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Page 8
[Sidenote: The Meaning of Jesus.]
[Sidenote: Christ as Revealer.]
In the unity of the Godhead, Christ is God in manifestation, redemption,
intercession, judgment. In the Trinity, in which we must believe God
exists, Jesus Christ is the personality expressive, at first visibly and
now invisibly, of the tender qualities of the Divine nature which,
manifested in part in the world of nature, are there so linked with
severity as to require special and peculiar revelation in the person of
Jesus Christ in order that God may be understood both as transcending
nature and as eternal love.
* * * * *
Surely the doctrine, "I believe in the Holy Ghost," will remain. It is a
misfortune that the word "ghost" has, in our English use, an unworthy
and terrifying significance. On this account it were well if we could
substitute for constant use the word "Spirit."
[Sidenote: The Holy Ghost.]
[Sidenote: The Energy of God.]
[Sidenote: The Interpreter.]
The Holy Spirit is the energy of God, whether working as Creator or in
the processes of redemption. It stirs us to the depths when we consider
that the Author of the worlds, the Source of the energies is He who
transforms, renews, sanctifies, and witnesses in us. There is no
question as to the pervasiveness and competence of the Power which
"works in us to will and to do of His good pleasure." We are taught to
trace all our religious uplift to the highest possible source. We gather
a great sense of our worth by the dignity of this association as we do
of the condescension of our Lord in making His home in our hearts. This
Holy Spirit is in all Christians the energy of the entire spiritual
life. By this we do the things which by nature we can not do. His is
that Divine impulse which initiates, continues, matures, and satisfies
the life of God in us. It is the indwelling, all-pervading Holy Spirit,
which interprets that great word, "I in them and Thou in Me, that they
may be one as We are."
[Sidenote: The Doctrine of Energy.]
And if the most advanced philosophy should yet be confirmed as true that
there is nothing really but energy, none the less would the doctrine of
the Holy Spirit abide. Back of all the individual energies of humanity;
back of all the forces of nature is the supreme energy of God. If
creation be our theory, it is the Spirit of God which broods on the face
of the waters. If evolution be our creed, it is "in Him we live and move
and have our being." All science is but the knowing of His way of
working, and all theology is but the discovery of His mind. To know Him
is to know all things. The latest Christian will be saying, "I believe
in the Holy Ghost."
* * * * *
[Sidenote: The Forgiveness of Sin.]
[Sidenote: Huxley on Depravity.]
[Sidenote: Not All Born Good.]
[Sidenote: Experience of Hell.]
And what becomes of the doctrine of the "forgiveness of sins" in this
outlook for "the things which remain?" Accepting Huxley as the
incarnation of the skeptical spirit of our time, I quote from him his
thought of sin, depravity, and punishment, as a hint of where the
scientific spirit may yet aid us. "The doctrine of predestination, of
original sin, of the innate depravity of man, the evil fate of the
greater part of the race, of the primacy of Satan in this world, of the
essential vileness of matter, of a malevolent Demiurgos subordinate to a
benevolent Almighty who has only lately revealed Himself, faulty as they
are, appear to me to be vastly nearer the truth than the liberal,
popular illusions that babies are all born good, and that the example of
corrupt society is responsible for their failure to remain so.... That
it is given to everybody to reach the ethical ideal if they will only
try; that all partial evil is universal good; and other optimistic
figments." "I suppose that all men with a clear sense of right and wrong
have descended into hell and stopped there quite long enough to know
what infinite punishment means."
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