แ passeth knowledge," but in the name of the only begotten . e., in that which distinguishes His Person as the Person of the Only Begotten.

Again, "If ye believe not that I am [He], ye shall die in your sins." (John viii. 24.) Of course we must ask here, "What are we to believe that He is ?" And this is what the Jews asked, for we go on to read, "Then said they unto Him, Who art Thou? And Jesus said unto them, Even the same that I said unto you from the beginning." Now up to this time Jesus had represented Himself to be the true, i. e., the only begotten Son of God, and because of this they had taken up stones to stone Him. He had as yet said little or nothing to them about His work, but He had said much about His Person; and naturally so, for how could they exercise any true trust in His work, except they realized His Person, for the all-sufficiency of His work depends wholly upon the greatness of His Person, that He is in very truth the Only Begotten Son-the "Word made flesh ?"

Again, we have a confirmation of this in the very next chapter (John ix. 35). "Jesus heard that they had cast him out and when He had found him, He said unto him, Dost thou believe on the Son of God? He answered and said, Who is He, Lord, that I might believe on Him? And Jesus said unto him, Thou hast both seen Him, and it is He that talketh with thee. And he said, Lord, I believe. And he worshipped Him."

And again, in the thirteenth chapter: "Now I tell you before it come, that, when it is come to pass, ye may believe that I am He." (John xiii. 19.)

Again, we have the

Saviour Himself saying, "Ye bo

lieve in God, believe also in ME" (John xiv. 1), mention ing Himself, that is His Person.

How could He put "believing in Himself" side by side with "believing in God," except that belief be the recognition of what He is, viz. the Son of God, and so in nature equal with God?

Again, when St. Paul began to preach, it is said that "he preached Christ in the synagogues, that He is the Son of God." (Acts ix. 20.)

Again, in the very first verses of the Epistle to the Romans, the Gospel is set forth as having specially to do with Christ's Person. "The Gospel of God concerning His Son Jesus Christ, who was made of the seed of David according to the flesh, and declared to be the Son

of God with power. by the Resurrection from the

dead." Here we have belief in the Resurrection of Christ set forth as subsidiary to belief in the Person of Christ as the Son of God, for St. Paul says, "He was declared to be the Son of God with power, by the resurrection from

the dead."

Lastly, 1 John iv. 3: "Every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof," &c. With this we must join St. John's words in his Second Epistle :

Many deceivers are entered into the world, who confess not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh. This is a deceiver and an antichrist. Whosoever transgresseth, and abideth not in the doctrine of Christ, hath not God," &c. Here we have belief in Christ's Person guarded with a very strong anathema.

Now, what can the Apostle here mean by "confessing not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh ?" Evidently he can mean but one thing, viz. "confessing not" the Incarnation, for the Incarnation is the one thing which distinguishes the coming of Christ into the world from the coming of any other man into the world. He must

mean, in fact, the truth of God which he expresses in other words in his Gospel,-" The Word was made flesh, and dwelt amongst us."

All men come into the world in the flesh, so that there would be no meaning in the Apostle's denunciation of those who denied that Jesus Christ had "come in the flesh," unless Christ's coming "in the flesh" involved what St. John elsewhere connects with it, viz. the Incarnation.

From all this it is abundantly clear that the only belief in Christ which the Scriptures recognise is a belief in His Person as God's Only Begotten Son Incarnate.

Now, the whole Creed of St. Athanasius, as I have shown, may be assumed to be written to defend, or hedge round, or guard, the simple statement that Jesus Christ is God's Only Begotten Son in our nature; so that we should hold and confess this truth in the one real true sense which the salvation of such a world as ours requires.

If any one holds in its integrity, without any reservation, the statement that Jesus Christ is God's true and Only Begotten Son in our nature, he commits himself to the belief of every statement respecting the Trinity and Incarnation in the Creed of St. Athanasius. He may not be conscious of so doing, but he unquestionably does so. For if the Son of God be His Only Begotten Son, and not His Son by adoption or by regeneration, then He must be Eternal, Incomprehensible, Uncreated, Almighty, Lord, and God, for it is the very nature of the Godhead to be all this, and so if He be the true actual Begotten Son of God He must be all this-otherwise the glory of the First Person as "the Father" would be taken away for He would have begotten a Son to whom He would have communicated an inferior and created, and so less glorious, nature than His Own.

On any hypothesis short of the Athanasian, the relation of the Son to the Father in the Godhead would be nothing like so intimate and close as the relation of any human son to his father.

By the Creed of St. Athanasius we hold and confess that "Son" means Son," that "begetting means the real communication of nature-of what constitutes Deity that these terms when applied to the Godhead have no unreal meaning, but betoken the same intimate relationship as the same words do when used to denote true fatherhood and sonship amongst men. They may have a higher meaning, but we will not for a moment allow them to have a lower.

If we give them a lower, we lose our whole conception of the "love of the Father" to sinners.

The more real the Sonship of the Son to the Father, the greater the love of the Father in giving Him.

The Creed of St. Athanasius is the great defence of the reality of the love of God the Father. "God so loved the world that He gave His Only Begotten Son," and the Creed of St. Athanasius obliges us to realize and confess that this Son Whom He gave is really and actually His Only Begotten. So that in giving Him, God manifested a love to us sinners infinitely greater than if He had given the highest archangel from before His throne.

So that when we confess the damnatory clauses of this Creed we say, perhaps in stern and somewhat harsh, but still in true language, what the Scriptures say, that to be saved we must believe in the Person of the Redeemer as the True and Only Son of the Living God, and so a partaker of all His Father's glorious and Divine perfections, and at the same time as true Son of man, and so partaker of all that constitutes unfallen human nature.

When we repeat these clauses, we say what our Lord

says, "He that believeth not shall be damned," and by the rest of the Creed we make this belief to be-what the

Scriptures evidently imply that it is-a belief in the Person of the Redeemer as the Son of God Incarnate. If we are to be faithful to God on the one hand, and to souls on the other, we must set forth this belief in the Name of the Only Begotten as it is set forth in Scripture.

God says that to be saved we must believe in His Son, and we must say so too; and if we would be free from men's blood, we must assert that this belief must be, in the first place, a real bona-fide acceptance of what the Scriptures say respecting Jesus, that He is the Only Begotten Son of God, and that He has "come in the flesh."

We do this, and then leave the matter to God, to deal with the man who comes short as seems good to Him.

So then in the use of these denunciations we are not

pronouncing on the eternal state of any one. We are simply saying what Scripture says or implies, that saving faith in Christ must fully recognize Who He is. And we should be unfaithful to our trust if we said less.

Though we humbly trust that God will make every allowance, and take into full account the education or cir cumstances which have led to the heresy of particular persons, we have no power to make exceptions or reservations.

If the Scriptures are to be relied upon, God denounces eternal wrath, not only against sins of the flesh, but against sins of the Spirit, such as unbelief-more particularly unbelief in the glory of His Son's Person; and it must be so, for the unbelief which refuses assent to the glory of Christ's Person as the Only Begotten Son of God, strikes at the root of that manifestation of the love of the Father to us which is implied in His having given His Only Son,