sea, over burning deserts, into proud cities and rude hamlets, they are found making their way, in the face of scorn and death, to persuade their fellow beings to accept this wonderful grace of God, until the world is filled with this doctrine. Alas! alas! that Christ as a living inspiration should ever have been taken out of the hearts of his people to be petrified in a creed, and to be doled out to the perishing in the cold, precise formulations of philosophical doctrine! No longer Christ in them the hope of glory, but Christ in the creeds, the pledge of everlasting strifes.

God descending into humanity, brought regenerating and emancipating power to the hearts of men, and millions of the slaves of sin at the touch of his presence broke their fetters and sprang into new life. Such was the "mystery of goliness." But soon the "mystery of iniquity" began to work. Man aspired to

It

divine honors, and in the train of this blasphemous arrogance came spiritual bondage and death. The external pomp of a hierarchy took the place of the indwelling Spirit of Christ. Christianity was no longer a living faith and a divine inspiration, but a pompous ceremonial, a dead formalism. We must get back to the pure, simple catholic faith of the apostolic age. is not too much to say that with all the boasted reformations of Protestants, this faith is yet but dimly seen and feebly held. The one article of faith in the creed of the apostolic age-"I believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God,"-has more in it to regenerate the race and transform society, than all the labored creeds of man's devising.

We stated in the outset, in the former portion of this essay, when dwelling on the meaning of the great fact of the incarnation, that God descended into humanity, that humanity might be lifted up to God. Let us say, before we close our remarks on this phase of the subject, that this takes in the whole vast scope of the redemption as fully consummated in the world to come. But the earnest of it is ours to enjoy here. God does even now dwell with and in his people. Christ is in them the hope of glory. The Spirit of God takes up his abode in human hearts, the earnest of the heavenly inheritance, and much of heaven is to be enjoyed in this life by those on whom the power of Christ rests. They may live on very intimate terms with God. They may enjoy many precious manifestations of his presence. They may know very much of the sweet peace and rest that broods over the eternal Sabbath of the heavenly world.

It will be seen at a glance that the gospel creed,

with his revelation of a Divine Saviour, is fundamental and vital. Without it, Christianity is an empty husk -at best but a glittering generality. It is our life. We have no concessions to make at this point to Rationalism or to the false Liberalism of the times.

But, if we are to have fellowship with Christ, it will not be in a mere holding of a creed, either divine or human, concerning him, but by entering into his ideas and sympathies concerning human nature, and laboring in his spirit for the redemption of our race. The men who narrow their sympathies to their own congregations, their own neighborhood, their own country, their own color, do but mock the revelations of the New Testament in their own professions of faith in the Son of God. Christ lived and died for humanity. "Though he was rich, for our sakes he became poor, that we, through his poverty, might be rich." If we are not willing to spend and be spent in the same service, we are none of his.

SPIRITUALITY.

From what has been said in previous chapters of the design of the incarnation, it will have been concluded already, by the careful reader, that the religion of Jesus must be characterized by spirituality. For, if the intent of God's stooping to man was to lift man up to God-if God's partnership with humanity was to prepare the way for man's partnership with divinity then the purest, deepest, highest spirituality must be the feature of Christianity. For, be it observed, no national religion can be eminently spiritual. God may, for special purposes, be the God of a nation, and dwell among its people, and work out national objects, and use the nation as an agency for the accomplishment of his providential designs. But a nation is earthly, fleshly, materialistic; belongs to time and sense; and membership in it is based on flesh, not on spirit. Its religion and worship, while it may have a spiritual outlook and ulterior spiritual designs, must necessarily be sensuous, ritualistic and statutory, adapted to those who are born of the flesh, but not of the Spirit, and who are therefore under law rather than under grace. But when God reveals himself as the God of man, and proposes the uplifting of man to God in an intimate and loving fellowship, religion is no longer a national, but a personal matter. It is the reconciliation to God of the individual mind, heart and life. Spiritual life